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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104,
+June, 1866, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: August 22, 2007 [EBook #22375]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by Cornell University Digital Collections).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+_A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics._
+
+VOL. XVII.--JUNE, 1866.--NO. CIV.
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by TICKNOR AND
+FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
+Massachusetts.
+
+Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved
+to the end of the article. Contractions have been retained as they appear
+in each story.
+
+
+
+
+QUICKSANDS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+"This is the seventy-fifth pair! Pretty well for us in so short a time!"
+said the Colonel's wife.
+
+"Yes, but we must give Aunt Marian the credit of a very large
+proportion; at least ten pairs have come from her."
+
+"I have nothing to do but to knit; none to knit for at home but my cat,"
+I replied, rather shortly, to the soft voice that had given me credit
+for such extraordinary industry. Afterwards I looked up at Percy Lunt,
+and tried to think of some pleasant thing to say to her; but in
+vain,--the words wouldn't come. I did not like her, and that is the
+truth.
+
+Thirty of us were assembled as usual, at our weekly "Soldiers' Aid
+Circle." We always met at the house of her father, Colonel Lunt, because
+its parlors were the largest in Barton, and because Mrs. Lunt invited us
+to come every week at three o'clock in the afternoon, and stay till
+nine, meanwhile giving us all tea. The two parlors, which opened into
+each other as no others in Barton did, were handsomely furnished with
+articles brought from France; though, for that matter, they did not look
+very different from Barton furniture generally, except, perhaps, in
+being plainer. Just now the chairs, lounges, and card-table were covered
+with blue yarn, blue woollen cloth, unbleached cotton, and other things
+requisite for the soldiers. They, the soldiers, had worn out the
+miserable socks provided by government in two days' marching, and sent
+up the cry, to the mothers and sisters in New England, "Give us such
+stockings as you are used to knitting for us!"
+
+That home-cry found its answer in every heart. Not a hand but responded.
+Every spare moment was given to the needs of the soldiers. For these
+were not the materials of a common army. These were all our own
+brothers, lovers, husbands, fathers. And shame to the wife, daughter, or
+sister who would know them to be sufferers while a finger remained on
+their hands to be moved! So, day by day, at soldiers' meetings, but
+much more at home, the army of waiters and watchers wrought cheerfully
+and hopefully for the loved ones who were "marching along." In Barton we
+knitted while we talked, and at the Lyceum lectures. Nay, we threatened
+even to take our knitting to meeting,--for it seemed, as we said, a
+great waste of time to be sitting so long idle.
+
+This had gone on for more than months. We had begun to count the war by
+years. Did we bate one jot of heart or hope for that? No more than at
+the beginning. We continued to place the end of the struggle at sixty or
+ninety days, as the news came more or less favorable to the loyal cause.
+But despair of the Republic? Never. Not the smallest child in Barton.
+Not a woman, of course. And through these life-currents flowing between
+each soldier and his home, the good heart and courage of the army was
+kept up through all those dismal reverses and bloody struggles that
+marked the early part of the years of sixty-two and three.
+
+We kept writing to our Barton boys, and took care of them, both in tent
+and field. And in every box sent on to the Potomac went letters from all
+the soldiers' families, and photographs to show how fast the children
+were growing, and how proud the sisters were of the brave brothers who
+were upholding the flag at the price of their lives.
+
+We were very busy to-day at Mrs. Lunt's. She and I cut out shirts for
+the rest,--and I took an opportunity to carry one to Percy Lunt, with
+some directions, in as kind a voice as I could command, about the
+sleeves. She smiled and looked up wistfully in my face, but I turned
+away in a hurry to my work. Somehow, I could not forgive her for
+troubling my poor Robert. I couldn't before he went, much less now.
+
+I must describe Percy if I can. She was of middling height, and very
+delicately formed, with a face as destitute of color as if it had been
+carved out of marble. Her dark hair was cut short in her neck, and
+parted over her forehead and her even brows. Her eyes were dark and
+soft, but almost constantly bent on the floor. She dressed in black, and
+wore over her small head a little tarlatan cap as close as a Shaker's.
+You might call her interesting-looking, but for a certain listlessness
+and want of sympathy with others. She had been married, was not more
+than twenty years old at the time I am describing her, and had been in
+Barton only about a year, since her husband's death.
+
+As I had neither chick nor child to offer to my country, I was glad to
+hear my nephew, Robert Elliott, say that the Barton boys had chosen him
+for Captain, and that they were all to start for Boston the next
+morning, and go on at once to Fortress Monroe.
+
+This boy's black eyes were very near to my heart,--almost as near as
+they were to his own mother's. And when he came in to bid me good by, I
+could not look on his pale, resolute face without a sinking, trembling
+feeling, do what I would to keep up a brave outside? This was in the
+very beginning of the war, when word first came that blood had been shed
+in Baltimore; and our Barton boys were in Boston reporting to Governor
+Andrew in less than a week after. Now we didn't, one of us, believe in
+the bravery of the South. We believed them braggarts and bullies, and
+that was all. We believed that, once let them see that the North was not
+going to give way to them, they would go back where they came from.
+
+"You will be back in a month, Robert, all of you. Mind, I don't say you
+will send these hounds back to their kennels,--rather, send these gentry
+back to their ladies' chambers. But I won't say either. Only let them
+see that you are ready for a fair stand-up fight, and I'll be bound
+they'll be too much astonished to stop running for a week."
+
+So we all said and thought at the North,--all but a few who had been at
+the South, and who knew too well how much in earnest it was in its
+treason, and how slight was the struggle it anticipated. These few
+shuddered at the possibility that stood red and gloomy in the path of
+the future,--these few, who knew both sides. Meanwhile both sides most
+heartily underrated each other, and had the sincerest reciprocal
+disrespect.
+
+"I don't quite think like you, Auntie, but that is, perhaps, because I
+was at Charleston. A year at the South, and you understand them a little
+differently. But no matter,--they must go back all the same. This is my
+pincushion, is it?"
+
+"Yes, and here are thread and needles. But, Rob, nonsense! I say you
+will be back in a month. They will begin talking and arguing, and once
+they begin that, there will be no fighting. It is like the Chinese, each
+side trying to frighten the other."
+
+"Perhaps so," said Robert, in an abstracted way. "Let us hope so, at all
+events. I am sure I don't want to shoot anybody. But now I am going to
+Colonel Lunt's a little while; shall I find you up when I come back?"
+
+"Come in, any way, and tell me if you have good news."
+
+I knew what he was going to Colonel Lunt's for. He had talked to me
+about Percy, and I knew he loved her. If he had not been going away,
+perhaps he would have waited longer; for Mr. Lunt (he was Percy's
+cousin) had not been dead quite two years. But he said he could not go
+away without telling her; and when I remembered all the readings
+together, and the walkings and talkings between the two, I thought it
+most likely she had already consoled herself. As I said before, I had no
+very great love for her.
+
+Not an hour, not fifteen minutes, when Robert returned. He looked paler
+than before, and spoke no word, only stared into the fire. At length,
+with a pitiful attempt at a smile, he said, "I'm a fool to be vexed
+about it,--let her please herself!"
+
+"It is bad news, Robert!" said I softly, laying my hand on his arm. His
+hands were clenched hard together.
+
+"Yes, there's no mistake about it. But, Auntie, tell me, am I a fool and
+a jackass? didn't you think she liked me?"
+
+"To be sure I did!" I answered decidedly.
+
+"Well, she says she never thought of me,--never!--and she never thought
+of marrying again."
+
+The wound wouldn't bear touching,--it was too sore. So I sat silently
+with him, holding his hand in mine, and looking into the fire, and in
+almost as great a rage as he was. He knew I felt with him, and by and by
+he turned to kiss my cheek, but still without a word.
+
+How I wished he could have gone to the conflict with the thought of his
+true love warm at his heart? Who deserved it so much? who was so brave,
+so heroic, so handsome?--one in ten thousand! And here was this
+dead-and-alive Percy Lunt, saying she never thought! "Pah!--just as if
+girls don't always think! If there's anything I do detest, it's a
+coquette!" The last sentence I unconsciously uttered aloud.
+
+"Don't call her that, Auntie! I really think she didn't know. I wasn't
+just to her. I was too angry. When I spoke to her she looked really
+distressed and astonished. I am sure that I ought----"
+
+"Nonsense, Robert! she must have seen your feelings. And haven't you
+been sending her flowers and books and pictures, and reading to her, and
+talking to her the whole time, this three months! Where were her eyes? I
+have no patience with her, I say!"
+
+The boy had recovered his sense of justice so much sooner than I! He
+smiled sadly, and took both my little old hands in his. "Best of
+aunties! what a good hater you are! Now, if you love me, you will be
+kind to her, and try to love and comfort her. Somehow she looks very
+unhappy."
+
+I could not answer.
+
+"She looked--O so sorry! Auntie, when I spoke, and as if she was too
+much astonished to answer me. I do think it was the very last thing in
+the world she expected. And after she told me, which she did at once,
+that I was mistaken, and she was mistaken, and that we never could be
+any more than friends to each other, and I had got up to go away,--for I
+was very angry as well as agitated,--she stood looking so pale and so
+earnestly at me, as if she must make me believe her. Then she held out
+her hands to me, and I thought she was going to speak; but she shook her
+head, and seemed so thoroughly distressed, that I tried to smile, and
+shake hands cordially, though, I confess, I didn't feel much like it.
+But I do now, Auntie,--and you must forgive her for not thinking quite
+so much of your Rob as you do."
+
+He took a photograph from his breast-pocket, and kissed it.
+
+"She gave me this; and she wrote on the back the date of to-day, April
+16th, 1861. She said she did not want me to remember her as she is now,
+but as she was in her happy days. And that they could never come again."
+
+It was a very lovely vignette, taken when she was joyous and
+round-faced, and with the curls falling about her cheeks and neck,
+instead of the prim little widow's cap she wore now. And instead of the
+still, self-contained, suffering look, there was great sweetness and
+serenity.
+
+"I don't see why she gave it to you, Rob," said I peevishly; "the best
+thing you can do is to forget her, and the kindest thing she could do to
+you would be to cut off all hope."
+
+"She did that," he replied; "but she said she could not bear to have me
+go where I was going without feeling that I had left a most affectionate
+friend, who would watch eagerly for my success, and sympathize with all
+my trials. Auntie! who knows?"
+
+I saw by the lighting up of his dark eyes what hope lay at the very
+bottom of his soul. And, to be sure, who knew what might be in the
+future? At all events, it made him more comfortable now to have this
+little, unexpressed, crouching hope, where he could silently caress it
+when he was far away from us all. He had all our photographs,--mother,
+sister, and aunt.
+
+"And now I must go to Mr. Ford's to-night, and bid them good by. Don't
+let any enterprising young lawyer come here and get away all my business
+before the month is out. I came within an ace of making a writ only last
+week!"
+
+So with smiles he parted from me, and strength was given me to smile
+too, the next morning, when he marched by my window, and bowed to me, at
+the head of his hundred men. I saw his steady, heroic face, no longer
+pale, but full of stern purpose and strength. And so they all
+looked,--strong, able, determined. The call took all our young men from
+Barton. Not one would remain behind.
+
+And that is why I could not love Percy Lunt. How hard she worked at our
+soldiers' club! how gentle and respectful she always was to me! If I had
+not been always preoccupied and prejudiced, I might have pitied the
+poor, overcharged heart, that showed itself so plainly in the deathly
+pallor of the young cheek, and the eyes so weighed down with weeping.
+Colonel Lunt and his wife watched her with loving eyes, but they could
+do little to soothe her. Every heart must taste its own bitterness. And,
+besides, she wasn't their own child.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Every village has its great man and woman, and Colonel Lunt and his wife
+were Barton's. Theirs was the only family whose table appointments were
+of sufficient elegance to board the preceptor of the academy. All the
+Lyceum lecturers stopped at Colonel Lunt's; and Mrs. Lunt was the person
+who answered the requirements of Lady Manager for the Mount Vernon
+Association, namely, "social position, executive ability, tact, and
+persistency."
+
+They were the only family in Barton who had been abroad. The rest of us
+stayed at home and admired them. They had not always lived in Barton;
+perhaps, if they had, we should not have succumbed so entirely as we all
+did, ten years ago, when Colonel Lunt came and bought the Schuyler
+place, (so called because General Schuyler stopped there over night on
+his way to fight Burgoyne,) and brought his orphan niece and adopted
+daughter with him, and also a French governess for the child. These
+things were not in Barton style at all; all our children being educated
+at the town school, and finished, as means allowed, by three months'
+polish at some seminary or other. Of course, in a country town like
+Barton, which numbers nearly fifteen hundred inhabitants, there is
+enough to interest and occupy every one. What would be gossip and
+scandal in a different social condition is pure, kindly interest in
+Barton. We know everybody, and his father and mother. Of course each
+person has his standing as inevitable and decided as an English
+nobleman's. Our social organization is perfect. Our circles are within
+and within each other, until we come to the _crème de la crème_ of the
+Lunts and six other families. The outer circle is quite extensive,
+embracing all the personable young men "who are not embarrassed with
+antecedents," as one of our number said. The inner one takes in some
+graduates of college,--persons who read all the new books, and give a
+tone to Barton. Among the best people are the Elliotts and Robertses.
+The lawyers and shopkeepers come in of course, but not quite of
+course--anywhere but in Barton--is included the barber. But Mr. Roberts
+was an extreme case. He had been destined to literary pursuits, became
+consumptive, and was obliged, by unforeseen contingencies, to take up
+some light employment, which proved in the end to be shaving. If it had
+been holding notes instead of noses, the employment would have been
+vastly genteel, I dare say. As it was, we thought about the French
+_émigrés_ and _marquises_ who made cakes and dressed hair for a living,
+and concluded to admit Mr. Roberts, especially as he married a far-away
+Elliott, and was really a sensible and cultivated man. But as we must
+stop somewhere, we drew a strict line before the tinman, blacksmith, and
+Democrats of all sorts. We are pure-blooded Federalists in Barton, and
+were brought up on the Hartford Convention. I think we all fully
+believed that a Democrat was unfit to associate with decent people.
+
+As in most New England towns, the young fly from the parent nest as soon
+as they are fledged. Out of Barton have gone, in my time, Boston
+millionnaires, state secretaries, statesmen, and missionaries,--of the
+last, not a few. Once the town was full of odd people, whose
+peculiarities and idiosyncrasies ran to seed, and made strange, eventful
+histories.
+
+But we have ceased to take such microscopic views of each other since
+the railway came within ten miles of us, and are now able to converse on
+much more general topics than formerly. Not that there isn't still
+opportunity to lament over the flighty nature of kitchen incumbents, and
+to look after the domestic interests of all Barton; but I think going to
+Boston several times a year tends to enlarge the mind, and gives us more
+subjects of conversation. We are quite up in the sculpture at Mount
+Auburn, and have our preferences for Bierstadt and Weber. Nobody in
+Barton, so far, is known to see anything but horrors in
+pre-Raphaelitism. Some wandering Lyceum-man tried to imbue us with the
+new doctrine, and showed us engravings of Raphael's first manner, and
+Perugino. But we all voted Perugino was detestable, and would none of
+him. Besides, none of the Lunts liked him.
+
+In patriotism, Barton would have "knocked under to no man," if the
+question had been put to it ten years ago on the Fourth of July. When a
+proof of it was required from the pocket, on the occasion before alluded
+to, of the Mount Vernon Association, I regret to say the response did
+no credit to Barton.
+
+Mrs. Lunt made a great many Lady Assistant Managers in the town, and
+sent us forth to gather in the harvest, which we could not doubt would
+be plentiful. She herself worded a most touching "appeal to the women of
+Barton," and described "the majestic desolation of the spot where the
+remains of Washington lie in cold neglect," and asked each one for a
+heart-offering to purchase, beautify, and perpetuate a fitting home
+where pilgrims from all parts of the Union should come to fill their
+urns with the tears of grateful remembrance.
+
+It really seemed unnecessary to urge such a claim on a community like
+ours. Yet we found ourselves obliged to exhaust all the persistency and
+tact we had. For every conceivable reason Barton refused to respond to
+our appeals. The minister, Mr. Ford, declared to me that the sentiment
+of loyalty did not exist in America. Sometimes, he said, he wished he
+lived under a monarchy. He envied the heartfelt cheers with which
+Victoria's name was met, everywhere on British ground. "But you can't
+get people to give to Mount Vernon. They are afraid of slavery there.
+They are afraid of this, that, and the other; but give they will not."
+He handed me a dollar, in a hopeless way, which was a four-hundredth of
+his income. The blacksmith's wife would not admit me at all, saying,
+"There has been one beggar here already this morning!" The butcher's
+wife gave five cents; but I had my doubts about accepting it, for while
+I was indignantly relating the desolate condition of the home and tomb
+of the Father of his Country, and something about its being a spot only
+fit for a wild pelican to live in, the butcher himself passed through
+the house, nodding his head at me, and saying loudly, "Not a cent,
+wife!" The plasterer, Mr. Rice, a respectable Vermonter, asked me who
+Washington was; and Mrs. Goodwin, the cabinet-maker's wife, said
+cordially to me, "There 's ten cents towards a tomb. I don't never
+expect to go down South myself, but maybe my son'll like to be buried
+there." Her son was buried down South, with many more of our brave
+Barton boys, little as we thought of it then!
+
+Now, the butcher and baker, the plasterer, and all, have gone to the
+war. They have learned what it is to have a country to live for. They
+have learned to hold up the old flag through thunderings and blood, and
+to die for it joyfully. What a baptism and regeneration it has been!
+what a new creation! Behold, old things have passed away, and all has
+become new!
+
+Soon after the battle of Cedar Mountain, and Banks's retreat, we had
+long, full letters from Robert. He wrote a separate note to me, in which
+he said, "Be kind to Percy." It was the very thing I had not been,--had
+not felt it possible to be. But, conscience-stricken, I went up to call
+at Colonel Lunt's, and read our letters to them. Percy walked home with
+me, and we talked over the prospects and reverses of the war. Of course
+we would not allow there were any real reverses.
+
+We went on to my little cottage, and I asked her to come in and rest. I
+remember it was a very still evening, except for a sad south-wind. The
+breeze sighed through the pines in front of the house, like the sound of
+distant water. The long lingering of the sun slanted over Percy's brow,
+as she sat leaning her head on her hand, and looking away off, as if
+over thousands of miles. Her pretty pale fingers were purple with
+working on hospital shirts and drawers, and bloody with pricking through
+the slipper soles for the wounded men. She was the most untiring and
+energetic of all the young people; but they all worked well.
+
+We sat there some time without speaking. I was full of thought and
+anxiety, and I supposed she too might feel deeply about Robert.
+
+"Aunt Marian,--may I call you so?" said she softly, at length looking
+up.
+
+"Why not, Percy? you always do."
+
+"Only, lately, it has seemed to me you were different."
+
+She crossed the room and sat down on a _tabouret_ so low that she was at
+my feet, and took my hand with a humble sweetness that would have
+touched any heart less hard than mine.
+
+"I used to love to hear _him_ call you so!" she went on, caressing my
+hand, which I did not withdraw, though I should have liked well to do
+so, for I did not at all like this attitude we had assumed of penitent
+and confessor. "I can't expect you to be just to me, dear Auntie,
+because you don't know. But oh! do believe! I never guessed Robert's
+feelings for me. How could I think of it,--and I a married woman!"
+
+"Married! Percy!" said I, astonished at her agitation and the tears that
+flowed down her pale face like rain.
+
+"Yes," she answered in a voice so low that I could scarcely hear it.
+
+"Not a widow, Percy Lunt! What do you mean?"
+
+"I think--I believe--my husband is living. He was so a few months ago.
+But I cannot tell you any more without papa's permission. O, I have
+suffered so much! You would pity me if you knew all. But I felt as if I
+must tell you this: and then--you would understand how I might have
+been, as I was, so wholly preoccupied with my own feelings and interests
+as never to guess that Robert's was anything but the regard of a friend.
+And, indeed," she added with a sorrowful smile, "I feel so much older
+than Robert.--I have gone through so much, that I feel ten years older
+than he is. You will believe me, Aunt Marian, and forgive me?"
+
+"It is easy to forgive, poor child!" I said, mingling my tears with
+hers. "I have been cruel and hard-hearted to you. But I felt only for
+poor Robert, and how could I guess?"
+
+"You couldn't,--and that is why I felt that I must tell you."
+
+"I cannot ask you anything further,--it is very strange."
+
+While Percy kept strong rein on her feelings, her impassive manner had
+deceived me. Now that my sympathy with her made me more keenly alive to
+her distress, I saw the deep pain in her pale face, and the unnatural
+look of grief in one so young. She tied on her hat in her old, hopeless
+way, and the ivory smoothness of her face spoke of self-centred and
+silent suffering.
+
+"If papa is willing, I shall come to-morrow, and tell you part, at
+least, of my sad story; and even if he is not willing, I think I must
+tell you a part of it. I owe it to you, Aunt Marian!"
+
+"I shall be at home all day, my dear," I said, kissing the poor, pale
+lips with such tender pity as I had never thought to feel for Percy
+Lunt.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+It was early in September, 1862, and on Sunday morning, the day after I
+had received the promise of at least a partial confidence from Percy. We
+were to come home together from meeting, and she was to spend the rest
+of the day quietly with me. Many a query passed through my mind as I
+walked along. I wondered at a thousand things,--at the mysteries that
+are directly under our feet,--at the true stories that belong to every
+family, and are never known but to the trusted few,--at the many that
+are known but to the one heart, whereon they are cut in sharp letters.
+
+As I approached the meeting-house, I saw Mr. Ford talking earnestly with
+Colonel Lunt and Mr. Wilder on the porch-step, while the pews were
+already full, and the clock pointed to ten minutes past the usual time.
+I had myself been detained until late, and had walked rapidly and quite
+alone.
+
+The heart of the community was on the _qui vive_ so constantly, that any
+unusual sign startled and alarmed every one. A minute more, and Mr. Ford
+passed rapidly up the broad aisle, his face pale with excitement.
+Instead of the opening prayer, he said to us: "Brethren and sisters!
+there has been a great battle,--a terrible battle at Antietam! They have
+sent on to the North for aid for the wounded, who are being brought on
+as fast as possible to Washington. But they are brought in by thousands,
+and everything is needed that any of us can spare."
+
+All of us had risen to our feet.
+
+"I have thought we should best serve and praise our God by ministering
+to the sufferings of our brave boys! God knows what afflictions are in
+store for us; but all who can aid in this extremity I am sure will do
+so, and the blessing of those ready to perish will fall on them."
+
+Mr. Ford ceased speaking. He had two boys with McClellan; and then
+Colonel Lunt, in a few words, stated the arrangements which had already
+been made by himself and Mr. Wilder, who was a deacon of the church, to
+convey any articles that might be contributed to the railroad station
+ten miles away. Whatever was gathered together should be brought to the
+Common at once, where it would be boxed and put into the wagons.
+
+    "Ah, then and there was hurrying to and fro!"
+
+But one hour later saw Barton Common, an enclosed acre of ground,
+covered with every sort of garment that could by any possibility be
+useful in a hospital. Besides the incredible numbers of sheets and
+pillow-cases, wrappers and stockings, which every housekeeper drew forth
+from her stores, notwithstanding her previous belief and assertion that
+she "really had nothing more fit to give to the soldiers," there were
+countless boxes of jellies, preserves, and dried fruit. Everything
+palatable and transportable was brought, with streaming eyes and
+throbbing hearts, to the general contribution. From house to house the
+electric current of sympathy flowed, and by twelve o'clock Barton Common
+was a sight to behold. Seventeen boxes full of all imaginable comforts
+and alleviatives set off in four wagons for the railroad station, and
+Colonel Lunt himself went on with them to Washington to see that they
+were properly and safely delivered. That was a Sunday service for us!
+
+I had been sitting in my little keeping-room, knitting at soldiers'
+stockings, (what would Deacon Hall's wife and my mother have thought of
+my doing this on a Sunday!) and with the tea ready for drawing, when
+Percy came to make her promised visit. She too brought her basket of
+gray yarn and knitting-needles. We were not afraid of becoming atheists,
+if we did work on a Sunday. Our sheep had all fallen into ditches on the
+Sabbath-day, and we should have been worse than Jews not to have laid
+hold to get them out. So Percy kept on knitting until after our tea was
+ready, and then helped me with the teacups. When we were seated at the
+west window on the wide seat together, she put her arm round my neck and
+kissed me.
+
+"You will forgive me all, Aunt?"
+
+"O, you know that beforehand!"
+
+"But I shall not tell you very much, and what I do tell is so unpleasant
+and mortifying to reveal, that it was only when I told papa my great
+reason he was willing I should tell you."
+
+"Tell me just as much, and just as little, as you like, my dear; I am
+willing to believe in you without a word," I said. And so it was; and
+philosophers may tell, if they can, why it was.
+
+"You remember my governess, Madame Guyot?"
+
+"O, yes, of course, perfectly. Her dreadfully pale face and great black
+eyes."
+
+"She was so good to me! I loved her dearly. But after she died, you
+remember, they sent me to Paris to a school which she recommended, and
+which was really a very good one, and where I was very happy; and it was
+after that _we_ travelled so much, and I met--"
+
+"Never mind, my poor dear!" I said, seeing that she was choked with her
+sorrowful remembrances, "I can guess,--you saw there the person,--the
+young man--"
+
+"I was only seventeen, Aunt Marian! and he was the first man I ever saw
+that really interested me at all,--though papa had several proposals for
+me from others. But this young man was so different. He really loved me,
+I am sure,--or rather I was sure at the time. He was not in good health,
+and I think his tall, fragile, spiritual person interested all the
+romance of my nature. Look at his picture, and tell me if that is the
+face of a bad or a treacherous man!"
+
+Percy opened a red morocco case and handed it to me. I gazed on the face
+with deep interest. The light, curling hair and smooth face gave an
+impression of extreme youth, and the soft blue eyes had the careless,
+serene expression which is often seen in foreigners' eyes, but scarcely
+ever in those of Americans. There was none of the keen, business look
+apparent in almost every New England face, but rather an abstracted,
+gentle expression, as of one interested in poetry or scientific
+pursuits,--objects that do not bring him in conflict with his race.
+
+I expressed something of this to Percy, and she said I was right about
+the poetry, and especially the gentleness. But he had, in fact, only
+been a student, and as yet but little of a traveller. They were to have
+travelled together after their marriage.
+
+"It was only six weeks after that, when Charles was obliged to go to the
+West Indies on business for his father. It was the sickly season, and he
+would not let me go with him. He was to be back in England in five or
+six weeks at farthest."
+
+"And--he wasn't lost?"
+
+"Lost to me. Papa heard at one time that he was living at the West
+Indies, and after a time he went there to search for him--in vain. Then,
+months after, we heard that he had been seen in Fayal. Sometimes I
+think--I almost hope he is dead. For that he should be willing to go
+away and live without me is so dreadful!"
+
+"You are dressed like a widow?"
+
+"Yes,--I desired it myself, after two years had passed, and not a word
+came from Charles. But papa says he has most likely met with a violent
+death, and that these rumors of his having been seen in Fayal and in the
+West Indies, as we heard once, are only got up to mislead suspicion. You
+know papa's great dislike--nay, I may call it weakness--is being talked
+about and discussed. And he thought the best way was to say nothing
+about the peculiarity or mystery attending my marriage, but merely say I
+was a widow. Somebody in Barton said Charles died of a fever, and as
+nobody contradicted it, so it has gone; but, Aunt Marian, it is often my
+hope, and even belief, that I shall see him again!"
+
+She stopped talking, and hid her face, sobbing heavily, like a grieved
+child. Poor thing! I pitied her from my heart. But what could I say?
+People are not lost, now-a-days. The difficulty is to be able to hide,
+try they ever so much. It looked very dark for this Charles Lunt; and,
+by her own account, they had not known much about him. He was a New York
+merchant, and I had not much opinion of New York morals myself. From
+their own newspapers, I should say there was more wickedness than could
+possibly be crammed into their dailies going on as a habit. However, I
+said nothing of this sort to poor Percy, whose grief and mortification
+had already given her such a look of suffering as belongs only to the
+gloomiest experience of life. I soothed and comforted her as well as I
+might, and it doesn't always take a similar experience to give
+consolation. She said it was a real comfort to tell me about her
+trouble, and I dare say it was.
+
+When Colonel Lunt got back from Washington, he had a great deal to tell
+us all, which he did, at our next soldiers' meeting, of the good which
+the Barton boxes had done. But he said it was a really wonderful sight
+to see the amount of relief contributed on that Lord's day, from all
+parts of the North, for the wounded. Every train brought in hundreds and
+thousands of packages and boxes, filled with comforts and delicacies.
+If the boys had been at home, they could not have been cared for more
+tenderly and abundantly. And the nurses in the hospitals! Colonel Lunt
+couldn't say enough about them. It was a treat to be watched over and
+consoled by such ministering angels as these women were! We could
+believe that, if they were at all like Anna Ford, who went, she said,
+"to help the soldiers bear the pain!" And I know she did that in a
+hundred cases,--cases where the men said they should have given up
+entirely, if she hadn't held their hands, or their heads, while their
+wounds were being dressed. "It made it seem so like their own mother or
+sister!"
+
+That fall, I think, Barton put up eighty boxes of blackberry jam. This
+wasn't done without such a corresponding amount of sympathy in every
+good word and work as makes a community take long leaps in Christian
+progress. Barton could not help improving morally and mentally while her
+sons were doing the country's work of regeneration; and her daughters
+forgot their round tires like the moon, their braidings of hair, and
+their tinkling ornaments, while they devoted themselves to all that was
+highest and noblest both in thought and action. I was proud of Barton
+girls, when I saw them on the hills, in their sun-bonnets, gathering the
+fruit that was to be for the healing of the nations.
+
+Soon after Colonel Lunt's return, he told me one day, in one of his
+cautious whispers, that he and Mrs. Lunt proposed to take me over to
+Swampy Hollow, if it would be agreeable to me. Of course it was; but I
+was surprised, when we were fairly shut up in the carriage, to find no
+Percy with us.
+
+"We left her at home purposely," said Colonel Lunt, in a mysterious way,
+which he was fond of, and which always enraged me.
+
+I don't like mysteries or whisperings, and yet, from an unfortunate
+"receptivity" in my nature, I am the unwilling depositary of half the
+secrets of Barton. I knew now that I was to hear poor Percy's story over
+again, with the Colonel's emendations and illustrations. I was in the
+carriage, and there was no getting out of it. Mrs. Lunt was used to him,
+and, I do believe, would like nothing better than to hear his old
+stories over and over, from January to December. But I wasn't of a
+patient make.
+
+Colonel Lunt was a gentleman of the old school, which means, according
+to my experience, a person who likes to spend a long time getting at a
+joke or telling a story. He was a long time telling this, with the aid
+of Mrs. Lunt, who put in her corrections now and then, in a gentle,
+wifely way all her own, and which helped, instead of hindering him.
+
+"And now, may I ask, my dear Colonel," said I, when he had finished,
+"why don't you, or rather why didn't you tell Percy the whole story?"
+
+The Colonel pulled the check-string. "Thomas! drive slowly home now, and
+go round by the Devil's Dishful."
+
+This is one of the loveliest drives about Barton. I knew that the
+Colonel's mind was easy.
+
+"What need is there, or was there, to cloud Percy's life with such
+knowledge? Why, my dear Miss Elliott, if we all knew what other people
+know about us, we should be wretched! No! the mysteries of life are as
+merciful as the revelations; let us be thankful for all that we do _not_
+know."
+
+"And I am sure we couldn't love Percy any more than we do, let her birth
+or circumstances be what they would," said Mrs. Lunt.
+
+"I don't believe in natural affection, myself," said the Colonel; "but
+if I did, it would be enough to hear Percy congratulating herself on
+being of 'our very own blood,--a real Lunt!' Poor child! why should we
+trouble her? And I have often heard her say, she thought any blot on
+one's lineage the greatest of misfortunes."
+
+"The reason the Colonel wanted to tell you about Percy was this. Now
+that her husband may be dead, who knew all about her, it is just
+possible that circumstances may arise that would need the interference
+of friends. If we were to die, the secret might die with us. We are sure
+it will be safe with you, Aunt Marian, and we think that, as you know
+about her husband, you had better know the whole."
+
+Now this whole I propose to tell, myself, in one tenth part of the time
+it took the Colonel to tell me, prefacing it with a few facts about
+himself, which I guess he does not think that I know, and which relate
+to his early beginnings. Of course, all Barton is fully acquainted with
+the fact that he was born in the north of Vermont, at "the jumping-off
+place." He came to Boston, mostly on foot, and began his career in a
+small shop in Cornhill, where he sold bandannas, and the like. This
+imports nothing,--only he came by and by to associate with lords and
+dukes. And that shows what comes of being an American. He fell among
+Perkinses and Sturgises, and after working hard for them in China, and
+getting a great deal to do in the "carrying-trade," whatever that may
+be, retired on his half-million to Maryland, where he lived awhile,
+until he went to Europe. After he returned he bought the Schuyler place,
+which had been for sale years and years. But in Barton we like new
+things, and we saw no beauty in the old house, with its long walk of
+nearly a quarter of a mile to the front door, bordered with box. The
+Colonel, whose taste has been differently cultivated, has made a
+beautiful place of it, applying some of the old French notions of
+gardening, where the trees would admit of being cut into grotesque
+shapes, and leaving the shade-trees, stately and handsome, as they
+always were. Now to his story in my own words.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+I can't think of a more desolate place than they had in Maryland, by
+their own account;--a great, dismal house, without chick or child in it
+for years and years;--full of rooms and furniture and black people, and
+nowhere the shout and cry of a baby. There was nobody to be anxious
+about,--nobody gone away or coming home, or to be wept for, or to be
+joyful for;--only their two stupid selves. Madam pottering about the
+great house, dusting with a feather duster all the knick-knacks that she
+had brought home from Europe, and that she might have just as well
+bought in New York after she got home; and he putting up books and
+taking them down, riding out on his white horse, and having somebody to
+dine once in a while,--_could_ any life be drearier and more tiresome?
+
+Why people who have great empty houses and hearts don't rush into the
+street and pick up the first dozen little vagabonds they see, I can't
+think. With soap-suds, love, and the tenderest care, why don't they
+baptize them, body and soul, and keep them to make music in their silent
+halls, and, when their time comes, have something worth to render up to
+the child-loving Christ? Especially, why didn't two such affectionate,
+tender-hearted persons as Colonel Lunt and his wife? But they did not.
+They only waxed duller and duller, sitting there by their Christmas
+fires, that warmed no hearts but their own, rapidly growing cold.
+
+They sat alone by their Christmas fire one night, at last, to some
+purpose. All the servants had gone off pleasuring somewhere, where it is
+to be hoped there were children enough. The Colonel went himself to the
+door and brought in a market-basket that stood in the porch. He opened
+it by the light of a blazing fire, and Mrs. Lunt guessed, at every
+wrapper he turned down, something, and then something else; but she
+never guessed a baby. Yet there it lay, with eyes wide open,--a perfect
+baby, nobly planned;--a year old or more; and no more afraid of the
+Colonel than if it had been in society ten years. The little girl sprang
+forward towards him, laughing, and by doing so won his heart at once.
+Mrs. Lunt found credentials in the basket, in the shape of a note
+written in good English and spelled correctly. The wardrobe of the baby
+accompanied her also,--fine and delicately embroidered. The note said
+that circumstances of the most painful nature made it imperative to the
+mother of this child to keep herself unknown for a time; but meanwhile
+begged the charitable care of Colonel Lunt.
+
+The child, of course, took straight hold of their heart-strings. She
+made the house ring with her shouts and her healthy glee. She toddled
+over everything without restraint; tumbled over Chinese tea-poys and
+Japan idols; upset the alabaster Graces in the best parlor, and pulled
+every knick-knack out of its proper place.
+
+The worthy couple wondered at the happiness this naughty little thing
+brought; and a tyranny, but one very sweet and fair, triumphed in the
+decorous parlor and over the decorous old hearts. The baby was in a fair
+way of becoming a spoiled pest, when her own mother, in the character of
+French _bonne_, and afterwards of governess, came to the rescue. She
+told her story, which was rather a strange one, to the Colonel, and they
+made an arrangement with her to come and take care of the child. It was
+planned between them that Percy (her name is Amy Percival) should
+personate the only child of a deceased brother of the Colonel, and be
+adopted by him as his own daughter. Thenceforward the poor pale Madame
+Guyot took up her abode with them, like Amram's wife at the Egyptian
+court. I remember how sad and silent she always was, and how much her
+French speech separated her from us all in Barton. No wonder to me now
+that she faded day by day, till her life went out. No wonder that she
+was glad to exchange those memories of hers, and Percy's duty-kisses,
+for the green grave.
+
+When the child was fourteen, the Colonel took her abroad, but before
+that time the governess died. In some respects the Colonel's theory of
+education was peculiar. Squeers thought it best for people to learn how
+to spell windows by washing them,--"And then, you know, they don't
+forget. Winders, there 't is." And the Colonel approved of learning
+geography by going to the places themselves, and especially of learning
+the languages on the spot. This, he contended, was the only correct way,
+and enough better than by hammering forever at school-books and masters.
+It was in pursuance of this somewhat desultory, but healthful mode of
+education, that the family found itself, in 1857, at Baden-Baden.
+
+As usual, there were, in the crowds there assembled for health and
+pleasure, a great many English; among them several persons of high rank.
+Here were German princes and counts, so plenty that Percy got tired of
+wondering they were not more refined and agreeable. She was herself a
+great attraction there, and, the Colonel said, had many admirers. Among
+the guests was an English family that took great notice of her, and made
+many advances towards intimacy. The two young ladies and their father
+seemed equally pleased and interested in the Lunts, and when they left
+Baden-Baden asked them to make them a visit in the autumn at their house
+in Derbyshire.
+
+Thinking of this, I am not much surprised. For the Colonel's manners are
+unexceptionably good, with a simplicity and a self-reliance that mark a
+true gentleman; while Mrs. Lunt is the loveliest and best-bred woman in
+Barton, and consequently fit society for any nobleman.
+
+When the Lunts went to England, in October, they visited these people.
+And there they found Charles Lunt, a second-cousin of the Colonel's, a
+New-Yorker, and a graduate of Oxford. His father had sent him to England
+to be finished off, after Yale had done its best for him here. He and
+Percy fell in love immediately, and matters came to a climax.
+
+Colonel Lunt did not desire the connection at all. Charles's mother was
+related to the family where they were visiting, and, as he himself
+would feel it incumbent on him to state the facts relative to Percy's
+birth, he foresaw distinctly only a mortifying relinquishment of the
+alliance. Charles was, in fact, on his mother's side, second-cousin to
+an English Earl. The name of the Earl I don't give, for the good reason
+that the Colonel kept it a secret, and, even if I knew, I should not
+wish to reveal it.
+
+Before Colonel Lunt could act on his impressions and decisions, Charles
+cut the knot by asking his relative, the Earl, to make proposals for
+him. He was of age, with an independent fortune, and could please
+himself, and it pleased him to marry Percy.
+
+Then the Colonel asked to see Charles, and he was called in. He began by
+declining the connection; but finding this mortifying and mysterious to
+both the gentlemen, he ended by a plain statement of such of the facts
+as he had been made acquainted with by Madame Guyot.
+
+"I don't know the name of Percy's father," said the Colonel, "the poor
+woman would give me no clew to him,--but he may be living,--he may some
+time trace and claim her!"
+
+"Does this make any difference to you, Charles?" said the Earl, when
+Colonel Lunt had finished.
+
+"Not a jot!" said Charles, warmly. "It isn't likely her father will ever
+either trace or claim her; and, if he should even, and all should come
+out, why, I care nothing for it,--nothing, I mean, in comparison with
+Percy."
+
+Of course then the Colonel had no objections.
+
+"Now, is it best, all things considered," said the Earl, who took the
+interest of a father in Charles, "is it best to say anything to Percy of
+her real history?"
+
+Charles thought not by any means, and it was so agreed among the three.
+The young man left the room to go to his confident wooing, for there was
+not much reason to doubt of his fate, and left Colonel Lunt with the
+Earl.
+
+"Nothing can be more honorable than your whole proceeding, Colonel, in
+this matter. You might have kept the thing quiet, if you had so chosen."
+
+"I always meant to tell any man who really desired to marry Percy," said
+the Colonel; "we never can tell what may happen, and I wouldn't be such
+a swindler as to keep these facts from him, on which his whole decision
+might rest."
+
+The Colonel looked at the Earl,--"looked him straight in the eye," he
+said,--for he felt it an imputation on his honor that he could have been
+supposed for a moment to do otherwise than he had done. To his surprise
+the Earl turned very red, and then very pale, and said, holding out his
+hand, "You have kept my secret well, Colonel Lunt! and I thank you for
+it!"
+
+"You are Percy's father!" said the Colonel, at once.
+
+The Earl wrung his hand hard. It isn't the English nature to express
+much, but it was plain that the past was full of mournful and
+distressful remembrances.
+
+"I never thought of it till this instant," said Colonel Lunt, "and I
+don't know how I knew it; but it was written in your face. She never
+told me who it was!"
+
+"But she wrote to me about you, and about the child. I have watched your
+comings and goings these many years. I knew I should meet you where I
+did. You may guess my feelings at seeing my beautiful child,--at seeing
+how lovely in mind and person she is, and at being unable to call her my
+own! I was well punished the first hour after I met you. But my next
+hope and desire was to interest you all enough in my own family to
+induce you to come here. In fact, I did think you were the depositary of
+my secret. But I see I was wrong there."
+
+"Yes," the Colonel said, "Madame Guyot simply informed me the child's
+father would never claim her, and that the name was an assumed one. I
+saw how it probably was, but I respected her too much to ask anything
+which she did not herself choose to reveal. I think she was one of the
+loveliest and most superior women I ever saw, though, at the time I
+first met her, she showed that her health was fatally undermined. It was
+much on her account that I left Maryland for the more equable climate of
+Barton."
+
+"You were everything to her that the most tender and noble friends could
+be!" said the Earl, warmly. "She wrote me of all your kindness. Now let
+me tell you a little about her. She was my sister's governess, and I saw
+her in my college vacations. I need not tell you how lovely she was in
+her youth. She was no French girl, but a country curate's daughter in
+Hampshire. Now, Colonel Lunt, it would have been as impossible for me to
+marry that girl--no matter how beautiful, refined, and good--as if she
+had been a Hottentot. How often I have wished to throw birth,
+connections, name, title, everything, to the winds, that I might take
+Amy Percival to my heart and hold her there legally! How I have envied
+the Americans, who care nothing for antecedents, to whom birth and
+social position are literally nothing,--often not even fortunate
+accidents! How many times I have read your papers, and imagined myself
+thrown on my own resources only, like so many of your successful men,
+and making my own way among you, taking my Amy with me and giving her a
+respectable and happy home! But these social cobwebs by which we poor
+flies are caught and held,--it is very hard to break them! I was always
+going to do right, and always did wrong. After my great wrong to Amy,
+which was a pretended marriage, she left me,--she had found out my
+villany,--and went to America. She did not write to me until she knew
+she must die, and then she related every particular,--all your great
+kindness to both her and the child, and the motherly tenderness with
+which Mrs. Lunt had endeavored to soften her sufferings. In twenty years
+I have changed very much every way, but I have never ceased to feel
+self-contempt for my conduct to Amy Percival."
+
+Now a new question arose.
+
+Was it best to reveal this last secret to Charles? He had been content
+to take Percy, nameless and illegitimate. The Earl was extremely
+unwilling to extend his confidence further than Colonel Lunt. It seemed
+to him unnecessary. He said he desired to give Percy the same share of
+his property that his other two daughters would receive on their
+marriage, but that he could not openly do this without exciting remarks
+and provoking unpleasant feelings. Colonel Lunt considered that the
+secret was not his to keep or reveal. So nothing was said, and the
+marriage took place at the house of the Earl; Colonel Lunt receiving
+from Percy's father ten thousand pounds, as some atonement by a wounded
+conscience.
+
+"Now," said the Colonel, as he finished his long story, and we drove up
+to his house, "I say it was a mean cowardice that kept that man from
+doing his daughter justice. But then he was a scoundrel all through. And
+now for my reason for telling you. I have my doubts, after all, about
+the first marriage. There are the certificate and all the papers safe in
+my desk. Earls may die, and worms may eat them,--and so with their sons
+and daughters. It isn't among the impossibilities that my little Percy
+may be a countess yet! Any way, if an advertisement should appear
+calling for heirs to the Earl of Blank, somebody besides me and my
+little woman would know all about it."
+
+Mrs. Lunt insisted on my stopping to tea with them, and I had a strange
+curiosity to look at Percy Lunt again, surrounded with this new halo,
+thrice circled, of mystery. If she only knew or guessed what she really
+was!
+
+She sat by the fire, for the evening was a little cool, and, as we came
+in, roused herself from her sad posture to give me welcome. How white
+her face was! It was grievous to see such a young spirit so
+blanched,--so utterly unelastic. If she could receive tidings of his
+death, she would reconcile herself to the inevitable; but this wearing,
+gnawing pain, this grief at his desertion, this dread of meeting him
+again after he had been willing to leave her so long,--death itself
+would be less bitter! But there were no words to console her with.
+
+"You have had letters from Robert?" she inquired.
+
+"Only a telegram came saying that the Barton boys were safe. It must
+have been a dreadful battle! They say twelve thousand were killed on
+each side."
+
+"But you will hear very soon?"
+
+"O, yes," I said, "but Robert must have his hands very full. He will
+write as soon as he has a minute of leisure."
+
+Robert was colonel now, and we were very proud of him. He had not yet
+received a scratch, and he had been in eleven battles. We felt as if he
+bore a charmed life.
+
+After tea, we four sat round the sparkling wood-fire, knitting and
+talking, (people in war-time have enough to talk about,) when a loud,
+sudden knock at the door startled us. The old knocker thumped again and
+again. The servant hurried to the door, and a moment after a man rushed
+by him, with swift and heavy steps into the parlor, caught up Percy as
+if she had been a feather, and held her tight to his heart and mouth.
+
+He had not taken off his army cap, nor his blue great coat. We all
+sprang up at his entrance, of course, but I hadn't a thought who it
+could be, until Colonel Lunt called out "_Charles!_"
+
+There he was, to be sure, as alive as he could be, with his great red
+beard, and his face tanned and burnt like a brick! He took no notice of
+us whatever, only kept kissing Percy over and over, till her face, which
+was white as death, was covered with living crimson, and her
+heavy-lidded eyes turned to stars for brightness!
+
+After her fashion, Percy still continued undemonstrative, so far as
+words went; but she clung most eloquently to his neck with both her
+hands, the joyful light from her eyes streaming silently into his. O, it
+was fair to see,--this might of human love,--this mystery that needed no
+solving! His face shedding fidelity and joyfulness, and her heart
+accepting it with a trust that had not one question!
+
+In a few but most eloquent words he told us his adventures. But that
+would make a story by itself. A shipwreck,--and capture by Japanese
+pirates,--prison,--escape,--landing at Mobile,--pressed into the Rebel
+service,--battle,--prisoner to the Union forces,--glad taking of the
+oath of allegiance,--interview with General Banks, and service at last
+for the North. It was a wild, strange story of suffering, hardships, and
+wonderful escapes. Colonel Lunt said he never should have known the man,
+nor guessed at him, but for his eyes, he was so altered in every
+way,--so rough and strong-looking, with his complexion tanned and
+weather-beaten; and he had always been such a delicate, curled darling
+of indulgent parents! However, he looked twice the man he was before,
+Mrs. Lunt whispered me; and Percy could not take her eyes off him, he
+looked so strong and noble, and his face so full of high thoughts.
+
+He had been in several battles, and had been wounded twice. After his
+first wound he had been some time in a Southern hospital. "And now I
+think of it, Percy," he said, turning suddenly to her, and taking her on
+his knee as if she had been a baby, "it was in a hospital that I found
+out where you were. You must know that I hadn't the least clew to your
+whereabout, and thought of you as most likely still in London. You know
+our plan was to travel together for some months, and I could not guess
+where you might be, if indeed you were alive. After the battle the other
+day, I went into one of the improvised hospitals to look after some
+brave fellows of mine, when one of the nurses asked me for directions
+as to the burial of some men who had just been brought in. They had
+officers' uniforms on, and it was ascertained that they were really
+dead. As I turned to give the necessary directions, a man at my side,
+who was smoothing down the limbs of one who had just ceased to breathe,
+handed me a photograph from the man's breast, all rumpled and bloody. I
+recognized it in a moment as yours, Percy,--though how it should have
+been in that man's breast, I couldn't see."
+
+Percy and I looked at each other. But we dared not think. He went on.
+
+"I could not recognize him. But he was one of so many who were brought
+in on that terrible day after the battle, and except my own company I
+scarcely knew any of the officers. But I saw by the photograph where you
+were, at least the name on the back was a guide. It was Barton, Mass.,
+and the date of April, 1861. So, as I had worked pretty well at
+Antietam, Little Mac gave me a week's furlough, and I thought I would
+try it!"
+
+"Do you remember at all how he looked?" Mrs. Lunt asked, for I could not
+speak.
+
+"The young officer? Yes, Madam, I looked keenly at him, you may be sure.
+He was tall and fine-looking, with dark, curling hair, and his regular
+features were smiling and peaceful. They mostly look so who are shot
+dead at once. And this one had not suffered. He had died at the moment
+of triumph."
+
+I went home to fear and to weep. It seemed too certain. And time brought
+us the truth. Robert had fallen as he would have chosen to fall, leading
+on his men. He was so tall, and he was such a shining mark for death!
+But I knew that no din of cannon or roar of battle was loud enough to
+overcome the still, small voices of home, and that his last thought was,
+as he wrote me it would be, "of you all."
+
+O beautiful, valiant youth! O fearful ploughshare, tearing thy way
+through so many bleeding hearts! O terrible throes, out of which a new
+nation must be born!
+
+
+
+
+IN THE HEMLOCKS.
+
+
+Most people receive with incredulity a statement of the number of birds
+that annually visit our climate. Very few even are aware of half the
+number that spend the summer in their own immediate vicinity. We little
+suspect, when we walk in the woods, whose privacy we are intruding
+upon,--what rare and elegant visitants from Mexico, from Central and
+South America, and from the islands of the sea, are holding their
+reunions in the branches over our heads, or pursuing their pleasure on
+the ground before us.
+
+I recall the altogether admirable and shining family which Thoreau
+dreamed he saw in the upper chambers of Spaulding's woods, which
+Spaulding did not know lived there, and which were not put out when
+Spaulding, whistling, drove his team through their lower halls. They did
+not go into society in the village; they were quite well; they had sons
+and daughters; they neither wove nor spun; there was a sound as of
+suppressed hilarity.
+
+I take it for granted that the forester was only saying a pretty thing
+of the birds, though I have observed that it does sometimes annoy them
+when Spaulding's cart rumbles through their house. Generally, however,
+they are as unconscious of Spaulding as Spaulding is of them.
+
+Walking the other day in an old hemlock wood, I counted over forty
+varieties of these summer visitants, many of them common to other woods
+in the vicinity, but quite a number peculiar to these ancient solitudes,
+and not a few that are rare in any locality. It is quite unusual to find
+so large a number abiding in one forest,--and that not a large
+one,--most of them nesting and spending the summer there. Many of those
+I observed commonly pass this season much farther north. But the
+geographical distribution of birds is rather a climatical one. The same
+temperature, though under different parallels, usually attracts the same
+birds; difference in altitude being equivalent to the difference in
+latitude. A given height above the sea level under the parallel of 30°
+may have the same climate as places under that of 35°, and similar Flora
+and Fauna. At the head-waters of the Delaware, where I write, the
+latitude is that of Boston, but the region has a much greater elevation,
+and hence a climate that compares better with the northern part of the
+State and of New England. Half a day's drive to the southeast brings me
+down into quite a different temperature, with an older geological
+formation, different forest timber, and different birds,--even with
+different mammals. Neither the little Gray Rabbit nor the little Gray
+Fox is found in my locality, but the great Northern Hare and the Red Fox
+are seen here. In the last century a colony of beavers dwelt here,
+though the oldest inhabitant cannot now point to even the traditional
+site of their dams. The ancient hemlocks, whither I propose to take the
+reader, are rich in many things beside birds. Indeed, their wealth in
+this respect is owing mainly, no doubt, to their rank vegetable growths,
+their fruitful swamps, and their dark, sheltered retreats.
+
+Their history is of an heroic cast. Ravished and torn by the tanner in
+his thirst for bark, preyed upon by the lumberman, assaulted and beaten
+back by the settler, still their spirit has never been broken, their
+energies never paralyzed. Not many years ago a public highway passed
+through them, but it was at no time a tolerable road; trees fell across
+it, mud and limbs choked it up, till finally travellers took the hint
+and went around; and now, walking along its deserted course, I see only
+the footprints of coons, foxes, and squirrels.
+
+Nature loves such woods, and places her own seal upon them. Here she
+shows me what can be done with ferns and mosses and lichens. The soil is
+marrowy and full of innumerable forests. Standing in these fragrant
+aisles, I feel the strength of the vegetable kingdom and am awed by the
+deep and inscrutable processes of life going on so silently about me.
+
+No hostile forms with axe or spud now visit these solitudes. The cows
+have half-hidden ways through them, and know where the best browsing is
+to be had. In spring the farmer repairs to their bordering of maples to
+make sugar; in July and August women and boys from all the country about
+penetrate the old Barkpeeling for raspberries and blackberries; and I
+know a youth who wonderingly follows their languid stream casting for
+trout.
+
+In like spirit, alert and buoyant, on this bright June morning go I also
+to reap my harvest,--pursuing a sweet more delectable than sugar, fruit
+more savory than berries, and game for another palate than that tickled
+by trout.
+
+June, of all the months, the student of ornithology can least afford to
+lose. Most birds are nesting then, and in full song and plumage. And
+what is a bird without its song? Do we not wait for the stranger to
+speak? It seems to me that I do not know a bird till I have heard its
+voice; then I come nearer it at once, and it possesses a human interest
+to me. I have met the Gray-cheeked Thrush (_Turdus aliciæ_) in the
+woods, and held him in my hand; still I do not know him. The silence of
+the Cedar-Bird throws a mystery about him which neither his good looks
+nor his petty larcenies in cherry time can dispel. A bird's song
+contains a clew to its life, and establishes a sympathy, an
+understanding, between itself and the admiring listener.
+
+I descend a steep hill, and approach the hemlocks through a large
+sugar-bush. When twenty rods distant, I hear all along the line of the
+forest the incessant warble of the Red-eyed Flycatcher (_Vireosylvia
+olivacea_), cheerful and happy as the merry whistle of a schoolboy. He
+is one of our most common and widely distributed birds. Approach any
+forest at any hour of the day, in any kind of weather, from May to
+August, in any of the Middle or Eastern districts, and the chances are
+that the first note you hear will be his. Rain or shine, before noon or
+after, in the deep forest or in the village grove,--when it is too hot
+for the thrushes or too cold and windy for the warblers,--it is never
+out of time or place for this little minstrel to indulge his cheerful
+strain. In the deep wilds of the Adirondac, where few birds are seen and
+fewer heard, his note was almost constantly in my ear. Always busy,
+making it a point never to suspend for one moment his occupation to
+indulge his musical taste, his lay is that of industry and contentment.
+There is nothing plaintive or especially musical in his performance, but
+the sentiment expressed is eminently that of cheerfulness. Indeed the
+songs of most birds have some human significance, which, I think, is the
+source of the delight we take in them. The song of the Bobolink, to me,
+expresses hilarity; the Song-Sparrow's, faith; the Bluebird's, love; the
+Cat-Bird's, pride; the White-eyed Fly-catcher's, self-consciousness;
+that of the Hermit-Thrush, spiritual serenity; while there is something
+military in the call of the Robin, and unalloyed contentment in the
+warble of the Red-eyed Vireo.
+
+This bird is classed among the flycatchers, but is much more of a
+worm-eater, and has few of the traits or habits of the _Muscicapa_ or
+the true _Sylvia_. He resembles somewhat the Warbling Vireo (_Vireo
+gilvus_), and the two birds are often confounded by careless observers.
+Both warble in the same cheerful strain, but the latter more
+continuously and rapidly. The Red-Eye is a larger, slimmer bird, with a
+faint bluish crown, and a light line over the eye. His movements are
+peculiar. You may see him hopping among the limbs, exploring the under
+side of the leaves, peering to the right and left,--now flitting a few
+feet, now hopping as many,--and warbling incessantly, occasionally in a
+subdued tone, which sounds from a very indefinite distance. When he has
+found a worm to his liking, he turns lengthwise of the limb, and bruises
+its head with his beak before devouring it.
+
+As I enter the woods the Slate-colored Snowbird (_Fringilla Hudsonia_)
+starts up before me and chirps sharply. His protest when thus disturbed
+is almost metallic in its sharpness. He breeds here, and is not esteemed
+a snowbird at all, as he disappears at the near approach of winter, and
+returns again in spring, like the Song-Sparrow, and is not in any way
+associated with the cold and the snow. So different are the habits of
+birds in different localities. Even the Crow does not winter here, and
+is seldom seen after December or before March.
+
+The Snow-Bird, or "Black Chipping-Bird," as it is known among the
+farmers, is the finest architect of any of the ground-builders known to
+me. The site of its nest is usually some low bank by the roadside near a
+wood. In a slight excavation, with a partially concealed entrance, the
+exquisite structure is placed. Horse-hair and cow-hair are plentifully
+used, imparting to the interior of the nest great symmetry and firmness
+as well as softness.
+
+Passing down through the maple arches, barely pausing to observe the
+antics of a trio of squirrels,--two gray ones and a black one,--I cross
+an ancient brush fence and am fairly within the old hemlocks, and in one
+of the most primitive, undisturbed nooks. In the deep moss I tread as
+with muffled feet, and the pupils of my eyes dilate in the dim, almost
+religious light. The irreverent red squirrels, however, run and snicker
+at my approach, or mock the solitude with their ridiculous chattering
+and frisking.
+
+This nook is the chosen haunt of the Winter Wren. This is the only place
+and these the only woods in which I find him in this vicinity. His voice
+fills these dim aisles, as if aided by some marvellous sounding-board.
+Indeed, his song is very strong for so small a bird, and unites in a
+remarkable degree brilliancy and plaintiveness. I think of a tremulous
+vibrating tongue of silver. You may know it is the song of a wren, from
+its gushing lyrical character; but you must needs look sharp to see the
+little minstrel, especially while in the act of singing. He is nearly
+the color of the ground and the leaves; he never ascends the tall trees,
+but keeps low, flitting from stump to stump and from root to root,
+dodging in and out of his hiding-places, and watching all intruders with
+a suspicious eye. He has a very perk, almost comical look. His tail
+stands more than perpendicular: it points straight toward his head. He
+is the least ostentatious singer I know of. He does not strike an
+attitude, and lift up his head in preparation, and, as it were, clear
+his throat; but sits there on the log and pours out his music, looking
+straight before him, or even down at the ground. As a songster, he has
+but few superiors. I do not hear him after the first week in July.
+
+While sitting on this soft-cushioned log, tasting the pungent acidulous
+wood-sorrel (_Oxalis acetorella_), the blossoms of which, large and
+pink-veined, rise everywhere above the moss, a rufous-colored bird flies
+quickly past, and, alighting on a low limb a few rods off, salutes me
+with "Whew! Whew!" or "Whoit! Whoit!" almost as you would whistle for
+your dog. I see by his impulsive, graceful movements, and his dimly
+speckled breast, that it is a Thrush. Presently he utters a few soft,
+mellow, flute-like notes, one of the most simple expressions of melody
+to be heard, and scuds away, and I see it is the Veery or Wilson's
+Thrush. He is the least of the Thrushes in size, being about that of the
+common Bluebird, and he may be distinguished from his relatives by the
+dimness of the spots upon his breast. The Wood-Thrush has very clear,
+distinct oval spots on a white ground; in the Hermit, the spots run more
+into lines, on a ground of a faint bluish-white; in the Veery, the marks
+are almost obsolete, and a few rods off his breast presents only a dull
+yellowish appearance. To get a good view of him you have only to sit
+down in his haunts, as in such cases he seems equally anxious to get a
+good view of you.
+
+From those tall hemlocks proceeds a very fine insect-like warble, and
+occasionally I see a spray _teeter_, or catch the flit of a wing. I
+watch and watch till my head grows dizzy and my neck is in danger of
+permanent displacement, and still do not get a good view. Presently the
+bird darts, or, as it seems, falls down a few feet in pursuit of a fly
+or moth, and I see the whole of it, but in the dim light am undecided.
+It is for such emergencies that I have brought this gun. A bird in the
+hand is worth half a dozen in the bush, even for ornithological
+purposes; and no sure and rapid progress can be made in the study
+without taking life, without procuring specimens. This bird is a
+Warbler, plainly enough, from his habits and manner; but what kind of
+Warbler? Look on him and name him: a deep orange or flame-colored throat
+and breast; the same color showing also in a line over the eye and in
+his crown; back variegated black and white. The female is less marked
+and brilliant. The Orange-throated Warbler would seem to be his right
+name, his characteristic cognomen; but no, he is doomed to wear the name
+of some discoverer, perhaps the first who robbed his nest or rifled him
+of his mate,--Blackburn; hence, Blackburnian Warbler. The _burn_ seems
+appropriate enough, for in these dark evergreens his throat and breast
+show like flame. He has a very fine warble, suggesting that of the
+Redstart, but not especially musical. I find him in no other woods in
+this vicinity.
+
+I am attracted by another warble in the same locality, and experience a
+like difficulty in getting a good view of the author of it. It is quite
+a noticeable strain, sharp and sibilant, and sounds well amid the old
+trees. In the upland woods of beech and maple it is a more familiar
+sound than in these solitudes. On taking the bird in your hand, even if
+you are not a young lady, you will probably exclaim, "How beautiful!" So
+tiny and elegant, the smallest of the Warblers; a delicate blue back,
+with a slight bronze-colored triangular spot between the shoulders;
+upper mandible black; lower mandible yellow as gold; throat yellow,
+becoming a dark bronze on the breast. Blue Yellow-Back he is called,
+though the yellow is much nearer a bronze. He is remarkably delicate and
+beautiful,--the handsomest, as he is the smallest, of the Warblers known
+to me. It is never without surprise that I find amid these rugged,
+savage aspects of Nature creatures so fairy and delicate. But such is
+the law. Go to the sea or climb the mountain, and with the ruggedest and
+the savagest you will find likewise the fairest and the most delicate.
+The greatness and the minuteness of Nature pass all understanding.
+
+Ever since I entered the woods, even while listening to the lesser
+songsters, or contemplating the silent forms about me, a strain has
+reached my ear from out the depths of the forest that to me is the
+finest sound in nature,--the song of the Hermit-Thrush. I often hear him
+thus a long way off, sometimes over a quarter of a mile away, when only
+the stronger and more perfect parts of his music reach me; and through
+the general chorus of Wrens and Warblers I detect this sound rising pure
+and serene, as if a spirit from some remote height were slowly chanting
+a divine accompaniment. This song appeals to the sentiment of the
+beautiful in me, and suggests a serene religious beatitude as no other
+sound in nature does. It is perhaps more of an evening than a morning
+hymn, though I hear it at all hours of the day. It is very simple, and I
+can hardly tell the secret of its charm. "O spheral, spheral!" he seems
+to say; "O holy, holy! O clear away, clear away! O clear up, clear up!"
+interspersed with the finest trills and the most delicate preludes. It
+is not a proud, gorgeous strain, like the Tanager's or the Grosbeak's;
+suggests no passion or emotion,--nothing personal,--but seems to be the
+voice of that calm, sweet solemnity one attains to in his best moments.
+It realizes a peace and a deep, solemn joy that only the finest souls
+may know. A few nights ago I ascended a mountain to see the world by
+moonlight; and when near the summit the Hermit commenced his evening
+hymn a few rods from me. Listening to this strain on the lone mountain,
+with the full moon just rounded from the horizon, the pomp of your
+cities and the pride of your civilization seemed trivial and cheap.
+
+Whether it is because of their rareness, or an accident of my
+observation, or a characteristic trait, I cannot tell, yet I have never
+known two of these birds to be singing at the same time in the same
+locality, rivalling each other, like the Wood-Thrush or the Veery.
+Shooting one from a tree, I have observed another take up the strain
+from almost the identical perch in less than ten minutes afterward.
+Later in the day, when I had penetrated the heart of the old
+Barkpeeling, I came suddenly upon one singing from a low stump, and for
+a wonder he did not seem alarmed, but lifted up his divine voice as if
+his privacy was undisturbed. I open his beak and find the inside yellow
+as gold. I was prepared to find it inlaid with pearls and diamonds, or
+to see an angel issue from it.
+
+He is not much in the books. Indeed, I am acquainted with scarcely any
+writer on ornithology whose head is not muddled on the subject of our
+three prevailing song-thrushes, confounding either their figures or
+their songs. A writer in the Atlantic[A] gravely tells us the
+Wood-Thrush is sometimes called the Hermit, and then, after describing
+the song of the Hermit with great beauty and correctness, coolly
+ascribes it to the Veery! The new Cyclopædia, fresh from the study of
+Audubon, says the Hermit's song consists of a single plaintive note, and
+that the Veery's resembles that of the Wood-Thrush! These observations
+deserve to be preserved with that of the author of "Out-door Papers,"
+who tells us the trill of the Hair-Bird (_Fringilla socialis_) is
+produced by the bird fluttering its wings upon its sides! The
+Hermit-Thrush may be easily identified by his color; his back being a
+clear olive-brown, becoming rufous on his rump and tail. A quill from
+his wing placed beside one from his tail, on a dark ground, presents
+quite a marked contrast.
+
+I walk along the old road, and note the tracks in the thin layer of mud.
+When do these creatures travel here? I have never yet chanced to meet
+one. Here a partridge has set its foot; there, a woodcock; here, a
+squirrel or mink; there, a skunk; there, a fox. What a clear, nervous
+track Reynard makes! how easy to distinguish it from that of a little
+dog,--it is so sharply cut and defined! A dog's track is coarse and
+clumsy beside it. There is as much wildness in the track of an animal as
+in its voice. Is a deer's track like a sheep's or a goat's? What
+winged-footed fleetness and agility may be inferred from the sharp,
+braided track of the gray squirrel upon the new snow! Ah! in nature is
+the best discipline. I think the sculptor might carve finer and more
+expressive lines if he grew up in the woods, and the painter
+discriminate finer hues. How wood-life sharpens the senses, giving a new
+power to the eye, the ear, the nose! And are not the rarest and most
+exquisite songsters wood-birds?
+
+Everywhere in these solitudes I am greeted with the pensive, almost
+pathetic note of the Wood-Pewee. Do you know the Pewees? They are the
+true Flycatchers, and are easily identified. They are very
+characteristic birds, have very strong family traits, and very
+pugnacious dispositions. Without any exception or qualification they are
+the homeliest or the least elegant birds of our fields or forest.
+Sharp-shouldered, big-headed, short-legged, of no particular color, of
+little elegance in flight or movement, with a disagreeable flirt of the
+tail, always quarrelling with their neighbors and with one another, no
+birds are so little calculated to excite pleasurable emotions in the
+beholder, or to become objects of human interest and affection. The
+King-Bird is the best-dressed member of the family, but he is a
+braggart; and, though always snubbing his neighbors, is an arrant
+coward, and shows the white feather at the slightest display of pluck in
+his antagonist. I have seen him turn tail to a Swallow, and have known
+the little Pewee in question to whip him beautifully. From the Great
+Crested to the Little Green Flycatcher, their ways and general habits
+are the same. Slow in flying from point to point, they yet have a
+wonderful quickness, and snap up the fleetest insects with little
+apparent effort. There is a constant play of quick, nervous movements
+underneath their outer show of calmness and stolidity. They do not scour
+the limbs and trees like the Warblers, but, perched upon the middle
+branches, wait like true hunters for the game to come along. There is
+often a very audible snap of the beak as they arrest their prey.
+
+The Wood-Pewee, the prevailing species in this locality, arrests your
+attention by his sweet, pathetic cry. There is room for it also in the
+deep woods, as well as for the more prolonged and elevated strains. His
+mate builds an exquisite nest of moss on the side of some shelving cliff
+or overhanging rock. The other day, passing by a ledge near the top of a
+mountain in a singularly desolate locality, my eye rested upon one of
+these structures, looking precisely as if it grew there, so in keeping
+was it with the mossy character of the rock; and I have had a growing
+affection for the bird ever since. The rock seemed to love the nest and
+to claim it as its own. I said, What a lesson in architecture is here!
+Here is a house that was built, but built with such loving care and such
+beautiful adaptation of the means to the end, that it looks like a
+product of nature. The same wise economy is noticeable in the nests of
+all birds. No bird would paint its house white or red, or add aught for
+show.
+
+Coming to a drier and less mossy place in the woods, I am amused with
+the Golden-crowned Thrush,--which, however, is no thrush at all, but a
+Warbler, the _Sciurus aurocapillus_. He walks on the ground ahead of me
+with such an easy gliding motion, and with such an unconscious,
+preoccupied air, jerking his head like a hen or a partridge, now
+hurrying, now slackening his pace, that I pause to observe him. If I sit
+down, he pauses to observe me, and extends his pretty ramblings on all
+sides, apparently very much engrossed with his own affairs, but never
+losing sight of me. But few of the birds are walkers, most being
+hoppers, like the Robin. I recall only five species of the former among
+our ordinary birds,--the one in question, the Meadow-Lark, the Tit-Lark,
+the Cow-Bunting, and the Water-Wagtail (a relative of the Golden-Crown).
+
+Satisfied that I have no hostile intentions, the pretty pedestrian
+mounts a limb a few feet from the ground, and gives me the benefit of
+one of his musical performances, a sort of accelerating chant.
+Commencing in a very low key, which makes him seem at a very uncertain
+distance, he grows louder and louder, till his body quakes and his chant
+runs into a shriek, ringing in my ears with a peculiar sharpness. This
+lay may be represented thus: "Teacher teacher, teacher, teacher
+teacher!"--the accent on the first syllable and each word uttered with
+increased force and shrillness. No writer with whom I am acquainted
+gives him credit for more musical ability than is displayed in this
+strain. Yet in this the half is not told. He has a far rarer song, which
+he reserves for some nymph whom he meets in the air. Mounting by easy
+flights to the top of the tallest tree, he launches into the air with a
+sort of suspended, hovering flight, like certain of the Finches, and
+bursts into a perfect ecstasy of song,--clear, ringing, copious,
+rivalling the Goldfinch's in vivacity, and the Linnet's in melody. This
+strain is one of the rarest bits of bird-melody to be heard. Over the
+woods, hid from view, the ecstatic singer warbles his finest strain. In
+this song you instantly detect his relationship to the Water-Wagtail
+(_Sciurus Noveboracensis_),--erroneously called Water-Thrush,--whose
+song is likewise a sudden burst, full and ringing, and with a tone of
+youthful joyousness in it, as if the bird had just had some unexpected
+good-fortune. For nearly two years this strain of the pretty walker was
+little more than a disembodied voice to me, and I was puzzled by it as
+Thoreau by his mysterious Night-Warbler, which, by the way, I suspect
+was no new bird at all, but one he was otherwise familiar with. The
+little bird himself seems disposed to keep the matter a secret, and
+improves every opportunity to repeat before you his shrill, accelerating
+lay, as if this were quite enough and all he laid claim to. Still, I
+trust I am betraying no confidence in making the matter public here. I
+think this is pre-eminently his love-song, as I hear it oftenest about
+the mating season. I have caught half-suppressed bursts of it from two
+birds chasing each other with fearful speed through the forest.
+
+Turning to the left from the old road, I wander, over soft logs and gray
+yielding _débris_, across the little trout brook, until I emerge in the
+Barkpeeling,--pausing now and then on the way to admire a small,
+solitary white flower which rises above the moss, with radical,
+heart-shaped leaves, and a blossom precisely like the liverwort except
+in color, but which is not put down in my botany,--or to observe the
+ferns, of which I count six varieties, some gigantic ones nearly
+shoulder-high.
+
+At the foot of a rough, scraggy yellow birch, on a bank of club-moss, so
+richly inlaid with partridge-berry and curious shining leaves,--with
+here and there in the bordering a spire of the false wintergreen
+(_Pyrola rotundifolia_) strung with faint pink flowers and exhaling the
+breath of a May orchard,--that it looks too costly a couch for such an
+idler, I recline to note what transpires. The sun is just past the
+meridian, and the afternoon chorus is not yet in full tune. Most birds
+sing with the greatest spirit and vivacity in the forenoon, though there
+are occasional bursts later in the day, in which nearly all voices join;
+while it is not till the twilight that the full power and solemnity of
+the thrush's hymn is felt.
+
+My attention is soon arrested by a pair of Humming-Birds, the
+Ruby-Throated, disporting themselves in a low bush a few yards from me.
+The female takes shelter amid the branches, and squeaks exultingly as
+the male, circling above, dives down as if to dislodge her. Seeing me,
+he drops like a feather on a slender twig, and in a moment both are
+gone. Then, as if by a preconcerted signal, the throats are all atune. I
+lie on my back with eyes half closed, and analyze the chorus of
+Warblers, Thrushes, Finches, and Flycatchers; while, soaring above all,
+a little withdrawn and alone, rises the divine soprano of the Hermit.
+That richly modulated warble proceeding from the top of yonder birch,
+and which unpractised ears would mistake for the voice of the Scarlet
+Tanager, comes from that rare visitant, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak. It
+is a strong, vivacious strain, a bright noonday song, full of health and
+assurance, indicating fine talents in the performer, but not genius. As
+I come up under the tree he casts his eye down at me, but continues his
+song. This bird is said to be quite common in the Northwest, but he is
+rare in the Eastern districts. His beak is disproportionately large and
+heavy, like a huge nose, which slightly mars his good looks; but Nature
+has made it up to him in a blush rose upon his breast, and the most
+delicate of pink linings to the under side of his wings. His back is
+variegated black and white, and when flying low the white shows
+conspicuously. If he passed over your head, you would note the delicate
+flush under his wings.
+
+That bit of bright scarlet on yonder dead hemlock, glowing like a live
+coal against the dark background, seeming almost too brilliant for the
+severe Northern climate, is his relative, the Scarlet Tanager. I
+occasionally meet him in the deep hemlocks, and know no stronger
+contrast in nature. I almost fear he will kindle the dry limb on which
+he alights. He is quite a solitary bird, and in this section seems to
+prefer the high, remote woods, even going quite to the mountain's top.
+Indeed, the event of my last visit to the mountain was meeting one of
+these brilliant creatures near the summit, in full song. The breeze
+carried the notes far and wide. He seemed to enjoy the elevation, and I
+imagined his song had more scope and freedom than usual. When he had
+flown far down the mountain-side, the breeze still brought me his finest
+notes. In plumage he is the most brilliant bird we have. The Bluebird is
+not entirely blue; nor will the Indigo-bird bear a close inspection, nor
+the Goldfinch, nor the Summer Redbird. But the Tanager loses nothing by
+a near view; the deep scarlet of his body and the black of his wings and
+tail are quite perfect. This is his holiday suit; in the fall he becomes
+a dull green,--the color of the female the whole season.
+
+One of the leading songsters in this choir of the old Barkpeeling is the
+Purple Finch or Linnet. He sits somewhat apart, usually on a dead
+hemlock, and warbles most exquisitely. He is one of our finest
+songsters, and stands at the head of the Finches, as the Hermit at the
+head of the Thrushes. His song approaches an ecstasy, and, with the
+exception of the Winter Wren's, is the most rapid and copious strain to
+be heard in these woods. It is quite destitute of the trills and the
+liquid, silvery, bubbling notes that characterize the Wren's; but there
+runs through it a round, richly modulated whistle, very sweet and very
+pleasing. The call of the Robin is brought in at a certain point with
+marked effect, and, throughout, the variety is so great and the strain
+so rapid that the impression is as of two or three birds singing at the
+same time. He is not common here, and I only find him in these or
+similar woods. His color is peculiar, and looks as if it might have been
+imparted by dipping a brown bird in diluted pokeberry juice. Two or
+three more dippings would have made the purple complete. The female is
+the color of the Song-Sparrow, a little larger, with heavier beak, and
+tail much more forked.
+
+In a little opening quite free from brush and trees I step down to bathe
+my hands in the brook, when a small, light slate-colored bird flutters
+out of the bank, not three feet from my head, as I stoop down, and, as
+if severely lamed or injured, flutters through the grass and into the
+nearest bush. As I do not follow, but remain near the nest, she _chips_
+sharply, which brings the male, and I see it is the Speckled Canada
+Warbler. I find no authority in the books for this bird to build upon
+the ground, yet here is the nest, made chiefly of dry grass, set in a
+slight excavation in the bank, not two feet from the water, and looking
+a little perilous to anything but ducklings or sandpipers. There are two
+young birds and one little specked egg, just pipped. But how is this?
+what mystery is here? One nestling is much larger than the other,
+monopolizes most of the nest, and lifts its open mouth far above that of
+its companion, though obviously both are of the same age, not more than
+a day old. Ah! I see;--the old trick of the Cow-Bunting, with a stinging
+human significance. Taking the interloper by the nape of the neck, I
+deliberately drop it into the water, but not without a pang, as I see
+its naked form, convulsed with chills, float down stream. Cruel! So is
+Nature cruel. I take one life to save two. In less than two days this
+pot-bellied intruder would have caused the death of the two rightful
+occupants of the nest; so I step in and divert things into their proper
+channel again.
+
+It is a singular freak of Nature, this instinct which prompts one bird
+to lay its eggs in the nests of others, and thus shirk the
+responsibility of rearing its own young. The Cow-Buntings always resort
+to this cunning trick; and when one reflects upon their numbers it is
+evident that these little tragedies are quite frequent. In Europe the
+parallel case is that of the Cuckoo, and occasionally our own Cuckoo
+imposes upon a Robin or a Thrush in the same manner. The Cow-Bunting
+seems to have no conscience about the matter, and, so far as I have
+observed, invariably selects the nest of a bird smaller than itself. Its
+egg is usually the first to hatch; its young overreaches all the rest
+when food is brought; it grows with great rapidity, spreads and fills
+the nest, and the starved and crowded occupants soon perish, when the
+parent bird removes their dead bodies, giving its whole energy and care
+to the foster-child.
+
+The Warblers and smaller Flycatchers are generally the sufferers, though
+I sometimes see the Slate-colored Snowbird unconsciously duped in like
+manner; and the other day, in a tall tree in the woods, I discovered the
+Black-throated Green-backed Warbler devoting itself to this dusky,
+overgrown foundling. An old farmer to whom I pointed out the fact was
+much surprised that such things should happen in his woods without his
+knowledge.
+
+From long observation it is my opinion that the male Bunting selects the
+nest into which the egg is to be deposited, and exercises a sort of
+guardianship over it afterward, lingering in the vicinity and uttering
+his peculiar, liquid, glassy note from the tops of the tall trees.
+
+The Speckled Canada is a very superior Warbler, having a lively,
+animated strain, reminding you of certain parts of the Canary's, though
+quite broken and incomplete; the bird the while hopping amid the
+branches with increased liveliness, and indulging in fine sibilant
+chirps, too happy to keep silent.
+
+His manners are very marked. He has a habit of curtsying when he
+discovers you, which is very pretty. In form he is a very elegant bird,
+somewhat slender, his back of a bluish lead-color becoming nearly black
+on his crown; the under part of his body, from his throat down, is of a
+light, delicate yellow, with a belt of black dots across his breast. He
+has a very fine eye, surrounded by a light yellow ring.
+
+The parent birds are much disturbed by my presence, and keep up a loud,
+emphatic chirping, which attracts the attention of their sympathetic
+neighbors, and one after another they come to see what has happened. The
+Chestnut-Sided and the Blackburnian come in company. The
+Black-and-Yellow Warbler pauses a moment and hastens away; the Maryland
+Yellow-Throat peeps shyly from the lower bushes and utters his "Fip!
+fip!" in sympathy; the Wood-Pewee comes straight to the tree overhead,
+and the Red-eyed Vireo lingers and lingers, eying me with a curious,
+innocent look, evidently much puzzled. But all disappear again, one
+after another, apparently without a word of condolence or encouragement
+to the distressed pair. I have often noticed among birds this show of
+sympathy,--if indeed it be sympathy, and not merely curiosity, or a
+feeling of doubt concerning their own safety.
+
+An hour afterward I approach the place, find all still, and the mother
+bird upon the nest. As I draw near she seems to sit closer, her eyes
+growing large with an inexpressibly wild, beautiful look. She keeps her
+place till I am within two paces of her, when she flutters away as at
+first. In the brief interval the remaining egg has hatched, and the two
+little nestlings lift their heads without being jostled or overreached
+by any strange bedfellow. A week afterward and they are flown away,--so
+brief is the infancy of birds. And the wonder is that they escape, even
+for this short time, the skunks and minks and muskrats that abound here,
+and that have a decided partiality for such tidbits.
+
+I pass on through the old Barkpeeling, now threading an old cow-path or
+an overgrown wood-road; now clambering over soft and decayed logs, or
+forcing my way through a network of briers and hazel; now entering a
+perfect bower of wild-cherry, beech, and soft-maple; now emerging into a
+little grassy lane, golden with buttercups or white with daisies, or
+wading waist-deep in the red raspberry-bushes.
+
+Whir! whir! whir! and a brood of half-grown Partridges start up like an
+explosion, a few paces from me, and, scattering, disappear in the bushes
+on all sides. Let me sit down here behind this screen of ferns and
+briers, and hear this wild-hen of the woods call together her brood.
+Have you observed at what an early age the Partridge flies? Nature seems
+to concentrate her energies on the wing, making the safety of the bird a
+point to be looked after first; and while the body is covered with down,
+and no signs of feathers are visible, the wing-quills sprout and unfold,
+and in an incredibly short time the young make fair headway in flying.
+
+The same rapid development of wing may be observed in chickens and
+turkeys, but not in water-fowls, nor in birds that are safely housed in
+the nest till full-fledged. The other day, by a brook, I came suddenly
+upon a young Sandpiper, a most beautiful creature, enveloped in a soft
+gray down, swift and nimble, and apparently a week or two old, but with
+no signs of plumage either of body or wing. And it needed none, for it
+escaped me by taking to the water as readily as if it had flown with
+wings.
+
+Hark! There arises over there in the brush a soft, persuasive cooing, a
+sound so subtile and wild and unobtrusive that it requires the most
+alert and watchful ear to hear it. How gentle and solicitous and full of
+yearning love! It is the voice of the mother hen. Presently a faint,
+timid "Yeap!" which almost eludes the ear, is heard in various
+directions,--the young responding. As no danger seems near, the cooing
+of the parent bird is soon a very audible clucking call, and the young
+move cautiously in the direction. Let me step never so carefully from my
+hiding-place, and all sounds instantly cease, and I search in vain for
+either parent or young.
+
+The Partridge (_Bonasa umbellus_) is one of our most native and
+characteristic birds. The woods seem good to be in where I find him. He
+gives a habitable air to the forest, and one feels as if the rightful
+occupant was really at home. The woods where I do not find him seem to
+want something, as if suffering from some neglect of Nature. And then he
+is such a splendid success, so hardy and vigorous. I think he enjoys the
+cold and the snow. His wings seem to rustle with more fervency in
+midwinter. If the snow falls very fast, and promises a heavy storm, he
+will complacently sit down and allow himself to be snowed under.
+Approaching him at such times, he suddenly bursts out of the snow at
+your feet, scattering the flakes in all directions, and goes humming
+away through the woods like a bomb-shell,--a picture of native spirit
+and success.
+
+His drum is one of the most welcome and beautiful sounds of spring.
+Scarcely have the trees showed their buds, when, in the still April
+mornings, or toward nightfall, you hear the hum of his devoted wings. He
+selects not, as you would predict, a dry and resinous log, but a decayed
+and crumbling one, seeming to give the preference to old oak-logs that
+are partially blended with the soil. If a log to his taste cannot be
+found, he sets up his altar on a rock, which becomes resonant beneath
+his fervent blows. Have you seen the Partridge drum? It is the next
+thing to catching a weasel asleep, though by much caution and tact it
+may be done. He does not hug the log, but stands very erect, expands his
+ruff, gives two introductory blows, pauses half a second, and then
+resumes, striking faster and faster till the sound becomes a continuous,
+unbroken whir, the whole lasting less than half a minute. The tips of
+his wings barely brush the log, so that the sound is produced rather by
+the force of the blows upon the air and upon his own body as in flying.
+One log will be used for many years, though not by the same drummer. It
+seems to be a sort of temple, and held in great respect. The bird always
+approaches it on foot, and leaves it in the same quiet manner, unless
+rudely disturbed. He is very cunning, though his wit is not profound. It
+is very difficult to approach him by stealth; you will try many times
+before succeeding; but seem to pass by him in a great hurry, making all
+the noise possible, and with plumage furled he stands as immovable as a
+knot, allowing you a good view and a good shot, if you are a sportsman.
+
+Passing along one of the old barkpeelers' roads which wander aimlessly
+about, I am attracted by a singularly brilliant and emphatic warble,
+proceeding from the low bushes, and quickly suggesting the voice of the
+Maryland Yellow-Throat. Presently the singer hops up on a dry twig, and
+gives me a good view. Lead-colored head and neck, becoming nearly black
+on the breast; clear olive-green back, and yellow belly. From his habit
+of keeping near the ground, even hopping upon it occasionally, I know
+him to be a Ground-Warbler; from his dark breast the ornithologist has
+added the expletive Mourning, hence the Mourning Ground-Warbler.
+
+Of this bird both Wilson and Audubon confessed their comparative
+ignorance, neither ever having seen its nest or become acquainted with
+its haunts and general habits. Its song is quite striking and novel,
+though its voice at once suggests the class of Warblers, to which it
+belongs. It is very shy and wary, flying but a few feet at a time, and
+studiously concealing itself from your view. I discover but one pair
+here. The female has food in her beak, but carefully avoids betraying
+the locality of her nest. The Ground-Warblers all have one notable
+feature,--very beautiful legs, as white and delicate as if they had
+always worn silk stockings and satin slippers. High tree Warblers have
+dark brown or black legs and more brilliant plumage, but less musical
+ability.
+
+The Chestnut-Sided belongs to the latter class. He is quite common in
+these woods, as in all the woods about. He is one of the rarest and
+handsomest of the Warblers; his white breast and throat, chestnut sides,
+and yellow crown show conspicuously. Audubon did not know his haunts,
+and had never seen his nest or known any naturalist who had. Last year I
+found the nest of one in an uplying beech-wood, in a low bush near the
+roadside, where cows passed and browsed daily. Things went on smoothly
+till the Cow-Bunting stole her egg into it, when other mishaps followed,
+and the nest was soon empty. A characteristic attitude of the male
+during this season is a slight drooping of the wings, and tail a little
+elevated, which gives him a very smart, bantam-like appearance. His song
+is fine and hurried, and not much of itself, but has its place in the
+general chorus.
+
+A far sweeter strain, falling on the ear with the true sylvan cadence,
+is that of the Black-throated Green-backed Warbler, whom I meet at
+various points. He has no superiors among the true _Sylvia_. His song is
+very plain and simple, but remarkably pure and tender, and might be
+indicated by straight lines, thus, ---- ----\/----; the first two marks
+representing two sweet, silvery notes, in the same pitch of voice, and
+quite unaccented; the latter marks, the concluding notes, wherein the
+tone and inflection are changed. The throat and breast of the male are a
+rich black, like velvet, his face yellow, and his back a yellowish
+green.
+
+Beyond the Barkpeeling, where the woods are mingled hemlock, beech, and
+birch, the languid midsummer note of the Black-throated Blue-Back falls
+on my ear. "Twea, twea, twea-e-e!" in the upward slide, and with the
+peculiar _z-ing_ of certain insects, but not destitute of a certain
+plaintive cadence. It is one of the most languid, unhurried sounds in
+all the woods. I feel like reclining upon the dry leaves at once.
+Audubon says he has never heard his love-song; but this is all the
+love-song he has, and he is evidently a very plain hero with his little
+brown mistress. He is not the bird you would send to the princess to
+"cheep and twitter twenty million loves"; she would go to sleep while he
+was piping. He assumes few attitudes, and is not a bold and striking
+gymnast, like many of his kindred. He has a preference for dense woods
+of beech and maple, moves slowly amid the lower branches and smaller
+growths, keeping from eight to ten feet from the ground, and repeating
+now and then his listless, indolent strain. His back and crown are dark
+blue; his throat and breast, black; his belly, pure white; and he has a
+white spot on each wing.
+
+Here and there I meet the Black and White Creeping-Warbler, whose fine
+strain reminds me of hair-wire. It is unquestionably the finest
+bird-song to be heard. Few insect strains will compare with it in this
+respect; while it has none of the harsh, brassy character of the latter,
+being very delicate and tender.
+
+That sharp, interrupted, but still continued warble, which, before one
+has learned to discriminate closely, he is apt to confound with the
+Red-eyed Vireo's, is that of the Solitary Warbling Vireo,--a bird
+slightly larger, much rarer, and with a louder, less cheerful and happy
+strain. I see him hopping along lengthwise of the limbs, and note the
+orange tinge of his breast and sides and the white circle around his
+eye.
+
+But the declining sun and the deepening shadows admonish me that this
+ramble must be brought to a close, even though only the leading
+characters in this chorus of forty songsters have been described, and
+only a small portion of the venerable old woods explored. In a secluded
+swampy corner of the old Barkpeeling, where I find the great purple
+orchis in bloom, and where the foot of man or beast seems never to have
+trod, I linger long, contemplating the wonderful display of lichens and
+mosses that overrun both the smaller and the larger growths. Every bush
+and branch and sprig is dressed up in the most rich and fantastic of
+liveries; and, crowning all, the long bearded moss festoons the branches
+or sways gracefully from the limbs. Every twig looks a century old,
+though green leaves tip the end of it. A young yellow birch has a
+venerable, patriarchal look, and seems ill at ease under such premature
+honors. A decayed hemlock is draped as if by hands for some solemn
+festival.
+
+Mounting toward the upland again, I pause reverently as the hush and
+stillness of twilight come upon the woods. It is the sweetest, ripest
+hour of the day. And as the Hermit's evening hymn goes up from the deep
+solitude below me, I experience that serene exaltation of sentiment of
+which music, literature, and religion are but the faint types and
+symbols.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] For December, 1858.
+
+
+
+
+LAST DAYS OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
+
+
+PART III.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+Landor has frequently been ridiculed for insisting upon an orthography
+peculiar at present to himself, and this ridicule has been bestowed most
+mercilessly, because of the supposition that he was bent upon
+revolutionizing the English language merely for the sake of singularity.
+But Landor has logic on his side, and it would be wise to heed
+authoritative protests against senseless innovations that bid fair to
+destroy the symmetry of words, and which, fifty years hence, will render
+the tracing of their derivation an Herculean task, unless Trenches
+multiply in proportion to the necessities of the times. If I ever wished
+the old lion to put forth all the majesty of his indignation, I had only
+to whisper the cabalistic words, "Phonetic spelling!" Yet Landor was not
+very exacting. In the "Last Fruit off an Old Tree," he says, through his
+medium, Pericles, who is giving advice to Alcibiades: "Every time we
+pronounce a word different from another, we show our disapprobation of
+his manner, and accuse him of rusticity. In all common things we must do
+as others do. It is more barbarous to undermine the stability of a
+language than of an edifice that hath stood as long. This is done by the
+introduction of changes. Write as others do, but only as the best of
+others; and, if one eloquent man forty or fifty years ago spoke and
+wrote differently from the generality of the present, follow him, though
+alone, rather than the many. But in pronunciation we are not indulged in
+this latitude of choice; we must pronounce as those do who favor us with
+their audience." Landor only claimed to write as the best of others do,
+and in his own name protests to Southey against misconstruction. "One
+would represent me as attempting to undermine our native tongue;
+another, as modernizing; a third, as antiquating it. _Wheras_" (Landor's
+spelling) "I am trying to underprop, not to undermine; I am trying to
+stop the man-milliner at his ungainly work of trimming and flouncing; I
+am trying to show how graceful is our English, not in its stiff
+decrepitude, not in its riotous luxuriance, but in its hale mid-life. I
+would make bad writers follow good ones, and good ones accord with
+themselves. If all cannot be reduced into order, is that any reason why
+nothing should be done toward it? If languages and men too are
+imperfect, must we never make an effort to bring them a few steps
+nearer to what is preferable?"
+
+It is my great good fortune to possess a copy of Landor's works made
+curious and peculiarly valuable by the author's own revisions and
+corrections, and it is most interesting to wander through these volumes,
+wherein almost every page is a battle-field between the writer and his
+arch-enemy, the printer. The final _l_ in _still_ and _till_ is
+ignominiously blotted out; _exclaim_ is written _exclame_; a _d_ is put
+over the obliterated _a_ in _steady_; _t_ is substituted _t_ is
+substituted for the second _s_ in _confessed_ and kindred words;
+_straightway_ is shorn of _gh_; _pontiff_ is allowed but one _f_. Landor
+spells _honor_ in what we call the modern way, without the _u_; and the
+_r_ and _e_ in _sceptre_ change places. A dash of the pen cancels the
+_s_ in _isle_ and the final _e_ in _wherefore_, _therefore_, &c.
+_Simile_ is terminated with a _y_; the imperfect of the verbs _to milk_,
+_to ask_, etc., is spelled with a _t_; _whereat_ loses its second _e_,
+and _although_ is deprived of its last three letters. To his poem of
+"Guidone and Lucia" has been added this final verse:--
+
+    "The sire had earned with gold his son's release
+    And led him home; at home he died in peace.
+    His soul was with Lucia, and he praid
+    To meet again soon, soon, that happier maid.
+    This wish was granted, for the Powers above
+    Abound in mercy and delight in love."
+
+And to this verse is appended the following note: "If the pret. and
+partic. of _lay_ is _laid_, of _say_, _said_, that of _pray_ must be
+_praid_. We want a lexiconomist."
+
+In his lines entitled "New Style," which are a burlesque on Wordsworth,
+Landor introduces a new verse:--
+
+    "Some one (I might have asked her who)
+      Has given her a locket;
+    I, more considerate, brought her two
+      Potatoes in each pocket."
+
+Landor has been accused of an unwarrantable dislike to the manufacture
+of words; but so far from true is this, that I have known him to indulge
+with great felicity in words of his own coining, when conversation
+chanced to take a humorous turn. He makes Sam. Johnson say that "all
+words are good which come when they are wanted; all which come when they
+are not wanted should be dismissed." Tooke, in the same conversation,
+cites Cicero as one who, not contented with new spellings, created new
+words; but Tooke further declares, that "only one valuable word has been
+received into our language since my birth, or perhaps since yours. I
+have lately heard _appreciate_ for _estimate_." To which Johnson
+replies: "Words taken from the French should be amenable, in their
+spelling, to English laws and regulations. _Appreciate_ is a good and
+useful one; it signifies more than _estimate_ or _value_; it implies 'to
+value justly.'"
+
+Taking up one day Dean Trench's excellent little book on "The Study of
+Words," which lay on my table, Landor expressed a desire to read it. He
+brought it back not long afterward, enriched with notes, and declared
+himself to have been much pleased with the manner in which the Dean had
+treated a subject so deeply interesting to himself. I have singled out a
+few of these notes, that student of etymology may read the criticisms of
+so able a man. Dean Trench is taken to task for a misuse of _every
+where_ in making two words of it. Landor puts the question, "Is the Dean
+ignorant that _everywhere_ is one word, and _where_ is no substantive?"
+Trench asserts that _caprice_ is from _capra_, "a goat," whereupon his
+critic says, "No,--then it would be capr_a_cious. It is from
+_caper_--_capere_." _To retract_, writes Trench, means properly, as its
+derivation declares, no more than to handle over again, to reconsider;
+Landor declares that "it means more. _Retrahere_ is _to draw back_." But
+he very vehemently approves of the Dean's remarks on the use of the word
+_talents_. We should say "a man of talents," not "of talent," for that
+is nonsense, though "of a talent" would be allowable.
+
+"[Greek: Kosmos] is both 'world' and 'ornament,' hence 'cosmetic,'"
+writes Landor in answer to a doubt expressed by Trench whether the
+well-known quotation from St. James, "The tongue is a world of
+iniquity," could not also be translated, as some maintain, "the
+ornament of iniquity." Making use of the expression "redolent of scorn"
+in connection with words that formerly expressed sacred functions and
+offices, Landor adds: "Gray is highly poetical in his 'redolent of joy
+and youth.' The word is now vilely misused daily." "By and bye," writes
+the Dean. "Why write _bye_?" asks his commentator. Once or twice Landor
+credits Horne Tooke with what the Dean gives as his own, and
+occasionally scores an observation as old. "Why won't people say
+_messager_?" he demands. "By what right is _messenger_ made out of
+_message_?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Have you nothing else for the old man to read? have you nothing
+American?" Landor inquired upon returning Trench. Desiring to obtain the
+verdict of one so high in authority, I gave him Drake's "Culprit Fay,"
+and some fugitive verses by M. C. Field, whose poems have never been
+collected in book form. Of the latter's "Indian Hunting the Buffaloes,"
+"Night on the Prairie," "Les Très Marias," and others, known to but few
+readers now, Landor spoke in high commendation, and this praise will be
+welcome to those friends of "Phazma" still living, and still loving the
+memory of him who died early, and found, as he wished, an ocean grave.
+With "The Culprit Fay" came a scrap of paper on which was written: "The
+Culprit Fay is rich in imagination,--few poems more so. Drake is among
+the noblest of names, and this poem throws a fresh lustre on it."
+Observing in this poem a misuse of the exclamation "Oh!" Landor
+remarked, "'Oh!' properly is an expression of grief or pain. 'O!'
+without the aspirate may express pleasure or hope." Current literature
+rarely makes any distinction between the two, and even good writers
+stumble through carelessness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Style in writing was one of Landor's favorite topics, and his ire was
+rarely more quickly excited than by placing before him a specimen of
+high-flown sentimentality. He would put on his spectacles, exclaim,
+"What is this?" and, having read a few lines, would throw the book down,
+saying, "I have not the patience to read such stuff. It may be very
+fine, but I cannot understand it. It is beyond me." He had little mercy
+to bestow upon transcendentalists, though he praised Emerson one day,--a
+marvellous proof of high regard when it is considered how he detested
+the school to which Emerson belongs. "Emerson called on me when he was
+in Florence many years ago, and a very agreeable visit I had from him.
+He is a very clever man, and might be cleverer if he were less
+sublimated. But then you Americans, practical as you are, are fond of
+soaring in high latitudes." Carlyle in his last manner had the same
+effect upon Landor's nerves as a discord in music produces upon a
+sensitive ear. "Ah," said he with a quizzical smile, "'Frederick the
+Great' convinces me that I write two dead languages,--Latin and
+English!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+English hexameter was still another pet detestation which Landor nursed
+with great volubility. In 1860 all Anglo-Saxon Florence was reading with
+no little interest a poem in this metre, which had recently appeared,
+and which of course passed under the critical eye of the old Grecian.
+"Well, Mr. Landor, what do you think of the new poem?" I asked during
+its nine days' reign. "Think of it? I don't think of it. I don't want to
+be bothered with it. The book has driven all the breath out of my body.
+I am lame with galloping. I've been on a gallop from the beginning to
+the end. Never did I have so hard and long a ride. But what else to
+expect when mounted on a _nightmare_! It may be very fine. I dare say it
+is, but Giallo and I prefer our ease to being battered. I am too old to
+hop, skip, and jump, and he is too sensible. It may be very bad taste,
+but we prefer verse that stands on two feet to verse that limps about on
+none. Now-a-days it is better to stumble than to walk erect. Giallo and
+I, however, have registered an oath not to encourage so base a fashion.
+We have consulted old Homer, and he quite approves our indignation."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Speaking of certain Americanisms and of our ridiculous squeamishness in
+the use of certain honest words, Landor remarked: "You Americans are
+very proper people; you have difficulties, but not diseases. Legs are
+unknown,--you have limbs; and under no consideration do you go to
+bed,--you retire." Much of this I could not gainsay, for only a few days
+previously I had been severely frowned upon for making inquiries about a
+broken leg. "My dear," said Landor to a young American girl who had been
+speaking of the city of New Or_leens_,--such being the ordinary Southern
+pronunciation,--"that pretty mouth of yours should not be distorted by
+vulgar dialect. You should say Or'leans." But he was never pedantic in
+his language. He used the simplest and most emphatic words.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are those who accuse Landor of having sacrificed all things to
+style: it were as wise to assert that Beethoven sacrificed harmony to
+time. If his accusers would but read Landor before criticising, a proper
+regard for their own reputations would prevent them from hazarding such
+an opinion. "Style," writes Landor, "I consider as nothing, if what it
+covers be unsound: wisdom in union with harmony is oracular. On this
+idea, the wiser of ancient days venerated in the same person the deity
+of oracles and of music; and it must have been the most malicious and
+the most ingenious of satirists who transferred the gift of eloquence to
+the god of thieves." Those who by the actual sweat of their brows have
+got at the deep, hidden meaning of the most recent geniuses, will honor
+and thank Landor for having practically enforced his own refreshing
+theory. There are certain modern books of positive value which the
+reader closes with a sense of utter exhaustion. The meaning is
+discovered, but at too great an outlay of vitality. To render simple
+things complex, is to fly in the face of Nature; and after such mental
+"gymnastics," we turn with relief to Landor. "The greater part of those
+who are most ambitious of style are unaware of all its value. Thought
+does not separate man from the brutes; for the brutes think: but man
+alone thinks beyond the moment and beyond himself. Speech does not
+separate them; for speech is common to all, perhaps more or less
+articulate, and conveyed and received through different organs in the
+lower and more inert. Man's thought, which seems imperishable, loses its
+form, and runs along from proprietor to impropriator, like any other
+transitory thing, unless it is invested so becomingly and nobly that no
+successor can improve upon it by any new fashion or combination. For
+want of dignity or beauty, many good things are passed and forgotten;
+and much ancient wisdom is overrun and hidden by a rampant verdure,
+succulent, but unsubstantial.... Let those who look upon style as
+unworthy of much attention ask themselves how many, in proportion to men
+of genius, have excelled in it. In all languages, ancient and modern,
+are there ten prose-writers at once harmonious, correct, and energetic?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Popular as is the belief that Landor's gifts were the offspring of
+profound study, he himself says: "Only four years of my life were given
+up much to study; and I regret that I spent so many so ill. Even these
+debarred me from no pleasure; for I seldom read or wrote within doors,
+excepting a few hours at night. The learning of those who are called the
+learned is learning at second hand; the primary and most important must
+be acquired by reading in our own bosoms; the rest by a deep insight
+into other men's. What is written is mostly an imperfect and unfaithful
+copy." This confession emanates from one who is claimed as a university
+rather than a universal man. Landor remained but two years at Oxford,
+and, though deeply interested in the classics, never contended for a
+Latin prize. Speaking of this one day, he said: "I once wrote some
+Latin verses for a fellow of my college who, being in great trouble,
+came to me for aid. What was hard work to him was pastime to me, and it
+ended in my composing the entire poem. At the time the fellow was very
+grateful, but it happened that these verses excited attention and were
+much eulogized. The supposed author accepted the praise as due to
+himself. This of course I expected, as he knew full well I would never
+betray him; but the amusing part of the matter was that the fellow never
+afterwards spoke to me, never came near me,--in fact, treated me as
+though I had done him a grievous wrong. It was of no consequence to me
+that he strutted about in my feathers. If they became him, he was
+welcome to them,--but of such is the kingdom of cowards."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Poetry," writes Landor, "was always my amusement, prose my study and
+business." In his thirtieth year he lived in the woods, "did not
+exchange twelve sentences with men," and wrote "Gebir," his most
+elaborate and ambitious poem, which Southey took as a model in blank
+verse, and which a Boston critic wonders whether anyone ever read
+through. "Pericles and Aspasia," and the finest of his "Imaginary
+Conversations," were the flowering of half a century of thought. There
+are few readers who do not prefer Landor's prose to his verse, for in
+the former he does not aim at the dramatic: the passion peculiar to
+verse is not congenial to his genius. He sympathizes most fully with men
+and women in repose, when intellect, not the heart, rules. His prose has
+all the purity of outline and harmony of Greek plastic art. He could not
+wield the painter's brush, but the great sculptor had yet power to
+depict the grief of a "Niobe," the agony of the "Laocoön," or the
+majesty of a "Moses." Like a sculptor, he rarely groups more than two
+figures.
+
+It is satisfactory then to know that in the zenith of physical strength
+Landor was at his noblest and best, for his example is a forcible
+protest against the feverish enthusiasm of young American authors, who
+wear out their lives in the struggle to be famous at the age of Keats,
+never remembering that "there must be a good deal of movement and
+shuffling before there is any rising from the ground; and those who have
+the longest wings have the most difficulty in the first mounting. In
+literature, as at football, strength and agility are insufficient of
+themselves; you must have your _side_, or you may run till you are out
+of breath, and kick till you are out of shoes, and never win the game.
+There must be some to keep others off you, and some to prolong for you
+the ball's rebound.... Do not, however, be ambitious of an early fame:
+such is apt to shrivel and to drop under the tree." The poetical dictum,
+"Whom the gods love, die young," has worked untold mischief, having
+created a morbid dislike to a fine physique, on the theory that great
+minds are antagonistic to noble bodies. There never was error so fatal:
+the larger the brain, the larger should be the reservoir from which to
+draw vitality. Were Seneca alive now, he would write no such letter as
+he once wrote to Lucilius, protesting against the ridiculous devotion of
+his countrymen to physical gymnastics. "To be wise is to be well," was
+the gospel he went about preaching. "To be well is to be wise," would
+answer much better as the modern article of faith. The utmost that a
+persistent brain-worker of this century can do is to keep himself bodily
+up to mental requirements. Landor, however, was an extraordinary
+exception. He could boast of never having worn an overcoat since
+boyhood, and of not having been ill more than three times in his life.
+Even at eighty-six his hand had none of the wavering of age; and it was
+with no little satisfaction that, grasping an imaginary pistol, he
+showed me how steady an aim he could still take, and told of how famous
+a shot he used to be. "But my sister was more skilful than I," he
+added.
+
+One day conversation chanced upon Aubrey De Vere, the beautiful Catholic
+poet of Ireland, whose name is scarcely known on this side of the
+Atlantic. This is our loss, though De Vere can never be a popular poet,
+for his muse lives in the past and breathes ether rather than air. "De
+Vere is charming both as man and as poet," said Landor enthusiastically,
+rising as he spoke and leaving the room to return immediately with a
+small volume of De Vere's poems published at Oxford in 1843. "Here are
+his poems given to me by himself. Such a modest, unassuming man as he
+is! Now listen to this from the 'Ode on the Ascent of the Alps.' Is it
+not magnificent?
+
+    'I spake.--Behold her o'er the broad lake flying,
+    Like a great Angel missioned to bestow
+    Some boon on men beneath in sadness lying:
+    The waves are murmuring silver murmurs low:
+        Over the waves are borne
+    Those feeble lights which, ere the eyes of Morn
+    Are lifted, through her lids and lashes flow.
+        Beneath the curdling wind
+    Green through the shades the waters rush and roll,
+    (Or whitened only by the unfrequent shoal,)
+    Till two dark hills, with darker yet behind,
+    Confront them,--purple mountains almost black,
+    Each behind each self-folded and withdrawn,
+    Beneath the umbrage of yon cloudy rack.--
+    That orange-gleam! 't is dawn!
+    Onward! the swan's flight with the eagle's blending,
+    On, wingèd Muse! still forward and ascending!'
+
+"This sonnet on 'Sunrise,'" continued Landor, "is the noblest that ever
+was written:--
+
+    'I saw the Master of the Sun. He stood
+    High in his fiery car, himself more bright,
+    An archer of immeasurable might.
+    On his left shoulder hung his quivered load;
+    Spurred by his steeds, the eastern mountain glowed;
+    Forward his eager eye and brow of light
+    He bent; and while both hands that arch embowed,
+    Shaft after shaft pursued the flying Night,
+    No wings profaned that godlike form: around
+    His polished neck an ever-moving crowd
+    Of locks hung glistening; while each perfect sound
+    Fell from his bow-string, _that th' ethereal dome
+    Thrilled as a dew-drop_; while each passing cloud
+    Expanded, whitening like the ocean foam.'
+
+"Is not this line grand?--
+
+    'Peals the strong, voluminous thunder!'
+
+And how incomparable is the termination of this song!--
+
+    'Bright was her soul as Dian's crest
+    Showering on Vesta's fane its sheen:
+    Cold looked she as the waveless breast
+    Of some stone Dian at thirteen.
+    Men loved: but hope they deemed to be
+    A sweet Impossibility!'
+
+Here are two beautiful lines from the Grecian Ode:--
+
+    'Those sinuous streams that blushing wander
+    Through labyrinthine oleander.'
+
+This is like Shakespeare:--
+
+    'Yea, and the Queen of Love, as fame reports,
+    Was caught,--no doubt in Bacchic wreaths,--for Bacchus
+    Such puissance hath, that he old oaks will twine
+    Into true-lovers' knots, and laughing stand
+    Until the sun goes down.'
+
+And an admirable passage is this, too, from the same poem,--'The Search
+after Proserpine':--
+
+    'Yea, and the motions of her trees and harvests
+    Resemble those of slaves, reluctant, cumbered,
+    By outward force compelled; _not like our billows,
+    Springing elastic in impetuous joy,
+    Or indolently swayed_.'
+
+"There!" exclaimed Landor, closing the book, "I want you to have this.
+It will be none the less valuable because I have scribbled in it," he
+added with a smile.
+
+"But, Mr. Landor--"
+
+"Now don't say a word. I am an old man, and if both my legs are not in
+the grave, they ought to be. I cannot lay up such treasures in heaven,
+you know,--saving of course in my memory,--and De Vere had rather you
+should have it than the rats. There's a compliment for you! so put the
+book in your pocket."
+
+This little volume is marked throughout by Landor with notes of
+admiration, and if I here transcribe a few of his favorite poems, it
+will be with the hope of benefiting many readers to whom De Vere is a
+sealed book.
+
+"Greece never produced anything so exquisite," wrote Landor beneath the
+following song:--
+
+    "Give me back my heart, fair child;
+    To you as yet 't is worth but little.
+    Half beguiler, half beguiled,
+    Be you warned: your own is brittle.
+    I know it by your redd'ning cheeks,--
+    I know it by those two black streaks
+    Arching up your pearly brows
+    In a momentary laughter,
+    Stretched in long and dark repose
+    With a sigh the moment after.
+
+    "'Hid it! dropt it on the moors!
+    Lost it, and you cannot find it,'--
+    My own heart I want, not yours:
+    You have bound and must unbind it.
+    Set it free then from your net,
+    We will love, sweet,--but not yet!
+    Fling it from you:--we are strong;
+    Love is trouble, love is folly:
+    Love, that makes an old heart young,
+    Makes a young heart melancholy."
+
+And for this Landor claimed that it was "finer than the best in
+Horace":--
+
+    "Slanting both hands against her forehead,
+    On me she levelled her bright eyes.
+    My whole heart brightened as the sea
+    When midnight clouds part suddenly:--
+    Through all my spirit went the lustre,
+    Like starlight poured through purple skies.
+
+    "And then she sang a loud, sweet music;
+    Yet louder as aloft it clomb:
+    Soft when her curving lips it left;
+    Then rising till the heavens were cleft,
+    As though each strain, on high expanding,
+    Were echoed in a silver dome.
+
+    "But hark! she sings 'she does not love me':
+    She loves to say she ne'er can love.
+    To me her beauty she denies,--
+    Bending the while on me those eyes,
+    Whose beams might charm the mountain leopard,
+    Or lure Jove's herald from above!"
+
+Below the following exquisite bit of melody is written, "Never was any
+sonnet so beautiful."
+
+    "She whom this heart must ever hold most dear
+    (This heart in happy bondage held so long)
+    Began to sing. At first a gentle fear
+    Rosied her countenance, for she is young,
+    And he who loves her most of all was near:
+    But when at last her voice grew full and strong,
+    O, from their ambush sweet, how rich and clear
+    Bubbled the notes abroad,--a rapturous throng!
+    Her little hands were sometimes flung apart,
+    And sometimes palm to palm together prest;
+    While wave-like blushes rising from her breast
+    Kept time with that aerial melody,
+    As music to the sight!--I standing nigh
+    Received the falling fountain in my heart."
+
+"What sonnet of Petrarca equals this?" he says of the following:--
+
+    "Happy are they who kiss thee, morn and even,
+    Parting the hair upon thy forehead white;
+    For them the sky is bluer and more bright,
+    And purer their thanksgivings rise to Heaven.
+    Happy are they to whom thy songs are given;
+    Happy are they on whom thy hands alight;
+    And happiest they for whom thy prayers at night
+    In tender piety so oft have striven.
+    Away with vain regrets and selfish sighs!
+    Even I, dear friend, am lonely, not unblest:
+    Permitted sometimes on that form to gaze,
+    Or feel the light of those consoling eyes,--
+    If but a moment on my cheek it stays,
+    I know that gentle beam from all the rest!"
+
+"Like Shakespeare's, but better, is this allegory:--
+
+    "You say that you have given your love to me.
+    Ah, give it not, but lend it me; and say
+    That you will ofttimes ask me to repay,
+    But never to restore it: so shall we,
+    Retaining, still bestow perpetually:
+    So shall I ask thee for it every day,
+    Securely as for daily bread we pray;
+    So all of favor, naught of right shall be.
+    The joy which now is mine shall leave me never.
+    Indeed, I have deserved it not; and yet
+    No painful blush is mine,--so soon my face
+    Blushing is hid in that beloved embrace.
+    Myself I would condemn not, but forget;
+    Remembering thee alone, and thee forever!"
+
+"Worthy of Raleigh and like him," is Landor's preface to the following
+sonnet:--
+
+    "Flowers I would bring, if flowers could make thee fairer,
+    And music, if the Muse were dear to thee;
+    (For loving these would make thee love the bearer.)
+    But sweetest songs forget their melody,
+    And loveliest flowers would but conceal the wearer:--
+    A rose I marked, and might have plucked; but she
+    Blushed as she bent, imploring me to spare her,
+    Nor spoil her beauty by such rivalry.
+    Alas! and with what gifts shall I pursue thee,
+    What offerings bring, what treasures lay before thee,
+    When earth with all her floral train doth woo thee,
+    And all old poets and old songs adore thee.
+    And love to thee is naught, from passionate mood
+    Secured by joy's complacent plenitude!"
+
+Occasionally Landor indulges in a little humorous indignation,
+particularly in his remarks on the poem of which Coleridge is the hero.
+De Vere's lines end thus:--
+
+    "Soft be the sound ordained thy sleep to break!
+    When thou art waking, wake me, for thy Master's sake!"
+
+"And let me nap on," wrote the august critic, who had no desire to meet
+Coleridge, even as a celestial being.
+
+Now and then there is a dash of the pencil across some final verse, with
+the remark, "Better without these." Twice or thrice Landor finds fault
+with a word. He objects to the expression, "eyes so fair," saying _fair_
+is a bad word for eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The subject of Latin being one day mentioned, Landor very eagerly
+proposed that I should study this language with him.
+
+The thought was awful, and I expostulated. "But, Mr. Landor, you who are
+so noble a Latinist can never have the patience to instruct such a
+stumbling scholar."
+
+"I insist upon it. You shall be my first pupil," he said, laughing at
+the idea of beginning to teach in his extreme old age. "It will give the
+old man something to do."
+
+"But you will get very tired of me, Mr. Landor."
+
+"Well, well, I'll tell you when I am tired. You say you have a grammar;
+then I'll bring along with me to-morrow something to read."
+
+True to his promise, the "old pedagogue," for so he was wont to call
+himself, made his appearance with a time-worn Virgil under his arm,--a
+Virgil that in 1809 was the property, according to much pen and ink
+scribbling, of one "John Prince, ætat. 12. College School, Hereford."
+
+"Now, then, for our lesson," Landor exclaimed, in a cheery voice.
+"Giallo knows all about it, and quite approves of the arrangement. Don't
+you, Giallo?" And the wise dog wagged his sympathetic tail, jumped up on
+his master's knees, and put his fore paws around Landor's neck. "There,
+you see, he gives consent; for this is the way Giallo expresses
+approbation."
+
+The kindness and amiability of my teacher made me forget his greatness,
+and I soon found myself reciting with as much ease as if there had been
+nothing strange in the affair. He was very patient, and never found
+fault with me, but his criticisms on my Latin grammar were frequent and
+severe. "It is strange," he would mutter, "that men cannot do things
+properly. There is no necessity for this rule; it only confuses the
+pupil. That note is absurd; this, unintelligible. Grammars should be
+made more comprehensible."
+
+Expressing a preference for the Italian method of pronunciation, I dared
+to say that it seemed to be the most correct, inasmuch as the Italian
+language was but bastard Latin. The master, however, would not listen to
+such heresy, and declared that, with the exception of the French, the
+Italian was the worst possible pronunciation to adopt; that the German
+method was the most correct, and after that came the English.
+
+It was only a few hours after the termination of our first lesson that
+Landor's little maid entered the room laden with old folios, which she
+deposited with the following pleasant note:--"As my young friend is
+willing to become a grammarian, an old fellow sends her for her gracious
+acceptance these books tending to that purpose." I was made rich,
+indeed, by this generous donation, for there were a ponderous Latin
+Dictionary in Landor's handwriting, a curious old Italian and French
+Dictionary of 1692,--published at Paris, "per uso del Serenissimo
+Delfino,"--a Greek Grammar, and a delightfully rare and musty old Latin
+Grammar by Emmanuel Alvarus, the Jesuit, carefully annotated by Landor.
+Then, too, there was a valuable edition, in two volumes, of Annibal
+Caro's Italian translation of the Æneid, published at Paris in 1760, by
+permission of "Louis, par le grace de Dieu Roi de France et de Navarre,"
+and very copiously illustrated by Zocchi. Two noble coats-of-arms adorn
+its fly-leaves, those of the Right Honorable Lady Mary Louther and of
+George, Earl of Macartney, Knight of the Order of the White Eagle and of
+the Bath.
+
+The lessons, as pleasant as they were profitable, were given several
+times a week for many weeks, and would have been continued still longer
+had not a change of residence on our part rendered frequent meetings
+impossible. On each appointed day Landor entered the room with a bouquet
+of camellias or roses,--the products of his little garden, in which he
+took great pride,--and, after presenting it with a graceful speech,
+turned to the Latin books with infinite gusto, as though they reflected
+upon him the light of other days. No voice could be better adapted to
+the reading of Latin than that of Landor, who uttered the words with a
+certain majestic flow, and sounding, cataract-like falls and plunges of
+music. Occasionally he would touch upon the subject of Greek. "I wonder
+whether I've forgotten all my Greek," he said one day. "It is so long
+since I have written a word of it that I doubt if I can remember the
+alphabet. Let me see." He took up pen and paper, and from Alpha to Omega
+traced every letter with far more distinctness than he would have
+written the English alphabet. "Why, Landor," he exclaimed, looking with
+no little satisfaction on the work before him, "you have not grown as
+foolish as I thought. You know your letters,--which proves that you are
+in your second childhood, does it not?" he asked, smiling, and turning
+to me.
+
+After my recitation he would lean back in the arm-chair and relate
+anecdotes of great men and women to a small, but deeply interested
+audience of three, including Giallo. A few well-timed questions were
+quite sufficient to open his inexhaustible reservoir of reminiscences.
+Nor had Landor reason to complain of his memory in so far as the dim
+past was concerned; for, one morning, reference having been made to Monk
+Lewis's poem of "Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene," he recited it
+in cadences from beginning to end, without the slightest hesitation or
+the tripping of a word. "Well, this is indeed astonishing," he said at
+its conclusion; "I have not _thought_ of that poem for thirty years!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Landor was often very brilliant. At Sienna, during the summer of 1860,
+an American lady having expressed a desire to meet him the following
+season, he replied, "Ah, by that time I shall have gone farther and
+fared worse!" Sometimes, when we were all in a particularly merry mood,
+Landor would indulge in impromptu _doggerel_ "to please _Giallo_"!
+Absurd couplets would come thick and fast,--so fast that it was
+impossible to remember them.
+
+Advising me with regard to certain rules in my Latin Grammar he
+exclaimed,
+
+    "What you'd fain know, you will find:
+    What you want not, leave behind."
+
+Whereupon Giallo walked up to his master and caressed his hand. "Why,
+Giallo," added Landor, "your nose is hot, but
+
+    He is foolish who supposes
+    Dogs are ill that have hot noses!"
+
+Attention being directed to several letters received by Landor from
+well-meaning but intensely orthodox friends, who were extremely anxious
+that he should join the Church in order to be saved from perdition, he
+said: "They are very kind, but I cannot be redeemed in that way.
+
+    When I throw off this mortal coil,
+    I will not call on you, friend Hoil;
+    And I think that I shall do,
+    My good Tompkins, without you.
+    But I pray you, charming Kate,
+    You will come, but not too late."
+
+"How wicked you are, Mr. Landor!" I replied, laughingly. "It is well
+that _I_ am not orthodox."
+
+    "For if you were orthodox
+    I should be in the wrong box!"
+
+was the ready response.
+
+Landor held orthodoxy in great horror, having no faith in creeds which
+set up the highly comfortable doctrine, "I am holier than thou, for I am
+in the Church." "Ah! I have given dear, good friends great pain because
+of my obstinacy. They would have me believe as they do, which is utterly
+impossible." By Church, Landor did not mean religion, nor did he pass
+judgment on those who in sincerity embraced any particular faith, but
+claimed for himself perfect freedom of opinion, and gave as much to
+others. In his paper on "Popery, British and Foreign," Landor freely
+expresses himself. "The people, by their own efforts, will sweep away
+the gross inequalities now obstructing the church-path,--will sweep away
+from amidst the habitations of the industrious the moral cemeteries, the
+noisome markets around the house of God, whatever be the selfish
+interests that stubbornly resist the operation.... It would grieve me to
+foresee a day when our cathedrals and our churches shall be demolished
+or desecrated; when the tones of the organ, when the symphonies of
+Handel, no longer swell and reverberate along the groined roof and dim
+windows. But let old superstitions crumble into dust; let Faith, Hope,
+and Charity be simple in their attire; let few and solemn words be
+spoken before Him 'to whom all hearts are open, all desires known.'
+Principalities and powers belong not to the service of the Crucified;
+and religion can never be pure, never 'of good report,' among those who
+usurp or covet them."
+
+Landor was no exception to the generality of Protestants in Italy, who
+become imbued with a profound aversion to Romanism, while retaining
+great respect and regard for individual members of its clergy. He never
+passed one of the _preti_ that he did not open his batteries, pouring
+grape and canister of sarcasm and indignation on the retreating
+enemy,--"rascally beetles," "human vampires," "Satan's imps." "Italy
+never can be free as long as these locusts, worse than those of Egypt,
+infest the land. They are as plentiful as fleas, and as great a curse,"
+he exclaimed one day. "They are fleas demoralized!" he added, with a
+laugh.
+
+"It is reported that Pio Nono is not long for this world," I said, on
+another occasion. "Erysipelas is supposed to have settled in his legs."
+
+"Ah, yes," Landor replied, "he has been on his _last legs_ for some
+time, but depend upon it they are legs that will _last_. The Devil is
+always good to his own, you know!"
+
+In Italy the advanced party will not allow virtue in the Pope even as a
+man. A story is told, that when, as the Cardinal Mastai Ferretti, he was
+made Pontiff, his sister threw up her hands and exclaimed, "Guai a
+Roma!" (Woe to Rome!) "Se non è vero è ben trovato." And this is told in
+spite of Mrs. Kemble's story of the conversation which took place
+between the Cardinals Micara and Lambruschini prior to this election, in
+which the former remarked: "If the powers of darkness preside over the
+election, you'll be Pope; if the people had a voice, I'm the man; but if
+Heaven has a finger in the business, 't will be Ferretti!" Apropos of
+Popes, Landor writes: "If the Popes are the servants of God, it must be
+confessed that God has been very unlucky in the choice of his household.
+So many and so atrocious thieves, liars, and murderers are not to be
+found in any other trade; much less would you look for them at the head
+of it." And because of faithless servants Landor has wisely made
+Boccaccio say of Rome: "She, I think will be the last city to rise from
+the dead."
+
+"How surprised St. Peter would be," continued Landor,--resuming our
+conversation, which I have thus parenthetically interrupted,--"how
+surprised he would be to return to earth and find his apostolic
+successors living in such a grand house as the Vatican. Ah, they are
+jolly fishermen!--Landor, Landor! how can you be so wicked?" he said,
+checking himself with mock seriousness; "Giallo does not approve of such
+levity. He tells me he is a good Catholic, for he always refuses meat on
+Friday, even when I offer him a tempting bit. He is a pious dog, and
+will intercede for his naughty old _Padrone_ when he goes to heaven."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A young friend of mine, Charles C. Coleman, an art-student in Italy,
+having visited Landor, was struck by the nobility of his head, and
+expressed a wish to make a study of it. To fulfil such a desire,
+however, was difficult, inasmuch as Landor had an inherent objection to
+having his likeness taken either by man or the sun. Not long before the
+artist's visit, Mr. Browning had persuaded him to sit for his
+photograph, but no less a person could have induced the old man to mount
+the numberless steps which seem to be a necessary condition of
+photography. This sitting was most satisfactory; and to Mr. Browning's
+zealous friendship is due the likeness by which the octogenarian Landor
+will probably be known to the world. Finding him in unusually good
+spirits one day, I dubiously and gradually approached the subject.
+
+"Mr. Landor, do you remember the young artist who called on you one
+day?"
+
+"Yes, and a nice fellow he seemed to be."
+
+"He was greatly taken with your head."
+
+(Humorously.) "You are quite sure he was not smitten with my face?"
+
+"No, I am not sure, for he expressed himself enthusiastically about your
+beard. He says you are a fine subject for a study."
+
+No answer.
+
+"Would you allow him to make a sketch of you, Mr. Landor? He is
+exceedingly anxious to do so."
+
+"No; I do not wish my face to be public property. I detest this
+publicity that men now-a-days seem to be so fond of. There is a painting
+of me in England. D'Orsay, too, made a drawing of me" (I think he said
+drawing) "once when I was visiting Gore House,--a very good thing it was
+too,--and there is a bust executed by Gibson when I was in Rome. These
+are quite sufficient. I have often been urged to allow my portrait to be
+inserted in my books, but never would I give my consent."
+(Notwithstanding this assertion, it may be found in the "Last Fruit.")
+"It is a custom that I detest."
+
+"But, Mr. Landor, you had your photograph taken lately."
+
+"That was to oblige my good friend Browning, who has been so exceedingly
+kind and attentive to me. I could not refuse him."
+
+"But, Mr. Landor, this is entirely between ourselves. It does not
+concern the public in the least. My friend wants to make a study of your
+head, and I want the study."
+
+"O, the painting is for you, is it?"
+
+"Yes. I want to have something of you in oil colors."
+
+"Ah, to be sure! the old creature's complexion is so fresh and fair.
+Well, I'll tell you what I will do. Your friend may come, provided you
+come with him,--and act as chaperon!" This was said laughingly.
+
+"That I will do with pleasure."
+
+"But stop!" added Landor after a pause. "I must be taken without my
+beard!"
+
+"O no! Mr. Landor. That cannot be. Why, you will spoil the picture. You
+won't look like a patriarch without a beard."
+
+"I ordered my barber to come and shear me to-morrow. The weather is
+getting to be very warm, and a heavy beard is exceedingly uncomfortable.
+I _must_ be shaved to-morrow."
+
+"Pray countermand the order, dear Mr. Landor. Do retain your beard until
+the picture is completed. You will not be obliged to wait long. We shall
+all be so disappointed if you don't."
+
+"Well, well, I suppose I must submit."
+
+And thus the matter was amicably arranged, to our infinite satisfaction.
+
+Those sittings were very pleasant to the artist and his chaperon, and
+were not disagreeable, I think, to the model. Seated in his arm-chair,
+with his back to the window that the light might fall on the top of his
+head and form a sort of glory, Landor looked every inch a seer, and
+would entertain us with interesting though unseerlike recollections,
+while the artist was busy with his brush.
+
+Putting out his foot one day, he said, "Who could suppose that that ugly
+old foot had ever been good-looking? Yet they say it was once. When I
+was in Rome, an artist came to me, and asked to take a cast of my foot
+and leg."
+
+"Ah, Mr. Landor, you don't know how good-looking you might be now, if
+you would get a new suit of clothes and a nice pair of boots."
+
+"No, no. I never intend to buy anything more for myself. My old clothes
+are quite good enough. They are all-sufficient for this world, and in
+the next I sha'n't need any; that is, if we are to believe what we are
+told."
+
+"But, indeed, Mr. Landor, you really ought to get a new cap."
+
+"No, the one I wear is quite grand enough. I may have it made over.
+Napier gave it to me," (I think he said Napier,) "and for that reason I
+value it."
+
+"Mr. Landor, you do look like a lion," I said at another time.
+
+He smiled and replied, "You are not the only person who has said so. One
+day, when Napier was dining with me, he threw himself back in his chair,
+exclaiming, with a hearty laugh, 'Zounds! Landor, I've just discovered a
+resemblance. You look like an old lion.'"
+
+"That was a compliment, Mr. Landor. The lion is the king of beasts."
+
+"Yes, but he's only a beast after all," was the quick retort.
+
+Landor always spoke with enthusiasm of General Sir William Napier, and
+in fact lavished praise upon all the family. It was to General Napier
+that he dedicated his "Hellenics," published in 1859, wherein he pays
+the following chivalric tribute: "An illustrious man ordered it to be
+inscribed on his monument, that he was _the friend of Sir Philip
+Sidney_; an obscurer one can but leave this brief memorial, that he was
+the friend of Sir William Napier." Not long after the conversation last
+referred to, Landor said, very sadly, as he welcomed us, "I have just
+heard of the death of my dear old friend Napier. Why could not I have
+been taken, and he left? I have lived too long."
+
+The portrait was soon painted, for Landor, with great patience and
+good-nature, would pose for an hour and a half at a time. Then, rising,
+he would say by way of conclusion to the day's work, "Now it is time for
+a little refreshment." After talking awhile longer, and partaking of
+cake and wine, we would leave to meet a few days later. This was the
+last time Landor sat for his picture.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Landor could never have greatly admired Italian music, although he spoke
+in high praise of the singing of Catalani, a _prima donna_ whom he knew
+and liked personally. He was always ready to point out the absurdity of
+many operatic situations and conventionalities, and often confessed that
+he had been rarely to the theatre. But that he was exceedingly fond of
+old English, Scotch, and German ballads, I had the best possible
+evidence. Frequently he entered our rooms, saying playfully, "I wish to
+make a bargain with you. I will give you these flowers if you will give
+me a song!" I was only too happy to comply, thinking the flowers very
+cheaply purchased. While I sang Italian cavatinas, Landor remained away
+from the piano, pleased, but not satisfied. At their conclusion he used
+to exclaim, "Now for an English ballad!" and would seat himself beside
+the piano, saying, "I must get nearer to hear the words. These old deaf
+ears treat me shabbily!" "Kathleen Mavourneen," Schubert's "Ave Maria,"
+and "Within a Mile of Edinboro' Town," were great favorites with him;
+but "Auld Robin Gray" came first in his affections and was the ballad he
+always asked for. Upon first hearing it, the tears streamed down his
+face, and with a sigh he said: "I have not heard that for many, many
+years. It takes me back to very happy days, when ---- used to sing to
+me. Ah, you did not know what thoughts you were recalling to the
+troublesome old man." As I turned over the leaves he added, "Ah, Landor!
+when you were younger, you knew how to turn over the leaves: you've
+forgotten all your accomplishments!"
+
+Apropos of old songs, Landor has laid his offering upon their neglected
+altar. I shall not forget that evening at Casa Guidi--I can forget no
+evening passed there--when, just as the tea was being placed upon the
+table. Robert Browning turned to Landor, who was that night's honored
+guest, gracefully thanked him for his defence of old songs, and, opening
+the "Last Fruit," read in his clear, manly voice the following passages
+from the Idyls of Theocritus: "We often hear that such or such a thing
+'is not worth an old song.' Alas! how very few things are! What precious
+recollections do some of them awaken! what pleasurable tears do they
+excite! They purify the stream of life; they can delay it on its
+shelves and rapids; they can turn it back again to the soft moss amidst
+which its sources issue."
+
+"Ah, you are kind," replied the gratified author. "You always find out
+the best bits in my books."
+
+I have never seen anything of its kind so chivalric as the deference
+paid by Robert Browning to Walter Savage Landor. It was loyal homage
+rendered by a poet in all the glow of power and impulsive magnetism to
+an "old master."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Landor often berated the custom of dinner-parties. "I dislike large
+dinners exceedingly. This herding together of men and women for the
+purpose of eating, this clatter of knives and forks, is barbarous. What
+can be more horrible than to see and hear a person talking with his
+mouth full? But Landor has strange notions, has he not, Giallo? In fact
+_Padrone_ is a fool if we may believe what folks say. Once, while
+walking near my villa at Fiesole, I overheard quite a flattering remark
+about myself, made by one _contadino_ to another. My beloved countrymen
+had evidently been the subject of conversation, and, as the two fellows
+approached my grounds, one of them pointed towards the villa and
+exclaimed: 'Tutti gli Inglesi sono pazzi, ma questo poi!' (All the
+English are mad,--but _this one_!) Words were too feeble to express the
+extent of my lunacy, and so both men shrugged their shoulders as only
+Italians can. Yes, Giallo, those _contadini_ pitied your old master, and
+I dare say they were quite right."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While talking one day about Franklin, Landor said: "Ah, Franklin was a
+great man; and I can tell you an anecdote of him that has never been in
+print, and which I had directly from a personal friend of Franklin's,
+who was acting as private secretary to Lord Auckland, the English
+ambassador at Paris during Franklin's visit to the French Court. On one
+occasion, when Franklin presented himself before Louis, he was most
+cavalierly treated by the king, whereupon Lord Auckland took it upon
+himself to make impertinent speeches, and, notwithstanding Franklin's
+habitually courteous manners, sneered at his appearing in court dress.
+Upon Franklin's return home, he was met by ----, who, being much
+attached to him,--a bit of a republican, too,--was anxious to learn the
+issue of the visit. 'I was received badly enough,' said Franklin. 'Your
+master, Lord Auckland, was very insolent. I am not quite sure that,
+among other things, he did not call me a rebel.' Then, taking off his
+court coat, which, after carefully folding and laying upon the sofa, he
+stroked, he muttered, 'Lie there now; you'll see better days yet.'"
+
+Being asked if he had ever seen Daniel Webster, Landor replied, "I once
+met Mr. Webster at a dinner-party. We sat next each other, and had a
+most agreeable conversation. Finally Mr. Webster asked me if I would
+have taken him for an American; and I answered, 'Yes, for the best of
+Americans!'"
+
+Landor had met Talma, "who spoke English most perfectly,"--had been in
+the society of Mrs. Siddons, "who was not at all clever in
+private,"--had conversed with Mrs. Jordan, "and a most handsome and
+agreeable woman she was; but that scoundrel, William IV., treated her
+shamefully. He even went so far as to appropriate the money she received
+on her benefit nights." Malibran, too, Landor described as being most
+fascinating off the stage.
+
+"I never studied German," he remarked at another time. "I was once in
+Germany four months, but conversed with the professors in Latin. Their
+Latin was grammatical, but very like dog-Latin for all that. What an
+offence to dogs, if they only knew it!" Then, lowering his voice, he
+laughingly added, "I hope Giallo did not hear me. I would not offend him
+for the world. A German Baroness attempted to induce me to learn her
+language, and read aloud German poetry for my benefit; but the noise was
+intolerable to me. It sounded like a great wagon banging over a
+pavement of boulders. It was very ungrateful in me not to learn, for my
+fair teacher paid me many pretty compliments. Yes, Giallo, _Padrone_ has
+had pleasant things said to him in his day. But the greatest compliment
+I ever received was from Lord Dudley. Being confined to his bed by
+illness at Bologna, a friend read aloud to him my imaginary conversation
+between the two Ciceros. Upon its conclusion, the reader exclaimed, 'Is
+not that exactly what Cicero would have said?' 'Yes, if he could!' was
+Lord Dudley's answer. Now was not that a compliment worth having?"
+
+One day when I was sitting with Landor, and he, as usual, was
+discoursing of "lang syne," he rose, saying, "Stop a bit; I've something
+to show you,"--and, leaving the room for a moment, returned with a small
+writing-desk, looking as old as himself. "Now I want you to look at
+something I have here," he continued, seating himself and opening the
+desk. "There, what do you think of that?" he asked, handing me a
+miniature of a very lovely woman.
+
+"I think the original must have been exceedingly handsome."
+
+"Ah, yes, she was," he replied, with a sigh, leaning back in his chair.
+"That is the 'Ianthe' of my poems."
+
+"I can well understand why she inspired your muse, Mr. Landor."
+
+"Ah, she was far more beautiful than her picture, but much she cared for
+my poetry! It couldn't be said that she liked me for my books. She, too,
+has gone,--gone before me."
+
+It is to "Ianthe" that the first seventy-five of his verses marked
+"Miscellaneous" are addressed, and it is of her he has written,--
+
+    "It often comes into my head
+    That we may dream when we are dead,
+    But I am far from sure we do.
+    O that it were so! then my rest
+    Would be indeed among the blest;
+    I should forever dream of you."
+
+In the "Heroic Idyls," also, there are lines
+
+    "ON THE DEATH OF IANTHE.
+
+    "I dare not trust my pen, it trembles so;
+    It seems to feel a portion of my woe,
+    And makes me credulous that trees and stones
+    At mournful fates have uttered mournful tones.
+    While I look back again on days long past,
+    How gladly would I yours might be my last!
+    Sad our first severance was, but sadder this,
+    When death forbids one hour of mutual bliss."
+
+"Ianthe's portrait is not the only treasure this old desk contains,"
+Landor said, as he replaced it and took up a small package, very
+carefully tied, which he undid with great precaution, as though the
+treasure had wings and might escape, if not well guarded. "There!" he
+said, holding up a pen-wiper made of red and gold stuff in the shape of
+a bell with an ivory handle,--"that pen-wiper was given to me by ----,
+Rose's sister, forty years ago. Would you believe it? Have I not kept it
+well?" The pen-wiper looked as though it had been made the day before,
+so fresh was it. "Now," continued Landor, "I intend to give that to
+you."
+
+"But, Mr. Landor--"
+
+"Tut! tut! there are to be no buts about it. My passage for another
+world is already engaged, and I know you'll take good care of my
+keepsake. There, now, put it in your pocket, and only use it on grand
+occasions."
+
+Into my pocket the pen-wiper went, and, wrapped in the same old paper,
+it lies in another desk, as free from ink as it was four years ago.
+
+Who Rose was no reader of Landor need be told,--she to whom "Andrea of
+Hungary" was dedicated, and of whom Lady Blessington, in one of her
+letters to Landor, wrote: "The tuneful bird, inspired of old by the
+Persian rose, warbled not more harmoniously its praise than you do that
+of the English Rose, whom posterity will know through your beautiful
+verses." Many and many a time the gray-bearded poet related incidents of
+which this English Rose was the heroine, and for the moment seemed to
+live over again an interesting episode of his mature years.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Dear! dear! what is the old creature to do for reading-matter?" Landor
+exclaimed after having exhausted his own small stock and my still
+smaller one. "Shakespeare and Milton are my daily food, but at times,
+you know, we require side-dishes."
+
+"Why not subscribe to Vieusseux's Library, Mr. Landor?"
+
+"That would be the best thing to do, would it not? Very well, you shall
+secure me a six months' subscription to-morrow. And now what shall I
+read? When Mr. Anthony Trollope was here, he called on me with his
+brother, and a clever man he appeared to be. I have never read anything
+of his. Suppose I begin with his novels?"
+
+And so it happened that Landor read all of Anthony Trollope's works with
+zest, admiring them for their unaffected honesty of purpose and truth to
+nature. He next read Hood's works, and when this writer's poems were
+returned to me there came with them a scrap of paper on which were named
+the poems that had most pleased their reader.
+
+"Song of a Shirt.
+
+"To my Daughter.
+
+"A Child embracing.
+
+"My Heart is sick.
+
+"False Poets and True.
+
+"The Forsaken.
+
+"The last stanza of Inez is beautiful."
+
+Of the poem which heads the list, he wrote:--
+
+    "'Song of the Shirt' Strange! very strange,
+    This shirt will never want a change,
+    Nor ever will wear out so long
+    As Britain has a heart or tongue."
+
+Hood commanded great love and respect from Landor. Soon the reign of G.
+P. R. James set in, and when I left Florence he was still in power. I
+cannot but think that a strong personal friendship had much to do with
+Landor's enthusiasm for this novelist.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We took many drives with Landor during the spring and summer of 1861,
+and made very delightful jaunts into the country. Not forgetful in the
+least of things, the old man, in spite of his age, would always insist
+upon taking the front seat, and was more active than many a younger man
+in assisting us in and out of the carriage. "You are the most genuinely
+polite man I know," once wrote Lady Blessington to him. The verdict of
+1840 could not have been overruled twenty-one years later. Once we drove
+up to "aerial Fiesole," and never can I forget Landor's manner while in
+the neighborhood of his former home. It had been proposed that we should
+turn back when only half-way up the hill. "Ah, go a little farther,"
+Landor said nervously; "I should like to see my villa." Of course his
+wish was our pleasure, and so the drive was continued. Landor sat
+immovable, with head turned in the direction of the Villa Gherardesca.
+At first sight of it he gave a sudden start, and genuine tears filled
+his eyes and coursed down his cheeks. "There's where I lived," he said,
+breaking a long silence and pointing to his old estate. Still we mounted
+the hill, and when at a turn in the road the villa stood out before us
+clearly and distinctly, Landor said, "Let us give the horses a rest
+here!" We stopped, and for several minutes Landor's gaze was fixed upon
+the villa. "There now, we can return to Florence, if you like," he
+murmured, finally, with a deep sigh. "I have seen it probably for the
+last time." Hardly a word was spoken during the drive home. Landor
+seemed to be absent-minded. A sadder, more pathetic picture than he made
+during this memorable drive is rarely seen. "With me life has been a
+failure," was the expression of that wretched, worn face. Those who
+believe Landor to have been devoid of heart should have seen him then.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During another drive he stopped the horses at the corner of a dirty
+little old street, and, getting out of the carriage, hurriedly
+disappeared round a corner, leaving us without explanation and
+consequently in amazement. We had not long to wait, however, as he soon
+appeared carrying a large roll of canvas. "There!" he exclaimed, as he
+again seated himself, "I've made a capital bargain. I've long wanted
+these paintings, but the man asked more than I could give. To-day he
+relented. They are very clever, and I shall have them framed." Alas!
+they were not clever, and Landor in his last days had queer notions
+concerning art. That he was excessively fond of pictures is undoubtedly
+true; he surrounded himself with them, but there was far more quantity
+than quality about them. He frequently attributed very bad paintings to
+very good masters; and it by no means followed because he called a
+battle-piece a "Salvator Rosa," that it was painted by Salvator. But the
+old man was tenacious of his art opinions, and it was unwise to argue
+the point.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The notes which I possess in Landor's handwriting are numerous, but they
+are of too personal a character to interest the public. Sometimes he
+signs himself "The Old Creature," at another, "The Restless Old Man,"
+and once, "Your Beardless Old Friend." This was after the painting of
+his portrait, when he had himself shorn of half his patriarchal
+grandeur. The day previous to the fatal deed, he entered our room
+saying, "I've just made an arrangement with my barber to shear me
+to-morrow. I must have a clean face during the summer."
+
+"I wish you had somewhat of the Oriental reverence for beards, Mr.
+Landor, for then there would be no shaving. Why, think of it! if you've
+no beard, how can you swear?"
+
+"Ah, _Padrone_ can swear tolerably well without it, can he not, Giallo?
+he will have no difficulty on that score. Now I'll wager, were I a young
+man, you would ask me for a lock of my hair. See what it is to be old
+and gray."
+
+"Why, Mr. Landor, I've long wanted just that same, but have not dared to
+ask for it. May I cut off a few stray hairs?" I asked, going toward him
+with a pair of scissors.
+
+"Ah no," he replied, quizzically, "there can be but one 'Rape of the
+Lock!' Let me be my own barber." Taking the scissors, he cut off the
+longest curl of his snow-white beard, enclosed it in an envelope with a
+Greek superscription, and, presenting it, said, "One of these days, when
+I have gone to my long sleep, this bit of an old pagan may interest some
+very good Christians."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following note is worthy to be transcribed, showing, as it does, the
+generosity of his nature at a time when he had nothing to give away but
+ideas.
+
+     "MY DEAR FRIEND,--Will you think it worth your while to
+     transcribe the enclosed? These pages I have corrected and
+     enlarged. Some of them you have never seen. They have occupied
+     more of my time and trouble, and are now more complete, than
+     anything you have favored me by reading. I hope you will be
+     pleased. I care less about others.... I hope you will get
+     something for these articles, and keep it. I am richer by
+     several crowns than you suspect, and I must scramble to the
+     kingdom of Heaven, to which a full pocket, we learn, is an
+     impediment.
+
+                        "Ever truly yours,
+
+                                    W. S. L."
+
+The manuscripts contained the two conversations between Homer and
+Laertes which two years ago were published in the "Heroic Idyls." I did
+not put them to the use desired by their author. Though my copies differ
+somewhat from the printed ones, it is natural to conclude that Landor
+most approved of what was last submitted to his inspection, and would
+not desire to be seen in any other guise. The publicity of a note
+prefixed to one of these conversations, however, is warranted.
+
+"It will be thought audacious, and most so by those who know the least
+of Homer, to represent him as talking so familiarly. He must often have
+done it, as Milton and Shakespeare did. There is homely talk in the
+'Odyssey.'
+
+"Fashion turns round like Fortune. Twenty years hence, perhaps, this
+conversation of Homer and Laertes, in which for the first time Greek
+domestic manners have been represented by any modern poet, may be
+recognized and approved.
+
+"Our sculptors and painters frequently take their subjects from
+antiquity; are our poets never to pass beyond the mediæval? At our own
+doors we listen to the affecting 'Song of the Shirt'; but some few of
+us, at the end of it, turn back to catch the 'Song of the Sirens.'
+
+"Poetry is not tied to chronology. The Roman poet brings Dido and Æneas
+together,--the historian parts them far asunder. Homer may or may not
+have been the contemporary of Laertes. Nothing is idler or more
+dangerous than to enter a labyrinth without a clew."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At last the time came when there were to be no more conversations, no
+more drives, with Walter Savage Landor. Summoned suddenly to America, we
+called upon him three or four days before our departure to say good by.
+
+"What? going to America?" Landor exclaimed in a sorrowful voice. "Is it
+really true? Must the old creature lose his young friends as well as his
+old? Ah me! ah me! what will become of Giallo and me? And America in the
+condition that it is too! But this is not the last time that I am to see
+you. Tut! tut! now no excuses. We must have one more drive, one more cup
+of tea together before you leave."
+
+Pressed as we were for time, it was still arranged that we should drive
+with Landor the evening previous to our departure. On the morning of
+this day came the following note:--
+
+     "I am so stupid that everything puzzles me. Is not this the day
+     I was to expect your visit? At all events you will have the
+     carriage at your door at _six_ this evening.
+
+    To drive or not to drive,
+    That is the question.
+
+     You shall not be detained one half-hour,--but tea will be ready
+     on your arrival.
+
+     "I fell asleep after the jolting, and felt no bad effect. See
+     what it is to be so young.
+
+                        "Ever yours affectionately,
+
+                                     "W. S. L."
+
+There was little to cheer any of us in that last drive, and few words
+were spoken. Stopping at his house on our way home, we sipped a final
+cup of tea in almost complete silence. I tried to say merry things and
+look forward a few years to another meeting, but the old man shook his
+head sadly, saying: "I shall never see you again. I cannot live through
+another winter, nor do I desire to. Life to me is but a counterpart of
+Dead Sea fruit; and now that you are going away, there is one less link
+to the chain that binds me."
+
+Landor, in the flood-tide of intellect and fortune, could command
+attention; Landor, tottering with an empty purse towards his ninth
+decade, could count his Florentine friends in one breath; thus it
+happened that the loss of the least of these made the old man sad.
+
+At last the hour of leave-taking arrived. Culling a flower from the
+little garden, taking a final turn through those three little rooms,
+patting Giallo on the head, who, sober through sympathy, looked as
+though he wondered what it all meant, we turned to Landor, who entered
+the front room dragging an immense album after him. It was the same that
+he had bought years before of Barker, the English artist, for fifty
+guineas, and about which previous mention has been made. "You are not to
+get rid of me yet," said Landor, bearing the album toward the stairs. "I
+shall see you home, and bid you good by at your own door."
+
+"But, dear Mr. Landor, what are you doing with that big book? You will
+surely injure yourself by attempting to carry it."
+
+"This album is intended for you, and you must take it with you
+to-night."
+
+Astonished at this munificent present, I hardly knew how to refuse it
+without offending the generous giver. Stopping him at the door, I
+endeavored to dissuade him from giving away so valuable an album; and,
+finding him resolute in his determination, begged him to compromise by
+leaving it to me in his will.
+
+"No, my dear," he replied, "I at least have lived long enough to know
+that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Whereupon he carried
+the book down stairs and deposited it in the carriage, deaf to our
+entreaties, and obstinately refusing assistance. "Now I am sure that you
+will have the album," he continued, after we were all seated in the
+carriage. "A will is an uncanny thing, and I'd rather remember my
+friends out of one than in one. I shall never see you again, and I want
+you to think of the foolish old creature occasionally."
+
+The carriage stopped at our door, and "the good by" came. "May God bless
+you!" murmured the lonely old man, and in a moment Walter Savage Landor
+was out of sight.
+
+He was right. We were never to meet again. Distance did not entirely
+sever the friendly link, however, for soon there came to me, across the
+sea, the following letters:--
+
+                                        August 28, 1861.
+
+     "By this time, my dear friend, you will be far on your way over
+     the Atlantic, and before you receive the scribble now before
+     you, half your friends will have offered you their
+     congratulations on your return home.
+
+     "People, I hear, are flocking fast into Florence for the
+     exhibition. This evening I received another kind note from the
+     Countess, who tells me that she shall return to Florence on
+     Saturday, and invites me to accompany her there. But I abhor
+     all crowds, and am not fascinated by the eye of kings. I never
+     saw him of Italy when he was here before, and shall not now.
+
+     "I am about to remove my terrace, and to place it under the
+     window of the small bedroom, substituting a glass door for the
+     present window. On this terrace I shall spend all my October
+     days, and--and--all my money! The landlord will not allow one
+     shilling toward the expense, which will make his lower rooms
+     lighter and healthier. To him the advantage will be
+     permanent,--to me (God knows) it must be very temporary. In
+     another summer I shall not sit so high, nor, indeed, _sit_
+     anywhere, but take instead the easiest and laziest of all
+     positions.
+
+     "I am continuing to read the noble romances of my friend James.
+     I find in them thoughts as profound as any in Charron, or
+     Montaigne, or Bacon,--I had almost added, or Shakespeare
+     himself,--the wisest of men, as the greatest of poets. On the
+     morning after your departure I finished the 'Philip Augustus.'
+     In the thirty-eighth chapter is this sentence: 'O Isidore! 't
+     is not the present, I believe, that ever makes our misery; 't
+     is its contrast with the past; 't is the loss of some hope, or
+     the crushing of some joy; the disappointment of expectation, or
+     the regrets of memory. The present is nothing, nothing,
+     nothing, but in its relation to the future or the past.' James
+     is inferior to Scott in wit and humor, but more than his equal
+     in many other respects; but then Scott wrote excellent poetry,
+     in which James, when he attempted it, failed.
+
+     "Let me hear how affairs are going on in America. I believe we
+     have truer accounts from England than your papers are disposed
+     to publish. Louis Napoleon is increasing his naval force to a
+     degree it never reached before. We must have war with him
+     before a twelvemonth is over. He will also make disturbances in
+     Louisiana, claiming it on the dolorous cry of France for her
+     lost children. They will _invite_ him, as the poor Savoyards
+     were _invited_ by him to do. So long as this perfidious
+     scoundrel exists there will be no peace of quiet in any quarter
+     of the globe. The Pope is heartily sick of intervention; but
+     nothing can goad his fat sides into a move.
+
+     "Are you not tired? My wrist is. So adieu.
+
+                        "Ever affectionately,
+
+                                    "W. S. L."
+
+With this letter came a slip of paper, on which were these lines:--
+
+    "TO GIALLO,
+
+    "Faithfullest of a faithful race,
+    Plainly I read it in thy face,
+    Thou wishest me to mount the stairs,
+    And leave behind me all my cares.
+      No: I shall never see again,
+    Her who now sails across the main,
+    Nor wilt thou ever as before
+    Rear two white feet against her door."
+
+    "Written opposite Palazzo Pitti,
+        September, 1861."
+
+                                            "February 15, 1862.
+
+     ".... The affairs of your country interest me painfully. The
+     Northern States had acknowledged the right of the Southern to
+     hold slaves, and had even been so iniquitous as to surrender a
+     fugitive from his thraldom. I would propose an accommodation:--
+
+     "1. That every slave should be free after ten years' labor.
+
+     "2. That none should be imported, or sold, or separated from
+     wife and children.
+
+     "3. That an adequate portion of land should be granted in
+     perpetuity to the liberated.
+
+     "The proprietor would be fully indemnified for his purchase by
+     ten years' labor. France and England will not permit their
+     commerce with the Southern States to be interrupted much
+     longer. It has caused great discontent in Manchester and Leeds,
+     where the artificers suffer grievously from want of employment.
+
+     ".... May you continue to improve in health as the warmer
+     weather advances. Mine will not allow me to hope for many more
+     months of life, but I shall always remember you, and desire
+     that you also will remember
+
+                                    "W. S. LANDOR."
+
+                                            "January, 1863.
+
+     ".... Your account of your improved health is very satisfactory
+     and delightful to me. Hardly can I expect to receive many such.
+     This month I enter on my eighty-ninth year, and am growing
+     blind and deaf.... I hope you may live long enough to see the
+     end of your disastrous civil war. Remember, the Southrons are
+     fighting for their acknowledged rights, as established by the
+     laws of the United States. Horrible is the idea that one man
+     should be lord and master of another. But Washington had
+     slaves, so had the President his successor. If your government
+     had been contented to decree that no slave henceforth should be
+     imported, none sold, none disunited from his family, your
+     Northern cause would be more popular in England and throughout
+     Europe than it is. You are about to see detached from the Union
+     a third of the white population. Is it not better that the
+     blacks should be contented slaves than exasperated murderers or
+     drunken vagabonds? Your blacks were generally more happy than
+     they were in Africa, or than they are likely to be in America.
+     Your taxes will soon excite a general insurrection. In a war of
+     five years they will be vastly heavier than their amount in all
+     the continent of Europe. And what enormous armies must be kept
+     stationary to keep down not only those who are now refractory,
+     but also those whom (by courtesy and fiction) we call free.
+
+     "I hope and trust that I shall leave the world before the end
+     of this winter. My darling dog, Giallo, will find a fond
+     protectress in ----.... Present my respectful compliments to
+     Mrs. F., and believe me to continue
+
+                        "Your faithful old friend,
+
+                                    "W. S. LANDOR."
+
+                                            "September 11, 1863.
+
+     ".... You must be grieved at the civil war. It might have been
+     avoided. The North had no right to violate the Constitution.
+     Slavery was lawful, execrable as it is.... Congress might have
+     liberated them [the slaves] gradually at no expense to the
+     nation at large.
+
+     "1. Every slave after fifteen years should be affranchised.
+
+     "2. None to be imported or sold.
+
+     "3. No husband and wife separated.
+
+     "4. No slave under twelve compelled to labor.
+
+     "5. Schools in every township; and children of both sexes sent
+     to them at six to ten.
+
+     "A few days before I left England, five years ago, I had an
+     opportunity of conversing with a gentleman who had visited the
+     United States. He was an intelligent and zealous Abolitionist.
+     Wishing to learn the real state of things, he went on board a
+     vessel bound to New York. He was amazed at the opulence and
+     splendor of that city, and at the inadequate civilization of
+     the inhabitants. He dined at a public table, at a principal
+     inn. The dinner was plenteous and sumptuous. On each side of
+     him sat two gentlemen who spat like Frenchmen the moment a
+     plate was removed. This prodigy deprived him of appetite. Dare
+     I mention it, that the lady opposite cleared her throat in like
+     manner?
+
+     "The Englishman wished to see your capital, and hastened to
+     Washington. There he met a member of Congress to whom he had
+     been introduced in London by Webster. Most willingly he
+     accepted his invitation to join him at Baltimore, his
+     residence. He found it difficult to express the difference
+     between the people of New York and those of Baltimore, whom he
+     represented as higher-bred. He met there a slaveholder of New
+     Orleans, with whom at first he was disinclined to converse, but
+     whom presently he found liberal and humane, and who assured him
+     that his slaves were contented, happy, and joyous. 'There are
+     some cruel masters,' he said, 'among us; but come yourself,
+     sir, and see whether we consider them fit for our society or
+     our notice.' He accepted the invitation, and remained at New
+     Orleans until a vessel was about to sail for Bermuda, where he
+     spent the winter.
+
+     "Your people, I am afraid, will resolve on war with England.
+     Always aggressive, they already devour Canada. I hope Canada
+     will soon be independent both of America and England. Your
+     people should be satisfied with a civil war of ten or twelve
+     years: they will soon have one of much longer duration about
+     Mexico. God grant that you, my dear friend, may see the end of
+     it. Believe me ever,
+
+                        "Your affectionate old friend,
+
+                                    "W. S. LANDOR."
+
+It was sad to receive such letters from the old man, for they showed how
+a mind once great was tottering ere it fell. Blind, deaf, shut up within
+the narrow limits of his own four walls, dependent upon English
+newspapers for all tidings of America,--is it strange that during those
+last days Landor failed to appreciate the grandeur of our conflict, and
+stumbled as he attempted to follow the logic of events? Well do I
+remember that in conversations he had reasoned far differently, his
+sympathy going out most unreservedly to the North. Living in the dark,
+he saw no more clearly than the majority of Europeans, and a not small
+minority of our own people. Interesting as is everything that so
+celebrated an author as Landor writes, these extracts, so unfavorable to
+our cause and to his intellect, would never have been published had not
+English reviewers thoroughly ventilated his opinions on the American
+war. Their insertion, consequently, in no way exposes Landor to severer
+comment than that to which the rashly unthinking have already subjected
+him, but, on the contrary, increases our regard for him, denoting, as
+they do, that, however erroneous his conclusions, the subject was one to
+which he devoted all the thought left him by old age. The record of a
+long life cannot be obliterated by the unsound theories of the
+octogenarian. It was only ten years before that he appealed to America
+in behalf of freedom in lines beginning thus:--
+
+    "Friend Jonathan!--for friend thou art,--
+    Do, prithee, take now in good part
+    Lines the first steamer shall waft o'er.
+    Sorry am I to hear the blacks
+    Still bear your ensign on their backs;
+    The stripes they suffer make me sore.
+    Beware of wrong. The brave are true;
+    The tree of Freedom never grew
+    Where Fraud and Falsehood sowed their salt."
+
+In his poem, also, addressed to Andrew Jackson, the "Atlantic Ruler" is
+apostrophized on the supposition of a prophecy that remained
+unfulfilled.
+
+    "Up, every son of Afric soil,
+    Ye worn and weary, hoist the sail,
+    For your own glebes and garners toil
+    With easy plough and lightsome flail.
+    A father's home ye never knew,
+    A father's home your sons shall have from you.
+    Enjoy your palmy groves, your cloudless day,
+    Your world that demons tore away.
+    Look up! look up! the flaming sword
+    Hath vanished! and behold your Paradise restored."
+
+This is Landor in the full possession of his intellect.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For Landor's own sake, I did not wish to drink the lees of that rich
+wine which Lady Blessington had prophesied would "flow on pure, bright,
+and sparkling to the last." It is the strength, not the weakness, of our
+friends that we would remember, and therefore Landor's letter of
+September, 1863, remained unanswered. It was better so. A year later he
+died of old age, and during this year he was but the wreck of himself.
+He became gradually more and more averse to going out, and to receiving
+visitors,--more indifferent, in fact, to all outward things. He used to
+sit and read, or, at all events, hold a book in his hand, and would
+sometimes write and sometimes give way to passion. "It was the swell of
+the sea after the storm, before the final calm," wrote a friend in
+Florence. Landor did not become physically deafer, but the mind grew
+more and more insensible to external impressions, and at last his
+housekeeper was forced to write down every question she was called upon
+to ask him. Few crossed the threshold of his door saving his sons, who
+went to see him regularly. At last he had a difficulty in swallowing,
+which produced a kind of cough. Had he been strong enough to expectorate
+or be sick, he might have lived a little longer; but the frame-work was
+worn out, and in a fit of coughing the great old man drew his last
+breath. He was confined to his bed but two or three days. I am told he
+looked very grand when dead,--like a majestic marble statue. The funeral
+was hurried, and none but his two sons followed his remains to the
+grave!
+
+One touching anecdote remains to be told of him, as related by his
+housekeeper. On the night before the 1st of May, 1864, Landor became
+very restless, as sometimes happened during the last year. About two
+o'clock, A. M., he rang for Wilson, and insisted upon having the room
+lighted and the windows thrown open. He then asked for pen, ink, and
+paper, and the date of the day. Being told that it was the dawn of the
+1st of May, he wrote a few lines of poetry upon it; then, leaning back,
+said, "I shall never write again. Put out the lights and draw the
+curtains." Very precious would those lines be now, had they been found.
+Wilson fancies that Landor must have destroyed them the next morning on
+rising.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The old man had his wish. Years before, when bidding, as he supposed, an
+eternal farewell to Italy, he wrote sadly of hopes which then seemed
+beyond the pale of possibility.
+
+    "I did believe, (what have I not believed?)
+    Weary with age, but unopprest by pain,
+    To close in thy soft clime my quiet day,
+    And rest my bones in the Mimosa's shade.
+    Hope! hope! few ever cherisht thee so little;
+    Few are the heads thou hast so rarely raised;
+    But thou didst promise this, and all was well.
+    For we are fond of thinking where to lie
+    When every pulse hath ceast, when the lone heart
+    Can lift no aspiration, ... reasoning
+    As if the sight were unimpaired by death,
+    Were unobstructed by the coffin-lid,
+    And the sun cheered corruption! Over all
+    The smiles of Nature shed a potent charm,
+    And light us to our chamber at the grave."
+
+Italy recalled her aged yet impassioned lover, and there, beneath the
+cypresses of the English burying-ground at Florence, almost within sound
+of the murmur of his "own Affrico," rest the weary bones of Walter
+Savage Landor. It is glorified dust with which his mingles. Near by, the
+birds sing their sweetest over the grave of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
+Not far off, an American pine watches vigilantly while Theodore Parker
+sleeps his long sleep; and but a little distance beyond, Frances
+Trollope, the mother, and Theodosia Trollope, her more than devoted
+daughter, are united in death as they had been in life.
+
+    "Nobly, O Theo! has your verse called forth
+    The Roman valor and Subalpine worth,"
+
+sang Landor years ago of his _protégée_, who outlived her friend and
+critic but a few months. With the great and good about him, Landor
+sleeps well. His genius needs no eulogy: good wine needs no bush. Time,
+that hides the many in oblivion, can but add to the warmth and
+mellowness of his fame; and in the days to come no modern writer will be
+more faithfully studied or more largely quoted than Walter Savage
+Landor.
+
+            "We upon earth
+    Have not our places and our distances
+    Assigned, for many years; at last a tube,
+    Raised and adjusted by Intelligence,
+    Stands elevated to a cloudless sky,
+    And place and magnitude are ascertained."
+
+Landor "will dine late; but the dining-room will be well lighted, the
+guests few and select." He will reign among crowned heads.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL.
+
+
+    What flecks the outer gray beyond
+      The sundown's golden trail?
+    The white flash of a sea-bird's wing,
+      Or gleam of slanting sail?
+    Let young eyes watch from Neck and Point,
+      And sea-worn elders pray,--
+    The ghost of what was once a ship
+      Is sailing up the bay!
+
+    From gray sea-fog, from icy drift,
+      From peril and from pain,
+    The home-bound fisher greets thy lights,
+      O hundred-harbored Maine!
+    But many a keel shall seaward turn,
+      And many a sail outstand,
+    When, tall and white, the Dead Ship looms
+      Against the dusk of land.
+
+    She rounds the headland's bristling pines.
+      She threads the isle-set bay;
+    No spur of breeze can speed her on,
+      Nor ebb of tide delay.
+    Old men still walk the Isle of Orr
+      Who tell her date and name,
+    Old shipwrights sit in Freeport yards
+      Who hewed her oaken frame.
+
+    What weary doom of baffled quest,
+      Thou sad sea-ghost, is thine?
+    What makes thee in the haunts of home
+      A wonder and a sign?
+    No foot is on thy silent deck,
+      Upon thy helm no hand;
+    No ripple hath the soundless wind
+      That smites thee from the land!
+
+    For never comes the ship to port
+      Howe'er the breeze may be;
+    Just when she nears the waiting shore
+      She drifts again to sea.
+    No tack of sail, nor turn of helm,
+      Nor sheer of veering side.
+    Stern-fore she drives to sea and night
+      Against the wind and tide.
+
+    In vain o'er Harpswell Neck the star
+      Of evening guides her in;
+    In vain for her the lamps are lit
+      Within thy tower, Seguin!
+    In vain the harbor-boat shall hail,
+      In vain the pilot call;
+    No hand shall reef her spectral sail,
+      Or let her anchor fall.
+
+    Shake, brown old wives, with dreary joy,
+      Your gray-head hints of ill;
+    And, over sick-beds whispering low,
+      Your prophecies fulfil.
+    Some home amid yon birchen trees
+      Shall drape its door with woe;
+    And slowly where the Dead Ship sails,
+      The burial boat shall row!
+
+    From Wolf Neck and from Flying Point,
+      From island and from main,
+    From sheltered cove and tided creek,
+      Shall glide the funeral train.
+    The dead-boat with the bearers four,
+      The mourners at her stern,--
+    And one shall go the silent way
+      Who shall no more return!
+
+    And men shall sigh, and women weep,
+      Whose dear ones pale and pine,
+    And sadly over sunset seas
+      Await the ghostly sign.
+    They know not that its sails are filled
+      By pity's tender breath,
+    Nor see the Angel at the helm
+      Who steers the Ship of Death!
+
+
+
+
+DOCTOR JOHNS.
+
+
+LXIII.
+
+Reuben had heard latterly very little of domestic affairs at Ashfield.
+He knew scarce more of the family relations of Adèle than was covered by
+that confidential announcement of the parson's which had so set on fire
+his generous zeal. The spinster, indeed, in one of her later letters had
+hinted, in a roundabout manner, that Adèle's family misfortunes were not
+looking so badly as they once did,--that the poor girl (she believed)
+felt tenderly still toward her old playmate,--and that Mr. Maverick was,
+beyond all question, a gentleman of very easy fortune. But Reuben was
+not in a mood to be caught by any chaff administered by his most
+respectable aunt. If, indeed, he had known all,--if that hearty burst of
+Adèle's gratitude had come to him,--if he could once have met her with
+the old freedom of manner,--ah! then--then--
+
+But no; he thinks of her now as one under social blight, which he would
+have lifted or borne with her had not her religious squeamishness
+forbidden. He tries to forget what was most charming in her, and has
+succeeded passably well.
+
+"I suppose she is still modelling her heroes on the Catechism," he
+thought, "and Phil will very likely pass muster."
+
+The name of Madam Maverick as attaching to their fellow-passenger--which
+came to his ear for the first time on the second day out from
+port--considerably startled him. Madam Maverick is, he learns, on her
+way to join her husband and child in America. But he is by no means
+disposed to entertain a very exalted respect for any claimant of such
+name and title. He finds, indeed, the prejudices of his education (so he
+calls them) asserting themselves with a fiery heat; and most of all he
+is astounded by the artfully arranged religious drapery with which this
+poor woman--as it appears to him--seeks to cover her short-comings. He
+had brought away from the atmosphere of the old cathedrals a certain
+quickened religious sentiment, by the aid of which he had grown into a
+respect, not only for the Romish faith, but for Christian faith of
+whatever degree. And now he encountered what seemed to him its gross
+prostitution. The old Doctor then was right: this Popish form of
+heathenism was but a device of Satan,--a scarlet covering of iniquity.
+Yet, in losing respect for one form of faith, he found himself losing
+respect for all. It was easy for him to match the present hypocrisy with
+hypocrisies that he had seen of old.
+
+Meantime, the good ship Meteor was skirting the shores of Spain, and had
+made a good hundred leagues of her voyage before Reuben had ventured to
+make himself known as the old schoolmate and friend of the child whom
+Madam Maverick was on her way to greet after so many years of
+separation. The truth was, that Reuben, his first disgust being
+overcome, could not shake off the influence of something attractive and
+winning in the manner of Madam Maverick. In her step and in her lithe
+figure he saw the step and figure of Adèle. All her orisons and aves,
+which she failed not to murmur each morning and evening, were reminders
+of the earnest faith of her poor child. It is impossible to treat her
+with disrespect. Nay, it is impossible,--as Reuben begins to associate
+more intimately the figure and the voice of this quiet lady with his
+memories of another and a younger one,--quite impossible, that he should
+not feel his whole chivalrous nature stirred in him, and become prodigal
+of attentions. If there were hypocrisy, it somehow cheated him into
+reverence.
+
+The lady is, of course, astounded at Reuben's disclosure to her. "_Mon
+Dieu!_ you, then, are the son of that good priest of whom I have heard
+so much! And you are Puritan? I would not have thought that. They love
+the vanities of the world then,"--and her eye flashed over the
+well-appointed dress of Reuben, who felt half an inclination to hide, if
+it had been possible, the cluster of gairish charms which hung at his
+watch-chain. "You have shown great kindness to my child, Monsieur. I
+thank you with my whole heart."
+
+"She is very charming, Madam," said Reuben, in an easy, _dégagé_ manner,
+which, to tell truth, he put on to cover a little embarrassing revival
+of his old sentiment.
+
+Madam Maverick looked at him keenly. "Describe her to me, if you will be
+so good, Monsieur."
+
+Whereupon Reuben ran on,--jauntily, at first, as if it had been a
+ballet-girl of San Carlo whose picture he was making out; but his old
+hearty warmth declared itself by degrees; and his admiration and his
+tenderness gave such warm color to his language as it might have shown
+if her little gloved hand had been shivering even then in his own
+passionate clasp. And as he closed, with a great glow upon his face,
+Madam Maverick burst forth,--
+
+"_Mon Dieu_, how I love her! Yet is it not a thing astonishing that I
+should ask you, a stranger, Monsieur, how my own child is looking?
+_Culpa mea! culpa mea!_" and she clutched at her rosary, and mumbled an
+ave, with her eyes lifted and streaming tears.
+
+Reuben looked upon her in wonder, amazed at the depth of her emotion.
+Could this be all hypocrisy?
+
+"_Tenez!_" said she, recovering herself, and reading, as it were, his
+doubts. "You count these" (lifting her rosary) "bawbles yonder, and our
+prayers pagan prayers; my husband has told me, and that she, Adèle, is
+taught thus, and that the _Bon Dieu_ has forsaken our Holy Church,--that
+He comes near now only to your--what shall I call them?--meeting-houses?
+Tell me, Monsieur, does Adèle think this?"
+
+"I think," said Reuben, "that your daughter would have charity for any
+religious faith which was earnest."
+
+"Charity! _Mon Dieu!_ Charity for sins, charity for failings,--yes, I
+ask it; but for my faith! No, Monsieur, no--no--a thousand times, no!"
+
+"This is real," thought Reuben.
+
+"Tell me, Monsieur," continued she, with a heat of language that excited
+his admiration, "what is it you believe there? What is the horror
+against which your New England teachers would warn my poor Adèle? May
+the Blessed Virgin be near her!"
+
+Whereupon, Reuben undertook to lay down the grounds of distrust in which
+he had been educated; not, surely, with the fervor or the logical
+sequence which the old Doctor would have given to the same, but yet
+inveighing in good set terms against the vain ceremonials, the
+idolatries, the mummeries, the confessional, the empty absolution; and
+summing up all with the formula (may be he had heard the Doctor use the
+same language) that the piety of the Romanist was not so much a deep
+religious conviction of the truth, as a sentiment.
+
+"Sentiment!" exclaims Madam Maverick. "What else? What but love of the
+good God?"
+
+But not so much by her talk as by the every-day sight of her serene,
+unfaltering devotion is Reuben won into a deep respect for her faith.
+
+Those are rare days and rare nights for him, as the good ship Meteor
+slips down past the shores of Spain to the Straits,--days all sunny,
+nights moon-lit. To the right,--not discernible, but he knows they are
+there,--the swelling hills of Catalonia and of Andalusia, the marvellous
+Moorish ruins, the murmurs of the Guadalquivir; to the left, a broad
+sweep of burnished sea, on which, late into the night, the moon pours a
+stream of molten silver, that comes rocking and widening toward him, and
+vanishes in the shadow of the ship. The cruise has been a splendid
+venture for him,--twenty-five thousand at the least. And as he paces the
+decks,--in the view only of the silent man at the wheel and of the
+silent stars,--he forecasts the palaces he will build. The feeble
+Doctor shall have ease and every luxury; he will be gracious in his
+charities; he will astonish the old people by his affluence; he will
+live--
+
+Just here, he spies a female figure stealing from the companion-way, and
+gliding beyond the shelter of the wheelhouse. Half concealed as he
+chances to be in the shadow of the rigging, he sees her fall upon her
+knees, and, with head uplifted, cross her hands upon her bosom. 'T is a
+short prayer, and the instant after she glides below.
+
+"Good God! what trust!"--it is an ejaculatory prayer of Reuben's, rather
+than an oath. And with it, swift as the wind, comes a dreary sense of
+unrest. The palaces he had built vanish. The stars blink upon him
+kindly, and from their wondrous depths challenge his thought. The sea
+swashes idly against the floating ship. He too afloat,--afloat. Whither
+bound? Yearning still for a belief on which he may repose. And he
+bethinks himself,--does it lie somewhere under the harsh and dogmatic
+utterances of the Ashfield pulpit? At the thought, he recalls the weary
+iteration of cumbersome formulas, that passed through his brain like
+leaden plummets, and the swift lashings of rebuke, if he but reached
+over for a single worldly floweret, blooming beside the narrow path; and
+yet,--and yet, from the leaden atmosphere of that past, saintly faces
+beam upon him,--a mother's, Adèle's,--nay, the kindly fixed gray eyes of
+the old Doctor glow upon him with a fire that must have been kindled
+with truth.
+
+Does it lie in the melodious aves, and under the robes of Rome? The
+sordid friars, with their shaven pates, grin at him; some Rabelais head
+of a priest in the confessional-stall leers at him with mockery: and yet
+the golden letters of the great dome gleam again with the blazing
+legend, _Ædificabo meam Ecclesiam!_--and the figure of the Magdalen
+yonder has just now murmured, in tones that must surely have reached a
+gracious ear,--
+
+    "Tibi Christe, redemptori,
+    Nostro vero salvatori!"
+
+Is the truth between? Is it in both? Is it real? And if real, why may
+not the same lips declare it under the cathedral or the meeting-house
+roof? Why not--in God's name--charity?
+
+
+LXIV.
+
+The Meteor is a snug ship, well found, well manned, and, as the times
+go, well officered. The captain, indeed, is not over-alert or fitted for
+high emergencies; but what emergencies can belong to so placid a voyage?
+For a week after the headlands of Tarifa and Spartel have sunk under the
+eastern horizon, the vessel is kept every day upon her course,--her
+top-gallant and studding sails all distent with the wind blowing freely
+from over Biscay. After this come light, baffling, westerly breezes,
+with sometimes a clear sky, and then all is overclouded by the drifting
+trade-mists. Zigzagging on, quietly as ever, save the bustle and whiz
+and flapping canvas of the ship "in stays," the good Meteor pushes
+gradually westward.
+
+Meantime a singular and almost tender intimacy grew up between Reuben
+and the lady voyager. It is always agreeable to a young man to find a
+listening ear in a lady whose age puts her out of the range of any
+flurry of sentiment, and whose sympathy gives kindly welcome to his
+confidence. All that early life of his he detailed to her with a
+particularity and a warmth (himself unconscious of the warmth) which
+brought the childish associations of her daughter fresh to the mind of
+poor Madam Maverick. No wonder that she gave a willing ear! no wonder
+that the glow of his language kindled her sympathy! Nor with such a
+listener does he stop with the boyish life of Ashfield. He unfolds his
+city career, and the bright promises that are before him,--promises of
+business success, which (he would make it appear) are all that fill his
+heart now. In the pride of his twenty-five years he loves to represent
+himself as _blasé_ in sentiment.
+
+Madam Maverick has been taught, in these latter years, a large amount of
+self-control; so she can listen with a grave, nay, even a kindly face,
+to Reuben's sweeping declarations. And if, at a hint from her,--which he
+shrewdly counts Jesuitical,--his thought is turned in the direction of
+his religious experiences, he has his axioms, his common-sense formulas,
+his irreproachable coolness, and, at times, a noisy show of distrust,
+under which it is easy to see an eager groping after the ends of that
+great tangled skein of thought within, which is a weariness.
+
+"If you could only have a talk with Father Ambrose!" says Madam Maverick
+with half a sigh.
+
+"I should like that of all things," says Reuben, with a touch of
+merriment. "I suppose he 's a jolly old fellow, with rosy cheeks and
+full of humor. By Jove! there go the beads again!" (He says this latter
+to himself, however, as he sees the nervous fingers of the poor lady
+plying her rosary, and her lips murmuring some catch of a prayer.)
+
+Yet he cannot but respect her devotion profoundly, wondering how it can
+have grown up under the heathenisms of her life; wondering perhaps, too,
+how his own heathenism could have grown up under the roof of a
+parsonage. It will be an odd encounter, he thinks, for this woman, with
+the people of Ashfield, with the Doctor, with Adèle.
+
+There are gales, but the good ship rides them out jauntily, with but a
+single reef in her topsails. Within five weeks from the date of her
+leaving Marseilles she is within a few days' sail of New York. A few
+days' sail! It may mean overmuch; for there are mists, and hazy weather,
+which forbid any observation. The last was taken a hundred miles to the
+eastward of George's Shoal. Under an easy offshore wind the ship is
+beating westward. But the clouds hang low, and there is no opportunity
+for determining position. At last, one evening, there is a little lift,
+and, for a moment only, a bright light blazes over the starboard bow.
+The captain counts it a light upon one of the headlands of the Jersey
+shore; and he orders the helmsman (she is sailing in the eye of an easy
+westerly breeze) to give her a couple of points more "northing"; and the
+yards and sheets are trimmed accordingly. The ship pushes on more
+steadily as she opens to the wind, and the mists and coming night
+conceal all around them.
+
+"What do you make of the light, Mr. Yardley?" says the captain,
+addressing the mate.
+
+"Can't say, sir, with such a bit of a look. If it should be Fire Island,
+we 're in a bad course, sir."
+
+"That's true enough," said the captain thoughtfully. "Put a man in the
+chains, Mr. Yardley, and give us the water."
+
+"I hope we shall be in the bay by morning, Captain," said Reuben, who
+stood smoking leisurely near the wheel. But the captain was preoccupied,
+and answered nothing.
+
+A little after, a voice from the chains came chanting full and loud, "By
+the mark--nine!"
+
+"This 'll never do, Mr. Yardley," said the captain, "Jersey shore or any
+other. Let all hands keep by to put the ship about."
+
+A voice forward was heard to say something of a roar that sounded like
+the beat of surf; at which the mate stepped to the side of the ship and
+listened anxiously.
+
+"It 's true, sir," said he coming aft. "Captain, there 's something very
+like the beat of surf, here away to the no'th'ard."
+
+A flutter in the canvas caught the captain's attention. "It 's the wind
+slacking; there's a bare capful," said the mate, "and I 'm afeard
+there's mischief brewing yonder." He pointed as he spoke a little to the
+south of east, where the darkness seemed to be giving way to a luminous
+gray cloud of mist.
+
+"And a half--six!" shouts again the man in the chains.
+
+The captain meets it with a swelling oath, which betrays clearly enough
+his anxiety. "There 's not a moment to lose, Yardley; see all ready
+there! Keep her a good full, my boy!" (to the man at the wheel).
+
+The darkness was profound. Reuben, not a little startled by the new
+aspect of affairs, still kept his place upon the quarter-deck. He saw
+objects flitting across the waist of the ship, and heard distinctly the
+coils flung down with a clang upon the wet decks. There was something
+weird and ghostly in those half-seen figures, in the indistinct maze of
+cordage and canvas above, and the phosphorescent streaks of spray
+streaming away from either bow.
+
+"Are you ready there?" says the captain.
+
+"Ay, ay, sir," responds the mate.
+
+"Put your helm a-lee, my man!--Hard down!"
+
+"Hard down it is, sir!"
+
+The ship veers up into the wind; and, as the captain shouts his order,
+"Mainsail haul!" the canvas shakes; the long, cumbrous yard groans upon
+its bearings; there is a great whizzing of the cordage through the
+blocks; but, in the midst of it all,--coming keenly to the captain's
+ear,--a voice from the fore-hatch exclaims, "By G--, she touches!"
+
+The next moment proved it true. The good ship minded her helm no more.
+The fore-yards are brought round by the run and the mizzen, but the
+light wind--growing lighter--hardly clears the flapping canvas from the
+spars.
+
+In the sunshine, with so moderate a sea, 't would seem little; in so
+little depth of water they might warp her off; but the darkness
+magnifies the danger; besides which, an ominous sighing and murmur are
+coming from that luminous misty mass to the southward. Through all this,
+Reuben has continued smoking upon the quarter-deck; a landsman under a
+light wind, and with a light sea, hardly estimates at their true worth
+such intimations as had been given of the near breaking of the surf, and
+of the shoaling water. Even the touch upon bottom, of which the grating
+evidence had come home to his own perceptions, brought up more the fate
+of his business venture than any sense of personal peril. We can surely
+warp her off in the morning, he thought; or, if the worst came,
+insurance was full, and it would be easy boating to the shore.
+
+"It's lucky there's no wind," said he to Yardley.
+
+"Will you obleege me, Mr. Johns? Take a good strong puff of your
+cigar,--here, upon the larboard rail, sir," and he took the lantern from
+the companion-way that he might see the drift of the smoke. For a moment
+it lifted steadily; then, with a toss it vanished away--shoreward. The
+first angry puffs of the southeaster were coming.
+
+The captain had seen all, and with an excited voice said, "Mr. Yardley,
+clew up, fore and aft,--clew up everything; put all snug, and make ready
+the best bower."
+
+"Mr. Johns," said he, approaching Reuben, "we are on a lee shore; it
+should be Long Island beach by the soundings; with calm weather, and a
+kedge, we might work her off with the lift of the tide. But the Devil
+and all is in that puff from the sou'east."
+
+"O, well, we can anchor," says Reuben.
+
+"Yes, we can anchor, Mr. Johns; but if that sou'easter turns out the
+gale it promises, the best anchor aboard won't be so good as a
+gridiron."
+
+"Do you advise taking to the boats, then?" asked Reuben, a little
+nervously.
+
+"I advise nothing, Mr. Johns. Do you hear the murmur of the surf yonder?
+It's bad landing under such a pounding of the surf, with daylight; in
+the dark, where one can't catch the drift of the waves, it might
+be--death!"
+
+The word startled Reuben. His philosophy had always contemplated it at a
+distance, toward which easy and gradual approaches might be made: but
+here it was, now, at a cable's length!
+
+And yet it was very strange; the sea was not high; no gale as yet; only
+an occasional grating thump of the keel was a reminder that the good
+Meteor was not still afloat. But the darkness! Yes, the darkness was
+complete, (hardly a sight even of the topmen who were aloft--as in the
+sunniest of weather--stowing the canvas,) and to the northward that
+groan and echo of the resounding surf; to the southward, the whirling
+white of waves that are lifting now, topped with phosphorescent foam.
+
+The anchor is let go, but even this does not bring the ship's head to
+the wind. Those griping sands hold her keel fast. The force of the
+rising gale strikes her full abeam, giving her a great list to shore. It
+is in vain the masts are cut away, and the rigging drifts free; the hulk
+lifts only to settle anew in the grasping sands. Every old seaman upon
+her deck knows that she is a doomed ship.
+
+From time to time, as the crashing spars or the leaden thump upon the
+sands have startled those below, Madam Maverick and her maid have made
+their appearance, in a wild flutter of anxiety, asking eager questions;
+(Reuben alone can understand them or answer them;) but as the
+southeaster grows, as it does, into a fury of wind, and the poor hulk
+reels vainly, and is overlaid with a torrent of biting salt spray, Madam
+Maverick becomes calm. Instinctively, she sees the worst.
+
+"Could I only clasp Adèle once more in these arms, I would say,
+cheerfully, '_Nunc dimittis_.'"
+
+Reuben regarded her calm faith with a hungry eagerness. Not, indeed,
+that calmness was lacking in himself. Great danger, in many instances,
+sublimates the faculties of keenly strung minds. But underneath his
+calmness there was an unrest, hungering for repose,--the repose of a
+fixed belief. If even then the breaking waves had whelmed him in their
+mad career, he would have made no wailing outcry, but would have
+clutched--how eagerly!--at the merest shred of that faith which, in
+other days and times, he had seen illuminate the calm face of the
+father. Something to believe,--on which to float upon such a sea!
+
+But the waves and winds make sport of beliefs. Prayers count nothing
+against that angry surge. Two boats are already swept from the davits,
+and are gone upon the whirling waters. A third, with infinite pains, is
+dropped into the yeast. It is hard to tell who gives the orders. But,
+once afloat, there is a rush upon it, and away it goes,--overcrowded,
+and within eyeshot lifts, turns, and a crowd of swimmers float for a
+moment,--one with an oar, another with a thwart that the waves have torn
+out,--and in the yeast of waters they vanish.
+
+One boat only remains, and it is launched with more careful handling;
+three cling by the wreck; the rest--save only Madam Maverick and
+Reuben--are within her, as she tosses still in the lee of the vessel.
+
+"There 's room!" cries some one; "jump quick! for God's sake!"
+
+And Reuben, with some strange, generous impulse, seizes upon Madam
+Maverick, and, before she can rebel or resist, has dropped her over the
+rail. The men grapple her and drag her in; but in the next moment the
+little cockle of a boat is drifted yards away.
+
+The few who are left--the boatswain among them--are toiling on the wet
+deck to give a last signal from the little brass howitzer on the
+forecastle. As the sharp crack breaks on the air,--a miniature sound in
+that howl of the storm,--the red flash of the gun gives Reuben, as the
+boat lurches toward the wreck again, a last glance of Madam
+Maverick,--her hands clasped, her eyes lifted, and calm as ever. More
+than ever too her face was like the face of Adèle,--such as the face of
+Adèle must surely become, when years have sobered her and her buoyant
+faith has ripened into calm. And from that momentary glance of the
+serene countenance, and that flashing associated memory of Adèle, a
+subtile, mystic influence is born in him, by which he seems suddenly
+transfused with the same trustful serenity which just now he gazed upon
+with wonder. If indeed the poor lady is already lost,--he thinks it for
+a moment,--her spirit has fanned and cheered him as it passed. Once
+more, as if some mysterious hand had brought them to his reach, he
+grapples with those lost lines of hope and trust which in that youthful
+year of his exuberant emotional experience he had held and lost,--once
+more, now, in hand,--once more he is elated with that wonderful sense of
+a religious poise, that, it would seem, no doubts or terrors could
+overbalance. Unconsciously kneeling on the wet deck, he is rapt into a
+kind of ecstatic indifference to winds, to waves, to danger, to death.
+
+The boom of a gun is heard to the northward. It must be from shore.
+There are helpers at work, then. Some hope yet for this narrow tide of
+life, which just seemed losing itself in some infinite flow beyond. Life
+is, after all, so sweet! The boatswain forward labors desperately to
+return an answering signal; but the spray, the slanted deck, the
+overleaping waves, are too much for him. Darkness and storm and despair
+rule again.
+
+The wind, indeed, has fallen; the force of the gale is broken; but the
+waves are making deeper and more desperate surges. The wreck, which had
+remained fixed in the fury of the wind, lifts again under the great
+swell of the sea, and is dashed anew and anew upon the shoal. With every
+lift her timbers writhe and creak, and all the remaining upper works
+crack and burst open with the strain.
+
+Reuben chances to espy an old-fashioned round life-buoy lashed to the
+taffrail, and, cutting it loose, makes himself fast to it. He overhears
+the boatswain say, yonder by the forecastle, "These thumpings will break
+her in two in an hour. Cling to a spar, Jack."
+
+The gray light of dawn at last breaks, and shows a dim line of shore, on
+which parties are moving, dragging some machine, with which they hope to
+cast a line over the wreck. But the swell is heavier than ever, the
+timbers nearer to parting. At last a flash of lurid light from the dim
+shore-line,--a great boom of sound, and a line goes spinning out like a
+spider's web up into the gray, bleak sky. Too far! too short! and the
+line tumbles, plashing into the water. A new and fearful lift of the sea
+shatters the wreck, the fore part of the ship still holding fast to the
+sands; but all abaft the mainmast lifts, surges, reels, topples over;
+with the wreck, and in the angry swirl and torment of waters, Reuben
+goes down.
+
+
+LXV.
+
+That morning,--it was the 22d of September, in the year 1842,--Mr.
+Brindlock came into his counting-room some two hours before noon, and
+says to his porter and factotum, as he enters the door, "Well, Roger, I
+suppose you 'll be counting this puff of a southeaster the equinoctial,
+eh?"
+
+"Indeed, sir, and it 's an awful one. The Meteor 's gone ashore on Long
+Beach; and there 's talk of young Mr. Johns being lost."
+
+"Good Heavens!" said Brindlock, "you don't tell me so!"
+
+By half past three he was upon the spot; a little remaining fragment
+only of the Meteor hanging to the sands, and a great _débris_ of bales,
+spars, shattered timbers, bodies, drifted along the shore,--Reuben's
+among them.
+
+But he is not dead; at least so say the wreckers, who throng upon the
+beach; the life-buoy is still fast to him, though he is fearfully
+shattered and bruised. He is borne away under the orders of Brindlock to
+some near house, and presently revives enough to ask that he may be
+carried--"home."
+
+As, in the opening of this story, his old grandfather, the Major, was
+borne away from the scene of his first battle by easy stages homeward,
+so now the grandson, far feebler and after more terrible encounter with
+death, is carried by "easy stages" to his home in Ashfield. Again the
+city, the boat, the river,--with its banks yellowing with harvests, and
+brightened with the glowing tints of autumn; again the sluggish brigs
+drifting down with the tide, and sailors in tasselled caps leaning over
+the bulwarks; again the flocks feeding leisurely on the rock-strewn
+hills; again the ferryman, in his broad, cumbrous scow, oaring across;
+again the stoppage at the wharf of the little town, from which the coach
+still plies over the hills to Ashfield.
+
+On the way thither, a carriage passes them, in which are Adèle and her
+father. The news of disaster flies fast; they have learned of the wreck,
+and the names of passengers. They go to learn what they can of the
+mother, whom the daughter has scarce known. The passing is too hasty for
+recognition. Brindlock arrives at last with his helpless charge at the
+door of the parsonage. The Doctor is overwhelmed at once with grief and
+with joy. The news had come to him, and he had anticipated the worst.
+But "Thank God! 'Joseph, my son, is yet alive!' Still a probationer;
+there is yet hope that he may be brought into the fold."
+
+He insists that he shall be placed below, upon his own bed, just out of
+his study. For himself, he shall need none until the crisis is past. But
+the crisis does not pass; it is hard to say when it will. The wounds are
+not so much; but a low fever has set in, (the physician says,) owing to
+exposure and excitement, and he can predict nothing as to the result.
+Even Aunt Eliza is warmed into unwonted attention as she sees that poor
+battered hulk of humanity lying there; she spares herself no fatigue,
+God knows, but she sheds tears in her own chamber over this great
+disaster. There are good points even in the spinster; when shall we
+learn that the best of us are not wholly good, nor the worst wholly bad?
+
+Days and days pass. Reuben hovering between life and death; and the old
+Doctor, catching chance rest upon the little cot they have placed for
+him in the study, looks yearningly by the dim light of the sick-lamp
+upon that dove which his lost Rachel had hung upon his wall above the
+sword of his father. He fancies that the face of Reuben, pinched with
+suffering, resembles more than ever the mother. Of sickness, or of the
+little offices of friends which cheat it of pains, the old gentleman
+knows nothing: sick souls only have been his care. And it is pitiful to
+see his blundering, eager efforts to do something, as he totters round
+the sick-chamber where Reuben, with very much of youthful vigor left in
+him, makes fight against the arch-enemy who one day conquers us all. For
+many days after his arrival there is no consciousness,--only wild words
+(at times words that sound to the ears of the good Doctor strangely
+wicked, and that make him groan in spirit),--tender words, too, of
+dalliance, and eager, loving glances,--murmurs of boyish things, of
+sunny, school-day noonings,--hearing which, the Doctor thinks that, if
+this light must go out, it had better have gone out in those days of
+comparative innocence.
+
+Over and over the father appeals to the village physician to know what
+the chances may be,--to which that old gentleman, fumbling his
+watch-key, and looking grave, makes very doubtful response. He hints at
+a possible undermining of the constitution in these later years of city
+life.
+
+God only knows what habits the young man may have formed in these last
+years; surely the Doctor does not; and he tells the physician as much,
+with a groan of anguish.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meantime, Maverick and Adèle have gone upon their melancholy search;
+and, as they course over the island to the southern beach, the sands,
+the plains, the houses, the pines, drift by the eye of Adèle as in a
+dream. At last she sees a great reach of water,--piling up, as it rolls
+lazily in from seaward, into high walls of waves, that are no sooner
+lifted than they break and send sparkling floods of foam over the sands.
+Bits of wreck, dark clots of weed, are strewed here and
+there,--stragglers scanning every noticeable heap, every floating thing
+that comes in.
+
+Is she dead? is she living? They have heard only on the way that many
+bodies are lying in the near houses,--many bruised and suffering ones;
+while some have come safe to land, and gone to their homes. They make
+their way from that dismal surf-beaten shore to the nearest house. There
+are loiterers about the door; and within,--within, Adèle finds her
+mother at last, clasps her to her heart, kisses the poor dumb lips that
+will never more open,--never say to her rapt ears, "My child! my
+darling!"
+
+Maverick is touched as he has never been touched before; the age of
+early sentiment comes drifting back to his world-haunted mind; nay,
+tears come to those eyes that have not known them for years. The grief,
+the passionate, vain tenderness of Adèle, somehow seems to sanctify the
+memory of the dead one who lies before him, her great wealth of hair
+streaming dank and fetterless over the floor.
+
+Not more tenderly, scarce more tearfully, could he have ministered to
+one who had been his life-long companion. Where shall the poor lady be
+buried? Adèle answers that, with eyes flashing through her
+tears,--nowhere but in Ashfield, nowhere except beside the sister,
+Marie.
+
+It is a dismal journey for the father and the daughter; it is almost a
+silent journey. Does she love him less? No, a thousand times, no. Does
+he love her less? No, a thousand times, no. In such presence love is
+awed into silence. As the mournful _cortége_ enters the town of
+Ashfield, it passes the home of that fatherless boy, Arthur, for whom
+Adèle had shown such sympathy. The youngster is there swinging upon the
+gate, his cap gayly set off with feathers, and he looking wonderingly
+upon the bier. He sees, too, the sad face of Adèle, and, by some strange
+rush of memory, recalls, as he looks on her, the letter which she had
+given him long ago, and which till then had been forgotten. He runs to
+his mother: it is in his pocket,--it is in that of some summer jacket.
+At last it is found; and the poor woman herself, that very morning, with
+numberless apologies, delivers it at the door of the parsonage.
+
+Phil is the first to meet this exceptional funeral company, and is the
+first to tell Adèle how Reuben lies stricken almost to death at the
+parsonage. She thanks him: she thanks him again for the tender care
+which he shows in all relating to the approaching burial. When an enemy
+even comes forward to help us bury the child we loved or the parent we
+mourn, our hearts warm toward him as they never warmed before; but when
+a friend assumes these offices of tenderness, and takes away the
+harshest edge of grief by assuming the harshest duties of grief, our
+hearts shower upon him their tenderest sympathies. We never forget it.
+
+Of course, the arrival of this strange freight in Ashfield gives rise to
+a world of gossip. We cannot follow it; we cannot rehearse it. The poor
+woman is buried, as Adèle had wished, beside her sister. No _De
+Profundis_ except the murmur of the winds through the crimson and the
+scarlet leaves of later September.
+
+The Tourtelots have been eager with their gossip. The dame has queried
+if there should not be some town demonstration against the burial of the
+Papist. But the little Deacon has been milder; and we give our last
+glimpse of him--altogether characteristic--in a suggestion which he
+makes in a friendly way to Squire Elderkin, who is the host of the
+French strangers.
+
+"Square, have they ordered a moniment yit for Miss Maverick?"
+
+"Not that I 'm aware of, Deacon."
+
+"Waal, my nevvy's got a good slab of Varmont marble, which he ordered
+for his fust wife; but the old folks did n't like it, and it's in his
+barn on the heater-piece. 'T ain't engraved, nor nothin'. If it should
+_suit_ the Mavericks, I dare say they could git it tol'able low."
+
+
+LXVI.
+
+Reuben is still floating between death and life. There is doubt whether
+the master of the long course or of the short course will win. However
+that may be, his consciousness has returned; and it has been with a
+great glow of gratitude that the poor Doctor has welcomed that look of
+recognition in his eye,--the eye of Rachel!
+
+He is calm,--he knows all. That calmness which had flashed into his soul
+when last he saw the serene face of his fellow-voyager upon that mad sea
+is _his_ still.
+
+The poor father had been moved unwontedly by that unconsciousness which
+was blind to all his efforts at spiritual consolation; but he is not
+less moved when he sees reason stirring again,--a light of eager inquiry
+in those eyes fearfully sunken, but from their cavernous depths seeing
+farther and more keenly than ever.
+
+"Adèle's mother,--was she lost?" He whispers it to the Doctor; and Miss
+Eliza, who is sewing yonder, is quickened into eager listening.
+
+"Lost! my son, lost! Lost, I apprehend, in the other world as well as
+this, I fear the true light never dawned upon her."
+
+A faint smile--as of one who sees things others do not see--broke over
+the face of Reuben. "'T is a broad light, father; it reaches beyond our
+blind reckoning."
+
+There was a trustfulness in his manner that delighted the Doctor. "And
+you see it, my son?--Repentance, Justification by Faith, Adoption,
+Sanctification, Election?"
+
+"Those words are a weariness to me, father; they suggest methods,
+dogmas, perplexities. Christian hope, pure and simple, I love better."
+
+The Doctor is disturbed; he cannot rightly understand how one who seems
+inspired by so calm a trust--the son of his own loins too--should find
+the authoritative declarations of the divines a weariness. Is it not
+some subtle disguise of Satan, by which his poor boy is being cheated
+into repose?
+
+Of course the letter of Adèle, which had been so long upon its way, Miss
+Eliza had handed to Reuben after such time as her caution suggested, and
+she had explained to him its long delay.
+
+Reading is no easy matter for him; but he races through those delicately
+penned lines with quite a new strength. The spinster sees the color come
+and go upon his wan cheek, and with what a trembling eagerness he folds
+the letter at the end, and, making a painful effort, tries to thrust it
+under his pillow. The good woman has to aid him in this. He thanks her,
+but says nothing more. His fingers are toying nervously at a bit of torn
+fringe upon the coverlet. It seems a relief to him to make the rent
+wider and wider. A little glimpse of the world has come back to him,
+which disturbs the repose with which but now he would have quitted it
+forever.
+
+Adèle has been into the sick-chamber from time to time,--once led away
+weeping by the good Doctor, when the son had fallen upon his wild talk
+of school-days; once, too, since consciousness has come to him again,
+but before her letter had been read. He had met her with scarce more
+than a touch of those fevered fingers, and a hard, uncertain quiver of a
+smile, which had both shocked and disappointed the poor girl. She
+thought he would have spoken some friendly consoling word of her mother;
+but his heart, more than his strength, failed him. Her mournful, pitying
+eyes were a reproach to him; they had haunted him through the wakeful
+hours of two succeeding nights, and now, under the light of that laggard
+letter, they blaze with a new and an appealing tenderness. His fingers
+still puzzle wearily with that tangle of the fringe. The noon passes.
+The aunt advises a little broth. But no, his strength is feeding itself
+on other aliment. The Doctor comes in with a curiously awkward attempt
+at gentleness and noiselessness of tread, and, seeing his excited
+condition, repeats to him some texts which he believes must be
+consoling. Reuben utters no open dissent; but through and back of all he
+sees the tender eyes of Adèle, which, for the moment, outshine the
+promises, or at the least illuminate them with a new meaning.
+
+"I must see Adèle," he says to the Doctor; and the message is
+carried,--she herself presently bringing answer, with a rich glow upon
+her cheek.
+
+"Reuben has sent for me,"--she murmurs it to herself with pride and joy.
+
+She is in full black now; but never had she looked more radiantly
+beautiful than when she stepped to the side of the sick-bed, and took
+the hand of Reuben with an eager clasp--that was met, and met again. The
+Doctor is in his study, (the open door between,) and the spinster is
+fortunately just now busy at some of her household duties.
+
+Reuben fumbles under his pillow nervously for that cherished bit of
+paper, (Adèle knows already its history,) and when he has found it and
+shown it (his thin fingers crumpling it nervously) he says, "Thank you
+for this, Adèle!"
+
+She answers only by clasping his hand with a sudden mad pressure of
+content, while the blood mounted into either cheek with a rosy
+exuberance that magnified her beauty tenfold.
+
+He saw it,--he felt it all; and through her beaming eyes, so full of
+tenderness and love, saw the world to which he had bidden adieu shining
+before him more beguilingly than ever. Yesterday it was a dim and weary
+world that he could leave without a pang; to-day it is a brilliant
+world, where hopes, promises, joys pile in splendid proportions.
+
+He tells her this. "Yesterday I would have died with scarce a regret;
+to-day, Adèle, I would live."
+
+"You will, you will, Reuben!" and she grappled more and more
+passionately those shrunken fingers. "'T is not hopeless!" (sobbing).
+
+"No, no, Adèle, darling, not hopeless. The cloud is lifted,--not
+hopeless!"
+
+"Thank God, thank God!" said she, dropping upon her knees beside him,
+and with a smile of ecstasy he gathered that fair head to his bosom.
+
+The Doctor, hearing her sobs, came softly in. The son's smile, as he met
+his father's inquiring look, was more than ever like the smile of
+Rachel. He has been telling the poor girl of her mother's death, thinks
+the old gentleman; yet the Doctor wonders that he could have kept so
+radiant a face with such a story.
+
+Of these things, however, Reuben goes on presently to speak: of his
+first sight of the mother of Adèle, and of her devotional attitude as
+they floated down past the little chapel of Nôtre Dame to enter upon the
+fateful voyage; he recounts their talks upon the tranquil moon-lit
+nights of ocean; he tells of the mother's eager listening to his
+description of her child.
+
+"I did not tell her the half, Adèle; yet she loved me for what I told
+her."
+
+And Adèle smiles through her tears.
+
+At last he comes to those dismal scenes of the wreck, relating all with
+a strange vividness; living over again, as it were, that fearful
+episode, till his brain whirled, his self-possession was lost, and he
+broke out into a torrent of delirious raving.
+
+He sleeps brokenly that night, and the next day is feebler than ever.
+The physician warns against any causes of excitement. He is calm only at
+intervals. The old school-days seem present to him again; he talks of
+his fight with Phil Elderkin as if it happened yesterday.
+
+"Yet I like Phil," he says (to himself), "and Rose is like Amanda, the
+divine Amanda. No--not she. I've forgotten: it's the French girl. She's
+a ---- Pah! who cares? She's as pure as heaven; she's an angel. Adèle!
+Adèle! Not good enough! I'm not good enough. Very well, very well, now
+I'll be bad enough! Clouds, wrangles, doubts! Is it my fault? _Ædificabo
+meam Ecclesiam._ How they kneel! Puppets! mummers! No, not mummers, they
+see a Christ. What if they see it in a picture? You see him in words.
+Both in earnest. Belief--belief! That is best. Adèle, Adèle, I believe!"
+
+The Doctor is a pained listener of this incoherent talk of his son. "I
+am afraid,--I am afraid," he murmurs to himself, "that he has no clear
+views of the great scheme of the Atonement."
+
+The next day Reuben is himself once more, but feeble, to a degree that
+startles the household. It is a charming morning of later September;
+the window is wide open, and the sick one looks out over a stretch of
+orchard (he knew its every tree), and upon wooded hills beyond (he knew
+every coppice and thicket), and upon a background of sky over which a
+few dappled white clouds floated at rest.
+
+"It is most beautiful!" said Reuben.
+
+"All things that He has made are beautiful," said the Doctor; and
+thereupon he seeks to explore his way into the secrets of Reuben's
+religious experience,--employing, as he was wont to do, all the
+Westminster formulas by which his own belief stood fast.
+
+"Father, father, the words are stumbling-blocks to me," says the son.
+
+"I would to God, Reuben, that I could make my language always clear."
+
+"No, father, no man can, in measuring the Divine mysteries. We must
+carry this draggled earth-dress with us always,--always in some sort
+fashionists, even in our soberest opinions. The robes of light are worn
+only Beyond. Thought, at the best, is hampered by this clog of language,
+that tempts, obscures, misleads."
+
+"And do you see any light, my son?"
+
+"I hope and tremble. A great light is before me; it shines back upon
+outlines of doctrines and creeds where I have floundered for many a
+year."
+
+"But some are clear,--some are clear, Reuben!"
+
+"Before, all seems clear; but behind--"
+
+"And yet, Reuben," (the Doctor cannot forbear the discussion,) "there is
+the cross,--Election, Adoption, Sanctification--"
+
+"Stop, father; the cross, indeed, with a blaze of glory, I see; but the
+teachers of this or that special form of doctrine I see only catching
+radiations of the light. The men who teach, and argue, and declaim, and
+exorcise, are using human weapons; the great light only strikes here and
+there upon some sword-point which is nearest to the cross."
+
+"He wanders," says the Doctor to Adèle, who has slipped in and stands
+beside the sick-bed.
+
+"No wandering, father; on the brink where I stand, I cannot."
+
+"And what do you see, Reuben, my boy?" (tenderly).
+
+Is it the presence of Adèle that gives a new fervor, a kind of crazy
+inspiration to his talk? "I see the light-hearted clashing cymbals; and
+those who love art, kneeling under blazing temples and shrines; but the
+great light touches the gold no more effulgently than the steeple of
+your meeting-house, father, but no less. I see eyes of chanting girls
+streaming with joy in the light; and haggard men with ponderous
+foreheads working out contrivances to bridge the gap between the finite
+and the infinite. Father, they are no nearer to a passage than the
+radiant girls who chant and tell their beads. Angels in all shapes of
+beauty flit over and amid the throngs I see,--in shape of fleecy clouds
+that fan them,--in shape of brooks that murmur praise,--in shape of
+leafy shadows that tremble and flicker,--in shape of birds that make a
+concert of song." The birds even then were singing, the clouds floating
+in his eye, the leafy shadows trailing on the chamber floor, and, from
+the valley, the murmur of the brook came to his sensitive ear.
+
+"He wanders,--he wanders!" said the poor Doctor.
+
+Reuben turns to Adèle. "Adèle, kiss me!" A rosy tint ran over her face
+as she stooped and kissed him with a freedom a mother might have
+shown,--leaving one hand toying caressingly with his hair. "The cloud is
+passing, Adèle,--passing! God is Justice; Christ is Mercy. In him I
+trust."
+
+"Reuben, darling," says Adèle, "come back to us!"
+
+"Darling,--darling!" he repeated with a strange, eager, satisfied
+smile,--so sweet a sound it was.
+
+The chamber was filled with the delightful perfume of a violet bed
+beneath the window. Suddenly there came from the Doctor, whose old eyes
+caught sooner than any the change, a passionate outcry. "Great God! Thy
+will be done!"
+
+With that one loud, clear utterance, his firmness gave way,--for the
+first time in sixty years broke utterly; and big tears streamed down his
+face as he gazed yearningly upon the dead body of his first-born.
+
+
+LXVII.
+
+In the autumn of 1845, three years after the incidents related in our
+last chapter, Mr. Philip Elderkin, being at that time president of a
+railroad company, which was establishing an important connection of
+travel that was to pass within a few miles of the quiet town of
+Ashfield, was a passenger on the steamer Caledonia, for Europe. He
+sailed, partly in the interest of the company,--to place certain
+bonds,--and partly in his own interest, as an intelligent man, eager to
+add to his knowledge of the world.
+
+At Paris, where he passed some time, it chanced that he was one evening
+invited to the house of a resident American, where, he was gayly
+assured, he would meet with a very attractive American heiress, the only
+daughter of a merchant of large fortune.
+
+Philip Elderkin--brave, straightforward fellow that he was--had never
+forgotten his early sentiment. He had cared for those French graves in
+Ashfield with an almost religious attention. In all the churchyard there
+was not such scrupulously shorn turf, or such orderly array of bloom. He
+counted--in a fever of doubt--upon a visit to Marseilles before his sail
+for home.
+
+But at the _soirée_ we have mentioned he was amazed and delighted to
+meet, in the person of the heiress, Adèle Maverick,--not changed
+essentially since the time he had known her. That life at
+Marseilles--even in the well-appointed home of her father--has none of
+that domesticity which she had learned to love; and this first winter in
+Paris for her does not supply the lack. That she has a great company of
+admirers it is easy to understand; but yet she gives a most cordial
+greeting to Phil Elderkin,--a greeting that by its manner makes the
+pretenders doubtful. Philip finds it possible to reconcile the demands
+of his business with a week's visit to Marseilles. To the general
+traveller it is not a charming region. The dust abounds; the winds are
+terrible; the sun is scalding. But Mr. Philip Elderkin found it
+delightful. And, indeed, the country-house of Mr. Maverick had
+attractions of its own; attractions so great that his week runs over
+into two,--into three. There are excursions to the Pont du Gard, to the
+Arène of Arles. And, before he leaves, he has an engagement there (which
+he has enforced by very peremptory proposals) for the next spring.
+
+On his return to Ashfield, he reports a very successful trip. To his
+sister Rose (now Mrs. Catesby, with a blooming little infant, called
+Grace Catesby) he is specially communicative. And she thinks it was a
+glorious trip, and longs for the time when he will make the next. He,
+furthermore, to the astonishment of Dame Tourtelot (whose husband sleeps
+now under the sod), has commenced the establishment of a fine home, upon
+a charming site, overlooking all Ashfield. The Squire, still stalwart,
+cannot resist giving a hint of what is expected to the old Doctor, who
+still wearily goes his rounds, and prays for the welfare of his flock.
+
+He is delighted at the thought of meeting again with Adèle, though he
+thinks with a sigh of his lost boy. Yet he says in his old manner, "'T
+is the hand of Providence; she first bloomed into grace under the roof
+of our church; she comes back to adorn it with her faith and her works."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At a date three years later we take one more glimpse at that quiet
+village of Ashfield, where we began our story. The near railway has
+brought it into more intimate connection with the shore towns and the
+great cities. But there is no noisy clatter of the cars to break the
+quietude. On still days, indeed, the shriek of the steam-whistle or the
+roar of a distant train is heard bursting over the hills, and dying in
+strange echoes up and down the valley. The stage-driver's horn is heard
+no longer; no longer the coach whirls into the village and delivers its
+leathern pouch of letters. The Tew partners we once met are now partners
+in the grave. Deacon Tourtelot (as we have already hinted) has gone to
+his long home; and the dame has planted over him the slab of "Varmont"
+marble, which she has bought at a bargain from his "nevvy."
+
+The Boody tavern-keeper has long since disappeared; no teams wheel up
+with the old dash at the doors of the Eagle Tavern. The creaking
+sign-board even is gone from the overhanging sycamore.
+
+Miss Almira is still among the living. She sings treble, however, no
+longer; she wears spectacles; she writes no more over mystical asterisks
+for the Hartford Courant. Age has brought to her at least this much of
+wisdom.
+
+The mill groans, as of old, in the valley. A new race of boys pelt the
+hanging nests of the orioles; a new race of school-girls hang swinging
+on the village gates at the noonings.
+
+As for Miss Johns, she lives still,--scarce older to appearance than
+twenty years before,--prim, wiry, active,--proof against all ailments,
+it would seem. It is hard to conceive of her as yielding to the great
+conqueror. If the tongue and an inflexibility of temper were the
+weapons, she would whip Death from her chamber at the last. It seems
+like amiability almost to hear such a one as she talk of her
+approaching, inevitable dissolution,--so kindly in her to yield that
+point!
+
+And she does; she declares it over and over, there are far feebler ones
+who do not declare it half so often. If she is to be conquered and the
+Johns banner go down, she will accept the defeat so courageously and so
+long in advance that the defeat shall become a victorious confirmation
+of the Johns prophecy.
+
+She is still earnest in all her duties; she gives cast-away clothing to
+the poor, and good advice with it. She is rigorous in the observance of
+every propriety; no storm keeps her from church. If the children of a
+new generation climb unduly upon the pew-backs, or shake their curly
+heads too wantonly, she lifts a prim forefinger at them, which has lost
+none of its authoritative meaning. She is the impersonation of all good
+severities. A strange character! Let us hope that, as it sloughs off its
+earthly cerements, it may in the Divine presence scintillate charities
+and draw toward it the love of others. A good, kind, bad
+gentlewoman,--unwearied in performance of duties. We wonder as we think
+of her! So steadfast, we cannot sneer at her,--so true to her line of
+faith, we cannot condemn her,--so utterly forbidding, we cannot love
+her! May God give rest to her good, stubborn soul!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Upon Sundays of August and September there may be occasionally seen in
+the pew of Elderkin Junior a gray-haired old gentleman, dressed with
+scrupulous care, and still carrying an erect figure, though somewhat
+gouty in his step. This should be Mr. Maverick, a retired merchant, who
+is on a visit to his daughter. He makes wonderful gifts to a certain
+little boy who bears a Puritan name, and gives occasional ponderous sums
+to the parish. In winter, his head-quarters are at the Union Club.
+
+And Doctor Johns? Yes, he is living still,--making his way wearily each
+morning along the street with his cane. Going oftenest, perhaps, to the
+home of Adèle, who is now a matron,--a tender, and most womanly and
+joyful matron,--and with her little boy--Reuben Elderkin by name--he
+wanders often to the graves where sleep his best beloved,--Rachel, so
+early lost,--the son, in respect to whom he feels at last a "reasonable
+assurance" that the youth has entered upon a glorious inheritance in
+those courts where one day he will join him, and the sainted Rachel too,
+and clasp again in his arms (if it be God's will) the babe that was his
+but for an hour on earth.
+
+
+
+
+TIED TO A ROPE.
+
+
+You don't know what a Hircus Oepagrus is, Tommy? Well, it is a big
+name for him, isn't it? And if you should ask that somewhat slatternly
+female, who appears to employ tubs for the advantage of others rather
+than herself, what the animal is, she would tell you it is a goat. See
+what a hardy, sturdy little creature he is; and how he lifts up his
+startled head, as the cars come thundering along, and bounds away as if
+he were on the rugged hills that his ancestors climbed, ages ago, in
+wild freedom. O that cruel rope! how it stops him in his career with a
+sudden jerk that pulls him to the ground! See where it has worn away the
+hair round his neck, in his constant struggles to escape. See how he has
+browsed the scanty grass of that dry pasture, in the little circle to
+which he is confined, and is now trying to reach an uncropped tuft, just
+beyond his tether. And the sun is beating down upon him, and there is
+not the shade of a leaf for him to creep into, this July day. Poor
+little fellow!
+
+Not waste my sympathy on a common goat? My dear Madam, I can assure you
+that ropes are not knotted around the neck of Hirci Oepagri alone. And
+when I was bemoaning the captivity of yonder little browser we have left
+behind, I was bewailing the fortune of another great order of the
+Mammalian class,--an order that Mr. Huxley and Mr. Darwin and other
+great thinkers of the day are proving to be close connections of their
+humbler brethren that bleat and bark and bray. The bimanal species of
+this order are similarly appendaged, though they are not apt to be
+staked beside railways or confined to a rood of ground.
+
+Do you see Vanitas at the other end of the car? Does he look as though
+he carried about with him a "lengthening chain"? No one would certainly
+suppose it. Yet he is bound as securely as the poor little goat. We may
+go to the fresh air of his country-seat this July day, or to the
+sea-breezes of his Newport cottage next month, or he may sit here, "the
+incarnation of fat dividends," while you and I envy him his wealth and
+comforts; but he can never break his bonds. They are riveted to the
+counters of the money-changers, knotted around the tall masts of his
+goodly ships, bolted to the ore of his distant mines. He bears them to
+his luxurious home, and his fond wife, his caressing children, his
+troops of friends, can never strike them off. Ever and anon, as the car
+of fortune sweeps by to start him from his comfortable ease, they gall
+him with their remorseless restraint. You may cut the poor goat's rope
+and set him free, to roam where he will; but Vanitas has forged his own
+fetters, and there comes to him no blessed day of emancipation.
+
+My dear Madam, the bright blue ether around us is traversed by a
+wonderful network of these invisible bonds that hold poor human beings
+to their fate. Over the green hills and over the blue waters, far, far
+away they reach,--a warp and woof of multiform, expansive strands, over
+which the sense of bondage moves with all the wondrous celerity of that
+strange force which, on the instant, speaks the thought of the
+Antipodes. You don't know that you carry about any such? Ah! it is well
+that they weigh so lightly. Utter your grateful thanks, to-night, when
+you seek your pillow, that the chains you wear are not galling ones. But
+you are most irrevocably bound. Frank holds you fast. One of these days,
+when you are most peaceful and content in your bondage, scarcely
+recognized, there may come a stately tread, a fiery eye, a glowing
+heart, to startle you from your quiet ease; and when you bound,
+trembling and breathless in their mighty sway, you may feel the
+chain--before so light--wearing its way deep into your throbbing heart.
+May you never wake on the morn of that day, Madam! You don't carry any
+such? Round a little white tablet, half hidden in the sighing grass, is
+linked a chain which holds you, at this moment, by your inmost soul. You
+are not listening to me now; for I have but touched it, and your breast
+is swelling 'neath its pressure, and the tears start to your eyes at its
+momentary tightness. You don't carry any such? We all carry them; and
+were human ears sensitive to other than the grosser sounds of nature,
+they would hear a strange music sweeping from these mystic chords, as
+they tremble at the touch of time and fate.
+
+Master Tommy seems to be tolerably free from any sort of restraint, I
+acknowledge. In fact, it is he who keeps myself and Mrs. A. in the most
+abject servitude. He holds our nasal appendages close to the grindstone
+of his imperious will. And yet--please take him into the next car,
+Madam, while I speak of him. You cannot? What is this? Let me see, I
+pray you. As I live, it is his mother's apron-string. Ah! I fear, Madam,
+that all your efforts cannot break that tie. In the years to come, it
+will doubtless be frayed and worn; and, some day or other, he will bound
+loose from his childhood's captivity; but long ere that he will have
+other bonds thrown around him, some of which he can never break. He will
+weave with his own hands the silken cord of love, coil it about him,
+knot it with Gordian intricacy, net it with Vulcan strength, and then,
+with blind simplicity, place it in Beauty's hand to lead him captive to
+her capricious will. My dear Madam, did not Tommy's father do the same
+foolish thing? And is he not grateful to the lovely Mrs. Asmodeus for
+the gentleness with which she holds him in her power? Some of our bonds
+are light to bear. We glory in them, and hold up our gyves to show them
+to the world. Tommy may be a little shamefaced when his playmates jeer
+at the maternal tie; but he will walk forth, glowing with pride and joy,
+to parade his self-woven fetters ostentatiously in the sight of men.
+When you had done some such foolish thing yourself, did not your young
+mates gather round to view, with wondering and eager eyes, the result of
+your own handiwork at the cordage of love? Were there not many
+loquacious conclaves held to sit in secret judgment thereon? Were there
+not many soft cheeks flushing, and bright eyes sparkling, and fresh
+hearts beating, as you brought forth, with a pride you did not pretend
+to hide, the rose-colored fabric you had woven? And did they not all
+envy you, and wonder when their distaffs were to whirl to the tread of
+their own ready feet?
+
+But we are not always eager or proud to exhibit our bonds. Indeed, we
+sedulously conceal them from every eye; we cover up the marks upon our
+scarred hearts with such jealous care, that none, not even our bosom
+friends, can ever see them. They hold us where the sweet herbage of life
+has become dry and sere, where no shelter offers us a grateful retreat.
+Vanitas can bear away with him his "lengthening chain" to his leafy
+groves; but Scripsit is confined to the torrid regions of his scanty
+garret. In vain he gazes afar, beyond the smoky haze of his stony
+prison, upon the green slopes and shady hills. In vain he toils and
+strains to burst the links that bind him. His soul is yearning for the
+cooling freshness, the sweet fragrance, the beauty, the glory, of the
+outer world. It is just beyond his reach; and, wearied with futile
+exertions, he sinks, fainting and despairing, in his efforts to rend the
+chain of penury. And there are many other bonds which hold us to areas
+of life from which we have gathered all the fresh bloom and the rich
+fruit. We may tread their barren soil with jewelled sandals, wrap around
+us ermined robes in winter's cold, and raise our silken tents in
+summer's glare, while our souls are hungering and thirsting for the
+ambrosia and the nectar beyond our tethered reach. We are held fast by
+honor, virtue, fidelity, pity,--ties which we dare not break if we
+could. We must not even bear their golden links to their extremest
+length; we must not show that they are chains which bind us; we must not
+show that we are hungering and thirsting in the confines to which they
+restrain us. We must seem to be feasting as from the flesh-pots of
+Egypt,--fattening on the husks which we have emptied,--while our souls
+are starving and fainting and dying within us. 'T is a sad music that
+swells from these chords. How fortunate that our ears are not attuned to
+their notes. And we are not always solitary in our bondage; nor do we
+tread round the cropped circuit, held to senseless pillars. We are
+chained to each other; and unhappy are they who, straining at the bond,
+seek food for their hearts in opposite directions. We are chained to
+each other; and light or heavy are the bonds, as Fortune shall couple
+us. Now you and Frank, I know, are leashed with down; and when Mrs.
+Asmodeus went to the blacksmith, the Vulcan of our days, to order my
+fetters, she bespoke gossamers, to which a spider's web were cable. But
+we are among the favored of Fortune's children. There are many poor
+unfortunates whose daily round is but the measured clank of hateful
+chains; who eat, drink, sleep, live together, in a bondage worse than
+that of Chillon,--round whom the bright sun shines, the sweet flowers
+bloom, the soft breezes play,--and yet who stifle in the gloom of a
+domestic dungeon.
+
+And there are others fettered as firmly,--but how differently! The
+clasping links are soft, caressing arms; the tones their sounding chains
+give out are cheerful voices, joyous accents, words of love, that echo
+far beyond the little circle that they keep, and spread their harmony
+through many hearts. That little circle is a happy home; love spun the
+bonds that hold them close therein, and many are the strands that bind
+them there. They come from beauteous eyes that beam with light; from
+lisping tongues more sweet than seraph choirs; from swelling hearts that
+beat in every pulse with fond affection, which is richer far than all
+the nectar of the ancient gods. Bind me with these, O Fortune! and I hug
+my chains o'erjoyed. Be these the cords which hold me to the rock around
+which break the surging waves of time, and let the beak of Fate tear as
+it will, I hold the bondage sweet and laugh at liberty.
+
+My dear Madam, there are chains which hold us as the cable holds the
+ship; and, in their sure restraint, we safely ride through all the
+howling blasts of adverse fate. The globe we tread whirls on through
+endless space, kept ever in the circuit that it makes by that
+restraining force which holds it to the pillar of the sun. Loose but the
+bond an instant, and it flies in wild, tangential flight, to shatter
+other worlds. The very bondage that we curse, and seek, in fretful mood,
+to break and burst, may keep us to the orbit that is traced, by
+overruling wisdom, for our good. We gravitate towards duty, though we
+sweep with errant course along the outer marge of the bare area of its
+tightened cord. Let but the wise restraint be rudely broke, and through
+life's peopled space we heedless rush, trampling o'er hearts, and
+whirling to our fate, leaving destruction on our reckless way.
+
+Did you ever chance to see, Madam, a picture of those venturous hunters,
+who are lowered by a rope to the nests of sea-birds, built on some
+inaccessible cliff? Hanging between heaven and earth they sway;--above,
+the craggy rock, o'er which the single cord is strained that holds them
+fast; below, a yawning chasm, whose jagged depth would be a fearful
+grave to him who should fall. You and I would never dream of
+bird-nesting under such circumstances. I can see you shudder, even now,
+at the bare idea. Yet do we not sometimes hang ourselves over cliffs
+from which a fall were worse than death? Do we not trust ourselves, in
+venturous mood, to the frail tenure of a single strand which sways
+'twixt heaven and earth? Not after birds' eggs, I grant you. We are not
+all of us so fond of omelettes. But over the wild crags of human passion
+many drop, pursuing game that shuns the beaten way, and sway above the
+depths of dark despair. Intent upon their prey, they further go, secure
+in the firm hold they think they have, nor heed the fraying line that,
+grating on the edge of the bare precipice, at last is worn and weak;
+while, one by one, the little threads give way, and they who watch above
+in terror call to warn them of the danger. But in vain! no friendly
+voice can stay their flushed success; till, at its height, the cord is
+suddenly snapped, and crushed upon the rocks beneath they lie. You and I
+will never go bird-nesting after this fashion, my dear Madam. Let us
+hover then around the crags of life, and watch the twisting strands that
+others, more adventurous than we, have risked themselves upon. Be ours
+the part to note the breaking threads, and, with our words of kindly
+warning, seek to save our fellows from a fall so dread.
+
+And, if the ties of earth keep us from falling, so also do they keep us
+from rising above the level of grosser things. They hold us down to the
+dull, tedious monotony of worldly cares, aims, purposes. Like birds
+withheld from flight into the pure regions of the upper air by cruel,
+frightening cords, we fluttering go, stifled amid the vapors men have
+spread, and panting for the freedom that we seek.
+
+Madam, our bright-eyed little goat has, by this time, settled himself
+calmly on the grass; and I see, near at hand, the shady groves where
+King Tommy is wont to lead Mrs. A. and myself in his summer wanderings.
+Let me hope that all our bonds may be those which hold us fast to peace,
+content, and virtue; and that, when the silver cord which holds us here
+to earth shall be loosed, we then on sweeping pinions may arise, pure
+and untrammelled, into cloudless skies.
+
+
+
+
+GIOTTO'S TOWER.
+
+
+    How many lives, made beautiful and sweet
+      By self-devotion and by self-restraint,--
+      Whose pleasure is to run without complaint
+      On unknown errands of the Paraclete,--
+    Wanting the reverence of unshodden feet,
+      Fail of the nimbus which the artists paint
+      Around the shining forehead of the saint,
+      And are in their completeness incomplete.
+    In the old Tuscan town stands Giotto's tower,
+      The lily of Florence blossoming in stone,--
+      A vision, a delight, and a desire,--
+    The builder's perfect and centennial flower,
+      That in the night of ages bloomed alone,
+      But wanting still the glory of the spire.
+
+
+
+
+PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.
+
+
+VI.
+
+Brook Farm, _Oct. 9, 1841._--A walk this afternoon to Cow Island. The
+clouds had broken away towards noon, and let forth a few sunbeams, and
+more and more blue sky ventured to appear, till at last it was really
+warm and sunny,--indeed, rather too warm in the sheltered hollows,
+though it is delightful to be too warm now, after so much stormy
+chillness. O the beauty of grassy slopes, and the hollow ways of paths
+winding between hills, and the intervals between the road and wood-lots,
+where summer lingers and sits down, strewing dandelions of gold, and
+blue asters, as her parting gifts and memorials! I went to a grape-vine,
+which I have already visited several times, and found some clusters of
+grapes still remaining, and now perfectly ripe. Coming within view of
+the river, I saw several wild ducks under the shadow of the opposite
+shore, which was high, and covered with a grove of pines. I should not
+have discovered the ducks had they not risen and skimmed the surface of
+the glassy stream, breaking its dark water with a bright streak, and,
+sweeping round, gradually rose high enough to fly away. I likewise
+started a partridge just within the verge of the woods, and in another
+place a large squirrel ran across the wood-path from one shelter of
+trees to the other. Small birds, in flocks, were flitting about the
+fields, seeking and finding I know not what sort of food. There were
+little fish, also, darting in shoals through the pools and depths of the
+brooks, which are now replenished to their brims, and rush towards the
+river with a swift, amber-colored current.
+
+Cow Island is not an island,--at least, at this season,--though, I
+believe, in the time of freshets, the marshy Charles floods the meadows
+all round about it, and extends across its communication with the
+mainland. The path to it is a very secluded one, threading a wood of
+pines, and just wide enough to admit the loads of meadow hay which are
+drawn from the splashy shore of the river. The island has a growth of
+stately pines, with tall and ponderous stems, standing at distance
+enough to admit the eye to travel far among them; and, as there is no
+underbrush, the effect is somewhat like looking among the pillars of a
+church.
+
+I returned home by the high-road. On my right, separated from the road
+by a level field, perhaps fifty yards across, was a range of young
+forest-trees, dressed in their garb of autumnal glory. The sun shone
+directly upon them; and sunlight is like the breath of life to the pomp
+of autumn. In its absence, one doubts whether there be any truth in what
+poets have told about the splendor of an American autumn; but when this
+charm is added, one feels that the effect is beyond description. As I
+beheld it to-day, there was nothing dazzling; it was gentle and mild,
+though brilliant and diversified, and had a most quiet and pensive
+influence. And yet there were some trees that seemed really made of
+sunshine, and others were of a sunny red, and the whole picture was
+painted with but little relief of darksome hues,--only a few evergreens.
+But there was nothing inharmonious; and, on closer examination, it
+appeared that all the tints had a relationship among themselves. And
+this, I suppose, is the reason that, while Nature seems to scatter them
+so carelessly, they still never shock the beholder by their contrasts,
+nor disturb, but only soothe. The brilliant scarlet and the brilliant
+yellow are different hues of the maple-leaves, and the first changes
+into the last. I saw one maple-tree, its centre yellow as gold, set in a
+framework of red. The native poplars have different shades of green,
+verging towards yellow, and are very cheerful in the sunshine. Most of
+the oak-leaves have still the deep verdure of summer; but where a change
+has taken place, it is into a russet-red, warm, but sober. These colors,
+infinitely varied by the progress which different trees have made in
+their decay, constitute almost the whole glory of autumnal woods; but it
+is impossible to conceive how much is done with such scanty materials.
+In my whole walk I saw only one man, and he was at a distance, in the
+obscurity of the trees. He had a horse and a wagon, and was getting a
+load of dry brush-wood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Sunday, October 10._--I visited my grape-vine this afternoon, and ate
+the last of its clusters. This vine climbs around a young maple-tree,
+which has now assumed the yellow leaf. The leaves of the vine are more
+decayed than those of the maple. Thence to Cow Island, a solemn and
+thoughtful walk. Returned by another path, of the width of a wagon,
+passing through a grove of hard wood, the lightsome hues of which make
+the walk more cheerful than among the pines. The roots of oaks emerged
+from the soil, and contorted themselves across the path. The sunlight,
+also, broke across in spots, and otherwheres the shadow was deep; but
+still there was intermingling enough of bright hues to keep off the
+gloom from the whole path.
+
+Brooks and pools have a peculiar aspect at this season. One knows that
+the water must be cold, and one shivers a little at the sight of it; and
+yet the grass about the pool may be of the deepest green, and the sun
+may be shining into it. The withered leaves which overhanging trees shed
+upon its surface contribute much to the effect.
+
+Insects have mostly vanished in the fields and woods. I hear locusts
+yet, singing in the sunny hours, and crickets have not yet finished
+their song. Once in a while I see a caterpillar,--this afternoon, for
+instance, a red, hairy one, with black head and tail. They do not appear
+to be active, and it makes one rather melancholy to look at them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Tuesday, October 12._--The cawing of the crow resounds among the woods.
+A sentinel is aware of your approach a great way off, and gives the
+alarm to his comrades loudly and eagerly,--Caw, caw, caw! Immediately
+the whole conclave replies, and you behold them rising above the trees,
+flapping darkly, and winging their way to deeper solitudes. Sometimes,
+however, they remain till you come near enough to discern their sable
+gravity of aspect, each occupying a separate bough, or perhaps the
+blasted tip-top of a pine. As you approach, one after another, with loud
+cawing, flaps his wings and throws himself upon the air.
+
+There is hardly a more striking feature in the landscape now-a-days than
+the red patches of blueberry and whortleberry bushes, as seen on a
+sloping hillside, like islands among the grass, with trees growing in
+them; or crowning the summit of a bare, brown hill with their somewhat
+russet liveliness; or circling round the base of an earth-embedded rock.
+At a distance, this hue, clothing spots and patches of the earth, looks
+more like a picture than anything else,--yet such a picture as I never
+saw painted.
+
+The oaks are now beginning to look sere, and their leaves have withered
+borders. It is pleasant to notice the wide circle of greener grass
+beneath the circumference of an overshadowing oak. Passing an orchard,
+one hears an uneasy rustling in the trees, and not as if they were
+struggling with the wind. Scattered about are barrels to contain the
+gathered apples; and perhaps a great heap of golden or scarlet apples is
+collected in one place.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Wednesday, October 13._--A good view, from an upland swell of our
+pasture, across the valley of the river Charles. There is the meadow, as
+level as a floor, and carpeted with green, perhaps two miles from the
+rising ground on this side of the river to that on the opposite side.
+The stream winds through the midst of the flat space, without any banks
+at all; for it fills its bed almost to the brim, and bathes the meadow
+grass on either side. A tuft of shrubbery, at broken intervals, is
+scattered along its border; and thus it meanders sluggishly along,
+without other life than what it gains from gleaming in the sun. Now,
+into the broad, smooth meadow, as into a lake, capes and headlands put
+themselves forth, and shores of firm woodland border it, covered with
+variegated foliage, making the contrast so much the stronger of their
+height and rough, outline with the even spread of the plain. And beyond,
+and far away, rises a long, gradual swell of country, covered with an
+apparently dense growth of foliage for miles, till the horizon
+terminates it; and here and there is a house, or perhaps two, among the
+contiguity of trees. Everywhere the trees wear their autumnal dress, so
+that the whole landscape is red, russet, orange, and yellow, blending in
+the distance into a rich tint of brown-orange, or nearly that,--except
+the green expanse so definitely hemmed in by the higher ground.
+
+I took a long walk this morning, going first nearly to Newton, thence
+nearly to Brighton, thence to Jamaica Plain, and thence home. It was a
+fine morning, with a northwest wind; cool when facing the wind, but warm
+and most genially pleasant in sheltered spots; and warm enough
+everywhere while I was in motion. I traversed most of the by-ways which
+offered themselves to me; and, passing through one in which there was a
+double line of grass between the wheel-tracks and that of the horses'
+feet, I came to where had once stood a farm-house, which appeared to
+have been recently torn down. Most of the old timber and boards had been
+carted away; a pile of it, however, remained. The cellar of the house
+was uncovered, and beside it stood the base and middle height of the
+chimney. The oven, in which household bread had been baked for daily
+food, and puddings and cake and jolly pumpkin-pies for festivals, opened
+its mouth, being deprived of its iron door. The fireplace was close at
+hand. All round the site of the house was a pleasant, sunny, green
+space, with old fruit-trees in pretty fair condition, though aged. There
+was a barn, also aged, but in decent repair; and a ruinous shed, on the
+corner of which was nailed a boy's windmill, where it had probably been
+turning and clattering for years together, till now it was black with
+time and weather-stain. It was broken, but still it went round whenever
+the wind stirred. The spot was entirely secluded, there being no other
+house within a mile or two.
+
+No language can give an idea of the beauty and glory of the trees, just
+at this moment. It would be easy, by a process of word-daubing, to set
+down a confused group of gorgeous colors, like a bunch of tangled skeins
+of bright silk; but there is nothing of the reality in the glare which
+would thus be produced. And yet the splendor both of individual clusters
+and of whole scenes is unsurpassable. The oaks are now far advanced in
+their change of hue; and, in certain positions relatively to the sun,
+they light up and gleam with a most magnificent deep gold, varying
+according as portions of the foliage are in shadow or sunlight. On the
+sides which receive the direct rays, the effect is altogether rich; and
+in other points of view it is equally beautiful, if less brilliant. This
+color of the oak is more superb than the lighter yellow of the maples
+and walnuts. The whole landscape is now covered with this indescribable
+pomp; it is discerned on the uplands afar off; and Blue Hill in Milton,
+at the distance of several miles, actually glistens with rich, dark
+light,--no, not glistens, nor gleams,--but perhaps to say glows
+subduedly will be a truer expression for it.
+
+Met few people this morning;--a grown girl, in company with a little
+boy, gathering barberries in a secluded lane; a portly, autumnal
+gentleman, wrapped in a great-coat, who asked the way to Mr. Joseph
+Goddard's; and a fish-cart from the city, the driver of which sounded
+his horn along the lonesome way.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Monday, October 18._--There has been a succession of days which were
+cold and bright in the forenoon, and gray, sullen, and chill towards
+night. The woods have now taken a soberer tint than they wore at my last
+date. Many of the shrubs which looked brightest a little while ago are
+now wholly bare of leaves. The oaks have generally a russet-brown shade,
+although some of them are still green, as are likewise other scattered
+trees in the forests. The bright yellow and the rich scarlet are no more
+to be seen. Scarcely any of them will now bear a close examination; for
+this shows them to be rugged, wilted, and of faded, frost-bitten hue;
+but at a distance, and in the mass, and enlivened by the sun, they have
+still somewhat of the varied splendor which distinguished them a week
+ago. It is wonderful what a difference the sunshine makes; it is like
+varnish, bringing out the hidden veins in a piece of rich wood. In the
+cold, gray atmosphere, such as that of most of our afternoons now, the
+landscape lies dark,--brown, and in a much deeper shadow than if it were
+clothed in green. But, perchance, a gleam of sun falls on a certain spot
+of distant shrubbery or woodland, and we see it brighten with many hues,
+standing forth prominently from the dimness around it. The sunlight
+gradually spreads, and the whole sombre scene is changed to a motley
+picture,--the sun bringing out many shades of color, and converting its
+gloom to an almost laughing cheerfulness. At such times I almost doubt
+whether the foliage has lost any of its brilliancy. But the clouds
+intercept the sun again, and lo! old Autumn appears, clad in his cloak
+of russet-brown.
+
+Beautiful now, while the general landscape lies in shadow, looks the
+summit of a distant hill (say a mile off), with the sunshine brightening
+the trees that cover it. It is noticeable that the outlines of hills,
+and the whole bulk of them at the distance of several miles, become
+stronger, denser, and more substantial in this autumn atmosphere and in
+these autumnal tints than in summer. Then they looked blue, misty, and
+dim. Now they show their great humpbacks more plainly, as if they had
+drawn nearer to us.
+
+A waste of shrubbery and small trees, such as overruns the borders of
+the meadows for miles together, looks much more rugged, wild, and savage
+in its present brown color than when clad in green.
+
+I passed through a very pleasant wood-path yesterday, quite shut in and
+sheltered by trees that had not thrown off their yellow robes. The sun
+shone strongly in among them, and quite kindled them; so that the path
+was brighter for their shade than if it had been quite exposed to the
+sun.
+
+In the village graveyard, which lies contiguous to the street, I saw a
+man digging a grave, and one inhabitant after another turned aside from
+his way to look into the grave and talk with the digger. I heard him
+laugh, with the hereditary mirthfulness of men of that occupation.
+
+In the hollow of the woods, yesterday afternoon, I lay a long while
+watching a squirrel, who was capering about among the trees over my head
+(oaks and white-pines, so close together that their branches
+intermingled). The squirrel seemed not to approve of my presence, for he
+frequently uttered a sharp, quick, angry noise, like that of a
+scissors-grinder's wheel. Sometimes I could see him sitting on an
+impending bough, with his tail over his back, looking down pryingly upon
+me. It seems to be a natural posture with him, to sit on his hind legs,
+holding up his forepaws. Anon, with a peculiarly quick start, he would
+scramble along the branch, and be lost to sight in another part of the
+tree, whence his shrill chatter would again be heard. Then I would see
+him rapidly descending the trunk, and running along the ground; and a
+moment afterwards, casting my eye upward, I beheld him flitting like a
+bird among the high limbs at the summit, directly above me. Afterwards,
+he apparently became accustomed to my society, and set about some
+business of his. He came down to the ground, took up a piece of a
+decayed bough, (a heavy burden for such a small personage,) and, with
+this in his mouth, again climbed up, and passed from the branches of one
+tree to those of another, and thus onward and onward till he went out of
+sight. Shortly afterwards he returned for another burden, and this he
+repeated several times. I suppose he was building a nest,--at least, I
+know not what else could have been his object. Never was there such an
+active, cheerful, choleric, continually-in-motion fellow as this little
+red squirrel, talking to himself, chattering at me, and as sociable in
+his own person as if he had half a dozen companions, instead of being
+alone in the lonesome wood. Indeed, he flitted about so quickly, and
+showed himself in different places so suddenly, that I was in some doubt
+whether there were not two or three of them.
+
+I must mention again the very beautiful effect produced by the masses of
+berry-bushes, lying like scarlet islands in the midst of withered
+pasture-ground, or crowning the tops of barren hills. Their hue, at a
+distance, is lustrous scarlet, although it does not look nearly as
+bright and gorgeous when examined close at hand. But at a proper
+distance it is a beautiful fringe on Autumn's petticoat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Friday, October 22._--A continued succession of unpleasant, Novembery
+days, and Autumn has made rapid progress in the work of decay. It is now
+somewhat of a rare good fortune to find a verdant, grassy spot, on some
+slope, or in a dell; and even such seldom-seen oases are bestrewn with
+dried brown leaves,--which, however, methinks, make the short, fresh
+grass look greener around them. Dry leaves are now plentiful everywhere,
+save where there are none but pine-trees. They rustle beneath the tread,
+and there is nothing more autumnal than that sound. Nevertheless, in a
+walk this afternoon I have seen two oaks which retained almost the
+greenness of summer. They grew close to the huge Pulpit Rock, so that
+portions of their trunks appeared to grasp the rough surface; and they
+were rooted beneath it, and, ascending high into the air, overshadowed
+the gray crag with verdure. Other oaks, here and there, have a few green
+leaves or boughs among their rustling and rugged shade.
+
+Yet, dreary as the woods are in a bleak, sullen day, there is a very
+peculiar sense of warmth and a sort of richness of effect in the slope
+of a bank and in sheltered spots, where bright sunshine falls, and the
+brown oaken foliage is gladdened by it. There is then a feeling of
+comfort, and consequently of heart-warmth, which cannot be experienced
+in summer.
+
+I walked this afternoon along a pleasant wood-path, gently winding, so
+that but little of it could be seen at a time, and going up and down
+small mounds, now plunging into a denser shadow and now emerging from
+it. Part of the way it was strewn with the dusky yellow leaves of
+white-pines,--the cast-off garments of last year; part of the way with
+green grass, close-cropped and very fresh for the season. Sometimes the
+trees met across it; sometimes it was bordered on one side by an old
+rail-fence of moss-grown cedar, with bushes sprouting beneath it, and
+thrusting their branches through it; sometimes by a stone wall of
+unknown antiquity, older than the wood it closed in. A stone wall, when
+shrubbery has grown around it, and thrust its roots beneath it, becomes
+a very pleasant and meditative object. It does not belong too evidently
+to man, having been built so long ago. It seems a part of nature.
+
+Yesterday I found two mushrooms in the woods, probably of the preceding
+night's growth. Also I saw a mosquito, frost-pinched, and so wretched
+that I felt avenged for all the injuries which his tribe inflicted upon
+me last summer, and so did not molest this lone survivor.
+
+Walnuts in their green rinds are falling from the trees, and so are
+chestnut-burrs.
+
+I found a maple-leaf to-day, yellow all over, except its extremest
+point, which was bright scarlet. It looked as if a drop of blood were
+hanging from it. The first change of the maple-leaf is to scarlet; the
+next, to yellow. Then it withers, wilts, and drops off, as most of them
+have already done.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_October 27._--Fringed gentians,--I found the last, probably, that will
+be seen this year, growing on the margin of the brook.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1842.--Some man of powerful character to command a person, morally
+subjected to him, to perform some act. The commanding person suddenly to
+die; and, for all the rest of his life, the subjected one continues to
+perform that act.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Solomon dies during the building of the temple, but his body remains
+leaning on a staff, and overlooking the workmen, as if it were alive."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A tri-weekly paper, to be called the Tertian Ague.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Subject for a picture,--Satan's reappearance in Pandemonium, shining out
+from a mist, with "shape star-bright."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Five points of Theology,--Five Points at New York.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It seems a greater pity that an accomplished worker with the hand should
+perish prematurely, than a person of great intellect; because
+intellectual arts may be cultivated in the next world, but not physical
+ones.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To trace out the influence of a frightful and disgraceful crime in
+debasing and destroying a character naturally high and noble, the guilty
+person being alone conscious of the crime.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A man, virtuous in his general conduct, but committing habitually some
+monstrous crime,--as murder,--and doing this without the sense of guilt,
+but with a peaceful conscience,--habit, probably, reconciling him to it;
+but something (for instance, discovery) occurs to make him sensible of
+his enormity. His horror then.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The strangeness, if they could be foreseen and forethought, of events
+which do not seem so strange after they have happened. As, for instance,
+to muse over a child's cradle, and foresee all the persons in different
+parts of the world with whom he would have relations.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A man to swallow a small snake,--and it to be a symbol of a cherished
+sin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Questions as to unsettled points of history, and mysteries of nature, to
+be asked of a mesmerized person.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gordier, a young man of the Island of Jersey, was paying his addresses
+to a young lady of Guernsey. He visited the latter island, intending to
+be married. He disappeared on his way from the beach to his mistress's
+residence, and was afterwards found dead in a cavity of the rocks. After
+a time, Galliard, a merchant of Guernsey, paid his addresses to the
+young lady; but she always felt a strong, unaccountable antipathy to
+him. He presented her with a beautiful trinket. The mother of Gordier,
+chancing to see this trinket, recognized it as having been bought by her
+dead son as a present for his mistress. She expired on learning this;
+and Galliard, being suspected of the murder, committed suicide.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The _curé_ of Montreux in Switzerland, ninety-six years old, still
+vigorous in mind and body, and able to preach. He had a twin-brother,
+also a preacher, and the exact likeness of himself. Sometimes strangers
+have beheld a white-haired, venerable clerical personage, nearly a
+century old; and, upon riding a few miles farther, have been astonished
+to meet again this white-haired, venerable, century-old personage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the body of Lord Mohun (killed in a duel) was carried home,
+bleeding, to his house, Lady Mohun was very angry because it was "flung
+upon the best bed."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A prophecy, somewhat in the style of Swift's about Partridge, but
+embracing various events and personages.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An incident that befell Dr. Harris, while a Junior at college. Being in
+great want of money to buy shirts or other necessaries, and not knowing
+how to obtain it, he set out on a walk from Cambridge to Boston. On the
+way, he cut a stick, and after walking a short distance perceived that
+something had become attached to the end of it. It proved to be a gold
+ring, with the motto, "God speed thee, friend."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Brobdignag lay on the northwest coast of the American continent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A gush of violets along a wood-path.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+People with false hair and other artifices may be supposed to deceive
+Death himself, so that he does not know when their hour is come.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bees are sometimes drowned (or suffocated) in the honey which they
+collect. So some writers are lost in their collected learning.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Advice of Lady Pepperell's father on her marriage,--never to work one
+moment after Saturday sunset,--never to lay down her knitting except in
+the middle of the needle,--always to rise with the sun,--to pass an hour
+daily with the housekeeper,--to visit every room daily from garret to
+cellar,--to attend herself to the brewing of beer and the baking of
+bread,--and to instruct every member of the family in their religious
+duties.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Service of plate, presented by the city of London to Sir William
+Pepperell, together with a table of solid silver. The table very narrow,
+but long; the articles of plate numerous, but of small dimensions,--the
+tureen not holding more than three pints. At the close of the
+Revolution, when the Pepperell and Sparhawk property was confiscated,
+this plate was sent to the grandson of Sir William, in London. It was so
+valuable, that Sheriff Moulton of old York, with six well-armed men,
+accompanied it to Boston. Pepperell's only daughter married Colonel
+Sparhawk, a fine gentleman of the day. Andrew Pepperell, the son, was
+rejected by a young lady (afterwards the mother of Mrs. General Knox),
+to whom he was on the point of marriage, as being addicted to low
+company and low pleasures. The lover, two days afterwards, in the
+streets of Portsmouth, was sun-struck, and fell down dead. Sir William
+had built an elegant house for his son and his intended wife; but after
+the death of the former he never entered it. He lost his cheerfulness
+and social qualities, and gave up intercourse with people, except on
+business. Very anxious to secure his property to his descendants by the
+provisions of his will, which was drawn up by Judge Sewall, then a young
+lawyer. Yet the Judge lived to see two of Sir William's grandchildren so
+reduced that they were to have been numbered among the town's poor, and
+were only rescued from this fate by private charity.
+
+The arms of the Pepperell family were displayed over the door of every
+room in Sir William's house, and his crest on every door. In Colonel
+Sparhawk's house there were forty portraits, most of them in full
+length. The house built for Sir William's son was occupied as barracks
+during the Revolution, and much injured. A few years after the peace,
+it was blown down by a violent tempest, and finally no vestige of it was
+left, but there remained only a summer-house and the family tomb.
+
+At Sir William's death, his mansion was hung with black, while the body
+lay in state for a week. All the Sparhawk portraits were covered with
+black crape, and the family pew was draped with black. Two oxen were
+roasted, and liquid hospitality dispensed in proportion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Old lady's dress seventy or eighty years ago. Brown brocade gown, with a
+nice lawn handkerchief and apron,--short sleeves, with a little ruffle,
+just below the elbow,--black mittens,--a lawn cap, with rich lace
+border,--a black velvet hood on the back of the head, tied with black
+ribbon under the chin. She sat in an old-fashioned easy-chair, in a
+small, low parlor,--the wainscot painted entirely black, and the walls
+hung with a dark velvet paper.
+
+A table, stationary ever since the house was built, extending the whole
+length of a room. One end was raised two steps higher than the rest. The
+Lady Ursula, an early Colonial heroine, was wont to dine at the upper
+end, while her servants sat below. This was in the kitchen. An old
+garden and summer-house, and roses, currant-bushes, and tulips, which
+Lady Ursula had brought from Grondale Abbey in Old England. Although a
+hundred and fifty years before, and though their roots were propagated
+all over the country, they were still flourishing in the original
+garden. This Lady Ursula was the daughter of Lord Thomas Cutts of
+Grondale Abbey in England. She had been in love with an officer named
+Fowler, who was supposed to have been slain in battle. After the death
+of her father and mother, Lady Ursula came to Kittery, bringing twenty
+men-servants and several women. After a time, a letter arrived from her
+lover, who was not killed, but merely a prisoner to the French. He
+announced his purpose to come to America, where he would arrive in
+October. A few days after the letter came, she went out in a low
+carriage to visit her work-people, and was blessing the food for their
+luncheon, when she fell dead, struck by an Indian tomahawk, as did all
+the rest save one. They were buried, where the massacre took place, and
+a stone was erected, which (possibly) still remains. The lady's family
+had a grant from Sir Ferdinando Gorges of the territory thereabout, and
+her brother had likewise come over and settled in the vicinity. I
+believe very little of this story. Long afterwards, at about the
+commencement of the Revolution, a descendant of Fowler came from
+England, and applied to the Judge of Probate to search the records for a
+will, supposed to have been made by Lady Ursula in favor of her lover as
+soon as she heard of his existence. In the mean time the estate had been
+sold to Colonel Whipple. No will could be found. (Lady Ursula was old
+Mrs. Cutts, widow of President Cutts.)
+
+The mode of living of Lady Ursula's brother in Kittery. A drawbridge to
+the house, which was raised every evening, and lowered in the morning,
+for the laborers and the family to pass out. They kept thirty cows, a
+hundred sheep, and several horses. The house spacious,--one room large
+enough to contain forty or fifty guests. Two silver branches for
+candles,--the walls ornamented with paintings and needlework. The floors
+were daily rubbed with wax, and shone like a mahogany-table. A domestic
+chaplain, who said prayers every morning and evening in a small
+apartment called the chapel. Also a steward and butler. The family
+attended the Episcopal Church at Christmas, Easter, and Good Friday, and
+gave a grand entertainment once a year.
+
+Madam Cutts, at the last of these entertainments, wore a black damask
+gown, and cuffs with double lace ruffles, velvet shoes, blue silk
+stockings, white and silver stomacher. The daughter and granddaughters
+in rich brocades and yellow satin. Old Major Cutts in brown velvet,
+laced with gold, and a large wig. The parson in his silk cassock, and
+his helpmate in brown damask. Old General Atkinson in scarlet velvet,
+and his wife and daughters in white damask. The Governor in black
+velvet, and his lady in crimson tabby trimmed with silver. The ladies
+wore bell-hoops, high-heeled shoes, paste buckles, silk stockings, and
+enormously high head-dresses, with lappets of Brussels lace hanging
+thence to the waist.
+
+Among the eatables, a silver tub of the capacity of four gallons,
+holding a pyramid of pancakes powdered with white sugar.
+
+The date assigned to all this about 1690.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What is the price of a day's labor in Lapland, where the sun never sets
+for six months?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Miss Asphyxia Davis!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A life, generally of a grave hue, may be said to be _embroidered_ with
+occasional sports and fantasies.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A father confessor,--his reflections on character, and the contrast of
+the inward man with the outward, as he looks around on his congregation,
+all whose secret sins are known to him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A person with an ice-cold hand,--his right hand, which people ever
+afterwards remember when once they have grasped it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A stove possessed by a Devil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_June 1, 1842._--One of my chief amusements is to see the boys sail
+their miniature vessels on the Frog Pond. There is a great variety of
+shipping owned among the young people, and they appear to have a
+considerable knowledge of the art of managing vessels. There is a
+full-rigged man-of-war, with, I believe, every spar, rope, and sail,
+that sometimes makes its appearance; and, when on a voyage across the
+pond, it so identically resembles a great ship, except in size, that it
+has the effect of a picture. All its motions,--its tossing up and down
+on the small waves, and its sinking and rising in a calm swell, its
+heeling to the breeze,--the whole effect, in short, is that of a real
+ship at sea; while, moreover, there is something that kindles the
+imagination more than the reality would do. If we see a real, great
+ship, the mind grasps and possesses, within its real clutch, all that
+there is of it; while here the mimic ship is the representation of an
+ideal one, and so gives us a more imaginative pleasure. There are many
+schooners that ply to and fro on the pond, and pilot-boats, all
+perfectly rigged. I saw a race, the other day, between the ship above
+mentioned and a pilot-boat, in which the latter came off conqueror. The
+boys appear to be well acquainted with all the ropes and sails, and can
+call them by their nautical names. One of the owners of the vessels
+remains on one side of the pond, and the other on the opposite side, and
+so they send the little bark to and fro, like merchants of different
+countries, consigning their vessels to one another.
+
+Generally, when any vessel is on the pond, there are full-grown
+spectators, who look on with as much interest as the boys themselves.
+Towards sunset, this is especially the case: for then are seen young
+girls and their lovers; mothers, with their little boys in hand;
+school-girls, beating hoops round about, and occasionally running to the
+side of the pond; rough tars, or perhaps masters or young mates of
+vessels, who make remarks about the miniature shipping, and occasionally
+give professional advice to the navigators; visitors from the country;
+gloved and caned young gentlemen;--in short, everybody stops to take a
+look. In the mean time, dogs are continually plunging into the pond, and
+swimming about, with noses pointed upward, and snatching at floating
+ships; then, emerging, they shake themselves, scattering a horizontal
+shower on the clean gowns of ladies and trousers of gentlemen; then
+scamper to and fro on the grass, with joyous barks.
+
+Some boys cast off lines of twine with pin-hooks, and perhaps pull out a
+horned-pout, that being, I think, the only kind of fish that inhabits
+the Frog Pond.
+
+The ship-of-war above mentioned is about three feet from stem to stern,
+or possibly a few inches more. This, if I mistake not, was the size of a
+ship of the line in the navy of Liliput.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Fancy pictures of familiar places which one has never been in, as the
+green-room of a theatre, &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The famous characters of history,--to imagine their spirits now extant
+on earth, in the guise of various public or private personages.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The case quoted in Combe's Physiology of a young man of great talents
+and profound knowledge of chemistry, who had in view some new discovery
+of importance. In order to put his mind into the highest possible
+activity, he shut himself up for several successive days, and used
+various methods of excitement. He had a singing-girl, he drank spirits,
+smelled penetrating odors, sprinkled Cologne-water round the room, &c.,
+&c. Eight days thus passed, when he was seized with a fit of frenzy
+which terminated in mania.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Flesh and Blood,--a firm of butchers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Miss Polly Syllable, a schoolmistress.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A spendthrift,--in one sense he has his money's worth by the purchase of
+large lots of repentance and other dolorous commodities.
+
+
+
+
+THE MOUNTAIN.
+
+
+    Two thousand feet in air it stands
+    Betwixt the bright and shaded lands,
+    Above the regions it divides
+    And borders with its furrowed sides.
+    The seaward valley laughs with light
+    Till the round sun o'erhangs this height;
+    But then the shadow of the crest
+    No more the plains that lengthen west
+    Enshrouds, yet slowly, surely creeps
+    Eastward, until the coolness steeps
+    A darkling league of tilth and wold,
+    And chills the flocks that seek their fold.
+
+    Not like those ancient summits lone,
+    Mont Blanc, on his eternal throne,--
+    The city-gemmed Peruvian peak,--
+    The sunset portals landsmen seek,
+    Whose train, to reach the Golden Land,
+    Crawls slow and pathless through the sand,--
+    Or that, whose ice-lit beacon guides
+    The mariner on tropic tides,
+    And flames across the Gulf afar,
+    A torch by day, by night a star,--
+    Not thus, to cleave the outer skies,
+    Does my serener mountain rise,
+    Nor aye forget its gentle birth
+    Upon the dewy, pastoral earth.
+
+    But ever, in the noonday light,
+    Are scenes whereof I love the sight,--
+    Broad pictures of the lower world
+    Beneath my gladdened eyes unfurled.
+    Irradiate distances reveal
+    Fair nature wed to human weal;
+    The rolling valley made a plain;
+    Its checkered squares of grass and grain;
+    The silvery rye, the golden wheat,
+    The flowery elders where they meet,--
+    Ay, even the springing corn I see,
+    And garden haunts of bird and bee;
+    And where, in daisied meadows, shines
+    The wandering river through its vines,
+    Move specks at random, which I know
+    Are herds a-grazing to and fro.
+
+    Yet still a goodly height it seems
+    From which the mountain pours his streams,
+    Or hinders, with caressing hands,
+    The sunlight seeking other lands.
+    Like some great giant, strong and proud,
+    He fronts the lowering thunder-cloud,
+    And wrests its treasures, to bestow
+    A guerdon on the realm below;
+    Or, by the deluge roused from sleep
+    Within his bristling forest-keep,
+    Shakes all his pines, and far and wide
+    Sends down a rich, imperious tide.
+    At night the whistling tempests meet
+    In tryst upon his topmost seat,
+    And all the phantoms of the sky
+    Frolic and gibber, storming by.
+    By day I see the ocean-mists
+    Float with the current where it lists,
+    And from my summit I can hail
+    Cloud-vessels passing on the gale,--
+    The stately argosies of air,--
+    And parley with the helmsmen there;
+    Can probe their dim, mysterious source,
+    Ask of their cargo and their course,--
+    _Whence come? where bound?_--and wait reply,
+    As, all sails spread, they hasten by.
+
+    If foiled in what I fain would know,
+    Again I turn my eyes below
+    And eastward, past the hither mead
+    Where all day long the cattle feed,
+    A crescent gleam my sight allures
+    And clings about the hazy moors,--
+    The great, encircling, radiant sea,
+    Alone in its immensity.
+
+    Even there, a queen upon its shore,
+    I know the city evermore
+    Her palaces and temples rears,
+    And wooes the nations to her piers;
+    Yet the proud city seems a mole
+    To this horizon-bounded whole;
+    And, from my station on the mount,
+    The whole is little worth account
+    Beneath the overhanging sky,
+    That seems so far and yet so nigh.
+    Here breathe I inspiration rare,
+    Unburdened by the grosser air
+    That hugs the lower land, and feel
+    Through all my finer senses steal
+    The life of what that life may be,
+    Freed from this dull earth's density,
+    When we, with many a soul-felt thrill,
+    Shall thrid the ether at our will,
+    Through widening corridors of morn
+    And starry archways swiftly borne.
+
+    Here, in the process of the night,
+    The stars themselves a purer light
+    Give out, than reaches those who gaze
+    Enshrouded with the valley's haze.
+    October, entering Heaven's fane,
+    Assumes her lucent, annual reign:
+    Then what a dark and dismal clod,
+    Forsaken by the Sons of God,
+    Seems this sad world, to those which march
+    Across the high, illumined arch,
+    And with their brightness draw me forth
+    To scan the splendors of the North!
+    I see the Dragon, as he toils
+    With Ursa in his shining coils,
+    And mark the Huntsman lift his shield,
+    Confronting on the ancient field
+    The Bull, while in a mystic row
+    The jewels of his girdle glow
+    Or, haply, I may ponder long
+    On that remoter, sparkling throng,
+    The orient sisterhood, around
+    Whose chief our Galaxy is wound;
+    Thus, half enwrapt in classic dreams,
+    And brooding over Learning's gleams,
+    I leave to gloom the under-land,
+    And from my watch-tower, close at hand,
+    Like him who led the favored race,
+    I look on glory face to face!
+
+    So, on the mountain-top, alone,
+    I dwell, as one who holds a throne;
+    Or prince, or peasant, him I count
+    My peer, who stands upon a mount,
+    Sees farther than the tribes below,
+    And knows the joys they cannot know;
+    And, though beyond the sound of speech
+    They reign, my soul goes out to reach,
+    Far on their noble heights elsewhere,
+    My brother-monarchs of the air.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.
+
+
+VI.
+
+THE CATHEDRAL.
+
+"I am going to build a cathedral one of these days," said I to my wife,
+as I sat looking at the slant line of light made by the afternoon sun on
+our picture of the Cathedral of Milan.
+
+"That picture is one of the most poetic things you have among your house
+ornaments," said Rudolph. "Its original is the world's chief beauty,--a
+tribute to religion such as Art never gave before and never can
+again,--as much before the Pantheon, as the Alps, with their virgin
+snows and glittering pinnacles, are above all temples made with hands.
+Say what you will, those Middle Ages that you call Dark had a glory of
+faith that never will be seen in our days of cotton-mills and Manchester
+prints. Where will you marshal such an army of saints as stands in
+yonder white-marble forest, visibly transfigured and glorified in that
+celestial Italian air? Saintship belonged to the mediæval Church; the
+heroism of religion has died with it."
+
+"That's just like one of your assertions, Rudolph," said I. "You might
+as well say that Nature has never made any flowers since Linnæus shut up
+his herbarium. We have no statues and pictures of modern saints, but
+saints themselves, thank God, have never been wanting. 'As it was in the
+beginning, is now, and ever shall be--'"
+
+"But what about your cathedral?" said my wife.
+
+"O yes!--my cathedral, yes. When my stocks in cloud-land rise, I'll
+build a cathedral larger than Milan's; and the men, but more
+particularly the _women_, thereon shall be those who have done even more
+than St. Paul tells of in the saints of old, who 'subdued kingdoms,
+wrought righteousness, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge
+of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight,
+turned to flight the armies of the aliens.' I am not now thinking of
+Florence Nightingale, nor of the host of women who have been walking
+worthily in her footsteps, but of nameless saints of more retired and
+private state,--domestic saints, who have tended children not their own
+through whooping-cough and measles, and borne the unruly whims of
+fretful invalids,--stocking-darning, shirt-making saints,--saints who
+wore no visible garment of hair-cloth, bound themselves with no belts of
+spikes and nails, yet in their inmost souls were marked and seared with
+the red cross of a life-long self-sacrifice,--saints for whom the
+mystical terms _self-annihilation_ and _self-crucifixion_ had a real and
+tangible meaning, all the stronger because their daily death was marked
+by no outward sign. No mystical rites consecrated them; no organ-music
+burst forth in solemn rapture to welcome them; no habit of their order
+proclaimed to themselves and the world that they were the elect of
+Christ, the brides of another life: but small eating cares, daily
+prosaic duties, the petty friction of all the littleness and all the
+inglorious annoyances of every day, were as dust that hid the beauty and
+grandeur of their calling even from themselves; they walked unknown even
+to their households, unknown even to their own souls; but when the Lord
+comes to build his New Jerusalem, we shall find many a white stone with
+a new name thereon, and the record of deeds and words which only He that
+seeth in secret knows. Many a humble soul will be amazed to find that
+the seed it sowed in such weakness, in the dust of daily life, has
+blossomed into immortal flowers under the eye of the Lord.
+
+"When I build my cathedral, _that_ woman," I said, pointing to a small
+painting by the fire, "shall be among the first of my saints. You see
+her there, in an every-day dress-cap with a mortal thread-lace border,
+and with a very ordinary worked collar, fastened by a visible and
+terrestrial breastpin. There is no nimbus around her head, no sign of
+the cross upon her breast; her hands are clasped on no crucifix or
+rosary. Her clear, keen, hazel eye looks as if it could sparkle with
+mirthfulness, as in fact it could; there are in it both the subtile
+flash of wit and the subdued light of humor; and though the whole face
+smiles, it has yet a certain decisive firmness that speaks the soul
+immutable in good. That woman shall be the first saint in my cathedral,
+and her name shall be recorded as Saint Esther. What makes saintliness
+in my view, as distinguished from ordinary goodness, is a certain
+quality of magnanimity and greatness of soul that brings life within the
+circle of the heroic. To be really great in little things, to be truly
+noble and heroic in the insipid details of every-day life, is a virtue
+so rare as to be worthy of canonization,--and this virtue was hers. New
+England Puritanism must be credited with the making of many such women.
+Severe as was her discipline, and harsh as seems now her rule, we have
+yet to see whether women will be born of modern systems of tolerance and
+indulgence equal to those grand ones of the olden times whose places now
+know them no more. The inconceivable austerity and solemnity with which
+Puritanism invested this mortal life, the awful grandeur of the themes
+which it made household words, the sublimity of the issues which it hung
+upon the commonest acts of our earthly existence, created characters of
+more than Roman strength and greatness; and the good men and women of
+Puritan training excelled the saints of the Middle Ages, as a soul fully
+developed intellectually, educated to closest thought, and exercised in
+reasoning, is superior to a soul great merely through impulse and
+sentiment.
+
+"My earliest recollections of Aunt Esther, for so our saint was known,
+were of a bright-faced, cheerful, witty, quick-moving little middle-aged
+person, who came into our house like a good fairy whenever there was a
+call of sickness or trouble. If an accident happened in the great
+roistering family of eight or ten children, (and when was not something
+happening to some of us?) and we were shut up in a sick-room, then duly
+as daylight came the quick step and cheerful face of Aunt Esther,--not
+solemn and lugubrious like so many sick-room nurses, but with a
+never-failing flow of wit and story that could beguile even the most
+doleful into laughing at their own afflictions. I remember how a fit of
+the quinsy--most tedious of all sicknesses to an active child--was
+gilded and glorified into quite a _fête_ by my having Aunt Esther all to
+myself for two whole days, with nothing to do but amuse me. She charmed
+me into smiling at the very pangs which had made me weep before, and of
+which she described her own experiences in a manner to make me think
+that, after all, the quinsy was something with an amusing side to it.
+Her knowledge of all sorts of medicines, gargles, and alleviatives, her
+perfect familiarity with every canon and law of good nursing and
+tending, was something that could only have come from long experience in
+those good old New England days when there were no nurses recognized as
+a class in the land, but when watching and the care of the sick were
+among those offices of Christian life which the families of a
+neighborhood reciprocally rendered each other. Even from early youth she
+had obeyed a special vocation as sister of charity in many a sick-room,
+and, with the usual keen intelligence of New England, had widened her
+powers of doing good by the reading of medical and physiological works.
+Her legends of nursing in those days of long typhus-fever and other
+formidable and protracted forms of disease were to our ears quite
+wonderful, and we regarded her as a sort of patron saint of the
+sick-room. She seemed always so cheerful, so bright, and so devoted,
+that it never occurred to us youngsters to doubt that she enjoyed, above
+all things, being with us, waiting on us all day, watching over us by
+night, telling us stories, and answering, in her lively and always
+amusing and instructive way, that incessant fire of questions with which
+a child persecutes a grown person.
+
+"Sometimes, as a reward of goodness, we were allowed to visit her in her
+own room, a neat little parlor in the neighborhood, whose windows looked
+down a hillside on one hand, under the boughs of an apple orchard, where
+daisies and clover and bobolinks always abounded in summer time, and, on
+the other, faced the street, with a green yard flanked by one or two
+shady elms between them and the street. No nun's cell was ever neater,
+no bee's cell ever more compactly and carefully arranged; and to us,
+familiar with the confusion of a great family of little ones, there was
+something always inviting about its stillness, its perfect order, and
+the air of thoughtful repose that breathed over it. She lived there in
+perfect independence, doing, as it was her delight to do, every office
+of life for herself. She was her own cook, her own parlor and chamber
+maid, her own laundress; and very faultless the cooking, washing,
+ironing, and care of her premises were. A slice of Aunt Esther's
+gingerbread, one of Aunt Esther's cookies, had, we all believed, certain
+magical properties such as belonged to no other mortal mixture. Even a
+handful of walnuts that were brought from the depths of her mysterious
+closet had virtues in our eyes such as no other walnuts could approach.
+The little shelf of books that hung suspended by cords against her wall
+was sacred in our regard; the volumes were like no other books; and we
+supposed that she derived from them those stores of knowledge on all
+subjects which she unconsciously dispensed among us,--for she was always
+telling us something of metals, or minerals, or gems, or plants, or
+animals, which awakened our curiosity, stimulated our inquiries, and,
+above all, led us to wonder where she had learned it all. Even the
+slight restrictions which her neat habits imposed on our breezy and
+turbulent natures seemed all quite graceful and becoming. It was right,
+in our eyes, to cleanse our shoes on scraper and mat with extra
+diligence, and then to place a couple of chips under the heels of our
+boots when we essayed to dry our feet at her spotless hearth. We
+marvelled to see our own faces reflected in a thousand smiles and winks
+from her bright brass andirons,--such andirons we thought were seen on
+earth in no other place,--and a pair of radiant brass candlesticks, that
+illustrated the mantle-piece, were viewed with no less respect.
+
+"Aunt Esther's cat was a model for all cats,--so sleek, so intelligent,
+so decorous and well-trained, always occupying exactly her own cushion
+by the fire, and never transgressing in one iota the proprieties
+belonging to a cat of good breeding. She shared our affections with her
+mistress, and we were allowed as a great favor and privilege, now and
+then, to hold the favorite on our knees, and stroke her satin coat to a
+smoother gloss.
+
+"But it was not for cats alone that she had attractions. She was in
+sympathy and fellowship with everything that moved and lived; knew every
+bird and beast with a friendly acquaintanceship. The squirrels that
+inhabited the trees in the front-yard were won in time by her
+blandishments to come and perch on her window-sills, and thence, by
+trains of nuts adroitly laid, to disport themselves on the shining
+cherry tea-table that stood between the windows; and we youngsters used
+to sit entranced with delight as they gambolled and waved their feathery
+tails in frolicsome security, eating rations of gingerbread and bits of
+seed-cake with as good a relish as any child among us.
+
+"The habits, the rights, the wrongs, the wants, and the sufferings of
+the animal creation formed the subject of many an interesting
+conversation with her; and we boys, with the natural male instinct of
+hunting, trapping, and pursuing, were often made to pause in our career,
+remembering her pleas for the dumb things which could not speak for
+themselves.
+
+"Her little hermitage was the favorite resort of numerous friends. Many
+of the young girls who attended the village academy made her
+acquaintance, and nothing delighted her more than that they should come
+there and read to her the books they were studying, when her superior
+and wide information enabled her to light up and explain much that was
+not clear to the immature students.
+
+"In her shady retirement, too, she was a sort of Egeria to certain men
+of genius, who came to read to her their writings, to consult her in
+their arguments, and to discuss with her the literature and politics of
+the day,--through all which her mind moved with an equal step, yet with
+a sprightliness and vivacity peculiarly feminine.
+
+"Her memory was remarkably retentive, not only of the contents of books,
+but of all that great outlying fund of anecdote and story which the
+quaint and earnest New England life always supplied. There were pictures
+of peculiar characters, legends of true events stranger than romance,
+all stored in the cabinets of her mind; and these came from her lips
+with the greater force because the precision of her memory enabled her
+to authenticate them with name, date, and circumstances of vivid
+reality. From that shadowy line of incidents which marks the twilight
+boundary between the spiritual world and the present life she drew
+legends of peculiar clearness, but invested with the mysterious charm
+which always dwells in that uncertain region; and the shrewd flash of
+her eye, and the keen, bright smile with which she answered the
+wondering question, 'What _do_ you suppose it was?' or, 'What could it
+have been?' showed how evenly rationalism in her mind kept pace with
+romance.
+
+"The retired room in which she thus read, studied, thought, and surveyed
+from afar the whole world of science and literature, and in which she
+received friends and entertained children, was perhaps the dearest and
+freshest spot to her in the world. There came a time, however, when the
+neat little independent establishment was given up, and she went to
+associate herself with two of her nieces in keeping house for a
+boarding-school of young girls. Here her lively manners and her gracious
+interest in the young made her a universal favorite, though the cares
+she assumed broke in upon those habits of solitude and study which
+formed her delight. From the day that she surrendered this independency
+of hers, she had never, for more than a score of years, a home of her
+own, but filled the trying position of an accessory in the home of
+others. Leaving the boarding-school, she became the helper of an invalid
+wife and mother in the early nursing and rearing of a family of young
+children,--an office which leaves no privacy and no leisure. Her bed was
+always shared with some little one; her territories were exposed to the
+constant inroads of little pattering feet; and all the various
+sicknesses and ailments of delicate childhood made absorbing drafts upon
+her time.
+
+"After a while she left New England with the brother to whose family she
+devoted herself. The failing health of the wife and mother left more and
+more the charge of all things in her hands; servants were poor, and all
+the appliances of living had the rawness and inconvenience which in
+those days attended Western life. It became her fate to supply all other
+people's defects and deficiencies. Wherever a hand failed, there must
+her hand be. Whenever a foot faltered, she must step into the ranks. She
+was the one who thought for and cared for and toiled for all, yet made
+never a claim that any one should care for her.
+
+"It was not till late in my life that I became acquainted with the deep
+interior sacrifice, the constant self-abnegation, which all her life
+involved. She was born with a strong, vehement, impulsive nature,--a
+nature both proud and sensitive,--a nature whose tastes were passions,
+whose likings and whose aversions were of the most intense and positive
+character. Devoted as she always seemed to the mere practical and
+material, she had naturally a deep romance and enthusiasm of temperament
+which exceeded all that can be written in novels. It was chiefly owing
+to this that a home and a central affection of her own were never hers.
+In her early days of attractiveness, none who would have sought her
+could meet the high requirements of her ideality; she never saw her
+hero,--and so never married. Family cares, the tending of young
+children, she often confessed, were peculiarly irksome to her. She had
+the head of a student, a passionate love for the world of books. A
+Protestant convent, where she might devote herself without interruption
+to study, was her ideal of happiness. She had, too, the keenest
+appreciation of poetry, of music, of painting, and of natural scenery.
+Her enjoyment in any of these things was intensely vivid whenever, by
+chance, a stray sunbeam of the kind darted across the dusty path of her
+life; yet in all these her life was a constant repression. The eagerness
+with which she would listen to any account from those more fortunate
+ones who had known these things, showed how ardent a passion was
+constantly held in check. A short time before her death, talking with a
+friend who had visited Switzerland, she said, with great feeling: 'All
+my life my desire to visit the beautiful places of this earth has been
+so intense, that I cannot but hope that after my death I shall be
+permitted to go and look at them.'
+
+"The completeness of her self-discipline may be gathered from the fact,
+that no child could ever be brought to believe she had not a natural
+fondness for children, or that she found the care of them burdensome. It
+was easy to see that she had naturally all those particular habits,
+those minute pertinacities in respect to her daily movements and the
+arrangement of all her belongings, which would make the meddling,
+intrusive demands of infancy and childhood peculiarly hard for her to
+meet. Yet never was there a pair of toddling feet that did not make free
+with Aunt Esther's room, never a curly head that did not look up, in
+confiding assurance of a welcome smile, to her bright eyes. The
+inconsiderate and never-ceasing requirements of children and invalids
+never drew from her other than a cheerful response; and to my mind
+there is more saintship in this than in the private wearing of any
+number of hair-cloth shirts or belts lined with spikes.
+
+"In a large family of careless, noisy children there will be constant
+losing of thimbles and needles and scissors; but Aunt Esther was always
+ready, without reproach, to help the careless and the luckless. Her
+things, so well kept and so treasured, she was willing to lend, with
+many a caution and injunction it is true, but also with a relish of
+right good-will. And, to do us justice, we generally felt the sacredness
+of the trust, and were more careful of her things than of our own. If a
+shade of sewing-silk were wanting, or a choice button, or a bit of braid
+or tape, Aunt Esther cheerfully volunteered something from her well-kept
+stores, not regarding the trouble she made herself in seeking the key,
+unlocking the drawer, and searching out in bag or parcel just the
+treasure demanded. Never was more perfect precision, or more perfect
+readiness to accommodate others.
+
+"Her little income, scarcely reaching a hundred dollars yearly, was
+disposed of with a generosity worthy a fortune. One tenth was sacredly
+devoted to charity, and a still further sum laid by every year for
+presents to friends. No Christmas or New Year ever came round that Aunt
+Esther, out of this very tiny fund, did not find something for children
+and servants. Her gifts were trifling in value, but well timed,--a ball
+of thread-wax, a paper of pins, a pincushion,--something generally so
+well chosen as to show that she had been running over our needs, and
+noting what to give. She was no less gracious as receiver than as giver.
+The little articles that we made for her, or the small presents that we
+could buy out of our childish resources, she always declared were
+exactly what she needed; and she delighted us by the care she took of
+them and the value she set upon them.
+
+"Her income was a source of the greatest pleasure to her, as maintaining
+an independence without which she could not have been happy. Though she
+constantly gave, to every family in which she lived, services which no
+money could repay, it would have been the greatest trial to her not to
+be able to provide for herself. Her dress, always that of a true
+gentlewoman,--refined, quiet, and neat,--was bought from this restricted
+sum, and her small travelling expenses were paid out of it. She abhorred
+anything false or flashy: her caps were trimmed with _real_ thread-lace,
+and her silk dresses were of the best quality, perfectly well made and
+kept; and, after all, a little sum always remained over in her hands for
+unforeseen exigencies.
+
+"This love of independence was one of the strongest features of her
+life, and we often playfully told her that her only form of selfishness
+was the monopoly of saintship,--that she who gave so much was not
+willing to allow others to give to her,--that she who made herself
+servant of all was not willing to allow others to serve her.
+
+"Among the trials of her life must be reckoned much ill-health; borne,
+however, with such heroic patience that it was not easy to say when the
+hand of pain was laid upon her. She inherited, too, a tendency to
+depression of spirits, which at times increased to a morbid and
+distressing gloom. Few knew or suspected these sufferings, so completely
+had she learned to suppress every outward manifestation that might
+interfere with the happiness of others. In her hours of depression she
+resolutely forbore to sadden the lives of those around her with her own
+melancholy, and often her darkest moods were so lighted up and adorned
+with an outside show of wit and humor, that those who had known her
+intimately were astonished to hear that she had ever been subject to
+depression.
+
+"Her truthfulness of nature amounted almost to superstition. From her
+promise once given she felt no change of purpose could absolve her; and
+therefore rarely would she give it absolutely, for she _could not_ alter
+the thing that had gone forth from her lips. Our belief in the
+certainty of her fulfilling her word was like our belief in the
+immutability of the laws of nature. Whoever asked her got of her the
+absolute truth on every subject, and, when she had no good thing to say,
+her silence was often truly awful. When anything mean or ungenerous was
+brought to her knowledge, she would close her lips resolutely; but the
+flash in her eyes showed what she would speak were speech permitted. In
+her last days she spoke to a friend of what she had suffered from the
+strength of her personal antipathies. 'I thank God,' she said, 'that I
+believe at last I have overcome all that too, and that there has not
+been, for some years, any human being toward whom I have felt a movement
+of dislike.'
+
+"The last year of her life was a constant discipline of unceasing pain,
+borne with that fortitude which could make her an entertaining and
+interesting companion even while the sweat of mortal agony was starting
+from her brow. Her own room she kept as a last asylum, to which she
+would silently retreat when the torture became too intense for the
+repression of society, and there alone, with closed doors, she wrestled
+with her agony. The stubborn independence of her nature took refuge in
+this final fastness; and she prayed only that she might go down to death
+with the full ability to steady herself all the way, needing the help of
+no other hand.
+
+"The ultimate struggle of earthly feeling came when this proud
+self-reliance was forced to give way, and she was obliged to leave
+herself helpless in the hands of others. 'God requires that I should
+give up my last form of self-will,' she said; 'now I have resigned
+_this_, perhaps he will let me go home.'
+
+"In a good old age, Death, the friend, came and opened the door of this
+mortal state, and a great soul, that had served a long apprenticeship to
+little things, went forth into the joy of its Lord; a life of
+self-sacrifice and self-abnegation passed into a life of endless rest."
+
+"But," said Rudolph, "I rebel at this life of self-abnegation and
+self-sacrifice. I do not think it the duty of noble women, who have
+beautiful natures and enlarged and cultivated tastes, to make themselves
+the slaves of the sick-room and nursery."
+
+"Such was not the teaching of our New England faith," said I. "Absolute
+unselfishness,--the death of self,--such were its teachings, and such as
+Esther's the characters it made. 'Do the duty nearest thee,' was the
+only message it gave to 'women with a mission'; and from duty to duty,
+from one self-denial to another, they rose to a majesty of moral
+strength impossible to any form of mere self-indulgence. It is of souls
+thus sculptured and chiselled by self-denial and self-discipline that
+the living temple of the perfect hereafter is to be built. The pain of
+the discipline is short, but the glory of the fruition is eternal."
+
+
+
+
+A PIONEER EDITOR.
+
+
+The historian who, without qualification of his statement, should date
+the commencement of our late civil war from the attack on Fort Sumter,
+instead of the first attempt by the slaveholders to render a single
+property interest paramount in the relations of the country, would prove
+himself unfit for his task. The battles fought in the press, pulpit, and
+forum, in ante-war days, were as much agencies in the great conflict as
+the deadlier ones fought since, on land and sea. Men strove in the
+former, as in the latter case, for the extension of the slave system on
+one side, and for its total suppression on the other; and it is the
+proud distinction of the early partisans of freedom to be recognized now
+as the pioneers--the advance-guard--of the armed hosts who at last won
+the victory for humanity.
+
+This view of the actual beginning of the war makes the facts in the
+lives of those antislavery men who took the lead in the good fight, and
+especially of such as died with their armor on, of the utmost value to
+the historian. We therefore propose to offer a contribution to the
+record, by tracing the career of one who acted a distinguished part in
+the struggle, as an antislavery journalist.
+
+Gamaliel Bailey was born in New Jersey,--a State where antislavery men,
+or, indeed, men of progress in any direction, are so far from being a
+staple growth, that they can barely be said to be indigenous to her
+soil. His birthday was December 3, 1807. He was the son of a Methodist
+preacher noted for his earnestness and devotion to the duties of his
+calling. His mother was a woman of active brain and sympathetic heart.
+It was from her, as is not unusual with men of marked traits, that the
+son derived his distinguishing mental characteristics. His education was
+such as was obtainable in the private schools of Philadelphia, which,
+whatever their advantages to others, were not particularly well
+calculated to prepare young Bailey for the study of the learned
+profession he subsequently chose; and he had to seek, without their aid,
+the classical knowledge necessary to a mastery of the technicalities of
+medical science. Nevertheless he graduated with credit in the Jefferson
+Medical College, and at so early an age--for he was then only
+twenty--that the restriction in its charter deprived him of the usual
+diploma for a year. The statutes of New Jersey, however, while
+forbidding him to prescribe for the physical ailments of her citizens,
+did not pronounce him too young to undertake the mental training of her
+children, and he eagerly availed himself of the pedagogue's privilege of
+bending the twigs of mind amid the pine forests of his native State. By
+the time he was entitled to his diploma, he was satisfied that the
+overdraught upon his vitality had been so great, during his college
+years, as utterly to unfit him for the field of action on which, but a
+twelvemonth before, he had been so desirous to enter. A sea voyage was
+chosen as the best means of resting his brain while strengthening his
+body and preparing it for the heavy demands which his profession would
+naturally make.
+
+Having, with the scanty income from his year's teaching, equipped
+himself for his voyage, he obeyed at once the dictates of necessity and
+of judgment, and shipped on a vessel bound for China. Instead of a
+successful physician winning golden opinions from all, Dr. Bailey was
+now a common sailor before the mast, receiving from his superiors oaths
+or orders as the case might be. The ship's destination was Canton, and
+its arrival in port was attended by such an unusual amount of sickness
+among the crew, that it became necessary to assign young Bailey the
+office of surgeon. This he filled with promptness and skill, and when
+the vessel set sail for Philadelphia, the sailor was again found at his
+post, performing his duties as acceptably as could have been expected
+from a greenhorn on his first cruise. Once more on his native shore, and
+in some degree reinvigorated by travel, he opened his office for the
+practice of medicine. At the end of three months he found himself out of
+patients, and in a situation far from enjoyable to one of his active
+temperament.
+
+But, luckily for Dr. Bailey, whatever it may have been for the church of
+his fathers, just at this time the so-called "Radicals" had begun their
+reform movement against Methodist Episcopacy, which resulted in the
+secession of a number of the clergy and laity, principally in the Middle
+States, and the organization of the Methodist Protestants. These
+"Radicals" had their head-quarters at Baltimore. There they started an
+organ under the title of "The Methodist Protestant," and to the
+editorship of this journal Dr. Bailey was called. His youthful
+inexperience as a writer was not the only remarkable feature of this
+engagement; for he had not even the qualification of being at that time
+a professor of religion. His connection with "The Methodist Protestant"
+was a brief one; but it was terminated by lack of sufficient funds to
+sustain a regular editor, and not by lack of ability in the editor.
+
+Dr. Bailey was again adrift, and we next find him concerned in "Kelley's
+Expedition to Oregon." This had been projected at St. Louis, which was
+to be its starting-point; and thither hastened our adventurous young
+physician--to learn that the expedition, having had little more to rest
+upon than that baseless fabric so often supplied by printers' ink, was
+an utter failure. Finding himself without funds to pay for the costly
+means of conveyance then used in the West, he made his way back as far
+as Cincinnati on foot. Soon after his arrival there the cholera broke
+out. This presented an aspect of affairs rather inviting to a courageous
+spirit. He gladly embraced the opening for practice; and, happening to
+be known to some of the faculty of the place, he was recommended for the
+appointment of Physician to the Cholera Hospital. Thus he was soon
+introduced to the general confidence of the profession and the public,
+and seemed to be on the highway to fame. Dr. Eberlie, a standard medical
+authority at that day, as he still is among many practitioners of the
+old school in the West, was then preparing his work on the Diseases of
+Children, and he availed himself of Dr. Bailey's aid. This opened an
+unexpected field to the latter for the exercise of his ability as a
+writer; and the work in question contains abundant evidence that he
+would have succeeded in the line of medical authorship. But
+circumstances proved unfavorable to his connection with Dr. Eberlie, and
+he again devoted himself to the practice of his profession, in which he
+continued for a time with great success.
+
+At this date, however, an event of great interest occurred in connection
+with the agitation of the slavery question,--an event exercising a most
+decided influence on the career of Dr. Bailey,--in fact, changing
+entirely the current of his eventful life. We allude to the discussions
+of slavery at Lane Seminary, and the memorable expulsion of a number of
+the students for their persistence in promulging antislavery doctrines.
+Dr. Bailey was then engaged at the Seminary in the delivery of a course
+of lectures on Physiology. He became interested in the pending
+discussion, and espoused the proslavery side. For this his mind had
+probably been unconsciously prepared by the current of thought in
+Cincinnati, then under the mercantile control of her proslavery
+customers from Kentucky and other Southern States. But erelong he
+appeared as a convert to the antislavery side of the discussion. This he
+himself was wont to attribute, in great part, to the light which an
+honest comparison of views threw upon the subject; but it is evident
+that his conversion was somewhat accelerated by the expulsion of his
+antislavery antagonists in debate. Following the lead of these new
+sympathies, he became (in 1835) editorially associated with that great
+pioneer advocate of freedom, James G. Birney, whose venerated name has
+been so honorably connected with the recent triumph of the Union arms,
+through the courage of three of his sons. The paper was "The Cincinnati
+Philanthropist," so well remembered by the earlier espousers of
+antislavery truth. The association continued about a year. Dr. Bailey
+then became sole editor of the Philanthropist, and soon after sole
+proprietor. It was from the pages of this journal that a series of
+antislavery tracts were reprinted, which had not a little to do in
+giving fresh impulse to the discussions of that day. They were entitled
+"Facts for the People."
+
+The relation of Dr. Bailey to a journal which was regarded by the
+slave-owners as the organ of their worst enemies made him a marked man,
+and called him to endure severe and unexpected ordeals. In 1836, his
+opponents incited against him the memorable mob, whose first act was the
+secret destruction of his press at midnight. Soon after the riot raged
+openly, and not only destroyed the remaining contents of his
+printing-office, but the building itself. Mr. Birney, being the older
+and more conspicuous of the offenders, was of course more emphatically
+the object of the mob's wrath than the junior associate. But the latter
+shared with him the personal perils of the day, while bearing the brunt
+of the pecuniary losses. As is usual in such outbreaks, after three days
+of fury, the lawless spirit of the people subsided. There was a
+repetition of violence in 1840, however, and during another three days'
+reign of terror two more presses were destroyed. But such was the
+indomitable energy of the man in whose person and property the
+constitutional liberty of the press was thus assailed, that in three
+weeks the Philanthropist was again before the public, sturdily defending
+the truth it was established to proclaim; and this, be it remembered,
+when the press-work of even weekly journals was not let out, in
+Cincinnati, as jobs for "lightning presses," but was done in the
+proprietors' own offices, on presses to be obtained only from distant
+manufactories.
+
+It was in this year that the Liberty party, of which Dr. Bailey was a
+prominent leader, entered for the first time into the Presidential
+contest, with James G. Birney as its candidate.
+
+Not yet satiated, the spirit of mob violence manifested itself a third
+time in 1843; but it was suppressed by the interference of the military
+power, and its demonstration was followed by a growth of liberal
+sentiment altogether unlooked for. Availing himself of this favorable
+change, Dr. Bailey started a daily paper to which the name of "The
+Herald" was given.
+
+The unprecedented ordeal through which Dr. Bailey had passed, involving
+not only his family, but Mr. Birney, Mr. Clawson, and other friends of
+his enterprise, was, after all, but needful training for the subsequent
+work allotted to the reformer. He continued the publication of the Daily
+Herald, and the Philanthropist also, but under the name of "The Weekly
+Herald and Philanthropist," until 1847. With a growing family and a
+meagre income, the intervening years marked a season of self-denial to
+himself and his excellent wife such as few, even among reformers, have
+been called to pass through. And yet through all his poverty his
+cheerfulness was unfaltering, and inspired all who came in contact with
+him. There was a better day before him,--better in a pecuniary as well
+as a political sense. He had now fairly won a reputation throughout the
+country for courage and ability as an antislavery journalist. A project
+for establishing an antislavery organ at the seat of the national
+government had been successfully carried out by the Executive Committee
+of the American and Foreign Antislavery Society, under the lead of that
+now venerable and esteemed pioneer of freedom, Lewis Tappan. The
+editorial charge of it was tendered, with great propriety, to Dr.
+Bailey, and was accepted. He entered upon his duties as editor in chief
+of "The National Era" in January, 1847, with the Reverend Amos A.
+Phelps, now deceased, and John G. Whittier, as corresponding editors,
+and L. P. Noble as publishing agent. "The Daily Herald" and "The Weekly
+Herald and Philanthropist" were transferred to Messrs. Sperry and
+Matthews, with Stanley Matthews as editor; but the political ambition of
+the latter prevented his continuing the paper in the steadfast
+antislavery tone of his predecessor, and it soon ceased to appear.[B]
+
+The establishment of the National Era, while it furnished a most
+appropriate field for Dr. Bailey's talents, also marked an era in the
+antislavery history of the country. At the centres of all governments
+there is found a fulcrum whose value politicians have long since
+demonstrated by its use,--too frequently for the most unworthy purposes.
+There had always been organs for conservatism at Washington, but none
+for progress. There were numbers of bold thinkers throughout the
+country, who had found, here and there, a representative of their ideas
+in the government. But they had no newspaper to keep watch and ward over
+him, or to correctly report his acts to his constituents,--no vehicle
+through which they could bring their thoughts to bear upon him or
+others. This was furnished by the National Era. But this was not the
+only direction in which it proved useful. It enabled the friends of
+emancipation everywhere to communicate freely with those against whose
+gigantic system of wrong they felt it their duty to wage war, where such
+were found willing to read their antagonists' arguments, instead of
+taking them as perverted by proslavery journals.
+
+The first effect of the Era upon the local antislavery journals which it
+found in existence was, unquestionably, to excite not a little
+apprehension and jealousy among their conductors. Naturally they felt
+that the national reputation of Dr. Bailey and his assistants, aided by
+a central position, was calculated to detract from their own importance
+in the estimation of their patrons. But, besides this, there was the
+actual fact of the Era's large supply of original and high-toned
+literary matter, added to the direct and reliable Congressional news it
+was expected to furnish, which stared them threateningly in the face.
+And we well remember now what pain these petty jealousies gave to the
+sensitive nature of our departed friend. But these gradually subsided,
+until there was hardly an antislavery editor of average discernment who
+did not come to see that a national organ like the Era, by legitimating
+discussion and keeping up the heat and blaze of a vigorous agitation, at
+the nation's very centre, against that nation's own giant crime, would
+prove a benefit, in the end, to all colaborers worthy of the name. And
+the increase of antislavery journals, as well as of vigor in conducting
+them, in the period subsequent to 1847, proved that this was the correct
+view.
+
+Although now so favorably placed for contest with his great foe, Dr.
+Bailey was here subjected to a renewal of the assaults which had become
+painfully familiar in the West. His paper had not been in existence more
+than fifteen months when an event occurred which, although he had in it
+no agency whatever, brought down upon his devoted head a fourth
+discharge of the vials of popular wrath. Some seventy or eighty slaves
+attempted to escape from Washington in the steamer Pearl, and instantly
+the charge of complicity was laid at his door. His office and dwelling
+were surrounded by a furious crowd, including a large proportion of
+office-holding F.F.V.'s, and some "gentlemen of property and standing."
+These gentlemen threatened the entire destruction of the press and type
+of the Era, while the editor's personal safety, with that of his family,
+was again put in peril for the space of three terrific days. The Federal
+metropolis had never known such days since the torch applied by a
+foreign foe had wrapped the first Capitol in flames. The calm
+self-possession of Dr. Bailey, when he made his appearance unarmed
+before the swaying mob, and addressed them from the steps of his
+dwelling,--as described by the late Dr. Houston in a letter to the New
+York Tribune, from notes taken while he was concealed in the house,--was
+such that, while disarming the leaders with the simple majesty of the
+truth, it did not fail to produce a reaction even in the most
+exasperated members of the mob.
+
+It would indeed be an interesting task to trace the public influence of
+this last demonstration, for it offered phases of interest to both
+parties. It is sufficient to say, that the Era's unmolested existence
+ever after was simply due to the instincts of self-preservation in the
+community. The issue was practically presented to the owners of real
+estate in the District, whether freedom of debate on all topics of
+public concern should be tolerated there, or the capital be removed to
+some Western centre. The bare possibility of this event was more than
+the slaveholding land-owners could face, and produced the desired
+effect. The continuance of the paper once acquiesced in, the tact of its
+editor, aided by that remarkable suavity of manners which made him a
+favorite in the private circles of Washington, was sufficient to forever
+forbid the probability of a second mob. And thenceforward the Era
+increased in influence as well as circulation. The latter, indeed, soon
+reached a figure which entitled it to a share of government patronage,
+while the former commanded the respect even of the enemies of the cause
+it defended.
+
+But this is not all that is to be said of the Era. To that paper belongs
+the honor of introducing to the world the story of "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
+Although reference has frequently been made to the origin of this
+wonderful fiction, the facts of its inception and growth have never been
+given to the public. These are so curious, that we are happy to be able
+to present what politicians would call the "secret history" of this
+book. The account was furnished to a friend by Dr. Bailey himself, when
+about to embark for Europe, on his first voyage for health, in 1853; the
+manuscript, now used for the first time, was hurriedly penned, without
+expectation of its appearance in print, and therefore has all the
+dashing freedom which might be looked for in a communication from one
+friend to another. We give it _verbatim_, that it may serve for a
+_souvenir_, as well as a contribution to the literary history of the
+time.
+
+                                          "NEW YORK, May 27, 1853.
+
+     "In the beginning of the year 1851, as my custom has been, I
+     sent remittances to various writers whom I wished to furnish
+     contributions to the Era, during that volume. Among these was
+     Mrs. Stowe. I sent her one hundred dollars, saying to her that
+     for that sum she might write as _much_ as she pleased, _what_
+     she pleased, and _when_ she pleased. I did not dream that she
+     would attempt a novel, for she had never written one. Some time
+     in the summer she wrote me that she was going to write me a
+     story about 'How a Man became a Thing.' It would occupy a few
+     numbers of the Era, in chapters. She did not suppose or dream
+     that it would expand to a novel, nor did I. She changed the
+     title to 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' and commenced it in August. I
+     read two or three of the first chapters, to see that everything
+     was going on right, and read no more then. She proceeded,--the
+     story grew,--it seemed to have no end,--everybody talked of it.
+     I thought the mails were never so irregular, for none of my
+     subscribers was willing to lose a single number of the Era
+     while the story was going on. Mrs. Bailey attracted my
+     attention by her special devotion to it, and Mr. Chase always
+     read it before anything else. Of the hundreds of letters
+     received weekly, renewing subscriptions or sending new ones,
+     there was scarcely one that did not contain some cordial
+     reference to Uncle Tom. I wrote to Mrs. Stowe, and told her
+     that, although such a story had not been contracted for, and I
+     had, in my programme, limited my remittance to her to one
+     hundred dollars, yet, as the thing had grown beyond all our
+     calculations, I felt bound to make her another remittance. So I
+     sent her two hundred dollars more. The story was closed early
+     in the spring of 1852. I had not yet read it; but I wrote to
+     Mrs. Stowe that, as I had not contemplated so large an outlay
+     in my plans for the volume, as the paper had not received so
+     much pecuniary benefit from its publication as it would have
+     done could my readers have foreseen what it was to be, and as
+     my large circulation had served as a tremendous advertisement
+     for the work, which was now about to be published separately,
+     and of which she held the copyright alone, I supposed that I
+     ought not to pay for it so much as if these circumstances had
+     not existed. But I simply stated the case to her,--submitted
+     everything to her judgment,--and would pay her additional just
+     exactly what she should determine was right. She named one
+     hundred dollars more; this I immediately remitted. And thus
+     terminated my relations with 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' but not with
+     its author, who is still engaged as a regular contributor to
+     the Era. Dr. Snodgrass is hereby commended to Mr. Clephane [Dr.
+     Bailey's clerk], who is authorized to hand him any letters
+     between Mrs. Stowe and myself that may aid him in his
+     undertaking."
+
+It may be proper to say that the "undertaking" referred to contemplated
+a biographical sketch, not of Dr. Bailey, but of his distinguished
+contributor,--a project the execution of which circumstances did not
+favor, and which was therefore abandoned.
+
+"Uncle Tom's Cabin," and the remarkable introduction of its author to
+fame and pecuniary fortune, were not the only results of a similar
+character referable to the Era. Mrs. Southworth also made her literary
+_début_ in the same journal. Previous to her connection with the Era,
+she had only published some short sketches in the Baltimore Saturday
+Visiter, over her initial "E," or "Emma" at most; and even these
+signatures gave her much trouble, as her letters to the editor plainly
+indicated, so fearful was she of the recognition and unfavorable
+criticism of her friends. She had a painful lack of confidence in her
+own ability. Just before the transfer of the subscription list of the
+Visiter to the Era, she had sent in a story. To this, against her
+earnest protest, the editor had affixed her entire name, and the story,
+prepared for the Visiter, was transferred with its list to the Era, and
+was there published, in spite of the deprecations of Mrs. Southworth. It
+served the purpose intended. The attention of Dr. Bailey was called to
+one until then unknown to him, although residing in the same city, and
+he at once gave her a paying engagement in his journal. This brought her
+under new influences, which resulted in her conversion to the principles
+of the antislavery reform,--a conversion whose fruits have since been
+shown in her deeds as well as her writings. And thus commenced the
+literary career of another successful author, who, but for the existence
+of the Era, would probably have been left to struggle on in the
+adversity from which her pen has so creditably set her free.
+
+Unduly encouraged by the success of his weekly journal, Dr. Bailey
+started a daily edition of the Era. Having committed himself to continue
+it for a year without regard to pecuniary results, he did so, and here
+the publication ceased. The experiment cost him heavily. This, however,
+he anticipated, though he of course also anticipated ultimate profit,
+notwithstanding the warning which he had received from the equally
+unlucky experiment of the Cincinnati Daily Herald. In a letter to the
+writer of this, dated December 18, 1853, he said: "I start the Daily
+with the full expectation of sinking five thousand dollars on it. Of
+course I can afford no extra expenses, but must do nearly all the work
+on it myself,"--a statement which shows at once the hopefulness and the
+energy of our friend's disposition.
+
+Dr. Bailey died at sea, while on his way to Europe, on the fifth day of
+June, 1859. It was the second voyage thither which he had undertaken
+within a few years, for the benefit of his broken health. His body was
+brought home and interred at Washington. With its editor died the
+National Era; for it was discontinued soon after his decease.
+
+Mr. Raymond of the New York Daily Times, who was a fellow-passenger
+with Dr. Bailey, wrote an account of his last hours for his paper, which
+has by no means lost its melancholy interest. "I gathered from his
+conversation," says Mr. Raymond, "that he did not consider himself to be
+very ill, at least, that his lungs were not affected, but that a
+long-continued dyspepsia, and the nervous excitement which his labors
+had induced, had combined to bring about the weakness under which he
+suffered. For the first two or three days he was upon deck for the
+greater part of the time. The weather was fresh, though not unpleasantly
+cold, and the sea not rough enough to occasion any considerable
+discomfort. The motion, however, affected him disagreeably. He slept
+badly, had no appetite, and could relish nothing but a little fruit now
+and then. His eldest son was with him, and attended upon him with all a
+fond son's solicitude. Except myself, I do not think he had another
+acquaintance on board. He was cheerful and social, and talked with
+interest of everything connected with public affairs at home and abroad.
+He suffered some inconvenience from the fact that his room was below,
+and that he could only reach it by descending two flights of stairs. We
+occasionally made a couch of cushions for him upon deck, when he became
+fatigued; but this made him too conspicuous for his taste, and he seemed
+uneasily fearful of attracting attention to himself as an invalid. After
+Tuesday the sea became remarkably smooth, and so continued to the end of
+the voyage. But it brought him no relief; his strength failed with
+failing appetite; and on Thursday, from staying too long on deck, he
+took cold, which confined him to his room next day. Otherwise he seemed
+about as usual through that day and Saturday, and on Sunday morning
+seemed even better, saying that he had slept unusually well, and felt
+strengthened and refreshed. He took some slight nourishment, and
+attempted to get up from his berth without assistance; the effort was
+too much for him, however, and his son, who had left his room at his
+request, but stood at the door, saw him fall as he attempted to stand.
+He at once went in, raised him, and laid him upon the couch. Seeing that
+he was greatly distressed in breathing, he went immediately for Dr.
+Smith, the surgeon of the ship. I met him on deck, and, hearing of his
+father's condition, went at once to his room. I found him wholly
+unconscious, breathing with difficulty, but perfectly quiet, and
+seemingly asleep. Drs. Beale and Dubois were present, and endeavored to
+give him a stimulant, but he was unable to swallow, and it was evident
+that he was dying. He continued in this state for about half an hour;
+his breathing became slower and slower, until finally it ceased
+altogether, and that was all! Not a movement of a muscle, not a spasm or
+a tremor of any kind, betrayed the moment when his spirit took its
+departure. An infant, wearied with play on a summer's eve, could not
+have fallen asleep more gently."
+
+As mourners over him who thus passed away in the very prime of manhood,
+there were left a wife, whose maiden name was Maria L. Shands, and who
+was the daughter of a Methodist preacher and planter of Sussex County,
+Virginia, and six children, three sons and three daughters. In Mrs.
+Bailey her husband had found a woman of rare intelligence as well as
+courage, whose companionship proved most sustaining and consoling amid
+the trials of his eventful life. She and five of their children still
+live to revere his memory. Two of the survivors are sons; and it is
+pleasant to add that one of these has done honor to his parentage, as
+well as to himself, by continuing what is virtually the same good fight,
+as a commander of colored troops, under General William Birney, the son
+of the very James G. Birney who was Dr. Bailey's editorial associate in
+Cincinnati.
+
+Subjected as Dr. Bailey was so frequently to the fury of mobs, and the
+pressure of social opposition and pecuniary want, he led the hosts of
+Antislavery Reform into the very stronghold of the enemy's country; and
+to say that he maintained his position with integrity and success is but
+to pronounce the common praise of his contemporaries and colaborers. As
+a writer he was clear and logical to an uncommon degree, carrying
+certain conviction to the mind, wherever it was at all open to the
+truth; and with the rare habit of stating fairly the position of his
+opponent, he never failed of winning his respect and his confidence. The
+death of such a man was well calculated to fill the friends of progress
+throughout the world with unfeigned regret. Especially must they lament
+that he departed too soon to witness the triumph of liberty, for which
+it had so long been his pleasure "to labor and to wait."
+
+We learn with much satisfaction, that a "Life of Dr. Bailey" is in
+course of preparation, with the sanction of Mrs. Bailey, which, while
+affording much valuable information concerning the antislavery events of
+the past, will also offer space, wanting here, to do full justice to the
+memory of this estimable man.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[B] These facts are given because of an erroneous statement which crept
+into the brief though kind biographical notice of Dr. Bailey in "The New
+American Cyclopædia," to the effect that the subscription list of the
+Philanthropist was transferred with its editor to the National Era. It
+was the list of "The Saturday Visiter," published for many years, as an
+antislavery journal, at Baltimore, which was transferred to the Era,
+together with the services of its editor and proprietor (J. E.
+Snodgrass) as special correspondent and publishing agent at that
+important point. This arrangement admirably served to secure to the Era
+a circulation in Southern communities where the Visiter had already
+found its way, and where it would otherwise have been difficult to
+introduce a paper which was notoriously the central organ of
+Abolitionism.
+
+
+
+
+GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+He was gone for good, this time.
+
+At the fair the wrestling was ended, and the tongues going over it all
+again, and throwing the victors; the greasy pole, with leg of mutton
+attached by ribbons, was being hoisted, and the swings flying, and the
+lads and lasses footing it to the fife and tabor, and the people
+chattering in groups; when the clatter of a horse's feet was heard, and
+a horseman burst in and rode recklessly through the market-place;
+indeed, if his noble horse had been as rash as he was, some would have
+been trampled under foot. The rider's face was ghastly: such as were not
+exactly in his path had time to see it, and wonder how this terrible
+countenance came into that merry place. Thus, as he passed, shouts of
+dismay arose, and a space opened before him, and then closed behind him
+with a great murmur that followed at his heels.
+
+Tom Leicester was listening, spell-bound, on the outskirts of the
+throng, to the songs and humorous tirades of a pedler selling his wares;
+and was saying to himself, "I too will be a pedler." Hearing the row, he
+turned round, and saw his master just coming down with that stricken
+face.
+
+Tom could not read his own name in print or manuscript; and these are
+the fellows that beat us all at reading countenances: he saw in a moment
+that some great calamity had fallen on Griffith's head; and nature
+stirred in him. He darted to his master's side, and seized the bridle.
+"What is up?" he cried.
+
+But Griffith did not answer nor notice. His ears were almost deaf, and
+his eyes, great and staring, were fixed right ahead; and, to all
+appearance, he did not see the people. He seemed to be making for the
+horizon.
+
+"Master! for the love of God, speak to me," cried Leicester. "What have
+they done to you? Whither be you going, with the face of a ghost?"
+
+"Away, from the hangman," shrieked Griffith, still staring at the
+horizon. "Stay me not; my hands itch for their throats; my heart thirsts
+for their blood; but I'll not hang for a priest and a wanton." Then he
+suddenly turned on Leicester, "Let thou go, or--" and he lifted his
+heavy riding-whip.
+
+Then Leicester let go the rein, and the whip descended on the horse's
+flank. He went clattering furiously over the stones, and drove the
+thinner groups apart like chaff, and his galloping feet were soon heard
+fainter and fainter till they died away in the distance. Leicester stood
+gaping.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Griffith's horse, a black hunter of singular power and beauty, carried
+his wretched master well that day. He went on till sunset, trotting,
+cantering, and walking, without intermission; the whip ceased to touch
+him, the rein never checked him. He found he was the master, and he went
+his own way. He took his broken rider back into the county where he had
+been foaled. But a few miles from his native place they came to the
+"Packhorse," a pretty little roadside inn, with farm-yard and buildings
+at the back. He had often baited here in his infancy; and now, stiff and
+stumbling with fatigue, the good horse could not pass the familiar
+place; he walked gravely into the stable-yard, and there fairly came to
+an end; craned out his drooping head, crooked his limbs, and seemed of
+wood. And no wonder. He was ninety-three miles from his last corn.
+
+Paul Carrick, a young farrier, who frequented the "Packhorse," happened
+just then to be lounging at the kitchen door, and saw him come in. He
+turned directly, and shouted into the house, "Ho! Master Vint, come
+hither. Here's Black Dick come home, and brought you a worshipful
+customer."
+
+The landlord bustled out of the kitchen, crying, "They are welcome
+both." Then he came lowly louting to Griffith, cap in hand, and held the
+horse, poor immovable brute; and his wife courtesied perseveringly at
+the door.
+
+Griffith dismounted, and stood there looking like one in a dream.
+
+"Please you come in, sir," said the landlady, smiling professionally.
+
+He followed her mechanically.
+
+"Would your worship be private? We keep a parlor for gentles."
+
+"Ay, let me be alone," he groaned.
+
+Mercy Vint, the daughter, happened to be on the stairs and heard him:
+the voice startled her, and she turned round directly to look at the
+speaker; but she only saw his back going into the room, and then he
+flung himself like a sack into the arm-chair.
+
+The landlady invited him to order supper: he declined. She pressed him.
+He flung a piece of money on the table, and told her savagely to score
+his supper, and leave him in peace.
+
+She flounced out with a red face, and complained to her husband in the
+kitchen.
+
+Harry Vint rung the crown-piece on the table before he committed himself
+to a reply. It rang like a bell. "Churl or not, his coin is good," said
+Harry Vint, philosophically. "I'll eat his supper, dame, for that
+matter."
+
+"Father," whispered Mercy, "I do think the gentleman is in trouble."
+
+"And that is no business of mine, neither," said Harry Vint.
+
+Presently the guest they were discussing called loudly for a quart of
+burnt wine.
+
+When it was ready, Mercy offered to take it in to him. She was curious.
+The landlord looked up rather surprised; for his daughter attended to
+the farm, but fought shy of the inn and its business.
+
+"Take it, lass, and welcome for me," said Mrs. Vint, pettishly.
+
+Mercy took the wine in, and found Griffith with his head buried in his
+hands.
+
+She stood awhile with the tray, not knowing what to do.
+
+Then, as he did not move, she said softly, "The wine, sir, an if it
+please you."
+
+Griffith lifted his head, and turned two eyes clouded with suffering
+upon her. He saw a buxom, blooming young woman, with remarkably
+dove-like eyes that dwelt with timid, kindly curiosity upon him. He
+looked at her in a half-distracted way, and then put his hand to the
+mug. "Here's perdition to all false women!" said he, and tossed half the
+wine down at a single draught.
+
+"'T is not to me you drink, sir," said Mercy, with gentle dignity. Then
+she courtesied modestly and retired, discouraged, not offended.
+
+The wretched Griffith took no notice,--did not even see he had repulsed
+a friendly visitor. The wine, taken on an empty stomach, soon stupefied
+him, and he staggered to bed.
+
+He awoke at daybreak: and O the agony of that waking!
+
+He lay sighing awhile, with his hot skin quivering on his bones, and his
+heart like lead; then got up and flung his clothes on hastily, and asked
+how far to the nearest seaport.
+
+Twenty miles.
+
+He called for his horse. The poor brute was dead lame.
+
+He cursed that good servant for going lame. He walked round and round
+like a wild beast, chafing and fuming awhile; then sank into a torpor of
+dejection, and sat with his head bowed on the table all day.
+
+He ate scarcely any food; but drank wine freely, remarking, however,
+that it was false-hearted stuff, did him no good, and had no taste as
+wine used to have. "But nothing is what it was," said he. "Even I was
+happy once. But that seems years ago."
+
+"Alas! poor gentleman; God comfort you," said Mercy Vint, and came, with
+the tears in her dove-like eyes, and said to her father, "To be sure his
+worship hath been crossed in love; and what could she be thinking of?
+Such a handsome, well-made gentleman!"
+
+"Now that is a wench's first thought," said Harry Vint; "more likely
+lost his money, gambling, or racing. But, indeed, I think 't is his head
+is disordered, not his heart. I wish the 'Packhorse' was quit of him,
+maugre his laced coat. We want no kill-joys here."
+
+That night he was heard groaning, and talking, and did not come down at
+all.
+
+So at noon Mrs. Vint knocked at his door. A weak voice bade her enter.
+She found him shivering, and he asked her for a fire.
+
+She grumbled, out of hearing, but lighted a fire.
+
+Presently his voice was heard hallooing. He wanted all the windows open,
+he was so burning hot.
+
+The landlady looked at him, and saw his face was flushed and swollen;
+and he complained of pain in all his bones. She opened the windows, and
+asked him would he have a doctor sent for. He shook his head
+contemptuously.
+
+However, towards evening, he became delirious, and raved and tossed, and
+rolled his head as if it was an intolerable weight he wanted to get rid
+of.
+
+The females of the family were for sending at once for a doctor; but the
+prudent Harry demurred.
+
+"Tell me, first, who is to pay the fee," said he. "I've seen a fine coat
+with the pockets empty, before to-day."
+
+The women set up their throats at him with one accord, each after her
+kind.
+
+"Out, fie!" said Mercy; "are we to do naught for charity?"
+
+"Why, there's his horse, ye foolish man," said Mrs. Vint.
+
+"Ay, ye are both wiser than me," said Harry Vint, ironically. And soon
+after that he went out softly.
+
+The next minute he was in the sick man's room, examining his pockets. To
+his infinite surprise he found twenty gold pieces, a quantity of silver,
+and some trinkets.
+
+He spread them all out on the table, and gloated on them with greedy
+eyes. They looked so inviting, that he said to himself they would be
+safer in his custody than in that of a delirious person, who was even
+now raving incoherently before him, and could not see what he was doing.
+He therefore proceeded to transfer them to his own care.
+
+On the way to his pocket, his shaking hand was arrested by another hand,
+soft, but firm as iron.
+
+He shuddered, and looked round in abject terror; and there was his
+daughter's face, pale as his own, but full of resolution. "Nay, father,"
+said she; "_I_ must take charge of these: and well do you know why."
+
+These simple words cowed Harry Vint, so that he instantly resigned the
+money and jewels, and retired, muttering that "things were come to a
+pretty pass,"--"a man was no longer master in his own house," etc.,
+etc., etc.
+
+While he inveighed against the degeneracy of the age, the women paid him
+no more attention than the age did, but just sent for the doctor. He
+came, and bled the patient. This gave him a momentary relief; but when,
+in the natural progress of the disease, sweating and weakness came on,
+the loss of the precious vital fluid was fatal, and the patient's pulse
+became scarce perceptible. There he lay, with wet hair, and gleaming
+eyes, and haggard face, at death's door.
+
+An experienced old crone was got to nurse him, and she told Mrs. Vint he
+would live may be three days.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Paul Carrick used to come to the "Packhorse" after Mercy Vint, and,
+finding her sad, asked her what was the matter.
+
+"What should it be," said she, "but the poor gentleman a-dying overhead;
+away from all his friends."
+
+"Let me see him," said Paul.
+
+Mercy took him softly into the room.
+
+"Ay, he is booked," said the farrier, "Doctor has taken too much blood
+out of the man's body. They kill a many that way."
+
+"Alack, Paul! must he die? Can naught be done?" said Mercy, clasping her
+hands.
+
+"I don't say that, neither," said the farrier. "He is a well-made man:
+he is young, _I_ might save him, perhaps, if I had not so many beasts to
+look to. I'll tell you what you do. Make him soup as strong as strong;
+have him watched night and day, and let 'em put a spoonful of warm wine
+into him every hour, and then of soup; egg flip is a good thing, too;
+change his bed-linen, and keep the doctors from him: that is his only
+chance; he is fairly dying of weakness. But I must be off. Farmer
+Blake's cow is down for calving; I must give her an ounce of salts
+before 't is too late."
+
+Mercy Vint scanned the patient closely, and saw that Paul Carrick was
+right. She followed his instructions to the letter, with one exception.
+Instead of trusting to the old woman, of whom she had no very good
+opinion, she had the great arm-chair brought into the sick-room, and
+watched the patient herself by night and day; a gentle hand cooled his
+temples; a gentle hand brought concentrated nourishment to his lips; and
+a mellow voice coaxed him to be good and swallow it. There are voices it
+is not natural to resist; and Griffith learned by degrees to obey this
+one, even when he was half unconscious.
+
+At the end of three days this zealous young nurse thought she discerned
+a slight improvement, and told her mother so. Then the old lady came and
+examined the patient, and shook her head gravely. Her judgment, like her
+daughter's, was influenced by her wishes.
+
+The fact is, both landlord and landlady were now calculating upon
+Griffith's decease. Harry had told her about the money and jewels, and
+the pair had put their heads together, and settled that Griffith was a
+gentleman highwayman, and his spoil would never be reclaimed after his
+decease, but fall to those good Samaritans, who were now nursing him,
+and intended to bury him respectably. The future being thus settled,
+this worthy couple became a little impatient; for Griffith, like Charles
+the Second, was "an unconscionable time dying."
+
+We order dinner to hasten a lingering guest; and, with equal force of
+logic, mine host of the "Packhorse" spoke to White, the village
+carpenter, about a full-sized coffin; and his wife set the old crone to
+make a linen shroud, unobtrusively, in the bake-house.
+
+On the third afternoon of her nursing, Mercy left her patient, and
+called up the crone to tend him. She herself, worn out with fatigue,
+threw herself on a bed in her mother's room, hard by, and soon fell
+asleep.
+
+She had slept about two hours when she was wakened by a strange noise in
+the sick-chamber. A man and a woman quarrelling.
+
+She bounded off the bed, and was in the room directly.
+
+Lo and behold, there were the nurse and the dying man abusing one
+another like pickpockets.
+
+The cause of this little misunderstanding was not far to seek. The old
+crone had brought up her work: _videlicet_, a winding-sheet all but
+finished, and certain strips of glazed muslin about three inches deep.
+She soon completed the winding-sheet, and hung it over two chairs in the
+patient's sight; she then proceeded to double the slips in six, and nick
+them; then she unrolled them, and they were frills, and well adapted to
+make the coming corpse absurd, and divest it of any little dignity the
+King of Terrors might bestow on it.
+
+She was so intent upon her congenial task that she did not observe the
+sick man had awakened, and was viewing her and her work with an
+intelligent but sinister eye.
+
+"What is that you are making?" said he, grimly.
+
+The voice was rather clear, and strong, and seemed so loud and strange
+in that still chamber, that it startled the woman mightily. She uttered
+a little shriek, and then was wroth. "Plague take the man!" said she;
+"how you scared me. Keep quiet, do; and mind your own business." [The
+business of going off the hooks.]
+
+"I ask you what is that you are making," said Griffith, louder, and
+raising himself on his arm.
+
+"Baby's frills," replied the woman, coolly, recovering that contempt for
+the understandings of the dying which marks the veritable crone.
+
+"Ye lie," said Griffith. "And there is a shroud. Who is that for?"
+
+"Who should it be for, thou simple body? Keep quiet, do, till the change
+comes. 'T won't be long now; art too well to last till sundown."
+
+"So 't is for me, is it?" screamed Griffith. "I'll disappoint ye yet.
+Give me my clothes. I'll not lie here to be measured for my grave, ye
+old witch."
+
+"Here's manners!" cackled the indignant crone. "Ye foul-mouthed knave!
+is this how you thank a decent woman for making a comfortable corpse of
+ye, you that has no right to die in your shoes, let a be such dainties
+as muslin neck-ruff, and shroud of good Dutch flax."
+
+At this Griffith discharged a volley in which "vulture," "hag,"
+"blood-sucker," etc., blended with as many oaths: during which Mercy
+came in.
+
+She glided to him, with her dove's eyes full of concern, and laid her
+hand gently on his shoulder. "You'll work yourself a mischief," said
+she; "leave me to scold her. Why, my good Nelly, how could ye be so
+hare-brained? Prithee take all that trumpery away this minute: none here
+needeth it, nor shall not this many a year, please God."
+
+"They want me dead," said Griffith to her, piteously, finding he had got
+one friend, and sunk back on his pillow exhausted.
+
+"So it seems," said Mercy, cunningly. "But I'd balk them finely. I'd up
+and order a beef-steak this minute."
+
+"And shall," said Griffith, with feeble spite. "Leastways, do you order
+it, and I'll eat it: ---- d--n her!"
+
+Sick men are like children; and women soon find that out, and manage
+them accordingly. In ten minutes Mercy brought a good rump-steak to the
+bedside, and said, "Now for 't. Marry come up, with her winding-sheets!"
+
+Thus played upon, and encouraged, the great baby ate more than half the
+steak; and soon after perspired gently, and fell asleep.
+
+Paul Carrick found him breathing gently, with a slight tint of red in
+his cheek, and told Mercy there was a change for the better. "We have
+brought him to a true intermission," said he; "so throw in the bark at
+once."
+
+"What, drench his honor's worship!" said Mercy, innocently. "Nay, send
+thou the medicine, and I'll find womanly ways to get it down him."
+
+Next day came the doctor, and whispered softly to Mrs. Vint, "How are we
+all up stairs?"
+
+"Why couldn't you come afore?" replied Mrs. Vint, crossly. "Here's
+Farrier Carrick stepped in, and curing him out of hand,--the meddlesome
+body."
+
+"A farrier rob me of my patient!" cried the doctor, in high dudgeon.
+
+"Nay, good sir, 't is no fault of mine. This Paul is a sort of a kind of
+a follower of our Mercy's: and she is mistress here, I trow."
+
+"And what hath his farriership prescribed? Friar's balsam, belike."
+
+"Nay, I know not; but you may soon learn, for he is above, physicking
+the gentleman (a pretty gentleman!) and suiting to our Mercy--after a
+manner."
+
+The doctor declined to make one in so mixed a consultation.
+
+"Give me my fee, dame," said he; "and as for this impertinent farrier,
+the patient's blood be on his head; and I'd have him beware the law."
+
+Mrs. Vint went to the stair-foot, and screamed, "Mercy, the good doctor
+wants his fee. Who is to pay it, I wonder?"
+
+"I'll bring it him anon," said a gentle voice; and Mercy soon came down
+and paid it with a willing air that half disarmed professional fury.
+
+"'T is a good lass, dame," said the doctor, when she was gone; "and, by
+the same token, I wish her better mated than to a scrub of a farrier."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Griffith, still weak, but freed of fever, woke one glorious afternoon,
+and heard a bird-like voice humming a quaint old ditty, and saw a field
+of golden wheat through an open window, and seated at that window the
+mellow songstress, Mercy Vint, plying her needle, with lowered lashes
+but beaming face, a picture of health and quiet womanly happiness.
+Things were going to her mind in that sick-room.
+
+He looked at her, and at the golden corn and summer haze beyond, and the
+tide of life seemed to rush back upon him.
+
+"My good lass," said he, "tell me, where am I? for I know not."
+
+Mercy started, and left off singing, then rose and came slowly towards
+him, with her work in her hand.
+
+Innocent joy at this new symptom of convalescence flushed her comely
+features, but she spoke low.
+
+"Good sir, at the 'Packhorse,'" said she, smiling.
+
+"The 'Packhorse'? and where is that?"
+
+"Hard by Allerton village."
+
+"And where is that? not in Cumberland?"
+
+"Nay, in Lancashire, your worship. Why, whence come you that know not
+the 'Packhorse,' nor yet Allerton township? Come you from Cumberland?"
+
+"No matter whence I come. I'm going on board ship,--like my father
+before me."
+
+"Alas, sir, you are not fit; you have been very ill, and partly
+distraught."
+
+She stopped; for Griffith turned his face to the wall, with a deep
+groan. It had all rushed over him in a moment.
+
+Mercy stood still, and worked on, but the water gathered in her eyes at
+that eloquent groan.
+
+By and by Griffith turned round again, with a face of anguish, and filmy
+eyes, and saw her in the same place, standing, working, and pitying.
+
+"What, are _you_ there still?" said he, roughly.
+
+"Ay, sir; but I'll go, sooner than be troublesome. Can I fetch you
+anything?"
+
+"No. Ay, wine; bring me wine to drown it all."
+
+She brought him a pint of wine.
+
+"Pledge me," said he, with a miserable attempt at a smile.
+
+She put the cup to her lips, and sipped a drop or two; but her dove's
+eyes were looking up at him over the liquor all the time. Griffith soon
+disposed of the rest, and asked for more.
+
+"Nay," said she, "but I dare not: the doctor hath forbidden excess in
+drinking."
+
+"The doctor! What doctor?"
+
+"Doctor Paul," said she, demurely. "He hath saved your life, sir, I do
+think."
+
+"Plague take him for that!"
+
+"So say not I."
+
+Here, she left him with an excuse. "'T is milking time, sir; and you
+shall know that I am our dairymaid. I seldom trouble the inn."
+
+Next day she was on the window-seat, working and beaming. The patient
+called to her in peevish accents to put his head higher. She laid down
+her work with a smile, and came and raised his head.
+
+"There, now, that is too high," said he; "how awkward you are."
+
+"I lack experience, sir, but not good will. There, now, is that a little
+better?"
+
+"Ay, a little. I'm sick of lying here. I want to get up. Dost hear what
+I say? I--want--to get up."
+
+"And so you shall. As soon as ever you are fit. To-morrow, perhaps.
+To-day you must e'en be patient. Patience is a rare medicine."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tic, tic, tic! "What a noise they are making down stairs. Go, lass, and
+bid them hold their peace."
+
+Mercy shook her head. "Good lack-a-day! we might as well bid the river
+give over running; but, to be sure, this comes of keeping a hostelry,
+sir. When we had only the farm, we were quiet, and did no ill to no
+one."
+
+"Well, sing me, to drown their eternal buzzing: it worries me dead."
+
+"Me sing! alack, sir, I'm no songster."
+
+"That is false. You sing like a throstle. I dote on music; and, when I
+was delirious, I heard one singing about my bed; I thought it was an
+angel at that time, but 't was only you, my young mistress: and now I
+ask you, you say me nay. That is the way with you all. Plague take the
+girl, and all her d----d, unreasonable, hypocritical sex. I warrant me
+you'd sing, if I wanted to sleep, and dance the Devil to a standstill."
+
+Mercy, instead of flouncing out of the room, stood looking on him with
+maternal eyes, and chuckling like a bird. "That is right, sir: tax us
+all to your heart's content. O, but I'm a joyful woman to hear you; for
+'t is a sure sign of mending when the sick take to rating of their
+nurses."
+
+"In sooth, I am too cross-grained," said Griffith, relenting.
+
+"Not a whit, sir, for my taste. I've been in care for you: and now you
+are a little cross, that maketh me easy."
+
+"Thou art a good soul. Wilt sing me a stave after all?"
+
+"La, you now; how you come back to that. Ay, and with a good heart: for,
+to be sure, 't is a sin to gainsay a sick man. But indeed I am the
+homeliest singer. Methinks 't is time I went down and bade them cook
+your worship's supper."
+
+"Nay, I'll not eat nor sup till I hear thee sing."
+
+"Your will is my law, sir," said Mercy, dryly, and retired to the
+window-seat; that was the first obvious preliminary. Then she fiddled
+with her apron, and hemmed, and waited in hopes a reprieve might come;
+but a peevish, relentless voice demanded the song at intervals.
+
+So then she turned her head carefully away from her hearer, lowered her
+eyes, and, looking the picture of guilt and shame all the time, sang an
+ancient ditty. The poltroon's voice was rich, mellow, clear, and sweet
+as honey; and she sang the notes for the sake of the words, not the
+words for the sake of the notes, as all but Nature's singers do.
+
+The air was grave as well as sweet; for Mercy was of an old Puritan
+stock, and even her songs were not giddy-paced, but solid, quaint, and
+tender: all the more did they reach the soul.
+
+In vain was the blushing cheek averted, and the honeyed lips. The
+ravishing tones set the birds chirping outside, yet filled the room
+within, and the glasses rang in harmony upon the shelf as the sweet
+singer poured out from her heart (so it seemed) the speaking-song:--
+
+    "In vain you tell your parting lover
+    You wish fair winds may waft him over.
+    Alas! what winds can happy prove
+    That bear me far from her I love?
+    Alas! what dangers on the main
+    Can equal those that I sustain
+    From stinted love and cold disdain?" etc.
+
+Griffith beat time with his hand awhile, and his face softened and
+beautified as the melody curled about his heart. But soon it was too
+much for him. He knew the song,--had sung it to Kate Peyton in their
+days of courtship. A thousand memories gushed in upon his soul and
+overpowered him. He burst out sobbing violently, and wept as if his
+heart must break.
+
+"Alas! what have I done?" said Mercy; and the tears ran from her eyes at
+the sight. Then, with native delicacy, she hurried from the room.
+
+What Griffith Gaunt went through that night, in silence, was never known
+but to himself. But the next morning he was a changed man. He was all
+dogged resolution,--put on his clothes unaided, though he could hardly
+stand to do it, and borrowed the landlord's staff, and crawled out a
+smart distance into the sun. "It was kill or cure," said he. "I am to
+live, it seems. Well, then, the past is dead. My life begins again
+to-day."
+
+Hen-like, Mercy soon learned this sally of her refractory duckling, and
+was uneasy. So, for an excuse to watch him, she brought him out his
+money and jewels, and told him she had thought it safest to take charge
+of them.
+
+He thanked her cavalierly, and offered her a diamond ring.
+
+She blushed scarlet, and declined it; and even turned a meekly
+reproachful glance on him with her dove's eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He had a suit of russet made, and put away his fine coat, and forbade
+any one to call him "Your worship." "I am a farmer, like yourselves,"
+said he; "and my name is--Thomas Leicester."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A brain fever either kills the unhappy lover, or else benumbs the very
+anguish that caused it.
+
+And so it was with Griffith. His love got benumbed, and the sense of his
+wrongs vivid. He nursed a bitter hatred of his wife; only, as he could
+not punish her without going near her, and no punishment short of death
+seemed enough for her, he set to work to obliterate her from his very
+memory, if possible. He tried employment: he pottered about the little
+farm, advising and helping,--and that so zealously that the landlord
+retired altogether from that department, and Griffith, instead of he,
+became Mercy's ally, agricultural and bucolical. She was a shepherdess
+to the core, and hated the poor "Packhorse."
+
+For all that, it was her fate to add to its attractions: for Griffith
+bought a _viol da gambo_, and taught her sweet songs, which he
+accompanied with such skill, sometimes, with his voice, that good
+company often looked in on the chance of a good song sweetly sung and
+played.
+
+The sick, in body or mind, are egotistical. Griffith was no exception:
+bent on curing his own deep wound, he never troubled his head about the
+wound he might inflict.
+
+He was grateful to his sweet nurse, and told her so. And his gratitude
+charmed her all the more that it had been rather long in coming.
+
+He found this dove-like creature a wonderful soother: he applied her
+more and more to his sore heart.
+
+As for Mercy, she had been too good and kind to her patient not to take
+a tender interest in his convalescence. Our hearts warm more to those we
+have been kind to, than to those who have been kind to us: and the
+female reader can easily imagine what delicious feelings stole into that
+womanly heart when she saw her pale nursling pick up health and strength
+under her wing, and become the finest, handsomest man in the parish.
+
+Pity and admiration,--where these meet, love is not far behind.
+
+And then this man, who had been cross and rough while he was weak,
+became gentler, kinder, and more deferential to her, the stronger he
+got.
+
+Mrs. Vint saw they were both fond of each other's company, and
+disapproved it. She told Paul Carrick if he had any thought of Mercy he
+had better give over shilly-shallying, for there was another man after
+her.
+
+Paul made light of it, at first. "She has known me too long to take up
+her head with a new-comer," said he. "To be sure I never asked her to
+name the day; but she knows my mind well enough, and I know hers."
+
+"Then you know more than I do," said the mother, ironically.
+
+He thought over this conversation, and very wisely determined not to run
+unnecessary risks. He came up one afternoon, and hunted about for Mercy,
+till he found her milking a cow in the adjoining paddock.
+
+"Well, lass," said he, "I've good news for thee. My old dad says we may
+have his house to live in. So now you and I can yoke next month if ye
+will."
+
+"Me turn the honest man out of his house!" said Mercy, mighty
+innocently.
+
+"Who asks you? He nobbut bargains for the chimney-corner: and you are
+not the girl to begrudge the old man that."
+
+"O no, Paul. But what would father do if I were to leave _his_ house?
+Methinks the farm would go to rack and ruin; he is so wrapped up in his
+nasty public."
+
+"Why, he has got a helper, by all accounts: and if you talk like that,
+you will never wed at all."
+
+"Never is a big word. But I'm too young to marry yet. Jenny, thou jade,
+stand still."
+
+The attack and defence proceeded upon these terms for some time; and the
+defendant had one base advantage; and used it. Her forehead was wedged
+tight against Jenny's ribs, and Paul could not see her face. This, and
+the feminine evasiveness of her replies, irritated him at last.
+
+"Take thy head out o' the coow," said he, roughly, "and answer straight.
+Is all our wooing to go for naught?"
+
+"Wooing? You never said so much to me in all these years as you have
+to-day."
+
+"O, ye knew my mind well enough. There's a many ways of showing the
+heart."
+
+"Speaking out is the best, I trow."
+
+"Why, what do I come here for twice a week, this two years past, if not
+for thee?"
+
+"Ay, for me, and father's ale."
+
+"And thou canst look at me, and tell me that? Ye false, hard-hearted
+hussy. But nay, thou wast never so: 't is this Thomas Leicester hath
+bewitched thee, and set thee against thy true lover."
+
+"Mr. Leicester pays no suit to me," said Mercy, blushing. "He is a right
+civil-spoken gentleman, and you know you saved his life."
+
+"The more fool I. I wish I had known he was going to rob me of my lass's
+heart, I'd have seen him die a hundred times ere I'd have interfered.
+But they say if you save a man's life he'll make you rue it. Mercy, my
+lass, you are well respected in the parish. Take a thought, now: better
+be a farrier's wife than a gentleman's mistress."
+
+Mercy did take her head "out of the cow" at this, and, for once, her
+cheek burned with anger; but the unwonted sentiment died before it could
+find words, and she said, quietly, "I need not be either, against my
+will."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Young Carrick made many such appeals to Mercy Vint; but he could never
+bring her to confess to him that he and she had ever been more than
+friends, or were now anything less than friends. Still he forced her to
+own to herself, that, if she had never seen Thomas Leicester, her quiet
+affection and respect for Carrick would probably have carried her to the
+altar with him.
+
+His remonstrances, sometimes angry, sometimes tearful, awoke her pity,
+which was the grand sentiment of her heart, and disturbed her peace.
+
+Moreover, she studied the two men in her quiet, thoughtful way, and saw
+that Carrick loved her with all his honest, though hitherto tepid
+heart; but Griffith had depths, and could love with more passion than
+ever he had shown for her. "He is not the man to have a fever by reason
+of me," said the poor girl to herself. But I am afraid even this
+attracted her to Griffith. It nettled a woman's soft ambition; which is,
+to be as well loved as ever woman was.
+
+And so things went on, and, as generally happens, the man who was losing
+ground went the very way to lose more. He spoke ill of Griffith behind
+his back: called him a highwayman, a gentleman, an ungrateful,
+undermining traitor. But Griffith never mentioned Carrick; and so, when
+he and Mercy were together, her old follower was pleasingly obliterated,
+and affectionate good-humor reigned. Thus Griffith, _alias_ Thomas,
+became her sunbeam, and Paul her cloud.
+
+But he who had disturbed the peace of others, his own turn came.
+
+One day he found Mercy crying. He sat down beside her, and said, kindly,
+"Why, sweetheart, what is amiss?"
+
+"No great matter," said she; and turned her head away, but did not check
+her tears, for it was new and pleasant to be consoled by Thomas
+Leicester.
+
+"Nay, but tell me, child."
+
+"Well, then, Jessie Carrick has been at me; that is all."
+
+"The vixen! what did she say?"
+
+"Nay, I'm not pleased enow with it to repeat it. She did cast something
+in my teeth."
+
+Griffith pressed her to be more explicit: she declined, with so many
+blushes, that his curiosity was awakened, and he told Mrs. Vint, with
+some heat, that Jess Carrick had been making Mercy cry.
+
+"Like enow," said Mrs. Vint, coolly. "She'll eat her victuals all one
+for that, please God."
+
+"Else I'll wring the cock-nosed jade's neck, next time she comes here,"
+replied Griffith; "but, Dame, I want to know what she can have to say to
+Mercy to make her cry."
+
+Mrs. Vint looked him steadily in the face for some time, and then and
+there decided to come to an explanation. "Ten to one 't is about her
+brother," said she; "you know this Paul is our Mercy's sweetheart."
+
+At these simple words Griffith winced, and his countenance changed
+remarkably. Mrs. Vint observed it, and was all the more resolved to have
+it out with him.
+
+"Her sweetheart!" said Griffith. "Why, I have seen them together a dozen
+of times, and not a word of courtship."
+
+"O, the young men don't make many speeches in these parts. They show
+their hearts by act."
+
+"By act? why, I met them coming home from milking t' other evening.
+Mercy was carrying the pail, brimful; and that oaf sauntered by her
+side, with his hands in his pockets. Was that the act of a lover?"
+
+"I heard of it, sir," said Mrs. Vint, quietly; "and as how you took the
+pail from her, willy nilly, and carried it home. Mercy was vexed about
+it. She told me you panted at the door, and she was a deal fitter to
+carry the pail than you, that is just off a sick-bed, like. But lawk,
+sir, ye can't go by the likes of that. The bachelors here they'd see
+their sweethearts carry the roof into next parish on their backs, like a
+snail, and never put out a hand; 't is not the custom hereaway. But, as
+I was saying, Paul and our Mercy kept company, after a manner: he never
+had the wit to flatter her as should he, nor the stomach to bid her name
+the day and he'd buy the ring; but he talked to her about his sick
+beasts more than he did to any other girl in the parish, and she'd have
+ended by going to Church with him; only you came and put a coolness
+atween 'em."
+
+"I! How?"
+
+"Well, sir, our Mercy is a kind-hearted lass, though I say it, and you
+were sick, and she did nurse you; and that was a beginning. And, to be
+sure, you are a fine personable man, and capital company; and you are
+always about the girl; and, bethink you, sir, she is flesh and blood
+like her neighbors; and they say, once a body has tasted venison-steak,
+it spoils their stomach for oat-porridge. Now that is Mercy's case, I'm
+thinking; not that she ever said as much to me,--she is too reserved.
+But, bless your heart, I'm forced to go about with eyes in my head, and
+watch 'em all a bit,--me that keeps an inn."
+
+Griffith groaned. "I'm a villain!" said he.
+
+"Nay, nay," said Mrs. Vint. "Gentlefolks must be amused, cost what it
+may; but, hoping no offence, sir, the girl was a good friend to you in
+time of sickness; and so was this Paul, for that matter."
+
+"She was," cried Griffith; "God bless her. How can I ever repay her?"
+
+"Well, sir," said Mrs. Vint, "if that comes from your heart, you might
+take our Mercy apart, and tell her you like her very well, but not
+enough to marry a farmer's daughter,--don't say an innkeeper's daughter,
+or you'll be sure to offend her. She is bitter against the 'Packhorse.'
+Says you, 'This Paul is an honest lad, turn your heart back to him.'
+And, with that, mount your black horse and ride away, and God speed you,
+sir; we shall often talk of you at the 'Packhorse,' and naught but
+good."
+
+Griffith gave the woman his hand, and his breast labored visibly.
+
+Jealousy was ingrained in the man. Mrs. Vint had pricked his conscience,
+but she had wounded his foible. He was not in love with Mercy, but he
+esteemed her, and liked her, and saw her value, and, above all, could
+not bear another man should have her.
+
+Now this gave the matter a new turn. Mrs. Vint had overcome her dislike
+to him long ago: still he was not her favorite. But his giving her his
+hand with a gentle pressure, and his manifest agitation, rather won her;
+and, as uneducated women are your true weathercocks, she went about
+directly. "To be sure," said she, "our Mercy is too good for the likes
+of him. She is not like Harry and me. She has been well brought up by
+her Aunt Prudence, as was governess in a nobleman's house. She can read
+and write, and cast accounts; good at her sampler, and can churn and
+make cheeses, and play of the viol, and lead the psalm in church, and
+dance a minuet, she can, with any lady in the land. As to her nursing in
+time of sickness, that I leave to you, sir."
+
+"She is an angel," cried Griffith, "and my benefactress: no man living
+is good enough for her." And he went away, visibly discomposed.
+
+Mrs. Vint repeated this conversation to Mercy, and told her Thomas
+Leicester was certainly in love with her. "Shouldst have seen his face,
+girl, when I told him Paul and you were sweethearts. 'T was as if I had
+run a knife in his heart."
+
+Mercy murmured a few words of doubt; but she kissed her mother
+eloquently, and went about, rosy and beaming, all that afternoon.
+
+As for Griffith, his gratitude and his jealousy were now at war, and
+caused him a severe mental struggle.
+
+Carrick, too, was spurred by jealousy, and came every day to the house,
+and besieged Mercy; and Griffith, who saw them together, and did not
+hear Mercy's replies, was excited, irritated, alarmed.
+
+Mrs. Vint saw his agitation, and determined to bring matters to a
+climax. She was always giving him a side thrust; and, at last, she told
+him plainly that he was not behaving like a man. "If the girl is not
+good enough for you, why make a fool of her, and set her against a good
+husband?" And when he replied she was good enough for any man in
+England, "Then," said she, "why not show your respect for her as Paul
+Carrick does? He likes her well enough to go to church with her."
+
+With the horns of this dilemma she so gored Kate Peyton's husband that,
+at last, she and Paul Carrick, between them, drove him out of his
+conscience.
+
+So he watched his opportunity and got Mercy alone. He took her hand and
+told her he loved her, and that she was his only comfort in the world,
+and he found he could not live without her.
+
+At this she blushed and trembled a little, and leaned her brow upon his
+shoulder, and was a happy creature for a few moments.
+
+So far, fluently enough; but then he began to falter and stammer, and
+say that for certain reasons he could not marry at all. But if she could
+be content with anything short of that, he would retire with her into a
+distant country, and there, where nobody could contradict him, would
+call her his wife, and treat her as his wife, and pay his debt of
+gratitude to her by a life of devotion.
+
+As he spoke, her brow retired an inch or two from his shoulder; but she
+heard him quietly out, and then drew back and confronted him, pale, and,
+to all appearance, calm.
+
+"Call things by their right names," said she. "What you offer me this
+day, in my father's house, is, to be your mistress. Then--God forgive
+you, Thomas Leicester."
+
+With this oblique and feminine reply, and one look of unfathomable
+reproach from her soft eyes, she turned her back on him; but,
+remembering her manners, courtesied at the door; and so retired; and
+unpretending Virtue lent her such true dignity that he was struck dumb,
+and made no attempt to detain her.
+
+I think her dignified composure did not last long when she was alone; at
+least, the next time he saw her, her eyes were red; his heart smote him,
+and he began to make excuses and beg her forgiveness. But she
+interrupted him. "Don't speak to me no more, if you please, sir," said
+she, civilly, but coldly.
+
+Mercy, though so quiet and inoffensive, had depth and strength of
+character. She never told her mother what Thomas Leicester had proposed
+to her. Her honest pride kept her silent, for one thing. She would not
+have it known she had been insulted. And, besides that, she loved Thomas
+Leicester still, and could not expose or hurt him. Once there was an
+Israelite without guile, though you and I never saw him; and once there
+was a Saxon without bile, and her name was Mercy Vint. In this heart of
+gold the affections were stronger than the passions. She was deeply
+wounded, and showed it in a patient way to him who had wounded her, but
+to none other. Her conduct to him in public and private was truly
+singular, and would alone have stamped her a remarkable character. She
+declined all communication with him in private, and avoided him steadily
+and adroitly; but in public she spoke to him, sang with him when she was
+asked, and treated him much the same as before. He could see a subtle
+difference, but nobody else could.
+
+This generosity, coupled with all she had done for him before,
+penetrated his heart and filled him with admiration and remorse. He
+yielded to Mrs. Vint's suggestions, and told her she was right; he would
+tear himself away, and never see the dear "Packhorse" again. "But oh!
+Dame," said he, "'t is a sorrowful thing to be alone in the world again,
+and naught to do. If I had but a farm, and a sweet little inn like this
+to go to, perchance my heart would not be quite so heavy as 't is this
+day at thoughts of parting from thee and thine."
+
+"Well, sir," said Mrs. Vint, "if that is all, there is the 'Vine' to let
+at this moment. 'T is a better place of business than this; and some
+meadows go with it, and land to be had in the parish."
+
+"I'll ride and see it," said Griffith, eagerly: then, dejectedly, "but,
+alas! I have no heart to keep an inn without somebody to help me, and
+say a kind word now and then. Ah! Mercy Vint, thou hast spoiled me for
+living alone."
+
+This vacillation exhausted Mrs. Vint's patience. "What are ye sighing
+about, ye foolish man?" said she, contemptuously; "you have got it all
+your own way. If 't is a wife ye want, ask Mercy, and don't take a nay.
+If ye would have a housekeeper, you need not want one long. I'll be
+bound there's plenty of young women where you came from as would be glad
+to keep the 'Vine' under you. And, if you come to that, our Mercy is a
+treasure on the farm, but she is no help in the inn, no more than a wax
+figure. She never brought us a shilling, till you came and made her sing
+to your bass-viol. Nay, what you want is a smart, handsome girl, with a
+quick eye and a ready tongue, and one as can look a man in the face, and
+not given to love nor liquor. Don't you know never such a one?"
+
+"Not I. Humph, to be sure there is Caroline Ryder. She is handsome, and
+hath a good wit. She is a lady's maid."
+
+"That's your woman, if she'll come. And to be sure she will; for to be
+mistress of an inn, that's a lady's maid's Paradise."
+
+"She would have come a few months ago, and gladly. I'll write to her."
+
+"Better talk to her, and persuade her."
+
+"I'll do that, too; but I must write to her first."
+
+"So do then; but whatever you do, don't shilly-shally no longer. If
+wrestling was shilly-shallying, methinks you'd bear the bell, you or
+else Paul Carrick. Why, all his trouble comes on 't. He might have wed
+our Mercy a year agone for the asking. Shilly-shally belongs to us that
+be women. 'T is despicable in a man."
+
+Thus driven on all sides, Griffith rode and inspected the "Vine" (it was
+only seven miles off); and, after the usual chaffering, came to terms
+with the proprietor.
+
+He fixed the day for his departure, and told Mrs. Vint he must ride into
+Cumberland first to get some money, and also to see about a housekeeper.
+
+He made no secret of all this; and, indeed, was not without hopes Mercy
+would relent, or perhaps be jealous of this housekeeper. But the only
+visible effect was to make her look pale and sad. She avoided him in
+private as before.
+
+Harry Vint was loud in his regrets, and Carrick openly exultant.
+Griffith wrote to Caroline Ryder, and addressed the letter in a feigned
+hand, and took it himself to the nearest post-town.
+
+The letter came to hand, and will appear in that sequence of events on
+which I am now about to enter.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+If Griffith Gaunt suffered anguish, he inflicted agony. Mrs. Gaunt was a
+high-spirited, proud, and sensitive woman; and he crushed her with foul
+words. Leonard was a delicate, vain, and sensitive man, accustomed to
+veneration. Imagine such a man hurled to the ground, and trampled upon.
+
+Griffith should not have fled; he should have stayed and enjoyed his
+vengeance on these two persons. It might have cooled him a little had he
+stopped and seen the immediate consequences of his savage act.
+
+The priest rose from the ground, pale as ashes, and trembling with fear
+and hate.
+
+The lady was leaning, white as a sheet, against a tree, and holding it
+with her very nails for a little support.
+
+They looked round at one another,--a piteous glance of anguish and
+horror. Then Mrs. Gaunt turned and flung her arm round so that the palm
+of her hand, high raised, confronted Leonard. I am thus particular
+because it was a gesture grand and terrible as the occasion that called
+it forth,--a gesture that _spoke_, and said, "Put the whole earth and
+sea between us forever after this."
+
+The next moment she bent her head and rushed away, cowering and wringing
+her hands. She made for her house as naturally as a scared animal for
+its lair; but, ere she could reach it, she tottered under the shame, the
+distress, and the mere terror, and fell fainting, with her fair forehead
+on the grass.
+
+Caroline Ryder was crouched in the doorway, and did not see her come
+out of the grove, but only heard a rustle; and then saw her proud
+mistress totter forward and lie, white, senseless, helpless, at her very
+feet.
+
+Ryder uttered a scream, but did not lose her presence of mind. She
+instantly kneeled over Mrs. Gaunt, and loosened her stays with quick and
+dexterous hand.
+
+It was very like the hawk perched over and clawing the ringdove she has
+struck down.
+
+But people with brains are never quite inhuman: a drop of lukewarm pity
+entered even Ryder's heart as she assisted her victim. She called no one
+to help her; for she saw something very serious had happened, and she
+felt sure Mrs. Gaunt would say something imprudent in that dangerous
+period when the patient recovers consciousness but has not all her wits
+about her. Now Ryder was equally determined to know her mistress's
+secrets, and not to share the knowledge with any other person.
+
+It was a long swoon; and, when Mrs. Gaunt came to, the first thing she
+saw was Ryder leaning over her, with a face of much curiosity, and some
+concern.
+
+In that moment of weakness the poor lady, who had been so roughly
+handled, saw a woman close to her, and being a little kind to her; so
+what did she do but throw her arms round Ryder's neck and burst out
+sobbing as if her heart would break.
+
+Then that unprincipled woman shed a tear or two with her, half
+crocodile, half impulse.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt not only cried on her servant's neck; she
+justified Ryder's forecast by speaking unguardedly: "I've been
+insulted--insulted--insulted!"
+
+But, even while uttering these words, she was recovering her pride: so
+the first "insulted" seemed to come from a broken-hearted child, the
+second from an indignant lady, the third from a wounded queen.
+
+No more words than this; but she rose, with Ryder's assistance, and
+went, leaning on that faithful creature's shoulder, to her own bedroom.
+There she sank into a chair and said, in a voice to melt a stone, "My
+child! Bring me my little Rose."
+
+Ryder ran and fetched the little girl; and Mrs. Gaunt held out both arms
+to her, angelically, and clasped her so passionately and piteously to
+her bosom, that Rose cried for fear, and never forgot the scene all her
+days; and Mrs. Ryder, who was secretly a mother, felt a genuine twinge
+of pity and remorse. Curiosity, however, was the dominant sentiment. She
+was impatient to get all these convulsions over, and learn what had
+actually passed between Mr. and Mrs. Gaunt.
+
+She waited till her mistress appeared calmer; and then, in soft,
+caressing tones, asked her what had happened.
+
+"Never ask me that question again," cried Mrs. Gaunt, wildly. Then, with
+inexpressible dignity, "My good girl, you have done all you could for
+me; now you must leave me alone with my daughter, and my God, who knows
+the truth."
+
+Ryder courtesied and retired, burning with baffled curiosity.
+
+Towards dusk Thomas Leicester came into the kitchen, and brought her
+news with a vengeance. He told her and the other maids that the Squire
+had gone raving mad, and fled the country. "O lasses," said he, "if you
+had seen the poor soul's face, a-riding headlong through the fair, all
+one as if it was a ploughed field; 't was white as your smocks; and his
+eyes glowering on 't other world. We shall ne'er see that face alive
+again."
+
+And this was her doing.
+
+It surprised and overpowered Ryder. She threw her apron over her head,
+and went off in hysterics, and betrayed her lawless attachment to every
+woman in the kitchen,--she who was so clever at probing others.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This day of violent emotions was followed by a sullen and sorrowful
+gloom.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt kept her bedroom, and admitted nobody; till, at last, the
+servants consulted together, and sent little Rose to knock at her door,
+with a basin of chocolate, while they watched on the stairs.
+
+"It's only me, mamma," said Rose.
+
+"Come in, my precious," said a trembling voice; and so Rose got in with
+her chocolate.
+
+The next day she was sent for early; and at noon Mrs. Gaunt and Rose
+came down stairs; but their appearance startled the whole household.
+
+The mother was dressed all in black, and so was her daughter, whom she
+led by the hand. Mrs. Gaunt's face was pale, and sad, and stern,--a
+monument of deep suffering and high-strung resolution.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It soon transpired that Griffith had left his home for good; and friends
+called on Mrs. Gaunt to slake their curiosity under the mask of
+sympathy.
+
+Not one of them was admitted. No false excuses were made. "My mistress
+sees no one for the present," was the reply.
+
+Curiosity, thus baffled, took up the pen; but was met with a short,
+unvarying formula: "There is an unhappy misunderstanding between my
+husband and me. But I shall neither accuse him behind his back, nor
+justify myself."
+
+Thus the proud lady carried herself before the world; but secretly she
+writhed. A wife abandoned is a woman insulted, and the wives--that are
+not abandoned--cluck.
+
+Ryder was dejected for a time, and, though not honestly penitent,
+suffered some remorse at the miserable issue of her intrigues. But her
+elastic nature soon shook it off, and she felt a certain satisfaction at
+having reduced Mrs. Gaunt to her own level. This disarmed her hostility.
+She watched her as keenly as ever, but out of pure curiosity.
+
+One thing puzzled her strangely. Leonard did not visit the house; nor
+could she even detect any communication between the parties.
+
+At last, one day, her mistress told her to put on her hat, and go to
+Father Leonard.
+
+Ryder's eyes sparkled; and she was soon equipped. Mrs. Gaunt put a
+parcel and a letter into her hands. Ryder no sooner got out of her sight
+than she proceeded to tamper with the letter. But to her just
+indignation she found it so ingeniously folded and sealed that she could
+not read a word.
+
+The parcel, however, she easily undid, and it contained forty pounds in
+gold and small notes. "Oho! my lady," said Ryder.
+
+She was received by Leonard with a tender emotion he in vain tried to
+conceal.
+
+On reading the letter his features contracted sharply, and he seemed to
+suffer agony. He would not even open the parcel. "You will take that
+back," said he, bitterly.
+
+"What, without a word?"
+
+"Without a word. But I will write, when I am able."
+
+"Don't be long, sir," suggested Ryder. "I am sure my mistress is
+wearying for you. Consider, sir, she is all alone now."
+
+"Not so much alone as I am," said the priest, "nor half so unfortunate."
+
+And with this he leaned his head despairingly on his hand, and motioned
+to Ryder to leave him.
+
+"Here's a couple of fools," said she to herself, as she went home.
+
+That very evening Thomas Leicester caught her alone, and asked her to
+marry him.
+
+She stared at first, and then treated it as a jest. "You come at the
+wrong time, young man," said she. "Marriage is put out of countenance.
+No, no, I will never marry after what I have seen in this house."
+
+Leicester would not take this for an answer, and pressed her hard.
+
+"Thomas," said this plausible jade, "I like you very well; but I
+couldn't leave my mistress in her trouble. Time to talk of marrying when
+master comes here alive and well."
+
+"Nay," said Leicester, "my only chance is while he is away. You care
+more for his little finger than for my whole body; that they all say."
+
+"Who says?"
+
+"Jane, and all the lasses."
+
+"You simple man, they want you for themselves; that is why they belie
+me."
+
+"Nay, nay; I saw how you carried on, when I brought word he was gone.
+You let your heart out for once. Don't take me for a fool. I see how 't
+is, but I'll face it, for I worship the ground you walk on. Take a
+thought, my lass. What good can come of your setting your heart on
+_him_? I'm young, I'm healthy, and not ugly enough to set the dogs
+a-barking. I've got a good place; I love you dear; I'll cure you of that
+fancy, and make you as happy as the day is long. I'll try and make you
+as happy as you will make me, my beauty."
+
+He was so earnest, and so much in love, that Mrs. Ryder pitied him, and
+wished her husband was in heaven.
+
+"I am very sorry, Tom," said she, softly; "dear me, I did not think you
+cared so much for me as this. I must just tell you the truth. I have got
+one in my own country, and I've promised him. I don't care to break my
+word; and, if I did, he is such a man, I am sure he would kill me for
+it. Indeed he has told me as much, more than once or twice."
+
+"Killing is a game that two can play at."
+
+"Ah! but 't is an ugly game; and I'll have no hand in it. And--don't you
+be angry with me, Tom--I've known him longest, and--I love him best."
+
+By pertinacity and vanity in lying, she hit the mark at last. Tom
+swallowed this figment whole.
+
+"That is but reason," said he. "I take my answer, and I wish ye both
+many happy days together, and well spent." With this he retired, and
+blubbered a good hour in an outhouse.
+
+Tom avoided the castle, and fell into low spirits. He told his mother
+all, and she advised him to change the air. "You have been too long in
+one place," said she; "I hate being too long in one place myself."
+
+This fired Tom's gypsy blood, and he said he would travel to-morrow, if
+he could but scrape together money enough to fill a pedler's pack.
+
+He applied for a loan in several quarters, but was denied in all.
+
+At last the poor fellow summoned courage to lay his case before Mrs.
+Gaunt.
+
+Ryder's influence procured him an interview. She took him into the
+drawing-room, and bade him wait there. By and by a pale lady, all in
+black, glided into the room.
+
+He pulled his front hair, and began to stammer something or other.
+
+She interrupted him. "Ryder has told me," said she, softly. "I am sorry
+for you; and I will do what you require. And, to be sure, we need no
+gamekeeper here now."
+
+She then gave him some money, and said she would look him up a few
+trifles besides, to put in his pack.
+
+Tom's mother helped him to lay out this money to advantage; and, one
+day, he called at Hernshaw, pack and all, to bid farewell.
+
+The servants all laid out something with him for luck; and Mrs. Gaunt
+sent for him, and gave him a gold thimble, and a pound of tea, and
+several yards of gold lace, slightly tarnished, and a Queen Anne's
+guinea.
+
+He thanked her heartily. "Ay, Dame," said he, "you had always an open
+hand, married or single. My heart is heavy at leaving you. But I miss
+the Squire's kindly face too. Hernshaw is not what it used to be."
+
+Mrs. Gaunt turned her head aside, and the man could see his words had
+made her cry. "My good Thomas," said she, at last, "you are going to
+travel the country: you might fall in with him."
+
+"I might," said Leicester, incredulously.
+
+"God grant you may; and, if ever you should, think of your poor mistress
+and give him--this." She put her finger in her bosom and drew out a
+bullet wrapped in silver paper. "You will never lose this," said she. "I
+value it more than gold or silver. O, if ever you _should_ see him,
+think of me and my daughter, and just put it in his hand without a
+word."
+
+As he went out of the room Ryder intercepted him, and said, "Mayhap you
+will fall in with our master. If ever you do, tell him he is under a
+mistake, and the sooner he comes home the better."
+
+Tom Leicester departed; and, for days and weeks, nothing occurred to
+break the sorrowful monotony of the place.
+
+But the mourner had written to her old friend and confessor, Francis;
+and, after some delay, involuntary on his part, he came to see her.
+
+They were often closeted together, and spoke so low that Ryder could not
+catch a word.
+
+Francis also paid several visits to Leonard; and the final result of
+these visits was that the latter left England.
+
+Francis remained at Hernshaw as long as he could; and it was Mrs.
+Gaunt's hourly prayer that Griffith might return while Francis was with
+her.
+
+He did, at her earnest request, stay much longer than he had intended;
+but, at length, he was obliged to fix next Monday to return to his own
+place.
+
+It was on Thursday he made this arrangement; but the very next day the
+postman brought a letter to the Castle, thus addressed:--
+
+        "To Mistress Caroline Ryder,
+    Living Servant with Griffith Gaunt, Esq.,
+        at his house, called Hernshaw Castle,
+          near Wigeonmoor,
+            in the county of Cumberland.
+              These with speed."
+
+The address was in a feigned hand. Ryder opened it in the kitchen, and
+uttered a scream.
+
+Instantly three female throats opened upon her with questions.
+
+She looked them contemptuously in their faces, put the letter into her
+pocket, and, soon after, slipped away to her own room, and locked
+herself in while she read it. It ran thus:--
+
+     "GOOD MISTRESS RYDER,--I am alive yet, by the blessing; though
+     somewhat battered; being now risen from a fever, wherein I lost
+     my wits for a time. And, on coming to myself, I found them
+     making of my shroud; whereby you shall learn how near I was to
+     death. And all this I owe to that false, perjured woman that
+     was my wife, and is your mistress.
+
+     "Know that I have donned russet, and doffed gentility; for I
+     find a heavy heart's best cure is occupation. I have taken a
+     wayside inn, and think of renting a small farm, which two
+     things go well together. Now you are, of all those I know, most
+     fitted to manage the inn, and I the farm. You were always my
+     good friend; and, if you be so still, then I charge you most
+     solemnly that you utter no word to any living soul about this
+     letter; but meet me privately where we can talk fully of these
+     matters; for I will not set foot in Hernshaw Castle. Moreover,
+     she told me once 't was hers; and so be it. On Friday I shall
+     lie at Stapleton, and the next day, by an easy journey, to the
+     place where I once was so happy.
+
+     "So then at seven of the clock on Saturday evening, be the same
+     wet or dry, prithee come to the gate of the grove unbeknown,
+     and speak to
+
+                        "Your faithful friend
+                            and most unhappy master,
+
+                                "GRIFFITH GAUNT.
+
+     "Be secret as the grave. Would I were in it."
+
+This letter set Caroline Ryder in a tumult. Griffith alive and well, and
+set against his wife, and coming to her for assistance!
+
+After the first agitation, she read it again, and weighed every
+syllable. There was one book she had studied more than most of us,--the
+Heart. And she soon read Griffith's in this letter. It was no
+love-letter; he really intended business; but, weak in health and
+broken in spirit, and alone in the world, he naturally turned to one who
+had confessed an affection for him, and would therefore be true to his
+interests, and study his happiness.
+
+The proposal was every way satisfactory to Mrs. Ryder. To be mistress of
+an inn, and have servants under her instead of being one herself. And
+then, if Griffith and she began as allies in business, she felt very
+sure she could make herself, first necessary to him, and then dear to
+him.
+
+She was so elated she could hardly contain herself; and all her
+fellow-servants remarked that Mrs. Ryder had heard good news.
+
+Saturday came, and never did hours seem to creep so slowly.
+
+But at last the sun set, and the stars come out. There was no moon.
+Ryder opened the window and looked out; it was an admirable night for an
+assignation.
+
+She washed her face again, put on her gray silk gown, and purple
+petticoat,--_Mrs. Gaunt_ had given them to her,--and, at the last
+moment, went and made up her mistress's fire, and put out everything she
+thought could be wanted, and, five minutes after seven o'clock, tied a
+scarlet handkerchief over her head, and stepped out at the back door.
+
+What with her coal-black hair, so streaked with red, her black eyes,
+flashing in the starlight, and her glowing cheeks, she looked
+bewitching.
+
+And, thus armed for conquest, wily, yet impassioned, she stole out, with
+noiseless foot and beating heart, to her appointment with her imprudent
+master.
+
+
+
+
+BAD SYMPTOMS.
+
+
+Mons. Alphonse Karr writes as follows in his _Les Femmes_:--"When I wish
+to become invisible, I have a certain rusty and napless old hat, which I
+put on as Prince Lutin in the fairy tale puts on his chaplet of roses; I
+join to this a certain coat very much out at elbows: _eh bien_! I become
+invisible! Nobody on the street sees me, nobody recognizes me, nobody
+speaks to me."
+
+And yet I do not doubt that the majority of M. Karr's friends and
+acquaintances, as is the case with the friends and acquaintances of
+nearly every one else, are well-disposed, good-hearted, average persons,
+who would be heartily ashamed, if it could be brought home to them, of
+having given him the go-by under such circumstances. What, then, was the
+difficulty? In what consisted this change in the man's appearance, so
+signal that he trusted to it as a disguise? What was there in hat and
+coat thus to eclipse the whole personality of the man? There is a
+certain mystery in the philosophy of clothes too deep for me to fathom.
+The matter has been descanted upon before; the "Hávámal, or High Song of
+Odin," the Essays of Montaigne, the "Sartor" of Thomas Carlyle, all
+dwell with acuteness upon this topic; but they merely give instances,
+they do not interpret. I am continually meeting with things in my
+intercourse with the world which I cannot reconcile with any theories
+society professes to be governed by. How shall I explain them? How, for
+example, shall I interpret the following cases, occurring within my own
+experience and under my own observation?
+
+I live in the country, and am a farmer. If I lived in the city and
+occupied myself with the vending of merchandise, I should, in busy
+times at least, now and then help my clerks to sell my own goods,--if I
+could,--make up the packages, mark them, and attend to having them
+delivered. Solomon Gunnybags himself has done as much, upon occasion,
+and society has praised Solomon Gunnybags for such a display of devotion
+to his business. But I am a farmer, not a merchant; and, though not able
+to handle the plough, I am not above my business. One day during the
+past summer, while my peach-orchard was in full bearing, my foreman, who
+attends market for me, fell sick. The peaches would not tarry in their
+ripening, the pears were soft and blushing as sweet sixteen as they lay
+upon their shelves, the cantelopes grew mellow upon their vines, the
+tomato-beds called loudly to be relieved, and the very beans were
+beginning to rattle in their pods for ripeness. I am not a good
+salesman, and I was very sorry my foreman could not help me out; but
+something must be done, so I made up a load of fruit and vegetables,
+took them to the city to market, and sold them. While I was busily
+occupied measuring peaches by the half and quarter peck, stolidly deaf
+to the objurgations of my neighbor huckster on my right, to whom some
+one had given bad money, and equally impervious to the blandishments of
+an Irish customer in front of me, who could not be persuaded I meant to
+require the price I had set upon my goods, my friend Mrs. Entresol came
+along, trailing her parasol with one gloved hand, with the other
+daintily lifting her skirts out of the dust and dirt. Bridget, following
+her, toiled under the burden of a basket of good things. Mrs. Entresol
+is an old acquaintance of mine, and I esteem her highly. Entresol has
+just obtained a partnership in the retail dry-goods house for which he
+has been a clerk during so many years; the firm is prosperous, and, if
+he continues to be as industrious and prudent as he has been, I do not
+doubt but my friend will in the course of time be able to retire from
+business with money enough to buy a farm. My pears seemed to please Mrs.
+Entresol; she approached my stall, looked at them, took one up. "What is
+the price of your--" she began to inquire, when, looking up, she
+recognized the vender of the coveted fruit. What in the world came over
+the woman? I give you my word that, instead of speaking to me in her
+usual way, and telling me how glad she was to see me, she started as if
+something had stung her; she stammered, she blushed, and stood there
+with the pear in her fingers, staring at me in the blankest way
+imaginable. I must confess a little of her confusion imparted itself to
+me. For a moment the thought entered my mind that I had, in selling my
+own pears and peaches, been guilty of some really criminal action, such
+as sheep-stealing, lying, or slandering, and it was not pleasant to be
+caught in the act. But only for a moment; then I replied, "Good morning,
+Mrs. Entresol"; and, stating the price, proceeded to wait upon another
+customer.
+
+My highly business-like tone and manner rather added to my charming
+friend's confusion, but she rallied surprisingly, put out her little
+gloved hand to me, and exclaimed in the gayest voice: "Ah, you eccentric
+man! What will you do next? To think of you selling in the market, _just
+like a huckster_! You! I must tell Mrs. Belle Étoile of it. It is really
+one of the best jokes I know of! And how well you act your part,
+too,--just as if it came naturally to you," etc., etc.
+
+Thus she ran on, laughing, and interfering with my sales, protesting all
+the while that I was the greatest original in all her circle of
+acquaintance. Of course it would have been idle for me to controvert her
+view of the matter, so I quietly left her to the enjoyment of such an
+excellent joke, and was rather glad when at last she went away. I could
+not help wondering, however, after she was gone, why it was she should
+think I joked in retailing the products of my farm, any more than Mr.
+Entresol in retailing the goods piled upon his shelves and counters.
+And why should one be "original" because he handles a peck-measure,
+while another is _comme il faut_ in wielding a yardstick? Why did M.
+Karr's thread-bare coat and shocking bad hat fling such a cloud of dust
+in the eyes of passing friends, that they could not see him,
+
+    "Ne wot who that he ben?"
+
+Now for another case. There is Tom Pinch's wife. Tom is an excellent
+person, in every respect, and so is his wife. I don't know any woman
+with a light purse and four children who manages better, or is possessed
+of more sterling qualities, than Mrs. Tom Pinch. She is industrious,
+amiable, intelligent; pious as father Æneas; in fact, the most devoted
+creature to preachers and sermons that ever worked for a fair. She would
+be very angry with you if you were to charge her with entertaining the
+doctrine of "justification by works," but I seriously incline to believe
+she imagines that seat of hers in that cushioned pew one of the
+mainstays to her hope of heaven. And yet, at this crisis, Mrs. Tom Pinch
+can't go to church! There is an insurmountable obstacle which keeps the
+poor little thing at home every Sunday, and renders her (comparatively)
+miserable the rest of the week. She takes a course of Jay's Sermons, to
+be sure, but she takes it disconsolately, and has serious fears of
+becoming a backslider. What is it closes the church door to her? Not her
+health, for that is excellent. It is not the baby, for her nurse, small
+as she is, is quite trustworthy. It is not any trouble about dinner, for
+nobody has a better cook than Mrs. Tom Pinch,--a paragon cook, in fact,
+who seems to have strayed down into her kitchen from that remote
+antiquity when servants were servants. No, none of these things keeps
+the pious wife at home. None of these things restrains her from taking
+that quiet walk up the aisle and occupying that seat in the corner of
+the pew, there to dismiss all thought of worldly care, and fit her good
+little soul for the pleasures of real worship, and that prayerful
+meditation and sweet communion with holy things that only such good
+little women know the blessings of;--none of these things at all. It is
+Mrs. Tom Pinch's _bonnet_ that keeps her at home,--her last season's
+bonnet! Strike, but hear me, ladies, for the thing is simply so. Tom's
+practice is not larger than he can manage; Tom's family need quite all
+he can make to keep them; and he has not yet been able this season to
+let Mrs. Tom have the money required to provide a new fall bonnet. She
+will get it before long, of course, for Tom is a good provider, and he
+knows his wife to be economical. Still he cannot see--poor innocent that
+he is!--why his dear little woman cannot just as well go to church in
+her last fall's bonnet, which, to his purblind vision, is quite as good
+as new. What, Tom! don't you know the dear little woman has too much
+love for you, too much pride in you, to make a fright of herself, upon
+any consideration? Don't you know that, were your wife to venture to
+church in that hideous condition of which a last year's bonnet is the
+efficient and unmistakable symbol, Mrs. A., Mrs. B., Mrs. C., all the
+ladies of the church, in fact, would remark it at once,--would sit in
+judgment upon it like a quilt committee at an industrial fair, and would
+unanimously decide, either that you were a close-fisted brute to deny
+such a sweet little helpmeet the very necessaries of life, or that your
+legal practice was falling off so materially you could no longer support
+your family? O no, Tom, your wife must not venture out to church in her
+last season's bonnet! She is not without a certain sort of courage, to
+be sure; she has stood by death-beds without trembling; she has endured
+poverty and its privations, illness, the pains and perils of childbirth,
+and many another hardship, with a brave cheerfulness such as you can
+wonder at, and never dream of imitating; but there is a limit even to
+the boldest woman's daring; and, when it comes to the exposure and
+ridicule consequent upon defying the world in a last season's bonnet,
+that limit is reached.
+
+I have one other case to recount, and, in my opinion, the most
+lamentable one of all. Were I to tell you the real name of my friend,
+Mrs. Belle Étoile, you would recognize one of the most favored daughters
+of America, as the newspapers phrase it. Rich, intelligent, highly
+cultivated, at the tip-top of the social ladder, esteemed by a wide
+circle of such friends as it is an honor to know, loving and beloved by
+her noble husband,--every one knows Mrs. Étoile by reputation at least.
+Happy in her pretty, well-behaved children, she is the polished
+reflection of all that is best and most refined in American society. She
+is, indeed, a noble woman, as pure and unsullied in the instincts of her
+heart, as she is bright and glowing in the display of her intellect. Her
+wit is brilliant; her _mots_ are things to be remembered; her opinions
+upon art and life have at once a wide currency and a substantial value;
+and, more than all, her modest charities, of which none knows save
+herself, are as deep and as beneficent as those subterranean fountains
+which well up in a thousand places to refresh and gladden the earth.
+Nevertheless, and in spite of her genuine practical wisdom, her lofty
+idealism of thought, her profound contempt for all the weak shams and
+petty frivolities of life, Mrs. Belle Étoile is a slave! "They who
+submit to drink as another pleases, make themselves his slaves," says
+that Great Mogul of sentences, Dr. Johnson; and in this sense Mrs. Belle
+Étoile is a slave indeed. The fetters gall her, but she has not courage
+to shake them off. Her mistress is her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Colisle,
+a coarse, vulgar, half-bred woman, whose husband acquired a sudden
+wealth from contracts and petroleum speculations, and who has in
+consequence set herself up for a leader of _ton_. A certain downright
+persistence and energy of character, acquired, it may be, in bullying
+the kitchen-maids at the country tavern where she began life, a certain
+lavish expenditure of her husband's profits, the vulgar display and
+profusion at her numerous balls, and her free-handed patronage of
+_modistes_ and shop-keepers, have secured to Mrs. Colisle a sort of
+Drummond-light position among the stars of fashion. She imports
+patterns, and they become the mode; her caterer invents dishes, and they
+are copied throughout the obeisant world. There are confections _à la_
+Colisle; the confectioners utter new editions of them. There is a
+Colisle head-dress, a Colisle pomade, a Colisle hat,--the world wears
+and uses them. Thus, Mrs. Colisle has set herself up as Mrs. Belle
+Étoile's rival; and that unfortunate lady, compelled by those
+_noblesse-oblige_ principles which control the chivalry of fashion,
+takes up the unequal gage, and enters the lists against her. The result
+is, that Mrs. Belle Étoile has become the veriest slave in Christendom.
+Whatever the other woman's whims and extravagances, Mrs. Belle Étoile is
+their victim. Her taste revolts, but her pride of place compels
+obedience. She cannot yield, she will not follow; and so Mrs. Colisle,
+with diabolical ingenuity, constrains her to run a course that gives her
+no honor and pays her no compensation. She scorns Mrs. Colisle's ways,
+she loathes her fashions and her company, and--outbids her for them! It
+is a very unequal contest, of course. Defeat only inspires Mrs. Colisle
+with a more stubborn persistence. Victory cannot lessen the sad regrets
+of Mrs. Belle Étoile's soul for outraged instincts and insulted taste.
+It is an ill match,--a strife between greyhound and mastiff, a contest
+at heavy draught between a thoroughbred and a Flanders mare. Mrs. Étoile
+knows this as well as you and I can possibly know it. She is perfectly
+aware of her serfdom. She is poignantly conscious of the degrading
+character of her servitude, and that it is not possible to gather grapes
+of thorns, nor figs of thistles; and yet she will continue to wage the
+unequal strife, to wear the unhandsome fetters, simply because she has
+not the courage to extricate herself from the false position into which
+the strategic arts of Fashion have inveigled her.
+
+Now I do not intend to moralize. I have no purpose to frighten the
+reader prematurely off to the next page by unmasking a formidable
+battery of reflections and admonitions. I have merely instanced the
+above cases, three or four among a thousand of such as must have
+presented themselves to the attention of each one of us; and I adduce
+them simply as examples of what I call "bad symptoms" in any diagnosis
+of the state of the social frame. They indicate, in fact, a total
+absence of _social courage_ in persons otherwise endowed with and
+illustrious for all the useful and ornamental virtues, and consequently
+they make it plain and palpable that society is in a condition of
+dangerous disease. Whether a remedy is practicable or not I will not
+venture to decide; but I can confidently assure our reformers, both men
+and women, that, if they can accomplish anything toward restoring its
+normal and healthy courage to society, they will benefit the human race
+much more signally than they could by making Arcadias out of a dozen or
+two Borrioboola-Ghas.
+
+
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+
+1. _Croquet._ By CAPTAIN MAYNE REID. Boston: James Redpath.
+
+2. _Handbook of Croquet._ By EDMUND ROUTLEDGE. London: George Routledge
+and Sons.
+
+3. _The Game of Croquet; its Appointments and Laws._ By R. FELLOW. New
+York: Hurd and Houghton.
+
+4. _Croquet, as played by the Newport Croquet Club._ By one of the
+Members. New York: Sheldon & Co.
+
+The original tower of Babel having been for some time discontinued, and
+most of our local legislatures having adjourned, the nearest approach to
+a confusion of tongues is perhaps now to be found in an ordinary game of
+croquet. Out of eight youths and maidens caught for that performance at
+a picnic, four have usually learned the rules from four different
+manuals, and can agree on nothing; while the rest have never learned any
+rules at all, and cannot even distinctly agree to disagree. With
+tolerably firm wills and moderately shrill voices, it is possible for
+such a party to exhibit a very pretty war of words before even a single
+blow is struck. For supposing that there is an hour of daylight for the
+game, they can easily spend fifteen minutes in debating whether the
+starting-point should be taken a mallet's length from the stake,
+according to Reid, or only twelve inches, according to Routledge.
+
+More than twenty manuals of croquet have been published in England, it
+is said, and some five or six in America. Of the four authorities named
+above, each has some representative value for American players. Mayne
+Reid was the pioneer, Routledge is the most compact and seductive,
+Fellow the most popular and the poorest, and "Newport" the newest and by
+far the best. And among them all it is possible to find authority for
+and against almost every possible procedure.
+
+The first point of grave divergence is one that occurs at the very
+outset of the game. "Do you play with or without the roquet-croquet?"
+has now come to be the first point of mutual solicitude in a mixed
+party. It may not seem a momentous affair whether the privilege of
+striking one's own ball and the adversary's without holding the former
+beneath the foot, should be extended to all players or limited to the
+"rover"; but it makes an immense difference in both the duration and the
+difficulty of the game. By skilfully using this right, every player may
+change the position of every ball, during each tour of play. It is a
+formidable privilege, and accordingly Reid and "Newport" both forbid it
+to all but the "rover," and Routledge denies it even to him; while
+Fellow alone pleads for universal indulgence. It seems a pity to side
+with one poor authority against three good ones, but there is no doubt
+that the present tendency of the best players is to cultivate the
+roquet-croquet more and more; and after employing it, one is as
+unwilling to give it up, as a good billiard-player would be to revert
+from the cue to the mace. The very fact, however, that this privilege
+multiplies so enormously the advantages of skill is perhaps a good
+reason for avoiding it in a mixed party of novices and experts, where
+the object is rather to equalize abilities. It should also be avoided
+where the croquet-ground is small, as is apt to be the case in our
+community,--because in such narrow quarters a good player can often hit
+every other ball during each tour of play, even without this added
+advantage. If we played habitually on large, smooth lawns like those of
+England, the reasons for the general use of the roquet-croquet would be
+far stronger.
+
+Another inconvenient discrepancy of the books relates to the different
+penalties imposed on "flinching," or allowing one's ball to slip from
+under one's foot, during the process of croquet. Here Routledge gives no
+general rule; Reid and "Newport" decree that, if a ball "flinches," its
+tour terminates, but its effects remain; while, according to Fellow, the
+ball which has suffered croquet is restored, but the tour
+continues,--the penalties being thus reversed. Here the sober judgment
+must side with the majority of authorities; for this reason, if for no
+other, that the first-named punishment is more readily enforced, and
+avoids the confusion and altercation which are often produced by taking
+up and replacing a ball.
+
+Again, if a ball be accidentally stopped in its motion by a careless
+player or spectator, what shall be done? Fellow permits the striker
+either to leave the ball where the interruption left it, or to place it
+where he thinks it would have stopped, if unmolested. This again is a
+rule far less simple, and liable to produce far more wrangling, than the
+principle of the other authorities, which is that the ball should either
+be left where it lies, or be carried to the end of the arena.
+
+These points are all among the commonest that can be raised, and it is
+very unfortunate that there should be no uniformity of rule, to meet
+contingencies so inevitable. When more difficult points come up for
+adjudication, the difficulty has thus far been less in the conflict of
+authorities than in their absence. Until the new American commentator
+appeared, there was no really scientific treatise on croquet to be had
+in our bookstores.
+
+The so-called manual of the "Newport Croquet Club" is understood to
+proceed from a young gentleman whose mathematical attainments have won
+him honor both at Cambridge and at New Haven, and who now beguiles his
+banishment as Assistant Professor in the Naval Academy by writing on
+croquet in the spirit of Peirce. What President Hill has done for
+elementary geometry, "Newport" aims to do for croquet, making it
+severely simple, and, perhaps we might add, simply severe. And yet,
+admirable to relate, this is the smallest of all the manuals, and the
+cheapest, and the only one in which there is not so much as an allusion
+to ladies' ankles. All the others have a few pages of rules and a very
+immoderate quantity of slang; they are all liable to the charge of being
+silly; whereas the only possible charge to be brought against "Newport"
+is that he is too sensible. But for those who hold, with ourselves, that
+whatever is worth doing is worth doing sensibly, there is really no
+other manual. That is, this is the only one which really grapples with a
+difficult case, and deals with it as if heaven and earth depended on the
+adjudication.
+
+It is possible that this scientific method sometimes makes its author
+too bold a lawgiver. The error of most of the books is in attempting too
+little and in doing that little ill. They are all written for beginners
+only. The error of "Newport" lies in too absolute an adherence to
+principles. His "theory of double points" is excellent, but his theory
+of "the right of declining" is an innovation all the more daring because
+it is so methodically put. The principle has long been familiar, though
+never perhaps quite settled, that where two distinct points were made by
+any stroke,--as, for instance, a bridge and a roquet,--the one or the
+other could be waived. The croquet, too, could always be waived. But to
+assert boldly that "a player may decline any point made by himself, and
+play precisely as if the point had not been made," is a thought radical
+enough to send a shudder along Pennsylvania Avenue. Under this ruling, a
+single player in a game of eight might spend a half-hour in running and
+rerunning a single bridge, with dog-in-the-mangerish pertinacity,
+waiting his opportunity to claim the most mischievous run as the valid
+one. It would produce endless misunderstandings and errors of memory.
+The only vexed case which it would help to decide is that in which a
+ball, in running the very last bridge, strikes another ball, and is yet
+forbidden to croquet, because it must continue its play from the
+starting-point. But even this would be better settled in almost any
+other way; and indeed this whole rule as to a return to the "spot" seems
+a rather arbitrary and meaningless thing.
+
+The same adherence to theory takes the author quite beyond our depth, if
+not beyond his own, in another place. He says that a ball may hit
+another ball twice or more, during the same tour, between two steps on
+the round, and move it each time by concussion,--"but only one (not
+necessarily the first) contact is a valid roquet." (p. 34.) But how can
+a player obtain the right to make a second contact, under such
+circumstances, unless indeed the first was part of a _ricochet_, and was
+waived as such? And if the case intended was merely that of ricochet, it
+should have been more distinctly stated, for the right to waive ricochet
+was long since recognized by Reid (p. 40), though Routledge prohibits,
+and Fellow limits it.
+
+Thus even the errors of "Newport" are of grave and weighty nature, such
+as statesmen and mathematicians may, without loss of dignity, commit. Is
+it that it is possible to go too deep into all sciences, even croquet?
+But how delightful to have at last a treatise which errs on that side,
+when its predecessors, like popular commentators on the Bible, have
+carefully avoided all the hard points, and only cleared up the easy
+ones!
+
+
+_Poetry, Lyrical, Narrative, and Satirical, of the Civil War._ Selected
+and Edited by RICHARD GRANT WHITE. New York: The American News Company.
+
+We confess that our heart had at times misgiven us concerning the
+written and printed poetry of our recent war; but until Mr. White gave
+us the present volume, we did not know how strong a case could be made
+against it. The effect is perhaps not altogether intended, but it shows
+how bad his material was, and how little inspiration of any sort
+attended him in his work, when a literary gentleman of habits of
+research and of generally supposed critical taste makes a book so
+careless and slovenly as this.
+
+We can well afford the space which the editor devotes to Mr. Lowell's
+noble poem, but we must admit that we can regard "The Present Crisis" as
+part of the poetry of the war only in the large sense in which we should
+also accept the Prophecies of Ezekiel and the Lamentations of Jeremiah.
+Many pious men beheld the war (after it came) foreshadowed in the poetry
+of the awful and exalted prophecies, and we wonder that Mr. White did
+not give us a few passages from those books. It is scarcely possible
+that he did not know "The Present Crisis" to have been written nearly a
+score of years ago; though he seems to have been altogether ignorant of
+"The Washers of the Shroud," a poem by the same author actually written
+after the war began, and uttering all that dread, suspense, and deep
+determination which the threatened Republic felt after the defeats in
+the autumn of 1861. As Mr. White advances with his poetical chronology
+of the war, he is likewise unconscious of "The Commemoration Ode," which
+indeed is so far above all other elegiac poems of the war, as perhaps to
+be out of his somewhat earth-bound range. Yet we cannot help blaming him
+a little for not looking higher: his book must for some time represent
+the feeling of the nation in war time, and we would fain have had his
+readers know how deep and exalted this sentiment really was, and how it
+could reach, if only once and in only one, an expression which we may
+challenge any literature to surpass. Of "The Biglow Papers," in which
+there is so much of the national hard-headed shrewdness, humor, and
+earnestness, we have but one, and that not the best.
+
+As some compensation, however, Mr. White presents us with two humorous
+lyrics of his own, and makes us feel like men who, in the first moments
+of our financial disorder, parted with a good dollar, and received
+change in car-tickets and envelopes covering an ideal value in
+postage-stamps. It seems hard to complain of an editor who puts only two
+of his poems in a collection when he was master to put in twenty if he
+chose, and when in both cases he does his best to explain and relieve
+their intolerable brilliancy by foot-notes; yet, seeing that one of
+these productions is in literature what the "Yankee Notions" and the
+"Nick-Nax" caricatures of John Bull are in art, and seeing that the
+other is not in the least a parody of the Emersonian poetry it is
+supposed to burlesque, and is otherwise nothing at all, we cannot help
+crying out against them.
+
+The foot-notes to Mr. White's verses _are_ comical, however, we must
+acknowledge; and so are all the foot-notes in the book. If the Model of
+Deportment had taken to letters with a humorous aim, we could conceive
+of his writing them. "If burlesque," says Mr. White of his "Union"
+verses, "were all their purpose, they would not be here preserved";
+adding, with a noble tenderness for his victim, "Mr. Emerson could well
+afford to forgive them, even if they did not come from one of his
+warmest admirers,"--in which we agree with Mr. White, whose
+consideration for the great transcendentalist is equalled only by his
+consideration for the reader's ignorance in regard to most things not
+connected with the poetry of the war. "Bully," he tells us, was used as
+"an expression of encouragement and approval" by the Elizabethan
+dramatists, as well as by our own cherished rowdies; which may be
+readily proven from the plays of Shakespeare. But what the author of the
+poem in which this word occurs means by "hefty" Mr. White does not know,
+and frankly makes a note for the purpose of saying so. Concerning the
+expression "hurried up his cakes," he is, however, perfectly _au fait_,
+and surprises us with the promptness of his learning. "As long as the
+importance of hurrying buckwheat pancakes from the griddle to the
+table," says he, with a fine air of annotation, "is impressed upon the
+American mind, this vile slang will need no explanation. But the
+fame,"--mark this dry light of philosophy, and the delicacy of the humor
+through which it plays,--"but the fame of the Rebel march into
+Pennsylvania, and of the victory of Gettysburg, will probably outlive
+even the taste for these alluring compounds." This is Mr. White's good
+humor; his bad humor is displayed in his note to a poem by Fitz James
+O'Brien on the "Seventh Regiment," which he says was "written by a young
+Irishman, one of its members." The young Irishman's name is probably as
+familiar to most readers of the magazines as Mr. White's, and we cannot
+help wondering how he knew a writer of singularly brilliant powers and
+wide repute only as "a young Irishman."
+
+But there are many things which Mr. White seems not to know, and he has
+but a poor memory for names, and in his despair he writes _anonymous_
+against the title of every third poem. We might have expected a
+gentleman interested in the poetry of the war to attend the lectures of
+Dr. Holmes, who has been reading in New York and elsewhere "The Old
+Sergeant," as the production of Mr. Forcythe Willson of Kentucky. By
+turning to the index of that volume of the Atlantic from which the
+verses were taken, Mr. White could have learned that "Spring at the
+Capital" was written by Mrs. Akers; and with quite as little trouble
+could have informed himself of the authorship of a half-score of other
+poems we might name. We have already noted the defectiveness of the
+collection, in which we are told "no conspicuous poem elicited by the
+war is omitted"; and we note it again in Mr. White's failure to print
+Mr. Bryant's pathetic and beautiful poem, "My Autumn Walk," and in his
+choosing from Mr. Aldrich not one of the fine sonnets he has written on
+the war, but a _jeu d'esprit_ which in no wise represents him. Indeed,
+Mr. White's book seems to have been compiled after the editor had
+collected a certain number of clippings from the magazines and
+newspapers: if by the blessing of Heaven these had the names of their
+authors attached, and happened to be the best things the poets had done,
+it was a fortunate circumstance; but if the reverse was the fact, Mr.
+White seems to have felt no responsibility in the matter. We are
+disposed to hold him to stricter account, and to blame him for
+temporarily blocking, with a book and a reputation, the way to a work of
+real industry, taste, and accuracy on the poetry of the war. It was our
+right that a man whose scholarly fame would carry his volume beyond our
+own shores should do his best for our heroic Muse, robing her in all
+possible splendor; and it is our wrong that he has chosen instead to
+present the poor soul in attire so very indifferently selected from her
+limited wardrobe.
+
+
+_The Story of Kennett._ By BAYARD TAYLOR. New York: G. P. Putnam; Hurd
+and Houghton.
+
+In this novel Mr. Taylor has so far surpassed his former efforts in
+extended fiction, as to approach the excellence attained in his briefer
+stories. He has of course some obvious advantages in recounting "The
+Story of Kennett" which were denied him in "Hannah Thurston" and "John
+Godfrey's Fortunes." He here deals with the persons, scenes, and actions
+of a hundred years ago, and thus gains that distance so valuable to the
+novelist; and he neither burdens himself with an element utterly and
+hopelessly unpicturesque, like modern reformerism, nor assumes the
+difficult office of interesting us in the scarcely more attractive
+details of literary adventure. But we think, after all, that we owe the
+superiority of "The Story of Kennett" less to the felicity of his
+subject than to Mr. Taylor's maturing powers as a novelist, of which his
+choice of a happy theme is but one of the evidences. He seems to have
+told his story because he liked it; and without the least consciousness
+(which we fear haunted him in former efforts) that he was doing
+something to supply the great want of an American novel. Indeed, but for
+the prologue dedicating the work in a somewhat patronizing strain to his
+old friends and neighbors of Kennett, the author forgets himself
+entirely in the book, and leaves us to remember him, therefore, with all
+the greater pleasure.
+
+The hero of the tale is Gilbert Potter, a young farmer of Kennett, on
+whose birth there is, in the belief of his neighbors, the stain of
+illegitimacy, though his mother, with whom he lives somewhat solitarily
+and apart from the others, denies the guilt imputed to her, while some
+mystery forbids her to reveal her husband's name. Gilbert is in love
+with Martha, the daughter of Dr. Deane, a rich, smooth, proud old
+Quaker, who is naturally no friend to the young man's suit, but is
+rather bent upon his daughter's marriage with Alfred Barton, a bachelor
+of advanced years, and apparent heir of one of the hardest, wealthiest,
+and most obstinately long-lived old gentlemen in the neighborhood.
+Obediently to the laws of fiction, Martha rejects Alfred Barton, who,
+indeed, is but a cool and timid wooer, and a weak, selfish, spiritless
+man, of few good impulses, with a dull fear and dislike of his own
+father, and a covert tenderness for Gilbert. The last, being openly
+accepted by Martha, and forbidden, with much contumely, to see her, by
+her father, applies himself with all diligence to paying off the
+mortgage on his farm, in order that he may wed the Doctor's daughter, in
+spite of his science, his pride, and his riches; but when he has earned
+the requisite sum, he is met on his way to Philadelphia and robbed of
+the money by Sandy Flash, a highwayman who infested that region, and
+who, Mr. Taylor tells us, is an historical personage. He appears first
+in the first chapter of "The Story of Kennett," when, having spent the
+day in a fox-hunt with Alfred Barton, and the evening at the tavern in
+the same company, he beguiles his comrade into a lonely place, reveals
+himself, and, with the usual ceremonies, robs Barton of his money and
+watch. Thereafter, he is seen again, when he rides through the midst of
+the volunteers of Kennett, drinks at the bar of the village tavern, and
+retires unharmed by the men assembled to hunt him down and take him.
+After all, however, he is a real brigand, and no hero; and Mr. Taylor
+manages his character so well as to leave us no pity for the fate of a
+man, who, with some noble traits, is in the main fierce and cruel. He is
+at last given up to justice by the poor, half-wild creature with whom he
+lives, and whom, in a furious moment, he strikes because she implores
+him to return Gilbert his money.
+
+As for Gilbert, through all the joy of winning Martha, and the sickening
+disappointment of losing his money, the shame and anguish of the mystery
+that hangs over his origin oppress him; and, having once experienced the
+horror of suspecting that Martha's father might also be his, he suffers
+hardly less torture when the highwayman, on the day of his conviction,
+sends to ask an interview with him. But Sandy Flash merely wishes to
+ease his conscience by revealing the burial-place of Gilbert's money;
+and when the young man, urged to the demand by an irresistible anxiety,
+implores, "You are not my father?" the good highwayman, in great and
+honest amazement, declares that he certainly is not. The mystery
+remains, and it is not until the death of the old man Barton that it is
+solved. Then it is dissipated, when Gilbert's mother, in presence of
+kindred and neighbors, assembled at the funeral, claims Alfred Barton as
+her husband; and after this nothing remains but the distribution of
+justice, and the explanation that, long ago, before Gilbert's birth, his
+parents had been secretly married. Alfred Barton, however, had sworn his
+wife not to reveal the marriage before his father's death, at that time
+daily expected, and had cruelly held her to her vow after the birth of
+their son, and through all the succeeding years of agony and
+contumely,--loving her and her boy in his weak, selfish, cowardly way,
+but dreading too deeply his father's anger ever to do them justice. The
+reader entirely sympathizes with Gilbert's shame in such a father, and
+his half-regret that it had not been a brave, bad man like Sandy Flash
+instead. Barton's punishment is finely worked out. The fact of the
+marriage had been brought to the old man's knowledge before his death,
+and he had so changed his will as to leave the money intended for his
+son to his son's deeply wronged wife; and, after the public assertion of
+their rights at the funeral, Gilbert and his mother coldly withdraw from
+the wretched man, and leave him, humiliated before the world he dreaded,
+to seek the late reconciliation which is not accomplished in this book.
+It is impossible to feel pity for his sufferings; but one cannot repress
+the hope that Mary and her son will complete the beauty of their own
+characters by forgiving him at last.
+
+It seems to us that this scene of Mary Potter's triumph at the funeral
+is the most effective in the whole book. Considering her character and
+history, it is natural that she should seek to make her justification as
+signal and public as possible. The long and pitiless years of shame
+following the error of her youthful love and ambition, during which the
+sin of attempting to found her happiness on a deceit was so heavily
+punished, have disciplined her to the perfect acting of her part, and
+all her past is elevated and dignified by the calm power with which she
+rights herself. She is the chief person of the drama, which is so pure
+and simple as not to approach melodrama; and the other characters are
+merely passive agents; while the reader, to whom the facts are known,
+cannot help sharing their sense of mystery and surprise. We confess to a
+deeper respect for Mr. Taylor's power than we have felt before, when we
+observe with what masterly skill he contrives by a single incident to
+give sudden and important development to a character, which, however
+insignificant it had previously seemed, we must finally allow to have
+been perfectly prepared for such an effect.
+
+The hero of the book, we find a good deal like other heroes,--a little
+more natural than most, perhaps, but still portentously noble and
+perfect. He does not interest us much; but we greatly admire the
+heroine, Martha Deane, whom he loves and marries. In the study of her
+character and that of her father, Mr. Taylor is perfectly at home, and
+extremely felicitous. There is no one else who treats Quaker life so
+well as the author of the beautiful story of "Friend Eli's Daughter";
+and in the opposite characters of Doctor Deane and Martha we have the
+best portraiture of the contrasts which Quakerism produces in human
+nature. In the sweet and unselfish spirit of Martha, the theories of
+individual action under special inspiration have created self-reliance,
+and calm, fearless humility, sustaining her in her struggle against the
+will of her father, and even against the sect to whose teachings she
+owes them. Dr. Deane had made a marriage of which the Society
+disapproved, but after his wife's death he had professed contrition for
+his youthful error, and had been again taken into the quiet brotherhood.
+Martha, however, had always refused to unite with the Society, and had
+thereby been "a great cross" to her father,--a man by no means broken
+under his affliction, but a hard-headed, self-satisfied, smooth, narrow
+egotist. Mr. Taylor contrives to present his person as clearly as his
+character, and we smell hypocrisy in the sweet scent of marjoram that
+hangs about him, see selfishness in his heavy face and craft in the
+quiet gloss of his drab broadcloth, and hear obstinacy in his studied
+step. He is the most odious character in the book, what is bad in him
+being separated by such fine differences from what is very good in
+others. We have even more regard for Alfred Barton, who, though a
+coward, has heart enough to be truly ashamed at last, while Dr. Deane
+retains a mean self-respect after the folly and the wickedness of his
+purposes are shown to him.
+
+His daughter, for all her firmness in resisting her father's commands to
+marry Barton, and to dismiss Gilbert, is true woman, and submissive to
+her lover. The wooing of these, and of the other lovers, Mark Deane and
+Sally Fairthorn, is described with pleasant touches of contrast, and a
+strict fidelity to place and character. Indeed, nothing can be better
+than the faithful spirit in which Mr. Taylor seems to have adhered to
+all the facts of the life he portrays. There is such shyness among
+American novelists (if we may so classify the writers of our meagre
+fiction) in regard to dates, names, and localities, that we are glad to
+have a book in which there is great courage in this respect. Honesty of
+this kind is vastly more acceptable to us than the aerial romance which
+cannot alight in any place known to the gazetteer; though we must
+confess that we attach infinitely less importance than the author does
+to the fact that Miss Betsy Lavender, Deb. Smith, Sandy Flash, and the
+two Fairthorn boys are drawn from the characters of persons who once
+actually lived. Indeed, we could dispense very well with the low comedy
+of Sally's brothers, and, in spite of Miss Betsy Lavender's foundation
+in fact, we could consent to lose her much sooner than any other leading
+character of the book: she seems to us made-up and mechanical. On the
+contrary, we find Sally Fairthorn, with her rustic beauty and
+fresh-heartedness, her impulses and blunders, altogether delightful. She
+is a part of the thoroughly _country_ flavor of the book,--the rides
+through the woods, the huskings, the raising of the barn,--(how
+admirably and poetically all that scene of the barn-raising is
+depicted!)--just as Martha somehow belongs to the loveliness and
+goodness of nature,--the blossom and the harvest which appear and
+reappear in the story.
+
+We must applaud the delicacy and propriety of the descriptive parts of
+Mr. Taylor's work: they are rare and brief, and they are inseparable
+from the human interest of the narrative with which they are interwoven.
+The style of the whole fiction is clear and simple, and, in the more
+dramatic scenes,--like that of old Barton's funeral,--rises effortlessly
+into very great strength. The plot, too, is well managed; the incidents
+naturally succeed each other; and, while some portion of the end may be
+foreseen, it must be allowed that the author skilfully conceals the
+secret of Gilbert's parentage, while preparing at the right moment to
+break it effectively to the reader.
+
+
+_The South since the War: as shown by Fourteen Weeks of Travel and
+Observation in Georgia and the Carolinas._ By SIDNEY ANDREWS. Boston:
+Ticknor and Fields.
+
+The simple and clear exhibition of things heard and seen in the South
+seems to have been the object of Mr. Andrews's interesting tour, and he
+holds the mirror up to Reconstruction with a noble and self-denying
+fidelity. It would have been much easier to give us studied theories and
+speculations instead of the facts we needed, and we are by no means
+inclined to let the crudity of parts of the present book abate from our
+admiration of its honesty and straightforwardness.
+
+A great share of the volume is devoted to sketches of scenes and debates
+in the Conventions held last autumn in North and South Carolina and
+Georgia, for the reconstruction of the State governments; and Mr.
+Andrews's readers are made acquainted, as pleasantly as may be, with the
+opinions and appearance of the leaders in these bodies. But the value of
+this part of his book is necessarily transitory; and we have been much
+more interested in the chapters which recount the author's experiences
+of travel and sojourn, and describe the popular character and
+civilization of the South as affected by the event of the war. It must
+be confessed, however, that the picture is not one from which we can
+take great courage for the present. The leading men in the region
+through which Mr. Andrews passed seem to have an adequate conception of
+the fact that the South can only rise again through tranquillity,
+education, and justice; and some few of these men have the daring to
+declare that regeneration must come through her abandonment of all the
+social theories and prejudices that distinguished her as a section
+before the war. But in a great degree the beaten bully is a bully still.
+There is the old lounging, the old tipsiness, the old swagger, the old
+violence. Mr. Andrews has to fly from a mob, as in the merry days of
+1859, because he persuades an old negro to go home and not stay and be
+stabbed by a gentleman of one of the first families. Drunken life-long
+idlers hiccup an eloquent despair over the freedmen's worthlessness;
+bitter young ladies and high-toned gentlemen insult Northerners when
+opportunity offers; and, while there is a general disposition to accept
+the fortune of war, there is a belief, equally general, among our
+unconstructed brethren, that better people were never worse off. The
+conditions outside of the great towns are not such as to attract
+Northern immigration, in which the chief hope of the South lies; and
+there is but slight wish on the part of the dominant classes to improve
+the industry of the country by doing justice to the liberated slaves.
+The military, under the Freedmen's Bureau, does something to enforce
+contracts and punish outrage; but it is often lamentably inadequate, and
+is sometimes controlled by men who have the baseness to side against the
+weak.
+
+Of the three States through which Mr. Andrews travelled, South Carolina
+seems to be in the most hopeful mood for regeneration; but it is
+probable that the natural advantages of Georgia will attract a larger
+share of foreign capital and industry, and place it first in the line of
+redemption, though the temper of its people is less intelligent and
+frank than that of the South-Carolinians. In North Carolina the
+difficulty seems to be with the prevailing ignorance and poverty of the
+lower classes, and the lukewarm virtue of people who were also lukewarm
+in wickedness, and whose present loyalty is dull and cold, like their
+late treason.
+
+
+_Social Life of the Chinese: with some Account of their Religious,
+Governmental, Educational, and Business Customs and Opinions, etc._ By
+REV. JUSTUS DOOLITTLE, Fourteen Years Member of the Fuhchan Mission of
+the American Board. With over One Hundred and Fifty Illustrations. In
+Two Volumes. New York: Harper and Brothers.
+
+Mr. Doolittle speaks of a class of degraded individuals in China, "who
+are willing to make amusement for others." The severest critic can
+hardly assign him to any such class, for there is no reason to suppose
+that he would have made his book amusing, if he could possibly have
+helped it. But the Chinese are a race of such amazing and inexhaustible
+oddities, that the driest description of them, if it be only truthful,
+must be entertaining.
+
+What power of prose can withdraw all interest from a people whose
+theology declares that whoever throws printed paper on the ground in
+anger "has five demerits, and will lose his intelligence," and that he
+who tosses it into water "has twenty demerits, and will have sore eyes"?
+A people among whom unmarried women who have forsworn meat are called
+"vegetable virgins," and married women similarly pledged are known as
+"vegetable dames,"--among whom a present of sugar-cane signifies the
+approach of an elder sister, and oysters in an earthen vessel are the
+charming signal that a younger brother draws near,--a people among whom
+the most exciting confectionery is made of rice and molasses,--how can
+the Reverend Justus Doolittle deprive such a people of the most piquant
+interest?
+
+And when we come to weightier matters, one finds this to be after all
+one of those "dry books" for which Margaret Fuller declared her
+preference,--a book where the author supplies only a multiplicity of the
+most unvarnished facts, and leaves all the imagination to the reader. To
+say that he for one instant makes the individuality of a Chinese
+conceivable, or his human existence credible, or that he can represent
+the whole nation to the fancy as anything but a race of idiotic dolls,
+would be saying far too much. No traveller has ever accomplished so much
+as that, save that wonderful Roman Catholic, Huc. But setting all this
+apart, there has scarcely appeared in English, until now, so exhaustive
+and so honest a picture of the external phenomena of Chinese life.
+
+It is painful to have to single out honesty as a special merit in a
+missionary work; but the temptation to filch away the good name of a
+Pagan community is very formidable, and few even among lay travellers
+have done as faithful justice to the Chinese character as Mr. Doolittle.
+He fully recognizes the extended charities of the Chinese and their
+filial piety; stoutly declares that tight shoeing is not so injurious as
+tight lacing, and that Chinese slavery is not so bad as the late
+lamented "institution" in America; shows that the religions of that
+land, taken at their worst, have none of the deified sensuality of other
+ancient mythologies, and that the greatest practical evils, such as
+infanticide, are steadily combated by the Chinese themselves. Even on
+the most delicate point, the actual condition of missionary enterprises,
+the good man tells the precise truth with the most admirable frankness.
+To make a single convert cost seven years' labor at Canton, and nine at
+Fuhchan, and it was twenty-eight years ere a church was organized. Out
+of four hundred million souls, there are as yet less than three thousand
+converts, as the result of the labor of two hundred missionaries, after
+sixty years of work. Yet Mr. Doolittle, who has spent more than a third
+of his life in China, still finds his courage fresh and his zeal
+unabated; and every one must look with respect upon a self-devotion so
+generous and so sincere.
+
+
+_Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates, a Story of Life in Holland._ By M.
+E. DODGE. New York: James O'Kane.
+
+Hans Brinker is a charming domestic story of some three hundred and
+fifty pages, which is addressed, indeed, to young people, but which may
+be read with pleasure and profit by their elders. The scene is laid in
+Holland, a land deserving to be better known than it is; and the writer
+evinces a knowledge of the country, and an acquaintance with the spirit
+and habits of its stout, independent, estimable people, which must have
+been gathered not from books alone, but from living sources.
+
+Graphically, too, is the quaint picture sketched, and with a pleasant
+touch of humor. We all know the main features of Dutch scenery; but they
+are seldom brought to our notice with livelier effect. Speaking of the
+guardian dikes, Mrs. Dodge says:--
+
+"They are high and wide, and the tops of some of them are covered with
+buildings and trees. They have even fine public roads upon them, from
+which horses may look down on wayside cottages. Often the keels of
+floating ships are higher than the roofs of the dwellings. The stork
+chattering to her young on the house-peak may feel that her nest is
+lifted out of danger, but the croaking frog in neighboring bulrushes is
+nearer the stars than she. Water-bugs dart backward and forward above
+the heads of the chimney-swallows, and willow-trees seem drooping with
+shame, because they cannot reach as high as the reeds near by....
+Farm-houses, with roofs like great slouched hats over their eyes, stand
+on wooden legs with a tucked-up sort of air, as if to say, 'We intend to
+keep dry if we can.' Even the horses wear a wide stool on each hoof to
+lift them out of the mire.... Men, women, and children go clattering
+about in wooden shoes with loose heels; peasant-girls, who cannot get
+beaux for love, hire them for money to escort them to the _Kermis_; and
+husbands and wives lovingly harness themselves, side by side, on the
+bank of the canal, and drag their _pakschuyts_ to market....
+
+"'One thing is clear," cries Master Brightside, 'the inhabitants need
+never be thirsty.' But no, Odd-land is true to itself still.
+Notwithstanding the sea pushing to get in, and the lakes pushing to get
+out, and all the canals and rivers and ditches, there is, in many
+districts, no water fit to swallow; our poor Hollanders must go dry, or
+drink wine and beer, or send inland to Utrecht and other favored
+localities for that precious fluid, older than Adam, yet young as the
+morning dew.
+
+The book is fresh and flavorous in tone, and speaks to the fancy of
+children. Here is a scene on the canal:--
+
+"It was recess-hour. At the first stroke of the school-house bell, the
+canal seemed to give a tremendous shout, and grow suddenly alive with
+boys and girls. The sly thing, shining so quietly under the noonday sun,
+was a kaleidoscope at heart, and only needed a shake from that great
+clapper to startle it into dazzling changes.
+
+"Dozens of gayly clad children were skating in and out among each other,
+and all their pent-up merriment of the morning was relieving itself in
+song and shout and laughter. There was nothing to check the flow of
+frolic. Not a thought of school-books came out with them into the
+sunshine. Latin, arithmetic, grammar, all were locked up for an hour in
+the dingy school-room. The teacher might be a noun if he wished, and a
+proper one at that, but _they_ meant to enjoy themselves. As long as the
+skating was as perfect as this, it made no difference whether Holland
+was on the North Pole or the Equator; and as for philosophy, how could
+they bother themselves about inertia and gravitation and such things,
+when it was as much as they could do to keep from getting knocked over
+in the commotion?"
+
+There is no formal moral, obtruding itself in set phrase. The lessons
+inculcated, elevated in tone, are in the action of the story and the
+feelings and aspirations of the actors. A young lady, for example, has
+been on a visit to aid and console a poor peasant-girl, whom, having
+been in deep affliction, she found unexpectedly relieved. Engrossed by
+her warm sympathy with her humble friend, she forgets the lapse of time.
+
+"Helda was reprimanded severely that day for returning late to school
+after recess, and for imperfect recitation.
+
+"She had remained near the cottage until she heard Dame Brinker laugh,
+and heard Hans say, 'Here I am, father!' and then she had gone back to
+her lessons. What wonder that she missed them! How could she get a long
+string of Latin verbs by heart, when her heart did not care a fig for
+them, but would keep saying to itself, 'O, I am so glad! I am so glad!'"
+
+The book contains two things,--a series of lifelike pictures of an
+interesting country and of the odd ways and peculiarities and homely
+virtues of its inhabitants; and then, interwoven with these, a simple
+tale, now pathetic, now amusing, and carrying with it wholesome
+influences on the young heart and mind.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No.
+104, June, 1866, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***
+
+***** This file should be named 22375-8.txt or 22375-8.zip *****
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104,
+June, 1866, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: August 22, 2007 [EBook #22375]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by Cornell University Digital Collections).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<h4>THE</h4>
+<h1>ATLANTIC MONTHLY.</h1>
+
+<h2><i>A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics.</i></h2>
+
+<h3>VOL. XVII.&mdash;JUNE, 1866.&mdash;NO. CIV.</h3>
+
+<p>Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by <span class="smcap">Ticknor and
+Fields</span>, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
+Massachusetts.</p>
+
+<p class="notes">Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved
+to the end of the article. Contractions have been retained as they appear
+in each story. A table of contents has been created for the HTML version.</p>
+
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+<p>
+<a href="#QUICKSANDS"><b>QUICKSANDS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#IN_THE_HEMLOCKS"><b>IN THE HEMLOCKS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#LAST_DAYS_OF_WALTER_SAVAGE_LANDOR"><b>LAST DAYS OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_DEAD_SHIP_OF_HARPSWELL"><b>THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#DOCTOR_JOHNS"><b>DOCTOR JOHNS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#TIED_TO_A_ROPE"><b>TIED TO A ROPE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GIOTTOS_TOWER"><b>GIOTTO'S TOWER.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#PASSAGES_FROM_HAWTHORNES_NOTE-BOOKS"><b>PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_MOUNTAIN"><b>THE MOUNTAIN.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_CHIMNEY-CORNER_FOR_1866"><b>THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#A_PIONEER_EDITOR"><b>A PIONEER EDITOR.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GRIFFITH_GAUNT_OR_JEALOUSY"><b>GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#BAD_SYMPTOMS"><b>BAD SYMPTOMS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#REVIEWS_AND_LITERARY_NOTICES"><b>REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.</b></a><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_657" id="Page_657">[Pg 657]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="QUICKSANDS" id="QUICKSANDS"></a>QUICKSANDS.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER I.</h3>
+
+<p>"This is the seventy-fifth pair! Pretty well for us in so short a time!"
+said the Colonel's wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but we must give Aunt Marian the credit of a very large
+proportion; at least ten pairs have come from her."</p>
+
+<p>"I have nothing to do but to knit; none to knit for at home but my cat,"
+I replied, rather shortly, to the soft voice that had given me credit
+for such extraordinary industry. Afterwards I looked up at Percy Lunt,
+and tried to think of some pleasant thing to say to her; but in
+vain,&mdash;the words wouldn't come. I did not like her, and that is the
+truth.</p>
+
+<p>Thirty of us were assembled as usual, at our weekly "Soldiers' Aid
+Circle." We always met at the house of her father, Colonel Lunt, because
+its parlors were the largest in Barton, and because Mrs. Lunt invited us
+to come every week at three o'clock in the afternoon, and stay till
+nine, meanwhile giving us all tea. The two parlors, which opened into
+each other as no others in Barton did, were handsomely furnished with
+articles brought from France; though, for that matter, they did not look
+very different from Barton furniture generally, except, perhaps, in
+being plainer. Just now the chairs, lounges, and card-table were covered
+with blue yarn, blue woollen cloth, unbleached cotton, and other things
+requisite for the soldiers. They, the soldiers, had worn out the
+miserable socks provided by government in two days' marching, and sent
+up the cry, to the mothers and sisters in New England, "Give us such
+stockings as you are used to knitting for us!"</p>
+
+<p>That home-cry found its answer in every heart. Not a hand but responded.
+Every spare moment was given to the needs of the soldiers. For these
+were not the materials of a common army. These were all our own
+brothers, lovers, husbands, fathers. And shame to the wife, daughter, or
+sister who would know them to be sufferers while a finger remained on
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_658" id="Page_658">[Pg 658]</a></span>their hands to be moved! So, day by day, at soldiers' meetings, but
+much more at home, the army of waiters and watchers wrought cheerfully
+and hopefully for the loved ones who were "marching along." In Barton we
+knitted while we talked, and at the Lyceum lectures. Nay, we threatened
+even to take our knitting to meeting,&mdash;for it seemed, as we said, a
+great waste of time to be sitting so long idle.</p>
+
+<p>This had gone on for more than months. We had begun to count the war by
+years. Did we bate one jot of heart or hope for that? No more than at
+the beginning. We continued to place the end of the struggle at sixty or
+ninety days, as the news came more or less favorable to the loyal cause.
+But despair of the Republic? Never. Not the smallest child in Barton.
+Not a woman, of course. And through these life-currents flowing between
+each soldier and his home, the good heart and courage of the army was
+kept up through all those dismal reverses and bloody struggles that
+marked the early part of the years of sixty-two and three.</p>
+
+<p>We kept writing to our Barton boys, and took care of them, both in tent
+and field. And in every box sent on to the Potomac went letters from all
+the soldiers' families, and photographs to show how fast the children
+were growing, and how proud the sisters were of the brave brothers who
+were upholding the flag at the price of their lives.</p>
+
+<p>We were very busy to-day at Mrs. Lunt's. She and I cut out shirts for
+the rest,&mdash;and I took an opportunity to carry one to Percy Lunt, with
+some directions, in as kind a voice as I could command, about the
+sleeves. She smiled and looked up wistfully in my face, but I turned
+away in a hurry to my work. Somehow, I could not forgive her for
+troubling my poor Robert. I couldn't before he went, much less now.</p>
+
+<p>I must describe Percy if I can. She was of middling height, and very
+delicately formed, with a face as destitute of color as if it had been
+carved out of marble. Her dark hair was cut short in her neck, and
+parted over her forehead and her even brows. Her eyes were dark and
+soft, but almost constantly bent on the floor. She dressed in black, and
+wore over her small head a little tarlatan cap as close as a Shaker's.
+You might call her interesting-looking, but for a certain listlessness
+and want of sympathy with others. She had been married, was not more
+than twenty years old at the time I am describing her, and had been in
+Barton only about a year, since her husband's death.</p>
+
+<p>As I had neither chick nor child to offer to my country, I was glad to
+hear my nephew, Robert Elliott, say that the Barton boys had chosen him
+for Captain, and that they were all to start for Boston the next
+morning, and go on at once to Fortress Monroe.</p>
+
+<p>This boy's black eyes were very near to my heart,&mdash;almost as near as
+they were to his own mother's. And when he came in to bid me good by, I
+could not look on his pale, resolute face without a sinking, trembling
+feeling, do what I would to keep up a brave outside? This was in the
+very beginning of the war, when word first came that blood had been shed
+in Baltimore; and our Barton boys were in Boston reporting to Governor
+Andrew in less than a week after. Now we didn't, one of us, believe in
+the bravery of the South. We believed them braggarts and bullies, and
+that was all. We believed that, once let them see that the North was not
+going to give way to them, they would go back where they came from.</p>
+
+<p>"You will be back in a month, Robert, all of you. Mind, I don't say you
+will send these hounds back to their kennels,&mdash;rather, send these gentry
+back to their ladies' chambers. But I won't say either. Only let them
+see that you are ready for a fair stand-up fight, and I'll be bound
+they'll be too much astonished to stop running for a week."</p>
+
+<p>So we all said and thought at the North,&mdash;all but a few who had been at
+the South, and who knew too well how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_659" id="Page_659">[Pg 659]</a></span> much in earnest it was in its
+treason, and how slight was the struggle it anticipated. These few
+shuddered at the possibility that stood red and gloomy in the path of
+the future,&mdash;these few, who knew both sides. Meanwhile both sides most
+heartily underrated each other, and had the sincerest reciprocal
+disrespect.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't quite think like you, Auntie, but that is, perhaps, because I
+was at Charleston. A year at the South, and you understand them a little
+differently. But no matter,&mdash;they must go back all the same. This is my
+pincushion, is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and here are thread and needles. But, Rob, nonsense! I say you
+will be back in a month. They will begin talking and arguing, and once
+they begin that, there will be no fighting. It is like the Chinese, each
+side trying to frighten the other."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps so," said Robert, in an abstracted way. "Let us hope so, at all
+events. I am sure I don't want to shoot anybody. But now I am going to
+Colonel Lunt's a little while; shall I find you up when I come back?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, any way, and tell me if you have good news."</p>
+
+<p>I knew what he was going to Colonel Lunt's for. He had talked to me
+about Percy, and I knew he loved her. If he had not been going away,
+perhaps he would have waited longer; for Mr. Lunt (he was Percy's
+cousin) had not been dead quite two years. But he said he could not go
+away without telling her; and when I remembered all the readings
+together, and the walkings and talkings between the two, I thought it
+most likely she had already consoled herself. As I said before, I had no
+very great love for her.</p>
+
+<p>Not an hour, not fifteen minutes, when Robert returned. He looked paler
+than before, and spoke no word, only stared into the fire. At length,
+with a pitiful attempt at a smile, he said, "I'm a fool to be vexed
+about it,&mdash;let her please herself!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is bad news, Robert!" said I softly, laying my hand on his arm. His
+hands were clenched hard together.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, there's no mistake about it. But, Auntie, tell me, am I a fool and
+a jackass? didn't you think she liked me?"</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure I did!" I answered decidedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she says she never thought of me,&mdash;never!&mdash;and she never thought
+of marrying again."</p>
+
+<p>The wound wouldn't bear touching,&mdash;it was too sore. So I sat silently
+with him, holding his hand in mine, and looking into the fire, and in
+almost as great a rage as he was. He knew I felt with him, and by and by
+he turned to kiss my cheek, but still without a word.</p>
+
+<p>How I wished he could have gone to the conflict with the thought of his
+true love warm at his heart? Who deserved it so much? who was so brave,
+so heroic, so handsome?&mdash;one in ten thousand! And here was this
+dead-and-alive Percy Lunt, saying she never thought! "Pah!&mdash;just as if
+girls don't always think! If there's anything I do detest, it's a
+coquette!" The last sentence I unconsciously uttered aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't call her that, Auntie! I really think she didn't know. I wasn't
+just to her. I was too angry. When I spoke to her she looked really
+distressed and astonished. I am sure that I ought&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, Robert! she must have seen your feelings. And haven't you
+been sending her flowers and books and pictures, and reading to her, and
+talking to her the whole time, this three months! Where were her eyes? I
+have no patience with her, I say!"</p>
+
+<p>The boy had recovered his sense of justice so much sooner than I! He
+smiled sadly, and took both my little old hands in his. "Best of
+aunties! what a good hater you are! Now, if you love me, you will be
+kind to her, and try to love and comfort her. Somehow she looks very
+unhappy."</p>
+
+<p>I could not answer.</p>
+
+<p>"She looked&mdash;O so sorry! Auntie, when I spoke, and as if she was too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_660" id="Page_660">[Pg 660]</a></span>
+much astonished to answer me. I do think it was the very last thing in
+the world she expected. And after she told me, which she did at once,
+that I was mistaken, and she was mistaken, and that we never could be
+any more than friends to each other, and I had got up to go away,&mdash;for I
+was very angry as well as agitated,&mdash;she stood looking so pale and so
+earnestly at me, as if she must make me believe her. Then she held out
+her hands to me, and I thought she was going to speak; but she shook her
+head, and seemed so thoroughly distressed, that I tried to smile, and
+shake hands cordially, though, I confess, I didn't feel much like it.
+But I do now, Auntie,&mdash;and you must forgive her for not thinking quite
+so much of your Rob as you do."</p>
+
+<p>He took a photograph from his breast-pocket, and kissed it.</p>
+
+<p>"She gave me this; and she wrote on the back the date of to-day, April
+16th, 1861. She said she did not want me to remember her as she is now,
+but as she was in her happy days. And that they could never come again."</p>
+
+<p>It was a very lovely vignette, taken when she was joyous and
+round-faced, and with the curls falling about her cheeks and neck,
+instead of the prim little widow's cap she wore now. And instead of the
+still, self-contained, suffering look, there was great sweetness and
+serenity.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see why she gave it to you, Rob," said I peevishly; "the best
+thing you can do is to forget her, and the kindest thing she could do to
+you would be to cut off all hope."</p>
+
+<p>"She did that," he replied; "but she said she could not bear to have me
+go where I was going without feeling that I had left a most affectionate
+friend, who would watch eagerly for my success, and sympathize with all
+my trials. Auntie! who knows?"</p>
+
+<p>I saw by the lighting up of his dark eyes what hope lay at the very
+bottom of his soul. And, to be sure, who knew what might be in the
+future? At all events, it made him more comfortable now to have this
+little, unexpressed, crouching hope, where he could silently caress it
+when he was far away from us all. He had all our photographs,&mdash;mother,
+sister, and aunt.</p>
+
+<p>"And now I must go to Mr. Ford's to-night, and bid them good by. Don't
+let any enterprising young lawyer come here and get away all my business
+before the month is out. I came within an ace of making a writ only last
+week!"</p>
+
+<p>So with smiles he parted from me, and strength was given me to smile
+too, the next morning, when he marched by my window, and bowed to me, at
+the head of his hundred men. I saw his steady, heroic face, no longer
+pale, but full of stern purpose and strength. And so they all
+looked,&mdash;strong, able, determined. The call took all our young men from
+Barton. Not one would remain behind.</p>
+
+<p>And that is why I could not love Percy Lunt. How hard she worked at our
+soldiers' club! how gentle and respectful she always was to me! If I had
+not been always preoccupied and prejudiced, I might have pitied the
+poor, overcharged heart, that showed itself so plainly in the deathly
+pallor of the young cheek, and the eyes so weighed down with weeping.
+Colonel Lunt and his wife watched her with loving eyes, but they could
+do little to soothe her. Every heart must taste its own bitterness. And,
+besides, she wasn't their own child.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER II.</h3>
+
+<p>Every village has its great man and woman, and Colonel Lunt and his wife
+were Barton's. Theirs was the only family whose table appointments were
+of sufficient elegance to board the preceptor of the academy. All the
+Lyceum lecturers stopped at Colonel Lunt's; and Mrs. Lunt was the person
+who answered the requirements of Lady Manager for the Mount Vernon
+Association, namely, "social position, executive ability, tact, and
+persistency."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_661" id="Page_661">[Pg 661]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They were the only family in Barton who had been abroad. The rest of us
+stayed at home and admired them. They had not always lived in Barton;
+perhaps, if they had, we should not have succumbed so entirely as we all
+did, ten years ago, when Colonel Lunt came and bought the Schuyler
+place, (so called because General Schuyler stopped there over night on
+his way to fight Burgoyne,) and brought his orphan niece and adopted
+daughter with him, and also a French governess for the child. These
+things were not in Barton style at all; all our children being educated
+at the town school, and finished, as means allowed, by three months'
+polish at some seminary or other. Of course, in a country town like
+Barton, which numbers nearly fifteen hundred inhabitants, there is
+enough to interest and occupy every one. What would be gossip and
+scandal in a different social condition is pure, kindly interest in
+Barton. We know everybody, and his father and mother. Of course each
+person has his standing as inevitable and decided as an English
+nobleman's. Our social organization is perfect. Our circles are within
+and within each other, until we come to the <i>cr&egrave;me de la cr&egrave;me</i> of the
+Lunts and six other families. The outer circle is quite extensive,
+embracing all the personable young men "who are not embarrassed with
+antecedents," as one of our number said. The inner one takes in some
+graduates of college,&mdash;persons who read all the new books, and give a
+tone to Barton. Among the best people are the Elliotts and Robertses.
+The lawyers and shopkeepers come in of course, but not quite of
+course&mdash;anywhere but in Barton&mdash;is included the barber. But Mr. Roberts
+was an extreme case. He had been destined to literary pursuits, became
+consumptive, and was obliged, by unforeseen contingencies, to take up
+some light employment, which proved in the end to be shaving. If it had
+been holding notes instead of noses, the employment would have been
+vastly genteel, I dare say. As it was, we thought about the French
+<i>&eacute;migr&eacute;s</i> and <i>marquises</i> who made cakes and dressed hair for a living,
+and concluded to admit Mr. Roberts, especially as he married a far-away
+Elliott, and was really a sensible and cultivated man. But as we must
+stop somewhere, we drew a strict line before the tinman, blacksmith, and
+Democrats of all sorts. We are pure-blooded Federalists in Barton, and
+were brought up on the Hartford Convention. I think we all fully
+believed that a Democrat was unfit to associate with decent people.</p>
+
+<p>As in most New England towns, the young fly from the parent nest as soon
+as they are fledged. Out of Barton have gone, in my time, Boston
+millionnaires, state secretaries, statesmen, and missionaries,&mdash;of the
+last, not a few. Once the town was full of odd people, whose
+peculiarities and idiosyncrasies ran to seed, and made strange, eventful
+histories.</p>
+
+<p>But we have ceased to take such microscopic views of each other since
+the railway came within ten miles of us, and are now able to converse on
+much more general topics than formerly. Not that there isn't still
+opportunity to lament over the flighty nature of kitchen incumbents, and
+to look after the domestic interests of all Barton; but I think going to
+Boston several times a year tends to enlarge the mind, and gives us more
+subjects of conversation. We are quite up in the sculpture at Mount
+Auburn, and have our preferences for Bierstadt and Weber. Nobody in
+Barton, so far, is known to see anything but horrors in
+pre-Raphaelitism. Some wandering Lyceum-man tried to imbue us with the
+new doctrine, and showed us engravings of Raphael's first manner, and
+Perugino. But we all voted Perugino was detestable, and would none of
+him. Besides, none of the Lunts liked him.</p>
+
+<p>In patriotism, Barton would have "knocked under to no man," if the
+question had been put to it ten years ago on the Fourth of July. When a
+proof of it was required from the pocket, on the occasion before alluded
+to, of the Mount Vernon Association, I regret<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_662" id="Page_662">[Pg 662]</a></span> to say the response did
+no credit to Barton.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Lunt made a great many Lady Assistant Managers in the town, and
+sent us forth to gather in the harvest, which we could not doubt would
+be plentiful. She herself worded a most touching "appeal to the women of
+Barton," and described "the majestic desolation of the spot where the
+remains of Washington lie in cold neglect," and asked each one for a
+heart-offering to purchase, beautify, and perpetuate a fitting home
+where pilgrims from all parts of the Union should come to fill their
+urns with the tears of grateful remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>It really seemed unnecessary to urge such a claim on a community like
+ours. Yet we found ourselves obliged to exhaust all the persistency and
+tact we had. For every conceivable reason Barton refused to respond to
+our appeals. The minister, Mr. Ford, declared to me that the sentiment
+of loyalty did not exist in America. Sometimes, he said, he wished he
+lived under a monarchy. He envied the heartfelt cheers with which
+Victoria's name was met, everywhere on British ground. "But you can't
+get people to give to Mount Vernon. They are afraid of slavery there.
+They are afraid of this, that, and the other; but give they will not."
+He handed me a dollar, in a hopeless way, which was a four-hundredth of
+his income. The blacksmith's wife would not admit me at all, saying,
+"There has been one beggar here already this morning!" The butcher's
+wife gave five cents; but I had my doubts about accepting it, for while
+I was indignantly relating the desolate condition of the home and tomb
+of the Father of his Country, and something about its being a spot only
+fit for a wild pelican to live in, the butcher himself passed through
+the house, nodding his head at me, and saying loudly, "Not a cent,
+wife!" The plasterer, Mr. Rice, a respectable Vermonter, asked me who
+Washington was; and Mrs. Goodwin, the cabinet-maker's wife, said
+cordially to me, "There 's ten cents towards a tomb. I don't never
+expect to go down South myself, but maybe my son'll like to be buried
+there." Her son was buried down South, with many more of our brave
+Barton boys, little as we thought of it then!</p>
+
+<p>Now, the butcher and baker, the plasterer, and all, have gone to the
+war. They have learned what it is to have a country to live for. They
+have learned to hold up the old flag through thunderings and blood, and
+to die for it joyfully. What a baptism and regeneration it has been!
+what a new creation! Behold, old things have passed away, and all has
+become new!</p>
+
+<p>Soon after the battle of Cedar Mountain, and Banks's retreat, we had
+long, full letters from Robert. He wrote a separate note to me, in which
+he said, "Be kind to Percy." It was the very thing I had not been,&mdash;had
+not felt it possible to be. But, conscience-stricken, I went up to call
+at Colonel Lunt's, and read our letters to them. Percy walked home with
+me, and we talked over the prospects and reverses of the war. Of course
+we would not allow there were any real reverses.</p>
+
+<p>We went on to my little cottage, and I asked her to come in and rest. I
+remember it was a very still evening, except for a sad south-wind. The
+breeze sighed through the pines in front of the house, like the sound of
+distant water. The long lingering of the sun slanted over Percy's brow,
+as she sat leaning her head on her hand, and looking away off, as if
+over thousands of miles. Her pretty pale fingers were purple with
+working on hospital shirts and drawers, and bloody with pricking through
+the slipper soles for the wounded men. She was the most untiring and
+energetic of all the young people; but they all worked well.</p>
+
+<p>We sat there some time without speaking. I was full of thought and
+anxiety, and I supposed she too might feel deeply about Robert.</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Marian,&mdash;may I call you so?" said she softly, at length looking
+up.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not, Percy? you always do."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_663" id="Page_663">[Pg 663]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Only, lately, it has seemed to me you were different."</p>
+
+<p>She crossed the room and sat down on a <i>tabouret</i> so low that she was at
+my feet, and took my hand with a humble sweetness that would have
+touched any heart less hard than mine.</p>
+
+<p>"I used to love to hear <i>him</i> call you so!" she went on, caressing my
+hand, which I did not withdraw, though I should have liked well to do
+so, for I did not at all like this attitude we had assumed of penitent
+and confessor. "I can't expect you to be just to me, dear Auntie,
+because you don't know. But oh! do believe! I never guessed Robert's
+feelings for me. How could I think of it,&mdash;and I a married woman!"</p>
+
+<p>"Married! Percy!" said I, astonished at her agitation and the tears that
+flowed down her pale face like rain.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she answered in a voice so low that I could scarcely hear it.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a widow, Percy Lunt! What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think&mdash;I believe&mdash;my husband is living. He was so a few months ago.
+But I cannot tell you any more without papa's permission. O, I have
+suffered so much! You would pity me if you knew all. But I felt as if I
+must tell you this: and then&mdash;you would understand how I might have
+been, as I was, so wholly preoccupied with my own feelings and interests
+as never to guess that Robert's was anything but the regard of a friend.
+And, indeed," she added with a sorrowful smile, "I feel so much older
+than Robert.&mdash;I have gone through so much, that I feel ten years older
+than he is. You will believe me, Aunt Marian, and forgive me?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is easy to forgive, poor child!" I said, mingling my tears with
+hers. "I have been cruel and hard-hearted to you. But I felt only for
+poor Robert, and how could I guess?"</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't,&mdash;and that is why I felt that I must tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot ask you anything further,&mdash;it is very strange."</p>
+
+<p>While Percy kept strong rein on her feelings, her impassive manner had
+deceived me. Now that my sympathy with her made me more keenly alive to
+her distress, I saw the deep pain in her pale face, and the unnatural
+look of grief in one so young. She tied on her hat in her old, hopeless
+way, and the ivory smoothness of her face spoke of self-centred and
+silent suffering.</p>
+
+<p>"If papa is willing, I shall come to-morrow, and tell you part, at
+least, of my sad story; and even if he is not willing, I think I must
+tell you a part of it. I owe it to you, Aunt Marian!"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be at home all day, my dear," I said, kissing the poor, pale
+lips with such tender pity as I had never thought to feel for Percy
+Lunt.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER III.</h3>
+
+<p>It was early in September, 1862, and on Sunday morning, the day after I
+had received the promise of at least a partial confidence from Percy. We
+were to come home together from meeting, and she was to spend the rest
+of the day quietly with me. Many a query passed through my mind as I
+walked along. I wondered at a thousand things,&mdash;at the mysteries that
+are directly under our feet,&mdash;at the true stories that belong to every
+family, and are never known but to the trusted few,&mdash;at the many that
+are known but to the one heart, whereon they are cut in sharp letters.</p>
+
+<p>As I approached the meeting-house, I saw Mr. Ford talking earnestly with
+Colonel Lunt and Mr. Wilder on the porch-step, while the pews were
+already full, and the clock pointed to ten minutes past the usual time.
+I had myself been detained until late, and had walked rapidly and quite
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>The heart of the community was on the <i>qui vive</i> so constantly, that any
+unusual sign startled and alarmed every one. A minute more, and Mr. Ford
+passed rapidly up the broad aisle, his face pale with excitement.
+Instead<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_664" id="Page_664">[Pg 664]</a></span> of the opening prayer, he said to us: "Brethren and sisters!
+there has been a great battle,&mdash;a terrible battle at Antietam! They have
+sent on to the North for aid for the wounded, who are being brought on
+as fast as possible to Washington. But they are brought in by thousands,
+and everything is needed that any of us can spare."</p>
+
+<p>All of us had risen to our feet.</p>
+
+<p>"I have thought we should best serve and praise our God by ministering
+to the sufferings of our brave boys! God knows what afflictions are in
+store for us; but all who can aid in this extremity I am sure will do
+so, and the blessing of those ready to perish will fall on them."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ford ceased speaking. He had two boys with McClellan; and then
+Colonel Lunt, in a few words, stated the arrangements which had already
+been made by himself and Mr. Wilder, who was a deacon of the church, to
+convey any articles that might be contributed to the railroad station
+ten miles away. Whatever was gathered together should be brought to the
+Common at once, where it would be boxed and put into the wagons.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Ah, then and there was hurrying to and fro!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But one hour later saw Barton Common, an enclosed acre of ground,
+covered with every sort of garment that could by any possibility be
+useful in a hospital. Besides the incredible numbers of sheets and
+pillow-cases, wrappers and stockings, which every housekeeper drew forth
+from her stores, notwithstanding her previous belief and assertion that
+she "really had nothing more fit to give to the soldiers," there were
+countless boxes of jellies, preserves, and dried fruit. Everything
+palatable and transportable was brought, with streaming eyes and
+throbbing hearts, to the general contribution. From house to house the
+electric current of sympathy flowed, and by twelve o'clock Barton Common
+was a sight to behold. Seventeen boxes full of all imaginable comforts
+and alleviatives set off in four wagons for the railroad station, and
+Colonel Lunt himself went on with them to Washington to see that they
+were properly and safely delivered. That was a Sunday service for us!</p>
+
+<p>I had been sitting in my little keeping-room, knitting at soldiers'
+stockings, (what would Deacon Hall's wife and my mother have thought of
+my doing this on a Sunday!) and with the tea ready for drawing, when
+Percy came to make her promised visit. She too brought her basket of
+gray yarn and knitting-needles. We were not afraid of becoming atheists,
+if we did work on a Sunday. Our sheep had all fallen into ditches on the
+Sabbath-day, and we should have been worse than Jews not to have laid
+hold to get them out. So Percy kept on knitting until after our tea was
+ready, and then helped me with the teacups. When we were seated at the
+west window on the wide seat together, she put her arm round my neck and
+kissed me.</p>
+
+<p>"You will forgive me all, Aunt?"</p>
+
+<p>"O, you know that beforehand!"</p>
+
+<p>"But I shall not tell you very much, and what I do tell is so unpleasant
+and mortifying to reveal, that it was only when I told papa my great
+reason he was willing I should tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me just as much, and just as little, as you like, my dear; I am
+willing to believe in you without a word," I said. And so it was; and
+philosophers may tell, if they can, why it was.</p>
+
+<p>"You remember my governess, Madame Guyot?"</p>
+
+<p>"O, yes, of course, perfectly. Her dreadfully pale face and great black
+eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"She was so good to me! I loved her dearly. But after she died, you
+remember, they sent me to Paris to a school which she recommended, and
+which was really a very good one, and where I was very happy; and it was
+after that <i>we</i> travelled so much, and I met&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, my poor dear!" I said, seeing that she was choked with her
+sorrowful remembrances, "I can guess,&mdash;you saw there the person,&mdash;the
+young man&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_665" id="Page_665">[Pg 665]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I was only seventeen, Aunt Marian! and he was the first man I ever saw
+that really interested me at all,&mdash;though papa had several proposals for
+me from others. But this young man was so different. He really loved me,
+I am sure,&mdash;or rather I was sure at the time. He was not in good health,
+and I think his tall, fragile, spiritual person interested all the
+romance of my nature. Look at his picture, and tell me if that is the
+face of a bad or a treacherous man!"</p>
+
+<p>Percy opened a red morocco case and handed it to me. I gazed on the face
+with deep interest. The light, curling hair and smooth face gave an
+impression of extreme youth, and the soft blue eyes had the careless,
+serene expression which is often seen in foreigners' eyes, but scarcely
+ever in those of Americans. There was none of the keen, business look
+apparent in almost every New England face, but rather an abstracted,
+gentle expression, as of one interested in poetry or scientific
+pursuits,&mdash;objects that do not bring him in conflict with his race.</p>
+
+<p>I expressed something of this to Percy, and she said I was right about
+the poetry, and especially the gentleness. But he had, in fact, only
+been a student, and as yet but little of a traveller. They were to have
+travelled together after their marriage.</p>
+
+<p>"It was only six weeks after that, when Charles was obliged to go to the
+West Indies on business for his father. It was the sickly season, and he
+would not let me go with him. He was to be back in England in five or
+six weeks at farthest."</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;he wasn't lost?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lost to me. Papa heard at one time that he was living at the West
+Indies, and after a time he went there to search for him&mdash;in vain. Then,
+months after, we heard that he had been seen in Fayal. Sometimes I
+think&mdash;I almost hope he is dead. For that he should be willing to go
+away and live without me is so dreadful!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are dressed like a widow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes,&mdash;I desired it myself, after two years had passed, and not a word
+came from Charles. But papa says he has most likely met with a violent
+death, and that these rumors of his having been seen in Fayal and in the
+West Indies, as we heard once, are only got up to mislead suspicion. You
+know papa's great dislike&mdash;nay, I may call it weakness&mdash;is being talked
+about and discussed. And he thought the best way was to say nothing
+about the peculiarity or mystery attending my marriage, but merely say I
+was a widow. Somebody in Barton said Charles died of a fever, and as
+nobody contradicted it, so it has gone; but, Aunt Marian, it is often my
+hope, and even belief, that I shall see him again!"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped talking, and hid her face, sobbing heavily, like a grieved
+child. Poor thing! I pitied her from my heart. But what could I say?
+People are not lost, now-a-days. The difficulty is to be able to hide,
+try they ever so much. It looked very dark for this Charles Lunt; and,
+by her own account, they had not known much about him. He was a New York
+merchant, and I had not much opinion of New York morals myself. From
+their own newspapers, I should say there was more wickedness than could
+possibly be crammed into their dailies going on as a habit. However, I
+said nothing of this sort to poor Percy, whose grief and mortification
+had already given her such a look of suffering as belongs only to the
+gloomiest experience of life. I soothed and comforted her as well as I
+might, and it doesn't always take a similar experience to give
+consolation. She said it was a real comfort to tell me about her
+trouble, and I dare say it was.</p>
+
+<p>When Colonel Lunt got back from Washington, he had a great deal to tell
+us all, which he did, at our next soldiers' meeting, of the good which
+the Barton boxes had done. But he said it was a really wonderful sight
+to see the amount of relief contributed on that Lord's day, from all
+parts of the North, for the wounded. Every train brought in hundreds and
+thousands of packages<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_666" id="Page_666">[Pg 666]</a></span> and boxes, filled with comforts and delicacies.
+If the boys had been at home, they could not have been cared for more
+tenderly and abundantly. And the nurses in the hospitals! Colonel Lunt
+couldn't say enough about them. It was a treat to be watched over and
+consoled by such ministering angels as these women were! We could
+believe that, if they were at all like Anna Ford, who went, she said,
+"to help the soldiers bear the pain!" And I know she did that in a
+hundred cases,&mdash;cases where the men said they should have given up
+entirely, if she hadn't held their hands, or their heads, while their
+wounds were being dressed. "It made it seem so like their own mother or
+sister!"</p>
+
+<p>That fall, I think, Barton put up eighty boxes of blackberry jam. This
+wasn't done without such a corresponding amount of sympathy in every
+good word and work as makes a community take long leaps in Christian
+progress. Barton could not help improving morally and mentally while her
+sons were doing the country's work of regeneration; and her daughters
+forgot their round tires like the moon, their braidings of hair, and
+their tinkling ornaments, while they devoted themselves to all that was
+highest and noblest both in thought and action. I was proud of Barton
+girls, when I saw them on the hills, in their sun-bonnets, gathering the
+fruit that was to be for the healing of the nations.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after Colonel Lunt's return, he told me one day, in one of his
+cautious whispers, that he and Mrs. Lunt proposed to take me over to
+Swampy Hollow, if it would be agreeable to me. Of course it was; but I
+was surprised, when we were fairly shut up in the carriage, to find no
+Percy with us.</p>
+
+<p>"We left her at home purposely," said Colonel Lunt, in a mysterious way,
+which he was fond of, and which always enraged me.</p>
+
+<p>I don't like mysteries or whisperings, and yet, from an unfortunate
+"receptivity" in my nature, I am the unwilling depositary of half the
+secrets of Barton. I knew now that I was to hear poor Percy's story over
+again, with the Colonel's emendations and illustrations. I was in the
+carriage, and there was no getting out of it. Mrs. Lunt was used to him,
+and, I do believe, would like nothing better than to hear his old
+stories over and over, from January to December. But I wasn't of a
+patient make.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Lunt was a gentleman of the old school, which means, according
+to my experience, a person who likes to spend a long time getting at a
+joke or telling a story. He was a long time telling this, with the aid
+of Mrs. Lunt, who put in her corrections now and then, in a gentle,
+wifely way all her own, and which helped, instead of hindering him.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, may I ask, my dear Colonel," said I, when he had finished,
+"why don't you, or rather why didn't you tell Percy the whole story?"</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel pulled the check-string. "Thomas! drive slowly home now, and
+go round by the Devil's Dishful."</p>
+
+<p>This is one of the loveliest drives about Barton. I knew that the
+Colonel's mind was easy.</p>
+
+<p>"What need is there, or was there, to cloud Percy's life with such
+knowledge? Why, my dear Miss Elliott, if we all knew what other people
+know about us, we should be wretched! No! the mysteries of life are as
+merciful as the revelations; let us be thankful for all that we do <i>not</i>
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"And I am sure we couldn't love Percy any more than we do, let her birth
+or circumstances be what they would," said Mrs. Lunt.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe in natural affection, myself," said the Colonel; "but
+if I did, it would be enough to hear Percy congratulating herself on
+being of 'our very own blood,&mdash;a real Lunt!' Poor child! why should we
+trouble her? And I have often heard her say, she thought any blot on
+one's lineage the greatest of misfortunes."</p>
+
+<p>"The reason the Colonel wanted to tell you about Percy was this. Now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_667" id="Page_667">[Pg 667]</a></span>
+that her husband may be dead, who knew all about her, it is just
+possible that circumstances may arise that would need the interference
+of friends. If we were to die, the secret might die with us. We are sure
+it will be safe with you, Aunt Marian, and we think that, as you know
+about her husband, you had better know the whole."</p>
+
+<p>Now this whole I propose to tell, myself, in one tenth part of the time
+it took the Colonel to tell me, prefacing it with a few facts about
+himself, which I guess he does not think that I know, and which relate
+to his early beginnings. Of course, all Barton is fully acquainted with
+the fact that he was born in the north of Vermont, at "the jumping-off
+place." He came to Boston, mostly on foot, and began his career in a
+small shop in Cornhill, where he sold bandannas, and the like. This
+imports nothing,&mdash;only he came by and by to associate with lords and
+dukes. And that shows what comes of being an American. He fell among
+Perkinses and Sturgises, and after working hard for them in China, and
+getting a great deal to do in the "carrying-trade," whatever that may
+be, retired on his half-million to Maryland, where he lived awhile,
+until he went to Europe. After he returned he bought the Schuyler place,
+which had been for sale years and years. But in Barton we like new
+things, and we saw no beauty in the old house, with its long walk of
+nearly a quarter of a mile to the front door, bordered with box. The
+Colonel, whose taste has been differently cultivated, has made a
+beautiful place of it, applying some of the old French notions of
+gardening, where the trees would admit of being cut into grotesque
+shapes, and leaving the shade-trees, stately and handsome, as they
+always were. Now to his story in my own words.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER IV.</h3>
+
+<p>I can't think of a more desolate place than they had in Maryland, by
+their own account;&mdash;a great, dismal house, without chick or child in it
+for years and years;&mdash;full of rooms and furniture and black people, and
+nowhere the shout and cry of a baby. There was nobody to be anxious
+about,&mdash;nobody gone away or coming home, or to be wept for, or to be
+joyful for;&mdash;only their two stupid selves. Madam pottering about the
+great house, dusting with a feather duster all the knick-knacks that she
+had brought home from Europe, and that she might have just as well
+bought in New York after she got home; and he putting up books and
+taking them down, riding out on his white horse, and having somebody to
+dine once in a while,&mdash;<i>could</i> any life be drearier and more tiresome?</p>
+
+<p>Why people who have great empty houses and hearts don't rush into the
+street and pick up the first dozen little vagabonds they see, I can't
+think. With soap-suds, love, and the tenderest care, why don't they
+baptize them, body and soul, and keep them to make music in their silent
+halls, and, when their time comes, have something worth to render up to
+the child-loving Christ? Especially, why didn't two such affectionate,
+tender-hearted persons as Colonel Lunt and his wife? But they did not.
+They only waxed duller and duller, sitting there by their Christmas
+fires, that warmed no hearts but their own, rapidly growing cold.</p>
+
+<p>They sat alone by their Christmas fire one night, at last, to some
+purpose. All the servants had gone off pleasuring somewhere, where it is
+to be hoped there were children enough. The Colonel went himself to the
+door and brought in a market-basket that stood in the porch. He opened
+it by the light of a blazing fire, and Mrs. Lunt guessed, at every
+wrapper he turned down, something, and then something else; but she
+never guessed a baby. Yet there it lay, with eyes wide open,&mdash;a perfect
+baby, nobly planned;&mdash;a year old or more; and no more afraid of the
+Colonel than if it had been in society ten years. The little girl sprang
+forward towards him, laughing, and by doing so won his heart at once.
+Mrs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_668" id="Page_668">[Pg 668]</a></span> Lunt found credentials in the basket, in the shape of a note
+written in good English and spelled correctly. The wardrobe of the baby
+accompanied her also,&mdash;fine and delicately embroidered. The note said
+that circumstances of the most painful nature made it imperative to the
+mother of this child to keep herself unknown for a time; but meanwhile
+begged the charitable care of Colonel Lunt.</p>
+
+<p>The child, of course, took straight hold of their heart-strings. She
+made the house ring with her shouts and her healthy glee. She toddled
+over everything without restraint; tumbled over Chinese tea-poys and
+Japan idols; upset the alabaster Graces in the best parlor, and pulled
+every knick-knack out of its proper place.</p>
+
+<p>The worthy couple wondered at the happiness this naughty little thing
+brought; and a tyranny, but one very sweet and fair, triumphed in the
+decorous parlor and over the decorous old hearts. The baby was in a fair
+way of becoming a spoiled pest, when her own mother, in the character of
+French <i>bonne</i>, and afterwards of governess, came to the rescue. She
+told her story, which was rather a strange one, to the Colonel, and they
+made an arrangement with her to come and take care of the child. It was
+planned between them that Percy (her name is Amy Percival) should
+personate the only child of a deceased brother of the Colonel, and be
+adopted by him as his own daughter. Thenceforward the poor pale Madame
+Guyot took up her abode with them, like Amram's wife at the Egyptian
+court. I remember how sad and silent she always was, and how much her
+French speech separated her from us all in Barton. No wonder to me now
+that she faded day by day, till her life went out. No wonder that she
+was glad to exchange those memories of hers, and Percy's duty-kisses,
+for the green grave.</p>
+
+<p>When the child was fourteen, the Colonel took her abroad, but before
+that time the governess died. In some respects the Colonel's theory of
+education was peculiar. Squeers thought it best for people to learn how
+to spell windows by washing them,&mdash;"And then, you know, they don't
+forget. Winders, there 't is." And the Colonel approved of learning
+geography by going to the places themselves, and especially of learning
+the languages on the spot. This, he contended, was the only correct way,
+and enough better than by hammering forever at school-books and masters.
+It was in pursuance of this somewhat desultory, but healthful mode of
+education, that the family found itself, in 1857, at Baden-Baden.</p>
+
+<p>As usual, there were, in the crowds there assembled for health and
+pleasure, a great many English; among them several persons of high rank.
+Here were German princes and counts, so plenty that Percy got tired of
+wondering they were not more refined and agreeable. She was herself a
+great attraction there, and, the Colonel said, had many admirers. Among
+the guests was an English family that took great notice of her, and made
+many advances towards intimacy. The two young ladies and their father
+seemed equally pleased and interested in the Lunts, and when they left
+Baden-Baden asked them to make them a visit in the autumn at their house
+in Derbyshire.</p>
+
+<p>Thinking of this, I am not much surprised. For the Colonel's manners are
+unexceptionably good, with a simplicity and a self-reliance that mark a
+true gentleman; while Mrs. Lunt is the loveliest and best-bred woman in
+Barton, and consequently fit society for any nobleman.</p>
+
+<p>When the Lunts went to England, in October, they visited these people.
+And there they found Charles Lunt, a second-cousin of the Colonel's, a
+New-Yorker, and a graduate of Oxford. His father had sent him to England
+to be finished off, after Yale had done its best for him here. He and
+Percy fell in love immediately, and matters came to a climax.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Lunt did not desire the connection at all. Charles's mother was
+related to the family where they were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_669" id="Page_669">[Pg 669]</a></span> visiting, and, as he himself
+would feel it incumbent on him to state the facts relative to Percy's
+birth, he foresaw distinctly only a mortifying relinquishment of the
+alliance. Charles was, in fact, on his mother's side, second-cousin to
+an English Earl. The name of the Earl I don't give, for the good reason
+that the Colonel kept it a secret, and, even if I knew, I should not
+wish to reveal it.</p>
+
+<p>Before Colonel Lunt could act on his impressions and decisions, Charles
+cut the knot by asking his relative, the Earl, to make proposals for
+him. He was of age, with an independent fortune, and could please
+himself, and it pleased him to marry Percy.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Colonel asked to see Charles, and he was called in. He began by
+declining the connection; but finding this mortifying and mysterious to
+both the gentlemen, he ended by a plain statement of such of the facts
+as he had been made acquainted with by Madame Guyot.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know the name of Percy's father," said the Colonel, "the poor
+woman would give me no clew to him,&mdash;but he may be living,&mdash;he may some
+time trace and claim her!"</p>
+
+<p>"Does this make any difference to you, Charles?" said the Earl, when
+Colonel Lunt had finished.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a jot!" said Charles, warmly. "It isn't likely her father will ever
+either trace or claim her; and, if he should even, and all should come
+out, why, I care nothing for it,&mdash;nothing, I mean, in comparison with
+Percy."</p>
+
+<p>Of course then the Colonel had no objections.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, is it best, all things considered," said the Earl, who took the
+interest of a father in Charles, "is it best to say anything to Percy of
+her real history?"</p>
+
+<p>Charles thought not by any means, and it was so agreed among the three.
+The young man left the room to go to his confident wooing, for there was
+not much reason to doubt of his fate, and left Colonel Lunt with the
+Earl.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing can be more honorable than your whole proceeding, Colonel, in
+this matter. You might have kept the thing quiet, if you had so chosen."</p>
+
+<p>"I always meant to tell any man who really desired to marry Percy," said
+the Colonel; "we never can tell what may happen, and I wouldn't be such
+a swindler as to keep these facts from him, on which his whole decision
+might rest."</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel looked at the Earl,&mdash;"looked him straight in the eye," he
+said,&mdash;for he felt it an imputation on his honor that he could have been
+supposed for a moment to do otherwise than he had done. To his surprise
+the Earl turned very red, and then very pale, and said, holding out his
+hand, "You have kept my secret well, Colonel Lunt! and I thank you for
+it!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are Percy's father!" said the Colonel, at once.</p>
+
+<p>The Earl wrung his hand hard. It isn't the English nature to express
+much, but it was plain that the past was full of mournful and
+distressful remembrances.</p>
+
+<p>"I never thought of it till this instant," said Colonel Lunt, "and I
+don't know how I knew it; but it was written in your face. She never
+told me who it was!"</p>
+
+<p>"But she wrote to me about you, and about the child. I have watched your
+comings and goings these many years. I knew I should meet you where I
+did. You may guess my feelings at seeing my beautiful child,&mdash;at seeing
+how lovely in mind and person she is, and at being unable to call her my
+own! I was well punished the first hour after I met you. But my next
+hope and desire was to interest you all enough in my own family to
+induce you to come here. In fact, I did think you were the depositary of
+my secret. But I see I was wrong there."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," the Colonel said, "Madame Guyot simply informed me the child's
+father would never claim her, and that the name was an assumed one. I
+saw how it probably was, but I respected<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_670" id="Page_670">[Pg 670]</a></span> her too much to ask anything
+which she did not herself choose to reveal. I think she was one of the
+loveliest and most superior women I ever saw, though, at the time I
+first met her, she showed that her health was fatally undermined. It was
+much on her account that I left Maryland for the more equable climate of
+Barton."</p>
+
+<p>"You were everything to her that the most tender and noble friends could
+be!" said the Earl, warmly. "She wrote me of all your kindness. Now let
+me tell you a little about her. She was my sister's governess, and I saw
+her in my college vacations. I need not tell you how lovely she was in
+her youth. She was no French girl, but a country curate's daughter in
+Hampshire. Now, Colonel Lunt, it would have been as impossible for me to
+marry that girl&mdash;no matter how beautiful, refined, and good&mdash;as if she
+had been a Hottentot. How often I have wished to throw birth,
+connections, name, title, everything, to the winds, that I might take
+Amy Percival to my heart and hold her there legally! How I have envied
+the Americans, who care nothing for antecedents, to whom birth and
+social position are literally nothing,&mdash;often not even fortunate
+accidents! How many times I have read your papers, and imagined myself
+thrown on my own resources only, like so many of your successful men,
+and making my own way among you, taking my Amy with me and giving her a
+respectable and happy home! But these social cobwebs by which we poor
+flies are caught and held,&mdash;it is very hard to break them! I was always
+going to do right, and always did wrong. After my great wrong to Amy,
+which was a pretended marriage, she left me,&mdash;she had found out my
+villany,&mdash;and went to America. She did not write to me until she knew
+she must die, and then she related every particular,&mdash;all your great
+kindness to both her and the child, and the motherly tenderness with
+which Mrs. Lunt had endeavored to soften her sufferings. In twenty years
+I have changed very much every way, but I have never ceased to feel
+self-contempt for my conduct to Amy Percival."</p>
+
+<p>Now a new question arose.</p>
+
+<p>Was it best to reveal this last secret to Charles? He had been content
+to take Percy, nameless and illegitimate. The Earl was extremely
+unwilling to extend his confidence further than Colonel Lunt. It seemed
+to him unnecessary. He said he desired to give Percy the same share of
+his property that his other two daughters would receive on their
+marriage, but that he could not openly do this without exciting remarks
+and provoking unpleasant feelings. Colonel Lunt considered that the
+secret was not his to keep or reveal. So nothing was said, and the
+marriage took place at the house of the Earl; Colonel Lunt receiving
+from Percy's father ten thousand pounds, as some atonement by a wounded
+conscience.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said the Colonel, as he finished his long story, and we drove up
+to his house, "I say it was a mean cowardice that kept that man from
+doing his daughter justice. But then he was a scoundrel all through. And
+now for my reason for telling you. I have my doubts, after all, about
+the first marriage. There are the certificate and all the papers safe in
+my desk. Earls may die, and worms may eat them,&mdash;and so with their sons
+and daughters. It isn't among the impossibilities that my little Percy
+may be a countess yet! Any way, if an advertisement should appear
+calling for heirs to the Earl of Blank, somebody besides me and my
+little woman would know all about it."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Lunt insisted on my stopping to tea with them, and I had a strange
+curiosity to look at Percy Lunt again, surrounded with this new halo,
+thrice circled, of mystery. If she only knew or guessed what she really
+was!</p>
+
+<p>She sat by the fire, for the evening was a little cool, and, as we came
+in, roused herself from her sad posture to give me welcome. How white
+her face was! It was grievous to see such a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_671" id="Page_671">[Pg 671]</a></span> young spirit so
+blanched,&mdash;so utterly unelastic. If she could receive tidings of his
+death, she would reconcile herself to the inevitable; but this wearing,
+gnawing pain, this grief at his desertion, this dread of meeting him
+again after he had been willing to leave her so long,&mdash;death itself
+would be less bitter! But there were no words to console her with.</p>
+
+<p>"You have had letters from Robert?" she inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Only a telegram came saying that the Barton boys were safe. It must
+have been a dreadful battle! They say twelve thousand were killed on
+each side."</p>
+
+<p>"But you will hear very soon?"</p>
+
+<p>"O, yes," I said, "but Robert must have his hands very full. He will
+write as soon as he has a minute of leisure."</p>
+
+<p>Robert was colonel now, and we were very proud of him. He had not yet
+received a scratch, and he had been in eleven battles. We felt as if he
+bore a charmed life.</p>
+
+<p>After tea, we four sat round the sparkling wood-fire, knitting and
+talking, (people in war-time have enough to talk about,) when a loud,
+sudden knock at the door startled us. The old knocker thumped again and
+again. The servant hurried to the door, and a moment after a man rushed
+by him, with swift and heavy steps into the parlor, caught up Percy as
+if she had been a feather, and held her tight to his heart and mouth.</p>
+
+<p>He had not taken off his army cap, nor his blue great coat. We all
+sprang up at his entrance, of course, but I hadn't a thought who it
+could be, until Colonel Lunt called out "<i>Charles!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>There he was, to be sure, as alive as he could be, with his great red
+beard, and his face tanned and burnt like a brick! He took no notice of
+us whatever, only kept kissing Percy over and over, till her face, which
+was white as death, was covered with living crimson, and her
+heavy-lidded eyes turned to stars for brightness!</p>
+
+<p>After her fashion, Percy still continued undemonstrative, so far as
+words went; but she clung most eloquently to his neck with both her
+hands, the joyful light from her eyes streaming silently into his. O, it
+was fair to see,&mdash;this might of human love,&mdash;this mystery that needed no
+solving! His face shedding fidelity and joyfulness, and her heart
+accepting it with a trust that had not one question!</p>
+
+<p>In a few but most eloquent words he told us his adventures. But that
+would make a story by itself. A shipwreck,&mdash;and capture by Japanese
+pirates,&mdash;prison,&mdash;escape,&mdash;landing at Mobile,&mdash;pressed into the Rebel
+service,&mdash;battle,&mdash;prisoner to the Union forces,&mdash;glad taking of the
+oath of allegiance,&mdash;interview with General Banks, and service at last
+for the North. It was a wild, strange story of suffering, hardships, and
+wonderful escapes. Colonel Lunt said he never should have known the man,
+nor guessed at him, but for his eyes, he was so altered in every
+way,&mdash;so rough and strong-looking, with his complexion tanned and
+weather-beaten; and he had always been such a delicate, curled darling
+of indulgent parents! However, he looked twice the man he was before,
+Mrs. Lunt whispered me; and Percy could not take her eyes off him, he
+looked so strong and noble, and his face so full of high thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>He had been in several battles, and had been wounded twice. After his
+first wound he had been some time in a Southern hospital. "And now I
+think of it, Percy," he said, turning suddenly to her, and taking her on
+his knee as if she had been a baby, "it was in a hospital that I found
+out where you were. You must know that I hadn't the least clew to your
+whereabout, and thought of you as most likely still in London. You know
+our plan was to travel together for some months, and I could not guess
+where you might be, if indeed you were alive. After the battle the other
+day, I went into one of the improvised hospitals to look after some
+brave fellows of mine, when one of the nurses asked me for directions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_672" id="Page_672">[Pg 672]</a></span>
+as to the burial of some men who had just been brought in. They had
+officers' uniforms on, and it was ascertained that they were really
+dead. As I turned to give the necessary directions, a man at my side,
+who was smoothing down the limbs of one who had just ceased to breathe,
+handed me a photograph from the man's breast, all rumpled and bloody. I
+recognized it in a moment as yours, Percy,&mdash;though how it should have
+been in that man's breast, I couldn't see."</p>
+
+<p>Percy and I looked at each other. But we dared not think. He went on.</p>
+
+<p>"I could not recognize him. But he was one of so many who were brought
+in on that terrible day after the battle, and except my own company I
+scarcely knew any of the officers. But I saw by the photograph where you
+were, at least the name on the back was a guide. It was Barton, Mass.,
+and the date of April, 1861. So, as I had worked pretty well at
+Antietam, Little Mac gave me a week's furlough, and I thought I would
+try it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember at all how he looked?" Mrs. Lunt asked, for I could not
+speak.</p>
+
+<p>"The young officer? Yes, Madam, I looked keenly at him, you may be sure.
+He was tall and fine-looking, with dark, curling hair, and his regular
+features were smiling and peaceful. They mostly look so who are shot
+dead at once. And this one had not suffered. He had died at the moment
+of triumph."</p>
+
+<p>I went home to fear and to weep. It seemed too certain. And time brought
+us the truth. Robert had fallen as he would have chosen to fall, leading
+on his men. He was so tall, and he was such a shining mark for death!
+But I knew that no din of cannon or roar of battle was loud enough to
+overcome the still, small voices of home, and that his last thought was,
+as he wrote me it would be, "of you all."</p>
+
+<p>O beautiful, valiant youth! O fearful ploughshare, tearing thy way
+through so many bleeding hearts! O terrible throes, out of which a new
+nation must be born!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IN_THE_HEMLOCKS" id="IN_THE_HEMLOCKS"></a>IN THE HEMLOCKS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Most people receive with incredulity a statement of the number of birds
+that annually visit our climate. Very few even are aware of half the
+number that spend the summer in their own immediate vicinity. We little
+suspect, when we walk in the woods, whose privacy we are intruding
+upon,&mdash;what rare and elegant visitants from Mexico, from Central and
+South America, and from the islands of the sea, are holding their
+reunions in the branches over our heads, or pursuing their pleasure on
+the ground before us.</p>
+
+<p>I recall the altogether admirable and shining family which Thoreau
+dreamed he saw in the upper chambers of Spaulding's woods, which
+Spaulding did not know lived there, and which were not put out when
+Spaulding, whistling, drove his team through their lower halls. They did
+not go into society in the village; they were quite well; they had sons
+and daughters; they neither wove nor spun; there was a sound as of
+suppressed hilarity.</p>
+
+<p>I take it for granted that the forester was only saying a pretty thing
+of the birds, though I have observed that it does sometimes annoy them
+when Spaulding's cart rumbles through their house. Generally, however,
+they are as unconscious of Spaulding as Spaulding is of them.</p>
+
+<p>Walking the other day in an old hemlock wood, I counted over forty
+varieties<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_673" id="Page_673">[Pg 673]</a></span> of these summer visitants, many of them common to other woods
+in the vicinity, but quite a number peculiar to these ancient solitudes,
+and not a few that are rare in any locality. It is quite unusual to find
+so large a number abiding in one forest,&mdash;and that not a large
+one,&mdash;most of them nesting and spending the summer there. Many of those
+I observed commonly pass this season much farther north. But the
+geographical distribution of birds is rather a climatical one. The same
+temperature, though under different parallels, usually attracts the same
+birds; difference in altitude being equivalent to the difference in
+latitude. A given height above the sea level under the parallel of 30&deg;
+may have the same climate as places under that of 35&deg;, and similar Flora
+and Fauna. At the head-waters of the Delaware, where I write, the
+latitude is that of Boston, but the region has a much greater elevation,
+and hence a climate that compares better with the northern part of the
+State and of New England. Half a day's drive to the southeast brings me
+down into quite a different temperature, with an older geological
+formation, different forest timber, and different birds,&mdash;even with
+different mammals. Neither the little Gray Rabbit nor the little Gray
+Fox is found in my locality, but the great Northern Hare and the Red Fox
+are seen here. In the last century a colony of beavers dwelt here,
+though the oldest inhabitant cannot now point to even the traditional
+site of their dams. The ancient hemlocks, whither I propose to take the
+reader, are rich in many things beside birds. Indeed, their wealth in
+this respect is owing mainly, no doubt, to their rank vegetable growths,
+their fruitful swamps, and their dark, sheltered retreats.</p>
+
+<p>Their history is of an heroic cast. Ravished and torn by the tanner in
+his thirst for bark, preyed upon by the lumberman, assaulted and beaten
+back by the settler, still their spirit has never been broken, their
+energies never paralyzed. Not many years ago a public highway passed
+through them, but it was at no time a tolerable road; trees fell across
+it, mud and limbs choked it up, till finally travellers took the hint
+and went around; and now, walking along its deserted course, I see only
+the footprints of coons, foxes, and squirrels.</p>
+
+<p>Nature loves such woods, and places her own seal upon them. Here she
+shows me what can be done with ferns and mosses and lichens. The soil is
+marrowy and full of innumerable forests. Standing in these fragrant
+aisles, I feel the strength of the vegetable kingdom and am awed by the
+deep and inscrutable processes of life going on so silently about me.</p>
+
+<p>No hostile forms with axe or spud now visit these solitudes. The cows
+have half-hidden ways through them, and know where the best browsing is
+to be had. In spring the farmer repairs to their bordering of maples to
+make sugar; in July and August women and boys from all the country about
+penetrate the old Barkpeeling for raspberries and blackberries; and I
+know a youth who wonderingly follows their languid stream casting for
+trout.</p>
+
+<p>In like spirit, alert and buoyant, on this bright June morning go I also
+to reap my harvest,&mdash;pursuing a sweet more delectable than sugar, fruit
+more savory than berries, and game for another palate than that tickled
+by trout.</p>
+
+<p>June, of all the months, the student of ornithology can least afford to
+lose. Most birds are nesting then, and in full song and plumage. And
+what is a bird without its song? Do we not wait for the stranger to
+speak? It seems to me that I do not know a bird till I have heard its
+voice; then I come nearer it at once, and it possesses a human interest
+to me. I have met the Gray-cheeked Thrush (<i>Turdus alici&aelig;</i>) in the
+woods, and held him in my hand; still I do not know him. The silence of
+the Cedar-Bird throws a mystery about him which neither his good looks
+nor his petty larcenies in cherry time can dispel. A bird's song
+contains a clew to its life, and establishes a sympathy, an
+understanding, between itself and the admiring listener.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_674" id="Page_674">[Pg 674]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I descend a steep hill, and approach the hemlocks through a large
+sugar-bush. When twenty rods distant, I hear all along the line of the
+forest the incessant warble of the Red-eyed Flycatcher (<i>Vireosylvia
+olivacea</i>), cheerful and happy as the merry whistle of a schoolboy. He
+is one of our most common and widely distributed birds. Approach any
+forest at any hour of the day, in any kind of weather, from May to
+August, in any of the Middle or Eastern districts, and the chances are
+that the first note you hear will be his. Rain or shine, before noon or
+after, in the deep forest or in the village grove,&mdash;when it is too hot
+for the thrushes or too cold and windy for the warblers,&mdash;it is never
+out of time or place for this little minstrel to indulge his cheerful
+strain. In the deep wilds of the Adirondac, where few birds are seen and
+fewer heard, his note was almost constantly in my ear. Always busy,
+making it a point never to suspend for one moment his occupation to
+indulge his musical taste, his lay is that of industry and contentment.
+There is nothing plaintive or especially musical in his performance, but
+the sentiment expressed is eminently that of cheerfulness. Indeed the
+songs of most birds have some human significance, which, I think, is the
+source of the delight we take in them. The song of the Bobolink, to me,
+expresses hilarity; the Song-Sparrow's, faith; the Bluebird's, love; the
+Cat-Bird's, pride; the White-eyed Fly-catcher's, self-consciousness;
+that of the Hermit-Thrush, spiritual serenity; while there is something
+military in the call of the Robin, and unalloyed contentment in the
+warble of the Red-eyed Vireo.</p>
+
+<p>This bird is classed among the flycatchers, but is much more of a
+worm-eater, and has few of the traits or habits of the <i>Muscicapa</i> or
+the true <i>Sylvia</i>. He resembles somewhat the Warbling Vireo (<i>Vireo
+gilvus</i>), and the two birds are often confounded by careless observers.
+Both warble in the same cheerful strain, but the latter more
+continuously and rapidly. The Red-Eye is a larger, slimmer bird, with a
+faint bluish crown, and a light line over the eye. His movements are
+peculiar. You may see him hopping among the limbs, exploring the under
+side of the leaves, peering to the right and left,&mdash;now flitting a few
+feet, now hopping as many,&mdash;and warbling incessantly, occasionally in a
+subdued tone, which sounds from a very indefinite distance. When he has
+found a worm to his liking, he turns lengthwise of the limb, and bruises
+its head with his beak before devouring it.</p>
+
+<p>As I enter the woods the Slate-colored Snowbird (<i>Fringilla Hudsonia</i>)
+starts up before me and chirps sharply. His protest when thus disturbed
+is almost metallic in its sharpness. He breeds here, and is not esteemed
+a snowbird at all, as he disappears at the near approach of winter, and
+returns again in spring, like the Song-Sparrow, and is not in any way
+associated with the cold and the snow. So different are the habits of
+birds in different localities. Even the Crow does not winter here, and
+is seldom seen after December or before March.</p>
+
+<p>The Snow-Bird, or "Black Chipping-Bird," as it is known among the
+farmers, is the finest architect of any of the ground-builders known to
+me. The site of its nest is usually some low bank by the roadside near a
+wood. In a slight excavation, with a partially concealed entrance, the
+exquisite structure is placed. Horse-hair and cow-hair are plentifully
+used, imparting to the interior of the nest great symmetry and firmness
+as well as softness.</p>
+
+<p>Passing down through the maple arches, barely pausing to observe the
+antics of a trio of squirrels,&mdash;two gray ones and a black one,&mdash;I cross
+an ancient brush fence and am fairly within the old hemlocks, and in one
+of the most primitive, undisturbed nooks. In the deep moss I tread as
+with muffled feet, and the pupils of my eyes dilate in the dim, almost
+religious light. The irreverent red squirrels, however, run and snicker
+at my approach, or mock the solitude with their ridiculous chattering
+and frisking.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_675" id="Page_675">[Pg 675]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This nook is the chosen haunt of the Winter Wren. This is the only place
+and these the only woods in which I find him in this vicinity. His voice
+fills these dim aisles, as if aided by some marvellous sounding-board.
+Indeed, his song is very strong for so small a bird, and unites in a
+remarkable degree brilliancy and plaintiveness. I think of a tremulous
+vibrating tongue of silver. You may know it is the song of a wren, from
+its gushing lyrical character; but you must needs look sharp to see the
+little minstrel, especially while in the act of singing. He is nearly
+the color of the ground and the leaves; he never ascends the tall trees,
+but keeps low, flitting from stump to stump and from root to root,
+dodging in and out of his hiding-places, and watching all intruders with
+a suspicious eye. He has a very perk, almost comical look. His tail
+stands more than perpendicular: it points straight toward his head. He
+is the least ostentatious singer I know of. He does not strike an
+attitude, and lift up his head in preparation, and, as it were, clear
+his throat; but sits there on the log and pours out his music, looking
+straight before him, or even down at the ground. As a songster, he has
+but few superiors. I do not hear him after the first week in July.</p>
+
+<p>While sitting on this soft-cushioned log, tasting the pungent acidulous
+wood-sorrel (<i>Oxalis acetorella</i>), the blossoms of which, large and
+pink-veined, rise everywhere above the moss, a rufous-colored bird flies
+quickly past, and, alighting on a low limb a few rods off, salutes me
+with "Whew! Whew!" or "Whoit! Whoit!" almost as you would whistle for
+your dog. I see by his impulsive, graceful movements, and his dimly
+speckled breast, that it is a Thrush. Presently he utters a few soft,
+mellow, flute-like notes, one of the most simple expressions of melody
+to be heard, and scuds away, and I see it is the Veery or Wilson's
+Thrush. He is the least of the Thrushes in size, being about that of the
+common Bluebird, and he may be distinguished from his relatives by the
+dimness of the spots upon his breast. The Wood-Thrush has very clear,
+distinct oval spots on a white ground; in the Hermit, the spots run more
+into lines, on a ground of a faint bluish-white; in the Veery, the marks
+are almost obsolete, and a few rods off his breast presents only a dull
+yellowish appearance. To get a good view of him you have only to sit
+down in his haunts, as in such cases he seems equally anxious to get a
+good view of you.</p>
+
+<p>From those tall hemlocks proceeds a very fine insect-like warble, and
+occasionally I see a spray <i>teeter</i>, or catch the flit of a wing. I
+watch and watch till my head grows dizzy and my neck is in danger of
+permanent displacement, and still do not get a good view. Presently the
+bird darts, or, as it seems, falls down a few feet in pursuit of a fly
+or moth, and I see the whole of it, but in the dim light am undecided.
+It is for such emergencies that I have brought this gun. A bird in the
+hand is worth half a dozen in the bush, even for ornithological
+purposes; and no sure and rapid progress can be made in the study
+without taking life, without procuring specimens. This bird is a
+Warbler, plainly enough, from his habits and manner; but what kind of
+Warbler? Look on him and name him: a deep orange or flame-colored throat
+and breast; the same color showing also in a line over the eye and in
+his crown; back variegated black and white. The female is less marked
+and brilliant. The Orange-throated Warbler would seem to be his right
+name, his characteristic cognomen; but no, he is doomed to wear the name
+of some discoverer, perhaps the first who robbed his nest or rifled him
+of his mate,&mdash;Blackburn; hence, Blackburnian Warbler. The <i>burn</i> seems
+appropriate enough, for in these dark evergreens his throat and breast
+show like flame. He has a very fine warble, suggesting that of the
+Redstart, but not especially musical. I find him in no other woods in
+this vicinity.</p>
+
+<p>I am attracted by another warble in the same locality, and experience a
+like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_676" id="Page_676">[Pg 676]</a></span> difficulty in getting a good view of the author of it. It is quite
+a noticeable strain, sharp and sibilant, and sounds well amid the old
+trees. In the upland woods of beech and maple it is a more familiar
+sound than in these solitudes. On taking the bird in your hand, even if
+you are not a young lady, you will probably exclaim, "How beautiful!" So
+tiny and elegant, the smallest of the Warblers; a delicate blue back,
+with a slight bronze-colored triangular spot between the shoulders;
+upper mandible black; lower mandible yellow as gold; throat yellow,
+becoming a dark bronze on the breast. Blue Yellow-Back he is called,
+though the yellow is much nearer a bronze. He is remarkably delicate and
+beautiful,&mdash;the handsomest, as he is the smallest, of the Warblers known
+to me. It is never without surprise that I find amid these rugged,
+savage aspects of Nature creatures so fairy and delicate. But such is
+the law. Go to the sea or climb the mountain, and with the ruggedest and
+the savagest you will find likewise the fairest and the most delicate.
+The greatness and the minuteness of Nature pass all understanding.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since I entered the woods, even while listening to the lesser
+songsters, or contemplating the silent forms about me, a strain has
+reached my ear from out the depths of the forest that to me is the
+finest sound in nature,&mdash;the song of the Hermit-Thrush. I often hear him
+thus a long way off, sometimes over a quarter of a mile away, when only
+the stronger and more perfect parts of his music reach me; and through
+the general chorus of Wrens and Warblers I detect this sound rising pure
+and serene, as if a spirit from some remote height were slowly chanting
+a divine accompaniment. This song appeals to the sentiment of the
+beautiful in me, and suggests a serene religious beatitude as no other
+sound in nature does. It is perhaps more of an evening than a morning
+hymn, though I hear it at all hours of the day. It is very simple, and I
+can hardly tell the secret of its charm. "O spheral, spheral!" he seems
+to say; "O holy, holy! O clear away, clear away! O clear up, clear up!"
+interspersed with the finest trills and the most delicate preludes. It
+is not a proud, gorgeous strain, like the Tanager's or the Grosbeak's;
+suggests no passion or emotion,&mdash;nothing personal,&mdash;but seems to be the
+voice of that calm, sweet solemnity one attains to in his best moments.
+It realizes a peace and a deep, solemn joy that only the finest souls
+may know. A few nights ago I ascended a mountain to see the world by
+moonlight; and when near the summit the Hermit commenced his evening
+hymn a few rods from me. Listening to this strain on the lone mountain,
+with the full moon just rounded from the horizon, the pomp of your
+cities and the pride of your civilization seemed trivial and cheap.</p>
+
+<p>Whether it is because of their rareness, or an accident of my
+observation, or a characteristic trait, I cannot tell, yet I have never
+known two of these birds to be singing at the same time in the same
+locality, rivalling each other, like the Wood-Thrush or the Veery.
+Shooting one from a tree, I have observed another take up the strain
+from almost the identical perch in less than ten minutes afterward.
+Later in the day, when I had penetrated the heart of the old
+Barkpeeling, I came suddenly upon one singing from a low stump, and for
+a wonder he did not seem alarmed, but lifted up his divine voice as if
+his privacy was undisturbed. I open his beak and find the inside yellow
+as gold. I was prepared to find it inlaid with pearls and diamonds, or
+to see an angel issue from it.</p>
+
+<p>He is not much in the books. Indeed, I am acquainted with scarcely any
+writer on ornithology whose head is not muddled on the subject of our
+three prevailing song-thrushes, confounding either their figures or
+their songs. A writer in the Atlantic<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> gravely tells us the
+Wood-Thrush is sometimes called the Hermit, and then, after describing
+the song of the Hermit with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_677" id="Page_677">[Pg 677]</a></span> great beauty and correctness, coolly
+ascribes it to the Veery! The new Cyclop&aelig;dia, fresh from the study of
+Audubon, says the Hermit's song consists of a single plaintive note, and
+that the Veery's resembles that of the Wood-Thrush! These observations
+deserve to be preserved with that of the author of "Out-door Papers,"
+who tells us the trill of the Hair-Bird (<i>Fringilla socialis</i>) is
+produced by the bird fluttering its wings upon its sides! The
+Hermit-Thrush may be easily identified by his color; his back being a
+clear olive-brown, becoming rufous on his rump and tail. A quill from
+his wing placed beside one from his tail, on a dark ground, presents
+quite a marked contrast.</p>
+
+<p>I walk along the old road, and note the tracks in the thin layer of mud.
+When do these creatures travel here? I have never yet chanced to meet
+one. Here a partridge has set its foot; there, a woodcock; here, a
+squirrel or mink; there, a skunk; there, a fox. What a clear, nervous
+track Reynard makes! how easy to distinguish it from that of a little
+dog,&mdash;it is so sharply cut and defined! A dog's track is coarse and
+clumsy beside it. There is as much wildness in the track of an animal as
+in its voice. Is a deer's track like a sheep's or a goat's? What
+winged-footed fleetness and agility may be inferred from the sharp,
+braided track of the gray squirrel upon the new snow! Ah! in nature is
+the best discipline. I think the sculptor might carve finer and more
+expressive lines if he grew up in the woods, and the painter
+discriminate finer hues. How wood-life sharpens the senses, giving a new
+power to the eye, the ear, the nose! And are not the rarest and most
+exquisite songsters wood-birds?</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere in these solitudes I am greeted with the pensive, almost
+pathetic note of the Wood-Pewee. Do you know the Pewees? They are the
+true Flycatchers, and are easily identified. They are very
+characteristic birds, have very strong family traits, and very
+pugnacious dispositions. Without any exception or qualification they are
+the homeliest or the least elegant birds of our fields or forest.
+Sharp-shouldered, big-headed, short-legged, of no particular color, of
+little elegance in flight or movement, with a disagreeable flirt of the
+tail, always quarrelling with their neighbors and with one another, no
+birds are so little calculated to excite pleasurable emotions in the
+beholder, or to become objects of human interest and affection. The
+King-Bird is the best-dressed member of the family, but he is a
+braggart; and, though always snubbing his neighbors, is an arrant
+coward, and shows the white feather at the slightest display of pluck in
+his antagonist. I have seen him turn tail to a Swallow, and have known
+the little Pewee in question to whip him beautifully. From the Great
+Crested to the Little Green Flycatcher, their ways and general habits
+are the same. Slow in flying from point to point, they yet have a
+wonderful quickness, and snap up the fleetest insects with little
+apparent effort. There is a constant play of quick, nervous movements
+underneath their outer show of calmness and stolidity. They do not scour
+the limbs and trees like the Warblers, but, perched upon the middle
+branches, wait like true hunters for the game to come along. There is
+often a very audible snap of the beak as they arrest their prey.</p>
+
+<p>The Wood-Pewee, the prevailing species in this locality, arrests your
+attention by his sweet, pathetic cry. There is room for it also in the
+deep woods, as well as for the more prolonged and elevated strains. His
+mate builds an exquisite nest of moss on the side of some shelving cliff
+or overhanging rock. The other day, passing by a ledge near the top of a
+mountain in a singularly desolate locality, my eye rested upon one of
+these structures, looking precisely as if it grew there, so in keeping
+was it with the mossy character of the rock; and I have had a growing
+affection for the bird ever since. The rock seemed to love the nest and
+to claim it as its own. I said, What a lesson in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_678" id="Page_678">[Pg 678]</a></span> architecture is here!
+Here is a house that was built, but built with such loving care and such
+beautiful adaptation of the means to the end, that it looks like a
+product of nature. The same wise economy is noticeable in the nests of
+all birds. No bird would paint its house white or red, or add aught for
+show.</p>
+
+<p>Coming to a drier and less mossy place in the woods, I am amused with
+the Golden-crowned Thrush,&mdash;which, however, is no thrush at all, but a
+Warbler, the <i>Sciurus aurocapillus</i>. He walks on the ground ahead of me
+with such an easy gliding motion, and with such an unconscious,
+preoccupied air, jerking his head like a hen or a partridge, now
+hurrying, now slackening his pace, that I pause to observe him. If I sit
+down, he pauses to observe me, and extends his pretty ramblings on all
+sides, apparently very much engrossed with his own affairs, but never
+losing sight of me. But few of the birds are walkers, most being
+hoppers, like the Robin. I recall only five species of the former among
+our ordinary birds,&mdash;the one in question, the Meadow-Lark, the Tit-Lark,
+the Cow-Bunting, and the Water-Wagtail (a relative of the Golden-Crown).</p>
+
+<p>Satisfied that I have no hostile intentions, the pretty pedestrian
+mounts a limb a few feet from the ground, and gives me the benefit of
+one of his musical performances, a sort of accelerating chant.
+Commencing in a very low key, which makes him seem at a very uncertain
+distance, he grows louder and louder, till his body quakes and his chant
+runs into a shriek, ringing in my ears with a peculiar sharpness. This
+lay may be represented thus: "Teacher teacher, teacher, teacher
+teacher!"&mdash;the accent on the first syllable and each word uttered with
+increased force and shrillness. No writer with whom I am acquainted
+gives him credit for more musical ability than is displayed in this
+strain. Yet in this the half is not told. He has a far rarer song, which
+he reserves for some nymph whom he meets in the air. Mounting by easy
+flights to the top of the tallest tree, he launches into the air with a
+sort of suspended, hovering flight, like certain of the Finches, and
+bursts into a perfect ecstasy of song,&mdash;clear, ringing, copious,
+rivalling the Goldfinch's in vivacity, and the Linnet's in melody. This
+strain is one of the rarest bits of bird-melody to be heard. Over the
+woods, hid from view, the ecstatic singer warbles his finest strain. In
+this song you instantly detect his relationship to the Water-Wagtail
+(<i>Sciurus Noveboracensis</i>),&mdash;erroneously called Water-Thrush,&mdash;whose
+song is likewise a sudden burst, full and ringing, and with a tone of
+youthful joyousness in it, as if the bird had just had some unexpected
+good-fortune. For nearly two years this strain of the pretty walker was
+little more than a disembodied voice to me, and I was puzzled by it as
+Thoreau by his mysterious Night-Warbler, which, by the way, I suspect
+was no new bird at all, but one he was otherwise familiar with. The
+little bird himself seems disposed to keep the matter a secret, and
+improves every opportunity to repeat before you his shrill, accelerating
+lay, as if this were quite enough and all he laid claim to. Still, I
+trust I am betraying no confidence in making the matter public here. I
+think this is pre-eminently his love-song, as I hear it oftenest about
+the mating season. I have caught half-suppressed bursts of it from two
+birds chasing each other with fearful speed through the forest.</p>
+
+<p>Turning to the left from the old road, I wander, over soft logs and gray
+yielding <i>d&eacute;bris</i>, across the little trout brook, until I emerge in the
+Barkpeeling,&mdash;pausing now and then on the way to admire a small,
+solitary white flower which rises above the moss, with radical,
+heart-shaped leaves, and a blossom precisely like the liverwort except
+in color, but which is not put down in my botany,&mdash;or to observe the
+ferns, of which I count six varieties, some gigantic ones nearly
+shoulder-high.</p>
+
+<p>At the foot of a rough, scraggy yellow birch, on a bank of club-moss, so
+richly inlaid with partridge-berry and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_679" id="Page_679">[Pg 679]</a></span> curious shining leaves,&mdash;with
+here and there in the bordering a spire of the false wintergreen
+(<i>Pyrola rotundifolia</i>) strung with faint pink flowers and exhaling the
+breath of a May orchard,&mdash;that it looks too costly a couch for such an
+idler, I recline to note what transpires. The sun is just past the
+meridian, and the afternoon chorus is not yet in full tune. Most birds
+sing with the greatest spirit and vivacity in the forenoon, though there
+are occasional bursts later in the day, in which nearly all voices join;
+while it is not till the twilight that the full power and solemnity of
+the thrush's hymn is felt.</p>
+
+<p>My attention is soon arrested by a pair of Humming-Birds, the
+Ruby-Throated, disporting themselves in a low bush a few yards from me.
+The female takes shelter amid the branches, and squeaks exultingly as
+the male, circling above, dives down as if to dislodge her. Seeing me,
+he drops like a feather on a slender twig, and in a moment both are
+gone. Then, as if by a preconcerted signal, the throats are all atune. I
+lie on my back with eyes half closed, and analyze the chorus of
+Warblers, Thrushes, Finches, and Flycatchers; while, soaring above all,
+a little withdrawn and alone, rises the divine soprano of the Hermit.
+That richly modulated warble proceeding from the top of yonder birch,
+and which unpractised ears would mistake for the voice of the Scarlet
+Tanager, comes from that rare visitant, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak. It
+is a strong, vivacious strain, a bright noonday song, full of health and
+assurance, indicating fine talents in the performer, but not genius. As
+I come up under the tree he casts his eye down at me, but continues his
+song. This bird is said to be quite common in the Northwest, but he is
+rare in the Eastern districts. His beak is disproportionately large and
+heavy, like a huge nose, which slightly mars his good looks; but Nature
+has made it up to him in a blush rose upon his breast, and the most
+delicate of pink linings to the under side of his wings. His back is
+variegated black and white, and when flying low the white shows
+conspicuously. If he passed over your head, you would note the delicate
+flush under his wings.</p>
+
+<p>That bit of bright scarlet on yonder dead hemlock, glowing like a live
+coal against the dark background, seeming almost too brilliant for the
+severe Northern climate, is his relative, the Scarlet Tanager. I
+occasionally meet him in the deep hemlocks, and know no stronger
+contrast in nature. I almost fear he will kindle the dry limb on which
+he alights. He is quite a solitary bird, and in this section seems to
+prefer the high, remote woods, even going quite to the mountain's top.
+Indeed, the event of my last visit to the mountain was meeting one of
+these brilliant creatures near the summit, in full song. The breeze
+carried the notes far and wide. He seemed to enjoy the elevation, and I
+imagined his song had more scope and freedom than usual. When he had
+flown far down the mountain-side, the breeze still brought me his finest
+notes. In plumage he is the most brilliant bird we have. The Bluebird is
+not entirely blue; nor will the Indigo-bird bear a close inspection, nor
+the Goldfinch, nor the Summer Redbird. But the Tanager loses nothing by
+a near view; the deep scarlet of his body and the black of his wings and
+tail are quite perfect. This is his holiday suit; in the fall he becomes
+a dull green,&mdash;the color of the female the whole season.</p>
+
+<p>One of the leading songsters in this choir of the old Barkpeeling is the
+Purple Finch or Linnet. He sits somewhat apart, usually on a dead
+hemlock, and warbles most exquisitely. He is one of our finest
+songsters, and stands at the head of the Finches, as the Hermit at the
+head of the Thrushes. His song approaches an ecstasy, and, with the
+exception of the Winter Wren's, is the most rapid and copious strain to
+be heard in these woods. It is quite destitute of the trills and the
+liquid, silvery, bubbling notes that characterize the Wren's; but there
+runs through it a round, richly modulated whistle, very sweet and very
+pleasing. The call of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_680" id="Page_680">[Pg 680]</a></span> the Robin is brought in at a certain point with
+marked effect, and, throughout, the variety is so great and the strain
+so rapid that the impression is as of two or three birds singing at the
+same time. He is not common here, and I only find him in these or
+similar woods. His color is peculiar, and looks as if it might have been
+imparted by dipping a brown bird in diluted pokeberry juice. Two or
+three more dippings would have made the purple complete. The female is
+the color of the Song-Sparrow, a little larger, with heavier beak, and
+tail much more forked.</p>
+
+<p>In a little opening quite free from brush and trees I step down to bathe
+my hands in the brook, when a small, light slate-colored bird flutters
+out of the bank, not three feet from my head, as I stoop down, and, as
+if severely lamed or injured, flutters through the grass and into the
+nearest bush. As I do not follow, but remain near the nest, she <i>chips</i>
+sharply, which brings the male, and I see it is the Speckled Canada
+Warbler. I find no authority in the books for this bird to build upon
+the ground, yet here is the nest, made chiefly of dry grass, set in a
+slight excavation in the bank, not two feet from the water, and looking
+a little perilous to anything but ducklings or sandpipers. There are two
+young birds and one little specked egg, just pipped. But how is this?
+what mystery is here? One nestling is much larger than the other,
+monopolizes most of the nest, and lifts its open mouth far above that of
+its companion, though obviously both are of the same age, not more than
+a day old. Ah! I see;&mdash;the old trick of the Cow-Bunting, with a stinging
+human significance. Taking the interloper by the nape of the neck, I
+deliberately drop it into the water, but not without a pang, as I see
+its naked form, convulsed with chills, float down stream. Cruel! So is
+Nature cruel. I take one life to save two. In less than two days this
+pot-bellied intruder would have caused the death of the two rightful
+occupants of the nest; so I step in and divert things into their proper
+channel again.</p>
+
+<p>It is a singular freak of Nature, this instinct which prompts one bird
+to lay its eggs in the nests of others, and thus shirk the
+responsibility of rearing its own young. The Cow-Buntings always resort
+to this cunning trick; and when one reflects upon their numbers it is
+evident that these little tragedies are quite frequent. In Europe the
+parallel case is that of the Cuckoo, and occasionally our own Cuckoo
+imposes upon a Robin or a Thrush in the same manner. The Cow-Bunting
+seems to have no conscience about the matter, and, so far as I have
+observed, invariably selects the nest of a bird smaller than itself. Its
+egg is usually the first to hatch; its young overreaches all the rest
+when food is brought; it grows with great rapidity, spreads and fills
+the nest, and the starved and crowded occupants soon perish, when the
+parent bird removes their dead bodies, giving its whole energy and care
+to the foster-child.</p>
+
+<p>The Warblers and smaller Flycatchers are generally the sufferers, though
+I sometimes see the Slate-colored Snowbird unconsciously duped in like
+manner; and the other day, in a tall tree in the woods, I discovered the
+Black-throated Green-backed Warbler devoting itself to this dusky,
+overgrown foundling. An old farmer to whom I pointed out the fact was
+much surprised that such things should happen in his woods without his
+knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>From long observation it is my opinion that the male Bunting selects the
+nest into which the egg is to be deposited, and exercises a sort of
+guardianship over it afterward, lingering in the vicinity and uttering
+his peculiar, liquid, glassy note from the tops of the tall trees.</p>
+
+<p>The Speckled Canada is a very superior Warbler, having a lively,
+animated strain, reminding you of certain parts of the Canary's, though
+quite broken and incomplete; the bird the while hopping amid the
+branches with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_681" id="Page_681">[Pg 681]</a></span> increased liveliness, and indulging in fine sibilant
+chirps, too happy to keep silent.</p>
+
+<p>His manners are very marked. He has a habit of curtsying when he
+discovers you, which is very pretty. In form he is a very elegant bird,
+somewhat slender, his back of a bluish lead-color becoming nearly black
+on his crown; the under part of his body, from his throat down, is of a
+light, delicate yellow, with a belt of black dots across his breast. He
+has a very fine eye, surrounded by a light yellow ring.</p>
+
+<p>The parent birds are much disturbed by my presence, and keep up a loud,
+emphatic chirping, which attracts the attention of their sympathetic
+neighbors, and one after another they come to see what has happened. The
+Chestnut-Sided and the Blackburnian come in company. The
+Black-and-Yellow Warbler pauses a moment and hastens away; the Maryland
+Yellow-Throat peeps shyly from the lower bushes and utters his "Fip!
+fip!" in sympathy; the Wood-Pewee comes straight to the tree overhead,
+and the Red-eyed Vireo lingers and lingers, eying me with a curious,
+innocent look, evidently much puzzled. But all disappear again, one
+after another, apparently without a word of condolence or encouragement
+to the distressed pair. I have often noticed among birds this show of
+sympathy,&mdash;if indeed it be sympathy, and not merely curiosity, or a
+feeling of doubt concerning their own safety.</p>
+
+<p>An hour afterward I approach the place, find all still, and the mother
+bird upon the nest. As I draw near she seems to sit closer, her eyes
+growing large with an inexpressibly wild, beautiful look. She keeps her
+place till I am within two paces of her, when she flutters away as at
+first. In the brief interval the remaining egg has hatched, and the two
+little nestlings lift their heads without being jostled or overreached
+by any strange bedfellow. A week afterward and they are flown away,&mdash;so
+brief is the infancy of birds. And the wonder is that they escape, even
+for this short time, the skunks and minks and muskrats that abound here,
+and that have a decided partiality for such tidbits.</p>
+
+<p>I pass on through the old Barkpeeling, now threading an old cow-path or
+an overgrown wood-road; now clambering over soft and decayed logs, or
+forcing my way through a network of briers and hazel; now entering a
+perfect bower of wild-cherry, beech, and soft-maple; now emerging into a
+little grassy lane, golden with buttercups or white with daisies, or
+wading waist-deep in the red raspberry-bushes.</p>
+
+<p>Whir! whir! whir! and a brood of half-grown Partridges start up like an
+explosion, a few paces from me, and, scattering, disappear in the bushes
+on all sides. Let me sit down here behind this screen of ferns and
+briers, and hear this wild-hen of the woods call together her brood.
+Have you observed at what an early age the Partridge flies? Nature seems
+to concentrate her energies on the wing, making the safety of the bird a
+point to be looked after first; and while the body is covered with down,
+and no signs of feathers are visible, the wing-quills sprout and unfold,
+and in an incredibly short time the young make fair headway in flying.</p>
+
+<p>The same rapid development of wing may be observed in chickens and
+turkeys, but not in water-fowls, nor in birds that are safely housed in
+the nest till full-fledged. The other day, by a brook, I came suddenly
+upon a young Sandpiper, a most beautiful creature, enveloped in a soft
+gray down, swift and nimble, and apparently a week or two old, but with
+no signs of plumage either of body or wing. And it needed none, for it
+escaped me by taking to the water as readily as if it had flown with
+wings.</p>
+
+<p>Hark! There arises over there in the brush a soft, persuasive cooing, a
+sound so subtile and wild and unobtrusive that it requires the most
+alert and watchful ear to hear it. How gentle and solicitous and full of
+yearning love! It is the voice of the mother hen. Presently a faint,
+timid "Yeap!" which almost eludes the ear, is heard in various
+directions,&mdash;the young responding. As<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_682" id="Page_682">[Pg 682]</a></span> no danger seems near, the cooing
+of the parent bird is soon a very audible clucking call, and the young
+move cautiously in the direction. Let me step never so carefully from my
+hiding-place, and all sounds instantly cease, and I search in vain for
+either parent or young.</p>
+
+<p>The Partridge (<i>Bonasa umbellus</i>) is one of our most native and
+characteristic birds. The woods seem good to be in where I find him. He
+gives a habitable air to the forest, and one feels as if the rightful
+occupant was really at home. The woods where I do not find him seem to
+want something, as if suffering from some neglect of Nature. And then he
+is such a splendid success, so hardy and vigorous. I think he enjoys the
+cold and the snow. His wings seem to rustle with more fervency in
+midwinter. If the snow falls very fast, and promises a heavy storm, he
+will complacently sit down and allow himself to be snowed under.
+Approaching him at such times, he suddenly bursts out of the snow at
+your feet, scattering the flakes in all directions, and goes humming
+away through the woods like a bomb-shell,&mdash;a picture of native spirit
+and success.</p>
+
+<p>His drum is one of the most welcome and beautiful sounds of spring.
+Scarcely have the trees showed their buds, when, in the still April
+mornings, or toward nightfall, you hear the hum of his devoted wings. He
+selects not, as you would predict, a dry and resinous log, but a decayed
+and crumbling one, seeming to give the preference to old oak-logs that
+are partially blended with the soil. If a log to his taste cannot be
+found, he sets up his altar on a rock, which becomes resonant beneath
+his fervent blows. Have you seen the Partridge drum? It is the next
+thing to catching a weasel asleep, though by much caution and tact it
+may be done. He does not hug the log, but stands very erect, expands his
+ruff, gives two introductory blows, pauses half a second, and then
+resumes, striking faster and faster till the sound becomes a continuous,
+unbroken whir, the whole lasting less than half a minute. The tips of
+his wings barely brush the log, so that the sound is produced rather by
+the force of the blows upon the air and upon his own body as in flying.
+One log will be used for many years, though not by the same drummer. It
+seems to be a sort of temple, and held in great respect. The bird always
+approaches it on foot, and leaves it in the same quiet manner, unless
+rudely disturbed. He is very cunning, though his wit is not profound. It
+is very difficult to approach him by stealth; you will try many times
+before succeeding; but seem to pass by him in a great hurry, making all
+the noise possible, and with plumage furled he stands as immovable as a
+knot, allowing you a good view and a good shot, if you are a sportsman.</p>
+
+<p>Passing along one of the old barkpeelers' roads which wander aimlessly
+about, I am attracted by a singularly brilliant and emphatic warble,
+proceeding from the low bushes, and quickly suggesting the voice of the
+Maryland Yellow-Throat. Presently the singer hops up on a dry twig, and
+gives me a good view. Lead-colored head and neck, becoming nearly black
+on the breast; clear olive-green back, and yellow belly. From his habit
+of keeping near the ground, even hopping upon it occasionally, I know
+him to be a Ground-Warbler; from his dark breast the ornithologist has
+added the expletive Mourning, hence the Mourning Ground-Warbler.</p>
+
+<p>Of this bird both Wilson and Audubon confessed their comparative
+ignorance, neither ever having seen its nest or become acquainted with
+its haunts and general habits. Its song is quite striking and novel,
+though its voice at once suggests the class of Warblers, to which it
+belongs. It is very shy and wary, flying but a few feet at a time, and
+studiously concealing itself from your view. I discover but one pair
+here. The female has food in her beak, but carefully avoids betraying
+the locality of her nest. The Ground-Warblers all have one notable
+feature,&mdash;very beautiful legs, as white and delicate as if they had
+always worn silk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_683" id="Page_683">[Pg 683]</a></span> stockings and satin slippers. High tree Warblers have
+dark brown or black legs and more brilliant plumage, but less musical
+ability.</p>
+
+<p>The Chestnut-Sided belongs to the latter class. He is quite common in
+these woods, as in all the woods about. He is one of the rarest and
+handsomest of the Warblers; his white breast and throat, chestnut sides,
+and yellow crown show conspicuously. Audubon did not know his haunts,
+and had never seen his nest or known any naturalist who had. Last year I
+found the nest of one in an uplying beech-wood, in a low bush near the
+roadside, where cows passed and browsed daily. Things went on smoothly
+till the Cow-Bunting stole her egg into it, when other mishaps followed,
+and the nest was soon empty. A characteristic attitude of the male
+during this season is a slight drooping of the wings, and tail a little
+elevated, which gives him a very smart, bantam-like appearance. His song
+is fine and hurried, and not much of itself, but has its place in the
+general chorus.</p>
+
+<p>A far sweeter strain, falling on the ear with the true sylvan cadence,
+is that of the Black-throated Green-backed Warbler, whom I meet at
+various points. He has no superiors among the true <i>Sylvia</i>. His song is
+very plain and simple, but remarkably pure and tender, and might be
+indicated by straight lines, thus, &mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash;\/&mdash;&mdash;; the first two marks
+representing two sweet, silvery notes, in the same pitch of voice, and
+quite unaccented; the latter marks, the concluding notes, wherein the
+tone and inflection are changed. The throat and breast of the male are a
+rich black, like velvet, his face yellow, and his back a yellowish
+green.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the Barkpeeling, where the woods are mingled hemlock, beech, and
+birch, the languid midsummer note of the Black-throated Blue-Back falls
+on my ear. "Twea, twea, twea-e-e!" in the upward slide, and with the
+peculiar <i>z-ing</i> of certain insects, but not destitute of a certain
+plaintive cadence. It is one of the most languid, unhurried sounds in
+all the woods. I feel like reclining upon the dry leaves at once.
+Audubon says he has never heard his love-song; but this is all the
+love-song he has, and he is evidently a very plain hero with his little
+brown mistress. He is not the bird you would send to the princess to
+"cheep and twitter twenty million loves"; she would go to sleep while he
+was piping. He assumes few attitudes, and is not a bold and striking
+gymnast, like many of his kindred. He has a preference for dense woods
+of beech and maple, moves slowly amid the lower branches and smaller
+growths, keeping from eight to ten feet from the ground, and repeating
+now and then his listless, indolent strain. His back and crown are dark
+blue; his throat and breast, black; his belly, pure white; and he has a
+white spot on each wing.</p>
+
+<p>Here and there I meet the Black and White Creeping-Warbler, whose fine
+strain reminds me of hair-wire. It is unquestionably the finest
+bird-song to be heard. Few insect strains will compare with it in this
+respect; while it has none of the harsh, brassy character of the latter,
+being very delicate and tender.</p>
+
+<p>That sharp, interrupted, but still continued warble, which, before one
+has learned to discriminate closely, he is apt to confound with the
+Red-eyed Vireo's, is that of the Solitary Warbling Vireo,&mdash;a bird
+slightly larger, much rarer, and with a louder, less cheerful and happy
+strain. I see him hopping along lengthwise of the limbs, and note the
+orange tinge of his breast and sides and the white circle around his
+eye.</p>
+
+<p>But the declining sun and the deepening shadows admonish me that this
+ramble must be brought to a close, even though only the leading
+characters in this chorus of forty songsters have been described, and
+only a small portion of the venerable old woods explored. In a secluded
+swampy corner of the old Barkpeeling, where I find the great purple
+orchis in bloom, and where the foot of man or beast seems never to have
+trod, I linger long, contemplating the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_684" id="Page_684">[Pg 684]</a></span> wonderful display of lichens and
+mosses that overrun both the smaller and the larger growths. Every bush
+and branch and sprig is dressed up in the most rich and fantastic of
+liveries; and, crowning all, the long bearded moss festoons the branches
+or sways gracefully from the limbs. Every twig looks a century old,
+though green leaves tip the end of it. A young yellow birch has a
+venerable, patriarchal look, and seems ill at ease under such premature
+honors. A decayed hemlock is draped as if by hands for some solemn
+festival.</p>
+
+<p>Mounting toward the upland again, I pause reverently as the hush and
+stillness of twilight come upon the woods. It is the sweetest, ripest
+hour of the day. And as the Hermit's evening hymn goes up from the deep
+solitude below me, I experience that serene exaltation of sentiment of
+which music, literature, and religion are but the faint types and
+symbols.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> For December, 1858.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LAST_DAYS_OF_WALTER_SAVAGE_LANDOR" id="LAST_DAYS_OF_WALTER_SAVAGE_LANDOR"></a>LAST DAYS OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>PART III.</h3>
+
+<h4>CONCLUSION.</h4>
+
+<p>Landor has frequently been ridiculed for insisting upon an orthography
+peculiar at present to himself, and this ridicule has been bestowed most
+mercilessly, because of the supposition that he was bent upon
+revolutionizing the English language merely for the sake of singularity.
+But Landor has logic on his side, and it would be wise to heed
+authoritative protests against senseless innovations that bid fair to
+destroy the symmetry of words, and which, fifty years hence, will render
+the tracing of their derivation an Herculean task, unless Trenches
+multiply in proportion to the necessities of the times. If I ever wished
+the old lion to put forth all the majesty of his indignation, I had only
+to whisper the cabalistic words, "Phonetic spelling!" Yet Landor was not
+very exacting. In the "Last Fruit off an Old Tree," he says, through his
+medium, Pericles, who is giving advice to Alcibiades: "Every time we
+pronounce a word different from another, we show our disapprobation of
+his manner, and accuse him of rusticity. In all common things we must do
+as others do. It is more barbarous to undermine the stability of a
+language than of an edifice that hath stood as long. This is done by the
+introduction of changes. Write as others do, but only as the best of
+others; and, if one eloquent man forty or fifty years ago spoke and
+wrote differently from the generality of the present, follow him, though
+alone, rather than the many. But in pronunciation we are not indulged in
+this latitude of choice; we must pronounce as those do who favor us with
+their audience." Landor only claimed to write as the best of others do,
+and in his own name protests to Southey against misconstruction. "One
+would represent me as attempting to undermine our native tongue;
+another, as modernizing; a third, as antiquating it. <i>Wheras</i>" (Landor's
+spelling) "I am trying to underprop, not to undermine; I am trying to
+stop the man-milliner at his ungainly work of trimming and flouncing; I
+am trying to show how graceful is our English, not in its stiff
+decrepitude, not in its riotous luxuriance, but in its hale mid-life. I
+would make bad writers follow good ones, and good ones accord with
+themselves. If all cannot be reduced into order, is that any reason why
+nothing should be done toward it? If languages and men too are
+imperfect, must we never make an effort<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_685" id="Page_685">[Pg 685]</a></span> to bring them a few steps
+nearer to what is preferable?"</p>
+
+<p>It is my great good fortune to possess a copy of Landor's works made
+curious and peculiarly valuable by the author's own revisions and
+corrections, and it is most interesting to wander through these volumes,
+wherein almost every page is a battle-field between the writer and his
+arch-enemy, the printer. The final <i>l</i> in <i>still</i> and <i>till</i> is
+ignominiously blotted out; <i>exclaim</i> is written <i>exclame</i>; a <i>d</i> is put
+over the obliterated <i>a</i> in <i>steady</i>; <i>t</i> is substituted <i>t</i> is
+substituted for the second <i>s</i> in <i>confessed</i> and kindred words;
+<i>straightway</i> is shorn of <i>gh</i>; <i>pontiff</i> is allowed but one <i>f</i>. Landor
+spells <i>honor</i> in what we call the modern way, without the <i>u</i>; and the
+<i>r</i> and <i>e</i> in <i>sceptre</i> change places. A dash of the pen cancels the
+<i>s</i> in <i>isle</i> and the final <i>e</i> in <i>wherefore</i>, <i>therefore</i>, &amp;c.
+<i>Simile</i> is terminated with a <i>y</i>; the imperfect of the verbs <i>to milk</i>,
+<i>to ask</i>, etc., is spelled with a <i>t</i>; <i>whereat</i> loses its second <i>e</i>,
+and <i>although</i> is deprived of its last three letters. To his poem of
+"Guidone and Lucia" has been added this final verse:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The sire had earned with gold his son's release<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And led him home; at home he died in peace.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His soul was with Lucia, and he praid<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To meet again soon, soon, that happier maid.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This wish was granted, for the Powers above<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Abound in mercy and delight in love."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And to this verse is appended the following note: "If the pret. and
+partic. of <i>lay</i> is <i>laid</i>, of <i>say</i>, <i>said</i>, that of <i>pray</i> must be
+<i>praid</i>. We want a lexiconomist."</p>
+
+<p>In his lines entitled "New Style," which are a burlesque on Wordsworth,
+Landor introduces a new verse:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Some one (I might have asked her who)<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Has given her a locket;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I, more considerate, brought her two<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Potatoes in each pocket."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Landor has been accused of an unwarrantable dislike to the manufacture
+of words; but so far from true is this, that I have known him to indulge
+with great felicity in words of his own coining, when conversation
+chanced to take a humorous turn. He makes Sam. Johnson say that "all
+words are good which come when they are wanted; all which come when they
+are not wanted should be dismissed." Tooke, in the same conversation,
+cites Cicero as one who, not contented with new spellings, created new
+words; but Tooke further declares, that "only one valuable word has been
+received into our language since my birth, or perhaps since yours. I
+have lately heard <i>appreciate</i> for <i>estimate</i>." To which Johnson
+replies: "Words taken from the French should be amenable, in their
+spelling, to English laws and regulations. <i>Appreciate</i> is a good and
+useful one; it signifies more than <i>estimate</i> or <i>value</i>; it implies 'to
+value justly.'"</p>
+
+<p>Taking up one day Dean Trench's excellent little book on "The Study of
+Words," which lay on my table, Landor expressed a desire to read it. He
+brought it back not long afterward, enriched with notes, and declared
+himself to have been much pleased with the manner in which the Dean had
+treated a subject so deeply interesting to himself. I have singled out a
+few of these notes, that student of etymology may read the criticisms of
+so able a man. Dean Trench is taken to task for a misuse of <i>every
+where</i> in making two words of it. Landor puts the question, "Is the Dean
+ignorant that <i>everywhere</i> is one word, and <i>where</i> is no substantive?"
+Trench asserts that <i>caprice</i> is from <i>capra</i>, "a goat," whereupon his
+critic says, "No,&mdash;then it would be capr<i>a</i>cious. It is from
+<i>caper</i>&mdash;<i>capere</i>." <i>To retract</i>, writes Trench, means properly, as its
+derivation declares, no more than to handle over again, to reconsider;
+Landor declares that "it means more. <i>Retrahere</i> is <i>to draw back</i>." But
+he very vehemently approves of the Dean's remarks on the use of the word
+<i>talents</i>. We should say "a man of talents," not "of talent," for that
+is nonsense, though "of a talent" would be allowable.</p>
+
+<p>"&#922;&#959;&#963;&#956;&#959;&#962; is both 'world' and 'ornament,' hence 'cosmetic,'"
+writes Landor in answer to a doubt expressed by Trench whether the
+well-known quotation from St. James, "The tongue is a world of
+iniquity," could not also be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_686" id="Page_686">[Pg 686]</a></span> translated, as some maintain, "the
+ornament of iniquity." Making use of the expression "redolent of scorn"
+in connection with words that formerly expressed sacred functions and
+offices, Landor adds: "Gray is highly poetical in his 'redolent of joy
+and youth.' The word is now vilely misused daily." "By and bye," writes
+the Dean. "Why write <i>bye</i>?" asks his commentator. Once or twice Landor
+credits Horne Tooke with what the Dean gives as his own, and
+occasionally scores an observation as old. "Why won't people say
+<i>messager</i>?" he demands. "By what right is <i>messenger</i> made out of
+<i>message</i>?"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Have you nothing else for the old man to read? have you nothing
+American?" Landor inquired upon returning Trench. Desiring to obtain the
+verdict of one so high in authority, I gave him Drake's "Culprit Fay,"
+and some fugitive verses by M. C. Field, whose poems have never been
+collected in book form. Of the latter's "Indian Hunting the Buffaloes,"
+"Night on the Prairie," "Les Tr&egrave;s Marias," and others, known to but few
+readers now, Landor spoke in high commendation, and this praise will be
+welcome to those friends of "Phazma" still living, and still loving the
+memory of him who died early, and found, as he wished, an ocean grave.
+With "The Culprit Fay" came a scrap of paper on which was written: "The
+Culprit Fay is rich in imagination,&mdash;few poems more so. Drake is among
+the noblest of names, and this poem throws a fresh lustre on it."
+Observing in this poem a misuse of the exclamation "Oh!" Landor
+remarked, "'Oh!' properly is an expression of grief or pain. 'O!'
+without the aspirate may express pleasure or hope." Current literature
+rarely makes any distinction between the two, and even good writers
+stumble through carelessness.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Style in writing was one of Landor's favorite topics, and his ire was
+rarely more quickly excited than by placing before him a specimen of
+high-flown sentimentality. He would put on his spectacles, exclaim,
+"What is this?" and, having read a few lines, would throw the book down,
+saying, "I have not the patience to read such stuff. It may be very
+fine, but I cannot understand it. It is beyond me." He had little mercy
+to bestow upon transcendentalists, though he praised Emerson one day,&mdash;a
+marvellous proof of high regard when it is considered how he detested
+the school to which Emerson belongs. "Emerson called on me when he was
+in Florence many years ago, and a very agreeable visit I had from him.
+He is a very clever man, and might be cleverer if he were less
+sublimated. But then you Americans, practical as you are, are fond of
+soaring in high latitudes." Carlyle in his last manner had the same
+effect upon Landor's nerves as a discord in music produces upon a
+sensitive ear. "Ah," said he with a quizzical smile, "'Frederick the
+Great' convinces me that I write two dead languages,&mdash;Latin and
+English!"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>English hexameter was still another pet detestation which Landor nursed
+with great volubility. In 1860 all Anglo-Saxon Florence was reading with
+no little interest a poem in this metre, which had recently appeared,
+and which of course passed under the critical eye of the old Grecian.
+"Well, Mr. Landor, what do you think of the new poem?" I asked during
+its nine days' reign. "Think of it? I don't think of it. I don't want to
+be bothered with it. The book has driven all the breath out of my body.
+I am lame with galloping. I've been on a gallop from the beginning to
+the end. Never did I have so hard and long a ride. But what else to
+expect when mounted on a <i>nightmare</i>! It may be very fine. I dare say it
+is, but Giallo and I prefer our ease to being battered. I am too old to
+hop, skip, and jump, and he is too sensible. It may be very bad taste,
+but we prefer verse that stands on two feet to verse that limps about on
+none. Now-a-days it is better to stumble than to walk erect. Giallo and
+I, however, have registered an oath not to encourage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_687" id="Page_687">[Pg 687]</a></span> so base a fashion.
+We have consulted old Homer, and he quite approves our indignation."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Speaking of certain Americanisms and of our ridiculous squeamishness in
+the use of certain honest words, Landor remarked: "You Americans are
+very proper people; you have difficulties, but not diseases. Legs are
+unknown,&mdash;you have limbs; and under no consideration do you go to
+bed,&mdash;you retire." Much of this I could not gainsay, for only a few days
+previously I had been severely frowned upon for making inquiries about a
+broken leg. "My dear," said Landor to a young American girl who had been
+speaking of the city of New Or<i>leens</i>,&mdash;such being the ordinary Southern
+pronunciation,&mdash;"that pretty mouth of yours should not be distorted by
+vulgar dialect. You should say Or'leans." But he was never pedantic in
+his language. He used the simplest and most emphatic words.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>There are those who accuse Landor of having sacrificed all things to
+style: it were as wise to assert that Beethoven sacrificed harmony to
+time. If his accusers would but read Landor before criticising, a proper
+regard for their own reputations would prevent them from hazarding such
+an opinion. "Style," writes Landor, "I consider as nothing, if what it
+covers be unsound: wisdom in union with harmony is oracular. On this
+idea, the wiser of ancient days venerated in the same person the deity
+of oracles and of music; and it must have been the most malicious and
+the most ingenious of satirists who transferred the gift of eloquence to
+the god of thieves." Those who by the actual sweat of their brows have
+got at the deep, hidden meaning of the most recent geniuses, will honor
+and thank Landor for having practically enforced his own refreshing
+theory. There are certain modern books of positive value which the
+reader closes with a sense of utter exhaustion. The meaning is
+discovered, but at too great an outlay of vitality. To render simple
+things complex, is to fly in the face of Nature; and after such mental
+"gymnastics," we turn with relief to Landor. "The greater part of those
+who are most ambitious of style are unaware of all its value. Thought
+does not separate man from the brutes; for the brutes think: but man
+alone thinks beyond the moment and beyond himself. Speech does not
+separate them; for speech is common to all, perhaps more or less
+articulate, and conveyed and received through different organs in the
+lower and more inert. Man's thought, which seems imperishable, loses its
+form, and runs along from proprietor to impropriator, like any other
+transitory thing, unless it is invested so becomingly and nobly that no
+successor can improve upon it by any new fashion or combination. For
+want of dignity or beauty, many good things are passed and forgotten;
+and much ancient wisdom is overrun and hidden by a rampant verdure,
+succulent, but unsubstantial.... Let those who look upon style as
+unworthy of much attention ask themselves how many, in proportion to men
+of genius, have excelled in it. In all languages, ancient and modern,
+are there ten prose-writers at once harmonious, correct, and energetic?"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Popular as is the belief that Landor's gifts were the offspring of
+profound study, he himself says: "Only four years of my life were given
+up much to study; and I regret that I spent so many so ill. Even these
+debarred me from no pleasure; for I seldom read or wrote within doors,
+excepting a few hours at night. The learning of those who are called the
+learned is learning at second hand; the primary and most important must
+be acquired by reading in our own bosoms; the rest by a deep insight
+into other men's. What is written is mostly an imperfect and unfaithful
+copy." This confession emanates from one who is claimed as a university
+rather than a universal man. Landor remained but two years at Oxford,
+and, though deeply interested in the classics, never contended for a
+Latin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_688" id="Page_688">[Pg 688]</a></span> prize. Speaking of this one day, he said: "I once wrote some
+Latin verses for a fellow of my college who, being in great trouble,
+came to me for aid. What was hard work to him was pastime to me, and it
+ended in my composing the entire poem. At the time the fellow was very
+grateful, but it happened that these verses excited attention and were
+much eulogized. The supposed author accepted the praise as due to
+himself. This of course I expected, as he knew full well I would never
+betray him; but the amusing part of the matter was that the fellow never
+afterwards spoke to me, never came near me,&mdash;in fact, treated me as
+though I had done him a grievous wrong. It was of no consequence to me
+that he strutted about in my feathers. If they became him, he was
+welcome to them,&mdash;but of such is the kingdom of cowards."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Poetry," writes Landor, "was always my amusement, prose my study and
+business." In his thirtieth year he lived in the woods, "did not
+exchange twelve sentences with men," and wrote "Gebir," his most
+elaborate and ambitious poem, which Southey took as a model in blank
+verse, and which a Boston critic wonders whether anyone ever read
+through. "Pericles and Aspasia," and the finest of his "Imaginary
+Conversations," were the flowering of half a century of thought. There
+are few readers who do not prefer Landor's prose to his verse, for in
+the former he does not aim at the dramatic: the passion peculiar to
+verse is not congenial to his genius. He sympathizes most fully with men
+and women in repose, when intellect, not the heart, rules. His prose has
+all the purity of outline and harmony of Greek plastic art. He could not
+wield the painter's brush, but the great sculptor had yet power to
+depict the grief of a "Niobe," the agony of the "Laoco&ouml;n," or the
+majesty of a "Moses." Like a sculptor, he rarely groups more than two
+figures.</p>
+
+<p>It is satisfactory then to know that in the zenith of physical strength
+Landor was at his noblest and best, for his example is a forcible
+protest against the feverish enthusiasm of young American authors, who
+wear out their lives in the struggle to be famous at the age of Keats,
+never remembering that "there must be a good deal of movement and
+shuffling before there is any rising from the ground; and those who have
+the longest wings have the most difficulty in the first mounting. In
+literature, as at football, strength and agility are insufficient of
+themselves; you must have your <i>side</i>, or you may run till you are out
+of breath, and kick till you are out of shoes, and never win the game.
+There must be some to keep others off you, and some to prolong for you
+the ball's rebound.... Do not, however, be ambitious of an early fame:
+such is apt to shrivel and to drop under the tree." The poetical dictum,
+"Whom the gods love, die young," has worked untold mischief, having
+created a morbid dislike to a fine physique, on the theory that great
+minds are antagonistic to noble bodies. There never was error so fatal:
+the larger the brain, the larger should be the reservoir from which to
+draw vitality. Were Seneca alive now, he would write no such letter as
+he once wrote to Lucilius, protesting against the ridiculous devotion of
+his countrymen to physical gymnastics. "To be wise is to be well," was
+the gospel he went about preaching. "To be well is to be wise," would
+answer much better as the modern article of faith. The utmost that a
+persistent brain-worker of this century can do is to keep himself bodily
+up to mental requirements. Landor, however, was an extraordinary
+exception. He could boast of never having worn an overcoat since
+boyhood, and of not having been ill more than three times in his life.
+Even at eighty-six his hand had none of the wavering of age; and it was
+with no little satisfaction that, grasping an imaginary pistol, he
+showed me how steady an aim he could still take, and told of how famous
+a shot he used to be. "But my sister was more skilful than I," he
+added.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_689" id="Page_689">[Pg 689]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One day conversation chanced upon Aubrey De Vere, the beautiful Catholic
+poet of Ireland, whose name is scarcely known on this side of the
+Atlantic. This is our loss, though De Vere can never be a popular poet,
+for his muse lives in the past and breathes ether rather than air. "De
+Vere is charming both as man and as poet," said Landor enthusiastically,
+rising as he spoke and leaving the room to return immediately with a
+small volume of De Vere's poems published at Oxford in 1843. "Here are
+his poems given to me by himself. Such a modest, unassuming man as he
+is! Now listen to this from the 'Ode on the Ascent of the Alps.' Is it
+not magnificent?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I spake.&mdash;Behold her o'er the broad lake flying,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a great Angel missioned to bestow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some boon on men beneath in sadness lying:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The waves are murmuring silver murmurs low:<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Over the waves are borne<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Those feeble lights which, ere the eyes of Morn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are lifted, through her lids and lashes flow.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Beneath the curdling wind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Green through the shades the waters rush and roll,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Or whitened only by the unfrequent shoal,)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till two dark hills, with darker yet behind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Confront them,&mdash;purple mountains almost black,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each behind each self-folded and withdrawn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath the umbrage of yon cloudy rack.&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That orange-gleam! 't is dawn!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Onward! the swan's flight with the eagle's blending,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On, wing&egrave;d Muse! still forward and ascending!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"This sonnet on 'Sunrise,'" continued Landor, "is the noblest that ever
+was written:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I saw the Master of the Sun. He stood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">High in his fiery car, himself more bright,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An archer of immeasurable might.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On his left shoulder hung his quivered load;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spurred by his steeds, the eastern mountain glowed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forward his eager eye and brow of light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He bent; and while both hands that arch embowed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shaft after shaft pursued the flying Night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No wings profaned that godlike form: around<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His polished neck an ever-moving crowd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of locks hung glistening; while each perfect sound<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fell from his bow-string, <i>that th' ethereal dome</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Thrilled as a dew-drop</i>; while each passing cloud<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Expanded, whitening like the ocean foam.'</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Is not this line grand?&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Peals the strong, voluminous thunder!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And how incomparable is the termination of this song!&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Bright was her soul as Dian's crest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Showering on Vesta's fane its sheen:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cold looked she as the waveless breast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of some stone Dian at thirteen.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Men loved: but hope they deemed to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sweet Impossibility!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here are two beautiful lines from the Grecian Ode:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Those sinuous streams that blushing wander<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through labyrinthine oleander.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is like Shakespeare:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Yea, and the Queen of Love, as fame reports,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was caught,&mdash;no doubt in Bacchic wreaths,&mdash;for Bacchus<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such puissance hath, that he old oaks will twine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into true-lovers' knots, and laughing stand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Until the sun goes down.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And an admirable passage is this, too, from the same poem,&mdash;'The Search
+after Proserpine':&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Yea, and the motions of her trees and harvests<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Resemble those of slaves, reluctant, cumbered,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By outward force compelled; <i>not like our billows,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Springing elastic in impetuous joy,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Or indolently swayed</i>.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"There!" exclaimed Landor, closing the book, "I want you to have this.
+It will be none the less valuable because I have scribbled in it," he
+added with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Mr. Landor&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Now don't say a word. I am an old man, and if both my legs are not in
+the grave, they ought to be. I cannot lay up such treasures in heaven,
+you know,&mdash;saving of course in my memory,&mdash;and De Vere had rather you
+should have it than the rats. There's a compliment for you! so put the
+book in your pocket."</p>
+
+<p>This little volume is marked throughout by Landor with notes of
+admiration, and if I here transcribe a few of his favorite poems, it
+will be with the hope of benefiting many readers to whom De Vere is a
+sealed book.</p>
+
+<p>"Greece never produced anything so exquisite," wrote Landor beneath the
+following song:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Give me back my heart, fair child;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To you as yet 't is worth but little.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Half beguiler, half beguiled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be you warned: your own is brittle.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I know it by your redd'ning cheeks,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I know it by those two black streaks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Arching up your pearly brows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a momentary laughter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stretched in long and dark repose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a sigh the moment after.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Hid it! dropt it on the moors!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lost it, and you cannot find it,'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_690" id="Page_690">[Pg 690]</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My own heart I want, not yours:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You have bound and must unbind it.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Set it free then from your net,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We will love, sweet,&mdash;but not yet!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fling it from you:&mdash;we are strong;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love is trouble, love is folly:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love, that makes an old heart young,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Makes a young heart melancholy."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And for this Landor claimed that it was "finer than the best in
+Horace":&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Slanting both hands against her forehead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On me she levelled her bright eyes.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My whole heart brightened as the sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When midnight clouds part suddenly:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through all my spirit went the lustre,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like starlight poured through purple skies.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And then she sang a loud, sweet music;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet louder as aloft it clomb:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soft when her curving lips it left;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then rising till the heavens were cleft,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As though each strain, on high expanding,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were echoed in a silver dome.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"But hark! she sings 'she does not love me':<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She loves to say she ne'er can love.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To me her beauty she denies,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bending the while on me those eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose beams might charm the mountain leopard,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or lure Jove's herald from above!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Below the following exquisite bit of melody is written, "Never was any
+sonnet so beautiful."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"She whom this heart must ever hold most dear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(This heart in happy bondage held so long)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Began to sing. At first a gentle fear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rosied her countenance, for she is young,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he who loves her most of all was near:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But when at last her voice grew full and strong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O, from their ambush sweet, how rich and clear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bubbled the notes abroad,&mdash;a rapturous throng!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her little hands were sometimes flung apart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sometimes palm to palm together prest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While wave-like blushes rising from her breast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Kept time with that aerial melody,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As music to the sight!&mdash;I standing nigh<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Received the falling fountain in my heart."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"What sonnet of Petrarca equals this?" he says of the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Happy are they who kiss thee, morn and even,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Parting the hair upon thy forehead white;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For them the sky is bluer and more bright,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And purer their thanksgivings rise to Heaven.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Happy are they to whom thy songs are given;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Happy are they on whom thy hands alight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And happiest they for whom thy prayers at night<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In tender piety so oft have striven.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Away with vain regrets and selfish sighs!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even I, dear friend, am lonely, not unblest:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Permitted sometimes on that form to gaze,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or feel the light of those consoling eyes,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If but a moment on my cheek it stays,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I know that gentle beam from all the rest!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Like Shakespeare's, but better, is this allegory:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"You say that you have given your love to me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, give it not, but lend it me; and say<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That you will ofttimes ask me to repay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But never to restore it: so shall we,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Retaining, still bestow perpetually:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So shall I ask thee for it every day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Securely as for daily bread we pray;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So all of favor, naught of right shall be.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The joy which now is mine shall leave me never.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Indeed, I have deserved it not; and yet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No painful blush is mine,&mdash;so soon my face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blushing is hid in that beloved embrace.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Myself I would condemn not, but forget;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Remembering thee alone, and thee forever!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Worthy of Raleigh and like him," is Landor's preface to the following
+sonnet:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Flowers I would bring, if flowers could make thee fairer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And music, if the Muse were dear to thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(For loving these would make thee love the bearer.)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But sweetest songs forget their melody,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And loveliest flowers would but conceal the wearer:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A rose I marked, and might have plucked; but she<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blushed as she bent, imploring me to spare her,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor spoil her beauty by such rivalry.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alas! and with what gifts shall I pursue thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What offerings bring, what treasures lay before thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When earth with all her floral train doth woo thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all old poets and old songs adore thee.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And love to thee is naught, from passionate mood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Secured by joy's complacent plenitude!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Occasionally Landor indulges in a little humorous indignation,
+particularly in his remarks on the poem of which Coleridge is the hero.
+De Vere's lines end thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Soft be the sound ordained thy sleep to break!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When thou art waking, wake me, for thy Master's sake!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"And let me nap on," wrote the august critic, who had no desire to meet
+Coleridge, even as a celestial being.</p>
+
+<p>Now and then there is a dash of the pencil across some final verse, with
+the remark, "Better without these." Twice or thrice Landor finds fault
+with a word. He objects to the expression, "eyes so fair," saying <i>fair</i>
+is a bad word for eyes.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The subject of Latin being one day mentioned, Landor very eagerly
+proposed that I should study this language with him.</p>
+
+<p>The thought was awful, and I expostulated. "But, Mr. Landor, you who are
+so noble a Latinist can never have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_691" id="Page_691">[Pg 691]</a></span> the patience to instruct such a
+stumbling scholar."</p>
+
+<p>"I insist upon it. You shall be my first pupil," he said, laughing at
+the idea of beginning to teach in his extreme old age. "It will give the
+old man something to do."</p>
+
+<p>"But you will get very tired of me, Mr. Landor."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, I'll tell you when I am tired. You say you have a grammar;
+then I'll bring along with me to-morrow something to read."</p>
+
+<p>True to his promise, the "old pedagogue," for so he was wont to call
+himself, made his appearance with a time-worn Virgil under his arm,&mdash;a
+Virgil that in 1809 was the property, according to much pen and ink
+scribbling, of one "John Prince, &aelig;tat. 12. College School, Hereford."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, then, for our lesson," Landor exclaimed, in a cheery voice.
+"Giallo knows all about it, and quite approves of the arrangement. Don't
+you, Giallo?" And the wise dog wagged his sympathetic tail, jumped up on
+his master's knees, and put his fore paws around Landor's neck. "There,
+you see, he gives consent; for this is the way Giallo expresses
+approbation."</p>
+
+<p>The kindness and amiability of my teacher made me forget his greatness,
+and I soon found myself reciting with as much ease as if there had been
+nothing strange in the affair. He was very patient, and never found
+fault with me, but his criticisms on my Latin grammar were frequent and
+severe. "It is strange," he would mutter, "that men cannot do things
+properly. There is no necessity for this rule; it only confuses the
+pupil. That note is absurd; this, unintelligible. Grammars should be
+made more comprehensible."</p>
+
+<p>Expressing a preference for the Italian method of pronunciation, I dared
+to say that it seemed to be the most correct, inasmuch as the Italian
+language was but bastard Latin. The master, however, would not listen to
+such heresy, and declared that, with the exception of the French, the
+Italian was the worst possible pronunciation to adopt; that the German
+method was the most correct, and after that came the English.</p>
+
+<p>It was only a few hours after the termination of our first lesson that
+Landor's little maid entered the room laden with old folios, which she
+deposited with the following pleasant note:&mdash;"As my young friend is
+willing to become a grammarian, an old fellow sends her for her gracious
+acceptance these books tending to that purpose." I was made rich,
+indeed, by this generous donation, for there were a ponderous Latin
+Dictionary in Landor's handwriting, a curious old Italian and French
+Dictionary of 1692,&mdash;published at Paris, "per uso del Serenissimo
+Delfino,"&mdash;a Greek Grammar, and a delightfully rare and musty old Latin
+Grammar by Emmanuel Alvarus, the Jesuit, carefully annotated by Landor.
+Then, too, there was a valuable edition, in two volumes, of Annibal
+Caro's Italian translation of the &AElig;neid, published at Paris in 1760, by
+permission of "Louis, par le grace de Dieu Roi de France et de Navarre,"
+and very copiously illustrated by Zocchi. Two noble coats-of-arms adorn
+its fly-leaves, those of the Right Honorable Lady Mary Louther and of
+George, Earl of Macartney, Knight of the Order of the White Eagle and of
+the Bath.</p>
+
+<p>The lessons, as pleasant as they were profitable, were given several
+times a week for many weeks, and would have been continued still longer
+had not a change of residence on our part rendered frequent meetings
+impossible. On each appointed day Landor entered the room with a bouquet
+of camellias or roses,&mdash;the products of his little garden, in which he
+took great pride,&mdash;and, after presenting it with a graceful speech,
+turned to the Latin books with infinite gusto, as though they reflected
+upon him the light of other days. No voice could be better adapted to
+the reading of Latin than that of Landor, who uttered the words with a
+certain majestic flow, and sounding, cataract-like falls<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_692" id="Page_692">[Pg 692]</a></span> and plunges of
+music. Occasionally he would touch upon the subject of Greek. "I wonder
+whether I've forgotten all my Greek," he said one day. "It is so long
+since I have written a word of it that I doubt if I can remember the
+alphabet. Let me see." He took up pen and paper, and from Alpha to Omega
+traced every letter with far more distinctness than he would have
+written the English alphabet. "Why, Landor," he exclaimed, looking with
+no little satisfaction on the work before him, "you have not grown as
+foolish as I thought. You know your letters,&mdash;which proves that you are
+in your second childhood, does it not?" he asked, smiling, and turning
+to me.</p>
+
+<p>After my recitation he would lean back in the arm-chair and relate
+anecdotes of great men and women to a small, but deeply interested
+audience of three, including Giallo. A few well-timed questions were
+quite sufficient to open his inexhaustible reservoir of reminiscences.
+Nor had Landor reason to complain of his memory in so far as the dim
+past was concerned; for, one morning, reference having been made to Monk
+Lewis's poem of "Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene," he recited it
+in cadences from beginning to end, without the slightest hesitation or
+the tripping of a word. "Well, this is indeed astonishing," he said at
+its conclusion; "I have not <i>thought</i> of that poem for thirty years!"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Landor was often very brilliant. At Sienna, during the summer of 1860,
+an American lady having expressed a desire to meet him the following
+season, he replied, "Ah, by that time I shall have gone farther and
+fared worse!" Sometimes, when we were all in a particularly merry mood,
+Landor would indulge in impromptu <i>doggerel</i> "to please <i>Giallo</i>"!
+Absurd couplets would come thick and fast,&mdash;so fast that it was
+impossible to remember them.</p>
+
+<p>Advising me with regard to certain rules in my Latin Grammar he
+exclaimed,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"What you'd fain know, you will find:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What you want not, leave behind."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Whereupon Giallo walked up to his master and caressed his hand. "Why,
+Giallo," added Landor, "your nose is hot, but</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He is foolish who supposes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dogs are ill that have hot noses!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Attention being directed to several letters received by Landor from
+well-meaning but intensely orthodox friends, who were extremely anxious
+that he should join the Church in order to be saved from perdition, he
+said: "They are very kind, but I cannot be redeemed in that way.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When I throw off this mortal coil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will not call on you, friend Hoil;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I think that I shall do,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My good Tompkins, without you.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But I pray you, charming Kate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You will come, but not too late."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"How wicked you are, Mr. Landor!" I replied, laughingly. "It is well
+that <i>I</i> am not orthodox."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"For if you were orthodox<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I should be in the wrong box!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>was the ready response.</p>
+
+<p>Landor held orthodoxy in great horror, having no faith in creeds which
+set up the highly comfortable doctrine, "I am holier than thou, for I am
+in the Church." "Ah! I have given dear, good friends great pain because
+of my obstinacy. They would have me believe as they do, which is utterly
+impossible." By Church, Landor did not mean religion, nor did he pass
+judgment on those who in sincerity embraced any particular faith, but
+claimed for himself perfect freedom of opinion, and gave as much to
+others. In his paper on "Popery, British and Foreign," Landor freely
+expresses himself. "The people, by their own efforts, will sweep away
+the gross inequalities now obstructing the church-path,&mdash;will sweep away
+from amidst the habitations of the industrious the moral cemeteries, the
+noisome markets around the house of God, whatever be the selfish
+interests that stubbornly resist the operation.... It would grieve me to
+foresee a day<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_693" id="Page_693">[Pg 693]</a></span> when our cathedrals and our churches shall be demolished
+or desecrated; when the tones of the organ, when the symphonies of
+Handel, no longer swell and reverberate along the groined roof and dim
+windows. But let old superstitions crumble into dust; let Faith, Hope,
+and Charity be simple in their attire; let few and solemn words be
+spoken before Him 'to whom all hearts are open, all desires known.'
+Principalities and powers belong not to the service of the Crucified;
+and religion can never be pure, never 'of good report,' among those who
+usurp or covet them."</p>
+
+<p>Landor was no exception to the generality of Protestants in Italy, who
+become imbued with a profound aversion to Romanism, while retaining
+great respect and regard for individual members of its clergy. He never
+passed one of the <i>preti</i> that he did not open his batteries, pouring
+grape and canister of sarcasm and indignation on the retreating
+enemy,&mdash;"rascally beetles," "human vampires," "Satan's imps." "Italy
+never can be free as long as these locusts, worse than those of Egypt,
+infest the land. They are as plentiful as fleas, and as great a curse,"
+he exclaimed one day. "They are fleas demoralized!" he added, with a
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"It is reported that Pio Nono is not long for this world," I said, on
+another occasion. "Erysipelas is supposed to have settled in his legs."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes," Landor replied, "he has been on his <i>last legs</i> for some
+time, but depend upon it they are legs that will <i>last</i>. The Devil is
+always good to his own, you know!"</p>
+
+<p>In Italy the advanced party will not allow virtue in the Pope even as a
+man. A story is told, that when, as the Cardinal Mastai Ferretti, he was
+made Pontiff, his sister threw up her hands and exclaimed, "Guai a
+Roma!" (Woe to Rome!) "Se non &egrave; vero &egrave; ben trovato." And this is told in
+spite of Mrs. Kemble's story of the conversation which took place
+between the Cardinals Micara and Lambruschini prior to this election, in
+which the former remarked: "If the powers of darkness preside over the
+election, you'll be Pope; if the people had a voice, I'm the man; but if
+Heaven has a finger in the business, 't will be Ferretti!" Apropos of
+Popes, Landor writes: "If the Popes are the servants of God, it must be
+confessed that God has been very unlucky in the choice of his household.
+So many and so atrocious thieves, liars, and murderers are not to be
+found in any other trade; much less would you look for them at the head
+of it." And because of faithless servants Landor has wisely made
+Boccaccio say of Rome: "She, I think will be the last city to rise from
+the dead."</p>
+
+<p>"How surprised St. Peter would be," continued Landor,&mdash;resuming our
+conversation, which I have thus parenthetically interrupted,&mdash;"how
+surprised he would be to return to earth and find his apostolic
+successors living in such a grand house as the Vatican. Ah, they are
+jolly fishermen!&mdash;Landor, Landor! how can you be so wicked?" he said,
+checking himself with mock seriousness; "Giallo does not approve of such
+levity. He tells me he is a good Catholic, for he always refuses meat on
+Friday, even when I offer him a tempting bit. He is a pious dog, and
+will intercede for his naughty old <i>Padrone</i> when he goes to heaven."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A young friend of mine, Charles C. Coleman, an art-student in Italy,
+having visited Landor, was struck by the nobility of his head, and
+expressed a wish to make a study of it. To fulfil such a desire,
+however, was difficult, inasmuch as Landor had an inherent objection to
+having his likeness taken either by man or the sun. Not long before the
+artist's visit, Mr. Browning had persuaded him to sit for his
+photograph, but no less a person could have induced the old man to mount
+the numberless steps which seem to be a necessary condition of
+photography. This sitting was most satisfactory; and to Mr. Browning's
+zealous friendship is due the likeness by which the octogenarian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_694" id="Page_694">[Pg 694]</a></span> Landor
+will probably be known to the world. Finding him in unusually good
+spirits one day, I dubiously and gradually approached the subject.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Landor, do you remember the young artist who called on you one
+day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and a nice fellow he seemed to be."</p>
+
+<p>"He was greatly taken with your head."</p>
+
+<p>(Humorously.) "You are quite sure he was not smitten with my face?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I am not sure, for he expressed himself enthusiastically about your
+beard. He says you are a fine subject for a study."</p>
+
+<p>No answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you allow him to make a sketch of you, Mr. Landor? He is
+exceedingly anxious to do so."</p>
+
+<p>"No; I do not wish my face to be public property. I detest this
+publicity that men now-a-days seem to be so fond of. There is a painting
+of me in England. D'Orsay, too, made a drawing of me" (I think he said
+drawing) "once when I was visiting Gore House,&mdash;a very good thing it was
+too,&mdash;and there is a bust executed by Gibson when I was in Rome. These
+are quite sufficient. I have often been urged to allow my portrait to be
+inserted in my books, but never would I give my consent."
+(Notwithstanding this assertion, it may be found in the "Last Fruit.")
+"It is a custom that I detest."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Mr. Landor, you had your photograph taken lately."</p>
+
+<p>"That was to oblige my good friend Browning, who has been so exceedingly
+kind and attentive to me. I could not refuse him."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Mr. Landor, this is entirely between ourselves. It does not
+concern the public in the least. My friend wants to make a study of your
+head, and I want the study."</p>
+
+<p>"O, the painting is for you, is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I want to have something of you in oil colors."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, to be sure! the old creature's complexion is so fresh and fair.
+Well, I'll tell you what I will do. Your friend may come, provided you
+come with him,&mdash;and act as chaperon!" This was said laughingly.</p>
+
+<p>"That I will do with pleasure."</p>
+
+<p>"But stop!" added Landor after a pause. "I must be taken without my
+beard!"</p>
+
+<p>"O no! Mr. Landor. That cannot be. Why, you will spoil the picture. You
+won't look like a patriarch without a beard."</p>
+
+<p>"I ordered my barber to come and shear me to-morrow. The weather is
+getting to be very warm, and a heavy beard is exceedingly uncomfortable.
+I <i>must</i> be shaved to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Pray countermand the order, dear Mr. Landor. Do retain your beard until
+the picture is completed. You will not be obliged to wait long. We shall
+all be so disappointed if you don't."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, I suppose I must submit."</p>
+
+<p>And thus the matter was amicably arranged, to our infinite satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>Those sittings were very pleasant to the artist and his chaperon, and
+were not disagreeable, I think, to the model. Seated in his arm-chair,
+with his back to the window that the light might fall on the top of his
+head and form a sort of glory, Landor looked every inch a seer, and
+would entertain us with interesting though unseerlike recollections,
+while the artist was busy with his brush.</p>
+
+<p>Putting out his foot one day, he said, "Who could suppose that that ugly
+old foot had ever been good-looking? Yet they say it was once. When I
+was in Rome, an artist came to me, and asked to take a cast of my foot
+and leg."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Mr. Landor, you don't know how good-looking you might be now, if
+you would get a new suit of clothes and a nice pair of boots."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. I never intend to buy anything more for myself. My old clothes
+are quite good enough. They are all-sufficient for this world, and in
+the next I sha'n't need any; that is, if we are to believe what we are
+told."</p>
+
+<p>"But, indeed, Mr. Landor, you really ought to get a new cap."</p>
+
+<p>"No, the one I wear is quite grand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_695" id="Page_695">[Pg 695]</a></span> enough. I may have it made over.
+Napier gave it to me," (I think he said Napier,) "and for that reason I
+value it."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Landor, you do look like a lion," I said at another time.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled and replied, "You are not the only person who has said so. One
+day, when Napier was dining with me, he threw himself back in his chair,
+exclaiming, with a hearty laugh, 'Zounds! Landor, I've just discovered a
+resemblance. You look like an old lion.'"</p>
+
+<p>"That was a compliment, Mr. Landor. The lion is the king of beasts."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but he's only a beast after all," was the quick retort.</p>
+
+<p>Landor always spoke with enthusiasm of General Sir William Napier, and
+in fact lavished praise upon all the family. It was to General Napier
+that he dedicated his "Hellenics," published in 1859, wherein he pays
+the following chivalric tribute: "An illustrious man ordered it to be
+inscribed on his monument, that he was <i>the friend of Sir Philip
+Sidney</i>; an obscurer one can but leave this brief memorial, that he was
+the friend of Sir William Napier." Not long after the conversation last
+referred to, Landor said, very sadly, as he welcomed us, "I have just
+heard of the death of my dear old friend Napier. Why could not I have
+been taken, and he left? I have lived too long."</p>
+
+<p>The portrait was soon painted, for Landor, with great patience and
+good-nature, would pose for an hour and a half at a time. Then, rising,
+he would say by way of conclusion to the day's work, "Now it is time for
+a little refreshment." After talking awhile longer, and partaking of
+cake and wine, we would leave to meet a few days later. This was the
+last time Landor sat for his picture.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Landor could never have greatly admired Italian music, although he spoke
+in high praise of the singing of Catalani, a <i>prima donna</i> whom he knew
+and liked personally. He was always ready to point out the absurdity of
+many operatic situations and conventionalities, and often confessed that
+he had been rarely to the theatre. But that he was exceedingly fond of
+old English, Scotch, and German ballads, I had the best possible
+evidence. Frequently he entered our rooms, saying playfully, "I wish to
+make a bargain with you. I will give you these flowers if you will give
+me a song!" I was only too happy to comply, thinking the flowers very
+cheaply purchased. While I sang Italian cavatinas, Landor remained away
+from the piano, pleased, but not satisfied. At their conclusion he used
+to exclaim, "Now for an English ballad!" and would seat himself beside
+the piano, saying, "I must get nearer to hear the words. These old deaf
+ears treat me shabbily!" "Kathleen Mavourneen," Schubert's "Ave Maria,"
+and "Within a Mile of Edinboro' Town," were great favorites with him;
+but "Auld Robin Gray" came first in his affections and was the ballad he
+always asked for. Upon first hearing it, the tears streamed down his
+face, and with a sigh he said: "I have not heard that for many, many
+years. It takes me back to very happy days, when &mdash;&mdash; used to sing to
+me. Ah, you did not know what thoughts you were recalling to the
+troublesome old man." As I turned over the leaves he added, "Ah, Landor!
+when you were younger, you knew how to turn over the leaves: you've
+forgotten all your accomplishments!"</p>
+
+<p>Apropos of old songs, Landor has laid his offering upon their neglected
+altar. I shall not forget that evening at Casa Guidi&mdash;I can forget no
+evening passed there&mdash;when, just as the tea was being placed upon the
+table. Robert Browning turned to Landor, who was that night's honored
+guest, gracefully thanked him for his defence of old songs, and, opening
+the "Last Fruit," read in his clear, manly voice the following passages
+from the Idyls of Theocritus: "We often hear that such or such a thing
+'is not worth an old song.' Alas! how very few things are! What precious
+recollections do some of them awaken! what pleasurable tears do they
+excite! They purify the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_696" id="Page_696">[Pg 696]</a></span> stream of life; they can delay it on its
+shelves and rapids; they can turn it back again to the soft moss amidst
+which its sources issue."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you are kind," replied the gratified author. "You always find out
+the best bits in my books."</p>
+
+<p>I have never seen anything of its kind so chivalric as the deference
+paid by Robert Browning to Walter Savage Landor. It was loyal homage
+rendered by a poet in all the glow of power and impulsive magnetism to
+an "old master."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Landor often berated the custom of dinner-parties. "I dislike large
+dinners exceedingly. This herding together of men and women for the
+purpose of eating, this clatter of knives and forks, is barbarous. What
+can be more horrible than to see and hear a person talking with his
+mouth full? But Landor has strange notions, has he not, Giallo? In fact
+<i>Padrone</i> is a fool if we may believe what folks say. Once, while
+walking near my villa at Fiesole, I overheard quite a flattering remark
+about myself, made by one <i>contadino</i> to another. My beloved countrymen
+had evidently been the subject of conversation, and, as the two fellows
+approached my grounds, one of them pointed towards the villa and
+exclaimed: 'Tutti gli Inglesi sono pazzi, ma questo poi!' (All the
+English are mad,&mdash;but <i>this one</i>!) Words were too feeble to express the
+extent of my lunacy, and so both men shrugged their shoulders as only
+Italians can. Yes, Giallo, those <i>contadini</i> pitied your old master, and
+I dare say they were quite right."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>While talking one day about Franklin, Landor said: "Ah, Franklin was a
+great man; and I can tell you an anecdote of him that has never been in
+print, and which I had directly from a personal friend of Franklin's,
+who was acting as private secretary to Lord Auckland, the English
+ambassador at Paris during Franklin's visit to the French Court. On one
+occasion, when Franklin presented himself before Louis, he was most
+cavalierly treated by the king, whereupon Lord Auckland took it upon
+himself to make impertinent speeches, and, notwithstanding Franklin's
+habitually courteous manners, sneered at his appearing in court dress.
+Upon Franklin's return home, he was met by &mdash;&mdash;, who, being much
+attached to him,&mdash;a bit of a republican, too,&mdash;was anxious to learn the
+issue of the visit. 'I was received badly enough,' said Franklin. 'Your
+master, Lord Auckland, was very insolent. I am not quite sure that,
+among other things, he did not call me a rebel.' Then, taking off his
+court coat, which, after carefully folding and laying upon the sofa, he
+stroked, he muttered, 'Lie there now; you'll see better days yet.'"</p>
+
+<p>Being asked if he had ever seen Daniel Webster, Landor replied, "I once
+met Mr. Webster at a dinner-party. We sat next each other, and had a
+most agreeable conversation. Finally Mr. Webster asked me if I would
+have taken him for an American; and I answered, 'Yes, for the best of
+Americans!'"</p>
+
+<p>Landor had met Talma, "who spoke English most perfectly,"&mdash;had been in
+the society of Mrs. Siddons, "who was not at all clever in
+private,"&mdash;had conversed with Mrs. Jordan, "and a most handsome and
+agreeable woman she was; but that scoundrel, William IV., treated her
+shamefully. He even went so far as to appropriate the money she received
+on her benefit nights." Malibran, too, Landor described as being most
+fascinating off the stage.</p>
+
+<p>"I never studied German," he remarked at another time. "I was once in
+Germany four months, but conversed with the professors in Latin. Their
+Latin was grammatical, but very like dog-Latin for all that. What an
+offence to dogs, if they only knew it!" Then, lowering his voice, he
+laughingly added, "I hope Giallo did not hear me. I would not offend him
+for the world. A German Baroness attempted to induce me to learn her
+language, and read aloud German poetry for my benefit; but the noise was
+intolerable to me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_697" id="Page_697">[Pg 697]</a></span> It sounded like a great wagon banging over a
+pavement of boulders. It was very ungrateful in me not to learn, for my
+fair teacher paid me many pretty compliments. Yes, Giallo, <i>Padrone</i> has
+had pleasant things said to him in his day. But the greatest compliment
+I ever received was from Lord Dudley. Being confined to his bed by
+illness at Bologna, a friend read aloud to him my imaginary conversation
+between the two Ciceros. Upon its conclusion, the reader exclaimed, 'Is
+not that exactly what Cicero would have said?' 'Yes, if he could!' was
+Lord Dudley's answer. Now was not that a compliment worth having?"</p>
+
+<p>One day when I was sitting with Landor, and he, as usual, was
+discoursing of "lang syne," he rose, saying, "Stop a bit; I've something
+to show you,"&mdash;and, leaving the room for a moment, returned with a small
+writing-desk, looking as old as himself. "Now I want you to look at
+something I have here," he continued, seating himself and opening the
+desk. "There, what do you think of that?" he asked, handing me a
+miniature of a very lovely woman.</p>
+
+<p>"I think the original must have been exceedingly handsome."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes, she was," he replied, with a sigh, leaning back in his chair.
+"That is the 'Ianthe' of my poems."</p>
+
+<p>"I can well understand why she inspired your muse, Mr. Landor."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, she was far more beautiful than her picture, but much she cared for
+my poetry! It couldn't be said that she liked me for my books. She, too,
+has gone,&mdash;gone before me."</p>
+
+<p>It is to "Ianthe" that the first seventy-five of his verses marked
+"Miscellaneous" are addressed, and it is of her he has written,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"It often comes into my head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That we may dream when we are dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But I am far from sure we do.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O that it were so! then my rest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would be indeed among the blest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I should forever dream of you."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the "Heroic Idyls," also, there are lines</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"ON THE DEATH OF IANTHE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I dare not trust my pen, it trembles so;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It seems to feel a portion of my woe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And makes me credulous that trees and stones<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At mournful fates have uttered mournful tones.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While I look back again on days long past,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How gladly would I yours might be my last!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sad our first severance was, but sadder this,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When death forbids one hour of mutual bliss."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Ianthe's portrait is not the only treasure this old desk contains,"
+Landor said, as he replaced it and took up a small package, very
+carefully tied, which he undid with great precaution, as though the
+treasure had wings and might escape, if not well guarded. "There!" he
+said, holding up a pen-wiper made of red and gold stuff in the shape of
+a bell with an ivory handle,&mdash;"that pen-wiper was given to me by &mdash;&mdash;,
+Rose's sister, forty years ago. Would you believe it? Have I not kept it
+well?" The pen-wiper looked as though it had been made the day before,
+so fresh was it. "Now," continued Landor, "I intend to give that to
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Mr. Landor&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Tut! tut! there are to be no buts about it. My passage for another
+world is already engaged, and I know you'll take good care of my
+keepsake. There, now, put it in your pocket, and only use it on grand
+occasions."</p>
+
+<p>Into my pocket the pen-wiper went, and, wrapped in the same old paper,
+it lies in another desk, as free from ink as it was four years ago.</p>
+
+<p>Who Rose was no reader of Landor need be told,&mdash;she to whom "Andrea of
+Hungary" was dedicated, and of whom Lady Blessington, in one of her
+letters to Landor, wrote: "The tuneful bird, inspired of old by the
+Persian rose, warbled not more harmoniously its praise than you do that
+of the English Rose, whom posterity will know through your beautiful
+verses." Many and many a time the gray-bearded poet related incidents of
+which this English Rose was the heroine, and for the moment seemed to
+live over again an interesting episode of his mature years.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Dear! dear! what is the old creature<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_698" id="Page_698">[Pg 698]</a></span> to do for reading-matter?" Landor
+exclaimed after having exhausted his own small stock and my still
+smaller one. "Shakespeare and Milton are my daily food, but at times,
+you know, we require side-dishes."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not subscribe to Vieusseux's Library, Mr. Landor?"</p>
+
+<p>"That would be the best thing to do, would it not? Very well, you shall
+secure me a six months' subscription to-morrow. And now what shall I
+read? When Mr. Anthony Trollope was here, he called on me with his
+brother, and a clever man he appeared to be. I have never read anything
+of his. Suppose I begin with his novels?"</p>
+
+<p>And so it happened that Landor read all of Anthony Trollope's works with
+zest, admiring them for their unaffected honesty of purpose and truth to
+nature. He next read Hood's works, and when this writer's poems were
+returned to me there came with them a scrap of paper on which were named
+the poems that had most pleased their reader.</p>
+
+<p>"Song of a Shirt.</p>
+
+<p>"To my Daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"A Child embracing.</p>
+
+<p>"My Heart is sick.</p>
+
+<p>"False Poets and True.</p>
+
+<p>"The Forsaken.</p>
+
+<p>"The last stanza of Inez is beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>Of the poem which heads the list, he wrote:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Song of the Shirt' Strange! very strange,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This shirt will never want a change,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor ever will wear out so long<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As Britain has a heart or tongue."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Hood commanded great love and respect from Landor. Soon the reign of G.
+P. R. James set in, and when I left Florence he was still in power. I
+cannot but think that a strong personal friendship had much to do with
+Landor's enthusiasm for this novelist.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>We took many drives with Landor during the spring and summer of 1861,
+and made very delightful jaunts into the country. Not forgetful in the
+least of things, the old man, in spite of his age, would always insist
+upon taking the front seat, and was more active than many a younger man
+in assisting us in and out of the carriage. "You are the most genuinely
+polite man I know," once wrote Lady Blessington to him. The verdict of
+1840 could not have been overruled twenty-one years later. Once we drove
+up to "aerial Fiesole," and never can I forget Landor's manner while in
+the neighborhood of his former home. It had been proposed that we should
+turn back when only half-way up the hill. "Ah, go a little farther,"
+Landor said nervously; "I should like to see my villa." Of course his
+wish was our pleasure, and so the drive was continued. Landor sat
+immovable, with head turned in the direction of the Villa Gherardesca.
+At first sight of it he gave a sudden start, and genuine tears filled
+his eyes and coursed down his cheeks. "There's where I lived," he said,
+breaking a long silence and pointing to his old estate. Still we mounted
+the hill, and when at a turn in the road the villa stood out before us
+clearly and distinctly, Landor said, "Let us give the horses a rest
+here!" We stopped, and for several minutes Landor's gaze was fixed upon
+the villa. "There now, we can return to Florence, if you like," he
+murmured, finally, with a deep sigh. "I have seen it probably for the
+last time." Hardly a word was spoken during the drive home. Landor
+seemed to be absent-minded. A sadder, more pathetic picture than he made
+during this memorable drive is rarely seen. "With me life has been a
+failure," was the expression of that wretched, worn face. Those who
+believe Landor to have been devoid of heart should have seen him then.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>During another drive he stopped the horses at the corner of a dirty
+little old street, and, getting out of the carriage, hurriedly
+disappeared round a corner, leaving us without explanation and
+consequently in amazement. We had not long to wait, however, as he soon
+appeared carrying a large roll of canvas. "There!" he exclaimed, as he
+again seated himself, "I've made a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_699" id="Page_699">[Pg 699]</a></span> capital bargain. I've long wanted
+these paintings, but the man asked more than I could give. To-day he
+relented. They are very clever, and I shall have them framed." Alas!
+they were not clever, and Landor in his last days had queer notions
+concerning art. That he was excessively fond of pictures is undoubtedly
+true; he surrounded himself with them, but there was far more quantity
+than quality about them. He frequently attributed very bad paintings to
+very good masters; and it by no means followed because he called a
+battle-piece a "Salvator Rosa," that it was painted by Salvator. But the
+old man was tenacious of his art opinions, and it was unwise to argue
+the point.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The notes which I possess in Landor's handwriting are numerous, but they
+are of too personal a character to interest the public. Sometimes he
+signs himself "The Old Creature," at another, "The Restless Old Man,"
+and once, "Your Beardless Old Friend." This was after the painting of
+his portrait, when he had himself shorn of half his patriarchal
+grandeur. The day previous to the fatal deed, he entered our room
+saying, "I've just made an arrangement with my barber to shear me
+to-morrow. I must have a clean face during the summer."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you had somewhat of the Oriental reverence for beards, Mr.
+Landor, for then there would be no shaving. Why, think of it! if you've
+no beard, how can you swear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, <i>Padrone</i> can swear tolerably well without it, can he not, Giallo?
+he will have no difficulty on that score. Now I'll wager, were I a young
+man, you would ask me for a lock of my hair. See what it is to be old
+and gray."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Mr. Landor, I've long wanted just that same, but have not dared to
+ask for it. May I cut off a few stray hairs?" I asked, going toward him
+with a pair of scissors.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah no," he replied, quizzically, "there can be but one 'Rape of the
+Lock!' Let me be my own barber." Taking the scissors, he cut off the
+longest curl of his snow-white beard, enclosed it in an envelope with a
+Greek superscription, and, presenting it, said, "One of these days, when
+I have gone to my long sleep, this bit of an old pagan may interest some
+very good Christians."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The following note is worthy to be transcribed, showing, as it does, the
+generosity of his nature at a time when he had nothing to give away but
+ideas.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">My dear Friend</span>,&mdash;Will you think it worth your while to
+transcribe the enclosed? These pages I have corrected and
+enlarged. Some of them you have never seen. They have occupied
+more of my time and trouble, and are now more complete, than
+anything you have favored me by reading. I hope you will be
+pleased. I care less about others.... I hope you will get
+something for these articles, and keep it. I am richer by
+several crowns than you suspect, and I must scramble to the
+kingdom of Heaven, to which a full pocket, we learn, is an
+impediment.</p></div>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">"Ever truly yours,</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 20em;">W. S. L."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The manuscripts contained the two conversations between Homer and
+Laertes which two years ago were published in the "Heroic Idyls." I did
+not put them to the use desired by their author. Though my copies differ
+somewhat from the printed ones, it is natural to conclude that Landor
+most approved of what was last submitted to his inspection, and would
+not desire to be seen in any other guise. The publicity of a note
+prefixed to one of these conversations, however, is warranted.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be thought audacious, and most so by those who know the least
+of Homer, to represent him as talking so familiarly. He must often have
+done it, as Milton and Shakespeare did. There is homely talk in the
+'Odyssey.'</p>
+
+<p>"Fashion turns round like Fortune. Twenty years hence, perhaps, this
+conversation of Homer and Laertes, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_700" id="Page_700">[Pg 700]</a></span> which for the first time Greek
+domestic manners have been represented by any modern poet, may be
+recognized and approved.</p>
+
+<p>"Our sculptors and painters frequently take their subjects from
+antiquity; are our poets never to pass beyond the medi&aelig;val? At our own
+doors we listen to the affecting 'Song of the Shirt'; but some few of
+us, at the end of it, turn back to catch the 'Song of the Sirens.'</p>
+
+<p>"Poetry is not tied to chronology. The Roman poet brings Dido and &AElig;neas
+together,&mdash;the historian parts them far asunder. Homer may or may not
+have been the contemporary of Laertes. Nothing is idler or more
+dangerous than to enter a labyrinth without a clew."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>At last the time came when there were to be no more conversations, no
+more drives, with Walter Savage Landor. Summoned suddenly to America, we
+called upon him three or four days before our departure to say good by.</p>
+
+<p>"What? going to America?" Landor exclaimed in a sorrowful voice. "Is it
+really true? Must the old creature lose his young friends as well as his
+old? Ah me! ah me! what will become of Giallo and me? And America in the
+condition that it is too! But this is not the last time that I am to see
+you. Tut! tut! now no excuses. We must have one more drive, one more cup
+of tea together before you leave."</p>
+
+<p>Pressed as we were for time, it was still arranged that we should drive
+with Landor the evening previous to our departure. On the morning of
+this day came the following note:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I am so stupid that everything puzzles me. Is not this the day
+I was to expect your visit? At all events you will have the
+carriage at your door at <i>six</i> this evening.</p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To drive or not to drive,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That is the question.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>You shall not be detained one half-hour,&mdash;but tea will be ready
+on your arrival.</p>
+
+<p>"I fell asleep after the jolting, and felt no bad effect. See
+what it is to be so young.</p></div>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">"Ever yours affectionately,</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 20em;">"W. S. L."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>There was little to cheer any of us in that last drive, and few words
+were spoken. Stopping at his house on our way home, we sipped a final
+cup of tea in almost complete silence. I tried to say merry things and
+look forward a few years to another meeting, but the old man shook his
+head sadly, saying: "I shall never see you again. I cannot live through
+another winter, nor do I desire to. Life to me is but a counterpart of
+Dead Sea fruit; and now that you are going away, there is one less link
+to the chain that binds me."</p>
+
+<p>Landor, in the flood-tide of intellect and fortune, could command
+attention; Landor, tottering with an empty purse towards his ninth
+decade, could count his Florentine friends in one breath; thus it
+happened that the loss of the least of these made the old man sad.</p>
+
+<p>At last the hour of leave-taking arrived. Culling a flower from the
+little garden, taking a final turn through those three little rooms,
+patting Giallo on the head, who, sober through sympathy, looked as
+though he wondered what it all meant, we turned to Landor, who entered
+the front room dragging an immense album after him. It was the same that
+he had bought years before of Barker, the English artist, for fifty
+guineas, and about which previous mention has been made. "You are not to
+get rid of me yet," said Landor, bearing the album toward the stairs. "I
+shall see you home, and bid you good by at your own door."</p>
+
+<p>"But, dear Mr. Landor, what are you doing with that big book? You will
+surely injure yourself by attempting to carry it."</p>
+
+<p>"This album is intended for you, and you must take it with you
+to-night."</p>
+
+<p>Astonished at this munificent present, I hardly knew how to refuse it
+without offending the generous giver.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_701" id="Page_701">[Pg 701]</a></span> Stopping him at the door, I
+endeavored to dissuade him from giving away so valuable an album; and,
+finding him resolute in his determination, begged him to compromise by
+leaving it to me in his will.</p>
+
+<p>"No, my dear," he replied, "I at least have lived long enough to know
+that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Whereupon he carried
+the book down stairs and deposited it in the carriage, deaf to our
+entreaties, and obstinately refusing assistance. "Now I am sure that you
+will have the album," he continued, after we were all seated in the
+carriage. "A will is an uncanny thing, and I'd rather remember my
+friends out of one than in one. I shall never see you again, and I want
+you to think of the foolish old creature occasionally."</p>
+
+<p>The carriage stopped at our door, and "the good by" came. "May God bless
+you!" murmured the lonely old man, and in a moment Walter Savage Landor
+was out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>He was right. We were never to meet again. Distance did not entirely
+sever the friendly link, however, for soon there came to me, across the
+sea, the following letters:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 20em;">August 28, 1861.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"By this time, my dear friend, you will be far on your way over
+the Atlantic, and before you receive the scribble now before
+you, half your friends will have offered you their
+congratulations on your return home.</p>
+
+<p>"People, I hear, are flocking fast into Florence for the
+exhibition. This evening I received another kind note from the
+Countess, who tells me that she shall return to Florence on
+Saturday, and invites me to accompany her there. But I abhor
+all crowds, and am not fascinated by the eye of kings. I never
+saw him of Italy when he was here before, and shall not now.</p>
+
+<p>"I am about to remove my terrace, and to place it under the
+window of the small bedroom, substituting a glass door for the
+present window. On this terrace I shall spend all my October
+days, and&mdash;and&mdash;all my money! The landlord will not allow one
+shilling toward the expense, which will make his lower rooms
+lighter and healthier. To him the advantage will be
+permanent,&mdash;to me (God knows) it must be very temporary. In
+another summer I shall not sit so high, nor, indeed, <i>sit</i>
+anywhere, but take instead the easiest and laziest of all
+positions.</p>
+
+<p>"I am continuing to read the noble romances of my friend James.
+I find in them thoughts as profound as any in Charron, or
+Montaigne, or Bacon,&mdash;I had almost added, or Shakespeare
+himself,&mdash;the wisest of men, as the greatest of poets. On the
+morning after your departure I finished the 'Philip Augustus.'
+In the thirty-eighth chapter is this sentence: 'O Isidore! 't
+is not the present, I believe, that ever makes our misery; 't
+is its contrast with the past; 't is the loss of some hope, or
+the crushing of some joy; the disappointment of expectation, or
+the regrets of memory. The present is nothing, nothing,
+nothing, but in its relation to the future or the past.' James
+is inferior to Scott in wit and humor, but more than his equal
+in many other respects; but then Scott wrote excellent poetry,
+in which James, when he attempted it, failed.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me hear how affairs are going on in America. I believe we
+have truer accounts from England than your papers are disposed
+to publish. Louis Napoleon is increasing his naval force to a
+degree it never reached before. We must have war with him
+before a twelvemonth is over. He will also make disturbances in
+Louisiana, claiming it on the dolorous cry of France for her
+lost children. They will <i>invite</i> him, as the poor Savoyards
+were <i>invited</i> by him to do. So long as this perfidious
+scoundrel exists there will be no peace of quiet in any quarter
+of the globe. The Pope is heartily sick of intervention; but
+nothing can goad his fat sides into a move.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you not tired? My wrist is. So adieu.</p></div>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">"Ever affectionately,</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 20em;">"W. S. L."</span><br />
+</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_702" id="Page_702">[Pg 702]</a></span></p>
+<p>With this letter came a slip of paper, on which were these lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"TO GIALLO,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Faithfullest of a faithful race,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Plainly I read it in thy face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou wishest me to mount the stairs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And leave behind me all my cares.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No: I shall never see again,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her who now sails across the main,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor wilt thou ever as before<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rear two white feet against her door."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Written opposite Palazzo Pitti,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">September, 1861."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 20em;">"February 15, 1862.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>".... The affairs of your country interest me painfully. The
+Northern States had acknowledged the right of the Southern to
+hold slaves, and had even been so iniquitous as to surrender a
+fugitive from his thraldom. I would propose an accommodation:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"1. That every slave should be free after ten years' labor.</p>
+
+<p>"2. That none should be imported, or sold, or separated from
+wife and children.</p>
+
+<p>"3. That an adequate portion of land should be granted in
+perpetuity to the liberated.</p>
+
+<p>"The proprietor would be fully indemnified for his purchase by
+ten years' labor. France and England will not permit their
+commerce with the Southern States to be interrupted much
+longer. It has caused great discontent in Manchester and Leeds,
+where the artificers suffer grievously from want of employment.</p>
+
+<p>".... May you continue to improve in health as the warmer
+weather advances. Mine will not allow me to hope for many more
+months of life, but I shall always remember you, and desire
+that you also will remember</p></div>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 20em;">"<span class="smcap">W. S. Landor</span>."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 20em;">"January, 1863.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>".... Your account of your improved health is very satisfactory
+and delightful to me. Hardly can I expect to receive many such.
+This month I enter on my eighty-ninth year, and am growing
+blind and deaf.... I hope you may live long enough to see the
+end of your disastrous civil war. Remember, the Southrons are
+fighting for their acknowledged rights, as established by the
+laws of the United States. Horrible is the idea that one man
+should be lord and master of another. But Washington had
+slaves, so had the President his successor. If your government
+had been contented to decree that no slave henceforth should be
+imported, none sold, none disunited from his family, your
+Northern cause would be more popular in England and throughout
+Europe than it is. You are about to see detached from the Union
+a third of the white population. Is it not better that the
+blacks should be contented slaves than exasperated murderers or
+drunken vagabonds? Your blacks were generally more happy than
+they were in Africa, or than they are likely to be in America.
+Your taxes will soon excite a general insurrection. In a war of
+five years they will be vastly heavier than their amount in all
+the continent of Europe. And what enormous armies must be kept
+stationary to keep down not only those who are now refractory,
+but also those whom (by courtesy and fiction) we call free.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope and trust that I shall leave the world before the end
+of this winter. My darling dog, Giallo, will find a fond
+protectress in &mdash;&mdash;.... Present my respectful compliments to
+Mrs. F., and believe me to continue</p></div>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">"Your faithful old friend,</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 20em;">"<span class="smcap">W. S. Landor</span>."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 20em;">"September 11, 1863.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>".... You must be grieved at the civil war. It might have been
+avoided. The North had no right to violate the Constitution.
+Slavery was lawful, execrable as it is.... Congress might have
+liberated them [the slaves] gradually at no expense to the
+nation at large.</p>
+
+<p>"1. Every slave after fifteen years should be affranchised.</p>
+
+<p>"2. None to be imported or sold.</p>
+
+<p>"3. No husband and wife separated.</p>
+
+<p>"4. No slave under twelve compelled to labor.</p>
+
+<p>"5. Schools in every township; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_703" id="Page_703">[Pg 703]</a></span> children of both sexes sent
+to them at six to ten.</p>
+
+<p>"A few days before I left England, five years ago, I had an
+opportunity of conversing with a gentleman who had visited the
+United States. He was an intelligent and zealous Abolitionist.
+Wishing to learn the real state of things, he went on board a
+vessel bound to New York. He was amazed at the opulence and
+splendor of that city, and at the inadequate civilization of
+the inhabitants. He dined at a public table, at a principal
+inn. The dinner was plenteous and sumptuous. On each side of
+him sat two gentlemen who spat like Frenchmen the moment a
+plate was removed. This prodigy deprived him of appetite. Dare
+I mention it, that the lady opposite cleared her throat in like
+manner?</p>
+
+<p>"The Englishman wished to see your capital, and hastened to
+Washington. There he met a member of Congress to whom he had
+been introduced in London by Webster. Most willingly he
+accepted his invitation to join him at Baltimore, his
+residence. He found it difficult to express the difference
+between the people of New York and those of Baltimore, whom he
+represented as higher-bred. He met there a slaveholder of New
+Orleans, with whom at first he was disinclined to converse, but
+whom presently he found liberal and humane, and who assured him
+that his slaves were contented, happy, and joyous. 'There are
+some cruel masters,' he said, 'among us; but come yourself,
+sir, and see whether we consider them fit for our society or
+our notice.' He accepted the invitation, and remained at New
+Orleans until a vessel was about to sail for Bermuda, where he
+spent the winter.</p>
+
+<p>"Your people, I am afraid, will resolve on war with England.
+Always aggressive, they already devour Canada. I hope Canada
+will soon be independent both of America and England. Your
+people should be satisfied with a civil war of ten or twelve
+years: they will soon have one of much longer duration about
+Mexico. God grant that you, my dear friend, may see the end of
+it. Believe me ever,</p></div>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">"Your affectionate old friend,</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 20em;">"<span class="smcap">W. S. Landor</span>."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>It was sad to receive such letters from the old man, for they showed how
+a mind once great was tottering ere it fell. Blind, deaf, shut up within
+the narrow limits of his own four walls, dependent upon English
+newspapers for all tidings of America,&mdash;is it strange that during those
+last days Landor failed to appreciate the grandeur of our conflict, and
+stumbled as he attempted to follow the logic of events? Well do I
+remember that in conversations he had reasoned far differently, his
+sympathy going out most unreservedly to the North. Living in the dark,
+he saw no more clearly than the majority of Europeans, and a not small
+minority of our own people. Interesting as is everything that so
+celebrated an author as Landor writes, these extracts, so unfavorable to
+our cause and to his intellect, would never have been published had not
+English reviewers thoroughly ventilated his opinions on the American
+war. Their insertion, consequently, in no way exposes Landor to severer
+comment than that to which the rashly unthinking have already subjected
+him, but, on the contrary, increases our regard for him, denoting, as
+they do, that, however erroneous his conclusions, the subject was one to
+which he devoted all the thought left him by old age. The record of a
+long life cannot be obliterated by the unsound theories of the
+octogenarian. It was only ten years before that he appealed to America
+in behalf of freedom in lines beginning thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Friend Jonathan!&mdash;for friend thou art,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do, prithee, take now in good part<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lines the first steamer shall waft o'er.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sorry am I to hear the blacks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still bear your ensign on their backs;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The stripes they suffer make me sore.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beware of wrong. The brave are true;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The tree of Freedom never grew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where Fraud and Falsehood sowed their salt."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In his poem, also, addressed to Andrew Jackson, the "Atlantic Ruler" is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_704" id="Page_704">[Pg 704]</a></span>
+apostrophized on the supposition of a prophecy that remained
+unfulfilled.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Up, every son of Afric soil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye worn and weary, hoist the sail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For your own glebes and garners toil<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With easy plough and lightsome flail.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A father's home ye never knew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A father's home your sons shall have from you.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Enjoy your palmy groves, your cloudless day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your world that demons tore away.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look up! look up! the flaming sword<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hath vanished! and behold your Paradise restored."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is Landor in the full possession of his intellect.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>For Landor's own sake, I did not wish to drink the lees of that rich
+wine which Lady Blessington had prophesied would "flow on pure, bright,
+and sparkling to the last." It is the strength, not the weakness, of our
+friends that we would remember, and therefore Landor's letter of
+September, 1863, remained unanswered. It was better so. A year later he
+died of old age, and during this year he was but the wreck of himself.
+He became gradually more and more averse to going out, and to receiving
+visitors,&mdash;more indifferent, in fact, to all outward things. He used to
+sit and read, or, at all events, hold a book in his hand, and would
+sometimes write and sometimes give way to passion. "It was the swell of
+the sea after the storm, before the final calm," wrote a friend in
+Florence. Landor did not become physically deafer, but the mind grew
+more and more insensible to external impressions, and at last his
+housekeeper was forced to write down every question she was called upon
+to ask him. Few crossed the threshold of his door saving his sons, who
+went to see him regularly. At last he had a difficulty in swallowing,
+which produced a kind of cough. Had he been strong enough to expectorate
+or be sick, he might have lived a little longer; but the frame-work was
+worn out, and in a fit of coughing the great old man drew his last
+breath. He was confined to his bed but two or three days. I am told he
+looked very grand when dead,&mdash;like a majestic marble statue. The funeral
+was hurried, and none but his two sons followed his remains to the
+grave!</p>
+
+<p>One touching anecdote remains to be told of him, as related by his
+housekeeper. On the night before the 1st of May, 1864, Landor became
+very restless, as sometimes happened during the last year. About two
+o'clock, <span class="smcap">a. m.</span>, he rang for Wilson, and insisted upon having the room
+lighted and the windows thrown open. He then asked for pen, ink, and
+paper, and the date of the day. Being told that it was the dawn of the
+1st of May, he wrote a few lines of poetry upon it; then, leaning back,
+said, "I shall never write again. Put out the lights and draw the
+curtains." Very precious would those lines be now, had they been found.
+Wilson fancies that Landor must have destroyed them the next morning on
+rising.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The old man had his wish. Years before, when bidding, as he supposed, an
+eternal farewell to Italy, he wrote sadly of hopes which then seemed
+beyond the pale of possibility.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I did believe, (what have I not believed?)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Weary with age, but unopprest by pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To close in thy soft clime my quiet day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And rest my bones in the Mimosa's shade.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hope! hope! few ever cherisht thee so little;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Few are the heads thou hast so rarely raised;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But thou didst promise this, and all was well.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For we are fond of thinking where to lie<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When every pulse hath ceast, when the lone heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can lift no aspiration, ... reasoning<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As if the sight were unimpaired by death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were unobstructed by the coffin-lid,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the sun cheered corruption! Over all<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The smiles of Nature shed a potent charm,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And light us to our chamber at the grave."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Italy recalled her aged yet impassioned lover, and there, beneath the
+cypresses of the English burying-ground at Florence, almost within sound
+of the murmur of his "own Affrico," rest the weary bones of Walter
+Savage Landor. It is glorified dust with which his mingles. Near by, the
+birds sing their sweetest over the grave of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
+Not far off, an American pine watches vigilantly while Theodore Parker
+sleeps his long sleep; and but a little distance beyond, Frances
+Trollope, the mother, and Theodosia Trollope, her more than devoted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_705" id="Page_705">[Pg 705]</a></span>
+daughter, are united in death as they had been in life.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Nobly, O Theo! has your verse called forth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Roman valor and Subalpine worth,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>sang Landor years ago of his <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;e</i>, who outlived her friend and
+critic but a few months. With the great and good about him, Landor
+sleeps well. His genius needs no eulogy: good wine needs no bush. Time,
+that hides the many in oblivion, can but add to the warmth and
+mellowness of his fame; and in the days to come no modern writer will be
+more faithfully studied or more largely quoted than Walter Savage
+Landor.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"We upon earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have not our places and our distances<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Assigned, for many years; at last a tube,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Raised and adjusted by Intelligence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stands elevated to a cloudless sky,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And place and magnitude are ascertained."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Landor "will dine late; but the dining-room will be well lighted, the
+guests few and select." He will reign among crowned heads.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_DEAD_SHIP_OF_HARPSWELL" id="THE_DEAD_SHIP_OF_HARPSWELL"></a>THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What flecks the outer gray beyond<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The sundown's golden trail?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The white flash of a sea-bird's wing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or gleam of slanting sail?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let young eyes watch from Neck and Point,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And sea-worn elders pray,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ghost of what was once a ship<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is sailing up the bay!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From gray sea-fog, from icy drift,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From peril and from pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The home-bound fisher greets thy lights,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O hundred-harbored Maine!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But many a keel shall seaward turn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And many a sail outstand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, tall and white, the Dead Ship looms<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Against the dusk of land.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She rounds the headland's bristling pines.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She threads the isle-set bay;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No spur of breeze can speed her on,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor ebb of tide delay.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Old men still walk the Isle of Orr<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who tell her date and name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Old shipwrights sit in Freeport yards<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who hewed her oaken frame.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What weary doom of baffled quest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thou sad sea-ghost, is thine?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What makes thee in the haunts of home<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A wonder and a sign?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_706" id="Page_706">[Pg 706]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No foot is on thy silent deck,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Upon thy helm no hand;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No ripple hath the soundless wind<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That smites thee from the land!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For never comes the ship to port<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Howe'er the breeze may be;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Just when she nears the waiting shore<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She drifts again to sea.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No tack of sail, nor turn of helm,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor sheer of veering side.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stern-fore she drives to sea and night<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Against the wind and tide.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In vain o'er Harpswell Neck the star<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of evening guides her in;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In vain for her the lamps are lit<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Within thy tower, Seguin!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In vain the harbor-boat shall hail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In vain the pilot call;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No hand shall reef her spectral sail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or let her anchor fall.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Shake, brown old wives, with dreary joy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your gray-head hints of ill;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, over sick-beds whispering low,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your prophecies fulfil.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some home amid yon birchen trees<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall drape its door with woe;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And slowly where the Dead Ship sails,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The burial boat shall row!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From Wolf Neck and from Flying Point,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From island and from main,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From sheltered cove and tided creek,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall glide the funeral train.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The dead-boat with the bearers four,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The mourners at her stern,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And one shall go the silent way<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who shall no more return!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And men shall sigh, and women weep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose dear ones pale and pine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sadly over sunset seas<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Await the ghostly sign.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They know not that its sails are filled<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">By pity's tender breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor see the Angel at the helm<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who steers the Ship of Death!<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_707" id="Page_707">[Pg 707]</a></span></div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="DOCTOR_JOHNS" id="DOCTOR_JOHNS"></a>DOCTOR JOHNS.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>LXIII.</h3>
+
+<p>Reuben had heard latterly very little of domestic affairs at Ashfield.
+He knew scarce more of the family relations of Ad&egrave;le than was covered by
+that confidential announcement of the parson's which had so set on fire
+his generous zeal. The spinster, indeed, in one of her later letters had
+hinted, in a roundabout manner, that Ad&egrave;le's family misfortunes were not
+looking so badly as they once did,&mdash;that the poor girl (she believed)
+felt tenderly still toward her old playmate,&mdash;and that Mr. Maverick was,
+beyond all question, a gentleman of very easy fortune. But Reuben was
+not in a mood to be caught by any chaff administered by his most
+respectable aunt. If, indeed, he had known all,&mdash;if that hearty burst of
+Ad&egrave;le's gratitude had come to him,&mdash;if he could once have met her with
+the old freedom of manner,&mdash;ah! then&mdash;then&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>But no; he thinks of her now as one under social blight, which he would
+have lifted or borne with her had not her religious squeamishness
+forbidden. He tries to forget what was most charming in her, and has
+succeeded passably well.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose she is still modelling her heroes on the Catechism," he
+thought, "and Phil will very likely pass muster."</p>
+
+<p>The name of Madam Maverick as attaching to their fellow-passenger&mdash;which
+came to his ear for the first time on the second day out from
+port&mdash;considerably startled him. Madam Maverick is, he learns, on her
+way to join her husband and child in America. But he is by no means
+disposed to entertain a very exalted respect for any claimant of such
+name and title. He finds, indeed, the prejudices of his education (so he
+calls them) asserting themselves with a fiery heat; and most of all he
+is astounded by the artfully arranged religious drapery with which this
+poor woman&mdash;as it appears to him&mdash;seeks to cover her short-comings. He
+had brought away from the atmosphere of the old cathedrals a certain
+quickened religious sentiment, by the aid of which he had grown into a
+respect, not only for the Romish faith, but for Christian faith of
+whatever degree. And now he encountered what seemed to him its gross
+prostitution. The old Doctor then was right: this Popish form of
+heathenism was but a device of Satan,&mdash;a scarlet covering of iniquity.
+Yet, in losing respect for one form of faith, he found himself losing
+respect for all. It was easy for him to match the present hypocrisy with
+hypocrisies that he had seen of old.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, the good ship Meteor was skirting the shores of Spain, and had
+made a good hundred leagues of her voyage before Reuben had ventured to
+make himself known as the old schoolmate and friend of the child whom
+Madam Maverick was on her way to greet after so many years of
+separation. The truth was, that Reuben, his first disgust being
+overcome, could not shake off the influence of something attractive and
+winning in the manner of Madam Maverick. In her step and in her lithe
+figure he saw the step and figure of Ad&egrave;le. All her orisons and aves,
+which she failed not to murmur each morning and evening, were reminders
+of the earnest faith of her poor child. It is impossible to treat her
+with disrespect. Nay, it is impossible,&mdash;as Reuben begins to associate
+more intimately the figure and the voice of this quiet lady with his
+memories of another and a younger one,&mdash;quite impossible, that he should
+not feel his whole chivalrous nature stirred in him, and become prodigal
+of attentions. If there were hypocrisy, it somehow cheated him into
+reverence.</p>
+
+<p>The lady is, of course, astounded at Reuben's disclosure to her. "<i>Mon
+Dieu!</i> you, then, are the son of that good priest of whom I have heard
+so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_708" id="Page_708">[Pg 708]</a></span> much! And you are Puritan? I would not have thought that. They love
+the vanities of the world then,"&mdash;and her eye flashed over the
+well-appointed dress of Reuben, who felt half an inclination to hide, if
+it had been possible, the cluster of gairish charms which hung at his
+watch-chain. "You have shown great kindness to my child, Monsieur. I
+thank you with my whole heart."</p>
+
+<p>"She is very charming, Madam," said Reuben, in an easy, <i>d&eacute;gag&eacute;</i> manner,
+which, to tell truth, he put on to cover a little embarrassing revival
+of his old sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>Madam Maverick looked at him keenly. "Describe her to me, if you will be
+so good, Monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon Reuben ran on,&mdash;jauntily, at first, as if it had been a
+ballet-girl of San Carlo whose picture he was making out; but his old
+hearty warmth declared itself by degrees; and his admiration and his
+tenderness gave such warm color to his language as it might have shown
+if her little gloved hand had been shivering even then in his own
+passionate clasp. And as he closed, with a great glow upon his face,
+Madam Maverick burst forth,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mon Dieu</i>, how I love her! Yet is it not a thing astonishing that I
+should ask you, a stranger, Monsieur, how my own child is looking?
+<i>Culpa mea! culpa mea!</i>" and she clutched at her rosary, and mumbled an
+ave, with her eyes lifted and streaming tears.</p>
+
+<p>Reuben looked upon her in wonder, amazed at the depth of her emotion.
+Could this be all hypocrisy?</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tenez!</i>" said she, recovering herself, and reading, as it were, his
+doubts. "You count these" (lifting her rosary) "bawbles yonder, and our
+prayers pagan prayers; my husband has told me, and that she, Ad&egrave;le, is
+taught thus, and that the <i>Bon Dieu</i> has forsaken our Holy Church,&mdash;that
+He comes near now only to your&mdash;what shall I call them?&mdash;meeting-houses?
+Tell me, Monsieur, does Ad&egrave;le think this?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think," said Reuben, "that your daughter would have charity for any
+religious faith which was earnest."</p>
+
+<p>"Charity! <i>Mon Dieu!</i> Charity for sins, charity for failings,&mdash;yes, I
+ask it; but for my faith! No, Monsieur, no&mdash;no&mdash;a thousand times, no!"</p>
+
+<p>"This is real," thought Reuben.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, Monsieur," continued she, with a heat of language that excited
+his admiration, "what is it you believe there? What is the horror
+against which your New England teachers would warn my poor Ad&egrave;le? May
+the Blessed Virgin be near her!"</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon, Reuben undertook to lay down the grounds of distrust in which
+he had been educated; not, surely, with the fervor or the logical
+sequence which the old Doctor would have given to the same, but yet
+inveighing in good set terms against the vain ceremonials, the
+idolatries, the mummeries, the confessional, the empty absolution; and
+summing up all with the formula (may be he had heard the Doctor use the
+same language) that the piety of the Romanist was not so much a deep
+religious conviction of the truth, as a sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>"Sentiment!" exclaims Madam Maverick. "What else? What but love of the
+good God?"</p>
+
+<p>But not so much by her talk as by the every-day sight of her serene,
+unfaltering devotion is Reuben won into a deep respect for her faith.</p>
+
+<p>Those are rare days and rare nights for him, as the good ship Meteor
+slips down past the shores of Spain to the Straits,&mdash;days all sunny,
+nights moon-lit. To the right,&mdash;not discernible, but he knows they are
+there,&mdash;the swelling hills of Catalonia and of Andalusia, the marvellous
+Moorish ruins, the murmurs of the Guadalquivir; to the left, a broad
+sweep of burnished sea, on which, late into the night, the moon pours a
+stream of molten silver, that comes rocking and widening toward him, and
+vanishes in the shadow of the ship. The cruise has been a splendid
+venture for him,&mdash;twenty-five thousand at the least. And as he paces the
+decks,&mdash;in the view only of the silent man at the wheel and of the
+silent stars,&mdash;he forecasts the palaces he will build. The feeble
+Doctor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_709" id="Page_709">[Pg 709]</a></span> shall have ease and every luxury; he will be gracious in his
+charities; he will astonish the old people by his affluence; he will
+live&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Just here, he spies a female figure stealing from the companion-way, and
+gliding beyond the shelter of the wheelhouse. Half concealed as he
+chances to be in the shadow of the rigging, he sees her fall upon her
+knees, and, with head uplifted, cross her hands upon her bosom. 'T is a
+short prayer, and the instant after she glides below.</p>
+
+<p>"Good God! what trust!"&mdash;it is an ejaculatory prayer of Reuben's, rather
+than an oath. And with it, swift as the wind, comes a dreary sense of
+unrest. The palaces he had built vanish. The stars blink upon him
+kindly, and from their wondrous depths challenge his thought. The sea
+swashes idly against the floating ship. He too afloat,&mdash;afloat. Whither
+bound? Yearning still for a belief on which he may repose. And he
+bethinks himself,&mdash;does it lie somewhere under the harsh and dogmatic
+utterances of the Ashfield pulpit? At the thought, he recalls the weary
+iteration of cumbersome formulas, that passed through his brain like
+leaden plummets, and the swift lashings of rebuke, if he but reached
+over for a single worldly floweret, blooming beside the narrow path; and
+yet,&mdash;and yet, from the leaden atmosphere of that past, saintly faces
+beam upon him,&mdash;a mother's, Ad&egrave;le's,&mdash;nay, the kindly fixed gray eyes of
+the old Doctor glow upon him with a fire that must have been kindled
+with truth.</p>
+
+<p>Does it lie in the melodious aves, and under the robes of Rome? The
+sordid friars, with their shaven pates, grin at him; some Rabelais head
+of a priest in the confessional-stall leers at him with mockery: and yet
+the golden letters of the great dome gleam again with the blazing
+legend, <i>&AElig;dificabo meam Ecclesiam!</i>&mdash;and the figure of the Magdalen
+yonder has just now murmured, in tones that must surely have reached a
+gracious ear,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Tibi Christe, redemptori,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nostro vero salvatori!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Is the truth between? Is it in both? Is it real? And if real, why may
+not the same lips declare it under the cathedral or the meeting-house
+roof? Why not&mdash;in God's name&mdash;charity?</p>
+
+
+<h3>LXIV.</h3>
+
+<p>The Meteor is a snug ship, well found, well manned, and, as the times
+go, well officered. The captain, indeed, is not over-alert or fitted for
+high emergencies; but what emergencies can belong to so placid a voyage?
+For a week after the headlands of Tarifa and Spartel have sunk under the
+eastern horizon, the vessel is kept every day upon her course,&mdash;her
+top-gallant and studding sails all distent with the wind blowing freely
+from over Biscay. After this come light, baffling, westerly breezes,
+with sometimes a clear sky, and then all is overclouded by the drifting
+trade-mists. Zigzagging on, quietly as ever, save the bustle and whiz
+and flapping canvas of the ship "in stays," the good Meteor pushes
+gradually westward.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime a singular and almost tender intimacy grew up between Reuben
+and the lady voyager. It is always agreeable to a young man to find a
+listening ear in a lady whose age puts her out of the range of any
+flurry of sentiment, and whose sympathy gives kindly welcome to his
+confidence. All that early life of his he detailed to her with a
+particularity and a warmth (himself unconscious of the warmth) which
+brought the childish associations of her daughter fresh to the mind of
+poor Madam Maverick. No wonder that she gave a willing ear! no wonder
+that the glow of his language kindled her sympathy! Nor with such a
+listener does he stop with the boyish life of Ashfield. He unfolds his
+city career, and the bright promises that are before him,&mdash;promises of
+business success, which (he would make it appear) are all that fill his
+heart now. In the pride of his twenty-five years he loves to represent
+himself as <i>blas&eacute;</i> in sentiment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_710" id="Page_710">[Pg 710]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Madam Maverick has been taught, in these latter years, a large amount of
+self-control; so she can listen with a grave, nay, even a kindly face,
+to Reuben's sweeping declarations. And if, at a hint from her,&mdash;which he
+shrewdly counts Jesuitical,&mdash;his thought is turned in the direction of
+his religious experiences, he has his axioms, his common-sense formulas,
+his irreproachable coolness, and, at times, a noisy show of distrust,
+under which it is easy to see an eager groping after the ends of that
+great tangled skein of thought within, which is a weariness.</p>
+
+<p>"If you could only have a talk with Father Ambrose!" says Madam Maverick
+with half a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like that of all things," says Reuben, with a touch of
+merriment. "I suppose he 's a jolly old fellow, with rosy cheeks and
+full of humor. By Jove! there go the beads again!" (He says this latter
+to himself, however, as he sees the nervous fingers of the poor lady
+plying her rosary, and her lips murmuring some catch of a prayer.)</p>
+
+<p>Yet he cannot but respect her devotion profoundly, wondering how it can
+have grown up under the heathenisms of her life; wondering perhaps, too,
+how his own heathenism could have grown up under the roof of a
+parsonage. It will be an odd encounter, he thinks, for this woman, with
+the people of Ashfield, with the Doctor, with Ad&egrave;le.</p>
+
+<p>There are gales, but the good ship rides them out jauntily, with but a
+single reef in her topsails. Within five weeks from the date of her
+leaving Marseilles she is within a few days' sail of New York. A few
+days' sail! It may mean overmuch; for there are mists, and hazy weather,
+which forbid any observation. The last was taken a hundred miles to the
+eastward of George's Shoal. Under an easy offshore wind the ship is
+beating westward. But the clouds hang low, and there is no opportunity
+for determining position. At last, one evening, there is a little lift,
+and, for a moment only, a bright light blazes over the starboard bow.
+The captain counts it a light upon one of the headlands of the Jersey
+shore; and he orders the helmsman (she is sailing in the eye of an easy
+westerly breeze) to give her a couple of points more "northing"; and the
+yards and sheets are trimmed accordingly. The ship pushes on more
+steadily as she opens to the wind, and the mists and coming night
+conceal all around them.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you make of the light, Mr. Yardley?" says the captain,
+addressing the mate.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't say, sir, with such a bit of a look. If it should be Fire Island,
+we 're in a bad course, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"That's true enough," said the captain thoughtfully. "Put a man in the
+chains, Mr. Yardley, and give us the water."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope we shall be in the bay by morning, Captain," said Reuben, who
+stood smoking leisurely near the wheel. But the captain was preoccupied,
+and answered nothing.</p>
+
+<p>A little after, a voice from the chains came chanting full and loud, "By
+the mark&mdash;nine!"</p>
+
+<p>"This 'll never do, Mr. Yardley," said the captain, "Jersey shore or any
+other. Let all hands keep by to put the ship about."</p>
+
+<p>A voice forward was heard to say something of a roar that sounded like
+the beat of surf; at which the mate stepped to the side of the ship and
+listened anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"It 's true, sir," said he coming aft. "Captain, there 's something very
+like the beat of surf, here away to the no'th'ard."</p>
+
+<p>A flutter in the canvas caught the captain's attention. "It 's the wind
+slacking; there's a bare capful," said the mate, "and I 'm afeard
+there's mischief brewing yonder." He pointed as he spoke a little to the
+south of east, where the darkness seemed to be giving way to a luminous
+gray cloud of mist.</p>
+
+<p>"And a half&mdash;six!" shouts again the man in the chains.</p>
+
+<p>The captain meets it with a swelling oath, which betrays clearly enough
+his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_711" id="Page_711">[Pg 711]</a></span> anxiety. "There 's not a moment to lose, Yardley; see all ready
+there! Keep her a good full, my boy!" (to the man at the wheel).</p>
+
+<p>The darkness was profound. Reuben, not a little startled by the new
+aspect of affairs, still kept his place upon the quarter-deck. He saw
+objects flitting across the waist of the ship, and heard distinctly the
+coils flung down with a clang upon the wet decks. There was something
+weird and ghostly in those half-seen figures, in the indistinct maze of
+cordage and canvas above, and the phosphorescent streaks of spray
+streaming away from either bow.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you ready there?" says the captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay, sir," responds the mate.</p>
+
+<p>"Put your helm a-lee, my man!&mdash;Hard down!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hard down it is, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>The ship veers up into the wind; and, as the captain shouts his order,
+"Mainsail haul!" the canvas shakes; the long, cumbrous yard groans upon
+its bearings; there is a great whizzing of the cordage through the
+blocks; but, in the midst of it all,&mdash;coming keenly to the captain's
+ear,&mdash;a voice from the fore-hatch exclaims, "By G&mdash;, she touches!"</p>
+
+<p>The next moment proved it true. The good ship minded her helm no more.
+The fore-yards are brought round by the run and the mizzen, but the
+light wind&mdash;growing lighter&mdash;hardly clears the flapping canvas from the
+spars.</p>
+
+<p>In the sunshine, with so moderate a sea, 't would seem little; in so
+little depth of water they might warp her off; but the darkness
+magnifies the danger; besides which, an ominous sighing and murmur are
+coming from that luminous misty mass to the southward. Through all this,
+Reuben has continued smoking upon the quarter-deck; a landsman under a
+light wind, and with a light sea, hardly estimates at their true worth
+such intimations as had been given of the near breaking of the surf, and
+of the shoaling water. Even the touch upon bottom, of which the grating
+evidence had come home to his own perceptions, brought up more the fate
+of his business venture than any sense of personal peril. We can surely
+warp her off in the morning, he thought; or, if the worst came,
+insurance was full, and it would be easy boating to the shore.</p>
+
+<p>"It's lucky there's no wind," said he to Yardley.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you obleege me, Mr. Johns? Take a good strong puff of your
+cigar,&mdash;here, upon the larboard rail, sir," and he took the lantern from
+the companion-way that he might see the drift of the smoke. For a moment
+it lifted steadily; then, with a toss it vanished away&mdash;shoreward. The
+first angry puffs of the southeaster were coming.</p>
+
+<p>The captain had seen all, and with an excited voice said, "Mr. Yardley,
+clew up, fore and aft,&mdash;clew up everything; put all snug, and make ready
+the best bower."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Johns," said he, approaching Reuben, "we are on a lee shore; it
+should be Long Island beach by the soundings; with calm weather, and a
+kedge, we might work her off with the lift of the tide. But the Devil
+and all is in that puff from the sou'east."</p>
+
+<p>"O, well, we can anchor," says Reuben.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we can anchor, Mr. Johns; but if that sou'easter turns out the
+gale it promises, the best anchor aboard won't be so good as a
+gridiron."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you advise taking to the boats, then?" asked Reuben, a little
+nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"I advise nothing, Mr. Johns. Do you hear the murmur of the surf yonder?
+It's bad landing under such a pounding of the surf, with daylight; in
+the dark, where one can't catch the drift of the waves, it might
+be&mdash;death!"</p>
+
+<p>The word startled Reuben. His philosophy had always contemplated it at a
+distance, toward which easy and gradual approaches might be made: but
+here it was, now, at a cable's length!</p>
+
+<p>And yet it was very strange; the sea was not high; no gale as yet; only
+an occasional grating thump of the keel was a reminder that the good
+Meteor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_712" id="Page_712">[Pg 712]</a></span> was not still afloat. But the darkness! Yes, the darkness was
+complete, (hardly a sight even of the topmen who were aloft&mdash;as in the
+sunniest of weather&mdash;stowing the canvas,) and to the northward that
+groan and echo of the resounding surf; to the southward, the whirling
+white of waves that are lifting now, topped with phosphorescent foam.</p>
+
+<p>The anchor is let go, but even this does not bring the ship's head to
+the wind. Those griping sands hold her keel fast. The force of the
+rising gale strikes her full abeam, giving her a great list to shore. It
+is in vain the masts are cut away, and the rigging drifts free; the hulk
+lifts only to settle anew in the grasping sands. Every old seaman upon
+her deck knows that she is a doomed ship.</p>
+
+<p>From time to time, as the crashing spars or the leaden thump upon the
+sands have startled those below, Madam Maverick and her maid have made
+their appearance, in a wild flutter of anxiety, asking eager questions;
+(Reuben alone can understand them or answer them;) but as the
+southeaster grows, as it does, into a fury of wind, and the poor hulk
+reels vainly, and is overlaid with a torrent of biting salt spray, Madam
+Maverick becomes calm. Instinctively, she sees the worst.</p>
+
+<p>"Could I only clasp Ad&egrave;le once more in these arms, I would say,
+cheerfully, '<i>Nunc dimittis</i>.'"</p>
+
+<p>Reuben regarded her calm faith with a hungry eagerness. Not, indeed,
+that calmness was lacking in himself. Great danger, in many instances,
+sublimates the faculties of keenly strung minds. But underneath his
+calmness there was an unrest, hungering for repose,&mdash;the repose of a
+fixed belief. If even then the breaking waves had whelmed him in their
+mad career, he would have made no wailing outcry, but would have
+clutched&mdash;how eagerly!&mdash;at the merest shred of that faith which, in
+other days and times, he had seen illuminate the calm face of the
+father. Something to believe,&mdash;on which to float upon such a sea!</p>
+
+<p>But the waves and winds make sport of beliefs. Prayers count nothing
+against that angry surge. Two boats are already swept from the davits,
+and are gone upon the whirling waters. A third, with infinite pains, is
+dropped into the yeast. It is hard to tell who gives the orders. But,
+once afloat, there is a rush upon it, and away it goes,&mdash;overcrowded,
+and within eyeshot lifts, turns, and a crowd of swimmers float for a
+moment,&mdash;one with an oar, another with a thwart that the waves have torn
+out,&mdash;and in the yeast of waters they vanish.</p>
+
+<p>One boat only remains, and it is launched with more careful handling;
+three cling by the wreck; the rest&mdash;save only Madam Maverick and
+Reuben&mdash;are within her, as she tosses still in the lee of the vessel.</p>
+
+<p>"There 's room!" cries some one; "jump quick! for God's sake!"</p>
+
+<p>And Reuben, with some strange, generous impulse, seizes upon Madam
+Maverick, and, before she can rebel or resist, has dropped her over the
+rail. The men grapple her and drag her in; but in the next moment the
+little cockle of a boat is drifted yards away.</p>
+
+<p>The few who are left&mdash;the boatswain among them&mdash;are toiling on the wet
+deck to give a last signal from the little brass howitzer on the
+forecastle. As the sharp crack breaks on the air,&mdash;a miniature sound in
+that howl of the storm,&mdash;the red flash of the gun gives Reuben, as the
+boat lurches toward the wreck again, a last glance of Madam
+Maverick,&mdash;her hands clasped, her eyes lifted, and calm as ever. More
+than ever too her face was like the face of Ad&egrave;le,&mdash;such as the face of
+Ad&egrave;le must surely become, when years have sobered her and her buoyant
+faith has ripened into calm. And from that momentary glance of the
+serene countenance, and that flashing associated memory of Ad&egrave;le, a
+subtile, mystic influence is born in him, by which he seems suddenly
+transfused with the same trustful serenity which just now he gazed upon
+with wonder. If indeed the poor lady is already lost,&mdash;he thinks it for
+a moment,&mdash;her spirit has fanned and cheered him as it passed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_713" id="Page_713">[Pg 713]</a></span> Once
+more, as if some mysterious hand had brought them to his reach, he
+grapples with those lost lines of hope and trust which in that youthful
+year of his exuberant emotional experience he had held and lost,&mdash;once
+more, now, in hand,&mdash;once more he is elated with that wonderful sense of
+a religious poise, that, it would seem, no doubts or terrors could
+overbalance. Unconsciously kneeling on the wet deck, he is rapt into a
+kind of ecstatic indifference to winds, to waves, to danger, to death.</p>
+
+<p>The boom of a gun is heard to the northward. It must be from shore.
+There are helpers at work, then. Some hope yet for this narrow tide of
+life, which just seemed losing itself in some infinite flow beyond. Life
+is, after all, so sweet! The boatswain forward labors desperately to
+return an answering signal; but the spray, the slanted deck, the
+overleaping waves, are too much for him. Darkness and storm and despair
+rule again.</p>
+
+<p>The wind, indeed, has fallen; the force of the gale is broken; but the
+waves are making deeper and more desperate surges. The wreck, which had
+remained fixed in the fury of the wind, lifts again under the great
+swell of the sea, and is dashed anew and anew upon the shoal. With every
+lift her timbers writhe and creak, and all the remaining upper works
+crack and burst open with the strain.</p>
+
+<p>Reuben chances to espy an old-fashioned round life-buoy lashed to the
+taffrail, and, cutting it loose, makes himself fast to it. He overhears
+the boatswain say, yonder by the forecastle, "These thumpings will break
+her in two in an hour. Cling to a spar, Jack."</p>
+
+<p>The gray light of dawn at last breaks, and shows a dim line of shore, on
+which parties are moving, dragging some machine, with which they hope to
+cast a line over the wreck. But the swell is heavier than ever, the
+timbers nearer to parting. At last a flash of lurid light from the dim
+shore-line,&mdash;a great boom of sound, and a line goes spinning out like a
+spider's web up into the gray, bleak sky. Too far! too short! and the
+line tumbles, plashing into the water. A new and fearful lift of the sea
+shatters the wreck, the fore part of the ship still holding fast to the
+sands; but all abaft the mainmast lifts, surges, reels, topples over;
+with the wreck, and in the angry swirl and torment of waters, Reuben
+goes down.</p>
+
+
+<h3>LXV.</h3>
+
+<p>That morning,&mdash;it was the 22d of September, in the year 1842,&mdash;Mr.
+Brindlock came into his counting-room some two hours before noon, and
+says to his porter and factotum, as he enters the door, "Well, Roger, I
+suppose you 'll be counting this puff of a southeaster the equinoctial,
+eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, sir, and it 's an awful one. The Meteor 's gone ashore on Long
+Beach; and there 's talk of young Mr. Johns being lost."</p>
+
+<p>"Good Heavens!" said Brindlock, "you don't tell me so!"</p>
+
+<p>By half past three he was upon the spot; a little remaining fragment
+only of the Meteor hanging to the sands, and a great <i>d&eacute;bris</i> of bales,
+spars, shattered timbers, bodies, drifted along the shore,&mdash;Reuben's
+among them.</p>
+
+<p>But he is not dead; at least so say the wreckers, who throng upon the
+beach; the life-buoy is still fast to him, though he is fearfully
+shattered and bruised. He is borne away under the orders of Brindlock to
+some near house, and presently revives enough to ask that he may be
+carried&mdash;"home."</p>
+
+<p>As, in the opening of this story, his old grandfather, the Major, was
+borne away from the scene of his first battle by easy stages homeward,
+so now the grandson, far feebler and after more terrible encounter with
+death, is carried by "easy stages" to his home in Ashfield. Again the
+city, the boat, the river,&mdash;with its banks yellowing with harvests, and
+brightened with the glowing tints of autumn; again the sluggish brigs
+drifting down with the tide, and sailors in tasselled caps leaning over
+the bulwarks; again the flocks feeding leisurely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_714" id="Page_714">[Pg 714]</a></span> on the rock-strewn
+hills; again the ferryman, in his broad, cumbrous scow, oaring across;
+again the stoppage at the wharf of the little town, from which the coach
+still plies over the hills to Ashfield.</p>
+
+<p>On the way thither, a carriage passes them, in which are Ad&egrave;le and her
+father. The news of disaster flies fast; they have learned of the wreck,
+and the names of passengers. They go to learn what they can of the
+mother, whom the daughter has scarce known. The passing is too hasty for
+recognition. Brindlock arrives at last with his helpless charge at the
+door of the parsonage. The Doctor is overwhelmed at once with grief and
+with joy. The news had come to him, and he had anticipated the worst.
+But "Thank God! 'Joseph, my son, is yet alive!' Still a probationer;
+there is yet hope that he may be brought into the fold."</p>
+
+<p>He insists that he shall be placed below, upon his own bed, just out of
+his study. For himself, he shall need none until the crisis is past. But
+the crisis does not pass; it is hard to say when it will. The wounds are
+not so much; but a low fever has set in, (the physician says,) owing to
+exposure and excitement, and he can predict nothing as to the result.
+Even Aunt Eliza is warmed into unwonted attention as she sees that poor
+battered hulk of humanity lying there; she spares herself no fatigue,
+God knows, but she sheds tears in her own chamber over this great
+disaster. There are good points even in the spinster; when shall we
+learn that the best of us are not wholly good, nor the worst wholly bad?</p>
+
+<p>Days and days pass. Reuben hovering between life and death; and the old
+Doctor, catching chance rest upon the little cot they have placed for
+him in the study, looks yearningly by the dim light of the sick-lamp
+upon that dove which his lost Rachel had hung upon his wall above the
+sword of his father. He fancies that the face of Reuben, pinched with
+suffering, resembles more than ever the mother. Of sickness, or of the
+little offices of friends which cheat it of pains, the old gentleman
+knows nothing: sick souls only have been his care. And it is pitiful to
+see his blundering, eager efforts to do something, as he totters round
+the sick-chamber where Reuben, with very much of youthful vigor left in
+him, makes fight against the arch-enemy who one day conquers us all. For
+many days after his arrival there is no consciousness,&mdash;only wild words
+(at times words that sound to the ears of the good Doctor strangely
+wicked, and that make him groan in spirit),&mdash;tender words, too, of
+dalliance, and eager, loving glances,&mdash;murmurs of boyish things, of
+sunny, school-day noonings,&mdash;hearing which, the Doctor thinks that, if
+this light must go out, it had better have gone out in those days of
+comparative innocence.</p>
+
+<p>Over and over the father appeals to the village physician to know what
+the chances may be,&mdash;to which that old gentleman, fumbling his
+watch-key, and looking grave, makes very doubtful response. He hints at
+a possible undermining of the constitution in these later years of city
+life.</p>
+
+<p>God only knows what habits the young man may have formed in these last
+years; surely the Doctor does not; and he tells the physician as much,
+with a groan of anguish.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Meantime, Maverick and Ad&egrave;le have gone upon their melancholy search;
+and, as they course over the island to the southern beach, the sands,
+the plains, the houses, the pines, drift by the eye of Ad&egrave;le as in a
+dream. At last she sees a great reach of water,&mdash;piling up, as it rolls
+lazily in from seaward, into high walls of waves, that are no sooner
+lifted than they break and send sparkling floods of foam over the sands.
+Bits of wreck, dark clots of weed, are strewed here and
+there,&mdash;stragglers scanning every noticeable heap, every floating thing
+that comes in.</p>
+
+<p>Is she dead? is she living? They have heard only on the way that many
+bodies are lying in the near houses,&mdash;many bruised and suffering ones;
+while some have come safe to land, and gone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_715" id="Page_715">[Pg 715]</a></span> to their homes. They make
+their way from that dismal surf-beaten shore to the nearest house. There
+are loiterers about the door; and within,&mdash;within, Ad&egrave;le finds her
+mother at last, clasps her to her heart, kisses the poor dumb lips that
+will never more open,&mdash;never say to her rapt ears, "My child! my
+darling!"</p>
+
+<p>Maverick is touched as he has never been touched before; the age of
+early sentiment comes drifting back to his world-haunted mind; nay,
+tears come to those eyes that have not known them for years. The grief,
+the passionate, vain tenderness of Ad&egrave;le, somehow seems to sanctify the
+memory of the dead one who lies before him, her great wealth of hair
+streaming dank and fetterless over the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Not more tenderly, scarce more tearfully, could he have ministered to
+one who had been his life-long companion. Where shall the poor lady be
+buried? Ad&egrave;le answers that, with eyes flashing through her
+tears,&mdash;nowhere but in Ashfield, nowhere except beside the sister,
+Marie.</p>
+
+<p>It is a dismal journey for the father and the daughter; it is almost a
+silent journey. Does she love him less? No, a thousand times, no. Does
+he love her less? No, a thousand times, no. In such presence love is
+awed into silence. As the mournful <i>cort&eacute;ge</i> enters the town of
+Ashfield, it passes the home of that fatherless boy, Arthur, for whom
+Ad&egrave;le had shown such sympathy. The youngster is there swinging upon the
+gate, his cap gayly set off with feathers, and he looking wonderingly
+upon the bier. He sees, too, the sad face of Ad&egrave;le, and, by some strange
+rush of memory, recalls, as he looks on her, the letter which she had
+given him long ago, and which till then had been forgotten. He runs to
+his mother: it is in his pocket,&mdash;it is in that of some summer jacket.
+At last it is found; and the poor woman herself, that very morning, with
+numberless apologies, delivers it at the door of the parsonage.</p>
+
+<p>Phil is the first to meet this exceptional funeral company, and is the
+first to tell Ad&egrave;le how Reuben lies stricken almost to death at the
+parsonage. She thanks him: she thanks him again for the tender care
+which he shows in all relating to the approaching burial. When an enemy
+even comes forward to help us bury the child we loved or the parent we
+mourn, our hearts warm toward him as they never warmed before; but when
+a friend assumes these offices of tenderness, and takes away the
+harshest edge of grief by assuming the harshest duties of grief, our
+hearts shower upon him their tenderest sympathies. We never forget it.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, the arrival of this strange freight in Ashfield gives rise to
+a world of gossip. We cannot follow it; we cannot rehearse it. The poor
+woman is buried, as Ad&egrave;le had wished, beside her sister. No <i>De
+Profundis</i> except the murmur of the winds through the crimson and the
+scarlet leaves of later September.</p>
+
+<p>The Tourtelots have been eager with their gossip. The dame has queried
+if there should not be some town demonstration against the burial of the
+Papist. But the little Deacon has been milder; and we give our last
+glimpse of him&mdash;altogether characteristic&mdash;in a suggestion which he
+makes in a friendly way to Squire Elderkin, who is the host of the
+French strangers.</p>
+
+<p>"Square, have they ordered a moniment yit for Miss Maverick?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I 'm aware of, Deacon."</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, my nevvy's got a good slab of Varmont marble, which he ordered
+for his fust wife; but the old folks did n't like it, and it's in his
+barn on the heater-piece. 'T ain't engraved, nor nothin'. If it should
+<i>suit</i> the Mavericks, I dare say they could git it tol'able low."</p>
+
+
+<h3>LXVI.</h3>
+
+<p>Reuben is still floating between death and life. There is doubt whether
+the master of the long course or of the short course will win. However
+that may be, his consciousness has returned; and it has been with a
+great glow of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_716" id="Page_716">[Pg 716]</a></span> gratitude that the poor Doctor has welcomed that look of
+recognition in his eye,&mdash;the eye of Rachel!</p>
+
+<p>He is calm,&mdash;he knows all. That calmness which had flashed into his soul
+when last he saw the serene face of his fellow-voyager upon that mad sea
+is <i>his</i> still.</p>
+
+<p>The poor father had been moved unwontedly by that unconsciousness which
+was blind to all his efforts at spiritual consolation; but he is not
+less moved when he sees reason stirring again,&mdash;a light of eager inquiry
+in those eyes fearfully sunken, but from their cavernous depths seeing
+farther and more keenly than ever.</p>
+
+<p>"Ad&egrave;le's mother,&mdash;was she lost?" He whispers it to the Doctor; and Miss
+Eliza, who is sewing yonder, is quickened into eager listening.</p>
+
+<p>"Lost! my son, lost! Lost, I apprehend, in the other world as well as
+this, I fear the true light never dawned upon her."</p>
+
+<p>A faint smile&mdash;as of one who sees things others do not see&mdash;broke over
+the face of Reuben. "'T is a broad light, father; it reaches beyond our
+blind reckoning."</p>
+
+<p>There was a trustfulness in his manner that delighted the Doctor. "And
+you see it, my son?&mdash;Repentance, Justification by Faith, Adoption,
+Sanctification, Election?"</p>
+
+<p>"Those words are a weariness to me, father; they suggest methods,
+dogmas, perplexities. Christian hope, pure and simple, I love better."</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor is disturbed; he cannot rightly understand how one who seems
+inspired by so calm a trust&mdash;the son of his own loins too&mdash;should find
+the authoritative declarations of the divines a weariness. Is it not
+some subtle disguise of Satan, by which his poor boy is being cheated
+into repose?</p>
+
+<p>Of course the letter of Ad&egrave;le, which had been so long upon its way, Miss
+Eliza had handed to Reuben after such time as her caution suggested, and
+she had explained to him its long delay.</p>
+
+<p>Reading is no easy matter for him; but he races through those delicately
+penned lines with quite a new strength. The spinster sees the color come
+and go upon his wan cheek, and with what a trembling eagerness he folds
+the letter at the end, and, making a painful effort, tries to thrust it
+under his pillow. The good woman has to aid him in this. He thanks her,
+but says nothing more. His fingers are toying nervously at a bit of torn
+fringe upon the coverlet. It seems a relief to him to make the rent
+wider and wider. A little glimpse of the world has come back to him,
+which disturbs the repose with which but now he would have quitted it
+forever.</p>
+
+<p>Ad&egrave;le has been into the sick-chamber from time to time,&mdash;once led away
+weeping by the good Doctor, when the son had fallen upon his wild talk
+of school-days; once, too, since consciousness has come to him again,
+but before her letter had been read. He had met her with scarce more
+than a touch of those fevered fingers, and a hard, uncertain quiver of a
+smile, which had both shocked and disappointed the poor girl. She
+thought he would have spoken some friendly consoling word of her mother;
+but his heart, more than his strength, failed him. Her mournful, pitying
+eyes were a reproach to him; they had haunted him through the wakeful
+hours of two succeeding nights, and now, under the light of that laggard
+letter, they blaze with a new and an appealing tenderness. His fingers
+still puzzle wearily with that tangle of the fringe. The noon passes.
+The aunt advises a little broth. But no, his strength is feeding itself
+on other aliment. The Doctor comes in with a curiously awkward attempt
+at gentleness and noiselessness of tread, and, seeing his excited
+condition, repeats to him some texts which he believes must be
+consoling. Reuben utters no open dissent; but through and back of all he
+sees the tender eyes of Ad&egrave;le, which, for the moment, outshine the
+promises, or at the least illuminate them with a new meaning.</p>
+
+<p>"I must see Ad&egrave;le," he says to the Doctor; and the message is
+carried,&mdash;she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_717" id="Page_717">[Pg 717]</a></span> herself presently bringing answer, with a rich glow upon
+her cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"Reuben has sent for me,"&mdash;she murmurs it to herself with pride and joy.</p>
+
+<p>She is in full black now; but never had she looked more radiantly
+beautiful than when she stepped to the side of the sick-bed, and took
+the hand of Reuben with an eager clasp&mdash;that was met, and met again. The
+Doctor is in his study, (the open door between,) and the spinster is
+fortunately just now busy at some of her household duties.</p>
+
+<p>Reuben fumbles under his pillow nervously for that cherished bit of
+paper, (Ad&egrave;le knows already its history,) and when he has found it and
+shown it (his thin fingers crumpling it nervously) he says, "Thank you
+for this, Ad&egrave;le!"</p>
+
+<p>She answers only by clasping his hand with a sudden mad pressure of
+content, while the blood mounted into either cheek with a rosy
+exuberance that magnified her beauty tenfold.</p>
+
+<p>He saw it,&mdash;he felt it all; and through her beaming eyes, so full of
+tenderness and love, saw the world to which he had bidden adieu shining
+before him more beguilingly than ever. Yesterday it was a dim and weary
+world that he could leave without a pang; to-day it is a brilliant
+world, where hopes, promises, joys pile in splendid proportions.</p>
+
+<p>He tells her this. "Yesterday I would have died with scarce a regret;
+to-day, Ad&egrave;le, I would live."</p>
+
+<p>"You will, you will, Reuben!" and she grappled more and more
+passionately those shrunken fingers. "'T is not hopeless!" (sobbing).</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, Ad&egrave;le, darling, not hopeless. The cloud is lifted,&mdash;not
+hopeless!"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God, thank God!" said she, dropping upon her knees beside him,
+and with a smile of ecstasy he gathered that fair head to his bosom.</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor, hearing her sobs, came softly in. The son's smile, as he met
+his father's inquiring look, was more than ever like the smile of
+Rachel. He has been telling the poor girl of her mother's death, thinks
+the old gentleman; yet the Doctor wonders that he could have kept so
+radiant a face with such a story.</p>
+
+<p>Of these things, however, Reuben goes on presently to speak: of his
+first sight of the mother of Ad&egrave;le, and of her devotional attitude as
+they floated down past the little chapel of N&ocirc;tre Dame to enter upon the
+fateful voyage; he recounts their talks upon the tranquil moon-lit
+nights of ocean; he tells of the mother's eager listening to his
+description of her child.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not tell her the half, Ad&egrave;le; yet she loved me for what I told
+her."</p>
+
+<p>And Ad&egrave;le smiles through her tears.</p>
+
+<p>At last he comes to those dismal scenes of the wreck, relating all with
+a strange vividness; living over again, as it were, that fearful
+episode, till his brain whirled, his self-possession was lost, and he
+broke out into a torrent of delirious raving.</p>
+
+<p>He sleeps brokenly that night, and the next day is feebler than ever.
+The physician warns against any causes of excitement. He is calm only at
+intervals. The old school-days seem present to him again; he talks of
+his fight with Phil Elderkin as if it happened yesterday.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet I like Phil," he says (to himself), "and Rose is like Amanda, the
+divine Amanda. No&mdash;not she. I've forgotten: it's the French girl. She's
+a &mdash;&mdash; Pah! who cares? She's as pure as heaven; she's an angel. Ad&egrave;le!
+Ad&egrave;le! Not good enough! I'm not good enough. Very well, very well, now
+I'll be bad enough! Clouds, wrangles, doubts! Is it my fault? <i>&AElig;dificabo
+meam Ecclesiam.</i> How they kneel! Puppets! mummers! No, not mummers, they
+see a Christ. What if they see it in a picture? You see him in words.
+Both in earnest. Belief&mdash;belief! That is best. Ad&egrave;le, Ad&egrave;le, I believe!"</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor is a pained listener of this incoherent talk of his son. "I
+am afraid,&mdash;I am afraid," he murmurs to himself, "that he has no clear
+views of the great scheme of the Atonement."</p>
+
+<p>The next day Reuben is himself once more, but feeble, to a degree that
+startles the household. It is a charming morning of later September;
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_718" id="Page_718">[Pg 718]</a></span> window is wide open, and the sick one looks out over a stretch of
+orchard (he knew its every tree), and upon wooded hills beyond (he knew
+every coppice and thicket), and upon a background of sky over which a
+few dappled white clouds floated at rest.</p>
+
+<p>"It is most beautiful!" said Reuben.</p>
+
+<p>"All things that He has made are beautiful," said the Doctor; and
+thereupon he seeks to explore his way into the secrets of Reuben's
+religious experience,&mdash;employing, as he was wont to do, all the
+Westminster formulas by which his own belief stood fast.</p>
+
+<p>"Father, father, the words are stumbling-blocks to me," says the son.</p>
+
+<p>"I would to God, Reuben, that I could make my language always clear."</p>
+
+<p>"No, father, no man can, in measuring the Divine mysteries. We must
+carry this draggled earth-dress with us always,&mdash;always in some sort
+fashionists, even in our soberest opinions. The robes of light are worn
+only Beyond. Thought, at the best, is hampered by this clog of language,
+that tempts, obscures, misleads."</p>
+
+<p>"And do you see any light, my son?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope and tremble. A great light is before me; it shines back upon
+outlines of doctrines and creeds where I have floundered for many a
+year."</p>
+
+<p>"But some are clear,&mdash;some are clear, Reuben!"</p>
+
+<p>"Before, all seems clear; but behind&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And yet, Reuben," (the Doctor cannot forbear the discussion,) "there is
+the cross,&mdash;Election, Adoption, Sanctification&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Stop, father; the cross, indeed, with a blaze of glory, I see; but the
+teachers of this or that special form of doctrine I see only catching
+radiations of the light. The men who teach, and argue, and declaim, and
+exorcise, are using human weapons; the great light only strikes here and
+there upon some sword-point which is nearest to the cross."</p>
+
+<p>"He wanders," says the Doctor to Ad&egrave;le, who has slipped in and stands
+beside the sick-bed.</p>
+
+<p>"No wandering, father; on the brink where I stand, I cannot."</p>
+
+<p>"And what do you see, Reuben, my boy?" (tenderly).</p>
+
+<p>Is it the presence of Ad&egrave;le that gives a new fervor, a kind of crazy
+inspiration to his talk? "I see the light-hearted clashing cymbals; and
+those who love art, kneeling under blazing temples and shrines; but the
+great light touches the gold no more effulgently than the steeple of
+your meeting-house, father, but no less. I see eyes of chanting girls
+streaming with joy in the light; and haggard men with ponderous
+foreheads working out contrivances to bridge the gap between the finite
+and the infinite. Father, they are no nearer to a passage than the
+radiant girls who chant and tell their beads. Angels in all shapes of
+beauty flit over and amid the throngs I see,&mdash;in shape of fleecy clouds
+that fan them,&mdash;in shape of brooks that murmur praise,&mdash;in shape of
+leafy shadows that tremble and flicker,&mdash;in shape of birds that make a
+concert of song." The birds even then were singing, the clouds floating
+in his eye, the leafy shadows trailing on the chamber floor, and, from
+the valley, the murmur of the brook came to his sensitive ear.</p>
+
+<p>"He wanders,&mdash;he wanders!" said the poor Doctor.</p>
+
+<p>Reuben turns to Ad&egrave;le. "Ad&egrave;le, kiss me!" A rosy tint ran over her face
+as she stooped and kissed him with a freedom a mother might have
+shown,&mdash;leaving one hand toying caressingly with his hair. "The cloud is
+passing, Ad&egrave;le,&mdash;passing! God is Justice; Christ is Mercy. In him I
+trust."</p>
+
+<p>"Reuben, darling," says Ad&egrave;le, "come back to us!"</p>
+
+<p>"Darling,&mdash;darling!" he repeated with a strange, eager, satisfied
+smile,&mdash;so sweet a sound it was.</p>
+
+<p>The chamber was filled with the delightful perfume of a violet bed
+beneath the window. Suddenly there came from the Doctor, whose old eyes
+caught sooner than any the change, a passionate outcry. "Great God! Thy
+will be done!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_719" id="Page_719">[Pg 719]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With that one loud, clear utterance, his firmness gave way,&mdash;for the
+first time in sixty years broke utterly; and big tears streamed down his
+face as he gazed yearningly upon the dead body of his first-born.</p>
+
+
+<h3>LXVII.</h3>
+
+<p>In the autumn of 1845, three years after the incidents related in our
+last chapter, Mr. Philip Elderkin, being at that time president of a
+railroad company, which was establishing an important connection of
+travel that was to pass within a few miles of the quiet town of
+Ashfield, was a passenger on the steamer Caledonia, for Europe. He
+sailed, partly in the interest of the company,&mdash;to place certain
+bonds,&mdash;and partly in his own interest, as an intelligent man, eager to
+add to his knowledge of the world.</p>
+
+<p>At Paris, where he passed some time, it chanced that he was one evening
+invited to the house of a resident American, where, he was gayly
+assured, he would meet with a very attractive American heiress, the only
+daughter of a merchant of large fortune.</p>
+
+<p>Philip Elderkin&mdash;brave, straightforward fellow that he was&mdash;had never
+forgotten his early sentiment. He had cared for those French graves in
+Ashfield with an almost religious attention. In all the churchyard there
+was not such scrupulously shorn turf, or such orderly array of bloom. He
+counted&mdash;in a fever of doubt&mdash;upon a visit to Marseilles before his sail
+for home.</p>
+
+<p>But at the <i>soir&eacute;e</i> we have mentioned he was amazed and delighted to
+meet, in the person of the heiress, Ad&egrave;le Maverick,&mdash;not changed
+essentially since the time he had known her. That life at
+Marseilles&mdash;even in the well-appointed home of her father&mdash;has none of
+that domesticity which she had learned to love; and this first winter in
+Paris for her does not supply the lack. That she has a great company of
+admirers it is easy to understand; but yet she gives a most cordial
+greeting to Phil Elderkin,&mdash;a greeting that by its manner makes the
+pretenders doubtful. Philip finds it possible to reconcile the demands
+of his business with a week's visit to Marseilles. To the general
+traveller it is not a charming region. The dust abounds; the winds are
+terrible; the sun is scalding. But Mr. Philip Elderkin found it
+delightful. And, indeed, the country-house of Mr. Maverick had
+attractions of its own; attractions so great that his week runs over
+into two,&mdash;into three. There are excursions to the Pont du Gard, to the
+Ar&egrave;ne of Arles. And, before he leaves, he has an engagement there (which
+he has enforced by very peremptory proposals) for the next spring.</p>
+
+<p>On his return to Ashfield, he reports a very successful trip. To his
+sister Rose (now Mrs. Catesby, with a blooming little infant, called
+Grace Catesby) he is specially communicative. And she thinks it was a
+glorious trip, and longs for the time when he will make the next. He,
+furthermore, to the astonishment of Dame Tourtelot (whose husband sleeps
+now under the sod), has commenced the establishment of a fine home, upon
+a charming site, overlooking all Ashfield. The Squire, still stalwart,
+cannot resist giving a hint of what is expected to the old Doctor, who
+still wearily goes his rounds, and prays for the welfare of his flock.</p>
+
+<p>He is delighted at the thought of meeting again with Ad&egrave;le, though he
+thinks with a sigh of his lost boy. Yet he says in his old manner, "'T
+is the hand of Providence; she first bloomed into grace under the roof
+of our church; she comes back to adorn it with her faith and her works."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>At a date three years later we take one more glimpse at that quiet
+village of Ashfield, where we began our story. The near railway has
+brought it into more intimate connection with the shore towns and the
+great cities. But there is no noisy clatter of the cars to break the
+quietude. On still days, indeed, the shriek of the steam-whistle or the
+roar of a distant train is heard bursting over the hills, and dying in
+strange<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_720" id="Page_720">[Pg 720]</a></span> echoes up and down the valley. The stage-driver's horn is heard
+no longer; no longer the coach whirls into the village and delivers its
+leathern pouch of letters. The Tew partners we once met are now partners
+in the grave. Deacon Tourtelot (as we have already hinted) has gone to
+his long home; and the dame has planted over him the slab of "Varmont"
+marble, which she has bought at a bargain from his "nevvy."</p>
+
+<p>The Boody tavern-keeper has long since disappeared; no teams wheel up
+with the old dash at the doors of the Eagle Tavern. The creaking
+sign-board even is gone from the overhanging sycamore.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Almira is still among the living. She sings treble, however, no
+longer; she wears spectacles; she writes no more over mystical asterisks
+for the Hartford Courant. Age has brought to her at least this much of
+wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>The mill groans, as of old, in the valley. A new race of boys pelt the
+hanging nests of the orioles; a new race of school-girls hang swinging
+on the village gates at the noonings.</p>
+
+<p>As for Miss Johns, she lives still,&mdash;scarce older to appearance than
+twenty years before,&mdash;prim, wiry, active,&mdash;proof against all ailments,
+it would seem. It is hard to conceive of her as yielding to the great
+conqueror. If the tongue and an inflexibility of temper were the
+weapons, she would whip Death from her chamber at the last. It seems
+like amiability almost to hear such a one as she talk of her
+approaching, inevitable dissolution,&mdash;so kindly in her to yield that
+point!</p>
+
+<p>And she does; she declares it over and over, there are far feebler ones
+who do not declare it half so often. If she is to be conquered and the
+Johns banner go down, she will accept the defeat so courageously and so
+long in advance that the defeat shall become a victorious confirmation
+of the Johns prophecy.</p>
+
+<p>She is still earnest in all her duties; she gives cast-away clothing to
+the poor, and good advice with it. She is rigorous in the observance of
+every propriety; no storm keeps her from church. If the children of a
+new generation climb unduly upon the pew-backs, or shake their curly
+heads too wantonly, she lifts a prim forefinger at them, which has lost
+none of its authoritative meaning. She is the impersonation of all good
+severities. A strange character! Let us hope that, as it sloughs off its
+earthly cerements, it may in the Divine presence scintillate charities
+and draw toward it the love of others. A good, kind, bad
+gentlewoman,&mdash;unwearied in performance of duties. We wonder as we think
+of her! So steadfast, we cannot sneer at her,&mdash;so true to her line of
+faith, we cannot condemn her,&mdash;so utterly forbidding, we cannot love
+her! May God give rest to her good, stubborn soul!</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Upon Sundays of August and September there may be occasionally seen in
+the pew of Elderkin Junior a gray-haired old gentleman, dressed with
+scrupulous care, and still carrying an erect figure, though somewhat
+gouty in his step. This should be Mr. Maverick, a retired merchant, who
+is on a visit to his daughter. He makes wonderful gifts to a certain
+little boy who bears a Puritan name, and gives occasional ponderous sums
+to the parish. In winter, his head-quarters are at the Union Club.</p>
+
+<p>And Doctor Johns? Yes, he is living still,&mdash;making his way wearily each
+morning along the street with his cane. Going oftenest, perhaps, to the
+home of Ad&egrave;le, who is now a matron,&mdash;a tender, and most womanly and
+joyful matron,&mdash;and with her little boy&mdash;Reuben Elderkin by name&mdash;he
+wanders often to the graves where sleep his best beloved,&mdash;Rachel, so
+early lost,&mdash;the son, in respect to whom he feels at last a "reasonable
+assurance" that the youth has entered upon a glorious inheritance in
+those courts where one day he will join him, and the sainted Rachel too,
+and clasp again in his arms (if it be God's will) the babe that was his
+but for an hour on earth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_721" id="Page_721">[Pg 721]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="TIED_TO_A_ROPE" id="TIED_TO_A_ROPE"></a>TIED TO A ROPE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>You don't know what a Hircus &#338;pagrus is, Tommy? Well, it is a big
+name for him, isn't it? And if you should ask that somewhat slatternly
+female, who appears to employ tubs for the advantage of others rather
+than herself, what the animal is, she would tell you it is a goat. See
+what a hardy, sturdy little creature he is; and how he lifts up his
+startled head, as the cars come thundering along, and bounds away as if
+he were on the rugged hills that his ancestors climbed, ages ago, in
+wild freedom. O that cruel rope! how it stops him in his career with a
+sudden jerk that pulls him to the ground! See where it has worn away the
+hair round his neck, in his constant struggles to escape. See how he has
+browsed the scanty grass of that dry pasture, in the little circle to
+which he is confined, and is now trying to reach an uncropped tuft, just
+beyond his tether. And the sun is beating down upon him, and there is
+not the shade of a leaf for him to creep into, this July day. Poor
+little fellow!</p>
+
+<p>Not waste my sympathy on a common goat? My dear Madam, I can assure you
+that ropes are not knotted around the neck of Hirci &#338;pagri alone. And
+when I was bemoaning the captivity of yonder little browser we have left
+behind, I was bewailing the fortune of another great order of the
+Mammalian class,&mdash;an order that Mr. Huxley and Mr. Darwin and other
+great thinkers of the day are proving to be close connections of their
+humbler brethren that bleat and bark and bray. The bimanal species of
+this order are similarly appendaged, though they are not apt to be
+staked beside railways or confined to a rood of ground.</p>
+
+<p>Do you see Vanitas at the other end of the car? Does he look as though
+he carried about with him a "lengthening chain"? No one would certainly
+suppose it. Yet he is bound as securely as the poor little goat. We may
+go to the fresh air of his country-seat this July day, or to the
+sea-breezes of his Newport cottage next month, or he may sit here, "the
+incarnation of fat dividends," while you and I envy him his wealth and
+comforts; but he can never break his bonds. They are riveted to the
+counters of the money-changers, knotted around the tall masts of his
+goodly ships, bolted to the ore of his distant mines. He bears them to
+his luxurious home, and his fond wife, his caressing children, his
+troops of friends, can never strike them off. Ever and anon, as the car
+of fortune sweeps by to start him from his comfortable ease, they gall
+him with their remorseless restraint. You may cut the poor goat's rope
+and set him free, to roam where he will; but Vanitas has forged his own
+fetters, and there comes to him no blessed day of emancipation.</p>
+
+<p>My dear Madam, the bright blue ether around us is traversed by a
+wonderful network of these invisible bonds that hold poor human beings
+to their fate. Over the green hills and over the blue waters, far, far
+away they reach,&mdash;a warp and woof of multiform, expansive strands, over
+which the sense of bondage moves with all the wondrous celerity of that
+strange force which, on the instant, speaks the thought of the
+Antipodes. You don't know that you carry about any such? Ah! it is well
+that they weigh so lightly. Utter your grateful thanks, to-night, when
+you seek your pillow, that the chains you wear are not galling ones. But
+you are most irrevocably bound. Frank holds you fast. One of these days,
+when you are most peaceful and content in your bondage, scarcely
+recognized, there may come a stately tread, a fiery eye, a glowing
+heart, to startle you from your quiet ease; and when you bound,
+trembling and breathless in their mighty sway, you may feel the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_722" id="Page_722">[Pg 722]</a></span>
+chain&mdash;before so light&mdash;wearing its way deep into your throbbing heart.
+May you never wake on the morn of that day, Madam! You don't carry any
+such? Round a little white tablet, half hidden in the sighing grass, is
+linked a chain which holds you, at this moment, by your inmost soul. You
+are not listening to me now; for I have but touched it, and your breast
+is swelling 'neath its pressure, and the tears start to your eyes at its
+momentary tightness. You don't carry any such? We all carry them; and
+were human ears sensitive to other than the grosser sounds of nature,
+they would hear a strange music sweeping from these mystic chords, as
+they tremble at the touch of time and fate.</p>
+
+<p>Master Tommy seems to be tolerably free from any sort of restraint, I
+acknowledge. In fact, it is he who keeps myself and Mrs. A. in the most
+abject servitude. He holds our nasal appendages close to the grindstone
+of his imperious will. And yet&mdash;please take him into the next car,
+Madam, while I speak of him. You cannot? What is this? Let me see, I
+pray you. As I live, it is his mother's apron-string. Ah! I fear, Madam,
+that all your efforts cannot break that tie. In the years to come, it
+will doubtless be frayed and worn; and, some day or other, he will bound
+loose from his childhood's captivity; but long ere that he will have
+other bonds thrown around him, some of which he can never break. He will
+weave with his own hands the silken cord of love, coil it about him,
+knot it with Gordian intricacy, net it with Vulcan strength, and then,
+with blind simplicity, place it in Beauty's hand to lead him captive to
+her capricious will. My dear Madam, did not Tommy's father do the same
+foolish thing? And is he not grateful to the lovely Mrs. Asmodeus for
+the gentleness with which she holds him in her power? Some of our bonds
+are light to bear. We glory in them, and hold up our gyves to show them
+to the world. Tommy may be a little shamefaced when his playmates jeer
+at the maternal tie; but he will walk forth, glowing with pride and joy,
+to parade his self-woven fetters ostentatiously in the sight of men.
+When you had done some such foolish thing yourself, did not your young
+mates gather round to view, with wondering and eager eyes, the result of
+your own handiwork at the cordage of love? Were there not many
+loquacious conclaves held to sit in secret judgment thereon? Were there
+not many soft cheeks flushing, and bright eyes sparkling, and fresh
+hearts beating, as you brought forth, with a pride you did not pretend
+to hide, the rose-colored fabric you had woven? And did they not all
+envy you, and wonder when their distaffs were to whirl to the tread of
+their own ready feet?</p>
+
+<p>But we are not always eager or proud to exhibit our bonds. Indeed, we
+sedulously conceal them from every eye; we cover up the marks upon our
+scarred hearts with such jealous care, that none, not even our bosom
+friends, can ever see them. They hold us where the sweet herbage of life
+has become dry and sere, where no shelter offers us a grateful retreat.
+Vanitas can bear away with him his "lengthening chain" to his leafy
+groves; but Scripsit is confined to the torrid regions of his scanty
+garret. In vain he gazes afar, beyond the smoky haze of his stony
+prison, upon the green slopes and shady hills. In vain he toils and
+strains to burst the links that bind him. His soul is yearning for the
+cooling freshness, the sweet fragrance, the beauty, the glory, of the
+outer world. It is just beyond his reach; and, wearied with futile
+exertions, he sinks, fainting and despairing, in his efforts to rend the
+chain of penury. And there are many other bonds which hold us to areas
+of life from which we have gathered all the fresh bloom and the rich
+fruit. We may tread their barren soil with jewelled sandals, wrap around
+us ermined robes in winter's cold, and raise our silken tents in
+summer's glare, while our souls are hungering and thirsting for the
+ambrosia and the nectar beyond our tethered reach. We are held fast by
+honor,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_723" id="Page_723">[Pg 723]</a></span> virtue, fidelity, pity,&mdash;ties which we dare not break if we
+could. We must not even bear their golden links to their extremest
+length; we must not show that they are chains which bind us; we must not
+show that we are hungering and thirsting in the confines to which they
+restrain us. We must seem to be feasting as from the flesh-pots of
+Egypt,&mdash;fattening on the husks which we have emptied,&mdash;while our souls
+are starving and fainting and dying within us. 'T is a sad music that
+swells from these chords. How fortunate that our ears are not attuned to
+their notes. And we are not always solitary in our bondage; nor do we
+tread round the cropped circuit, held to senseless pillars. We are
+chained to each other; and unhappy are they who, straining at the bond,
+seek food for their hearts in opposite directions. We are chained to
+each other; and light or heavy are the bonds, as Fortune shall couple
+us. Now you and Frank, I know, are leashed with down; and when Mrs.
+Asmodeus went to the blacksmith, the Vulcan of our days, to order my
+fetters, she bespoke gossamers, to which a spider's web were cable. But
+we are among the favored of Fortune's children. There are many poor
+unfortunates whose daily round is but the measured clank of hateful
+chains; who eat, drink, sleep, live together, in a bondage worse than
+that of Chillon,&mdash;round whom the bright sun shines, the sweet flowers
+bloom, the soft breezes play,&mdash;and yet who stifle in the gloom of a
+domestic dungeon.</p>
+
+<p>And there are others fettered as firmly,&mdash;but how differently! The
+clasping links are soft, caressing arms; the tones their sounding chains
+give out are cheerful voices, joyous accents, words of love, that echo
+far beyond the little circle that they keep, and spread their harmony
+through many hearts. That little circle is a happy home; love spun the
+bonds that hold them close therein, and many are the strands that bind
+them there. They come from beauteous eyes that beam with light; from
+lisping tongues more sweet than seraph choirs; from swelling hearts that
+beat in every pulse with fond affection, which is richer far than all
+the nectar of the ancient gods. Bind me with these, O Fortune! and I hug
+my chains o'erjoyed. Be these the cords which hold me to the rock around
+which break the surging waves of time, and let the beak of Fate tear as
+it will, I hold the bondage sweet and laugh at liberty.</p>
+
+<p>My dear Madam, there are chains which hold us as the cable holds the
+ship; and, in their sure restraint, we safely ride through all the
+howling blasts of adverse fate. The globe we tread whirls on through
+endless space, kept ever in the circuit that it makes by that
+restraining force which holds it to the pillar of the sun. Loose but the
+bond an instant, and it flies in wild, tangential flight, to shatter
+other worlds. The very bondage that we curse, and seek, in fretful mood,
+to break and burst, may keep us to the orbit that is traced, by
+overruling wisdom, for our good. We gravitate towards duty, though we
+sweep with errant course along the outer marge of the bare area of its
+tightened cord. Let but the wise restraint be rudely broke, and through
+life's peopled space we heedless rush, trampling o'er hearts, and
+whirling to our fate, leaving destruction on our reckless way.</p>
+
+<p>Did you ever chance to see, Madam, a picture of those venturous hunters,
+who are lowered by a rope to the nests of sea-birds, built on some
+inaccessible cliff? Hanging between heaven and earth they sway;&mdash;above,
+the craggy rock, o'er which the single cord is strained that holds them
+fast; below, a yawning chasm, whose jagged depth would be a fearful
+grave to him who should fall. You and I would never dream of
+bird-nesting under such circumstances. I can see you shudder, even now,
+at the bare idea. Yet do we not sometimes hang ourselves over cliffs
+from which a fall were worse than death? Do we not trust ourselves, in
+venturous mood, to the frail tenure of a single strand which sways
+'twixt heaven<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_724" id="Page_724">[Pg 724]</a></span> and earth? Not after birds' eggs, I grant you. We are not
+all of us so fond of omelettes. But over the wild crags of human passion
+many drop, pursuing game that shuns the beaten way, and sway above the
+depths of dark despair. Intent upon their prey, they further go, secure
+in the firm hold they think they have, nor heed the fraying line that,
+grating on the edge of the bare precipice, at last is worn and weak;
+while, one by one, the little threads give way, and they who watch above
+in terror call to warn them of the danger. But in vain! no friendly
+voice can stay their flushed success; till, at its height, the cord is
+suddenly snapped, and crushed upon the rocks beneath they lie. You and I
+will never go bird-nesting after this fashion, my dear Madam. Let us
+hover then around the crags of life, and watch the twisting strands that
+others, more adventurous than we, have risked themselves upon. Be ours
+the part to note the breaking threads, and, with our words of kindly
+warning, seek to save our fellows from a fall so dread.</p>
+
+<p>And, if the ties of earth keep us from falling, so also do they keep us
+from rising above the level of grosser things. They hold us down to the
+dull, tedious monotony of worldly cares, aims, purposes. Like birds
+withheld from flight into the pure regions of the upper air by cruel,
+frightening cords, we fluttering go, stifled amid the vapors men have
+spread, and panting for the freedom that we seek.</p>
+
+<p>Madam, our bright-eyed little goat has, by this time, settled himself
+calmly on the grass; and I see, near at hand, the shady groves where
+King Tommy is wont to lead Mrs. A. and myself in his summer wanderings.
+Let me hope that all our bonds may be those which hold us fast to peace,
+content, and virtue; and that, when the silver cord which holds us here
+to earth shall be loosed, we then on sweeping pinions may arise, pure
+and untrammelled, into cloudless skies.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="GIOTTOS_TOWER" id="GIOTTOS_TOWER"></a>GIOTTO'S TOWER.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How many lives, made beautiful and sweet<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">By self-devotion and by self-restraint,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose pleasure is to run without complaint<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On unknown errands of the Paraclete,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wanting the reverence of unshodden feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fail of the nimbus which the artists paint<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Around the shining forehead of the saint,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And are in their completeness incomplete.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the old Tuscan town stands Giotto's tower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The lily of Florence blossoming in stone,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A vision, a delight, and a desire,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The builder's perfect and centennial flower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That in the night of ages bloomed alone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But wanting still the glory of the spire.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_725" id="Page_725">[Pg 725]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="PASSAGES_FROM_HAWTHORNES_NOTE-BOOKS" id="PASSAGES_FROM_HAWTHORNES_NOTE-BOOKS"></a>PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>VI.</h3>
+
+<p>Brook Farm, <i>Oct. 9, 1841.</i>&mdash;A walk this afternoon to Cow Island. The
+clouds had broken away towards noon, and let forth a few sunbeams, and
+more and more blue sky ventured to appear, till at last it was really
+warm and sunny,&mdash;indeed, rather too warm in the sheltered hollows,
+though it is delightful to be too warm now, after so much stormy
+chillness. O the beauty of grassy slopes, and the hollow ways of paths
+winding between hills, and the intervals between the road and wood-lots,
+where summer lingers and sits down, strewing dandelions of gold, and
+blue asters, as her parting gifts and memorials! I went to a grape-vine,
+which I have already visited several times, and found some clusters of
+grapes still remaining, and now perfectly ripe. Coming within view of
+the river, I saw several wild ducks under the shadow of the opposite
+shore, which was high, and covered with a grove of pines. I should not
+have discovered the ducks had they not risen and skimmed the surface of
+the glassy stream, breaking its dark water with a bright streak, and,
+sweeping round, gradually rose high enough to fly away. I likewise
+started a partridge just within the verge of the woods, and in another
+place a large squirrel ran across the wood-path from one shelter of
+trees to the other. Small birds, in flocks, were flitting about the
+fields, seeking and finding I know not what sort of food. There were
+little fish, also, darting in shoals through the pools and depths of the
+brooks, which are now replenished to their brims, and rush towards the
+river with a swift, amber-colored current.</p>
+
+<p>Cow Island is not an island,&mdash;at least, at this season,&mdash;though, I
+believe, in the time of freshets, the marshy Charles floods the meadows
+all round about it, and extends across its communication with the
+mainland. The path to it is a very secluded one, threading a wood of
+pines, and just wide enough to admit the loads of meadow hay which are
+drawn from the splashy shore of the river. The island has a growth of
+stately pines, with tall and ponderous stems, standing at distance
+enough to admit the eye to travel far among them; and, as there is no
+underbrush, the effect is somewhat like looking among the pillars of a
+church.</p>
+
+<p>I returned home by the high-road. On my right, separated from the road
+by a level field, perhaps fifty yards across, was a range of young
+forest-trees, dressed in their garb of autumnal glory. The sun shone
+directly upon them; and sunlight is like the breath of life to the pomp
+of autumn. In its absence, one doubts whether there be any truth in what
+poets have told about the splendor of an American autumn; but when this
+charm is added, one feels that the effect is beyond description. As I
+beheld it to-day, there was nothing dazzling; it was gentle and mild,
+though brilliant and diversified, and had a most quiet and pensive
+influence. And yet there were some trees that seemed really made of
+sunshine, and others were of a sunny red, and the whole picture was
+painted with but little relief of darksome hues,&mdash;only a few evergreens.
+But there was nothing inharmonious; and, on closer examination, it
+appeared that all the tints had a relationship among themselves. And
+this, I suppose, is the reason that, while Nature seems to scatter them
+so carelessly, they still never shock the beholder by their contrasts,
+nor disturb, but only soothe. The brilliant scarlet and the brilliant
+yellow are different hues of the maple-leaves, and the first changes
+into the last. I saw one maple-tree, its centre yellow as gold, set in a
+framework of red. The native<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_726" id="Page_726">[Pg 726]</a></span> poplars have different shades of green,
+verging towards yellow, and are very cheerful in the sunshine. Most of
+the oak-leaves have still the deep verdure of summer; but where a change
+has taken place, it is into a russet-red, warm, but sober. These colors,
+infinitely varied by the progress which different trees have made in
+their decay, constitute almost the whole glory of autumnal woods; but it
+is impossible to conceive how much is done with such scanty materials.
+In my whole walk I saw only one man, and he was at a distance, in the
+obscurity of the trees. He had a horse and a wagon, and was getting a
+load of dry brush-wood.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Sunday, October 10.</i>&mdash;I visited my grape-vine this afternoon, and ate
+the last of its clusters. This vine climbs around a young maple-tree,
+which has now assumed the yellow leaf. The leaves of the vine are more
+decayed than those of the maple. Thence to Cow Island, a solemn and
+thoughtful walk. Returned by another path, of the width of a wagon,
+passing through a grove of hard wood, the lightsome hues of which make
+the walk more cheerful than among the pines. The roots of oaks emerged
+from the soil, and contorted themselves across the path. The sunlight,
+also, broke across in spots, and otherwheres the shadow was deep; but
+still there was intermingling enough of bright hues to keep off the
+gloom from the whole path.</p>
+
+<p>Brooks and pools have a peculiar aspect at this season. One knows that
+the water must be cold, and one shivers a little at the sight of it; and
+yet the grass about the pool may be of the deepest green, and the sun
+may be shining into it. The withered leaves which overhanging trees shed
+upon its surface contribute much to the effect.</p>
+
+<p>Insects have mostly vanished in the fields and woods. I hear locusts
+yet, singing in the sunny hours, and crickets have not yet finished
+their song. Once in a while I see a caterpillar,&mdash;this afternoon, for
+instance, a red, hairy one, with black head and tail. They do not appear
+to be active, and it makes one rather melancholy to look at them.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Tuesday, October 12.</i>&mdash;The cawing of the crow resounds among the woods.
+A sentinel is aware of your approach a great way off, and gives the
+alarm to his comrades loudly and eagerly,&mdash;Caw, caw, caw! Immediately
+the whole conclave replies, and you behold them rising above the trees,
+flapping darkly, and winging their way to deeper solitudes. Sometimes,
+however, they remain till you come near enough to discern their sable
+gravity of aspect, each occupying a separate bough, or perhaps the
+blasted tip-top of a pine. As you approach, one after another, with loud
+cawing, flaps his wings and throws himself upon the air.</p>
+
+<p>There is hardly a more striking feature in the landscape now-a-days than
+the red patches of blueberry and whortleberry bushes, as seen on a
+sloping hillside, like islands among the grass, with trees growing in
+them; or crowning the summit of a bare, brown hill with their somewhat
+russet liveliness; or circling round the base of an earth-embedded rock.
+At a distance, this hue, clothing spots and patches of the earth, looks
+more like a picture than anything else,&mdash;yet such a picture as I never
+saw painted.</p>
+
+<p>The oaks are now beginning to look sere, and their leaves have withered
+borders. It is pleasant to notice the wide circle of greener grass
+beneath the circumference of an overshadowing oak. Passing an orchard,
+one hears an uneasy rustling in the trees, and not as if they were
+struggling with the wind. Scattered about are barrels to contain the
+gathered apples; and perhaps a great heap of golden or scarlet apples is
+collected in one place.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Wednesday, October 13.</i>&mdash;A good view, from an upland swell of our
+pasture, across the valley of the river Charles. There is the meadow, as
+level<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_727" id="Page_727">[Pg 727]</a></span> as a floor, and carpeted with green, perhaps two miles from the
+rising ground on this side of the river to that on the opposite side.
+The stream winds through the midst of the flat space, without any banks
+at all; for it fills its bed almost to the brim, and bathes the meadow
+grass on either side. A tuft of shrubbery, at broken intervals, is
+scattered along its border; and thus it meanders sluggishly along,
+without other life than what it gains from gleaming in the sun. Now,
+into the broad, smooth meadow, as into a lake, capes and headlands put
+themselves forth, and shores of firm woodland border it, covered with
+variegated foliage, making the contrast so much the stronger of their
+height and rough, outline with the even spread of the plain. And beyond,
+and far away, rises a long, gradual swell of country, covered with an
+apparently dense growth of foliage for miles, till the horizon
+terminates it; and here and there is a house, or perhaps two, among the
+contiguity of trees. Everywhere the trees wear their autumnal dress, so
+that the whole landscape is red, russet, orange, and yellow, blending in
+the distance into a rich tint of brown-orange, or nearly that,&mdash;except
+the green expanse so definitely hemmed in by the higher ground.</p>
+
+<p>I took a long walk this morning, going first nearly to Newton, thence
+nearly to Brighton, thence to Jamaica Plain, and thence home. It was a
+fine morning, with a northwest wind; cool when facing the wind, but warm
+and most genially pleasant in sheltered spots; and warm enough
+everywhere while I was in motion. I traversed most of the by-ways which
+offered themselves to me; and, passing through one in which there was a
+double line of grass between the wheel-tracks and that of the horses'
+feet, I came to where had once stood a farm-house, which appeared to
+have been recently torn down. Most of the old timber and boards had been
+carted away; a pile of it, however, remained. The cellar of the house
+was uncovered, and beside it stood the base and middle height of the
+chimney. The oven, in which household bread had been baked for daily
+food, and puddings and cake and jolly pumpkin-pies for festivals, opened
+its mouth, being deprived of its iron door. The fireplace was close at
+hand. All round the site of the house was a pleasant, sunny, green
+space, with old fruit-trees in pretty fair condition, though aged. There
+was a barn, also aged, but in decent repair; and a ruinous shed, on the
+corner of which was nailed a boy's windmill, where it had probably been
+turning and clattering for years together, till now it was black with
+time and weather-stain. It was broken, but still it went round whenever
+the wind stirred. The spot was entirely secluded, there being no other
+house within a mile or two.</p>
+
+<p>No language can give an idea of the beauty and glory of the trees, just
+at this moment. It would be easy, by a process of word-daubing, to set
+down a confused group of gorgeous colors, like a bunch of tangled skeins
+of bright silk; but there is nothing of the reality in the glare which
+would thus be produced. And yet the splendor both of individual clusters
+and of whole scenes is unsurpassable. The oaks are now far advanced in
+their change of hue; and, in certain positions relatively to the sun,
+they light up and gleam with a most magnificent deep gold, varying
+according as portions of the foliage are in shadow or sunlight. On the
+sides which receive the direct rays, the effect is altogether rich; and
+in other points of view it is equally beautiful, if less brilliant. This
+color of the oak is more superb than the lighter yellow of the maples
+and walnuts. The whole landscape is now covered with this indescribable
+pomp; it is discerned on the uplands afar off; and Blue Hill in Milton,
+at the distance of several miles, actually glistens with rich, dark
+light,&mdash;no, not glistens, nor gleams,&mdash;but perhaps to say glows
+subduedly will be a truer expression for it.</p>
+
+<p>Met few people this morning;&mdash;a grown girl, in company with a little
+boy, gathering barberries in a secluded lane; a portly, autumnal
+gentleman,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_728" id="Page_728">[Pg 728]</a></span> wrapped in a great-coat, who asked the way to Mr. Joseph
+Goddard's; and a fish-cart from the city, the driver of which sounded
+his horn along the lonesome way.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Monday, October 18.</i>&mdash;There has been a succession of days which were
+cold and bright in the forenoon, and gray, sullen, and chill towards
+night. The woods have now taken a soberer tint than they wore at my last
+date. Many of the shrubs which looked brightest a little while ago are
+now wholly bare of leaves. The oaks have generally a russet-brown shade,
+although some of them are still green, as are likewise other scattered
+trees in the forests. The bright yellow and the rich scarlet are no more
+to be seen. Scarcely any of them will now bear a close examination; for
+this shows them to be rugged, wilted, and of faded, frost-bitten hue;
+but at a distance, and in the mass, and enlivened by the sun, they have
+still somewhat of the varied splendor which distinguished them a week
+ago. It is wonderful what a difference the sunshine makes; it is like
+varnish, bringing out the hidden veins in a piece of rich wood. In the
+cold, gray atmosphere, such as that of most of our afternoons now, the
+landscape lies dark,&mdash;brown, and in a much deeper shadow than if it were
+clothed in green. But, perchance, a gleam of sun falls on a certain spot
+of distant shrubbery or woodland, and we see it brighten with many hues,
+standing forth prominently from the dimness around it. The sunlight
+gradually spreads, and the whole sombre scene is changed to a motley
+picture,&mdash;the sun bringing out many shades of color, and converting its
+gloom to an almost laughing cheerfulness. At such times I almost doubt
+whether the foliage has lost any of its brilliancy. But the clouds
+intercept the sun again, and lo! old Autumn appears, clad in his cloak
+of russet-brown.</p>
+
+<p>Beautiful now, while the general landscape lies in shadow, looks the
+summit of a distant hill (say a mile off), with the sunshine brightening
+the trees that cover it. It is noticeable that the outlines of hills,
+and the whole bulk of them at the distance of several miles, become
+stronger, denser, and more substantial in this autumn atmosphere and in
+these autumnal tints than in summer. Then they looked blue, misty, and
+dim. Now they show their great humpbacks more plainly, as if they had
+drawn nearer to us.</p>
+
+<p>A waste of shrubbery and small trees, such as overruns the borders of
+the meadows for miles together, looks much more rugged, wild, and savage
+in its present brown color than when clad in green.</p>
+
+<p>I passed through a very pleasant wood-path yesterday, quite shut in and
+sheltered by trees that had not thrown off their yellow robes. The sun
+shone strongly in among them, and quite kindled them; so that the path
+was brighter for their shade than if it had been quite exposed to the
+sun.</p>
+
+<p>In the village graveyard, which lies contiguous to the street, I saw a
+man digging a grave, and one inhabitant after another turned aside from
+his way to look into the grave and talk with the digger. I heard him
+laugh, with the hereditary mirthfulness of men of that occupation.</p>
+
+<p>In the hollow of the woods, yesterday afternoon, I lay a long while
+watching a squirrel, who was capering about among the trees over my head
+(oaks and white-pines, so close together that their branches
+intermingled). The squirrel seemed not to approve of my presence, for he
+frequently uttered a sharp, quick, angry noise, like that of a
+scissors-grinder's wheel. Sometimes I could see him sitting on an
+impending bough, with his tail over his back, looking down pryingly upon
+me. It seems to be a natural posture with him, to sit on his hind legs,
+holding up his forepaws. Anon, with a peculiarly quick start, he would
+scramble along the branch, and be lost to sight in another part of the
+tree, whence his shrill chatter would again be heard. Then I would see
+him rapidly descending the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_729" id="Page_729">[Pg 729]</a></span> trunk, and running along the ground; and a
+moment afterwards, casting my eye upward, I beheld him flitting like a
+bird among the high limbs at the summit, directly above me. Afterwards,
+he apparently became accustomed to my society, and set about some
+business of his. He came down to the ground, took up a piece of a
+decayed bough, (a heavy burden for such a small personage,) and, with
+this in his mouth, again climbed up, and passed from the branches of one
+tree to those of another, and thus onward and onward till he went out of
+sight. Shortly afterwards he returned for another burden, and this he
+repeated several times. I suppose he was building a nest,&mdash;at least, I
+know not what else could have been his object. Never was there such an
+active, cheerful, choleric, continually-in-motion fellow as this little
+red squirrel, talking to himself, chattering at me, and as sociable in
+his own person as if he had half a dozen companions, instead of being
+alone in the lonesome wood. Indeed, he flitted about so quickly, and
+showed himself in different places so suddenly, that I was in some doubt
+whether there were not two or three of them.</p>
+
+<p>I must mention again the very beautiful effect produced by the masses of
+berry-bushes, lying like scarlet islands in the midst of withered
+pasture-ground, or crowning the tops of barren hills. Their hue, at a
+distance, is lustrous scarlet, although it does not look nearly as
+bright and gorgeous when examined close at hand. But at a proper
+distance it is a beautiful fringe on Autumn's petticoat.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Friday, October 22.</i>&mdash;A continued succession of unpleasant, Novembery
+days, and Autumn has made rapid progress in the work of decay. It is now
+somewhat of a rare good fortune to find a verdant, grassy spot, on some
+slope, or in a dell; and even such seldom-seen oases are bestrewn with
+dried brown leaves,&mdash;which, however, methinks, make the short, fresh
+grass look greener around them. Dry leaves are now plentiful everywhere,
+save where there are none but pine-trees. They rustle beneath the tread,
+and there is nothing more autumnal than that sound. Nevertheless, in a
+walk this afternoon I have seen two oaks which retained almost the
+greenness of summer. They grew close to the huge Pulpit Rock, so that
+portions of their trunks appeared to grasp the rough surface; and they
+were rooted beneath it, and, ascending high into the air, overshadowed
+the gray crag with verdure. Other oaks, here and there, have a few green
+leaves or boughs among their rustling and rugged shade.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, dreary as the woods are in a bleak, sullen day, there is a very
+peculiar sense of warmth and a sort of richness of effect in the slope
+of a bank and in sheltered spots, where bright sunshine falls, and the
+brown oaken foliage is gladdened by it. There is then a feeling of
+comfort, and consequently of heart-warmth, which cannot be experienced
+in summer.</p>
+
+<p>I walked this afternoon along a pleasant wood-path, gently winding, so
+that but little of it could be seen at a time, and going up and down
+small mounds, now plunging into a denser shadow and now emerging from
+it. Part of the way it was strewn with the dusky yellow leaves of
+white-pines,&mdash;the cast-off garments of last year; part of the way with
+green grass, close-cropped and very fresh for the season. Sometimes the
+trees met across it; sometimes it was bordered on one side by an old
+rail-fence of moss-grown cedar, with bushes sprouting beneath it, and
+thrusting their branches through it; sometimes by a stone wall of
+unknown antiquity, older than the wood it closed in. A stone wall, when
+shrubbery has grown around it, and thrust its roots beneath it, becomes
+a very pleasant and meditative object. It does not belong too evidently
+to man, having been built so long ago. It seems a part of nature.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday I found two mushrooms in the woods, probably of the preceding
+night's growth. Also I saw a mosquito,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_730" id="Page_730">[Pg 730]</a></span> frost-pinched, and so wretched
+that I felt avenged for all the injuries which his tribe inflicted upon
+me last summer, and so did not molest this lone survivor.</p>
+
+<p>Walnuts in their green rinds are falling from the trees, and so are
+chestnut-burrs.</p>
+
+<p>I found a maple-leaf to-day, yellow all over, except its extremest
+point, which was bright scarlet. It looked as if a drop of blood were
+hanging from it. The first change of the maple-leaf is to scarlet; the
+next, to yellow. Then it withers, wilts, and drops off, as most of them
+have already done.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>October 27.</i>&mdash;Fringed gentians,&mdash;I found the last, probably, that will
+be seen this year, growing on the margin of the brook.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>1842.&mdash;Some man of powerful character to command a person, morally
+subjected to him, to perform some act. The commanding person suddenly to
+die; and, for all the rest of his life, the subjected one continues to
+perform that act.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Solomon dies during the building of the temple, but his body remains
+leaning on a staff, and overlooking the workmen, as if it were alive."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A tri-weekly paper, to be called the Tertian Ague.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Subject for a picture,&mdash;Satan's reappearance in Pandemonium, shining out
+from a mist, with "shape star-bright."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Five points of Theology,&mdash;Five Points at New York.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It seems a greater pity that an accomplished worker with the hand should
+perish prematurely, than a person of great intellect; because
+intellectual arts may be cultivated in the next world, but not physical
+ones.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>To trace out the influence of a frightful and disgraceful crime in
+debasing and destroying a character naturally high and noble, the guilty
+person being alone conscious of the crime.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A man, virtuous in his general conduct, but committing habitually some
+monstrous crime,&mdash;as murder,&mdash;and doing this without the sense of guilt,
+but with a peaceful conscience,&mdash;habit, probably, reconciling him to it;
+but something (for instance, discovery) occurs to make him sensible of
+his enormity. His horror then.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The strangeness, if they could be foreseen and forethought, of events
+which do not seem so strange after they have happened. As, for instance,
+to muse over a child's cradle, and foresee all the persons in different
+parts of the world with whom he would have relations.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A man to swallow a small snake,&mdash;and it to be a symbol of a cherished
+sin.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Questions as to unsettled points of history, and mysteries of nature, to
+be asked of a mesmerized person.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Gordier, a young man of the Island of Jersey, was paying his addresses
+to a young lady of Guernsey. He visited the latter island, intending to
+be married. He disappeared on his way from the beach to his mistress's
+residence, and was afterwards found dead in a cavity of the rocks. After
+a time, Galliard, a merchant of Guernsey, paid his addresses to the
+young lady; but she always felt a strong, unaccountable antipathy to
+him. He presented her with a beautiful trinket. The mother of Gordier,
+chancing to see this trinket, recognized it as having been bought by her
+dead son as a present for his mistress. She expired on learning this;
+and Galliard, being suspected of the murder, committed suicide.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The <i>cur&eacute;</i> of Montreux in Switzerland, ninety-six years old, still
+vigorous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_731" id="Page_731">[Pg 731]</a></span> in mind and body, and able to preach. He had a twin-brother,
+also a preacher, and the exact likeness of himself. Sometimes strangers
+have beheld a white-haired, venerable clerical personage, nearly a
+century old; and, upon riding a few miles farther, have been astonished
+to meet again this white-haired, venerable, century-old personage.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>When the body of Lord Mohun (killed in a duel) was carried home,
+bleeding, to his house, Lady Mohun was very angry because it was "flung
+upon the best bed."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A prophecy, somewhat in the style of Swift's about Partridge, but
+embracing various events and personages.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>An incident that befell Dr. Harris, while a Junior at college. Being in
+great want of money to buy shirts or other necessaries, and not knowing
+how to obtain it, he set out on a walk from Cambridge to Boston. On the
+way, he cut a stick, and after walking a short distance perceived that
+something had become attached to the end of it. It proved to be a gold
+ring, with the motto, "God speed thee, friend."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Brobdignag lay on the northwest coast of the American continent.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A gush of violets along a wood-path.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>People with false hair and other artifices may be supposed to deceive
+Death himself, so that he does not know when their hour is come.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Bees are sometimes drowned (or suffocated) in the honey which they
+collect. So some writers are lost in their collected learning.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Advice of Lady Pepperell's father on her marriage,&mdash;never to work one
+moment after Saturday sunset,&mdash;never to lay down her knitting except in
+the middle of the needle,&mdash;always to rise with the sun,&mdash;to pass an hour
+daily with the housekeeper,&mdash;to visit every room daily from garret to
+cellar,&mdash;to attend herself to the brewing of beer and the baking of
+bread,&mdash;and to instruct every member of the family in their religious
+duties.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Service of plate, presented by the city of London to Sir William
+Pepperell, together with a table of solid silver. The table very narrow,
+but long; the articles of plate numerous, but of small dimensions,&mdash;the
+tureen not holding more than three pints. At the close of the
+Revolution, when the Pepperell and Sparhawk property was confiscated,
+this plate was sent to the grandson of Sir William, in London. It was so
+valuable, that Sheriff Moulton of old York, with six well-armed men,
+accompanied it to Boston. Pepperell's only daughter married Colonel
+Sparhawk, a fine gentleman of the day. Andrew Pepperell, the son, was
+rejected by a young lady (afterwards the mother of Mrs. General Knox),
+to whom he was on the point of marriage, as being addicted to low
+company and low pleasures. The lover, two days afterwards, in the
+streets of Portsmouth, was sun-struck, and fell down dead. Sir William
+had built an elegant house for his son and his intended wife; but after
+the death of the former he never entered it. He lost his cheerfulness
+and social qualities, and gave up intercourse with people, except on
+business. Very anxious to secure his property to his descendants by the
+provisions of his will, which was drawn up by Judge Sewall, then a young
+lawyer. Yet the Judge lived to see two of Sir William's grandchildren so
+reduced that they were to have been numbered among the town's poor, and
+were only rescued from this fate by private charity.</p>
+
+<p>The arms of the Pepperell family were displayed over the door of every
+room in Sir William's house, and his crest on every door. In Colonel
+Sparhawk's house there were forty portraits, most of them in full
+length. The house built for Sir William's son was occupied as barracks
+during the Revolution,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_732" id="Page_732">[Pg 732]</a></span> and much injured. A few years after the peace,
+it was blown down by a violent tempest, and finally no vestige of it was
+left, but there remained only a summer-house and the family tomb.</p>
+
+<p>At Sir William's death, his mansion was hung with black, while the body
+lay in state for a week. All the Sparhawk portraits were covered with
+black crape, and the family pew was draped with black. Two oxen were
+roasted, and liquid hospitality dispensed in proportion.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Old lady's dress seventy or eighty years ago. Brown brocade gown, with a
+nice lawn handkerchief and apron,&mdash;short sleeves, with a little ruffle,
+just below the elbow,&mdash;black mittens,&mdash;a lawn cap, with rich lace
+border,&mdash;a black velvet hood on the back of the head, tied with black
+ribbon under the chin. She sat in an old-fashioned easy-chair, in a
+small, low parlor,&mdash;the wainscot painted entirely black, and the walls
+hung with a dark velvet paper.</p>
+
+<p>A table, stationary ever since the house was built, extending the whole
+length of a room. One end was raised two steps higher than the rest. The
+Lady Ursula, an early Colonial heroine, was wont to dine at the upper
+end, while her servants sat below. This was in the kitchen. An old
+garden and summer-house, and roses, currant-bushes, and tulips, which
+Lady Ursula had brought from Grondale Abbey in Old England. Although a
+hundred and fifty years before, and though their roots were propagated
+all over the country, they were still flourishing in the original
+garden. This Lady Ursula was the daughter of Lord Thomas Cutts of
+Grondale Abbey in England. She had been in love with an officer named
+Fowler, who was supposed to have been slain in battle. After the death
+of her father and mother, Lady Ursula came to Kittery, bringing twenty
+men-servants and several women. After a time, a letter arrived from her
+lover, who was not killed, but merely a prisoner to the French. He
+announced his purpose to come to America, where he would arrive in
+October. A few days after the letter came, she went out in a low
+carriage to visit her work-people, and was blessing the food for their
+luncheon, when she fell dead, struck by an Indian tomahawk, as did all
+the rest save one. They were buried, where the massacre took place, and
+a stone was erected, which (possibly) still remains. The lady's family
+had a grant from Sir Ferdinando Gorges of the territory thereabout, and
+her brother had likewise come over and settled in the vicinity. I
+believe very little of this story. Long afterwards, at about the
+commencement of the Revolution, a descendant of Fowler came from
+England, and applied to the Judge of Probate to search the records for a
+will, supposed to have been made by Lady Ursula in favor of her lover as
+soon as she heard of his existence. In the mean time the estate had been
+sold to Colonel Whipple. No will could be found. (Lady Ursula was old
+Mrs. Cutts, widow of President Cutts.)</p>
+
+<p>The mode of living of Lady Ursula's brother in Kittery. A drawbridge to
+the house, which was raised every evening, and lowered in the morning,
+for the laborers and the family to pass out. They kept thirty cows, a
+hundred sheep, and several horses. The house spacious,&mdash;one room large
+enough to contain forty or fifty guests. Two silver branches for
+candles,&mdash;the walls ornamented with paintings and needlework. The floors
+were daily rubbed with wax, and shone like a mahogany-table. A domestic
+chaplain, who said prayers every morning and evening in a small
+apartment called the chapel. Also a steward and butler. The family
+attended the Episcopal Church at Christmas, Easter, and Good Friday, and
+gave a grand entertainment once a year.</p>
+
+<p>Madam Cutts, at the last of these entertainments, wore a black damask
+gown, and cuffs with double lace ruffles, velvet shoes, blue silk
+stockings, white and silver stomacher. The daughter and granddaughters
+in rich brocades and yellow satin. Old Major Cutts in brown velvet,
+laced with gold, and a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_733" id="Page_733">[Pg 733]</a></span> large wig. The parson in his silk cassock, and
+his helpmate in brown damask. Old General Atkinson in scarlet velvet,
+and his wife and daughters in white damask. The Governor in black
+velvet, and his lady in crimson tabby trimmed with silver. The ladies
+wore bell-hoops, high-heeled shoes, paste buckles, silk stockings, and
+enormously high head-dresses, with lappets of Brussels lace hanging
+thence to the waist.</p>
+
+<p>Among the eatables, a silver tub of the capacity of four gallons,
+holding a pyramid of pancakes powdered with white sugar.</p>
+
+<p>The date assigned to all this about 1690.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>What is the price of a day's labor in Lapland, where the sun never sets
+for six months?</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Miss Asphyxia Davis!</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A life, generally of a grave hue, may be said to be <i>embroidered</i> with
+occasional sports and fantasies.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A father confessor,&mdash;his reflections on character, and the contrast of
+the inward man with the outward, as he looks around on his congregation,
+all whose secret sins are known to him.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A person with an ice-cold hand,&mdash;his right hand, which people ever
+afterwards remember when once they have grasped it.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A stove possessed by a Devil.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>June 1, 1842.</i>&mdash;One of my chief amusements is to see the boys sail
+their miniature vessels on the Frog Pond. There is a great variety of
+shipping owned among the young people, and they appear to have a
+considerable knowledge of the art of managing vessels. There is a
+full-rigged man-of-war, with, I believe, every spar, rope, and sail,
+that sometimes makes its appearance; and, when on a voyage across the
+pond, it so identically resembles a great ship, except in size, that it
+has the effect of a picture. All its motions,&mdash;its tossing up and down
+on the small waves, and its sinking and rising in a calm swell, its
+heeling to the breeze,&mdash;the whole effect, in short, is that of a real
+ship at sea; while, moreover, there is something that kindles the
+imagination more than the reality would do. If we see a real, great
+ship, the mind grasps and possesses, within its real clutch, all that
+there is of it; while here the mimic ship is the representation of an
+ideal one, and so gives us a more imaginative pleasure. There are many
+schooners that ply to and fro on the pond, and pilot-boats, all
+perfectly rigged. I saw a race, the other day, between the ship above
+mentioned and a pilot-boat, in which the latter came off conqueror. The
+boys appear to be well acquainted with all the ropes and sails, and can
+call them by their nautical names. One of the owners of the vessels
+remains on one side of the pond, and the other on the opposite side, and
+so they send the little bark to and fro, like merchants of different
+countries, consigning their vessels to one another.</p>
+
+<p>Generally, when any vessel is on the pond, there are full-grown
+spectators, who look on with as much interest as the boys themselves.
+Towards sunset, this is especially the case: for then are seen young
+girls and their lovers; mothers, with their little boys in hand;
+school-girls, beating hoops round about, and occasionally running to the
+side of the pond; rough tars, or perhaps masters or young mates of
+vessels, who make remarks about the miniature shipping, and occasionally
+give professional advice to the navigators; visitors from the country;
+gloved and caned young gentlemen;&mdash;in short, everybody stops to take a
+look. In the mean time, dogs are continually plunging into the pond, and
+swimming about, with noses pointed upward, and snatching at floating
+ships; then, emerging, they shake themselves, scattering a horizontal
+shower on the clean gowns of ladies and trousers of gentlemen; then
+scamper to and fro on the grass, with joyous barks.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_734" id="Page_734">[Pg 734]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Some boys cast off lines of twine with pin-hooks, and perhaps pull out a
+horned-pout, that being, I think, the only kind of fish that inhabits
+the Frog Pond.</p>
+
+<p>The ship-of-war above mentioned is about three feet from stem to stern,
+or possibly a few inches more. This, if I mistake not, was the size of a
+ship of the line in the navy of Liliput.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Fancy pictures of familiar places which one has never been in, as the
+green-room of a theatre, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The famous characters of history,&mdash;to imagine their spirits now extant
+on earth, in the guise of various public or private personages.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The case quoted in Combe's Physiology of a young man of great talents
+and profound knowledge of chemistry, who had in view some new discovery
+of importance. In order to put his mind into the highest possible
+activity, he shut himself up for several successive days, and used
+various methods of excitement. He had a singing-girl, he drank spirits,
+smelled penetrating odors, sprinkled Cologne-water round the room, &amp;c.,
+&amp;c. Eight days thus passed, when he was seized with a fit of frenzy
+which terminated in mania.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Flesh and Blood,&mdash;a firm of butchers.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Miss Polly Syllable, a schoolmistress.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A spendthrift,&mdash;in one sense he has his money's worth by the purchase of
+large lots of repentance and other dolorous commodities.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_MOUNTAIN" id="THE_MOUNTAIN"></a>THE MOUNTAIN.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Two thousand feet in air it stands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Betwixt the bright and shaded lands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Above the regions it divides<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And borders with its furrowed sides.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The seaward valley laughs with light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the round sun o'erhangs this height;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But then the shadow of the crest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No more the plains that lengthen west<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Enshrouds, yet slowly, surely creeps<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eastward, until the coolness steeps<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A darkling league of tilth and wold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And chills the flocks that seek their fold.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not like those ancient summits lone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mont Blanc, on his eternal throne,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The city-gemmed Peruvian peak,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sunset portals landsmen seek,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose train, to reach the Golden Land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crawls slow and pathless through the sand,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or that, whose ice-lit beacon guides<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_735" id="Page_735">[Pg 735]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">The mariner on tropic tides,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And flames across the Gulf afar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A torch by day, by night a star,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not thus, to cleave the outer skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Does my serener mountain rise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor aye forget its gentle birth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon the dewy, pastoral earth.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But ever, in the noonday light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are scenes whereof I love the sight,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Broad pictures of the lower world<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath my gladdened eyes unfurled.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Irradiate distances reveal<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fair nature wed to human weal;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The rolling valley made a plain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its checkered squares of grass and grain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The silvery rye, the golden wheat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The flowery elders where they meet,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ay, even the springing corn I see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And garden haunts of bird and bee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And where, in daisied meadows, shines<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wandering river through its vines,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Move specks at random, which I know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are herds a-grazing to and fro.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet still a goodly height it seems<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From which the mountain pours his streams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or hinders, with caressing hands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sunlight seeking other lands.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like some great giant, strong and proud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He fronts the lowering thunder-cloud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wrests its treasures, to bestow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A guerdon on the realm below;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or, by the deluge roused from sleep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Within his bristling forest-keep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shakes all his pines, and far and wide<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sends down a rich, imperious tide.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At night the whistling tempests meet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In tryst upon his topmost seat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the phantoms of the sky<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Frolic and gibber, storming by.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By day I see the ocean-mists<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Float with the current where it lists,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And from my summit I can hail<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cloud-vessels passing on the gale,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The stately argosies of air,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And parley with the helmsmen there;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can probe their dim, mysterious source,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ask of their cargo and their course,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Whence come? where bound?</i>&mdash;and wait reply,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As, all sails spread, they hasten by.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_736" id="Page_736">[Pg 736]</a></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If foiled in what I fain would know,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Again I turn my eyes below<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And eastward, past the hither mead<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where all day long the cattle feed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A crescent gleam my sight allures<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And clings about the hazy moors,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The great, encircling, radiant sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alone in its immensity.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Even there, a queen upon its shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I know the city evermore<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her palaces and temples rears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wooes the nations to her piers;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet the proud city seems a mole<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To this horizon-bounded whole;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, from my station on the mount,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The whole is little worth account<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath the overhanging sky,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That seems so far and yet so nigh.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here breathe I inspiration rare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unburdened by the grosser air<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That hugs the lower land, and feel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through all my finer senses steal<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The life of what that life may be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Freed from this dull earth's density,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When we, with many a soul-felt thrill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall thrid the ether at our will,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through widening corridors of morn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And starry archways swiftly borne.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Here, in the process of the night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The stars themselves a purer light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give out, than reaches those who gaze<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Enshrouded with the valley's haze.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">October, entering Heaven's fane,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Assumes her lucent, annual reign:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then what a dark and dismal clod,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forsaken by the Sons of God,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seems this sad world, to those which march<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Across the high, illumined arch,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with their brightness draw me forth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To scan the splendors of the North!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I see the Dragon, as he toils<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With Ursa in his shining coils,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And mark the Huntsman lift his shield,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Confronting on the ancient field<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Bull, while in a mystic row<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The jewels of his girdle glow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or, haply, I may ponder long<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On that remoter, sparkling throng,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The orient sisterhood, around<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose chief our Galaxy is wound;<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_737" id="Page_737">[Pg 737]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus, half enwrapt in classic dreams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And brooding over Learning's gleams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I leave to gloom the under-land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And from my watch-tower, close at hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like him who led the favored race,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I look on glory face to face!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So, on the mountain-top, alone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I dwell, as one who holds a throne;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or prince, or peasant, him I count<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My peer, who stands upon a mount,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sees farther than the tribes below,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And knows the joys they cannot know;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, though beyond the sound of speech<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They reign, my soul goes out to reach,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Far on their noble heights elsewhere,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My brother-monarchs of the air.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_CHIMNEY-CORNER_FOR_1866" id="THE_CHIMNEY-CORNER_FOR_1866"></a>THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>VI.</h3>
+
+<h4>THE CATHEDRAL.</h4>
+
+<p>"I am going to build a cathedral one of these days," said I to my wife,
+as I sat looking at the slant line of light made by the afternoon sun on
+our picture of the Cathedral of Milan.</p>
+
+<p>"That picture is one of the most poetic things you have among your house
+ornaments," said Rudolph. "Its original is the world's chief beauty,&mdash;a
+tribute to religion such as Art never gave before and never can
+again,&mdash;as much before the Pantheon, as the Alps, with their virgin
+snows and glittering pinnacles, are above all temples made with hands.
+Say what you will, those Middle Ages that you call Dark had a glory of
+faith that never will be seen in our days of cotton-mills and Manchester
+prints. Where will you marshal such an army of saints as stands in
+yonder white-marble forest, visibly transfigured and glorified in that
+celestial Italian air? Saintship belonged to the medi&aelig;val Church; the
+heroism of religion has died with it."</p>
+
+<p>"That's just like one of your assertions, Rudolph," said I. "You might
+as well say that Nature has never made any flowers since Linn&aelig;us shut up
+his herbarium. We have no statues and pictures of modern saints, but
+saints themselves, thank God, have never been wanting. 'As it was in the
+beginning, is now, and ever shall be&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>"But what about your cathedral?" said my wife.</p>
+
+<p>"O yes!&mdash;my cathedral, yes. When my stocks in cloud-land rise, I'll
+build a cathedral larger than Milan's; and the men, but more
+particularly the <i>women</i>, thereon shall be those who have done even more
+than St. Paul tells of in the saints of old, who 'subdued kingdoms,
+wrought righteousness, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge
+of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight,
+turned to flight the armies of the aliens.' I am not now thinking of
+Florence Nightingale, nor of the host of women who have been walking
+worthily in her footsteps, but of nameless saints of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_738" id="Page_738">[Pg 738]</a></span> more retired and
+private state,&mdash;domestic saints, who have tended children not their own
+through whooping-cough and measles, and borne the unruly whims of
+fretful invalids,&mdash;stocking-darning, shirt-making saints,&mdash;saints who
+wore no visible garment of hair-cloth, bound themselves with no belts of
+spikes and nails, yet in their inmost souls were marked and seared with
+the red cross of a life-long self-sacrifice,&mdash;saints for whom the
+mystical terms <i>self-annihilation</i> and <i>self-crucifixion</i> had a real and
+tangible meaning, all the stronger because their daily death was marked
+by no outward sign. No mystical rites consecrated them; no organ-music
+burst forth in solemn rapture to welcome them; no habit of their order
+proclaimed to themselves and the world that they were the elect of
+Christ, the brides of another life: but small eating cares, daily
+prosaic duties, the petty friction of all the littleness and all the
+inglorious annoyances of every day, were as dust that hid the beauty and
+grandeur of their calling even from themselves; they walked unknown even
+to their households, unknown even to their own souls; but when the Lord
+comes to build his New Jerusalem, we shall find many a white stone with
+a new name thereon, and the record of deeds and words which only He that
+seeth in secret knows. Many a humble soul will be amazed to find that
+the seed it sowed in such weakness, in the dust of daily life, has
+blossomed into immortal flowers under the eye of the Lord.</p>
+
+<p>"When I build my cathedral, <i>that</i> woman," I said, pointing to a small
+painting by the fire, "shall be among the first of my saints. You see
+her there, in an every-day dress-cap with a mortal thread-lace border,
+and with a very ordinary worked collar, fastened by a visible and
+terrestrial breastpin. There is no nimbus around her head, no sign of
+the cross upon her breast; her hands are clasped on no crucifix or
+rosary. Her clear, keen, hazel eye looks as if it could sparkle with
+mirthfulness, as in fact it could; there are in it both the subtile
+flash of wit and the subdued light of humor; and though the whole face
+smiles, it has yet a certain decisive firmness that speaks the soul
+immutable in good. That woman shall be the first saint in my cathedral,
+and her name shall be recorded as Saint Esther. What makes saintliness
+in my view, as distinguished from ordinary goodness, is a certain
+quality of magnanimity and greatness of soul that brings life within the
+circle of the heroic. To be really great in little things, to be truly
+noble and heroic in the insipid details of every-day life, is a virtue
+so rare as to be worthy of canonization,&mdash;and this virtue was hers. New
+England Puritanism must be credited with the making of many such women.
+Severe as was her discipline, and harsh as seems now her rule, we have
+yet to see whether women will be born of modern systems of tolerance and
+indulgence equal to those grand ones of the olden times whose places now
+know them no more. The inconceivable austerity and solemnity with which
+Puritanism invested this mortal life, the awful grandeur of the themes
+which it made household words, the sublimity of the issues which it hung
+upon the commonest acts of our earthly existence, created characters of
+more than Roman strength and greatness; and the good men and women of
+Puritan training excelled the saints of the Middle Ages, as a soul fully
+developed intellectually, educated to closest thought, and exercised in
+reasoning, is superior to a soul great merely through impulse and
+sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>"My earliest recollections of Aunt Esther, for so our saint was known,
+were of a bright-faced, cheerful, witty, quick-moving little middle-aged
+person, who came into our house like a good fairy whenever there was a
+call of sickness or trouble. If an accident happened in the great
+roistering family of eight or ten children, (and when was not something
+happening to some of us?) and we were shut up in a sick-room, then duly
+as daylight came the quick step and cheerful face of Aunt Esther,&mdash;not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_739" id="Page_739">[Pg 739]</a></span>
+solemn and lugubrious like so many sick-room nurses, but with a
+never-failing flow of wit and story that could beguile even the most
+doleful into laughing at their own afflictions. I remember how a fit of
+the quinsy&mdash;most tedious of all sicknesses to an active child&mdash;was
+gilded and glorified into quite a <i>f&ecirc;te</i> by my having Aunt Esther all to
+myself for two whole days, with nothing to do but amuse me. She charmed
+me into smiling at the very pangs which had made me weep before, and of
+which she described her own experiences in a manner to make me think
+that, after all, the quinsy was something with an amusing side to it.
+Her knowledge of all sorts of medicines, gargles, and alleviatives, her
+perfect familiarity with every canon and law of good nursing and
+tending, was something that could only have come from long experience in
+those good old New England days when there were no nurses recognized as
+a class in the land, but when watching and the care of the sick were
+among those offices of Christian life which the families of a
+neighborhood reciprocally rendered each other. Even from early youth she
+had obeyed a special vocation as sister of charity in many a sick-room,
+and, with the usual keen intelligence of New England, had widened her
+powers of doing good by the reading of medical and physiological works.
+Her legends of nursing in those days of long typhus-fever and other
+formidable and protracted forms of disease were to our ears quite
+wonderful, and we regarded her as a sort of patron saint of the
+sick-room. She seemed always so cheerful, so bright, and so devoted,
+that it never occurred to us youngsters to doubt that she enjoyed, above
+all things, being with us, waiting on us all day, watching over us by
+night, telling us stories, and answering, in her lively and always
+amusing and instructive way, that incessant fire of questions with which
+a child persecutes a grown person.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes, as a reward of goodness, we were allowed to visit her in her
+own room, a neat little parlor in the neighborhood, whose windows looked
+down a hillside on one hand, under the boughs of an apple orchard, where
+daisies and clover and bobolinks always abounded in summer time, and, on
+the other, faced the street, with a green yard flanked by one or two
+shady elms between them and the street. No nun's cell was ever neater,
+no bee's cell ever more compactly and carefully arranged; and to us,
+familiar with the confusion of a great family of little ones, there was
+something always inviting about its stillness, its perfect order, and
+the air of thoughtful repose that breathed over it. She lived there in
+perfect independence, doing, as it was her delight to do, every office
+of life for herself. She was her own cook, her own parlor and chamber
+maid, her own laundress; and very faultless the cooking, washing,
+ironing, and care of her premises were. A slice of Aunt Esther's
+gingerbread, one of Aunt Esther's cookies, had, we all believed, certain
+magical properties such as belonged to no other mortal mixture. Even a
+handful of walnuts that were brought from the depths of her mysterious
+closet had virtues in our eyes such as no other walnuts could approach.
+The little shelf of books that hung suspended by cords against her wall
+was sacred in our regard; the volumes were like no other books; and we
+supposed that she derived from them those stores of knowledge on all
+subjects which she unconsciously dispensed among us,&mdash;for she was always
+telling us something of metals, or minerals, or gems, or plants, or
+animals, which awakened our curiosity, stimulated our inquiries, and,
+above all, led us to wonder where she had learned it all. Even the
+slight restrictions which her neat habits imposed on our breezy and
+turbulent natures seemed all quite graceful and becoming. It was right,
+in our eyes, to cleanse our shoes on scraper and mat with extra
+diligence, and then to place a couple of chips under the heels of our
+boots when we essayed to dry our feet at her spotless hearth. We
+marvelled to see<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_740" id="Page_740">[Pg 740]</a></span> our own faces reflected in a thousand smiles and winks
+from her bright brass andirons,&mdash;such andirons we thought were seen on
+earth in no other place,&mdash;and a pair of radiant brass candlesticks, that
+illustrated the mantle-piece, were viewed with no less respect.</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Esther's cat was a model for all cats,&mdash;so sleek, so intelligent,
+so decorous and well-trained, always occupying exactly her own cushion
+by the fire, and never transgressing in one iota the proprieties
+belonging to a cat of good breeding. She shared our affections with her
+mistress, and we were allowed as a great favor and privilege, now and
+then, to hold the favorite on our knees, and stroke her satin coat to a
+smoother gloss.</p>
+
+<p>"But it was not for cats alone that she had attractions. She was in
+sympathy and fellowship with everything that moved and lived; knew every
+bird and beast with a friendly acquaintanceship. The squirrels that
+inhabited the trees in the front-yard were won in time by her
+blandishments to come and perch on her window-sills, and thence, by
+trains of nuts adroitly laid, to disport themselves on the shining
+cherry tea-table that stood between the windows; and we youngsters used
+to sit entranced with delight as they gambolled and waved their feathery
+tails in frolicsome security, eating rations of gingerbread and bits of
+seed-cake with as good a relish as any child among us.</p>
+
+<p>"The habits, the rights, the wrongs, the wants, and the sufferings of
+the animal creation formed the subject of many an interesting
+conversation with her; and we boys, with the natural male instinct of
+hunting, trapping, and pursuing, were often made to pause in our career,
+remembering her pleas for the dumb things which could not speak for
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"Her little hermitage was the favorite resort of numerous friends. Many
+of the young girls who attended the village academy made her
+acquaintance, and nothing delighted her more than that they should come
+there and read to her the books they were studying, when her superior
+and wide information enabled her to light up and explain much that was
+not clear to the immature students.</p>
+
+<p>"In her shady retirement, too, she was a sort of Egeria to certain men
+of genius, who came to read to her their writings, to consult her in
+their arguments, and to discuss with her the literature and politics of
+the day,&mdash;through all which her mind moved with an equal step, yet with
+a sprightliness and vivacity peculiarly feminine.</p>
+
+<p>"Her memory was remarkably retentive, not only of the contents of books,
+but of all that great outlying fund of anecdote and story which the
+quaint and earnest New England life always supplied. There were pictures
+of peculiar characters, legends of true events stranger than romance,
+all stored in the cabinets of her mind; and these came from her lips
+with the greater force because the precision of her memory enabled her
+to authenticate them with name, date, and circumstances of vivid
+reality. From that shadowy line of incidents which marks the twilight
+boundary between the spiritual world and the present life she drew
+legends of peculiar clearness, but invested with the mysterious charm
+which always dwells in that uncertain region; and the shrewd flash of
+her eye, and the keen, bright smile with which she answered the
+wondering question, 'What <i>do</i> you suppose it was?' or, 'What could it
+have been?' showed how evenly rationalism in her mind kept pace with
+romance.</p>
+
+<p>"The retired room in which she thus read, studied, thought, and surveyed
+from afar the whole world of science and literature, and in which she
+received friends and entertained children, was perhaps the dearest and
+freshest spot to her in the world. There came a time, however, when the
+neat little independent establishment was given up, and she went to
+associate herself with two of her nieces in keeping house for a
+boarding-school of young girls. Here her lively manners and her gracious
+interest in the young made her a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_741" id="Page_741">[Pg 741]</a></span> universal favorite, though the cares
+she assumed broke in upon those habits of solitude and study which
+formed her delight. From the day that she surrendered this independency
+of hers, she had never, for more than a score of years, a home of her
+own, but filled the trying position of an accessory in the home of
+others. Leaving the boarding-school, she became the helper of an invalid
+wife and mother in the early nursing and rearing of a family of young
+children,&mdash;an office which leaves no privacy and no leisure. Her bed was
+always shared with some little one; her territories were exposed to the
+constant inroads of little pattering feet; and all the various
+sicknesses and ailments of delicate childhood made absorbing drafts upon
+her time.</p>
+
+<p>"After a while she left New England with the brother to whose family she
+devoted herself. The failing health of the wife and mother left more and
+more the charge of all things in her hands; servants were poor, and all
+the appliances of living had the rawness and inconvenience which in
+those days attended Western life. It became her fate to supply all other
+people's defects and deficiencies. Wherever a hand failed, there must
+her hand be. Whenever a foot faltered, she must step into the ranks. She
+was the one who thought for and cared for and toiled for all, yet made
+never a claim that any one should care for her.</p>
+
+<p>"It was not till late in my life that I became acquainted with the deep
+interior sacrifice, the constant self-abnegation, which all her life
+involved. She was born with a strong, vehement, impulsive nature,&mdash;a
+nature both proud and sensitive,&mdash;a nature whose tastes were passions,
+whose likings and whose aversions were of the most intense and positive
+character. Devoted as she always seemed to the mere practical and
+material, she had naturally a deep romance and enthusiasm of temperament
+which exceeded all that can be written in novels. It was chiefly owing
+to this that a home and a central affection of her own were never hers.
+In her early days of attractiveness, none who would have sought her
+could meet the high requirements of her ideality; she never saw her
+hero,&mdash;and so never married. Family cares, the tending of young
+children, she often confessed, were peculiarly irksome to her. She had
+the head of a student, a passionate love for the world of books. A
+Protestant convent, where she might devote herself without interruption
+to study, was her ideal of happiness. She had, too, the keenest
+appreciation of poetry, of music, of painting, and of natural scenery.
+Her enjoyment in any of these things was intensely vivid whenever, by
+chance, a stray sunbeam of the kind darted across the dusty path of her
+life; yet in all these her life was a constant repression. The eagerness
+with which she would listen to any account from those more fortunate
+ones who had known these things, showed how ardent a passion was
+constantly held in check. A short time before her death, talking with a
+friend who had visited Switzerland, she said, with great feeling: 'All
+my life my desire to visit the beautiful places of this earth has been
+so intense, that I cannot but hope that after my death I shall be
+permitted to go and look at them.'</p>
+
+<p>"The completeness of her self-discipline may be gathered from the fact,
+that no child could ever be brought to believe she had not a natural
+fondness for children, or that she found the care of them burdensome. It
+was easy to see that she had naturally all those particular habits,
+those minute pertinacities in respect to her daily movements and the
+arrangement of all her belongings, which would make the meddling,
+intrusive demands of infancy and childhood peculiarly hard for her to
+meet. Yet never was there a pair of toddling feet that did not make free
+with Aunt Esther's room, never a curly head that did not look up, in
+confiding assurance of a welcome smile, to her bright eyes. The
+inconsiderate and never-ceasing requirements of children and invalids
+never drew from her other than a cheerful response; and to my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_742" id="Page_742">[Pg 742]</a></span> mind
+there is more saintship in this than in the private wearing of any
+number of hair-cloth shirts or belts lined with spikes.</p>
+
+<p>"In a large family of careless, noisy children there will be constant
+losing of thimbles and needles and scissors; but Aunt Esther was always
+ready, without reproach, to help the careless and the luckless. Her
+things, so well kept and so treasured, she was willing to lend, with
+many a caution and injunction it is true, but also with a relish of
+right good-will. And, to do us justice, we generally felt the sacredness
+of the trust, and were more careful of her things than of our own. If a
+shade of sewing-silk were wanting, or a choice button, or a bit of braid
+or tape, Aunt Esther cheerfully volunteered something from her well-kept
+stores, not regarding the trouble she made herself in seeking the key,
+unlocking the drawer, and searching out in bag or parcel just the
+treasure demanded. Never was more perfect precision, or more perfect
+readiness to accommodate others.</p>
+
+<p>"Her little income, scarcely reaching a hundred dollars yearly, was
+disposed of with a generosity worthy a fortune. One tenth was sacredly
+devoted to charity, and a still further sum laid by every year for
+presents to friends. No Christmas or New Year ever came round that Aunt
+Esther, out of this very tiny fund, did not find something for children
+and servants. Her gifts were trifling in value, but well timed,&mdash;a ball
+of thread-wax, a paper of pins, a pincushion,&mdash;something generally so
+well chosen as to show that she had been running over our needs, and
+noting what to give. She was no less gracious as receiver than as giver.
+The little articles that we made for her, or the small presents that we
+could buy out of our childish resources, she always declared were
+exactly what she needed; and she delighted us by the care she took of
+them and the value she set upon them.</p>
+
+<p>"Her income was a source of the greatest pleasure to her, as maintaining
+an independence without which she could not have been happy. Though she
+constantly gave, to every family in which she lived, services which no
+money could repay, it would have been the greatest trial to her not to
+be able to provide for herself. Her dress, always that of a true
+gentlewoman,&mdash;refined, quiet, and neat,&mdash;was bought from this restricted
+sum, and her small travelling expenses were paid out of it. She abhorred
+anything false or flashy: her caps were trimmed with <i>real</i> thread-lace,
+and her silk dresses were of the best quality, perfectly well made and
+kept; and, after all, a little sum always remained over in her hands for
+unforeseen exigencies.</p>
+
+<p>"This love of independence was one of the strongest features of her
+life, and we often playfully told her that her only form of selfishness
+was the monopoly of saintship,&mdash;that she who gave so much was not
+willing to allow others to give to her,&mdash;that she who made herself
+servant of all was not willing to allow others to serve her.</p>
+
+<p>"Among the trials of her life must be reckoned much ill-health; borne,
+however, with such heroic patience that it was not easy to say when the
+hand of pain was laid upon her. She inherited, too, a tendency to
+depression of spirits, which at times increased to a morbid and
+distressing gloom. Few knew or suspected these sufferings, so completely
+had she learned to suppress every outward manifestation that might
+interfere with the happiness of others. In her hours of depression she
+resolutely forbore to sadden the lives of those around her with her own
+melancholy, and often her darkest moods were so lighted up and adorned
+with an outside show of wit and humor, that those who had known her
+intimately were astonished to hear that she had ever been subject to
+depression.</p>
+
+<p>"Her truthfulness of nature amounted almost to superstition. From her
+promise once given she felt no change of purpose could absolve her; and
+therefore rarely would she give it absolutely, for she <i>could not</i> alter
+the thing that had gone forth from her lips. Our belief<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_743" id="Page_743">[Pg 743]</a></span> in the
+certainty of her fulfilling her word was like our belief in the
+immutability of the laws of nature. Whoever asked her got of her the
+absolute truth on every subject, and, when she had no good thing to say,
+her silence was often truly awful. When anything mean or ungenerous was
+brought to her knowledge, she would close her lips resolutely; but the
+flash in her eyes showed what she would speak were speech permitted. In
+her last days she spoke to a friend of what she had suffered from the
+strength of her personal antipathies. 'I thank God,' she said, 'that I
+believe at last I have overcome all that too, and that there has not
+been, for some years, any human being toward whom I have felt a movement
+of dislike.'</p>
+
+<p>"The last year of her life was a constant discipline of unceasing pain,
+borne with that fortitude which could make her an entertaining and
+interesting companion even while the sweat of mortal agony was starting
+from her brow. Her own room she kept as a last asylum, to which she
+would silently retreat when the torture became too intense for the
+repression of society, and there alone, with closed doors, she wrestled
+with her agony. The stubborn independence of her nature took refuge in
+this final fastness; and she prayed only that she might go down to death
+with the full ability to steady herself all the way, needing the help of
+no other hand.</p>
+
+<p>"The ultimate struggle of earthly feeling came when this proud
+self-reliance was forced to give way, and she was obliged to leave
+herself helpless in the hands of others. 'God requires that I should
+give up my last form of self-will,' she said; 'now I have resigned
+<i>this</i>, perhaps he will let me go home.'</p>
+
+<p>"In a good old age, Death, the friend, came and opened the door of this
+mortal state, and a great soul, that had served a long apprenticeship to
+little things, went forth into the joy of its Lord; a life of
+self-sacrifice and self-abnegation passed into a life of endless rest."</p>
+
+<p>"But," said Rudolph, "I rebel at this life of self-abnegation and
+self-sacrifice. I do not think it the duty of noble women, who have
+beautiful natures and enlarged and cultivated tastes, to make themselves
+the slaves of the sick-room and nursery."</p>
+
+<p>"Such was not the teaching of our New England faith," said I. "Absolute
+unselfishness,&mdash;the death of self,&mdash;such were its teachings, and such as
+Esther's the characters it made. 'Do the duty nearest thee,' was the
+only message it gave to 'women with a mission'; and from duty to duty,
+from one self-denial to another, they rose to a majesty of moral
+strength impossible to any form of mere self-indulgence. It is of souls
+thus sculptured and chiselled by self-denial and self-discipline that
+the living temple of the perfect hereafter is to be built. The pain of
+the discipline is short, but the glory of the fruition is eternal."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_PIONEER_EDITOR" id="A_PIONEER_EDITOR"></a>A PIONEER EDITOR.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The historian who, without qualification of his statement, should date
+the commencement of our late civil war from the attack on Fort Sumter,
+instead of the first attempt by the slaveholders to render a single
+property interest paramount in the relations of the country, would prove
+himself unfit for his task. The battles fought in the press, pulpit, and
+forum, in ante-war days, were as much agencies in the great conflict as
+the deadlier ones fought since, on land and sea. Men strove in the
+former, as in the latter case, for the extension of the slave system on
+one side, and for its total suppression on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_744" id="Page_744">[Pg 744]</a></span> other; and it is the
+proud distinction of the early partisans of freedom to be recognized now
+as the pioneers&mdash;the advance-guard&mdash;of the armed hosts who at last won
+the victory for humanity.</p>
+
+<p>This view of the actual beginning of the war makes the facts in the
+lives of those antislavery men who took the lead in the good fight, and
+especially of such as died with their armor on, of the utmost value to
+the historian. We therefore propose to offer a contribution to the
+record, by tracing the career of one who acted a distinguished part in
+the struggle, as an antislavery journalist.</p>
+
+<p>Gamaliel Bailey was born in New Jersey,&mdash;a State where antislavery men,
+or, indeed, men of progress in any direction, are so far from being a
+staple growth, that they can barely be said to be indigenous to her
+soil. His birthday was December 3, 1807. He was the son of a Methodist
+preacher noted for his earnestness and devotion to the duties of his
+calling. His mother was a woman of active brain and sympathetic heart.
+It was from her, as is not unusual with men of marked traits, that the
+son derived his distinguishing mental characteristics. His education was
+such as was obtainable in the private schools of Philadelphia, which,
+whatever their advantages to others, were not particularly well
+calculated to prepare young Bailey for the study of the learned
+profession he subsequently chose; and he had to seek, without their aid,
+the classical knowledge necessary to a mastery of the technicalities of
+medical science. Nevertheless he graduated with credit in the Jefferson
+Medical College, and at so early an age&mdash;for he was then only
+twenty&mdash;that the restriction in its charter deprived him of the usual
+diploma for a year. The statutes of New Jersey, however, while
+forbidding him to prescribe for the physical ailments of her citizens,
+did not pronounce him too young to undertake the mental training of her
+children, and he eagerly availed himself of the pedagogue's privilege of
+bending the twigs of mind amid the pine forests of his native State. By
+the time he was entitled to his diploma, he was satisfied that the
+overdraught upon his vitality had been so great, during his college
+years, as utterly to unfit him for the field of action on which, but a
+twelvemonth before, he had been so desirous to enter. A sea voyage was
+chosen as the best means of resting his brain while strengthening his
+body and preparing it for the heavy demands which his profession would
+naturally make.</p>
+
+<p>Having, with the scanty income from his year's teaching, equipped
+himself for his voyage, he obeyed at once the dictates of necessity and
+of judgment, and shipped on a vessel bound for China. Instead of a
+successful physician winning golden opinions from all, Dr. Bailey was
+now a common sailor before the mast, receiving from his superiors oaths
+or orders as the case might be. The ship's destination was Canton, and
+its arrival in port was attended by such an unusual amount of sickness
+among the crew, that it became necessary to assign young Bailey the
+office of surgeon. This he filled with promptness and skill, and when
+the vessel set sail for Philadelphia, the sailor was again found at his
+post, performing his duties as acceptably as could have been expected
+from a greenhorn on his first cruise. Once more on his native shore, and
+in some degree reinvigorated by travel, he opened his office for the
+practice of medicine. At the end of three months he found himself out of
+patients, and in a situation far from enjoyable to one of his active
+temperament.</p>
+
+<p>But, luckily for Dr. Bailey, whatever it may have been for the church of
+his fathers, just at this time the so-called "Radicals" had begun their
+reform movement against Methodist Episcopacy, which resulted in the
+secession of a number of the clergy and laity, principally in the Middle
+States, and the organization of the Methodist Protestants. These
+"Radicals" had their head-quarters at Baltimore. There they started an
+organ under the title of "The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_745" id="Page_745">[Pg 745]</a></span> Methodist Protestant," and to the
+editorship of this journal Dr. Bailey was called. His youthful
+inexperience as a writer was not the only remarkable feature of this
+engagement; for he had not even the qualification of being at that time
+a professor of religion. His connection with "The Methodist Protestant"
+was a brief one; but it was terminated by lack of sufficient funds to
+sustain a regular editor, and not by lack of ability in the editor.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Bailey was again adrift, and we next find him concerned in "Kelley's
+Expedition to Oregon." This had been projected at St. Louis, which was
+to be its starting-point; and thither hastened our adventurous young
+physician&mdash;to learn that the expedition, having had little more to rest
+upon than that baseless fabric so often supplied by printers' ink, was
+an utter failure. Finding himself without funds to pay for the costly
+means of conveyance then used in the West, he made his way back as far
+as Cincinnati on foot. Soon after his arrival there the cholera broke
+out. This presented an aspect of affairs rather inviting to a courageous
+spirit. He gladly embraced the opening for practice; and, happening to
+be known to some of the faculty of the place, he was recommended for the
+appointment of Physician to the Cholera Hospital. Thus he was soon
+introduced to the general confidence of the profession and the public,
+and seemed to be on the highway to fame. Dr. Eberlie, a standard medical
+authority at that day, as he still is among many practitioners of the
+old school in the West, was then preparing his work on the Diseases of
+Children, and he availed himself of Dr. Bailey's aid. This opened an
+unexpected field to the latter for the exercise of his ability as a
+writer; and the work in question contains abundant evidence that he
+would have succeeded in the line of medical authorship. But
+circumstances proved unfavorable to his connection with Dr. Eberlie, and
+he again devoted himself to the practice of his profession, in which he
+continued for a time with great success.</p>
+
+<p>At this date, however, an event of great interest occurred in connection
+with the agitation of the slavery question,&mdash;an event exercising a most
+decided influence on the career of Dr. Bailey,&mdash;in fact, changing
+entirely the current of his eventful life. We allude to the discussions
+of slavery at Lane Seminary, and the memorable expulsion of a number of
+the students for their persistence in promulging antislavery doctrines.
+Dr. Bailey was then engaged at the Seminary in the delivery of a course
+of lectures on Physiology. He became interested in the pending
+discussion, and espoused the proslavery side. For this his mind had
+probably been unconsciously prepared by the current of thought in
+Cincinnati, then under the mercantile control of her proslavery
+customers from Kentucky and other Southern States. But erelong he
+appeared as a convert to the antislavery side of the discussion. This he
+himself was wont to attribute, in great part, to the light which an
+honest comparison of views threw upon the subject; but it is evident
+that his conversion was somewhat accelerated by the expulsion of his
+antislavery antagonists in debate. Following the lead of these new
+sympathies, he became (in 1835) editorially associated with that great
+pioneer advocate of freedom, James G. Birney, whose venerated name has
+been so honorably connected with the recent triumph of the Union arms,
+through the courage of three of his sons. The paper was "The Cincinnati
+Philanthropist," so well remembered by the earlier espousers of
+antislavery truth. The association continued about a year. Dr. Bailey
+then became sole editor of the Philanthropist, and soon after sole
+proprietor. It was from the pages of this journal that a series of
+antislavery tracts were reprinted, which had not a little to do in
+giving fresh impulse to the discussions of that day. They were entitled
+"Facts for the People."</p>
+
+<p>The relation of Dr. Bailey to a journal which was regarded by the
+slave-owners as the organ of their worst enemies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_746" id="Page_746">[Pg 746]</a></span> made him a marked man,
+and called him to endure severe and unexpected ordeals. In 1836, his
+opponents incited against him the memorable mob, whose first act was the
+secret destruction of his press at midnight. Soon after the riot raged
+openly, and not only destroyed the remaining contents of his
+printing-office, but the building itself. Mr. Birney, being the older
+and more conspicuous of the offenders, was of course more emphatically
+the object of the mob's wrath than the junior associate. But the latter
+shared with him the personal perils of the day, while bearing the brunt
+of the pecuniary losses. As is usual in such outbreaks, after three days
+of fury, the lawless spirit of the people subsided. There was a
+repetition of violence in 1840, however, and during another three days'
+reign of terror two more presses were destroyed. But such was the
+indomitable energy of the man in whose person and property the
+constitutional liberty of the press was thus assailed, that in three
+weeks the Philanthropist was again before the public, sturdily defending
+the truth it was established to proclaim; and this, be it remembered,
+when the press-work of even weekly journals was not let out, in
+Cincinnati, as jobs for "lightning presses," but was done in the
+proprietors' own offices, on presses to be obtained only from distant
+manufactories.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this year that the Liberty party, of which Dr. Bailey was a
+prominent leader, entered for the first time into the Presidential
+contest, with James G. Birney as its candidate.</p>
+
+<p>Not yet satiated, the spirit of mob violence manifested itself a third
+time in 1843; but it was suppressed by the interference of the military
+power, and its demonstration was followed by a growth of liberal
+sentiment altogether unlooked for. Availing himself of this favorable
+change, Dr. Bailey started a daily paper to which the name of "The
+Herald" was given.</p>
+
+<p>The unprecedented ordeal through which Dr. Bailey had passed, involving
+not only his family, but Mr. Birney, Mr. Clawson, and other friends of
+his enterprise, was, after all, but needful training for the subsequent
+work allotted to the reformer. He continued the publication of the Daily
+Herald, and the Philanthropist also, but under the name of "The Weekly
+Herald and Philanthropist," until 1847. With a growing family and a
+meagre income, the intervening years marked a season of self-denial to
+himself and his excellent wife such as few, even among reformers, have
+been called to pass through. And yet through all his poverty his
+cheerfulness was unfaltering, and inspired all who came in contact with
+him. There was a better day before him,&mdash;better in a pecuniary as well
+as a political sense. He had now fairly won a reputation throughout the
+country for courage and ability as an antislavery journalist. A project
+for establishing an antislavery organ at the seat of the national
+government had been successfully carried out by the Executive Committee
+of the American and Foreign Antislavery Society, under the lead of that
+now venerable and esteemed pioneer of freedom, Lewis Tappan. The
+editorial charge of it was tendered, with great propriety, to Dr.
+Bailey, and was accepted. He entered upon his duties as editor in chief
+of "The National Era" in January, 1847, with the Reverend Amos A.
+Phelps, now deceased, and John G. Whittier, as corresponding editors,
+and L. P. Noble as publishing agent. "The Daily Herald" and "The Weekly
+Herald and Philanthropist" were transferred to Messrs. Sperry and
+Matthews, with Stanley Matthews as editor; but the political ambition of
+the latter prevented his continuing the paper in the steadfast
+antislavery tone of his predecessor, and it soon ceased to appear.<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_747" id="Page_747">[Pg 747]</a></span></p>
+<p>The establishment of the National Era, while it furnished a most
+appropriate field for Dr. Bailey's talents, also marked an era in the
+antislavery history of the country. At the centres of all governments
+there is found a fulcrum whose value politicians have long since
+demonstrated by its use,&mdash;too frequently for the most unworthy purposes.
+There had always been organs for conservatism at Washington, but none
+for progress. There were numbers of bold thinkers throughout the
+country, who had found, here and there, a representative of their ideas
+in the government. But they had no newspaper to keep watch and ward over
+him, or to correctly report his acts to his constituents,&mdash;no vehicle
+through which they could bring their thoughts to bear upon him or
+others. This was furnished by the National Era. But this was not the
+only direction in which it proved useful. It enabled the friends of
+emancipation everywhere to communicate freely with those against whose
+gigantic system of wrong they felt it their duty to wage war, where such
+were found willing to read their antagonists' arguments, instead of
+taking them as perverted by proslavery journals.</p>
+
+<p>The first effect of the Era upon the local antislavery journals which it
+found in existence was, unquestionably, to excite not a little
+apprehension and jealousy among their conductors. Naturally they felt
+that the national reputation of Dr. Bailey and his assistants, aided by
+a central position, was calculated to detract from their own importance
+in the estimation of their patrons. But, besides this, there was the
+actual fact of the Era's large supply of original and high-toned
+literary matter, added to the direct and reliable Congressional news it
+was expected to furnish, which stared them threateningly in the face.
+And we well remember now what pain these petty jealousies gave to the
+sensitive nature of our departed friend. But these gradually subsided,
+until there was hardly an antislavery editor of average discernment who
+did not come to see that a national organ like the Era, by legitimating
+discussion and keeping up the heat and blaze of a vigorous agitation, at
+the nation's very centre, against that nation's own giant crime, would
+prove a benefit, in the end, to all colaborers worthy of the name. And
+the increase of antislavery journals, as well as of vigor in conducting
+them, in the period subsequent to 1847, proved that this was the correct
+view.</p>
+
+<p>Although now so favorably placed for contest with his great foe, Dr.
+Bailey was here subjected to a renewal of the assaults which had become
+painfully familiar in the West. His paper had not been in existence more
+than fifteen months when an event occurred which, although he had in it
+no agency whatever, brought down upon his devoted head a fourth
+discharge of the vials of popular wrath. Some seventy or eighty slaves
+attempted to escape from Washington in the steamer Pearl, and instantly
+the charge of complicity was laid at his door. His office and dwelling
+were surrounded by a furious crowd, including a large proportion of
+office-holding F.F.V.'s, and some "gentlemen of property and standing."
+These gentlemen threatened the entire destruction of the press and type
+of the Era, while the editor's personal safety, with that of his family,
+was again put in peril for the space of three terrific days. The Federal
+metropolis had never known such days since the torch applied by a
+foreign foe had wrapped the first Capitol in flames. The calm
+self-possession of Dr. Bailey, when he made his appearance unarmed
+before the swaying mob, and addressed them from the steps of his
+dwelling,&mdash;as described by the late Dr. Houston in a letter to the New
+York Tribune, from notes taken while he was concealed in the house,&mdash;was
+such that, while disarming the leaders with the simple majesty of the
+truth, it did not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_748" id="Page_748">[Pg 748]</a></span> fail to produce a reaction even in the most
+exasperated members of the mob.</p>
+
+<p>It would indeed be an interesting task to trace the public influence of
+this last demonstration, for it offered phases of interest to both
+parties. It is sufficient to say, that the Era's unmolested existence
+ever after was simply due to the instincts of self-preservation in the
+community. The issue was practically presented to the owners of real
+estate in the District, whether freedom of debate on all topics of
+public concern should be tolerated there, or the capital be removed to
+some Western centre. The bare possibility of this event was more than
+the slaveholding land-owners could face, and produced the desired
+effect. The continuance of the paper once acquiesced in, the tact of its
+editor, aided by that remarkable suavity of manners which made him a
+favorite in the private circles of Washington, was sufficient to forever
+forbid the probability of a second mob. And thenceforward the Era
+increased in influence as well as circulation. The latter, indeed, soon
+reached a figure which entitled it to a share of government patronage,
+while the former commanded the respect even of the enemies of the cause
+it defended.</p>
+
+<p>But this is not all that is to be said of the Era. To that paper belongs
+the honor of introducing to the world the story of "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
+Although reference has frequently been made to the origin of this
+wonderful fiction, the facts of its inception and growth have never been
+given to the public. These are so curious, that we are happy to be able
+to present what politicians would call the "secret history" of this
+book. The account was furnished to a friend by Dr. Bailey himself, when
+about to embark for Europe, on his first voyage for health, in 1853; the
+manuscript, now used for the first time, was hurriedly penned, without
+expectation of its appearance in print, and therefore has all the
+dashing freedom which might be looked for in a communication from one
+friend to another. We give it <i>verbatim</i>, that it may serve for a
+<i>souvenir</i>, as well as a contribution to the literary history of the
+time.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 20em;">"<span class="smcap">New York</span>, May 27, 1853.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"In the beginning of the year 1851, as my custom has been, I
+sent remittances to various writers whom I wished to furnish
+contributions to the Era, during that volume. Among these was
+Mrs. Stowe. I sent her one hundred dollars, saying to her that
+for that sum she might write as <i>much</i> as she pleased, <i>what</i>
+she pleased, and <i>when</i> she pleased. I did not dream that she
+would attempt a novel, for she had never written one. Some time
+in the summer she wrote me that she was going to write me a
+story about 'How a Man became a Thing.' It would occupy a few
+numbers of the Era, in chapters. She did not suppose or dream
+that it would expand to a novel, nor did I. She changed the
+title to 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' and commenced it in August. I
+read two or three of the first chapters, to see that everything
+was going on right, and read no more then. She proceeded,&mdash;the
+story grew,&mdash;it seemed to have no end,&mdash;everybody talked of it.
+I thought the mails were never so irregular, for none of my
+subscribers was willing to lose a single number of the Era
+while the story was going on. Mrs. Bailey attracted my
+attention by her special devotion to it, and Mr. Chase always
+read it before anything else. Of the hundreds of letters
+received weekly, renewing subscriptions or sending new ones,
+there was scarcely one that did not contain some cordial
+reference to Uncle Tom. I wrote to Mrs. Stowe, and told her
+that, although such a story had not been contracted for, and I
+had, in my programme, limited my remittance to her to one
+hundred dollars, yet, as the thing had grown beyond all our
+calculations, I felt bound to make her another remittance. So I
+sent her two hundred dollars more. The story was closed early
+in the spring of 1852. I had not yet read it; but I wrote to
+Mrs. Stowe that, as I had not contemplated so large an outlay
+in my plans for the volume, as the paper had not received so
+much pecuniary benefit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_749" id="Page_749">[Pg 749]</a></span> from its publication as it would have
+done could my readers have foreseen what it was to be, and as
+my large circulation had served as a tremendous advertisement
+for the work, which was now about to be published separately,
+and of which she held the copyright alone, I supposed that I
+ought not to pay for it so much as if these circumstances had
+not existed. But I simply stated the case to her,&mdash;submitted
+everything to her judgment,&mdash;and would pay her additional just
+exactly what she should determine was right. She named one
+hundred dollars more; this I immediately remitted. And thus
+terminated my relations with 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' but not with
+its author, who is still engaged as a regular contributor to
+the Era. Dr. Snodgrass is hereby commended to Mr. Clephane [Dr.
+Bailey's clerk], who is authorized to hand him any letters
+between Mrs. Stowe and myself that may aid him in his
+undertaking."</p></div>
+
+<p>It may be proper to say that the "undertaking" referred to contemplated
+a biographical sketch, not of Dr. Bailey, but of his distinguished
+contributor,&mdash;a project the execution of which circumstances did not
+favor, and which was therefore abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle Tom's Cabin," and the remarkable introduction of its author to
+fame and pecuniary fortune, were not the only results of a similar
+character referable to the Era. Mrs. Southworth also made her literary
+<i>d&eacute;but</i> in the same journal. Previous to her connection with the Era,
+she had only published some short sketches in the Baltimore Saturday
+Visiter, over her initial "E," or "Emma" at most; and even these
+signatures gave her much trouble, as her letters to the editor plainly
+indicated, so fearful was she of the recognition and unfavorable
+criticism of her friends. She had a painful lack of confidence in her
+own ability. Just before the transfer of the subscription list of the
+Visiter to the Era, she had sent in a story. To this, against her
+earnest protest, the editor had affixed her entire name, and the story,
+prepared for the Visiter, was transferred with its list to the Era, and
+was there published, in spite of the deprecations of Mrs. Southworth. It
+served the purpose intended. The attention of Dr. Bailey was called to
+one until then unknown to him, although residing in the same city, and
+he at once gave her a paying engagement in his journal. This brought her
+under new influences, which resulted in her conversion to the principles
+of the antislavery reform,&mdash;a conversion whose fruits have since been
+shown in her deeds as well as her writings. And thus commenced the
+literary career of another successful author, who, but for the existence
+of the Era, would probably have been left to struggle on in the
+adversity from which her pen has so creditably set her free.</p>
+
+<p>Unduly encouraged by the success of his weekly journal, Dr. Bailey
+started a daily edition of the Era. Having committed himself to continue
+it for a year without regard to pecuniary results, he did so, and here
+the publication ceased. The experiment cost him heavily. This, however,
+he anticipated, though he of course also anticipated ultimate profit,
+notwithstanding the warning which he had received from the equally
+unlucky experiment of the Cincinnati Daily Herald. In a letter to the
+writer of this, dated December 18, 1853, he said: "I start the Daily
+with the full expectation of sinking five thousand dollars on it. Of
+course I can afford no extra expenses, but must do nearly all the work
+on it myself,"&mdash;a statement which shows at once the hopefulness and the
+energy of our friend's disposition.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Bailey died at sea, while on his way to Europe, on the fifth day of
+June, 1859. It was the second voyage thither which he had undertaken
+within a few years, for the benefit of his broken health. His body was
+brought home and interred at Washington. With its editor died the
+National Era; for it was discontinued soon after his decease.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Raymond of the New York<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_750" id="Page_750">[Pg 750]</a></span> Daily Times, who was a fellow-passenger
+with Dr. Bailey, wrote an account of his last hours for his paper, which
+has by no means lost its melancholy interest. "I gathered from his
+conversation," says Mr. Raymond, "that he did not consider himself to be
+very ill, at least, that his lungs were not affected, but that a
+long-continued dyspepsia, and the nervous excitement which his labors
+had induced, had combined to bring about the weakness under which he
+suffered. For the first two or three days he was upon deck for the
+greater part of the time. The weather was fresh, though not unpleasantly
+cold, and the sea not rough enough to occasion any considerable
+discomfort. The motion, however, affected him disagreeably. He slept
+badly, had no appetite, and could relish nothing but a little fruit now
+and then. His eldest son was with him, and attended upon him with all a
+fond son's solicitude. Except myself, I do not think he had another
+acquaintance on board. He was cheerful and social, and talked with
+interest of everything connected with public affairs at home and abroad.
+He suffered some inconvenience from the fact that his room was below,
+and that he could only reach it by descending two flights of stairs. We
+occasionally made a couch of cushions for him upon deck, when he became
+fatigued; but this made him too conspicuous for his taste, and he seemed
+uneasily fearful of attracting attention to himself as an invalid. After
+Tuesday the sea became remarkably smooth, and so continued to the end of
+the voyage. But it brought him no relief; his strength failed with
+failing appetite; and on Thursday, from staying too long on deck, he
+took cold, which confined him to his room next day. Otherwise he seemed
+about as usual through that day and Saturday, and on Sunday morning
+seemed even better, saying that he had slept unusually well, and felt
+strengthened and refreshed. He took some slight nourishment, and
+attempted to get up from his berth without assistance; the effort was
+too much for him, however, and his son, who had left his room at his
+request, but stood at the door, saw him fall as he attempted to stand.
+He at once went in, raised him, and laid him upon the couch. Seeing that
+he was greatly distressed in breathing, he went immediately for Dr.
+Smith, the surgeon of the ship. I met him on deck, and, hearing of his
+father's condition, went at once to his room. I found him wholly
+unconscious, breathing with difficulty, but perfectly quiet, and
+seemingly asleep. Drs. Beale and Dubois were present, and endeavored to
+give him a stimulant, but he was unable to swallow, and it was evident
+that he was dying. He continued in this state for about half an hour;
+his breathing became slower and slower, until finally it ceased
+altogether, and that was all! Not a movement of a muscle, not a spasm or
+a tremor of any kind, betrayed the moment when his spirit took its
+departure. An infant, wearied with play on a summer's eve, could not
+have fallen asleep more gently."</p>
+
+<p>As mourners over him who thus passed away in the very prime of manhood,
+there were left a wife, whose maiden name was Maria L. Shands, and who
+was the daughter of a Methodist preacher and planter of Sussex County,
+Virginia, and six children, three sons and three daughters. In Mrs.
+Bailey her husband had found a woman of rare intelligence as well as
+courage, whose companionship proved most sustaining and consoling amid
+the trials of his eventful life. She and five of their children still
+live to revere his memory. Two of the survivors are sons; and it is
+pleasant to add that one of these has done honor to his parentage, as
+well as to himself, by continuing what is virtually the same good fight,
+as a commander of colored troops, under General William Birney, the son
+of the very James G. Birney who was Dr. Bailey's editorial associate in
+Cincinnati.</p>
+
+<p>Subjected as Dr. Bailey was so frequently to the fury of mobs, and the
+pressure of social opposition and pecuniary want, he led the hosts of
+Antislavery<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_751" id="Page_751">[Pg 751]</a></span> Reform into the very stronghold of the enemy's country; and
+to say that he maintained his position with integrity and success is but
+to pronounce the common praise of his contemporaries and colaborers. As
+a writer he was clear and logical to an uncommon degree, carrying
+certain conviction to the mind, wherever it was at all open to the
+truth; and with the rare habit of stating fairly the position of his
+opponent, he never failed of winning his respect and his confidence. The
+death of such a man was well calculated to fill the friends of progress
+throughout the world with unfeigned regret. Especially must they lament
+that he departed too soon to witness the triumph of liberty, for which
+it had so long been his pleasure "to labor and to wait."</p>
+
+<p>We learn with much satisfaction, that a "Life of Dr. Bailey" is in
+course of preparation, with the sanction of Mrs. Bailey, which, while
+affording much valuable information concerning the antislavery events of
+the past, will also offer space, wanting here, to do full justice to the
+memory of this estimable man.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> These facts are given because of an erroneous statement
+which crept into the brief though kind biographical notice of Dr. Bailey
+in "The New American Cyclop&aelig;dia," to the effect that the subscription
+list of the Philanthropist was transferred with its editor to the
+National Era. It was the list of "The Saturday Visiter," published for
+many years, as an antislavery journal, at Baltimore, which was
+transferred to the Era, together with the services of its editor and
+proprietor (J. E. Snodgrass) as special correspondent and publishing
+agent at that important point. This arrangement admirably served to
+secure to the Era a circulation in Southern communities where the
+Visiter had already found its way, and where it would otherwise have
+been difficult to introduce a paper which was notoriously the central
+organ of Abolitionism.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="GRIFFITH_GAUNT_OR_JEALOUSY" id="GRIFFITH_GAUNT_OR_JEALOUSY"></a>GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XXVI.</h3>
+
+<p>He was gone for good, this time.</p>
+
+<p>At the fair the wrestling was ended, and the tongues going over it all
+again, and throwing the victors; the greasy pole, with leg of mutton
+attached by ribbons, was being hoisted, and the swings flying, and the
+lads and lasses footing it to the fife and tabor, and the people
+chattering in groups; when the clatter of a horse's feet was heard, and
+a horseman burst in and rode recklessly through the market-place;
+indeed, if his noble horse had been as rash as he was, some would have
+been trampled under foot. The rider's face was ghastly: such as were not
+exactly in his path had time to see it, and wonder how this terrible
+countenance came into that merry place. Thus, as he passed, shouts of
+dismay arose, and a space opened before him, and then closed behind him
+with a great murmur that followed at his heels.</p>
+
+<p>Tom Leicester was listening, spell-bound, on the outskirts of the
+throng, to the songs and humorous tirades of a pedler selling his wares;
+and was saying to himself, "I too will be a pedler." Hearing the row, he
+turned round, and saw his master just coming down with that stricken
+face.</p>
+
+<p>Tom could not read his own name in print or manuscript; and these are
+the fellows that beat us all at reading countenances: he saw in a moment
+that some great calamity had fallen on Griffith's head; and nature
+stirred in him. He darted to his master's side, and seized the bridle.
+"What is up?" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>But Griffith did not answer nor notice. His ears were almost deaf, and
+his eyes, great and staring, were fixed right ahead; and, to all
+appearance, he did not see the people. He seemed to be making for the
+horizon.</p>
+
+<p>"Master! for the love of God, speak to me," cried Leicester. "What have
+they done to you? Whither be you going, with the face of a ghost?"</p>
+
+<p>"Away, from the hangman," shrieked Griffith, still staring at the
+horizon. "Stay me not; my hands itch for their throats; my heart thirsts
+for their blood; but I'll not hang for a priest and a wanton." Then he
+suddenly turned on Leicester, "Let thou go, or&mdash;" and he lifted his
+heavy riding-whip.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_752" id="Page_752">[Pg 752]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then Leicester let go the rein, and the whip descended on the horse's
+flank. He went clattering furiously over the stones, and drove the
+thinner groups apart like chaff, and his galloping feet were soon heard
+fainter and fainter till they died away in the distance. Leicester stood
+gaping.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Griffith's horse, a black hunter of singular power and beauty, carried
+his wretched master well that day. He went on till sunset, trotting,
+cantering, and walking, without intermission; the whip ceased to touch
+him, the rein never checked him. He found he was the master, and he went
+his own way. He took his broken rider back into the county where he had
+been foaled. But a few miles from his native place they came to the
+"Packhorse," a pretty little roadside inn, with farm-yard and buildings
+at the back. He had often baited here in his infancy; and now, stiff and
+stumbling with fatigue, the good horse could not pass the familiar
+place; he walked gravely into the stable-yard, and there fairly came to
+an end; craned out his drooping head, crooked his limbs, and seemed of
+wood. And no wonder. He was ninety-three miles from his last corn.</p>
+
+<p>Paul Carrick, a young farrier, who frequented the "Packhorse," happened
+just then to be lounging at the kitchen door, and saw him come in. He
+turned directly, and shouted into the house, "Ho! Master Vint, come
+hither. Here's Black Dick come home, and brought you a worshipful
+customer."</p>
+
+<p>The landlord bustled out of the kitchen, crying, "They are welcome
+both." Then he came lowly louting to Griffith, cap in hand, and held the
+horse, poor immovable brute; and his wife courtesied perseveringly at
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith dismounted, and stood there looking like one in a dream.</p>
+
+<p>"Please you come in, sir," said the landlady, smiling professionally.</p>
+
+<p>He followed her mechanically.</p>
+
+<p>"Would your worship be private? We keep a parlor for gentles."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, let me be alone," he groaned.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy Vint, the daughter, happened to be on the stairs and heard him:
+the voice startled her, and she turned round directly to look at the
+speaker; but she only saw his back going into the room, and then he
+flung himself like a sack into the arm-chair.</p>
+
+<p>The landlady invited him to order supper: he declined. She pressed him.
+He flung a piece of money on the table, and told her savagely to score
+his supper, and leave him in peace.</p>
+
+<p>She flounced out with a red face, and complained to her husband in the
+kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>Harry Vint rung the crown-piece on the table before he committed himself
+to a reply. It rang like a bell. "Churl or not, his coin is good," said
+Harry Vint, philosophically. "I'll eat his supper, dame, for that
+matter."</p>
+
+<p>"Father," whispered Mercy, "I do think the gentleman is in trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"And that is no business of mine, neither," said Harry Vint.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the guest they were discussing called loudly for a quart of
+burnt wine.</p>
+
+<p>When it was ready, Mercy offered to take it in to him. She was curious.
+The landlord looked up rather surprised; for his daughter attended to
+the farm, but fought shy of the inn and its business.</p>
+
+<p>"Take it, lass, and welcome for me," said Mrs. Vint, pettishly.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy took the wine in, and found Griffith with his head buried in his
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>She stood awhile with the tray, not knowing what to do.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as he did not move, she said softly, "The wine, sir, an if it
+please you."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith lifted his head, and turned two eyes clouded with suffering
+upon her. He saw a buxom, blooming young woman, with remarkably
+dove-like eyes that dwelt with timid, kindly curiosity upon him. He
+looked at her in a half-distracted way, and then put his hand to the
+mug. "Here's perdition to all false women!" said he, and tossed half the
+wine down at a single draught.</p>
+
+<p>"'T is not to me you drink, sir," said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_753" id="Page_753">[Pg 753]</a></span> Mercy, with gentle dignity. Then
+she courtesied modestly and retired, discouraged, not offended.</p>
+
+<p>The wretched Griffith took no notice,&mdash;did not even see he had repulsed
+a friendly visitor. The wine, taken on an empty stomach, soon stupefied
+him, and he staggered to bed.</p>
+
+<p>He awoke at daybreak: and O the agony of that waking!</p>
+
+<p>He lay sighing awhile, with his hot skin quivering on his bones, and his
+heart like lead; then got up and flung his clothes on hastily, and asked
+how far to the nearest seaport.</p>
+
+<p>Twenty miles.</p>
+
+<p>He called for his horse. The poor brute was dead lame.</p>
+
+<p>He cursed that good servant for going lame. He walked round and round
+like a wild beast, chafing and fuming awhile; then sank into a torpor of
+dejection, and sat with his head bowed on the table all day.</p>
+
+<p>He ate scarcely any food; but drank wine freely, remarking, however,
+that it was false-hearted stuff, did him no good, and had no taste as
+wine used to have. "But nothing is what it was," said he. "Even I was
+happy once. But that seems years ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Alas! poor gentleman; God comfort you," said Mercy Vint, and came, with
+the tears in her dove-like eyes, and said to her father, "To be sure his
+worship hath been crossed in love; and what could she be thinking of?
+Such a handsome, well-made gentleman!"</p>
+
+<p>"Now that is a wench's first thought," said Harry Vint; "more likely
+lost his money, gambling, or racing. But, indeed, I think 't is his head
+is disordered, not his heart. I wish the 'Packhorse' was quit of him,
+maugre his laced coat. We want no kill-joys here."</p>
+
+<p>That night he was heard groaning, and talking, and did not come down at
+all.</p>
+
+<p>So at noon Mrs. Vint knocked at his door. A weak voice bade her enter.
+She found him shivering, and he asked her for a fire.</p>
+
+<p>She grumbled, out of hearing, but lighted a fire.</p>
+
+<p>Presently his voice was heard hallooing. He wanted all the windows open,
+he was so burning hot.</p>
+
+<p>The landlady looked at him, and saw his face was flushed and swollen;
+and he complained of pain in all his bones. She opened the windows, and
+asked him would he have a doctor sent for. He shook his head
+contemptuously.</p>
+
+<p>However, towards evening, he became delirious, and raved and tossed, and
+rolled his head as if it was an intolerable weight he wanted to get rid
+of.</p>
+
+<p>The females of the family were for sending at once for a doctor; but the
+prudent Harry demurred.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, first, who is to pay the fee," said he. "I've seen a fine coat
+with the pockets empty, before to-day."</p>
+
+<p>The women set up their throats at him with one accord, each after her
+kind.</p>
+
+<p>"Out, fie!" said Mercy; "are we to do naught for charity?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, there's his horse, ye foolish man," said Mrs. Vint.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ye are both wiser than me," said Harry Vint, ironically. And soon
+after that he went out softly.</p>
+
+<p>The next minute he was in the sick man's room, examining his pockets. To
+his infinite surprise he found twenty gold pieces, a quantity of silver,
+and some trinkets.</p>
+
+<p>He spread them all out on the table, and gloated on them with greedy
+eyes. They looked so inviting, that he said to himself they would be
+safer in his custody than in that of a delirious person, who was even
+now raving incoherently before him, and could not see what he was doing.
+He therefore proceeded to transfer them to his own care.</p>
+
+<p>On the way to his pocket, his shaking hand was arrested by another hand,
+soft, but firm as iron.</p>
+
+<p>He shuddered, and looked round in abject terror; and there was his
+daughter's face, pale as his own, but full of resolution. "Nay, father,"
+said she; "<i>I</i> must take charge of these: and well do you know why."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_754" id="Page_754">[Pg 754]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>These simple words cowed Harry Vint, so that he instantly resigned the
+money and jewels, and retired, muttering that "things were come to a
+pretty pass,"&mdash;"a man was no longer master in his own house," etc.,
+etc., etc.</p>
+
+<p>While he inveighed against the degeneracy of the age, the women paid him
+no more attention than the age did, but just sent for the doctor. He
+came, and bled the patient. This gave him a momentary relief; but when,
+in the natural progress of the disease, sweating and weakness came on,
+the loss of the precious vital fluid was fatal, and the patient's pulse
+became scarce perceptible. There he lay, with wet hair, and gleaming
+eyes, and haggard face, at death's door.</p>
+
+<p>An experienced old crone was got to nurse him, and she told Mrs. Vint he
+would live may be three days.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Paul Carrick used to come to the "Packhorse" after Mercy Vint, and,
+finding her sad, asked her what was the matter.</p>
+
+<p>"What should it be," said she, "but the poor gentleman a-dying overhead;
+away from all his friends."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see him," said Paul.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy took him softly into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, he is booked," said the farrier, "Doctor has taken too much blood
+out of the man's body. They kill a many that way."</p>
+
+<p>"Alack, Paul! must he die? Can naught be done?" said Mercy, clasping her
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't say that, neither," said the farrier. "He is a well-made man:
+he is young, <i>I</i> might save him, perhaps, if I had not so many beasts to
+look to. I'll tell you what you do. Make him soup as strong as strong;
+have him watched night and day, and let 'em put a spoonful of warm wine
+into him every hour, and then of soup; egg flip is a good thing, too;
+change his bed-linen, and keep the doctors from him: that is his only
+chance; he is fairly dying of weakness. But I must be off. Farmer
+Blake's cow is down for calving; I must give her an ounce of salts
+before 't is too late."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy Vint scanned the patient closely, and saw that Paul Carrick was
+right. She followed his instructions to the letter, with one exception.
+Instead of trusting to the old woman, of whom she had no very good
+opinion, she had the great arm-chair brought into the sick-room, and
+watched the patient herself by night and day; a gentle hand cooled his
+temples; a gentle hand brought concentrated nourishment to his lips; and
+a mellow voice coaxed him to be good and swallow it. There are voices it
+is not natural to resist; and Griffith learned by degrees to obey this
+one, even when he was half unconscious.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of three days this zealous young nurse thought she discerned
+a slight improvement, and told her mother so. Then the old lady came and
+examined the patient, and shook her head gravely. Her judgment, like her
+daughter's, was influenced by her wishes.</p>
+
+<p>The fact is, both landlord and landlady were now calculating upon
+Griffith's decease. Harry had told her about the money and jewels, and
+the pair had put their heads together, and settled that Griffith was a
+gentleman highwayman, and his spoil would never be reclaimed after his
+decease, but fall to those good Samaritans, who were now nursing him,
+and intended to bury him respectably. The future being thus settled,
+this worthy couple became a little impatient; for Griffith, like Charles
+the Second, was "an unconscionable time dying."</p>
+
+<p>We order dinner to hasten a lingering guest; and, with equal force of
+logic, mine host of the "Packhorse" spoke to White, the village
+carpenter, about a full-sized coffin; and his wife set the old crone to
+make a linen shroud, unobtrusively, in the bake-house.</p>
+
+<p>On the third afternoon of her nursing, Mercy left her patient, and
+called up the crone to tend him. She herself, worn out with fatigue,
+threw herself on a bed in her mother's room, hard by, and soon fell
+asleep.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_755" id="Page_755">[Pg 755]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She had slept about two hours when she was wakened by a strange noise in
+the sick-chamber. A man and a woman quarrelling.</p>
+
+<p>She bounded off the bed, and was in the room directly.</p>
+
+<p>Lo and behold, there were the nurse and the dying man abusing one
+another like pickpockets.</p>
+
+<p>The cause of this little misunderstanding was not far to seek. The old
+crone had brought up her work: <i>videlicet</i>, a winding-sheet all but
+finished, and certain strips of glazed muslin about three inches deep.
+She soon completed the winding-sheet, and hung it over two chairs in the
+patient's sight; she then proceeded to double the slips in six, and nick
+them; then she unrolled them, and they were frills, and well adapted to
+make the coming corpse absurd, and divest it of any little dignity the
+King of Terrors might bestow on it.</p>
+
+<p>She was so intent upon her congenial task that she did not observe the
+sick man had awakened, and was viewing her and her work with an
+intelligent but sinister eye.</p>
+
+<p>"What is that you are making?" said he, grimly.</p>
+
+<p>The voice was rather clear, and strong, and seemed so loud and strange
+in that still chamber, that it startled the woman mightily. She uttered
+a little shriek, and then was wroth. "Plague take the man!" said she;
+"how you scared me. Keep quiet, do; and mind your own business." [The
+business of going off the hooks.]</p>
+
+<p>"I ask you what is that you are making," said Griffith, louder, and
+raising himself on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Baby's frills," replied the woman, coolly, recovering that contempt for
+the understandings of the dying which marks the veritable crone.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye lie," said Griffith. "And there is a shroud. Who is that for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who should it be for, thou simple body? Keep quiet, do, till the change
+comes. 'T won't be long now; art too well to last till sundown."</p>
+
+<p>"So 't is for me, is it?" screamed Griffith. "I'll disappoint ye yet.
+Give me my clothes. I'll not lie here to be measured for my grave, ye
+old witch."</p>
+
+<p>"Here's manners!" cackled the indignant crone. "Ye foul-mouthed knave!
+is this how you thank a decent woman for making a comfortable corpse of
+ye, you that has no right to die in your shoes, let a be such dainties
+as muslin neck-ruff, and shroud of good Dutch flax."</p>
+
+<p>At this Griffith discharged a volley in which "vulture," "hag,"
+"blood-sucker," etc., blended with as many oaths: during which Mercy
+came in.</p>
+
+<p>She glided to him, with her dove's eyes full of concern, and laid her
+hand gently on his shoulder. "You'll work yourself a mischief," said
+she; "leave me to scold her. Why, my good Nelly, how could ye be so
+hare-brained? Prithee take all that trumpery away this minute: none here
+needeth it, nor shall not this many a year, please God."</p>
+
+<p>"They want me dead," said Griffith to her, piteously, finding he had got
+one friend, and sunk back on his pillow exhausted.</p>
+
+<p>"So it seems," said Mercy, cunningly. "But I'd balk them finely. I'd up
+and order a beef-steak this minute."</p>
+
+<p>"And shall," said Griffith, with feeble spite. "Leastways, do you order
+it, and I'll eat it: &mdash;&mdash; d&mdash;n her!"</p>
+
+<p>Sick men are like children; and women soon find that out, and manage
+them accordingly. In ten minutes Mercy brought a good rump-steak to the
+bedside, and said, "Now for 't. Marry come up, with her winding-sheets!"</p>
+
+<p>Thus played upon, and encouraged, the great baby ate more than half the
+steak; and soon after perspired gently, and fell asleep.</p>
+
+<p>Paul Carrick found him breathing gently, with a slight tint of red in
+his cheek, and told Mercy there was a change for the better. "We have
+brought him to a true intermission," said he; "so throw in the bark at
+once."</p>
+
+<p>"What, drench his honor's worship!" said Mercy, innocently. "Nay, send
+thou the medicine, and I'll find womanly ways to get it down him."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_756" id="Page_756">[Pg 756]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Next day came the doctor, and whispered softly to Mrs. Vint, "How are we
+all up stairs?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why couldn't you come afore?" replied Mrs. Vint, crossly. "Here's
+Farrier Carrick stepped in, and curing him out of hand,&mdash;the meddlesome
+body."</p>
+
+<p>"A farrier rob me of my patient!" cried the doctor, in high dudgeon.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, good sir, 't is no fault of mine. This Paul is a sort of a kind of
+a follower of our Mercy's: and she is mistress here, I trow."</p>
+
+<p>"And what hath his farriership prescribed? Friar's balsam, belike."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, I know not; but you may soon learn, for he is above, physicking
+the gentleman (a pretty gentleman!) and suiting to our Mercy&mdash;after a
+manner."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor declined to make one in so mixed a consultation.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me my fee, dame," said he; "and as for this impertinent farrier,
+the patient's blood be on his head; and I'd have him beware the law."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Vint went to the stair-foot, and screamed, "Mercy, the good doctor
+wants his fee. Who is to pay it, I wonder?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bring it him anon," said a gentle voice; and Mercy soon came down
+and paid it with a willing air that half disarmed professional fury.</p>
+
+<p>"'T is a good lass, dame," said the doctor, when she was gone; "and, by
+the same token, I wish her better mated than to a scrub of a farrier."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Griffith, still weak, but freed of fever, woke one glorious afternoon,
+and heard a bird-like voice humming a quaint old ditty, and saw a field
+of golden wheat through an open window, and seated at that window the
+mellow songstress, Mercy Vint, plying her needle, with lowered lashes
+but beaming face, a picture of health and quiet womanly happiness.
+Things were going to her mind in that sick-room.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her, and at the golden corn and summer haze beyond, and the
+tide of life seemed to rush back upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"My good lass," said he, "tell me, where am I? for I know not."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy started, and left off singing, then rose and came slowly towards
+him, with her work in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>Innocent joy at this new symptom of convalescence flushed her comely
+features, but she spoke low.</p>
+
+<p>"Good sir, at the 'Packhorse,'" said she, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"The 'Packhorse'? and where is that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hard by Allerton village."</p>
+
+<p>"And where is that? not in Cumberland?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, in Lancashire, your worship. Why, whence come you that know not
+the 'Packhorse,' nor yet Allerton township? Come you from Cumberland?"</p>
+
+<p>"No matter whence I come. I'm going on board ship,&mdash;like my father
+before me."</p>
+
+<p>"Alas, sir, you are not fit; you have been very ill, and partly
+distraught."</p>
+
+<p>She stopped; for Griffith turned his face to the wall, with a deep
+groan. It had all rushed over him in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy stood still, and worked on, but the water gathered in her eyes at
+that eloquent groan.</p>
+
+<p>By and by Griffith turned round again, with a face of anguish, and filmy
+eyes, and saw her in the same place, standing, working, and pitying.</p>
+
+<p>"What, are <i>you</i> there still?" said he, roughly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, sir; but I'll go, sooner than be troublesome. Can I fetch you
+anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Ay, wine; bring me wine to drown it all."</p>
+
+<p>She brought him a pint of wine.</p>
+
+<p>"Pledge me," said he, with a miserable attempt at a smile.</p>
+
+<p>She put the cup to her lips, and sipped a drop or two; but her dove's
+eyes were looking up at him over the liquor all the time. Griffith soon
+disposed of the rest, and asked for more.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay," said she, "but I dare not: the doctor hath forbidden excess in
+drinking."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_757" id="Page_757">[Pg 757]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The doctor! What doctor?"</p>
+
+<p>"Doctor Paul," said she, demurely. "He hath saved your life, sir, I do
+think."</p>
+
+<p>"Plague take him for that!"</p>
+
+<p>"So say not I."</p>
+
+<p>Here, she left him with an excuse. "'T is milking time, sir; and you
+shall know that I am our dairymaid. I seldom trouble the inn."</p>
+
+<p>Next day she was on the window-seat, working and beaming. The patient
+called to her in peevish accents to put his head higher. She laid down
+her work with a smile, and came and raised his head.</p>
+
+<p>"There, now, that is too high," said he; "how awkward you are."</p>
+
+<p>"I lack experience, sir, but not good will. There, now, is that a little
+better?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, a little. I'm sick of lying here. I want to get up. Dost hear what
+I say? I&mdash;want&mdash;to get up."</p>
+
+<p>"And so you shall. As soon as ever you are fit. To-morrow, perhaps.
+To-day you must e'en be patient. Patience is a rare medicine."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Tic, tic, tic! "What a noise they are making down stairs. Go, lass, and
+bid them hold their peace."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy shook her head. "Good lack-a-day! we might as well bid the river
+give over running; but, to be sure, this comes of keeping a hostelry,
+sir. When we had only the farm, we were quiet, and did no ill to no
+one."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sing me, to drown their eternal buzzing: it worries me dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Me sing! alack, sir, I'm no songster."</p>
+
+<p>"That is false. You sing like a throstle. I dote on music; and, when I
+was delirious, I heard one singing about my bed; I thought it was an
+angel at that time, but 't was only you, my young mistress: and now I
+ask you, you say me nay. That is the way with you all. Plague take the
+girl, and all her d&mdash;&mdash;d, unreasonable, hypocritical sex. I warrant me
+you'd sing, if I wanted to sleep, and dance the Devil to a standstill."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy, instead of flouncing out of the room, stood looking on him with
+maternal eyes, and chuckling like a bird. "That is right, sir: tax us
+all to your heart's content. O, but I'm a joyful woman to hear you; for
+'t is a sure sign of mending when the sick take to rating of their
+nurses."</p>
+
+<p>"In sooth, I am too cross-grained," said Griffith, relenting.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a whit, sir, for my taste. I've been in care for you: and now you
+are a little cross, that maketh me easy."</p>
+
+<p>"Thou art a good soul. Wilt sing me a stave after all?"</p>
+
+<p>"La, you now; how you come back to that. Ay, and with a good heart: for,
+to be sure, 't is a sin to gainsay a sick man. But indeed I am the
+homeliest singer. Methinks 't is time I went down and bade them cook
+your worship's supper."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, I'll not eat nor sup till I hear thee sing."</p>
+
+<p>"Your will is my law, sir," said Mercy, dryly, and retired to the
+window-seat; that was the first obvious preliminary. Then she fiddled
+with her apron, and hemmed, and waited in hopes a reprieve might come;
+but a peevish, relentless voice demanded the song at intervals.</p>
+
+<p>So then she turned her head carefully away from her hearer, lowered her
+eyes, and, looking the picture of guilt and shame all the time, sang an
+ancient ditty. The poltroon's voice was rich, mellow, clear, and sweet
+as honey; and she sang the notes for the sake of the words, not the
+words for the sake of the notes, as all but Nature's singers do.</p>
+
+<p>The air was grave as well as sweet; for Mercy was of an old Puritan
+stock, and even her songs were not giddy-paced, but solid, quaint, and
+tender: all the more did they reach the soul.</p>
+
+<p>In vain was the blushing cheek averted, and the honeyed lips. The
+ravishing tones set the birds chirping outside, yet filled the room
+within, and the glasses rang in harmony upon the shelf as the sweet
+singer poured out from her heart (so it seemed) the speaking-song:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_758" id="Page_758">[Pg 758]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"In vain you tell your parting lover<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You wish fair winds may waft him over.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alas! what winds can happy prove<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That bear me far from her I love?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alas! what dangers on the main<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can equal those that I sustain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From stinted love and cold disdain?" etc.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Griffith beat time with his hand awhile, and his face softened and
+beautified as the melody curled about his heart. But soon it was too
+much for him. He knew the song,&mdash;had sung it to Kate Peyton in their
+days of courtship. A thousand memories gushed in upon his soul and
+overpowered him. He burst out sobbing violently, and wept as if his
+heart must break.</p>
+
+<p>"Alas! what have I done?" said Mercy; and the tears ran from her eyes at
+the sight. Then, with native delicacy, she hurried from the room.</p>
+
+<p>What Griffith Gaunt went through that night, in silence, was never known
+but to himself. But the next morning he was a changed man. He was all
+dogged resolution,&mdash;put on his clothes unaided, though he could hardly
+stand to do it, and borrowed the landlord's staff, and crawled out a
+smart distance into the sun. "It was kill or cure," said he. "I am to
+live, it seems. Well, then, the past is dead. My life begins again
+to-day."</p>
+
+<p>Hen-like, Mercy soon learned this sally of her refractory duckling, and
+was uneasy. So, for an excuse to watch him, she brought him out his
+money and jewels, and told him she had thought it safest to take charge
+of them.</p>
+
+<p>He thanked her cavalierly, and offered her a diamond ring.</p>
+
+<p>She blushed scarlet, and declined it; and even turned a meekly
+reproachful glance on him with her dove's eyes.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>He had a suit of russet made, and put away his fine coat, and forbade
+any one to call him "Your worship." "I am a farmer, like yourselves,"
+said he; "and my name is&mdash;Thomas Leicester."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A brain fever either kills the unhappy lover, or else benumbs the very
+anguish that caused it.</p>
+
+<p>And so it was with Griffith. His love got benumbed, and the sense of his
+wrongs vivid. He nursed a bitter hatred of his wife; only, as he could
+not punish her without going near her, and no punishment short of death
+seemed enough for her, he set to work to obliterate her from his very
+memory, if possible. He tried employment: he pottered about the little
+farm, advising and helping,&mdash;and that so zealously that the landlord
+retired altogether from that department, and Griffith, instead of he,
+became Mercy's ally, agricultural and bucolical. She was a shepherdess
+to the core, and hated the poor "Packhorse."</p>
+
+<p>For all that, it was her fate to add to its attractions: for Griffith
+bought a <i>viol da gambo</i>, and taught her sweet songs, which he
+accompanied with such skill, sometimes, with his voice, that good
+company often looked in on the chance of a good song sweetly sung and
+played.</p>
+
+<p>The sick, in body or mind, are egotistical. Griffith was no exception:
+bent on curing his own deep wound, he never troubled his head about the
+wound he might inflict.</p>
+
+<p>He was grateful to his sweet nurse, and told her so. And his gratitude
+charmed her all the more that it had been rather long in coming.</p>
+
+<p>He found this dove-like creature a wonderful soother: he applied her
+more and more to his sore heart.</p>
+
+<p>As for Mercy, she had been too good and kind to her patient not to take
+a tender interest in his convalescence. Our hearts warm more to those we
+have been kind to, than to those who have been kind to us: and the
+female reader can easily imagine what delicious feelings stole into that
+womanly heart when she saw her pale nursling pick up health and strength
+under her wing, and become the finest, handsomest man in the parish.</p>
+
+<p>Pity and admiration,&mdash;where these meet, love is not far behind.</p>
+
+<p>And then this man, who had been cross and rough while he was weak,
+became gentler, kinder, and more deferential to her, the stronger he
+got.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_759" id="Page_759">[Pg 759]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Vint saw they were both fond of each other's company, and
+disapproved it. She told Paul Carrick if he had any thought of Mercy he
+had better give over shilly-shallying, for there was another man after
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Paul made light of it, at first. "She has known me too long to take up
+her head with a new-comer," said he. "To be sure I never asked her to
+name the day; but she knows my mind well enough, and I know hers."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you know more than I do," said the mother, ironically.</p>
+
+<p>He thought over this conversation, and very wisely determined not to run
+unnecessary risks. He came up one afternoon, and hunted about for Mercy,
+till he found her milking a cow in the adjoining paddock.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, lass," said he, "I've good news for thee. My old dad says we may
+have his house to live in. So now you and I can yoke next month if ye
+will."</p>
+
+<p>"Me turn the honest man out of his house!" said Mercy, mighty
+innocently.</p>
+
+<p>"Who asks you? He nobbut bargains for the chimney-corner: and you are
+not the girl to begrudge the old man that."</p>
+
+<p>"O no, Paul. But what would father do if I were to leave <i>his</i> house?
+Methinks the farm would go to rack and ruin; he is so wrapped up in his
+nasty public."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, he has got a helper, by all accounts: and if you talk like that,
+you will never wed at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Never is a big word. But I'm too young to marry yet. Jenny, thou jade,
+stand still."</p>
+
+<p>The attack and defence proceeded upon these terms for some time; and the
+defendant had one base advantage; and used it. Her forehead was wedged
+tight against Jenny's ribs, and Paul could not see her face. This, and
+the feminine evasiveness of her replies, irritated him at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Take thy head out o' the coow," said he, roughly, "and answer straight.
+Is all our wooing to go for naught?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wooing? You never said so much to me in all these years as you have
+to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"O, ye knew my mind well enough. There's a many ways of showing the
+heart."</p>
+
+<p>"Speaking out is the best, I trow."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what do I come here for twice a week, this two years past, if not
+for thee?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, for me, and father's ale."</p>
+
+<p>"And thou canst look at me, and tell me that? Ye false, hard-hearted
+hussy. But nay, thou wast never so: 't is this Thomas Leicester hath
+bewitched thee, and set thee against thy true lover."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Leicester pays no suit to me," said Mercy, blushing. "He is a right
+civil-spoken gentleman, and you know you saved his life."</p>
+
+<p>"The more fool I. I wish I had known he was going to rob me of my lass's
+heart, I'd have seen him die a hundred times ere I'd have interfered.
+But they say if you save a man's life he'll make you rue it. Mercy, my
+lass, you are well respected in the parish. Take a thought, now: better
+be a farrier's wife than a gentleman's mistress."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy did take her head "out of the cow" at this, and, for once, her
+cheek burned with anger; but the unwonted sentiment died before it could
+find words, and she said, quietly, "I need not be either, against my
+will."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Young Carrick made many such appeals to Mercy Vint; but he could never
+bring her to confess to him that he and she had ever been more than
+friends, or were now anything less than friends. Still he forced her to
+own to herself, that, if she had never seen Thomas Leicester, her quiet
+affection and respect for Carrick would probably have carried her to the
+altar with him.</p>
+
+<p>His remonstrances, sometimes angry, sometimes tearful, awoke her pity,
+which was the grand sentiment of her heart, and disturbed her peace.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, she studied the two men in her quiet, thoughtful way, and saw
+that Carrick loved her with all his honest,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_760" id="Page_760">[Pg 760]</a></span> though hitherto tepid
+heart; but Griffith had depths, and could love with more passion than
+ever he had shown for her. "He is not the man to have a fever by reason
+of me," said the poor girl to herself. But I am afraid even this
+attracted her to Griffith. It nettled a woman's soft ambition; which is,
+to be as well loved as ever woman was.</p>
+
+<p>And so things went on, and, as generally happens, the man who was losing
+ground went the very way to lose more. He spoke ill of Griffith behind
+his back: called him a highwayman, a gentleman, an ungrateful,
+undermining traitor. But Griffith never mentioned Carrick; and so, when
+he and Mercy were together, her old follower was pleasingly obliterated,
+and affectionate good-humor reigned. Thus Griffith, <i>alias</i> Thomas,
+became her sunbeam, and Paul her cloud.</p>
+
+<p>But he who had disturbed the peace of others, his own turn came.</p>
+
+<p>One day he found Mercy crying. He sat down beside her, and said, kindly,
+"Why, sweetheart, what is amiss?"</p>
+
+<p>"No great matter," said she; and turned her head away, but did not check
+her tears, for it was new and pleasant to be consoled by Thomas
+Leicester.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, but tell me, child."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, Jessie Carrick has been at me; that is all."</p>
+
+<p>"The vixen! what did she say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, I'm not pleased enow with it to repeat it. She did cast something
+in my teeth."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith pressed her to be more explicit: she declined, with so many
+blushes, that his curiosity was awakened, and he told Mrs. Vint, with
+some heat, that Jess Carrick had been making Mercy cry.</p>
+
+<p>"Like enow," said Mrs. Vint, coolly. "She'll eat her victuals all one
+for that, please God."</p>
+
+<p>"Else I'll wring the cock-nosed jade's neck, next time she comes here,"
+replied Griffith; "but, Dame, I want to know what she can have to say to
+Mercy to make her cry."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Vint looked him steadily in the face for some time, and then and
+there decided to come to an explanation. "Ten to one 't is about her
+brother," said she; "you know this Paul is our Mercy's sweetheart."</p>
+
+<p>At these simple words Griffith winced, and his countenance changed
+remarkably. Mrs. Vint observed it, and was all the more resolved to have
+it out with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Her sweetheart!" said Griffith. "Why, I have seen them together a dozen
+of times, and not a word of courtship."</p>
+
+<p>"O, the young men don't make many speeches in these parts. They show
+their hearts by act."</p>
+
+<p>"By act? why, I met them coming home from milking t' other evening.
+Mercy was carrying the pail, brimful; and that oaf sauntered by her
+side, with his hands in his pockets. Was that the act of a lover?"</p>
+
+<p>"I heard of it, sir," said Mrs. Vint, quietly; "and as how you took the
+pail from her, willy nilly, and carried it home. Mercy was vexed about
+it. She told me you panted at the door, and she was a deal fitter to
+carry the pail than you, that is just off a sick-bed, like. But lawk,
+sir, ye can't go by the likes of that. The bachelors here they'd see
+their sweethearts carry the roof into next parish on their backs, like a
+snail, and never put out a hand; 't is not the custom hereaway. But, as
+I was saying, Paul and our Mercy kept company, after a manner: he never
+had the wit to flatter her as should he, nor the stomach to bid her name
+the day and he'd buy the ring; but he talked to her about his sick
+beasts more than he did to any other girl in the parish, and she'd have
+ended by going to Church with him; only you came and put a coolness
+atween 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"I! How?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, our Mercy is a kind-hearted lass, though I say it, and you
+were sick, and she did nurse you; and that was a beginning. And, to be
+sure, you are a fine personable man, and capital company; and you are
+always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_761" id="Page_761">[Pg 761]</a></span> about the girl; and, bethink you, sir, she is flesh and blood
+like her neighbors; and they say, once a body has tasted venison-steak,
+it spoils their stomach for oat-porridge. Now that is Mercy's case, I'm
+thinking; not that she ever said as much to me,&mdash;she is too reserved.
+But, bless your heart, I'm forced to go about with eyes in my head, and
+watch 'em all a bit,&mdash;me that keeps an inn."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith groaned. "I'm a villain!" said he.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, nay," said Mrs. Vint. "Gentlefolks must be amused, cost what it
+may; but, hoping no offence, sir, the girl was a good friend to you in
+time of sickness; and so was this Paul, for that matter."</p>
+
+<p>"She was," cried Griffith; "God bless her. How can I ever repay her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir," said Mrs. Vint, "if that comes from your heart, you might
+take our Mercy apart, and tell her you like her very well, but not
+enough to marry a farmer's daughter,&mdash;don't say an innkeeper's daughter,
+or you'll be sure to offend her. She is bitter against the 'Packhorse.'
+Says you, 'This Paul is an honest lad, turn your heart back to him.'
+And, with that, mount your black horse and ride away, and God speed you,
+sir; we shall often talk of you at the 'Packhorse,' and naught but
+good."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith gave the woman his hand, and his breast labored visibly.</p>
+
+<p>Jealousy was ingrained in the man. Mrs. Vint had pricked his conscience,
+but she had wounded his foible. He was not in love with Mercy, but he
+esteemed her, and liked her, and saw her value, and, above all, could
+not bear another man should have her.</p>
+
+<p>Now this gave the matter a new turn. Mrs. Vint had overcome her dislike
+to him long ago: still he was not her favorite. But his giving her his
+hand with a gentle pressure, and his manifest agitation, rather won her;
+and, as uneducated women are your true weathercocks, she went about
+directly. "To be sure," said she, "our Mercy is too good for the likes
+of him. She is not like Harry and me. She has been well brought up by
+her Aunt Prudence, as was governess in a nobleman's house. She can read
+and write, and cast accounts; good at her sampler, and can churn and
+make cheeses, and play of the viol, and lead the psalm in church, and
+dance a minuet, she can, with any lady in the land. As to her nursing in
+time of sickness, that I leave to you, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"She is an angel," cried Griffith, "and my benefactress: no man living
+is good enough for her." And he went away, visibly discomposed.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Vint repeated this conversation to Mercy, and told her Thomas
+Leicester was certainly in love with her. "Shouldst have seen his face,
+girl, when I told him Paul and you were sweethearts. 'T was as if I had
+run a knife in his heart."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy murmured a few words of doubt; but she kissed her mother
+eloquently, and went about, rosy and beaming, all that afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>As for Griffith, his gratitude and his jealousy were now at war, and
+caused him a severe mental struggle.</p>
+
+<p>Carrick, too, was spurred by jealousy, and came every day to the house,
+and besieged Mercy; and Griffith, who saw them together, and did not
+hear Mercy's replies, was excited, irritated, alarmed.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Vint saw his agitation, and determined to bring matters to a
+climax. She was always giving him a side thrust; and, at last, she told
+him plainly that he was not behaving like a man. "If the girl is not
+good enough for you, why make a fool of her, and set her against a good
+husband?" And when he replied she was good enough for any man in
+England, "Then," said she, "why not show your respect for her as Paul
+Carrick does? He likes her well enough to go to church with her."</p>
+
+<p>With the horns of this dilemma she so gored Kate Peyton's husband that,
+at last, she and Paul Carrick, between them, drove him out of his
+conscience.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_762" id="Page_762">[Pg 762]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So he watched his opportunity and got Mercy alone. He took her hand and
+told her he loved her, and that she was his only comfort in the world,
+and he found he could not live without her.</p>
+
+<p>At this she blushed and trembled a little, and leaned her brow upon his
+shoulder, and was a happy creature for a few moments.</p>
+
+<p>So far, fluently enough; but then he began to falter and stammer, and
+say that for certain reasons he could not marry at all. But if she could
+be content with anything short of that, he would retire with her into a
+distant country, and there, where nobody could contradict him, would
+call her his wife, and treat her as his wife, and pay his debt of
+gratitude to her by a life of devotion.</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke, her brow retired an inch or two from his shoulder; but she
+heard him quietly out, and then drew back and confronted him, pale, and,
+to all appearance, calm.</p>
+
+<p>"Call things by their right names," said she. "What you offer me this
+day, in my father's house, is, to be your mistress. Then&mdash;God forgive
+you, Thomas Leicester."</p>
+
+<p>With this oblique and feminine reply, and one look of unfathomable
+reproach from her soft eyes, she turned her back on him; but,
+remembering her manners, courtesied at the door; and so retired; and
+unpretending Virtue lent her such true dignity that he was struck dumb,
+and made no attempt to detain her.</p>
+
+<p>I think her dignified composure did not last long when she was alone; at
+least, the next time he saw her, her eyes were red; his heart smote him,
+and he began to make excuses and beg her forgiveness. But she
+interrupted him. "Don't speak to me no more, if you please, sir," said
+she, civilly, but coldly.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy, though so quiet and inoffensive, had depth and strength of
+character. She never told her mother what Thomas Leicester had proposed
+to her. Her honest pride kept her silent, for one thing. She would not
+have it known she had been insulted. And, besides that, she loved Thomas
+Leicester still, and could not expose or hurt him. Once there was an
+Israelite without guile, though you and I never saw him; and once there
+was a Saxon without bile, and her name was Mercy Vint. In this heart of
+gold the affections were stronger than the passions. She was deeply
+wounded, and showed it in a patient way to him who had wounded her, but
+to none other. Her conduct to him in public and private was truly
+singular, and would alone have stamped her a remarkable character. She
+declined all communication with him in private, and avoided him steadily
+and adroitly; but in public she spoke to him, sang with him when she was
+asked, and treated him much the same as before. He could see a subtle
+difference, but nobody else could.</p>
+
+<p>This generosity, coupled with all she had done for him before,
+penetrated his heart and filled him with admiration and remorse. He
+yielded to Mrs. Vint's suggestions, and told her she was right; he would
+tear himself away, and never see the dear "Packhorse" again. "But oh!
+Dame," said he, "'t is a sorrowful thing to be alone in the world again,
+and naught to do. If I had but a farm, and a sweet little inn like this
+to go to, perchance my heart would not be quite so heavy as 't is this
+day at thoughts of parting from thee and thine."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir," said Mrs. Vint, "if that is all, there is the 'Vine' to let
+at this moment. 'T is a better place of business than this; and some
+meadows go with it, and land to be had in the parish."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll ride and see it," said Griffith, eagerly: then, dejectedly, "but,
+alas! I have no heart to keep an inn without somebody to help me, and
+say a kind word now and then. Ah! Mercy Vint, thou hast spoiled me for
+living alone."</p>
+
+<p>This vacillation exhausted Mrs. Vint's patience. "What are ye sighing
+about, ye foolish man?" said she, contemptuously; "you have got it all
+your own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_763" id="Page_763">[Pg 763]</a></span> way. If 't is a wife ye want, ask Mercy, and don't take a nay.
+If ye would have a housekeeper, you need not want one long. I'll be
+bound there's plenty of young women where you came from as would be glad
+to keep the 'Vine' under you. And, if you come to that, our Mercy is a
+treasure on the farm, but she is no help in the inn, no more than a wax
+figure. She never brought us a shilling, till you came and made her sing
+to your bass-viol. Nay, what you want is a smart, handsome girl, with a
+quick eye and a ready tongue, and one as can look a man in the face, and
+not given to love nor liquor. Don't you know never such a one?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not I. Humph, to be sure there is Caroline Ryder. She is handsome, and
+hath a good wit. She is a lady's maid."</p>
+
+<p>"That's your woman, if she'll come. And to be sure she will; for to be
+mistress of an inn, that's a lady's maid's Paradise."</p>
+
+<p>"She would have come a few months ago, and gladly. I'll write to her."</p>
+
+<p>"Better talk to her, and persuade her."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll do that, too; but I must write to her first."</p>
+
+<p>"So do then; but whatever you do, don't shilly-shally no longer. If
+wrestling was shilly-shallying, methinks you'd bear the bell, you or
+else Paul Carrick. Why, all his trouble comes on 't. He might have wed
+our Mercy a year agone for the asking. Shilly-shally belongs to us that
+be women. 'T is despicable in a man."</p>
+
+<p>Thus driven on all sides, Griffith rode and inspected the "Vine" (it was
+only seven miles off); and, after the usual chaffering, came to terms
+with the proprietor.</p>
+
+<p>He fixed the day for his departure, and told Mrs. Vint he must ride into
+Cumberland first to get some money, and also to see about a housekeeper.</p>
+
+<p>He made no secret of all this; and, indeed, was not without hopes Mercy
+would relent, or perhaps be jealous of this housekeeper. But the only
+visible effect was to make her look pale and sad. She avoided him in
+private as before.</p>
+
+<p>Harry Vint was loud in his regrets, and Carrick openly exultant.
+Griffith wrote to Caroline Ryder, and addressed the letter in a feigned
+hand, and took it himself to the nearest post-town.</p>
+
+<p>The letter came to hand, and will appear in that sequence of events on
+which I am now about to enter.</p>
+
+
+<p>CHAPTER XXVII.</p>
+
+<p>If Griffith Gaunt suffered anguish, he inflicted agony. Mrs. Gaunt was a
+high-spirited, proud, and sensitive woman; and he crushed her with foul
+words. Leonard was a delicate, vain, and sensitive man, accustomed to
+veneration. Imagine such a man hurled to the ground, and trampled upon.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith should not have fled; he should have stayed and enjoyed his
+vengeance on these two persons. It might have cooled him a little had he
+stopped and seen the immediate consequences of his savage act.</p>
+
+<p>The priest rose from the ground, pale as ashes, and trembling with fear
+and hate.</p>
+
+<p>The lady was leaning, white as a sheet, against a tree, and holding it
+with her very nails for a little support.</p>
+
+<p>They looked round at one another,&mdash;a piteous glance of anguish and
+horror. Then Mrs. Gaunt turned and flung her arm round so that the palm
+of her hand, high raised, confronted Leonard. I am thus particular
+because it was a gesture grand and terrible as the occasion that called
+it forth,&mdash;a gesture that <i>spoke</i>, and said, "Put the whole earth and
+sea between us forever after this."</p>
+
+<p>The next moment she bent her head and rushed away, cowering and wringing
+her hands. She made for her house as naturally as a scared animal for
+its lair; but, ere she could reach it, she tottered under the shame, the
+distress, and the mere terror, and fell fainting, with her fair forehead
+on the grass.</p>
+
+<p>Caroline Ryder was crouched in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_764" id="Page_764">[Pg 764]</a></span> doorway, and did not see her come
+out of the grove, but only heard a rustle; and then saw her proud
+mistress totter forward and lie, white, senseless, helpless, at her very
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>Ryder uttered a scream, but did not lose her presence of mind. She
+instantly kneeled over Mrs. Gaunt, and loosened her stays with quick and
+dexterous hand.</p>
+
+<p>It was very like the hawk perched over and clawing the ringdove she has
+struck down.</p>
+
+<p>But people with brains are never quite inhuman: a drop of lukewarm pity
+entered even Ryder's heart as she assisted her victim. She called no one
+to help her; for she saw something very serious had happened, and she
+felt sure Mrs. Gaunt would say something imprudent in that dangerous
+period when the patient recovers consciousness but has not all her wits
+about her. Now Ryder was equally determined to know her mistress's
+secrets, and not to share the knowledge with any other person.</p>
+
+<p>It was a long swoon; and, when Mrs. Gaunt came to, the first thing she
+saw was Ryder leaning over her, with a face of much curiosity, and some
+concern.</p>
+
+<p>In that moment of weakness the poor lady, who had been so roughly
+handled, saw a woman close to her, and being a little kind to her; so
+what did she do but throw her arms round Ryder's neck and burst out
+sobbing as if her heart would break.</p>
+
+<p>Then that unprincipled woman shed a tear or two with her, half
+crocodile, half impulse.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt not only cried on her servant's neck; she justified Ryder's
+forecast by speaking unguardedly: "I've been
+insulted&mdash;insulted&mdash;insulted!"</p>
+
+<p>But, even while uttering these words, she was recovering her pride: so
+the first "insulted" seemed to come from a broken-hearted child, the
+second from an indignant lady, the third from a wounded queen.</p>
+
+<p>No more words than this; but she rose, with Ryder's assistance, and
+went, leaning on that faithful creature's shoulder, to her own bedroom.
+There she sank into a chair and said, in a voice to melt a stone, "My
+child! Bring me my little Rose."</p>
+
+<p>Ryder ran and fetched the little girl; and Mrs. Gaunt held out both arms
+to her, angelically, and clasped her so passionately and piteously to
+her bosom, that Rose cried for fear, and never forgot the scene all her
+days; and Mrs. Ryder, who was secretly a mother, felt a genuine twinge
+of pity and remorse. Curiosity, however, was the dominant sentiment. She
+was impatient to get all these convulsions over, and learn what had
+actually passed between Mr. and Mrs. Gaunt.</p>
+
+<p>She waited till her mistress appeared calmer; and then, in soft,
+caressing tones, asked her what had happened.</p>
+
+<p>"Never ask me that question again," cried Mrs. Gaunt, wildly. Then, with
+inexpressible dignity, "My good girl, you have done all you could for
+me; now you must leave me alone with my daughter, and my God, who knows
+the truth."</p>
+
+<p>Ryder courtesied and retired, burning with baffled curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>Towards dusk Thomas Leicester came into the kitchen, and brought her
+news with a vengeance. He told her and the other maids that the Squire
+had gone raving mad, and fled the country. "O lasses," said he, "if you
+had seen the poor soul's face, a-riding headlong through the fair, all
+one as if it was a ploughed field; 't was white as your smocks; and his
+eyes glowering on 't other world. We shall ne'er see that face alive
+again."</p>
+
+<p>And this was her doing.</p>
+
+<p>It surprised and overpowered Ryder. She threw her apron over her head,
+and went off in hysterics, and betrayed her lawless attachment to every
+woman in the kitchen,&mdash;she who was so clever at probing others.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>This day of violent emotions was followed by a sullen and sorrowful
+gloom.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt kept her bedroom, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_765" id="Page_765">[Pg 765]</a></span> admitted nobody; till, at last, the
+servants consulted together, and sent little Rose to knock at her door,
+with a basin of chocolate, while they watched on the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"It's only me, mamma," said Rose.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, my precious," said a trembling voice; and so Rose got in with
+her chocolate.</p>
+
+<p>The next day she was sent for early; and at noon Mrs. Gaunt and Rose
+came down stairs; but their appearance startled the whole household.</p>
+
+<p>The mother was dressed all in black, and so was her daughter, whom she
+led by the hand. Mrs. Gaunt's face was pale, and sad, and stern,&mdash;a
+monument of deep suffering and high-strung resolution.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It soon transpired that Griffith had left his home for good; and friends
+called on Mrs. Gaunt to slake their curiosity under the mask of
+sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Not one of them was admitted. No false excuses were made. "My mistress
+sees no one for the present," was the reply.</p>
+
+<p>Curiosity, thus baffled, took up the pen; but was met with a short,
+unvarying formula: "There is an unhappy misunderstanding between my
+husband and me. But I shall neither accuse him behind his back, nor
+justify myself."</p>
+
+<p>Thus the proud lady carried herself before the world; but secretly she
+writhed. A wife abandoned is a woman insulted, and the wives&mdash;that are
+not abandoned&mdash;cluck.</p>
+
+<p>Ryder was dejected for a time, and, though not honestly penitent,
+suffered some remorse at the miserable issue of her intrigues. But her
+elastic nature soon shook it off, and she felt a certain satisfaction at
+having reduced Mrs. Gaunt to her own level. This disarmed her hostility.
+She watched her as keenly as ever, but out of pure curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>One thing puzzled her strangely. Leonard did not visit the house; nor
+could she even detect any communication between the parties.</p>
+
+<p>At last, one day, her mistress told her to put on her hat, and go to
+Father Leonard.</p>
+
+<p>Ryder's eyes sparkled; and she was soon equipped. Mrs. Gaunt put a
+parcel and a letter into her hands. Ryder no sooner got out of her sight
+than she proceeded to tamper with the letter. But to her just
+indignation she found it so ingeniously folded and sealed that she could
+not read a word.</p>
+
+<p>The parcel, however, she easily undid, and it contained forty pounds in
+gold and small notes. "Oho! my lady," said Ryder.</p>
+
+<p>She was received by Leonard with a tender emotion he in vain tried to
+conceal.</p>
+
+<p>On reading the letter his features contracted sharply, and he seemed to
+suffer agony. He would not even open the parcel. "You will take that
+back," said he, bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>"What, without a word?"</p>
+
+<p>"Without a word. But I will write, when I am able."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be long, sir," suggested Ryder. "I am sure my mistress is
+wearying for you. Consider, sir, she is all alone now."</p>
+
+<p>"Not so much alone as I am," said the priest, "nor half so unfortunate."</p>
+
+<p>And with this he leaned his head despairingly on his hand, and motioned
+to Ryder to leave him.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's a couple of fools," said she to herself, as she went home.</p>
+
+<p>That very evening Thomas Leicester caught her alone, and asked her to
+marry him.</p>
+
+<p>She stared at first, and then treated it as a jest. "You come at the
+wrong time, young man," said she. "Marriage is put out of countenance.
+No, no, I will never marry after what I have seen in this house."</p>
+
+<p>Leicester would not take this for an answer, and pressed her hard.</p>
+
+<p>"Thomas," said this plausible jade, "I like you very well; but I
+couldn't leave my mistress in her trouble. Time to talk of marrying when
+master comes here alive and well."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay," said Leicester, "my only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_766" id="Page_766">[Pg 766]</a></span> chance is while he is away. You care
+more for his little finger than for my whole body; that they all say."</p>
+
+<p>"Who says?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jane, and all the lasses."</p>
+
+<p>"You simple man, they want you for themselves; that is why they belie
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, nay; I saw how you carried on, when I brought word he was gone.
+You let your heart out for once. Don't take me for a fool. I see how 't
+is, but I'll face it, for I worship the ground you walk on. Take a
+thought, my lass. What good can come of your setting your heart on
+<i>him</i>? I'm young, I'm healthy, and not ugly enough to set the dogs
+a-barking. I've got a good place; I love you dear; I'll cure you of that
+fancy, and make you as happy as the day is long. I'll try and make you
+as happy as you will make me, my beauty."</p>
+
+<p>He was so earnest, and so much in love, that Mrs. Ryder pitied him, and
+wished her husband was in heaven.</p>
+
+<p>"I am very sorry, Tom," said she, softly; "dear me, I did not think you
+cared so much for me as this. I must just tell you the truth. I have got
+one in my own country, and I've promised him. I don't care to break my
+word; and, if I did, he is such a man, I am sure he would kill me for
+it. Indeed he has told me as much, more than once or twice."</p>
+
+<p>"Killing is a game that two can play at."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! but 't is an ugly game; and I'll have no hand in it. And&mdash;don't you
+be angry with me, Tom&mdash;I've known him longest, and&mdash;I love him best."</p>
+
+<p>By pertinacity and vanity in lying, she hit the mark at last. Tom
+swallowed this figment whole.</p>
+
+<p>"That is but reason," said he. "I take my answer, and I wish ye both
+many happy days together, and well spent." With this he retired, and
+blubbered a good hour in an outhouse.</p>
+
+<p>Tom avoided the castle, and fell into low spirits. He told his mother
+all, and she advised him to change the air. "You have been too long in
+one place," said she; "I hate being too long in one place myself."</p>
+
+<p>This fired Tom's gypsy blood, and he said he would travel to-morrow, if
+he could but scrape together money enough to fill a pedler's pack.</p>
+
+<p>He applied for a loan in several quarters, but was denied in all.</p>
+
+<p>At last the poor fellow summoned courage to lay his case before Mrs.
+Gaunt.</p>
+
+<p>Ryder's influence procured him an interview. She took him into the
+drawing-room, and bade him wait there. By and by a pale lady, all in
+black, glided into the room.</p>
+
+<p>He pulled his front hair, and began to stammer something or other.</p>
+
+<p>She interrupted him. "Ryder has told me," said she, softly. "I am sorry
+for you; and I will do what you require. And, to be sure, we need no
+gamekeeper here now."</p>
+
+<p>She then gave him some money, and said she would look him up a few
+trifles besides, to put in his pack.</p>
+
+<p>Tom's mother helped him to lay out this money to advantage; and, one
+day, he called at Hernshaw, pack and all, to bid farewell.</p>
+
+<p>The servants all laid out something with him for luck; and Mrs. Gaunt
+sent for him, and gave him a gold thimble, and a pound of tea, and
+several yards of gold lace, slightly tarnished, and a Queen Anne's
+guinea.</p>
+
+<p>He thanked her heartily. "Ay, Dame," said he, "you had always an open
+hand, married or single. My heart is heavy at leaving you. But I miss
+the Squire's kindly face too. Hernshaw is not what it used to be."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt turned her head aside, and the man could see his words had
+made her cry. "My good Thomas," said she, at last, "you are going to
+travel the country: you might fall in with him."</p>
+
+<p>"I might," said Leicester, incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>"God grant you may; and, if ever you should, think of your poor mistress
+and give him&mdash;this." She put<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_767" id="Page_767">[Pg 767]</a></span> her finger in her bosom and drew out a
+bullet wrapped in silver paper. "You will never lose this," said she. "I
+value it more than gold or silver. O, if ever you <i>should</i> see him,
+think of me and my daughter, and just put it in his hand without a
+word."</p>
+
+<p>As he went out of the room Ryder intercepted him, and said, "Mayhap you
+will fall in with our master. If ever you do, tell him he is under a
+mistake, and the sooner he comes home the better."</p>
+
+<p>Tom Leicester departed; and, for days and weeks, nothing occurred to
+break the sorrowful monotony of the place.</p>
+
+<p>But the mourner had written to her old friend and confessor, Francis;
+and, after some delay, involuntary on his part, he came to see her.</p>
+
+<p>They were often closeted together, and spoke so low that Ryder could not
+catch a word.</p>
+
+<p>Francis also paid several visits to Leonard; and the final result of
+these visits was that the latter left England.</p>
+
+<p>Francis remained at Hernshaw as long as he could; and it was Mrs.
+Gaunt's hourly prayer that Griffith might return while Francis was with
+her.</p>
+
+<p>He did, at her earnest request, stay much longer than he had intended;
+but, at length, he was obliged to fix next Monday to return to his own
+place.</p>
+
+<p>It was on Thursday he made this arrangement; but the very next day the
+postman brought a letter to the Castle, thus addressed:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"To Mistress Caroline Ryder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Living Servant with Griffith Gaunt, Esq.,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">at his house, called Hernshaw Castle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">near Wigeonmoor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">in the county of Cumberland.<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">These with speed."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The address was in a feigned hand. Ryder opened it in the kitchen, and
+uttered a scream.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly three female throats opened upon her with questions.</p>
+
+<p>She looked them contemptuously in their faces, put the letter into her
+pocket, and, soon after, slipped away to her own room, and locked
+herself in while she read it. It ran thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Good Mistress Ryder</span>,&mdash;I am alive yet, by the blessing; though
+somewhat battered; being now risen from a fever, wherein I lost
+my wits for a time. And, on coming to myself, I found them
+making of my shroud; whereby you shall learn how near I was to
+death. And all this I owe to that false, perjured woman that
+was my wife, and is your mistress.</p>
+
+<p>"Know that I have donned russet, and doffed gentility; for I
+find a heavy heart's best cure is occupation. I have taken a
+wayside inn, and think of renting a small farm, which two
+things go well together. Now you are, of all those I know, most
+fitted to manage the inn, and I the farm. You were always my
+good friend; and, if you be so still, then I charge you most
+solemnly that you utter no word to any living soul about this
+letter; but meet me privately where we can talk fully of these
+matters; for I will not set foot in Hernshaw Castle. Moreover,
+she told me once 't was hers; and so be it. On Friday I shall
+lie at Stapleton, and the next day, by an easy journey, to the
+place where I once was so happy.</p>
+
+<p>"So then at seven of the clock on Saturday evening, be the same
+wet or dry, prithee come to the gate of the grove unbeknown,
+and speak to</p></div>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">"Your faithful friend</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 17em;">and most unhappy master,</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 20em;">"<span class="smcap">Griffith Gaunt</span>.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Be secret as the grave. Would I were in it."</p></div>
+
+<p>This letter set Caroline Ryder in a tumult. Griffith alive and well, and
+set against his wife, and coming to her for assistance!</p>
+
+<p>After the first agitation, she read it again, and weighed every
+syllable. There was one book she had studied more than most of us,&mdash;the
+Heart. And she soon read Griffith's in this letter. It was no
+love-letter; he really<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_768" id="Page_768">[Pg 768]</a></span> intended business; but, weak in health and
+broken in spirit, and alone in the world, he naturally turned to one who
+had confessed an affection for him, and would therefore be true to his
+interests, and study his happiness.</p>
+
+<p>The proposal was every way satisfactory to Mrs. Ryder. To be mistress of
+an inn, and have servants under her instead of being one herself. And
+then, if Griffith and she began as allies in business, she felt very
+sure she could make herself, first necessary to him, and then dear to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>She was so elated she could hardly contain herself; and all her
+fellow-servants remarked that Mrs. Ryder had heard good news.</p>
+
+<p>Saturday came, and never did hours seem to creep so slowly.</p>
+
+<p>But at last the sun set, and the stars come out. There was no moon.
+Ryder opened the window and looked out; it was an admirable night for an
+assignation.</p>
+
+<p>She washed her face again, put on her gray silk gown, and purple
+petticoat,&mdash;<i>Mrs. Gaunt</i> had given them to her,&mdash;and, at the last
+moment, went and made up her mistress's fire, and put out everything she
+thought could be wanted, and, five minutes after seven o'clock, tied a
+scarlet handkerchief over her head, and stepped out at the back door.</p>
+
+<p>What with her coal-black hair, so streaked with red, her black eyes,
+flashing in the starlight, and her glowing cheeks, she looked
+bewitching.</p>
+
+<p>And, thus armed for conquest, wily, yet impassioned, she stole out, with
+noiseless foot and beating heart, to her appointment with her imprudent
+master.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BAD_SYMPTOMS" id="BAD_SYMPTOMS"></a>BAD SYMPTOMS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mons. Alphonse Karr writes as follows in his <i>Les Femmes</i>:&mdash;"When I wish
+to become invisible, I have a certain rusty and napless old hat, which I
+put on as Prince Lutin in the fairy tale puts on his chaplet of roses; I
+join to this a certain coat very much out at elbows: <i>eh bien</i>! I become
+invisible! Nobody on the street sees me, nobody recognizes me, nobody
+speaks to me."</p>
+
+<p>And yet I do not doubt that the majority of M. Karr's friends and
+acquaintances, as is the case with the friends and acquaintances of
+nearly every one else, are well-disposed, good-hearted, average persons,
+who would be heartily ashamed, if it could be brought home to them, of
+having given him the go-by under such circumstances. What, then, was the
+difficulty? In what consisted this change in the man's appearance, so
+signal that he trusted to it as a disguise? What was there in hat and
+coat thus to eclipse the whole personality of the man? There is a
+certain mystery in the philosophy of clothes too deep for me to fathom.
+The matter has been descanted upon before; the "H&aacute;v&aacute;mal, or High Song of
+Odin," the Essays of Montaigne, the "Sartor" of Thomas Carlyle, all
+dwell with acuteness upon this topic; but they merely give instances,
+they do not interpret. I am continually meeting with things in my
+intercourse with the world which I cannot reconcile with any theories
+society professes to be governed by. How shall I explain them? How, for
+example, shall I interpret the following cases, occurring within my own
+experience and under my own observation?</p>
+
+<p>I live in the country, and am a farmer. If I lived in the city and
+occupied myself with the vending of merchandise,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_769" id="Page_769">[Pg 769]</a></span> I should, in busy
+times at least, now and then help my clerks to sell my own goods,&mdash;if I
+could,&mdash;make up the packages, mark them, and attend to having them
+delivered. Solomon Gunnybags himself has done as much, upon occasion,
+and society has praised Solomon Gunnybags for such a display of devotion
+to his business. But I am a farmer, not a merchant; and, though not able
+to handle the plough, I am not above my business. One day during the
+past summer, while my peach-orchard was in full bearing, my foreman, who
+attends market for me, fell sick. The peaches would not tarry in their
+ripening, the pears were soft and blushing as sweet sixteen as they lay
+upon their shelves, the cantelopes grew mellow upon their vines, the
+tomato-beds called loudly to be relieved, and the very beans were
+beginning to rattle in their pods for ripeness. I am not a good
+salesman, and I was very sorry my foreman could not help me out; but
+something must be done, so I made up a load of fruit and vegetables,
+took them to the city to market, and sold them. While I was busily
+occupied measuring peaches by the half and quarter peck, stolidly deaf
+to the objurgations of my neighbor huckster on my right, to whom some
+one had given bad money, and equally impervious to the blandishments of
+an Irish customer in front of me, who could not be persuaded I meant to
+require the price I had set upon my goods, my friend Mrs. Entresol came
+along, trailing her parasol with one gloved hand, with the other
+daintily lifting her skirts out of the dust and dirt. Bridget, following
+her, toiled under the burden of a basket of good things. Mrs. Entresol
+is an old acquaintance of mine, and I esteem her highly. Entresol has
+just obtained a partnership in the retail dry-goods house for which he
+has been a clerk during so many years; the firm is prosperous, and, if
+he continues to be as industrious and prudent as he has been, I do not
+doubt but my friend will in the course of time be able to retire from
+business with money enough to buy a farm. My pears seemed to please Mrs.
+Entresol; she approached my stall, looked at them, took one up. "What is
+the price of your&mdash;" she began to inquire, when, looking up, she
+recognized the vender of the coveted fruit. What in the world came over
+the woman? I give you my word that, instead of speaking to me in her
+usual way, and telling me how glad she was to see me, she started as if
+something had stung her; she stammered, she blushed, and stood there
+with the pear in her fingers, staring at me in the blankest way
+imaginable. I must confess a little of her confusion imparted itself to
+me. For a moment the thought entered my mind that I had, in selling my
+own pears and peaches, been guilty of some really criminal action, such
+as sheep-stealing, lying, or slandering, and it was not pleasant to be
+caught in the act. But only for a moment; then I replied, "Good morning,
+Mrs. Entresol"; and, stating the price, proceeded to wait upon another
+customer.</p>
+
+<p>My highly business-like tone and manner rather added to my charming
+friend's confusion, but she rallied surprisingly, put out her little
+gloved hand to me, and exclaimed in the gayest voice: "Ah, you eccentric
+man! What will you do next? To think of you selling in the market, <i>just
+like a huckster</i>! You! I must tell Mrs. Belle &Eacute;toile of it. It is really
+one of the best jokes I know of! And how well you act your part,
+too,&mdash;just as if it came naturally to you," etc., etc.</p>
+
+<p>Thus she ran on, laughing, and interfering with my sales, protesting all
+the while that I was the greatest original in all her circle of
+acquaintance. Of course it would have been idle for me to controvert her
+view of the matter, so I quietly left her to the enjoyment of such an
+excellent joke, and was rather glad when at last she went away. I could
+not help wondering, however, after she was gone, why it was she should
+think I joked in retailing the products of my farm, any more than Mr.
+Entresol in retailing the goods piled upon his shelves and counters.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_770" id="Page_770">[Pg 770]</a></span>
+And why should one be "original" because he handles a peck-measure,
+while another is <i>comme il faut</i> in wielding a yardstick? Why did M.
+Karr's thread-bare coat and shocking bad hat fling such a cloud of dust
+in the eyes of passing friends, that they could not see him,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Ne wot who that he ben?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Now for another case. There is Tom Pinch's wife. Tom is an excellent
+person, in every respect, and so is his wife. I don't know any woman
+with a light purse and four children who manages better, or is possessed
+of more sterling qualities, than Mrs. Tom Pinch. She is industrious,
+amiable, intelligent; pious as father &AElig;neas; in fact, the most devoted
+creature to preachers and sermons that ever worked for a fair. She would
+be very angry with you if you were to charge her with entertaining the
+doctrine of "justification by works," but I seriously incline to believe
+she imagines that seat of hers in that cushioned pew one of the
+mainstays to her hope of heaven. And yet, at this crisis, Mrs. Tom Pinch
+can't go to church! There is an insurmountable obstacle which keeps the
+poor little thing at home every Sunday, and renders her (comparatively)
+miserable the rest of the week. She takes a course of Jay's Sermons, to
+be sure, but she takes it disconsolately, and has serious fears of
+becoming a backslider. What is it closes the church door to her? Not her
+health, for that is excellent. It is not the baby, for her nurse, small
+as she is, is quite trustworthy. It is not any trouble about dinner, for
+nobody has a better cook than Mrs. Tom Pinch,&mdash;a paragon cook, in fact,
+who seems to have strayed down into her kitchen from that remote
+antiquity when servants were servants. No, none of these things keeps
+the pious wife at home. None of these things restrains her from taking
+that quiet walk up the aisle and occupying that seat in the corner of
+the pew, there to dismiss all thought of worldly care, and fit her good
+little soul for the pleasures of real worship, and that prayerful
+meditation and sweet communion with holy things that only such good
+little women know the blessings of;&mdash;none of these things at all. It is
+Mrs. Tom Pinch's <i>bonnet</i> that keeps her at home,&mdash;her last season's
+bonnet! Strike, but hear me, ladies, for the thing is simply so. Tom's
+practice is not larger than he can manage; Tom's family need quite all
+he can make to keep them; and he has not yet been able this season to
+let Mrs. Tom have the money required to provide a new fall bonnet. She
+will get it before long, of course, for Tom is a good provider, and he
+knows his wife to be economical. Still he cannot see&mdash;poor innocent that
+he is!&mdash;why his dear little woman cannot just as well go to church in
+her last fall's bonnet, which, to his purblind vision, is quite as good
+as new. What, Tom! don't you know the dear little woman has too much
+love for you, too much pride in you, to make a fright of herself, upon
+any consideration? Don't you know that, were your wife to venture to
+church in that hideous condition of which a last year's bonnet is the
+efficient and unmistakable symbol, Mrs. A., Mrs. B., Mrs. C., all the
+ladies of the church, in fact, would remark it at once,&mdash;would sit in
+judgment upon it like a quilt committee at an industrial fair, and would
+unanimously decide, either that you were a close-fisted brute to deny
+such a sweet little helpmeet the very necessaries of life, or that your
+legal practice was falling off so materially you could no longer support
+your family? O no, Tom, your wife must not venture out to church in her
+last season's bonnet! She is not without a certain sort of courage, to
+be sure; she has stood by death-beds without trembling; she has endured
+poverty and its privations, illness, the pains and perils of childbirth,
+and many another hardship, with a brave cheerfulness such as you can
+wonder at, and never dream of imitating; but there is a limit even to
+the boldest woman's daring; and, when it comes to the exposure and
+ridicule consequent upon defying the world in a last season's bonnet,
+that limit is reached.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_771" id="Page_771">[Pg 771]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I have one other case to recount, and, in my opinion, the most
+lamentable one of all. Were I to tell you the real name of my friend,
+Mrs. Belle &Eacute;toile, you would recognize one of the most favored daughters
+of America, as the newspapers phrase it. Rich, intelligent, highly
+cultivated, at the tip-top of the social ladder, esteemed by a wide
+circle of such friends as it is an honor to know, loving and beloved by
+her noble husband,&mdash;every one knows Mrs. &Eacute;toile by reputation at least.
+Happy in her pretty, well-behaved children, she is the polished
+reflection of all that is best and most refined in American society. She
+is, indeed, a noble woman, as pure and unsullied in the instincts of her
+heart, as she is bright and glowing in the display of her intellect. Her
+wit is brilliant; her <i>mots</i> are things to be remembered; her opinions
+upon art and life have at once a wide currency and a substantial value;
+and, more than all, her modest charities, of which none knows save
+herself, are as deep and as beneficent as those subterranean fountains
+which well up in a thousand places to refresh and gladden the earth.
+Nevertheless, and in spite of her genuine practical wisdom, her lofty
+idealism of thought, her profound contempt for all the weak shams and
+petty frivolities of life, Mrs. Belle &Eacute;toile is a slave! "They who
+submit to drink as another pleases, make themselves his slaves," says
+that Great Mogul of sentences, Dr. Johnson; and in this sense Mrs. Belle
+&Eacute;toile is a slave indeed. The fetters gall her, but she has not courage
+to shake them off. Her mistress is her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Colisle,
+a coarse, vulgar, half-bred woman, whose husband acquired a sudden
+wealth from contracts and petroleum speculations, and who has in
+consequence set herself up for a leader of <i>ton</i>. A certain downright
+persistence and energy of character, acquired, it may be, in bullying
+the kitchen-maids at the country tavern where she began life, a certain
+lavish expenditure of her husband's profits, the vulgar display and
+profusion at her numerous balls, and her free-handed patronage of
+<i>modistes</i> and shop-keepers, have secured to Mrs. Colisle a sort of
+Drummond-light position among the stars of fashion. She imports
+patterns, and they become the mode; her caterer invents dishes, and they
+are copied throughout the obeisant world. There are confections <i>&agrave; la</i>
+Colisle; the confectioners utter new editions of them. There is a
+Colisle head-dress, a Colisle pomade, a Colisle hat,&mdash;the world wears
+and uses them. Thus, Mrs. Colisle has set herself up as Mrs. Belle
+&Eacute;toile's rival; and that unfortunate lady, compelled by those
+<i>noblesse-oblige</i> principles which control the chivalry of fashion,
+takes up the unequal gage, and enters the lists against her. The result
+is, that Mrs. Belle &Eacute;toile has become the veriest slave in Christendom.
+Whatever the other woman's whims and extravagances, Mrs. Belle &Eacute;toile is
+their victim. Her taste revolts, but her pride of place compels
+obedience. She cannot yield, she will not follow; and so Mrs. Colisle,
+with diabolical ingenuity, constrains her to run a course that gives her
+no honor and pays her no compensation. She scorns Mrs. Colisle's ways,
+she loathes her fashions and her company, and&mdash;outbids her for them! It
+is a very unequal contest, of course. Defeat only inspires Mrs. Colisle
+with a more stubborn persistence. Victory cannot lessen the sad regrets
+of Mrs. Belle &Eacute;toile's soul for outraged instincts and insulted taste.
+It is an ill match,&mdash;a strife between greyhound and mastiff, a contest
+at heavy draught between a thoroughbred and a Flanders mare. Mrs. &Eacute;toile
+knows this as well as you and I can possibly know it. She is perfectly
+aware of her serfdom. She is poignantly conscious of the degrading
+character of her servitude, and that it is not possible to gather grapes
+of thorns, nor figs of thistles; and yet she will continue to wage the
+unequal strife, to wear the unhandsome fetters, simply because she has
+not the courage to extricate herself from the false position into which
+the strategic arts of Fashion have inveigled her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_772" id="Page_772">[Pg 772]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now I do not intend to moralize. I have no purpose to frighten the
+reader prematurely off to the next page by unmasking a formidable
+battery of reflections and admonitions. I have merely instanced the
+above cases, three or four among a thousand of such as must have
+presented themselves to the attention of each one of us; and I adduce
+them simply as examples of what I call "bad symptoms" in any diagnosis
+of the state of the social frame. They indicate, in fact, a total
+absence of <i>social courage</i> in persons otherwise endowed with and
+illustrious for all the useful and ornamental virtues, and consequently
+they make it plain and palpable that society is in a condition of
+dangerous disease. Whether a remedy is practicable or not I will not
+venture to decide; but I can confidently assure our reformers, both men
+and women, that, if they can accomplish anything toward restoring its
+normal and healthy courage to society, they will benefit the human race
+much more signally than they could by making Arcadias out of a dozen or
+two Borrioboola-Ghas.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="REVIEWS_AND_LITERARY_NOTICES" id="REVIEWS_AND_LITERARY_NOTICES"></a>REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.</h2>
+
+
+<p>1. <i>Croquet.</i> By <span class="smcap">Captain Mayne Reid</span>. Boston: James Redpath.</p>
+
+<p>2. <i>Handbook of Croquet.</i> By <span class="smcap">Edmund Routledge</span>. London: George Routledge
+and Sons.</p>
+
+<p>3. <i>The Game of Croquet; its Appointments and Laws.</i> By <span class="smcap">R. Fellow</span>. New
+York: Hurd and Houghton.</p>
+
+<p>4. <i>Croquet, as played by the Newport Croquet Club.</i> By one of the
+Members. New York: Sheldon &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p>The original tower of Babel having been for some time discontinued, and
+most of our local legislatures having adjourned, the nearest approach to
+a confusion of tongues is perhaps now to be found in an ordinary game of
+croquet. Out of eight youths and maidens caught for that performance at
+a picnic, four have usually learned the rules from four different
+manuals, and can agree on nothing; while the rest have never learned any
+rules at all, and cannot even distinctly agree to disagree. With
+tolerably firm wills and moderately shrill voices, it is possible for
+such a party to exhibit a very pretty war of words before even a single
+blow is struck. For supposing that there is an hour of daylight for the
+game, they can easily spend fifteen minutes in debating whether the
+starting-point should be taken a mallet's length from the stake,
+according to Reid, or only twelve inches, according to Routledge.</p>
+
+<p>More than twenty manuals of croquet have been published in England, it
+is said, and some five or six in America. Of the four authorities named
+above, each has some representative value for American players. Mayne
+Reid was the pioneer, Routledge is the most compact and seductive,
+Fellow the most popular and the poorest, and "Newport" the newest and by
+far the best. And among them all it is possible to find authority for
+and against almost every possible procedure.</p>
+
+<p>The first point of grave divergence is one that occurs at the very
+outset of the game. "Do you play with or without the roquet-croquet?"
+has now come to be the first point of mutual solicitude in a mixed
+party. It may not seem a momentous affair whether the privilege of
+striking one's own ball and the adversary's without holding the former
+beneath the foot, should be extended to all players or limited to the
+"rover"; but it makes an immense difference in both the duration and the
+difficulty of the game. By skilfully using this right, every player may
+change the position of every ball, during each tour of play. It is a
+formidable privilege, and accordingly Reid and "Newport" both forbid it
+to all but the "rover," and Routledge denies it even to him; while
+Fellow alone pleads for universal indulgence. It seems a pity to side
+with one poor authority against three good ones, but there is no doubt
+that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_773" id="Page_773">[Pg 773]</a></span> the present tendency of the best players is to cultivate the
+roquet-croquet more and more; and after employing it, one is as
+unwilling to give it up, as a good billiard-player would be to revert
+from the cue to the mace. The very fact, however, that this privilege
+multiplies so enormously the advantages of skill is perhaps a good
+reason for avoiding it in a mixed party of novices and experts, where
+the object is rather to equalize abilities. It should also be avoided
+where the croquet-ground is small, as is apt to be the case in our
+community,&mdash;because in such narrow quarters a good player can often hit
+every other ball during each tour of play, even without this added
+advantage. If we played habitually on large, smooth lawns like those of
+England, the reasons for the general use of the roquet-croquet would be
+far stronger.</p>
+
+<p>Another inconvenient discrepancy of the books relates to the different
+penalties imposed on "flinching," or allowing one's ball to slip from
+under one's foot, during the process of croquet. Here Routledge gives no
+general rule; Reid and "Newport" decree that, if a ball "flinches," its
+tour terminates, but its effects remain; while, according to Fellow, the
+ball which has suffered croquet is restored, but the tour
+continues,&mdash;the penalties being thus reversed. Here the sober judgment
+must side with the majority of authorities; for this reason, if for no
+other, that the first-named punishment is more readily enforced, and
+avoids the confusion and altercation which are often produced by taking
+up and replacing a ball.</p>
+
+<p>Again, if a ball be accidentally stopped in its motion by a careless
+player or spectator, what shall be done? Fellow permits the striker
+either to leave the ball where the interruption left it, or to place it
+where he thinks it would have stopped, if unmolested. This again is a
+rule far less simple, and liable to produce far more wrangling, than the
+principle of the other authorities, which is that the ball should either
+be left where it lies, or be carried to the end of the arena.</p>
+
+<p>These points are all among the commonest that can be raised, and it is
+very unfortunate that there should be no uniformity of rule, to meet
+contingencies so inevitable. When more difficult points come up for
+adjudication, the difficulty has thus far been less in the conflict of
+authorities than in their absence. Until the new American commentator
+appeared, there was no really scientific treatise on croquet to be had
+in our bookstores.</p>
+
+<p>The so-called manual of the "Newport Croquet Club" is understood to
+proceed from a young gentleman whose mathematical attainments have won
+him honor both at Cambridge and at New Haven, and who now beguiles his
+banishment as Assistant Professor in the Naval Academy by writing on
+croquet in the spirit of Peirce. What President Hill has done for
+elementary geometry, "Newport" aims to do for croquet, making it
+severely simple, and, perhaps we might add, simply severe. And yet,
+admirable to relate, this is the smallest of all the manuals, and the
+cheapest, and the only one in which there is not so much as an allusion
+to ladies' ankles. All the others have a few pages of rules and a very
+immoderate quantity of slang; they are all liable to the charge of being
+silly; whereas the only possible charge to be brought against "Newport"
+is that he is too sensible. But for those who hold, with ourselves, that
+whatever is worth doing is worth doing sensibly, there is really no
+other manual. That is, this is the only one which really grapples with a
+difficult case, and deals with it as if heaven and earth depended on the
+adjudication.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible that this scientific method sometimes makes its author
+too bold a lawgiver. The error of most of the books is in attempting too
+little and in doing that little ill. They are all written for beginners
+only. The error of "Newport" lies in too absolute an adherence to
+principles. His "theory of double points" is excellent, but his theory
+of "the right of declining" is an innovation all the more daring because
+it is so methodically put. The principle has long been familiar, though
+never perhaps quite settled, that where two distinct points were made by
+any stroke,&mdash;as, for instance, a bridge and a roquet,&mdash;the one or the
+other could be waived. The croquet, too, could always be waived. But to
+assert boldly that "a player may decline any point made by himself, and
+play precisely as if the point had not been made," is a thought radical
+enough to send a shudder along Pennsylvania Avenue. Under this ruling, a
+single player in a game of eight might spend a half-hour in running and
+rerunning a single bridge, with dog-in-the-mangerish pertinacity,
+waiting his opportunity to claim the most mischievous run as the valid
+one. It would produce endless misunderstandings and errors of memory.
+The only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_774" id="Page_774">[Pg 774]</a></span> vexed case which it would help to decide is that in which a
+ball, in running the very last bridge, strikes another ball, and is yet
+forbidden to croquet, because it must continue its play from the
+starting-point. But even this would be better settled in almost any
+other way; and indeed this whole rule as to a return to the "spot" seems
+a rather arbitrary and meaningless thing.</p>
+
+<p>The same adherence to theory takes the author quite beyond our depth, if
+not beyond his own, in another place. He says that a ball may hit
+another ball twice or more, during the same tour, between two steps on
+the round, and move it each time by concussion,&mdash;"but only one (not
+necessarily the first) contact is a valid roquet." (p. 34.) But how can
+a player obtain the right to make a second contact, under such
+circumstances, unless indeed the first was part of a <i>ricochet</i>, and was
+waived as such? And if the case intended was merely that of ricochet, it
+should have been more distinctly stated, for the right to waive ricochet
+was long since recognized by Reid (p. 40), though Routledge prohibits,
+and Fellow limits it.</p>
+
+<p>Thus even the errors of "Newport" are of grave and weighty nature, such
+as statesmen and mathematicians may, without loss of dignity, commit. Is
+it that it is possible to go too deep into all sciences, even croquet?
+But how delightful to have at last a treatise which errs on that side,
+when its predecessors, like popular commentators on the Bible, have
+carefully avoided all the hard points, and only cleared up the easy
+ones!</p>
+
+
+<p><br /><br /><i>Poetry, Lyrical, Narrative, and Satirical, of the Civil War.</i> Selected
+and Edited by <span class="smcap">Richard Grant White</span>. New York: The American News Company.</p>
+
+<p>We confess that our heart had at times misgiven us concerning the
+written and printed poetry of our recent war; but until Mr. White gave
+us the present volume, we did not know how strong a case could be made
+against it. The effect is perhaps not altogether intended, but it shows
+how bad his material was, and how little inspiration of any sort
+attended him in his work, when a literary gentleman of habits of
+research and of generally supposed critical taste makes a book so
+careless and slovenly as this.</p>
+
+<p>We can well afford the space which the editor devotes to Mr. Lowell's
+noble poem, but we must admit that we can regard "The Present Crisis" as
+part of the poetry of the war only in the large sense in which we should
+also accept the Prophecies of Ezekiel and the Lamentations of Jeremiah.
+Many pious men beheld the war (after it came) foreshadowed in the poetry
+of the awful and exalted prophecies, and we wonder that Mr. White did
+not give us a few passages from those books. It is scarcely possible
+that he did not know "The Present Crisis" to have been written nearly a
+score of years ago; though he seems to have been altogether ignorant of
+"The Washers of the Shroud," a poem by the same author actually written
+after the war began, and uttering all that dread, suspense, and deep
+determination which the threatened Republic felt after the defeats in
+the autumn of 1861. As Mr. White advances with his poetical chronology
+of the war, he is likewise unconscious of "The Commemoration Ode," which
+indeed is so far above all other elegiac poems of the war, as perhaps to
+be out of his somewhat earth-bound range. Yet we cannot help blaming him
+a little for not looking higher: his book must for some time represent
+the feeling of the nation in war time, and we would fain have had his
+readers know how deep and exalted this sentiment really was, and how it
+could reach, if only once and in only one, an expression which we may
+challenge any literature to surpass. Of "The Biglow Papers," in which
+there is so much of the national hard-headed shrewdness, humor, and
+earnestness, we have but one, and that not the best.</p>
+
+<p>As some compensation, however, Mr. White presents us with two humorous
+lyrics of his own, and makes us feel like men who, in the first moments
+of our financial disorder, parted with a good dollar, and received
+change in car-tickets and envelopes covering an ideal value in
+postage-stamps. It seems hard to complain of an editor who puts only two
+of his poems in a collection when he was master to put in twenty if he
+chose, and when in both cases he does his best to explain and relieve
+their intolerable brilliancy by foot-notes; yet, seeing that one of
+these productions is in literature what the "Yankee Notions" and the
+"Nick-Nax" caricatures of John Bull are in art, and seeing that the
+other is not in the least a parody of the Emersonian poetry it is
+supposed to burlesque, and is otherwise nothing at all, we cannot help
+crying out against them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_775" id="Page_775">[Pg 775]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The foot-notes to Mr. White's verses <i>are</i> comical, however, we must
+acknowledge; and so are all the foot-notes in the book. If the Model of
+Deportment had taken to letters with a humorous aim, we could conceive
+of his writing them. "If burlesque," says Mr. White of his "Union"
+verses, "were all their purpose, they would not be here preserved";
+adding, with a noble tenderness for his victim, "Mr. Emerson could well
+afford to forgive them, even if they did not come from one of his
+warmest admirers,"&mdash;in which we agree with Mr. White, whose
+consideration for the great transcendentalist is equalled only by his
+consideration for the reader's ignorance in regard to most things not
+connected with the poetry of the war. "Bully," he tells us, was used as
+"an expression of encouragement and approval" by the Elizabethan
+dramatists, as well as by our own cherished rowdies; which may be
+readily proven from the plays of Shakespeare. But what the author of the
+poem in which this word occurs means by "hefty" Mr. White does not know,
+and frankly makes a note for the purpose of saying so. Concerning the
+expression "hurried up his cakes," he is, however, perfectly <i>au fait</i>,
+and surprises us with the promptness of his learning. "As long as the
+importance of hurrying buckwheat pancakes from the griddle to the
+table," says he, with a fine air of annotation, "is impressed upon the
+American mind, this vile slang will need no explanation. But the
+fame,"&mdash;mark this dry light of philosophy, and the delicacy of the humor
+through which it plays,&mdash;"but the fame of the Rebel march into
+Pennsylvania, and of the victory of Gettysburg, will probably outlive
+even the taste for these alluring compounds." This is Mr. White's good
+humor; his bad humor is displayed in his note to a poem by Fitz James
+O'Brien on the "Seventh Regiment," which he says was "written by a young
+Irishman, one of its members." The young Irishman's name is probably as
+familiar to most readers of the magazines as Mr. White's, and we cannot
+help wondering how he knew a writer of singularly brilliant powers and
+wide repute only as "a young Irishman."</p>
+
+<p>But there are many things which Mr. White seems not to know, and he has
+but a poor memory for names, and in his despair he writes <i>anonymous</i>
+against the title of every third poem. We might have expected a
+gentleman interested in the poetry of the war to attend the lectures of
+Dr. Holmes, who has been reading in New York and elsewhere "The Old
+Sergeant," as the production of Mr. Forcythe Willson of Kentucky. By
+turning to the index of that volume of the Atlantic from which the
+verses were taken, Mr. White could have learned that "Spring at the
+Capital" was written by Mrs. Akers; and with quite as little trouble
+could have informed himself of the authorship of a half-score of other
+poems we might name. We have already noted the defectiveness of the
+collection, in which we are told "no conspicuous poem elicited by the
+war is omitted"; and we note it again in Mr. White's failure to print
+Mr. Bryant's pathetic and beautiful poem, "My Autumn Walk," and in his
+choosing from Mr. Aldrich not one of the fine sonnets he has written on
+the war, but a <i>jeu d'esprit</i> which in no wise represents him. Indeed,
+Mr. White's book seems to have been compiled after the editor had
+collected a certain number of clippings from the magazines and
+newspapers: if by the blessing of Heaven these had the names of their
+authors attached, and happened to be the best things the poets had done,
+it was a fortunate circumstance; but if the reverse was the fact, Mr.
+White seems to have felt no responsibility in the matter. We are
+disposed to hold him to stricter account, and to blame him for
+temporarily blocking, with a book and a reputation, the way to a work of
+real industry, taste, and accuracy on the poetry of the war. It was our
+right that a man whose scholarly fame would carry his volume beyond our
+own shores should do his best for our heroic Muse, robing her in all
+possible splendor; and it is our wrong that he has chosen instead to
+present the poor soul in attire so very indifferently selected from her
+limited wardrobe.</p>
+
+
+<p><br /><br /><i>The Story of Kennett.</i> By <span class="smcap">Bayard Taylor</span>. New York: G. P. Putnam; Hurd
+and Houghton.</p>
+
+<p>In this novel Mr. Taylor has so far surpassed his former efforts in
+extended fiction, as to approach the excellence attained in his briefer
+stories. He has of course some obvious advantages in recounting "The
+Story of Kennett" which were denied him in "Hannah Thurston" and "John
+Godfrey's Fortunes." He here deals with the persons, scenes, and actions
+of a hundred years ago, and thus gains that distance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_776" id="Page_776">[Pg 776]</a></span> so valuable to the
+novelist; and he neither burdens himself with an element utterly and
+hopelessly unpicturesque, like modern reformerism, nor assumes the
+difficult office of interesting us in the scarcely more attractive
+details of literary adventure. But we think, after all, that we owe the
+superiority of "The Story of Kennett" less to the felicity of his
+subject than to Mr. Taylor's maturing powers as a novelist, of which his
+choice of a happy theme is but one of the evidences. He seems to have
+told his story because he liked it; and without the least consciousness
+(which we fear haunted him in former efforts) that he was doing
+something to supply the great want of an American novel. Indeed, but for
+the prologue dedicating the work in a somewhat patronizing strain to his
+old friends and neighbors of Kennett, the author forgets himself
+entirely in the book, and leaves us to remember him, therefore, with all
+the greater pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>The hero of the tale is Gilbert Potter, a young farmer of Kennett, on
+whose birth there is, in the belief of his neighbors, the stain of
+illegitimacy, though his mother, with whom he lives somewhat solitarily
+and apart from the others, denies the guilt imputed to her, while some
+mystery forbids her to reveal her husband's name. Gilbert is in love
+with Martha, the daughter of Dr. Deane, a rich, smooth, proud old
+Quaker, who is naturally no friend to the young man's suit, but is
+rather bent upon his daughter's marriage with Alfred Barton, a bachelor
+of advanced years, and apparent heir of one of the hardest, wealthiest,
+and most obstinately long-lived old gentlemen in the neighborhood.
+Obediently to the laws of fiction, Martha rejects Alfred Barton, who,
+indeed, is but a cool and timid wooer, and a weak, selfish, spiritless
+man, of few good impulses, with a dull fear and dislike of his own
+father, and a covert tenderness for Gilbert. The last, being openly
+accepted by Martha, and forbidden, with much contumely, to see her, by
+her father, applies himself with all diligence to paying off the
+mortgage on his farm, in order that he may wed the Doctor's daughter, in
+spite of his science, his pride, and his riches; but when he has earned
+the requisite sum, he is met on his way to Philadelphia and robbed of
+the money by Sandy Flash, a highwayman who infested that region, and
+who, Mr. Taylor tells us, is an historical personage. He appears first
+in the first chapter of "The Story of Kennett," when, having spent the
+day in a fox-hunt with Alfred Barton, and the evening at the tavern in
+the same company, he beguiles his comrade into a lonely place, reveals
+himself, and, with the usual ceremonies, robs Barton of his money and
+watch. Thereafter, he is seen again, when he rides through the midst of
+the volunteers of Kennett, drinks at the bar of the village tavern, and
+retires unharmed by the men assembled to hunt him down and take him.
+After all, however, he is a real brigand, and no hero; and Mr. Taylor
+manages his character so well as to leave us no pity for the fate of a
+man, who, with some noble traits, is in the main fierce and cruel. He is
+at last given up to justice by the poor, half-wild creature with whom he
+lives, and whom, in a furious moment, he strikes because she implores
+him to return Gilbert his money.</p>
+
+<p>As for Gilbert, through all the joy of winning Martha, and the sickening
+disappointment of losing his money, the shame and anguish of the mystery
+that hangs over his origin oppress him; and, having once experienced the
+horror of suspecting that Martha's father might also be his, he suffers
+hardly less torture when the highwayman, on the day of his conviction,
+sends to ask an interview with him. But Sandy Flash merely wishes to
+ease his conscience by revealing the burial-place of Gilbert's money;
+and when the young man, urged to the demand by an irresistible anxiety,
+implores, "You are not my father?" the good highwayman, in great and
+honest amazement, declares that he certainly is not. The mystery
+remains, and it is not until the death of the old man Barton that it is
+solved. Then it is dissipated, when Gilbert's mother, in presence of
+kindred and neighbors, assembled at the funeral, claims Alfred Barton as
+her husband; and after this nothing remains but the distribution of
+justice, and the explanation that, long ago, before Gilbert's birth, his
+parents had been secretly married. Alfred Barton, however, had sworn his
+wife not to reveal the marriage before his father's death, at that time
+daily expected, and had cruelly held her to her vow after the birth of
+their son, and through all the succeeding years of agony and
+contumely,&mdash;loving her and her boy in his weak, selfish, cowardly way,
+but dreading too deeply his father's anger ever to do them justice. The
+reader entirely sympathizes with Gilbert's shame in such a father, and
+his half-regret that it had not been a brave, bad man like Sandy Flash
+instead. Barton's punishment is finely worked out.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_777" id="Page_777">[Pg 777]</a></span> The fact of the
+marriage had been brought to the old man's knowledge before his death,
+and he had so changed his will as to leave the money intended for his
+son to his son's deeply wronged wife; and, after the public assertion of
+their rights at the funeral, Gilbert and his mother coldly withdraw from
+the wretched man, and leave him, humiliated before the world he dreaded,
+to seek the late reconciliation which is not accomplished in this book.
+It is impossible to feel pity for his sufferings; but one cannot repress
+the hope that Mary and her son will complete the beauty of their own
+characters by forgiving him at last.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to us that this scene of Mary Potter's triumph at the funeral
+is the most effective in the whole book. Considering her character and
+history, it is natural that she should seek to make her justification as
+signal and public as possible. The long and pitiless years of shame
+following the error of her youthful love and ambition, during which the
+sin of attempting to found her happiness on a deceit was so heavily
+punished, have disciplined her to the perfect acting of her part, and
+all her past is elevated and dignified by the calm power with which she
+rights herself. She is the chief person of the drama, which is so pure
+and simple as not to approach melodrama; and the other characters are
+merely passive agents; while the reader, to whom the facts are known,
+cannot help sharing their sense of mystery and surprise. We confess to a
+deeper respect for Mr. Taylor's power than we have felt before, when we
+observe with what masterly skill he contrives by a single incident to
+give sudden and important development to a character, which, however
+insignificant it had previously seemed, we must finally allow to have
+been perfectly prepared for such an effect.</p>
+
+<p>The hero of the book, we find a good deal like other heroes,&mdash;a little
+more natural than most, perhaps, but still portentously noble and
+perfect. He does not interest us much; but we greatly admire the
+heroine, Martha Deane, whom he loves and marries. In the study of her
+character and that of her father, Mr. Taylor is perfectly at home, and
+extremely felicitous. There is no one else who treats Quaker life so
+well as the author of the beautiful story of "Friend Eli's Daughter";
+and in the opposite characters of Doctor Deane and Martha we have the
+best portraiture of the contrasts which Quakerism produces in human
+nature. In the sweet and unselfish spirit of Martha, the theories of
+individual action under special inspiration have created self-reliance,
+and calm, fearless humility, sustaining her in her struggle against the
+will of her father, and even against the sect to whose teachings she
+owes them. Dr. Deane had made a marriage of which the Society
+disapproved, but after his wife's death he had professed contrition for
+his youthful error, and had been again taken into the quiet brotherhood.
+Martha, however, had always refused to unite with the Society, and had
+thereby been "a great cross" to her father,&mdash;a man by no means broken
+under his affliction, but a hard-headed, self-satisfied, smooth, narrow
+egotist. Mr. Taylor contrives to present his person as clearly as his
+character, and we smell hypocrisy in the sweet scent of marjoram that
+hangs about him, see selfishness in his heavy face and craft in the
+quiet gloss of his drab broadcloth, and hear obstinacy in his studied
+step. He is the most odious character in the book, what is bad in him
+being separated by such fine differences from what is very good in
+others. We have even more regard for Alfred Barton, who, though a
+coward, has heart enough to be truly ashamed at last, while Dr. Deane
+retains a mean self-respect after the folly and the wickedness of his
+purposes are shown to him.</p>
+
+<p>His daughter, for all her firmness in resisting her father's commands to
+marry Barton, and to dismiss Gilbert, is true woman, and submissive to
+her lover. The wooing of these, and of the other lovers, Mark Deane and
+Sally Fairthorn, is described with pleasant touches of contrast, and a
+strict fidelity to place and character. Indeed, nothing can be better
+than the faithful spirit in which Mr. Taylor seems to have adhered to
+all the facts of the life he portrays. There is such shyness among
+American novelists (if we may so classify the writers of our meagre
+fiction) in regard to dates, names, and localities, that we are glad to
+have a book in which there is great courage in this respect. Honesty of
+this kind is vastly more acceptable to us than the aerial romance which
+cannot alight in any place known to the gazetteer; though we must
+confess that we attach infinitely less importance than the author does
+to the fact that Miss Betsy Lavender, Deb. Smith, Sandy Flash, and the
+two Fairthorn boys are drawn from the characters of persons who once
+actually lived. Indeed, we could dispense very well with the low comedy
+of Sally's brothers, and, in spite of Miss Betsy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_778" id="Page_778">[Pg 778]</a></span> Lavender's foundation
+in fact, we could consent to lose her much sooner than any other leading
+character of the book: she seems to us made-up and mechanical. On the
+contrary, we find Sally Fairthorn, with her rustic beauty and
+fresh-heartedness, her impulses and blunders, altogether delightful. She
+is a part of the thoroughly <i>country</i> flavor of the book,&mdash;the rides
+through the woods, the huskings, the raising of the barn,&mdash;(how
+admirably and poetically all that scene of the barn-raising is
+depicted!)&mdash;just as Martha somehow belongs to the loveliness and
+goodness of nature,&mdash;the blossom and the harvest which appear and
+reappear in the story.</p>
+
+<p>We must applaud the delicacy and propriety of the descriptive parts of
+Mr. Taylor's work: they are rare and brief, and they are inseparable
+from the human interest of the narrative with which they are interwoven.
+The style of the whole fiction is clear and simple, and, in the more
+dramatic scenes,&mdash;like that of old Barton's funeral,&mdash;rises effortlessly
+into very great strength. The plot, too, is well managed; the incidents
+naturally succeed each other; and, while some portion of the end may be
+foreseen, it must be allowed that the author skilfully conceals the
+secret of Gilbert's parentage, while preparing at the right moment to
+break it effectively to the reader.</p>
+
+
+<p><br /><br /><i>The South since the War: as shown by Fourteen Weeks of Travel and
+Observation in Georgia and the Carolinas.</i> By <span class="smcap">Sidney Andrews</span>. Boston:
+Ticknor and Fields.</p>
+
+<p>The simple and clear exhibition of things heard and seen in the South
+seems to have been the object of Mr. Andrews's interesting tour, and he
+holds the mirror up to Reconstruction with a noble and self-denying
+fidelity. It would have been much easier to give us studied theories and
+speculations instead of the facts we needed, and we are by no means
+inclined to let the crudity of parts of the present book abate from our
+admiration of its honesty and straightforwardness.</p>
+
+<p>A great share of the volume is devoted to sketches of scenes and debates
+in the Conventions held last autumn in North and South Carolina and
+Georgia, for the reconstruction of the State governments; and Mr.
+Andrews's readers are made acquainted, as pleasantly as may be, with the
+opinions and appearance of the leaders in these bodies. But the value of
+this part of his book is necessarily transitory; and we have been much
+more interested in the chapters which recount the author's experiences
+of travel and sojourn, and describe the popular character and
+civilization of the South as affected by the event of the war. It must
+be confessed, however, that the picture is not one from which we can
+take great courage for the present. The leading men in the region
+through which Mr. Andrews passed seem to have an adequate conception of
+the fact that the South can only rise again through tranquillity,
+education, and justice; and some few of these men have the daring to
+declare that regeneration must come through her abandonment of all the
+social theories and prejudices that distinguished her as a section
+before the war. But in a great degree the beaten bully is a bully still.
+There is the old lounging, the old tipsiness, the old swagger, the old
+violence. Mr. Andrews has to fly from a mob, as in the merry days of
+1859, because he persuades an old negro to go home and not stay and be
+stabbed by a gentleman of one of the first families. Drunken life-long
+idlers hiccup an eloquent despair over the freedmen's worthlessness;
+bitter young ladies and high-toned gentlemen insult Northerners when
+opportunity offers; and, while there is a general disposition to accept
+the fortune of war, there is a belief, equally general, among our
+unconstructed brethren, that better people were never worse off. The
+conditions outside of the great towns are not such as to attract
+Northern immigration, in which the chief hope of the South lies; and
+there is but slight wish on the part of the dominant classes to improve
+the industry of the country by doing justice to the liberated slaves.
+The military, under the Freedmen's Bureau, does something to enforce
+contracts and punish outrage; but it is often lamentably inadequate, and
+is sometimes controlled by men who have the baseness to side against the
+weak.</p>
+
+<p>Of the three States through which Mr. Andrews travelled, South Carolina
+seems to be in the most hopeful mood for regeneration; but it is
+probable that the natural advantages of Georgia will attract a larger
+share of foreign capital and industry, and place it first in the line of
+redemption, though the temper of its people is less intelligent and
+frank than that of the South-Carolinians. In North Carolina the
+difficulty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_779" id="Page_779">[Pg 779]</a></span> seems to be with the prevailing ignorance and poverty of the
+lower classes, and the lukewarm virtue of people who were also lukewarm
+in wickedness, and whose present loyalty is dull and cold, like their
+late treason.</p>
+
+
+<p><br /><br /><i>Social Life of the Chinese: with some Account of their Religious,
+Governmental, Educational, and Business Customs and Opinions, etc.</i> By
+<span class="smcap">Rev. Justus Doolittle</span>, Fourteen Years Member of the Fuhchan Mission of
+the American Board. With over One Hundred and Fifty Illustrations. In
+Two Volumes. New York: Harper and Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Doolittle speaks of a class of degraded individuals in China, "who
+are willing to make amusement for others." The severest critic can
+hardly assign him to any such class, for there is no reason to suppose
+that he would have made his book amusing, if he could possibly have
+helped it. But the Chinese are a race of such amazing and inexhaustible
+oddities, that the driest description of them, if it be only truthful,
+must be entertaining.</p>
+
+<p>What power of prose can withdraw all interest from a people whose
+theology declares that whoever throws printed paper on the ground in
+anger "has five demerits, and will lose his intelligence," and that he
+who tosses it into water "has twenty demerits, and will have sore eyes"?
+A people among whom unmarried women who have forsworn meat are called
+"vegetable virgins," and married women similarly pledged are known as
+"vegetable dames,"&mdash;among whom a present of sugar-cane signifies the
+approach of an elder sister, and oysters in an earthen vessel are the
+charming signal that a younger brother draws near,&mdash;a people among whom
+the most exciting confectionery is made of rice and molasses,&mdash;how can
+the Reverend Justus Doolittle deprive such a people of the most piquant
+interest?</p>
+
+<p>And when we come to weightier matters, one finds this to be after all
+one of those "dry books" for which Margaret Fuller declared her
+preference,&mdash;a book where the author supplies only a multiplicity of the
+most unvarnished facts, and leaves all the imagination to the reader. To
+say that he for one instant makes the individuality of a Chinese
+conceivable, or his human existence credible, or that he can represent
+the whole nation to the fancy as anything but a race of idiotic dolls,
+would be saying far too much. No traveller has ever accomplished so much
+as that, save that wonderful Roman Catholic, Huc. But setting all this
+apart, there has scarcely appeared in English, until now, so exhaustive
+and so honest a picture of the external phenomena of Chinese life.</p>
+
+<p>It is painful to have to single out honesty as a special merit in a
+missionary work; but the temptation to filch away the good name of a
+Pagan community is very formidable, and few even among lay travellers
+have done as faithful justice to the Chinese character as Mr. Doolittle.
+He fully recognizes the extended charities of the Chinese and their
+filial piety; stoutly declares that tight shoeing is not so injurious as
+tight lacing, and that Chinese slavery is not so bad as the late
+lamented "institution" in America; shows that the religions of that
+land, taken at their worst, have none of the deified sensuality of other
+ancient mythologies, and that the greatest practical evils, such as
+infanticide, are steadily combated by the Chinese themselves. Even on
+the most delicate point, the actual condition of missionary enterprises,
+the good man tells the precise truth with the most admirable frankness.
+To make a single convert cost seven years' labor at Canton, and nine at
+Fuhchan, and it was twenty-eight years ere a church was organized. Out
+of four hundred million souls, there are as yet less than three thousand
+converts, as the result of the labor of two hundred missionaries, after
+sixty years of work. Yet Mr. Doolittle, who has spent more than a third
+of his life in China, still finds his courage fresh and his zeal
+unabated; and every one must look with respect upon a self-devotion so
+generous and so sincere.</p>
+
+
+<p><br /><br /><i>Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates, a Story of Life in Holland.</i> By <span class="smcap">M.
+E. Dodge</span>. New York: James O'Kane.</p>
+
+<p>Hans Brinker is a charming domestic story of some three hundred and
+fifty pages, which is addressed, indeed, to young people, but which may
+be read with pleasure and profit by their elders. The scene is laid in
+Holland, a land deserving to be better known than it is; and the writer
+evinces a knowledge of the country, and an acquaintance with the spirit
+and habits of its stout, independent, estimable people, which must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_780" id="Page_780">[Pg 780]</a></span> have
+been gathered not from books alone, but from living sources.</p>
+
+<p>Graphically, too, is the quaint picture sketched, and with a pleasant
+touch of humor. We all know the main features of Dutch scenery; but they
+are seldom brought to our notice with livelier effect. Speaking of the
+guardian dikes, Mrs. Dodge says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"They are high and wide, and the tops of some of them are covered with
+buildings and trees. They have even fine public roads upon them, from
+which horses may look down on wayside cottages. Often the keels of
+floating ships are higher than the roofs of the dwellings. The stork
+chattering to her young on the house-peak may feel that her nest is
+lifted out of danger, but the croaking frog in neighboring bulrushes is
+nearer the stars than she. Water-bugs dart backward and forward above
+the heads of the chimney-swallows, and willow-trees seem drooping with
+shame, because they cannot reach as high as the reeds near by....
+Farm-houses, with roofs like great slouched hats over their eyes, stand
+on wooden legs with a tucked-up sort of air, as if to say, 'We intend to
+keep dry if we can.' Even the horses wear a wide stool on each hoof to
+lift them out of the mire.... Men, women, and children go clattering
+about in wooden shoes with loose heels; peasant-girls, who cannot get
+beaux for love, hire them for money to escort them to the <i>Kermis</i>; and
+husbands and wives lovingly harness themselves, side by side, on the
+bank of the canal, and drag their <i>pakschuyts</i> to market....</p>
+
+<p>"'One thing is clear," cries Master Brightside, 'the inhabitants need
+never be thirsty.' But no, Odd-land is true to itself still.
+Notwithstanding the sea pushing to get in, and the lakes pushing to get
+out, and all the canals and rivers and ditches, there is, in many
+districts, no water fit to swallow; our poor Hollanders must go dry, or
+drink wine and beer, or send inland to Utrecht and other favored
+localities for that precious fluid, older than Adam, yet young as the
+morning dew.</p>
+
+<p>The book is fresh and flavorous in tone, and speaks to the fancy of
+children. Here is a scene on the canal:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It was recess-hour. At the first stroke of the school-house bell, the
+canal seemed to give a tremendous shout, and grow suddenly alive with
+boys and girls. The sly thing, shining so quietly under the noonday sun,
+was a kaleidoscope at heart, and only needed a shake from that great
+clapper to startle it into dazzling changes.</p>
+
+<p>"Dozens of gayly clad children were skating in and out among each other,
+and all their pent-up merriment of the morning was relieving itself in
+song and shout and laughter. There was nothing to check the flow of
+frolic. Not a thought of school-books came out with them into the
+sunshine. Latin, arithmetic, grammar, all were locked up for an hour in
+the dingy school-room. The teacher might be a noun if he wished, and a
+proper one at that, but <i>they</i> meant to enjoy themselves. As long as the
+skating was as perfect as this, it made no difference whether Holland
+was on the North Pole or the Equator; and as for philosophy, how could
+they bother themselves about inertia and gravitation and such things,
+when it was as much as they could do to keep from getting knocked over
+in the commotion?"</p>
+
+<p>There is no formal moral, obtruding itself in set phrase. The lessons
+inculcated, elevated in tone, are in the action of the story and the
+feelings and aspirations of the actors. A young lady, for example, has
+been on a visit to aid and console a poor peasant-girl, whom, having
+been in deep affliction, she found unexpectedly relieved. Engrossed by
+her warm sympathy with her humble friend, she forgets the lapse of time.</p>
+
+<p>"Helda was reprimanded severely that day for returning late to school
+after recess, and for imperfect recitation.</p>
+
+<p>"She had remained near the cottage until she heard Dame Brinker laugh,
+and heard Hans say, 'Here I am, father!' and then she had gone back to
+her lessons. What wonder that she missed them! How could she get a long
+string of Latin verbs by heart, when her heart did not care a fig for
+them, but would keep saying to itself, 'O, I am so glad! I am so glad!'"</p>
+
+<p>The book contains two things,&mdash;a series of lifelike pictures of an
+interesting country and of the odd ways and peculiarities and homely
+virtues of its inhabitants; and then, interwoven with these, a simple
+tale, now pathetic, now amusing, and carrying with it wholesome
+influences on the young heart and mind.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No.
+104, June, 1866, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***
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@@ -0,0 +1,9294 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104,
+June, 1866, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: August 22, 2007 [EBook #22375]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by Cornell University Digital Collections).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+_A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics._
+
+VOL. XVII.--JUNE, 1866.--NO. CIV.
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by TICKNOR AND
+FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
+Massachusetts.
+
+Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved
+to the end of the article. Contractions have been retained as they appear
+in each story.
+
+
+
+
+QUICKSANDS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+"This is the seventy-fifth pair! Pretty well for us in so short a time!"
+said the Colonel's wife.
+
+"Yes, but we must give Aunt Marian the credit of a very large
+proportion; at least ten pairs have come from her."
+
+"I have nothing to do but to knit; none to knit for at home but my cat,"
+I replied, rather shortly, to the soft voice that had given me credit
+for such extraordinary industry. Afterwards I looked up at Percy Lunt,
+and tried to think of some pleasant thing to say to her; but in
+vain,--the words wouldn't come. I did not like her, and that is the
+truth.
+
+Thirty of us were assembled as usual, at our weekly "Soldiers' Aid
+Circle." We always met at the house of her father, Colonel Lunt, because
+its parlors were the largest in Barton, and because Mrs. Lunt invited us
+to come every week at three o'clock in the afternoon, and stay till
+nine, meanwhile giving us all tea. The two parlors, which opened into
+each other as no others in Barton did, were handsomely furnished with
+articles brought from France; though, for that matter, they did not look
+very different from Barton furniture generally, except, perhaps, in
+being plainer. Just now the chairs, lounges, and card-table were covered
+with blue yarn, blue woollen cloth, unbleached cotton, and other things
+requisite for the soldiers. They, the soldiers, had worn out the
+miserable socks provided by government in two days' marching, and sent
+up the cry, to the mothers and sisters in New England, "Give us such
+stockings as you are used to knitting for us!"
+
+That home-cry found its answer in every heart. Not a hand but responded.
+Every spare moment was given to the needs of the soldiers. For these
+were not the materials of a common army. These were all our own
+brothers, lovers, husbands, fathers. And shame to the wife, daughter, or
+sister who would know them to be sufferers while a finger remained on
+their hands to be moved! So, day by day, at soldiers' meetings, but
+much more at home, the army of waiters and watchers wrought cheerfully
+and hopefully for the loved ones who were "marching along." In Barton we
+knitted while we talked, and at the Lyceum lectures. Nay, we threatened
+even to take our knitting to meeting,--for it seemed, as we said, a
+great waste of time to be sitting so long idle.
+
+This had gone on for more than months. We had begun to count the war by
+years. Did we bate one jot of heart or hope for that? No more than at
+the beginning. We continued to place the end of the struggle at sixty or
+ninety days, as the news came more or less favorable to the loyal cause.
+But despair of the Republic? Never. Not the smallest child in Barton.
+Not a woman, of course. And through these life-currents flowing between
+each soldier and his home, the good heart and courage of the army was
+kept up through all those dismal reverses and bloody struggles that
+marked the early part of the years of sixty-two and three.
+
+We kept writing to our Barton boys, and took care of them, both in tent
+and field. And in every box sent on to the Potomac went letters from all
+the soldiers' families, and photographs to show how fast the children
+were growing, and how proud the sisters were of the brave brothers who
+were upholding the flag at the price of their lives.
+
+We were very busy to-day at Mrs. Lunt's. She and I cut out shirts for
+the rest,--and I took an opportunity to carry one to Percy Lunt, with
+some directions, in as kind a voice as I could command, about the
+sleeves. She smiled and looked up wistfully in my face, but I turned
+away in a hurry to my work. Somehow, I could not forgive her for
+troubling my poor Robert. I couldn't before he went, much less now.
+
+I must describe Percy if I can. She was of middling height, and very
+delicately formed, with a face as destitute of color as if it had been
+carved out of marble. Her dark hair was cut short in her neck, and
+parted over her forehead and her even brows. Her eyes were dark and
+soft, but almost constantly bent on the floor. She dressed in black, and
+wore over her small head a little tarlatan cap as close as a Shaker's.
+You might call her interesting-looking, but for a certain listlessness
+and want of sympathy with others. She had been married, was not more
+than twenty years old at the time I am describing her, and had been in
+Barton only about a year, since her husband's death.
+
+As I had neither chick nor child to offer to my country, I was glad to
+hear my nephew, Robert Elliott, say that the Barton boys had chosen him
+for Captain, and that they were all to start for Boston the next
+morning, and go on at once to Fortress Monroe.
+
+This boy's black eyes were very near to my heart,--almost as near as
+they were to his own mother's. And when he came in to bid me good by, I
+could not look on his pale, resolute face without a sinking, trembling
+feeling, do what I would to keep up a brave outside? This was in the
+very beginning of the war, when word first came that blood had been shed
+in Baltimore; and our Barton boys were in Boston reporting to Governor
+Andrew in less than a week after. Now we didn't, one of us, believe in
+the bravery of the South. We believed them braggarts and bullies, and
+that was all. We believed that, once let them see that the North was not
+going to give way to them, they would go back where they came from.
+
+"You will be back in a month, Robert, all of you. Mind, I don't say you
+will send these hounds back to their kennels,--rather, send these gentry
+back to their ladies' chambers. But I won't say either. Only let them
+see that you are ready for a fair stand-up fight, and I'll be bound
+they'll be too much astonished to stop running for a week."
+
+So we all said and thought at the North,--all but a few who had been at
+the South, and who knew too well how much in earnest it was in its
+treason, and how slight was the struggle it anticipated. These few
+shuddered at the possibility that stood red and gloomy in the path of
+the future,--these few, who knew both sides. Meanwhile both sides most
+heartily underrated each other, and had the sincerest reciprocal
+disrespect.
+
+"I don't quite think like you, Auntie, but that is, perhaps, because I
+was at Charleston. A year at the South, and you understand them a little
+differently. But no matter,--they must go back all the same. This is my
+pincushion, is it?"
+
+"Yes, and here are thread and needles. But, Rob, nonsense! I say you
+will be back in a month. They will begin talking and arguing, and once
+they begin that, there will be no fighting. It is like the Chinese, each
+side trying to frighten the other."
+
+"Perhaps so," said Robert, in an abstracted way. "Let us hope so, at all
+events. I am sure I don't want to shoot anybody. But now I am going to
+Colonel Lunt's a little while; shall I find you up when I come back?"
+
+"Come in, any way, and tell me if you have good news."
+
+I knew what he was going to Colonel Lunt's for. He had talked to me
+about Percy, and I knew he loved her. If he had not been going away,
+perhaps he would have waited longer; for Mr. Lunt (he was Percy's
+cousin) had not been dead quite two years. But he said he could not go
+away without telling her; and when I remembered all the readings
+together, and the walkings and talkings between the two, I thought it
+most likely she had already consoled herself. As I said before, I had no
+very great love for her.
+
+Not an hour, not fifteen minutes, when Robert returned. He looked paler
+than before, and spoke no word, only stared into the fire. At length,
+with a pitiful attempt at a smile, he said, "I'm a fool to be vexed
+about it,--let her please herself!"
+
+"It is bad news, Robert!" said I softly, laying my hand on his arm. His
+hands were clenched hard together.
+
+"Yes, there's no mistake about it. But, Auntie, tell me, am I a fool and
+a jackass? didn't you think she liked me?"
+
+"To be sure I did!" I answered decidedly.
+
+"Well, she says she never thought of me,--never!--and she never thought
+of marrying again."
+
+The wound wouldn't bear touching,--it was too sore. So I sat silently
+with him, holding his hand in mine, and looking into the fire, and in
+almost as great a rage as he was. He knew I felt with him, and by and by
+he turned to kiss my cheek, but still without a word.
+
+How I wished he could have gone to the conflict with the thought of his
+true love warm at his heart? Who deserved it so much? who was so brave,
+so heroic, so handsome?--one in ten thousand! And here was this
+dead-and-alive Percy Lunt, saying she never thought! "Pah!--just as if
+girls don't always think! If there's anything I do detest, it's a
+coquette!" The last sentence I unconsciously uttered aloud.
+
+"Don't call her that, Auntie! I really think she didn't know. I wasn't
+just to her. I was too angry. When I spoke to her she looked really
+distressed and astonished. I am sure that I ought----"
+
+"Nonsense, Robert! she must have seen your feelings. And haven't you
+been sending her flowers and books and pictures, and reading to her, and
+talking to her the whole time, this three months! Where were her eyes? I
+have no patience with her, I say!"
+
+The boy had recovered his sense of justice so much sooner than I! He
+smiled sadly, and took both my little old hands in his. "Best of
+aunties! what a good hater you are! Now, if you love me, you will be
+kind to her, and try to love and comfort her. Somehow she looks very
+unhappy."
+
+I could not answer.
+
+"She looked--O so sorry! Auntie, when I spoke, and as if she was too
+much astonished to answer me. I do think it was the very last thing in
+the world she expected. And after she told me, which she did at once,
+that I was mistaken, and she was mistaken, and that we never could be
+any more than friends to each other, and I had got up to go away,--for I
+was very angry as well as agitated,--she stood looking so pale and so
+earnestly at me, as if she must make me believe her. Then she held out
+her hands to me, and I thought she was going to speak; but she shook her
+head, and seemed so thoroughly distressed, that I tried to smile, and
+shake hands cordially, though, I confess, I didn't feel much like it.
+But I do now, Auntie,--and you must forgive her for not thinking quite
+so much of your Rob as you do."
+
+He took a photograph from his breast-pocket, and kissed it.
+
+"She gave me this; and she wrote on the back the date of to-day, April
+16th, 1861. She said she did not want me to remember her as she is now,
+but as she was in her happy days. And that they could never come again."
+
+It was a very lovely vignette, taken when she was joyous and
+round-faced, and with the curls falling about her cheeks and neck,
+instead of the prim little widow's cap she wore now. And instead of the
+still, self-contained, suffering look, there was great sweetness and
+serenity.
+
+"I don't see why she gave it to you, Rob," said I peevishly; "the best
+thing you can do is to forget her, and the kindest thing she could do to
+you would be to cut off all hope."
+
+"She did that," he replied; "but she said she could not bear to have me
+go where I was going without feeling that I had left a most affectionate
+friend, who would watch eagerly for my success, and sympathize with all
+my trials. Auntie! who knows?"
+
+I saw by the lighting up of his dark eyes what hope lay at the very
+bottom of his soul. And, to be sure, who knew what might be in the
+future? At all events, it made him more comfortable now to have this
+little, unexpressed, crouching hope, where he could silently caress it
+when he was far away from us all. He had all our photographs,--mother,
+sister, and aunt.
+
+"And now I must go to Mr. Ford's to-night, and bid them good by. Don't
+let any enterprising young lawyer come here and get away all my business
+before the month is out. I came within an ace of making a writ only last
+week!"
+
+So with smiles he parted from me, and strength was given me to smile
+too, the next morning, when he marched by my window, and bowed to me, at
+the head of his hundred men. I saw his steady, heroic face, no longer
+pale, but full of stern purpose and strength. And so they all
+looked,--strong, able, determined. The call took all our young men from
+Barton. Not one would remain behind.
+
+And that is why I could not love Percy Lunt. How hard she worked at our
+soldiers' club! how gentle and respectful she always was to me! If I had
+not been always preoccupied and prejudiced, I might have pitied the
+poor, overcharged heart, that showed itself so plainly in the deathly
+pallor of the young cheek, and the eyes so weighed down with weeping.
+Colonel Lunt and his wife watched her with loving eyes, but they could
+do little to soothe her. Every heart must taste its own bitterness. And,
+besides, she wasn't their own child.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Every village has its great man and woman, and Colonel Lunt and his wife
+were Barton's. Theirs was the only family whose table appointments were
+of sufficient elegance to board the preceptor of the academy. All the
+Lyceum lecturers stopped at Colonel Lunt's; and Mrs. Lunt was the person
+who answered the requirements of Lady Manager for the Mount Vernon
+Association, namely, "social position, executive ability, tact, and
+persistency."
+
+They were the only family in Barton who had been abroad. The rest of us
+stayed at home and admired them. They had not always lived in Barton;
+perhaps, if they had, we should not have succumbed so entirely as we all
+did, ten years ago, when Colonel Lunt came and bought the Schuyler
+place, (so called because General Schuyler stopped there over night on
+his way to fight Burgoyne,) and brought his orphan niece and adopted
+daughter with him, and also a French governess for the child. These
+things were not in Barton style at all; all our children being educated
+at the town school, and finished, as means allowed, by three months'
+polish at some seminary or other. Of course, in a country town like
+Barton, which numbers nearly fifteen hundred inhabitants, there is
+enough to interest and occupy every one. What would be gossip and
+scandal in a different social condition is pure, kindly interest in
+Barton. We know everybody, and his father and mother. Of course each
+person has his standing as inevitable and decided as an English
+nobleman's. Our social organization is perfect. Our circles are within
+and within each other, until we come to the _creme de la creme_ of the
+Lunts and six other families. The outer circle is quite extensive,
+embracing all the personable young men "who are not embarrassed with
+antecedents," as one of our number said. The inner one takes in some
+graduates of college,--persons who read all the new books, and give a
+tone to Barton. Among the best people are the Elliotts and Robertses.
+The lawyers and shopkeepers come in of course, but not quite of
+course--anywhere but in Barton--is included the barber. But Mr. Roberts
+was an extreme case. He had been destined to literary pursuits, became
+consumptive, and was obliged, by unforeseen contingencies, to take up
+some light employment, which proved in the end to be shaving. If it had
+been holding notes instead of noses, the employment would have been
+vastly genteel, I dare say. As it was, we thought about the French
+_emigres_ and _marquises_ who made cakes and dressed hair for a living,
+and concluded to admit Mr. Roberts, especially as he married a far-away
+Elliott, and was really a sensible and cultivated man. But as we must
+stop somewhere, we drew a strict line before the tinman, blacksmith, and
+Democrats of all sorts. We are pure-blooded Federalists in Barton, and
+were brought up on the Hartford Convention. I think we all fully
+believed that a Democrat was unfit to associate with decent people.
+
+As in most New England towns, the young fly from the parent nest as soon
+as they are fledged. Out of Barton have gone, in my time, Boston
+millionnaires, state secretaries, statesmen, and missionaries,--of the
+last, not a few. Once the town was full of odd people, whose
+peculiarities and idiosyncrasies ran to seed, and made strange, eventful
+histories.
+
+But we have ceased to take such microscopic views of each other since
+the railway came within ten miles of us, and are now able to converse on
+much more general topics than formerly. Not that there isn't still
+opportunity to lament over the flighty nature of kitchen incumbents, and
+to look after the domestic interests of all Barton; but I think going to
+Boston several times a year tends to enlarge the mind, and gives us more
+subjects of conversation. We are quite up in the sculpture at Mount
+Auburn, and have our preferences for Bierstadt and Weber. Nobody in
+Barton, so far, is known to see anything but horrors in
+pre-Raphaelitism. Some wandering Lyceum-man tried to imbue us with the
+new doctrine, and showed us engravings of Raphael's first manner, and
+Perugino. But we all voted Perugino was detestable, and would none of
+him. Besides, none of the Lunts liked him.
+
+In patriotism, Barton would have "knocked under to no man," if the
+question had been put to it ten years ago on the Fourth of July. When a
+proof of it was required from the pocket, on the occasion before alluded
+to, of the Mount Vernon Association, I regret to say the response did
+no credit to Barton.
+
+Mrs. Lunt made a great many Lady Assistant Managers in the town, and
+sent us forth to gather in the harvest, which we could not doubt would
+be plentiful. She herself worded a most touching "appeal to the women of
+Barton," and described "the majestic desolation of the spot where the
+remains of Washington lie in cold neglect," and asked each one for a
+heart-offering to purchase, beautify, and perpetuate a fitting home
+where pilgrims from all parts of the Union should come to fill their
+urns with the tears of grateful remembrance.
+
+It really seemed unnecessary to urge such a claim on a community like
+ours. Yet we found ourselves obliged to exhaust all the persistency and
+tact we had. For every conceivable reason Barton refused to respond to
+our appeals. The minister, Mr. Ford, declared to me that the sentiment
+of loyalty did not exist in America. Sometimes, he said, he wished he
+lived under a monarchy. He envied the heartfelt cheers with which
+Victoria's name was met, everywhere on British ground. "But you can't
+get people to give to Mount Vernon. They are afraid of slavery there.
+They are afraid of this, that, and the other; but give they will not."
+He handed me a dollar, in a hopeless way, which was a four-hundredth of
+his income. The blacksmith's wife would not admit me at all, saying,
+"There has been one beggar here already this morning!" The butcher's
+wife gave five cents; but I had my doubts about accepting it, for while
+I was indignantly relating the desolate condition of the home and tomb
+of the Father of his Country, and something about its being a spot only
+fit for a wild pelican to live in, the butcher himself passed through
+the house, nodding his head at me, and saying loudly, "Not a cent,
+wife!" The plasterer, Mr. Rice, a respectable Vermonter, asked me who
+Washington was; and Mrs. Goodwin, the cabinet-maker's wife, said
+cordially to me, "There 's ten cents towards a tomb. I don't never
+expect to go down South myself, but maybe my son'll like to be buried
+there." Her son was buried down South, with many more of our brave
+Barton boys, little as we thought of it then!
+
+Now, the butcher and baker, the plasterer, and all, have gone to the
+war. They have learned what it is to have a country to live for. They
+have learned to hold up the old flag through thunderings and blood, and
+to die for it joyfully. What a baptism and regeneration it has been!
+what a new creation! Behold, old things have passed away, and all has
+become new!
+
+Soon after the battle of Cedar Mountain, and Banks's retreat, we had
+long, full letters from Robert. He wrote a separate note to me, in which
+he said, "Be kind to Percy." It was the very thing I had not been,--had
+not felt it possible to be. But, conscience-stricken, I went up to call
+at Colonel Lunt's, and read our letters to them. Percy walked home with
+me, and we talked over the prospects and reverses of the war. Of course
+we would not allow there were any real reverses.
+
+We went on to my little cottage, and I asked her to come in and rest. I
+remember it was a very still evening, except for a sad south-wind. The
+breeze sighed through the pines in front of the house, like the sound of
+distant water. The long lingering of the sun slanted over Percy's brow,
+as she sat leaning her head on her hand, and looking away off, as if
+over thousands of miles. Her pretty pale fingers were purple with
+working on hospital shirts and drawers, and bloody with pricking through
+the slipper soles for the wounded men. She was the most untiring and
+energetic of all the young people; but they all worked well.
+
+We sat there some time without speaking. I was full of thought and
+anxiety, and I supposed she too might feel deeply about Robert.
+
+"Aunt Marian,--may I call you so?" said she softly, at length looking
+up.
+
+"Why not, Percy? you always do."
+
+"Only, lately, it has seemed to me you were different."
+
+She crossed the room and sat down on a _tabouret_ so low that she was at
+my feet, and took my hand with a humble sweetness that would have
+touched any heart less hard than mine.
+
+"I used to love to hear _him_ call you so!" she went on, caressing my
+hand, which I did not withdraw, though I should have liked well to do
+so, for I did not at all like this attitude we had assumed of penitent
+and confessor. "I can't expect you to be just to me, dear Auntie,
+because you don't know. But oh! do believe! I never guessed Robert's
+feelings for me. How could I think of it,--and I a married woman!"
+
+"Married! Percy!" said I, astonished at her agitation and the tears that
+flowed down her pale face like rain.
+
+"Yes," she answered in a voice so low that I could scarcely hear it.
+
+"Not a widow, Percy Lunt! What do you mean?"
+
+"I think--I believe--my husband is living. He was so a few months ago.
+But I cannot tell you any more without papa's permission. O, I have
+suffered so much! You would pity me if you knew all. But I felt as if I
+must tell you this: and then--you would understand how I might have
+been, as I was, so wholly preoccupied with my own feelings and interests
+as never to guess that Robert's was anything but the regard of a friend.
+And, indeed," she added with a sorrowful smile, "I feel so much older
+than Robert.--I have gone through so much, that I feel ten years older
+than he is. You will believe me, Aunt Marian, and forgive me?"
+
+"It is easy to forgive, poor child!" I said, mingling my tears with
+hers. "I have been cruel and hard-hearted to you. But I felt only for
+poor Robert, and how could I guess?"
+
+"You couldn't,--and that is why I felt that I must tell you."
+
+"I cannot ask you anything further,--it is very strange."
+
+While Percy kept strong rein on her feelings, her impassive manner had
+deceived me. Now that my sympathy with her made me more keenly alive to
+her distress, I saw the deep pain in her pale face, and the unnatural
+look of grief in one so young. She tied on her hat in her old, hopeless
+way, and the ivory smoothness of her face spoke of self-centred and
+silent suffering.
+
+"If papa is willing, I shall come to-morrow, and tell you part, at
+least, of my sad story; and even if he is not willing, I think I must
+tell you a part of it. I owe it to you, Aunt Marian!"
+
+"I shall be at home all day, my dear," I said, kissing the poor, pale
+lips with such tender pity as I had never thought to feel for Percy
+Lunt.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+It was early in September, 1862, and on Sunday morning, the day after I
+had received the promise of at least a partial confidence from Percy. We
+were to come home together from meeting, and she was to spend the rest
+of the day quietly with me. Many a query passed through my mind as I
+walked along. I wondered at a thousand things,--at the mysteries that
+are directly under our feet,--at the true stories that belong to every
+family, and are never known but to the trusted few,--at the many that
+are known but to the one heart, whereon they are cut in sharp letters.
+
+As I approached the meeting-house, I saw Mr. Ford talking earnestly with
+Colonel Lunt and Mr. Wilder on the porch-step, while the pews were
+already full, and the clock pointed to ten minutes past the usual time.
+I had myself been detained until late, and had walked rapidly and quite
+alone.
+
+The heart of the community was on the _qui vive_ so constantly, that any
+unusual sign startled and alarmed every one. A minute more, and Mr. Ford
+passed rapidly up the broad aisle, his face pale with excitement.
+Instead of the opening prayer, he said to us: "Brethren and sisters!
+there has been a great battle,--a terrible battle at Antietam! They have
+sent on to the North for aid for the wounded, who are being brought on
+as fast as possible to Washington. But they are brought in by thousands,
+and everything is needed that any of us can spare."
+
+All of us had risen to our feet.
+
+"I have thought we should best serve and praise our God by ministering
+to the sufferings of our brave boys! God knows what afflictions are in
+store for us; but all who can aid in this extremity I am sure will do
+so, and the blessing of those ready to perish will fall on them."
+
+Mr. Ford ceased speaking. He had two boys with McClellan; and then
+Colonel Lunt, in a few words, stated the arrangements which had already
+been made by himself and Mr. Wilder, who was a deacon of the church, to
+convey any articles that might be contributed to the railroad station
+ten miles away. Whatever was gathered together should be brought to the
+Common at once, where it would be boxed and put into the wagons.
+
+    "Ah, then and there was hurrying to and fro!"
+
+But one hour later saw Barton Common, an enclosed acre of ground,
+covered with every sort of garment that could by any possibility be
+useful in a hospital. Besides the incredible numbers of sheets and
+pillow-cases, wrappers and stockings, which every housekeeper drew forth
+from her stores, notwithstanding her previous belief and assertion that
+she "really had nothing more fit to give to the soldiers," there were
+countless boxes of jellies, preserves, and dried fruit. Everything
+palatable and transportable was brought, with streaming eyes and
+throbbing hearts, to the general contribution. From house to house the
+electric current of sympathy flowed, and by twelve o'clock Barton Common
+was a sight to behold. Seventeen boxes full of all imaginable comforts
+and alleviatives set off in four wagons for the railroad station, and
+Colonel Lunt himself went on with them to Washington to see that they
+were properly and safely delivered. That was a Sunday service for us!
+
+I had been sitting in my little keeping-room, knitting at soldiers'
+stockings, (what would Deacon Hall's wife and my mother have thought of
+my doing this on a Sunday!) and with the tea ready for drawing, when
+Percy came to make her promised visit. She too brought her basket of
+gray yarn and knitting-needles. We were not afraid of becoming atheists,
+if we did work on a Sunday. Our sheep had all fallen into ditches on the
+Sabbath-day, and we should have been worse than Jews not to have laid
+hold to get them out. So Percy kept on knitting until after our tea was
+ready, and then helped me with the teacups. When we were seated at the
+west window on the wide seat together, she put her arm round my neck and
+kissed me.
+
+"You will forgive me all, Aunt?"
+
+"O, you know that beforehand!"
+
+"But I shall not tell you very much, and what I do tell is so unpleasant
+and mortifying to reveal, that it was only when I told papa my great
+reason he was willing I should tell you."
+
+"Tell me just as much, and just as little, as you like, my dear; I am
+willing to believe in you without a word," I said. And so it was; and
+philosophers may tell, if they can, why it was.
+
+"You remember my governess, Madame Guyot?"
+
+"O, yes, of course, perfectly. Her dreadfully pale face and great black
+eyes."
+
+"She was so good to me! I loved her dearly. But after she died, you
+remember, they sent me to Paris to a school which she recommended, and
+which was really a very good one, and where I was very happy; and it was
+after that _we_ travelled so much, and I met--"
+
+"Never mind, my poor dear!" I said, seeing that she was choked with her
+sorrowful remembrances, "I can guess,--you saw there the person,--the
+young man--"
+
+"I was only seventeen, Aunt Marian! and he was the first man I ever saw
+that really interested me at all,--though papa had several proposals for
+me from others. But this young man was so different. He really loved me,
+I am sure,--or rather I was sure at the time. He was not in good health,
+and I think his tall, fragile, spiritual person interested all the
+romance of my nature. Look at his picture, and tell me if that is the
+face of a bad or a treacherous man!"
+
+Percy opened a red morocco case and handed it to me. I gazed on the face
+with deep interest. The light, curling hair and smooth face gave an
+impression of extreme youth, and the soft blue eyes had the careless,
+serene expression which is often seen in foreigners' eyes, but scarcely
+ever in those of Americans. There was none of the keen, business look
+apparent in almost every New England face, but rather an abstracted,
+gentle expression, as of one interested in poetry or scientific
+pursuits,--objects that do not bring him in conflict with his race.
+
+I expressed something of this to Percy, and she said I was right about
+the poetry, and especially the gentleness. But he had, in fact, only
+been a student, and as yet but little of a traveller. They were to have
+travelled together after their marriage.
+
+"It was only six weeks after that, when Charles was obliged to go to the
+West Indies on business for his father. It was the sickly season, and he
+would not let me go with him. He was to be back in England in five or
+six weeks at farthest."
+
+"And--he wasn't lost?"
+
+"Lost to me. Papa heard at one time that he was living at the West
+Indies, and after a time he went there to search for him--in vain. Then,
+months after, we heard that he had been seen in Fayal. Sometimes I
+think--I almost hope he is dead. For that he should be willing to go
+away and live without me is so dreadful!"
+
+"You are dressed like a widow?"
+
+"Yes,--I desired it myself, after two years had passed, and not a word
+came from Charles. But papa says he has most likely met with a violent
+death, and that these rumors of his having been seen in Fayal and in the
+West Indies, as we heard once, are only got up to mislead suspicion. You
+know papa's great dislike--nay, I may call it weakness--is being talked
+about and discussed. And he thought the best way was to say nothing
+about the peculiarity or mystery attending my marriage, but merely say I
+was a widow. Somebody in Barton said Charles died of a fever, and as
+nobody contradicted it, so it has gone; but, Aunt Marian, it is often my
+hope, and even belief, that I shall see him again!"
+
+She stopped talking, and hid her face, sobbing heavily, like a grieved
+child. Poor thing! I pitied her from my heart. But what could I say?
+People are not lost, now-a-days. The difficulty is to be able to hide,
+try they ever so much. It looked very dark for this Charles Lunt; and,
+by her own account, they had not known much about him. He was a New York
+merchant, and I had not much opinion of New York morals myself. From
+their own newspapers, I should say there was more wickedness than could
+possibly be crammed into their dailies going on as a habit. However, I
+said nothing of this sort to poor Percy, whose grief and mortification
+had already given her such a look of suffering as belongs only to the
+gloomiest experience of life. I soothed and comforted her as well as I
+might, and it doesn't always take a similar experience to give
+consolation. She said it was a real comfort to tell me about her
+trouble, and I dare say it was.
+
+When Colonel Lunt got back from Washington, he had a great deal to tell
+us all, which he did, at our next soldiers' meeting, of the good which
+the Barton boxes had done. But he said it was a really wonderful sight
+to see the amount of relief contributed on that Lord's day, from all
+parts of the North, for the wounded. Every train brought in hundreds and
+thousands of packages and boxes, filled with comforts and delicacies.
+If the boys had been at home, they could not have been cared for more
+tenderly and abundantly. And the nurses in the hospitals! Colonel Lunt
+couldn't say enough about them. It was a treat to be watched over and
+consoled by such ministering angels as these women were! We could
+believe that, if they were at all like Anna Ford, who went, she said,
+"to help the soldiers bear the pain!" And I know she did that in a
+hundred cases,--cases where the men said they should have given up
+entirely, if she hadn't held their hands, or their heads, while their
+wounds were being dressed. "It made it seem so like their own mother or
+sister!"
+
+That fall, I think, Barton put up eighty boxes of blackberry jam. This
+wasn't done without such a corresponding amount of sympathy in every
+good word and work as makes a community take long leaps in Christian
+progress. Barton could not help improving morally and mentally while her
+sons were doing the country's work of regeneration; and her daughters
+forgot their round tires like the moon, their braidings of hair, and
+their tinkling ornaments, while they devoted themselves to all that was
+highest and noblest both in thought and action. I was proud of Barton
+girls, when I saw them on the hills, in their sun-bonnets, gathering the
+fruit that was to be for the healing of the nations.
+
+Soon after Colonel Lunt's return, he told me one day, in one of his
+cautious whispers, that he and Mrs. Lunt proposed to take me over to
+Swampy Hollow, if it would be agreeable to me. Of course it was; but I
+was surprised, when we were fairly shut up in the carriage, to find no
+Percy with us.
+
+"We left her at home purposely," said Colonel Lunt, in a mysterious way,
+which he was fond of, and which always enraged me.
+
+I don't like mysteries or whisperings, and yet, from an unfortunate
+"receptivity" in my nature, I am the unwilling depositary of half the
+secrets of Barton. I knew now that I was to hear poor Percy's story over
+again, with the Colonel's emendations and illustrations. I was in the
+carriage, and there was no getting out of it. Mrs. Lunt was used to him,
+and, I do believe, would like nothing better than to hear his old
+stories over and over, from January to December. But I wasn't of a
+patient make.
+
+Colonel Lunt was a gentleman of the old school, which means, according
+to my experience, a person who likes to spend a long time getting at a
+joke or telling a story. He was a long time telling this, with the aid
+of Mrs. Lunt, who put in her corrections now and then, in a gentle,
+wifely way all her own, and which helped, instead of hindering him.
+
+"And now, may I ask, my dear Colonel," said I, when he had finished,
+"why don't you, or rather why didn't you tell Percy the whole story?"
+
+The Colonel pulled the check-string. "Thomas! drive slowly home now, and
+go round by the Devil's Dishful."
+
+This is one of the loveliest drives about Barton. I knew that the
+Colonel's mind was easy.
+
+"What need is there, or was there, to cloud Percy's life with such
+knowledge? Why, my dear Miss Elliott, if we all knew what other people
+know about us, we should be wretched! No! the mysteries of life are as
+merciful as the revelations; let us be thankful for all that we do _not_
+know."
+
+"And I am sure we couldn't love Percy any more than we do, let her birth
+or circumstances be what they would," said Mrs. Lunt.
+
+"I don't believe in natural affection, myself," said the Colonel; "but
+if I did, it would be enough to hear Percy congratulating herself on
+being of 'our very own blood,--a real Lunt!' Poor child! why should we
+trouble her? And I have often heard her say, she thought any blot on
+one's lineage the greatest of misfortunes."
+
+"The reason the Colonel wanted to tell you about Percy was this. Now
+that her husband may be dead, who knew all about her, it is just
+possible that circumstances may arise that would need the interference
+of friends. If we were to die, the secret might die with us. We are sure
+it will be safe with you, Aunt Marian, and we think that, as you know
+about her husband, you had better know the whole."
+
+Now this whole I propose to tell, myself, in one tenth part of the time
+it took the Colonel to tell me, prefacing it with a few facts about
+himself, which I guess he does not think that I know, and which relate
+to his early beginnings. Of course, all Barton is fully acquainted with
+the fact that he was born in the north of Vermont, at "the jumping-off
+place." He came to Boston, mostly on foot, and began his career in a
+small shop in Cornhill, where he sold bandannas, and the like. This
+imports nothing,--only he came by and by to associate with lords and
+dukes. And that shows what comes of being an American. He fell among
+Perkinses and Sturgises, and after working hard for them in China, and
+getting a great deal to do in the "carrying-trade," whatever that may
+be, retired on his half-million to Maryland, where he lived awhile,
+until he went to Europe. After he returned he bought the Schuyler place,
+which had been for sale years and years. But in Barton we like new
+things, and we saw no beauty in the old house, with its long walk of
+nearly a quarter of a mile to the front door, bordered with box. The
+Colonel, whose taste has been differently cultivated, has made a
+beautiful place of it, applying some of the old French notions of
+gardening, where the trees would admit of being cut into grotesque
+shapes, and leaving the shade-trees, stately and handsome, as they
+always were. Now to his story in my own words.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+I can't think of a more desolate place than they had in Maryland, by
+their own account;--a great, dismal house, without chick or child in it
+for years and years;--full of rooms and furniture and black people, and
+nowhere the shout and cry of a baby. There was nobody to be anxious
+about,--nobody gone away or coming home, or to be wept for, or to be
+joyful for;--only their two stupid selves. Madam pottering about the
+great house, dusting with a feather duster all the knick-knacks that she
+had brought home from Europe, and that she might have just as well
+bought in New York after she got home; and he putting up books and
+taking them down, riding out on his white horse, and having somebody to
+dine once in a while,--_could_ any life be drearier and more tiresome?
+
+Why people who have great empty houses and hearts don't rush into the
+street and pick up the first dozen little vagabonds they see, I can't
+think. With soap-suds, love, and the tenderest care, why don't they
+baptize them, body and soul, and keep them to make music in their silent
+halls, and, when their time comes, have something worth to render up to
+the child-loving Christ? Especially, why didn't two such affectionate,
+tender-hearted persons as Colonel Lunt and his wife? But they did not.
+They only waxed duller and duller, sitting there by their Christmas
+fires, that warmed no hearts but their own, rapidly growing cold.
+
+They sat alone by their Christmas fire one night, at last, to some
+purpose. All the servants had gone off pleasuring somewhere, where it is
+to be hoped there were children enough. The Colonel went himself to the
+door and brought in a market-basket that stood in the porch. He opened
+it by the light of a blazing fire, and Mrs. Lunt guessed, at every
+wrapper he turned down, something, and then something else; but she
+never guessed a baby. Yet there it lay, with eyes wide open,--a perfect
+baby, nobly planned;--a year old or more; and no more afraid of the
+Colonel than if it had been in society ten years. The little girl sprang
+forward towards him, laughing, and by doing so won his heart at once.
+Mrs. Lunt found credentials in the basket, in the shape of a note
+written in good English and spelled correctly. The wardrobe of the baby
+accompanied her also,--fine and delicately embroidered. The note said
+that circumstances of the most painful nature made it imperative to the
+mother of this child to keep herself unknown for a time; but meanwhile
+begged the charitable care of Colonel Lunt.
+
+The child, of course, took straight hold of their heart-strings. She
+made the house ring with her shouts and her healthy glee. She toddled
+over everything without restraint; tumbled over Chinese tea-poys and
+Japan idols; upset the alabaster Graces in the best parlor, and pulled
+every knick-knack out of its proper place.
+
+The worthy couple wondered at the happiness this naughty little thing
+brought; and a tyranny, but one very sweet and fair, triumphed in the
+decorous parlor and over the decorous old hearts. The baby was in a fair
+way of becoming a spoiled pest, when her own mother, in the character of
+French _bonne_, and afterwards of governess, came to the rescue. She
+told her story, which was rather a strange one, to the Colonel, and they
+made an arrangement with her to come and take care of the child. It was
+planned between them that Percy (her name is Amy Percival) should
+personate the only child of a deceased brother of the Colonel, and be
+adopted by him as his own daughter. Thenceforward the poor pale Madame
+Guyot took up her abode with them, like Amram's wife at the Egyptian
+court. I remember how sad and silent she always was, and how much her
+French speech separated her from us all in Barton. No wonder to me now
+that she faded day by day, till her life went out. No wonder that she
+was glad to exchange those memories of hers, and Percy's duty-kisses,
+for the green grave.
+
+When the child was fourteen, the Colonel took her abroad, but before
+that time the governess died. In some respects the Colonel's theory of
+education was peculiar. Squeers thought it best for people to learn how
+to spell windows by washing them,--"And then, you know, they don't
+forget. Winders, there 't is." And the Colonel approved of learning
+geography by going to the places themselves, and especially of learning
+the languages on the spot. This, he contended, was the only correct way,
+and enough better than by hammering forever at school-books and masters.
+It was in pursuance of this somewhat desultory, but healthful mode of
+education, that the family found itself, in 1857, at Baden-Baden.
+
+As usual, there were, in the crowds there assembled for health and
+pleasure, a great many English; among them several persons of high rank.
+Here were German princes and counts, so plenty that Percy got tired of
+wondering they were not more refined and agreeable. She was herself a
+great attraction there, and, the Colonel said, had many admirers. Among
+the guests was an English family that took great notice of her, and made
+many advances towards intimacy. The two young ladies and their father
+seemed equally pleased and interested in the Lunts, and when they left
+Baden-Baden asked them to make them a visit in the autumn at their house
+in Derbyshire.
+
+Thinking of this, I am not much surprised. For the Colonel's manners are
+unexceptionably good, with a simplicity and a self-reliance that mark a
+true gentleman; while Mrs. Lunt is the loveliest and best-bred woman in
+Barton, and consequently fit society for any nobleman.
+
+When the Lunts went to England, in October, they visited these people.
+And there they found Charles Lunt, a second-cousin of the Colonel's, a
+New-Yorker, and a graduate of Oxford. His father had sent him to England
+to be finished off, after Yale had done its best for him here. He and
+Percy fell in love immediately, and matters came to a climax.
+
+Colonel Lunt did not desire the connection at all. Charles's mother was
+related to the family where they were visiting, and, as he himself
+would feel it incumbent on him to state the facts relative to Percy's
+birth, he foresaw distinctly only a mortifying relinquishment of the
+alliance. Charles was, in fact, on his mother's side, second-cousin to
+an English Earl. The name of the Earl I don't give, for the good reason
+that the Colonel kept it a secret, and, even if I knew, I should not
+wish to reveal it.
+
+Before Colonel Lunt could act on his impressions and decisions, Charles
+cut the knot by asking his relative, the Earl, to make proposals for
+him. He was of age, with an independent fortune, and could please
+himself, and it pleased him to marry Percy.
+
+Then the Colonel asked to see Charles, and he was called in. He began by
+declining the connection; but finding this mortifying and mysterious to
+both the gentlemen, he ended by a plain statement of such of the facts
+as he had been made acquainted with by Madame Guyot.
+
+"I don't know the name of Percy's father," said the Colonel, "the poor
+woman would give me no clew to him,--but he may be living,--he may some
+time trace and claim her!"
+
+"Does this make any difference to you, Charles?" said the Earl, when
+Colonel Lunt had finished.
+
+"Not a jot!" said Charles, warmly. "It isn't likely her father will ever
+either trace or claim her; and, if he should even, and all should come
+out, why, I care nothing for it,--nothing, I mean, in comparison with
+Percy."
+
+Of course then the Colonel had no objections.
+
+"Now, is it best, all things considered," said the Earl, who took the
+interest of a father in Charles, "is it best to say anything to Percy of
+her real history?"
+
+Charles thought not by any means, and it was so agreed among the three.
+The young man left the room to go to his confident wooing, for there was
+not much reason to doubt of his fate, and left Colonel Lunt with the
+Earl.
+
+"Nothing can be more honorable than your whole proceeding, Colonel, in
+this matter. You might have kept the thing quiet, if you had so chosen."
+
+"I always meant to tell any man who really desired to marry Percy," said
+the Colonel; "we never can tell what may happen, and I wouldn't be such
+a swindler as to keep these facts from him, on which his whole decision
+might rest."
+
+The Colonel looked at the Earl,--"looked him straight in the eye," he
+said,--for he felt it an imputation on his honor that he could have been
+supposed for a moment to do otherwise than he had done. To his surprise
+the Earl turned very red, and then very pale, and said, holding out his
+hand, "You have kept my secret well, Colonel Lunt! and I thank you for
+it!"
+
+"You are Percy's father!" said the Colonel, at once.
+
+The Earl wrung his hand hard. It isn't the English nature to express
+much, but it was plain that the past was full of mournful and
+distressful remembrances.
+
+"I never thought of it till this instant," said Colonel Lunt, "and I
+don't know how I knew it; but it was written in your face. She never
+told me who it was!"
+
+"But she wrote to me about you, and about the child. I have watched your
+comings and goings these many years. I knew I should meet you where I
+did. You may guess my feelings at seeing my beautiful child,--at seeing
+how lovely in mind and person she is, and at being unable to call her my
+own! I was well punished the first hour after I met you. But my next
+hope and desire was to interest you all enough in my own family to
+induce you to come here. In fact, I did think you were the depositary of
+my secret. But I see I was wrong there."
+
+"Yes," the Colonel said, "Madame Guyot simply informed me the child's
+father would never claim her, and that the name was an assumed one. I
+saw how it probably was, but I respected her too much to ask anything
+which she did not herself choose to reveal. I think she was one of the
+loveliest and most superior women I ever saw, though, at the time I
+first met her, she showed that her health was fatally undermined. It was
+much on her account that I left Maryland for the more equable climate of
+Barton."
+
+"You were everything to her that the most tender and noble friends could
+be!" said the Earl, warmly. "She wrote me of all your kindness. Now let
+me tell you a little about her. She was my sister's governess, and I saw
+her in my college vacations. I need not tell you how lovely she was in
+her youth. She was no French girl, but a country curate's daughter in
+Hampshire. Now, Colonel Lunt, it would have been as impossible for me to
+marry that girl--no matter how beautiful, refined, and good--as if she
+had been a Hottentot. How often I have wished to throw birth,
+connections, name, title, everything, to the winds, that I might take
+Amy Percival to my heart and hold her there legally! How I have envied
+the Americans, who care nothing for antecedents, to whom birth and
+social position are literally nothing,--often not even fortunate
+accidents! How many times I have read your papers, and imagined myself
+thrown on my own resources only, like so many of your successful men,
+and making my own way among you, taking my Amy with me and giving her a
+respectable and happy home! But these social cobwebs by which we poor
+flies are caught and held,--it is very hard to break them! I was always
+going to do right, and always did wrong. After my great wrong to Amy,
+which was a pretended marriage, she left me,--she had found out my
+villany,--and went to America. She did not write to me until she knew
+she must die, and then she related every particular,--all your great
+kindness to both her and the child, and the motherly tenderness with
+which Mrs. Lunt had endeavored to soften her sufferings. In twenty years
+I have changed very much every way, but I have never ceased to feel
+self-contempt for my conduct to Amy Percival."
+
+Now a new question arose.
+
+Was it best to reveal this last secret to Charles? He had been content
+to take Percy, nameless and illegitimate. The Earl was extremely
+unwilling to extend his confidence further than Colonel Lunt. It seemed
+to him unnecessary. He said he desired to give Percy the same share of
+his property that his other two daughters would receive on their
+marriage, but that he could not openly do this without exciting remarks
+and provoking unpleasant feelings. Colonel Lunt considered that the
+secret was not his to keep or reveal. So nothing was said, and the
+marriage took place at the house of the Earl; Colonel Lunt receiving
+from Percy's father ten thousand pounds, as some atonement by a wounded
+conscience.
+
+"Now," said the Colonel, as he finished his long story, and we drove up
+to his house, "I say it was a mean cowardice that kept that man from
+doing his daughter justice. But then he was a scoundrel all through. And
+now for my reason for telling you. I have my doubts, after all, about
+the first marriage. There are the certificate and all the papers safe in
+my desk. Earls may die, and worms may eat them,--and so with their sons
+and daughters. It isn't among the impossibilities that my little Percy
+may be a countess yet! Any way, if an advertisement should appear
+calling for heirs to the Earl of Blank, somebody besides me and my
+little woman would know all about it."
+
+Mrs. Lunt insisted on my stopping to tea with them, and I had a strange
+curiosity to look at Percy Lunt again, surrounded with this new halo,
+thrice circled, of mystery. If she only knew or guessed what she really
+was!
+
+She sat by the fire, for the evening was a little cool, and, as we came
+in, roused herself from her sad posture to give me welcome. How white
+her face was! It was grievous to see such a young spirit so
+blanched,--so utterly unelastic. If she could receive tidings of his
+death, she would reconcile herself to the inevitable; but this wearing,
+gnawing pain, this grief at his desertion, this dread of meeting him
+again after he had been willing to leave her so long,--death itself
+would be less bitter! But there were no words to console her with.
+
+"You have had letters from Robert?" she inquired.
+
+"Only a telegram came saying that the Barton boys were safe. It must
+have been a dreadful battle! They say twelve thousand were killed on
+each side."
+
+"But you will hear very soon?"
+
+"O, yes," I said, "but Robert must have his hands very full. He will
+write as soon as he has a minute of leisure."
+
+Robert was colonel now, and we were very proud of him. He had not yet
+received a scratch, and he had been in eleven battles. We felt as if he
+bore a charmed life.
+
+After tea, we four sat round the sparkling wood-fire, knitting and
+talking, (people in war-time have enough to talk about,) when a loud,
+sudden knock at the door startled us. The old knocker thumped again and
+again. The servant hurried to the door, and a moment after a man rushed
+by him, with swift and heavy steps into the parlor, caught up Percy as
+if she had been a feather, and held her tight to his heart and mouth.
+
+He had not taken off his army cap, nor his blue great coat. We all
+sprang up at his entrance, of course, but I hadn't a thought who it
+could be, until Colonel Lunt called out "_Charles!_"
+
+There he was, to be sure, as alive as he could be, with his great red
+beard, and his face tanned and burnt like a brick! He took no notice of
+us whatever, only kept kissing Percy over and over, till her face, which
+was white as death, was covered with living crimson, and her
+heavy-lidded eyes turned to stars for brightness!
+
+After her fashion, Percy still continued undemonstrative, so far as
+words went; but she clung most eloquently to his neck with both her
+hands, the joyful light from her eyes streaming silently into his. O, it
+was fair to see,--this might of human love,--this mystery that needed no
+solving! His face shedding fidelity and joyfulness, and her heart
+accepting it with a trust that had not one question!
+
+In a few but most eloquent words he told us his adventures. But that
+would make a story by itself. A shipwreck,--and capture by Japanese
+pirates,--prison,--escape,--landing at Mobile,--pressed into the Rebel
+service,--battle,--prisoner to the Union forces,--glad taking of the
+oath of allegiance,--interview with General Banks, and service at last
+for the North. It was a wild, strange story of suffering, hardships, and
+wonderful escapes. Colonel Lunt said he never should have known the man,
+nor guessed at him, but for his eyes, he was so altered in every
+way,--so rough and strong-looking, with his complexion tanned and
+weather-beaten; and he had always been such a delicate, curled darling
+of indulgent parents! However, he looked twice the man he was before,
+Mrs. Lunt whispered me; and Percy could not take her eyes off him, he
+looked so strong and noble, and his face so full of high thoughts.
+
+He had been in several battles, and had been wounded twice. After his
+first wound he had been some time in a Southern hospital. "And now I
+think of it, Percy," he said, turning suddenly to her, and taking her on
+his knee as if she had been a baby, "it was in a hospital that I found
+out where you were. You must know that I hadn't the least clew to your
+whereabout, and thought of you as most likely still in London. You know
+our plan was to travel together for some months, and I could not guess
+where you might be, if indeed you were alive. After the battle the other
+day, I went into one of the improvised hospitals to look after some
+brave fellows of mine, when one of the nurses asked me for directions
+as to the burial of some men who had just been brought in. They had
+officers' uniforms on, and it was ascertained that they were really
+dead. As I turned to give the necessary directions, a man at my side,
+who was smoothing down the limbs of one who had just ceased to breathe,
+handed me a photograph from the man's breast, all rumpled and bloody. I
+recognized it in a moment as yours, Percy,--though how it should have
+been in that man's breast, I couldn't see."
+
+Percy and I looked at each other. But we dared not think. He went on.
+
+"I could not recognize him. But he was one of so many who were brought
+in on that terrible day after the battle, and except my own company I
+scarcely knew any of the officers. But I saw by the photograph where you
+were, at least the name on the back was a guide. It was Barton, Mass.,
+and the date of April, 1861. So, as I had worked pretty well at
+Antietam, Little Mac gave me a week's furlough, and I thought I would
+try it!"
+
+"Do you remember at all how he looked?" Mrs. Lunt asked, for I could not
+speak.
+
+"The young officer? Yes, Madam, I looked keenly at him, you may be sure.
+He was tall and fine-looking, with dark, curling hair, and his regular
+features were smiling and peaceful. They mostly look so who are shot
+dead at once. And this one had not suffered. He had died at the moment
+of triumph."
+
+I went home to fear and to weep. It seemed too certain. And time brought
+us the truth. Robert had fallen as he would have chosen to fall, leading
+on his men. He was so tall, and he was such a shining mark for death!
+But I knew that no din of cannon or roar of battle was loud enough to
+overcome the still, small voices of home, and that his last thought was,
+as he wrote me it would be, "of you all."
+
+O beautiful, valiant youth! O fearful ploughshare, tearing thy way
+through so many bleeding hearts! O terrible throes, out of which a new
+nation must be born!
+
+
+
+
+IN THE HEMLOCKS.
+
+
+Most people receive with incredulity a statement of the number of birds
+that annually visit our climate. Very few even are aware of half the
+number that spend the summer in their own immediate vicinity. We little
+suspect, when we walk in the woods, whose privacy we are intruding
+upon,--what rare and elegant visitants from Mexico, from Central and
+South America, and from the islands of the sea, are holding their
+reunions in the branches over our heads, or pursuing their pleasure on
+the ground before us.
+
+I recall the altogether admirable and shining family which Thoreau
+dreamed he saw in the upper chambers of Spaulding's woods, which
+Spaulding did not know lived there, and which were not put out when
+Spaulding, whistling, drove his team through their lower halls. They did
+not go into society in the village; they were quite well; they had sons
+and daughters; they neither wove nor spun; there was a sound as of
+suppressed hilarity.
+
+I take it for granted that the forester was only saying a pretty thing
+of the birds, though I have observed that it does sometimes annoy them
+when Spaulding's cart rumbles through their house. Generally, however,
+they are as unconscious of Spaulding as Spaulding is of them.
+
+Walking the other day in an old hemlock wood, I counted over forty
+varieties of these summer visitants, many of them common to other woods
+in the vicinity, but quite a number peculiar to these ancient solitudes,
+and not a few that are rare in any locality. It is quite unusual to find
+so large a number abiding in one forest,--and that not a large
+one,--most of them nesting and spending the summer there. Many of those
+I observed commonly pass this season much farther north. But the
+geographical distribution of birds is rather a climatical one. The same
+temperature, though under different parallels, usually attracts the same
+birds; difference in altitude being equivalent to the difference in
+latitude. A given height above the sea level under the parallel of 30 deg.
+may have the same climate as places under that of 35 deg., and similar Flora
+and Fauna. At the head-waters of the Delaware, where I write, the
+latitude is that of Boston, but the region has a much greater elevation,
+and hence a climate that compares better with the northern part of the
+State and of New England. Half a day's drive to the southeast brings me
+down into quite a different temperature, with an older geological
+formation, different forest timber, and different birds,--even with
+different mammals. Neither the little Gray Rabbit nor the little Gray
+Fox is found in my locality, but the great Northern Hare and the Red Fox
+are seen here. In the last century a colony of beavers dwelt here,
+though the oldest inhabitant cannot now point to even the traditional
+site of their dams. The ancient hemlocks, whither I propose to take the
+reader, are rich in many things beside birds. Indeed, their wealth in
+this respect is owing mainly, no doubt, to their rank vegetable growths,
+their fruitful swamps, and their dark, sheltered retreats.
+
+Their history is of an heroic cast. Ravished and torn by the tanner in
+his thirst for bark, preyed upon by the lumberman, assaulted and beaten
+back by the settler, still their spirit has never been broken, their
+energies never paralyzed. Not many years ago a public highway passed
+through them, but it was at no time a tolerable road; trees fell across
+it, mud and limbs choked it up, till finally travellers took the hint
+and went around; and now, walking along its deserted course, I see only
+the footprints of coons, foxes, and squirrels.
+
+Nature loves such woods, and places her own seal upon them. Here she
+shows me what can be done with ferns and mosses and lichens. The soil is
+marrowy and full of innumerable forests. Standing in these fragrant
+aisles, I feel the strength of the vegetable kingdom and am awed by the
+deep and inscrutable processes of life going on so silently about me.
+
+No hostile forms with axe or spud now visit these solitudes. The cows
+have half-hidden ways through them, and know where the best browsing is
+to be had. In spring the farmer repairs to their bordering of maples to
+make sugar; in July and August women and boys from all the country about
+penetrate the old Barkpeeling for raspberries and blackberries; and I
+know a youth who wonderingly follows their languid stream casting for
+trout.
+
+In like spirit, alert and buoyant, on this bright June morning go I also
+to reap my harvest,--pursuing a sweet more delectable than sugar, fruit
+more savory than berries, and game for another palate than that tickled
+by trout.
+
+June, of all the months, the student of ornithology can least afford to
+lose. Most birds are nesting then, and in full song and plumage. And
+what is a bird without its song? Do we not wait for the stranger to
+speak? It seems to me that I do not know a bird till I have heard its
+voice; then I come nearer it at once, and it possesses a human interest
+to me. I have met the Gray-cheeked Thrush (_Turdus aliciae_) in the
+woods, and held him in my hand; still I do not know him. The silence of
+the Cedar-Bird throws a mystery about him which neither his good looks
+nor his petty larcenies in cherry time can dispel. A bird's song
+contains a clew to its life, and establishes a sympathy, an
+understanding, between itself and the admiring listener.
+
+I descend a steep hill, and approach the hemlocks through a large
+sugar-bush. When twenty rods distant, I hear all along the line of the
+forest the incessant warble of the Red-eyed Flycatcher (_Vireosylvia
+olivacea_), cheerful and happy as the merry whistle of a schoolboy. He
+is one of our most common and widely distributed birds. Approach any
+forest at any hour of the day, in any kind of weather, from May to
+August, in any of the Middle or Eastern districts, and the chances are
+that the first note you hear will be his. Rain or shine, before noon or
+after, in the deep forest or in the village grove,--when it is too hot
+for the thrushes or too cold and windy for the warblers,--it is never
+out of time or place for this little minstrel to indulge his cheerful
+strain. In the deep wilds of the Adirondac, where few birds are seen and
+fewer heard, his note was almost constantly in my ear. Always busy,
+making it a point never to suspend for one moment his occupation to
+indulge his musical taste, his lay is that of industry and contentment.
+There is nothing plaintive or especially musical in his performance, but
+the sentiment expressed is eminently that of cheerfulness. Indeed the
+songs of most birds have some human significance, which, I think, is the
+source of the delight we take in them. The song of the Bobolink, to me,
+expresses hilarity; the Song-Sparrow's, faith; the Bluebird's, love; the
+Cat-Bird's, pride; the White-eyed Fly-catcher's, self-consciousness;
+that of the Hermit-Thrush, spiritual serenity; while there is something
+military in the call of the Robin, and unalloyed contentment in the
+warble of the Red-eyed Vireo.
+
+This bird is classed among the flycatchers, but is much more of a
+worm-eater, and has few of the traits or habits of the _Muscicapa_ or
+the true _Sylvia_. He resembles somewhat the Warbling Vireo (_Vireo
+gilvus_), and the two birds are often confounded by careless observers.
+Both warble in the same cheerful strain, but the latter more
+continuously and rapidly. The Red-Eye is a larger, slimmer bird, with a
+faint bluish crown, and a light line over the eye. His movements are
+peculiar. You may see him hopping among the limbs, exploring the under
+side of the leaves, peering to the right and left,--now flitting a few
+feet, now hopping as many,--and warbling incessantly, occasionally in a
+subdued tone, which sounds from a very indefinite distance. When he has
+found a worm to his liking, he turns lengthwise of the limb, and bruises
+its head with his beak before devouring it.
+
+As I enter the woods the Slate-colored Snowbird (_Fringilla Hudsonia_)
+starts up before me and chirps sharply. His protest when thus disturbed
+is almost metallic in its sharpness. He breeds here, and is not esteemed
+a snowbird at all, as he disappears at the near approach of winter, and
+returns again in spring, like the Song-Sparrow, and is not in any way
+associated with the cold and the snow. So different are the habits of
+birds in different localities. Even the Crow does not winter here, and
+is seldom seen after December or before March.
+
+The Snow-Bird, or "Black Chipping-Bird," as it is known among the
+farmers, is the finest architect of any of the ground-builders known to
+me. The site of its nest is usually some low bank by the roadside near a
+wood. In a slight excavation, with a partially concealed entrance, the
+exquisite structure is placed. Horse-hair and cow-hair are plentifully
+used, imparting to the interior of the nest great symmetry and firmness
+as well as softness.
+
+Passing down through the maple arches, barely pausing to observe the
+antics of a trio of squirrels,--two gray ones and a black one,--I cross
+an ancient brush fence and am fairly within the old hemlocks, and in one
+of the most primitive, undisturbed nooks. In the deep moss I tread as
+with muffled feet, and the pupils of my eyes dilate in the dim, almost
+religious light. The irreverent red squirrels, however, run and snicker
+at my approach, or mock the solitude with their ridiculous chattering
+and frisking.
+
+This nook is the chosen haunt of the Winter Wren. This is the only place
+and these the only woods in which I find him in this vicinity. His voice
+fills these dim aisles, as if aided by some marvellous sounding-board.
+Indeed, his song is very strong for so small a bird, and unites in a
+remarkable degree brilliancy and plaintiveness. I think of a tremulous
+vibrating tongue of silver. You may know it is the song of a wren, from
+its gushing lyrical character; but you must needs look sharp to see the
+little minstrel, especially while in the act of singing. He is nearly
+the color of the ground and the leaves; he never ascends the tall trees,
+but keeps low, flitting from stump to stump and from root to root,
+dodging in and out of his hiding-places, and watching all intruders with
+a suspicious eye. He has a very perk, almost comical look. His tail
+stands more than perpendicular: it points straight toward his head. He
+is the least ostentatious singer I know of. He does not strike an
+attitude, and lift up his head in preparation, and, as it were, clear
+his throat; but sits there on the log and pours out his music, looking
+straight before him, or even down at the ground. As a songster, he has
+but few superiors. I do not hear him after the first week in July.
+
+While sitting on this soft-cushioned log, tasting the pungent acidulous
+wood-sorrel (_Oxalis acetorella_), the blossoms of which, large and
+pink-veined, rise everywhere above the moss, a rufous-colored bird flies
+quickly past, and, alighting on a low limb a few rods off, salutes me
+with "Whew! Whew!" or "Whoit! Whoit!" almost as you would whistle for
+your dog. I see by his impulsive, graceful movements, and his dimly
+speckled breast, that it is a Thrush. Presently he utters a few soft,
+mellow, flute-like notes, one of the most simple expressions of melody
+to be heard, and scuds away, and I see it is the Veery or Wilson's
+Thrush. He is the least of the Thrushes in size, being about that of the
+common Bluebird, and he may be distinguished from his relatives by the
+dimness of the spots upon his breast. The Wood-Thrush has very clear,
+distinct oval spots on a white ground; in the Hermit, the spots run more
+into lines, on a ground of a faint bluish-white; in the Veery, the marks
+are almost obsolete, and a few rods off his breast presents only a dull
+yellowish appearance. To get a good view of him you have only to sit
+down in his haunts, as in such cases he seems equally anxious to get a
+good view of you.
+
+From those tall hemlocks proceeds a very fine insect-like warble, and
+occasionally I see a spray _teeter_, or catch the flit of a wing. I
+watch and watch till my head grows dizzy and my neck is in danger of
+permanent displacement, and still do not get a good view. Presently the
+bird darts, or, as it seems, falls down a few feet in pursuit of a fly
+or moth, and I see the whole of it, but in the dim light am undecided.
+It is for such emergencies that I have brought this gun. A bird in the
+hand is worth half a dozen in the bush, even for ornithological
+purposes; and no sure and rapid progress can be made in the study
+without taking life, without procuring specimens. This bird is a
+Warbler, plainly enough, from his habits and manner; but what kind of
+Warbler? Look on him and name him: a deep orange or flame-colored throat
+and breast; the same color showing also in a line over the eye and in
+his crown; back variegated black and white. The female is less marked
+and brilliant. The Orange-throated Warbler would seem to be his right
+name, his characteristic cognomen; but no, he is doomed to wear the name
+of some discoverer, perhaps the first who robbed his nest or rifled him
+of his mate,--Blackburn; hence, Blackburnian Warbler. The _burn_ seems
+appropriate enough, for in these dark evergreens his throat and breast
+show like flame. He has a very fine warble, suggesting that of the
+Redstart, but not especially musical. I find him in no other woods in
+this vicinity.
+
+I am attracted by another warble in the same locality, and experience a
+like difficulty in getting a good view of the author of it. It is quite
+a noticeable strain, sharp and sibilant, and sounds well amid the old
+trees. In the upland woods of beech and maple it is a more familiar
+sound than in these solitudes. On taking the bird in your hand, even if
+you are not a young lady, you will probably exclaim, "How beautiful!" So
+tiny and elegant, the smallest of the Warblers; a delicate blue back,
+with a slight bronze-colored triangular spot between the shoulders;
+upper mandible black; lower mandible yellow as gold; throat yellow,
+becoming a dark bronze on the breast. Blue Yellow-Back he is called,
+though the yellow is much nearer a bronze. He is remarkably delicate and
+beautiful,--the handsomest, as he is the smallest, of the Warblers known
+to me. It is never without surprise that I find amid these rugged,
+savage aspects of Nature creatures so fairy and delicate. But such is
+the law. Go to the sea or climb the mountain, and with the ruggedest and
+the savagest you will find likewise the fairest and the most delicate.
+The greatness and the minuteness of Nature pass all understanding.
+
+Ever since I entered the woods, even while listening to the lesser
+songsters, or contemplating the silent forms about me, a strain has
+reached my ear from out the depths of the forest that to me is the
+finest sound in nature,--the song of the Hermit-Thrush. I often hear him
+thus a long way off, sometimes over a quarter of a mile away, when only
+the stronger and more perfect parts of his music reach me; and through
+the general chorus of Wrens and Warblers I detect this sound rising pure
+and serene, as if a spirit from some remote height were slowly chanting
+a divine accompaniment. This song appeals to the sentiment of the
+beautiful in me, and suggests a serene religious beatitude as no other
+sound in nature does. It is perhaps more of an evening than a morning
+hymn, though I hear it at all hours of the day. It is very simple, and I
+can hardly tell the secret of its charm. "O spheral, spheral!" he seems
+to say; "O holy, holy! O clear away, clear away! O clear up, clear up!"
+interspersed with the finest trills and the most delicate preludes. It
+is not a proud, gorgeous strain, like the Tanager's or the Grosbeak's;
+suggests no passion or emotion,--nothing personal,--but seems to be the
+voice of that calm, sweet solemnity one attains to in his best moments.
+It realizes a peace and a deep, solemn joy that only the finest souls
+may know. A few nights ago I ascended a mountain to see the world by
+moonlight; and when near the summit the Hermit commenced his evening
+hymn a few rods from me. Listening to this strain on the lone mountain,
+with the full moon just rounded from the horizon, the pomp of your
+cities and the pride of your civilization seemed trivial and cheap.
+
+Whether it is because of their rareness, or an accident of my
+observation, or a characteristic trait, I cannot tell, yet I have never
+known two of these birds to be singing at the same time in the same
+locality, rivalling each other, like the Wood-Thrush or the Veery.
+Shooting one from a tree, I have observed another take up the strain
+from almost the identical perch in less than ten minutes afterward.
+Later in the day, when I had penetrated the heart of the old
+Barkpeeling, I came suddenly upon one singing from a low stump, and for
+a wonder he did not seem alarmed, but lifted up his divine voice as if
+his privacy was undisturbed. I open his beak and find the inside yellow
+as gold. I was prepared to find it inlaid with pearls and diamonds, or
+to see an angel issue from it.
+
+He is not much in the books. Indeed, I am acquainted with scarcely any
+writer on ornithology whose head is not muddled on the subject of our
+three prevailing song-thrushes, confounding either their figures or
+their songs. A writer in the Atlantic[A] gravely tells us the
+Wood-Thrush is sometimes called the Hermit, and then, after describing
+the song of the Hermit with great beauty and correctness, coolly
+ascribes it to the Veery! The new Cyclopaedia, fresh from the study of
+Audubon, says the Hermit's song consists of a single plaintive note, and
+that the Veery's resembles that of the Wood-Thrush! These observations
+deserve to be preserved with that of the author of "Out-door Papers,"
+who tells us the trill of the Hair-Bird (_Fringilla socialis_) is
+produced by the bird fluttering its wings upon its sides! The
+Hermit-Thrush may be easily identified by his color; his back being a
+clear olive-brown, becoming rufous on his rump and tail. A quill from
+his wing placed beside one from his tail, on a dark ground, presents
+quite a marked contrast.
+
+I walk along the old road, and note the tracks in the thin layer of mud.
+When do these creatures travel here? I have never yet chanced to meet
+one. Here a partridge has set its foot; there, a woodcock; here, a
+squirrel or mink; there, a skunk; there, a fox. What a clear, nervous
+track Reynard makes! how easy to distinguish it from that of a little
+dog,--it is so sharply cut and defined! A dog's track is coarse and
+clumsy beside it. There is as much wildness in the track of an animal as
+in its voice. Is a deer's track like a sheep's or a goat's? What
+winged-footed fleetness and agility may be inferred from the sharp,
+braided track of the gray squirrel upon the new snow! Ah! in nature is
+the best discipline. I think the sculptor might carve finer and more
+expressive lines if he grew up in the woods, and the painter
+discriminate finer hues. How wood-life sharpens the senses, giving a new
+power to the eye, the ear, the nose! And are not the rarest and most
+exquisite songsters wood-birds?
+
+Everywhere in these solitudes I am greeted with the pensive, almost
+pathetic note of the Wood-Pewee. Do you know the Pewees? They are the
+true Flycatchers, and are easily identified. They are very
+characteristic birds, have very strong family traits, and very
+pugnacious dispositions. Without any exception or qualification they are
+the homeliest or the least elegant birds of our fields or forest.
+Sharp-shouldered, big-headed, short-legged, of no particular color, of
+little elegance in flight or movement, with a disagreeable flirt of the
+tail, always quarrelling with their neighbors and with one another, no
+birds are so little calculated to excite pleasurable emotions in the
+beholder, or to become objects of human interest and affection. The
+King-Bird is the best-dressed member of the family, but he is a
+braggart; and, though always snubbing his neighbors, is an arrant
+coward, and shows the white feather at the slightest display of pluck in
+his antagonist. I have seen him turn tail to a Swallow, and have known
+the little Pewee in question to whip him beautifully. From the Great
+Crested to the Little Green Flycatcher, their ways and general habits
+are the same. Slow in flying from point to point, they yet have a
+wonderful quickness, and snap up the fleetest insects with little
+apparent effort. There is a constant play of quick, nervous movements
+underneath their outer show of calmness and stolidity. They do not scour
+the limbs and trees like the Warblers, but, perched upon the middle
+branches, wait like true hunters for the game to come along. There is
+often a very audible snap of the beak as they arrest their prey.
+
+The Wood-Pewee, the prevailing species in this locality, arrests your
+attention by his sweet, pathetic cry. There is room for it also in the
+deep woods, as well as for the more prolonged and elevated strains. His
+mate builds an exquisite nest of moss on the side of some shelving cliff
+or overhanging rock. The other day, passing by a ledge near the top of a
+mountain in a singularly desolate locality, my eye rested upon one of
+these structures, looking precisely as if it grew there, so in keeping
+was it with the mossy character of the rock; and I have had a growing
+affection for the bird ever since. The rock seemed to love the nest and
+to claim it as its own. I said, What a lesson in architecture is here!
+Here is a house that was built, but built with such loving care and such
+beautiful adaptation of the means to the end, that it looks like a
+product of nature. The same wise economy is noticeable in the nests of
+all birds. No bird would paint its house white or red, or add aught for
+show.
+
+Coming to a drier and less mossy place in the woods, I am amused with
+the Golden-crowned Thrush,--which, however, is no thrush at all, but a
+Warbler, the _Sciurus aurocapillus_. He walks on the ground ahead of me
+with such an easy gliding motion, and with such an unconscious,
+preoccupied air, jerking his head like a hen or a partridge, now
+hurrying, now slackening his pace, that I pause to observe him. If I sit
+down, he pauses to observe me, and extends his pretty ramblings on all
+sides, apparently very much engrossed with his own affairs, but never
+losing sight of me. But few of the birds are walkers, most being
+hoppers, like the Robin. I recall only five species of the former among
+our ordinary birds,--the one in question, the Meadow-Lark, the Tit-Lark,
+the Cow-Bunting, and the Water-Wagtail (a relative of the Golden-Crown).
+
+Satisfied that I have no hostile intentions, the pretty pedestrian
+mounts a limb a few feet from the ground, and gives me the benefit of
+one of his musical performances, a sort of accelerating chant.
+Commencing in a very low key, which makes him seem at a very uncertain
+distance, he grows louder and louder, till his body quakes and his chant
+runs into a shriek, ringing in my ears with a peculiar sharpness. This
+lay may be represented thus: "Teacher teacher, teacher, teacher
+teacher!"--the accent on the first syllable and each word uttered with
+increased force and shrillness. No writer with whom I am acquainted
+gives him credit for more musical ability than is displayed in this
+strain. Yet in this the half is not told. He has a far rarer song, which
+he reserves for some nymph whom he meets in the air. Mounting by easy
+flights to the top of the tallest tree, he launches into the air with a
+sort of suspended, hovering flight, like certain of the Finches, and
+bursts into a perfect ecstasy of song,--clear, ringing, copious,
+rivalling the Goldfinch's in vivacity, and the Linnet's in melody. This
+strain is one of the rarest bits of bird-melody to be heard. Over the
+woods, hid from view, the ecstatic singer warbles his finest strain. In
+this song you instantly detect his relationship to the Water-Wagtail
+(_Sciurus Noveboracensis_),--erroneously called Water-Thrush,--whose
+song is likewise a sudden burst, full and ringing, and with a tone of
+youthful joyousness in it, as if the bird had just had some unexpected
+good-fortune. For nearly two years this strain of the pretty walker was
+little more than a disembodied voice to me, and I was puzzled by it as
+Thoreau by his mysterious Night-Warbler, which, by the way, I suspect
+was no new bird at all, but one he was otherwise familiar with. The
+little bird himself seems disposed to keep the matter a secret, and
+improves every opportunity to repeat before you his shrill, accelerating
+lay, as if this were quite enough and all he laid claim to. Still, I
+trust I am betraying no confidence in making the matter public here. I
+think this is pre-eminently his love-song, as I hear it oftenest about
+the mating season. I have caught half-suppressed bursts of it from two
+birds chasing each other with fearful speed through the forest.
+
+Turning to the left from the old road, I wander, over soft logs and gray
+yielding _debris_, across the little trout brook, until I emerge in the
+Barkpeeling,--pausing now and then on the way to admire a small,
+solitary white flower which rises above the moss, with radical,
+heart-shaped leaves, and a blossom precisely like the liverwort except
+in color, but which is not put down in my botany,--or to observe the
+ferns, of which I count six varieties, some gigantic ones nearly
+shoulder-high.
+
+At the foot of a rough, scraggy yellow birch, on a bank of club-moss, so
+richly inlaid with partridge-berry and curious shining leaves,--with
+here and there in the bordering a spire of the false wintergreen
+(_Pyrola rotundifolia_) strung with faint pink flowers and exhaling the
+breath of a May orchard,--that it looks too costly a couch for such an
+idler, I recline to note what transpires. The sun is just past the
+meridian, and the afternoon chorus is not yet in full tune. Most birds
+sing with the greatest spirit and vivacity in the forenoon, though there
+are occasional bursts later in the day, in which nearly all voices join;
+while it is not till the twilight that the full power and solemnity of
+the thrush's hymn is felt.
+
+My attention is soon arrested by a pair of Humming-Birds, the
+Ruby-Throated, disporting themselves in a low bush a few yards from me.
+The female takes shelter amid the branches, and squeaks exultingly as
+the male, circling above, dives down as if to dislodge her. Seeing me,
+he drops like a feather on a slender twig, and in a moment both are
+gone. Then, as if by a preconcerted signal, the throats are all atune. I
+lie on my back with eyes half closed, and analyze the chorus of
+Warblers, Thrushes, Finches, and Flycatchers; while, soaring above all,
+a little withdrawn and alone, rises the divine soprano of the Hermit.
+That richly modulated warble proceeding from the top of yonder birch,
+and which unpractised ears would mistake for the voice of the Scarlet
+Tanager, comes from that rare visitant, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak. It
+is a strong, vivacious strain, a bright noonday song, full of health and
+assurance, indicating fine talents in the performer, but not genius. As
+I come up under the tree he casts his eye down at me, but continues his
+song. This bird is said to be quite common in the Northwest, but he is
+rare in the Eastern districts. His beak is disproportionately large and
+heavy, like a huge nose, which slightly mars his good looks; but Nature
+has made it up to him in a blush rose upon his breast, and the most
+delicate of pink linings to the under side of his wings. His back is
+variegated black and white, and when flying low the white shows
+conspicuously. If he passed over your head, you would note the delicate
+flush under his wings.
+
+That bit of bright scarlet on yonder dead hemlock, glowing like a live
+coal against the dark background, seeming almost too brilliant for the
+severe Northern climate, is his relative, the Scarlet Tanager. I
+occasionally meet him in the deep hemlocks, and know no stronger
+contrast in nature. I almost fear he will kindle the dry limb on which
+he alights. He is quite a solitary bird, and in this section seems to
+prefer the high, remote woods, even going quite to the mountain's top.
+Indeed, the event of my last visit to the mountain was meeting one of
+these brilliant creatures near the summit, in full song. The breeze
+carried the notes far and wide. He seemed to enjoy the elevation, and I
+imagined his song had more scope and freedom than usual. When he had
+flown far down the mountain-side, the breeze still brought me his finest
+notes. In plumage he is the most brilliant bird we have. The Bluebird is
+not entirely blue; nor will the Indigo-bird bear a close inspection, nor
+the Goldfinch, nor the Summer Redbird. But the Tanager loses nothing by
+a near view; the deep scarlet of his body and the black of his wings and
+tail are quite perfect. This is his holiday suit; in the fall he becomes
+a dull green,--the color of the female the whole season.
+
+One of the leading songsters in this choir of the old Barkpeeling is the
+Purple Finch or Linnet. He sits somewhat apart, usually on a dead
+hemlock, and warbles most exquisitely. He is one of our finest
+songsters, and stands at the head of the Finches, as the Hermit at the
+head of the Thrushes. His song approaches an ecstasy, and, with the
+exception of the Winter Wren's, is the most rapid and copious strain to
+be heard in these woods. It is quite destitute of the trills and the
+liquid, silvery, bubbling notes that characterize the Wren's; but there
+runs through it a round, richly modulated whistle, very sweet and very
+pleasing. The call of the Robin is brought in at a certain point with
+marked effect, and, throughout, the variety is so great and the strain
+so rapid that the impression is as of two or three birds singing at the
+same time. He is not common here, and I only find him in these or
+similar woods. His color is peculiar, and looks as if it might have been
+imparted by dipping a brown bird in diluted pokeberry juice. Two or
+three more dippings would have made the purple complete. The female is
+the color of the Song-Sparrow, a little larger, with heavier beak, and
+tail much more forked.
+
+In a little opening quite free from brush and trees I step down to bathe
+my hands in the brook, when a small, light slate-colored bird flutters
+out of the bank, not three feet from my head, as I stoop down, and, as
+if severely lamed or injured, flutters through the grass and into the
+nearest bush. As I do not follow, but remain near the nest, she _chips_
+sharply, which brings the male, and I see it is the Speckled Canada
+Warbler. I find no authority in the books for this bird to build upon
+the ground, yet here is the nest, made chiefly of dry grass, set in a
+slight excavation in the bank, not two feet from the water, and looking
+a little perilous to anything but ducklings or sandpipers. There are two
+young birds and one little specked egg, just pipped. But how is this?
+what mystery is here? One nestling is much larger than the other,
+monopolizes most of the nest, and lifts its open mouth far above that of
+its companion, though obviously both are of the same age, not more than
+a day old. Ah! I see;--the old trick of the Cow-Bunting, with a stinging
+human significance. Taking the interloper by the nape of the neck, I
+deliberately drop it into the water, but not without a pang, as I see
+its naked form, convulsed with chills, float down stream. Cruel! So is
+Nature cruel. I take one life to save two. In less than two days this
+pot-bellied intruder would have caused the death of the two rightful
+occupants of the nest; so I step in and divert things into their proper
+channel again.
+
+It is a singular freak of Nature, this instinct which prompts one bird
+to lay its eggs in the nests of others, and thus shirk the
+responsibility of rearing its own young. The Cow-Buntings always resort
+to this cunning trick; and when one reflects upon their numbers it is
+evident that these little tragedies are quite frequent. In Europe the
+parallel case is that of the Cuckoo, and occasionally our own Cuckoo
+imposes upon a Robin or a Thrush in the same manner. The Cow-Bunting
+seems to have no conscience about the matter, and, so far as I have
+observed, invariably selects the nest of a bird smaller than itself. Its
+egg is usually the first to hatch; its young overreaches all the rest
+when food is brought; it grows with great rapidity, spreads and fills
+the nest, and the starved and crowded occupants soon perish, when the
+parent bird removes their dead bodies, giving its whole energy and care
+to the foster-child.
+
+The Warblers and smaller Flycatchers are generally the sufferers, though
+I sometimes see the Slate-colored Snowbird unconsciously duped in like
+manner; and the other day, in a tall tree in the woods, I discovered the
+Black-throated Green-backed Warbler devoting itself to this dusky,
+overgrown foundling. An old farmer to whom I pointed out the fact was
+much surprised that such things should happen in his woods without his
+knowledge.
+
+From long observation it is my opinion that the male Bunting selects the
+nest into which the egg is to be deposited, and exercises a sort of
+guardianship over it afterward, lingering in the vicinity and uttering
+his peculiar, liquid, glassy note from the tops of the tall trees.
+
+The Speckled Canada is a very superior Warbler, having a lively,
+animated strain, reminding you of certain parts of the Canary's, though
+quite broken and incomplete; the bird the while hopping amid the
+branches with increased liveliness, and indulging in fine sibilant
+chirps, too happy to keep silent.
+
+His manners are very marked. He has a habit of curtsying when he
+discovers you, which is very pretty. In form he is a very elegant bird,
+somewhat slender, his back of a bluish lead-color becoming nearly black
+on his crown; the under part of his body, from his throat down, is of a
+light, delicate yellow, with a belt of black dots across his breast. He
+has a very fine eye, surrounded by a light yellow ring.
+
+The parent birds are much disturbed by my presence, and keep up a loud,
+emphatic chirping, which attracts the attention of their sympathetic
+neighbors, and one after another they come to see what has happened. The
+Chestnut-Sided and the Blackburnian come in company. The
+Black-and-Yellow Warbler pauses a moment and hastens away; the Maryland
+Yellow-Throat peeps shyly from the lower bushes and utters his "Fip!
+fip!" in sympathy; the Wood-Pewee comes straight to the tree overhead,
+and the Red-eyed Vireo lingers and lingers, eying me with a curious,
+innocent look, evidently much puzzled. But all disappear again, one
+after another, apparently without a word of condolence or encouragement
+to the distressed pair. I have often noticed among birds this show of
+sympathy,--if indeed it be sympathy, and not merely curiosity, or a
+feeling of doubt concerning their own safety.
+
+An hour afterward I approach the place, find all still, and the mother
+bird upon the nest. As I draw near she seems to sit closer, her eyes
+growing large with an inexpressibly wild, beautiful look. She keeps her
+place till I am within two paces of her, when she flutters away as at
+first. In the brief interval the remaining egg has hatched, and the two
+little nestlings lift their heads without being jostled or overreached
+by any strange bedfellow. A week afterward and they are flown away,--so
+brief is the infancy of birds. And the wonder is that they escape, even
+for this short time, the skunks and minks and muskrats that abound here,
+and that have a decided partiality for such tidbits.
+
+I pass on through the old Barkpeeling, now threading an old cow-path or
+an overgrown wood-road; now clambering over soft and decayed logs, or
+forcing my way through a network of briers and hazel; now entering a
+perfect bower of wild-cherry, beech, and soft-maple; now emerging into a
+little grassy lane, golden with buttercups or white with daisies, or
+wading waist-deep in the red raspberry-bushes.
+
+Whir! whir! whir! and a brood of half-grown Partridges start up like an
+explosion, a few paces from me, and, scattering, disappear in the bushes
+on all sides. Let me sit down here behind this screen of ferns and
+briers, and hear this wild-hen of the woods call together her brood.
+Have you observed at what an early age the Partridge flies? Nature seems
+to concentrate her energies on the wing, making the safety of the bird a
+point to be looked after first; and while the body is covered with down,
+and no signs of feathers are visible, the wing-quills sprout and unfold,
+and in an incredibly short time the young make fair headway in flying.
+
+The same rapid development of wing may be observed in chickens and
+turkeys, but not in water-fowls, nor in birds that are safely housed in
+the nest till full-fledged. The other day, by a brook, I came suddenly
+upon a young Sandpiper, a most beautiful creature, enveloped in a soft
+gray down, swift and nimble, and apparently a week or two old, but with
+no signs of plumage either of body or wing. And it needed none, for it
+escaped me by taking to the water as readily as if it had flown with
+wings.
+
+Hark! There arises over there in the brush a soft, persuasive cooing, a
+sound so subtile and wild and unobtrusive that it requires the most
+alert and watchful ear to hear it. How gentle and solicitous and full of
+yearning love! It is the voice of the mother hen. Presently a faint,
+timid "Yeap!" which almost eludes the ear, is heard in various
+directions,--the young responding. As no danger seems near, the cooing
+of the parent bird is soon a very audible clucking call, and the young
+move cautiously in the direction. Let me step never so carefully from my
+hiding-place, and all sounds instantly cease, and I search in vain for
+either parent or young.
+
+The Partridge (_Bonasa umbellus_) is one of our most native and
+characteristic birds. The woods seem good to be in where I find him. He
+gives a habitable air to the forest, and one feels as if the rightful
+occupant was really at home. The woods where I do not find him seem to
+want something, as if suffering from some neglect of Nature. And then he
+is such a splendid success, so hardy and vigorous. I think he enjoys the
+cold and the snow. His wings seem to rustle with more fervency in
+midwinter. If the snow falls very fast, and promises a heavy storm, he
+will complacently sit down and allow himself to be snowed under.
+Approaching him at such times, he suddenly bursts out of the snow at
+your feet, scattering the flakes in all directions, and goes humming
+away through the woods like a bomb-shell,--a picture of native spirit
+and success.
+
+His drum is one of the most welcome and beautiful sounds of spring.
+Scarcely have the trees showed their buds, when, in the still April
+mornings, or toward nightfall, you hear the hum of his devoted wings. He
+selects not, as you would predict, a dry and resinous log, but a decayed
+and crumbling one, seeming to give the preference to old oak-logs that
+are partially blended with the soil. If a log to his taste cannot be
+found, he sets up his altar on a rock, which becomes resonant beneath
+his fervent blows. Have you seen the Partridge drum? It is the next
+thing to catching a weasel asleep, though by much caution and tact it
+may be done. He does not hug the log, but stands very erect, expands his
+ruff, gives two introductory blows, pauses half a second, and then
+resumes, striking faster and faster till the sound becomes a continuous,
+unbroken whir, the whole lasting less than half a minute. The tips of
+his wings barely brush the log, so that the sound is produced rather by
+the force of the blows upon the air and upon his own body as in flying.
+One log will be used for many years, though not by the same drummer. It
+seems to be a sort of temple, and held in great respect. The bird always
+approaches it on foot, and leaves it in the same quiet manner, unless
+rudely disturbed. He is very cunning, though his wit is not profound. It
+is very difficult to approach him by stealth; you will try many times
+before succeeding; but seem to pass by him in a great hurry, making all
+the noise possible, and with plumage furled he stands as immovable as a
+knot, allowing you a good view and a good shot, if you are a sportsman.
+
+Passing along one of the old barkpeelers' roads which wander aimlessly
+about, I am attracted by a singularly brilliant and emphatic warble,
+proceeding from the low bushes, and quickly suggesting the voice of the
+Maryland Yellow-Throat. Presently the singer hops up on a dry twig, and
+gives me a good view. Lead-colored head and neck, becoming nearly black
+on the breast; clear olive-green back, and yellow belly. From his habit
+of keeping near the ground, even hopping upon it occasionally, I know
+him to be a Ground-Warbler; from his dark breast the ornithologist has
+added the expletive Mourning, hence the Mourning Ground-Warbler.
+
+Of this bird both Wilson and Audubon confessed their comparative
+ignorance, neither ever having seen its nest or become acquainted with
+its haunts and general habits. Its song is quite striking and novel,
+though its voice at once suggests the class of Warblers, to which it
+belongs. It is very shy and wary, flying but a few feet at a time, and
+studiously concealing itself from your view. I discover but one pair
+here. The female has food in her beak, but carefully avoids betraying
+the locality of her nest. The Ground-Warblers all have one notable
+feature,--very beautiful legs, as white and delicate as if they had
+always worn silk stockings and satin slippers. High tree Warblers have
+dark brown or black legs and more brilliant plumage, but less musical
+ability.
+
+The Chestnut-Sided belongs to the latter class. He is quite common in
+these woods, as in all the woods about. He is one of the rarest and
+handsomest of the Warblers; his white breast and throat, chestnut sides,
+and yellow crown show conspicuously. Audubon did not know his haunts,
+and had never seen his nest or known any naturalist who had. Last year I
+found the nest of one in an uplying beech-wood, in a low bush near the
+roadside, where cows passed and browsed daily. Things went on smoothly
+till the Cow-Bunting stole her egg into it, when other mishaps followed,
+and the nest was soon empty. A characteristic attitude of the male
+during this season is a slight drooping of the wings, and tail a little
+elevated, which gives him a very smart, bantam-like appearance. His song
+is fine and hurried, and not much of itself, but has its place in the
+general chorus.
+
+A far sweeter strain, falling on the ear with the true sylvan cadence,
+is that of the Black-throated Green-backed Warbler, whom I meet at
+various points. He has no superiors among the true _Sylvia_. His song is
+very plain and simple, but remarkably pure and tender, and might be
+indicated by straight lines, thus, ---- ----\/----; the first two marks
+representing two sweet, silvery notes, in the same pitch of voice, and
+quite unaccented; the latter marks, the concluding notes, wherein the
+tone and inflection are changed. The throat and breast of the male are a
+rich black, like velvet, his face yellow, and his back a yellowish
+green.
+
+Beyond the Barkpeeling, where the woods are mingled hemlock, beech, and
+birch, the languid midsummer note of the Black-throated Blue-Back falls
+on my ear. "Twea, twea, twea-e-e!" in the upward slide, and with the
+peculiar _z-ing_ of certain insects, but not destitute of a certain
+plaintive cadence. It is one of the most languid, unhurried sounds in
+all the woods. I feel like reclining upon the dry leaves at once.
+Audubon says he has never heard his love-song; but this is all the
+love-song he has, and he is evidently a very plain hero with his little
+brown mistress. He is not the bird you would send to the princess to
+"cheep and twitter twenty million loves"; she would go to sleep while he
+was piping. He assumes few attitudes, and is not a bold and striking
+gymnast, like many of his kindred. He has a preference for dense woods
+of beech and maple, moves slowly amid the lower branches and smaller
+growths, keeping from eight to ten feet from the ground, and repeating
+now and then his listless, indolent strain. His back and crown are dark
+blue; his throat and breast, black; his belly, pure white; and he has a
+white spot on each wing.
+
+Here and there I meet the Black and White Creeping-Warbler, whose fine
+strain reminds me of hair-wire. It is unquestionably the finest
+bird-song to be heard. Few insect strains will compare with it in this
+respect; while it has none of the harsh, brassy character of the latter,
+being very delicate and tender.
+
+That sharp, interrupted, but still continued warble, which, before one
+has learned to discriminate closely, he is apt to confound with the
+Red-eyed Vireo's, is that of the Solitary Warbling Vireo,--a bird
+slightly larger, much rarer, and with a louder, less cheerful and happy
+strain. I see him hopping along lengthwise of the limbs, and note the
+orange tinge of his breast and sides and the white circle around his
+eye.
+
+But the declining sun and the deepening shadows admonish me that this
+ramble must be brought to a close, even though only the leading
+characters in this chorus of forty songsters have been described, and
+only a small portion of the venerable old woods explored. In a secluded
+swampy corner of the old Barkpeeling, where I find the great purple
+orchis in bloom, and where the foot of man or beast seems never to have
+trod, I linger long, contemplating the wonderful display of lichens and
+mosses that overrun both the smaller and the larger growths. Every bush
+and branch and sprig is dressed up in the most rich and fantastic of
+liveries; and, crowning all, the long bearded moss festoons the branches
+or sways gracefully from the limbs. Every twig looks a century old,
+though green leaves tip the end of it. A young yellow birch has a
+venerable, patriarchal look, and seems ill at ease under such premature
+honors. A decayed hemlock is draped as if by hands for some solemn
+festival.
+
+Mounting toward the upland again, I pause reverently as the hush and
+stillness of twilight come upon the woods. It is the sweetest, ripest
+hour of the day. And as the Hermit's evening hymn goes up from the deep
+solitude below me, I experience that serene exaltation of sentiment of
+which music, literature, and religion are but the faint types and
+symbols.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] For December, 1858.
+
+
+
+
+LAST DAYS OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
+
+
+PART III.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+Landor has frequently been ridiculed for insisting upon an orthography
+peculiar at present to himself, and this ridicule has been bestowed most
+mercilessly, because of the supposition that he was bent upon
+revolutionizing the English language merely for the sake of singularity.
+But Landor has logic on his side, and it would be wise to heed
+authoritative protests against senseless innovations that bid fair to
+destroy the symmetry of words, and which, fifty years hence, will render
+the tracing of their derivation an Herculean task, unless Trenches
+multiply in proportion to the necessities of the times. If I ever wished
+the old lion to put forth all the majesty of his indignation, I had only
+to whisper the cabalistic words, "Phonetic spelling!" Yet Landor was not
+very exacting. In the "Last Fruit off an Old Tree," he says, through his
+medium, Pericles, who is giving advice to Alcibiades: "Every time we
+pronounce a word different from another, we show our disapprobation of
+his manner, and accuse him of rusticity. In all common things we must do
+as others do. It is more barbarous to undermine the stability of a
+language than of an edifice that hath stood as long. This is done by the
+introduction of changes. Write as others do, but only as the best of
+others; and, if one eloquent man forty or fifty years ago spoke and
+wrote differently from the generality of the present, follow him, though
+alone, rather than the many. But in pronunciation we are not indulged in
+this latitude of choice; we must pronounce as those do who favor us with
+their audience." Landor only claimed to write as the best of others do,
+and in his own name protests to Southey against misconstruction. "One
+would represent me as attempting to undermine our native tongue;
+another, as modernizing; a third, as antiquating it. _Wheras_" (Landor's
+spelling) "I am trying to underprop, not to undermine; I am trying to
+stop the man-milliner at his ungainly work of trimming and flouncing; I
+am trying to show how graceful is our English, not in its stiff
+decrepitude, not in its riotous luxuriance, but in its hale mid-life. I
+would make bad writers follow good ones, and good ones accord with
+themselves. If all cannot be reduced into order, is that any reason why
+nothing should be done toward it? If languages and men too are
+imperfect, must we never make an effort to bring them a few steps
+nearer to what is preferable?"
+
+It is my great good fortune to possess a copy of Landor's works made
+curious and peculiarly valuable by the author's own revisions and
+corrections, and it is most interesting to wander through these volumes,
+wherein almost every page is a battle-field between the writer and his
+arch-enemy, the printer. The final _l_ in _still_ and _till_ is
+ignominiously blotted out; _exclaim_ is written _exclame_; a _d_ is put
+over the obliterated _a_ in _steady_; _t_ is substituted _t_ is
+substituted for the second _s_ in _confessed_ and kindred words;
+_straightway_ is shorn of _gh_; _pontiff_ is allowed but one _f_. Landor
+spells _honor_ in what we call the modern way, without the _u_; and the
+_r_ and _e_ in _sceptre_ change places. A dash of the pen cancels the
+_s_ in _isle_ and the final _e_ in _wherefore_, _therefore_, &c.
+_Simile_ is terminated with a _y_; the imperfect of the verbs _to milk_,
+_to ask_, etc., is spelled with a _t_; _whereat_ loses its second _e_,
+and _although_ is deprived of its last three letters. To his poem of
+"Guidone and Lucia" has been added this final verse:--
+
+    "The sire had earned with gold his son's release
+    And led him home; at home he died in peace.
+    His soul was with Lucia, and he praid
+    To meet again soon, soon, that happier maid.
+    This wish was granted, for the Powers above
+    Abound in mercy and delight in love."
+
+And to this verse is appended the following note: "If the pret. and
+partic. of _lay_ is _laid_, of _say_, _said_, that of _pray_ must be
+_praid_. We want a lexiconomist."
+
+In his lines entitled "New Style," which are a burlesque on Wordsworth,
+Landor introduces a new verse:--
+
+    "Some one (I might have asked her who)
+      Has given her a locket;
+    I, more considerate, brought her two
+      Potatoes in each pocket."
+
+Landor has been accused of an unwarrantable dislike to the manufacture
+of words; but so far from true is this, that I have known him to indulge
+with great felicity in words of his own coining, when conversation
+chanced to take a humorous turn. He makes Sam. Johnson say that "all
+words are good which come when they are wanted; all which come when they
+are not wanted should be dismissed." Tooke, in the same conversation,
+cites Cicero as one who, not contented with new spellings, created new
+words; but Tooke further declares, that "only one valuable word has been
+received into our language since my birth, or perhaps since yours. I
+have lately heard _appreciate_ for _estimate_." To which Johnson
+replies: "Words taken from the French should be amenable, in their
+spelling, to English laws and regulations. _Appreciate_ is a good and
+useful one; it signifies more than _estimate_ or _value_; it implies 'to
+value justly.'"
+
+Taking up one day Dean Trench's excellent little book on "The Study of
+Words," which lay on my table, Landor expressed a desire to read it. He
+brought it back not long afterward, enriched with notes, and declared
+himself to have been much pleased with the manner in which the Dean had
+treated a subject so deeply interesting to himself. I have singled out a
+few of these notes, that student of etymology may read the criticisms of
+so able a man. Dean Trench is taken to task for a misuse of _every
+where_ in making two words of it. Landor puts the question, "Is the Dean
+ignorant that _everywhere_ is one word, and _where_ is no substantive?"
+Trench asserts that _caprice_ is from _capra_, "a goat," whereupon his
+critic says, "No,--then it would be capr_a_cious. It is from
+_caper_--_capere_." _To retract_, writes Trench, means properly, as its
+derivation declares, no more than to handle over again, to reconsider;
+Landor declares that "it means more. _Retrahere_ is _to draw back_." But
+he very vehemently approves of the Dean's remarks on the use of the word
+_talents_. We should say "a man of talents," not "of talent," for that
+is nonsense, though "of a talent" would be allowable.
+
+"[Greek: Kosmos] is both 'world' and 'ornament,' hence 'cosmetic,'"
+writes Landor in answer to a doubt expressed by Trench whether the
+well-known quotation from St. James, "The tongue is a world of
+iniquity," could not also be translated, as some maintain, "the
+ornament of iniquity." Making use of the expression "redolent of scorn"
+in connection with words that formerly expressed sacred functions and
+offices, Landor adds: "Gray is highly poetical in his 'redolent of joy
+and youth.' The word is now vilely misused daily." "By and bye," writes
+the Dean. "Why write _bye_?" asks his commentator. Once or twice Landor
+credits Horne Tooke with what the Dean gives as his own, and
+occasionally scores an observation as old. "Why won't people say
+_messager_?" he demands. "By what right is _messenger_ made out of
+_message_?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Have you nothing else for the old man to read? have you nothing
+American?" Landor inquired upon returning Trench. Desiring to obtain the
+verdict of one so high in authority, I gave him Drake's "Culprit Fay,"
+and some fugitive verses by M. C. Field, whose poems have never been
+collected in book form. Of the latter's "Indian Hunting the Buffaloes,"
+"Night on the Prairie," "Les Tres Marias," and others, known to but few
+readers now, Landor spoke in high commendation, and this praise will be
+welcome to those friends of "Phazma" still living, and still loving the
+memory of him who died early, and found, as he wished, an ocean grave.
+With "The Culprit Fay" came a scrap of paper on which was written: "The
+Culprit Fay is rich in imagination,--few poems more so. Drake is among
+the noblest of names, and this poem throws a fresh lustre on it."
+Observing in this poem a misuse of the exclamation "Oh!" Landor
+remarked, "'Oh!' properly is an expression of grief or pain. 'O!'
+without the aspirate may express pleasure or hope." Current literature
+rarely makes any distinction between the two, and even good writers
+stumble through carelessness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Style in writing was one of Landor's favorite topics, and his ire was
+rarely more quickly excited than by placing before him a specimen of
+high-flown sentimentality. He would put on his spectacles, exclaim,
+"What is this?" and, having read a few lines, would throw the book down,
+saying, "I have not the patience to read such stuff. It may be very
+fine, but I cannot understand it. It is beyond me." He had little mercy
+to bestow upon transcendentalists, though he praised Emerson one day,--a
+marvellous proof of high regard when it is considered how he detested
+the school to which Emerson belongs. "Emerson called on me when he was
+in Florence many years ago, and a very agreeable visit I had from him.
+He is a very clever man, and might be cleverer if he were less
+sublimated. But then you Americans, practical as you are, are fond of
+soaring in high latitudes." Carlyle in his last manner had the same
+effect upon Landor's nerves as a discord in music produces upon a
+sensitive ear. "Ah," said he with a quizzical smile, "'Frederick the
+Great' convinces me that I write two dead languages,--Latin and
+English!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+English hexameter was still another pet detestation which Landor nursed
+with great volubility. In 1860 all Anglo-Saxon Florence was reading with
+no little interest a poem in this metre, which had recently appeared,
+and which of course passed under the critical eye of the old Grecian.
+"Well, Mr. Landor, what do you think of the new poem?" I asked during
+its nine days' reign. "Think of it? I don't think of it. I don't want to
+be bothered with it. The book has driven all the breath out of my body.
+I am lame with galloping. I've been on a gallop from the beginning to
+the end. Never did I have so hard and long a ride. But what else to
+expect when mounted on a _nightmare_! It may be very fine. I dare say it
+is, but Giallo and I prefer our ease to being battered. I am too old to
+hop, skip, and jump, and he is too sensible. It may be very bad taste,
+but we prefer verse that stands on two feet to verse that limps about on
+none. Now-a-days it is better to stumble than to walk erect. Giallo and
+I, however, have registered an oath not to encourage so base a fashion.
+We have consulted old Homer, and he quite approves our indignation."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Speaking of certain Americanisms and of our ridiculous squeamishness in
+the use of certain honest words, Landor remarked: "You Americans are
+very proper people; you have difficulties, but not diseases. Legs are
+unknown,--you have limbs; and under no consideration do you go to
+bed,--you retire." Much of this I could not gainsay, for only a few days
+previously I had been severely frowned upon for making inquiries about a
+broken leg. "My dear," said Landor to a young American girl who had been
+speaking of the city of New Or_leens_,--such being the ordinary Southern
+pronunciation,--"that pretty mouth of yours should not be distorted by
+vulgar dialect. You should say Or'leans." But he was never pedantic in
+his language. He used the simplest and most emphatic words.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are those who accuse Landor of having sacrificed all things to
+style: it were as wise to assert that Beethoven sacrificed harmony to
+time. If his accusers would but read Landor before criticising, a proper
+regard for their own reputations would prevent them from hazarding such
+an opinion. "Style," writes Landor, "I consider as nothing, if what it
+covers be unsound: wisdom in union with harmony is oracular. On this
+idea, the wiser of ancient days venerated in the same person the deity
+of oracles and of music; and it must have been the most malicious and
+the most ingenious of satirists who transferred the gift of eloquence to
+the god of thieves." Those who by the actual sweat of their brows have
+got at the deep, hidden meaning of the most recent geniuses, will honor
+and thank Landor for having practically enforced his own refreshing
+theory. There are certain modern books of positive value which the
+reader closes with a sense of utter exhaustion. The meaning is
+discovered, but at too great an outlay of vitality. To render simple
+things complex, is to fly in the face of Nature; and after such mental
+"gymnastics," we turn with relief to Landor. "The greater part of those
+who are most ambitious of style are unaware of all its value. Thought
+does not separate man from the brutes; for the brutes think: but man
+alone thinks beyond the moment and beyond himself. Speech does not
+separate them; for speech is common to all, perhaps more or less
+articulate, and conveyed and received through different organs in the
+lower and more inert. Man's thought, which seems imperishable, loses its
+form, and runs along from proprietor to impropriator, like any other
+transitory thing, unless it is invested so becomingly and nobly that no
+successor can improve upon it by any new fashion or combination. For
+want of dignity or beauty, many good things are passed and forgotten;
+and much ancient wisdom is overrun and hidden by a rampant verdure,
+succulent, but unsubstantial.... Let those who look upon style as
+unworthy of much attention ask themselves how many, in proportion to men
+of genius, have excelled in it. In all languages, ancient and modern,
+are there ten prose-writers at once harmonious, correct, and energetic?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Popular as is the belief that Landor's gifts were the offspring of
+profound study, he himself says: "Only four years of my life were given
+up much to study; and I regret that I spent so many so ill. Even these
+debarred me from no pleasure; for I seldom read or wrote within doors,
+excepting a few hours at night. The learning of those who are called the
+learned is learning at second hand; the primary and most important must
+be acquired by reading in our own bosoms; the rest by a deep insight
+into other men's. What is written is mostly an imperfect and unfaithful
+copy." This confession emanates from one who is claimed as a university
+rather than a universal man. Landor remained but two years at Oxford,
+and, though deeply interested in the classics, never contended for a
+Latin prize. Speaking of this one day, he said: "I once wrote some
+Latin verses for a fellow of my college who, being in great trouble,
+came to me for aid. What was hard work to him was pastime to me, and it
+ended in my composing the entire poem. At the time the fellow was very
+grateful, but it happened that these verses excited attention and were
+much eulogized. The supposed author accepted the praise as due to
+himself. This of course I expected, as he knew full well I would never
+betray him; but the amusing part of the matter was that the fellow never
+afterwards spoke to me, never came near me,--in fact, treated me as
+though I had done him a grievous wrong. It was of no consequence to me
+that he strutted about in my feathers. If they became him, he was
+welcome to them,--but of such is the kingdom of cowards."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Poetry," writes Landor, "was always my amusement, prose my study and
+business." In his thirtieth year he lived in the woods, "did not
+exchange twelve sentences with men," and wrote "Gebir," his most
+elaborate and ambitious poem, which Southey took as a model in blank
+verse, and which a Boston critic wonders whether anyone ever read
+through. "Pericles and Aspasia," and the finest of his "Imaginary
+Conversations," were the flowering of half a century of thought. There
+are few readers who do not prefer Landor's prose to his verse, for in
+the former he does not aim at the dramatic: the passion peculiar to
+verse is not congenial to his genius. He sympathizes most fully with men
+and women in repose, when intellect, not the heart, rules. His prose has
+all the purity of outline and harmony of Greek plastic art. He could not
+wield the painter's brush, but the great sculptor had yet power to
+depict the grief of a "Niobe," the agony of the "Laocooen," or the
+majesty of a "Moses." Like a sculptor, he rarely groups more than two
+figures.
+
+It is satisfactory then to know that in the zenith of physical strength
+Landor was at his noblest and best, for his example is a forcible
+protest against the feverish enthusiasm of young American authors, who
+wear out their lives in the struggle to be famous at the age of Keats,
+never remembering that "there must be a good deal of movement and
+shuffling before there is any rising from the ground; and those who have
+the longest wings have the most difficulty in the first mounting. In
+literature, as at football, strength and agility are insufficient of
+themselves; you must have your _side_, or you may run till you are out
+of breath, and kick till you are out of shoes, and never win the game.
+There must be some to keep others off you, and some to prolong for you
+the ball's rebound.... Do not, however, be ambitious of an early fame:
+such is apt to shrivel and to drop under the tree." The poetical dictum,
+"Whom the gods love, die young," has worked untold mischief, having
+created a morbid dislike to a fine physique, on the theory that great
+minds are antagonistic to noble bodies. There never was error so fatal:
+the larger the brain, the larger should be the reservoir from which to
+draw vitality. Were Seneca alive now, he would write no such letter as
+he once wrote to Lucilius, protesting against the ridiculous devotion of
+his countrymen to physical gymnastics. "To be wise is to be well," was
+the gospel he went about preaching. "To be well is to be wise," would
+answer much better as the modern article of faith. The utmost that a
+persistent brain-worker of this century can do is to keep himself bodily
+up to mental requirements. Landor, however, was an extraordinary
+exception. He could boast of never having worn an overcoat since
+boyhood, and of not having been ill more than three times in his life.
+Even at eighty-six his hand had none of the wavering of age; and it was
+with no little satisfaction that, grasping an imaginary pistol, he
+showed me how steady an aim he could still take, and told of how famous
+a shot he used to be. "But my sister was more skilful than I," he
+added.
+
+One day conversation chanced upon Aubrey De Vere, the beautiful Catholic
+poet of Ireland, whose name is scarcely known on this side of the
+Atlantic. This is our loss, though De Vere can never be a popular poet,
+for his muse lives in the past and breathes ether rather than air. "De
+Vere is charming both as man and as poet," said Landor enthusiastically,
+rising as he spoke and leaving the room to return immediately with a
+small volume of De Vere's poems published at Oxford in 1843. "Here are
+his poems given to me by himself. Such a modest, unassuming man as he
+is! Now listen to this from the 'Ode on the Ascent of the Alps.' Is it
+not magnificent?
+
+    'I spake.--Behold her o'er the broad lake flying,
+    Like a great Angel missioned to bestow
+    Some boon on men beneath in sadness lying:
+    The waves are murmuring silver murmurs low:
+        Over the waves are borne
+    Those feeble lights which, ere the eyes of Morn
+    Are lifted, through her lids and lashes flow.
+        Beneath the curdling wind
+    Green through the shades the waters rush and roll,
+    (Or whitened only by the unfrequent shoal,)
+    Till two dark hills, with darker yet behind,
+    Confront them,--purple mountains almost black,
+    Each behind each self-folded and withdrawn,
+    Beneath the umbrage of yon cloudy rack.--
+    That orange-gleam! 't is dawn!
+    Onward! the swan's flight with the eagle's blending,
+    On, winged Muse! still forward and ascending!'
+
+"This sonnet on 'Sunrise,'" continued Landor, "is the noblest that ever
+was written:--
+
+    'I saw the Master of the Sun. He stood
+    High in his fiery car, himself more bright,
+    An archer of immeasurable might.
+    On his left shoulder hung his quivered load;
+    Spurred by his steeds, the eastern mountain glowed;
+    Forward his eager eye and brow of light
+    He bent; and while both hands that arch embowed,
+    Shaft after shaft pursued the flying Night,
+    No wings profaned that godlike form: around
+    His polished neck an ever-moving crowd
+    Of locks hung glistening; while each perfect sound
+    Fell from his bow-string, _that th' ethereal dome
+    Thrilled as a dew-drop_; while each passing cloud
+    Expanded, whitening like the ocean foam.'
+
+"Is not this line grand?--
+
+    'Peals the strong, voluminous thunder!'
+
+And how incomparable is the termination of this song!--
+
+    'Bright was her soul as Dian's crest
+    Showering on Vesta's fane its sheen:
+    Cold looked she as the waveless breast
+    Of some stone Dian at thirteen.
+    Men loved: but hope they deemed to be
+    A sweet Impossibility!'
+
+Here are two beautiful lines from the Grecian Ode:--
+
+    'Those sinuous streams that blushing wander
+    Through labyrinthine oleander.'
+
+This is like Shakespeare:--
+
+    'Yea, and the Queen of Love, as fame reports,
+    Was caught,--no doubt in Bacchic wreaths,--for Bacchus
+    Such puissance hath, that he old oaks will twine
+    Into true-lovers' knots, and laughing stand
+    Until the sun goes down.'
+
+And an admirable passage is this, too, from the same poem,--'The Search
+after Proserpine':--
+
+    'Yea, and the motions of her trees and harvests
+    Resemble those of slaves, reluctant, cumbered,
+    By outward force compelled; _not like our billows,
+    Springing elastic in impetuous joy,
+    Or indolently swayed_.'
+
+"There!" exclaimed Landor, closing the book, "I want you to have this.
+It will be none the less valuable because I have scribbled in it," he
+added with a smile.
+
+"But, Mr. Landor--"
+
+"Now don't say a word. I am an old man, and if both my legs are not in
+the grave, they ought to be. I cannot lay up such treasures in heaven,
+you know,--saving of course in my memory,--and De Vere had rather you
+should have it than the rats. There's a compliment for you! so put the
+book in your pocket."
+
+This little volume is marked throughout by Landor with notes of
+admiration, and if I here transcribe a few of his favorite poems, it
+will be with the hope of benefiting many readers to whom De Vere is a
+sealed book.
+
+"Greece never produced anything so exquisite," wrote Landor beneath the
+following song:--
+
+    "Give me back my heart, fair child;
+    To you as yet 't is worth but little.
+    Half beguiler, half beguiled,
+    Be you warned: your own is brittle.
+    I know it by your redd'ning cheeks,--
+    I know it by those two black streaks
+    Arching up your pearly brows
+    In a momentary laughter,
+    Stretched in long and dark repose
+    With a sigh the moment after.
+
+    "'Hid it! dropt it on the moors!
+    Lost it, and you cannot find it,'--
+    My own heart I want, not yours:
+    You have bound and must unbind it.
+    Set it free then from your net,
+    We will love, sweet,--but not yet!
+    Fling it from you:--we are strong;
+    Love is trouble, love is folly:
+    Love, that makes an old heart young,
+    Makes a young heart melancholy."
+
+And for this Landor claimed that it was "finer than the best in
+Horace":--
+
+    "Slanting both hands against her forehead,
+    On me she levelled her bright eyes.
+    My whole heart brightened as the sea
+    When midnight clouds part suddenly:--
+    Through all my spirit went the lustre,
+    Like starlight poured through purple skies.
+
+    "And then she sang a loud, sweet music;
+    Yet louder as aloft it clomb:
+    Soft when her curving lips it left;
+    Then rising till the heavens were cleft,
+    As though each strain, on high expanding,
+    Were echoed in a silver dome.
+
+    "But hark! she sings 'she does not love me':
+    She loves to say she ne'er can love.
+    To me her beauty she denies,--
+    Bending the while on me those eyes,
+    Whose beams might charm the mountain leopard,
+    Or lure Jove's herald from above!"
+
+Below the following exquisite bit of melody is written, "Never was any
+sonnet so beautiful."
+
+    "She whom this heart must ever hold most dear
+    (This heart in happy bondage held so long)
+    Began to sing. At first a gentle fear
+    Rosied her countenance, for she is young,
+    And he who loves her most of all was near:
+    But when at last her voice grew full and strong,
+    O, from their ambush sweet, how rich and clear
+    Bubbled the notes abroad,--a rapturous throng!
+    Her little hands were sometimes flung apart,
+    And sometimes palm to palm together prest;
+    While wave-like blushes rising from her breast
+    Kept time with that aerial melody,
+    As music to the sight!--I standing nigh
+    Received the falling fountain in my heart."
+
+"What sonnet of Petrarca equals this?" he says of the following:--
+
+    "Happy are they who kiss thee, morn and even,
+    Parting the hair upon thy forehead white;
+    For them the sky is bluer and more bright,
+    And purer their thanksgivings rise to Heaven.
+    Happy are they to whom thy songs are given;
+    Happy are they on whom thy hands alight;
+    And happiest they for whom thy prayers at night
+    In tender piety so oft have striven.
+    Away with vain regrets and selfish sighs!
+    Even I, dear friend, am lonely, not unblest:
+    Permitted sometimes on that form to gaze,
+    Or feel the light of those consoling eyes,--
+    If but a moment on my cheek it stays,
+    I know that gentle beam from all the rest!"
+
+"Like Shakespeare's, but better, is this allegory:--
+
+    "You say that you have given your love to me.
+    Ah, give it not, but lend it me; and say
+    That you will ofttimes ask me to repay,
+    But never to restore it: so shall we,
+    Retaining, still bestow perpetually:
+    So shall I ask thee for it every day,
+    Securely as for daily bread we pray;
+    So all of favor, naught of right shall be.
+    The joy which now is mine shall leave me never.
+    Indeed, I have deserved it not; and yet
+    No painful blush is mine,--so soon my face
+    Blushing is hid in that beloved embrace.
+    Myself I would condemn not, but forget;
+    Remembering thee alone, and thee forever!"
+
+"Worthy of Raleigh and like him," is Landor's preface to the following
+sonnet:--
+
+    "Flowers I would bring, if flowers could make thee fairer,
+    And music, if the Muse were dear to thee;
+    (For loving these would make thee love the bearer.)
+    But sweetest songs forget their melody,
+    And loveliest flowers would but conceal the wearer:--
+    A rose I marked, and might have plucked; but she
+    Blushed as she bent, imploring me to spare her,
+    Nor spoil her beauty by such rivalry.
+    Alas! and with what gifts shall I pursue thee,
+    What offerings bring, what treasures lay before thee,
+    When earth with all her floral train doth woo thee,
+    And all old poets and old songs adore thee.
+    And love to thee is naught, from passionate mood
+    Secured by joy's complacent plenitude!"
+
+Occasionally Landor indulges in a little humorous indignation,
+particularly in his remarks on the poem of which Coleridge is the hero.
+De Vere's lines end thus:--
+
+    "Soft be the sound ordained thy sleep to break!
+    When thou art waking, wake me, for thy Master's sake!"
+
+"And let me nap on," wrote the august critic, who had no desire to meet
+Coleridge, even as a celestial being.
+
+Now and then there is a dash of the pencil across some final verse, with
+the remark, "Better without these." Twice or thrice Landor finds fault
+with a word. He objects to the expression, "eyes so fair," saying _fair_
+is a bad word for eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The subject of Latin being one day mentioned, Landor very eagerly
+proposed that I should study this language with him.
+
+The thought was awful, and I expostulated. "But, Mr. Landor, you who are
+so noble a Latinist can never have the patience to instruct such a
+stumbling scholar."
+
+"I insist upon it. You shall be my first pupil," he said, laughing at
+the idea of beginning to teach in his extreme old age. "It will give the
+old man something to do."
+
+"But you will get very tired of me, Mr. Landor."
+
+"Well, well, I'll tell you when I am tired. You say you have a grammar;
+then I'll bring along with me to-morrow something to read."
+
+True to his promise, the "old pedagogue," for so he was wont to call
+himself, made his appearance with a time-worn Virgil under his arm,--a
+Virgil that in 1809 was the property, according to much pen and ink
+scribbling, of one "John Prince, aetat. 12. College School, Hereford."
+
+"Now, then, for our lesson," Landor exclaimed, in a cheery voice.
+"Giallo knows all about it, and quite approves of the arrangement. Don't
+you, Giallo?" And the wise dog wagged his sympathetic tail, jumped up on
+his master's knees, and put his fore paws around Landor's neck. "There,
+you see, he gives consent; for this is the way Giallo expresses
+approbation."
+
+The kindness and amiability of my teacher made me forget his greatness,
+and I soon found myself reciting with as much ease as if there had been
+nothing strange in the affair. He was very patient, and never found
+fault with me, but his criticisms on my Latin grammar were frequent and
+severe. "It is strange," he would mutter, "that men cannot do things
+properly. There is no necessity for this rule; it only confuses the
+pupil. That note is absurd; this, unintelligible. Grammars should be
+made more comprehensible."
+
+Expressing a preference for the Italian method of pronunciation, I dared
+to say that it seemed to be the most correct, inasmuch as the Italian
+language was but bastard Latin. The master, however, would not listen to
+such heresy, and declared that, with the exception of the French, the
+Italian was the worst possible pronunciation to adopt; that the German
+method was the most correct, and after that came the English.
+
+It was only a few hours after the termination of our first lesson that
+Landor's little maid entered the room laden with old folios, which she
+deposited with the following pleasant note:--"As my young friend is
+willing to become a grammarian, an old fellow sends her for her gracious
+acceptance these books tending to that purpose." I was made rich,
+indeed, by this generous donation, for there were a ponderous Latin
+Dictionary in Landor's handwriting, a curious old Italian and French
+Dictionary of 1692,--published at Paris, "per uso del Serenissimo
+Delfino,"--a Greek Grammar, and a delightfully rare and musty old Latin
+Grammar by Emmanuel Alvarus, the Jesuit, carefully annotated by Landor.
+Then, too, there was a valuable edition, in two volumes, of Annibal
+Caro's Italian translation of the AEneid, published at Paris in 1760, by
+permission of "Louis, par le grace de Dieu Roi de France et de Navarre,"
+and very copiously illustrated by Zocchi. Two noble coats-of-arms adorn
+its fly-leaves, those of the Right Honorable Lady Mary Louther and of
+George, Earl of Macartney, Knight of the Order of the White Eagle and of
+the Bath.
+
+The lessons, as pleasant as they were profitable, were given several
+times a week for many weeks, and would have been continued still longer
+had not a change of residence on our part rendered frequent meetings
+impossible. On each appointed day Landor entered the room with a bouquet
+of camellias or roses,--the products of his little garden, in which he
+took great pride,--and, after presenting it with a graceful speech,
+turned to the Latin books with infinite gusto, as though they reflected
+upon him the light of other days. No voice could be better adapted to
+the reading of Latin than that of Landor, who uttered the words with a
+certain majestic flow, and sounding, cataract-like falls and plunges of
+music. Occasionally he would touch upon the subject of Greek. "I wonder
+whether I've forgotten all my Greek," he said one day. "It is so long
+since I have written a word of it that I doubt if I can remember the
+alphabet. Let me see." He took up pen and paper, and from Alpha to Omega
+traced every letter with far more distinctness than he would have
+written the English alphabet. "Why, Landor," he exclaimed, looking with
+no little satisfaction on the work before him, "you have not grown as
+foolish as I thought. You know your letters,--which proves that you are
+in your second childhood, does it not?" he asked, smiling, and turning
+to me.
+
+After my recitation he would lean back in the arm-chair and relate
+anecdotes of great men and women to a small, but deeply interested
+audience of three, including Giallo. A few well-timed questions were
+quite sufficient to open his inexhaustible reservoir of reminiscences.
+Nor had Landor reason to complain of his memory in so far as the dim
+past was concerned; for, one morning, reference having been made to Monk
+Lewis's poem of "Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene," he recited it
+in cadences from beginning to end, without the slightest hesitation or
+the tripping of a word. "Well, this is indeed astonishing," he said at
+its conclusion; "I have not _thought_ of that poem for thirty years!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Landor was often very brilliant. At Sienna, during the summer of 1860,
+an American lady having expressed a desire to meet him the following
+season, he replied, "Ah, by that time I shall have gone farther and
+fared worse!" Sometimes, when we were all in a particularly merry mood,
+Landor would indulge in impromptu _doggerel_ "to please _Giallo_"!
+Absurd couplets would come thick and fast,--so fast that it was
+impossible to remember them.
+
+Advising me with regard to certain rules in my Latin Grammar he
+exclaimed,
+
+    "What you'd fain know, you will find:
+    What you want not, leave behind."
+
+Whereupon Giallo walked up to his master and caressed his hand. "Why,
+Giallo," added Landor, "your nose is hot, but
+
+    He is foolish who supposes
+    Dogs are ill that have hot noses!"
+
+Attention being directed to several letters received by Landor from
+well-meaning but intensely orthodox friends, who were extremely anxious
+that he should join the Church in order to be saved from perdition, he
+said: "They are very kind, but I cannot be redeemed in that way.
+
+    When I throw off this mortal coil,
+    I will not call on you, friend Hoil;
+    And I think that I shall do,
+    My good Tompkins, without you.
+    But I pray you, charming Kate,
+    You will come, but not too late."
+
+"How wicked you are, Mr. Landor!" I replied, laughingly. "It is well
+that _I_ am not orthodox."
+
+    "For if you were orthodox
+    I should be in the wrong box!"
+
+was the ready response.
+
+Landor held orthodoxy in great horror, having no faith in creeds which
+set up the highly comfortable doctrine, "I am holier than thou, for I am
+in the Church." "Ah! I have given dear, good friends great pain because
+of my obstinacy. They would have me believe as they do, which is utterly
+impossible." By Church, Landor did not mean religion, nor did he pass
+judgment on those who in sincerity embraced any particular faith, but
+claimed for himself perfect freedom of opinion, and gave as much to
+others. In his paper on "Popery, British and Foreign," Landor freely
+expresses himself. "The people, by their own efforts, will sweep away
+the gross inequalities now obstructing the church-path,--will sweep away
+from amidst the habitations of the industrious the moral cemeteries, the
+noisome markets around the house of God, whatever be the selfish
+interests that stubbornly resist the operation.... It would grieve me to
+foresee a day when our cathedrals and our churches shall be demolished
+or desecrated; when the tones of the organ, when the symphonies of
+Handel, no longer swell and reverberate along the groined roof and dim
+windows. But let old superstitions crumble into dust; let Faith, Hope,
+and Charity be simple in their attire; let few and solemn words be
+spoken before Him 'to whom all hearts are open, all desires known.'
+Principalities and powers belong not to the service of the Crucified;
+and religion can never be pure, never 'of good report,' among those who
+usurp or covet them."
+
+Landor was no exception to the generality of Protestants in Italy, who
+become imbued with a profound aversion to Romanism, while retaining
+great respect and regard for individual members of its clergy. He never
+passed one of the _preti_ that he did not open his batteries, pouring
+grape and canister of sarcasm and indignation on the retreating
+enemy,--"rascally beetles," "human vampires," "Satan's imps." "Italy
+never can be free as long as these locusts, worse than those of Egypt,
+infest the land. They are as plentiful as fleas, and as great a curse,"
+he exclaimed one day. "They are fleas demoralized!" he added, with a
+laugh.
+
+"It is reported that Pio Nono is not long for this world," I said, on
+another occasion. "Erysipelas is supposed to have settled in his legs."
+
+"Ah, yes," Landor replied, "he has been on his _last legs_ for some
+time, but depend upon it they are legs that will _last_. The Devil is
+always good to his own, you know!"
+
+In Italy the advanced party will not allow virtue in the Pope even as a
+man. A story is told, that when, as the Cardinal Mastai Ferretti, he was
+made Pontiff, his sister threw up her hands and exclaimed, "Guai a
+Roma!" (Woe to Rome!) "Se non e vero e ben trovato." And this is told in
+spite of Mrs. Kemble's story of the conversation which took place
+between the Cardinals Micara and Lambruschini prior to this election, in
+which the former remarked: "If the powers of darkness preside over the
+election, you'll be Pope; if the people had a voice, I'm the man; but if
+Heaven has a finger in the business, 't will be Ferretti!" Apropos of
+Popes, Landor writes: "If the Popes are the servants of God, it must be
+confessed that God has been very unlucky in the choice of his household.
+So many and so atrocious thieves, liars, and murderers are not to be
+found in any other trade; much less would you look for them at the head
+of it." And because of faithless servants Landor has wisely made
+Boccaccio say of Rome: "She, I think will be the last city to rise from
+the dead."
+
+"How surprised St. Peter would be," continued Landor,--resuming our
+conversation, which I have thus parenthetically interrupted,--"how
+surprised he would be to return to earth and find his apostolic
+successors living in such a grand house as the Vatican. Ah, they are
+jolly fishermen!--Landor, Landor! how can you be so wicked?" he said,
+checking himself with mock seriousness; "Giallo does not approve of such
+levity. He tells me he is a good Catholic, for he always refuses meat on
+Friday, even when I offer him a tempting bit. He is a pious dog, and
+will intercede for his naughty old _Padrone_ when he goes to heaven."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A young friend of mine, Charles C. Coleman, an art-student in Italy,
+having visited Landor, was struck by the nobility of his head, and
+expressed a wish to make a study of it. To fulfil such a desire,
+however, was difficult, inasmuch as Landor had an inherent objection to
+having his likeness taken either by man or the sun. Not long before the
+artist's visit, Mr. Browning had persuaded him to sit for his
+photograph, but no less a person could have induced the old man to mount
+the numberless steps which seem to be a necessary condition of
+photography. This sitting was most satisfactory; and to Mr. Browning's
+zealous friendship is due the likeness by which the octogenarian Landor
+will probably be known to the world. Finding him in unusually good
+spirits one day, I dubiously and gradually approached the subject.
+
+"Mr. Landor, do you remember the young artist who called on you one
+day?"
+
+"Yes, and a nice fellow he seemed to be."
+
+"He was greatly taken with your head."
+
+(Humorously.) "You are quite sure he was not smitten with my face?"
+
+"No, I am not sure, for he expressed himself enthusiastically about your
+beard. He says you are a fine subject for a study."
+
+No answer.
+
+"Would you allow him to make a sketch of you, Mr. Landor? He is
+exceedingly anxious to do so."
+
+"No; I do not wish my face to be public property. I detest this
+publicity that men now-a-days seem to be so fond of. There is a painting
+of me in England. D'Orsay, too, made a drawing of me" (I think he said
+drawing) "once when I was visiting Gore House,--a very good thing it was
+too,--and there is a bust executed by Gibson when I was in Rome. These
+are quite sufficient. I have often been urged to allow my portrait to be
+inserted in my books, but never would I give my consent."
+(Notwithstanding this assertion, it may be found in the "Last Fruit.")
+"It is a custom that I detest."
+
+"But, Mr. Landor, you had your photograph taken lately."
+
+"That was to oblige my good friend Browning, who has been so exceedingly
+kind and attentive to me. I could not refuse him."
+
+"But, Mr. Landor, this is entirely between ourselves. It does not
+concern the public in the least. My friend wants to make a study of your
+head, and I want the study."
+
+"O, the painting is for you, is it?"
+
+"Yes. I want to have something of you in oil colors."
+
+"Ah, to be sure! the old creature's complexion is so fresh and fair.
+Well, I'll tell you what I will do. Your friend may come, provided you
+come with him,--and act as chaperon!" This was said laughingly.
+
+"That I will do with pleasure."
+
+"But stop!" added Landor after a pause. "I must be taken without my
+beard!"
+
+"O no! Mr. Landor. That cannot be. Why, you will spoil the picture. You
+won't look like a patriarch without a beard."
+
+"I ordered my barber to come and shear me to-morrow. The weather is
+getting to be very warm, and a heavy beard is exceedingly uncomfortable.
+I _must_ be shaved to-morrow."
+
+"Pray countermand the order, dear Mr. Landor. Do retain your beard until
+the picture is completed. You will not be obliged to wait long. We shall
+all be so disappointed if you don't."
+
+"Well, well, I suppose I must submit."
+
+And thus the matter was amicably arranged, to our infinite satisfaction.
+
+Those sittings were very pleasant to the artist and his chaperon, and
+were not disagreeable, I think, to the model. Seated in his arm-chair,
+with his back to the window that the light might fall on the top of his
+head and form a sort of glory, Landor looked every inch a seer, and
+would entertain us with interesting though unseerlike recollections,
+while the artist was busy with his brush.
+
+Putting out his foot one day, he said, "Who could suppose that that ugly
+old foot had ever been good-looking? Yet they say it was once. When I
+was in Rome, an artist came to me, and asked to take a cast of my foot
+and leg."
+
+"Ah, Mr. Landor, you don't know how good-looking you might be now, if
+you would get a new suit of clothes and a nice pair of boots."
+
+"No, no. I never intend to buy anything more for myself. My old clothes
+are quite good enough. They are all-sufficient for this world, and in
+the next I sha'n't need any; that is, if we are to believe what we are
+told."
+
+"But, indeed, Mr. Landor, you really ought to get a new cap."
+
+"No, the one I wear is quite grand enough. I may have it made over.
+Napier gave it to me," (I think he said Napier,) "and for that reason I
+value it."
+
+"Mr. Landor, you do look like a lion," I said at another time.
+
+He smiled and replied, "You are not the only person who has said so. One
+day, when Napier was dining with me, he threw himself back in his chair,
+exclaiming, with a hearty laugh, 'Zounds! Landor, I've just discovered a
+resemblance. You look like an old lion.'"
+
+"That was a compliment, Mr. Landor. The lion is the king of beasts."
+
+"Yes, but he's only a beast after all," was the quick retort.
+
+Landor always spoke with enthusiasm of General Sir William Napier, and
+in fact lavished praise upon all the family. It was to General Napier
+that he dedicated his "Hellenics," published in 1859, wherein he pays
+the following chivalric tribute: "An illustrious man ordered it to be
+inscribed on his monument, that he was _the friend of Sir Philip
+Sidney_; an obscurer one can but leave this brief memorial, that he was
+the friend of Sir William Napier." Not long after the conversation last
+referred to, Landor said, very sadly, as he welcomed us, "I have just
+heard of the death of my dear old friend Napier. Why could not I have
+been taken, and he left? I have lived too long."
+
+The portrait was soon painted, for Landor, with great patience and
+good-nature, would pose for an hour and a half at a time. Then, rising,
+he would say by way of conclusion to the day's work, "Now it is time for
+a little refreshment." After talking awhile longer, and partaking of
+cake and wine, we would leave to meet a few days later. This was the
+last time Landor sat for his picture.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Landor could never have greatly admired Italian music, although he spoke
+in high praise of the singing of Catalani, a _prima donna_ whom he knew
+and liked personally. He was always ready to point out the absurdity of
+many operatic situations and conventionalities, and often confessed that
+he had been rarely to the theatre. But that he was exceedingly fond of
+old English, Scotch, and German ballads, I had the best possible
+evidence. Frequently he entered our rooms, saying playfully, "I wish to
+make a bargain with you. I will give you these flowers if you will give
+me a song!" I was only too happy to comply, thinking the flowers very
+cheaply purchased. While I sang Italian cavatinas, Landor remained away
+from the piano, pleased, but not satisfied. At their conclusion he used
+to exclaim, "Now for an English ballad!" and would seat himself beside
+the piano, saying, "I must get nearer to hear the words. These old deaf
+ears treat me shabbily!" "Kathleen Mavourneen," Schubert's "Ave Maria,"
+and "Within a Mile of Edinboro' Town," were great favorites with him;
+but "Auld Robin Gray" came first in his affections and was the ballad he
+always asked for. Upon first hearing it, the tears streamed down his
+face, and with a sigh he said: "I have not heard that for many, many
+years. It takes me back to very happy days, when ---- used to sing to
+me. Ah, you did not know what thoughts you were recalling to the
+troublesome old man." As I turned over the leaves he added, "Ah, Landor!
+when you were younger, you knew how to turn over the leaves: you've
+forgotten all your accomplishments!"
+
+Apropos of old songs, Landor has laid his offering upon their neglected
+altar. I shall not forget that evening at Casa Guidi--I can forget no
+evening passed there--when, just as the tea was being placed upon the
+table. Robert Browning turned to Landor, who was that night's honored
+guest, gracefully thanked him for his defence of old songs, and, opening
+the "Last Fruit," read in his clear, manly voice the following passages
+from the Idyls of Theocritus: "We often hear that such or such a thing
+'is not worth an old song.' Alas! how very few things are! What precious
+recollections do some of them awaken! what pleasurable tears do they
+excite! They purify the stream of life; they can delay it on its
+shelves and rapids; they can turn it back again to the soft moss amidst
+which its sources issue."
+
+"Ah, you are kind," replied the gratified author. "You always find out
+the best bits in my books."
+
+I have never seen anything of its kind so chivalric as the deference
+paid by Robert Browning to Walter Savage Landor. It was loyal homage
+rendered by a poet in all the glow of power and impulsive magnetism to
+an "old master."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Landor often berated the custom of dinner-parties. "I dislike large
+dinners exceedingly. This herding together of men and women for the
+purpose of eating, this clatter of knives and forks, is barbarous. What
+can be more horrible than to see and hear a person talking with his
+mouth full? But Landor has strange notions, has he not, Giallo? In fact
+_Padrone_ is a fool if we may believe what folks say. Once, while
+walking near my villa at Fiesole, I overheard quite a flattering remark
+about myself, made by one _contadino_ to another. My beloved countrymen
+had evidently been the subject of conversation, and, as the two fellows
+approached my grounds, one of them pointed towards the villa and
+exclaimed: 'Tutti gli Inglesi sono pazzi, ma questo poi!' (All the
+English are mad,--but _this one_!) Words were too feeble to express the
+extent of my lunacy, and so both men shrugged their shoulders as only
+Italians can. Yes, Giallo, those _contadini_ pitied your old master, and
+I dare say they were quite right."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While talking one day about Franklin, Landor said: "Ah, Franklin was a
+great man; and I can tell you an anecdote of him that has never been in
+print, and which I had directly from a personal friend of Franklin's,
+who was acting as private secretary to Lord Auckland, the English
+ambassador at Paris during Franklin's visit to the French Court. On one
+occasion, when Franklin presented himself before Louis, he was most
+cavalierly treated by the king, whereupon Lord Auckland took it upon
+himself to make impertinent speeches, and, notwithstanding Franklin's
+habitually courteous manners, sneered at his appearing in court dress.
+Upon Franklin's return home, he was met by ----, who, being much
+attached to him,--a bit of a republican, too,--was anxious to learn the
+issue of the visit. 'I was received badly enough,' said Franklin. 'Your
+master, Lord Auckland, was very insolent. I am not quite sure that,
+among other things, he did not call me a rebel.' Then, taking off his
+court coat, which, after carefully folding and laying upon the sofa, he
+stroked, he muttered, 'Lie there now; you'll see better days yet.'"
+
+Being asked if he had ever seen Daniel Webster, Landor replied, "I once
+met Mr. Webster at a dinner-party. We sat next each other, and had a
+most agreeable conversation. Finally Mr. Webster asked me if I would
+have taken him for an American; and I answered, 'Yes, for the best of
+Americans!'"
+
+Landor had met Talma, "who spoke English most perfectly,"--had been in
+the society of Mrs. Siddons, "who was not at all clever in
+private,"--had conversed with Mrs. Jordan, "and a most handsome and
+agreeable woman she was; but that scoundrel, William IV., treated her
+shamefully. He even went so far as to appropriate the money she received
+on her benefit nights." Malibran, too, Landor described as being most
+fascinating off the stage.
+
+"I never studied German," he remarked at another time. "I was once in
+Germany four months, but conversed with the professors in Latin. Their
+Latin was grammatical, but very like dog-Latin for all that. What an
+offence to dogs, if they only knew it!" Then, lowering his voice, he
+laughingly added, "I hope Giallo did not hear me. I would not offend him
+for the world. A German Baroness attempted to induce me to learn her
+language, and read aloud German poetry for my benefit; but the noise was
+intolerable to me. It sounded like a great wagon banging over a
+pavement of boulders. It was very ungrateful in me not to learn, for my
+fair teacher paid me many pretty compliments. Yes, Giallo, _Padrone_ has
+had pleasant things said to him in his day. But the greatest compliment
+I ever received was from Lord Dudley. Being confined to his bed by
+illness at Bologna, a friend read aloud to him my imaginary conversation
+between the two Ciceros. Upon its conclusion, the reader exclaimed, 'Is
+not that exactly what Cicero would have said?' 'Yes, if he could!' was
+Lord Dudley's answer. Now was not that a compliment worth having?"
+
+One day when I was sitting with Landor, and he, as usual, was
+discoursing of "lang syne," he rose, saying, "Stop a bit; I've something
+to show you,"--and, leaving the room for a moment, returned with a small
+writing-desk, looking as old as himself. "Now I want you to look at
+something I have here," he continued, seating himself and opening the
+desk. "There, what do you think of that?" he asked, handing me a
+miniature of a very lovely woman.
+
+"I think the original must have been exceedingly handsome."
+
+"Ah, yes, she was," he replied, with a sigh, leaning back in his chair.
+"That is the 'Ianthe' of my poems."
+
+"I can well understand why she inspired your muse, Mr. Landor."
+
+"Ah, she was far more beautiful than her picture, but much she cared for
+my poetry! It couldn't be said that she liked me for my books. She, too,
+has gone,--gone before me."
+
+It is to "Ianthe" that the first seventy-five of his verses marked
+"Miscellaneous" are addressed, and it is of her he has written,--
+
+    "It often comes into my head
+    That we may dream when we are dead,
+    But I am far from sure we do.
+    O that it were so! then my rest
+    Would be indeed among the blest;
+    I should forever dream of you."
+
+In the "Heroic Idyls," also, there are lines
+
+    "ON THE DEATH OF IANTHE.
+
+    "I dare not trust my pen, it trembles so;
+    It seems to feel a portion of my woe,
+    And makes me credulous that trees and stones
+    At mournful fates have uttered mournful tones.
+    While I look back again on days long past,
+    How gladly would I yours might be my last!
+    Sad our first severance was, but sadder this,
+    When death forbids one hour of mutual bliss."
+
+"Ianthe's portrait is not the only treasure this old desk contains,"
+Landor said, as he replaced it and took up a small package, very
+carefully tied, which he undid with great precaution, as though the
+treasure had wings and might escape, if not well guarded. "There!" he
+said, holding up a pen-wiper made of red and gold stuff in the shape of
+a bell with an ivory handle,--"that pen-wiper was given to me by ----,
+Rose's sister, forty years ago. Would you believe it? Have I not kept it
+well?" The pen-wiper looked as though it had been made the day before,
+so fresh was it. "Now," continued Landor, "I intend to give that to
+you."
+
+"But, Mr. Landor--"
+
+"Tut! tut! there are to be no buts about it. My passage for another
+world is already engaged, and I know you'll take good care of my
+keepsake. There, now, put it in your pocket, and only use it on grand
+occasions."
+
+Into my pocket the pen-wiper went, and, wrapped in the same old paper,
+it lies in another desk, as free from ink as it was four years ago.
+
+Who Rose was no reader of Landor need be told,--she to whom "Andrea of
+Hungary" was dedicated, and of whom Lady Blessington, in one of her
+letters to Landor, wrote: "The tuneful bird, inspired of old by the
+Persian rose, warbled not more harmoniously its praise than you do that
+of the English Rose, whom posterity will know through your beautiful
+verses." Many and many a time the gray-bearded poet related incidents of
+which this English Rose was the heroine, and for the moment seemed to
+live over again an interesting episode of his mature years.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Dear! dear! what is the old creature to do for reading-matter?" Landor
+exclaimed after having exhausted his own small stock and my still
+smaller one. "Shakespeare and Milton are my daily food, but at times,
+you know, we require side-dishes."
+
+"Why not subscribe to Vieusseux's Library, Mr. Landor?"
+
+"That would be the best thing to do, would it not? Very well, you shall
+secure me a six months' subscription to-morrow. And now what shall I
+read? When Mr. Anthony Trollope was here, he called on me with his
+brother, and a clever man he appeared to be. I have never read anything
+of his. Suppose I begin with his novels?"
+
+And so it happened that Landor read all of Anthony Trollope's works with
+zest, admiring them for their unaffected honesty of purpose and truth to
+nature. He next read Hood's works, and when this writer's poems were
+returned to me there came with them a scrap of paper on which were named
+the poems that had most pleased their reader.
+
+"Song of a Shirt.
+
+"To my Daughter.
+
+"A Child embracing.
+
+"My Heart is sick.
+
+"False Poets and True.
+
+"The Forsaken.
+
+"The last stanza of Inez is beautiful."
+
+Of the poem which heads the list, he wrote:--
+
+    "'Song of the Shirt' Strange! very strange,
+    This shirt will never want a change,
+    Nor ever will wear out so long
+    As Britain has a heart or tongue."
+
+Hood commanded great love and respect from Landor. Soon the reign of G.
+P. R. James set in, and when I left Florence he was still in power. I
+cannot but think that a strong personal friendship had much to do with
+Landor's enthusiasm for this novelist.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We took many drives with Landor during the spring and summer of 1861,
+and made very delightful jaunts into the country. Not forgetful in the
+least of things, the old man, in spite of his age, would always insist
+upon taking the front seat, and was more active than many a younger man
+in assisting us in and out of the carriage. "You are the most genuinely
+polite man I know," once wrote Lady Blessington to him. The verdict of
+1840 could not have been overruled twenty-one years later. Once we drove
+up to "aerial Fiesole," and never can I forget Landor's manner while in
+the neighborhood of his former home. It had been proposed that we should
+turn back when only half-way up the hill. "Ah, go a little farther,"
+Landor said nervously; "I should like to see my villa." Of course his
+wish was our pleasure, and so the drive was continued. Landor sat
+immovable, with head turned in the direction of the Villa Gherardesca.
+At first sight of it he gave a sudden start, and genuine tears filled
+his eyes and coursed down his cheeks. "There's where I lived," he said,
+breaking a long silence and pointing to his old estate. Still we mounted
+the hill, and when at a turn in the road the villa stood out before us
+clearly and distinctly, Landor said, "Let us give the horses a rest
+here!" We stopped, and for several minutes Landor's gaze was fixed upon
+the villa. "There now, we can return to Florence, if you like," he
+murmured, finally, with a deep sigh. "I have seen it probably for the
+last time." Hardly a word was spoken during the drive home. Landor
+seemed to be absent-minded. A sadder, more pathetic picture than he made
+during this memorable drive is rarely seen. "With me life has been a
+failure," was the expression of that wretched, worn face. Those who
+believe Landor to have been devoid of heart should have seen him then.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During another drive he stopped the horses at the corner of a dirty
+little old street, and, getting out of the carriage, hurriedly
+disappeared round a corner, leaving us without explanation and
+consequently in amazement. We had not long to wait, however, as he soon
+appeared carrying a large roll of canvas. "There!" he exclaimed, as he
+again seated himself, "I've made a capital bargain. I've long wanted
+these paintings, but the man asked more than I could give. To-day he
+relented. They are very clever, and I shall have them framed." Alas!
+they were not clever, and Landor in his last days had queer notions
+concerning art. That he was excessively fond of pictures is undoubtedly
+true; he surrounded himself with them, but there was far more quantity
+than quality about them. He frequently attributed very bad paintings to
+very good masters; and it by no means followed because he called a
+battle-piece a "Salvator Rosa," that it was painted by Salvator. But the
+old man was tenacious of his art opinions, and it was unwise to argue
+the point.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The notes which I possess in Landor's handwriting are numerous, but they
+are of too personal a character to interest the public. Sometimes he
+signs himself "The Old Creature," at another, "The Restless Old Man,"
+and once, "Your Beardless Old Friend." This was after the painting of
+his portrait, when he had himself shorn of half his patriarchal
+grandeur. The day previous to the fatal deed, he entered our room
+saying, "I've just made an arrangement with my barber to shear me
+to-morrow. I must have a clean face during the summer."
+
+"I wish you had somewhat of the Oriental reverence for beards, Mr.
+Landor, for then there would be no shaving. Why, think of it! if you've
+no beard, how can you swear?"
+
+"Ah, _Padrone_ can swear tolerably well without it, can he not, Giallo?
+he will have no difficulty on that score. Now I'll wager, were I a young
+man, you would ask me for a lock of my hair. See what it is to be old
+and gray."
+
+"Why, Mr. Landor, I've long wanted just that same, but have not dared to
+ask for it. May I cut off a few stray hairs?" I asked, going toward him
+with a pair of scissors.
+
+"Ah no," he replied, quizzically, "there can be but one 'Rape of the
+Lock!' Let me be my own barber." Taking the scissors, he cut off the
+longest curl of his snow-white beard, enclosed it in an envelope with a
+Greek superscription, and, presenting it, said, "One of these days, when
+I have gone to my long sleep, this bit of an old pagan may interest some
+very good Christians."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following note is worthy to be transcribed, showing, as it does, the
+generosity of his nature at a time when he had nothing to give away but
+ideas.
+
+     "MY DEAR FRIEND,--Will you think it worth your while to
+     transcribe the enclosed? These pages I have corrected and
+     enlarged. Some of them you have never seen. They have occupied
+     more of my time and trouble, and are now more complete, than
+     anything you have favored me by reading. I hope you will be
+     pleased. I care less about others.... I hope you will get
+     something for these articles, and keep it. I am richer by
+     several crowns than you suspect, and I must scramble to the
+     kingdom of Heaven, to which a full pocket, we learn, is an
+     impediment.
+
+                        "Ever truly yours,
+
+                                    W. S. L."
+
+The manuscripts contained the two conversations between Homer and
+Laertes which two years ago were published in the "Heroic Idyls." I did
+not put them to the use desired by their author. Though my copies differ
+somewhat from the printed ones, it is natural to conclude that Landor
+most approved of what was last submitted to his inspection, and would
+not desire to be seen in any other guise. The publicity of a note
+prefixed to one of these conversations, however, is warranted.
+
+"It will be thought audacious, and most so by those who know the least
+of Homer, to represent him as talking so familiarly. He must often have
+done it, as Milton and Shakespeare did. There is homely talk in the
+'Odyssey.'
+
+"Fashion turns round like Fortune. Twenty years hence, perhaps, this
+conversation of Homer and Laertes, in which for the first time Greek
+domestic manners have been represented by any modern poet, may be
+recognized and approved.
+
+"Our sculptors and painters frequently take their subjects from
+antiquity; are our poets never to pass beyond the mediaeval? At our own
+doors we listen to the affecting 'Song of the Shirt'; but some few of
+us, at the end of it, turn back to catch the 'Song of the Sirens.'
+
+"Poetry is not tied to chronology. The Roman poet brings Dido and AEneas
+together,--the historian parts them far asunder. Homer may or may not
+have been the contemporary of Laertes. Nothing is idler or more
+dangerous than to enter a labyrinth without a clew."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At last the time came when there were to be no more conversations, no
+more drives, with Walter Savage Landor. Summoned suddenly to America, we
+called upon him three or four days before our departure to say good by.
+
+"What? going to America?" Landor exclaimed in a sorrowful voice. "Is it
+really true? Must the old creature lose his young friends as well as his
+old? Ah me! ah me! what will become of Giallo and me? And America in the
+condition that it is too! But this is not the last time that I am to see
+you. Tut! tut! now no excuses. We must have one more drive, one more cup
+of tea together before you leave."
+
+Pressed as we were for time, it was still arranged that we should drive
+with Landor the evening previous to our departure. On the morning of
+this day came the following note:--
+
+     "I am so stupid that everything puzzles me. Is not this the day
+     I was to expect your visit? At all events you will have the
+     carriage at your door at _six_ this evening.
+
+    To drive or not to drive,
+    That is the question.
+
+     You shall not be detained one half-hour,--but tea will be ready
+     on your arrival.
+
+     "I fell asleep after the jolting, and felt no bad effect. See
+     what it is to be so young.
+
+                        "Ever yours affectionately,
+
+                                     "W. S. L."
+
+There was little to cheer any of us in that last drive, and few words
+were spoken. Stopping at his house on our way home, we sipped a final
+cup of tea in almost complete silence. I tried to say merry things and
+look forward a few years to another meeting, but the old man shook his
+head sadly, saying: "I shall never see you again. I cannot live through
+another winter, nor do I desire to. Life to me is but a counterpart of
+Dead Sea fruit; and now that you are going away, there is one less link
+to the chain that binds me."
+
+Landor, in the flood-tide of intellect and fortune, could command
+attention; Landor, tottering with an empty purse towards his ninth
+decade, could count his Florentine friends in one breath; thus it
+happened that the loss of the least of these made the old man sad.
+
+At last the hour of leave-taking arrived. Culling a flower from the
+little garden, taking a final turn through those three little rooms,
+patting Giallo on the head, who, sober through sympathy, looked as
+though he wondered what it all meant, we turned to Landor, who entered
+the front room dragging an immense album after him. It was the same that
+he had bought years before of Barker, the English artist, for fifty
+guineas, and about which previous mention has been made. "You are not to
+get rid of me yet," said Landor, bearing the album toward the stairs. "I
+shall see you home, and bid you good by at your own door."
+
+"But, dear Mr. Landor, what are you doing with that big book? You will
+surely injure yourself by attempting to carry it."
+
+"This album is intended for you, and you must take it with you
+to-night."
+
+Astonished at this munificent present, I hardly knew how to refuse it
+without offending the generous giver. Stopping him at the door, I
+endeavored to dissuade him from giving away so valuable an album; and,
+finding him resolute in his determination, begged him to compromise by
+leaving it to me in his will.
+
+"No, my dear," he replied, "I at least have lived long enough to know
+that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Whereupon he carried
+the book down stairs and deposited it in the carriage, deaf to our
+entreaties, and obstinately refusing assistance. "Now I am sure that you
+will have the album," he continued, after we were all seated in the
+carriage. "A will is an uncanny thing, and I'd rather remember my
+friends out of one than in one. I shall never see you again, and I want
+you to think of the foolish old creature occasionally."
+
+The carriage stopped at our door, and "the good by" came. "May God bless
+you!" murmured the lonely old man, and in a moment Walter Savage Landor
+was out of sight.
+
+He was right. We were never to meet again. Distance did not entirely
+sever the friendly link, however, for soon there came to me, across the
+sea, the following letters:--
+
+                                        August 28, 1861.
+
+     "By this time, my dear friend, you will be far on your way over
+     the Atlantic, and before you receive the scribble now before
+     you, half your friends will have offered you their
+     congratulations on your return home.
+
+     "People, I hear, are flocking fast into Florence for the
+     exhibition. This evening I received another kind note from the
+     Countess, who tells me that she shall return to Florence on
+     Saturday, and invites me to accompany her there. But I abhor
+     all crowds, and am not fascinated by the eye of kings. I never
+     saw him of Italy when he was here before, and shall not now.
+
+     "I am about to remove my terrace, and to place it under the
+     window of the small bedroom, substituting a glass door for the
+     present window. On this terrace I shall spend all my October
+     days, and--and--all my money! The landlord will not allow one
+     shilling toward the expense, which will make his lower rooms
+     lighter and healthier. To him the advantage will be
+     permanent,--to me (God knows) it must be very temporary. In
+     another summer I shall not sit so high, nor, indeed, _sit_
+     anywhere, but take instead the easiest and laziest of all
+     positions.
+
+     "I am continuing to read the noble romances of my friend James.
+     I find in them thoughts as profound as any in Charron, or
+     Montaigne, or Bacon,--I had almost added, or Shakespeare
+     himself,--the wisest of men, as the greatest of poets. On the
+     morning after your departure I finished the 'Philip Augustus.'
+     In the thirty-eighth chapter is this sentence: 'O Isidore! 't
+     is not the present, I believe, that ever makes our misery; 't
+     is its contrast with the past; 't is the loss of some hope, or
+     the crushing of some joy; the disappointment of expectation, or
+     the regrets of memory. The present is nothing, nothing,
+     nothing, but in its relation to the future or the past.' James
+     is inferior to Scott in wit and humor, but more than his equal
+     in many other respects; but then Scott wrote excellent poetry,
+     in which James, when he attempted it, failed.
+
+     "Let me hear how affairs are going on in America. I believe we
+     have truer accounts from England than your papers are disposed
+     to publish. Louis Napoleon is increasing his naval force to a
+     degree it never reached before. We must have war with him
+     before a twelvemonth is over. He will also make disturbances in
+     Louisiana, claiming it on the dolorous cry of France for her
+     lost children. They will _invite_ him, as the poor Savoyards
+     were _invited_ by him to do. So long as this perfidious
+     scoundrel exists there will be no peace of quiet in any quarter
+     of the globe. The Pope is heartily sick of intervention; but
+     nothing can goad his fat sides into a move.
+
+     "Are you not tired? My wrist is. So adieu.
+
+                        "Ever affectionately,
+
+                                    "W. S. L."
+
+With this letter came a slip of paper, on which were these lines:--
+
+    "TO GIALLO,
+
+    "Faithfullest of a faithful race,
+    Plainly I read it in thy face,
+    Thou wishest me to mount the stairs,
+    And leave behind me all my cares.
+      No: I shall never see again,
+    Her who now sails across the main,
+    Nor wilt thou ever as before
+    Rear two white feet against her door."
+
+    "Written opposite Palazzo Pitti,
+        September, 1861."
+
+                                            "February 15, 1862.
+
+     ".... The affairs of your country interest me painfully. The
+     Northern States had acknowledged the right of the Southern to
+     hold slaves, and had even been so iniquitous as to surrender a
+     fugitive from his thraldom. I would propose an accommodation:--
+
+     "1. That every slave should be free after ten years' labor.
+
+     "2. That none should be imported, or sold, or separated from
+     wife and children.
+
+     "3. That an adequate portion of land should be granted in
+     perpetuity to the liberated.
+
+     "The proprietor would be fully indemnified for his purchase by
+     ten years' labor. France and England will not permit their
+     commerce with the Southern States to be interrupted much
+     longer. It has caused great discontent in Manchester and Leeds,
+     where the artificers suffer grievously from want of employment.
+
+     ".... May you continue to improve in health as the warmer
+     weather advances. Mine will not allow me to hope for many more
+     months of life, but I shall always remember you, and desire
+     that you also will remember
+
+                                    "W. S. LANDOR."
+
+                                            "January, 1863.
+
+     ".... Your account of your improved health is very satisfactory
+     and delightful to me. Hardly can I expect to receive many such.
+     This month I enter on my eighty-ninth year, and am growing
+     blind and deaf.... I hope you may live long enough to see the
+     end of your disastrous civil war. Remember, the Southrons are
+     fighting for their acknowledged rights, as established by the
+     laws of the United States. Horrible is the idea that one man
+     should be lord and master of another. But Washington had
+     slaves, so had the President his successor. If your government
+     had been contented to decree that no slave henceforth should be
+     imported, none sold, none disunited from his family, your
+     Northern cause would be more popular in England and throughout
+     Europe than it is. You are about to see detached from the Union
+     a third of the white population. Is it not better that the
+     blacks should be contented slaves than exasperated murderers or
+     drunken vagabonds? Your blacks were generally more happy than
+     they were in Africa, or than they are likely to be in America.
+     Your taxes will soon excite a general insurrection. In a war of
+     five years they will be vastly heavier than their amount in all
+     the continent of Europe. And what enormous armies must be kept
+     stationary to keep down not only those who are now refractory,
+     but also those whom (by courtesy and fiction) we call free.
+
+     "I hope and trust that I shall leave the world before the end
+     of this winter. My darling dog, Giallo, will find a fond
+     protectress in ----.... Present my respectful compliments to
+     Mrs. F., and believe me to continue
+
+                        "Your faithful old friend,
+
+                                    "W. S. LANDOR."
+
+                                            "September 11, 1863.
+
+     ".... You must be grieved at the civil war. It might have been
+     avoided. The North had no right to violate the Constitution.
+     Slavery was lawful, execrable as it is.... Congress might have
+     liberated them [the slaves] gradually at no expense to the
+     nation at large.
+
+     "1. Every slave after fifteen years should be affranchised.
+
+     "2. None to be imported or sold.
+
+     "3. No husband and wife separated.
+
+     "4. No slave under twelve compelled to labor.
+
+     "5. Schools in every township; and children of both sexes sent
+     to them at six to ten.
+
+     "A few days before I left England, five years ago, I had an
+     opportunity of conversing with a gentleman who had visited the
+     United States. He was an intelligent and zealous Abolitionist.
+     Wishing to learn the real state of things, he went on board a
+     vessel bound to New York. He was amazed at the opulence and
+     splendor of that city, and at the inadequate civilization of
+     the inhabitants. He dined at a public table, at a principal
+     inn. The dinner was plenteous and sumptuous. On each side of
+     him sat two gentlemen who spat like Frenchmen the moment a
+     plate was removed. This prodigy deprived him of appetite. Dare
+     I mention it, that the lady opposite cleared her throat in like
+     manner?
+
+     "The Englishman wished to see your capital, and hastened to
+     Washington. There he met a member of Congress to whom he had
+     been introduced in London by Webster. Most willingly he
+     accepted his invitation to join him at Baltimore, his
+     residence. He found it difficult to express the difference
+     between the people of New York and those of Baltimore, whom he
+     represented as higher-bred. He met there a slaveholder of New
+     Orleans, with whom at first he was disinclined to converse, but
+     whom presently he found liberal and humane, and who assured him
+     that his slaves were contented, happy, and joyous. 'There are
+     some cruel masters,' he said, 'among us; but come yourself,
+     sir, and see whether we consider them fit for our society or
+     our notice.' He accepted the invitation, and remained at New
+     Orleans until a vessel was about to sail for Bermuda, where he
+     spent the winter.
+
+     "Your people, I am afraid, will resolve on war with England.
+     Always aggressive, they already devour Canada. I hope Canada
+     will soon be independent both of America and England. Your
+     people should be satisfied with a civil war of ten or twelve
+     years: they will soon have one of much longer duration about
+     Mexico. God grant that you, my dear friend, may see the end of
+     it. Believe me ever,
+
+                        "Your affectionate old friend,
+
+                                    "W. S. LANDOR."
+
+It was sad to receive such letters from the old man, for they showed how
+a mind once great was tottering ere it fell. Blind, deaf, shut up within
+the narrow limits of his own four walls, dependent upon English
+newspapers for all tidings of America,--is it strange that during those
+last days Landor failed to appreciate the grandeur of our conflict, and
+stumbled as he attempted to follow the logic of events? Well do I
+remember that in conversations he had reasoned far differently, his
+sympathy going out most unreservedly to the North. Living in the dark,
+he saw no more clearly than the majority of Europeans, and a not small
+minority of our own people. Interesting as is everything that so
+celebrated an author as Landor writes, these extracts, so unfavorable to
+our cause and to his intellect, would never have been published had not
+English reviewers thoroughly ventilated his opinions on the American
+war. Their insertion, consequently, in no way exposes Landor to severer
+comment than that to which the rashly unthinking have already subjected
+him, but, on the contrary, increases our regard for him, denoting, as
+they do, that, however erroneous his conclusions, the subject was one to
+which he devoted all the thought left him by old age. The record of a
+long life cannot be obliterated by the unsound theories of the
+octogenarian. It was only ten years before that he appealed to America
+in behalf of freedom in lines beginning thus:--
+
+    "Friend Jonathan!--for friend thou art,--
+    Do, prithee, take now in good part
+    Lines the first steamer shall waft o'er.
+    Sorry am I to hear the blacks
+    Still bear your ensign on their backs;
+    The stripes they suffer make me sore.
+    Beware of wrong. The brave are true;
+    The tree of Freedom never grew
+    Where Fraud and Falsehood sowed their salt."
+
+In his poem, also, addressed to Andrew Jackson, the "Atlantic Ruler" is
+apostrophized on the supposition of a prophecy that remained
+unfulfilled.
+
+    "Up, every son of Afric soil,
+    Ye worn and weary, hoist the sail,
+    For your own glebes and garners toil
+    With easy plough and lightsome flail.
+    A father's home ye never knew,
+    A father's home your sons shall have from you.
+    Enjoy your palmy groves, your cloudless day,
+    Your world that demons tore away.
+    Look up! look up! the flaming sword
+    Hath vanished! and behold your Paradise restored."
+
+This is Landor in the full possession of his intellect.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For Landor's own sake, I did not wish to drink the lees of that rich
+wine which Lady Blessington had prophesied would "flow on pure, bright,
+and sparkling to the last." It is the strength, not the weakness, of our
+friends that we would remember, and therefore Landor's letter of
+September, 1863, remained unanswered. It was better so. A year later he
+died of old age, and during this year he was but the wreck of himself.
+He became gradually more and more averse to going out, and to receiving
+visitors,--more indifferent, in fact, to all outward things. He used to
+sit and read, or, at all events, hold a book in his hand, and would
+sometimes write and sometimes give way to passion. "It was the swell of
+the sea after the storm, before the final calm," wrote a friend in
+Florence. Landor did not become physically deafer, but the mind grew
+more and more insensible to external impressions, and at last his
+housekeeper was forced to write down every question she was called upon
+to ask him. Few crossed the threshold of his door saving his sons, who
+went to see him regularly. At last he had a difficulty in swallowing,
+which produced a kind of cough. Had he been strong enough to expectorate
+or be sick, he might have lived a little longer; but the frame-work was
+worn out, and in a fit of coughing the great old man drew his last
+breath. He was confined to his bed but two or three days. I am told he
+looked very grand when dead,--like a majestic marble statue. The funeral
+was hurried, and none but his two sons followed his remains to the
+grave!
+
+One touching anecdote remains to be told of him, as related by his
+housekeeper. On the night before the 1st of May, 1864, Landor became
+very restless, as sometimes happened during the last year. About two
+o'clock, A. M., he rang for Wilson, and insisted upon having the room
+lighted and the windows thrown open. He then asked for pen, ink, and
+paper, and the date of the day. Being told that it was the dawn of the
+1st of May, he wrote a few lines of poetry upon it; then, leaning back,
+said, "I shall never write again. Put out the lights and draw the
+curtains." Very precious would those lines be now, had they been found.
+Wilson fancies that Landor must have destroyed them the next morning on
+rising.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The old man had his wish. Years before, when bidding, as he supposed, an
+eternal farewell to Italy, he wrote sadly of hopes which then seemed
+beyond the pale of possibility.
+
+    "I did believe, (what have I not believed?)
+    Weary with age, but unopprest by pain,
+    To close in thy soft clime my quiet day,
+    And rest my bones in the Mimosa's shade.
+    Hope! hope! few ever cherisht thee so little;
+    Few are the heads thou hast so rarely raised;
+    But thou didst promise this, and all was well.
+    For we are fond of thinking where to lie
+    When every pulse hath ceast, when the lone heart
+    Can lift no aspiration, ... reasoning
+    As if the sight were unimpaired by death,
+    Were unobstructed by the coffin-lid,
+    And the sun cheered corruption! Over all
+    The smiles of Nature shed a potent charm,
+    And light us to our chamber at the grave."
+
+Italy recalled her aged yet impassioned lover, and there, beneath the
+cypresses of the English burying-ground at Florence, almost within sound
+of the murmur of his "own Affrico," rest the weary bones of Walter
+Savage Landor. It is glorified dust with which his mingles. Near by, the
+birds sing their sweetest over the grave of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
+Not far off, an American pine watches vigilantly while Theodore Parker
+sleeps his long sleep; and but a little distance beyond, Frances
+Trollope, the mother, and Theodosia Trollope, her more than devoted
+daughter, are united in death as they had been in life.
+
+    "Nobly, O Theo! has your verse called forth
+    The Roman valor and Subalpine worth,"
+
+sang Landor years ago of his _protegee_, who outlived her friend and
+critic but a few months. With the great and good about him, Landor
+sleeps well. His genius needs no eulogy: good wine needs no bush. Time,
+that hides the many in oblivion, can but add to the warmth and
+mellowness of his fame; and in the days to come no modern writer will be
+more faithfully studied or more largely quoted than Walter Savage
+Landor.
+
+            "We upon earth
+    Have not our places and our distances
+    Assigned, for many years; at last a tube,
+    Raised and adjusted by Intelligence,
+    Stands elevated to a cloudless sky,
+    And place and magnitude are ascertained."
+
+Landor "will dine late; but the dining-room will be well lighted, the
+guests few and select." He will reign among crowned heads.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL.
+
+
+    What flecks the outer gray beyond
+      The sundown's golden trail?
+    The white flash of a sea-bird's wing,
+      Or gleam of slanting sail?
+    Let young eyes watch from Neck and Point,
+      And sea-worn elders pray,--
+    The ghost of what was once a ship
+      Is sailing up the bay!
+
+    From gray sea-fog, from icy drift,
+      From peril and from pain,
+    The home-bound fisher greets thy lights,
+      O hundred-harbored Maine!
+    But many a keel shall seaward turn,
+      And many a sail outstand,
+    When, tall and white, the Dead Ship looms
+      Against the dusk of land.
+
+    She rounds the headland's bristling pines.
+      She threads the isle-set bay;
+    No spur of breeze can speed her on,
+      Nor ebb of tide delay.
+    Old men still walk the Isle of Orr
+      Who tell her date and name,
+    Old shipwrights sit in Freeport yards
+      Who hewed her oaken frame.
+
+    What weary doom of baffled quest,
+      Thou sad sea-ghost, is thine?
+    What makes thee in the haunts of home
+      A wonder and a sign?
+    No foot is on thy silent deck,
+      Upon thy helm no hand;
+    No ripple hath the soundless wind
+      That smites thee from the land!
+
+    For never comes the ship to port
+      Howe'er the breeze may be;
+    Just when she nears the waiting shore
+      She drifts again to sea.
+    No tack of sail, nor turn of helm,
+      Nor sheer of veering side.
+    Stern-fore she drives to sea and night
+      Against the wind and tide.
+
+    In vain o'er Harpswell Neck the star
+      Of evening guides her in;
+    In vain for her the lamps are lit
+      Within thy tower, Seguin!
+    In vain the harbor-boat shall hail,
+      In vain the pilot call;
+    No hand shall reef her spectral sail,
+      Or let her anchor fall.
+
+    Shake, brown old wives, with dreary joy,
+      Your gray-head hints of ill;
+    And, over sick-beds whispering low,
+      Your prophecies fulfil.
+    Some home amid yon birchen trees
+      Shall drape its door with woe;
+    And slowly where the Dead Ship sails,
+      The burial boat shall row!
+
+    From Wolf Neck and from Flying Point,
+      From island and from main,
+    From sheltered cove and tided creek,
+      Shall glide the funeral train.
+    The dead-boat with the bearers four,
+      The mourners at her stern,--
+    And one shall go the silent way
+      Who shall no more return!
+
+    And men shall sigh, and women weep,
+      Whose dear ones pale and pine,
+    And sadly over sunset seas
+      Await the ghostly sign.
+    They know not that its sails are filled
+      By pity's tender breath,
+    Nor see the Angel at the helm
+      Who steers the Ship of Death!
+
+
+
+
+DOCTOR JOHNS.
+
+
+LXIII.
+
+Reuben had heard latterly very little of domestic affairs at Ashfield.
+He knew scarce more of the family relations of Adele than was covered by
+that confidential announcement of the parson's which had so set on fire
+his generous zeal. The spinster, indeed, in one of her later letters had
+hinted, in a roundabout manner, that Adele's family misfortunes were not
+looking so badly as they once did,--that the poor girl (she believed)
+felt tenderly still toward her old playmate,--and that Mr. Maverick was,
+beyond all question, a gentleman of very easy fortune. But Reuben was
+not in a mood to be caught by any chaff administered by his most
+respectable aunt. If, indeed, he had known all,--if that hearty burst of
+Adele's gratitude had come to him,--if he could once have met her with
+the old freedom of manner,--ah! then--then--
+
+But no; he thinks of her now as one under social blight, which he would
+have lifted or borne with her had not her religious squeamishness
+forbidden. He tries to forget what was most charming in her, and has
+succeeded passably well.
+
+"I suppose she is still modelling her heroes on the Catechism," he
+thought, "and Phil will very likely pass muster."
+
+The name of Madam Maverick as attaching to their fellow-passenger--which
+came to his ear for the first time on the second day out from
+port--considerably startled him. Madam Maverick is, he learns, on her
+way to join her husband and child in America. But he is by no means
+disposed to entertain a very exalted respect for any claimant of such
+name and title. He finds, indeed, the prejudices of his education (so he
+calls them) asserting themselves with a fiery heat; and most of all he
+is astounded by the artfully arranged religious drapery with which this
+poor woman--as it appears to him--seeks to cover her short-comings. He
+had brought away from the atmosphere of the old cathedrals a certain
+quickened religious sentiment, by the aid of which he had grown into a
+respect, not only for the Romish faith, but for Christian faith of
+whatever degree. And now he encountered what seemed to him its gross
+prostitution. The old Doctor then was right: this Popish form of
+heathenism was but a device of Satan,--a scarlet covering of iniquity.
+Yet, in losing respect for one form of faith, he found himself losing
+respect for all. It was easy for him to match the present hypocrisy with
+hypocrisies that he had seen of old.
+
+Meantime, the good ship Meteor was skirting the shores of Spain, and had
+made a good hundred leagues of her voyage before Reuben had ventured to
+make himself known as the old schoolmate and friend of the child whom
+Madam Maverick was on her way to greet after so many years of
+separation. The truth was, that Reuben, his first disgust being
+overcome, could not shake off the influence of something attractive and
+winning in the manner of Madam Maverick. In her step and in her lithe
+figure he saw the step and figure of Adele. All her orisons and aves,
+which she failed not to murmur each morning and evening, were reminders
+of the earnest faith of her poor child. It is impossible to treat her
+with disrespect. Nay, it is impossible,--as Reuben begins to associate
+more intimately the figure and the voice of this quiet lady with his
+memories of another and a younger one,--quite impossible, that he should
+not feel his whole chivalrous nature stirred in him, and become prodigal
+of attentions. If there were hypocrisy, it somehow cheated him into
+reverence.
+
+The lady is, of course, astounded at Reuben's disclosure to her. "_Mon
+Dieu!_ you, then, are the son of that good priest of whom I have heard
+so much! And you are Puritan? I would not have thought that. They love
+the vanities of the world then,"--and her eye flashed over the
+well-appointed dress of Reuben, who felt half an inclination to hide, if
+it had been possible, the cluster of gairish charms which hung at his
+watch-chain. "You have shown great kindness to my child, Monsieur. I
+thank you with my whole heart."
+
+"She is very charming, Madam," said Reuben, in an easy, _degage_ manner,
+which, to tell truth, he put on to cover a little embarrassing revival
+of his old sentiment.
+
+Madam Maverick looked at him keenly. "Describe her to me, if you will be
+so good, Monsieur."
+
+Whereupon Reuben ran on,--jauntily, at first, as if it had been a
+ballet-girl of San Carlo whose picture he was making out; but his old
+hearty warmth declared itself by degrees; and his admiration and his
+tenderness gave such warm color to his language as it might have shown
+if her little gloved hand had been shivering even then in his own
+passionate clasp. And as he closed, with a great glow upon his face,
+Madam Maverick burst forth,--
+
+"_Mon Dieu_, how I love her! Yet is it not a thing astonishing that I
+should ask you, a stranger, Monsieur, how my own child is looking?
+_Culpa mea! culpa mea!_" and she clutched at her rosary, and mumbled an
+ave, with her eyes lifted and streaming tears.
+
+Reuben looked upon her in wonder, amazed at the depth of her emotion.
+Could this be all hypocrisy?
+
+"_Tenez!_" said she, recovering herself, and reading, as it were, his
+doubts. "You count these" (lifting her rosary) "bawbles yonder, and our
+prayers pagan prayers; my husband has told me, and that she, Adele, is
+taught thus, and that the _Bon Dieu_ has forsaken our Holy Church,--that
+He comes near now only to your--what shall I call them?--meeting-houses?
+Tell me, Monsieur, does Adele think this?"
+
+"I think," said Reuben, "that your daughter would have charity for any
+religious faith which was earnest."
+
+"Charity! _Mon Dieu!_ Charity for sins, charity for failings,--yes, I
+ask it; but for my faith! No, Monsieur, no--no--a thousand times, no!"
+
+"This is real," thought Reuben.
+
+"Tell me, Monsieur," continued she, with a heat of language that excited
+his admiration, "what is it you believe there? What is the horror
+against which your New England teachers would warn my poor Adele? May
+the Blessed Virgin be near her!"
+
+Whereupon, Reuben undertook to lay down the grounds of distrust in which
+he had been educated; not, surely, with the fervor or the logical
+sequence which the old Doctor would have given to the same, but yet
+inveighing in good set terms against the vain ceremonials, the
+idolatries, the mummeries, the confessional, the empty absolution; and
+summing up all with the formula (may be he had heard the Doctor use the
+same language) that the piety of the Romanist was not so much a deep
+religious conviction of the truth, as a sentiment.
+
+"Sentiment!" exclaims Madam Maverick. "What else? What but love of the
+good God?"
+
+But not so much by her talk as by the every-day sight of her serene,
+unfaltering devotion is Reuben won into a deep respect for her faith.
+
+Those are rare days and rare nights for him, as the good ship Meteor
+slips down past the shores of Spain to the Straits,--days all sunny,
+nights moon-lit. To the right,--not discernible, but he knows they are
+there,--the swelling hills of Catalonia and of Andalusia, the marvellous
+Moorish ruins, the murmurs of the Guadalquivir; to the left, a broad
+sweep of burnished sea, on which, late into the night, the moon pours a
+stream of molten silver, that comes rocking and widening toward him, and
+vanishes in the shadow of the ship. The cruise has been a splendid
+venture for him,--twenty-five thousand at the least. And as he paces the
+decks,--in the view only of the silent man at the wheel and of the
+silent stars,--he forecasts the palaces he will build. The feeble
+Doctor shall have ease and every luxury; he will be gracious in his
+charities; he will astonish the old people by his affluence; he will
+live--
+
+Just here, he spies a female figure stealing from the companion-way, and
+gliding beyond the shelter of the wheelhouse. Half concealed as he
+chances to be in the shadow of the rigging, he sees her fall upon her
+knees, and, with head uplifted, cross her hands upon her bosom. 'T is a
+short prayer, and the instant after she glides below.
+
+"Good God! what trust!"--it is an ejaculatory prayer of Reuben's, rather
+than an oath. And with it, swift as the wind, comes a dreary sense of
+unrest. The palaces he had built vanish. The stars blink upon him
+kindly, and from their wondrous depths challenge his thought. The sea
+swashes idly against the floating ship. He too afloat,--afloat. Whither
+bound? Yearning still for a belief on which he may repose. And he
+bethinks himself,--does it lie somewhere under the harsh and dogmatic
+utterances of the Ashfield pulpit? At the thought, he recalls the weary
+iteration of cumbersome formulas, that passed through his brain like
+leaden plummets, and the swift lashings of rebuke, if he but reached
+over for a single worldly floweret, blooming beside the narrow path; and
+yet,--and yet, from the leaden atmosphere of that past, saintly faces
+beam upon him,--a mother's, Adele's,--nay, the kindly fixed gray eyes of
+the old Doctor glow upon him with a fire that must have been kindled
+with truth.
+
+Does it lie in the melodious aves, and under the robes of Rome? The
+sordid friars, with their shaven pates, grin at him; some Rabelais head
+of a priest in the confessional-stall leers at him with mockery: and yet
+the golden letters of the great dome gleam again with the blazing
+legend, _AEdificabo meam Ecclesiam!_--and the figure of the Magdalen
+yonder has just now murmured, in tones that must surely have reached a
+gracious ear,--
+
+    "Tibi Christe, redemptori,
+    Nostro vero salvatori!"
+
+Is the truth between? Is it in both? Is it real? And if real, why may
+not the same lips declare it under the cathedral or the meeting-house
+roof? Why not--in God's name--charity?
+
+
+LXIV.
+
+The Meteor is a snug ship, well found, well manned, and, as the times
+go, well officered. The captain, indeed, is not over-alert or fitted for
+high emergencies; but what emergencies can belong to so placid a voyage?
+For a week after the headlands of Tarifa and Spartel have sunk under the
+eastern horizon, the vessel is kept every day upon her course,--her
+top-gallant and studding sails all distent with the wind blowing freely
+from over Biscay. After this come light, baffling, westerly breezes,
+with sometimes a clear sky, and then all is overclouded by the drifting
+trade-mists. Zigzagging on, quietly as ever, save the bustle and whiz
+and flapping canvas of the ship "in stays," the good Meteor pushes
+gradually westward.
+
+Meantime a singular and almost tender intimacy grew up between Reuben
+and the lady voyager. It is always agreeable to a young man to find a
+listening ear in a lady whose age puts her out of the range of any
+flurry of sentiment, and whose sympathy gives kindly welcome to his
+confidence. All that early life of his he detailed to her with a
+particularity and a warmth (himself unconscious of the warmth) which
+brought the childish associations of her daughter fresh to the mind of
+poor Madam Maverick. No wonder that she gave a willing ear! no wonder
+that the glow of his language kindled her sympathy! Nor with such a
+listener does he stop with the boyish life of Ashfield. He unfolds his
+city career, and the bright promises that are before him,--promises of
+business success, which (he would make it appear) are all that fill his
+heart now. In the pride of his twenty-five years he loves to represent
+himself as _blase_ in sentiment.
+
+Madam Maverick has been taught, in these latter years, a large amount of
+self-control; so she can listen with a grave, nay, even a kindly face,
+to Reuben's sweeping declarations. And if, at a hint from her,--which he
+shrewdly counts Jesuitical,--his thought is turned in the direction of
+his religious experiences, he has his axioms, his common-sense formulas,
+his irreproachable coolness, and, at times, a noisy show of distrust,
+under which it is easy to see an eager groping after the ends of that
+great tangled skein of thought within, which is a weariness.
+
+"If you could only have a talk with Father Ambrose!" says Madam Maverick
+with half a sigh.
+
+"I should like that of all things," says Reuben, with a touch of
+merriment. "I suppose he 's a jolly old fellow, with rosy cheeks and
+full of humor. By Jove! there go the beads again!" (He says this latter
+to himself, however, as he sees the nervous fingers of the poor lady
+plying her rosary, and her lips murmuring some catch of a prayer.)
+
+Yet he cannot but respect her devotion profoundly, wondering how it can
+have grown up under the heathenisms of her life; wondering perhaps, too,
+how his own heathenism could have grown up under the roof of a
+parsonage. It will be an odd encounter, he thinks, for this woman, with
+the people of Ashfield, with the Doctor, with Adele.
+
+There are gales, but the good ship rides them out jauntily, with but a
+single reef in her topsails. Within five weeks from the date of her
+leaving Marseilles she is within a few days' sail of New York. A few
+days' sail! It may mean overmuch; for there are mists, and hazy weather,
+which forbid any observation. The last was taken a hundred miles to the
+eastward of George's Shoal. Under an easy offshore wind the ship is
+beating westward. But the clouds hang low, and there is no opportunity
+for determining position. At last, one evening, there is a little lift,
+and, for a moment only, a bright light blazes over the starboard bow.
+The captain counts it a light upon one of the headlands of the Jersey
+shore; and he orders the helmsman (she is sailing in the eye of an easy
+westerly breeze) to give her a couple of points more "northing"; and the
+yards and sheets are trimmed accordingly. The ship pushes on more
+steadily as she opens to the wind, and the mists and coming night
+conceal all around them.
+
+"What do you make of the light, Mr. Yardley?" says the captain,
+addressing the mate.
+
+"Can't say, sir, with such a bit of a look. If it should be Fire Island,
+we 're in a bad course, sir."
+
+"That's true enough," said the captain thoughtfully. "Put a man in the
+chains, Mr. Yardley, and give us the water."
+
+"I hope we shall be in the bay by morning, Captain," said Reuben, who
+stood smoking leisurely near the wheel. But the captain was preoccupied,
+and answered nothing.
+
+A little after, a voice from the chains came chanting full and loud, "By
+the mark--nine!"
+
+"This 'll never do, Mr. Yardley," said the captain, "Jersey shore or any
+other. Let all hands keep by to put the ship about."
+
+A voice forward was heard to say something of a roar that sounded like
+the beat of surf; at which the mate stepped to the side of the ship and
+listened anxiously.
+
+"It 's true, sir," said he coming aft. "Captain, there 's something very
+like the beat of surf, here away to the no'th'ard."
+
+A flutter in the canvas caught the captain's attention. "It 's the wind
+slacking; there's a bare capful," said the mate, "and I 'm afeard
+there's mischief brewing yonder." He pointed as he spoke a little to the
+south of east, where the darkness seemed to be giving way to a luminous
+gray cloud of mist.
+
+"And a half--six!" shouts again the man in the chains.
+
+The captain meets it with a swelling oath, which betrays clearly enough
+his anxiety. "There 's not a moment to lose, Yardley; see all ready
+there! Keep her a good full, my boy!" (to the man at the wheel).
+
+The darkness was profound. Reuben, not a little startled by the new
+aspect of affairs, still kept his place upon the quarter-deck. He saw
+objects flitting across the waist of the ship, and heard distinctly the
+coils flung down with a clang upon the wet decks. There was something
+weird and ghostly in those half-seen figures, in the indistinct maze of
+cordage and canvas above, and the phosphorescent streaks of spray
+streaming away from either bow.
+
+"Are you ready there?" says the captain.
+
+"Ay, ay, sir," responds the mate.
+
+"Put your helm a-lee, my man!--Hard down!"
+
+"Hard down it is, sir!"
+
+The ship veers up into the wind; and, as the captain shouts his order,
+"Mainsail haul!" the canvas shakes; the long, cumbrous yard groans upon
+its bearings; there is a great whizzing of the cordage through the
+blocks; but, in the midst of it all,--coming keenly to the captain's
+ear,--a voice from the fore-hatch exclaims, "By G--, she touches!"
+
+The next moment proved it true. The good ship minded her helm no more.
+The fore-yards are brought round by the run and the mizzen, but the
+light wind--growing lighter--hardly clears the flapping canvas from the
+spars.
+
+In the sunshine, with so moderate a sea, 't would seem little; in so
+little depth of water they might warp her off; but the darkness
+magnifies the danger; besides which, an ominous sighing and murmur are
+coming from that luminous misty mass to the southward. Through all this,
+Reuben has continued smoking upon the quarter-deck; a landsman under a
+light wind, and with a light sea, hardly estimates at their true worth
+such intimations as had been given of the near breaking of the surf, and
+of the shoaling water. Even the touch upon bottom, of which the grating
+evidence had come home to his own perceptions, brought up more the fate
+of his business venture than any sense of personal peril. We can surely
+warp her off in the morning, he thought; or, if the worst came,
+insurance was full, and it would be easy boating to the shore.
+
+"It's lucky there's no wind," said he to Yardley.
+
+"Will you obleege me, Mr. Johns? Take a good strong puff of your
+cigar,--here, upon the larboard rail, sir," and he took the lantern from
+the companion-way that he might see the drift of the smoke. For a moment
+it lifted steadily; then, with a toss it vanished away--shoreward. The
+first angry puffs of the southeaster were coming.
+
+The captain had seen all, and with an excited voice said, "Mr. Yardley,
+clew up, fore and aft,--clew up everything; put all snug, and make ready
+the best bower."
+
+"Mr. Johns," said he, approaching Reuben, "we are on a lee shore; it
+should be Long Island beach by the soundings; with calm weather, and a
+kedge, we might work her off with the lift of the tide. But the Devil
+and all is in that puff from the sou'east."
+
+"O, well, we can anchor," says Reuben.
+
+"Yes, we can anchor, Mr. Johns; but if that sou'easter turns out the
+gale it promises, the best anchor aboard won't be so good as a
+gridiron."
+
+"Do you advise taking to the boats, then?" asked Reuben, a little
+nervously.
+
+"I advise nothing, Mr. Johns. Do you hear the murmur of the surf yonder?
+It's bad landing under such a pounding of the surf, with daylight; in
+the dark, where one can't catch the drift of the waves, it might
+be--death!"
+
+The word startled Reuben. His philosophy had always contemplated it at a
+distance, toward which easy and gradual approaches might be made: but
+here it was, now, at a cable's length!
+
+And yet it was very strange; the sea was not high; no gale as yet; only
+an occasional grating thump of the keel was a reminder that the good
+Meteor was not still afloat. But the darkness! Yes, the darkness was
+complete, (hardly a sight even of the topmen who were aloft--as in the
+sunniest of weather--stowing the canvas,) and to the northward that
+groan and echo of the resounding surf; to the southward, the whirling
+white of waves that are lifting now, topped with phosphorescent foam.
+
+The anchor is let go, but even this does not bring the ship's head to
+the wind. Those griping sands hold her keel fast. The force of the
+rising gale strikes her full abeam, giving her a great list to shore. It
+is in vain the masts are cut away, and the rigging drifts free; the hulk
+lifts only to settle anew in the grasping sands. Every old seaman upon
+her deck knows that she is a doomed ship.
+
+From time to time, as the crashing spars or the leaden thump upon the
+sands have startled those below, Madam Maverick and her maid have made
+their appearance, in a wild flutter of anxiety, asking eager questions;
+(Reuben alone can understand them or answer them;) but as the
+southeaster grows, as it does, into a fury of wind, and the poor hulk
+reels vainly, and is overlaid with a torrent of biting salt spray, Madam
+Maverick becomes calm. Instinctively, she sees the worst.
+
+"Could I only clasp Adele once more in these arms, I would say,
+cheerfully, '_Nunc dimittis_.'"
+
+Reuben regarded her calm faith with a hungry eagerness. Not, indeed,
+that calmness was lacking in himself. Great danger, in many instances,
+sublimates the faculties of keenly strung minds. But underneath his
+calmness there was an unrest, hungering for repose,--the repose of a
+fixed belief. If even then the breaking waves had whelmed him in their
+mad career, he would have made no wailing outcry, but would have
+clutched--how eagerly!--at the merest shred of that faith which, in
+other days and times, he had seen illuminate the calm face of the
+father. Something to believe,--on which to float upon such a sea!
+
+But the waves and winds make sport of beliefs. Prayers count nothing
+against that angry surge. Two boats are already swept from the davits,
+and are gone upon the whirling waters. A third, with infinite pains, is
+dropped into the yeast. It is hard to tell who gives the orders. But,
+once afloat, there is a rush upon it, and away it goes,--overcrowded,
+and within eyeshot lifts, turns, and a crowd of swimmers float for a
+moment,--one with an oar, another with a thwart that the waves have torn
+out,--and in the yeast of waters they vanish.
+
+One boat only remains, and it is launched with more careful handling;
+three cling by the wreck; the rest--save only Madam Maverick and
+Reuben--are within her, as she tosses still in the lee of the vessel.
+
+"There 's room!" cries some one; "jump quick! for God's sake!"
+
+And Reuben, with some strange, generous impulse, seizes upon Madam
+Maverick, and, before she can rebel or resist, has dropped her over the
+rail. The men grapple her and drag her in; but in the next moment the
+little cockle of a boat is drifted yards away.
+
+The few who are left--the boatswain among them--are toiling on the wet
+deck to give a last signal from the little brass howitzer on the
+forecastle. As the sharp crack breaks on the air,--a miniature sound in
+that howl of the storm,--the red flash of the gun gives Reuben, as the
+boat lurches toward the wreck again, a last glance of Madam
+Maverick,--her hands clasped, her eyes lifted, and calm as ever. More
+than ever too her face was like the face of Adele,--such as the face of
+Adele must surely become, when years have sobered her and her buoyant
+faith has ripened into calm. And from that momentary glance of the
+serene countenance, and that flashing associated memory of Adele, a
+subtile, mystic influence is born in him, by which he seems suddenly
+transfused with the same trustful serenity which just now he gazed upon
+with wonder. If indeed the poor lady is already lost,--he thinks it for
+a moment,--her spirit has fanned and cheered him as it passed. Once
+more, as if some mysterious hand had brought them to his reach, he
+grapples with those lost lines of hope and trust which in that youthful
+year of his exuberant emotional experience he had held and lost,--once
+more, now, in hand,--once more he is elated with that wonderful sense of
+a religious poise, that, it would seem, no doubts or terrors could
+overbalance. Unconsciously kneeling on the wet deck, he is rapt into a
+kind of ecstatic indifference to winds, to waves, to danger, to death.
+
+The boom of a gun is heard to the northward. It must be from shore.
+There are helpers at work, then. Some hope yet for this narrow tide of
+life, which just seemed losing itself in some infinite flow beyond. Life
+is, after all, so sweet! The boatswain forward labors desperately to
+return an answering signal; but the spray, the slanted deck, the
+overleaping waves, are too much for him. Darkness and storm and despair
+rule again.
+
+The wind, indeed, has fallen; the force of the gale is broken; but the
+waves are making deeper and more desperate surges. The wreck, which had
+remained fixed in the fury of the wind, lifts again under the great
+swell of the sea, and is dashed anew and anew upon the shoal. With every
+lift her timbers writhe and creak, and all the remaining upper works
+crack and burst open with the strain.
+
+Reuben chances to espy an old-fashioned round life-buoy lashed to the
+taffrail, and, cutting it loose, makes himself fast to it. He overhears
+the boatswain say, yonder by the forecastle, "These thumpings will break
+her in two in an hour. Cling to a spar, Jack."
+
+The gray light of dawn at last breaks, and shows a dim line of shore, on
+which parties are moving, dragging some machine, with which they hope to
+cast a line over the wreck. But the swell is heavier than ever, the
+timbers nearer to parting. At last a flash of lurid light from the dim
+shore-line,--a great boom of sound, and a line goes spinning out like a
+spider's web up into the gray, bleak sky. Too far! too short! and the
+line tumbles, plashing into the water. A new and fearful lift of the sea
+shatters the wreck, the fore part of the ship still holding fast to the
+sands; but all abaft the mainmast lifts, surges, reels, topples over;
+with the wreck, and in the angry swirl and torment of waters, Reuben
+goes down.
+
+
+LXV.
+
+That morning,--it was the 22d of September, in the year 1842,--Mr.
+Brindlock came into his counting-room some two hours before noon, and
+says to his porter and factotum, as he enters the door, "Well, Roger, I
+suppose you 'll be counting this puff of a southeaster the equinoctial,
+eh?"
+
+"Indeed, sir, and it 's an awful one. The Meteor 's gone ashore on Long
+Beach; and there 's talk of young Mr. Johns being lost."
+
+"Good Heavens!" said Brindlock, "you don't tell me so!"
+
+By half past three he was upon the spot; a little remaining fragment
+only of the Meteor hanging to the sands, and a great _debris_ of bales,
+spars, shattered timbers, bodies, drifted along the shore,--Reuben's
+among them.
+
+But he is not dead; at least so say the wreckers, who throng upon the
+beach; the life-buoy is still fast to him, though he is fearfully
+shattered and bruised. He is borne away under the orders of Brindlock to
+some near house, and presently revives enough to ask that he may be
+carried--"home."
+
+As, in the opening of this story, his old grandfather, the Major, was
+borne away from the scene of his first battle by easy stages homeward,
+so now the grandson, far feebler and after more terrible encounter with
+death, is carried by "easy stages" to his home in Ashfield. Again the
+city, the boat, the river,--with its banks yellowing with harvests, and
+brightened with the glowing tints of autumn; again the sluggish brigs
+drifting down with the tide, and sailors in tasselled caps leaning over
+the bulwarks; again the flocks feeding leisurely on the rock-strewn
+hills; again the ferryman, in his broad, cumbrous scow, oaring across;
+again the stoppage at the wharf of the little town, from which the coach
+still plies over the hills to Ashfield.
+
+On the way thither, a carriage passes them, in which are Adele and her
+father. The news of disaster flies fast; they have learned of the wreck,
+and the names of passengers. They go to learn what they can of the
+mother, whom the daughter has scarce known. The passing is too hasty for
+recognition. Brindlock arrives at last with his helpless charge at the
+door of the parsonage. The Doctor is overwhelmed at once with grief and
+with joy. The news had come to him, and he had anticipated the worst.
+But "Thank God! 'Joseph, my son, is yet alive!' Still a probationer;
+there is yet hope that he may be brought into the fold."
+
+He insists that he shall be placed below, upon his own bed, just out of
+his study. For himself, he shall need none until the crisis is past. But
+the crisis does not pass; it is hard to say when it will. The wounds are
+not so much; but a low fever has set in, (the physician says,) owing to
+exposure and excitement, and he can predict nothing as to the result.
+Even Aunt Eliza is warmed into unwonted attention as she sees that poor
+battered hulk of humanity lying there; she spares herself no fatigue,
+God knows, but she sheds tears in her own chamber over this great
+disaster. There are good points even in the spinster; when shall we
+learn that the best of us are not wholly good, nor the worst wholly bad?
+
+Days and days pass. Reuben hovering between life and death; and the old
+Doctor, catching chance rest upon the little cot they have placed for
+him in the study, looks yearningly by the dim light of the sick-lamp
+upon that dove which his lost Rachel had hung upon his wall above the
+sword of his father. He fancies that the face of Reuben, pinched with
+suffering, resembles more than ever the mother. Of sickness, or of the
+little offices of friends which cheat it of pains, the old gentleman
+knows nothing: sick souls only have been his care. And it is pitiful to
+see his blundering, eager efforts to do something, as he totters round
+the sick-chamber where Reuben, with very much of youthful vigor left in
+him, makes fight against the arch-enemy who one day conquers us all. For
+many days after his arrival there is no consciousness,--only wild words
+(at times words that sound to the ears of the good Doctor strangely
+wicked, and that make him groan in spirit),--tender words, too, of
+dalliance, and eager, loving glances,--murmurs of boyish things, of
+sunny, school-day noonings,--hearing which, the Doctor thinks that, if
+this light must go out, it had better have gone out in those days of
+comparative innocence.
+
+Over and over the father appeals to the village physician to know what
+the chances may be,--to which that old gentleman, fumbling his
+watch-key, and looking grave, makes very doubtful response. He hints at
+a possible undermining of the constitution in these later years of city
+life.
+
+God only knows what habits the young man may have formed in these last
+years; surely the Doctor does not; and he tells the physician as much,
+with a groan of anguish.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meantime, Maverick and Adele have gone upon their melancholy search;
+and, as they course over the island to the southern beach, the sands,
+the plains, the houses, the pines, drift by the eye of Adele as in a
+dream. At last she sees a great reach of water,--piling up, as it rolls
+lazily in from seaward, into high walls of waves, that are no sooner
+lifted than they break and send sparkling floods of foam over the sands.
+Bits of wreck, dark clots of weed, are strewed here and
+there,--stragglers scanning every noticeable heap, every floating thing
+that comes in.
+
+Is she dead? is she living? They have heard only on the way that many
+bodies are lying in the near houses,--many bruised and suffering ones;
+while some have come safe to land, and gone to their homes. They make
+their way from that dismal surf-beaten shore to the nearest house. There
+are loiterers about the door; and within,--within, Adele finds her
+mother at last, clasps her to her heart, kisses the poor dumb lips that
+will never more open,--never say to her rapt ears, "My child! my
+darling!"
+
+Maverick is touched as he has never been touched before; the age of
+early sentiment comes drifting back to his world-haunted mind; nay,
+tears come to those eyes that have not known them for years. The grief,
+the passionate, vain tenderness of Adele, somehow seems to sanctify the
+memory of the dead one who lies before him, her great wealth of hair
+streaming dank and fetterless over the floor.
+
+Not more tenderly, scarce more tearfully, could he have ministered to
+one who had been his life-long companion. Where shall the poor lady be
+buried? Adele answers that, with eyes flashing through her
+tears,--nowhere but in Ashfield, nowhere except beside the sister,
+Marie.
+
+It is a dismal journey for the father and the daughter; it is almost a
+silent journey. Does she love him less? No, a thousand times, no. Does
+he love her less? No, a thousand times, no. In such presence love is
+awed into silence. As the mournful _cortege_ enters the town of
+Ashfield, it passes the home of that fatherless boy, Arthur, for whom
+Adele had shown such sympathy. The youngster is there swinging upon the
+gate, his cap gayly set off with feathers, and he looking wonderingly
+upon the bier. He sees, too, the sad face of Adele, and, by some strange
+rush of memory, recalls, as he looks on her, the letter which she had
+given him long ago, and which till then had been forgotten. He runs to
+his mother: it is in his pocket,--it is in that of some summer jacket.
+At last it is found; and the poor woman herself, that very morning, with
+numberless apologies, delivers it at the door of the parsonage.
+
+Phil is the first to meet this exceptional funeral company, and is the
+first to tell Adele how Reuben lies stricken almost to death at the
+parsonage. She thanks him: she thanks him again for the tender care
+which he shows in all relating to the approaching burial. When an enemy
+even comes forward to help us bury the child we loved or the parent we
+mourn, our hearts warm toward him as they never warmed before; but when
+a friend assumes these offices of tenderness, and takes away the
+harshest edge of grief by assuming the harshest duties of grief, our
+hearts shower upon him their tenderest sympathies. We never forget it.
+
+Of course, the arrival of this strange freight in Ashfield gives rise to
+a world of gossip. We cannot follow it; we cannot rehearse it. The poor
+woman is buried, as Adele had wished, beside her sister. No _De
+Profundis_ except the murmur of the winds through the crimson and the
+scarlet leaves of later September.
+
+The Tourtelots have been eager with their gossip. The dame has queried
+if there should not be some town demonstration against the burial of the
+Papist. But the little Deacon has been milder; and we give our last
+glimpse of him--altogether characteristic--in a suggestion which he
+makes in a friendly way to Squire Elderkin, who is the host of the
+French strangers.
+
+"Square, have they ordered a moniment yit for Miss Maverick?"
+
+"Not that I 'm aware of, Deacon."
+
+"Waal, my nevvy's got a good slab of Varmont marble, which he ordered
+for his fust wife; but the old folks did n't like it, and it's in his
+barn on the heater-piece. 'T ain't engraved, nor nothin'. If it should
+_suit_ the Mavericks, I dare say they could git it tol'able low."
+
+
+LXVI.
+
+Reuben is still floating between death and life. There is doubt whether
+the master of the long course or of the short course will win. However
+that may be, his consciousness has returned; and it has been with a
+great glow of gratitude that the poor Doctor has welcomed that look of
+recognition in his eye,--the eye of Rachel!
+
+He is calm,--he knows all. That calmness which had flashed into his soul
+when last he saw the serene face of his fellow-voyager upon that mad sea
+is _his_ still.
+
+The poor father had been moved unwontedly by that unconsciousness which
+was blind to all his efforts at spiritual consolation; but he is not
+less moved when he sees reason stirring again,--a light of eager inquiry
+in those eyes fearfully sunken, but from their cavernous depths seeing
+farther and more keenly than ever.
+
+"Adele's mother,--was she lost?" He whispers it to the Doctor; and Miss
+Eliza, who is sewing yonder, is quickened into eager listening.
+
+"Lost! my son, lost! Lost, I apprehend, in the other world as well as
+this, I fear the true light never dawned upon her."
+
+A faint smile--as of one who sees things others do not see--broke over
+the face of Reuben. "'T is a broad light, father; it reaches beyond our
+blind reckoning."
+
+There was a trustfulness in his manner that delighted the Doctor. "And
+you see it, my son?--Repentance, Justification by Faith, Adoption,
+Sanctification, Election?"
+
+"Those words are a weariness to me, father; they suggest methods,
+dogmas, perplexities. Christian hope, pure and simple, I love better."
+
+The Doctor is disturbed; he cannot rightly understand how one who seems
+inspired by so calm a trust--the son of his own loins too--should find
+the authoritative declarations of the divines a weariness. Is it not
+some subtle disguise of Satan, by which his poor boy is being cheated
+into repose?
+
+Of course the letter of Adele, which had been so long upon its way, Miss
+Eliza had handed to Reuben after such time as her caution suggested, and
+she had explained to him its long delay.
+
+Reading is no easy matter for him; but he races through those delicately
+penned lines with quite a new strength. The spinster sees the color come
+and go upon his wan cheek, and with what a trembling eagerness he folds
+the letter at the end, and, making a painful effort, tries to thrust it
+under his pillow. The good woman has to aid him in this. He thanks her,
+but says nothing more. His fingers are toying nervously at a bit of torn
+fringe upon the coverlet. It seems a relief to him to make the rent
+wider and wider. A little glimpse of the world has come back to him,
+which disturbs the repose with which but now he would have quitted it
+forever.
+
+Adele has been into the sick-chamber from time to time,--once led away
+weeping by the good Doctor, when the son had fallen upon his wild talk
+of school-days; once, too, since consciousness has come to him again,
+but before her letter had been read. He had met her with scarce more
+than a touch of those fevered fingers, and a hard, uncertain quiver of a
+smile, which had both shocked and disappointed the poor girl. She
+thought he would have spoken some friendly consoling word of her mother;
+but his heart, more than his strength, failed him. Her mournful, pitying
+eyes were a reproach to him; they had haunted him through the wakeful
+hours of two succeeding nights, and now, under the light of that laggard
+letter, they blaze with a new and an appealing tenderness. His fingers
+still puzzle wearily with that tangle of the fringe. The noon passes.
+The aunt advises a little broth. But no, his strength is feeding itself
+on other aliment. The Doctor comes in with a curiously awkward attempt
+at gentleness and noiselessness of tread, and, seeing his excited
+condition, repeats to him some texts which he believes must be
+consoling. Reuben utters no open dissent; but through and back of all he
+sees the tender eyes of Adele, which, for the moment, outshine the
+promises, or at the least illuminate them with a new meaning.
+
+"I must see Adele," he says to the Doctor; and the message is
+carried,--she herself presently bringing answer, with a rich glow upon
+her cheek.
+
+"Reuben has sent for me,"--she murmurs it to herself with pride and joy.
+
+She is in full black now; but never had she looked more radiantly
+beautiful than when she stepped to the side of the sick-bed, and took
+the hand of Reuben with an eager clasp--that was met, and met again. The
+Doctor is in his study, (the open door between,) and the spinster is
+fortunately just now busy at some of her household duties.
+
+Reuben fumbles under his pillow nervously for that cherished bit of
+paper, (Adele knows already its history,) and when he has found it and
+shown it (his thin fingers crumpling it nervously) he says, "Thank you
+for this, Adele!"
+
+She answers only by clasping his hand with a sudden mad pressure of
+content, while the blood mounted into either cheek with a rosy
+exuberance that magnified her beauty tenfold.
+
+He saw it,--he felt it all; and through her beaming eyes, so full of
+tenderness and love, saw the world to which he had bidden adieu shining
+before him more beguilingly than ever. Yesterday it was a dim and weary
+world that he could leave without a pang; to-day it is a brilliant
+world, where hopes, promises, joys pile in splendid proportions.
+
+He tells her this. "Yesterday I would have died with scarce a regret;
+to-day, Adele, I would live."
+
+"You will, you will, Reuben!" and she grappled more and more
+passionately those shrunken fingers. "'T is not hopeless!" (sobbing).
+
+"No, no, Adele, darling, not hopeless. The cloud is lifted,--not
+hopeless!"
+
+"Thank God, thank God!" said she, dropping upon her knees beside him,
+and with a smile of ecstasy he gathered that fair head to his bosom.
+
+The Doctor, hearing her sobs, came softly in. The son's smile, as he met
+his father's inquiring look, was more than ever like the smile of
+Rachel. He has been telling the poor girl of her mother's death, thinks
+the old gentleman; yet the Doctor wonders that he could have kept so
+radiant a face with such a story.
+
+Of these things, however, Reuben goes on presently to speak: of his
+first sight of the mother of Adele, and of her devotional attitude as
+they floated down past the little chapel of Notre Dame to enter upon the
+fateful voyage; he recounts their talks upon the tranquil moon-lit
+nights of ocean; he tells of the mother's eager listening to his
+description of her child.
+
+"I did not tell her the half, Adele; yet she loved me for what I told
+her."
+
+And Adele smiles through her tears.
+
+At last he comes to those dismal scenes of the wreck, relating all with
+a strange vividness; living over again, as it were, that fearful
+episode, till his brain whirled, his self-possession was lost, and he
+broke out into a torrent of delirious raving.
+
+He sleeps brokenly that night, and the next day is feebler than ever.
+The physician warns against any causes of excitement. He is calm only at
+intervals. The old school-days seem present to him again; he talks of
+his fight with Phil Elderkin as if it happened yesterday.
+
+"Yet I like Phil," he says (to himself), "and Rose is like Amanda, the
+divine Amanda. No--not she. I've forgotten: it's the French girl. She's
+a ---- Pah! who cares? She's as pure as heaven; she's an angel. Adele!
+Adele! Not good enough! I'm not good enough. Very well, very well, now
+I'll be bad enough! Clouds, wrangles, doubts! Is it my fault? _AEdificabo
+meam Ecclesiam._ How they kneel! Puppets! mummers! No, not mummers, they
+see a Christ. What if they see it in a picture? You see him in words.
+Both in earnest. Belief--belief! That is best. Adele, Adele, I believe!"
+
+The Doctor is a pained listener of this incoherent talk of his son. "I
+am afraid,--I am afraid," he murmurs to himself, "that he has no clear
+views of the great scheme of the Atonement."
+
+The next day Reuben is himself once more, but feeble, to a degree that
+startles the household. It is a charming morning of later September;
+the window is wide open, and the sick one looks out over a stretch of
+orchard (he knew its every tree), and upon wooded hills beyond (he knew
+every coppice and thicket), and upon a background of sky over which a
+few dappled white clouds floated at rest.
+
+"It is most beautiful!" said Reuben.
+
+"All things that He has made are beautiful," said the Doctor; and
+thereupon he seeks to explore his way into the secrets of Reuben's
+religious experience,--employing, as he was wont to do, all the
+Westminster formulas by which his own belief stood fast.
+
+"Father, father, the words are stumbling-blocks to me," says the son.
+
+"I would to God, Reuben, that I could make my language always clear."
+
+"No, father, no man can, in measuring the Divine mysteries. We must
+carry this draggled earth-dress with us always,--always in some sort
+fashionists, even in our soberest opinions. The robes of light are worn
+only Beyond. Thought, at the best, is hampered by this clog of language,
+that tempts, obscures, misleads."
+
+"And do you see any light, my son?"
+
+"I hope and tremble. A great light is before me; it shines back upon
+outlines of doctrines and creeds where I have floundered for many a
+year."
+
+"But some are clear,--some are clear, Reuben!"
+
+"Before, all seems clear; but behind--"
+
+"And yet, Reuben," (the Doctor cannot forbear the discussion,) "there is
+the cross,--Election, Adoption, Sanctification--"
+
+"Stop, father; the cross, indeed, with a blaze of glory, I see; but the
+teachers of this or that special form of doctrine I see only catching
+radiations of the light. The men who teach, and argue, and declaim, and
+exorcise, are using human weapons; the great light only strikes here and
+there upon some sword-point which is nearest to the cross."
+
+"He wanders," says the Doctor to Adele, who has slipped in and stands
+beside the sick-bed.
+
+"No wandering, father; on the brink where I stand, I cannot."
+
+"And what do you see, Reuben, my boy?" (tenderly).
+
+Is it the presence of Adele that gives a new fervor, a kind of crazy
+inspiration to his talk? "I see the light-hearted clashing cymbals; and
+those who love art, kneeling under blazing temples and shrines; but the
+great light touches the gold no more effulgently than the steeple of
+your meeting-house, father, but no less. I see eyes of chanting girls
+streaming with joy in the light; and haggard men with ponderous
+foreheads working out contrivances to bridge the gap between the finite
+and the infinite. Father, they are no nearer to a passage than the
+radiant girls who chant and tell their beads. Angels in all shapes of
+beauty flit over and amid the throngs I see,--in shape of fleecy clouds
+that fan them,--in shape of brooks that murmur praise,--in shape of
+leafy shadows that tremble and flicker,--in shape of birds that make a
+concert of song." The birds even then were singing, the clouds floating
+in his eye, the leafy shadows trailing on the chamber floor, and, from
+the valley, the murmur of the brook came to his sensitive ear.
+
+"He wanders,--he wanders!" said the poor Doctor.
+
+Reuben turns to Adele. "Adele, kiss me!" A rosy tint ran over her face
+as she stooped and kissed him with a freedom a mother might have
+shown,--leaving one hand toying caressingly with his hair. "The cloud is
+passing, Adele,--passing! God is Justice; Christ is Mercy. In him I
+trust."
+
+"Reuben, darling," says Adele, "come back to us!"
+
+"Darling,--darling!" he repeated with a strange, eager, satisfied
+smile,--so sweet a sound it was.
+
+The chamber was filled with the delightful perfume of a violet bed
+beneath the window. Suddenly there came from the Doctor, whose old eyes
+caught sooner than any the change, a passionate outcry. "Great God! Thy
+will be done!"
+
+With that one loud, clear utterance, his firmness gave way,--for the
+first time in sixty years broke utterly; and big tears streamed down his
+face as he gazed yearningly upon the dead body of his first-born.
+
+
+LXVII.
+
+In the autumn of 1845, three years after the incidents related in our
+last chapter, Mr. Philip Elderkin, being at that time president of a
+railroad company, which was establishing an important connection of
+travel that was to pass within a few miles of the quiet town of
+Ashfield, was a passenger on the steamer Caledonia, for Europe. He
+sailed, partly in the interest of the company,--to place certain
+bonds,--and partly in his own interest, as an intelligent man, eager to
+add to his knowledge of the world.
+
+At Paris, where he passed some time, it chanced that he was one evening
+invited to the house of a resident American, where, he was gayly
+assured, he would meet with a very attractive American heiress, the only
+daughter of a merchant of large fortune.
+
+Philip Elderkin--brave, straightforward fellow that he was--had never
+forgotten his early sentiment. He had cared for those French graves in
+Ashfield with an almost religious attention. In all the churchyard there
+was not such scrupulously shorn turf, or such orderly array of bloom. He
+counted--in a fever of doubt--upon a visit to Marseilles before his sail
+for home.
+
+But at the _soiree_ we have mentioned he was amazed and delighted to
+meet, in the person of the heiress, Adele Maverick,--not changed
+essentially since the time he had known her. That life at
+Marseilles--even in the well-appointed home of her father--has none of
+that domesticity which she had learned to love; and this first winter in
+Paris for her does not supply the lack. That she has a great company of
+admirers it is easy to understand; but yet she gives a most cordial
+greeting to Phil Elderkin,--a greeting that by its manner makes the
+pretenders doubtful. Philip finds it possible to reconcile the demands
+of his business with a week's visit to Marseilles. To the general
+traveller it is not a charming region. The dust abounds; the winds are
+terrible; the sun is scalding. But Mr. Philip Elderkin found it
+delightful. And, indeed, the country-house of Mr. Maverick had
+attractions of its own; attractions so great that his week runs over
+into two,--into three. There are excursions to the Pont du Gard, to the
+Arene of Arles. And, before he leaves, he has an engagement there (which
+he has enforced by very peremptory proposals) for the next spring.
+
+On his return to Ashfield, he reports a very successful trip. To his
+sister Rose (now Mrs. Catesby, with a blooming little infant, called
+Grace Catesby) he is specially communicative. And she thinks it was a
+glorious trip, and longs for the time when he will make the next. He,
+furthermore, to the astonishment of Dame Tourtelot (whose husband sleeps
+now under the sod), has commenced the establishment of a fine home, upon
+a charming site, overlooking all Ashfield. The Squire, still stalwart,
+cannot resist giving a hint of what is expected to the old Doctor, who
+still wearily goes his rounds, and prays for the welfare of his flock.
+
+He is delighted at the thought of meeting again with Adele, though he
+thinks with a sigh of his lost boy. Yet he says in his old manner, "'T
+is the hand of Providence; she first bloomed into grace under the roof
+of our church; she comes back to adorn it with her faith and her works."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At a date three years later we take one more glimpse at that quiet
+village of Ashfield, where we began our story. The near railway has
+brought it into more intimate connection with the shore towns and the
+great cities. But there is no noisy clatter of the cars to break the
+quietude. On still days, indeed, the shriek of the steam-whistle or the
+roar of a distant train is heard bursting over the hills, and dying in
+strange echoes up and down the valley. The stage-driver's horn is heard
+no longer; no longer the coach whirls into the village and delivers its
+leathern pouch of letters. The Tew partners we once met are now partners
+in the grave. Deacon Tourtelot (as we have already hinted) has gone to
+his long home; and the dame has planted over him the slab of "Varmont"
+marble, which she has bought at a bargain from his "nevvy."
+
+The Boody tavern-keeper has long since disappeared; no teams wheel up
+with the old dash at the doors of the Eagle Tavern. The creaking
+sign-board even is gone from the overhanging sycamore.
+
+Miss Almira is still among the living. She sings treble, however, no
+longer; she wears spectacles; she writes no more over mystical asterisks
+for the Hartford Courant. Age has brought to her at least this much of
+wisdom.
+
+The mill groans, as of old, in the valley. A new race of boys pelt the
+hanging nests of the orioles; a new race of school-girls hang swinging
+on the village gates at the noonings.
+
+As for Miss Johns, she lives still,--scarce older to appearance than
+twenty years before,--prim, wiry, active,--proof against all ailments,
+it would seem. It is hard to conceive of her as yielding to the great
+conqueror. If the tongue and an inflexibility of temper were the
+weapons, she would whip Death from her chamber at the last. It seems
+like amiability almost to hear such a one as she talk of her
+approaching, inevitable dissolution,--so kindly in her to yield that
+point!
+
+And she does; she declares it over and over, there are far feebler ones
+who do not declare it half so often. If she is to be conquered and the
+Johns banner go down, she will accept the defeat so courageously and so
+long in advance that the defeat shall become a victorious confirmation
+of the Johns prophecy.
+
+She is still earnest in all her duties; she gives cast-away clothing to
+the poor, and good advice with it. She is rigorous in the observance of
+every propriety; no storm keeps her from church. If the children of a
+new generation climb unduly upon the pew-backs, or shake their curly
+heads too wantonly, she lifts a prim forefinger at them, which has lost
+none of its authoritative meaning. She is the impersonation of all good
+severities. A strange character! Let us hope that, as it sloughs off its
+earthly cerements, it may in the Divine presence scintillate charities
+and draw toward it the love of others. A good, kind, bad
+gentlewoman,--unwearied in performance of duties. We wonder as we think
+of her! So steadfast, we cannot sneer at her,--so true to her line of
+faith, we cannot condemn her,--so utterly forbidding, we cannot love
+her! May God give rest to her good, stubborn soul!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Upon Sundays of August and September there may be occasionally seen in
+the pew of Elderkin Junior a gray-haired old gentleman, dressed with
+scrupulous care, and still carrying an erect figure, though somewhat
+gouty in his step. This should be Mr. Maverick, a retired merchant, who
+is on a visit to his daughter. He makes wonderful gifts to a certain
+little boy who bears a Puritan name, and gives occasional ponderous sums
+to the parish. In winter, his head-quarters are at the Union Club.
+
+And Doctor Johns? Yes, he is living still,--making his way wearily each
+morning along the street with his cane. Going oftenest, perhaps, to the
+home of Adele, who is now a matron,--a tender, and most womanly and
+joyful matron,--and with her little boy--Reuben Elderkin by name--he
+wanders often to the graves where sleep his best beloved,--Rachel, so
+early lost,--the son, in respect to whom he feels at last a "reasonable
+assurance" that the youth has entered upon a glorious inheritance in
+those courts where one day he will join him, and the sainted Rachel too,
+and clasp again in his arms (if it be God's will) the babe that was his
+but for an hour on earth.
+
+
+
+
+TIED TO A ROPE.
+
+
+You don't know what a Hircus Oepagrus is, Tommy? Well, it is a big
+name for him, isn't it? And if you should ask that somewhat slatternly
+female, who appears to employ tubs for the advantage of others rather
+than herself, what the animal is, she would tell you it is a goat. See
+what a hardy, sturdy little creature he is; and how he lifts up his
+startled head, as the cars come thundering along, and bounds away as if
+he were on the rugged hills that his ancestors climbed, ages ago, in
+wild freedom. O that cruel rope! how it stops him in his career with a
+sudden jerk that pulls him to the ground! See where it has worn away the
+hair round his neck, in his constant struggles to escape. See how he has
+browsed the scanty grass of that dry pasture, in the little circle to
+which he is confined, and is now trying to reach an uncropped tuft, just
+beyond his tether. And the sun is beating down upon him, and there is
+not the shade of a leaf for him to creep into, this July day. Poor
+little fellow!
+
+Not waste my sympathy on a common goat? My dear Madam, I can assure you
+that ropes are not knotted around the neck of Hirci Oepagri alone. And
+when I was bemoaning the captivity of yonder little browser we have left
+behind, I was bewailing the fortune of another great order of the
+Mammalian class,--an order that Mr. Huxley and Mr. Darwin and other
+great thinkers of the day are proving to be close connections of their
+humbler brethren that bleat and bark and bray. The bimanal species of
+this order are similarly appendaged, though they are not apt to be
+staked beside railways or confined to a rood of ground.
+
+Do you see Vanitas at the other end of the car? Does he look as though
+he carried about with him a "lengthening chain"? No one would certainly
+suppose it. Yet he is bound as securely as the poor little goat. We may
+go to the fresh air of his country-seat this July day, or to the
+sea-breezes of his Newport cottage next month, or he may sit here, "the
+incarnation of fat dividends," while you and I envy him his wealth and
+comforts; but he can never break his bonds. They are riveted to the
+counters of the money-changers, knotted around the tall masts of his
+goodly ships, bolted to the ore of his distant mines. He bears them to
+his luxurious home, and his fond wife, his caressing children, his
+troops of friends, can never strike them off. Ever and anon, as the car
+of fortune sweeps by to start him from his comfortable ease, they gall
+him with their remorseless restraint. You may cut the poor goat's rope
+and set him free, to roam where he will; but Vanitas has forged his own
+fetters, and there comes to him no blessed day of emancipation.
+
+My dear Madam, the bright blue ether around us is traversed by a
+wonderful network of these invisible bonds that hold poor human beings
+to their fate. Over the green hills and over the blue waters, far, far
+away they reach,--a warp and woof of multiform, expansive strands, over
+which the sense of bondage moves with all the wondrous celerity of that
+strange force which, on the instant, speaks the thought of the
+Antipodes. You don't know that you carry about any such? Ah! it is well
+that they weigh so lightly. Utter your grateful thanks, to-night, when
+you seek your pillow, that the chains you wear are not galling ones. But
+you are most irrevocably bound. Frank holds you fast. One of these days,
+when you are most peaceful and content in your bondage, scarcely
+recognized, there may come a stately tread, a fiery eye, a glowing
+heart, to startle you from your quiet ease; and when you bound,
+trembling and breathless in their mighty sway, you may feel the
+chain--before so light--wearing its way deep into your throbbing heart.
+May you never wake on the morn of that day, Madam! You don't carry any
+such? Round a little white tablet, half hidden in the sighing grass, is
+linked a chain which holds you, at this moment, by your inmost soul. You
+are not listening to me now; for I have but touched it, and your breast
+is swelling 'neath its pressure, and the tears start to your eyes at its
+momentary tightness. You don't carry any such? We all carry them; and
+were human ears sensitive to other than the grosser sounds of nature,
+they would hear a strange music sweeping from these mystic chords, as
+they tremble at the touch of time and fate.
+
+Master Tommy seems to be tolerably free from any sort of restraint, I
+acknowledge. In fact, it is he who keeps myself and Mrs. A. in the most
+abject servitude. He holds our nasal appendages close to the grindstone
+of his imperious will. And yet--please take him into the next car,
+Madam, while I speak of him. You cannot? What is this? Let me see, I
+pray you. As I live, it is his mother's apron-string. Ah! I fear, Madam,
+that all your efforts cannot break that tie. In the years to come, it
+will doubtless be frayed and worn; and, some day or other, he will bound
+loose from his childhood's captivity; but long ere that he will have
+other bonds thrown around him, some of which he can never break. He will
+weave with his own hands the silken cord of love, coil it about him,
+knot it with Gordian intricacy, net it with Vulcan strength, and then,
+with blind simplicity, place it in Beauty's hand to lead him captive to
+her capricious will. My dear Madam, did not Tommy's father do the same
+foolish thing? And is he not grateful to the lovely Mrs. Asmodeus for
+the gentleness with which she holds him in her power? Some of our bonds
+are light to bear. We glory in them, and hold up our gyves to show them
+to the world. Tommy may be a little shamefaced when his playmates jeer
+at the maternal tie; but he will walk forth, glowing with pride and joy,
+to parade his self-woven fetters ostentatiously in the sight of men.
+When you had done some such foolish thing yourself, did not your young
+mates gather round to view, with wondering and eager eyes, the result of
+your own handiwork at the cordage of love? Were there not many
+loquacious conclaves held to sit in secret judgment thereon? Were there
+not many soft cheeks flushing, and bright eyes sparkling, and fresh
+hearts beating, as you brought forth, with a pride you did not pretend
+to hide, the rose-colored fabric you had woven? And did they not all
+envy you, and wonder when their distaffs were to whirl to the tread of
+their own ready feet?
+
+But we are not always eager or proud to exhibit our bonds. Indeed, we
+sedulously conceal them from every eye; we cover up the marks upon our
+scarred hearts with such jealous care, that none, not even our bosom
+friends, can ever see them. They hold us where the sweet herbage of life
+has become dry and sere, where no shelter offers us a grateful retreat.
+Vanitas can bear away with him his "lengthening chain" to his leafy
+groves; but Scripsit is confined to the torrid regions of his scanty
+garret. In vain he gazes afar, beyond the smoky haze of his stony
+prison, upon the green slopes and shady hills. In vain he toils and
+strains to burst the links that bind him. His soul is yearning for the
+cooling freshness, the sweet fragrance, the beauty, the glory, of the
+outer world. It is just beyond his reach; and, wearied with futile
+exertions, he sinks, fainting and despairing, in his efforts to rend the
+chain of penury. And there are many other bonds which hold us to areas
+of life from which we have gathered all the fresh bloom and the rich
+fruit. We may tread their barren soil with jewelled sandals, wrap around
+us ermined robes in winter's cold, and raise our silken tents in
+summer's glare, while our souls are hungering and thirsting for the
+ambrosia and the nectar beyond our tethered reach. We are held fast by
+honor, virtue, fidelity, pity,--ties which we dare not break if we
+could. We must not even bear their golden links to their extremest
+length; we must not show that they are chains which bind us; we must not
+show that we are hungering and thirsting in the confines to which they
+restrain us. We must seem to be feasting as from the flesh-pots of
+Egypt,--fattening on the husks which we have emptied,--while our souls
+are starving and fainting and dying within us. 'T is a sad music that
+swells from these chords. How fortunate that our ears are not attuned to
+their notes. And we are not always solitary in our bondage; nor do we
+tread round the cropped circuit, held to senseless pillars. We are
+chained to each other; and unhappy are they who, straining at the bond,
+seek food for their hearts in opposite directions. We are chained to
+each other; and light or heavy are the bonds, as Fortune shall couple
+us. Now you and Frank, I know, are leashed with down; and when Mrs.
+Asmodeus went to the blacksmith, the Vulcan of our days, to order my
+fetters, she bespoke gossamers, to which a spider's web were cable. But
+we are among the favored of Fortune's children. There are many poor
+unfortunates whose daily round is but the measured clank of hateful
+chains; who eat, drink, sleep, live together, in a bondage worse than
+that of Chillon,--round whom the bright sun shines, the sweet flowers
+bloom, the soft breezes play,--and yet who stifle in the gloom of a
+domestic dungeon.
+
+And there are others fettered as firmly,--but how differently! The
+clasping links are soft, caressing arms; the tones their sounding chains
+give out are cheerful voices, joyous accents, words of love, that echo
+far beyond the little circle that they keep, and spread their harmony
+through many hearts. That little circle is a happy home; love spun the
+bonds that hold them close therein, and many are the strands that bind
+them there. They come from beauteous eyes that beam with light; from
+lisping tongues more sweet than seraph choirs; from swelling hearts that
+beat in every pulse with fond affection, which is richer far than all
+the nectar of the ancient gods. Bind me with these, O Fortune! and I hug
+my chains o'erjoyed. Be these the cords which hold me to the rock around
+which break the surging waves of time, and let the beak of Fate tear as
+it will, I hold the bondage sweet and laugh at liberty.
+
+My dear Madam, there are chains which hold us as the cable holds the
+ship; and, in their sure restraint, we safely ride through all the
+howling blasts of adverse fate. The globe we tread whirls on through
+endless space, kept ever in the circuit that it makes by that
+restraining force which holds it to the pillar of the sun. Loose but the
+bond an instant, and it flies in wild, tangential flight, to shatter
+other worlds. The very bondage that we curse, and seek, in fretful mood,
+to break and burst, may keep us to the orbit that is traced, by
+overruling wisdom, for our good. We gravitate towards duty, though we
+sweep with errant course along the outer marge of the bare area of its
+tightened cord. Let but the wise restraint be rudely broke, and through
+life's peopled space we heedless rush, trampling o'er hearts, and
+whirling to our fate, leaving destruction on our reckless way.
+
+Did you ever chance to see, Madam, a picture of those venturous hunters,
+who are lowered by a rope to the nests of sea-birds, built on some
+inaccessible cliff? Hanging between heaven and earth they sway;--above,
+the craggy rock, o'er which the single cord is strained that holds them
+fast; below, a yawning chasm, whose jagged depth would be a fearful
+grave to him who should fall. You and I would never dream of
+bird-nesting under such circumstances. I can see you shudder, even now,
+at the bare idea. Yet do we not sometimes hang ourselves over cliffs
+from which a fall were worse than death? Do we not trust ourselves, in
+venturous mood, to the frail tenure of a single strand which sways
+'twixt heaven and earth? Not after birds' eggs, I grant you. We are not
+all of us so fond of omelettes. But over the wild crags of human passion
+many drop, pursuing game that shuns the beaten way, and sway above the
+depths of dark despair. Intent upon their prey, they further go, secure
+in the firm hold they think they have, nor heed the fraying line that,
+grating on the edge of the bare precipice, at last is worn and weak;
+while, one by one, the little threads give way, and they who watch above
+in terror call to warn them of the danger. But in vain! no friendly
+voice can stay their flushed success; till, at its height, the cord is
+suddenly snapped, and crushed upon the rocks beneath they lie. You and I
+will never go bird-nesting after this fashion, my dear Madam. Let us
+hover then around the crags of life, and watch the twisting strands that
+others, more adventurous than we, have risked themselves upon. Be ours
+the part to note the breaking threads, and, with our words of kindly
+warning, seek to save our fellows from a fall so dread.
+
+And, if the ties of earth keep us from falling, so also do they keep us
+from rising above the level of grosser things. They hold us down to the
+dull, tedious monotony of worldly cares, aims, purposes. Like birds
+withheld from flight into the pure regions of the upper air by cruel,
+frightening cords, we fluttering go, stifled amid the vapors men have
+spread, and panting for the freedom that we seek.
+
+Madam, our bright-eyed little goat has, by this time, settled himself
+calmly on the grass; and I see, near at hand, the shady groves where
+King Tommy is wont to lead Mrs. A. and myself in his summer wanderings.
+Let me hope that all our bonds may be those which hold us fast to peace,
+content, and virtue; and that, when the silver cord which holds us here
+to earth shall be loosed, we then on sweeping pinions may arise, pure
+and untrammelled, into cloudless skies.
+
+
+
+
+GIOTTO'S TOWER.
+
+
+    How many lives, made beautiful and sweet
+      By self-devotion and by self-restraint,--
+      Whose pleasure is to run without complaint
+      On unknown errands of the Paraclete,--
+    Wanting the reverence of unshodden feet,
+      Fail of the nimbus which the artists paint
+      Around the shining forehead of the saint,
+      And are in their completeness incomplete.
+    In the old Tuscan town stands Giotto's tower,
+      The lily of Florence blossoming in stone,--
+      A vision, a delight, and a desire,--
+    The builder's perfect and centennial flower,
+      That in the night of ages bloomed alone,
+      But wanting still the glory of the spire.
+
+
+
+
+PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.
+
+
+VI.
+
+Brook Farm, _Oct. 9, 1841._--A walk this afternoon to Cow Island. The
+clouds had broken away towards noon, and let forth a few sunbeams, and
+more and more blue sky ventured to appear, till at last it was really
+warm and sunny,--indeed, rather too warm in the sheltered hollows,
+though it is delightful to be too warm now, after so much stormy
+chillness. O the beauty of grassy slopes, and the hollow ways of paths
+winding between hills, and the intervals between the road and wood-lots,
+where summer lingers and sits down, strewing dandelions of gold, and
+blue asters, as her parting gifts and memorials! I went to a grape-vine,
+which I have already visited several times, and found some clusters of
+grapes still remaining, and now perfectly ripe. Coming within view of
+the river, I saw several wild ducks under the shadow of the opposite
+shore, which was high, and covered with a grove of pines. I should not
+have discovered the ducks had they not risen and skimmed the surface of
+the glassy stream, breaking its dark water with a bright streak, and,
+sweeping round, gradually rose high enough to fly away. I likewise
+started a partridge just within the verge of the woods, and in another
+place a large squirrel ran across the wood-path from one shelter of
+trees to the other. Small birds, in flocks, were flitting about the
+fields, seeking and finding I know not what sort of food. There were
+little fish, also, darting in shoals through the pools and depths of the
+brooks, which are now replenished to their brims, and rush towards the
+river with a swift, amber-colored current.
+
+Cow Island is not an island,--at least, at this season,--though, I
+believe, in the time of freshets, the marshy Charles floods the meadows
+all round about it, and extends across its communication with the
+mainland. The path to it is a very secluded one, threading a wood of
+pines, and just wide enough to admit the loads of meadow hay which are
+drawn from the splashy shore of the river. The island has a growth of
+stately pines, with tall and ponderous stems, standing at distance
+enough to admit the eye to travel far among them; and, as there is no
+underbrush, the effect is somewhat like looking among the pillars of a
+church.
+
+I returned home by the high-road. On my right, separated from the road
+by a level field, perhaps fifty yards across, was a range of young
+forest-trees, dressed in their garb of autumnal glory. The sun shone
+directly upon them; and sunlight is like the breath of life to the pomp
+of autumn. In its absence, one doubts whether there be any truth in what
+poets have told about the splendor of an American autumn; but when this
+charm is added, one feels that the effect is beyond description. As I
+beheld it to-day, there was nothing dazzling; it was gentle and mild,
+though brilliant and diversified, and had a most quiet and pensive
+influence. And yet there were some trees that seemed really made of
+sunshine, and others were of a sunny red, and the whole picture was
+painted with but little relief of darksome hues,--only a few evergreens.
+But there was nothing inharmonious; and, on closer examination, it
+appeared that all the tints had a relationship among themselves. And
+this, I suppose, is the reason that, while Nature seems to scatter them
+so carelessly, they still never shock the beholder by their contrasts,
+nor disturb, but only soothe. The brilliant scarlet and the brilliant
+yellow are different hues of the maple-leaves, and the first changes
+into the last. I saw one maple-tree, its centre yellow as gold, set in a
+framework of red. The native poplars have different shades of green,
+verging towards yellow, and are very cheerful in the sunshine. Most of
+the oak-leaves have still the deep verdure of summer; but where a change
+has taken place, it is into a russet-red, warm, but sober. These colors,
+infinitely varied by the progress which different trees have made in
+their decay, constitute almost the whole glory of autumnal woods; but it
+is impossible to conceive how much is done with such scanty materials.
+In my whole walk I saw only one man, and he was at a distance, in the
+obscurity of the trees. He had a horse and a wagon, and was getting a
+load of dry brush-wood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Sunday, October 10._--I visited my grape-vine this afternoon, and ate
+the last of its clusters. This vine climbs around a young maple-tree,
+which has now assumed the yellow leaf. The leaves of the vine are more
+decayed than those of the maple. Thence to Cow Island, a solemn and
+thoughtful walk. Returned by another path, of the width of a wagon,
+passing through a grove of hard wood, the lightsome hues of which make
+the walk more cheerful than among the pines. The roots of oaks emerged
+from the soil, and contorted themselves across the path. The sunlight,
+also, broke across in spots, and otherwheres the shadow was deep; but
+still there was intermingling enough of bright hues to keep off the
+gloom from the whole path.
+
+Brooks and pools have a peculiar aspect at this season. One knows that
+the water must be cold, and one shivers a little at the sight of it; and
+yet the grass about the pool may be of the deepest green, and the sun
+may be shining into it. The withered leaves which overhanging trees shed
+upon its surface contribute much to the effect.
+
+Insects have mostly vanished in the fields and woods. I hear locusts
+yet, singing in the sunny hours, and crickets have not yet finished
+their song. Once in a while I see a caterpillar,--this afternoon, for
+instance, a red, hairy one, with black head and tail. They do not appear
+to be active, and it makes one rather melancholy to look at them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Tuesday, October 12._--The cawing of the crow resounds among the woods.
+A sentinel is aware of your approach a great way off, and gives the
+alarm to his comrades loudly and eagerly,--Caw, caw, caw! Immediately
+the whole conclave replies, and you behold them rising above the trees,
+flapping darkly, and winging their way to deeper solitudes. Sometimes,
+however, they remain till you come near enough to discern their sable
+gravity of aspect, each occupying a separate bough, or perhaps the
+blasted tip-top of a pine. As you approach, one after another, with loud
+cawing, flaps his wings and throws himself upon the air.
+
+There is hardly a more striking feature in the landscape now-a-days than
+the red patches of blueberry and whortleberry bushes, as seen on a
+sloping hillside, like islands among the grass, with trees growing in
+them; or crowning the summit of a bare, brown hill with their somewhat
+russet liveliness; or circling round the base of an earth-embedded rock.
+At a distance, this hue, clothing spots and patches of the earth, looks
+more like a picture than anything else,--yet such a picture as I never
+saw painted.
+
+The oaks are now beginning to look sere, and their leaves have withered
+borders. It is pleasant to notice the wide circle of greener grass
+beneath the circumference of an overshadowing oak. Passing an orchard,
+one hears an uneasy rustling in the trees, and not as if they were
+struggling with the wind. Scattered about are barrels to contain the
+gathered apples; and perhaps a great heap of golden or scarlet apples is
+collected in one place.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Wednesday, October 13._--A good view, from an upland swell of our
+pasture, across the valley of the river Charles. There is the meadow, as
+level as a floor, and carpeted with green, perhaps two miles from the
+rising ground on this side of the river to that on the opposite side.
+The stream winds through the midst of the flat space, without any banks
+at all; for it fills its bed almost to the brim, and bathes the meadow
+grass on either side. A tuft of shrubbery, at broken intervals, is
+scattered along its border; and thus it meanders sluggishly along,
+without other life than what it gains from gleaming in the sun. Now,
+into the broad, smooth meadow, as into a lake, capes and headlands put
+themselves forth, and shores of firm woodland border it, covered with
+variegated foliage, making the contrast so much the stronger of their
+height and rough, outline with the even spread of the plain. And beyond,
+and far away, rises a long, gradual swell of country, covered with an
+apparently dense growth of foliage for miles, till the horizon
+terminates it; and here and there is a house, or perhaps two, among the
+contiguity of trees. Everywhere the trees wear their autumnal dress, so
+that the whole landscape is red, russet, orange, and yellow, blending in
+the distance into a rich tint of brown-orange, or nearly that,--except
+the green expanse so definitely hemmed in by the higher ground.
+
+I took a long walk this morning, going first nearly to Newton, thence
+nearly to Brighton, thence to Jamaica Plain, and thence home. It was a
+fine morning, with a northwest wind; cool when facing the wind, but warm
+and most genially pleasant in sheltered spots; and warm enough
+everywhere while I was in motion. I traversed most of the by-ways which
+offered themselves to me; and, passing through one in which there was a
+double line of grass between the wheel-tracks and that of the horses'
+feet, I came to where had once stood a farm-house, which appeared to
+have been recently torn down. Most of the old timber and boards had been
+carted away; a pile of it, however, remained. The cellar of the house
+was uncovered, and beside it stood the base and middle height of the
+chimney. The oven, in which household bread had been baked for daily
+food, and puddings and cake and jolly pumpkin-pies for festivals, opened
+its mouth, being deprived of its iron door. The fireplace was close at
+hand. All round the site of the house was a pleasant, sunny, green
+space, with old fruit-trees in pretty fair condition, though aged. There
+was a barn, also aged, but in decent repair; and a ruinous shed, on the
+corner of which was nailed a boy's windmill, where it had probably been
+turning and clattering for years together, till now it was black with
+time and weather-stain. It was broken, but still it went round whenever
+the wind stirred. The spot was entirely secluded, there being no other
+house within a mile or two.
+
+No language can give an idea of the beauty and glory of the trees, just
+at this moment. It would be easy, by a process of word-daubing, to set
+down a confused group of gorgeous colors, like a bunch of tangled skeins
+of bright silk; but there is nothing of the reality in the glare which
+would thus be produced. And yet the splendor both of individual clusters
+and of whole scenes is unsurpassable. The oaks are now far advanced in
+their change of hue; and, in certain positions relatively to the sun,
+they light up and gleam with a most magnificent deep gold, varying
+according as portions of the foliage are in shadow or sunlight. On the
+sides which receive the direct rays, the effect is altogether rich; and
+in other points of view it is equally beautiful, if less brilliant. This
+color of the oak is more superb than the lighter yellow of the maples
+and walnuts. The whole landscape is now covered with this indescribable
+pomp; it is discerned on the uplands afar off; and Blue Hill in Milton,
+at the distance of several miles, actually glistens with rich, dark
+light,--no, not glistens, nor gleams,--but perhaps to say glows
+subduedly will be a truer expression for it.
+
+Met few people this morning;--a grown girl, in company with a little
+boy, gathering barberries in a secluded lane; a portly, autumnal
+gentleman, wrapped in a great-coat, who asked the way to Mr. Joseph
+Goddard's; and a fish-cart from the city, the driver of which sounded
+his horn along the lonesome way.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Monday, October 18._--There has been a succession of days which were
+cold and bright in the forenoon, and gray, sullen, and chill towards
+night. The woods have now taken a soberer tint than they wore at my last
+date. Many of the shrubs which looked brightest a little while ago are
+now wholly bare of leaves. The oaks have generally a russet-brown shade,
+although some of them are still green, as are likewise other scattered
+trees in the forests. The bright yellow and the rich scarlet are no more
+to be seen. Scarcely any of them will now bear a close examination; for
+this shows them to be rugged, wilted, and of faded, frost-bitten hue;
+but at a distance, and in the mass, and enlivened by the sun, they have
+still somewhat of the varied splendor which distinguished them a week
+ago. It is wonderful what a difference the sunshine makes; it is like
+varnish, bringing out the hidden veins in a piece of rich wood. In the
+cold, gray atmosphere, such as that of most of our afternoons now, the
+landscape lies dark,--brown, and in a much deeper shadow than if it were
+clothed in green. But, perchance, a gleam of sun falls on a certain spot
+of distant shrubbery or woodland, and we see it brighten with many hues,
+standing forth prominently from the dimness around it. The sunlight
+gradually spreads, and the whole sombre scene is changed to a motley
+picture,--the sun bringing out many shades of color, and converting its
+gloom to an almost laughing cheerfulness. At such times I almost doubt
+whether the foliage has lost any of its brilliancy. But the clouds
+intercept the sun again, and lo! old Autumn appears, clad in his cloak
+of russet-brown.
+
+Beautiful now, while the general landscape lies in shadow, looks the
+summit of a distant hill (say a mile off), with the sunshine brightening
+the trees that cover it. It is noticeable that the outlines of hills,
+and the whole bulk of them at the distance of several miles, become
+stronger, denser, and more substantial in this autumn atmosphere and in
+these autumnal tints than in summer. Then they looked blue, misty, and
+dim. Now they show their great humpbacks more plainly, as if they had
+drawn nearer to us.
+
+A waste of shrubbery and small trees, such as overruns the borders of
+the meadows for miles together, looks much more rugged, wild, and savage
+in its present brown color than when clad in green.
+
+I passed through a very pleasant wood-path yesterday, quite shut in and
+sheltered by trees that had not thrown off their yellow robes. The sun
+shone strongly in among them, and quite kindled them; so that the path
+was brighter for their shade than if it had been quite exposed to the
+sun.
+
+In the village graveyard, which lies contiguous to the street, I saw a
+man digging a grave, and one inhabitant after another turned aside from
+his way to look into the grave and talk with the digger. I heard him
+laugh, with the hereditary mirthfulness of men of that occupation.
+
+In the hollow of the woods, yesterday afternoon, I lay a long while
+watching a squirrel, who was capering about among the trees over my head
+(oaks and white-pines, so close together that their branches
+intermingled). The squirrel seemed not to approve of my presence, for he
+frequently uttered a sharp, quick, angry noise, like that of a
+scissors-grinder's wheel. Sometimes I could see him sitting on an
+impending bough, with his tail over his back, looking down pryingly upon
+me. It seems to be a natural posture with him, to sit on his hind legs,
+holding up his forepaws. Anon, with a peculiarly quick start, he would
+scramble along the branch, and be lost to sight in another part of the
+tree, whence his shrill chatter would again be heard. Then I would see
+him rapidly descending the trunk, and running along the ground; and a
+moment afterwards, casting my eye upward, I beheld him flitting like a
+bird among the high limbs at the summit, directly above me. Afterwards,
+he apparently became accustomed to my society, and set about some
+business of his. He came down to the ground, took up a piece of a
+decayed bough, (a heavy burden for such a small personage,) and, with
+this in his mouth, again climbed up, and passed from the branches of one
+tree to those of another, and thus onward and onward till he went out of
+sight. Shortly afterwards he returned for another burden, and this he
+repeated several times. I suppose he was building a nest,--at least, I
+know not what else could have been his object. Never was there such an
+active, cheerful, choleric, continually-in-motion fellow as this little
+red squirrel, talking to himself, chattering at me, and as sociable in
+his own person as if he had half a dozen companions, instead of being
+alone in the lonesome wood. Indeed, he flitted about so quickly, and
+showed himself in different places so suddenly, that I was in some doubt
+whether there were not two or three of them.
+
+I must mention again the very beautiful effect produced by the masses of
+berry-bushes, lying like scarlet islands in the midst of withered
+pasture-ground, or crowning the tops of barren hills. Their hue, at a
+distance, is lustrous scarlet, although it does not look nearly as
+bright and gorgeous when examined close at hand. But at a proper
+distance it is a beautiful fringe on Autumn's petticoat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Friday, October 22._--A continued succession of unpleasant, Novembery
+days, and Autumn has made rapid progress in the work of decay. It is now
+somewhat of a rare good fortune to find a verdant, grassy spot, on some
+slope, or in a dell; and even such seldom-seen oases are bestrewn with
+dried brown leaves,--which, however, methinks, make the short, fresh
+grass look greener around them. Dry leaves are now plentiful everywhere,
+save where there are none but pine-trees. They rustle beneath the tread,
+and there is nothing more autumnal than that sound. Nevertheless, in a
+walk this afternoon I have seen two oaks which retained almost the
+greenness of summer. They grew close to the huge Pulpit Rock, so that
+portions of their trunks appeared to grasp the rough surface; and they
+were rooted beneath it, and, ascending high into the air, overshadowed
+the gray crag with verdure. Other oaks, here and there, have a few green
+leaves or boughs among their rustling and rugged shade.
+
+Yet, dreary as the woods are in a bleak, sullen day, there is a very
+peculiar sense of warmth and a sort of richness of effect in the slope
+of a bank and in sheltered spots, where bright sunshine falls, and the
+brown oaken foliage is gladdened by it. There is then a feeling of
+comfort, and consequently of heart-warmth, which cannot be experienced
+in summer.
+
+I walked this afternoon along a pleasant wood-path, gently winding, so
+that but little of it could be seen at a time, and going up and down
+small mounds, now plunging into a denser shadow and now emerging from
+it. Part of the way it was strewn with the dusky yellow leaves of
+white-pines,--the cast-off garments of last year; part of the way with
+green grass, close-cropped and very fresh for the season. Sometimes the
+trees met across it; sometimes it was bordered on one side by an old
+rail-fence of moss-grown cedar, with bushes sprouting beneath it, and
+thrusting their branches through it; sometimes by a stone wall of
+unknown antiquity, older than the wood it closed in. A stone wall, when
+shrubbery has grown around it, and thrust its roots beneath it, becomes
+a very pleasant and meditative object. It does not belong too evidently
+to man, having been built so long ago. It seems a part of nature.
+
+Yesterday I found two mushrooms in the woods, probably of the preceding
+night's growth. Also I saw a mosquito, frost-pinched, and so wretched
+that I felt avenged for all the injuries which his tribe inflicted upon
+me last summer, and so did not molest this lone survivor.
+
+Walnuts in their green rinds are falling from the trees, and so are
+chestnut-burrs.
+
+I found a maple-leaf to-day, yellow all over, except its extremest
+point, which was bright scarlet. It looked as if a drop of blood were
+hanging from it. The first change of the maple-leaf is to scarlet; the
+next, to yellow. Then it withers, wilts, and drops off, as most of them
+have already done.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_October 27._--Fringed gentians,--I found the last, probably, that will
+be seen this year, growing on the margin of the brook.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1842.--Some man of powerful character to command a person, morally
+subjected to him, to perform some act. The commanding person suddenly to
+die; and, for all the rest of his life, the subjected one continues to
+perform that act.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Solomon dies during the building of the temple, but his body remains
+leaning on a staff, and overlooking the workmen, as if it were alive."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A tri-weekly paper, to be called the Tertian Ague.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Subject for a picture,--Satan's reappearance in Pandemonium, shining out
+from a mist, with "shape star-bright."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Five points of Theology,--Five Points at New York.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It seems a greater pity that an accomplished worker with the hand should
+perish prematurely, than a person of great intellect; because
+intellectual arts may be cultivated in the next world, but not physical
+ones.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To trace out the influence of a frightful and disgraceful crime in
+debasing and destroying a character naturally high and noble, the guilty
+person being alone conscious of the crime.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A man, virtuous in his general conduct, but committing habitually some
+monstrous crime,--as murder,--and doing this without the sense of guilt,
+but with a peaceful conscience,--habit, probably, reconciling him to it;
+but something (for instance, discovery) occurs to make him sensible of
+his enormity. His horror then.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The strangeness, if they could be foreseen and forethought, of events
+which do not seem so strange after they have happened. As, for instance,
+to muse over a child's cradle, and foresee all the persons in different
+parts of the world with whom he would have relations.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A man to swallow a small snake,--and it to be a symbol of a cherished
+sin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Questions as to unsettled points of history, and mysteries of nature, to
+be asked of a mesmerized person.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gordier, a young man of the Island of Jersey, was paying his addresses
+to a young lady of Guernsey. He visited the latter island, intending to
+be married. He disappeared on his way from the beach to his mistress's
+residence, and was afterwards found dead in a cavity of the rocks. After
+a time, Galliard, a merchant of Guernsey, paid his addresses to the
+young lady; but she always felt a strong, unaccountable antipathy to
+him. He presented her with a beautiful trinket. The mother of Gordier,
+chancing to see this trinket, recognized it as having been bought by her
+dead son as a present for his mistress. She expired on learning this;
+and Galliard, being suspected of the murder, committed suicide.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The _cure_ of Montreux in Switzerland, ninety-six years old, still
+vigorous in mind and body, and able to preach. He had a twin-brother,
+also a preacher, and the exact likeness of himself. Sometimes strangers
+have beheld a white-haired, venerable clerical personage, nearly a
+century old; and, upon riding a few miles farther, have been astonished
+to meet again this white-haired, venerable, century-old personage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the body of Lord Mohun (killed in a duel) was carried home,
+bleeding, to his house, Lady Mohun was very angry because it was "flung
+upon the best bed."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A prophecy, somewhat in the style of Swift's about Partridge, but
+embracing various events and personages.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An incident that befell Dr. Harris, while a Junior at college. Being in
+great want of money to buy shirts or other necessaries, and not knowing
+how to obtain it, he set out on a walk from Cambridge to Boston. On the
+way, he cut a stick, and after walking a short distance perceived that
+something had become attached to the end of it. It proved to be a gold
+ring, with the motto, "God speed thee, friend."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Brobdignag lay on the northwest coast of the American continent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A gush of violets along a wood-path.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+People with false hair and other artifices may be supposed to deceive
+Death himself, so that he does not know when their hour is come.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bees are sometimes drowned (or suffocated) in the honey which they
+collect. So some writers are lost in their collected learning.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Advice of Lady Pepperell's father on her marriage,--never to work one
+moment after Saturday sunset,--never to lay down her knitting except in
+the middle of the needle,--always to rise with the sun,--to pass an hour
+daily with the housekeeper,--to visit every room daily from garret to
+cellar,--to attend herself to the brewing of beer and the baking of
+bread,--and to instruct every member of the family in their religious
+duties.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Service of plate, presented by the city of London to Sir William
+Pepperell, together with a table of solid silver. The table very narrow,
+but long; the articles of plate numerous, but of small dimensions,--the
+tureen not holding more than three pints. At the close of the
+Revolution, when the Pepperell and Sparhawk property was confiscated,
+this plate was sent to the grandson of Sir William, in London. It was so
+valuable, that Sheriff Moulton of old York, with six well-armed men,
+accompanied it to Boston. Pepperell's only daughter married Colonel
+Sparhawk, a fine gentleman of the day. Andrew Pepperell, the son, was
+rejected by a young lady (afterwards the mother of Mrs. General Knox),
+to whom he was on the point of marriage, as being addicted to low
+company and low pleasures. The lover, two days afterwards, in the
+streets of Portsmouth, was sun-struck, and fell down dead. Sir William
+had built an elegant house for his son and his intended wife; but after
+the death of the former he never entered it. He lost his cheerfulness
+and social qualities, and gave up intercourse with people, except on
+business. Very anxious to secure his property to his descendants by the
+provisions of his will, which was drawn up by Judge Sewall, then a young
+lawyer. Yet the Judge lived to see two of Sir William's grandchildren so
+reduced that they were to have been numbered among the town's poor, and
+were only rescued from this fate by private charity.
+
+The arms of the Pepperell family were displayed over the door of every
+room in Sir William's house, and his crest on every door. In Colonel
+Sparhawk's house there were forty portraits, most of them in full
+length. The house built for Sir William's son was occupied as barracks
+during the Revolution, and much injured. A few years after the peace,
+it was blown down by a violent tempest, and finally no vestige of it was
+left, but there remained only a summer-house and the family tomb.
+
+At Sir William's death, his mansion was hung with black, while the body
+lay in state for a week. All the Sparhawk portraits were covered with
+black crape, and the family pew was draped with black. Two oxen were
+roasted, and liquid hospitality dispensed in proportion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Old lady's dress seventy or eighty years ago. Brown brocade gown, with a
+nice lawn handkerchief and apron,--short sleeves, with a little ruffle,
+just below the elbow,--black mittens,--a lawn cap, with rich lace
+border,--a black velvet hood on the back of the head, tied with black
+ribbon under the chin. She sat in an old-fashioned easy-chair, in a
+small, low parlor,--the wainscot painted entirely black, and the walls
+hung with a dark velvet paper.
+
+A table, stationary ever since the house was built, extending the whole
+length of a room. One end was raised two steps higher than the rest. The
+Lady Ursula, an early Colonial heroine, was wont to dine at the upper
+end, while her servants sat below. This was in the kitchen. An old
+garden and summer-house, and roses, currant-bushes, and tulips, which
+Lady Ursula had brought from Grondale Abbey in Old England. Although a
+hundred and fifty years before, and though their roots were propagated
+all over the country, they were still flourishing in the original
+garden. This Lady Ursula was the daughter of Lord Thomas Cutts of
+Grondale Abbey in England. She had been in love with an officer named
+Fowler, who was supposed to have been slain in battle. After the death
+of her father and mother, Lady Ursula came to Kittery, bringing twenty
+men-servants and several women. After a time, a letter arrived from her
+lover, who was not killed, but merely a prisoner to the French. He
+announced his purpose to come to America, where he would arrive in
+October. A few days after the letter came, she went out in a low
+carriage to visit her work-people, and was blessing the food for their
+luncheon, when she fell dead, struck by an Indian tomahawk, as did all
+the rest save one. They were buried, where the massacre took place, and
+a stone was erected, which (possibly) still remains. The lady's family
+had a grant from Sir Ferdinando Gorges of the territory thereabout, and
+her brother had likewise come over and settled in the vicinity. I
+believe very little of this story. Long afterwards, at about the
+commencement of the Revolution, a descendant of Fowler came from
+England, and applied to the Judge of Probate to search the records for a
+will, supposed to have been made by Lady Ursula in favor of her lover as
+soon as she heard of his existence. In the mean time the estate had been
+sold to Colonel Whipple. No will could be found. (Lady Ursula was old
+Mrs. Cutts, widow of President Cutts.)
+
+The mode of living of Lady Ursula's brother in Kittery. A drawbridge to
+the house, which was raised every evening, and lowered in the morning,
+for the laborers and the family to pass out. They kept thirty cows, a
+hundred sheep, and several horses. The house spacious,--one room large
+enough to contain forty or fifty guests. Two silver branches for
+candles,--the walls ornamented with paintings and needlework. The floors
+were daily rubbed with wax, and shone like a mahogany-table. A domestic
+chaplain, who said prayers every morning and evening in a small
+apartment called the chapel. Also a steward and butler. The family
+attended the Episcopal Church at Christmas, Easter, and Good Friday, and
+gave a grand entertainment once a year.
+
+Madam Cutts, at the last of these entertainments, wore a black damask
+gown, and cuffs with double lace ruffles, velvet shoes, blue silk
+stockings, white and silver stomacher. The daughter and granddaughters
+in rich brocades and yellow satin. Old Major Cutts in brown velvet,
+laced with gold, and a large wig. The parson in his silk cassock, and
+his helpmate in brown damask. Old General Atkinson in scarlet velvet,
+and his wife and daughters in white damask. The Governor in black
+velvet, and his lady in crimson tabby trimmed with silver. The ladies
+wore bell-hoops, high-heeled shoes, paste buckles, silk stockings, and
+enormously high head-dresses, with lappets of Brussels lace hanging
+thence to the waist.
+
+Among the eatables, a silver tub of the capacity of four gallons,
+holding a pyramid of pancakes powdered with white sugar.
+
+The date assigned to all this about 1690.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What is the price of a day's labor in Lapland, where the sun never sets
+for six months?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Miss Asphyxia Davis!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A life, generally of a grave hue, may be said to be _embroidered_ with
+occasional sports and fantasies.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A father confessor,--his reflections on character, and the contrast of
+the inward man with the outward, as he looks around on his congregation,
+all whose secret sins are known to him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A person with an ice-cold hand,--his right hand, which people ever
+afterwards remember when once they have grasped it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A stove possessed by a Devil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_June 1, 1842._--One of my chief amusements is to see the boys sail
+their miniature vessels on the Frog Pond. There is a great variety of
+shipping owned among the young people, and they appear to have a
+considerable knowledge of the art of managing vessels. There is a
+full-rigged man-of-war, with, I believe, every spar, rope, and sail,
+that sometimes makes its appearance; and, when on a voyage across the
+pond, it so identically resembles a great ship, except in size, that it
+has the effect of a picture. All its motions,--its tossing up and down
+on the small waves, and its sinking and rising in a calm swell, its
+heeling to the breeze,--the whole effect, in short, is that of a real
+ship at sea; while, moreover, there is something that kindles the
+imagination more than the reality would do. If we see a real, great
+ship, the mind grasps and possesses, within its real clutch, all that
+there is of it; while here the mimic ship is the representation of an
+ideal one, and so gives us a more imaginative pleasure. There are many
+schooners that ply to and fro on the pond, and pilot-boats, all
+perfectly rigged. I saw a race, the other day, between the ship above
+mentioned and a pilot-boat, in which the latter came off conqueror. The
+boys appear to be well acquainted with all the ropes and sails, and can
+call them by their nautical names. One of the owners of the vessels
+remains on one side of the pond, and the other on the opposite side, and
+so they send the little bark to and fro, like merchants of different
+countries, consigning their vessels to one another.
+
+Generally, when any vessel is on the pond, there are full-grown
+spectators, who look on with as much interest as the boys themselves.
+Towards sunset, this is especially the case: for then are seen young
+girls and their lovers; mothers, with their little boys in hand;
+school-girls, beating hoops round about, and occasionally running to the
+side of the pond; rough tars, or perhaps masters or young mates of
+vessels, who make remarks about the miniature shipping, and occasionally
+give professional advice to the navigators; visitors from the country;
+gloved and caned young gentlemen;--in short, everybody stops to take a
+look. In the mean time, dogs are continually plunging into the pond, and
+swimming about, with noses pointed upward, and snatching at floating
+ships; then, emerging, they shake themselves, scattering a horizontal
+shower on the clean gowns of ladies and trousers of gentlemen; then
+scamper to and fro on the grass, with joyous barks.
+
+Some boys cast off lines of twine with pin-hooks, and perhaps pull out a
+horned-pout, that being, I think, the only kind of fish that inhabits
+the Frog Pond.
+
+The ship-of-war above mentioned is about three feet from stem to stern,
+or possibly a few inches more. This, if I mistake not, was the size of a
+ship of the line in the navy of Liliput.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Fancy pictures of familiar places which one has never been in, as the
+green-room of a theatre, &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The famous characters of history,--to imagine their spirits now extant
+on earth, in the guise of various public or private personages.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The case quoted in Combe's Physiology of a young man of great talents
+and profound knowledge of chemistry, who had in view some new discovery
+of importance. In order to put his mind into the highest possible
+activity, he shut himself up for several successive days, and used
+various methods of excitement. He had a singing-girl, he drank spirits,
+smelled penetrating odors, sprinkled Cologne-water round the room, &c.,
+&c. Eight days thus passed, when he was seized with a fit of frenzy
+which terminated in mania.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Flesh and Blood,--a firm of butchers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Miss Polly Syllable, a schoolmistress.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A spendthrift,--in one sense he has his money's worth by the purchase of
+large lots of repentance and other dolorous commodities.
+
+
+
+
+THE MOUNTAIN.
+
+
+    Two thousand feet in air it stands
+    Betwixt the bright and shaded lands,
+    Above the regions it divides
+    And borders with its furrowed sides.
+    The seaward valley laughs with light
+    Till the round sun o'erhangs this height;
+    But then the shadow of the crest
+    No more the plains that lengthen west
+    Enshrouds, yet slowly, surely creeps
+    Eastward, until the coolness steeps
+    A darkling league of tilth and wold,
+    And chills the flocks that seek their fold.
+
+    Not like those ancient summits lone,
+    Mont Blanc, on his eternal throne,--
+    The city-gemmed Peruvian peak,--
+    The sunset portals landsmen seek,
+    Whose train, to reach the Golden Land,
+    Crawls slow and pathless through the sand,--
+    Or that, whose ice-lit beacon guides
+    The mariner on tropic tides,
+    And flames across the Gulf afar,
+    A torch by day, by night a star,--
+    Not thus, to cleave the outer skies,
+    Does my serener mountain rise,
+    Nor aye forget its gentle birth
+    Upon the dewy, pastoral earth.
+
+    But ever, in the noonday light,
+    Are scenes whereof I love the sight,--
+    Broad pictures of the lower world
+    Beneath my gladdened eyes unfurled.
+    Irradiate distances reveal
+    Fair nature wed to human weal;
+    The rolling valley made a plain;
+    Its checkered squares of grass and grain;
+    The silvery rye, the golden wheat,
+    The flowery elders where they meet,--
+    Ay, even the springing corn I see,
+    And garden haunts of bird and bee;
+    And where, in daisied meadows, shines
+    The wandering river through its vines,
+    Move specks at random, which I know
+    Are herds a-grazing to and fro.
+
+    Yet still a goodly height it seems
+    From which the mountain pours his streams,
+    Or hinders, with caressing hands,
+    The sunlight seeking other lands.
+    Like some great giant, strong and proud,
+    He fronts the lowering thunder-cloud,
+    And wrests its treasures, to bestow
+    A guerdon on the realm below;
+    Or, by the deluge roused from sleep
+    Within his bristling forest-keep,
+    Shakes all his pines, and far and wide
+    Sends down a rich, imperious tide.
+    At night the whistling tempests meet
+    In tryst upon his topmost seat,
+    And all the phantoms of the sky
+    Frolic and gibber, storming by.
+    By day I see the ocean-mists
+    Float with the current where it lists,
+    And from my summit I can hail
+    Cloud-vessels passing on the gale,--
+    The stately argosies of air,--
+    And parley with the helmsmen there;
+    Can probe their dim, mysterious source,
+    Ask of their cargo and their course,--
+    _Whence come? where bound?_--and wait reply,
+    As, all sails spread, they hasten by.
+
+    If foiled in what I fain would know,
+    Again I turn my eyes below
+    And eastward, past the hither mead
+    Where all day long the cattle feed,
+    A crescent gleam my sight allures
+    And clings about the hazy moors,--
+    The great, encircling, radiant sea,
+    Alone in its immensity.
+
+    Even there, a queen upon its shore,
+    I know the city evermore
+    Her palaces and temples rears,
+    And wooes the nations to her piers;
+    Yet the proud city seems a mole
+    To this horizon-bounded whole;
+    And, from my station on the mount,
+    The whole is little worth account
+    Beneath the overhanging sky,
+    That seems so far and yet so nigh.
+    Here breathe I inspiration rare,
+    Unburdened by the grosser air
+    That hugs the lower land, and feel
+    Through all my finer senses steal
+    The life of what that life may be,
+    Freed from this dull earth's density,
+    When we, with many a soul-felt thrill,
+    Shall thrid the ether at our will,
+    Through widening corridors of morn
+    And starry archways swiftly borne.
+
+    Here, in the process of the night,
+    The stars themselves a purer light
+    Give out, than reaches those who gaze
+    Enshrouded with the valley's haze.
+    October, entering Heaven's fane,
+    Assumes her lucent, annual reign:
+    Then what a dark and dismal clod,
+    Forsaken by the Sons of God,
+    Seems this sad world, to those which march
+    Across the high, illumined arch,
+    And with their brightness draw me forth
+    To scan the splendors of the North!
+    I see the Dragon, as he toils
+    With Ursa in his shining coils,
+    And mark the Huntsman lift his shield,
+    Confronting on the ancient field
+    The Bull, while in a mystic row
+    The jewels of his girdle glow
+    Or, haply, I may ponder long
+    On that remoter, sparkling throng,
+    The orient sisterhood, around
+    Whose chief our Galaxy is wound;
+    Thus, half enwrapt in classic dreams,
+    And brooding over Learning's gleams,
+    I leave to gloom the under-land,
+    And from my watch-tower, close at hand,
+    Like him who led the favored race,
+    I look on glory face to face!
+
+    So, on the mountain-top, alone,
+    I dwell, as one who holds a throne;
+    Or prince, or peasant, him I count
+    My peer, who stands upon a mount,
+    Sees farther than the tribes below,
+    And knows the joys they cannot know;
+    And, though beyond the sound of speech
+    They reign, my soul goes out to reach,
+    Far on their noble heights elsewhere,
+    My brother-monarchs of the air.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.
+
+
+VI.
+
+THE CATHEDRAL.
+
+"I am going to build a cathedral one of these days," said I to my wife,
+as I sat looking at the slant line of light made by the afternoon sun on
+our picture of the Cathedral of Milan.
+
+"That picture is one of the most poetic things you have among your house
+ornaments," said Rudolph. "Its original is the world's chief beauty,--a
+tribute to religion such as Art never gave before and never can
+again,--as much before the Pantheon, as the Alps, with their virgin
+snows and glittering pinnacles, are above all temples made with hands.
+Say what you will, those Middle Ages that you call Dark had a glory of
+faith that never will be seen in our days of cotton-mills and Manchester
+prints. Where will you marshal such an army of saints as stands in
+yonder white-marble forest, visibly transfigured and glorified in that
+celestial Italian air? Saintship belonged to the mediaeval Church; the
+heroism of religion has died with it."
+
+"That's just like one of your assertions, Rudolph," said I. "You might
+as well say that Nature has never made any flowers since Linnaeus shut up
+his herbarium. We have no statues and pictures of modern saints, but
+saints themselves, thank God, have never been wanting. 'As it was in the
+beginning, is now, and ever shall be--'"
+
+"But what about your cathedral?" said my wife.
+
+"O yes!--my cathedral, yes. When my stocks in cloud-land rise, I'll
+build a cathedral larger than Milan's; and the men, but more
+particularly the _women_, thereon shall be those who have done even more
+than St. Paul tells of in the saints of old, who 'subdued kingdoms,
+wrought righteousness, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge
+of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight,
+turned to flight the armies of the aliens.' I am not now thinking of
+Florence Nightingale, nor of the host of women who have been walking
+worthily in her footsteps, but of nameless saints of more retired and
+private state,--domestic saints, who have tended children not their own
+through whooping-cough and measles, and borne the unruly whims of
+fretful invalids,--stocking-darning, shirt-making saints,--saints who
+wore no visible garment of hair-cloth, bound themselves with no belts of
+spikes and nails, yet in their inmost souls were marked and seared with
+the red cross of a life-long self-sacrifice,--saints for whom the
+mystical terms _self-annihilation_ and _self-crucifixion_ had a real and
+tangible meaning, all the stronger because their daily death was marked
+by no outward sign. No mystical rites consecrated them; no organ-music
+burst forth in solemn rapture to welcome them; no habit of their order
+proclaimed to themselves and the world that they were the elect of
+Christ, the brides of another life: but small eating cares, daily
+prosaic duties, the petty friction of all the littleness and all the
+inglorious annoyances of every day, were as dust that hid the beauty and
+grandeur of their calling even from themselves; they walked unknown even
+to their households, unknown even to their own souls; but when the Lord
+comes to build his New Jerusalem, we shall find many a white stone with
+a new name thereon, and the record of deeds and words which only He that
+seeth in secret knows. Many a humble soul will be amazed to find that
+the seed it sowed in such weakness, in the dust of daily life, has
+blossomed into immortal flowers under the eye of the Lord.
+
+"When I build my cathedral, _that_ woman," I said, pointing to a small
+painting by the fire, "shall be among the first of my saints. You see
+her there, in an every-day dress-cap with a mortal thread-lace border,
+and with a very ordinary worked collar, fastened by a visible and
+terrestrial breastpin. There is no nimbus around her head, no sign of
+the cross upon her breast; her hands are clasped on no crucifix or
+rosary. Her clear, keen, hazel eye looks as if it could sparkle with
+mirthfulness, as in fact it could; there are in it both the subtile
+flash of wit and the subdued light of humor; and though the whole face
+smiles, it has yet a certain decisive firmness that speaks the soul
+immutable in good. That woman shall be the first saint in my cathedral,
+and her name shall be recorded as Saint Esther. What makes saintliness
+in my view, as distinguished from ordinary goodness, is a certain
+quality of magnanimity and greatness of soul that brings life within the
+circle of the heroic. To be really great in little things, to be truly
+noble and heroic in the insipid details of every-day life, is a virtue
+so rare as to be worthy of canonization,--and this virtue was hers. New
+England Puritanism must be credited with the making of many such women.
+Severe as was her discipline, and harsh as seems now her rule, we have
+yet to see whether women will be born of modern systems of tolerance and
+indulgence equal to those grand ones of the olden times whose places now
+know them no more. The inconceivable austerity and solemnity with which
+Puritanism invested this mortal life, the awful grandeur of the themes
+which it made household words, the sublimity of the issues which it hung
+upon the commonest acts of our earthly existence, created characters of
+more than Roman strength and greatness; and the good men and women of
+Puritan training excelled the saints of the Middle Ages, as a soul fully
+developed intellectually, educated to closest thought, and exercised in
+reasoning, is superior to a soul great merely through impulse and
+sentiment.
+
+"My earliest recollections of Aunt Esther, for so our saint was known,
+were of a bright-faced, cheerful, witty, quick-moving little middle-aged
+person, who came into our house like a good fairy whenever there was a
+call of sickness or trouble. If an accident happened in the great
+roistering family of eight or ten children, (and when was not something
+happening to some of us?) and we were shut up in a sick-room, then duly
+as daylight came the quick step and cheerful face of Aunt Esther,--not
+solemn and lugubrious like so many sick-room nurses, but with a
+never-failing flow of wit and story that could beguile even the most
+doleful into laughing at their own afflictions. I remember how a fit of
+the quinsy--most tedious of all sicknesses to an active child--was
+gilded and glorified into quite a _fete_ by my having Aunt Esther all to
+myself for two whole days, with nothing to do but amuse me. She charmed
+me into smiling at the very pangs which had made me weep before, and of
+which she described her own experiences in a manner to make me think
+that, after all, the quinsy was something with an amusing side to it.
+Her knowledge of all sorts of medicines, gargles, and alleviatives, her
+perfect familiarity with every canon and law of good nursing and
+tending, was something that could only have come from long experience in
+those good old New England days when there were no nurses recognized as
+a class in the land, but when watching and the care of the sick were
+among those offices of Christian life which the families of a
+neighborhood reciprocally rendered each other. Even from early youth she
+had obeyed a special vocation as sister of charity in many a sick-room,
+and, with the usual keen intelligence of New England, had widened her
+powers of doing good by the reading of medical and physiological works.
+Her legends of nursing in those days of long typhus-fever and other
+formidable and protracted forms of disease were to our ears quite
+wonderful, and we regarded her as a sort of patron saint of the
+sick-room. She seemed always so cheerful, so bright, and so devoted,
+that it never occurred to us youngsters to doubt that she enjoyed, above
+all things, being with us, waiting on us all day, watching over us by
+night, telling us stories, and answering, in her lively and always
+amusing and instructive way, that incessant fire of questions with which
+a child persecutes a grown person.
+
+"Sometimes, as a reward of goodness, we were allowed to visit her in her
+own room, a neat little parlor in the neighborhood, whose windows looked
+down a hillside on one hand, under the boughs of an apple orchard, where
+daisies and clover and bobolinks always abounded in summer time, and, on
+the other, faced the street, with a green yard flanked by one or two
+shady elms between them and the street. No nun's cell was ever neater,
+no bee's cell ever more compactly and carefully arranged; and to us,
+familiar with the confusion of a great family of little ones, there was
+something always inviting about its stillness, its perfect order, and
+the air of thoughtful repose that breathed over it. She lived there in
+perfect independence, doing, as it was her delight to do, every office
+of life for herself. She was her own cook, her own parlor and chamber
+maid, her own laundress; and very faultless the cooking, washing,
+ironing, and care of her premises were. A slice of Aunt Esther's
+gingerbread, one of Aunt Esther's cookies, had, we all believed, certain
+magical properties such as belonged to no other mortal mixture. Even a
+handful of walnuts that were brought from the depths of her mysterious
+closet had virtues in our eyes such as no other walnuts could approach.
+The little shelf of books that hung suspended by cords against her wall
+was sacred in our regard; the volumes were like no other books; and we
+supposed that she derived from them those stores of knowledge on all
+subjects which she unconsciously dispensed among us,--for she was always
+telling us something of metals, or minerals, or gems, or plants, or
+animals, which awakened our curiosity, stimulated our inquiries, and,
+above all, led us to wonder where she had learned it all. Even the
+slight restrictions which her neat habits imposed on our breezy and
+turbulent natures seemed all quite graceful and becoming. It was right,
+in our eyes, to cleanse our shoes on scraper and mat with extra
+diligence, and then to place a couple of chips under the heels of our
+boots when we essayed to dry our feet at her spotless hearth. We
+marvelled to see our own faces reflected in a thousand smiles and winks
+from her bright brass andirons,--such andirons we thought were seen on
+earth in no other place,--and a pair of radiant brass candlesticks, that
+illustrated the mantle-piece, were viewed with no less respect.
+
+"Aunt Esther's cat was a model for all cats,--so sleek, so intelligent,
+so decorous and well-trained, always occupying exactly her own cushion
+by the fire, and never transgressing in one iota the proprieties
+belonging to a cat of good breeding. She shared our affections with her
+mistress, and we were allowed as a great favor and privilege, now and
+then, to hold the favorite on our knees, and stroke her satin coat to a
+smoother gloss.
+
+"But it was not for cats alone that she had attractions. She was in
+sympathy and fellowship with everything that moved and lived; knew every
+bird and beast with a friendly acquaintanceship. The squirrels that
+inhabited the trees in the front-yard were won in time by her
+blandishments to come and perch on her window-sills, and thence, by
+trains of nuts adroitly laid, to disport themselves on the shining
+cherry tea-table that stood between the windows; and we youngsters used
+to sit entranced with delight as they gambolled and waved their feathery
+tails in frolicsome security, eating rations of gingerbread and bits of
+seed-cake with as good a relish as any child among us.
+
+"The habits, the rights, the wrongs, the wants, and the sufferings of
+the animal creation formed the subject of many an interesting
+conversation with her; and we boys, with the natural male instinct of
+hunting, trapping, and pursuing, were often made to pause in our career,
+remembering her pleas for the dumb things which could not speak for
+themselves.
+
+"Her little hermitage was the favorite resort of numerous friends. Many
+of the young girls who attended the village academy made her
+acquaintance, and nothing delighted her more than that they should come
+there and read to her the books they were studying, when her superior
+and wide information enabled her to light up and explain much that was
+not clear to the immature students.
+
+"In her shady retirement, too, she was a sort of Egeria to certain men
+of genius, who came to read to her their writings, to consult her in
+their arguments, and to discuss with her the literature and politics of
+the day,--through all which her mind moved with an equal step, yet with
+a sprightliness and vivacity peculiarly feminine.
+
+"Her memory was remarkably retentive, not only of the contents of books,
+but of all that great outlying fund of anecdote and story which the
+quaint and earnest New England life always supplied. There were pictures
+of peculiar characters, legends of true events stranger than romance,
+all stored in the cabinets of her mind; and these came from her lips
+with the greater force because the precision of her memory enabled her
+to authenticate them with name, date, and circumstances of vivid
+reality. From that shadowy line of incidents which marks the twilight
+boundary between the spiritual world and the present life she drew
+legends of peculiar clearness, but invested with the mysterious charm
+which always dwells in that uncertain region; and the shrewd flash of
+her eye, and the keen, bright smile with which she answered the
+wondering question, 'What _do_ you suppose it was?' or, 'What could it
+have been?' showed how evenly rationalism in her mind kept pace with
+romance.
+
+"The retired room in which she thus read, studied, thought, and surveyed
+from afar the whole world of science and literature, and in which she
+received friends and entertained children, was perhaps the dearest and
+freshest spot to her in the world. There came a time, however, when the
+neat little independent establishment was given up, and she went to
+associate herself with two of her nieces in keeping house for a
+boarding-school of young girls. Here her lively manners and her gracious
+interest in the young made her a universal favorite, though the cares
+she assumed broke in upon those habits of solitude and study which
+formed her delight. From the day that she surrendered this independency
+of hers, she had never, for more than a score of years, a home of her
+own, but filled the trying position of an accessory in the home of
+others. Leaving the boarding-school, she became the helper of an invalid
+wife and mother in the early nursing and rearing of a family of young
+children,--an office which leaves no privacy and no leisure. Her bed was
+always shared with some little one; her territories were exposed to the
+constant inroads of little pattering feet; and all the various
+sicknesses and ailments of delicate childhood made absorbing drafts upon
+her time.
+
+"After a while she left New England with the brother to whose family she
+devoted herself. The failing health of the wife and mother left more and
+more the charge of all things in her hands; servants were poor, and all
+the appliances of living had the rawness and inconvenience which in
+those days attended Western life. It became her fate to supply all other
+people's defects and deficiencies. Wherever a hand failed, there must
+her hand be. Whenever a foot faltered, she must step into the ranks. She
+was the one who thought for and cared for and toiled for all, yet made
+never a claim that any one should care for her.
+
+"It was not till late in my life that I became acquainted with the deep
+interior sacrifice, the constant self-abnegation, which all her life
+involved. She was born with a strong, vehement, impulsive nature,--a
+nature both proud and sensitive,--a nature whose tastes were passions,
+whose likings and whose aversions were of the most intense and positive
+character. Devoted as she always seemed to the mere practical and
+material, she had naturally a deep romance and enthusiasm of temperament
+which exceeded all that can be written in novels. It was chiefly owing
+to this that a home and a central affection of her own were never hers.
+In her early days of attractiveness, none who would have sought her
+could meet the high requirements of her ideality; she never saw her
+hero,--and so never married. Family cares, the tending of young
+children, she often confessed, were peculiarly irksome to her. She had
+the head of a student, a passionate love for the world of books. A
+Protestant convent, where she might devote herself without interruption
+to study, was her ideal of happiness. She had, too, the keenest
+appreciation of poetry, of music, of painting, and of natural scenery.
+Her enjoyment in any of these things was intensely vivid whenever, by
+chance, a stray sunbeam of the kind darted across the dusty path of her
+life; yet in all these her life was a constant repression. The eagerness
+with which she would listen to any account from those more fortunate
+ones who had known these things, showed how ardent a passion was
+constantly held in check. A short time before her death, talking with a
+friend who had visited Switzerland, she said, with great feeling: 'All
+my life my desire to visit the beautiful places of this earth has been
+so intense, that I cannot but hope that after my death I shall be
+permitted to go and look at them.'
+
+"The completeness of her self-discipline may be gathered from the fact,
+that no child could ever be brought to believe she had not a natural
+fondness for children, or that she found the care of them burdensome. It
+was easy to see that she had naturally all those particular habits,
+those minute pertinacities in respect to her daily movements and the
+arrangement of all her belongings, which would make the meddling,
+intrusive demands of infancy and childhood peculiarly hard for her to
+meet. Yet never was there a pair of toddling feet that did not make free
+with Aunt Esther's room, never a curly head that did not look up, in
+confiding assurance of a welcome smile, to her bright eyes. The
+inconsiderate and never-ceasing requirements of children and invalids
+never drew from her other than a cheerful response; and to my mind
+there is more saintship in this than in the private wearing of any
+number of hair-cloth shirts or belts lined with spikes.
+
+"In a large family of careless, noisy children there will be constant
+losing of thimbles and needles and scissors; but Aunt Esther was always
+ready, without reproach, to help the careless and the luckless. Her
+things, so well kept and so treasured, she was willing to lend, with
+many a caution and injunction it is true, but also with a relish of
+right good-will. And, to do us justice, we generally felt the sacredness
+of the trust, and were more careful of her things than of our own. If a
+shade of sewing-silk were wanting, or a choice button, or a bit of braid
+or tape, Aunt Esther cheerfully volunteered something from her well-kept
+stores, not regarding the trouble she made herself in seeking the key,
+unlocking the drawer, and searching out in bag or parcel just the
+treasure demanded. Never was more perfect precision, or more perfect
+readiness to accommodate others.
+
+"Her little income, scarcely reaching a hundred dollars yearly, was
+disposed of with a generosity worthy a fortune. One tenth was sacredly
+devoted to charity, and a still further sum laid by every year for
+presents to friends. No Christmas or New Year ever came round that Aunt
+Esther, out of this very tiny fund, did not find something for children
+and servants. Her gifts were trifling in value, but well timed,--a ball
+of thread-wax, a paper of pins, a pincushion,--something generally so
+well chosen as to show that she had been running over our needs, and
+noting what to give. She was no less gracious as receiver than as giver.
+The little articles that we made for her, or the small presents that we
+could buy out of our childish resources, she always declared were
+exactly what she needed; and she delighted us by the care she took of
+them and the value she set upon them.
+
+"Her income was a source of the greatest pleasure to her, as maintaining
+an independence without which she could not have been happy. Though she
+constantly gave, to every family in which she lived, services which no
+money could repay, it would have been the greatest trial to her not to
+be able to provide for herself. Her dress, always that of a true
+gentlewoman,--refined, quiet, and neat,--was bought from this restricted
+sum, and her small travelling expenses were paid out of it. She abhorred
+anything false or flashy: her caps were trimmed with _real_ thread-lace,
+and her silk dresses were of the best quality, perfectly well made and
+kept; and, after all, a little sum always remained over in her hands for
+unforeseen exigencies.
+
+"This love of independence was one of the strongest features of her
+life, and we often playfully told her that her only form of selfishness
+was the monopoly of saintship,--that she who gave so much was not
+willing to allow others to give to her,--that she who made herself
+servant of all was not willing to allow others to serve her.
+
+"Among the trials of her life must be reckoned much ill-health; borne,
+however, with such heroic patience that it was not easy to say when the
+hand of pain was laid upon her. She inherited, too, a tendency to
+depression of spirits, which at times increased to a morbid and
+distressing gloom. Few knew or suspected these sufferings, so completely
+had she learned to suppress every outward manifestation that might
+interfere with the happiness of others. In her hours of depression she
+resolutely forbore to sadden the lives of those around her with her own
+melancholy, and often her darkest moods were so lighted up and adorned
+with an outside show of wit and humor, that those who had known her
+intimately were astonished to hear that she had ever been subject to
+depression.
+
+"Her truthfulness of nature amounted almost to superstition. From her
+promise once given she felt no change of purpose could absolve her; and
+therefore rarely would she give it absolutely, for she _could not_ alter
+the thing that had gone forth from her lips. Our belief in the
+certainty of her fulfilling her word was like our belief in the
+immutability of the laws of nature. Whoever asked her got of her the
+absolute truth on every subject, and, when she had no good thing to say,
+her silence was often truly awful. When anything mean or ungenerous was
+brought to her knowledge, she would close her lips resolutely; but the
+flash in her eyes showed what she would speak were speech permitted. In
+her last days she spoke to a friend of what she had suffered from the
+strength of her personal antipathies. 'I thank God,' she said, 'that I
+believe at last I have overcome all that too, and that there has not
+been, for some years, any human being toward whom I have felt a movement
+of dislike.'
+
+"The last year of her life was a constant discipline of unceasing pain,
+borne with that fortitude which could make her an entertaining and
+interesting companion even while the sweat of mortal agony was starting
+from her brow. Her own room she kept as a last asylum, to which she
+would silently retreat when the torture became too intense for the
+repression of society, and there alone, with closed doors, she wrestled
+with her agony. The stubborn independence of her nature took refuge in
+this final fastness; and she prayed only that she might go down to death
+with the full ability to steady herself all the way, needing the help of
+no other hand.
+
+"The ultimate struggle of earthly feeling came when this proud
+self-reliance was forced to give way, and she was obliged to leave
+herself helpless in the hands of others. 'God requires that I should
+give up my last form of self-will,' she said; 'now I have resigned
+_this_, perhaps he will let me go home.'
+
+"In a good old age, Death, the friend, came and opened the door of this
+mortal state, and a great soul, that had served a long apprenticeship to
+little things, went forth into the joy of its Lord; a life of
+self-sacrifice and self-abnegation passed into a life of endless rest."
+
+"But," said Rudolph, "I rebel at this life of self-abnegation and
+self-sacrifice. I do not think it the duty of noble women, who have
+beautiful natures and enlarged and cultivated tastes, to make themselves
+the slaves of the sick-room and nursery."
+
+"Such was not the teaching of our New England faith," said I. "Absolute
+unselfishness,--the death of self,--such were its teachings, and such as
+Esther's the characters it made. 'Do the duty nearest thee,' was the
+only message it gave to 'women with a mission'; and from duty to duty,
+from one self-denial to another, they rose to a majesty of moral
+strength impossible to any form of mere self-indulgence. It is of souls
+thus sculptured and chiselled by self-denial and self-discipline that
+the living temple of the perfect hereafter is to be built. The pain of
+the discipline is short, but the glory of the fruition is eternal."
+
+
+
+
+A PIONEER EDITOR.
+
+
+The historian who, without qualification of his statement, should date
+the commencement of our late civil war from the attack on Fort Sumter,
+instead of the first attempt by the slaveholders to render a single
+property interest paramount in the relations of the country, would prove
+himself unfit for his task. The battles fought in the press, pulpit, and
+forum, in ante-war days, were as much agencies in the great conflict as
+the deadlier ones fought since, on land and sea. Men strove in the
+former, as in the latter case, for the extension of the slave system on
+one side, and for its total suppression on the other; and it is the
+proud distinction of the early partisans of freedom to be recognized now
+as the pioneers--the advance-guard--of the armed hosts who at last won
+the victory for humanity.
+
+This view of the actual beginning of the war makes the facts in the
+lives of those antislavery men who took the lead in the good fight, and
+especially of such as died with their armor on, of the utmost value to
+the historian. We therefore propose to offer a contribution to the
+record, by tracing the career of one who acted a distinguished part in
+the struggle, as an antislavery journalist.
+
+Gamaliel Bailey was born in New Jersey,--a State where antislavery men,
+or, indeed, men of progress in any direction, are so far from being a
+staple growth, that they can barely be said to be indigenous to her
+soil. His birthday was December 3, 1807. He was the son of a Methodist
+preacher noted for his earnestness and devotion to the duties of his
+calling. His mother was a woman of active brain and sympathetic heart.
+It was from her, as is not unusual with men of marked traits, that the
+son derived his distinguishing mental characteristics. His education was
+such as was obtainable in the private schools of Philadelphia, which,
+whatever their advantages to others, were not particularly well
+calculated to prepare young Bailey for the study of the learned
+profession he subsequently chose; and he had to seek, without their aid,
+the classical knowledge necessary to a mastery of the technicalities of
+medical science. Nevertheless he graduated with credit in the Jefferson
+Medical College, and at so early an age--for he was then only
+twenty--that the restriction in its charter deprived him of the usual
+diploma for a year. The statutes of New Jersey, however, while
+forbidding him to prescribe for the physical ailments of her citizens,
+did not pronounce him too young to undertake the mental training of her
+children, and he eagerly availed himself of the pedagogue's privilege of
+bending the twigs of mind amid the pine forests of his native State. By
+the time he was entitled to his diploma, he was satisfied that the
+overdraught upon his vitality had been so great, during his college
+years, as utterly to unfit him for the field of action on which, but a
+twelvemonth before, he had been so desirous to enter. A sea voyage was
+chosen as the best means of resting his brain while strengthening his
+body and preparing it for the heavy demands which his profession would
+naturally make.
+
+Having, with the scanty income from his year's teaching, equipped
+himself for his voyage, he obeyed at once the dictates of necessity and
+of judgment, and shipped on a vessel bound for China. Instead of a
+successful physician winning golden opinions from all, Dr. Bailey was
+now a common sailor before the mast, receiving from his superiors oaths
+or orders as the case might be. The ship's destination was Canton, and
+its arrival in port was attended by such an unusual amount of sickness
+among the crew, that it became necessary to assign young Bailey the
+office of surgeon. This he filled with promptness and skill, and when
+the vessel set sail for Philadelphia, the sailor was again found at his
+post, performing his duties as acceptably as could have been expected
+from a greenhorn on his first cruise. Once more on his native shore, and
+in some degree reinvigorated by travel, he opened his office for the
+practice of medicine. At the end of three months he found himself out of
+patients, and in a situation far from enjoyable to one of his active
+temperament.
+
+But, luckily for Dr. Bailey, whatever it may have been for the church of
+his fathers, just at this time the so-called "Radicals" had begun their
+reform movement against Methodist Episcopacy, which resulted in the
+secession of a number of the clergy and laity, principally in the Middle
+States, and the organization of the Methodist Protestants. These
+"Radicals" had their head-quarters at Baltimore. There they started an
+organ under the title of "The Methodist Protestant," and to the
+editorship of this journal Dr. Bailey was called. His youthful
+inexperience as a writer was not the only remarkable feature of this
+engagement; for he had not even the qualification of being at that time
+a professor of religion. His connection with "The Methodist Protestant"
+was a brief one; but it was terminated by lack of sufficient funds to
+sustain a regular editor, and not by lack of ability in the editor.
+
+Dr. Bailey was again adrift, and we next find him concerned in "Kelley's
+Expedition to Oregon." This had been projected at St. Louis, which was
+to be its starting-point; and thither hastened our adventurous young
+physician--to learn that the expedition, having had little more to rest
+upon than that baseless fabric so often supplied by printers' ink, was
+an utter failure. Finding himself without funds to pay for the costly
+means of conveyance then used in the West, he made his way back as far
+as Cincinnati on foot. Soon after his arrival there the cholera broke
+out. This presented an aspect of affairs rather inviting to a courageous
+spirit. He gladly embraced the opening for practice; and, happening to
+be known to some of the faculty of the place, he was recommended for the
+appointment of Physician to the Cholera Hospital. Thus he was soon
+introduced to the general confidence of the profession and the public,
+and seemed to be on the highway to fame. Dr. Eberlie, a standard medical
+authority at that day, as he still is among many practitioners of the
+old school in the West, was then preparing his work on the Diseases of
+Children, and he availed himself of Dr. Bailey's aid. This opened an
+unexpected field to the latter for the exercise of his ability as a
+writer; and the work in question contains abundant evidence that he
+would have succeeded in the line of medical authorship. But
+circumstances proved unfavorable to his connection with Dr. Eberlie, and
+he again devoted himself to the practice of his profession, in which he
+continued for a time with great success.
+
+At this date, however, an event of great interest occurred in connection
+with the agitation of the slavery question,--an event exercising a most
+decided influence on the career of Dr. Bailey,--in fact, changing
+entirely the current of his eventful life. We allude to the discussions
+of slavery at Lane Seminary, and the memorable expulsion of a number of
+the students for their persistence in promulging antislavery doctrines.
+Dr. Bailey was then engaged at the Seminary in the delivery of a course
+of lectures on Physiology. He became interested in the pending
+discussion, and espoused the proslavery side. For this his mind had
+probably been unconsciously prepared by the current of thought in
+Cincinnati, then under the mercantile control of her proslavery
+customers from Kentucky and other Southern States. But erelong he
+appeared as a convert to the antislavery side of the discussion. This he
+himself was wont to attribute, in great part, to the light which an
+honest comparison of views threw upon the subject; but it is evident
+that his conversion was somewhat accelerated by the expulsion of his
+antislavery antagonists in debate. Following the lead of these new
+sympathies, he became (in 1835) editorially associated with that great
+pioneer advocate of freedom, James G. Birney, whose venerated name has
+been so honorably connected with the recent triumph of the Union arms,
+through the courage of three of his sons. The paper was "The Cincinnati
+Philanthropist," so well remembered by the earlier espousers of
+antislavery truth. The association continued about a year. Dr. Bailey
+then became sole editor of the Philanthropist, and soon after sole
+proprietor. It was from the pages of this journal that a series of
+antislavery tracts were reprinted, which had not a little to do in
+giving fresh impulse to the discussions of that day. They were entitled
+"Facts for the People."
+
+The relation of Dr. Bailey to a journal which was regarded by the
+slave-owners as the organ of their worst enemies made him a marked man,
+and called him to endure severe and unexpected ordeals. In 1836, his
+opponents incited against him the memorable mob, whose first act was the
+secret destruction of his press at midnight. Soon after the riot raged
+openly, and not only destroyed the remaining contents of his
+printing-office, but the building itself. Mr. Birney, being the older
+and more conspicuous of the offenders, was of course more emphatically
+the object of the mob's wrath than the junior associate. But the latter
+shared with him the personal perils of the day, while bearing the brunt
+of the pecuniary losses. As is usual in such outbreaks, after three days
+of fury, the lawless spirit of the people subsided. There was a
+repetition of violence in 1840, however, and during another three days'
+reign of terror two more presses were destroyed. But such was the
+indomitable energy of the man in whose person and property the
+constitutional liberty of the press was thus assailed, that in three
+weeks the Philanthropist was again before the public, sturdily defending
+the truth it was established to proclaim; and this, be it remembered,
+when the press-work of even weekly journals was not let out, in
+Cincinnati, as jobs for "lightning presses," but was done in the
+proprietors' own offices, on presses to be obtained only from distant
+manufactories.
+
+It was in this year that the Liberty party, of which Dr. Bailey was a
+prominent leader, entered for the first time into the Presidential
+contest, with James G. Birney as its candidate.
+
+Not yet satiated, the spirit of mob violence manifested itself a third
+time in 1843; but it was suppressed by the interference of the military
+power, and its demonstration was followed by a growth of liberal
+sentiment altogether unlooked for. Availing himself of this favorable
+change, Dr. Bailey started a daily paper to which the name of "The
+Herald" was given.
+
+The unprecedented ordeal through which Dr. Bailey had passed, involving
+not only his family, but Mr. Birney, Mr. Clawson, and other friends of
+his enterprise, was, after all, but needful training for the subsequent
+work allotted to the reformer. He continued the publication of the Daily
+Herald, and the Philanthropist also, but under the name of "The Weekly
+Herald and Philanthropist," until 1847. With a growing family and a
+meagre income, the intervening years marked a season of self-denial to
+himself and his excellent wife such as few, even among reformers, have
+been called to pass through. And yet through all his poverty his
+cheerfulness was unfaltering, and inspired all who came in contact with
+him. There was a better day before him,--better in a pecuniary as well
+as a political sense. He had now fairly won a reputation throughout the
+country for courage and ability as an antislavery journalist. A project
+for establishing an antislavery organ at the seat of the national
+government had been successfully carried out by the Executive Committee
+of the American and Foreign Antislavery Society, under the lead of that
+now venerable and esteemed pioneer of freedom, Lewis Tappan. The
+editorial charge of it was tendered, with great propriety, to Dr.
+Bailey, and was accepted. He entered upon his duties as editor in chief
+of "The National Era" in January, 1847, with the Reverend Amos A.
+Phelps, now deceased, and John G. Whittier, as corresponding editors,
+and L. P. Noble as publishing agent. "The Daily Herald" and "The Weekly
+Herald and Philanthropist" were transferred to Messrs. Sperry and
+Matthews, with Stanley Matthews as editor; but the political ambition of
+the latter prevented his continuing the paper in the steadfast
+antislavery tone of his predecessor, and it soon ceased to appear.[B]
+
+The establishment of the National Era, while it furnished a most
+appropriate field for Dr. Bailey's talents, also marked an era in the
+antislavery history of the country. At the centres of all governments
+there is found a fulcrum whose value politicians have long since
+demonstrated by its use,--too frequently for the most unworthy purposes.
+There had always been organs for conservatism at Washington, but none
+for progress. There were numbers of bold thinkers throughout the
+country, who had found, here and there, a representative of their ideas
+in the government. But they had no newspaper to keep watch and ward over
+him, or to correctly report his acts to his constituents,--no vehicle
+through which they could bring their thoughts to bear upon him or
+others. This was furnished by the National Era. But this was not the
+only direction in which it proved useful. It enabled the friends of
+emancipation everywhere to communicate freely with those against whose
+gigantic system of wrong they felt it their duty to wage war, where such
+were found willing to read their antagonists' arguments, instead of
+taking them as perverted by proslavery journals.
+
+The first effect of the Era upon the local antislavery journals which it
+found in existence was, unquestionably, to excite not a little
+apprehension and jealousy among their conductors. Naturally they felt
+that the national reputation of Dr. Bailey and his assistants, aided by
+a central position, was calculated to detract from their own importance
+in the estimation of their patrons. But, besides this, there was the
+actual fact of the Era's large supply of original and high-toned
+literary matter, added to the direct and reliable Congressional news it
+was expected to furnish, which stared them threateningly in the face.
+And we well remember now what pain these petty jealousies gave to the
+sensitive nature of our departed friend. But these gradually subsided,
+until there was hardly an antislavery editor of average discernment who
+did not come to see that a national organ like the Era, by legitimating
+discussion and keeping up the heat and blaze of a vigorous agitation, at
+the nation's very centre, against that nation's own giant crime, would
+prove a benefit, in the end, to all colaborers worthy of the name. And
+the increase of antislavery journals, as well as of vigor in conducting
+them, in the period subsequent to 1847, proved that this was the correct
+view.
+
+Although now so favorably placed for contest with his great foe, Dr.
+Bailey was here subjected to a renewal of the assaults which had become
+painfully familiar in the West. His paper had not been in existence more
+than fifteen months when an event occurred which, although he had in it
+no agency whatever, brought down upon his devoted head a fourth
+discharge of the vials of popular wrath. Some seventy or eighty slaves
+attempted to escape from Washington in the steamer Pearl, and instantly
+the charge of complicity was laid at his door. His office and dwelling
+were surrounded by a furious crowd, including a large proportion of
+office-holding F.F.V.'s, and some "gentlemen of property and standing."
+These gentlemen threatened the entire destruction of the press and type
+of the Era, while the editor's personal safety, with that of his family,
+was again put in peril for the space of three terrific days. The Federal
+metropolis had never known such days since the torch applied by a
+foreign foe had wrapped the first Capitol in flames. The calm
+self-possession of Dr. Bailey, when he made his appearance unarmed
+before the swaying mob, and addressed them from the steps of his
+dwelling,--as described by the late Dr. Houston in a letter to the New
+York Tribune, from notes taken while he was concealed in the house,--was
+such that, while disarming the leaders with the simple majesty of the
+truth, it did not fail to produce a reaction even in the most
+exasperated members of the mob.
+
+It would indeed be an interesting task to trace the public influence of
+this last demonstration, for it offered phases of interest to both
+parties. It is sufficient to say, that the Era's unmolested existence
+ever after was simply due to the instincts of self-preservation in the
+community. The issue was practically presented to the owners of real
+estate in the District, whether freedom of debate on all topics of
+public concern should be tolerated there, or the capital be removed to
+some Western centre. The bare possibility of this event was more than
+the slaveholding land-owners could face, and produced the desired
+effect. The continuance of the paper once acquiesced in, the tact of its
+editor, aided by that remarkable suavity of manners which made him a
+favorite in the private circles of Washington, was sufficient to forever
+forbid the probability of a second mob. And thenceforward the Era
+increased in influence as well as circulation. The latter, indeed, soon
+reached a figure which entitled it to a share of government patronage,
+while the former commanded the respect even of the enemies of the cause
+it defended.
+
+But this is not all that is to be said of the Era. To that paper belongs
+the honor of introducing to the world the story of "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
+Although reference has frequently been made to the origin of this
+wonderful fiction, the facts of its inception and growth have never been
+given to the public. These are so curious, that we are happy to be able
+to present what politicians would call the "secret history" of this
+book. The account was furnished to a friend by Dr. Bailey himself, when
+about to embark for Europe, on his first voyage for health, in 1853; the
+manuscript, now used for the first time, was hurriedly penned, without
+expectation of its appearance in print, and therefore has all the
+dashing freedom which might be looked for in a communication from one
+friend to another. We give it _verbatim_, that it may serve for a
+_souvenir_, as well as a contribution to the literary history of the
+time.
+
+                                          "NEW YORK, May 27, 1853.
+
+     "In the beginning of the year 1851, as my custom has been, I
+     sent remittances to various writers whom I wished to furnish
+     contributions to the Era, during that volume. Among these was
+     Mrs. Stowe. I sent her one hundred dollars, saying to her that
+     for that sum she might write as _much_ as she pleased, _what_
+     she pleased, and _when_ she pleased. I did not dream that she
+     would attempt a novel, for she had never written one. Some time
+     in the summer she wrote me that she was going to write me a
+     story about 'How a Man became a Thing.' It would occupy a few
+     numbers of the Era, in chapters. She did not suppose or dream
+     that it would expand to a novel, nor did I. She changed the
+     title to 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' and commenced it in August. I
+     read two or three of the first chapters, to see that everything
+     was going on right, and read no more then. She proceeded,--the
+     story grew,--it seemed to have no end,--everybody talked of it.
+     I thought the mails were never so irregular, for none of my
+     subscribers was willing to lose a single number of the Era
+     while the story was going on. Mrs. Bailey attracted my
+     attention by her special devotion to it, and Mr. Chase always
+     read it before anything else. Of the hundreds of letters
+     received weekly, renewing subscriptions or sending new ones,
+     there was scarcely one that did not contain some cordial
+     reference to Uncle Tom. I wrote to Mrs. Stowe, and told her
+     that, although such a story had not been contracted for, and I
+     had, in my programme, limited my remittance to her to one
+     hundred dollars, yet, as the thing had grown beyond all our
+     calculations, I felt bound to make her another remittance. So I
+     sent her two hundred dollars more. The story was closed early
+     in the spring of 1852. I had not yet read it; but I wrote to
+     Mrs. Stowe that, as I had not contemplated so large an outlay
+     in my plans for the volume, as the paper had not received so
+     much pecuniary benefit from its publication as it would have
+     done could my readers have foreseen what it was to be, and as
+     my large circulation had served as a tremendous advertisement
+     for the work, which was now about to be published separately,
+     and of which she held the copyright alone, I supposed that I
+     ought not to pay for it so much as if these circumstances had
+     not existed. But I simply stated the case to her,--submitted
+     everything to her judgment,--and would pay her additional just
+     exactly what she should determine was right. She named one
+     hundred dollars more; this I immediately remitted. And thus
+     terminated my relations with 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' but not with
+     its author, who is still engaged as a regular contributor to
+     the Era. Dr. Snodgrass is hereby commended to Mr. Clephane [Dr.
+     Bailey's clerk], who is authorized to hand him any letters
+     between Mrs. Stowe and myself that may aid him in his
+     undertaking."
+
+It may be proper to say that the "undertaking" referred to contemplated
+a biographical sketch, not of Dr. Bailey, but of his distinguished
+contributor,--a project the execution of which circumstances did not
+favor, and which was therefore abandoned.
+
+"Uncle Tom's Cabin," and the remarkable introduction of its author to
+fame and pecuniary fortune, were not the only results of a similar
+character referable to the Era. Mrs. Southworth also made her literary
+_debut_ in the same journal. Previous to her connection with the Era,
+she had only published some short sketches in the Baltimore Saturday
+Visiter, over her initial "E," or "Emma" at most; and even these
+signatures gave her much trouble, as her letters to the editor plainly
+indicated, so fearful was she of the recognition and unfavorable
+criticism of her friends. She had a painful lack of confidence in her
+own ability. Just before the transfer of the subscription list of the
+Visiter to the Era, she had sent in a story. To this, against her
+earnest protest, the editor had affixed her entire name, and the story,
+prepared for the Visiter, was transferred with its list to the Era, and
+was there published, in spite of the deprecations of Mrs. Southworth. It
+served the purpose intended. The attention of Dr. Bailey was called to
+one until then unknown to him, although residing in the same city, and
+he at once gave her a paying engagement in his journal. This brought her
+under new influences, which resulted in her conversion to the principles
+of the antislavery reform,--a conversion whose fruits have since been
+shown in her deeds as well as her writings. And thus commenced the
+literary career of another successful author, who, but for the existence
+of the Era, would probably have been left to struggle on in the
+adversity from which her pen has so creditably set her free.
+
+Unduly encouraged by the success of his weekly journal, Dr. Bailey
+started a daily edition of the Era. Having committed himself to continue
+it for a year without regard to pecuniary results, he did so, and here
+the publication ceased. The experiment cost him heavily. This, however,
+he anticipated, though he of course also anticipated ultimate profit,
+notwithstanding the warning which he had received from the equally
+unlucky experiment of the Cincinnati Daily Herald. In a letter to the
+writer of this, dated December 18, 1853, he said: "I start the Daily
+with the full expectation of sinking five thousand dollars on it. Of
+course I can afford no extra expenses, but must do nearly all the work
+on it myself,"--a statement which shows at once the hopefulness and the
+energy of our friend's disposition.
+
+Dr. Bailey died at sea, while on his way to Europe, on the fifth day of
+June, 1859. It was the second voyage thither which he had undertaken
+within a few years, for the benefit of his broken health. His body was
+brought home and interred at Washington. With its editor died the
+National Era; for it was discontinued soon after his decease.
+
+Mr. Raymond of the New York Daily Times, who was a fellow-passenger
+with Dr. Bailey, wrote an account of his last hours for his paper, which
+has by no means lost its melancholy interest. "I gathered from his
+conversation," says Mr. Raymond, "that he did not consider himself to be
+very ill, at least, that his lungs were not affected, but that a
+long-continued dyspepsia, and the nervous excitement which his labors
+had induced, had combined to bring about the weakness under which he
+suffered. For the first two or three days he was upon deck for the
+greater part of the time. The weather was fresh, though not unpleasantly
+cold, and the sea not rough enough to occasion any considerable
+discomfort. The motion, however, affected him disagreeably. He slept
+badly, had no appetite, and could relish nothing but a little fruit now
+and then. His eldest son was with him, and attended upon him with all a
+fond son's solicitude. Except myself, I do not think he had another
+acquaintance on board. He was cheerful and social, and talked with
+interest of everything connected with public affairs at home and abroad.
+He suffered some inconvenience from the fact that his room was below,
+and that he could only reach it by descending two flights of stairs. We
+occasionally made a couch of cushions for him upon deck, when he became
+fatigued; but this made him too conspicuous for his taste, and he seemed
+uneasily fearful of attracting attention to himself as an invalid. After
+Tuesday the sea became remarkably smooth, and so continued to the end of
+the voyage. But it brought him no relief; his strength failed with
+failing appetite; and on Thursday, from staying too long on deck, he
+took cold, which confined him to his room next day. Otherwise he seemed
+about as usual through that day and Saturday, and on Sunday morning
+seemed even better, saying that he had slept unusually well, and felt
+strengthened and refreshed. He took some slight nourishment, and
+attempted to get up from his berth without assistance; the effort was
+too much for him, however, and his son, who had left his room at his
+request, but stood at the door, saw him fall as he attempted to stand.
+He at once went in, raised him, and laid him upon the couch. Seeing that
+he was greatly distressed in breathing, he went immediately for Dr.
+Smith, the surgeon of the ship. I met him on deck, and, hearing of his
+father's condition, went at once to his room. I found him wholly
+unconscious, breathing with difficulty, but perfectly quiet, and
+seemingly asleep. Drs. Beale and Dubois were present, and endeavored to
+give him a stimulant, but he was unable to swallow, and it was evident
+that he was dying. He continued in this state for about half an hour;
+his breathing became slower and slower, until finally it ceased
+altogether, and that was all! Not a movement of a muscle, not a spasm or
+a tremor of any kind, betrayed the moment when his spirit took its
+departure. An infant, wearied with play on a summer's eve, could not
+have fallen asleep more gently."
+
+As mourners over him who thus passed away in the very prime of manhood,
+there were left a wife, whose maiden name was Maria L. Shands, and who
+was the daughter of a Methodist preacher and planter of Sussex County,
+Virginia, and six children, three sons and three daughters. In Mrs.
+Bailey her husband had found a woman of rare intelligence as well as
+courage, whose companionship proved most sustaining and consoling amid
+the trials of his eventful life. She and five of their children still
+live to revere his memory. Two of the survivors are sons; and it is
+pleasant to add that one of these has done honor to his parentage, as
+well as to himself, by continuing what is virtually the same good fight,
+as a commander of colored troops, under General William Birney, the son
+of the very James G. Birney who was Dr. Bailey's editorial associate in
+Cincinnati.
+
+Subjected as Dr. Bailey was so frequently to the fury of mobs, and the
+pressure of social opposition and pecuniary want, he led the hosts of
+Antislavery Reform into the very stronghold of the enemy's country; and
+to say that he maintained his position with integrity and success is but
+to pronounce the common praise of his contemporaries and colaborers. As
+a writer he was clear and logical to an uncommon degree, carrying
+certain conviction to the mind, wherever it was at all open to the
+truth; and with the rare habit of stating fairly the position of his
+opponent, he never failed of winning his respect and his confidence. The
+death of such a man was well calculated to fill the friends of progress
+throughout the world with unfeigned regret. Especially must they lament
+that he departed too soon to witness the triumph of liberty, for which
+it had so long been his pleasure "to labor and to wait."
+
+We learn with much satisfaction, that a "Life of Dr. Bailey" is in
+course of preparation, with the sanction of Mrs. Bailey, which, while
+affording much valuable information concerning the antislavery events of
+the past, will also offer space, wanting here, to do full justice to the
+memory of this estimable man.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[B] These facts are given because of an erroneous statement which crept
+into the brief though kind biographical notice of Dr. Bailey in "The New
+American Cyclopaedia," to the effect that the subscription list of the
+Philanthropist was transferred with its editor to the National Era. It
+was the list of "The Saturday Visiter," published for many years, as an
+antislavery journal, at Baltimore, which was transferred to the Era,
+together with the services of its editor and proprietor (J. E.
+Snodgrass) as special correspondent and publishing agent at that
+important point. This arrangement admirably served to secure to the Era
+a circulation in Southern communities where the Visiter had already
+found its way, and where it would otherwise have been difficult to
+introduce a paper which was notoriously the central organ of
+Abolitionism.
+
+
+
+
+GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+He was gone for good, this time.
+
+At the fair the wrestling was ended, and the tongues going over it all
+again, and throwing the victors; the greasy pole, with leg of mutton
+attached by ribbons, was being hoisted, and the swings flying, and the
+lads and lasses footing it to the fife and tabor, and the people
+chattering in groups; when the clatter of a horse's feet was heard, and
+a horseman burst in and rode recklessly through the market-place;
+indeed, if his noble horse had been as rash as he was, some would have
+been trampled under foot. The rider's face was ghastly: such as were not
+exactly in his path had time to see it, and wonder how this terrible
+countenance came into that merry place. Thus, as he passed, shouts of
+dismay arose, and a space opened before him, and then closed behind him
+with a great murmur that followed at his heels.
+
+Tom Leicester was listening, spell-bound, on the outskirts of the
+throng, to the songs and humorous tirades of a pedler selling his wares;
+and was saying to himself, "I too will be a pedler." Hearing the row, he
+turned round, and saw his master just coming down with that stricken
+face.
+
+Tom could not read his own name in print or manuscript; and these are
+the fellows that beat us all at reading countenances: he saw in a moment
+that some great calamity had fallen on Griffith's head; and nature
+stirred in him. He darted to his master's side, and seized the bridle.
+"What is up?" he cried.
+
+But Griffith did not answer nor notice. His ears were almost deaf, and
+his eyes, great and staring, were fixed right ahead; and, to all
+appearance, he did not see the people. He seemed to be making for the
+horizon.
+
+"Master! for the love of God, speak to me," cried Leicester. "What have
+they done to you? Whither be you going, with the face of a ghost?"
+
+"Away, from the hangman," shrieked Griffith, still staring at the
+horizon. "Stay me not; my hands itch for their throats; my heart thirsts
+for their blood; but I'll not hang for a priest and a wanton." Then he
+suddenly turned on Leicester, "Let thou go, or--" and he lifted his
+heavy riding-whip.
+
+Then Leicester let go the rein, and the whip descended on the horse's
+flank. He went clattering furiously over the stones, and drove the
+thinner groups apart like chaff, and his galloping feet were soon heard
+fainter and fainter till they died away in the distance. Leicester stood
+gaping.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Griffith's horse, a black hunter of singular power and beauty, carried
+his wretched master well that day. He went on till sunset, trotting,
+cantering, and walking, without intermission; the whip ceased to touch
+him, the rein never checked him. He found he was the master, and he went
+his own way. He took his broken rider back into the county where he had
+been foaled. But a few miles from his native place they came to the
+"Packhorse," a pretty little roadside inn, with farm-yard and buildings
+at the back. He had often baited here in his infancy; and now, stiff and
+stumbling with fatigue, the good horse could not pass the familiar
+place; he walked gravely into the stable-yard, and there fairly came to
+an end; craned out his drooping head, crooked his limbs, and seemed of
+wood. And no wonder. He was ninety-three miles from his last corn.
+
+Paul Carrick, a young farrier, who frequented the "Packhorse," happened
+just then to be lounging at the kitchen door, and saw him come in. He
+turned directly, and shouted into the house, "Ho! Master Vint, come
+hither. Here's Black Dick come home, and brought you a worshipful
+customer."
+
+The landlord bustled out of the kitchen, crying, "They are welcome
+both." Then he came lowly louting to Griffith, cap in hand, and held the
+horse, poor immovable brute; and his wife courtesied perseveringly at
+the door.
+
+Griffith dismounted, and stood there looking like one in a dream.
+
+"Please you come in, sir," said the landlady, smiling professionally.
+
+He followed her mechanically.
+
+"Would your worship be private? We keep a parlor for gentles."
+
+"Ay, let me be alone," he groaned.
+
+Mercy Vint, the daughter, happened to be on the stairs and heard him:
+the voice startled her, and she turned round directly to look at the
+speaker; but she only saw his back going into the room, and then he
+flung himself like a sack into the arm-chair.
+
+The landlady invited him to order supper: he declined. She pressed him.
+He flung a piece of money on the table, and told her savagely to score
+his supper, and leave him in peace.
+
+She flounced out with a red face, and complained to her husband in the
+kitchen.
+
+Harry Vint rung the crown-piece on the table before he committed himself
+to a reply. It rang like a bell. "Churl or not, his coin is good," said
+Harry Vint, philosophically. "I'll eat his supper, dame, for that
+matter."
+
+"Father," whispered Mercy, "I do think the gentleman is in trouble."
+
+"And that is no business of mine, neither," said Harry Vint.
+
+Presently the guest they were discussing called loudly for a quart of
+burnt wine.
+
+When it was ready, Mercy offered to take it in to him. She was curious.
+The landlord looked up rather surprised; for his daughter attended to
+the farm, but fought shy of the inn and its business.
+
+"Take it, lass, and welcome for me," said Mrs. Vint, pettishly.
+
+Mercy took the wine in, and found Griffith with his head buried in his
+hands.
+
+She stood awhile with the tray, not knowing what to do.
+
+Then, as he did not move, she said softly, "The wine, sir, an if it
+please you."
+
+Griffith lifted his head, and turned two eyes clouded with suffering
+upon her. He saw a buxom, blooming young woman, with remarkably
+dove-like eyes that dwelt with timid, kindly curiosity upon him. He
+looked at her in a half-distracted way, and then put his hand to the
+mug. "Here's perdition to all false women!" said he, and tossed half the
+wine down at a single draught.
+
+"'T is not to me you drink, sir," said Mercy, with gentle dignity. Then
+she courtesied modestly and retired, discouraged, not offended.
+
+The wretched Griffith took no notice,--did not even see he had repulsed
+a friendly visitor. The wine, taken on an empty stomach, soon stupefied
+him, and he staggered to bed.
+
+He awoke at daybreak: and O the agony of that waking!
+
+He lay sighing awhile, with his hot skin quivering on his bones, and his
+heart like lead; then got up and flung his clothes on hastily, and asked
+how far to the nearest seaport.
+
+Twenty miles.
+
+He called for his horse. The poor brute was dead lame.
+
+He cursed that good servant for going lame. He walked round and round
+like a wild beast, chafing and fuming awhile; then sank into a torpor of
+dejection, and sat with his head bowed on the table all day.
+
+He ate scarcely any food; but drank wine freely, remarking, however,
+that it was false-hearted stuff, did him no good, and had no taste as
+wine used to have. "But nothing is what it was," said he. "Even I was
+happy once. But that seems years ago."
+
+"Alas! poor gentleman; God comfort you," said Mercy Vint, and came, with
+the tears in her dove-like eyes, and said to her father, "To be sure his
+worship hath been crossed in love; and what could she be thinking of?
+Such a handsome, well-made gentleman!"
+
+"Now that is a wench's first thought," said Harry Vint; "more likely
+lost his money, gambling, or racing. But, indeed, I think 't is his head
+is disordered, not his heart. I wish the 'Packhorse' was quit of him,
+maugre his laced coat. We want no kill-joys here."
+
+That night he was heard groaning, and talking, and did not come down at
+all.
+
+So at noon Mrs. Vint knocked at his door. A weak voice bade her enter.
+She found him shivering, and he asked her for a fire.
+
+She grumbled, out of hearing, but lighted a fire.
+
+Presently his voice was heard hallooing. He wanted all the windows open,
+he was so burning hot.
+
+The landlady looked at him, and saw his face was flushed and swollen;
+and he complained of pain in all his bones. She opened the windows, and
+asked him would he have a doctor sent for. He shook his head
+contemptuously.
+
+However, towards evening, he became delirious, and raved and tossed, and
+rolled his head as if it was an intolerable weight he wanted to get rid
+of.
+
+The females of the family were for sending at once for a doctor; but the
+prudent Harry demurred.
+
+"Tell me, first, who is to pay the fee," said he. "I've seen a fine coat
+with the pockets empty, before to-day."
+
+The women set up their throats at him with one accord, each after her
+kind.
+
+"Out, fie!" said Mercy; "are we to do naught for charity?"
+
+"Why, there's his horse, ye foolish man," said Mrs. Vint.
+
+"Ay, ye are both wiser than me," said Harry Vint, ironically. And soon
+after that he went out softly.
+
+The next minute he was in the sick man's room, examining his pockets. To
+his infinite surprise he found twenty gold pieces, a quantity of silver,
+and some trinkets.
+
+He spread them all out on the table, and gloated on them with greedy
+eyes. They looked so inviting, that he said to himself they would be
+safer in his custody than in that of a delirious person, who was even
+now raving incoherently before him, and could not see what he was doing.
+He therefore proceeded to transfer them to his own care.
+
+On the way to his pocket, his shaking hand was arrested by another hand,
+soft, but firm as iron.
+
+He shuddered, and looked round in abject terror; and there was his
+daughter's face, pale as his own, but full of resolution. "Nay, father,"
+said she; "_I_ must take charge of these: and well do you know why."
+
+These simple words cowed Harry Vint, so that he instantly resigned the
+money and jewels, and retired, muttering that "things were come to a
+pretty pass,"--"a man was no longer master in his own house," etc.,
+etc., etc.
+
+While he inveighed against the degeneracy of the age, the women paid him
+no more attention than the age did, but just sent for the doctor. He
+came, and bled the patient. This gave him a momentary relief; but when,
+in the natural progress of the disease, sweating and weakness came on,
+the loss of the precious vital fluid was fatal, and the patient's pulse
+became scarce perceptible. There he lay, with wet hair, and gleaming
+eyes, and haggard face, at death's door.
+
+An experienced old crone was got to nurse him, and she told Mrs. Vint he
+would live may be three days.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Paul Carrick used to come to the "Packhorse" after Mercy Vint, and,
+finding her sad, asked her what was the matter.
+
+"What should it be," said she, "but the poor gentleman a-dying overhead;
+away from all his friends."
+
+"Let me see him," said Paul.
+
+Mercy took him softly into the room.
+
+"Ay, he is booked," said the farrier, "Doctor has taken too much blood
+out of the man's body. They kill a many that way."
+
+"Alack, Paul! must he die? Can naught be done?" said Mercy, clasping her
+hands.
+
+"I don't say that, neither," said the farrier. "He is a well-made man:
+he is young, _I_ might save him, perhaps, if I had not so many beasts to
+look to. I'll tell you what you do. Make him soup as strong as strong;
+have him watched night and day, and let 'em put a spoonful of warm wine
+into him every hour, and then of soup; egg flip is a good thing, too;
+change his bed-linen, and keep the doctors from him: that is his only
+chance; he is fairly dying of weakness. But I must be off. Farmer
+Blake's cow is down for calving; I must give her an ounce of salts
+before 't is too late."
+
+Mercy Vint scanned the patient closely, and saw that Paul Carrick was
+right. She followed his instructions to the letter, with one exception.
+Instead of trusting to the old woman, of whom she had no very good
+opinion, she had the great arm-chair brought into the sick-room, and
+watched the patient herself by night and day; a gentle hand cooled his
+temples; a gentle hand brought concentrated nourishment to his lips; and
+a mellow voice coaxed him to be good and swallow it. There are voices it
+is not natural to resist; and Griffith learned by degrees to obey this
+one, even when he was half unconscious.
+
+At the end of three days this zealous young nurse thought she discerned
+a slight improvement, and told her mother so. Then the old lady came and
+examined the patient, and shook her head gravely. Her judgment, like her
+daughter's, was influenced by her wishes.
+
+The fact is, both landlord and landlady were now calculating upon
+Griffith's decease. Harry had told her about the money and jewels, and
+the pair had put their heads together, and settled that Griffith was a
+gentleman highwayman, and his spoil would never be reclaimed after his
+decease, but fall to those good Samaritans, who were now nursing him,
+and intended to bury him respectably. The future being thus settled,
+this worthy couple became a little impatient; for Griffith, like Charles
+the Second, was "an unconscionable time dying."
+
+We order dinner to hasten a lingering guest; and, with equal force of
+logic, mine host of the "Packhorse" spoke to White, the village
+carpenter, about a full-sized coffin; and his wife set the old crone to
+make a linen shroud, unobtrusively, in the bake-house.
+
+On the third afternoon of her nursing, Mercy left her patient, and
+called up the crone to tend him. She herself, worn out with fatigue,
+threw herself on a bed in her mother's room, hard by, and soon fell
+asleep.
+
+She had slept about two hours when she was wakened by a strange noise in
+the sick-chamber. A man and a woman quarrelling.
+
+She bounded off the bed, and was in the room directly.
+
+Lo and behold, there were the nurse and the dying man abusing one
+another like pickpockets.
+
+The cause of this little misunderstanding was not far to seek. The old
+crone had brought up her work: _videlicet_, a winding-sheet all but
+finished, and certain strips of glazed muslin about three inches deep.
+She soon completed the winding-sheet, and hung it over two chairs in the
+patient's sight; she then proceeded to double the slips in six, and nick
+them; then she unrolled them, and they were frills, and well adapted to
+make the coming corpse absurd, and divest it of any little dignity the
+King of Terrors might bestow on it.
+
+She was so intent upon her congenial task that she did not observe the
+sick man had awakened, and was viewing her and her work with an
+intelligent but sinister eye.
+
+"What is that you are making?" said he, grimly.
+
+The voice was rather clear, and strong, and seemed so loud and strange
+in that still chamber, that it startled the woman mightily. She uttered
+a little shriek, and then was wroth. "Plague take the man!" said she;
+"how you scared me. Keep quiet, do; and mind your own business." [The
+business of going off the hooks.]
+
+"I ask you what is that you are making," said Griffith, louder, and
+raising himself on his arm.
+
+"Baby's frills," replied the woman, coolly, recovering that contempt for
+the understandings of the dying which marks the veritable crone.
+
+"Ye lie," said Griffith. "And there is a shroud. Who is that for?"
+
+"Who should it be for, thou simple body? Keep quiet, do, till the change
+comes. 'T won't be long now; art too well to last till sundown."
+
+"So 't is for me, is it?" screamed Griffith. "I'll disappoint ye yet.
+Give me my clothes. I'll not lie here to be measured for my grave, ye
+old witch."
+
+"Here's manners!" cackled the indignant crone. "Ye foul-mouthed knave!
+is this how you thank a decent woman for making a comfortable corpse of
+ye, you that has no right to die in your shoes, let a be such dainties
+as muslin neck-ruff, and shroud of good Dutch flax."
+
+At this Griffith discharged a volley in which "vulture," "hag,"
+"blood-sucker," etc., blended with as many oaths: during which Mercy
+came in.
+
+She glided to him, with her dove's eyes full of concern, and laid her
+hand gently on his shoulder. "You'll work yourself a mischief," said
+she; "leave me to scold her. Why, my good Nelly, how could ye be so
+hare-brained? Prithee take all that trumpery away this minute: none here
+needeth it, nor shall not this many a year, please God."
+
+"They want me dead," said Griffith to her, piteously, finding he had got
+one friend, and sunk back on his pillow exhausted.
+
+"So it seems," said Mercy, cunningly. "But I'd balk them finely. I'd up
+and order a beef-steak this minute."
+
+"And shall," said Griffith, with feeble spite. "Leastways, do you order
+it, and I'll eat it: ---- d--n her!"
+
+Sick men are like children; and women soon find that out, and manage
+them accordingly. In ten minutes Mercy brought a good rump-steak to the
+bedside, and said, "Now for 't. Marry come up, with her winding-sheets!"
+
+Thus played upon, and encouraged, the great baby ate more than half the
+steak; and soon after perspired gently, and fell asleep.
+
+Paul Carrick found him breathing gently, with a slight tint of red in
+his cheek, and told Mercy there was a change for the better. "We have
+brought him to a true intermission," said he; "so throw in the bark at
+once."
+
+"What, drench his honor's worship!" said Mercy, innocently. "Nay, send
+thou the medicine, and I'll find womanly ways to get it down him."
+
+Next day came the doctor, and whispered softly to Mrs. Vint, "How are we
+all up stairs?"
+
+"Why couldn't you come afore?" replied Mrs. Vint, crossly. "Here's
+Farrier Carrick stepped in, and curing him out of hand,--the meddlesome
+body."
+
+"A farrier rob me of my patient!" cried the doctor, in high dudgeon.
+
+"Nay, good sir, 't is no fault of mine. This Paul is a sort of a kind of
+a follower of our Mercy's: and she is mistress here, I trow."
+
+"And what hath his farriership prescribed? Friar's balsam, belike."
+
+"Nay, I know not; but you may soon learn, for he is above, physicking
+the gentleman (a pretty gentleman!) and suiting to our Mercy--after a
+manner."
+
+The doctor declined to make one in so mixed a consultation.
+
+"Give me my fee, dame," said he; "and as for this impertinent farrier,
+the patient's blood be on his head; and I'd have him beware the law."
+
+Mrs. Vint went to the stair-foot, and screamed, "Mercy, the good doctor
+wants his fee. Who is to pay it, I wonder?"
+
+"I'll bring it him anon," said a gentle voice; and Mercy soon came down
+and paid it with a willing air that half disarmed professional fury.
+
+"'T is a good lass, dame," said the doctor, when she was gone; "and, by
+the same token, I wish her better mated than to a scrub of a farrier."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Griffith, still weak, but freed of fever, woke one glorious afternoon,
+and heard a bird-like voice humming a quaint old ditty, and saw a field
+of golden wheat through an open window, and seated at that window the
+mellow songstress, Mercy Vint, plying her needle, with lowered lashes
+but beaming face, a picture of health and quiet womanly happiness.
+Things were going to her mind in that sick-room.
+
+He looked at her, and at the golden corn and summer haze beyond, and the
+tide of life seemed to rush back upon him.
+
+"My good lass," said he, "tell me, where am I? for I know not."
+
+Mercy started, and left off singing, then rose and came slowly towards
+him, with her work in her hand.
+
+Innocent joy at this new symptom of convalescence flushed her comely
+features, but she spoke low.
+
+"Good sir, at the 'Packhorse,'" said she, smiling.
+
+"The 'Packhorse'? and where is that?"
+
+"Hard by Allerton village."
+
+"And where is that? not in Cumberland?"
+
+"Nay, in Lancashire, your worship. Why, whence come you that know not
+the 'Packhorse,' nor yet Allerton township? Come you from Cumberland?"
+
+"No matter whence I come. I'm going on board ship,--like my father
+before me."
+
+"Alas, sir, you are not fit; you have been very ill, and partly
+distraught."
+
+She stopped; for Griffith turned his face to the wall, with a deep
+groan. It had all rushed over him in a moment.
+
+Mercy stood still, and worked on, but the water gathered in her eyes at
+that eloquent groan.
+
+By and by Griffith turned round again, with a face of anguish, and filmy
+eyes, and saw her in the same place, standing, working, and pitying.
+
+"What, are _you_ there still?" said he, roughly.
+
+"Ay, sir; but I'll go, sooner than be troublesome. Can I fetch you
+anything?"
+
+"No. Ay, wine; bring me wine to drown it all."
+
+She brought him a pint of wine.
+
+"Pledge me," said he, with a miserable attempt at a smile.
+
+She put the cup to her lips, and sipped a drop or two; but her dove's
+eyes were looking up at him over the liquor all the time. Griffith soon
+disposed of the rest, and asked for more.
+
+"Nay," said she, "but I dare not: the doctor hath forbidden excess in
+drinking."
+
+"The doctor! What doctor?"
+
+"Doctor Paul," said she, demurely. "He hath saved your life, sir, I do
+think."
+
+"Plague take him for that!"
+
+"So say not I."
+
+Here, she left him with an excuse. "'T is milking time, sir; and you
+shall know that I am our dairymaid. I seldom trouble the inn."
+
+Next day she was on the window-seat, working and beaming. The patient
+called to her in peevish accents to put his head higher. She laid down
+her work with a smile, and came and raised his head.
+
+"There, now, that is too high," said he; "how awkward you are."
+
+"I lack experience, sir, but not good will. There, now, is that a little
+better?"
+
+"Ay, a little. I'm sick of lying here. I want to get up. Dost hear what
+I say? I--want--to get up."
+
+"And so you shall. As soon as ever you are fit. To-morrow, perhaps.
+To-day you must e'en be patient. Patience is a rare medicine."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tic, tic, tic! "What a noise they are making down stairs. Go, lass, and
+bid them hold their peace."
+
+Mercy shook her head. "Good lack-a-day! we might as well bid the river
+give over running; but, to be sure, this comes of keeping a hostelry,
+sir. When we had only the farm, we were quiet, and did no ill to no
+one."
+
+"Well, sing me, to drown their eternal buzzing: it worries me dead."
+
+"Me sing! alack, sir, I'm no songster."
+
+"That is false. You sing like a throstle. I dote on music; and, when I
+was delirious, I heard one singing about my bed; I thought it was an
+angel at that time, but 't was only you, my young mistress: and now I
+ask you, you say me nay. That is the way with you all. Plague take the
+girl, and all her d----d, unreasonable, hypocritical sex. I warrant me
+you'd sing, if I wanted to sleep, and dance the Devil to a standstill."
+
+Mercy, instead of flouncing out of the room, stood looking on him with
+maternal eyes, and chuckling like a bird. "That is right, sir: tax us
+all to your heart's content. O, but I'm a joyful woman to hear you; for
+'t is a sure sign of mending when the sick take to rating of their
+nurses."
+
+"In sooth, I am too cross-grained," said Griffith, relenting.
+
+"Not a whit, sir, for my taste. I've been in care for you: and now you
+are a little cross, that maketh me easy."
+
+"Thou art a good soul. Wilt sing me a stave after all?"
+
+"La, you now; how you come back to that. Ay, and with a good heart: for,
+to be sure, 't is a sin to gainsay a sick man. But indeed I am the
+homeliest singer. Methinks 't is time I went down and bade them cook
+your worship's supper."
+
+"Nay, I'll not eat nor sup till I hear thee sing."
+
+"Your will is my law, sir," said Mercy, dryly, and retired to the
+window-seat; that was the first obvious preliminary. Then she fiddled
+with her apron, and hemmed, and waited in hopes a reprieve might come;
+but a peevish, relentless voice demanded the song at intervals.
+
+So then she turned her head carefully away from her hearer, lowered her
+eyes, and, looking the picture of guilt and shame all the time, sang an
+ancient ditty. The poltroon's voice was rich, mellow, clear, and sweet
+as honey; and she sang the notes for the sake of the words, not the
+words for the sake of the notes, as all but Nature's singers do.
+
+The air was grave as well as sweet; for Mercy was of an old Puritan
+stock, and even her songs were not giddy-paced, but solid, quaint, and
+tender: all the more did they reach the soul.
+
+In vain was the blushing cheek averted, and the honeyed lips. The
+ravishing tones set the birds chirping outside, yet filled the room
+within, and the glasses rang in harmony upon the shelf as the sweet
+singer poured out from her heart (so it seemed) the speaking-song:--
+
+    "In vain you tell your parting lover
+    You wish fair winds may waft him over.
+    Alas! what winds can happy prove
+    That bear me far from her I love?
+    Alas! what dangers on the main
+    Can equal those that I sustain
+    From stinted love and cold disdain?" etc.
+
+Griffith beat time with his hand awhile, and his face softened and
+beautified as the melody curled about his heart. But soon it was too
+much for him. He knew the song,--had sung it to Kate Peyton in their
+days of courtship. A thousand memories gushed in upon his soul and
+overpowered him. He burst out sobbing violently, and wept as if his
+heart must break.
+
+"Alas! what have I done?" said Mercy; and the tears ran from her eyes at
+the sight. Then, with native delicacy, she hurried from the room.
+
+What Griffith Gaunt went through that night, in silence, was never known
+but to himself. But the next morning he was a changed man. He was all
+dogged resolution,--put on his clothes unaided, though he could hardly
+stand to do it, and borrowed the landlord's staff, and crawled out a
+smart distance into the sun. "It was kill or cure," said he. "I am to
+live, it seems. Well, then, the past is dead. My life begins again
+to-day."
+
+Hen-like, Mercy soon learned this sally of her refractory duckling, and
+was uneasy. So, for an excuse to watch him, she brought him out his
+money and jewels, and told him she had thought it safest to take charge
+of them.
+
+He thanked her cavalierly, and offered her a diamond ring.
+
+She blushed scarlet, and declined it; and even turned a meekly
+reproachful glance on him with her dove's eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He had a suit of russet made, and put away his fine coat, and forbade
+any one to call him "Your worship." "I am a farmer, like yourselves,"
+said he; "and my name is--Thomas Leicester."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A brain fever either kills the unhappy lover, or else benumbs the very
+anguish that caused it.
+
+And so it was with Griffith. His love got benumbed, and the sense of his
+wrongs vivid. He nursed a bitter hatred of his wife; only, as he could
+not punish her without going near her, and no punishment short of death
+seemed enough for her, he set to work to obliterate her from his very
+memory, if possible. He tried employment: he pottered about the little
+farm, advising and helping,--and that so zealously that the landlord
+retired altogether from that department, and Griffith, instead of he,
+became Mercy's ally, agricultural and bucolical. She was a shepherdess
+to the core, and hated the poor "Packhorse."
+
+For all that, it was her fate to add to its attractions: for Griffith
+bought a _viol da gambo_, and taught her sweet songs, which he
+accompanied with such skill, sometimes, with his voice, that good
+company often looked in on the chance of a good song sweetly sung and
+played.
+
+The sick, in body or mind, are egotistical. Griffith was no exception:
+bent on curing his own deep wound, he never troubled his head about the
+wound he might inflict.
+
+He was grateful to his sweet nurse, and told her so. And his gratitude
+charmed her all the more that it had been rather long in coming.
+
+He found this dove-like creature a wonderful soother: he applied her
+more and more to his sore heart.
+
+As for Mercy, she had been too good and kind to her patient not to take
+a tender interest in his convalescence. Our hearts warm more to those we
+have been kind to, than to those who have been kind to us: and the
+female reader can easily imagine what delicious feelings stole into that
+womanly heart when she saw her pale nursling pick up health and strength
+under her wing, and become the finest, handsomest man in the parish.
+
+Pity and admiration,--where these meet, love is not far behind.
+
+And then this man, who had been cross and rough while he was weak,
+became gentler, kinder, and more deferential to her, the stronger he
+got.
+
+Mrs. Vint saw they were both fond of each other's company, and
+disapproved it. She told Paul Carrick if he had any thought of Mercy he
+had better give over shilly-shallying, for there was another man after
+her.
+
+Paul made light of it, at first. "She has known me too long to take up
+her head with a new-comer," said he. "To be sure I never asked her to
+name the day; but she knows my mind well enough, and I know hers."
+
+"Then you know more than I do," said the mother, ironically.
+
+He thought over this conversation, and very wisely determined not to run
+unnecessary risks. He came up one afternoon, and hunted about for Mercy,
+till he found her milking a cow in the adjoining paddock.
+
+"Well, lass," said he, "I've good news for thee. My old dad says we may
+have his house to live in. So now you and I can yoke next month if ye
+will."
+
+"Me turn the honest man out of his house!" said Mercy, mighty
+innocently.
+
+"Who asks you? He nobbut bargains for the chimney-corner: and you are
+not the girl to begrudge the old man that."
+
+"O no, Paul. But what would father do if I were to leave _his_ house?
+Methinks the farm would go to rack and ruin; he is so wrapped up in his
+nasty public."
+
+"Why, he has got a helper, by all accounts: and if you talk like that,
+you will never wed at all."
+
+"Never is a big word. But I'm too young to marry yet. Jenny, thou jade,
+stand still."
+
+The attack and defence proceeded upon these terms for some time; and the
+defendant had one base advantage; and used it. Her forehead was wedged
+tight against Jenny's ribs, and Paul could not see her face. This, and
+the feminine evasiveness of her replies, irritated him at last.
+
+"Take thy head out o' the coow," said he, roughly, "and answer straight.
+Is all our wooing to go for naught?"
+
+"Wooing? You never said so much to me in all these years as you have
+to-day."
+
+"O, ye knew my mind well enough. There's a many ways of showing the
+heart."
+
+"Speaking out is the best, I trow."
+
+"Why, what do I come here for twice a week, this two years past, if not
+for thee?"
+
+"Ay, for me, and father's ale."
+
+"And thou canst look at me, and tell me that? Ye false, hard-hearted
+hussy. But nay, thou wast never so: 't is this Thomas Leicester hath
+bewitched thee, and set thee against thy true lover."
+
+"Mr. Leicester pays no suit to me," said Mercy, blushing. "He is a right
+civil-spoken gentleman, and you know you saved his life."
+
+"The more fool I. I wish I had known he was going to rob me of my lass's
+heart, I'd have seen him die a hundred times ere I'd have interfered.
+But they say if you save a man's life he'll make you rue it. Mercy, my
+lass, you are well respected in the parish. Take a thought, now: better
+be a farrier's wife than a gentleman's mistress."
+
+Mercy did take her head "out of the cow" at this, and, for once, her
+cheek burned with anger; but the unwonted sentiment died before it could
+find words, and she said, quietly, "I need not be either, against my
+will."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Young Carrick made many such appeals to Mercy Vint; but he could never
+bring her to confess to him that he and she had ever been more than
+friends, or were now anything less than friends. Still he forced her to
+own to herself, that, if she had never seen Thomas Leicester, her quiet
+affection and respect for Carrick would probably have carried her to the
+altar with him.
+
+His remonstrances, sometimes angry, sometimes tearful, awoke her pity,
+which was the grand sentiment of her heart, and disturbed her peace.
+
+Moreover, she studied the two men in her quiet, thoughtful way, and saw
+that Carrick loved her with all his honest, though hitherto tepid
+heart; but Griffith had depths, and could love with more passion than
+ever he had shown for her. "He is not the man to have a fever by reason
+of me," said the poor girl to herself. But I am afraid even this
+attracted her to Griffith. It nettled a woman's soft ambition; which is,
+to be as well loved as ever woman was.
+
+And so things went on, and, as generally happens, the man who was losing
+ground went the very way to lose more. He spoke ill of Griffith behind
+his back: called him a highwayman, a gentleman, an ungrateful,
+undermining traitor. But Griffith never mentioned Carrick; and so, when
+he and Mercy were together, her old follower was pleasingly obliterated,
+and affectionate good-humor reigned. Thus Griffith, _alias_ Thomas,
+became her sunbeam, and Paul her cloud.
+
+But he who had disturbed the peace of others, his own turn came.
+
+One day he found Mercy crying. He sat down beside her, and said, kindly,
+"Why, sweetheart, what is amiss?"
+
+"No great matter," said she; and turned her head away, but did not check
+her tears, for it was new and pleasant to be consoled by Thomas
+Leicester.
+
+"Nay, but tell me, child."
+
+"Well, then, Jessie Carrick has been at me; that is all."
+
+"The vixen! what did she say?"
+
+"Nay, I'm not pleased enow with it to repeat it. She did cast something
+in my teeth."
+
+Griffith pressed her to be more explicit: she declined, with so many
+blushes, that his curiosity was awakened, and he told Mrs. Vint, with
+some heat, that Jess Carrick had been making Mercy cry.
+
+"Like enow," said Mrs. Vint, coolly. "She'll eat her victuals all one
+for that, please God."
+
+"Else I'll wring the cock-nosed jade's neck, next time she comes here,"
+replied Griffith; "but, Dame, I want to know what she can have to say to
+Mercy to make her cry."
+
+Mrs. Vint looked him steadily in the face for some time, and then and
+there decided to come to an explanation. "Ten to one 't is about her
+brother," said she; "you know this Paul is our Mercy's sweetheart."
+
+At these simple words Griffith winced, and his countenance changed
+remarkably. Mrs. Vint observed it, and was all the more resolved to have
+it out with him.
+
+"Her sweetheart!" said Griffith. "Why, I have seen them together a dozen
+of times, and not a word of courtship."
+
+"O, the young men don't make many speeches in these parts. They show
+their hearts by act."
+
+"By act? why, I met them coming home from milking t' other evening.
+Mercy was carrying the pail, brimful; and that oaf sauntered by her
+side, with his hands in his pockets. Was that the act of a lover?"
+
+"I heard of it, sir," said Mrs. Vint, quietly; "and as how you took the
+pail from her, willy nilly, and carried it home. Mercy was vexed about
+it. She told me you panted at the door, and she was a deal fitter to
+carry the pail than you, that is just off a sick-bed, like. But lawk,
+sir, ye can't go by the likes of that. The bachelors here they'd see
+their sweethearts carry the roof into next parish on their backs, like a
+snail, and never put out a hand; 't is not the custom hereaway. But, as
+I was saying, Paul and our Mercy kept company, after a manner: he never
+had the wit to flatter her as should he, nor the stomach to bid her name
+the day and he'd buy the ring; but he talked to her about his sick
+beasts more than he did to any other girl in the parish, and she'd have
+ended by going to Church with him; only you came and put a coolness
+atween 'em."
+
+"I! How?"
+
+"Well, sir, our Mercy is a kind-hearted lass, though I say it, and you
+were sick, and she did nurse you; and that was a beginning. And, to be
+sure, you are a fine personable man, and capital company; and you are
+always about the girl; and, bethink you, sir, she is flesh and blood
+like her neighbors; and they say, once a body has tasted venison-steak,
+it spoils their stomach for oat-porridge. Now that is Mercy's case, I'm
+thinking; not that she ever said as much to me,--she is too reserved.
+But, bless your heart, I'm forced to go about with eyes in my head, and
+watch 'em all a bit,--me that keeps an inn."
+
+Griffith groaned. "I'm a villain!" said he.
+
+"Nay, nay," said Mrs. Vint. "Gentlefolks must be amused, cost what it
+may; but, hoping no offence, sir, the girl was a good friend to you in
+time of sickness; and so was this Paul, for that matter."
+
+"She was," cried Griffith; "God bless her. How can I ever repay her?"
+
+"Well, sir," said Mrs. Vint, "if that comes from your heart, you might
+take our Mercy apart, and tell her you like her very well, but not
+enough to marry a farmer's daughter,--don't say an innkeeper's daughter,
+or you'll be sure to offend her. She is bitter against the 'Packhorse.'
+Says you, 'This Paul is an honest lad, turn your heart back to him.'
+And, with that, mount your black horse and ride away, and God speed you,
+sir; we shall often talk of you at the 'Packhorse,' and naught but
+good."
+
+Griffith gave the woman his hand, and his breast labored visibly.
+
+Jealousy was ingrained in the man. Mrs. Vint had pricked his conscience,
+but she had wounded his foible. He was not in love with Mercy, but he
+esteemed her, and liked her, and saw her value, and, above all, could
+not bear another man should have her.
+
+Now this gave the matter a new turn. Mrs. Vint had overcome her dislike
+to him long ago: still he was not her favorite. But his giving her his
+hand with a gentle pressure, and his manifest agitation, rather won her;
+and, as uneducated women are your true weathercocks, she went about
+directly. "To be sure," said she, "our Mercy is too good for the likes
+of him. She is not like Harry and me. She has been well brought up by
+her Aunt Prudence, as was governess in a nobleman's house. She can read
+and write, and cast accounts; good at her sampler, and can churn and
+make cheeses, and play of the viol, and lead the psalm in church, and
+dance a minuet, she can, with any lady in the land. As to her nursing in
+time of sickness, that I leave to you, sir."
+
+"She is an angel," cried Griffith, "and my benefactress: no man living
+is good enough for her." And he went away, visibly discomposed.
+
+Mrs. Vint repeated this conversation to Mercy, and told her Thomas
+Leicester was certainly in love with her. "Shouldst have seen his face,
+girl, when I told him Paul and you were sweethearts. 'T was as if I had
+run a knife in his heart."
+
+Mercy murmured a few words of doubt; but she kissed her mother
+eloquently, and went about, rosy and beaming, all that afternoon.
+
+As for Griffith, his gratitude and his jealousy were now at war, and
+caused him a severe mental struggle.
+
+Carrick, too, was spurred by jealousy, and came every day to the house,
+and besieged Mercy; and Griffith, who saw them together, and did not
+hear Mercy's replies, was excited, irritated, alarmed.
+
+Mrs. Vint saw his agitation, and determined to bring matters to a
+climax. She was always giving him a side thrust; and, at last, she told
+him plainly that he was not behaving like a man. "If the girl is not
+good enough for you, why make a fool of her, and set her against a good
+husband?" And when he replied she was good enough for any man in
+England, "Then," said she, "why not show your respect for her as Paul
+Carrick does? He likes her well enough to go to church with her."
+
+With the horns of this dilemma she so gored Kate Peyton's husband that,
+at last, she and Paul Carrick, between them, drove him out of his
+conscience.
+
+So he watched his opportunity and got Mercy alone. He took her hand and
+told her he loved her, and that she was his only comfort in the world,
+and he found he could not live without her.
+
+At this she blushed and trembled a little, and leaned her brow upon his
+shoulder, and was a happy creature for a few moments.
+
+So far, fluently enough; but then he began to falter and stammer, and
+say that for certain reasons he could not marry at all. But if she could
+be content with anything short of that, he would retire with her into a
+distant country, and there, where nobody could contradict him, would
+call her his wife, and treat her as his wife, and pay his debt of
+gratitude to her by a life of devotion.
+
+As he spoke, her brow retired an inch or two from his shoulder; but she
+heard him quietly out, and then drew back and confronted him, pale, and,
+to all appearance, calm.
+
+"Call things by their right names," said she. "What you offer me this
+day, in my father's house, is, to be your mistress. Then--God forgive
+you, Thomas Leicester."
+
+With this oblique and feminine reply, and one look of unfathomable
+reproach from her soft eyes, she turned her back on him; but,
+remembering her manners, courtesied at the door; and so retired; and
+unpretending Virtue lent her such true dignity that he was struck dumb,
+and made no attempt to detain her.
+
+I think her dignified composure did not last long when she was alone; at
+least, the next time he saw her, her eyes were red; his heart smote him,
+and he began to make excuses and beg her forgiveness. But she
+interrupted him. "Don't speak to me no more, if you please, sir," said
+she, civilly, but coldly.
+
+Mercy, though so quiet and inoffensive, had depth and strength of
+character. She never told her mother what Thomas Leicester had proposed
+to her. Her honest pride kept her silent, for one thing. She would not
+have it known she had been insulted. And, besides that, she loved Thomas
+Leicester still, and could not expose or hurt him. Once there was an
+Israelite without guile, though you and I never saw him; and once there
+was a Saxon without bile, and her name was Mercy Vint. In this heart of
+gold the affections were stronger than the passions. She was deeply
+wounded, and showed it in a patient way to him who had wounded her, but
+to none other. Her conduct to him in public and private was truly
+singular, and would alone have stamped her a remarkable character. She
+declined all communication with him in private, and avoided him steadily
+and adroitly; but in public she spoke to him, sang with him when she was
+asked, and treated him much the same as before. He could see a subtle
+difference, but nobody else could.
+
+This generosity, coupled with all she had done for him before,
+penetrated his heart and filled him with admiration and remorse. He
+yielded to Mrs. Vint's suggestions, and told her she was right; he would
+tear himself away, and never see the dear "Packhorse" again. "But oh!
+Dame," said he, "'t is a sorrowful thing to be alone in the world again,
+and naught to do. If I had but a farm, and a sweet little inn like this
+to go to, perchance my heart would not be quite so heavy as 't is this
+day at thoughts of parting from thee and thine."
+
+"Well, sir," said Mrs. Vint, "if that is all, there is the 'Vine' to let
+at this moment. 'T is a better place of business than this; and some
+meadows go with it, and land to be had in the parish."
+
+"I'll ride and see it," said Griffith, eagerly: then, dejectedly, "but,
+alas! I have no heart to keep an inn without somebody to help me, and
+say a kind word now and then. Ah! Mercy Vint, thou hast spoiled me for
+living alone."
+
+This vacillation exhausted Mrs. Vint's patience. "What are ye sighing
+about, ye foolish man?" said she, contemptuously; "you have got it all
+your own way. If 't is a wife ye want, ask Mercy, and don't take a nay.
+If ye would have a housekeeper, you need not want one long. I'll be
+bound there's plenty of young women where you came from as would be glad
+to keep the 'Vine' under you. And, if you come to that, our Mercy is a
+treasure on the farm, but she is no help in the inn, no more than a wax
+figure. She never brought us a shilling, till you came and made her sing
+to your bass-viol. Nay, what you want is a smart, handsome girl, with a
+quick eye and a ready tongue, and one as can look a man in the face, and
+not given to love nor liquor. Don't you know never such a one?"
+
+"Not I. Humph, to be sure there is Caroline Ryder. She is handsome, and
+hath a good wit. She is a lady's maid."
+
+"That's your woman, if she'll come. And to be sure she will; for to be
+mistress of an inn, that's a lady's maid's Paradise."
+
+"She would have come a few months ago, and gladly. I'll write to her."
+
+"Better talk to her, and persuade her."
+
+"I'll do that, too; but I must write to her first."
+
+"So do then; but whatever you do, don't shilly-shally no longer. If
+wrestling was shilly-shallying, methinks you'd bear the bell, you or
+else Paul Carrick. Why, all his trouble comes on 't. He might have wed
+our Mercy a year agone for the asking. Shilly-shally belongs to us that
+be women. 'T is despicable in a man."
+
+Thus driven on all sides, Griffith rode and inspected the "Vine" (it was
+only seven miles off); and, after the usual chaffering, came to terms
+with the proprietor.
+
+He fixed the day for his departure, and told Mrs. Vint he must ride into
+Cumberland first to get some money, and also to see about a housekeeper.
+
+He made no secret of all this; and, indeed, was not without hopes Mercy
+would relent, or perhaps be jealous of this housekeeper. But the only
+visible effect was to make her look pale and sad. She avoided him in
+private as before.
+
+Harry Vint was loud in his regrets, and Carrick openly exultant.
+Griffith wrote to Caroline Ryder, and addressed the letter in a feigned
+hand, and took it himself to the nearest post-town.
+
+The letter came to hand, and will appear in that sequence of events on
+which I am now about to enter.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+If Griffith Gaunt suffered anguish, he inflicted agony. Mrs. Gaunt was a
+high-spirited, proud, and sensitive woman; and he crushed her with foul
+words. Leonard was a delicate, vain, and sensitive man, accustomed to
+veneration. Imagine such a man hurled to the ground, and trampled upon.
+
+Griffith should not have fled; he should have stayed and enjoyed his
+vengeance on these two persons. It might have cooled him a little had he
+stopped and seen the immediate consequences of his savage act.
+
+The priest rose from the ground, pale as ashes, and trembling with fear
+and hate.
+
+The lady was leaning, white as a sheet, against a tree, and holding it
+with her very nails for a little support.
+
+They looked round at one another,--a piteous glance of anguish and
+horror. Then Mrs. Gaunt turned and flung her arm round so that the palm
+of her hand, high raised, confronted Leonard. I am thus particular
+because it was a gesture grand and terrible as the occasion that called
+it forth,--a gesture that _spoke_, and said, "Put the whole earth and
+sea between us forever after this."
+
+The next moment she bent her head and rushed away, cowering and wringing
+her hands. She made for her house as naturally as a scared animal for
+its lair; but, ere she could reach it, she tottered under the shame, the
+distress, and the mere terror, and fell fainting, with her fair forehead
+on the grass.
+
+Caroline Ryder was crouched in the doorway, and did not see her come
+out of the grove, but only heard a rustle; and then saw her proud
+mistress totter forward and lie, white, senseless, helpless, at her very
+feet.
+
+Ryder uttered a scream, but did not lose her presence of mind. She
+instantly kneeled over Mrs. Gaunt, and loosened her stays with quick and
+dexterous hand.
+
+It was very like the hawk perched over and clawing the ringdove she has
+struck down.
+
+But people with brains are never quite inhuman: a drop of lukewarm pity
+entered even Ryder's heart as she assisted her victim. She called no one
+to help her; for she saw something very serious had happened, and she
+felt sure Mrs. Gaunt would say something imprudent in that dangerous
+period when the patient recovers consciousness but has not all her wits
+about her. Now Ryder was equally determined to know her mistress's
+secrets, and not to share the knowledge with any other person.
+
+It was a long swoon; and, when Mrs. Gaunt came to, the first thing she
+saw was Ryder leaning over her, with a face of much curiosity, and some
+concern.
+
+In that moment of weakness the poor lady, who had been so roughly
+handled, saw a woman close to her, and being a little kind to her; so
+what did she do but throw her arms round Ryder's neck and burst out
+sobbing as if her heart would break.
+
+Then that unprincipled woman shed a tear or two with her, half
+crocodile, half impulse.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt not only cried on her servant's neck; she
+justified Ryder's forecast by speaking unguardedly: "I've been
+insulted--insulted--insulted!"
+
+But, even while uttering these words, she was recovering her pride: so
+the first "insulted" seemed to come from a broken-hearted child, the
+second from an indignant lady, the third from a wounded queen.
+
+No more words than this; but she rose, with Ryder's assistance, and
+went, leaning on that faithful creature's shoulder, to her own bedroom.
+There she sank into a chair and said, in a voice to melt a stone, "My
+child! Bring me my little Rose."
+
+Ryder ran and fetched the little girl; and Mrs. Gaunt held out both arms
+to her, angelically, and clasped her so passionately and piteously to
+her bosom, that Rose cried for fear, and never forgot the scene all her
+days; and Mrs. Ryder, who was secretly a mother, felt a genuine twinge
+of pity and remorse. Curiosity, however, was the dominant sentiment. She
+was impatient to get all these convulsions over, and learn what had
+actually passed between Mr. and Mrs. Gaunt.
+
+She waited till her mistress appeared calmer; and then, in soft,
+caressing tones, asked her what had happened.
+
+"Never ask me that question again," cried Mrs. Gaunt, wildly. Then, with
+inexpressible dignity, "My good girl, you have done all you could for
+me; now you must leave me alone with my daughter, and my God, who knows
+the truth."
+
+Ryder courtesied and retired, burning with baffled curiosity.
+
+Towards dusk Thomas Leicester came into the kitchen, and brought her
+news with a vengeance. He told her and the other maids that the Squire
+had gone raving mad, and fled the country. "O lasses," said he, "if you
+had seen the poor soul's face, a-riding headlong through the fair, all
+one as if it was a ploughed field; 't was white as your smocks; and his
+eyes glowering on 't other world. We shall ne'er see that face alive
+again."
+
+And this was her doing.
+
+It surprised and overpowered Ryder. She threw her apron over her head,
+and went off in hysterics, and betrayed her lawless attachment to every
+woman in the kitchen,--she who was so clever at probing others.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This day of violent emotions was followed by a sullen and sorrowful
+gloom.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt kept her bedroom, and admitted nobody; till, at last, the
+servants consulted together, and sent little Rose to knock at her door,
+with a basin of chocolate, while they watched on the stairs.
+
+"It's only me, mamma," said Rose.
+
+"Come in, my precious," said a trembling voice; and so Rose got in with
+her chocolate.
+
+The next day she was sent for early; and at noon Mrs. Gaunt and Rose
+came down stairs; but their appearance startled the whole household.
+
+The mother was dressed all in black, and so was her daughter, whom she
+led by the hand. Mrs. Gaunt's face was pale, and sad, and stern,--a
+monument of deep suffering and high-strung resolution.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It soon transpired that Griffith had left his home for good; and friends
+called on Mrs. Gaunt to slake their curiosity under the mask of
+sympathy.
+
+Not one of them was admitted. No false excuses were made. "My mistress
+sees no one for the present," was the reply.
+
+Curiosity, thus baffled, took up the pen; but was met with a short,
+unvarying formula: "There is an unhappy misunderstanding between my
+husband and me. But I shall neither accuse him behind his back, nor
+justify myself."
+
+Thus the proud lady carried herself before the world; but secretly she
+writhed. A wife abandoned is a woman insulted, and the wives--that are
+not abandoned--cluck.
+
+Ryder was dejected for a time, and, though not honestly penitent,
+suffered some remorse at the miserable issue of her intrigues. But her
+elastic nature soon shook it off, and she felt a certain satisfaction at
+having reduced Mrs. Gaunt to her own level. This disarmed her hostility.
+She watched her as keenly as ever, but out of pure curiosity.
+
+One thing puzzled her strangely. Leonard did not visit the house; nor
+could she even detect any communication between the parties.
+
+At last, one day, her mistress told her to put on her hat, and go to
+Father Leonard.
+
+Ryder's eyes sparkled; and she was soon equipped. Mrs. Gaunt put a
+parcel and a letter into her hands. Ryder no sooner got out of her sight
+than she proceeded to tamper with the letter. But to her just
+indignation she found it so ingeniously folded and sealed that she could
+not read a word.
+
+The parcel, however, she easily undid, and it contained forty pounds in
+gold and small notes. "Oho! my lady," said Ryder.
+
+She was received by Leonard with a tender emotion he in vain tried to
+conceal.
+
+On reading the letter his features contracted sharply, and he seemed to
+suffer agony. He would not even open the parcel. "You will take that
+back," said he, bitterly.
+
+"What, without a word?"
+
+"Without a word. But I will write, when I am able."
+
+"Don't be long, sir," suggested Ryder. "I am sure my mistress is
+wearying for you. Consider, sir, she is all alone now."
+
+"Not so much alone as I am," said the priest, "nor half so unfortunate."
+
+And with this he leaned his head despairingly on his hand, and motioned
+to Ryder to leave him.
+
+"Here's a couple of fools," said she to herself, as she went home.
+
+That very evening Thomas Leicester caught her alone, and asked her to
+marry him.
+
+She stared at first, and then treated it as a jest. "You come at the
+wrong time, young man," said she. "Marriage is put out of countenance.
+No, no, I will never marry after what I have seen in this house."
+
+Leicester would not take this for an answer, and pressed her hard.
+
+"Thomas," said this plausible jade, "I like you very well; but I
+couldn't leave my mistress in her trouble. Time to talk of marrying when
+master comes here alive and well."
+
+"Nay," said Leicester, "my only chance is while he is away. You care
+more for his little finger than for my whole body; that they all say."
+
+"Who says?"
+
+"Jane, and all the lasses."
+
+"You simple man, they want you for themselves; that is why they belie
+me."
+
+"Nay, nay; I saw how you carried on, when I brought word he was gone.
+You let your heart out for once. Don't take me for a fool. I see how 't
+is, but I'll face it, for I worship the ground you walk on. Take a
+thought, my lass. What good can come of your setting your heart on
+_him_? I'm young, I'm healthy, and not ugly enough to set the dogs
+a-barking. I've got a good place; I love you dear; I'll cure you of that
+fancy, and make you as happy as the day is long. I'll try and make you
+as happy as you will make me, my beauty."
+
+He was so earnest, and so much in love, that Mrs. Ryder pitied him, and
+wished her husband was in heaven.
+
+"I am very sorry, Tom," said she, softly; "dear me, I did not think you
+cared so much for me as this. I must just tell you the truth. I have got
+one in my own country, and I've promised him. I don't care to break my
+word; and, if I did, he is such a man, I am sure he would kill me for
+it. Indeed he has told me as much, more than once or twice."
+
+"Killing is a game that two can play at."
+
+"Ah! but 't is an ugly game; and I'll have no hand in it. And--don't you
+be angry with me, Tom--I've known him longest, and--I love him best."
+
+By pertinacity and vanity in lying, she hit the mark at last. Tom
+swallowed this figment whole.
+
+"That is but reason," said he. "I take my answer, and I wish ye both
+many happy days together, and well spent." With this he retired, and
+blubbered a good hour in an outhouse.
+
+Tom avoided the castle, and fell into low spirits. He told his mother
+all, and she advised him to change the air. "You have been too long in
+one place," said she; "I hate being too long in one place myself."
+
+This fired Tom's gypsy blood, and he said he would travel to-morrow, if
+he could but scrape together money enough to fill a pedler's pack.
+
+He applied for a loan in several quarters, but was denied in all.
+
+At last the poor fellow summoned courage to lay his case before Mrs.
+Gaunt.
+
+Ryder's influence procured him an interview. She took him into the
+drawing-room, and bade him wait there. By and by a pale lady, all in
+black, glided into the room.
+
+He pulled his front hair, and began to stammer something or other.
+
+She interrupted him. "Ryder has told me," said she, softly. "I am sorry
+for you; and I will do what you require. And, to be sure, we need no
+gamekeeper here now."
+
+She then gave him some money, and said she would look him up a few
+trifles besides, to put in his pack.
+
+Tom's mother helped him to lay out this money to advantage; and, one
+day, he called at Hernshaw, pack and all, to bid farewell.
+
+The servants all laid out something with him for luck; and Mrs. Gaunt
+sent for him, and gave him a gold thimble, and a pound of tea, and
+several yards of gold lace, slightly tarnished, and a Queen Anne's
+guinea.
+
+He thanked her heartily. "Ay, Dame," said he, "you had always an open
+hand, married or single. My heart is heavy at leaving you. But I miss
+the Squire's kindly face too. Hernshaw is not what it used to be."
+
+Mrs. Gaunt turned her head aside, and the man could see his words had
+made her cry. "My good Thomas," said she, at last, "you are going to
+travel the country: you might fall in with him."
+
+"I might," said Leicester, incredulously.
+
+"God grant you may; and, if ever you should, think of your poor mistress
+and give him--this." She put her finger in her bosom and drew out a
+bullet wrapped in silver paper. "You will never lose this," said she. "I
+value it more than gold or silver. O, if ever you _should_ see him,
+think of me and my daughter, and just put it in his hand without a
+word."
+
+As he went out of the room Ryder intercepted him, and said, "Mayhap you
+will fall in with our master. If ever you do, tell him he is under a
+mistake, and the sooner he comes home the better."
+
+Tom Leicester departed; and, for days and weeks, nothing occurred to
+break the sorrowful monotony of the place.
+
+But the mourner had written to her old friend and confessor, Francis;
+and, after some delay, involuntary on his part, he came to see her.
+
+They were often closeted together, and spoke so low that Ryder could not
+catch a word.
+
+Francis also paid several visits to Leonard; and the final result of
+these visits was that the latter left England.
+
+Francis remained at Hernshaw as long as he could; and it was Mrs.
+Gaunt's hourly prayer that Griffith might return while Francis was with
+her.
+
+He did, at her earnest request, stay much longer than he had intended;
+but, at length, he was obliged to fix next Monday to return to his own
+place.
+
+It was on Thursday he made this arrangement; but the very next day the
+postman brought a letter to the Castle, thus addressed:--
+
+        "To Mistress Caroline Ryder,
+    Living Servant with Griffith Gaunt, Esq.,
+        at his house, called Hernshaw Castle,
+          near Wigeonmoor,
+            in the county of Cumberland.
+              These with speed."
+
+The address was in a feigned hand. Ryder opened it in the kitchen, and
+uttered a scream.
+
+Instantly three female throats opened upon her with questions.
+
+She looked them contemptuously in their faces, put the letter into her
+pocket, and, soon after, slipped away to her own room, and locked
+herself in while she read it. It ran thus:--
+
+     "GOOD MISTRESS RYDER,--I am alive yet, by the blessing; though
+     somewhat battered; being now risen from a fever, wherein I lost
+     my wits for a time. And, on coming to myself, I found them
+     making of my shroud; whereby you shall learn how near I was to
+     death. And all this I owe to that false, perjured woman that
+     was my wife, and is your mistress.
+
+     "Know that I have donned russet, and doffed gentility; for I
+     find a heavy heart's best cure is occupation. I have taken a
+     wayside inn, and think of renting a small farm, which two
+     things go well together. Now you are, of all those I know, most
+     fitted to manage the inn, and I the farm. You were always my
+     good friend; and, if you be so still, then I charge you most
+     solemnly that you utter no word to any living soul about this
+     letter; but meet me privately where we can talk fully of these
+     matters; for I will not set foot in Hernshaw Castle. Moreover,
+     she told me once 't was hers; and so be it. On Friday I shall
+     lie at Stapleton, and the next day, by an easy journey, to the
+     place where I once was so happy.
+
+     "So then at seven of the clock on Saturday evening, be the same
+     wet or dry, prithee come to the gate of the grove unbeknown,
+     and speak to
+
+                        "Your faithful friend
+                            and most unhappy master,
+
+                                "GRIFFITH GAUNT.
+
+     "Be secret as the grave. Would I were in it."
+
+This letter set Caroline Ryder in a tumult. Griffith alive and well, and
+set against his wife, and coming to her for assistance!
+
+After the first agitation, she read it again, and weighed every
+syllable. There was one book she had studied more than most of us,--the
+Heart. And she soon read Griffith's in this letter. It was no
+love-letter; he really intended business; but, weak in health and
+broken in spirit, and alone in the world, he naturally turned to one who
+had confessed an affection for him, and would therefore be true to his
+interests, and study his happiness.
+
+The proposal was every way satisfactory to Mrs. Ryder. To be mistress of
+an inn, and have servants under her instead of being one herself. And
+then, if Griffith and she began as allies in business, she felt very
+sure she could make herself, first necessary to him, and then dear to
+him.
+
+She was so elated she could hardly contain herself; and all her
+fellow-servants remarked that Mrs. Ryder had heard good news.
+
+Saturday came, and never did hours seem to creep so slowly.
+
+But at last the sun set, and the stars come out. There was no moon.
+Ryder opened the window and looked out; it was an admirable night for an
+assignation.
+
+She washed her face again, put on her gray silk gown, and purple
+petticoat,--_Mrs. Gaunt_ had given them to her,--and, at the last
+moment, went and made up her mistress's fire, and put out everything she
+thought could be wanted, and, five minutes after seven o'clock, tied a
+scarlet handkerchief over her head, and stepped out at the back door.
+
+What with her coal-black hair, so streaked with red, her black eyes,
+flashing in the starlight, and her glowing cheeks, she looked
+bewitching.
+
+And, thus armed for conquest, wily, yet impassioned, she stole out, with
+noiseless foot and beating heart, to her appointment with her imprudent
+master.
+
+
+
+
+BAD SYMPTOMS.
+
+
+Mons. Alphonse Karr writes as follows in his _Les Femmes_:--"When I wish
+to become invisible, I have a certain rusty and napless old hat, which I
+put on as Prince Lutin in the fairy tale puts on his chaplet of roses; I
+join to this a certain coat very much out at elbows: _eh bien_! I become
+invisible! Nobody on the street sees me, nobody recognizes me, nobody
+speaks to me."
+
+And yet I do not doubt that the majority of M. Karr's friends and
+acquaintances, as is the case with the friends and acquaintances of
+nearly every one else, are well-disposed, good-hearted, average persons,
+who would be heartily ashamed, if it could be brought home to them, of
+having given him the go-by under such circumstances. What, then, was the
+difficulty? In what consisted this change in the man's appearance, so
+signal that he trusted to it as a disguise? What was there in hat and
+coat thus to eclipse the whole personality of the man? There is a
+certain mystery in the philosophy of clothes too deep for me to fathom.
+The matter has been descanted upon before; the "Havamal, or High Song of
+Odin," the Essays of Montaigne, the "Sartor" of Thomas Carlyle, all
+dwell with acuteness upon this topic; but they merely give instances,
+they do not interpret. I am continually meeting with things in my
+intercourse with the world which I cannot reconcile with any theories
+society professes to be governed by. How shall I explain them? How, for
+example, shall I interpret the following cases, occurring within my own
+experience and under my own observation?
+
+I live in the country, and am a farmer. If I lived in the city and
+occupied myself with the vending of merchandise, I should, in busy
+times at least, now and then help my clerks to sell my own goods,--if I
+could,--make up the packages, mark them, and attend to having them
+delivered. Solomon Gunnybags himself has done as much, upon occasion,
+and society has praised Solomon Gunnybags for such a display of devotion
+to his business. But I am a farmer, not a merchant; and, though not able
+to handle the plough, I am not above my business. One day during the
+past summer, while my peach-orchard was in full bearing, my foreman, who
+attends market for me, fell sick. The peaches would not tarry in their
+ripening, the pears were soft and blushing as sweet sixteen as they lay
+upon their shelves, the cantelopes grew mellow upon their vines, the
+tomato-beds called loudly to be relieved, and the very beans were
+beginning to rattle in their pods for ripeness. I am not a good
+salesman, and I was very sorry my foreman could not help me out; but
+something must be done, so I made up a load of fruit and vegetables,
+took them to the city to market, and sold them. While I was busily
+occupied measuring peaches by the half and quarter peck, stolidly deaf
+to the objurgations of my neighbor huckster on my right, to whom some
+one had given bad money, and equally impervious to the blandishments of
+an Irish customer in front of me, who could not be persuaded I meant to
+require the price I had set upon my goods, my friend Mrs. Entresol came
+along, trailing her parasol with one gloved hand, with the other
+daintily lifting her skirts out of the dust and dirt. Bridget, following
+her, toiled under the burden of a basket of good things. Mrs. Entresol
+is an old acquaintance of mine, and I esteem her highly. Entresol has
+just obtained a partnership in the retail dry-goods house for which he
+has been a clerk during so many years; the firm is prosperous, and, if
+he continues to be as industrious and prudent as he has been, I do not
+doubt but my friend will in the course of time be able to retire from
+business with money enough to buy a farm. My pears seemed to please Mrs.
+Entresol; she approached my stall, looked at them, took one up. "What is
+the price of your--" she began to inquire, when, looking up, she
+recognized the vender of the coveted fruit. What in the world came over
+the woman? I give you my word that, instead of speaking to me in her
+usual way, and telling me how glad she was to see me, she started as if
+something had stung her; she stammered, she blushed, and stood there
+with the pear in her fingers, staring at me in the blankest way
+imaginable. I must confess a little of her confusion imparted itself to
+me. For a moment the thought entered my mind that I had, in selling my
+own pears and peaches, been guilty of some really criminal action, such
+as sheep-stealing, lying, or slandering, and it was not pleasant to be
+caught in the act. But only for a moment; then I replied, "Good morning,
+Mrs. Entresol"; and, stating the price, proceeded to wait upon another
+customer.
+
+My highly business-like tone and manner rather added to my charming
+friend's confusion, but she rallied surprisingly, put out her little
+gloved hand to me, and exclaimed in the gayest voice: "Ah, you eccentric
+man! What will you do next? To think of you selling in the market, _just
+like a huckster_! You! I must tell Mrs. Belle Etoile of it. It is really
+one of the best jokes I know of! And how well you act your part,
+too,--just as if it came naturally to you," etc., etc.
+
+Thus she ran on, laughing, and interfering with my sales, protesting all
+the while that I was the greatest original in all her circle of
+acquaintance. Of course it would have been idle for me to controvert her
+view of the matter, so I quietly left her to the enjoyment of such an
+excellent joke, and was rather glad when at last she went away. I could
+not help wondering, however, after she was gone, why it was she should
+think I joked in retailing the products of my farm, any more than Mr.
+Entresol in retailing the goods piled upon his shelves and counters.
+And why should one be "original" because he handles a peck-measure,
+while another is _comme il faut_ in wielding a yardstick? Why did M.
+Karr's thread-bare coat and shocking bad hat fling such a cloud of dust
+in the eyes of passing friends, that they could not see him,
+
+    "Ne wot who that he ben?"
+
+Now for another case. There is Tom Pinch's wife. Tom is an excellent
+person, in every respect, and so is his wife. I don't know any woman
+with a light purse and four children who manages better, or is possessed
+of more sterling qualities, than Mrs. Tom Pinch. She is industrious,
+amiable, intelligent; pious as father AEneas; in fact, the most devoted
+creature to preachers and sermons that ever worked for a fair. She would
+be very angry with you if you were to charge her with entertaining the
+doctrine of "justification by works," but I seriously incline to believe
+she imagines that seat of hers in that cushioned pew one of the
+mainstays to her hope of heaven. And yet, at this crisis, Mrs. Tom Pinch
+can't go to church! There is an insurmountable obstacle which keeps the
+poor little thing at home every Sunday, and renders her (comparatively)
+miserable the rest of the week. She takes a course of Jay's Sermons, to
+be sure, but she takes it disconsolately, and has serious fears of
+becoming a backslider. What is it closes the church door to her? Not her
+health, for that is excellent. It is not the baby, for her nurse, small
+as she is, is quite trustworthy. It is not any trouble about dinner, for
+nobody has a better cook than Mrs. Tom Pinch,--a paragon cook, in fact,
+who seems to have strayed down into her kitchen from that remote
+antiquity when servants were servants. No, none of these things keeps
+the pious wife at home. None of these things restrains her from taking
+that quiet walk up the aisle and occupying that seat in the corner of
+the pew, there to dismiss all thought of worldly care, and fit her good
+little soul for the pleasures of real worship, and that prayerful
+meditation and sweet communion with holy things that only such good
+little women know the blessings of;--none of these things at all. It is
+Mrs. Tom Pinch's _bonnet_ that keeps her at home,--her last season's
+bonnet! Strike, but hear me, ladies, for the thing is simply so. Tom's
+practice is not larger than he can manage; Tom's family need quite all
+he can make to keep them; and he has not yet been able this season to
+let Mrs. Tom have the money required to provide a new fall bonnet. She
+will get it before long, of course, for Tom is a good provider, and he
+knows his wife to be economical. Still he cannot see--poor innocent that
+he is!--why his dear little woman cannot just as well go to church in
+her last fall's bonnet, which, to his purblind vision, is quite as good
+as new. What, Tom! don't you know the dear little woman has too much
+love for you, too much pride in you, to make a fright of herself, upon
+any consideration? Don't you know that, were your wife to venture to
+church in that hideous condition of which a last year's bonnet is the
+efficient and unmistakable symbol, Mrs. A., Mrs. B., Mrs. C., all the
+ladies of the church, in fact, would remark it at once,--would sit in
+judgment upon it like a quilt committee at an industrial fair, and would
+unanimously decide, either that you were a close-fisted brute to deny
+such a sweet little helpmeet the very necessaries of life, or that your
+legal practice was falling off so materially you could no longer support
+your family? O no, Tom, your wife must not venture out to church in her
+last season's bonnet! She is not without a certain sort of courage, to
+be sure; she has stood by death-beds without trembling; she has endured
+poverty and its privations, illness, the pains and perils of childbirth,
+and many another hardship, with a brave cheerfulness such as you can
+wonder at, and never dream of imitating; but there is a limit even to
+the boldest woman's daring; and, when it comes to the exposure and
+ridicule consequent upon defying the world in a last season's bonnet,
+that limit is reached.
+
+I have one other case to recount, and, in my opinion, the most
+lamentable one of all. Were I to tell you the real name of my friend,
+Mrs. Belle Etoile, you would recognize one of the most favored daughters
+of America, as the newspapers phrase it. Rich, intelligent, highly
+cultivated, at the tip-top of the social ladder, esteemed by a wide
+circle of such friends as it is an honor to know, loving and beloved by
+her noble husband,--every one knows Mrs. Etoile by reputation at least.
+Happy in her pretty, well-behaved children, she is the polished
+reflection of all that is best and most refined in American society. She
+is, indeed, a noble woman, as pure and unsullied in the instincts of her
+heart, as she is bright and glowing in the display of her intellect. Her
+wit is brilliant; her _mots_ are things to be remembered; her opinions
+upon art and life have at once a wide currency and a substantial value;
+and, more than all, her modest charities, of which none knows save
+herself, are as deep and as beneficent as those subterranean fountains
+which well up in a thousand places to refresh and gladden the earth.
+Nevertheless, and in spite of her genuine practical wisdom, her lofty
+idealism of thought, her profound contempt for all the weak shams and
+petty frivolities of life, Mrs. Belle Etoile is a slave! "They who
+submit to drink as another pleases, make themselves his slaves," says
+that Great Mogul of sentences, Dr. Johnson; and in this sense Mrs. Belle
+Etoile is a slave indeed. The fetters gall her, but she has not courage
+to shake them off. Her mistress is her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Colisle,
+a coarse, vulgar, half-bred woman, whose husband acquired a sudden
+wealth from contracts and petroleum speculations, and who has in
+consequence set herself up for a leader of _ton_. A certain downright
+persistence and energy of character, acquired, it may be, in bullying
+the kitchen-maids at the country tavern where she began life, a certain
+lavish expenditure of her husband's profits, the vulgar display and
+profusion at her numerous balls, and her free-handed patronage of
+_modistes_ and shop-keepers, have secured to Mrs. Colisle a sort of
+Drummond-light position among the stars of fashion. She imports
+patterns, and they become the mode; her caterer invents dishes, and they
+are copied throughout the obeisant world. There are confections _a la_
+Colisle; the confectioners utter new editions of them. There is a
+Colisle head-dress, a Colisle pomade, a Colisle hat,--the world wears
+and uses them. Thus, Mrs. Colisle has set herself up as Mrs. Belle
+Etoile's rival; and that unfortunate lady, compelled by those
+_noblesse-oblige_ principles which control the chivalry of fashion,
+takes up the unequal gage, and enters the lists against her. The result
+is, that Mrs. Belle Etoile has become the veriest slave in Christendom.
+Whatever the other woman's whims and extravagances, Mrs. Belle Etoile is
+their victim. Her taste revolts, but her pride of place compels
+obedience. She cannot yield, she will not follow; and so Mrs. Colisle,
+with diabolical ingenuity, constrains her to run a course that gives her
+no honor and pays her no compensation. She scorns Mrs. Colisle's ways,
+she loathes her fashions and her company, and--outbids her for them! It
+is a very unequal contest, of course. Defeat only inspires Mrs. Colisle
+with a more stubborn persistence. Victory cannot lessen the sad regrets
+of Mrs. Belle Etoile's soul for outraged instincts and insulted taste.
+It is an ill match,--a strife between greyhound and mastiff, a contest
+at heavy draught between a thoroughbred and a Flanders mare. Mrs. Etoile
+knows this as well as you and I can possibly know it. She is perfectly
+aware of her serfdom. She is poignantly conscious of the degrading
+character of her servitude, and that it is not possible to gather grapes
+of thorns, nor figs of thistles; and yet she will continue to wage the
+unequal strife, to wear the unhandsome fetters, simply because she has
+not the courage to extricate herself from the false position into which
+the strategic arts of Fashion have inveigled her.
+
+Now I do not intend to moralize. I have no purpose to frighten the
+reader prematurely off to the next page by unmasking a formidable
+battery of reflections and admonitions. I have merely instanced the
+above cases, three or four among a thousand of such as must have
+presented themselves to the attention of each one of us; and I adduce
+them simply as examples of what I call "bad symptoms" in any diagnosis
+of the state of the social frame. They indicate, in fact, a total
+absence of _social courage_ in persons otherwise endowed with and
+illustrious for all the useful and ornamental virtues, and consequently
+they make it plain and palpable that society is in a condition of
+dangerous disease. Whether a remedy is practicable or not I will not
+venture to decide; but I can confidently assure our reformers, both men
+and women, that, if they can accomplish anything toward restoring its
+normal and healthy courage to society, they will benefit the human race
+much more signally than they could by making Arcadias out of a dozen or
+two Borrioboola-Ghas.
+
+
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+
+1. _Croquet._ By CAPTAIN MAYNE REID. Boston: James Redpath.
+
+2. _Handbook of Croquet._ By EDMUND ROUTLEDGE. London: George Routledge
+and Sons.
+
+3. _The Game of Croquet; its Appointments and Laws._ By R. FELLOW. New
+York: Hurd and Houghton.
+
+4. _Croquet, as played by the Newport Croquet Club._ By one of the
+Members. New York: Sheldon & Co.
+
+The original tower of Babel having been for some time discontinued, and
+most of our local legislatures having adjourned, the nearest approach to
+a confusion of tongues is perhaps now to be found in an ordinary game of
+croquet. Out of eight youths and maidens caught for that performance at
+a picnic, four have usually learned the rules from four different
+manuals, and can agree on nothing; while the rest have never learned any
+rules at all, and cannot even distinctly agree to disagree. With
+tolerably firm wills and moderately shrill voices, it is possible for
+such a party to exhibit a very pretty war of words before even a single
+blow is struck. For supposing that there is an hour of daylight for the
+game, they can easily spend fifteen minutes in debating whether the
+starting-point should be taken a mallet's length from the stake,
+according to Reid, or only twelve inches, according to Routledge.
+
+More than twenty manuals of croquet have been published in England, it
+is said, and some five or six in America. Of the four authorities named
+above, each has some representative value for American players. Mayne
+Reid was the pioneer, Routledge is the most compact and seductive,
+Fellow the most popular and the poorest, and "Newport" the newest and by
+far the best. And among them all it is possible to find authority for
+and against almost every possible procedure.
+
+The first point of grave divergence is one that occurs at the very
+outset of the game. "Do you play with or without the roquet-croquet?"
+has now come to be the first point of mutual solicitude in a mixed
+party. It may not seem a momentous affair whether the privilege of
+striking one's own ball and the adversary's without holding the former
+beneath the foot, should be extended to all players or limited to the
+"rover"; but it makes an immense difference in both the duration and the
+difficulty of the game. By skilfully using this right, every player may
+change the position of every ball, during each tour of play. It is a
+formidable privilege, and accordingly Reid and "Newport" both forbid it
+to all but the "rover," and Routledge denies it even to him; while
+Fellow alone pleads for universal indulgence. It seems a pity to side
+with one poor authority against three good ones, but there is no doubt
+that the present tendency of the best players is to cultivate the
+roquet-croquet more and more; and after employing it, one is as
+unwilling to give it up, as a good billiard-player would be to revert
+from the cue to the mace. The very fact, however, that this privilege
+multiplies so enormously the advantages of skill is perhaps a good
+reason for avoiding it in a mixed party of novices and experts, where
+the object is rather to equalize abilities. It should also be avoided
+where the croquet-ground is small, as is apt to be the case in our
+community,--because in such narrow quarters a good player can often hit
+every other ball during each tour of play, even without this added
+advantage. If we played habitually on large, smooth lawns like those of
+England, the reasons for the general use of the roquet-croquet would be
+far stronger.
+
+Another inconvenient discrepancy of the books relates to the different
+penalties imposed on "flinching," or allowing one's ball to slip from
+under one's foot, during the process of croquet. Here Routledge gives no
+general rule; Reid and "Newport" decree that, if a ball "flinches," its
+tour terminates, but its effects remain; while, according to Fellow, the
+ball which has suffered croquet is restored, but the tour
+continues,--the penalties being thus reversed. Here the sober judgment
+must side with the majority of authorities; for this reason, if for no
+other, that the first-named punishment is more readily enforced, and
+avoids the confusion and altercation which are often produced by taking
+up and replacing a ball.
+
+Again, if a ball be accidentally stopped in its motion by a careless
+player or spectator, what shall be done? Fellow permits the striker
+either to leave the ball where the interruption left it, or to place it
+where he thinks it would have stopped, if unmolested. This again is a
+rule far less simple, and liable to produce far more wrangling, than the
+principle of the other authorities, which is that the ball should either
+be left where it lies, or be carried to the end of the arena.
+
+These points are all among the commonest that can be raised, and it is
+very unfortunate that there should be no uniformity of rule, to meet
+contingencies so inevitable. When more difficult points come up for
+adjudication, the difficulty has thus far been less in the conflict of
+authorities than in their absence. Until the new American commentator
+appeared, there was no really scientific treatise on croquet to be had
+in our bookstores.
+
+The so-called manual of the "Newport Croquet Club" is understood to
+proceed from a young gentleman whose mathematical attainments have won
+him honor both at Cambridge and at New Haven, and who now beguiles his
+banishment as Assistant Professor in the Naval Academy by writing on
+croquet in the spirit of Peirce. What President Hill has done for
+elementary geometry, "Newport" aims to do for croquet, making it
+severely simple, and, perhaps we might add, simply severe. And yet,
+admirable to relate, this is the smallest of all the manuals, and the
+cheapest, and the only one in which there is not so much as an allusion
+to ladies' ankles. All the others have a few pages of rules and a very
+immoderate quantity of slang; they are all liable to the charge of being
+silly; whereas the only possible charge to be brought against "Newport"
+is that he is too sensible. But for those who hold, with ourselves, that
+whatever is worth doing is worth doing sensibly, there is really no
+other manual. That is, this is the only one which really grapples with a
+difficult case, and deals with it as if heaven and earth depended on the
+adjudication.
+
+It is possible that this scientific method sometimes makes its author
+too bold a lawgiver. The error of most of the books is in attempting too
+little and in doing that little ill. They are all written for beginners
+only. The error of "Newport" lies in too absolute an adherence to
+principles. His "theory of double points" is excellent, but his theory
+of "the right of declining" is an innovation all the more daring because
+it is so methodically put. The principle has long been familiar, though
+never perhaps quite settled, that where two distinct points were made by
+any stroke,--as, for instance, a bridge and a roquet,--the one or the
+other could be waived. The croquet, too, could always be waived. But to
+assert boldly that "a player may decline any point made by himself, and
+play precisely as if the point had not been made," is a thought radical
+enough to send a shudder along Pennsylvania Avenue. Under this ruling, a
+single player in a game of eight might spend a half-hour in running and
+rerunning a single bridge, with dog-in-the-mangerish pertinacity,
+waiting his opportunity to claim the most mischievous run as the valid
+one. It would produce endless misunderstandings and errors of memory.
+The only vexed case which it would help to decide is that in which a
+ball, in running the very last bridge, strikes another ball, and is yet
+forbidden to croquet, because it must continue its play from the
+starting-point. But even this would be better settled in almost any
+other way; and indeed this whole rule as to a return to the "spot" seems
+a rather arbitrary and meaningless thing.
+
+The same adherence to theory takes the author quite beyond our depth, if
+not beyond his own, in another place. He says that a ball may hit
+another ball twice or more, during the same tour, between two steps on
+the round, and move it each time by concussion,--"but only one (not
+necessarily the first) contact is a valid roquet." (p. 34.) But how can
+a player obtain the right to make a second contact, under such
+circumstances, unless indeed the first was part of a _ricochet_, and was
+waived as such? And if the case intended was merely that of ricochet, it
+should have been more distinctly stated, for the right to waive ricochet
+was long since recognized by Reid (p. 40), though Routledge prohibits,
+and Fellow limits it.
+
+Thus even the errors of "Newport" are of grave and weighty nature, such
+as statesmen and mathematicians may, without loss of dignity, commit. Is
+it that it is possible to go too deep into all sciences, even croquet?
+But how delightful to have at last a treatise which errs on that side,
+when its predecessors, like popular commentators on the Bible, have
+carefully avoided all the hard points, and only cleared up the easy
+ones!
+
+
+_Poetry, Lyrical, Narrative, and Satirical, of the Civil War._ Selected
+and Edited by RICHARD GRANT WHITE. New York: The American News Company.
+
+We confess that our heart had at times misgiven us concerning the
+written and printed poetry of our recent war; but until Mr. White gave
+us the present volume, we did not know how strong a case could be made
+against it. The effect is perhaps not altogether intended, but it shows
+how bad his material was, and how little inspiration of any sort
+attended him in his work, when a literary gentleman of habits of
+research and of generally supposed critical taste makes a book so
+careless and slovenly as this.
+
+We can well afford the space which the editor devotes to Mr. Lowell's
+noble poem, but we must admit that we can regard "The Present Crisis" as
+part of the poetry of the war only in the large sense in which we should
+also accept the Prophecies of Ezekiel and the Lamentations of Jeremiah.
+Many pious men beheld the war (after it came) foreshadowed in the poetry
+of the awful and exalted prophecies, and we wonder that Mr. White did
+not give us a few passages from those books. It is scarcely possible
+that he did not know "The Present Crisis" to have been written nearly a
+score of years ago; though he seems to have been altogether ignorant of
+"The Washers of the Shroud," a poem by the same author actually written
+after the war began, and uttering all that dread, suspense, and deep
+determination which the threatened Republic felt after the defeats in
+the autumn of 1861. As Mr. White advances with his poetical chronology
+of the war, he is likewise unconscious of "The Commemoration Ode," which
+indeed is so far above all other elegiac poems of the war, as perhaps to
+be out of his somewhat earth-bound range. Yet we cannot help blaming him
+a little for not looking higher: his book must for some time represent
+the feeling of the nation in war time, and we would fain have had his
+readers know how deep and exalted this sentiment really was, and how it
+could reach, if only once and in only one, an expression which we may
+challenge any literature to surpass. Of "The Biglow Papers," in which
+there is so much of the national hard-headed shrewdness, humor, and
+earnestness, we have but one, and that not the best.
+
+As some compensation, however, Mr. White presents us with two humorous
+lyrics of his own, and makes us feel like men who, in the first moments
+of our financial disorder, parted with a good dollar, and received
+change in car-tickets and envelopes covering an ideal value in
+postage-stamps. It seems hard to complain of an editor who puts only two
+of his poems in a collection when he was master to put in twenty if he
+chose, and when in both cases he does his best to explain and relieve
+their intolerable brilliancy by foot-notes; yet, seeing that one of
+these productions is in literature what the "Yankee Notions" and the
+"Nick-Nax" caricatures of John Bull are in art, and seeing that the
+other is not in the least a parody of the Emersonian poetry it is
+supposed to burlesque, and is otherwise nothing at all, we cannot help
+crying out against them.
+
+The foot-notes to Mr. White's verses _are_ comical, however, we must
+acknowledge; and so are all the foot-notes in the book. If the Model of
+Deportment had taken to letters with a humorous aim, we could conceive
+of his writing them. "If burlesque," says Mr. White of his "Union"
+verses, "were all their purpose, they would not be here preserved";
+adding, with a noble tenderness for his victim, "Mr. Emerson could well
+afford to forgive them, even if they did not come from one of his
+warmest admirers,"--in which we agree with Mr. White, whose
+consideration for the great transcendentalist is equalled only by his
+consideration for the reader's ignorance in regard to most things not
+connected with the poetry of the war. "Bully," he tells us, was used as
+"an expression of encouragement and approval" by the Elizabethan
+dramatists, as well as by our own cherished rowdies; which may be
+readily proven from the plays of Shakespeare. But what the author of the
+poem in which this word occurs means by "hefty" Mr. White does not know,
+and frankly makes a note for the purpose of saying so. Concerning the
+expression "hurried up his cakes," he is, however, perfectly _au fait_,
+and surprises us with the promptness of his learning. "As long as the
+importance of hurrying buckwheat pancakes from the griddle to the
+table," says he, with a fine air of annotation, "is impressed upon the
+American mind, this vile slang will need no explanation. But the
+fame,"--mark this dry light of philosophy, and the delicacy of the humor
+through which it plays,--"but the fame of the Rebel march into
+Pennsylvania, and of the victory of Gettysburg, will probably outlive
+even the taste for these alluring compounds." This is Mr. White's good
+humor; his bad humor is displayed in his note to a poem by Fitz James
+O'Brien on the "Seventh Regiment," which he says was "written by a young
+Irishman, one of its members." The young Irishman's name is probably as
+familiar to most readers of the magazines as Mr. White's, and we cannot
+help wondering how he knew a writer of singularly brilliant powers and
+wide repute only as "a young Irishman."
+
+But there are many things which Mr. White seems not to know, and he has
+but a poor memory for names, and in his despair he writes _anonymous_
+against the title of every third poem. We might have expected a
+gentleman interested in the poetry of the war to attend the lectures of
+Dr. Holmes, who has been reading in New York and elsewhere "The Old
+Sergeant," as the production of Mr. Forcythe Willson of Kentucky. By
+turning to the index of that volume of the Atlantic from which the
+verses were taken, Mr. White could have learned that "Spring at the
+Capital" was written by Mrs. Akers; and with quite as little trouble
+could have informed himself of the authorship of a half-score of other
+poems we might name. We have already noted the defectiveness of the
+collection, in which we are told "no conspicuous poem elicited by the
+war is omitted"; and we note it again in Mr. White's failure to print
+Mr. Bryant's pathetic and beautiful poem, "My Autumn Walk," and in his
+choosing from Mr. Aldrich not one of the fine sonnets he has written on
+the war, but a _jeu d'esprit_ which in no wise represents him. Indeed,
+Mr. White's book seems to have been compiled after the editor had
+collected a certain number of clippings from the magazines and
+newspapers: if by the blessing of Heaven these had the names of their
+authors attached, and happened to be the best things the poets had done,
+it was a fortunate circumstance; but if the reverse was the fact, Mr.
+White seems to have felt no responsibility in the matter. We are
+disposed to hold him to stricter account, and to blame him for
+temporarily blocking, with a book and a reputation, the way to a work of
+real industry, taste, and accuracy on the poetry of the war. It was our
+right that a man whose scholarly fame would carry his volume beyond our
+own shores should do his best for our heroic Muse, robing her in all
+possible splendor; and it is our wrong that he has chosen instead to
+present the poor soul in attire so very indifferently selected from her
+limited wardrobe.
+
+
+_The Story of Kennett._ By BAYARD TAYLOR. New York: G. P. Putnam; Hurd
+and Houghton.
+
+In this novel Mr. Taylor has so far surpassed his former efforts in
+extended fiction, as to approach the excellence attained in his briefer
+stories. He has of course some obvious advantages in recounting "The
+Story of Kennett" which were denied him in "Hannah Thurston" and "John
+Godfrey's Fortunes." He here deals with the persons, scenes, and actions
+of a hundred years ago, and thus gains that distance so valuable to the
+novelist; and he neither burdens himself with an element utterly and
+hopelessly unpicturesque, like modern reformerism, nor assumes the
+difficult office of interesting us in the scarcely more attractive
+details of literary adventure. But we think, after all, that we owe the
+superiority of "The Story of Kennett" less to the felicity of his
+subject than to Mr. Taylor's maturing powers as a novelist, of which his
+choice of a happy theme is but one of the evidences. He seems to have
+told his story because he liked it; and without the least consciousness
+(which we fear haunted him in former efforts) that he was doing
+something to supply the great want of an American novel. Indeed, but for
+the prologue dedicating the work in a somewhat patronizing strain to his
+old friends and neighbors of Kennett, the author forgets himself
+entirely in the book, and leaves us to remember him, therefore, with all
+the greater pleasure.
+
+The hero of the tale is Gilbert Potter, a young farmer of Kennett, on
+whose birth there is, in the belief of his neighbors, the stain of
+illegitimacy, though his mother, with whom he lives somewhat solitarily
+and apart from the others, denies the guilt imputed to her, while some
+mystery forbids her to reveal her husband's name. Gilbert is in love
+with Martha, the daughter of Dr. Deane, a rich, smooth, proud old
+Quaker, who is naturally no friend to the young man's suit, but is
+rather bent upon his daughter's marriage with Alfred Barton, a bachelor
+of advanced years, and apparent heir of one of the hardest, wealthiest,
+and most obstinately long-lived old gentlemen in the neighborhood.
+Obediently to the laws of fiction, Martha rejects Alfred Barton, who,
+indeed, is but a cool and timid wooer, and a weak, selfish, spiritless
+man, of few good impulses, with a dull fear and dislike of his own
+father, and a covert tenderness for Gilbert. The last, being openly
+accepted by Martha, and forbidden, with much contumely, to see her, by
+her father, applies himself with all diligence to paying off the
+mortgage on his farm, in order that he may wed the Doctor's daughter, in
+spite of his science, his pride, and his riches; but when he has earned
+the requisite sum, he is met on his way to Philadelphia and robbed of
+the money by Sandy Flash, a highwayman who infested that region, and
+who, Mr. Taylor tells us, is an historical personage. He appears first
+in the first chapter of "The Story of Kennett," when, having spent the
+day in a fox-hunt with Alfred Barton, and the evening at the tavern in
+the same company, he beguiles his comrade into a lonely place, reveals
+himself, and, with the usual ceremonies, robs Barton of his money and
+watch. Thereafter, he is seen again, when he rides through the midst of
+the volunteers of Kennett, drinks at the bar of the village tavern, and
+retires unharmed by the men assembled to hunt him down and take him.
+After all, however, he is a real brigand, and no hero; and Mr. Taylor
+manages his character so well as to leave us no pity for the fate of a
+man, who, with some noble traits, is in the main fierce and cruel. He is
+at last given up to justice by the poor, half-wild creature with whom he
+lives, and whom, in a furious moment, he strikes because she implores
+him to return Gilbert his money.
+
+As for Gilbert, through all the joy of winning Martha, and the sickening
+disappointment of losing his money, the shame and anguish of the mystery
+that hangs over his origin oppress him; and, having once experienced the
+horror of suspecting that Martha's father might also be his, he suffers
+hardly less torture when the highwayman, on the day of his conviction,
+sends to ask an interview with him. But Sandy Flash merely wishes to
+ease his conscience by revealing the burial-place of Gilbert's money;
+and when the young man, urged to the demand by an irresistible anxiety,
+implores, "You are not my father?" the good highwayman, in great and
+honest amazement, declares that he certainly is not. The mystery
+remains, and it is not until the death of the old man Barton that it is
+solved. Then it is dissipated, when Gilbert's mother, in presence of
+kindred and neighbors, assembled at the funeral, claims Alfred Barton as
+her husband; and after this nothing remains but the distribution of
+justice, and the explanation that, long ago, before Gilbert's birth, his
+parents had been secretly married. Alfred Barton, however, had sworn his
+wife not to reveal the marriage before his father's death, at that time
+daily expected, and had cruelly held her to her vow after the birth of
+their son, and through all the succeeding years of agony and
+contumely,--loving her and her boy in his weak, selfish, cowardly way,
+but dreading too deeply his father's anger ever to do them justice. The
+reader entirely sympathizes with Gilbert's shame in such a father, and
+his half-regret that it had not been a brave, bad man like Sandy Flash
+instead. Barton's punishment is finely worked out. The fact of the
+marriage had been brought to the old man's knowledge before his death,
+and he had so changed his will as to leave the money intended for his
+son to his son's deeply wronged wife; and, after the public assertion of
+their rights at the funeral, Gilbert and his mother coldly withdraw from
+the wretched man, and leave him, humiliated before the world he dreaded,
+to seek the late reconciliation which is not accomplished in this book.
+It is impossible to feel pity for his sufferings; but one cannot repress
+the hope that Mary and her son will complete the beauty of their own
+characters by forgiving him at last.
+
+It seems to us that this scene of Mary Potter's triumph at the funeral
+is the most effective in the whole book. Considering her character and
+history, it is natural that she should seek to make her justification as
+signal and public as possible. The long and pitiless years of shame
+following the error of her youthful love and ambition, during which the
+sin of attempting to found her happiness on a deceit was so heavily
+punished, have disciplined her to the perfect acting of her part, and
+all her past is elevated and dignified by the calm power with which she
+rights herself. She is the chief person of the drama, which is so pure
+and simple as not to approach melodrama; and the other characters are
+merely passive agents; while the reader, to whom the facts are known,
+cannot help sharing their sense of mystery and surprise. We confess to a
+deeper respect for Mr. Taylor's power than we have felt before, when we
+observe with what masterly skill he contrives by a single incident to
+give sudden and important development to a character, which, however
+insignificant it had previously seemed, we must finally allow to have
+been perfectly prepared for such an effect.
+
+The hero of the book, we find a good deal like other heroes,--a little
+more natural than most, perhaps, but still portentously noble and
+perfect. He does not interest us much; but we greatly admire the
+heroine, Martha Deane, whom he loves and marries. In the study of her
+character and that of her father, Mr. Taylor is perfectly at home, and
+extremely felicitous. There is no one else who treats Quaker life so
+well as the author of the beautiful story of "Friend Eli's Daughter";
+and in the opposite characters of Doctor Deane and Martha we have the
+best portraiture of the contrasts which Quakerism produces in human
+nature. In the sweet and unselfish spirit of Martha, the theories of
+individual action under special inspiration have created self-reliance,
+and calm, fearless humility, sustaining her in her struggle against the
+will of her father, and even against the sect to whose teachings she
+owes them. Dr. Deane had made a marriage of which the Society
+disapproved, but after his wife's death he had professed contrition for
+his youthful error, and had been again taken into the quiet brotherhood.
+Martha, however, had always refused to unite with the Society, and had
+thereby been "a great cross" to her father,--a man by no means broken
+under his affliction, but a hard-headed, self-satisfied, smooth, narrow
+egotist. Mr. Taylor contrives to present his person as clearly as his
+character, and we smell hypocrisy in the sweet scent of marjoram that
+hangs about him, see selfishness in his heavy face and craft in the
+quiet gloss of his drab broadcloth, and hear obstinacy in his studied
+step. He is the most odious character in the book, what is bad in him
+being separated by such fine differences from what is very good in
+others. We have even more regard for Alfred Barton, who, though a
+coward, has heart enough to be truly ashamed at last, while Dr. Deane
+retains a mean self-respect after the folly and the wickedness of his
+purposes are shown to him.
+
+His daughter, for all her firmness in resisting her father's commands to
+marry Barton, and to dismiss Gilbert, is true woman, and submissive to
+her lover. The wooing of these, and of the other lovers, Mark Deane and
+Sally Fairthorn, is described with pleasant touches of contrast, and a
+strict fidelity to place and character. Indeed, nothing can be better
+than the faithful spirit in which Mr. Taylor seems to have adhered to
+all the facts of the life he portrays. There is such shyness among
+American novelists (if we may so classify the writers of our meagre
+fiction) in regard to dates, names, and localities, that we are glad to
+have a book in which there is great courage in this respect. Honesty of
+this kind is vastly more acceptable to us than the aerial romance which
+cannot alight in any place known to the gazetteer; though we must
+confess that we attach infinitely less importance than the author does
+to the fact that Miss Betsy Lavender, Deb. Smith, Sandy Flash, and the
+two Fairthorn boys are drawn from the characters of persons who once
+actually lived. Indeed, we could dispense very well with the low comedy
+of Sally's brothers, and, in spite of Miss Betsy Lavender's foundation
+in fact, we could consent to lose her much sooner than any other leading
+character of the book: she seems to us made-up and mechanical. On the
+contrary, we find Sally Fairthorn, with her rustic beauty and
+fresh-heartedness, her impulses and blunders, altogether delightful. She
+is a part of the thoroughly _country_ flavor of the book,--the rides
+through the woods, the huskings, the raising of the barn,--(how
+admirably and poetically all that scene of the barn-raising is
+depicted!)--just as Martha somehow belongs to the loveliness and
+goodness of nature,--the blossom and the harvest which appear and
+reappear in the story.
+
+We must applaud the delicacy and propriety of the descriptive parts of
+Mr. Taylor's work: they are rare and brief, and they are inseparable
+from the human interest of the narrative with which they are interwoven.
+The style of the whole fiction is clear and simple, and, in the more
+dramatic scenes,--like that of old Barton's funeral,--rises effortlessly
+into very great strength. The plot, too, is well managed; the incidents
+naturally succeed each other; and, while some portion of the end may be
+foreseen, it must be allowed that the author skilfully conceals the
+secret of Gilbert's parentage, while preparing at the right moment to
+break it effectively to the reader.
+
+
+_The South since the War: as shown by Fourteen Weeks of Travel and
+Observation in Georgia and the Carolinas._ By SIDNEY ANDREWS. Boston:
+Ticknor and Fields.
+
+The simple and clear exhibition of things heard and seen in the South
+seems to have been the object of Mr. Andrews's interesting tour, and he
+holds the mirror up to Reconstruction with a noble and self-denying
+fidelity. It would have been much easier to give us studied theories and
+speculations instead of the facts we needed, and we are by no means
+inclined to let the crudity of parts of the present book abate from our
+admiration of its honesty and straightforwardness.
+
+A great share of the volume is devoted to sketches of scenes and debates
+in the Conventions held last autumn in North and South Carolina and
+Georgia, for the reconstruction of the State governments; and Mr.
+Andrews's readers are made acquainted, as pleasantly as may be, with the
+opinions and appearance of the leaders in these bodies. But the value of
+this part of his book is necessarily transitory; and we have been much
+more interested in the chapters which recount the author's experiences
+of travel and sojourn, and describe the popular character and
+civilization of the South as affected by the event of the war. It must
+be confessed, however, that the picture is not one from which we can
+take great courage for the present. The leading men in the region
+through which Mr. Andrews passed seem to have an adequate conception of
+the fact that the South can only rise again through tranquillity,
+education, and justice; and some few of these men have the daring to
+declare that regeneration must come through her abandonment of all the
+social theories and prejudices that distinguished her as a section
+before the war. But in a great degree the beaten bully is a bully still.
+There is the old lounging, the old tipsiness, the old swagger, the old
+violence. Mr. Andrews has to fly from a mob, as in the merry days of
+1859, because he persuades an old negro to go home and not stay and be
+stabbed by a gentleman of one of the first families. Drunken life-long
+idlers hiccup an eloquent despair over the freedmen's worthlessness;
+bitter young ladies and high-toned gentlemen insult Northerners when
+opportunity offers; and, while there is a general disposition to accept
+the fortune of war, there is a belief, equally general, among our
+unconstructed brethren, that better people were never worse off. The
+conditions outside of the great towns are not such as to attract
+Northern immigration, in which the chief hope of the South lies; and
+there is but slight wish on the part of the dominant classes to improve
+the industry of the country by doing justice to the liberated slaves.
+The military, under the Freedmen's Bureau, does something to enforce
+contracts and punish outrage; but it is often lamentably inadequate, and
+is sometimes controlled by men who have the baseness to side against the
+weak.
+
+Of the three States through which Mr. Andrews travelled, South Carolina
+seems to be in the most hopeful mood for regeneration; but it is
+probable that the natural advantages of Georgia will attract a larger
+share of foreign capital and industry, and place it first in the line of
+redemption, though the temper of its people is less intelligent and
+frank than that of the South-Carolinians. In North Carolina the
+difficulty seems to be with the prevailing ignorance and poverty of the
+lower classes, and the lukewarm virtue of people who were also lukewarm
+in wickedness, and whose present loyalty is dull and cold, like their
+late treason.
+
+
+_Social Life of the Chinese: with some Account of their Religious,
+Governmental, Educational, and Business Customs and Opinions, etc._ By
+REV. JUSTUS DOOLITTLE, Fourteen Years Member of the Fuhchan Mission of
+the American Board. With over One Hundred and Fifty Illustrations. In
+Two Volumes. New York: Harper and Brothers.
+
+Mr. Doolittle speaks of a class of degraded individuals in China, "who
+are willing to make amusement for others." The severest critic can
+hardly assign him to any such class, for there is no reason to suppose
+that he would have made his book amusing, if he could possibly have
+helped it. But the Chinese are a race of such amazing and inexhaustible
+oddities, that the driest description of them, if it be only truthful,
+must be entertaining.
+
+What power of prose can withdraw all interest from a people whose
+theology declares that whoever throws printed paper on the ground in
+anger "has five demerits, and will lose his intelligence," and that he
+who tosses it into water "has twenty demerits, and will have sore eyes"?
+A people among whom unmarried women who have forsworn meat are called
+"vegetable virgins," and married women similarly pledged are known as
+"vegetable dames,"--among whom a present of sugar-cane signifies the
+approach of an elder sister, and oysters in an earthen vessel are the
+charming signal that a younger brother draws near,--a people among whom
+the most exciting confectionery is made of rice and molasses,--how can
+the Reverend Justus Doolittle deprive such a people of the most piquant
+interest?
+
+And when we come to weightier matters, one finds this to be after all
+one of those "dry books" for which Margaret Fuller declared her
+preference,--a book where the author supplies only a multiplicity of the
+most unvarnished facts, and leaves all the imagination to the reader. To
+say that he for one instant makes the individuality of a Chinese
+conceivable, or his human existence credible, or that he can represent
+the whole nation to the fancy as anything but a race of idiotic dolls,
+would be saying far too much. No traveller has ever accomplished so much
+as that, save that wonderful Roman Catholic, Huc. But setting all this
+apart, there has scarcely appeared in English, until now, so exhaustive
+and so honest a picture of the external phenomena of Chinese life.
+
+It is painful to have to single out honesty as a special merit in a
+missionary work; but the temptation to filch away the good name of a
+Pagan community is very formidable, and few even among lay travellers
+have done as faithful justice to the Chinese character as Mr. Doolittle.
+He fully recognizes the extended charities of the Chinese and their
+filial piety; stoutly declares that tight shoeing is not so injurious as
+tight lacing, and that Chinese slavery is not so bad as the late
+lamented "institution" in America; shows that the religions of that
+land, taken at their worst, have none of the deified sensuality of other
+ancient mythologies, and that the greatest practical evils, such as
+infanticide, are steadily combated by the Chinese themselves. Even on
+the most delicate point, the actual condition of missionary enterprises,
+the good man tells the precise truth with the most admirable frankness.
+To make a single convert cost seven years' labor at Canton, and nine at
+Fuhchan, and it was twenty-eight years ere a church was organized. Out
+of four hundred million souls, there are as yet less than three thousand
+converts, as the result of the labor of two hundred missionaries, after
+sixty years of work. Yet Mr. Doolittle, who has spent more than a third
+of his life in China, still finds his courage fresh and his zeal
+unabated; and every one must look with respect upon a self-devotion so
+generous and so sincere.
+
+
+_Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates, a Story of Life in Holland._ By M.
+E. DODGE. New York: James O'Kane.
+
+Hans Brinker is a charming domestic story of some three hundred and
+fifty pages, which is addressed, indeed, to young people, but which may
+be read with pleasure and profit by their elders. The scene is laid in
+Holland, a land deserving to be better known than it is; and the writer
+evinces a knowledge of the country, and an acquaintance with the spirit
+and habits of its stout, independent, estimable people, which must have
+been gathered not from books alone, but from living sources.
+
+Graphically, too, is the quaint picture sketched, and with a pleasant
+touch of humor. We all know the main features of Dutch scenery; but they
+are seldom brought to our notice with livelier effect. Speaking of the
+guardian dikes, Mrs. Dodge says:--
+
+"They are high and wide, and the tops of some of them are covered with
+buildings and trees. They have even fine public roads upon them, from
+which horses may look down on wayside cottages. Often the keels of
+floating ships are higher than the roofs of the dwellings. The stork
+chattering to her young on the house-peak may feel that her nest is
+lifted out of danger, but the croaking frog in neighboring bulrushes is
+nearer the stars than she. Water-bugs dart backward and forward above
+the heads of the chimney-swallows, and willow-trees seem drooping with
+shame, because they cannot reach as high as the reeds near by....
+Farm-houses, with roofs like great slouched hats over their eyes, stand
+on wooden legs with a tucked-up sort of air, as if to say, 'We intend to
+keep dry if we can.' Even the horses wear a wide stool on each hoof to
+lift them out of the mire.... Men, women, and children go clattering
+about in wooden shoes with loose heels; peasant-girls, who cannot get
+beaux for love, hire them for money to escort them to the _Kermis_; and
+husbands and wives lovingly harness themselves, side by side, on the
+bank of the canal, and drag their _pakschuyts_ to market....
+
+"'One thing is clear," cries Master Brightside, 'the inhabitants need
+never be thirsty.' But no, Odd-land is true to itself still.
+Notwithstanding the sea pushing to get in, and the lakes pushing to get
+out, and all the canals and rivers and ditches, there is, in many
+districts, no water fit to swallow; our poor Hollanders must go dry, or
+drink wine and beer, or send inland to Utrecht and other favored
+localities for that precious fluid, older than Adam, yet young as the
+morning dew.
+
+The book is fresh and flavorous in tone, and speaks to the fancy of
+children. Here is a scene on the canal:--
+
+"It was recess-hour. At the first stroke of the school-house bell, the
+canal seemed to give a tremendous shout, and grow suddenly alive with
+boys and girls. The sly thing, shining so quietly under the noonday sun,
+was a kaleidoscope at heart, and only needed a shake from that great
+clapper to startle it into dazzling changes.
+
+"Dozens of gayly clad children were skating in and out among each other,
+and all their pent-up merriment of the morning was relieving itself in
+song and shout and laughter. There was nothing to check the flow of
+frolic. Not a thought of school-books came out with them into the
+sunshine. Latin, arithmetic, grammar, all were locked up for an hour in
+the dingy school-room. The teacher might be a noun if he wished, and a
+proper one at that, but _they_ meant to enjoy themselves. As long as the
+skating was as perfect as this, it made no difference whether Holland
+was on the North Pole or the Equator; and as for philosophy, how could
+they bother themselves about inertia and gravitation and such things,
+when it was as much as they could do to keep from getting knocked over
+in the commotion?"
+
+There is no formal moral, obtruding itself in set phrase. The lessons
+inculcated, elevated in tone, are in the action of the story and the
+feelings and aspirations of the actors. A young lady, for example, has
+been on a visit to aid and console a poor peasant-girl, whom, having
+been in deep affliction, she found unexpectedly relieved. Engrossed by
+her warm sympathy with her humble friend, she forgets the lapse of time.
+
+"Helda was reprimanded severely that day for returning late to school
+after recess, and for imperfect recitation.
+
+"She had remained near the cottage until she heard Dame Brinker laugh,
+and heard Hans say, 'Here I am, father!' and then she had gone back to
+her lessons. What wonder that she missed them! How could she get a long
+string of Latin verbs by heart, when her heart did not care a fig for
+them, but would keep saying to itself, 'O, I am so glad! I am so glad!'"
+
+The book contains two things,--a series of lifelike pictures of an
+interesting country and of the odd ways and peculiarities and homely
+virtues of its inhabitants; and then, interwoven with these, a simple
+tale, now pathetic, now amusing, and carrying with it wholesome
+influences on the young heart and mind.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No.
+104, June, 1866, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***
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