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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105,
+July 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 18, No. 105, July 1866
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: October 8, 2007 [EBook #22927]
+
+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._
+
+VOLUME XVIII.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+BOSTON:
+
+TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
+
+124 TREMONT STREET.
+
+1866.
+
+
+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.
+
+
+UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & CO.,
+
+CAMBRIDGE.
+
+
+Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved
+to the end of the article.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                                       Page
+
+Aunt Judy                           _J. W. Palmer_                       76
+
+Borneo and Rajah Brooke             _G. Reynolds_                       667
+Bundle of Bones, A                  _Charles J. Sprague_                 60
+
+Case of George Dedlow, The                                                1
+Childhood; a Study                  _F. B. Perkins_                     385
+Chimney Corner for 1866, The, VII., VIII., IX.
+                                    _Mrs. H. B. Stowe_         85, 197, 338
+
+Darwinian Theory, The               _Charles J. Sprague_                415
+Distinguished Character, A                                              315
+
+Englishman in Normandy, An          _Goldwin Smith_                      64
+
+Fall of Austria, The                _C. C. Hazewell_                    746
+Farmer Hill's Diary                 _Mrs. A. M. Diaz_                   397
+Five Hundred Years Ago              _J. H. A. Bone_                     545
+Friedrich R�ckert                   _Bayard Taylor_                      33
+
+Great Doctor, The, I., II.          _Alice Cary_                    12, 174
+Griffith Gaunt; or, Jealousy. VIII., IX., X., XI., XII.
+                                    _Charles Reade_  94, 204, 323, 492, 606
+Gurowski                            _Robert Carter_                     625
+
+How my New Acquaintances Spin       _Dr. B. G. Wilder_                  129
+
+Incidents of the Portland Fire                                          356
+Indian Medicine                     _John Mason Browne_                 113
+Invalidism                          _Miss C. P. Hawes_                  599
+Italian Rain-Storm, An              _Mary Cowden Clarke_                356
+
+Johnson Party, The                  _E. P. Whipple_                     374
+
+Katharine Morne. I., II.            _Author of "Herman"_           559, 697
+
+Life Assurance                                                          308
+London Forty Years Ago              _John Neal_                         224
+
+Maniac's Confession, A                                                  170
+My Heathen at Home                  _J. W. Palmer_                      728
+My Little Boy                       _Mrs. M. L. Moody_                  361
+
+Norman Conquest, The                _C. C. Hazewell_                    461
+Novels of George Eliot, The         _Henry James, Jr._                  479
+
+Passages from Hawthorne's Note-Books. VII., VIII., IX., X.,
+  XI, XII.                                      40, 189, 288, 450, 536, 682
+Physical History of the Valley of the Amazons. I., II.
+                                    _Louis Agassiz_                 49, 159
+Pierpont, John                      _John Neal_                         650
+President and his Accomplices, The  _E. P. Whipple_                     634
+Progress of Prussia, The            _C. C. Hazewell_                    578
+
+Reconstruction                      _Frederick Douglass_                761
+Retreat from Lenoir's, and the Siege of Knoxville.
+                                    _H. S. Burrage_                      21
+Rhoda                               _Ruth Harper_                       521
+
+Scarab�i ed Altri                   _W. J. Stillman_                    435
+Singing-School Romance, The         _H. H. Weld_                        740
+Surgeon's Assistant, The            _Caroline Chesebro_                 257
+
+Through Broadway                    _H. T. Tuckerman_                   717
+
+University Reform                   _F. H. Hedge_                       296
+Usurpation, The                     _George S. Boutwell_                506
+
+Various Aspects of the Woman Question _F. Sheldon_                      425
+
+What did she see with?                _Miss E. Stuart Phelps_           146
+Woman's Work in the Middle Ages       _Mrs. R. C. Waterston_            274
+
+Year in Montana, A                    _Edward B. Nealley_               236
+Yesterday                             _Mrs. H. Prescott Spofford_       367
+
+
+POETRY.
+
+Autumn Song                      _Forceythe Willson_         746
+
+Bobolinks, The                   _C. P. Cranch_              321
+
+Death of Slavery, The            _W. C. Bryant_              120
+
+Friend, A                        _C. P. Cranch_              739
+
+Her Pilgrimage                   _H. B. Sargent_             396
+
+Late Champlain                   _H. T. Tuckerman_           365
+
+Miantowona                       _T. B. Aldrich_             446
+Miner, The                       _James Russell Lowell_      158
+My Farm: a Fable                 _Bayard Taylor_             187
+My Garden                        _R. W. Emerson_             665
+
+On Translating the Divina Commedia
+                                 _H. W. Longfellow_ 11, 273, 544
+
+Protoneiron                      _H. B. Sargent_             576
+
+Released                         _Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney_      32
+
+Song Sparrow, The                _A. West_                   599
+Sword of Bolivar, The            _J. T. Trowbridge_          713
+
+To J. B.                         _J. R. Lowell_               47
+
+Voice, The                       _Forceythe Willson_         307
+
+
+ART.
+
+Marshall's Portrait of Abraham Lincoln                       643
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+Aldrich's Poems                                                   250
+American Annual Cyclop�dia, The                                   646
+
+Bancroft's History of the United States                           765
+Barry Cornwall's Memoir of Charles Lamb                           771
+Beecher's Royal Truths                                            645
+Browne's American Family in Germany                               771
+
+Carpenter's Six Months at the White House                         644
+
+Ecce Homo                                                         122
+Eichendorff's Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing                       256
+Eros, etc.                                                        255
+Evangeline, Maud Muller, Vision of Sir Launfal, and
+  Flower-de-Luce, Illustrated                                     770
+
+Field's History of the Atlantic Telegraph                         647
+Fifteen Days                                                      128
+Fisher's Life of Benjamin Silliman                                126
+
+Gilmore's Four Years in the Saddle                                382
+
+Harrington's Inside: a Chronicle of Secession                     645
+
+Laugel's United States during the War, and Goldwin Smith's
+  Address on the Civil War in America                             252
+
+Marcy's Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border                   255
+Miss Ildrewe's Language of Flowers                                646
+Moens's English Travellers and Italian Brigands, and
+  Abbott's Prison Life in the South                               518
+
+Porter's Giant Cities of Bashan, and Syria's Holy Places          125
+
+Reade's Griffith Gaunt                                            767
+Reed's Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac                   253
+
+Saxe's Masquerade and other Poems                                 123
+Simpson's History of the Gypsies                                  254
+
+Wheaton's Elements of International Law                           513
+Whipple's Character and Characteristic Men                        772
+Wilkie Collins's Armadale                                         381
+
+RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS                                 383, 648
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+_A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics._
+
+VOL. XVIII--JULY, 1866.--NO. CV.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+THE CASE OF GEORGE DEDLOW.
+
+
+The following notes of my own case have been declined on various
+pretexts by every medical journal to which I have offered them. There
+was, perhaps, some reason in this, because many of the medical facts
+which they record are not altogether new, and because the psychical
+deductions to which they have led me are not in themselves of medical
+interest. I ought to add, that a good deal of what is here related is
+not of any scientific value whatsoever; but as one or two people on
+whose judgment I rely have advised me to print my narrative with all the
+personal details, rather than in the dry shape in which, as a
+psychological statement, I shall publish it elsewhere, I have yielded to
+their views. I suspect, however, that the very character of my record
+will, in the eyes of some of my readers, tend to lessen the value of the
+metaphysical discoveries which it sets forth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am the son of a physician, still in large practice, in the village of
+Abington, Scofield County, Indiana. Expecting to act as his future
+partner, I studied medicine in his office, and in 1859 and 1860 attended
+lectures at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. My second
+course should have been in the following year, but the outbreak of the
+Rebellion so crippled my father's means that I was forced to abandon my
+intention. The demand for army surgeons at this time became very great;
+and although not a graduate, I found no difficulty in getting the place
+of Assistant-Surgeon to the Tenth Indiana Volunteers. In the subsequent
+Western campaigns this organization suffered so severely, that, before
+the term of its service was over, it was merged in the Twenty-First
+Indiana Volunteers; and I, as an extra surgeon, ranked by the medical
+officers of the latter regiment, was transferred to the Fifteenth
+Indiana Cavalry. Like many physicians, I had contracted a strong taste
+for army life, and, disliking cavalry service, sought and obtained the
+position of First-Lieutenant in the Seventy-Ninth Indiana
+Volunteers,--an infantry regiment of excellent character.
+
+On the day after I assumed command of my company, which had no captain,
+we were sent to garrison a part of a line of block-houses stretching
+along the Cumberland River below Nashville, then occupied by a portion
+of the command of General Rosecrans.
+
+The life we led while on this duty was tedious, and at the same time
+dangerous in the extreme. Food was scarce and bad, the water horrible,
+and we had no cavalry to forage for us. If, as infantry, we attempted to
+levy supplies upon the scattered farms around us, the population seemed
+suddenly to double, and in the shape of guerillas "potted" us
+industriously from behind distant trees, rocks, or hasty earthworks.
+Under these various and unpleasant influences, combined with a fair
+infusion of malaria, our men rapidly lost health and spirits.
+Unfortunately, no proper medical supplies had been forwarded with our
+small force (two companies), and, as the fall advanced, the want of
+quinine and stimulants became a serious annoyance. Moreover, our rations
+were running low; we had been three weeks without a new supply; and our
+commanding officer, Major Terrill, began to be uneasy as to the safety
+of his men. About this time it was supposed that a train with rations
+would be due from the post twenty miles to the north of us; yet it was
+quite possible that it would bring us food, but no medicines, which were
+what we most needed. The command was too small to detach any part of it,
+and the Major therefore resolved to send an officer alone to the post
+above us, where the rest of the Seventy-Ninth lay, and whence they could
+easily forward quinine and stimulants by the train, if it had not left,
+or, if it had, by a small cavalry escort.
+
+It so happened, to my cost, as it turned out, that I was the only
+officer fit to make the journey, and I was accordingly ordered to
+proceed to Block House No. 3, and make the required arrangements. I
+started alone just after dusk the next night, and during the darkness
+succeeded in getting within three miles of my destination. At this time
+I found that I had lost my way, and, although aware of the danger of my
+act, was forced to turn aside and ask at a log-cabin for directions. The
+house contained a dried-up old woman, and four white-headed, half-naked
+children. The woman was either stone-deaf, or pretended to be so; but at
+all events she gave me no satisfaction, and I remounted and rode away.
+On coming to the end of a lane, into which I had turned to seek the
+cabin, I found to my surprise that the bars had been put up during my
+brief parley. They were too high to leap, and I therefore dismounted to
+pull them down. As I touched the top rail, I heard a rifle, and at the
+same instant felt a blow on both arms, which fell helpless. I staggered
+to my horse and tried to mount; but, as I could use neither arm, the
+effort was vain, and I therefore stood still, awaiting my fate. I am
+only conscious that I saw about me several Graybacks, for I must have
+fallen fainting almost immediately.
+
+When I awoke, I was lying in the cabin near by, upon a pile of rubbish.
+Ten or twelve guerillas were gathered about the fire, apparently drawing
+lots for my watch, boots, hat, etc. I now made an effort to find out how
+far I was hurt. I discovered that I could use the left forearm and hand
+pretty well, and with this hand I felt the right limb all over until I
+touched the wound. The ball had passed from left to right through the
+left biceps, and directly through the right arm just below the shoulder,
+emerging behind. The right hand and forearm were cold and perfectly
+insensible. I pinched them as well as I could, to test the amount of
+sensation remaining; but the hand might as well have been that of a dead
+man. I began to understand that the nerves had been wounded, and that
+the part was utterly powerless. By this time my friends had pretty well
+divided the spoils, and, rising together, went out. The old woman then
+came to me and said, "Reckon you'd best git up. Theyuns is agoin' to
+take you away." To this I only answered, "Water, water." I had a grim
+sense of amusement on finding that the old woman was not deaf, for she
+went out, and presently came back with a gourdful, which I eagerly
+drank. An hour later the Graybacks returned, and, finding that I was too
+weak to walk, carried me out, and laid me on the bottom of a common
+cart, with which they set off on a trot. The jolting was horrible, but
+within an hour I began to have in my dead right hand a strange burning,
+which was rather a relief to me. It increased as the sun rose and the
+day grew warm, until I felt as if the hand was caught and pinched in a
+red-hot vice. Then in my agony I begged my guard for water to wet it
+with, but for some reason they desired silence, and at every noise
+threatened me with a revolver. At length the pain became absolutely
+unendurable, and I grew what it is the fashion to call demoralized. I
+screamed, cried, and yelled in my torture, until, as I suppose, my
+captors became alarmed, and, stopping, gave me a handkerchief,--my own,
+I fancy,--and a canteen of water, with which I wetted the hand, to my
+unspeakable relief.
+
+It is unnecessary to detail the events by which, finally, I found myself
+in one of the Rebel hospitals near Atlanta. Here, for the first time, my
+wounds were properly cleansed and dressed by a Dr. Oliver Wilson, who
+treated me throughout with great kindness. I told him I had been a
+doctor; which, perhaps, may have been in part the cause of the unusual
+tenderness with which I was managed. The left arm was now quite easy;
+although, as will be seen, it never entirely healed. The right arm was
+worse than ever,--the humerus broken, the nerves wounded, and the hand
+only alive to pain. I use this phrase because it is connected in my mind
+with a visit from a local visitor,--I am not sure he was a
+preacher,--who used to go daily through the wards, and talk to us, or
+write our letters. One morning he stopped at my bed, when this little
+talk occurred.
+
+"How are you, Lieutenant?"
+
+"O," said I, "as usual. All right, but this hand, which is dead except
+to pain."
+
+"Ah," said he, "such and thus will the wicked be,--such will you be if
+you die in your sins: you will go where only pain can be felt. For all
+eternity, all of you will be as that hand,--knowing pain only."
+
+I suppose I was very weak, but somehow I felt a sudden and chilling
+horror of possible universal pain, and suddenly fainted. When I awoke,
+the hand was worse, if that could be. It was red, shining, aching,
+burning, and, as it seemed to me, perpetually rasped with hot files.
+When the doctor came, I begged for morphia. He said gravely: "We have
+none. You know you don't allow it to pass the lines."
+
+I turned to the wall, and wetted the hand again, my sole relief. In
+about an hour, Dr. Wilson came back with two aids, and explained to me
+that the bone was so broken as to make it hopeless to save it, and that,
+besides, amputation offered some chance of arresting the pain. I had
+thought of this before, but the anguish I felt--I cannot say
+endured--was so awful, that I made no more of losing the limb than of
+parting with a tooth on account of toothache. Accordingly, brief
+preparations were made, which I watched with a sort of eagerness such as
+must forever be inexplicable to any one who has not passed six weeks of
+torture like that which I had suffered.
+
+I had but one pang before the operation. As I arranged myself on the
+left side, so as to make it convenient for the operator to use the
+knife, I asked: "Who is to give me the ether?" "We have none," said the
+person questioned. I set my teeth, and said no more.
+
+I need not describe the operation. The pain felt was severe; but it was
+insignificant as compared to that of any other minute of the past six
+weeks. The limb was removed very near to the shoulder-joint. As the
+second incision was made, I felt a strange lightning of pain play
+through the limb, defining every minutest fibril of nerve. This was
+followed by instant, unspeakable relief, and before the flaps were
+brought together I was sound asleep. I have only a recollection that I
+said, pointing to the arm which lay on the floor: "There is the pain,
+and here am I. How queer!" Then I slept,--slept the sleep of the just,
+or, better, of the painless. From this time forward, I was free from
+neuralgia; but at a subsequent period I saw a number of cases similar to
+mine in a hospital in Philadelphia.
+
+It is no part of my plan to detail my weary months of monotonous prison
+life in the South. In the early part of August, 1863, I was exchanged,
+and, after the usual thirty days' furlough, returned to my regiment a
+captain.
+
+On the 19th of September, 1863, occurred the battle of Chickamauga, in
+which my regiment took a conspicuous part. The close of our own share in
+this contest is, as it were, burnt into my memory with every least
+detail. It was about six P. M., when we found ourselves in line, under
+cover of a long, thin row of scrubby trees, beyond which lay a gentle
+slope, from which, again, rose a hill rather more abrupt, and crowned
+with an earthwork. We received orders to cross this space, and take the
+fort in front, while a brigade on our right was to make a like movement
+on its flank.
+
+Just before we emerged into the open ground, we noticed what, I think,
+was common in many fights,--that the enemy had begun to bowl round-shot
+at us, probably from failure of shell. We passed across the valley in
+good order, although the men fell rapidly all along the line. As we
+climbed the hill, our pace slackened, and the fire grew heavier. At this
+moment a battery opened on our left,--the shots crossing our heads
+obliquely. It is this moment which is so printed on my recollection. I
+can see now, as if through a window, the gray smoke, lit with red
+flashes,--the long, wavering line,--the sky blue above,--the trodden
+furrows, blotted with blue blouses. Then it was as if the window closed,
+and I knew and saw no more. No other scene in my life is thus scarred,
+if I may say so, into my memory. I have a fancy that the horrible shock
+which suddenly fell upon me must have had something to do with thus
+intensifying the momentary image then before my eyes.
+
+When I awakened, I was lying under a tree somewhere at the rear. The
+ground was covered with wounded, and the doctors were busy at an
+operating-table, improvised from two barrels and a plank. At length two
+of them who were examining the wounded about me came up to where I lay.
+A hospital steward raised my head, and poured down some brandy and
+water, while another cut loose my pantaloons. The doctors exchanged
+looks, and walked away. I asked the steward where I was hit.
+
+"Both thighs," said he; "the Doc's won't do nothing."
+
+"No use?" said I.
+
+"Not much," said he.
+
+"Not much means none at all," I answered.
+
+When he had gone, I set myself to thinking about a good many things
+which I had better have thought of before, but which in no way concern
+the history of my case. A half-hour went by. I had no pain, and did not
+get weaker. At last, I cannot explain why, I began to look about me. At
+first, things appeared a little hazy; but I remember one which thrilled
+me a little, even then.
+
+A tall, blond-bearded major walked up to a doctor near me, saying, "When
+you've a little leisure, just take a look at my side."
+
+"Do it now," said the doctor.
+
+The officer exposed his left hip. "Ball went in here, and out here."
+
+The Doctor looked up at him with a curious air,--half pity, half
+amazement. "If you've got any message, you'd best send it by me."
+
+"Why, you don't say its serious?" was the reply.
+
+"Serious! Why, you're shot through the stomach. You won't live over the
+day."
+
+Then the man did what struck me as a very odd thing. "Anybody got a
+pipe?" Some one gave him a pipe. He filled it deliberately, struck a
+light with a flint, and sat down against a tree near to me. Presently
+the doctor came over to him, and asked what he could do for him.
+
+"Send me a drink of Bourbon."
+
+"Anything else?"
+
+"No."
+
+As the doctor left him, he called him back. "It's a little rough, Doc,
+isn't it?"
+
+No more passed, and I saw this man no longer, for another set of doctors
+were handling my legs, for the first time causing pain. A moment after,
+a steward put a towel over my mouth, and I smelt the familiar odor of
+chloroform, which I was glad enough to breathe. In a moment the trees
+began to move around from left to right,--then faster and faster; then a
+universal grayness came before me, and I recall nothing further until I
+awoke to consciousness in a hospital-tent. I got hold of my own identity
+in a moment or two, and was suddenly aware of a sharp cramp in my left
+leg. I tried to get at it to rub it with my single arm, but, finding
+myself too weak, hailed an attendant. "Just rub my left calf," said I,
+"if you please."
+
+"Calf?" said he, "you ain't none, pardner. It's took off."
+
+"I know better," said I. "I have pain in both legs."
+
+"Wall, I never!" said he. "You ain't got nary leg."
+
+As I did not believe him, he threw off the covers, and, to my horror,
+showed me that I had suffered amputation of both thighs, very high up.
+
+"That will do," said I, faintly.
+
+A month later, to the amazement of every one, I was so well as to be
+moved from the crowded hospital at Chattanooga to Nashville, where I
+filled one of the ten thousand beds of that vast metropolis of
+hospitals. Of the sufferings which then began I shall presently speak.
+It will be best just now to detail the final misfortune which here fell
+upon me. Hospital No. 2, in which I lay, was inconveniently crowded with
+severely wounded officers. After my third week, an epidemic of hospital
+gangrene broke out in my ward. In three days it attacked twenty persons.
+Then an inspector came out, and we were transferred at once to the open
+air, and placed in tents. Strangely enough, the wound in my remaining
+arm, which still suppurated, was seized with gangrene. The usual remedy,
+bromine, was used locally, but the main artery opened, was tied, bled
+again and again, and at last, as a final resort, the remaining arm was
+amputated at the shoulder-joint. Against all chances I recovered, to
+find myself a useless torso, more like some strange larval creature than
+anything of human shape. Of my anguish and horror of myself I dare not
+speak. I have dictated these pages, not to shock my readers, but to
+possess them with facts in regard to the relation of the mind to the
+body; and I hasten, therefore, to such portions of my case as best
+illustrate these views.
+
+In January, 1864, I was forwarded to Philadelphia, in order to enter
+what was then known as the Stump Hospital, South Street. This favor was
+obtained through the influence of my father's friend, the late Governor
+Anderson, who has always manifested an interest in my case, for which I
+am deeply grateful. It was thought, at the time, that Mr. Palmer, the
+leg-maker, might be able to adapt some form of arm to my left shoulder,
+as on that side there remained five inches of the arm bone, which I
+could move to a moderate extent. The hope proved illusory, as the stump
+was always too tender to bear any pressure. The hospital referred to was
+in charge of several surgeons while I was an inmate, and was at all
+times a clean and pleasant home. It was filled with men who had lost one
+arm or leg, or one of each, as happened now and then. I saw one man who
+had lost both legs, and one who had parted with both arms; but none,
+like myself, stripped of every limb. There were collected in this place
+hundreds of these cases, which gave to it, with reason enough, the not
+very pleasing title of Stump-Hospital.
+
+I spent here three and a half months, before my transfer to the United
+States Army Hospital for nervous diseases. Every morning I was carried
+out in an arm-chair, and placed in the library, where some one was
+always ready to write or read for me, or to fill my pipe. The doctors
+lent me medical books; the ladies brought me luxuries, and fed me; and,
+save that I was helpless to a degree which was humiliating, I was as
+comfortable as kindness could make me.
+
+I amused myself, at this time, by noting in my mind all that I could
+learn from other limbless folk, and from myself, as to the peculiar
+feelings which were noticed in regard to lost members. I found that the
+great mass of men who had undergone amputations, for many months felt
+the usual consciousness that they still had the lost limb. It itched or
+pained, or was cramped, but never felt hot or cold. If they had painful
+sensations referred to it, the conviction of its existence continued
+unaltered for long periods; but where no pain was felt in it, then, by
+degrees, the sense of having that limb faded away entirely. I think we
+may to some extent explain this. The knowledge we possess of any part is
+made up of the numberless impressions from without which affect its
+sensitive surfaces, and which are transmitted through its nerves to the
+spinal nerve-cells, and through them, again, to the brain. We are thus
+kept endlessly informed as to the existence of parts, because the
+impressions which reach the brain are, by a law of our being, referred
+by us to the part from which they came. Now, when the part is cut off,
+the nerve-trunks which led to it and from it, remaining capable of being
+impressed by irritations, are made to convey to the brain from the stump
+impressions which are as usual referred by the brain to the lost parts,
+to which these nerve-threads belonged. In other words, the nerve is like
+a bell-wire. You may pull it at any part of its course, and thus ring
+the bell as well as if you pulled at the end of the wire; but, in any
+case, the intelligent servant will refer the pull to the front door, and
+obey it accordingly. The impressions made on the cut ends of the nerve,
+or on its sides, are due often to the changes in the stump during
+healing, and consequently cease as it heals, so that finally, in a very
+healthy stump, no such impressions arise; the brain ceases to correspond
+with the lost leg, and, as _les absents ont toujours tort_, it is no
+longer remembered or recognized. But in some cases, such as mine proved
+at last to my sorrow, the ends of the nerves undergo a curious
+alteration, and get to be enlarged and altered. This change, as I have
+seen in my practice of medicine, passes up the nerves towards the
+centres, and occasions a more or less constant irritation of the
+nerve-fibres, producing neuralgia, which is usually referred to that
+part of the lost limb to which the affected nerve belongs. This pain
+keeps the brain ever mindful of the missing part, and, imperfectly at
+least, preserves to the man a consciousness of possessing that which he
+has not.
+
+Where the pains come and go, as they do in certain cases, the subjective
+sensations thus occasioned are very curious, since in such cases the man
+loses and gains, and loses and regains, the consciousness of the
+presence of lost parts, so that he will tell you, "Now I feel my
+thumb,--now I feel my little finger." I should also add, that nearly
+every person who has lost an arm above the elbow feels as though the
+lost member were bent at the elbow, and at times is vividly impressed
+with the notion that his fingers are strongly flexed.
+
+Another set of cases present a peculiarity which I am at a loss to
+account for. Where the leg, for instance, has been lost, they feel as if
+the foot was present, but as though the leg were shortened. If the thigh
+has been taken off, there seems to them to be a foot at the knee; if the
+arm, a hand seems to be at the elbow, or attached to the stump itself.
+
+As I have said, I was next sent to the United States Army Hospital for
+Injuries and Diseases of the Nervous System. Before leaving Nashville, I
+had begun to suffer the most acute pain in my left hand, especially the
+little finger; and so perfect was the idea which was thus kept up of the
+real presence of these missing parts, that I found it hard at times to
+believe them absent. Often, at night, I would try with one lost hand to
+grope for the other. As, however, I had no pain in the right arm, the
+sense of the existence of that limb gradually disappeared, as did that
+of my legs also.
+
+Everything was done for my neuralgia which the doctors could think of;
+and at length, at my suggestion, I was removed to the above-named
+hospital. It was a pleasant, suburban, old-fashioned country-seat, its
+gardens surrounded by a circle of wooden, one-story wards, shaded by
+fine trees. There were some three hundred cases of epilepsy, paralysis,
+St. Vitus's dance, and wounds of nerves. On one side of me lay a poor
+fellow, a Dane, who had the same burning neuralgia with which I once
+suffered, and which I now learned was only too common. This man had
+become hysterical from pain. He carried a sponge in his pocket, and a
+bottle of water in one hand, with which he constantly wetted the burning
+hand. Every sound increased his torture, and he even poured water into
+his boots to keep himself from feeling too sensibly the rough friction
+of his soles when walking. Like him, I was greatly eased by having small
+doses of morphia injected under the skin of my shoulder, with a hollow
+needle, fitted to a syringe.
+
+As I improved under the morphia treatment, I began to be disturbed by
+the horrible variety of suffering about me. One man walked sideways;
+there was one who could not smell; another was dumb from an explosion.
+In fact, every one had his own grotesquely painful peculiarity. Near me
+was a strange case of palsy of the muscles called rhomboids, whose
+office it is to hold down the shoulder-blades flat on the back during
+the motions of the arms, which, in themselves, were strong enough. When,
+however, he lifted these members, the shoulder-blades stood out from the
+back like wings, and got him the soubriquet of the Angel. In my ward
+were also the cases of fits, which very much annoyed me, as upon any
+great change in the weather it was common to have a dozen convulsions in
+view at once. Dr. Neek, one of our physicians, told me that on one
+occasion a hundred and fifty fits took place within thirty-six hours. On
+my complaining of these sights, whence I alone could not fly, I was
+placed in the paralytic and wound ward, which I found much more
+pleasant.
+
+A month of skilful treatment eased me entirely of my aches, and I then
+began to experience certain curious feelings, upon which, having nothing
+to do and nothing to do anything with, I reflected a good deal. It was a
+good while before I could correctly explain to my own satisfaction the
+phenomena which at this time I was called upon to observe. By the
+various operations already described, I had lost about four fifths of my
+weight. As a consequence of this, I ate much less than usual, and could
+scarcely have consumed the ration of a soldier. I slept also but little;
+for, as sleep is the repose of the brain, made necessary by the waste of
+its tissues during thought and voluntary movement, and as this latter
+did not exist in my case, I needed only that rest which was necessary to
+repair such exhaustion of the nerve-centres as was induced by thinking
+and the automatic movements of the viscera.
+
+I observed at this time also, that my heart, in place of beating as it
+once did seventy-eight in the minute, pulsated only forty-five times in
+this interval,--a fact to be easily explained by the perfect quiescence
+to which I was reduced, and the consequent absence of that healthy and
+constant stimulus to the muscles of the heart which exercise occasions.
+
+Notwithstanding these drawbacks, my physical health was good, which I
+confess surprised me, for this among other reasons. It is said that a
+burn of two thirds of the surface destroys life, because then all the
+excretory matters which this portion of the glands of the skin evolved
+are thrown upon the blood, and poison the man, just as happens in an
+animal whose skin the physiologist has varnished, so as in this way to
+destroy its function. Yet here was I, having lost at least a third of my
+skin, and apparently none the worse for it.
+
+Still more remarkable, however, were the physical changes which I now
+began to perceive. I found to my horror that at times I was less
+conscious of myself, of my own existence, than used to be the case. This
+sensation was so novel, that at first it quite bewildered me. I felt
+like asking some one constantly if I were really George Dedlow or not;
+but, well aware how absurd I should seem after such a question, I
+refrained from speaking of my case, and strove more keenly to analyze my
+feelings. At times the conviction of my want of being myself was
+overwhelming, and most painful. It was, as well as I can describe it, a
+deficiency in the egoistic sentiment of individuality. About one half of
+the sensitive surface of my skin was gone, and thus much of relation to
+the outer world destroyed. As a consequence, a large part of the
+receptive central organs must be out of employ, and, like other idle
+things, degenerating rapidly. Moreover, all the great central ganglia,
+which give rise to movements in the limbs, were also eternally at rest.
+Thus one half of me was absent or functionally dead. This set me to
+thinking how much a man might lose and yet live. If I were unhappy
+enough to survive, I might part with my spleen at least, as many a dog
+has done, and grown fat afterwards. The other organs, with which we
+breathe and circulate the blood, would be essential; so also would the
+liver; but at least half of the intestines might be dispensed with, and
+of course all of the limbs. And as to the nervous system, the only parts
+really necessary to life are a few small ganglia. Were the rest absent
+or inactive, we should have a man reduced, as it were, to the lowest
+terms, and leading an almost vegetative existence. Would such a being, I
+asked myself, possess the sense of individuality in its usual
+completeness,--even if his organs of sensation remained, and he were
+capable of consciousness? Of course, without them, he could not have it
+any more than a dahlia, or a tulip. But with it--how then? I concluded
+that it would be at a minimum, and that, if utter loss of relation to
+the outer world were capable of destroying a man's consciousness of
+himself, the destruction of half of his sensitive surfaces might well
+occasion, in a less degree, a like result, and so diminish his sense of
+individual existence.
+
+I thus reached the conclusion that a man is not his brain, or any one
+part of it, but all of his economy, and that to lose any part must
+lessen this sense of his own existence. I found but one person who
+properly appreciated this great truth. She was a New England lady, from
+Hartford,--an agent, I think, for some commission, perhaps the Sanitary.
+After I had told her my views and feelings, she said: "Yes, I
+comprehend. The fractional entities of vitality are embraced in the
+oneness of the unitary Ego. Life," she added, "is the garnered
+condensation of objective impressions; and, as the objective is the
+remote father of the subjective, so must individuality, which is but
+focused subjectivity, suffer and fade when the sensation lenses, by
+which the rays of impression are condensed, become destroyed." I am not
+quite clear that I fully understood her, but I think she appreciated my
+ideas, and I felt grateful for her kindly interest.
+
+The strange want I have spoken of now haunted and perplexed me so
+constantly, that I became moody and wretched. While in this state, a man
+from a neighboring ward fell one morning into conversation with the
+chaplain, within earshot of my chair. Some of their words arrested my
+attention, and I turned my head to see and listen. The speaker, who
+wore a sergeant's chevron and carried one arm in a sling, was a tall,
+loosely made person, with a pale face, light eyes of a washed-out blue
+tint, and very sparse yellow whiskers. His mouth was weak, both lips
+being almost alike, so that the organ might have been turned upside down
+without affecting its expression. His forehead, however, was high and
+thinly covered with sandy hair. I should have said, as a phrenologist,
+Will feeble,--emotional, but not passionate,--likely to be enthusiast,
+or weakly bigot.
+
+I caught enough of what passed to make me call to the sergeant when the
+chaplain left him.
+
+"Good morning," said he. "How do you get on?"
+
+"Not at all," I replied. "Where were you hit?"
+
+"O, at Chancellorsville. I was shot in the shoulder. I have what the
+doctors call paralysis of the median nerve, but I guess Dr. Neek and the
+lightnin' battery will fix it in time. When my time's out I'll go back
+to Kearsage and try on the school-teaching again. I was a fool to leave
+it."
+
+"Well," said I, "you're better off than I."
+
+"Yes," he answered, "in more ways than one. I belong to the New Church.
+It's a great comfort for a plain man like me, when he's weary and sick,
+to be able to turn away from earthly things, and hold converse daily
+with the great and good who have left the world. We have a circle in
+Coates Street. If it wa'n't for the comfort I get there, I should have
+wished myself dead many a time. I ain't got kith or kin on earth; but
+this matters little, when one can talk to them daily, and know that they
+are in the spheres above us."
+
+"It must be a great comfort," I replied, "if only one could believe it."
+
+"Believe!" he repeated, "how can you help it? Do you suppose anything
+dies?"
+
+"No," I said. "The soul does not, I am sure; and as to matter, it merely
+changes form."
+
+"But why then," said he, "should not the dead soul talk to the living.
+In space, no doubt, exist all forms of matter, merely in finer, more
+ethereal being. You can't suppose a naked soul moving about without a
+bodily garment. No creed teaches that, and if its new clothing be of
+like substance to ours, only of ethereal fineness,--a more delicate
+recrystallization about the eternal spiritual nucleus,--must not it then
+possess powers as much more delicate and refined as is the new material
+in which it is reclad?"
+
+"Not very clear," I answered; "but after all, the thing should be
+susceptible of some form of proof to our present senses."
+
+"And so it is," said he. "Come to-morrow with me, and you shall see and
+hear for yourself."
+
+"I will," said I, "if the doctor will lend me the ambulance."
+
+It was so arranged, as the surgeon in charge was kind enough, as usual,
+to oblige me with the loan of his wagon, and two orderlies to lift my
+useless trunk.
+
+On the day following, I found myself, with my new comrade, in a house in
+Coates Street, where a "circle" was in the daily habit of meeting. So
+soon as I had been comfortably deposited in an arm-chair, beside a large
+pine-table, the rest of those assembled seated themselves, and for some
+time preserved an unbroken silence. During this pause I scrutinized the
+persons present. Next to me, on my right, sat a flabby man, with
+ill-marked, baggy features, and injected eyes. He was, as I learned
+afterwards, an eclectic doctor, who had tried his hand at medicine and
+several of its quackish variations, finally settling down on
+eclecticism, which I believe professes to be to scientific medicine what
+vegetarianism is to common sense, every-day dietetics. Next to him sat a
+female,--authoress, I think, of two somewhat feeble novels, and much
+pleasanter to look at than her books. She was, I thought, a good deal
+excited at the prospect of spiritual revelations. Her neighbor was a
+pallid, care-worn girl, with very red lips, and large brown eyes of
+great beauty. She was, as I learned afterwards, a magnetic patient of
+the doctor, and had deserted her husband, a master mechanic, to follow
+this new light. The others were, like myself, strangers brought hither
+by mere curiosity. One of them was a lady in deep black, closely veiled.
+Beyond her, and opposite to me, sat the sergeant, and next to him, the
+medium, a man named Blake. He was well dressed, and wore a good deal of
+jewelry, and had large, black side-whiskers,--a shrewd-visaged,
+large-nosed, full-lipped man, formed by nature to appreciate the
+pleasant things of sensual existence.
+
+Before I had ended my survey, he turned to the lady in black, and asked
+if she wished to see any one in the spirit-world.
+
+She said, "Yes," rather feebly.
+
+"Is the spirit present?" he asked. Upon which two knocks were heard in
+affirmation.
+
+"Ah!" said the medium, "the name is--it is the name of a child. It is a
+male child. It is Albert,--no, Alfred!"
+
+"Great Heaven!" said the lady. "My child! my boy!"
+
+On this the medium arose, and became strangely convulsed. "I see," he
+said, "I see--a fair-haired boy. I see blue eyes,--I see above you,
+beyond you--" at the same time pointing fixedly over her head.
+
+She turned with a wild start "Where,--whereabouts?"
+
+"A blue-eyed boy," he continued, "over your head. He cries,--he says,
+Mamma, mamma!"
+
+The effect of this on the woman was unpleasant. She stared about her for
+a moment, and, exclaiming, "I come,--I am coming, Alfy!" fell in
+hysterics on the floor.
+
+Two or three persons raised her, and aided her into an adjoining room;
+but the rest remained at the table, as though well accustomed to like
+scenes.
+
+After this, several of the strangers were called upon to write the names
+of the dead with whom they wished to communicate. The names were spelled
+out by the agency of affirmative knocks when the correct letters were
+touched by the applicant, who was furnished with an alphabet card upon
+which he tapped the letters in turn, the medium, meanwhile, scanning his
+face very keenly. With some, the names were readily made out. With one,
+a stolid personage of disbelieving type, every attempt failed, until at
+last the spirits signified by knocks that he was a disturbing agency,
+and that while he remained all our efforts would fail. Upon this some of
+the company proposed that he should leave, of which invitation he took
+advantage with a sceptical sneer at the whole performance.
+
+As he left us, the sergeant leaned over and whispered to the medium, who
+next addressed himself to me, "Sister Euphemia," he said, indicating the
+lady with large eyes, "will act as your medium. I am unable to do more.
+These things exhaust my nervous system."
+
+"Sister Euphemia," said the doctor, "will aid us. Think, if you please,
+sir, of a spirit, and she will endeavor to summon it to our circle."
+
+Upon this, a wild idea came into my head. I answered, "I am thinking as
+you directed me to do."
+
+The medium sat with her arms folded, looking steadily at the centre of
+the table. For a few moments there was silence. Then a series of
+irregular knocks began. "Are you present?" said the medium.
+
+The affirmative raps were twice given.
+
+"I should think," said the doctor, "that there were two spirits
+present."
+
+His words sent a thrill through my heart.
+
+"Are there two?" he questioned.
+
+A double rap.
+
+"Yes, two," said the medium. "Will it please the spirits to make us
+conscious of their names in this world?"
+
+A single knock. "No."
+
+"Will it please them to say how they are called in the world of
+spirits?"
+
+Again came the irregular raps,--3, 4, 8, 6; then a pause, and 3, 4, 8,
+7.
+
+"I think," said the authoress, "they must be numbers. Will the spirits,"
+she said, "be good enough to aid us? Shall we use the alphabet?"
+
+"Yes," was rapped very quickly.
+
+"Are these numbers?"
+
+"Yes," again.
+
+"I will write them," she added, and, doing so, took up the card and
+tapped the letters. The spelling was pretty rapid, and ran thus as she
+tapped in turn, first the letters, and last the numbers she had already
+set down:--
+
+"UNITED STATES ARMY MEDICAL MUSEUM, NOS. 3486, 3487."
+
+The medium looked up with a puzzled expression.
+
+"Good gracious!" said I, "they are _my legs! my legs!_"
+
+What followed, I ask no one to believe except those who, like myself,
+have communed with the beings of another sphere. Suddenly I felt a
+strange return of my self-consciousness. I was re-individualized, so to
+speak. A strange wonder filled me, and, to the amazement of every one, I
+arose, and, staggering a little, walked across the room on limbs
+invisible to them or me. It was no wonder I staggered, for, as I briefly
+reflected, my legs had been nine months in the strongest alcohol. At
+this instant all my new friends crowded around me in astonishment.
+Presently, however, I felt myself sinking slowly. My legs were going,
+and in a moment I was resting feebly on my two stumps upon the floor. It
+was too much. All that was left of me fainted and rolled over senseless.
+
+I have little to add. I am now at home in the West, surrounded by every
+form of kindness, and every possible comfort; but, alas! I have so
+little surety of being myself, that I doubt my own honesty in drawing my
+pension, and feel absolved from gratitude to those who are kind to a
+being who is uncertain of being enough himself to be conscientiously
+responsible. It is needless to add, that I am not a happy fraction of a
+man; and that I am eager for the day when I shall rejoin the lost
+members of my corporeal family in another and a happier world.
+
+
+
+
+ON TRANSLATING THE DIVINA COMMEDIA.
+
+
+SECOND SONNET.
+
+    I enter, and see thee in the gloom
+      Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine!
+      And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine.
+      The air is filled with some unknown perfume;
+    The congregation of the dead make room
+      For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine;
+      Like rooks that haunt Ravenna's groves of pine
+      The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb.
+    From the confessionals I hear arise
+      Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies,
+      And lamentations from the crypts below;
+    And then a voice celestial that begins
+      With the pathetic words, "Although your sins
+      As scarlet be," and ends with "as the snow."
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT DOCTOR.
+
+A STORY IN TWO PARTS.
+
+
+PART I.
+
+"Hello! hello! which way now, Mrs. Walker? It'll rain afore you git
+there, if you've got fur to go. Hadn't you better stop an' come in till
+this thunder-shower passes over?"
+
+"Well, no, I reckon not, Mr. Bowen. I'm in a good deal of a hurry. I've
+been sent for over to John's." And rubbing one finger up and down the
+horn of her saddle, for she was on horseback, Mrs. Walker added,
+"Johnny's sick, Mr. Bowen, an' purty bad, I'm afeard." Then she tucked
+up her skirts, and, gathering up the rein, that had dropped on the neck
+of her horse, she inquired in a more cheerful tone, "How's all the
+folks,--Miss Bowen, an' Jinney, an' all?"
+
+By this time the thunder began to growl, and the wind to whirl clouds of
+dust along the road.
+
+"You'd better hitch your critter under the wood-shed, an' come in a bit.
+My woman'll be glad to see you, an' Jinney too,--there she is now, at
+the winder. I'll warrant nobody goes along the big road without her
+seein' 'em." Mr. Bowen had left the broad kitchen-porch from which he
+had hallooed to the old woman, and was now walking down the gravelled
+path, that, between its borders of four-o'clocks and other common
+flowers, led from the front door to the front gate. "We're all purty
+well, I'm obleeged to you," he said, as, reaching the gate, he leaned
+over it, and turned his cold gray eyes upon the neat legs of the horse,
+rather than the anxious face of the rider.
+
+"I'm glad to hear you're well," Mrs. Walker said; "it a'most seems to me
+that, if I had Johnny the way he was last week, I wouldn't complain
+about anything. We think too much of our little hardships, Mr. Bowen,--a
+good deal too much!" And Mrs. Walker looked at the clouds, perhaps in
+the hope that their blackness would frighten the tears away from her
+eyes. John was her own boy,--forty years old, to be sure, but still a
+boy to her,--and he was very sick.
+
+"Well, I don't know," Mr. Bowen said, opening the mouth of the horse and
+looking in it; "we all have our troubles, an' if it ain't one thing it's
+another. Now if John wasn't sick, I s'pose you'd be frettin' about
+somethin' else; you mustn't think you're particularly sot apart in your
+afflictions, any how. This rain that's getherin' is goin' to spile a
+couple of acres of grass for me, don't you see?"
+
+Mrs. Walker was hurt. Her neighbor had not given her the sympathy she
+expected; he had not said anything about John one way nor another; had
+not inquired whether there was anything he could do, nor what the doctor
+said, nor asked any of those questions that express a kindly solicitude.
+
+"I am sorry about your hay," she answered, "but I must be going."
+
+"Don't want to hurry you; but if you will go, the sooner the better.
+That thunder-cloud is certain to bust in a few minutes." And Mr. Bowen
+turned toward the house.
+
+"Wait a minute, Mrs. Walker," called a young voice, full of kindness;
+"here's my umberell. It'll save your bonnet, any how; and it's a real
+purty one. But didn't I hear you say somebody was sick over to your
+son's house?"
+
+"Yes, darlin'," answered the old woman as she took the umbrella; "it's
+Johnny himself; he's right bad, they say. I just got word about an hour
+ago, and left everything, and started off. They think he's got the
+small-pox."
+
+Jenny Bowen, the young girl who had brought the umbrella, looked
+terribly frightened. "_They_ won't let me go over, you know," she said,
+nodding her head toward the house, "not if it's really small-pox!" And
+then, with the hope at which the young are so quick to catch, she added,
+"May be it isn't small-pox. I haven't heard of a case anywhere about. I
+don't believe it is." And then she told Mrs. Walker not to fret about
+home. "I will go," she said, "and milk the cow, and look after things.
+Don't think one thought about it." And then she asked if the rest of
+them at John Walker's were well.
+
+"If it's Hobert you want to know about," the grandmother said, smiling
+faintly, "he's well; but, darlin', you'd better not think about him:
+they'll be ag'in it, in there!" and she nodded toward the house as Jenny
+had done before her.
+
+The face of the young girl flushed,--not with confusion, but with
+self-asserting and defiant brightness that seemed to say, "Let them do
+their worst." The thunder rattled sharper and nearer, bursting right
+upon the flash of the lightning, and then came the rain. But it proved
+not one of those bright, brief dashes that leave the world sparkling,
+but settled toward sunset into a slow, dull drizzle.
+
+Jenny had her milking, and all the other evening chores, done betimes,
+and with an alertness and cheerfulness in excess of her usual manner,
+that might have indicated an unusual favor to be asked. She had made her
+evening toilet; that is, she had combed her hair, tied on a pair of
+calf-skin shoes, and a blue checked apron, newly washed and ironed; when
+she said, looking toward a faint light in the west, and as though the
+thought had just occurred to her, "It's going to break away, I see.
+Don't you think, mother, I had better just run over to Mrs. Walker's,
+and milk her cow for her?"
+
+"Go to Miss Walker's!" repeated the mother, as though she were as much
+outraged as astonished. She was seated in the door, patching, by the
+waning light, an old pair of mud-spattered trousers, her own dress being
+very old-fashioned, coarse, and scanty,--so scant, in fact, as to reveal
+the angles of her form with ungraceful definiteness, especially the
+knees, that were almost suggestive of a skeleton, and now, as she put
+herself in position, as it were, stood up with inordinate prominence.
+Her hands were big in the joints, ragged in the nails, and marred all
+over with the cuts, burns, and scratches of indiscriminate and incessant
+toil. But her face was, perhaps, the most sadly divested of all womanly
+charm. It had, in the first place, the deep yellow, lifeless appearance
+of an old bruise, and was expressive of pain, irritation, and fanatical
+anxiety.
+
+"Go to Miss Walker's!" she said again, seeing that Jenny was taking down
+from its peg in the kitchen-wall a woollen cloak that had been hers
+since she was a little girl, and her mother's before her.
+
+"Yes, mother. You know John Walker is very sick, and Mrs. Walker has
+been sent for over there. She's very down-hearted about him. He's
+dangerous, they think; and I thought may be I'd come round that way as I
+come home, and ask how he was. Don't you think I'd better?"
+
+"I think you had better stay at home and tend to your own business.
+You'll spile your clothes, and do no good that I can see by traipsin'
+out in such a storm."
+
+"Why, you would think it was bad for one of our cows to go without
+milking," Jenny said, "and I suppose Mrs. Walker's cow is a good deal
+like ours, and she is giving a pailful of milk now."
+
+"How do you know so much about Miss Walker's cow? If you paid more
+attention to things at home, and less to other folks, you'd be more
+dutiful."
+
+"That's true, mother, but would I be any better?"
+
+"Not in your own eyes, child; but you're so much wiser than your father
+and me, that words are throwed away on you."
+
+"I promised Mrs. Walker that I would milk for her to-night," Jenny
+said, hesitating, and dropping her eyes.
+
+"O yes, you've always got some excuse! What did you make a promise for,
+that you knowed your father wouldn't approve of? Take your things right
+off now, and peel the potaters, and sift the meal for mush in the
+morning; an' if Miss Walker's cow must be milked, what's to hender that
+Hobe, the great lazy strapper, shouldn't go and milk her?"
+
+"You forget how much he has to do at home now; and one pair of hands
+can't do everything, even if they are Hobert Walker's!"
+
+Jenny had spoken with much spirit and some bitterness; and the bright
+defiant flush, before noticed, came into her face, as she untied the
+cloak and proceeded to sift the meal and peel the potatoes for
+breakfast. She did her work quietly, but with a determination in every
+movement that indicated a will not easily overruled.
+
+It was nearly dark, and the rain still persistently falling, when she
+turned the potato-peelings into the pig-trough that stood only a few
+yards from the door, and, returning, put the cloak about her shoulders,
+tied it deliberately, turned the hood over her head, and, without
+another word, walked straight out into the rain.
+
+"Well, I must say! Well, I _must_ say!" cried the mother, in exasperated
+astonishment. "What on airth is that girl a-comin' to?" And, resting her
+elbows on her knees, she leaned her yellow face in her hands, and
+gathered out of her hard, embittered heart such consolation as she
+could.
+
+Jenny, meantime, tucked up her petticoats, and, having left a field or
+two between her and the homestead, tripped lightly along, debating with
+herself whether or not she should carry out her will to the full, and
+return by the way of Mr. John Walker's,--a question she need hardly have
+raised, if unexpected events had not interfered with her
+predeterminations. At Mrs. Walker's gate she stopped and pulled half a
+dozen roses from the bush that was almost lying on the ground with its
+burden,--they seemed, somehow, brighter than the roses at home,--and,
+with them swinging in her hand, had wellnigh gained the door, before she
+perceived that it was standing open. She hesitated an instant,--perhaps
+some crazy wanderer or drunken person might have entered the
+house,--when brisk steps, coming up the path that led from the
+milking-yard, arrested her attention, and, looking that way, she
+recognized through the darkness young Hobert Walker, with the full pail
+in his hand.
+
+"O Jenny," he said, setting down the pail, "we are in such trouble at
+home! The doctor says father is better, but I don't think so, and I
+ain't satisfied with what is being done for him. Besides, I had such a
+strange dream,--I thought I met you, Jenny, alone, in the night, and you
+had six red roses in your hand,--let me see how many have you." He had
+come close to her, and he now took the roses and counted them. There
+were six, sure enough. "Humph!" he said, and went on. "Six red roses, I
+thought; and while I looked at them they turned white as snow; and then
+it seemed to me it was a shroud you had in your hand, and not roses at
+all; and you, seeing how I was frightened, said to me, 'What if it
+should turn out to be my wedding-dress?' And while we talked, your
+father came between us, and led you away by a great chain that he put
+round your neck. But you think all this foolish, I see." And, as if he
+feared the apprehension he had confessed involved some surrender of
+manhood, he cast down his eyes, and awaited her reply in confusion. She
+had too much tact to have noticed this at any time; but in view of the
+serious circumstances in which he then stood, she could not for the life
+of her have turned any feeling of his into a jest, however unwarranted
+she might have felt it to be.
+
+"My grandmother was a great believer in dreams," she said,
+sympathetically; "but she always thought they went by contraries; and,
+if she was right, why, yours bodes ever so much good. But come, Hobert,
+let us go into the house: it's raining harder."
+
+"How stupid of me, Jenny, not to remember that you were being drowned,
+almost! You must try to excuse me: I am really hardly myself to-night."
+
+"Excuse you, Hobert! As if you could ever do anything I should not think
+was just right!" And she laughed the little musical laugh that had been
+ringing in his ears so long, and skipped before him into the house.
+
+He followed her with better heart; and, as she strained and put away the
+milk, and swept the hearth, and set the house in order, he pleased
+himself with fancies of a home of which she would be always the charming
+mistress.
+
+And who, that saw the sweet domestic cheer she diffused through the
+house with her harmless little gossip about this and that, and the
+artfully artless kindnesses to him she mingled with all, could have
+blamed him? He was given to melancholy and to musing; his cheek was
+sometimes pale, and his step languid; and he saw, all too often,
+troublesome phantoms coming to meet him. This disposition in another
+would have incited the keenest ridicule in the mind of Jenny Bowen, but
+in Hobert it was well enough; nay, more, it was actually fascinating,
+and she would not have had him otherwise. These characteristics--for her
+sake we will not say weaknesses--constantly suggested to her how much
+she could be to him,--she who was so strong in all ways,--in health, in
+hope, and in enthusiasm. And for him it was joy enough to look upon her
+full bright cheek, to see her compact little figure before him; but to
+touch her dimpled shoulder, to feel one tress of her hair against his
+face, was ecstasy; and her voice,--the tenderest trill of the wood-dove
+was not half so delicious! But who shall define the mystery of love?
+They were lovers; and when we have said that, is there anything more to
+be said? Their love had not, however, up to the time of which we write,
+found utterance in words. Hobert was the son of a poor man, and Jenny
+was prospectively rich, and the faces of her parents were set as flints
+against the poor young man. But Jenny had said in her heart more than
+once that she would marry him; and if the old folks had known this, they
+might as well have held their peace. Hobert did not dream that she had
+talked thus to her heart, and, with his constitutional timidity, he
+feared she would never say anything of the kind. Then, too, his
+conscientiousness stood in his way. Should he presume to take her to his
+poor house, even if she would come? No, no, he must not think of it; he
+must work and wait, and defer hope. This hour so opportune was also most
+inopportune,--such sorrow at home! He would not speak to-night,--O no,
+not to-night! And yet he could bear up against everything else, if she
+only cared for him! Such were his resolves, as she passed to and fro
+before him, trifling away the time with pretence of adjusting this thing
+and that; but at last expedients failed, and reaching for her cloak,
+which hung almost above him as he sat against the wall, she said it was
+time to go. As frostwork disappears in the sunshine, so his brave
+resolutions vanished when her arm reached across his shoulder, and the
+ribbon that tied her beads fluttered against his cheek. With a motion
+quite involuntary, he snatched her hand. "No, Jenny, not yet,--not quite
+yet!" he said.
+
+"And why not?" demanded Jenny; for could any woman, however innocent, or
+rustic, be without her little coquetries? And she added, in a tone that
+contradicted her words, "I am sure I should not have come if I had known
+you were coming!"
+
+"I dare say not," replied Hobert, in a voice so sad and so tender
+withal, as to set the roses Jenny wore in her bosom trembling. "I dare
+say not, indeed. I would not presume to hope you would go a step out of
+your way to give me pleasure; only I was feeling so lonesome to-night, I
+thought may be--no, I didn't think anything; I certainly didn't hope
+anything. Well, no matter, I am ready to go." And he let go the hand he
+had been holding, and stood up.
+
+It was Jenny's privilege to pout a little now, and to walk sullenly and
+silently home,--so torturing herself and her honest-hearted lover; but
+she was much too generous, much too noble, to do this. She would not for
+the world have grieved poor Hobert,--not then,--not when his heart was
+so sick and so weighed down with shadows; and she told him this with a
+simple earnestness that admitted of no doubt, concluding with, "I only
+wish, Hobert, I could say or do something to comfort you."
+
+"Then you will stay? Just a moment, Jenny!" And the hand was in his
+again.
+
+"Dear Jenny,--dear, dear Jenny!" She was sitting on his knee now; and
+the rain, with its pattering against the window, drowned their
+heart-beats; and the summer darkness threw over them its sacred veil.
+
+"Shall I tell you, darling, of another dream I have had to-night--since
+I have been sitting here?" The fair cheek bent itself close to his to
+listen, and he went on. "I have been dreaming, Jenny, a very sweet
+dream; and this is what it was. You and I were living here, in this
+house, with grandmother; and she was your grandmother as well as mine;
+and I was farmer of the land, and you were mistress of the dairy; and
+the little room with windows toward the sunrise, and the pretty bureau,
+and bed with snow-white coverlet and pillows of down,--that
+was"--perhaps he meant to say "_ours_," but his courage failed him, and,
+with a charming awkwardness, he said, "yours, Jenny," and hurried on to
+speak of the door-yard flowers, and the garden with its beds of thyme
+and mint, its berry-bushes and hop-vines and bee-hives,--all of which
+were brighter and sweeter than were ever hives and bushes in any other
+garden; and when he had run through the catalogue of rustic delights, he
+said: "And now, Jenny, I want you to tell me the meaning of my dream;
+and yet I am afraid you will interpret it as your grandmother used to
+hers."
+
+Jenny laughed gayly. "That is just what I will do, dear Hobert," she
+said; "for she used to say that only bad dreams went by contraries, and
+yours was the prettiest dream I ever heard."
+
+The reply to this sweet interpretation was after the manner of all
+lovers since the world began. And so, forgetting the stern old folks at
+home,--forgetting everything but each other,--they sat for an hour at
+the very gate of heaven. How often Hobert called her his sweetheart, and
+his rosebud, and other fond names, we need not stop to enumerate: how
+often he said that for her sake he could brave the winter storm and the
+summer heat, that she should never know rough work nor sad days, but
+that she should be as tenderly protected, as daintily cared for, as any
+lady of them all,--how often he said all these things, we need not
+enumerate; nor need we say with what unquestioning trust, and deafness
+to all the suggestions of probability, Jenny believed. Does not love, in
+fact, always believe what it hopes? Who would do away with the blessed
+insanity that clothes the marriage day with such enchantment? Who would
+dare to do it?
+
+No royal mantle could have been adjusted with tenderer and more reverent
+solicitude than was that night the coarse cloak about the shoulders of
+Jenny. The walk homeward was all too short; and whether the rain fell,
+or whether the moon were at her best, perhaps neither of them could have
+told until they were come within earshot of the Bowen homestead; then
+both suddenly stood still. Was it the arm of Jenny that trembled so? No,
+no! we must own the truth,--it was the arm through which hers was drawn.
+At her chamber window, peering out curiously and anxiously, was the
+yellow-white face of Mrs. Bowen; and, leaning over the gate, gazing up
+and down the road, the rain falling on his bent shoulders and gray
+head, was the father of Jenny,--angry and impatient, past doubt.
+
+"Don't stand looking any longer, for mercy's sake!" called the querulous
+voice from the house. "You'll get your death of cold, and then what'll
+become of us all? Saddle your horse this minute, and ride over to John
+Walker's,--for there's where you'll find Jinny, the gad-about,--and
+bring her home at the tail of your critter. I'll see who is going to be
+mistress here!"
+
+"She's had her own head too long a'ready, I'm afeard," replied the old
+man, turning from the gate, with intent, probably, to execute his wife's
+order.
+
+Seeing this, and hearing this, Hobert, as we said, stood still and
+trembled, and could only ask, by a little pressure of the hand he held,
+what was to be said or done.
+
+Jenny did not hesitate a moment. "I expected this or something worse,"
+she said. "Don't mind, Hobert; so they don't see you, I don't care for
+the rest. You must not go one step farther: the lightning will betray
+us, you see. I will say I waited for the rain to slack, and the two
+storms will clear off about the same time, I dare say. There, good
+night!"--and she turned her cheek to him; for she was not one of those
+impossible maidens we read of in books, who don't know they are in love,
+until after the consent of parents is obtained, and blush themselves to
+ashes at the thought of a kiss. To love Hobert was to her the most
+natural and proper thing in the world, and she did not dream there was
+anything to blush for. It is probable, too, that his constitutional
+bashfulness and distrust of himself brought out her greater confidence
+and buoyancy.
+
+"And how and where am I ever to see you again?" he asked, as he detained
+her, against her better judgment, if not against her will.
+
+"Trust that to me,"--and she hurried away in time to meet and prevent
+her father from riding forth in search of her.
+
+Of course there were fault-finding and quarrelling, accusations and
+protestations, hard demands and sullen pouting,--so that the home, at no
+time so attractive as we like to imagine the home of a young girl who
+has father and mother to provide for her and protect her, became to her
+like a prison-house. At the close of the first and second days after her
+meeting with Hobert, when the work was all faithfully done, she ventured
+to ask leave to go over to John Walker's and inquire how the sick man
+was; but so cold a refusal met her, that, on the evening of the third
+day, she sat down on the porch-side to while away the hour between
+working and sleeping, without having renewed her request.
+
+The sun was down, and the first star began to show faintly above a strip
+of gray cloud in the west, when a voice, low and tender, called to her,
+"Come here, my child!" and looking up she saw Grandmother Walker sitting
+on her horse at the gate. She had in the saddle before her her youngest
+granddaughter, and on the bare back of the horse, behind her, a little
+grandson, both their young faces expressive of the sorrow at home. Jenny
+arose on the instant, betraying in every motion the interest and
+sympathy she felt, and was just stepping lightly from the porch to the
+ground, when a strong hand grasped her shoulder and turned her back. It
+was her father who had overtaken her. "Go into the house!" he said. "If
+the old woman has got any arrant at all, it's likely it's to your mother
+and me."
+
+Nor was his heart melted in the least when he learned that his friend
+and neighbor was no more. He evinced surprise, and made some blunt and
+coarse inquiries, but that was the amount. "The widder is left purty
+destitute, I reckon," he said; and then he added, the Lord helped them
+that helped themselves, and we mustn't fly in the face of Providence.
+She had her son, strong and able-bodied; and of course he had no
+thoughts of encumbering himself with a family of his own,--young and
+poverty-struck as he was.
+
+Mrs. Walker understood the insinuation; but her heart could not hold
+resentment just then. She must relieve her burdened soul by talking of
+"poor Johnny," even though it were to deaf ears. She must tell what a
+good boy he had been,--how kind to her and considerate of her, how
+manly, how generous, how self-forgetful. And then she must tell how hard
+he had worked, and how saving he had been in order to give his children
+a better chance in the world than he had had; and how, if he had lived
+another year, he would have paid off the mortgage, and been able to hold
+up his head amongst men.
+
+After all the ploughing and sowing,--after all the preparation for the
+gathering in of the harvest,--it seemed very hard, she said, that Johnny
+must be called away, just as the shining ears began to appear. The
+circumstances of his death, too, seemed to her peculiarly afflictive.
+"We had all the doctors in the neighborhood," she said, "but none of
+them understood his case. At first they thought he had small-pox, and
+doctored him for that; and then they thought it was liver-complaint, and
+doctored him for that; and then it was bilious fever, and then it was
+typhus fever; and so it went on, and I really can't believe any of them
+understood anything about it. Their way seemed to be to do just what he
+didn't want done. In the first place, he was bled; and then he was
+blistered; and then he was bled again and blistered again, the fever all
+the time getting higher and higher; and when he wanted water, they said
+it would kill him, and gave him hot drinks till it seemed to me they
+would drive him mad; and sure enough, they did! The last word he ever
+said, to know what he was saying, was to ask me for a cup of cold water.
+I only wish I had given it to him; all the doctors in the world wouldn't
+prevent me now, if I only had him back. The fever seemed to be just
+devouring him: his tongue was as dry as sand, and his head as hot as
+fire. 'O mother!' says he, and there was such a look of beseeching in
+his eyes as I can never forget, 'may be I shall never want you to do
+anything more for me. Cold water! give me some cold water! If I don't
+have it, my senses will surely fly out of my head!' 'Yes, Johnny,' says
+I,--and I went and brought a tin bucketful, right out of the well, and
+set it on the table in his sight; for I thought it would do him good to
+see even more than he could drink; and then I brought a cup and dipped
+it up full. It was all dripping over, and he had raised himself on one
+elbow, and was leaning toward me, when the young doctor came in, and,
+stepping between us, took the cup out of my hand. All his strength
+seemed to go from poor Johnny at that, and he fell back on his pillow
+and never lifted his head any more. Still he kept begging in a feeble
+voice for the water. 'Just two or three drops,--just one drop!' he said.
+I couldn't bear it, and the doctor said I had better go out of the room,
+and so I did,--and the good Lord forgive me; for when I went back, after
+half an hour, he was clean crazy. He didn't know me, and he never knowed
+me any more."
+
+"It's purty hard, Miss Walker," answered Mr. Bowen, "to accuse the
+doctors with the murder of your son. A purty hard charge, that, I call
+it! So John's dead! Well, I hope he is better off. Where are you goin'
+to bury him?"
+
+And then Mrs. Walker said she didn't charge anybody with the murder of
+poor Johnny,--nobody meant to do him any harm, she knew that; but, after
+all, she wished she could only have had her own way with him from the
+first. And so she rode away,--her little bare-legged grandson, behind
+her, aggravating her distress by telling her that, when he got to be a
+man, he meant to do nothing all the days of his life but dig wells, and
+give water to whoever wanted it.
+
+It is not worth while to dwell at length on the humiliations and
+privations to which Jenny was subjected,--the mention of one or two will
+indicate the nature of all. In the first place, the white heifer she had
+always called hers was sold, and the money tied up in a tow bag. Jenny
+would not want a cow for years to come. The piece of land that had
+always been known as "Jenny's Corner" was not thus denominated any more,
+and she was given to understand that it was only to be hers
+_conditionally_. There were obstacles put in the way of her going to
+meeting of a Sunday,--first one thing, then another; and, finally, the
+bureau was locked, and the best dress and brightest ribbon inside the
+drawers. The new side-saddle she had been promised was refused to her,
+unless she in turn would make a promise; and the long day's work was
+made to drag on into the night, lest she might find time to visit some
+neighbor, and lest that neighbor might be the Widow Walker. But what
+device of the enemy ever proved successful when matched against the
+simple sincerity of true love? It came about, in spite of all restraint
+and prohibition, that Jenny and Hobert met in their own times and ways;
+and so a year went by.
+
+One night, late in the summer, when the katydids began to sing, Jenny
+waited longer than usual under the vine-covered beech that drooped its
+boughs low to the ground all round her,--now listening for the expected
+footstep, and now singing, very low, some little song to her heart, such
+as many a loving and trusting maiden had sung before her. What could
+keep Hobert? She knew it was not his will that kept him; and though her
+heart began to be heavy, she harbored therein no thought of reproach. By
+the movement of the shadow on the grass, she guessed that an hour beyond
+the one of appointment must have passed, when the far-away footfall set
+her so lately hushed pulses fluttering with delight. He was coming,--he
+was coming! And, no matter what had been wrong, all would be right now.
+She was holding wide the curtaining boughs long before he came near; and
+when they dropped, and her arms closed, it is not improbable that he was
+within them. It was the delight of meeting her that kept him still so
+long, Jenny thought; and she prattled lightly and gayly of this and of
+that, and, seeing that she won no answer, fell to tenderer tones, and
+imparted the little vexing secrets of her daily life, and the sweet
+hopes of her nightly dreams.
+
+They were seated on a grassy knoll, the moonlight creeping tenderly
+about their feet, and the leaves of the drooping vines touching their
+heads like hands of pity, or of blessing. The water running over the
+pebbly bottom of the brook just made the silence sweet, and the evening
+dews shining on the red globes of the clover made the darkness lovely;
+but with all these enchantments of sight and sound about him,--nay,
+more, with the hand of Jenny, his own true-love, Jenny, folded in
+his,--Hobert was not happy.
+
+"And so you think you love me!" he said at last, speaking so sadly, and
+clasping the hand he held with so faint a pressure, that Jenny would
+have been offended if she had not been the dear, trustful little
+creature she was.
+
+There was, indeed, a slight reproach in her accent as she answered,
+"_Think_ I love you, Hobert? No, I don't think anything about it,--I
+_know_."
+
+"And I know I love you, Jenny," he replied. "I love you so well that I
+am going to leave you without asking you to marry me!"
+
+For one moment Jenny was silent,--for one moment the world seemed
+unsteady beneath her,--then she stood up, and, taking the hand of her
+lover between her palms, gazed into his face with one long, earnest,
+steadfast gaze. "You have asked me already, Hobert," she said, "a
+thousand times, and I have consented as often. You may go away, but you
+will not leave me; for 'Whither thou goest I will go, where thou diest
+will I die, and there will I be buried.'"
+
+He drew her close to his bosom now, and kissed her with most passionate,
+but still saddest tenderness. "You know not, my darling," he said, "what
+you would sacrifice." Then he laid before her all her present
+advantages, all her bright prospects for the future,--her high chamber
+with its broad eastern windows, to be given up for the low dingy walls
+of a settler's cabin, her free girlhood for the hard struggles of a
+settler's wife! Sickness, perhaps,--certainly the lonesome nights and
+days of a home remote from neighbors, and the dreariness and hardship
+inseparable from the working out of better fortunes. But all these
+things, even though they should all come, were light in comparison with
+losing him!
+
+Perhaps Hobert had desired and expected to hear her say this. At any
+rate, he did not insist on a reversal of her decision, as, with his arms
+about her, he proceeded to explain why he had come to her that night
+with so heavy a heart. The substance of all he related may be
+recapitulated in a few words. The land could not be paid for, and the
+homestead must be sold. He would not be selfish and forsake his mother,
+and his young brothers and sisters in their time of need. By careful
+management of the little that could be saved, he might buy in the West a
+better farm than that which was now to be given up; and there to build a
+cabin and plant a garden would be easy,--O, so easy!--with the smile of
+Jenny to light him home when the day's work was done.
+
+In fact, the prospective hardships vanished away at the thought of her
+for his little housekeeper. It was such easy work for fancy to convert
+the work-days into holidays, and the thick wilderness into the shining
+village, where the schoolhouse stood open all the week, and the sweet
+bells called them to church of a Sunday; easy work for that deceitful
+elf to make the chimney-corner snug and warm, and to embellish it with
+his mother in her easy-chair. When they parted that night, each young
+heart was trembling with the sweetest secret it had ever held; and it
+was perhaps a fortnight thereafter that the same secret took wing, and
+flew wildly over the neighborhood.
+
+John Walker's little farm was gone for good and all. The few sheep, and
+the cows, and the pig, and the fowls, together with the greater part of
+the household furniture, were scattered over the neighborhood; the smoke
+was gone from the chimney, and the windows were curtainless; and the
+grave of John, with a modest but decent headstone, and a rose-bush newly
+planted beside it, was left to the care of strangers. The last visits
+had been paid, and the last good-byes and good wishes exchanged; and the
+widow and her younger children were far on their journey,--Hobert
+remaining for a day or two to dispose of his smart young horse, as it
+was understood, and then follow on.
+
+At this juncture, Mr. Bowen one morning opened the stair-door, as was
+his custom, soon after daybreak, and called harshly out, "Jinny! Jinny!
+its high time you was up!"
+
+Five minutes having elapsed, and the young girl not having yet appeared,
+the call was repeated more harshly than before. "Come, Jinny, come! or
+I'll know what's the reason!"
+
+She did not come; and five minutes more having passed, he mounted the
+stairs with a quick, resolute step, to know what was the reason. He came
+down faster, if possible, than he went up. "Mother, mother!" he cried,
+rushing toward Mrs. Bowen, who stood at the table sifting meal, his gray
+hair streaming wildly back, and his cheek blanched with amazement,
+"Jinny's run away!--run away, as sure as you're a livin' woman. Her
+piller hasn't been touched last night, and her chamber's desarted!"
+
+And this was the secret that took wing and flew over the neighborhood.
+
+
+
+
+THE RETREAT FROM LENOIR'S AND THE SIEGE OF KNOXVILLE.
+
+
+Late in October, 1863, the Ninth Army Corps went into camp at Lenoir's
+Station, twenty-five miles southwest of Knoxville, East Tennessee. Since
+April, the corps had campaigned in Kentucky, had participated in the
+siege of Vicksburg, had accompanied Sherman into the interior of
+Mississippi in his pursuit of Johnston, had returned to Kentucky, and
+then, in conjunction with the Twenty-third Army Corps, marching over the
+mountains into East Tennessee, in a brief but brilliant campaign under
+its old leader and favorite, Burnside, had delivered the loyal people of
+that region from the miseries of Rebel rule, and had placed them once
+more under the protection of the old flag. But all this had not been
+done without loss. Many of our brave comrades, who, through a storm of
+leaden hail, had crossed the bridge at Antietam, and had faced death in
+a hundred forms on the heights of Fredericksburg, had fallen on these
+widely separated battle-fields in the valley of the Mississippi. Many,
+overborne by fatigue and exposure, had laid down their wasted bodies by
+the roadside and in hospitals, and had gently breathed their young lives
+away. Many more, from time to time, had been rendered unfit for active
+service; and the corps, now a mere skeleton, numbered less than three
+thousand men present for duty. Never did men need rest more than they;
+and never was an order more welcome than that which now declared the
+campaign ended, and authorized the construction of winter quarters.
+
+The Thirty-sixth Massachusetts Volunteers--then in the First Brigade,
+First Division, Ninth Corps--was under the command of Major
+Draper,--Lieutenant-Colonel Goodell having been severely wounded at the
+battle of Blue Springs, October 10. The place selected for the winter
+quarters of the regiment was a young oak grove, nearly a quarter of a
+mile east of the village. The camp was laid out with unusual care. In
+order to secure uniformity throughout the regiment, the size of the
+log-houses--they were to be ten feet by six--was announced in orders
+from regimental head-quarters. The work of construction was at once
+commenced. Unfortunately, we were so far from our base of supplies--Camp
+Nelson, Kentucky--that nearly all our transportation was required by the
+Commissary Department for the conveyance of its stores. Consequently,
+the Quartermaster's Department was poorly supplied; and the only axes
+which could be obtained were those which our pioneers and company cooks
+had brought with them for their own use. These, however, were pressed
+into the service; and their merry ringing, as the men cheerfully engaged
+in the work, could be heard from early morning till evening. Small oaks,
+four and five inches in diameter, were chiefly used in building these
+houses. The logs were laid one above another, to the height of four
+feet, intersecting at the corners of the houses like the rails of a
+Virginia fence. The interstices were filled with mud. Shelter-tents,
+buttoned together to the size required, formed the roof, and afforded
+ample protection from the weather, except in very heavy rains. Each
+house had its fireplace, table, and bunk. On the 13th of November the
+houses were nearly completed; and as we sat by our cheerful fires that
+evening, and looked forward to the leisure and quiet of the winter
+before us, we thought ourselves the happiest of soldiers. Writing home
+at that time, I said that, unless something unforeseen should happen, we
+expected to remain at Lenoir's during the winter.
+
+That something unforeseen was at hand; and our pleasant dreams were
+destined to fade away like an unsubstantial pageant, leaving not a rack
+behind. At four o'clock on the morning of the 14th I was roused from
+sleep by loud knocks on the new-made door. In the order which followed,
+"Be ready to march at daybreak," I recognized the familiar, but
+unwelcome voice of the Sergeant-Major. Throwing aside my blankets, and
+leaving the Captain dreamily wondering what could be the occasion of so
+unexpected an order, I hurried to the quarters of the men of Company D,
+and repeated to the Orderly Sergeant the instructions just received. The
+camp was soon astir. Lights flashed here and there through the trees.
+"Pack up! pack up!" passed from lip to lip. "Shall we take everything?"
+Yes, everything. The shelter-tents were stripped from the houses,
+knapsacks and trunks were packed. The wagon for the officers' baggage
+came, was hurriedly loaded, and driven away. A hasty breakfast followed.
+Then, forming our line, we stacked arms, and awaited further orders.
+
+The mystery was soon solved. Longstreet, having cut loose from Bragg's
+army, which still remained in the vicinity of Chattanooga, had, by a
+forced march, struck the Tennessee River at Hough's Ferry, a few miles
+below Loudon. Already he had thrown a pontoon across the river, and was
+crossing with his entire command, except the cavalry under Wheeler,
+which he had sent by way of Marysville, with orders to seize the heights
+on the south bank of the Holston, opposite Knoxville. The whole movement
+was the commencement of a series of blunders on the part of the Rebel
+commanders in this department, which resulted at length in the utter
+overthrow of the Rebel army of the Tennessee. General Grant saw at once
+the mistake which the enemy had made, and ordered General Burnside to
+fall back to Knoxville and intrench, promising reinforcements speedily.
+Knoxville was Longstreet's objective. It was the key of East Tennessee.
+Should it again fall into the enemy's hands, we would be obliged to
+retire to Cumberland Gap. Lenoir's did not lie in Longstreet's path. If
+we remained there, he would push his columns past our right, and get
+between us and Knoxville. It was evident that the place must be
+abandoned; and there was need of haste. The mills and factories in the
+village were accordingly destroyed, and the wagon-train started north.
+
+The morning had opened heavily with clouds, and, as the day advanced,
+the rain came down in torrents. A little before noon, our division, then
+under the command of General Ferrero, moved out of the woods; but,
+instead of taking the road to Knoxville, as we had anticipated, the
+column marched down the Loudon road. We were to watch the enemy, and, by
+holding him in check, secure the safety of our trains and material, then
+on the way to Knoxville.
+
+A few miles from Lenoir's, while we were halting for rest, General
+Burnside passed us on his way to the front. Under his slouched hat there
+was a sterner face than there was wont to be. There is trouble ahead,
+said the men; but the cheers which rose from regiment after regiment, as
+with his staff and battle-flag he swept past us, told the confidence
+which all felt in "Old Burnie."
+
+Chapin's brigade of White's command (Twenty-third Army Corps) was in the
+advance; and about four o'clock his skirmishers met those of the enemy,
+and drove them back a mile and a half. We followed through mud and rain.
+The country became hilly as we advanced, and our artillery was moved
+with difficulty. At dark we were in front of the enemy's position,
+having marched nearly fourteen miles. The rain had now ceased. Halting,
+we formed our lines in thick woods, and stacked our arms,--weary and
+wet, and not in the happiest of moods.
+
+During the evening a circular was received, notifying us of an intended
+attack on the enemy's lines at nine o'clock, P. M., by the troops of
+White's command; but, with the exception of an occasional shot, the
+night was a quiet one.
+
+The next morning, the usual reveille was omitted; and, at daybreak,
+noiselessly our lines were formed, and we marched out of the woods into
+the road. But it was not an advance. During the night General Ferrero
+had received orders to fall back to Lenoir's. Such, however, was the
+state of the roads, that it was almost impossible to move our artillery.
+At one time our whole regiment was detailed to assist Roemer's battery.
+Near Loudon we passed the Second Division of our corps, which during the
+night had moved down from Lenoir's, in order to be within supporting
+distance. But the enemy did not seem disposed to press us. We reached
+Lenoir's about noon. Sigfried, with the Second Division, followed later
+in the day. Our brigade (Morrison's) was now drawn up in line of battle
+on the Kingston road, as it was thought that the enemy, by not pressing
+our rear, intended a movement from that direction. And such was the
+fact. The enemy advanced against our position on this road, about four
+o'clock, and drove in our pickets. The Eighth Michigan was at once
+deployed as skirmishers. The Thirty-sixth Massachusetts and Forty-fifth
+Pennsylvania at the same time moved forward to support the skirmishers,
+and formed their line of battle in the woods, on the left of the road.
+Just at dusk, the enemy made a dash, and pressed our skirmishers back
+nearly to our line, but did not seem inclined to advance any further.
+
+A portion of the Ninth Corps, under Colonel Hartranft, and a body of
+mounted infantry, were now sent towards Knoxville, with orders to seize
+and hold the junction of the road from Lenoir's with the Knoxville and
+Kingston road, near the village of Campbell's Station. The distance was
+only eight miles, but the progress of the column was much retarded. Such
+was still the condition of the roads that the artillery could be moved
+only with the greatest difficulty. Colonel Biddle dismounted some of his
+men, and hitched their horses to the guns. In order to lighten the
+caissons, some of the ammunition was removed from the boxes and
+destroyed; but as little as possible, for who could say it would not be
+needed on the morrow? Throughout the long night, officers and men
+faltered not in their efforts to help forward the batteries. In the
+light of subsequent events, it will be seen that they could not have
+performed any more important service. Colonel Hartranft that night
+displayed the same spirit and energy which he infused into his gallant
+Pennsylvanians at Fort Steadman, in the last agonies of the Rebellion,
+when, rolling back the fiercest assaults of the enemy, he gained the
+first real success in the trenches at Petersburg, and won for himself
+the double star of a Major-General.
+
+Meanwhile, Morrison's brigade remained on the Kingston road in front of
+Lenoir's. The enemy, anticipating an evacuation of the place, made an
+attack on our lines about ten o'clock, P. M.; but a few shots on our
+part were sufficient to satisfy him that we still held the ground.
+Additional pickets, however, were sent out to extend the line held by
+the Eighth Michigan. The Thirty-sixth Massachusetts and Forty-fifth
+Pennsylvania still remained in line of battle in the woods. Neither
+officers nor men slept that night. It was bitter cold, and the usual
+fires were denied us, lest they should betray our weakness to the enemy.
+The men were ordered to put their canteens and tin cups in their
+haversacks, and remain quietly in their places, ready for any movement
+at a moment's notice. It was a long, tedious, fearful night; what would
+the morrow bring? It was Sunday night. The day had brought us no
+rest,--only weariness and anxiety. No one could speak to his fellow; and
+in the thick darkness, through the long, long night, we lay on our arms,
+waiting for the morning. Ah, how many hearts there were among us, which,
+overleaping the boundaries of States, found their way to Pennsylvanian
+and New England homes,--how many, which, on the morrow, among the hills
+of East Tennessee, were to pour out their young blood even unto death!
+
+At length the morning came. It was cloudy as the day before. White's
+division of the Twenty-third Corps was now on the road to Knoxville;
+and, besides our own brigade, only Humphrey's brigade of our division
+remained at Lenoir's. About daybreak, as silently as possible, we
+withdrew from our position on the Kingston road, and, falling back
+through the village of Lenoir's, moved towards Knoxville, Humphrey's
+brigade covering the retreat. Everything which we could not take with us
+was destroyed. Even our baggage and books, which, for the want of
+transportation, had not been removed, were committed to the flames. The
+enemy at once discovered our retreat, but did not press us till within a
+mile or two of the village of Campbell's Station. Humphrey, however,
+held him in check, and we moved on to the point where the road from
+Lenoir's unites with the road from Kingston to Knoxville. It was
+evidently Longstreet's intention to cut off our retreat at this place.
+For this reason he had not pressed us at Lenoir's, the afternoon
+previous, but had moved the main body of his army to our right. But the
+mounted infantry, which had been sent to this point during the night,
+were able to hold him in check, on the Kingston road, till Hartranft
+came up.
+
+On reaching the junction of the roads, we advanced into an open field on
+our left, and at once formed our line of battle in rear of a rail fence,
+our right resting near the Kingston road. The Eighth Michigan was on our
+left. The Forty-fifth Pennsylvania was deployed as skirmishers. The rest
+of our troops were now withdrawing to a new position back of the village
+of Campbell's Station; and we were left to cover the movement. Unfurling
+our colors, we awaited the advance of the enemy. There was an occasional
+shot fired in our front, and to our right; but it was soon evident that
+the Rebels were moving to our left, in order to gain the cover of the
+woods. Moving off by the left flank, therefore, we took a second
+position in an adjoining field. Finding now the enemy moving rapidly
+through the woods, and threatening our rear, we executed a left
+half-wheel; and, advancing on the double-quick to the rail fence which
+ran along the edge of the woods, we opened a heavy fire. From this
+position the enemy endeavored to force us. His fire was well directed,
+but the fence afforded us a slight protection. Lieutenant Fairbank and a
+few of the men were here wounded. For a while, we held the enemy in
+check, but at length the skirmishers of the Forty-fifth Pennsylvania,
+who were watching our right, discovered a body of Rebel infantry pushing
+towards our rear from the Kingston road. Colonel Morrison, our brigade
+commander, at once ordered the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts and Eighth
+Michigan to face about, and establish a new line, in rear of the rail
+fence on the opposite side of the field. We advanced on the
+double-quick; and, reaching the fence, our men with a shout poured a
+volley into the Rebel line of battle, which not only checked its
+advance, but drove it back in confusion. Meanwhile, the enemy in our
+rear moved up to the edge of the woods, which we had just left, and now
+opened a brisk fire. We at once crossed the fence in order to place it
+between us and his fire, and were about to devote our attention again to
+him, when orders came for us to withdraw,--it being no longer necessary
+to hold the junction of the roads, for all our troops and wagons had now
+passed. The enemy, too, was closing in upon us, and his fire was the
+hottest. We moved off in good order; but our loss in killed and wounded
+was quite heavy, considering the length of time we were under fire.
+
+Among the killed was Lieutenant P. Marion Holmes of Charlestown, Mass.,
+of whom it might well be said,
+
+    "He died as fathers wish their sons to die."
+
+Lieutenant Holmes had been wounded at the battle of Blue Springs a
+little more than a month before, and had made the march from Lenoir's
+that morning with great difficulty. But he would not leave his men. On
+his breast he wore the badge of the Bunker Hill Club, on which was
+engraved the familiar line from Horace, which Warren quoted just before
+the battle of Bunker Hill,--"Dulce et decorum est pro patri� mori." In
+the death of Lieutenant Holmes, the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts offered
+its costliest sacrifice. Frank, courteous, manly, brave, he had won all
+hearts, and his sudden removal from our companionship at that moment
+will ever remind us of the great price with which that morning's success
+was bought.
+
+The enemy now manoeuvred to cut us off from the road, and pressed us
+so hard that we were obliged to oblique to the left. Moving on the
+double-quick, receiving an occasional volley, and barely escaping
+capture, we at length emerged from the woods on the outskirts of the
+little village of Campbell's Station. We were soon under cover of our
+artillery, which General Potter, under the direction of General
+Burnside, had placed in position on high ground just beyond the village.
+This village is situated between two low ranges of hills, which are
+nearly a mile apart. Across the intervening space, our infantry was
+drawn up in a single line of battle, Ferrero's division of the Ninth
+Corps held the right, White's division of the Twenty-third Corps held
+the centre, and Hartranft's division of the Ninth Corps held the left.
+Benjamin's, Buckley's, Getting's, and Van Schlein's batteries were on
+the right of the road. Roemer's battery was on the left. The
+Thirty-sixth Massachusetts supported Roemer.
+
+The enemy, meanwhile, had disposed his forces for an attack on our
+position. At noon he came out of the woods, just beyond the village, in
+two lines of battle, with a line of skirmishers in front. The whole
+field was open to our view. Benjamin and Roemer opened fire at once; and
+so accurate was their range, that the Rebel lines were immediately
+broken, and they fell back into the woods in confusion. The enemy, under
+cover of the woods on the slope of the ridge, now advanced against our
+right. Christ's brigade, of our division, at once changed front. Buckley
+executed the same movement with his battery, and, by a well-directed
+fire, checked the enemy's progress in that direction. The enemy next
+manoeuvred to turn our left. Falling back, however, to a stronger
+position in our rear, we established a new line about four o'clock in
+the afternoon. This was done under a heavy fire from the enemy's
+batteries. Ferrero was now on the right of the road. Morrison's brigade
+was placed in rear of a rail fence, at the foot of the ridge on which
+Benjamin's battery had been planted. The enemy did not seem inclined to
+attack us in front, but pushed along the ridge, on our left, aiming to
+strike Hartranft in flank and rear. He was discovered in this attempt;
+and, just as he was moving over ground recently cleared, Roemer,
+changing front at the same time with Hartranft, opened his three-inch
+guns on the Rebel line, and drove it back in disorder, followed by the
+skirmishers. Longstreet, foiled in all these attempts to force us from
+our position, now withdrew beyond the range of our guns, and made no
+further demonstrations that day. Our troops were justly proud of their
+success; for, with a force not exceeding five thousand men, they had
+held in check, for an entire day, three times their own number,--the
+flower of Lee's army. Our loss in the Ninth Corps was twenty-six killed,
+one hundred and sixty-six wounded, and fifty-seven missing. Of these,
+the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts lost one officer and three enlisted men
+killed, three officers and fourteen enlisted men wounded, and three
+enlisted men missing.
+
+At six o'clock, P. M., Ferrero's division, followed by Hartranft's,
+moved to the rear, taking the road to Knoxville. White's division of the
+Twenty-third Corps covered the retreat. Campbell's Station is a little
+more than sixteen miles from Knoxville; but the night was so dark, and
+the road so muddy, that our progress was much retarded, and we did not
+reach Knoxville till about four o'clock the next morning. We had now
+been without sleep forty-eight hours. Moreover, since the previous
+morning we had marched twenty-four miles and fought a battle. Halting
+just outside of the town, weary and worn, we threw ourselves on the
+ground, and snatched a couple of hours of sleep. Early in the day--it
+was the 17th of November--General Burnside assigned the batteries and
+regiments of his command to the positions they were to occupy in the
+defence of the place. Knoxville is situated on the northern bank of the
+Holston River. For the most part, the town is built on a table-land,
+which is nearly a mile square, and about one hundred and fifty feet
+above the river. On the northeast, the town is bounded by a small creek.
+Beyond this creek is an elevation known as Temperance Hill. Still
+farther to the east is Mayberry's Hill. On the northwest, this
+table-land descends to a broad valley; on the southwest, the town is
+bounded by a second creek. Beyond this is College Hill; and still
+farther to the southwest is a high ridge, running nearly parallel with
+the road which enters Knoxville at this point. Benjamin's and Buckley's
+batteries occupied the unfinished bastion-work on the ridge just
+mentioned. This work was afterwards known as Fort Sanders. Roemer's
+battery was placed in position on College Hill. These batteries were
+supported by Ferrero's division of the Ninth Corps, his line extending
+from the Holston River on the left to the point where the East Tennessee
+and Georgia Railroad crosses the creek mentioned above as Second Creek.
+Hartranft connected with Ferrero's right, supporting Getting's and the
+Fifteenth Indiana Batteries. His lines extended as far as First Creek.
+The divisions of White and Hascall, of the Twenty-third Corps, occupied
+the ground between this point and the Holston River, on the northeast
+side of the town, with their artillery in position on Temperance and
+Mayberry's Hills.
+
+Knoxville at this time was by no means in a defensible condition. The
+bastion-work, occupied by Benjamin's and Buckley's batteries, was not
+only not finished, but was little more than begun. It required two
+hundred negroes four hours to clear places for the guns. There was also
+a fort in process of construction on Temperance Hill. Nothing more had
+been done. But the work was now carried forward in earnest. As fast as
+the troops were placed in position, they commenced the construction of
+rifle-pits. Though wearied by three days of constant marching and
+fighting, they gave themselves to the work with all the energy of fresh
+men. Citizens and contrabands also were pressed into the service. Many
+of the former were loyal men, and devoted themselves to their tasks with
+a zeal which evinced the interest they felt in making good the defence
+of the town; but some of them were bitter Rebels, and, as Captain Poe,
+Chief-Engineer of the Army of the Ohio, well remarked, "worked with a
+very poor grace, which blistered hands did not tend to improve." The
+contrabands engaged in the work with that heartiness which, during the
+war, characterized their labors in our service.
+
+At noon, the enemy's advance was only a mile or two distant; and four
+companies of the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts--A, B, D, G--were thrown out
+as skirmishers,--the line extending from the Holston River to the
+Kingston road. But the enemy was held in check at some little distance
+from the town by Sanders's division of cavalry. The hours thus gained
+for our work in the trenches were precious hours, indeed. There was a
+lack of intrenching tools, and much remained to be done; but all day and
+all night the men continued their labors undisturbed; and, on the
+morning of the 18th, our line of works around the town presented a
+formidable appearance.
+
+Throughout the forenoon of that day there was heavy skirmishing on the
+Kingston road; but our men--dismounted cavalry--still maintained their
+position. Later in the day, however, the enemy brought up a battery,
+which, opening a heavy fire, soon compelled our men to fall back. The
+Rebels, now pressing forward, gained the ridge for which they had been
+contending, and established their lines within rifle range of our works.
+
+It was while endeavoring to check this advance that General Sanders was
+mortally wounded. He was at once borne from the field, and carried into
+Knoxville. While a surgeon was examining the wound, he asked, "Tell me,
+Doctor, is my wound mortal?"
+
+Tenderly the surgeon replied, "Sanders, it is a fearful wound, and
+mortal. I am sorry to say it, my dear fellow, but the odds are against
+you."
+
+Calmly the General continued, "Well, I am not afraid to die. I have made
+up my mind upon that subject. I have done my duty, and have served my
+country as well as I could."
+
+The next day he called the attention of the surgeon to certain symptoms
+which he had observed, and asked him what they meant.
+
+The surgeon replied, "General, you are dying."
+
+"If that be so," he said, "I would like to see a clergyman."
+
+Rev. Mr. Hayden, chaplain of the post, was summoned. On his arrival, the
+dying soldier expressed a desire that the ordinance of baptism should be
+administered. This was done, and then the minister in prayer commended
+the believing soul to God,--General Burnside and his staff, who were
+present, kneeling around the bed. When the prayer was ended, General
+Sanders took General Burnside by the hand. Tears--the language of that
+heartfelt sympathy and tender love belonging to all noble souls--dropped
+down the bronzed cheeks of the chief as he listened to the last words
+which followed. The sacrament was now about to be administered, but
+suddenly the strength of the dying soldier failed, and like a child he
+gently fell asleep. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay
+down his life for his friends."
+
+The enemy did not seem inclined to attack our position at once, but
+proceeded to invest the town on the north bank of the Holston. He then
+commenced the construction of a line of works. The four companies of the
+Thirty-sixth Massachusetts which had been detailed for picket duty on
+the morning of the 17th, remained on post till the morning of the 19th.
+Thenceforward, throughout the siege, both officers and men were on
+picket duty every third day. During this twenty-four hours of duty no
+one slept. The rest of the time we were on duty in the trenches, where,
+during the siege, one third, and sometimes one fourth, of the men were
+kept awake. The utmost vigilance was enjoined upon all.
+
+Meanwhile, day by day, and night by night, with unflagging zeal, the
+troops gave themselves to the labor of strengthening the works.
+Immediately in front of the rifle-pits, a _chevaux-de-frise_ was
+constructed. This was formed of pointed stakes, thickly and firmly set
+in the ground, and inclining outwards at an angle of forty-five degrees.
+The stakes were bound together with wire, so that they could not easily
+be torn apart by an assaulting party. They were nearly five feet in
+height. In front of Colonel Haskins's position, on the north side of the
+town, the _chevaux-de-frise_ was constructed with the two thousand pikes
+which were captured at Cumberland Gap early in the fall. A few rods in
+front of the _chevaux-de-frise_ was the abatis, formed of thick branches
+of trees, which likewise were firmly set in the ground. Still farther to
+the front, were wire entanglements stretched a few inches above the
+ground, and fastened here and there to stakes and stumps. In front of a
+portion of our lines another obstacle was formed by constructing dams
+across First and Second Creeks, so called, and throwing back the water.
+The whole constituted a series of obstacles which could not be passed,
+in face of a heavy fire, without great difficulty and fearful loss.
+
+Just in rear of the rifle-pits occupied by the Thirty-sixth
+Massachusetts was an elegant brick mansion, of recent construction,
+known as the Powell House. When the siege commenced, fresco-painters
+were at work ornamenting its parlors and halls. Throwing open its doors,
+Mr. Powell, a true Union man, invited Colonel Morrison and Major Draper
+to make it their head-quarters. He also designated a chamber for the
+sick of our regiment. Early during the siege, the southwestern and
+northwestern fronts were loopholed by order of General Burnside, and
+instructions were given to post in the house, in case of an attack, two
+companies of the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts. When the order was
+announced to Mr. Powell, he nobly said, "Lay this house level with the
+ground, if it is necessary." A few feet from the southwestern front of
+the house, a small earthwork was thrown up by our men, in which was
+placed a section of Buckley's battery. This work was afterwards known as
+Battery Noble.
+
+Morrison's brigade now held the line of defences from the Holston
+River--the extreme left of our line--to Fort Sanders. The following was
+the position of the several regiments of the brigade. The Forty-fifth
+Pennsylvania was on the left, its left on the river. On its right lay
+the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts. Then came the Eighth Michigan. The
+Seventy-ninth New York (Highlanders) formed the garrison of Fort
+Sanders. Between the Eighth Michigan and Fort Sanders was the One
+Hundredth Pennsylvania (Roundheads).
+
+On the evening of the 20th, the Seventeenth Michigan made a sortie, and
+drove the Rebels from the Armstrong House. This stood on the Kingston
+road, and only a short distance from Fort Sanders. It was a brick house,
+and afforded a near and safe position for the enemy's sharpshooters,
+which of late had become somewhat annoying to the working parties at the
+fort. Our men destroyed the house, and then withdrew. The loss on our
+part was slight.
+
+For a few days during the siege, four companies of the Thirty-sixth
+Massachusetts were detached to support Roemer's battery on College Hill.
+While on this duty the officers and men were quartered in the buildings
+of East Tennessee College. Prior to our occupation of East Tennessee,
+these buildings had been used by the Rebels as a hospital; but, after a
+vigorous use of the ordinary means of purification, they afforded us
+pleasant and comfortable quarters.
+
+The siege had now continued several days. The Rebels had constructed
+works offensive and defensive in our front; but the greater part of
+their force seemed to have moved to the right. On the 22d of November,
+however, they returned, not having found evidently the weak place in our
+lines which they had sought. It was now thought they might attack our
+front that night; and orders were given to the men on duty in the outer
+works to exercise the utmost vigilance. But the night passed quietly.
+
+With each day our confidence in the strength of our position increased;
+and we soon felt able to repel an assault from any quarter. But the
+question of supplies was a serious one. When the siege commenced, there
+was in the Commissary Department at Knoxville little more than a day's
+ration for the whole army. Should the enemy gain possession of the south
+bank of the Holston, our only means of subsistence would be cut off.
+Thus far his attempts in this direction had failed; and the whole
+country, from the French Broad to the Holston, was open to our foraging
+parties. In this way a considerable quantity of corn and wheat was soon
+collected in Knoxville. Bread, made from a mixture of meal and flour,
+was issued to the men, but only in half and quarter rations.
+Occasionally a small quantity of fresh pork was also issued. Neither
+sugar nor coffee was issued after the first days of the siege.
+
+The enemy, foiled in his attempts to seize the south bank of the
+Holston, now commenced the construction of a raft at Boyd's Ferry.
+Floating this down the swift current of the stream, he hoped to carry
+away our pontoon, and thus cut off our communication with the country
+beyond. To thwart this plan, an iron cable, one thousand feet in length,
+was stretched across the river above the bridge. This was done under the
+direction of Captain Poe. Afterwards, a boom of logs, fastened end to
+end by chains, was constructed still farther up the river. The boom was
+fifteen hundred feet in length.
+
+On the evening of the 23d the Rebels made an attack on our pickets in
+front of the left of the Second Division, Ninth Corps. In falling back,
+our men fired the buildings on the ground abandoned, lest they should
+become a shelter for the enemy's sharpshooters. Among the buildings thus
+destroyed were the arsenal and machine-shops near the depot. The light
+of the blazing buildings illuminated the whole town. The next day the
+Twenty-first Massachusetts and another picked regiment, the whole under
+the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Hawkes of the Twenty-first, drove back
+the Rebels at this point, and reoccupied our old position.
+
+The same day an attack was made by the Second Michigan on the advanced
+parallel, which the enemy had so constructed as to envelop the northwest
+bastion of Fort Sanders. The works were gallantly carried; but before
+the supporting columns could come up, our men were repulsed by fresh
+troops which the enemy had at hand.
+
+On the 25th of November the enemy, having on the day previous crossed
+the Holston at a point below us, made another unsuccessful attempt to
+occupy the heights opposite Knoxville. He succeeded, however, in
+planting a battery on a knob about one hundred and fifty feet above the
+river, and twenty-five hundred yards south of Fort Sanders. This
+position commanded Fort Sanders, so that it now became necessary to
+defilade the fort.
+
+November 26th was our national Thanksgiving day, and General Burnside
+issued an order, in which he expressed the hope that the day would be
+observed by all, as far as military operations would allow. He knew the
+rations were short, and that the day would be unlike the joyous festival
+we were wont to celebrate in our distant homes; and so he reminded us of
+the circumstances of trial under which our fathers first observed the
+day. He also reminded us of the debt of gratitude which we owed to Him
+who during the year had not only prospered our arms, but had kindly
+preserved our lives. Accordingly, we ate our corn bread with
+thanksgiving; and, forgetting our own privations, thought only of the
+loved ones at home, who, uncertain of our fate, would that day find
+little cheer at the table and by the fireside.
+
+Allusion has already been made to the bastion-work known as Fort
+Sanders. A more particular description is now needed. The main line,
+held by our troops, made almost a right angle at the fort, the northwest
+bastion being the salient of the angle. The ground in front of the fort,
+from which the wood had been cleared, sloped gradually for a distance of
+eighty yards, and then abruptly descended to a wide ravine. Under the
+direction of Lieutenant Benjamin, Second United States Artillery, and
+Chief of Artillery of the Army of the Ohio, the fort had now been made
+as strong as the means at his disposal and the rules of military art
+admitted. Eighty and thirty yards in front of the fort, rifle-pits were
+constructed. These were to be used in case our men were driven in from
+the outer line. Between these pits and the Fort were wire entanglements,
+running from stump to stump, and also an abatis. Sand-bags and barrels
+were arranged so as to cover the embrasures. Traverses, also, were built
+for the protection of the men at the guns, and in passing from one
+position to another. In the fort were four twenty-pounder Parrotts
+(Benjamin's battery), four light twelve-pounders (of Buckley's battery),
+and two three-inch guns.
+
+Early in the evening of the 27th there was much cheering along the Rebel
+lines. Their bands, too, were unusually lavish of the Rebel airs they
+were wont occasionally to waft across the debatable ground which
+separated our lines. Had the enemy received reinforcements, or had Grant
+met with a reverse? While on picket that night, in making my rounds, I
+could distinctly hear the Rebels chopping on the knob which they had so
+recently occupied on the opposite bank of the river. They were clearing
+away the trees in front of the earthwork which they had constructed the
+day before. Would they attack at daybreak? So we thought, connecting
+this fact with the cheers and music of the earlier part of the night;
+but the morning opened as quietly as its predecessors. Late in the
+afternoon the enemy seemed to be placing his troops in position in our
+front, and our men stood in the trenches, awaiting an attack; yet the
+day wore away without further demonstrations.
+
+A little after eleven o'clock, P. M., November 28th, I was aroused by
+heavy musketry. I hurried to the trenches. It was a cloudy, dark night,
+and at a distance of only a few feet it was impossible to distinguish
+any object. The men were already at their posts. With the exception of
+an occasional shot on the picket-line, the firing soon ceased. An attack
+had evidently been made on our pickets; but at what point, or with what
+success, was as yet unknown. Reports soon came in. The enemy had first
+driven in the pickets in front of Fort Sanders, and had then attacked
+_our_ line which was also obliged to fall back. The Rebels in our front,
+however, did not advance beyond the pits which our men had just vacated,
+and a new line was at once established by Captain Buffum, our brigade
+officer of the day.
+
+It was now evident that the enemy intended an attack. But where would it
+be made? All that long, cold night--our men were without overcoats--we
+stood in the trenches pondering that question. Might not this
+demonstration in our front be only a feint to draw our attention from
+other parts of the line, where the chief blow was to be struck? So some
+thought. Gradually the night wore away.
+
+A little after six o'clock the next morning, the enemy suddenly opened a
+furious cannonade. This was mostly directed against Fort Sanders; but
+several shots struck the Powell House, in rear of Battery Noble. Roemer
+immediately responded from College Hill. In about twenty minutes the
+enemy's fire slackened, and in its stead rose the well-known Rebel yell,
+in the direction of the fort. Then followed the rattle of musketry, the
+roar of cannon, and the bursting of shells. The yells died away, and
+then rose again. Now the roar of musketry and artillery was redoubled.
+It was a moment of the deepest anxiety. Our straining eyes were fixed on
+the fort. The Rebels had reached the ditch and were now endeavoring to
+scale the parapet. Whose will be the victory,--O, whose? The yells again
+died away, and then followed three loud Union cheers,--"Hurrah, hurrah,
+hurrah!" How those cheers thrilled our hearts, as we stood almost
+breathless at our posts in the trenches! They told us that the enemy had
+been repulsed, and that the victory was ours. Peering through the rising
+fog towards the fort, not a hundred yards away,--O glorious sight!--we
+dimly saw that our flag was still there.
+
+Let us now go back a little. Under cover of the ridge on which Fort
+Sanders was built, Longstreet had formed his columns for the assault.
+The men were picked men,--the flower of his army. One brigade was to
+make the assault, two brigades were to support it,[A] and two other
+brigades were to watch our lines and keep up a constant fire. Five
+regiments formed the brigade selected for the assaulting column. These
+were placed in position not more than eighty yards from the fort. They
+were "in column by division, closed in mass." When the fire of their
+artillery slackened, the order for the charge was given. The salient of
+the northwest bastion was the point of attack. The Rebel lines were much
+broken in passing the abatis. But the wire entanglements proved a
+greater obstacle. Whole companies were prostrated. Benjamin now opened
+his triple-shotted guns. Nevertheless, the weight of their column
+carried the Rebels forward, and in two minutes from the time the charge
+was commenced they had filled the ditch around the fort, and were
+endeavoring to scale the parapet. The guns, which had been trained to
+sweep the ditch, now opened a most destructive fire. Lieutenant Benjamin
+also took shells in his hand, and, lighting the fuse, tossed them over
+the parapet into the crowded ditch. One of the Rebel brigades in reserve
+now came up in support, and planted several of its flags on the parapet
+of the fort. Those, however, who endeavored to scale the parapet were
+swept away by the fire of our musketry. The men in the ditch, satisfied
+of the hopelessness of the task they had undertaken, now surrendered.
+They represented eleven regiments. The prisoners numbered nearly three
+hundred. Among them were seventeen commissioned officers. Over two
+hundred dead and wounded, including three colonels, lay in the ditch
+alone. The ground in front of the fort was also strewn with the bodies
+of the dead and wounded. Over one thousand stands of arms fell into our
+hands, and the battle-flags of the Thirteenth and Seventeenth
+Mississippi and Sixteenth Georgia. Our loss was eight men killed and
+five wounded. Never was a victory more complete; and never were brighter
+laurels worn than were that morning laid on the brow of the hero of Fort
+Sanders,--Lieutenant Benjamin, Second United States Artillery.
+
+Longstreet had promised his men that they should dine that day in
+Knoxville. But, in order that he might bury his dead, General Burnside
+now tendered him an armistice till five o'clock, P. M. It was accepted
+by the Rebel general; and our ambulances were furnished him to assist in
+removing the bodies to his lines. At five o'clock, two additional hours
+were asked, as the work was not yet completed. At seven o'clock, a gun
+was fired from Fort Sanders, the Rebels responded from an earthwork
+opposite, and the truce was at an end.
+
+The next day, through a courier who had succeeded in reaching our lines,
+General Burnside received official notice of the defeat of Bragg. At
+noon, a single gun--we were short of ammunition--was fired from Battery
+Noble in our rear, and the men of the brigade, standing in the trenches,
+gave three cheers for Grant's victory at Chattanooga. We now looked for
+reinforcements daily, for Sherman was already on the road. The enemy
+knew this as well as we, and, during the night of the 4th of December,
+withdrew his forces, and started north. The retreat was discovered by
+the pickets of the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts, under Captain Ames, who
+had the honor of first declaring the siege of Knoxville raised.
+
+It would be interesting to recount the facts connected with the retreat
+of the Rebel army, and then to follow our men to their winter quarters,
+among the mountains of East Tennessee, where, throughout the icy season,
+they remained, without shoes, without overcoats, without new clothing of
+any description, living on quarter rations of corn meal, with
+occasionally a handful of flour, and never grumbling; and where, at the
+expiration of their three years of service, standing forth under the
+open skies, amid all these discomforts, and raising loyal hands towards
+heaven, they swore to serve their country yet three years longer. But I
+must pause. I have already illustrated their fortitude and heroic
+endurance.
+
+The noble bearing of General Burnside throughout the siege won the
+admiration of all. In a speech at Cincinnati, a few days after the siege
+was raised, with that modesty which characterizes the true soldier, he
+said that the honors bestowed on him belonged to his under officers and
+the men in the ranks. These kindly words his officers and men will ever
+cherish; and in all their added years, as they recall the widely
+separated battle-fields, made forever sacred by the blood of their
+fallen comrades, and forever glorious by the victories there won, it
+will be their pride to say, "We fought with Burnside at Campbell's
+Station and in the trenches at Knoxville."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] This statement is confirmed by the following extract from Pollard's
+(Rebel) "Third Year of the War." Speaking of his charge on Fort Sanders,
+he says: "The force which was to attempt an enterprise which ranks with
+the most famous charges in military history should be mentioned in
+detail. It consisted of three brigades of McLaw's division;--that of
+General Wolford, the Sixteenth, Eighteenth, and Twenty-fourth Georgia
+Regiments, and Cobb's and Phillip's Georgia Legions; that of General
+Humphrey, the Thirteenth, Seventeenth, Twenty-first, Twenty-second, and
+Twenty-third Mississippi Regiments; and a brigade composed of General
+Anderson's and Bryant's brigades, embracing, among others, the Palmetto
+State Guard, the Fifteenth South Carolina Regiment, and the Fifty-first,
+Fifty-third, and Fifty-ninth Georgia Regiments."--pp. 161, 162.
+
+
+
+
+RELEASED.
+
+
+    A little low-ceiled room. Four walls
+      Whose blank shut out all else of life,
+    And crowded close within their bound
+      A world of pain, and toil, and strife.
+
+    Her world. Scarce furthermore she knew
+      Of God's great globe, that wondrously
+    Outrolls a glory of green earth,
+      And frames it with the restless sea.
+
+    Four closer walls of common pine:
+      And therein lieth, cold and still,
+    The weary flesh that long hath borne
+      Its patient mystery of ill.
+
+    Regardless now of work to do;
+      No queen more careless in her state;
+    Hands crossed in their unbroken calm;
+      For other hands the work may wait.
+
+    Put by her implements of toil;
+      Put by each coarse, intrusive sign;
+    She made a Sabbath when she died,
+      And round her breathes a Rest Divine.
+
+    Put by, at last, beneath the lid,
+      The exempted hands, the tranquil face;
+    Uplift her in her dreamless sleep,
+      And bear her gently from the place.
+
+    Oft she hath gazed, with wistful eyes,
+      Out from that threshold on the night;
+    The narrow bourn she crosseth now;
+      She standeth in the Eternal Light.
+
+    Oft she hath pressed, with aching feet,
+      Those broken steps that reach the door;
+    Henceforth with angels she shall tread
+      Heaven's golden stair forevermore!
+
+
+
+
+FRIEDRICH R�CKERT.
+
+
+The last of the grand old generation of German poets is dead. Within ten
+years Eichendorff, Heine, Uhland, have passed away; and now the death of
+Friedrich R�ckert, the sole survivor of the minor gods who inhabited the
+higher slopes of the Weimar Olympus, closes the list of their names.
+Yet, although with these poets in time, R�ckert was not of them in the
+structure of his mind or the character of his poetical development. No
+author ever stood so lonely among his contemporaries. Looking over the
+long catalogue, not only of German, but of European poets, we find no
+one with whom he can be compared. His birthplace is supposed to be
+Schweinfurt, but it is to be sought, in reality, somewhere on the banks
+of the Euphrates. His true contemporaries were Saadi and Hariri of
+Bosrah.
+
+R�ckert's biography may be given in a few words, his life having been
+singularly devoid of incident. He seems even to have been spared the
+usual alternations of fortune in a material, as well as a literary
+sense. With the exception of a somewhat acridly hostile criticism, which
+the _Jahrb�cher_ of Halle dealt out to him for several years in
+succession, his reputation has enjoyed a gradual and steady growth since
+his first appearance as a poet. His place is now so well defined that
+death--which sometimes changes, while it fixes, the impression an author
+makes upon his generation--cannot seriously elevate or depress it. In
+life he stood so far aloof from the fashions of the day, that all his
+successes were permanent achievements.
+
+He was born on the 16th of May, 1788, in Schweinfurt, a pleasant old
+town in Bavaria, near the baths of Kissingen. As a student he visited
+Jena, where he distinguished himself by his devotion to philological and
+literary studies. For some years a private tutor, in 1815 he became
+connected with the _Morgenblatt_, published by Cotta, in Stuttgart. The
+year 1818 he spent in Italy. Soon after his return, he married, and
+established himself in Coburg, of which place, I believe, his wife was a
+native. Here he occupied himself ostensibly as a teacher, but in reality
+with an enthusiastic and untiring study of the Oriental languages and
+literature. Twice he was called away by appointments which were the
+result of his growing fame as poet and scholar,--the first time in 1826,
+when he was made Professor of the Oriental Languages at the University
+of Erlangen; and again in 1840, when he was appointed to a similar place
+in the University of Berlin, with the title of Privy Councillor. Both
+these posts were uncongenial to his nature. Though so competent to fill
+them, he discharged his duties reluctantly and with a certain
+impatience; and probably there were few more joyous moments of his life
+than when, in 1849, he was allowed to retire permanently to the pastoral
+seclusion of his little property at Neuses, a suburb of Coburg.
+
+One of his German critics remarks that the poem in which he celebrates
+his release embodies a nearer approach to passion than all his Oriental
+songs of love, sorrow, or wine. It is a joyous dithyrambic, which,
+despite its artful and semi-impossible metre, must have been the
+swiftly-worded expression of a genuine feeling. Let me attempt to
+translate the first stanza:--
+
+    "Out of the dust of the
+    Town o' the king,
+    Into the lust of the
+    Green of spring,--
+    Forth from the noises of
+    Streets and walls,
+    Unto the voices of
+    Waterfalls,--
+    He who presently
+    Flies is blest:
+    Fate thus pleasantly
+    Makes my nest!"[B]
+
+
+The quaint old residence at Neuses thus early became, and for nearly
+half a century continued to be, the poet's home. No desire to visit the
+Orient--the native land of his brain--seems to have disturbed him.
+Possibly the Italian journey was in some respects disenchanting. The few
+poems which date from it are picturesque and descriptive, but do not
+indicate that his imagination was warmed by what he saw. He was never so
+happy as when alone with his books and manuscripts, studying or writing,
+according to the dominant mood. This secluded habit engendered a shyness
+of manner, which frequently repelled the strangers who came to see
+him,--especially those who failed to detect the simple, tender, genial
+nature of the man, under his wonderful load of learning. But there was
+nothing morbid or misanthropical in his composition; his shyness was
+rather the result of an intense devotion to his studies. These gradually
+became a necessity of his daily life; his health, his mental peace,
+depended upon them; and whatever disturbed their regular recurrence took
+from him more than the mere time lost.
+
+When I first visited Coburg, in October, 1852, I was very anxious to
+make R�ckert's acquaintance. My interest in Oriental literature had been
+refreshed, at that time, by nearly ten months of travel in Eastern
+lands, and some knowledge of modern colloquial Arabic. I had read his
+wonderful translation of the _Makam�t_ of Hariri, and felt sure that he
+would share in my enthusiasm for the people to whose treasures of song
+he had given so many years of his life. I found, however, that very few
+families in the town were familiarly acquainted with the poet,--that
+many persons, even, who had been residents of the place for years, had
+never seen him. He was presumed to be inaccessible to strangers.
+
+It fortunately happened that one of my friends knew a student of the
+Oriental languages, then residing in Coburg. The latter, who was in the
+habit of consulting R�ckert in regard to his Sanskrit studies, offered
+at once to conduct me to Neuses. A walk of twenty minutes across the
+meadows of the Itz, along the base of the wooded hills which terminate,
+just beyond, in the castled Kallenberg (the summer residence of Duke
+Ernest II.), brought us to the little village, which lies so snugly
+hidden in its own orchards that one might almost pass without
+discovering it. The afternoon was warm and sunny, and a hazy, idyllic
+atmosphere veiled and threw into remoteness the bolder features of the
+landscape. Near at hand, a few quaint old tile-roofed houses rose above
+the trees.
+
+My guide left the highway, crossed a clear little brook on the left, and
+entered the bottom of a garden behind the largest of these houses. As we
+were making our way between the plum-trees and gooseberry-bushes, I
+perceived a tall figure standing in the midst of a great bed of
+late-blossoming roses, over which he was bending as if to inhale their
+fragrance. The sound of our steps startled him; and as he straightened
+himself and faced us, I saw that it could be none other than R�ckert. I
+believe his first impulse was to fly; but we were already so near that
+his moment of indecision settled the matter. The student presented me to
+him as an American traveller, whereat I thought he seemed to experience
+a little relief. Nevertheless, he looked uneasily at his coat,--a sort
+of loose, commodious blouse,--at his hands, full of seeds, and muttered
+some incoherent words about flowers. Suddenly, lifting his head and
+looking steadily at us, he said, "Come into the house!"
+
+The student, who was familiar with his habits, led me to a pleasant room
+on the second floor. The windows looked towards the sun, and were filled
+with hot-house plants. We were scarcely seated before R�ckert made his
+appearance, having laid aside his blouse, and put on a coat. After a
+moment of hesitation, he asked me, "Where have you been travelling?" "I
+come from the Orient," I answered. He looked up with a keen light in his
+eyes. "From the Orient!" he exclaimed, "Where? let me know where you
+have been, and what you have seen!" From that moment he was
+self-possessed, full of life, enthusiasm, fancy, and humor.
+
+He was then in his sixty-fifth year, but still enjoyed the ripe maturity
+of his powers. A man of more striking personal appearance I have seldom
+seen. Over six feet in height, and somewhat gaunt of body, the first
+impression of an absence of physical grace vanished as soon as one
+looked upon his countenance. His face was long, and every feature
+strongly marked,--the brow high and massive, the nose strong and
+slightly aquiline, the mouth wide and firm, and the jaw broad, square,
+and projecting. His thick silver hair, parted in the middle of his
+forehead, fell in wavy masses upon his shoulders. His eyes were
+deep-set, bluish-gray, and burned with a deep, lustrous fire as he
+became animated in conversation. At times they had a mystic, rapt
+expression, as if the far East, of which he spoke, were actually visible
+to his brain. I thought of an Arab sheikh, looking towards Mecca, at the
+hour of prayer.
+
+I regret that I made no notes of the conversation, in which, as may be
+guessed, I took but little part. It was rather a monologue on the
+subject of Arabic poetry, full of the clearest and richest knowledge,
+and sparkling with those evanescent felicities of diction which can so
+rarely be recalled. I was charmed out of all sense of time, and was
+astonished to find, when tea appeared, that more than two hours had
+elapsed. The student had magnanimously left me to the poet, devoting
+himself to the good Frau R�ckert, the "Luise" of her husband's
+_Liebesfr�hling_ (Spring-time of Love). She still, although now a
+grandmother, retained some traces of the fresh, rosy beauty of her
+younger days; and it was pleasant to see the watchful, tender interest
+upon her face, whenever she turned towards the poet. Before I left, she
+whispered to me, "I am always very glad when my husband has an
+opportunity to talk about the Orient: nothing refreshes him so much."
+
+But we must not lose sight of R�ckert's poetical biography. His first
+volume, entitled "German Poems, by Freimund Raimar," was published at
+Heidelberg in the year 1814. It contained, among other things, his
+famous _Geharnischte Sonette_ (Sonnets in Armor), which are still read
+and admired as masterpieces of that form of verse. Preserving the
+Petrarchan model, even to the feminine rhymes of the Italian tongue, he
+has nevertheless succeeded in concealing the extraordinary art by which
+the difficult task was accomplished. Thus early the German language
+acquired its unsuspected power of flexibility in his hands. It is very
+evident to me that his peculiar characteristics as a poet sprang not so
+much from his Oriental studies as from a rare native faculty of mind.
+
+These "Sonnets in Armor," although they may sound but gravely beside the
+Tyrt�an strains of Arndt and K�rner, are nevertheless full of stately
+and inspiring music. They remind one of Wordsworth's phrase,--
+
+              "In Milton's hand,
+    The thing became a trumpet,"--
+
+and must have had their share in stimulating that national sentiment
+which overturned the Napoleonic rule, and for three or four years
+flourished so greenly upon its ruins.
+
+Shortly afterwards, R�ckert published "Napoleon, a Political Comedy,"
+which did not increase his fame. His next important contribution to
+general literature was the "Oriental Roses," which appeared in 1822.
+Three years before, Goethe had published his _West�stlicher Divan_, and
+the younger poet dedicated his first venture in the same field to his
+venerable predecessor, in stanzas which express the most delicate, and
+at the same time the most generous homage. I scarcely know where to
+look for a more graceful dedication in verse. It is said that Goethe
+never acknowledged the compliment,--an omission which some German
+authors attribute to the latter's distaste at being surpassed on his
+latest and (at that time) favorite field. No one familiar with Goethe's
+life and works will accept this conjecture.
+
+It is quite impossible to translate this poem literally, in the original
+metre: the rhymes are exclusively feminine. I am aware that I shall
+shock ears familiar with the original by substituting masculine rhymes
+in the two stanzas which I present; but there is really no alternative.
+
+    "Would you taste
+    Purest East,
+    Hence depart, and seek the selfsame man
+    Who our West
+    Gave the best
+    Wine that ever flowed from Poet's can:
+    When the Western flavors ended,
+    He the Orient's vintage spended,--
+    Yonder dreams he on his own divan!
+
+    "Sunset-red
+    Goethe led
+    Star to be of all the sunset-land:
+    Now the higher
+    Morning-fire
+    Makes him lord of all the morning-land!
+    Where the two, together turning,
+    Meet, the rounded heaven is burning
+    Rosy-bright in one celestial brand!"
+
+I have not the original edition of the "Oriental Roses," but I believe
+the volume contained the greater portion of R�ckert's marvellous
+"Ghazels." Count Platen, it is true, had preceded him by one year, but
+his adaptation of the Persian metre to German poetry--light and graceful
+and melodious as he succeeded in making it--falls far short of R�ckert's
+infinite richness and skill. One of the latter's "Ghazels" contains
+twenty-six variations of the same rhyme, yet so subtly managed, so
+colored with the finest reflected tints of Eastern rhetoric and fancy,
+that the immense art implied in its construction is nowhere unpleasantly
+apparent. In fact, one dare not say that these poems are _all_ art. In
+the Oriental measures the poet found the garment which best fitted his
+own mind. We are not to infer that he did not move joyously, and, after
+a time, easily, within the limitations which, to most authors, would
+have been intolerable fetters.
+
+In 1826 appeared his translation of the _Makam�t_ of Hariri. The old
+silk-merchant of Bosrah never could have anticipated such an
+immortality. The word _Makam�t_ means "sessions," (probably the Italian
+_conversazione_ best translates it,) but is applied to a series of short
+narratives, or rather anecdotes, told alternately in verse and rhymed
+prose, with all the brilliance of rhetoric, the richness of
+alliteration, antithesis, and imitative sound, and the endless
+grammatical subtilties of which the Arabic language is capable. The work
+of Hariri is considered the unapproachable model of this style of
+narrative throughout all the East. R�ckert called his translation "The
+Metamorphoses of Abou-Seyd of Serudj,"--the name of the hero of the
+story. In this work he has shown the capacity of one language to
+reproduce the very spirit of another with which it has the least
+affinity. Like the original, the translation can never be surpassed: it
+is unique in literature.
+
+As the acrobat who has mastered every branch of his art, from the
+spidery contortions of the India-rubber man to the double somersault and
+the flying trapeze, is to the well-developed individual of ordinary
+muscular habits, so is the language of R�ckert in this work to the
+language of all other German authors. It is one perpetual gymnastic show
+of grammar, rhythm, and fancy. Moods, tenses, antecedents, appositions,
+whirl and flash around you, to the sound of some strange, barbaric
+music. Closer and more rapidly they link, chassez, and "cross hands,"
+until, when you anticipate a hopeless tangle, some bold, bright word
+leaps unexpectedly into the throng, and resolves it to instant harmony.
+One's breath is taken away, and his brain made dizzy, by any half-dozen
+of the "Metamorphoses." In this respect the translation has become a
+representative work. The Arabic title, misunderstood, has given birth
+to a German word. Daring and difficult rhymes are now frequently termed
+_Makamen_ in German literary society.
+
+R�ckert's studies were not confined to the Arabic and Persian languages;
+he also devoted many years to the Sanskrit. In 1828 appeared his
+translation of "Nal and Damayanti," and some years later, "Hamasa, or
+the oldest Arabian Poetry," and "Amrilka�s, Poet and King." In addition
+to these translations, he published, between the years 1835 and 1840,
+the following original poems, or collections of poems, on Oriental
+themes,--"Legends of the Morning-Land" (2 vols.), "Rustem and Sohrab,"
+and "Brahminical Stories." These poems are so bathed in the atmosphere
+of his studies, that it is very difficult to say which are his own
+independent conceptions, and which the suggestions of Eastern poets.
+Where he has borrowed images or phrases, (as sometimes from the Koran,)
+they are woven, without any discernible seam, into the texture of his
+own brain.
+
+Some of R�ckert's critics have asserted that his extraordinary mastery
+of all the resources of language operated to the detriment of his
+poetical faculty,--that the feeling to be expressed became subordinate
+to the skill displayed by expressing it in an unusual form. They claim,
+moreover, that he produced a mass of sparkling fragments, rather than
+any single great work. I am convinced, however, that the first charge is
+unfounded, basing my opinion upon my knowledge of the poet's simple,
+true, tender nature, which I learned to appreciate during my later
+visits to his home. After the death of his wife, the daughter who
+thereafter assumed her mother's place in the household wrote me frequent
+accounts of her father's grief and loneliness, enclosing manuscript
+copies of the poems in which he expressed his sorrow. These poems are
+exceedingly sweet and touching; yet they are all marked by the same
+flexile use of difficult rhythms and unprecedented rhymes. They have
+never yet been published, and I am therefore withheld from translating
+any one of them, in illustration.
+
+Few of Goethe's minor songs are more beautiful than his serenade, _O
+gib' vom weichen Pf�hle_, where the interlinked repetitions are a
+perpetual surprise and charm; yet R�ckert has written a score of more
+artfully constructed and equally melodious songs. His collection of
+amatory poems entitled _Liebesfr�hling_ contains some of the sunniest
+idyls in any language. That his genius was lyrical and not epic, was not
+a fault; that it delighted in varied and unusual metres, was an
+exceptional--perhaps in his case a phenomenal--form of development; but
+I do not think it was any the less instinctively natural. One of his
+quatrains runs:--
+
+    "Much I make as make the others;
+      Better much another man
+    Makes than I; but much, moreover,
+      Make I which no other can."
+
+His poetical comment on the translation of Hariri is given in
+prose:--"He who, like myself, unfortunate man! is philologist and poet
+in the same person, cannot do better than to translate as I do. My
+Hariri has illustrated how philology and poetry are competent to
+stimulate and to complete each other. If thou, reader, wilt look upon
+this hybrid production neither too philologically nor over-poetically,
+it may delight and instruct thee. That which is false in philology thou
+wilt attribute to poetic license, and where the poetry is deficient,
+thou wilt give the blame to philology."
+
+The critics who charge R�ckert with never having produced "a whole,"
+have certainly forgotten one of his works,--"The Wisdom of the Brahmin,
+a Didactic Poem, in Fragments." The title somewhat describes its
+character. The "fragments" are couplets, in iambic hexameter, each one
+generally complete in itself, yet grouped in sections by some connecting
+thought, after the manner of the stanzas of Tennyson's "In Memoriam."
+There are more than _six thousand_ couplets, in all, divided into
+twenty books,--the whole forming a mass of poetic wisdom, coupled with
+such amazing wealth of illustration, that this one volume, if
+sufficiently diluted, would make several thousand "Proverbial
+Philosophies." It is not a book to read continuously, but one which, I
+should imagine, no educated German could live without possessing. I
+never open its pages without the certainty of refreshment. Its tone is
+quietistic, as might readily be conjectured, but it is the calm of
+serene reflection, not of indifference. No work which R�ckert ever wrote
+so strongly illustrates the incessant activity of his mind. Half of
+these six thousand couplets are terse and pithy enough for proverbs, and
+their construction would have sufficed for the lifetime of many poets.
+
+With the exception of "Kaiser Barbarossa," and two or three other
+ballads, the amatory poems of R�ckert have attained the widest
+popularity among his countrymen. Many of the love-songs have been set to
+music by Mendelssohn and other composers. Their melody is of that
+subtile, delicate quality which excites a musician's fancy, suggesting
+the tones to which the words should be wedded. Precisely for this reason
+they are most difficult to translate. The first stanza may, in most
+cases, be tolerably reproduced; but as it usually contains a refrain,
+which is repeated to a constantly varied rhyme, throughout the whole
+song or poem, the labor at first becomes desperate, and then impossible.
+An example (the original of which I possess, in the author's manuscript)
+will best illustrate this particular difficulty. Here the metre and the
+order of rhyme have been strictly preserved, except in the first and
+third lines.
+
+    "He came to meet me
+    In rain and thunder;
+    My heart 'gan beating
+    In timid wonder:
+    Could I guess whether
+    Thenceforth together
+    Our paths should run, so long asunder?
+
+    "He came to meet me
+    In rain and thunder,
+    With guile to cheat me,--
+    My heart to plunder.
+    Was't mine he captured?
+    Or his I raptured?
+    Half-way both met, in bliss and wonder!
+
+    "He came to meet me
+    In rain and thunder:
+    Spring-blessings greet me
+    Spring-blossoms under.
+    What though he leave me?
+    No partings grieve me,--
+    No path can lead our hearts asunder!"
+
+The Irish poet, James Clarence Mangan, (whose translations from the
+German comprise both the best and the worst specimens I have yet found,)
+has been successful in rendering one of R�ckert's ghazels. I am
+specially tempted to quote it, on account of the curious general
+resemblance (accidental, no doubt) which Poe's "Lenore" bears to it.
+
+    "I saw her once, a little while, and then no more:
+    'T was Eden's light on earth awhile, and then no more.
+    Amid the throng she passed along the meadow-floor;
+    Spring seemed to smile on earth awhile, and then no more,
+    But whence she came, which way she went, what garb she wore,
+    I noted not; I gazed awhile, and then no more.
+
+    "I saw her once, a little while, and then no more:
+    'T was Paradise on earth awhile, and then no more.
+    Ah! what avail my vigils pale, my magic lore?
+    She shone before mine eyes awhile, and then no more.
+    The shallop of my peace is wrecked on Beauty's shore;
+    Near Hope's fair isle it rode awhile, and then no more.
+
+    "I saw her once, a little while, and then no more:
+    Earth looked like Heaven a little while, and then no more.
+    Her presence thrilled and lighted to its inmost core
+    My desert breast a little while, and then no more.
+    So may, perchance, a meteor glance at midnight o'er
+    Some ruined pile a little while, and then no more.
+
+    "I saw her once, a little while and then no more:
+    The earth was Eden-land awhile, and then no more.
+    O, might I see but once again, as once before,
+    Through chance or wile, that shape awhile, and then no more!
+    Death soon would heal my grief: this heart, now sad and sore,
+    Would beat anew, a little while, and then no more!"
+
+Here, nevertheless, something is sacrificed. The translation is by no
+means literal, and lacks the crispness and freshness of Oriental
+antithesis. R�ckert, I fear, will never be as fortunate as Hariri of
+Bosrah.
+
+When, in 1856, I again visited Germany, I received a friendly message
+from the old poet, with a kind invitation to visit him. Late in November
+I found him, apparently unchanged in body and spirit,--simple,
+enthusiastic, and, in spite of his seclusion, awake to all the movements
+of the world. One of his married sons was then visiting him, so that the
+household was larger and livelier than usual; but, as he sat, during the
+evening, in his favorite arm-chair, with pipe and beer, he fell into the
+same brilliant, wise strain of talk, undisturbed by all the cheerful
+young voices around him.
+
+The conversation gradually wandered away from the Orient to the modern
+languages of Europe. I remarked the special capacity of the German for
+descriptions of forest scenery,--of the feeling and sentiment of deep,
+dark woods, and woodland solitudes.
+
+"May not that be," said he, "because the race lived for centuries in
+forests? A language is always richest in its epithets for those things
+with which the people who speak it are most familiar. Look at the many
+terms for 'horse' and 'sword' in Arabic."
+
+"But the old Britons lived also in forests," I suggested.
+
+"I suspect," he answered, "while the English language was taking shape,
+the people knew quite as much of the sea as of the woods. You ought,
+therefore, to surpass us in describing coast and sea-scenery, winds and
+storms, and the motion of waves."
+
+The idea had not occurred to me before, but I found it to be correct.
+
+Though not speaking English, R�ckert had a thorough critical knowledge
+of the language, and a great admiration of its qualities. He admitted
+that its chances for becoming the dominant tongue of the world were
+greater than those of any other. Much that he said upon this subject
+interested me greatly at the time, but the substance of it has escaped
+me.
+
+When I left, that evening, I looked upon his cheerful, faithful wife for
+the last time. Five years elapsed before I visited Coburg again, and she
+died in the interval. In the summer of 1861 I had an hour's conversation
+with him, chiefly on American affairs, in which he expressed the keenest
+interest. He had read much, and had a very correct understanding of the
+nature of the struggle. He was buried in his studies, in a small house
+outside of the village, where he spent half of every day alone, and
+inaccessible to every one; but his youngest daughter ventured to summon
+him away from his books.
+
+Two years later (in June, 1863) I paid my last visit to Neuses. He had
+then passed his seventy-fifth birthday; his frame was still unbent, but
+the waves of gray hair on his shoulders were thinner, and his step
+showed the increasing feebleness of age. The fire of his eye was
+softened, not dimmed, and the long and happy life that lay behind him
+had given his face a peaceful, serene expression, prophetic of a gentle
+translation into the other life that was drawing near. So I shall always
+remember him,--scholar and poet, strong with the best strength of a man,
+yet trustful and accessible to joy as a child.
+
+Notwithstanding the great amount of R�ckert's contributions to
+literature during his life, he has left behind him a mass of poems and
+philological papers (the latter said to be of great interest and value)
+which his accomplished son, Professor R�ckert of the University of
+Breslau, is now preparing for publication.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[B] The reader may be curious to see how smoothly and naturally these
+dactyls (so forced in the translation) flow in the original:--
+
+    "Aus der staubigen
+    Residenz,
+    In den laubigen
+    Frischen Lenz--
+    Aus dem tosenden
+    Gassenschwall
+    Zu dem kosenden
+    Wasserfall,--
+    Wer sich rettete,
+    Dank's dem Gl�ck,
+    Wie mich bettete
+    Mein Geschick!"
+
+
+
+
+PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.
+
+
+VII.
+
+Concord, _August 5, 1842._--A rainy day,--a rainy day. I am commanded to
+take pen in hand, and I am therefore banished to the little
+ten-foot-square apartment misnamed my study; but perhaps the dismalness
+of the day and the dulness of my solitude will be the prominent
+characteristics of what I write. And what is there to write about?
+Happiness has no succession of events, because it is a part of eternity;
+and we have been living in eternity ever since we came to this old
+manse. Like Enoch, we seem to have been translated to the other state of
+being, without having passed through death. Our spirits must have
+flitted away unconsciously, and we can only perceive that we have cast
+off our mortal part by the more real and earnest life of our souls.
+Externally, our Paradise has very much the aspect of a pleasant old
+domicile on earth. This antique house--for it looks antique, though it
+was created by Providence expressly for our use, and at the precise time
+when we wanted it--stands behind a noble avenue of balm-of-Gilead trees;
+and when we chance to observe a passing traveller through the sunshine
+and the shadow of this long avenue, his figure appears too dim and
+remote to disturb the sense of blissful seclusion. Few, indeed, are the
+mortals who venture within our sacred precincts. George Prescott, who
+has not yet grown earthly enough, I suppose, to be debarred from
+occasional visits to Paradise, comes daily to bring three pints of milk
+from some ambrosial cow; occasionally, also, he makes an offering of
+mortal flowers. Mr. Emerson comes sometimes, and has been feasted on our
+nectar and ambrosia. Mr. Thoreau has twice listened to the music of the
+spheres, which, for our private convenience, we have packed into a
+musical box. E---- H----, who is much more at home among spirits than
+among fleshly bodies, came hither a few times, merely to welcome us to
+the ethereal world; but latterly she has vanished into some other region
+of infinite space. One rash mortal, on the second Sunday after our
+arrival, obtruded himself upon us in a gig. There have since been three
+or four callers, who preposterously think that the courtesies of the
+lower world are to be responded to by people whose home is in Paradise.
+I must not forget to mention that the butcher comes twice or thrice a
+week; and we have so far improved upon the custom of Adam and Eve, that
+we generally furnish forth our feasts with portions of some delicate
+calf or lamb, whose unspotted innocence entitles them to the happiness
+of becoming our sustenance. Would that I were permitted to record the
+celestial dainties that kind Heaven provided for us on the first day of
+our arrival! Never, surely, was such food heard of on earth,--at least,
+not by me. Well, the above-mentioned persons are nearly all that have
+entered into the hallowed shade of our avenue; except, indeed, a certain
+sinner who came to bargain for the grass in our orchard, and another who
+came with a new cistern. For it is one of the drawbacks upon our Eden
+that it contains no water fit either to drink or to bathe in; so that
+the showers have become, in good truth, a godsend. I wonder why
+Providence does not cause a clear, cold fountain to bubble up at our
+doorstep; methinks it would not be unreasonable to pray for such a
+favor. At present we are under the ridiculous necessity of sending to
+the outer world for water. Only imagine Adam trudging out of Paradise
+with a bucket in each hand, to get water to drink, or for Eve to bathe
+in! Intolerable! (though our stout handmaiden really fetches our water).
+In other respects Providence has treated us pretty tolerably well; but
+here I shall expect something further to be done. Also, in the way of
+future favors, a kitten would be very acceptable. Animals (except,
+perhaps, a pig) seem never out of place, even in the most paradisiacal
+spheres. And, by the way, a young colt comes up our avenue, now and
+then, to crop the seldom-trodden herbage; and so does a company of cows,
+whose sweet breath well repays us for the food which they obtain. There
+are likewise a few hens, whose quiet cluck is heard pleasantly about the
+house. A black dog sometimes stands at the farther extremity of the
+avenue, and looks wistfully hitherward; but when I whistle to him, he
+puts his tail between his legs, and trots away. Foolish dog! if he had
+more faith, he should have bones enough.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Saturday, August 6._--Still a dull day, threatening rain, yet without
+energy of character enough to rain outright. However, yesterday there
+were showers enough to supply us well with their beneficent outpouring.
+As to the new cistern, it seems to be bewitched; for, while the spout
+pours into it like a cataract, it still remains almost empty. I wonder
+where Mr. Hosmer got it; perhaps from Tantalus, under the eaves of whose
+palace it must formerly have stood; for, like his drinking-cup in Hades,
+it has the property of filling itself forever, and never being full.
+
+After breakfast, I took my fishing-rod, and went down through our
+orchard to the river-side; but as three or four boys were already in
+possession of the best spots along the shore, I did not fish. This river
+of ours is the most sluggish stream that I ever was acquainted with. I
+had spent three weeks by its side, and swam across it every day, before
+I could determine which way its current ran; and then I was compelled to
+decide the question by the testimony of others, and not by my own
+observation. Owing to this torpor of the stream, it has nowhere a
+bright, pebbly shore, nor is there so much as a narrow strip of
+glistening sand in any part of its course; but it slumbers along between
+broad meadows, or kisses the tangled grass of mowing-fields and
+pastures, or bathes the overhanging boughs of elder-bushes and other
+water-loving plants. Flags and rushes grow along its shallow margin. The
+yellow water-lily spreads its broad, flat leaves upon its surface; and
+the fragrant white pond-lily occurs in many favored spots,--generally
+selecting a situation just so far from the river's brink, that it cannot
+be grasped except at the hazard of plunging in. But thanks be to the
+beautiful flower for growing at any rate. It is a marvel whence it
+derives its loveliness and perfume, sprouting as it does from the black
+mud over which the river sleeps, and from which the yellow lily likewise
+draws its unclean life and noisome odor. So it is with many people in
+this world: the same soil and circumstances may produce the good and
+beautiful, and the wicked and ugly. Some have the faculty of
+assimilating to themselves only what is evil, and so they become as
+noisome as the yellow water-lily. Some assimilate none but good
+influences, and their emblem is the fragrant and spotless pond-lily,
+whose very breath is a blessing to all the region round about.... Among
+the productions of the river's margin, I must not forget the
+pickerel-weed, which grows just on the edge of the water, and shoots up
+a long stalk crowned with a blue spire, from among large green leaves.
+Both the flower and the leaves look well in a vase with pond-lilies, and
+relieve the unvaried whiteness of the latter; and, being all alike
+children of the waters, they are perfectly in keeping with one
+another....
+
+I bathe once, and often twice, a day in our river; but one dip into the
+salt sea would be worth more than a whole week's soaking in such a
+lifeless tide. I have read of a river somewhere (whether it be in
+classic regions or among our Western Indians I know not) which seemed to
+dissolve and steal away the vigor of those who bathed in it. Perhaps
+our stream will be found to have this property. Its water, however, is
+pleasant in its immediate effect, being as soft as milk, and always
+warmer than the air. Its hue has a slight tinge of gold, and my limbs,
+when I behold them through its medium, look tawny. I am not aware that
+the inhabitants of Concord resemble their native river in any of their
+moral characteristics. Their forefathers, certainly, seem to have had
+the energy and impetus of a mountain torrent, rather than the torpor of
+this listless stream,--as it was proved by the blood with which they
+stained their river of Peace. It is said there are plenty of fish in it;
+but my most important captures hitherto have been a mud-turtle and an
+enormous eel. The former made his escape to his native element,--the
+latter we ate; and truly he had the taste of the whole river in his
+flesh, with a very prominent flavor of mud. On the whole, Concord River
+is no great favorite of mine; but I am glad to have any river at all so
+near at hand, it being just at the bottom of our orchard. Neither is it
+without a degree and kind of picturesqueness, both in its nearness and
+in the distance, when a blue gleam from its surface, among the green
+meadows and woods, seems like an open eye in Earth's countenance.
+Pleasant it is, too, to behold a little flat-bottomed skiff gliding over
+its bosom, which yields lazily to the stroke of the paddle, and allows
+the boat to go against its current almost as freely as with it.
+Pleasant, too, to watch an angler, as he strays along the brink,
+sometimes sheltering himself behind a tuft of bushes, and trailing his
+line along the water, in hopes to catch a pickerel. But, taking the
+river for all in all, I can find nothing more fit to compare it with,
+than one of the half-torpid earth-worms which I dig up for bait. The
+worm is sluggish, and so is the river,--the river is muddy, and so is
+the worm. You hardly know whether either of them be alive or dead; but
+still, in the course of time, they both manage to creep away. The best
+aspect of the Concord is when there is a northwestern breeze curling its
+surface, in a bright, sunshiny day. It then assumes a vivacity not its
+own. Moonlight, also, gives it beauty, as it does to all scenery of
+earth or water.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Sunday, August 7._--At sunset, last evening, I ascended the hill-top
+opposite our house; and, looking downward at the long extent of the
+river, it struck me that I had done it some injustice in my remarks.
+Perhaps, like other gentle and quiet characters, it will be better
+appreciated the longer I am acquainted with it. Certainly, as I beheld
+it then, it was one of the loveliest features in a scene of great rural
+beauty. It was visible through a course of two or three miles, sweeping
+in a semicircle round the hill on which I stood, and being the central
+line of a broad vale on either side. At a distance, it looked like a
+strip of sky set into the earth, which it so etherealized and idealized
+that it seemed akin to the upper regions. Nearer the base of the hill, I
+could discern the shadows of every tree and rock, imaged with a
+distinctness that made them even more charming than the reality;
+because, knowing them to be unsubstantial, they assumed the ideality
+which the soul always craves in the contemplation of earthly beauty. All
+the sky, too, and the rich clouds of sunset, were reflected in the
+peaceful bosom of the river; and surely, if its bosom can give back such
+an adequate reflection of heaven, it cannot be so gross and impure as I
+described it yesterday. Or if so, it shall be a symbol to me that even a
+human breast, which may appear least spiritual in some aspects, may
+still have the capability of reflecting an infinite heaven in its
+depths, and therefore of enjoying it. It is a comfortable thought, that
+the smallest and most turbid mud-puddle can contain its own picture of
+heaven. Let us remember this, when we feel inclined to deny all
+spiritual life to some people, in whom, nevertheless, our Father may
+perhaps see the image of his face. This dull river has a deep religion
+of its own: so, let us trust, has the dullest human soul, though,
+perhaps, unconsciously.
+
+The scenery of Concord, as I beheld it from the summit of the hill, has
+no very marked characteristics, but has a great deal of quiet beauty, in
+keeping with the river. There are broad and peaceful meadows, which, I
+think, are among the most satisfying objects in natural scenery. The
+heart reposes on them with a feeling that few things else can give,
+because almost all other objects are abrupt and clearly defined; but a
+meadow stretches out like a small infinity, yet with a secure homeliness
+which we do not find either in an expanse of water or of air. The hills
+which border these meadows are wide swells of land, or long and gradual
+ridges, some of them densely covered with wood. The white village, at a
+distance on the left, appears to be embosomed among wooded hills. The
+verdure of the country is much more perfect than is usual at this season
+of the year, when the autumnal hue has generally made considerable
+progress over trees and grass. Last evening, after the copious showers
+of the preceding two days, it was worthy of early June, or, indeed, of a
+world just created. Had I not then been alone, I should have had a far
+deeper sense of beauty, for I should have looked through the medium of
+another spirit. Along the horizon there were masses of those deep clouds
+in which the fancy may see images of all things that ever existed or
+were dreamed of. Over our old manse, of which I could catch but a
+glimpse among its embowering trees, appeared the immensely gigantic
+figure of a hound, crouching down, with head erect, as if keeping
+watchful guard while the master of the mansion was away.... How sweet it
+was to draw near my own home, after having lived homeless in the world
+so long!... With thoughts like these, I descended the hill, and
+clambered over the stone wall, and crossed the road, and passed up our
+avenue, while the quaint old house put on an aspect of welcome.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Monday, August 8._--I wish I could give a description of our house, for
+it really has a character of its own, which is more than can be said of
+most edifices in these days. It is two stories high, with a third story
+of attic chambers in the gable roof. When I first visited it, early in
+June, it looked pretty much as it did during the old clergyman's
+lifetime, showing all the dust and disarray that might be supposed to
+have gathered about him in the course of sixty years of occupancy. The
+rooms seemed never to have been painted; at all events, the walls and
+panels, as well as the huge crossbeams, had a venerable and most dismal
+tinge of brown. The furniture consisted of high-backed, short-legged,
+rheumatic chairs, small, old tables, bedsteads with lofty posts, stately
+chests of drawers, looking-glasses in antique black frames, all of which
+were probably fashionable in the days of Dr. Ripley's predecessor. It
+required some energy of imagination to conceive the idea of transforming
+this ancient edifice into a comfortable modern residence. However, it
+has been successfully accomplished. The old Doctor's sleeping apartment,
+which was the front room on the ground floor, we have converted into a
+parlor; and, by the aid of cheerful paint and paper, a gladsome carpet,
+pictures and engravings, new furniture, _bijouterie_, and a daily supply
+of flowers, it has become one of the prettiest and pleasantest rooms in
+the whole world. The shade of our departed host will never haunt it; for
+its aspect has been changed as completely as the scenery of a theatre.
+Probably the ghost gave one peep into it, uttered a groan, and vanished
+forever. The opposite room has been metamorphosed into a store-room.
+Through the house, both in the first and second story, runs a spacious
+hall or entry, occupying more space than is usually devoted to such a
+purpose in modern times. This feature contributes to give the whole
+house an airy, roomy, and convenient appearance; we can breathe the
+freer by the aid of the broad passage-way. The front door of the hall
+looks up the stately avenue, which I have already mentioned; and the
+opposite door opens into the orchard, through which a path descends to
+the river. In the second story we have at present fitted up three rooms,
+one being our own chamber, and the opposite one a guest-chamber, which
+contains the most presentable of the old Doctor's ante-Revolutionary
+furniture. After all, the moderns have invented nothing better, as
+chamber furniture, than these chests of drawers, which stand on four
+slender legs, and rear an absolute tower of mahogany to the ceiling, the
+whole terminating in a fantastically carved summit. Such a venerable
+structure adorns our guest-chamber. In the rear of the house is the
+little room which I call my study, and which, in its day, has witnessed
+the intellectual labors of better students than myself. It contains,
+with some additions and alterations, the furniture of my bachelor-room
+in Boston; but there is a happier disposal of things now. There is a
+little vase of flowers on one of the book-cases, and a larger bronze
+vase of graceful ferns that surmounts the bureau. In size the room is
+just what it ought to be; for I never could compress my thoughts
+sufficiently to write in a very spacious room. It has three windows, two
+of which are shaded by a large and beautiful willow-tree, which sweeps
+against the overhanging eaves. On this side we have a view into the
+orchard, and beyond, a glimpse of the river. The other window is the one
+from which Mr. Emerson, the predecessor of Dr. Ripley, beheld the first
+fight of the Revolution,--which he might well do, as the British troops
+were drawn up within a hundred yards of the house; and on looking forth,
+just now, I could still perceive the western abutments of the old
+bridge, the passage of which was contested. The new monument is visible
+from base to summit.
+
+Notwithstanding all we have done to modernize the old place, we seem
+scarcely to have disturbed its air of antiquity. It is evident that
+other wedded pairs have spent their honeymoons here, that children have
+been born here, and people have grown old and died in these rooms,
+although for our behoof the same apartments have consented to look
+cheerful once again. Then there are dark closets, and strange nooks and
+corners, where the ghosts of former occupants might hide themselves in
+the daytime, and stalk forth when night conceals all our sacrilegious
+improvements. We have seen no apparitions as yet; but we hear strange
+noises, especially in the kitchen, and last night, while sitting in the
+parlor, we heard a thumping and pounding as of somebody at work in my
+study. Nay, if I mistake not, (for I was half asleep,) there was a sound
+as of some person crumpling paper in his hand in our very bedchamber.
+This must have been old Dr. Ripley with one of his sermons. There is a
+whole chest of them in the garret; but he need have no apprehensions of
+our disturbing them. I never saw the old patriarch myself, which I
+regret, as I should have been glad to associate his venerable figure at
+ninety years of age with the house in which he dwelt.
+
+Externally the house presents the same appearance as in the Doctor's
+day. It had once a coat of white paint; but the storms and sunshine of
+many years have almost obliterated it, and produced a sober, grayish
+hue, which entirely suits the antique form of the structure. To repaint
+its reverend face would be a real sacrilege. It would look like old Dr.
+Ripley in a brown wig. I hardly know why it is that our cheerful and
+lightsome repairs and improvements in the interior of the house seem to
+be in perfectly good taste, though the heavy old beams and high
+wainscoting of the walls speak of ages gone by. But so it is. The
+cheerful paper-hangings have the air of belonging to the old walls; and
+such modernisms as astral lamps, card-tables, gilded Cologne-bottles,
+silver taper-stands, and bronze and alabaster flower-vases, do not seem
+at all impertinent. It is thus that an aged man may keep his heart warm
+for new things and new friends, and often furnish himself anew with
+ideas; though it would not be graceful for him to attempt to suit his
+exterior to the passing fashions of the day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_August 9._--Our orchard in its day has been a very productive and
+profitable one; and we were told, that in one year it returned Dr.
+Ripley a hundred dollars, besides defraying the expense of repairing the
+house. It is now long past its prime: many of the trees are moss-grown,
+and have dead and rotten branches intermixed among the green and
+fruitful ones. And it may well be so; for I suppose some of the trees
+may have been set out by Mr. Emerson, who died in the first year of the
+Revolutionary war. Neither will the fruit, probably, bear comparison
+with the delicate productions of modern pomology. Most of the trees seem
+to have abundant burdens upon them; but they are homely russet apples,
+fit only for baking and cooking. (But we have yet to have practical
+experience of our fruit.) Justice Shallow's orchard, with its choice
+pippins and leather-coats, was doubtless much superior. Nevertheless, it
+pleases me to think of the good minister, walking in the shadows of
+these old, fantastically-shaped apple-trees, here plucking some of the
+fruit to taste, there pruning away a too luxuriant branch, and all the
+while computing how many barrels may be filled, and how large a sum will
+be added to his stipend by their sale. And the same trees offer their
+fruit to me as freely as they did to him,--their old branches, like
+withered hands and arms, holding out apples of the same flavor as they
+held out to Dr. Ripley in his lifetime. Thus the trees, as living
+existences, form a peculiar link between the dead and us. My fancy has
+always found something very interesting in an orchard. Apple-trees, and
+all fruit-trees, have a domestic character which brings them into
+relationship with man. They have lost, in a great measure, the wild
+nature of the forest-tree, and have grown humanized by receiving the
+care of man, and by contributing to his wants. They have become a part
+of the family; and their individual characters are as well understood
+and appreciated as those of the human members. One tree is harsh and
+crabbed, another mild; one is churlish and illiberal, another exhausts
+itself with its free-hearted bounties. Even the shapes of apple-trees
+have great individuality, into such strange postures do they put
+themselves, and thrust their contorted branches so grotesquely in all
+directions. And when they have stood around a house for many years, and
+held converse with successive dynasties of occupants, and gladdened
+their hearts so often in the fruitful autumn, then it would seem almost
+sacrilege to cut them down.
+
+Besides the apple-trees, there are various other kinds of fruit in close
+vicinity to the house. When we first arrived, there were several trees
+of ripe cherries, but so sour that we allowed them to wither upon the
+branches. Two long rows of currant-bushes supplied us abundantly for
+nearly four weeks. There are a good many peach-trees, but all of an old
+date,--their branches rotten, gummy, and mossy,--and their fruit, I
+fear, will be of very inferior quality. They produce most abundantly,
+however,--the peaches being almost as numerous as the leaves; and even
+the sprouts and suckers from the roots of the old trees have fruit upon
+them. Then there are pear-trees of various kinds, and one or two
+quince-trees. On the whole, these fruit-trees, and the other items and
+adjuncts of the place, convey a very agreeable idea of the outward
+comfort in which the good old Doctor must have spent his life.
+Everything seems to have fallen to his lot that could possibly be
+supposed to render the life of a country clergyman easy and prosperous.
+There is a barn, which probably used to be filled, annually, with his
+hay and other agricultural products. There are sheds, and a hen-house,
+and a pigeon-house, and an old stone pig-sty, the open portion of which
+is overgrown with tall weeds, indicating that no grunter has recently
+occupied it.... I have serious thoughts of inducting a new incumbent in
+this part of the parsonage. It is our duty to support a pig, even if we
+have no design of feasting upon him; and, for my own part, I have a
+great sympathy and interest for the whole race of porkers, and should
+have much amusement in studying the character of a pig. Perhaps I might
+try to bring out his moral and intellectual nature, and cultivate his
+affections. A cat, too, and perhaps a dog, would be desirable additions
+to our household.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_August 10._--The natural taste of man for the original Adam's
+occupation is fast developing itself in me. I find that I am a good deal
+interested in our garden, although, as it was planted before we came
+here, I do not feel the same affection for the plants that I should if
+the seed had been sown by my own hands. It is something like nursing and
+educating another person's children. Still, it was a very pleasant
+moment when I gathered the first string-beans, which were the earliest
+esculent that the garden contributed to our table. And I love to watch
+the successive development of each new vegetable, and mark its daily
+growth, which always affects me with surprise. It is as if something
+were being created under my own inspection, and partly by my own aid.
+One day, perchance, I look at my bean-vines, and see only the green
+leaves clambering up the poles; again, to-morrow, I give a second
+glance, and there are the delicate blossoms; and a third day, on a
+somewhat closer observation, I discover the tender young beans, hiding
+among the foliage. Then, each morning, I watch the swelling of the pods,
+and calculate how soon they will be ready to yield their treasures. All
+this gives a pleasure and an ideality, hitherto unthought of, to the
+business of providing sustenance for my family. I suppose Adam felt it
+in Paradise; and, of merely and exclusively earthly enjoyments, there
+are few purer and more harmless to be experienced. Speaking of beans, by
+the way, they are a classical food, and their culture must have been the
+occupation of many ancient sages and heroes. Summer-squashes are a very
+pleasant vegetable to be acquainted with. They grow in the forms of urns
+and vases,--some shallow, others deeper, and all with a beautifully
+scalloped edge. Almost any squash in our garden might be copied by a
+sculptor, and would look lovely in marble, or in china; and, if I could
+afford it, I would have exact imitations of the real vegetable as
+portions of my dining-service. They would be very appropriate dishes for
+holding garden-vegetables. Besides the summer-squashes, we have the
+crook-necked winter-squash, which I always delight to look at, when it
+turns up its big rotundity to ripen in the autumn sun. Except a pumpkin,
+there is no vegetable production that imparts such an idea of warmth and
+comfort to the beholder. Our own crop, however, does not promise to be
+very abundant; for the leaves formed such a superfluous shade over the
+young blossoms, that most of them dropped off without producing the germ
+of fruit. Yesterday and to-day I have cut off an immense number of
+leaves, and have thus given the remaining blossoms a chance to profit by
+the air and sunshine; but the season is too far advanced, I am afraid,
+for the squashes to attain any great bulk, and grow yellow in the sun.
+We have muskmelons and watermelons, which promise to supply us with as
+many as we can eat. After all, the greatest interest of these vegetables
+does not seem to consist in their being articles of food. It is rather
+that we love to see something born into the world; and when a great
+squash or melon is produced, it is a large and tangible existence, which
+the imagination can seize hold of and rejoice in. I love, also, to see
+my own works contributing to the life and well-being of animate nature.
+It is pleasant to have the bees come and suck honey out of my
+squash-blossoms, though, when they have laden themselves, they fly away
+to some unknown hive, which will give me back nothing in return for what
+my garden has given them. But there is much more honey in the world, and
+so I am content. Indian corn, in the prime and glory of its verdure, is
+a very beautiful vegetable, both considered in the separate plant, and
+in a mass in a broad field, rustling, and waving, and surging up and
+down in the breeze and sunshine of a summer afternoon. We have as many
+as fifty hills, I should think, which will give us an abundant supply.
+Pray Heaven that we may be able to eat it all! for it is not pleasant to
+think that anything which Nature has been at the pains to produce should
+be thrown away. But the hens will be glad of our superfluity, and so
+will the pigs, though we have neither hens nor pigs of our own. But hens
+we must certainly keep. There is something very sociable, and quiet, and
+soothing, too, in their soliloquies and converse among themselves; and,
+in an idle and half-meditative mood, it is very pleasant to watch a
+party of hens picking up their daily subsistence, with a gallant
+chanticleer in the midst of them. Milton had evidently contemplated such
+a picture with delight.
+
+I find that I have not given a very complete idea of our garden,
+although it certainly deserves an ample record in this chronicle, since
+my labors in it are the only present labors of my life. Besides what I
+have mentioned, we have cucumber-vines, which to-day yielded us the
+first cucumber of the season, a bed of beets, and another of carrots,
+and another of parsnips and turnips, none of which promise us a very
+abundant harvest. In truth, the soil is worn out, and, moreover,
+received very little manure this season. Also, we have cabbages in
+superfluous abundance, inasmuch as we neither of us have the least
+affection for them; and it would be unreasonable to expect Sarah, the
+cook, to eat fifty head of cabbages. Tomatoes, too, we shall have by and
+by. At our first arrival, we found green peas ready for gathering, and
+these, instead of the string-beans, were the first offering of the
+garden to our board.
+
+
+
+
+TO J. B.
+
+ON SENDING ME A SEVEN-POUND TROUT.
+
+
+              1.
+
+    Fit for an Abbot of Theleme,
+    For the whole Cardinals' College, or
+    The Pope himself to see in dream
+    Before his lenten vision gleam,
+    He lies there,--the sogdologer!
+
+              2.
+
+    His precious flanks with stars besprent,
+    Worthy to swim in Castaly!
+    The friend by whom such gifts are sent,--
+    For him shall bumpers full be spent,--
+    His health! be Luck his fast ally!
+
+              3.
+
+    I see him trace the wayward brook
+    Amid the forest mysteries,
+    Where at themselves shy aspens look,
+    Or where, with many a gurgling crook,
+    It croons its woodland histories.
+
+              4.
+
+    I see leaf-shade and sun-fleck lend
+    Their tremulous, sweet vicissitude
+    To smooth, dark pool, to crinkling bend,--
+    (O, stew him, Ann, as 't were your friend,
+    With amorous solicitude!)
+
+              5.
+
+    I see him step with caution due,
+    Soft as if shod with moccasins,
+    Grave as in church,--and who plies you,
+    Sweet craft, is safe as in a pew
+    From all our common stock o' sins.
+
+              6.
+
+    The unerring fly I see him cast,
+    That as a rose-leaf falls as soft,--
+    A flash! a whirl! he has him fast!
+    We tyros,--how that struggle last
+    Confuses and appalls us oft!
+
+              7.
+
+    Unfluttered he; calm as the sky
+    Looks on our tragicomedies,
+    This way and that he lets him fly,
+    A sunbeam-shuttle, then to die
+    Lands him with cool _aplomb_, at ease.
+
+              8.
+
+    The friend who gave our board such gust,--
+    Life's care, may he o'erstep it half,
+    And when Death hooks him, as he must,
+    He'll do it featly, as I trust,
+    And J. H. write his epitaph!
+
+              9.
+
+    O, born beneath the Fishes' sign,
+    Of constellations happiest,
+    May he somewhere with Walton dine,
+    May Horace send him Massic wine,
+    And Burns Scotch drink,--the nappiest!
+
+              10.
+
+    And when they come his deeds to weigh,
+    And how he used the talents his,
+    One trout-scale in the scales he'll lay,
+    (If trout had scales,) and 't will outsway
+    The wrong side of the balances.
+
+
+
+
+PHYSICAL HISTORY OF THE VALLEY OF THE AMAZONS.
+
+
+I.
+
+A year or two ago I published in the Atlantic Monthly, as part of a
+series of geological sketches, a number of articles on the glacial
+phenomena of the Northern hemisphere. To-day I am led to add a new
+chapter to that strange history, taken from the Southern hemisphere, and
+even from the tropics themselves.
+
+I am prepared to find that the statement of this new phase of the
+glacial period will awaken among my scientific colleagues an opposition
+even more violent than that by which the first announcement of my views
+on this subject was met. I am, however, willing to bide my time; feeling
+sure that, as the theory of the ancient extension of glaciers in Europe
+has gradually come to be accepted by geologists, so will the existence
+of like phenomena, both in North and South America, during the same
+epoch, be recognized sooner or later as part of a great series of
+physical events extending over the whole globe. Indeed, when the ice
+period is fully understood, it will be seen that the absurdity lies in
+supposing that climatic conditions so intense could be limited to a
+small portion of the world's surface. If the geological winter existed
+at all, it must have been cosmic; and it is quite as rational to look
+for its traces in the Western as in the Eastern hemisphere, to the south
+of the equator as to the north of it. Impressed by this wider view of
+the subject, confirmed by a number of unpublished investigations which I
+have made during the last three or four years in the United States, I
+came to South America, expecting to find in the tropical regions new
+evidences of a by-gone glacial period, though, of course, under
+different aspects. Such a result seemed to me the logical sequence of
+what I had already observed in Europe and in North America.
+
+On my arrival in Rio de Janeiro,--the port at which I first landed in
+Brazil,--my attention was immediately attracted by a very peculiar
+formation, consisting of an ochraceous, highly ferruginous sandy clay.
+During a stay of three months in Rio, whence I made many excursions into
+the neighboring country, I had opportunities of studying this deposit,
+both in the province of Rio de Janeiro and in the adjoining province of
+Minas Geraes. I found that it rested everywhere upon the undulating
+surfaces of the solid rocks in place, was almost entirely destitute of
+stratification, and contained a variety of pebbles and boulders. The
+pebbles were chiefly quartz, sometimes scattered indiscriminately
+throughout the deposit, sometimes lying in a seam between it and the
+rock below; while the boulders were either sunk in its mass or resting
+loose on the surface. At Tijuca, a few miles out of the city of Rio,
+among the picturesque hills lying to the southwest of it, these
+phenomena may be seen in great perfection. Near Bennett's Hotel--a
+favorite resort, not only with the citizens of Rio, but with all
+sojourners there who care to leave the town occasionally for its
+beautiful environs--may be seen a great number of erratic boulders,
+having no connection whatever with the rock in place, and also a bluff
+of this superficial deposit studded with boulders, resting above the
+partially stratified metamorphic rock. Other excellent opportunities for
+observing this formation, also within easy reach from the city, are
+afforded along the whole line of the Railroad of Dom Pedro Segundo,
+where the cuts expose admirable sections, showing the red, unstratified,
+homogeneous mass of sandy clay resting above the solid rock, and often
+divided from it by a thin bed of pebbles. There can be no doubt, in the
+mind of any one familiar with similar facts observed in other parts of
+the world, that this is one of the many forms of drift connected with
+glacial action. I was, however, far from anticipating, when I first met
+it in the neighborhood of Rio, that I should afterwards find it
+spreading over the surface of the country, from north to south and from
+east to west, with a continuity which gives legible connection to the
+whole geological history of the continent.
+
+It is true that the extensive decomposition of the underlying rock,
+penetrating sometimes to a considerable depth, makes it often difficult
+to distinguish between it and the drift; and the problem is made still
+more puzzling by the fact that the surface of the drift, when baked by
+exposure to the hot sun, often assumes the appearance of decomposed
+rock, so that great care is required for a correct interpretation of the
+facts. A little practice, however, trains the eye to read these
+appearances aright, and I may say that I have learned to recognize
+everywhere the limit between the two formations. There is indeed one
+safe guide, namely, the undulating line, reminding one of _roches
+moutonn�es_,[C] and marking the irregular surface of the rock on which
+the drift was accumulated; whatever modifications the one or the other
+may have undergone, this line seems never to disappear. Another
+deceptive feature, arising from the frequent disintegration of the rocks
+and from the brittle character of some of them, is the presence of loose
+fragments, which simulate erratic boulders, but are in fact only
+detached masses of the rock in place. A careful examination of their
+structure, however, will at once show the geologist whether they belong
+where they are found, or have been brought from a distance to their
+present resting-place.
+
+But while the features to which I have alluded are unquestionably drift
+phenomena, they present in their wider extension, and especially in the
+northern part of Brazil, as will hereafter be seen, some phases of
+glacial action hitherto unobserved. Just as the investigation of the ice
+period in the United States has shown us that ice-fields may move over
+open level plains, as well as along the slopes of mountain valleys, so
+does a study of the same class of facts in South America reveal new and
+unlooked-for features in the history of the ice period. Some will say,
+that the fact of the advance of ice-fields over an open country is by no
+means established, inasmuch as many geologists believe all the so-called
+glacial traces, viz. stri�, furrows, polish, etc., found in the United
+States, to have been made by floating icebergs at a time when the
+continent was submerged. To this I can only answer, that in the State of
+Maine I have followed, compass in hand, the same set of furrows, running
+from north to south in one unvarying line, over a surface of one hundred
+and thirty miles from the Katahdin Iron Range to the sea-shore. These
+furrows follow all the inequalities of the country, ascending ranges of
+hills varying from twelve to fifteen hundred feet in height, and
+descending into the intervening valleys only two or three hundred feet
+above the sea, or sometimes even on a level with it. I take it to be
+impossible that a floating mass of ice should travel onward in one
+rectilinear direction, turning neither to the right nor to the left, for
+such a distance. Equally impossible would it be for a detached mass of
+ice, swimming on the surface of the water, or even with its base sunk
+considerably below it, to furrow in a straight line the summits and
+sides of the hills, and the beds of the valleys. It would be carried
+over the depressions without touching bottom. Instead of ascending the
+mountains, it would remain stranded against any elevation which rose
+greatly above its own basis, and, if caught between two parallel ridges,
+would float up and down between them. Moreover, the action of solid,
+unbroken ice, moving over the ground in immediate contact with it, is so
+different from that of floating ice-rafts or icebergs, that, though the
+latter have unquestionably dropped erratic boulders, and made furrows
+and stri� on the surface where they happened to be grounded, these
+phenomena will easily be distinguished from the more connected traces of
+glaciers, or extensive sheets of ice, resting directly upon the face of
+the country and advancing over it.
+
+There seems thus far to be an inextricable confusion, in the ideas of
+many geologists, as to the respective action of currents, icebergs, and
+glaciers. It is time they should learn to distinguish between classes of
+facts so different from each other, and so easily recognized after the
+discrimination has once been made. As to the southward movement of an
+immense field of ice, extending over the whole north, it seems
+inevitable, the moment we admit that snow may accumulate around the pole
+in such quantities as to initiate a pressure radiating in every
+direction. Snow, alternately thawing and freezing, must, like water,
+find its level at last. A sheet of snow ten or fifteen thousand feet in
+thickness, extending all over the northern and southern portions of the
+globe, must necessarily lead, in the end, to the formation of a northern
+and southern cap of ice, moving toward the equator.
+
+I have spoken of Tijuca and the Dom Pedro Railroad as favorable
+localities for studying the peculiar southern drift; but one meets it in
+every direction. A sheet of drift, consisting of the same homogeneous,
+unstratified paste, and containing loose materials of all sorts and
+sizes, covers the country. It is of very uneven thickness,--sometimes
+thrown into relief, as it were, by the surrounding denudations, and
+rising into hills,--sometimes reduced to a thin layer,--sometimes, as,
+for instance, on steep slopes, washed entirely away, leaving the bare
+face of the rock exposed. It has, however, remained comparatively
+undisturbed on some very abrupt ascents; as, for instance, on the
+Corcovado, along the path leading up the mountain, are some very fine
+banks of drift,--the more striking from the contrast of their deep red
+color with the surrounding vegetation. I have myself followed this sheet
+of drift from Rio de Janeiro to the top of the Serra do Mar, where, just
+outside the pretty town of Petropolis, the river Piabanha may be seen
+flowing between banks of drift, in which it has excavated its bed;
+thence I have traced it along the beautiful macadamized road leading to
+Juiz de Fora in the province of Minas Geraes, and beyond this to the
+farther side of the Serra da Babylonia. Throughout this whole tract of
+country, in the greater part of which travelling is easy and
+delightful,--an admirable line of diligences, over one of the finest
+roads in the world, being established as far as Juiz de Fora,--the drift
+may be seen along the roadside, in immediate contact with the native
+crystalline rock. The fertility of the land, also, is a guide to the
+presence of drift. Wherever it lies thickest over the surface, there are
+the most flourishing coffee-plantations; and I believe that a more
+systematic regard to this fact would have a most beneficial influence
+upon the agricultural interests of the country. No doubt the fertility
+arises from the great variety of chemical elements contained in the
+drift, and the kneading process it has undergone beneath the gigantic
+ice-plough,--a process which makes glacial drift everywhere the most
+fertile soil. Since my return from the Amazons, my impression as to the
+general distribution of these phenomena has been confirmed by the
+reports of some of my assistants, who have been travelling in other
+parts of the country. Mr. Frederick C. Hartt, accompanied by Mr.
+Copeland, one of the volunteer aids of the expedition, has been making
+collections and geological observations in the province of Spiritu
+Santo, in the valley of the Rio Doce, and afterwards in the valley of
+the Mucury. He informs me that he has found everywhere the same sheet
+of red, unstratified clay, with pebbles and occasional boulders,
+overlying the rock in place. Mr. Orestes St. John, who, taking the road
+through the interior, has visited, with the same objects in view, the
+valleys of the Rio San Francisco and the Rio das Velhas, and also the
+valley of Piauhy, gives the same account, with the exception that he
+found no erratic boulders in these more northern regions. The rarity of
+erratic boulders, not only in the deposits of the Amazons proper, but in
+those of the whole region which may be considered as the Amazonian
+basin, is accounted for, as we shall see hereafter, by the mode of their
+formation. The observations of Mr. Hartt and Mr. St. John are the more
+valuable, because I had employed them both, on our first arrival in Rio,
+in making geological surveys of different sections on the Dom Pedro
+Railroad, so that they had a great familiarity with those formations
+before starting on their separate journeys. Recently, Mr. St. John and
+myself having met at Par� on returning from our respective journeys, I
+have had an opportunity of comparing on the spot his geological sections
+from the valley of the Piauhy with the Amazonian deposits. There can be
+no doubt of the absolute identity of the formations in these valleys.
+
+Having arranged the work of my assistants, and sent several of them to
+collect and make geological examinations in other directions, I myself,
+with the rest of my companions, proceeded up the coast to Par�. I was
+surprised to find at every step of my progress the same geological
+phenomena which had met me at Rio. As the steamer stops for a number of
+hours, or sometimes for a day or two, at Bahia, Maceio, Pernambuco,
+Parahiba, Natal, Ceara, and Maranham, I had many opportunities for
+observation. It was my friend Major Coutinho, already an experienced
+Amazonian traveller, who first told me that this formation continued
+through the whole valley of the Amazons, and was also to be found on all
+of its affluents which he had visited, although he had never thought of
+referring it to so recent a period. And here let me interrupt the course
+of my remarks to say, that the facts recorded in this article are by no
+means exclusively the result of my own investigations. They are in great
+part due to this able and intelligent young Brazilian, a member of the
+government corps of engineers, who, by the kindness of the Emperor, was
+associated with me in my Amazonian expedition. I can truly say that he
+has been my good genius throughout the whole journey, saving me, by his
+previous knowledge of the ground, from the futile and misdirected
+expenditure of means and time often inevitable in a new country, where
+one is imperfectly acquainted both with the people and their language.
+We have worked together in this investigation; my only advantage over
+him being my greater familiarity with like phenomena in Europe and North
+America, and consequent readiness in the practical handling of the
+facts, and in perceiving their connection. Major Coutinho's assertion,
+that on the banks of the Amazons I should find the same red,
+unstratified clay as in Rio and along the southern coast, seemed to me
+at first almost incredible, impressed as I was with the generally
+received notions as to the ancient character of the Amazonian deposits,
+referred by Humboldt to the Devonian, and by Martins to the Triassic
+period, and considered by all travellers to be at least as old as the
+Tertiaries. The result, however, confirmed his report, at least so far
+as the component materials of the formation are concerned; but, as will
+be seen hereafter, the mode of their deposition, and the time at which
+it took place, have not been the same at the north and south; and this
+difference of circumstances has modified the aspect of a formation
+essentially the same throughout. At first sight, it would indeed appear
+that this formation, as it exists in the valley of the Amazons, is
+identical with that of Rio; but it differs from it in the rarity of its
+boulders, and in showing occasional signs of stratification. It is also
+everywhere underlaid by coarse, well-stratified deposits, resembling
+somewhat the recife of Bahia and Pernambuco; whereas the unstratified
+drift of the south rests immediately upon the undulating surface of
+whatever rock happens to make the foundation of the country, whether
+stratified or crystalline. The peculiar sandstone on which the Amazonian
+clay rests exists nowhere else. Before proceeding, however, to describe
+the Amazonian deposits in detail, I ought to say something of the nature
+and origin of the valley itself.
+
+The Valley of the Amazons was first sketched out by the elevation of two
+tracts of land; namely, the plateau of Guiana on the north, and the
+central plateau of Brazil on the south. It is probable that, at the time
+these two table-lands were lifted above the sea-level, the Andes did not
+exist, and the ocean flowed between them through an open strait. It
+would seem (and this is a curious result of modern geological
+investigations) that the portions of the earth's surface earliest raised
+above the ocean have trended from east to west. The first tract of land
+lifted above the waters in North America was also a long continental
+island, running from Newfoundland almost to the present base of the
+Rocky Mountains. This tendency may be attributed to various causes,--to
+the rotation of the earth, the consequent depression of its poles, and
+the breaking of its crust along the lines of greatest tension thus
+produced. At a later period, the upheaval of the Andes took place,
+closing the western side of this strait, and thus transforming it into a
+gulf, open only toward the east. Little or nothing is known of the
+earlier stratified deposits resting against the crystalline masses first
+uplifted in the Amazonian Valley. There is here no sequence, as in North
+America, of Azoic, Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous formations,
+shored up against each other by the gradual upheaval of the continent,
+although unquestionably older pal�ozoic and secondary beds underlie,
+here and there, the later formations. Indeed, Major Coutinho has found
+pal�ozoic deposits, with characteristic shells, in the valley of the Rio
+Tapajos, at the first cascade, and carboniferous deposits have been
+noticed along the Rio Guapore and the Rio Marnore. But the first chapter
+in the valley's geological history about which we have connected and
+trustworthy data is that of the cretaceous period. It seems certain,
+that, at the close of the secondary age, the whole Amazonian basin
+became lined with a cretaceous deposit, the margins of which crop out at
+various localities on its borders. They have been observed along its
+southern limits, on its western outskirts along the Andes, in Venezuela
+along the shore-line of mountains, and also in certain localities near
+its eastern edge. I well remember that one of the first things which
+awakened my interest in the geology of the Amazonian Valley was the
+sight of some cretaceous fossil fishes from the province of Ceara. These
+fossil fishes were collected by Mr. George Gardner, to whom science is
+indebted for the most extensive information yet obtained respecting the
+geology of that part of Brazil. In this connection, let me say that here
+and elsewhere I shall speak of the provinces of Ceara, Piauhy, and
+Maranham as belonging geologically to the Valley of the Amazons, though
+their shore is bathed by the ocean, and their rivers empty directly into
+the Atlantic. But I entertain no doubt, and I hope I may hereafter be
+able to show, that, at an earlier period, the northeastern coast of
+Brazil stretched much farther seaward than in our day; so far, indeed,
+that in those times the rivers of all these provinces must have been
+tributaries of the Amazon in its eastward course. The evidence for this
+conclusion is substantially derived from the identity of the deposits in
+the valleys belonging to these provinces with those of the valleys
+through which the actual tributaries of the Amazons flow; as, for
+instance, the Tocantins, the Xingu, the Tapajos, the Madura, etc.
+Besides the fossils above alluded to from the eastern borders of this
+ancient basin, I have had recently another evidence of its cretaceous
+character from its southern region. Mr. William Chandless, on his return
+from a late journey on the Rio Purus, presented me with a series of
+fossil remains of the highest interest, and undoubtedly belonging to the
+cretaceous period. They were collected by himself on the Rio Aquiry, an
+affluent of the Rio Purus. Most of them were found in place between the
+tenth and eleventh degrees of south latitude, and the sixty-seventh and
+sixty-ninth degrees of west longitude from Greenwich, in localities
+varying from 430 to 650 feet above the sea-level. There are among them
+remains of Mososaurus, and of fishes closely allied to those already
+represented by Faujas in his description of Maestricht, and
+characteristic, as is well known to geological students, of the most
+recent cretaceous period.
+
+Thus in its main features the Valley of the Amazons, like that of the
+Mississippi, is a cretaceous basin. This resemblance suggests a further
+comparison between the twin continents of North and South America. Not
+only is their general form the same, but their framework as we may call
+it, that is, the lay of their great mountain-chains and of their
+table-lands, with the extensive intervening depressions, presents a
+striking similarity. Indeed, a zo�logist, accustomed to trace a like
+structure under variously modified animal forms, cannot but have his
+homological studies recalled to his mind by the coincidence between
+certain physical features in the northern and southern parts of the
+Western hemisphere. And yet here, as throughout all nature, these
+correspondences are combined with a distinctness of individualization,
+which leaves its respective character not only to each continent as a
+whole, but also to the different regions circumscribed within its
+borders. In both, however, the highest mountain-chains, the Rocky
+Mountains and Coast Range with their wide intervening table-land in
+North America, and the chain of the Andes with its lesser plateaus in
+South America, run along the western coast; both have a great eastern
+promontory,--Newfoundland in the northern continent, and Cape St. Roque
+in the southern;--and though the resemblance between the inland
+elevations is perhaps less striking, yet the Canadian range, the White
+Mountains, and the Alleghanies may very fairly be compared to the
+table-lands of Guiana and Brazil, and the Serra do Mar. Similar
+correspondences may be traced among the river systems. The Amazons and
+the St. Lawrence, though so different in dimensions, remind us of each
+other by their trend and geographical position; and while the one is fed
+by the largest river system in the world, the other drains the most
+extensive lake surfaces known to exist in immediate contiguity. The
+Orinoco, with its bay, recalls Hudson's Bay and its many tributaries,
+and the Rio Magdalena may be said to be the South American Mackenzie;
+while the Rio de la Plata represents geographically our Mississippi, and
+the Paraguay recalls the Missouri. The Parana may be compared to the
+Ohio; the Pilcomayo, Vermejo, and Salado rivers, to the River Platte,
+the Arkansas, and the Red River in the United States; while the rivers
+farther south, emptying into the Gulf of Mexico, represent the rivers of
+Patagonia and the southern parts of the Argentine Republic. Not only is
+there this general correspondence between the mountain elevations and
+the river systems, but as the larger river basins of North
+America--those of the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, and the
+Mackenzie--meet in the low tracts extending along the foot of the Rocky
+Mountains, so do the basins of the Amazons, the Rio de la Plata, and the
+Orinoco join each other along the eastern slope of the Andes.
+
+But while in geographical homology the Amazons compare with the St.
+Lawrence, and the Mississippi with the Rio de la Plata, the Mississippi
+and the Amazons, as has been said, resemble each other in their local
+geological character. They have both received a substratum of cretaceous
+beds, above which are accumulated their more recent deposits, so that,
+in their most prominent geological features, both may be considered as
+cretaceous basins, containing extensive deposits of a very recent age.
+Of the history of the Amazonian Valley during the periods immediately
+following the Cretaceous, we know little or nothing. Whether the
+Tertiary deposits are hidden under the more modern ones, or whether they
+are wholly wanting, the basin having, perhaps, been raised above the
+sea-level before that time, or whether they have been swept away by the
+tremendous inundations in the valley, which have certainly destroyed a
+great part of the cretaceous deposit, they have never been observed in
+any part of the Amazonian basin. Whatever tertiary deposits are
+represented in geological maps of this region are so marked in
+consequence of an incorrect identification of strata belonging, in fact,
+to a much more recent period.
+
+A minute and extensive survey of the Valley of the Amazons is by no
+means an easy task, and its difficulty is greatly increased by the fact
+that the lower formations are only accessible on the river margins
+during the _vasante_, as it is called, or dry season, when the waters
+shrink in their beds, leaving a great part of their banks exposed. It
+happened that the first three or four months of my journey, August,
+September, October, and November, were those when the waters are
+lowest,--reaching their minimum in September and October, and beginning
+to rise again in November,--so that I had an excellent opportunity in
+ascending the river to observe its geological structure. Throughout its
+whole length, three distinct geological formations may be traced, the
+two lower of which have followed in immediate succession, and are
+conformable with one another, while the third rests unconformably upon
+them, following all the inequalities of the greatly denudated surface
+presented by the second formation. Notwithstanding this seeming
+interruption in the sequence of these deposits, the third, as we shall
+presently see, belongs to the same series, and was accumulated in the
+same basin. The lowest set of beds of the whole series is rarely
+visible, but it seems everywhere to consist of sandstone, or even of
+loose sands well stratified, the coarser materials lying invariably
+below, and the finer above. Upon this lower set of beds rests everywhere
+an extensive deposit of fine laminated clays, varying in thickness, but
+frequently dividing into layers as thin as a sheet of paper. In some
+localities they exhibit in patches an extraordinary variety of beautiful
+colors,--pink, orange, crimson, yellow, gray, blue, and also black and
+white. The Indians are very skilful in preparing paints from these
+colored clays, with which they ornament their pottery, and the bowls of
+various shapes and sizes made from the fruit of the Cuieira-tree. These
+clay deposits assume occasionally a peculiar appearance, and one which
+might mislead the observer as to their true nature. When their surface
+has been long exposed to the action of the atmosphere and to the heat of
+the burning sun, they look so much like clay slates of the oldest
+geological epochs, that, at first sight, I took them for primary slates,
+my attention being attracted to them by a regular cleavage as distinct
+as that of the most ancient clay slates. And yet at Tonantins, on the
+banks of the Solimoens, in a locality where their exposed surfaces had
+this primordial appearance, I found in these very beds a considerable
+amount of well-preserved leaves, the character of which proves their
+recent origin. These leaves do not even indicate as ancient a period as
+the Tertiaries, but resemble so closely the vegetation of to-day, that I
+have no doubt, when examined by competent authority, they will be
+identified with living plants. The presence of such an extensive clay
+formation, stretching over a surface of more than three thousand miles
+in length and about seven hundred in breadth, is not easily explained
+under any ordinary circumstances. The fact that it is so thoroughly
+laminated shows that, in the basin in which it was formed, the waters
+must have been unusually quiet, containing identical materials
+throughout, and that these materials must have been deposited over the
+whole bottom in the same way. It is usually separated from the
+superincumbent beds by a glazed crust of hard, compact sandstone, almost
+resembling a ferruginous quartzite.
+
+Upon this follow beds of sand and sandstone, varying in the regularity
+of their strata, reddish in color, often highly ferruginous, and more or
+less nodulous or porous. They present frequent traces of
+cross-stratification, alternating with regularly stratified horizontal
+beds, with here and there an intervening layer of clay. It would seem as
+if the character of the water basin had now changed, and as if the
+waters under which this second formation was deposited had vibrated
+between storm and calm,--had sometimes flowed more gently, and again had
+been tossed to and fro,--giving to some of the beds the aspect of true
+torrential deposits. Indeed, these sandstone formations present a great
+variety of aspects. Sometimes they are very regularly laminated, or
+assume even the appearance of the hardest quartzite. This is usually the
+case with the uppermost beds. In other localities, and more especially
+in the lowermost beds, the whole mass is honeycombed, as if drilled by
+worms or boring shells, the hard parts enclosing softer sands or clays.
+Occasionally the ferruginous materials prevail to such an extent, that
+some of these beds might be mistaken for bog ore, while others contain a
+large amount of clay, more regularly stratified, and alternating with
+strata of sandstone, thus recalling the most characteristic forms of the
+Old Red or Triassic formations. This resemblance has, no doubt, led to
+the identification of the Amazonian deposits with the more ancient
+formations of Europe. At Monte Alegre, of which I shall presently speak
+more in detail, such a clay bed divides the lower from the upper
+sandstone. The thickness of these sandstones is extremely variable. In
+the basin of the Amazons proper, they hardly rise anywhere above the
+level of high water during the rainy season, while at low water, in the
+summer months, they maybe seen everywhere along the river-banks. It will
+be seen, however, that the limit between high and low water gives no
+true measure of the original thickness of the whole series.
+
+In the neighborhood of Almeirim, at a short distance from the northern
+bank of the river, and nearly parallel with its course, there rises a
+line of low hills, interrupted here and there, but extending in evident
+connection from Almeirim through the region of Monte Alegre to the
+heights of Obidos. These hills have attracted the attention of
+travellers, not only from their height, which appears greater than it
+is, because they rise abruptly from an extensive plain, but also on
+account of their curious form, many of them being perfectly level on
+top, like smooth tables, and very abruptly divided from each other by
+low, intervening spaces.[D] Nothing has hitherto been known of the
+geological structure of these hills, but they have been usually
+represented as the southernmost spurs of the table-land of Guiana. On
+ascending the river, I felt the greatest curiosity to examine them; but
+at the time I was deeply engrossed in studying the distribution of
+fishes in the Amazonian waters, and in making large ichthyological
+collections, for which it was very important not to miss the season of
+low water, when the fishes are most easily obtained. I was, therefore,
+obliged to leave this most interesting geological problem, and content
+myself with examining the structure of the valley so far as it could be
+seen on the river-banks and in the neighborhood of my different
+collecting stations. On my return, however, when my collections were
+completed, I was free to pursue this investigation, in which Major
+Coutinho was as much interested as myself. We determined to select Monte
+Alegre as the centre of our exploration, the serra in that region being
+higher than elsewhere. As I was detained by indisposition at Manaos, for
+some days, at the time we had appointed for the excursion, Major
+Coutinho preceded me, and had already made one trip to the serra, with
+some very interesting results, when I joined him, and we made a second
+journey together.
+
+Monte Alegre lies on a side arm of the Amazons, a little off from its
+main course. This side arm, called the Rio Gurupatuba, is simply a
+channel running parallel with the Amazons, and cutting through from a
+higher to a lower point. Its dimensions are, however, greatly
+exaggerated in all the maps thus far published, where it is usually made
+to appear as a considerable northern tributary of the Amazons. The town
+stands on an elevated terrace, separated from the main stream by the Rio
+Gurupatuba, and by an extensive flat, consisting of numerous lakes
+divided from each other by low alluvial land, and mostly connected by
+narrow channels. To the west of the town, this terrace sinks abruptly to
+a wide sandy plain called the Campos, covered with a low forest growth,
+and bordered on its farther limit by the picturesque serra of Errer�.
+The form of this mountain is so abrupt, its rise from the plain so bold
+and sudden, that it seems more than twice its real height. Judging by
+the eye, and comparing it with the mountains I had last seen,--the
+Corcovado, the Gavia and Tijuca range in the neighborhood of Rio,--I had
+supposed it to be three or four thousand feet high, and was greatly
+astonished when our barometric observations showed it to be somewhat
+less than nine hundred feet in its most elevated point. This, however,
+agrees with Martins's measurement of the Almeirim hills, which he says
+are eight hundred feet in height.
+
+Major Coutinho and I reached the serra by different roads; he crossing
+the Campos on horseback with Captain Faria, the commander of our
+steamer, and one or two other friends from Monte Alegre, who joined our
+party, while I went by canoe. The canoe journey is somewhat longer. A
+two hours' ride across the Campos brings you to the foot of the
+mountain, whereas the trip by boat takes more than twice that time. But
+I preferred going by water, as it gave me an opportunity of seeing the
+vast variety of animals haunting the river-banks and lakes. As this was
+almost the only occasion in all my journey when I passed a day in the
+pure enjoyment of nature, without the labor of collecting,--which in
+this hot climate, where specimens require such immediate and constant
+attention, is very great,--I am tempted to interrupt our geology for a
+moment, to give an account of it. I learned how rich a single day may be
+in this wonderful tropical world, if one's eyes are only open to the
+wealth of animal and vegetable life. Indeed, a few hours so spent in the
+field, in simply watching animals and plants, teaches more of the
+distribution of life than a month of closet study; for under such
+circumstances all things are seen in their true relations. Unhappily, it
+is not easy to present the picture as a whole, for all our written
+descriptions are more or less dependent on nomenclature, and the local
+names are hardly known out of the districts where they belong, while
+systematic names are familiar to few.
+
+I started before daylight; but, as the dawn began to redden the sky,
+large flocks of ducks, and of the small Amazonian geese, might be seen
+flying towards the lakes. Here and there a cormorant sat alone on the
+branch of a dead tree, or a kingfisher poised himself over the water,
+watching for his prey. Numerous gulls were gathered in large companies
+on the trees along the river-shore; alligators lay on its surface,
+diving with a sudden plash at the approach of our canoe; and
+occasionally a porpoise emerged from the water, showing himself for a
+moment and then disappearing again. Sometimes we startled a herd of
+capivara, resting on the water's edge; and once we saw a sloth, sitting
+upon the branch of an Imbauba (Cecropia) tree, rolled up in its peculiar
+attitude, the very picture of indolence, with its head sunk between its
+arms. Much of the river-shore consisted of low alluvial land, and was
+covered with that peculiar and beautiful grass known as Capim; this
+grass makes an excellent pasturage for cattle, and the abundance of it
+in this region renders the district of Monte Alegre very favorable for
+agricultural purposes. Here and there, where the red clay soil rose
+above the level of the water, a palm-thatched cabin stood on the low
+bluff, with a few trees about it. Such a house was usually the centre of
+a cattle farm, and large herds might be seen grazing in the adjoining
+fields. Along the river-banks, where the country is chiefly open, with
+extensive low marshy grounds, the only palm to be seen is the Maraja.
+After keeping along the Rio Gurupatuba for some distance, we turned to
+the right into a narrow stream, which has the character of an Igarap� in
+its lower course, though higher up it drains the country between the
+serra of Errer� and that of Tajury, and assumes the appearance of a
+small river. It is named after the serra, and is known as the Rio
+Errer�. This stream, narrow and picturesque, and often so overgrown with
+capim that the canoe pursued its course with difficulty, passed through
+a magnificent forest of the beautiful fan-palm, called here the Miriti
+(_Mauritia flexuosa_). This forest stretched for miles, overshadowing,
+as a kind of underbrush, many smaller trees and innumerable shrubs, some
+of which bore bright, conspicuous flowers. It seemed to me a strange
+spectacle,--a forest of monocotyledonous trees with a dicotyledonous
+undergrowth; the inferior plants thus towering above and sheltering the
+superior ones. Among the lower trees were many Leguminos�,--one of the
+most striking, called Fava, having a colossal pod. The whole mass of
+vegetation was woven together by innumerable lianas and creeping vines,
+in the midst of which the flowers of the Bignonia, with its open,
+trumpet-shaped corolla, were conspicuous. The capim was bright with the
+blossoms of the mallow growing in its midst, and was often edged with
+the broad-leaved Aninga, a large aquatic Arum.
+
+Through such a forest, where the animal life was no less rich and varied
+than the vegetation, our boat glided slowly for hours. The number and
+variety of birds struck me with astonishment. The coarse sedgy grasses
+on either side were full of water birds, one of the most common of which
+was a small chestnut-brown wading bird, the Ja�ana (Parra), whose toes
+are immensely long in proportion to its size, enabling it to run upon
+the surface of the aquatic vegetation, as if it were solid ground. It
+was in the month of January, their breeding season, and at every turn of
+the boat we started them up in pairs. Their flat, open nests generally
+contained five flesh-colored eggs, streaked in zigzag with dark brown
+lines. The other waders were a snow-white heron, another ash-colored,
+smaller species, and a large white stork. The ash-colored herons were
+always in pairs, the white one always single, standing quiet and alone
+on the edge of the water, or half hidden in the green capim. The trees
+and bushes were full of small warbler-like birds, which it would be
+difficult to characterize separately. To the ordinary observer they
+might seem like the small birds of our woods; but there was one species
+among them which attracted my attention by its numbers, and also because
+it builds the most extraordinary nest, considering the size of the bird
+itself, that I have ever seen. It is known among the country people by
+two names, as the Pedreiro or the Forneiro, both names referring, as
+will be seen, to the nature of its habitation. This singular nest is
+built of clay, and is as hard as stone (_pedra_), while it has the form
+of the round mandioca oven (_forno_) in which the country people prepare
+their farinha, or flour, made from the mandioca root. It is about a
+foot in diameter, and stands edgewise upon a branch, or in the crotch of
+a tree. Among the smaller birds, I noticed bright Tanagers, and also a
+species resembling the Canary. Besides these, there were the wagtails,
+the black and white widow finches, the hang-nests, or Jap�, as they are
+called here, with their pendent bag-like dwellings, and the familiar
+"Bem ti vi." Humming-birds, which we are always apt to associate with
+tropical vegetation, were very scarce. I saw but a few specimens.
+Thrushes and doves were more frequent, and I noticed also three or four
+kinds of woodpeckers. Of these latter there were countless numbers along
+our canoe path, flying overhead in dense crowds, and, at times, drowning
+every other sound in their high, noisy chatter.
+
+These made a deep impression upon me. Indeed, in all regions, however
+far away from his own home, in the midst of a fauna and flora entirely
+new to him, the traveller is startled occasionally by the song of a bird
+or the sight of a flower so familiar that it transports him at once to
+woods where every tree is like a friend to him. It seems as if something
+akin to what in our own mental experience we call reminiscence or
+association existed in the workings of nature; for though the organic
+combinations are so distinct in different climates and countries, they
+never wholly exclude each other. Every zo�logical and botanical province
+retains some link which binds it to all the rest, and makes it part of
+the general harmony. The Arctic lichen is found growing under the shadow
+of the palm on the rocks of the tropical serra, and the song of the
+thrush and the tap of the woodpecker mingle with the sharp discordant
+cries of the parrot and paroquet.
+
+Birds of prey, also, were not wanting. Among them was one about the size
+of our kite, and called the Red Hawk, which was so tame that, even when
+our canoe passed immediately under the low branch on which he was
+sitting, he did not fly away. But of all the groups of birds, the most
+striking as compared with corresponding groups in the temperate zone,
+and the one which reminded me the most directly of the fact that every
+region has its peculiar animal world, was that of the gallinaceous
+birds. The most frequent is the Cigana, to be seen in groups of fifteen
+or twenty, perched upon trees overhanging the water, and feeding upon
+berries. At night they roost in pairs, but in the daytime are always in
+larger companies. In their appearance they have something of the
+character of both the pheasant and peacock, and yet do not closely
+resemble either. It is a curious fact, that, with the exception of some
+small partridge-like gallinaceous birds, all the representatives of this
+family in Brazil, and especially in the Valley of the Amazons, belong to
+types which do not exist in other parts of the world. Here we find
+neither pheasants, nor cocks of the woods, nor grouse; but in their
+place abound the Mutun, the Ja�u, the Jacami, and the Unicorn (Crax,
+Penelope, Psophia, and Palamedea), all of which are so remote from the
+gallinaceous types found farther north, that they remind one quite as
+much of the bustard, and other ostrich-like birds, as of the hen and
+pheasant. They differ also from Northern gallinaceous birds in the
+greater uniformity of the sexes, none of them exhibiting those striking
+differences between the males and females which we see in the pheasants,
+the cocks of the woods, and in our barn-yard fowls. While birds abounded
+in such numbers, insects were rather scarce. I saw but few and small
+butterflies, and beetles were still more rare. The most numerous insects
+were the dragon-flies,--some with crimson bodies, black heads, and
+burnished wings,--others with large green bodies, crossed by blue bands.
+Of land shells I saw but one creeping along the reeds; and of water
+shells I gathered only a few small Ampullari�.
+
+Having ascended the river to a point nearly on a line with the serra, I
+landed, and struck across the Campos on foot. Here I entered upon an
+entirely different region,--a dry, open plain, with scanty vegetation.
+The most prominent plants were clusters of cactus and curua palms, a
+kind of stemless, low palm, with broad, elegant leaves springing
+vase-like from the ground. In these dry, sandy fields, rising gradually
+toward the serra, I observed in the deeper gullies formed by the heavy
+rains the laminated clays which are everywhere the foundation of the
+Amazonian strata. They here presented again so much the character of
+ordinary clay slates, that I thought I had at last come upon some old
+geological formation. Instead of this I only obtained fresh evidence
+that, by baking them, the burning sun of the tropics may produce upon
+laminated clays of recent origin the same effect as plutonic agents have
+produced upon the ancient clays, that is, it may change them into
+metamorphic slates. As I approached the serra, I was again reminded how,
+under the most dissimilar circumstances, similar features recur
+everywhere in nature. I came suddenly upon a little creek, bordered with
+the usual vegetation of such shallow water-courses, and on its brink
+stood a sand-piper, which flew away at my approach, uttering its
+peculiar cry, so like what one hears at home that, had I not seen him, I
+should have recognized him by his voice.
+
+After an hour's walk under the scorching sun, I was glad to find myself
+at the hamlet of Errer�, near the foot of the serra, where I rejoined my
+companions. It was already noon, and they had arrived some time before.
+They had, however, waited breakfast for me, to which we all brought a
+good appetite. Breakfast over, we slung our hammocks under the trees,
+and during the heat of the day enjoyed the rest which we had so richly
+earned.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[C] The name consecrated by De Saussure to designate certain rocks in
+Switzerland, which have had their surfaces rounded under the action of
+the glaciers. Their gently swelling outlines are thought to resemble
+sheep resting on the ground, and for this reason the people in the Alps
+call them _roches moutonn�es_.
+
+[D] The atlas in Martins's "Journey to Brazil," or the sketch
+accompanying Bates's description of these hills in his "Naturalist on
+the Amazons," will give an idea of their aspect.
+
+
+
+
+A BUNDLE OF BONES.
+
+
+And a very large bundle it was, as it lay, in _disjecta membra_, before
+the astonished eyes of the first learned pal�ontologist who gazed, in
+wondering delight, on its strange proportions. As it rears its ungainly
+form some eighteen feet above us, Madam, you may gather some idea of
+what it was in its native forests, I don't know how many hundreds of
+thousands of years ago. You need not snuggle up to me so, Tommy. The
+creature is not alive, unless it is enjoying Sydney Smith's idea of
+comfort, and, having taken off its flesh, is airing itself in its bones.
+Megatherium was a very proper name for it, if not a very common one; for
+_large animal_ it was, beyond any dispute, and could scarcely have been
+much of a pet with the human beings of old, unless "there were giants in
+those days," and enormous ones at that. How Owen must have gloated over
+that treasure-trove! Captain Kyd's buried booty would have been worse
+trash to him than Iago's stolen purse, beside this unearthed deposit of
+an antediluvian age. Its missing caudal vertebr� would outweigh now, in
+his anatomical scales, all the hidden gains of the whole race of
+pirates, past, present, and to come. Think of those bones with all the
+original muscle upon them! Why, they would outweigh all the worthy
+members of the Boston Society of Natural History together, unless they
+are uncommonly obese. Where could Noah have stowed a pair of such
+enormous beasts, supposing that they existed as late as when the ark was
+launched? Sloth, indeed! I am inclined to think the five or six tons of
+flesh these bones must have carried round might reasonably permit the
+bearer to rank, on _a priori_ reasons, among the most confirmed of
+sluggards, even if Owen and Agassiz and Wyman had not so decided on
+strictly scientific, anatomical grounds.
+
+My dear Madam, does it ever occur to you, when you wonderingly gaze on
+the strange relics around this hall,--these stony skeletons, these
+silent remnants of extinct races, that you are face to face with
+rock-buried creatures, who lived and sported and mated, who basked in
+the sunlight and breathed in the air of this world, hundreds of
+thousands of years before you were thought of? who rested in the shade
+of the trees which made the coal that warms you to-day? who trod the
+soft mud which now builds in solid strength the dwellings which shelter
+you? who darted through the deep waters that foamed over a bed now
+raised into snow-capped mountains? who frolicked on a shore now piled
+with miles of massive rock? whose bones were petrifactions untold ages
+before the race was born which built the Pyramids? Do you really
+understand how far back into antiquity these grim fossils bear you? Can
+you really conceive of Nature, our dear, kind, gentle mother, in those
+early throes of her maternity which brought forth Megatheria and
+Ichthyosauri,--when the "firm and rock-built earth" was tilted into
+mountain ranges, wrinkled by earthquakes, and ploughed by mighty hills
+of moving ice? And yet in those distant days, which have left their
+ripple-marks and rain-drops in the weighty stone, there was life, warm,
+breathing, sentient life, which, dying, traced its own epitaph on its
+massive tomb. Shakespeare, C�sar, Brahma, Noah, Adam, lived but
+yesterday compared with these creatures, whose stone-bound bones were
+buried in the sands that drifted on the shores of this world centuries
+before the first man drew into his nostrils the breath of life. Does the
+thought ever occur to you, that, ages hence, some enthusiastic student
+of nature may puzzle his brains over the bones of some such humble
+individuals as you and I, and wonder to what manner of creature they
+belonged? Or that, perched upon the shelves of some museum in the year
+500000, they may be treasures of an unknown past to the Owens and Wymans
+of that day?
+
+You wish I would not talk so?--Well, Madam, let us leave this mausoleum
+of the past, and come forth into the life of 1866; and let us see
+whether all the _disjecta membra_ of extinct being are ranged around the
+walls of this classic hall, or whether we may not find something akin
+near our own snug and comfortable homes. I think I know some hardened
+hearts which have ossified around the soft emotions which in earlier
+years played therein. And, bless you, Madam, I meet every day, in my
+down-town walks, some strange animated fossils, more repellent than any
+I ever beheld in the Natural History cabinet. These bear the unfamiliar
+look which belongs to a fabulous age, and rest, silent and unobtrusive,
+in their half-opened cerements. The others wear a very familiar form,
+which belongs to our day, yet they are the exponents of a dead life
+which animated the buried bones of barbarism. The innocent Megatheria
+and Ichthyosauri crawled and paddled and died in their day; but these
+living fossils have the vital forms of the life above ground, while they
+bear within the psychical peculiarities of extinct beings. They creep
+about on the shores of time with the outward shapes of their fellows,
+and, when buried in its rising waves, will leave undistinguishable
+remains in their common tomb; and future explorers will never trace
+therein the evanescent peculiarities in which the two were so unlike.
+
+Bones! Why, the whole earth is a big bundle of them. They are not only
+in graveyards, where "mossy marbles rest"; they are strewn, "unknelled,
+uncoffined, and unknown," over the whole surface of the globe, and lie
+embosomed in the gulfs of the great, restless ocean. Who knows what
+untamed savage rests beneath us here? Don't start, my dear Madam. I have
+no doubt that, when Tommy plays bo-peep round the big tree on the
+Common, he is tripping over the crania of some Indian sachems.
+Goldsmith's seat, "for whispering lovers made," very likely rested on
+some venerable, departed Roman; and many a Maypole has gone plump
+through the thorax of some defunct Gaul. If the old story be true, that,
+when we shudder, somebody is walking over our grave, what a shaking race
+of beings our remote ancestors must have been!
+
+My dear Madam, down in the green fields, the flowery meadows, the deep
+woods, the damp swamps of the balmy South, are there not spread, to-day,
+in grievous numbers, the bones of the noble, true-hearted heroes who
+went forth in their strength and manhood to meet a patriot's fate? Will
+not the future tread of those they ransomed be light and buoyant in the
+long days of freedom yet to come? What will they know of the hallowed
+remains over which they bound with glowing, happy hearts? Some little
+Peterkin may find a bleached remnant of their heroism, and the Caspar of
+that day will surely say, "It was a famous victory." Madam, you and I
+would be content to have the children of the future gambol above us, if
+we could know their blithesome hearts were emancipated from thraldom by
+such deposit of our poor bones under the verdant sod. The stateliest
+mausoleum of crowned kings, the Pyramids that mark the resting-place of
+Egypt's ancient rulers, are not so proud a monument as the rich, green
+herbage that springs from the remains of a fallen hero, and hides the
+little feet that trip over him, freed by his fall. Let us rejoice, then,
+Madam, that we belong to that nobler race, which no curious explorer of
+the far future will rank with Megatheria and Ichthyosauri, or any of the
+soulless creatures of past geologic ages.
+
+Backbone is a most important article, Tommy. Professor Wyman will tell
+you that backbone is the distinctive characteristic of the highest order
+of animals on this earth. When your father used to pry into all sorts of
+books, years ago, he found out that he belonged to the Vertebrata,
+which, Anglicized, meant backboned creatures. And yet do you know that
+there are crowds of men and women whose framework would puzzle the good
+Professor, with all his learning,--people who are utterly destitute of
+that same essential article? Carry him the first old bone you may find,
+and, I warrant you, he will tell, in a jiffy, to what manner of creature
+it belonged. But wouldn't he look bewildered upon a cranium and a pelvis
+which perambulated the earth without any osseous connection? Backbone is
+the grand fulcrum on which human life moves its inertia. But wouldn't
+Professor Rogers, _facile princeps_ in physics, rub his nose, and look
+in wonder, to see peripatetic motion induced without a sign of a fulcrum
+for the lever of life to rest upon? And yet these anomalies are
+plentiful. They are everywhere,--in houses, in churches, in stores, in
+town, in country, on land, at sea, in public, in private,--extensive
+sub-orders of mammalian Invertebrata. They crouch and crawl through the
+world with pliant length. They wriggle through the knot-holes of fear
+and policy, when their stouter-boned brethren oppose them. They creep
+into corners and cracks when the giant, Progress, strides before them,
+and quake at the thunder of his tread. They cling, trembling, to the old
+mouldering scaffolding of the past, and look bewildered on the broad,
+rising arches of the new temple of thought. They stand quivering in the
+blast of opinion. And when Mrs. Grundy passes by, they back, like
+hermit-crabs, into the first time-worn old shell of precedent they can
+find, and hide there, shaking with dread.
+
+My boy, strengthen well your backbone, that it may bear you upright and
+onward in your career. Walk erect in this world with the stature and
+aspect of a man. Tread forth alone with fearlessness and conscious
+power. Bear up your God-given intelligence with unbending pride, that it
+may look afar over the broad expanse of nature, and gaze with even eye
+upon the mountain-heights of eternal truth. I am using words too big
+for you? Well, one of these days you will understand them all, when your
+little backbone has gathered more lime.
+
+Bone has done some remarkable things in this world. There was that
+little feat of Samson, in which he flourished the grinding apparatus of
+a defunct donkey. It has always seemed to me, Madam, that that same
+jaw-bone must have been either prodigiously strong and tough, or else
+the Philistine crania must have been of very chartaceous texture. There
+are the bones of the eleven thousand virgins,--the remains of ancient
+virtue, and loveliness, and faith. Though, if all the stories of
+travelled anatomists be true, there must have been some virgin heifers
+among them; for many of them are certainly of bovine, and not human,
+origin.
+
+And then, Madam, do not the poor bones which have been strewn, for ages,
+over the rolling earth, play sometimes a nobler part in their decay than
+in their prime? The incrusted fragments, carefully treasured up in halls
+of science, reveal to the broadening intelligence of man the story of
+earth in its young days of mighty struggle, and tell of the sandy
+shores, the rolling waters, the waving woods of a primeval time. Turning
+back the stony tablets time has firmly bound, he views upon their
+wrinkled sides its nature-printed figures,--relics that have there
+remained, locked in the rocky sepulchre, built of crumbling mountains,
+washed and worn by tides that ebbed and flowed a million years ago. Now,
+opened to the eye of human thought, their crumbling forms bring tidings
+of a distant, wondrous past, when they were all in all of sentient life
+on earth. The thought they could not know, their dead remains have
+wakened in the minds of a far nobler race, which was not born when they
+lay down and died.
+
+When travellers over far-reaching deserts are lost in the great waste
+that shows no friendly, guiding sign, they sometimes find, half buried
+in the shifting sands, the bleaching bones of some poor creature which
+has fainted and fallen, left to its fate by the companions of its
+journey. Then, taking heart, they cheerier move along, secure in the
+forgotten path these silent relics show. Thus over life's drear desert
+do we move, seeking the path that leads us on direct, and often guided
+in our wandering way by the chance sight of lost and fallen ones, whose
+sad remains our errant footsteps cross. Not always clad in soft, warm,
+beating life do our bones perform their noblest purpose. Beauty may lure
+to ruin, but, the witching charm removed, decay may waken sober thought
+and high resolve. Poor Yorick might have set King Hamlet's table in a
+roar and been forgot, if, from his unknown grave, the sexton had not
+brought him forth, to teach an unborn age philosophy.
+
+My dear Madam, I am really getting too serious, philosophic, and
+melancholic. I had no idea, when I asked you down to the Natural History
+Society rooms to see the great Megatherium, that I was either to bury or
+resuscitate you in imagination. But I must have my moral, if I draw it
+from such a lean text as crumbling bones. Let us hope that what we leave
+behind us, when our journey over the drear expanse of mortal life shall
+cease, may serve to guide some future wanderer in the devious way, and
+lead him to the bright oasis of eternal life and rest.
+
+
+
+
+AN ENGLISHMAN IN NORMANDY.
+
+
+A tour in Normandy is a very commonplace thing; and mine was not even a
+tour in Normandy. In the six weeks which I spent there, I did not see as
+many sights as an ordinary English tourist sees in ten days, or an
+American, perhaps, in five. Going abroad in need of rest, I rambled
+slowly about, sojourning at each place as long as I found it agreeable,
+then moving on to another, avoiding the railroads, the tyranny of the
+timetable, the flurry of packing up every morning. My time was divided
+between some seven or eight places; and I stayed longest where there was
+least, according to the guide-books, to be seen.
+
+Travelling in this way, you at all events see something of the people;
+that is, if you will live among them and fall in with their ways.
+
+Normandy--at least the sequestered part of it in which most of my time
+was passed--is a good country for a traveller minded as I was. The
+scenery is not grand. It does not exact the highest admiration; but it
+is, perhaps, not on that account the less suitable for the purpose of
+those who seek repose. The country is very like the most rich and
+beautiful parts of England. Its lanes and hedge-rows are indeed so
+thoroughly English, as to suggest that it was laid out under influences
+similar to those which determined the aspect of the country in England,
+and unlike those which determined it in other parts of France. It is
+well wooded; and as the trees stand not in masses, but in lines along
+the hedge-rows, you see distinctly the form of each tree. This is one of
+its characteristic features. The number of poplars interspersed with the
+trees of rounder outline is another, and very grateful to the eye. The
+general greenness rivals that of England. The valleys are wide, and the
+views from the hill-tops very extensive. I am speaking chiefly of the
+western part of Normandy: the parts about Caen approach more nearly to
+the flatness, monotony, and dreary treelessness of ordinary French and
+German scenery. The air is pure and bracing,--especially in the little
+towns built on old castled heights. Why do we not always build our
+towns, when we can, on heights, in what Shakespeare calls nimble and
+sweet air?
+
+The Norman towns are full of grand old churches, old castles, historic
+memories, shadows of the past. In these, where I spent most of my
+holiday, there are no garrisons, no Zouaves, no _fanfares_, no signs of
+the presence of the empire, except occasionally the abode of a
+_sous-pr�fet_. The province retains a good deal of its old character. In
+the great towns, such as Rouen and Caen, the people are French; but in
+the country they are Normans still. The French are sensible of the
+difference, and do the Normans the honor (as, if I were a Norman, I
+should think it) of acknowledging it by habitual flouts and sneers at
+the "heavy" race who inhabit "the land of cider."
+
+If you do not mind outward appearances,--if you have the resolution to
+penetrate beyond a very dirty entrance, perhaps through the kitchen,
+into the rooms within,--you may make yourself extremely comfortable in a
+little Norman inn. You have only to behave to your landlord and landlady
+as a guest, not as a customer, and you will find yourself treated with
+the utmost civility and kindness. You will get a large, airy room, not
+so tidy as an English room, but with a better bed, and excellent fare,
+beginning with a delicious cup of _caf� au lait_ in the early
+morning,--that is, if you choose to breakfast and dine at the _table
+d'h�te_; for, if, like many English travellers, you insist on living in
+English privacy, and taking your meals at English hours, all the
+resources of the little establishment being expended on the public
+meals, you will probably pay the penalty of your patriotic and stoical
+adherence to the customs of your country.
+
+In my passage from Weymouth to Normandy, I landed at Jersey. The little,
+secluded bays of that island are the most perfect poetry of the sea.
+They are types of the spot in which Horace, in his poetic mood of
+imaginary misanthropy, wished to end his days.
+
+    "Oblitusque meorum obliviscendus et illis
+    Neptunum procul e terra spectare furentem."
+
+I was told that the scenery of Guernsey was even more beautiful; but the
+rough passage between the two islands is rather a heavy price to pay for
+the enjoyment. The islands are curious from their old Norman character,
+laws, and customs; their Norman _patois_; their system of small
+proprietors, whose little holdings, divided from each other by high
+hedges, cut the island into a multitude of paddocks; and the miniature
+republicanism and universal suffrage which the inhabitants enjoy, though
+under the paternal eye of an English governor, who, if the insects grew
+too angry, would no doubt sprinkle a little dust. But all that is native
+and original is fast being overlaid by the influx of English
+residents,--unhappy victims of genteel pauperism flying from the heavy
+taxes of England, which the Channel Islands escape; or, in not a few
+cases, persons whose reputation has suffered some damage in their own
+country. There are also a few exiles of a more honorable kind,--French
+liberals, who have taken refuge from imperial tyranny under the shield
+of English law,--the most illustrious of whom is Victor Hugo. The
+Emperor would fain get hold of these men, and he is now trying to force
+upon us a modification of the extradition treaty for that purpose. But
+the sanctity of our asylum is a tradition dear to the English people,
+and one which they will not be induced to betray. An attempt to change
+the English law for the purposes of the French police was fatal to
+Palmerston, at the height of his popularity and power.
+
+The French government employs agents to decoy the refugees into
+conspiracies, in order that it may obtain a pretext for criminal
+proceedings against them. The fact has fallen under my personal
+observation. To estimate the character of these practices, and of the
+present attempt to tamper with the extradition treaty, we must remember
+that Louis Napoleon himself long enjoyed, as a political refugee, the
+shelter of the asylum which he is now endeavoring to subvert.
+
+Jersey is studded with fortifications. England and France frown at each
+other in arms from the neighboring coasts. I thought of poor Cobden, and
+of the day when his policy shall finally prevail, as it begins to
+prevail already, over these national divisions and jealousies; and when
+there shall be at once a better and a cheaper security for the peace of
+nations than fortresses bristling with the instruments of mutual
+destruction. The Norman islands are of no use to England, while they
+involve us in a large military expenditure. In a maritime war, we should
+find it very difficult to defend dependencies so far from our coast and
+so close to that of the enemy. But the people are loyal to England, and
+very unwilling to be annexed to France.
+
+Granville, where I landed in Normandy, is a hideous seaport; but its
+hideousness was almost turned to beauty, on that golden afternoon, by
+the bright French atmosphere, which can do for bad scenery what French
+cookery does for bad meat. The royal and imperial roads of France are as
+despotically straight as those of the Roman Empire. But it was a
+pleasant evening drive to Avranches, through the rich champaign,--the
+active little Norman horses trotting the sixteen miles merrily to the
+jingling of their bells. The figure of the _gendarme_, in his cocked hat
+and imposing uniform, setting out upon his rounds, tells me that I am in
+France.
+
+Avranches stands on the steep and towering extremity of a line of hills,
+commanding a most magnificent and varied view of land and sea, with
+Mont St. Michel in the distance. Its cathedral must have occupied a
+site as striking as the temple of Poseidon, on the headland of Sunium.
+But of that cathedral nothing is now left but a heap of fragments, and a
+stone, on which, fabling tradition says, Henry II. was reconciled to the
+Church after the murder of Becket. It was pulled down in consequence of
+the injuries it received at the time of the Revolution; and the bare
+area where it stood is typical of that devastating tornado which swept
+feudal and Catholic France out of existence. Where once the learned
+Huetius lived and wrote, the house of the _sous-pr�fet_ now stands. The
+building of churches, however, is going on actively in Avranches, and
+attests the reviving influence of the priests. And one should be glad to
+see the revival of any form of religion, however different from one's
+own, in France, if it were not that this Church is so intensely
+political, and that it presents Christianity as the ally of atheist and
+sensualist despotism, and the enemy of morality, liberty, justice, and
+the hopes of man. The French C�sars, Napoleon I. and Napoleon III.,
+though themselves absolutely devoid of any faith but the self-idolatry
+which they call faith in their "star," find it politic, like the Roman
+C�sars, to have their official creed and their augurs.
+
+I went to the distribution of prizes at the school of the Christian
+Brothers. I had greatly admired the schools of the brotherhood in
+Ireland, and felt an interest in their system, notwithstanding their
+main object, like that of the famous Jesuit teachers of the sixteenth
+century, was rather to proselytize than to educate. The ceremony was
+thoroughly French, each boy being crowned with a tinsel wreath, and
+kissed by one of the company when he was presented with his prize.
+Everything, however, was arranged with the greatest taste and skill; and
+the recitations and dialogues, by which the endless distribution of
+prizes was relieved, were very cleverly and gracefully performed. Some
+of them were comic. The one which made us laugh most was a dialogue
+between a barber and a young gentleman who had come into his shop to be
+shaved. The barber pausing with the razor in his hand, the young
+gentleman asked him, angrily, why he did not begin. "I am waiting,"
+replied the barber, "for your beard to grow." Specimens of writing were
+handed round, which were good; drawings, which, strange to say, were
+detestable. I praised the recitations and dialogues to the gentleman who
+sat next me. "Ah! oui," was his reply, "tout cela vient de Paris." So
+complete is the centralization of French intellect, even in such little
+matters as these! While I was in France, some leading politicians were
+attempting to set on foot a movement in favor of political
+decentralization. They must begin deeper, if they would hope to succeed.
+
+In Ireland, the Christian Brothers maintain the most purely spiritual
+character, and the most complete independence of the state. But here,
+alas! a different tendency peeped out. The alliance of a Jesuit Church
+with the Empire, and the subserviency of education to their common
+objects, were typified by the presence of the _sous-pr�fet_ and the
+_maire_ in their gold-laced coats of office, who arrived escorted by a
+guard of soldiers with fixed bayonets. The harangue of the reverend head
+of the establishment was highly political, and amply merited by its
+recommendations of the duty of obedience to authority the eulogy of the
+_sous-pr�fet_ on "the good direction" which the brotherhood were giving
+to the studies of youth. There is no garrison at Avranches. But all the
+soldiers in the place seemed to have been collected to give a military
+character to the scene. Other incentives of military aspiration were not
+wanting; and the boy who delivered the allocution told us, amidst loud
+applause, that he and his companions were being brought up to be, "not
+only good Christians, but, in case of need, good soldiers."
+
+In France under the Empire a military character is studiously given to
+every act of public, and almost of social life. There you see
+everywhere the pomp of war in the midst of peace, as in America you saw
+everywhere peace in the midst of civil war. The images of war and
+conquest are constantly kept before the eyes of a people naturally full
+of military vanity, and now, by the decay alike of religious and
+political faith, almost entirely bereft of all other aspirations. There
+is at the same time a vast standing army, which is not occupied, as the
+army of the Roman Empire was, in defending the frontiers, nor, as the
+Austrian army is, in holding down disaffected provinces, and which is
+full of the memory of the Napoleonic conquests, and longs again to
+overrun and pillage Europe in the name of "glory." There is no
+restraining influence either of morality or of religion to keep the war
+spirit in check. The French priesthood are as ready as any priests of
+Jupiter or Baal to bless national aggression, if by so doing they can
+gain political power. In what can all this end? In what but a European
+war? The children in the schools of the Christian Brothers are no doubt
+faithfully taught the precepts of a religion of peace; but there is a
+teaching of a different kind before their eyes, which, it is to be
+feared, they more easily imbibe and less easily forget.
+
+It was amusing, on this and other occasions, to see the state which
+surrounds the subordinate officials of the Empire. I had found the head
+of the American Republic and all its armaments without any insignia of
+dignity, without a guard or attendants, in a common office room. And
+here was a _sous-pr�fet_ parading the streets in solemn state, in a
+gilded coat, and with a line of bayonets glittering on either hand.
+
+From Avranches it is a pleasant walk (by the country road) to the
+village of Ducie, where there is good fishing, a nice little village
+inn, and a deserted chateau in the Louis Quatorze style, and of
+sumptuous dimensions, which, if it was ever completely finished, is now
+in a state of great dilapidation. No doubt it shared the fate of its
+fellows, when the Revolution proclaimed "peace to the cottage, war to
+the castle." The peasantry almost everywhere rose, like galley-slaves
+whose chains had been suddenly struck off, and gutted the chateaux, the
+strongholds of feudal extortion and injustice. How violent and sweeping
+have been the revolutions of this people compared with those of the
+stronger and more self-controlled race! In England, the Tudor mansions,
+and not unfrequently even the feudal castles, are still tenanted by the
+heirs, or by those who have peacefully purchased from the heirs, of
+their ancient lords; and the insensible gradations by which the feudal
+guard-room has softened down into the modern drawing-room, and the
+feudal moat into the flower-garden, are emblematic of the continuous and
+comparatively tranquil progress of English history. In France, how
+different! Scarcely eighty years have passed since the Chateau de
+Montgomeri was proud and gay; since the village idlers gathered here to
+see its lord, and his little provincial court, assemble along those
+mouldering balustrades, and ride through the now deserted gates. But to
+the grandchildren of those villagers the chateau is a strange,
+mysterious relic of the times before the flood. A group of peasants
+tried in vain, when I asked them, to recollect the name of its former
+proprietors. One of them said that it had been inhabited by a great
+lord, who shod his horses with shoes of gold,--much the sort of tale
+that an Irish peasant tells you about the primeval monuments of his
+country. The mansions of France before the Revolution belong as
+completely to the past as the tombs of the Pharaohs. The old aristocracy
+and the old dynasty are no longer hated or regretted. Their names excite
+no emotion whatever in the French peasant's heart. They are wiped out of
+the memory of the nation, and their place knows them no more. In the
+midst of their shows and their pleasures and their shallow philosophies,
+they could not read the handwriting on the wall, and therefore they are
+blotted out of existence. They went on marrying and giving in marriage;
+this chateau, perhaps, was still being enlarged and embellished, when
+the flood came upon them and destroyed them all. The science of politics
+is the science of regulating progress and avoiding revolutions.
+
+The hostess of the Lion d'Or is about to transfer her establishment to
+an inn of greater pretensions, to which, aware that the old chateau is
+an object of interest to visitors, she means to give the name of the
+Hotel de Montgomeri. On the wall of her _caf�_ is a coarse medallion
+bust taken from a room in the chateau. She did not know whom it
+represented; and I dare say it was only my fancy that made me think I
+recognized a rude effigy of the once adored features of Marie
+Antoinette.
+
+The plates at the Lion d'Or were adorned with humorous devices. On one
+was a satire on the hypocritical rapacity of perfidious Albion. Two
+English soldiers were standing with their swords hidden behind their
+backs, and trying to coax back to them some Indians who were running
+away in the distance. "Come to us, dear little Indians; you know we are
+your best friends!" Suppose "Arabs" or "Mexicans" had been substituted
+for "Indians." To a Frenchman, our conquests in India are rapine; his
+own conquests in Algeria or Mexico are the extension of civilization by
+the "holy bayonets" (I forget whether the phrase is Michelet's or
+Quinet's) of the chosen people. Justice gives the same name (no matter
+which) to both.
+
+At Ducie a handsome new church had just been built,--mainly, I was told,
+by the munificence of two maiden ladies. The congregation at vespers was
+large and apparently devout; and here the number of the men was in fair
+proportion to that of the women. In the churches of the cities, though
+the power of the clergy has everywhere increased of late, you see
+scarcely one man to a hundred women.
+
+On the road, a shower drove me for refuge into the house of a peasant,
+who received me with the usual kindliness of the French peasantry, and,
+when the shower was over, walked two or three miles with me on my way.
+The condition of these present proprietors is a subject of great
+interest to English economists, especially as we are evidently on the
+eve of a great controversy--perhaps a great struggle--respecting the law
+of succession to landed property in our own country. Not that any
+English economist would go so far as to advocate the French system of
+compulsory subdivision, which owes its existence in great measure to the
+policy of the first Napoleon,--who took care, with the instinct of a
+true despot, to secure the solitary power of the throne against the
+growth of an independent class of wealthy proprietors. All that English
+economists contemplate is the abolition of primogeniture and entail. I
+must not found any conclusion on observations so partial and cursory as
+those which I was able to make; but I suspect that the French peasant is
+better off than the English laborer. He is not better housed, clothed,
+or fed; perhaps not so well housed, clothed, or fed. He eats black
+bread, which the English peasant would reject, and clumps about in
+wooden shoes, which the English laborer would regard with horror; but
+this, according to statements which I have heard, and am inclined to
+trust, arises, generally speaking, not so much from indigence as from
+self-denying frugality, pushed to an extreme. The French peasant is the
+possessor of property, and has a passion, almost a mania, for
+acquisition. He saves money and subscribes to government loans, which
+are judiciously brought out in very small shares, so as to draw forth
+his little hoard, and thus bind him as a creditor to the interest of the
+Empire. The cottage of the peasant which I entered on my way to Ducie
+was very mean and comfortless, and the food which his hospitality
+offered me was of the coarsest kind. But he had a valuable mare and
+foal; his yard was full of poultry; and his orchard showed, for a bad
+season, a fair crop of apples. There are some large estates, the result
+frequently of great fortunes made in trade. Not far from the place
+where the high-born lords of the Chateau de Montgomeri once reigned, a
+chocolate-merchant had bought broad lands, and built himself a princely
+mansion. I should have thought that the great proprietors would have
+crushed the small; but I was assured that the two systems went on very
+well side by side. But this is a matter for exact inquiry, not for
+casual remark. The population in France is stationary, or nearly so,
+while that of England increases rapidly; and this is an important
+element in the question, and itself raises questions of a difficult,
+perhaps of a disagreeable kind.
+
+The cares of proprietorship must necessarily interfere with the
+lightness of heart once proverbially characteristic of the French
+peasant. Still, he appears to a stranger cheerful, ready to chat, and at
+least as inquisitive as to the stranger's history and objects as
+Americans are commonly believed to be. It would be a happy thing if the
+Irish peasant's lightness of heart, pleasant as it often is, could be
+interfered with in the same way. There is a certain gayety which springs
+from mere recklessness, and is sister to despair.
+
+They are hard economical problems that we have to solve in this Old
+World, and terribly complicated by social and political entanglements;
+and there is no boundless West, with bread for all who want it, to
+assist us in the solution.
+
+From Avranches you visit Mont St. Michel,--not without difficulty, for
+you have to drive along over sands which are never dry, and over which
+the tide--its advance can be seen even from the distant height of
+Avranches--rushes in with the speed of a race-horse. But you are well
+repaid. Mont St. Michel is one of the most astonishing and beautiful
+monuments of the Catholic and feudal age. Its fortifications, and the
+halls, church, and cloisters of the chivalrous and monastic fraternities
+of which it was the seat, rise like an efflorescence from the solitary
+cone of granite, surrounded at low tide by the vast flat of sand, at
+high tide by the sea. Gothic architecture, to which we are apt to attach
+the notion of a sort of infantine unconsciousness, here seems
+consciously to revel and disport itself in its power, and to exult in
+investing the sea-girt rock with the playful elegance of a Cellini vase.
+It is a real _jeu d'esprit_ of medi�val art. The cloisters are a model
+of airy grace, enhanced by contrast with the massiveness of the fortress
+and the wildness of the scene. A strange life the monks must have led in
+their narrow boundaries. But they had the visits of the knights to
+relieve their dulness; and probably they were rude natures, not liable
+to the unhappiness which such seclusion would produce in men of
+cultivated sensibilities and active minds. Both monks and knights are
+gone long ago. But there are still six priests on the rock. I asked what
+they did. "Ils prient le bon Dieu."
+
+In feudal times this sea-girt fortress was almost impregnable. Two
+ancient cannon lying at its gate show that the conqueror of Agincourt
+thundered against it in vain. Its weak point was want of water: it had
+none but the rain-water collected in a great cistern. In these days it
+could not hold out an hour against a single gun-boat.
+
+It is a pleasant drive from Avranches to Vire; and Vire itself is a
+pleasant place,--a quiet little town, placed high, in bracing air, and
+with beautiful walks round it. The comfortable, though unpretending,
+little H�tel de St. Pierre stands outside the town, and commands a fine
+view. While I was at Vire, the _f�te_ day of the Emperor was
+celebrated--with profound apathy. Not a dozen houses responded to the
+_pr�fet's_ invitation to illuminate. There being no troops in the town,
+and a military show being indispensable, there was a review of the
+firemen in military uniforms; a single brass cannon pestered us with its
+noise all the morning; the "veterans" of the Napoleonic army (every
+surviving drummer-boy of the army of 1815 goes by that name) were
+dismally paraded about, and the firemen practised with their muskets,
+very awkwardly, at a mark which was so placed among the trees that they
+could hardly see it.
+
+Why has not the government the sense to let these people alone? After
+all their revolutions and convulsions, they have sunk into perfect
+political indifference, and literally care not a straw whether they are
+governed by Napoleon, Nero, or Nebuchadnezzar. To be always appealing to
+them with Bonapartist demonstrations and manifestoes, is to awaken
+political sentiments, in them, and so to create a danger which does not
+exist.
+
+If Louis Napoleon is in any peril, it is not from the republican or
+constitutional party, but from his own lavish expenditure, which begins
+to irritate the people. They are careless of their rights as freemen,
+but they are fond, and growing daily fonder, of money; and they do not
+like to be heavily taxed, and to hear at the same time that the Emperor
+is wasting on his personal expenses and those of his relatives and
+courtiers some six millions of dollars a year. Regard for economy is the
+only profession which distinguishes the addresses of the so-called
+opposition candidates from those of their competitors. I asked a good
+many people what they thought of the Mexican expedition. Not one of them
+objected to its injustice, but they all objected to its cost, "Cela
+mangera beaucoup d'argent," was the invariable reply. And in this point
+of view the government has committed what it would think much worse than
+any crime,--a very damaging blunder.
+
+It does not appear that the Orleans family have any hold on the mind of
+the French people. When I mentioned their name, it seemed to produce no
+emotion, one way or the other. But if the marshals and grandees, who
+have hold of the wires of administration at the point where they are
+centralized, chose to make Napoleon III abdicate, (as they made Napoleon
+I. abdicate at Fontainebleau,) and to set up a king of the House of
+Orleans in his place, they could probably do it; and they might choose
+to do it, if, by such blunders as the Mexican expedition, he seemed to
+be placing their personal interests in jeopardy.
+
+Stopping to breakfast at Cond�, on the way from Vire to Falaise, I fell
+in with the only Frenchman, with a single exception, who showed any
+interest in the affairs of America. Generally speaking, I was told, and
+found by experience, that profound apathy prevailed upon the subject.
+This gentleman, on learning that I had recently been in America, entered
+eagerly into conversation on the subject. But his inquiries were only
+about the prospects of cotton; and all I could tell him on that point
+was, that, if the growth of cotton was profitable, the Yankee would
+certainly make it grow.
+
+The castle of Falaise is the reputed birthplace of the Conqueror. They
+even pretend to show you the room in which he was born. The existing
+castle, however, is of considerably later date. It is even doubtful,
+according to the best antiquaries, whether there were any stone castles
+at the date of his birth, or only earthworks with palisades. There is,
+however, one genuine monument of that time. You look down from the
+castle on the tanneries in the glen below, and see the women washing
+their clothes in the stream, as in the days when Robert the Devil wooed
+the tanner's daughter. Robert, however, must have had diabolically good
+eyes to choose a mistress at such a distance.
+
+Annexed to the castle is Talbot's Tower,--a beautiful piece of feudal
+architecture, and a monument of a later episode in that long train of
+miserable wars between England and France, of which the Conqueror's
+cruel rapacity may be regarded as the spring; for the English conquests
+were an inverted copy and counterpart of his. But the Conqueror's
+crimes, like those of Napoleon I., were on the grandiose scale, and
+therefore they impose, like those of Napoleon, on the slavishness of
+mankind; while the petty bandit, though endowed perhaps with the same
+powers of destruction and only lacking the ampler sphere, is buried
+under the gallows. The equestrian statue of William in the public place
+at Falaise prances, it has been remarked, close to the spot where rest
+the ashes of Walter and Biona, Count and Countess of Pontoise, poisoned,
+if contemporary accounts are true, by the same ambition which launched
+havoc and misery on a whole nation. They and the Conqueror were rival
+claimants to the sovereignty of Maine. They supped with the Conqueror
+one evening at Falaise, and next morning William was the sole claimant.
+The Norman, like the Corsican, was an assassin as well as a conqueror.
+
+I must leave it to architects to describe the architectural glories of
+Caen. But I had no idea that the Norman style, in England grand only
+from its massiveness, could soar to such a height of beauty as it has
+attained in the Church of St. Stephen and the Abbaye aux Dames. I
+afterwards did homage again to its powers when standing before the
+august ruin of Jumi�ges. There is something peculiarly delightful in the
+freshness of early art, whether Greek or medi�val, and whether in
+architecture or in poetry,--when you see the mind first beginning to
+feel its power over the material, and to make it the vehicle of thought.
+There is something, too, in all human works, which makes the early hope
+more charming than the fulfilment.
+
+St. Stephen is the church of the Conqueror, as the Abbaye aux Dames is
+that of his Queen. There he lies buried. Every one knows the story of
+Ascelin demanding the price of the ground in which William was going to
+be buried, and which the tyrant had taken from him by force; and how, at
+last, the corpse of the Conqueror was thrust, amidst a scene of horror
+and loathing, into its grave. But _Rex Invictissimus_ is the inscription
+on his tomb.
+
+The spire of St. Pierre is very graceful; the body of the church, in the
+latest and most debased style of Gothic architecture, stands signally
+contrasted with St. Stephen,--St. Stephen the simple vigor of the prime,
+St. Pierre the florid weakness of the decay.
+
+Caen is a large city, and, of course, full of soldiers, who are as
+completely the dominant caste in France now, as the old _noblesse_ were
+before the Revolution. To this the French have come after their long
+train of sanguinary revolutions,--after all their visions of a perfect
+social state,--after all their promises of a new era of happiness to
+mankind. "A light and cruel people," Coleridge calls them. And how
+lightly they turned from regenerating to pillaging and oppressing the
+world! They have great intellectual gifts, and still greater social
+graces; but, in the political sphere, they have no real regard for
+freedom, and will gladly lay their liberties at the feet of any master
+who will enable them to domineer over other nations. Napoleon I. is more
+than their hero: he is their God. Many of them, the soldiery especially,
+have no other object of worship. I saw in a shop-window a print of
+Napoleon I., Napoleon II., and the Prince Imperial, all in military
+uniform and surrounded by the emblems of war. It was entitled, "The
+Past, the Present, and the Future of France." Military ambition has been
+the Past of France, is her Present, and seems too likely to be her
+Future. In some directions, she has promoted civilization; but,
+politically speaking, she has done, and probably will long continue to
+do, more harm than good to mankind.
+
+I may say with truth, that, having seen America, and brought away an
+assured faith in human liberty and progress, I looked with far more
+serenity than I should otherwise have done on the Zouaves, swaggering,
+in the insolence of triumphant force, over the neglected ashes of Turgot
+and Mirabeau. I felt as though, strong as the yoke of these janizaries
+and their master looked, I had the death-warrant of imperialism in my
+pocket. There is a Power which made the world for other ends than these,
+and which will not suffer its ends to give way even to those of the
+Bonapartes. But to all appearances there will be a terrible struggle in
+Europe,--a struggle to which the old "wars of the mercenaries" were a
+trifling affair,--before the nations can be redeemed from subjection to
+these armed hordes and the masters whom they obey.
+
+From Caen I visited Bayeux,--a sleepy, ecclesiastical town with a
+glorious cathedral, which, however, shows by a huge crack in the tower
+that even such edifices know decay. Gems of the Norman style are
+scattered all round Caen and Bayeux; and one of the finest is the little
+church of St. Loup, in the environs of Bayeux.
+
+I found that the old French office-book had been completely banished
+from the French churches by the Jesuit and Ultramontane party, and the
+Roman (though much inferior, Roman Catholics tell me, as a composition)
+everywhere thrust into its place. The people in some places
+recalcitrated violently; but the Jesuits and Ultramontanes triumphed.
+The old Gallican spirit of independence is extinct in the French Church,
+and its extinction is not greatly to be deplored; for it tended not to a
+real independence, but to the substitution of a royal for an
+ecclesiastical Pope. Louis XIV. was quite as great a spiritual tyrant as
+any Hildebrand or Innocent, and his tyranny was, if anything, more
+degrading to the soul. In fact, the Ultramontane French Church, resting
+for support on Rome, may be regarded by the friends of liberty, with a
+qualified complacency, as a check, though a miserable one, on the
+absolute dominion of physical force embodied in the Emperor.
+
+The Bayeux tapestry, representing the expedition of William the
+Conqueror, is curious and valuable as an historical monument, though it
+cannot be proved to be contemporary. As a work of art it is singularly
+spiritless, and devoid of merit of any kind. One of the fancy figures on
+the border reveals the indelicacy of the ladies (a queen, perhaps, and
+her handmaidens) who wrought it in a way which would be startling to any
+one who had taken the manners and morals of the age of chivalry on
+trust.
+
+The heat drove me from Caen before I had "done" all the antiquities and
+curiosities prescribed by the guidebook. Migrating to Lisieux, I found
+myself in such pleasant quarters that I was tempted to settle there for
+some days. The town is almost an unbroken assemblage of the quaintest
+and most picturesque old houses. There are whole streets without any
+taint of modern architecture to disturb the perfect image of the past.
+Two magnificent churches, one of them formerly a cathedral, rise over
+the whole; and there is a very pretty public garden, with its terraces,
+pastures, and green alleys. A public garden is the invariable appendage
+of a city in France, as it ought to be everywhere. We do not do half
+enough in England for the innocent amusement of the people.
+
+At Lisieux we had a public _f�te_. It is evidently a part of the
+business of the _sous-pr�fets_ to get up these things as antidotes to
+political aspiration. _Panem et circenses_ is the policy of the French,
+as it was of the Roman C�sars. For two or three days beforehand, the
+people were engaged in planting little fir-trees in the street before
+their doors, and decorating them and the houses, with little tricolor
+flags. Larger flags (of which this little quiet town produced a truly
+formidable number) were hung out from all the houses. As the weather was
+very dry, the population was at work keeping the fir-trees alive with
+squirts. The _f�te_ consisted of a horse and cattle show, in which the
+Norman horses made a very good display; the inevitable military review,
+which, Lisieux being as happily free from soldiery as Vire, was here,
+too, performed by the firemen; the band of a regiment of the line, which
+had been announced as a magnificent addition to the festivities, by a
+special proclamation of the _sous-pr�fet_; balloons not of the common
+shape, but in the shape of dogs, pigs, and grotesque human figures, a
+gentleman and lady waltzing, etc., which must have rather puzzled any
+scientific observer whose telescope was at that moment directed to the
+sky; and, to crown all, fireworks (the noise of which, a French
+gentleman remarked to me, the people loved, as reminding them of
+musketry) and an illumination. The illumination--all the little trees
+before the houses, as well as the houses themselves and the green arches
+thrown across the streets, being covered with lamps--was an extremely
+pretty sight. The outline of the old houses, and the windings and
+declivities of the old streets, wonderfully favored the effect. But the
+French are peerless in these things. The childish delight of the people
+was pleasant to see. Why cannot they be satisfied with their _f�tes_,
+and with the undisputed empire of cookery and dress, instead of making
+themselves a scourge to the world, and keeping all Europe in disquietude
+and under arms?
+
+The Emperor is trying to inoculate his subjects with a taste for English
+sports, but with rather doubtful success. He tries to make them play at
+cricket, but they do not much like the swift bowling. There was a
+caricature in the Charivari of a Frenchman standing up to his wicket
+with an implement which the artist intended for a bat, but which was
+more like a pavior's rammer, in his hand. A friend was asking him
+whether he had a wife, children, any tie to life. "None." "Then you may
+begin." In a window at Lisieux there was a print of a fox-hunt, with the
+master of the hounds dismounting to despatch the fox with a gun! At Vire
+there was a print of a horse-race, with the horses in a cantering
+attitude, and a large dog running and barking by their side. I have seen
+something equally funny of the same kind in America, but I need not say
+what or where. I never witnessed a French horse-race, but I am told that
+they enjoy it _moult tristement_, as they say we English enjoy all our
+amusements.
+
+Close to Lisieux is the fashionable watering-place of Trouville, a place
+without any charms that I could see, puffed into celebrity by Alexander
+Dumas. The Duke de Morny invested in building there a good deal of the
+money which he made by the _coup d'�tat_. Life at a French
+watering-place seems to be as close an imitation of life at Paris as
+French ingenuity can produce under the adverse circumstances of the
+case. Nothing but the religion of fashion can compel these people
+periodically to leave the capital for the sea. The mode of bathing is
+rather singular. I found that the Americans did not, as is commonly
+believed in England, put trousers on the legs of their pianos, but I
+believe you are more particular than we are; and therefore, perhaps, you
+would be still more surprised than we are at seeing a gentleman wrapped
+in a sheet stalk before the eyes of all the promenaders over the sands
+to the sea, and there throw off the sheet, and at his leisure get into
+the water. At the risk of exposing my English prudishness, I ventured to
+remark to a French acquaintance that the fashion was _un peu libre_. I
+found, rather to my astonishment, that he thought so too.
+
+At Val Richer, near Lisieux, is the pleasant country-house of M. Guizot.
+There, surrounded by his children and his grandchildren, a pretty
+patriarchal picture, the veteran statesman and historian reposes after
+the prodigious labors and tragic vicissitudes of his life. I say he
+reposes; but his pen is as active as ever, only that he has turned from
+politics and history to the more enduring and consoling topic of
+religion. He has just given us a volume on Christianity; he is about to
+give us one on the state of religion in France. It will be deeply
+interesting. In the revival of religion lies the only hope of
+regeneration for the French nation. And whence is that revival to come?
+From the official priesthood, and the jesuitical influences depicted in
+_Le Maudit_? Or from the Protestant Church of France, itself full of
+dissensions and turmoils, in which M. Guizot himself has been recently
+involved? Or from the school of Natural Theologians represented by
+Jules Simon? We shall see, when M. Guizot's work appears. It is from his
+religious character as well as from his attachment to constitutional
+liberty, I imagine, that M. Guizot has, unlike the mass of his
+countrymen, watched the American struggle with ardent interest, and
+cordially rejoiced in the triumph of the Union and of freedom.
+
+There are of course very different opinions as to this eminent man's
+career; and there are parts of his conduct of which no Liberal can
+approve. But I have always thought that a tranquil and happy old age is
+a proof, as well as a reward, of a good life; and if this be the case,
+M. Guizot's life, though not free from faults, must on the whole have
+been good.
+
+His resistance to reform is commonly regarded as having led to the fall
+of the constitutional monarchy. I should attribute that catastrophe much
+more to the prevalence of the military spirit, which the peaceful policy
+of Louis Philippe disappointed, and to which even the conquest of
+Algeria failed (as its authors deserved) to give a sufficient vent. The
+reign of Louis Philippe was essentially an attempt to found a civil in
+place of a military government in France, which was foiled by the
+passions excited by the presence of a large standing army and the recent
+memory of the Napoleonic wars. The translation of the body of Napoleon
+from St. Helena to Paris was the greatest mistake committed by the king
+and his advisers. It was the self-humiliation of the government of peace
+before the Genius of War.
+
+At Lisieux, as at Caen, and afterwards at Rouen, I saw on the Sunday a
+great church full of women, with scarcely a score of men. And what
+wonder? Close to where I sat was the altar of Our Lady of La Salette,
+offering to the adoration of the people the most coarse and revolting of
+impostures. And in the course of the service, an image of the Virgin,
+from which the taste of a Greek Pagan would have recoiled, was borne
+round the aisles in procession, manifestly the favorite object of
+worship in a church nominally devoted to the worship of God. An educated
+man in France, even one of the best character and naturally religious,
+would almost as soon think of entering a temple of Jupiter as a church.
+Religion in Roman Catholic countries being thus left, so far as the
+educated classes are concerned, to the priests and women, its recent
+developments have been inspired exclusively by priestly ambition and
+female imagination. The infallibility of the Pope and the worship of the
+Virgin have made, and are still making, tremendous strides. The
+Romanizing party in the Episcopal Church of England are left panting
+behind, in their vain efforts to keep up with the superstitions of Rome.
+
+From Lisieux my road lay by Pont-Audemer in its beautiful valley to
+Caudebec on the Seine; then along the Seine,--here most pleasant,--by
+the towers of Jumi�ges, the masterpiece, even in its ruins, of the grand
+Norman style, and the great Norman Church of St. George de Boscherville,
+to Rouen.
+
+Everybody knows Rouen and its sights,--the Cathedral, the Church of St.
+Ouen, the magnificent view of the city from St. Catherine's
+Hill,--magnificent still, though much marred by the tall chimneys and
+their smoke. St. Ouen is undoubtedly the perfection of Gothic art.
+Unlike most of the cathedrals, it is built all in the same style and on
+one plan, complete in every part, admirable in all its proportions, and
+faultless in its details. But there is something disappointing in
+perfection. The less perfect cathedrals suggest more to the imagination
+than is realized in St. Ouen.
+
+In the Museum is a portion of the heart of Richard Coeur-de-Lion. The
+Crusader king loved the Normans, and bequeathed his heart to them. He
+did not bequeath it to Imperial France. With all his faults, he was an
+illustrious soldier of Christendom; and he deserves to rest, not within
+the pale of this sensualist and atheist Empire, but in some land where
+the spirit of religious enterprise is not yet dead.
+
+In the outskirts is St. Gervais, the church of the monastery to which
+William the Conqueror was carried, out of the noise and the feverish air
+of the great city, to die, and which witnessed the strange struggle, in
+his last moments, between his rapacious passions and his late-awakened
+remorse. So insecure was the state of society, that, when he whose iron
+hand had preserved order among his feudal nobles had expired, those
+about him fled to their strongholds in expectation of a general anarchy.
+Government was still only personal: law had not yet been enthroned in
+the minds of men. Even the personal attendants of the Conqueror
+abandoned his corpse,--a singular illustration of the theory, cherished
+by lovers of the past, that the relations of master and servant were
+more affectionate, and of a higher kind, in the days of chivalry than
+they are in ours.
+
+Among the workingmen of Rouen, there probably lurks a good deal of
+republicanism, akin to that which exists among the workingmen of Paris.
+Unfortunately it is of a kind which, though capable of spasmodic
+attempts to revolutionize society by force, is little capable of
+sustained constitutional effect, and which alarms and arrays against it,
+not only despots, but moderate friends of liberty and progress. The
+outward appearances, however, at Rouen are all in favor of the Zouave
+and the Priest; and of the dominion of these two powers in France, if
+they can abstain from quarrelling with each other, it is difficult to
+foresee the end.
+
+I have spoken bitterly of the French Empire. It has not only crushed the
+liberties of France, but it is the keystone and the focus of the system
+of military despotism in Europe. Bismarck, O'Donnell, and all the rest
+who rule by sabre-sway, are its pupils. It is intensely
+propagandist,--feeling, like slavery, that it cannot endure the
+contagious neighborhood of freedom. It has to a terrible extent
+corrupted even English politics, and inspired our oligarchical party
+with ideas of violence quite foreign to the temper of English Tories in
+former days. It is killing not only all moral aspirations, but almost
+all moral culture in France, and leaving nothing but the passion for
+military glory, the thirst of money, and the love of pleasure. It is
+reducing all education to a centralized machine, the wires of which are
+moved by a bureau at Paris; and we shall see the effects of this on
+French intellect in the next generation, "Ils ont tu� la jeunesse," were
+the bitter words of an eminent and chivalrous Frenchman to the author of
+this article. Commerce is no doubt flourishing, and money is being made
+by the commercial classes, at present, under the Empire; but the highest
+industry is intimately connected with the moral and intellectual
+energies of a nation; and if these perish, it will in time perish too.
+
+I have no means of knowing whether the morality of the court and the
+upper classes at Paris is what it is commonly reported to be; though,
+assuredly, if the performances of Th�r�se are truly described to us,
+strange things must go on in the highest circles. Historical experience
+would be at fault, if a military despotism, with a political religion,
+did not produce moral effects in Paris somewhat analogous to those which
+it produced in Rome. The fashionable literature of the Empire, which can
+scarcely fail to reflect pretty accurately the moral state of the
+fashionable world, is not merely loose in principle, (as literature
+might possibly be in a period of transition between a narrower and an
+ampler moral code,) but utterly vile and loathsome; it seeks the
+materials of sensation novels from the charnel-house as well as from the
+brothel.
+
+At Dieppe, my last point, I visited that very picturesque as well as
+memorable ruin, the Chateau d'Arques. It is a monument of the great
+victory gained near it by the Huguenots under Henri IV. over the League.
+This and the other Huguenot victories, alas! proved bootless; and it is
+melancholy to visit the fields where they were won. By a series of
+calamities, the party was in the end erased from history; and scarcely a
+trace of its existence remains in the religious or political condition
+of Roman Catholic and Imperial France. It has left some noble names, and
+the memory of some noble deeds, which no doubt work upon national
+character to a certain extent; but this is all.
+
+There was nothing in the fashionable watering-place of Dieppe to tempt
+my stay; and I turned from the Chateau d'Arques to embark for the land
+where, in spite of our political reaction and the efforts of the
+priest-party in our Church, the principles for which the field of Arques
+was fought and won have still a home.
+
+
+
+
+AUNT JUDY.
+
+
+A soft white bosom, kissed by lips and fondled by fingers pure as
+itself!
+
+Back through the tender twilight of my one dim dream of a sinless
+childhood I catch that accusing glimpse of my mother--and myself. And as
+I stand here on this shapeless cairn of remorses, which, after forty
+years, I have piled upon my butchered and buried promise, that child
+turns from "the cup of his life and couch of his rest," to look upon me
+wondering, pitying.
+
+My mother died when I was scarce five years old; and save the blurred
+beauty of that reproachful phantom,--caught and lost, caught and lost,
+by the unfaithful eyes of a graceless spirit,--she is as though she
+never had been. But in her place she left me a vicarious mother,--old,
+foolish, doting, black,--the youngest, loveliest, wisest, fairest lady I
+have ever known,--young with the youth of the immortal heart, lovely
+with the loveliness of the gleaning Ruth, wise with the wisdom of the
+most blessed among mothers when she "pondered all those things in her
+heart," and fair with the fairness of her who goeth her way forth by the
+footsteps of the flock, and feedeth her kids beside the shepherds'
+tents,--black, but comely.
+
+"Aunt Judy,"--Judith was her company name,--as the oldest of my uncles
+and aunts, and other boys' grandfathers and grandmothers, and all the
+rest of us children, delighted to call her,--was pure negro; not
+grafted, scandalous mulatto, nor muddled, niggerish "gingerbread," but
+downright, unmixed, old-fashioned blackamoor. Her father and mother were
+genuine importations from the coast of Africa, snatched from some
+cannibal's calaboose,--where else they might have been butchered to make
+a Dahomeyan holiday,--and set up in a country gentleman's kitchen in
+Maryland, where they and their Christian progeny helped to make many a
+happy Christmas.
+
+Of this antique Ethiopian couple I remember nothing,--they died long
+before I was born,--nor have I gathered any notable _ana_ concerning
+them. Only of the father, I learned from my darling old nurse that he
+was one hundred and four years old when the Almighty Emancipator set him
+free; and from my father, and the brothers and sisters of my mother,
+that he possessed in a remarkable degree those simple, childlike
+virtues, characteristic of the original domesticated African, which his
+daughters Judith and Rachel so richly inherited.
+
+Aunt Judy was one of many slaves set free by my grandfather's will,
+partly in reward of faithful service, partly from an impulse of
+conscientiousness; for our fine old Maryland gentleman was that social
+and political phenomenon, a slaveholder with a practical scruple. Not
+that he doubted the moral wholesomeness of the "institution," which, in
+his theory, was patriarchal and protective, and in his practice
+eminently beneficent;--if he were living this day, I doubt not he would
+be found among its most earnest and confident champions;--but he did not
+believe in holding human beings in bondage "on principle," as it were,
+and for the mere sake of bondage. The patriarchal element was, he
+thought, an essential in the moral right of the system, and _that_ no
+longer necessary, the system became wrong. Therefore, so soon as it
+became clear to him that he (so peculiarly had God blessed him) could
+protect, advise, relieve his servants as effectually, they being free,
+as if their persons and their poor little goods, their labor and almost
+their lives, were at his disposal, he set them at liberty without asking
+the advice, or caring for the opinion, of any man; and by the same
+instrument which gave them the right to work, think, live, and die for
+themselves, he imposed upon his children a solemn responsibility for
+their well-being, in the future as in the past,--the honorable care of
+seeing to it that their wants were judiciously provided for, their
+training virtuous, their instruction useful, their employers just, their
+families united, and their homes happy. Those who were already of age
+went forth free at once; the minors received their "papers" on their
+twenty-first birthday. And thus it was that, when I was born, Aunt Judy
+was as much freer than her "boy" is now, as simple, natural wants are
+freer than impatient, artificial appetites.
+
+But that was the beginning and the end of Aunt Judy's freedom. For all
+the change it wrought in her feelings and her ways toward us, or in ours
+toward her, she might as well have remained the slave and the baby she
+was born; the old relations, so natural and gentle, of affection and
+faithful service on her side, of affection and grateful care on ours, no
+mere legal forms could alter: no papers could disturb their
+peacefulness, no privileges impair their confidence. Indeed, that same
+freedom--or at least her personal interest in it--was matter of
+magnificent contempt to both nurse and child; she understood it too well
+to pet it, I understood it too little to be jealous of it. It was only
+by asking her that you could discover that Aunt Judy was free; it was
+only by being asked that she could recollect it. For her, freedom meant
+the right to "go where she pleased"; but her love knew no _where_ but my
+father's roof and her darling's crib, nor anything so wrong as that
+right. For us, her freedom meant our freedom, the right to send her away
+when we chose; but our love knew no such _when_ in all the shameful
+possibilities of time, nor anything in all the cruel conspiracies of
+ingratitude so wrong as that right. Could we entreat her to leave us, or
+to return from following after us, when each of our hearts had spoken
+and said, "The Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part
+thee and me"? So she and I have gone on together ever since, and shall
+go on, until we come to the Bethlehem of love at rest. What though she
+had been there before we started, and were there now? To the saints and
+their eternal spaceless spirits there are nor days, nor miles, nor
+starting-points, nor resting-places, nor journey's ends.
+
+From my earliest remembered observation, when I first began to "take
+notice," as nurses say of vague babies, with pinafore comparison and
+judgment, Aunt Judy was an old woman; I knew that, because she had
+explained to me why I had not wrinkles like hers, and why she could not
+read her precious Bible without spectacles, as I could, and why my back
+was not bent too, and how if I lived I would grow so. From such
+instructions I derived a blurred, bewildering notion that from me to
+her, suffering an Aunt-Judy change, was a long, slow, wearisome process
+of puckering and dimming and stiffening. But when she told me how she
+had carried my mother in her arms, as she had carried me, and had made
+the proud discovery of her first tooth, as, piously exploring among my
+tender gums with her little finger, she had found mine, I stared at the
+Pacific of her possible nursings, in a wild surmise, silent upon a peak
+of wonder. "Well, then, Auntie," I asked, "do you think you're much more
+than a thousand?"
+
+She was not noticeably little as a woman, but wonderfully little as a
+bundle, to contain so many great virtues,--rather below the medium
+stature, slender, and bent with age, rather than with burdens; for she
+had had no heartless master to lay heavy packs upon her. Her face, far
+from unpleasing in its lines, was lovely in its blended expression of
+intelligence, modesty, the sweetest guilelessness, an almost heroic
+truthfulness, devoted fidelity, a dove-like tranquillity of mind, and
+that abiding, reposeful trust in God which is equal to all trials, and
+can never be taken by surprise. Her voice was soft and soothing, her
+motions singularly free from clumsiness or fretfulness, her manners so
+beautifully blended of unaffected humility, patience, and self-respect
+as to command, in cheerful reciprocity, the deference they tendered; in
+which respect she was a severe ordeal to the sham gentlemen and ladies
+who had the honor to be presented to her,--the slightest trace of
+snobbery betraying itself at once to the sensitive test-paper of Aunt
+Judy's true politeness. Her ways were ways of pleasantness, and all her
+paths were peace. Faith, hope, and charity were met in her dusky,
+shrunken bosom,--more at home there, perhaps, than in a finer dwelling.
+
+A sneering philosophy was never yet challenged to contemplate a piety
+more complete than that which made this venerable "nigger" a lady on
+earth, and a saint in heaven; but on her knees she found it, and on her
+knees she held it fast,--watching, praying, trembling.
+
+    "When she sat, her head was, prayer-like, bending;
+      When she rose, it rose not any more.
+    Faster seemed her true heart grave-ward tending
+      Than her tired feet, weak and travel-sore."
+
+She was, indeed, a living prayer, a lying-down and rising-up, a
+going-out and coming-in prayer,--a loving, longing, working, waiting
+prayer,--a black and wrinkled, bent and tottering incense and
+aspiration. With her to labor was literally to worship; she washed
+dishes with confession, ironed shirts with supplication, and dusted
+furniture with thanksgiving,--morning, evening, noon, and night,
+praising God. From resting-place to resting-place, over tedious
+stretches of task, she prayed her way,
+
+    "And ever, at each period,
+    She stopped and sang, 'Praise God!'"
+
+like Browning's Theocrite. And, as if answering Blaise, the listening
+monk, when he said,
+
+                           "Well done!
+    I doubt not thou art heard, my son:
+    As well as if thy voice to-day
+    Were praising God the Pope's great way,"
+
+her longing was,
+
+                       "Would God that I
+    Might praise him _some_ great way and die."
+
+Many a time have I, bursting boisterously into my little bedroom in
+quest of top or ball, checked myself, with a feeling more akin to
+superstition than to reverence, on finding Aunt Judy on her knees beside
+the pretty cot she had just made up so snugly and tenderly for me,
+pouring her ever-brimming heart out in clear, refreshing springs of
+prayer. Led by these still waters, she rested there from the heat and
+burden of life, as the camel by wells in the desert. On such occasions I
+always knew that my dear old nurse had just finished making a bed or
+sweeping a room, and had sunk down to rest in a prayer, as a fagged
+drudge on a stool. If you ever gloried--and what gentleman has not?--in
+Gregg's brave old hymn, beginning
+
+    "Jesus, and shall it ever be,
+    A mortal man ashamed of thee?"
+
+you would ask for no more intrepid illustration of its loyal spirit than
+the figure of Aunt Judy on her knees at the foot of my father's bed,
+where he often found her in the act,--turning her face for an instant,
+but without offering to rise, from her Divine Master to the mild
+fellow-servant in whom she affectionately recognized an earthly master,
+and asking, with a manner far less embarrassed than his own, "Was you
+lookin' for your gloves, sir? They's on de bureau,--and your umbrell's
+behind de door";--and then placidly turning back again to that Master
+whom most of us white slaves of the Devil think we have honored enough
+when we have printed His title with a capital M.
+
+    "My Master, shall I speak? O that to Thee
+      My Servant were a little so
+        As flesh may be!
+      That these two words might creep and grow
+    To some degree of spiciness to Thee!"
+
+But the hour of my Aunt-Judyness most sacred and inspiring to me,
+weirdly filling my imagination with solemn reaches beyond my childish
+ken, was at the close of the day, when--I having been undressed, with
+many a cradle lecture and many a blessing, many an admonition and
+endearment, line upon line and precept upon precept, here a text and
+there a pious rhyme, between the buttons and the strings, and having
+said my awful "Now I lay me," lest "I should die before I wake," and
+been tucked in with careful fondling fingers, the party of the first
+part honorably contracting to "shut his eyes and go straight to sleep,"
+provided the party of the second part would remain at the bedside till
+the last heavy-lingering wink was winked,--that image of her Maker
+carved in ebony took up her part in creation's pausing chorus, and
+poured her little human praise into the echoing ear of God in such a
+burst of triumphant humility, of exulting hope and trust, and
+all-embracing charity and love,--wherein master and mistress and
+fellow-servant, friend and stranger, the kind and the cruel, the just
+and the unjust, the believer and the scoffer, had each his welcome place
+and was called by his name,--as only Ruth could have said or Isaiah
+sung. As for me, I only lay there with closed eyes, very still, lest I
+should offend the angels, for I knew the room was full of them,--as for
+me, I only write here with a faltering heart, lest I should offend those
+prayers, for I know heaven is full of them, and I know that for every
+time my name arose to the throne of God on that beatified handmaid's
+hopes and cries, I have been forgiven seventy times seven.
+
+And so Aunt Judy prayed and praised, sitting upon the landing to rest
+herself, as she descended from the garret side-wise, the same foot
+always advanced, as is the way of weak old folks in coming down stairs;
+and so she prayed and praised between the splitting spells of her forty
+years' asthmatic cough, rocking backward and forward, with her hands
+upon her knees. And sometimes she preached to me, the ironing-table
+being her pulpit; for oh! she was an excellent divine, that had the
+Bible at her fingers' ends, and many a moving sermon did she deliver,
+"how God doth make his enemies his friends." And sometimes she baptized
+me, the bath-tub being her Jordan, in the name of duty, love, and
+patience. In truth, Aunt Judy took as much prophylactic pains with my
+soul as if it had been tainted with a congenital sulphuric diathesis;
+and if I had sunk under a complication of profane disorders, no
+postmortem statement of my spiritual pathology would have been complete
+and exact which failed to take note of her stringent preventive
+measures.
+
+Now be it known, that Aunt Judy's piety was in no respect of the
+niggerish kind; when I say "colored," I mean one thing, respectfully;
+and when I say "niggerish," I mean another, disgustedly. I am not
+responsible for the distinction: it is a true "cullud" nomenclature, and
+very significant; our fellow-citizens of African descent themselves
+employ it, nicely and wisely; and when they call each other "nigger" the
+familiar term of opprobrium is applied with all the malice of a sting,
+and resented with all the sensitiveness of a raw. So when I say that my
+Auntie's piety was not of the niggerish kind, even Zoe, "The Octoroon,"
+or any other woman or man in whose veins courses the blood of Ham four
+times diluted, knows that I mean it was not that glory-hallelujah
+variety of cunning or delusion, compounded of laziness and catalepsy,
+which is popular among the shouting, shirt-tearing sects of plantation
+darkies, who "git relijin" and fits twelve times a year. To all such
+she used to say, "'T ain't de real grace, honey,--'t ain't de sure
+glory,--you hollers too loud. When you gits de Dove in your heart, and
+de Lamb on your bosom, you'll feel as ef you was in dat stable at
+Bethlehem and de Blessed Virgin had lent you de sleepin' Baby to hold."
+She would not have shrunk from lifting up her voice and crying aloud in
+the market-place, if thereby she might turn one smart butcher from the
+error of his _weighs_; but for steady talking to the Lord, she preferred
+my bedside or the back-stairs.
+
+But in those days the kitchen was my paradise, by her transmuted. As a
+child, and not less now than then, I had a consuming longing for
+snuggery; my one fair, clear idea of the consummate golden fruit of the
+spirit's sweet content was a cosey place to get away to. In my longing I
+purred with the cat rolled up in her furry ball on the rug by the fire,
+making a high-post bedstead of a chair; in my longing I stole with
+furtive rats to their mysterious cave-nests in the wall. So do I
+now,--the more for that I lost, so long ago, my dear kitchen, my
+Aunt-Judyness,--my home.
+
+    "I behold it everywhere,
+    On the earth, and in the air,
+    But it never comes again."
+
+At this moment I feel the dresser in the corner, gleaming with the
+cook's refulgent pride of polished tins; I am sensible of that pulpit
+ironing-table--alas! the flat-iron on its ring is as cold as the hand
+that erst so deftly guided it. I bask before the old-fashioned
+hospitable fireplace, capacious and embracing, and jolly with its
+old-fashioned hickory blaze, and the fat old-fashioned kettle hung upon
+the old-fashioned crane, swinging and singing of old-fashioned abundance
+and good cheer. I behold the Madras turban, the white neckerchief
+crossed over the bosom, the clumsy steel-bowed spectacles, the check
+apron, and the old-fashioned love that is forever new. But they never
+come again.
+
+That kitchen was my hospital and my school,--as much better than the
+whole round of select academies and classical institutes that my father
+tried, and that tried me, as check aprons and love are more inculcating
+than canes and quarterly bills; and however it may be with my head, my
+heart never has forgotten the lessons I learned there. Thither, on the
+nipping nights of winter, brought I my small fingers and toes, numbed
+and aching with snow-balling and skating, to be tenderly rubbed before
+the fire, or fondly folded in the motherly apron. Thither brought I an
+extensive and various assortment of splinters and fresh cuts; thither my
+impervious nose, to be lubricated with goose-grease, or my swollen angry
+tonsils ("waxen kernels," Aunt Judy called them), to be mollified with
+volatile liniment.
+
+It was here that my own free mind, uncompelled by pedagogues and
+unallured by prizes, first achieved a whole chapter in the Bible. Cook
+and laundress and chambermaid were out for the evening; the table had
+been cleared and covered with the fresh white cloth; and I, perched on
+Aunt Judy's lap at the end next the fireplace, glided featly over the
+short words, plunged pluckily through the long, (braced, as it were,
+against the superior education and the spectacles behind me,) of the
+first chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, from the Word that
+was in the beginning, to the Hereafter of the glorified Son of man.
+After which so large performance for so small a boy, we re-refreshed
+ourselves with that cheerful hymn, in which Dr. Watts lyrically disposes
+of the questions,
+
+      "And must this body die,
+      This mortal frame decay?
+    And must these active limbs of mine
+      Lie mouldering in the clay?"
+
+For so infantile a heart, my darling old mammy had a wonderful lack of
+active imagination, even in her religion; for there all was real and
+actual to her. Her pleasures of memory and her pleasures of hope were
+alike founded upon fact. Christ was as personal to her as her own
+rheumatic frame, and heaven as positive as her kitchen. "Blessed are
+they that have not seen, and yet have believed";--but for her, to
+believe and to see were one. So whatever imagination she may by nature
+have possessed seemed to have dwindled for lack of exercise: it was long
+since she had had any use for it. She had no folk-lore, no faculty of
+story-telling,--only a veracious legend or two of our family, which she
+invariably related with an affidavit-like scrupulousness of
+circumstance. I cannot recollect that she ever once beguiled me with a
+mere nurse's tale. So when at that kitchen-table we read "The Pilgrim's
+Progress" together, we presented a curious entertainment for the student
+of intellectual processes,--nurse and child arriving by diverse
+arguments of imagination at the same result of reality;--she knowing
+that Sin was a burden, because she had borne it; I, because I had seen
+it in the picture strapped to Christian's back;--she, that Despair was a
+giant, because he had often appalled her soul within her; I, because in
+a dream he had made me scream last night;--she, that Death was a river,
+because so many of her dear ones had gone over, and because on her clear
+days she could see the other shore; I, because, as I lay with my young
+cheek against her old heart, I could hear the beating of its waves.
+
+Blessed indeed is the mother who is admitted to the sanctuary of her
+darling's secrets with the freedom with which Aunt Judy penetrated (was
+invited rather, with parted lips and sparkling eyes) to mine,--into
+whose sympathetic ear are poured, in all the dream-borne melody of the
+first songs of the heart, in all "the tender thought, the speechless
+pain" of its first violets, his earliest confessions, aspirations,
+loves, wrongs, troubles, triumphs. Well do I remember that day when,
+trembling, ghastly, faint, I fell in tears upon her neck, and poured
+into her bosom and basin the spasmodic story of My First Cigar! Well do
+I remember that night, when, bursting from the evening party in the
+parlor, and the thick red married lady in the thin blue tarletan, and
+all my raptures and my anguish, I flung myself into Aunt Judy's arms and
+acknowledged the soft corn of My First Love, raving at the fatal
+sandy-whiskered gulf that yawned between me and Mine thick blue Own One
+in the thin red tarletan!
+
+Well do I remember--though I was only seven times one--the panting
+exultation with which I flung into her lap the cheap colored print of
+the Tower of Babel (showing the hurly-burly of French bricklayers and
+Irish hod-carriers, and the grand row generally) that I had just won at
+school by correctly committing to memory, and publicly reciting, the
+whole of
+
+    "Almighty God, thy piercing eye
+    Strikes through the shades of night," etc.
+
+My first prize! The Tower of Babel fell untimely into the wash-tub, but
+she dried it on her warm bosom; and I have never forgotten that All our
+secret actions lie All open to His sight; though I have never seen the
+verses (they were in Comly's Spelling-Book) from that day to this.
+
+In those days we had a youth of talent in the family,--a sort of
+sophomorical boil, that the soap and sugar of indiscriminate adulation
+had drawn to a head of conceit. This youth bestowed a great deal of
+attention on a certain young woman of a classical turn of mind, who once
+had a longing to attend a fancy-ball as a sibyl. About the same time
+Sophomore missed the first volume of his Potter's "Antiquities of
+Greece"; and, having searched for it in vain, made up his mind that I
+had presented it as a keepsake, together with a lock of my hair and a
+cent's worth of pea-nut taffy, to the head girl of the infant class at
+my Sunday school. So Sophomore, being in morals a pedant and in
+intellect a bully, accused me of appropriating the book, and offered me
+a dollar if I would restore it to him. With swelling heart and quivering
+lip I carried the wanton insult--my first great wrong--straight to Aunt
+Judy, who, in her mild way, resented it as a personal outrage to her own
+feelings, and tried to soothe and console me by assuring me that "it
+would all rub out when it got dry." Three years later, as I was passing
+the sibyl's house one morning, her mother met me at the door and handed
+me an odd volume of Potter's "Antiquities of Greece," which she had just
+discovered in some out-of-the-way corner, where it had been mislaid, and
+which she desired me to hand to Sophomore with the sibyl's compliments,
+thanks, regrets, and several other delicacies of the season. But I
+handed it first to Aunt Judy, who gloried boisterously in my first
+triumph. Sophomore patronized me magnificently with apologies; but if
+the wrong never gets any drier than Aunt Judy's joyful eyes were then,
+it never will rub out.
+
+So heartily disgusted was I with this classical episode that I conceived
+the original and desperate project of running away and going to sea. At
+that time I enjoyed the proud privilege of a personal acquaintance with
+the Siamese Twins, and was the envied holder of a season ticket to the
+Museum, where they exhibited their attractive duplicity. It was an
+essential part of my preparations to procure from the amiable Chang-Eng
+a letter of introduction to their ingenious mother, who, I was told, was
+in the duck-fishing line at Bangkok. Of course, I confided my plan to
+Aunt Judy; and, although she opposed it with extra prayers of peculiar
+length and strength, and finally succeeded in dissuading me from it, I
+am by no means certain that she would not have connived at my flight,
+rather than betray my confidence or consent to my punishment.
+
+Those were the days of the _Morus multicaulis_ mania, and I embarked
+with spirit in the silk-worm business. The original capital upon which I
+erected the enterprise was furnished from the surplus of Aunt Judy's
+wages. It was in the first silk dress that should come of all those
+moths and eggs and wriggling spinners and cocoons that she invested with
+such sanguine cheerfulness; and although she never got her money back in
+that form,--owing to the unfortunate exhaustion of my mulberry-leaves
+and the refusal of my worms to spin silk from tea, which, they being of
+pure Chinese stock, I thought very unreasonable,--she conceived that she
+reaped abundant returns in her share of my happy enthusiasm, while it
+lasted; and when I wept over the famine-stricken forms of my operatives,
+she said, "Never mind, honey; dey was an awful litter anyhow, and I
+spec' dey was only de or'nary caterpillar poor trash, after all, else
+dey 'd a-kep' goin' on dat tea; fur 't was de rale high-price Chany
+kind, sure 's ye 'r born."
+
+It was a striking oddness in the dear old soul, that, whilst in her
+hours of familiar ease she indulged in the homely lingo of her tribe, in
+her "company talk" she displayed a graver propriety of language, and in
+her prayers was always fluent, forcible, and correct.
+
+The watchful tenderness with which I loved my gentle, childlike father
+was the most interesting of the many secrets that my heart shared only
+with Aunt Judy's. When I was twelve years old, he fell into a touching
+despondency, caused by certain reverses in his business and the
+unremitting anxieties consequent upon them. So intense and sensitive was
+my magnetic sympathy with him, that I contracted the same sadness, in a
+form so aggravated and morbid that the despondency, in me, became
+despair, and the anxiety horror. The cruel fancy took possession of my
+mind, installed there by my treacherously imaginative temperament, that
+some awful calamity was about to befall my dear father; that he,
+patient, submissive Christian that he was, even meditated suicide; and
+that shape of fear so shook my soul with terror in the daytime, so
+filled my dreams with horror in the night, that, as if it were not
+myself, I turn back to pity the poor child now, and wonder that he did
+not go mad.
+
+Does he know the truth now up in Heaven, the beloved old man? Surely;
+for the beloved old woman, who alone knew it on earth, is she not there?
+He knows now how his selfish, wilful, school-hating scamp, of whom only
+he and Aunt Judy ever boded any good, stole away from his playmates and
+his games, every afternoon when school was dismissed, and with that
+baleful phantom before him, and that doleful cry in his ears, flew
+through the bustle and clatter of the wharves to where his father's
+warehouse was, two miles away; and, dodging like a thief among crates
+and boxes, bales and casks, and choking down the appeal of his lonely,
+shame-faced terror, watched that door with all the eager, tenacious,
+panting fidelity of a dog, until the merchant came forth on his way
+homeward for the night. And how the scamp followed, dodging, watching,
+trembling, unconsciously moaning, unconsciously sobbing, seeing no form
+but his, hearing no sound but his footfall, keeping cunningly between
+that form and the dock, lest it should suddenly dart, through the drays
+and the moored vessels and plunge into the river, as the scamp had seen
+it do in his dreams. And how, at the end of that walk through the Valley
+of the Shadow of Death, when we reached our own door, and the
+simple-hearted, good old man passed in, as ignorant of my following as
+he was innocent of the monstrous purpose I imputed to him, I lingered
+some minutes at the gate to ease with a sluice of tears my pent-up fears
+and pains; and then burst into the yard, whistling, whooping, prancing,
+swinging my satchel, without feeling or manners,--a shameless, heartless
+brat and nuisance. And how, when the day, with all its secret sighs and
+sobs, was over, and he and I retired to the same bed, I prayed to our
+Father in heaven (muffling my very thoughts in the bed-clothes lest he
+should hear them) to keep my earthly father safe for me from all the
+formless dangers of the darkness; and how, when at the first gray streak
+of dawn the spectre shook me, and I awoke, I held my heart and my
+breathing still, to listen for his breathing, and thanked God when he
+groaned in his sleep; and how, when his shaving-water was brought and he
+stood before the glass, baring his throat, I crept close behind him,
+still watching, gasping,--now pretending to hum a tune, now pressing my
+hand upon my mouth lest I should shriek in my helpless suspense; and
+how, when he drew the razor from its sheath--Well! I am forty years old
+now, and I have been pursued since then by so many and such torturing
+shapes of desperation and dismay as should refresh the heart of my
+stupidest enemy with an emotion of relenting; but I would consent to
+weep, groan, rave them all over again, beginning where that haunted
+child left off, rather than begin where he began, though my spectres
+should forever vanish with his.
+
+Aunt Judy trembled and watched with me, and, accepting my phantom as if
+it were a reasonable fear, hid away her share of the sacred secret in
+her heart, and helped me to cover up mine with a disguise of
+carelessness, lest any foolish or brutal mockery should find it out.
+
+My darling had but few superstitions: her spiritually informed
+intelligence rose superior to vulgar signs and dreams, and saw through
+the little warnings and wonders of darker and less pure minds with a
+science of its own, which she called Gospel light. Still, there was here
+a sign and there a legend that she clung to for old acquaintance' sake,
+rather than by reason of any credulity in her strong enough to take the
+place of faith. But these constituted the peculiar poetry of her
+personality, the fireside balladry and folk-lore of her Aunt-Judyness;
+and I could no more mock them than I could mock the good fairy in her,
+that changed all my floggings to feathers,--no sooner tear away their
+comfortable homeliness to jeer at their honored absurdity, than I could
+snatch off her dear familiar turban to mock the silver reverence of her
+"wool." Ah! I wish you could have heard her tell me that I must pass
+through fourteen years of trouble,--seven on account of the big old
+mirror in the parlor that I, lying on the sofa beneath it, kicked clear
+off its hook and into the middle of the floor,--and seven for that very
+looking-glass which my father used to shave by, and which I, sparring
+at my image in it, to amuse my little brother, knocked into smithareens
+with my fractious fist. Why, man, it was not only awful, it all came
+true.
+
+Aunt Judy, like most of those antiques, the old-fashioned house-servants
+of the South,--coachmen and waiters, nurses and lady's maids,--was a
+towering aristocrat: she believed in blood, and was a connoisseur in
+pedigrees. Her family pride was lofty, vast, and imposing, and embraced
+in the scope of its sympathy whoever could boast of a family Bible
+containing a well-filled record of births, marriages, and deaths,--a
+dear dead-and-gone inheritance of family portraits, lace, trinkets, and
+silver spoons,--a family vault in an Orthodox burial-ground,--and above
+all, one or two venerable family servants, just to show "dese mushroom
+folks, wid der high-minded notions, how diff'ent things was in ole
+missus's time!" Measured by this standard, if you had the misfortune to
+be a nobody, Aunt Judy, as a lady, might patronize you, as a Christian,
+would cheerfully advise and assist you; but to the exclusive privilege
+of what she superbly styled family-arities, you must in vain aspire.
+_Our_ family, in the broadest sense of that word, was a large one,--by
+blood and marriage a numerous connection; and when Aunt Judy said,
+"So-and-so b'longs to our family," she included every man, woman, and
+child who could produce the genuine patent of our nobility, and
+especially all who had ever worn our livery, from my great-grandfather's
+tremendous coachman to the slipshod young gal that "nussed" our last new
+cousin's last new baby. Sometimes one of these cousins--quite
+telescopic, so distant was the relationship--would come to dine with us.
+Then Aunt Judy, in gorgeous turban, immaculate neckerchief, and lively
+satisfaction, would be served up in state, our _pi�ce de r�sistance_.
+The guest would compliment her with sympathetic inquiries about the
+state of her health, which was always "only tol'able," or "ra-a-ther
+poorly," or it "did 'pear as ef she could shuffle round a leetle yit,
+praise de Master! But she was a-gettin' older and shacklier every day;
+her cough was awful tryin' sometimes, and it 'peared as ef she warn't of
+much account, nohow. But de Lord's will be done; when He wanted her, she
+reckined He'd call. And how does you find yourself, Miss? And how does
+your ma git along wid de servants now? You know she always was a great
+hand to be pertickler, Miss; we hadn't sich another young lady in our
+family, to be pertickler, as your ma, Miss,--'specially 'bout de
+pleetin' and clare-starchin'."
+
+I have to accuse myself of habitually shocking her aristocratic
+sensibilities by profanely ignoring, in favor of the society of dirty
+little plebeians, the relations to whom the sacred charm of a common
+ancestry should have drawn me. "Make haste, honey," she used to say;
+"wash yer face and hands, and pull up yer stockin's, and tie yer shoes,
+and bresh de sand out of yer hair, and blow yer nose, and go into de
+parlor, and shake hands wid yer Cousin Jorjana." But I would not. "O
+bother, Auntie! who's my Cousin Georgiana?" "Why, honey, don't you know?
+Miss Arabella Jane--dat's your dear dead-an'-gone grandma's second
+cousin--had seven childern by her first husband,--he was a
+Patterson,--and nine by her second,--_he_ was a McKim,--and five--but
+'tain't no use, honey; you don't 'pear to take no int'res' in yer own
+kith and kin, no more dan or'nary white trash. I 'spec' you don't know
+de diff'ence, dis minnit, 'twixt yer poor old Aunt Judy and any
+no-account poor-house nigger." And so my Cousin Georgiana, of whom I had
+never heard before, remains a myth to me, one of Aunt Judy's Mrs.
+Harrises, to this day. It was wonderful what an exact descriptive list
+of them she could call at a moment's notice; and for keeping the run of
+their names and numbers, she was as good as an enrolling officer or a
+directory man. "Our family" could boast of many Pharisees, as well as
+blush for many prodigals; but her sympathies were wholly with the
+latter; and for these she was eternally killing fatted calves, in
+spite of angry elder brothers and the whole sect of whited
+sepulchres, who forgive exactly four hundred and ninety times by the
+multiplication-table, and compass sea and land to make one hypocrite. If
+she had had a fold of her own, all her sheep would have been black.
+
+One day in January, 1849, I called to see Aunt Judy for the last time.
+Superannuated, and rapidly failing, she had been installed by my father
+in a comfortable room in the house of a sort of cousin of hers, a worthy
+and "well-to-do" woman of color, where she might be cheered by the
+visits of the more respectable people of her own class,--darkies of
+substantial character and of the first families, among whom she was
+esteemed as a mother in Israel. Thither either my father or one or two
+of his children came every day, to watch her declining health, to
+administer to her comfort, and to wait upon her with those offices of
+respect to which she had earned her right by three quarters of a century
+of humble, patient love and faithful service. My chest was packed, and
+on the morrow I must sail for the ends of the earth; but she knew
+nothing of that. All that afternoon we talked together as we had never
+talked before; and many an injury that my indignant tears had kept fresh
+and sticky was "dried" in the warmth of her earnest, anxious
+peace-making, and "rubbed out" then and there. No page of my inditing
+could be pure enough to record it all; but is it not written in the Book
+of Life, among the regrets and the forgivenesses, the confessions and
+the consolations and the hopes?
+
+The last word I ever uttered to Aunt Judy was a careful, loving, pious
+lie. She said, "Won't you come ag'in to-morrow, son, and see de poor ole
+woman?" And I replied, "O yes, Auntie!"--though I well knew that, even
+as I spoke, I was looking into the wise truth of those patient, tender
+eyes for the last time in this world. The sun was going down as we
+parted,--that sun has never risen again for me.
+
+In June, 1850, on board a steamboat in the Sacramento River, I received
+the very Bible I had first learned to read in, sitting on her lap by the
+kitchen fire,--in the beginning was the Word. She was dead; and, dying,
+she had sent it me, with her blessing,--at the end was the Word.
+
+In August, 1852, that Bible was tossed ashore from a wreck in an Indian
+river, and by angels delivered at a mission school in the jungle, where
+other heathens beside myself have doubtless learned from it the Word
+that was, and is, and ever shall be. On the inside of the cover, sitting
+on her lap by the kitchen fire, I had written, with appropriate
+"pot-hooks and hangers," AUNT JUDY.
+
+Such her quiet consummation and renown!
+
+
+
+
+THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.
+
+
+VII.
+
+BODILY RELIGION: A SERMON ON GOOD HEALTH.
+
+One of our recent writers has said, that "good health is physical
+religion"; and it is a saying worthy to be printed in golden letters.
+But good health being physical religion, it fully shares that
+indifference with which the human race regards things confessedly the
+most important. The neglect of the soul is the trite theme of all
+religious teachers; and, next to their souls, there is nothing that
+people neglect so much as their bodies. Every person ought to be
+perfectly healthy, just as everybody ought to be perfectly religious;
+but, in point of fact, the greater part of mankind are so far from
+perfect moral or physical religion that they cannot even form a
+conception of the blessing beyond them.
+
+The mass of good, well-meaning Christians are not yet advanced enough to
+guess at the change which a perfect fidelity to Christ's spirit and
+precepts would produce in them. And the majority of people who call
+themselves well, because they are not, at present, upon any particular
+doctor's list, are not within sight of what perfect health would be.
+That fulness of life, that vigorous tone, and that elastic cheerfulness,
+which make the mere fact of existence a luxury, that suppleness which
+carries one like a well-built boat over every wave of unfavorable
+chance,--these are attributes of the perfect health seldom enjoyed. We
+see them in young children, in animals, and now and then, but rarely, in
+some adult human being, who has preserved intact the religion of the
+body through all opposing influences. Perfect health supposes not a
+state of mere quiescence, but of positive enjoyment in living. See that
+little fellow, as his nurse turns him out in the morning, fresh from his
+bath, his hair newly curled, and his cheeks polished like apples. Every
+step is a spring or a dance; he runs, he laughs, he shouts, his face
+breaks into a thousand dimpling smiles at a word. His breakfast of plain
+bread and milk is swallowed with an eager and incredible delight,--it is
+_so good_, that he stops to laugh or thump the table now and then in
+expression of his ecstasy. All day long he runs and frisks and plays;
+and when at night the little head seeks the pillow, down go the
+eye-curtains, and sleep comes without a dream. In the morning his first
+note is a laugh and a crow, as he sits up in his crib and tries to pull
+papa's eyes open with his fat fingers. He is an embodied joy,--he is
+sunshine and music and laughter for all the house. With what a
+magnificent generosity does the Author of life endow a little mortal
+pilgrim in giving him at the outset of his career such a body as this!
+How miserable it is to look forward twenty years, when the same child,
+now grown a man, wakes in the morning with a dull, heavy head, the
+consequence of smoking and studying till twelve or one the night before;
+when he rises languidly to a late breakfast, and turns from this, and
+tries that,--wants a devilled bone, or a cutlet with Worcestershire
+sauce, to make eating possible; and then, with slow and plodding step,
+finds his way to his office and his books. Verily the shades of the
+prison-house gather round the growing boy; for, surely, no one will deny
+that life often begins with health little less perfect than that of the
+angels.
+
+But the man who habitually wakes sodden, headachy, and a little stupid,
+and who needs a cup of strong coffee and various stimulating condiments
+to coax his bodily system into something like fair working order, does
+not suppose he is out of health. He says, "Very well, I thank you," to
+your inquiries,--merely because he has entirely forgotten what good
+health is. He is well, not because of any particular pleasure in
+physical existence, but well simply because he is not a subject for
+prescriptions. Yet there is no store of vitality, no buoyancy, no
+superabundant vigor, to resist the strain and pressure to which life
+puts him. A checked perspiration, a draught of air ill-timed, a crisis
+of perplexing business or care, and he is down with a bilious attack, or
+an influenza, and subject to doctors' orders for an indefinite period.
+And if the case be so with men, how is it with women? How many women
+have at maturity the keen appetite, the joyous love of life and motion,
+the elasticity and sense of physical delight in existence, that little
+children have? How many have any superabundance of vitality with which
+to meet the wear and strain of life? And yet they call themselves well.
+
+But is it possible, in maturity, to have the joyful fulness of the life
+of childhood? Experience has shown that the delicious freshness of this
+dawning hour may be preserved even to mid-day, and may be brought back
+and restored after it has been for years a stranger. Nature, though a
+severe disciplinarian, is still, in many respects, most patient and easy
+to be entreated, and meets any repentant movement of her prodigal
+children with wonderful condescension. Take Bulwer's account of the
+first few weeks of his sojourn at Malvern, and you will read, in very
+elegant English, the story of an experience of pleasure which has
+surprised and delighted many a patient at a water-cure. The return to
+the great primitive elements of health--water, air, and simple food,
+with a regular system of exercise--has brought to many a jaded, weary,
+worn-down human being the elastic spirits, the simple, eager appetite,
+the sound sleep, of a little child. Hence, the rude huts and ch�lets of
+the peasant Priessnitz were crowded with battered dukes and princesses,
+and notables of every degree, who came from the hot, enervating luxury
+which had drained them of existence to find a keener pleasure in
+peasants' bread under peasants' roofs than in soft raiment and palaces.
+No arts of French cookery can possibly make anything taste so well to a
+feeble and palled appetite as plain brown bread and milk taste to a
+hungry water-cure patient, fresh from bath and exercise.
+
+If the water-cure had done nothing more than establish the fact that the
+glow and joyousness of early life are things which maybe restored after
+having been once wasted, it would have done a good work. For if Nature
+is so forgiving to those who have once lost or have squandered her
+treasures, what may not be hoped for us if we can learn the art of never
+losing the first health of childhood? And though with us, who have
+passed to maturity, it may be too late for the blessing, cannot
+something be done for the children who are yet to come after us?
+
+Why is the first health of childhood lost? Is it not the answer, that
+childhood is the only period of life in which bodily health is made a
+prominent object? Take our pretty boy, with cheeks like apples, who
+started in life with a hop, skip, and dance,--to whom laughter was like
+breathing, and who was enraptured with plain bread and milk,--how did he
+grow into the man who wakes so languid and dull, who wants strong coffee
+and Worcestershire sauce to make his breakfast go down? When and where
+did he drop the invaluable talisman that once made everything look
+brighter and taste better to him, however rude and simple, than now do
+the most elaborate combinations? What is the boy's history? Why, for the
+first seven years of his life his body is made of some account. It is
+watched, cared for, dieted, disciplined, fed with fresh air, and left to
+grow and develop like a thrifty plant. But from the time school
+education begins, the body is steadily ignored, and left to take care of
+itself.
+
+The boy is made to sit six hours a day in a close, hot room, breathing
+impure air, putting the brain and the nervous system upon a constant
+strain, while the muscular system is repressed to an unnatural quiet.
+During the six hours, perhaps twenty minutes are allowed for all that
+play of the muscles which, up to this time, has been the constant habit
+of his life. After this he is sent home with books, slate, and lessons
+to occupy an hour or two more in preparing for the next day. In the
+whole of this time there is no kind of effort to train the physical
+system by appropriate exercise. Something of the sort was attempted
+years ago in the infant schools, but soon given up; and now, from the
+time study first begins, the muscles are ignored in all primary schools.
+One of the first results is the loss of that animal vigor which formerly
+made the boy love motion for its own sake. Even in his leisure hours he
+no longer leaps and runs as he used to; he learns to sit still, and by
+and by sitting and lounging come to be the habit, and vigorous motion
+the exception, for most of the hours of the day. The education thus
+begun goes on from primary to high school, from high school to college,
+from college through professional studies of law, medicine, or theology,
+with this steady contempt for the body, with no provision for its
+culture, training, or development, but rather a direct and evident
+provision for its deterioration and decay.
+
+The want of suitable ventilation in school-rooms, recitation-rooms,
+lecture-rooms, offices, court-rooms, conference-rooms, and vestries,
+where young students of law, medicine, and theology acquire their
+earlier practice, is something simply appalling. Of itself it would
+answer for men the question, why so many thousand glad, active children
+come to a middle life without joy,--a life whose best estate is a sort
+of slow, plodding endurance. The despite and hatred which most men seem
+to feel for God's gift of fresh air, and their resolution to breathe as
+little of it as possible, could only come from a long course of
+education, in which they have been accustomed to live without it. Let
+any one notice the conduct of our American people travelling in railroad
+cars. We will suppose that about half of them are what might be called
+well-educated people, who have learned in books, or otherwise, that the
+air breathed from the lungs is laden with impurities,--that it is
+noxious and poisonous; and yet, travel with these people half a day, and
+you would suppose from their actions that they considered the external
+air as a poison created expressly to injure them, and that the only
+course of safety lay in keeping the cars hermetically sealed, and
+breathing over and over the vapor from each others' lungs. If a person
+in despair at the intolerable foulness raises a window, what frowns from
+all the neighboring seats, especially from great rough-coated men, who
+always seem the first to be apprehensive! The request to "put down that
+window" is almost sure to follow a moment or two of fresh air. In vain
+have rows of ventilators been put in the tops of some of the cars, for
+conductors and passengers are both of one mind, that these ventilators
+are inlets of danger, and must be kept carefully closed.
+
+Railroad travelling in America is systematically, and one would think
+carefully, arranged so as to violate every possible law of health. The
+old rule to keep the head cool and the feet warm is precisely reversed.
+A red-hot stove heats the upper stratum of air to oppression, while a
+stream of cold air is constantly circulating about the lower
+extremities. The most indigestible and unhealthy substances conceivable
+are generally sold in the cars or at way-stations for the confusion and
+distress of the stomach. Rarely can a traveller obtain so innocent a
+thing as a plain good sandwich of bread and meat, while pie, cake,
+doughnuts, and all other culinary atrocities, are almost forced upon him
+at every stopping-place. In France, England, and Germany the railroad
+cars are perfectly ventilated; the feet are kept warm by flat cases
+filled with hot water and covered with carpet, and answering the double
+purpose of warming the feet and diffusing an agreeable temperature
+through the car, without burning away the vitality of the air; while the
+arrangements at the refreshment-rooms provide for the passenger as
+wholesome and well-served a meal of healthy, nutritious food as could be
+obtained in any home circle.
+
+What are we to infer concerning the home habits of a nation of men who
+so resignedly allow their bodies to be poisoned and maltreated in
+travelling over such an extent of territory as is covered by our
+railroad lines? Does it not show that foul air and improper food are too
+much matters of course to excite attention? As a writer in "The Nation"
+has lately remarked, it is simply and only because the American nation
+like to have unventilated cars, and to be fed on pie and coffee at
+stopping-places, that nothing better is known to our travellers; if
+there were, any marked dislike of such a state of things on the part of
+the people, it would not exist. We have wealth enough, and enterprise
+enough, and ingenuity enough, in our American nation, to compass with
+wonderful rapidity any end that really seems to us desirable. An army
+was improvised when an army was wanted,--and an army more perfectly
+equipped, more bountifully fed, than so great a body of men ever was
+before. Hospitals, Sanitary Commissions, and Christian Commissions all
+arose out of the simple conviction of the American people that they must
+arise. If the American people were equally convinced that foul air was a
+poison,--that to have cold feet and hot heads was to invite an attack of
+illness,--that maple-sugar, pop-corn, peppermint candy, pie, doughnuts,
+and peanuts are not diet for reasonable beings,--they would have
+railroad accommodations very different from those now in existence.
+
+We have spoken of the foul air of court-rooms. What better illustration
+could be given of the utter contempt with which the laws of bodily
+health are treated, than the condition of these places? Our lawyers are
+our highly educated men. They have been through high-school and college
+training, they have learned the properties of oxygen, nitrogen, and
+carbonic-acid gas, and have seen a mouse die under an exhausted
+receiver, and of course they know that foul, unventilated rooms are bad
+for the health; and yet generation after generation of men so taught and
+trained will spend the greater part of their lives in rooms notorious
+for their close and impure air, without so much as an attempt to remedy
+the evil. A well-ventilated court-room is a four-leaved clover among
+court-rooms. Young men are constantly losing their health at the bar:
+lung diseases, dyspepsia, follow them up, gradually sapping their
+vitality. Some of the brightest ornaments of the profession have
+actually fallen dead as they stood pleading,--victims of the fearful
+pressure of poisonous and heated air upon the excited brain. The deaths
+of Salmon P. Chase of Portland, uncle of our present Chief Justice, and
+of Ezekiel Webster, the brother of our great statesman, are memorable
+examples of the calamitous effects of the errors dwelt upon; and yet,
+strange to say, nothing efficient is done to mend these errors, and give
+the body an equal chance with the mind in the pressure of the world's
+affairs.
+
+But churches, lecture-rooms, and vestries, and all buildings devoted
+especially to the good of the soul, are equally witness of the mind's
+disdain of the body's needs, and the body's consequent revenge upon the
+soul. In how many of these places has the question of a thorough
+provision of fresh air been even considered? People would never think of
+bringing a thousand persons into a desert place, and keeping them there,
+without making preparations to feed them. Bread and butter, potatoes and
+meat, must plainly be found for them; but a thousand human beings are
+put into a building to remain a given number of hours, and no one asks
+the question whether means exist for giving each one the quantum of
+fresh air needed for his circulation, and these thousand victims will
+consent to be slowly poisoned, gasping, sweating, getting red in the
+face, with confused and sleepy brains, while a minister with a yet
+redder face and a more oppressed brain struggles and wrestles, through
+the hot, seething vapors, to make clear to them the mysteries of faith.
+How many churches are there that for six or eight months in the year are
+never ventilated at all, except by the accidental opening of doors? The
+foul air generated by one congregation is locked up by the sexton for
+the use of the next assembly; and so gathers and gathers from week to
+week, and month to month, while devout persons upbraid themselves, and
+are ready to tear their hair, because they always feel stupid and sleepy
+in church. The proper ventilation of their churches and vestries would
+remove that spiritual deadness of which their prayers and hymns
+complain. A man hoeing his corn out on a breezy hillside is bright and
+alert, his mind works clearly, and he feels interested in religion, and
+thinks of many a thing that might be said at the prayer-meeting at
+night. But at night, when he sits down in a little room where the air
+reeks with the vapor of his neighbor's breath and the smoke of kerosene
+lamps, he finds himself suddenly dull and drowsy,--without emotion,
+without thought, without feeling,--and he rises and reproaches himself
+for this state of things. He calls upon his soul and all that is within
+him to bless the Lord; but the indignant body, abused, insulted,
+ignored, takes the soul by the throat, and says, "If you won't let _me_
+have a good time, neither shall you." Revivals of religion, with
+ministers and with those people whose moral organization leads them to
+take most interest in them, often end in periods of bodily ill-health
+and depression. But is there any need of this? Suppose that a revival of
+religion required, as a formula, that all the members of a given
+congregation should daily take a minute dose of arsenic in concert,--we
+should not be surprised after a while to hear of various ill effects
+therefrom; and, as vestries and lecture-rooms are now arranged, a daily
+prayer-meeting is often nothing more nor less than a number of persons
+spending half an hour a day breathing poison from each other's lungs.
+There is not only no need of this, but, on the contrary, a good supply
+of pure air would make the daily prayer-meeting far more enjoyable. The
+body, if allowed the slightest degree of fair play, so far from being a
+contumacious infidel and opposer, becomes a very fair Christian helper,
+and, instead of throttling the soul, gives it wings to rise to celestial
+regions.
+
+This branch of our subject we will quit with one significant anecdote. A
+certain rural church was somewhat famous for its picturesque Gothic
+architecture, and equally famous for its sleepy atmosphere, the rules of
+Gothic symmetry requiring very small windows, which could be only
+partially opened. Everybody was affected alike in this church: minister
+and people complained that it was like the enchanted ground in the
+Pilgrim's Progress. Do what they would, sleep was ever at their elbows;
+the blue, red, and green of the painted windows melted into a rainbow
+dimness of hazy confusion; and ere they were aware, they were off on a
+cloud to the land of dreams.
+
+An energetic sister in the church suggested the inquiry, whether it was
+ever ventilated, and discovered that it was regularly locked up at the
+close of service, and remained so till opened for the next week. She
+suggested the inquiry, whether giving the church a thorough airing on
+Saturday would not improve the Sunday services; but nobody acted on her
+suggestion. Finally, she borrowed the sexton's key one Saturday night,
+and went into the church and opened all the windows herself, and let
+them remain so for the night. The next day everybody remarked the
+improved comfort of the church, and wondered what had produced the
+change. Nevertheless, when it was discovered, it was not deemed a matter
+of enough importance to call for an order on the sexton to perpetuate
+the improvement.
+
+The ventilation of private dwellings in this country is such as might be
+expected from that entire indifference to the laws of health manifested
+in public establishments. Let a person travel in private conveyance up
+through the valley of the Connecticut, and stop for a night at the
+taverns which he will usually find at the end of each day's stage. The
+bed-chamber into which he will be ushered will be the concentration of
+all forms of bad air. The house is redolent of the vegetables in the
+cellar,--cabbages, turnips, and potatoes; and this fragrance is confined
+and retained by the custom of closing the window-blinds and dropping the
+inside curtains, so that neither air nor sunshine enters in to purify.
+Add to this the strong odor of a new feather-bed and pillows, and you
+have a combination of perfumes most appalling to a delicate sense. Yet
+travellers take possession of these rooms, sleep in them all night
+without raising the window or opening the blinds, and leave them to be
+shut up for other travellers.
+
+The spare chamber of many dwellings seems to be an hermetically closed
+box, opened only twice a year, for spring and fall cleaning; but for the
+rest of the time closed to the sun and the air of heaven. Thrifty
+country housekeepers often adopt the custom of making their beds on the
+instant after they are left, without airing the sheets and mattresses;
+and a bed so made gradually becomes permeated with the insensible
+emanations of the human body, so as to be a steady corrupter of the
+atmosphere.
+
+In the winter, the windows are calked and listed, the throat of the
+chimney built up with a tight brick wall, and a close stove is
+introduced to help burn out the vitality of the air. In a sitting-room
+like this, from five to ten persons will spend about eight months of the
+year, with no other ventilation than that gained by the casual opening
+and shutting of doors. Is it any wonder that consumption every year
+sweeps away its thousands?--that people are suffering constant chronic
+ailments,--neuralgia, nervous dyspepsia, and all the host of indefinite
+bad feelings that rob life of sweetness and flower and bloom?
+
+A recent writer raises the inquiry, whether the community would not gain
+in health by the demolition of all dwelling-houses. That is, he suggests
+the question, whether the evils from foul air are not so great and so
+constant, that they countervail the advantages of shelter. Consumptive
+patients far gone have been known to be cured by long journeys, which
+have required them to be day and night in the open air. Sleep under the
+open heaven, even though the person be exposed to the various accidents
+of weather, has often proved a miraculous restorer after everything else
+had failed. But surely, if simple fresh air is so healing and preserving
+a thing, some means might be found to keep the air in a house just as
+pure and vigorous as it is outside.
+
+An article in the May number of "Harpers' Magazine" presents drawings of
+a very simple arrangement by which any house can be made thoroughly
+self-ventilating. Ventilation, as this article shows, consists in two
+things,--a perfect and certain expulsion from the dwelling of all foul
+air breathed from the lungs or arising from any other cause, and the
+constant supply of pure air.
+
+One source of foul air cannot be too much guarded against,--we mean
+imperfect gas-pipes. A want of thoroughness in execution is the sin of
+our American artisans, and very few gas-fixtures are so thoroughly made
+that more or less gas does not escape and mingle with the air of the
+dwelling. There are parlors where plants cannot be made to live, because
+the gas kills them; and yet their occupants do not seem to reflect that
+an air in which a plant cannot live must be dangerous for a human being.
+The very clemency and long-suffering of Nature to those who persistently
+violate her laws is one great cause why men are, physically speaking,
+such sinners as they are. If foul air poisoned at once and completely,
+we should have well-ventilated houses, whatever else we failed to have.
+But because people can go on for weeks, months, and years, breathing
+poisons, and slowly and imperceptibly lowering the tone of their vital
+powers, and yet be what they call "pretty well, I thank you," sermons on
+ventilation and fresh air go by them as an idle song. "I don't see but
+we are well enough, and we never took much pains about these things.
+There's air enough gets into houses, of course. What with doors opening
+and windows occasionally lifted, the air of houses is generally good
+enough";--and so the matter is dismissed.
+
+One of Heaven's great hygienic teachers is now abroad in the world,
+giving lessons on health to the children of men. The cholera is like the
+angel whom God threatened to send as leader to the rebellious
+Israelites. "Beware of him, obey his voice, and provoke him not; for he
+will not pardon your transgressions." The advent of this fearful
+messenger seems really to be made necessary by the contempt with which
+men treat the physical laws of their being. What else could have
+purified the dark places of New York? What a wiping-up and reforming and
+cleansing is going before him through the country! At last we find that
+Nature is in earnest, and that her laws cannot be always ignored with
+impunity. Poisoned air is recognized at last as an evil,--even although
+the poison cannot be weighed, measured, or tasted; and if all the
+precautions that men are now willing to take could be made perpetual,
+the alarm would be a blessing to the world.
+
+Like the principles of spiritual religion, the principles of physical
+religion are few and easy to be understood. An old medical apothegm
+personifies the hygienic forces as the Doctors Air, Diet, Exercise, and
+Quiet; and these four will be found, on reflection, to cover the whole
+ground of what is required to preserve human health. A human being whose
+lungs have always been nourished by pure air, whose stomach has been fed
+only by appropriate food, whose muscles have been systematically trained
+by appropriate exercises, and whose mind is kept tranquil by faith in
+God and a good conscience, has _perfect physical religion_. There is a
+line where physical religion must necessarily overlap spiritual religion
+and rest upon it. No human being can be assured of perfect health,
+through all the strain and wear and tear of such cares and such
+perplexities as life brings, without the rest of _faith in God_. An
+unsubmissive, unconfiding, unresigned soul will make vain the best
+hygienic treatment; and, on the contrary, the most saintly religious
+resolution and purpose maybe defeated and vitiated by an habitual
+ignorance and disregard of the laws of the physical system.
+
+_Perfect_ spiritual religion cannot exist without perfect physical
+religion. Every flaw and defect in the bodily system is just so much
+taken from the spiritual vitality: we are commanded to glorify God, not
+simply in our spirits, but in our _bodies_ and spirits. The only example
+of perfect manhood the world ever saw impresses us more than anything
+else by an atmosphere of perfect healthiness. There is a calmness, a
+steadiness, in the character of Jesus, a naturalness in his evolution of
+the sublimest truths under the strain of the most absorbing and intense
+excitement, that could commonly from the _one_ perfectly trained and
+developed body, bearing as a pure and sacred shrine the One Perfect
+Spirit. Jesus of Nazareth, journeying on foot from city to city, always
+calm yet always fervent, always steady yet glowing with a white heat of
+sacred enthusiasm, able to walk and teach all day and afterwards to
+continue in prayer all night, with unshaken nerves, sedately patient,
+serenely reticent, perfectly self-controlled, walked the earth, the only
+man that perfectly glorified God in his body no less than in his spirit.
+It is worthy of remark, that in choosing his disciples he chose plain
+men from the laboring classes, who had lived the most obediently to the
+simple, unperverted laws of nature. He chose men of good and pure
+bodies,--simple, natural, childlike, healthy men,--and baptized their
+souls with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
+
+The hygienic bearings of the New Testament have never been sufficiently
+understood. The basis of them lies in the solemn declaration, that our
+bodies are to be temples of the Holy Spirit, and that all abuse of them
+is of the nature of sacrilege. Reverence for the physical system, as the
+outward shrine and temple of the spiritual, is the peculiarity of the
+Christian religion. The doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and
+its physical immortality, sets the last crown of honor upon it. That
+bodily system which God declared worthy to be gathered back from the
+dust of the grave, and re-created, as the soul's immortal companion,
+must necessarily be dear and precious in the eyes of its Creator. The
+one passage in the New Testament in which it is spoken of disparagingly
+is where Paul contrasts it with the brighter glory of what is to
+come,--"He shall change our _vile_ bodies, that they may be fashioned
+like his glorious body." From this passage has come abundance of
+reviling of the physical system. Memoirs of good men are full of abuse
+of it, as the clog, the load, the burden, the chain. It is spoken of as
+pollution, as corruption,--in short, one would think that the Creator
+had imitated the cruelty of some Oriental despots who have been known to
+chain a festering corpse to a living body. Accordingly, the memoirs of
+these pious men are also mournful records of slow suicide, wrought by
+the persistent neglect of the most necessary and important laws of the
+bodily system; and the body, outraged and down-trodden, has turned
+traitor to the soul, and played the adversary with fearful power. Who
+can tell the countless temptations to evil which flow in from a
+neglected, disordered, deranged nervous system,--temptations to anger,
+to irritability, to selfishness, to every kind of sin of appetite and
+passion? No wonder that the poor soul longs for the hour of release from
+such a companion.
+
+But that human body which God declares expressly was made to be the
+temple of the Holy Spirit, which he considers worthy to be perpetuated
+by a resurrection and an immortal existence, cannot be intended to be a
+clog and a hindrance to spiritual advancement. A perfect body, working
+in perfect tune and time, would open glimpses of happiness to the soul
+approaching the joys we hope for in heaven. It is only through the
+images of things which our _bodily_ senses have taught us, that we can
+form any conception of that future bliss; and the more perfect these
+senses, the more perfect our conceptions must be.
+
+The conclusion of the whole matter, and the practical application of
+this sermon, is:--First, that all men set themselves to form the idea of
+what perfect health is, and resolve to realize it for themselves and
+their children. Second, that with a view to this they study the religion
+of the body, in such simple and popular treatises as those of George
+Combe, Dr. Dio Lewis, and others, and with simple and honest hearts
+practise what they there learn. Third, that the training of the bodily
+system should form a regular part of our common-school education,--every
+common school being provided with a well-instructed teacher of
+gymnastics; and the growth and development of each pupil's body being as
+much noticed and marked as is now the growth of his mind. The same
+course should be continued and enlarged in colleges and female
+seminaries, which should have professors of hygiene appointed to give
+thorough instruction concerning the laws of health.
+
+And when this is all done, we may hope that crooked spines, pimpled
+faces, sallow complexions, stooping shoulders, and all other signs
+indicating an undeveloped physical vitality, will, in the course of a
+few generations, disappear from the earth, and men will have bodies
+which will glorify God, their great Architect.
+
+The soul of man has got as far as it can without the body. Religion
+herself stops and looks back, waiting for the body to overtake her. The
+soul's great enemy and hindrance can be made her best friend and most
+powerful help; and it is high time that this era were begun. We old
+sinners, who have lived carelessly, and almost spent our day of grace,
+may not gain much of its good; but the children,--shall there not be a
+more perfect day for them? Shall there not come a day when the little
+child, whom Christ set forth to his disciples as the type of the
+greatest in the kingdom of heaven, shall be the type no less of our
+physical than our spiritual advancement,--when men and women shall
+arise, keeping through long and happy lives the simple, unperverted
+appetites, the joyous freshness of spirit, the keen delight in mere
+existence, the dreamless sleep and happy waking of early childhood?
+
+
+
+
+GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+The bill was paid; the black horse saddled and brought round to the
+door. Mr. and Mrs. Vint stood bare-headed to honor the parting guest;
+and the latter offered him the stirrup-cup.
+
+Griffith looked round for Mercy. She was nowhere to be seen.
+
+Then he said, piteously, to Mrs. Vint, "What, not even bid me good by?"
+
+Mrs. Vint replied, in a very low voice, that there was no disrespect
+intended. "The truth is, sir, she could not trust herself to see you go;
+but she bade me give you a message. Says she, 'Mother, tell him I pray
+God to bless him, go where he will.'"
+
+Something rose in Griffith's throat "O Dame!" said he, "if she only knew
+the truth, she would think better of me than she does. God bless her!"
+
+And he rode sorrowfully away, alone in the world once more.
+
+At the first turn in the road, he wheeled his horse, and took a last
+lingering look.
+
+There was nothing vulgar, nor inn-like, in the "Packhorse." It stood
+fifty yards from the road, on a little rural green, and was picturesque
+itself. The front was entirely clad with large-leaved ivy. Shutters
+there were none: the windows, with their diamond panes, were lustrous
+squares, set like great eyes in the green ivy. It looked a pretty,
+peaceful retreat, and in it Griffith had found peace and a dove-like
+friend.
+
+He sighed, and rode away from the sight; not raging and convulsed, as
+when he rode from Hernshaw Castle, but somewhat sick at heart, and very
+heavy.
+
+He paced so slowly that it took him a quarter of an hour to reach the
+"Woodman,"--a wayside inn, not two miles distant. As he went by, a
+farmer hailed him from the porch, and insisted on drinking with him; for
+he was very popular in the neighborhood. Whilst they were thus employed,
+who should come out but Paul Carrick, booted and spurred, and flushed in
+the face, and rather the worse for liquor imbibed on the spot.
+
+"So you are going, are ye?" said he. "A good job, too." Then, turning to
+the other, "Master Gutteridge, never you save a man's life, if you can
+anyways help it. I saved this one's; and what does he do but turn round
+and poison my sweetheart against me?"
+
+"How can you say so?" remonstrated Griffith. "I never belied you. Your
+name scarce ever passed my lips."
+
+"Don't tell me," said Carrick. "However, she has come to her senses, and
+given your worship the sack. Ride you into Cumberland, and I to the
+'Packhorse,' and take my own again."
+
+With this, he unhooked his nag from the wall, and clattered off to the
+"Packhorse."
+
+Griffith sat a moment stupefied, and then his face was convulsed by his
+ruling passion. He wheeled his horse, gave him the spur, and galloped
+after Carrick.
+
+He soon came up with him, and yelled in his ear, "I'll teach you to spit
+your wormwood in my cup of sorrow."
+
+Carrick shook his fist defiantly, and spurred his horse in turn.
+
+It was an exciting race, and a novel one, but soon decided. The great
+black hunter went ahead, and still improved his advantage. Carrick,
+purple with rage, was full a quarter of a mile behind, when Griffith
+dashed furiously into the stable of the "Packhorse," and, leaving Black
+Dick panting and covered with foam, ran in search of Mercy.
+
+The girl told him she was in the dairy. He looked in at the window, and
+there she was with her mother. With instinctive sense and fortitude she
+had fled to work. She was trying to churn; but it would not do: she had
+laid her shapely arm on the churn, and her head on it, and was crying.
+
+Mrs. Vint was praising Carrick, and offering homely consolation.
+
+"Ah, mother," sighed Mercy, "I could have made him happy. He does not
+know that; and he has turned his back on content. What will become of
+him?"
+
+Griffith heard no more. He went round to the front door, and rushed in.
+
+"Take your own way, Dame," said he, in great agitation. "Put up the
+banns when you like. Sweetheart, wilt wed with me? I'll make thee the
+best husband I can."
+
+Mercy screamed faintly, and lifted up her hands; then she blushed and
+trembled to her very finger ends; but it ended in smiles of joy and her
+brow upon his shoulder.
+
+In which attitude, with Mrs. Vint patting him approvingly on the back,
+they were surprised by Paul Carrick. He came to the door, and there
+stood aghast.
+
+The young man stared ruefully at the picture, and then said, very dryly,
+"I'm too late, methinks."
+
+"That you be, Paul," said Mrs. Vint, cheerfully. "She is meat for your
+master."
+
+"Don't--you--never--come to me--to save your life--no more," blubbered
+Paul, breaking down all of a sudden.
+
+He then retired, little heeded, and came no more to the "Packhorse" for
+several days.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+It is desirable that improper marriages should never be solemnized; and
+the Christian Church saw this, many hundred years ago, and ordained
+that, before a marriage, the banns should be cried in a church three
+Sundays, and any person there present might forbid the union of the
+parties, and allege the just impediment.
+
+This precaution was feeble, but not wholly inadequate--in the Middle
+Ages; for we know by good evidence that the priest was often interrupted
+and the banns forbidden.
+
+But in modern days the banns are never forbidden; in other words, the
+precautionary measure that has come down to us from the thirteenth
+century is out of date and useless. It rests, indeed, on an estimate of
+publicity that has become childish, and almost asinine. If persons about
+to marry were compelled to inscribe their names and descriptions in a
+Matrimonial Weekly Gazette, and a copy of this were placed on a desk in
+ten thousand churches, perhaps we might stop one lady per annum from
+marrying her husband's brother, and one gentleman from wedding his
+neighbor's wife. But the crying of banns in a single parish church is a
+waste of the people's time and the parson's breath.
+
+And so it proved in Griffith Gaunt's case. The Rev. William Wentworth
+published, in the usual recitative, the banns of marriage between Thomas
+Leicester, of the parish of Marylebone in London, and Mercy Vint,
+spinster, of _this_ parish; and creation, present _ex hypothesi
+medi�vale_, but absent in fact, assented, by silence, to the union.
+
+So Thomas Leicester wedded Mercy Vint, and took her home to the
+"Packhorse."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It would be well if those who stifle their consciences, and commit
+crimes, would set up a sort of medico-moral diary, and record their
+symptoms minutely day by day. Such records might help to clear away some
+vague conventional notions.
+
+To tell the truth, our hero, and now malefactor, (the combination is of
+high antiquity,) enjoyed, for several months, the peace of mind that
+belongs of right to innocence; and his days passed in a state of smooth
+complacency. Mercy was a good, wise, and tender wife; she naturally
+looked up to him after marriage more than she did before; she studied
+his happiness, as she had never studied her own; she mastered his
+character, admired his good qualities, discerned his weaknesses, but did
+not view them as defects; only as little traits to be watched, lest she
+should give pain to "her master," as she called him.
+
+Affection, in her, took a more obsequious form than it could ever assume
+in Kate Peyton. And yet she had great influence, and softly governed
+"her master" for his good. She would come into the room and take away
+the bottle, if he was committing excess; but she had a way of doing it,
+so like a good, but resolute mother, and so unlike a termagant, that he
+never resisted. Upon the whole, she nursed his mind, as in earlier days
+she had nursed his body.
+
+And then she made him so comfortable: she observed him minutely to that
+end. As is the eye of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so Mercy
+Leicester's dove-like eye was ever watching "her master's" face, to
+learn the minutest features of his mind.
+
+One evening he came in tired, and there was a black fire in the parlor.
+His countenance fell the sixteenth of an inch. You and I, sir, should
+never have noticed it. But Mercy did, and, ever after, there was a clear
+fire when he came in.
+
+She noted, too, that he loved to play the _viol da gambo_, but disliked
+the trouble of tuning it. So then she tuned it for him.
+
+When he came home at night, early or late, he was sure to find a dry
+pair of shoes on the rug, his six-stringed viol tuned to a hair, a
+bright fire, and a brighter wife, smiling and radiant at his coming, and
+always neat; for, said she, "Shall I don my bravery for strangers, and
+not for my Thomas, that is the best of company?"
+
+They used to go to church, and come back together, hand in hand like
+lovers; for the arm was rarely given in those days. And Griffith said to
+himself every Sunday, "What a comfort to have a Protestant wife!"
+
+But one day he was off his guard, and called her "Kate, my dear."
+
+"Who is Kate?" said she softly, but with a degree of trouble and
+intelligence that made him tremble.
+
+"No matter," said he, all in a flutter. Then, solemnly, "Whoever she
+was, she is dead,--dead."
+
+"Ah!" said Mercy, very tenderly and solemnly, and under her breath. "You
+loved her; yet she must die." She paused; then, in a tone so exquisite I
+can only call it an angel's whisper, "Poor Kate!"
+
+Griffith groaned aloud. "For God's sake, never mention that name to me
+again. Let me forget she ever lived. She was not the true friend to me
+that you have been."
+
+Mercy replied, softly, "Say not so, Thomas. You loved her well. Her
+death had all but cost me thine. Ah, well! we cannot all be the first. I
+am not very jealous, for my part; and I thank God for 't. Thou art a
+dear good husband to me, and that is enow."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Paul Carrick, unable to break off his habits, came to the "Packhorse"
+now and then; but Mercy protected her husband's heart from pain. She was
+kind, and even pitiful; but so discreet and resolute, and contrived to
+draw the line so clearly between her husband and her old sweetheart,
+that Griffith's foible could not burn him, for want of fuel.
+
+And so passed several months, and the man's heart was at peace. He could
+not love Mercy passionately as he had loved Kate; but he was full of
+real regard and esteem for her. It was one of those gentle, clinging
+attachments that outlast grand passions, and survive till death; a
+tender, pure affection, though built upon a crime.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They had been married, and lived in sweet content, about three quarters
+of a year--when trouble came; but in a vulgar form. A murrain carried
+off several of Harry Vint's cattle; and it then came out that he had
+purchased six of them on credit, and had been induced to set his hand
+to bills of exchange for them. His rent was also behind, and, in fact,
+his affairs were in a desperate condition.
+
+He hid it as long as he could from them all; but at last, being served
+with a process for debt, and threatened with a distress and an
+execution, he called a family council and exposed the real state of
+things.
+
+Mrs. Vint rated him soundly for keeping all this secret so long.
+
+He whom they called Thomas Leicester remonstrated with him. "Had you
+told me in time," said he, "I had not paid forfeit for 'The Vine,' but
+settled there, and given you a home."
+
+Mercy said never a word but "Poor father!"
+
+As the peril drew nearer, the conversations became more animated and
+agitated, and soon the old people took to complaining of Thomas
+Leicester to his wife.
+
+"Thou hast married a gentleman; and he hath not the heart to lift a hand
+to save thy folk from ruin."
+
+"Say not so," pleaded Mercy: "to be sure he hath the heart, but not the
+means. 'T was but yestreen he bade me sell his jewels for you. But,
+mother, I think they belonged to some one he loved,--and she died. So,
+poor thing, how could I? Then, if you love me, blame me, and not him."
+
+"Jewels, quotha! will they stop such a gap as ours?" was the
+contemptuous reply.
+
+From complaining of him behind his back, the old people soon came to
+launching innuendoes obliquely at him. Here is one specimen out of a
+dozen.
+
+"Wife, if our Mercy had wedded one of her own sort, mayhap he'd have
+helped us a bit."
+
+"Ay, poor soul; and she so near her time: if the bailiffs come down on
+us next month, 'tis my belief we shall lose her, as well as house and
+home."
+
+The false Thomas Leicester let them run on, in dogged silence; but every
+word was a stab.
+
+And one day, when he had been baited sore with hints, he turned round on
+them fiercely, and said: "Did I get you into this mess? It's all your
+own doing. Learn to see your own faults, and not be so hard on one that
+has been the best servant you ever had, gentleman or not."
+
+Men can resist the remonstrances that wound them, and so irritate them,
+better than they can those gentle appeals that rouse no anger, but
+soften the whole heart. The old people stung him; but Mercy, without
+design, took a surer way. She never said a word; but sometimes, when the
+discussions were at their height, she turned her dove-like eyes on him,
+with a look so loving, so humbly inquiring, so timidly imploring, that
+his heart melted within him.
+
+Ah, that is a true touch of nature and genuine observation of the sexes,
+in the old song,--
+
+    "My feyther urged me sair;
+      My mither didna speak;
+    But she looked me in the face,
+      Till my hairt was like to break."
+
+These silent, womanly, imploring looks of patient Mercy were mightier
+than argument or invective.
+
+The man knew all along where to get money, and how to get it. He had
+only to go to Hernshaw Castle. But his very soul shuddered at the idea.
+However, for Mercy's sake, he took the first step; he compelled himself
+to look the thing in the face, and discuss it with himself. A few months
+ago he could not have done even this,--he loved his lawful wife too
+much; hated her too much. But now, Mercy and Time had blunted both those
+passions; and he could ask himself whether he could not encounter Kate
+and her priest without any very violent emotion.
+
+When they first set up house together, he had spent his whole fortune, a
+sum of two thousand pounds, on repairing and embellishing Hernshaw
+Castle and grounds. Since she had driven him out of the house, he had a
+clear right to have back the money; and he now resolved he would have
+it; but what he wanted was to get it without going to the place in
+person.
+
+And now Mercy's figure, as well as her imploring looks, moved him
+greatly. She was in that condition which appeals to a man's humanity and
+masculine pity, as well as to his affection. To use the homely words of
+Scripture, she was great with child, and in that condition moved slowly
+about him, filling his pipe, and laying his slippers, and ministering to
+all his little comforts; she would make no difference: and when he saw
+the poor dove move about him so heavily, and rather languidly, yet so
+zealously and tenderly, the man's very bowels yearned over her, and he
+felt as if he could die to do her a service.
+
+So, one day, when she was standing by him, bending over his little round
+table, and filling his pipe with her neat hand, he took her by the other
+hand and drew her gently on his knee, her burden and all. "Child!" said
+he, "do not thou fret. I know how to get money; and I'll do 't, for thy
+sake."
+
+"I know that," said she, softly; "can I not read thy face by this time?"
+and so laid her cheek to his. "But, Thomas, for my sake, get it
+honestly,--or not at all," said she, still filling his pipe, with her
+cheek to his.
+
+"I'll but take back my own," said he; "fear naught."
+
+But, after thus positively pledging himself to Mercy, he became
+thoughtful and rather fretful; for he was still most averse to go to
+Hernshaw, and yet could hit upon no other way; since to employ an agent
+would be to let out that he had committed bigamy, and so risk his own
+neck, and break Mercy's heart.
+
+After all his scale was turned by his foible.
+
+Mrs. Vint had been weak enough to confide her trouble to a friend: it
+was all over the parish in three days.
+
+Well, one day, in the kitchen of the Inn, Paul Carrick, having drunk two
+pints of good ale, said to Vint, "Landlord, you ought to have married
+her to me, I've got two hundred pounds laid by. I'd have pulled you out
+of the mire, and welcome."
+
+"Would you, though, Paul?" said Harry Vint; "then, by G--, I wish I
+had."
+
+Now Carrick bawled that out, and Griffith, who was at the door, heard
+it.
+
+He walked into the kitchen, ghastly pale, and spoke to Harry Vint first.
+
+"I take your inn, your farm, and your debts on me," said he; "not one
+without t' other."
+
+"Spoke like a man!" cried the landlord, joyfully; "and so be it--before
+these witnesses."
+
+Griffith turned on Carrick: "This house is mine. Get out on 't, ye
+_jealous_, mischief-making cur." And he took him by the collar and
+dragged him furiously out of the place, and sent him whirling into the
+middle of the road; then ran back for his hat and flung it out after
+him.
+
+This done, he sat down boiling, and his eyes roved fiercely round the
+room in search of some other antagonist. But his strength was so great,
+and his face so altered with this sudden spasm of reviving jealousy,
+that nobody cared to provoke him further.
+
+After a while, however, Harry Vint muttered dryly, "There goes one good
+customer."
+
+Griffith took him up sternly: "If your debts are to be mine, your trade
+shall be mine too, that you had not the head to conduct."
+
+"So be it, son-in-law," said the old man; "only you go so fast: you do
+take possession afore you pays the fee."
+
+Griffith winced. "That shall be the last of your taunts, old man." He
+turned to the ostler: "Bill, give Black Dick his oats at sunrise; and in
+ten days at furthest I'll pay every shilling this house and farm do owe.
+Now, Master White, you'll put in hand a new sign-board for this inn; a
+fresh 'Packhorse,' and paint him jet black, with one white hoof (instead
+of chocolate), in honor of my nag Dick; and in place of Harry Vint
+you'll put in Thomas Leicester. See that is done against I come back,
+or come _you_ here no more."
+
+Soon after this scene he retired to tell Mercy; and, on his departure,
+the suppressed tongues went like mill-clacks.
+
+Dick came round saddled at peep of day; but Mercy had been up more than
+an hour, and prepared her man's breakfast. She clung to him at parting,
+and cried a little; and whispered something in his ear, for nobody else
+to hear: it was an entreaty that he would not be long gone, lest he
+should be far from her in the hour of her peril.
+
+Thereupon he promised her, and kissed her tenderly, and bade her be of
+good heart; and so rode away northwards with dogged resolution.
+
+As soon as he was gone, Mercy's tears flowed without restraint.
+
+Her father set himself to console her. "Thy good man," he said, "is but
+gone back to the high road for a night or two, to follow his trade of
+'stand and deliver.' Fear naught, child; his pistols are well primed: I
+saw to that myself; and his horse is the fleetest in the county. You'll
+have him back in three days, and money in both pockets. I warrant you
+his is a better trade than mine; and he is a fool to change it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Griffith was two days upon the road, and all that time he was turning
+over and discussing in his mind how he should conduct the disagreeable
+but necessary business he had undertaken.
+
+He determined, at last, to make the visit one of business only: no heat,
+no reproaches. That lovely, hateful woman might continue to dishonor his
+name, for he had himself abandoned it. He would not deign to receive any
+money that was hers; but his own two thousand pounds he would have; and
+two or three hundred on the spot by way of instalment. And, with these
+hard views, he drew near to Hernshaw; but the nearer he got, the slower
+he went; for what at a distance had seemed tolerably easy began to get
+more and more difficult and repulsive. Moreover, his heart, which he
+thought he had steeled, began now to flutter a little, and somehow to
+shudder at the approaching interview.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+Caroline Ryder went to the gate of the Grove, and stayed there two
+hours; but, of course, no Griffith came.
+
+She returned the next night, and the next; and then she gave it up, and
+awaited an explanation. None came, and she was bitterly disappointed,
+and indignant.
+
+She began to hate Griffith, and to conceive a certain respect, and even
+a tepid friendship, for the other woman he had insulted.
+
+Another clew to this change of feeling is to be found in a word she let
+drop in talking to another servant. "My mistress," said she, "bears it
+_like a man_."
+
+In fact, Mrs. Gaunt's conduct at this period was truly noble.
+
+She suffered months of torture, months of grief; but the high-spirited
+creature hid it from the world, and maintained a sad but high composure.
+
+She wore her black, for she said, "How do I know he is alive?" She
+retrenched her establishment, reduced her expenses two thirds, and
+busied herself in works of charity and religion.
+
+Her desolate condition attracted a gentleman who had once loved her, and
+now esteemed and pitied her profoundly,--Sir George Neville.
+
+He was still unmarried, and she was the cause; so far at least as this:
+she had put him out of conceit with the other ladies at that period when
+he had serious thoughts of marriage: and the inclination to marry at all
+had not since returned.
+
+If the Gaunts had settled at Boulton, Sir George would have been their
+near neighbor; but Neville's Court was nine miles from Hernshaw Castle:
+and when they met, which was not very often, Mrs. Gaunt was on her guard
+to give Griffith no shadow of uneasiness. She was therefore rather more
+dignified and distant with Sir George than her own inclination and his
+merits would have prompted; for he was a superior and very agreeable
+man.
+
+When it became quite certain that her husband had left her, Sir George
+rode up to Hernshaw Castle, and called upon her.
+
+She begged to be excused from seeing him.
+
+Now Sir George was universally courted, and this rather nettled him;
+however, he soon learned that she received nobody except a few religious
+friends of her own sex.
+
+Sir George then wrote her a letter that did him credit: it was full of
+worthy sentiment and good sense. For instance, he said he desired to
+intrude his friendly offices and his sympathy upon her, but nothing
+more. Time had cured him of those warmer feelings which had once ruffled
+his peace; but Time could not efface his tender esteem for the lady he
+had loved in his youth, nor his profound respect for her character.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt wept over his gentle letter, and was on the verge of asking
+herself why she had chosen Griffith instead of this chevalier. She sent
+him a sweet, yet prudent reply; she did not encourage him to visit her;
+but said, that, if ever she should bring herself to receive visits from
+the gentlemen of the county during her husband's absence, he should be
+the first to know it. She signed herself his unhappy, but deeply
+grateful, servant and friend.
+
+One day, as she came out of a poor woman's cottage, with a little basket
+on her arm, which she had emptied in the cottage, she met Sir George
+Neville full.
+
+He took his hat off, and made her a profound bow. He was then about to
+ride on, but altered his mind, and, dismounted to speak to her.
+
+The interview was constrained at first; but erelong he ventured to tell
+her she really ought to consult with some old friend and practical man
+like himself. He would undertake to scour the country, and find her
+husband, if he was above ground.
+
+"Me go a-hunting the man," cried she, turning red; "not if he was my
+king as well as my husband. He knows where to find _me_; and that is
+enough."
+
+"Well, but madam, would you not like to learn where he is, and what he
+is doing?"
+
+"Why, yes, my good, kind friend, I _should_ like to know that." And,
+having pronounced these words with apparent calmness, she burst out
+crying, and almost ran away from him.
+
+Sir George looked sadly after her, and formed a worthy resolution. He
+saw there was but one road to her regard. He resolved to hunt her
+husband for her, without intruding on her, or giving her a voice in the
+matter. Sir George was a magistrate, and accustomed to organize
+inquiries; spite of the length of time that had elapsed, he traced
+Griffith for a considerable distance. Pending further inquiries, he sent
+Mrs. Gaunt word that the truant had not made for the sea, but had gone
+due south.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt returned him her warm thanks for this scrap of information.
+So long as Griffith remained in the island there was always a hope he
+might return to her. The money he had taken would soon be exhausted; and
+poverty might drive him to her; and she was so far humbled by grief,
+that she could welcome him even on those terms.
+
+Affliction tempers the proud. Mrs. Gaunt was deeply injured as well as
+insulted; but, for all that, in her many days and weeks of solitude and
+sorrow, she took herself to task, and saw her fault. She became more
+gentle, more considerate of her servants' feelings, more womanly.
+
+For many months she could not enter "the Grove." The spirited woman's
+very flesh revolted at the sight of the place where she had been
+insulted and abandoned. But, as she went deeper in religion, she forced
+herself to go to the gate and look in, and say out loud, "I gave the
+first offence," and then she would go in-doors again, quivering with
+the internal conflict.
+
+Finally, being a Catholic, and therefore attaching more value to
+self-torture than we do, the poor soul made this very grove her place of
+penance. Once a week she had the fortitude to drag herself to the very
+spot where Griffith had denounced her; and there she would kneel and
+pray for him and for herself. And certainly, if humility and
+self-abasement were qualities of the body, here was to be seen their
+picture; for her way was to set her crucifix up at the foot of a tree;
+then to bow herself all down, between kneeling and lying, and put her
+lips meekly to the foot of the crucifix, and so pray long and earnestly.
+
+Now, one day, while she was thus crouching in prayer, a gentleman,
+booted and spurred and splashed, drew near, with hesitating steps. She
+was so absorbed, she did not hear those steps at all till they were very
+near; but then she trembled all over; for her delicate ear recognized a
+manly tread she had not heard for many a day. She dared not move nor
+look, for she thought it was a mere sound, sent to her by Heaven to
+comfort her.
+
+But the next moment a well-known mellow voice came like a thunder-clap,
+it shook her so.
+
+"Forgive me, my good dame, but I desire to know--"
+
+The question went no further, for Kate Gaunt sprang to her feet, with a
+loud scream, and stood glaring at Griffith Gaunt, and he at her.
+
+And thus husband and wife met again,--met, by some strange caprice of
+Destiny, on the very spot where they had parted so horribly.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+The gaze these two persons bent on one another may be half imagined: it
+can never be described.
+
+Griffith spoke first. "In black!" said he, in a whisper.
+
+His voice was low; his face, though pale and grim, had not the terrible
+aspect he wore at parting.
+
+So she thought he had come back in an amicable spirit; and she flew to
+him, with a cry of love, and threw her arm round his neck, and panted on
+his shoulder.
+
+At this reception, and the tremulous contact of one he had loved so
+dearly, a strange shudder ran through his frame,--a shudder that marked
+his present repugnance, yet indicated her latent power.
+
+He himself felt he had betrayed some weakness; and it was all the worse
+for her. He caught her wrist and put her from him, not roughly, but with
+a look of horror. "The day is gone by for that, madam," he gasped. Then,
+sternly: "Think you I came here to play the credulous husband?"
+
+Mrs. Gaunt drew back in her turn, and faltered out, "What! come back
+here, and not sorry for what you have done? not the least sorry? O my
+heart! you have almost broken it."
+
+"Prithee, no more of this," said Griffith, sternly. "You and I are
+naught to one another now, and forever. But there, you are but a woman,
+and I did not come to quarrel with you." And he fixed his eyes on the
+ground.
+
+"Thank God for that," faltered Mrs. Gaunt. "O sir, the sight of you--the
+thought of what you were to me once--till jealousy blinded you. Lend me
+your arm, if you are a man; my limbs do fail me."
+
+The shock had been too much; a pallor overspread her lovely features,
+her knees knocked together, and she was tottering like some tender tree
+cut down, when Griffith, who, with all his faults, was a man, put out
+his strong arm, and she clung to it, quivering all over, and weeping
+hysterically.
+
+That little hand, with its little feminine clutch, trembling on his arm,
+raised a certain male compassion for her piteous condition; and he
+bestowed a few cold, sad words of encouragement on her. "Come, come,"
+said he, gently; "I shall not trouble you long. I'm cured of my
+jealousy. 'T is gone, along with my love. You and your saintly sinner
+are safe from me. I am come hither for my own, my two thousand pounds,
+and for nothing more."
+
+"Ah! you are come back for money, not for me?" she murmured, with forced
+calmness.
+
+"For money, and not for you, of course," said he, coldly.
+
+The words were hardly out of his mouth, when the proud lady flung his
+arm from her. "Then money shall you have, and not me; nor aught of me
+but my contempt."
+
+But she could not carry it off as heretofore. She turned her back
+haughtily on him; but, at the first step, she burst out crying, "Come,
+and I'll give you what you are come for," she sobbed. "Ungrateful!
+heartless! O, how little I knew this man!"
+
+She crept away before him, drooping her head, and crying bitterly; and
+he followed her, hanging his head, and ill at ease; for there was such
+true passion in her voice, her streaming eyes, and indeed in her whole
+body, that he was moved, and the part he was playing revolted him. He
+felt confused and troubled, and asked himself how on earth it was that
+she, the guilty one, contrived to appear the injured one, and made him,
+the wronged one, feel almost remorseful.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Gaunt took no more notice of him now than if he had been a dog
+following at her heels. She went into the drawing-room, and sank
+helplessly on the nearest couch, threw her head wearily back, and shut
+her eyes. Yet the tears trickled through the closed lids.
+
+Griffith caught up a hand-bell, and rang it vigorously.
+
+Quick, light steps were soon heard pattering; and in darted Caroline
+Ryder, with an anxious face; for of late she had conceived a certain
+sober regard for her mistress, who had ceased to be her successful
+rival, and who bore her grief _like a man_.
+
+At sight of Griffith, Ryder screamed aloud, and stood panting.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt opened her eyes. "Ay, child, he has come home," said she,
+bitterly; "his body, but not his heart."
+
+She stretched her hand out feebly, and pointed to a bottle of salts that
+stood on the table. Ryder ran and put them to her nostrils. Mrs. Gaunt
+whispered in her ear, "Send a swift horse for Father Francis; tell him
+life or death!"
+
+Ryder gave her a very intelligent look, and presently slipped out, and
+ran into the stable-yard.
+
+At the gate she caught sight of Griffith's horse. What does this
+quick-witted creature do but send the groom off on that horse, and not
+on Mrs. Gaunt's.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Now, Dame," said Griffith, doggedly, "are you better?"
+
+"Ay, I thank you."
+
+"Then listen to me. When you and I set up house together, I had two
+thousand pounds. I spent it on this house. The house is yours. You told
+me so, one day, you know."
+
+"Ah, you can remember my faults."
+
+"I remember all, Kate."
+
+"Thank you, at least, for calling me Kate. Well, Griffith, since you
+abandoned us, I thought, and thought, and thought, of all that might
+befall you; and I said, 'What will he do for money?' My jewels, that you
+did me the honor to take, would not last you long, I feared. So I
+reduced my expenses three fourths at least, and I put by some money for
+your need."
+
+Griffith looked amazed. "For my need?" said he.
+
+"For whose else? I'll send for it, and place it in your
+hands--to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow? Why not to-day?"
+
+"I have a favor to ask of you first."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"Justice. If you are fond of money, I too have something I prize: my
+honor. You have belied and insulted me, sir; but I know you were under a
+delusion. I mean to remove that delusion, and make you see how little I
+am to blame; for, alas! I own I was imprudent. But, O Griffith, as I
+hope to be saved, it was the imprudence of innocence and
+over-confidence."
+
+"Mistress," said Griffith, in a stern, yet agitated voice, "be advised,
+and leave all this: rouse not a man's sleeping wrath. Let bygones be
+bygones."
+
+Mrs. Gaunt rose, and said, faintly, "So be it. I must go, sir, and give
+some orders for your entertainment."
+
+"O, don't put yourself about for me," said Griffith: "I am not the
+master of this house."
+
+Mrs. Gaunt's lip trembled, but she was a match for him. "Then are you my
+guest," said she; "and my credit is concerned in your comfort."
+
+She made him a courtesy, as if he were a stranger, and marched to the
+door, concealing, with great pride and art, a certain trembling of her
+knees.
+
+At the door she found Ryder, and bade her follow, much to that lady's
+disappointment; for she desired a _t�te-�-t�te_ with Griffith, and an
+explanation.
+
+As soon as the two women were out of Griffith's hearing, the mistress
+laid her hand on the servant's arm, and, giving way to her feelings,
+said, all in a flutter: "Child, if I have been a good mistress to thee,
+show it now. Help me keep him in the house till Father Francis comes."
+
+"I undertake to do so much," said Ryder, firmly. "Leave it to me,
+mistress."
+
+Mrs. Gaunt threw her arms round Ryder's neck and kissed her.
+
+It was done so ardently, and by a woman hitherto so dignified and proud,
+that Ryder was taken by surprise, and almost affected.
+
+As for the service Mrs. Gaunt had asked of her, it suited her own
+designs.
+
+"Mistress," said she, "be ruled by me; keep out of his way a bit, while
+I get Miss Rose ready. You understand."
+
+"Ah! I have one true friend in the house," said poor Mrs. Gaunt. She
+then confided in Ryder, and went away to give her own orders for
+Griffith's reception.
+
+Ryder found little Rose, dressed her to perfection, and told her her
+dear papa was come home. She then worked upon the child's mind in that
+subtle way known to women, so that Rose went down stairs loaded and
+primed, though no distinct instructions had been given her.
+
+As for Griffith, he walked up and down, uneasy; and wished he had stayed
+at the "Packhorse." He had not bargained for all these emotions; the
+peace of mind he had enjoyed for some months seemed trickling away.
+
+"Mercy, my dear," said he to himself, "'t will be a dear penny to me, I
+doubt."
+
+Then he went to the window, and looked at the lawn, and sighed. Then he
+sat down, and thought of the past.
+
+Whilst he sat thus moody, the door opened very softly, and a little
+cherubic face, with blue eyes and golden hair, peeped in. Griffith
+started. "Ah!" cried Rose, with a joyful scream; and out flew her little
+arms, and away she came, half running, half dancing, and was on his knee
+in a moment, with her arms round his neck.
+
+"Papa! papa!" she cried. "O my dear, dear, dear, darling papa!" And she
+kissed and patted his cheek again and again.
+
+Her innocent endearments moved him to tears. "My pretty angel!" he
+sighed: "my lamb!"
+
+"How your heart beats! Don't cry, dear papa. Nobody is dead: only we
+thought you were. I'm so glad you are come home alive. Now we can take
+off this nasty black: I hate it."
+
+"What, 't is for me you wear it, pretty one?"
+
+"Ay. Mamma made us. Poor mamma has been so unhappy. And that reminds me:
+you are a wicked man, papa. But I love you all one for that. It _tis_ so
+dull when everybody is good like mamma; and she makes me dreadfully good
+too; but now you are come back, there will be a little, little
+wickedness again, it is to be hoped. Aren't you glad you are not dead,
+and are come home instead? I am."
+
+"I am glad I have seen thee. Come, take my hand, and let us go look at
+the old place."
+
+"Ay. But you must wait till I get on my new hat and feather."
+
+"Nay, nay; art pretty enough bare-headed."
+
+"O papa! but I must, for decency. You are company now; you know."
+
+"Dull company, sweetheart, thou 'lt find me."
+
+"I don't mean that: I mean, when you were here always, you were only
+papa; but now you come once in an age, you're COMPANY. I won't budge
+without 'em; so there, now."
+
+"Well, little one, I do submit to thy hat and feather; only be quick, or
+I shall go forth without thee."
+
+"If you dare," said Rose impetuously; "for I won't be half a moment."
+
+She ran and extorted from Ryder the new hat and feather, which by rights
+she was not to have worn until next month.
+
+Griffith and his little girl went all over the well-known premises, he
+sad and moody, she excited and chattering, and nodding her head down,
+and cocking her eye up every now and then, to get a glimpse of her
+feather.
+
+"And don't you go away again, dear papa. It _tis_ so dull without you.
+Nobody comes here. Mamma won't let 'em."
+
+"Nobody except Father Leonard," said Griffith, bitterly.
+
+"Father Leonard? Why, he never comes here. Leonard! That is the
+beautiful priest that used to pat me on the head, and bid me love and
+honor my parents. And so I do. Only mamma is always crying, and you keep
+away; so how can I love and honor you, when I never see you, and they
+keep telling me you are good for nothing, and dead."
+
+"My young mistress, when did you see Father Leonard last?" said
+Griffith, gnawing his lip.
+
+"How can I tell? Why, it was miles ago; when I was a mere girl. You know
+he went away before you did."
+
+"I know nothing of the kind. Tell me the truth now. He has visited here
+since I went away."
+
+"Nay, papa."
+
+"That is strange. She visits him, then?"
+
+"What, mamma? She seldom stirs out; and never beyond the village. We
+keep no carriage now. Mamma is turned such a miser. She is afraid you
+will be poor; so she puts it all by for you. But now you are come, we
+shall have carriages and things again. O, by the by, Father Leonard! I
+heard them say he had left England, so I did."
+
+"When was that?"
+
+"Well, I think that was a little bit after you went away."
+
+"That is strange," said Griffith, thoughtfully.
+
+He led his little girl by the hand, but scarcely listened to her
+prattle; he was so surprised and puzzled by the information he had
+elicited from her.
+
+Upon the whole, however, he concluded that his wife and the priest had
+perhaps been smitten with remorse, and had parted--when it was too late.
+
+This, and the peace of mind he had found elsewhere, somewhat softened
+his feelings towards them. "So," thought he, "they were not hardened
+creatures after all. Poor Kate!"
+
+As these milder feelings gained on him, Rose suddenly uttered a joyful
+cry; and, looking up, he saw Mrs. Gaunt coming towards him, and Ryder
+behind her. Both were in gay colors, which, in fact, was what had so
+delighted Rose.
+
+They came up, and Mrs. Gaunt seemed a changed woman. She looked young
+and beautiful, and bent a look of angelic affection on her daughter; and
+said to Griffith, "Is she not grown? Is she not lovely? Sure you will
+never desert her again."
+
+"'T was not her I deserted, but her mother; and she had played me false
+with her d----d priest," was Griffith's reply.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt drew back with horror. "This, before my girl?" she cried.
+"GRIFFITH GAUNT, YOU LIE!"
+
+And this time it was the woman who menaced the man. She rose to six
+feet high, and advanced on him with her great gray eyes flashing flames
+at him. "O that I were a man!" she cried: "this insult should be the
+last. I'd lay you dead at her feet and mine."
+
+Griffith actually drew back a step; for the wrath of such a woman was
+terrible,--more terrible perhaps to a brave man than to a coward.
+
+Then he put his hands in his pockets with a dogged air, and said,
+grinding his teeth, "But--as you are not a man, and I'm not a woman, we
+can't settle it that way. So I give you the last word, and good day. I'm
+sore in want of money; but I find I can't pay the price it is like to
+cost me. Farewell."
+
+"Begone!" said Mrs. Gaunt: "and, this time, forever. Ruffian, and fool,
+I loathe the sight of you."
+
+Rose ran weeping to her. "O mamma, don't quarrel with papa": then back
+to Griffith, "O papa, don't quarrel with mamma,--for my sake."
+
+Griffith hung his head, and said, in a broken voice: "No, my lamb, we
+twain must not quarrel before thee. We will part in silence, as becomes
+those that once were dear, and have thee to show for 't. Madam, I wish
+you all health and happiness. Adieu."
+
+He turned on his heel; and Mrs. Gaunt took Rose to her knees, and bent
+and wept over her. Niobe over her last was not more graceful, nor more
+sad.
+
+As for Ryder, she stole quietly after her retiring master. She found him
+peering about, and asked him demurely what he was looking for.
+
+"My good black horse, girl, to take me from this cursed place. Did I not
+tie him to yon gate?"
+
+"The black horse? Why I sent him for Father Francis. Nay, listen to me,
+master; you know I was always your friend, and hard upon _her_. Well,
+since you went, things have come to pass that make me doubt. I do begin
+to fear you were too hasty."
+
+"Do you tell me this now, woman?" cried Griffith, furiously.
+
+"How could I tell you before? Why did you break your tryst with me? If
+you had come according to your letter, I'd have told you months ago what
+I tell you now; but, as I was saying, the priest never came near her
+after you left; and she never stirred abroad to meet him. More than
+that, he has left England."
+
+"Remorse! Too late."
+
+"Perhaps it may, sir. I couldn't say; but there is one coming that knows
+the very truth."
+
+"Who is that?"
+
+"Father Francis. The moment you came, sir, I took it on me to send for
+him. You know the man: he won't tell a lie to please our dame. And he
+knows all; for Leonard has confessed to him. I listened, and heard him
+say as much. Then, master, be advised, and get the truth from Father
+Francis."
+
+Griffith trembled. "Francis is an honest man," said he; "I'll wait till
+he comes. But O, my lass, I find money may be bought too dear."
+
+"Your chamber is ready, sir, and your clothes put out. Supper is
+ordered. Let me show you your room. We are all so happy now."
+
+"Well," said he, listlessly, "since my horse is gone, and Francis
+coming, and I'm wearied and sick of the world, do what you will with me
+for this one day."
+
+He followed her mechanically to a bedroom, where was a bright fire, and
+a fine shirt, and his silver-laced suit of clothes airing.
+
+A sense of luxurious comfort struck him at the sight.
+
+"Ay," said he, "I'll dress, and so to supper; I'm main hungry. It seems
+a man must eat, let his heart be ever so sore."
+
+Before she left him, Ryder asked him coldly why he had broken his
+appointment with her.
+
+"That is too long a story to tell you now," said he, coolly.
+
+"Another time then," said she; and went out smiling, but bitter at
+heart.
+
+Griffith had a good wash, and enjoyed certain little conveniences which
+he had not at the "Packhorse." He doffed his riding suit, and donned the
+magnificent dress Ryder had selected for him; and with his fine clothes
+he somehow put on more ceremonious manners.
+
+He came down to the dining-room. To his surprise he found it illuminated
+with wax candles, and the table and sideboard gorgeous with plate.
+
+Supper soon smoked upon the board; but, though it was set for three,
+nobody else appeared.
+
+Griffith inquired of Ryder whether he was to sup alone.
+
+She replied: "My mistress desires you not to wait for her. She has no
+stomach."
+
+"Well, then, I have," said Griffith, and fell to with a will.
+
+Ryder, who waited on this occasion, stood and eyed him with curiosity:
+his conduct was so unlike a woman's.
+
+Just as he concluded, the door opened, and a burly form entered.
+Griffith rose, and embraced him with his arms and lips, after the
+fashion of the day. "Welcome, thou one honest priest!" said he.
+
+"Welcome, thrice welcome, my long lost son!" said the cordial Francis.
+
+"Sit down, man, and eat with me. I'll begin again, for you."
+
+"Presently, Squire; I've work to do first. Go thou and bid thy mistress
+come hither to me."
+
+Ryder, to whom this was addressed, went out, and left the gentlemen
+together.
+
+Father Francis drew out of his pocket two packets, carefully tied and
+sealed. He took a knife from the table and cut the strings, and broke
+the seals. Griffith eyed him with curiosity.
+
+Father Francis looked at him. "These," said he, very gravely, "are the
+letters that Brother Leonard hath written, at sundry times, to Catharine
+Gaunt, and these are the letters Catharine Gaunt hath written to Brother
+Leonard."
+
+Griffith trembled, and his face was convulsed.
+
+"Let me read them at once," said he: and stretched out his hand, with
+eyes like a dog's in the dark.
+
+Francis withdrew them, quietly. "Not till she is also present," said he.
+
+At that Griffith's good-nature, multiplied by a good supper, took the
+alarm. "Come, come, sir," said he, "have a little mercy. I know you are
+a just man, and, though a boon companion, most severe in all matters of
+morality. But, I tell you plainly, if you are going to drag this poor
+woman in the dirt, I shall go out of the room. What is the use
+tormenting her? I've told her my mind before her own child: and now I
+wish I had not. When I caught them in the grove I lifted my hand to
+strike her, and she never winced; I had better have left that alone too,
+methinks. D--n the women: you are always in the wrong if you treat 'em
+like men. They are not wicked: they are weak. And this one hath lain in
+my bosom, and borne me two children, and one he lieth in the churchyard,
+and t' other hath her hair and my very eyes: and the truth is, I can't
+bear any man on earth to miscall her, but myself. God help me; I doubt I
+love her still too well to sit by and see her tortured. She was all in
+black for her fault, poor penitent wretch. Give me the letters; but let
+her be."
+
+Francis was moved by this appeal, but shook his head solemnly; and, ere
+Griffith could renew his argument, the door was flung open by Ryder, and
+a stately figure sailed in, that took both the gentlemen by surprise.
+
+It was Mrs. Gaunt, in full dress. Rich brocade that swept the ground;
+magnificent bust, like Parian marble varnished; and on her brow a diadem
+of emeralds and diamonds that gave her beauty an imperial stamp.
+
+She swept into the room as only fine women can sweep, made Griffith a
+haughty courtesy, and suddenly lowered her head, and received Father
+Francis's blessing: then seated herself, and quietly awaited events.
+
+"The brazen jade!" thought Griffith. "But how divinely beautiful!" And
+he became as agitated as she was calm--in appearance. For need I say her
+calmness was put on? Defensive armor made for her by her pride and her
+sex.
+
+The voice of Father Francis now rose, solid, grave, and too impressive
+to be interrupted.
+
+"My daughter, and you who are her husband and my friend, I am here to do
+justice between you both, with God's help; and to show you both your
+faults. Catharine Gaunt, you began the mischief, by encouraging another
+man to interfere between you and your husband in things secular."
+
+"But, father, he was my director, my priest."
+
+"My daughter, do you believe, with the Protestants, that marriage is a
+mere civil contract; or do you hold, with us, that it is one of the holy
+sacraments?"
+
+"Can you ask me?" murmured Kate, reproachfully.
+
+"Well, then, those whom God and the whole Church have in holy sacrament
+united, what right hath a single priest to disunite in heart, and make
+the wife false to any part whatever of that most holy vow? I hear, and
+not from you, that Leonard did set you against your husband's friends,
+withdrew you from society, and sent him abroad alone. In one word, he
+robbed your husband of his companion and his friend. The sin was
+Leonard's; but the fault was yours. You were five years older than
+Leonard, and a woman of sense and experience; he but a boy by
+comparison. What right had you to surrender your understanding, in a
+matter of this kind, to a poor silly priest, fresh from his seminary,
+and as manifestly without a grain of common sense as he was full of
+piety?"
+
+This remonstrance produced rather a striking effect on both those who
+heard it. Mrs. Gaunt seemed much struck with it. She leaned back in her
+chair, and put her hand to her brow with a sort of despairing gesture
+that Griffith could not very well understand, it seemed to him so
+disproportionate.
+
+It softened him, however, and he faltered out, "Ay, father, that is how
+it all began. Would to heaven it had stopped there."
+
+Francis resumed. "This false step led to consequences you never dreamed
+of; for one of your romantic notions is, that a priest is an angel. I
+have known you, in former times, try to take me for an angel: then would
+I throw cold water on your folly by calling lustily for chines of beef
+and mugs of ale. But I suppose Leonard thought himself an angel too; and
+the upshot was, he fell in love with his neighbor's wife."
+
+"And she with him," groaned Griffith.
+
+"Not so," said Francis; "but perhaps she was nearer it than she thinks."
+
+"Prove that," said Mrs. Gaunt, "and I'll fall on my knees to him before
+you."
+
+Francis smiled, and proceeded. "To be sure, from the moment you
+discovered Leonard was in love with you, you drew back, and conducted
+yourself with prudence and propriety. Read these letters, sir, and tell
+me what you think of them."
+
+He handed them to Griffith. Griffith's hand trembled visibly as he took
+them.
+
+"Stay," said Father Francis; "your better way will be to read the whole
+correspondence according to the dates. Begin with this of Mrs. Gaunt's."
+
+Griffith read the letter in an audible whisper.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt listened with all her ears.
+
+     "DEAR FATHER AND FRIEND,--The words you spoke to me to-day
+     admit but one meaning; you are jealous of my husband.
+
+     "Then you must be--how can I write it?--almost in love with me.
+
+     "So then my poor husband was wiser than I. He saw a rival in
+     you: and he has one.
+
+     "I am deeply, deeply shocked. I ought to be very angry too;
+     but, thinking of your solitary condition, and all the good you
+     have done to my soul, my heart has no place for aught but pity.
+     Only, as I am in my senses, and you are not, you must now obey
+     me, as heretofore I have obeyed you. You must seek another
+     sphere of duty, without delay.
+
+     "These seem harsh words from me to you. You will live to see
+     they are kind ones.
+
+     "Write me one line, and no more, to say you will be ruled by me
+     in this.
+
+     "God and the saints have you in their holy keeping. So prays
+     your affectionate and
+
+     "Sorrowful daughter and true friend,
+
+                  "CATHARINE GAUNT."
+
+
+"Poor soul!" said Griffith. "Said I not that women are not wicked, but
+weak? Who would think that after this he could get the better of her
+good resolves,--the villain!"
+
+"Now read his reply," said Father Francis.
+
+"Ay," said Griffith. "So this is his one word of reply, is it? three
+pages closely writ,--the villain, O the villain!"
+
+"Read the villain's letter," said Francis, calmly.
+
+The letter was very humble and pathetic,--the reply of a good, though
+erring man, who owned that in a moment of weakness he had been betrayed
+into a feeling inconsistent with his holy profession. He begged his
+correspondent, however, not to judge him quite so hardly. He reminded
+her of his solitary life, his natural melancholy, and assured her that
+all men in his condition had moments when they envied those whose bosoms
+had partners. "Such a cry of anguish," said he, "was once wrung from a
+maiden queen, maugre all her pride. The Queen of Scots hath a son; and I
+am but a barren stock." He went on to say that prayer and vigilance
+united do much. "Do not despair so soon of me. Flight is not cure: let
+me rather stay, and, with God's help and the saints', overcome this
+unhappy weakness. If I fail, it will indeed be time for me to go, and
+never again see the angelic face of my daughter and my benefactress."
+
+Griffith laid down the letter. He was somewhat softened by it, and said,
+gently, "I cannot understand it. This is not the letter of a thorough
+bad man neither."
+
+"No," said Father Francis, coldly, "'t is the letter of a self-deceiver;
+and there is no more dangerous man to himself and others than your
+self-deceiver. But now let us see whether he can throw dust in her eyes,
+as well as his own." And he handed him Kate's reply.
+
+The first word of it was, "You deceive yourself." The writer then
+insisted, quietly, that he owed it to himself, to her, and to her
+husband, whose happiness he was destroying, to leave the place at her
+request.
+
+"Either you must go, or I," said she: "and pray let it be you. Also,
+this place is unworthy of your high gifts: and I love you, in my way,
+the way I mean to love you when we meet again--in heaven; and I labor
+your advancement to a sphere more worthy of you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I wish space permitted me to lay the whole correspondence before the
+reader; but I must confine myself to its general purport.
+
+It proceeded in this way: the priest, humble, eloquent, pathetic; but
+gently, yet pertinaciously, clinging to the place: the lady, gentle,
+wise, and firm, detaching with her soft fingers, first one hand, then
+another, of the poor priest's, till at last he was driven to the sorry
+excuse that he had no money to travel with, nor place to go to.
+
+"I can't understand it," said Griffith. "Are these letters all forged,
+or are there two Kate Gaunts? the one that wrote these prudent letters,
+and the one I caught upon this very priest's arm. Perdition!"
+
+Mrs. Gaunt started to her feet. "Methinks 'tis time for me to leave the
+room," said she, scarlet.
+
+"Gently, my good friends; one thing at a time," said Francis. "Sit thou
+down, impetuous. The letters, sir,--what think you of them?"
+
+"I see no harm in them," said Griffith.
+
+"No harm! Is that all? But I say these are very remarkable letters, sir:
+and they show us that a woman may be innocent and unsuspicious, and so
+seem foolish, yet may be wise for all that. In her early communication
+with Leonard,
+
+        'At Wisdom's gate Suspicion slept;
+    And thought no ill where no ill seemed.'
+
+But, you see, suspicion being once aroused, wisdom was not to be lulled
+nor blinded. But that is not all: these letters breathe a spirit of
+Christian charity; of true, and rare, and exalted piety. Tender are
+they, without passion; wise, yet not cold; full of conjugal love, and of
+filial pity for an erring father, whom she leads, for his good, with
+firm yet dutiful hand. Trust to my great experience: doubt the chastity
+of snow rather than hers who could write these pure and exquisite lines.
+My good friend, you heard me rebuke and sneer at this poor lady for
+being too innocent and unsuspicious of man's frailty: now hear me own to
+you that I could no more have written these angelic letters than a
+barn-door fowl could soar to the mansions of the saints in heaven."
+
+This unexpected tribute took Mrs. Gaunt's heart by storm; she threw her
+arms round Father Francis's neck, and wept upon his shoulder.
+
+"Ah!" she sobbed, "you are the only one left that loves me."
+
+She could not understand justice praising her: it must be love.
+
+"Ay," said Griffith, in a broken voice, "she writes like an angel: she
+speaks like an angel: she looks like an angel. My heart says she is an
+angel. But my eyes have shown me she is naught. I left her, unable to
+walk, by her way of it; I came back and found her on that priest's arm,
+springing along like a greyhound." He buried his head in his hands, and
+groaned aloud.
+
+Francis turned to Mrs. Gaunt, and said, a little severely, "How do you
+account for that?"
+
+"I'll tell _you_, Father," said Kate, "because you love me. I do not
+speak to _you_, sir: for you never loved me."
+
+"I could give thee the lie," said Griffith, in a trembling voice; "but
+'tis not worth while. Know, sir, that within twenty-four hours after I
+caught her with that villain, I lay a-dying for her sake; and lost my
+wits; and, when I came to, they were a-making my shroud in the very room
+where I lay. No matter; no matter; I never loved her."
+
+"Alas! poor soul!" sighed Kate. "Would I had died ere I brought thee to
+that!" And, with this, they both began to cry at the same moment.
+
+"Ay, poor fools," said Father Francis, softly; "neither of ye loved t'
+other; that is plain. So now sit you there, and let us have your
+explanation; for you must own appearances are strong against you."
+
+Mrs. Gaunt drew her stool to Francis's knee; and addressing herself to
+him alone, explained as follows:--
+
+"I saw Father Leonard was giving way, and only wanted one good push,
+after a manner. Well, you know I had got him, by my friends, a good
+place in Ireland: and I had money by me for his journey; so, when my
+husband talked of going to the fair, I thought, 'O, if I could but get
+this settled to his mind before he comes back!' So I wrote a line to
+Leonard. You can read it if you like. 'T is dated the 30th of September,
+I suppose."
+
+"I will," said Francis, and read this out:--
+
+     "DEAR FATHER AND FRIEND,--You have fought the good fight, and
+     conquered. Now, therefore, I _will_see you once more, and thank
+     you for my husband (he is so unhappy), and put the money for
+     your journey into your hand myself,--your journey to Ireland.
+     You are the Duke of Leinster's chaplain; for I have accepted
+     that place for you. Let me see you to-morrow in the Grove, for
+     a few minutes, at high noon. God bless you.
+
+
+
+                  "CATHARINE GAUNT."
+
+"Well, father," said Mrs. Gaunt, "'t is true that I could only walk two
+or three times across the room. But, alack, you know what women are:
+excitement gives us strength. With thinking that our unhappiness was at
+an end,--that, when he should come back from the fair, I should fling my
+arm round his neck, and tell him I had removed the cause of his misery,
+and so of mine,--I seemed to have wings; and I did walk with Leonard,
+and talked with rapture of the good he was to do in Ireland, and how he
+was to be a mitred abbot one day (for he is a great man), and poor
+little me be proud of him; and how we were all to be happy together in
+heaven, where is no marrying nor giving in marriage. This was our
+discourse; and I was just putting the purse into his hands, and bidding
+him God-speed, when he--for whom I fought against my woman's nature, and
+took this trying task upon me--broke in upon us, with the face of a
+fiend; trampled on the poor, good priest, that deserved veneration and
+consolation from him, of all men; and raised his hand to me; and was not
+man enough to kill me after all; but called me--ask him what he called
+me--see if he dares to say it again before you; and then ran away,
+like a coward as he is, from the lady he had defiled with his rude
+tongue, and the heart he had broken. Forgive him? that I never
+will,--never,--never."
+
+"Who asked you to forgive him?" said the shrewd priest. "Your own heart.
+Come, look at him."
+
+"Not I," said she, irresolutely. Then, still more feebly: "He is naught
+to me." And so stole a look at him.
+
+Griffith, pale as ashes, had his hand on his brow, and his eyes were
+fixed with horror and remorse.
+
+"Something tells me she has spoken the truth," he said, in a quavering
+voice. Then, with concentrated horror, "But if so--O God, what have I
+done?--What shall I do?"
+
+Mrs. Gaunt extended her arms towards him across the priest.
+
+"Why, fall at thy wife's knees and ask her to forgive thee."
+
+Griffith obeyed: he fell on his knees, and Mrs. Gaunt leaned her head on
+Francis's shoulder, and gave her hand across him to her remorse-stricken
+husband.
+
+Neither spoke, nor desired to speak; and even Father Francis sat silent,
+and enjoyed that sweet glow which sometimes blesses the peacemaker, even
+in this world of wrangles and jars.
+
+But the good soul had ridden hard, and the neglected meats emitted
+savory odors; and by and by he said dryly, "I wonder whether that fat
+pullet tastes as well as it smells: can you tell me, Squire?"
+
+"O, inhospitable wretch that I am!" said Mrs. Gaunt: "I thought but of
+my own heart."
+
+"And forgot the stomach of your unspiritual father. But, my dear, you
+are pale, you tremble."
+
+"'T is nothing, sir: I shall soon be better. Sit you down and sup: I
+will return anon."
+
+She retired, not to make a fuss; but her heart palpitated violently, and
+she had to sit down on the stairs.
+
+Ryder, who was prowling about, found her there, and fetched her
+hartshorn.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt got better; but felt so languid, and also hysterical, that
+she retired to her own room for the night, attended by the faithful
+Ryder, to whom she confided that a reconciliation had taken place, and,
+to celebrate it, gave her a dress she had only worn a year. This does
+not sound queenly to you ladies; but know that a week's wear tells far
+more on the flimsy trash you wear now-a-days, than a year did on the
+glorious silks of Lyons Mrs. Gaunt put on; thick as broadcloth, and
+embroidered so cunningly by the loom, that it would pass for rarest
+needle-work. Besides, in those days, silk was silk.
+
+As Ryder left her, she asked, "Where is master to lie to-night?"
+
+Mrs. Gaunt was not pleased at this question being put to her. She would
+have preferred to leave that to Griffith. And, as she was a singular
+mixture of frankness and finesse, I believe she had retired to her own
+room partly to test Griffith's heart. If he was as sincere as she was,
+he would not be content with a public reconciliation.
+
+But the question being put to her plump, and by one of her own sex, she
+colored faintly, and said, "Why, is there not a bed in his room?"
+
+"O yes, madam."
+
+"Then see it be well aired. Put down all the things before the fire; and
+then tell me: I'll come and see. The feather-bed, mind, as well as the
+sheets and blankets."
+
+Ryder executed all this with zeal. She did more; though Griffith and
+Francis sat up very late, she sat up too; and, on the gentlemen leaving
+the supper-room, she met them both, with bed-candles, in a delightful
+cap, and undertook, with cordial smiles, to show them both their
+chambers.
+
+"Tread softly on the landing, an if it please you, gentlemen. My
+mistress hath been unwell; but she is in a fine sleep now, by the
+blessing, and I would not have her disturbed."
+
+Good, faithful, single-hearted Ryder!
+
+Father Francis went to bed thoughtful. There was something about
+Griffith he did not like: the man every now and then broke out into
+boisterous raptures, and presently relapsed into moody thoughtfulness.
+Francis almost feared that his cure was only temporary.
+
+In the morning, before he left, he drew Mrs. Gaunt aside, and told her
+his misgivings. She replied that she thought she knew what was amiss,
+and would soon set that right.
+
+Griffith tossed and turned in his bed, and spent a stormy night. His
+mind was in a confused whirl, and his heart distracted. The wife he had
+loved so tenderly proved to be the very reverse of all he had lately
+thought her! She was pure as snow, and had always loved him; loved him
+now, and only wanted a good excuse to take him to her arms again. But
+Mercy Vint!--his wife, his benefactress! a woman as chaste as Kate, as
+strict in life and morals,--what was to become of her? How could he tell
+her she was not his wife? how reveal to her her own calamity, and his
+treason? And, on the other hand, desert her without a word! and leave
+her hoping, fearing, pining, all her life! Affection, humanity,
+gratitude, alike forbade it.
+
+He came down in the morning, pale for him, and worn with the inward
+struggle.
+
+Naturally there was a restraint between him and Mrs. Gaunt; and only
+short sentences passed between them.
+
+He saw the peacemaker off, and then wandered all over the premises, and
+the past came nearer, and the present seemed to retire into the
+background.
+
+He wandered about like one in a dream; and was so self-absorbed, that he
+did not see Mrs. Gaunt coming towards him, with observant eyes.
+
+She met him full; he started like a guilty thing.
+
+"Are you afraid of me?" said she, sweetly.
+
+"No, my dear, not exactly; and yet I am: afraid, or ashamed, or both."
+
+"You need not. I said I forgive you; and you know I am not one that does
+things by halves."
+
+"You are an angel!" said he, warmly; "but" (suddenly relapsing into
+despondency) "we shall never be happy together again."
+
+She sighed. "Say not so. Time and sweet recollections may heal even this
+wound by degrees."
+
+"God grant it," said he, despairingly.
+
+"And, though we can't be lovers again all at once, we may be friends.
+To begin, tell me, what have you on your mind? Come, make a friend of
+me."
+
+He looked at her in alarm.
+
+She smiled. "Shall I guess?" said she.
+
+"You will never guess," said he; "and I shall never have the heart to
+tell you."
+
+"Let me try. Well, I think you have run in debt, and are afraid to ask
+me for the money."
+
+Griffith was greatly relieved by this conjecture; he drew a long breath;
+and, after a pause, said cunningly, "What made you think that?"
+
+"Because you came here for money, and not for happiness. You told me so
+in the Grove."
+
+"That is true. What a sordid wretch you must think me!"
+
+"No, because you were under a delusion. But I do believe you are just
+the man to turn reckless, when you thought me false, and go drinking and
+dicing." She added eagerly, "I do not suspect you of anything worse."
+
+He assured her that was not the way of it.
+
+"Then tell me the way of it. You must not think, because I pester you
+not with questions, I have no curiosity. O, how often I have longed to
+be a bird, and watch you day and night unseen! How would you have liked
+that? I wish you had been one, to watch me. Ah, you don't answer. Could
+you have borne so close an inspection, sir?"
+
+Griffith shuddered at the idea; and his eyes fell before the full gray
+orbs of his wife.
+
+"Well, never mind," said she. "Tell me your story."
+
+"Well, then, when I left you, I was raving mad."
+
+"That is true, I'll be sworn."
+
+"I let my horse go; and he took me near a hundred miles from here, and
+stopped at--at--a farm-house. The good people took me in."
+
+"God bless them for it. I'll ride and thank them."
+
+"Nay, nay; 't is too far. There I fell sick of a fever, a brain-fever:
+the doctor blooded me."
+
+"Alas! would he had taken mine instead."
+
+"And I lost my wits for several days; and when I came back, I was weak
+as water, and given up by the doctor; and the first thing I saw was an
+old hag set a-making of my shroud."
+
+Here the narrative was interrupted a moment by Mrs. Gaunt seizing him
+convulsively; and then holding him tenderly, as if he was even now about
+to be taken from her.
+
+"The good people nursed me, and so did their daughter, and I came back
+from the grave. I took an inn; but I gave up that, and had to pay
+forfeit; and so my money all went; but they kept me on. To be sure I
+helped on the farm: they kept a hostelry as well. By and by came that
+murrain among the cattle. Did you have it in these parts, too?"
+
+"I know not; nor care. Prithee, leave cattle, and talk of thyself."
+
+"Well, in a word, they were ruined, and going to be sold up. I could not
+bear that: I became bondsman for the old man. It was the least I could
+do. Kate, they had saved thy husband's life."
+
+"Not a word more, Griffith. How much stand you pledged for?"
+
+"A large sum."
+
+"Would five hundred pounds be of any avail?"
+
+"Five hundred pounds! Ay, that it would, and to spare; but where can I
+get so much money? And the time so short."
+
+"Give me thy hand, and come with me," said Mrs. Gaunt, ardently.
+
+She took his hand, and made a swift rush across the lawn. It was not
+exactly running, nor walking, but some grand motion she had when
+excited. She put him to his stride to keep up with her at all; and in
+two minutes she had him into her boudoir. She unlocked a bureau, all in
+a hurry, and took out a bag of gold. "There!" she cried, thrusting it
+into his hand, and blooming all over with joy and eagerness: "I thought
+you would want money; so I saved it up. You shall not be in debt a day
+longer. Now mount thy horse, and carry it to those good souls; only, for
+my sake, take the gardener with thee,--I have no groom now but he,--and
+both well armed."
+
+"What! go this very day?"
+
+"Ay, this very hour. I can bear thy absence for a day or two more,--I
+have borne it so long; but I cannot bear thy plighted word to stand in
+doubt a day, no, not an hour. I am your wife, sir, your true and loving
+wife: your honor is mine, and is as dear to me now as it was when you
+saw me with Father Leonard in the Grove, and read me all awry. Don't
+wait a moment. Begone at once."
+
+"Nay, nay, if I go to-morrow, I shall be in time."
+
+"Ay, but," said Mrs. Gaunt, very softly, "I am afraid if I keep you
+another hour I shall not have the heart to let you go at all; and the
+sooner gone, the sooner back for good, please God. There, give me one
+kiss, to live on, and begone this instant."
+
+He covered her hands with kisses and tears. "I'm not worthy to kiss any
+higher than thy hand," he said, and so ran sobbing from her.
+
+He went straight to the stable, and saddled Black Dick.
+
+
+
+
+INDIAN MEDICINE.
+
+
+Every one who has fed his boyish fancy with the stories of pioneers and
+hunters has heard of the character known among Indians as the
+"medicine-man." But it may very likely be the case that few of those
+familiar with the term really know the import of the word. A somewhat
+protracted residence among the Blackfoot tribe of Indians, and an
+extensive observation of men and manners as they appear in the wilder
+parts of the Rocky Mountains and British America, have enabled the
+writer to give some facts which may not prove wholly uninteresting.
+
+By the term "medicine" much more is implied than mere curative drugs, or
+a system of curative practice. Among all the tribes of American Indians,
+the word is used with a double signification,--a literal and narrow
+meaning, and a general and rather undefined application. It signifies
+not only physical remedies and the art of using them, but second-sight,
+prophecy, and preternatural power. As an adjective, it embraces the idea
+of supernatural as well as remedial.
+
+As an example of the use of the word in its mystic signification, the
+following may be given. The _horse_, as is well known, was to the
+Indian, on its first importation, a strange and terrible beast. Having
+no native word by which to designate this hitherto unknown creature, the
+Indians contrived a name by combining the name of some familiar animal,
+most nearly resembling the horse, with the "medicine" term denoting
+astonishment or awe. Consequently the Blackfeet, adding to the word
+"Elk" (_Pounika_) the adjective "medicine" (_tos_) called the horse
+_Pou-nika-ma-ta_, i. e. Medicine Elk. This word is still their
+designation for a horse.
+
+With this idea of medicine, and recollecting that the word is used to
+express two classes of thoughts very different, and separated by
+civilization, though confounded by the savage, it will not surprise one
+to find that the medicine-men are conjurers as well as doctors, and that
+their conjurations partake as much of medical quackery as does their
+medical practice of affected incantation. As physicians, the
+medicine-men are below contempt, and, but for the savage cruelty of
+their ignorance, undeserving of notice. The writer has known a man to
+have his uvula and palate torn out by a medicine-man. In that case the
+disease was a hacking cough caused by an elongation of the uvula; and
+the remedy adopted (after preparatory singing, dancing, burning buffalo
+hair, and other conjurations) was to seize the uvula with a pair of
+bullet-moulds, and tear from the poor wretch every tissue that would
+give way. Death of course ensued in a short time. The unfortunate man
+had, however, died in "able hands," and according to the "highest
+principles of [Indian] medical art."
+
+Were I to tell how barbarously I have seen men mutilated, simply to
+extract an arrow-head from a wound, the story would scarce be credited.
+Common sense has no place in the system of Indian medicine-men, nor do
+they appear to have gained an idea, beyond the rudest, from experience.
+
+In their quality of seers, however, they are more important, and
+frequently more successful persons, attaining, of course, various
+degrees of proficiency and reputation. An accomplished dreamer has a
+sure competency in that gift. He is reverently consulted, handsomely
+paid, and, in general, strictly obeyed. His influence, when once
+established, is more potent even than that of a war chief. The dignity
+and profit of the position are baits sufficient to command the attention
+and ambition of the ablest men; yet it is not unfrequently the case that
+persons otherwise undistinguished are noted for clear and strong powers
+of "medicine."
+
+Of the three most distinguished medicine-men known to the writer, but
+one was a man of powerful intellect. Even this person preferred a
+somewhat sedentary, and what might be called a strictly professional
+life, to the usual active habits of the hunting and warring tribes. He
+dwelt almost alone on a far northern branch of the Saskatchewan River,
+revered for his gifts, feared for his power, and always approached with
+something of reluctance by the Indians, who firmly believed the spirit
+of the gods to dwell within him. He was an austere and taciturn man,
+difficult of access, and as vain and ambitious as he was haughty and
+contemptuous. Those who professed to have witnessed the scene told of a
+trial of power between this man--the Black Snake, as he was called--and
+a renowned medicine-man of a neighboring tribe. The contest, from what
+the Indians said, must have occurred about 1855.
+
+The rival medicine-men, each furnished with his medicine-bag, his
+amulets, and other professional paraphernalia, arrayed in full dress,
+and covered with war-paint, met in the presence of a great concourse.
+Both had prepared for the encounter by long fasting and conjurations.
+After the pipe, which precedes all important councils, the medicine-men
+sat down opposite to each other, a few feet apart. The trial of power
+seems to have been conducted on principles of animal magnetism, and
+lasted a long while without decided advantage on either side; until the
+Black Snake, concentrating all his power, or "gathering his medicine,"
+in a loud voice commanded his opponent to die. The unfortunate conjurer
+succumbed, and in a few minutes "his spirit," as my informant said,
+"went beyond the Sand Buttes." The only charm or amulet ever used by the
+Black Snake is said to have been a small bean-shaped pebble suspended
+round his neck by a cord of moose sinew. He had his books, it is true,
+but they were rarely exhibited.[E]
+
+The death of his rival, by means so purely non-mechanical or physical,
+gave the Black Snake a pre-eminence in "medicine" which he has ever
+since maintained. It was useless to suggest poison, deception, or
+collusion, to explain the occurrence. The firm belief was that the
+spiritual power of the Black Snake had alone secured his triumph.
+
+I mentioned this story to a highly educated and deeply religious man of
+my acquaintance. He was a priest of the Jesuit order, a European by
+birth, formerly a professor in a Continental university of high repute,
+and beyond doubt a guileless and pious man. His acquaintance with Indian
+life extended over more than twenty years of missionary labor in the
+wildest parts of the west slope of the Rocky Mountains. To my surprise,
+(for I was then a novice in the country,) I found him neither
+astonished, nor shocked, nor amused, by what seemed to me so gross a
+superstition.
+
+"I have seen," said he, "many exhibitions of power which my philosophy
+cannot explain. I have known predictions of events far in the future to
+be literally fulfilled, and have seen medicine tested in the most
+conclusive ways. I once saw a Kootenai Indian (known generally as
+Skookum-tamahe-rewos, from his extraordinary power) command a mountain
+sheep to fall dead, and the animal, then leaping among the rocks of the
+mountain-side, fell instantly lifeless. This I saw with my own eyes, and
+I ate of the animal afterwards. It was unwounded, healthy, and perfectly
+wild. Ah!" continued he, crossing himself and looking upwards, "Mary
+protect us! the medicine-men have power from Sathanas."[F]
+
+This statement, made by so responsible a person, attracted my attention
+to what before seemed but a clumsy species of juggling. During many
+months of intimate knowledge of Indian life,--as an adopted member of a
+tribe, as a resident in their camps, and their companion on hunts and
+war-parties,--I lost no opportunity of gathering information concerning
+their religious belief and traditions, and the system of _medicine_, as
+it prevails in its purity. It would be foreign to the design of this
+desultory paper to enter at large upon the history of creation as
+preserved by the Indians in their traditions, the conflicts of the
+Beneficent Spirit with the Adversary, and the Indian idea of a future
+state. With all these, the present sketch has no further concern than a
+mere statement that "medicine" is based upon the idea of an overruling
+and all-powerful Providence, who acts at His good pleasure, through
+human instruments. Those among Christians who entertain the doctrine of
+Special Providences may find in the untutored Indian a faith as firm as
+theirs,--not sharply defined, or understood by the Indian himself, but
+inborn and ineradicable.
+
+The Indian, being thoroughly ignorant of all things not connected with
+war or the chase, is necessarily superstitious. His imagination is
+active,--generally more so than are his reasoning powers,--and fits him
+for a ready belief in the powers of any able mediciner. On one occasion,
+Meldram, a white man in the employ of the American Fur Company, found
+himself suddenly elevated to high rank as a seer by a foolish or
+petulant remark. He was engaged in making a rude press for baling furs,
+and had got a heavy lever in position. A large party of Crow Indians who
+were near at hand, considering his press a marvel of mechanical
+ingenuity, were very inquisitive as to its uses. Meldram, with an
+assumption of severity, told them the machine was "snow medicine," and
+that it would make snow to fall until it reached the end of a cord that
+dangled from the lever and reached within a yard of the ground. The fame
+of so potent a medicine spread rapidly through the Crow nation. The
+machine was visited by hundreds, and the fall of snow anxiously looked
+for by the entire tribe. To the awe of every Indian, and the
+astonishment of the few trappers then at the mouth of the Yellowstone,
+the snow actually reached the end of the rope, and did not during the
+winter attain any greater depth. Meldram found greatness thrust upon
+him. He has lived for more than forty years among the Crows, and when I
+knew him was much consulted as a medicine-man. His chief charms, or
+amulets, were a large bull's-eye silver watch, and a copy of "Ayer's
+Family Almanac," in which was displayed the human body encircled by the
+signs of the zodiac.
+
+The position and ease attendant upon a reputation for medicine power
+cause many unsuccessful pretenders to embrace the profession; and it
+would seem strange that their failures should not have brought medicine
+into disrepute. In looking closely into this, a well-marked distinction
+will always be found between _medicine_ and the _medicine-man_,--quite
+as broad as is made with us between religion and the preacher. I have
+seen would-be medicine-men laughed at through the camp,--men of
+reputation as warriors, and respected in council, but whose _forte_ was
+not the reading of dreams or the prediction of events. On the other
+hand, I have seen persons of inferior intellect, without courage on the
+war-path or wisdom in the council, revered as the channels through
+which, in some unexplained manner, the Great Spirit warned or advised
+his creatures.
+
+Of course it is no purpose of this paper to uphold or attack these
+peculiar ideas. A meagre presentation of a few facts not generally known
+is all that is aimed at. Whether the system of Indian medicine be a
+variety of Mesmerism, Magnetism, Spiritualism, or what not, others may
+inquire and determine. One bred a Calvinist, as was the writer, may be
+supposed to have viewed with suspicion the exhibitions of medicine power
+that almost daily presented themselves. And while, in very numerous
+instances, they proved to be but the impudent pretensions of charlatans,
+it must be conceded, if credible witnesses are to be believed, that
+sometimes there is a power of second-sight, or something of a kindred
+nature, which defies investigation. Instances of this kind are of
+frequent occurrence, and easily recalled, I venture to say, by every one
+familiar with the Indian in his native state. The higher powers claimed
+for medicine are, in general, doubtfully spoken of by the Indians. Not
+that they deny the possibility of the power, but they question the
+probability of so signal a mark of favor being bestowed on a mere
+mortal. Powers and medicine privileges of a lower degree are more
+readily acknowledged. An aged Indian of the Assinaboin tribe is very
+generally admitted, by his own and neighboring tribes, to have been
+shown the happy hunting-grounds, and conducted through them and returned
+safely to the camp of his tribe, by special favor of the Great Spirit.
+He once drew a map of the Indian paradise for me, and described its
+pleasant prairies and crystal rivers, its countless herds of fat buffalo
+and horses, its perennial and luxuriant grass, and other charms dear to
+an Indian's heart, in a rhapsody that was almost poetry. Another, an
+obscure man of the Cathead Sioux, is believed to have seen the hole
+through which issue the herds of buffalo which the Great Spirit calls
+forth from the centre of the earth to feed his children.
+
+Medicine of this degree is not unfavorably regarded by the masses; but
+instances of the highest grades are extremely rare, and the claimants of
+such powers few in number. The Black Snake and the Kootenai, before
+referred to, are, if still alive, the only instances with which I am
+acquainted of admitted and well-authenticated powers so great and
+incredible. The common use of medicine is in affairs of war and the
+chase. Here the medicine-man will be found, in many cases, to exhibit a
+prescience truly astounding. Without attempting a theory to account for
+this, a suggestion may be ventured. The Indian passes a life that knows
+no repose. His vigilance is ever on the alert. No hour of day or night
+is to him an hour of assured safety. In the course of years, his
+perceptions and apprehensions become so acute, in the presence of
+constant danger, as to render him keenly and delicately sensitive to
+impressions that a civilized man could scarce recognize. The Indian, in
+other words, has a development almost like the instinct of the fox or
+beaver. Upon this delicate barometer, whose basis is physical fear,
+impressions (moral or physical, who shall say?) act with surprising
+power. How this occurs, no Indian will attempt to explain. Certain
+conjurations will, they maintain, aid the medicine-man to receive
+impressions; but how or wherefore, no one pretends to know. This view of
+_minor medicine_ is the one which will account for many of its
+manifestations. Whether sound or defective, we will not contend.
+
+The medicine-man whom I knew best was Ma-qu�-a-pos (the Wolf's Word), an
+ignorant and unintellectual person. I knew him perfectly well. His
+nature was simple, innocent, and harmless, devoid of cunning, and
+wanting in those fierce traits that make up the Indian character. His
+predictions were sometimes absolutely astounding. He has, beyond
+question, accurately described the persons, horses, arms, and
+destination of a party three hundred miles distant, not one of whom he
+had ever seen, and of whose very existence neither he, nor any one in
+his camp, was before apprised.
+
+On one occasion, a party of ten voyageurs set out from Fort Benton, the
+remotest post of the American Fur Company, for the purpose of finding
+the Kaim�, or Blood Band of the Northern Blackfeet. Their route lay
+almost due north, crossing the British line near the Chief Mountain
+(Nee-na-st�-ko) and the great Lake O-m�x-een (two of the grandest
+features of Rocky Mountain scenery, but scarce ever seen by whites), and
+extending indefinitely beyond the Saskatchewan and towards the
+tributaries of the Coppermine and Mackenzie Rivers. The expedition was
+perilous from its commencement, and the danger increased with each day's
+journey. The war-paths, war-party fires, and similar indications of the
+vicinity of hostile bands, were each day found in greater abundance.
+
+It should be borne in mind that an experienced trapper can, at a glance,
+pronounce what tribe made a war-trail or a camp-fire. Indications which
+would convey no meaning to the inexperienced are conclusive proofs to
+the keen-eyed mountaineer. The track of a foot, by a greater or less
+turning out of the toes, demonstrates from which side of the mountains a
+party has come. The print of a moccasin in soft earth indicates the
+tribe of the wearer. An arrow-head or a feather from a war-bonnet, a
+scrap of dressed deer-skin, or even a chance fragment of jerked
+buffalo-meat, furnishes data from which unerring conclusions are deduced
+with marvellous facility.
+
+The party of adventurers soon found that they were in the thickest of
+the Cree war-party operations, and so full of danger was every day's
+travel that a council was called, and seven of the ten turned back. The
+remaining three, more through foolhardiness than for any good reason,
+continued their journey, until their resolution failed them, and they
+too determined that, after another day's travel northward, they would
+hasten back to their comrades.
+
+On the afternoon of the last day, four young Indians were seen, who,
+after a cautious approach, made the sign of peace, laid down their arms,
+and came forward, announcing themselves to be Blackfeet of the Blood
+Band. They were sent out, they said, by Ma-qu�-a-pos, to find three
+whites mounted on horses of a peculiar color, dressed in garments
+accurately described to them, and armed with weapons which they, without
+seeing them, minutely described. The whole history of the expedition had
+been detailed to them by Ma-qu�-a-pos. The purpose of the journey, the
+_personnel_ of the party, the exact locality at which to find the three
+who persevered, had been detailed by him with as much fidelity as could
+have been done by one of the whites themselves. And so convinced were
+the Indians of the truth of the old man's medicine, that the four young
+men were sent to appoint a rendezvous, for four days later, at a spot a
+hundred miles distant. On arriving there, accompanied by the young
+Indians, the whites found the entire camp of "Rising Head," a noted
+war-chief, awaiting them. The objects of the expedition were speedily
+accomplished; and the whites, after a few days' rest, returned to safer
+haunts. The writer of this paper was at the head of the party of whites,
+and himself met the Indian messengers.
+
+Upon questioning the chief men of the Indian camp, many of whom
+afterwards became my warm personal friends, and one of them my adopted
+brother, no suspicion of the facts, as narrated, could be sustained.
+Ma-qu�-a-pos could give no explanation beyond the general one,--that he
+"saw us coming, and heard us talk on our journey." He had not, during
+that time, been absent from the Indian camp.
+
+A subsequent intimate acquaintance with Ma-qu�-a-pos disclosed a
+remarkable medicine faculty as accurate as it was inexplicable. He was
+tested in every way, and almost always stood the ordeal successfully.
+Yet he never claimed that the gift entitled him to any peculiar regard,
+except as the instrument of a power whose operations he did not pretend
+to understand. He had an imperfect knowledge of the Catholic worship,
+distorted and intermixed with the wild theogony of the red man. He would
+talk with passionate devotion of the Mother of God, and in the same
+breath tell how the Great Spirit restrains the Rain Spirits from
+drowning the world, by tying them with the rainbow. I have often seen
+him make the sign of the cross, while he recounted, in all the soberness
+of implicit belief, how the Old Man (the God of the Blackfeet) formed
+the human race from the mud of the Missouri,--how he experimented before
+he adopted the human frame, as we now have it,--how he placed his
+creatures in an isolated park far to the north, and there taught them
+the rude arts of Indian life,--how he staked the Indians on a desperate
+game of chance with the Spirit of Evil,--and how the whites are now his
+peculiar care. Ma-qu�-a-pos's faith could hardly stand the test of any
+religious creed. Yet it must be said for him, that his simplicity and
+innocence of life might be a model for many, better instructed than he.
+
+The wilder tribes are accustomed to certain observances which are
+generally termed the tribe-medicine. Their leading men inculcate them
+with great care,--perhaps to perpetuate unity of tradition and purpose.
+In the arrangement of tribe-medicine, trivial observances are frequently
+intermixed with very serious doctrines. Thus, the grand war-council of
+the Dakotah confederacy, comprising thirteen tribes of Sioux, and more
+than seventeen thousand warriors, many years since promulgated a
+national medicine, prescribing a red stone pipe with an ashen stem for
+all council purposes, and (herein was the true point) an eternal
+hostility to the whites. The prediction may be safely ventured, that
+every Sioux will preserve this medicine until the nation shall cease to
+exist. To it may be traced the recent Indian war that devastated
+Minnesota; and there cannot, in the nature of things, and of the
+American Indian especially, be a peace kept in good faith until the
+confederacy of the Dakotah is in effect destroyed.
+
+The Crows, or Ups�raukas, will not smoke in council, unless the pipe is
+lighted with a coal of buffalo chip, and the bowl rested on a fragment
+of the same substance. Their chief men have for a great while endeavored
+to engraft teetotalism upon their national medicine, and have succeeded
+better than the Indian character would have seemed to promise.
+
+Among the Flat-Heads female chastity is a national medicine. With the
+Mandans, friendship for the whites is supposed to be the source of
+national and individual advantage.
+
+Besides the varieties of medicine already alluded to, there are in use
+charms of almost every kind. When game is scarce, medicine is made to
+call back the buffalo. The Man in the Sun is invoked for fair weather,
+for success in war or chase, and for a cure of wounds. The spirits of
+the dead are appeased by medicine songs and offerings. The curiosity of
+some may be attracted by the following rude and literal translation of
+the song of a Blackfoot woman to the spirit of her son, who was killed
+on his first war-party. The words were written down at the time, and are
+not in any respect changed or smoothed.
+
+    "O my son, farewell!
+    You have gone beyond the great river,
+    Your spirit is on the other side of the Sand Buttes;
+    I will not see you for a hundred winters;
+    You will scalp the enemy in the green prairie,
+    Beyond the great river.
+    When the warriors of the Blackfeet meet,
+    When they smoke the medicine-pipe and dance the war-dance,
+    They will ask, 'Where is Isthumaka?--
+    Where is the bravest of the Mannikappi?'
+    He fell on the war-path.
+                  Mai-ram-bo, mai-ram-bo.
+
+    "Many scalps will be taken for your death;
+    The Crows will lose many horses;
+    Their women will weep for their braves,
+    They will curse the spirit of Isthumaka.
+    O my son! I will come to you
+    And make moccasins for the war-path,
+    As I did when you struck the lodge
+    Of the 'Horse-Guard' with the tomahawk.
+    Farewell, my son! I will see you
+    Beyond the broad river.
+                  Mai-ram-bo, mai-ram-bo," etc., etc.
+
+Sung in a plaintive minor key, and in a wild, irregular rhythm, the
+dirge was far more impressive than the words would indicate.
+
+It cannot be denied that the whites, who consort much with the ruder
+tribes of Indians imbibe, to a considerable degree, their veneration for
+medicine. The old trappers and voyageurs are, almost without exception,
+observers of omens and dreamers of dreams. They claim that medicine is a
+faculty which can in some degree be cultivated, and aspire to its
+possession as eagerly as does the Indian. Sometimes they acquire a
+reputation that is in many ways beneficial to them.
+
+As before said, it is no object of this paper to defend or combat the
+Indian notion of medicine. Such a system exists as a fact; and whoever
+writes upon American Demonology will find many fruitful topics of
+investigation in the daily life of the uncontaminated Indian. There may
+be nothing of truth in the supposed prediction by Tecumseh, that
+Tuckabatchee would be destroyed by an earthquake on a day which he
+named; the gifts of the "Prophet" may be overstated in the traditions
+that yet linger in Kentucky and Indiana; the descent of the Mandans from
+Prince Madoc and his adventurous Welchmen, and the consideration
+accorded them on that account, may very possibly be altogether fanciful;
+but whoever will take the trouble to investigate will find in the _real_
+Indian a faith, and occasionally a power, that quite equal the faculties
+claimed by our civilized clairvoyants, and will approach an untrodden
+path of curious, if not altogether useful research.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[E] The Mountain Assinaboins, of which tribe the Black Snake is (if
+living) a distinguished ornament, were visited more than a hundred years
+since by an English clergyman named Wolsey, who devised an alphabet for
+their use. The alphabet is still used by them, and they keep their
+memoranda on dressed skins. With the exception of the Cherokees, they
+are, perhaps, the only tribe possessing a written language. They have no
+other civilization.
+
+[F] I do not feel at liberty to give the name of this excellent man, now
+perhaps no more. In 1861, he lived and labored, with a gentleness and
+zeal worthy of the cause he heralded, as a missionary among the
+Kalispelm Indians, on the west slope of the Rocky Mountains. Such
+devotion to missionary labor as was his may well challenge admiration
+even from those who think him in fatal error. His memory will long be
+cherished by those who knew the purity of his character, his generous
+catholicity of spirit, and the native and acquired graces of mind which
+made him a companion at once charming and instructive.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEATH OF SLAVERY.
+
+
+    O thou great Wrong, that, through the slow-paced years,
+      Didst hold thy millions fettered, and didst wield
+      The scourge that drove the laborer to the field,
+    And look with stony eye on human tears,
+          Thy cruel reign is o'er;
+          Thy bondmen crouch no more
+    In terror at the menace of thine eye;
+      For He who marks the bounds of guilty power,
+    Long-suffering, hath heard the captive's cry,
+      And touched his shackles at the appointed hour,
+    And lo! they fall, and he whose limbs they galled
+    Stands in his native manhood, disenthralled.
+
+    A shout of joy from the redeemed is sent;
+      Ten thousand hamlets swell the hymn of thanks;
+      Our rivers roll exulting, and their banks
+    Send up hosannas to the firmament.
+          Fields, where the bondman's toil
+          No more shall trench the soil,
+    Seem now to bask in a serener day;
+      The meadow-birds sing sweeter, and the airs
+    Of heaven with more caressing softness play,
+      Welcoming man to liberty like theirs.
+    A glory clothes the land from sea to sea,
+    For the great land and all its coasts are free.
+
+    Within that land wert thou enthroned of late,
+      And they by whom the nation's laws were made,
+      And they who filled its judgment-seats, obeyed
+    Thy mandate, rigid as the will of fate.
+          Fierce men at thy right hand,
+          With gesture of command,
+    Gave forth the word that none might dare gainsay;
+      And grave and reverend ones, who loved thee not,
+    Shrank from thy presence, and, in blank dismay,
+      Choked down, unuttered, the rebellious thought;
+    While meaner cowards, mingling with thy train,
+    Proved, from the book of God, thy right to reign.
+
+    Great as thou wert, and feared from shore to shore,
+        The wrath of God o'ertook thee in thy pride;
+        Thou sitt'st a ghastly shadow; by thy side
+    Thy once strong arms hang nerveless evermore.
+            And they who quailed but now
+            Before thy lowering brow
+    Devote thy memory to scorn and shame,
+      And scoff at the pale, powerless thing thou art.
+    And they who ruled in thine imperial name,
+      Subdued, and standing sullenly apart,
+    Scowl at the hands that overthrew thy reign,
+    And shattered at a blow the prisoner's chain.
+
+    Well was thy doom deserved; thou didst not spare
+      Life's tenderest ties, but cruelly didst part
+      Husband and wife, and from the mother's heart
+    Didst wrest her children, deaf to shriek and prayer;
+          Thy inner lair became
+          The haunt of guilty shame;
+    Thy lash dropped blood; the murderer, at thy side,
+      Showed his red hands, nor feared the vengeance due.
+    Thou didst sow earth with crimes, and, far and wide,
+      A harvest of uncounted miseries grew,
+    Until the measure of thy sins at last
+    Was full, and then the avenging bolt was cast.
+
+    Go then, accursed of God, and take thy place
+      With baleful memories of the elder time,
+      With many a wasting pest, and nameless crime,
+    And bloody war that thinned the human race;
+          With the Black Death, whose way
+          Through wailing cities lay,
+    Worship of Moloch, tyrannies that built
+      The Pyramids, and cruel creeds that taught
+    To avenge a fancied guilt by deeper guilt,--
+      Death at the stake to those that held them not.
+    Lo, the foul phantoms, silent in the gloom
+    Of the flown ages, part to yield thee room.
+
+    I see the better years that hasten by
+      Carry thee back into that shadowy past,
+      Where, in the dusty spaces, void and vast,
+    The graves of those whom thou hast murdered lie.
+          The slave-pen, through whose door
+          Thy victims pass no more,
+    Is there, and there shall the grim block remain
+      At which the slave was sold; while at thy feet
+    Scourges and engines of restraint and pain
+      Moulder and rust by thine eternal seat.
+    There, 'mid the symbols that proclaim thy crimes,
+    Dwell thou, a warning to the coming times.
+
+
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+
+_Ecce Homo: a Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus Christ._ Boston:
+Roberts Brothers.
+
+The merits of this book are popular and obvious, consisting in a strain
+of liberal, enlightened sentiment, an ingenious and original cast of
+thought, and a painstaking lucidity of style which leaves the writer's
+meaning even prosaically plain. There is a good deal of absurd and even
+puerile exegesis in its pages, which makes you wonder how so much
+sentimentality can co-exist with so much ability; but the book is
+vitiated for all purposes beyond mere literary entertainment by one
+grand defect, which is the guarded theologic obscurity the writer keeps
+up, or the attempt he makes to estimate Christianity apart from all
+question of the truth or falsity of Christ's personal pretensions
+towards God. The author may have reached in his own mind the most
+definite theologic convictions, but he sedulously withholds them from
+his reader; and the consequence is, that the book awakens and satisfies
+no intellectual interest in the latter, but remains at best a curious
+literary speculation. For what men have always been moved by in
+Christianity is not so much the superiority of its moral inculcations to
+those of other faiths, as its uncompromising pretension to be a final or
+absolute religion. If Christ be only the eminently good and wise and
+philanthropic man the author describes him to be, deliberating,
+legislating, for the improvement of man's morals, he may be very
+admirable, but nothing can be inferred from that circumstance to the
+deeper inquiry. If he claim no essentially different significance to our
+regard, on God's part, than that claimed by Zoroaster, Confucius,
+Mahomet, Hildebrand, Luther, Wesley, he is to be sure still entitled to
+all the respect inherent in such an office; but then there is no _a
+priori_ reason why his teaching and influence should not be superseded
+in process of time by that of any at present unmentionable Anne Lee,
+Joanna Southcote, or Joe Smith. And what the human mind craves, above
+all things else, is repose towards God,--is not to remain a helpless
+sport to every fanatic sot that comes up from the abyss of human vanity,
+and claims to hold it captive by the assumption of a new Divine mission.
+
+The objection to the _mythic_ view of Christ's significance, which is
+that maintained by Strauss, is, that it violates men's faith in the
+integrity of history as a veracious outcome of the providential love and
+wisdom which are extant and operative in human affairs. And the
+objection to what has been called the _Troubadour_ view of the same
+subject, which is that represented by M. Renan, is, that it outrages
+men's faith in human character, regarded, if not as habitually, still as
+occasionally capable of heroic or consistent veracity. We may safely
+argue, then, that neither Strauss nor Renan will possess any long
+vitality to human thought. They are both fascinating reading;--the one
+for his profound sincerity, or his conviction of a worth in Christianity
+so broadly human and impersonal as to exempt it from the obligations of
+a literal historic doctrine; the other for his profound insincerity, so
+to speak, or an egotism so subtile, so capacious and frank, as permits
+him to take up the grandest character in history into the hollow of his
+hand, and turn him about there for critical inspection and definite
+adjustment to the race, with absolutely no more reverence nor reticence
+than a buyer of grain shows to a handful of wheat, as he pours it
+dexterously from hand to hand, and blows the chaff in the seller's
+face.[G] But both writers alike are left behind us in the library, and
+are not subsequently brought to mind by anything we encounter in the
+fields or the streets.
+
+The author of _Ecce Homo_ does no dishonor to the Christian history as
+history, however foolishly he expatiates at times upon its incidents and
+implications; much less to the simple and perfect integrity of Christ as
+a man, but no more than Strauss or Renan does he meet the supreme want
+of the popular understanding, which is to know wherein Christianity has
+the right it claims to be regarded as a final or complete revelation of
+the Divine name upon the earth. We think, moreover, that the reason of
+the omission is the same in every case, being the sheer and contented
+indifference which each of the writers feels to the question of a
+revelation in the abstract or general, regarded as a _sine qua non_ of
+any sympathetic or rational intercourse which may be considered as
+possible between God and man. We should not be so presumptuous as to
+invite our readers' attention to the discussion of so grave a
+philosophic topic as the one here referred to, in the limited space at
+our command; but surely it may be said, without any danger of
+misunderstanding from the most cursory reader, that if creation were the
+absolute or unconditioned verity which thoughtless people deem it, there
+could be no _ratio_ between Creator and creature, hence no intercourse
+or intimacy, inasmuch as the one is being itself, and the other does not
+even exist or _seem_ to be but by him. In order that creation should be
+a rational product of Divine power, in order that the creature should be
+a being of reason, endowed with the responsibility of his own actions,
+it is imperative that the Creator disown his essential infinitude and
+diminish himself to the creature's dimensions; that he hide or obscure
+his own perfection in the creature's imperfection, to the extent even of
+rendering it fairly problematic whether or not an infinite being really
+exist, so putting man, as it were, upon the spontaneous search and
+demand for such a being, and in that measure developing his rational
+possibilities. And if this be so,--if creation philosophically involve a
+descending movement on the Creator's part proportionate to the ascending
+one contemplated on the creature's part,--then it follows that creation
+is not a simple, but a complex process, involving equally a Divine
+action and a human reaction, or the due adjustment of means and ends;
+and that no writer, consequently, can long satisfy the intellect in the
+sphere of religious thought, who either jauntily or ignorantly overlooks
+this philosophic necessity. This, however, is what Messrs. Strauss and
+Renan and the author of _Ecce Homo_ agree to do; and this is what makes
+their several books, whatever subjective differences characterize them
+to a literary regard, alike objectively unprofitable as instruments of
+intellectual progress.
+
+
+_The Masquerade and Other Poems._ By JOHN GODFREY SAXE. Boston: Ticknor
+and Fields.
+
+It was remarked lately by an ingenious writer, that "it never seems to
+occur to some people, who deliver upon the books they read very
+unhesitating judgments, that they may be wanting, either by congenital
+defect, or defect of experience, or defect of reproductive memory, in
+the qualifications which are necessary for judging fairly of any
+particular book." To poetry this remark applies with especial force.
+
+By poetry we do not understand mere verse, but any form of literary
+composition which reproduces in the mind certain emotions which, in the
+absence of an epithet less vague, we shall call _poetical_. These
+emotions may be a compound of the sensuous and the purely intellectual,
+or they may partake much more of the one than of the other. (The
+rigorous metaphysician will please not begin to carp at our definition.)
+These emotions may be excited by an odor, the state of the atmosphere, a
+strain of music, a form of words, or by a single word; and, as they
+result largely from association, it is obvious that what may be poetry
+to some minds may not be poetry to others,--may not be poetry to the
+same mind at different periods of life or in different moods. The most
+sympathetic, most catholic, most receptive mind will always be the best
+qualified to detect and appreciate poetry under all its various forms,
+and would as soon think of denying the devotional faculty to a man of
+differing creed, as of denying the poetical to one whose theory or habit
+of expression may chance to differ from its own. Goethe was so apt to
+discover something good in poems which others dismissed as wholly
+worthless, that it was said of him, "his commendation is a brevet of
+mediocrity." Perhaps it was his "many-sidedness" that made him so
+accurate a "detective" in criticism.
+
+According to Wordsworth, "poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
+feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity."
+A good definition so far as it goes. But Wordsworth could see only one
+side of the shield. He was notoriously so deficient in the faculty of
+humor, that even Sydney Smith was unintelligible to him. Few specimens
+of what can be called wit can be found in his writings. He could not see
+that there is a poetry of wit as well as of sentiment,--of the intellect
+as well as of the emotions. No wonder he could not enjoy Pope, and had
+little relish for Horace. And yet how grand is Wordsworth in his own
+peculiar sphere!
+
+Those narrow views of the province of poetry, which roused the
+indignation of Byron, and which would exclude such writers as
+Goldsmith, Pope, Campbell, Scott, Praed, Moore, and Saxe from the rank
+of poets, are not unfrequently reproduced in our own day. We do not
+perceive that they spring from a liberal or philosophical consideration
+of the subject. Poetry, [Greek: poi�sis], or "making," creation, or
+re-creation, does not address itself to any single group of those
+faculties of our complex nature, the gratification of which brings a
+sense of the agreeable, the exhilarating, or the elevating. As well
+might we deny to didactic verse the name of poetry, as to those _vers de
+soci�t�_ in which a profound truth may be found in a comic mask, or the
+foibles which scolding could not reach may be reflected in the mirror
+held up in gayety of heart. As well might we deny that a waltz is music,
+and claim the name of music only for a funeral march or a nocturne, as
+deny that Shakespeare's description of Queen Mab is as much poetry as
+the stately words in which Prospero compares the vanishing of his
+insubstantial pageant to that of
+
+    "The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
+    The solemn temples, the great globe itself."
+
+The new volume of poems by Mr. Saxe is, in many respects, an improvement
+on all that he has given us hitherto. There is more versatility in the
+style, a freer and firmer touch in the handling. Like our best
+humorists, he shows that the founts of tears and of laughter lie close
+together; for his power of pathos is almost as marked as that of fun. As
+good specimens of what he has accomplished in the minor key, we may
+instance "The Expected Ship," "The Story of Life," and "Pan Immortal."
+But it is in his faculty of turning upon us the whimsical and humorous
+side of a fact or a character that Saxe especially excels. The lines
+entitled "The Superfluous Man" are an illustration of what we mean. In
+some learned treatise the author stumbles on the following somewhat
+startling reflection: "It is ascertained by inspection of the registers
+of many countries, that the uniform proportion of male to female births
+is as 21 to 20: accordingly, in respect to marriage, every 21st man is
+naturally superfluous." Here is hint enough to set Saxe's bright vein of
+humor flowing. The Superfluous Man becomes a concrete embodiment, and
+sings his discovery of the cause of his forlorn single lot and his
+hopeless predicament. It flashes upon him that he is that 21st man
+alluded to by the profound statistician. He is under a natural ban,--for
+he's a superfluous man. There's no use fighting 'gainst nature's
+inflexible plan. There's never a woman for him,--for he's a superfluous
+man. The whole conception and execution of the poem afford a fine
+example of the manner in which a genuine artist may inform a subtile and
+an extravagant whim with life, humor, and consistency.
+
+"The Mourner a la Mode" contains some good instances of the neatness and
+felicity with which the author floods a whole stanza with humor by a
+single epithet.
+
+    "What tears of _vicarious_ woe.
+      That else might have sullied her face,
+    Were kindly permitted to flow
+      In ripples of ebony lace
+    While even her fan, in its play,
+      Had quite a lugubrious scope,
+    And seemed to be waving away
+      The ghost of the angel of Hope!"
+
+The sentiments of a young lover on finding that the object of his
+adoration had an excellent appetite, and was always punctual at lunch
+and dinner, are expressed with a Sheridan-like sparkle in the concluding
+stanza of "The Beauty of Ballston."
+
+    "Ah me! of so much loveliness
+      It had been sweet to be the winner;
+    I know she loved me only less--
+      The merest fraction--than her dinner;
+    'T was hard to lose so fair a prize,
+      But then (I thought) 't were vastly harder
+    To have before my jealous eyes
+      _A constant rival in my larder!_"
+
+There is one practical consideration in regard to the poetry of Saxe,
+which may excite the distrust of those critics who, with Horace, hate
+the profane multitude. Fortunately or unfortunately for his reputation,
+Saxe's poems are _popular_, and--not to put too fine a point of
+it--_sell_. His books have a regular market value, and this value
+increases rather than diminishes with years. This is, we confess, rather
+a suspicious circumstance. Did Milton sell? Did Wordsworth sell? Must
+not the fame that is instantaneous prove hollow and ephemeral? Are we
+not acquainted with a certain volume of poems that shall be nameless,
+the whole edition of which lies untouched and unclaimed on the
+publisher's shelves? And are we not perfectly well aware that those
+poems--well, we can wait. If Mr. Saxe would only put forth a volume that
+should prove, in a mercantile sense, a failure, we think he would be
+surprised to find how happily he would hit certain critics who can now
+see little in his writings to justify their success. Let him once join
+the fraternity of unappreciated geniuses, and he will find
+compensation,--though not, perhaps, in the form of what some vulgar
+fellow has called "solid pudding."
+
+
+_The Giant Cities of Bashan; and Syria's Holy Places._ By the Rev. J. L.
+PORTER, A. M., Author of "Murray's Hand-Book for Syria and Palestine,"
+etc., etc. New York: T. Nelson and Sons.
+
+Travellers who have merely visited the classic scenes of Greece and
+Italy, or at the best have "browsed about" the ruinous sites of Tyre and
+Carthage, must have a mortifying sense of the newness of such recent
+settlements, in reading of Mr. Porter's journey through Bashan, and
+sojourn in Bozrah, Salcah, Edrei, and the other cities of the Rephaim.
+As Chicago is to Athens, so is Athens to these mighty and wonderful
+cities of doom and eld, which are marvellous, not alone for their
+antiquity, (so remote that one looks into it dizzily and doubtfully, as
+a depth into which it is not wholly safe to peer,) but also for the
+perfection in which they stand and have stood amid the desolation of
+unnumbered ages. A Cockney clergyman travelling through Eastern Syria,
+with his Ezekiel in his hand, arrives at nightfall before the gates of a
+town which was a flourishing metropolis in the days of Moses, and takes
+up his lodging in a house built by some newly-married giant, say five or
+six thousand years ago. It is in perfect repair, "the walls are sound,
+the roofs unbroken, the doors and even window-shutters"--being of solid
+basalt monoliths, incapable of decay or destruction--"are in their
+places." In the town whose dumb streets no foot but the Bedouin's has
+trodden for centuries and centuries, there are hundreds of such houses
+as this; and in a province not larger than Rhode Island there are a
+hundred such towns. According to Mr. Porter, the language of Scripture,
+which the strongest powers of deglutition have sometimes rejected as
+that of Eastern hyperbole, is literally verified at every step in the
+land of Bashan. The facts, he says, would not stand the arithmetic of
+Bishop Colenso for an instant; yet from the summit of the castle of
+Salcah (capital of his late gigantic Majesty, King Og) he counted thirty
+utterly deserted and perfectly habitable towns; so that he finds no
+difficulty in believing the bulletin of Jair in which the Israelite
+general declares he took in the province of Argob sixty great cities
+"fenced with high walls, gates, and bars, besides unwalled towns a great
+many." Nor is the fulfilment of prophecy in regard to this kingdom,
+populous and prosperous beyond any other known to history, less literal
+or less startling.
+
+"Thus saith the Lord God of Israel: They shall eat their bread with
+carefulness, and drink their water with astonishment, that her land may
+be desolate from all that is therein, because of the violence of all
+that dwell therein. And the cities that are inhabited shall be laid
+waste, and the land shall be desolate."
+
+Everywhere Mr. Porter witnessed the end predicted by Ezekiel: a nation
+might dwell in these enchanted cities, but they are all empty and silent
+as the desert. Their architecture, however, is eloquent in witness of
+the successive changes through which they have passed in reaching the
+state of final desolation foretold of the prophet. The dwellings, so
+ponderous and so simple, are the work of the original Rephaim, or
+giants, from whom the Israelites conquered the land, and the masonry is
+of these first conquerors. The Greeks have left the proof of their
+presence in the temples and inscriptions, and the Romans in the
+structure of the roads; while the Saracens have added mosques, and the
+Turks solitude and danger,--for the whole land is infested with robbers.
+But while Jewish masonry has crumbled to dust, while Roman roads are
+weed-grown, and the temples of the gods and the mosques of Mahomet
+mingle their ruins, the dwellings of the Rephaim stand intact and
+everlasting, as if the earth had loved her mighty first-born too well to
+suffer the memory of their greatness to perish from her face.
+
+It must be acknowledged that Mr. Porter has not done the best that could
+be done for the country through which he travels. With a style extremely
+graphic at times, he seems wanting in those arts of composition by which
+he could convey to his readers an impression of things at once vivid and
+comprehensive. He visits the cities of Bashan, one after another, and
+tells us repeatedly that they are desolate, and in perfect repair, and
+quotes the proper text of Scripture in which their desolation is
+foretold, and their number and strength not exaggerated. Yet he fails,
+with all this, to describe any one place completely, and is of opinion
+that he should weary his reader in recounting, at Bozrah, for example,
+"the wonders of art and architecture, and the curiosities of votive
+tablet, and dedicatory inscription on altar, tomb, church, and temple";
+whereas we must confess that nothing would have pleased us better than
+to hear about all these things, with ever so much minuteness, and that
+we should have been willing to take two passages of prophecy instead of
+twenty, if we might have had the omitted description in the place of
+them. But Mr. Porter being made as he is, we are glad to get out of him
+what we can, and have to thank him for a full account of at least one of
+the houses of the Rephaim, in which he passed a night.
+
+"The walls were perfect, nearly five feet thick, built of large blocks
+of hewn stones, without lime or cement of any kind. The roof was formed
+of large slabs of the same black basalt, lying as regularly, and jointed
+as closely as if the workmen had only just completed them. They measured
+twelve feet in length, eighteen inches in breadth, and six inches in
+thickness. The ends rested on a plain stone cornice, projecting about a
+foot from each side wall. The chamber was twenty feet long, twelve wide,
+and ten high. The outer door was a slab of stone, four and a half feet
+high, four wide, and eight inches thick. It hung upon pivots formed of
+projecting parts of the slab, working in sockets in the lintel and
+threshold; and though so massive, I was able to open and shut it with
+ease. At one end of the room was a small window with a stone shutter. An
+inner door, also of stone, but of finer workmanship, and not quite so
+heavy as the other, admitted to a chamber of the same size and
+appearance. From it a much larger door communicated with a third
+chamber, to which there was a descent by a flight of stone steps. This
+was a spacious hall, equal in width to the two rooms, and about
+twenty-five feet long by twenty high. A semicircular arch was thrown
+across it, supporting the stone roof; and a gate, so large that camels
+could pass in and out, opened on the street. The gate was of stone, and
+in its place; but some rubbish had accumulated on the threshold, and it
+appeared to have been open for ages. Here our horses were comfortably
+installed. Such were the internal arrangements of this strange old
+mansion. It had only one story; and its simple, massive style of
+architecture gave evidence of a very remote antiquity."
+
+Mr. Porter does not tell us whether all the dwellings of the Rephaim are
+constructed after one plan, as, for instance, the houses of Pompeii
+were, or whether there was variety in the architecture, and on many
+other points of inquiry he is equally unsatisfactory. His strength is in
+his one great fact,--that these cities are older than any known to
+profane history, and that they yet exist undecayed and undecaying. The
+charm of such a fact is so great, that we recur again and again to his
+pages, with a forever unappeased famine for more knowledge, which we
+hope some garrulous and gossipful traveller will soon arise to satisfy.
+
+Of him--the beneficent future tourist--we shall willingly accept any
+number of fables, if only he will add something more filling than Mr.
+Porter has given us. It is true that this tourist will not have a mere
+pleasure excursion, but will undergo much to merit the gratitude of his
+readers. The land of Bashan is nomadically inhabited by a race of men
+much fiercer than its ancient bulls; and Bedouins beset the movements of
+the traveller, to pillage and slay wherever they are strong enough to
+overcome his escort of Druses. Mr. Porter tells much of the perils he
+incurred, and even of actual attacks made upon him by fanatical
+Mussulmans while he sketched the wonders of the world's youth among
+which they dwelt. For the present his book has a value unique and very
+great: the scenes through which he passes have been heretofore unvisited
+by travel, and the interest attaching to them is intense and universal.
+The literal verification of many passages of Scripture supposed more or
+less allegorical, must have its weight with all liberal thinkers; and,
+as a contribution to the means of religious inquiry, this work will be
+earnestly received.
+
+
+_Life of Benjamin Silliman, M. D., LL. D., late Professor of Chemistry,
+Mineralogy, and Geology in Yale College._ Chiefly from his Manuscript
+Reminiscences, Diaries, and Correspondence. By GEORGE P. FISHER,
+Professor in Yale College. In Two Volumes. New York: Charles Scribner &
+Co.
+
+Professor Fisher, in allowing the subject of this biography to tell the
+story of his life, restricts himself very self-denyingly to here and
+there a line of introduction or comment. We have ample passages from
+Professor Silliman's journal, and from an autobiographical memoir
+written during his last years, as well as extracts from his letters and
+the letters addressed to him. It is an easy and pleasant way of writing
+personal history, and it would be an easy and pleasant way of reading
+it, if life were as long as art. But we fear that the popular usefulness
+of this work--and the biography of the eminent man who did so much to
+popularize science should be in the hands of all--must be impaired by
+its magnitude; and we are disposed to regret that Professor Fisher did
+not think fit to reject that part of the correspondence which
+contributes nothing to the movement of the narrative or the development
+of character, and condense much of that material which has only a value
+reflected from the interest already felt in Professor Silliman. These
+are faults in a work from which we have risen with a clear sense of the
+beauty and goodness, as well as the greatness, of the eminent scientist.
+It is admirable to see how his career, begun in another century and
+another phase of civilization, ended in what was best and most
+enlightened and liberal in our own time. A man could hardly have started
+from better things, or been subject at important points of his progress
+to better influences. Benjamin Silliman was of Revolutionary stock,
+which had its roots in the soil of the Reformation. The Connecticut
+Puritan came of Tuscan Puritans, who fled their city of Lucca, and
+finally passed from Switzerland through Holland to our shores. Brain and
+heart in him were thus imbued with an unfaltering love of freedom,
+chastised by religious fervor; and when he became a man, he married with
+a race of kindred origin in faith, sentiment, and principles. He
+advanced with his times in a patriotic devotion to democracy and
+equality, but he seems to have always kept, together with great
+simplicity of character, the impression of early teaching and
+associations, and something of old-time stateliness and formality. His
+youth, like his age, was very sober, modest, and discreet. The ties
+which united him to his family were strong; and he loved his mother, who
+long survived his father, with the reverent affection of the past
+generation. He inherited certain theological principles from his
+parents, and never swerved from them for a moment. Some friendships came
+down to him from his father which he always honored; and the institution
+of learning with which he maintained a life-long connection was in his
+early days the object of a regard mixed with awe, and always of pride
+and devotion. He used to think President Styles the greatest of human
+beings; and one reads with a kind of dismay, that he was once fined
+sixpence for kicking a football into the President's door-yard.
+
+There was in this grave youth the making of many kinds of greatness. He
+who became so eminent in science could have been a great jurist, for he
+had the tranquillity and perseverance necessary to legal success; he
+could have been a great statesman, for his political views were clear
+and just and far-reaching; he wrote some of the most popular books of
+travels in his day, and he could have shone in literature; while he
+appears to have been conscious of the direction in which a sole weakness
+lay, and with early wisdom forsook the muse of poetry. He tells us that
+it was no instinctive preference which led him to the study and pursuit
+of the natural sciences, but the persuasion of Dr. Dwight, who was
+President of Yale in Silliman's twenty-third year, and who opened this
+career to him by offering him the Professorship of Chemistry, then about
+to be established. At that time Silliman was studying law; but, once
+convinced that he can be of greater use to himself and others in the way
+proposed, he enters it and never looks back; goes to Philadelphia to
+hear the learnedest professors of that day; goes to Europe for the
+culture unattainable in this country; overcomes poverty in himself and
+in Yale; will not be tempted from New Haven by the offer of the
+Presidency of the University of South Carolina, but devotes himself to a
+generous study of science, to the diffusion of scientific knowledge, and
+the promotion of the greatness of the institution to which he belongs.
+His devotion is not blind, however: he finds time to write attractive
+accounts of his voyages to Europe, to concern himself in religious
+affairs, to sympathize and cooperate with whatever is noble and good in
+political movements. He lives long enough to enjoy his fame, to see Yale
+prosperous and great, and his country about to triumph forever over the
+evil of slavery, which he had hated and combated. It was a noble
+life,--simple, pure, and illustrious,--and its history is full of
+instruction and encouragement.
+
+
+_Fifteen Days._ An Extract from EDWARD COLVIL'S Journal. Boston: Ticknor
+and Fields.
+
+This is a work of fiction, in which the passion of love, so far from
+being the prime motive, as in other fictions, does not enter at all. The
+author seeks to reach, without other incident, one tragic event, and
+endeavors to make up for a want of adventure by the subtile analysis of
+character and the study of a civil problem. The novelty and courage of
+the attempt will attract the thoughtful reader, and will probably tempt
+him so far into the pages of the book, that he will find himself too
+deeply interested in its persons to part from them voluntarily. The
+national sin with which the author so pitilessly deals has been expiated
+by the whole nation, and is now no more; but its effects upon the guilty
+and guiltless victims, here alike so leniently treated, remain, and the
+question of slavery must always command attention till the question of
+reconstruction is settled.
+
+In "Fifteen Days" the political influences of slavery are only very
+remotely considered, while the personal and social results of the system
+are examined with incisive acuteness united to a warmth of feeling which
+at last breaks forth into pathetic lament. Is not the tragedy, of which
+we discern the proportions only in looking back, indeed a fateful one? A
+young New-Englander, rich, handsome, generous, and thoroughly taught by
+books and by ample experience of the Old World and the New to honor men
+and freedom, passes a few days in a Slave State, in the midst of that
+cruel system which could progress only from bad to worse; to which
+reform was death, and which with the instinct of self-preservation
+punished all open attempts to ameliorate the relations of oppressor and
+oppressed, and permitted no kindness to exist but in the guise of
+severity or the tenderness of a good man for his beast; which boasted
+itself an aristocracy, and was an oligarchy of plebeian ignorance and
+meanness; which either dulled men's brains or chilled their hearts. In
+the presence of this system, Harry Dudley lingers long enough to rescue
+a slave and to die by the furious hand of the master,--a man in whose
+soul the best impulse was the love he bore his victim, and in whom the
+evil destiny of the drama triumphs.
+
+From the conversation of Harry and the botanist, his friend, the author
+retrospectively develops in its full beauty a character illustrated in
+only one phase by the episode which the passages from Edward Colvil's
+journal cover, while she sketches with other touches, slight, but
+skilful, the people of a whole neighborhood, and the events of years.
+Doctor Borrow, the botanist, is made to pass, by insensible changes,
+from a learned indifference concerning slavery to eloquent and ardent
+argument against it, and thus to present the history of the process by
+which even science, the coldest element of our civilization, found
+itself at last unconsciously arrayed against a system long abhorrent to
+feeling. In the Doctor's talk with Westlake, we have a close and clear
+comparison of the origin and result of the civilizations of New England
+and the South, the high equality of the North and the mean aristocracy
+of the Slave States, and the Doctor's first perfect consciousness of
+loving the one and hating the other. The supposititious Mandingo's
+observations of the state of Europe at the time of opening the African
+slave-trade form a humorous protest against judgment of Africa by
+travellers' stories, and suggest more than a doubt whether the first
+men-stealers were better than their victims, and whether they conferred
+the boon of a higher civilization upon negroes by enslaving them. But
+the humor of the book, like its learning, is subordinated to the story,
+which is imbued with a sentiment not wanting in warmth because so noble
+and lofty. The friendship of Colvil and Dudley is less like the
+friendship between two men, than the affectionate tenderness of two
+women for each other; and the character of Dudley in its purity and
+elevation is sometimes elusive. The personality of Colvil is also rather
+shadowy; but the Doctor is human and tangible, and the other persons,
+however slightly indicated, are all real, and bear palpable witness, in
+their lives, to the influences of that system which, though cruel to the
+oppressed, wrought a ruin yet more terrible in the oppressor.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[G] Of course we have no disposition to deny M. Renan's right to reduce
+Christ and every other historic figure to the standard of the most
+modern critical art. We merely mean to say that this is all M. Renan
+does, and that the all is not much.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No.
+105, July 1866, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July, 1866.
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105,
+July 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 18, No. 105, July 1866
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: October 8, 2007 [EBook #22927]
+
+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>
+
+<h3>A MAGAZINE OF</h3>
+
+<h2><i>Literature, Science, Art, and Politics.</i></h2>
+
+<h4>VOLUME XVIII.</h4>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/image1.png" width="200" height="200" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<h4>BOSTON:</h4>
+
+<h4>TICKNOR AND FIELDS,</h4>
+
+<h4>124 <span class="smcap">Tremont Street.</span></h4>
+
+<h4>1866.</h4>
+
+
+<p>Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by</p>
+
+<p>TICKNOR AND FIELDS,</p>
+
+<p>in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
+Massachusetts.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">University Press: Welch, Bigelow, &amp; Co.</span>,</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Cambridge.</span></p>
+
+<p class="notes">Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved
+to the end of the article.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>Page</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Aunt Judy</td><td align='left'><i>J. W. Palmer</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Borneo and Rajah Brooke</td><td align='left'><i>G. Reynolds</i></td><td align='right'>667</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Bundle of Bones, A</td><td align='left'><i>Charles J. Sprague</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_60">60</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Case of George Dedlow, The</td><td align='left'></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Childhood; a Study</td><td align='left'><i>F. B. Perkins</i></td><td align='right'>385</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Chimney Corner for 1866, The, VII., VIII., IX.</td><td align='left'><i>Mrs. H. B. Stowe</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_85">85</a>, 197, 338</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Darwinian Theory, The</td><td align='left'><i>Charles J. Sprague</i></td><td align='right'>415</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Distinguished Character, A</td><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>315</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Englishman in Normandy, An</td><td align='left'><i>Goldwin Smith</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Fall of Austria, The</td><td align='left'><i>C. C. Hazewell</i></td><td align='right'>746</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Farmer Hill's Diary</td><td align='left'><i>Mrs. A. M. Diaz</i></td><td align='right'>397</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Five Hundred Years Ago</td><td align='left'><i>J. H. A. Bone</i></td><td align='right'>545</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Friedrich R&uuml;ckert</td><td align='left'><i>Bayard Taylor</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Great Doctor, The, I., II.</td><td align='left'><i>Alice Cary</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_12">12</a>, 174</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Griffith Gaunt; or, Jealousy. VIII., IX., X., XI., XII.</td><td align='left'><i>Charles Reade</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_94">94</a>, 204, 323, 492, 606</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Gurowski</td><td align='left'><i>Robert Carter</i></td><td align='right'>625</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>How my New Acquaintances Spin</td><td align='left'><i>Dr. B. G. Wilder</i></td><td align='right'>129</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Incidents of the Portland Fire</td><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>356</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Indian Medicine</td><td align='left'><i>John Mason Browne</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_113">113</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Invalidism</td><td align='left'><i>Miss C. P. Hawes</i></td><td align='right'>599</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Italian Rain-Storm, An</td><td align='left'><i>Mary Cowden Clarke</i></td><td align='right'>356</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Johnson Party, The</td><td align='left'><i>E. P. Whipple</i></td><td align='right'>374</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Katharine Morne. I., II.</td><td align='left'><i>Author of "Herman"</i></td><td align='right'>559, 697</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Life Assurance</td><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>308</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>London Forty Years Ago</td><td align='left'><i>John Neal</i></td><td align='right'>224</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Maniac's Confession, A</td><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>170</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>My Heathen at Home</td><td align='left'><i>J. W. Palmer</i></td><td align='right'>728</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>My Little Boy</td><td align='left'><i>Mrs. M. L. Moody</i></td><td align='right'>361</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Norman Conquest, The</td><td align='left'><i>C. C. Hazewell</i></td><td align='right'>461</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Novels of George Eliot, The</td><td align='left'><i>Henry James, Jr.</i></td><td align='right'>479</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Passages from Hawthorne's Note-Books. VII., VIII., IX., X., XI, XII.</td><td align='left'></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_40">40</a>, 189, 288, 450, 536, 682</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Physical History of the Valley of the Amazons. I., II.</td><td align='left'><i>Louis Agassiz</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_49">49</a>, 159</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Pierpont, John</td><td align='left'><i>John Neal</i></td><td align='right'>650</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>President and his Accomplices, The</td><td align='left'><i>E. P. Whipple</i></td><td align='right'>634</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Progress of Prussia, The</td><td align='left'><i>C. C. Hazewell</i></td><td align='right'>578</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Reconstruction</td><td align='left'><i>Frederick Douglass</i></td><td align='right'>761</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Retreat from Lenoir's, and the Siege of Knoxville.</td><td align='left'><i>H. S. Burrage</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_21">21</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Rhoda</td><td align='left'><i>Ruth Harper</i></td><td align='right'>521</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Scarab&aelig;i ed Altri</td><td align='left'><i>W. J. Stillman</i></td><td align='right'>435</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Singing-School Romance, The</td><td align='left'><i>H. H. Weld</i></td><td align='right'>740</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Surgeon's Assistant, The</td><td align='left'><i>Caroline Chesebro</i></td><td align='right'>257</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Through Broadway</td><td align='left'><i>H. T. Tuckerman</i></td><td align='right'>717</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>University Reform</td><td align='left'><i>F. H. Hedge</i></td><td align='right'>296</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Usurpation, The</td><td align='left'><i>George S. Boutwell</i></td><td align='right'>506</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Various Aspects of the Woman Question</td><td align='left'><i>F. Sheldon</i></td><td align='right'>425</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>What did she see with?</td><td align='left'><i>Miss E. Stuart Phelps</i></td><td align='right'>146</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Woman's Work in the Middle Ages</td><td align='left'><i>Mrs. R. C. Waterston</i></td><td align='right'>274</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Year in Montana, A</td><td align='left'><i>Edward B. Nealley</i></td><td align='right'>236</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Yesterday</td><td align='left'><i>Mrs. H. Prescott Spofford</i></td><td align='right'>367</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span></p>
+<h3><span class="smcap">Poetry</span>.</h3>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>Autumn Song</td><td align='left'><i>Forceythe Willson</i></td><td align='right'>746</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Bobolinks, The</td><td align='left'><i>C. P. Cranch</i></td><td align='right'>321</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Death of Slavery, The</td><td align='left'><i>W. C. Bryant</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_120">120</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Friend, A</td><td align='left'><i>C. P. Cranch</i></td><td align='right'>739</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Her Pilgrimage</td><td align='left'><i>H. B. Sargent</i></td><td align='right'>396</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Late Champlain</td><td align='left'><i>H. T. Tuckerman</i></td><td align='right'>365</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Miantowona</td><td align='left'><i>T. B. Aldrich</i></td><td align='right'>446</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Miner, The</td><td align='left'><i>James Russell Lowell</i></td><td align='right'>158</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>My Farm: a Fable</td><td align='left'><i>Bayard Taylor</i></td><td align='right'>187</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>My Garden</td><td align='left'><i>R. W. Emerson</i></td><td align='right'>665</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>On Translating the Divina Commedia</td><td align='left'><i>H. W. Longfellow</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_11">11</a>, 273, 544</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Protoneiron</td><td align='left'><i>H. B. Sargent</i></td><td align='right'>576</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Released</td><td align='left'><i>Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Song Sparrow, The</td><td align='left'><i>A. West</i></td><td align='right'>599</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Sword of Bolivar, The</td><td align='left'><i>J. T. Trowbridge</i></td><td align='right'>713</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>To J. B.</td><td align='left'><i>J. R. Lowell</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_47">47</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td align='left'>Voice, The</td><td align='left'><i>Forceythe Willson</i></td><td align='right'>307</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Art</span>.</h3>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>Marshall's Portrait of Abraham Lincoln</td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>643</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Reviews and Literary Notices</span>.</h3>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>Aldrich's Poems</td><td align='right'>250</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>American Annual Cyclop&aelig;dia, The</td><td align='right'>646</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Bancroft's History of the United States</td><td align='right'>765</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Barry Cornwall's Memoir of Charles Lamb</td><td align='right'>771</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Beecher's Royal Truths</td><td align='right'>645</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Browne's American Family in Germany</td><td align='right'>771</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Carpenter's Six Months at the White House</td><td align='right'>644</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Ecce Homo</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_122">122</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Eichendorff's Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing</td><td align='right'>256</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Eros, etc.</td><td align='right'>255</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Evangeline, Maud Muller, Vision of Sir Launfal, and Flower-de-Luce, Illustrated</td><td align='right'>770</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Field's History of the Atlantic Telegraph</td><td align='right'>647</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Fifteen Days</td><td align='right'>128</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Fisher's Life of Benjamin Silliman</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Gilmore's Four Years in the Saddle</td><td align='right'>382</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Harrington's Inside: a Chronicle of Secession</td><td align='right'>645</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Laugel's United States during the War, and Goldwin Smith's Address on the Civil War in America</td><td align='right'>252</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Marcy's Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border</td><td align='right'>255</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Miss Ildrewe's Language of Flowers</td><td align='right'>646</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Moens's English Travellers and Italian Brigands, and Abbott's Prison Life in the South</td><td align='right'>518</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Porter's Giant Cities of Bashan, and Syria's Holy Places</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_125">125</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Reade's Griffith Gaunt</td><td align='right'>767</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Reed's Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac</td><td align='right'>253</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Saxe's Masquerade and other Poems</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_123">123</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Simpson's History of the Gypsies</td><td align='right'>254</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Wheaton's Elements of International Law</td><td align='right'>513</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Whipple's Character and Characteristic Men</td><td align='right'>772</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Wilkie Collins's Armadale</td><td align='right'>381</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Recent American Publications</span></td><td align='right'>383, 648</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h4>THE</h4>
+
+<h1>ATLANTIC MONTHLY.</h1>
+
+<h2><i>A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics.</i></h2>
+
+<h3>VOL. XVIII&mdash;JULY, 1866.&mdash;NO. CV.</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>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE CASE OF GEORGE DEDLOW.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The following notes of my own case have been declined on various
+pretexts by every medical journal to which I have offered them. There
+was, perhaps, some reason in this, because many of the medical facts
+which they record are not altogether new, and because the psychical
+deductions to which they have led me are not in themselves of medical
+interest. I ought to add, that a good deal of what is here related is
+not of any scientific value whatsoever; but as one or two people on
+whose judgment I rely have advised me to print my narrative with all the
+personal details, rather than in the dry shape in which, as a
+psychological statement, I shall publish it elsewhere, I have yielded to
+their views. I suspect, however, that the very character of my record
+will, in the eyes of some of my readers, tend to lessen the value of the
+metaphysical discoveries which it sets forth.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I am the son of a physician, still in large practice, in the village of
+Abington, Scofield County, Indiana. Expecting to act as his future
+partner, I studied medicine in his office, and in 1859 and 1860 attended
+lectures at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. My second
+course should have been in the following year, but the outbreak of the
+Rebellion so crippled my father's means that I was forced to abandon my
+intention. The demand for army surgeons at this time became very great;
+and although not a graduate, I found no difficulty in getting the place
+of Assistant-Surgeon to the Tenth Indiana Volunteers. In the subsequent
+Western campaigns this organization suffered so severely, that, before
+the term of its service was over, it was merged in the Twenty-First
+Indiana Volunteers; and I, as an extra surgeon, ranked by the medical
+officers of the latter regiment, was transferred to the Fifteenth
+Indiana Cavalry. Like many physicians, I had contracted a strong taste
+for army life, and, disliking cavalry service, sought and obtained the
+position of First-Lieutenant in the Seventy-Ninth Indiana
+Volunteers,&mdash;an infantry regiment of excellent character.</p>
+
+<p>On the day after I assumed command of my company, which had no captain,
+we were sent to garrison a part<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> of a line of block-houses stretching
+along the Cumberland River below Nashville, then occupied by a portion
+of the command of General Rosecrans.</p>
+
+<p>The life we led while on this duty was tedious, and at the same time
+dangerous in the extreme. Food was scarce and bad, the water horrible,
+and we had no cavalry to forage for us. If, as infantry, we attempted to
+levy supplies upon the scattered farms around us, the population seemed
+suddenly to double, and in the shape of guerillas "potted" us
+industriously from behind distant trees, rocks, or hasty earthworks.
+Under these various and unpleasant influences, combined with a fair
+infusion of malaria, our men rapidly lost health and spirits.
+Unfortunately, no proper medical supplies had been forwarded with our
+small force (two companies), and, as the fall advanced, the want of
+quinine and stimulants became a serious annoyance. Moreover, our rations
+were running low; we had been three weeks without a new supply; and our
+commanding officer, Major Terrill, began to be uneasy as to the safety
+of his men. About this time it was supposed that a train with rations
+would be due from the post twenty miles to the north of us; yet it was
+quite possible that it would bring us food, but no medicines, which were
+what we most needed. The command was too small to detach any part of it,
+and the Major therefore resolved to send an officer alone to the post
+above us, where the rest of the Seventy-Ninth lay, and whence they could
+easily forward quinine and stimulants by the train, if it had not left,
+or, if it had, by a small cavalry escort.</p>
+
+<p>It so happened, to my cost, as it turned out, that I was the only
+officer fit to make the journey, and I was accordingly ordered to
+proceed to Block House No. 3, and make the required arrangements. I
+started alone just after dusk the next night, and during the darkness
+succeeded in getting within three miles of my destination. At this time
+I found that I had lost my way, and, although aware of the danger of my
+act, was forced to turn aside and ask at a log-cabin for directions. The
+house contained a dried-up old woman, and four white-headed, half-naked
+children. The woman was either stone-deaf, or pretended to be so; but at
+all events she gave me no satisfaction, and I remounted and rode away.
+On coming to the end of a lane, into which I had turned to seek the
+cabin, I found to my surprise that the bars had been put up during my
+brief parley. They were too high to leap, and I therefore dismounted to
+pull them down. As I touched the top rail, I heard a rifle, and at the
+same instant felt a blow on both arms, which fell helpless. I staggered
+to my horse and tried to mount; but, as I could use neither arm, the
+effort was vain, and I therefore stood still, awaiting my fate. I am
+only conscious that I saw about me several Graybacks, for I must have
+fallen fainting almost immediately.</p>
+
+<p>When I awoke, I was lying in the cabin near by, upon a pile of rubbish.
+Ten or twelve guerillas were gathered about the fire, apparently drawing
+lots for my watch, boots, hat, etc. I now made an effort to find out how
+far I was hurt. I discovered that I could use the left forearm and hand
+pretty well, and with this hand I felt the right limb all over until I
+touched the wound. The ball had passed from left to right through the
+left biceps, and directly through the right arm just below the shoulder,
+emerging behind. The right hand and forearm were cold and perfectly
+insensible. I pinched them as well as I could, to test the amount of
+sensation remaining; but the hand might as well have been that of a dead
+man. I began to understand that the nerves had been wounded, and that
+the part was utterly powerless. By this time my friends had pretty well
+divided the spoils, and, rising together, went out. The old woman then
+came to me and said, "Reckon you'd best git up. Theyuns is agoin' to
+take you away." To this I only answered, "Water, water." I had a grim
+sense of amusement on finding that the old woman was not deaf, for she
+went out, and presently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> came back with a gourdful, which I eagerly
+drank. An hour later the Graybacks returned, and, finding that I was too
+weak to walk, carried me out, and laid me on the bottom of a common
+cart, with which they set off on a trot. The jolting was horrible, but
+within an hour I began to have in my dead right hand a strange burning,
+which was rather a relief to me. It increased as the sun rose and the
+day grew warm, until I felt as if the hand was caught and pinched in a
+red-hot vice. Then in my agony I begged my guard for water to wet it
+with, but for some reason they desired silence, and at every noise
+threatened me with a revolver. At length the pain became absolutely
+unendurable, and I grew what it is the fashion to call demoralized. I
+screamed, cried, and yelled in my torture, until, as I suppose, my
+captors became alarmed, and, stopping, gave me a handkerchief,&mdash;my own,
+I fancy,&mdash;and a canteen of water, with which I wetted the hand, to my
+unspeakable relief.</p>
+
+<p>It is unnecessary to detail the events by which, finally, I found myself
+in one of the Rebel hospitals near Atlanta. Here, for the first time, my
+wounds were properly cleansed and dressed by a Dr. Oliver Wilson, who
+treated me throughout with great kindness. I told him I had been a
+doctor; which, perhaps, may have been in part the cause of the unusual
+tenderness with which I was managed. The left arm was now quite easy;
+although, as will be seen, it never entirely healed. The right arm was
+worse than ever,&mdash;the humerus broken, the nerves wounded, and the hand
+only alive to pain. I use this phrase because it is connected in my mind
+with a visit from a local visitor,&mdash;I am not sure he was a
+preacher,&mdash;who used to go daily through the wards, and talk to us, or
+write our letters. One morning he stopped at my bed, when this little
+talk occurred.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you, Lieutenant?"</p>
+
+<p>"O," said I, "as usual. All right, but this hand, which is dead except
+to pain."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," said he, "such and thus will the wicked be,&mdash;such will you be if
+you die in your sins: you will go where only pain can be felt. For all
+eternity, all of you will be as that hand,&mdash;knowing pain only."</p>
+
+<p>I suppose I was very weak, but somehow I felt a sudden and chilling
+horror of possible universal pain, and suddenly fainted. When I awoke,
+the hand was worse, if that could be. It was red, shining, aching,
+burning, and, as it seemed to me, perpetually rasped with hot files.
+When the doctor came, I begged for morphia. He said gravely: "We have
+none. You know you don't allow it to pass the lines."</p>
+
+<p>I turned to the wall, and wetted the hand again, my sole relief. In
+about an hour, Dr. Wilson came back with two aids, and explained to me
+that the bone was so broken as to make it hopeless to save it, and that,
+besides, amputation offered some chance of arresting the pain. I had
+thought of this before, but the anguish I felt&mdash;I cannot say
+endured&mdash;was so awful, that I made no more of losing the limb than of
+parting with a tooth on account of toothache. Accordingly, brief
+preparations were made, which I watched with a sort of eagerness such as
+must forever be inexplicable to any one who has not passed six weeks of
+torture like that which I had suffered.</p>
+
+<p>I had but one pang before the operation. As I arranged myself on the
+left side, so as to make it convenient for the operator to use the
+knife, I asked: "Who is to give me the ether?" "We have none," said the
+person questioned. I set my teeth, and said no more.</p>
+
+<p>I need not describe the operation. The pain felt was severe; but it was
+insignificant as compared to that of any other minute of the past six
+weeks. The limb was removed very near to the shoulder-joint. As the
+second incision was made, I felt a strange lightning of pain play
+through the limb, defining every minutest fibril of nerve. This was
+followed by instant, unspeakable relief, and before the flaps were
+brought together I was sound asleep. I have only a recollection that I
+said, pointing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> to the arm which lay on the floor: "There is the pain,
+and here am I. How queer!" Then I slept,&mdash;slept the sleep of the just,
+or, better, of the painless. From this time forward, I was free from
+neuralgia; but at a subsequent period I saw a number of cases similar to
+mine in a hospital in Philadelphia.</p>
+
+<p>It is no part of my plan to detail my weary months of monotonous prison
+life in the South. In the early part of August, 1863, I was exchanged,
+and, after the usual thirty days' furlough, returned to my regiment a
+captain.</p>
+
+<p>On the 19th of September, 1863, occurred the battle of Chickamauga, in
+which my regiment took a conspicuous part. The close of our own share in
+this contest is, as it were, burnt into my memory with every least
+detail. It was about six <span class="smcap">p. m.</span>, when we found ourselves in line, under
+cover of a long, thin row of scrubby trees, beyond which lay a gentle
+slope, from which, again, rose a hill rather more abrupt, and crowned
+with an earthwork. We received orders to cross this space, and take the
+fort in front, while a brigade on our right was to make a like movement
+on its flank.</p>
+
+<p>Just before we emerged into the open ground, we noticed what, I think,
+was common in many fights,&mdash;that the enemy had begun to bowl round-shot
+at us, probably from failure of shell. We passed across the valley in
+good order, although the men fell rapidly all along the line. As we
+climbed the hill, our pace slackened, and the fire grew heavier. At this
+moment a battery opened on our left,&mdash;the shots crossing our heads
+obliquely. It is this moment which is so printed on my recollection. I
+can see now, as if through a window, the gray smoke, lit with red
+flashes,&mdash;the long, wavering line,&mdash;the sky blue above,&mdash;the trodden
+furrows, blotted with blue blouses. Then it was as if the window closed,
+and I knew and saw no more. No other scene in my life is thus scarred,
+if I may say so, into my memory. I have a fancy that the horrible shock
+which suddenly fell upon me must have had something to do with thus
+intensifying the momentary image then before my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>When I awakened, I was lying under a tree somewhere at the rear. The
+ground was covered with wounded, and the doctors were busy at an
+operating-table, improvised from two barrels and a plank. At length two
+of them who were examining the wounded about me came up to where I lay.
+A hospital steward raised my head, and poured down some brandy and
+water, while another cut loose my pantaloons. The doctors exchanged
+looks, and walked away. I asked the steward where I was hit.</p>
+
+<p>"Both thighs," said he; "the Doc's won't do nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"No use?" said I.</p>
+
+<p>"Not much," said he.</p>
+
+<p>"Not much means none at all," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>When he had gone, I set myself to thinking about a good many things
+which I had better have thought of before, but which in no way concern
+the history of my case. A half-hour went by. I had no pain, and did not
+get weaker. At last, I cannot explain why, I began to look about me. At
+first, things appeared a little hazy; but I remember one which thrilled
+me a little, even then.</p>
+
+<p>A tall, blond-bearded major walked up to a doctor near me, saying, "When
+you've a little leisure, just take a look at my side."</p>
+
+<p>"Do it now," said the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>The officer exposed his left hip. "Ball went in here, and out here."</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor looked up at him with a curious air,&mdash;half pity, half
+amazement. "If you've got any message, you'd best send it by me."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you don't say its serious?" was the reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Serious! Why, you're shot through the stomach. You won't live over the
+day."</p>
+
+<p>Then the man did what struck me as a very odd thing. "Anybody got a
+pipe?" Some one gave him a pipe. He filled it deliberately, struck a
+light with a flint, and sat down against a tree<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> near to me. Presently
+the doctor came over to him, and asked what he could do for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Send me a drink of Bourbon."</p>
+
+<p>"Anything else?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>As the doctor left him, he called him back. "It's a little rough, Doc,
+isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>No more passed, and I saw this man no longer, for another set of doctors
+were handling my legs, for the first time causing pain. A moment after,
+a steward put a towel over my mouth, and I smelt the familiar odor of
+chloroform, which I was glad enough to breathe. In a moment the trees
+began to move around from left to right,&mdash;then faster and faster; then a
+universal grayness came before me, and I recall nothing further until I
+awoke to consciousness in a hospital-tent. I got hold of my own identity
+in a moment or two, and was suddenly aware of a sharp cramp in my left
+leg. I tried to get at it to rub it with my single arm, but, finding
+myself too weak, hailed an attendant. "Just rub my left calf," said I,
+"if you please."</p>
+
+<p>"Calf?" said he, "you ain't none, pardner. It's took off."</p>
+
+<p>"I know better," said I. "I have pain in both legs."</p>
+
+<p>"Wall, I never!" said he. "You ain't got nary leg."</p>
+
+<p>As I did not believe him, he threw off the covers, and, to my horror,
+showed me that I had suffered amputation of both thighs, very high up.</p>
+
+<p>"That will do," said I, faintly.</p>
+
+<p>A month later, to the amazement of every one, I was so well as to be
+moved from the crowded hospital at Chattanooga to Nashville, where I
+filled one of the ten thousand beds of that vast metropolis of
+hospitals. Of the sufferings which then began I shall presently speak.
+It will be best just now to detail the final misfortune which here fell
+upon me. Hospital No. 2, in which I lay, was inconveniently crowded with
+severely wounded officers. After my third week, an epidemic of hospital
+gangrene broke out in my ward. In three days it attacked twenty persons.
+Then an inspector came out, and we were transferred at once to the open
+air, and placed in tents. Strangely enough, the wound in my remaining
+arm, which still suppurated, was seized with gangrene. The usual remedy,
+bromine, was used locally, but the main artery opened, was tied, bled
+again and again, and at last, as a final resort, the remaining arm was
+amputated at the shoulder-joint. Against all chances I recovered, to
+find myself a useless torso, more like some strange larval creature than
+anything of human shape. Of my anguish and horror of myself I dare not
+speak. I have dictated these pages, not to shock my readers, but to
+possess them with facts in regard to the relation of the mind to the
+body; and I hasten, therefore, to such portions of my case as best
+illustrate these views.</p>
+
+<p>In January, 1864, I was forwarded to Philadelphia, in order to enter
+what was then known as the Stump Hospital, South Street. This favor was
+obtained through the influence of my father's friend, the late Governor
+Anderson, who has always manifested an interest in my case, for which I
+am deeply grateful. It was thought, at the time, that Mr. Palmer, the
+leg-maker, might be able to adapt some form of arm to my left shoulder,
+as on that side there remained five inches of the arm bone, which I
+could move to a moderate extent. The hope proved illusory, as the stump
+was always too tender to bear any pressure. The hospital referred to was
+in charge of several surgeons while I was an inmate, and was at all
+times a clean and pleasant home. It was filled with men who had lost one
+arm or leg, or one of each, as happened now and then. I saw one man who
+had lost both legs, and one who had parted with both arms; but none,
+like myself, stripped of every limb. There were collected in this place
+hundreds of these cases, which gave to it, with reason enough, the not
+very pleasing title of Stump-Hospital.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I spent here three and a half months, before my transfer to the United
+States Army Hospital for nervous diseases. Every morning I was carried
+out in an arm-chair, and placed in the library, where some one was
+always ready to write or read for me, or to fill my pipe. The doctors
+lent me medical books; the ladies brought me luxuries, and fed me; and,
+save that I was helpless to a degree which was humiliating, I was as
+comfortable as kindness could make me.</p>
+
+<p>I amused myself, at this time, by noting in my mind all that I could
+learn from other limbless folk, and from myself, as to the peculiar
+feelings which were noticed in regard to lost members. I found that the
+great mass of men who had undergone amputations, for many months felt
+the usual consciousness that they still had the lost limb. It itched or
+pained, or was cramped, but never felt hot or cold. If they had painful
+sensations referred to it, the conviction of its existence continued
+unaltered for long periods; but where no pain was felt in it, then, by
+degrees, the sense of having that limb faded away entirely. I think we
+may to some extent explain this. The knowledge we possess of any part is
+made up of the numberless impressions from without which affect its
+sensitive surfaces, and which are transmitted through its nerves to the
+spinal nerve-cells, and through them, again, to the brain. We are thus
+kept endlessly informed as to the existence of parts, because the
+impressions which reach the brain are, by a law of our being, referred
+by us to the part from which they came. Now, when the part is cut off,
+the nerve-trunks which led to it and from it, remaining capable of being
+impressed by irritations, are made to convey to the brain from the stump
+impressions which are as usual referred by the brain to the lost parts,
+to which these nerve-threads belonged. In other words, the nerve is like
+a bell-wire. You may pull it at any part of its course, and thus ring
+the bell as well as if you pulled at the end of the wire; but, in any
+case, the intelligent servant will refer the pull to the front door, and
+obey it accordingly. The impressions made on the cut ends of the nerve,
+or on its sides, are due often to the changes in the stump during
+healing, and consequently cease as it heals, so that finally, in a very
+healthy stump, no such impressions arise; the brain ceases to correspond
+with the lost leg, and, as <i>les absents ont toujours tort</i>, it is no
+longer remembered or recognized. But in some cases, such as mine proved
+at last to my sorrow, the ends of the nerves undergo a curious
+alteration, and get to be enlarged and altered. This change, as I have
+seen in my practice of medicine, passes up the nerves towards the
+centres, and occasions a more or less constant irritation of the
+nerve-fibres, producing neuralgia, which is usually referred to that
+part of the lost limb to which the affected nerve belongs. This pain
+keeps the brain ever mindful of the missing part, and, imperfectly at
+least, preserves to the man a consciousness of possessing that which he
+has not.</p>
+
+<p>Where the pains come and go, as they do in certain cases, the subjective
+sensations thus occasioned are very curious, since in such cases the man
+loses and gains, and loses and regains, the consciousness of the
+presence of lost parts, so that he will tell you, "Now I feel my
+thumb,&mdash;now I feel my little finger." I should also add, that nearly
+every person who has lost an arm above the elbow feels as though the
+lost member were bent at the elbow, and at times is vividly impressed
+with the notion that his fingers are strongly flexed.</p>
+
+<p>Another set of cases present a peculiarity which I am at a loss to
+account for. Where the leg, for instance, has been lost, they feel as if
+the foot was present, but as though the leg were shortened. If the thigh
+has been taken off, there seems to them to be a foot at the knee; if the
+arm, a hand seems to be at the elbow, or attached to the stump itself.</p>
+
+<p>As I have said, I was next sent to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> the United States Army Hospital for
+Injuries and Diseases of the Nervous System. Before leaving Nashville, I
+had begun to suffer the most acute pain in my left hand, especially the
+little finger; and so perfect was the idea which was thus kept up of the
+real presence of these missing parts, that I found it hard at times to
+believe them absent. Often, at night, I would try with one lost hand to
+grope for the other. As, however, I had no pain in the right arm, the
+sense of the existence of that limb gradually disappeared, as did that
+of my legs also.</p>
+
+<p>Everything was done for my neuralgia which the doctors could think of;
+and at length, at my suggestion, I was removed to the above-named
+hospital. It was a pleasant, suburban, old-fashioned country-seat, its
+gardens surrounded by a circle of wooden, one-story wards, shaded by
+fine trees. There were some three hundred cases of epilepsy, paralysis,
+St. Vitus's dance, and wounds of nerves. On one side of me lay a poor
+fellow, a Dane, who had the same burning neuralgia with which I once
+suffered, and which I now learned was only too common. This man had
+become hysterical from pain. He carried a sponge in his pocket, and a
+bottle of water in one hand, with which he constantly wetted the burning
+hand. Every sound increased his torture, and he even poured water into
+his boots to keep himself from feeling too sensibly the rough friction
+of his soles when walking. Like him, I was greatly eased by having small
+doses of morphia injected under the skin of my shoulder, with a hollow
+needle, fitted to a syringe.</p>
+
+<p>As I improved under the morphia treatment, I began to be disturbed by
+the horrible variety of suffering about me. One man walked sideways;
+there was one who could not smell; another was dumb from an explosion.
+In fact, every one had his own grotesquely painful peculiarity. Near me
+was a strange case of palsy of the muscles called rhomboids, whose
+office it is to hold down the shoulder-blades flat on the back during
+the motions of the arms, which, in themselves, were strong enough. When,
+however, he lifted these members, the shoulder-blades stood out from the
+back like wings, and got him the soubriquet of the Angel. In my ward
+were also the cases of fits, which very much annoyed me, as upon any
+great change in the weather it was common to have a dozen convulsions in
+view at once. Dr. Neek, one of our physicians, told me that on one
+occasion a hundred and fifty fits took place within thirty-six hours. On
+my complaining of these sights, whence I alone could not fly, I was
+placed in the paralytic and wound ward, which I found much more
+pleasant.</p>
+
+<p>A month of skilful treatment eased me entirely of my aches, and I then
+began to experience certain curious feelings, upon which, having nothing
+to do and nothing to do anything with, I reflected a good deal. It was a
+good while before I could correctly explain to my own satisfaction the
+phenomena which at this time I was called upon to observe. By the
+various operations already described, I had lost about four fifths of my
+weight. As a consequence of this, I ate much less than usual, and could
+scarcely have consumed the ration of a soldier. I slept also but little;
+for, as sleep is the repose of the brain, made necessary by the waste of
+its tissues during thought and voluntary movement, and as this latter
+did not exist in my case, I needed only that rest which was necessary to
+repair such exhaustion of the nerve-centres as was induced by thinking
+and the automatic movements of the viscera.</p>
+
+<p>I observed at this time also, that my heart, in place of beating as it
+once did seventy-eight in the minute, pulsated only forty-five times in
+this interval,&mdash;a fact to be easily explained by the perfect quiescence
+to which I was reduced, and the consequent absence of that healthy and
+constant stimulus to the muscles of the heart which exercise occasions.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding these drawbacks, my physical health was good, which I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+confess surprised me, for this among other reasons. It is said that a
+burn of two thirds of the surface destroys life, because then all the
+excretory matters which this portion of the glands of the skin evolved
+are thrown upon the blood, and poison the man, just as happens in an
+animal whose skin the physiologist has varnished, so as in this way to
+destroy its function. Yet here was I, having lost at least a third of my
+skin, and apparently none the worse for it.</p>
+
+<p>Still more remarkable, however, were the physical changes which I now
+began to perceive. I found to my horror that at times I was less
+conscious of myself, of my own existence, than used to be the case. This
+sensation was so novel, that at first it quite bewildered me. I felt
+like asking some one constantly if I were really George Dedlow or not;
+but, well aware how absurd I should seem after such a question, I
+refrained from speaking of my case, and strove more keenly to analyze my
+feelings. At times the conviction of my want of being myself was
+overwhelming, and most painful. It was, as well as I can describe it, a
+deficiency in the egoistic sentiment of individuality. About one half of
+the sensitive surface of my skin was gone, and thus much of relation to
+the outer world destroyed. As a consequence, a large part of the
+receptive central organs must be out of employ, and, like other idle
+things, degenerating rapidly. Moreover, all the great central ganglia,
+which give rise to movements in the limbs, were also eternally at rest.
+Thus one half of me was absent or functionally dead. This set me to
+thinking how much a man might lose and yet live. If I were unhappy
+enough to survive, I might part with my spleen at least, as many a dog
+has done, and grown fat afterwards. The other organs, with which we
+breathe and circulate the blood, would be essential; so also would the
+liver; but at least half of the intestines might be dispensed with, and
+of course all of the limbs. And as to the nervous system, the only parts
+really necessary to life are a few small ganglia. Were the rest absent
+or inactive, we should have a man reduced, as it were, to the lowest
+terms, and leading an almost vegetative existence. Would such a being, I
+asked myself, possess the sense of individuality in its usual
+completeness,&mdash;even if his organs of sensation remained, and he were
+capable of consciousness? Of course, without them, he could not have it
+any more than a dahlia, or a tulip. But with it&mdash;how then? I concluded
+that it would be at a minimum, and that, if utter loss of relation to
+the outer world were capable of destroying a man's consciousness of
+himself, the destruction of half of his sensitive surfaces might well
+occasion, in a less degree, a like result, and so diminish his sense of
+individual existence.</p>
+
+<p>I thus reached the conclusion that a man is not his brain, or any one
+part of it, but all of his economy, and that to lose any part must
+lessen this sense of his own existence. I found but one person who
+properly appreciated this great truth. She was a New England lady, from
+Hartford,&mdash;an agent, I think, for some commission, perhaps the Sanitary.
+After I had told her my views and feelings, she said: "Yes, I
+comprehend. The fractional entities of vitality are embraced in the
+oneness of the unitary Ego. Life," she added, "is the garnered
+condensation of objective impressions; and, as the objective is the
+remote father of the subjective, so must individuality, which is but
+focused subjectivity, suffer and fade when the sensation lenses, by
+which the rays of impression are condensed, become destroyed." I am not
+quite clear that I fully understood her, but I think she appreciated my
+ideas, and I felt grateful for her kindly interest.</p>
+
+<p>The strange want I have spoken of now haunted and perplexed me so
+constantly, that I became moody and wretched. While in this state, a man
+from a neighboring ward fell one morning into conversation with the
+chaplain, within earshot of my chair. Some of their words arrested my
+attention, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> I turned my head to see and listen. The speaker, who
+wore a sergeant's chevron and carried one arm in a sling, was a tall,
+loosely made person, with a pale face, light eyes of a washed-out blue
+tint, and very sparse yellow whiskers. His mouth was weak, both lips
+being almost alike, so that the organ might have been turned upside down
+without affecting its expression. His forehead, however, was high and
+thinly covered with sandy hair. I should have said, as a phrenologist,
+Will feeble,&mdash;emotional, but not passionate,&mdash;likely to be enthusiast,
+or weakly bigot.</p>
+
+<p>I caught enough of what passed to make me call to the sergeant when the
+chaplain left him.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning," said he. "How do you get on?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," I replied. "Where were you hit?"</p>
+
+<p>"O, at Chancellorsville. I was shot in the shoulder. I have what the
+doctors call paralysis of the median nerve, but I guess Dr. Neek and the
+lightnin' battery will fix it in time. When my time's out I'll go back
+to Kearsage and try on the school-teaching again. I was a fool to leave
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said I, "you're better off than I."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he answered, "in more ways than one. I belong to the New Church.
+It's a great comfort for a plain man like me, when he's weary and sick,
+to be able to turn away from earthly things, and hold converse daily
+with the great and good who have left the world. We have a circle in
+Coates Street. If it wa'n't for the comfort I get there, I should have
+wished myself dead many a time. I ain't got kith or kin on earth; but
+this matters little, when one can talk to them daily, and know that they
+are in the spheres above us."</p>
+
+<p>"It must be a great comfort," I replied, "if only one could believe it."</p>
+
+<p>"Believe!" he repeated, "how can you help it? Do you suppose anything
+dies?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," I said. "The soul does not, I am sure; and as to matter, it merely
+changes form."</p>
+
+<p>"But why then," said he, "should not the dead soul talk to the living.
+In space, no doubt, exist all forms of matter, merely in finer, more
+ethereal being. You can't suppose a naked soul moving about without a
+bodily garment. No creed teaches that, and if its new clothing be of
+like substance to ours, only of ethereal fineness,&mdash;a more delicate
+recrystallization about the eternal spiritual nucleus,&mdash;must not it then
+possess powers as much more delicate and refined as is the new material
+in which it is reclad?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not very clear," I answered; "but after all, the thing should be
+susceptible of some form of proof to our present senses."</p>
+
+<p>"And so it is," said he. "Come to-morrow with me, and you shall see and
+hear for yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"I will," said I, "if the doctor will lend me the ambulance."</p>
+
+<p>It was so arranged, as the surgeon in charge was kind enough, as usual,
+to oblige me with the loan of his wagon, and two orderlies to lift my
+useless trunk.</p>
+
+<p>On the day following, I found myself, with my new comrade, in a house in
+Coates Street, where a "circle" was in the daily habit of meeting. So
+soon as I had been comfortably deposited in an arm-chair, beside a large
+pine-table, the rest of those assembled seated themselves, and for some
+time preserved an unbroken silence. During this pause I scrutinized the
+persons present. Next to me, on my right, sat a flabby man, with
+ill-marked, baggy features, and injected eyes. He was, as I learned
+afterwards, an eclectic doctor, who had tried his hand at medicine and
+several of its quackish variations, finally settling down on
+eclecticism, which I believe professes to be to scientific medicine what
+vegetarianism is to common sense, every-day dietetics. Next to him sat a
+female,&mdash;authoress, I think, of two somewhat feeble novels, and much
+pleasanter to look at than her books. She was, I thought, a good deal
+excited<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> at the prospect of spiritual revelations. Her neighbor was a
+pallid, care-worn girl, with very red lips, and large brown eyes of
+great beauty. She was, as I learned afterwards, a magnetic patient of
+the doctor, and had deserted her husband, a master mechanic, to follow
+this new light. The others were, like myself, strangers brought hither
+by mere curiosity. One of them was a lady in deep black, closely veiled.
+Beyond her, and opposite to me, sat the sergeant, and next to him, the
+medium, a man named Blake. He was well dressed, and wore a good deal of
+jewelry, and had large, black side-whiskers,&mdash;a shrewd-visaged,
+large-nosed, full-lipped man, formed by nature to appreciate the
+pleasant things of sensual existence.</p>
+
+<p>Before I had ended my survey, he turned to the lady in black, and asked
+if she wished to see any one in the spirit-world.</p>
+
+<p>She said, "Yes," rather feebly.</p>
+
+<p>"Is the spirit present?" he asked. Upon which two knocks were heard in
+affirmation.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said the medium, "the name is&mdash;it is the name of a child. It is a
+male child. It is Albert,&mdash;no, Alfred!"</p>
+
+<p>"Great Heaven!" said the lady. "My child! my boy!"</p>
+
+<p>On this the medium arose, and became strangely convulsed. "I see," he
+said, "I see&mdash;a fair-haired boy. I see blue eyes,&mdash;I see above you,
+beyond you&mdash;" at the same time pointing fixedly over her head.</p>
+
+<p>She turned with a wild start "Where,&mdash;whereabouts?"</p>
+
+<p>"A blue-eyed boy," he continued, "over your head. He cries,&mdash;he says,
+Mamma, mamma!"</p>
+
+<p>The effect of this on the woman was unpleasant. She stared about her for
+a moment, and, exclaiming, "I come,&mdash;I am coming, Alfy!" fell in
+hysterics on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Two or three persons raised her, and aided her into an adjoining room;
+but the rest remained at the table, as though well accustomed to like
+scenes.</p>
+
+<p>After this, several of the strangers were called upon to write the names
+of the dead with whom they wished to communicate. The names were spelled
+out by the agency of affirmative knocks when the correct letters were
+touched by the applicant, who was furnished with an alphabet card upon
+which he tapped the letters in turn, the medium, meanwhile, scanning his
+face very keenly. With some, the names were readily made out. With one,
+a stolid personage of disbelieving type, every attempt failed, until at
+last the spirits signified by knocks that he was a disturbing agency,
+and that while he remained all our efforts would fail. Upon this some of
+the company proposed that he should leave, of which invitation he took
+advantage with a sceptical sneer at the whole performance.</p>
+
+<p>As he left us, the sergeant leaned over and whispered to the medium, who
+next addressed himself to me, "Sister Euphemia," he said, indicating the
+lady with large eyes, "will act as your medium. I am unable to do more.
+These things exhaust my nervous system."</p>
+
+<p>"Sister Euphemia," said the doctor, "will aid us. Think, if you please,
+sir, of a spirit, and she will endeavor to summon it to our circle."</p>
+
+<p>Upon this, a wild idea came into my head. I answered, "I am thinking as
+you directed me to do."</p>
+
+<p>The medium sat with her arms folded, looking steadily at the centre of
+the table. For a few moments there was silence. Then a series of
+irregular knocks began. "Are you present?" said the medium.</p>
+
+<p>The affirmative raps were twice given.</p>
+
+<p>"I should think," said the doctor, "that there were two spirits
+present."</p>
+
+<p>His words sent a thrill through my heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Are there two?" he questioned.</p>
+
+<p>A double rap.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, two," said the medium. "Will it please the spirits to make us
+conscious of their names in this world?"</p>
+
+<p>A single knock. "No."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Will it please them to say how they are called in the world of
+spirits?"</p>
+
+<p>Again came the irregular raps,&mdash;3, 4, 8, 6; then a pause, and 3, 4, 8,
+7.</p>
+
+<p>"I think," said the authoress, "they must be numbers. Will the spirits,"
+she said, "be good enough to aid us? Shall we use the alphabet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," was rapped very quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Are these numbers?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," again.</p>
+
+<p>"I will write them," she added, and, doing so, took up the card and
+tapped the letters. The spelling was pretty rapid, and ran thus as she
+tapped in turn, first the letters, and last the numbers she had already
+set down:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">United States Army Medical Museum, Nos.</span> 3486, 3487."</p>
+
+<p>The medium looked up with a puzzled expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious!" said I, "they are <i>my legs! my legs!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>What followed, I ask no one to believe except those who, like myself,
+have communed with the beings of another sphere. Suddenly I felt a
+strange return of my self-consciousness. I was re-individualized, so to
+speak. A strange wonder filled me, and, to the amazement of every one, I
+arose, and, staggering a little, walked across the room on limbs
+invisible to them or me. It was no wonder I staggered, for, as I briefly
+reflected, my legs had been nine months in the strongest alcohol. At
+this instant all my new friends crowded around me in astonishment.
+Presently, however, I felt myself sinking slowly. My legs were going,
+and in a moment I was resting feebly on my two stumps upon the floor. It
+was too much. All that was left of me fainted and rolled over senseless.</p>
+
+<p>I have little to add. I am now at home in the West, surrounded by every
+form of kindness, and every possible comfort; but, alas! I have so
+little surety of being myself, that I doubt my own honesty in drawing my
+pension, and feel absolved from gratitude to those who are kind to a
+being who is uncertain of being enough himself to be conscientiously
+responsible. It is needless to add, that I am not a happy fraction of a
+man; and that I am eager for the day when I shall rejoin the lost
+members of my corporeal family in another and a happier world.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>ON TRANSLATING THE DIVINA COMMEDIA.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>SECOND SONNET.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I enter, and see thee in the gloom<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The air is filled with some unknown perfume;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The congregation of the dead make room<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like rooks that haunt Ravenna's groves of pine<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the confessionals I hear arise<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And lamentations from the crypts below;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And then a voice celestial that begins<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With the pathetic words, "Although your sins<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As scarlet be," and ends with "as the snow."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE GREAT DOCTOR.</h2>
+
+<h3>A STORY IN TWO PARTS.</h3>
+
+
+<h4>PART I.</h4>
+
+<p>"Hello! hello! which way now, Mrs. Walker? It'll rain afore you git
+there, if you've got fur to go. Hadn't you better stop an' come in till
+this thunder-shower passes over?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no, I reckon not, Mr. Bowen. I'm in a good deal of a hurry. I've
+been sent for over to John's." And rubbing one finger up and down the
+horn of her saddle, for she was on horseback, Mrs. Walker added,
+"Johnny's sick, Mr. Bowen, an' purty bad, I'm afeard." Then she tucked
+up her skirts, and, gathering up the rein, that had dropped on the neck
+of her horse, she inquired in a more cheerful tone, "How's all the
+folks,&mdash;Miss Bowen, an' Jinney, an' all?"</p>
+
+<p>By this time the thunder began to growl, and the wind to whirl clouds of
+dust along the road.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better hitch your critter under the wood-shed, an' come in a bit.
+My woman'll be glad to see you, an' Jinney too,&mdash;there she is now, at
+the winder. I'll warrant nobody goes along the big road without her
+seein' 'em." Mr. Bowen had left the broad kitchen-porch from which he
+had hallooed to the old woman, and was now walking down the gravelled
+path, that, between its borders of four-o'clocks and other common
+flowers, led from the front door to the front gate. "We're all purty
+well, I'm obleeged to you," he said, as, reaching the gate, he leaned
+over it, and turned his cold gray eyes upon the neat legs of the horse,
+rather than the anxious face of the rider.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad to hear you're well," Mrs. Walker said; "it a'most seems to me
+that, if I had Johnny the way he was last week, I wouldn't complain
+about anything. We think too much of our little hardships, Mr. Bowen,&mdash;a
+good deal too much!" And Mrs. Walker looked at the clouds, perhaps in
+the hope that their blackness would frighten the tears away from her
+eyes. John was her own boy,&mdash;forty years old, to be sure, but still a
+boy to her,&mdash;and he was very sick.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know," Mr. Bowen said, opening the mouth of the horse and
+looking in it; "we all have our troubles, an' if it ain't one thing it's
+another. Now if John wasn't sick, I s'pose you'd be frettin' about
+somethin' else; you mustn't think you're particularly sot apart in your
+afflictions, any how. This rain that's getherin' is goin' to spile a
+couple of acres of grass for me, don't you see?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Walker was hurt. Her neighbor had not given her the sympathy she
+expected; he had not said anything about John one way nor another; had
+not inquired whether there was anything he could do, nor what the doctor
+said, nor asked any of those questions that express a kindly solicitude.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry about your hay," she answered, "but I must be going."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't want to hurry you; but if you will go, the sooner the better.
+That thunder-cloud is certain to bust in a few minutes." And Mr. Bowen
+turned toward the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute, Mrs. Walker," called a young voice, full of kindness;
+"here's my umberell. It'll save your bonnet, any how; and it's a real
+purty one. But didn't I hear you say somebody was sick over to your
+son's house?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, darlin'," answered the old woman as she took the umbrella; "it's
+Johnny himself; he's right bad, they say. I just got word about an hour
+ago, and left everything, and started off. They think he's got the
+small-pox."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny Bowen, the young girl who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> had brought the umbrella, looked
+terribly frightened. "<i>They</i> won't let me go over, you know," she said,
+nodding her head toward the house, "not if it's really small-pox!" And
+then, with the hope at which the young are so quick to catch, she added,
+"May be it isn't small-pox. I haven't heard of a case anywhere about. I
+don't believe it is." And then she told Mrs. Walker not to fret about
+home. "I will go," she said, "and milk the cow, and look after things.
+Don't think one thought about it." And then she asked if the rest of
+them at John Walker's were well.</p>
+
+<p>"If it's Hobert you want to know about," the grandmother said, smiling
+faintly, "he's well; but, darlin', you'd better not think about him:
+they'll be ag'in it, in there!" and she nodded toward the house as Jenny
+had done before her.</p>
+
+<p>The face of the young girl flushed,&mdash;not with confusion, but with
+self-asserting and defiant brightness that seemed to say, "Let them do
+their worst." The thunder rattled sharper and nearer, bursting right
+upon the flash of the lightning, and then came the rain. But it proved
+not one of those bright, brief dashes that leave the world sparkling,
+but settled toward sunset into a slow, dull drizzle.</p>
+
+<p>Jenny had her milking, and all the other evening chores, done betimes,
+and with an alertness and cheerfulness in excess of her usual manner,
+that might have indicated an unusual favor to be asked. She had made her
+evening toilet; that is, she had combed her hair, tied on a pair of
+calf-skin shoes, and a blue checked apron, newly washed and ironed; when
+she said, looking toward a faint light in the west, and as though the
+thought had just occurred to her, "It's going to break away, I see.
+Don't you think, mother, I had better just run over to Mrs. Walker's,
+and milk her cow for her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Go to Miss Walker's!" repeated the mother, as though she were as much
+outraged as astonished. She was seated in the door, patching, by the
+waning light, an old pair of mud-spattered trousers, her own dress being
+very old-fashioned, coarse, and scanty,&mdash;so scant, in fact, as to reveal
+the angles of her form with ungraceful definiteness, especially the
+knees, that were almost suggestive of a skeleton, and now, as she put
+herself in position, as it were, stood up with inordinate prominence.
+Her hands were big in the joints, ragged in the nails, and marred all
+over with the cuts, burns, and scratches of indiscriminate and incessant
+toil. But her face was, perhaps, the most sadly divested of all womanly
+charm. It had, in the first place, the deep yellow, lifeless appearance
+of an old bruise, and was expressive of pain, irritation, and fanatical
+anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"Go to Miss Walker's!" she said again, seeing that Jenny was taking down
+from its peg in the kitchen-wall a woollen cloak that had been hers
+since she was a little girl, and her mother's before her.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, mother. You know John Walker is very sick, and Mrs. Walker has
+been sent for over there. She's very down-hearted about him. He's
+dangerous, they think; and I thought may be I'd come round that way as I
+come home, and ask how he was. Don't you think I'd better?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think you had better stay at home and tend to your own business.
+You'll spile your clothes, and do no good that I can see by traipsin'
+out in such a storm."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you would think it was bad for one of our cows to go without
+milking," Jenny said, "and I suppose Mrs. Walker's cow is a good deal
+like ours, and she is giving a pailful of milk now."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know so much about Miss Walker's cow? If you paid more
+attention to things at home, and less to other folks, you'd be more
+dutiful."</p>
+
+<p>"That's true, mother, but would I be any better?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not in your own eyes, child; but you're so much wiser than your father
+and me, that words are throwed away on you."</p>
+
+<p>"I promised Mrs. Walker that I would milk for her to-night," Jenny<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+said, hesitating, and dropping her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"O yes, you've always got some excuse! What did you make a promise for,
+that you knowed your father wouldn't approve of? Take your things right
+off now, and peel the potaters, and sift the meal for mush in the
+morning; an' if Miss Walker's cow must be milked, what's to hender that
+Hobe, the great lazy strapper, shouldn't go and milk her?"</p>
+
+<p>"You forget how much he has to do at home now; and one pair of hands
+can't do everything, even if they are Hobert Walker's!"</p>
+
+<p>Jenny had spoken with much spirit and some bitterness; and the bright
+defiant flush, before noticed, came into her face, as she untied the
+cloak and proceeded to sift the meal and peel the potatoes for
+breakfast. She did her work quietly, but with a determination in every
+movement that indicated a will not easily overruled.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly dark, and the rain still persistently falling, when she
+turned the potato-peelings into the pig-trough that stood only a few
+yards from the door, and, returning, put the cloak about her shoulders,
+tied it deliberately, turned the hood over her head, and, without
+another word, walked straight out into the rain.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I must say! Well, I <i>must</i> say!" cried the mother, in exasperated
+astonishment. "What on airth is that girl a-comin' to?" And, resting her
+elbows on her knees, she leaned her yellow face in her hands, and
+gathered out of her hard, embittered heart such consolation as she
+could.</p>
+
+<p>Jenny, meantime, tucked up her petticoats, and, having left a field or
+two between her and the homestead, tripped lightly along, debating with
+herself whether or not she should carry out her will to the full, and
+return by the way of Mr. John Walker's,&mdash;a question she need hardly have
+raised, if unexpected events had not interfered with her
+predeterminations. At Mrs. Walker's gate she stopped and pulled half a
+dozen roses from the bush that was almost lying on the ground with its
+burden,&mdash;they seemed, somehow, brighter than the roses at home,&mdash;and,
+with them swinging in her hand, had wellnigh gained the door, before she
+perceived that it was standing open. She hesitated an instant,&mdash;perhaps
+some crazy wanderer or drunken person might have entered the
+house,&mdash;when brisk steps, coming up the path that led from the
+milking-yard, arrested her attention, and, looking that way, she
+recognized through the darkness young Hobert Walker, with the full pail
+in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"O Jenny," he said, setting down the pail, "we are in such trouble at
+home! The doctor says father is better, but I don't think so, and I
+ain't satisfied with what is being done for him. Besides, I had such a
+strange dream,&mdash;I thought I met you, Jenny, alone, in the night, and you
+had six red roses in your hand,&mdash;let me see how many have you." He had
+come close to her, and he now took the roses and counted them. There
+were six, sure enough. "Humph!" he said, and went on. "Six red roses, I
+thought; and while I looked at them they turned white as snow; and then
+it seemed to me it was a shroud you had in your hand, and not roses at
+all; and you, seeing how I was frightened, said to me, 'What if it
+should turn out to be my wedding-dress?' And while we talked, your
+father came between us, and led you away by a great chain that he put
+round your neck. But you think all this foolish, I see." And, as if he
+feared the apprehension he had confessed involved some surrender of
+manhood, he cast down his eyes, and awaited her reply in confusion. She
+had too much tact to have noticed this at any time; but in view of the
+serious circumstances in which he then stood, she could not for the life
+of her have turned any feeling of his into a jest, however unwarranted
+she might have felt it to be.</p>
+
+<p>"My grandmother was a great believer in dreams," she said,
+sympathetically; "but she always thought they went by contraries; and,
+if she was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> right, why, yours bodes ever so much good. But come, Hobert,
+let us go into the house: it's raining harder."</p>
+
+<p>"How stupid of me, Jenny, not to remember that you were being drowned,
+almost! You must try to excuse me: I am really hardly myself to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse you, Hobert! As if you could ever do anything I should not think
+was just right!" And she laughed the little musical laugh that had been
+ringing in his ears so long, and skipped before him into the house.</p>
+
+<p>He followed her with better heart; and, as she strained and put away the
+milk, and swept the hearth, and set the house in order, he pleased
+himself with fancies of a home of which she would be always the charming
+mistress.</p>
+
+<p>And who, that saw the sweet domestic cheer she diffused through the
+house with her harmless little gossip about this and that, and the
+artfully artless kindnesses to him she mingled with all, could have
+blamed him? He was given to melancholy and to musing; his cheek was
+sometimes pale, and his step languid; and he saw, all too often,
+troublesome phantoms coming to meet him. This disposition in another
+would have incited the keenest ridicule in the mind of Jenny Bowen, but
+in Hobert it was well enough; nay, more, it was actually fascinating,
+and she would not have had him otherwise. These characteristics&mdash;for her
+sake we will not say weaknesses&mdash;constantly suggested to her how much
+she could be to him,&mdash;she who was so strong in all ways,&mdash;in health, in
+hope, and in enthusiasm. And for him it was joy enough to look upon her
+full bright cheek, to see her compact little figure before him; but to
+touch her dimpled shoulder, to feel one tress of her hair against his
+face, was ecstasy; and her voice,&mdash;the tenderest trill of the wood-dove
+was not half so delicious! But who shall define the mystery of love?
+They were lovers; and when we have said that, is there anything more to
+be said? Their love had not, however, up to the time of which we write,
+found utterance in words. Hobert was the son of a poor man, and Jenny
+was prospectively rich, and the faces of her parents were set as flints
+against the poor young man. But Jenny had said in her heart more than
+once that she would marry him; and if the old folks had known this, they
+might as well have held their peace. Hobert did not dream that she had
+talked thus to her heart, and, with his constitutional timidity, he
+feared she would never say anything of the kind. Then, too, his
+conscientiousness stood in his way. Should he presume to take her to his
+poor house, even if she would come? No, no, he must not think of it; he
+must work and wait, and defer hope. This hour so opportune was also most
+inopportune,&mdash;such sorrow at home! He would not speak to-night,&mdash;O no,
+not to-night! And yet he could bear up against everything else, if she
+only cared for him! Such were his resolves, as she passed to and fro
+before him, trifling away the time with pretence of adjusting this thing
+and that; but at last expedients failed, and reaching for her cloak,
+which hung almost above him as he sat against the wall, she said it was
+time to go. As frostwork disappears in the sunshine, so his brave
+resolutions vanished when her arm reached across his shoulder, and the
+ribbon that tied her beads fluttered against his cheek. With a motion
+quite involuntary, he snatched her hand. "No, Jenny, not yet,&mdash;not quite
+yet!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"And why not?" demanded Jenny; for could any woman, however innocent, or
+rustic, be without her little coquetries? And she added, in a tone that
+contradicted her words, "I am sure I should not have come if I had known
+you were coming!"</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say not," replied Hobert, in a voice so sad and so tender
+withal, as to set the roses Jenny wore in her bosom trembling. "I dare
+say not, indeed. I would not presume to hope you would go a step out of
+your way to give me pleasure; only I was feeling so lonesome to-night, I
+thought may be&mdash;no, I didn't think anything; I certainly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> didn't hope
+anything. Well, no matter, I am ready to go." And he let go the hand he
+had been holding, and stood up.</p>
+
+<p>It was Jenny's privilege to pout a little now, and to walk sullenly and
+silently home,&mdash;so torturing herself and her honest-hearted lover; but
+she was much too generous, much too noble, to do this. She would not for
+the world have grieved poor Hobert,&mdash;not then,&mdash;not when his heart was
+so sick and so weighed down with shadows; and she told him this with a
+simple earnestness that admitted of no doubt, concluding with, "I only
+wish, Hobert, I could say or do something to comfort you."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you will stay? Just a moment, Jenny!" And the hand was in his
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Jenny,&mdash;dear, dear Jenny!" She was sitting on his knee now; and
+the rain, with its pattering against the window, drowned their
+heart-beats; and the summer darkness threw over them its sacred veil.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I tell you, darling, of another dream I have had to-night&mdash;since
+I have been sitting here?" The fair cheek bent itself close to his to
+listen, and he went on. "I have been dreaming, Jenny, a very sweet
+dream; and this is what it was. You and I were living here, in this
+house, with grandmother; and she was your grandmother as well as mine;
+and I was farmer of the land, and you were mistress of the dairy; and
+the little room with windows toward the sunrise, and the pretty bureau,
+and bed with snow-white coverlet and pillows of down,&mdash;that
+was"&mdash;perhaps he meant to say "<i>ours</i>," but his courage failed him, and,
+with a charming awkwardness, he said, "yours, Jenny," and hurried on to
+speak of the door-yard flowers, and the garden with its beds of thyme
+and mint, its berry-bushes and hop-vines and bee-hives,&mdash;all of which
+were brighter and sweeter than were ever hives and bushes in any other
+garden; and when he had run through the catalogue of rustic delights, he
+said: "And now, Jenny, I want you to tell me the meaning of my dream;
+and yet I am afraid you will interpret it as your grandmother used to
+hers."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny laughed gayly. "That is just what I will do, dear Hobert," she
+said; "for she used to say that only bad dreams went by contraries, and
+yours was the prettiest dream I ever heard."</p>
+
+<p>The reply to this sweet interpretation was after the manner of all
+lovers since the world began. And so, forgetting the stern old folks at
+home,&mdash;forgetting everything but each other,&mdash;they sat for an hour at
+the very gate of heaven. How often Hobert called her his sweetheart, and
+his rosebud, and other fond names, we need not stop to enumerate: how
+often he said that for her sake he could brave the winter storm and the
+summer heat, that she should never know rough work nor sad days, but
+that she should be as tenderly protected, as daintily cared for, as any
+lady of them all,&mdash;how often he said all these things, we need not
+enumerate; nor need we say with what unquestioning trust, and deafness
+to all the suggestions of probability, Jenny believed. Does not love, in
+fact, always believe what it hopes? Who would do away with the blessed
+insanity that clothes the marriage day with such enchantment? Who would
+dare to do it?</p>
+
+<p>No royal mantle could have been adjusted with tenderer and more reverent
+solicitude than was that night the coarse cloak about the shoulders of
+Jenny. The walk homeward was all too short; and whether the rain fell,
+or whether the moon were at her best, perhaps neither of them could have
+told until they were come within earshot of the Bowen homestead; then
+both suddenly stood still. Was it the arm of Jenny that trembled so? No,
+no! we must own the truth,&mdash;it was the arm through which hers was drawn.
+At her chamber window, peering out curiously and anxiously, was the
+yellow-white face of Mrs. Bowen; and, leaning over the gate, gazing up
+and down the road, the rain falling on his bent shoulders and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> gray
+head, was the father of Jenny,&mdash;angry and impatient, past doubt.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't stand looking any longer, for mercy's sake!" called the querulous
+voice from the house. "You'll get your death of cold, and then what'll
+become of us all? Saddle your horse this minute, and ride over to John
+Walker's,&mdash;for there's where you'll find Jinny, the gad-about,&mdash;and
+bring her home at the tail of your critter. I'll see who is going to be
+mistress here!"</p>
+
+<p>"She's had her own head too long a'ready, I'm afeard," replied the old
+man, turning from the gate, with intent, probably, to execute his wife's
+order.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing this, and hearing this, Hobert, as we said, stood still and
+trembled, and could only ask, by a little pressure of the hand he held,
+what was to be said or done.</p>
+
+<p>Jenny did not hesitate a moment. "I expected this or something worse,"
+she said. "Don't mind, Hobert; so they don't see you, I don't care for
+the rest. You must not go one step farther: the lightning will betray
+us, you see. I will say I waited for the rain to slack, and the two
+storms will clear off about the same time, I dare say. There, good
+night!"&mdash;and she turned her cheek to him; for she was not one of those
+impossible maidens we read of in books, who don't know they are in love,
+until after the consent of parents is obtained, and blush themselves to
+ashes at the thought of a kiss. To love Hobert was to her the most
+natural and proper thing in the world, and she did not dream there was
+anything to blush for. It is probable, too, that his constitutional
+bashfulness and distrust of himself brought out her greater confidence
+and buoyancy.</p>
+
+<p>"And how and where am I ever to see you again?" he asked, as he detained
+her, against her better judgment, if not against her will.</p>
+
+<p>"Trust that to me,"&mdash;and she hurried away in time to meet and prevent
+her father from riding forth in search of her.</p>
+
+<p>Of course there were fault-finding and quarrelling, accusations and
+protestations, hard demands and sullen pouting,&mdash;so that the home, at no
+time so attractive as we like to imagine the home of a young girl who
+has father and mother to provide for her and protect her, became to her
+like a prison-house. At the close of the first and second days after her
+meeting with Hobert, when the work was all faithfully done, she ventured
+to ask leave to go over to John Walker's and inquire how the sick man
+was; but so cold a refusal met her, that, on the evening of the third
+day, she sat down on the porch-side to while away the hour between
+working and sleeping, without having renewed her request.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was down, and the first star began to show faintly above a strip
+of gray cloud in the west, when a voice, low and tender, called to her,
+"Come here, my child!" and looking up she saw Grandmother Walker sitting
+on her horse at the gate. She had in the saddle before her her youngest
+granddaughter, and on the bare back of the horse, behind her, a little
+grandson, both their young faces expressive of the sorrow at home. Jenny
+arose on the instant, betraying in every motion the interest and
+sympathy she felt, and was just stepping lightly from the porch to the
+ground, when a strong hand grasped her shoulder and turned her back. It
+was her father who had overtaken her. "Go into the house!" he said. "If
+the old woman has got any arrant at all, it's likely it's to your mother
+and me."</p>
+
+<p>Nor was his heart melted in the least when he learned that his friend
+and neighbor was no more. He evinced surprise, and made some blunt and
+coarse inquiries, but that was the amount. "The widder is left purty
+destitute, I reckon," he said; and then he added, the Lord helped them
+that helped themselves, and we mustn't fly in the face of Providence.
+She had her son, strong and able-bodied; and of course he had no
+thoughts of encumbering himself with a family of his own,&mdash;young and
+poverty-struck as he was.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Walker understood the insinuation;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> but her heart could not hold
+resentment just then. She must relieve her burdened soul by talking of
+"poor Johnny," even though it were to deaf ears. She must tell what a
+good boy he had been,&mdash;how kind to her and considerate of her, how
+manly, how generous, how self-forgetful. And then she must tell how hard
+he had worked, and how saving he had been in order to give his children
+a better chance in the world than he had had; and how, if he had lived
+another year, he would have paid off the mortgage, and been able to hold
+up his head amongst men.</p>
+
+<p>After all the ploughing and sowing,&mdash;after all the preparation for the
+gathering in of the harvest,&mdash;it seemed very hard, she said, that Johnny
+must be called away, just as the shining ears began to appear. The
+circumstances of his death, too, seemed to her peculiarly afflictive.
+"We had all the doctors in the neighborhood," she said, "but none of
+them understood his case. At first they thought he had small-pox, and
+doctored him for that; and then they thought it was liver-complaint, and
+doctored him for that; and then it was bilious fever, and then it was
+typhus fever; and so it went on, and I really can't believe any of them
+understood anything about it. Their way seemed to be to do just what he
+didn't want done. In the first place, he was bled; and then he was
+blistered; and then he was bled again and blistered again, the fever all
+the time getting higher and higher; and when he wanted water, they said
+it would kill him, and gave him hot drinks till it seemed to me they
+would drive him mad; and sure enough, they did! The last word he ever
+said, to know what he was saying, was to ask me for a cup of cold water.
+I only wish I had given it to him; all the doctors in the world wouldn't
+prevent me now, if I only had him back. The fever seemed to be just
+devouring him: his tongue was as dry as sand, and his head as hot as
+fire. 'O mother!' says he, and there was such a look of beseeching in
+his eyes as I can never forget, 'may be I shall never want you to do
+anything more for me. Cold water! give me some cold water! If I don't
+have it, my senses will surely fly out of my head!' 'Yes, Johnny,' says
+I,&mdash;and I went and brought a tin bucketful, right out of the well, and
+set it on the table in his sight; for I thought it would do him good to
+see even more than he could drink; and then I brought a cup and dipped
+it up full. It was all dripping over, and he had raised himself on one
+elbow, and was leaning toward me, when the young doctor came in, and,
+stepping between us, took the cup out of my hand. All his strength
+seemed to go from poor Johnny at that, and he fell back on his pillow
+and never lifted his head any more. Still he kept begging in a feeble
+voice for the water. 'Just two or three drops,&mdash;just one drop!' he said.
+I couldn't bear it, and the doctor said I had better go out of the room,
+and so I did,&mdash;and the good Lord forgive me; for when I went back, after
+half an hour, he was clean crazy. He didn't know me, and he never knowed
+me any more."</p>
+
+<p>"It's purty hard, Miss Walker," answered Mr. Bowen, "to accuse the
+doctors with the murder of your son. A purty hard charge, that, I call
+it! So John's dead! Well, I hope he is better off. Where are you goin'
+to bury him?"</p>
+
+<p>And then Mrs. Walker said she didn't charge anybody with the murder of
+poor Johnny,&mdash;nobody meant to do him any harm, she knew that; but, after
+all, she wished she could only have had her own way with him from the
+first. And so she rode away,&mdash;her little bare-legged grandson, behind
+her, aggravating her distress by telling her that, when he got to be a
+man, he meant to do nothing all the days of his life but dig wells, and
+give water to whoever wanted it.</p>
+
+<p>It is not worth while to dwell at length on the humiliations and
+privations to which Jenny was subjected,&mdash;the mention of one or two will
+indicate the nature of all. In the first place, the white heifer she had
+always called<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> hers was sold, and the money tied up in a tow bag. Jenny
+would not want a cow for years to come. The piece of land that had
+always been known as "Jenny's Corner" was not thus denominated any more,
+and she was given to understand that it was only to be hers
+<i>conditionally</i>. There were obstacles put in the way of her going to
+meeting of a Sunday,&mdash;first one thing, then another; and, finally, the
+bureau was locked, and the best dress and brightest ribbon inside the
+drawers. The new side-saddle she had been promised was refused to her,
+unless she in turn would make a promise; and the long day's work was
+made to drag on into the night, lest she might find time to visit some
+neighbor, and lest that neighbor might be the Widow Walker. But what
+device of the enemy ever proved successful when matched against the
+simple sincerity of true love? It came about, in spite of all restraint
+and prohibition, that Jenny and Hobert met in their own times and ways;
+and so a year went by.</p>
+
+<p>One night, late in the summer, when the katydids began to sing, Jenny
+waited longer than usual under the vine-covered beech that drooped its
+boughs low to the ground all round her,&mdash;now listening for the expected
+footstep, and now singing, very low, some little song to her heart, such
+as many a loving and trusting maiden had sung before her. What could
+keep Hobert? She knew it was not his will that kept him; and though her
+heart began to be heavy, she harbored therein no thought of reproach. By
+the movement of the shadow on the grass, she guessed that an hour beyond
+the one of appointment must have passed, when the far-away footfall set
+her so lately hushed pulses fluttering with delight. He was coming,&mdash;he
+was coming! And, no matter what had been wrong, all would be right now.
+She was holding wide the curtaining boughs long before he came near; and
+when they dropped, and her arms closed, it is not improbable that he was
+within them. It was the delight of meeting her that kept him still so
+long, Jenny thought; and she prattled lightly and gayly of this and of
+that, and, seeing that she won no answer, fell to tenderer tones, and
+imparted the little vexing secrets of her daily life, and the sweet
+hopes of her nightly dreams.</p>
+
+<p>They were seated on a grassy knoll, the moonlight creeping tenderly
+about their feet, and the leaves of the drooping vines touching their
+heads like hands of pity, or of blessing. The water running over the
+pebbly bottom of the brook just made the silence sweet, and the evening
+dews shining on the red globes of the clover made the darkness lovely;
+but with all these enchantments of sight and sound about him,&mdash;nay,
+more, with the hand of Jenny, his own true-love, Jenny, folded in
+his,&mdash;Hobert was not happy.</p>
+
+<p>"And so you think you love me!" he said at last, speaking so sadly, and
+clasping the hand he held with so faint a pressure, that Jenny would
+have been offended if she had not been the dear, trustful little
+creature she was.</p>
+
+<p>There was, indeed, a slight reproach in her accent as she answered,
+"<i>Think</i> I love you, Hobert? No, I don't think anything about it,&mdash;I
+<i>know</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"And I know I love you, Jenny," he replied. "I love you so well that I
+am going to leave you without asking you to marry me!"</p>
+
+<p>For one moment Jenny was silent,&mdash;for one moment the world seemed
+unsteady beneath her,&mdash;then she stood up, and, taking the hand of her
+lover between her palms, gazed into his face with one long, earnest,
+steadfast gaze. "You have asked me already, Hobert," she said, "a
+thousand times, and I have consented as often. You may go away, but you
+will not leave me; for 'Whither thou goest I will go, where thou diest
+will I die, and there will I be buried.'"</p>
+
+<p>He drew her close to his bosom now, and kissed her with most passionate,
+but still saddest tenderness. "You know not, my darling," he said, "what
+you would sacrifice." Then he laid before her all her present
+advantages, all her bright prospects for the future,&mdash;her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> high chamber
+with its broad eastern windows, to be given up for the low dingy walls
+of a settler's cabin, her free girlhood for the hard struggles of a
+settler's wife! Sickness, perhaps,&mdash;certainly the lonesome nights and
+days of a home remote from neighbors, and the dreariness and hardship
+inseparable from the working out of better fortunes. But all these
+things, even though they should all come, were light in comparison with
+losing him!</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps Hobert had desired and expected to hear her say this. At any
+rate, he did not insist on a reversal of her decision, as, with his arms
+about her, he proceeded to explain why he had come to her that night
+with so heavy a heart. The substance of all he related may be
+recapitulated in a few words. The land could not be paid for, and the
+homestead must be sold. He would not be selfish and forsake his mother,
+and his young brothers and sisters in their time of need. By careful
+management of the little that could be saved, he might buy in the West a
+better farm than that which was now to be given up; and there to build a
+cabin and plant a garden would be easy,&mdash;O, so easy!&mdash;with the smile of
+Jenny to light him home when the day's work was done.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, the prospective hardships vanished away at the thought of her
+for his little housekeeper. It was such easy work for fancy to convert
+the work-days into holidays, and the thick wilderness into the shining
+village, where the schoolhouse stood open all the week, and the sweet
+bells called them to church of a Sunday; easy work for that deceitful
+elf to make the chimney-corner snug and warm, and to embellish it with
+his mother in her easy-chair. When they parted that night, each young
+heart was trembling with the sweetest secret it had ever held; and it
+was perhaps a fortnight thereafter that the same secret took wing, and
+flew wildly over the neighborhood.</p>
+
+<p>John Walker's little farm was gone for good and all. The few sheep, and
+the cows, and the pig, and the fowls, together with the greater part of
+the household furniture, were scattered over the neighborhood; the smoke
+was gone from the chimney, and the windows were curtainless; and the
+grave of John, with a modest but decent headstone, and a rose-bush newly
+planted beside it, was left to the care of strangers. The last visits
+had been paid, and the last good-byes and good wishes exchanged; and the
+widow and her younger children were far on their journey,&mdash;Hobert
+remaining for a day or two to dispose of his smart young horse, as it
+was understood, and then follow on.</p>
+
+<p>At this juncture, Mr. Bowen one morning opened the stair-door, as was
+his custom, soon after daybreak, and called harshly out, "Jinny! Jinny!
+its high time you was up!"</p>
+
+<p>Five minutes having elapsed, and the young girl not having yet appeared,
+the call was repeated more harshly than before. "Come, Jinny, come! or
+I'll know what's the reason!"</p>
+
+<p>She did not come; and five minutes more having passed, he mounted the
+stairs with a quick, resolute step, to know what was the reason. He came
+down faster, if possible, than he went up. "Mother, mother!" he cried,
+rushing toward Mrs. Bowen, who stood at the table sifting meal, his gray
+hair streaming wildly back, and his cheek blanched with amazement,
+"Jinny's run away!&mdash;run away, as sure as you're a livin' woman. Her
+piller hasn't been touched last night, and her chamber's desarted!"</p>
+
+<p>And this was the secret that took wing and flew over the neighborhood.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE RETREAT FROM LENOIR'S AND THE SIEGE OF KNOXVILLE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Late in October, 1863, the Ninth Army Corps went into camp at Lenoir's
+Station, twenty-five miles southwest of Knoxville, East Tennessee. Since
+April, the corps had campaigned in Kentucky, had participated in the
+siege of Vicksburg, had accompanied Sherman into the interior of
+Mississippi in his pursuit of Johnston, had returned to Kentucky, and
+then, in conjunction with the Twenty-third Army Corps, marching over the
+mountains into East Tennessee, in a brief but brilliant campaign under
+its old leader and favorite, Burnside, had delivered the loyal people of
+that region from the miseries of Rebel rule, and had placed them once
+more under the protection of the old flag. But all this had not been
+done without loss. Many of our brave comrades, who, through a storm of
+leaden hail, had crossed the bridge at Antietam, and had faced death in
+a hundred forms on the heights of Fredericksburg, had fallen on these
+widely separated battle-fields in the valley of the Mississippi. Many,
+overborne by fatigue and exposure, had laid down their wasted bodies by
+the roadside and in hospitals, and had gently breathed their young lives
+away. Many more, from time to time, had been rendered unfit for active
+service; and the corps, now a mere skeleton, numbered less than three
+thousand men present for duty. Never did men need rest more than they;
+and never was an order more welcome than that which now declared the
+campaign ended, and authorized the construction of winter quarters.</p>
+
+<p>The Thirty-sixth Massachusetts Volunteers&mdash;then in the First Brigade,
+First Division, Ninth Corps&mdash;was under the command of Major
+Draper,&mdash;Lieutenant-Colonel Goodell having been severely wounded at the
+battle of Blue Springs, October 10. The place selected for the winter
+quarters of the regiment was a young oak grove, nearly a quarter of a
+mile east of the village. The camp was laid out with unusual care. In
+order to secure uniformity throughout the regiment, the size of the
+log-houses&mdash;they were to be ten feet by six&mdash;was announced in orders
+from regimental head-quarters. The work of construction was at once
+commenced. Unfortunately, we were so far from our base of supplies&mdash;Camp
+Nelson, Kentucky&mdash;that nearly all our transportation was required by the
+Commissary Department for the conveyance of its stores. Consequently,
+the Quartermaster's Department was poorly supplied; and the only axes
+which could be obtained were those which our pioneers and company cooks
+had brought with them for their own use. These, however, were pressed
+into the service; and their merry ringing, as the men cheerfully engaged
+in the work, could be heard from early morning till evening. Small oaks,
+four and five inches in diameter, were chiefly used in building these
+houses. The logs were laid one above another, to the height of four
+feet, intersecting at the corners of the houses like the rails of a
+Virginia fence. The interstices were filled with mud. Shelter-tents,
+buttoned together to the size required, formed the roof, and afforded
+ample protection from the weather, except in very heavy rains. Each
+house had its fireplace, table, and bunk. On the 13th of November the
+houses were nearly completed; and as we sat by our cheerful fires that
+evening, and looked forward to the leisure and quiet of the winter
+before us, we thought ourselves the happiest of soldiers. Writing home
+at that time, I said that, unless something unforeseen should happen, we
+expected to remain at Lenoir's during the winter.</p>
+
+<p>That something unforeseen was at hand; and our pleasant dreams were
+destined to fade away like an unsubstantial pageant, leaving not a rack
+behind.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> At four o'clock on the morning of the 14th I was roused from
+sleep by loud knocks on the new-made door. In the order which followed,
+"Be ready to march at daybreak," I recognized the familiar, but
+unwelcome voice of the Sergeant-Major. Throwing aside my blankets, and
+leaving the Captain dreamily wondering what could be the occasion of so
+unexpected an order, I hurried to the quarters of the men of Company D,
+and repeated to the Orderly Sergeant the instructions just received. The
+camp was soon astir. Lights flashed here and there through the trees.
+"Pack up! pack up!" passed from lip to lip. "Shall we take everything?"
+Yes, everything. The shelter-tents were stripped from the houses,
+knapsacks and trunks were packed. The wagon for the officers' baggage
+came, was hurriedly loaded, and driven away. A hasty breakfast followed.
+Then, forming our line, we stacked arms, and awaited further orders.</p>
+
+<p>The mystery was soon solved. Longstreet, having cut loose from Bragg's
+army, which still remained in the vicinity of Chattanooga, had, by a
+forced march, struck the Tennessee River at Hough's Ferry, a few miles
+below Loudon. Already he had thrown a pontoon across the river, and was
+crossing with his entire command, except the cavalry under Wheeler,
+which he had sent by way of Marysville, with orders to seize the heights
+on the south bank of the Holston, opposite Knoxville. The whole movement
+was the commencement of a series of blunders on the part of the Rebel
+commanders in this department, which resulted at length in the utter
+overthrow of the Rebel army of the Tennessee. General Grant saw at once
+the mistake which the enemy had made, and ordered General Burnside to
+fall back to Knoxville and intrench, promising reinforcements speedily.
+Knoxville was Longstreet's objective. It was the key of East Tennessee.
+Should it again fall into the enemy's hands, we would be obliged to
+retire to Cumberland Gap. Lenoir's did not lie in Longstreet's path. If
+we remained there, he would push his columns past our right, and get
+between us and Knoxville. It was evident that the place must be
+abandoned; and there was need of haste. The mills and factories in the
+village were accordingly destroyed, and the wagon-train started north.</p>
+
+<p>The morning had opened heavily with clouds, and, as the day advanced,
+the rain came down in torrents. A little before noon, our division, then
+under the command of General Ferrero, moved out of the woods; but,
+instead of taking the road to Knoxville, as we had anticipated, the
+column marched down the Loudon road. We were to watch the enemy, and, by
+holding him in check, secure the safety of our trains and material, then
+on the way to Knoxville.</p>
+
+<p>A few miles from Lenoir's, while we were halting for rest, General
+Burnside passed us on his way to the front. Under his slouched hat there
+was a sterner face than there was wont to be. There is trouble ahead,
+said the men; but the cheers which rose from regiment after regiment, as
+with his staff and battle-flag he swept past us, told the confidence
+which all felt in "Old Burnie."</p>
+
+<p>Chapin's brigade of White's command (Twenty-third Army Corps) was in the
+advance; and about four o'clock his skirmishers met those of the enemy,
+and drove them back a mile and a half. We followed through mud and rain.
+The country became hilly as we advanced, and our artillery was moved
+with difficulty. At dark we were in front of the enemy's position,
+having marched nearly fourteen miles. The rain had now ceased. Halting,
+we formed our lines in thick woods, and stacked our arms,&mdash;weary and
+wet, and not in the happiest of moods.</p>
+
+<p>During the evening a circular was received, notifying us of an intended
+attack on the enemy's lines at nine o'clock, <span class="smcap">p. m.</span>, by the troops of
+White's command; but, with the exception of an occasional shot, the
+night was a quiet one.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning, the usual reveille was omitted; and, at daybreak,
+noiselessly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> our lines were formed, and we marched out of the woods into
+the road. But it was not an advance. During the night General Ferrero
+had received orders to fall back to Lenoir's. Such, however, was the
+state of the roads, that it was almost impossible to move our artillery.
+At one time our whole regiment was detailed to assist Roemer's battery.
+Near Loudon we passed the Second Division of our corps, which during the
+night had moved down from Lenoir's, in order to be within supporting
+distance. But the enemy did not seem disposed to press us. We reached
+Lenoir's about noon. Sigfried, with the Second Division, followed later
+in the day. Our brigade (Morrison's) was now drawn up in line of battle
+on the Kingston road, as it was thought that the enemy, by not pressing
+our rear, intended a movement from that direction. And such was the
+fact. The enemy advanced against our position on this road, about four
+o'clock, and drove in our pickets. The Eighth Michigan was at once
+deployed as skirmishers. The Thirty-sixth Massachusetts and Forty-fifth
+Pennsylvania at the same time moved forward to support the skirmishers,
+and formed their line of battle in the woods, on the left of the road.
+Just at dusk, the enemy made a dash, and pressed our skirmishers back
+nearly to our line, but did not seem inclined to advance any further.</p>
+
+<p>A portion of the Ninth Corps, under Colonel Hartranft, and a body of
+mounted infantry, were now sent towards Knoxville, with orders to seize
+and hold the junction of the road from Lenoir's with the Knoxville and
+Kingston road, near the village of Campbell's Station. The distance was
+only eight miles, but the progress of the column was much retarded. Such
+was still the condition of the roads that the artillery could be moved
+only with the greatest difficulty. Colonel Biddle dismounted some of his
+men, and hitched their horses to the guns. In order to lighten the
+caissons, some of the ammunition was removed from the boxes and
+destroyed; but as little as possible, for who could say it would not be
+needed on the morrow? Throughout the long night, officers and men
+faltered not in their efforts to help forward the batteries. In the
+light of subsequent events, it will be seen that they could not have
+performed any more important service. Colonel Hartranft that night
+displayed the same spirit and energy which he infused into his gallant
+Pennsylvanians at Fort Steadman, in the last agonies of the Rebellion,
+when, rolling back the fiercest assaults of the enemy, he gained the
+first real success in the trenches at Petersburg, and won for himself
+the double star of a Major-General.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Morrison's brigade remained on the Kingston road in front of
+Lenoir's. The enemy, anticipating an evacuation of the place, made an
+attack on our lines about ten o'clock, <span class="smcap">p. m.</span>; but a few shots on our
+part were sufficient to satisfy him that we still held the ground.
+Additional pickets, however, were sent out to extend the line held by
+the Eighth Michigan. The Thirty-sixth Massachusetts and Forty-fifth
+Pennsylvania still remained in line of battle in the woods. Neither
+officers nor men slept that night. It was bitter cold, and the usual
+fires were denied us, lest they should betray our weakness to the enemy.
+The men were ordered to put their canteens and tin cups in their
+haversacks, and remain quietly in their places, ready for any movement
+at a moment's notice. It was a long, tedious, fearful night; what would
+the morrow bring? It was Sunday night. The day had brought us no
+rest,&mdash;only weariness and anxiety. No one could speak to his fellow; and
+in the thick darkness, through the long, long night, we lay on our arms,
+waiting for the morning. Ah, how many hearts there were among us, which,
+overleaping the boundaries of States, found their way to Pennsylvanian
+and New England homes,&mdash;how many, which, on the morrow, among the hills
+of East Tennessee, were to pour out their young blood even unto death!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At length the morning came. It was cloudy as the day before. White's
+division of the Twenty-third Corps was now on the road to Knoxville;
+and, besides our own brigade, only Humphrey's brigade of our division
+remained at Lenoir's. About daybreak, as silently as possible, we
+withdrew from our position on the Kingston road, and, falling back
+through the village of Lenoir's, moved towards Knoxville, Humphrey's
+brigade covering the retreat. Everything which we could not take with us
+was destroyed. Even our baggage and books, which, for the want of
+transportation, had not been removed, were committed to the flames. The
+enemy at once discovered our retreat, but did not press us till within a
+mile or two of the village of Campbell's Station. Humphrey, however,
+held him in check, and we moved on to the point where the road from
+Lenoir's unites with the road from Kingston to Knoxville. It was
+evidently Longstreet's intention to cut off our retreat at this place.
+For this reason he had not pressed us at Lenoir's, the afternoon
+previous, but had moved the main body of his army to our right. But the
+mounted infantry, which had been sent to this point during the night,
+were able to hold him in check, on the Kingston road, till Hartranft
+came up.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching the junction of the roads, we advanced into an open field on
+our left, and at once formed our line of battle in rear of a rail fence,
+our right resting near the Kingston road. The Eighth Michigan was on our
+left. The Forty-fifth Pennsylvania was deployed as skirmishers. The rest
+of our troops were now withdrawing to a new position back of the village
+of Campbell's Station; and we were left to cover the movement. Unfurling
+our colors, we awaited the advance of the enemy. There was an occasional
+shot fired in our front, and to our right; but it was soon evident that
+the Rebels were moving to our left, in order to gain the cover of the
+woods. Moving off by the left flank, therefore, we took a second
+position in an adjoining field. Finding now the enemy moving rapidly
+through the woods, and threatening our rear, we executed a left
+half-wheel; and, advancing on the double-quick to the rail fence which
+ran along the edge of the woods, we opened a heavy fire. From this
+position the enemy endeavored to force us. His fire was well directed,
+but the fence afforded us a slight protection. Lieutenant Fairbank and a
+few of the men were here wounded. For a while, we held the enemy in
+check, but at length the skirmishers of the Forty-fifth Pennsylvania,
+who were watching our right, discovered a body of Rebel infantry pushing
+towards our rear from the Kingston road. Colonel Morrison, our brigade
+commander, at once ordered the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts and Eighth
+Michigan to face about, and establish a new line, in rear of the rail
+fence on the opposite side of the field. We advanced on the
+double-quick; and, reaching the fence, our men with a shout poured a
+volley into the Rebel line of battle, which not only checked its
+advance, but drove it back in confusion. Meanwhile, the enemy in our
+rear moved up to the edge of the woods, which we had just left, and now
+opened a brisk fire. We at once crossed the fence in order to place it
+between us and his fire, and were about to devote our attention again to
+him, when orders came for us to withdraw,&mdash;it being no longer necessary
+to hold the junction of the roads, for all our troops and wagons had now
+passed. The enemy, too, was closing in upon us, and his fire was the
+hottest. We moved off in good order; but our loss in killed and wounded
+was quite heavy, considering the length of time we were under fire.</p>
+
+<p>Among the killed was Lieutenant P. Marion Holmes of Charlestown, Mass.,
+of whom it might well be said,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"He died as fathers wish their sons to die."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Lieutenant Holmes had been wounded at the battle of Blue Springs a
+little more than a month before, and had made the march from Lenoir's
+that morning with great difficulty. But he would not leave his men. On
+his breast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> he wore the badge of the Bunker Hill Club, on which was
+engraved the familiar line from Horace, which Warren quoted just before
+the battle of Bunker Hill,&mdash;"Dulce et decorum est pro patri&acirc; mori." In
+the death of Lieutenant Holmes, the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts offered
+its costliest sacrifice. Frank, courteous, manly, brave, he had won all
+hearts, and his sudden removal from our companionship at that moment
+will ever remind us of the great price with which that morning's success
+was bought.</p>
+
+<p>The enemy now man&oelig;uvred to cut us off from the road, and pressed us
+so hard that we were obliged to oblique to the left. Moving on the
+double-quick, receiving an occasional volley, and barely escaping
+capture, we at length emerged from the woods on the outskirts of the
+little village of Campbell's Station. We were soon under cover of our
+artillery, which General Potter, under the direction of General
+Burnside, had placed in position on high ground just beyond the village.
+This village is situated between two low ranges of hills, which are
+nearly a mile apart. Across the intervening space, our infantry was
+drawn up in a single line of battle, Ferrero's division of the Ninth
+Corps held the right, White's division of the Twenty-third Corps held
+the centre, and Hartranft's division of the Ninth Corps held the left.
+Benjamin's, Buckley's, Getting's, and Van Schlein's batteries were on
+the right of the road. Roemer's battery was on the left. The
+Thirty-sixth Massachusetts supported Roemer.</p>
+
+<p>The enemy, meanwhile, had disposed his forces for an attack on our
+position. At noon he came out of the woods, just beyond the village, in
+two lines of battle, with a line of skirmishers in front. The whole
+field was open to our view. Benjamin and Roemer opened fire at once; and
+so accurate was their range, that the Rebel lines were immediately
+broken, and they fell back into the woods in confusion. The enemy, under
+cover of the woods on the slope of the ridge, now advanced against our
+right. Christ's brigade, of our division, at once changed front. Buckley
+executed the same movement with his battery, and, by a well-directed
+fire, checked the enemy's progress in that direction. The enemy next
+man&oelig;uvred to turn our left. Falling back, however, to a stronger
+position in our rear, we established a new line about four o'clock in
+the afternoon. This was done under a heavy fire from the enemy's
+batteries. Ferrero was now on the right of the road. Morrison's brigade
+was placed in rear of a rail fence, at the foot of the ridge on which
+Benjamin's battery had been planted. The enemy did not seem inclined to
+attack us in front, but pushed along the ridge, on our left, aiming to
+strike Hartranft in flank and rear. He was discovered in this attempt;
+and, just as he was moving over ground recently cleared, Roemer,
+changing front at the same time with Hartranft, opened his three-inch
+guns on the Rebel line, and drove it back in disorder, followed by the
+skirmishers. Longstreet, foiled in all these attempts to force us from
+our position, now withdrew beyond the range of our guns, and made no
+further demonstrations that day. Our troops were justly proud of their
+success; for, with a force not exceeding five thousand men, they had
+held in check, for an entire day, three times their own number,&mdash;the
+flower of Lee's army. Our loss in the Ninth Corps was twenty-six killed,
+one hundred and sixty-six wounded, and fifty-seven missing. Of these,
+the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts lost one officer and three enlisted men
+killed, three officers and fourteen enlisted men wounded, and three
+enlisted men missing.</p>
+
+<p>At six o'clock, <span class="smcap">p. m.</span>, Ferrero's division, followed by Hartranft's,
+moved to the rear, taking the road to Knoxville. White's division of the
+Twenty-third Corps covered the retreat. Campbell's Station is a little
+more than sixteen miles from Knoxville; but the night was so dark, and
+the road so muddy, that our progress was much retarded, and we did not
+reach Knoxville till about four o'clock the next morning. We<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> had now
+been without sleep forty-eight hours. Moreover, since the previous
+morning we had marched twenty-four miles and fought a battle. Halting
+just outside of the town, weary and worn, we threw ourselves on the
+ground, and snatched a couple of hours of sleep. Early in the day&mdash;it
+was the 17th of November&mdash;General Burnside assigned the batteries and
+regiments of his command to the positions they were to occupy in the
+defence of the place. Knoxville is situated on the northern bank of the
+Holston River. For the most part, the town is built on a table-land,
+which is nearly a mile square, and about one hundred and fifty feet
+above the river. On the northeast, the town is bounded by a small creek.
+Beyond this creek is an elevation known as Temperance Hill. Still
+farther to the east is Mayberry's Hill. On the northwest, this
+table-land descends to a broad valley; on the southwest, the town is
+bounded by a second creek. Beyond this is College Hill; and still
+farther to the southwest is a high ridge, running nearly parallel with
+the road which enters Knoxville at this point. Benjamin's and Buckley's
+batteries occupied the unfinished bastion-work on the ridge just
+mentioned. This work was afterwards known as Fort Sanders. Roemer's
+battery was placed in position on College Hill. These batteries were
+supported by Ferrero's division of the Ninth Corps, his line extending
+from the Holston River on the left to the point where the East Tennessee
+and Georgia Railroad crosses the creek mentioned above as Second Creek.
+Hartranft connected with Ferrero's right, supporting Getting's and the
+Fifteenth Indiana Batteries. His lines extended as far as First Creek.
+The divisions of White and Hascall, of the Twenty-third Corps, occupied
+the ground between this point and the Holston River, on the northeast
+side of the town, with their artillery in position on Temperance and
+Mayberry's Hills.</p>
+
+<p>Knoxville at this time was by no means in a defensible condition. The
+bastion-work, occupied by Benjamin's and Buckley's batteries, was not
+only not finished, but was little more than begun. It required two
+hundred negroes four hours to clear places for the guns. There was also
+a fort in process of construction on Temperance Hill. Nothing more had
+been done. But the work was now carried forward in earnest. As fast as
+the troops were placed in position, they commenced the construction of
+rifle-pits. Though wearied by three days of constant marching and
+fighting, they gave themselves to the work with all the energy of fresh
+men. Citizens and contrabands also were pressed into the service. Many
+of the former were loyal men, and devoted themselves to their tasks with
+a zeal which evinced the interest they felt in making good the defence
+of the town; but some of them were bitter Rebels, and, as Captain Poe,
+Chief-Engineer of the Army of the Ohio, well remarked, "worked with a
+very poor grace, which blistered hands did not tend to improve." The
+contrabands engaged in the work with that heartiness which, during the
+war, characterized their labors in our service.</p>
+
+<p>At noon, the enemy's advance was only a mile or two distant; and four
+companies of the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts&mdash;A, B, D, G&mdash;were thrown out
+as skirmishers,&mdash;the line extending from the Holston River to the
+Kingston road. But the enemy was held in check at some little distance
+from the town by Sanders's division of cavalry. The hours thus gained
+for our work in the trenches were precious hours, indeed. There was a
+lack of intrenching tools, and much remained to be done; but all day and
+all night the men continued their labors undisturbed; and, on the
+morning of the 18th, our line of works around the town presented a
+formidable appearance.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the forenoon of that day there was heavy skirmishing on the
+Kingston road; but our men&mdash;dismounted cavalry&mdash;still maintained their
+position. Later in the day, however, the enemy brought up a battery,
+which, opening a heavy fire, soon compelled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> our men to fall back. The
+Rebels, now pressing forward, gained the ridge for which they had been
+contending, and established their lines within rifle range of our works.</p>
+
+<p>It was while endeavoring to check this advance that General Sanders was
+mortally wounded. He was at once borne from the field, and carried into
+Knoxville. While a surgeon was examining the wound, he asked, "Tell me,
+Doctor, is my wound mortal?"</p>
+
+<p>Tenderly the surgeon replied, "Sanders, it is a fearful wound, and
+mortal. I am sorry to say it, my dear fellow, but the odds are against
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Calmly the General continued, "Well, I am not afraid to die. I have made
+up my mind upon that subject. I have done my duty, and have served my
+country as well as I could."</p>
+
+<p>The next day he called the attention of the surgeon to certain symptoms
+which he had observed, and asked him what they meant.</p>
+
+<p>The surgeon replied, "General, you are dying."</p>
+
+<p>"If that be so," he said, "I would like to see a clergyman."</p>
+
+<p>Rev. Mr. Hayden, chaplain of the post, was summoned. On his arrival, the
+dying soldier expressed a desire that the ordinance of baptism should be
+administered. This was done, and then the minister in prayer commended
+the believing soul to God,&mdash;General Burnside and his staff, who were
+present, kneeling around the bed. When the prayer was ended, General
+Sanders took General Burnside by the hand. Tears&mdash;the language of that
+heartfelt sympathy and tender love belonging to all noble souls&mdash;dropped
+down the bronzed cheeks of the chief as he listened to the last words
+which followed. The sacrament was now about to be administered, but
+suddenly the strength of the dying soldier failed, and like a child he
+gently fell asleep. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay
+down his life for his friends."</p>
+
+<p>The enemy did not seem inclined to attack our position at once, but
+proceeded to invest the town on the north bank of the Holston. He then
+commenced the construction of a line of works. The four companies of the
+Thirty-sixth Massachusetts which had been detailed for picket duty on
+the morning of the 17th, remained on post till the morning of the 19th.
+Thenceforward, throughout the siege, both officers and men were on
+picket duty every third day. During this twenty-four hours of duty no
+one slept. The rest of the time we were on duty in the trenches, where,
+during the siege, one third, and sometimes one fourth, of the men were
+kept awake. The utmost vigilance was enjoined upon all.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, day by day, and night by night, with unflagging zeal, the
+troops gave themselves to the labor of strengthening the works.
+Immediately in front of the rifle-pits, a <i>chevaux-de-frise</i> was
+constructed. This was formed of pointed stakes, thickly and firmly set
+in the ground, and inclining outwards at an angle of forty-five degrees.
+The stakes were bound together with wire, so that they could not easily
+be torn apart by an assaulting party. They were nearly five feet in
+height. In front of Colonel Haskins's position, on the north side of the
+town, the <i>chevaux-de-frise</i> was constructed with the two thousand pikes
+which were captured at Cumberland Gap early in the fall. A few rods in
+front of the <i>chevaux-de-frise</i> was the abatis, formed of thick branches
+of trees, which likewise were firmly set in the ground. Still farther to
+the front, were wire entanglements stretched a few inches above the
+ground, and fastened here and there to stakes and stumps. In front of a
+portion of our lines another obstacle was formed by constructing dams
+across First and Second Creeks, so called, and throwing back the water.
+The whole constituted a series of obstacles which could not be passed,
+in face of a heavy fire, without great difficulty and fearful loss.</p>
+
+<p>Just in rear of the rifle-pits occupied by the Thirty-sixth
+Massachusetts was an elegant brick mansion, of recent construction,
+known as the Powell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> House. When the siege commenced, fresco-painters
+were at work ornamenting its parlors and halls. Throwing open its doors,
+Mr. Powell, a true Union man, invited Colonel Morrison and Major Draper
+to make it their head-quarters. He also designated a chamber for the
+sick of our regiment. Early during the siege, the southwestern and
+northwestern fronts were loopholed by order of General Burnside, and
+instructions were given to post in the house, in case of an attack, two
+companies of the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts. When the order was
+announced to Mr. Powell, he nobly said, "Lay this house level with the
+ground, if it is necessary." A few feet from the southwestern front of
+the house, a small earthwork was thrown up by our men, in which was
+placed a section of Buckley's battery. This work was afterwards known as
+Battery Noble.</p>
+
+<p>Morrison's brigade now held the line of defences from the Holston
+River&mdash;the extreme left of our line&mdash;to Fort Sanders. The following was
+the position of the several regiments of the brigade. The Forty-fifth
+Pennsylvania was on the left, its left on the river. On its right lay
+the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts. Then came the Eighth Michigan. The
+Seventy-ninth New York (Highlanders) formed the garrison of Fort
+Sanders. Between the Eighth Michigan and Fort Sanders was the One
+Hundredth Pennsylvania (Roundheads).</p>
+
+<p>On the evening of the 20th, the Seventeenth Michigan made a sortie, and
+drove the Rebels from the Armstrong House. This stood on the Kingston
+road, and only a short distance from Fort Sanders. It was a brick house,
+and afforded a near and safe position for the enemy's sharpshooters,
+which of late had become somewhat annoying to the working parties at the
+fort. Our men destroyed the house, and then withdrew. The loss on our
+part was slight.</p>
+
+<p>For a few days during the siege, four companies of the Thirty-sixth
+Massachusetts were detached to support Roemer's battery on College Hill.
+While on this duty the officers and men were quartered in the buildings
+of East Tennessee College. Prior to our occupation of East Tennessee,
+these buildings had been used by the Rebels as a hospital; but, after a
+vigorous use of the ordinary means of purification, they afforded us
+pleasant and comfortable quarters.</p>
+
+<p>The siege had now continued several days. The Rebels had constructed
+works offensive and defensive in our front; but the greater part of
+their force seemed to have moved to the right. On the 22d of November,
+however, they returned, not having found evidently the weak place in our
+lines which they had sought. It was now thought they might attack our
+front that night; and orders were given to the men on duty in the outer
+works to exercise the utmost vigilance. But the night passed quietly.</p>
+
+<p>With each day our confidence in the strength of our position increased;
+and we soon felt able to repel an assault from any quarter. But the
+question of supplies was a serious one. When the siege commenced, there
+was in the Commissary Department at Knoxville little more than a day's
+ration for the whole army. Should the enemy gain possession of the south
+bank of the Holston, our only means of subsistence would be cut off.
+Thus far his attempts in this direction had failed; and the whole
+country, from the French Broad to the Holston, was open to our foraging
+parties. In this way a considerable quantity of corn and wheat was soon
+collected in Knoxville. Bread, made from a mixture of meal and flour,
+was issued to the men, but only in half and quarter rations.
+Occasionally a small quantity of fresh pork was also issued. Neither
+sugar nor coffee was issued after the first days of the siege.</p>
+
+<p>The enemy, foiled in his attempts to seize the south bank of the
+Holston, now commenced the construction of a raft at Boyd's Ferry.
+Floating this down the swift current of the stream,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> he hoped to carry
+away our pontoon, and thus cut off our communication with the country
+beyond. To thwart this plan, an iron cable, one thousand feet in length,
+was stretched across the river above the bridge. This was done under the
+direction of Captain Poe. Afterwards, a boom of logs, fastened end to
+end by chains, was constructed still farther up the river. The boom was
+fifteen hundred feet in length.</p>
+
+<p>On the evening of the 23d the Rebels made an attack on our pickets in
+front of the left of the Second Division, Ninth Corps. In falling back,
+our men fired the buildings on the ground abandoned, lest they should
+become a shelter for the enemy's sharpshooters. Among the buildings thus
+destroyed were the arsenal and machine-shops near the depot. The light
+of the blazing buildings illuminated the whole town. The next day the
+Twenty-first Massachusetts and another picked regiment, the whole under
+the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Hawkes of the Twenty-first, drove back
+the Rebels at this point, and reoccupied our old position.</p>
+
+<p>The same day an attack was made by the Second Michigan on the advanced
+parallel, which the enemy had so constructed as to envelop the northwest
+bastion of Fort Sanders. The works were gallantly carried; but before
+the supporting columns could come up, our men were repulsed by fresh
+troops which the enemy had at hand.</p>
+
+<p>On the 25th of November the enemy, having on the day previous crossed
+the Holston at a point below us, made another unsuccessful attempt to
+occupy the heights opposite Knoxville. He succeeded, however, in
+planting a battery on a knob about one hundred and fifty feet above the
+river, and twenty-five hundred yards south of Fort Sanders. This
+position commanded Fort Sanders, so that it now became necessary to
+defilade the fort.</p>
+
+<p>November 26th was our national Thanksgiving day, and General Burnside
+issued an order, in which he expressed the hope that the day would be
+observed by all, as far as military operations would allow. He knew the
+rations were short, and that the day would be unlike the joyous festival
+we were wont to celebrate in our distant homes; and so he reminded us of
+the circumstances of trial under which our fathers first observed the
+day. He also reminded us of the debt of gratitude which we owed to Him
+who during the year had not only prospered our arms, but had kindly
+preserved our lives. Accordingly, we ate our corn bread with
+thanksgiving; and, forgetting our own privations, thought only of the
+loved ones at home, who, uncertain of our fate, would that day find
+little cheer at the table and by the fireside.</p>
+
+<p>Allusion has already been made to the bastion-work known as Fort
+Sanders. A more particular description is now needed. The main line,
+held by our troops, made almost a right angle at the fort, the northwest
+bastion being the salient of the angle. The ground in front of the fort,
+from which the wood had been cleared, sloped gradually for a distance of
+eighty yards, and then abruptly descended to a wide ravine. Under the
+direction of Lieutenant Benjamin, Second United States Artillery, and
+Chief of Artillery of the Army of the Ohio, the fort had now been made
+as strong as the means at his disposal and the rules of military art
+admitted. Eighty and thirty yards in front of the fort, rifle-pits were
+constructed. These were to be used in case our men were driven in from
+the outer line. Between these pits and the Fort were wire entanglements,
+running from stump to stump, and also an abatis. Sand-bags and barrels
+were arranged so as to cover the embrasures. Traverses, also, were built
+for the protection of the men at the guns, and in passing from one
+position to another. In the fort were four twenty-pounder Parrotts
+(Benjamin's battery), four light twelve-pounders (of Buckley's battery),
+and two three-inch guns.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the evening of the 27th there was much cheering along the Rebel
+lines. Their bands, too, were unusually<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> lavish of the Rebel airs they
+were wont occasionally to waft across the debatable ground which
+separated our lines. Had the enemy received reinforcements, or had Grant
+met with a reverse? While on picket that night, in making my rounds, I
+could distinctly hear the Rebels chopping on the knob which they had so
+recently occupied on the opposite bank of the river. They were clearing
+away the trees in front of the earthwork which they had constructed the
+day before. Would they attack at daybreak? So we thought, connecting
+this fact with the cheers and music of the earlier part of the night;
+but the morning opened as quietly as its predecessors. Late in the
+afternoon the enemy seemed to be placing his troops in position in our
+front, and our men stood in the trenches, awaiting an attack; yet the
+day wore away without further demonstrations.</p>
+
+<p>A little after eleven o'clock, <span class="smcap">p. m.</span>, November 28th, I was aroused by
+heavy musketry. I hurried to the trenches. It was a cloudy, dark night,
+and at a distance of only a few feet it was impossible to distinguish
+any object. The men were already at their posts. With the exception of
+an occasional shot on the picket-line, the firing soon ceased. An attack
+had evidently been made on our pickets; but at what point, or with what
+success, was as yet unknown. Reports soon came in. The enemy had first
+driven in the pickets in front of Fort Sanders, and had then attacked
+<i>our</i> line which was also obliged to fall back. The Rebels in our front,
+however, did not advance beyond the pits which our men had just vacated,
+and a new line was at once established by Captain Buffum, our brigade
+officer of the day.</p>
+
+<p>It was now evident that the enemy intended an attack. But where would it
+be made? All that long, cold night&mdash;our men were without overcoats&mdash;we
+stood in the trenches pondering that question. Might not this
+demonstration in our front be only a feint to draw our attention from
+other parts of the line, where the chief blow was to be struck? So some
+thought. Gradually the night wore away.</p>
+
+<p>A little after six o'clock the next morning, the enemy suddenly opened a
+furious cannonade. This was mostly directed against Fort Sanders; but
+several shots struck the Powell House, in rear of Battery Noble. Roemer
+immediately responded from College Hill. In about twenty minutes the
+enemy's fire slackened, and in its stead rose the well-known Rebel yell,
+in the direction of the fort. Then followed the rattle of musketry, the
+roar of cannon, and the bursting of shells. The yells died away, and
+then rose again. Now the roar of musketry and artillery was redoubled.
+It was a moment of the deepest anxiety. Our straining eyes were fixed on
+the fort. The Rebels had reached the ditch and were now endeavoring to
+scale the parapet. Whose will be the victory,&mdash;O, whose? The yells again
+died away, and then followed three loud Union cheers,&mdash;"Hurrah, hurrah,
+hurrah!" How those cheers thrilled our hearts, as we stood almost
+breathless at our posts in the trenches! They told us that the enemy had
+been repulsed, and that the victory was ours. Peering through the rising
+fog towards the fort, not a hundred yards away,&mdash;O glorious sight!&mdash;we
+dimly saw that our flag was still there.</p>
+
+<p>Let us now go back a little. Under cover of the ridge on which Fort
+Sanders was built, Longstreet had formed his columns for the assault.
+The men were picked men,&mdash;the flower of his army. One brigade was to
+make the assault, two brigades were to support it,<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> and two other
+brigades were to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> watch our lines and keep up a constant fire. Five
+regiments formed the brigade selected for the assaulting column. These
+were placed in position not more than eighty yards from the fort. They
+were "in column by division, closed in mass." When the fire of their
+artillery slackened, the order for the charge was given. The salient of
+the northwest bastion was the point of attack. The Rebel lines were much
+broken in passing the abatis. But the wire entanglements proved a
+greater obstacle. Whole companies were prostrated. Benjamin now opened
+his triple-shotted guns. Nevertheless, the weight of their column
+carried the Rebels forward, and in two minutes from the time the charge
+was commenced they had filled the ditch around the fort, and were
+endeavoring to scale the parapet. The guns, which had been trained to
+sweep the ditch, now opened a most destructive fire. Lieutenant Benjamin
+also took shells in his hand, and, lighting the fuse, tossed them over
+the parapet into the crowded ditch. One of the Rebel brigades in reserve
+now came up in support, and planted several of its flags on the parapet
+of the fort. Those, however, who endeavored to scale the parapet were
+swept away by the fire of our musketry. The men in the ditch, satisfied
+of the hopelessness of the task they had undertaken, now surrendered.
+They represented eleven regiments. The prisoners numbered nearly three
+hundred. Among them were seventeen commissioned officers. Over two
+hundred dead and wounded, including three colonels, lay in the ditch
+alone. The ground in front of the fort was also strewn with the bodies
+of the dead and wounded. Over one thousand stands of arms fell into our
+hands, and the battle-flags of the Thirteenth and Seventeenth
+Mississippi and Sixteenth Georgia. Our loss was eight men killed and
+five wounded. Never was a victory more complete; and never were brighter
+laurels worn than were that morning laid on the brow of the hero of Fort
+Sanders,&mdash;Lieutenant Benjamin, Second United States Artillery.</p>
+
+<p>Longstreet had promised his men that they should dine that day in
+Knoxville. But, in order that he might bury his dead, General Burnside
+now tendered him an armistice till five o'clock, <span class="smcap">p. m.</span> It was accepted
+by the Rebel general; and our ambulances were furnished him to assist in
+removing the bodies to his lines. At five o'clock, two additional hours
+were asked, as the work was not yet completed. At seven o'clock, a gun
+was fired from Fort Sanders, the Rebels responded from an earthwork
+opposite, and the truce was at an end.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, through a courier who had succeeded in reaching our lines,
+General Burnside received official notice of the defeat of Bragg. At
+noon, a single gun&mdash;we were short of ammunition&mdash;was fired from Battery
+Noble in our rear, and the men of the brigade, standing in the trenches,
+gave three cheers for Grant's victory at Chattanooga. We now looked for
+reinforcements daily, for Sherman was already on the road. The enemy
+knew this as well as we, and, during the night of the 4th of December,
+withdrew his forces, and started north. The retreat was discovered by
+the pickets of the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts, under Captain Ames, who
+had the honor of first declaring the siege of Knoxville raised.</p>
+
+<p>It would be interesting to recount the facts connected with the retreat
+of the Rebel army, and then to follow our men to their winter quarters,
+among the mountains of East Tennessee, where, throughout the icy season,
+they remained, without shoes, without overcoats, without new clothing of
+any description, living on quarter rations of corn meal, with
+occasionally a handful of flour, and never grumbling; and where, at the
+expiration of their three years of service, standing forth under the
+open skies, amid all these discomforts, and raising loyal hands towards
+heaven, they swore to serve their country yet three years longer. But I
+must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> pause. I have already illustrated their fortitude and heroic
+endurance.</p>
+
+<p>The noble bearing of General Burnside throughout the siege won the
+admiration of all. In a speech at Cincinnati, a few days after the siege
+was raised, with that modesty which characterizes the true soldier, he
+said that the honors bestowed on him belonged to his under officers and
+the men in the ranks. These kindly words his officers and men will ever
+cherish; and in all their added years, as they recall the widely
+separated battle-fields, made forever sacred by the blood of their
+fallen comrades, and forever glorious by the victories there won, it
+will be their pride to say, "We fought with Burnside at Campbell's
+Station and in the trenches at Knoxville."</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> This statement is confirmed by the following extract from
+Pollard's (Rebel) "Third Year of the War." Speaking of his charge on
+Fort Sanders, he says: "The force which was to attempt an enterprise
+which ranks with the most famous charges in military history should be
+mentioned in detail. It consisted of three brigades of McLaw's
+division;&mdash;that of General Wolford, the Sixteenth, Eighteenth, and
+Twenty-fourth Georgia Regiments, and Cobb's and Phillip's Georgia
+Legions; that of General Humphrey, the Thirteenth, Seventeenth,
+Twenty-first, Twenty-second, and Twenty-third Mississippi Regiments; and
+a brigade composed of General Anderson's and Bryant's brigades,
+embracing, among others, the Palmetto State Guard, the Fifteenth South
+Carolina Regiment, and the Fifty-first, Fifty-third, and Fifty-ninth
+Georgia Regiments."&mdash;pp. 161, 162.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>RELEASED.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A little low-ceiled room. Four walls<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose blank shut out all else of life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And crowded close within their bound<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A world of pain, and toil, and strife.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Her world. Scarce furthermore she knew<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of God's great globe, that wondrously<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Outrolls a glory of green earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And frames it with the restless sea.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Four closer walls of common pine:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And therein lieth, cold and still,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The weary flesh that long hath borne<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Its patient mystery of ill.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Regardless now of work to do;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No queen more careless in her state;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hands crossed in their unbroken calm;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For other hands the work may wait.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Put by her implements of toil;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Put by each coarse, intrusive sign;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She made a Sabbath when she died,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And round her breathes a Rest Divine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Put by, at last, beneath the lid,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The exempted hands, the tranquil face;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Uplift her in her dreamless sleep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And bear her gently from the place.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oft she hath gazed, with wistful eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Out from that threshold on the night;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The narrow bourn she crosseth now;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She standeth in the Eternal Light.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oft she hath pressed, with aching feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Those broken steps that reach the door;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Henceforth with angels she shall tread<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Heaven's golden stair forevermore!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p>
+<h2>FRIEDRICH R&Uuml;CKERT.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The last of the grand old generation of German poets is dead. Within ten
+years Eichendorff, Heine, Uhland, have passed away; and now the death of
+Friedrich R&uuml;ckert, the sole survivor of the minor gods who inhabited the
+higher slopes of the Weimar Olympus, closes the list of their names.
+Yet, although with these poets in time, R&uuml;ckert was not of them in the
+structure of his mind or the character of his poetical development. No
+author ever stood so lonely among his contemporaries. Looking over the
+long catalogue, not only of German, but of European poets, we find no
+one with whom he can be compared. His birthplace is supposed to be
+Schweinfurt, but it is to be sought, in reality, somewhere on the banks
+of the Euphrates. His true contemporaries were Saadi and Hariri of
+Bosrah.</p>
+
+<p>R&uuml;ckert's biography may be given in a few words, his life having been
+singularly devoid of incident. He seems even to have been spared the
+usual alternations of fortune in a material, as well as a literary
+sense. With the exception of a somewhat acridly hostile criticism, which
+the <i>Jahrb&uuml;cher</i> of Halle dealt out to him for several years in
+succession, his reputation has enjoyed a gradual and steady growth since
+his first appearance as a poet. His place is now so well defined that
+death&mdash;which sometimes changes, while it fixes, the impression an author
+makes upon his generation&mdash;cannot seriously elevate or depress it. In
+life he stood so far aloof from the fashions of the day, that all his
+successes were permanent achievements.</p>
+
+<p>He was born on the 16th of May, 1788, in Schweinfurt, a pleasant old
+town in Bavaria, near the baths of Kissingen. As a student he visited
+Jena, where he distinguished himself by his devotion to philological and
+literary studies. For some years a private tutor, in 1815 he became
+connected with the <i>Morgenblatt</i>, published by Cotta, in Stuttgart. The
+year 1818 he spent in Italy. Soon after his return, he married, and
+established himself in Coburg, of which place, I believe, his wife was a
+native. Here he occupied himself ostensibly as a teacher, but in reality
+with an enthusiastic and untiring study of the Oriental languages and
+literature. Twice he was called away by appointments which were the
+result of his growing fame as poet and scholar,&mdash;the first time in 1826,
+when he was made Professor of the Oriental Languages at the University
+of Erlangen; and again in 1840, when he was appointed to a similar place
+in the University of Berlin, with the title of Privy Councillor. Both
+these posts were uncongenial to his nature. Though so competent to fill
+them, he discharged his duties reluctantly and with a certain
+impatience; and probably there were few more joyous moments of his life
+than when, in 1849, he was allowed to retire permanently to the pastoral
+seclusion of his little property at Neuses, a suburb of Coburg.</p>
+
+<p>One of his German critics remarks that the poem in which he celebrates
+his release embodies a nearer approach to passion than all his Oriental
+songs of love, sorrow, or wine. It is a joyous dithyrambic, which,
+despite its artful and semi-impossible metre, must have been the
+swiftly-worded expression of a genuine feeling. Let me attempt to
+translate the first stanza:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Out of the dust of the<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Town o' the king,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the lust of the<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Green of spring,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forth from the noises of<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Streets and walls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unto the voices of<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Waterfalls,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He who presently<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flies is blest:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fate thus pleasantly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Makes my nest!"<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The quaint old residence at Neuses thus early became, and for nearly
+half a century continued to be, the poet's home. No desire to visit the
+Orient&mdash;the native land of his brain&mdash;seems to have disturbed him.
+Possibly the Italian journey was in some respects disenchanting. The few
+poems which date from it are picturesque and descriptive, but do not
+indicate that his imagination was warmed by what he saw. He was never so
+happy as when alone with his books and manuscripts, studying or writing,
+according to the dominant mood. This secluded habit engendered a shyness
+of manner, which frequently repelled the strangers who came to see
+him,&mdash;especially those who failed to detect the simple, tender, genial
+nature of the man, under his wonderful load of learning. But there was
+nothing morbid or misanthropical in his composition; his shyness was
+rather the result of an intense devotion to his studies. These gradually
+became a necessity of his daily life; his health, his mental peace,
+depended upon them; and whatever disturbed their regular recurrence took
+from him more than the mere time lost.</p>
+
+<p>When I first visited Coburg, in October, 1852, I was very anxious to
+make R&uuml;ckert's acquaintance. My interest in Oriental literature had been
+refreshed, at that time, by nearly ten months of travel in Eastern
+lands, and some knowledge of modern colloquial Arabic. I had read his
+wonderful translation of the <i>Makam&acirc;t</i> of Hariri, and felt sure that he
+would share in my enthusiasm for the people to whose treasures of song
+he had given so many years of his life. I found, however, that very few
+families in the town were familiarly acquainted with the poet,&mdash;that
+many persons, even, who had been residents of the place for years, had
+never seen him. He was presumed to be inaccessible to strangers.</p>
+
+<p>It fortunately happened that one of my friends knew a student of the
+Oriental languages, then residing in Coburg. The latter, who was in the
+habit of consulting R&uuml;ckert in regard to his Sanskrit studies, offered
+at once to conduct me to Neuses. A walk of twenty minutes across the
+meadows of the Itz, along the base of the wooded hills which terminate,
+just beyond, in the castled Kallenberg (the summer residence of Duke
+Ernest II.), brought us to the little village, which lies so snugly
+hidden in its own orchards that one might almost pass without
+discovering it. The afternoon was warm and sunny, and a hazy, idyllic
+atmosphere veiled and threw into remoteness the bolder features of the
+landscape. Near at hand, a few quaint old tile-roofed houses rose above
+the trees.</p>
+
+<p>My guide left the highway, crossed a clear little brook on the left, and
+entered the bottom of a garden behind the largest of these houses. As we
+were making our way between the plum-trees and gooseberry-bushes, I
+perceived a tall figure standing in the midst of a great bed of
+late-blossoming roses, over which he was bending as if to inhale their
+fragrance. The sound of our steps startled him; and as he straightened
+himself and faced us, I saw that it could be none other than R&uuml;ckert. I
+believe his first impulse was to fly; but we were already so near that
+his moment of indecision settled the matter. The student presented me to
+him as an American traveller, whereat I thought he seemed to experience
+a little relief. Nevertheless, he looked uneasily at his coat,&mdash;a sort
+of loose, commodious blouse,&mdash;at his hands, full of seeds, and muttered
+some incoherent words about flowers. Suddenly, lifting his head and
+looking steadily at us, he said, "Come into the house!"</p>
+
+<p>The student, who was familiar with his habits, led me to a pleasant room
+on the second floor. The windows looked towards the sun, and were filled
+with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> hot-house plants. We were scarcely seated before R&uuml;ckert made his
+appearance, having laid aside his blouse, and put on a coat. After a
+moment of hesitation, he asked me, "Where have you been travelling?" "I
+come from the Orient," I answered. He looked up with a keen light in his
+eyes. "From the Orient!" he exclaimed, "Where? let me know where you
+have been, and what you have seen!" From that moment he was
+self-possessed, full of life, enthusiasm, fancy, and humor.</p>
+
+<p>He was then in his sixty-fifth year, but still enjoyed the ripe maturity
+of his powers. A man of more striking personal appearance I have seldom
+seen. Over six feet in height, and somewhat gaunt of body, the first
+impression of an absence of physical grace vanished as soon as one
+looked upon his countenance. His face was long, and every feature
+strongly marked,&mdash;the brow high and massive, the nose strong and
+slightly aquiline, the mouth wide and firm, and the jaw broad, square,
+and projecting. His thick silver hair, parted in the middle of his
+forehead, fell in wavy masses upon his shoulders. His eyes were
+deep-set, bluish-gray, and burned with a deep, lustrous fire as he
+became animated in conversation. At times they had a mystic, rapt
+expression, as if the far East, of which he spoke, were actually visible
+to his brain. I thought of an Arab sheikh, looking towards Mecca, at the
+hour of prayer.</p>
+
+<p>I regret that I made no notes of the conversation, in which, as may be
+guessed, I took but little part. It was rather a monologue on the
+subject of Arabic poetry, full of the clearest and richest knowledge,
+and sparkling with those evanescent felicities of diction which can so
+rarely be recalled. I was charmed out of all sense of time, and was
+astonished to find, when tea appeared, that more than two hours had
+elapsed. The student had magnanimously left me to the poet, devoting
+himself to the good Frau R&uuml;ckert, the "Luise" of her husband's
+<i>Liebesfr&uuml;hling</i> (Spring-time of Love). She still, although now a
+grandmother, retained some traces of the fresh, rosy beauty of her
+younger days; and it was pleasant to see the watchful, tender interest
+upon her face, whenever she turned towards the poet. Before I left, she
+whispered to me, "I am always very glad when my husband has an
+opportunity to talk about the Orient: nothing refreshes him so much."</p>
+
+<p>But we must not lose sight of R&uuml;ckert's poetical biography. His first
+volume, entitled "German Poems, by Freimund Raimar," was published at
+Heidelberg in the year 1814. It contained, among other things, his
+famous <i>Geharnischte Sonette</i> (Sonnets in Armor), which are still read
+and admired as masterpieces of that form of verse. Preserving the
+Petrarchan model, even to the feminine rhymes of the Italian tongue, he
+has nevertheless succeeded in concealing the extraordinary art by which
+the difficult task was accomplished. Thus early the German language
+acquired its unsuspected power of flexibility in his hands. It is very
+evident to me that his peculiar characteristics as a poet sprang not so
+much from his Oriental studies as from a rare native faculty of mind.</p>
+
+<p>These "Sonnets in Armor," although they may sound but gravely beside the
+Tyrt&aelig;an strains of Arndt and K&ouml;rner, are nevertheless full of stately
+and inspiring music. They remind one of Wordsworth's phrase,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">"In Milton's hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The thing became a trumpet,"&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and must have had their share in stimulating that national sentiment
+which overturned the Napoleonic rule, and for three or four years
+flourished so greenly upon its ruins.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly afterwards, R&uuml;ckert published "Napoleon, a Political Comedy,"
+which did not increase his fame. His next important contribution to
+general literature was the "Oriental Roses," which appeared in 1822.
+Three years before, Goethe had published his <i>West&ouml;stlicher Divan</i>, and
+the younger poet dedicated his first venture in the same field to his
+venerable predecessor, in stanzas which express the most delicate, and
+at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> same time the most generous homage. I scarcely know where to
+look for a more graceful dedication in verse. It is said that Goethe
+never acknowledged the compliment,&mdash;an omission which some German
+authors attribute to the latter's distaste at being surpassed on his
+latest and (at that time) favorite field. No one familiar with Goethe's
+life and works will accept this conjecture.</p>
+
+<p>It is quite impossible to translate this poem literally, in the original
+metre: the rhymes are exclusively feminine. I am aware that I shall
+shock ears familiar with the original by substituting masculine rhymes
+in the two stanzas which I present; but there is really no alternative.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Would you taste<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Purest East,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hence depart, and seek the selfsame man<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who our West<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gave the best<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wine that ever flowed from Poet's can:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the Western flavors ended,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He the Orient's vintage spended,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yonder dreams he on his own divan!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Sunset-red<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Goethe led<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Star to be of all the sunset-land:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now the higher<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Morning-fire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Makes him lord of all the morning-land!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the two, together turning,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meet, the rounded heaven is burning<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rosy-bright in one celestial brand!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I have not the original edition of the "Oriental Roses," but I believe
+the volume contained the greater portion of R&uuml;ckert's marvellous
+"Ghazels." Count Platen, it is true, had preceded him by one year, but
+his adaptation of the Persian metre to German poetry&mdash;light and graceful
+and melodious as he succeeded in making it&mdash;falls far short of R&uuml;ckert's
+infinite richness and skill. One of the latter's "Ghazels" contains
+twenty-six variations of the same rhyme, yet so subtly managed, so
+colored with the finest reflected tints of Eastern rhetoric and fancy,
+that the immense art implied in its construction is nowhere unpleasantly
+apparent. In fact, one dare not say that these poems are <i>all</i> art. In
+the Oriental measures the poet found the garment which best fitted his
+own mind. We are not to infer that he did not move joyously, and, after
+a time, easily, within the limitations which, to most authors, would
+have been intolerable fetters.</p>
+
+<p>In 1826 appeared his translation of the <i>Makam&acirc;t</i> of Hariri. The old
+silk-merchant of Bosrah never could have anticipated such an
+immortality. The word <i>Makam&acirc;t</i> means "sessions," (probably the Italian
+<i>conversazione</i> best translates it,) but is applied to a series of short
+narratives, or rather anecdotes, told alternately in verse and rhymed
+prose, with all the brilliance of rhetoric, the richness of
+alliteration, antithesis, and imitative sound, and the endless
+grammatical subtilties of which the Arabic language is capable. The work
+of Hariri is considered the unapproachable model of this style of
+narrative throughout all the East. R&uuml;ckert called his translation "The
+Metamorphoses of Abou-Seyd of Serudj,"&mdash;the name of the hero of the
+story. In this work he has shown the capacity of one language to
+reproduce the very spirit of another with which it has the least
+affinity. Like the original, the translation can never be surpassed: it
+is unique in literature.</p>
+
+<p>As the acrobat who has mastered every branch of his art, from the
+spidery contortions of the India-rubber man to the double somersault and
+the flying trapeze, is to the well-developed individual of ordinary
+muscular habits, so is the language of R&uuml;ckert in this work to the
+language of all other German authors. It is one perpetual gymnastic show
+of grammar, rhythm, and fancy. Moods, tenses, antecedents, appositions,
+whirl and flash around you, to the sound of some strange, barbaric
+music. Closer and more rapidly they link, chassez, and "cross hands,"
+until, when you anticipate a hopeless tangle, some bold, bright word
+leaps unexpectedly into the throng, and resolves it to instant harmony.
+One's breath is taken away, and his brain made dizzy, by any half-dozen
+of the "Metamorphoses." In this respect the translation has become a
+representative work. The Arabic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> title, misunderstood, has given birth
+to a German word. Daring and difficult rhymes are now frequently termed
+<i>Makamen</i> in German literary society.</p>
+
+<p>R&uuml;ckert's studies were not confined to the Arabic and Persian languages;
+he also devoted many years to the Sanskrit. In 1828 appeared his
+translation of "Nal and Damayanti," and some years later, "Hamasa, or
+the oldest Arabian Poetry," and "Amrilka&iuml;s, Poet and King." In addition
+to these translations, he published, between the years 1835 and 1840,
+the following original poems, or collections of poems, on Oriental
+themes,&mdash;"Legends of the Morning-Land" (2 vols.), "Rustem and Sohrab,"
+and "Brahminical Stories." These poems are so bathed in the atmosphere
+of his studies, that it is very difficult to say which are his own
+independent conceptions, and which the suggestions of Eastern poets.
+Where he has borrowed images or phrases, (as sometimes from the Koran,)
+they are woven, without any discernible seam, into the texture of his
+own brain.</p>
+
+<p>Some of R&uuml;ckert's critics have asserted that his extraordinary mastery
+of all the resources of language operated to the detriment of his
+poetical faculty,&mdash;that the feeling to be expressed became subordinate
+to the skill displayed by expressing it in an unusual form. They claim,
+moreover, that he produced a mass of sparkling fragments, rather than
+any single great work. I am convinced, however, that the first charge is
+unfounded, basing my opinion upon my knowledge of the poet's simple,
+true, tender nature, which I learned to appreciate during my later
+visits to his home. After the death of his wife, the daughter who
+thereafter assumed her mother's place in the household wrote me frequent
+accounts of her father's grief and loneliness, enclosing manuscript
+copies of the poems in which he expressed his sorrow. These poems are
+exceedingly sweet and touching; yet they are all marked by the same
+flexile use of difficult rhythms and unprecedented rhymes. They have
+never yet been published, and I am therefore withheld from translating
+any one of them, in illustration.</p>
+
+<p>Few of Goethe's minor songs are more beautiful than his serenade, <i>O
+gib' vom weichen Pf&uuml;hle</i>, where the interlinked repetitions are a
+perpetual surprise and charm; yet R&uuml;ckert has written a score of more
+artfully constructed and equally melodious songs. His collection of
+amatory poems entitled <i>Liebesfr&uuml;hling</i> contains some of the sunniest
+idyls in any language. That his genius was lyrical and not epic, was not
+a fault; that it delighted in varied and unusual metres, was an
+exceptional&mdash;perhaps in his case a phenomenal&mdash;form of development; but
+I do not think it was any the less instinctively natural. One of his
+quatrains runs:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Much I make as make the others;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Better much another man<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Makes than I; but much, moreover,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Make I which no other can."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>His poetical comment on the translation of Hariri is given in
+prose:&mdash;"He who, like myself, unfortunate man! is philologist and poet
+in the same person, cannot do better than to translate as I do. My
+Hariri has illustrated how philology and poetry are competent to
+stimulate and to complete each other. If thou, reader, wilt look upon
+this hybrid production neither too philologically nor over-poetically,
+it may delight and instruct thee. That which is false in philology thou
+wilt attribute to poetic license, and where the poetry is deficient,
+thou wilt give the blame to philology."</p>
+
+<p>The critics who charge R&uuml;ckert with never having produced "a whole,"
+have certainly forgotten one of his works,&mdash;"The Wisdom of the Brahmin,
+a Didactic Poem, in Fragments." The title somewhat describes its
+character. The "fragments" are couplets, in iambic hexameter, each one
+generally complete in itself, yet grouped in sections by some connecting
+thought, after the manner of the stanzas of Tennyson's "In Memoriam."
+There are more than <i>six thousand</i> couplets, in all, divided into
+twenty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> books,&mdash;the whole forming a mass of poetic wisdom, coupled with
+such amazing wealth of illustration, that this one volume, if
+sufficiently diluted, would make several thousand "Proverbial
+Philosophies." It is not a book to read continuously, but one which, I
+should imagine, no educated German could live without possessing. I
+never open its pages without the certainty of refreshment. Its tone is
+quietistic, as might readily be conjectured, but it is the calm of
+serene reflection, not of indifference. No work which R&uuml;ckert ever wrote
+so strongly illustrates the incessant activity of his mind. Half of
+these six thousand couplets are terse and pithy enough for proverbs, and
+their construction would have sufficed for the lifetime of many poets.</p>
+
+<p>With the exception of "Kaiser Barbarossa," and two or three other
+ballads, the amatory poems of R&uuml;ckert have attained the widest
+popularity among his countrymen. Many of the love-songs have been set to
+music by Mendelssohn and other composers. Their melody is of that
+subtile, delicate quality which excites a musician's fancy, suggesting
+the tones to which the words should be wedded. Precisely for this reason
+they are most difficult to translate. The first stanza may, in most
+cases, be tolerably reproduced; but as it usually contains a refrain,
+which is repeated to a constantly varied rhyme, throughout the whole
+song or poem, the labor at first becomes desperate, and then impossible.
+An example (the original of which I possess, in the author's manuscript)
+will best illustrate this particular difficulty. Here the metre and the
+order of rhyme have been strictly preserved, except in the first and
+third lines.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"He came to meet me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In rain and thunder;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My heart 'gan beating<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In timid wonder:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could I guess whether<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thenceforth together<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our paths should run, so long asunder?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"He came to meet me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In rain and thunder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With guile to cheat me,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My heart to plunder.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was't mine he captured?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or his I raptured?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Half-way both met, in bliss and wonder!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"He came to meet me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In rain and thunder:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spring-blessings greet me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spring-blossoms under.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What though he leave me?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No partings grieve me,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No path can lead our hearts asunder!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The Irish poet, James Clarence Mangan, (whose translations from the
+German comprise both the best and the worst specimens I have yet found,)
+has been successful in rendering one of R&uuml;ckert's ghazels. I am
+specially tempted to quote it, on account of the curious general
+resemblance (accidental, no doubt) which Poe's "Lenore" bears to it.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I saw her once, a little while, and then no more:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'T was Eden's light on earth awhile, and then no more.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Amid the throng she passed along the meadow-floor;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spring seemed to smile on earth awhile, and then no more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But whence she came, which way she went, what garb she wore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I noted not; I gazed awhile, and then no more.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I saw her once, a little while, and then no more:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'T was Paradise on earth awhile, and then no more.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah! what avail my vigils pale, my magic lore?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She shone before mine eyes awhile, and then no more.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The shallop of my peace is wrecked on Beauty's shore;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Near Hope's fair isle it rode awhile, and then no more.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I saw her once, a little while, and then no more:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth looked like Heaven a little while, and then no more.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her presence thrilled and lighted to its inmost core<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My desert breast a little while, and then no more.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So may, perchance, a meteor glance at midnight o'er<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some ruined pile a little while, and then no more.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I saw her once, a little while and then no more:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The earth was Eden-land awhile, and then no more.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O, might I see but once again, as once before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through chance or wile, that shape awhile, and then no more!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Death soon would heal my grief: this heart, now sad and sore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would beat anew, a little while, and then no more!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here, nevertheless, something is sacrificed. The translation is by no
+means<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> literal, and lacks the crispness and freshness of Oriental
+antithesis. R&uuml;ckert, I fear, will never be as fortunate as Hariri of
+Bosrah.</p>
+
+<p>When, in 1856, I again visited Germany, I received a friendly message
+from the old poet, with a kind invitation to visit him. Late in November
+I found him, apparently unchanged in body and spirit,&mdash;simple,
+enthusiastic, and, in spite of his seclusion, awake to all the movements
+of the world. One of his married sons was then visiting him, so that the
+household was larger and livelier than usual; but, as he sat, during the
+evening, in his favorite arm-chair, with pipe and beer, he fell into the
+same brilliant, wise strain of talk, undisturbed by all the cheerful
+young voices around him.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation gradually wandered away from the Orient to the modern
+languages of Europe. I remarked the special capacity of the German for
+descriptions of forest scenery,&mdash;of the feeling and sentiment of deep,
+dark woods, and woodland solitudes.</p>
+
+<p>"May not that be," said he, "because the race lived for centuries in
+forests? A language is always richest in its epithets for those things
+with which the people who speak it are most familiar. Look at the many
+terms for 'horse' and 'sword' in Arabic."</p>
+
+<p>"But the old Britons lived also in forests," I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"I suspect," he answered, "while the English language was taking shape,
+the people knew quite as much of the sea as of the woods. You ought,
+therefore, to surpass us in describing coast and sea-scenery, winds and
+storms, and the motion of waves."</p>
+
+<p>The idea had not occurred to me before, but I found it to be correct.</p>
+
+<p>Though not speaking English, R&uuml;ckert had a thorough critical knowledge
+of the language, and a great admiration of its qualities. He admitted
+that its chances for becoming the dominant tongue of the world were
+greater than those of any other. Much that he said upon this subject
+interested me greatly at the time, but the substance of it has escaped
+me.</p>
+
+<p>When I left, that evening, I looked upon his cheerful, faithful wife for
+the last time. Five years elapsed before I visited Coburg again, and she
+died in the interval. In the summer of 1861 I had an hour's conversation
+with him, chiefly on American affairs, in which he expressed the keenest
+interest. He had read much, and had a very correct understanding of the
+nature of the struggle. He was buried in his studies, in a small house
+outside of the village, where he spent half of every day alone, and
+inaccessible to every one; but his youngest daughter ventured to summon
+him away from his books.</p>
+
+<p>Two years later (in June, 1863) I paid my last visit to Neuses. He had
+then passed his seventy-fifth birthday; his frame was still unbent, but
+the waves of gray hair on his shoulders were thinner, and his step
+showed the increasing feebleness of age. The fire of his eye was
+softened, not dimmed, and the long and happy life that lay behind him
+had given his face a peaceful, serene expression, prophetic of a gentle
+translation into the other life that was drawing near. So I shall always
+remember him,&mdash;scholar and poet, strong with the best strength of a man,
+yet trustful and accessible to joy as a child.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding the great amount of R&uuml;ckert's contributions to
+literature during his life, he has left behind him a mass of poems and
+philological papers (the latter said to be of great interest and value)
+which his accomplished son, Professor R&uuml;ckert of the University of
+Breslau, is now preparing for publication.</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> The reader may be curious to see how smoothly and naturally
+these dactyls (so forced in the translation) flow in the original:&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Aus der staubigen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Residenz,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In den laubigen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Frischen Lenz&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Aus dem tosenden<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gassenschwall<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Zu dem kosenden<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wasserfall,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wer sich rettete,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dank's dem Gl&uuml;ck,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wie mich bettete<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mein Geschick!"<br /></span>
+</div></div></div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p>
+<h2>PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>VII.</h3>
+
+<p>Concord, <i>August 5, 1842.</i>&mdash;A rainy day,&mdash;a rainy day. I am commanded to
+take pen in hand, and I am therefore banished to the little
+ten-foot-square apartment misnamed my study; but perhaps the dismalness
+of the day and the dulness of my solitude will be the prominent
+characteristics of what I write. And what is there to write about?
+Happiness has no succession of events, because it is a part of eternity;
+and we have been living in eternity ever since we came to this old
+manse. Like Enoch, we seem to have been translated to the other state of
+being, without having passed through death. Our spirits must have
+flitted away unconsciously, and we can only perceive that we have cast
+off our mortal part by the more real and earnest life of our souls.
+Externally, our Paradise has very much the aspect of a pleasant old
+domicile on earth. This antique house&mdash;for it looks antique, though it
+was created by Providence expressly for our use, and at the precise time
+when we wanted it&mdash;stands behind a noble avenue of balm-of-Gilead trees;
+and when we chance to observe a passing traveller through the sunshine
+and the shadow of this long avenue, his figure appears too dim and
+remote to disturb the sense of blissful seclusion. Few, indeed, are the
+mortals who venture within our sacred precincts. George Prescott, who
+has not yet grown earthly enough, I suppose, to be debarred from
+occasional visits to Paradise, comes daily to bring three pints of milk
+from some ambrosial cow; occasionally, also, he makes an offering of
+mortal flowers. Mr. Emerson comes sometimes, and has been feasted on our
+nectar and ambrosia. Mr. Thoreau has twice listened to the music of the
+spheres, which, for our private convenience, we have packed into a
+musical box. E&mdash;&mdash; H&mdash;&mdash;, who is much more at home among spirits than
+among fleshly bodies, came hither a few times, merely to welcome us to
+the ethereal world; but latterly she has vanished into some other region
+of infinite space. One rash mortal, on the second Sunday after our
+arrival, obtruded himself upon us in a gig. There have since been three
+or four callers, who preposterously think that the courtesies of the
+lower world are to be responded to by people whose home is in Paradise.
+I must not forget to mention that the butcher comes twice or thrice a
+week; and we have so far improved upon the custom of Adam and Eve, that
+we generally furnish forth our feasts with portions of some delicate
+calf or lamb, whose unspotted innocence entitles them to the happiness
+of becoming our sustenance. Would that I were permitted to record the
+celestial dainties that kind Heaven provided for us on the first day of
+our arrival! Never, surely, was such food heard of on earth,&mdash;at least,
+not by me. Well, the above-mentioned persons are nearly all that have
+entered into the hallowed shade of our avenue; except, indeed, a certain
+sinner who came to bargain for the grass in our orchard, and another who
+came with a new cistern. For it is one of the drawbacks upon our Eden
+that it contains no water fit either to drink or to bathe in; so that
+the showers have become, in good truth, a godsend. I wonder why
+Providence does not cause a clear, cold fountain to bubble up at our
+doorstep; methinks it would not be unreasonable to pray for such a
+favor. At present we are under the ridiculous necessity of sending to
+the outer world for water. Only imagine Adam trudging out of Paradise
+with a bucket in each hand, to get water to drink, or for Eve to bathe
+in! Intolerable! (though our stout handmaiden really fetches our water).
+In other respects<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> Providence has treated us pretty tolerably well; but
+here I shall expect something further to be done. Also, in the way of
+future favors, a kitten would be very acceptable. Animals (except,
+perhaps, a pig) seem never out of place, even in the most paradisiacal
+spheres. And, by the way, a young colt comes up our avenue, now and
+then, to crop the seldom-trodden herbage; and so does a company of cows,
+whose sweet breath well repays us for the food which they obtain. There
+are likewise a few hens, whose quiet cluck is heard pleasantly about the
+house. A black dog sometimes stands at the farther extremity of the
+avenue, and looks wistfully hitherward; but when I whistle to him, he
+puts his tail between his legs, and trots away. Foolish dog! if he had
+more faith, he should have bones enough.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Saturday, August 6.</i>&mdash;Still a dull day, threatening rain, yet without
+energy of character enough to rain outright. However, yesterday there
+were showers enough to supply us well with their beneficent outpouring.
+As to the new cistern, it seems to be bewitched; for, while the spout
+pours into it like a cataract, it still remains almost empty. I wonder
+where Mr. Hosmer got it; perhaps from Tantalus, under the eaves of whose
+palace it must formerly have stood; for, like his drinking-cup in Hades,
+it has the property of filling itself forever, and never being full.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast, I took my fishing-rod, and went down through our
+orchard to the river-side; but as three or four boys were already in
+possession of the best spots along the shore, I did not fish. This river
+of ours is the most sluggish stream that I ever was acquainted with. I
+had spent three weeks by its side, and swam across it every day, before
+I could determine which way its current ran; and then I was compelled to
+decide the question by the testimony of others, and not by my own
+observation. Owing to this torpor of the stream, it has nowhere a
+bright, pebbly shore, nor is there so much as a narrow strip of
+glistening sand in any part of its course; but it slumbers along between
+broad meadows, or kisses the tangled grass of mowing-fields and
+pastures, or bathes the overhanging boughs of elder-bushes and other
+water-loving plants. Flags and rushes grow along its shallow margin. The
+yellow water-lily spreads its broad, flat leaves upon its surface; and
+the fragrant white pond-lily occurs in many favored spots,&mdash;generally
+selecting a situation just so far from the river's brink, that it cannot
+be grasped except at the hazard of plunging in. But thanks be to the
+beautiful flower for growing at any rate. It is a marvel whence it
+derives its loveliness and perfume, sprouting as it does from the black
+mud over which the river sleeps, and from which the yellow lily likewise
+draws its unclean life and noisome odor. So it is with many people in
+this world: the same soil and circumstances may produce the good and
+beautiful, and the wicked and ugly. Some have the faculty of
+assimilating to themselves only what is evil, and so they become as
+noisome as the yellow water-lily. Some assimilate none but good
+influences, and their emblem is the fragrant and spotless pond-lily,
+whose very breath is a blessing to all the region round about.... Among
+the productions of the river's margin, I must not forget the
+pickerel-weed, which grows just on the edge of the water, and shoots up
+a long stalk crowned with a blue spire, from among large green leaves.
+Both the flower and the leaves look well in a vase with pond-lilies, and
+relieve the unvaried whiteness of the latter; and, being all alike
+children of the waters, they are perfectly in keeping with one
+another....</p>
+
+<p>I bathe once, and often twice, a day in our river; but one dip into the
+salt sea would be worth more than a whole week's soaking in such a
+lifeless tide. I have read of a river somewhere (whether it be in
+classic regions or among our Western Indians I know not) which seemed to
+dissolve and steal away the vigor of those who bathed in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> it. Perhaps
+our stream will be found to have this property. Its water, however, is
+pleasant in its immediate effect, being as soft as milk, and always
+warmer than the air. Its hue has a slight tinge of gold, and my limbs,
+when I behold them through its medium, look tawny. I am not aware that
+the inhabitants of Concord resemble their native river in any of their
+moral characteristics. Their forefathers, certainly, seem to have had
+the energy and impetus of a mountain torrent, rather than the torpor of
+this listless stream,&mdash;as it was proved by the blood with which they
+stained their river of Peace. It is said there are plenty of fish in it;
+but my most important captures hitherto have been a mud-turtle and an
+enormous eel. The former made his escape to his native element,&mdash;the
+latter we ate; and truly he had the taste of the whole river in his
+flesh, with a very prominent flavor of mud. On the whole, Concord River
+is no great favorite of mine; but I am glad to have any river at all so
+near at hand, it being just at the bottom of our orchard. Neither is it
+without a degree and kind of picturesqueness, both in its nearness and
+in the distance, when a blue gleam from its surface, among the green
+meadows and woods, seems like an open eye in Earth's countenance.
+Pleasant it is, too, to behold a little flat-bottomed skiff gliding over
+its bosom, which yields lazily to the stroke of the paddle, and allows
+the boat to go against its current almost as freely as with it.
+Pleasant, too, to watch an angler, as he strays along the brink,
+sometimes sheltering himself behind a tuft of bushes, and trailing his
+line along the water, in hopes to catch a pickerel. But, taking the
+river for all in all, I can find nothing more fit to compare it with,
+than one of the half-torpid earth-worms which I dig up for bait. The
+worm is sluggish, and so is the river,&mdash;the river is muddy, and so is
+the worm. You hardly know whether either of them be alive or dead; but
+still, in the course of time, they both manage to creep away. The best
+aspect of the Concord is when there is a northwestern breeze curling its
+surface, in a bright, sunshiny day. It then assumes a vivacity not its
+own. Moonlight, also, gives it beauty, as it does to all scenery of
+earth or water.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Sunday, August 7.</i>&mdash;At sunset, last evening, I ascended the hill-top
+opposite our house; and, looking downward at the long extent of the
+river, it struck me that I had done it some injustice in my remarks.
+Perhaps, like other gentle and quiet characters, it will be better
+appreciated the longer I am acquainted with it. Certainly, as I beheld
+it then, it was one of the loveliest features in a scene of great rural
+beauty. It was visible through a course of two or three miles, sweeping
+in a semicircle round the hill on which I stood, and being the central
+line of a broad vale on either side. At a distance, it looked like a
+strip of sky set into the earth, which it so etherealized and idealized
+that it seemed akin to the upper regions. Nearer the base of the hill, I
+could discern the shadows of every tree and rock, imaged with a
+distinctness that made them even more charming than the reality;
+because, knowing them to be unsubstantial, they assumed the ideality
+which the soul always craves in the contemplation of earthly beauty. All
+the sky, too, and the rich clouds of sunset, were reflected in the
+peaceful bosom of the river; and surely, if its bosom can give back such
+an adequate reflection of heaven, it cannot be so gross and impure as I
+described it yesterday. Or if so, it shall be a symbol to me that even a
+human breast, which may appear least spiritual in some aspects, may
+still have the capability of reflecting an infinite heaven in its
+depths, and therefore of enjoying it. It is a comfortable thought, that
+the smallest and most turbid mud-puddle can contain its own picture of
+heaven. Let us remember this, when we feel inclined to deny all
+spiritual life to some people, in whom, nevertheless, our Father may
+perhaps see the image of his face.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> This dull river has a deep religion
+of its own: so, let us trust, has the dullest human soul, though,
+perhaps, unconsciously.</p>
+
+<p>The scenery of Concord, as I beheld it from the summit of the hill, has
+no very marked characteristics, but has a great deal of quiet beauty, in
+keeping with the river. There are broad and peaceful meadows, which, I
+think, are among the most satisfying objects in natural scenery. The
+heart reposes on them with a feeling that few things else can give,
+because almost all other objects are abrupt and clearly defined; but a
+meadow stretches out like a small infinity, yet with a secure homeliness
+which we do not find either in an expanse of water or of air. The hills
+which border these meadows are wide swells of land, or long and gradual
+ridges, some of them densely covered with wood. The white village, at a
+distance on the left, appears to be embosomed among wooded hills. The
+verdure of the country is much more perfect than is usual at this season
+of the year, when the autumnal hue has generally made considerable
+progress over trees and grass. Last evening, after the copious showers
+of the preceding two days, it was worthy of early June, or, indeed, of a
+world just created. Had I not then been alone, I should have had a far
+deeper sense of beauty, for I should have looked through the medium of
+another spirit. Along the horizon there were masses of those deep clouds
+in which the fancy may see images of all things that ever existed or
+were dreamed of. Over our old manse, of which I could catch but a
+glimpse among its embowering trees, appeared the immensely gigantic
+figure of a hound, crouching down, with head erect, as if keeping
+watchful guard while the master of the mansion was away.... How sweet it
+was to draw near my own home, after having lived homeless in the world
+so long!... With thoughts like these, I descended the hill, and
+clambered over the stone wall, and crossed the road, and passed up our
+avenue, while the quaint old house put on an aspect of welcome.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Monday, August 8.</i>&mdash;I wish I could give a description of our house, for
+it really has a character of its own, which is more than can be said of
+most edifices in these days. It is two stories high, with a third story
+of attic chambers in the gable roof. When I first visited it, early in
+June, it looked pretty much as it did during the old clergyman's
+lifetime, showing all the dust and disarray that might be supposed to
+have gathered about him in the course of sixty years of occupancy. The
+rooms seemed never to have been painted; at all events, the walls and
+panels, as well as the huge crossbeams, had a venerable and most dismal
+tinge of brown. The furniture consisted of high-backed, short-legged,
+rheumatic chairs, small, old tables, bedsteads with lofty posts, stately
+chests of drawers, looking-glasses in antique black frames, all of which
+were probably fashionable in the days of Dr. Ripley's predecessor. It
+required some energy of imagination to conceive the idea of transforming
+this ancient edifice into a comfortable modern residence. However, it
+has been successfully accomplished. The old Doctor's sleeping apartment,
+which was the front room on the ground floor, we have converted into a
+parlor; and, by the aid of cheerful paint and paper, a gladsome carpet,
+pictures and engravings, new furniture, <i>bijouterie</i>, and a daily supply
+of flowers, it has become one of the prettiest and pleasantest rooms in
+the whole world. The shade of our departed host will never haunt it; for
+its aspect has been changed as completely as the scenery of a theatre.
+Probably the ghost gave one peep into it, uttered a groan, and vanished
+forever. The opposite room has been metamorphosed into a store-room.
+Through the house, both in the first and second story, runs a spacious
+hall or entry, occupying more space than is usually devoted to such a
+purpose in modern times. This feature contributes to give the whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+house an airy, roomy, and convenient appearance; we can breathe the
+freer by the aid of the broad passage-way. The front door of the hall
+looks up the stately avenue, which I have already mentioned; and the
+opposite door opens into the orchard, through which a path descends to
+the river. In the second story we have at present fitted up three rooms,
+one being our own chamber, and the opposite one a guest-chamber, which
+contains the most presentable of the old Doctor's ante-Revolutionary
+furniture. After all, the moderns have invented nothing better, as
+chamber furniture, than these chests of drawers, which stand on four
+slender legs, and rear an absolute tower of mahogany to the ceiling, the
+whole terminating in a fantastically carved summit. Such a venerable
+structure adorns our guest-chamber. In the rear of the house is the
+little room which I call my study, and which, in its day, has witnessed
+the intellectual labors of better students than myself. It contains,
+with some additions and alterations, the furniture of my bachelor-room
+in Boston; but there is a happier disposal of things now. There is a
+little vase of flowers on one of the book-cases, and a larger bronze
+vase of graceful ferns that surmounts the bureau. In size the room is
+just what it ought to be; for I never could compress my thoughts
+sufficiently to write in a very spacious room. It has three windows, two
+of which are shaded by a large and beautiful willow-tree, which sweeps
+against the overhanging eaves. On this side we have a view into the
+orchard, and beyond, a glimpse of the river. The other window is the one
+from which Mr. Emerson, the predecessor of Dr. Ripley, beheld the first
+fight of the Revolution,&mdash;which he might well do, as the British troops
+were drawn up within a hundred yards of the house; and on looking forth,
+just now, I could still perceive the western abutments of the old
+bridge, the passage of which was contested. The new monument is visible
+from base to summit.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding all we have done to modernize the old place, we seem
+scarcely to have disturbed its air of antiquity. It is evident that
+other wedded pairs have spent their honeymoons here, that children have
+been born here, and people have grown old and died in these rooms,
+although for our behoof the same apartments have consented to look
+cheerful once again. Then there are dark closets, and strange nooks and
+corners, where the ghosts of former occupants might hide themselves in
+the daytime, and stalk forth when night conceals all our sacrilegious
+improvements. We have seen no apparitions as yet; but we hear strange
+noises, especially in the kitchen, and last night, while sitting in the
+parlor, we heard a thumping and pounding as of somebody at work in my
+study. Nay, if I mistake not, (for I was half asleep,) there was a sound
+as of some person crumpling paper in his hand in our very bedchamber.
+This must have been old Dr. Ripley with one of his sermons. There is a
+whole chest of them in the garret; but he need have no apprehensions of
+our disturbing them. I never saw the old patriarch myself, which I
+regret, as I should have been glad to associate his venerable figure at
+ninety years of age with the house in which he dwelt.</p>
+
+<p>Externally the house presents the same appearance as in the Doctor's
+day. It had once a coat of white paint; but the storms and sunshine of
+many years have almost obliterated it, and produced a sober, grayish
+hue, which entirely suits the antique form of the structure. To repaint
+its reverend face would be a real sacrilege. It would look like old Dr.
+Ripley in a brown wig. I hardly know why it is that our cheerful and
+lightsome repairs and improvements in the interior of the house seem to
+be in perfectly good taste, though the heavy old beams and high
+wainscoting of the walls speak of ages gone by. But so it is. The
+cheerful paper-hangings have the air of belonging to the old walls; and
+such modernisms as astral lamps, card-tables, gilded Cologne-bottles,
+silver taper-stands, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> bronze and alabaster flower-vases, do not seem
+at all impertinent. It is thus that an aged man may keep his heart warm
+for new things and new friends, and often furnish himself anew with
+ideas; though it would not be graceful for him to attempt to suit his
+exterior to the passing fashions of the day.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>August 9.</i>&mdash;Our orchard in its day has been a very productive and
+profitable one; and we were told, that in one year it returned Dr.
+Ripley a hundred dollars, besides defraying the expense of repairing the
+house. It is now long past its prime: many of the trees are moss-grown,
+and have dead and rotten branches intermixed among the green and
+fruitful ones. And it may well be so; for I suppose some of the trees
+may have been set out by Mr. Emerson, who died in the first year of the
+Revolutionary war. Neither will the fruit, probably, bear comparison
+with the delicate productions of modern pomology. Most of the trees seem
+to have abundant burdens upon them; but they are homely russet apples,
+fit only for baking and cooking. (But we have yet to have practical
+experience of our fruit.) Justice Shallow's orchard, with its choice
+pippins and leather-coats, was doubtless much superior. Nevertheless, it
+pleases me to think of the good minister, walking in the shadows of
+these old, fantastically-shaped apple-trees, here plucking some of the
+fruit to taste, there pruning away a too luxuriant branch, and all the
+while computing how many barrels may be filled, and how large a sum will
+be added to his stipend by their sale. And the same trees offer their
+fruit to me as freely as they did to him,&mdash;their old branches, like
+withered hands and arms, holding out apples of the same flavor as they
+held out to Dr. Ripley in his lifetime. Thus the trees, as living
+existences, form a peculiar link between the dead and us. My fancy has
+always found something very interesting in an orchard. Apple-trees, and
+all fruit-trees, have a domestic character which brings them into
+relationship with man. They have lost, in a great measure, the wild
+nature of the forest-tree, and have grown humanized by receiving the
+care of man, and by contributing to his wants. They have become a part
+of the family; and their individual characters are as well understood
+and appreciated as those of the human members. One tree is harsh and
+crabbed, another mild; one is churlish and illiberal, another exhausts
+itself with its free-hearted bounties. Even the shapes of apple-trees
+have great individuality, into such strange postures do they put
+themselves, and thrust their contorted branches so grotesquely in all
+directions. And when they have stood around a house for many years, and
+held converse with successive dynasties of occupants, and gladdened
+their hearts so often in the fruitful autumn, then it would seem almost
+sacrilege to cut them down.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the apple-trees, there are various other kinds of fruit in close
+vicinity to the house. When we first arrived, there were several trees
+of ripe cherries, but so sour that we allowed them to wither upon the
+branches. Two long rows of currant-bushes supplied us abundantly for
+nearly four weeks. There are a good many peach-trees, but all of an old
+date,&mdash;their branches rotten, gummy, and mossy,&mdash;and their fruit, I
+fear, will be of very inferior quality. They produce most abundantly,
+however,&mdash;the peaches being almost as numerous as the leaves; and even
+the sprouts and suckers from the roots of the old trees have fruit upon
+them. Then there are pear-trees of various kinds, and one or two
+quince-trees. On the whole, these fruit-trees, and the other items and
+adjuncts of the place, convey a very agreeable idea of the outward
+comfort in which the good old Doctor must have spent his life.
+Everything seems to have fallen to his lot that could possibly be
+supposed to render the life of a country clergyman easy and prosperous.
+There is a barn, which probably used to be filled, annually, with his
+hay and other agricultural products. There are sheds, and a hen-house,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
+and a pigeon-house, and an old stone pig-sty, the open portion of which
+is overgrown with tall weeds, indicating that no grunter has recently
+occupied it.... I have serious thoughts of inducting a new incumbent in
+this part of the parsonage. It is our duty to support a pig, even if we
+have no design of feasting upon him; and, for my own part, I have a
+great sympathy and interest for the whole race of porkers, and should
+have much amusement in studying the character of a pig. Perhaps I might
+try to bring out his moral and intellectual nature, and cultivate his
+affections. A cat, too, and perhaps a dog, would be desirable additions
+to our household.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>August 10.</i>&mdash;The natural taste of man for the original Adam's
+occupation is fast developing itself in me. I find that I am a good deal
+interested in our garden, although, as it was planted before we came
+here, I do not feel the same affection for the plants that I should if
+the seed had been sown by my own hands. It is something like nursing and
+educating another person's children. Still, it was a very pleasant
+moment when I gathered the first string-beans, which were the earliest
+esculent that the garden contributed to our table. And I love to watch
+the successive development of each new vegetable, and mark its daily
+growth, which always affects me with surprise. It is as if something
+were being created under my own inspection, and partly by my own aid.
+One day, perchance, I look at my bean-vines, and see only the green
+leaves clambering up the poles; again, to-morrow, I give a second
+glance, and there are the delicate blossoms; and a third day, on a
+somewhat closer observation, I discover the tender young beans, hiding
+among the foliage. Then, each morning, I watch the swelling of the pods,
+and calculate how soon they will be ready to yield their treasures. All
+this gives a pleasure and an ideality, hitherto unthought of, to the
+business of providing sustenance for my family. I suppose Adam felt it
+in Paradise; and, of merely and exclusively earthly enjoyments, there
+are few purer and more harmless to be experienced. Speaking of beans, by
+the way, they are a classical food, and their culture must have been the
+occupation of many ancient sages and heroes. Summer-squashes are a very
+pleasant vegetable to be acquainted with. They grow in the forms of urns
+and vases,&mdash;some shallow, others deeper, and all with a beautifully
+scalloped edge. Almost any squash in our garden might be copied by a
+sculptor, and would look lovely in marble, or in china; and, if I could
+afford it, I would have exact imitations of the real vegetable as
+portions of my dining-service. They would be very appropriate dishes for
+holding garden-vegetables. Besides the summer-squashes, we have the
+crook-necked winter-squash, which I always delight to look at, when it
+turns up its big rotundity to ripen in the autumn sun. Except a pumpkin,
+there is no vegetable production that imparts such an idea of warmth and
+comfort to the beholder. Our own crop, however, does not promise to be
+very abundant; for the leaves formed such a superfluous shade over the
+young blossoms, that most of them dropped off without producing the germ
+of fruit. Yesterday and to-day I have cut off an immense number of
+leaves, and have thus given the remaining blossoms a chance to profit by
+the air and sunshine; but the season is too far advanced, I am afraid,
+for the squashes to attain any great bulk, and grow yellow in the sun.
+We have muskmelons and watermelons, which promise to supply us with as
+many as we can eat. After all, the greatest interest of these vegetables
+does not seem to consist in their being articles of food. It is rather
+that we love to see something born into the world; and when a great
+squash or melon is produced, it is a large and tangible existence, which
+the imagination can seize hold of and rejoice in. I love, also, to see
+my own works contributing to the life and well-being of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> animate nature.
+It is pleasant to have the bees come and suck honey out of my
+squash-blossoms, though, when they have laden themselves, they fly away
+to some unknown hive, which will give me back nothing in return for what
+my garden has given them. But there is much more honey in the world, and
+so I am content. Indian corn, in the prime and glory of its verdure, is
+a very beautiful vegetable, both considered in the separate plant, and
+in a mass in a broad field, rustling, and waving, and surging up and
+down in the breeze and sunshine of a summer afternoon. We have as many
+as fifty hills, I should think, which will give us an abundant supply.
+Pray Heaven that we may be able to eat it all! for it is not pleasant to
+think that anything which Nature has been at the pains to produce should
+be thrown away. But the hens will be glad of our superfluity, and so
+will the pigs, though we have neither hens nor pigs of our own. But hens
+we must certainly keep. There is something very sociable, and quiet, and
+soothing, too, in their soliloquies and converse among themselves; and,
+in an idle and half-meditative mood, it is very pleasant to watch a
+party of hens picking up their daily subsistence, with a gallant
+chanticleer in the midst of them. Milton had evidently contemplated such
+a picture with delight.</p>
+
+<p>I find that I have not given a very complete idea of our garden,
+although it certainly deserves an ample record in this chronicle, since
+my labors in it are the only present labors of my life. Besides what I
+have mentioned, we have cucumber-vines, which to-day yielded us the
+first cucumber of the season, a bed of beets, and another of carrots,
+and another of parsnips and turnips, none of which promise us a very
+abundant harvest. In truth, the soil is worn out, and, moreover,
+received very little manure this season. Also, we have cabbages in
+superfluous abundance, inasmuch as we neither of us have the least
+affection for them; and it would be unreasonable to expect Sarah, the
+cook, to eat fifty head of cabbages. Tomatoes, too, we shall have by and
+by. At our first arrival, we found green peas ready for gathering, and
+these, instead of the string-beans, were the first offering of the
+garden to our board.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>TO J. B.</h2>
+
+<h3>ON SENDING ME A SEVEN-POUND TROUT.</h3>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">1.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fit for an Abbot of Theleme,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the whole Cardinals' College, or<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Pope himself to see in dream<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before his lenten vision gleam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He lies there,&mdash;the sogdologer!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">2.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His precious flanks with stars besprent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Worthy to swim in Castaly!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The friend by whom such gifts are sent,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For him shall bumpers full be spent,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His health! be Luck his fast ally!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">3.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I see him trace the wayward brook<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Amid the forest mysteries,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where at themselves shy aspens look,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or where, with many a gurgling crook,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It croons its woodland histories.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">4.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I see leaf-shade and sun-fleck lend<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their tremulous, sweet vicissitude<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To smooth, dark pool, to crinkling bend,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(O, stew him, Ann, as 't were your friend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With amorous solicitude!)<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">5.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I see him step with caution due,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soft as if shod with moccasins,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grave as in church,&mdash;and who plies you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet craft, is safe as in a pew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From all our common stock o' sins.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">6.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The unerring fly I see him cast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That as a rose-leaf falls as soft,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A flash! a whirl! he has him fast!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We tyros,&mdash;how that struggle last<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Confuses and appalls us oft!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">7.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Unfluttered he; calm as the sky<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Looks on our tragicomedies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This way and that he lets him fly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sunbeam-shuttle, then to die<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lands him with cool <i>aplomb</i>, at ease.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">8.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The friend who gave our board such gust,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Life's care, may he o'erstep it half,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when Death hooks him, as he must,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He'll do it featly, as I trust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And J. H. write his epitaph!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">9.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O, born beneath the Fishes' sign,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of constellations happiest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May he somewhere with Walton dine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May Horace send him Massic wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Burns Scotch drink,&mdash;the nappiest!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">10.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And when they come his deeds to weigh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And how he used the talents his,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One trout-scale in the scales he'll lay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(If trout had scales,) and 't will outsway<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wrong side of the balances.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p>
+<h2>PHYSICAL HISTORY OF THE VALLEY OF THE AMAZONS.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<p>A year or two ago I published in the Atlantic Monthly, as part of a
+series of geological sketches, a number of articles on the glacial
+phenomena of the Northern hemisphere. To-day I am led to add a new
+chapter to that strange history, taken from the Southern hemisphere, and
+even from the tropics themselves.</p>
+
+<p>I am prepared to find that the statement of this new phase of the
+glacial period will awaken among my scientific colleagues an opposition
+even more violent than that by which the first announcement of my views
+on this subject was met. I am, however, willing to bide my time; feeling
+sure that, as the theory of the ancient extension of glaciers in Europe
+has gradually come to be accepted by geologists, so will the existence
+of like phenomena, both in North and South America, during the same
+epoch, be recognized sooner or later as part of a great series of
+physical events extending over the whole globe. Indeed, when the ice
+period is fully understood, it will be seen that the absurdity lies in
+supposing that climatic conditions so intense could be limited to a
+small portion of the world's surface. If the geological winter existed
+at all, it must have been cosmic; and it is quite as rational to look
+for its traces in the Western as in the Eastern hemisphere, to the south
+of the equator as to the north of it. Impressed by this wider view of
+the subject, confirmed by a number of unpublished investigations which I
+have made during the last three or four years in the United States, I
+came to South America, expecting to find in the tropical regions new
+evidences of a by-gone glacial period, though, of course, under
+different aspects. Such a result seemed to me the logical sequence of
+what I had already observed in Europe and in North America.</p>
+
+<p>On my arrival in Rio de Janeiro,&mdash;the port at which I first landed in
+Brazil,&mdash;my attention was immediately attracted by a very peculiar
+formation, consisting of an ochraceous, highly ferruginous sandy clay.
+During a stay of three months in Rio, whence I made many excursions into
+the neighboring country, I had opportunities of studying this deposit,
+both in the province of Rio de Janeiro and in the adjoining province of
+Minas Geraes. I found that it rested everywhere upon the undulating
+surfaces of the solid rocks in place, was almost entirely destitute of
+stratification, and contained a variety of pebbles and boulders. The
+pebbles were chiefly quartz, sometimes scattered indiscriminately
+throughout the deposit, sometimes lying in a seam between it and the
+rock below; while the boulders were either sunk in its mass or resting
+loose on the surface. At Tijuca, a few miles out of the city of Rio,
+among the picturesque hills lying to the southwest of it, these
+phenomena may be seen in great perfection. Near Bennett's Hotel&mdash;a
+favorite resort, not only with the citizens of Rio, but with all
+sojourners there who care to leave the town occasionally for its
+beautiful environs&mdash;may be seen a great number of erratic boulders,
+having no connection whatever with the rock in place, and also a bluff
+of this superficial deposit studded with boulders, resting above the
+partially stratified metamorphic rock. Other excellent opportunities for
+observing this formation, also within easy reach from the city, are
+afforded along the whole line of the Railroad of Dom Pedro Segundo,
+where the cuts expose admirable sections, showing the red, unstratified,
+homogeneous mass of sandy clay resting above the solid rock, and often
+divided from it by a thin bed of pebbles. There can be no doubt, in the
+mind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> of any one familiar with similar facts observed in other parts of
+the world, that this is one of the many forms of drift connected with
+glacial action. I was, however, far from anticipating, when I first met
+it in the neighborhood of Rio, that I should afterwards find it
+spreading over the surface of the country, from north to south and from
+east to west, with a continuity which gives legible connection to the
+whole geological history of the continent.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that the extensive decomposition of the underlying rock,
+penetrating sometimes to a considerable depth, makes it often difficult
+to distinguish between it and the drift; and the problem is made still
+more puzzling by the fact that the surface of the drift, when baked by
+exposure to the hot sun, often assumes the appearance of decomposed
+rock, so that great care is required for a correct interpretation of the
+facts. A little practice, however, trains the eye to read these
+appearances aright, and I may say that I have learned to recognize
+everywhere the limit between the two formations. There is indeed one
+safe guide, namely, the undulating line, reminding one of <i>roches
+moutonn&eacute;es</i>,<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> and marking the irregular surface of the rock on which
+the drift was accumulated; whatever modifications the one or the other
+may have undergone, this line seems never to disappear. Another
+deceptive feature, arising from the frequent disintegration of the rocks
+and from the brittle character of some of them, is the presence of loose
+fragments, which simulate erratic boulders, but are in fact only
+detached masses of the rock in place. A careful examination of their
+structure, however, will at once show the geologist whether they belong
+where they are found, or have been brought from a distance to their
+present resting-place.</p>
+
+<p>But while the features to which I have alluded are unquestionably drift
+phenomena, they present in their wider extension, and especially in the
+northern part of Brazil, as will hereafter be seen, some phases of
+glacial action hitherto unobserved. Just as the investigation of the ice
+period in the United States has shown us that ice-fields may move over
+open level plains, as well as along the slopes of mountain valleys, so
+does a study of the same class of facts in South America reveal new and
+unlooked-for features in the history of the ice period. Some will say,
+that the fact of the advance of ice-fields over an open country is by no
+means established, inasmuch as many geologists believe all the so-called
+glacial traces, viz. stri&aelig;, furrows, polish, etc., found in the United
+States, to have been made by floating icebergs at a time when the
+continent was submerged. To this I can only answer, that in the State of
+Maine I have followed, compass in hand, the same set of furrows, running
+from north to south in one unvarying line, over a surface of one hundred
+and thirty miles from the Katahdin Iron Range to the sea-shore. These
+furrows follow all the inequalities of the country, ascending ranges of
+hills varying from twelve to fifteen hundred feet in height, and
+descending into the intervening valleys only two or three hundred feet
+above the sea, or sometimes even on a level with it. I take it to be
+impossible that a floating mass of ice should travel onward in one
+rectilinear direction, turning neither to the right nor to the left, for
+such a distance. Equally impossible would it be for a detached mass of
+ice, swimming on the surface of the water, or even with its base sunk
+considerably below it, to furrow in a straight line the summits and
+sides of the hills, and the beds of the valleys. It would be carried
+over the depressions without touching bottom. Instead of ascending the
+mountains, it would remain stranded against any elevation which rose
+greatly above its own basis, and, if caught between two parallel ridges,
+would float up and down between them. Moreover, the action of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> solid,
+unbroken ice, moving over the ground in immediate contact with it, is so
+different from that of floating ice-rafts or icebergs, that, though the
+latter have unquestionably dropped erratic boulders, and made furrows
+and stri&aelig; on the surface where they happened to be grounded, these
+phenomena will easily be distinguished from the more connected traces of
+glaciers, or extensive sheets of ice, resting directly upon the face of
+the country and advancing over it.</p>
+
+<p>There seems thus far to be an inextricable confusion, in the ideas of
+many geologists, as to the respective action of currents, icebergs, and
+glaciers. It is time they should learn to distinguish between classes of
+facts so different from each other, and so easily recognized after the
+discrimination has once been made. As to the southward movement of an
+immense field of ice, extending over the whole north, it seems
+inevitable, the moment we admit that snow may accumulate around the pole
+in such quantities as to initiate a pressure radiating in every
+direction. Snow, alternately thawing and freezing, must, like water,
+find its level at last. A sheet of snow ten or fifteen thousand feet in
+thickness, extending all over the northern and southern portions of the
+globe, must necessarily lead, in the end, to the formation of a northern
+and southern cap of ice, moving toward the equator.</p>
+
+<p>I have spoken of Tijuca and the Dom Pedro Railroad as favorable
+localities for studying the peculiar southern drift; but one meets it in
+every direction. A sheet of drift, consisting of the same homogeneous,
+unstratified paste, and containing loose materials of all sorts and
+sizes, covers the country. It is of very uneven thickness,&mdash;sometimes
+thrown into relief, as it were, by the surrounding denudations, and
+rising into hills,&mdash;sometimes reduced to a thin layer,&mdash;sometimes, as,
+for instance, on steep slopes, washed entirely away, leaving the bare
+face of the rock exposed. It has, however, remained comparatively
+undisturbed on some very abrupt ascents; as, for instance, on the
+Corcovado, along the path leading up the mountain, are some very fine
+banks of drift,&mdash;the more striking from the contrast of their deep red
+color with the surrounding vegetation. I have myself followed this sheet
+of drift from Rio de Janeiro to the top of the Serra do Mar, where, just
+outside the pretty town of Petropolis, the river Piabanha may be seen
+flowing between banks of drift, in which it has excavated its bed;
+thence I have traced it along the beautiful macadamized road leading to
+Juiz de Fora in the province of Minas Geraes, and beyond this to the
+farther side of the Serra da Babylonia. Throughout this whole tract of
+country, in the greater part of which travelling is easy and
+delightful,&mdash;an admirable line of diligences, over one of the finest
+roads in the world, being established as far as Juiz de Fora,&mdash;the drift
+may be seen along the roadside, in immediate contact with the native
+crystalline rock. The fertility of the land, also, is a guide to the
+presence of drift. Wherever it lies thickest over the surface, there are
+the most flourishing coffee-plantations; and I believe that a more
+systematic regard to this fact would have a most beneficial influence
+upon the agricultural interests of the country. No doubt the fertility
+arises from the great variety of chemical elements contained in the
+drift, and the kneading process it has undergone beneath the gigantic
+ice-plough,&mdash;a process which makes glacial drift everywhere the most
+fertile soil. Since my return from the Amazons, my impression as to the
+general distribution of these phenomena has been confirmed by the
+reports of some of my assistants, who have been travelling in other
+parts of the country. Mr. Frederick C. Hartt, accompanied by Mr.
+Copeland, one of the volunteer aids of the expedition, has been making
+collections and geological observations in the province of Spiritu
+Santo, in the valley of the Rio Doce, and afterwards in the valley of
+the Mucury. He informs me that he has found everywhere the same sheet
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> red, unstratified clay, with pebbles and occasional boulders,
+overlying the rock in place. Mr. Orestes St. John, who, taking the road
+through the interior, has visited, with the same objects in view, the
+valleys of the Rio San Francisco and the Rio das Velhas, and also the
+valley of Piauhy, gives the same account, with the exception that he
+found no erratic boulders in these more northern regions. The rarity of
+erratic boulders, not only in the deposits of the Amazons proper, but in
+those of the whole region which may be considered as the Amazonian
+basin, is accounted for, as we shall see hereafter, by the mode of their
+formation. The observations of Mr. Hartt and Mr. St. John are the more
+valuable, because I had employed them both, on our first arrival in Rio,
+in making geological surveys of different sections on the Dom Pedro
+Railroad, so that they had a great familiarity with those formations
+before starting on their separate journeys. Recently, Mr. St. John and
+myself having met at Par&aacute; on returning from our respective journeys, I
+have had an opportunity of comparing on the spot his geological sections
+from the valley of the Piauhy with the Amazonian deposits. There can be
+no doubt of the absolute identity of the formations in these valleys.</p>
+
+<p>Having arranged the work of my assistants, and sent several of them to
+collect and make geological examinations in other directions, I myself,
+with the rest of my companions, proceeded up the coast to Par&aacute;. I was
+surprised to find at every step of my progress the same geological
+phenomena which had met me at Rio. As the steamer stops for a number of
+hours, or sometimes for a day or two, at Bahia, Maceio, Pernambuco,
+Parahiba, Natal, Ceara, and Maranham, I had many opportunities for
+observation. It was my friend Major Coutinho, already an experienced
+Amazonian traveller, who first told me that this formation continued
+through the whole valley of the Amazons, and was also to be found on all
+of its affluents which he had visited, although he had never thought of
+referring it to so recent a period. And here let me interrupt the course
+of my remarks to say, that the facts recorded in this article are by no
+means exclusively the result of my own investigations. They are in great
+part due to this able and intelligent young Brazilian, a member of the
+government corps of engineers, who, by the kindness of the Emperor, was
+associated with me in my Amazonian expedition. I can truly say that he
+has been my good genius throughout the whole journey, saving me, by his
+previous knowledge of the ground, from the futile and misdirected
+expenditure of means and time often inevitable in a new country, where
+one is imperfectly acquainted both with the people and their language.
+We have worked together in this investigation; my only advantage over
+him being my greater familiarity with like phenomena in Europe and North
+America, and consequent readiness in the practical handling of the
+facts, and in perceiving their connection. Major Coutinho's assertion,
+that on the banks of the Amazons I should find the same red,
+unstratified clay as in Rio and along the southern coast, seemed to me
+at first almost incredible, impressed as I was with the generally
+received notions as to the ancient character of the Amazonian deposits,
+referred by Humboldt to the Devonian, and by Martins to the Triassic
+period, and considered by all travellers to be at least as old as the
+Tertiaries. The result, however, confirmed his report, at least so far
+as the component materials of the formation are concerned; but, as will
+be seen hereafter, the mode of their deposition, and the time at which
+it took place, have not been the same at the north and south; and this
+difference of circumstances has modified the aspect of a formation
+essentially the same throughout. At first sight, it would indeed appear
+that this formation, as it exists in the valley of the Amazons, is
+identical with that of Rio; but it differs from it in the rarity of its
+boulders, and in showing occasional<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> signs of stratification. It is also
+everywhere underlaid by coarse, well-stratified deposits, resembling
+somewhat the recife of Bahia and Pernambuco; whereas the unstratified
+drift of the south rests immediately upon the undulating surface of
+whatever rock happens to make the foundation of the country, whether
+stratified or crystalline. The peculiar sandstone on which the Amazonian
+clay rests exists nowhere else. Before proceeding, however, to describe
+the Amazonian deposits in detail, I ought to say something of the nature
+and origin of the valley itself.</p>
+
+<p>The Valley of the Amazons was first sketched out by the elevation of two
+tracts of land; namely, the plateau of Guiana on the north, and the
+central plateau of Brazil on the south. It is probable that, at the time
+these two table-lands were lifted above the sea-level, the Andes did not
+exist, and the ocean flowed between them through an open strait. It
+would seem (and this is a curious result of modern geological
+investigations) that the portions of the earth's surface earliest raised
+above the ocean have trended from east to west. The first tract of land
+lifted above the waters in North America was also a long continental
+island, running from Newfoundland almost to the present base of the
+Rocky Mountains. This tendency may be attributed to various causes,&mdash;to
+the rotation of the earth, the consequent depression of its poles, and
+the breaking of its crust along the lines of greatest tension thus
+produced. At a later period, the upheaval of the Andes took place,
+closing the western side of this strait, and thus transforming it into a
+gulf, open only toward the east. Little or nothing is known of the
+earlier stratified deposits resting against the crystalline masses first
+uplifted in the Amazonian Valley. There is here no sequence, as in North
+America, of Azoic, Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous formations,
+shored up against each other by the gradual upheaval of the continent,
+although unquestionably older pal&aelig;ozoic and secondary beds underlie,
+here and there, the later formations. Indeed, Major Coutinho has found
+pal&aelig;ozoic deposits, with characteristic shells, in the valley of the Rio
+Tapajos, at the first cascade, and carboniferous deposits have been
+noticed along the Rio Guapore and the Rio Marnore. But the first chapter
+in the valley's geological history about which we have connected and
+trustworthy data is that of the cretaceous period. It seems certain,
+that, at the close of the secondary age, the whole Amazonian basin
+became lined with a cretaceous deposit, the margins of which crop out at
+various localities on its borders. They have been observed along its
+southern limits, on its western outskirts along the Andes, in Venezuela
+along the shore-line of mountains, and also in certain localities near
+its eastern edge. I well remember that one of the first things which
+awakened my interest in the geology of the Amazonian Valley was the
+sight of some cretaceous fossil fishes from the province of Ceara. These
+fossil fishes were collected by Mr. George Gardner, to whom science is
+indebted for the most extensive information yet obtained respecting the
+geology of that part of Brazil. In this connection, let me say that here
+and elsewhere I shall speak of the provinces of Ceara, Piauhy, and
+Maranham as belonging geologically to the Valley of the Amazons, though
+their shore is bathed by the ocean, and their rivers empty directly into
+the Atlantic. But I entertain no doubt, and I hope I may hereafter be
+able to show, that, at an earlier period, the northeastern coast of
+Brazil stretched much farther seaward than in our day; so far, indeed,
+that in those times the rivers of all these provinces must have been
+tributaries of the Amazon in its eastward course. The evidence for this
+conclusion is substantially derived from the identity of the deposits in
+the valleys belonging to these provinces with those of the valleys
+through which the actual tributaries of the Amazons flow; as, for
+instance, the Tocantins, the Xingu, the Tapajos, the Madura, etc.
+Besides the fossils above alluded to from the eastern borders of this
+ancient<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> basin, I have had recently another evidence of its cretaceous
+character from its southern region. Mr. William Chandless, on his return
+from a late journey on the Rio Purus, presented me with a series of
+fossil remains of the highest interest, and undoubtedly belonging to the
+cretaceous period. They were collected by himself on the Rio Aquiry, an
+affluent of the Rio Purus. Most of them were found in place between the
+tenth and eleventh degrees of south latitude, and the sixty-seventh and
+sixty-ninth degrees of west longitude from Greenwich, in localities
+varying from 430 to 650 feet above the sea-level. There are among them
+remains of Mososaurus, and of fishes closely allied to those already
+represented by Faujas in his description of Maestricht, and
+characteristic, as is well known to geological students, of the most
+recent cretaceous period.</p>
+
+<p>Thus in its main features the Valley of the Amazons, like that of the
+Mississippi, is a cretaceous basin. This resemblance suggests a further
+comparison between the twin continents of North and South America. Not
+only is their general form the same, but their framework as we may call
+it, that is, the lay of their great mountain-chains and of their
+table-lands, with the extensive intervening depressions, presents a
+striking similarity. Indeed, a zo&ouml;logist, accustomed to trace a like
+structure under variously modified animal forms, cannot but have his
+homological studies recalled to his mind by the coincidence between
+certain physical features in the northern and southern parts of the
+Western hemisphere. And yet here, as throughout all nature, these
+correspondences are combined with a distinctness of individualization,
+which leaves its respective character not only to each continent as a
+whole, but also to the different regions circumscribed within its
+borders. In both, however, the highest mountain-chains, the Rocky
+Mountains and Coast Range with their wide intervening table-land in
+North America, and the chain of the Andes with its lesser plateaus in
+South America, run along the western coast; both have a great eastern
+promontory,&mdash;Newfoundland in the northern continent, and Cape St. Roque
+in the southern;&mdash;and though the resemblance between the inland
+elevations is perhaps less striking, yet the Canadian range, the White
+Mountains, and the Alleghanies may very fairly be compared to the
+table-lands of Guiana and Brazil, and the Serra do Mar. Similar
+correspondences may be traced among the river systems. The Amazons and
+the St. Lawrence, though so different in dimensions, remind us of each
+other by their trend and geographical position; and while the one is fed
+by the largest river system in the world, the other drains the most
+extensive lake surfaces known to exist in immediate contiguity. The
+Orinoco, with its bay, recalls Hudson's Bay and its many tributaries,
+and the Rio Magdalena may be said to be the South American Mackenzie;
+while the Rio de la Plata represents geographically our Mississippi, and
+the Paraguay recalls the Missouri. The Parana may be compared to the
+Ohio; the Pilcomayo, Vermejo, and Salado rivers, to the River Platte,
+the Arkansas, and the Red River in the United States; while the rivers
+farther south, emptying into the Gulf of Mexico, represent the rivers of
+Patagonia and the southern parts of the Argentine Republic. Not only is
+there this general correspondence between the mountain elevations and
+the river systems, but as the larger river basins of North
+America&mdash;those of the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, and the
+Mackenzie&mdash;meet in the low tracts extending along the foot of the Rocky
+Mountains, so do the basins of the Amazons, the Rio de la Plata, and the
+Orinoco join each other along the eastern slope of the Andes.</p>
+
+<p>But while in geographical homology the Amazons compare with the St.
+Lawrence, and the Mississippi with the Rio de la Plata, the Mississippi
+and the Amazons, as has been said, resemble each other in their local
+geological character. They have both received a substratum of cretaceous
+beds, above<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> which are accumulated their more recent deposits, so that,
+in their most prominent geological features, both may be considered as
+cretaceous basins, containing extensive deposits of a very recent age.
+Of the history of the Amazonian Valley during the periods immediately
+following the Cretaceous, we know little or nothing. Whether the
+Tertiary deposits are hidden under the more modern ones, or whether they
+are wholly wanting, the basin having, perhaps, been raised above the
+sea-level before that time, or whether they have been swept away by the
+tremendous inundations in the valley, which have certainly destroyed a
+great part of the cretaceous deposit, they have never been observed in
+any part of the Amazonian basin. Whatever tertiary deposits are
+represented in geological maps of this region are so marked in
+consequence of an incorrect identification of strata belonging, in fact,
+to a much more recent period.</p>
+
+<p>A minute and extensive survey of the Valley of the Amazons is by no
+means an easy task, and its difficulty is greatly increased by the fact
+that the lower formations are only accessible on the river margins
+during the <i>vasante</i>, as it is called, or dry season, when the waters
+shrink in their beds, leaving a great part of their banks exposed. It
+happened that the first three or four months of my journey, August,
+September, October, and November, were those when the waters are
+lowest,&mdash;reaching their minimum in September and October, and beginning
+to rise again in November,&mdash;so that I had an excellent opportunity in
+ascending the river to observe its geological structure. Throughout its
+whole length, three distinct geological formations may be traced, the
+two lower of which have followed in immediate succession, and are
+conformable with one another, while the third rests unconformably upon
+them, following all the inequalities of the greatly denudated surface
+presented by the second formation. Notwithstanding this seeming
+interruption in the sequence of these deposits, the third, as we shall
+presently see, belongs to the same series, and was accumulated in the
+same basin. The lowest set of beds of the whole series is rarely
+visible, but it seems everywhere to consist of sandstone, or even of
+loose sands well stratified, the coarser materials lying invariably
+below, and the finer above. Upon this lower set of beds rests everywhere
+an extensive deposit of fine laminated clays, varying in thickness, but
+frequently dividing into layers as thin as a sheet of paper. In some
+localities they exhibit in patches an extraordinary variety of beautiful
+colors,&mdash;pink, orange, crimson, yellow, gray, blue, and also black and
+white. The Indians are very skilful in preparing paints from these
+colored clays, with which they ornament their pottery, and the bowls of
+various shapes and sizes made from the fruit of the Cuieira-tree. These
+clay deposits assume occasionally a peculiar appearance, and one which
+might mislead the observer as to their true nature. When their surface
+has been long exposed to the action of the atmosphere and to the heat of
+the burning sun, they look so much like clay slates of the oldest
+geological epochs, that, at first sight, I took them for primary slates,
+my attention being attracted to them by a regular cleavage as distinct
+as that of the most ancient clay slates. And yet at Tonantins, on the
+banks of the Solimoens, in a locality where their exposed surfaces had
+this primordial appearance, I found in these very beds a considerable
+amount of well-preserved leaves, the character of which proves their
+recent origin. These leaves do not even indicate as ancient a period as
+the Tertiaries, but resemble so closely the vegetation of to-day, that I
+have no doubt, when examined by competent authority, they will be
+identified with living plants. The presence of such an extensive clay
+formation, stretching over a surface of more than three thousand miles
+in length and about seven hundred in breadth, is not easily explained
+under any ordinary circumstances.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> The fact that it is so thoroughly
+laminated shows that, in the basin in which it was formed, the waters
+must have been unusually quiet, containing identical materials
+throughout, and that these materials must have been deposited over the
+whole bottom in the same way. It is usually separated from the
+superincumbent beds by a glazed crust of hard, compact sandstone, almost
+resembling a ferruginous quartzite.</p>
+
+<p>Upon this follow beds of sand and sandstone, varying in the regularity
+of their strata, reddish in color, often highly ferruginous, and more or
+less nodulous or porous. They present frequent traces of
+cross-stratification, alternating with regularly stratified horizontal
+beds, with here and there an intervening layer of clay. It would seem as
+if the character of the water basin had now changed, and as if the
+waters under which this second formation was deposited had vibrated
+between storm and calm,&mdash;had sometimes flowed more gently, and again had
+been tossed to and fro,&mdash;giving to some of the beds the aspect of true
+torrential deposits. Indeed, these sandstone formations present a great
+variety of aspects. Sometimes they are very regularly laminated, or
+assume even the appearance of the hardest quartzite. This is usually the
+case with the uppermost beds. In other localities, and more especially
+in the lowermost beds, the whole mass is honeycombed, as if drilled by
+worms or boring shells, the hard parts enclosing softer sands or clays.
+Occasionally the ferruginous materials prevail to such an extent, that
+some of these beds might be mistaken for bog ore, while others contain a
+large amount of clay, more regularly stratified, and alternating with
+strata of sandstone, thus recalling the most characteristic forms of the
+Old Red or Triassic formations. This resemblance has, no doubt, led to
+the identification of the Amazonian deposits with the more ancient
+formations of Europe. At Monte Alegre, of which I shall presently speak
+more in detail, such a clay bed divides the lower from the upper
+sandstone. The thickness of these sandstones is extremely variable. In
+the basin of the Amazons proper, they hardly rise anywhere above the
+level of high water during the rainy season, while at low water, in the
+summer months, they maybe seen everywhere along the river-banks. It will
+be seen, however, that the limit between high and low water gives no
+true measure of the original thickness of the whole series.</p>
+
+<p>In the neighborhood of Almeirim, at a short distance from the northern
+bank of the river, and nearly parallel with its course, there rises a
+line of low hills, interrupted here and there, but extending in evident
+connection from Almeirim through the region of Monte Alegre to the
+heights of Obidos. These hills have attracted the attention of
+travellers, not only from their height, which appears greater than it
+is, because they rise abruptly from an extensive plain, but also on
+account of their curious form, many of them being perfectly level on
+top, like smooth tables, and very abruptly divided from each other by
+low, intervening spaces.<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a> Nothing has hitherto been known of the
+geological structure of these hills, but they have been usually
+represented as the southernmost spurs of the table-land of Guiana. On
+ascending the river, I felt the greatest curiosity to examine them; but
+at the time I was deeply engrossed in studying the distribution of
+fishes in the Amazonian waters, and in making large ichthyological
+collections, for which it was very important not to miss the season of
+low water, when the fishes are most easily obtained. I was, therefore,
+obliged to leave this most interesting geological problem, and content
+myself with examining the structure of the valley so far as it could be
+seen on the river-banks and in the neighborhood of my different
+collecting stations. On my return, however, when my collections were
+completed, I was free to pursue<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> this investigation, in which Major
+Coutinho was as much interested as myself. We determined to select Monte
+Alegre as the centre of our exploration, the serra in that region being
+higher than elsewhere. As I was detained by indisposition at Manaos, for
+some days, at the time we had appointed for the excursion, Major
+Coutinho preceded me, and had already made one trip to the serra, with
+some very interesting results, when I joined him, and we made a second
+journey together.</p>
+
+<p>Monte Alegre lies on a side arm of the Amazons, a little off from its
+main course. This side arm, called the Rio Gurupatuba, is simply a
+channel running parallel with the Amazons, and cutting through from a
+higher to a lower point. Its dimensions are, however, greatly
+exaggerated in all the maps thus far published, where it is usually made
+to appear as a considerable northern tributary of the Amazons. The town
+stands on an elevated terrace, separated from the main stream by the Rio
+Gurupatuba, and by an extensive flat, consisting of numerous lakes
+divided from each other by low alluvial land, and mostly connected by
+narrow channels. To the west of the town, this terrace sinks abruptly to
+a wide sandy plain called the Campos, covered with a low forest growth,
+and bordered on its farther limit by the picturesque serra of Errer&eacute;.
+The form of this mountain is so abrupt, its rise from the plain so bold
+and sudden, that it seems more than twice its real height. Judging by
+the eye, and comparing it with the mountains I had last seen,&mdash;the
+Corcovado, the Gavia and Tijuca range in the neighborhood of Rio,&mdash;I had
+supposed it to be three or four thousand feet high, and was greatly
+astonished when our barometric observations showed it to be somewhat
+less than nine hundred feet in its most elevated point. This, however,
+agrees with Martins's measurement of the Almeirim hills, which he says
+are eight hundred feet in height.</p>
+
+<p>Major Coutinho and I reached the serra by different roads; he crossing
+the Campos on horseback with Captain Faria, the commander of our
+steamer, and one or two other friends from Monte Alegre, who joined our
+party, while I went by canoe. The canoe journey is somewhat longer. A
+two hours' ride across the Campos brings you to the foot of the
+mountain, whereas the trip by boat takes more than twice that time. But
+I preferred going by water, as it gave me an opportunity of seeing the
+vast variety of animals haunting the river-banks and lakes. As this was
+almost the only occasion in all my journey when I passed a day in the
+pure enjoyment of nature, without the labor of collecting,&mdash;which in
+this hot climate, where specimens require such immediate and constant
+attention, is very great,&mdash;I am tempted to interrupt our geology for a
+moment, to give an account of it. I learned how rich a single day may be
+in this wonderful tropical world, if one's eyes are only open to the
+wealth of animal and vegetable life. Indeed, a few hours so spent in the
+field, in simply watching animals and plants, teaches more of the
+distribution of life than a month of closet study; for under such
+circumstances all things are seen in their true relations. Unhappily, it
+is not easy to present the picture as a whole, for all our written
+descriptions are more or less dependent on nomenclature, and the local
+names are hardly known out of the districts where they belong, while
+systematic names are familiar to few.</p>
+
+<p>I started before daylight; but, as the dawn began to redden the sky,
+large flocks of ducks, and of the small Amazonian geese, might be seen
+flying towards the lakes. Here and there a cormorant sat alone on the
+branch of a dead tree, or a kingfisher poised himself over the water,
+watching for his prey. Numerous gulls were gathered in large companies
+on the trees along the river-shore; alligators lay on its surface,
+diving with a sudden plash at the approach of our canoe; and
+occasionally a porpoise emerged from the water, showing himself for a
+moment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> and then disappearing again. Sometimes we startled a herd of
+capivara, resting on the water's edge; and once we saw a sloth, sitting
+upon the branch of an Imbauba (Cecropia) tree, rolled up in its peculiar
+attitude, the very picture of indolence, with its head sunk between its
+arms. Much of the river-shore consisted of low alluvial land, and was
+covered with that peculiar and beautiful grass known as Capim; this
+grass makes an excellent pasturage for cattle, and the abundance of it
+in this region renders the district of Monte Alegre very favorable for
+agricultural purposes. Here and there, where the red clay soil rose
+above the level of the water, a palm-thatched cabin stood on the low
+bluff, with a few trees about it. Such a house was usually the centre of
+a cattle farm, and large herds might be seen grazing in the adjoining
+fields. Along the river-banks, where the country is chiefly open, with
+extensive low marshy grounds, the only palm to be seen is the Maraja.
+After keeping along the Rio Gurupatuba for some distance, we turned to
+the right into a narrow stream, which has the character of an Igarap&eacute; in
+its lower course, though higher up it drains the country between the
+serra of Errer&eacute; and that of Tajury, and assumes the appearance of a
+small river. It is named after the serra, and is known as the Rio
+Errer&eacute;. This stream, narrow and picturesque, and often so overgrown with
+capim that the canoe pursued its course with difficulty, passed through
+a magnificent forest of the beautiful fan-palm, called here the Miriti
+(<i>Mauritia flexuosa</i>). This forest stretched for miles, overshadowing,
+as a kind of underbrush, many smaller trees and innumerable shrubs, some
+of which bore bright, conspicuous flowers. It seemed to me a strange
+spectacle,&mdash;a forest of monocotyledonous trees with a dicotyledonous
+undergrowth; the inferior plants thus towering above and sheltering the
+superior ones. Among the lower trees were many Leguminos&aelig;,&mdash;one of the
+most striking, called Fava, having a colossal pod. The whole mass of
+vegetation was woven together by innumerable lianas and creeping vines,
+in the midst of which the flowers of the Bignonia, with its open,
+trumpet-shaped corolla, were conspicuous. The capim was bright with the
+blossoms of the mallow growing in its midst, and was often edged with
+the broad-leaved Aninga, a large aquatic Arum.</p>
+
+<p>Through such a forest, where the animal life was no less rich and varied
+than the vegetation, our boat glided slowly for hours. The number and
+variety of birds struck me with astonishment. The coarse sedgy grasses
+on either side were full of water birds, one of the most common of which
+was a small chestnut-brown wading bird, the Ja&ccedil;ana (Parra), whose toes
+are immensely long in proportion to its size, enabling it to run upon
+the surface of the aquatic vegetation, as if it were solid ground. It
+was in the month of January, their breeding season, and at every turn of
+the boat we started them up in pairs. Their flat, open nests generally
+contained five flesh-colored eggs, streaked in zigzag with dark brown
+lines. The other waders were a snow-white heron, another ash-colored,
+smaller species, and a large white stork. The ash-colored herons were
+always in pairs, the white one always single, standing quiet and alone
+on the edge of the water, or half hidden in the green capim. The trees
+and bushes were full of small warbler-like birds, which it would be
+difficult to characterize separately. To the ordinary observer they
+might seem like the small birds of our woods; but there was one species
+among them which attracted my attention by its numbers, and also because
+it builds the most extraordinary nest, considering the size of the bird
+itself, that I have ever seen. It is known among the country people by
+two names, as the Pedreiro or the Forneiro, both names referring, as
+will be seen, to the nature of its habitation. This singular nest is
+built of clay, and is as hard as stone (<i>pedra</i>), while it has the form
+of the round mandioca oven (<i>forno</i>) in which the country people prepare
+their farinha, or flour, made from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> the mandioca root. It is about a
+foot in diameter, and stands edgewise upon a branch, or in the crotch of
+a tree. Among the smaller birds, I noticed bright Tanagers, and also a
+species resembling the Canary. Besides these, there were the wagtails,
+the black and white widow finches, the hang-nests, or Jap&eacute;, as they are
+called here, with their pendent bag-like dwellings, and the familiar
+"Bem ti vi." Humming-birds, which we are always apt to associate with
+tropical vegetation, were very scarce. I saw but a few specimens.
+Thrushes and doves were more frequent, and I noticed also three or four
+kinds of woodpeckers. Of these latter there were countless numbers along
+our canoe path, flying overhead in dense crowds, and, at times, drowning
+every other sound in their high, noisy chatter.</p>
+
+<p>These made a deep impression upon me. Indeed, in all regions, however
+far away from his own home, in the midst of a fauna and flora entirely
+new to him, the traveller is startled occasionally by the song of a bird
+or the sight of a flower so familiar that it transports him at once to
+woods where every tree is like a friend to him. It seems as if something
+akin to what in our own mental experience we call reminiscence or
+association existed in the workings of nature; for though the organic
+combinations are so distinct in different climates and countries, they
+never wholly exclude each other. Every zo&ouml;logical and botanical province
+retains some link which binds it to all the rest, and makes it part of
+the general harmony. The Arctic lichen is found growing under the shadow
+of the palm on the rocks of the tropical serra, and the song of the
+thrush and the tap of the woodpecker mingle with the sharp discordant
+cries of the parrot and paroquet.</p>
+
+<p>Birds of prey, also, were not wanting. Among them was one about the size
+of our kite, and called the Red Hawk, which was so tame that, even when
+our canoe passed immediately under the low branch on which he was
+sitting, he did not fly away. But of all the groups of birds, the most
+striking as compared with corresponding groups in the temperate zone,
+and the one which reminded me the most directly of the fact that every
+region has its peculiar animal world, was that of the gallinaceous
+birds. The most frequent is the Cigana, to be seen in groups of fifteen
+or twenty, perched upon trees overhanging the water, and feeding upon
+berries. At night they roost in pairs, but in the daytime are always in
+larger companies. In their appearance they have something of the
+character of both the pheasant and peacock, and yet do not closely
+resemble either. It is a curious fact, that, with the exception of some
+small partridge-like gallinaceous birds, all the representatives of this
+family in Brazil, and especially in the Valley of the Amazons, belong to
+types which do not exist in other parts of the world. Here we find
+neither pheasants, nor cocks of the woods, nor grouse; but in their
+place abound the Mutun, the Ja&ccedil;u, the Jacami, and the Unicorn (Crax,
+Penelope, Psophia, and Palamedea), all of which are so remote from the
+gallinaceous types found farther north, that they remind one quite as
+much of the bustard, and other ostrich-like birds, as of the hen and
+pheasant. They differ also from Northern gallinaceous birds in the
+greater uniformity of the sexes, none of them exhibiting those striking
+differences between the males and females which we see in the pheasants,
+the cocks of the woods, and in our barn-yard fowls. While birds abounded
+in such numbers, insects were rather scarce. I saw but few and small
+butterflies, and beetles were still more rare. The most numerous insects
+were the dragon-flies,&mdash;some with crimson bodies, black heads, and
+burnished wings,&mdash;others with large green bodies, crossed by blue bands.
+Of land shells I saw but one creeping along the reeds; and of water
+shells I gathered only a few small Ampullari&aelig;.</p>
+
+<p>Having ascended the river to a point nearly on a line with the serra, I
+landed, and struck across the Campos<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> on foot. Here I entered upon an
+entirely different region,&mdash;a dry, open plain, with scanty vegetation.
+The most prominent plants were clusters of cactus and curua palms, a
+kind of stemless, low palm, with broad, elegant leaves springing
+vase-like from the ground. In these dry, sandy fields, rising gradually
+toward the serra, I observed in the deeper gullies formed by the heavy
+rains the laminated clays which are everywhere the foundation of the
+Amazonian strata. They here presented again so much the character of
+ordinary clay slates, that I thought I had at last come upon some old
+geological formation. Instead of this I only obtained fresh evidence
+that, by baking them, the burning sun of the tropics may produce upon
+laminated clays of recent origin the same effect as plutonic agents have
+produced upon the ancient clays, that is, it may change them into
+metamorphic slates. As I approached the serra, I was again reminded how,
+under the most dissimilar circumstances, similar features recur
+everywhere in nature. I came suddenly upon a little creek, bordered with
+the usual vegetation of such shallow water-courses, and on its brink
+stood a sand-piper, which flew away at my approach, uttering its
+peculiar cry, so like what one hears at home that, had I not seen him, I
+should have recognized him by his voice.</p>
+
+<p>After an hour's walk under the scorching sun, I was glad to find myself
+at the hamlet of Errer&eacute;, near the foot of the serra, where I rejoined my
+companions. It was already noon, and they had arrived some time before.
+They had, however, waited breakfast for me, to which we all brought a
+good appetite. Breakfast over, we slung our hammocks under the trees,
+and during the heat of the day enjoyed the rest which we had so richly
+earned.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> The name consecrated by De Saussure to designate certain
+rocks in Switzerland, which have had their surfaces rounded under the
+action of the glaciers. Their gently swelling outlines are thought to
+resemble sheep resting on the ground, and for this reason the people in
+the Alps call them <i>roches moutonn&eacute;es</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_D_4" id="Footnote_D_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_4"><span class="label">[D]</span></a> The atlas in Martins's "Journey to Brazil," or the sketch
+accompanying Bates's description of these hills in his "Naturalist on
+the Amazons," will give an idea of their aspect.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>A BUNDLE OF BONES.</h2>
+
+
+<p>And a very large bundle it was, as it lay, in <i>disjecta membra</i>, before
+the astonished eyes of the first learned pal&aelig;ontologist who gazed, in
+wondering delight, on its strange proportions. As it rears its ungainly
+form some eighteen feet above us, Madam, you may gather some idea of
+what it was in its native forests, I don't know how many hundreds of
+thousands of years ago. You need not snuggle up to me so, Tommy. The
+creature is not alive, unless it is enjoying Sydney Smith's idea of
+comfort, and, having taken off its flesh, is airing itself in its bones.
+Megatherium was a very proper name for it, if not a very common one; for
+<i>large animal</i> it was, beyond any dispute, and could scarcely have been
+much of a pet with the human beings of old, unless "there were giants in
+those days," and enormous ones at that. How Owen must have gloated over
+that treasure-trove! Captain Kyd's buried booty would have been worse
+trash to him than Iago's stolen purse, beside this unearthed deposit of
+an antediluvian age. Its missing caudal vertebr&aelig; would outweigh now, in
+his anatomical scales, all the hidden gains of the whole race of
+pirates, past, present, and to come. Think of those bones with all the
+original muscle upon them! Why, they would outweigh all the worthy
+members of the Boston Society of Natural History together, unless they
+are uncommonly obese. Where could Noah have stowed a pair of such
+enormous beasts, supposing that they existed as late as when the ark was
+launched? Sloth, indeed! I am inclined to think the five or six tons of
+flesh these bones must have carried<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> round might reasonably permit the
+bearer to rank, on <i>a priori</i> reasons, among the most confirmed of
+sluggards, even if Owen and Agassiz and Wyman had not so decided on
+strictly scientific, anatomical grounds.</p>
+
+<p>My dear Madam, does it ever occur to you, when you wonderingly gaze on
+the strange relics around this hall,&mdash;these stony skeletons, these
+silent remnants of extinct races, that you are face to face with
+rock-buried creatures, who lived and sported and mated, who basked in
+the sunlight and breathed in the air of this world, hundreds of
+thousands of years before you were thought of? who rested in the shade
+of the trees which made the coal that warms you to-day? who trod the
+soft mud which now builds in solid strength the dwellings which shelter
+you? who darted through the deep waters that foamed over a bed now
+raised into snow-capped mountains? who frolicked on a shore now piled
+with miles of massive rock? whose bones were petrifactions untold ages
+before the race was born which built the Pyramids? Do you really
+understand how far back into antiquity these grim fossils bear you? Can
+you really conceive of Nature, our dear, kind, gentle mother, in those
+early throes of her maternity which brought forth Megatheria and
+Ichthyosauri,&mdash;when the "firm and rock-built earth" was tilted into
+mountain ranges, wrinkled by earthquakes, and ploughed by mighty hills
+of moving ice? And yet in those distant days, which have left their
+ripple-marks and rain-drops in the weighty stone, there was life, warm,
+breathing, sentient life, which, dying, traced its own epitaph on its
+massive tomb. Shakespeare, C&aelig;sar, Brahma, Noah, Adam, lived but
+yesterday compared with these creatures, whose stone-bound bones were
+buried in the sands that drifted on the shores of this world centuries
+before the first man drew into his nostrils the breath of life. Does the
+thought ever occur to you, that, ages hence, some enthusiastic student
+of nature may puzzle his brains over the bones of some such humble
+individuals as you and I, and wonder to what manner of creature they
+belonged? Or that, perched upon the shelves of some museum in the year
+500000, they may be treasures of an unknown past to the Owens and Wymans
+of that day?</p>
+
+<p>You wish I would not talk so?&mdash;Well, Madam, let us leave this mausoleum
+of the past, and come forth into the life of 1866; and let us see
+whether all the <i>disjecta membra</i> of extinct being are ranged around the
+walls of this classic hall, or whether we may not find something akin
+near our own snug and comfortable homes. I think I know some hardened
+hearts which have ossified around the soft emotions which in earlier
+years played therein. And, bless you, Madam, I meet every day, in my
+down-town walks, some strange animated fossils, more repellent than any
+I ever beheld in the Natural History cabinet. These bear the unfamiliar
+look which belongs to a fabulous age, and rest, silent and unobtrusive,
+in their half-opened cerements. The others wear a very familiar form,
+which belongs to our day, yet they are the exponents of a dead life
+which animated the buried bones of barbarism. The innocent Megatheria
+and Ichthyosauri crawled and paddled and died in their day; but these
+living fossils have the vital forms of the life above ground, while they
+bear within the psychical peculiarities of extinct beings. They creep
+about on the shores of time with the outward shapes of their fellows,
+and, when buried in its rising waves, will leave undistinguishable
+remains in their common tomb; and future explorers will never trace
+therein the evanescent peculiarities in which the two were so unlike.</p>
+
+<p>Bones! Why, the whole earth is a big bundle of them. They are not only
+in graveyards, where "mossy marbles rest"; they are strewn, "unknelled,
+uncoffined, and unknown," over the whole surface of the globe, and lie
+embosomed in the gulfs of the great, restless ocean. Who knows what
+untamed savage rests beneath us here? Don't start, my dear Madam. I have
+no doubt that, when Tommy plays bo-peep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> round the big tree on the
+Common, he is tripping over the crania of some Indian sachems.
+Goldsmith's seat, "for whispering lovers made," very likely rested on
+some venerable, departed Roman; and many a Maypole has gone plump
+through the thorax of some defunct Gaul. If the old story be true, that,
+when we shudder, somebody is walking over our grave, what a shaking race
+of beings our remote ancestors must have been!</p>
+
+<p>My dear Madam, down in the green fields, the flowery meadows, the deep
+woods, the damp swamps of the balmy South, are there not spread, to-day,
+in grievous numbers, the bones of the noble, true-hearted heroes who
+went forth in their strength and manhood to meet a patriot's fate? Will
+not the future tread of those they ransomed be light and buoyant in the
+long days of freedom yet to come? What will they know of the hallowed
+remains over which they bound with glowing, happy hearts? Some little
+Peterkin may find a bleached remnant of their heroism, and the Caspar of
+that day will surely say, "It was a famous victory." Madam, you and I
+would be content to have the children of the future gambol above us, if
+we could know their blithesome hearts were emancipated from thraldom by
+such deposit of our poor bones under the verdant sod. The stateliest
+mausoleum of crowned kings, the Pyramids that mark the resting-place of
+Egypt's ancient rulers, are not so proud a monument as the rich, green
+herbage that springs from the remains of a fallen hero, and hides the
+little feet that trip over him, freed by his fall. Let us rejoice, then,
+Madam, that we belong to that nobler race, which no curious explorer of
+the far future will rank with Megatheria and Ichthyosauri, or any of the
+soulless creatures of past geologic ages.</p>
+
+<p>Backbone is a most important article, Tommy. Professor Wyman will tell
+you that backbone is the distinctive characteristic of the highest order
+of animals on this earth. When your father used to pry into all sorts of
+books, years ago, he found out that he belonged to the Vertebrata,
+which, Anglicized, meant backboned creatures. And yet do you know that
+there are crowds of men and women whose framework would puzzle the good
+Professor, with all his learning,&mdash;people who are utterly destitute of
+that same essential article? Carry him the first old bone you may find,
+and, I warrant you, he will tell, in a jiffy, to what manner of creature
+it belonged. But wouldn't he look bewildered upon a cranium and a pelvis
+which perambulated the earth without any osseous connection? Backbone is
+the grand fulcrum on which human life moves its inertia. But wouldn't
+Professor Rogers, <i>facile princeps</i> in physics, rub his nose, and look
+in wonder, to see peripatetic motion induced without a sign of a fulcrum
+for the lever of life to rest upon? And yet these anomalies are
+plentiful. They are everywhere,&mdash;in houses, in churches, in stores, in
+town, in country, on land, at sea, in public, in private,&mdash;extensive
+sub-orders of mammalian Invertebrata. They crouch and crawl through the
+world with pliant length. They wriggle through the knot-holes of fear
+and policy, when their stouter-boned brethren oppose them. They creep
+into corners and cracks when the giant, Progress, strides before them,
+and quake at the thunder of his tread. They cling, trembling, to the old
+mouldering scaffolding of the past, and look bewildered on the broad,
+rising arches of the new temple of thought. They stand quivering in the
+blast of opinion. And when Mrs. Grundy passes by, they back, like
+hermit-crabs, into the first time-worn old shell of precedent they can
+find, and hide there, shaking with dread.</p>
+
+<p>My boy, strengthen well your backbone, that it may bear you upright and
+onward in your career. Walk erect in this world with the stature and
+aspect of a man. Tread forth alone with fearlessness and conscious
+power. Bear up your God-given intelligence with unbending pride, that it
+may look afar over the broad expanse of nature, and gaze with even eye
+upon the mountain-heights of eternal truth. I am using<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> words too big
+for you? Well, one of these days you will understand them all, when your
+little backbone has gathered more lime.</p>
+
+<p>Bone has done some remarkable things in this world. There was that
+little feat of Samson, in which he flourished the grinding apparatus of
+a defunct donkey. It has always seemed to me, Madam, that that same
+jaw-bone must have been either prodigiously strong and tough, or else
+the Philistine crania must have been of very chartaceous texture. There
+are the bones of the eleven thousand virgins,&mdash;the remains of ancient
+virtue, and loveliness, and faith. Though, if all the stories of
+travelled anatomists be true, there must have been some virgin heifers
+among them; for many of them are certainly of bovine, and not human,
+origin.</p>
+
+<p>And then, Madam, do not the poor bones which have been strewn, for ages,
+over the rolling earth, play sometimes a nobler part in their decay than
+in their prime? The incrusted fragments, carefully treasured up in halls
+of science, reveal to the broadening intelligence of man the story of
+earth in its young days of mighty struggle, and tell of the sandy
+shores, the rolling waters, the waving woods of a primeval time. Turning
+back the stony tablets time has firmly bound, he views upon their
+wrinkled sides its nature-printed figures,&mdash;relics that have there
+remained, locked in the rocky sepulchre, built of crumbling mountains,
+washed and worn by tides that ebbed and flowed a million years ago. Now,
+opened to the eye of human thought, their crumbling forms bring tidings
+of a distant, wondrous past, when they were all in all of sentient life
+on earth. The thought they could not know, their dead remains have
+wakened in the minds of a far nobler race, which was not born when they
+lay down and died.</p>
+
+<p>When travellers over far-reaching deserts are lost in the great waste
+that shows no friendly, guiding sign, they sometimes find, half buried
+in the shifting sands, the bleaching bones of some poor creature which
+has fainted and fallen, left to its fate by the companions of its
+journey. Then, taking heart, they cheerier move along, secure in the
+forgotten path these silent relics show. Thus over life's drear desert
+do we move, seeking the path that leads us on direct, and often guided
+in our wandering way by the chance sight of lost and fallen ones, whose
+sad remains our errant footsteps cross. Not always clad in soft, warm,
+beating life do our bones perform their noblest purpose. Beauty may lure
+to ruin, but, the witching charm removed, decay may waken sober thought
+and high resolve. Poor Yorick might have set King Hamlet's table in a
+roar and been forgot, if, from his unknown grave, the sexton had not
+brought him forth, to teach an unborn age philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>My dear Madam, I am really getting too serious, philosophic, and
+melancholic. I had no idea, when I asked you down to the Natural History
+Society rooms to see the great Megatherium, that I was either to bury or
+resuscitate you in imagination. But I must have my moral, if I draw it
+from such a lean text as crumbling bones. Let us hope that what we leave
+behind us, when our journey over the drear expanse of mortal life shall
+cease, may serve to guide some future wanderer in the devious way, and
+lead him to the bright oasis of eternal life and rest.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>AN ENGLISHMAN IN NORMANDY.</h2>
+
+
+<p>A tour in Normandy is a very commonplace thing; and mine was not even a
+tour in Normandy. In the six weeks which I spent there, I did not see as
+many sights as an ordinary English tourist sees in ten days, or an
+American, perhaps, in five. Going abroad in need of rest, I rambled
+slowly about, sojourning at each place as long as I found it agreeable,
+then moving on to another, avoiding the railroads, the tyranny of the
+timetable, the flurry of packing up every morning. My time was divided
+between some seven or eight places; and I stayed longest where there was
+least, according to the guide-books, to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>Travelling in this way, you at all events see something of the people;
+that is, if you will live among them and fall in with their ways.</p>
+
+<p>Normandy&mdash;at least the sequestered part of it in which most of my time
+was passed&mdash;is a good country for a traveller minded as I was. The
+scenery is not grand. It does not exact the highest admiration; but it
+is, perhaps, not on that account the less suitable for the purpose of
+those who seek repose. The country is very like the most rich and
+beautiful parts of England. Its lanes and hedge-rows are indeed so
+thoroughly English, as to suggest that it was laid out under influences
+similar to those which determined the aspect of the country in England,
+and unlike those which determined it in other parts of France. It is
+well wooded; and as the trees stand not in masses, but in lines along
+the hedge-rows, you see distinctly the form of each tree. This is one of
+its characteristic features. The number of poplars interspersed with the
+trees of rounder outline is another, and very grateful to the eye. The
+general greenness rivals that of England. The valleys are wide, and the
+views from the hill-tops very extensive. I am speaking chiefly of the
+western part of Normandy: the parts about Caen approach more nearly to
+the flatness, monotony, and dreary treelessness of ordinary French and
+German scenery. The air is pure and bracing,&mdash;especially in the little
+towns built on old castled heights. Why do we not always build our
+towns, when we can, on heights, in what Shakespeare calls nimble and
+sweet air?</p>
+
+<p>The Norman towns are full of grand old churches, old castles, historic
+memories, shadows of the past. In these, where I spent most of my
+holiday, there are no garrisons, no Zouaves, no <i>fanfares</i>, no signs of
+the presence of the empire, except occasionally the abode of a
+<i>sous-pr&eacute;fet</i>. The province retains a good deal of its old character. In
+the great towns, such as Rouen and Caen, the people are French; but in
+the country they are Normans still. The French are sensible of the
+difference, and do the Normans the honor (as, if I were a Norman, I
+should think it) of acknowledging it by habitual flouts and sneers at
+the "heavy" race who inhabit "the land of cider."</p>
+
+<p>If you do not mind outward appearances,&mdash;if you have the resolution to
+penetrate beyond a very dirty entrance, perhaps through the kitchen,
+into the rooms within,&mdash;you may make yourself extremely comfortable in a
+little Norman inn. You have only to behave to your landlord and landlady
+as a guest, not as a customer, and you will find yourself treated with
+the utmost civility and kindness. You will get a large, airy room, not
+so tidy as an English room, but with a better bed, and excellent fare,
+beginning with a delicious cup of <i>caf&eacute; au lait</i> in the early
+morning,&mdash;that is, if you choose to breakfast and dine at the <i>table
+d'h&ocirc;te</i>; for, if, like many English travellers, you insist on living in
+English privacy, and taking your meals at English hours, all the
+resources of the little establishment being expended on the public<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+meals, you will probably pay the penalty of your patriotic and stoical
+adherence to the customs of your country.</p>
+
+<p>In my passage from Weymouth to Normandy, I landed at Jersey. The little,
+secluded bays of that island are the most perfect poetry of the sea.
+They are types of the spot in which Horace, in his poetic mood of
+imaginary misanthropy, wished to end his days.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Oblitusque meorum obliviscendus et illis<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Neptunum procul e terra spectare furentem."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I was told that the scenery of Guernsey was even more beautiful; but the
+rough passage between the two islands is rather a heavy price to pay for
+the enjoyment. The islands are curious from their old Norman character,
+laws, and customs; their Norman <i>patois</i>; their system of small
+proprietors, whose little holdings, divided from each other by high
+hedges, cut the island into a multitude of paddocks; and the miniature
+republicanism and universal suffrage which the inhabitants enjoy, though
+under the paternal eye of an English governor, who, if the insects grew
+too angry, would no doubt sprinkle a little dust. But all that is native
+and original is fast being overlaid by the influx of English
+residents,&mdash;unhappy victims of genteel pauperism flying from the heavy
+taxes of England, which the Channel Islands escape; or, in not a few
+cases, persons whose reputation has suffered some damage in their own
+country. There are also a few exiles of a more honorable kind,&mdash;French
+liberals, who have taken refuge from imperial tyranny under the shield
+of English law,&mdash;the most illustrious of whom is Victor Hugo. The
+Emperor would fain get hold of these men, and he is now trying to force
+upon us a modification of the extradition treaty for that purpose. But
+the sanctity of our asylum is a tradition dear to the English people,
+and one which they will not be induced to betray. An attempt to change
+the English law for the purposes of the French police was fatal to
+Palmerston, at the height of his popularity and power.</p>
+
+<p>The French government employs agents to decoy the refugees into
+conspiracies, in order that it may obtain a pretext for criminal
+proceedings against them. The fact has fallen under my personal
+observation. To estimate the character of these practices, and of the
+present attempt to tamper with the extradition treaty, we must remember
+that Louis Napoleon himself long enjoyed, as a political refugee, the
+shelter of the asylum which he is now endeavoring to subvert.</p>
+
+<p>Jersey is studded with fortifications. England and France frown at each
+other in arms from the neighboring coasts. I thought of poor Cobden, and
+of the day when his policy shall finally prevail, as it begins to
+prevail already, over these national divisions and jealousies; and when
+there shall be at once a better and a cheaper security for the peace of
+nations than fortresses bristling with the instruments of mutual
+destruction. The Norman islands are of no use to England, while they
+involve us in a large military expenditure. In a maritime war, we should
+find it very difficult to defend dependencies so far from our coast and
+so close to that of the enemy. But the people are loyal to England, and
+very unwilling to be annexed to France.</p>
+
+<p>Granville, where I landed in Normandy, is a hideous seaport; but its
+hideousness was almost turned to beauty, on that golden afternoon, by
+the bright French atmosphere, which can do for bad scenery what French
+cookery does for bad meat. The royal and imperial roads of France are as
+despotically straight as those of the Roman Empire. But it was a
+pleasant evening drive to Avranches, through the rich champaign,&mdash;the
+active little Norman horses trotting the sixteen miles merrily to the
+jingling of their bells. The figure of the <i>gendarme</i>, in his cocked hat
+and imposing uniform, setting out upon his rounds, tells me that I am in
+France.</p>
+
+<p>Avranches stands on the steep and towering extremity of a line of hills,
+commanding a most magnificent and varied view of land and sea, with
+Mont<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> St. Michel in the distance. Its cathedral must have occupied a
+site as striking as the temple of Poseidon, on the headland of Sunium.
+But of that cathedral nothing is now left but a heap of fragments, and a
+stone, on which, fabling tradition says, Henry II. was reconciled to the
+Church after the murder of Becket. It was pulled down in consequence of
+the injuries it received at the time of the Revolution; and the bare
+area where it stood is typical of that devastating tornado which swept
+feudal and Catholic France out of existence. Where once the learned
+Huetius lived and wrote, the house of the <i>sous-pr&eacute;fet</i> now stands. The
+building of churches, however, is going on actively in Avranches, and
+attests the reviving influence of the priests. And one should be glad to
+see the revival of any form of religion, however different from one's
+own, in France, if it were not that this Church is so intensely
+political, and that it presents Christianity as the ally of atheist and
+sensualist despotism, and the enemy of morality, liberty, justice, and
+the hopes of man. The French C&aelig;sars, Napoleon I. and Napoleon III.,
+though themselves absolutely devoid of any faith but the self-idolatry
+which they call faith in their "star," find it politic, like the Roman
+C&aelig;sars, to have their official creed and their augurs.</p>
+
+<p>I went to the distribution of prizes at the school of the Christian
+Brothers. I had greatly admired the schools of the brotherhood in
+Ireland, and felt an interest in their system, notwithstanding their
+main object, like that of the famous Jesuit teachers of the sixteenth
+century, was rather to proselytize than to educate. The ceremony was
+thoroughly French, each boy being crowned with a tinsel wreath, and
+kissed by one of the company when he was presented with his prize.
+Everything, however, was arranged with the greatest taste and skill; and
+the recitations and dialogues, by which the endless distribution of
+prizes was relieved, were very cleverly and gracefully performed. Some
+of them were comic. The one which made us laugh most was a dialogue
+between a barber and a young gentleman who had come into his shop to be
+shaved. The barber pausing with the razor in his hand, the young
+gentleman asked him, angrily, why he did not begin. "I am waiting,"
+replied the barber, "for your beard to grow." Specimens of writing were
+handed round, which were good; drawings, which, strange to say, were
+detestable. I praised the recitations and dialogues to the gentleman who
+sat next me. "Ah! oui," was his reply, "tout cela vient de Paris." So
+complete is the centralization of French intellect, even in such little
+matters as these! While I was in France, some leading politicians were
+attempting to set on foot a movement in favor of political
+decentralization. They must begin deeper, if they would hope to succeed.</p>
+
+<p>In Ireland, the Christian Brothers maintain the most purely spiritual
+character, and the most complete independence of the state. But here,
+alas! a different tendency peeped out. The alliance of a Jesuit Church
+with the Empire, and the subserviency of education to their common
+objects, were typified by the presence of the <i>sous-pr&eacute;fet</i> and the
+<i>maire</i> in their gold-laced coats of office, who arrived escorted by a
+guard of soldiers with fixed bayonets. The harangue of the reverend head
+of the establishment was highly political, and amply merited by its
+recommendations of the duty of obedience to authority the eulogy of the
+<i>sous-pr&eacute;fet</i> on "the good direction" which the brotherhood were giving
+to the studies of youth. There is no garrison at Avranches. But all the
+soldiers in the place seemed to have been collected to give a military
+character to the scene. Other incentives of military aspiration were not
+wanting; and the boy who delivered the allocution told us, amidst loud
+applause, that he and his companions were being brought up to be, "not
+only good Christians, but, in case of need, good soldiers."</p>
+
+<p>In France under the Empire a military character is studiously given to
+every act of public, and almost of social<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> life. There you see
+everywhere the pomp of war in the midst of peace, as in America you saw
+everywhere peace in the midst of civil war. The images of war and
+conquest are constantly kept before the eyes of a people naturally full
+of military vanity, and now, by the decay alike of religious and
+political faith, almost entirely bereft of all other aspirations. There
+is at the same time a vast standing army, which is not occupied, as the
+army of the Roman Empire was, in defending the frontiers, nor, as the
+Austrian army is, in holding down disaffected provinces, and which is
+full of the memory of the Napoleonic conquests, and longs again to
+overrun and pillage Europe in the name of "glory." There is no
+restraining influence either of morality or of religion to keep the war
+spirit in check. The French priesthood are as ready as any priests of
+Jupiter or Baal to bless national aggression, if by so doing they can
+gain political power. In what can all this end? In what but a European
+war? The children in the schools of the Christian Brothers are no doubt
+faithfully taught the precepts of a religion of peace; but there is a
+teaching of a different kind before their eyes, which, it is to be
+feared, they more easily imbibe and less easily forget.</p>
+
+<p>It was amusing, on this and other occasions, to see the state which
+surrounds the subordinate officials of the Empire. I had found the head
+of the American Republic and all its armaments without any insignia of
+dignity, without a guard or attendants, in a common office room. And
+here was a <i>sous-pr&eacute;fet</i> parading the streets in solemn state, in a
+gilded coat, and with a line of bayonets glittering on either hand.</p>
+
+<p>From Avranches it is a pleasant walk (by the country road) to the
+village of Ducie, where there is good fishing, a nice little village
+inn, and a deserted chateau in the Louis Quatorze style, and of
+sumptuous dimensions, which, if it was ever completely finished, is now
+in a state of great dilapidation. No doubt it shared the fate of its
+fellows, when the Revolution proclaimed "peace to the cottage, war to
+the castle." The peasantry almost everywhere rose, like galley-slaves
+whose chains had been suddenly struck off, and gutted the chateaux, the
+strongholds of feudal extortion and injustice. How violent and sweeping
+have been the revolutions of this people compared with those of the
+stronger and more self-controlled race! In England, the Tudor mansions,
+and not unfrequently even the feudal castles, are still tenanted by the
+heirs, or by those who have peacefully purchased from the heirs, of
+their ancient lords; and the insensible gradations by which the feudal
+guard-room has softened down into the modern drawing-room, and the
+feudal moat into the flower-garden, are emblematic of the continuous and
+comparatively tranquil progress of English history. In France, how
+different! Scarcely eighty years have passed since the Chateau de
+Montgomeri was proud and gay; since the village idlers gathered here to
+see its lord, and his little provincial court, assemble along those
+mouldering balustrades, and ride through the now deserted gates. But to
+the grandchildren of those villagers the chateau is a strange,
+mysterious relic of the times before the flood. A group of peasants
+tried in vain, when I asked them, to recollect the name of its former
+proprietors. One of them said that it had been inhabited by a great
+lord, who shod his horses with shoes of gold,&mdash;much the sort of tale
+that an Irish peasant tells you about the primeval monuments of his
+country. The mansions of France before the Revolution belong as
+completely to the past as the tombs of the Pharaohs. The old aristocracy
+and the old dynasty are no longer hated or regretted. Their names excite
+no emotion whatever in the French peasant's heart. They are wiped out of
+the memory of the nation, and their place knows them no more. In the
+midst of their shows and their pleasures and their shallow philosophies,
+they could not read the handwriting on the wall, and therefore they are
+blotted out of existence. They went on marrying and giving in marriage;
+this chateau,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> perhaps, was still being enlarged and embellished, when
+the flood came upon them and destroyed them all. The science of politics
+is the science of regulating progress and avoiding revolutions.</p>
+
+<p>The hostess of the Lion d'Or is about to transfer her establishment to
+an inn of greater pretensions, to which, aware that the old chateau is
+an object of interest to visitors, she means to give the name of the
+Hotel de Montgomeri. On the wall of her <i>caf&eacute;</i> is a coarse medallion
+bust taken from a room in the chateau. She did not know whom it
+represented; and I dare say it was only my fancy that made me think I
+recognized a rude effigy of the once adored features of Marie
+Antoinette.</p>
+
+<p>The plates at the Lion d'Or were adorned with humorous devices. On one
+was a satire on the hypocritical rapacity of perfidious Albion. Two
+English soldiers were standing with their swords hidden behind their
+backs, and trying to coax back to them some Indians who were running
+away in the distance. "Come to us, dear little Indians; you know we are
+your best friends!" Suppose "Arabs" or "Mexicans" had been substituted
+for "Indians." To a Frenchman, our conquests in India are rapine; his
+own conquests in Algeria or Mexico are the extension of civilization by
+the "holy bayonets" (I forget whether the phrase is Michelet's or
+Quinet's) of the chosen people. Justice gives the same name (no matter
+which) to both.</p>
+
+<p>At Ducie a handsome new church had just been built,&mdash;mainly, I was told,
+by the munificence of two maiden ladies. The congregation at vespers was
+large and apparently devout; and here the number of the men was in fair
+proportion to that of the women. In the churches of the cities, though
+the power of the clergy has everywhere increased of late, you see
+scarcely one man to a hundred women.</p>
+
+<p>On the road, a shower drove me for refuge into the house of a peasant,
+who received me with the usual kindliness of the French peasantry, and,
+when the shower was over, walked two or three miles with me on my way.
+The condition of these present proprietors is a subject of great
+interest to English economists, especially as we are evidently on the
+eve of a great controversy&mdash;perhaps a great struggle&mdash;respecting the law
+of succession to landed property in our own country. Not that any
+English economist would go so far as to advocate the French system of
+compulsory subdivision, which owes its existence in great measure to the
+policy of the first Napoleon,&mdash;who took care, with the instinct of a
+true despot, to secure the solitary power of the throne against the
+growth of an independent class of wealthy proprietors. All that English
+economists contemplate is the abolition of primogeniture and entail. I
+must not found any conclusion on observations so partial and cursory as
+those which I was able to make; but I suspect that the French peasant is
+better off than the English laborer. He is not better housed, clothed,
+or fed; perhaps not so well housed, clothed, or fed. He eats black
+bread, which the English peasant would reject, and clumps about in
+wooden shoes, which the English laborer would regard with horror; but
+this, according to statements which I have heard, and am inclined to
+trust, arises, generally speaking, not so much from indigence as from
+self-denying frugality, pushed to an extreme. The French peasant is the
+possessor of property, and has a passion, almost a mania, for
+acquisition. He saves money and subscribes to government loans, which
+are judiciously brought out in very small shares, so as to draw forth
+his little hoard, and thus bind him as a creditor to the interest of the
+Empire. The cottage of the peasant which I entered on my way to Ducie
+was very mean and comfortless, and the food which his hospitality
+offered me was of the coarsest kind. But he had a valuable mare and
+foal; his yard was full of poultry; and his orchard showed, for a bad
+season, a fair crop of apples. There are some large estates, the result
+frequently of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> great fortunes made in trade. Not far from the place
+where the high-born lords of the Chateau de Montgomeri once reigned, a
+chocolate-merchant had bought broad lands, and built himself a princely
+mansion. I should have thought that the great proprietors would have
+crushed the small; but I was assured that the two systems went on very
+well side by side. But this is a matter for exact inquiry, not for
+casual remark. The population in France is stationary, or nearly so,
+while that of England increases rapidly; and this is an important
+element in the question, and itself raises questions of a difficult,
+perhaps of a disagreeable kind.</p>
+
+<p>The cares of proprietorship must necessarily interfere with the
+lightness of heart once proverbially characteristic of the French
+peasant. Still, he appears to a stranger cheerful, ready to chat, and at
+least as inquisitive as to the stranger's history and objects as
+Americans are commonly believed to be. It would be a happy thing if the
+Irish peasant's lightness of heart, pleasant as it often is, could be
+interfered with in the same way. There is a certain gayety which springs
+from mere recklessness, and is sister to despair.</p>
+
+<p>They are hard economical problems that we have to solve in this Old
+World, and terribly complicated by social and political entanglements;
+and there is no boundless West, with bread for all who want it, to
+assist us in the solution.</p>
+
+<p>From Avranches you visit Mont St. Michel,&mdash;not without difficulty, for
+you have to drive along over sands which are never dry, and over which
+the tide&mdash;its advance can be seen even from the distant height of
+Avranches&mdash;rushes in with the speed of a race-horse. But you are well
+repaid. Mont St. Michel is one of the most astonishing and beautiful
+monuments of the Catholic and feudal age. Its fortifications, and the
+halls, church, and cloisters of the chivalrous and monastic fraternities
+of which it was the seat, rise like an efflorescence from the solitary
+cone of granite, surrounded at low tide by the vast flat of sand, at
+high tide by the sea. Gothic architecture, to which we are apt to attach
+the notion of a sort of infantine unconsciousness, here seems
+consciously to revel and disport itself in its power, and to exult in
+investing the sea-girt rock with the playful elegance of a Cellini vase.
+It is a real <i>jeu d'esprit</i> of medi&aelig;val art. The cloisters are a model
+of airy grace, enhanced by contrast with the massiveness of the fortress
+and the wildness of the scene. A strange life the monks must have led in
+their narrow boundaries. But they had the visits of the knights to
+relieve their dulness; and probably they were rude natures, not liable
+to the unhappiness which such seclusion would produce in men of
+cultivated sensibilities and active minds. Both monks and knights are
+gone long ago. But there are still six priests on the rock. I asked what
+they did. "Ils prient le bon Dieu."</p>
+
+<p>In feudal times this sea-girt fortress was almost impregnable. Two
+ancient cannon lying at its gate show that the conqueror of Agincourt
+thundered against it in vain. Its weak point was want of water: it had
+none but the rain-water collected in a great cistern. In these days it
+could not hold out an hour against a single gun-boat.</p>
+
+<p>It is a pleasant drive from Avranches to Vire; and Vire itself is a
+pleasant place,&mdash;a quiet little town, placed high, in bracing air, and
+with beautiful walks round it. The comfortable, though unpretending,
+little H&ocirc;tel de St. Pierre stands outside the town, and commands a fine
+view. While I was at Vire, the <i>f&ecirc;te</i> day of the Emperor was
+celebrated&mdash;with profound apathy. Not a dozen houses responded to the
+<i>pr&eacute;fet's</i> invitation to illuminate. There being no troops in the town,
+and a military show being indispensable, there was a review of the
+firemen in military uniforms; a single brass cannon pestered us with its
+noise all the morning; the "veterans" of the Napoleonic army (every
+surviving drummer-boy of the army of 1815 goes by that name) were
+dismally paraded about, and the firemen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> practised with their muskets,
+very awkwardly, at a mark which was so placed among the trees that they
+could hardly see it.</p>
+
+<p>Why has not the government the sense to let these people alone? After
+all their revolutions and convulsions, they have sunk into perfect
+political indifference, and literally care not a straw whether they are
+governed by Napoleon, Nero, or Nebuchadnezzar. To be always appealing to
+them with Bonapartist demonstrations and manifestoes, is to awaken
+political sentiments, in them, and so to create a danger which does not
+exist.</p>
+
+<p>If Louis Napoleon is in any peril, it is not from the republican or
+constitutional party, but from his own lavish expenditure, which begins
+to irritate the people. They are careless of their rights as freemen,
+but they are fond, and growing daily fonder, of money; and they do not
+like to be heavily taxed, and to hear at the same time that the Emperor
+is wasting on his personal expenses and those of his relatives and
+courtiers some six millions of dollars a year. Regard for economy is the
+only profession which distinguishes the addresses of the so-called
+opposition candidates from those of their competitors. I asked a good
+many people what they thought of the Mexican expedition. Not one of them
+objected to its injustice, but they all objected to its cost, "Cela
+mangera beaucoup d'argent," was the invariable reply. And in this point
+of view the government has committed what it would think much worse than
+any crime,&mdash;a very damaging blunder.</p>
+
+<p>It does not appear that the Orleans family have any hold on the mind of
+the French people. When I mentioned their name, it seemed to produce no
+emotion, one way or the other. But if the marshals and grandees, who
+have hold of the wires of administration at the point where they are
+centralized, chose to make Napoleon III abdicate, (as they made Napoleon
+I. abdicate at Fontainebleau,) and to set up a king of the House of
+Orleans in his place, they could probably do it; and they might choose
+to do it, if, by such blunders as the Mexican expedition, he seemed to
+be placing their personal interests in jeopardy.</p>
+
+<p>Stopping to breakfast at Cond&eacute;, on the way from Vire to Falaise, I fell
+in with the only Frenchman, with a single exception, who showed any
+interest in the affairs of America. Generally speaking, I was told, and
+found by experience, that profound apathy prevailed upon the subject.
+This gentleman, on learning that I had recently been in America, entered
+eagerly into conversation on the subject. But his inquiries were only
+about the prospects of cotton; and all I could tell him on that point
+was, that, if the growth of cotton was profitable, the Yankee would
+certainly make it grow.</p>
+
+<p>The castle of Falaise is the reputed birthplace of the Conqueror. They
+even pretend to show you the room in which he was born. The existing
+castle, however, is of considerably later date. It is even doubtful,
+according to the best antiquaries, whether there were any stone castles
+at the date of his birth, or only earthworks with palisades. There is,
+however, one genuine monument of that time. You look down from the
+castle on the tanneries in the glen below, and see the women washing
+their clothes in the stream, as in the days when Robert the Devil wooed
+the tanner's daughter. Robert, however, must have had diabolically good
+eyes to choose a mistress at such a distance.</p>
+
+<p>Annexed to the castle is Talbot's Tower,&mdash;a beautiful piece of feudal
+architecture, and a monument of a later episode in that long train of
+miserable wars between England and France, of which the Conqueror's
+cruel rapacity may be regarded as the spring; for the English conquests
+were an inverted copy and counterpart of his. But the Conqueror's
+crimes, like those of Napoleon I., were on the grandiose scale, and
+therefore they impose, like those of Napoleon, on the slavishness of
+mankind; while the petty bandit, though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> endowed perhaps with the same
+powers of destruction and only lacking the ampler sphere, is buried
+under the gallows. The equestrian statue of William in the public place
+at Falaise prances, it has been remarked, close to the spot where rest
+the ashes of Walter and Biona, Count and Countess of Pontoise, poisoned,
+if contemporary accounts are true, by the same ambition which launched
+havoc and misery on a whole nation. They and the Conqueror were rival
+claimants to the sovereignty of Maine. They supped with the Conqueror
+one evening at Falaise, and next morning William was the sole claimant.
+The Norman, like the Corsican, was an assassin as well as a conqueror.</p>
+
+<p>I must leave it to architects to describe the architectural glories of
+Caen. But I had no idea that the Norman style, in England grand only
+from its massiveness, could soar to such a height of beauty as it has
+attained in the Church of St. Stephen and the Abbaye aux Dames. I
+afterwards did homage again to its powers when standing before the
+august ruin of Jumi&egrave;ges. There is something peculiarly delightful in the
+freshness of early art, whether Greek or medi&aelig;val, and whether in
+architecture or in poetry,&mdash;when you see the mind first beginning to
+feel its power over the material, and to make it the vehicle of thought.
+There is something, too, in all human works, which makes the early hope
+more charming than the fulfilment.</p>
+
+<p>St. Stephen is the church of the Conqueror, as the Abbaye aux Dames is
+that of his Queen. There he lies buried. Every one knows the story of
+Ascelin demanding the price of the ground in which William was going to
+be buried, and which the tyrant had taken from him by force; and how, at
+last, the corpse of the Conqueror was thrust, amidst a scene of horror
+and loathing, into its grave. But <i>Rex Invictissimus</i> is the inscription
+on his tomb.</p>
+
+<p>The spire of St. Pierre is very graceful; the body of the church, in the
+latest and most debased style of Gothic architecture, stands signally
+contrasted with St. Stephen,&mdash;St. Stephen the simple vigor of the prime,
+St. Pierre the florid weakness of the decay.</p>
+
+<p>Caen is a large city, and, of course, full of soldiers, who are as
+completely the dominant caste in France now, as the old <i>noblesse</i> were
+before the Revolution. To this the French have come after their long
+train of sanguinary revolutions,&mdash;after all their visions of a perfect
+social state,&mdash;after all their promises of a new era of happiness to
+mankind. "A light and cruel people," Coleridge calls them. And how
+lightly they turned from regenerating to pillaging and oppressing the
+world! They have great intellectual gifts, and still greater social
+graces; but, in the political sphere, they have no real regard for
+freedom, and will gladly lay their liberties at the feet of any master
+who will enable them to domineer over other nations. Napoleon I. is more
+than their hero: he is their God. Many of them, the soldiery especially,
+have no other object of worship. I saw in a shop-window a print of
+Napoleon I., Napoleon II., and the Prince Imperial, all in military
+uniform and surrounded by the emblems of war. It was entitled, "The
+Past, the Present, and the Future of France." Military ambition has been
+the Past of France, is her Present, and seems too likely to be her
+Future. In some directions, she has promoted civilization; but,
+politically speaking, she has done, and probably will long continue to
+do, more harm than good to mankind.</p>
+
+<p>I may say with truth, that, having seen America, and brought away an
+assured faith in human liberty and progress, I looked with far more
+serenity than I should otherwise have done on the Zouaves, swaggering,
+in the insolence of triumphant force, over the neglected ashes of Turgot
+and Mirabeau. I felt as though, strong as the yoke of these janizaries
+and their master looked, I had the death-warrant of imperialism in my
+pocket. There is a Power which made the world for other ends than these,
+and which will not suffer its ends<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> to give way even to those of the
+Bonapartes. But to all appearances there will be a terrible struggle in
+Europe,&mdash;a struggle to which the old "wars of the mercenaries" were a
+trifling affair,&mdash;before the nations can be redeemed from subjection to
+these armed hordes and the masters whom they obey.</p>
+
+<p>From Caen I visited Bayeux,&mdash;a sleepy, ecclesiastical town with a
+glorious cathedral, which, however, shows by a huge crack in the tower
+that even such edifices know decay. Gems of the Norman style are
+scattered all round Caen and Bayeux; and one of the finest is the little
+church of St. Loup, in the environs of Bayeux.</p>
+
+<p>I found that the old French office-book had been completely banished
+from the French churches by the Jesuit and Ultramontane party, and the
+Roman (though much inferior, Roman Catholics tell me, as a composition)
+everywhere thrust into its place. The people in some places
+recalcitrated violently; but the Jesuits and Ultramontanes triumphed.
+The old Gallican spirit of independence is extinct in the French Church,
+and its extinction is not greatly to be deplored; for it tended not to a
+real independence, but to the substitution of a royal for an
+ecclesiastical Pope. Louis XIV. was quite as great a spiritual tyrant as
+any Hildebrand or Innocent, and his tyranny was, if anything, more
+degrading to the soul. In fact, the Ultramontane French Church, resting
+for support on Rome, may be regarded by the friends of liberty, with a
+qualified complacency, as a check, though a miserable one, on the
+absolute dominion of physical force embodied in the Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>The Bayeux tapestry, representing the expedition of William the
+Conqueror, is curious and valuable as an historical monument, though it
+cannot be proved to be contemporary. As a work of art it is singularly
+spiritless, and devoid of merit of any kind. One of the fancy figures on
+the border reveals the indelicacy of the ladies (a queen, perhaps, and
+her handmaidens) who wrought it in a way which would be startling to any
+one who had taken the manners and morals of the age of chivalry on
+trust.</p>
+
+<p>The heat drove me from Caen before I had "done" all the antiquities and
+curiosities prescribed by the guidebook. Migrating to Lisieux, I found
+myself in such pleasant quarters that I was tempted to settle there for
+some days. The town is almost an unbroken assemblage of the quaintest
+and most picturesque old houses. There are whole streets without any
+taint of modern architecture to disturb the perfect image of the past.
+Two magnificent churches, one of them formerly a cathedral, rise over
+the whole; and there is a very pretty public garden, with its terraces,
+pastures, and green alleys. A public garden is the invariable appendage
+of a city in France, as it ought to be everywhere. We do not do half
+enough in England for the innocent amusement of the people.</p>
+
+<p>At Lisieux we had a public <i>f&ecirc;te</i>. It is evidently a part of the
+business of the <i>sous-pr&eacute;fets</i> to get up these things as antidotes to
+political aspiration. <i>Panem et circenses</i> is the policy of the French,
+as it was of the Roman C&aelig;sars. For two or three days beforehand, the
+people were engaged in planting little fir-trees in the street before
+their doors, and decorating them and the houses, with little tricolor
+flags. Larger flags (of which this little quiet town produced a truly
+formidable number) were hung out from all the houses. As the weather was
+very dry, the population was at work keeping the fir-trees alive with
+squirts. The <i>f&ecirc;te</i> consisted of a horse and cattle show, in which the
+Norman horses made a very good display; the inevitable military review,
+which, Lisieux being as happily free from soldiery as Vire, was here,
+too, performed by the firemen; the band of a regiment of the line, which
+had been announced as a magnificent addition to the festivities, by a
+special proclamation of the <i>sous-pr&eacute;fet</i>; balloons not of the common
+shape, but in the shape of dogs, pigs, and grotesque human figures, a
+gentleman and lady waltzing,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> etc., which must have rather puzzled any
+scientific observer whose telescope was at that moment directed to the
+sky; and, to crown all, fireworks (the noise of which, a French
+gentleman remarked to me, the people loved, as reminding them of
+musketry) and an illumination. The illumination&mdash;all the little trees
+before the houses, as well as the houses themselves and the green arches
+thrown across the streets, being covered with lamps&mdash;was an extremely
+pretty sight. The outline of the old houses, and the windings and
+declivities of the old streets, wonderfully favored the effect. But the
+French are peerless in these things. The childish delight of the people
+was pleasant to see. Why cannot they be satisfied with their <i>f&ecirc;tes</i>,
+and with the undisputed empire of cookery and dress, instead of making
+themselves a scourge to the world, and keeping all Europe in disquietude
+and under arms?</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor is trying to inoculate his subjects with a taste for English
+sports, but with rather doubtful success. He tries to make them play at
+cricket, but they do not much like the swift bowling. There was a
+caricature in the Charivari of a Frenchman standing up to his wicket
+with an implement which the artist intended for a bat, but which was
+more like a pavior's rammer, in his hand. A friend was asking him
+whether he had a wife, children, any tie to life. "None." "Then you may
+begin." In a window at Lisieux there was a print of a fox-hunt, with the
+master of the hounds dismounting to despatch the fox with a gun! At Vire
+there was a print of a horse-race, with the horses in a cantering
+attitude, and a large dog running and barking by their side. I have seen
+something equally funny of the same kind in America, but I need not say
+what or where. I never witnessed a French horse-race, but I am told that
+they enjoy it <i>moult tristement</i>, as they say we English enjoy all our
+amusements.</p>
+
+<p>Close to Lisieux is the fashionable watering-place of Trouville, a place
+without any charms that I could see, puffed into celebrity by Alexander
+Dumas. The Duke de Morny invested in building there a good deal of the
+money which he made by the <i>coup d'&eacute;tat</i>. Life at a French
+watering-place seems to be as close an imitation of life at Paris as
+French ingenuity can produce under the adverse circumstances of the
+case. Nothing but the religion of fashion can compel these people
+periodically to leave the capital for the sea. The mode of bathing is
+rather singular. I found that the Americans did not, as is commonly
+believed in England, put trousers on the legs of their pianos, but I
+believe you are more particular than we are; and therefore, perhaps, you
+would be still more surprised than we are at seeing a gentleman wrapped
+in a sheet stalk before the eyes of all the promenaders over the sands
+to the sea, and there throw off the sheet, and at his leisure get into
+the water. At the risk of exposing my English prudishness, I ventured to
+remark to a French acquaintance that the fashion was <i>un peu libre</i>. I
+found, rather to my astonishment, that he thought so too.</p>
+
+<p>At Val Richer, near Lisieux, is the pleasant country-house of M. Guizot.
+There, surrounded by his children and his grandchildren, a pretty
+patriarchal picture, the veteran statesman and historian reposes after
+the prodigious labors and tragic vicissitudes of his life. I say he
+reposes; but his pen is as active as ever, only that he has turned from
+politics and history to the more enduring and consoling topic of
+religion. He has just given us a volume on Christianity; he is about to
+give us one on the state of religion in France. It will be deeply
+interesting. In the revival of religion lies the only hope of
+regeneration for the French nation. And whence is that revival to come?
+From the official priesthood, and the jesuitical influences depicted in
+<i>Le Maudit</i>? Or from the Protestant Church of France, itself full of
+dissensions and turmoils, in which M. Guizot himself has been recently
+involved?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> Or from the school of Natural Theologians represented by
+Jules Simon? We shall see, when M. Guizot's work appears. It is from his
+religious character as well as from his attachment to constitutional
+liberty, I imagine, that M. Guizot has, unlike the mass of his
+countrymen, watched the American struggle with ardent interest, and
+cordially rejoiced in the triumph of the Union and of freedom.</p>
+
+<p>There are of course very different opinions as to this eminent man's
+career; and there are parts of his conduct of which no Liberal can
+approve. But I have always thought that a tranquil and happy old age is
+a proof, as well as a reward, of a good life; and if this be the case,
+M. Guizot's life, though not free from faults, must on the whole have
+been good.</p>
+
+<p>His resistance to reform is commonly regarded as having led to the fall
+of the constitutional monarchy. I should attribute that catastrophe much
+more to the prevalence of the military spirit, which the peaceful policy
+of Louis Philippe disappointed, and to which even the conquest of
+Algeria failed (as its authors deserved) to give a sufficient vent. The
+reign of Louis Philippe was essentially an attempt to found a civil in
+place of a military government in France, which was foiled by the
+passions excited by the presence of a large standing army and the recent
+memory of the Napoleonic wars. The translation of the body of Napoleon
+from St. Helena to Paris was the greatest mistake committed by the king
+and his advisers. It was the self-humiliation of the government of peace
+before the Genius of War.</p>
+
+<p>At Lisieux, as at Caen, and afterwards at Rouen, I saw on the Sunday a
+great church full of women, with scarcely a score of men. And what
+wonder? Close to where I sat was the altar of Our Lady of La Salette,
+offering to the adoration of the people the most coarse and revolting of
+impostures. And in the course of the service, an image of the Virgin,
+from which the taste of a Greek Pagan would have recoiled, was borne
+round the aisles in procession, manifestly the favorite object of
+worship in a church nominally devoted to the worship of God. An educated
+man in France, even one of the best character and naturally religious,
+would almost as soon think of entering a temple of Jupiter as a church.
+Religion in Roman Catholic countries being thus left, so far as the
+educated classes are concerned, to the priests and women, its recent
+developments have been inspired exclusively by priestly ambition and
+female imagination. The infallibility of the Pope and the worship of the
+Virgin have made, and are still making, tremendous strides. The
+Romanizing party in the Episcopal Church of England are left panting
+behind, in their vain efforts to keep up with the superstitions of Rome.</p>
+
+<p>From Lisieux my road lay by Pont-Audemer in its beautiful valley to
+Caudebec on the Seine; then along the Seine,&mdash;here most pleasant,&mdash;by
+the towers of Jumi&egrave;ges, the masterpiece, even in its ruins, of the grand
+Norman style, and the great Norman Church of St. George de Boscherville,
+to Rouen.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody knows Rouen and its sights,&mdash;the Cathedral, the Church of St.
+Ouen, the magnificent view of the city from St. Catherine's
+Hill,&mdash;magnificent still, though much marred by the tall chimneys and
+their smoke. St. Ouen is undoubtedly the perfection of Gothic art.
+Unlike most of the cathedrals, it is built all in the same style and on
+one plan, complete in every part, admirable in all its proportions, and
+faultless in its details. But there is something disappointing in
+perfection. The less perfect cathedrals suggest more to the imagination
+than is realized in St. Ouen.</p>
+
+<p>In the Museum is a portion of the heart of Richard C&oelig;ur-de-Lion. The
+Crusader king loved the Normans, and bequeathed his heart to them. He
+did not bequeath it to Imperial France. With all his faults, he was an
+illustrious soldier of Christendom; and he deserves to rest, not within
+the pale of this sensualist and atheist Empire, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> in some land where
+the spirit of religious enterprise is not yet dead.</p>
+
+<p>In the outskirts is St. Gervais, the church of the monastery to which
+William the Conqueror was carried, out of the noise and the feverish air
+of the great city, to die, and which witnessed the strange struggle, in
+his last moments, between his rapacious passions and his late-awakened
+remorse. So insecure was the state of society, that, when he whose iron
+hand had preserved order among his feudal nobles had expired, those
+about him fled to their strongholds in expectation of a general anarchy.
+Government was still only personal: law had not yet been enthroned in
+the minds of men. Even the personal attendants of the Conqueror
+abandoned his corpse,&mdash;a singular illustration of the theory, cherished
+by lovers of the past, that the relations of master and servant were
+more affectionate, and of a higher kind, in the days of chivalry than
+they are in ours.</p>
+
+<p>Among the workingmen of Rouen, there probably lurks a good deal of
+republicanism, akin to that which exists among the workingmen of Paris.
+Unfortunately it is of a kind which, though capable of spasmodic
+attempts to revolutionize society by force, is little capable of
+sustained constitutional effect, and which alarms and arrays against it,
+not only despots, but moderate friends of liberty and progress. The
+outward appearances, however, at Rouen are all in favor of the Zouave
+and the Priest; and of the dominion of these two powers in France, if
+they can abstain from quarrelling with each other, it is difficult to
+foresee the end.</p>
+
+<p>I have spoken bitterly of the French Empire. It has not only crushed the
+liberties of France, but it is the keystone and the focus of the system
+of military despotism in Europe. Bismarck, O'Donnell, and all the rest
+who rule by sabre-sway, are its pupils. It is intensely
+propagandist,&mdash;feeling, like slavery, that it cannot endure the
+contagious neighborhood of freedom. It has to a terrible extent
+corrupted even English politics, and inspired our oligarchical party
+with ideas of violence quite foreign to the temper of English Tories in
+former days. It is killing not only all moral aspirations, but almost
+all moral culture in France, and leaving nothing but the passion for
+military glory, the thirst of money, and the love of pleasure. It is
+reducing all education to a centralized machine, the wires of which are
+moved by a bureau at Paris; and we shall see the effects of this on
+French intellect in the next generation, "Ils ont tu&eacute; la jeunesse," were
+the bitter words of an eminent and chivalrous Frenchman to the author of
+this article. Commerce is no doubt flourishing, and money is being made
+by the commercial classes, at present, under the Empire; but the highest
+industry is intimately connected with the moral and intellectual
+energies of a nation; and if these perish, it will in time perish too.</p>
+
+<p>I have no means of knowing whether the morality of the court and the
+upper classes at Paris is what it is commonly reported to be; though,
+assuredly, if the performances of Th&eacute;r&egrave;se are truly described to us,
+strange things must go on in the highest circles. Historical experience
+would be at fault, if a military despotism, with a political religion,
+did not produce moral effects in Paris somewhat analogous to those which
+it produced in Rome. The fashionable literature of the Empire, which can
+scarcely fail to reflect pretty accurately the moral state of the
+fashionable world, is not merely loose in principle, (as literature
+might possibly be in a period of transition between a narrower and an
+ampler moral code,) but utterly vile and loathsome; it seeks the
+materials of sensation novels from the charnel-house as well as from the
+brothel.</p>
+
+<p>At Dieppe, my last point, I visited that very picturesque as well as
+memorable ruin, the Chateau d'Arques. It is a monument of the great
+victory gained near it by the Huguenots under Henri IV. over the League.
+This and the other Huguenot victories, alas! proved bootless; and it is
+melancholy to visit the fields where they were won.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> By a series of
+calamities, the party was in the end erased from history; and scarcely a
+trace of its existence remains in the religious or political condition
+of Roman Catholic and Imperial France. It has left some noble names, and
+the memory of some noble deeds, which no doubt work upon national
+character to a certain extent; but this is all.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing in the fashionable watering-place of Dieppe to tempt
+my stay; and I turned from the Chateau d'Arques to embark for the land
+where, in spite of our political reaction and the efforts of the
+priest-party in our Church, the principles for which the field of Arques
+was fought and won have still a home.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>AUNT JUDY.</h2>
+
+
+<p>A soft white bosom, kissed by lips and fondled by fingers pure as
+itself!</p>
+
+<p>Back through the tender twilight of my one dim dream of a sinless
+childhood I catch that accusing glimpse of my mother&mdash;and myself. And as
+I stand here on this shapeless cairn of remorses, which, after forty
+years, I have piled upon my butchered and buried promise, that child
+turns from "the cup of his life and couch of his rest," to look upon me
+wondering, pitying.</p>
+
+<p>My mother died when I was scarce five years old; and save the blurred
+beauty of that reproachful phantom,&mdash;caught and lost, caught and lost,
+by the unfaithful eyes of a graceless spirit,&mdash;she is as though she
+never had been. But in her place she left me a vicarious mother,&mdash;old,
+foolish, doting, black,&mdash;the youngest, loveliest, wisest, fairest lady I
+have ever known,&mdash;young with the youth of the immortal heart, lovely
+with the loveliness of the gleaning Ruth, wise with the wisdom of the
+most blessed among mothers when she "pondered all those things in her
+heart," and fair with the fairness of her who goeth her way forth by the
+footsteps of the flock, and feedeth her kids beside the shepherds'
+tents,&mdash;black, but comely.</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Judy,"&mdash;Judith was her company name,&mdash;as the oldest of my uncles
+and aunts, and other boys' grandfathers and grandmothers, and all the
+rest of us children, delighted to call her,&mdash;was pure negro; not
+grafted, scandalous mulatto, nor muddled, niggerish "gingerbread," but
+downright, unmixed, old-fashioned blackamoor. Her father and mother were
+genuine importations from the coast of Africa, snatched from some
+cannibal's calaboose,&mdash;where else they might have been butchered to make
+a Dahomeyan holiday,&mdash;and set up in a country gentleman's kitchen in
+Maryland, where they and their Christian progeny helped to make many a
+happy Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>Of this antique Ethiopian couple I remember nothing,&mdash;they died long
+before I was born,&mdash;nor have I gathered any notable <i>ana</i> concerning
+them. Only of the father, I learned from my darling old nurse that he
+was one hundred and four years old when the Almighty Emancipator set him
+free; and from my father, and the brothers and sisters of my mother,
+that he possessed in a remarkable degree those simple, childlike
+virtues, characteristic of the original domesticated African, which his
+daughters Judith and Rachel so richly inherited.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Judy was one of many slaves set free by my grandfather's will,
+partly in reward of faithful service, partly from an impulse of
+conscientiousness; for our fine old Maryland gentleman was that social
+and political phenomenon, a slaveholder with a practical scruple. Not
+that he doubted the moral wholesomeness of the "institution," which, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+his theory, was patriarchal and protective, and in his practice
+eminently beneficent;&mdash;if he were living this day, I doubt not he would
+be found among its most earnest and confident champions;&mdash;but he did not
+believe in holding human beings in bondage "on principle," as it were,
+and for the mere sake of bondage. The patriarchal element was, he
+thought, an essential in the moral right of the system, and <i>that</i> no
+longer necessary, the system became wrong. Therefore, so soon as it
+became clear to him that he (so peculiarly had God blessed him) could
+protect, advise, relieve his servants as effectually, they being free,
+as if their persons and their poor little goods, their labor and almost
+their lives, were at his disposal, he set them at liberty without asking
+the advice, or caring for the opinion, of any man; and by the same
+instrument which gave them the right to work, think, live, and die for
+themselves, he imposed upon his children a solemn responsibility for
+their well-being, in the future as in the past,&mdash;the honorable care of
+seeing to it that their wants were judiciously provided for, their
+training virtuous, their instruction useful, their employers just, their
+families united, and their homes happy. Those who were already of age
+went forth free at once; the minors received their "papers" on their
+twenty-first birthday. And thus it was that, when I was born, Aunt Judy
+was as much freer than her "boy" is now, as simple, natural wants are
+freer than impatient, artificial appetites.</p>
+
+<p>But that was the beginning and the end of Aunt Judy's freedom. For all
+the change it wrought in her feelings and her ways toward us, or in ours
+toward her, she might as well have remained the slave and the baby she
+was born; the old relations, so natural and gentle, of affection and
+faithful service on her side, of affection and grateful care on ours, no
+mere legal forms could alter: no papers could disturb their
+peacefulness, no privileges impair their confidence. Indeed, that same
+freedom&mdash;or at least her personal interest in it&mdash;was matter of
+magnificent contempt to both nurse and child; she understood it too well
+to pet it, I understood it too little to be jealous of it. It was only
+by asking her that you could discover that Aunt Judy was free; it was
+only by being asked that she could recollect it. For her, freedom meant
+the right to "go where she pleased"; but her love knew no <i>where</i> but my
+father's roof and her darling's crib, nor anything so wrong as that
+right. For us, her freedom meant our freedom, the right to send her away
+when we chose; but our love knew no such <i>when</i> in all the shameful
+possibilities of time, nor anything in all the cruel conspiracies of
+ingratitude so wrong as that right. Could we entreat her to leave us, or
+to return from following after us, when each of our hearts had spoken
+and said, "The Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part
+thee and me"? So she and I have gone on together ever since, and shall
+go on, until we come to the Bethlehem of love at rest. What though she
+had been there before we started, and were there now? To the saints and
+their eternal spaceless spirits there are nor days, nor miles, nor
+starting-points, nor resting-places, nor journey's ends.</p>
+
+<p>From my earliest remembered observation, when I first began to "take
+notice," as nurses say of vague babies, with pinafore comparison and
+judgment, Aunt Judy was an old woman; I knew that, because she had
+explained to me why I had not wrinkles like hers, and why she could not
+read her precious Bible without spectacles, as I could, and why my back
+was not bent too, and how if I lived I would grow so. From such
+instructions I derived a blurred, bewildering notion that from me to
+her, suffering an Aunt-Judy change, was a long, slow, wearisome process
+of puckering and dimming and stiffening. But when she told me how she
+had carried my mother in her arms, as she had carried me, and had made
+the proud discovery of her first tooth, as, piously exploring among my
+tender gums with her little finger, she had found mine, I stared at the
+Pacific of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> her possible nursings, in a wild surmise, silent upon a peak
+of wonder. "Well, then, Auntie," I asked, "do you think you're much more
+than a thousand?"</p>
+
+<p>She was not noticeably little as a woman, but wonderfully little as a
+bundle, to contain so many great virtues,&mdash;rather below the medium
+stature, slender, and bent with age, rather than with burdens; for she
+had had no heartless master to lay heavy packs upon her. Her face, far
+from unpleasing in its lines, was lovely in its blended expression of
+intelligence, modesty, the sweetest guilelessness, an almost heroic
+truthfulness, devoted fidelity, a dove-like tranquillity of mind, and
+that abiding, reposeful trust in God which is equal to all trials, and
+can never be taken by surprise. Her voice was soft and soothing, her
+motions singularly free from clumsiness or fretfulness, her manners so
+beautifully blended of unaffected humility, patience, and self-respect
+as to command, in cheerful reciprocity, the deference they tendered; in
+which respect she was a severe ordeal to the sham gentlemen and ladies
+who had the honor to be presented to her,&mdash;the slightest trace of
+snobbery betraying itself at once to the sensitive test-paper of Aunt
+Judy's true politeness. Her ways were ways of pleasantness, and all her
+paths were peace. Faith, hope, and charity were met in her dusky,
+shrunken bosom,&mdash;more at home there, perhaps, than in a finer dwelling.</p>
+
+<p>A sneering philosophy was never yet challenged to contemplate a piety
+more complete than that which made this venerable "nigger" a lady on
+earth, and a saint in heaven; but on her knees she found it, and on her
+knees she held it fast,&mdash;watching, praying, trembling.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"When she sat, her head was, prayer-like, bending;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When she rose, it rose not any more.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Faster seemed her true heart grave-ward tending<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Than her tired feet, weak and travel-sore."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She was, indeed, a living prayer, a lying-down and rising-up, a
+going-out and coming-in prayer,&mdash;a loving, longing, working, waiting
+prayer,&mdash;a black and wrinkled, bent and tottering incense and
+aspiration. With her to labor was literally to worship; she washed
+dishes with confession, ironed shirts with supplication, and dusted
+furniture with thanksgiving,&mdash;morning, evening, noon, and night,
+praising God. From resting-place to resting-place, over tedious
+stretches of task, she prayed her way,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And ever, at each period,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She stopped and sang, 'Praise God!'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>like Browning's Theocrite. And, as if answering Blaise, the listening
+monk, when he said,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">"Well done!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I doubt not thou art heard, my son:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As well as if thy voice to-day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were praising God the Pope's great way,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>her longing was,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">"Would God that I<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Might praise him <i>some</i> great way and die."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Many a time have I, bursting boisterously into my little bedroom in
+quest of top or ball, checked myself, with a feeling more akin to
+superstition than to reverence, on finding Aunt Judy on her knees beside
+the pretty cot she had just made up so snugly and tenderly for me,
+pouring her ever-brimming heart out in clear, refreshing springs of
+prayer. Led by these still waters, she rested there from the heat and
+burden of life, as the camel by wells in the desert. On such occasions I
+always knew that my dear old nurse had just finished making a bed or
+sweeping a room, and had sunk down to rest in a prayer, as a fagged
+drudge on a stool. If you ever gloried&mdash;and what gentleman has not?&mdash;in
+Gregg's brave old hymn, beginning</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Jesus, and shall it ever be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A mortal man ashamed of thee?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>you would ask for no more intrepid illustration of its loyal spirit than
+the figure of Aunt Judy on her knees at the foot of my father's bed,
+where he often found her in the act,&mdash;turning her face for an instant,
+but without offering to rise, from her Divine Master to the mild
+fellow-servant in whom she affectionately recognized an earthly master,
+and asking, with a manner far less embarrassed than his own, "Was you
+lookin' for your gloves, sir? They's on de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> bureau,&mdash;and your umbrell's
+behind de door";&mdash;and then placidly turning back again to that Master
+whom most of us white slaves of the Devil think we have honored enough
+when we have printed His title with a capital M.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"My Master, shall I speak? O that to Thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My Servant were a little so<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">As flesh may be!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That these two words might creep and grow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To some degree of spiciness to Thee!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But the hour of my Aunt-Judyness most sacred and inspiring to me,
+weirdly filling my imagination with solemn reaches beyond my childish
+ken, was at the close of the day, when&mdash;I having been undressed, with
+many a cradle lecture and many a blessing, many an admonition and
+endearment, line upon line and precept upon precept, here a text and
+there a pious rhyme, between the buttons and the strings, and having
+said my awful "Now I lay me," lest "I should die before I wake," and
+been tucked in with careful fondling fingers, the party of the first
+part honorably contracting to "shut his eyes and go straight to sleep,"
+provided the party of the second part would remain at the bedside till
+the last heavy-lingering wink was winked,&mdash;that image of her Maker
+carved in ebony took up her part in creation's pausing chorus, and
+poured her little human praise into the echoing ear of God in such a
+burst of triumphant humility, of exulting hope and trust, and
+all-embracing charity and love,&mdash;wherein master and mistress and
+fellow-servant, friend and stranger, the kind and the cruel, the just
+and the unjust, the believer and the scoffer, had each his welcome place
+and was called by his name,&mdash;as only Ruth could have said or Isaiah
+sung. As for me, I only lay there with closed eyes, very still, lest I
+should offend the angels, for I knew the room was full of them,&mdash;as for
+me, I only write here with a faltering heart, lest I should offend those
+prayers, for I know heaven is full of them, and I know that for every
+time my name arose to the throne of God on that beatified handmaid's
+hopes and cries, I have been forgiven seventy times seven.</p>
+
+<p>And so Aunt Judy prayed and praised, sitting upon the landing to rest
+herself, as she descended from the garret side-wise, the same foot
+always advanced, as is the way of weak old folks in coming down stairs;
+and so she prayed and praised between the splitting spells of her forty
+years' asthmatic cough, rocking backward and forward, with her hands
+upon her knees. And sometimes she preached to me, the ironing-table
+being her pulpit; for oh! she was an excellent divine, that had the
+Bible at her fingers' ends, and many a moving sermon did she deliver,
+"how God doth make his enemies his friends." And sometimes she baptized
+me, the bath-tub being her Jordan, in the name of duty, love, and
+patience. In truth, Aunt Judy took as much prophylactic pains with my
+soul as if it had been tainted with a congenital sulphuric diathesis;
+and if I had sunk under a complication of profane disorders, no
+postmortem statement of my spiritual pathology would have been complete
+and exact which failed to take note of her stringent preventive
+measures.</p>
+
+<p>Now be it known, that Aunt Judy's piety was in no respect of the
+niggerish kind; when I say "colored," I mean one thing, respectfully;
+and when I say "niggerish," I mean another, disgustedly. I am not
+responsible for the distinction: it is a true "cullud" nomenclature, and
+very significant; our fellow-citizens of African descent themselves
+employ it, nicely and wisely; and when they call each other "nigger" the
+familiar term of opprobrium is applied with all the malice of a sting,
+and resented with all the sensitiveness of a raw. So when I say that my
+Auntie's piety was not of the niggerish kind, even Zoe, "The Octoroon,"
+or any other woman or man in whose veins courses the blood of Ham four
+times diluted, knows that I mean it was not that glory-hallelujah
+variety of cunning or delusion, compounded of laziness and catalepsy,
+which is popular among the shouting, shirt-tearing sects of plantation
+darkies, who "git relijin" and fits twelve times a year.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> To all such
+she used to say, "'T ain't de real grace, honey,&mdash;'t ain't de sure
+glory,&mdash;you hollers too loud. When you gits de Dove in your heart, and
+de Lamb on your bosom, you'll feel as ef you was in dat stable at
+Bethlehem and de Blessed Virgin had lent you de sleepin' Baby to hold."
+She would not have shrunk from lifting up her voice and crying aloud in
+the market-place, if thereby she might turn one smart butcher from the
+error of his <i>weighs</i>; but for steady talking to the Lord, she preferred
+my bedside or the back-stairs.</p>
+
+<p>But in those days the kitchen was my paradise, by her transmuted. As a
+child, and not less now than then, I had a consuming longing for
+snuggery; my one fair, clear idea of the consummate golden fruit of the
+spirit's sweet content was a cosey place to get away to. In my longing I
+purred with the cat rolled up in her furry ball on the rug by the fire,
+making a high-post bedstead of a chair; in my longing I stole with
+furtive rats to their mysterious cave-nests in the wall. So do I
+now,&mdash;the more for that I lost, so long ago, my dear kitchen, my
+Aunt-Judyness,&mdash;my home.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I behold it everywhere,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the earth, and in the air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But it never comes again."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>At this moment I feel the dresser in the corner, gleaming with the
+cook's refulgent pride of polished tins; I am sensible of that pulpit
+ironing-table&mdash;alas! the flat-iron on its ring is as cold as the hand
+that erst so deftly guided it. I bask before the old-fashioned
+hospitable fireplace, capacious and embracing, and jolly with its
+old-fashioned hickory blaze, and the fat old-fashioned kettle hung upon
+the old-fashioned crane, swinging and singing of old-fashioned abundance
+and good cheer. I behold the Madras turban, the white neckerchief
+crossed over the bosom, the clumsy steel-bowed spectacles, the check
+apron, and the old-fashioned love that is forever new. But they never
+come again.</p>
+
+<p>That kitchen was my hospital and my school,&mdash;as much better than the
+whole round of select academies and classical institutes that my father
+tried, and that tried me, as check aprons and love are more inculcating
+than canes and quarterly bills; and however it may be with my head, my
+heart never has forgotten the lessons I learned there. Thither, on the
+nipping nights of winter, brought I my small fingers and toes, numbed
+and aching with snow-balling and skating, to be tenderly rubbed before
+the fire, or fondly folded in the motherly apron. Thither brought I an
+extensive and various assortment of splinters and fresh cuts; thither my
+impervious nose, to be lubricated with goose-grease, or my swollen angry
+tonsils ("waxen kernels," Aunt Judy called them), to be mollified with
+volatile liniment.</p>
+
+<p>It was here that my own free mind, uncompelled by pedagogues and
+unallured by prizes, first achieved a whole chapter in the Bible. Cook
+and laundress and chambermaid were out for the evening; the table had
+been cleared and covered with the fresh white cloth; and I, perched on
+Aunt Judy's lap at the end next the fireplace, glided featly over the
+short words, plunged pluckily through the long, (braced, as it were,
+against the superior education and the spectacles behind me,) of the
+first chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, from the Word that
+was in the beginning, to the Hereafter of the glorified Son of man.
+After which so large performance for so small a boy, we re-refreshed
+ourselves with that cheerful hymn, in which Dr. Watts lyrically disposes
+of the questions,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"And must this body die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">This mortal frame decay?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And must these active limbs of mine<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lie mouldering in the clay?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>For so infantile a heart, my darling old mammy had a wonderful lack of
+active imagination, even in her religion; for there all was real and
+actual to her. Her pleasures of memory and her pleasures of hope were
+alike founded upon fact. Christ was as personal to her as her own
+rheumatic frame, and heaven as positive as her kitchen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> "Blessed are
+they that have not seen, and yet have believed";&mdash;but for her, to
+believe and to see were one. So whatever imagination she may by nature
+have possessed seemed to have dwindled for lack of exercise: it was long
+since she had had any use for it. She had no folk-lore, no faculty of
+story-telling,&mdash;only a veracious legend or two of our family, which she
+invariably related with an affidavit-like scrupulousness of
+circumstance. I cannot recollect that she ever once beguiled me with a
+mere nurse's tale. So when at that kitchen-table we read "The Pilgrim's
+Progress" together, we presented a curious entertainment for the student
+of intellectual processes,&mdash;nurse and child arriving by diverse
+arguments of imagination at the same result of reality;&mdash;she knowing
+that Sin was a burden, because she had borne it; I, because I had seen
+it in the picture strapped to Christian's back;&mdash;she, that Despair was a
+giant, because he had often appalled her soul within her; I, because in
+a dream he had made me scream last night;&mdash;she, that Death was a river,
+because so many of her dear ones had gone over, and because on her clear
+days she could see the other shore; I, because, as I lay with my young
+cheek against her old heart, I could hear the beating of its waves.</p>
+
+<p>Blessed indeed is the mother who is admitted to the sanctuary of her
+darling's secrets with the freedom with which Aunt Judy penetrated (was
+invited rather, with parted lips and sparkling eyes) to mine,&mdash;into
+whose sympathetic ear are poured, in all the dream-borne melody of the
+first songs of the heart, in all "the tender thought, the speechless
+pain" of its first violets, his earliest confessions, aspirations,
+loves, wrongs, troubles, triumphs. Well do I remember that day when,
+trembling, ghastly, faint, I fell in tears upon her neck, and poured
+into her bosom and basin the spasmodic story of My First Cigar! Well do
+I remember that night, when, bursting from the evening party in the
+parlor, and the thick red married lady in the thin blue tarletan, and
+all my raptures and my anguish, I flung myself into Aunt Judy's arms and
+acknowledged the soft corn of My First Love, raving at the fatal
+sandy-whiskered gulf that yawned between me and Mine thick blue Own One
+in the thin red tarletan!</p>
+
+<p>Well do I remember&mdash;though I was only seven times one&mdash;the panting
+exultation with which I flung into her lap the cheap colored print of
+the Tower of Babel (showing the hurly-burly of French bricklayers and
+Irish hod-carriers, and the grand row generally) that I had just won at
+school by correctly committing to memory, and publicly reciting, the
+whole of</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Almighty God, thy piercing eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strikes through the shades of night," etc.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>My first prize! The Tower of Babel fell untimely into the wash-tub, but
+she dried it on her warm bosom; and I have never forgotten that All our
+secret actions lie All open to His sight; though I have never seen the
+verses (they were in Comly's Spelling-Book) from that day to this.</p>
+
+<p>In those days we had a youth of talent in the family,&mdash;a sort of
+sophomorical boil, that the soap and sugar of indiscriminate adulation
+had drawn to a head of conceit. This youth bestowed a great deal of
+attention on a certain young woman of a classical turn of mind, who once
+had a longing to attend a fancy-ball as a sibyl. About the same time
+Sophomore missed the first volume of his Potter's "Antiquities of
+Greece"; and, having searched for it in vain, made up his mind that I
+had presented it as a keepsake, together with a lock of my hair and a
+cent's worth of pea-nut taffy, to the head girl of the infant class at
+my Sunday school. So Sophomore, being in morals a pedant and in
+intellect a bully, accused me of appropriating the book, and offered me
+a dollar if I would restore it to him. With swelling heart and quivering
+lip I carried the wanton insult&mdash;my first great wrong&mdash;straight to Aunt
+Judy, who, in her mild way, resented it as a personal outrage to her own
+feelings, and tried to soothe and console<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> me by assuring me that "it
+would all rub out when it got dry." Three years later, as I was passing
+the sibyl's house one morning, her mother met me at the door and handed
+me an odd volume of Potter's "Antiquities of Greece," which she had just
+discovered in some out-of-the-way corner, where it had been mislaid, and
+which she desired me to hand to Sophomore with the sibyl's compliments,
+thanks, regrets, and several other delicacies of the season. But I
+handed it first to Aunt Judy, who gloried boisterously in my first
+triumph. Sophomore patronized me magnificently with apologies; but if
+the wrong never gets any drier than Aunt Judy's joyful eyes were then,
+it never will rub out.</p>
+
+<p>So heartily disgusted was I with this classical episode that I conceived
+the original and desperate project of running away and going to sea. At
+that time I enjoyed the proud privilege of a personal acquaintance with
+the Siamese Twins, and was the envied holder of a season ticket to the
+Museum, where they exhibited their attractive duplicity. It was an
+essential part of my preparations to procure from the amiable Chang-Eng
+a letter of introduction to their ingenious mother, who, I was told, was
+in the duck-fishing line at Bangkok. Of course, I confided my plan to
+Aunt Judy; and, although she opposed it with extra prayers of peculiar
+length and strength, and finally succeeded in dissuading me from it, I
+am by no means certain that she would not have connived at my flight,
+rather than betray my confidence or consent to my punishment.</p>
+
+<p>Those were the days of the <i>Morus multicaulis</i> mania, and I embarked
+with spirit in the silk-worm business. The original capital upon which I
+erected the enterprise was furnished from the surplus of Aunt Judy's
+wages. It was in the first silk dress that should come of all those
+moths and eggs and wriggling spinners and cocoons that she invested with
+such sanguine cheerfulness; and although she never got her money back in
+that form,&mdash;owing to the unfortunate exhaustion of my mulberry-leaves
+and the refusal of my worms to spin silk from tea, which, they being of
+pure Chinese stock, I thought very unreasonable,&mdash;she conceived that she
+reaped abundant returns in her share of my happy enthusiasm, while it
+lasted; and when I wept over the famine-stricken forms of my operatives,
+she said, "Never mind, honey; dey was an awful litter anyhow, and I
+spec' dey was only de or'nary caterpillar poor trash, after all, else
+dey 'd a-kep' goin' on dat tea; fur 't was de rale high-price Chany
+kind, sure 's ye 'r born."</p>
+
+<p>It was a striking oddness in the dear old soul, that, whilst in her
+hours of familiar ease she indulged in the homely lingo of her tribe, in
+her "company talk" she displayed a graver propriety of language, and in
+her prayers was always fluent, forcible, and correct.</p>
+
+<p>The watchful tenderness with which I loved my gentle, childlike father
+was the most interesting of the many secrets that my heart shared only
+with Aunt Judy's. When I was twelve years old, he fell into a touching
+despondency, caused by certain reverses in his business and the
+unremitting anxieties consequent upon them. So intense and sensitive was
+my magnetic sympathy with him, that I contracted the same sadness, in a
+form so aggravated and morbid that the despondency, in me, became
+despair, and the anxiety horror. The cruel fancy took possession of my
+mind, installed there by my treacherously imaginative temperament, that
+some awful calamity was about to befall my dear father; that he,
+patient, submissive Christian that he was, even meditated suicide; and
+that shape of fear so shook my soul with terror in the daytime, so
+filled my dreams with horror in the night, that, as if it were not
+myself, I turn back to pity the poor child now, and wonder that he did
+not go mad.</p>
+
+<p>Does he know the truth now up in Heaven, the beloved old man? Surely;
+for the beloved old woman, who alone knew it on earth, is she not there?
+He knows now how his selfish, wilful, school-hating scamp, of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> whom only
+he and Aunt Judy ever boded any good, stole away from his playmates and
+his games, every afternoon when school was dismissed, and with that
+baleful phantom before him, and that doleful cry in his ears, flew
+through the bustle and clatter of the wharves to where his father's
+warehouse was, two miles away; and, dodging like a thief among crates
+and boxes, bales and casks, and choking down the appeal of his lonely,
+shame-faced terror, watched that door with all the eager, tenacious,
+panting fidelity of a dog, until the merchant came forth on his way
+homeward for the night. And how the scamp followed, dodging, watching,
+trembling, unconsciously moaning, unconsciously sobbing, seeing no form
+but his, hearing no sound but his footfall, keeping cunningly between
+that form and the dock, lest it should suddenly dart, through the drays
+and the moored vessels and plunge into the river, as the scamp had seen
+it do in his dreams. And how, at the end of that walk through the Valley
+of the Shadow of Death, when we reached our own door, and the
+simple-hearted, good old man passed in, as ignorant of my following as
+he was innocent of the monstrous purpose I imputed to him, I lingered
+some minutes at the gate to ease with a sluice of tears my pent-up fears
+and pains; and then burst into the yard, whistling, whooping, prancing,
+swinging my satchel, without feeling or manners,&mdash;a shameless, heartless
+brat and nuisance. And how, when the day, with all its secret sighs and
+sobs, was over, and he and I retired to the same bed, I prayed to our
+Father in heaven (muffling my very thoughts in the bed-clothes lest he
+should hear them) to keep my earthly father safe for me from all the
+formless dangers of the darkness; and how, when at the first gray streak
+of dawn the spectre shook me, and I awoke, I held my heart and my
+breathing still, to listen for his breathing, and thanked God when he
+groaned in his sleep; and how, when his shaving-water was brought and he
+stood before the glass, baring his throat, I crept close behind him,
+still watching, gasping,&mdash;now pretending to hum a tune, now pressing my
+hand upon my mouth lest I should shriek in my helpless suspense; and
+how, when he drew the razor from its sheath&mdash;Well! I am forty years old
+now, and I have been pursued since then by so many and such torturing
+shapes of desperation and dismay as should refresh the heart of my
+stupidest enemy with an emotion of relenting; but I would consent to
+weep, groan, rave them all over again, beginning where that haunted
+child left off, rather than begin where he began, though my spectres
+should forever vanish with his.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Judy trembled and watched with me, and, accepting my phantom as if
+it were a reasonable fear, hid away her share of the sacred secret in
+her heart, and helped me to cover up mine with a disguise of
+carelessness, lest any foolish or brutal mockery should find it out.</p>
+
+<p>My darling had but few superstitions: her spiritually informed
+intelligence rose superior to vulgar signs and dreams, and saw through
+the little warnings and wonders of darker and less pure minds with a
+science of its own, which she called Gospel light. Still, there was here
+a sign and there a legend that she clung to for old acquaintance' sake,
+rather than by reason of any credulity in her strong enough to take the
+place of faith. But these constituted the peculiar poetry of her
+personality, the fireside balladry and folk-lore of her Aunt-Judyness;
+and I could no more mock them than I could mock the good fairy in her,
+that changed all my floggings to feathers,&mdash;no sooner tear away their
+comfortable homeliness to jeer at their honored absurdity, than I could
+snatch off her dear familiar turban to mock the silver reverence of her
+"wool." Ah! I wish you could have heard her tell me that I must pass
+through fourteen years of trouble,&mdash;seven on account of the big old
+mirror in the parlor that I, lying on the sofa beneath it, kicked clear
+off its hook and into the middle of the floor,&mdash;and seven for that very
+looking-glass which my father used to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> shave by, and which I, sparring
+at my image in it, to amuse my little brother, knocked into smithareens
+with my fractious fist. Why, man, it was not only awful, it all came
+true.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Judy, like most of those antiques, the old-fashioned house-servants
+of the South,&mdash;coachmen and waiters, nurses and lady's maids,&mdash;was a
+towering aristocrat: she believed in blood, and was a connoisseur in
+pedigrees. Her family pride was lofty, vast, and imposing, and embraced
+in the scope of its sympathy whoever could boast of a family Bible
+containing a well-filled record of births, marriages, and deaths,&mdash;a
+dear dead-and-gone inheritance of family portraits, lace, trinkets, and
+silver spoons,&mdash;a family vault in an Orthodox burial-ground,&mdash;and above
+all, one or two venerable family servants, just to show "dese mushroom
+folks, wid der high-minded notions, how diff'ent things was in ole
+missus's time!" Measured by this standard, if you had the misfortune to
+be a nobody, Aunt Judy, as a lady, might patronize you, as a Christian,
+would cheerfully advise and assist you; but to the exclusive privilege
+of what she superbly styled family-arities, you must in vain aspire.
+<i>Our</i> family, in the broadest sense of that word, was a large one,&mdash;by
+blood and marriage a numerous connection; and when Aunt Judy said,
+"So-and-so b'longs to our family," she included every man, woman, and
+child who could produce the genuine patent of our nobility, and
+especially all who had ever worn our livery, from my great-grandfather's
+tremendous coachman to the slipshod young gal that "nussed" our last new
+cousin's last new baby. Sometimes one of these cousins&mdash;quite
+telescopic, so distant was the relationship&mdash;would come to dine with us.
+Then Aunt Judy, in gorgeous turban, immaculate neckerchief, and lively
+satisfaction, would be served up in state, our <i>pi&egrave;ce de r&eacute;sistance</i>.
+The guest would compliment her with sympathetic inquiries about the
+state of her health, which was always "only tol'able," or "ra-a-ther
+poorly," or it "did 'pear as ef she could shuffle round a leetle yit,
+praise de Master! But she was a-gettin' older and shacklier every day;
+her cough was awful tryin' sometimes, and it 'peared as ef she warn't of
+much account, nohow. But de Lord's will be done; when He wanted her, she
+reckined He'd call. And how does you find yourself, Miss? And how does
+your ma git along wid de servants now? You know she always was a great
+hand to be pertickler, Miss; we hadn't sich another young lady in our
+family, to be pertickler, as your ma, Miss,&mdash;'specially 'bout de
+pleetin' and clare-starchin'."</p>
+
+<p>I have to accuse myself of habitually shocking her aristocratic
+sensibilities by profanely ignoring, in favor of the society of dirty
+little plebeians, the relations to whom the sacred charm of a common
+ancestry should have drawn me. "Make haste, honey," she used to say;
+"wash yer face and hands, and pull up yer stockin's, and tie yer shoes,
+and bresh de sand out of yer hair, and blow yer nose, and go into de
+parlor, and shake hands wid yer Cousin Jorjana." But I would not. "O
+bother, Auntie! who's my Cousin Georgiana?" "Why, honey, don't you know?
+Miss Arabella Jane&mdash;dat's your dear dead-an'-gone grandma's second
+cousin&mdash;had seven childern by her first husband,&mdash;he was a
+Patterson,&mdash;and nine by her second,&mdash;<i>he</i> was a McKim,&mdash;and five&mdash;but
+'tain't no use, honey; you don't 'pear to take no int'res' in yer own
+kith and kin, no more dan or'nary white trash. I 'spec' you don't know
+de diff'ence, dis minnit, 'twixt yer poor old Aunt Judy and any
+no-account poor-house nigger." And so my Cousin Georgiana, of whom I had
+never heard before, remains a myth to me, one of Aunt Judy's Mrs.
+Harrises, to this day. It was wonderful what an exact descriptive list
+of them she could call at a moment's notice; and for keeping the run of
+their names and numbers, she was as good as an enrolling officer or a
+directory man. "Our family" could boast of many Pharisees, as well as
+blush for many prodigals; but her sympathies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> were wholly with the
+latter; and for these she was eternally killing fatted calves, in
+spite of angry elder brothers and the whole sect of whited
+sepulchres, who forgive exactly four hundred and ninety times by the
+multiplication-table, and compass sea and land to make one hypocrite. If
+she had had a fold of her own, all her sheep would have been black.</p>
+
+<p>One day in January, 1849, I called to see Aunt Judy for the last time.
+Superannuated, and rapidly failing, she had been installed by my father
+in a comfortable room in the house of a sort of cousin of hers, a worthy
+and "well-to-do" woman of color, where she might be cheered by the
+visits of the more respectable people of her own class,&mdash;darkies of
+substantial character and of the first families, among whom she was
+esteemed as a mother in Israel. Thither either my father or one or two
+of his children came every day, to watch her declining health, to
+administer to her comfort, and to wait upon her with those offices of
+respect to which she had earned her right by three quarters of a century
+of humble, patient love and faithful service. My chest was packed, and
+on the morrow I must sail for the ends of the earth; but she knew
+nothing of that. All that afternoon we talked together as we had never
+talked before; and many an injury that my indignant tears had kept fresh
+and sticky was "dried" in the warmth of her earnest, anxious
+peace-making, and "rubbed out" then and there. No page of my inditing
+could be pure enough to record it all; but is it not written in the Book
+of Life, among the regrets and the forgivenesses, the confessions and
+the consolations and the hopes?</p>
+
+<p>The last word I ever uttered to Aunt Judy was a careful, loving, pious
+lie. She said, "Won't you come ag'in to-morrow, son, and see de poor ole
+woman?" And I replied, "O yes, Auntie!"&mdash;though I well knew that, even
+as I spoke, I was looking into the wise truth of those patient, tender
+eyes for the last time in this world. The sun was going down as we
+parted,&mdash;that sun has never risen again for me.</p>
+
+<p>In June, 1850, on board a steamboat in the Sacramento River, I received
+the very Bible I had first learned to read in, sitting on her lap by the
+kitchen fire,&mdash;in the beginning was the Word. She was dead; and, dying,
+she had sent it me, with her blessing,&mdash;at the end was the Word.</p>
+
+<p>In August, 1852, that Bible was tossed ashore from a wreck in an Indian
+river, and by angels delivered at a mission school in the jungle, where
+other heathens beside myself have doubtless learned from it the Word
+that was, and is, and ever shall be. On the inside of the cover, sitting
+on her lap by the kitchen fire, I had written, with appropriate
+"pot-hooks and hangers," <span class="smcap">Aunt Judy</span>.</p>
+
+<p>Such her quiet consummation and renown!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>VII.</h3>
+
+<h4>BODILY RELIGION: A SERMON ON GOOD HEALTH.</h4>
+
+<p>One of our recent writers has said, that "good health is physical
+religion"; and it is a saying worthy to be printed in golden letters.
+But good health being physical religion, it fully shares that
+indifference with which the human race regards things confessedly the
+most important. The neglect of the soul is the trite theme of all
+religious teachers; and, next to their souls, there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> is nothing that
+people neglect so much as their bodies. Every person ought to be
+perfectly healthy, just as everybody ought to be perfectly religious;
+but, in point of fact, the greater part of mankind are so far from
+perfect moral or physical religion that they cannot even form a
+conception of the blessing beyond them.</p>
+
+<p>The mass of good, well-meaning Christians are not yet advanced enough to
+guess at the change which a perfect fidelity to Christ's spirit and
+precepts would produce in them. And the majority of people who call
+themselves well, because they are not, at present, upon any particular
+doctor's list, are not within sight of what perfect health would be.
+That fulness of life, that vigorous tone, and that elastic cheerfulness,
+which make the mere fact of existence a luxury, that suppleness which
+carries one like a well-built boat over every wave of unfavorable
+chance,&mdash;these are attributes of the perfect health seldom enjoyed. We
+see them in young children, in animals, and now and then, but rarely, in
+some adult human being, who has preserved intact the religion of the
+body through all opposing influences. Perfect health supposes not a
+state of mere quiescence, but of positive enjoyment in living. See that
+little fellow, as his nurse turns him out in the morning, fresh from his
+bath, his hair newly curled, and his cheeks polished like apples. Every
+step is a spring or a dance; he runs, he laughs, he shouts, his face
+breaks into a thousand dimpling smiles at a word. His breakfast of plain
+bread and milk is swallowed with an eager and incredible delight,&mdash;it is
+<i>so good</i>, that he stops to laugh or thump the table now and then in
+expression of his ecstasy. All day long he runs and frisks and plays;
+and when at night the little head seeks the pillow, down go the
+eye-curtains, and sleep comes without a dream. In the morning his first
+note is a laugh and a crow, as he sits up in his crib and tries to pull
+papa's eyes open with his fat fingers. He is an embodied joy,&mdash;he is
+sunshine and music and laughter for all the house. With what a
+magnificent generosity does the Author of life endow a little mortal
+pilgrim in giving him at the outset of his career such a body as this!
+How miserable it is to look forward twenty years, when the same child,
+now grown a man, wakes in the morning with a dull, heavy head, the
+consequence of smoking and studying till twelve or one the night before;
+when he rises languidly to a late breakfast, and turns from this, and
+tries that,&mdash;wants a devilled bone, or a cutlet with Worcestershire
+sauce, to make eating possible; and then, with slow and plodding step,
+finds his way to his office and his books. Verily the shades of the
+prison-house gather round the growing boy; for, surely, no one will deny
+that life often begins with health little less perfect than that of the
+angels.</p>
+
+<p>But the man who habitually wakes sodden, headachy, and a little stupid,
+and who needs a cup of strong coffee and various stimulating condiments
+to coax his bodily system into something like fair working order, does
+not suppose he is out of health. He says, "Very well, I thank you," to
+your inquiries,&mdash;merely because he has entirely forgotten what good
+health is. He is well, not because of any particular pleasure in
+physical existence, but well simply because he is not a subject for
+prescriptions. Yet there is no store of vitality, no buoyancy, no
+superabundant vigor, to resist the strain and pressure to which life
+puts him. A checked perspiration, a draught of air ill-timed, a crisis
+of perplexing business or care, and he is down with a bilious attack, or
+an influenza, and subject to doctors' orders for an indefinite period.
+And if the case be so with men, how is it with women? How many women
+have at maturity the keen appetite, the joyous love of life and motion,
+the elasticity and sense of physical delight in existence, that little
+children have? How many have any superabundance of vitality with which
+to meet the wear and strain of life? And yet they call themselves well.</p>
+
+<p>But is it possible, in maturity, to have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> the joyful fulness of the life
+of childhood? Experience has shown that the delicious freshness of this
+dawning hour may be preserved even to mid-day, and may be brought back
+and restored after it has been for years a stranger. Nature, though a
+severe disciplinarian, is still, in many respects, most patient and easy
+to be entreated, and meets any repentant movement of her prodigal
+children with wonderful condescension. Take Bulwer's account of the
+first few weeks of his sojourn at Malvern, and you will read, in very
+elegant English, the story of an experience of pleasure which has
+surprised and delighted many a patient at a water-cure. The return to
+the great primitive elements of health&mdash;water, air, and simple food,
+with a regular system of exercise&mdash;has brought to many a jaded, weary,
+worn-down human being the elastic spirits, the simple, eager appetite,
+the sound sleep, of a little child. Hence, the rude huts and ch&acirc;lets of
+the peasant Priessnitz were crowded with battered dukes and princesses,
+and notables of every degree, who came from the hot, enervating luxury
+which had drained them of existence to find a keener pleasure in
+peasants' bread under peasants' roofs than in soft raiment and palaces.
+No arts of French cookery can possibly make anything taste so well to a
+feeble and palled appetite as plain brown bread and milk taste to a
+hungry water-cure patient, fresh from bath and exercise.</p>
+
+<p>If the water-cure had done nothing more than establish the fact that the
+glow and joyousness of early life are things which maybe restored after
+having been once wasted, it would have done a good work. For if Nature
+is so forgiving to those who have once lost or have squandered her
+treasures, what may not be hoped for us if we can learn the art of never
+losing the first health of childhood? And though with us, who have
+passed to maturity, it may be too late for the blessing, cannot
+something be done for the children who are yet to come after us?</p>
+
+<p>Why is the first health of childhood lost? Is it not the answer, that
+childhood is the only period of life in which bodily health is made a
+prominent object? Take our pretty boy, with cheeks like apples, who
+started in life with a hop, skip, and dance,&mdash;to whom laughter was like
+breathing, and who was enraptured with plain bread and milk,&mdash;how did he
+grow into the man who wakes so languid and dull, who wants strong coffee
+and Worcestershire sauce to make his breakfast go down? When and where
+did he drop the invaluable talisman that once made everything look
+brighter and taste better to him, however rude and simple, than now do
+the most elaborate combinations? What is the boy's history? Why, for the
+first seven years of his life his body is made of some account. It is
+watched, cared for, dieted, disciplined, fed with fresh air, and left to
+grow and develop like a thrifty plant. But from the time school
+education begins, the body is steadily ignored, and left to take care of
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>The boy is made to sit six hours a day in a close, hot room, breathing
+impure air, putting the brain and the nervous system upon a constant
+strain, while the muscular system is repressed to an unnatural quiet.
+During the six hours, perhaps twenty minutes are allowed for all that
+play of the muscles which, up to this time, has been the constant habit
+of his life. After this he is sent home with books, slate, and lessons
+to occupy an hour or two more in preparing for the next day. In the
+whole of this time there is no kind of effort to train the physical
+system by appropriate exercise. Something of the sort was attempted
+years ago in the infant schools, but soon given up; and now, from the
+time study first begins, the muscles are ignored in all primary schools.
+One of the first results is the loss of that animal vigor which formerly
+made the boy love motion for its own sake. Even in his leisure hours he
+no longer leaps and runs as he used to; he learns to sit still, and by
+and by sitting and lounging come to be the habit, and vigorous motion
+the exception,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> for most of the hours of the day. The education thus
+begun goes on from primary to high school, from high school to college,
+from college through professional studies of law, medicine, or theology,
+with this steady contempt for the body, with no provision for its
+culture, training, or development, but rather a direct and evident
+provision for its deterioration and decay.</p>
+
+<p>The want of suitable ventilation in school-rooms, recitation-rooms,
+lecture-rooms, offices, court-rooms, conference-rooms, and vestries,
+where young students of law, medicine, and theology acquire their
+earlier practice, is something simply appalling. Of itself it would
+answer for men the question, why so many thousand glad, active children
+come to a middle life without joy,&mdash;a life whose best estate is a sort
+of slow, plodding endurance. The despite and hatred which most men seem
+to feel for God's gift of fresh air, and their resolution to breathe as
+little of it as possible, could only come from a long course of
+education, in which they have been accustomed to live without it. Let
+any one notice the conduct of our American people travelling in railroad
+cars. We will suppose that about half of them are what might be called
+well-educated people, who have learned in books, or otherwise, that the
+air breathed from the lungs is laden with impurities,&mdash;that it is
+noxious and poisonous; and yet, travel with these people half a day, and
+you would suppose from their actions that they considered the external
+air as a poison created expressly to injure them, and that the only
+course of safety lay in keeping the cars hermetically sealed, and
+breathing over and over the vapor from each others' lungs. If a person
+in despair at the intolerable foulness raises a window, what frowns from
+all the neighboring seats, especially from great rough-coated men, who
+always seem the first to be apprehensive! The request to "put down that
+window" is almost sure to follow a moment or two of fresh air. In vain
+have rows of ventilators been put in the tops of some of the cars, for
+conductors and passengers are both of one mind, that these ventilators
+are inlets of danger, and must be kept carefully closed.</p>
+
+<p>Railroad travelling in America is systematically, and one would think
+carefully, arranged so as to violate every possible law of health. The
+old rule to keep the head cool and the feet warm is precisely reversed.
+A red-hot stove heats the upper stratum of air to oppression, while a
+stream of cold air is constantly circulating about the lower
+extremities. The most indigestible and unhealthy substances conceivable
+are generally sold in the cars or at way-stations for the confusion and
+distress of the stomach. Rarely can a traveller obtain so innocent a
+thing as a plain good sandwich of bread and meat, while pie, cake,
+doughnuts, and all other culinary atrocities, are almost forced upon him
+at every stopping-place. In France, England, and Germany the railroad
+cars are perfectly ventilated; the feet are kept warm by flat cases
+filled with hot water and covered with carpet, and answering the double
+purpose of warming the feet and diffusing an agreeable temperature
+through the car, without burning away the vitality of the air; while the
+arrangements at the refreshment-rooms provide for the passenger as
+wholesome and well-served a meal of healthy, nutritious food as could be
+obtained in any home circle.</p>
+
+<p>What are we to infer concerning the home habits of a nation of men who
+so resignedly allow their bodies to be poisoned and maltreated in
+travelling over such an extent of territory as is covered by our
+railroad lines? Does it not show that foul air and improper food are too
+much matters of course to excite attention? As a writer in "The Nation"
+has lately remarked, it is simply and only because the American nation
+like to have unventilated cars, and to be fed on pie and coffee at
+stopping-places, that nothing better is known to our travellers; if
+there were, any marked dislike of such a state of things on the part of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
+the people, it would not exist. We have wealth enough, and enterprise
+enough, and ingenuity enough, in our American nation, to compass with
+wonderful rapidity any end that really seems to us desirable. An army
+was improvised when an army was wanted,&mdash;and an army more perfectly
+equipped, more bountifully fed, than so great a body of men ever was
+before. Hospitals, Sanitary Commissions, and Christian Commissions all
+arose out of the simple conviction of the American people that they must
+arise. If the American people were equally convinced that foul air was a
+poison,&mdash;that to have cold feet and hot heads was to invite an attack of
+illness,&mdash;that maple-sugar, pop-corn, peppermint candy, pie, doughnuts,
+and peanuts are not diet for reasonable beings,&mdash;they would have
+railroad accommodations very different from those now in existence.</p>
+
+<p>We have spoken of the foul air of court-rooms. What better illustration
+could be given of the utter contempt with which the laws of bodily
+health are treated, than the condition of these places? Our lawyers are
+our highly educated men. They have been through high-school and college
+training, they have learned the properties of oxygen, nitrogen, and
+carbonic-acid gas, and have seen a mouse die under an exhausted
+receiver, and of course they know that foul, unventilated rooms are bad
+for the health; and yet generation after generation of men so taught and
+trained will spend the greater part of their lives in rooms notorious
+for their close and impure air, without so much as an attempt to remedy
+the evil. A well-ventilated court-room is a four-leaved clover among
+court-rooms. Young men are constantly losing their health at the bar:
+lung diseases, dyspepsia, follow them up, gradually sapping their
+vitality. Some of the brightest ornaments of the profession have
+actually fallen dead as they stood pleading,&mdash;victims of the fearful
+pressure of poisonous and heated air upon the excited brain. The deaths
+of Salmon P. Chase of Portland, uncle of our present Chief Justice, and
+of Ezekiel Webster, the brother of our great statesman, are memorable
+examples of the calamitous effects of the errors dwelt upon; and yet,
+strange to say, nothing efficient is done to mend these errors, and give
+the body an equal chance with the mind in the pressure of the world's
+affairs.</p>
+
+<p>But churches, lecture-rooms, and vestries, and all buildings devoted
+especially to the good of the soul, are equally witness of the mind's
+disdain of the body's needs, and the body's consequent revenge upon the
+soul. In how many of these places has the question of a thorough
+provision of fresh air been even considered? People would never think of
+bringing a thousand persons into a desert place, and keeping them there,
+without making preparations to feed them. Bread and butter, potatoes and
+meat, must plainly be found for them; but a thousand human beings are
+put into a building to remain a given number of hours, and no one asks
+the question whether means exist for giving each one the quantum of
+fresh air needed for his circulation, and these thousand victims will
+consent to be slowly poisoned, gasping, sweating, getting red in the
+face, with confused and sleepy brains, while a minister with a yet
+redder face and a more oppressed brain struggles and wrestles, through
+the hot, seething vapors, to make clear to them the mysteries of faith.
+How many churches are there that for six or eight months in the year are
+never ventilated at all, except by the accidental opening of doors? The
+foul air generated by one congregation is locked up by the sexton for
+the use of the next assembly; and so gathers and gathers from week to
+week, and month to month, while devout persons upbraid themselves, and
+are ready to tear their hair, because they always feel stupid and sleepy
+in church. The proper ventilation of their churches and vestries would
+remove that spiritual deadness of which their prayers and hymns
+complain. A man hoeing his corn out on a breezy hillside is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> bright and
+alert, his mind works clearly, and he feels interested in religion, and
+thinks of many a thing that might be said at the prayer-meeting at
+night. But at night, when he sits down in a little room where the air
+reeks with the vapor of his neighbor's breath and the smoke of kerosene
+lamps, he finds himself suddenly dull and drowsy,&mdash;without emotion,
+without thought, without feeling,&mdash;and he rises and reproaches himself
+for this state of things. He calls upon his soul and all that is within
+him to bless the Lord; but the indignant body, abused, insulted,
+ignored, takes the soul by the throat, and says, "If you won't let <i>me</i>
+have a good time, neither shall you." Revivals of religion, with
+ministers and with those people whose moral organization leads them to
+take most interest in them, often end in periods of bodily ill-health
+and depression. But is there any need of this? Suppose that a revival of
+religion required, as a formula, that all the members of a given
+congregation should daily take a minute dose of arsenic in concert,&mdash;we
+should not be surprised after a while to hear of various ill effects
+therefrom; and, as vestries and lecture-rooms are now arranged, a daily
+prayer-meeting is often nothing more nor less than a number of persons
+spending half an hour a day breathing poison from each other's lungs.
+There is not only no need of this, but, on the contrary, a good supply
+of pure air would make the daily prayer-meeting far more enjoyable. The
+body, if allowed the slightest degree of fair play, so far from being a
+contumacious infidel and opposer, becomes a very fair Christian helper,
+and, instead of throttling the soul, gives it wings to rise to celestial
+regions.</p>
+
+<p>This branch of our subject we will quit with one significant anecdote. A
+certain rural church was somewhat famous for its picturesque Gothic
+architecture, and equally famous for its sleepy atmosphere, the rules of
+Gothic symmetry requiring very small windows, which could be only
+partially opened. Everybody was affected alike in this church: minister
+and people complained that it was like the enchanted ground in the
+Pilgrim's Progress. Do what they would, sleep was ever at their elbows;
+the blue, red, and green of the painted windows melted into a rainbow
+dimness of hazy confusion; and ere they were aware, they were off on a
+cloud to the land of dreams.</p>
+
+<p>An energetic sister in the church suggested the inquiry, whether it was
+ever ventilated, and discovered that it was regularly locked up at the
+close of service, and remained so till opened for the next week. She
+suggested the inquiry, whether giving the church a thorough airing on
+Saturday would not improve the Sunday services; but nobody acted on her
+suggestion. Finally, she borrowed the sexton's key one Saturday night,
+and went into the church and opened all the windows herself, and let
+them remain so for the night. The next day everybody remarked the
+improved comfort of the church, and wondered what had produced the
+change. Nevertheless, when it was discovered, it was not deemed a matter
+of enough importance to call for an order on the sexton to perpetuate
+the improvement.</p>
+
+<p>The ventilation of private dwellings in this country is such as might be
+expected from that entire indifference to the laws of health manifested
+in public establishments. Let a person travel in private conveyance up
+through the valley of the Connecticut, and stop for a night at the
+taverns which he will usually find at the end of each day's stage. The
+bed-chamber into which he will be ushered will be the concentration of
+all forms of bad air. The house is redolent of the vegetables in the
+cellar,&mdash;cabbages, turnips, and potatoes; and this fragrance is confined
+and retained by the custom of closing the window-blinds and dropping the
+inside curtains, so that neither air nor sunshine enters in to purify.
+Add to this the strong odor of a new feather-bed and pillows, and you
+have a combination of perfumes most appalling to a delicate sense. Yet
+travellers take possession<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> of these rooms, sleep in them all night
+without raising the window or opening the blinds, and leave them to be
+shut up for other travellers.</p>
+
+<p>The spare chamber of many dwellings seems to be an hermetically closed
+box, opened only twice a year, for spring and fall cleaning; but for the
+rest of the time closed to the sun and the air of heaven. Thrifty
+country housekeepers often adopt the custom of making their beds on the
+instant after they are left, without airing the sheets and mattresses;
+and a bed so made gradually becomes permeated with the insensible
+emanations of the human body, so as to be a steady corrupter of the
+atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>In the winter, the windows are calked and listed, the throat of the
+chimney built up with a tight brick wall, and a close stove is
+introduced to help burn out the vitality of the air. In a sitting-room
+like this, from five to ten persons will spend about eight months of the
+year, with no other ventilation than that gained by the casual opening
+and shutting of doors. Is it any wonder that consumption every year
+sweeps away its thousands?&mdash;that people are suffering constant chronic
+ailments,&mdash;neuralgia, nervous dyspepsia, and all the host of indefinite
+bad feelings that rob life of sweetness and flower and bloom?</p>
+
+<p>A recent writer raises the inquiry, whether the community would not gain
+in health by the demolition of all dwelling-houses. That is, he suggests
+the question, whether the evils from foul air are not so great and so
+constant, that they countervail the advantages of shelter. Consumptive
+patients far gone have been known to be cured by long journeys, which
+have required them to be day and night in the open air. Sleep under the
+open heaven, even though the person be exposed to the various accidents
+of weather, has often proved a miraculous restorer after everything else
+had failed. But surely, if simple fresh air is so healing and preserving
+a thing, some means might be found to keep the air in a house just as
+pure and vigorous as it is outside.</p>
+
+<p>An article in the May number of "Harpers' Magazine" presents drawings of
+a very simple arrangement by which any house can be made thoroughly
+self-ventilating. Ventilation, as this article shows, consists in two
+things,&mdash;a perfect and certain expulsion from the dwelling of all foul
+air breathed from the lungs or arising from any other cause, and the
+constant supply of pure air.</p>
+
+<p>One source of foul air cannot be too much guarded against,&mdash;we mean
+imperfect gas-pipes. A want of thoroughness in execution is the sin of
+our American artisans, and very few gas-fixtures are so thoroughly made
+that more or less gas does not escape and mingle with the air of the
+dwelling. There are parlors where plants cannot be made to live, because
+the gas kills them; and yet their occupants do not seem to reflect that
+an air in which a plant cannot live must be dangerous for a human being.
+The very clemency and long-suffering of Nature to those who persistently
+violate her laws is one great cause why men are, physically speaking,
+such sinners as they are. If foul air poisoned at once and completely,
+we should have well-ventilated houses, whatever else we failed to have.
+But because people can go on for weeks, months, and years, breathing
+poisons, and slowly and imperceptibly lowering the tone of their vital
+powers, and yet be what they call "pretty well, I thank you," sermons on
+ventilation and fresh air go by them as an idle song. "I don't see but
+we are well enough, and we never took much pains about these things.
+There's air enough gets into houses, of course. What with doors opening
+and windows occasionally lifted, the air of houses is generally good
+enough";&mdash;and so the matter is dismissed.</p>
+
+<p>One of Heaven's great hygienic teachers is now abroad in the world,
+giving lessons on health to the children of men. The cholera is like the
+angel whom God threatened to send as leader to the rebellious
+Israelites. "Beware of him, obey his voice, and provoke<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> him not; for he
+will not pardon your transgressions." The advent of this fearful
+messenger seems really to be made necessary by the contempt with which
+men treat the physical laws of their being. What else could have
+purified the dark places of New York? What a wiping-up and reforming and
+cleansing is going before him through the country! At last we find that
+Nature is in earnest, and that her laws cannot be always ignored with
+impunity. Poisoned air is recognized at last as an evil,&mdash;even although
+the poison cannot be weighed, measured, or tasted; and if all the
+precautions that men are now willing to take could be made perpetual,
+the alarm would be a blessing to the world.</p>
+
+<p>Like the principles of spiritual religion, the principles of physical
+religion are few and easy to be understood. An old medical apothegm
+personifies the hygienic forces as the Doctors Air, Diet, Exercise, and
+Quiet; and these four will be found, on reflection, to cover the whole
+ground of what is required to preserve human health. A human being whose
+lungs have always been nourished by pure air, whose stomach has been fed
+only by appropriate food, whose muscles have been systematically trained
+by appropriate exercises, and whose mind is kept tranquil by faith in
+God and a good conscience, has <i>perfect physical religion</i>. There is a
+line where physical religion must necessarily overlap spiritual religion
+and rest upon it. No human being can be assured of perfect health,
+through all the strain and wear and tear of such cares and such
+perplexities as life brings, without the rest of <i>faith in God</i>. An
+unsubmissive, unconfiding, unresigned soul will make vain the best
+hygienic treatment; and, on the contrary, the most saintly religious
+resolution and purpose maybe defeated and vitiated by an habitual
+ignorance and disregard of the laws of the physical system.</p>
+
+<p><i>Perfect</i> spiritual religion cannot exist without perfect physical
+religion. Every flaw and defect in the bodily system is just so much
+taken from the spiritual vitality: we are commanded to glorify God, not
+simply in our spirits, but in our <i>bodies</i> and spirits. The only example
+of perfect manhood the world ever saw impresses us more than anything
+else by an atmosphere of perfect healthiness. There is a calmness, a
+steadiness, in the character of Jesus, a naturalness in his evolution of
+the sublimest truths under the strain of the most absorbing and intense
+excitement, that could commonly from the <i>one</i> perfectly trained and
+developed body, bearing as a pure and sacred shrine the One Perfect
+Spirit. Jesus of Nazareth, journeying on foot from city to city, always
+calm yet always fervent, always steady yet glowing with a white heat of
+sacred enthusiasm, able to walk and teach all day and afterwards to
+continue in prayer all night, with unshaken nerves, sedately patient,
+serenely reticent, perfectly self-controlled, walked the earth, the only
+man that perfectly glorified God in his body no less than in his spirit.
+It is worthy of remark, that in choosing his disciples he chose plain
+men from the laboring classes, who had lived the most obediently to the
+simple, unperverted laws of nature. He chose men of good and pure
+bodies,&mdash;simple, natural, childlike, healthy men,&mdash;and baptized their
+souls with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>The hygienic bearings of the New Testament have never been sufficiently
+understood. The basis of them lies in the solemn declaration, that our
+bodies are to be temples of the Holy Spirit, and that all abuse of them
+is of the nature of sacrilege. Reverence for the physical system, as the
+outward shrine and temple of the spiritual, is the peculiarity of the
+Christian religion. The doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and
+its physical immortality, sets the last crown of honor upon it. That
+bodily system which God declared worthy to be gathered back from the
+dust of the grave, and re-created, as the soul's immortal companion,
+must necessarily be dear and precious in the eyes of its Creator. The
+one passage in the New Testament<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> in which it is spoken of disparagingly
+is where Paul contrasts it with the brighter glory of what is to
+come,&mdash;"He shall change our <i>vile</i> bodies, that they may be fashioned
+like his glorious body." From this passage has come abundance of
+reviling of the physical system. Memoirs of good men are full of abuse
+of it, as the clog, the load, the burden, the chain. It is spoken of as
+pollution, as corruption,&mdash;in short, one would think that the Creator
+had imitated the cruelty of some Oriental despots who have been known to
+chain a festering corpse to a living body. Accordingly, the memoirs of
+these pious men are also mournful records of slow suicide, wrought by
+the persistent neglect of the most necessary and important laws of the
+bodily system; and the body, outraged and down-trodden, has turned
+traitor to the soul, and played the adversary with fearful power. Who
+can tell the countless temptations to evil which flow in from a
+neglected, disordered, deranged nervous system,&mdash;temptations to anger,
+to irritability, to selfishness, to every kind of sin of appetite and
+passion? No wonder that the poor soul longs for the hour of release from
+such a companion.</p>
+
+<p>But that human body which God declares expressly was made to be the
+temple of the Holy Spirit, which he considers worthy to be perpetuated
+by a resurrection and an immortal existence, cannot be intended to be a
+clog and a hindrance to spiritual advancement. A perfect body, working
+in perfect tune and time, would open glimpses of happiness to the soul
+approaching the joys we hope for in heaven. It is only through the
+images of things which our <i>bodily</i> senses have taught us, that we can
+form any conception of that future bliss; and the more perfect these
+senses, the more perfect our conceptions must be.</p>
+
+<p>The conclusion of the whole matter, and the practical application of
+this sermon, is:&mdash;First, that all men set themselves to form the idea of
+what perfect health is, and resolve to realize it for themselves and
+their children. Second, that with a view to this they study the religion
+of the body, in such simple and popular treatises as those of George
+Combe, Dr. Dio Lewis, and others, and with simple and honest hearts
+practise what they there learn. Third, that the training of the bodily
+system should form a regular part of our common-school education,&mdash;every
+common school being provided with a well-instructed teacher of
+gymnastics; and the growth and development of each pupil's body being as
+much noticed and marked as is now the growth of his mind. The same
+course should be continued and enlarged in colleges and female
+seminaries, which should have professors of hygiene appointed to give
+thorough instruction concerning the laws of health.</p>
+
+<p>And when this is all done, we may hope that crooked spines, pimpled
+faces, sallow complexions, stooping shoulders, and all other signs
+indicating an undeveloped physical vitality, will, in the course of a
+few generations, disappear from the earth, and men will have bodies
+which will glorify God, their great Architect.</p>
+
+<p>The soul of man has got as far as it can without the body. Religion
+herself stops and looks back, waiting for the body to overtake her. The
+soul's great enemy and hindrance can be made her best friend and most
+powerful help; and it is high time that this era were begun. We old
+sinners, who have lived carelessly, and almost spent our day of grace,
+may not gain much of its good; but the children,&mdash;shall there not be a
+more perfect day for them? Shall there not come a day when the little
+child, whom Christ set forth to his disciples as the type of the
+greatest in the kingdom of heaven, shall be the type no less of our
+physical than our spiritual advancement,&mdash;when men and women shall
+arise, keeping through long and happy lives the simple, unperverted
+appetites, the joyous freshness of spirit, the keen delight in mere
+existence, the dreamless sleep and happy waking of early childhood?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XXVIII.</h3>
+
+<p>The bill was paid; the black horse saddled and brought round to the
+door. Mr. and Mrs. Vint stood bare-headed to honor the parting guest;
+and the latter offered him the stirrup-cup.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith looked round for Mercy. She was nowhere to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>Then he said, piteously, to Mrs. Vint, "What, not even bid me good by?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Vint replied, in a very low voice, that there was no disrespect
+intended. "The truth is, sir, she could not trust herself to see you go;
+but she bade me give you a message. Says she, 'Mother, tell him I pray
+God to bless him, go where he will.'"</p>
+
+<p>Something rose in Griffith's throat "O Dame!" said he, "if she only knew
+the truth, she would think better of me than she does. God bless her!"</p>
+
+<p>And he rode sorrowfully away, alone in the world once more.</p>
+
+<p>At the first turn in the road, he wheeled his horse, and took a last
+lingering look.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing vulgar, nor inn-like, in the "Packhorse." It stood
+fifty yards from the road, on a little rural green, and was picturesque
+itself. The front was entirely clad with large-leaved ivy. Shutters
+there were none: the windows, with their diamond panes, were lustrous
+squares, set like great eyes in the green ivy. It looked a pretty,
+peaceful retreat, and in it Griffith had found peace and a dove-like
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>He sighed, and rode away from the sight; not raging and convulsed, as
+when he rode from Hernshaw Castle, but somewhat sick at heart, and very
+heavy.</p>
+
+<p>He paced so slowly that it took him a quarter of an hour to reach the
+"Woodman,"&mdash;a wayside inn, not two miles distant. As he went by, a
+farmer hailed him from the porch, and insisted on drinking with him; for
+he was very popular in the neighborhood. Whilst they were thus employed,
+who should come out but Paul Carrick, booted and spurred, and flushed in
+the face, and rather the worse for liquor imbibed on the spot.</p>
+
+<p>"So you are going, are ye?" said he. "A good job, too." Then, turning to
+the other, "Master Gutteridge, never you save a man's life, if you can
+anyways help it. I saved this one's; and what does he do but turn round
+and poison my sweetheart against me?"</p>
+
+<p>"How can you say so?" remonstrated Griffith. "I never belied you. Your
+name scarce ever passed my lips."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't tell me," said Carrick. "However, she has come to her senses, and
+given your worship the sack. Ride you into Cumberland, and I to the
+'Packhorse,' and take my own again."</p>
+
+<p>With this, he unhooked his nag from the wall, and clattered off to the
+"Packhorse."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith sat a moment stupefied, and then his face was convulsed by his
+ruling passion. He wheeled his horse, gave him the spur, and galloped
+after Carrick.</p>
+
+<p>He soon came up with him, and yelled in his ear, "I'll teach you to spit
+your wormwood in my cup of sorrow."</p>
+
+<p>Carrick shook his fist defiantly, and spurred his horse in turn.</p>
+
+<p>It was an exciting race, and a novel one, but soon decided. The great
+black hunter went ahead, and still improved his advantage. Carrick,
+purple with rage, was full a quarter of a mile behind, when Griffith
+dashed furiously into the stable of the "Packhorse," and, leaving Black
+Dick panting and covered with foam, ran in search of Mercy.</p>
+
+<p>The girl told him she was in the dairy. He looked in at the window, and
+there she was with her mother. With<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> instinctive sense and fortitude she
+had fled to work. She was trying to churn; but it would not do: she had
+laid her shapely arm on the churn, and her head on it, and was crying.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Vint was praising Carrick, and offering homely consolation.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, mother," sighed Mercy, "I could have made him happy. He does not
+know that; and he has turned his back on content. What will become of
+him?"</p>
+
+<p>Griffith heard no more. He went round to the front door, and rushed in.</p>
+
+<p>"Take your own way, Dame," said he, in great agitation. "Put up the
+banns when you like. Sweetheart, wilt wed with me? I'll make thee the
+best husband I can."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy screamed faintly, and lifted up her hands; then she blushed and
+trembled to her very finger ends; but it ended in smiles of joy and her
+brow upon his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>In which attitude, with Mrs. Vint patting him approvingly on the back,
+they were surprised by Paul Carrick. He came to the door, and there
+stood aghast.</p>
+
+<p>The young man stared ruefully at the picture, and then said, very dryly,
+"I'm too late, methinks."</p>
+
+<p>"That you be, Paul," said Mrs. Vint, cheerfully. "She is meat for your
+master."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't&mdash;you&mdash;never&mdash;come to me&mdash;to save your life&mdash;no more," blubbered
+Paul, breaking down all of a sudden.</p>
+
+<p>He then retired, little heeded, and came no more to the "Packhorse" for
+several days.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XXIX.</h3>
+
+<p>It is desirable that improper marriages should never be solemnized; and
+the Christian Church saw this, many hundred years ago, and ordained
+that, before a marriage, the banns should be cried in a church three
+Sundays, and any person there present might forbid the union of the
+parties, and allege the just impediment.</p>
+
+<p>This precaution was feeble, but not wholly inadequate&mdash;in the Middle
+Ages; for we know by good evidence that the priest was often interrupted
+and the banns forbidden.</p>
+
+<p>But in modern days the banns are never forbidden; in other words, the
+precautionary measure that has come down to us from the thirteenth
+century is out of date and useless. It rests, indeed, on an estimate of
+publicity that has become childish, and almost asinine. If persons about
+to marry were compelled to inscribe their names and descriptions in a
+Matrimonial Weekly Gazette, and a copy of this were placed on a desk in
+ten thousand churches, perhaps we might stop one lady per annum from
+marrying her husband's brother, and one gentleman from wedding his
+neighbor's wife. But the crying of banns in a single parish church is a
+waste of the people's time and the parson's breath.</p>
+
+<p>And so it proved in Griffith Gaunt's case. The Rev. William Wentworth
+published, in the usual recitative, the banns of marriage between Thomas
+Leicester, of the parish of Marylebone in London, and Mercy Vint,
+spinster, of <i>this</i> parish; and creation, present <i>ex hypothesi
+medi&aelig;vale</i>, but absent in fact, assented, by silence, to the union.</p>
+
+<p>So Thomas Leicester wedded Mercy Vint, and took her home to the
+"Packhorse."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It would be well if those who stifle their consciences, and commit
+crimes, would set up a sort of medico-moral diary, and record their
+symptoms minutely day by day. Such records might help to clear away some
+vague conventional notions.</p>
+
+<p>To tell the truth, our hero, and now malefactor, (the combination is of
+high antiquity,) enjoyed, for several months, the peace of mind that
+belongs of right to innocence; and his days passed in a state of smooth
+complacency. Mercy was a good, wise, and tender wife; she naturally
+looked up to him after marriage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> more than she did before; she studied
+his happiness, as she had never studied her own; she mastered his
+character, admired his good qualities, discerned his weaknesses, but did
+not view them as defects; only as little traits to be watched, lest she
+should give pain to "her master," as she called him.</p>
+
+<p>Affection, in her, took a more obsequious form than it could ever assume
+in Kate Peyton. And yet she had great influence, and softly governed
+"her master" for his good. She would come into the room and take away
+the bottle, if he was committing excess; but she had a way of doing it,
+so like a good, but resolute mother, and so unlike a termagant, that he
+never resisted. Upon the whole, she nursed his mind, as in earlier days
+she had nursed his body.</p>
+
+<p>And then she made him so comfortable: she observed him minutely to that
+end. As is the eye of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so Mercy
+Leicester's dove-like eye was ever watching "her master's" face, to
+learn the minutest features of his mind.</p>
+
+<p>One evening he came in tired, and there was a black fire in the parlor.
+His countenance fell the sixteenth of an inch. You and I, sir, should
+never have noticed it. But Mercy did, and, ever after, there was a clear
+fire when he came in.</p>
+
+<p>She noted, too, that he loved to play the <i>viol da gambo</i>, but disliked
+the trouble of tuning it. So then she tuned it for him.</p>
+
+<p>When he came home at night, early or late, he was sure to find a dry
+pair of shoes on the rug, his six-stringed viol tuned to a hair, a
+bright fire, and a brighter wife, smiling and radiant at his coming, and
+always neat; for, said she, "Shall I don my bravery for strangers, and
+not for my Thomas, that is the best of company?"</p>
+
+<p>They used to go to church, and come back together, hand in hand like
+lovers; for the arm was rarely given in those days. And Griffith said to
+himself every Sunday, "What a comfort to have a Protestant wife!"</p>
+
+<p>But one day he was off his guard, and called her "Kate, my dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is Kate?" said she softly, but with a degree of trouble and
+intelligence that made him tremble.</p>
+
+<p>"No matter," said he, all in a flutter. Then, solemnly, "Whoever she
+was, she is dead,&mdash;dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said Mercy, very tenderly and solemnly, and under her breath. "You
+loved her; yet she must die." She paused; then, in a tone so exquisite I
+can only call it an angel's whisper, "Poor Kate!"</p>
+
+<p>Griffith groaned aloud. "For God's sake, never mention that name to me
+again. Let me forget she ever lived. She was not the true friend to me
+that you have been."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy replied, softly, "Say not so, Thomas. You loved her well. Her
+death had all but cost me thine. Ah, well! we cannot all be the first. I
+am not very jealous, for my part; and I thank God for 't. Thou art a
+dear good husband to me, and that is enow."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Paul Carrick, unable to break off his habits, came to the "Packhorse"
+now and then; but Mercy protected her husband's heart from pain. She was
+kind, and even pitiful; but so discreet and resolute, and contrived to
+draw the line so clearly between her husband and her old sweetheart,
+that Griffith's foible could not burn him, for want of fuel.</p>
+
+<p>And so passed several months, and the man's heart was at peace. He could
+not love Mercy passionately as he had loved Kate; but he was full of
+real regard and esteem for her. It was one of those gentle, clinging
+attachments that outlast grand passions, and survive till death; a
+tender, pure affection, though built upon a crime.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>They had been married, and lived in sweet content, about three quarters
+of a year&mdash;when trouble came; but in a vulgar form. A murrain carried
+off several of Harry Vint's cattle; and it then came out that he had
+purchased six of them on credit, and had been induced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> to set his hand
+to bills of exchange for them. His rent was also behind, and, in fact,
+his affairs were in a desperate condition.</p>
+
+<p>He hid it as long as he could from them all; but at last, being served
+with a process for debt, and threatened with a distress and an
+execution, he called a family council and exposed the real state of
+things.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Vint rated him soundly for keeping all this secret so long.</p>
+
+<p>He whom they called Thomas Leicester remonstrated with him. "Had you
+told me in time," said he, "I had not paid forfeit for 'The Vine,' but
+settled there, and given you a home."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy said never a word but "Poor father!"</p>
+
+<p>As the peril drew nearer, the conversations became more animated and
+agitated, and soon the old people took to complaining of Thomas
+Leicester to his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Thou hast married a gentleman; and he hath not the heart to lift a hand
+to save thy folk from ruin."</p>
+
+<p>"Say not so," pleaded Mercy: "to be sure he hath the heart, but not the
+means. 'T was but yestreen he bade me sell his jewels for you. But,
+mother, I think they belonged to some one he loved,&mdash;and she died. So,
+poor thing, how could I? Then, if you love me, blame me, and not him."</p>
+
+<p>"Jewels, quotha! will they stop such a gap as ours?" was the
+contemptuous reply.</p>
+
+<p>From complaining of him behind his back, the old people soon came to
+launching innuendoes obliquely at him. Here is one specimen out of a
+dozen.</p>
+
+<p>"Wife, if our Mercy had wedded one of her own sort, mayhap he'd have
+helped us a bit."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, poor soul; and she so near her time: if the bailiffs come down on
+us next month, 'tis my belief we shall lose her, as well as house and
+home."</p>
+
+<p>The false Thomas Leicester let them run on, in dogged silence; but every
+word was a stab.</p>
+
+<p>And one day, when he had been baited sore with hints, he turned round on
+them fiercely, and said: "Did I get you into this mess? It's all your
+own doing. Learn to see your own faults, and not be so hard on one that
+has been the best servant you ever had, gentleman or not."</p>
+
+<p>Men can resist the remonstrances that wound them, and so irritate them,
+better than they can those gentle appeals that rouse no anger, but
+soften the whole heart. The old people stung him; but Mercy, without
+design, took a surer way. She never said a word; but sometimes, when the
+discussions were at their height, she turned her dove-like eyes on him,
+with a look so loving, so humbly inquiring, so timidly imploring, that
+his heart melted within him.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, that is a true touch of nature and genuine observation of the sexes,
+in the old song,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"My feyther urged me sair;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My mither didna speak;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But she looked me in the face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till my hairt was like to break."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>These silent, womanly, imploring looks of patient Mercy were mightier
+than argument or invective.</p>
+
+<p>The man knew all along where to get money, and how to get it. He had
+only to go to Hernshaw Castle. But his very soul shuddered at the idea.
+However, for Mercy's sake, he took the first step; he compelled himself
+to look the thing in the face, and discuss it with himself. A few months
+ago he could not have done even this,&mdash;he loved his lawful wife too
+much; hated her too much. But now, Mercy and Time had blunted both those
+passions; and he could ask himself whether he could not encounter Kate
+and her priest without any very violent emotion.</p>
+
+<p>When they first set up house together, he had spent his whole fortune, a
+sum of two thousand pounds, on repairing and embellishing Hernshaw
+Castle and grounds. Since she had driven him out of the house, he had a
+clear right to have back the money; and he now resolved he would have
+it;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> but what he wanted was to get it without going to the place in
+person.</p>
+
+<p>And now Mercy's figure, as well as her imploring looks, moved him
+greatly. She was in that condition which appeals to a man's humanity and
+masculine pity, as well as to his affection. To use the homely words of
+Scripture, she was great with child, and in that condition moved slowly
+about him, filling his pipe, and laying his slippers, and ministering to
+all his little comforts; she would make no difference: and when he saw
+the poor dove move about him so heavily, and rather languidly, yet so
+zealously and tenderly, the man's very bowels yearned over her, and he
+felt as if he could die to do her a service.</p>
+
+<p>So, one day, when she was standing by him, bending over his little round
+table, and filling his pipe with her neat hand, he took her by the other
+hand and drew her gently on his knee, her burden and all. "Child!" said
+he, "do not thou fret. I know how to get money; and I'll do 't, for thy
+sake."</p>
+
+<p>"I know that," said she, softly; "can I not read thy face by this time?"
+and so laid her cheek to his. "But, Thomas, for my sake, get it
+honestly,&mdash;or not at all," said she, still filling his pipe, with her
+cheek to his.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll but take back my own," said he; "fear naught."</p>
+
+<p>But, after thus positively pledging himself to Mercy, he became
+thoughtful and rather fretful; for he was still most averse to go to
+Hernshaw, and yet could hit upon no other way; since to employ an agent
+would be to let out that he had committed bigamy, and so risk his own
+neck, and break Mercy's heart.</p>
+
+<p>After all his scale was turned by his foible.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Vint had been weak enough to confide her trouble to a friend: it
+was all over the parish in three days.</p>
+
+<p>Well, one day, in the kitchen of the Inn, Paul Carrick, having drunk two
+pints of good ale, said to Vint, "Landlord, you ought to have married
+her to me, I've got two hundred pounds laid by. I'd have pulled you out
+of the mire, and welcome."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you, though, Paul?" said Harry Vint; "then, by G&mdash;, I wish I
+had."</p>
+
+<p>Now Carrick bawled that out, and Griffith, who was at the door, heard
+it.</p>
+
+<p>He walked into the kitchen, ghastly pale, and spoke to Harry Vint first.</p>
+
+<p>"I take your inn, your farm, and your debts on me," said he; "not one
+without t' other."</p>
+
+<p>"Spoke like a man!" cried the landlord, joyfully; "and so be it&mdash;before
+these witnesses."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith turned on Carrick: "This house is mine. Get out on 't, ye
+<i>jealous</i>, mischief-making cur." And he took him by the collar and
+dragged him furiously out of the place, and sent him whirling into the
+middle of the road; then ran back for his hat and flung it out after
+him.</p>
+
+<p>This done, he sat down boiling, and his eyes roved fiercely round the
+room in search of some other antagonist. But his strength was so great,
+and his face so altered with this sudden spasm of reviving jealousy,
+that nobody cared to provoke him further.</p>
+
+<p>After a while, however, Harry Vint muttered dryly, "There goes one good
+customer."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith took him up sternly: "If your debts are to be mine, your trade
+shall be mine too, that you had not the head to conduct."</p>
+
+<p>"So be it, son-in-law," said the old man; "only you go so fast: you do
+take possession afore you pays the fee."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith winced. "That shall be the last of your taunts, old man." He
+turned to the ostler: "Bill, give Black Dick his oats at sunrise; and in
+ten days at furthest I'll pay every shilling this house and farm do owe.
+Now, Master White, you'll put in hand a new sign-board for this inn; a
+fresh 'Packhorse,' and paint him jet black, with one white hoof (instead
+of chocolate), in honor of my nag Dick; and in place of Harry Vint
+you'll put in Thomas Leicester. See that is done<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> against I come back,
+or come <i>you</i> here no more."</p>
+
+<p>Soon after this scene he retired to tell Mercy; and, on his departure,
+the suppressed tongues went like mill-clacks.</p>
+
+<p>Dick came round saddled at peep of day; but Mercy had been up more than
+an hour, and prepared her man's breakfast. She clung to him at parting,
+and cried a little; and whispered something in his ear, for nobody else
+to hear: it was an entreaty that he would not be long gone, lest he
+should be far from her in the hour of her peril.</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon he promised her, and kissed her tenderly, and bade her be of
+good heart; and so rode away northwards with dogged resolution.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he was gone, Mercy's tears flowed without restraint.</p>
+
+<p>Her father set himself to console her. "Thy good man," he said, "is but
+gone back to the high road for a night or two, to follow his trade of
+'stand and deliver.' Fear naught, child; his pistols are well primed: I
+saw to that myself; and his horse is the fleetest in the county. You'll
+have him back in three days, and money in both pockets. I warrant you
+his is a better trade than mine; and he is a fool to change it."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Griffith was two days upon the road, and all that time he was turning
+over and discussing in his mind how he should conduct the disagreeable
+but necessary business he had undertaken.</p>
+
+<p>He determined, at last, to make the visit one of business only: no heat,
+no reproaches. That lovely, hateful woman might continue to dishonor his
+name, for he had himself abandoned it. He would not deign to receive any
+money that was hers; but his own two thousand pounds he would have; and
+two or three hundred on the spot by way of instalment. And, with these
+hard views, he drew near to Hernshaw; but the nearer he got, the slower
+he went; for what at a distance had seemed tolerably easy began to get
+more and more difficult and repulsive. Moreover, his heart, which he
+thought he had steeled, began now to flutter a little, and somehow to
+shudder at the approaching interview.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XXX.</h3>
+
+<p>Caroline Ryder went to the gate of the Grove, and stayed there two
+hours; but, of course, no Griffith came.</p>
+
+<p>She returned the next night, and the next; and then she gave it up, and
+awaited an explanation. None came, and she was bitterly disappointed,
+and indignant.</p>
+
+<p>She began to hate Griffith, and to conceive a certain respect, and even
+a tepid friendship, for the other woman he had insulted.</p>
+
+<p>Another clew to this change of feeling is to be found in a word she let
+drop in talking to another servant. "My mistress," said she, "bears it
+<i>like a man</i>."</p>
+
+<p>In fact, Mrs. Gaunt's conduct at this period was truly noble.</p>
+
+<p>She suffered months of torture, months of grief; but the high-spirited
+creature hid it from the world, and maintained a sad but high composure.</p>
+
+<p>She wore her black, for she said, "How do I know he is alive?" She
+retrenched her establishment, reduced her expenses two thirds, and
+busied herself in works of charity and religion.</p>
+
+<p>Her desolate condition attracted a gentleman who had once loved her, and
+now esteemed and pitied her profoundly,&mdash;Sir George Neville.</p>
+
+<p>He was still unmarried, and she was the cause; so far at least as this:
+she had put him out of conceit with the other ladies at that period when
+he had serious thoughts of marriage: and the inclination to marry at all
+had not since returned.</p>
+
+<p>If the Gaunts had settled at Boulton, Sir George would have been their
+near neighbor; but Neville's Court was nine miles from Hernshaw Castle:
+and when they met, which was not very often, Mrs. Gaunt was on her guard
+to give Griffith no shadow of uneasiness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> She was therefore rather more
+dignified and distant with Sir George than her own inclination and his
+merits would have prompted; for he was a superior and very agreeable
+man.</p>
+
+<p>When it became quite certain that her husband had left her, Sir George
+rode up to Hernshaw Castle, and called upon her.</p>
+
+<p>She begged to be excused from seeing him.</p>
+
+<p>Now Sir George was universally courted, and this rather nettled him;
+however, he soon learned that she received nobody except a few religious
+friends of her own sex.</p>
+
+<p>Sir George then wrote her a letter that did him credit: it was full of
+worthy sentiment and good sense. For instance, he said he desired to
+intrude his friendly offices and his sympathy upon her, but nothing
+more. Time had cured him of those warmer feelings which had once ruffled
+his peace; but Time could not efface his tender esteem for the lady he
+had loved in his youth, nor his profound respect for her character.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt wept over his gentle letter, and was on the verge of asking
+herself why she had chosen Griffith instead of this chevalier. She sent
+him a sweet, yet prudent reply; she did not encourage him to visit her;
+but said, that, if ever she should bring herself to receive visits from
+the gentlemen of the county during her husband's absence, he should be
+the first to know it. She signed herself his unhappy, but deeply
+grateful, servant and friend.</p>
+
+<p>One day, as she came out of a poor woman's cottage, with a little basket
+on her arm, which she had emptied in the cottage, she met Sir George
+Neville full.</p>
+
+<p>He took his hat off, and made her a profound bow. He was then about to
+ride on, but altered his mind, and, dismounted to speak to her.</p>
+
+<p>The interview was constrained at first; but erelong he ventured to tell
+her she really ought to consult with some old friend and practical man
+like himself. He would undertake to scour the country, and find her
+husband, if he was above ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Me go a-hunting the man," cried she, turning red; "not if he was my
+king as well as my husband. He knows where to find <i>me</i>; and that is
+enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but madam, would you not like to learn where he is, and what he
+is doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, my good, kind friend, I <i>should</i> like to know that." And,
+having pronounced these words with apparent calmness, she burst out
+crying, and almost ran away from him.</p>
+
+<p>Sir George looked sadly after her, and formed a worthy resolution. He
+saw there was but one road to her regard. He resolved to hunt her
+husband for her, without intruding on her, or giving her a voice in the
+matter. Sir George was a magistrate, and accustomed to organize
+inquiries; spite of the length of time that had elapsed, he traced
+Griffith for a considerable distance. Pending further inquiries, he sent
+Mrs. Gaunt word that the truant had not made for the sea, but had gone
+due south.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt returned him her warm thanks for this scrap of information.
+So long as Griffith remained in the island there was always a hope he
+might return to her. The money he had taken would soon be exhausted; and
+poverty might drive him to her; and she was so far humbled by grief,
+that she could welcome him even on those terms.</p>
+
+<p>Affliction tempers the proud. Mrs. Gaunt was deeply injured as well as
+insulted; but, for all that, in her many days and weeks of solitude and
+sorrow, she took herself to task, and saw her fault. She became more
+gentle, more considerate of her servants' feelings, more womanly.</p>
+
+<p>For many months she could not enter "the Grove." The spirited woman's
+very flesh revolted at the sight of the place where she had been
+insulted and abandoned. But, as she went deeper in religion, she forced
+herself to go to the gate and look in, and say out loud, "I gave the
+first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> offence," and then she would go in-doors again, quivering with
+the internal conflict.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, being a Catholic, and therefore attaching more value to
+self-torture than we do, the poor soul made this very grove her place of
+penance. Once a week she had the fortitude to drag herself to the very
+spot where Griffith had denounced her; and there she would kneel and
+pray for him and for herself. And certainly, if humility and
+self-abasement were qualities of the body, here was to be seen their
+picture; for her way was to set her crucifix up at the foot of a tree;
+then to bow herself all down, between kneeling and lying, and put her
+lips meekly to the foot of the crucifix, and so pray long and earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>Now, one day, while she was thus crouching in prayer, a gentleman,
+booted and spurred and splashed, drew near, with hesitating steps. She
+was so absorbed, she did not hear those steps at all till they were very
+near; but then she trembled all over; for her delicate ear recognized a
+manly tread she had not heard for many a day. She dared not move nor
+look, for she thought it was a mere sound, sent to her by Heaven to
+comfort her.</p>
+
+<p>But the next moment a well-known mellow voice came like a thunder-clap,
+it shook her so.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me, my good dame, but I desire to know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The question went no further, for Kate Gaunt sprang to her feet, with a
+loud scream, and stood glaring at Griffith Gaunt, and he at her.</p>
+
+<p>And thus husband and wife met again,&mdash;met, by some strange caprice of
+Destiny, on the very spot where they had parted so horribly.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXI.</h3>
+
+<p>The gaze these two persons bent on one another may be half imagined: it
+can never be described.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith spoke first. "In black!" said he, in a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>His voice was low; his face, though pale and grim, had not the terrible
+aspect he wore at parting.</p>
+
+<p>So she thought he had come back in an amicable spirit; and she flew to
+him, with a cry of love, and threw her arm round his neck, and panted on
+his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>At this reception, and the tremulous contact of one he had loved so
+dearly, a strange shudder ran through his frame,&mdash;a shudder that marked
+his present repugnance, yet indicated her latent power.</p>
+
+<p>He himself felt he had betrayed some weakness; and it was all the worse
+for her. He caught her wrist and put her from him, not roughly, but with
+a look of horror. "The day is gone by for that, madam," he gasped. Then,
+sternly: "Think you I came here to play the credulous husband?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt drew back in her turn, and faltered out, "What! come back
+here, and not sorry for what you have done? not the least sorry? O my
+heart! you have almost broken it."</p>
+
+<p>"Prithee, no more of this," said Griffith, sternly. "You and I are
+naught to one another now, and forever. But there, you are but a woman,
+and I did not come to quarrel with you." And he fixed his eyes on the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God for that," faltered Mrs. Gaunt. "O sir, the sight of you&mdash;the
+thought of what you were to me once&mdash;till jealousy blinded you. Lend me
+your arm, if you are a man; my limbs do fail me."</p>
+
+<p>The shock had been too much; a pallor overspread her lovely features,
+her knees knocked together, and she was tottering like some tender tree
+cut down, when Griffith, who, with all his faults, was a man, put out
+his strong arm, and she clung to it, quivering all over, and weeping
+hysterically.</p>
+
+<p>That little hand, with its little feminine clutch, trembling on his arm,
+raised a certain male compassion for her piteous condition; and he
+bestowed a few cold, sad words of encouragement on her. "Come, come,"
+said he, gently; "I shall not trouble you long. I'm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> cured of my
+jealousy. 'T is gone, along with my love. You and your saintly sinner
+are safe from me. I am come hither for my own, my two thousand pounds,
+and for nothing more."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! you are come back for money, not for me?" she murmured, with forced
+calmness.</p>
+
+<p>"For money, and not for you, of course," said he, coldly.</p>
+
+<p>The words were hardly out of his mouth, when the proud lady flung his
+arm from her. "Then money shall you have, and not me; nor aught of me
+but my contempt."</p>
+
+<p>But she could not carry it off as heretofore. She turned her back
+haughtily on him; but, at the first step, she burst out crying, "Come,
+and I'll give you what you are come for," she sobbed. "Ungrateful!
+heartless! O, how little I knew this man!"</p>
+
+<p>She crept away before him, drooping her head, and crying bitterly; and
+he followed her, hanging his head, and ill at ease; for there was such
+true passion in her voice, her streaming eyes, and indeed in her whole
+body, that he was moved, and the part he was playing revolted him. He
+felt confused and troubled, and asked himself how on earth it was that
+she, the guilty one, contrived to appear the injured one, and made him,
+the wronged one, feel almost remorseful.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt took no more notice of him now than if he had been a dog
+following at her heels. She went into the drawing-room, and sank
+helplessly on the nearest couch, threw her head wearily back, and shut
+her eyes. Yet the tears trickled through the closed lids.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith caught up a hand-bell, and rang it vigorously.</p>
+
+<p>Quick, light steps were soon heard pattering; and in darted Caroline
+Ryder, with an anxious face; for of late she had conceived a certain
+sober regard for her mistress, who had ceased to be her successful
+rival, and who bore her grief <i>like a man</i>.</p>
+
+<p>At sight of Griffith, Ryder screamed aloud, and stood panting.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt opened her eyes. "Ay, child, he has come home," said she,
+bitterly; "his body, but not his heart."</p>
+
+<p>She stretched her hand out feebly, and pointed to a bottle of salts that
+stood on the table. Ryder ran and put them to her nostrils. Mrs. Gaunt
+whispered in her ear, "Send a swift horse for Father Francis; tell him
+life or death!"</p>
+
+<p>Ryder gave her a very intelligent look, and presently slipped out, and
+ran into the stable-yard.</p>
+
+<p>At the gate she caught sight of Griffith's horse. What does this
+quick-witted creature do but send the groom off on that horse, and not
+on Mrs. Gaunt's.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Now, Dame," said Griffith, doggedly, "are you better?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, I thank you."</p>
+
+<p>"Then listen to me. When you and I set up house together, I had two
+thousand pounds. I spent it on this house. The house is yours. You told
+me so, one day, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you can remember my faults."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember all, Kate."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, at least, for calling me Kate. Well, Griffith, since you
+abandoned us, I thought, and thought, and thought, of all that might
+befall you; and I said, 'What will he do for money?' My jewels, that you
+did me the honor to take, would not last you long, I feared. So I
+reduced my expenses three fourths at least, and I put by some money for
+your need."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith looked amazed. "For my need?" said he.</p>
+
+<p>"For whose else? I'll send for it, and place it in your
+hands&mdash;to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow? Why not to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have a favor to ask of you first."</p>
+
+<p>"What is that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Justice. If you are fond of money, I too have something I prize: my
+honor. You have belied and insulted me, sir; but I know you were under a
+delusion. I mean to remove that delusion, and make you see how little I
+am to blame; for, alas! I own I was imprudent.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> But, O Griffith, as I
+hope to be saved, it was the imprudence of innocence and
+over-confidence."</p>
+
+<p>"Mistress," said Griffith, in a stern, yet agitated voice, "be advised,
+and leave all this: rouse not a man's sleeping wrath. Let bygones be
+bygones."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt rose, and said, faintly, "So be it. I must go, sir, and give
+some orders for your entertainment."</p>
+
+<p>"O, don't put yourself about for me," said Griffith: "I am not the
+master of this house."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt's lip trembled, but she was a match for him. "Then are you my
+guest," said she; "and my credit is concerned in your comfort."</p>
+
+<p>She made him a courtesy, as if he were a stranger, and marched to the
+door, concealing, with great pride and art, a certain trembling of her
+knees.</p>
+
+<p>At the door she found Ryder, and bade her follow, much to that lady's
+disappointment; for she desired a <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i> with Griffith, and an
+explanation.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the two women were out of Griffith's hearing, the mistress
+laid her hand on the servant's arm, and, giving way to her feelings,
+said, all in a flutter: "Child, if I have been a good mistress to thee,
+show it now. Help me keep him in the house till Father Francis comes."</p>
+
+<p>"I undertake to do so much," said Ryder, firmly. "Leave it to me,
+mistress."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt threw her arms round Ryder's neck and kissed her.</p>
+
+<p>It was done so ardently, and by a woman hitherto so dignified and proud,
+that Ryder was taken by surprise, and almost affected.</p>
+
+<p>As for the service Mrs. Gaunt had asked of her, it suited her own
+designs.</p>
+
+<p>"Mistress," said she, "be ruled by me; keep out of his way a bit, while
+I get Miss Rose ready. You understand."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! I have one true friend in the house," said poor Mrs. Gaunt. She
+then confided in Ryder, and went away to give her own orders for
+Griffith's reception.</p>
+
+<p>Ryder found little Rose, dressed her to perfection, and told her her
+dear papa was come home. She then worked upon the child's mind in that
+subtle way known to women, so that Rose went down stairs loaded and
+primed, though no distinct instructions had been given her.</p>
+
+<p>As for Griffith, he walked up and down, uneasy; and wished he had stayed
+at the "Packhorse." He had not bargained for all these emotions; the
+peace of mind he had enjoyed for some months seemed trickling away.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy, my dear," said he to himself, "'t will be a dear penny to me, I
+doubt."</p>
+
+<p>Then he went to the window, and looked at the lawn, and sighed. Then he
+sat down, and thought of the past.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst he sat thus moody, the door opened very softly, and a little
+cherubic face, with blue eyes and golden hair, peeped in. Griffith
+started. "Ah!" cried Rose, with a joyful scream; and out flew her little
+arms, and away she came, half running, half dancing, and was on his knee
+in a moment, with her arms round his neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Papa! papa!" she cried. "O my dear, dear, dear, darling papa!" And she
+kissed and patted his cheek again and again.</p>
+
+<p>Her innocent endearments moved him to tears. "My pretty angel!" he
+sighed: "my lamb!"</p>
+
+<p>"How your heart beats! Don't cry, dear papa. Nobody is dead: only we
+thought you were. I'm so glad you are come home alive. Now we can take
+off this nasty black: I hate it."</p>
+
+<p>"What, 't is for me you wear it, pretty one?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay. Mamma made us. Poor mamma has been so unhappy. And that reminds me:
+you are a wicked man, papa. But I love you all one for that. It <i>tis</i> so
+dull when everybody is good like mamma; and she makes me dreadfully good
+too; but now you are come back, there will be a little, little
+wickedness again, it is to be hoped. Aren't you glad you are not dead,
+and are come home instead? I am."</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad I have seen thee. Come,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> take my hand, and let us go look at
+the old place."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay. But you must wait till I get on my new hat and feather."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, nay; art pretty enough bare-headed."</p>
+
+<p>"O papa! but I must, for decency. You are company now; you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Dull company, sweetheart, thou 'lt find me."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mean that: I mean, when you were here always, you were only
+papa; but now you come once in an age, you're <span class="smcap">company</span>. I won't budge
+without 'em; so there, now."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, little one, I do submit to thy hat and feather; only be quick, or
+I shall go forth without thee."</p>
+
+<p>"If you dare," said Rose impetuously; "for I won't be half a moment."</p>
+
+<p>She ran and extorted from Ryder the new hat and feather, which by rights
+she was not to have worn until next month.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith and his little girl went all over the well-known premises, he
+sad and moody, she excited and chattering, and nodding her head down,
+and cocking her eye up every now and then, to get a glimpse of her
+feather.</p>
+
+<p>"And don't you go away again, dear papa. It <i>tis</i> so dull without you.
+Nobody comes here. Mamma won't let 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody except Father Leonard," said Griffith, bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>"Father Leonard? Why, he never comes here. Leonard! That is the
+beautiful priest that used to pat me on the head, and bid me love and
+honor my parents. And so I do. Only mamma is always crying, and you keep
+away; so how can I love and honor you, when I never see you, and they
+keep telling me you are good for nothing, and dead."</p>
+
+<p>"My young mistress, when did you see Father Leonard last?" said
+Griffith, gnawing his lip.</p>
+
+<p>"How can I tell? Why, it was miles ago; when I was a mere girl. You know
+he went away before you did."</p>
+
+<p>"I know nothing of the kind. Tell me the truth now. He has visited here
+since I went away."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, papa."</p>
+
+<p>"That is strange. She visits him, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"What, mamma? She seldom stirs out; and never beyond the village. We
+keep no carriage now. Mamma is turned such a miser. She is afraid you
+will be poor; so she puts it all by for you. But now you are come, we
+shall have carriages and things again. O, by the by, Father Leonard! I
+heard them say he had left England, so I did."</p>
+
+<p>"When was that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I think that was a little bit after you went away."</p>
+
+<p>"That is strange," said Griffith, thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>He led his little girl by the hand, but scarcely listened to her
+prattle; he was so surprised and puzzled by the information he had
+elicited from her.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the whole, however, he concluded that his wife and the priest had
+perhaps been smitten with remorse, and had parted&mdash;when it was too late.</p>
+
+<p>This, and the peace of mind he had found elsewhere, somewhat softened
+his feelings towards them. "So," thought he, "they were not hardened
+creatures after all. Poor Kate!"</p>
+
+<p>As these milder feelings gained on him, Rose suddenly uttered a joyful
+cry; and, looking up, he saw Mrs. Gaunt coming towards him, and Ryder
+behind her. Both were in gay colors, which, in fact, was what had so
+delighted Rose.</p>
+
+<p>They came up, and Mrs. Gaunt seemed a changed woman. She looked young
+and beautiful, and bent a look of angelic affection on her daughter; and
+said to Griffith, "Is she not grown? Is she not lovely? Sure you will
+never desert her again."</p>
+
+<p>"'T was not her I deserted, but her mother; and she had played me false
+with her d&mdash;&mdash;d priest," was Griffith's reply.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt drew back with horror. "This, before my girl?" she cried.
+"<span class="smcap">Griffith Gaunt, you lie!</span>"</p>
+
+<p>And this time it was the woman who menaced the man. She rose to six
+feet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> high, and advanced on him with her great gray eyes flashing flames
+at him. "O that I were a man!" she cried: "this insult should be the
+last. I'd lay you dead at her feet and mine."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith actually drew back a step; for the wrath of such a woman was
+terrible,&mdash;more terrible perhaps to a brave man than to a coward.</p>
+
+<p>Then he put his hands in his pockets with a dogged air, and said,
+grinding his teeth, "But&mdash;as you are not a man, and I'm not a woman, we
+can't settle it that way. So I give you the last word, and good day. I'm
+sore in want of money; but I find I can't pay the price it is like to
+cost me. Farewell."</p>
+
+<p>"Begone!" said Mrs. Gaunt: "and, this time, forever. Ruffian, and fool,
+I loathe the sight of you."</p>
+
+<p>Rose ran weeping to her. "O mamma, don't quarrel with papa": then back
+to Griffith, "O papa, don't quarrel with mamma,&mdash;for my sake."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith hung his head, and said, in a broken voice: "No, my lamb, we
+twain must not quarrel before thee. We will part in silence, as becomes
+those that once were dear, and have thee to show for 't. Madam, I wish
+you all health and happiness. Adieu."</p>
+
+<p>He turned on his heel; and Mrs. Gaunt took Rose to her knees, and bent
+and wept over her. Niobe over her last was not more graceful, nor more
+sad.</p>
+
+<p>As for Ryder, she stole quietly after her retiring master. She found him
+peering about, and asked him demurely what he was looking for.</p>
+
+<p>"My good black horse, girl, to take me from this cursed place. Did I not
+tie him to yon gate?"</p>
+
+<p>"The black horse? Why I sent him for Father Francis. Nay, listen to me,
+master; you know I was always your friend, and hard upon <i>her</i>. Well,
+since you went, things have come to pass that make me doubt. I do begin
+to fear you were too hasty."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you tell me this now, woman?" cried Griffith, furiously.</p>
+
+<p>"How could I tell you before? Why did you break your tryst with me? If
+you had come according to your letter, I'd have told you months ago what
+I tell you now; but, as I was saying, the priest never came near her
+after you left; and she never stirred abroad to meet him. More than
+that, he has left England."</p>
+
+<p>"Remorse! Too late."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it may, sir. I couldn't say; but there is one coming that knows
+the very truth."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Father Francis. The moment you came, sir, I took it on me to send for
+him. You know the man: he won't tell a lie to please our dame. And he
+knows all; for Leonard has confessed to him. I listened, and heard him
+say as much. Then, master, be advised, and get the truth from Father
+Francis."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith trembled. "Francis is an honest man," said he; "I'll wait till
+he comes. But O, my lass, I find money may be bought too dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Your chamber is ready, sir, and your clothes put out. Supper is
+ordered. Let me show you your room. We are all so happy now."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said he, listlessly, "since my horse is gone, and Francis
+coming, and I'm wearied and sick of the world, do what you will with me
+for this one day."</p>
+
+<p>He followed her mechanically to a bedroom, where was a bright fire, and
+a fine shirt, and his silver-laced suit of clothes airing.</p>
+
+<p>A sense of luxurious comfort struck him at the sight.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," said he, "I'll dress, and so to supper; I'm main hungry. It seems
+a man must eat, let his heart be ever so sore."</p>
+
+<p>Before she left him, Ryder asked him coldly why he had broken his
+appointment with her.</p>
+
+<p>"That is too long a story to tell you now," said he, coolly.</p>
+
+<p>"Another time then," said she; and went out smiling, but bitter at
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith had a good wash, and enjoyed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> certain little conveniences which
+he had not at the "Packhorse." He doffed his riding suit, and donned the
+magnificent dress Ryder had selected for him; and with his fine clothes
+he somehow put on more ceremonious manners.</p>
+
+<p>He came down to the dining-room. To his surprise he found it illuminated
+with wax candles, and the table and sideboard gorgeous with plate.</p>
+
+<p>Supper soon smoked upon the board; but, though it was set for three,
+nobody else appeared.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith inquired of Ryder whether he was to sup alone.</p>
+
+<p>She replied: "My mistress desires you not to wait for her. She has no
+stomach."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, I have," said Griffith, and fell to with a will.</p>
+
+<p>Ryder, who waited on this occasion, stood and eyed him with curiosity:
+his conduct was so unlike a woman's.</p>
+
+<p>Just as he concluded, the door opened, and a burly form entered.
+Griffith rose, and embraced him with his arms and lips, after the
+fashion of the day. "Welcome, thou one honest priest!" said he.</p>
+
+<p>"Welcome, thrice welcome, my long lost son!" said the cordial Francis.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, man, and eat with me. I'll begin again, for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Presently, Squire; I've work to do first. Go thou and bid thy mistress
+come hither to me."</p>
+
+<p>Ryder, to whom this was addressed, went out, and left the gentlemen
+together.</p>
+
+<p>Father Francis drew out of his pocket two packets, carefully tied and
+sealed. He took a knife from the table and cut the strings, and broke
+the seals. Griffith eyed him with curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>Father Francis looked at him. "These," said he, very gravely, "are the
+letters that Brother Leonard hath written, at sundry times, to Catharine
+Gaunt, and these are the letters Catharine Gaunt hath written to Brother
+Leonard."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith trembled, and his face was convulsed.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me read them at once," said he: and stretched out his hand, with
+eyes like a dog's in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>Francis withdrew them, quietly. "Not till she is also present," said he.</p>
+
+<p>At that Griffith's good-nature, multiplied by a good supper, took the
+alarm. "Come, come, sir," said he, "have a little mercy. I know you are
+a just man, and, though a boon companion, most severe in all matters of
+morality. But, I tell you plainly, if you are going to drag this poor
+woman in the dirt, I shall go out of the room. What is the use
+tormenting her? I've told her my mind before her own child: and now I
+wish I had not. When I caught them in the grove I lifted my hand to
+strike her, and she never winced; I had better have left that alone too,
+methinks. D&mdash;n the women: you are always in the wrong if you treat 'em
+like men. They are not wicked: they are weak. And this one hath lain in
+my bosom, and borne me two children, and one he lieth in the churchyard,
+and t' other hath her hair and my very eyes: and the truth is, I can't
+bear any man on earth to miscall her, but myself. God help me; I doubt I
+love her still too well to sit by and see her tortured. She was all in
+black for her fault, poor penitent wretch. Give me the letters; but let
+her be."</p>
+
+<p>Francis was moved by this appeal, but shook his head solemnly; and, ere
+Griffith could renew his argument, the door was flung open by Ryder, and
+a stately figure sailed in, that took both the gentlemen by surprise.</p>
+
+<p>It was Mrs. Gaunt, in full dress. Rich brocade that swept the ground;
+magnificent bust, like Parian marble varnished; and on her brow a diadem
+of emeralds and diamonds that gave her beauty an imperial stamp.</p>
+
+<p>She swept into the room as only fine women can sweep, made Griffith a
+haughty courtesy, and suddenly lowered her head, and received Father
+Francis's blessing: then seated herself, and quietly awaited events.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The brazen jade!" thought Griffith. "But how divinely beautiful!" And
+he became as agitated as she was calm&mdash;in appearance. For need I say her
+calmness was put on? Defensive armor made for her by her pride and her
+sex.</p>
+
+<p>The voice of Father Francis now rose, solid, grave, and too impressive
+to be interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>"My daughter, and you who are her husband and my friend, I am here to do
+justice between you both, with God's help; and to show you both your
+faults. Catharine Gaunt, you began the mischief, by encouraging another
+man to interfere between you and your husband in things secular."</p>
+
+<p>"But, father, he was my director, my priest."</p>
+
+<p>"My daughter, do you believe, with the Protestants, that marriage is a
+mere civil contract; or do you hold, with us, that it is one of the holy
+sacraments?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can you ask me?" murmured Kate, reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, those whom God and the whole Church have in holy sacrament
+united, what right hath a single priest to disunite in heart, and make
+the wife false to any part whatever of that most holy vow? I hear, and
+not from you, that Leonard did set you against your husband's friends,
+withdrew you from society, and sent him abroad alone. In one word, he
+robbed your husband of his companion and his friend. The sin was
+Leonard's; but the fault was yours. You were five years older than
+Leonard, and a woman of sense and experience; he but a boy by
+comparison. What right had you to surrender your understanding, in a
+matter of this kind, to a poor silly priest, fresh from his seminary,
+and as manifestly without a grain of common sense as he was full of
+piety?"</p>
+
+<p>This remonstrance produced rather a striking effect on both those who
+heard it. Mrs. Gaunt seemed much struck with it. She leaned back in her
+chair, and put her hand to her brow with a sort of despairing gesture
+that Griffith could not very well understand, it seemed to him so
+disproportionate.</p>
+
+<p>It softened him, however, and he faltered out, "Ay, father, that is how
+it all began. Would to heaven it had stopped there."</p>
+
+<p>Francis resumed. "This false step led to consequences you never dreamed
+of; for one of your romantic notions is, that a priest is an angel. I
+have known you, in former times, try to take me for an angel: then would
+I throw cold water on your folly by calling lustily for chines of beef
+and mugs of ale. But I suppose Leonard thought himself an angel too; and
+the upshot was, he fell in love with his neighbor's wife."</p>
+
+<p>"And she with him," groaned Griffith.</p>
+
+<p>"Not so," said Francis; "but perhaps she was nearer it than she thinks."</p>
+
+<p>"Prove that," said Mrs. Gaunt, "and I'll fall on my knees to him before
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Francis smiled, and proceeded. "To be sure, from the moment you
+discovered Leonard was in love with you, you drew back, and conducted
+yourself with prudence and propriety. Read these letters, sir, and tell
+me what you think of them."</p>
+
+<p>He handed them to Griffith. Griffith's hand trembled visibly as he took
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"Stay," said Father Francis; "your better way will be to read the whole
+correspondence according to the dates. Begin with this of Mrs. Gaunt's."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith read the letter in an audible whisper.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt listened with all her ears.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Father and Friend</span>,&mdash;The words you spoke to me to-day
+admit but one meaning; you are jealous of my husband.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you must be&mdash;how can I write it?&mdash;almost in love with me.</p>
+
+<p>"So then my poor husband was wiser than I. He saw a rival in
+you: and he has one.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I am deeply, deeply shocked. I ought to be very angry too;
+but, thinking of your solitary condition, and all the good you
+have done to my soul, my heart has no place for aught but pity.
+Only, as I am in my senses, and you are not, you must now obey
+me, as heretofore I have obeyed you. You must seek another
+sphere of duty, without delay.</p>
+
+<p>"These seem harsh words from me to you. You will live to see
+they are kind ones.</p>
+
+<p>"Write me one line, and no more, to say you will be ruled by me
+in this.</p>
+
+<p>"God and the saints have you in their holy keeping. So prays
+your affectionate and</p>
+
+<p>"Sorrowful daughter and true friend,</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="right">"<span class="smcap">Catharine Gaunt</span>."</p>
+
+
+<p>"Poor soul!" said Griffith. "Said I not that women are not wicked, but
+weak? Who would think that after this he could get the better of her
+good resolves,&mdash;the villain!"</p>
+
+<p>"Now read his reply," said Father Francis.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," said Griffith. "So this is his one word of reply, is it? three
+pages closely writ,&mdash;the villain, O the villain!"</p>
+
+<p>"Read the villain's letter," said Francis, calmly.</p>
+
+<p>The letter was very humble and pathetic,&mdash;the reply of a good, though
+erring man, who owned that in a moment of weakness he had been betrayed
+into a feeling inconsistent with his holy profession. He begged his
+correspondent, however, not to judge him quite so hardly. He reminded
+her of his solitary life, his natural melancholy, and assured her that
+all men in his condition had moments when they envied those whose bosoms
+had partners. "Such a cry of anguish," said he, "was once wrung from a
+maiden queen, maugre all her pride. The Queen of Scots hath a son; and I
+am but a barren stock." He went on to say that prayer and vigilance
+united do much. "Do not despair so soon of me. Flight is not cure: let
+me rather stay, and, with God's help and the saints', overcome this
+unhappy weakness. If I fail, it will indeed be time for me to go, and
+never again see the angelic face of my daughter and my benefactress."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith laid down the letter. He was somewhat softened by it, and said,
+gently, "I cannot understand it. This is not the letter of a thorough
+bad man neither."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Father Francis, coldly, "'t is the letter of a self-deceiver;
+and there is no more dangerous man to himself and others than your
+self-deceiver. But now let us see whether he can throw dust in her eyes,
+as well as his own." And he handed him Kate's reply.</p>
+
+<p>The first word of it was, "You deceive yourself." The writer then
+insisted, quietly, that he owed it to himself, to her, and to her
+husband, whose happiness he was destroying, to leave the place at her
+request.</p>
+
+<p>"Either you must go, or I," said she: "and pray let it be you. Also,
+this place is unworthy of your high gifts: and I love you, in my way,
+the way I mean to love you when we meet again&mdash;in heaven; and I labor
+your advancement to a sphere more worthy of you."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I wish space permitted me to lay the whole correspondence before the
+reader; but I must confine myself to its general purport.</p>
+
+<p>It proceeded in this way: the priest, humble, eloquent, pathetic; but
+gently, yet pertinaciously, clinging to the place: the lady, gentle,
+wise, and firm, detaching with her soft fingers, first one hand, then
+another, of the poor priest's, till at last he was driven to the sorry
+excuse that he had no money to travel with, nor place to go to.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't understand it," said Griffith. "Are these letters all forged,
+or are there two Kate Gaunts? the one that wrote these prudent letters,
+and the one I caught upon this very priest's arm. Perdition!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt started to her feet.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> "Methinks 'tis time for me to leave the
+room," said she, scarlet.</p>
+
+<p>"Gently, my good friends; one thing at a time," said Francis. "Sit thou
+down, impetuous. The letters, sir,&mdash;what think you of them?"</p>
+
+<p>"I see no harm in them," said Griffith.</p>
+
+<p>"No harm! Is that all? But I say these are very remarkable letters, sir:
+and they show us that a woman may be innocent and unsuspicious, and so
+seem foolish, yet may be wise for all that. In her early communication
+with Leonard,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">'At Wisdom's gate Suspicion slept;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thought no ill where no ill seemed.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But, you see, suspicion being once aroused, wisdom was not to be lulled
+nor blinded. But that is not all: these letters breathe a spirit of
+Christian charity; of true, and rare, and exalted piety. Tender are
+they, without passion; wise, yet not cold; full of conjugal love, and of
+filial pity for an erring father, whom she leads, for his good, with
+firm yet dutiful hand. Trust to my great experience: doubt the chastity
+of snow rather than hers who could write these pure and exquisite lines.
+My good friend, you heard me rebuke and sneer at this poor lady for
+being too innocent and unsuspicious of man's frailty: now hear me own to
+you that I could no more have written these angelic letters than a
+barn-door fowl could soar to the mansions of the saints in heaven."</p>
+
+<p>This unexpected tribute took Mrs. Gaunt's heart by storm; she threw her
+arms round Father Francis's neck, and wept upon his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" she sobbed, "you are the only one left that loves me."</p>
+
+<p>She could not understand justice praising her: it must be love.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," said Griffith, in a broken voice, "she writes like an angel: she
+speaks like an angel: she looks like an angel. My heart says she is an
+angel. But my eyes have shown me she is naught. I left her, unable to
+walk, by her way of it; I came back and found her on that priest's arm,
+springing along like a greyhound." He buried his head in his hands, and
+groaned aloud.</p>
+
+<p>Francis turned to Mrs. Gaunt, and said, a little severely, "How do you
+account for that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell <i>you</i>, Father," said Kate, "because you love me. I do not
+speak to <i>you</i>, sir: for you never loved me."</p>
+
+<p>"I could give thee the lie," said Griffith, in a trembling voice; "but
+'tis not worth while. Know, sir, that within twenty-four hours after I
+caught her with that villain, I lay a-dying for her sake; and lost my
+wits; and, when I came to, they were a-making my shroud in the very room
+where I lay. No matter; no matter; I never loved her."</p>
+
+<p>"Alas! poor soul!" sighed Kate. "Would I had died ere I brought thee to
+that!" And, with this, they both began to cry at the same moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, poor fools," said Father Francis, softly; "neither of ye loved t'
+other; that is plain. So now sit you there, and let us have your
+explanation; for you must own appearances are strong against you."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt drew her stool to Francis's knee; and addressing herself to
+him alone, explained as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I saw Father Leonard was giving way, and only wanted one good push,
+after a manner. Well, you know I had got him, by my friends, a good
+place in Ireland: and I had money by me for his journey; so, when my
+husband talked of going to the fair, I thought, 'O, if I could but get
+this settled to his mind before he comes back!' So I wrote a line to
+Leonard. You can read it if you like. 'T is dated the 30th of September,
+I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"I will," said Francis, and read this out:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Father and Friend</span>,&mdash;You have fought the good fight, and
+conquered. Now, therefore, I <i>will</i>see you once more, and thank
+you for my husband (he is so unhappy), and put<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> the money for
+your journey into your hand myself,&mdash;your journey to Ireland.
+You are the Duke of Leinster's chaplain; for I have accepted
+that place for you. Let me see you to-morrow in the Grove, for
+a few minutes, at high noon. God bless you.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="right">"<span class="smcap">Catharine Gaunt</span>."</p>
+
+
+<p>"Well, father," said Mrs. Gaunt, "'t is true that I could only walk two
+or three times across the room. But, alack, you know what women are:
+excitement gives us strength. With thinking that our unhappiness was at
+an end,&mdash;that, when he should come back from the fair, I should fling my
+arm round his neck, and tell him I had removed the cause of his misery,
+and so of mine,&mdash;I seemed to have wings; and I did walk with Leonard,
+and talked with rapture of the good he was to do in Ireland, and how he
+was to be a mitred abbot one day (for he is a great man), and poor
+little me be proud of him; and how we were all to be happy together in
+heaven, where is no marrying nor giving in marriage. This was our
+discourse; and I was just putting the purse into his hands, and bidding
+him God-speed, when he&mdash;for whom I fought against my woman's nature, and
+took this trying task upon me&mdash;broke in upon us, with the face of a
+fiend; trampled on the poor, good priest, that deserved veneration and
+consolation from him, of all men; and raised his hand to me; and was not
+man enough to kill me after all; but called me&mdash;ask him what he called
+me&mdash;see if he dares to say it again before you; and then ran away,
+like a coward as he is, from the lady he had defiled with his rude
+tongue, and the heart he had broken. Forgive him? that I never
+will,&mdash;never,&mdash;never."</p>
+
+<p>"Who asked you to forgive him?" said the shrewd priest. "Your own heart.
+Come, look at him."</p>
+
+<p>"Not I," said she, irresolutely. Then, still more feebly: "He is naught
+to me." And so stole a look at him.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith, pale as ashes, had his hand on his brow, and his eyes were
+fixed with horror and remorse.</p>
+
+<p>"Something tells me she has spoken the truth," he said, in a quavering
+voice. Then, with concentrated horror, "But if so&mdash;O God, what have I
+done?&mdash;What shall I do?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt extended her arms towards him across the priest.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, fall at thy wife's knees and ask her to forgive thee."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith obeyed: he fell on his knees, and Mrs. Gaunt leaned her head on
+Francis's shoulder, and gave her hand across him to her remorse-stricken
+husband.</p>
+
+<p>Neither spoke, nor desired to speak; and even Father Francis sat silent,
+and enjoyed that sweet glow which sometimes blesses the peacemaker, even
+in this world of wrangles and jars.</p>
+
+<p>But the good soul had ridden hard, and the neglected meats emitted
+savory odors; and by and by he said dryly, "I wonder whether that fat
+pullet tastes as well as it smells: can you tell me, Squire?"</p>
+
+<p>"O, inhospitable wretch that I am!" said Mrs. Gaunt: "I thought but of
+my own heart."</p>
+
+<p>"And forgot the stomach of your unspiritual father. But, my dear, you
+are pale, you tremble."</p>
+
+<p>"'T is nothing, sir: I shall soon be better. Sit you down and sup: I
+will return anon."</p>
+
+<p>She retired, not to make a fuss; but her heart palpitated violently, and
+she had to sit down on the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>Ryder, who was prowling about, found her there, and fetched her
+hartshorn.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt got better; but felt so languid, and also hysterical, that
+she retired to her own room for the night, attended by the faithful
+Ryder, to whom she confided that a reconciliation had taken place, and,
+to celebrate it, gave her a dress she had only worn a year. This does
+not sound queenly to you ladies; but know that a week's wear tells far
+more on the flimsy trash you wear now-a-days, than a year did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> on the
+glorious silks of Lyons Mrs. Gaunt put on; thick as broadcloth, and
+embroidered so cunningly by the loom, that it would pass for rarest
+needle-work. Besides, in those days, silk was silk.</p>
+
+<p>As Ryder left her, she asked, "Where is master to lie to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt was not pleased at this question being put to her. She would
+have preferred to leave that to Griffith. And, as she was a singular
+mixture of frankness and finesse, I believe she had retired to her own
+room partly to test Griffith's heart. If he was as sincere as she was,
+he would not be content with a public reconciliation.</p>
+
+<p>But the question being put to her plump, and by one of her own sex, she
+colored faintly, and said, "Why, is there not a bed in his room?"</p>
+
+<p>"O yes, madam."</p>
+
+<p>"Then see it be well aired. Put down all the things before the fire; and
+then tell me: I'll come and see. The feather-bed, mind, as well as the
+sheets and blankets."</p>
+
+<p>Ryder executed all this with zeal. She did more; though Griffith and
+Francis sat up very late, she sat up too; and, on the gentlemen leaving
+the supper-room, she met them both, with bed-candles, in a delightful
+cap, and undertook, with cordial smiles, to show them both their
+chambers.</p>
+
+<p>"Tread softly on the landing, an if it please you, gentlemen. My
+mistress hath been unwell; but she is in a fine sleep now, by the
+blessing, and I would not have her disturbed."</p>
+
+<p>Good, faithful, single-hearted Ryder!</p>
+
+<p>Father Francis went to bed thoughtful. There was something about
+Griffith he did not like: the man every now and then broke out into
+boisterous raptures, and presently relapsed into moody thoughtfulness.
+Francis almost feared that his cure was only temporary.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning, before he left, he drew Mrs. Gaunt aside, and told her
+his misgivings. She replied that she thought she knew what was amiss,
+and would soon set that right.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith tossed and turned in his bed, and spent a stormy night. His
+mind was in a confused whirl, and his heart distracted. The wife he had
+loved so tenderly proved to be the very reverse of all he had lately
+thought her! She was pure as snow, and had always loved him; loved him
+now, and only wanted a good excuse to take him to her arms again. But
+Mercy Vint!&mdash;his wife, his benefactress! a woman as chaste as Kate, as
+strict in life and morals,&mdash;what was to become of her? How could he tell
+her she was not his wife? how reveal to her her own calamity, and his
+treason? And, on the other hand, desert her without a word! and leave
+her hoping, fearing, pining, all her life! Affection, humanity,
+gratitude, alike forbade it.</p>
+
+<p>He came down in the morning, pale for him, and worn with the inward
+struggle.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally there was a restraint between him and Mrs. Gaunt; and only
+short sentences passed between them.</p>
+
+<p>He saw the peacemaker off, and then wandered all over the premises, and
+the past came nearer, and the present seemed to retire into the
+background.</p>
+
+<p>He wandered about like one in a dream; and was so self-absorbed, that he
+did not see Mrs. Gaunt coming towards him, with observant eyes.</p>
+
+<p>She met him full; he started like a guilty thing.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you afraid of me?" said she, sweetly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, my dear, not exactly; and yet I am: afraid, or ashamed, or both."</p>
+
+<p>"You need not. I said I forgive you; and you know I am not one that does
+things by halves."</p>
+
+<p>"You are an angel!" said he, warmly; "but" (suddenly relapsing into
+despondency) "we shall never be happy together again."</p>
+
+<p>She sighed. "Say not so. Time and sweet recollections may heal even this
+wound by degrees."</p>
+
+<p>"God grant it," said he, despairingly.</p>
+
+<p>"And, though we can't be lovers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> again all at once, we may be friends.
+To begin, tell me, what have you on your mind? Come, make a friend of
+me."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her in alarm.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled. "Shall I guess?" said she.</p>
+
+<p>"You will never guess," said he; "and I shall never have the heart to
+tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me try. Well, I think you have run in debt, and are afraid to ask
+me for the money."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith was greatly relieved by this conjecture; he drew a long breath;
+and, after a pause, said cunningly, "What made you think that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because you came here for money, and not for happiness. You told me so
+in the Grove."</p>
+
+<p>"That is true. What a sordid wretch you must think me!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, because you were under a delusion. But I do believe you are just
+the man to turn reckless, when you thought me false, and go drinking and
+dicing." She added eagerly, "I do not suspect you of anything worse."</p>
+
+<p>He assured her that was not the way of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Then tell me the way of it. You must not think, because I pester you
+not with questions, I have no curiosity. O, how often I have longed to
+be a bird, and watch you day and night unseen! How would you have liked
+that? I wish you had been one, to watch me. Ah, you don't answer. Could
+you have borne so close an inspection, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>Griffith shuddered at the idea; and his eyes fell before the full gray
+orbs of his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, never mind," said she. "Tell me your story."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, when I left you, I was raving mad."</p>
+
+<p>"That is true, I'll be sworn."</p>
+
+<p>"I let my horse go; and he took me near a hundred miles from here, and
+stopped at&mdash;at&mdash;a farm-house. The good people took me in."</p>
+
+<p>"God bless them for it. I'll ride and thank them."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, nay; 't is too far. There I fell sick of a fever, a brain-fever:
+the doctor blooded me."</p>
+
+<p>"Alas! would he had taken mine instead."</p>
+
+<p>"And I lost my wits for several days; and when I came back, I was weak
+as water, and given up by the doctor; and the first thing I saw was an
+old hag set a-making of my shroud."</p>
+
+<p>Here the narrative was interrupted a moment by Mrs. Gaunt seizing him
+convulsively; and then holding him tenderly, as if he was even now about
+to be taken from her.</p>
+
+<p>"The good people nursed me, and so did their daughter, and I came back
+from the grave. I took an inn; but I gave up that, and had to pay
+forfeit; and so my money all went; but they kept me on. To be sure I
+helped on the farm: they kept a hostelry as well. By and by came that
+murrain among the cattle. Did you have it in these parts, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know not; nor care. Prithee, leave cattle, and talk of thyself."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, in a word, they were ruined, and going to be sold up. I could not
+bear that: I became bondsman for the old man. It was the least I could
+do. Kate, they had saved thy husband's life."</p>
+
+<p>"Not a word more, Griffith. How much stand you pledged for?"</p>
+
+<p>"A large sum."</p>
+
+<p>"Would five hundred pounds be of any avail?"</p>
+
+<p>"Five hundred pounds! Ay, that it would, and to spare; but where can I
+get so much money? And the time so short."</p>
+
+<p>"Give me thy hand, and come with me," said Mrs. Gaunt, ardently.</p>
+
+<p>She took his hand, and made a swift rush across the lawn. It was not
+exactly running, nor walking, but some grand motion she had when
+excited. She put him to his stride to keep up with her at all; and in
+two minutes she had him into her boudoir. She unlocked a bureau, all in
+a hurry, and took out a bag of gold. "There!" she cried, thrusting it
+into his hand, and blooming all over with joy and eagerness: "I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> thought
+you would want money; so I saved it up. You shall not be in debt a day
+longer. Now mount thy horse, and carry it to those good souls; only, for
+my sake, take the gardener with thee,&mdash;I have no groom now but he,&mdash;and
+both well armed."</p>
+
+<p>"What! go this very day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, this very hour. I can bear thy absence for a day or two more,&mdash;I
+have borne it so long; but I cannot bear thy plighted word to stand in
+doubt a day, no, not an hour. I am your wife, sir, your true and loving
+wife: your honor is mine, and is as dear to me now as it was when you
+saw me with Father Leonard in the Grove, and read me all awry. Don't
+wait a moment. Begone at once."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, nay, if I go to-morrow, I shall be in time."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, but," said Mrs. Gaunt, very softly, "I am afraid if I keep you
+another hour I shall not have the heart to let you go at all; and the
+sooner gone, the sooner back for good, please God. There, give me one
+kiss, to live on, and begone this instant."</p>
+
+<p>He covered her hands with kisses and tears. "I'm not worthy to kiss any
+higher than thy hand," he said, and so ran sobbing from her.</p>
+
+<p>He went straight to the stable, and saddled Black Dick.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>INDIAN MEDICINE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Every one who has fed his boyish fancy with the stories of pioneers and
+hunters has heard of the character known among Indians as the
+"medicine-man." But it may very likely be the case that few of those
+familiar with the term really know the import of the word. A somewhat
+protracted residence among the Blackfoot tribe of Indians, and an
+extensive observation of men and manners as they appear in the wilder
+parts of the Rocky Mountains and British America, have enabled the
+writer to give some facts which may not prove wholly uninteresting.</p>
+
+<p>By the term "medicine" much more is implied than mere curative drugs, or
+a system of curative practice. Among all the tribes of American Indians,
+the word is used with a double signification,&mdash;a literal and narrow
+meaning, and a general and rather undefined application. It signifies
+not only physical remedies and the art of using them, but second-sight,
+prophecy, and preternatural power. As an adjective, it embraces the idea
+of supernatural as well as remedial.</p>
+
+<p>As an example of the use of the word in its mystic signification, the
+following may be given. The <i>horse</i>, as is well known, was to the
+Indian, on its first importation, a strange and terrible beast. Having
+no native word by which to designate this hitherto unknown creature, the
+Indians contrived a name by combining the name of some familiar animal,
+most nearly resembling the horse, with the "medicine" term denoting
+astonishment or awe. Consequently the Blackfeet, adding to the word
+"Elk" (<i>Pounika</i>) the adjective "medicine" (<i>t&#333;s</i>) called the horse
+<i>Pou-nika-ma-ta</i>, i. e. Medicine Elk. This word is still their
+designation for a horse.</p>
+
+<p>With this idea of medicine, and recollecting that the word is used to
+express two classes of thoughts very different, and separated by
+civilization, though confounded by the savage, it will not surprise one
+to find that the medicine-men are conjurers as well as doctors, and that
+their conjurations partake as much of medical quackery as does their
+medical practice of affected incantation. As physicians, the
+medicine-men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> are below contempt, and, but for the savage cruelty of
+their ignorance, undeserving of notice. The writer has known a man to
+have his uvula and palate torn out by a medicine-man. In that case the
+disease was a hacking cough caused by an elongation of the uvula; and
+the remedy adopted (after preparatory singing, dancing, burning buffalo
+hair, and other conjurations) was to seize the uvula with a pair of
+bullet-moulds, and tear from the poor wretch every tissue that would
+give way. Death of course ensued in a short time. The unfortunate man
+had, however, died in "able hands," and according to the "highest
+principles of [Indian] medical art."</p>
+
+<p>Were I to tell how barbarously I have seen men mutilated, simply to
+extract an arrow-head from a wound, the story would scarce be credited.
+Common sense has no place in the system of Indian medicine-men, nor do
+they appear to have gained an idea, beyond the rudest, from experience.</p>
+
+<p>In their quality of seers, however, they are more important, and
+frequently more successful persons, attaining, of course, various
+degrees of proficiency and reputation. An accomplished dreamer has a
+sure competency in that gift. He is reverently consulted, handsomely
+paid, and, in general, strictly obeyed. His influence, when once
+established, is more potent even than that of a war chief. The dignity
+and profit of the position are baits sufficient to command the attention
+and ambition of the ablest men; yet it is not unfrequently the case that
+persons otherwise undistinguished are noted for clear and strong powers
+of "medicine."</p>
+
+<p>Of the three most distinguished medicine-men known to the writer, but
+one was a man of powerful intellect. Even this person preferred a
+somewhat sedentary, and what might be called a strictly professional
+life, to the usual active habits of the hunting and warring tribes. He
+dwelt almost alone on a far northern branch of the Saskatchewan River,
+revered for his gifts, feared for his power, and always approached with
+something of reluctance by the Indians, who firmly believed the spirit
+of the gods to dwell within him. He was an austere and taciturn man,
+difficult of access, and as vain and ambitious as he was haughty and
+contemptuous. Those who professed to have witnessed the scene told of a
+trial of power between this man&mdash;the Black Snake, as he was called&mdash;and
+a renowned medicine-man of a neighboring tribe. The contest, from what
+the Indians said, must have occurred about 1855.</p>
+
+<p>The rival medicine-men, each furnished with his medicine-bag, his
+amulets, and other professional paraphernalia, arrayed in full dress,
+and covered with war-paint, met in the presence of a great concourse.
+Both had prepared for the encounter by long fasting and conjurations.
+After the pipe, which precedes all important councils, the medicine-men
+sat down opposite to each other, a few feet apart. The trial of power
+seems to have been conducted on principles of animal magnetism, and
+lasted a long while without decided advantage on either side; until the
+Black Snake, concentrating all his power, or "gathering his medicine,"
+in a loud voice commanded his opponent to die. The unfortunate conjurer
+succumbed, and in a few minutes "his spirit," as my informant said,
+"went beyond the Sand Buttes." The only charm or amulet ever used by the
+Black Snake is said to have been a small bean-shaped pebble suspended
+round his neck by a cord of moose sinew. He had his books, it is true,
+but they were rarely exhibited.<a name="FNanchor_E_5" id="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a></p>
+
+<p>The death of his rival, by means so purely non-mechanical or physical,
+gave the Black Snake a pre-eminence in "medicine" which he has ever
+since maintained. It was useless to suggest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> poison, deception, or
+collusion, to explain the occurrence. The firm belief was that the
+spiritual power of the Black Snake had alone secured his triumph.</p>
+
+<p>I mentioned this story to a highly educated and deeply religious man of
+my acquaintance. He was a priest of the Jesuit order, a European by
+birth, formerly a professor in a Continental university of high repute,
+and beyond doubt a guileless and pious man. His acquaintance with Indian
+life extended over more than twenty years of missionary labor in the
+wildest parts of the west slope of the Rocky Mountains. To my surprise,
+(for I was then a novice in the country,) I found him neither
+astonished, nor shocked, nor amused, by what seemed to me so gross a
+superstition.</p>
+
+<p>"I have seen," said he, "many exhibitions of power which my philosophy
+cannot explain. I have known predictions of events far in the future to
+be literally fulfilled, and have seen medicine tested in the most
+conclusive ways. I once saw a Kootenai Indian (known generally as
+Skookum-tamahe-rewos, from his extraordinary power) command a mountain
+sheep to fall dead, and the animal, then leaping among the rocks of the
+mountain-side, fell instantly lifeless. This I saw with my own eyes, and
+I ate of the animal afterwards. It was unwounded, healthy, and perfectly
+wild. Ah!" continued he, crossing himself and looking upwards, "Mary
+protect us! the medicine-men have power from Sathanas."<a name="FNanchor_F_6" id="FNanchor_F_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_F_6" class="fnanchor">[F]</a></p>
+
+<p>This statement, made by so responsible a person, attracted my attention
+to what before seemed but a clumsy species of juggling. During many
+months of intimate knowledge of Indian life,&mdash;as an adopted member of a
+tribe, as a resident in their camps, and their companion on hunts and
+war-parties,&mdash;I lost no opportunity of gathering information concerning
+their religious belief and traditions, and the system of <i>medicine</i>, as
+it prevails in its purity. It would be foreign to the design of this
+desultory paper to enter at large upon the history of creation as
+preserved by the Indians in their traditions, the conflicts of the
+Beneficent Spirit with the Adversary, and the Indian idea of a future
+state. With all these, the present sketch has no further concern than a
+mere statement that "medicine" is based upon the idea of an overruling
+and all-powerful Providence, who acts at His good pleasure, through
+human instruments. Those among Christians who entertain the doctrine of
+Special Providences may find in the untutored Indian a faith as firm as
+theirs,&mdash;not sharply defined, or understood by the Indian himself, but
+inborn and ineradicable.</p>
+
+<p>The Indian, being thoroughly ignorant of all things not connected with
+war or the chase, is necessarily superstitious. His imagination is
+active,&mdash;generally more so than are his reasoning powers,&mdash;and fits him
+for a ready belief in the powers of any able mediciner. On one occasion,
+Meldram, a white man in the employ of the American Fur Company, found
+himself suddenly elevated to high rank as a seer by a foolish or
+petulant remark. He was engaged in making a rude press for baling furs,
+and had got a heavy lever in position. A large party of Crow Indians who
+were near at hand, considering his press a marvel of mechanical
+ingenuity, were very inquisitive as to its uses. Meldram, with an
+assumption of severity, told them the machine was "snow medicine," and
+that it would make snow to fall until it reached the end of a cord that
+dangled from the lever and reached within a yard of the ground. The fame
+of so potent a medicine spread rapidly through the Crow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> nation. The
+machine was visited by hundreds, and the fall of snow anxiously looked
+for by the entire tribe. To the awe of every Indian, and the
+astonishment of the few trappers then at the mouth of the Yellowstone,
+the snow actually reached the end of the rope, and did not during the
+winter attain any greater depth. Meldram found greatness thrust upon
+him. He has lived for more than forty years among the Crows, and when I
+knew him was much consulted as a medicine-man. His chief charms, or
+amulets, were a large bull's-eye silver watch, and a copy of "Ayer's
+Family Almanac," in which was displayed the human body encircled by the
+signs of the zodiac.</p>
+
+<p>The position and ease attendant upon a reputation for medicine power
+cause many unsuccessful pretenders to embrace the profession; and it
+would seem strange that their failures should not have brought medicine
+into disrepute. In looking closely into this, a well-marked distinction
+will always be found between <i>medicine</i> and the <i>medicine-man</i>,&mdash;quite
+as broad as is made with us between religion and the preacher. I have
+seen would-be medicine-men laughed at through the camp,&mdash;men of
+reputation as warriors, and respected in council, but whose <i>forte</i> was
+not the reading of dreams or the prediction of events. On the other
+hand, I have seen persons of inferior intellect, without courage on the
+war-path or wisdom in the council, revered as the channels through
+which, in some unexplained manner, the Great Spirit warned or advised
+his creatures.</p>
+
+<p>Of course it is no purpose of this paper to uphold or attack these
+peculiar ideas. A meagre presentation of a few facts not generally known
+is all that is aimed at. Whether the system of Indian medicine be a
+variety of Mesmerism, Magnetism, Spiritualism, or what not, others may
+inquire and determine. One bred a Calvinist, as was the writer, may be
+supposed to have viewed with suspicion the exhibitions of medicine power
+that almost daily presented themselves. And while, in very numerous
+instances, they proved to be but the impudent pretensions of charlatans,
+it must be conceded, if credible witnesses are to be believed, that
+sometimes there is a power of second-sight, or something of a kindred
+nature, which defies investigation. Instances of this kind are of
+frequent occurrence, and easily recalled, I venture to say, by every one
+familiar with the Indian in his native state. The higher powers claimed
+for medicine are, in general, doubtfully spoken of by the Indians. Not
+that they deny the possibility of the power, but they question the
+probability of so signal a mark of favor being bestowed on a mere
+mortal. Powers and medicine privileges of a lower degree are more
+readily acknowledged. An aged Indian of the Assinaboin tribe is very
+generally admitted, by his own and neighboring tribes, to have been
+shown the happy hunting-grounds, and conducted through them and returned
+safely to the camp of his tribe, by special favor of the Great Spirit.
+He once drew a map of the Indian paradise for me, and described its
+pleasant prairies and crystal rivers, its countless herds of fat buffalo
+and horses, its perennial and luxuriant grass, and other charms dear to
+an Indian's heart, in a rhapsody that was almost poetry. Another, an
+obscure man of the Cathead Sioux, is believed to have seen the hole
+through which issue the herds of buffalo which the Great Spirit calls
+forth from the centre of the earth to feed his children.</p>
+
+<p>Medicine of this degree is not unfavorably regarded by the masses; but
+instances of the highest grades are extremely rare, and the claimants of
+such powers few in number. The Black Snake and the Kootenai, before
+referred to, are, if still alive, the only instances with which I am
+acquainted of admitted and well-authenticated powers so great and
+incredible. The common use of medicine is in affairs of war and the
+chase. Here the medicine-man will be found, in many cases, to exhibit a
+prescience truly astounding. Without attempting a theory<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> to account for
+this, a suggestion may be ventured. The Indian passes a life that knows
+no repose. His vigilance is ever on the alert. No hour of day or night
+is to him an hour of assured safety. In the course of years, his
+perceptions and apprehensions become so acute, in the presence of
+constant danger, as to render him keenly and delicately sensitive to
+impressions that a civilized man could scarce recognize. The Indian, in
+other words, has a development almost like the instinct of the fox or
+beaver. Upon this delicate barometer, whose basis is physical fear,
+impressions (moral or physical, who shall say?) act with surprising
+power. How this occurs, no Indian will attempt to explain. Certain
+conjurations will, they maintain, aid the medicine-man to receive
+impressions; but how or wherefore, no one pretends to know. This view of
+<i>minor medicine</i> is the one which will account for many of its
+manifestations. Whether sound or defective, we will not contend.</p>
+
+<p>The medicine-man whom I knew best was Ma-qu&egrave;-a-pos (the Wolf's Word), an
+ignorant and unintellectual person. I knew him perfectly well. His
+nature was simple, innocent, and harmless, devoid of cunning, and
+wanting in those fierce traits that make up the Indian character. His
+predictions were sometimes absolutely astounding. He has, beyond
+question, accurately described the persons, horses, arms, and
+destination of a party three hundred miles distant, not one of whom he
+had ever seen, and of whose very existence neither he, nor any one in
+his camp, was before apprised.</p>
+
+<p>On one occasion, a party of ten voyageurs set out from Fort Benton, the
+remotest post of the American Fur Company, for the purpose of finding
+the Kaim&egrave;, or Blood Band of the Northern Blackfeet. Their route lay
+almost due north, crossing the British line near the Chief Mountain
+(Nee-na-st&agrave;-ko) and the great Lake O-m&agrave;x-een (two of the grandest
+features of Rocky Mountain scenery, but scarce ever seen by whites), and
+extending indefinitely beyond the Saskatchewan and towards the
+tributaries of the Coppermine and Mackenzie Rivers. The expedition was
+perilous from its commencement, and the danger increased with each day's
+journey. The war-paths, war-party fires, and similar indications of the
+vicinity of hostile bands, were each day found in greater abundance.</p>
+
+<p>It should be borne in mind that an experienced trapper can, at a glance,
+pronounce what tribe made a war-trail or a camp-fire. Indications which
+would convey no meaning to the inexperienced are conclusive proofs to
+the keen-eyed mountaineer. The track of a foot, by a greater or less
+turning out of the toes, demonstrates from which side of the mountains a
+party has come. The print of a moccasin in soft earth indicates the
+tribe of the wearer. An arrow-head or a feather from a war-bonnet, a
+scrap of dressed deer-skin, or even a chance fragment of jerked
+buffalo-meat, furnishes data from which unerring conclusions are deduced
+with marvellous facility.</p>
+
+<p>The party of adventurers soon found that they were in the thickest of
+the Cree war-party operations, and so full of danger was every day's
+travel that a council was called, and seven of the ten turned back. The
+remaining three, more through foolhardiness than for any good reason,
+continued their journey, until their resolution failed them, and they
+too determined that, after another day's travel northward, they would
+hasten back to their comrades.</p>
+
+<p>On the afternoon of the last day, four young Indians were seen, who,
+after a cautious approach, made the sign of peace, laid down their arms,
+and came forward, announcing themselves to be Blackfeet of the Blood
+Band. They were sent out, they said, by Ma-qu&egrave;-a-pos, to find three
+whites mounted on horses of a peculiar color, dressed in garments
+accurately described to them, and armed with weapons which they, without
+seeing them, minutely described. The whole history of the expedition had
+been detailed to them by Ma-qu&egrave;-a-pos. The purpose of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> journey, the
+<i>personnel</i> of the party, the exact locality at which to find the three
+who persevered, had been detailed by him with as much fidelity as could
+have been done by one of the whites themselves. And so convinced were
+the Indians of the truth of the old man's medicine, that the four young
+men were sent to appoint a rendezvous, for four days later, at a spot a
+hundred miles distant. On arriving there, accompanied by the young
+Indians, the whites found the entire camp of "Rising Head," a noted
+war-chief, awaiting them. The objects of the expedition were speedily
+accomplished; and the whites, after a few days' rest, returned to safer
+haunts. The writer of this paper was at the head of the party of whites,
+and himself met the Indian messengers.</p>
+
+<p>Upon questioning the chief men of the Indian camp, many of whom
+afterwards became my warm personal friends, and one of them my adopted
+brother, no suspicion of the facts, as narrated, could be sustained.
+Ma-qu&egrave;-a-pos could give no explanation beyond the general one,&mdash;that he
+"saw us coming, and heard us talk on our journey." He had not, during
+that time, been absent from the Indian camp.</p>
+
+<p>A subsequent intimate acquaintance with Ma-qu&egrave;-a-pos disclosed a
+remarkable medicine faculty as accurate as it was inexplicable. He was
+tested in every way, and almost always stood the ordeal successfully.
+Yet he never claimed that the gift entitled him to any peculiar regard,
+except as the instrument of a power whose operations he did not pretend
+to understand. He had an imperfect knowledge of the Catholic worship,
+distorted and intermixed with the wild theogony of the red man. He would
+talk with passionate devotion of the Mother of God, and in the same
+breath tell how the Great Spirit restrains the Rain Spirits from
+drowning the world, by tying them with the rainbow. I have often seen
+him make the sign of the cross, while he recounted, in all the soberness
+of implicit belief, how the Old Man (the God of the Blackfeet) formed
+the human race from the mud of the Missouri,&mdash;how he experimented before
+he adopted the human frame, as we now have it,&mdash;how he placed his
+creatures in an isolated park far to the north, and there taught them
+the rude arts of Indian life,&mdash;how he staked the Indians on a desperate
+game of chance with the Spirit of Evil,&mdash;and how the whites are now his
+peculiar care. Ma-qu&egrave;-a-pos's faith could hardly stand the test of any
+religious creed. Yet it must be said for him, that his simplicity and
+innocence of life might be a model for many, better instructed than he.</p>
+
+<p>The wilder tribes are accustomed to certain observances which are
+generally termed the tribe-medicine. Their leading men inculcate them
+with great care,&mdash;perhaps to perpetuate unity of tradition and purpose.
+In the arrangement of tribe-medicine, trivial observances are frequently
+intermixed with very serious doctrines. Thus, the grand war-council of
+the Dakotah confederacy, comprising thirteen tribes of Sioux, and more
+than seventeen thousand warriors, many years since promulgated a
+national medicine, prescribing a red stone pipe with an ashen stem for
+all council purposes, and (herein was the true point) an eternal
+hostility to the whites. The prediction may be safely ventured, that
+every Sioux will preserve this medicine until the nation shall cease to
+exist. To it may be traced the recent Indian war that devastated
+Minnesota; and there cannot, in the nature of things, and of the
+American Indian especially, be a peace kept in good faith until the
+confederacy of the Dakotah is in effect destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>The Crows, or Ups&agrave;raukas, will not smoke in council, unless the pipe is
+lighted with a coal of buffalo chip, and the bowl rested on a fragment
+of the same substance. Their chief men have for a great while endeavored
+to engraft teetotalism upon their national medicine, and have succeeded
+better than the Indian character would have seemed to promise.</p>
+
+<p>Among the Flat-Heads female chastity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> is a national medicine. With the
+Mandans, friendship for the whites is supposed to be the source of
+national and individual advantage.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the varieties of medicine already alluded to, there are in use
+charms of almost every kind. When game is scarce, medicine is made to
+call back the buffalo. The Man in the Sun is invoked for fair weather,
+for success in war or chase, and for a cure of wounds. The spirits of
+the dead are appeased by medicine songs and offerings. The curiosity of
+some may be attracted by the following rude and literal translation of
+the song of a Blackfoot woman to the spirit of her son, who was killed
+on his first war-party. The words were written down at the time, and are
+not in any respect changed or smoothed.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"O my son, farewell!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You have gone beyond the great river,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your spirit is on the other side of the Sand Buttes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will not see you for a hundred winters;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You will scalp the enemy in the green prairie,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beyond the great river.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the warriors of the Blackfeet meet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When they smoke the medicine-pipe and dance the war-dance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They will ask, 'Where is Isthumaka?&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where is the bravest of the Mannikappi?'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He fell on the war-path.<br /></span>
+<span class="i14">Mai-ram-bo, mai-ram-bo.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Many scalps will be taken for your death;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Crows will lose many horses;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their women will weep for their braves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They will curse the spirit of Isthumaka.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O my son! I will come to you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And make moccasins for the war-path,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As I did when you struck the lodge<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the 'Horse-Guard' with the tomahawk.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Farewell, my son! I will see you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beyond the broad river.<br /></span>
+<span class="i14">Mai-ram-bo, mai-ram-bo," etc., etc.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Sung in a plaintive minor key, and in a wild, irregular rhythm, the
+dirge was far more impressive than the words would indicate.</p>
+
+<p>It cannot be denied that the whites, who consort much with the ruder
+tribes of Indians imbibe, to a considerable degree, their veneration for
+medicine. The old trappers and voyageurs are, almost without exception,
+observers of omens and dreamers of dreams. They claim that medicine is a
+faculty which can in some degree be cultivated, and aspire to its
+possession as eagerly as does the Indian. Sometimes they acquire a
+reputation that is in many ways beneficial to them.</p>
+
+<p>As before said, it is no object of this paper to defend or combat the
+Indian notion of medicine. Such a system exists as a fact; and whoever
+writes upon American Demonology will find many fruitful topics of
+investigation in the daily life of the uncontaminated Indian. There may
+be nothing of truth in the supposed prediction by Tecumseh, that
+Tuckabatchee would be destroyed by an earthquake on a day which he
+named; the gifts of the "Prophet" may be overstated in the traditions
+that yet linger in Kentucky and Indiana; the descent of the Mandans from
+Prince Madoc and his adventurous Welchmen, and the consideration
+accorded them on that account, may very possibly be altogether fanciful;
+but whoever will take the trouble to investigate will find in the <i>real</i>
+Indian a faith, and occasionally a power, that quite equal the faculties
+claimed by our civilized clairvoyants, and will approach an untrodden
+path of curious, if not altogether useful research.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_E_5" id="Footnote_E_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_E_5"><span class="label">[E]</span></a> The Mountain Assinaboins, of which tribe the Black Snake is
+(if living) a distinguished ornament, were visited more than a hundred
+years since by an English clergyman named Wolsey, who devised an
+alphabet for their use. The alphabet is still used by them, and they
+keep their memoranda on dressed skins. With the exception of the
+Cherokees, they are, perhaps, the only tribe possessing a written
+language. They have no other civilization.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_F_6" id="Footnote_F_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_F_6"><span class="label">[F]</span></a> I do not feel at liberty to give the name of this excellent
+man, now perhaps no more. In 1861, he lived and labored, with a
+gentleness and zeal worthy of the cause he heralded, as a missionary
+among the Kalispelm Indians, on the west slope of the Rocky Mountains.
+Such devotion to missionary labor as was his may well challenge
+admiration even from those who think him in fatal error. His memory will
+long be cherished by those who knew the purity of his character, his
+generous catholicity of spirit, and the native and acquired graces of
+mind which made him a companion at once charming and instructive.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE DEATH OF SLAVERY.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O thou great Wrong, that, through the slow-paced years,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Didst hold thy millions fettered, and didst wield<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The scourge that drove the laborer to the field,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And look with stony eye on human tears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Thy cruel reign is o'er;<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Thy bondmen crouch no more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In terror at the menace of thine eye;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For He who marks the bounds of guilty power,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long-suffering, hath heard the captive's cry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And touched his shackles at the appointed hour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lo! they fall, and he whose limbs they galled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stands in his native manhood, disenthralled.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A shout of joy from the redeemed is sent;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ten thousand hamlets swell the hymn of thanks;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our rivers roll exulting, and their banks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Send up hosannas to the firmament.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Fields, where the bondman's toil<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">No more shall trench the soil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seem now to bask in a serener day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The meadow-birds sing sweeter, and the airs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of heaven with more caressing softness play,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Welcoming man to liberty like theirs.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A glory clothes the land from sea to sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the great land and all its coasts are free.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Within that land wert thou enthroned of late,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And they by whom the nation's laws were made,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And they who filled its judgment-seats, obeyed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy mandate, rigid as the will of fate.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Fierce men at thy right hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">With gesture of command,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gave forth the word that none might dare gainsay;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And grave and reverend ones, who loved thee not,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shrank from thy presence, and, in blank dismay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Choked down, unuttered, the rebellious thought;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While meaner cowards, mingling with thy train,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Proved, from the book of God, thy right to reign.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Great as thou wert, and feared from shore to shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The wrath of God o'ertook thee in thy pride;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Thou sitt'st a ghastly shadow; by thy side<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy once strong arms hang nerveless evermore.<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">And they who quailed but now<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Before thy lowering brow<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Devote thy memory to scorn and shame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And scoff at the pale, powerless thing thou art.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And they who ruled in thine imperial name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Subdued, and standing sullenly apart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Scowl at the hands that overthrew thy reign,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And shattered at a blow the prisoner's chain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Well was thy doom deserved; thou didst not spare<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Life's tenderest ties, but cruelly didst part<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Husband and wife, and from the mother's heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Didst wrest her children, deaf to shriek and prayer;<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Thy inner lair became<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The haunt of guilty shame;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy lash dropped blood; the murderer, at thy side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Showed his red hands, nor feared the vengeance due.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou didst sow earth with crimes, and, far and wide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A harvest of uncounted miseries grew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Until the measure of thy sins at last<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was full, and then the avenging bolt was cast.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Go then, accursed of God, and take thy place<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With baleful memories of the elder time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With many a wasting pest, and nameless crime,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bloody war that thinned the human race;<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">With the Black Death, whose way<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Through wailing cities lay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Worship of Moloch, tyrannies that built<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The Pyramids, and cruel creeds that taught<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To avenge a fancied guilt by deeper guilt,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Death at the stake to those that held them not.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lo, the foul phantoms, silent in the gloom<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the flown ages, part to yield thee room.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I see the better years that hasten by<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Carry thee back into that shadowy past,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where, in the dusty spaces, void and vast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The graves of those whom thou hast murdered lie.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The slave-pen, through whose door<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Thy victims pass no more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is there, and there shall the grim block remain<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">At which the slave was sold; while at thy feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Scourges and engines of restraint and pain<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Moulder and rust by thine eternal seat.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There, 'mid the symbols that proclaim thy crimes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dwell thou, a warning to the coming times.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p>
+<h2>REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.</h2>
+
+
+<p><br /><br /><i>Ecce Homo: a Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus Christ.</i> Boston:
+Roberts Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>The merits of this book are popular and obvious, consisting in a strain
+of liberal, enlightened sentiment, an ingenious and original cast of
+thought, and a painstaking lucidity of style which leaves the writer's
+meaning even prosaically plain. There is a good deal of absurd and even
+puerile exegesis in its pages, which makes you wonder how so much
+sentimentality can co-exist with so much ability; but the book is
+vitiated for all purposes beyond mere literary entertainment by one
+grand defect, which is the guarded theologic obscurity the writer keeps
+up, or the attempt he makes to estimate Christianity apart from all
+question of the truth or falsity of Christ's personal pretensions
+towards God. The author may have reached in his own mind the most
+definite theologic convictions, but he sedulously withholds them from
+his reader; and the consequence is, that the book awakens and satisfies
+no intellectual interest in the latter, but remains at best a curious
+literary speculation. For what men have always been moved by in
+Christianity is not so much the superiority of its moral inculcations to
+those of other faiths, as its uncompromising pretension to be a final or
+absolute religion. If Christ be only the eminently good and wise and
+philanthropic man the author describes him to be, deliberating,
+legislating, for the improvement of man's morals, he may be very
+admirable, but nothing can be inferred from that circumstance to the
+deeper inquiry. If he claim no essentially different significance to our
+regard, on God's part, than that claimed by Zoroaster, Confucius,
+Mahomet, Hildebrand, Luther, Wesley, he is to be sure still entitled to
+all the respect inherent in such an office; but then there is no <i>a
+priori</i> reason why his teaching and influence should not be superseded
+in process of time by that of any at present unmentionable Anne Lee,
+Joanna Southcote, or Joe Smith. And what the human mind craves, above
+all things else, is repose towards God,&mdash;is not to remain a helpless
+sport to every fanatic sot that comes up from the abyss of human vanity,
+and claims to hold it captive by the assumption of a new Divine mission.</p>
+
+<p>The objection to the <i>mythic</i> view of Christ's significance, which is
+that maintained by Strauss, is, that it violates men's faith in the
+integrity of history as a veracious outcome of the providential love and
+wisdom which are extant and operative in human affairs. And the
+objection to what has been called the <i>Troubadour</i> view of the same
+subject, which is that represented by M. Renan, is, that it outrages
+men's faith in human character, regarded, if not as habitually, still as
+occasionally capable of heroic or consistent veracity. We may safely
+argue, then, that neither Strauss nor Renan will possess any long
+vitality to human thought. They are both fascinating reading;&mdash;the one
+for his profound sincerity, or his conviction of a worth in Christianity
+so broadly human and impersonal as to exempt it from the obligations of
+a literal historic doctrine; the other for his profound insincerity, so
+to speak, or an egotism so subtile, so capacious and frank, as permits
+him to take up the grandest character in history into the hollow of his
+hand, and turn him about there for critical inspection and definite
+adjustment to the race, with absolutely no more reverence nor reticence
+than a buyer of grain shows to a handful of wheat, as he pours it
+dexterously from hand to hand, and blows the chaff in the seller's
+face.<a name="FNanchor_G_7" id="FNanchor_G_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_G_7" class="fnanchor">[G]</a> But both writers alike are left behind us in the library, and
+are not subsequently brought to mind by anything we encounter in the
+fields or the streets.</p>
+
+<p>The author of <i>Ecce Homo</i> does no dishonor to the Christian history as
+history, however foolishly he expatiates at times upon its incidents and
+implications; much less to the simple and perfect integrity of Christ as
+a man, but no more than Strauss or Renan does he meet the supreme want
+of the popular understanding, which is to know wherein Christianity has
+the right it claims to be regarded as a final or complete revelation of
+the Divine name upon the earth. We think, moreover, that the reason of
+the omission is the same in every case, being the sheer and contented
+indifference which each of the writers feels<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> to the question of a
+revelation in the abstract or general, regarded as a <i>sine qua non</i> of
+any sympathetic or rational intercourse which may be considered as
+possible between God and man. We should not be so presumptuous as to
+invite our readers' attention to the discussion of so grave a
+philosophic topic as the one here referred to, in the limited space at
+our command; but surely it may be said, without any danger of
+misunderstanding from the most cursory reader, that if creation were the
+absolute or unconditioned verity which thoughtless people deem it, there
+could be no <i>ratio</i> between Creator and creature, hence no intercourse
+or intimacy, inasmuch as the one is being itself, and the other does not
+even exist or <i>seem</i> to be but by him. In order that creation should be
+a rational product of Divine power, in order that the creature should be
+a being of reason, endowed with the responsibility of his own actions,
+it is imperative that the Creator disown his essential infinitude and
+diminish himself to the creature's dimensions; that he hide or obscure
+his own perfection in the creature's imperfection, to the extent even of
+rendering it fairly problematic whether or not an infinite being really
+exist, so putting man, as it were, upon the spontaneous search and
+demand for such a being, and in that measure developing his rational
+possibilities. And if this be so,&mdash;if creation philosophically involve a
+descending movement on the Creator's part proportionate to the ascending
+one contemplated on the creature's part,&mdash;then it follows that creation
+is not a simple, but a complex process, involving equally a Divine
+action and a human reaction, or the due adjustment of means and ends;
+and that no writer, consequently, can long satisfy the intellect in the
+sphere of religious thought, who either jauntily or ignorantly overlooks
+this philosophic necessity. This, however, is what Messrs. Strauss and
+Renan and the author of <i>Ecce Homo</i> agree to do; and this is what makes
+their several books, whatever subjective differences characterize them
+to a literary regard, alike objectively unprofitable as instruments of
+intellectual progress.</p>
+
+
+<p><br /><br /><i>The Masquerade and Other Poems.</i> By <span class="smcap">John Godfrey Saxe</span>. Boston: Ticknor
+and Fields.</p>
+
+<p>It was remarked lately by an ingenious writer, that "it never seems to
+occur to some people, who deliver upon the books they read very
+unhesitating judgments, that they may be wanting, either by congenital
+defect, or defect of experience, or defect of reproductive memory, in
+the qualifications which are necessary for judging fairly of any
+particular book." To poetry this remark applies with especial force.</p>
+
+<p>By poetry we do not understand mere verse, but any form of literary
+composition which reproduces in the mind certain emotions which, in the
+absence of an epithet less vague, we shall call <i>poetical</i>. These
+emotions may be a compound of the sensuous and the purely intellectual,
+or they may partake much more of the one than of the other. (The
+rigorous metaphysician will please not begin to carp at our definition.)
+These emotions may be excited by an odor, the state of the atmosphere, a
+strain of music, a form of words, or by a single word; and, as they
+result largely from association, it is obvious that what may be poetry
+to some minds may not be poetry to others,&mdash;may not be poetry to the
+same mind at different periods of life or in different moods. The most
+sympathetic, most catholic, most receptive mind will always be the best
+qualified to detect and appreciate poetry under all its various forms,
+and would as soon think of denying the devotional faculty to a man of
+differing creed, as of denying the poetical to one whose theory or habit
+of expression may chance to differ from its own. Goethe was so apt to
+discover something good in poems which others dismissed as wholly
+worthless, that it was said of him, "his commendation is a brevet of
+mediocrity." Perhaps it was his "many-sidedness" that made him so
+accurate a "detective" in criticism.</p>
+
+<p>According to Wordsworth, "poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
+feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity."
+A good definition so far as it goes. But Wordsworth could see only one
+side of the shield. He was notoriously so deficient in the faculty of
+humor, that even Sydney Smith was unintelligible to him. Few specimens
+of what can be called wit can be found in his writings. He could not see
+that there is a poetry of wit as well as of sentiment,&mdash;of the intellect
+as well as of the emotions. No wonder he could not enjoy Pope, and had
+little relish for Horace. And yet how grand is Wordsworth in his own
+peculiar sphere!</p>
+
+<p>Those narrow views of the province of poetry, which roused the
+indignation of Byron,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> and which would exclude such writers as
+Goldsmith, Pope, Campbell, Scott, Praed, Moore, and Saxe from the rank
+of poets, are not unfrequently reproduced in our own day. We do not
+perceive that they spring from a liberal or philosophical consideration
+of the subject. Poetry,&#960;&#959;&#953;&#951;&#963;&#953;&#962;, or "making," creation, or
+re-creation, does not address itself to any single group of those
+faculties of our complex nature, the gratification of which brings a
+sense of the agreeable, the exhilarating, or the elevating. As well
+might we deny to didactic verse the name of poetry, as to those <i>vers de
+soci&eacute;t&eacute;</i> in which a profound truth may be found in a comic mask, or the
+foibles which scolding could not reach may be reflected in the mirror
+held up in gayety of heart. As well might we deny that a waltz is music,
+and claim the name of music only for a funeral march or a nocturne, as
+deny that Shakespeare's description of Queen Mab is as much poetry as
+the stately words in which Prospero compares the vanishing of his
+insubstantial pageant to that of</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The solemn temples, the great globe itself."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The new volume of poems by Mr. Saxe is, in many respects, an improvement
+on all that he has given us hitherto. There is more versatility in the
+style, a freer and firmer touch in the handling. Like our best
+humorists, he shows that the founts of tears and of laughter lie close
+together; for his power of pathos is almost as marked as that of fun. As
+good specimens of what he has accomplished in the minor key, we may
+instance "The Expected Ship," "The Story of Life," and "Pan Immortal."
+But it is in his faculty of turning upon us the whimsical and humorous
+side of a fact or a character that Saxe especially excels. The lines
+entitled "The Superfluous Man" are an illustration of what we mean. In
+some learned treatise the author stumbles on the following somewhat
+startling reflection: "It is ascertained by inspection of the registers
+of many countries, that the uniform proportion of male to female births
+is as 21 to 20: accordingly, in respect to marriage, every 21st man is
+naturally superfluous." Here is hint enough to set Saxe's bright vein of
+humor flowing. The Superfluous Man becomes a concrete embodiment, and
+sings his discovery of the cause of his forlorn single lot and his
+hopeless predicament. It flashes upon him that he is that 21st man
+alluded to by the profound statistician. He is under a natural ban,&mdash;for
+he's a superfluous man. There's no use fighting 'gainst nature's
+inflexible plan. There's never a woman for him,&mdash;for he's a superfluous
+man. The whole conception and execution of the poem afford a fine
+example of the manner in which a genuine artist may inform a subtile and
+an extravagant whim with life, humor, and consistency.</p>
+
+<p>"The Mourner a la Mode" contains some good instances of the neatness and
+felicity with which the author floods a whole stanza with humor by a
+single epithet.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"What tears of <i>vicarious</i> woe.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That else might have sullied her face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were kindly permitted to flow<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In ripples of ebony lace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While even her fan, in its play,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Had quite a lugubrious scope,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And seemed to be waving away<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The ghost of the angel of Hope!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The sentiments of a young lover on finding that the object of his
+adoration had an excellent appetite, and was always punctual at lunch
+and dinner, are expressed with a Sheridan-like sparkle in the concluding
+stanza of "The Beauty of Ballston."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Ah me! of so much loveliness<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It had been sweet to be the winner;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I know she loved me only less&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The merest fraction&mdash;than her dinner;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'T was hard to lose so fair a prize,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But then (I thought) 't were vastly harder<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To have before my jealous eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>A constant rival in my larder!</i>"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There is one practical consideration in regard to the poetry of Saxe,
+which may excite the distrust of those critics who, with Horace, hate
+the profane multitude. Fortunately or unfortunately for his reputation,
+Saxe's poems are <i>popular</i>, and&mdash;not to put too fine a point of
+it&mdash;<i>sell</i>. His books have a regular market value, and this value
+increases rather than diminishes with years. This is, we confess, rather
+a suspicious circumstance. Did Milton sell? Did Wordsworth sell? Must
+not the fame that is instantaneous prove hollow and ephemeral? Are we
+not acquainted with a certain volume of poems that shall be nameless,
+the whole edition of which lies untouched and unclaimed on the
+publisher's shelves? And are we not perfectly well aware that those
+poems&mdash;well, we can wait. If Mr. Saxe would only put forth a volume that
+should prove, in a mercantile sense, a failure, we think he would be
+surprised to find how happily he would hit certain critics who can now
+see little in his writings to justify their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> success. Let him once join
+the fraternity of unappreciated geniuses, and he will find
+compensation,&mdash;though not, perhaps, in the form of what some vulgar
+fellow has called "solid pudding."</p>
+
+
+<p><br /><br /><i>The Giant Cities of Bashan; and Syria's Holy Places.</i> By the Rev. <span class="smcap">J. L.
+Porter</span>, A. M., Author of "Murray's Hand-Book for Syria and Palestine,"
+etc., etc. New York: T. Nelson and Sons.</p>
+
+<p>Travellers who have merely visited the classic scenes of Greece and
+Italy, or at the best have "browsed about" the ruinous sites of Tyre and
+Carthage, must have a mortifying sense of the newness of such recent
+settlements, in reading of Mr. Porter's journey through Bashan, and
+sojourn in Bozrah, Salcah, Edrei, and the other cities of the Rephaim.
+As Chicago is to Athens, so is Athens to these mighty and wonderful
+cities of doom and eld, which are marvellous, not alone for their
+antiquity, (so remote that one looks into it dizzily and doubtfully, as
+a depth into which it is not wholly safe to peer,) but also for the
+perfection in which they stand and have stood amid the desolation of
+unnumbered ages. A Cockney clergyman travelling through Eastern Syria,
+with his Ezekiel in his hand, arrives at nightfall before the gates of a
+town which was a flourishing metropolis in the days of Moses, and takes
+up his lodging in a house built by some newly-married giant, say five or
+six thousand years ago. It is in perfect repair, "the walls are sound,
+the roofs unbroken, the doors and even window-shutters"&mdash;being of solid
+basalt monoliths, incapable of decay or destruction&mdash;"are in their
+places." In the town whose dumb streets no foot but the Bedouin's has
+trodden for centuries and centuries, there are hundreds of such houses
+as this; and in a province not larger than Rhode Island there are a
+hundred such towns. According to Mr. Porter, the language of Scripture,
+which the strongest powers of deglutition have sometimes rejected as
+that of Eastern hyperbole, is literally verified at every step in the
+land of Bashan. The facts, he says, would not stand the arithmetic of
+Bishop Colenso for an instant; yet from the summit of the castle of
+Salcah (capital of his late gigantic Majesty, King Og) he counted thirty
+utterly deserted and perfectly habitable towns; so that he finds no
+difficulty in believing the bulletin of Jair in which the Israelite
+general declares he took in the province of Argob sixty great cities
+"fenced with high walls, gates, and bars, besides unwalled towns a great
+many." Nor is the fulfilment of prophecy in regard to this kingdom,
+populous and prosperous beyond any other known to history, less literal
+or less startling.</p>
+
+<p>"Thus saith the Lord God of Israel: They shall eat their bread with
+carefulness, and drink their water with astonishment, that her land may
+be desolate from all that is therein, because of the violence of all
+that dwell therein. And the cities that are inhabited shall be laid
+waste, and the land shall be desolate."</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere Mr. Porter witnessed the end predicted by Ezekiel: a nation
+might dwell in these enchanted cities, but they are all empty and silent
+as the desert. Their architecture, however, is eloquent in witness of
+the successive changes through which they have passed in reaching the
+state of final desolation foretold of the prophet. The dwellings, so
+ponderous and so simple, are the work of the original Rephaim, or
+giants, from whom the Israelites conquered the land, and the masonry is
+of these first conquerors. The Greeks have left the proof of their
+presence in the temples and inscriptions, and the Romans in the
+structure of the roads; while the Saracens have added mosques, and the
+Turks solitude and danger,&mdash;for the whole land is infested with robbers.
+But while Jewish masonry has crumbled to dust, while Roman roads are
+weed-grown, and the temples of the gods and the mosques of Mahomet
+mingle their ruins, the dwellings of the Rephaim stand intact and
+everlasting, as if the earth had loved her mighty first-born too well to
+suffer the memory of their greatness to perish from her face.</p>
+
+<p>It must be acknowledged that Mr. Porter has not done the best that could
+be done for the country through which he travels. With a style extremely
+graphic at times, he seems wanting in those arts of composition by which
+he could convey to his readers an impression of things at once vivid and
+comprehensive. He visits the cities of Bashan, one after another, and
+tells us repeatedly that they are desolate, and in perfect repair, and
+quotes the proper text of Scripture in which their desolation is
+foretold, and their number and strength not exaggerated. Yet he fails,
+with all this, to describe any one place<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> completely, and is of opinion
+that he should weary his reader in recounting, at Bozrah, for example,
+"the wonders of art and architecture, and the curiosities of votive
+tablet, and dedicatory inscription on altar, tomb, church, and temple";
+whereas we must confess that nothing would have pleased us better than
+to hear about all these things, with ever so much minuteness, and that
+we should have been willing to take two passages of prophecy instead of
+twenty, if we might have had the omitted description in the place of
+them. But Mr. Porter being made as he is, we are glad to get out of him
+what we can, and have to thank him for a full account of at least one of
+the houses of the Rephaim, in which he passed a night.</p>
+
+<p>"The walls were perfect, nearly five feet thick, built of large blocks
+of hewn stones, without lime or cement of any kind. The roof was formed
+of large slabs of the same black basalt, lying as regularly, and jointed
+as closely as if the workmen had only just completed them. They measured
+twelve feet in length, eighteen inches in breadth, and six inches in
+thickness. The ends rested on a plain stone cornice, projecting about a
+foot from each side wall. The chamber was twenty feet long, twelve wide,
+and ten high. The outer door was a slab of stone, four and a half feet
+high, four wide, and eight inches thick. It hung upon pivots formed of
+projecting parts of the slab, working in sockets in the lintel and
+threshold; and though so massive, I was able to open and shut it with
+ease. At one end of the room was a small window with a stone shutter. An
+inner door, also of stone, but of finer workmanship, and not quite so
+heavy as the other, admitted to a chamber of the same size and
+appearance. From it a much larger door communicated with a third
+chamber, to which there was a descent by a flight of stone steps. This
+was a spacious hall, equal in width to the two rooms, and about
+twenty-five feet long by twenty high. A semicircular arch was thrown
+across it, supporting the stone roof; and a gate, so large that camels
+could pass in and out, opened on the street. The gate was of stone, and
+in its place; but some rubbish had accumulated on the threshold, and it
+appeared to have been open for ages. Here our horses were comfortably
+installed. Such were the internal arrangements of this strange old
+mansion. It had only one story; and its simple, massive style of
+architecture gave evidence of a very remote antiquity."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Porter does not tell us whether all the dwellings of the Rephaim are
+constructed after one plan, as, for instance, the houses of Pompeii
+were, or whether there was variety in the architecture, and on many
+other points of inquiry he is equally unsatisfactory. His strength is in
+his one great fact,&mdash;that these cities are older than any known to
+profane history, and that they yet exist undecayed and undecaying. The
+charm of such a fact is so great, that we recur again and again to his
+pages, with a forever unappeased famine for more knowledge, which we
+hope some garrulous and gossipful traveller will soon arise to satisfy.</p>
+
+<p>Of him&mdash;the beneficent future tourist&mdash;we shall willingly accept any
+number of fables, if only he will add something more filling than Mr.
+Porter has given us. It is true that this tourist will not have a mere
+pleasure excursion, but will undergo much to merit the gratitude of his
+readers. The land of Bashan is nomadically inhabited by a race of men
+much fiercer than its ancient bulls; and Bedouins beset the movements of
+the traveller, to pillage and slay wherever they are strong enough to
+overcome his escort of Druses. Mr. Porter tells much of the perils he
+incurred, and even of actual attacks made upon him by fanatical
+Mussulmans while he sketched the wonders of the world's youth among
+which they dwelt. For the present his book has a value unique and very
+great: the scenes through which he passes have been heretofore unvisited
+by travel, and the interest attaching to them is intense and universal.
+The literal verification of many passages of Scripture supposed more or
+less allegorical, must have its weight with all liberal thinkers; and,
+as a contribution to the means of religious inquiry, this work will be
+earnestly received.</p>
+
+
+<p><br /><br /><i>Life of Benjamin Silliman, M. D., LL. D., late Professor of Chemistry,
+Mineralogy, and Geology in Yale College.</i> Chiefly from his Manuscript
+Reminiscences, Diaries, and Correspondence. By <span class="smcap">George P. Fisher</span>,
+Professor in Yale College. In Two Volumes. New York: Charles Scribner &amp;
+Co.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Fisher, in allowing the subject of this biography to tell the
+story of his life, restricts himself very self-denyingly to here and
+there a line of introduction or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> comment. We have ample passages from
+Professor Silliman's journal, and from an autobiographical memoir
+written during his last years, as well as extracts from his letters and
+the letters addressed to him. It is an easy and pleasant way of writing
+personal history, and it would be an easy and pleasant way of reading
+it, if life were as long as art. But we fear that the popular usefulness
+of this work&mdash;and the biography of the eminent man who did so much to
+popularize science should be in the hands of all&mdash;must be impaired by
+its magnitude; and we are disposed to regret that Professor Fisher did
+not think fit to reject that part of the correspondence which
+contributes nothing to the movement of the narrative or the development
+of character, and condense much of that material which has only a value
+reflected from the interest already felt in Professor Silliman. These
+are faults in a work from which we have risen with a clear sense of the
+beauty and goodness, as well as the greatness, of the eminent scientist.
+It is admirable to see how his career, begun in another century and
+another phase of civilization, ended in what was best and most
+enlightened and liberal in our own time. A man could hardly have started
+from better things, or been subject at important points of his progress
+to better influences. Benjamin Silliman was of Revolutionary stock,
+which had its roots in the soil of the Reformation. The Connecticut
+Puritan came of Tuscan Puritans, who fled their city of Lucca, and
+finally passed from Switzerland through Holland to our shores. Brain and
+heart in him were thus imbued with an unfaltering love of freedom,
+chastised by religious fervor; and when he became a man, he married with
+a race of kindred origin in faith, sentiment, and principles. He
+advanced with his times in a patriotic devotion to democracy and
+equality, but he seems to have always kept, together with great
+simplicity of character, the impression of early teaching and
+associations, and something of old-time stateliness and formality. His
+youth, like his age, was very sober, modest, and discreet. The ties
+which united him to his family were strong; and he loved his mother, who
+long survived his father, with the reverent affection of the past
+generation. He inherited certain theological principles from his
+parents, and never swerved from them for a moment. Some friendships came
+down to him from his father which he always honored; and the institution
+of learning with which he maintained a life-long connection was in his
+early days the object of a regard mixed with awe, and always of pride
+and devotion. He used to think President Styles the greatest of human
+beings; and one reads with a kind of dismay, that he was once fined
+sixpence for kicking a football into the President's door-yard.</p>
+
+<p>There was in this grave youth the making of many kinds of greatness. He
+who became so eminent in science could have been a great jurist, for he
+had the tranquillity and perseverance necessary to legal success; he
+could have been a great statesman, for his political views were clear
+and just and far-reaching; he wrote some of the most popular books of
+travels in his day, and he could have shone in literature; while he
+appears to have been conscious of the direction in which a sole weakness
+lay, and with early wisdom forsook the muse of poetry. He tells us that
+it was no instinctive preference which led him to the study and pursuit
+of the natural sciences, but the persuasion of Dr. Dwight, who was
+President of Yale in Silliman's twenty-third year, and who opened this
+career to him by offering him the Professorship of Chemistry, then about
+to be established. At that time Silliman was studying law; but, once
+convinced that he can be of greater use to himself and others in the way
+proposed, he enters it and never looks back; goes to Philadelphia to
+hear the learnedest professors of that day; goes to Europe for the
+culture unattainable in this country; overcomes poverty in himself and
+in Yale; will not be tempted from New Haven by the offer of the
+Presidency of the University of South Carolina, but devotes himself to a
+generous study of science, to the diffusion of scientific knowledge, and
+the promotion of the greatness of the institution to which he belongs.
+His devotion is not blind, however: he finds time to write attractive
+accounts of his voyages to Europe, to concern himself in religious
+affairs, to sympathize and cooperate with whatever is noble and good in
+political movements. He lives long enough to enjoy his fame, to see Yale
+prosperous and great, and his country about to triumph forever over the
+evil of slavery, which he had hated and combated. It was a noble
+life,&mdash;simple, pure, and illustrious,&mdash;and its history is full of
+instruction and encouragement.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p><br /><br /><i>Fifteen Days.</i> An Extract from <span class="smcap">Edward Colvil's</span> Journal. Boston: Ticknor
+and Fields.</p>
+
+<p>This is a work of fiction, in which the passion of love, so far from
+being the prime motive, as in other fictions, does not enter at all. The
+author seeks to reach, without other incident, one tragic event, and
+endeavors to make up for a want of adventure by the subtile analysis of
+character and the study of a civil problem. The novelty and courage of
+the attempt will attract the thoughtful reader, and will probably tempt
+him so far into the pages of the book, that he will find himself too
+deeply interested in its persons to part from them voluntarily. The
+national sin with which the author so pitilessly deals has been expiated
+by the whole nation, and is now no more; but its effects upon the guilty
+and guiltless victims, here alike so leniently treated, remain, and the
+question of slavery must always command attention till the question of
+reconstruction is settled.</p>
+
+<p>In "Fifteen Days" the political influences of slavery are only very
+remotely considered, while the personal and social results of the system
+are examined with incisive acuteness united to a warmth of feeling which
+at last breaks forth into pathetic lament. Is not the tragedy, of which
+we discern the proportions only in looking back, indeed a fateful one? A
+young New-Englander, rich, handsome, generous, and thoroughly taught by
+books and by ample experience of the Old World and the New to honor men
+and freedom, passes a few days in a Slave State, in the midst of that
+cruel system which could progress only from bad to worse; to which
+reform was death, and which with the instinct of self-preservation
+punished all open attempts to ameliorate the relations of oppressor and
+oppressed, and permitted no kindness to exist but in the guise of
+severity or the tenderness of a good man for his beast; which boasted
+itself an aristocracy, and was an oligarchy of plebeian ignorance and
+meanness; which either dulled men's brains or chilled their hearts. In
+the presence of this system, Harry Dudley lingers long enough to rescue
+a slave and to die by the furious hand of the master,&mdash;a man in whose
+soul the best impulse was the love he bore his victim, and in whom the
+evil destiny of the drama triumphs.</p>
+
+<p>From the conversation of Harry and the botanist, his friend, the author
+retrospectively develops in its full beauty a character illustrated in
+only one phase by the episode which the passages from Edward Colvil's
+journal cover, while she sketches with other touches, slight, but
+skilful, the people of a whole neighborhood, and the events of years.
+Doctor Borrow, the botanist, is made to pass, by insensible changes,
+from a learned indifference concerning slavery to eloquent and ardent
+argument against it, and thus to present the history of the process by
+which even science, the coldest element of our civilization, found
+itself at last unconsciously arrayed against a system long abhorrent to
+feeling. In the Doctor's talk with Westlake, we have a close and clear
+comparison of the origin and result of the civilizations of New England
+and the South, the high equality of the North and the mean aristocracy
+of the Slave States, and the Doctor's first perfect consciousness of
+loving the one and hating the other. The supposititious Mandingo's
+observations of the state of Europe at the time of opening the African
+slave-trade form a humorous protest against judgment of Africa by
+travellers' stories, and suggest more than a doubt whether the first
+men-stealers were better than their victims, and whether they conferred
+the boon of a higher civilization upon negroes by enslaving them. But
+the humor of the book, like its learning, is subordinated to the story,
+which is imbued with a sentiment not wanting in warmth because so noble
+and lofty. The friendship of Colvil and Dudley is less like the
+friendship between two men, than the affectionate tenderness of two
+women for each other; and the character of Dudley in its purity and
+elevation is sometimes elusive. The personality of Colvil is also rather
+shadowy; but the Doctor is human and tangible, and the other persons,
+however slightly indicated, are all real, and bear palpable witness, in
+their lives, to the influences of that system which, though cruel to the
+oppressed, wrought a ruin yet more terrible in the oppressor.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_G_7" id="Footnote_G_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_G_7"><span class="label">[G]</span></a> Of course we have no disposition to deny M. Renan's right
+to reduce Christ and every other historic figure to the standard of the
+most modern critical art. We merely mean to say that this is all M.
+Renan does, and that the all is not much.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No.
+105, July 1866, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105,
+July 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 18, No. 105, July 1866
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: October 8, 2007 [EBook #22927]
+
+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._
+
+VOLUME XVIII.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+BOSTON:
+
+TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
+
+124 TREMONT STREET.
+
+1866.
+
+
+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.
+
+
+UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & CO.,
+
+CAMBRIDGE.
+
+
+Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved
+to the end of the article.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                                       Page
+
+Aunt Judy                           _J. W. Palmer_                       76
+
+Borneo and Rajah Brooke             _G. Reynolds_                       667
+Bundle of Bones, A                  _Charles J. Sprague_                 60
+
+Case of George Dedlow, The                                                1
+Childhood; a Study                  _F. B. Perkins_                     385
+Chimney Corner for 1866, The, VII., VIII., IX.
+                                    _Mrs. H. B. Stowe_         85, 197, 338
+
+Darwinian Theory, The               _Charles J. Sprague_                415
+Distinguished Character, A                                              315
+
+Englishman in Normandy, An          _Goldwin Smith_                      64
+
+Fall of Austria, The                _C. C. Hazewell_                    746
+Farmer Hill's Diary                 _Mrs. A. M. Diaz_                   397
+Five Hundred Years Ago              _J. H. A. Bone_                     545
+Friedrich Rueckert                   _Bayard Taylor_                      33
+
+Great Doctor, The, I., II.          _Alice Cary_                    12, 174
+Griffith Gaunt; or, Jealousy. VIII., IX., X., XI., XII.
+                                    _Charles Reade_  94, 204, 323, 492, 606
+Gurowski                            _Robert Carter_                     625
+
+How my New Acquaintances Spin       _Dr. B. G. Wilder_                  129
+
+Incidents of the Portland Fire                                          356
+Indian Medicine                     _John Mason Browne_                 113
+Invalidism                          _Miss C. P. Hawes_                  599
+Italian Rain-Storm, An              _Mary Cowden Clarke_                356
+
+Johnson Party, The                  _E. P. Whipple_                     374
+
+Katharine Morne. I., II.            _Author of "Herman"_           559, 697
+
+Life Assurance                                                          308
+London Forty Years Ago              _John Neal_                         224
+
+Maniac's Confession, A                                                  170
+My Heathen at Home                  _J. W. Palmer_                      728
+My Little Boy                       _Mrs. M. L. Moody_                  361
+
+Norman Conquest, The                _C. C. Hazewell_                    461
+Novels of George Eliot, The         _Henry James, Jr._                  479
+
+Passages from Hawthorne's Note-Books. VII., VIII., IX., X.,
+  XI, XII.                                      40, 189, 288, 450, 536, 682
+Physical History of the Valley of the Amazons. I., II.
+                                    _Louis Agassiz_                 49, 159
+Pierpont, John                      _John Neal_                         650
+President and his Accomplices, The  _E. P. Whipple_                     634
+Progress of Prussia, The            _C. C. Hazewell_                    578
+
+Reconstruction                      _Frederick Douglass_                761
+Retreat from Lenoir's, and the Siege of Knoxville.
+                                    _H. S. Burrage_                      21
+Rhoda                               _Ruth Harper_                       521
+
+Scarabaei ed Altri                   _W. J. Stillman_                    435
+Singing-School Romance, The         _H. H. Weld_                        740
+Surgeon's Assistant, The            _Caroline Chesebro_                 257
+
+Through Broadway                    _H. T. Tuckerman_                   717
+
+University Reform                   _F. H. Hedge_                       296
+Usurpation, The                     _George S. Boutwell_                506
+
+Various Aspects of the Woman Question _F. Sheldon_                      425
+
+What did she see with?                _Miss E. Stuart Phelps_           146
+Woman's Work in the Middle Ages       _Mrs. R. C. Waterston_            274
+
+Year in Montana, A                    _Edward B. Nealley_               236
+Yesterday                             _Mrs. H. Prescott Spofford_       367
+
+
+POETRY.
+
+Autumn Song                      _Forceythe Willson_         746
+
+Bobolinks, The                   _C. P. Cranch_              321
+
+Death of Slavery, The            _W. C. Bryant_              120
+
+Friend, A                        _C. P. Cranch_              739
+
+Her Pilgrimage                   _H. B. Sargent_             396
+
+Late Champlain                   _H. T. Tuckerman_           365
+
+Miantowona                       _T. B. Aldrich_             446
+Miner, The                       _James Russell Lowell_      158
+My Farm: a Fable                 _Bayard Taylor_             187
+My Garden                        _R. W. Emerson_             665
+
+On Translating the Divina Commedia
+                                 _H. W. Longfellow_ 11, 273, 544
+
+Protoneiron                      _H. B. Sargent_             576
+
+Released                         _Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney_      32
+
+Song Sparrow, The                _A. West_                   599
+Sword of Bolivar, The            _J. T. Trowbridge_          713
+
+To J. B.                         _J. R. Lowell_               47
+
+Voice, The                       _Forceythe Willson_         307
+
+
+ART.
+
+Marshall's Portrait of Abraham Lincoln                       643
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+Aldrich's Poems                                                   250
+American Annual Cyclopaedia, The                                   646
+
+Bancroft's History of the United States                           765
+Barry Cornwall's Memoir of Charles Lamb                           771
+Beecher's Royal Truths                                            645
+Browne's American Family in Germany                               771
+
+Carpenter's Six Months at the White House                         644
+
+Ecce Homo                                                         122
+Eichendorff's Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing                       256
+Eros, etc.                                                        255
+Evangeline, Maud Muller, Vision of Sir Launfal, and
+  Flower-de-Luce, Illustrated                                     770
+
+Field's History of the Atlantic Telegraph                         647
+Fifteen Days                                                      128
+Fisher's Life of Benjamin Silliman                                126
+
+Gilmore's Four Years in the Saddle                                382
+
+Harrington's Inside: a Chronicle of Secession                     645
+
+Laugel's United States during the War, and Goldwin Smith's
+  Address on the Civil War in America                             252
+
+Marcy's Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border                   255
+Miss Ildrewe's Language of Flowers                                646
+Moens's English Travellers and Italian Brigands, and
+  Abbott's Prison Life in the South                               518
+
+Porter's Giant Cities of Bashan, and Syria's Holy Places          125
+
+Reade's Griffith Gaunt                                            767
+Reed's Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac                   253
+
+Saxe's Masquerade and other Poems                                 123
+Simpson's History of the Gypsies                                  254
+
+Wheaton's Elements of International Law                           513
+Whipple's Character and Characteristic Men                        772
+Wilkie Collins's Armadale                                         381
+
+RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS                                 383, 648
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+_A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics._
+
+VOL. XVIII--JULY, 1866.--NO. CV.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+THE CASE OF GEORGE DEDLOW.
+
+
+The following notes of my own case have been declined on various
+pretexts by every medical journal to which I have offered them. There
+was, perhaps, some reason in this, because many of the medical facts
+which they record are not altogether new, and because the psychical
+deductions to which they have led me are not in themselves of medical
+interest. I ought to add, that a good deal of what is here related is
+not of any scientific value whatsoever; but as one or two people on
+whose judgment I rely have advised me to print my narrative with all the
+personal details, rather than in the dry shape in which, as a
+psychological statement, I shall publish it elsewhere, I have yielded to
+their views. I suspect, however, that the very character of my record
+will, in the eyes of some of my readers, tend to lessen the value of the
+metaphysical discoveries which it sets forth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am the son of a physician, still in large practice, in the village of
+Abington, Scofield County, Indiana. Expecting to act as his future
+partner, I studied medicine in his office, and in 1859 and 1860 attended
+lectures at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. My second
+course should have been in the following year, but the outbreak of the
+Rebellion so crippled my father's means that I was forced to abandon my
+intention. The demand for army surgeons at this time became very great;
+and although not a graduate, I found no difficulty in getting the place
+of Assistant-Surgeon to the Tenth Indiana Volunteers. In the subsequent
+Western campaigns this organization suffered so severely, that, before
+the term of its service was over, it was merged in the Twenty-First
+Indiana Volunteers; and I, as an extra surgeon, ranked by the medical
+officers of the latter regiment, was transferred to the Fifteenth
+Indiana Cavalry. Like many physicians, I had contracted a strong taste
+for army life, and, disliking cavalry service, sought and obtained the
+position of First-Lieutenant in the Seventy-Ninth Indiana
+Volunteers,--an infantry regiment of excellent character.
+
+On the day after I assumed command of my company, which had no captain,
+we were sent to garrison a part of a line of block-houses stretching
+along the Cumberland River below Nashville, then occupied by a portion
+of the command of General Rosecrans.
+
+The life we led while on this duty was tedious, and at the same time
+dangerous in the extreme. Food was scarce and bad, the water horrible,
+and we had no cavalry to forage for us. If, as infantry, we attempted to
+levy supplies upon the scattered farms around us, the population seemed
+suddenly to double, and in the shape of guerillas "potted" us
+industriously from behind distant trees, rocks, or hasty earthworks.
+Under these various and unpleasant influences, combined with a fair
+infusion of malaria, our men rapidly lost health and spirits.
+Unfortunately, no proper medical supplies had been forwarded with our
+small force (two companies), and, as the fall advanced, the want of
+quinine and stimulants became a serious annoyance. Moreover, our rations
+were running low; we had been three weeks without a new supply; and our
+commanding officer, Major Terrill, began to be uneasy as to the safety
+of his men. About this time it was supposed that a train with rations
+would be due from the post twenty miles to the north of us; yet it was
+quite possible that it would bring us food, but no medicines, which were
+what we most needed. The command was too small to detach any part of it,
+and the Major therefore resolved to send an officer alone to the post
+above us, where the rest of the Seventy-Ninth lay, and whence they could
+easily forward quinine and stimulants by the train, if it had not left,
+or, if it had, by a small cavalry escort.
+
+It so happened, to my cost, as it turned out, that I was the only
+officer fit to make the journey, and I was accordingly ordered to
+proceed to Block House No. 3, and make the required arrangements. I
+started alone just after dusk the next night, and during the darkness
+succeeded in getting within three miles of my destination. At this time
+I found that I had lost my way, and, although aware of the danger of my
+act, was forced to turn aside and ask at a log-cabin for directions. The
+house contained a dried-up old woman, and four white-headed, half-naked
+children. The woman was either stone-deaf, or pretended to be so; but at
+all events she gave me no satisfaction, and I remounted and rode away.
+On coming to the end of a lane, into which I had turned to seek the
+cabin, I found to my surprise that the bars had been put up during my
+brief parley. They were too high to leap, and I therefore dismounted to
+pull them down. As I touched the top rail, I heard a rifle, and at the
+same instant felt a blow on both arms, which fell helpless. I staggered
+to my horse and tried to mount; but, as I could use neither arm, the
+effort was vain, and I therefore stood still, awaiting my fate. I am
+only conscious that I saw about me several Graybacks, for I must have
+fallen fainting almost immediately.
+
+When I awoke, I was lying in the cabin near by, upon a pile of rubbish.
+Ten or twelve guerillas were gathered about the fire, apparently drawing
+lots for my watch, boots, hat, etc. I now made an effort to find out how
+far I was hurt. I discovered that I could use the left forearm and hand
+pretty well, and with this hand I felt the right limb all over until I
+touched the wound. The ball had passed from left to right through the
+left biceps, and directly through the right arm just below the shoulder,
+emerging behind. The right hand and forearm were cold and perfectly
+insensible. I pinched them as well as I could, to test the amount of
+sensation remaining; but the hand might as well have been that of a dead
+man. I began to understand that the nerves had been wounded, and that
+the part was utterly powerless. By this time my friends had pretty well
+divided the spoils, and, rising together, went out. The old woman then
+came to me and said, "Reckon you'd best git up. Theyuns is agoin' to
+take you away." To this I only answered, "Water, water." I had a grim
+sense of amusement on finding that the old woman was not deaf, for she
+went out, and presently came back with a gourdful, which I eagerly
+drank. An hour later the Graybacks returned, and, finding that I was too
+weak to walk, carried me out, and laid me on the bottom of a common
+cart, with which they set off on a trot. The jolting was horrible, but
+within an hour I began to have in my dead right hand a strange burning,
+which was rather a relief to me. It increased as the sun rose and the
+day grew warm, until I felt as if the hand was caught and pinched in a
+red-hot vice. Then in my agony I begged my guard for water to wet it
+with, but for some reason they desired silence, and at every noise
+threatened me with a revolver. At length the pain became absolutely
+unendurable, and I grew what it is the fashion to call demoralized. I
+screamed, cried, and yelled in my torture, until, as I suppose, my
+captors became alarmed, and, stopping, gave me a handkerchief,--my own,
+I fancy,--and a canteen of water, with which I wetted the hand, to my
+unspeakable relief.
+
+It is unnecessary to detail the events by which, finally, I found myself
+in one of the Rebel hospitals near Atlanta. Here, for the first time, my
+wounds were properly cleansed and dressed by a Dr. Oliver Wilson, who
+treated me throughout with great kindness. I told him I had been a
+doctor; which, perhaps, may have been in part the cause of the unusual
+tenderness with which I was managed. The left arm was now quite easy;
+although, as will be seen, it never entirely healed. The right arm was
+worse than ever,--the humerus broken, the nerves wounded, and the hand
+only alive to pain. I use this phrase because it is connected in my mind
+with a visit from a local visitor,--I am not sure he was a
+preacher,--who used to go daily through the wards, and talk to us, or
+write our letters. One morning he stopped at my bed, when this little
+talk occurred.
+
+"How are you, Lieutenant?"
+
+"O," said I, "as usual. All right, but this hand, which is dead except
+to pain."
+
+"Ah," said he, "such and thus will the wicked be,--such will you be if
+you die in your sins: you will go where only pain can be felt. For all
+eternity, all of you will be as that hand,--knowing pain only."
+
+I suppose I was very weak, but somehow I felt a sudden and chilling
+horror of possible universal pain, and suddenly fainted. When I awoke,
+the hand was worse, if that could be. It was red, shining, aching,
+burning, and, as it seemed to me, perpetually rasped with hot files.
+When the doctor came, I begged for morphia. He said gravely: "We have
+none. You know you don't allow it to pass the lines."
+
+I turned to the wall, and wetted the hand again, my sole relief. In
+about an hour, Dr. Wilson came back with two aids, and explained to me
+that the bone was so broken as to make it hopeless to save it, and that,
+besides, amputation offered some chance of arresting the pain. I had
+thought of this before, but the anguish I felt--I cannot say
+endured--was so awful, that I made no more of losing the limb than of
+parting with a tooth on account of toothache. Accordingly, brief
+preparations were made, which I watched with a sort of eagerness such as
+must forever be inexplicable to any one who has not passed six weeks of
+torture like that which I had suffered.
+
+I had but one pang before the operation. As I arranged myself on the
+left side, so as to make it convenient for the operator to use the
+knife, I asked: "Who is to give me the ether?" "We have none," said the
+person questioned. I set my teeth, and said no more.
+
+I need not describe the operation. The pain felt was severe; but it was
+insignificant as compared to that of any other minute of the past six
+weeks. The limb was removed very near to the shoulder-joint. As the
+second incision was made, I felt a strange lightning of pain play
+through the limb, defining every minutest fibril of nerve. This was
+followed by instant, unspeakable relief, and before the flaps were
+brought together I was sound asleep. I have only a recollection that I
+said, pointing to the arm which lay on the floor: "There is the pain,
+and here am I. How queer!" Then I slept,--slept the sleep of the just,
+or, better, of the painless. From this time forward, I was free from
+neuralgia; but at a subsequent period I saw a number of cases similar to
+mine in a hospital in Philadelphia.
+
+It is no part of my plan to detail my weary months of monotonous prison
+life in the South. In the early part of August, 1863, I was exchanged,
+and, after the usual thirty days' furlough, returned to my regiment a
+captain.
+
+On the 19th of September, 1863, occurred the battle of Chickamauga, in
+which my regiment took a conspicuous part. The close of our own share in
+this contest is, as it were, burnt into my memory with every least
+detail. It was about six P. M., when we found ourselves in line, under
+cover of a long, thin row of scrubby trees, beyond which lay a gentle
+slope, from which, again, rose a hill rather more abrupt, and crowned
+with an earthwork. We received orders to cross this space, and take the
+fort in front, while a brigade on our right was to make a like movement
+on its flank.
+
+Just before we emerged into the open ground, we noticed what, I think,
+was common in many fights,--that the enemy had begun to bowl round-shot
+at us, probably from failure of shell. We passed across the valley in
+good order, although the men fell rapidly all along the line. As we
+climbed the hill, our pace slackened, and the fire grew heavier. At this
+moment a battery opened on our left,--the shots crossing our heads
+obliquely. It is this moment which is so printed on my recollection. I
+can see now, as if through a window, the gray smoke, lit with red
+flashes,--the long, wavering line,--the sky blue above,--the trodden
+furrows, blotted with blue blouses. Then it was as if the window closed,
+and I knew and saw no more. No other scene in my life is thus scarred,
+if I may say so, into my memory. I have a fancy that the horrible shock
+which suddenly fell upon me must have had something to do with thus
+intensifying the momentary image then before my eyes.
+
+When I awakened, I was lying under a tree somewhere at the rear. The
+ground was covered with wounded, and the doctors were busy at an
+operating-table, improvised from two barrels and a plank. At length two
+of them who were examining the wounded about me came up to where I lay.
+A hospital steward raised my head, and poured down some brandy and
+water, while another cut loose my pantaloons. The doctors exchanged
+looks, and walked away. I asked the steward where I was hit.
+
+"Both thighs," said he; "the Doc's won't do nothing."
+
+"No use?" said I.
+
+"Not much," said he.
+
+"Not much means none at all," I answered.
+
+When he had gone, I set myself to thinking about a good many things
+which I had better have thought of before, but which in no way concern
+the history of my case. A half-hour went by. I had no pain, and did not
+get weaker. At last, I cannot explain why, I began to look about me. At
+first, things appeared a little hazy; but I remember one which thrilled
+me a little, even then.
+
+A tall, blond-bearded major walked up to a doctor near me, saying, "When
+you've a little leisure, just take a look at my side."
+
+"Do it now," said the doctor.
+
+The officer exposed his left hip. "Ball went in here, and out here."
+
+The Doctor looked up at him with a curious air,--half pity, half
+amazement. "If you've got any message, you'd best send it by me."
+
+"Why, you don't say its serious?" was the reply.
+
+"Serious! Why, you're shot through the stomach. You won't live over the
+day."
+
+Then the man did what struck me as a very odd thing. "Anybody got a
+pipe?" Some one gave him a pipe. He filled it deliberately, struck a
+light with a flint, and sat down against a tree near to me. Presently
+the doctor came over to him, and asked what he could do for him.
+
+"Send me a drink of Bourbon."
+
+"Anything else?"
+
+"No."
+
+As the doctor left him, he called him back. "It's a little rough, Doc,
+isn't it?"
+
+No more passed, and I saw this man no longer, for another set of doctors
+were handling my legs, for the first time causing pain. A moment after,
+a steward put a towel over my mouth, and I smelt the familiar odor of
+chloroform, which I was glad enough to breathe. In a moment the trees
+began to move around from left to right,--then faster and faster; then a
+universal grayness came before me, and I recall nothing further until I
+awoke to consciousness in a hospital-tent. I got hold of my own identity
+in a moment or two, and was suddenly aware of a sharp cramp in my left
+leg. I tried to get at it to rub it with my single arm, but, finding
+myself too weak, hailed an attendant. "Just rub my left calf," said I,
+"if you please."
+
+"Calf?" said he, "you ain't none, pardner. It's took off."
+
+"I know better," said I. "I have pain in both legs."
+
+"Wall, I never!" said he. "You ain't got nary leg."
+
+As I did not believe him, he threw off the covers, and, to my horror,
+showed me that I had suffered amputation of both thighs, very high up.
+
+"That will do," said I, faintly.
+
+A month later, to the amazement of every one, I was so well as to be
+moved from the crowded hospital at Chattanooga to Nashville, where I
+filled one of the ten thousand beds of that vast metropolis of
+hospitals. Of the sufferings which then began I shall presently speak.
+It will be best just now to detail the final misfortune which here fell
+upon me. Hospital No. 2, in which I lay, was inconveniently crowded with
+severely wounded officers. After my third week, an epidemic of hospital
+gangrene broke out in my ward. In three days it attacked twenty persons.
+Then an inspector came out, and we were transferred at once to the open
+air, and placed in tents. Strangely enough, the wound in my remaining
+arm, which still suppurated, was seized with gangrene. The usual remedy,
+bromine, was used locally, but the main artery opened, was tied, bled
+again and again, and at last, as a final resort, the remaining arm was
+amputated at the shoulder-joint. Against all chances I recovered, to
+find myself a useless torso, more like some strange larval creature than
+anything of human shape. Of my anguish and horror of myself I dare not
+speak. I have dictated these pages, not to shock my readers, but to
+possess them with facts in regard to the relation of the mind to the
+body; and I hasten, therefore, to such portions of my case as best
+illustrate these views.
+
+In January, 1864, I was forwarded to Philadelphia, in order to enter
+what was then known as the Stump Hospital, South Street. This favor was
+obtained through the influence of my father's friend, the late Governor
+Anderson, who has always manifested an interest in my case, for which I
+am deeply grateful. It was thought, at the time, that Mr. Palmer, the
+leg-maker, might be able to adapt some form of arm to my left shoulder,
+as on that side there remained five inches of the arm bone, which I
+could move to a moderate extent. The hope proved illusory, as the stump
+was always too tender to bear any pressure. The hospital referred to was
+in charge of several surgeons while I was an inmate, and was at all
+times a clean and pleasant home. It was filled with men who had lost one
+arm or leg, or one of each, as happened now and then. I saw one man who
+had lost both legs, and one who had parted with both arms; but none,
+like myself, stripped of every limb. There were collected in this place
+hundreds of these cases, which gave to it, with reason enough, the not
+very pleasing title of Stump-Hospital.
+
+I spent here three and a half months, before my transfer to the United
+States Army Hospital for nervous diseases. Every morning I was carried
+out in an arm-chair, and placed in the library, where some one was
+always ready to write or read for me, or to fill my pipe. The doctors
+lent me medical books; the ladies brought me luxuries, and fed me; and,
+save that I was helpless to a degree which was humiliating, I was as
+comfortable as kindness could make me.
+
+I amused myself, at this time, by noting in my mind all that I could
+learn from other limbless folk, and from myself, as to the peculiar
+feelings which were noticed in regard to lost members. I found that the
+great mass of men who had undergone amputations, for many months felt
+the usual consciousness that they still had the lost limb. It itched or
+pained, or was cramped, but never felt hot or cold. If they had painful
+sensations referred to it, the conviction of its existence continued
+unaltered for long periods; but where no pain was felt in it, then, by
+degrees, the sense of having that limb faded away entirely. I think we
+may to some extent explain this. The knowledge we possess of any part is
+made up of the numberless impressions from without which affect its
+sensitive surfaces, and which are transmitted through its nerves to the
+spinal nerve-cells, and through them, again, to the brain. We are thus
+kept endlessly informed as to the existence of parts, because the
+impressions which reach the brain are, by a law of our being, referred
+by us to the part from which they came. Now, when the part is cut off,
+the nerve-trunks which led to it and from it, remaining capable of being
+impressed by irritations, are made to convey to the brain from the stump
+impressions which are as usual referred by the brain to the lost parts,
+to which these nerve-threads belonged. In other words, the nerve is like
+a bell-wire. You may pull it at any part of its course, and thus ring
+the bell as well as if you pulled at the end of the wire; but, in any
+case, the intelligent servant will refer the pull to the front door, and
+obey it accordingly. The impressions made on the cut ends of the nerve,
+or on its sides, are due often to the changes in the stump during
+healing, and consequently cease as it heals, so that finally, in a very
+healthy stump, no such impressions arise; the brain ceases to correspond
+with the lost leg, and, as _les absents ont toujours tort_, it is no
+longer remembered or recognized. But in some cases, such as mine proved
+at last to my sorrow, the ends of the nerves undergo a curious
+alteration, and get to be enlarged and altered. This change, as I have
+seen in my practice of medicine, passes up the nerves towards the
+centres, and occasions a more or less constant irritation of the
+nerve-fibres, producing neuralgia, which is usually referred to that
+part of the lost limb to which the affected nerve belongs. This pain
+keeps the brain ever mindful of the missing part, and, imperfectly at
+least, preserves to the man a consciousness of possessing that which he
+has not.
+
+Where the pains come and go, as they do in certain cases, the subjective
+sensations thus occasioned are very curious, since in such cases the man
+loses and gains, and loses and regains, the consciousness of the
+presence of lost parts, so that he will tell you, "Now I feel my
+thumb,--now I feel my little finger." I should also add, that nearly
+every person who has lost an arm above the elbow feels as though the
+lost member were bent at the elbow, and at times is vividly impressed
+with the notion that his fingers are strongly flexed.
+
+Another set of cases present a peculiarity which I am at a loss to
+account for. Where the leg, for instance, has been lost, they feel as if
+the foot was present, but as though the leg were shortened. If the thigh
+has been taken off, there seems to them to be a foot at the knee; if the
+arm, a hand seems to be at the elbow, or attached to the stump itself.
+
+As I have said, I was next sent to the United States Army Hospital for
+Injuries and Diseases of the Nervous System. Before leaving Nashville, I
+had begun to suffer the most acute pain in my left hand, especially the
+little finger; and so perfect was the idea which was thus kept up of the
+real presence of these missing parts, that I found it hard at times to
+believe them absent. Often, at night, I would try with one lost hand to
+grope for the other. As, however, I had no pain in the right arm, the
+sense of the existence of that limb gradually disappeared, as did that
+of my legs also.
+
+Everything was done for my neuralgia which the doctors could think of;
+and at length, at my suggestion, I was removed to the above-named
+hospital. It was a pleasant, suburban, old-fashioned country-seat, its
+gardens surrounded by a circle of wooden, one-story wards, shaded by
+fine trees. There were some three hundred cases of epilepsy, paralysis,
+St. Vitus's dance, and wounds of nerves. On one side of me lay a poor
+fellow, a Dane, who had the same burning neuralgia with which I once
+suffered, and which I now learned was only too common. This man had
+become hysterical from pain. He carried a sponge in his pocket, and a
+bottle of water in one hand, with which he constantly wetted the burning
+hand. Every sound increased his torture, and he even poured water into
+his boots to keep himself from feeling too sensibly the rough friction
+of his soles when walking. Like him, I was greatly eased by having small
+doses of morphia injected under the skin of my shoulder, with a hollow
+needle, fitted to a syringe.
+
+As I improved under the morphia treatment, I began to be disturbed by
+the horrible variety of suffering about me. One man walked sideways;
+there was one who could not smell; another was dumb from an explosion.
+In fact, every one had his own grotesquely painful peculiarity. Near me
+was a strange case of palsy of the muscles called rhomboids, whose
+office it is to hold down the shoulder-blades flat on the back during
+the motions of the arms, which, in themselves, were strong enough. When,
+however, he lifted these members, the shoulder-blades stood out from the
+back like wings, and got him the soubriquet of the Angel. In my ward
+were also the cases of fits, which very much annoyed me, as upon any
+great change in the weather it was common to have a dozen convulsions in
+view at once. Dr. Neek, one of our physicians, told me that on one
+occasion a hundred and fifty fits took place within thirty-six hours. On
+my complaining of these sights, whence I alone could not fly, I was
+placed in the paralytic and wound ward, which I found much more
+pleasant.
+
+A month of skilful treatment eased me entirely of my aches, and I then
+began to experience certain curious feelings, upon which, having nothing
+to do and nothing to do anything with, I reflected a good deal. It was a
+good while before I could correctly explain to my own satisfaction the
+phenomena which at this time I was called upon to observe. By the
+various operations already described, I had lost about four fifths of my
+weight. As a consequence of this, I ate much less than usual, and could
+scarcely have consumed the ration of a soldier. I slept also but little;
+for, as sleep is the repose of the brain, made necessary by the waste of
+its tissues during thought and voluntary movement, and as this latter
+did not exist in my case, I needed only that rest which was necessary to
+repair such exhaustion of the nerve-centres as was induced by thinking
+and the automatic movements of the viscera.
+
+I observed at this time also, that my heart, in place of beating as it
+once did seventy-eight in the minute, pulsated only forty-five times in
+this interval,--a fact to be easily explained by the perfect quiescence
+to which I was reduced, and the consequent absence of that healthy and
+constant stimulus to the muscles of the heart which exercise occasions.
+
+Notwithstanding these drawbacks, my physical health was good, which I
+confess surprised me, for this among other reasons. It is said that a
+burn of two thirds of the surface destroys life, because then all the
+excretory matters which this portion of the glands of the skin evolved
+are thrown upon the blood, and poison the man, just as happens in an
+animal whose skin the physiologist has varnished, so as in this way to
+destroy its function. Yet here was I, having lost at least a third of my
+skin, and apparently none the worse for it.
+
+Still more remarkable, however, were the physical changes which I now
+began to perceive. I found to my horror that at times I was less
+conscious of myself, of my own existence, than used to be the case. This
+sensation was so novel, that at first it quite bewildered me. I felt
+like asking some one constantly if I were really George Dedlow or not;
+but, well aware how absurd I should seem after such a question, I
+refrained from speaking of my case, and strove more keenly to analyze my
+feelings. At times the conviction of my want of being myself was
+overwhelming, and most painful. It was, as well as I can describe it, a
+deficiency in the egoistic sentiment of individuality. About one half of
+the sensitive surface of my skin was gone, and thus much of relation to
+the outer world destroyed. As a consequence, a large part of the
+receptive central organs must be out of employ, and, like other idle
+things, degenerating rapidly. Moreover, all the great central ganglia,
+which give rise to movements in the limbs, were also eternally at rest.
+Thus one half of me was absent or functionally dead. This set me to
+thinking how much a man might lose and yet live. If I were unhappy
+enough to survive, I might part with my spleen at least, as many a dog
+has done, and grown fat afterwards. The other organs, with which we
+breathe and circulate the blood, would be essential; so also would the
+liver; but at least half of the intestines might be dispensed with, and
+of course all of the limbs. And as to the nervous system, the only parts
+really necessary to life are a few small ganglia. Were the rest absent
+or inactive, we should have a man reduced, as it were, to the lowest
+terms, and leading an almost vegetative existence. Would such a being, I
+asked myself, possess the sense of individuality in its usual
+completeness,--even if his organs of sensation remained, and he were
+capable of consciousness? Of course, without them, he could not have it
+any more than a dahlia, or a tulip. But with it--how then? I concluded
+that it would be at a minimum, and that, if utter loss of relation to
+the outer world were capable of destroying a man's consciousness of
+himself, the destruction of half of his sensitive surfaces might well
+occasion, in a less degree, a like result, and so diminish his sense of
+individual existence.
+
+I thus reached the conclusion that a man is not his brain, or any one
+part of it, but all of his economy, and that to lose any part must
+lessen this sense of his own existence. I found but one person who
+properly appreciated this great truth. She was a New England lady, from
+Hartford,--an agent, I think, for some commission, perhaps the Sanitary.
+After I had told her my views and feelings, she said: "Yes, I
+comprehend. The fractional entities of vitality are embraced in the
+oneness of the unitary Ego. Life," she added, "is the garnered
+condensation of objective impressions; and, as the objective is the
+remote father of the subjective, so must individuality, which is but
+focused subjectivity, suffer and fade when the sensation lenses, by
+which the rays of impression are condensed, become destroyed." I am not
+quite clear that I fully understood her, but I think she appreciated my
+ideas, and I felt grateful for her kindly interest.
+
+The strange want I have spoken of now haunted and perplexed me so
+constantly, that I became moody and wretched. While in this state, a man
+from a neighboring ward fell one morning into conversation with the
+chaplain, within earshot of my chair. Some of their words arrested my
+attention, and I turned my head to see and listen. The speaker, who
+wore a sergeant's chevron and carried one arm in a sling, was a tall,
+loosely made person, with a pale face, light eyes of a washed-out blue
+tint, and very sparse yellow whiskers. His mouth was weak, both lips
+being almost alike, so that the organ might have been turned upside down
+without affecting its expression. His forehead, however, was high and
+thinly covered with sandy hair. I should have said, as a phrenologist,
+Will feeble,--emotional, but not passionate,--likely to be enthusiast,
+or weakly bigot.
+
+I caught enough of what passed to make me call to the sergeant when the
+chaplain left him.
+
+"Good morning," said he. "How do you get on?"
+
+"Not at all," I replied. "Where were you hit?"
+
+"O, at Chancellorsville. I was shot in the shoulder. I have what the
+doctors call paralysis of the median nerve, but I guess Dr. Neek and the
+lightnin' battery will fix it in time. When my time's out I'll go back
+to Kearsage and try on the school-teaching again. I was a fool to leave
+it."
+
+"Well," said I, "you're better off than I."
+
+"Yes," he answered, "in more ways than one. I belong to the New Church.
+It's a great comfort for a plain man like me, when he's weary and sick,
+to be able to turn away from earthly things, and hold converse daily
+with the great and good who have left the world. We have a circle in
+Coates Street. If it wa'n't for the comfort I get there, I should have
+wished myself dead many a time. I ain't got kith or kin on earth; but
+this matters little, when one can talk to them daily, and know that they
+are in the spheres above us."
+
+"It must be a great comfort," I replied, "if only one could believe it."
+
+"Believe!" he repeated, "how can you help it? Do you suppose anything
+dies?"
+
+"No," I said. "The soul does not, I am sure; and as to matter, it merely
+changes form."
+
+"But why then," said he, "should not the dead soul talk to the living.
+In space, no doubt, exist all forms of matter, merely in finer, more
+ethereal being. You can't suppose a naked soul moving about without a
+bodily garment. No creed teaches that, and if its new clothing be of
+like substance to ours, only of ethereal fineness,--a more delicate
+recrystallization about the eternal spiritual nucleus,--must not it then
+possess powers as much more delicate and refined as is the new material
+in which it is reclad?"
+
+"Not very clear," I answered; "but after all, the thing should be
+susceptible of some form of proof to our present senses."
+
+"And so it is," said he. "Come to-morrow with me, and you shall see and
+hear for yourself."
+
+"I will," said I, "if the doctor will lend me the ambulance."
+
+It was so arranged, as the surgeon in charge was kind enough, as usual,
+to oblige me with the loan of his wagon, and two orderlies to lift my
+useless trunk.
+
+On the day following, I found myself, with my new comrade, in a house in
+Coates Street, where a "circle" was in the daily habit of meeting. So
+soon as I had been comfortably deposited in an arm-chair, beside a large
+pine-table, the rest of those assembled seated themselves, and for some
+time preserved an unbroken silence. During this pause I scrutinized the
+persons present. Next to me, on my right, sat a flabby man, with
+ill-marked, baggy features, and injected eyes. He was, as I learned
+afterwards, an eclectic doctor, who had tried his hand at medicine and
+several of its quackish variations, finally settling down on
+eclecticism, which I believe professes to be to scientific medicine what
+vegetarianism is to common sense, every-day dietetics. Next to him sat a
+female,--authoress, I think, of two somewhat feeble novels, and much
+pleasanter to look at than her books. She was, I thought, a good deal
+excited at the prospect of spiritual revelations. Her neighbor was a
+pallid, care-worn girl, with very red lips, and large brown eyes of
+great beauty. She was, as I learned afterwards, a magnetic patient of
+the doctor, and had deserted her husband, a master mechanic, to follow
+this new light. The others were, like myself, strangers brought hither
+by mere curiosity. One of them was a lady in deep black, closely veiled.
+Beyond her, and opposite to me, sat the sergeant, and next to him, the
+medium, a man named Blake. He was well dressed, and wore a good deal of
+jewelry, and had large, black side-whiskers,--a shrewd-visaged,
+large-nosed, full-lipped man, formed by nature to appreciate the
+pleasant things of sensual existence.
+
+Before I had ended my survey, he turned to the lady in black, and asked
+if she wished to see any one in the spirit-world.
+
+She said, "Yes," rather feebly.
+
+"Is the spirit present?" he asked. Upon which two knocks were heard in
+affirmation.
+
+"Ah!" said the medium, "the name is--it is the name of a child. It is a
+male child. It is Albert,--no, Alfred!"
+
+"Great Heaven!" said the lady. "My child! my boy!"
+
+On this the medium arose, and became strangely convulsed. "I see," he
+said, "I see--a fair-haired boy. I see blue eyes,--I see above you,
+beyond you--" at the same time pointing fixedly over her head.
+
+She turned with a wild start "Where,--whereabouts?"
+
+"A blue-eyed boy," he continued, "over your head. He cries,--he says,
+Mamma, mamma!"
+
+The effect of this on the woman was unpleasant. She stared about her for
+a moment, and, exclaiming, "I come,--I am coming, Alfy!" fell in
+hysterics on the floor.
+
+Two or three persons raised her, and aided her into an adjoining room;
+but the rest remained at the table, as though well accustomed to like
+scenes.
+
+After this, several of the strangers were called upon to write the names
+of the dead with whom they wished to communicate. The names were spelled
+out by the agency of affirmative knocks when the correct letters were
+touched by the applicant, who was furnished with an alphabet card upon
+which he tapped the letters in turn, the medium, meanwhile, scanning his
+face very keenly. With some, the names were readily made out. With one,
+a stolid personage of disbelieving type, every attempt failed, until at
+last the spirits signified by knocks that he was a disturbing agency,
+and that while he remained all our efforts would fail. Upon this some of
+the company proposed that he should leave, of which invitation he took
+advantage with a sceptical sneer at the whole performance.
+
+As he left us, the sergeant leaned over and whispered to the medium, who
+next addressed himself to me, "Sister Euphemia," he said, indicating the
+lady with large eyes, "will act as your medium. I am unable to do more.
+These things exhaust my nervous system."
+
+"Sister Euphemia," said the doctor, "will aid us. Think, if you please,
+sir, of a spirit, and she will endeavor to summon it to our circle."
+
+Upon this, a wild idea came into my head. I answered, "I am thinking as
+you directed me to do."
+
+The medium sat with her arms folded, looking steadily at the centre of
+the table. For a few moments there was silence. Then a series of
+irregular knocks began. "Are you present?" said the medium.
+
+The affirmative raps were twice given.
+
+"I should think," said the doctor, "that there were two spirits
+present."
+
+His words sent a thrill through my heart.
+
+"Are there two?" he questioned.
+
+A double rap.
+
+"Yes, two," said the medium. "Will it please the spirits to make us
+conscious of their names in this world?"
+
+A single knock. "No."
+
+"Will it please them to say how they are called in the world of
+spirits?"
+
+Again came the irregular raps,--3, 4, 8, 6; then a pause, and 3, 4, 8,
+7.
+
+"I think," said the authoress, "they must be numbers. Will the spirits,"
+she said, "be good enough to aid us? Shall we use the alphabet?"
+
+"Yes," was rapped very quickly.
+
+"Are these numbers?"
+
+"Yes," again.
+
+"I will write them," she added, and, doing so, took up the card and
+tapped the letters. The spelling was pretty rapid, and ran thus as she
+tapped in turn, first the letters, and last the numbers she had already
+set down:--
+
+"UNITED STATES ARMY MEDICAL MUSEUM, NOS. 3486, 3487."
+
+The medium looked up with a puzzled expression.
+
+"Good gracious!" said I, "they are _my legs! my legs!_"
+
+What followed, I ask no one to believe except those who, like myself,
+have communed with the beings of another sphere. Suddenly I felt a
+strange return of my self-consciousness. I was re-individualized, so to
+speak. A strange wonder filled me, and, to the amazement of every one, I
+arose, and, staggering a little, walked across the room on limbs
+invisible to them or me. It was no wonder I staggered, for, as I briefly
+reflected, my legs had been nine months in the strongest alcohol. At
+this instant all my new friends crowded around me in astonishment.
+Presently, however, I felt myself sinking slowly. My legs were going,
+and in a moment I was resting feebly on my two stumps upon the floor. It
+was too much. All that was left of me fainted and rolled over senseless.
+
+I have little to add. I am now at home in the West, surrounded by every
+form of kindness, and every possible comfort; but, alas! I have so
+little surety of being myself, that I doubt my own honesty in drawing my
+pension, and feel absolved from gratitude to those who are kind to a
+being who is uncertain of being enough himself to be conscientiously
+responsible. It is needless to add, that I am not a happy fraction of a
+man; and that I am eager for the day when I shall rejoin the lost
+members of my corporeal family in another and a happier world.
+
+
+
+
+ON TRANSLATING THE DIVINA COMMEDIA.
+
+
+SECOND SONNET.
+
+    I enter, and see thee in the gloom
+      Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine!
+      And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine.
+      The air is filled with some unknown perfume;
+    The congregation of the dead make room
+      For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine;
+      Like rooks that haunt Ravenna's groves of pine
+      The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb.
+    From the confessionals I hear arise
+      Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies,
+      And lamentations from the crypts below;
+    And then a voice celestial that begins
+      With the pathetic words, "Although your sins
+      As scarlet be," and ends with "as the snow."
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT DOCTOR.
+
+A STORY IN TWO PARTS.
+
+
+PART I.
+
+"Hello! hello! which way now, Mrs. Walker? It'll rain afore you git
+there, if you've got fur to go. Hadn't you better stop an' come in till
+this thunder-shower passes over?"
+
+"Well, no, I reckon not, Mr. Bowen. I'm in a good deal of a hurry. I've
+been sent for over to John's." And rubbing one finger up and down the
+horn of her saddle, for she was on horseback, Mrs. Walker added,
+"Johnny's sick, Mr. Bowen, an' purty bad, I'm afeard." Then she tucked
+up her skirts, and, gathering up the rein, that had dropped on the neck
+of her horse, she inquired in a more cheerful tone, "How's all the
+folks,--Miss Bowen, an' Jinney, an' all?"
+
+By this time the thunder began to growl, and the wind to whirl clouds of
+dust along the road.
+
+"You'd better hitch your critter under the wood-shed, an' come in a bit.
+My woman'll be glad to see you, an' Jinney too,--there she is now, at
+the winder. I'll warrant nobody goes along the big road without her
+seein' 'em." Mr. Bowen had left the broad kitchen-porch from which he
+had hallooed to the old woman, and was now walking down the gravelled
+path, that, between its borders of four-o'clocks and other common
+flowers, led from the front door to the front gate. "We're all purty
+well, I'm obleeged to you," he said, as, reaching the gate, he leaned
+over it, and turned his cold gray eyes upon the neat legs of the horse,
+rather than the anxious face of the rider.
+
+"I'm glad to hear you're well," Mrs. Walker said; "it a'most seems to me
+that, if I had Johnny the way he was last week, I wouldn't complain
+about anything. We think too much of our little hardships, Mr. Bowen,--a
+good deal too much!" And Mrs. Walker looked at the clouds, perhaps in
+the hope that their blackness would frighten the tears away from her
+eyes. John was her own boy,--forty years old, to be sure, but still a
+boy to her,--and he was very sick.
+
+"Well, I don't know," Mr. Bowen said, opening the mouth of the horse and
+looking in it; "we all have our troubles, an' if it ain't one thing it's
+another. Now if John wasn't sick, I s'pose you'd be frettin' about
+somethin' else; you mustn't think you're particularly sot apart in your
+afflictions, any how. This rain that's getherin' is goin' to spile a
+couple of acres of grass for me, don't you see?"
+
+Mrs. Walker was hurt. Her neighbor had not given her the sympathy she
+expected; he had not said anything about John one way nor another; had
+not inquired whether there was anything he could do, nor what the doctor
+said, nor asked any of those questions that express a kindly solicitude.
+
+"I am sorry about your hay," she answered, "but I must be going."
+
+"Don't want to hurry you; but if you will go, the sooner the better.
+That thunder-cloud is certain to bust in a few minutes." And Mr. Bowen
+turned toward the house.
+
+"Wait a minute, Mrs. Walker," called a young voice, full of kindness;
+"here's my umberell. It'll save your bonnet, any how; and it's a real
+purty one. But didn't I hear you say somebody was sick over to your
+son's house?"
+
+"Yes, darlin'," answered the old woman as she took the umbrella; "it's
+Johnny himself; he's right bad, they say. I just got word about an hour
+ago, and left everything, and started off. They think he's got the
+small-pox."
+
+Jenny Bowen, the young girl who had brought the umbrella, looked
+terribly frightened. "_They_ won't let me go over, you know," she said,
+nodding her head toward the house, "not if it's really small-pox!" And
+then, with the hope at which the young are so quick to catch, she added,
+"May be it isn't small-pox. I haven't heard of a case anywhere about. I
+don't believe it is." And then she told Mrs. Walker not to fret about
+home. "I will go," she said, "and milk the cow, and look after things.
+Don't think one thought about it." And then she asked if the rest of
+them at John Walker's were well.
+
+"If it's Hobert you want to know about," the grandmother said, smiling
+faintly, "he's well; but, darlin', you'd better not think about him:
+they'll be ag'in it, in there!" and she nodded toward the house as Jenny
+had done before her.
+
+The face of the young girl flushed,--not with confusion, but with
+self-asserting and defiant brightness that seemed to say, "Let them do
+their worst." The thunder rattled sharper and nearer, bursting right
+upon the flash of the lightning, and then came the rain. But it proved
+not one of those bright, brief dashes that leave the world sparkling,
+but settled toward sunset into a slow, dull drizzle.
+
+Jenny had her milking, and all the other evening chores, done betimes,
+and with an alertness and cheerfulness in excess of her usual manner,
+that might have indicated an unusual favor to be asked. She had made her
+evening toilet; that is, she had combed her hair, tied on a pair of
+calf-skin shoes, and a blue checked apron, newly washed and ironed; when
+she said, looking toward a faint light in the west, and as though the
+thought had just occurred to her, "It's going to break away, I see.
+Don't you think, mother, I had better just run over to Mrs. Walker's,
+and milk her cow for her?"
+
+"Go to Miss Walker's!" repeated the mother, as though she were as much
+outraged as astonished. She was seated in the door, patching, by the
+waning light, an old pair of mud-spattered trousers, her own dress being
+very old-fashioned, coarse, and scanty,--so scant, in fact, as to reveal
+the angles of her form with ungraceful definiteness, especially the
+knees, that were almost suggestive of a skeleton, and now, as she put
+herself in position, as it were, stood up with inordinate prominence.
+Her hands were big in the joints, ragged in the nails, and marred all
+over with the cuts, burns, and scratches of indiscriminate and incessant
+toil. But her face was, perhaps, the most sadly divested of all womanly
+charm. It had, in the first place, the deep yellow, lifeless appearance
+of an old bruise, and was expressive of pain, irritation, and fanatical
+anxiety.
+
+"Go to Miss Walker's!" she said again, seeing that Jenny was taking down
+from its peg in the kitchen-wall a woollen cloak that had been hers
+since she was a little girl, and her mother's before her.
+
+"Yes, mother. You know John Walker is very sick, and Mrs. Walker has
+been sent for over there. She's very down-hearted about him. He's
+dangerous, they think; and I thought may be I'd come round that way as I
+come home, and ask how he was. Don't you think I'd better?"
+
+"I think you had better stay at home and tend to your own business.
+You'll spile your clothes, and do no good that I can see by traipsin'
+out in such a storm."
+
+"Why, you would think it was bad for one of our cows to go without
+milking," Jenny said, "and I suppose Mrs. Walker's cow is a good deal
+like ours, and she is giving a pailful of milk now."
+
+"How do you know so much about Miss Walker's cow? If you paid more
+attention to things at home, and less to other folks, you'd be more
+dutiful."
+
+"That's true, mother, but would I be any better?"
+
+"Not in your own eyes, child; but you're so much wiser than your father
+and me, that words are throwed away on you."
+
+"I promised Mrs. Walker that I would milk for her to-night," Jenny
+said, hesitating, and dropping her eyes.
+
+"O yes, you've always got some excuse! What did you make a promise for,
+that you knowed your father wouldn't approve of? Take your things right
+off now, and peel the potaters, and sift the meal for mush in the
+morning; an' if Miss Walker's cow must be milked, what's to hender that
+Hobe, the great lazy strapper, shouldn't go and milk her?"
+
+"You forget how much he has to do at home now; and one pair of hands
+can't do everything, even if they are Hobert Walker's!"
+
+Jenny had spoken with much spirit and some bitterness; and the bright
+defiant flush, before noticed, came into her face, as she untied the
+cloak and proceeded to sift the meal and peel the potatoes for
+breakfast. She did her work quietly, but with a determination in every
+movement that indicated a will not easily overruled.
+
+It was nearly dark, and the rain still persistently falling, when she
+turned the potato-peelings into the pig-trough that stood only a few
+yards from the door, and, returning, put the cloak about her shoulders,
+tied it deliberately, turned the hood over her head, and, without
+another word, walked straight out into the rain.
+
+"Well, I must say! Well, I _must_ say!" cried the mother, in exasperated
+astonishment. "What on airth is that girl a-comin' to?" And, resting her
+elbows on her knees, she leaned her yellow face in her hands, and
+gathered out of her hard, embittered heart such consolation as she
+could.
+
+Jenny, meantime, tucked up her petticoats, and, having left a field or
+two between her and the homestead, tripped lightly along, debating with
+herself whether or not she should carry out her will to the full, and
+return by the way of Mr. John Walker's,--a question she need hardly have
+raised, if unexpected events had not interfered with her
+predeterminations. At Mrs. Walker's gate she stopped and pulled half a
+dozen roses from the bush that was almost lying on the ground with its
+burden,--they seemed, somehow, brighter than the roses at home,--and,
+with them swinging in her hand, had wellnigh gained the door, before she
+perceived that it was standing open. She hesitated an instant,--perhaps
+some crazy wanderer or drunken person might have entered the
+house,--when brisk steps, coming up the path that led from the
+milking-yard, arrested her attention, and, looking that way, she
+recognized through the darkness young Hobert Walker, with the full pail
+in his hand.
+
+"O Jenny," he said, setting down the pail, "we are in such trouble at
+home! The doctor says father is better, but I don't think so, and I
+ain't satisfied with what is being done for him. Besides, I had such a
+strange dream,--I thought I met you, Jenny, alone, in the night, and you
+had six red roses in your hand,--let me see how many have you." He had
+come close to her, and he now took the roses and counted them. There
+were six, sure enough. "Humph!" he said, and went on. "Six red roses, I
+thought; and while I looked at them they turned white as snow; and then
+it seemed to me it was a shroud you had in your hand, and not roses at
+all; and you, seeing how I was frightened, said to me, 'What if it
+should turn out to be my wedding-dress?' And while we talked, your
+father came between us, and led you away by a great chain that he put
+round your neck. But you think all this foolish, I see." And, as if he
+feared the apprehension he had confessed involved some surrender of
+manhood, he cast down his eyes, and awaited her reply in confusion. She
+had too much tact to have noticed this at any time; but in view of the
+serious circumstances in which he then stood, she could not for the life
+of her have turned any feeling of his into a jest, however unwarranted
+she might have felt it to be.
+
+"My grandmother was a great believer in dreams," she said,
+sympathetically; "but she always thought they went by contraries; and,
+if she was right, why, yours bodes ever so much good. But come, Hobert,
+let us go into the house: it's raining harder."
+
+"How stupid of me, Jenny, not to remember that you were being drowned,
+almost! You must try to excuse me: I am really hardly myself to-night."
+
+"Excuse you, Hobert! As if you could ever do anything I should not think
+was just right!" And she laughed the little musical laugh that had been
+ringing in his ears so long, and skipped before him into the house.
+
+He followed her with better heart; and, as she strained and put away the
+milk, and swept the hearth, and set the house in order, he pleased
+himself with fancies of a home of which she would be always the charming
+mistress.
+
+And who, that saw the sweet domestic cheer she diffused through the
+house with her harmless little gossip about this and that, and the
+artfully artless kindnesses to him she mingled with all, could have
+blamed him? He was given to melancholy and to musing; his cheek was
+sometimes pale, and his step languid; and he saw, all too often,
+troublesome phantoms coming to meet him. This disposition in another
+would have incited the keenest ridicule in the mind of Jenny Bowen, but
+in Hobert it was well enough; nay, more, it was actually fascinating,
+and she would not have had him otherwise. These characteristics--for her
+sake we will not say weaknesses--constantly suggested to her how much
+she could be to him,--she who was so strong in all ways,--in health, in
+hope, and in enthusiasm. And for him it was joy enough to look upon her
+full bright cheek, to see her compact little figure before him; but to
+touch her dimpled shoulder, to feel one tress of her hair against his
+face, was ecstasy; and her voice,--the tenderest trill of the wood-dove
+was not half so delicious! But who shall define the mystery of love?
+They were lovers; and when we have said that, is there anything more to
+be said? Their love had not, however, up to the time of which we write,
+found utterance in words. Hobert was the son of a poor man, and Jenny
+was prospectively rich, and the faces of her parents were set as flints
+against the poor young man. But Jenny had said in her heart more than
+once that she would marry him; and if the old folks had known this, they
+might as well have held their peace. Hobert did not dream that she had
+talked thus to her heart, and, with his constitutional timidity, he
+feared she would never say anything of the kind. Then, too, his
+conscientiousness stood in his way. Should he presume to take her to his
+poor house, even if she would come? No, no, he must not think of it; he
+must work and wait, and defer hope. This hour so opportune was also most
+inopportune,--such sorrow at home! He would not speak to-night,--O no,
+not to-night! And yet he could bear up against everything else, if she
+only cared for him! Such were his resolves, as she passed to and fro
+before him, trifling away the time with pretence of adjusting this thing
+and that; but at last expedients failed, and reaching for her cloak,
+which hung almost above him as he sat against the wall, she said it was
+time to go. As frostwork disappears in the sunshine, so his brave
+resolutions vanished when her arm reached across his shoulder, and the
+ribbon that tied her beads fluttered against his cheek. With a motion
+quite involuntary, he snatched her hand. "No, Jenny, not yet,--not quite
+yet!" he said.
+
+"And why not?" demanded Jenny; for could any woman, however innocent, or
+rustic, be without her little coquetries? And she added, in a tone that
+contradicted her words, "I am sure I should not have come if I had known
+you were coming!"
+
+"I dare say not," replied Hobert, in a voice so sad and so tender
+withal, as to set the roses Jenny wore in her bosom trembling. "I dare
+say not, indeed. I would not presume to hope you would go a step out of
+your way to give me pleasure; only I was feeling so lonesome to-night, I
+thought may be--no, I didn't think anything; I certainly didn't hope
+anything. Well, no matter, I am ready to go." And he let go the hand he
+had been holding, and stood up.
+
+It was Jenny's privilege to pout a little now, and to walk sullenly and
+silently home,--so torturing herself and her honest-hearted lover; but
+she was much too generous, much too noble, to do this. She would not for
+the world have grieved poor Hobert,--not then,--not when his heart was
+so sick and so weighed down with shadows; and she told him this with a
+simple earnestness that admitted of no doubt, concluding with, "I only
+wish, Hobert, I could say or do something to comfort you."
+
+"Then you will stay? Just a moment, Jenny!" And the hand was in his
+again.
+
+"Dear Jenny,--dear, dear Jenny!" She was sitting on his knee now; and
+the rain, with its pattering against the window, drowned their
+heart-beats; and the summer darkness threw over them its sacred veil.
+
+"Shall I tell you, darling, of another dream I have had to-night--since
+I have been sitting here?" The fair cheek bent itself close to his to
+listen, and he went on. "I have been dreaming, Jenny, a very sweet
+dream; and this is what it was. You and I were living here, in this
+house, with grandmother; and she was your grandmother as well as mine;
+and I was farmer of the land, and you were mistress of the dairy; and
+the little room with windows toward the sunrise, and the pretty bureau,
+and bed with snow-white coverlet and pillows of down,--that
+was"--perhaps he meant to say "_ours_," but his courage failed him, and,
+with a charming awkwardness, he said, "yours, Jenny," and hurried on to
+speak of the door-yard flowers, and the garden with its beds of thyme
+and mint, its berry-bushes and hop-vines and bee-hives,--all of which
+were brighter and sweeter than were ever hives and bushes in any other
+garden; and when he had run through the catalogue of rustic delights, he
+said: "And now, Jenny, I want you to tell me the meaning of my dream;
+and yet I am afraid you will interpret it as your grandmother used to
+hers."
+
+Jenny laughed gayly. "That is just what I will do, dear Hobert," she
+said; "for she used to say that only bad dreams went by contraries, and
+yours was the prettiest dream I ever heard."
+
+The reply to this sweet interpretation was after the manner of all
+lovers since the world began. And so, forgetting the stern old folks at
+home,--forgetting everything but each other,--they sat for an hour at
+the very gate of heaven. How often Hobert called her his sweetheart, and
+his rosebud, and other fond names, we need not stop to enumerate: how
+often he said that for her sake he could brave the winter storm and the
+summer heat, that she should never know rough work nor sad days, but
+that she should be as tenderly protected, as daintily cared for, as any
+lady of them all,--how often he said all these things, we need not
+enumerate; nor need we say with what unquestioning trust, and deafness
+to all the suggestions of probability, Jenny believed. Does not love, in
+fact, always believe what it hopes? Who would do away with the blessed
+insanity that clothes the marriage day with such enchantment? Who would
+dare to do it?
+
+No royal mantle could have been adjusted with tenderer and more reverent
+solicitude than was that night the coarse cloak about the shoulders of
+Jenny. The walk homeward was all too short; and whether the rain fell,
+or whether the moon were at her best, perhaps neither of them could have
+told until they were come within earshot of the Bowen homestead; then
+both suddenly stood still. Was it the arm of Jenny that trembled so? No,
+no! we must own the truth,--it was the arm through which hers was drawn.
+At her chamber window, peering out curiously and anxiously, was the
+yellow-white face of Mrs. Bowen; and, leaning over the gate, gazing up
+and down the road, the rain falling on his bent shoulders and gray
+head, was the father of Jenny,--angry and impatient, past doubt.
+
+"Don't stand looking any longer, for mercy's sake!" called the querulous
+voice from the house. "You'll get your death of cold, and then what'll
+become of us all? Saddle your horse this minute, and ride over to John
+Walker's,--for there's where you'll find Jinny, the gad-about,--and
+bring her home at the tail of your critter. I'll see who is going to be
+mistress here!"
+
+"She's had her own head too long a'ready, I'm afeard," replied the old
+man, turning from the gate, with intent, probably, to execute his wife's
+order.
+
+Seeing this, and hearing this, Hobert, as we said, stood still and
+trembled, and could only ask, by a little pressure of the hand he held,
+what was to be said or done.
+
+Jenny did not hesitate a moment. "I expected this or something worse,"
+she said. "Don't mind, Hobert; so they don't see you, I don't care for
+the rest. You must not go one step farther: the lightning will betray
+us, you see. I will say I waited for the rain to slack, and the two
+storms will clear off about the same time, I dare say. There, good
+night!"--and she turned her cheek to him; for she was not one of those
+impossible maidens we read of in books, who don't know they are in love,
+until after the consent of parents is obtained, and blush themselves to
+ashes at the thought of a kiss. To love Hobert was to her the most
+natural and proper thing in the world, and she did not dream there was
+anything to blush for. It is probable, too, that his constitutional
+bashfulness and distrust of himself brought out her greater confidence
+and buoyancy.
+
+"And how and where am I ever to see you again?" he asked, as he detained
+her, against her better judgment, if not against her will.
+
+"Trust that to me,"--and she hurried away in time to meet and prevent
+her father from riding forth in search of her.
+
+Of course there were fault-finding and quarrelling, accusations and
+protestations, hard demands and sullen pouting,--so that the home, at no
+time so attractive as we like to imagine the home of a young girl who
+has father and mother to provide for her and protect her, became to her
+like a prison-house. At the close of the first and second days after her
+meeting with Hobert, when the work was all faithfully done, she ventured
+to ask leave to go over to John Walker's and inquire how the sick man
+was; but so cold a refusal met her, that, on the evening of the third
+day, she sat down on the porch-side to while away the hour between
+working and sleeping, without having renewed her request.
+
+The sun was down, and the first star began to show faintly above a strip
+of gray cloud in the west, when a voice, low and tender, called to her,
+"Come here, my child!" and looking up she saw Grandmother Walker sitting
+on her horse at the gate. She had in the saddle before her her youngest
+granddaughter, and on the bare back of the horse, behind her, a little
+grandson, both their young faces expressive of the sorrow at home. Jenny
+arose on the instant, betraying in every motion the interest and
+sympathy she felt, and was just stepping lightly from the porch to the
+ground, when a strong hand grasped her shoulder and turned her back. It
+was her father who had overtaken her. "Go into the house!" he said. "If
+the old woman has got any arrant at all, it's likely it's to your mother
+and me."
+
+Nor was his heart melted in the least when he learned that his friend
+and neighbor was no more. He evinced surprise, and made some blunt and
+coarse inquiries, but that was the amount. "The widder is left purty
+destitute, I reckon," he said; and then he added, the Lord helped them
+that helped themselves, and we mustn't fly in the face of Providence.
+She had her son, strong and able-bodied; and of course he had no
+thoughts of encumbering himself with a family of his own,--young and
+poverty-struck as he was.
+
+Mrs. Walker understood the insinuation; but her heart could not hold
+resentment just then. She must relieve her burdened soul by talking of
+"poor Johnny," even though it were to deaf ears. She must tell what a
+good boy he had been,--how kind to her and considerate of her, how
+manly, how generous, how self-forgetful. And then she must tell how hard
+he had worked, and how saving he had been in order to give his children
+a better chance in the world than he had had; and how, if he had lived
+another year, he would have paid off the mortgage, and been able to hold
+up his head amongst men.
+
+After all the ploughing and sowing,--after all the preparation for the
+gathering in of the harvest,--it seemed very hard, she said, that Johnny
+must be called away, just as the shining ears began to appear. The
+circumstances of his death, too, seemed to her peculiarly afflictive.
+"We had all the doctors in the neighborhood," she said, "but none of
+them understood his case. At first they thought he had small-pox, and
+doctored him for that; and then they thought it was liver-complaint, and
+doctored him for that; and then it was bilious fever, and then it was
+typhus fever; and so it went on, and I really can't believe any of them
+understood anything about it. Their way seemed to be to do just what he
+didn't want done. In the first place, he was bled; and then he was
+blistered; and then he was bled again and blistered again, the fever all
+the time getting higher and higher; and when he wanted water, they said
+it would kill him, and gave him hot drinks till it seemed to me they
+would drive him mad; and sure enough, they did! The last word he ever
+said, to know what he was saying, was to ask me for a cup of cold water.
+I only wish I had given it to him; all the doctors in the world wouldn't
+prevent me now, if I only had him back. The fever seemed to be just
+devouring him: his tongue was as dry as sand, and his head as hot as
+fire. 'O mother!' says he, and there was such a look of beseeching in
+his eyes as I can never forget, 'may be I shall never want you to do
+anything more for me. Cold water! give me some cold water! If I don't
+have it, my senses will surely fly out of my head!' 'Yes, Johnny,' says
+I,--and I went and brought a tin bucketful, right out of the well, and
+set it on the table in his sight; for I thought it would do him good to
+see even more than he could drink; and then I brought a cup and dipped
+it up full. It was all dripping over, and he had raised himself on one
+elbow, and was leaning toward me, when the young doctor came in, and,
+stepping between us, took the cup out of my hand. All his strength
+seemed to go from poor Johnny at that, and he fell back on his pillow
+and never lifted his head any more. Still he kept begging in a feeble
+voice for the water. 'Just two or three drops,--just one drop!' he said.
+I couldn't bear it, and the doctor said I had better go out of the room,
+and so I did,--and the good Lord forgive me; for when I went back, after
+half an hour, he was clean crazy. He didn't know me, and he never knowed
+me any more."
+
+"It's purty hard, Miss Walker," answered Mr. Bowen, "to accuse the
+doctors with the murder of your son. A purty hard charge, that, I call
+it! So John's dead! Well, I hope he is better off. Where are you goin'
+to bury him?"
+
+And then Mrs. Walker said she didn't charge anybody with the murder of
+poor Johnny,--nobody meant to do him any harm, she knew that; but, after
+all, she wished she could only have had her own way with him from the
+first. And so she rode away,--her little bare-legged grandson, behind
+her, aggravating her distress by telling her that, when he got to be a
+man, he meant to do nothing all the days of his life but dig wells, and
+give water to whoever wanted it.
+
+It is not worth while to dwell at length on the humiliations and
+privations to which Jenny was subjected,--the mention of one or two will
+indicate the nature of all. In the first place, the white heifer she had
+always called hers was sold, and the money tied up in a tow bag. Jenny
+would not want a cow for years to come. The piece of land that had
+always been known as "Jenny's Corner" was not thus denominated any more,
+and she was given to understand that it was only to be hers
+_conditionally_. There were obstacles put in the way of her going to
+meeting of a Sunday,--first one thing, then another; and, finally, the
+bureau was locked, and the best dress and brightest ribbon inside the
+drawers. The new side-saddle she had been promised was refused to her,
+unless she in turn would make a promise; and the long day's work was
+made to drag on into the night, lest she might find time to visit some
+neighbor, and lest that neighbor might be the Widow Walker. But what
+device of the enemy ever proved successful when matched against the
+simple sincerity of true love? It came about, in spite of all restraint
+and prohibition, that Jenny and Hobert met in their own times and ways;
+and so a year went by.
+
+One night, late in the summer, when the katydids began to sing, Jenny
+waited longer than usual under the vine-covered beech that drooped its
+boughs low to the ground all round her,--now listening for the expected
+footstep, and now singing, very low, some little song to her heart, such
+as many a loving and trusting maiden had sung before her. What could
+keep Hobert? She knew it was not his will that kept him; and though her
+heart began to be heavy, she harbored therein no thought of reproach. By
+the movement of the shadow on the grass, she guessed that an hour beyond
+the one of appointment must have passed, when the far-away footfall set
+her so lately hushed pulses fluttering with delight. He was coming,--he
+was coming! And, no matter what had been wrong, all would be right now.
+She was holding wide the curtaining boughs long before he came near; and
+when they dropped, and her arms closed, it is not improbable that he was
+within them. It was the delight of meeting her that kept him still so
+long, Jenny thought; and she prattled lightly and gayly of this and of
+that, and, seeing that she won no answer, fell to tenderer tones, and
+imparted the little vexing secrets of her daily life, and the sweet
+hopes of her nightly dreams.
+
+They were seated on a grassy knoll, the moonlight creeping tenderly
+about their feet, and the leaves of the drooping vines touching their
+heads like hands of pity, or of blessing. The water running over the
+pebbly bottom of the brook just made the silence sweet, and the evening
+dews shining on the red globes of the clover made the darkness lovely;
+but with all these enchantments of sight and sound about him,--nay,
+more, with the hand of Jenny, his own true-love, Jenny, folded in
+his,--Hobert was not happy.
+
+"And so you think you love me!" he said at last, speaking so sadly, and
+clasping the hand he held with so faint a pressure, that Jenny would
+have been offended if she had not been the dear, trustful little
+creature she was.
+
+There was, indeed, a slight reproach in her accent as she answered,
+"_Think_ I love you, Hobert? No, I don't think anything about it,--I
+_know_."
+
+"And I know I love you, Jenny," he replied. "I love you so well that I
+am going to leave you without asking you to marry me!"
+
+For one moment Jenny was silent,--for one moment the world seemed
+unsteady beneath her,--then she stood up, and, taking the hand of her
+lover between her palms, gazed into his face with one long, earnest,
+steadfast gaze. "You have asked me already, Hobert," she said, "a
+thousand times, and I have consented as often. You may go away, but you
+will not leave me; for 'Whither thou goest I will go, where thou diest
+will I die, and there will I be buried.'"
+
+He drew her close to his bosom now, and kissed her with most passionate,
+but still saddest tenderness. "You know not, my darling," he said, "what
+you would sacrifice." Then he laid before her all her present
+advantages, all her bright prospects for the future,--her high chamber
+with its broad eastern windows, to be given up for the low dingy walls
+of a settler's cabin, her free girlhood for the hard struggles of a
+settler's wife! Sickness, perhaps,--certainly the lonesome nights and
+days of a home remote from neighbors, and the dreariness and hardship
+inseparable from the working out of better fortunes. But all these
+things, even though they should all come, were light in comparison with
+losing him!
+
+Perhaps Hobert had desired and expected to hear her say this. At any
+rate, he did not insist on a reversal of her decision, as, with his arms
+about her, he proceeded to explain why he had come to her that night
+with so heavy a heart. The substance of all he related may be
+recapitulated in a few words. The land could not be paid for, and the
+homestead must be sold. He would not be selfish and forsake his mother,
+and his young brothers and sisters in their time of need. By careful
+management of the little that could be saved, he might buy in the West a
+better farm than that which was now to be given up; and there to build a
+cabin and plant a garden would be easy,--O, so easy!--with the smile of
+Jenny to light him home when the day's work was done.
+
+In fact, the prospective hardships vanished away at the thought of her
+for his little housekeeper. It was such easy work for fancy to convert
+the work-days into holidays, and the thick wilderness into the shining
+village, where the schoolhouse stood open all the week, and the sweet
+bells called them to church of a Sunday; easy work for that deceitful
+elf to make the chimney-corner snug and warm, and to embellish it with
+his mother in her easy-chair. When they parted that night, each young
+heart was trembling with the sweetest secret it had ever held; and it
+was perhaps a fortnight thereafter that the same secret took wing, and
+flew wildly over the neighborhood.
+
+John Walker's little farm was gone for good and all. The few sheep, and
+the cows, and the pig, and the fowls, together with the greater part of
+the household furniture, were scattered over the neighborhood; the smoke
+was gone from the chimney, and the windows were curtainless; and the
+grave of John, with a modest but decent headstone, and a rose-bush newly
+planted beside it, was left to the care of strangers. The last visits
+had been paid, and the last good-byes and good wishes exchanged; and the
+widow and her younger children were far on their journey,--Hobert
+remaining for a day or two to dispose of his smart young horse, as it
+was understood, and then follow on.
+
+At this juncture, Mr. Bowen one morning opened the stair-door, as was
+his custom, soon after daybreak, and called harshly out, "Jinny! Jinny!
+its high time you was up!"
+
+Five minutes having elapsed, and the young girl not having yet appeared,
+the call was repeated more harshly than before. "Come, Jinny, come! or
+I'll know what's the reason!"
+
+She did not come; and five minutes more having passed, he mounted the
+stairs with a quick, resolute step, to know what was the reason. He came
+down faster, if possible, than he went up. "Mother, mother!" he cried,
+rushing toward Mrs. Bowen, who stood at the table sifting meal, his gray
+hair streaming wildly back, and his cheek blanched with amazement,
+"Jinny's run away!--run away, as sure as you're a livin' woman. Her
+piller hasn't been touched last night, and her chamber's desarted!"
+
+And this was the secret that took wing and flew over the neighborhood.
+
+
+
+
+THE RETREAT FROM LENOIR'S AND THE SIEGE OF KNOXVILLE.
+
+
+Late in October, 1863, the Ninth Army Corps went into camp at Lenoir's
+Station, twenty-five miles southwest of Knoxville, East Tennessee. Since
+April, the corps had campaigned in Kentucky, had participated in the
+siege of Vicksburg, had accompanied Sherman into the interior of
+Mississippi in his pursuit of Johnston, had returned to Kentucky, and
+then, in conjunction with the Twenty-third Army Corps, marching over the
+mountains into East Tennessee, in a brief but brilliant campaign under
+its old leader and favorite, Burnside, had delivered the loyal people of
+that region from the miseries of Rebel rule, and had placed them once
+more under the protection of the old flag. But all this had not been
+done without loss. Many of our brave comrades, who, through a storm of
+leaden hail, had crossed the bridge at Antietam, and had faced death in
+a hundred forms on the heights of Fredericksburg, had fallen on these
+widely separated battle-fields in the valley of the Mississippi. Many,
+overborne by fatigue and exposure, had laid down their wasted bodies by
+the roadside and in hospitals, and had gently breathed their young lives
+away. Many more, from time to time, had been rendered unfit for active
+service; and the corps, now a mere skeleton, numbered less than three
+thousand men present for duty. Never did men need rest more than they;
+and never was an order more welcome than that which now declared the
+campaign ended, and authorized the construction of winter quarters.
+
+The Thirty-sixth Massachusetts Volunteers--then in the First Brigade,
+First Division, Ninth Corps--was under the command of Major
+Draper,--Lieutenant-Colonel Goodell having been severely wounded at the
+battle of Blue Springs, October 10. The place selected for the winter
+quarters of the regiment was a young oak grove, nearly a quarter of a
+mile east of the village. The camp was laid out with unusual care. In
+order to secure uniformity throughout the regiment, the size of the
+log-houses--they were to be ten feet by six--was announced in orders
+from regimental head-quarters. The work of construction was at once
+commenced. Unfortunately, we were so far from our base of supplies--Camp
+Nelson, Kentucky--that nearly all our transportation was required by the
+Commissary Department for the conveyance of its stores. Consequently,
+the Quartermaster's Department was poorly supplied; and the only axes
+which could be obtained were those which our pioneers and company cooks
+had brought with them for their own use. These, however, were pressed
+into the service; and their merry ringing, as the men cheerfully engaged
+in the work, could be heard from early morning till evening. Small oaks,
+four and five inches in diameter, were chiefly used in building these
+houses. The logs were laid one above another, to the height of four
+feet, intersecting at the corners of the houses like the rails of a
+Virginia fence. The interstices were filled with mud. Shelter-tents,
+buttoned together to the size required, formed the roof, and afforded
+ample protection from the weather, except in very heavy rains. Each
+house had its fireplace, table, and bunk. On the 13th of November the
+houses were nearly completed; and as we sat by our cheerful fires that
+evening, and looked forward to the leisure and quiet of the winter
+before us, we thought ourselves the happiest of soldiers. Writing home
+at that time, I said that, unless something unforeseen should happen, we
+expected to remain at Lenoir's during the winter.
+
+That something unforeseen was at hand; and our pleasant dreams were
+destined to fade away like an unsubstantial pageant, leaving not a rack
+behind. At four o'clock on the morning of the 14th I was roused from
+sleep by loud knocks on the new-made door. In the order which followed,
+"Be ready to march at daybreak," I recognized the familiar, but
+unwelcome voice of the Sergeant-Major. Throwing aside my blankets, and
+leaving the Captain dreamily wondering what could be the occasion of so
+unexpected an order, I hurried to the quarters of the men of Company D,
+and repeated to the Orderly Sergeant the instructions just received. The
+camp was soon astir. Lights flashed here and there through the trees.
+"Pack up! pack up!" passed from lip to lip. "Shall we take everything?"
+Yes, everything. The shelter-tents were stripped from the houses,
+knapsacks and trunks were packed. The wagon for the officers' baggage
+came, was hurriedly loaded, and driven away. A hasty breakfast followed.
+Then, forming our line, we stacked arms, and awaited further orders.
+
+The mystery was soon solved. Longstreet, having cut loose from Bragg's
+army, which still remained in the vicinity of Chattanooga, had, by a
+forced march, struck the Tennessee River at Hough's Ferry, a few miles
+below Loudon. Already he had thrown a pontoon across the river, and was
+crossing with his entire command, except the cavalry under Wheeler,
+which he had sent by way of Marysville, with orders to seize the heights
+on the south bank of the Holston, opposite Knoxville. The whole movement
+was the commencement of a series of blunders on the part of the Rebel
+commanders in this department, which resulted at length in the utter
+overthrow of the Rebel army of the Tennessee. General Grant saw at once
+the mistake which the enemy had made, and ordered General Burnside to
+fall back to Knoxville and intrench, promising reinforcements speedily.
+Knoxville was Longstreet's objective. It was the key of East Tennessee.
+Should it again fall into the enemy's hands, we would be obliged to
+retire to Cumberland Gap. Lenoir's did not lie in Longstreet's path. If
+we remained there, he would push his columns past our right, and get
+between us and Knoxville. It was evident that the place must be
+abandoned; and there was need of haste. The mills and factories in the
+village were accordingly destroyed, and the wagon-train started north.
+
+The morning had opened heavily with clouds, and, as the day advanced,
+the rain came down in torrents. A little before noon, our division, then
+under the command of General Ferrero, moved out of the woods; but,
+instead of taking the road to Knoxville, as we had anticipated, the
+column marched down the Loudon road. We were to watch the enemy, and, by
+holding him in check, secure the safety of our trains and material, then
+on the way to Knoxville.
+
+A few miles from Lenoir's, while we were halting for rest, General
+Burnside passed us on his way to the front. Under his slouched hat there
+was a sterner face than there was wont to be. There is trouble ahead,
+said the men; but the cheers which rose from regiment after regiment, as
+with his staff and battle-flag he swept past us, told the confidence
+which all felt in "Old Burnie."
+
+Chapin's brigade of White's command (Twenty-third Army Corps) was in the
+advance; and about four o'clock his skirmishers met those of the enemy,
+and drove them back a mile and a half. We followed through mud and rain.
+The country became hilly as we advanced, and our artillery was moved
+with difficulty. At dark we were in front of the enemy's position,
+having marched nearly fourteen miles. The rain had now ceased. Halting,
+we formed our lines in thick woods, and stacked our arms,--weary and
+wet, and not in the happiest of moods.
+
+During the evening a circular was received, notifying us of an intended
+attack on the enemy's lines at nine o'clock, P. M., by the troops of
+White's command; but, with the exception of an occasional shot, the
+night was a quiet one.
+
+The next morning, the usual reveille was omitted; and, at daybreak,
+noiselessly our lines were formed, and we marched out of the woods into
+the road. But it was not an advance. During the night General Ferrero
+had received orders to fall back to Lenoir's. Such, however, was the
+state of the roads, that it was almost impossible to move our artillery.
+At one time our whole regiment was detailed to assist Roemer's battery.
+Near Loudon we passed the Second Division of our corps, which during the
+night had moved down from Lenoir's, in order to be within supporting
+distance. But the enemy did not seem disposed to press us. We reached
+Lenoir's about noon. Sigfried, with the Second Division, followed later
+in the day. Our brigade (Morrison's) was now drawn up in line of battle
+on the Kingston road, as it was thought that the enemy, by not pressing
+our rear, intended a movement from that direction. And such was the
+fact. The enemy advanced against our position on this road, about four
+o'clock, and drove in our pickets. The Eighth Michigan was at once
+deployed as skirmishers. The Thirty-sixth Massachusetts and Forty-fifth
+Pennsylvania at the same time moved forward to support the skirmishers,
+and formed their line of battle in the woods, on the left of the road.
+Just at dusk, the enemy made a dash, and pressed our skirmishers back
+nearly to our line, but did not seem inclined to advance any further.
+
+A portion of the Ninth Corps, under Colonel Hartranft, and a body of
+mounted infantry, were now sent towards Knoxville, with orders to seize
+and hold the junction of the road from Lenoir's with the Knoxville and
+Kingston road, near the village of Campbell's Station. The distance was
+only eight miles, but the progress of the column was much retarded. Such
+was still the condition of the roads that the artillery could be moved
+only with the greatest difficulty. Colonel Biddle dismounted some of his
+men, and hitched their horses to the guns. In order to lighten the
+caissons, some of the ammunition was removed from the boxes and
+destroyed; but as little as possible, for who could say it would not be
+needed on the morrow? Throughout the long night, officers and men
+faltered not in their efforts to help forward the batteries. In the
+light of subsequent events, it will be seen that they could not have
+performed any more important service. Colonel Hartranft that night
+displayed the same spirit and energy which he infused into his gallant
+Pennsylvanians at Fort Steadman, in the last agonies of the Rebellion,
+when, rolling back the fiercest assaults of the enemy, he gained the
+first real success in the trenches at Petersburg, and won for himself
+the double star of a Major-General.
+
+Meanwhile, Morrison's brigade remained on the Kingston road in front of
+Lenoir's. The enemy, anticipating an evacuation of the place, made an
+attack on our lines about ten o'clock, P. M.; but a few shots on our
+part were sufficient to satisfy him that we still held the ground.
+Additional pickets, however, were sent out to extend the line held by
+the Eighth Michigan. The Thirty-sixth Massachusetts and Forty-fifth
+Pennsylvania still remained in line of battle in the woods. Neither
+officers nor men slept that night. It was bitter cold, and the usual
+fires were denied us, lest they should betray our weakness to the enemy.
+The men were ordered to put their canteens and tin cups in their
+haversacks, and remain quietly in their places, ready for any movement
+at a moment's notice. It was a long, tedious, fearful night; what would
+the morrow bring? It was Sunday night. The day had brought us no
+rest,--only weariness and anxiety. No one could speak to his fellow; and
+in the thick darkness, through the long, long night, we lay on our arms,
+waiting for the morning. Ah, how many hearts there were among us, which,
+overleaping the boundaries of States, found their way to Pennsylvanian
+and New England homes,--how many, which, on the morrow, among the hills
+of East Tennessee, were to pour out their young blood even unto death!
+
+At length the morning came. It was cloudy as the day before. White's
+division of the Twenty-third Corps was now on the road to Knoxville;
+and, besides our own brigade, only Humphrey's brigade of our division
+remained at Lenoir's. About daybreak, as silently as possible, we
+withdrew from our position on the Kingston road, and, falling back
+through the village of Lenoir's, moved towards Knoxville, Humphrey's
+brigade covering the retreat. Everything which we could not take with us
+was destroyed. Even our baggage and books, which, for the want of
+transportation, had not been removed, were committed to the flames. The
+enemy at once discovered our retreat, but did not press us till within a
+mile or two of the village of Campbell's Station. Humphrey, however,
+held him in check, and we moved on to the point where the road from
+Lenoir's unites with the road from Kingston to Knoxville. It was
+evidently Longstreet's intention to cut off our retreat at this place.
+For this reason he had not pressed us at Lenoir's, the afternoon
+previous, but had moved the main body of his army to our right. But the
+mounted infantry, which had been sent to this point during the night,
+were able to hold him in check, on the Kingston road, till Hartranft
+came up.
+
+On reaching the junction of the roads, we advanced into an open field on
+our left, and at once formed our line of battle in rear of a rail fence,
+our right resting near the Kingston road. The Eighth Michigan was on our
+left. The Forty-fifth Pennsylvania was deployed as skirmishers. The rest
+of our troops were now withdrawing to a new position back of the village
+of Campbell's Station; and we were left to cover the movement. Unfurling
+our colors, we awaited the advance of the enemy. There was an occasional
+shot fired in our front, and to our right; but it was soon evident that
+the Rebels were moving to our left, in order to gain the cover of the
+woods. Moving off by the left flank, therefore, we took a second
+position in an adjoining field. Finding now the enemy moving rapidly
+through the woods, and threatening our rear, we executed a left
+half-wheel; and, advancing on the double-quick to the rail fence which
+ran along the edge of the woods, we opened a heavy fire. From this
+position the enemy endeavored to force us. His fire was well directed,
+but the fence afforded us a slight protection. Lieutenant Fairbank and a
+few of the men were here wounded. For a while, we held the enemy in
+check, but at length the skirmishers of the Forty-fifth Pennsylvania,
+who were watching our right, discovered a body of Rebel infantry pushing
+towards our rear from the Kingston road. Colonel Morrison, our brigade
+commander, at once ordered the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts and Eighth
+Michigan to face about, and establish a new line, in rear of the rail
+fence on the opposite side of the field. We advanced on the
+double-quick; and, reaching the fence, our men with a shout poured a
+volley into the Rebel line of battle, which not only checked its
+advance, but drove it back in confusion. Meanwhile, the enemy in our
+rear moved up to the edge of the woods, which we had just left, and now
+opened a brisk fire. We at once crossed the fence in order to place it
+between us and his fire, and were about to devote our attention again to
+him, when orders came for us to withdraw,--it being no longer necessary
+to hold the junction of the roads, for all our troops and wagons had now
+passed. The enemy, too, was closing in upon us, and his fire was the
+hottest. We moved off in good order; but our loss in killed and wounded
+was quite heavy, considering the length of time we were under fire.
+
+Among the killed was Lieutenant P. Marion Holmes of Charlestown, Mass.,
+of whom it might well be said,
+
+    "He died as fathers wish their sons to die."
+
+Lieutenant Holmes had been wounded at the battle of Blue Springs a
+little more than a month before, and had made the march from Lenoir's
+that morning with great difficulty. But he would not leave his men. On
+his breast he wore the badge of the Bunker Hill Club, on which was
+engraved the familiar line from Horace, which Warren quoted just before
+the battle of Bunker Hill,--"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." In
+the death of Lieutenant Holmes, the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts offered
+its costliest sacrifice. Frank, courteous, manly, brave, he had won all
+hearts, and his sudden removal from our companionship at that moment
+will ever remind us of the great price with which that morning's success
+was bought.
+
+The enemy now manoeuvred to cut us off from the road, and pressed us
+so hard that we were obliged to oblique to the left. Moving on the
+double-quick, receiving an occasional volley, and barely escaping
+capture, we at length emerged from the woods on the outskirts of the
+little village of Campbell's Station. We were soon under cover of our
+artillery, which General Potter, under the direction of General
+Burnside, had placed in position on high ground just beyond the village.
+This village is situated between two low ranges of hills, which are
+nearly a mile apart. Across the intervening space, our infantry was
+drawn up in a single line of battle, Ferrero's division of the Ninth
+Corps held the right, White's division of the Twenty-third Corps held
+the centre, and Hartranft's division of the Ninth Corps held the left.
+Benjamin's, Buckley's, Getting's, and Van Schlein's batteries were on
+the right of the road. Roemer's battery was on the left. The
+Thirty-sixth Massachusetts supported Roemer.
+
+The enemy, meanwhile, had disposed his forces for an attack on our
+position. At noon he came out of the woods, just beyond the village, in
+two lines of battle, with a line of skirmishers in front. The whole
+field was open to our view. Benjamin and Roemer opened fire at once; and
+so accurate was their range, that the Rebel lines were immediately
+broken, and they fell back into the woods in confusion. The enemy, under
+cover of the woods on the slope of the ridge, now advanced against our
+right. Christ's brigade, of our division, at once changed front. Buckley
+executed the same movement with his battery, and, by a well-directed
+fire, checked the enemy's progress in that direction. The enemy next
+manoeuvred to turn our left. Falling back, however, to a stronger
+position in our rear, we established a new line about four o'clock in
+the afternoon. This was done under a heavy fire from the enemy's
+batteries. Ferrero was now on the right of the road. Morrison's brigade
+was placed in rear of a rail fence, at the foot of the ridge on which
+Benjamin's battery had been planted. The enemy did not seem inclined to
+attack us in front, but pushed along the ridge, on our left, aiming to
+strike Hartranft in flank and rear. He was discovered in this attempt;
+and, just as he was moving over ground recently cleared, Roemer,
+changing front at the same time with Hartranft, opened his three-inch
+guns on the Rebel line, and drove it back in disorder, followed by the
+skirmishers. Longstreet, foiled in all these attempts to force us from
+our position, now withdrew beyond the range of our guns, and made no
+further demonstrations that day. Our troops were justly proud of their
+success; for, with a force not exceeding five thousand men, they had
+held in check, for an entire day, three times their own number,--the
+flower of Lee's army. Our loss in the Ninth Corps was twenty-six killed,
+one hundred and sixty-six wounded, and fifty-seven missing. Of these,
+the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts lost one officer and three enlisted men
+killed, three officers and fourteen enlisted men wounded, and three
+enlisted men missing.
+
+At six o'clock, P. M., Ferrero's division, followed by Hartranft's,
+moved to the rear, taking the road to Knoxville. White's division of the
+Twenty-third Corps covered the retreat. Campbell's Station is a little
+more than sixteen miles from Knoxville; but the night was so dark, and
+the road so muddy, that our progress was much retarded, and we did not
+reach Knoxville till about four o'clock the next morning. We had now
+been without sleep forty-eight hours. Moreover, since the previous
+morning we had marched twenty-four miles and fought a battle. Halting
+just outside of the town, weary and worn, we threw ourselves on the
+ground, and snatched a couple of hours of sleep. Early in the day--it
+was the 17th of November--General Burnside assigned the batteries and
+regiments of his command to the positions they were to occupy in the
+defence of the place. Knoxville is situated on the northern bank of the
+Holston River. For the most part, the town is built on a table-land,
+which is nearly a mile square, and about one hundred and fifty feet
+above the river. On the northeast, the town is bounded by a small creek.
+Beyond this creek is an elevation known as Temperance Hill. Still
+farther to the east is Mayberry's Hill. On the northwest, this
+table-land descends to a broad valley; on the southwest, the town is
+bounded by a second creek. Beyond this is College Hill; and still
+farther to the southwest is a high ridge, running nearly parallel with
+the road which enters Knoxville at this point. Benjamin's and Buckley's
+batteries occupied the unfinished bastion-work on the ridge just
+mentioned. This work was afterwards known as Fort Sanders. Roemer's
+battery was placed in position on College Hill. These batteries were
+supported by Ferrero's division of the Ninth Corps, his line extending
+from the Holston River on the left to the point where the East Tennessee
+and Georgia Railroad crosses the creek mentioned above as Second Creek.
+Hartranft connected with Ferrero's right, supporting Getting's and the
+Fifteenth Indiana Batteries. His lines extended as far as First Creek.
+The divisions of White and Hascall, of the Twenty-third Corps, occupied
+the ground between this point and the Holston River, on the northeast
+side of the town, with their artillery in position on Temperance and
+Mayberry's Hills.
+
+Knoxville at this time was by no means in a defensible condition. The
+bastion-work, occupied by Benjamin's and Buckley's batteries, was not
+only not finished, but was little more than begun. It required two
+hundred negroes four hours to clear places for the guns. There was also
+a fort in process of construction on Temperance Hill. Nothing more had
+been done. But the work was now carried forward in earnest. As fast as
+the troops were placed in position, they commenced the construction of
+rifle-pits. Though wearied by three days of constant marching and
+fighting, they gave themselves to the work with all the energy of fresh
+men. Citizens and contrabands also were pressed into the service. Many
+of the former were loyal men, and devoted themselves to their tasks with
+a zeal which evinced the interest they felt in making good the defence
+of the town; but some of them were bitter Rebels, and, as Captain Poe,
+Chief-Engineer of the Army of the Ohio, well remarked, "worked with a
+very poor grace, which blistered hands did not tend to improve." The
+contrabands engaged in the work with that heartiness which, during the
+war, characterized their labors in our service.
+
+At noon, the enemy's advance was only a mile or two distant; and four
+companies of the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts--A, B, D, G--were thrown out
+as skirmishers,--the line extending from the Holston River to the
+Kingston road. But the enemy was held in check at some little distance
+from the town by Sanders's division of cavalry. The hours thus gained
+for our work in the trenches were precious hours, indeed. There was a
+lack of intrenching tools, and much remained to be done; but all day and
+all night the men continued their labors undisturbed; and, on the
+morning of the 18th, our line of works around the town presented a
+formidable appearance.
+
+Throughout the forenoon of that day there was heavy skirmishing on the
+Kingston road; but our men--dismounted cavalry--still maintained their
+position. Later in the day, however, the enemy brought up a battery,
+which, opening a heavy fire, soon compelled our men to fall back. The
+Rebels, now pressing forward, gained the ridge for which they had been
+contending, and established their lines within rifle range of our works.
+
+It was while endeavoring to check this advance that General Sanders was
+mortally wounded. He was at once borne from the field, and carried into
+Knoxville. While a surgeon was examining the wound, he asked, "Tell me,
+Doctor, is my wound mortal?"
+
+Tenderly the surgeon replied, "Sanders, it is a fearful wound, and
+mortal. I am sorry to say it, my dear fellow, but the odds are against
+you."
+
+Calmly the General continued, "Well, I am not afraid to die. I have made
+up my mind upon that subject. I have done my duty, and have served my
+country as well as I could."
+
+The next day he called the attention of the surgeon to certain symptoms
+which he had observed, and asked him what they meant.
+
+The surgeon replied, "General, you are dying."
+
+"If that be so," he said, "I would like to see a clergyman."
+
+Rev. Mr. Hayden, chaplain of the post, was summoned. On his arrival, the
+dying soldier expressed a desire that the ordinance of baptism should be
+administered. This was done, and then the minister in prayer commended
+the believing soul to God,--General Burnside and his staff, who were
+present, kneeling around the bed. When the prayer was ended, General
+Sanders took General Burnside by the hand. Tears--the language of that
+heartfelt sympathy and tender love belonging to all noble souls--dropped
+down the bronzed cheeks of the chief as he listened to the last words
+which followed. The sacrament was now about to be administered, but
+suddenly the strength of the dying soldier failed, and like a child he
+gently fell asleep. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay
+down his life for his friends."
+
+The enemy did not seem inclined to attack our position at once, but
+proceeded to invest the town on the north bank of the Holston. He then
+commenced the construction of a line of works. The four companies of the
+Thirty-sixth Massachusetts which had been detailed for picket duty on
+the morning of the 17th, remained on post till the morning of the 19th.
+Thenceforward, throughout the siege, both officers and men were on
+picket duty every third day. During this twenty-four hours of duty no
+one slept. The rest of the time we were on duty in the trenches, where,
+during the siege, one third, and sometimes one fourth, of the men were
+kept awake. The utmost vigilance was enjoined upon all.
+
+Meanwhile, day by day, and night by night, with unflagging zeal, the
+troops gave themselves to the labor of strengthening the works.
+Immediately in front of the rifle-pits, a _chevaux-de-frise_ was
+constructed. This was formed of pointed stakes, thickly and firmly set
+in the ground, and inclining outwards at an angle of forty-five degrees.
+The stakes were bound together with wire, so that they could not easily
+be torn apart by an assaulting party. They were nearly five feet in
+height. In front of Colonel Haskins's position, on the north side of the
+town, the _chevaux-de-frise_ was constructed with the two thousand pikes
+which were captured at Cumberland Gap early in the fall. A few rods in
+front of the _chevaux-de-frise_ was the abatis, formed of thick branches
+of trees, which likewise were firmly set in the ground. Still farther to
+the front, were wire entanglements stretched a few inches above the
+ground, and fastened here and there to stakes and stumps. In front of a
+portion of our lines another obstacle was formed by constructing dams
+across First and Second Creeks, so called, and throwing back the water.
+The whole constituted a series of obstacles which could not be passed,
+in face of a heavy fire, without great difficulty and fearful loss.
+
+Just in rear of the rifle-pits occupied by the Thirty-sixth
+Massachusetts was an elegant brick mansion, of recent construction,
+known as the Powell House. When the siege commenced, fresco-painters
+were at work ornamenting its parlors and halls. Throwing open its doors,
+Mr. Powell, a true Union man, invited Colonel Morrison and Major Draper
+to make it their head-quarters. He also designated a chamber for the
+sick of our regiment. Early during the siege, the southwestern and
+northwestern fronts were loopholed by order of General Burnside, and
+instructions were given to post in the house, in case of an attack, two
+companies of the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts. When the order was
+announced to Mr. Powell, he nobly said, "Lay this house level with the
+ground, if it is necessary." A few feet from the southwestern front of
+the house, a small earthwork was thrown up by our men, in which was
+placed a section of Buckley's battery. This work was afterwards known as
+Battery Noble.
+
+Morrison's brigade now held the line of defences from the Holston
+River--the extreme left of our line--to Fort Sanders. The following was
+the position of the several regiments of the brigade. The Forty-fifth
+Pennsylvania was on the left, its left on the river. On its right lay
+the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts. Then came the Eighth Michigan. The
+Seventy-ninth New York (Highlanders) formed the garrison of Fort
+Sanders. Between the Eighth Michigan and Fort Sanders was the One
+Hundredth Pennsylvania (Roundheads).
+
+On the evening of the 20th, the Seventeenth Michigan made a sortie, and
+drove the Rebels from the Armstrong House. This stood on the Kingston
+road, and only a short distance from Fort Sanders. It was a brick house,
+and afforded a near and safe position for the enemy's sharpshooters,
+which of late had become somewhat annoying to the working parties at the
+fort. Our men destroyed the house, and then withdrew. The loss on our
+part was slight.
+
+For a few days during the siege, four companies of the Thirty-sixth
+Massachusetts were detached to support Roemer's battery on College Hill.
+While on this duty the officers and men were quartered in the buildings
+of East Tennessee College. Prior to our occupation of East Tennessee,
+these buildings had been used by the Rebels as a hospital; but, after a
+vigorous use of the ordinary means of purification, they afforded us
+pleasant and comfortable quarters.
+
+The siege had now continued several days. The Rebels had constructed
+works offensive and defensive in our front; but the greater part of
+their force seemed to have moved to the right. On the 22d of November,
+however, they returned, not having found evidently the weak place in our
+lines which they had sought. It was now thought they might attack our
+front that night; and orders were given to the men on duty in the outer
+works to exercise the utmost vigilance. But the night passed quietly.
+
+With each day our confidence in the strength of our position increased;
+and we soon felt able to repel an assault from any quarter. But the
+question of supplies was a serious one. When the siege commenced, there
+was in the Commissary Department at Knoxville little more than a day's
+ration for the whole army. Should the enemy gain possession of the south
+bank of the Holston, our only means of subsistence would be cut off.
+Thus far his attempts in this direction had failed; and the whole
+country, from the French Broad to the Holston, was open to our foraging
+parties. In this way a considerable quantity of corn and wheat was soon
+collected in Knoxville. Bread, made from a mixture of meal and flour,
+was issued to the men, but only in half and quarter rations.
+Occasionally a small quantity of fresh pork was also issued. Neither
+sugar nor coffee was issued after the first days of the siege.
+
+The enemy, foiled in his attempts to seize the south bank of the
+Holston, now commenced the construction of a raft at Boyd's Ferry.
+Floating this down the swift current of the stream, he hoped to carry
+away our pontoon, and thus cut off our communication with the country
+beyond. To thwart this plan, an iron cable, one thousand feet in length,
+was stretched across the river above the bridge. This was done under the
+direction of Captain Poe. Afterwards, a boom of logs, fastened end to
+end by chains, was constructed still farther up the river. The boom was
+fifteen hundred feet in length.
+
+On the evening of the 23d the Rebels made an attack on our pickets in
+front of the left of the Second Division, Ninth Corps. In falling back,
+our men fired the buildings on the ground abandoned, lest they should
+become a shelter for the enemy's sharpshooters. Among the buildings thus
+destroyed were the arsenal and machine-shops near the depot. The light
+of the blazing buildings illuminated the whole town. The next day the
+Twenty-first Massachusetts and another picked regiment, the whole under
+the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Hawkes of the Twenty-first, drove back
+the Rebels at this point, and reoccupied our old position.
+
+The same day an attack was made by the Second Michigan on the advanced
+parallel, which the enemy had so constructed as to envelop the northwest
+bastion of Fort Sanders. The works were gallantly carried; but before
+the supporting columns could come up, our men were repulsed by fresh
+troops which the enemy had at hand.
+
+On the 25th of November the enemy, having on the day previous crossed
+the Holston at a point below us, made another unsuccessful attempt to
+occupy the heights opposite Knoxville. He succeeded, however, in
+planting a battery on a knob about one hundred and fifty feet above the
+river, and twenty-five hundred yards south of Fort Sanders. This
+position commanded Fort Sanders, so that it now became necessary to
+defilade the fort.
+
+November 26th was our national Thanksgiving day, and General Burnside
+issued an order, in which he expressed the hope that the day would be
+observed by all, as far as military operations would allow. He knew the
+rations were short, and that the day would be unlike the joyous festival
+we were wont to celebrate in our distant homes; and so he reminded us of
+the circumstances of trial under which our fathers first observed the
+day. He also reminded us of the debt of gratitude which we owed to Him
+who during the year had not only prospered our arms, but had kindly
+preserved our lives. Accordingly, we ate our corn bread with
+thanksgiving; and, forgetting our own privations, thought only of the
+loved ones at home, who, uncertain of our fate, would that day find
+little cheer at the table and by the fireside.
+
+Allusion has already been made to the bastion-work known as Fort
+Sanders. A more particular description is now needed. The main line,
+held by our troops, made almost a right angle at the fort, the northwest
+bastion being the salient of the angle. The ground in front of the fort,
+from which the wood had been cleared, sloped gradually for a distance of
+eighty yards, and then abruptly descended to a wide ravine. Under the
+direction of Lieutenant Benjamin, Second United States Artillery, and
+Chief of Artillery of the Army of the Ohio, the fort had now been made
+as strong as the means at his disposal and the rules of military art
+admitted. Eighty and thirty yards in front of the fort, rifle-pits were
+constructed. These were to be used in case our men were driven in from
+the outer line. Between these pits and the Fort were wire entanglements,
+running from stump to stump, and also an abatis. Sand-bags and barrels
+were arranged so as to cover the embrasures. Traverses, also, were built
+for the protection of the men at the guns, and in passing from one
+position to another. In the fort were four twenty-pounder Parrotts
+(Benjamin's battery), four light twelve-pounders (of Buckley's battery),
+and two three-inch guns.
+
+Early in the evening of the 27th there was much cheering along the Rebel
+lines. Their bands, too, were unusually lavish of the Rebel airs they
+were wont occasionally to waft across the debatable ground which
+separated our lines. Had the enemy received reinforcements, or had Grant
+met with a reverse? While on picket that night, in making my rounds, I
+could distinctly hear the Rebels chopping on the knob which they had so
+recently occupied on the opposite bank of the river. They were clearing
+away the trees in front of the earthwork which they had constructed the
+day before. Would they attack at daybreak? So we thought, connecting
+this fact with the cheers and music of the earlier part of the night;
+but the morning opened as quietly as its predecessors. Late in the
+afternoon the enemy seemed to be placing his troops in position in our
+front, and our men stood in the trenches, awaiting an attack; yet the
+day wore away without further demonstrations.
+
+A little after eleven o'clock, P. M., November 28th, I was aroused by
+heavy musketry. I hurried to the trenches. It was a cloudy, dark night,
+and at a distance of only a few feet it was impossible to distinguish
+any object. The men were already at their posts. With the exception of
+an occasional shot on the picket-line, the firing soon ceased. An attack
+had evidently been made on our pickets; but at what point, or with what
+success, was as yet unknown. Reports soon came in. The enemy had first
+driven in the pickets in front of Fort Sanders, and had then attacked
+_our_ line which was also obliged to fall back. The Rebels in our front,
+however, did not advance beyond the pits which our men had just vacated,
+and a new line was at once established by Captain Buffum, our brigade
+officer of the day.
+
+It was now evident that the enemy intended an attack. But where would it
+be made? All that long, cold night--our men were without overcoats--we
+stood in the trenches pondering that question. Might not this
+demonstration in our front be only a feint to draw our attention from
+other parts of the line, where the chief blow was to be struck? So some
+thought. Gradually the night wore away.
+
+A little after six o'clock the next morning, the enemy suddenly opened a
+furious cannonade. This was mostly directed against Fort Sanders; but
+several shots struck the Powell House, in rear of Battery Noble. Roemer
+immediately responded from College Hill. In about twenty minutes the
+enemy's fire slackened, and in its stead rose the well-known Rebel yell,
+in the direction of the fort. Then followed the rattle of musketry, the
+roar of cannon, and the bursting of shells. The yells died away, and
+then rose again. Now the roar of musketry and artillery was redoubled.
+It was a moment of the deepest anxiety. Our straining eyes were fixed on
+the fort. The Rebels had reached the ditch and were now endeavoring to
+scale the parapet. Whose will be the victory,--O, whose? The yells again
+died away, and then followed three loud Union cheers,--"Hurrah, hurrah,
+hurrah!" How those cheers thrilled our hearts, as we stood almost
+breathless at our posts in the trenches! They told us that the enemy had
+been repulsed, and that the victory was ours. Peering through the rising
+fog towards the fort, not a hundred yards away,--O glorious sight!--we
+dimly saw that our flag was still there.
+
+Let us now go back a little. Under cover of the ridge on which Fort
+Sanders was built, Longstreet had formed his columns for the assault.
+The men were picked men,--the flower of his army. One brigade was to
+make the assault, two brigades were to support it,[A] and two other
+brigades were to watch our lines and keep up a constant fire. Five
+regiments formed the brigade selected for the assaulting column. These
+were placed in position not more than eighty yards from the fort. They
+were "in column by division, closed in mass." When the fire of their
+artillery slackened, the order for the charge was given. The salient of
+the northwest bastion was the point of attack. The Rebel lines were much
+broken in passing the abatis. But the wire entanglements proved a
+greater obstacle. Whole companies were prostrated. Benjamin now opened
+his triple-shotted guns. Nevertheless, the weight of their column
+carried the Rebels forward, and in two minutes from the time the charge
+was commenced they had filled the ditch around the fort, and were
+endeavoring to scale the parapet. The guns, which had been trained to
+sweep the ditch, now opened a most destructive fire. Lieutenant Benjamin
+also took shells in his hand, and, lighting the fuse, tossed them over
+the parapet into the crowded ditch. One of the Rebel brigades in reserve
+now came up in support, and planted several of its flags on the parapet
+of the fort. Those, however, who endeavored to scale the parapet were
+swept away by the fire of our musketry. The men in the ditch, satisfied
+of the hopelessness of the task they had undertaken, now surrendered.
+They represented eleven regiments. The prisoners numbered nearly three
+hundred. Among them were seventeen commissioned officers. Over two
+hundred dead and wounded, including three colonels, lay in the ditch
+alone. The ground in front of the fort was also strewn with the bodies
+of the dead and wounded. Over one thousand stands of arms fell into our
+hands, and the battle-flags of the Thirteenth and Seventeenth
+Mississippi and Sixteenth Georgia. Our loss was eight men killed and
+five wounded. Never was a victory more complete; and never were brighter
+laurels worn than were that morning laid on the brow of the hero of Fort
+Sanders,--Lieutenant Benjamin, Second United States Artillery.
+
+Longstreet had promised his men that they should dine that day in
+Knoxville. But, in order that he might bury his dead, General Burnside
+now tendered him an armistice till five o'clock, P. M. It was accepted
+by the Rebel general; and our ambulances were furnished him to assist in
+removing the bodies to his lines. At five o'clock, two additional hours
+were asked, as the work was not yet completed. At seven o'clock, a gun
+was fired from Fort Sanders, the Rebels responded from an earthwork
+opposite, and the truce was at an end.
+
+The next day, through a courier who had succeeded in reaching our lines,
+General Burnside received official notice of the defeat of Bragg. At
+noon, a single gun--we were short of ammunition--was fired from Battery
+Noble in our rear, and the men of the brigade, standing in the trenches,
+gave three cheers for Grant's victory at Chattanooga. We now looked for
+reinforcements daily, for Sherman was already on the road. The enemy
+knew this as well as we, and, during the night of the 4th of December,
+withdrew his forces, and started north. The retreat was discovered by
+the pickets of the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts, under Captain Ames, who
+had the honor of first declaring the siege of Knoxville raised.
+
+It would be interesting to recount the facts connected with the retreat
+of the Rebel army, and then to follow our men to their winter quarters,
+among the mountains of East Tennessee, where, throughout the icy season,
+they remained, without shoes, without overcoats, without new clothing of
+any description, living on quarter rations of corn meal, with
+occasionally a handful of flour, and never grumbling; and where, at the
+expiration of their three years of service, standing forth under the
+open skies, amid all these discomforts, and raising loyal hands towards
+heaven, they swore to serve their country yet three years longer. But I
+must pause. I have already illustrated their fortitude and heroic
+endurance.
+
+The noble bearing of General Burnside throughout the siege won the
+admiration of all. In a speech at Cincinnati, a few days after the siege
+was raised, with that modesty which characterizes the true soldier, he
+said that the honors bestowed on him belonged to his under officers and
+the men in the ranks. These kindly words his officers and men will ever
+cherish; and in all their added years, as they recall the widely
+separated battle-fields, made forever sacred by the blood of their
+fallen comrades, and forever glorious by the victories there won, it
+will be their pride to say, "We fought with Burnside at Campbell's
+Station and in the trenches at Knoxville."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] This statement is confirmed by the following extract from Pollard's
+(Rebel) "Third Year of the War." Speaking of his charge on Fort Sanders,
+he says: "The force which was to attempt an enterprise which ranks with
+the most famous charges in military history should be mentioned in
+detail. It consisted of three brigades of McLaw's division;--that of
+General Wolford, the Sixteenth, Eighteenth, and Twenty-fourth Georgia
+Regiments, and Cobb's and Phillip's Georgia Legions; that of General
+Humphrey, the Thirteenth, Seventeenth, Twenty-first, Twenty-second, and
+Twenty-third Mississippi Regiments; and a brigade composed of General
+Anderson's and Bryant's brigades, embracing, among others, the Palmetto
+State Guard, the Fifteenth South Carolina Regiment, and the Fifty-first,
+Fifty-third, and Fifty-ninth Georgia Regiments."--pp. 161, 162.
+
+
+
+
+RELEASED.
+
+
+    A little low-ceiled room. Four walls
+      Whose blank shut out all else of life,
+    And crowded close within their bound
+      A world of pain, and toil, and strife.
+
+    Her world. Scarce furthermore she knew
+      Of God's great globe, that wondrously
+    Outrolls a glory of green earth,
+      And frames it with the restless sea.
+
+    Four closer walls of common pine:
+      And therein lieth, cold and still,
+    The weary flesh that long hath borne
+      Its patient mystery of ill.
+
+    Regardless now of work to do;
+      No queen more careless in her state;
+    Hands crossed in their unbroken calm;
+      For other hands the work may wait.
+
+    Put by her implements of toil;
+      Put by each coarse, intrusive sign;
+    She made a Sabbath when she died,
+      And round her breathes a Rest Divine.
+
+    Put by, at last, beneath the lid,
+      The exempted hands, the tranquil face;
+    Uplift her in her dreamless sleep,
+      And bear her gently from the place.
+
+    Oft she hath gazed, with wistful eyes,
+      Out from that threshold on the night;
+    The narrow bourn she crosseth now;
+      She standeth in the Eternal Light.
+
+    Oft she hath pressed, with aching feet,
+      Those broken steps that reach the door;
+    Henceforth with angels she shall tread
+      Heaven's golden stair forevermore!
+
+
+
+
+FRIEDRICH RUeCKERT.
+
+
+The last of the grand old generation of German poets is dead. Within ten
+years Eichendorff, Heine, Uhland, have passed away; and now the death of
+Friedrich Rueckert, the sole survivor of the minor gods who inhabited the
+higher slopes of the Weimar Olympus, closes the list of their names.
+Yet, although with these poets in time, Rueckert was not of them in the
+structure of his mind or the character of his poetical development. No
+author ever stood so lonely among his contemporaries. Looking over the
+long catalogue, not only of German, but of European poets, we find no
+one with whom he can be compared. His birthplace is supposed to be
+Schweinfurt, but it is to be sought, in reality, somewhere on the banks
+of the Euphrates. His true contemporaries were Saadi and Hariri of
+Bosrah.
+
+Rueckert's biography may be given in a few words, his life having been
+singularly devoid of incident. He seems even to have been spared the
+usual alternations of fortune in a material, as well as a literary
+sense. With the exception of a somewhat acridly hostile criticism, which
+the _Jahrbuecher_ of Halle dealt out to him for several years in
+succession, his reputation has enjoyed a gradual and steady growth since
+his first appearance as a poet. His place is now so well defined that
+death--which sometimes changes, while it fixes, the impression an author
+makes upon his generation--cannot seriously elevate or depress it. In
+life he stood so far aloof from the fashions of the day, that all his
+successes were permanent achievements.
+
+He was born on the 16th of May, 1788, in Schweinfurt, a pleasant old
+town in Bavaria, near the baths of Kissingen. As a student he visited
+Jena, where he distinguished himself by his devotion to philological and
+literary studies. For some years a private tutor, in 1815 he became
+connected with the _Morgenblatt_, published by Cotta, in Stuttgart. The
+year 1818 he spent in Italy. Soon after his return, he married, and
+established himself in Coburg, of which place, I believe, his wife was a
+native. Here he occupied himself ostensibly as a teacher, but in reality
+with an enthusiastic and untiring study of the Oriental languages and
+literature. Twice he was called away by appointments which were the
+result of his growing fame as poet and scholar,--the first time in 1826,
+when he was made Professor of the Oriental Languages at the University
+of Erlangen; and again in 1840, when he was appointed to a similar place
+in the University of Berlin, with the title of Privy Councillor. Both
+these posts were uncongenial to his nature. Though so competent to fill
+them, he discharged his duties reluctantly and with a certain
+impatience; and probably there were few more joyous moments of his life
+than when, in 1849, he was allowed to retire permanently to the pastoral
+seclusion of his little property at Neuses, a suburb of Coburg.
+
+One of his German critics remarks that the poem in which he celebrates
+his release embodies a nearer approach to passion than all his Oriental
+songs of love, sorrow, or wine. It is a joyous dithyrambic, which,
+despite its artful and semi-impossible metre, must have been the
+swiftly-worded expression of a genuine feeling. Let me attempt to
+translate the first stanza:--
+
+    "Out of the dust of the
+    Town o' the king,
+    Into the lust of the
+    Green of spring,--
+    Forth from the noises of
+    Streets and walls,
+    Unto the voices of
+    Waterfalls,--
+    He who presently
+    Flies is blest:
+    Fate thus pleasantly
+    Makes my nest!"[B]
+
+
+The quaint old residence at Neuses thus early became, and for nearly
+half a century continued to be, the poet's home. No desire to visit the
+Orient--the native land of his brain--seems to have disturbed him.
+Possibly the Italian journey was in some respects disenchanting. The few
+poems which date from it are picturesque and descriptive, but do not
+indicate that his imagination was warmed by what he saw. He was never so
+happy as when alone with his books and manuscripts, studying or writing,
+according to the dominant mood. This secluded habit engendered a shyness
+of manner, which frequently repelled the strangers who came to see
+him,--especially those who failed to detect the simple, tender, genial
+nature of the man, under his wonderful load of learning. But there was
+nothing morbid or misanthropical in his composition; his shyness was
+rather the result of an intense devotion to his studies. These gradually
+became a necessity of his daily life; his health, his mental peace,
+depended upon them; and whatever disturbed their regular recurrence took
+from him more than the mere time lost.
+
+When I first visited Coburg, in October, 1852, I was very anxious to
+make Rueckert's acquaintance. My interest in Oriental literature had been
+refreshed, at that time, by nearly ten months of travel in Eastern
+lands, and some knowledge of modern colloquial Arabic. I had read his
+wonderful translation of the _Makamat_ of Hariri, and felt sure that he
+would share in my enthusiasm for the people to whose treasures of song
+he had given so many years of his life. I found, however, that very few
+families in the town were familiarly acquainted with the poet,--that
+many persons, even, who had been residents of the place for years, had
+never seen him. He was presumed to be inaccessible to strangers.
+
+It fortunately happened that one of my friends knew a student of the
+Oriental languages, then residing in Coburg. The latter, who was in the
+habit of consulting Rueckert in regard to his Sanskrit studies, offered
+at once to conduct me to Neuses. A walk of twenty minutes across the
+meadows of the Itz, along the base of the wooded hills which terminate,
+just beyond, in the castled Kallenberg (the summer residence of Duke
+Ernest II.), brought us to the little village, which lies so snugly
+hidden in its own orchards that one might almost pass without
+discovering it. The afternoon was warm and sunny, and a hazy, idyllic
+atmosphere veiled and threw into remoteness the bolder features of the
+landscape. Near at hand, a few quaint old tile-roofed houses rose above
+the trees.
+
+My guide left the highway, crossed a clear little brook on the left, and
+entered the bottom of a garden behind the largest of these houses. As we
+were making our way between the plum-trees and gooseberry-bushes, I
+perceived a tall figure standing in the midst of a great bed of
+late-blossoming roses, over which he was bending as if to inhale their
+fragrance. The sound of our steps startled him; and as he straightened
+himself and faced us, I saw that it could be none other than Rueckert. I
+believe his first impulse was to fly; but we were already so near that
+his moment of indecision settled the matter. The student presented me to
+him as an American traveller, whereat I thought he seemed to experience
+a little relief. Nevertheless, he looked uneasily at his coat,--a sort
+of loose, commodious blouse,--at his hands, full of seeds, and muttered
+some incoherent words about flowers. Suddenly, lifting his head and
+looking steadily at us, he said, "Come into the house!"
+
+The student, who was familiar with his habits, led me to a pleasant room
+on the second floor. The windows looked towards the sun, and were filled
+with hot-house plants. We were scarcely seated before Rueckert made his
+appearance, having laid aside his blouse, and put on a coat. After a
+moment of hesitation, he asked me, "Where have you been travelling?" "I
+come from the Orient," I answered. He looked up with a keen light in his
+eyes. "From the Orient!" he exclaimed, "Where? let me know where you
+have been, and what you have seen!" From that moment he was
+self-possessed, full of life, enthusiasm, fancy, and humor.
+
+He was then in his sixty-fifth year, but still enjoyed the ripe maturity
+of his powers. A man of more striking personal appearance I have seldom
+seen. Over six feet in height, and somewhat gaunt of body, the first
+impression of an absence of physical grace vanished as soon as one
+looked upon his countenance. His face was long, and every feature
+strongly marked,--the brow high and massive, the nose strong and
+slightly aquiline, the mouth wide and firm, and the jaw broad, square,
+and projecting. His thick silver hair, parted in the middle of his
+forehead, fell in wavy masses upon his shoulders. His eyes were
+deep-set, bluish-gray, and burned with a deep, lustrous fire as he
+became animated in conversation. At times they had a mystic, rapt
+expression, as if the far East, of which he spoke, were actually visible
+to his brain. I thought of an Arab sheikh, looking towards Mecca, at the
+hour of prayer.
+
+I regret that I made no notes of the conversation, in which, as may be
+guessed, I took but little part. It was rather a monologue on the
+subject of Arabic poetry, full of the clearest and richest knowledge,
+and sparkling with those evanescent felicities of diction which can so
+rarely be recalled. I was charmed out of all sense of time, and was
+astonished to find, when tea appeared, that more than two hours had
+elapsed. The student had magnanimously left me to the poet, devoting
+himself to the good Frau Rueckert, the "Luise" of her husband's
+_Liebesfruehling_ (Spring-time of Love). She still, although now a
+grandmother, retained some traces of the fresh, rosy beauty of her
+younger days; and it was pleasant to see the watchful, tender interest
+upon her face, whenever she turned towards the poet. Before I left, she
+whispered to me, "I am always very glad when my husband has an
+opportunity to talk about the Orient: nothing refreshes him so much."
+
+But we must not lose sight of Rueckert's poetical biography. His first
+volume, entitled "German Poems, by Freimund Raimar," was published at
+Heidelberg in the year 1814. It contained, among other things, his
+famous _Geharnischte Sonette_ (Sonnets in Armor), which are still read
+and admired as masterpieces of that form of verse. Preserving the
+Petrarchan model, even to the feminine rhymes of the Italian tongue, he
+has nevertheless succeeded in concealing the extraordinary art by which
+the difficult task was accomplished. Thus early the German language
+acquired its unsuspected power of flexibility in his hands. It is very
+evident to me that his peculiar characteristics as a poet sprang not so
+much from his Oriental studies as from a rare native faculty of mind.
+
+These "Sonnets in Armor," although they may sound but gravely beside the
+Tyrtaean strains of Arndt and Koerner, are nevertheless full of stately
+and inspiring music. They remind one of Wordsworth's phrase,--
+
+              "In Milton's hand,
+    The thing became a trumpet,"--
+
+and must have had their share in stimulating that national sentiment
+which overturned the Napoleonic rule, and for three or four years
+flourished so greenly upon its ruins.
+
+Shortly afterwards, Rueckert published "Napoleon, a Political Comedy,"
+which did not increase his fame. His next important contribution to
+general literature was the "Oriental Roses," which appeared in 1822.
+Three years before, Goethe had published his _Westoestlicher Divan_, and
+the younger poet dedicated his first venture in the same field to his
+venerable predecessor, in stanzas which express the most delicate, and
+at the same time the most generous homage. I scarcely know where to
+look for a more graceful dedication in verse. It is said that Goethe
+never acknowledged the compliment,--an omission which some German
+authors attribute to the latter's distaste at being surpassed on his
+latest and (at that time) favorite field. No one familiar with Goethe's
+life and works will accept this conjecture.
+
+It is quite impossible to translate this poem literally, in the original
+metre: the rhymes are exclusively feminine. I am aware that I shall
+shock ears familiar with the original by substituting masculine rhymes
+in the two stanzas which I present; but there is really no alternative.
+
+    "Would you taste
+    Purest East,
+    Hence depart, and seek the selfsame man
+    Who our West
+    Gave the best
+    Wine that ever flowed from Poet's can:
+    When the Western flavors ended,
+    He the Orient's vintage spended,--
+    Yonder dreams he on his own divan!
+
+    "Sunset-red
+    Goethe led
+    Star to be of all the sunset-land:
+    Now the higher
+    Morning-fire
+    Makes him lord of all the morning-land!
+    Where the two, together turning,
+    Meet, the rounded heaven is burning
+    Rosy-bright in one celestial brand!"
+
+I have not the original edition of the "Oriental Roses," but I believe
+the volume contained the greater portion of Rueckert's marvellous
+"Ghazels." Count Platen, it is true, had preceded him by one year, but
+his adaptation of the Persian metre to German poetry--light and graceful
+and melodious as he succeeded in making it--falls far short of Rueckert's
+infinite richness and skill. One of the latter's "Ghazels" contains
+twenty-six variations of the same rhyme, yet so subtly managed, so
+colored with the finest reflected tints of Eastern rhetoric and fancy,
+that the immense art implied in its construction is nowhere unpleasantly
+apparent. In fact, one dare not say that these poems are _all_ art. In
+the Oriental measures the poet found the garment which best fitted his
+own mind. We are not to infer that he did not move joyously, and, after
+a time, easily, within the limitations which, to most authors, would
+have been intolerable fetters.
+
+In 1826 appeared his translation of the _Makamat_ of Hariri. The old
+silk-merchant of Bosrah never could have anticipated such an
+immortality. The word _Makamat_ means "sessions," (probably the Italian
+_conversazione_ best translates it,) but is applied to a series of short
+narratives, or rather anecdotes, told alternately in verse and rhymed
+prose, with all the brilliance of rhetoric, the richness of
+alliteration, antithesis, and imitative sound, and the endless
+grammatical subtilties of which the Arabic language is capable. The work
+of Hariri is considered the unapproachable model of this style of
+narrative throughout all the East. Rueckert called his translation "The
+Metamorphoses of Abou-Seyd of Serudj,"--the name of the hero of the
+story. In this work he has shown the capacity of one language to
+reproduce the very spirit of another with which it has the least
+affinity. Like the original, the translation can never be surpassed: it
+is unique in literature.
+
+As the acrobat who has mastered every branch of his art, from the
+spidery contortions of the India-rubber man to the double somersault and
+the flying trapeze, is to the well-developed individual of ordinary
+muscular habits, so is the language of Rueckert in this work to the
+language of all other German authors. It is one perpetual gymnastic show
+of grammar, rhythm, and fancy. Moods, tenses, antecedents, appositions,
+whirl and flash around you, to the sound of some strange, barbaric
+music. Closer and more rapidly they link, chassez, and "cross hands,"
+until, when you anticipate a hopeless tangle, some bold, bright word
+leaps unexpectedly into the throng, and resolves it to instant harmony.
+One's breath is taken away, and his brain made dizzy, by any half-dozen
+of the "Metamorphoses." In this respect the translation has become a
+representative work. The Arabic title, misunderstood, has given birth
+to a German word. Daring and difficult rhymes are now frequently termed
+_Makamen_ in German literary society.
+
+Rueckert's studies were not confined to the Arabic and Persian languages;
+he also devoted many years to the Sanskrit. In 1828 appeared his
+translation of "Nal and Damayanti," and some years later, "Hamasa, or
+the oldest Arabian Poetry," and "Amrilkais, Poet and King." In addition
+to these translations, he published, between the years 1835 and 1840,
+the following original poems, or collections of poems, on Oriental
+themes,--"Legends of the Morning-Land" (2 vols.), "Rustem and Sohrab,"
+and "Brahminical Stories." These poems are so bathed in the atmosphere
+of his studies, that it is very difficult to say which are his own
+independent conceptions, and which the suggestions of Eastern poets.
+Where he has borrowed images or phrases, (as sometimes from the Koran,)
+they are woven, without any discernible seam, into the texture of his
+own brain.
+
+Some of Rueckert's critics have asserted that his extraordinary mastery
+of all the resources of language operated to the detriment of his
+poetical faculty,--that the feeling to be expressed became subordinate
+to the skill displayed by expressing it in an unusual form. They claim,
+moreover, that he produced a mass of sparkling fragments, rather than
+any single great work. I am convinced, however, that the first charge is
+unfounded, basing my opinion upon my knowledge of the poet's simple,
+true, tender nature, which I learned to appreciate during my later
+visits to his home. After the death of his wife, the daughter who
+thereafter assumed her mother's place in the household wrote me frequent
+accounts of her father's grief and loneliness, enclosing manuscript
+copies of the poems in which he expressed his sorrow. These poems are
+exceedingly sweet and touching; yet they are all marked by the same
+flexile use of difficult rhythms and unprecedented rhymes. They have
+never yet been published, and I am therefore withheld from translating
+any one of them, in illustration.
+
+Few of Goethe's minor songs are more beautiful than his serenade, _O
+gib' vom weichen Pfuehle_, where the interlinked repetitions are a
+perpetual surprise and charm; yet Rueckert has written a score of more
+artfully constructed and equally melodious songs. His collection of
+amatory poems entitled _Liebesfruehling_ contains some of the sunniest
+idyls in any language. That his genius was lyrical and not epic, was not
+a fault; that it delighted in varied and unusual metres, was an
+exceptional--perhaps in his case a phenomenal--form of development; but
+I do not think it was any the less instinctively natural. One of his
+quatrains runs:--
+
+    "Much I make as make the others;
+      Better much another man
+    Makes than I; but much, moreover,
+      Make I which no other can."
+
+His poetical comment on the translation of Hariri is given in
+prose:--"He who, like myself, unfortunate man! is philologist and poet
+in the same person, cannot do better than to translate as I do. My
+Hariri has illustrated how philology and poetry are competent to
+stimulate and to complete each other. If thou, reader, wilt look upon
+this hybrid production neither too philologically nor over-poetically,
+it may delight and instruct thee. That which is false in philology thou
+wilt attribute to poetic license, and where the poetry is deficient,
+thou wilt give the blame to philology."
+
+The critics who charge Rueckert with never having produced "a whole,"
+have certainly forgotten one of his works,--"The Wisdom of the Brahmin,
+a Didactic Poem, in Fragments." The title somewhat describes its
+character. The "fragments" are couplets, in iambic hexameter, each one
+generally complete in itself, yet grouped in sections by some connecting
+thought, after the manner of the stanzas of Tennyson's "In Memoriam."
+There are more than _six thousand_ couplets, in all, divided into
+twenty books,--the whole forming a mass of poetic wisdom, coupled with
+such amazing wealth of illustration, that this one volume, if
+sufficiently diluted, would make several thousand "Proverbial
+Philosophies." It is not a book to read continuously, but one which, I
+should imagine, no educated German could live without possessing. I
+never open its pages without the certainty of refreshment. Its tone is
+quietistic, as might readily be conjectured, but it is the calm of
+serene reflection, not of indifference. No work which Rueckert ever wrote
+so strongly illustrates the incessant activity of his mind. Half of
+these six thousand couplets are terse and pithy enough for proverbs, and
+their construction would have sufficed for the lifetime of many poets.
+
+With the exception of "Kaiser Barbarossa," and two or three other
+ballads, the amatory poems of Rueckert have attained the widest
+popularity among his countrymen. Many of the love-songs have been set to
+music by Mendelssohn and other composers. Their melody is of that
+subtile, delicate quality which excites a musician's fancy, suggesting
+the tones to which the words should be wedded. Precisely for this reason
+they are most difficult to translate. The first stanza may, in most
+cases, be tolerably reproduced; but as it usually contains a refrain,
+which is repeated to a constantly varied rhyme, throughout the whole
+song or poem, the labor at first becomes desperate, and then impossible.
+An example (the original of which I possess, in the author's manuscript)
+will best illustrate this particular difficulty. Here the metre and the
+order of rhyme have been strictly preserved, except in the first and
+third lines.
+
+    "He came to meet me
+    In rain and thunder;
+    My heart 'gan beating
+    In timid wonder:
+    Could I guess whether
+    Thenceforth together
+    Our paths should run, so long asunder?
+
+    "He came to meet me
+    In rain and thunder,
+    With guile to cheat me,--
+    My heart to plunder.
+    Was't mine he captured?
+    Or his I raptured?
+    Half-way both met, in bliss and wonder!
+
+    "He came to meet me
+    In rain and thunder:
+    Spring-blessings greet me
+    Spring-blossoms under.
+    What though he leave me?
+    No partings grieve me,--
+    No path can lead our hearts asunder!"
+
+The Irish poet, James Clarence Mangan, (whose translations from the
+German comprise both the best and the worst specimens I have yet found,)
+has been successful in rendering one of Rueckert's ghazels. I am
+specially tempted to quote it, on account of the curious general
+resemblance (accidental, no doubt) which Poe's "Lenore" bears to it.
+
+    "I saw her once, a little while, and then no more:
+    'T was Eden's light on earth awhile, and then no more.
+    Amid the throng she passed along the meadow-floor;
+    Spring seemed to smile on earth awhile, and then no more,
+    But whence she came, which way she went, what garb she wore,
+    I noted not; I gazed awhile, and then no more.
+
+    "I saw her once, a little while, and then no more:
+    'T was Paradise on earth awhile, and then no more.
+    Ah! what avail my vigils pale, my magic lore?
+    She shone before mine eyes awhile, and then no more.
+    The shallop of my peace is wrecked on Beauty's shore;
+    Near Hope's fair isle it rode awhile, and then no more.
+
+    "I saw her once, a little while, and then no more:
+    Earth looked like Heaven a little while, and then no more.
+    Her presence thrilled and lighted to its inmost core
+    My desert breast a little while, and then no more.
+    So may, perchance, a meteor glance at midnight o'er
+    Some ruined pile a little while, and then no more.
+
+    "I saw her once, a little while and then no more:
+    The earth was Eden-land awhile, and then no more.
+    O, might I see but once again, as once before,
+    Through chance or wile, that shape awhile, and then no more!
+    Death soon would heal my grief: this heart, now sad and sore,
+    Would beat anew, a little while, and then no more!"
+
+Here, nevertheless, something is sacrificed. The translation is by no
+means literal, and lacks the crispness and freshness of Oriental
+antithesis. Rueckert, I fear, will never be as fortunate as Hariri of
+Bosrah.
+
+When, in 1856, I again visited Germany, I received a friendly message
+from the old poet, with a kind invitation to visit him. Late in November
+I found him, apparently unchanged in body and spirit,--simple,
+enthusiastic, and, in spite of his seclusion, awake to all the movements
+of the world. One of his married sons was then visiting him, so that the
+household was larger and livelier than usual; but, as he sat, during the
+evening, in his favorite arm-chair, with pipe and beer, he fell into the
+same brilliant, wise strain of talk, undisturbed by all the cheerful
+young voices around him.
+
+The conversation gradually wandered away from the Orient to the modern
+languages of Europe. I remarked the special capacity of the German for
+descriptions of forest scenery,--of the feeling and sentiment of deep,
+dark woods, and woodland solitudes.
+
+"May not that be," said he, "because the race lived for centuries in
+forests? A language is always richest in its epithets for those things
+with which the people who speak it are most familiar. Look at the many
+terms for 'horse' and 'sword' in Arabic."
+
+"But the old Britons lived also in forests," I suggested.
+
+"I suspect," he answered, "while the English language was taking shape,
+the people knew quite as much of the sea as of the woods. You ought,
+therefore, to surpass us in describing coast and sea-scenery, winds and
+storms, and the motion of waves."
+
+The idea had not occurred to me before, but I found it to be correct.
+
+Though not speaking English, Rueckert had a thorough critical knowledge
+of the language, and a great admiration of its qualities. He admitted
+that its chances for becoming the dominant tongue of the world were
+greater than those of any other. Much that he said upon this subject
+interested me greatly at the time, but the substance of it has escaped
+me.
+
+When I left, that evening, I looked upon his cheerful, faithful wife for
+the last time. Five years elapsed before I visited Coburg again, and she
+died in the interval. In the summer of 1861 I had an hour's conversation
+with him, chiefly on American affairs, in which he expressed the keenest
+interest. He had read much, and had a very correct understanding of the
+nature of the struggle. He was buried in his studies, in a small house
+outside of the village, where he spent half of every day alone, and
+inaccessible to every one; but his youngest daughter ventured to summon
+him away from his books.
+
+Two years later (in June, 1863) I paid my last visit to Neuses. He had
+then passed his seventy-fifth birthday; his frame was still unbent, but
+the waves of gray hair on his shoulders were thinner, and his step
+showed the increasing feebleness of age. The fire of his eye was
+softened, not dimmed, and the long and happy life that lay behind him
+had given his face a peaceful, serene expression, prophetic of a gentle
+translation into the other life that was drawing near. So I shall always
+remember him,--scholar and poet, strong with the best strength of a man,
+yet trustful and accessible to joy as a child.
+
+Notwithstanding the great amount of Rueckert's contributions to
+literature during his life, he has left behind him a mass of poems and
+philological papers (the latter said to be of great interest and value)
+which his accomplished son, Professor Rueckert of the University of
+Breslau, is now preparing for publication.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[B] The reader may be curious to see how smoothly and naturally these
+dactyls (so forced in the translation) flow in the original:--
+
+    "Aus der staubigen
+    Residenz,
+    In den laubigen
+    Frischen Lenz--
+    Aus dem tosenden
+    Gassenschwall
+    Zu dem kosenden
+    Wasserfall,--
+    Wer sich rettete,
+    Dank's dem Glueck,
+    Wie mich bettete
+    Mein Geschick!"
+
+
+
+
+PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.
+
+
+VII.
+
+Concord, _August 5, 1842._--A rainy day,--a rainy day. I am commanded to
+take pen in hand, and I am therefore banished to the little
+ten-foot-square apartment misnamed my study; but perhaps the dismalness
+of the day and the dulness of my solitude will be the prominent
+characteristics of what I write. And what is there to write about?
+Happiness has no succession of events, because it is a part of eternity;
+and we have been living in eternity ever since we came to this old
+manse. Like Enoch, we seem to have been translated to the other state of
+being, without having passed through death. Our spirits must have
+flitted away unconsciously, and we can only perceive that we have cast
+off our mortal part by the more real and earnest life of our souls.
+Externally, our Paradise has very much the aspect of a pleasant old
+domicile on earth. This antique house--for it looks antique, though it
+was created by Providence expressly for our use, and at the precise time
+when we wanted it--stands behind a noble avenue of balm-of-Gilead trees;
+and when we chance to observe a passing traveller through the sunshine
+and the shadow of this long avenue, his figure appears too dim and
+remote to disturb the sense of blissful seclusion. Few, indeed, are the
+mortals who venture within our sacred precincts. George Prescott, who
+has not yet grown earthly enough, I suppose, to be debarred from
+occasional visits to Paradise, comes daily to bring three pints of milk
+from some ambrosial cow; occasionally, also, he makes an offering of
+mortal flowers. Mr. Emerson comes sometimes, and has been feasted on our
+nectar and ambrosia. Mr. Thoreau has twice listened to the music of the
+spheres, which, for our private convenience, we have packed into a
+musical box. E---- H----, who is much more at home among spirits than
+among fleshly bodies, came hither a few times, merely to welcome us to
+the ethereal world; but latterly she has vanished into some other region
+of infinite space. One rash mortal, on the second Sunday after our
+arrival, obtruded himself upon us in a gig. There have since been three
+or four callers, who preposterously think that the courtesies of the
+lower world are to be responded to by people whose home is in Paradise.
+I must not forget to mention that the butcher comes twice or thrice a
+week; and we have so far improved upon the custom of Adam and Eve, that
+we generally furnish forth our feasts with portions of some delicate
+calf or lamb, whose unspotted innocence entitles them to the happiness
+of becoming our sustenance. Would that I were permitted to record the
+celestial dainties that kind Heaven provided for us on the first day of
+our arrival! Never, surely, was such food heard of on earth,--at least,
+not by me. Well, the above-mentioned persons are nearly all that have
+entered into the hallowed shade of our avenue; except, indeed, a certain
+sinner who came to bargain for the grass in our orchard, and another who
+came with a new cistern. For it is one of the drawbacks upon our Eden
+that it contains no water fit either to drink or to bathe in; so that
+the showers have become, in good truth, a godsend. I wonder why
+Providence does not cause a clear, cold fountain to bubble up at our
+doorstep; methinks it would not be unreasonable to pray for such a
+favor. At present we are under the ridiculous necessity of sending to
+the outer world for water. Only imagine Adam trudging out of Paradise
+with a bucket in each hand, to get water to drink, or for Eve to bathe
+in! Intolerable! (though our stout handmaiden really fetches our water).
+In other respects Providence has treated us pretty tolerably well; but
+here I shall expect something further to be done. Also, in the way of
+future favors, a kitten would be very acceptable. Animals (except,
+perhaps, a pig) seem never out of place, even in the most paradisiacal
+spheres. And, by the way, a young colt comes up our avenue, now and
+then, to crop the seldom-trodden herbage; and so does a company of cows,
+whose sweet breath well repays us for the food which they obtain. There
+are likewise a few hens, whose quiet cluck is heard pleasantly about the
+house. A black dog sometimes stands at the farther extremity of the
+avenue, and looks wistfully hitherward; but when I whistle to him, he
+puts his tail between his legs, and trots away. Foolish dog! if he had
+more faith, he should have bones enough.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Saturday, August 6._--Still a dull day, threatening rain, yet without
+energy of character enough to rain outright. However, yesterday there
+were showers enough to supply us well with their beneficent outpouring.
+As to the new cistern, it seems to be bewitched; for, while the spout
+pours into it like a cataract, it still remains almost empty. I wonder
+where Mr. Hosmer got it; perhaps from Tantalus, under the eaves of whose
+palace it must formerly have stood; for, like his drinking-cup in Hades,
+it has the property of filling itself forever, and never being full.
+
+After breakfast, I took my fishing-rod, and went down through our
+orchard to the river-side; but as three or four boys were already in
+possession of the best spots along the shore, I did not fish. This river
+of ours is the most sluggish stream that I ever was acquainted with. I
+had spent three weeks by its side, and swam across it every day, before
+I could determine which way its current ran; and then I was compelled to
+decide the question by the testimony of others, and not by my own
+observation. Owing to this torpor of the stream, it has nowhere a
+bright, pebbly shore, nor is there so much as a narrow strip of
+glistening sand in any part of its course; but it slumbers along between
+broad meadows, or kisses the tangled grass of mowing-fields and
+pastures, or bathes the overhanging boughs of elder-bushes and other
+water-loving plants. Flags and rushes grow along its shallow margin. The
+yellow water-lily spreads its broad, flat leaves upon its surface; and
+the fragrant white pond-lily occurs in many favored spots,--generally
+selecting a situation just so far from the river's brink, that it cannot
+be grasped except at the hazard of plunging in. But thanks be to the
+beautiful flower for growing at any rate. It is a marvel whence it
+derives its loveliness and perfume, sprouting as it does from the black
+mud over which the river sleeps, and from which the yellow lily likewise
+draws its unclean life and noisome odor. So it is with many people in
+this world: the same soil and circumstances may produce the good and
+beautiful, and the wicked and ugly. Some have the faculty of
+assimilating to themselves only what is evil, and so they become as
+noisome as the yellow water-lily. Some assimilate none but good
+influences, and their emblem is the fragrant and spotless pond-lily,
+whose very breath is a blessing to all the region round about.... Among
+the productions of the river's margin, I must not forget the
+pickerel-weed, which grows just on the edge of the water, and shoots up
+a long stalk crowned with a blue spire, from among large green leaves.
+Both the flower and the leaves look well in a vase with pond-lilies, and
+relieve the unvaried whiteness of the latter; and, being all alike
+children of the waters, they are perfectly in keeping with one
+another....
+
+I bathe once, and often twice, a day in our river; but one dip into the
+salt sea would be worth more than a whole week's soaking in such a
+lifeless tide. I have read of a river somewhere (whether it be in
+classic regions or among our Western Indians I know not) which seemed to
+dissolve and steal away the vigor of those who bathed in it. Perhaps
+our stream will be found to have this property. Its water, however, is
+pleasant in its immediate effect, being as soft as milk, and always
+warmer than the air. Its hue has a slight tinge of gold, and my limbs,
+when I behold them through its medium, look tawny. I am not aware that
+the inhabitants of Concord resemble their native river in any of their
+moral characteristics. Their forefathers, certainly, seem to have had
+the energy and impetus of a mountain torrent, rather than the torpor of
+this listless stream,--as it was proved by the blood with which they
+stained their river of Peace. It is said there are plenty of fish in it;
+but my most important captures hitherto have been a mud-turtle and an
+enormous eel. The former made his escape to his native element,--the
+latter we ate; and truly he had the taste of the whole river in his
+flesh, with a very prominent flavor of mud. On the whole, Concord River
+is no great favorite of mine; but I am glad to have any river at all so
+near at hand, it being just at the bottom of our orchard. Neither is it
+without a degree and kind of picturesqueness, both in its nearness and
+in the distance, when a blue gleam from its surface, among the green
+meadows and woods, seems like an open eye in Earth's countenance.
+Pleasant it is, too, to behold a little flat-bottomed skiff gliding over
+its bosom, which yields lazily to the stroke of the paddle, and allows
+the boat to go against its current almost as freely as with it.
+Pleasant, too, to watch an angler, as he strays along the brink,
+sometimes sheltering himself behind a tuft of bushes, and trailing his
+line along the water, in hopes to catch a pickerel. But, taking the
+river for all in all, I can find nothing more fit to compare it with,
+than one of the half-torpid earth-worms which I dig up for bait. The
+worm is sluggish, and so is the river,--the river is muddy, and so is
+the worm. You hardly know whether either of them be alive or dead; but
+still, in the course of time, they both manage to creep away. The best
+aspect of the Concord is when there is a northwestern breeze curling its
+surface, in a bright, sunshiny day. It then assumes a vivacity not its
+own. Moonlight, also, gives it beauty, as it does to all scenery of
+earth or water.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Sunday, August 7._--At sunset, last evening, I ascended the hill-top
+opposite our house; and, looking downward at the long extent of the
+river, it struck me that I had done it some injustice in my remarks.
+Perhaps, like other gentle and quiet characters, it will be better
+appreciated the longer I am acquainted with it. Certainly, as I beheld
+it then, it was one of the loveliest features in a scene of great rural
+beauty. It was visible through a course of two or three miles, sweeping
+in a semicircle round the hill on which I stood, and being the central
+line of a broad vale on either side. At a distance, it looked like a
+strip of sky set into the earth, which it so etherealized and idealized
+that it seemed akin to the upper regions. Nearer the base of the hill, I
+could discern the shadows of every tree and rock, imaged with a
+distinctness that made them even more charming than the reality;
+because, knowing them to be unsubstantial, they assumed the ideality
+which the soul always craves in the contemplation of earthly beauty. All
+the sky, too, and the rich clouds of sunset, were reflected in the
+peaceful bosom of the river; and surely, if its bosom can give back such
+an adequate reflection of heaven, it cannot be so gross and impure as I
+described it yesterday. Or if so, it shall be a symbol to me that even a
+human breast, which may appear least spiritual in some aspects, may
+still have the capability of reflecting an infinite heaven in its
+depths, and therefore of enjoying it. It is a comfortable thought, that
+the smallest and most turbid mud-puddle can contain its own picture of
+heaven. Let us remember this, when we feel inclined to deny all
+spiritual life to some people, in whom, nevertheless, our Father may
+perhaps see the image of his face. This dull river has a deep religion
+of its own: so, let us trust, has the dullest human soul, though,
+perhaps, unconsciously.
+
+The scenery of Concord, as I beheld it from the summit of the hill, has
+no very marked characteristics, but has a great deal of quiet beauty, in
+keeping with the river. There are broad and peaceful meadows, which, I
+think, are among the most satisfying objects in natural scenery. The
+heart reposes on them with a feeling that few things else can give,
+because almost all other objects are abrupt and clearly defined; but a
+meadow stretches out like a small infinity, yet with a secure homeliness
+which we do not find either in an expanse of water or of air. The hills
+which border these meadows are wide swells of land, or long and gradual
+ridges, some of them densely covered with wood. The white village, at a
+distance on the left, appears to be embosomed among wooded hills. The
+verdure of the country is much more perfect than is usual at this season
+of the year, when the autumnal hue has generally made considerable
+progress over trees and grass. Last evening, after the copious showers
+of the preceding two days, it was worthy of early June, or, indeed, of a
+world just created. Had I not then been alone, I should have had a far
+deeper sense of beauty, for I should have looked through the medium of
+another spirit. Along the horizon there were masses of those deep clouds
+in which the fancy may see images of all things that ever existed or
+were dreamed of. Over our old manse, of which I could catch but a
+glimpse among its embowering trees, appeared the immensely gigantic
+figure of a hound, crouching down, with head erect, as if keeping
+watchful guard while the master of the mansion was away.... How sweet it
+was to draw near my own home, after having lived homeless in the world
+so long!... With thoughts like these, I descended the hill, and
+clambered over the stone wall, and crossed the road, and passed up our
+avenue, while the quaint old house put on an aspect of welcome.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Monday, August 8._--I wish I could give a description of our house, for
+it really has a character of its own, which is more than can be said of
+most edifices in these days. It is two stories high, with a third story
+of attic chambers in the gable roof. When I first visited it, early in
+June, it looked pretty much as it did during the old clergyman's
+lifetime, showing all the dust and disarray that might be supposed to
+have gathered about him in the course of sixty years of occupancy. The
+rooms seemed never to have been painted; at all events, the walls and
+panels, as well as the huge crossbeams, had a venerable and most dismal
+tinge of brown. The furniture consisted of high-backed, short-legged,
+rheumatic chairs, small, old tables, bedsteads with lofty posts, stately
+chests of drawers, looking-glasses in antique black frames, all of which
+were probably fashionable in the days of Dr. Ripley's predecessor. It
+required some energy of imagination to conceive the idea of transforming
+this ancient edifice into a comfortable modern residence. However, it
+has been successfully accomplished. The old Doctor's sleeping apartment,
+which was the front room on the ground floor, we have converted into a
+parlor; and, by the aid of cheerful paint and paper, a gladsome carpet,
+pictures and engravings, new furniture, _bijouterie_, and a daily supply
+of flowers, it has become one of the prettiest and pleasantest rooms in
+the whole world. The shade of our departed host will never haunt it; for
+its aspect has been changed as completely as the scenery of a theatre.
+Probably the ghost gave one peep into it, uttered a groan, and vanished
+forever. The opposite room has been metamorphosed into a store-room.
+Through the house, both in the first and second story, runs a spacious
+hall or entry, occupying more space than is usually devoted to such a
+purpose in modern times. This feature contributes to give the whole
+house an airy, roomy, and convenient appearance; we can breathe the
+freer by the aid of the broad passage-way. The front door of the hall
+looks up the stately avenue, which I have already mentioned; and the
+opposite door opens into the orchard, through which a path descends to
+the river. In the second story we have at present fitted up three rooms,
+one being our own chamber, and the opposite one a guest-chamber, which
+contains the most presentable of the old Doctor's ante-Revolutionary
+furniture. After all, the moderns have invented nothing better, as
+chamber furniture, than these chests of drawers, which stand on four
+slender legs, and rear an absolute tower of mahogany to the ceiling, the
+whole terminating in a fantastically carved summit. Such a venerable
+structure adorns our guest-chamber. In the rear of the house is the
+little room which I call my study, and which, in its day, has witnessed
+the intellectual labors of better students than myself. It contains,
+with some additions and alterations, the furniture of my bachelor-room
+in Boston; but there is a happier disposal of things now. There is a
+little vase of flowers on one of the book-cases, and a larger bronze
+vase of graceful ferns that surmounts the bureau. In size the room is
+just what it ought to be; for I never could compress my thoughts
+sufficiently to write in a very spacious room. It has three windows, two
+of which are shaded by a large and beautiful willow-tree, which sweeps
+against the overhanging eaves. On this side we have a view into the
+orchard, and beyond, a glimpse of the river. The other window is the one
+from which Mr. Emerson, the predecessor of Dr. Ripley, beheld the first
+fight of the Revolution,--which he might well do, as the British troops
+were drawn up within a hundred yards of the house; and on looking forth,
+just now, I could still perceive the western abutments of the old
+bridge, the passage of which was contested. The new monument is visible
+from base to summit.
+
+Notwithstanding all we have done to modernize the old place, we seem
+scarcely to have disturbed its air of antiquity. It is evident that
+other wedded pairs have spent their honeymoons here, that children have
+been born here, and people have grown old and died in these rooms,
+although for our behoof the same apartments have consented to look
+cheerful once again. Then there are dark closets, and strange nooks and
+corners, where the ghosts of former occupants might hide themselves in
+the daytime, and stalk forth when night conceals all our sacrilegious
+improvements. We have seen no apparitions as yet; but we hear strange
+noises, especially in the kitchen, and last night, while sitting in the
+parlor, we heard a thumping and pounding as of somebody at work in my
+study. Nay, if I mistake not, (for I was half asleep,) there was a sound
+as of some person crumpling paper in his hand in our very bedchamber.
+This must have been old Dr. Ripley with one of his sermons. There is a
+whole chest of them in the garret; but he need have no apprehensions of
+our disturbing them. I never saw the old patriarch myself, which I
+regret, as I should have been glad to associate his venerable figure at
+ninety years of age with the house in which he dwelt.
+
+Externally the house presents the same appearance as in the Doctor's
+day. It had once a coat of white paint; but the storms and sunshine of
+many years have almost obliterated it, and produced a sober, grayish
+hue, which entirely suits the antique form of the structure. To repaint
+its reverend face would be a real sacrilege. It would look like old Dr.
+Ripley in a brown wig. I hardly know why it is that our cheerful and
+lightsome repairs and improvements in the interior of the house seem to
+be in perfectly good taste, though the heavy old beams and high
+wainscoting of the walls speak of ages gone by. But so it is. The
+cheerful paper-hangings have the air of belonging to the old walls; and
+such modernisms as astral lamps, card-tables, gilded Cologne-bottles,
+silver taper-stands, and bronze and alabaster flower-vases, do not seem
+at all impertinent. It is thus that an aged man may keep his heart warm
+for new things and new friends, and often furnish himself anew with
+ideas; though it would not be graceful for him to attempt to suit his
+exterior to the passing fashions of the day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_August 9._--Our orchard in its day has been a very productive and
+profitable one; and we were told, that in one year it returned Dr.
+Ripley a hundred dollars, besides defraying the expense of repairing the
+house. It is now long past its prime: many of the trees are moss-grown,
+and have dead and rotten branches intermixed among the green and
+fruitful ones. And it may well be so; for I suppose some of the trees
+may have been set out by Mr. Emerson, who died in the first year of the
+Revolutionary war. Neither will the fruit, probably, bear comparison
+with the delicate productions of modern pomology. Most of the trees seem
+to have abundant burdens upon them; but they are homely russet apples,
+fit only for baking and cooking. (But we have yet to have practical
+experience of our fruit.) Justice Shallow's orchard, with its choice
+pippins and leather-coats, was doubtless much superior. Nevertheless, it
+pleases me to think of the good minister, walking in the shadows of
+these old, fantastically-shaped apple-trees, here plucking some of the
+fruit to taste, there pruning away a too luxuriant branch, and all the
+while computing how many barrels may be filled, and how large a sum will
+be added to his stipend by their sale. And the same trees offer their
+fruit to me as freely as they did to him,--their old branches, like
+withered hands and arms, holding out apples of the same flavor as they
+held out to Dr. Ripley in his lifetime. Thus the trees, as living
+existences, form a peculiar link between the dead and us. My fancy has
+always found something very interesting in an orchard. Apple-trees, and
+all fruit-trees, have a domestic character which brings them into
+relationship with man. They have lost, in a great measure, the wild
+nature of the forest-tree, and have grown humanized by receiving the
+care of man, and by contributing to his wants. They have become a part
+of the family; and their individual characters are as well understood
+and appreciated as those of the human members. One tree is harsh and
+crabbed, another mild; one is churlish and illiberal, another exhausts
+itself with its free-hearted bounties. Even the shapes of apple-trees
+have great individuality, into such strange postures do they put
+themselves, and thrust their contorted branches so grotesquely in all
+directions. And when they have stood around a house for many years, and
+held converse with successive dynasties of occupants, and gladdened
+their hearts so often in the fruitful autumn, then it would seem almost
+sacrilege to cut them down.
+
+Besides the apple-trees, there are various other kinds of fruit in close
+vicinity to the house. When we first arrived, there were several trees
+of ripe cherries, but so sour that we allowed them to wither upon the
+branches. Two long rows of currant-bushes supplied us abundantly for
+nearly four weeks. There are a good many peach-trees, but all of an old
+date,--their branches rotten, gummy, and mossy,--and their fruit, I
+fear, will be of very inferior quality. They produce most abundantly,
+however,--the peaches being almost as numerous as the leaves; and even
+the sprouts and suckers from the roots of the old trees have fruit upon
+them. Then there are pear-trees of various kinds, and one or two
+quince-trees. On the whole, these fruit-trees, and the other items and
+adjuncts of the place, convey a very agreeable idea of the outward
+comfort in which the good old Doctor must have spent his life.
+Everything seems to have fallen to his lot that could possibly be
+supposed to render the life of a country clergyman easy and prosperous.
+There is a barn, which probably used to be filled, annually, with his
+hay and other agricultural products. There are sheds, and a hen-house,
+and a pigeon-house, and an old stone pig-sty, the open portion of which
+is overgrown with tall weeds, indicating that no grunter has recently
+occupied it.... I have serious thoughts of inducting a new incumbent in
+this part of the parsonage. It is our duty to support a pig, even if we
+have no design of feasting upon him; and, for my own part, I have a
+great sympathy and interest for the whole race of porkers, and should
+have much amusement in studying the character of a pig. Perhaps I might
+try to bring out his moral and intellectual nature, and cultivate his
+affections. A cat, too, and perhaps a dog, would be desirable additions
+to our household.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_August 10._--The natural taste of man for the original Adam's
+occupation is fast developing itself in me. I find that I am a good deal
+interested in our garden, although, as it was planted before we came
+here, I do not feel the same affection for the plants that I should if
+the seed had been sown by my own hands. It is something like nursing and
+educating another person's children. Still, it was a very pleasant
+moment when I gathered the first string-beans, which were the earliest
+esculent that the garden contributed to our table. And I love to watch
+the successive development of each new vegetable, and mark its daily
+growth, which always affects me with surprise. It is as if something
+were being created under my own inspection, and partly by my own aid.
+One day, perchance, I look at my bean-vines, and see only the green
+leaves clambering up the poles; again, to-morrow, I give a second
+glance, and there are the delicate blossoms; and a third day, on a
+somewhat closer observation, I discover the tender young beans, hiding
+among the foliage. Then, each morning, I watch the swelling of the pods,
+and calculate how soon they will be ready to yield their treasures. All
+this gives a pleasure and an ideality, hitherto unthought of, to the
+business of providing sustenance for my family. I suppose Adam felt it
+in Paradise; and, of merely and exclusively earthly enjoyments, there
+are few purer and more harmless to be experienced. Speaking of beans, by
+the way, they are a classical food, and their culture must have been the
+occupation of many ancient sages and heroes. Summer-squashes are a very
+pleasant vegetable to be acquainted with. They grow in the forms of urns
+and vases,--some shallow, others deeper, and all with a beautifully
+scalloped edge. Almost any squash in our garden might be copied by a
+sculptor, and would look lovely in marble, or in china; and, if I could
+afford it, I would have exact imitations of the real vegetable as
+portions of my dining-service. They would be very appropriate dishes for
+holding garden-vegetables. Besides the summer-squashes, we have the
+crook-necked winter-squash, which I always delight to look at, when it
+turns up its big rotundity to ripen in the autumn sun. Except a pumpkin,
+there is no vegetable production that imparts such an idea of warmth and
+comfort to the beholder. Our own crop, however, does not promise to be
+very abundant; for the leaves formed such a superfluous shade over the
+young blossoms, that most of them dropped off without producing the germ
+of fruit. Yesterday and to-day I have cut off an immense number of
+leaves, and have thus given the remaining blossoms a chance to profit by
+the air and sunshine; but the season is too far advanced, I am afraid,
+for the squashes to attain any great bulk, and grow yellow in the sun.
+We have muskmelons and watermelons, which promise to supply us with as
+many as we can eat. After all, the greatest interest of these vegetables
+does not seem to consist in their being articles of food. It is rather
+that we love to see something born into the world; and when a great
+squash or melon is produced, it is a large and tangible existence, which
+the imagination can seize hold of and rejoice in. I love, also, to see
+my own works contributing to the life and well-being of animate nature.
+It is pleasant to have the bees come and suck honey out of my
+squash-blossoms, though, when they have laden themselves, they fly away
+to some unknown hive, which will give me back nothing in return for what
+my garden has given them. But there is much more honey in the world, and
+so I am content. Indian corn, in the prime and glory of its verdure, is
+a very beautiful vegetable, both considered in the separate plant, and
+in a mass in a broad field, rustling, and waving, and surging up and
+down in the breeze and sunshine of a summer afternoon. We have as many
+as fifty hills, I should think, which will give us an abundant supply.
+Pray Heaven that we may be able to eat it all! for it is not pleasant to
+think that anything which Nature has been at the pains to produce should
+be thrown away. But the hens will be glad of our superfluity, and so
+will the pigs, though we have neither hens nor pigs of our own. But hens
+we must certainly keep. There is something very sociable, and quiet, and
+soothing, too, in their soliloquies and converse among themselves; and,
+in an idle and half-meditative mood, it is very pleasant to watch a
+party of hens picking up their daily subsistence, with a gallant
+chanticleer in the midst of them. Milton had evidently contemplated such
+a picture with delight.
+
+I find that I have not given a very complete idea of our garden,
+although it certainly deserves an ample record in this chronicle, since
+my labors in it are the only present labors of my life. Besides what I
+have mentioned, we have cucumber-vines, which to-day yielded us the
+first cucumber of the season, a bed of beets, and another of carrots,
+and another of parsnips and turnips, none of which promise us a very
+abundant harvest. In truth, the soil is worn out, and, moreover,
+received very little manure this season. Also, we have cabbages in
+superfluous abundance, inasmuch as we neither of us have the least
+affection for them; and it would be unreasonable to expect Sarah, the
+cook, to eat fifty head of cabbages. Tomatoes, too, we shall have by and
+by. At our first arrival, we found green peas ready for gathering, and
+these, instead of the string-beans, were the first offering of the
+garden to our board.
+
+
+
+
+TO J. B.
+
+ON SENDING ME A SEVEN-POUND TROUT.
+
+
+              1.
+
+    Fit for an Abbot of Theleme,
+    For the whole Cardinals' College, or
+    The Pope himself to see in dream
+    Before his lenten vision gleam,
+    He lies there,--the sogdologer!
+
+              2.
+
+    His precious flanks with stars besprent,
+    Worthy to swim in Castaly!
+    The friend by whom such gifts are sent,--
+    For him shall bumpers full be spent,--
+    His health! be Luck his fast ally!
+
+              3.
+
+    I see him trace the wayward brook
+    Amid the forest mysteries,
+    Where at themselves shy aspens look,
+    Or where, with many a gurgling crook,
+    It croons its woodland histories.
+
+              4.
+
+    I see leaf-shade and sun-fleck lend
+    Their tremulous, sweet vicissitude
+    To smooth, dark pool, to crinkling bend,--
+    (O, stew him, Ann, as 't were your friend,
+    With amorous solicitude!)
+
+              5.
+
+    I see him step with caution due,
+    Soft as if shod with moccasins,
+    Grave as in church,--and who plies you,
+    Sweet craft, is safe as in a pew
+    From all our common stock o' sins.
+
+              6.
+
+    The unerring fly I see him cast,
+    That as a rose-leaf falls as soft,--
+    A flash! a whirl! he has him fast!
+    We tyros,--how that struggle last
+    Confuses and appalls us oft!
+
+              7.
+
+    Unfluttered he; calm as the sky
+    Looks on our tragicomedies,
+    This way and that he lets him fly,
+    A sunbeam-shuttle, then to die
+    Lands him with cool _aplomb_, at ease.
+
+              8.
+
+    The friend who gave our board such gust,--
+    Life's care, may he o'erstep it half,
+    And when Death hooks him, as he must,
+    He'll do it featly, as I trust,
+    And J. H. write his epitaph!
+
+              9.
+
+    O, born beneath the Fishes' sign,
+    Of constellations happiest,
+    May he somewhere with Walton dine,
+    May Horace send him Massic wine,
+    And Burns Scotch drink,--the nappiest!
+
+              10.
+
+    And when they come his deeds to weigh,
+    And how he used the talents his,
+    One trout-scale in the scales he'll lay,
+    (If trout had scales,) and 't will outsway
+    The wrong side of the balances.
+
+
+
+
+PHYSICAL HISTORY OF THE VALLEY OF THE AMAZONS.
+
+
+I.
+
+A year or two ago I published in the Atlantic Monthly, as part of a
+series of geological sketches, a number of articles on the glacial
+phenomena of the Northern hemisphere. To-day I am led to add a new
+chapter to that strange history, taken from the Southern hemisphere, and
+even from the tropics themselves.
+
+I am prepared to find that the statement of this new phase of the
+glacial period will awaken among my scientific colleagues an opposition
+even more violent than that by which the first announcement of my views
+on this subject was met. I am, however, willing to bide my time; feeling
+sure that, as the theory of the ancient extension of glaciers in Europe
+has gradually come to be accepted by geologists, so will the existence
+of like phenomena, both in North and South America, during the same
+epoch, be recognized sooner or later as part of a great series of
+physical events extending over the whole globe. Indeed, when the ice
+period is fully understood, it will be seen that the absurdity lies in
+supposing that climatic conditions so intense could be limited to a
+small portion of the world's surface. If the geological winter existed
+at all, it must have been cosmic; and it is quite as rational to look
+for its traces in the Western as in the Eastern hemisphere, to the south
+of the equator as to the north of it. Impressed by this wider view of
+the subject, confirmed by a number of unpublished investigations which I
+have made during the last three or four years in the United States, I
+came to South America, expecting to find in the tropical regions new
+evidences of a by-gone glacial period, though, of course, under
+different aspects. Such a result seemed to me the logical sequence of
+what I had already observed in Europe and in North America.
+
+On my arrival in Rio de Janeiro,--the port at which I first landed in
+Brazil,--my attention was immediately attracted by a very peculiar
+formation, consisting of an ochraceous, highly ferruginous sandy clay.
+During a stay of three months in Rio, whence I made many excursions into
+the neighboring country, I had opportunities of studying this deposit,
+both in the province of Rio de Janeiro and in the adjoining province of
+Minas Geraes. I found that it rested everywhere upon the undulating
+surfaces of the solid rocks in place, was almost entirely destitute of
+stratification, and contained a variety of pebbles and boulders. The
+pebbles were chiefly quartz, sometimes scattered indiscriminately
+throughout the deposit, sometimes lying in a seam between it and the
+rock below; while the boulders were either sunk in its mass or resting
+loose on the surface. At Tijuca, a few miles out of the city of Rio,
+among the picturesque hills lying to the southwest of it, these
+phenomena may be seen in great perfection. Near Bennett's Hotel--a
+favorite resort, not only with the citizens of Rio, but with all
+sojourners there who care to leave the town occasionally for its
+beautiful environs--may be seen a great number of erratic boulders,
+having no connection whatever with the rock in place, and also a bluff
+of this superficial deposit studded with boulders, resting above the
+partially stratified metamorphic rock. Other excellent opportunities for
+observing this formation, also within easy reach from the city, are
+afforded along the whole line of the Railroad of Dom Pedro Segundo,
+where the cuts expose admirable sections, showing the red, unstratified,
+homogeneous mass of sandy clay resting above the solid rock, and often
+divided from it by a thin bed of pebbles. There can be no doubt, in the
+mind of any one familiar with similar facts observed in other parts of
+the world, that this is one of the many forms of drift connected with
+glacial action. I was, however, far from anticipating, when I first met
+it in the neighborhood of Rio, that I should afterwards find it
+spreading over the surface of the country, from north to south and from
+east to west, with a continuity which gives legible connection to the
+whole geological history of the continent.
+
+It is true that the extensive decomposition of the underlying rock,
+penetrating sometimes to a considerable depth, makes it often difficult
+to distinguish between it and the drift; and the problem is made still
+more puzzling by the fact that the surface of the drift, when baked by
+exposure to the hot sun, often assumes the appearance of decomposed
+rock, so that great care is required for a correct interpretation of the
+facts. A little practice, however, trains the eye to read these
+appearances aright, and I may say that I have learned to recognize
+everywhere the limit between the two formations. There is indeed one
+safe guide, namely, the undulating line, reminding one of _roches
+moutonnees_,[C] and marking the irregular surface of the rock on which
+the drift was accumulated; whatever modifications the one or the other
+may have undergone, this line seems never to disappear. Another
+deceptive feature, arising from the frequent disintegration of the rocks
+and from the brittle character of some of them, is the presence of loose
+fragments, which simulate erratic boulders, but are in fact only
+detached masses of the rock in place. A careful examination of their
+structure, however, will at once show the geologist whether they belong
+where they are found, or have been brought from a distance to their
+present resting-place.
+
+But while the features to which I have alluded are unquestionably drift
+phenomena, they present in their wider extension, and especially in the
+northern part of Brazil, as will hereafter be seen, some phases of
+glacial action hitherto unobserved. Just as the investigation of the ice
+period in the United States has shown us that ice-fields may move over
+open level plains, as well as along the slopes of mountain valleys, so
+does a study of the same class of facts in South America reveal new and
+unlooked-for features in the history of the ice period. Some will say,
+that the fact of the advance of ice-fields over an open country is by no
+means established, inasmuch as many geologists believe all the so-called
+glacial traces, viz. striae, furrows, polish, etc., found in the United
+States, to have been made by floating icebergs at a time when the
+continent was submerged. To this I can only answer, that in the State of
+Maine I have followed, compass in hand, the same set of furrows, running
+from north to south in one unvarying line, over a surface of one hundred
+and thirty miles from the Katahdin Iron Range to the sea-shore. These
+furrows follow all the inequalities of the country, ascending ranges of
+hills varying from twelve to fifteen hundred feet in height, and
+descending into the intervening valleys only two or three hundred feet
+above the sea, or sometimes even on a level with it. I take it to be
+impossible that a floating mass of ice should travel onward in one
+rectilinear direction, turning neither to the right nor to the left, for
+such a distance. Equally impossible would it be for a detached mass of
+ice, swimming on the surface of the water, or even with its base sunk
+considerably below it, to furrow in a straight line the summits and
+sides of the hills, and the beds of the valleys. It would be carried
+over the depressions without touching bottom. Instead of ascending the
+mountains, it would remain stranded against any elevation which rose
+greatly above its own basis, and, if caught between two parallel ridges,
+would float up and down between them. Moreover, the action of solid,
+unbroken ice, moving over the ground in immediate contact with it, is so
+different from that of floating ice-rafts or icebergs, that, though the
+latter have unquestionably dropped erratic boulders, and made furrows
+and striae on the surface where they happened to be grounded, these
+phenomena will easily be distinguished from the more connected traces of
+glaciers, or extensive sheets of ice, resting directly upon the face of
+the country and advancing over it.
+
+There seems thus far to be an inextricable confusion, in the ideas of
+many geologists, as to the respective action of currents, icebergs, and
+glaciers. It is time they should learn to distinguish between classes of
+facts so different from each other, and so easily recognized after the
+discrimination has once been made. As to the southward movement of an
+immense field of ice, extending over the whole north, it seems
+inevitable, the moment we admit that snow may accumulate around the pole
+in such quantities as to initiate a pressure radiating in every
+direction. Snow, alternately thawing and freezing, must, like water,
+find its level at last. A sheet of snow ten or fifteen thousand feet in
+thickness, extending all over the northern and southern portions of the
+globe, must necessarily lead, in the end, to the formation of a northern
+and southern cap of ice, moving toward the equator.
+
+I have spoken of Tijuca and the Dom Pedro Railroad as favorable
+localities for studying the peculiar southern drift; but one meets it in
+every direction. A sheet of drift, consisting of the same homogeneous,
+unstratified paste, and containing loose materials of all sorts and
+sizes, covers the country. It is of very uneven thickness,--sometimes
+thrown into relief, as it were, by the surrounding denudations, and
+rising into hills,--sometimes reduced to a thin layer,--sometimes, as,
+for instance, on steep slopes, washed entirely away, leaving the bare
+face of the rock exposed. It has, however, remained comparatively
+undisturbed on some very abrupt ascents; as, for instance, on the
+Corcovado, along the path leading up the mountain, are some very fine
+banks of drift,--the more striking from the contrast of their deep red
+color with the surrounding vegetation. I have myself followed this sheet
+of drift from Rio de Janeiro to the top of the Serra do Mar, where, just
+outside the pretty town of Petropolis, the river Piabanha may be seen
+flowing between banks of drift, in which it has excavated its bed;
+thence I have traced it along the beautiful macadamized road leading to
+Juiz de Fora in the province of Minas Geraes, and beyond this to the
+farther side of the Serra da Babylonia. Throughout this whole tract of
+country, in the greater part of which travelling is easy and
+delightful,--an admirable line of diligences, over one of the finest
+roads in the world, being established as far as Juiz de Fora,--the drift
+may be seen along the roadside, in immediate contact with the native
+crystalline rock. The fertility of the land, also, is a guide to the
+presence of drift. Wherever it lies thickest over the surface, there are
+the most flourishing coffee-plantations; and I believe that a more
+systematic regard to this fact would have a most beneficial influence
+upon the agricultural interests of the country. No doubt the fertility
+arises from the great variety of chemical elements contained in the
+drift, and the kneading process it has undergone beneath the gigantic
+ice-plough,--a process which makes glacial drift everywhere the most
+fertile soil. Since my return from the Amazons, my impression as to the
+general distribution of these phenomena has been confirmed by the
+reports of some of my assistants, who have been travelling in other
+parts of the country. Mr. Frederick C. Hartt, accompanied by Mr.
+Copeland, one of the volunteer aids of the expedition, has been making
+collections and geological observations in the province of Spiritu
+Santo, in the valley of the Rio Doce, and afterwards in the valley of
+the Mucury. He informs me that he has found everywhere the same sheet
+of red, unstratified clay, with pebbles and occasional boulders,
+overlying the rock in place. Mr. Orestes St. John, who, taking the road
+through the interior, has visited, with the same objects in view, the
+valleys of the Rio San Francisco and the Rio das Velhas, and also the
+valley of Piauhy, gives the same account, with the exception that he
+found no erratic boulders in these more northern regions. The rarity of
+erratic boulders, not only in the deposits of the Amazons proper, but in
+those of the whole region which may be considered as the Amazonian
+basin, is accounted for, as we shall see hereafter, by the mode of their
+formation. The observations of Mr. Hartt and Mr. St. John are the more
+valuable, because I had employed them both, on our first arrival in Rio,
+in making geological surveys of different sections on the Dom Pedro
+Railroad, so that they had a great familiarity with those formations
+before starting on their separate journeys. Recently, Mr. St. John and
+myself having met at Para on returning from our respective journeys, I
+have had an opportunity of comparing on the spot his geological sections
+from the valley of the Piauhy with the Amazonian deposits. There can be
+no doubt of the absolute identity of the formations in these valleys.
+
+Having arranged the work of my assistants, and sent several of them to
+collect and make geological examinations in other directions, I myself,
+with the rest of my companions, proceeded up the coast to Para. I was
+surprised to find at every step of my progress the same geological
+phenomena which had met me at Rio. As the steamer stops for a number of
+hours, or sometimes for a day or two, at Bahia, Maceio, Pernambuco,
+Parahiba, Natal, Ceara, and Maranham, I had many opportunities for
+observation. It was my friend Major Coutinho, already an experienced
+Amazonian traveller, who first told me that this formation continued
+through the whole valley of the Amazons, and was also to be found on all
+of its affluents which he had visited, although he had never thought of
+referring it to so recent a period. And here let me interrupt the course
+of my remarks to say, that the facts recorded in this article are by no
+means exclusively the result of my own investigations. They are in great
+part due to this able and intelligent young Brazilian, a member of the
+government corps of engineers, who, by the kindness of the Emperor, was
+associated with me in my Amazonian expedition. I can truly say that he
+has been my good genius throughout the whole journey, saving me, by his
+previous knowledge of the ground, from the futile and misdirected
+expenditure of means and time often inevitable in a new country, where
+one is imperfectly acquainted both with the people and their language.
+We have worked together in this investigation; my only advantage over
+him being my greater familiarity with like phenomena in Europe and North
+America, and consequent readiness in the practical handling of the
+facts, and in perceiving their connection. Major Coutinho's assertion,
+that on the banks of the Amazons I should find the same red,
+unstratified clay as in Rio and along the southern coast, seemed to me
+at first almost incredible, impressed as I was with the generally
+received notions as to the ancient character of the Amazonian deposits,
+referred by Humboldt to the Devonian, and by Martins to the Triassic
+period, and considered by all travellers to be at least as old as the
+Tertiaries. The result, however, confirmed his report, at least so far
+as the component materials of the formation are concerned; but, as will
+be seen hereafter, the mode of their deposition, and the time at which
+it took place, have not been the same at the north and south; and this
+difference of circumstances has modified the aspect of a formation
+essentially the same throughout. At first sight, it would indeed appear
+that this formation, as it exists in the valley of the Amazons, is
+identical with that of Rio; but it differs from it in the rarity of its
+boulders, and in showing occasional signs of stratification. It is also
+everywhere underlaid by coarse, well-stratified deposits, resembling
+somewhat the recife of Bahia and Pernambuco; whereas the unstratified
+drift of the south rests immediately upon the undulating surface of
+whatever rock happens to make the foundation of the country, whether
+stratified or crystalline. The peculiar sandstone on which the Amazonian
+clay rests exists nowhere else. Before proceeding, however, to describe
+the Amazonian deposits in detail, I ought to say something of the nature
+and origin of the valley itself.
+
+The Valley of the Amazons was first sketched out by the elevation of two
+tracts of land; namely, the plateau of Guiana on the north, and the
+central plateau of Brazil on the south. It is probable that, at the time
+these two table-lands were lifted above the sea-level, the Andes did not
+exist, and the ocean flowed between them through an open strait. It
+would seem (and this is a curious result of modern geological
+investigations) that the portions of the earth's surface earliest raised
+above the ocean have trended from east to west. The first tract of land
+lifted above the waters in North America was also a long continental
+island, running from Newfoundland almost to the present base of the
+Rocky Mountains. This tendency may be attributed to various causes,--to
+the rotation of the earth, the consequent depression of its poles, and
+the breaking of its crust along the lines of greatest tension thus
+produced. At a later period, the upheaval of the Andes took place,
+closing the western side of this strait, and thus transforming it into a
+gulf, open only toward the east. Little or nothing is known of the
+earlier stratified deposits resting against the crystalline masses first
+uplifted in the Amazonian Valley. There is here no sequence, as in North
+America, of Azoic, Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous formations,
+shored up against each other by the gradual upheaval of the continent,
+although unquestionably older palaeozoic and secondary beds underlie,
+here and there, the later formations. Indeed, Major Coutinho has found
+palaeozoic deposits, with characteristic shells, in the valley of the Rio
+Tapajos, at the first cascade, and carboniferous deposits have been
+noticed along the Rio Guapore and the Rio Marnore. But the first chapter
+in the valley's geological history about which we have connected and
+trustworthy data is that of the cretaceous period. It seems certain,
+that, at the close of the secondary age, the whole Amazonian basin
+became lined with a cretaceous deposit, the margins of which crop out at
+various localities on its borders. They have been observed along its
+southern limits, on its western outskirts along the Andes, in Venezuela
+along the shore-line of mountains, and also in certain localities near
+its eastern edge. I well remember that one of the first things which
+awakened my interest in the geology of the Amazonian Valley was the
+sight of some cretaceous fossil fishes from the province of Ceara. These
+fossil fishes were collected by Mr. George Gardner, to whom science is
+indebted for the most extensive information yet obtained respecting the
+geology of that part of Brazil. In this connection, let me say that here
+and elsewhere I shall speak of the provinces of Ceara, Piauhy, and
+Maranham as belonging geologically to the Valley of the Amazons, though
+their shore is bathed by the ocean, and their rivers empty directly into
+the Atlantic. But I entertain no doubt, and I hope I may hereafter be
+able to show, that, at an earlier period, the northeastern coast of
+Brazil stretched much farther seaward than in our day; so far, indeed,
+that in those times the rivers of all these provinces must have been
+tributaries of the Amazon in its eastward course. The evidence for this
+conclusion is substantially derived from the identity of the deposits in
+the valleys belonging to these provinces with those of the valleys
+through which the actual tributaries of the Amazons flow; as, for
+instance, the Tocantins, the Xingu, the Tapajos, the Madura, etc.
+Besides the fossils above alluded to from the eastern borders of this
+ancient basin, I have had recently another evidence of its cretaceous
+character from its southern region. Mr. William Chandless, on his return
+from a late journey on the Rio Purus, presented me with a series of
+fossil remains of the highest interest, and undoubtedly belonging to the
+cretaceous period. They were collected by himself on the Rio Aquiry, an
+affluent of the Rio Purus. Most of them were found in place between the
+tenth and eleventh degrees of south latitude, and the sixty-seventh and
+sixty-ninth degrees of west longitude from Greenwich, in localities
+varying from 430 to 650 feet above the sea-level. There are among them
+remains of Mososaurus, and of fishes closely allied to those already
+represented by Faujas in his description of Maestricht, and
+characteristic, as is well known to geological students, of the most
+recent cretaceous period.
+
+Thus in its main features the Valley of the Amazons, like that of the
+Mississippi, is a cretaceous basin. This resemblance suggests a further
+comparison between the twin continents of North and South America. Not
+only is their general form the same, but their framework as we may call
+it, that is, the lay of their great mountain-chains and of their
+table-lands, with the extensive intervening depressions, presents a
+striking similarity. Indeed, a zooelogist, accustomed to trace a like
+structure under variously modified animal forms, cannot but have his
+homological studies recalled to his mind by the coincidence between
+certain physical features in the northern and southern parts of the
+Western hemisphere. And yet here, as throughout all nature, these
+correspondences are combined with a distinctness of individualization,
+which leaves its respective character not only to each continent as a
+whole, but also to the different regions circumscribed within its
+borders. In both, however, the highest mountain-chains, the Rocky
+Mountains and Coast Range with their wide intervening table-land in
+North America, and the chain of the Andes with its lesser plateaus in
+South America, run along the western coast; both have a great eastern
+promontory,--Newfoundland in the northern continent, and Cape St. Roque
+in the southern;--and though the resemblance between the inland
+elevations is perhaps less striking, yet the Canadian range, the White
+Mountains, and the Alleghanies may very fairly be compared to the
+table-lands of Guiana and Brazil, and the Serra do Mar. Similar
+correspondences may be traced among the river systems. The Amazons and
+the St. Lawrence, though so different in dimensions, remind us of each
+other by their trend and geographical position; and while the one is fed
+by the largest river system in the world, the other drains the most
+extensive lake surfaces known to exist in immediate contiguity. The
+Orinoco, with its bay, recalls Hudson's Bay and its many tributaries,
+and the Rio Magdalena may be said to be the South American Mackenzie;
+while the Rio de la Plata represents geographically our Mississippi, and
+the Paraguay recalls the Missouri. The Parana may be compared to the
+Ohio; the Pilcomayo, Vermejo, and Salado rivers, to the River Platte,
+the Arkansas, and the Red River in the United States; while the rivers
+farther south, emptying into the Gulf of Mexico, represent the rivers of
+Patagonia and the southern parts of the Argentine Republic. Not only is
+there this general correspondence between the mountain elevations and
+the river systems, but as the larger river basins of North
+America--those of the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, and the
+Mackenzie--meet in the low tracts extending along the foot of the Rocky
+Mountains, so do the basins of the Amazons, the Rio de la Plata, and the
+Orinoco join each other along the eastern slope of the Andes.
+
+But while in geographical homology the Amazons compare with the St.
+Lawrence, and the Mississippi with the Rio de la Plata, the Mississippi
+and the Amazons, as has been said, resemble each other in their local
+geological character. They have both received a substratum of cretaceous
+beds, above which are accumulated their more recent deposits, so that,
+in their most prominent geological features, both may be considered as
+cretaceous basins, containing extensive deposits of a very recent age.
+Of the history of the Amazonian Valley during the periods immediately
+following the Cretaceous, we know little or nothing. Whether the
+Tertiary deposits are hidden under the more modern ones, or whether they
+are wholly wanting, the basin having, perhaps, been raised above the
+sea-level before that time, or whether they have been swept away by the
+tremendous inundations in the valley, which have certainly destroyed a
+great part of the cretaceous deposit, they have never been observed in
+any part of the Amazonian basin. Whatever tertiary deposits are
+represented in geological maps of this region are so marked in
+consequence of an incorrect identification of strata belonging, in fact,
+to a much more recent period.
+
+A minute and extensive survey of the Valley of the Amazons is by no
+means an easy task, and its difficulty is greatly increased by the fact
+that the lower formations are only accessible on the river margins
+during the _vasante_, as it is called, or dry season, when the waters
+shrink in their beds, leaving a great part of their banks exposed. It
+happened that the first three or four months of my journey, August,
+September, October, and November, were those when the waters are
+lowest,--reaching their minimum in September and October, and beginning
+to rise again in November,--so that I had an excellent opportunity in
+ascending the river to observe its geological structure. Throughout its
+whole length, three distinct geological formations may be traced, the
+two lower of which have followed in immediate succession, and are
+conformable with one another, while the third rests unconformably upon
+them, following all the inequalities of the greatly denudated surface
+presented by the second formation. Notwithstanding this seeming
+interruption in the sequence of these deposits, the third, as we shall
+presently see, belongs to the same series, and was accumulated in the
+same basin. The lowest set of beds of the whole series is rarely
+visible, but it seems everywhere to consist of sandstone, or even of
+loose sands well stratified, the coarser materials lying invariably
+below, and the finer above. Upon this lower set of beds rests everywhere
+an extensive deposit of fine laminated clays, varying in thickness, but
+frequently dividing into layers as thin as a sheet of paper. In some
+localities they exhibit in patches an extraordinary variety of beautiful
+colors,--pink, orange, crimson, yellow, gray, blue, and also black and
+white. The Indians are very skilful in preparing paints from these
+colored clays, with which they ornament their pottery, and the bowls of
+various shapes and sizes made from the fruit of the Cuieira-tree. These
+clay deposits assume occasionally a peculiar appearance, and one which
+might mislead the observer as to their true nature. When their surface
+has been long exposed to the action of the atmosphere and to the heat of
+the burning sun, they look so much like clay slates of the oldest
+geological epochs, that, at first sight, I took them for primary slates,
+my attention being attracted to them by a regular cleavage as distinct
+as that of the most ancient clay slates. And yet at Tonantins, on the
+banks of the Solimoens, in a locality where their exposed surfaces had
+this primordial appearance, I found in these very beds a considerable
+amount of well-preserved leaves, the character of which proves their
+recent origin. These leaves do not even indicate as ancient a period as
+the Tertiaries, but resemble so closely the vegetation of to-day, that I
+have no doubt, when examined by competent authority, they will be
+identified with living plants. The presence of such an extensive clay
+formation, stretching over a surface of more than three thousand miles
+in length and about seven hundred in breadth, is not easily explained
+under any ordinary circumstances. The fact that it is so thoroughly
+laminated shows that, in the basin in which it was formed, the waters
+must have been unusually quiet, containing identical materials
+throughout, and that these materials must have been deposited over the
+whole bottom in the same way. It is usually separated from the
+superincumbent beds by a glazed crust of hard, compact sandstone, almost
+resembling a ferruginous quartzite.
+
+Upon this follow beds of sand and sandstone, varying in the regularity
+of their strata, reddish in color, often highly ferruginous, and more or
+less nodulous or porous. They present frequent traces of
+cross-stratification, alternating with regularly stratified horizontal
+beds, with here and there an intervening layer of clay. It would seem as
+if the character of the water basin had now changed, and as if the
+waters under which this second formation was deposited had vibrated
+between storm and calm,--had sometimes flowed more gently, and again had
+been tossed to and fro,--giving to some of the beds the aspect of true
+torrential deposits. Indeed, these sandstone formations present a great
+variety of aspects. Sometimes they are very regularly laminated, or
+assume even the appearance of the hardest quartzite. This is usually the
+case with the uppermost beds. In other localities, and more especially
+in the lowermost beds, the whole mass is honeycombed, as if drilled by
+worms or boring shells, the hard parts enclosing softer sands or clays.
+Occasionally the ferruginous materials prevail to such an extent, that
+some of these beds might be mistaken for bog ore, while others contain a
+large amount of clay, more regularly stratified, and alternating with
+strata of sandstone, thus recalling the most characteristic forms of the
+Old Red or Triassic formations. This resemblance has, no doubt, led to
+the identification of the Amazonian deposits with the more ancient
+formations of Europe. At Monte Alegre, of which I shall presently speak
+more in detail, such a clay bed divides the lower from the upper
+sandstone. The thickness of these sandstones is extremely variable. In
+the basin of the Amazons proper, they hardly rise anywhere above the
+level of high water during the rainy season, while at low water, in the
+summer months, they maybe seen everywhere along the river-banks. It will
+be seen, however, that the limit between high and low water gives no
+true measure of the original thickness of the whole series.
+
+In the neighborhood of Almeirim, at a short distance from the northern
+bank of the river, and nearly parallel with its course, there rises a
+line of low hills, interrupted here and there, but extending in evident
+connection from Almeirim through the region of Monte Alegre to the
+heights of Obidos. These hills have attracted the attention of
+travellers, not only from their height, which appears greater than it
+is, because they rise abruptly from an extensive plain, but also on
+account of their curious form, many of them being perfectly level on
+top, like smooth tables, and very abruptly divided from each other by
+low, intervening spaces.[D] Nothing has hitherto been known of the
+geological structure of these hills, but they have been usually
+represented as the southernmost spurs of the table-land of Guiana. On
+ascending the river, I felt the greatest curiosity to examine them; but
+at the time I was deeply engrossed in studying the distribution of
+fishes in the Amazonian waters, and in making large ichthyological
+collections, for which it was very important not to miss the season of
+low water, when the fishes are most easily obtained. I was, therefore,
+obliged to leave this most interesting geological problem, and content
+myself with examining the structure of the valley so far as it could be
+seen on the river-banks and in the neighborhood of my different
+collecting stations. On my return, however, when my collections were
+completed, I was free to pursue this investigation, in which Major
+Coutinho was as much interested as myself. We determined to select Monte
+Alegre as the centre of our exploration, the serra in that region being
+higher than elsewhere. As I was detained by indisposition at Manaos, for
+some days, at the time we had appointed for the excursion, Major
+Coutinho preceded me, and had already made one trip to the serra, with
+some very interesting results, when I joined him, and we made a second
+journey together.
+
+Monte Alegre lies on a side arm of the Amazons, a little off from its
+main course. This side arm, called the Rio Gurupatuba, is simply a
+channel running parallel with the Amazons, and cutting through from a
+higher to a lower point. Its dimensions are, however, greatly
+exaggerated in all the maps thus far published, where it is usually made
+to appear as a considerable northern tributary of the Amazons. The town
+stands on an elevated terrace, separated from the main stream by the Rio
+Gurupatuba, and by an extensive flat, consisting of numerous lakes
+divided from each other by low alluvial land, and mostly connected by
+narrow channels. To the west of the town, this terrace sinks abruptly to
+a wide sandy plain called the Campos, covered with a low forest growth,
+and bordered on its farther limit by the picturesque serra of Errere.
+The form of this mountain is so abrupt, its rise from the plain so bold
+and sudden, that it seems more than twice its real height. Judging by
+the eye, and comparing it with the mountains I had last seen,--the
+Corcovado, the Gavia and Tijuca range in the neighborhood of Rio,--I had
+supposed it to be three or four thousand feet high, and was greatly
+astonished when our barometric observations showed it to be somewhat
+less than nine hundred feet in its most elevated point. This, however,
+agrees with Martins's measurement of the Almeirim hills, which he says
+are eight hundred feet in height.
+
+Major Coutinho and I reached the serra by different roads; he crossing
+the Campos on horseback with Captain Faria, the commander of our
+steamer, and one or two other friends from Monte Alegre, who joined our
+party, while I went by canoe. The canoe journey is somewhat longer. A
+two hours' ride across the Campos brings you to the foot of the
+mountain, whereas the trip by boat takes more than twice that time. But
+I preferred going by water, as it gave me an opportunity of seeing the
+vast variety of animals haunting the river-banks and lakes. As this was
+almost the only occasion in all my journey when I passed a day in the
+pure enjoyment of nature, without the labor of collecting,--which in
+this hot climate, where specimens require such immediate and constant
+attention, is very great,--I am tempted to interrupt our geology for a
+moment, to give an account of it. I learned how rich a single day may be
+in this wonderful tropical world, if one's eyes are only open to the
+wealth of animal and vegetable life. Indeed, a few hours so spent in the
+field, in simply watching animals and plants, teaches more of the
+distribution of life than a month of closet study; for under such
+circumstances all things are seen in their true relations. Unhappily, it
+is not easy to present the picture as a whole, for all our written
+descriptions are more or less dependent on nomenclature, and the local
+names are hardly known out of the districts where they belong, while
+systematic names are familiar to few.
+
+I started before daylight; but, as the dawn began to redden the sky,
+large flocks of ducks, and of the small Amazonian geese, might be seen
+flying towards the lakes. Here and there a cormorant sat alone on the
+branch of a dead tree, or a kingfisher poised himself over the water,
+watching for his prey. Numerous gulls were gathered in large companies
+on the trees along the river-shore; alligators lay on its surface,
+diving with a sudden plash at the approach of our canoe; and
+occasionally a porpoise emerged from the water, showing himself for a
+moment and then disappearing again. Sometimes we startled a herd of
+capivara, resting on the water's edge; and once we saw a sloth, sitting
+upon the branch of an Imbauba (Cecropia) tree, rolled up in its peculiar
+attitude, the very picture of indolence, with its head sunk between its
+arms. Much of the river-shore consisted of low alluvial land, and was
+covered with that peculiar and beautiful grass known as Capim; this
+grass makes an excellent pasturage for cattle, and the abundance of it
+in this region renders the district of Monte Alegre very favorable for
+agricultural purposes. Here and there, where the red clay soil rose
+above the level of the water, a palm-thatched cabin stood on the low
+bluff, with a few trees about it. Such a house was usually the centre of
+a cattle farm, and large herds might be seen grazing in the adjoining
+fields. Along the river-banks, where the country is chiefly open, with
+extensive low marshy grounds, the only palm to be seen is the Maraja.
+After keeping along the Rio Gurupatuba for some distance, we turned to
+the right into a narrow stream, which has the character of an Igarape in
+its lower course, though higher up it drains the country between the
+serra of Errere and that of Tajury, and assumes the appearance of a
+small river. It is named after the serra, and is known as the Rio
+Errere. This stream, narrow and picturesque, and often so overgrown with
+capim that the canoe pursued its course with difficulty, passed through
+a magnificent forest of the beautiful fan-palm, called here the Miriti
+(_Mauritia flexuosa_). This forest stretched for miles, overshadowing,
+as a kind of underbrush, many smaller trees and innumerable shrubs, some
+of which bore bright, conspicuous flowers. It seemed to me a strange
+spectacle,--a forest of monocotyledonous trees with a dicotyledonous
+undergrowth; the inferior plants thus towering above and sheltering the
+superior ones. Among the lower trees were many Leguminosae,--one of the
+most striking, called Fava, having a colossal pod. The whole mass of
+vegetation was woven together by innumerable lianas and creeping vines,
+in the midst of which the flowers of the Bignonia, with its open,
+trumpet-shaped corolla, were conspicuous. The capim was bright with the
+blossoms of the mallow growing in its midst, and was often edged with
+the broad-leaved Aninga, a large aquatic Arum.
+
+Through such a forest, where the animal life was no less rich and varied
+than the vegetation, our boat glided slowly for hours. The number and
+variety of birds struck me with astonishment. The coarse sedgy grasses
+on either side were full of water birds, one of the most common of which
+was a small chestnut-brown wading bird, the Jacana (Parra), whose toes
+are immensely long in proportion to its size, enabling it to run upon
+the surface of the aquatic vegetation, as if it were solid ground. It
+was in the month of January, their breeding season, and at every turn of
+the boat we started them up in pairs. Their flat, open nests generally
+contained five flesh-colored eggs, streaked in zigzag with dark brown
+lines. The other waders were a snow-white heron, another ash-colored,
+smaller species, and a large white stork. The ash-colored herons were
+always in pairs, the white one always single, standing quiet and alone
+on the edge of the water, or half hidden in the green capim. The trees
+and bushes were full of small warbler-like birds, which it would be
+difficult to characterize separately. To the ordinary observer they
+might seem like the small birds of our woods; but there was one species
+among them which attracted my attention by its numbers, and also because
+it builds the most extraordinary nest, considering the size of the bird
+itself, that I have ever seen. It is known among the country people by
+two names, as the Pedreiro or the Forneiro, both names referring, as
+will be seen, to the nature of its habitation. This singular nest is
+built of clay, and is as hard as stone (_pedra_), while it has the form
+of the round mandioca oven (_forno_) in which the country people prepare
+their farinha, or flour, made from the mandioca root. It is about a
+foot in diameter, and stands edgewise upon a branch, or in the crotch of
+a tree. Among the smaller birds, I noticed bright Tanagers, and also a
+species resembling the Canary. Besides these, there were the wagtails,
+the black and white widow finches, the hang-nests, or Jape, as they are
+called here, with their pendent bag-like dwellings, and the familiar
+"Bem ti vi." Humming-birds, which we are always apt to associate with
+tropical vegetation, were very scarce. I saw but a few specimens.
+Thrushes and doves were more frequent, and I noticed also three or four
+kinds of woodpeckers. Of these latter there were countless numbers along
+our canoe path, flying overhead in dense crowds, and, at times, drowning
+every other sound in their high, noisy chatter.
+
+These made a deep impression upon me. Indeed, in all regions, however
+far away from his own home, in the midst of a fauna and flora entirely
+new to him, the traveller is startled occasionally by the song of a bird
+or the sight of a flower so familiar that it transports him at once to
+woods where every tree is like a friend to him. It seems as if something
+akin to what in our own mental experience we call reminiscence or
+association existed in the workings of nature; for though the organic
+combinations are so distinct in different climates and countries, they
+never wholly exclude each other. Every zooelogical and botanical province
+retains some link which binds it to all the rest, and makes it part of
+the general harmony. The Arctic lichen is found growing under the shadow
+of the palm on the rocks of the tropical serra, and the song of the
+thrush and the tap of the woodpecker mingle with the sharp discordant
+cries of the parrot and paroquet.
+
+Birds of prey, also, were not wanting. Among them was one about the size
+of our kite, and called the Red Hawk, which was so tame that, even when
+our canoe passed immediately under the low branch on which he was
+sitting, he did not fly away. But of all the groups of birds, the most
+striking as compared with corresponding groups in the temperate zone,
+and the one which reminded me the most directly of the fact that every
+region has its peculiar animal world, was that of the gallinaceous
+birds. The most frequent is the Cigana, to be seen in groups of fifteen
+or twenty, perched upon trees overhanging the water, and feeding upon
+berries. At night they roost in pairs, but in the daytime are always in
+larger companies. In their appearance they have something of the
+character of both the pheasant and peacock, and yet do not closely
+resemble either. It is a curious fact, that, with the exception of some
+small partridge-like gallinaceous birds, all the representatives of this
+family in Brazil, and especially in the Valley of the Amazons, belong to
+types which do not exist in other parts of the world. Here we find
+neither pheasants, nor cocks of the woods, nor grouse; but in their
+place abound the Mutun, the Jacu, the Jacami, and the Unicorn (Crax,
+Penelope, Psophia, and Palamedea), all of which are so remote from the
+gallinaceous types found farther north, that they remind one quite as
+much of the bustard, and other ostrich-like birds, as of the hen and
+pheasant. They differ also from Northern gallinaceous birds in the
+greater uniformity of the sexes, none of them exhibiting those striking
+differences between the males and females which we see in the pheasants,
+the cocks of the woods, and in our barn-yard fowls. While birds abounded
+in such numbers, insects were rather scarce. I saw but few and small
+butterflies, and beetles were still more rare. The most numerous insects
+were the dragon-flies,--some with crimson bodies, black heads, and
+burnished wings,--others with large green bodies, crossed by blue bands.
+Of land shells I saw but one creeping along the reeds; and of water
+shells I gathered only a few small Ampullariae.
+
+Having ascended the river to a point nearly on a line with the serra, I
+landed, and struck across the Campos on foot. Here I entered upon an
+entirely different region,--a dry, open plain, with scanty vegetation.
+The most prominent plants were clusters of cactus and curua palms, a
+kind of stemless, low palm, with broad, elegant leaves springing
+vase-like from the ground. In these dry, sandy fields, rising gradually
+toward the serra, I observed in the deeper gullies formed by the heavy
+rains the laminated clays which are everywhere the foundation of the
+Amazonian strata. They here presented again so much the character of
+ordinary clay slates, that I thought I had at last come upon some old
+geological formation. Instead of this I only obtained fresh evidence
+that, by baking them, the burning sun of the tropics may produce upon
+laminated clays of recent origin the same effect as plutonic agents have
+produced upon the ancient clays, that is, it may change them into
+metamorphic slates. As I approached the serra, I was again reminded how,
+under the most dissimilar circumstances, similar features recur
+everywhere in nature. I came suddenly upon a little creek, bordered with
+the usual vegetation of such shallow water-courses, and on its brink
+stood a sand-piper, which flew away at my approach, uttering its
+peculiar cry, so like what one hears at home that, had I not seen him, I
+should have recognized him by his voice.
+
+After an hour's walk under the scorching sun, I was glad to find myself
+at the hamlet of Errere, near the foot of the serra, where I rejoined my
+companions. It was already noon, and they had arrived some time before.
+They had, however, waited breakfast for me, to which we all brought a
+good appetite. Breakfast over, we slung our hammocks under the trees,
+and during the heat of the day enjoyed the rest which we had so richly
+earned.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[C] The name consecrated by De Saussure to designate certain rocks in
+Switzerland, which have had their surfaces rounded under the action of
+the glaciers. Their gently swelling outlines are thought to resemble
+sheep resting on the ground, and for this reason the people in the Alps
+call them _roches moutonnees_.
+
+[D] The atlas in Martins's "Journey to Brazil," or the sketch
+accompanying Bates's description of these hills in his "Naturalist on
+the Amazons," will give an idea of their aspect.
+
+
+
+
+A BUNDLE OF BONES.
+
+
+And a very large bundle it was, as it lay, in _disjecta membra_, before
+the astonished eyes of the first learned palaeontologist who gazed, in
+wondering delight, on its strange proportions. As it rears its ungainly
+form some eighteen feet above us, Madam, you may gather some idea of
+what it was in its native forests, I don't know how many hundreds of
+thousands of years ago. You need not snuggle up to me so, Tommy. The
+creature is not alive, unless it is enjoying Sydney Smith's idea of
+comfort, and, having taken off its flesh, is airing itself in its bones.
+Megatherium was a very proper name for it, if not a very common one; for
+_large animal_ it was, beyond any dispute, and could scarcely have been
+much of a pet with the human beings of old, unless "there were giants in
+those days," and enormous ones at that. How Owen must have gloated over
+that treasure-trove! Captain Kyd's buried booty would have been worse
+trash to him than Iago's stolen purse, beside this unearthed deposit of
+an antediluvian age. Its missing caudal vertebrae would outweigh now, in
+his anatomical scales, all the hidden gains of the whole race of
+pirates, past, present, and to come. Think of those bones with all the
+original muscle upon them! Why, they would outweigh all the worthy
+members of the Boston Society of Natural History together, unless they
+are uncommonly obese. Where could Noah have stowed a pair of such
+enormous beasts, supposing that they existed as late as when the ark was
+launched? Sloth, indeed! I am inclined to think the five or six tons of
+flesh these bones must have carried round might reasonably permit the
+bearer to rank, on _a priori_ reasons, among the most confirmed of
+sluggards, even if Owen and Agassiz and Wyman had not so decided on
+strictly scientific, anatomical grounds.
+
+My dear Madam, does it ever occur to you, when you wonderingly gaze on
+the strange relics around this hall,--these stony skeletons, these
+silent remnants of extinct races, that you are face to face with
+rock-buried creatures, who lived and sported and mated, who basked in
+the sunlight and breathed in the air of this world, hundreds of
+thousands of years before you were thought of? who rested in the shade
+of the trees which made the coal that warms you to-day? who trod the
+soft mud which now builds in solid strength the dwellings which shelter
+you? who darted through the deep waters that foamed over a bed now
+raised into snow-capped mountains? who frolicked on a shore now piled
+with miles of massive rock? whose bones were petrifactions untold ages
+before the race was born which built the Pyramids? Do you really
+understand how far back into antiquity these grim fossils bear you? Can
+you really conceive of Nature, our dear, kind, gentle mother, in those
+early throes of her maternity which brought forth Megatheria and
+Ichthyosauri,--when the "firm and rock-built earth" was tilted into
+mountain ranges, wrinkled by earthquakes, and ploughed by mighty hills
+of moving ice? And yet in those distant days, which have left their
+ripple-marks and rain-drops in the weighty stone, there was life, warm,
+breathing, sentient life, which, dying, traced its own epitaph on its
+massive tomb. Shakespeare, Caesar, Brahma, Noah, Adam, lived but
+yesterday compared with these creatures, whose stone-bound bones were
+buried in the sands that drifted on the shores of this world centuries
+before the first man drew into his nostrils the breath of life. Does the
+thought ever occur to you, that, ages hence, some enthusiastic student
+of nature may puzzle his brains over the bones of some such humble
+individuals as you and I, and wonder to what manner of creature they
+belonged? Or that, perched upon the shelves of some museum in the year
+500000, they may be treasures of an unknown past to the Owens and Wymans
+of that day?
+
+You wish I would not talk so?--Well, Madam, let us leave this mausoleum
+of the past, and come forth into the life of 1866; and let us see
+whether all the _disjecta membra_ of extinct being are ranged around the
+walls of this classic hall, or whether we may not find something akin
+near our own snug and comfortable homes. I think I know some hardened
+hearts which have ossified around the soft emotions which in earlier
+years played therein. And, bless you, Madam, I meet every day, in my
+down-town walks, some strange animated fossils, more repellent than any
+I ever beheld in the Natural History cabinet. These bear the unfamiliar
+look which belongs to a fabulous age, and rest, silent and unobtrusive,
+in their half-opened cerements. The others wear a very familiar form,
+which belongs to our day, yet they are the exponents of a dead life
+which animated the buried bones of barbarism. The innocent Megatheria
+and Ichthyosauri crawled and paddled and died in their day; but these
+living fossils have the vital forms of the life above ground, while they
+bear within the psychical peculiarities of extinct beings. They creep
+about on the shores of time with the outward shapes of their fellows,
+and, when buried in its rising waves, will leave undistinguishable
+remains in their common tomb; and future explorers will never trace
+therein the evanescent peculiarities in which the two were so unlike.
+
+Bones! Why, the whole earth is a big bundle of them. They are not only
+in graveyards, where "mossy marbles rest"; they are strewn, "unknelled,
+uncoffined, and unknown," over the whole surface of the globe, and lie
+embosomed in the gulfs of the great, restless ocean. Who knows what
+untamed savage rests beneath us here? Don't start, my dear Madam. I have
+no doubt that, when Tommy plays bo-peep round the big tree on the
+Common, he is tripping over the crania of some Indian sachems.
+Goldsmith's seat, "for whispering lovers made," very likely rested on
+some venerable, departed Roman; and many a Maypole has gone plump
+through the thorax of some defunct Gaul. If the old story be true, that,
+when we shudder, somebody is walking over our grave, what a shaking race
+of beings our remote ancestors must have been!
+
+My dear Madam, down in the green fields, the flowery meadows, the deep
+woods, the damp swamps of the balmy South, are there not spread, to-day,
+in grievous numbers, the bones of the noble, true-hearted heroes who
+went forth in their strength and manhood to meet a patriot's fate? Will
+not the future tread of those they ransomed be light and buoyant in the
+long days of freedom yet to come? What will they know of the hallowed
+remains over which they bound with glowing, happy hearts? Some little
+Peterkin may find a bleached remnant of their heroism, and the Caspar of
+that day will surely say, "It was a famous victory." Madam, you and I
+would be content to have the children of the future gambol above us, if
+we could know their blithesome hearts were emancipated from thraldom by
+such deposit of our poor bones under the verdant sod. The stateliest
+mausoleum of crowned kings, the Pyramids that mark the resting-place of
+Egypt's ancient rulers, are not so proud a monument as the rich, green
+herbage that springs from the remains of a fallen hero, and hides the
+little feet that trip over him, freed by his fall. Let us rejoice, then,
+Madam, that we belong to that nobler race, which no curious explorer of
+the far future will rank with Megatheria and Ichthyosauri, or any of the
+soulless creatures of past geologic ages.
+
+Backbone is a most important article, Tommy. Professor Wyman will tell
+you that backbone is the distinctive characteristic of the highest order
+of animals on this earth. When your father used to pry into all sorts of
+books, years ago, he found out that he belonged to the Vertebrata,
+which, Anglicized, meant backboned creatures. And yet do you know that
+there are crowds of men and women whose framework would puzzle the good
+Professor, with all his learning,--people who are utterly destitute of
+that same essential article? Carry him the first old bone you may find,
+and, I warrant you, he will tell, in a jiffy, to what manner of creature
+it belonged. But wouldn't he look bewildered upon a cranium and a pelvis
+which perambulated the earth without any osseous connection? Backbone is
+the grand fulcrum on which human life moves its inertia. But wouldn't
+Professor Rogers, _facile princeps_ in physics, rub his nose, and look
+in wonder, to see peripatetic motion induced without a sign of a fulcrum
+for the lever of life to rest upon? And yet these anomalies are
+plentiful. They are everywhere,--in houses, in churches, in stores, in
+town, in country, on land, at sea, in public, in private,--extensive
+sub-orders of mammalian Invertebrata. They crouch and crawl through the
+world with pliant length. They wriggle through the knot-holes of fear
+and policy, when their stouter-boned brethren oppose them. They creep
+into corners and cracks when the giant, Progress, strides before them,
+and quake at the thunder of his tread. They cling, trembling, to the old
+mouldering scaffolding of the past, and look bewildered on the broad,
+rising arches of the new temple of thought. They stand quivering in the
+blast of opinion. And when Mrs. Grundy passes by, they back, like
+hermit-crabs, into the first time-worn old shell of precedent they can
+find, and hide there, shaking with dread.
+
+My boy, strengthen well your backbone, that it may bear you upright and
+onward in your career. Walk erect in this world with the stature and
+aspect of a man. Tread forth alone with fearlessness and conscious
+power. Bear up your God-given intelligence with unbending pride, that it
+may look afar over the broad expanse of nature, and gaze with even eye
+upon the mountain-heights of eternal truth. I am using words too big
+for you? Well, one of these days you will understand them all, when your
+little backbone has gathered more lime.
+
+Bone has done some remarkable things in this world. There was that
+little feat of Samson, in which he flourished the grinding apparatus of
+a defunct donkey. It has always seemed to me, Madam, that that same
+jaw-bone must have been either prodigiously strong and tough, or else
+the Philistine crania must have been of very chartaceous texture. There
+are the bones of the eleven thousand virgins,--the remains of ancient
+virtue, and loveliness, and faith. Though, if all the stories of
+travelled anatomists be true, there must have been some virgin heifers
+among them; for many of them are certainly of bovine, and not human,
+origin.
+
+And then, Madam, do not the poor bones which have been strewn, for ages,
+over the rolling earth, play sometimes a nobler part in their decay than
+in their prime? The incrusted fragments, carefully treasured up in halls
+of science, reveal to the broadening intelligence of man the story of
+earth in its young days of mighty struggle, and tell of the sandy
+shores, the rolling waters, the waving woods of a primeval time. Turning
+back the stony tablets time has firmly bound, he views upon their
+wrinkled sides its nature-printed figures,--relics that have there
+remained, locked in the rocky sepulchre, built of crumbling mountains,
+washed and worn by tides that ebbed and flowed a million years ago. Now,
+opened to the eye of human thought, their crumbling forms bring tidings
+of a distant, wondrous past, when they were all in all of sentient life
+on earth. The thought they could not know, their dead remains have
+wakened in the minds of a far nobler race, which was not born when they
+lay down and died.
+
+When travellers over far-reaching deserts are lost in the great waste
+that shows no friendly, guiding sign, they sometimes find, half buried
+in the shifting sands, the bleaching bones of some poor creature which
+has fainted and fallen, left to its fate by the companions of its
+journey. Then, taking heart, they cheerier move along, secure in the
+forgotten path these silent relics show. Thus over life's drear desert
+do we move, seeking the path that leads us on direct, and often guided
+in our wandering way by the chance sight of lost and fallen ones, whose
+sad remains our errant footsteps cross. Not always clad in soft, warm,
+beating life do our bones perform their noblest purpose. Beauty may lure
+to ruin, but, the witching charm removed, decay may waken sober thought
+and high resolve. Poor Yorick might have set King Hamlet's table in a
+roar and been forgot, if, from his unknown grave, the sexton had not
+brought him forth, to teach an unborn age philosophy.
+
+My dear Madam, I am really getting too serious, philosophic, and
+melancholic. I had no idea, when I asked you down to the Natural History
+Society rooms to see the great Megatherium, that I was either to bury or
+resuscitate you in imagination. But I must have my moral, if I draw it
+from such a lean text as crumbling bones. Let us hope that what we leave
+behind us, when our journey over the drear expanse of mortal life shall
+cease, may serve to guide some future wanderer in the devious way, and
+lead him to the bright oasis of eternal life and rest.
+
+
+
+
+AN ENGLISHMAN IN NORMANDY.
+
+
+A tour in Normandy is a very commonplace thing; and mine was not even a
+tour in Normandy. In the six weeks which I spent there, I did not see as
+many sights as an ordinary English tourist sees in ten days, or an
+American, perhaps, in five. Going abroad in need of rest, I rambled
+slowly about, sojourning at each place as long as I found it agreeable,
+then moving on to another, avoiding the railroads, the tyranny of the
+timetable, the flurry of packing up every morning. My time was divided
+between some seven or eight places; and I stayed longest where there was
+least, according to the guide-books, to be seen.
+
+Travelling in this way, you at all events see something of the people;
+that is, if you will live among them and fall in with their ways.
+
+Normandy--at least the sequestered part of it in which most of my time
+was passed--is a good country for a traveller minded as I was. The
+scenery is not grand. It does not exact the highest admiration; but it
+is, perhaps, not on that account the less suitable for the purpose of
+those who seek repose. The country is very like the most rich and
+beautiful parts of England. Its lanes and hedge-rows are indeed so
+thoroughly English, as to suggest that it was laid out under influences
+similar to those which determined the aspect of the country in England,
+and unlike those which determined it in other parts of France. It is
+well wooded; and as the trees stand not in masses, but in lines along
+the hedge-rows, you see distinctly the form of each tree. This is one of
+its characteristic features. The number of poplars interspersed with the
+trees of rounder outline is another, and very grateful to the eye. The
+general greenness rivals that of England. The valleys are wide, and the
+views from the hill-tops very extensive. I am speaking chiefly of the
+western part of Normandy: the parts about Caen approach more nearly to
+the flatness, monotony, and dreary treelessness of ordinary French and
+German scenery. The air is pure and bracing,--especially in the little
+towns built on old castled heights. Why do we not always build our
+towns, when we can, on heights, in what Shakespeare calls nimble and
+sweet air?
+
+The Norman towns are full of grand old churches, old castles, historic
+memories, shadows of the past. In these, where I spent most of my
+holiday, there are no garrisons, no Zouaves, no _fanfares_, no signs of
+the presence of the empire, except occasionally the abode of a
+_sous-prefet_. The province retains a good deal of its old character. In
+the great towns, such as Rouen and Caen, the people are French; but in
+the country they are Normans still. The French are sensible of the
+difference, and do the Normans the honor (as, if I were a Norman, I
+should think it) of acknowledging it by habitual flouts and sneers at
+the "heavy" race who inhabit "the land of cider."
+
+If you do not mind outward appearances,--if you have the resolution to
+penetrate beyond a very dirty entrance, perhaps through the kitchen,
+into the rooms within,--you may make yourself extremely comfortable in a
+little Norman inn. You have only to behave to your landlord and landlady
+as a guest, not as a customer, and you will find yourself treated with
+the utmost civility and kindness. You will get a large, airy room, not
+so tidy as an English room, but with a better bed, and excellent fare,
+beginning with a delicious cup of _cafe au lait_ in the early
+morning,--that is, if you choose to breakfast and dine at the _table
+d'hote_; for, if, like many English travellers, you insist on living in
+English privacy, and taking your meals at English hours, all the
+resources of the little establishment being expended on the public
+meals, you will probably pay the penalty of your patriotic and stoical
+adherence to the customs of your country.
+
+In my passage from Weymouth to Normandy, I landed at Jersey. The little,
+secluded bays of that island are the most perfect poetry of the sea.
+They are types of the spot in which Horace, in his poetic mood of
+imaginary misanthropy, wished to end his days.
+
+    "Oblitusque meorum obliviscendus et illis
+    Neptunum procul e terra spectare furentem."
+
+I was told that the scenery of Guernsey was even more beautiful; but the
+rough passage between the two islands is rather a heavy price to pay for
+the enjoyment. The islands are curious from their old Norman character,
+laws, and customs; their Norman _patois_; their system of small
+proprietors, whose little holdings, divided from each other by high
+hedges, cut the island into a multitude of paddocks; and the miniature
+republicanism and universal suffrage which the inhabitants enjoy, though
+under the paternal eye of an English governor, who, if the insects grew
+too angry, would no doubt sprinkle a little dust. But all that is native
+and original is fast being overlaid by the influx of English
+residents,--unhappy victims of genteel pauperism flying from the heavy
+taxes of England, which the Channel Islands escape; or, in not a few
+cases, persons whose reputation has suffered some damage in their own
+country. There are also a few exiles of a more honorable kind,--French
+liberals, who have taken refuge from imperial tyranny under the shield
+of English law,--the most illustrious of whom is Victor Hugo. The
+Emperor would fain get hold of these men, and he is now trying to force
+upon us a modification of the extradition treaty for that purpose. But
+the sanctity of our asylum is a tradition dear to the English people,
+and one which they will not be induced to betray. An attempt to change
+the English law for the purposes of the French police was fatal to
+Palmerston, at the height of his popularity and power.
+
+The French government employs agents to decoy the refugees into
+conspiracies, in order that it may obtain a pretext for criminal
+proceedings against them. The fact has fallen under my personal
+observation. To estimate the character of these practices, and of the
+present attempt to tamper with the extradition treaty, we must remember
+that Louis Napoleon himself long enjoyed, as a political refugee, the
+shelter of the asylum which he is now endeavoring to subvert.
+
+Jersey is studded with fortifications. England and France frown at each
+other in arms from the neighboring coasts. I thought of poor Cobden, and
+of the day when his policy shall finally prevail, as it begins to
+prevail already, over these national divisions and jealousies; and when
+there shall be at once a better and a cheaper security for the peace of
+nations than fortresses bristling with the instruments of mutual
+destruction. The Norman islands are of no use to England, while they
+involve us in a large military expenditure. In a maritime war, we should
+find it very difficult to defend dependencies so far from our coast and
+so close to that of the enemy. But the people are loyal to England, and
+very unwilling to be annexed to France.
+
+Granville, where I landed in Normandy, is a hideous seaport; but its
+hideousness was almost turned to beauty, on that golden afternoon, by
+the bright French atmosphere, which can do for bad scenery what French
+cookery does for bad meat. The royal and imperial roads of France are as
+despotically straight as those of the Roman Empire. But it was a
+pleasant evening drive to Avranches, through the rich champaign,--the
+active little Norman horses trotting the sixteen miles merrily to the
+jingling of their bells. The figure of the _gendarme_, in his cocked hat
+and imposing uniform, setting out upon his rounds, tells me that I am in
+France.
+
+Avranches stands on the steep and towering extremity of a line of hills,
+commanding a most magnificent and varied view of land and sea, with
+Mont St. Michel in the distance. Its cathedral must have occupied a
+site as striking as the temple of Poseidon, on the headland of Sunium.
+But of that cathedral nothing is now left but a heap of fragments, and a
+stone, on which, fabling tradition says, Henry II. was reconciled to the
+Church after the murder of Becket. It was pulled down in consequence of
+the injuries it received at the time of the Revolution; and the bare
+area where it stood is typical of that devastating tornado which swept
+feudal and Catholic France out of existence. Where once the learned
+Huetius lived and wrote, the house of the _sous-prefet_ now stands. The
+building of churches, however, is going on actively in Avranches, and
+attests the reviving influence of the priests. And one should be glad to
+see the revival of any form of religion, however different from one's
+own, in France, if it were not that this Church is so intensely
+political, and that it presents Christianity as the ally of atheist and
+sensualist despotism, and the enemy of morality, liberty, justice, and
+the hopes of man. The French Caesars, Napoleon I. and Napoleon III.,
+though themselves absolutely devoid of any faith but the self-idolatry
+which they call faith in their "star," find it politic, like the Roman
+Caesars, to have their official creed and their augurs.
+
+I went to the distribution of prizes at the school of the Christian
+Brothers. I had greatly admired the schools of the brotherhood in
+Ireland, and felt an interest in their system, notwithstanding their
+main object, like that of the famous Jesuit teachers of the sixteenth
+century, was rather to proselytize than to educate. The ceremony was
+thoroughly French, each boy being crowned with a tinsel wreath, and
+kissed by one of the company when he was presented with his prize.
+Everything, however, was arranged with the greatest taste and skill; and
+the recitations and dialogues, by which the endless distribution of
+prizes was relieved, were very cleverly and gracefully performed. Some
+of them were comic. The one which made us laugh most was a dialogue
+between a barber and a young gentleman who had come into his shop to be
+shaved. The barber pausing with the razor in his hand, the young
+gentleman asked him, angrily, why he did not begin. "I am waiting,"
+replied the barber, "for your beard to grow." Specimens of writing were
+handed round, which were good; drawings, which, strange to say, were
+detestable. I praised the recitations and dialogues to the gentleman who
+sat next me. "Ah! oui," was his reply, "tout cela vient de Paris." So
+complete is the centralization of French intellect, even in such little
+matters as these! While I was in France, some leading politicians were
+attempting to set on foot a movement in favor of political
+decentralization. They must begin deeper, if they would hope to succeed.
+
+In Ireland, the Christian Brothers maintain the most purely spiritual
+character, and the most complete independence of the state. But here,
+alas! a different tendency peeped out. The alliance of a Jesuit Church
+with the Empire, and the subserviency of education to their common
+objects, were typified by the presence of the _sous-prefet_ and the
+_maire_ in their gold-laced coats of office, who arrived escorted by a
+guard of soldiers with fixed bayonets. The harangue of the reverend head
+of the establishment was highly political, and amply merited by its
+recommendations of the duty of obedience to authority the eulogy of the
+_sous-prefet_ on "the good direction" which the brotherhood were giving
+to the studies of youth. There is no garrison at Avranches. But all the
+soldiers in the place seemed to have been collected to give a military
+character to the scene. Other incentives of military aspiration were not
+wanting; and the boy who delivered the allocution told us, amidst loud
+applause, that he and his companions were being brought up to be, "not
+only good Christians, but, in case of need, good soldiers."
+
+In France under the Empire a military character is studiously given to
+every act of public, and almost of social life. There you see
+everywhere the pomp of war in the midst of peace, as in America you saw
+everywhere peace in the midst of civil war. The images of war and
+conquest are constantly kept before the eyes of a people naturally full
+of military vanity, and now, by the decay alike of religious and
+political faith, almost entirely bereft of all other aspirations. There
+is at the same time a vast standing army, which is not occupied, as the
+army of the Roman Empire was, in defending the frontiers, nor, as the
+Austrian army is, in holding down disaffected provinces, and which is
+full of the memory of the Napoleonic conquests, and longs again to
+overrun and pillage Europe in the name of "glory." There is no
+restraining influence either of morality or of religion to keep the war
+spirit in check. The French priesthood are as ready as any priests of
+Jupiter or Baal to bless national aggression, if by so doing they can
+gain political power. In what can all this end? In what but a European
+war? The children in the schools of the Christian Brothers are no doubt
+faithfully taught the precepts of a religion of peace; but there is a
+teaching of a different kind before their eyes, which, it is to be
+feared, they more easily imbibe and less easily forget.
+
+It was amusing, on this and other occasions, to see the state which
+surrounds the subordinate officials of the Empire. I had found the head
+of the American Republic and all its armaments without any insignia of
+dignity, without a guard or attendants, in a common office room. And
+here was a _sous-prefet_ parading the streets in solemn state, in a
+gilded coat, and with a line of bayonets glittering on either hand.
+
+From Avranches it is a pleasant walk (by the country road) to the
+village of Ducie, where there is good fishing, a nice little village
+inn, and a deserted chateau in the Louis Quatorze style, and of
+sumptuous dimensions, which, if it was ever completely finished, is now
+in a state of great dilapidation. No doubt it shared the fate of its
+fellows, when the Revolution proclaimed "peace to the cottage, war to
+the castle." The peasantry almost everywhere rose, like galley-slaves
+whose chains had been suddenly struck off, and gutted the chateaux, the
+strongholds of feudal extortion and injustice. How violent and sweeping
+have been the revolutions of this people compared with those of the
+stronger and more self-controlled race! In England, the Tudor mansions,
+and not unfrequently even the feudal castles, are still tenanted by the
+heirs, or by those who have peacefully purchased from the heirs, of
+their ancient lords; and the insensible gradations by which the feudal
+guard-room has softened down into the modern drawing-room, and the
+feudal moat into the flower-garden, are emblematic of the continuous and
+comparatively tranquil progress of English history. In France, how
+different! Scarcely eighty years have passed since the Chateau de
+Montgomeri was proud and gay; since the village idlers gathered here to
+see its lord, and his little provincial court, assemble along those
+mouldering balustrades, and ride through the now deserted gates. But to
+the grandchildren of those villagers the chateau is a strange,
+mysterious relic of the times before the flood. A group of peasants
+tried in vain, when I asked them, to recollect the name of its former
+proprietors. One of them said that it had been inhabited by a great
+lord, who shod his horses with shoes of gold,--much the sort of tale
+that an Irish peasant tells you about the primeval monuments of his
+country. The mansions of France before the Revolution belong as
+completely to the past as the tombs of the Pharaohs. The old aristocracy
+and the old dynasty are no longer hated or regretted. Their names excite
+no emotion whatever in the French peasant's heart. They are wiped out of
+the memory of the nation, and their place knows them no more. In the
+midst of their shows and their pleasures and their shallow philosophies,
+they could not read the handwriting on the wall, and therefore they are
+blotted out of existence. They went on marrying and giving in marriage;
+this chateau, perhaps, was still being enlarged and embellished, when
+the flood came upon them and destroyed them all. The science of politics
+is the science of regulating progress and avoiding revolutions.
+
+The hostess of the Lion d'Or is about to transfer her establishment to
+an inn of greater pretensions, to which, aware that the old chateau is
+an object of interest to visitors, she means to give the name of the
+Hotel de Montgomeri. On the wall of her _cafe_ is a coarse medallion
+bust taken from a room in the chateau. She did not know whom it
+represented; and I dare say it was only my fancy that made me think I
+recognized a rude effigy of the once adored features of Marie
+Antoinette.
+
+The plates at the Lion d'Or were adorned with humorous devices. On one
+was a satire on the hypocritical rapacity of perfidious Albion. Two
+English soldiers were standing with their swords hidden behind their
+backs, and trying to coax back to them some Indians who were running
+away in the distance. "Come to us, dear little Indians; you know we are
+your best friends!" Suppose "Arabs" or "Mexicans" had been substituted
+for "Indians." To a Frenchman, our conquests in India are rapine; his
+own conquests in Algeria or Mexico are the extension of civilization by
+the "holy bayonets" (I forget whether the phrase is Michelet's or
+Quinet's) of the chosen people. Justice gives the same name (no matter
+which) to both.
+
+At Ducie a handsome new church had just been built,--mainly, I was told,
+by the munificence of two maiden ladies. The congregation at vespers was
+large and apparently devout; and here the number of the men was in fair
+proportion to that of the women. In the churches of the cities, though
+the power of the clergy has everywhere increased of late, you see
+scarcely one man to a hundred women.
+
+On the road, a shower drove me for refuge into the house of a peasant,
+who received me with the usual kindliness of the French peasantry, and,
+when the shower was over, walked two or three miles with me on my way.
+The condition of these present proprietors is a subject of great
+interest to English economists, especially as we are evidently on the
+eve of a great controversy--perhaps a great struggle--respecting the law
+of succession to landed property in our own country. Not that any
+English economist would go so far as to advocate the French system of
+compulsory subdivision, which owes its existence in great measure to the
+policy of the first Napoleon,--who took care, with the instinct of a
+true despot, to secure the solitary power of the throne against the
+growth of an independent class of wealthy proprietors. All that English
+economists contemplate is the abolition of primogeniture and entail. I
+must not found any conclusion on observations so partial and cursory as
+those which I was able to make; but I suspect that the French peasant is
+better off than the English laborer. He is not better housed, clothed,
+or fed; perhaps not so well housed, clothed, or fed. He eats black
+bread, which the English peasant would reject, and clumps about in
+wooden shoes, which the English laborer would regard with horror; but
+this, according to statements which I have heard, and am inclined to
+trust, arises, generally speaking, not so much from indigence as from
+self-denying frugality, pushed to an extreme. The French peasant is the
+possessor of property, and has a passion, almost a mania, for
+acquisition. He saves money and subscribes to government loans, which
+are judiciously brought out in very small shares, so as to draw forth
+his little hoard, and thus bind him as a creditor to the interest of the
+Empire. The cottage of the peasant which I entered on my way to Ducie
+was very mean and comfortless, and the food which his hospitality
+offered me was of the coarsest kind. But he had a valuable mare and
+foal; his yard was full of poultry; and his orchard showed, for a bad
+season, a fair crop of apples. There are some large estates, the result
+frequently of great fortunes made in trade. Not far from the place
+where the high-born lords of the Chateau de Montgomeri once reigned, a
+chocolate-merchant had bought broad lands, and built himself a princely
+mansion. I should have thought that the great proprietors would have
+crushed the small; but I was assured that the two systems went on very
+well side by side. But this is a matter for exact inquiry, not for
+casual remark. The population in France is stationary, or nearly so,
+while that of England increases rapidly; and this is an important
+element in the question, and itself raises questions of a difficult,
+perhaps of a disagreeable kind.
+
+The cares of proprietorship must necessarily interfere with the
+lightness of heart once proverbially characteristic of the French
+peasant. Still, he appears to a stranger cheerful, ready to chat, and at
+least as inquisitive as to the stranger's history and objects as
+Americans are commonly believed to be. It would be a happy thing if the
+Irish peasant's lightness of heart, pleasant as it often is, could be
+interfered with in the same way. There is a certain gayety which springs
+from mere recklessness, and is sister to despair.
+
+They are hard economical problems that we have to solve in this Old
+World, and terribly complicated by social and political entanglements;
+and there is no boundless West, with bread for all who want it, to
+assist us in the solution.
+
+From Avranches you visit Mont St. Michel,--not without difficulty, for
+you have to drive along over sands which are never dry, and over which
+the tide--its advance can be seen even from the distant height of
+Avranches--rushes in with the speed of a race-horse. But you are well
+repaid. Mont St. Michel is one of the most astonishing and beautiful
+monuments of the Catholic and feudal age. Its fortifications, and the
+halls, church, and cloisters of the chivalrous and monastic fraternities
+of which it was the seat, rise like an efflorescence from the solitary
+cone of granite, surrounded at low tide by the vast flat of sand, at
+high tide by the sea. Gothic architecture, to which we are apt to attach
+the notion of a sort of infantine unconsciousness, here seems
+consciously to revel and disport itself in its power, and to exult in
+investing the sea-girt rock with the playful elegance of a Cellini vase.
+It is a real _jeu d'esprit_ of mediaeval art. The cloisters are a model
+of airy grace, enhanced by contrast with the massiveness of the fortress
+and the wildness of the scene. A strange life the monks must have led in
+their narrow boundaries. But they had the visits of the knights to
+relieve their dulness; and probably they were rude natures, not liable
+to the unhappiness which such seclusion would produce in men of
+cultivated sensibilities and active minds. Both monks and knights are
+gone long ago. But there are still six priests on the rock. I asked what
+they did. "Ils prient le bon Dieu."
+
+In feudal times this sea-girt fortress was almost impregnable. Two
+ancient cannon lying at its gate show that the conqueror of Agincourt
+thundered against it in vain. Its weak point was want of water: it had
+none but the rain-water collected in a great cistern. In these days it
+could not hold out an hour against a single gun-boat.
+
+It is a pleasant drive from Avranches to Vire; and Vire itself is a
+pleasant place,--a quiet little town, placed high, in bracing air, and
+with beautiful walks round it. The comfortable, though unpretending,
+little Hotel de St. Pierre stands outside the town, and commands a fine
+view. While I was at Vire, the _fete_ day of the Emperor was
+celebrated--with profound apathy. Not a dozen houses responded to the
+_prefet's_ invitation to illuminate. There being no troops in the town,
+and a military show being indispensable, there was a review of the
+firemen in military uniforms; a single brass cannon pestered us with its
+noise all the morning; the "veterans" of the Napoleonic army (every
+surviving drummer-boy of the army of 1815 goes by that name) were
+dismally paraded about, and the firemen practised with their muskets,
+very awkwardly, at a mark which was so placed among the trees that they
+could hardly see it.
+
+Why has not the government the sense to let these people alone? After
+all their revolutions and convulsions, they have sunk into perfect
+political indifference, and literally care not a straw whether they are
+governed by Napoleon, Nero, or Nebuchadnezzar. To be always appealing to
+them with Bonapartist demonstrations and manifestoes, is to awaken
+political sentiments, in them, and so to create a danger which does not
+exist.
+
+If Louis Napoleon is in any peril, it is not from the republican or
+constitutional party, but from his own lavish expenditure, which begins
+to irritate the people. They are careless of their rights as freemen,
+but they are fond, and growing daily fonder, of money; and they do not
+like to be heavily taxed, and to hear at the same time that the Emperor
+is wasting on his personal expenses and those of his relatives and
+courtiers some six millions of dollars a year. Regard for economy is the
+only profession which distinguishes the addresses of the so-called
+opposition candidates from those of their competitors. I asked a good
+many people what they thought of the Mexican expedition. Not one of them
+objected to its injustice, but they all objected to its cost, "Cela
+mangera beaucoup d'argent," was the invariable reply. And in this point
+of view the government has committed what it would think much worse than
+any crime,--a very damaging blunder.
+
+It does not appear that the Orleans family have any hold on the mind of
+the French people. When I mentioned their name, it seemed to produce no
+emotion, one way or the other. But if the marshals and grandees, who
+have hold of the wires of administration at the point where they are
+centralized, chose to make Napoleon III abdicate, (as they made Napoleon
+I. abdicate at Fontainebleau,) and to set up a king of the House of
+Orleans in his place, they could probably do it; and they might choose
+to do it, if, by such blunders as the Mexican expedition, he seemed to
+be placing their personal interests in jeopardy.
+
+Stopping to breakfast at Conde, on the way from Vire to Falaise, I fell
+in with the only Frenchman, with a single exception, who showed any
+interest in the affairs of America. Generally speaking, I was told, and
+found by experience, that profound apathy prevailed upon the subject.
+This gentleman, on learning that I had recently been in America, entered
+eagerly into conversation on the subject. But his inquiries were only
+about the prospects of cotton; and all I could tell him on that point
+was, that, if the growth of cotton was profitable, the Yankee would
+certainly make it grow.
+
+The castle of Falaise is the reputed birthplace of the Conqueror. They
+even pretend to show you the room in which he was born. The existing
+castle, however, is of considerably later date. It is even doubtful,
+according to the best antiquaries, whether there were any stone castles
+at the date of his birth, or only earthworks with palisades. There is,
+however, one genuine monument of that time. You look down from the
+castle on the tanneries in the glen below, and see the women washing
+their clothes in the stream, as in the days when Robert the Devil wooed
+the tanner's daughter. Robert, however, must have had diabolically good
+eyes to choose a mistress at such a distance.
+
+Annexed to the castle is Talbot's Tower,--a beautiful piece of feudal
+architecture, and a monument of a later episode in that long train of
+miserable wars between England and France, of which the Conqueror's
+cruel rapacity may be regarded as the spring; for the English conquests
+were an inverted copy and counterpart of his. But the Conqueror's
+crimes, like those of Napoleon I., were on the grandiose scale, and
+therefore they impose, like those of Napoleon, on the slavishness of
+mankind; while the petty bandit, though endowed perhaps with the same
+powers of destruction and only lacking the ampler sphere, is buried
+under the gallows. The equestrian statue of William in the public place
+at Falaise prances, it has been remarked, close to the spot where rest
+the ashes of Walter and Biona, Count and Countess of Pontoise, poisoned,
+if contemporary accounts are true, by the same ambition which launched
+havoc and misery on a whole nation. They and the Conqueror were rival
+claimants to the sovereignty of Maine. They supped with the Conqueror
+one evening at Falaise, and next morning William was the sole claimant.
+The Norman, like the Corsican, was an assassin as well as a conqueror.
+
+I must leave it to architects to describe the architectural glories of
+Caen. But I had no idea that the Norman style, in England grand only
+from its massiveness, could soar to such a height of beauty as it has
+attained in the Church of St. Stephen and the Abbaye aux Dames. I
+afterwards did homage again to its powers when standing before the
+august ruin of Jumieges. There is something peculiarly delightful in the
+freshness of early art, whether Greek or mediaeval, and whether in
+architecture or in poetry,--when you see the mind first beginning to
+feel its power over the material, and to make it the vehicle of thought.
+There is something, too, in all human works, which makes the early hope
+more charming than the fulfilment.
+
+St. Stephen is the church of the Conqueror, as the Abbaye aux Dames is
+that of his Queen. There he lies buried. Every one knows the story of
+Ascelin demanding the price of the ground in which William was going to
+be buried, and which the tyrant had taken from him by force; and how, at
+last, the corpse of the Conqueror was thrust, amidst a scene of horror
+and loathing, into its grave. But _Rex Invictissimus_ is the inscription
+on his tomb.
+
+The spire of St. Pierre is very graceful; the body of the church, in the
+latest and most debased style of Gothic architecture, stands signally
+contrasted with St. Stephen,--St. Stephen the simple vigor of the prime,
+St. Pierre the florid weakness of the decay.
+
+Caen is a large city, and, of course, full of soldiers, who are as
+completely the dominant caste in France now, as the old _noblesse_ were
+before the Revolution. To this the French have come after their long
+train of sanguinary revolutions,--after all their visions of a perfect
+social state,--after all their promises of a new era of happiness to
+mankind. "A light and cruel people," Coleridge calls them. And how
+lightly they turned from regenerating to pillaging and oppressing the
+world! They have great intellectual gifts, and still greater social
+graces; but, in the political sphere, they have no real regard for
+freedom, and will gladly lay their liberties at the feet of any master
+who will enable them to domineer over other nations. Napoleon I. is more
+than their hero: he is their God. Many of them, the soldiery especially,
+have no other object of worship. I saw in a shop-window a print of
+Napoleon I., Napoleon II., and the Prince Imperial, all in military
+uniform and surrounded by the emblems of war. It was entitled, "The
+Past, the Present, and the Future of France." Military ambition has been
+the Past of France, is her Present, and seems too likely to be her
+Future. In some directions, she has promoted civilization; but,
+politically speaking, she has done, and probably will long continue to
+do, more harm than good to mankind.
+
+I may say with truth, that, having seen America, and brought away an
+assured faith in human liberty and progress, I looked with far more
+serenity than I should otherwise have done on the Zouaves, swaggering,
+in the insolence of triumphant force, over the neglected ashes of Turgot
+and Mirabeau. I felt as though, strong as the yoke of these janizaries
+and their master looked, I had the death-warrant of imperialism in my
+pocket. There is a Power which made the world for other ends than these,
+and which will not suffer its ends to give way even to those of the
+Bonapartes. But to all appearances there will be a terrible struggle in
+Europe,--a struggle to which the old "wars of the mercenaries" were a
+trifling affair,--before the nations can be redeemed from subjection to
+these armed hordes and the masters whom they obey.
+
+From Caen I visited Bayeux,--a sleepy, ecclesiastical town with a
+glorious cathedral, which, however, shows by a huge crack in the tower
+that even such edifices know decay. Gems of the Norman style are
+scattered all round Caen and Bayeux; and one of the finest is the little
+church of St. Loup, in the environs of Bayeux.
+
+I found that the old French office-book had been completely banished
+from the French churches by the Jesuit and Ultramontane party, and the
+Roman (though much inferior, Roman Catholics tell me, as a composition)
+everywhere thrust into its place. The people in some places
+recalcitrated violently; but the Jesuits and Ultramontanes triumphed.
+The old Gallican spirit of independence is extinct in the French Church,
+and its extinction is not greatly to be deplored; for it tended not to a
+real independence, but to the substitution of a royal for an
+ecclesiastical Pope. Louis XIV. was quite as great a spiritual tyrant as
+any Hildebrand or Innocent, and his tyranny was, if anything, more
+degrading to the soul. In fact, the Ultramontane French Church, resting
+for support on Rome, may be regarded by the friends of liberty, with a
+qualified complacency, as a check, though a miserable one, on the
+absolute dominion of physical force embodied in the Emperor.
+
+The Bayeux tapestry, representing the expedition of William the
+Conqueror, is curious and valuable as an historical monument, though it
+cannot be proved to be contemporary. As a work of art it is singularly
+spiritless, and devoid of merit of any kind. One of the fancy figures on
+the border reveals the indelicacy of the ladies (a queen, perhaps, and
+her handmaidens) who wrought it in a way which would be startling to any
+one who had taken the manners and morals of the age of chivalry on
+trust.
+
+The heat drove me from Caen before I had "done" all the antiquities and
+curiosities prescribed by the guidebook. Migrating to Lisieux, I found
+myself in such pleasant quarters that I was tempted to settle there for
+some days. The town is almost an unbroken assemblage of the quaintest
+and most picturesque old houses. There are whole streets without any
+taint of modern architecture to disturb the perfect image of the past.
+Two magnificent churches, one of them formerly a cathedral, rise over
+the whole; and there is a very pretty public garden, with its terraces,
+pastures, and green alleys. A public garden is the invariable appendage
+of a city in France, as it ought to be everywhere. We do not do half
+enough in England for the innocent amusement of the people.
+
+At Lisieux we had a public _fete_. It is evidently a part of the
+business of the _sous-prefets_ to get up these things as antidotes to
+political aspiration. _Panem et circenses_ is the policy of the French,
+as it was of the Roman Caesars. For two or three days beforehand, the
+people were engaged in planting little fir-trees in the street before
+their doors, and decorating them and the houses, with little tricolor
+flags. Larger flags (of which this little quiet town produced a truly
+formidable number) were hung out from all the houses. As the weather was
+very dry, the population was at work keeping the fir-trees alive with
+squirts. The _fete_ consisted of a horse and cattle show, in which the
+Norman horses made a very good display; the inevitable military review,
+which, Lisieux being as happily free from soldiery as Vire, was here,
+too, performed by the firemen; the band of a regiment of the line, which
+had been announced as a magnificent addition to the festivities, by a
+special proclamation of the _sous-prefet_; balloons not of the common
+shape, but in the shape of dogs, pigs, and grotesque human figures, a
+gentleman and lady waltzing, etc., which must have rather puzzled any
+scientific observer whose telescope was at that moment directed to the
+sky; and, to crown all, fireworks (the noise of which, a French
+gentleman remarked to me, the people loved, as reminding them of
+musketry) and an illumination. The illumination--all the little trees
+before the houses, as well as the houses themselves and the green arches
+thrown across the streets, being covered with lamps--was an extremely
+pretty sight. The outline of the old houses, and the windings and
+declivities of the old streets, wonderfully favored the effect. But the
+French are peerless in these things. The childish delight of the people
+was pleasant to see. Why cannot they be satisfied with their _fetes_,
+and with the undisputed empire of cookery and dress, instead of making
+themselves a scourge to the world, and keeping all Europe in disquietude
+and under arms?
+
+The Emperor is trying to inoculate his subjects with a taste for English
+sports, but with rather doubtful success. He tries to make them play at
+cricket, but they do not much like the swift bowling. There was a
+caricature in the Charivari of a Frenchman standing up to his wicket
+with an implement which the artist intended for a bat, but which was
+more like a pavior's rammer, in his hand. A friend was asking him
+whether he had a wife, children, any tie to life. "None." "Then you may
+begin." In a window at Lisieux there was a print of a fox-hunt, with the
+master of the hounds dismounting to despatch the fox with a gun! At Vire
+there was a print of a horse-race, with the horses in a cantering
+attitude, and a large dog running and barking by their side. I have seen
+something equally funny of the same kind in America, but I need not say
+what or where. I never witnessed a French horse-race, but I am told that
+they enjoy it _moult tristement_, as they say we English enjoy all our
+amusements.
+
+Close to Lisieux is the fashionable watering-place of Trouville, a place
+without any charms that I could see, puffed into celebrity by Alexander
+Dumas. The Duke de Morny invested in building there a good deal of the
+money which he made by the _coup d'etat_. Life at a French
+watering-place seems to be as close an imitation of life at Paris as
+French ingenuity can produce under the adverse circumstances of the
+case. Nothing but the religion of fashion can compel these people
+periodically to leave the capital for the sea. The mode of bathing is
+rather singular. I found that the Americans did not, as is commonly
+believed in England, put trousers on the legs of their pianos, but I
+believe you are more particular than we are; and therefore, perhaps, you
+would be still more surprised than we are at seeing a gentleman wrapped
+in a sheet stalk before the eyes of all the promenaders over the sands
+to the sea, and there throw off the sheet, and at his leisure get into
+the water. At the risk of exposing my English prudishness, I ventured to
+remark to a French acquaintance that the fashion was _un peu libre_. I
+found, rather to my astonishment, that he thought so too.
+
+At Val Richer, near Lisieux, is the pleasant country-house of M. Guizot.
+There, surrounded by his children and his grandchildren, a pretty
+patriarchal picture, the veteran statesman and historian reposes after
+the prodigious labors and tragic vicissitudes of his life. I say he
+reposes; but his pen is as active as ever, only that he has turned from
+politics and history to the more enduring and consoling topic of
+religion. He has just given us a volume on Christianity; he is about to
+give us one on the state of religion in France. It will be deeply
+interesting. In the revival of religion lies the only hope of
+regeneration for the French nation. And whence is that revival to come?
+From the official priesthood, and the jesuitical influences depicted in
+_Le Maudit_? Or from the Protestant Church of France, itself full of
+dissensions and turmoils, in which M. Guizot himself has been recently
+involved? Or from the school of Natural Theologians represented by
+Jules Simon? We shall see, when M. Guizot's work appears. It is from his
+religious character as well as from his attachment to constitutional
+liberty, I imagine, that M. Guizot has, unlike the mass of his
+countrymen, watched the American struggle with ardent interest, and
+cordially rejoiced in the triumph of the Union and of freedom.
+
+There are of course very different opinions as to this eminent man's
+career; and there are parts of his conduct of which no Liberal can
+approve. But I have always thought that a tranquil and happy old age is
+a proof, as well as a reward, of a good life; and if this be the case,
+M. Guizot's life, though not free from faults, must on the whole have
+been good.
+
+His resistance to reform is commonly regarded as having led to the fall
+of the constitutional monarchy. I should attribute that catastrophe much
+more to the prevalence of the military spirit, which the peaceful policy
+of Louis Philippe disappointed, and to which even the conquest of
+Algeria failed (as its authors deserved) to give a sufficient vent. The
+reign of Louis Philippe was essentially an attempt to found a civil in
+place of a military government in France, which was foiled by the
+passions excited by the presence of a large standing army and the recent
+memory of the Napoleonic wars. The translation of the body of Napoleon
+from St. Helena to Paris was the greatest mistake committed by the king
+and his advisers. It was the self-humiliation of the government of peace
+before the Genius of War.
+
+At Lisieux, as at Caen, and afterwards at Rouen, I saw on the Sunday a
+great church full of women, with scarcely a score of men. And what
+wonder? Close to where I sat was the altar of Our Lady of La Salette,
+offering to the adoration of the people the most coarse and revolting of
+impostures. And in the course of the service, an image of the Virgin,
+from which the taste of a Greek Pagan would have recoiled, was borne
+round the aisles in procession, manifestly the favorite object of
+worship in a church nominally devoted to the worship of God. An educated
+man in France, even one of the best character and naturally religious,
+would almost as soon think of entering a temple of Jupiter as a church.
+Religion in Roman Catholic countries being thus left, so far as the
+educated classes are concerned, to the priests and women, its recent
+developments have been inspired exclusively by priestly ambition and
+female imagination. The infallibility of the Pope and the worship of the
+Virgin have made, and are still making, tremendous strides. The
+Romanizing party in the Episcopal Church of England are left panting
+behind, in their vain efforts to keep up with the superstitions of Rome.
+
+From Lisieux my road lay by Pont-Audemer in its beautiful valley to
+Caudebec on the Seine; then along the Seine,--here most pleasant,--by
+the towers of Jumieges, the masterpiece, even in its ruins, of the grand
+Norman style, and the great Norman Church of St. George de Boscherville,
+to Rouen.
+
+Everybody knows Rouen and its sights,--the Cathedral, the Church of St.
+Ouen, the magnificent view of the city from St. Catherine's
+Hill,--magnificent still, though much marred by the tall chimneys and
+their smoke. St. Ouen is undoubtedly the perfection of Gothic art.
+Unlike most of the cathedrals, it is built all in the same style and on
+one plan, complete in every part, admirable in all its proportions, and
+faultless in its details. But there is something disappointing in
+perfection. The less perfect cathedrals suggest more to the imagination
+than is realized in St. Ouen.
+
+In the Museum is a portion of the heart of Richard Coeur-de-Lion. The
+Crusader king loved the Normans, and bequeathed his heart to them. He
+did not bequeath it to Imperial France. With all his faults, he was an
+illustrious soldier of Christendom; and he deserves to rest, not within
+the pale of this sensualist and atheist Empire, but in some land where
+the spirit of religious enterprise is not yet dead.
+
+In the outskirts is St. Gervais, the church of the monastery to which
+William the Conqueror was carried, out of the noise and the feverish air
+of the great city, to die, and which witnessed the strange struggle, in
+his last moments, between his rapacious passions and his late-awakened
+remorse. So insecure was the state of society, that, when he whose iron
+hand had preserved order among his feudal nobles had expired, those
+about him fled to their strongholds in expectation of a general anarchy.
+Government was still only personal: law had not yet been enthroned in
+the minds of men. Even the personal attendants of the Conqueror
+abandoned his corpse,--a singular illustration of the theory, cherished
+by lovers of the past, that the relations of master and servant were
+more affectionate, and of a higher kind, in the days of chivalry than
+they are in ours.
+
+Among the workingmen of Rouen, there probably lurks a good deal of
+republicanism, akin to that which exists among the workingmen of Paris.
+Unfortunately it is of a kind which, though capable of spasmodic
+attempts to revolutionize society by force, is little capable of
+sustained constitutional effect, and which alarms and arrays against it,
+not only despots, but moderate friends of liberty and progress. The
+outward appearances, however, at Rouen are all in favor of the Zouave
+and the Priest; and of the dominion of these two powers in France, if
+they can abstain from quarrelling with each other, it is difficult to
+foresee the end.
+
+I have spoken bitterly of the French Empire. It has not only crushed the
+liberties of France, but it is the keystone and the focus of the system
+of military despotism in Europe. Bismarck, O'Donnell, and all the rest
+who rule by sabre-sway, are its pupils. It is intensely
+propagandist,--feeling, like slavery, that it cannot endure the
+contagious neighborhood of freedom. It has to a terrible extent
+corrupted even English politics, and inspired our oligarchical party
+with ideas of violence quite foreign to the temper of English Tories in
+former days. It is killing not only all moral aspirations, but almost
+all moral culture in France, and leaving nothing but the passion for
+military glory, the thirst of money, and the love of pleasure. It is
+reducing all education to a centralized machine, the wires of which are
+moved by a bureau at Paris; and we shall see the effects of this on
+French intellect in the next generation, "Ils ont tue la jeunesse," were
+the bitter words of an eminent and chivalrous Frenchman to the author of
+this article. Commerce is no doubt flourishing, and money is being made
+by the commercial classes, at present, under the Empire; but the highest
+industry is intimately connected with the moral and intellectual
+energies of a nation; and if these perish, it will in time perish too.
+
+I have no means of knowing whether the morality of the court and the
+upper classes at Paris is what it is commonly reported to be; though,
+assuredly, if the performances of Therese are truly described to us,
+strange things must go on in the highest circles. Historical experience
+would be at fault, if a military despotism, with a political religion,
+did not produce moral effects in Paris somewhat analogous to those which
+it produced in Rome. The fashionable literature of the Empire, which can
+scarcely fail to reflect pretty accurately the moral state of the
+fashionable world, is not merely loose in principle, (as literature
+might possibly be in a period of transition between a narrower and an
+ampler moral code,) but utterly vile and loathsome; it seeks the
+materials of sensation novels from the charnel-house as well as from the
+brothel.
+
+At Dieppe, my last point, I visited that very picturesque as well as
+memorable ruin, the Chateau d'Arques. It is a monument of the great
+victory gained near it by the Huguenots under Henri IV. over the League.
+This and the other Huguenot victories, alas! proved bootless; and it is
+melancholy to visit the fields where they were won. By a series of
+calamities, the party was in the end erased from history; and scarcely a
+trace of its existence remains in the religious or political condition
+of Roman Catholic and Imperial France. It has left some noble names, and
+the memory of some noble deeds, which no doubt work upon national
+character to a certain extent; but this is all.
+
+There was nothing in the fashionable watering-place of Dieppe to tempt
+my stay; and I turned from the Chateau d'Arques to embark for the land
+where, in spite of our political reaction and the efforts of the
+priest-party in our Church, the principles for which the field of Arques
+was fought and won have still a home.
+
+
+
+
+AUNT JUDY.
+
+
+A soft white bosom, kissed by lips and fondled by fingers pure as
+itself!
+
+Back through the tender twilight of my one dim dream of a sinless
+childhood I catch that accusing glimpse of my mother--and myself. And as
+I stand here on this shapeless cairn of remorses, which, after forty
+years, I have piled upon my butchered and buried promise, that child
+turns from "the cup of his life and couch of his rest," to look upon me
+wondering, pitying.
+
+My mother died when I was scarce five years old; and save the blurred
+beauty of that reproachful phantom,--caught and lost, caught and lost,
+by the unfaithful eyes of a graceless spirit,--she is as though she
+never had been. But in her place she left me a vicarious mother,--old,
+foolish, doting, black,--the youngest, loveliest, wisest, fairest lady I
+have ever known,--young with the youth of the immortal heart, lovely
+with the loveliness of the gleaning Ruth, wise with the wisdom of the
+most blessed among mothers when she "pondered all those things in her
+heart," and fair with the fairness of her who goeth her way forth by the
+footsteps of the flock, and feedeth her kids beside the shepherds'
+tents,--black, but comely.
+
+"Aunt Judy,"--Judith was her company name,--as the oldest of my uncles
+and aunts, and other boys' grandfathers and grandmothers, and all the
+rest of us children, delighted to call her,--was pure negro; not
+grafted, scandalous mulatto, nor muddled, niggerish "gingerbread," but
+downright, unmixed, old-fashioned blackamoor. Her father and mother were
+genuine importations from the coast of Africa, snatched from some
+cannibal's calaboose,--where else they might have been butchered to make
+a Dahomeyan holiday,--and set up in a country gentleman's kitchen in
+Maryland, where they and their Christian progeny helped to make many a
+happy Christmas.
+
+Of this antique Ethiopian couple I remember nothing,--they died long
+before I was born,--nor have I gathered any notable _ana_ concerning
+them. Only of the father, I learned from my darling old nurse that he
+was one hundred and four years old when the Almighty Emancipator set him
+free; and from my father, and the brothers and sisters of my mother,
+that he possessed in a remarkable degree those simple, childlike
+virtues, characteristic of the original domesticated African, which his
+daughters Judith and Rachel so richly inherited.
+
+Aunt Judy was one of many slaves set free by my grandfather's will,
+partly in reward of faithful service, partly from an impulse of
+conscientiousness; for our fine old Maryland gentleman was that social
+and political phenomenon, a slaveholder with a practical scruple. Not
+that he doubted the moral wholesomeness of the "institution," which, in
+his theory, was patriarchal and protective, and in his practice
+eminently beneficent;--if he were living this day, I doubt not he would
+be found among its most earnest and confident champions;--but he did not
+believe in holding human beings in bondage "on principle," as it were,
+and for the mere sake of bondage. The patriarchal element was, he
+thought, an essential in the moral right of the system, and _that_ no
+longer necessary, the system became wrong. Therefore, so soon as it
+became clear to him that he (so peculiarly had God blessed him) could
+protect, advise, relieve his servants as effectually, they being free,
+as if their persons and their poor little goods, their labor and almost
+their lives, were at his disposal, he set them at liberty without asking
+the advice, or caring for the opinion, of any man; and by the same
+instrument which gave them the right to work, think, live, and die for
+themselves, he imposed upon his children a solemn responsibility for
+their well-being, in the future as in the past,--the honorable care of
+seeing to it that their wants were judiciously provided for, their
+training virtuous, their instruction useful, their employers just, their
+families united, and their homes happy. Those who were already of age
+went forth free at once; the minors received their "papers" on their
+twenty-first birthday. And thus it was that, when I was born, Aunt Judy
+was as much freer than her "boy" is now, as simple, natural wants are
+freer than impatient, artificial appetites.
+
+But that was the beginning and the end of Aunt Judy's freedom. For all
+the change it wrought in her feelings and her ways toward us, or in ours
+toward her, she might as well have remained the slave and the baby she
+was born; the old relations, so natural and gentle, of affection and
+faithful service on her side, of affection and grateful care on ours, no
+mere legal forms could alter: no papers could disturb their
+peacefulness, no privileges impair their confidence. Indeed, that same
+freedom--or at least her personal interest in it--was matter of
+magnificent contempt to both nurse and child; she understood it too well
+to pet it, I understood it too little to be jealous of it. It was only
+by asking her that you could discover that Aunt Judy was free; it was
+only by being asked that she could recollect it. For her, freedom meant
+the right to "go where she pleased"; but her love knew no _where_ but my
+father's roof and her darling's crib, nor anything so wrong as that
+right. For us, her freedom meant our freedom, the right to send her away
+when we chose; but our love knew no such _when_ in all the shameful
+possibilities of time, nor anything in all the cruel conspiracies of
+ingratitude so wrong as that right. Could we entreat her to leave us, or
+to return from following after us, when each of our hearts had spoken
+and said, "The Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part
+thee and me"? So she and I have gone on together ever since, and shall
+go on, until we come to the Bethlehem of love at rest. What though she
+had been there before we started, and were there now? To the saints and
+their eternal spaceless spirits there are nor days, nor miles, nor
+starting-points, nor resting-places, nor journey's ends.
+
+From my earliest remembered observation, when I first began to "take
+notice," as nurses say of vague babies, with pinafore comparison and
+judgment, Aunt Judy was an old woman; I knew that, because she had
+explained to me why I had not wrinkles like hers, and why she could not
+read her precious Bible without spectacles, as I could, and why my back
+was not bent too, and how if I lived I would grow so. From such
+instructions I derived a blurred, bewildering notion that from me to
+her, suffering an Aunt-Judy change, was a long, slow, wearisome process
+of puckering and dimming and stiffening. But when she told me how she
+had carried my mother in her arms, as she had carried me, and had made
+the proud discovery of her first tooth, as, piously exploring among my
+tender gums with her little finger, she had found mine, I stared at the
+Pacific of her possible nursings, in a wild surmise, silent upon a peak
+of wonder. "Well, then, Auntie," I asked, "do you think you're much more
+than a thousand?"
+
+She was not noticeably little as a woman, but wonderfully little as a
+bundle, to contain so many great virtues,--rather below the medium
+stature, slender, and bent with age, rather than with burdens; for she
+had had no heartless master to lay heavy packs upon her. Her face, far
+from unpleasing in its lines, was lovely in its blended expression of
+intelligence, modesty, the sweetest guilelessness, an almost heroic
+truthfulness, devoted fidelity, a dove-like tranquillity of mind, and
+that abiding, reposeful trust in God which is equal to all trials, and
+can never be taken by surprise. Her voice was soft and soothing, her
+motions singularly free from clumsiness or fretfulness, her manners so
+beautifully blended of unaffected humility, patience, and self-respect
+as to command, in cheerful reciprocity, the deference they tendered; in
+which respect she was a severe ordeal to the sham gentlemen and ladies
+who had the honor to be presented to her,--the slightest trace of
+snobbery betraying itself at once to the sensitive test-paper of Aunt
+Judy's true politeness. Her ways were ways of pleasantness, and all her
+paths were peace. Faith, hope, and charity were met in her dusky,
+shrunken bosom,--more at home there, perhaps, than in a finer dwelling.
+
+A sneering philosophy was never yet challenged to contemplate a piety
+more complete than that which made this venerable "nigger" a lady on
+earth, and a saint in heaven; but on her knees she found it, and on her
+knees she held it fast,--watching, praying, trembling.
+
+    "When she sat, her head was, prayer-like, bending;
+      When she rose, it rose not any more.
+    Faster seemed her true heart grave-ward tending
+      Than her tired feet, weak and travel-sore."
+
+She was, indeed, a living prayer, a lying-down and rising-up, a
+going-out and coming-in prayer,--a loving, longing, working, waiting
+prayer,--a black and wrinkled, bent and tottering incense and
+aspiration. With her to labor was literally to worship; she washed
+dishes with confession, ironed shirts with supplication, and dusted
+furniture with thanksgiving,--morning, evening, noon, and night,
+praising God. From resting-place to resting-place, over tedious
+stretches of task, she prayed her way,
+
+    "And ever, at each period,
+    She stopped and sang, 'Praise God!'"
+
+like Browning's Theocrite. And, as if answering Blaise, the listening
+monk, when he said,
+
+                           "Well done!
+    I doubt not thou art heard, my son:
+    As well as if thy voice to-day
+    Were praising God the Pope's great way,"
+
+her longing was,
+
+                       "Would God that I
+    Might praise him _some_ great way and die."
+
+Many a time have I, bursting boisterously into my little bedroom in
+quest of top or ball, checked myself, with a feeling more akin to
+superstition than to reverence, on finding Aunt Judy on her knees beside
+the pretty cot she had just made up so snugly and tenderly for me,
+pouring her ever-brimming heart out in clear, refreshing springs of
+prayer. Led by these still waters, she rested there from the heat and
+burden of life, as the camel by wells in the desert. On such occasions I
+always knew that my dear old nurse had just finished making a bed or
+sweeping a room, and had sunk down to rest in a prayer, as a fagged
+drudge on a stool. If you ever gloried--and what gentleman has not?--in
+Gregg's brave old hymn, beginning
+
+    "Jesus, and shall it ever be,
+    A mortal man ashamed of thee?"
+
+you would ask for no more intrepid illustration of its loyal spirit than
+the figure of Aunt Judy on her knees at the foot of my father's bed,
+where he often found her in the act,--turning her face for an instant,
+but without offering to rise, from her Divine Master to the mild
+fellow-servant in whom she affectionately recognized an earthly master,
+and asking, with a manner far less embarrassed than his own, "Was you
+lookin' for your gloves, sir? They's on de bureau,--and your umbrell's
+behind de door";--and then placidly turning back again to that Master
+whom most of us white slaves of the Devil think we have honored enough
+when we have printed His title with a capital M.
+
+    "My Master, shall I speak? O that to Thee
+      My Servant were a little so
+        As flesh may be!
+      That these two words might creep and grow
+    To some degree of spiciness to Thee!"
+
+But the hour of my Aunt-Judyness most sacred and inspiring to me,
+weirdly filling my imagination with solemn reaches beyond my childish
+ken, was at the close of the day, when--I having been undressed, with
+many a cradle lecture and many a blessing, many an admonition and
+endearment, line upon line and precept upon precept, here a text and
+there a pious rhyme, between the buttons and the strings, and having
+said my awful "Now I lay me," lest "I should die before I wake," and
+been tucked in with careful fondling fingers, the party of the first
+part honorably contracting to "shut his eyes and go straight to sleep,"
+provided the party of the second part would remain at the bedside till
+the last heavy-lingering wink was winked,--that image of her Maker
+carved in ebony took up her part in creation's pausing chorus, and
+poured her little human praise into the echoing ear of God in such a
+burst of triumphant humility, of exulting hope and trust, and
+all-embracing charity and love,--wherein master and mistress and
+fellow-servant, friend and stranger, the kind and the cruel, the just
+and the unjust, the believer and the scoffer, had each his welcome place
+and was called by his name,--as only Ruth could have said or Isaiah
+sung. As for me, I only lay there with closed eyes, very still, lest I
+should offend the angels, for I knew the room was full of them,--as for
+me, I only write here with a faltering heart, lest I should offend those
+prayers, for I know heaven is full of them, and I know that for every
+time my name arose to the throne of God on that beatified handmaid's
+hopes and cries, I have been forgiven seventy times seven.
+
+And so Aunt Judy prayed and praised, sitting upon the landing to rest
+herself, as she descended from the garret side-wise, the same foot
+always advanced, as is the way of weak old folks in coming down stairs;
+and so she prayed and praised between the splitting spells of her forty
+years' asthmatic cough, rocking backward and forward, with her hands
+upon her knees. And sometimes she preached to me, the ironing-table
+being her pulpit; for oh! she was an excellent divine, that had the
+Bible at her fingers' ends, and many a moving sermon did she deliver,
+"how God doth make his enemies his friends." And sometimes she baptized
+me, the bath-tub being her Jordan, in the name of duty, love, and
+patience. In truth, Aunt Judy took as much prophylactic pains with my
+soul as if it had been tainted with a congenital sulphuric diathesis;
+and if I had sunk under a complication of profane disorders, no
+postmortem statement of my spiritual pathology would have been complete
+and exact which failed to take note of her stringent preventive
+measures.
+
+Now be it known, that Aunt Judy's piety was in no respect of the
+niggerish kind; when I say "colored," I mean one thing, respectfully;
+and when I say "niggerish," I mean another, disgustedly. I am not
+responsible for the distinction: it is a true "cullud" nomenclature, and
+very significant; our fellow-citizens of African descent themselves
+employ it, nicely and wisely; and when they call each other "nigger" the
+familiar term of opprobrium is applied with all the malice of a sting,
+and resented with all the sensitiveness of a raw. So when I say that my
+Auntie's piety was not of the niggerish kind, even Zoe, "The Octoroon,"
+or any other woman or man in whose veins courses the blood of Ham four
+times diluted, knows that I mean it was not that glory-hallelujah
+variety of cunning or delusion, compounded of laziness and catalepsy,
+which is popular among the shouting, shirt-tearing sects of plantation
+darkies, who "git relijin" and fits twelve times a year. To all such
+she used to say, "'T ain't de real grace, honey,--'t ain't de sure
+glory,--you hollers too loud. When you gits de Dove in your heart, and
+de Lamb on your bosom, you'll feel as ef you was in dat stable at
+Bethlehem and de Blessed Virgin had lent you de sleepin' Baby to hold."
+She would not have shrunk from lifting up her voice and crying aloud in
+the market-place, if thereby she might turn one smart butcher from the
+error of his _weighs_; but for steady talking to the Lord, she preferred
+my bedside or the back-stairs.
+
+But in those days the kitchen was my paradise, by her transmuted. As a
+child, and not less now than then, I had a consuming longing for
+snuggery; my one fair, clear idea of the consummate golden fruit of the
+spirit's sweet content was a cosey place to get away to. In my longing I
+purred with the cat rolled up in her furry ball on the rug by the fire,
+making a high-post bedstead of a chair; in my longing I stole with
+furtive rats to their mysterious cave-nests in the wall. So do I
+now,--the more for that I lost, so long ago, my dear kitchen, my
+Aunt-Judyness,--my home.
+
+    "I behold it everywhere,
+    On the earth, and in the air,
+    But it never comes again."
+
+At this moment I feel the dresser in the corner, gleaming with the
+cook's refulgent pride of polished tins; I am sensible of that pulpit
+ironing-table--alas! the flat-iron on its ring is as cold as the hand
+that erst so deftly guided it. I bask before the old-fashioned
+hospitable fireplace, capacious and embracing, and jolly with its
+old-fashioned hickory blaze, and the fat old-fashioned kettle hung upon
+the old-fashioned crane, swinging and singing of old-fashioned abundance
+and good cheer. I behold the Madras turban, the white neckerchief
+crossed over the bosom, the clumsy steel-bowed spectacles, the check
+apron, and the old-fashioned love that is forever new. But they never
+come again.
+
+That kitchen was my hospital and my school,--as much better than the
+whole round of select academies and classical institutes that my father
+tried, and that tried me, as check aprons and love are more inculcating
+than canes and quarterly bills; and however it may be with my head, my
+heart never has forgotten the lessons I learned there. Thither, on the
+nipping nights of winter, brought I my small fingers and toes, numbed
+and aching with snow-balling and skating, to be tenderly rubbed before
+the fire, or fondly folded in the motherly apron. Thither brought I an
+extensive and various assortment of splinters and fresh cuts; thither my
+impervious nose, to be lubricated with goose-grease, or my swollen angry
+tonsils ("waxen kernels," Aunt Judy called them), to be mollified with
+volatile liniment.
+
+It was here that my own free mind, uncompelled by pedagogues and
+unallured by prizes, first achieved a whole chapter in the Bible. Cook
+and laundress and chambermaid were out for the evening; the table had
+been cleared and covered with the fresh white cloth; and I, perched on
+Aunt Judy's lap at the end next the fireplace, glided featly over the
+short words, plunged pluckily through the long, (braced, as it were,
+against the superior education and the spectacles behind me,) of the
+first chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, from the Word that
+was in the beginning, to the Hereafter of the glorified Son of man.
+After which so large performance for so small a boy, we re-refreshed
+ourselves with that cheerful hymn, in which Dr. Watts lyrically disposes
+of the questions,
+
+      "And must this body die,
+      This mortal frame decay?
+    And must these active limbs of mine
+      Lie mouldering in the clay?"
+
+For so infantile a heart, my darling old mammy had a wonderful lack of
+active imagination, even in her religion; for there all was real and
+actual to her. Her pleasures of memory and her pleasures of hope were
+alike founded upon fact. Christ was as personal to her as her own
+rheumatic frame, and heaven as positive as her kitchen. "Blessed are
+they that have not seen, and yet have believed";--but for her, to
+believe and to see were one. So whatever imagination she may by nature
+have possessed seemed to have dwindled for lack of exercise: it was long
+since she had had any use for it. She had no folk-lore, no faculty of
+story-telling,--only a veracious legend or two of our family, which she
+invariably related with an affidavit-like scrupulousness of
+circumstance. I cannot recollect that she ever once beguiled me with a
+mere nurse's tale. So when at that kitchen-table we read "The Pilgrim's
+Progress" together, we presented a curious entertainment for the student
+of intellectual processes,--nurse and child arriving by diverse
+arguments of imagination at the same result of reality;--she knowing
+that Sin was a burden, because she had borne it; I, because I had seen
+it in the picture strapped to Christian's back;--she, that Despair was a
+giant, because he had often appalled her soul within her; I, because in
+a dream he had made me scream last night;--she, that Death was a river,
+because so many of her dear ones had gone over, and because on her clear
+days she could see the other shore; I, because, as I lay with my young
+cheek against her old heart, I could hear the beating of its waves.
+
+Blessed indeed is the mother who is admitted to the sanctuary of her
+darling's secrets with the freedom with which Aunt Judy penetrated (was
+invited rather, with parted lips and sparkling eyes) to mine,--into
+whose sympathetic ear are poured, in all the dream-borne melody of the
+first songs of the heart, in all "the tender thought, the speechless
+pain" of its first violets, his earliest confessions, aspirations,
+loves, wrongs, troubles, triumphs. Well do I remember that day when,
+trembling, ghastly, faint, I fell in tears upon her neck, and poured
+into her bosom and basin the spasmodic story of My First Cigar! Well do
+I remember that night, when, bursting from the evening party in the
+parlor, and the thick red married lady in the thin blue tarletan, and
+all my raptures and my anguish, I flung myself into Aunt Judy's arms and
+acknowledged the soft corn of My First Love, raving at the fatal
+sandy-whiskered gulf that yawned between me and Mine thick blue Own One
+in the thin red tarletan!
+
+Well do I remember--though I was only seven times one--the panting
+exultation with which I flung into her lap the cheap colored print of
+the Tower of Babel (showing the hurly-burly of French bricklayers and
+Irish hod-carriers, and the grand row generally) that I had just won at
+school by correctly committing to memory, and publicly reciting, the
+whole of
+
+    "Almighty God, thy piercing eye
+    Strikes through the shades of night," etc.
+
+My first prize! The Tower of Babel fell untimely into the wash-tub, but
+she dried it on her warm bosom; and I have never forgotten that All our
+secret actions lie All open to His sight; though I have never seen the
+verses (they were in Comly's Spelling-Book) from that day to this.
+
+In those days we had a youth of talent in the family,--a sort of
+sophomorical boil, that the soap and sugar of indiscriminate adulation
+had drawn to a head of conceit. This youth bestowed a great deal of
+attention on a certain young woman of a classical turn of mind, who once
+had a longing to attend a fancy-ball as a sibyl. About the same time
+Sophomore missed the first volume of his Potter's "Antiquities of
+Greece"; and, having searched for it in vain, made up his mind that I
+had presented it as a keepsake, together with a lock of my hair and a
+cent's worth of pea-nut taffy, to the head girl of the infant class at
+my Sunday school. So Sophomore, being in morals a pedant and in
+intellect a bully, accused me of appropriating the book, and offered me
+a dollar if I would restore it to him. With swelling heart and quivering
+lip I carried the wanton insult--my first great wrong--straight to Aunt
+Judy, who, in her mild way, resented it as a personal outrage to her own
+feelings, and tried to soothe and console me by assuring me that "it
+would all rub out when it got dry." Three years later, as I was passing
+the sibyl's house one morning, her mother met me at the door and handed
+me an odd volume of Potter's "Antiquities of Greece," which she had just
+discovered in some out-of-the-way corner, where it had been mislaid, and
+which she desired me to hand to Sophomore with the sibyl's compliments,
+thanks, regrets, and several other delicacies of the season. But I
+handed it first to Aunt Judy, who gloried boisterously in my first
+triumph. Sophomore patronized me magnificently with apologies; but if
+the wrong never gets any drier than Aunt Judy's joyful eyes were then,
+it never will rub out.
+
+So heartily disgusted was I with this classical episode that I conceived
+the original and desperate project of running away and going to sea. At
+that time I enjoyed the proud privilege of a personal acquaintance with
+the Siamese Twins, and was the envied holder of a season ticket to the
+Museum, where they exhibited their attractive duplicity. It was an
+essential part of my preparations to procure from the amiable Chang-Eng
+a letter of introduction to their ingenious mother, who, I was told, was
+in the duck-fishing line at Bangkok. Of course, I confided my plan to
+Aunt Judy; and, although she opposed it with extra prayers of peculiar
+length and strength, and finally succeeded in dissuading me from it, I
+am by no means certain that she would not have connived at my flight,
+rather than betray my confidence or consent to my punishment.
+
+Those were the days of the _Morus multicaulis_ mania, and I embarked
+with spirit in the silk-worm business. The original capital upon which I
+erected the enterprise was furnished from the surplus of Aunt Judy's
+wages. It was in the first silk dress that should come of all those
+moths and eggs and wriggling spinners and cocoons that she invested with
+such sanguine cheerfulness; and although she never got her money back in
+that form,--owing to the unfortunate exhaustion of my mulberry-leaves
+and the refusal of my worms to spin silk from tea, which, they being of
+pure Chinese stock, I thought very unreasonable,--she conceived that she
+reaped abundant returns in her share of my happy enthusiasm, while it
+lasted; and when I wept over the famine-stricken forms of my operatives,
+she said, "Never mind, honey; dey was an awful litter anyhow, and I
+spec' dey was only de or'nary caterpillar poor trash, after all, else
+dey 'd a-kep' goin' on dat tea; fur 't was de rale high-price Chany
+kind, sure 's ye 'r born."
+
+It was a striking oddness in the dear old soul, that, whilst in her
+hours of familiar ease she indulged in the homely lingo of her tribe, in
+her "company talk" she displayed a graver propriety of language, and in
+her prayers was always fluent, forcible, and correct.
+
+The watchful tenderness with which I loved my gentle, childlike father
+was the most interesting of the many secrets that my heart shared only
+with Aunt Judy's. When I was twelve years old, he fell into a touching
+despondency, caused by certain reverses in his business and the
+unremitting anxieties consequent upon them. So intense and sensitive was
+my magnetic sympathy with him, that I contracted the same sadness, in a
+form so aggravated and morbid that the despondency, in me, became
+despair, and the anxiety horror. The cruel fancy took possession of my
+mind, installed there by my treacherously imaginative temperament, that
+some awful calamity was about to befall my dear father; that he,
+patient, submissive Christian that he was, even meditated suicide; and
+that shape of fear so shook my soul with terror in the daytime, so
+filled my dreams with horror in the night, that, as if it were not
+myself, I turn back to pity the poor child now, and wonder that he did
+not go mad.
+
+Does he know the truth now up in Heaven, the beloved old man? Surely;
+for the beloved old woman, who alone knew it on earth, is she not there?
+He knows now how his selfish, wilful, school-hating scamp, of whom only
+he and Aunt Judy ever boded any good, stole away from his playmates and
+his games, every afternoon when school was dismissed, and with that
+baleful phantom before him, and that doleful cry in his ears, flew
+through the bustle and clatter of the wharves to where his father's
+warehouse was, two miles away; and, dodging like a thief among crates
+and boxes, bales and casks, and choking down the appeal of his lonely,
+shame-faced terror, watched that door with all the eager, tenacious,
+panting fidelity of a dog, until the merchant came forth on his way
+homeward for the night. And how the scamp followed, dodging, watching,
+trembling, unconsciously moaning, unconsciously sobbing, seeing no form
+but his, hearing no sound but his footfall, keeping cunningly between
+that form and the dock, lest it should suddenly dart, through the drays
+and the moored vessels and plunge into the river, as the scamp had seen
+it do in his dreams. And how, at the end of that walk through the Valley
+of the Shadow of Death, when we reached our own door, and the
+simple-hearted, good old man passed in, as ignorant of my following as
+he was innocent of the monstrous purpose I imputed to him, I lingered
+some minutes at the gate to ease with a sluice of tears my pent-up fears
+and pains; and then burst into the yard, whistling, whooping, prancing,
+swinging my satchel, without feeling or manners,--a shameless, heartless
+brat and nuisance. And how, when the day, with all its secret sighs and
+sobs, was over, and he and I retired to the same bed, I prayed to our
+Father in heaven (muffling my very thoughts in the bed-clothes lest he
+should hear them) to keep my earthly father safe for me from all the
+formless dangers of the darkness; and how, when at the first gray streak
+of dawn the spectre shook me, and I awoke, I held my heart and my
+breathing still, to listen for his breathing, and thanked God when he
+groaned in his sleep; and how, when his shaving-water was brought and he
+stood before the glass, baring his throat, I crept close behind him,
+still watching, gasping,--now pretending to hum a tune, now pressing my
+hand upon my mouth lest I should shriek in my helpless suspense; and
+how, when he drew the razor from its sheath--Well! I am forty years old
+now, and I have been pursued since then by so many and such torturing
+shapes of desperation and dismay as should refresh the heart of my
+stupidest enemy with an emotion of relenting; but I would consent to
+weep, groan, rave them all over again, beginning where that haunted
+child left off, rather than begin where he began, though my spectres
+should forever vanish with his.
+
+Aunt Judy trembled and watched with me, and, accepting my phantom as if
+it were a reasonable fear, hid away her share of the sacred secret in
+her heart, and helped me to cover up mine with a disguise of
+carelessness, lest any foolish or brutal mockery should find it out.
+
+My darling had but few superstitions: her spiritually informed
+intelligence rose superior to vulgar signs and dreams, and saw through
+the little warnings and wonders of darker and less pure minds with a
+science of its own, which she called Gospel light. Still, there was here
+a sign and there a legend that she clung to for old acquaintance' sake,
+rather than by reason of any credulity in her strong enough to take the
+place of faith. But these constituted the peculiar poetry of her
+personality, the fireside balladry and folk-lore of her Aunt-Judyness;
+and I could no more mock them than I could mock the good fairy in her,
+that changed all my floggings to feathers,--no sooner tear away their
+comfortable homeliness to jeer at their honored absurdity, than I could
+snatch off her dear familiar turban to mock the silver reverence of her
+"wool." Ah! I wish you could have heard her tell me that I must pass
+through fourteen years of trouble,--seven on account of the big old
+mirror in the parlor that I, lying on the sofa beneath it, kicked clear
+off its hook and into the middle of the floor,--and seven for that very
+looking-glass which my father used to shave by, and which I, sparring
+at my image in it, to amuse my little brother, knocked into smithareens
+with my fractious fist. Why, man, it was not only awful, it all came
+true.
+
+Aunt Judy, like most of those antiques, the old-fashioned house-servants
+of the South,--coachmen and waiters, nurses and lady's maids,--was a
+towering aristocrat: she believed in blood, and was a connoisseur in
+pedigrees. Her family pride was lofty, vast, and imposing, and embraced
+in the scope of its sympathy whoever could boast of a family Bible
+containing a well-filled record of births, marriages, and deaths,--a
+dear dead-and-gone inheritance of family portraits, lace, trinkets, and
+silver spoons,--a family vault in an Orthodox burial-ground,--and above
+all, one or two venerable family servants, just to show "dese mushroom
+folks, wid der high-minded notions, how diff'ent things was in ole
+missus's time!" Measured by this standard, if you had the misfortune to
+be a nobody, Aunt Judy, as a lady, might patronize you, as a Christian,
+would cheerfully advise and assist you; but to the exclusive privilege
+of what she superbly styled family-arities, you must in vain aspire.
+_Our_ family, in the broadest sense of that word, was a large one,--by
+blood and marriage a numerous connection; and when Aunt Judy said,
+"So-and-so b'longs to our family," she included every man, woman, and
+child who could produce the genuine patent of our nobility, and
+especially all who had ever worn our livery, from my great-grandfather's
+tremendous coachman to the slipshod young gal that "nussed" our last new
+cousin's last new baby. Sometimes one of these cousins--quite
+telescopic, so distant was the relationship--would come to dine with us.
+Then Aunt Judy, in gorgeous turban, immaculate neckerchief, and lively
+satisfaction, would be served up in state, our _piece de resistance_.
+The guest would compliment her with sympathetic inquiries about the
+state of her health, which was always "only tol'able," or "ra-a-ther
+poorly," or it "did 'pear as ef she could shuffle round a leetle yit,
+praise de Master! But she was a-gettin' older and shacklier every day;
+her cough was awful tryin' sometimes, and it 'peared as ef she warn't of
+much account, nohow. But de Lord's will be done; when He wanted her, she
+reckined He'd call. And how does you find yourself, Miss? And how does
+your ma git along wid de servants now? You know she always was a great
+hand to be pertickler, Miss; we hadn't sich another young lady in our
+family, to be pertickler, as your ma, Miss,--'specially 'bout de
+pleetin' and clare-starchin'."
+
+I have to accuse myself of habitually shocking her aristocratic
+sensibilities by profanely ignoring, in favor of the society of dirty
+little plebeians, the relations to whom the sacred charm of a common
+ancestry should have drawn me. "Make haste, honey," she used to say;
+"wash yer face and hands, and pull up yer stockin's, and tie yer shoes,
+and bresh de sand out of yer hair, and blow yer nose, and go into de
+parlor, and shake hands wid yer Cousin Jorjana." But I would not. "O
+bother, Auntie! who's my Cousin Georgiana?" "Why, honey, don't you know?
+Miss Arabella Jane--dat's your dear dead-an'-gone grandma's second
+cousin--had seven childern by her first husband,--he was a
+Patterson,--and nine by her second,--_he_ was a McKim,--and five--but
+'tain't no use, honey; you don't 'pear to take no int'res' in yer own
+kith and kin, no more dan or'nary white trash. I 'spec' you don't know
+de diff'ence, dis minnit, 'twixt yer poor old Aunt Judy and any
+no-account poor-house nigger." And so my Cousin Georgiana, of whom I had
+never heard before, remains a myth to me, one of Aunt Judy's Mrs.
+Harrises, to this day. It was wonderful what an exact descriptive list
+of them she could call at a moment's notice; and for keeping the run of
+their names and numbers, she was as good as an enrolling officer or a
+directory man. "Our family" could boast of many Pharisees, as well as
+blush for many prodigals; but her sympathies were wholly with the
+latter; and for these she was eternally killing fatted calves, in
+spite of angry elder brothers and the whole sect of whited
+sepulchres, who forgive exactly four hundred and ninety times by the
+multiplication-table, and compass sea and land to make one hypocrite. If
+she had had a fold of her own, all her sheep would have been black.
+
+One day in January, 1849, I called to see Aunt Judy for the last time.
+Superannuated, and rapidly failing, she had been installed by my father
+in a comfortable room in the house of a sort of cousin of hers, a worthy
+and "well-to-do" woman of color, where she might be cheered by the
+visits of the more respectable people of her own class,--darkies of
+substantial character and of the first families, among whom she was
+esteemed as a mother in Israel. Thither either my father or one or two
+of his children came every day, to watch her declining health, to
+administer to her comfort, and to wait upon her with those offices of
+respect to which she had earned her right by three quarters of a century
+of humble, patient love and faithful service. My chest was packed, and
+on the morrow I must sail for the ends of the earth; but she knew
+nothing of that. All that afternoon we talked together as we had never
+talked before; and many an injury that my indignant tears had kept fresh
+and sticky was "dried" in the warmth of her earnest, anxious
+peace-making, and "rubbed out" then and there. No page of my inditing
+could be pure enough to record it all; but is it not written in the Book
+of Life, among the regrets and the forgivenesses, the confessions and
+the consolations and the hopes?
+
+The last word I ever uttered to Aunt Judy was a careful, loving, pious
+lie. She said, "Won't you come ag'in to-morrow, son, and see de poor ole
+woman?" And I replied, "O yes, Auntie!"--though I well knew that, even
+as I spoke, I was looking into the wise truth of those patient, tender
+eyes for the last time in this world. The sun was going down as we
+parted,--that sun has never risen again for me.
+
+In June, 1850, on board a steamboat in the Sacramento River, I received
+the very Bible I had first learned to read in, sitting on her lap by the
+kitchen fire,--in the beginning was the Word. She was dead; and, dying,
+she had sent it me, with her blessing,--at the end was the Word.
+
+In August, 1852, that Bible was tossed ashore from a wreck in an Indian
+river, and by angels delivered at a mission school in the jungle, where
+other heathens beside myself have doubtless learned from it the Word
+that was, and is, and ever shall be. On the inside of the cover, sitting
+on her lap by the kitchen fire, I had written, with appropriate
+"pot-hooks and hangers," AUNT JUDY.
+
+Such her quiet consummation and renown!
+
+
+
+
+THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.
+
+
+VII.
+
+BODILY RELIGION: A SERMON ON GOOD HEALTH.
+
+One of our recent writers has said, that "good health is physical
+religion"; and it is a saying worthy to be printed in golden letters.
+But good health being physical religion, it fully shares that
+indifference with which the human race regards things confessedly the
+most important. The neglect of the soul is the trite theme of all
+religious teachers; and, next to their souls, there is nothing that
+people neglect so much as their bodies. Every person ought to be
+perfectly healthy, just as everybody ought to be perfectly religious;
+but, in point of fact, the greater part of mankind are so far from
+perfect moral or physical religion that they cannot even form a
+conception of the blessing beyond them.
+
+The mass of good, well-meaning Christians are not yet advanced enough to
+guess at the change which a perfect fidelity to Christ's spirit and
+precepts would produce in them. And the majority of people who call
+themselves well, because they are not, at present, upon any particular
+doctor's list, are not within sight of what perfect health would be.
+That fulness of life, that vigorous tone, and that elastic cheerfulness,
+which make the mere fact of existence a luxury, that suppleness which
+carries one like a well-built boat over every wave of unfavorable
+chance,--these are attributes of the perfect health seldom enjoyed. We
+see them in young children, in animals, and now and then, but rarely, in
+some adult human being, who has preserved intact the religion of the
+body through all opposing influences. Perfect health supposes not a
+state of mere quiescence, but of positive enjoyment in living. See that
+little fellow, as his nurse turns him out in the morning, fresh from his
+bath, his hair newly curled, and his cheeks polished like apples. Every
+step is a spring or a dance; he runs, he laughs, he shouts, his face
+breaks into a thousand dimpling smiles at a word. His breakfast of plain
+bread and milk is swallowed with an eager and incredible delight,--it is
+_so good_, that he stops to laugh or thump the table now and then in
+expression of his ecstasy. All day long he runs and frisks and plays;
+and when at night the little head seeks the pillow, down go the
+eye-curtains, and sleep comes without a dream. In the morning his first
+note is a laugh and a crow, as he sits up in his crib and tries to pull
+papa's eyes open with his fat fingers. He is an embodied joy,--he is
+sunshine and music and laughter for all the house. With what a
+magnificent generosity does the Author of life endow a little mortal
+pilgrim in giving him at the outset of his career such a body as this!
+How miserable it is to look forward twenty years, when the same child,
+now grown a man, wakes in the morning with a dull, heavy head, the
+consequence of smoking and studying till twelve or one the night before;
+when he rises languidly to a late breakfast, and turns from this, and
+tries that,--wants a devilled bone, or a cutlet with Worcestershire
+sauce, to make eating possible; and then, with slow and plodding step,
+finds his way to his office and his books. Verily the shades of the
+prison-house gather round the growing boy; for, surely, no one will deny
+that life often begins with health little less perfect than that of the
+angels.
+
+But the man who habitually wakes sodden, headachy, and a little stupid,
+and who needs a cup of strong coffee and various stimulating condiments
+to coax his bodily system into something like fair working order, does
+not suppose he is out of health. He says, "Very well, I thank you," to
+your inquiries,--merely because he has entirely forgotten what good
+health is. He is well, not because of any particular pleasure in
+physical existence, but well simply because he is not a subject for
+prescriptions. Yet there is no store of vitality, no buoyancy, no
+superabundant vigor, to resist the strain and pressure to which life
+puts him. A checked perspiration, a draught of air ill-timed, a crisis
+of perplexing business or care, and he is down with a bilious attack, or
+an influenza, and subject to doctors' orders for an indefinite period.
+And if the case be so with men, how is it with women? How many women
+have at maturity the keen appetite, the joyous love of life and motion,
+the elasticity and sense of physical delight in existence, that little
+children have? How many have any superabundance of vitality with which
+to meet the wear and strain of life? And yet they call themselves well.
+
+But is it possible, in maturity, to have the joyful fulness of the life
+of childhood? Experience has shown that the delicious freshness of this
+dawning hour may be preserved even to mid-day, and may be brought back
+and restored after it has been for years a stranger. Nature, though a
+severe disciplinarian, is still, in many respects, most patient and easy
+to be entreated, and meets any repentant movement of her prodigal
+children with wonderful condescension. Take Bulwer's account of the
+first few weeks of his sojourn at Malvern, and you will read, in very
+elegant English, the story of an experience of pleasure which has
+surprised and delighted many a patient at a water-cure. The return to
+the great primitive elements of health--water, air, and simple food,
+with a regular system of exercise--has brought to many a jaded, weary,
+worn-down human being the elastic spirits, the simple, eager appetite,
+the sound sleep, of a little child. Hence, the rude huts and chalets of
+the peasant Priessnitz were crowded with battered dukes and princesses,
+and notables of every degree, who came from the hot, enervating luxury
+which had drained them of existence to find a keener pleasure in
+peasants' bread under peasants' roofs than in soft raiment and palaces.
+No arts of French cookery can possibly make anything taste so well to a
+feeble and palled appetite as plain brown bread and milk taste to a
+hungry water-cure patient, fresh from bath and exercise.
+
+If the water-cure had done nothing more than establish the fact that the
+glow and joyousness of early life are things which maybe restored after
+having been once wasted, it would have done a good work. For if Nature
+is so forgiving to those who have once lost or have squandered her
+treasures, what may not be hoped for us if we can learn the art of never
+losing the first health of childhood? And though with us, who have
+passed to maturity, it may be too late for the blessing, cannot
+something be done for the children who are yet to come after us?
+
+Why is the first health of childhood lost? Is it not the answer, that
+childhood is the only period of life in which bodily health is made a
+prominent object? Take our pretty boy, with cheeks like apples, who
+started in life with a hop, skip, and dance,--to whom laughter was like
+breathing, and who was enraptured with plain bread and milk,--how did he
+grow into the man who wakes so languid and dull, who wants strong coffee
+and Worcestershire sauce to make his breakfast go down? When and where
+did he drop the invaluable talisman that once made everything look
+brighter and taste better to him, however rude and simple, than now do
+the most elaborate combinations? What is the boy's history? Why, for the
+first seven years of his life his body is made of some account. It is
+watched, cared for, dieted, disciplined, fed with fresh air, and left to
+grow and develop like a thrifty plant. But from the time school
+education begins, the body is steadily ignored, and left to take care of
+itself.
+
+The boy is made to sit six hours a day in a close, hot room, breathing
+impure air, putting the brain and the nervous system upon a constant
+strain, while the muscular system is repressed to an unnatural quiet.
+During the six hours, perhaps twenty minutes are allowed for all that
+play of the muscles which, up to this time, has been the constant habit
+of his life. After this he is sent home with books, slate, and lessons
+to occupy an hour or two more in preparing for the next day. In the
+whole of this time there is no kind of effort to train the physical
+system by appropriate exercise. Something of the sort was attempted
+years ago in the infant schools, but soon given up; and now, from the
+time study first begins, the muscles are ignored in all primary schools.
+One of the first results is the loss of that animal vigor which formerly
+made the boy love motion for its own sake. Even in his leisure hours he
+no longer leaps and runs as he used to; he learns to sit still, and by
+and by sitting and lounging come to be the habit, and vigorous motion
+the exception, for most of the hours of the day. The education thus
+begun goes on from primary to high school, from high school to college,
+from college through professional studies of law, medicine, or theology,
+with this steady contempt for the body, with no provision for its
+culture, training, or development, but rather a direct and evident
+provision for its deterioration and decay.
+
+The want of suitable ventilation in school-rooms, recitation-rooms,
+lecture-rooms, offices, court-rooms, conference-rooms, and vestries,
+where young students of law, medicine, and theology acquire their
+earlier practice, is something simply appalling. Of itself it would
+answer for men the question, why so many thousand glad, active children
+come to a middle life without joy,--a life whose best estate is a sort
+of slow, plodding endurance. The despite and hatred which most men seem
+to feel for God's gift of fresh air, and their resolution to breathe as
+little of it as possible, could only come from a long course of
+education, in which they have been accustomed to live without it. Let
+any one notice the conduct of our American people travelling in railroad
+cars. We will suppose that about half of them are what might be called
+well-educated people, who have learned in books, or otherwise, that the
+air breathed from the lungs is laden with impurities,--that it is
+noxious and poisonous; and yet, travel with these people half a day, and
+you would suppose from their actions that they considered the external
+air as a poison created expressly to injure them, and that the only
+course of safety lay in keeping the cars hermetically sealed, and
+breathing over and over the vapor from each others' lungs. If a person
+in despair at the intolerable foulness raises a window, what frowns from
+all the neighboring seats, especially from great rough-coated men, who
+always seem the first to be apprehensive! The request to "put down that
+window" is almost sure to follow a moment or two of fresh air. In vain
+have rows of ventilators been put in the tops of some of the cars, for
+conductors and passengers are both of one mind, that these ventilators
+are inlets of danger, and must be kept carefully closed.
+
+Railroad travelling in America is systematically, and one would think
+carefully, arranged so as to violate every possible law of health. The
+old rule to keep the head cool and the feet warm is precisely reversed.
+A red-hot stove heats the upper stratum of air to oppression, while a
+stream of cold air is constantly circulating about the lower
+extremities. The most indigestible and unhealthy substances conceivable
+are generally sold in the cars or at way-stations for the confusion and
+distress of the stomach. Rarely can a traveller obtain so innocent a
+thing as a plain good sandwich of bread and meat, while pie, cake,
+doughnuts, and all other culinary atrocities, are almost forced upon him
+at every stopping-place. In France, England, and Germany the railroad
+cars are perfectly ventilated; the feet are kept warm by flat cases
+filled with hot water and covered with carpet, and answering the double
+purpose of warming the feet and diffusing an agreeable temperature
+through the car, without burning away the vitality of the air; while the
+arrangements at the refreshment-rooms provide for the passenger as
+wholesome and well-served a meal of healthy, nutritious food as could be
+obtained in any home circle.
+
+What are we to infer concerning the home habits of a nation of men who
+so resignedly allow their bodies to be poisoned and maltreated in
+travelling over such an extent of territory as is covered by our
+railroad lines? Does it not show that foul air and improper food are too
+much matters of course to excite attention? As a writer in "The Nation"
+has lately remarked, it is simply and only because the American nation
+like to have unventilated cars, and to be fed on pie and coffee at
+stopping-places, that nothing better is known to our travellers; if
+there were, any marked dislike of such a state of things on the part of
+the people, it would not exist. We have wealth enough, and enterprise
+enough, and ingenuity enough, in our American nation, to compass with
+wonderful rapidity any end that really seems to us desirable. An army
+was improvised when an army was wanted,--and an army more perfectly
+equipped, more bountifully fed, than so great a body of men ever was
+before. Hospitals, Sanitary Commissions, and Christian Commissions all
+arose out of the simple conviction of the American people that they must
+arise. If the American people were equally convinced that foul air was a
+poison,--that to have cold feet and hot heads was to invite an attack of
+illness,--that maple-sugar, pop-corn, peppermint candy, pie, doughnuts,
+and peanuts are not diet for reasonable beings,--they would have
+railroad accommodations very different from those now in existence.
+
+We have spoken of the foul air of court-rooms. What better illustration
+could be given of the utter contempt with which the laws of bodily
+health are treated, than the condition of these places? Our lawyers are
+our highly educated men. They have been through high-school and college
+training, they have learned the properties of oxygen, nitrogen, and
+carbonic-acid gas, and have seen a mouse die under an exhausted
+receiver, and of course they know that foul, unventilated rooms are bad
+for the health; and yet generation after generation of men so taught and
+trained will spend the greater part of their lives in rooms notorious
+for their close and impure air, without so much as an attempt to remedy
+the evil. A well-ventilated court-room is a four-leaved clover among
+court-rooms. Young men are constantly losing their health at the bar:
+lung diseases, dyspepsia, follow them up, gradually sapping their
+vitality. Some of the brightest ornaments of the profession have
+actually fallen dead as they stood pleading,--victims of the fearful
+pressure of poisonous and heated air upon the excited brain. The deaths
+of Salmon P. Chase of Portland, uncle of our present Chief Justice, and
+of Ezekiel Webster, the brother of our great statesman, are memorable
+examples of the calamitous effects of the errors dwelt upon; and yet,
+strange to say, nothing efficient is done to mend these errors, and give
+the body an equal chance with the mind in the pressure of the world's
+affairs.
+
+But churches, lecture-rooms, and vestries, and all buildings devoted
+especially to the good of the soul, are equally witness of the mind's
+disdain of the body's needs, and the body's consequent revenge upon the
+soul. In how many of these places has the question of a thorough
+provision of fresh air been even considered? People would never think of
+bringing a thousand persons into a desert place, and keeping them there,
+without making preparations to feed them. Bread and butter, potatoes and
+meat, must plainly be found for them; but a thousand human beings are
+put into a building to remain a given number of hours, and no one asks
+the question whether means exist for giving each one the quantum of
+fresh air needed for his circulation, and these thousand victims will
+consent to be slowly poisoned, gasping, sweating, getting red in the
+face, with confused and sleepy brains, while a minister with a yet
+redder face and a more oppressed brain struggles and wrestles, through
+the hot, seething vapors, to make clear to them the mysteries of faith.
+How many churches are there that for six or eight months in the year are
+never ventilated at all, except by the accidental opening of doors? The
+foul air generated by one congregation is locked up by the sexton for
+the use of the next assembly; and so gathers and gathers from week to
+week, and month to month, while devout persons upbraid themselves, and
+are ready to tear their hair, because they always feel stupid and sleepy
+in church. The proper ventilation of their churches and vestries would
+remove that spiritual deadness of which their prayers and hymns
+complain. A man hoeing his corn out on a breezy hillside is bright and
+alert, his mind works clearly, and he feels interested in religion, and
+thinks of many a thing that might be said at the prayer-meeting at
+night. But at night, when he sits down in a little room where the air
+reeks with the vapor of his neighbor's breath and the smoke of kerosene
+lamps, he finds himself suddenly dull and drowsy,--without emotion,
+without thought, without feeling,--and he rises and reproaches himself
+for this state of things. He calls upon his soul and all that is within
+him to bless the Lord; but the indignant body, abused, insulted,
+ignored, takes the soul by the throat, and says, "If you won't let _me_
+have a good time, neither shall you." Revivals of religion, with
+ministers and with those people whose moral organization leads them to
+take most interest in them, often end in periods of bodily ill-health
+and depression. But is there any need of this? Suppose that a revival of
+religion required, as a formula, that all the members of a given
+congregation should daily take a minute dose of arsenic in concert,--we
+should not be surprised after a while to hear of various ill effects
+therefrom; and, as vestries and lecture-rooms are now arranged, a daily
+prayer-meeting is often nothing more nor less than a number of persons
+spending half an hour a day breathing poison from each other's lungs.
+There is not only no need of this, but, on the contrary, a good supply
+of pure air would make the daily prayer-meeting far more enjoyable. The
+body, if allowed the slightest degree of fair play, so far from being a
+contumacious infidel and opposer, becomes a very fair Christian helper,
+and, instead of throttling the soul, gives it wings to rise to celestial
+regions.
+
+This branch of our subject we will quit with one significant anecdote. A
+certain rural church was somewhat famous for its picturesque Gothic
+architecture, and equally famous for its sleepy atmosphere, the rules of
+Gothic symmetry requiring very small windows, which could be only
+partially opened. Everybody was affected alike in this church: minister
+and people complained that it was like the enchanted ground in the
+Pilgrim's Progress. Do what they would, sleep was ever at their elbows;
+the blue, red, and green of the painted windows melted into a rainbow
+dimness of hazy confusion; and ere they were aware, they were off on a
+cloud to the land of dreams.
+
+An energetic sister in the church suggested the inquiry, whether it was
+ever ventilated, and discovered that it was regularly locked up at the
+close of service, and remained so till opened for the next week. She
+suggested the inquiry, whether giving the church a thorough airing on
+Saturday would not improve the Sunday services; but nobody acted on her
+suggestion. Finally, she borrowed the sexton's key one Saturday night,
+and went into the church and opened all the windows herself, and let
+them remain so for the night. The next day everybody remarked the
+improved comfort of the church, and wondered what had produced the
+change. Nevertheless, when it was discovered, it was not deemed a matter
+of enough importance to call for an order on the sexton to perpetuate
+the improvement.
+
+The ventilation of private dwellings in this country is such as might be
+expected from that entire indifference to the laws of health manifested
+in public establishments. Let a person travel in private conveyance up
+through the valley of the Connecticut, and stop for a night at the
+taverns which he will usually find at the end of each day's stage. The
+bed-chamber into which he will be ushered will be the concentration of
+all forms of bad air. The house is redolent of the vegetables in the
+cellar,--cabbages, turnips, and potatoes; and this fragrance is confined
+and retained by the custom of closing the window-blinds and dropping the
+inside curtains, so that neither air nor sunshine enters in to purify.
+Add to this the strong odor of a new feather-bed and pillows, and you
+have a combination of perfumes most appalling to a delicate sense. Yet
+travellers take possession of these rooms, sleep in them all night
+without raising the window or opening the blinds, and leave them to be
+shut up for other travellers.
+
+The spare chamber of many dwellings seems to be an hermetically closed
+box, opened only twice a year, for spring and fall cleaning; but for the
+rest of the time closed to the sun and the air of heaven. Thrifty
+country housekeepers often adopt the custom of making their beds on the
+instant after they are left, without airing the sheets and mattresses;
+and a bed so made gradually becomes permeated with the insensible
+emanations of the human body, so as to be a steady corrupter of the
+atmosphere.
+
+In the winter, the windows are calked and listed, the throat of the
+chimney built up with a tight brick wall, and a close stove is
+introduced to help burn out the vitality of the air. In a sitting-room
+like this, from five to ten persons will spend about eight months of the
+year, with no other ventilation than that gained by the casual opening
+and shutting of doors. Is it any wonder that consumption every year
+sweeps away its thousands?--that people are suffering constant chronic
+ailments,--neuralgia, nervous dyspepsia, and all the host of indefinite
+bad feelings that rob life of sweetness and flower and bloom?
+
+A recent writer raises the inquiry, whether the community would not gain
+in health by the demolition of all dwelling-houses. That is, he suggests
+the question, whether the evils from foul air are not so great and so
+constant, that they countervail the advantages of shelter. Consumptive
+patients far gone have been known to be cured by long journeys, which
+have required them to be day and night in the open air. Sleep under the
+open heaven, even though the person be exposed to the various accidents
+of weather, has often proved a miraculous restorer after everything else
+had failed. But surely, if simple fresh air is so healing and preserving
+a thing, some means might be found to keep the air in a house just as
+pure and vigorous as it is outside.
+
+An article in the May number of "Harpers' Magazine" presents drawings of
+a very simple arrangement by which any house can be made thoroughly
+self-ventilating. Ventilation, as this article shows, consists in two
+things,--a perfect and certain expulsion from the dwelling of all foul
+air breathed from the lungs or arising from any other cause, and the
+constant supply of pure air.
+
+One source of foul air cannot be too much guarded against,--we mean
+imperfect gas-pipes. A want of thoroughness in execution is the sin of
+our American artisans, and very few gas-fixtures are so thoroughly made
+that more or less gas does not escape and mingle with the air of the
+dwelling. There are parlors where plants cannot be made to live, because
+the gas kills them; and yet their occupants do not seem to reflect that
+an air in which a plant cannot live must be dangerous for a human being.
+The very clemency and long-suffering of Nature to those who persistently
+violate her laws is one great cause why men are, physically speaking,
+such sinners as they are. If foul air poisoned at once and completely,
+we should have well-ventilated houses, whatever else we failed to have.
+But because people can go on for weeks, months, and years, breathing
+poisons, and slowly and imperceptibly lowering the tone of their vital
+powers, and yet be what they call "pretty well, I thank you," sermons on
+ventilation and fresh air go by them as an idle song. "I don't see but
+we are well enough, and we never took much pains about these things.
+There's air enough gets into houses, of course. What with doors opening
+and windows occasionally lifted, the air of houses is generally good
+enough";--and so the matter is dismissed.
+
+One of Heaven's great hygienic teachers is now abroad in the world,
+giving lessons on health to the children of men. The cholera is like the
+angel whom God threatened to send as leader to the rebellious
+Israelites. "Beware of him, obey his voice, and provoke him not; for he
+will not pardon your transgressions." The advent of this fearful
+messenger seems really to be made necessary by the contempt with which
+men treat the physical laws of their being. What else could have
+purified the dark places of New York? What a wiping-up and reforming and
+cleansing is going before him through the country! At last we find that
+Nature is in earnest, and that her laws cannot be always ignored with
+impunity. Poisoned air is recognized at last as an evil,--even although
+the poison cannot be weighed, measured, or tasted; and if all the
+precautions that men are now willing to take could be made perpetual,
+the alarm would be a blessing to the world.
+
+Like the principles of spiritual religion, the principles of physical
+religion are few and easy to be understood. An old medical apothegm
+personifies the hygienic forces as the Doctors Air, Diet, Exercise, and
+Quiet; and these four will be found, on reflection, to cover the whole
+ground of what is required to preserve human health. A human being whose
+lungs have always been nourished by pure air, whose stomach has been fed
+only by appropriate food, whose muscles have been systematically trained
+by appropriate exercises, and whose mind is kept tranquil by faith in
+God and a good conscience, has _perfect physical religion_. There is a
+line where physical religion must necessarily overlap spiritual religion
+and rest upon it. No human being can be assured of perfect health,
+through all the strain and wear and tear of such cares and such
+perplexities as life brings, without the rest of _faith in God_. An
+unsubmissive, unconfiding, unresigned soul will make vain the best
+hygienic treatment; and, on the contrary, the most saintly religious
+resolution and purpose maybe defeated and vitiated by an habitual
+ignorance and disregard of the laws of the physical system.
+
+_Perfect_ spiritual religion cannot exist without perfect physical
+religion. Every flaw and defect in the bodily system is just so much
+taken from the spiritual vitality: we are commanded to glorify God, not
+simply in our spirits, but in our _bodies_ and spirits. The only example
+of perfect manhood the world ever saw impresses us more than anything
+else by an atmosphere of perfect healthiness. There is a calmness, a
+steadiness, in the character of Jesus, a naturalness in his evolution of
+the sublimest truths under the strain of the most absorbing and intense
+excitement, that could commonly from the _one_ perfectly trained and
+developed body, bearing as a pure and sacred shrine the One Perfect
+Spirit. Jesus of Nazareth, journeying on foot from city to city, always
+calm yet always fervent, always steady yet glowing with a white heat of
+sacred enthusiasm, able to walk and teach all day and afterwards to
+continue in prayer all night, with unshaken nerves, sedately patient,
+serenely reticent, perfectly self-controlled, walked the earth, the only
+man that perfectly glorified God in his body no less than in his spirit.
+It is worthy of remark, that in choosing his disciples he chose plain
+men from the laboring classes, who had lived the most obediently to the
+simple, unperverted laws of nature. He chose men of good and pure
+bodies,--simple, natural, childlike, healthy men,--and baptized their
+souls with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
+
+The hygienic bearings of the New Testament have never been sufficiently
+understood. The basis of them lies in the solemn declaration, that our
+bodies are to be temples of the Holy Spirit, and that all abuse of them
+is of the nature of sacrilege. Reverence for the physical system, as the
+outward shrine and temple of the spiritual, is the peculiarity of the
+Christian religion. The doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and
+its physical immortality, sets the last crown of honor upon it. That
+bodily system which God declared worthy to be gathered back from the
+dust of the grave, and re-created, as the soul's immortal companion,
+must necessarily be dear and precious in the eyes of its Creator. The
+one passage in the New Testament in which it is spoken of disparagingly
+is where Paul contrasts it with the brighter glory of what is to
+come,--"He shall change our _vile_ bodies, that they may be fashioned
+like his glorious body." From this passage has come abundance of
+reviling of the physical system. Memoirs of good men are full of abuse
+of it, as the clog, the load, the burden, the chain. It is spoken of as
+pollution, as corruption,--in short, one would think that the Creator
+had imitated the cruelty of some Oriental despots who have been known to
+chain a festering corpse to a living body. Accordingly, the memoirs of
+these pious men are also mournful records of slow suicide, wrought by
+the persistent neglect of the most necessary and important laws of the
+bodily system; and the body, outraged and down-trodden, has turned
+traitor to the soul, and played the adversary with fearful power. Who
+can tell the countless temptations to evil which flow in from a
+neglected, disordered, deranged nervous system,--temptations to anger,
+to irritability, to selfishness, to every kind of sin of appetite and
+passion? No wonder that the poor soul longs for the hour of release from
+such a companion.
+
+But that human body which God declares expressly was made to be the
+temple of the Holy Spirit, which he considers worthy to be perpetuated
+by a resurrection and an immortal existence, cannot be intended to be a
+clog and a hindrance to spiritual advancement. A perfect body, working
+in perfect tune and time, would open glimpses of happiness to the soul
+approaching the joys we hope for in heaven. It is only through the
+images of things which our _bodily_ senses have taught us, that we can
+form any conception of that future bliss; and the more perfect these
+senses, the more perfect our conceptions must be.
+
+The conclusion of the whole matter, and the practical application of
+this sermon, is:--First, that all men set themselves to form the idea of
+what perfect health is, and resolve to realize it for themselves and
+their children. Second, that with a view to this they study the religion
+of the body, in such simple and popular treatises as those of George
+Combe, Dr. Dio Lewis, and others, and with simple and honest hearts
+practise what they there learn. Third, that the training of the bodily
+system should form a regular part of our common-school education,--every
+common school being provided with a well-instructed teacher of
+gymnastics; and the growth and development of each pupil's body being as
+much noticed and marked as is now the growth of his mind. The same
+course should be continued and enlarged in colleges and female
+seminaries, which should have professors of hygiene appointed to give
+thorough instruction concerning the laws of health.
+
+And when this is all done, we may hope that crooked spines, pimpled
+faces, sallow complexions, stooping shoulders, and all other signs
+indicating an undeveloped physical vitality, will, in the course of a
+few generations, disappear from the earth, and men will have bodies
+which will glorify God, their great Architect.
+
+The soul of man has got as far as it can without the body. Religion
+herself stops and looks back, waiting for the body to overtake her. The
+soul's great enemy and hindrance can be made her best friend and most
+powerful help; and it is high time that this era were begun. We old
+sinners, who have lived carelessly, and almost spent our day of grace,
+may not gain much of its good; but the children,--shall there not be a
+more perfect day for them? Shall there not come a day when the little
+child, whom Christ set forth to his disciples as the type of the
+greatest in the kingdom of heaven, shall be the type no less of our
+physical than our spiritual advancement,--when men and women shall
+arise, keeping through long and happy lives the simple, unperverted
+appetites, the joyous freshness of spirit, the keen delight in mere
+existence, the dreamless sleep and happy waking of early childhood?
+
+
+
+
+GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+The bill was paid; the black horse saddled and brought round to the
+door. Mr. and Mrs. Vint stood bare-headed to honor the parting guest;
+and the latter offered him the stirrup-cup.
+
+Griffith looked round for Mercy. She was nowhere to be seen.
+
+Then he said, piteously, to Mrs. Vint, "What, not even bid me good by?"
+
+Mrs. Vint replied, in a very low voice, that there was no disrespect
+intended. "The truth is, sir, she could not trust herself to see you go;
+but she bade me give you a message. Says she, 'Mother, tell him I pray
+God to bless him, go where he will.'"
+
+Something rose in Griffith's throat "O Dame!" said he, "if she only knew
+the truth, she would think better of me than she does. God bless her!"
+
+And he rode sorrowfully away, alone in the world once more.
+
+At the first turn in the road, he wheeled his horse, and took a last
+lingering look.
+
+There was nothing vulgar, nor inn-like, in the "Packhorse." It stood
+fifty yards from the road, on a little rural green, and was picturesque
+itself. The front was entirely clad with large-leaved ivy. Shutters
+there were none: the windows, with their diamond panes, were lustrous
+squares, set like great eyes in the green ivy. It looked a pretty,
+peaceful retreat, and in it Griffith had found peace and a dove-like
+friend.
+
+He sighed, and rode away from the sight; not raging and convulsed, as
+when he rode from Hernshaw Castle, but somewhat sick at heart, and very
+heavy.
+
+He paced so slowly that it took him a quarter of an hour to reach the
+"Woodman,"--a wayside inn, not two miles distant. As he went by, a
+farmer hailed him from the porch, and insisted on drinking with him; for
+he was very popular in the neighborhood. Whilst they were thus employed,
+who should come out but Paul Carrick, booted and spurred, and flushed in
+the face, and rather the worse for liquor imbibed on the spot.
+
+"So you are going, are ye?" said he. "A good job, too." Then, turning to
+the other, "Master Gutteridge, never you save a man's life, if you can
+anyways help it. I saved this one's; and what does he do but turn round
+and poison my sweetheart against me?"
+
+"How can you say so?" remonstrated Griffith. "I never belied you. Your
+name scarce ever passed my lips."
+
+"Don't tell me," said Carrick. "However, she has come to her senses, and
+given your worship the sack. Ride you into Cumberland, and I to the
+'Packhorse,' and take my own again."
+
+With this, he unhooked his nag from the wall, and clattered off to the
+"Packhorse."
+
+Griffith sat a moment stupefied, and then his face was convulsed by his
+ruling passion. He wheeled his horse, gave him the spur, and galloped
+after Carrick.
+
+He soon came up with him, and yelled in his ear, "I'll teach you to spit
+your wormwood in my cup of sorrow."
+
+Carrick shook his fist defiantly, and spurred his horse in turn.
+
+It was an exciting race, and a novel one, but soon decided. The great
+black hunter went ahead, and still improved his advantage. Carrick,
+purple with rage, was full a quarter of a mile behind, when Griffith
+dashed furiously into the stable of the "Packhorse," and, leaving Black
+Dick panting and covered with foam, ran in search of Mercy.
+
+The girl told him she was in the dairy. He looked in at the window, and
+there she was with her mother. With instinctive sense and fortitude she
+had fled to work. She was trying to churn; but it would not do: she had
+laid her shapely arm on the churn, and her head on it, and was crying.
+
+Mrs. Vint was praising Carrick, and offering homely consolation.
+
+"Ah, mother," sighed Mercy, "I could have made him happy. He does not
+know that; and he has turned his back on content. What will become of
+him?"
+
+Griffith heard no more. He went round to the front door, and rushed in.
+
+"Take your own way, Dame," said he, in great agitation. "Put up the
+banns when you like. Sweetheart, wilt wed with me? I'll make thee the
+best husband I can."
+
+Mercy screamed faintly, and lifted up her hands; then she blushed and
+trembled to her very finger ends; but it ended in smiles of joy and her
+brow upon his shoulder.
+
+In which attitude, with Mrs. Vint patting him approvingly on the back,
+they were surprised by Paul Carrick. He came to the door, and there
+stood aghast.
+
+The young man stared ruefully at the picture, and then said, very dryly,
+"I'm too late, methinks."
+
+"That you be, Paul," said Mrs. Vint, cheerfully. "She is meat for your
+master."
+
+"Don't--you--never--come to me--to save your life--no more," blubbered
+Paul, breaking down all of a sudden.
+
+He then retired, little heeded, and came no more to the "Packhorse" for
+several days.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+It is desirable that improper marriages should never be solemnized; and
+the Christian Church saw this, many hundred years ago, and ordained
+that, before a marriage, the banns should be cried in a church three
+Sundays, and any person there present might forbid the union of the
+parties, and allege the just impediment.
+
+This precaution was feeble, but not wholly inadequate--in the Middle
+Ages; for we know by good evidence that the priest was often interrupted
+and the banns forbidden.
+
+But in modern days the banns are never forbidden; in other words, the
+precautionary measure that has come down to us from the thirteenth
+century is out of date and useless. It rests, indeed, on an estimate of
+publicity that has become childish, and almost asinine. If persons about
+to marry were compelled to inscribe their names and descriptions in a
+Matrimonial Weekly Gazette, and a copy of this were placed on a desk in
+ten thousand churches, perhaps we might stop one lady per annum from
+marrying her husband's brother, and one gentleman from wedding his
+neighbor's wife. But the crying of banns in a single parish church is a
+waste of the people's time and the parson's breath.
+
+And so it proved in Griffith Gaunt's case. The Rev. William Wentworth
+published, in the usual recitative, the banns of marriage between Thomas
+Leicester, of the parish of Marylebone in London, and Mercy Vint,
+spinster, of _this_ parish; and creation, present _ex hypothesi
+mediaevale_, but absent in fact, assented, by silence, to the union.
+
+So Thomas Leicester wedded Mercy Vint, and took her home to the
+"Packhorse."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It would be well if those who stifle their consciences, and commit
+crimes, would set up a sort of medico-moral diary, and record their
+symptoms minutely day by day. Such records might help to clear away some
+vague conventional notions.
+
+To tell the truth, our hero, and now malefactor, (the combination is of
+high antiquity,) enjoyed, for several months, the peace of mind that
+belongs of right to innocence; and his days passed in a state of smooth
+complacency. Mercy was a good, wise, and tender wife; she naturally
+looked up to him after marriage more than she did before; she studied
+his happiness, as she had never studied her own; she mastered his
+character, admired his good qualities, discerned his weaknesses, but did
+not view them as defects; only as little traits to be watched, lest she
+should give pain to "her master," as she called him.
+
+Affection, in her, took a more obsequious form than it could ever assume
+in Kate Peyton. And yet she had great influence, and softly governed
+"her master" for his good. She would come into the room and take away
+the bottle, if he was committing excess; but she had a way of doing it,
+so like a good, but resolute mother, and so unlike a termagant, that he
+never resisted. Upon the whole, she nursed his mind, as in earlier days
+she had nursed his body.
+
+And then she made him so comfortable: she observed him minutely to that
+end. As is the eye of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so Mercy
+Leicester's dove-like eye was ever watching "her master's" face, to
+learn the minutest features of his mind.
+
+One evening he came in tired, and there was a black fire in the parlor.
+His countenance fell the sixteenth of an inch. You and I, sir, should
+never have noticed it. But Mercy did, and, ever after, there was a clear
+fire when he came in.
+
+She noted, too, that he loved to play the _viol da gambo_, but disliked
+the trouble of tuning it. So then she tuned it for him.
+
+When he came home at night, early or late, he was sure to find a dry
+pair of shoes on the rug, his six-stringed viol tuned to a hair, a
+bright fire, and a brighter wife, smiling and radiant at his coming, and
+always neat; for, said she, "Shall I don my bravery for strangers, and
+not for my Thomas, that is the best of company?"
+
+They used to go to church, and come back together, hand in hand like
+lovers; for the arm was rarely given in those days. And Griffith said to
+himself every Sunday, "What a comfort to have a Protestant wife!"
+
+But one day he was off his guard, and called her "Kate, my dear."
+
+"Who is Kate?" said she softly, but with a degree of trouble and
+intelligence that made him tremble.
+
+"No matter," said he, all in a flutter. Then, solemnly, "Whoever she
+was, she is dead,--dead."
+
+"Ah!" said Mercy, very tenderly and solemnly, and under her breath. "You
+loved her; yet she must die." She paused; then, in a tone so exquisite I
+can only call it an angel's whisper, "Poor Kate!"
+
+Griffith groaned aloud. "For God's sake, never mention that name to me
+again. Let me forget she ever lived. She was not the true friend to me
+that you have been."
+
+Mercy replied, softly, "Say not so, Thomas. You loved her well. Her
+death had all but cost me thine. Ah, well! we cannot all be the first. I
+am not very jealous, for my part; and I thank God for 't. Thou art a
+dear good husband to me, and that is enow."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Paul Carrick, unable to break off his habits, came to the "Packhorse"
+now and then; but Mercy protected her husband's heart from pain. She was
+kind, and even pitiful; but so discreet and resolute, and contrived to
+draw the line so clearly between her husband and her old sweetheart,
+that Griffith's foible could not burn him, for want of fuel.
+
+And so passed several months, and the man's heart was at peace. He could
+not love Mercy passionately as he had loved Kate; but he was full of
+real regard and esteem for her. It was one of those gentle, clinging
+attachments that outlast grand passions, and survive till death; a
+tender, pure affection, though built upon a crime.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They had been married, and lived in sweet content, about three quarters
+of a year--when trouble came; but in a vulgar form. A murrain carried
+off several of Harry Vint's cattle; and it then came out that he had
+purchased six of them on credit, and had been induced to set his hand
+to bills of exchange for them. His rent was also behind, and, in fact,
+his affairs were in a desperate condition.
+
+He hid it as long as he could from them all; but at last, being served
+with a process for debt, and threatened with a distress and an
+execution, he called a family council and exposed the real state of
+things.
+
+Mrs. Vint rated him soundly for keeping all this secret so long.
+
+He whom they called Thomas Leicester remonstrated with him. "Had you
+told me in time," said he, "I had not paid forfeit for 'The Vine,' but
+settled there, and given you a home."
+
+Mercy said never a word but "Poor father!"
+
+As the peril drew nearer, the conversations became more animated and
+agitated, and soon the old people took to complaining of Thomas
+Leicester to his wife.
+
+"Thou hast married a gentleman; and he hath not the heart to lift a hand
+to save thy folk from ruin."
+
+"Say not so," pleaded Mercy: "to be sure he hath the heart, but not the
+means. 'T was but yestreen he bade me sell his jewels for you. But,
+mother, I think they belonged to some one he loved,--and she died. So,
+poor thing, how could I? Then, if you love me, blame me, and not him."
+
+"Jewels, quotha! will they stop such a gap as ours?" was the
+contemptuous reply.
+
+From complaining of him behind his back, the old people soon came to
+launching innuendoes obliquely at him. Here is one specimen out of a
+dozen.
+
+"Wife, if our Mercy had wedded one of her own sort, mayhap he'd have
+helped us a bit."
+
+"Ay, poor soul; and she so near her time: if the bailiffs come down on
+us next month, 'tis my belief we shall lose her, as well as house and
+home."
+
+The false Thomas Leicester let them run on, in dogged silence; but every
+word was a stab.
+
+And one day, when he had been baited sore with hints, he turned round on
+them fiercely, and said: "Did I get you into this mess? It's all your
+own doing. Learn to see your own faults, and not be so hard on one that
+has been the best servant you ever had, gentleman or not."
+
+Men can resist the remonstrances that wound them, and so irritate them,
+better than they can those gentle appeals that rouse no anger, but
+soften the whole heart. The old people stung him; but Mercy, without
+design, took a surer way. She never said a word; but sometimes, when the
+discussions were at their height, she turned her dove-like eyes on him,
+with a look so loving, so humbly inquiring, so timidly imploring, that
+his heart melted within him.
+
+Ah, that is a true touch of nature and genuine observation of the sexes,
+in the old song,--
+
+    "My feyther urged me sair;
+      My mither didna speak;
+    But she looked me in the face,
+      Till my hairt was like to break."
+
+These silent, womanly, imploring looks of patient Mercy were mightier
+than argument or invective.
+
+The man knew all along where to get money, and how to get it. He had
+only to go to Hernshaw Castle. But his very soul shuddered at the idea.
+However, for Mercy's sake, he took the first step; he compelled himself
+to look the thing in the face, and discuss it with himself. A few months
+ago he could not have done even this,--he loved his lawful wife too
+much; hated her too much. But now, Mercy and Time had blunted both those
+passions; and he could ask himself whether he could not encounter Kate
+and her priest without any very violent emotion.
+
+When they first set up house together, he had spent his whole fortune, a
+sum of two thousand pounds, on repairing and embellishing Hernshaw
+Castle and grounds. Since she had driven him out of the house, he had a
+clear right to have back the money; and he now resolved he would have
+it; but what he wanted was to get it without going to the place in
+person.
+
+And now Mercy's figure, as well as her imploring looks, moved him
+greatly. She was in that condition which appeals to a man's humanity and
+masculine pity, as well as to his affection. To use the homely words of
+Scripture, she was great with child, and in that condition moved slowly
+about him, filling his pipe, and laying his slippers, and ministering to
+all his little comforts; she would make no difference: and when he saw
+the poor dove move about him so heavily, and rather languidly, yet so
+zealously and tenderly, the man's very bowels yearned over her, and he
+felt as if he could die to do her a service.
+
+So, one day, when she was standing by him, bending over his little round
+table, and filling his pipe with her neat hand, he took her by the other
+hand and drew her gently on his knee, her burden and all. "Child!" said
+he, "do not thou fret. I know how to get money; and I'll do 't, for thy
+sake."
+
+"I know that," said she, softly; "can I not read thy face by this time?"
+and so laid her cheek to his. "But, Thomas, for my sake, get it
+honestly,--or not at all," said she, still filling his pipe, with her
+cheek to his.
+
+"I'll but take back my own," said he; "fear naught."
+
+But, after thus positively pledging himself to Mercy, he became
+thoughtful and rather fretful; for he was still most averse to go to
+Hernshaw, and yet could hit upon no other way; since to employ an agent
+would be to let out that he had committed bigamy, and so risk his own
+neck, and break Mercy's heart.
+
+After all his scale was turned by his foible.
+
+Mrs. Vint had been weak enough to confide her trouble to a friend: it
+was all over the parish in three days.
+
+Well, one day, in the kitchen of the Inn, Paul Carrick, having drunk two
+pints of good ale, said to Vint, "Landlord, you ought to have married
+her to me, I've got two hundred pounds laid by. I'd have pulled you out
+of the mire, and welcome."
+
+"Would you, though, Paul?" said Harry Vint; "then, by G--, I wish I
+had."
+
+Now Carrick bawled that out, and Griffith, who was at the door, heard
+it.
+
+He walked into the kitchen, ghastly pale, and spoke to Harry Vint first.
+
+"I take your inn, your farm, and your debts on me," said he; "not one
+without t' other."
+
+"Spoke like a man!" cried the landlord, joyfully; "and so be it--before
+these witnesses."
+
+Griffith turned on Carrick: "This house is mine. Get out on 't, ye
+_jealous_, mischief-making cur." And he took him by the collar and
+dragged him furiously out of the place, and sent him whirling into the
+middle of the road; then ran back for his hat and flung it out after
+him.
+
+This done, he sat down boiling, and his eyes roved fiercely round the
+room in search of some other antagonist. But his strength was so great,
+and his face so altered with this sudden spasm of reviving jealousy,
+that nobody cared to provoke him further.
+
+After a while, however, Harry Vint muttered dryly, "There goes one good
+customer."
+
+Griffith took him up sternly: "If your debts are to be mine, your trade
+shall be mine too, that you had not the head to conduct."
+
+"So be it, son-in-law," said the old man; "only you go so fast: you do
+take possession afore you pays the fee."
+
+Griffith winced. "That shall be the last of your taunts, old man." He
+turned to the ostler: "Bill, give Black Dick his oats at sunrise; and in
+ten days at furthest I'll pay every shilling this house and farm do owe.
+Now, Master White, you'll put in hand a new sign-board for this inn; a
+fresh 'Packhorse,' and paint him jet black, with one white hoof (instead
+of chocolate), in honor of my nag Dick; and in place of Harry Vint
+you'll put in Thomas Leicester. See that is done against I come back,
+or come _you_ here no more."
+
+Soon after this scene he retired to tell Mercy; and, on his departure,
+the suppressed tongues went like mill-clacks.
+
+Dick came round saddled at peep of day; but Mercy had been up more than
+an hour, and prepared her man's breakfast. She clung to him at parting,
+and cried a little; and whispered something in his ear, for nobody else
+to hear: it was an entreaty that he would not be long gone, lest he
+should be far from her in the hour of her peril.
+
+Thereupon he promised her, and kissed her tenderly, and bade her be of
+good heart; and so rode away northwards with dogged resolution.
+
+As soon as he was gone, Mercy's tears flowed without restraint.
+
+Her father set himself to console her. "Thy good man," he said, "is but
+gone back to the high road for a night or two, to follow his trade of
+'stand and deliver.' Fear naught, child; his pistols are well primed: I
+saw to that myself; and his horse is the fleetest in the county. You'll
+have him back in three days, and money in both pockets. I warrant you
+his is a better trade than mine; and he is a fool to change it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Griffith was two days upon the road, and all that time he was turning
+over and discussing in his mind how he should conduct the disagreeable
+but necessary business he had undertaken.
+
+He determined, at last, to make the visit one of business only: no heat,
+no reproaches. That lovely, hateful woman might continue to dishonor his
+name, for he had himself abandoned it. He would not deign to receive any
+money that was hers; but his own two thousand pounds he would have; and
+two or three hundred on the spot by way of instalment. And, with these
+hard views, he drew near to Hernshaw; but the nearer he got, the slower
+he went; for what at a distance had seemed tolerably easy began to get
+more and more difficult and repulsive. Moreover, his heart, which he
+thought he had steeled, began now to flutter a little, and somehow to
+shudder at the approaching interview.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+Caroline Ryder went to the gate of the Grove, and stayed there two
+hours; but, of course, no Griffith came.
+
+She returned the next night, and the next; and then she gave it up, and
+awaited an explanation. None came, and she was bitterly disappointed,
+and indignant.
+
+She began to hate Griffith, and to conceive a certain respect, and even
+a tepid friendship, for the other woman he had insulted.
+
+Another clew to this change of feeling is to be found in a word she let
+drop in talking to another servant. "My mistress," said she, "bears it
+_like a man_."
+
+In fact, Mrs. Gaunt's conduct at this period was truly noble.
+
+She suffered months of torture, months of grief; but the high-spirited
+creature hid it from the world, and maintained a sad but high composure.
+
+She wore her black, for she said, "How do I know he is alive?" She
+retrenched her establishment, reduced her expenses two thirds, and
+busied herself in works of charity and religion.
+
+Her desolate condition attracted a gentleman who had once loved her, and
+now esteemed and pitied her profoundly,--Sir George Neville.
+
+He was still unmarried, and she was the cause; so far at least as this:
+she had put him out of conceit with the other ladies at that period when
+he had serious thoughts of marriage: and the inclination to marry at all
+had not since returned.
+
+If the Gaunts had settled at Boulton, Sir George would have been their
+near neighbor; but Neville's Court was nine miles from Hernshaw Castle:
+and when they met, which was not very often, Mrs. Gaunt was on her guard
+to give Griffith no shadow of uneasiness. She was therefore rather more
+dignified and distant with Sir George than her own inclination and his
+merits would have prompted; for he was a superior and very agreeable
+man.
+
+When it became quite certain that her husband had left her, Sir George
+rode up to Hernshaw Castle, and called upon her.
+
+She begged to be excused from seeing him.
+
+Now Sir George was universally courted, and this rather nettled him;
+however, he soon learned that she received nobody except a few religious
+friends of her own sex.
+
+Sir George then wrote her a letter that did him credit: it was full of
+worthy sentiment and good sense. For instance, he said he desired to
+intrude his friendly offices and his sympathy upon her, but nothing
+more. Time had cured him of those warmer feelings which had once ruffled
+his peace; but Time could not efface his tender esteem for the lady he
+had loved in his youth, nor his profound respect for her character.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt wept over his gentle letter, and was on the verge of asking
+herself why she had chosen Griffith instead of this chevalier. She sent
+him a sweet, yet prudent reply; she did not encourage him to visit her;
+but said, that, if ever she should bring herself to receive visits from
+the gentlemen of the county during her husband's absence, he should be
+the first to know it. She signed herself his unhappy, but deeply
+grateful, servant and friend.
+
+One day, as she came out of a poor woman's cottage, with a little basket
+on her arm, which she had emptied in the cottage, she met Sir George
+Neville full.
+
+He took his hat off, and made her a profound bow. He was then about to
+ride on, but altered his mind, and, dismounted to speak to her.
+
+The interview was constrained at first; but erelong he ventured to tell
+her she really ought to consult with some old friend and practical man
+like himself. He would undertake to scour the country, and find her
+husband, if he was above ground.
+
+"Me go a-hunting the man," cried she, turning red; "not if he was my
+king as well as my husband. He knows where to find _me_; and that is
+enough."
+
+"Well, but madam, would you not like to learn where he is, and what he
+is doing?"
+
+"Why, yes, my good, kind friend, I _should_ like to know that." And,
+having pronounced these words with apparent calmness, she burst out
+crying, and almost ran away from him.
+
+Sir George looked sadly after her, and formed a worthy resolution. He
+saw there was but one road to her regard. He resolved to hunt her
+husband for her, without intruding on her, or giving her a voice in the
+matter. Sir George was a magistrate, and accustomed to organize
+inquiries; spite of the length of time that had elapsed, he traced
+Griffith for a considerable distance. Pending further inquiries, he sent
+Mrs. Gaunt word that the truant had not made for the sea, but had gone
+due south.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt returned him her warm thanks for this scrap of information.
+So long as Griffith remained in the island there was always a hope he
+might return to her. The money he had taken would soon be exhausted; and
+poverty might drive him to her; and she was so far humbled by grief,
+that she could welcome him even on those terms.
+
+Affliction tempers the proud. Mrs. Gaunt was deeply injured as well as
+insulted; but, for all that, in her many days and weeks of solitude and
+sorrow, she took herself to task, and saw her fault. She became more
+gentle, more considerate of her servants' feelings, more womanly.
+
+For many months she could not enter "the Grove." The spirited woman's
+very flesh revolted at the sight of the place where she had been
+insulted and abandoned. But, as she went deeper in religion, she forced
+herself to go to the gate and look in, and say out loud, "I gave the
+first offence," and then she would go in-doors again, quivering with
+the internal conflict.
+
+Finally, being a Catholic, and therefore attaching more value to
+self-torture than we do, the poor soul made this very grove her place of
+penance. Once a week she had the fortitude to drag herself to the very
+spot where Griffith had denounced her; and there she would kneel and
+pray for him and for herself. And certainly, if humility and
+self-abasement were qualities of the body, here was to be seen their
+picture; for her way was to set her crucifix up at the foot of a tree;
+then to bow herself all down, between kneeling and lying, and put her
+lips meekly to the foot of the crucifix, and so pray long and earnestly.
+
+Now, one day, while she was thus crouching in prayer, a gentleman,
+booted and spurred and splashed, drew near, with hesitating steps. She
+was so absorbed, she did not hear those steps at all till they were very
+near; but then she trembled all over; for her delicate ear recognized a
+manly tread she had not heard for many a day. She dared not move nor
+look, for she thought it was a mere sound, sent to her by Heaven to
+comfort her.
+
+But the next moment a well-known mellow voice came like a thunder-clap,
+it shook her so.
+
+"Forgive me, my good dame, but I desire to know--"
+
+The question went no further, for Kate Gaunt sprang to her feet, with a
+loud scream, and stood glaring at Griffith Gaunt, and he at her.
+
+And thus husband and wife met again,--met, by some strange caprice of
+Destiny, on the very spot where they had parted so horribly.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+The gaze these two persons bent on one another may be half imagined: it
+can never be described.
+
+Griffith spoke first. "In black!" said he, in a whisper.
+
+His voice was low; his face, though pale and grim, had not the terrible
+aspect he wore at parting.
+
+So she thought he had come back in an amicable spirit; and she flew to
+him, with a cry of love, and threw her arm round his neck, and panted on
+his shoulder.
+
+At this reception, and the tremulous contact of one he had loved so
+dearly, a strange shudder ran through his frame,--a shudder that marked
+his present repugnance, yet indicated her latent power.
+
+He himself felt he had betrayed some weakness; and it was all the worse
+for her. He caught her wrist and put her from him, not roughly, but with
+a look of horror. "The day is gone by for that, madam," he gasped. Then,
+sternly: "Think you I came here to play the credulous husband?"
+
+Mrs. Gaunt drew back in her turn, and faltered out, "What! come back
+here, and not sorry for what you have done? not the least sorry? O my
+heart! you have almost broken it."
+
+"Prithee, no more of this," said Griffith, sternly. "You and I are
+naught to one another now, and forever. But there, you are but a woman,
+and I did not come to quarrel with you." And he fixed his eyes on the
+ground.
+
+"Thank God for that," faltered Mrs. Gaunt. "O sir, the sight of you--the
+thought of what you were to me once--till jealousy blinded you. Lend me
+your arm, if you are a man; my limbs do fail me."
+
+The shock had been too much; a pallor overspread her lovely features,
+her knees knocked together, and she was tottering like some tender tree
+cut down, when Griffith, who, with all his faults, was a man, put out
+his strong arm, and she clung to it, quivering all over, and weeping
+hysterically.
+
+That little hand, with its little feminine clutch, trembling on his arm,
+raised a certain male compassion for her piteous condition; and he
+bestowed a few cold, sad words of encouragement on her. "Come, come,"
+said he, gently; "I shall not trouble you long. I'm cured of my
+jealousy. 'T is gone, along with my love. You and your saintly sinner
+are safe from me. I am come hither for my own, my two thousand pounds,
+and for nothing more."
+
+"Ah! you are come back for money, not for me?" she murmured, with forced
+calmness.
+
+"For money, and not for you, of course," said he, coldly.
+
+The words were hardly out of his mouth, when the proud lady flung his
+arm from her. "Then money shall you have, and not me; nor aught of me
+but my contempt."
+
+But she could not carry it off as heretofore. She turned her back
+haughtily on him; but, at the first step, she burst out crying, "Come,
+and I'll give you what you are come for," she sobbed. "Ungrateful!
+heartless! O, how little I knew this man!"
+
+She crept away before him, drooping her head, and crying bitterly; and
+he followed her, hanging his head, and ill at ease; for there was such
+true passion in her voice, her streaming eyes, and indeed in her whole
+body, that he was moved, and the part he was playing revolted him. He
+felt confused and troubled, and asked himself how on earth it was that
+she, the guilty one, contrived to appear the injured one, and made him,
+the wronged one, feel almost remorseful.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Gaunt took no more notice of him now than if he had been a dog
+following at her heels. She went into the drawing-room, and sank
+helplessly on the nearest couch, threw her head wearily back, and shut
+her eyes. Yet the tears trickled through the closed lids.
+
+Griffith caught up a hand-bell, and rang it vigorously.
+
+Quick, light steps were soon heard pattering; and in darted Caroline
+Ryder, with an anxious face; for of late she had conceived a certain
+sober regard for her mistress, who had ceased to be her successful
+rival, and who bore her grief _like a man_.
+
+At sight of Griffith, Ryder screamed aloud, and stood panting.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt opened her eyes. "Ay, child, he has come home," said she,
+bitterly; "his body, but not his heart."
+
+She stretched her hand out feebly, and pointed to a bottle of salts that
+stood on the table. Ryder ran and put them to her nostrils. Mrs. Gaunt
+whispered in her ear, "Send a swift horse for Father Francis; tell him
+life or death!"
+
+Ryder gave her a very intelligent look, and presently slipped out, and
+ran into the stable-yard.
+
+At the gate she caught sight of Griffith's horse. What does this
+quick-witted creature do but send the groom off on that horse, and not
+on Mrs. Gaunt's.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Now, Dame," said Griffith, doggedly, "are you better?"
+
+"Ay, I thank you."
+
+"Then listen to me. When you and I set up house together, I had two
+thousand pounds. I spent it on this house. The house is yours. You told
+me so, one day, you know."
+
+"Ah, you can remember my faults."
+
+"I remember all, Kate."
+
+"Thank you, at least, for calling me Kate. Well, Griffith, since you
+abandoned us, I thought, and thought, and thought, of all that might
+befall you; and I said, 'What will he do for money?' My jewels, that you
+did me the honor to take, would not last you long, I feared. So I
+reduced my expenses three fourths at least, and I put by some money for
+your need."
+
+Griffith looked amazed. "For my need?" said he.
+
+"For whose else? I'll send for it, and place it in your
+hands--to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow? Why not to-day?"
+
+"I have a favor to ask of you first."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"Justice. If you are fond of money, I too have something I prize: my
+honor. You have belied and insulted me, sir; but I know you were under a
+delusion. I mean to remove that delusion, and make you see how little I
+am to blame; for, alas! I own I was imprudent. But, O Griffith, as I
+hope to be saved, it was the imprudence of innocence and
+over-confidence."
+
+"Mistress," said Griffith, in a stern, yet agitated voice, "be advised,
+and leave all this: rouse not a man's sleeping wrath. Let bygones be
+bygones."
+
+Mrs. Gaunt rose, and said, faintly, "So be it. I must go, sir, and give
+some orders for your entertainment."
+
+"O, don't put yourself about for me," said Griffith: "I am not the
+master of this house."
+
+Mrs. Gaunt's lip trembled, but she was a match for him. "Then are you my
+guest," said she; "and my credit is concerned in your comfort."
+
+She made him a courtesy, as if he were a stranger, and marched to the
+door, concealing, with great pride and art, a certain trembling of her
+knees.
+
+At the door she found Ryder, and bade her follow, much to that lady's
+disappointment; for she desired a _tete-a-tete_ with Griffith, and an
+explanation.
+
+As soon as the two women were out of Griffith's hearing, the mistress
+laid her hand on the servant's arm, and, giving way to her feelings,
+said, all in a flutter: "Child, if I have been a good mistress to thee,
+show it now. Help me keep him in the house till Father Francis comes."
+
+"I undertake to do so much," said Ryder, firmly. "Leave it to me,
+mistress."
+
+Mrs. Gaunt threw her arms round Ryder's neck and kissed her.
+
+It was done so ardently, and by a woman hitherto so dignified and proud,
+that Ryder was taken by surprise, and almost affected.
+
+As for the service Mrs. Gaunt had asked of her, it suited her own
+designs.
+
+"Mistress," said she, "be ruled by me; keep out of his way a bit, while
+I get Miss Rose ready. You understand."
+
+"Ah! I have one true friend in the house," said poor Mrs. Gaunt. She
+then confided in Ryder, and went away to give her own orders for
+Griffith's reception.
+
+Ryder found little Rose, dressed her to perfection, and told her her
+dear papa was come home. She then worked upon the child's mind in that
+subtle way known to women, so that Rose went down stairs loaded and
+primed, though no distinct instructions had been given her.
+
+As for Griffith, he walked up and down, uneasy; and wished he had stayed
+at the "Packhorse." He had not bargained for all these emotions; the
+peace of mind he had enjoyed for some months seemed trickling away.
+
+"Mercy, my dear," said he to himself, "'t will be a dear penny to me, I
+doubt."
+
+Then he went to the window, and looked at the lawn, and sighed. Then he
+sat down, and thought of the past.
+
+Whilst he sat thus moody, the door opened very softly, and a little
+cherubic face, with blue eyes and golden hair, peeped in. Griffith
+started. "Ah!" cried Rose, with a joyful scream; and out flew her little
+arms, and away she came, half running, half dancing, and was on his knee
+in a moment, with her arms round his neck.
+
+"Papa! papa!" she cried. "O my dear, dear, dear, darling papa!" And she
+kissed and patted his cheek again and again.
+
+Her innocent endearments moved him to tears. "My pretty angel!" he
+sighed: "my lamb!"
+
+"How your heart beats! Don't cry, dear papa. Nobody is dead: only we
+thought you were. I'm so glad you are come home alive. Now we can take
+off this nasty black: I hate it."
+
+"What, 't is for me you wear it, pretty one?"
+
+"Ay. Mamma made us. Poor mamma has been so unhappy. And that reminds me:
+you are a wicked man, papa. But I love you all one for that. It _tis_ so
+dull when everybody is good like mamma; and she makes me dreadfully good
+too; but now you are come back, there will be a little, little
+wickedness again, it is to be hoped. Aren't you glad you are not dead,
+and are come home instead? I am."
+
+"I am glad I have seen thee. Come, take my hand, and let us go look at
+the old place."
+
+"Ay. But you must wait till I get on my new hat and feather."
+
+"Nay, nay; art pretty enough bare-headed."
+
+"O papa! but I must, for decency. You are company now; you know."
+
+"Dull company, sweetheart, thou 'lt find me."
+
+"I don't mean that: I mean, when you were here always, you were only
+papa; but now you come once in an age, you're COMPANY. I won't budge
+without 'em; so there, now."
+
+"Well, little one, I do submit to thy hat and feather; only be quick, or
+I shall go forth without thee."
+
+"If you dare," said Rose impetuously; "for I won't be half a moment."
+
+She ran and extorted from Ryder the new hat and feather, which by rights
+she was not to have worn until next month.
+
+Griffith and his little girl went all over the well-known premises, he
+sad and moody, she excited and chattering, and nodding her head down,
+and cocking her eye up every now and then, to get a glimpse of her
+feather.
+
+"And don't you go away again, dear papa. It _tis_ so dull without you.
+Nobody comes here. Mamma won't let 'em."
+
+"Nobody except Father Leonard," said Griffith, bitterly.
+
+"Father Leonard? Why, he never comes here. Leonard! That is the
+beautiful priest that used to pat me on the head, and bid me love and
+honor my parents. And so I do. Only mamma is always crying, and you keep
+away; so how can I love and honor you, when I never see you, and they
+keep telling me you are good for nothing, and dead."
+
+"My young mistress, when did you see Father Leonard last?" said
+Griffith, gnawing his lip.
+
+"How can I tell? Why, it was miles ago; when I was a mere girl. You know
+he went away before you did."
+
+"I know nothing of the kind. Tell me the truth now. He has visited here
+since I went away."
+
+"Nay, papa."
+
+"That is strange. She visits him, then?"
+
+"What, mamma? She seldom stirs out; and never beyond the village. We
+keep no carriage now. Mamma is turned such a miser. She is afraid you
+will be poor; so she puts it all by for you. But now you are come, we
+shall have carriages and things again. O, by the by, Father Leonard! I
+heard them say he had left England, so I did."
+
+"When was that?"
+
+"Well, I think that was a little bit after you went away."
+
+"That is strange," said Griffith, thoughtfully.
+
+He led his little girl by the hand, but scarcely listened to her
+prattle; he was so surprised and puzzled by the information he had
+elicited from her.
+
+Upon the whole, however, he concluded that his wife and the priest had
+perhaps been smitten with remorse, and had parted--when it was too late.
+
+This, and the peace of mind he had found elsewhere, somewhat softened
+his feelings towards them. "So," thought he, "they were not hardened
+creatures after all. Poor Kate!"
+
+As these milder feelings gained on him, Rose suddenly uttered a joyful
+cry; and, looking up, he saw Mrs. Gaunt coming towards him, and Ryder
+behind her. Both were in gay colors, which, in fact, was what had so
+delighted Rose.
+
+They came up, and Mrs. Gaunt seemed a changed woman. She looked young
+and beautiful, and bent a look of angelic affection on her daughter; and
+said to Griffith, "Is she not grown? Is she not lovely? Sure you will
+never desert her again."
+
+"'T was not her I deserted, but her mother; and she had played me false
+with her d----d priest," was Griffith's reply.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt drew back with horror. "This, before my girl?" she cried.
+"GRIFFITH GAUNT, YOU LIE!"
+
+And this time it was the woman who menaced the man. She rose to six
+feet high, and advanced on him with her great gray eyes flashing flames
+at him. "O that I were a man!" she cried: "this insult should be the
+last. I'd lay you dead at her feet and mine."
+
+Griffith actually drew back a step; for the wrath of such a woman was
+terrible,--more terrible perhaps to a brave man than to a coward.
+
+Then he put his hands in his pockets with a dogged air, and said,
+grinding his teeth, "But--as you are not a man, and I'm not a woman, we
+can't settle it that way. So I give you the last word, and good day. I'm
+sore in want of money; but I find I can't pay the price it is like to
+cost me. Farewell."
+
+"Begone!" said Mrs. Gaunt: "and, this time, forever. Ruffian, and fool,
+I loathe the sight of you."
+
+Rose ran weeping to her. "O mamma, don't quarrel with papa": then back
+to Griffith, "O papa, don't quarrel with mamma,--for my sake."
+
+Griffith hung his head, and said, in a broken voice: "No, my lamb, we
+twain must not quarrel before thee. We will part in silence, as becomes
+those that once were dear, and have thee to show for 't. Madam, I wish
+you all health and happiness. Adieu."
+
+He turned on his heel; and Mrs. Gaunt took Rose to her knees, and bent
+and wept over her. Niobe over her last was not more graceful, nor more
+sad.
+
+As for Ryder, she stole quietly after her retiring master. She found him
+peering about, and asked him demurely what he was looking for.
+
+"My good black horse, girl, to take me from this cursed place. Did I not
+tie him to yon gate?"
+
+"The black horse? Why I sent him for Father Francis. Nay, listen to me,
+master; you know I was always your friend, and hard upon _her_. Well,
+since you went, things have come to pass that make me doubt. I do begin
+to fear you were too hasty."
+
+"Do you tell me this now, woman?" cried Griffith, furiously.
+
+"How could I tell you before? Why did you break your tryst with me? If
+you had come according to your letter, I'd have told you months ago what
+I tell you now; but, as I was saying, the priest never came near her
+after you left; and she never stirred abroad to meet him. More than
+that, he has left England."
+
+"Remorse! Too late."
+
+"Perhaps it may, sir. I couldn't say; but there is one coming that knows
+the very truth."
+
+"Who is that?"
+
+"Father Francis. The moment you came, sir, I took it on me to send for
+him. You know the man: he won't tell a lie to please our dame. And he
+knows all; for Leonard has confessed to him. I listened, and heard him
+say as much. Then, master, be advised, and get the truth from Father
+Francis."
+
+Griffith trembled. "Francis is an honest man," said he; "I'll wait till
+he comes. But O, my lass, I find money may be bought too dear."
+
+"Your chamber is ready, sir, and your clothes put out. Supper is
+ordered. Let me show you your room. We are all so happy now."
+
+"Well," said he, listlessly, "since my horse is gone, and Francis
+coming, and I'm wearied and sick of the world, do what you will with me
+for this one day."
+
+He followed her mechanically to a bedroom, where was a bright fire, and
+a fine shirt, and his silver-laced suit of clothes airing.
+
+A sense of luxurious comfort struck him at the sight.
+
+"Ay," said he, "I'll dress, and so to supper; I'm main hungry. It seems
+a man must eat, let his heart be ever so sore."
+
+Before she left him, Ryder asked him coldly why he had broken his
+appointment with her.
+
+"That is too long a story to tell you now," said he, coolly.
+
+"Another time then," said she; and went out smiling, but bitter at
+heart.
+
+Griffith had a good wash, and enjoyed certain little conveniences which
+he had not at the "Packhorse." He doffed his riding suit, and donned the
+magnificent dress Ryder had selected for him; and with his fine clothes
+he somehow put on more ceremonious manners.
+
+He came down to the dining-room. To his surprise he found it illuminated
+with wax candles, and the table and sideboard gorgeous with plate.
+
+Supper soon smoked upon the board; but, though it was set for three,
+nobody else appeared.
+
+Griffith inquired of Ryder whether he was to sup alone.
+
+She replied: "My mistress desires you not to wait for her. She has no
+stomach."
+
+"Well, then, I have," said Griffith, and fell to with a will.
+
+Ryder, who waited on this occasion, stood and eyed him with curiosity:
+his conduct was so unlike a woman's.
+
+Just as he concluded, the door opened, and a burly form entered.
+Griffith rose, and embraced him with his arms and lips, after the
+fashion of the day. "Welcome, thou one honest priest!" said he.
+
+"Welcome, thrice welcome, my long lost son!" said the cordial Francis.
+
+"Sit down, man, and eat with me. I'll begin again, for you."
+
+"Presently, Squire; I've work to do first. Go thou and bid thy mistress
+come hither to me."
+
+Ryder, to whom this was addressed, went out, and left the gentlemen
+together.
+
+Father Francis drew out of his pocket two packets, carefully tied and
+sealed. He took a knife from the table and cut the strings, and broke
+the seals. Griffith eyed him with curiosity.
+
+Father Francis looked at him. "These," said he, very gravely, "are the
+letters that Brother Leonard hath written, at sundry times, to Catharine
+Gaunt, and these are the letters Catharine Gaunt hath written to Brother
+Leonard."
+
+Griffith trembled, and his face was convulsed.
+
+"Let me read them at once," said he: and stretched out his hand, with
+eyes like a dog's in the dark.
+
+Francis withdrew them, quietly. "Not till she is also present," said he.
+
+At that Griffith's good-nature, multiplied by a good supper, took the
+alarm. "Come, come, sir," said he, "have a little mercy. I know you are
+a just man, and, though a boon companion, most severe in all matters of
+morality. But, I tell you plainly, if you are going to drag this poor
+woman in the dirt, I shall go out of the room. What is the use
+tormenting her? I've told her my mind before her own child: and now I
+wish I had not. When I caught them in the grove I lifted my hand to
+strike her, and she never winced; I had better have left that alone too,
+methinks. D--n the women: you are always in the wrong if you treat 'em
+like men. They are not wicked: they are weak. And this one hath lain in
+my bosom, and borne me two children, and one he lieth in the churchyard,
+and t' other hath her hair and my very eyes: and the truth is, I can't
+bear any man on earth to miscall her, but myself. God help me; I doubt I
+love her still too well to sit by and see her tortured. She was all in
+black for her fault, poor penitent wretch. Give me the letters; but let
+her be."
+
+Francis was moved by this appeal, but shook his head solemnly; and, ere
+Griffith could renew his argument, the door was flung open by Ryder, and
+a stately figure sailed in, that took both the gentlemen by surprise.
+
+It was Mrs. Gaunt, in full dress. Rich brocade that swept the ground;
+magnificent bust, like Parian marble varnished; and on her brow a diadem
+of emeralds and diamonds that gave her beauty an imperial stamp.
+
+She swept into the room as only fine women can sweep, made Griffith a
+haughty courtesy, and suddenly lowered her head, and received Father
+Francis's blessing: then seated herself, and quietly awaited events.
+
+"The brazen jade!" thought Griffith. "But how divinely beautiful!" And
+he became as agitated as she was calm--in appearance. For need I say her
+calmness was put on? Defensive armor made for her by her pride and her
+sex.
+
+The voice of Father Francis now rose, solid, grave, and too impressive
+to be interrupted.
+
+"My daughter, and you who are her husband and my friend, I am here to do
+justice between you both, with God's help; and to show you both your
+faults. Catharine Gaunt, you began the mischief, by encouraging another
+man to interfere between you and your husband in things secular."
+
+"But, father, he was my director, my priest."
+
+"My daughter, do you believe, with the Protestants, that marriage is a
+mere civil contract; or do you hold, with us, that it is one of the holy
+sacraments?"
+
+"Can you ask me?" murmured Kate, reproachfully.
+
+"Well, then, those whom God and the whole Church have in holy sacrament
+united, what right hath a single priest to disunite in heart, and make
+the wife false to any part whatever of that most holy vow? I hear, and
+not from you, that Leonard did set you against your husband's friends,
+withdrew you from society, and sent him abroad alone. In one word, he
+robbed your husband of his companion and his friend. The sin was
+Leonard's; but the fault was yours. You were five years older than
+Leonard, and a woman of sense and experience; he but a boy by
+comparison. What right had you to surrender your understanding, in a
+matter of this kind, to a poor silly priest, fresh from his seminary,
+and as manifestly without a grain of common sense as he was full of
+piety?"
+
+This remonstrance produced rather a striking effect on both those who
+heard it. Mrs. Gaunt seemed much struck with it. She leaned back in her
+chair, and put her hand to her brow with a sort of despairing gesture
+that Griffith could not very well understand, it seemed to him so
+disproportionate.
+
+It softened him, however, and he faltered out, "Ay, father, that is how
+it all began. Would to heaven it had stopped there."
+
+Francis resumed. "This false step led to consequences you never dreamed
+of; for one of your romantic notions is, that a priest is an angel. I
+have known you, in former times, try to take me for an angel: then would
+I throw cold water on your folly by calling lustily for chines of beef
+and mugs of ale. But I suppose Leonard thought himself an angel too; and
+the upshot was, he fell in love with his neighbor's wife."
+
+"And she with him," groaned Griffith.
+
+"Not so," said Francis; "but perhaps she was nearer it than she thinks."
+
+"Prove that," said Mrs. Gaunt, "and I'll fall on my knees to him before
+you."
+
+Francis smiled, and proceeded. "To be sure, from the moment you
+discovered Leonard was in love with you, you drew back, and conducted
+yourself with prudence and propriety. Read these letters, sir, and tell
+me what you think of them."
+
+He handed them to Griffith. Griffith's hand trembled visibly as he took
+them.
+
+"Stay," said Father Francis; "your better way will be to read the whole
+correspondence according to the dates. Begin with this of Mrs. Gaunt's."
+
+Griffith read the letter in an audible whisper.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt listened with all her ears.
+
+     "DEAR FATHER AND FRIEND,--The words you spoke to me to-day
+     admit but one meaning; you are jealous of my husband.
+
+     "Then you must be--how can I write it?--almost in love with me.
+
+     "So then my poor husband was wiser than I. He saw a rival in
+     you: and he has one.
+
+     "I am deeply, deeply shocked. I ought to be very angry too;
+     but, thinking of your solitary condition, and all the good you
+     have done to my soul, my heart has no place for aught but pity.
+     Only, as I am in my senses, and you are not, you must now obey
+     me, as heretofore I have obeyed you. You must seek another
+     sphere of duty, without delay.
+
+     "These seem harsh words from me to you. You will live to see
+     they are kind ones.
+
+     "Write me one line, and no more, to say you will be ruled by me
+     in this.
+
+     "God and the saints have you in their holy keeping. So prays
+     your affectionate and
+
+     "Sorrowful daughter and true friend,
+
+                  "CATHARINE GAUNT."
+
+
+"Poor soul!" said Griffith. "Said I not that women are not wicked, but
+weak? Who would think that after this he could get the better of her
+good resolves,--the villain!"
+
+"Now read his reply," said Father Francis.
+
+"Ay," said Griffith. "So this is his one word of reply, is it? three
+pages closely writ,--the villain, O the villain!"
+
+"Read the villain's letter," said Francis, calmly.
+
+The letter was very humble and pathetic,--the reply of a good, though
+erring man, who owned that in a moment of weakness he had been betrayed
+into a feeling inconsistent with his holy profession. He begged his
+correspondent, however, not to judge him quite so hardly. He reminded
+her of his solitary life, his natural melancholy, and assured her that
+all men in his condition had moments when they envied those whose bosoms
+had partners. "Such a cry of anguish," said he, "was once wrung from a
+maiden queen, maugre all her pride. The Queen of Scots hath a son; and I
+am but a barren stock." He went on to say that prayer and vigilance
+united do much. "Do not despair so soon of me. Flight is not cure: let
+me rather stay, and, with God's help and the saints', overcome this
+unhappy weakness. If I fail, it will indeed be time for me to go, and
+never again see the angelic face of my daughter and my benefactress."
+
+Griffith laid down the letter. He was somewhat softened by it, and said,
+gently, "I cannot understand it. This is not the letter of a thorough
+bad man neither."
+
+"No," said Father Francis, coldly, "'t is the letter of a self-deceiver;
+and there is no more dangerous man to himself and others than your
+self-deceiver. But now let us see whether he can throw dust in her eyes,
+as well as his own." And he handed him Kate's reply.
+
+The first word of it was, "You deceive yourself." The writer then
+insisted, quietly, that he owed it to himself, to her, and to her
+husband, whose happiness he was destroying, to leave the place at her
+request.
+
+"Either you must go, or I," said she: "and pray let it be you. Also,
+this place is unworthy of your high gifts: and I love you, in my way,
+the way I mean to love you when we meet again--in heaven; and I labor
+your advancement to a sphere more worthy of you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I wish space permitted me to lay the whole correspondence before the
+reader; but I must confine myself to its general purport.
+
+It proceeded in this way: the priest, humble, eloquent, pathetic; but
+gently, yet pertinaciously, clinging to the place: the lady, gentle,
+wise, and firm, detaching with her soft fingers, first one hand, then
+another, of the poor priest's, till at last he was driven to the sorry
+excuse that he had no money to travel with, nor place to go to.
+
+"I can't understand it," said Griffith. "Are these letters all forged,
+or are there two Kate Gaunts? the one that wrote these prudent letters,
+and the one I caught upon this very priest's arm. Perdition!"
+
+Mrs. Gaunt started to her feet. "Methinks 'tis time for me to leave the
+room," said she, scarlet.
+
+"Gently, my good friends; one thing at a time," said Francis. "Sit thou
+down, impetuous. The letters, sir,--what think you of them?"
+
+"I see no harm in them," said Griffith.
+
+"No harm! Is that all? But I say these are very remarkable letters, sir:
+and they show us that a woman may be innocent and unsuspicious, and so
+seem foolish, yet may be wise for all that. In her early communication
+with Leonard,
+
+        'At Wisdom's gate Suspicion slept;
+    And thought no ill where no ill seemed.'
+
+But, you see, suspicion being once aroused, wisdom was not to be lulled
+nor blinded. But that is not all: these letters breathe a spirit of
+Christian charity; of true, and rare, and exalted piety. Tender are
+they, without passion; wise, yet not cold; full of conjugal love, and of
+filial pity for an erring father, whom she leads, for his good, with
+firm yet dutiful hand. Trust to my great experience: doubt the chastity
+of snow rather than hers who could write these pure and exquisite lines.
+My good friend, you heard me rebuke and sneer at this poor lady for
+being too innocent and unsuspicious of man's frailty: now hear me own to
+you that I could no more have written these angelic letters than a
+barn-door fowl could soar to the mansions of the saints in heaven."
+
+This unexpected tribute took Mrs. Gaunt's heart by storm; she threw her
+arms round Father Francis's neck, and wept upon his shoulder.
+
+"Ah!" she sobbed, "you are the only one left that loves me."
+
+She could not understand justice praising her: it must be love.
+
+"Ay," said Griffith, in a broken voice, "she writes like an angel: she
+speaks like an angel: she looks like an angel. My heart says she is an
+angel. But my eyes have shown me she is naught. I left her, unable to
+walk, by her way of it; I came back and found her on that priest's arm,
+springing along like a greyhound." He buried his head in his hands, and
+groaned aloud.
+
+Francis turned to Mrs. Gaunt, and said, a little severely, "How do you
+account for that?"
+
+"I'll tell _you_, Father," said Kate, "because you love me. I do not
+speak to _you_, sir: for you never loved me."
+
+"I could give thee the lie," said Griffith, in a trembling voice; "but
+'tis not worth while. Know, sir, that within twenty-four hours after I
+caught her with that villain, I lay a-dying for her sake; and lost my
+wits; and, when I came to, they were a-making my shroud in the very room
+where I lay. No matter; no matter; I never loved her."
+
+"Alas! poor soul!" sighed Kate. "Would I had died ere I brought thee to
+that!" And, with this, they both began to cry at the same moment.
+
+"Ay, poor fools," said Father Francis, softly; "neither of ye loved t'
+other; that is plain. So now sit you there, and let us have your
+explanation; for you must own appearances are strong against you."
+
+Mrs. Gaunt drew her stool to Francis's knee; and addressing herself to
+him alone, explained as follows:--
+
+"I saw Father Leonard was giving way, and only wanted one good push,
+after a manner. Well, you know I had got him, by my friends, a good
+place in Ireland: and I had money by me for his journey; so, when my
+husband talked of going to the fair, I thought, 'O, if I could but get
+this settled to his mind before he comes back!' So I wrote a line to
+Leonard. You can read it if you like. 'T is dated the 30th of September,
+I suppose."
+
+"I will," said Francis, and read this out:--
+
+     "DEAR FATHER AND FRIEND,--You have fought the good fight, and
+     conquered. Now, therefore, I _will_see you once more, and thank
+     you for my husband (he is so unhappy), and put the money for
+     your journey into your hand myself,--your journey to Ireland.
+     You are the Duke of Leinster's chaplain; for I have accepted
+     that place for you. Let me see you to-morrow in the Grove, for
+     a few minutes, at high noon. God bless you.
+
+
+
+                  "CATHARINE GAUNT."
+
+"Well, father," said Mrs. Gaunt, "'t is true that I could only walk two
+or three times across the room. But, alack, you know what women are:
+excitement gives us strength. With thinking that our unhappiness was at
+an end,--that, when he should come back from the fair, I should fling my
+arm round his neck, and tell him I had removed the cause of his misery,
+and so of mine,--I seemed to have wings; and I did walk with Leonard,
+and talked with rapture of the good he was to do in Ireland, and how he
+was to be a mitred abbot one day (for he is a great man), and poor
+little me be proud of him; and how we were all to be happy together in
+heaven, where is no marrying nor giving in marriage. This was our
+discourse; and I was just putting the purse into his hands, and bidding
+him God-speed, when he--for whom I fought against my woman's nature, and
+took this trying task upon me--broke in upon us, with the face of a
+fiend; trampled on the poor, good priest, that deserved veneration and
+consolation from him, of all men; and raised his hand to me; and was not
+man enough to kill me after all; but called me--ask him what he called
+me--see if he dares to say it again before you; and then ran away,
+like a coward as he is, from the lady he had defiled with his rude
+tongue, and the heart he had broken. Forgive him? that I never
+will,--never,--never."
+
+"Who asked you to forgive him?" said the shrewd priest. "Your own heart.
+Come, look at him."
+
+"Not I," said she, irresolutely. Then, still more feebly: "He is naught
+to me." And so stole a look at him.
+
+Griffith, pale as ashes, had his hand on his brow, and his eyes were
+fixed with horror and remorse.
+
+"Something tells me she has spoken the truth," he said, in a quavering
+voice. Then, with concentrated horror, "But if so--O God, what have I
+done?--What shall I do?"
+
+Mrs. Gaunt extended her arms towards him across the priest.
+
+"Why, fall at thy wife's knees and ask her to forgive thee."
+
+Griffith obeyed: he fell on his knees, and Mrs. Gaunt leaned her head on
+Francis's shoulder, and gave her hand across him to her remorse-stricken
+husband.
+
+Neither spoke, nor desired to speak; and even Father Francis sat silent,
+and enjoyed that sweet glow which sometimes blesses the peacemaker, even
+in this world of wrangles and jars.
+
+But the good soul had ridden hard, and the neglected meats emitted
+savory odors; and by and by he said dryly, "I wonder whether that fat
+pullet tastes as well as it smells: can you tell me, Squire?"
+
+"O, inhospitable wretch that I am!" said Mrs. Gaunt: "I thought but of
+my own heart."
+
+"And forgot the stomach of your unspiritual father. But, my dear, you
+are pale, you tremble."
+
+"'T is nothing, sir: I shall soon be better. Sit you down and sup: I
+will return anon."
+
+She retired, not to make a fuss; but her heart palpitated violently, and
+she had to sit down on the stairs.
+
+Ryder, who was prowling about, found her there, and fetched her
+hartshorn.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt got better; but felt so languid, and also hysterical, that
+she retired to her own room for the night, attended by the faithful
+Ryder, to whom she confided that a reconciliation had taken place, and,
+to celebrate it, gave her a dress she had only worn a year. This does
+not sound queenly to you ladies; but know that a week's wear tells far
+more on the flimsy trash you wear now-a-days, than a year did on the
+glorious silks of Lyons Mrs. Gaunt put on; thick as broadcloth, and
+embroidered so cunningly by the loom, that it would pass for rarest
+needle-work. Besides, in those days, silk was silk.
+
+As Ryder left her, she asked, "Where is master to lie to-night?"
+
+Mrs. Gaunt was not pleased at this question being put to her. She would
+have preferred to leave that to Griffith. And, as she was a singular
+mixture of frankness and finesse, I believe she had retired to her own
+room partly to test Griffith's heart. If he was as sincere as she was,
+he would not be content with a public reconciliation.
+
+But the question being put to her plump, and by one of her own sex, she
+colored faintly, and said, "Why, is there not a bed in his room?"
+
+"O yes, madam."
+
+"Then see it be well aired. Put down all the things before the fire; and
+then tell me: I'll come and see. The feather-bed, mind, as well as the
+sheets and blankets."
+
+Ryder executed all this with zeal. She did more; though Griffith and
+Francis sat up very late, she sat up too; and, on the gentlemen leaving
+the supper-room, she met them both, with bed-candles, in a delightful
+cap, and undertook, with cordial smiles, to show them both their
+chambers.
+
+"Tread softly on the landing, an if it please you, gentlemen. My
+mistress hath been unwell; but she is in a fine sleep now, by the
+blessing, and I would not have her disturbed."
+
+Good, faithful, single-hearted Ryder!
+
+Father Francis went to bed thoughtful. There was something about
+Griffith he did not like: the man every now and then broke out into
+boisterous raptures, and presently relapsed into moody thoughtfulness.
+Francis almost feared that his cure was only temporary.
+
+In the morning, before he left, he drew Mrs. Gaunt aside, and told her
+his misgivings. She replied that she thought she knew what was amiss,
+and would soon set that right.
+
+Griffith tossed and turned in his bed, and spent a stormy night. His
+mind was in a confused whirl, and his heart distracted. The wife he had
+loved so tenderly proved to be the very reverse of all he had lately
+thought her! She was pure as snow, and had always loved him; loved him
+now, and only wanted a good excuse to take him to her arms again. But
+Mercy Vint!--his wife, his benefactress! a woman as chaste as Kate, as
+strict in life and morals,--what was to become of her? How could he tell
+her she was not his wife? how reveal to her her own calamity, and his
+treason? And, on the other hand, desert her without a word! and leave
+her hoping, fearing, pining, all her life! Affection, humanity,
+gratitude, alike forbade it.
+
+He came down in the morning, pale for him, and worn with the inward
+struggle.
+
+Naturally there was a restraint between him and Mrs. Gaunt; and only
+short sentences passed between them.
+
+He saw the peacemaker off, and then wandered all over the premises, and
+the past came nearer, and the present seemed to retire into the
+background.
+
+He wandered about like one in a dream; and was so self-absorbed, that he
+did not see Mrs. Gaunt coming towards him, with observant eyes.
+
+She met him full; he started like a guilty thing.
+
+"Are you afraid of me?" said she, sweetly.
+
+"No, my dear, not exactly; and yet I am: afraid, or ashamed, or both."
+
+"You need not. I said I forgive you; and you know I am not one that does
+things by halves."
+
+"You are an angel!" said he, warmly; "but" (suddenly relapsing into
+despondency) "we shall never be happy together again."
+
+She sighed. "Say not so. Time and sweet recollections may heal even this
+wound by degrees."
+
+"God grant it," said he, despairingly.
+
+"And, though we can't be lovers again all at once, we may be friends.
+To begin, tell me, what have you on your mind? Come, make a friend of
+me."
+
+He looked at her in alarm.
+
+She smiled. "Shall I guess?" said she.
+
+"You will never guess," said he; "and I shall never have the heart to
+tell you."
+
+"Let me try. Well, I think you have run in debt, and are afraid to ask
+me for the money."
+
+Griffith was greatly relieved by this conjecture; he drew a long breath;
+and, after a pause, said cunningly, "What made you think that?"
+
+"Because you came here for money, and not for happiness. You told me so
+in the Grove."
+
+"That is true. What a sordid wretch you must think me!"
+
+"No, because you were under a delusion. But I do believe you are just
+the man to turn reckless, when you thought me false, and go drinking and
+dicing." She added eagerly, "I do not suspect you of anything worse."
+
+He assured her that was not the way of it.
+
+"Then tell me the way of it. You must not think, because I pester you
+not with questions, I have no curiosity. O, how often I have longed to
+be a bird, and watch you day and night unseen! How would you have liked
+that? I wish you had been one, to watch me. Ah, you don't answer. Could
+you have borne so close an inspection, sir?"
+
+Griffith shuddered at the idea; and his eyes fell before the full gray
+orbs of his wife.
+
+"Well, never mind," said she. "Tell me your story."
+
+"Well, then, when I left you, I was raving mad."
+
+"That is true, I'll be sworn."
+
+"I let my horse go; and he took me near a hundred miles from here, and
+stopped at--at--a farm-house. The good people took me in."
+
+"God bless them for it. I'll ride and thank them."
+
+"Nay, nay; 't is too far. There I fell sick of a fever, a brain-fever:
+the doctor blooded me."
+
+"Alas! would he had taken mine instead."
+
+"And I lost my wits for several days; and when I came back, I was weak
+as water, and given up by the doctor; and the first thing I saw was an
+old hag set a-making of my shroud."
+
+Here the narrative was interrupted a moment by Mrs. Gaunt seizing him
+convulsively; and then holding him tenderly, as if he was even now about
+to be taken from her.
+
+"The good people nursed me, and so did their daughter, and I came back
+from the grave. I took an inn; but I gave up that, and had to pay
+forfeit; and so my money all went; but they kept me on. To be sure I
+helped on the farm: they kept a hostelry as well. By and by came that
+murrain among the cattle. Did you have it in these parts, too?"
+
+"I know not; nor care. Prithee, leave cattle, and talk of thyself."
+
+"Well, in a word, they were ruined, and going to be sold up. I could not
+bear that: I became bondsman for the old man. It was the least I could
+do. Kate, they had saved thy husband's life."
+
+"Not a word more, Griffith. How much stand you pledged for?"
+
+"A large sum."
+
+"Would five hundred pounds be of any avail?"
+
+"Five hundred pounds! Ay, that it would, and to spare; but where can I
+get so much money? And the time so short."
+
+"Give me thy hand, and come with me," said Mrs. Gaunt, ardently.
+
+She took his hand, and made a swift rush across the lawn. It was not
+exactly running, nor walking, but some grand motion she had when
+excited. She put him to his stride to keep up with her at all; and in
+two minutes she had him into her boudoir. She unlocked a bureau, all in
+a hurry, and took out a bag of gold. "There!" she cried, thrusting it
+into his hand, and blooming all over with joy and eagerness: "I thought
+you would want money; so I saved it up. You shall not be in debt a day
+longer. Now mount thy horse, and carry it to those good souls; only, for
+my sake, take the gardener with thee,--I have no groom now but he,--and
+both well armed."
+
+"What! go this very day?"
+
+"Ay, this very hour. I can bear thy absence for a day or two more,--I
+have borne it so long; but I cannot bear thy plighted word to stand in
+doubt a day, no, not an hour. I am your wife, sir, your true and loving
+wife: your honor is mine, and is as dear to me now as it was when you
+saw me with Father Leonard in the Grove, and read me all awry. Don't
+wait a moment. Begone at once."
+
+"Nay, nay, if I go to-morrow, I shall be in time."
+
+"Ay, but," said Mrs. Gaunt, very softly, "I am afraid if I keep you
+another hour I shall not have the heart to let you go at all; and the
+sooner gone, the sooner back for good, please God. There, give me one
+kiss, to live on, and begone this instant."
+
+He covered her hands with kisses and tears. "I'm not worthy to kiss any
+higher than thy hand," he said, and so ran sobbing from her.
+
+He went straight to the stable, and saddled Black Dick.
+
+
+
+
+INDIAN MEDICINE.
+
+
+Every one who has fed his boyish fancy with the stories of pioneers and
+hunters has heard of the character known among Indians as the
+"medicine-man." But it may very likely be the case that few of those
+familiar with the term really know the import of the word. A somewhat
+protracted residence among the Blackfoot tribe of Indians, and an
+extensive observation of men and manners as they appear in the wilder
+parts of the Rocky Mountains and British America, have enabled the
+writer to give some facts which may not prove wholly uninteresting.
+
+By the term "medicine" much more is implied than mere curative drugs, or
+a system of curative practice. Among all the tribes of American Indians,
+the word is used with a double signification,--a literal and narrow
+meaning, and a general and rather undefined application. It signifies
+not only physical remedies and the art of using them, but second-sight,
+prophecy, and preternatural power. As an adjective, it embraces the idea
+of supernatural as well as remedial.
+
+As an example of the use of the word in its mystic signification, the
+following may be given. The _horse_, as is well known, was to the
+Indian, on its first importation, a strange and terrible beast. Having
+no native word by which to designate this hitherto unknown creature, the
+Indians contrived a name by combining the name of some familiar animal,
+most nearly resembling the horse, with the "medicine" term denoting
+astonishment or awe. Consequently the Blackfeet, adding to the word
+"Elk" (_Pounika_) the adjective "medicine" (_tos_) called the horse
+_Pou-nika-ma-ta_, i. e. Medicine Elk. This word is still their
+designation for a horse.
+
+With this idea of medicine, and recollecting that the word is used to
+express two classes of thoughts very different, and separated by
+civilization, though confounded by the savage, it will not surprise one
+to find that the medicine-men are conjurers as well as doctors, and that
+their conjurations partake as much of medical quackery as does their
+medical practice of affected incantation. As physicians, the
+medicine-men are below contempt, and, but for the savage cruelty of
+their ignorance, undeserving of notice. The writer has known a man to
+have his uvula and palate torn out by a medicine-man. In that case the
+disease was a hacking cough caused by an elongation of the uvula; and
+the remedy adopted (after preparatory singing, dancing, burning buffalo
+hair, and other conjurations) was to seize the uvula with a pair of
+bullet-moulds, and tear from the poor wretch every tissue that would
+give way. Death of course ensued in a short time. The unfortunate man
+had, however, died in "able hands," and according to the "highest
+principles of [Indian] medical art."
+
+Were I to tell how barbarously I have seen men mutilated, simply to
+extract an arrow-head from a wound, the story would scarce be credited.
+Common sense has no place in the system of Indian medicine-men, nor do
+they appear to have gained an idea, beyond the rudest, from experience.
+
+In their quality of seers, however, they are more important, and
+frequently more successful persons, attaining, of course, various
+degrees of proficiency and reputation. An accomplished dreamer has a
+sure competency in that gift. He is reverently consulted, handsomely
+paid, and, in general, strictly obeyed. His influence, when once
+established, is more potent even than that of a war chief. The dignity
+and profit of the position are baits sufficient to command the attention
+and ambition of the ablest men; yet it is not unfrequently the case that
+persons otherwise undistinguished are noted for clear and strong powers
+of "medicine."
+
+Of the three most distinguished medicine-men known to the writer, but
+one was a man of powerful intellect. Even this person preferred a
+somewhat sedentary, and what might be called a strictly professional
+life, to the usual active habits of the hunting and warring tribes. He
+dwelt almost alone on a far northern branch of the Saskatchewan River,
+revered for his gifts, feared for his power, and always approached with
+something of reluctance by the Indians, who firmly believed the spirit
+of the gods to dwell within him. He was an austere and taciturn man,
+difficult of access, and as vain and ambitious as he was haughty and
+contemptuous. Those who professed to have witnessed the scene told of a
+trial of power between this man--the Black Snake, as he was called--and
+a renowned medicine-man of a neighboring tribe. The contest, from what
+the Indians said, must have occurred about 1855.
+
+The rival medicine-men, each furnished with his medicine-bag, his
+amulets, and other professional paraphernalia, arrayed in full dress,
+and covered with war-paint, met in the presence of a great concourse.
+Both had prepared for the encounter by long fasting and conjurations.
+After the pipe, which precedes all important councils, the medicine-men
+sat down opposite to each other, a few feet apart. The trial of power
+seems to have been conducted on principles of animal magnetism, and
+lasted a long while without decided advantage on either side; until the
+Black Snake, concentrating all his power, or "gathering his medicine,"
+in a loud voice commanded his opponent to die. The unfortunate conjurer
+succumbed, and in a few minutes "his spirit," as my informant said,
+"went beyond the Sand Buttes." The only charm or amulet ever used by the
+Black Snake is said to have been a small bean-shaped pebble suspended
+round his neck by a cord of moose sinew. He had his books, it is true,
+but they were rarely exhibited.[E]
+
+The death of his rival, by means so purely non-mechanical or physical,
+gave the Black Snake a pre-eminence in "medicine" which he has ever
+since maintained. It was useless to suggest poison, deception, or
+collusion, to explain the occurrence. The firm belief was that the
+spiritual power of the Black Snake had alone secured his triumph.
+
+I mentioned this story to a highly educated and deeply religious man of
+my acquaintance. He was a priest of the Jesuit order, a European by
+birth, formerly a professor in a Continental university of high repute,
+and beyond doubt a guileless and pious man. His acquaintance with Indian
+life extended over more than twenty years of missionary labor in the
+wildest parts of the west slope of the Rocky Mountains. To my surprise,
+(for I was then a novice in the country,) I found him neither
+astonished, nor shocked, nor amused, by what seemed to me so gross a
+superstition.
+
+"I have seen," said he, "many exhibitions of power which my philosophy
+cannot explain. I have known predictions of events far in the future to
+be literally fulfilled, and have seen medicine tested in the most
+conclusive ways. I once saw a Kootenai Indian (known generally as
+Skookum-tamahe-rewos, from his extraordinary power) command a mountain
+sheep to fall dead, and the animal, then leaping among the rocks of the
+mountain-side, fell instantly lifeless. This I saw with my own eyes, and
+I ate of the animal afterwards. It was unwounded, healthy, and perfectly
+wild. Ah!" continued he, crossing himself and looking upwards, "Mary
+protect us! the medicine-men have power from Sathanas."[F]
+
+This statement, made by so responsible a person, attracted my attention
+to what before seemed but a clumsy species of juggling. During many
+months of intimate knowledge of Indian life,--as an adopted member of a
+tribe, as a resident in their camps, and their companion on hunts and
+war-parties,--I lost no opportunity of gathering information concerning
+their religious belief and traditions, and the system of _medicine_, as
+it prevails in its purity. It would be foreign to the design of this
+desultory paper to enter at large upon the history of creation as
+preserved by the Indians in their traditions, the conflicts of the
+Beneficent Spirit with the Adversary, and the Indian idea of a future
+state. With all these, the present sketch has no further concern than a
+mere statement that "medicine" is based upon the idea of an overruling
+and all-powerful Providence, who acts at His good pleasure, through
+human instruments. Those among Christians who entertain the doctrine of
+Special Providences may find in the untutored Indian a faith as firm as
+theirs,--not sharply defined, or understood by the Indian himself, but
+inborn and ineradicable.
+
+The Indian, being thoroughly ignorant of all things not connected with
+war or the chase, is necessarily superstitious. His imagination is
+active,--generally more so than are his reasoning powers,--and fits him
+for a ready belief in the powers of any able mediciner. On one occasion,
+Meldram, a white man in the employ of the American Fur Company, found
+himself suddenly elevated to high rank as a seer by a foolish or
+petulant remark. He was engaged in making a rude press for baling furs,
+and had got a heavy lever in position. A large party of Crow Indians who
+were near at hand, considering his press a marvel of mechanical
+ingenuity, were very inquisitive as to its uses. Meldram, with an
+assumption of severity, told them the machine was "snow medicine," and
+that it would make snow to fall until it reached the end of a cord that
+dangled from the lever and reached within a yard of the ground. The fame
+of so potent a medicine spread rapidly through the Crow nation. The
+machine was visited by hundreds, and the fall of snow anxiously looked
+for by the entire tribe. To the awe of every Indian, and the
+astonishment of the few trappers then at the mouth of the Yellowstone,
+the snow actually reached the end of the rope, and did not during the
+winter attain any greater depth. Meldram found greatness thrust upon
+him. He has lived for more than forty years among the Crows, and when I
+knew him was much consulted as a medicine-man. His chief charms, or
+amulets, were a large bull's-eye silver watch, and a copy of "Ayer's
+Family Almanac," in which was displayed the human body encircled by the
+signs of the zodiac.
+
+The position and ease attendant upon a reputation for medicine power
+cause many unsuccessful pretenders to embrace the profession; and it
+would seem strange that their failures should not have brought medicine
+into disrepute. In looking closely into this, a well-marked distinction
+will always be found between _medicine_ and the _medicine-man_,--quite
+as broad as is made with us between religion and the preacher. I have
+seen would-be medicine-men laughed at through the camp,--men of
+reputation as warriors, and respected in council, but whose _forte_ was
+not the reading of dreams or the prediction of events. On the other
+hand, I have seen persons of inferior intellect, without courage on the
+war-path or wisdom in the council, revered as the channels through
+which, in some unexplained manner, the Great Spirit warned or advised
+his creatures.
+
+Of course it is no purpose of this paper to uphold or attack these
+peculiar ideas. A meagre presentation of a few facts not generally known
+is all that is aimed at. Whether the system of Indian medicine be a
+variety of Mesmerism, Magnetism, Spiritualism, or what not, others may
+inquire and determine. One bred a Calvinist, as was the writer, may be
+supposed to have viewed with suspicion the exhibitions of medicine power
+that almost daily presented themselves. And while, in very numerous
+instances, they proved to be but the impudent pretensions of charlatans,
+it must be conceded, if credible witnesses are to be believed, that
+sometimes there is a power of second-sight, or something of a kindred
+nature, which defies investigation. Instances of this kind are of
+frequent occurrence, and easily recalled, I venture to say, by every one
+familiar with the Indian in his native state. The higher powers claimed
+for medicine are, in general, doubtfully spoken of by the Indians. Not
+that they deny the possibility of the power, but they question the
+probability of so signal a mark of favor being bestowed on a mere
+mortal. Powers and medicine privileges of a lower degree are more
+readily acknowledged. An aged Indian of the Assinaboin tribe is very
+generally admitted, by his own and neighboring tribes, to have been
+shown the happy hunting-grounds, and conducted through them and returned
+safely to the camp of his tribe, by special favor of the Great Spirit.
+He once drew a map of the Indian paradise for me, and described its
+pleasant prairies and crystal rivers, its countless herds of fat buffalo
+and horses, its perennial and luxuriant grass, and other charms dear to
+an Indian's heart, in a rhapsody that was almost poetry. Another, an
+obscure man of the Cathead Sioux, is believed to have seen the hole
+through which issue the herds of buffalo which the Great Spirit calls
+forth from the centre of the earth to feed his children.
+
+Medicine of this degree is not unfavorably regarded by the masses; but
+instances of the highest grades are extremely rare, and the claimants of
+such powers few in number. The Black Snake and the Kootenai, before
+referred to, are, if still alive, the only instances with which I am
+acquainted of admitted and well-authenticated powers so great and
+incredible. The common use of medicine is in affairs of war and the
+chase. Here the medicine-man will be found, in many cases, to exhibit a
+prescience truly astounding. Without attempting a theory to account for
+this, a suggestion may be ventured. The Indian passes a life that knows
+no repose. His vigilance is ever on the alert. No hour of day or night
+is to him an hour of assured safety. In the course of years, his
+perceptions and apprehensions become so acute, in the presence of
+constant danger, as to render him keenly and delicately sensitive to
+impressions that a civilized man could scarce recognize. The Indian, in
+other words, has a development almost like the instinct of the fox or
+beaver. Upon this delicate barometer, whose basis is physical fear,
+impressions (moral or physical, who shall say?) act with surprising
+power. How this occurs, no Indian will attempt to explain. Certain
+conjurations will, they maintain, aid the medicine-man to receive
+impressions; but how or wherefore, no one pretends to know. This view of
+_minor medicine_ is the one which will account for many of its
+manifestations. Whether sound or defective, we will not contend.
+
+The medicine-man whom I knew best was Ma-que-a-pos (the Wolf's Word), an
+ignorant and unintellectual person. I knew him perfectly well. His
+nature was simple, innocent, and harmless, devoid of cunning, and
+wanting in those fierce traits that make up the Indian character. His
+predictions were sometimes absolutely astounding. He has, beyond
+question, accurately described the persons, horses, arms, and
+destination of a party three hundred miles distant, not one of whom he
+had ever seen, and of whose very existence neither he, nor any one in
+his camp, was before apprised.
+
+On one occasion, a party of ten voyageurs set out from Fort Benton, the
+remotest post of the American Fur Company, for the purpose of finding
+the Kaime, or Blood Band of the Northern Blackfeet. Their route lay
+almost due north, crossing the British line near the Chief Mountain
+(Nee-na-sta-ko) and the great Lake O-max-een (two of the grandest
+features of Rocky Mountain scenery, but scarce ever seen by whites), and
+extending indefinitely beyond the Saskatchewan and towards the
+tributaries of the Coppermine and Mackenzie Rivers. The expedition was
+perilous from its commencement, and the danger increased with each day's
+journey. The war-paths, war-party fires, and similar indications of the
+vicinity of hostile bands, were each day found in greater abundance.
+
+It should be borne in mind that an experienced trapper can, at a glance,
+pronounce what tribe made a war-trail or a camp-fire. Indications which
+would convey no meaning to the inexperienced are conclusive proofs to
+the keen-eyed mountaineer. The track of a foot, by a greater or less
+turning out of the toes, demonstrates from which side of the mountains a
+party has come. The print of a moccasin in soft earth indicates the
+tribe of the wearer. An arrow-head or a feather from a war-bonnet, a
+scrap of dressed deer-skin, or even a chance fragment of jerked
+buffalo-meat, furnishes data from which unerring conclusions are deduced
+with marvellous facility.
+
+The party of adventurers soon found that they were in the thickest of
+the Cree war-party operations, and so full of danger was every day's
+travel that a council was called, and seven of the ten turned back. The
+remaining three, more through foolhardiness than for any good reason,
+continued their journey, until their resolution failed them, and they
+too determined that, after another day's travel northward, they would
+hasten back to their comrades.
+
+On the afternoon of the last day, four young Indians were seen, who,
+after a cautious approach, made the sign of peace, laid down their arms,
+and came forward, announcing themselves to be Blackfeet of the Blood
+Band. They were sent out, they said, by Ma-que-a-pos, to find three
+whites mounted on horses of a peculiar color, dressed in garments
+accurately described to them, and armed with weapons which they, without
+seeing them, minutely described. The whole history of the expedition had
+been detailed to them by Ma-que-a-pos. The purpose of the journey, the
+_personnel_ of the party, the exact locality at which to find the three
+who persevered, had been detailed by him with as much fidelity as could
+have been done by one of the whites themselves. And so convinced were
+the Indians of the truth of the old man's medicine, that the four young
+men were sent to appoint a rendezvous, for four days later, at a spot a
+hundred miles distant. On arriving there, accompanied by the young
+Indians, the whites found the entire camp of "Rising Head," a noted
+war-chief, awaiting them. The objects of the expedition were speedily
+accomplished; and the whites, after a few days' rest, returned to safer
+haunts. The writer of this paper was at the head of the party of whites,
+and himself met the Indian messengers.
+
+Upon questioning the chief men of the Indian camp, many of whom
+afterwards became my warm personal friends, and one of them my adopted
+brother, no suspicion of the facts, as narrated, could be sustained.
+Ma-que-a-pos could give no explanation beyond the general one,--that he
+"saw us coming, and heard us talk on our journey." He had not, during
+that time, been absent from the Indian camp.
+
+A subsequent intimate acquaintance with Ma-que-a-pos disclosed a
+remarkable medicine faculty as accurate as it was inexplicable. He was
+tested in every way, and almost always stood the ordeal successfully.
+Yet he never claimed that the gift entitled him to any peculiar regard,
+except as the instrument of a power whose operations he did not pretend
+to understand. He had an imperfect knowledge of the Catholic worship,
+distorted and intermixed with the wild theogony of the red man. He would
+talk with passionate devotion of the Mother of God, and in the same
+breath tell how the Great Spirit restrains the Rain Spirits from
+drowning the world, by tying them with the rainbow. I have often seen
+him make the sign of the cross, while he recounted, in all the soberness
+of implicit belief, how the Old Man (the God of the Blackfeet) formed
+the human race from the mud of the Missouri,--how he experimented before
+he adopted the human frame, as we now have it,--how he placed his
+creatures in an isolated park far to the north, and there taught them
+the rude arts of Indian life,--how he staked the Indians on a desperate
+game of chance with the Spirit of Evil,--and how the whites are now his
+peculiar care. Ma-que-a-pos's faith could hardly stand the test of any
+religious creed. Yet it must be said for him, that his simplicity and
+innocence of life might be a model for many, better instructed than he.
+
+The wilder tribes are accustomed to certain observances which are
+generally termed the tribe-medicine. Their leading men inculcate them
+with great care,--perhaps to perpetuate unity of tradition and purpose.
+In the arrangement of tribe-medicine, trivial observances are frequently
+intermixed with very serious doctrines. Thus, the grand war-council of
+the Dakotah confederacy, comprising thirteen tribes of Sioux, and more
+than seventeen thousand warriors, many years since promulgated a
+national medicine, prescribing a red stone pipe with an ashen stem for
+all council purposes, and (herein was the true point) an eternal
+hostility to the whites. The prediction may be safely ventured, that
+every Sioux will preserve this medicine until the nation shall cease to
+exist. To it may be traced the recent Indian war that devastated
+Minnesota; and there cannot, in the nature of things, and of the
+American Indian especially, be a peace kept in good faith until the
+confederacy of the Dakotah is in effect destroyed.
+
+The Crows, or Upsaraukas, will not smoke in council, unless the pipe is
+lighted with a coal of buffalo chip, and the bowl rested on a fragment
+of the same substance. Their chief men have for a great while endeavored
+to engraft teetotalism upon their national medicine, and have succeeded
+better than the Indian character would have seemed to promise.
+
+Among the Flat-Heads female chastity is a national medicine. With the
+Mandans, friendship for the whites is supposed to be the source of
+national and individual advantage.
+
+Besides the varieties of medicine already alluded to, there are in use
+charms of almost every kind. When game is scarce, medicine is made to
+call back the buffalo. The Man in the Sun is invoked for fair weather,
+for success in war or chase, and for a cure of wounds. The spirits of
+the dead are appeased by medicine songs and offerings. The curiosity of
+some may be attracted by the following rude and literal translation of
+the song of a Blackfoot woman to the spirit of her son, who was killed
+on his first war-party. The words were written down at the time, and are
+not in any respect changed or smoothed.
+
+    "O my son, farewell!
+    You have gone beyond the great river,
+    Your spirit is on the other side of the Sand Buttes;
+    I will not see you for a hundred winters;
+    You will scalp the enemy in the green prairie,
+    Beyond the great river.
+    When the warriors of the Blackfeet meet,
+    When they smoke the medicine-pipe and dance the war-dance,
+    They will ask, 'Where is Isthumaka?--
+    Where is the bravest of the Mannikappi?'
+    He fell on the war-path.
+                  Mai-ram-bo, mai-ram-bo.
+
+    "Many scalps will be taken for your death;
+    The Crows will lose many horses;
+    Their women will weep for their braves,
+    They will curse the spirit of Isthumaka.
+    O my son! I will come to you
+    And make moccasins for the war-path,
+    As I did when you struck the lodge
+    Of the 'Horse-Guard' with the tomahawk.
+    Farewell, my son! I will see you
+    Beyond the broad river.
+                  Mai-ram-bo, mai-ram-bo," etc., etc.
+
+Sung in a plaintive minor key, and in a wild, irregular rhythm, the
+dirge was far more impressive than the words would indicate.
+
+It cannot be denied that the whites, who consort much with the ruder
+tribes of Indians imbibe, to a considerable degree, their veneration for
+medicine. The old trappers and voyageurs are, almost without exception,
+observers of omens and dreamers of dreams. They claim that medicine is a
+faculty which can in some degree be cultivated, and aspire to its
+possession as eagerly as does the Indian. Sometimes they acquire a
+reputation that is in many ways beneficial to them.
+
+As before said, it is no object of this paper to defend or combat the
+Indian notion of medicine. Such a system exists as a fact; and whoever
+writes upon American Demonology will find many fruitful topics of
+investigation in the daily life of the uncontaminated Indian. There may
+be nothing of truth in the supposed prediction by Tecumseh, that
+Tuckabatchee would be destroyed by an earthquake on a day which he
+named; the gifts of the "Prophet" may be overstated in the traditions
+that yet linger in Kentucky and Indiana; the descent of the Mandans from
+Prince Madoc and his adventurous Welchmen, and the consideration
+accorded them on that account, may very possibly be altogether fanciful;
+but whoever will take the trouble to investigate will find in the _real_
+Indian a faith, and occasionally a power, that quite equal the faculties
+claimed by our civilized clairvoyants, and will approach an untrodden
+path of curious, if not altogether useful research.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[E] The Mountain Assinaboins, of which tribe the Black Snake is (if
+living) a distinguished ornament, were visited more than a hundred years
+since by an English clergyman named Wolsey, who devised an alphabet for
+their use. The alphabet is still used by them, and they keep their
+memoranda on dressed skins. With the exception of the Cherokees, they
+are, perhaps, the only tribe possessing a written language. They have no
+other civilization.
+
+[F] I do not feel at liberty to give the name of this excellent man, now
+perhaps no more. In 1861, he lived and labored, with a gentleness and
+zeal worthy of the cause he heralded, as a missionary among the
+Kalispelm Indians, on the west slope of the Rocky Mountains. Such
+devotion to missionary labor as was his may well challenge admiration
+even from those who think him in fatal error. His memory will long be
+cherished by those who knew the purity of his character, his generous
+catholicity of spirit, and the native and acquired graces of mind which
+made him a companion at once charming and instructive.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEATH OF SLAVERY.
+
+
+    O thou great Wrong, that, through the slow-paced years,
+      Didst hold thy millions fettered, and didst wield
+      The scourge that drove the laborer to the field,
+    And look with stony eye on human tears,
+          Thy cruel reign is o'er;
+          Thy bondmen crouch no more
+    In terror at the menace of thine eye;
+      For He who marks the bounds of guilty power,
+    Long-suffering, hath heard the captive's cry,
+      And touched his shackles at the appointed hour,
+    And lo! they fall, and he whose limbs they galled
+    Stands in his native manhood, disenthralled.
+
+    A shout of joy from the redeemed is sent;
+      Ten thousand hamlets swell the hymn of thanks;
+      Our rivers roll exulting, and their banks
+    Send up hosannas to the firmament.
+          Fields, where the bondman's toil
+          No more shall trench the soil,
+    Seem now to bask in a serener day;
+      The meadow-birds sing sweeter, and the airs
+    Of heaven with more caressing softness play,
+      Welcoming man to liberty like theirs.
+    A glory clothes the land from sea to sea,
+    For the great land and all its coasts are free.
+
+    Within that land wert thou enthroned of late,
+      And they by whom the nation's laws were made,
+      And they who filled its judgment-seats, obeyed
+    Thy mandate, rigid as the will of fate.
+          Fierce men at thy right hand,
+          With gesture of command,
+    Gave forth the word that none might dare gainsay;
+      And grave and reverend ones, who loved thee not,
+    Shrank from thy presence, and, in blank dismay,
+      Choked down, unuttered, the rebellious thought;
+    While meaner cowards, mingling with thy train,
+    Proved, from the book of God, thy right to reign.
+
+    Great as thou wert, and feared from shore to shore,
+        The wrath of God o'ertook thee in thy pride;
+        Thou sitt'st a ghastly shadow; by thy side
+    Thy once strong arms hang nerveless evermore.
+            And they who quailed but now
+            Before thy lowering brow
+    Devote thy memory to scorn and shame,
+      And scoff at the pale, powerless thing thou art.
+    And they who ruled in thine imperial name,
+      Subdued, and standing sullenly apart,
+    Scowl at the hands that overthrew thy reign,
+    And shattered at a blow the prisoner's chain.
+
+    Well was thy doom deserved; thou didst not spare
+      Life's tenderest ties, but cruelly didst part
+      Husband and wife, and from the mother's heart
+    Didst wrest her children, deaf to shriek and prayer;
+          Thy inner lair became
+          The haunt of guilty shame;
+    Thy lash dropped blood; the murderer, at thy side,
+      Showed his red hands, nor feared the vengeance due.
+    Thou didst sow earth with crimes, and, far and wide,
+      A harvest of uncounted miseries grew,
+    Until the measure of thy sins at last
+    Was full, and then the avenging bolt was cast.
+
+    Go then, accursed of God, and take thy place
+      With baleful memories of the elder time,
+      With many a wasting pest, and nameless crime,
+    And bloody war that thinned the human race;
+          With the Black Death, whose way
+          Through wailing cities lay,
+    Worship of Moloch, tyrannies that built
+      The Pyramids, and cruel creeds that taught
+    To avenge a fancied guilt by deeper guilt,--
+      Death at the stake to those that held them not.
+    Lo, the foul phantoms, silent in the gloom
+    Of the flown ages, part to yield thee room.
+
+    I see the better years that hasten by
+      Carry thee back into that shadowy past,
+      Where, in the dusty spaces, void and vast,
+    The graves of those whom thou hast murdered lie.
+          The slave-pen, through whose door
+          Thy victims pass no more,
+    Is there, and there shall the grim block remain
+      At which the slave was sold; while at thy feet
+    Scourges and engines of restraint and pain
+      Moulder and rust by thine eternal seat.
+    There, 'mid the symbols that proclaim thy crimes,
+    Dwell thou, a warning to the coming times.
+
+
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+
+_Ecce Homo: a Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus Christ._ Boston:
+Roberts Brothers.
+
+The merits of this book are popular and obvious, consisting in a strain
+of liberal, enlightened sentiment, an ingenious and original cast of
+thought, and a painstaking lucidity of style which leaves the writer's
+meaning even prosaically plain. There is a good deal of absurd and even
+puerile exegesis in its pages, which makes you wonder how so much
+sentimentality can co-exist with so much ability; but the book is
+vitiated for all purposes beyond mere literary entertainment by one
+grand defect, which is the guarded theologic obscurity the writer keeps
+up, or the attempt he makes to estimate Christianity apart from all
+question of the truth or falsity of Christ's personal pretensions
+towards God. The author may have reached in his own mind the most
+definite theologic convictions, but he sedulously withholds them from
+his reader; and the consequence is, that the book awakens and satisfies
+no intellectual interest in the latter, but remains at best a curious
+literary speculation. For what men have always been moved by in
+Christianity is not so much the superiority of its moral inculcations to
+those of other faiths, as its uncompromising pretension to be a final or
+absolute religion. If Christ be only the eminently good and wise and
+philanthropic man the author describes him to be, deliberating,
+legislating, for the improvement of man's morals, he may be very
+admirable, but nothing can be inferred from that circumstance to the
+deeper inquiry. If he claim no essentially different significance to our
+regard, on God's part, than that claimed by Zoroaster, Confucius,
+Mahomet, Hildebrand, Luther, Wesley, he is to be sure still entitled to
+all the respect inherent in such an office; but then there is no _a
+priori_ reason why his teaching and influence should not be superseded
+in process of time by that of any at present unmentionable Anne Lee,
+Joanna Southcote, or Joe Smith. And what the human mind craves, above
+all things else, is repose towards God,--is not to remain a helpless
+sport to every fanatic sot that comes up from the abyss of human vanity,
+and claims to hold it captive by the assumption of a new Divine mission.
+
+The objection to the _mythic_ view of Christ's significance, which is
+that maintained by Strauss, is, that it violates men's faith in the
+integrity of history as a veracious outcome of the providential love and
+wisdom which are extant and operative in human affairs. And the
+objection to what has been called the _Troubadour_ view of the same
+subject, which is that represented by M. Renan, is, that it outrages
+men's faith in human character, regarded, if not as habitually, still as
+occasionally capable of heroic or consistent veracity. We may safely
+argue, then, that neither Strauss nor Renan will possess any long
+vitality to human thought. They are both fascinating reading;--the one
+for his profound sincerity, or his conviction of a worth in Christianity
+so broadly human and impersonal as to exempt it from the obligations of
+a literal historic doctrine; the other for his profound insincerity, so
+to speak, or an egotism so subtile, so capacious and frank, as permits
+him to take up the grandest character in history into the hollow of his
+hand, and turn him about there for critical inspection and definite
+adjustment to the race, with absolutely no more reverence nor reticence
+than a buyer of grain shows to a handful of wheat, as he pours it
+dexterously from hand to hand, and blows the chaff in the seller's
+face.[G] But both writers alike are left behind us in the library, and
+are not subsequently brought to mind by anything we encounter in the
+fields or the streets.
+
+The author of _Ecce Homo_ does no dishonor to the Christian history as
+history, however foolishly he expatiates at times upon its incidents and
+implications; much less to the simple and perfect integrity of Christ as
+a man, but no more than Strauss or Renan does he meet the supreme want
+of the popular understanding, which is to know wherein Christianity has
+the right it claims to be regarded as a final or complete revelation of
+the Divine name upon the earth. We think, moreover, that the reason of
+the omission is the same in every case, being the sheer and contented
+indifference which each of the writers feels to the question of a
+revelation in the abstract or general, regarded as a _sine qua non_ of
+any sympathetic or rational intercourse which may be considered as
+possible between God and man. We should not be so presumptuous as to
+invite our readers' attention to the discussion of so grave a
+philosophic topic as the one here referred to, in the limited space at
+our command; but surely it may be said, without any danger of
+misunderstanding from the most cursory reader, that if creation were the
+absolute or unconditioned verity which thoughtless people deem it, there
+could be no _ratio_ between Creator and creature, hence no intercourse
+or intimacy, inasmuch as the one is being itself, and the other does not
+even exist or _seem_ to be but by him. In order that creation should be
+a rational product of Divine power, in order that the creature should be
+a being of reason, endowed with the responsibility of his own actions,
+it is imperative that the Creator disown his essential infinitude and
+diminish himself to the creature's dimensions; that he hide or obscure
+his own perfection in the creature's imperfection, to the extent even of
+rendering it fairly problematic whether or not an infinite being really
+exist, so putting man, as it were, upon the spontaneous search and
+demand for such a being, and in that measure developing his rational
+possibilities. And if this be so,--if creation philosophically involve a
+descending movement on the Creator's part proportionate to the ascending
+one contemplated on the creature's part,--then it follows that creation
+is not a simple, but a complex process, involving equally a Divine
+action and a human reaction, or the due adjustment of means and ends;
+and that no writer, consequently, can long satisfy the intellect in the
+sphere of religious thought, who either jauntily or ignorantly overlooks
+this philosophic necessity. This, however, is what Messrs. Strauss and
+Renan and the author of _Ecce Homo_ agree to do; and this is what makes
+their several books, whatever subjective differences characterize them
+to a literary regard, alike objectively unprofitable as instruments of
+intellectual progress.
+
+
+_The Masquerade and Other Poems._ By JOHN GODFREY SAXE. Boston: Ticknor
+and Fields.
+
+It was remarked lately by an ingenious writer, that "it never seems to
+occur to some people, who deliver upon the books they read very
+unhesitating judgments, that they may be wanting, either by congenital
+defect, or defect of experience, or defect of reproductive memory, in
+the qualifications which are necessary for judging fairly of any
+particular book." To poetry this remark applies with especial force.
+
+By poetry we do not understand mere verse, but any form of literary
+composition which reproduces in the mind certain emotions which, in the
+absence of an epithet less vague, we shall call _poetical_. These
+emotions may be a compound of the sensuous and the purely intellectual,
+or they may partake much more of the one than of the other. (The
+rigorous metaphysician will please not begin to carp at our definition.)
+These emotions may be excited by an odor, the state of the atmosphere, a
+strain of music, a form of words, or by a single word; and, as they
+result largely from association, it is obvious that what may be poetry
+to some minds may not be poetry to others,--may not be poetry to the
+same mind at different periods of life or in different moods. The most
+sympathetic, most catholic, most receptive mind will always be the best
+qualified to detect and appreciate poetry under all its various forms,
+and would as soon think of denying the devotional faculty to a man of
+differing creed, as of denying the poetical to one whose theory or habit
+of expression may chance to differ from its own. Goethe was so apt to
+discover something good in poems which others dismissed as wholly
+worthless, that it was said of him, "his commendation is a brevet of
+mediocrity." Perhaps it was his "many-sidedness" that made him so
+accurate a "detective" in criticism.
+
+According to Wordsworth, "poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
+feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity."
+A good definition so far as it goes. But Wordsworth could see only one
+side of the shield. He was notoriously so deficient in the faculty of
+humor, that even Sydney Smith was unintelligible to him. Few specimens
+of what can be called wit can be found in his writings. He could not see
+that there is a poetry of wit as well as of sentiment,--of the intellect
+as well as of the emotions. No wonder he could not enjoy Pope, and had
+little relish for Horace. And yet how grand is Wordsworth in his own
+peculiar sphere!
+
+Those narrow views of the province of poetry, which roused the
+indignation of Byron, and which would exclude such writers as
+Goldsmith, Pope, Campbell, Scott, Praed, Moore, and Saxe from the rank
+of poets, are not unfrequently reproduced in our own day. We do not
+perceive that they spring from a liberal or philosophical consideration
+of the subject. Poetry, [Greek: poiesis], or "making," creation, or
+re-creation, does not address itself to any single group of those
+faculties of our complex nature, the gratification of which brings a
+sense of the agreeable, the exhilarating, or the elevating. As well
+might we deny to didactic verse the name of poetry, as to those _vers de
+societe_ in which a profound truth may be found in a comic mask, or the
+foibles which scolding could not reach may be reflected in the mirror
+held up in gayety of heart. As well might we deny that a waltz is music,
+and claim the name of music only for a funeral march or a nocturne, as
+deny that Shakespeare's description of Queen Mab is as much poetry as
+the stately words in which Prospero compares the vanishing of his
+insubstantial pageant to that of
+
+    "The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
+    The solemn temples, the great globe itself."
+
+The new volume of poems by Mr. Saxe is, in many respects, an improvement
+on all that he has given us hitherto. There is more versatility in the
+style, a freer and firmer touch in the handling. Like our best
+humorists, he shows that the founts of tears and of laughter lie close
+together; for his power of pathos is almost as marked as that of fun. As
+good specimens of what he has accomplished in the minor key, we may
+instance "The Expected Ship," "The Story of Life," and "Pan Immortal."
+But it is in his faculty of turning upon us the whimsical and humorous
+side of a fact or a character that Saxe especially excels. The lines
+entitled "The Superfluous Man" are an illustration of what we mean. In
+some learned treatise the author stumbles on the following somewhat
+startling reflection: "It is ascertained by inspection of the registers
+of many countries, that the uniform proportion of male to female births
+is as 21 to 20: accordingly, in respect to marriage, every 21st man is
+naturally superfluous." Here is hint enough to set Saxe's bright vein of
+humor flowing. The Superfluous Man becomes a concrete embodiment, and
+sings his discovery of the cause of his forlorn single lot and his
+hopeless predicament. It flashes upon him that he is that 21st man
+alluded to by the profound statistician. He is under a natural ban,--for
+he's a superfluous man. There's no use fighting 'gainst nature's
+inflexible plan. There's never a woman for him,--for he's a superfluous
+man. The whole conception and execution of the poem afford a fine
+example of the manner in which a genuine artist may inform a subtile and
+an extravagant whim with life, humor, and consistency.
+
+"The Mourner a la Mode" contains some good instances of the neatness and
+felicity with which the author floods a whole stanza with humor by a
+single epithet.
+
+    "What tears of _vicarious_ woe.
+      That else might have sullied her face,
+    Were kindly permitted to flow
+      In ripples of ebony lace
+    While even her fan, in its play,
+      Had quite a lugubrious scope,
+    And seemed to be waving away
+      The ghost of the angel of Hope!"
+
+The sentiments of a young lover on finding that the object of his
+adoration had an excellent appetite, and was always punctual at lunch
+and dinner, are expressed with a Sheridan-like sparkle in the concluding
+stanza of "The Beauty of Ballston."
+
+    "Ah me! of so much loveliness
+      It had been sweet to be the winner;
+    I know she loved me only less--
+      The merest fraction--than her dinner;
+    'T was hard to lose so fair a prize,
+      But then (I thought) 't were vastly harder
+    To have before my jealous eyes
+      _A constant rival in my larder!_"
+
+There is one practical consideration in regard to the poetry of Saxe,
+which may excite the distrust of those critics who, with Horace, hate
+the profane multitude. Fortunately or unfortunately for his reputation,
+Saxe's poems are _popular_, and--not to put too fine a point of
+it--_sell_. His books have a regular market value, and this value
+increases rather than diminishes with years. This is, we confess, rather
+a suspicious circumstance. Did Milton sell? Did Wordsworth sell? Must
+not the fame that is instantaneous prove hollow and ephemeral? Are we
+not acquainted with a certain volume of poems that shall be nameless,
+the whole edition of which lies untouched and unclaimed on the
+publisher's shelves? And are we not perfectly well aware that those
+poems--well, we can wait. If Mr. Saxe would only put forth a volume that
+should prove, in a mercantile sense, a failure, we think he would be
+surprised to find how happily he would hit certain critics who can now
+see little in his writings to justify their success. Let him once join
+the fraternity of unappreciated geniuses, and he will find
+compensation,--though not, perhaps, in the form of what some vulgar
+fellow has called "solid pudding."
+
+
+_The Giant Cities of Bashan; and Syria's Holy Places._ By the Rev. J. L.
+PORTER, A. M., Author of "Murray's Hand-Book for Syria and Palestine,"
+etc., etc. New York: T. Nelson and Sons.
+
+Travellers who have merely visited the classic scenes of Greece and
+Italy, or at the best have "browsed about" the ruinous sites of Tyre and
+Carthage, must have a mortifying sense of the newness of such recent
+settlements, in reading of Mr. Porter's journey through Bashan, and
+sojourn in Bozrah, Salcah, Edrei, and the other cities of the Rephaim.
+As Chicago is to Athens, so is Athens to these mighty and wonderful
+cities of doom and eld, which are marvellous, not alone for their
+antiquity, (so remote that one looks into it dizzily and doubtfully, as
+a depth into which it is not wholly safe to peer,) but also for the
+perfection in which they stand and have stood amid the desolation of
+unnumbered ages. A Cockney clergyman travelling through Eastern Syria,
+with his Ezekiel in his hand, arrives at nightfall before the gates of a
+town which was a flourishing metropolis in the days of Moses, and takes
+up his lodging in a house built by some newly-married giant, say five or
+six thousand years ago. It is in perfect repair, "the walls are sound,
+the roofs unbroken, the doors and even window-shutters"--being of solid
+basalt monoliths, incapable of decay or destruction--"are in their
+places." In the town whose dumb streets no foot but the Bedouin's has
+trodden for centuries and centuries, there are hundreds of such houses
+as this; and in a province not larger than Rhode Island there are a
+hundred such towns. According to Mr. Porter, the language of Scripture,
+which the strongest powers of deglutition have sometimes rejected as
+that of Eastern hyperbole, is literally verified at every step in the
+land of Bashan. The facts, he says, would not stand the arithmetic of
+Bishop Colenso for an instant; yet from the summit of the castle of
+Salcah (capital of his late gigantic Majesty, King Og) he counted thirty
+utterly deserted and perfectly habitable towns; so that he finds no
+difficulty in believing the bulletin of Jair in which the Israelite
+general declares he took in the province of Argob sixty great cities
+"fenced with high walls, gates, and bars, besides unwalled towns a great
+many." Nor is the fulfilment of prophecy in regard to this kingdom,
+populous and prosperous beyond any other known to history, less literal
+or less startling.
+
+"Thus saith the Lord God of Israel: They shall eat their bread with
+carefulness, and drink their water with astonishment, that her land may
+be desolate from all that is therein, because of the violence of all
+that dwell therein. And the cities that are inhabited shall be laid
+waste, and the land shall be desolate."
+
+Everywhere Mr. Porter witnessed the end predicted by Ezekiel: a nation
+might dwell in these enchanted cities, but they are all empty and silent
+as the desert. Their architecture, however, is eloquent in witness of
+the successive changes through which they have passed in reaching the
+state of final desolation foretold of the prophet. The dwellings, so
+ponderous and so simple, are the work of the original Rephaim, or
+giants, from whom the Israelites conquered the land, and the masonry is
+of these first conquerors. The Greeks have left the proof of their
+presence in the temples and inscriptions, and the Romans in the
+structure of the roads; while the Saracens have added mosques, and the
+Turks solitude and danger,--for the whole land is infested with robbers.
+But while Jewish masonry has crumbled to dust, while Roman roads are
+weed-grown, and the temples of the gods and the mosques of Mahomet
+mingle their ruins, the dwellings of the Rephaim stand intact and
+everlasting, as if the earth had loved her mighty first-born too well to
+suffer the memory of their greatness to perish from her face.
+
+It must be acknowledged that Mr. Porter has not done the best that could
+be done for the country through which he travels. With a style extremely
+graphic at times, he seems wanting in those arts of composition by which
+he could convey to his readers an impression of things at once vivid and
+comprehensive. He visits the cities of Bashan, one after another, and
+tells us repeatedly that they are desolate, and in perfect repair, and
+quotes the proper text of Scripture in which their desolation is
+foretold, and their number and strength not exaggerated. Yet he fails,
+with all this, to describe any one place completely, and is of opinion
+that he should weary his reader in recounting, at Bozrah, for example,
+"the wonders of art and architecture, and the curiosities of votive
+tablet, and dedicatory inscription on altar, tomb, church, and temple";
+whereas we must confess that nothing would have pleased us better than
+to hear about all these things, with ever so much minuteness, and that
+we should have been willing to take two passages of prophecy instead of
+twenty, if we might have had the omitted description in the place of
+them. But Mr. Porter being made as he is, we are glad to get out of him
+what we can, and have to thank him for a full account of at least one of
+the houses of the Rephaim, in which he passed a night.
+
+"The walls were perfect, nearly five feet thick, built of large blocks
+of hewn stones, without lime or cement of any kind. The roof was formed
+of large slabs of the same black basalt, lying as regularly, and jointed
+as closely as if the workmen had only just completed them. They measured
+twelve feet in length, eighteen inches in breadth, and six inches in
+thickness. The ends rested on a plain stone cornice, projecting about a
+foot from each side wall. The chamber was twenty feet long, twelve wide,
+and ten high. The outer door was a slab of stone, four and a half feet
+high, four wide, and eight inches thick. It hung upon pivots formed of
+projecting parts of the slab, working in sockets in the lintel and
+threshold; and though so massive, I was able to open and shut it with
+ease. At one end of the room was a small window with a stone shutter. An
+inner door, also of stone, but of finer workmanship, and not quite so
+heavy as the other, admitted to a chamber of the same size and
+appearance. From it a much larger door communicated with a third
+chamber, to which there was a descent by a flight of stone steps. This
+was a spacious hall, equal in width to the two rooms, and about
+twenty-five feet long by twenty high. A semicircular arch was thrown
+across it, supporting the stone roof; and a gate, so large that camels
+could pass in and out, opened on the street. The gate was of stone, and
+in its place; but some rubbish had accumulated on the threshold, and it
+appeared to have been open for ages. Here our horses were comfortably
+installed. Such were the internal arrangements of this strange old
+mansion. It had only one story; and its simple, massive style of
+architecture gave evidence of a very remote antiquity."
+
+Mr. Porter does not tell us whether all the dwellings of the Rephaim are
+constructed after one plan, as, for instance, the houses of Pompeii
+were, or whether there was variety in the architecture, and on many
+other points of inquiry he is equally unsatisfactory. His strength is in
+his one great fact,--that these cities are older than any known to
+profane history, and that they yet exist undecayed and undecaying. The
+charm of such a fact is so great, that we recur again and again to his
+pages, with a forever unappeased famine for more knowledge, which we
+hope some garrulous and gossipful traveller will soon arise to satisfy.
+
+Of him--the beneficent future tourist--we shall willingly accept any
+number of fables, if only he will add something more filling than Mr.
+Porter has given us. It is true that this tourist will not have a mere
+pleasure excursion, but will undergo much to merit the gratitude of his
+readers. The land of Bashan is nomadically inhabited by a race of men
+much fiercer than its ancient bulls; and Bedouins beset the movements of
+the traveller, to pillage and slay wherever they are strong enough to
+overcome his escort of Druses. Mr. Porter tells much of the perils he
+incurred, and even of actual attacks made upon him by fanatical
+Mussulmans while he sketched the wonders of the world's youth among
+which they dwelt. For the present his book has a value unique and very
+great: the scenes through which he passes have been heretofore unvisited
+by travel, and the interest attaching to them is intense and universal.
+The literal verification of many passages of Scripture supposed more or
+less allegorical, must have its weight with all liberal thinkers; and,
+as a contribution to the means of religious inquiry, this work will be
+earnestly received.
+
+
+_Life of Benjamin Silliman, M. D., LL. D., late Professor of Chemistry,
+Mineralogy, and Geology in Yale College._ Chiefly from his Manuscript
+Reminiscences, Diaries, and Correspondence. By GEORGE P. FISHER,
+Professor in Yale College. In Two Volumes. New York: Charles Scribner &
+Co.
+
+Professor Fisher, in allowing the subject of this biography to tell the
+story of his life, restricts himself very self-denyingly to here and
+there a line of introduction or comment. We have ample passages from
+Professor Silliman's journal, and from an autobiographical memoir
+written during his last years, as well as extracts from his letters and
+the letters addressed to him. It is an easy and pleasant way of writing
+personal history, and it would be an easy and pleasant way of reading
+it, if life were as long as art. But we fear that the popular usefulness
+of this work--and the biography of the eminent man who did so much to
+popularize science should be in the hands of all--must be impaired by
+its magnitude; and we are disposed to regret that Professor Fisher did
+not think fit to reject that part of the correspondence which
+contributes nothing to the movement of the narrative or the development
+of character, and condense much of that material which has only a value
+reflected from the interest already felt in Professor Silliman. These
+are faults in a work from which we have risen with a clear sense of the
+beauty and goodness, as well as the greatness, of the eminent scientist.
+It is admirable to see how his career, begun in another century and
+another phase of civilization, ended in what was best and most
+enlightened and liberal in our own time. A man could hardly have started
+from better things, or been subject at important points of his progress
+to better influences. Benjamin Silliman was of Revolutionary stock,
+which had its roots in the soil of the Reformation. The Connecticut
+Puritan came of Tuscan Puritans, who fled their city of Lucca, and
+finally passed from Switzerland through Holland to our shores. Brain and
+heart in him were thus imbued with an unfaltering love of freedom,
+chastised by religious fervor; and when he became a man, he married with
+a race of kindred origin in faith, sentiment, and principles. He
+advanced with his times in a patriotic devotion to democracy and
+equality, but he seems to have always kept, together with great
+simplicity of character, the impression of early teaching and
+associations, and something of old-time stateliness and formality. His
+youth, like his age, was very sober, modest, and discreet. The ties
+which united him to his family were strong; and he loved his mother, who
+long survived his father, with the reverent affection of the past
+generation. He inherited certain theological principles from his
+parents, and never swerved from them for a moment. Some friendships came
+down to him from his father which he always honored; and the institution
+of learning with which he maintained a life-long connection was in his
+early days the object of a regard mixed with awe, and always of pride
+and devotion. He used to think President Styles the greatest of human
+beings; and one reads with a kind of dismay, that he was once fined
+sixpence for kicking a football into the President's door-yard.
+
+There was in this grave youth the making of many kinds of greatness. He
+who became so eminent in science could have been a great jurist, for he
+had the tranquillity and perseverance necessary to legal success; he
+could have been a great statesman, for his political views were clear
+and just and far-reaching; he wrote some of the most popular books of
+travels in his day, and he could have shone in literature; while he
+appears to have been conscious of the direction in which a sole weakness
+lay, and with early wisdom forsook the muse of poetry. He tells us that
+it was no instinctive preference which led him to the study and pursuit
+of the natural sciences, but the persuasion of Dr. Dwight, who was
+President of Yale in Silliman's twenty-third year, and who opened this
+career to him by offering him the Professorship of Chemistry, then about
+to be established. At that time Silliman was studying law; but, once
+convinced that he can be of greater use to himself and others in the way
+proposed, he enters it and never looks back; goes to Philadelphia to
+hear the learnedest professors of that day; goes to Europe for the
+culture unattainable in this country; overcomes poverty in himself and
+in Yale; will not be tempted from New Haven by the offer of the
+Presidency of the University of South Carolina, but devotes himself to a
+generous study of science, to the diffusion of scientific knowledge, and
+the promotion of the greatness of the institution to which he belongs.
+His devotion is not blind, however: he finds time to write attractive
+accounts of his voyages to Europe, to concern himself in religious
+affairs, to sympathize and cooperate with whatever is noble and good in
+political movements. He lives long enough to enjoy his fame, to see Yale
+prosperous and great, and his country about to triumph forever over the
+evil of slavery, which he had hated and combated. It was a noble
+life,--simple, pure, and illustrious,--and its history is full of
+instruction and encouragement.
+
+
+_Fifteen Days._ An Extract from EDWARD COLVIL'S Journal. Boston: Ticknor
+and Fields.
+
+This is a work of fiction, in which the passion of love, so far from
+being the prime motive, as in other fictions, does not enter at all. The
+author seeks to reach, without other incident, one tragic event, and
+endeavors to make up for a want of adventure by the subtile analysis of
+character and the study of a civil problem. The novelty and courage of
+the attempt will attract the thoughtful reader, and will probably tempt
+him so far into the pages of the book, that he will find himself too
+deeply interested in its persons to part from them voluntarily. The
+national sin with which the author so pitilessly deals has been expiated
+by the whole nation, and is now no more; but its effects upon the guilty
+and guiltless victims, here alike so leniently treated, remain, and the
+question of slavery must always command attention till the question of
+reconstruction is settled.
+
+In "Fifteen Days" the political influences of slavery are only very
+remotely considered, while the personal and social results of the system
+are examined with incisive acuteness united to a warmth of feeling which
+at last breaks forth into pathetic lament. Is not the tragedy, of which
+we discern the proportions only in looking back, indeed a fateful one? A
+young New-Englander, rich, handsome, generous, and thoroughly taught by
+books and by ample experience of the Old World and the New to honor men
+and freedom, passes a few days in a Slave State, in the midst of that
+cruel system which could progress only from bad to worse; to which
+reform was death, and which with the instinct of self-preservation
+punished all open attempts to ameliorate the relations of oppressor and
+oppressed, and permitted no kindness to exist but in the guise of
+severity or the tenderness of a good man for his beast; which boasted
+itself an aristocracy, and was an oligarchy of plebeian ignorance and
+meanness; which either dulled men's brains or chilled their hearts. In
+the presence of this system, Harry Dudley lingers long enough to rescue
+a slave and to die by the furious hand of the master,--a man in whose
+soul the best impulse was the love he bore his victim, and in whom the
+evil destiny of the drama triumphs.
+
+From the conversation of Harry and the botanist, his friend, the author
+retrospectively develops in its full beauty a character illustrated in
+only one phase by the episode which the passages from Edward Colvil's
+journal cover, while she sketches with other touches, slight, but
+skilful, the people of a whole neighborhood, and the events of years.
+Doctor Borrow, the botanist, is made to pass, by insensible changes,
+from a learned indifference concerning slavery to eloquent and ardent
+argument against it, and thus to present the history of the process by
+which even science, the coldest element of our civilization, found
+itself at last unconsciously arrayed against a system long abhorrent to
+feeling. In the Doctor's talk with Westlake, we have a close and clear
+comparison of the origin and result of the civilizations of New England
+and the South, the high equality of the North and the mean aristocracy
+of the Slave States, and the Doctor's first perfect consciousness of
+loving the one and hating the other. The supposititious Mandingo's
+observations of the state of Europe at the time of opening the African
+slave-trade form a humorous protest against judgment of Africa by
+travellers' stories, and suggest more than a doubt whether the first
+men-stealers were better than their victims, and whether they conferred
+the boon of a higher civilization upon negroes by enslaving them. But
+the humor of the book, like its learning, is subordinated to the story,
+which is imbued with a sentiment not wanting in warmth because so noble
+and lofty. The friendship of Colvil and Dudley is less like the
+friendship between two men, than the affectionate tenderness of two
+women for each other; and the character of Dudley in its purity and
+elevation is sometimes elusive. The personality of Colvil is also rather
+shadowy; but the Doctor is human and tangible, and the other persons,
+however slightly indicated, are all real, and bear palpable witness, in
+their lives, to the influences of that system which, though cruel to the
+oppressed, wrought a ruin yet more terrible in the oppressor.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[G] Of course we have no disposition to deny M. Renan's right to reduce
+Christ and every other historic figure to the standard of the most
+modern critical art. We merely mean to say that this is all M. Renan
+does, and that the all is not much.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No.
+105, July 1866, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***
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author	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 01:55:57 -0700
committer	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 01:55:57 -0700
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