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+Project Gutenberg The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner
+Volume 1
+
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+Title:  The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner Volume 1
+
+Author:  Charles Dudley Warner
+
+June, 2001  [Etext #2671]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner
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+The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner Volume 1
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+
+MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN
+BACKLOG STUDIES
+BADDECK
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY LETTER
+
+MY DEAR MR. FIELDS,--I did promise to write an Introduction to these
+charming papers but an Introduction,--what is it?--a sort of
+pilaster, put upon the face of a building for looks' sake, and
+usually flat,--very flat.  Sometimes it may be called a caryatid,
+which is, as I understand it, a cruel device of architecture,
+representing a man or a woman, obliged to hold up upon his or her
+head or shoulders a structure which they did not build, and which
+could stand just as well without as with them.  But an Introduction
+is more apt to be a pillar, such as one may see in Baalbec, standing
+up in the air all alone, with nothing on it, and with nothing for it
+to do.
+
+But an Introductory Letter is different.  There is in that no
+formality, no assumption of function, no awkward propriety or dignity
+to be sustained.  A letter at the opening of a book may be only a
+footpath, leading the curious to a favorable point of observation,
+and then leaving them to wander as they will.
+
+Sluggards have been sent to the ant for wisdom; but writers might
+better be sent to the spider, not because he works all night, and
+watches all day, but because he works unconsciously.  He dare not
+even bring his work before his own eyes, but keeps it behind him, as
+if too much knowledge of what one is doing would spoil the delicacy
+and modesty of one's work.
+
+Almost all graceful and fanciful work is born like a dream, that
+comes noiselessly, and tarries silently, and goes as a bubble bursts.
+And yet somewhere work must come in,--real, well-considered work.
+
+Inness (the best American painter of Nature in her moods of real
+human feeling) once said, "No man can do anything in art, unless he
+has intuitions; but, between whiles, one must work hard in collecting
+the materials out of which intuitions are made."  The truth could not
+be hit off better.  Knowledge is the soil, and intuitions are the
+flowers which grow up out of it.  The soil must be well enriched and
+worked.
+
+It is very plain, or will be to those who read these papers, now
+gathered up into this book, as into a chariot for a race, that the
+author has long employed his eyes, his ears, and his understanding,
+in observing and considering the facts of Nature, and in weaving
+curious analogies.  Being an editor of one of the oldest daily news-
+papers in New England, and obliged to fill its columns day after day
+(as the village mill is obliged to render every day so many sacks of
+flour or of meal to its hungry customers), it naturally occurred to
+him, "Why not write something which I myself, as well as my readers,
+shall enjoy?  The market gives them facts enough; politics, lies
+enough; art, affectations enough; criminal news, horrors enough;
+fashion, more than enough of vanity upon vanity, and vexation of
+purse.  Why should they not have some of those wandering and joyous
+fancies which solace my hours?"
+
+The suggestion ripened into execution.  Men and women read, and
+wanted more.  These garden letters began to blossom every week; and
+many hands were glad to gather pleasure from them.  A sign it was of
+wisdom.  In our feverish days it is a sign of health or of
+convalescence that men love gentle pleasure, and enjoyments that do
+not rush or roar, but distill as the dew.
+
+The love of rural life, the habit of finding enjoyment in familiar
+things, that susceptibility to Nature which keeps the nerve gently
+thrilled in her homliest nooks and by her commonest sounds, is worth
+a thousand fortunes of money, or its equivalents.
+
+Every book which interprets the secret lore of fields and gardens,
+every essay that brings men nearer to the understanding of the
+mysteries which every tree whispers, every brook murmurs, every weed,
+even, hints, is a contribution to the wealth and the happiness of our
+kind.  And if the lines of the writer shall be traced in quaint
+characters, and be filled with a grave humor, or break out at times
+into merriment, all this will be no presumption against their wisdom
+or his goodness.  Is the oak less strong and tough because the mosses
+and weather-stains stick in all manner of grotesque sketches along
+its bark?  Now, truly, one may not learn from this little book either
+divinity or horticulture; but if he gets a pure happiness, and a
+tendency to repeat the happiness from the simple stores of Nature, he
+will gain from our friend's garden what Adam lost in his, and what
+neither philosophy nor divinity has always been able to restore.
+
+Wherefore, thanking you for listening to a former letter, which
+begged you to consider whether these curious and ingenious papers,
+that go winding about like a half-trodden path between the garden and
+the field, might not be given in book-form to your million readers, I
+remain, yours to command in everything but the writing of an
+Introduction,
+
+HENRY WARD BEECHER.
+
+
+
+
+
+BY WAY OF DEDICATION
+
+MY DEAR POLLY,--When a few of these papers had appeared in "The
+Courant," I was encouraged to continue them by hearing that they had
+at least one reader who read them with the serious mind from which
+alone profit is to be expected.  It was a maiden lady, who, I am
+sure, was no more to blame for her singleness than for her age; and
+she looked to these honest sketches of experience for that aid which
+the professional agricultural papers could not give in the management
+of the little bit of garden which she called her own.  She may have
+been my only disciple; and I confess that the thought of her yielding
+a simple faith to what a gainsaying world may have regarded with
+levity has contributed much to give an increased practical turn to my
+reports of what I know about gardening.  The thought that I had
+misled a lady, whose age is not her only singularity, who looked to
+me for advice which should be not at all the fanciful product of the
+Garden of Gull, would give me great pain.  I trust that her autumn is
+a peaceful one, and undisturbed by either the humorous or the
+satirical side of Nature.
+
+You know that this attempt to tell the truth about one of the most
+fascinating occupations in the world has not been without its
+dangers.  I have received anonymous letters.  Some of them were
+murderously spelled; others were missives in such elegant phrase and
+dress, that danger was only to be apprehended in them by one skilled
+in the mysteries of medieval poisoning, when death flew on the wings
+of a perfume.  One lady, whose entreaty that I should pause had
+something of command in it, wrote that my strictures on "pusley " had
+so inflamed her husband's zeal, that, in her absence in the country,
+he had rooted up all her beds of portulaca (a sort of cousin of the
+fat weed), and utterly cast it out.  It is, however, to be expected,
+that retributive justice would visit the innocent as well as the
+guilty of an offending family.  This is only another proof of the
+wide sweep of moral forces.  I suppose that it is as necessary in the
+vegetable world as it is elsewhere to avoid the appearance of evil.
+
+In offering you the fruit of my garden, which has been gathered from
+week to week, without much reference to the progress of the crops or
+the drought, I desire to acknowledge an influence which has lent half
+the charm to my labor.  If I were in a court of justice, or
+injustice, under oath, I should not like to say, that, either in the
+wooing days of spring, or under the suns of the summer solstice, you
+had been, either with hoe, rake, or miniature spade, of the least use
+in the garden; but your suggestions have been invaluable, and,
+whenever used, have been paid for.  Your horticultural inquiries have
+been of a nature to astonish the vegetable world, if it listened, and
+were a constant inspiration to research.  There was almost nothing
+that you did not wish to know; and this, added to what I wished to
+know, made a boundless field for discovery.  What might have become
+of the garden, if your advice had been followed, a good Providence
+only knows; but I never worked there without a consciousness that you
+might at any moment come down the walk, under the grape-arbor,
+bestowing glances of approval, that were none the worse for not being
+critical; exercising a sort of superintendence that elevated
+gardening into a fine art; expressing a wonder that was as
+complimentary to me as it was to Nature; bringing an atmosphere which
+made the garden a region of romance, the soil of which was set apart
+for fruits native to climes unseen.  It was this bright presence that
+filled the garden, as it did the summer, with light, and now leaves
+upon it that tender play of color and bloom which is called among the
+Alps the after-glow.
+
+NOOK FARM, HARTFORD, October, 1870
+
+C.  D.  W.
+
+
+
+
+
+PRELIMINARY
+
+
+The love of dirt is among the earliest of passions, as it is the
+latest.  Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts.  So
+long as we are dirty, we are pure.  Fondness for the ground comes
+back to a man after he has run the round of pleasure and business,
+eaten dirt, and sown wild-oats, drifted about the world, and taken
+the wind of all its moods.  The love of digging in the ground (or of
+looking on while he pays another to dig) is as sure to come back to
+him as he is sure, at last, to go under the ground, and stay there.
+To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds and
+watch, their renewal of life, this is the commonest delight of the
+race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do.  When Cicero writes
+of the pleasures of old age, that of agriculture is chief among them:
+
+"Venio nunc ad voluptates agricolarum, quibus ego incredibiliter
+delector: quae nec ulla impediuntur senectute, et mihi ad sapientis
+vitam proxime videntur accedere." (I am driven to Latin because New
+York editors have exhausted the English language in the praising of
+spring, and especially of the month of May.)
+
+Let us celebrate the soil.  Most men toil that they may own a piece
+of it; they measure their success in life by their ability to buy it.
+It is alike the passion of the parvenu and the pride of the
+aristocrat.  Broad acres are a patent of nobility; and no man but
+feels more, of a man in the world if he have a bit of ground that he
+can call his own.  However small it is on the surface, it is four
+thousand miles deep; and that is a very handsome property.  And there
+is a great pleasure in working in the soil, apart from the ownership
+of it.  The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done
+something for the good of the World.  He belongs to the producers.
+It is a pleasure to eat of the fruit of one's toil, if it be nothing
+more than a head of lettuce or an ear of corn.  One cultivates a lawn
+even with great satisfaction; for there is nothing more beautiful
+than grass and turf in our latitude.  The tropics may have their
+delights, but they have not turf: and the world without turf is a
+dreary desert.  The original Garden of Eden could not have had such
+turf as one sees in England.  The Teutonic races all love turf: they
+emigrate in the line of its growth.
+
+To dig in the mellow soil-to dig moderately, for all pleasure should
+be taken sparingly--is a great thing.  One gets strength out of the
+ground as often as one really touches it with a hoe.  Antaeus (this
+is a classical article) was no doubt an agriculturist; and such a
+prize-fighter as Hercules could n't do anything with him till he got
+him to lay down his spade, and quit the soil.  It is not simply beets
+and potatoes and corn and string-beans that one raises in his well-
+hoed garden: it is the average of human life.  There is life in the
+ground; it goes into the seeds; and it also, when it is stirred up,
+goes into the man who stirs it.  The hot sun on his back as he bends
+to his shovel and hoe, or contemplatively rakes the warm and fragrant
+loam, is better than much medicine.  The buds are coming out on the
+bushes round about; the blossoms of the fruit trees begin to show;
+the blood is running up the grapevines in streams; you can smell the
+Wild flowers on the near bank; and the birds are flying and glancing
+and singing everywhere.  To the open kitchen door comes the busy
+housewife to shake a white something, and stands a moment to look,
+quite transfixed by the delightful sights and sounds.  Hoeing in the
+garden on a bright, soft May day, when you are not obliged to, is
+nearly equal to the delight of going trouting.
+
+Blessed be agriculture! if one does not have too much of it.  All
+literature is fragrant with it, in a gentlemanly way.  At the foot of
+the charming olive-covered hills of Tivoli, Horace (not he of
+Chappaqua) had a sunny farm: it was in sight of Hadrian's villa, who
+did landscape gardening on an extensive scale, and probably did not
+get half as much comfort out of it as Horace did from his more simply
+tilled acres.  We trust that Horace did a little hoeing and farming
+himself, and that his verse is not all fraudulent sentiment.  In
+order to enjoy agriculture, you do not want too much of it, and you
+want to be poor enough to have a little inducement to work moderately
+yourself.  Hoe while it is spring, and enjoy the best anticipations.
+It is not much matter if things do not turn out well.
+
+
+
+
+FIRST WEEK
+
+Under this modest title, I purpose to write a series of papers, some
+of which will be like many papers of garden-seeds, with nothing vital
+in them, on the subject of gardening; holding that no man has any
+right to keep valuable knowledge to himself, and hoping that those
+who come after me, except tax-gatherers and that sort of person, will
+find profit in the perusal of my experience.  As my knowledge is
+constantly increasing, there is likely to be no end to these papers.
+They will pursue no orderly system of agriculture or horticulture,
+but range from topic to topic, according to the weather and the
+progress of the weeds, which may drive me from one corner of the
+garden to the other.
+
+The principal value of a private garden is not understood.  It is not
+to give the possessor vegetables or fruit (that can be better and
+cheaper done by the market-gardeners), but to teach him patience
+and philosophy and the higher virtues, -hope deferred and
+expectations blighted, leading directly to resignation and sometimes
+to alienation.  The garden thus becomes a moral agent, a test of
+character, as it was in the beginning.  I shall keep this central
+truth in mind in these articles.  I mean to have a moral garden, if
+it is not a productive one,--one that shall teach., O my brothers!
+O my sisters! the great lessons of life.
+
+The first pleasant thing about a garden in this latitude is, that you
+never know when to set it going.  If you want anything to come to
+maturity early, you must start it in a hot-house.  If you put it out
+early, the chances are all in favor of getting it nipped with frost;
+for the thermometer will be 90 deg. one day, and go below 32 deg. the
+night of the day following.  And, if you do not set out plants or sow
+seeds early, you fret continually; knowing that your vegetables will
+be late, and that, while Jones has early peas, you will be watching
+your slow-forming pods.  This keeps you in a state of mind.  When you
+have planted anything early, you are doubtful whether to desire to
+see it above ground, or not.  If a hot day comes, you long to see the
+young plants; but, when a cold north wind brings frost, you tremble
+lest the seeds have burst their bands.  Your spring is passed in
+anxious doubts and fears, which are usually realized; and so a great
+moral discipline is worked out for you.
+
+Now, there is my corn, two or three inches high this 18th of May, and
+apparently having no fear of a frost.  I was hoeing it this morning
+for the first time,--it is not well usually to hoe corn until about
+the 18th of May,--when Polly came out to look at the Lima beans.  She
+seemed to think the poles had come up beautifully.  I thought they
+did look well: they are a fine set of poles, large and well grown,
+and stand straight.  They were inexpensive, too.  The cheapness came
+about from my cutting them on another man's land, and he did not know
+it.  I have not examined this transaction in the moral light of
+gardening; but I know people in this country take great liberties at
+the polls.  Polly noticed that the beans had not themselves come up
+in any proper sense, but that the dirt had got off from them, leaving
+them uncovered.  She thought it would be well to sprinkle a slight
+layer of dirt over them; and I, indulgently, consented.  It occurred
+to me, when she had gone, that beans always come up that way,--wrong
+end first; and that what they wanted was light, and not dirt.
+
+Observation.  --Woman always did, from the first, make a muss in a
+garden.
+
+I inherited with my garden a large patch of raspberries.  Splendid
+berry the raspberry, when the strawberry has gone.  This patch has
+grown into such a defiant attitude, that you could not get within
+several feet of it.  Its stalks were enormous in size, and cast out
+long, prickly arms in all directions; but the bushes were pretty much
+all dead.  I have walked into them a good deal with a pruning-knife;
+but it is very much like fighting original sin.  The variety is one
+that I can recommend.  I think it is called Brinckley's Orange.  It
+is exceedingly prolific, and has enormous stalks.  The fruit is also
+said to be good; but that does not matter so much, as the plant does
+not often bear in this region.  The stalks seem to be biennial
+institutions; and as they get about their growth one year, and bear
+the next year, and then die, and the winters here nearly always kill
+them, unless you take them into the house (which is inconvenient if
+you have a family of small children), it is very difficult to induce
+the plant to flower and fruit.  This is the greatest objection there
+is to this sort of raspberry.  I think of keeping these for
+discipline, and setting out some others, more hardy sorts, for fruit.
+
+
+
+
+SECOND WEEK
+
+Next to deciding when to start your garden, the most important matter
+is, what to put in it.  It is difficult to decide what to order for
+dinner on a given day: how much more oppressive is it to order in a
+lump an endless vista of dinners, so to speak!  For, unless your
+garden is a boundless prairie (and mine seems to me to be that when I
+hoe it on hot days), you must make a selection, from the great
+variety of vegetables, of those you will raise in it; and you feel
+rather bound to supply your own table from your own garden, and to
+eat only as you have sown.
+
+I hold that no man has a right (whatever his sex, of course) to have
+a garden to his own selfish uses.  He ought not to please himself,
+but every man to please his neighbor.  I tried to have a garden that
+would give general moral satisfaction.  It seemed to me that nobody
+could object to potatoes (a most useful vegetable); and I began to
+plant them freely.  But there was a chorus of protest against them.
+"You don't want to take up your ground with potatoes," the neighbors
+said; "you can buy potatoes" (the very thing I wanted to avoid doing
+is buying things).  "What you want is the perishable things that you
+cannot get fresh in the market."--"But what kind of perishable
+things?"  A horticulturist of eminence wanted me to sow lines of
+straw-berries and raspberries right over where I had put my potatoes
+in drills.  I had about five hundred strawberry-plants in another
+part of my garden; but this fruit-fanatic wanted me to turn my whole
+patch into vines and runners.  I suppose I could raise strawberries
+enough for all my neighbors; and perhaps I ought to do it.  I had a
+little space prepared for melons,--muskmelons,--which I showed to an
+experienced friend.
+
+You are not going to waste your ground on muskmelons?" he asked.
+"They rarely ripen in this climate thoroughly, before frost." He had
+tried for years without luck.  I resolved to not go into such a
+foolish experiment.  But, the next day, another neighbor happened in.
+"Ah! I see you are going to have melons.  My family would rather give
+up anything else in the garden than musk-melons,--of the nutmeg
+variety.  They are the most grateful things we have on the table."
+So there it was.  There was no compromise: it was melons, or no
+melons, and somebody offended in any case.  I half resolved to plant
+them a little late, so that they would, and they would n't.  But I
+had the same difficulty about string-beans (which I detest), and
+squash (which I tolerate), and parsnips, and the whole round of green
+things.
+
+I have pretty much come to the conclusion that you have got to put
+your foot down in gardening.  If I had actually taken counsel of my
+friends, I should not have had a thing growing in the garden to-day
+but weeds.  And besides, while you are waiting, Nature does not wait.
+Her mind is made up.  She knows just what she will raise; and she has
+an infinite variety of early and late.  The most humiliating thing to
+me about a garden is the lesson it teaches of the inferiority of man.
+Nature is prompt, decided, inexhaustible.  She thrusts up her plants
+with a vigor and freedom that I admire; and the more worthless the
+plant, the more rapid and splendid its growth.  She is at it early
+and late, and all night; never tiring, nor showing the least sign of
+exhaustion.
+
+"Eternal gardening is the price of liberty," is a motto that I should
+put over the gateway of my garden, if I had a gate.  And yet it is
+not wholly true; for there is no liberty in gardening.  The man who
+undertakes a garden is relentlessly pursued.  He felicitates himself
+that, when he gets it once planted, he will have a season of rest and
+of enjoyment in the sprouting and growing of his seeds.  It is a
+green anticipation.  He has planted a seed that will keep him awake
+nights; drive rest from his bones, and sleep from his pillow.  Hardly
+is the garden planted, when he must begin to hoe it.  The weeds have
+sprung up all over it in a night.  They shine and wave in redundant
+life.  The docks have almost gone to seed; and their roots go deeper
+than conscience.  Talk about the London Docks!--the roots of these
+are like the sources of the Aryan race.  And the weeds are not all.
+I awake in the morning (and a thriving garden will wake a person up
+two hours before he ought to be out of bed) and think of the
+tomato-plants,--the leaves like fine lace-work, owing to black bugs
+that skip around, and can't be caught.  Somebody ought to get up
+before the dew is off (why don't the dew stay on till after a
+reasonable breakfast?) and sprinkle soot on the leaves.  I wonder if
+it is I.  Soot is so much blacker than the bugs, that they are
+disgusted, and go away.  You can't get up too early, if you have a
+garden.  You must be early due yourself, if you get ahead of the
+bugs.  I think, that, on the whole, it would be best to sit up all
+night, and sleep daytimes.  Things appear to go on in the night in
+the garden uncommonly.  It would be less trouble to stay up than it
+is to get up so early.
+
+I have been setting out some new raspberries, two sorts,--a silver
+and a gold color.  How fine they will look on the table next year in
+a cut-glass dish, the cream being in a ditto pitcher!  I set them
+four and five feet apart.  I set my strawberries pretty well apart
+also.  The reason is, to give room for the cows to run through when
+they break into the garden,--as they do sometimes.  A cow needs a
+broader track than a locomotive; and she generally makes one.  I am
+sometimes astonished, to see how big a space in, a flower-bed her
+foot will cover.  The raspberries are called Doolittle and Golden
+Cap.  I don't like the name of the first variety, and, if they do
+much, shall change it to Silver Top.  You never can tell what a thing
+named Doolittle will do.  The one in the Senate changed color, and
+got sour.  They ripen badly,--either mildew, or rot on the bush.
+They are apt to Johnsonize,--rot on the stem.  I shall watch the
+Doolittles.
+
+
+
+
+THIRD WEEK
+
+I believe that I have found, if not original sin, at least vegetable
+total depravity in my garden; and it was there before I went into it.
+It is the bunch, or joint, or snakegrass,--whatever it is called.  As
+I do not know the names of all the weeds and plants, I have to do as
+Adam did in his garden,--name things as I find them.  This grass has
+a slender, beautiful stalk : and when you cut it down) or pull up a
+long root of it, you fancy it is got rid of; but in a day or two it
+will come up in the same spot in half a dozen vigorous blades.
+Cutting down and pulling up is what it thrives on.  Extermination
+rather helps it.  If you follow a slender white root, it will be
+found to run under the ground until it meets another slender white
+root; and you will soon unearth a network of them, with a knot
+somewhere, sending out dozens of sharp-pointed, healthy shoots, every
+joint prepared to be an independent life and plant.  The only way to
+deal with it is to take one part hoe and two parts fingers, and
+carefully dig it out, not leaving a joint anywhere.  It will take a
+little time, say all summer, to dig out thoroughly a small patch; but
+if you once dig it out, and keep it out, you will have no further
+trouble.
+
+I have said it was total depravity.  Here it is.  If you attempt to
+pull up and root out any sin in you, which shows on the surface,--if
+it does not show, you do not care for it,--you may have noticed how
+it runs into an interior network of sins, and an ever-sprouting
+branch of them roots somewhere; and that you cannot pull out one
+without making a general internal disturbance, and rooting up your
+whole being.  I suppose it is less trouble to quietly cut them off at
+the top--say once a week, on Sunday, when you put on your religious
+clothes and face so that no one will see them, and not try to
+eradicate the network within.
+
+Remark.--This moral vegetable figure is at the service of any
+clergyman who will have the manliness to come forward and help me at
+a day's hoeing on my potatoes.  None but the orthodox need apply.
+
+I, however, believe in the intellectual, if not the moral, qualities
+of vegetables, and especially weeds.  There was a worthless vine that
+(or who) started up about midway between a grape-trellis and a row of
+bean-poles, some three feet from each, but a little nearer the
+trellis.  When it came out of the ground, it looked around to see
+what it should do.  The trellis was already occupied.  The bean-pole
+was empty.  There was evidently a little the best chance of light,
+air, and sole proprietorship on the pole.  And the vine started for
+the pole, and began to climb it with determination.  Here was as
+distinct an act of choice, of reason, as a boy exercises when he goes
+into a forest, and, looking about, decides which tree he will climb.
+And, besides, how did the vine know enough to travel in exactly the
+right direction, three feet, to find what it wanted?  This is
+intellect.  The weeds, on the other hand, have hateful moral
+qualities.  To cut down a weed is, therefore, to do a moral action.
+I feel as if I were destroying sin.  My hoe becomes an instrument of
+retributive justice.  I am an apostle of Nature.  This view of the
+matter lends a dignity to the art of hoeing which nothing else does,
+and lifts it into the region of ethics.  Hoeing becomes, not a
+pastime, but a duty.  And you get to regard it so, as the days and
+the weeds lengthen.
+
+Observation.--Nevertheless, what a man needs in gardening is a
+cast-iron back,--with a hinge in it.  The hoe is an ingenious
+instrument, calculated to call out a great deal of strength at a
+great disadvantage.
+
+The striped bug has come, the saddest of the year.  He is a moral
+double-ender, iron-clad at that.  He is unpleasant in two ways.  He
+burrows in the ground so that you cannot find him, and he flies away
+so that you cannot catch him.  He is rather handsome, as bugs go, but
+utterly dastardly, in that he gnaws the stem of the plant close to
+the ground, and ruins it without any apparent advantage to himself.
+I find him on the hills of cucumbers (perhaps it will be a
+cholera-year, and we shall not want any), the squashes (small loss),
+and the melons (which never ripen).  The best way to deal with the
+striped bug is to sit down by the hills, and patiently watch for him.
+If you are spry, you can annoy him.  This, however, takes time.  It
+takes all day and part of the night.  For he flieth in darkness, and
+wasteth at noonday.  If you get up before the dew is off the plants,-
+-it goes off very early,--you can sprinkle soot on the plant (soot is
+my panacea: if I can get the disease of a plant reduced to the
+necessity of soot, I am all right)and soot is unpleasant to the bug.
+But the best thing to do is to set a toad to catch the bugs.  The
+toad at once establishes the most intimate relations with the bug.
+It is a pleasure to see such unity among the lower animals.  The
+difficulty is to make the toad stay and watch the hill.  If you know
+your toad, it is all right.  If you do not, you must build a tight
+fence round the plants, which the toad cannot jump over.  This,
+however, introduces a new element.  I find that I have a zoological
+garden on my hands.  It is an unexpected result of my little
+enterprise, which never aspired to the completeness of the Paris
+"Jardin des Plantes."
+
+
+
+
+FOURTH WEEK
+
+Orthodoxy is at a low ebb.  Only two clergymen accepted my offer to
+come and help hoe my potatoes for the privilege of using my vegetable
+total-depravity figure about the snake-grass, or quack-grass as some
+call it; and those two did not bring hoes.  There seems to be a lack
+of disposition to hoe among our educated clergy.  I am bound to say
+that these two, however, sat and watched my vigorous combats with the
+weeds, and talked most beautifully about the application of the
+snake-grass figure.  As, for instance, when a fault or sin showed on
+the surface of a man, whether, if you dug down, you would find that
+it ran back and into the original organic bunch of original sin
+within the man.  The only other clergyman who came was from out of
+town,--a half Universalist, who said he wouldn't give twenty cents
+for my figure.  He said that the snake-grass was not in my garden
+originally, that it sneaked in under the sod, and that it could be
+entirely rooted out with industry and patience.  I asked the
+Universalist-inclined man to take my hoe and try it; but he said he
+had n't time, and went away.
+
+But, jubilate, I have got my garden all hoed the first time!  I feel
+as if I had put down the rebellion.  Only there are guerrillas left
+here and there, about the borders and in corners, unsubdued,- Forrest
+docks, and Quantrell grass, and Beauregard pig-weeds.  This first
+hoeing is a gigantic task: it is your first trial of strength with
+the never-sleeping forces of Nature.  Several times, in its progress,
+I was tempted to do as Adam did, who abandoned his garden on account
+of the weeds.  (How much my mind seems to run upon Adam, as if there
+had been only two really moral gardens,--Adam's and mine!) The only
+drawback to my rejoicing over the finishing of the first hoeing is,
+that the garden now wants hoeing the second time.  I suppose, if my
+garden were planted in a perfect circle, and I started round it with
+a hoe, I should never see an opportunity to rest.  The fact is, that
+gardening is the old fable of perpetual labor; and I, for one, can
+never forgive Adam Sisyphus, or whoever it was, who let in the roots
+of discord.  I had pictured myself sitting at eve, with my family, in
+the shade of twilight, contemplating a garden hoed.  Alas!  it is a
+dream not to be realized in this world.
+
+My mind has been turned to the subject of fruit and shade trees in a
+garden.  There are those who say that trees shade the garden too
+much, and interfere with the growth of the vegetables.  There may be
+something in this: but when I go down the potato rows, the rays of
+the sun glancing upon my shining blade, the sweat pouring from my
+face, I should be grateful for shade.  What is a garden for?  The
+pleasure of man.  I should take much more pleasure in a shady garden.
+Am I to be sacrificed, broiled, roasted, for the sake of the
+increased vigor of a few vegetables?  The thing is perfectly absurd.
+If I were rich, I think I would have my garden covered with an
+awning, so that it would be comfortable to work in it.  It might roll
+up and be removable, as the great awning of the Roman Coliseum was,--
+not like the Boston one, which went off in a high wind.  Another very
+good way to do, and probably not so expensive as the awning, would be
+to have four persons of foreign birth carry a sort of canopy over you
+as you hoed.  And there might be a person at each end of the row with
+some cool and refreshing drink.  Agriculture is still in a very
+barbarous stage.  I hope to live yet to see the day when I can do my
+gardening, as tragedy is done, to slow and soothing music, and
+attended by some of the comforts I have named.  These things come so
+forcibly into my mind sometimes as I work, that perhaps, when a
+wandering breeze lifts my straw hat, or a bird lights on a near
+currant-bush, and shakes out a full-throated summer song, I almost
+expect to find the cooling drink and the hospitable entertainment at
+the end of the row.  But I never do.  There is nothing to be done but
+to turn round, and hoe back to the other end.
+
+Speaking of those yellow squash-bugs, I think I disheartened them by
+covering the plants so deep with soot and wood-ashes that they could
+not find them; and I am in doubt if I shall ever see the plants
+again.  But I have heard of another defense against the bugs.  Put a
+fine wire-screen over each hill, which will keep out the bugs and
+admit the rain.  I should say that these screens would not cost much
+more than the melons you would be likely to get from the vines if you
+bought them; but then think of the moral satisfaction of watching the
+bugs hovering over the screen, seeing, but unable to reach the tender
+plants within.  That is worth paying for.
+
+I left my own garden yesterday, and went over to where Polly was
+getting the weeds out of one of her flower-beds.  She was working
+away at the bed with a little hoe.  Whether women ought to have the
+ballot or not (and I have a decided opinion on that point, which I
+should here plainly give, did I not fear that it would injure my
+agricultural influence), 'I am compelled to say that this was rather
+helpless hoeing.  It was patient, conscientious, even pathetic
+hoeing; but it was neither effective nor finished.  When completed,
+the bed looked somewhat as if a hen had scratched it: there was that
+touching unevenness about it.  I think no one could look at it and
+not be affected.  To be sure, Polly smoothed it off with a rake, and
+asked me if it was n't nice; and I said it was.  It was not a
+favorable time for me to explain the difference between puttering
+hoeing, and the broad, free sweep of the instrument, which kills the
+weeds, spares the plants, and loosens the soil without leaving it in
+holes and hills.  But, after all, as life is constituted, I think
+more of Polly's honest and anxious care of her plants than of the
+most finished gardening in the world.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTH WEEK
+
+I left my garden for a week, just at the close of the dry spell.  A
+season of rain immediately set in, and when I returned the
+transformation was wonderful.  In one week every vegetable had fairly
+jumped forward.  The tomatoes which I left slender plants, eaten of
+bugs and debating whether they would go backward or forward, had
+become stout and lusty, with thick stems and dark leaves, and some of
+them had blossomed.  The corn waved like that which grows so rank out
+of the French-English mixture at Waterloo.  The squashes--I will not
+speak of the squashes.  The most remarkable growth was the asparagus.
+There was not a spear above ground when I went away; and now it had
+sprung up, and gone to seed, and there were stalks higher than my
+head.  I am entirely aware of the value of words, and of moral
+obligations.  When I say that the asparagus had grown six feet in
+seven days, I expect and wish to be believed.  I am a little
+particular about the statement; for, if there is any prize offered
+for asparagus at the next agricultural fair, I wish to compete,-
+-speed to govern.  What I claim is the fastest asparagus.  As for
+eating purposes, I have seen better.  A neighbor of mine, who looked
+in at the growth of the bed, said, " Well, he'd be--": but I told him
+there was no use of affirming now; he might keep his oath till I
+wanted it on the asparagus affidavit.  In order to have this sort of
+asparagus, you want to manure heavily in the early spring, fork it
+in, and top-dress (that sounds technical) with a thick layer of
+chloride of sodium: if you cannot get that, common salt will do, and
+the neighbors will never notice whether it is the orthodox Na. Cl.
+58-5, or not.
+
+I scarcely dare trust myself to speak of the weeds.  They grow as if
+the devil was in them.  I know a lady, a member of the church, and a
+very good sort of woman, considering the subject condition of that
+class, who says that the weeds work on her to that extent, that, in
+going through her garden, she has the greatest difficulty in keeping
+the ten commandments in anything like an unfractured condition.  I
+asked her which one, but she said, all of them: one felt like
+breaking the whole lot.  The sort of weed which I most hate (if I can
+be said to hate anything which grows in my own garden) is the
+"pusley," a fat, ground-clinging, spreading, greasy thing, and the
+most propagatious (it is not my fault if the word is not in the
+dictionary) plant I know.  I saw a Chinaman, who came over with a
+returned missionary, and pretended to be converted, boil a lot of it
+in a pot, stir in eggs, and mix and eat it with relish, -"Me likee
+he." It will be a good thing to keep the Chinamen on when they come
+to do our gardening.  I only fear they will cultivate it at the
+expense of the strawberries and melons.  Who can say that other
+weeds, which we despise, may not be the favorite food of some remote
+people or tribe?  We ought to abate our conceit.  It is possible that
+we destroy in our gardens that which is really of most value in some
+other place.  Perhaps, in like manner, our faults and vices are
+virtues in some remote planet.  I cannot see, however, that this
+thought is of the slightest value to us here, any more than weeds
+are.
+
+There is another subject which is forced upon my notice.  I like
+neighbors, and I like chickens; but I do not think they ought to be
+united near a garden.  Neighbors' hens in your garden are an
+annoyance.  Even if they did not scratch up the corn, and peck the
+strawberries, and eat the tomatoes, it is not pleasant to see them
+straddling about in their jerky, high-stepping, speculative manner,
+picking inquisitively here and there.  It is of no use to tell the
+neighbor that his hens eat your tomatoes: it makes no impression on
+him, for the tomatoes are not his.  The best way is to casually
+remark to him that he has a fine lot of chickens, pretty well grown,
+and that you like spring chickens broiled.  He will take them away at
+once.
+
+The neighbors' small children are also out of place in your garden,
+in strawberry and currant time.  I hope I appreciate the value of
+children.  We should soon come to nothing without them, though the
+Shakers have the best gardens in the world.  Without them the common
+school would languish.  But the problem is, what to do with them in a
+garden.  For they are not good to eat, and there is a law against
+making away with them.  The law is not very well enforced, it is
+true; for people do thin them out with constant dosing, paregoric,
+and soothing-syrups, and scanty clothing.  But I, for one, feel that
+it would not be right, aside from the law, to take the life, even of
+the smallest child, for the sake of a little fruit, more or less, in
+the garden.  I may be wrong; but these are my sentiments, and I am
+not ashamed of them.  When we come, as Bryant says in his "Iliad," to
+leave the circus of this life, and join that innumerable caravan
+which moves, it will be some satisfaction to us, that we have never,
+in the way of gardening, disposed of even the humblest child
+unnecessarily.  My plan would be to put them into Sunday-schools more
+thoroughly, and to give the Sunday-schools an agricultural turn;
+teaching the children the sacredness of neighbors' vegetables.  I
+think that our Sunday-schools do not sufficiently impress upon
+children the danger, from snakes and otherwise, of going into the
+neighbors' gardens.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTH WEEK
+
+Somebody has sent me a new sort of hoe, with the wish that I should
+speak favorably of it, if I can consistently.  I willingly do so, but
+with the understanding that I am to be at liberty to speak just as
+courteously of any other hoe which I may receive.  If I understand
+religious morals, this is the position of the religious press with
+regard to bitters and wringing-machines.  In some cases, the
+responsibility of such a recommendation is shifted upon the wife of
+the editor or clergy-man.  Polly says she is entirely willing to make
+a certificate, accompanied with an affidavit, with regard to this
+hoe; but her habit of sitting about the garden walk, on an inverted
+flower-pot, while I hoe, some what destroys the practical value of
+her testimony.
+
+As to this hoe, I do not mind saying that it has changed my view of
+the desirableness and value of human life.  It has, in fact, made
+life a holiday to me.  It is made on the principle that man is an
+upright, sensible, reasonable being, and not a groveling wretch.  It
+does away with the necessity of the hinge in the back.  The handle is
+seven and a half feet long.  There are two narrow blades, sharp on
+both edges, which come together at an obtuse angle in front; and as
+you walk along with this hoe before you, pushing and pulling with a
+gentle motion, the weeds fall at every thrust and withdrawal, and the
+slaughter is immediate and widespread.  When I got this hoe I was
+troubled with sleepless mornings, pains in the back, kleptomania with
+regard to new weeders; when I went into my garden I was always sure
+to see something.  In this disordered state of mind and body I got
+this hoe.  The morning after a day of using it I slept perfectly and
+late.  I regained my respect for the eighth commandment.  After two
+doses of the hoe in the garden, the weeds entirely disappeared.
+Trying it a third morning, I was obliged to throw it over the fence
+in order to save from destruction the green things that ought to grow
+in the garden.  Of course, this is figurative language.  What I mean
+is, that the fascination of using this hoe is such that you are
+sorely tempted to employ it upon your vegetables, after the weeds are
+laid low, and must hastily withdraw it, to avoid unpleasant results.
+I make this explanation, because I intend to put nothing into these
+agricultural papers that will not bear the strictest scientific
+investigation; nothing that the youngest child cannot understand and
+cry for; nothing that the oldest and wisest men will not need to
+study with care.
+
+I need not add that the care of a garden with this hoe becomes the
+merest pastime.  I would not be without one for a single night.  The
+only danger is, that you may rather make an idol of the hoe, and
+somewhat neglect your garden in explaining it, and fooling about with
+it.  I almost think that, with one of these in the hands of an
+ordinary day-laborer, you might see at night where he had been
+working.
+
+Let us have peas.  I have been a zealous advocate of the birds.  I
+have rejoiced in their multiplication.  I have endured their concerts
+at four o'clock in the morning without a murmur.  Let them come, I
+said, and eat the worms, in order that we, later, may enjoy the
+foliage and the fruits of the earth.  We have a cat, a magnificent
+animal, of the sex which votes (but not a pole-cat),--so large and
+powerful that, if he were in the army, he would be called Long Tom.
+He is a cat of fine disposition, the most irreproachable morals I
+ever saw thrown away in a cat, and a splendid hunter.  He spends his
+nights, not in social dissipation, but in gathering in rats, mice,
+flying-squirrels, and also birds.  When he first brought me a bird, I
+told him that it was wrong, and tried to convince him, while he was
+eating it, that he was doing wrong; for he is a reasonable cat, and
+understands pretty much everything except the binomial theorem and
+the time down the cycloidal arc.  But with no effect.  The killing of
+birds went on, to my great regret and shame.
+
+The other day I went to my garden to get a mess of peas.  I had seen,
+the day before, that they were just ready to pick.  How I had lined
+the ground, planted, hoed, bushed them!  The bushes were very fine,--
+seven feet high, and of good wood.  How I had delighted in the
+growing, the blowing, the podding!  What a touching thought it was
+that they had all podded for me!  When I went to pick them, I found
+the pods all split open, and the peas gone.  The dear little birds,
+who are so fond of the strawberries, had eaten them all.  Perhaps
+there were left as many as I planted: I did not count them.  I made a
+rapid estimate of the cost of the seed, the interest of the ground,
+the price of labor, the value of the bushes, the anxiety of weeks of
+watchfulness.  I looked about me on the face of Nature.  The wind
+blew from the south so soft and treacherous!  A thrush sang in the
+woods so deceitfully!  All Nature seemed fair.  But who was to give
+me back my peas?  The fowls of the air have peas; but what has man?
+
+I went into the house.  I called Calvin.  (That is the name of our
+cat, given him on account of his gravity, morality, and uprightness.
+We never familiarly call him John).  I petted Calvin.  I lavished
+upon him an enthusiastic fondness.  I told him that he had no fault;
+that the one action that I had called a vice was an heroic exhibition
+of regard for my interests.  I bade him go and do likewise
+continually.  I now saw how much better instinct is than mere
+unguided reason.  Calvin knew.  If he had put his opinion into
+English (instead of his native catalogue), it would have been: "You
+need not teach your grandmother to suck eggs."  It was only the round
+of Nature.  The worms eat a noxious something in the ground.  The
+birds eat the worms.  Calvin eats the birds.  We eat--no, we do not
+eat Calvin.  There the chain stops.  When you ascend the scale of
+being, and come to an animal that is, like ourselves, inedible) you
+have arrived at a result where you can rest.  Let us respect the cat.
+He completes an edible chain.
+
+I have little heart to discuss methods of raising peas.  It occurs to
+me that I can have an iron peabush, a sort of trellis, through which
+I could discharge electricity at frequent intervals, and electrify
+the birds to death when they alight: for they stand upon my beautiful
+brush in order to pick out the peas.  An apparatus of this kind, with
+an operator, would cost, however, about as much as the peas.  A
+neighbor suggests that I might put up a scarecrow near the vines,
+which would keep the birds away.  I am doubtful about it: the birds
+are too much accustomed to seeing a person in poor clothes in the
+garden to care much for that.  Another neighbor suggests that the
+birds do not open the pods; that a sort of blast, apt to come after
+rain, splits the pods, and the birds then eat the peas.  It may be
+so.  There seems to be complete unity of action between the blast and
+the birds.  But, good neighbors, kind friends, I desire that you will
+not increase, by talk, a disappointment which you cannot assuage.
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTH WEEK
+
+A garden is an awful responsibility.  You never know what you may be
+aiding to grow in it.  I heard a sermon, not long ago, in which the
+preacher said that the Christian, at the moment of his becoming one,
+was as perfect a Christian as he would be if he grew to be an arch-
+angel; that is, that he would not change thereafter at all, but only
+develop.  I do not know whether this is good theology, or not; and I
+hesitate to support it by an illustration from my garden, especially
+as I do not want to run the risk of propagating error, and I do not
+care to give away these theological comparisons to clergymen who make
+me so little return in the way of labor.  But I find, in dissecting a
+pea-blossom, that hidden in the center of it is a perfect miniature
+pea-pod, with the peas all in it,--as perfect a pea-pod as it will
+ever be, only it is as tiny as a chatelaine ornament.  Maize and some
+other things show the same precocity.  This confirmation of the
+theologic theory is startling, and sets me meditating upon the moral
+possibilities of my garden.  I may find in it yet the cosmic egg.
+
+And, speaking of moral things, I am half determined to petition the
+Ecumenical Council to issue a bull of excommunication against
+"pusley."  Of all the forms which " error " has taken in this world,
+I think that is about the worst.  In the Middle Ages the monks in St.
+Bernard's ascetic community at Clairvaux excommunicated a vineyard
+which a less rigid monk had planted near, so that it bore nothing.
+In 1120 a bishop of Laon excommunicated the caterpillars in his
+diocese; and, the following year, St. Bernard excommunicated the
+flies in the Monastery of Foigny; and in 1510 the ecclesiastical
+court pronounced the dread sentence against the rats of Autun, Macon,
+and Lyons.  These examples are sufficient precedents.  It will be
+well for the council, however, not to publish the bull either just
+before or just after a rain; for nothing can kill this pestilent
+heresy when the ground is wet.
+
+It is the time of festivals.  Polly says we ought to have one,--a
+strawberry-festival.  She says they are perfectly delightful: it is
+so nice to get people together!--this hot weather.  They create such
+a good feeling!  I myself am very fond of festivals.  I always go,--
+when I can consistently.  Besides the strawberries, there are ice
+creams and cake and lemonade, and that sort of thing: and one always
+feels so well the next day after such a diet!  But as social
+reunions, if there are good things to eat, nothing can be pleasanter;
+and they are very profitable, if you have a good object.  I agreed
+that we ought to have a festival; but I did not know what object to
+devote it to.  We are not in need of an organ, nor of any pulpit-
+cushions.  I do not know that they use pulpit-cushions now as much as
+they used to, when preachers had to have something soft to pound, so
+that they would not hurt their fists.  I suggested pocket
+handkerchiefs, and flannels for next winter.  But Polly says that
+will not do at all.  You must have some charitable object,--something
+that appeals to a vast sense of something; something that it will be
+right to get up lotteries and that sort of thing for.  I suggest a
+festival for the benefit of my garden; and this seems feasible.  In
+order to make everything pass off pleasantly, invited guests will
+bring or send their own strawberries and cream, which I shall be
+happy to sell to them at a slight advance.  There are a great many
+improvements which the garden needs; among them a sounding-board, so
+that the neighbors' children can hear when I tell them to get a
+little farther off from the currant-bushes.  I should also like a
+selection from the ten commandments, in big letters, posted up
+conspicuously, and a few traps, that will detain, but not maim, for
+the benefit of those who cannot read.  But what is most important is,
+that the ladies should crochet nets to cover over the strawberries.
+A good-sized, well-managed festival ought to produce nets enough to
+cover my entire beds; and I can think of no other method of
+preserving the berries from the birds next year.  I wonder how many
+strawberries it would need for a festival "and whether they would
+cost more than the nets.
+
+I am more and more impressed, as the summer goes on, with the
+inequality of man's fight with Nature; especially in a civilized
+state.  In savagery, it does not much matter; for one does not take a
+square hold, and put out his strength, but rather accommodates
+himself to the situation, and takes what he can get, without raising
+any dust, or putting himself into everlasting opposition.  But the
+minute he begins to clear a spot larger than he needs to sleep in for
+a night, and to try to have his own way in the least, Nature is at
+once up, and vigilant, and contests him at every step with all her
+ingenuity and unwearied vigor.  This talk of subduing Nature is
+pretty much nonsense.  I do not intend to surrender in the midst of
+the summer campaign, yet I cannot but think how much more peaceful my
+relations would now be with the primal forces, if I had, let Nature
+make the garden according to her own notion.  (This is written with
+the thermometer at ninety degrees, and the weeds starting up with a
+freshness and vigor, as if they had just thought of it for the first
+time, and had not been cut down and dragged out every other day since
+the snow went off.)
+
+We have got down the forests, and exterminated savage beasts; but
+Nature is no more subdued than before: she only changes her tactics,-
+-uses smaller guns, so to speak.  She reenforces herself with a
+variety of bugs, worms, and vermin, and weeds, unknown to the savage
+state, in order to make war upon the things of our planting; and
+calls in the fowls of the air, just as we think the battle is won, to
+snatch away the booty.  When one gets almost weary of the struggle,
+she is as fresh as at the beginning,--just, in fact, ready for the
+fray.  I, for my part, begin to appreciate the value of frost and
+snow; for they give the husbandman a little peace, and enable him,
+for a season, to contemplate his incessant foe subdued.  I do not
+wonder that the tropical people, where Nature never goes to sleep,
+give it up, and sit in lazy acquiescence.
+
+Here I have been working all the season to make a piece of lawn.  It
+had to be graded and sowed and rolled; and I have been shaving it
+like a barber.  When it was soft, everything had a tendency to go on
+to it,--cows, and especially wandering hackmen.  Hackmen (who are a
+product of civilization) know a lawn when they see it.  They rather
+have a fancy for it, and always try to drive so as to cut the sharp
+borders of it, and leave the marks of their wheels in deep ruts of
+cut-up, ruined turf.  The other morning, I had just been running the
+mower over the lawn, and stood regarding its smoothness, when I
+noticed one, two, three puffs of fresh earth in it; and, hastening
+thither, I found that the mole had arrived to complete the work of
+the hackmen.  In a half-hour he had rooted up the ground like a pig.
+I found his run-ways.  I waited for him with a spade.  He did not
+appear; but, the next time I passed by, he had ridged the ground in
+all directions,--a smooth, beautiful animal, with fur like silk, if
+you could only catch him.  He appears to enjoy the lawn as much as
+the hackmen did.  He does not care how smooth it is.  He is
+constantly mining, and ridging it up.  I am not sure but he could be
+countermined.  I have half a mind to put powder in here and there,
+and blow the whole thing into the air.  Some folks set traps for the
+mole; but my moles never seem to go twice in the same place.  I am
+not sure but it would bother them to sow the lawn with interlacing
+snake-grass (the botanical name of which, somebody writes me, is
+devil-grass: the first time I have heard that the Devil has a
+botanical name), which would worry them, if it is as difficult for
+them to get through it as it is for me.
+
+I do not speak of this mole in any tone of complaint.  He is only a
+part of the untiring resources which Nature brings against the humble
+gardener.  I desire to write nothing against him which I should wish
+to recall at the last,--nothing foreign to the spirit of that
+beautiful saying of the dying boy, " He had no copy-book, which,
+dying, he was sorry he had blotted."
+
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTH WEEK
+
+My garden has been visited by a High Official Person.  President
+Gr-nt was here just before the Fourth, getting his mind quiet for
+that event by a few days of retirement, staying with a friend at the
+head of our street; and I asked him if he wouldn't like to come down
+our way Sunday afternoon and take a plain, simple look at my garden,
+eat a little lemon ice-cream and jelly-cake, and drink a glass of
+native lager-beer.  I thought of putting up over my gate, " Welcome
+to the Nation's Gardener; " but I hate nonsense, and did n't do it.
+I, however, hoed diligently on Saturday: what weeds I could n't
+remove I buried, so that everything would look all right.  The
+borders of my drive were trimmed with scissors; and everything that
+could offend the Eye of the Great was hustled out of the way.
+
+In relating this interview, it must be distinctly understood that I
+am not responsible for anything that the President said; nor is he,
+either.  He is not a great speaker; but whatever he says has an
+esoteric and an exoteric meaning; and some of his remarks about my
+vegetables went very deep.  I said nothing to him whatever about
+politics, at which he seemed a good deal surprised: he said it was
+the first garden he had ever been in, with a man, when the talk was
+not of appointments.  I told him that this was purely vegetable;
+after which he seemed more at his ease, and, in fact, delighted with
+everything he saw.  He was much interested in my strawberry-beds,
+asked what varieties I had, and requested me to send him some seed.
+He said the patent-office seed was as difficult to raise as an
+appropriation for the St. Domingo business.  The playful bean seemed
+also to please him; and he said he had never seen such impressive
+corn and potatoes at this time of year; that it was to him an
+unexpected pleasure, and one of the choicest memories that he should
+take away with him of his visit to New England.
+
+N.  B. --That corn and those potatoes which General Gr-nt looked at I
+will sell for seed, at five dollars an ear, and one dollar a potato.
+Office-seekers need not apply.
+
+Knowing the President's great desire for peas, I kept him from that
+part of the garden where the vines grow.  But they could not be
+concealed.  Those who say that the President is not a man easily
+moved are knaves or fools.  When he saw my pea-pods, ravaged by the
+birds, he burst into tears.  A man of war, he knows the value of
+peas.  I told him they were an excellent sort, "The Champion of
+England."  As quick as a flash he said, "Why don't you call them 'The
+Reverdy Johnson'?"
+
+It was a very clever bon-mot; but I changed the subject.
+
+The sight of my squashes, with stalks as big as speaking-trumpets,
+restored the President to his usual spirits.  He said the summer
+squash was the most ludicrous vegetable he knew.  It was nearly all
+leaf and blow, with only a sickly, crook-necked fruit after a mighty
+fuss.  It reminded him of the member of Congress from...; but I
+hastened to change the subject.
+
+As we walked along, the keen eye of the President rested upon some
+handsome sprays of "pusley," which must have grown up since Saturday
+night.  It was most fortunate; for it led his Excellency to speak of
+the Chinese problem.  He said he had been struck with one, coupling
+of the Chinese and the "pusley" in one of my agricultural papers; and
+it had a significance more far-reaching than I had probably supposed.
+He had made the Chinese problem a special study.  He said that I was
+right in saying that "pusley" was the natural food of the Chinaman,
+and that where the "pusley" was, there would the Chinaman be also.
+For his part, he welcomed the Chinese emigration: we needed the
+Chinaman in our gardens to eat the "pusley; "and he thought the whole
+problem solved by this simple consideration.  To get rid of rats and
+"pusley," he said, was a necessity of our civilization.  He did not
+care so much about the shoe-business; he did not think that the
+little Chinese shoes that he had seen would be of service in the
+army: but the garden-interest was quite another affair.  We want to
+make a garden of our whole country: the hoe, in the hands of a man
+truly great, he was pleased to say, was mightier than the pen.  He
+presumed that General B-tl-r had never taken into consideration the
+garden-question, or he would not assume the position he does with
+regard to the Chinese emigration.  He would let the Chinese come,
+even if B-tl-r had to leave, I thought he was going to say, but I
+changed the subject.
+
+During our entire garden interview (operatically speaking, the
+garden-scene), the President was not smoking.  I do not know how the
+impression arose that he "uses tobacco in any form;" for I have seen
+him several times, and he was not smoking.  Indeed, I offered him a
+Connecticut six; but he wittily said that he did not like a weed in a
+garden,--a remark which I took to have a personal political bearing,
+and changed the subject.
+
+The President was a good deal surprised at the method and fine
+appearance of my garden, and to learn that I had the sole care of it.
+He asked me if I pursued an original course, or whether I got my
+ideas from writers on the subject.  I told him that I had had no time
+to read anything on the subject since I began to hoe, except
+"Lothair," from which I got my ideas of landscape gardening; and that
+I had worked the garden entirely according to my own notions, except
+that I had borne in mind his injunction, "to fight it out on this
+line if"--The President stopped me abruptly, and said it was
+unnecessary to repeat that remark: he thought he had heard it before.
+Indeed, he deeply regretted that he had ever made it.  Sometimes, he
+said, after hearing it in speeches, and coming across it in
+resolutions, and reading it in newspapers, and having it dropped
+jocularly by facetious politicians, who were boring him for an
+office, about twenty-five times a day, say for a month, it would get
+to running through his head, like the "shoo-fly" song which B-tl-r
+sings in the House, until it did seem as if he should go distracted.
+He said, no man could stand that kind of sentence hammering on his
+brain for years.
+
+The President was so much pleased with my management of the garden,
+that he offered me (at least, I so understood him) the position of
+head gardener at the White House, to have care of the exotics.  I
+told him that I thanked him, but that I did not desire any foreign
+appointment.  I had resolved, when the administration came in, not to
+take an appointment; and I had kept my resolution.  As to any home
+office, I was poor, but honest; and, of course, it would be useless
+for me to take one.  The President mused a moment, and then smiled,
+and said he would see what could be done for me.  I did not change
+the subject; but nothing further was said by General Gr-nt.
+
+The President is a great talker (contrary to the general impression);
+but I think he appreciated his quiet hour in my garden.  He said it
+carried him back to his youth farther than anything he had seen
+lately.  He looked forward with delight to the time when he could
+again have his private garden, grow his own lettuce and tomatoes, and
+not have to get so much "sarce" from Congress.
+
+The chair in which the President sat, while declining to take a glass
+of lager I have had destroyed, in order that no one may sit in it.
+It was the only way to save it, if I may so speak.  It would have
+been impossible to keep it from use by any precautions.  There are
+people who would have sat in it, if the seat had been set with iron
+spikes.  Such is the adoration of Station.
+
+
+
+
+NINTH WEEK
+
+I am more and more impressed with the moral qualities of vegetables,
+and contemplate forming a science which shall rank with comparative
+anatomy and comparative philology,--the science of comparative
+vegetable morality.  We live in an age of protoplasm.  And, if
+life-matter is essentially the same in all forms of life, I purpose
+to begin early, and ascertain the nature of the plants for which I am
+responsible.  I will not associate with any vegetable which is
+disreputable, or has not some quality that can contribute to my moral
+growth.  I do not care to be seen much with the squashes or the dead-
+beets.  Fortunately I can cut down any sorts I do not like with the
+hoe, and, probably, commit no more sin in so doing than the
+Christians did in hewing down the Jews in the Middle Ages.
+
+This matter of vegetable rank has not been at all studied as it
+should be.  Why do we respect some vegetables and despise others,
+when all of them come to an equal honor or ignominy on the table?
+The bean is a graceful, confiding, engaging vine; but you never can
+put beans into poetry, nor into the highest sort of prose.  There is
+no dignity in the bean.  Corn, which, in my garden, grows alongside
+the bean, and, so far as I can see, with no affectation of
+superiority, is, however, the child of song.  It waves in all
+literature.  But mix it with beans, and its high tone is gone.
+Succotash is vulgar.  It is the bean in it.  The bean is a vulgar
+vegetable, without culture, or any flavor of high society among
+vegetables.  Then there is the cool cucumber, like so many people,
+good for nothing when it is ripe and the wildness has gone out of it.
+How inferior in quality it is to the melon, which grows upon a
+similar vine, is of a like watery consistency, but is not half so
+valuable!  The cucumber is a sort of low comedian in a company where
+the melon is a minor gentleman.  I might also contrast the celery
+with the potato.  The associations are as opposite as the dining-room
+of the duchess and the cabin of the peasant.  I admire the potato,
+both in vine and blossom; but it is not aristocratic.  I began
+digging my potatoes, by the way, about the 4th of July; and I fancy I
+have discovered the right way to do it.  I treat the potato just as I
+would a cow.  I do not pull them up, and shake them out, and destroy
+them; but I dig carefully at the side of the hill, remove the fruit
+which is grown, leaving the vine undisturbed: and my theory is, that
+it will go on bearing, and submitting to my exactions, until the
+frost cuts it down.  It is a game that one would not undertake with a
+vegetable of tone.
+
+The lettuce is to me a most interesting study.  Lettuce is like
+conversation: it must be fresh and crisp, so sparkling that you
+scarcely notice the bitter in it.  Lettuce, like most talkers, is,
+however, apt to run rapidly to seed.  Blessed is that sort which
+comes to a head, and so remains, like a few people I know; growing
+more solid and satisfactory and tender at the same time, and whiter
+at the center, and crisp in their maturity.  Lettuce, like conver-
+sation, requires a good deal of oil to avoid friction, and keep the
+company smooth; a pinch of attic salt; a dash of pepper; a quantity
+of mustard and vinegar, by all means, but so mixed that you will
+notice no sharp contrasts; and a trifle of sugar.  You can put
+anything, and the more things the better, into salad, as into a
+conversation; but everything depends upon the skill of mixing.  I
+feel that I am in the best society when I am with lettuce.  It is in
+the select circle of vegetables.  The tomato appears well on the
+table; but you do not want to ask its origin.  It is a most agreeable
+parvenu.  Of course, I have said nothing about the berries.  They
+live in another and more ideal region; except, perhaps, the currant.
+Here we see, that, even among berries, there are degrees of breeding.
+The currant is well enough, clear as truth, and exquisite in color;
+but I ask you to notice how far it is from the exclusive hauteur of
+the aristocratic strawberry, and the native refinement of the quietly
+elegant raspberry.
+
+I do not know that chemistry, searching for protoplasm, is able to
+discover the tendency of vegetables.  It can only be found out by
+outward observation.  I confess that I am suspicious of the bean, for
+instance.  There are signs in it of an unregulated life.  I put up
+the most attractive sort of poles for my Limas.  They stand high and
+straight, like church-spires, in my theological garden,--lifted up;
+and some of them have even budded, like Aaron's rod.  No church-
+steeple in a New England village was ever better fitted to draw to it
+the rising generation on Sunday, than those poles to lift up my beans
+towards heaven.  Some of them did run up the sticks seven feet, and
+then straggled off into the air in a wanton manner; but more than
+half of them went gallivanting off to the neighboring grape-trellis,
+and wound their tendrils with the tendrils of the grape, with a
+disregard of the proprieties of life which is a satire upon human
+nature.  And the grape is morally no better.  I think the ancients,
+who were not troubled with the recondite mystery of protoplasm, were
+right in the mythic union of Bacchus and Venus.
+
+Talk about the Darwinian theory of development, and the principle of
+natural selection!  I should like to see a garden let to run in
+accordance with it.  If I had left my vegetables and weeds to a free
+fight, in which the strongest specimens only should come to maturity,
+and the weaker go to the wall, I can clearly see that I should have
+had a pretty mess of it.  It would have been a scene of passion and
+license and brutality.  The "pusley" would have strangled the
+strawberry; the upright corn, which has now ears to hear the guilty
+beating of the hearts of the children who steal the raspberries,
+would have been dragged to the earth by the wandering bean; the
+snake-grass would have left no place for the potatoes under ground;
+and the tomatoes would have been swamped by the lusty weeds.  With a
+firm hand, I have had to make my own "natural selection." Nothing
+will so well bear watching as a garden, except a family of children
+next door.  Their power of selection beats mine.  If they could read
+half as well as they can steal awhile away, I should put up a notice,
+"Children, beware!  There is Protoplasm here." But I suppose it would
+have no effect.  I believe they would eat protoplasm as quick as
+anything else, ripe or green.  I wonder if this is going to be a
+cholera-year.  Considerable cholera is the only thing that would let
+my apples and pears ripen.  Of course I do not care for the fruit;
+but I do not want to take the responsibility of letting so much
+"life-matter," full of crude and even wicked vegetable-human
+tendencies, pass into the composition of the neighbors' children,
+some of whom may be as immortal as snake-grass.  There ought to be a
+public meeting about this, and resolutions, and perhaps a clambake.
+At least, it ought to be put into the catechism, and put in strong.
+
+
+
+
+TENTH WEEK
+
+I think I have discovered the way to keep peas from the birds.  I
+tried the scarecrow plan, in a way which I thought would outwit the
+shrewdest bird.  The brain of the bird is not large; but it is all
+concentrated on one object, and that is the attempt to elude the
+devices of modern civilization which injure his chances of food.  I
+knew that, if I put up a complete stuffed man, the bird would detect
+the imitation at once: the perfection of the thing would show him
+that it was a trick.  People always overdo the matter when they
+attempt deception.  I therefore hung some loose garments, of a bright
+color, upon a rake-head, and set them up among the vines.  The
+supposition was, that the bird would think there was an effort to
+trap him, that there was a man behind, holding up these garments, and
+would sing, as he kept at a distance, "You can't catch me with any
+such double device." The bird would know, or think he knew, that I
+would not hang up such a scare, in the expectation that it would pass
+for a man, and deceive a bird; and he would therefore look for a
+deeper plot.  I expected to outwit the bird by a duplicity that was
+simplicity itself I may have over-calculated the sagacity and
+reasoning power of the bird.  At any rate, I did over-calculate the
+amount of peas I should gather.
+
+But my game was only half played.  In another part of the garden were
+other peas, growing and blowing.  To-these I took good care not to
+attract the attention of the bird by any scarecrow whatever!  I left
+the old scarecrow conspicuously flaunting above the old vines; and by
+this means I hope to keep the attention of the birds confined to that
+side of the garden.  I am convinced that this is the true use of a
+scarecrow: it is a lure, and not a warning.  If you wish to save men
+from any particular vice, set up a tremendous cry of warning about
+some other; and they will all give their special efforts to the one
+to which attention is called.  This profound truth is about the only
+thing I have yet realized out of my pea-vines.
+
+However, the garden does begin to yield.  I know of nothing that
+makes one feel more complacent, in these July days, than to have his
+vegetables from his own garden.  What an effect it has on the
+market-man and the butcher!  It is a kind of declaration of
+independence.  The market-man shows me his peas and beets and
+tomatoes, and supposes he shall send me out some with the meat.  "No,
+I thank you," I say carelessly; "I am raising my own this year."
+Whereas I have been wont to remark, "Your vegetables look a little
+wilted this weather," I now say, "What a fine lot of vegetables
+you've got!"  When a man is not going to buy, he can afford to be
+generous.  To raise his own vegetables makes a person feel, somehow,
+more liberal.  I think the butcher is touched by the influence, and
+cuts off a better roast for me, The butcher is my friend when he sees
+that I am not wholly dependent on him.
+
+It is at home, however, that the effect is most marked, though
+sometimes in a way that I had not expected.  I have never read of any
+Roman supper that seemed to me equal to a dinner of my own
+vegetables; when everything on the table is the product of my own
+labor, except the clams, which I have not been able to raise yet, and
+the chickens, which have withdrawn from the garden just when they
+were most attractive.  It is strange what a taste you suddenly have
+for things you never liked before.  The squash has always been to me
+a dish of contempt; but I eat it now as if it were my best friend.  I
+never cared for the beet or the bean; but I fancy now that I could
+eat them all, tops and all, so completely have they been transformed
+by the soil in which they grew.  I think the squash is less squashy,
+and the beet has a deeper hue of rose, for my care of them.
+
+I had begun to nurse a good deal of pride in presiding over a table
+whereon was the fruit of my honest industry.  But woman!--John Stuart
+Mill is right when he says that we do not know anything about women.
+Six thousand years is as one day with them.  I thought I had
+something to do with those vegetables.  But when I saw Polly seated
+at her side of the table, presiding over the new and susceptible
+vegetables, flanked by the squash and the beans, and smiling upon the
+green corn and the new potatoes, as cool as the cucumbers which lay
+sliced in ice before her, and when she began to dispense the fresh
+dishes, I saw at once that the day of my destiny was over.  You would
+have thought that she owned all the vegetables, and had raised them
+all from their earliest years.  Such quiet, vegetable airs!  Such
+gracious appropriation!  At length I said,--
+
+"Polly, do you know who planted that squash, or those squashes?"
+
+"James, I suppose."
+
+"Well, yes, perhaps James did plant them, to a certain extent.  But
+who hoed them?"
+
+"We did."
+
+"We did!" I said, in the most sarcastic manner.
+
+And I suppose we put on the sackcloth and ashes, when the striped bug
+came at four o'clock A.M., and we watched the tender leaves, and
+watered night and morning the feeble plants.  I tell you, Polly,"
+said I, uncorking the Bordeaux raspberry vinegar, "there is not a pea
+here that does not represent a drop of moisture wrung from my brow,
+not a beet that does not stand for a back-ache, not a squash that has
+not caused me untold anxiety; and I did hope--but I will say no
+more."
+
+Observation. --In this sort of family discussion, "I will say no
+more" is the most effective thing you can close up with.
+
+I am not an alarmist.  I hope I am as cool as anybody this hot
+summer.  But I am quite ready to say to Polly, or any other woman,
+"You can have the ballot; only leave me the vegetables, or, what is
+more important, the consciousness of power in vegetables."  I see how
+it is.  Woman is now supreme in the house.  She already stretches out
+her hand to grasp the garden.  She will gradually control everything.
+Woman is one of the ablest and most cunning creatures who have ever
+mingled in human affairs.  I understand those women who say they
+don't want the ballot.  They purpose to hold the real power while we
+go through the mockery of making laws.  They want the power without
+the responsibility.  (Suppose my squash had not come up, or my beans-
+-as they threatened at one time--had gone the wrong way: where would
+I have been?) We are to be held to all the responsibilities.  Woman
+takes the lead in all the departments, leaving us politics only.  And
+what is politics?  Let me raise the vegetables of a nation, says
+Polly, and I care not who makes its politics.  Here I sat at the
+table, armed with the ballot, but really powerless among my own
+vegetables.  While we are being amused by the ballot, woman is
+quietly taking things into her own hands.
+
+
+
+
+ELEVENTH WEEK
+
+Perhaps, after all, it is not what you get out of a garden, but what
+you put into it, that is the most remunerative.  What is a man?  A
+question frequently asked, and never, so far as I know,
+satisfactorily answered.  He commonly spends his seventy years, if so
+many are given him, in getting ready to enjoy himself.  How many
+hours, how many minutes, does one get of that pure content which is
+happiness?  I do not mean laziness, which is always discontent; but
+that serene enjoyment, in which all the natural senses have easy
+play, and the unnatural ones have a holiday.  There is probably
+nothing that has such a tranquilizing effect, and leads into such
+content as gardening.  By gardening, I do not mean that insane desire
+to raise vegetables which some have; but the philosophical occupation
+of contact with the earth, and companionship with gently growing
+things and patient processes; that exercise which soothes the spirit,
+and develops the deltoid muscles.
+
+In half an hour I can hoe myself right away from this world, as we
+commonly see it, into a large place, where there are no obstacles.
+What an occupation it is for thought!  The mind broods like a hen on
+eggs.  The trouble is, that you are not thinking about anything, but
+are really vegetating like the plants around you.  I begin to know
+what the joy of the grape-vine is in running up the trellis, which is
+similar to that of the squirrel in running up a tree.  We all have
+something in our nature that requires contact with the earth.  In the
+solitude of garden-labor, one gets into a sort of communion with the
+vegetable life, which makes the old mythology possible.  For
+instance, I can believe that the dryads are plenty this summer: my
+garden is like an ash-heap.  Almost all the moisture it has had in
+weeks has been the sweat of honest industry.
+
+The pleasure of gardening in these days, when the thermometer is at
+ninety, is one that I fear I shall not be able to make intelligible
+to my readers, many of whom do not appreciate the delight of soaking
+in the sunshine.  I suppose that the sun, going through a man, as it
+will on such a day, takes out of him rheumatism, consumption, and
+every other disease, except sudden death--from sun-stroke.  But,
+aside from this, there is an odor from the evergreens, the hedges,
+the various plants and vines, that is only expressed and set afloat
+at a high temperature, which is delicious; and, hot as it may be, a
+little breeze will come at intervals, which can be heard in the
+treetops, and which is an unobtrusive benediction.  I hear a quail or
+two whistling in the ravine; and there is a good deal of fragmentary
+conversation going on among the birds, even on the warmest days.  The
+companionship of Calvin, also, counts for a good deal.  He usually
+attends me, unless I work too long in one place; sitting down on the
+turf, displaying the ermine of his breast, and watching my movements
+with great intelligence.  He has a feline and genuine love for the
+beauties of Nature, and will establish himself where there is a good
+view, and look on it for hours.  He always accompanies us when we go
+to gather the vegetables, seeming to be desirous to know what we are
+to have for dinner.  He is a connoisseur in the garden; being fond of
+almost all the vegetables, except the cucumber,--a dietetic hint to
+man.  I believe it is also said that the pig will not eat tobacco.
+These are important facts.  It is singular, however, that those who
+hold up the pigs as models to us never hold us up as models to the
+pigs.
+
+I wish I knew as much about natural history and the habits of animals
+as Calvin does.  He is the closest observer I ever saw; and there are
+few species of animals on the place that he has not analyzed.  I
+think he has, to use a euphemism very applicable to him, got outside
+of every one of them, except the toad.  To the toad he is entirely
+indifferent; but I presume he knows that the toad is the most useful
+animal in the garden.  I think the Agricultural Society ought to
+offer a prize for the finest toad.  When Polly comes to sit in the
+shade near my strawberry-beds, to shell peas, Calvin is always lying
+near in apparent obliviousness; but not the slightest unusual sound
+can be made in the bushes, that he is not alert, and prepared to
+investigate the cause of it.  It is this habit of observation, so
+cultivated, which has given him such a trained mind, and made him so
+philosophical.  It is within the capacity of even the humblest of us
+to attain this.
+
+And, speaking of the philosophical temper, there is no class of men
+whose society is more to be desired for this quality than that of
+plumbers.  They are the most agreeable men I know; and the boys in
+the business begin to be agreeable very early.  I suspect the secret
+of it is, that they are agreeable by the hour.  In the driest days,
+my fountain became disabled: the pipe was stopped up.  A couple of
+plumbers, with the implements of their craft, came out to view the
+situation.  There was a good deal of difference of opinion about
+where the stoppage was.  I found the plumbers perfectly willing to
+sit down and talk about it,--talk by the hour.  Some of their guesses
+and remarks were exceedingly ingenious; and their general
+observations on other subjects were excellent in their way, and could
+hardly have been better if they had been made by the job.  The work
+dragged a little, as it is apt to do by the hour.  The plumbers had
+occasion to make me several visits.  Sometimes they would find, upon
+arrival, that they had forgotten some indispensable tool; and one
+would go back to the shop, a mile and a half, after it; and his
+comrade would await his return with the most exemplary patience, and
+sit down and talk,--always by the hour.  I do not know but it is a
+habit to have something wanted at the shop.  They seemed to me very
+good workmen, and always willing to stop and talk about the job, or
+anything else, when I went near them.  Nor had they any of that
+impetuous hurry that is said to be the bane of our American
+civilization.  To their credit be it said, that I never observed
+anything of it in them.  They can afford to wait.  Two of them will
+sometimes wait nearly half a day while a comrade goes for a tool.
+They are patient and philosophical.  It is a great pleasure to meet
+such men.  One only wishes there was some work he could do for them
+by the hour.  There ought to be reciprocity.  I think they have very
+nearly solved the problem of Life: it is to work for other people,
+never for yourself, and get your pay by the hour.  You then have no
+anxiety, and little work.  If you do things by the job, you are
+perpetually driven: the hours are scourges.  If you work by the hour,
+you gently sail on the stream of Time, which is always bearing you on
+to the haven of Pay, whether you make any effort, or not.  Working by
+the hour tends to make one moral.  A plumber working by the job,
+trying to unscrew a rusty, refractory nut, in a cramped position,
+where the tongs continually slipped off, would swear; but I never
+heard one of them swear, or exhibit the least impatience at such a
+vexation, working by the hour.  Nothing can move a man who is paid by
+the hour.  How sweet the flight of time seems to his calm mind!
+
+
+
+
+TWELFTH WEEK
+
+Mr.  Horace Greeley, the introduction of whose name confers an honor
+upon this page (although I ought to say that it is used entirely
+without his consent), is my sole authority in agriculture.  In
+politics I do not dare to follow him; but in agriculture he is
+irresistible.  When, therefore, I find him advising Western farmers
+not to hill up their corn, I think that his advice must be political.
+You must hill up your corn.  People always have hilled up their corn.
+It would take a constitutional amendment to change the practice, that
+has pertained ever since maize was raised.  "It will stand the
+drought better," says Mr.  Greeley, "if the ground is left level."  I
+have corn in my garden, ten and twelve feet high, strong and lusty,
+standing the drought like a grenadier; and it is hilled.  In advising
+this radical change, Mr.  Greeley evidently has a political purpose.
+He might just as well say that you should not hill beans, when
+everybody knows that a "hill of beans" is one of the most expressive
+symbols of disparagement.  When I become too lazy to hill my corn, I,
+too, shall go into politics.
+
+I am satisfied that it is useless to try to cultivate "pusley." I set
+a little of it one side, and gave it some extra care.  It did not
+thrive as well as that which I was fighting.  The fact is, there is a
+spirit of moral perversity in the plant, which makes it grow the
+more, the more it is interfered with.  I am satisfied of that.  I
+doubt if any one has raised more "pusley" this year than I have; and
+my warfare with it has been continual.  Neither of us has slept much.
+If you combat it, it will grow, to use an expression that will be
+understood by many, like the devil.  I have a neighbor, a good
+Christian man, benevolent, and a person of good judgment.  He planted
+next to me an acre of turnips recently.  A few days after, he went to
+look at his crop; and he found the entire ground covered with a thick
+and luxurious carpet of "pusley," with a turnip-top worked in here
+and there as an ornament.  I have seldom seen so thrifty a field.  I
+advised my neighbor next time to sow "pusley" and then he might get a
+few turnips.  I wish there was more demand in our city markets for
+"pusley" as a salad.  I can recommend it.
+
+It does not take a great man to soon discover that, in raising
+anything, the greater part of the plants goes into stalk and leaf,
+and the fruit is a most inconsiderable portion.  I plant and hoe a
+hill of corn: it grows green and stout, and waves its broad leaves
+high in the air, and is months in perfecting itself, and then yields
+us not enough for a dinner.  It grows because it delights to do so,
+--to take the juices out of my ground, to absorb my fertilizers, to
+wax luxuriant, and disport itself in the summer air, and with very
+little thought of making any return to me.  I might go all through my
+garden and fruit trees with a similar result.  I have heard of places
+where there was very little land to the acre.  It is universally true
+that there is a great deal of vegetable show and fuss for the result
+produced.  I do not complain of this.  One cannot expect vegetables
+to be better than men: and they make a great deal of ostentatious
+splurge; and many of them come to no result at last.  Usually, the
+more show of leaf and wood, the less fruit.  This melancholy
+reflection is thrown in here in order to make dog-days seem cheerful
+in comparison.
+
+One of the minor pleasures of life is that of controlling vegetable
+activity and aggressions with the pruning-knife.  Vigorous and rapid
+growth is, however, a necessity to the sport.  To prune feeble plants
+and shrubs is like acting the part of dry-nurse to a sickly orphan.
+You must feel the blood of Nature bound under your hand, and get the
+thrill of its life in your nerves.  To control and culture a strong,
+thrifty plant in this way is like steering a ship under full headway,
+or driving a locomotive with your hand on the lever, or pulling the
+reins over a fast horse when his blood and tail are up.  I do not
+understand, by the way, the pleasure of the jockey in setting up the
+tail of the horse artificially.  If I had a horse with a tail not
+able to sit up, I should feed the horse, and curry him into good
+spirits, and let him set up his own tail.  When I see a poor,
+spiritless horse going by with an artificially set-up tail, it is
+only a signal of distress.  I desire to be surrounded only by
+healthy, vigorous plants and trees, which require constant cutting-in
+and management.  Merely to cut away dead branches is like perpetual
+attendance at a funeral, and puts one in low spirits.  I want to have
+a garden and orchard rise up and meet me every morning, with the
+request to "lay on, Macduff." I respect old age; but an old currant-
+bush, hoary with mossy bark, is a melancholy spectacle.
+
+I suppose the time has come when I am expected to say something about
+fertilizers: all agriculturists do.  When you plant, you think you
+cannot fertilize too much: when you get the bills for the manure, you
+think you cannot fertilize too little.  Of course you do not expect
+to get the value of the manure back in fruits and vegetables; but
+something is due to science,--to chemistry in particular.  You must
+have a knowledge of soils, must have your soil analyzed, and then go
+into a course of experiments to find what it needs.  It needs
+analyzing,--that, I am clear about: everything needs that.  You had
+better have the soil analyzed before you buy: if there is "pusley "
+in it, let it alone.  See if it is a soil that requires much hoeing,
+and how fine it will get if there is no rain for two months.  But
+when you come to fertilizing, if I understand the agricultural
+authorities, you open a pit that will ultimately swallow you up,-
+-farm and all.  It is the great subject of modern times, how to
+fertilize without ruinous expense; how, in short, not to starve the
+earth to death while we get our living out of it.  Practically, the
+business is hardly to the taste of a person of a poetic turn of mind.
+The details of fertilizing are not agreeable.  Michael Angelo, who
+tried every art, and nearly every trade, never gave his mind to
+fertilizing.  It is much pleasanter and easier to fertilize with a
+pen, as the agricultural writers do, than with a fork.  And this
+leads me to say, that, in carrying on a garden yourself, you must
+have a "consulting" gardener; that is, a man to do the heavy and
+unpleasant work.  To such a man, I say, in language used by
+Demosthenes to the Athenians, and which is my advice to all
+gardeners, "Fertilize, fertilize, fertilize!"
+
+
+
+
+THIRTEENTH WEEK
+
+I find that gardening has unsurpassed advantages for the study of
+natural history; and some scientific facts have come under my own
+observation, which cannot fail to interest naturalists and
+un-naturalists in about the same degree.  Much, for instance, has
+been written about the toad, an animal without which no garden would
+be complete.  But little account has been made of his value: the
+beauty of his eye alone has been dwelt on; and little has been said
+of his mouth, and its important function as a fly and bug trap.  His
+habits, and even his origin, have been misunderstood.  Why, as an
+illustration, are toads so plenty after a thunder-shower?  All my
+life long, no one has been able to answer me that question.  Why,
+after a heavy shower, and in the midst of it, do such multitudes of
+toads, especially little ones, hop about on the gravel-walks?  For
+many years, I believed that they rained down; and I suppose many
+people think so still.  They are so small, and they come in such
+numbers only in the shower, that the supposition is not a violent
+one.  "Thick as toads after a shower," is one of our best proverbs.
+I asked an explanation 'of this of a thoughtful woman,--indeed, a
+leader in the great movement to have all the toads hop in any
+direction, without any distinction of sex or religion.  Her reply
+was, that the toads come out during the shower to get water.  This,
+however, is not the fact.  I have discovered that they come out not
+to get water.  I deluged a dry flower-bed, the other night, with
+pailful after pailful of water.  Instantly the toads came out of
+their holes in the dirt, by tens and twenties and fifties, to escape
+death by drowning.  The big ones fled away in a ridiculous streak of
+hopping; and the little ones sprang about in the wildest confusion.
+The toad is just like any other land animal: when his house is full
+of water, he quits it.  These facts, with the drawings of the water
+and the toads, are at the service of the distinguished scientists of
+Albany in New York, who were so much impressed by the Cardiff Giant.
+
+The domestic cow is another animal whose ways I have a chance to
+study, and also to obliterate in the garden.  One of my neighbors has
+a cow, but no land; and he seems desirous to pasture her on the
+surface of the land of other people: a very reasonable desire.  The
+man proposed that he should be allowed to cut the grass from my
+grounds for his cow.  I knew the cow, having often had her in my
+garden; knew her gait and the size of her feet, which struck me as a
+little large for the size of the body.  Having no cow myself, but
+acquaintance with my neighbor's, I told him that I thought it would
+be fair for him to have the grass.  He was, therefore, to keep the
+grass nicely cut, and to keep his cow at home.  I waited some time
+after the grass needed cutting; and, as my neighbor did not appear, I
+hired it cut.  No sooner was it done than he promptly appeared, and
+raked up most of it, and carried it away.  He had evidently been
+waiting that opportunity.  When the grass grew again, the neighbor
+did not appear with his scythe; but one morning I found the cow
+tethered on the sward, hitched near the clothes-horse, a short
+distance from the house.  This seemed to be the man's idea of the
+best way to cut the grass.  I disliked to have the cow there, because
+I knew her inclination to pull up the stake, and transfer her field
+of mowing to the garden, but especially because of her voice.  She
+has the most melancholy "moo" I ever heard.  It is like the wail of
+one uninfallible, excommunicated, and lost.  It is a most distressing
+perpetual reminder of the brevity of life and the shortness of feed.
+It is unpleasant to the family.  We sometimes hear it in the middle
+of the night, breaking the silence like a suggestion of coming
+calamity.  It is as bad as the howling of a dog at a funeral.
+
+I told the man about it; but he seemed to think that he was not
+responsible for the cow's voice.  I then told him to take her away;
+and he did, at intervals, shifting her to different parts of the
+grounds in my absence, so that the desolate voice would startle us
+from unexpected quarters.  If I were to unhitch the cow, and turn her
+loose, I knew where she would go.  If I were to lead her away, the
+question was, Where?  for I did not fancy leading a cow about till I
+could find somebody who was willing to pasture her.  To this dilemma
+had my excellent neighbor reduced me.  But I found him, one Sunday
+morning,--a day when it would not do to get angry, tying his cow at
+the foot of the hill; the beast all the time going on in that
+abominable voice.  I told the man that I could not have the cow in
+the grounds.  He said, "All right, boss;" but he did not go away.  I
+asked him to clear out.  The man, who is a French sympathizer from
+the Republic of Ireland, kept his temper perfectly.  He said he
+wasn't doing anything, just feeding his cow a bit: he wouldn't make
+me the least trouble in the world.  I reminded him that he had been
+told again and again not to come here; that he might have all the
+grass, but he should not bring his cow upon the premises.  The
+imperturbable man assented to everything that I said, and kept on
+feeding his cow.  Before I got him to go to fresh scenes and pastures
+new, the Sabbath was almost broken; but it was saved by one thing: it
+is difficult to be emphatic when no one is emphatic on the other
+side.  The man and his cow have taught me a great lesson, which I
+shall recall when I keep a cow.  I can recommend this cow, if anybody
+wants one, as a steady boarder, whose keeping will cost the owner
+little; but, if her milk is at all like her voice, those who drink it
+are on the straight road to lunacy.
+
+I think I have said that we have a game-preserve.  We keep quails, or
+try to, in the thickly wooded, bushed, and brushed ravine.  This bird
+is a great favorite with us, dead or alive, on account of its taste-
+ful plumage, its tender flesh, its domestic virtues, and its pleasant
+piping.  Besides, although I appreciate toads and cows, and all that
+sort of thing, I like to have a game-preserve more in the English
+style.  And we did.  For in July, while the game-law was on, and the
+young quails were coming on, we were awakened one morning by firing,-
+-musketry-firing, close at hand.  My first thought was, that war was
+declared; but, as I should never pay much attention to war declared
+at that time in the morning, I went to sleep again.  But the
+occurrence was repeated, -and not only early in the morning, but at
+night.  There was calling of dogs, breaking down of brush, and firing
+of guns.  It is hardly pleasant to have guns fired in the direction
+of the house, at your own quails.  The hunters could be sometimes
+seen, but never caught.  Their best time was about sunrise; but,
+before one could dress and get to the front, they would retire.
+
+One morning, about four o'clock, I heard the battle renewed.  I
+sprang up, but not in arms, and went to a window.  Polly (like
+another 'blessed damozel') flew to another window,--
+
+"The blessed damozel leaned out
+>From the gold bar of heaven,"
+
+and reconnoitered from behind the blinds.
+
+"The wonder was not yet quite gone
+>From that still look of hers,"
+
+when an armed man and a legged dog appeared ir the opening.  I was
+vigilantly watching him.
+
+. . . . "And now
+She spoke through the still weather."
+
+"Are you afraid to speak to him?" asked Polly.
+
+Not exactly,
+
+. . . ."she spoke as when
+The stars sang in their spheres.
+
+"Stung by this inquiry, I leaned out of the window till
+
+"The bar I leaned on (was) warm,"
+
+and cried,--
+
+"Halloo, there!  What are you doing?"
+
+"Look out he don't shoot you," called out Polly from the other
+window, suddenly going on another tack.
+
+I explained that a sportsman would not be likely to shoot a gentleman
+in his own house, with bird-shot, so long as quails were to be had.
+
+"You have no business here: what are you after?"  I repeated.
+
+"Looking for a lost hen," said the man as he strode away.
+
+The reply was so satisfactory and conclusive that I shut the blinds
+and went to bed.
+
+But one evening I overhauled one of the poachers.  Hearing his dog in
+the thicket, I rushed through the brush, and came in sight of the
+hunter as he was retreating down the road.  He came to a halt; and we
+had some conversation in a high key.  Of course I threatened to
+prosecute him.  I believe that is the thing to do in such cases; but
+how I was to do it, when I did not know his name or ancestry, and
+couldn't see his face, never occurred to me.  (I remember, now, that
+a farmer once proposed to prosecute me when I was fishing in a
+trout-brook on his farm, and asked my name for that purpose.)  He
+said he should smile to see me prosecute him.
+
+"You can't do it: there ain't no notice up about trespassing."
+
+This view of the common law impressed me; and I said,
+
+"But these are private grounds."
+
+"Private h---!" was all his response.
+
+You can't argue much with a man who has a gun in his hands, when you
+have none.  Besides, it might be a needle-gun, for aught I knew.  I
+gave it up, and we separated.
+
+There is this disadvantage about having a game preserve attached to
+your garden: it makes life too lively.
+
+
+
+
+FOURTEENTH WEEK
+
+In these golden latter August days, Nature has come to a serene
+equilibrium.  Having flowered and fruited, she is enjoying herself.
+I can see how things are going: it is a down-hill business after
+this; but, for the time being, it is like swinging in a hammock,-
+-such a delicious air, such a graceful repose!  I take off my hat as
+I stroll into the garden and look about; and it does seem as if
+Nature had sounded a truce.  I did n't ask for it.  I went out with a
+hoe; but the serene sweetness disarms me.  Thrice is he armed who has
+a long-handled hoe, with a double blade.  Yet to-day I am almost
+ashamed to appear in such a belligerent fashion, with this terrible
+mitrailleuse of gardening.
+
+The tomatoes are getting tired of ripening, and are beginning to go
+into a worthless condition,--green.  The cucumbers cumber the
+ground,--great yellow, over-ripe objects, no more to be compared to
+the crisp beauty of their youth than is the fat swine of the sty to
+the clean little pig.  The nutmeg-melons, having covered themselves
+with delicate lace-work, are now ready to leave the vine.  I know
+they are ripe if they come easily off the stem.
+
+Moral Observations.  --You can tell when people are ripe by their
+willingness to let go.  Richness and ripeness are not exactly the
+same.  The rich are apt to hang to the stem with tenacity.  I have
+nothing against the rich.  If I were not virtuous, I should like to
+be rich.  But we cannot have everything, as the man said when he was
+down with small-pox and cholera, and the yellow fever came into the
+neighborhood.
+
+Now, the grapes, soaked in this liquid gold, called air, begin to
+turn, mindful of the injunction, "to turn or burn." The clusters
+under the leaves are getting quite purple, but look better than they
+taste.  I think there is no danger but they will be gathered as soon
+as they are ripe.  One of the blessings of having an open garden is,
+that I do not have to watch my fruit: a dozen youngsters do that, and
+let it waste no time after it matures.  I wish it were possible to
+grow a variety of grape like the explosive bullets, that should
+explode in the stomach: the vine would make such a nice border for
+the garden,--a masked battery of grape.  The pears, too, are getting
+russet and heavy; and here and there amid the shining leaves one
+gleams as ruddy as the cheek of the Nutbrown Maid.  The Flemish
+Beauties come off readily from the stem, if I take them in my hand:
+they say all kinds of beauty come off by handling.
+
+The garden is peace as much as if it were an empire.  Even the man's
+cow lies down under the tree where the man has tied her, with such an
+air of contentment, that I have small desire to disturb her.  She is
+chewing my cud as if it were hers.  Well, eat on and chew on,
+melancholy brute.  I have not the heart to tell the man to take you
+away: and it would do no good if I had; he wouldn't do it.  The man
+has not a taking way.  Munch on, ruminant creature.
+
+The frost will soon come; the grass will be brown.  I will be
+charitable while this blessed lull continues: for our benevolences
+must soon be turned to other and more distant objects,--the
+amelioration of the condition of the Jews, the education of
+theological young men in the West, and the like.
+
+I do not know that these appearances are deceitful; but I
+sufficiently know that this is a wicked world, to be glad that I have
+taken it on shares.  In fact, I could not pick the pears alone, not
+to speak of eating them.  When I climb the trees, and throw down the
+dusky fruit, Polly catches it in her apron; nearly always, however,
+letting go when it drops, the fall is so sudden.  The sun gets in her
+face; and, every time a pear comes down it is a surprise, like having
+a tooth out, she says.
+
+"If I could n't hold an apron better than that!
+
+But the sentence is not finished : it is useless to finish that sort
+of a sentence in this delicious weather.  Besides, conversation is
+dangerous.  As, for instance, towards evening I am preparing a bed
+for a sowing of turnips,--not that I like turnips in the least; but
+this is the season to sow them.  Polly comes out, and extemporizes
+her usual seat to "consult me" about matters while I work.  I well
+know that something is coming.
+
+"This is a rotation of crops, is n't it?"
+
+"Yes: I have rotated the gone-to-seed lettuce off, and expect to
+rotate the turnips in; it is a political fashion."
+
+"Is n't it a shame that the tomatoes are all getting ripe at once?
+What a lot of squashes!  I wish we had an oyster-bed.  Do you want me
+to help you any more than I am helping?"
+
+"No, I thank you." (I wonder what all this is about?)
+
+"Don't you think we could sell some strawberries next year?"
+
+"By all means, sell anything.  We shall no doubt get rich out of this
+acre."
+
+"Don't be foolish."
+
+And now!
+
+"Don't you think it would be nice to have a?"....
+
+And Polly unfolds a small scheme of benevolence, which is not quite
+enough to break me, and is really to be executed in an economical
+manner.  "Would n't that be nice?"
+
+"Oh, yes!  And where is the money to come from?"
+
+"I thought we had agreed to sell the strawberries."
+
+"Certainly.  But I think we would make more money if we sold the
+plants now."
+
+"Well," said Polly, concluding the whole matter, "I am going to do
+it." And, having thus "consulted" me, Polly goes away; and I put in
+the turnip-seeds quite thick, determined to raise enough to sell.
+But not even this mercenary thought can ruffle my mind as I rake off
+the loamy bed.  I notice, however, that the spring smell has gone out
+of the dirt.  That went into the first crop.
+
+In this peaceful unison with yielding nature, I was a little taken
+aback to find that a new enemy had turned up.  The celery had just
+rubbed through the fiery scorching of the drought, and stood a faint
+chance to grow; when I noticed on the green leaves a big green-and-
+black worm, called, I believe, the celery-worm: but I don't know who
+called him; I am sure I did not.  It was almost ludicrous that he
+should turn up here, just at the end of the season, when I supposed
+that my war with the living animals was over.  Yet he was, no doubt,
+predestinated; for he went to work as cheerfully as if he had arrived
+in June, when everything was fresh and vigorous.  It beats me--Nature
+does.  I doubt not, that, if I were to leave my garden now for a
+week, it would n't know me on my return.  The patch I scratched over
+for the turnips, and left as clean as earth, is already full of
+ambitious "pusley," which grows with all the confidence of youth and
+the skill of old age.  It beats the serpent as an emblem of
+immortality.  While all the others of us in the garden rest and sit
+in comfort a moment, upon the summit of the summer, it is as rampant
+and vicious as ever.  It accepts no armistice.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTEENTH WEEK
+
+It is said that absence conquers all things, love included; but it
+has a contrary effect on a garden.  I was absent for two or three
+weeks.  I left my garden a paradise, as paradises go in this
+protoplastic world; and when I returned, the trail of the serpent was
+over it all, so to speak.  (This is in addition to the actual snakes
+in it, which are large enough to strangle children of average size.)
+I asked Polly if she had seen to the garden while I was away, and she
+said she had.  I found that all the melons had been seen to, and the
+early grapes and pears.  The green worm had also seen to about half
+the celery; and a large flock of apparently perfectly domesticated
+chickens were roaming over the ground, gossiping in the hot September
+sun, and picking up any odd trifle that might be left.  On the whole,
+the garden could not have been better seen to; though it would take a
+sharp eye to see the potato-vines amid the rampant grass and weeds.
+
+The new strawberry-plants, for one thing, had taken advantage of my
+absence.  Every one of them had sent out as many scarlet runners as
+an Indian tribe has.  Some of them had blossomed; and a few had gone
+so far as to bear ripe berries,--long, pear-shaped fruit, hanging
+like the ear-pendants of an East Indian bride.  I could not but
+admire the persistence of these zealous plants, which seemed
+determined to propagate themselves both by seeds and roots, and make
+sure of immortality in some way.  Even the Colfax variety was as
+ambitious as the others.  After having seen the declining letter of
+Mr. Colfax, I did not suppose that this vine would run any more, and
+intended to root it out.  But one can never say what these
+politicians mean; and I shall let this variety grow until after the
+next election, at least; although I hear that the fruit is small, and
+rather sour.  If there is any variety of strawberries that really
+declines to run, and devotes itself to a private life of fruit-
+bearing, I should like to get it.  I may mention here, since we are
+on politics, that the Doolittle raspberries had sprawled all over the
+strawberry-bed's: so true is it that politics makes strange
+bedfellows.
+
+But another enemy had come into the strawberries, which, after all
+that has been said in these papers, I am almost ashamed to mention.
+But does the preacher in the pulpit, Sunday after Sunday, year after
+year, shrink from speaking of sin?  I refer, of course, to the
+greatest enemy of mankind, " p-sl-y."  The ground was carpeted with
+it.  I should think that this was the tenth crop of the season; and
+it was as good as the first.  I see no reason why our northern soil
+is not as prolific as that of the tropics, and will not produce as
+many crops in the year.  The mistake we make is in trying to force
+things that are not natural to it.  I have no doubt that, if we turn
+our attention to "pusley," we can beat the world.
+
+I had no idea, until recently, how generally this simple and thrifty
+plant is feared and hated.  Far beyond what I had regarded as the
+bounds of civilization, it is held as one of the mysteries of a
+fallen world; accompanying the home missionary on his wanderings, and
+preceding the footsteps of the Tract Society.  I was not long ago in
+the Adirondacks.  We had built a camp for the night, in the heart of
+the woods, high up on John's Brook and near the foot of Mount Marcy:
+I can see the lovely spot now.  It was on the bank of the crystal,
+rocky stream, at the foot of high and slender falls, which poured
+into a broad amber basin.  Out of this basin we had just taken trout
+enough for our supper, which had been killed, and roasted over the
+fire on sharp sticks, and eaten before they had an opportunity to
+feel the chill of this deceitful world.  We were lying under the hut
+of spruce-bark, on fragrant hemlock-boughs, talking, after supper.
+In front of us was a huge fire of birchlogs; and over it we could see
+the top of the falls glistening in the moonlight; and the roar of the
+falls, and the brawling of the stream near us, filled all the ancient
+woods.  It was a scene upon which one would think no thought of sin
+could enter.  We were talking with old Phelps, the guide.  Old Phelps
+is at once guide, philosopher, and friend.  He knows the woods and
+streams and mountains, and their savage inhabitants, as well as we
+know all our rich relations and what they are doing; and in lonely
+bear-hunts and sable-trappings he has thought out and solved most of
+the problems of life.  As he stands in his wood-gear, he is as
+grizzly as an old cedar-tree; and he speaks in a high falsetto voice,
+which would be invaluable to a boatswain in a storm at sea.
+
+We had been talking of all subjects about which rational men are
+interested,--bears, panthers, trapping, the habits of trout, the
+tariff, the internal revenue (to wit, the injustice of laying such a
+tax on tobacco, and none on dogs: --There ain't no dog in the United
+States," says the guide, at the top of his voice, "that earns his
+living"), the Adventists, the Gorner Grat, Horace Greeley, religion,
+the propagation of seeds in the wilderness (as, for instance, where
+were the seeds lying for ages that spring up into certain plants and
+flowers as soon as a spot is cleared anywhere in the most remote
+forest; and why does a growth of oak-trees always come up after a
+growth of pine has been removed?)--in short, we had pretty nearly
+reached a solution of many mysteries, when Phelps suddenly exclaimed
+with uncommon energy,--
+
+"Wall, there's one thing that beats me!"
+
+"What's that?" we asked with undisguised curiosity.
+
+"That's 'pusley'!" he replied, in the tone of a man who has come to
+one door in life which is hopelessly shut, and from which he retires
+in despair.
+
+"Where it comes from I don't know, nor what to do with it.  It's in
+my garden; and I can't get rid of it.  It beats me."
+
+About "pusley" the guide had no theory and no hope.  A feeling of awe
+came over me, as we lay there at midnight, hushed by the sound of the
+stream and the rising wind in the spruce-tops.  Then man can go
+nowhere that "pusley" will not attend him.  Though he camp on the
+Upper Au Sable, or penetrate the forest where rolls the Allegash, and
+hear no sound save his own allegations, he will not escape it.  It
+has entered the happy valley of Keene, although there is yet no
+church there, and only a feeble school part of the year.  Sin travels
+faster than they that ride in chariots.  I take my hoe, and begin;
+but I feel that I am warring against something whose roots take hold
+on H.
+
+By the time a man gets to be eighty, he learns that he is compassed
+by limitations, and that there has been a natural boundary set to his
+individual powers.  As he goes on in life, he begins to doubt his
+ability to destroy all evil and to reform all abuses, and to suspect
+that there will be much left to do after he has done.  I stepped into
+my garden in the spring, not doubting that I should be easily master
+of the weeds.  I have simply learned that an institution which is at
+least six thousand years old, and I believe six millions, is not to
+be put down in one season.
+
+I have been digging my potatoes, if anybody cares to know it.  I
+planted them in what are called "Early Rose," --the rows a little
+less than three feet apart; but the vines came to an early close in
+the drought.  Digging potatoes is a pleasant, soothing occupation,
+but not poetical.  It is good for the mind, unless they are too small
+(as many of mine are), when it begets a want of gratitude to the
+bountiful earth.  What small potatoes we all are, compared with what
+we might be!  We don't plow deep enough, any of us, for one thing.  I
+shall put in the plow next year, and give the tubers room enough.  I
+think they felt the lack of it this year: many of them seemed ashamed
+to come out so small.  There is great pleasure in turning out the
+brown-jacketed fellows into the sunshine of a royal September day,
+and seeing them glisten as they lie thickly strewn on the warm soil.
+Life has few such moments.  But then they must be picked up.  The
+picking-up, in this world, is always the unpleasant part of it.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTEENTH WEEK
+
+I do not hold myself bound to answer the question, Does gardening
+pay?  It is so difficult to define what is meant by paying.  There is
+a popular notion that, unless a thing pays, you had better let it
+alone; and I may say that there is a public opinion that will not let
+a man or woman continue in the indulgence of a fancy that does not
+pay.  And public opinion is stronger than the legislature, and nearly
+as strong as the ten commandments: I therefore yield to popular
+clamor when I discuss the profit of my garden.
+
+As I look at it, you might as well ask, Does a sunset pay?  I know
+that a sunset is commonly looked on as a cheap entertainment; but it
+is really one of the most expensive.  It is true that we can all have
+front seats, and we do not exactly need to dress for it as we do for
+the opera; but the conditions under which it is to be enjoyed are
+rather dear.  Among them I should name a good suit of clothes,
+including some trifling ornament,--not including back hair for one
+sex, or the parting of it in the middle for the other.  I should add
+also a good dinner, well cooked and digestible; and the cost of a
+fair education, extended, perhaps, through generations in which
+sensibility and love of beauty grew.  What I mean is, that if a man
+is hungry and naked, and half a savage, or with the love of beauty
+undeveloped in him, a sunset is thrown away on him : so that it
+appears that the conditions of the enjoyment of a sunset are as
+costly as anything in our civilization.
+
+Of course there is no such thing as absolute value in this world.
+You can only estimate what a thing is worth to you.  Does gardening
+in a city pay?  You might as well ask if it pays to keep hens, or a
+trotting-horse, or to wear a gold ring, or to keep your lawn cut, or
+your hair cut.  It is as you like it.  In a certain sense, it is a
+sort of profanation to consider if my garden pays, or to set a money-
+value upon my delight in it.  I fear that you could not put it in
+money.  Job had the right idea in his mind when he asked, "Is there
+any taste in the white of an egg?"  Suppose there is not!  What!
+shall I set a price upon the tender asparagus or the crisp lettuce,
+which made the sweet spring a reality?  Shall I turn into merchandise
+the red strawberry, the pale green pea, the high-flavored raspberry,
+the sanguinary beet, that love-plant the tomato, and the corn which
+did not waste its sweetness on the desert air, but, after flowing in
+a sweet rill through all our summer life, mingled at last with the
+engaging bean in a pool of succotash?  Shall I compute in figures
+what daily freshness and health and delight the garden yields, let
+alone the large crop of anticipation I gathered as soon as the first
+seeds got above ground?  I appeal to any gardening man of sound mind,
+if that which pays him best in gardening is not that which he cannot
+show in his trial-balance.  Yet I yield to public opinion, when I
+proceed to make such a balance; and I do it with the utmost
+confidence in figures.
+
+I select as a representative vegetable, in order to estimate the cost
+of gardening, the potato.  In my statement, I shall not include the
+interest on the value of the land.  I throw in the land, because it
+would otherwise have stood idle: the thing generally raised on city
+land is taxes.  I therefore make the following statement of the cost
+and income of my potato-crop, a part of it estimated in connection
+with other garden labor.  I have tried to make it so as to satisfy
+the income-tax collector:--
+
+Plowing.......................................$0.50
+Seed..........................................$1.50
+Manure........................................ 8.00
+Assistance in planting and digging, 3 days.... 6.75
+Labor of self in planting, hoeing, digging,
+     picking up, 5 days at 17 cents........... 0.85
+                                              _____
+                   Total Cost................$17.60
+
+
+Two thousand five hundred mealy potatoes,
+     at 2 cents..............................$50.00
+Small potatoes given to neighbor's pig.......   .50
+
+                   Total return..............$50.50
+
+              Balance, profit in cellar......$32.90
+
+
+Some of these items need explanation.  I have charged nothing for my
+own time waiting for the potatoes to grow.  My time in hoeing,
+fighting weeds, etc., is put in at five days: it may have been a
+little more.  Nor have I put in anything for cooling drinks while
+hoeing.  I leave this out from principle, because I always recommend
+water to others.  I had some difficulty in fixing the rate of my own
+wages.  It was the first time I had an opportunity of paying what I
+thought labor was worth; and I determined to make a good thing of it
+for once.  I figured it right down to European prices,--seventeen
+cents a day for unskilled labor.  Of course, I boarded myself.  I
+ought to say that I fixed the wages after the work was done, or I
+might have been tempted to do as some masons did who worked for me at
+four dollars a day.  They lay in the shade and slept the sleep of
+honest toil full half the time, at least all the time I was away.  I
+have reason to believe that when the wages of mechanics are raised to
+eight and ten dollars a day, the workmen will not come at all: they
+will merely send their cards.
+
+I do not see any possible fault in the above figures.  I ought to say
+that I deferred putting a value on the potatoes until I had footed up
+the debit column.  This is always the safest way to do.  I had
+twenty-five bushels.  I roughly estimated that there are one hundred
+good ones to the bushel.  Making my own market price, I asked two
+cents apiece for them.  This I should have considered dirt cheap last
+June, when I was going down the rows with the hoe.  If any one thinks
+that two cents each is high, let him try to raise them.
+
+Nature is "awful smart." I intend to be complimentary in saying so.
+She shows it in little things.  I have mentioned my attempt to put in
+a few modest turnips, near the close of the season.  I sowed the
+seeds, by the way, in the most liberal manner.  Into three or four
+short rows I presume I put enough to sow an acre; and they all came
+up,--came up as thick as grass, as crowded and useless as babies in a
+Chinese village.  Of course, they had to be thinned out; that is,
+pretty much all pulled up; and it took me a long time; for it takes a
+conscientious man some time to decide which are the best and
+healthiest plants to spare.  After all, I spared too many.  That is
+the great danger everywhere in this world (it may not be in the
+next): things are too thick; we lose all in grasping for too much.
+The Scotch say, that no man ought to thin out his own turnips,
+because he will not sacrifice enough to leave room for the remainder
+to grow: he should get his neighbor, who does not care for the
+plants, to do it.  But this is mere talk, and aside from the point:
+if there is anything I desire to avoid in these agricultural papers,
+it is digression.  I did think that putting in these turnips so late
+in the season, when general activity has ceased, and in a remote part
+of the garden, they would pass unnoticed.  But Nature never even
+winks, as I can see.  The tender blades were scarcely out of the
+ground when she sent a small black flv, which seemed to have been
+born and held in reserve for this purpose,--to cut the leaves.  They
+speedily made lace-work of the whole bed.  Thus everything appears to
+have its special enemy,--except, perhaps, p----y: nothing ever
+troubles that.
+
+Did the Concord Grape ever come to more luscious perfection than this
+year?  or yield so abundantly?  The golden sunshine has passed into
+them, and distended their purple skins almost to bursting.  Such
+heavy clusters!  such bloom!  such sweetness!  such meat and drink in
+their round globes!  What a fine fellow Bacchus would have been, if
+he had only signed the pledge when he was a young man!  I have taken
+off clusters that were as compact and almost as large as the Black
+Hamburgs.  It is slow work picking them.  I do not see how the
+gatherers for the vintage ever get off enough.  It takes so long to
+disentangle the bunches from the leaves and the interlacing vines and
+the supporting tendrils; and then I like to hold up each bunch and
+look at it in the sunlight, and get the fragrance and the bloom of
+it, and show it to Polly, who is making herself useful, as taster and
+companion, at the foot of the ladder, before dropping it into the
+basket.  But we have other company.  The robin, the most knowing and
+greedy bird out of paradise (I trust he will always be kept out), has
+discovered that the grape-crop is uncommonly good, and has come back,
+with his whole tribe and family, larger than it was in pea-time.  He
+knows the ripest bunches as well as anybody, and tries them all.  If
+he would take a whole bunch here and there, say half the number, and
+be off with it, I should not so much care.  But he will not.  He
+pecks away at all the bunches, and spoils as many as he can.  It is
+time he went south.
+
+There is no prettier sight, to my eye, than a gardener on a ladder in
+his grape-arbor, in these golden days, selecting the heaviest
+clusters of grapes, and handing them down to one and another of a
+group of neighbors and friends, who stand under the shade of the
+leaves, flecked with the sunlight, and cry, "How sweet!"  "What nice
+ones!" and the like,--remarks encouraging to the man on the ladder.
+It is great pleasure to see people eat grapes.
+
+Moral Truth. --I have no doubt that grapes taste best in other
+people's mouths.  It is an old notion that it is easier to be
+generous than to be stingy.  I am convinced that the majority of
+people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the
+opportunity.
+
+Philosophical Observation. --Nothing shows one who his friends are
+like prosperity and ripe fruit.  I had a good friend in the country,
+whom I almost never visited except in cherry-time.  By your fruits
+you shall know them.
+
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTEENTH WEEK
+
+I like to go into the garden these warm latter days, and muse.  To
+muse is to sit in the sun, and not think of anything.  I am not sure
+but goodness comes out of people who bask in the sun, as it does out
+of a sweet apple roasted before the fire.  The late September and
+October sun of this latitude is something like the sun of extreme
+Lower Italy: you can stand a good deal of it, and apparently soak a
+winter supply into the system.  If one only could take in his winter
+fuel in this way!  The next great discovery will, very likely, be the
+conservation of sunlight.  In the correlation of forces, I look to
+see the day when the superfluous sunshine will be utilized; as, for
+instance, that which has burned up my celery this year will be
+converted into a force to work the garden.
+
+This sitting in the sun amid the evidences of a ripe year is the
+easiest part of gardening I have experienced.  But what a combat has
+gone on here!  What vegetable passions have run the whole gamut of
+ambition, selfishness, greed of place, fruition, satiety, and now
+rest here in the truce of exhaustion!  What a battle-field, if one
+may look upon it so!  The corn has lost its ammunition, and stacked
+arms in a slovenly, militia sort of style.  The ground vines are
+torn, trampled, and withered; and the ungathered cucumbers, worthless
+melons, and golden squashes lie about like the spent bombs and
+exploded shells of a battle-field.  So the cannon-balls lay on the
+sandy plain before Fort Fisher after the capture.  So the great
+grassy meadow at Munich, any morning during the October Fest, is
+strewn with empty beermugs.  History constantly repeats itself.
+There is a large crop of moral reflections in my garden, which
+anybody is at liberty to gather who passes this way.
+
+I have tried to get in anything that offered temptation to sin.
+There would be no thieves if there was nothing to steal; and I
+suppose, in the thieves' catechism, the provider is as bad as the
+thief; and, probably, I am to blame for leaving out a few winter
+pears, which some predatory boy carried off on Sunday.  At first I
+was angry, and said I should like to have caught the urchin in the
+act; but, on second thought, I was glad I did not.  The interview
+could not have been pleasant: I shouldn't have known what to do with
+him.  The chances are, that he would have escaped away with his
+pockets full, and jibed at me from a safe distance.  And, if I had
+got my hands on him, I should have been still more embarrassed.  If I
+had flogged him, he would have got over it a good deal sooner than I
+should.  That sort of boy does not mind castigation any more than he
+does tearing his trousers in the briers.  If I had treated him with
+kindness, and conciliated him with grapes, showing him the enormity
+of his offense, I suppose he would have come the next night, and
+taken the remainder of the grapes.  The truth is, that the public
+morality is lax on the subject of fruit.  If anybody puts arsenic or
+gunpowder into his watermelons, he is universally denounced as a
+stingy old murderer by the community.  A great many people regard
+growing fruit as lawful prey, who would not think of breaking into
+your cellar to take it.  I found a man once in my raspberry-bushes,
+early in the season, when we were waiting for a dishful to ripen.
+Upon inquiring what he was about, he said he was only eating some;
+and the operation seemed to be so natural and simple, that I disliked
+to disturb him.  And I am not very sure that one has a right to the
+whole of an abundant crop of fruit until he has gathered it.  At
+least, in a city garden, one might as well conform his theory to the
+practice of the community.
+
+As for children (and it sometimes looks as if the chief products of
+my garden were small boys and hens), it is admitted that they are
+barbarians.  There is no exception among them to this condition of
+barbarism.  This is not to say that they are not attractive; for they
+have the virtues as well as the vices of a primitive people.  It is
+held by some naturalists that the child is only a zoophyte, with a
+stomach, and feelers radiating from it in search of something to fill
+it.  It is true that a child is always hungry all over: but he is
+also curious all over; and his curiosity is excited about as early as
+his hunger.  He immediately begins to put out his moral feelers into
+the unknown and the infinite to discover what sort of an existence
+this is into which he has come.  His imagination is quite as hungry
+as his stomach.  And again and again it is stronger than his other
+appetites.  You can easily engage his imagination in a story which
+will make him forget his dinner.  He is credulous and superstitious,
+and open to all wonder.  In this, he is exactly like the savage
+races.  Both gorge themselves on the marvelous; and all the unknown
+is marvelous to them.  I know the general impression is that children
+must be governed through their stomachs.  I think they can be
+controlled quite as well through their curiosity; that being the more
+craving and imperious of the two.  I have seen children follow about
+a person who told them stories, and interested them with his charming
+talk, as greedily as if his pockets had been full of bon-bons.
+
+Perhaps this fact has no practical relation to gardening; but it
+occurs to me that, if I should paper the outside of my high board
+fence with the leaves of "The Arabian Nights," it would afford me a
+good deal of protection,--more, in fact, than spikes in the top,
+which tear trousers and encourage profanity, but do not save much
+fruit.  A spiked fence is a challenge to any boy of spirit.  But if
+the fence were papered with fairy-tales, would he not stop to read
+them until it was too late for him to climb into the garden?  I don't
+know.  Human nature is vicious.  The boy might regard the picture of
+the garden of the Hesperides only as an advertisement of what was
+over the fence.  I begin to find that the problem of raising fruit is
+nothing to that of getting it after it has matured.  So long as the
+law, just in many respects, is in force against shooting birds and
+small boys, the gardener may sow in tears and reap in vain.
+
+The power of a boy is, to me, something fearful.  Consider what he
+can do.  You buy and set out a choice pear-tree; you enrich the earth
+for it; you train and trim it, and vanquish the borer, and watch its
+slow growth.  At length it rewards your care by producing two or
+three pears, which you cut up and divide in the family, declaring the
+flavor of the bit you eat to be something extraordinary.  The next
+year, the little tree blossoms full, and sets well; and in the autumn
+has on its slender, drooping limbs half a bushel of fruit, daily
+growing more delicious in the sun.  You show it to your friends,
+reading to them the French name, which you can never remember, on the
+label; and you take an honest pride in the successful fruit of long
+care.  That night your pears shall be required of you by a boy!
+Along comes an irresponsible urchin, who has not been growing much
+longer than the tree, with not twenty-five cents worth of clothing on
+him, and in five minutes takes off every pear, and retires into safe
+obscurity.  In five minutes the remorseless boy has undone your work
+of years, and with the easy nonchalance, I doubt not, of any agent of
+fate, in whose path nothing is sacred or safe.
+
+And it is not of much consequence.  The boy goes on his way,--to
+Congress, or to State Prison: in either place he will be accused of
+stealing, perhaps wrongfully.  You learn, in time, that it is better
+to have had pears and lost them than not to have had pears at all.
+You come to know that the least (and rarest) part of the pleasure of
+raising fruit is the vulgar eating it.  You recall your delight in
+conversing with the nurseryman, and looking at his illustrated
+catalogues, where all the pears are drawn perfect in form, and of
+extra size, and at that exact moment between ripeness and decay which
+it is so impossible to hit in practice.  Fruit cannot be raised on
+this earth to taste as you imagine those pears would taste.  For
+years you have this pleasure, unalloyed by any disenchanting reality.
+How you watch the tender twigs in spring, and the freshly forming
+bark, hovering about the healthy growing tree with your pruning-knife
+many a sunny morning!  That is happiness.  Then, if you know it, you
+are drinking the very wine of life; and when the sweet juices of the
+earth mount the limbs, and flow down the tender stem, ripening and
+reddening the pendent fruit, you feel that you somehow stand at the
+source of things, and have no unimportant share in the processes of
+Nature.  Enter at this moment boy the destroyer, whose office is that
+of preserver as well; for, though he removes the fruit from your
+sight, it remains in your memory immortally ripe and desirable.  The
+gardener needs all these consolations of a high philosophy.
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTEENTH WEEK
+
+Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might
+have turned out so differently!  If Ravaillac had not been imprisoned
+for debt, he would not have stabbed Henry of Navarre.  If William of
+Orange had escaped assassination by Philip's emissaries; if France
+had followed the French Calvin, and embraced Protestant Calvinism, as
+it came very near doing towards the end of the sixteenth century; if
+the Continental ammunition had not given out at Bunker's Hill; if
+Blucher had not "come up" at Waterloo,--the lesson is, that things do
+not come up unless they are planted.  When you go behind the
+historical scenery, you find there is a rope and pulley to effect
+every transformation which has astonished you.  It was the rascality
+of a minister and a contractor five years before that lost the
+battle; and the cause of the defeat was worthless ammunition.  I
+should like to know how many wars have been caused by fits of
+indigestion, and how many more dynasties have been upset by the love
+of woman than by the hate of man.  It is only because we are ill
+informed that anything surprises us; and we are disappointed because
+we expect that for which we have not provided.
+
+I had too vague expectations of what my garden would do of itself.  A
+garden ought to produce one everything,--just as a business ought to
+support a man, and a house ought to keep itself.  We had a convention
+lately to resolve that the house should keep itself; but it won't.
+There has been a lively time in our garden this summer; but it seems
+to me there is very little to show for it.  It has been a terrible
+campaign; but where is the indemnity?  Where are all "sass" and
+Lorraine?  It is true that we have lived on the country; but we
+desire, besides, the fruits of the war.  There are no onions, for one
+thing.  I am quite ashamed to take people into my garden, and have
+them notice the absence of onions.  It is very marked.  In onion is
+strength; and a garden without it lacks flavor.  The onion in its
+satin wrappings is among the most beautiful of vegetables; and it is
+the only one that represents the essence of things.  It can almost be
+said to have a soul.  You take off coat after coat) and the onion is
+still there; and, when the last one is removed, who dare say that the
+onion itself is destroyed, though you can weep over its departed
+spirit?  If there is any one thing on this fallen earth that the
+angels in heaven weep over--more than another, it is the onion.
+
+I know that there is supposed to be a prejudice against the onion;
+but I think there is rather a cowardice in regard to it.  I doubt not
+that all men and women love the onion; but few confess their love.
+Affection for it is concealed.  Good New-Englanders are as shy of
+owning it as they are of talking about religion.  Some people have
+days on which they eat onions,--what you might call "retreats," or
+their "Thursdays." The act is in the nature of a religious ceremony,
+an Eleusinian mystery; not a breath of it must get abroad.  On that
+day they see no company; they deny the kiss of greeting to the
+dearest friend; they retire within themselves, and hold communion
+with one of the most pungent and penetrating manifestations of the
+moral vegetable world.  Happy is said to be the family which can eat
+onions together.  They are, for the time being, separate from the
+world, and have a harmony of aspiration.  There is a hint here for
+the reformers.  Let them become apostles of the onion; let them eat,
+and preach it to their fellows, and circulate tracts of it in the
+form of seeds.  In the onion is the hope of universal brotherhood.
+If all men will eat onions at all times, they will come into a
+universal sympathy.  Look at Italy.  I hope I am not mistaken as to
+the cause of her unity.  It was the Reds who preached the gospel
+which made it possible.  All the Reds of Europe, all the sworn
+devotees of the mystic Mary Ann, eat of the common vegetable.  Their
+oaths are strong with it.  It is the food, also, of the common people
+of Italy.  All the social atmosphere of that delicious land is laden
+with it.  Its odor is a practical democracy.  In the churches all are
+alike: there is one faith, one smell.  The entrance of Victor Emanuel
+into Rome is only the pompous proclamation of a unity which garlic
+had already accomplished; and yet we, who boast of our democracy, eat
+onions in secret.
+
+I now see that I have left out many of the most moral elements.
+Neither onions, parsnips, carrots, nor cabbages are here.  I have
+never seen a garden in the autumn before, without the uncouth cabbage
+in it; but my garden gives the impression of a garden without a head.
+The cabbage is the rose of Holland.  I admire the force by which it
+compacts its crisp leaves into a solid head.  The secret of it would
+be priceless to the world.  We should see less expansive foreheads
+with nothing within.  Even the largest cabbages are not always the
+best.  But I mention these things, not from any sympathy I have with
+the vegetables named, but to show how hard it is to go contrary to
+the expectations of society.  Society expects every man to have
+certain things in his garden.  Not to raise cabbage is as if one had
+no pew in church.  Perhaps we shall come some day to free churches
+and free gardens; when I can show my neighbor through my tired
+garden, at the end of the season, when skies are overcast, and brown
+leaves are swirling down, and not mind if he does raise his eyebrows
+when he observes, "Ah!  I see you have none of this, and of that." At
+present we want the moral courage to plant only what we need; to
+spend only what will bring us peace, regardless of what is going on
+over the fence.  We are half ruined by conformity; but we should be
+wholly ruined without it; and I presume I shall make a garden next
+year that will be as popular as possible.
+
+And this brings me to what I see may be a crisis in life.  I begin to
+feel the temptation of experiment.  Agriculture, horticulture,
+floriculture,--these are vast fields, into which one may wander away,
+and never be seen more.  It seemed to me a very simple thing, this
+gardening; but it opens up astonishingly.  It is like the infinite
+possibilities in worsted-work.  Polly sometimes says to me, "I wish
+you would call at Bobbin's, and match that skein of worsted for me,
+when you are in town."  Time was, I used to accept such a commission
+with alacrity and self-confidence.  I went to Bobbin's, and asked one
+of his young men, with easy indifference, to give me some of that.
+The young man, who is as handsome a young man as ever I looked at,
+and who appears to own the shop, and whose suave superciliousness
+would be worth everything to a cabinet minister who wanted to repel
+applicants for place, says, "I have n't an ounce: I have sent to
+Paris, and I expect it every day.  I have a good deal of difficulty
+in getting that shade in my assortment."  To think that he is in
+communication with Paris, and perhaps with Persia!  Respect for such
+a being gives place to awe.  I go to another shop, holding fast to my
+scarlet clew.  There I am shown a heap of stuff, with more colors and
+shades than I had supposed existed in all the world.  What a blaze of
+distraction!  I have been told to get as near the shade as I could;
+and so I compare and contrast, till the whole thing seems to me about
+of one color.  But I can settle my mind on nothing.  The affair
+assumes a high degree of importance.  I am satisfied with nothing but
+perfection.  I don't know what may happen if the shade is not
+matched.  I go to another shop, and another, and another.  At last a
+pretty girl, who could make any customer believe that green is blue,
+matches the shade in a minute.  I buy five cents worth.  That was the
+order.  Women are the most economical persons that ever were.  I have
+spent two hours in this five-cent business; but who shall say they
+were wasted, when I take the stuff home, and Polly says it is a
+perfect match, and looks so pleased, and holds it up with the work,
+at arm's length, and turns her head one side, and then takes her
+needle, and works it in?  Working in, I can see, my own obligingness
+and amiability with every stitch.  Five cents is dirt cheap for such
+a pleasure.
+
+The things I may do in my garden multiply on my vision.  How
+fascinating have the catalogues of the nurserymen become!  Can I
+raise all those beautiful varieties, each one of which is preferable
+to the other?  Shall I try all the kinds of grapes, and all the sorts
+of pears?  I have already fifteen varieties of strawberries (vines);
+and I have no idea that I have hit the right one.  Must I subscribe
+to all the magazines and weekly papers which offer premiums of the
+best vines?  Oh, that all the strawberries were rolled into one, that
+I could inclose all its lusciousness in one bite!  Oh for the good
+old days when a strawberry was a strawberry, and there was no
+perplexity about it!  There are more berries now than churches; and
+no one knows what to believe.  I have seen gardens which were all
+experiment, given over to every new thing, and which produced little
+or nothing to the owners, except the pleasure of expectation.  People
+grow pear-trees at great expense of time and money, which never yield
+them more than four pears to the tree.  The fashions of ladies'
+bonnets are nothing to the fashions of nurserymen.  He who attempts
+to follow them has a business for life; but his life may be short.
+If I enter upon this wide field of horticultural experiment, I shall
+leave peace behind; and I may expect the ground to open, and swallow
+me and all my fortune.  May Heaven keep me to the old roots and herbs
+of my forefathers!  Perhaps in the world of modern reforms this is
+not possible; but I intend now to cultivate only the standard things,
+and learn to talk knowingly of the rest.  Of course, one must keep up
+a reputation.  I have seen people greatly enjoy themselves, and
+elevate themselves in their own esteem, in a wise and critical talk
+about all the choice wines, while they were sipping a decoction, the
+original cost of which bore no relation to the price of grapes.
+
+
+
+
+NINETEENTH WEEK
+
+The closing scenes are not necessarily funereal.  A garden should be
+got ready for winter as well as for summer.  When one goes into
+winter-quarters, he wants everything neat and trim.  Expecting high
+winds, we bring everything into close reef.  Some men there are who
+never shave (if they are so absurd as ever to shave), except when
+they go abroad, and who do not take care to wear polished boots in
+the bosoms of their families.  I like a man who shaves (next to one
+who does n't shave) to satisfy his own conscience, and not for
+display, and who dresses as neatly at home as he does anywhere.  Such
+a man will be likely to put his garden in complete order before the
+snow comes, so that its last days shall not present a scene of
+melancholy ruin and decay.
+
+I confess that, after such an exhausting campaign, I felt a great
+temptation to retire, and call it a drawn engagement.  But better
+counsels prevailed.  I determined that the weeds should not sleep on
+the field of battle.  I routed them out, and leveled their works.  I
+am master of the situation.  If I have made a desert, I at least have
+peace; but it is not quite a desert.  The strawberries, the
+raspberries, the celery, the turnips, wave green above the clean
+earth, with no enemy in sight.  In these golden October days no work
+is more fascinating than this getting ready for spring.  The sun is
+no longer a burning enemy, but a friend, illuminating all the open
+space, and warming the mellow soil.  And the pruning and clearing
+away of rubbish, and the fertilizing, go on with something of the
+hilarity of a wake, rather than the despondency of other funerals.
+When the wind begins to come out of the northwest of set purpose, and
+to sweep the ground with low and searching fierceness, very different
+from the roistering, jolly bluster of early fall, I have put the
+strawberries under their coverlet of leaves, pruned the grape-vines
+and laid them under the soil, tied up the tender plants, given the
+fruit trees a good, solid meal about the roots; and so I turn away,
+writing Resurgam on the gatepost.  And Calvin, aware that the summer
+is past and the harvest is ended, and that a mouse in the kitchen is
+worth two birds gone south, scampers away to the house with his tail
+in the air.
+
+And yet I am not perfectly at rest in my mind.  I know that this is
+only a truce until the parties recover their exhausted energies.  All
+winter long the forces of chemistry will be mustering under ground,
+repairing the losses, calling up the reserves, getting new strength
+from my surface-fertilizing bounty, and making ready for the spring
+campaign.  They will open it before I am ready: while the snow is
+scarcely melted, and the ground is not passable, they will begin to
+move on my works; and the fight will commence.  Yet how deceitfully
+it will open to the music of birds and the soft enchantment of the
+spring mornings!  I shall even be permitted to win a few skirmishes:
+the secret forces will even wait for me to plant and sow, and show my
+full hand, before they come on in heavy and determined assault.
+There are already signs of an internecine fight with the devil-grass,
+which has intrenched itself in a considerable portion of my
+garden-patch.  It contests the ground inch by inch; and digging it
+out is very much such labor as eating a piece of choke-cherry pie
+with the stones all in.  It is work, too, that I know by experience I
+shall have to do alone.  Every man must eradicate his own devil-
+grass.  The neighbors who have leisure to help you in grape-picking
+time are all busy when devil-grass is most aggressive.  My neighbors'
+visits are well timed: it is only their hens which have seasons for
+their own.
+
+I am told that abundant and rank weeds are signs of a rich soil; but
+I have noticed that a thin, poor soil grows little but weeds.  I am
+inclined to think that the substratum is the same, and that the only
+choice in this world is what kind of weeds you will have.  I am not
+much attracted by the gaunt, flavorless mullein, and the wiry thistle
+of upland country pastures, where the grass is always gray, as if the
+world were already weary and sick of life.  The awkward, uncouth
+wickedness of remote country-places, where culture has died out after
+the first crop, is about as disagreeable as the ranker and richer
+vice of city life, forced by artificial heat and the juices of an
+overfed civilization.  There is no doubt that, on the whole, the rich
+soil is the best: the fruit of it has body and flavor.  To what
+affluence does a woman (to take an instance, thank Heaven, which is
+common) grow, with favoring circumstances, under the stimulus of the
+richest social and intellectual influences!  I am aware that there
+has been a good deal said in poetry about the fringed gentian and the
+harebell of rocky districts and waysides, and I know that it is
+possible for maidens to bloom in very slight soil into a wild-wood
+grace and beauty; yet, the world through, they lack that wealth of
+charms, that tropic affluence of both person and mind, which higher
+and more stimulating culture brings,--the passion as well as the soul
+glowing in the Cloth-of-Gold rose.  Neither persons nor plants are
+ever fully themselves until they are cultivated to their highest.  I,
+for one, have no fear that society will be too much enriched.  The
+only question is about keeping down the weeds; and I have learned by
+experience, that we need new sorts of hoes, and more disposition to
+use them.
+
+Moral Deduction. --The difference between soil and society is
+evident.  We bury decay in the earth; we plant in it the perishing;
+we feed it with offensive refuse: but nothing grows out of it that is
+not clean; it gives us back life and beauty for our rubbish.  Society
+returns us what we give it.
+
+Pretending to reflect upon these things, but in reality watching the
+blue-jays, who are pecking at the purple berries of the woodbine on
+the south gable, I approach the house.  Polly is picking up chestnuts
+on the sward, regardless of the high wind which rattles them about
+her head and upon the glass roof of her winter-garden.  The garden, I
+see, is filled with thrifty plants, which will make it always summer
+there.  The callas about the fountain will be in flower by Christmas:
+the plant appears to keep that holiday in her secret heart all
+summer.  I close the outer windows as we go along, and congratulate
+myself that we are ready for winter.  For the winter-garden I have no
+responsibility: Polly has entire charge of it.  I am only required to
+keep it heated, and not too hot either; to smoke it often for the
+death of the bugs; to water it once a day; to move this and that into
+the sun and out of the sun pretty constantly: but she does all the
+work.  We never relinquish that theory.
+
+As we pass around the house, I discover a boy in the ravine filling a
+bag with chestnuts and hickorynuts.  They are not plenty this year;
+and I suggest the propriety of leaving some for us.  The boy is a
+little slow to take the idea: but he has apparently found the picking
+poor, and exhausted it; for, as he turns away down the glen, he hails
+me with,
+
+"Mister, I say, can you tell me where I can find some walnuts?"
+
+The coolness of this world grows upon me.  It is time to go in and
+light a wood-fire on the hearth.
+
+
+
+
+
+CALVIN
+
+
+
+     NOTE. --The following brief Memoir of one of the characters in
+this book is added by his friend, in the hope that the record of an
+exemplary fife in an humble sphere may be of some service to the
+world.
+
+     HARTFORD, January, 1880.
+
+
+
+
+CALVIN
+
+A STUDY OF CHARACTER
+
+Calvin is dead.  His life, long to him, but short for the rest of us,
+was not marked by startling adventures, but his character was so
+uncommon and his qualities were so worthy of imitation, that I have
+been asked by those who personally knew him to set down my
+recollections of his career.
+
+His origin and ancestry were shrouded in mystery; even his age was a
+matter of pure conjecture.  Although he was of the Maltese race, I
+have reason to suppose that he was American by birth as he certainly
+was in sympathy.  Calvin was given to me eight years ago by Mrs.
+Stowe, but she knew nothing of his age or origin.  He walked into her
+house one day out of the great unknown and became at once at home, as
+if he had been always a friend of the family.  He appeared to have
+artistic and literary tastes, and it was as if he had inquired at the
+door if that was the residence of the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin,"
+and, upon being assured that it was, bad decided to dwell there.
+This is, of course, fanciful, for his antecedents were wholly
+unknown, but in his time he could hardly have been in any household
+where he would not have heard "Uncle Tom's Cabin" talked about.  When
+he came to Mrs.  Stowe, he was as large as he ever was, and
+apparently as old as he ever became.  Yet there was in him no
+appearance of age; he was in the happy maturity of all his powers,
+and you would rather have said that in that maturity he had found the
+secret of perpetual youth.  And it was as difficult to believe that
+he would ever be aged as it was to imagine that he had ever been in
+immature youth.  There was in him a mysterious perpetuity.
+
+After some years, when Mrs. Stowe made her winter home in Florida,
+Calvin came to live with us.  From the first moment, he fell into the
+ways of the house and assumed a recognized position in the family,--I
+say recognized, because after he became known he was always inquired
+for by visitors, and in the letters to the other members of the
+family he always received a message.  Although the least obtrusive of
+beings, his individuality always made itself felt.
+
+His personal appearance had much to do with this, for he was of royal
+mould, and had an air of high breeding.  He was large, but he had
+nothing of the fat grossness of the celebrated Angora family; though
+powerful, he was exquisitely proportioned, and as graceful in every
+movement as a young leopard.  When he stood up to open a door--he
+opened all the doors with old-fashioned latches--he was portentously
+tall, and when stretched on the rug before the fire he seemed too
+long for this world--as indeed he was.  His coat was the finest and
+softest I have ever seen, a shade of quiet Maltese; and from his
+throat downward, underneath, to the white tips of his feet, he wore
+the whitest and most delicate ermine; and no person was ever more
+fastidiously neat.  In his finely formed head you saw something of
+his aristocratic character; the ears were small and cleanly cut,
+there was a tinge of pink in the nostrils, his face was handsome, and
+the expression of his countenance exceedingly intelligent--I should
+call it even a sweet expression, if the term were not inconsistent
+with his look of alertness and sagacity.
+
+It is difficult to convey a just idea of his gayety in connection
+with his dignity and gravity, which his name expressed.  As we know
+nothing of his family, of course it will be understood that Calvin
+was his Christian name.  He had times of relaxation into utter
+playfulness, delighting in a ball of yarn, catching sportively at
+stray ribbons when his mistress was at her toilet, and pursuing his
+own tail, with hilarity, for lack of anything better.  He could amuse
+himself by the hour, and he did not care for children; perhaps
+something in his past was present to his memory.  He had absolutely
+no bad habits, and his disposition was perfect.  I never saw him
+exactly angry, though I have seen his tail grow to an enormous size
+when a strange cat appeared upon his lawn.  He disliked cats,
+evidently regarding them as feline and treacherous, and he had no
+association with them.  Occasionally there would be heard a night
+concert in the shrubbery.  Calvin would ask to have the door opened,
+and then you would hear a rush and a "pestzt," and the concert would
+explode, and Calvin would quietly come in and resume his seat on the
+hearth.  There was no trace of anger in his manner, but he would n't
+have any of that about the house.  He had the rare virtue of
+magnanimity.  Although he had fixed notions about his own rights, and
+extraordinary persistency in getting them, he never showed temper at
+a repulse; he simply and firmly persisted till he had what he wanted.
+His diet was one point; his idea was that of the scholars about
+dictionaries,--to "get the best." He knew as well as any one what was
+in the house, and would refuse beef if turkey was to be had; and if
+there were oysters, he would wait over the turkey to see if the
+oysters would not be forthcoming.  And yet he was not a gross
+gourmand; he would eat bread if he saw me eating it, and thought he
+was not being imposed on.  His habits of feeding, also, were refined;
+he never used a knife, and he would put up his hand and draw the fork
+down to his mouth as gracefully as a grown person.  Unless necessity
+compelled, he would not eat in the kitchen, but insisted upon his
+meals in the dining-room, and would wait patiently, unless a stranger
+were present; and then he was sure to importune the visitor, hoping
+that the latter was ignorant of the rule of the house, and would give
+him something.  They used to say that he preferred as his table-cloth
+on the floor a certain well-known church journal; but this was said
+by an Episcopalian.  So far as I know, he had no religious
+prejudices, except that he did not like the association with
+Romanists.  He tolerated the servants, because they belonged to the
+house, and would sometimes linger by the kitchen stove; but the
+moment visitors came in he arose, opened the door, and marched into
+the drawing-room.  Yet he enjoyed the company of his equals, and
+never withdrew, no matter how many callers--whom he recognized as of
+his society--might come into the drawing-room.  Calvin was fond of
+company, but he wanted to choose it; and I have no doubt that his was
+an aristocratic fastidiousness rather than one of faith.  It is so
+with most people.
+
+The intelligence of Calvin was something phenomenal, in his rank of
+life.  He established a method of communicating his wants, and even
+some of his sentiments; and he could help himself in many things.
+There was a furnace register in a retired room, where he used to go
+when he wished to be alone, that he always opened when he desired
+more heat; but he never shut it, any more than he shut the door after
+himself.  He could do almost everything but speak; and you would
+declare sometimes that you could see a pathetic longing to do that in
+his intelligent face.  I have no desire to overdraw his qualities,
+but if there was one thing in him more noticeable than another, it
+was his fondness for nature.  He could content himself for hours at a
+low window, looking into the ravine and at the great trees, noting
+the smallest stir there; he delighted, above all things, to accompany
+me walking about the garden, hearing the birds, getting the smell of
+the fresh earth, and rejoicing in the sunshine.  He followed me and
+gamboled like a dog, rolling over on the turf and exhibiting his
+delight in a hundred ways.  If I worked, he sat and watched me, or
+looked off over the bank, and kept his ear open to the twitter in the
+cherry-trees.  When it stormed, he was sure to sit at the window,
+keenly watching the rain or the snow, glancing up and down at its
+falling; and a winter tempest always delighted him.  I think he was
+genuinely fond of birds, but, so far as I know, he usually confined
+himself to one a day; he never killed, as some sportsmen do, for the
+sake of killing, but only as civilized people do,--from necessity.
+He was intimate with the flying-squirrels who dwell in the chestnut-
+trees,--too intimate, for almost every day in the summer he would
+bring in one, until he nearly discouraged them.  He was, indeed, a
+superb hunter, and would have been a devastating one, if his bump of
+destructiveness had not been offset by a bump of moderation.  There
+was very little of the brutality of the lower animals about him; I
+don't think he enjoyed rats for themselves, but he knew his business,
+and for the first few months of his residence with us he waged an
+awful campaign against the horde, and after that his simple presence
+was sufficient to deter them from coming on the premises.  Mice
+amused him, but he usually considered them too small game to be taken
+seriously; I have seen him play for an hour with a mouse, and then
+let him go with a royal condescension.  In this whole, matter of
+"getting a living," Calvin was a great contrast to the rapacity of
+the age in which he lived.
+
+I hesitate a little to speak of his capacity for friendship and the
+affectionateness of his nature, for I know from his own reserve that
+he would not care to have it much talked about.  We understood each
+other perfectly, but we never made any fuss about it; when I spoke
+his name and snapped my fingers, he came to me; when I returned home
+at night, he was pretty sure to be waiting for me near the gate, and
+would rise and saunter along the walk, as if his being there were
+purely accidental,--so shy was he commonly of showing feeling; and
+when I opened the door, he never rushed in, like a cat, but loitered,
+and lounged, as if he had no intention of going in, but would
+condescend to.  And yet, the fact was, he knew dinner was ready, and
+he was bound to be there.  He kept the run of dinner-time.  It
+happened sometimes, during our absence in the summer, that dinner
+would be early, and Calvin, walking about the grounds, missed it and
+came in late.  But he never made a mistake the second day.  There was
+one thing he never did,--he never rushed through an open doorway.  He
+never forgot his dignity.  If he had asked to have the door opened,
+and was eager to go out, he always went deliberately; I can see him
+now standing on the sill, looking about at the sky as if he was
+thinking whether it were worth while to take an umbrella, until he
+was near having his tail shut in.
+
+His friendship was rather constant than demonstrative.  When we
+returned from an absence of nearly two years, Calvin welcomed us with
+evident pleasure, but showed his satisfaction rather by tranquil
+happiness than by fuming about.  He had the faculty of making us glad
+to get home.  It was his constancy that was so attractive.  He liked
+companionship, but he wouldn't be petted, or fussed over, or sit in
+any one's lap a moment; he always extricated himself from such
+familiarity with dignity and with no show of temper.  If there was
+any petting to be done, however, he chose to do it.  Often he would
+sit looking at me, and then, moved by a delicate affection, come and
+pull at my coat and sleeve until he could touch my face with his
+nose, and then go away contented.  He had a habit of coming to my
+study in the morning, sitting quietly by my side or on the table for
+hours, watching the pen run over the paper, occasionally swinging his
+tail round for a blotter, and then going to sleep among the papers by
+the inkstand.  Or, more rarely, he would watch the writing from a
+perch on my shoulder.  Writing always interested him, and, until he
+understood it, he wanted to hold the pen.
+
+He always held himself in a kind of reserve with his friend, as if he
+had said, "Let us respect our personality, and not make a "mess" of
+friendship."  He saw, with Emerson, the risk of degrading it to
+trivial conveniency.  "Why insist on rash personal relations with
+your friend?"  "Leave this touching and clawing."  Yet I would not
+give an unfair notion of his aloofness, his fine sense of the
+sacredness of the me and the not-me.  And, at the risk of not being
+believed, I will relate an incident, which was often repeated.
+Calvin had the practice of passing a portion of the night in the
+contemplation of its beauties, and would come into our chamber over
+the roof of the conservatory through the open window, summer and
+winter, and go to sleep on the foot of my bed.  He would do this
+always exactly in this way; he never was content to stay in the
+chamber if we compelled him to go upstairs and through the door.  He
+had the obstinacy of General Grant.  But this is by the way.  In the
+morning, he performed his toilet and went down to breakfast with the
+rest of the family.  Now, when the mistress was absent from home, and
+at no other time, Calvin would come in the morning, when the bell
+rang, to the head of the bed, put up his feet and look into my face,
+follow me about when I rose, "assist" at the dressing, and in many
+purring ways show his fondness, as if he had plainly said, "I know
+that she has gone away, but I am here."  Such was Calvin in rare
+moments.
+
+He had his limitations.  Whatever passion he had for nature, he had
+no conception of art.  There was sent to him once a fine and very
+expressive cat's head in bronze, by Fremiet.  I placed it on the
+floor.  He regarded it intently, approached it cautiously and
+crouchingly, touched it with his nose, perceived the fraud, turned
+away abruptly, and never would notice it afterward.  On the whole,
+his life was not only a successful one, but a happy one.  He never
+had but one fear, so far as I know: he had a mortal and a reasonable
+terror of plumbers.  He would never stay in the house when they were
+here.  No coaxing could quiet him.  Of course he did n't share our
+fear about their charges, but he must have had some dreadful
+experience with them in that portion of his life which is unknown to
+us.  A plumber was to him the devil, and I have no doubt that, in his
+scheme, plumbers were foreordained to do him mischief.
+
+In speaking of his worth, it has never occurred to me to estimate
+Calvin by the worldly standard.  I know that it is customary now,
+when any one dies, to ask how much he was worth, and that no obituary
+in the newspapers is considered complete without such an estimate.
+The plumbers in our house were one day overheard to say that, "They
+say that she says that he says that he wouldn't take a hundred
+dollars for him." It is unnecessary to say that I never made such a
+remark, and that, so far as Calvin was concerned, there was no
+purchase in money.
+
+As I look back upon it, Calvin's life seems to me a fortunate one,
+for it was natural and unforced.  He ate when he was hungry, slept
+when he was sleepy, and enjoyed existence to the very tips of his
+toes and the end of his expressive and slow-moving tail.  He
+delighted to roam about the garden, and stroll among the trees, and
+to lie on the green grass and luxuriate in all the sweet influences
+of summer.  You could never accuse him of idleness, and yet he knew
+the secret of repose.  The poet who wrote so prettily of him that his
+little life was rounded with a sleep, understated his felicity; it
+was rounded with a good many.  His conscience never seemed to
+interfere with his slumbers.  In fact, he had good habits and a
+contented mind.  I can see him now walk in at the study door, sit
+down by my chair, bring his tail artistically about his feet, and
+look up at me with unspeakable happiness in his handsome face.  I
+often thought that he felt the dumb limitation which denied him the
+power of language.  But since he was denied speech, he scorned the
+inarticulate mouthings of the lower animals.  The vulgar mewing and
+yowling of the cat species was beneath him; he sometimes uttered a
+sort of articulate and well-bred ejaculation, when he wished to call
+attention to something that he considered remarkable, or to some want
+of his, but he never went whining about.  He would sit for hours at a
+closed window, when he desired to enter, without a murmur, and when
+it was opened, he never admitted that he had been impatient by
+"bolting" in.  Though speech he had not, and the unpleasant kind of
+utterance given to his race he would not use, he had a mighty power
+of purr to express his measureless content with congenial society.
+There was in him a musical organ with stops of varied power and
+expression, upon which I have no doubt he could have performed
+Scarlatti's celebrated cat's-fugue.
+
+Whether Calvin died of old age, or was carried off by one of the
+diseases incident to youth, it is impossible to say; for his
+departure was as quiet as his advent was mysterious.  I only know
+that he appeared to us in this world in his perfect stature and
+beauty, and that after a time, like Lohengrin, he withdrew.  In his
+illness there was nothing more to be regretted than in all his
+blameless life.  I suppose there never was an illness that had more
+of dignity, and sweetness and resignation in it.  It came on
+gradually, in a kind of listlessness and want of appetite.  An
+alarming symptom was his preference for the warmth of a
+furnace-register to the lively sparkle of the open woodfire.
+Whatever pain he suffered, he bore it in silence, and seemed only
+anxious not to obtrude his malady.  We tempted him with the
+delicacies of the season, but it soon became impossible for him to
+eat, and for two weeks he ate or drank scarcely anything.  Sometimes
+he made an effort to take something, but it was evident that he made
+the effort to please us.  The neighbors--and I am convinced that the
+advice of neighbors is never good for anything--suggested catnip.  He
+would n't even smell it.  We had the attendance of an amateur
+practitioner of medicine, whose real office was the cure of souls,
+but nothing touched his case.  He took what was offered, but it was
+with the air of one to whom the time for pellets was passed.  He sat
+or lay day after day almost motionless, never once making a display
+of those vulgar convulsions or contortions of pain which are so
+disagreeable to society.  His favorite place was on the brightest
+spot of a Smyrna rug by the conservatory, where the sunlight fell and
+he could hear the fountain play.  If we went to him and exhibited our
+interest in his condition, he always purred in recognition of our
+sympathy.  And when I spoke his name, he looked up with an expression
+that said, "I understand it, old fellow, but it's no use."  He was to
+all who came to visit him a model of calmness and patience in
+affliction.
+
+I was absent from home at the last, but heard by daily postal-card of
+his failing condition; and never again saw him alive.  One sunny
+morning, he rose from his rug, went into the conservatory (he was
+very thin then), walked around it deliberately, looking at all the
+plants he knew, and then went to the bay-window in the dining-room,
+and stood a long time looking out upon the little field, now brown
+and sere, and toward the garden, where perhaps the happiest hours of
+his life had been spent.  It was a last look.  He turned and walked
+away, laid himself down upon the bright spot in the rug, and quietly
+died.
+
+It is not too much to say that a little shock went through the
+neighborhood when it was known that Calvin was dead, so marked was
+his individuality; and his friends, one after another, came in to see
+him.  There was no sentimental nonsense about his obsequies; it was
+felt that any parade would have been distasteful to him.  John, who
+acted as undertaker, prepared a candle-box for him and I believe
+assumed a professional decorum; but there may have been the usual
+levity underneath, for I heard that he remarked in the kitchen that
+it was the "driest wake he ever attended."  Everybody, however, felt
+a fondness for Calvin, and regarded him with a certain respect.
+Between him and Bertha there existed a great friendship, and she
+apprehended his nature; she used to say that sometimes she was afraid
+of him, he looked at her so intelligently; she was never certain that
+he was what he appeared to be.
+
+When I returned, they had laid Calvin on a table in an upper chamber
+by an open window.  It was February.  He reposed in a candle-box,
+lined about the edge with evergreen, and at his head stood a little
+wine-glass with flowers.  He lay with his head tucked down in his
+arms,--a favorite position of his before the fire,--as if asleep in
+the comfort of his soft and exquisite fur.  It was the involuntary
+exclamation of those who saw him, "How natural he looks!  "As for
+myself, I said nothing.  John buried him under the twin hawthorn-
+trees,--one white and the other pink,--in a spot where Calvin was
+fond of lying and listening to the hum of summer insects and the
+twitter of birds.
+
+Perhaps I have failed to make appear the individuality of character
+that was so evident to those who knew him.  At any rate, I have set
+down nothing concerning him, but the literal truth.  He was always a
+mystery.  I did not know whence he came; I do not know whither he has
+gone.  I would not weave one spray of falsehood in the wreath I lay
+upon his grave.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BACKLOG STUDIES
+
+
+
+FIRST STUDY
+
+I
+
+The fire on the hearth has almost gone out in New England; the hearth
+has gone out; the family has lost its center; age ceases to be
+respected; sex is only distinguished by a difference between
+millinery bills and tailors' bills; there is no more toast-and-cider;
+the young are not allowed to eat mince-pies at ten o'clock at night;
+half a cheese is no longer set to toast before the fire; you scarcely
+ever see in front of the coals a row of roasting apples, which a
+bright little girl, with many a dive and start, shielding her sunny
+face from the fire with one hand, turns from time to time; scarce are
+the gray-haired sires who strop their razors on the family Bible, and
+doze in the chimney-corner.  A good many things have gone out with
+the fire on the hearth.
+
+I do not mean to say that public and private morality have vanished
+with the hearth.  A good degree of purity and considerable happiness
+are possible with grates and blowers; it is a day of trial, when we
+are all passing through a fiery furnace, and very likely we shall be
+purified as we are dried up and wasted away.  Of course the family is
+gone, as an institution, though there still are attempts to bring up
+a family round a "register." But you might just as well try to bring
+it up by hand, as without the rallying-point of a hearthstone.  Are
+there any homesteads nowadays?  Do people hesitate to change houses
+any more than they do to change their clothes?  People hire houses as
+they would a masquerade costume, liking, sometimes, to appear for a
+year in a little fictitious stone-front splendor above their means.
+Thus it happens that so many people live in houses that do not fit
+them.  I should almost as soon think of wearing another person's
+clothes as his house; unless I could let it out and take it in until
+it fitted, and somehow expressed my own character and taste.  But we
+have fallen into the days of conformity.  It is no wonder that people
+constantly go into their neighbors' houses by mistake, just as, in
+spite of the Maine law, they wear away each other's hats from an
+evening party.  It has almost come to this, that you might as well be
+anybody else as yourself.
+
+Am I mistaken in supposing that this is owing to the discontinuance
+of big chimneys, with wide fireplaces in them?  How can a person be
+attached to a house that has no center of attraction, no soul in it,
+in the visible form of a glowing fire, and a warm chimney, like the
+heart in the body?  When you think of the old homestead, if you ever
+do, your thoughts go straight to the wide chimney and its burning
+logs.  No wonder that you are ready to move from one fireplaceless
+house into another.  But you have something just as good, you say.
+Yes, I have heard of it.  This age, which imitates everything, even
+to the virtues of our ancestors, has invented a fireplace, with
+artificial, iron, or composition logs in it, hacked and painted, in
+which gas is burned, so that it has the appearance of a wood-fire.
+This seems to me blasphemy.  Do you think a cat would lie down before
+it?  Can you poke it?  If you can't poke it, it is a fraud.  To poke
+a wood-fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in the
+world.  The crowning human virtue in a man is to let his wife poke
+the fire.  I do not know how any virtue whatever is possible over an
+imitation gas-log.  What a sense of insincerity the family must have,
+if they indulge in the hypocrisy of gathering about it.  With this
+center of untruthfulness, what must the life in the family be?
+Perhaps the father will be living at the rate of ten thousand a year
+on a salary of four thousand; perhaps the mother, more beautiful and
+younger than her beautified daughters, will rouge; perhaps the young
+ladies will make wax-work.  A cynic might suggest as the motto of
+modern life this simple legend,--"just as good as the real." But I am
+not a cynic, and I hope for the rekindling of wood-fires, and a
+return of the beautiful home light from them.  If a wood-fire is a
+luxury, it is cheaper than many in which we indulge without thought,
+and cheaper than the visits of a doctor, made necessary by the want
+of ventilation of the house.  Not that I have anything against
+doctors; I only wish, after they have been to see us in a way that
+seems so friendly, they had nothing against us.
+
+My fireplace, which is deep, and nearly three feet wide, has a broad
+hearthstone in front of it, where the live coals tumble down, and a
+pair of gigantic brass andirons.  The brasses are burnished, and
+shine cheerfully in the firelight, and on either side stand tall
+shovel and tongs, like sentries, mounted in brass.  The tongs, like
+the two-handed sword of Bruce, cannot be wielded by puny people.  We
+burn in it hickory wood, cut long.  We like the smell of this
+aromatic forest timber, and its clear flame.  The birch is also a
+sweet wood for the hearth, with a sort of spiritual flame and an even
+temper,--no snappishness.  Some prefer the elm, which holds fire so
+well; and I have a neighbor who uses nothing but apple-tree wood,--a
+solid, family sort of wood, fragrant also, and full of delightful
+suggestions.  But few people can afford to burn up their fruit trees.
+I should as soon think of lighting the fire with sweet-oil that comes
+in those graceful wicker-bound flasks from Naples, or with manuscript
+sermons, which, however, do not burn well, be they never so dry, not
+half so well as printed editorials.
+
+Few people know how to make a wood-fire, but everybody thinks he or
+she does.  You want, first, a large backlog, which does not rest on
+the andirons.  This will keep your fire forward, radiate heat all
+day, and late in the evening fall into a ruin of glowing coals, like
+the last days of a good man, whose life is the richest and most
+beneficent at the close, when the flames of passion and the sap of
+youth are burned out, and there only remain the solid, bright
+elements of character.  Then you want a forestick on the andirons;
+and upon these build the fire of lighter stuff.  In this way you have
+at once a cheerful blaze, and the fire gradually eats into the solid
+mass, sinking down with increasing fervor; coals drop below, and
+delicate tongues of flame sport along the beautiful grain of the
+forestick.  There are people who kindle a fire underneath.  But these
+are conceited people, who are wedded to their own way.  I suppose an
+accomplished incendiary always starts a fire in the attic, if he can.
+I am not an incendiary, but I hate bigotry.  I don't call those
+incendiaries very good Christians who, when they set fire to the
+martyrs, touched off the fagots at the bottom, so as to make them go
+slow.  Besides, knowledge works down easier than it does up.
+Education must proceed from the more enlightened down to the more
+ignorant strata.  If you want better common schools, raise the
+standard of the colleges, and so on.  Build your fire on top.  Let
+your light shine.  I have seen people build a fire under a balky
+horse; but he wouldn't go, he'd be a horse-martyr first.  A fire
+kindled under one never did him any good.  Of course you can make a
+fire on the hearth by kindling it underneath, but that does not make
+it right.  I want my hearthfire to be an emblem of the best things.
+
+
+
+II
+
+It must be confessed that a wood-fire needs as much tending as a pair
+of twins.  To say nothing of fiery projectiles sent into the room,
+even by the best wood, from the explosion of gases confined in its
+cells, the brands are continually dropping down, and coals are being
+scattered over the hearth.  However much a careful housewife, who
+thinks more of neatness than enjoyment, may dislike this, it is one
+of the chief delights of a wood-fire.  I would as soon have an
+Englishman without side-whiskers as a fire without a big backlog; and
+I would rather have no fire than one that required no tending,--one
+of dead wood that could not sing again the imprisoned songs of the
+forest, or give out in brilliant scintillations the sunshine it
+absorbed in its growth.  Flame is an ethereal sprite, and the spice
+of danger in it gives zest to the care of the hearth-fire.  Nothing
+is so beautiful as springing, changing flame,--it was the last freak
+of the Gothic architecture men to represent the fronts of elaborate
+edifices of stone as on fire, by the kindling flamboyant devices.  A
+fireplace is, besides, a private laboratory, where one can witness
+the most brilliant chemical experiments, minor conflagrations only
+wanting the grandeur of cities on fire.  It is a vulgar notion that a
+fire is only for heat.  A chief value of it is, however, to look at.
+It is a picture, framed between the jambs.  You have nothing on your
+walls, by the best masters (the poor masters are not, however,
+represented), that is really so fascinating, so spiritual.  Speaking
+like an upholsterer, it furnishes the room.  And it is never twice
+the same.  In this respect it is like the landscape-view through a
+window, always seen in a new light, color, or condition.  The
+fireplace is a window into the most charming world I ever had a
+glimpse of.
+
+Yet direct heat is an agreeable sensation.  I am not scientific
+enough to despise it, and have no taste for a winter residence on
+Mount Washington, where the thermometer cannot be kept comfortable
+even by boiling.  They say that they say in Boston that there is a
+satisfaction in being well dressed which religion cannot give.  There
+is certainly a satisfaction in the direct radiance of a hickory fire
+which is not to be found in the fieriest blasts of a furnace.  The
+hot air of a furnace is a sirocco; the heat of a wood-fire is only
+intense sunshine, like that bottled in Lacrimae Christi.  Besides
+this, the eye is delighted, the sense of smell is regaled by the
+fragrant decomposition, and the ear is pleased with the hissing,
+crackling, and singing,--a liberation of so many out-door noises.
+Some people like the sound of bubbling in a boiling pot, or the
+fizzing of a frying-spider.  But there is nothing gross in the
+animated crackling of sticks of wood blazing on the earth, not even
+if chestnuts are roasting in the ashes.  All the senses are
+ministered to, and the imagination is left as free as the leaping
+tongues of flame.
+
+The attention which a wood-fire demands is one of its best
+recommendations.  We value little that which costs us no trouble to
+maintain.  If we had to keep the sun kindled up and going by private
+corporate action, or act of Congress, and to be taxed for the support
+of customs officers of solar heat, we should prize it more than we
+do.  Not that I should like to look upon the sun as a job, and have
+the proper regulation of its temperature get into politics, where we
+already have so much combustible stuff; but we take it quite too much
+as a matter of course, and, having it free, do not reckon it among
+the reasons for gratitude.  Many people shut it out of their houses
+as if it were an enemy, watch its descent upon the carpet as if it
+were only a thief of color, and plant trees to shut it away from the
+mouldering house.  All the animals know better than this, as well as
+the more simple races of men; the old women of the southern Italian
+coasts sit all day in the sun and ply the distaff, as grateful as the
+sociable hens on the south side of a New England barn; the slow
+tortoise likes to take the sun upon his sloping back, soaking in
+color that shall make him immortal when the imperishable part of him
+is cut up into shell ornaments.  The capacity of a cat to absorb
+sunshine is only equaled by that of an Arab or an Ethiopian.  They
+are not afraid of injuring their complexions.
+
+White must be the color of civilization; it has so many natural
+disadvantages.  But this is politics.  I was about to say that,
+however it may be with sunshine, one is always grateful for his
+wood-fire, because he does not maintain it without some cost.
+
+Yet I cannot but confess to a difference between sunlight and the
+light of a wood-fire.  The sunshine is entirely untamed.  Where it
+rages most freely it tends to evoke the brilliancy rather than the
+harmonious satisfactions of nature.  The monstrous growths and the
+flaming colors of the tropics contrast with our more subdued
+loveliness of foliage and bloom.  The birds of the middle region
+dazzle with their contrasts of plumage, and their voices are for
+screaming rather than singing.  I presume the new experiments in
+sound would project a macaw's voice in very tangled and inharmonious
+lines of light.  I suspect that the fiercest sunlight puts people, as
+well as animals and vegetables, on extremes in all ways.  A wood-fire
+on the hearth is a kindler of the domestic virtues.  It brings in
+cheerfulness, and a family center, and, besides, it is artistic.
+I should like to know if an artist could ever represent on canvas a
+happy family gathered round a hole in the floor called a register.
+Given a fireplace, and a tolerable artist could almost create a
+pleasant family round it.  But what could he conjure out of a
+register?  If there was any virtue among our ancestors,--and they
+labored under a great many disadvantages, and had few of the aids
+which we have to excellence of life,--I am convinced they drew it
+mostly from the fireside.  If it was difficult to read the eleven
+commandments by the light of a pine-knot, it was not difficult to get
+the sweet spirit of them from the countenance of the serene mother
+knitting in the chimney-corner.
+
+
+
+III
+
+When the fire is made, you want to sit in front of it and grow genial
+in its effulgence.  I have never been upon a throne,--except in
+moments of a traveler's curiosity, about as long as a South American
+dictator remains on one,--but I have no idea that it compares, for
+pleasantness, with a seat before a wood-fire.  A whole leisure day
+before you, a good novel in hand, and the backlog only just beginning
+to kindle, with uncounted hours of comfort in it, has life anything
+more delicious?  For "novel" you can substitute "Calvin's
+Institutes," if you wish to be virtuous as well as happy.  Even
+Calvin would melt before a wood-fire.  A great snowstorm, visible on
+three sides of your wide-windowed room, loading the evergreens, blown
+in fine powder from the great chestnut-tops, piled up in ever
+accumulating masses, covering the paths, the shrubbery, the hedges,
+drifting and clinging in fantastic deposits, deepening your sense of
+security, and taking away the sin of idleness by making it a
+necessity, this is an excellent ground to your day by the fire.
+
+To deliberately sit down in the morning to read a novel, to enjoy
+yourself, is this not, in New England (I am told they don't read much
+in other parts of the country), the sin of sins?  Have you any right
+to read, especially novels, until you have exhausted the best part of
+the day in some employment that is called practical?  Have you any
+right to enjoy yourself at all until the fag-end of the day, when you
+are tired and incapable of enjoying yourself?  I am aware that this
+is the practice, if not the theory, of our society,--to postpone the
+delights of social intercourse until after dark, and rather late at
+night, when body and mind are both weary with the exertions of
+business, and when we can give to what is the most delightful and
+profitable thing in life, social and intellectual society, only the
+weariness of dull brains and over-tired muscles.  No wonder we take
+our amusements sadly, and that so many people find dinners heavy and
+parties stupid.  Our economy leaves no place for amusements; we
+merely add them to the burden of a life already full.  The world is
+still a little off the track as to what is really useful.
+
+I confess that the morning is a very good time to read a novel, or
+anything else which is good and requires a fresh mind; and I take it
+that nothing is worth reading that does not require an alert mind.
+I suppose it is necessary that business should be transacted; though
+the amount of business that does not contribute to anybody's comfort
+or improvement suggests the query whether it is not overdone.  I know
+that unremitting attention to business is the price of success, but
+I don't know what success is.  There is a man, whom we all know, who
+built a house that cost a quarter of a million of dollars, and
+furnished it for another like sum, who does not know anything more
+about architecture, or painting, or books, or history, than he cares
+for the rights of those who have not so much money as he has.  I
+heard him once, in a foreign gallery, say to his wife, as they stood
+in front of a famous picture by Rubens: "That is the Rape of the
+Sardines!"  What a cheerful world it would be if everybody was as
+successful as that man!  While I am reading my book by the fire, and
+taking an active part in important transactions that may be a good
+deal better than real, let me be thankful that a great many men are
+profitably employed in offices and bureaus and country stores in
+keeping up the gossip and endless exchange of opinions among mankind,
+so much of which is made to appear to the women at home as
+"business." I find that there is a sort of busy idleness among men in
+this world that is not held in disrepute.  When the time comes that I
+have to prove my right to vote, with women, I trust that it will be
+remembered in my favor that I made this admission.  If it is true, as
+a witty conservative once said to me, that we never shall have peace
+in this country until we elect a colored woman president, I desire to
+be rectus in curia early.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+The fireplace, as we said, is a window through which we look out upon
+other scenes.  We like to read of the small, bare room, with
+cobwebbed ceiling and narrow window, in which the poor child of
+genius sits with his magical pen, the master of a realm of beauty and
+enchantment.  I think the open fire does not kindle the imagination
+so much as it awakens the memory; one sees the past in its crumbling
+embers and ashy grayness, rather than the future.  People become
+reminiscent and even sentimental in front of it.  They used to become
+something else in those good old days when it was thought best to
+heat the poker red hot before plunging it into the mugs of flip.
+This heating of the poker has been disapproved of late years, but I
+do not know on what grounds; if one is to drink bitters and gins and
+the like, such as I understand as good people as clergymen and women
+take in private, and by advice, I do not know why one should not make
+them palatable and heat them with his own poker.  Cold whiskey out of
+a bottle, taken as a prescription six times a day on the sly, is n't
+my idea of virtue any more than the social ancestral glass, sizzling
+wickedly with the hot iron.  Names are so confusing in this world;
+but things are apt to remain pretty much the same, whatever we call
+them.
+
+Perhaps as you look into the fireplace it widens and grows deep and
+cavernous.  The back and the jambs are built up of great stones, not
+always smoothly laid, with jutting ledges upon which ashes are apt to
+lie.  The hearthstone is an enormous block of trap rock, with a
+surface not perfectly even, but a capital place to crack butternuts
+on.  Over the fire swings an iron crane, with a row of pot-hooks of
+all lengths hanging from it.  It swings out when the housewife wants
+to hang on the tea-kettle, and it is strong enough to support a row
+of pots, or a mammoth caldron kettle on occasion.  What a jolly sight
+is this fireplace when the pots and kettles in a row are all boiling
+and bubbling over the flame, and a roasting spit is turning in front!
+It makes a person as hungry as one of Scott's novels.  But the
+brilliant sight is in the frosty morning, about daylight, when the
+fire is made.  The coals are raked open, the split sticks are piled
+up in openwork criss-crossing, as high as the crane; and when the
+flame catches hold and roars up through the interstices, it is like
+an out-of-door bonfire.  Wood enough is consumed in that morning
+sacrifice to cook the food of a Parisian family for a year.  How it
+roars up the wide chimney, sending into the air the signal smoke and
+sparks which announce to the farming neighbors another day cheerfully
+begun!  The sleepiest boy in the world would get up in his red
+flannel nightgown to see such a fire lighted, even if he dropped to
+sleep again in his chair before the ruddy blaze.  Then it is that the
+house, which has shrunk and creaked all night in the pinching cold of
+winter, begins to glow again and come to life.  The thick frost melts
+little by little on the small window-panes, and it is seen that the
+gray dawn is breaking over the leagues of pallid snow.  It is time to
+blow out the candle, which has lost all its cheerfulness in the light
+of day.  The morning romance is over; the family is astir; and member
+after member appears with the morning yawn, to stand before the
+crackling, fierce conflagration.  The daily round begins.  The most
+hateful employment ever invented for mortal man presents itself: the
+"chores" are to be done.  The boy who expects every morning to open
+into a new world finds that to-day is like yesterday, but he believes
+to-morrow will be different.  And yet enough for him, for the day, is
+the wading in the snowdrifts, or the sliding on the diamond-sparkling
+crust.  Happy, too, is he, when the storm rages, and the snow is
+piled high against the windows, if he can sit in the warm chimney-
+corner and read about Burgoyne, and General Fraser, and Miss McCrea,
+midwinter marches through the wilderness, surprises of wigwams, and
+the stirring ballad, say, of the Battle of the Kegs:--
+
+
+"Come, gallants, attend and list a friend
+Thrill forth harmonious ditty;
+While I shall tell what late befell
+At Philadelphia city."
+
+
+I should like to know what heroism a boy in an old New England
+farmhouse--rough-nursed by nature, and fed on the traditions of the
+old wars did not aspire to.  "John," says the mother, "You'll burn
+your head to a crisp in that heat."  But John does not hear; he is
+storming the Plains of Abraham just now.  "Johnny, dear, bring in a
+stick of wood."  How can Johnny bring in wood when he is in that
+defile with Braddock, and the Indians are popping at him from behind
+every tree?  There is something about a boy that I like, after all.
+
+The fire rests upon the broad hearth; the hearth rests upon a great
+substruction of stone, and the substruction rests upon the cellar.
+What supports the cellar I never knew, but the cellar supports the
+family.  The cellar is the foundation of domestic comfort.  Into its
+dark, cavernous recesses the child's imagination fearfully goes.
+Bogies guard the bins of choicest apples.  I know not what comical
+sprites sit astride the cider-barrels ranged along the walls.  The
+feeble flicker of the tallow-candle does not at all dispel, but
+creates, illusions, and magnifies all the rich possibilities of this
+underground treasure-house.  When the cellar-door is opened, and the
+boy begins to descend into the thick darkness, it is always with a
+heart-beat as of one started upon some adventure.  Who can forget the
+smell that comes through the opened door;--a mingling of fresh earth,
+fruit exhaling delicious aroma, kitchen vegetables, the mouldy odor
+of barrels, a sort of ancestral air,--as if a door had been opened
+into an old romance.  Do you like it?  Not much.  But then I would
+not exchange the remembrance of it for a good many odors and perfumes
+that I do like.
+
+It is time to punch the backlog and put on a new forestick.
+
+
+
+
+SECOND STUDY
+
+I
+
+The log was white birch.  The beautiful satin bark at once kindled
+into a soft, pure, but brilliant flame, something like that of
+naphtha.  There is no other wood flame so rich, and it leaps up in a
+joyous, spiritual way, as if glad to burn for the sake of burning.
+Burning like a clear oil, it has none of the heaviness and fatness of
+the pine and the balsam.  Woodsmen are at a loss to account for its
+intense and yet chaste flame, since the bark has no oily appearance.
+The heat from it is fierce, and the light dazzling.  It flares up
+eagerly like young love, and then dies away; the wood does not keep
+up the promise of the bark.  The woodsmen, it is proper to say, have
+not considered it in its relation to young love.  In the remote
+settlements the pine-knot is still the torch of courtship; it endures
+to sit up by.  The birch-bark has alliances with the world of
+sentiment and of letters.  The most poetical reputation of the North
+American Indian floats in a canoe made of it; his picture-writing was
+inscribed on it.  It is the paper that nature furnishes for lovers in
+the wilderness, who are enabled to convey a delicate sentiment by its
+use, which is expressed neither in their ideas nor chirography.  It
+is inadequate for legal parchment, but does very well for deeds of
+love, which are not meant usually to give a perfect title.  With
+care, it may be split into sheets as thin as the Chinese paper.  It
+is so beautiful to handle that it is a pity civilization cannot make
+more use of it.  But fancy articles manufactured from it are very
+much like all ornamental work made of nature's perishable seeds,
+leaves, cones, and dry twigs,--exquisite while the pretty fingers are
+fashioning it, but soon growing shabby and cheap to the eye.  And yet
+there is a pathos in "dried things," whether they are displayed as
+ornaments in some secluded home, or hidden religiously in bureau
+drawers where profane eyes cannot see how white ties are growing
+yellow and ink is fading from treasured letters, amid a faint and
+discouraging perfume of ancient rose-leaves.
+
+The birch log holds out very well while it is green, but has not
+substance enough for a backlog when dry.  Seasoning green timber or
+men is always an experiment.  A man may do very well in a simple, let
+us say, country or backwoods line of life, who would come to nothing
+in a more complicated civilization.  City life is a severe trial.
+One man is struck with a dry-rot; another develops season-cracks;
+another shrinks and swells with every change of circumstance.
+Prosperity is said to be more trying than adversity, a theory which
+most people are willing to accept without trial; but few men stand
+the drying out of the natural sap of their greenness in the
+artificial heat of city life.  This, be it noticed, is nothing
+against the drying and seasoning process; character must be put into
+the crucible some time, and why not in this world?  A man who cannot
+stand seasoning will not have a high market value in any part of the
+universe.  It is creditable to the race, that so many men and women
+bravely jump into the furnace of prosperity and expose themselves to
+the drying influences of city life.
+
+The first fire that is lighted on the hearth in the autumn seems to
+bring out the cold weather.  Deceived by the placid appearance of the
+dying year, the softness of the sky, and the warm color of the
+foliage, we have been shivering about for days without exactly
+comprehending what was the matter.  The open fire at once sets up a
+standard of comparison.  We find that the advance guards of winter
+are besieging the house.  The cold rushes in at every crack of door
+and window, apparently signaled by the flame to invade the house and
+fill it with chilly drafts and sarcasms on what we call the temperate
+zone.  It needs a roaring fire to beat back the enemy; a feeble one
+is only an invitation to the most insulting demonstrations.  Our
+pious New England ancestors were philosophers in their way.  It was
+not simply owing to grace that they sat for hours in their barnlike
+meeting-houses during the winter Sundays, the thermometer many
+degrees below freezing, with no fire, except the zeal in their own
+hearts,--a congregation of red noses and bright eyes.  It was no
+wonder that the minister in the pulpit warmed up to his subject,
+cried aloud, used hot words, spoke a good deal of the hot place and
+the Person whose presence was a burning shame, hammered the desk as
+if he expected to drive his text through a two-inch plank, and heated
+himself by all allowable ecclesiastical gymnastics.  A few of their
+followers in our day seem to forget that our modern churches are
+heated by furnaces and supplied with gas.  In the old days it would
+have been thought unphilosophic as well as effeminate to warm the
+meeting-houses artificially.  In one house I knew, at least, when it
+was proposed to introduce a stove to take a little of the chill from
+the Sunday services, the deacons protested against the innovation.
+They said that the stove might benefit those who sat close to it, but
+it would drive all the cold air to the other parts of the church, and
+freeze the people to death; it was cold enough now around the edges.
+Blessed days of ignorance and upright living!  Sturdy men who served
+God by resolutely sitting out the icy hours of service, amid the
+rattling of windows and the carousal of winter in the high, windswept
+galleries!  Patient women, waiting in the chilly house for
+consumption to pick out his victims, and replace the color of youth
+and the flush of devotion with the hectic of disease!  At least, you
+did not doze and droop in our over-heated edifices, and die of
+vitiated air and disregard of the simplest conditions of organized
+life.  It is fortunate that each generation does not comprehend its
+own ignorance.  We are thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous.
+It is something also that each age has its choice of the death it
+will die.  Our generation is most ingenious.  From our public
+assembly-rooms and houses we have almost succeeded in excluding pure
+air.  It took the race ages to build dwellings that would keep out
+rain; it has taken longer to build houses air-tight, but we are on
+the eve of success.  We are only foiled by the ill-fitting, insincere
+work of the builders, who build for a day, and charge for all time.
+
+
+
+II
+
+When the fire on the hearth has blazed up and then settled into
+steady radiance, talk begins.  There is no place like the chimney-
+corner for confidences; for picking up the clews of an old
+friendship; for taking note where one's self has drifted, by
+comparing ideas and prejudices with the intimate friend of years ago,
+whose course in life has lain apart from yours.  No stranger puzzles
+you so much as the once close friend, with whose thinking and
+associates you have for years been unfamiliar.  Life has come to mean
+this and that to you; you have fallen into certain habits of thought;
+for you the world has progressed in this or that direction; of
+certain results you feel very sure; you have fallen into harmony with
+your surroundings; you meet day after day people interested in the
+things that interest you; you are not in the least opinionated, it is
+simply your good fortune to look upon the affairs of the world from
+the right point of view.  When you last saw your friend,--less than a
+year after you left college,--he was the most sensible and agreeable
+of men; he had no heterodox notions; he agreed with you; you could
+even tell what sort of a wife he would select, and if you could do
+that, you held the key to his life.
+
+Well, Herbert came to visit me the other day from the antipodes.  And
+here he sits by the fireplace.  I cannot think of any one I would
+rather see there, except perhaps Thackery; or, for entertainment,
+Boswell; or old, Pepys; or one of the people who was left out of the
+Ark.  They were talking one foggy London night at Hazlitt's about
+whom they would most like to have seen, when Charles Lamb startled
+the company by declaring that he would rather have seen Judas
+Iscariot than any other person who had lived on the earth.  For
+myself, I would rather have seen Lamb himself once, than to have
+lived with Judas.  Herbert, to my great delight, has not changed; I
+should know him anywhere,--the same serious, contemplative face, with
+lurking humor at the corners of the mouth,--the same cheery laugh and
+clear, distinct enunciation as of old.  There is nothing so winning
+as a good voice.  To see Herbert again, unchanged in all outward
+essentials, is not only gratifying, but valuable as a testimony to
+nature's success in holding on to a personal identity, through the
+entire change of matter that has been constantly taking place for so
+many years.  I know very well there is here no part of the Herbert
+whose hand I had shaken at the Commencement parting; but it is an
+astonishing reproduction of him,--a material likeness; and now for
+the spiritual.
+
+Such a wide chance for divergence in the spiritual.  It has been such
+a busy world for twenty years.  So many things have been torn up by
+the roots again that were settled when we left college.  There were
+to be no more wars; democracy was democracy, and progress, the
+differentiation of the individual, was a mere question of clothes; if
+you want to be different, go to your tailor; nobody had demonstrated
+that there is a man-soul and a woman-soul, and that each is in
+reality only a half-soul,--putting the race, so to speak, upon the
+half-shell.  The social oyster being opened, there appears to be two
+shells and only one oyster; who shall have it?  So many new canons of
+taste, of criticism, of morality have been set up; there has been
+such a resurrection of historical reputations for new judgment, and
+there have been so many discoveries, geographical, archaeological,
+geological, biological, that the earth is not at all what it was
+supposed to be; and our philosophers are much more anxious to
+ascertain where we came from than whither we are going.  In this
+whirl and turmoil of new ideas, nature, which has only the single end
+of maintaining the physical identity in the body, works on
+undisturbed, replacing particle for particle, and preserving the
+likeness more skillfully than a mosaic artist in the Vatican; she has
+not even her materials sorted and labeled, as the Roman artist has
+his thousands of bits of color; and man is all the while doing his
+best to confuse the process, by changing his climate, his diet, all
+his surroundings, without the least care to remain himself.  But the
+mind?
+
+It is more difficult to get acquainted with Herbert than with an
+entire stranger, for I have my prepossessions about him, and do not
+find him in so many places where I expect to find him.  He is full of
+criticism of the authors I admire; he thinks stupid or improper the
+books I most read; he is skeptical about the "movements" I am
+interested in; he has formed very different opinions from mine
+concerning a hundred men and women of the present day; we used to eat
+from one dish; we could n't now find anything in common in a dozen;
+his prejudices (as we call our opinions) are most extraordinary, and
+not half so reasonable as my prejudices; there are a great many
+persons and things that I am accustomed to denounce, uncontradicted
+by anybody, which he defends; his public opinion is not at all my
+public opinion.  I am sorry for him.  He appears to have fallen into
+influences and among a set of people foreign to me.  I find that his
+church has a different steeple on it from my church (which, to say
+the truth, hasn't any).  It is a pity that such a dear friend and a
+man of so much promise should have drifted off into such general
+contrariness.  I see Herbert sitting here by the fire, with the old
+look in his face coming out more and more, but I do not recognize any
+features of his mind,--except perhaps his contrariness; yes, he was
+always a little contrary, I think.  And finally he surprises me with,
+"Well, my friend, you seem to have drifted away from your old notions
+and opinions.  We used to agree when we were together, but I
+sometimes wondered where you would land; for, pardon me, you showed
+signs of looking at things a little contrary."
+
+I am silent for a good while.  I am trying to think who I am.  There
+was a person whom I thought I knew, very fond of Herbert, and
+agreeing with him in most things.  Where has he gone?  and, if he is
+here, where is the Herbert that I knew?
+
+If his intellectual and moral sympathies have all changed, I wonder
+if his physical tastes remain, like his appearance, the same.  There
+has come over this country within the last generation, as everybody
+knows, a great wave of condemnation of pie.  It has taken the
+character of a "movement!" though we have had no conventions about
+it, nor is any one, of any of the several sexes among us, running for
+president against it.  It is safe almost anywhere to denounce pie,
+yet nearly everybody eats it on occasion.  A great many people think
+it savors of a life abroad to speak with horror of pie, although they
+were very likely the foremost of the Americans in Paris who used to
+speak with more enthusiasm of the American pie at Madame Busque's
+than of the Venus of Milo.  To talk against pie and still eat it is
+snobbish, of course; but snobbery, being an aspiring failing, is
+sometimes the prophecy of better things.  To affect dislike of pie is
+something.  We have no statistics on the subject, and cannot tell
+whether it is gaining or losing in the country at large.  Its
+disappearance in select circles is no test.  The amount of writing
+against it is no more test of its desuetude, than the number of
+religious tracts distributed in a given district is a criterion of
+its piety.  We are apt to assume that certain regions are
+substantially free of it.  Herbert and I, traveling north one summer,
+fancied that we could draw in New England a sort of diet line, like
+the sweeping curves on the isothermal charts, which should show at
+least the leading pie sections.  Journeying towards the White
+Mountains, we concluded that a line passing through Bellows Falls,
+and bending a little south on either side, would mark northward the
+region of perpetual pie.  In this region pie is to be found at all
+hours and seasons, and at every meal.  I am not sure, however, that
+pie is not a matter of altitude rather than latitude, as I find that
+all the hill and country towns of New England are full of those
+excellent women, the very salt of the housekeeping earth, who would
+feel ready to sink in mortification through their scoured kitchen
+floors, if visitors should catch them without a pie in the house.
+The absence of pie would be more noticed than a scarcity of Bible
+even.  Without it the housekeepers are as distracted as the
+boarding-house keeper, who declared that if it were not for canned
+tomato, she should have nothing to fly to.  Well, in all this great
+agitation I find Herbert unmoved, a conservative, even to the
+under-crust.  I dare not ask him if he eats pie at breakfast.  There
+are some tests that the dearest friendship may not apply.
+
+"Will you smoke?" I ask.
+
+"No, I have reformed."
+
+"Yes, of course."
+
+"The fact is, that when we consider the correlation of forces, the
+apparent sympathy of spirit manifestations with electric conditions,
+the almost revealed mysteries of what may be called the odic force,
+and the relation of all these phenomena to the nervous system in man,
+it is not safe to do anything to the nervous system that will--"
+
+"Hang the nervous system!  Herbert, we can agree in one thing: old
+memories, reveries, friendships, center about that:--is n't an open
+wood-fire good?"
+
+"Yes," says Herbert, combatively, "if you don't sit before it too
+long."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+The best talk is that which escapes up the open chimney and cannot be
+repeated.  The finest woods make the best fire and pass away with the
+least residuum.  I hope the next generation will not accept the
+reports of "interviews" as specimens of the conversations of these
+years of grace.
+
+But do we talk as well as our fathers and mothers did?  We hear
+wonderful stories of the bright generation that sat about the wide
+fireplaces of New England.  Good talk has so much short-hand that it
+cannot be reported,--the inflection, the change of voice, the shrug,
+cannot be caught on paper.  The best of it is when the subject
+unexpectedly goes cross-lots, by a flash of short-cut, to a
+conclusion so suddenly revealed that it has the effect of wit.  It
+needs the highest culture and the finest breeding to prevent the
+conversation from running into mere persiflage on the one hand--its
+common fate--or monologue on the other.  Our conversation is largely
+chaff.  I am not sure but the former generation preached a good deal,
+but it had great practice in fireside talk, and must have talked
+well.  There were narrators in those days who could charm a circle
+all the evening long with stories.  When each day brought
+comparatively little new to read, there was leisure for talk, and the
+rare book and the in-frequent magazine were thoroughly discussed.
+Families now are swamped by the printed matter that comes daily upon
+the center-table.  There must be a division of labor, one reading
+this, and another that, to make any impression on it.  The telegraph
+brings the only common food, and works this daily miracle, that every
+mind in Christendom is excited by one topic simultaneously with every
+other mind; it enables a concurrent mental action, a burst of
+sympathy, or a universal prayer to be made, which must be, if we have
+any faith in the immaterial left, one of the chief forces in modern
+life.  It is fit that an agent so subtle as electricity should be the
+minister of it.
+
+When there is so much to read, there is little time for conversation;
+nor is there leisure for another pastime of the ancient firesides,
+called reading aloud.  The listeners, who heard while they looked
+into the wide chimney-place, saw there pass in stately procession the
+events and the grand persons of history, were kindled with the
+delights of travel, touched by the romance of true love, or made
+restless by tales of adventure;--the hearth became a sort of magic
+stone that could transport those who sat by it to the most distant
+places and times, as soon as the book was opened and the reader
+began, of a winter's night.  Perhaps the Puritan reader read through
+his nose, and all the little Puritans made the most dreadful nasal
+inquiries as the entertainment went on.  The prominent nose of the
+intellectual New-Englander is evidence of the constant linguistic
+exercise of the organ for generations.  It grew by talking through.
+But I have no doubt that practice made good readers in those days.
+Good reading aloud is almost a lost accomplishment now.  It is little
+thought of in the schools.  It is disused at home.  It is rare to
+find any one who can read, even from the newspaper, well.  Reading is
+so universal, even with the uncultivated, that it is common to hear
+people mispronounce words that you did not suppose they had ever
+seen.  In reading to themselves they glide over these words, in
+reading aloud they stumble over them.  Besides, our every-day books
+and newspapers are so larded with French that the ordinary reader is
+obliged marcher a pas de loup,--for instance.
+
+The newspaper is probably responsible for making current many words
+with which the general reader is familiar, but which he rises to in
+the flow of conversation, and strikes at with a splash and an
+unsuccessful attempt at appropriation; the word, which he perfectly
+knows, hooks him in the gills, and he cannot master it.  The
+newspaper is thus widening the language in use, and vastly increasing
+the number of words which enter into common talk.  The Americans of
+the lowest intellectual class probably use more words to express
+their ideas than the similar class of any other people; but this
+prodigality is partially balanced by the parsimony of words in some
+higher regions, in which a few phrases of current slang are made to
+do the whole duty of exchange of ideas; if that can be called
+exchange of ideas when one intellect flashes forth to another the
+remark, concerning some report, that "you know how it is yourself,"
+and is met by the response of "that's what's the matter," and rejoins
+with the perfectly conclusive "that's so."  It requires a high degree
+of culture to use slang with elegance and effect; and we are yet very
+far from the Greek attainment.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+The fireplace wants to be all aglow, the wind rising, the night heavy
+and black above, but light with sifting snow on the earth, a
+background of inclemency for the illumined room with its pictured
+walls, tables heaped with books, capacious easy-chairs and their
+occupants,--it needs, I say, to glow and throw its rays far through
+the crystal of the broad windows, in order that we may rightly
+appreciate the relation of the wide-jambed chimney to domestic
+architecture in our climate.  We fell to talking about it; and, as is
+usual when the conversation is professedly on one subject, we
+wandered all around it.  The young lady staying with us was roasting
+chestnuts in the ashes, and the frequent explosions required
+considerable attention.  The mistress, too, sat somewhat alert, ready
+to rise at any instant and minister to the fancied want of this or
+that guest, forgetting the reposeful truth that people about a
+fireside will not have any wants if they are not suggested.  The
+worst of them, if they desire anything, only want something hot, and
+that later in the evening.  And it is an open question whether you
+ought to associate with people who want that.
+
+I was saying that nothing had been so slow in its progress in the
+world as domestic architecture.  Temples, palaces, bridges,
+aqueducts, cathedrals, towers of marvelous delicacy and strength,
+grew to perfection while the common people lived in hovels, and the
+richest lodged in the most gloomy and contracted quarters.  The
+dwelling-house is a modern institution.  It is a curious fact that it
+has only improved with the social elevation of women.  Men were never
+more brilliant in arms and letters than in the age of Elizabeth, and
+yet they had no homes.  They made themselves thick-walled castles,
+with slits in the masonry for windows, for defense, and magnificent
+banquet-halls for pleasure; the stone rooms into which they crawled
+for the night were often little better than dog-kennels.  The
+Pompeians had no comfortable night-quarters.  The most singular thing
+to me, however, is that, especially interested as woman is in the
+house, she has never done anything for architecture.  And yet woman
+is reputed to be an ingenious creature.
+
+HERBERT.  I doubt if woman has real ingenuity; she has great
+adaptability.  I don't say that she will do the same thing twice
+alike, like a Chinaman, but she is most cunning in suiting herself to
+circumstances.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  Oh, if you speak of constructive, creative
+ingenuity, perhaps not; but in the higher ranges of achievement--that
+of accomplishing any purpose dear to her heart, for instance--her
+ingenuity is simply incomprehensible to me.
+
+HERBERT.  Yes, if you mean doing things by indirection.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  When you men assume all the direction, what else is
+left to us?
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  Did you ever see a woman refurnish a house?
+
+THE YOUNG LADY STAYING WITH US.  I never saw a man do it, unless he
+was burned out of his rookery.
+
+HERBERT.  There is no comfort in new things.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER (not noticing the interruption).  Having set her mind
+on a total revolution of the house, she buys one new thing, not too
+obtrusive, nor much out of harmony with the old.  The husband
+scarcely notices it, least of all does he suspect the revolution,
+which she already has accomplished.  Next, some article that does
+look a little shabby beside the new piece of furniture is sent to the
+garret, and its place is supplied by something that will match in
+color and effect.  Even the man can see that it ought to match, and
+so the process goes on, it may be for years, it may be forever, until
+nothing of the old is left, and the house is transformed as it was
+predetermined in the woman's mind.  I doubt if the man ever
+understands how or when it was done; his wife certainly never says
+anything about the refurnishing, but quietly goes on to new
+conquests.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  And is n't it better to buy little by little, enjoying
+every new object as you get it, and assimilating each article to your
+household life, and making the home a harmonious expression of your
+own taste, rather than to order things in sets, and turn your house,
+for the time being, into a furniture ware-room?
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  Oh, I only spoke of the ingenuity of it.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  For my part, I never can get acquainted with more
+than one piece of furniture at a time.
+
+HERBERT.  I suppose women are our superiors in artistic taste, and I
+fancy that I can tell whether a house is furnished by a woman or a
+man; of course, I mean the few houses that appear to be the result of
+individual taste and refinement,--most of them look as if they had
+been furnished on contract by the upholsterer.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Woman's province in this world is putting things to
+rights.
+
+HERBERT.  With a vengeance, sometimes.  In the study, for example.
+My chief objection to woman is that she has no respect for the
+newspaper, or the printed page, as such.  She is Siva, the destroyer.
+I have noticed that a great part of a married man's time at home is
+spent in trying to find the things he has put on his study-table.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  Herbert speaks with the bitterness of a bachelor
+shut out of paradise.  It is my experience that if women did not
+destroy the rubbish that men bring into the house, it would become
+uninhabitable, and need to be burned down every five years.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  I confess women do a great deal for the appearance
+of things.  When the mistress is absent, this room, although
+everything is here as it was before, does not look at all like the
+same place; it is stiff, and seems to lack a soul.  When she returns,
+I can see that her eye, even while greeting me, takes in the
+situation at a glance.  While she is talking of the journey, and
+before she has removed her traveling-hat, she turns this chair and
+moves that, sets one piece of furniture at a different angle,
+rapidly, and apparently unconsciously, shifts a dozen little
+knick-knacks and bits of color, and the room is transformed.  I
+couldn't do it in a week.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  That is the first time I ever knew a man admit he
+couldn't do anything if he had time.
+
+HERBERT.  Yet with all their peculiar instinct for making a home,
+women make themselves very little felt in our domestic architecture.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Men build most of the houses in what might be called
+the ready-made-clothing style, and we have to do the best we can with
+them; and hard enough it is to make cheerful homes in most of them.
+You will see something different when the woman is constantly
+consulted in the plan of the house.
+
+HERBERT.  We might see more difference if women would give any
+attention to architecture.  Why are there no women architects?
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  Want of the ballot, doubtless.  It seems to me that
+here is a splendid opportunity for woman to come to the front.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  They have no desire to come to the front; they would
+rather manage things where they are.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  If they would master the noble art, and put their
+brooding taste upon it, we might very likely compass something in our
+domestic architecture that we have not yet attained.  The outside of
+our houses needs attention as well as the inside.  Most of them are
+as ugly as money can build.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  What vexes me most is, that women, married women,
+have so easily consented to give up open fires in their houses.
+
+HERBERT.  They dislike the dust and the bother.  I think that women
+rather like the confined furnace heat.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  Nonsense; it is their angelic virtue of submission.
+We wouldn't be hired to stay all-day in the houses we build.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  That has a very chivalrous sound, but I know there
+will be no reformation until women rebel and demand everywhere the
+open fire.
+
+HERBERT.  They are just now rebelling about something else; it seems
+to me yours is a sort of counter-movement, a fire in the rear.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  I'll join that movement.  The time has come when woman
+must strike for her altars and her fires.
+
+HERBERT.  Hear, hear!
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Thank you, Herbert.  I applauded you once, when you
+declaimed that years ago in the old Academy.  I remember how
+eloquently you did it.
+
+HERBERT.  Yes, I was once a spouting idiot.
+
+Just then the door-bell rang, and company came in.  And the company
+brought in a new atmosphere, as company always does, something of the
+disturbance of out-doors, and a good deal of its healthy cheer.  The
+direct news that the thermometer was approaching zero, with a hopeful
+prospect of going below it, increased to liveliness our satisfaction
+in the fire.  When the cider was heated in the brown stone pitcher,
+there was difference of opinion whether there should be toast in it;
+some were for toast, because that was the old-fashioned way, and
+others were against it, "because it does not taste good" in cider.
+Herbert said there, was very little respect left for our forefathers.
+
+More wood was put on, and the flame danced in a hundred fantastic
+shapes.  The snow had ceased to fall, and the moonlight lay in
+silvery patches among the trees in the ravine.  The conversation
+became worldly.
+
+
+
+
+THIRD STUDY
+
+
+I
+
+Herbert said, as we sat by the fire one night, that he wished he had
+turned his attention to writing poetry like Tennyson's.
+
+The remark was not whimsical, but satirical.  Tennyson is a man of
+talent, who happened to strike a lucky vein, which he has worked with
+cleverness.  The adventurer with a pickaxe in Washoe may happen upon
+like good fortune.  The world is full of poetry as the earth is of
+"pay-dirt;" one only needs to know how to "strike" it.  An able man
+can make himself almost anything that he will.  It is melancholy to
+think how many epic poets have been lost in the tea-trade, how many
+dramatists (though the age of the drama has passed) have wasted their
+genius in great mercantile and mechanical enterprises.  I know a man
+who might have been the poet, the essayist, perhaps the critic, of
+this country, who chose to become a country judge, to sit day after
+day upon a bench in an obscure corner of the world, listening to
+wrangling lawyers and prevaricating witnesses, preferring to judge
+his fellow-men rather than enlighten them.
+
+It is fortunate for the vanity of the living and the reputation of
+the dead, that men get almost as much credit for what they do not as
+for what they do.  It was the opinion of many that Burns might have
+excelled as a statesman, or have been a great captain in war; and Mr.
+Carlyle says that if he had been sent to a university, and become a
+trained intellectual workman, it lay in him to have changed the whole
+course of British literature!  A large undertaking, as so vigorous
+and dazzling a writer as Mr. Carlyle must know by this time, since
+British literature has swept by him in a resistless and widening
+flood, mainly uncontaminated, and leaving his grotesque contrivances
+wrecked on the shore with other curiosities of letters, and yet among
+the richest of all the treasures lying there.
+
+It is a temptation to a temperate man to become a sot, to hear what
+talent, what versatility, what genius, is almost always attributed to
+a moderately bright man who is habitually drunk.  Such a mechanic,
+such a mathematician, such a poet he would be, if he were only sober;
+and then he is sure to be the most generous, magnanimous, friendly
+soul, conscientiously honorable, if he were not so conscientiously
+drunk.  I suppose it is now notorious that the most brilliant and
+promising men have been lost to the world in this way.  It is
+sometimes almost painful to think what a surplus of talent and genius
+there would be in the world if the habit of intoxication should
+suddenly cease; and what a slim chance there would be for the
+plodding people who have always had tolerably good habits.  The fear
+is only mitigated by the observation that the reputation of a person
+for great talent sometimes ceases with his reformation.
+
+It is believed by some that the maidens who would make the best wives
+never marry, but remain free to bless the world with their impartial
+sweetness, and make it generally habitable.  This is one of the
+mysteries of Providence and New England life.  It seems a pity, at
+first sight, that all those who become poor wives have the
+matrimonial chance, and that they are deprived of the reputation of
+those who would be good wives were they not set apart for the high
+and perpetual office of priestesses of society.  There is no beauty
+like that which was spoiled by an accident, no accomplishments--and
+graces are so to be envied as those that circumstances rudely
+hindered the development of.  All of which shows what a charitable
+and good-tempered world it is, notwithstanding its reputation for
+cynicism and detraction.
+
+Nothing is more beautiful than the belief of the faithful wife that
+her husband has all the talents, and could , if he would, be
+distinguished in any walk in life; and nothing will be more
+beautiful--unless this is a very dry time for signs--than the
+husband's belief that his wife is capable of taking charge of any of
+the affairs of this confused planet.  There is no woman but thinks
+that her husband, the green-grocer, could write poetry if he had
+given his mind to it, or else she thinks small beer of poetry in
+comparison with an occupation or accomplishment purely vegetable.  It
+is touching to see the look of pride with which the wife turns to her
+husband from any more brilliant personal presence or display of wit
+than his, in the perfect confidence that if the world knew what she
+knows, there would be one more popular idol.  How she magnifies his
+small wit, and dotes upon the self-satisfied look in his face as if
+it were a sign of wisdom!  What a councilor that man would make!
+What a warrior he would be!  There are a great many corporals in
+their retired homes who did more for the safety and success of our
+armies in critical moments, in the late war, than any of the "high-
+cock-a-lorum" commanders.  Mrs.  Corporal does not envy the
+reputation of General Sheridan; she knows very well who really won
+Five Forks, for she has heard the story a hundred times, and will
+hear it a hundred times more with apparently unabated interest.  What
+a general her husband would have made; and how his talking talent
+would shine in Congress!
+
+HERBERT.  Nonsense.  There isn't a wife in the world who has not
+taken the exact measure of her husband, weighed him and settled him
+in her own mind, and knows him as well as if she had ordered him
+after designs and specifications of her own.  That knowledge,
+however, she ordinarily keeps to herself, and she enters into a
+league with her husband, which he was never admitted to the secret
+of, to impose upon the world.  In nine out of ten cases he more than
+half believes that he is what his wife tells him he is.  At any rate,
+she manages him as easily as the keeper does the elephant, with only
+a bamboo wand and a sharp spike in the end.  Usually she flatters
+him, but she has the means of pricking clear through his hide on
+occasion.  It is the great secret of her power to have him think that
+she thoroughly believes in him.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY STAYING WITH Us.  And you call this hypocrisy?  I have
+heard authors, who thought themselves sly observers of women, call it
+so.
+
+HERBERT.  Nothing of the sort.  It is the basis on which society
+rests, the conventional agreement.  If society is about to be
+overturned, it is on this point.  Women are beginning to tell men
+what they really think of them; and to insist that the same relations
+of downright sincerity and independence that exist between men shall
+exist between women and men.  Absolute truth between souls, without
+regard to sex, has always been the ideal life of the poets.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Yes; but there was never a poet yet who would bear to
+have his wife say exactly what she thought of his poetry, any more
+than be would keep his temper if his wife beat him at chess; and
+there is nothing that disgusts a man like getting beaten at chess by
+a woman.
+
+HERBERT.  Well, women know how to win by losing.  I think that the
+reason why most women do not want to take the ballot and stand out in
+the open for a free trial of power, is that they are reluctant to
+change the certain domination of centuries, with weapons they are
+perfectly competent to handle, for an experiment.  I think we should
+be better off if women were more transparent, and men were not so
+systematically puffed up by the subtle flattery which is used to
+control them.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  Deliver me from transparency. When a woman takes that
+guise, and begins to convince me that I can see through her like a
+ray of light, I must run or be lost.  Transparent women are the truly
+dangerous.  There was one on ship-board [Mandeville likes to say
+that; he has just returned from a little tour in Europe, and he quite
+often begins his remarks with "on the ship going over; "the Young
+Lady declares that he has a sort of roll in his chair, when he says
+it, that makes her sea-sick] who was the most innocent, artless,
+guileless, natural bunch of lace and feathers you ever saw; she was
+all candor and helplessness and dependence; she sang like a
+nightingale, and talked like a nun.  There never was such simplicity.
+There was n't a sounding-line on board that would have gone to the
+bottom of her soulful eyes.  But she managed the captain and all the
+officers, and controlled the ship as if she had been the helm.  All
+the passengers were waiting on her, fetching this and that for her
+comfort, inquiring of her health, talking about her genuineness, and
+exhibiting as much anxiety to get her ashore in safety, as if she had
+been about to knight them all and give them a castle apiece when they
+came to land.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  What harm?  It shows what I have always said, that the
+service of a noble woman is the most ennobling influence for men.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  If she is noble, and not a mere manager.  I watched this
+woman to see if she would ever do anything for any one else.  She
+never did.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  Did you ever see her again?  I presume Mandeville
+has introduced her here for some purpose.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  No purpose.  But we did see her on the Rhine; she was
+the most disgusted traveler, and seemed to be in very ill humor with
+her maid.  I judged that her happiness depended upon establishing
+controlling relations with all about her.  On this Rhine boat, to be
+sure, there was reason for disgust.  And that reminds me of a remark
+that was made.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  Oh!
+
+MANDEVILLE.  When we got aboard at Mayence we were conscious of a
+dreadful odor somewhere; as it was a foggy morning, we could see no
+cause of it, but concluded it was from something on the wharf.  The
+fog lifted, and we got under way, but the odor traveled with us, and
+increased.  We went to every part of the vessel to avoid it, but in
+vain.  It occasionally reached us in great waves of disagreeableness.
+We had heard of the odors of the towns on the Rhine, but we had no
+idea that the entire stream was infected.  It was intolerable.
+
+The day was lovely, and the passengers stood about on deck holding
+their noses and admiring the scenery.  You might see a row of them
+leaning over the side, gazing up at some old ruin or ivied crag,
+entranced with the romance of the situation, and all holding their
+noses with thumb and finger.  The sweet Rhine!  By and by somebody
+discovered that the odor came from a pile of cheese on the forward
+deck, covered with a canvas; it seemed that the Rhinelanders are so
+fond of it that they take it with them when they travel.  If there
+should ever be war between us and Germany, the borders of the Rhine
+would need no other defense from American soldiers than a barricade
+of this cheese.  I went to the stern of the steamboat to tell a stout
+American traveler what was the origin of the odor he had been trying
+to dodge all the morning.  He looked more disgusted than before, when
+he heard that it was cheese; but his only reply was: "It must be a
+merciful God who can forgive a smell like that!"
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+The above is introduced here in order to illustrate the usual effect
+of an anecdote on conversation.  Commonly it kills it.  That talk
+must be very well in hand, and under great headway, that an anecdote
+thrown in front of will not pitch off the track and wreck.  And it
+makes little difference what the anecdote is; a poor one depresses
+the spirits, and casts a gloom over the company; a good one begets
+others, and the talkers go to telling stories; which is very good
+entertainment in moderation, but is not to be mistaken for that
+unwearying flow of argument, quaint remark, humorous color, and
+sprightly interchange of sentiments and opinions, called
+conversation.
+
+The reader will perceive that all hope is gone here of deciding
+whether Herbert could have written Tennyson's poems, or whether
+Tennyson could have dug as much money out of the Heliogabalus Lode as
+Herbert did.  The more one sees of life, I think the impression
+deepens that men, after all, play about the parts assigned them,
+according to their mental and moral gifts, which are limited and
+preordained, and that their entrances and exits are governed by a law
+no less certain because it is hidden.  Perhaps nobody ever
+accomplishes all that he feels lies in him to do; but nearly every
+one who tries his powers touches the walls of his being occasionally,
+and learns about how far to attempt to spring.  There are no
+impossibilities to youth and inexperience; but when a person has
+tried several times to reach high C and been coughed down, he is
+quite content to go down among the chorus.  It is only the fools who
+keep straining at high C all their lives.
+
+Mandeville here began to say that that reminded him of something that
+happened when he was on the
+
+But Herbert cut in with the observation that no matter what a man's
+single and several capacities and talents might be, he is controlled
+by his own mysterious individuality, which is what metaphysicians
+call the substance, all else being the mere accidents of the man.
+And this is the reason that we cannot with any certainty tell what
+any person will do or amount to, for, while we know his talents and
+abilities, we do not know the resulting whole, which is he himself.
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  So if you could take all the first-class qualities
+that we admire in men and women, and put them together into one
+being, you wouldn't be sure of the result?
+
+HERBERT.  Certainly not.  You would probably have a monster.  It
+takes a cook of long experience, with the best materials, to make a
+dish " taste good;" and the "taste good" is the indefinable essence,
+the resulting balance or harmony which makes man or woman agreeable
+or beautiful or effective in the world.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  That must be the reason why novelists fail so
+lamentably in almost all cases in creating good characters.  They put
+in real traits, talents, dispositions, but the result of the
+synthesis is something that never was seen on earth before.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  Oh, a good character in fiction is an inspiration.
+We admit this in poetry.  It is as true of such creations as Colonel
+Newcome, and Ethel, and Beatrix Esmond.  There is no patchwork about
+them.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  Why was n't Thackeray ever inspired to create a
+noble woman?
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  That is the standing conundrum with all the women.
+They will not accept Ethel Newcome even.  Perhaps we shall have to
+admit that Thackeray was a writer for men.
+
+HERBERT.  Scott and the rest had drawn so many perfect women that
+Thackeray thought it was time for a real one.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  That's ill-natured.  Thackeray did, however, make
+ladies.  If he had depicted, with his searching pen, any of us just
+as we are, I doubt if we should have liked it much.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  That's just it.  Thackeray never pretended to make
+ideals, and if the best novel is an idealization of human nature,
+then he was not the best novelist.  When I was crossing the Channel
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Oh dear, if we are to go to sea again, Mandeville, I
+move we have in the nuts and apples, and talk about our friends.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+There is this advantage in getting back to a wood-fire on the hearth,
+that you return to a kind of simplicity; you can scarcely imagine any
+one being stiffly conventional in front of it.  It thaws out
+formality, and puts the company who sit around it into easy attitudes
+of mind and body,--lounging attitudes,--Herbert said.
+
+And this brought up the subject of culture in America, especially as
+to manner.  The backlog period having passed, we are beginning to
+have in society people of the cultured manner, as it is called, or
+polished bearing, in which the polish is the most noticeable thing
+about the man.  Not the courtliness, the easy simplicity of the
+old-school gentleman, in whose presence the milkmaid was as much at
+her ease as the countess, but something far finer than this.  These
+are the people of unruffled demeanor, who never forget it for a
+moment, and never let you forget it.  Their presence is a constant
+rebuke to society.  They are never "jolly;" their laugh is never
+anything more than a well-bred smile; they are never betrayed into
+any enthusiasm.  Enthusiasm is a sign of inexperience, of ignorance,
+of want of culture.  They never lose themselves in any cause; they
+never heartily praise any man or woman or book; they are superior to
+all tides of feeling and all outbursts of passion.  They are not even
+shocked at vulgarity.  They are simply indifferent.  They are calm,
+visibly calm, painfully calm; and it is not the eternal, majestic
+calmness of the Sphinx either, but a rigid, self-conscious
+repression.  You would like to put a bent pin in their chair when
+they are about calmly to sit down.
+
+A sitting hen on her nest is calm, but hopeful; she has faith that
+her eggs are not china.  These people appear to be sitting on china
+eggs.  Perfect culture has refined all blood, warmth, flavor, out of
+them.  We admire them without envy.  They are too beautiful in their
+manners to be either prigs or snobs.  They are at once our models and
+our despair.  They are properly careful of themselves as models, for
+they know that if they should break, society would become a scene of
+mere animal confusion.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  I think that the best-bred people in the world are the
+English.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  You mean at home.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  That's where I saw them. There is no nonsense about a
+cultivated English man or woman.  They express themselves sturdily
+and naturally, and with no subservience to the opinions of others.
+There's a sort of hearty sincerity about them that I like.  Ages of
+culture on the island have gone deeper than the surface, and they
+have simpler and more natural manners than we.  There is something
+good in the full, round tones of their voices.
+
+HERBERT.  Did you ever get into a diligence with a growling English-
+man who had n't secured the place he wanted?
+
+[Mandeville once spent a week in London, riding about on the tops of
+omnibuses.]
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Did you ever see an English exquisite at the San
+Carlo, and hear him cry "Bwavo"?
+
+MANDEVILLE.  At any rate, he acted out his nature, and was n't afraid
+to.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  I think Mandeville is right, for once.  The men of
+the best culture in England, in the middle and higher social classes,
+are what you would call good fellows,--easy and simple in manner,
+enthusiastic on occasion, and decidedly not cultivated into the
+smooth calmness of indifference which some Americans seem to regard
+as the sine qua non of good breeding.  Their position is so assured
+that they do not need that lacquer of calmness of which we were
+speaking.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  Which is different from the manner acquired by those
+who live a great deal in American hotels?
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Or the Washington manner?
+
+HERBERT.  The last two are the same.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  Not exactly.  You think you can always tell if a
+man has learned his society carriage of a dancing-master.  Well, you
+cannot always tell by a person's manner whether he is a habitui of
+hotels or of Washington.  But these are distinct from the perfect
+polish and politeness of indifferentism.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+Daylight disenchants.  It draws one from the fireside, and dissipates
+the idle illusions of conversation, except under certain conditions.
+Let us say that the conditions are: a house in the country, with some
+forest trees near, and a few evergreens, which are Christmas-trees
+all winter long, fringed with snow, glistening with ice-pendants,
+cheerful by day and grotesque by night; a snow-storm beginning out of
+a dark sky, falling in a soft profusion that fills all the air, its
+dazzling whiteness making a light near at hand, which is quite lost
+in the distant darkling spaces.
+
+If one begins to watch the swirling flakes and crystals, he soon gets
+an impression of infinity of resources that he can have from nothing
+else so powerfully, except it be from Adirondack gnats.  Nothing
+makes one feel at home like a great snow-storm.  Our intelligent cat
+will quit the fire and sit for hours in the low window, watching the
+falling snow with a serious and contented air.  His thoughts are his
+own, but he is in accord with the subtlest agencies of Nature; on
+such a day he is charged with enough electricity to run a telegraphic
+battery, if it could be utilized.  The connection between thought and
+electricity has not been exactly determined, but the cat is mentally
+very alert in certain conditions of the atmosphere.  Feasting his
+eyes on the beautiful out-doors does not prevent his attention to the
+slightest noise in the wainscot.  And the snow-storm brings content,
+but not stupidity, to all the rest of the household.
+
+I can see Mandeville now, rising from his armchair and swinging his
+long arms as he strides to the window, and looks out and up, with,
+"Well, I declare!"  Herbert is pretending to read Herbert Spencer's
+tract on the philosophy of style but he loses much time in looking at
+the Young Lady, who is writing a letter, holding her portfolio in her
+lap,--one of her everlasting letters to one of her fifty everlasting
+friends.  She is one of the female patriots who save the post-office
+department from being a disastrous loss to the treasury.  Herbert is
+thinking of the great radical difference in the two sexes, which
+legislation will probably never change; that leads a woman always, to
+write letters on her lap and a man on a table,--a distinction which
+is commended to the notice of the anti-suffragists.
+
+The Mistress, in a pretty little breakfast-cap, is moving about the
+room with a feather-duster, whisking invisible dust from the picture-
+frames, and talking with the Parson, who has just come in, and is
+thawing the snow from his boots on the hearth.  The Parson says the
+thermometer is 15deg., and going down; that there is a snowdrift
+across the main church entrance three feet high, and that the house
+looks as if it had gone into winter quarters, religion and all.
+There were only ten persons at the conference meeting last night, and
+seven of those were women; he wonders how many weather-proof
+Christians there are in the parish, anyhow.
+
+The Fire-Tender is in the adjoining library, pretending to write; but
+it is a poor day for ideas.  He has written his wife's name about
+eleven hundred times, and cannot get any farther.  He hears the
+Mistress tell the Parson that she believes he is trying to write a
+lecture on the Celtic Influence in Literature.  The Parson says that
+it is a first-rate subject, if there were any such influence, and
+asks why he does n't take a shovel and make a path to the gate.
+Mandeville says that, by George!  he himself should like no better
+fun, but it wouldn't look well for a visitor to do it.  The
+Fire-Tender, not to be disturbed by this sort of chaff, keeps on
+writing his wife's name.
+
+Then the Parson and the Mistress fall to talking about the
+soup-relief, and about old Mrs. Grumples in Pig Alley, who had a
+present of one of Stowe's Illustrated Self-Acting Bibles on
+Christmas, when she had n't coal enough in the house to heat her
+gruel; and about a family behind the church, a widow and six little
+children and three dogs; and he did n't believe that any of them had
+known what it was to be warm in three weeks, and as to food, the
+woman said, she could hardly beg cold victuals enough to keep the
+dogs alive.
+
+The Mistress slipped out into the kitchen to fill a basket with
+provisions and send it somewhere; and when the Fire-Tender brought in
+a new forestick, Mandeville, who always wants to talk, and had been
+sitting drumming his feet and drawing deep sighs, attacked him.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  Speaking about culture and manners, did you ever notice
+how extremes meet, and that the savage bears himself very much like
+the sort of cultured persons we were talking of last night?
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  In what respect?
+
+MANDEVILLE.  Well, you take the North American Indian.  He is never
+interested in anything, never surprised at anything.  He has by
+nature that calmness and indifference which your people of culture
+have acquired.  If he should go into literature as a critic, he would
+scalp and tomahawk with the same emotionless composure, and he would
+do nothing else.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  Then you think the red man is a born gentleman of
+the highest breeding?
+
+MANDEVILLE.  I think he is calm.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  How is it about the war-path and all that?
+
+MANDEVILLE.  Oh, these studiously calm and cultured people may have
+malice underneath.  It takes them to give the most effective "little
+digs;" they know how to stick in the pine-splinters and set fire to
+them.
+
+HERBERT.  But there is more in Mandeville's idea.  You bring a red
+man into a picture-gallery, or a city full of fine architecture, or
+into a drawing-room crowded with objects of art and beauty, and he is
+apparently insensible to them all.  Now I have seen country people,--
+and by country people I don't mean people necessarily who live in the
+country, for everything is mixed in these days,--some of the best
+people in the world, intelligent, honest, sincere, who acted as the
+Indian would.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Herbert, if I did n't know you were cynical, I should
+say you were snobbish.
+
+HERBERT.  Such people think it a point of breeding never to speak of
+anything in your house, nor to appear to notice it, however beautiful
+it may be; even to slyly glance around strains their notion of
+etiquette.  They are like the countryman who confessed afterwards
+that he could hardly keep from laughing at one of Yankee Hill's
+entertainments,
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  Do you remember those English people at our house in
+Flushing last summer, who pleased us all so much with their apparent
+delight in everything that was artistic or tasteful, who explored the
+rooms and looked at everything, and were so interested?  I suppose
+that Herbert's country relations, many of whom live in the city,
+would have thought it very ill-bred.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  It's just as I said.  The English, the best of them,
+have become so civilized that they express themselves, in speech and
+action, naturally, and are not afraid of their emotions.
+
+THE PARSON.  I wish Mandeville would travel more, or that he had
+stayed at home.  It's wonderful what a fit of Atlantic sea-sickness
+will do for a man's judgment and cultivation.  He is prepared to
+pronounce on art, manners, all kinds of culture.  There is more
+nonsense talked about culture than about anything else.
+
+HERBERT.  The Parson reminds me of an American country minister I
+once met walking through the Vatican.  You could n't impose upon him
+with any rubbish; he tested everything by the standards of his native
+place, and there was little that could bear the test.  He had the sly
+air of a man who could not be deceived, and he went about with his
+mouth in a pucker of incredulity.  There is nothing so placid as
+rustic conceit.  There was something very enjoyable about his calm
+superiority to all the treasures of art.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  And the Parson reminds me of another American minister,
+a consul in an Italian city, who said he was going up to Rome to have
+a thorough talk with the Pope, and give him a piece of his mind.
+Ministers seem to think that is their business.  They serve it in
+such small pieces in order to make it go round.
+
+THE PARSON.  Mandeville is an infidel.  Come, let's have some music;
+nothing else will keep him in good humor till lunch-time.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  What shall it be?
+
+THE PARSON.  Give us the larghetto from Beethoven's second symphony.
+
+The Young Lady puts aside her portfolio.  Herbert looks at the young
+lady.  The Parson composes himself for critical purposes.  Mandeville
+settles himself in a chair and stretches his long legs nearly into
+the fire, remarking that music takes the tangles out of him.
+
+After the piece is finished, lunch is announced.  It is still
+snowing.
+
+
+
+
+FOURTH STUDY
+
+It is difficult to explain the attraction which the uncanny and even
+the horrible have for most minds.  I have seen a delicate woman half
+fascinated, but wholly disgusted, by one of the most unseemly of
+reptiles, vulgarly known as the "blowing viper" of the Alleghanies.
+She would look at it, and turn away with irresistible shuddering and
+the utmost loathing, and yet turn to look at it again and again, only
+to experience the same spasm of disgust. In spite of her aversion,
+she must have relished the sort of electric mental shock that the
+sight gave her.
+
+I can no more account for the fascination for us of the stories of
+ghosts and "appearances," and those weird tales in which the dead are
+the chief characters; nor tell why we should fall into converse about
+them when the winter evenings are far spent, the embers are glazing
+over on the hearth, and the listener begins to hear the eerie noises
+in the house.  At such times one's dreams become of importance, and
+people like to tell them and dwell upon them, as if they were a link
+between the known and unknown, and could give us a clew to that
+ghostly region which in certain states of the mind we feel to be more
+real than that we see.
+
+Recently, when we were, so to say, sitting around the borders of the
+supernatural late at night, MANDEVILLE related a dream of his which
+he assured us was true in every particular, and it interested us so
+much that we asked him to write it out.  In doing so he has curtailed
+it, and to my mind shorn it of some of its more vivid and picturesque
+features.  He might have worked it up with more art, and given it a
+finish which the narration now lacks, but I think best to insert it
+in its simplicity.  It seems to me that it may properly be called,
+
+
+A NEW "VISION OF SIN"
+
+In the winter of 1850 I was a member of one of the leading colleges
+of this country.  I was in moderate circumstances pecuniarily,
+though I was perhaps better furnished with less fleeting riches than
+many others.  I was an incessant and indiscriminate reader of books.
+For the solid sciences I had no particular fancy, but with mental
+modes and habits, and especially with the eccentric and fantastic in
+the intellectual and spiritual operations, I was tolerably familiar.
+All the literature of the supernatural was as real to me as the
+laboratory of the chemist, where I saw the continual struggle of
+material substances to evolve themselves into more volatile, less
+palpable and coarse forms.  My imagination, naturally vivid,
+stimulated by such repasts, nearly mastered me.  At times I could
+scarcely tell where the material ceased and the immaterial began (if
+I may so express it); so that once and again I walked, as it seemed,
+from the solid earth onward upon an impalpable plain, where I heard
+the same voices, I think, that Joan of Arc heard call to her in the
+garden at Domremy.  She was inspired, however, while I only lacked
+exercise.  I do not mean this in any literal sense; I only describe a
+state of mind.  I was at this time of spare habit, and nervous,
+excitable temperament.  I was ambitious, proud, and extremely
+sensitive.  I cannot deny that I had seen something of the world, and
+had contracted about the average bad habits of young men who have the
+sole care of themselves, and rather bungle the matter.  It is
+necessary to this relation to admit that I had seen a trifle more of
+what is called life than a young man ought to see, but at this period
+I was not only sick of my experience, but my habits were as correct
+as those of any Pharisee in our college, and we had some very
+favorable specimens of that ancient sect.
+
+Nor can I deny that at this period of my life I was in a peculiar
+mental condition.  I well remember an illustration of it.  I sat
+writing late one night, copying a prize essay,--a merely manual task,
+leaving my thoughts free.  It was in June, a sultry night, and about
+midnight a wind arose, pouring in through the open windows, full of
+mournful reminiscence, not of this, but of other summers, --the same
+wind that De Quincey heard at noonday in midsummer blowing through
+the room where he stood, a mere boy, by the side of his dead sister,-
+-a wind centuries old. As I wrote on mechanically, I became conscious
+of a presence in the room, though I did not lift my eyes from the
+paper on which I wrote.  Gradually I came to know that my
+grandmother--dead so long ago that I laughed at the idea--was in the
+room.  She stood beside her old-fashioned spinning-wheel, and quite
+near me.  She wore a plain muslin cap with a high puff in the crown,
+a short woolen gown, a white and blue checked apron, and shoes with
+heels.  She did not regard me, but stood facing the wheel, with the
+left hand near the spindle, holding lightly between the thumb and
+forefinger the white roll of wool which was being spun and twisted on
+it.  In her right hand she held a small stick.  I heard the sharp
+click of this against the spokes of the wheel, then the hum of the
+wheel, the buzz of the spindles as the twisting yarn was teased by
+the whirl of its point, then a step backwards, a pause, a step
+forward and the running of the yarn upon the spindle, and again a
+backward step, the drawing out of the roll and the droning and hum of
+the wheel, most mournfully hopeless sound that ever fell on mortal
+ear.  Since childhood it has haunted me.  All this time I wrote, and
+I could hear distinctly the scratching of the pen upon the paper.
+But she stood behind me (why I did not turn my head I never knew),
+pacing backward and forward by the spinning-wheel, just as I had a
+hundred times seen her in childhood in the old kitchen on drowsy
+summer afternoons.  And I heard the step, the buzz and whirl of the
+spindle, and the monotonous and dreary hum of the mournful wheel.
+Whether her face was ashy pale and looked as if it might crumble at
+the touch, and the border of her white cap trembled in the June wind
+that blew, I cannot say, for I tell you I did NOT see her.  But I
+know she was there, spinning yarn that had been knit into hose years
+and years ago by our fireside.  For I was in full possession of my
+faculties, and never copied more neatly and legibly any manuscript
+than I did the one that night.  And there the phantom (I use the word
+out of deference to a public prejudice on this subject) most
+persistently remained until my task was finished, and, closing the
+portfolio, I abruptly rose.  Did I see anything?  That is a silly and
+ignorant question.  Could I see the wind which had now risen
+stronger, and drove a few cloud-scuds across the sky, filling the
+night, somehow, with a longing that was not altogether born of
+reminiscence?
+
+In the winter following, in January, I made an effort to give up the
+use of tobacco,--a habit in which I was confirmed, and of which I
+have nothing more to say than this: that I should attribute to it
+almost all the sin and misery in the world, did I not remember that
+the old Romans attained a very considerable state of corruption
+without the assistance of the Virginia plant.
+
+On the night of the third day of my abstinence, rendered more nervous
+and excitable than usual by the privation, I retired late, and later
+still I fell into an uneasy sleep, and thus into a dream, vivid,
+illuminated, more real than any event of my life.  I was at home, and
+fell sick.  The illness developed into a fever, and then a delirium
+set in, not an intellectual blank, but a misty and most delicious
+wandering in places of incomparable beauty.  I learned subsequently
+that our regular physician was not certain to finish me, when a
+consultation was called, which did the business.  I have the
+satisfaction of knowing that they were of the proper school.  I lay
+sick for three days.
+
+On the morning of the fourth, at sunrise, I died.  The sensation was
+not unpleasant.  It was not a sudden shock.  I passed out of my body
+as one would walk from the door of his house.  There the body lay,--a
+blank, so far as I was concerned, and only interesting to me as I was
+rather entertained with watching the respect paid to it.  My friends
+stood about the bedside, regarding me (as they seemed to suppose),
+while I, in a different part of the room, could hardly repress a
+smile at their mistake, solemnized as they were, and I too, for that
+matter, by my recent demise.  A sensation (the word you see is
+material and inappropriate) of etherealization and imponderability
+pervaded me, and I was not sorry to get rid of such a dull, slow mass
+as I now perceived myself to be, lying there on the bed.  When I
+speak of my death, let me be understood to say that there was no
+change, except that I passed out of my body and floated to the top of
+a bookcase in the corner of the room, from which I looked down.  For
+a moment I was interested to see my person from the outside, but
+thereafter I was quite indifferent to the body.  I was now simply
+soul.  I seemed to be a globe, impalpable, transparent, about six
+inches in diameter.  I saw and heard everything as before.  Of
+course, matter was no obstacle to me, and I went easily and quickly
+wherever I willed to go.  There was none of that tedious process of
+communicating my wishes to the nerves, and from them to the muscles.
+I simply resolved to be at a particular place, and I was there.  It
+was better than the telegraph.
+
+It seemed to have been intimated to me at my death (birth I half
+incline to call it) that I could remain on this earth for four weeks
+after my decease, during which time I could amuse myself as I chose.
+
+I chose, in the first place, to see myself decently buried, to stay
+by myself to the last, and attend my own funeral for once.  As most
+of those referred to in this true narrative are still living, I am
+forbidden to indulge in personalities, nor shall I dare to say
+exactly how my death affected my friends, even the home circle.
+Whatever others did, I sat up with myself and kept awake.  I saw the
+"pennies" used instead of the "quarters" which I should have
+preferred.  I saw myself "laid out," a phrase that has come to have
+such a slang meaning that I smile as I write it.  When the body was
+put into the coffin, I took my place on the lid.
+
+I cannot recall all the details, and they are commonplace besides.
+The funeral took place at the church.  We all rode thither in
+carriages, and I, not fancying my place in mine, rode on the outside
+with the undertaker, whom I found to be a good deal more jolly than
+he looked to be.  The coffin was placed in front of the pulpit when
+we arrived.  I took my station on the pulpit cushion, from which
+elevation I had an admirable view of all the ceremonies, and could
+hear the sermon.  How distinctly I remember the services.  I think I
+could even at this distance write out the sermon.  The tune sung was
+of--the usual country selection,--Mount Vernon.  I recall the text.
+I was rather flattered by the tribute paid to me, and my future was
+spoken of gravely and as kindly as possible,--indeed, with remarkable
+charity, considering that the minister was not aware of my presence.
+I used to beat him at chess, and I thought, even then, of the last
+game; for, however solemn the occasion might be to others, it was not
+so to me.  With what interest I watched my kinsfolks, and neighbors
+as they filed past for the last look!  I saw, and I remember, who
+pulled a long face for the occasion and who exhibited genuine
+sadness.  I learned with the most dreadful certainty what people
+really thought of me.  It was a revelation never forgotten.
+
+Several particular acquaintances of mine were talking on the steps as
+we passed out.
+
+"Well, old Starr's gone up.  Sudden, was n't it?  He was a first-rate
+fellow."
+
+"Yes, queer about some things; but he had some mighty good streaks,"
+said another.  And so they ran on.
+
+Streaks!  So that is the reputation one gets during twenty years of
+life in this world.  Streaks!
+
+After the funeral I rode home with the family.  It was pleasanter
+than the ride down, though it seemed sad to my relations.  They did
+not mention me, however, and I may remark, that although I stayed
+about home for a week, I never heard my name mentioned by any of the
+family.  Arrived at home, the tea-kettle was put on and supper got
+ready.  This seemed to lift the gloom a little, and under the
+influence of the tea they brightened up and gradually got more
+cheerful.  They discussed the sermon and the singing, and the mistake
+of the sexton in digging the grave in the wrong place, and the large
+congregation.  From the mantel-piece I watched the group.  They had
+waffles for supper,--of which I had been exceedingly fond, but now I
+saw them disappear without a sigh.
+
+For the first day or two of my sojourn at home I was here and there
+at all the neighbors, and heard a good deal about my life and
+character, some of which was not very pleasant, but very wholesome,
+doubtless, for me to hear.  At the expiration of a week this
+amusement ceased to be such for I ceased to be talked of.  I realized
+the fact that I was dead and gone.
+
+By an act of volition I found myself back at college.  I floated into
+my own room, which was empty.  I went to the room of my two warmest
+friends, whose friendship I was and am yet assured of.  As usual,
+half a dozen of our set were lounging there.  A game of whist was
+just commencing.  I perched on a bust of Dante on the top of the
+book-shelves, where I could see two of the hands and give a good
+guess at a third.  My particular friend Timmins was just shuffling
+the cards.
+
+"Be hanged if it is n't lonesome without old Starr.  Did you cut?  I
+should like to see him lounge in now with his pipe, and with feet on
+the mantel-piece proceed to expound on the duplex functions of the
+soul."
+
+"There--misdeal," said his vis-,a-vis.  "Hope there's been no misdeal
+for old Starr."
+
+"Spades, did you say?" the talk ran on, "never knew Starr was
+sickly."
+
+"No more was he; stouter than you are, and as brave and plucky as he
+was strong.  By George, fellows,--how we do get cut down!  Last term
+little Stubbs, and now one of the best fellows in the class."
+
+"How suddenly he did pop off,--one for game, honors easy,--he was
+good for the Spouts' Medal this year, too."
+
+"Remember the joke he played on Prof. A., freshman year?  "asked
+another.
+
+"Remember he borrowed ten dollars of me about that time," said
+Timmins's partner, gathering the cards for a new deal.
+
+"Guess he is the only one who ever did," retorted some one.
+
+And so the talk went on, mingled with whist-talk, reminiscent of me,
+not all exactly what I would have chosen to go into my biography, but
+on the whole kind and tender, after the fashion of the boys.  At
+least I was in their thoughts, and I could see was a good deal
+regretted,--so I passed a very pleasant evening.  Most of those
+present were of my society, and wore crape on their badges, and all
+wore the usual crape on the left arm.  I learned that the following
+afternoon a eulogy would be delivered on me in the chapel.
+
+The eulogy was delivered before members of our society and others,
+the next afternoon, in the chapel.  I need not say that I was
+present.  Indeed, I was perched on the desk within reach of the
+speaker's hand.  The apotheosis was pronounced by my most intimate
+friend, Timmins, and I must say he did me ample justice.  He never
+was accustomed to "draw it very mild" (to use a vulgarism which I
+dislike) when he had his head, and on this occasion he entered into
+the matter with the zeal of a true friend, and a young man who never
+expected to have another occasion to sing a public "In Memoriam."  It
+made my hair stand on end,--metaphorically, of course.  From my
+childhood I had been extremely precocious.  There were anecdotes of
+preternatural brightness, picked up, Heaven knows where, of my
+eagerness to learn, of my adventurous, chivalrous young soul, and of
+my arduous struggles with chill penury, which was not able (as it
+appeared) to repress my rage, until I entered this institution, of
+which I had been ornament, pride, cynosure, and fair promising bud
+blasted while yet its fragrance was mingled with the dew of its
+youth.  Once launched upon my college days, Timmins went on with all
+sails spread.  I had, as it were, to hold on to the pulpit cushion.
+Latin, Greek, the old literatures, I was perfect master of; all
+history was merely a light repast to me;  mathematics I glanced at,
+and it disappeared; in the clouds of modern philosophy I was wrapped
+but not obscured; over the field of light literature I familiarly
+roamed as the honey-bee over the wide fields of clover which blossom
+white in the Junes of this world!  My life was pure, my character
+spotless, my name was inscribed among the names of those deathless
+few who were not born to die!
+
+It was a noble eulogy, and I felt before he finished, though I had
+misgivings at the beginning, that I deserved it all.  The effect on
+the audience was a little different.  They said it was a "strong"
+oration, and I think Timmins got more credit by it than I did.  After
+the performance they stood about the chapel, talking in a subdued
+tone, and seemed to be a good deal impressed by what they had heard,
+or perhaps by thoughts of the departed.  At least they all soon went
+over to Austin's and called for beer.  My particular friends called
+for it twice.  Then they all lit pipes.  The old grocery keeper was
+good enough to say that I was no fool, if I did go off owing him four
+dollars.  To the credit of human nature, let me here record that the
+fellows were touched by this remark reflecting upon my memory, and
+immediately made up a purse and paid the bill,--that is, they told
+the old man to charge it over to them.  College boys are rich in
+credit and the possibilities of life.
+
+It is needless to dwell upon the days I passed at college during this
+probation.  So far as I could see, everything went on as if I were
+there, or had never been there.  I could not even see the place where
+I had dropped out of the ranks.  Occasionally I heard my name, but I
+must say that four weeks was quite long enough to stay in a world
+that had pretty much forgotten me.  There is no great satisfaction in
+being dragged up to light now and then, like an old letter.  The case
+was somewhat different with the people with whom I had boarded.  They
+were relations of mine, and I often saw them weep, and they talked of
+me a good deal at twilight and Sunday nights, especially the youngest
+one, Carrie, who was handsomer than any one I knew, and not much
+older than I.  I never used to imagine that she cared particularly
+for me, nor would she have done so, if I had lived, but death brought
+with it a sort of sentimental regret, which, with the help of a
+daguerreotype, she nursed into quite a little passion.  I spent most
+of my time there, for it was more congenial than the college.
+
+But time hastened.  The last sand of probation leaked out of the
+glass.  One day, while Carrie played (for me, though she knew it not)
+one of Mendelssohn's "songs without words," I suddenly, yet gently,
+without self-effort or volition, moved from the house, floated in the
+air, rose higher, higher, by an easy, delicious, exultant, yet
+inconceivably rapid motion.  The ecstasy of that triumphant flight!
+Groves, trees, houses, the landscape, dimmed, faded, fled away
+beneath me.  Upward mounting, as on angels' wings, with no effort,
+till the earth hung beneath me a round black ball swinging, remote,
+in the universal ether.  Upward mounting, till the earth, no longer
+bathed in the sun's rays, went out to my sight, disappeared in the
+blank.  Constellations, before seen from afar, I sailed among.
+Stars, too remote for shining on earth, I neared, and found to be
+round globes flying through space with a velocity only equaled by my
+own.  New worlds continually opened on my sight; newfields of
+everlasting space opened and closed behind me.
+
+For days and days--it seemed a mortal forever--I mounted up the great
+heavens, whose everlasting doors swung wide.  How the worlds and
+systems, stars, constellations, neared me, blazed and flashed in
+splendor, and fled away!  At length,--was it not a thousand years?--I
+saw before me, yet afar off, a wall, the rocky bourn of that country
+whence travelers come not back, a battlement wider than I could
+guess, the height of which I could not see, the depth of which was
+infinite.  As I approached, it shone with a splendor never yet beheld
+on earth.  Its solid substance was built of jewels the rarest, and
+stones of priceless value.  It seemed like one solid stone, and yet
+all the colors of the rainbow were contained in it.  The ruby, the
+diamond, the emerald, the carbuncle, the topaz, the amethyst, the
+sapphire; of them the wall was built up in harmonious combination.
+So brilliant was it that all the space I floated in was full of the
+splendor.  So mild was it and so translucent, that I could look for
+miles into its clear depths.
+
+Rapidly nearing this heavenly battlement, an immense niche was
+disclosed in its solid face.  The floor was one large ruby.  Its
+sloping sides were of pearl.  Before I was aware I stood within the
+brilliant recess.  I say I stood there, for I was there bodily, in my
+habit as I lived; how, I cannot explain.  Was it the resurrection of
+the body?  Before me rose, a thousand feet in height, a wonderful
+gate of flashing diamond.  Beside it sat a venerable man, with long
+white beard, a robe of light gray, ancient sandals, and a golden key
+hanging by a cord from his waist.  In the serene beauty of his noble
+features I saw justice and mercy had met and were reconciled.  I
+cannot describe the majesty of his bearing or the benignity of his
+appearance.  It is needless to say that I stood before St. Peter, who
+sits at the Celestial Gate.
+
+I humbly approached, and begged admission.  St. Peter arose, and
+regarded me kindly, yet inquiringly.
+
+"What is your name?  " asked he, "and from what place do you come?"
+
+I answered, and, wishing to give a name well known, said I was from
+Washington, United States.  He looked doubtful, as if he had never
+heard the name before.
+
+"Give me," said he, "a full account of your whole life."
+
+I felt instantaneously that there was no concealment possible; all
+disguise fell away, and an unknown power forced me to speak absolute
+and exact truth.  I detailed the events of my life as well as I
+could, and the good man was not a little affected by the recital of
+my early trials, poverty, and temptation.  It did not seem a very
+good life when spread out in that presence, and I trembled as I
+proceeded; but I plead youth, inexperience, and bad examples.
+
+Have you been accustomed," he said, after a time, rather sadly, "to
+break the Sabbath?"
+
+I told him frankly that I had been rather lax in that matter,
+especially at college.  I often went to sleep in the chapel on
+Sunday, when I was not reading some entertaining book.  He then asked
+who the preacher was, and when I told him, he remarked that I was not
+so much to blame as he had supposed.
+
+"Have you," he went on, "ever stolen, or told any lie?"
+
+I was able to say no, except admitting as to the first, usual college
+"conveyances," and as to the last, an occasional "blinder" to the
+professors.  He was gracious enough to say that these could be
+overlooked as incident to the occasion.
+
+"Have you ever been dissipated, living riotously and keeping late
+hours?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+This also could be forgiven me as an incident of youth.
+
+"Did you ever," he went on, "commit the crime of using intoxicating
+drinks as a beverage?"
+
+I answered that I had never been a habitual drinker, that I had never
+been what was called a "moderate drinker," that I had never gone to a
+bar and drank alone; but that I had been accustomed, in company with
+other young men, on convivial occasions to taste the pleasures of the
+flowing bowl, sometimes to excess, but that I had also tasted the
+pains of it, and for months before my demise had refrained from
+liquor altogether.  The holy man looked grave, but, after reflection,
+said this might also be overlooked in a young man.
+
+"What," continued he, in tones still more serious, "has been your
+conduct with regard to the other sex?"
+
+I fell upon my knees in a tremor of fear.  I pulled from my bosom a
+little book like the one Leperello exhibits in the opera of "Don
+Giovanni."  There, I said, was a record of my flirtation and
+inconstancy.  I waited long for the decision, but it came in mercy.
+
+"Rise," he cried; "young men will be young men, I suppose.  We shall
+forgive this also to your youth and penitence."
+
+"Your examination is satisfactory, he informed me," after a pause;
+"you can now enter the abodes of the happy."
+
+Joy leaped within me.  We approached the gate.  The key turned in the
+lock.  The gate swung noiselessly on its hinges a little open.  Out
+flashed upon me unknown splendors.  What I saw in that momentary
+gleam I shall never whisper in mortal ears.  I stood upon the
+threshold, just about to enter.
+
+"Stop!  one moment," exclaimed St.  Peter, laying his hand on my
+shoulder; "I have one more question to ask you."
+
+I turned toward him.
+
+"Young man, did you ever use tobacco?"
+
+"I both smoked and chewed in my lifetime," I faltered, "but..."
+
+"THEN TO HELL WITH YOU!" he shouted in a voice of thunder.
+
+Instantly the gate closed without noise, and I was flung, hurled,
+from the battlement, down!  down!  down!  Faster and faster I sank in
+a dizzy, sickening whirl into an unfathomable space of gloom.  The
+light faded.  Dampness and darkness were round about me.  As before,
+for days and days I rose exultant in the light, so now forever I sank
+into thickening darkness,--and yet not darkness, but a pale, ashy
+light more fearful.
+
+In the dimness, I at length discovered a wall before me.  It ran up
+and down and on either hand endlessly into the night.  It was solid,
+black, terrible in its frowning massiveness.
+
+Straightway I alighted at the gate,--a dismal crevice hewn into the
+dripping rock.  The gate was wide open, and there sat-I knew him at
+once; who does not?--the Arch Enemy of mankind.  He cocked his eye at
+me in an impudent, low, familiar manner that disgusted me.  I saw
+that I was not to be treated like a gentleman.
+
+"Well, young man," said he, rising, with a queer grin on his face,"
+what are you sent here for?
+
+"For using tobacco," I replied.
+
+"Ho!" shouted he in a jolly manner, peculiar to devils, "that's what
+most of 'em are sent here for now."
+
+Without more ado, he called four lesser imps, who ushered me within.
+What a dreadful plain lay before me!  There was a vast city laid out
+in regular streets, but there were no houses.  Along the streets were
+places of torment and torture exceedingly ingenious and disagreeable.
+For miles and miles, it seemed, I followed my conductors through
+these horrors, Here was a deep vat of burning tar.  Here were rows of
+fiery ovens.  I noticed several immense caldron kettles of boiling
+oil, upon the rims of which little devils sat, with pitchforks in
+hand, and poked down the helpless victims who floundered in the
+liquid.  But I forbear to go into unseemly details.  The whole scene
+is as vivid in my mind as any earthly landscape.
+
+After an hour's walk my tormentors halted before the mouth of an
+oven,--a furnace heated seven times, and now roaring with flames.
+They grasped me, one hold of each hand and foot.  Standing before the
+blazing mouth, they, with a swing, and a "one, two, THREE...."
+
+I again assure the reader that in this narrative I have set down
+nothing that was not actually dreamed, and much, very much of this
+wonderful vision I have been obliged to omit.
+
+Haec fabula docet: It is dangerous for a young man to leave off the
+use of tobacco.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTH STUDY
+
+
+I
+
+I wish I could fitly celebrate the joyousness of the New England
+winter.  Perhaps I could if I more thoroughly believed in it.  But
+skepticism comes in with the south wind.  When that begins to blow,
+one feels the foundations of his belief breaking up.  This is only
+another way of saying that it is more difficult, if it be not
+impossible, to freeze out orthodoxy, or any fixed notion, than it is
+to thaw it out; though it is a mere fancy to suppose that this is the
+reason why the martyrs, of all creeds, were burned at the stake.
+There is said to be a great relaxation in New England of the ancient
+strictness in the direction of toleration of opinion, called by some
+a lowering of the standard, and by others a raising of the banner of
+liberality; it might be an interesting inquiry how much this change
+is due to another change,--the softening of the New England winter
+and the shifting of the Gulf Stream.  It is the fashion nowadays to
+refer almost everything to physical causes, and this hint is a
+gratuitous contribution to the science of metaphysical physics.
+
+The hindrance to entering fully into the joyousness of a New England
+winter, except far inland among the mountains, is the south wind.  It
+is a grateful wind, and has done more, I suspect, to demoralize
+society than any other.  It is not necessary to remember that it
+filled the silken sails of Cleopatra's galley.  It blows over New
+England every few days, and is in some portions of it the prevailing
+wind.  That it brings the soft clouds, and sometimes continues long
+enough to almost deceive the expectant buds of the fruit trees, and
+to tempt the robin from the secluded evergreen copses, may be
+nothing; but it takes the tone out of the mind, and engenders
+discontent, making one long for the tropics; it feeds the weakened
+imagination on palm-leaves and the lotus.  Before we know it we
+become demoralized, and shrink from the tonic of the sudden change to
+sharp weather, as the steamed hydropathic patient does from the
+plunge.  It is the insidious temptation that assails us when we are
+braced up to profit by the invigorating rigor of winter.
+
+Perhaps the influence of the four great winds on character is only a
+fancied one; but it is evident on temperament, which is not
+altogether a matter of temperature, although the good old deacon used
+to say, in his humble, simple way, that his third wife was a very
+good woman, but her "temperature was very different from that of the
+other two."  The north wind is full of courage, and puts the stamina
+of endurance into a man, and it probably would into a woman too if
+there were a series of resolutions passed to that effect.  The west
+wind is hopeful; it has promise and adventure in it, and is, except
+to Atlantic voyagers America-bound, the best wind that ever blew.
+The east wind is peevishness; it is mental rheumatism and grumbling,
+and curls one up in the chimney-corner like a cat.  And if the
+chimney ever smokes, it smokes when the wind sits in that quarter.
+The south wind is full of longing and unrest, of effeminate
+suggestions of luxurious ease, and perhaps we might say of modern
+poetry,--at any rate, modern poetry needs a change of air.  I am not
+sure but the south is the most powerful of the winds, because of its
+sweet persuasiveness.  Nothing so stirs the blood in spring, when it
+comes up out of the tropical latitude; it makes men "longen to gon on
+pilgrimages."
+
+I did intend to insert here a little poem (as it is quite proper to
+do in an essay) on the south wind, composed by the Young Lady Staying
+With Us, beginning,--
+
+"Out of a drifting southern cloud
+My soul heard the night-bird cry,"
+
+but it never got any farther than this.  The Young Lady said it was
+exceedingly difficult to write the next two lines, because not only
+rhyme but meaning had to be procured.  And this is true; anybody can
+write first lines, and that is probably the reason we have so many
+poems which seem to have been begun in just this way, that is, with a
+south-wind-longing without any thought in it, and it is very
+fortunate when there is not wind enough to finish them.  This
+emotional poem, if I may so call it, was begun after Herbert went
+away.  I liked it, and thought it was what is called "suggestive;"
+although I did not understand it, especially what the night-bird was;
+and I am afraid I hurt the Young Lady's feelings by asking her if she
+meant Herbert by the "night-bird,"--a very absurd suggestion about
+two unsentimental people.  She said, "Nonsense;" but she afterwards
+told the Mistress that there were emotions that one could never put
+into words without the danger of being ridiculous; a profound truth.
+And yet I should not like to say that there is not a tender
+lonesomeness in love that can get comfort out of a night-bird in a
+cloud, if there be such a thing.  Analysis is the death of sentiment.
+
+But to return to the winds.  Certain people impress us as the winds
+do.  Mandeville never comes in that I do not feel a north-wind vigor
+and healthfulness in his cordial, sincere, hearty manner, and in his
+wholesome way of looking at things.  The Parson, you would say, was
+the east wind, and only his intimates know that his peevishness is
+only a querulous humor.  In the fair west wind I know the Mistress
+herself, full of hope, and always the first one to discover a bit of
+blue in a cloudy sky.  It would not be just to apply what I have said
+of the south wind to any of our visitors, but it did blow a little
+while Herbert was here.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+In point of pure enjoyment, with an intellectual sparkle in it, I
+suppose that no luxurious lounging on tropical isles set in tropical
+seas compares with the positive happiness one may have before a great
+woodfire (not two sticks laid crossways in a grate), with a veritable
+New England winter raging outside.  In order to get the highest
+enjoyment, the faculties must be alert, and not be lulled into a mere
+recipient dullness.  There are those who prefer a warm bath to a
+brisk walk in the inspiring air, where ten thousand keen influences
+minister to the sense of beauty and run along the excited nerves.
+There are, for instance, a sharpness of horizon outline and a
+delicacy of color on distant hills which are wanting in summer, and
+which convey to one rightly organized the keenest delight, and a
+refinement of enjoyment that is scarcely sensuous, not at all
+sentimental, and almost passing the intellectual line into the
+spiritual.
+
+I was speaking to Mandeville about this, and he said that I was
+drawing it altogether too fine; that he experienced sensations of
+pleasure in being out in almost all weathers; that he rather liked to
+breast a north wind, and that there was a certain inspiration in
+sharp outlines and in a landscape in trim winter-quarters, with
+stripped trees, and, as it were, scudding through the season under
+bare poles; but that he must say that he preferred the weather in
+which he could sit on the fence by the wood-lot, with the spring sun
+on his back, and hear the stir of the leaves and the birds beginning
+their housekeeping.
+
+A very pretty idea for Mandeville; and I fear he is getting to have
+private thoughts about the Young Lady.  Mandeville naturally likes
+the robustness and sparkle of winter, and it has been a little
+suspicious to hear him express the hope that we shall have an early
+spring.
+
+I wonder how many people there are in New England who know the glory
+and inspiration of a winter walk just before sunset, and that, too,
+not only on days of clear sky, when the west is aflame with a rosy
+color, which has no suggestion of languor or unsatisfied longing in
+it, but on dull days, when the sullen clouds hang about the horizon,
+full of threats of storm and the terrors of the gathering night.  We
+are very busy with our own affairs, but there is always something
+going on out-doors worth looking at; and there is seldom an hour
+before sunset that has not some special attraction.  And, besides, it
+puts one in the mood for the cheer and comfort of the open fire at
+home.
+
+Probably if the people of New England could have a plebiscitum on
+their weather, they would vote against it, especially against winter.
+Almost no one speaks well of winter.  And this suggests the idea that
+most people here were either born in the wrong place, or do not know
+what is best for them.  I doubt if these grumblers would be any
+better satisfied, or would turn out as well, in the tropics.
+Everybody knows our virtues,--at least if they believe half we tell
+them,--and for delicate beauty, that rare plant, I should look among
+the girls of the New England hills as confidently as anywhere, and I
+have traveled as far south as New Jersey, and west of the Genesee
+Valley.  Indeed, it would be easy to show that the parents of the
+pretty girls in the West emigrated from New England.  And yet--such
+is the mystery of Providence--no one would expect that one of the
+sweetest and most delicate flowers that blooms, the trailing.
+arbutus, would blossom in this inhospitable climate, and peep forth
+from the edge of a snowbank at that.
+
+It seems unaccountable to a superficial observer that the thousands
+of people who are dissatisfied with their climate do not seek a more
+congenial one--or stop grumbling.  The world is so small, and all
+parts of it are so accessible, it has so many varieties of climate,
+that one could surely suit himself by searching; and, then, is it
+worth while to waste our one short life in the midst of unpleasant
+surroundings and in a constant friction with that which is
+disagreeable?  One would suppose that people set down on this little
+globe would seek places on it most agreeable to themselves.  It must
+be that they are much more content with the climate and country upon
+which they happen, by the accident of their birth, than they pretend
+to be.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Home sympathies and charities are most active in the winter.  Coming
+in from my late walk,--in fact driven in by a hurrying north wind
+that would brook no delay,--a wind that brought snow that did not
+seem to fall out of a bounteous sky, but to be blown from polar
+fields,--I find the Mistress returned from town, all in a glow of
+philanthropic excitement.
+
+There has been a meeting of a woman's association for Ameliorating
+the Condition of somebody here at home.  Any one can belong to it by
+paying a dollar, and for twenty dollars one can become a life
+Ameliorator,--a sort of life assurance.  The Mistress, at the
+meeting, I believe, "seconded the motion" several times, and is one
+of the Vice-Presidents; and this family honor makes me feel almost as
+if I were a president of something myself.  These little distinctions
+are among the sweetest things in life, and to see one's name
+officially printed stimulates his charity, and is almost as
+satisfactory as being the chairman of a committee or the mover of a
+resolution.  It is, I think, fortunate, and not at all discreditable,
+that our little vanity, which is reckoned among our weaknesses, is
+thus made to contribute to the activity of our nobler powers.
+Whatever we may say, we all of us like distinction; and probably
+there is no more subtle flattery than that conveyed in the whisper,
+"That's he," "That's she."
+
+There used to be a society for ameliorating the condition of the
+Jews; but they were found to be so much more adept than other people
+in ameliorating their own condition that I suppose it was given up.
+Mandeville says that to his knowledge there are a great many people
+who get up ameliorating enterprises merely to be conspicuously busy
+in society, or to earn a little something in a good cause.  They seem
+to think that the world owes them a living because they are
+philanthropists.  In this Mandeville does not speak with his usual
+charity.  It is evident that there are Jews, and some Gentiles, whose
+condition needs ameliorating, and if very little is really
+accomplished in the effort for them, it always remains true that the
+charitable reap a benefit to themselves.  It is one of the beautiful
+compensations of this life that no one can sincerely try to help
+another without helping himself
+
+OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR.  Why is it that almost all philanthropists
+and reformers are disagreeable?
+
+I ought to explain who our next-door neighbor is.  He is the person
+who comes in without knocking, drops in in the most natural way, as
+his wife does also, and not seldom in time to take the after-dinner
+cup of tea before the fire.  Formal society begins as soon as you
+lock your doors, and only admit visitors through the media of bells
+and servants.  It is lucky for us that our next-door neighbor is
+honest.
+
+THE PARSON.  Why do you class reformers and philanthropists together?
+Those usually called reformers are not philanthropists at all.  They
+are agitators.  Finding the world disagreeable to themselves, they
+wish to make it as unpleasant to others as possible.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  That's a noble view of your fellow-men.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  Well, granting the distinction, why are both apt to
+be unpleasant people to live with?
+
+THE PARSON.  As if the unpleasant people who won't mind their own
+business were confined to the classes you mention!  Some of the best
+people I know are philanthropists,--I mean the genuine ones, and not
+the uneasy busybodies seeking notoriety as a means of living.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  It is not altogether the not minding their own
+business.  Nobody does that.  The usual explanation is, that people
+with one idea are tedious.  But that is not all of it.  For few
+persons have more than one idea,--ministers, doctors, lawyers,
+teachers, manufacturers, merchants,--they all think the world they
+live in is the central one.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  And you might add authors.  To them nearly all the life
+of the world is in letters, and I suppose they would be astonished if
+they knew how little the thoughts of the majority of people are
+occupied with books, and with all that vast thought circulation which
+is the vital current of the world to book-men.  Newspapers have
+reached their present power by becoming unliterary, and reflecting
+all the interests of the world.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  I have noticed one thing, that the most popular
+persons in society are those who take the world as it is, find the
+least fault, and have no hobbies.  They are always wanted to dinner.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  And the other kind always appear to me to want a
+dinner.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  It seems to me that the real reason why reformers
+and some philanthropists are unpopular is, that they disturb our
+serenity and make us conscious of our own shortcomings.  It is only
+now and then that a whole people get a spasm of reformatory fervor,
+of investigation and regeneration.  At other times they rather hate
+those who disturb their quiet.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  Professional reformers and philanthropists are
+insufferably conceited and intolerant.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Everything depends upon the spirit in which a reform
+or a scheme of philanthropy is conducted.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  I attended a protracted convention of reformers of a
+certain evil, once, and had the pleasure of taking dinner with a
+tableful of them.  It was one of those country dinners accompanied
+with green tea.  Every one disagreed with every one else, and you
+would n't wonder at it, if you had seen them.  They were people with
+whom good food wouldn't agree.  George Thompson was expected at the
+convention, and I remember that there was almost a cordiality in the
+talk about him, until one sallow brother casually mentioned that
+George took snuff,--when a chorus of deprecatory groans went up from
+the table.  One long-faced maiden in spectacles, with purple ribbons
+in her hair, who drank five cups of tea by my count, declared that
+she was perfectly disgusted, and did n't want to hear him speak.  In
+the course of the meal the talk ran upon the discipline of children,
+and how to administer punishment.  I was quite taken by the remark of
+a thin, dyspeptic man who summed up the matter by growling out in a
+harsh, deep bass voice, "Punish 'em in love!" It sounded as if he had
+said, "Shoot 'em on the spot!"
+
+THE PARSON.  I supposed you would say that he was a minister.  There
+is another thing about those people.  I think they are working
+against the course of nature.  Nature is entirely indifferent to any
+reform.  She perpetuates a fault as persistently as a virtue.
+There's a split in my thumb-nail that has been scrupulously continued
+for many years, not withstanding all my efforts to make the nail
+resume its old regularity.  You see the same thing in trees whose
+bark is cut, and in melons that have had only one summer's intimacy
+with squashes.  The bad traits in character are passed down from
+generation to generation with as much care as the good ones.  Nature,
+unaided, never reforms anything.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  Is that the essence of Calvinism?
+
+THE PARSON.  Calvinism has n't any essence, it's a fact.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  When I was a boy, I always associated Calvinism and
+calomel together.  I thought that homeopathy--similia, etc.--had done
+away with both of them.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR (rising).  If you are going into theology, I'm off..
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+I fear we are not getting on much with the joyousness of winter.  In
+order to be exhilarating it must be real winter.  I have noticed that
+the lower the thermometer sinks the more fiercely the north wind
+rages, and the deeper the snow is, the higher rise the spirits of the
+community.  The activity of the "elements" has a great effect upon
+country folk especially; and it is a more wholesome excitement than
+that caused by a great conflagration.  The abatement of a snow-storm
+that grows to exceptional magnitude is regretted, for there is always
+the half-hope that this will be, since it has gone so far, the
+largest fall of snow ever known in the region, burying out of sight
+the great fall of 1808, the account of which is circumstantially and
+aggravatingly thrown in our way annually upon the least provocation.
+We all know how it reads: "Some said it began at daylight, others
+that it set in after sunrise; but all agree that by eight o'clock
+Friday morning it was snowing in heavy masses that darkened the air."
+
+The morning after we settled the five--or is it seven?--points of
+Calvinism, there began a very hopeful snow-storm, one of those
+wide-sweeping, careering storms that may not much affect the city,
+but which strongly impress the country imagination with a sense of
+the personal qualities of the weather,--power, persistency,
+fierceness, and roaring exultation.  Out-doors was terrible to those
+who looked out of windows, and heard the raging wind, and saw the
+commotion in all the high tree-tops and the writhing of the low
+evergreens, and could not summon resolution to go forth and breast
+and conquer the bluster.  The sky was dark with snow, which was not
+permitted to fall peacefully like a blessed mantle, as it sometimes
+does, but was blown and rent and tossed like the split canvas of a
+ship in a gale.  The world was taken possession of by the demons of
+the air, who had their will of it.  There is a sort of fascination in
+such a scene, equal to that of a tempest at sea, and without its
+attendant haunting sense of peril; there is no fear that the house
+will founder or dash against your neighbor's cottage, which is dimly
+seen anchored across the field; at every thundering onset there is no
+fear that the cook's galley will upset, or the screw break loose and
+smash through the side, and we are not in momently expectation of the
+tinkling of the little bell to "stop her."  The snow rises in
+drifting waves, and the naked trees bend like strained masts; but so
+long as the window-blinds remain fast, and the chimney-tops do not
+go, we preserve an equal mind.  Nothing more serious can happen than
+the failure of the butcher's and the grocer's carts, unless, indeed,
+the little news-carrier should fail to board us with the world's
+daily bulletin, or our next-door neighbor should be deterred from
+coming to sit by the blazing, excited fire, and interchange the
+trifling, harmless gossip of the day.  The feeling of seclusion on
+such a day is sweet, but the true friend who does brave the storm and
+come is welcomed with a sort of enthusiasm that his arrival in
+pleasant weather would never excite.  The snow-bound in their Arctic
+hulk are glad to see even a wandering Esquimau.
+
+On such a day I recall the great snow-storms on the northern New
+England hills, which lasted for a week with no cessation, with no
+sunrise or sunset, and no observation at noon; and the sky all the
+while dark with the driving snow, and the whole world full of the
+noise of the rioting Boreal forces; until the roads were obliterated,
+the fences covered, and the snow was piled solidly above the first-
+story windows of the farmhouse on one side, and drifted before the
+front door so high that egress could only be had by tunneling the
+bank.
+
+After such a battle and siege, when the wind fell and the sun
+struggled out again, the pallid world lay subdued and tranquil, and
+the scattered dwellings were not unlike wrecks stranded by the
+tempest and half buried in sand.  But when the blue sky again bent
+over all, the wide expanse of snow sparkled like diamond-fields, and
+the chimney signal-smokes could be seen, how beautiful was the
+picture!  Then began the stir abroad, and the efforts to open up
+communication through roads, or fields, or wherever paths could be
+broken, and the ways to the meeting-house first of all.  Then from
+every house and hamlet the men turned out with shovels, with the
+patient, lumbering oxen yoked to the sleds, to break the roads,
+driving into the deepest drifts, shoveling and shouting as if the
+severe labor were a holiday frolic, the courage and the hilarity
+rising with the difficulties encountered; and relief parties, meeting
+at length in the midst of the wide white desolation, hailed each
+other as chance explorers in new lands, and made the whole
+country-side ring with the noise of their congratulations.  There was
+as much excitement and healthy stirring of the blood in it as in the
+Fourth of July, and perhaps as much patriotism.  The boy saw it in
+dumb show from the distant, low farmhouse window, and wished he were
+a man.  At night there were great stories of achievement told by the
+cavernous fireplace; great latitude was permitted in the estimation
+of the size of particular drifts, but never any agreement was reached
+as to the "depth on a level."  I have observed since that people are
+quite as apt to agree upon the marvelous and the exceptional as upon
+simple facts.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+By the firelight and the twilight, the Young Lady is finishing a
+letter to Herbert,--writing it, literally, on her knees, transforming
+thus the simple deed into an act of devotion.  Mandeville says that
+it is bad for her eyes, but the sight of it is worse for his eyes.
+He begins to doubt the wisdom of reliance upon that worn apothegm
+about absence conquering love.
+
+Memory has the singular characteristic of recalling in a friend
+absent, as in a journey long past, only that which is agreeable.
+Mandeville begins to wish he were in New South Wales.
+
+I did intend to insert here a letter of Herbert's to the Young Lady,
+--obtained, I need not say, honorably, as private letters which get
+into print always are,--not to gratify a vulgar curiosity, but
+
+to show how the most unsentimental and cynical people are affected by
+the master passion.  But I cannot bring myself to do it.  Even in the
+interests of science one has no right to make an autopsy of two
+loving hearts, especially when they are suffering under a late attack
+of the one agreeable epidemic.
+
+All the world loves a lover, but it laughs at him none the less in
+his extravagances.  He loses his accustomed reticence; he has
+something of the martyr's willingness for publicity; he would even
+like to show the sincerity of his devotion by some piece of open
+heroism.  Why should he conceal a discovery which has transformed the
+world to him, a secret which explains all the mysteries of nature and
+human-ity?  He is in that ecstasy of mind which prompts those who
+were never orators before to rise in an experience-meeting and pour
+out a flood of feeling in the tritest language and the most
+conventional terms.  I am not sure that Herbert, while in this glow,
+would be ashamed of his letter in print, but this is one of the cases
+where chancery would step in and protect one from himself by his next
+friend.  This is really a delicate matter, and perhaps it is brutal
+to allude to it at all.
+
+In truth, the letter would hardly be interesting in print.  Love has
+a marvelous power of vivifying language and charging the simplest
+words with the most tender meaning, of restoring to them the power
+they had when first coined.  They are words of fire to those two who
+know their secret, but not to others.  It is generally admitted that
+the best love-letters would not make very good literature.
+"Dearest," begins Herbert, in a burst of originality, felicitously
+selecting a word whose exclusiveness shuts out all the world but one,
+and which is a whole letter, poem, confession, and creed in one
+breath.  What a weight of meaning it has to carry!  There may be
+beauty and wit and grace and naturalness and even the splendor of
+fortune elsewhere, but there is one woman in the world whose sweet
+presence would be compensation for the loss of all else.  It is not
+to be reasoned about; he wants that one; it is her plume dancing down
+the sunny street that sets his heart beating; he knows her form among
+a thousand, and follows her; he longs to run after her carriage,
+which the cruel coachman whirls out of his sight.  It is marvelous to
+him that all the world does not want her too, and he is in a panic
+when he thinks of it.  And what exquisite flattery is in that little
+word addressed to her, and with what sweet and meek triumph she
+repeats it to herself, with a feeling that is not altogether pity for
+those who still stand and wait.  To be chosen out of all the
+available world--it is almost as much bliss as it is to choose.  "All
+that long, long stage-ride from Blim's to Portage I thought of you
+every moment, and wondered what you were doing and how you were
+looking just that moment, and I found the occupation so charming that
+I was almost sorry when the journey was ended."  Not much in that!
+But I have no doubt the Young Lady read it over and over, and dwelt
+also upon every moment, and found in it new proof of unshaken
+constancy, and had in that and the like things in the letter a sense
+of the sweetest communion.  There is nothing in this letter that we
+need dwell on it, but I am convinced that the mail does not carry any
+other letters so valuable as this sort.
+
+I suppose that the appearance of Herbert in this new light
+unconsciously gave tone a little to the evening's talk; not that
+anybody mentioned him, but Mandeville was evidently generalizing from
+the qualities that make one person admired by another to those that
+win the love of mankind.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  There seems to be something in some persons that wins
+them liking, special or general, independent almost of what they do
+or say.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Why, everybody is liked by some one.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  I'm not sure of that.  There are those who are
+friendless, and would be if they had endless acquaintances.  But, to
+take the case away from ordinary examples, in which habit and a
+thousand circumstances influence liking, what is it that determines
+the world upon a personal regard for authors whom it has never seen?
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  Probably it is the spirit shown in their writings.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  More likely it is a sort of tradition; I don't believe
+that the world has a feeling of personal regard for any author who
+was not loved by those who knew him most intimately.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDFR.  Which comes to the same thing.  The qualities, the
+spirit, that got him the love of his acquaintances he put into his
+books.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  That does n't seem to me sufficient.  Shakespeare has
+put everything into his plays and poems, swept the whole range of
+human sympathies and passions, and at times is inspired by the
+sweetest spirit that ever man had.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  No one has better interpreted love.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  Yet I apprehend that no person living has any personal
+regard for Shakespeare, or that his personality affects many,--except
+they stand in Stratford church and feel a sort of awe at the thought
+that the bones of the greatest poet are so near them.
+
+THE PARSON.  I don't think the world cares personally for any mere
+man or woman dead for centuries.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  But there is a difference.  I think there is still
+rather a warm feeling for Socrates the man, independent of what he
+said, which is little known.  Homer's works are certainly better
+known, but no one cares personally for Homer any more than for any
+other shade.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  Why not go back to Moses?  We've got the evening
+before us for digging up people.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  Moses is a very good illustration.  No name of antiquity
+is better known, and yet I fancy he does not awaken the same kind of
+popular liking that Socrates does.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  Fudge!  You just get up in any lecture assembly and
+propose three cheers for Socrates, and see where you'll be.
+Mandeville ought to be a missionary, and read Robert Browning to the
+Fijis.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  How do you account for the alleged personal regard
+for Socrates?
+
+THE PARSON.  Because the world called Christian is still more than
+half heathen.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  He was a plain man; his sympathies were with the people;
+he had what is roughly known as "horse-sense," and he was homely.
+Franklin and Abraham Lincoln belong to his class.  They were all
+philosophers of the shrewd sort, and they all had humor.  It was
+fortunate for Lincoln that, with his other qualities, he was homely.
+That was the last touching recommendation to the popular heart.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Do you remember that ugly brown-stone statue of St.
+Antonio by the bridge in Sorrento?  He must have been a coarse saint,
+patron of pigs as he was, but I don't know any one anywhere, or the
+homely stone image of one, so loved by the people.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  Ugliness being trump, I wonder more people don't win.
+Mandeville, why don't you get up a "centenary" of Socrates, and put
+up his statue in the Central Park?  It would make that one of Lincoln
+in Union Square look beautiful.
+
+THE PARSON.  Oh, you'll see that some day, when they have a museum
+there illustrating the "Science of Religion."
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  Doubtless, to go back to what we were talking of,
+the world has a fondness for some authors, and thinks of them with an
+affectionate and half-pitying familiarity; and it may be that this
+grows out of something in their lives quite as much as anything in
+their writings.  There seems to be more disposition of personal
+liking to Thackeray than to Dickens, now both are dead,--a result
+that would hardly have been predicted when the world was crying over
+Little Nell, or agreeing to hate Becky Sharp.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  What was that you were telling about Charles Lamb,
+the other day, Mandeville?  Is not the popular liking for him
+somewhat independent of his writings?
+
+MANDEVILLE.  He is a striking example of an author who is loved.
+Very likely the remembrance of his tribulations has still something
+to do with the tenderness felt for him.  He supported no dignity and
+permitted a familiarity which indicated no self-appreciation of his
+real rank in the world of letters.  I have heard that his
+acquaintances familiarly called him "Charley."
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  It's a relief to know that!  Do you happen to know
+what Socrates was called?
+
+MANDEVILLE.  I have seen people who knew Lamb very well.  One of them
+told me, as illustrating his want of dignity, that as he was going
+home late one night through the nearly empty streets, he was met by a
+roystering party who were making a night of it from tavern to tavern.
+They fell upon Lamb, attracted by his odd figure and hesitating
+manner, and, hoisting him on their shoulders, carried him off,
+singing as they went.  Lamb enjoyed the lark, and did not tell them
+who he was.  When they were tired of lugging him, they lifted him,
+with much effort and difficulty, to the top of a high wall, and left
+him there amid the broken bottles, utterly unable to get down.  Lamb
+remained there philosophically in the enjoyment of his novel
+adventure, until a passing watchman rescued him from his ridiculous
+situation.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  How did the story get out?
+
+MANDEVILLE.  Oh, Lamb told all about it next morning; and when asked
+afterwards why he did so, he replied that there was no fun in it
+unless he told it.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTH STUDY
+
+
+I
+
+The King sat in the winter-house in the ninth month, and there was a
+fire on the hearth burning before him .  .  .  .  When Jehudi had
+read three or four leaves he cut it with the penknife.
+
+That seems to be a pleasant and home-like picture from a not very
+remote period,--less than twenty-five hundred years ago, and many
+centuries after the fall of Troy.  And that was not so very long ago,
+for Thebes, in the splendid streets of which Homer wandered and sang
+to the kings when Memphis, whose ruins are older than history, was
+its younger rival, was twelve centuries old when Paris ran away with
+Helen.
+
+I am sorry that the original--and you can usually do anything with
+the "original"--does not bear me out in saying that it was a pleasant
+picture.  I should like to believe that Jehoiakiin--for that was the
+singular name of the gentleman who sat by his hearthstone--had just
+received the Memphis "Palimpsest," fifteen days in advance of the
+date of its publication, and that his secretary was reading to him
+that monthly, and cutting its leaves as he read.  I should like to
+have seen it in that year when Thales was learning astronomy in
+Memphis, and Necho was organizing his campaign against Carchemish.
+If Jehoiakim took the "Attic Quarterly," he might have read its
+comments on the banishment of the Alcmaeonida:, and its gibes at
+Solon for his prohibitory laws, forbidding the sale of unguents,
+limiting the luxury of dress, and interfering with the sacred rights
+of mourners to passionately bewail the dead in the Asiatic manner;
+the same number being enriched with contributions from two rising
+poets,--a lyric of love by Sappho, and an ode sent by Anacreon from
+Teos, with an editorial note explaining that the Maces was not
+responsible for the sentiments of the poem.
+
+But, in fact, the gentleman who sat before the backlog in his
+winter-house had other things to think of.  For Nebuchadnezzar was
+coming that way with the chariots and horses of Babylon and a great
+crowd of marauders; and the king had not even the poor choice whether
+he would be the vassal of the Chaldean or of the Egyptian.  To us,
+this is only a ghostly show of monarchs and conquerors stalking
+across vast historic spaces.  It was no doubt a vulgar enough scene
+of war and plunder.  The great captains of that age went about to
+harry each other's territories and spoil each other's cities very
+much as we do nowadays, and for similar reasons;--Napoleon the Great
+in Moscow, Napoleon the Small in Italy, Kaiser William in Paris,
+Great Scott in Mexico!  Men have not changed much.
+
+--The Fire-Tender sat in his winter-garden in the third month; there
+was a fire on the hearth burning before him.  He cut the leaves of
+"Scribner's Monthly" with his penknife, and thought of Jehoiakim.
+
+That seems as real as the other.  In the garden, which is a room of
+the house, the tall callas, rooted in the ground, stand about the
+fountain; the sun, streaming through the glass, illumines the
+many-hued flowers.  I wonder what Jehoiakim did with the mealy-bug on
+his passion-vine, and if he had any way of removing the scale-bug
+from his African acacia?  One would like to know, too, how he treated
+the red spider on the Le Marque rose.  The record is silent.  I do
+not doubt he had all these insects in his winter-garden, and the
+aphidae besides; and he could not smoke them out with tobacco, for
+the world had not yet fallen into its second stage of the knowledge
+of good and evil by eating the forbidden tobacco-plant.
+
+I confess that this little picture of a fire on the hearth so many
+centuries ago helps to make real and interesting to me that somewhat
+misty past.  No doubt the lotus and the acanthus from the Nile grew
+in that winter-house, and perhaps Jehoiakim attempted--the most
+difficult thing in the world the cultivation of the wild flowers from
+Lebanon.  Perhaps Jehoiakim was interested also, as I am through this
+ancient fireplace,--which is a sort of domestic window into the
+ancient world,--in the loves of Bernice and Abaces at the court of
+the Pharaohs.  I see that it is the same thing as the sentiment--
+perhaps it is the shrinking which every soul that is a soul has,
+sooner or later, from isolation--which grew up between Herbert and
+the Young Lady Staying With Us.  Jeremiah used to come in to that
+fireside very much as the Parson does to ours.  The Parson, to be
+sure, never prophesies, but he grumbles, and is the chorus in the
+play that sings the everlasting ai ai of "I told you so!"  Yet we
+like the Parson.  He is the sprig of bitter herb that makes the
+pottage wholesome.  I should rather, ten times over, dispense with
+the flatterers and the smooth-sayers than the grumblers.  But the
+grumblers are of two sorts,--the healthful-toned and the whiners.
+There are makers of beer who substitute for the clean bitter of the
+hops some deleterious drug, and then seek to hide the fraud by some
+cloying sweet.  There is nothing of this sickish drug in the Parson's
+talk, nor was there in that of Jeremiah, I sometimes think there is
+scarcely enough of this wholesome tonic in modern society.  The
+Parson says he never would give a child sugar-coated pills.
+Mandeville says he never would give them any.  After all, you cannot
+help liking Mandeville.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+We were talking of this late news from Jerusalem.  The Fire-Tender
+was saying that it is astonishing how much is telegraphed us from the
+East that is not half so interesting.  He was at a loss
+philosophically to account for the fact that the world is so eager to
+know the news of yesterday which is unimportant, and so indifferent
+to that of the day before which is of some moment.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  I suspect that it arises from the want of imagination.
+People need to touch the facts, and nearness in time is contiguity.
+It would excite no interest to bulletin the last siege of Jerusalem
+in a village where the event was unknown, if the date was appended;
+and yet the account of it is incomparably more exciting than that of
+the siege of Metz.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  The daily news is a necessity.  I cannot get along
+without my morning paper.  The other morning I took it up, and was
+absorbed in the telegraphic columns for an hour nearly.  I thoroughly
+enjoyed the feeling of immediate contact with all the world of
+yesterday, until I read among the minor items that Patrick Donahue,
+of the city of New York, died of a sunstroke.  If he had frozen to
+death, I should have enjoyed that; but to die of sunstroke in
+February seemed inappropriate, and I turned to the date of the paper.
+When I found it was printed in July, I need not say that I lost all
+interest in it, though why the trivialities and crimes and accidents,
+relating to people I never knew, were not as good six months after
+date as twelve hours, I cannot say.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  You know that in Concord the latest news, except a
+remark or two by Thoreau or Emerson, is the Vedas.  I believe the
+Rig-Veda is read at the breakfast-table instead of the Boston
+journals.
+
+THE PARSON.  I know it is read afterward instead of the Bible.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  That is only because it is supposed to be older.  I have
+understood that the Bible is very well spoken of there, but it is not
+antiquated enough to be an authority.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  There was a project on foot to put it into the
+circulating library, but the title New in the second part was
+considered objectionable.
+
+HERBERT.  Well, I have a good deal of sympathy with Concord as to the
+news.  We are fed on a daily diet of trivial events and gossip, of
+the unfruitful sayings of thoughtless men and women, until our mental
+digestion is seriously impaired; the day will come when no one will
+be able to sit down to a thoughtful, well-wrought book and assimilate
+its contents.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  I doubt if a daily newspaper is a necessity, in the
+higher sense of the word.
+
+THE PARSON.  Nobody supposes it is to women,--that is, if they can
+see each other.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Don't interrupt, unless you have something to say;
+though I should like to know how much gossip there is afloat that the
+minister does not know.  The newspaper may be needed in society, but
+how quickly it drops out of mind when one goes beyond the bounds of
+what is called civilization.  You remember when we were in the depths
+of the woods last summer how difficult it was to get up any interest
+in the files of late papers that reached us, and how unreal all the
+struggle and turmoil of the world seemed.  We stood apart, and could
+estimate things at their true value.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  Yes, that was real life.  I never tired of the
+guide's stories; there was some interest in the intelligence that a
+deer had been down to eat the lily-pads at the foot of the lake the
+night before; that a bear's track was seen on the trail we crossed
+that day; even Mandeville's fish-stories had a certain air of
+probability; and how to roast a trout in the ashes and serve him hot
+and juicy and clean, and how to cook soup and prepare coffee and heat
+dish-water in one tin-pail, were vital problems.
+
+THE PARSON.  You would have had no such problems at home.  Why will
+people go so far to put themselves to such inconvenience?  I hate the
+woods.  Isolation breeds conceit; there are no people so conceited as
+those who dwell in remote wildernesses and live mostly alone.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  For my part, I feel humble in the presence of
+mountains, and in the vast stretches of the wilderness.
+
+THE PARSON.  I'll be bound a woman would feel just as nobody would
+expect her to feel, under given circumstances.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  I think the reason why the newspaper and the world it
+carries take no hold of us in the wilderness is that we become a kind
+of vegetable ourselves when we go there.  I have often attempted to
+improve my mind in the woods with good solid books.  You might as
+well offer a bunch of celery to an oyster.  The mind goes to sleep:
+the senses and the instincts wake up.  The best I can do when it
+rains, or the trout won't bite, is to read Dumas's novels.  Their
+ingenuity will almost keep a man awake after supper, by the
+camp-fire.  And there is a kind of unity about them that I like; the
+history is as good as the morality.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  I always wondered where Mandeville got his historical
+facts.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Mandeville misrepresents himself in the woods.  I
+heard him one night repeat "The Vision of Sir Launfal"--(THE
+FIRE-TENDER.  Which comes very near being our best poem.)--as we were
+crossing the lake, and the guides became so absorbed in it that they
+forgot to paddle, and sat listening with open mouths, as if it had
+been a panther story.
+
+THE PARSON.  Mandeville likes to show off well enough.  I heard that
+he related to a woods' boy up there the whole of the Siege of Troy.
+The boy was very much interested, and said "there'd been a man up
+there that spring from Troy, looking up timber."  Mandeville always
+carries the news when he goes into the country.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  I'm going to take the Parson's sermon on Jonah next
+summer; it's the nearest to anything like news we've had from his
+pulpit in ten years.  But, seriously, the boy was very well informed.
+He'd heard of Albany; his father took in the "Weekly Tribune," and he
+had a partial conception of Horace Greeley.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  I never went so far out of the world in America yet
+that the name of Horace Greeley did n't rise up before me.  One of
+the first questions asked by any camp-fire is, "Did ye ever see
+Horace?"
+
+HERBERT.  Which shows the power of the press again.  But I have often
+remarked how little real conception of the moving world, as it is,
+people in remote regions get from the newspaper.  It needs to be read
+in the midst of events.  A chip cast ashore in a refluent eddy tells
+no tale of the force and swiftness of the current.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  I don't exactly get the drift of that last remark;
+but I rather like a remark that I can't understand; like the
+landlady's indigestible bread, it stays by you.
+
+HERBERT.  I see that I must talk in words of one syllable.  The
+newspaper has little effect upon the remote country mind, because the
+remote country mind is interested in a very limited number of things.
+Besides, as the Parson says, it is conceited.  The most accomplished
+scholar will be the butt of all the guides in the woods, because he
+cannot follow a trail that would puzzle a sable (saple the trappers
+call it).
+
+THE PARSON.  It's enough to read the summer letters that people write
+to the newspapers from the country and the woods.  Isolated from the
+activity of the world, they come to think that the little adventures
+of their stupid days and nights are important.  Talk about that being
+real life!  Compare the letters such people write with the other
+contents of the newspaper, and you will see which life is real.
+That's one reason I hate to have summer come, the country letters set
+in.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  I should like to see something the Parson does n't
+hate to have come.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  Except his quarter's salary; and the meeting of the
+American Board.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  I don't see that we are getting any nearer the
+solution of the original question.  The world is evidently interested
+in events simply because they are recent.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  I have a theory that a newspaper might be published
+at little cost, merely by reprinting the numbers of years before,
+only altering the dates; just as the Parson preaches over his
+sermons.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  It's evident we must have a higher order of
+news-gatherers.  It has come to this, that the newspaper furnishes
+thought-material for all the world, actually prescribes from day to
+day the themes the world shall think on and talk about.  The
+occupation of news-gathering becomes, therefore, the most important.
+When you think of it, it is astonishing that this department should
+not be in the hands of the ablest men, accomplished scholars,
+philosophical observers, discriminating selectors of the news of the
+world that is worth thinking over and talking about.  The editorial
+comments frequently are able enough, but is it worth while keeping an
+expensive mill going to grind chaff?  I sometimes wonder, as I open
+my morning paper, if nothing did happen in the twenty-four hours
+except crimes, accidents, defalcations, deaths of unknown loafers,
+robberies, monstrous births,--say about the level of police-court
+news.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  I have even noticed that murders have deteriorated;
+they are not so high-toned and mysterious as they used to be.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  It is true that the newspapers have improved vastly
+within the last decade.
+
+HERBERT.  I think, for one, that they are very much above the level
+of the ordinary gossip of the country.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  But I am tired of having the under-world still
+occupy so much room in the newspapers.  The reporters are rather more
+alert for a dog-fight than a philological convention.  It must be
+that the good deeds of the world outnumber the bad in any given day;
+and what a good reflex action it would have on society if they could
+be more fully reported than the bad!  I suppose the Parson would call
+this the Enthusiasm of Humanity.
+
+THE PARSON.  You'll see how far you can lift yourself up by your
+boot-straps.
+
+HERBERT.  I wonder what influence on the quality (I say nothing of
+quantity) of news the coming of women into the reporter's and
+editor's work will have.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  There are the baby-shows; they make cheerful reading.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  All of them got up by speculating men, who impose upon
+the vanity of weak women.
+
+HERBERT.  I think women reporters are more given to personal details
+and gossip than the men.  When I read the Washington correspondence I
+am proud of my country, to see how many Apollo Belvederes, Adonises,
+how much marble brow and piercing eye and hyacinthine locks, we have
+in the two houses of Congress.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  That's simply because women understand the personal
+weakness of men; they have a long score of personal flattery to pay
+off too.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  I think women will bring in elements of brightness,
+picturesqueness, and purity very much needed.  Women have a power of
+investing simple ordinary things with a charm; men are bungling
+narrators compared with them.
+
+THE PARSON.  The mistake they make is in trying to write, and
+especially to "stump-speak," like men; next to an effeminate man
+there is nothing so disagreeable as a mannish woman.
+
+HERBERT.  I heard one once address a legislative committee.  The
+knowing air, the familiar, jocular, smart manner, the nodding and
+winking innuendoes, supposed to be those of a man "up to snuff," and
+au fait in political wiles, were inexpressibly comical.  And yet the
+exhibition was pathetic, for it had the suggestive vulgarity of a
+woman in man's clothes.  The imitation is always a dreary failure.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Such women are the rare exceptions.  I am ready to
+defend my sex; but I won't attempt to defend both sexes in one.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  I have great hope that women will bring into the
+newspaper an elevating influence; the common and sweet life of
+society is much better fitted to entertain and instruct us than the
+exceptional and extravagant.  I confess (saving the Mistress's
+presence) that the evening talk over the dessert at dinner is much
+more entertaining and piquant than the morning paper, and often as
+important.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  I think the subject had better be changed.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  The person, not the subject.  There is no entertainment
+so full of quiet pleasure as the hearing a lady of cultivation and
+refinement relate her day's experience in her daily rounds of calls,
+charitable visits, shopping, errands of relief and condolence.  The
+evening budget is better than the finance minister's.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  That's even so.  My wife will pick up more news in
+six hours than I can get in a week, and I'm fond of news.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  I don't mean gossip, by any means, or scandal.  A woman
+of culture skims over that like a bird, never touching it with the
+tip of a wing.  What she brings home is the freshness and brightness
+of life.  She touches everything so daintily, she hits off a
+character in a sentence, she gives the pith of a dialogue without
+tediousness, she mimics without vulgarity; her narration sparkles,
+but it does n't sting.  The picture of her day is full of vivacity,
+and it gives new value and freshness to common things.  If we could
+only have on the stage such actresses as we have in the drawing-room!
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  We want something more of this grace,
+sprightliness, and harmless play of the finer life of society in the
+newspaper.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  I wonder Mandeville does n't marry, and become a
+permanent subscriber to his embodied idea of a newspaper.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  Perhaps he does not relish the idea of being unable
+to stop his subscription.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  Parson, won't you please punch that fire, and give us
+more blaze?  we are getting into the darkness of socialism.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Herbert returned to us in March.  The Young Lady was spending the
+winter with us, and March, in spite of the calendar, turned out to be
+a winter month.  It usually is in New England, and April too, for
+that matter.  And I cannot say it is unfortunate for us.  There are
+so many topics to be turned over and settled at our fireside that a
+winter of ordinary length would make little impression on the list.
+The fireside is, after all, a sort of private court of chancery,
+where nothing ever does come to a final decision.  The chief effect
+of talk on any subject is to strengthen one's own opinions, and, in
+fact, one never knows exactly what he does believe until he is warmed
+into conviction by the heat of attack and defence.  A man left to
+himself drifts about like a boat on a calm lake; it is only when the
+wind blows that the boat goes anywhere.
+
+Herbert said he had been dipping into the recent novels written by
+women, here and there, with a view to noting the effect upon
+literature of this sudden and rather overwhelming accession to it.
+There was a good deal of talk about it evening after evening, off and
+on, and I can only undertake to set down fragments of it.
+
+HERBERT.  I should say that the distinguishing feature of the
+literature of this day is the prominence women have in its
+production.  They figure in most of the magazines, though very rarely
+in the scholarly and critical reviews, and in thousands of
+newspapers; to them we are indebted for the oceans of Sunday-school
+books, and they write the majority of the novels, the serial stories,
+and they mainly pour out the watery flood of tales in the weekly
+papers.  Whether this is to result in more good than evil it is
+impossible yet to say, and perhaps it would be unjust to say, until
+this generation has worked off its froth, and women settle down to
+artistic, conscien-tious labor in literature.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  You don't mean to say that George Eliot, and Mrs.
+Gaskell, and George Sand, and Mrs. Browning, before her marriage and
+severe attack of spiritism, are less true to art than contemporary
+men novelists and poets.
+
+HERBERT.  You name some exceptions that show the bright side of the
+picture, not only for the present, but for the future.  Perhaps
+genius has no sex; but ordinary talent has.  I refer to the great
+body of novels, which you would know by internal evidence were
+written by women.  They are of two sorts: the domestic story,
+entirely unidealized, and as flavorless as water-gruel; and the
+spiced novel, generally immoral in tendency, in which the social
+problems are handled, unhappy marriages, affinity and passional
+attraction, bigamy, and the violation of the seventh commandment.
+These subjects are treated in the rawest manner, without any settled
+ethics, with little discrimination of eternal right and wrong, and
+with very little sense of responsibility for what is set forth.  Many
+of these novels are merely the blind outbursts of a nature impatient
+of restraint and the conventionalities of society, and are as chaotic
+as the untrained minds that produce them.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  Don't you think these novels fairly represent a social
+condition of unrest and upheaval?
+
+HERBERT.  Very likely; and they help to create and spread abroad the
+discontent they describe.  Stories of bigamy (sometimes disguised by
+divorce), of unhappy marriages, where the injured wife, through an
+entire volume, is on the brink of falling into the arms of a sneaking
+lover, until death kindly removes the obstacle, and the two souls,
+who were born for each other, but got separated in the cradle, melt
+and mingle into one in the last chapter, are not healthful reading
+for maids or mothers.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Or men.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  The most disagreeable object to me in modern
+literature is the man the women novelists have introduced as the
+leading character; the women who come in contact with him seem to be
+fascinated by his disdainful mien, his giant strength, and his brutal
+manner.  He is broad across the shoulders, heavily moulded, yet as
+lithe as a cat; has an ugly scar across his right cheek; has been in
+the four quarters of the globe; knows seventeen languages; had a
+harem in Turkey and a Fayaway in the Marquesas; can be as polished as
+Bayard in the drawing-room, but is as gloomy as Conrad in the
+library; has a terrible eye and a withering glance, but can be
+instantly subdued by a woman's hand, if it is not his wife's; and
+through all his morose and vicious career has carried a heart as pure
+as a violet.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Don't you think the Count of Monte Cristo is the elder
+brother of Rochester?
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  One is a mere hero of romance; the other is meant
+for a real man.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  I don't see that the men novel-writers are better than
+the women.
+
+HERBERT.  That's not the question; but what are women who write so
+large a proportion of the current stories bringing into literature?
+Aside from the question of morals, and the absolutely demoralizing
+manner of treating social questions, most of their stories are vapid
+and weak beyond expression, and are slovenly in composition, showing
+neither study, training, nor mental discipline.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Considering that women have been shut out from the
+training of the universities, and have few opportunities for the wide
+observation that men enjoy, isn't it pretty well that the foremost
+living writers of fiction are women?
+
+HERBERT.  You can say that for the moment, since Thackeray and
+Dickens have just died.  But it does not affect the general estimate.
+We are inundated with a flood of weak writing.  Take the Sunday-
+school literature, largely the product of women; it has n't as much
+character as a dried apple pie.  I don't know what we are coming to
+if the presses keep on running.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  We are living, we are dwelling, in a grand and awful
+time; I'm glad I don't write novels.
+
+THE PARSON.  So am I.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  I tried a Sunday-school book once; but I made the
+good boy end in the poorhouse, and the bad boy go to Congress; and
+the publisher said it wouldn't do, the public wouldn't stand that
+sort of thing.  Nobody but the good go to Congress.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Herbert, what do you think women are good for?
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  That's a poser.
+
+HERBERT.  Well, I think they are in a tentative state as to
+literature, and we cannot yet tell what they will do.  Some of our
+most brilliant books of travel, correspondence, and writing on topics
+in which their sympathies have warmly interested them, are by women.
+Some of them are also strong writers in the daily journals.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  I 'm not sure there's anything a woman cannot do as well
+as a man, if she sets her heart on it.
+
+THE PARSON.  That's because she's no conscience.
+
+CHORUS.  O Parson!
+
+THE PARSON.  Well, it does n't trouble her, if she wants to do
+anything.  She looks at the end, not the means.  A woman, set on
+anything, will walk right through the moral crockery without wincing.
+She'd be a great deal more unscrupulous in politics than the average
+man.  Did you ever see a female lobbyist?  Or a criminal?  It is Lady
+Macbeth who does not falter.  Don't raise your hands at me!  The
+sweetest angel or the coolest devil is a woman.  I see in some of the
+modern novels we have been talking of the same unscrupulous daring, a
+blindness to moral distinctions, a constant exaltation of a passion
+into a virtue, an entire disregard of the immutable laws on which the
+family and society rest.  And you ask lawyers and trustees how
+scrupulous women are in business transactions!
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  Women are often ignorant of affairs, and, besides,
+they may have a notion often that a woman ought to be privileged more
+than a man in business matters; but I tell you, as a rule, that if
+men would consult their wives, they would go a deal straighter in
+business operations than they do go.
+
+THE PARSON.  We are all poor sinners.  But I've another indictment
+against the women writers.  We get no good old-fashioned love-stories
+from them.  It's either a quarrel of discordant natures one a
+panther, and the other a polar bear--for courtship, until one of them
+is crippled by a railway accident; or a long wrangle of married life
+between two unpleasant people, who can neither live comfortably
+together nor apart.  I suppose, by what I see, that sweet wooing,
+with all its torturing and delightful uncertainty, still goes on in
+the world; and I have no doubt that the majority of married people
+live more happily than the unmarried.  But it's easier to find a dodo
+than a new and good love-story.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  I suppose the old style of plot is exhausted.
+Everything in man and outside of him has been turned over so often
+that I should think the novelists would cease simply from want of
+material.
+
+THE PARSON.  Plots are no more exhausted than men are.  Every man is
+a new creation, and combinations are simply endless.  Even if we did
+not have new material in the daily change of society, and there were
+only a fixed number of incidents and characters in life, invention
+could not be exhausted on them.  I amuse myself sometimes with my
+kaleidoscope, but I can never reproduce a figure.  No, no.  I cannot
+say that you may not exhaust everything else: we may get all the
+secrets of a nature into a book by and by, but the novel is immortal,
+for it deals with men.
+
+The Parson's vehemence came very near carrying him into a sermon; and
+as nobody has the privilege of replying to his sermons, so none of
+the circle made any reply now.
+
+Our Next Door mumbled something about his hair standing on end, to
+hear a minister defending the novel; but it did not interrupt the
+general silence.  Silence is unnoticed when people sit before a fire;
+it would be intolerable if they sat and looked at each other.
+
+The wind had risen during the evening, and Mandeville remarked, as
+they rose to go, that it had a spring sound in it, but it was as cold
+as winter.  The Mistress said she heard a bird that morning singing
+in the sun a spring song, it was a winter bird, but it sang
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTH STUDY
+
+
+We have been much interested in what is called the Gothic revival.
+We have spent I don't know how many evenings in looking over
+Herbert's plans for a cottage, and have been amused with his vain
+efforts to cover with Gothic roofs the vast number of large rooms
+which the Young Lady draws in her sketch of a small house.
+
+I have no doubt that the Gothic, which is capable of infinite
+modification, so that every house built in that style may be as
+different from every other house as one tree is from every other, can
+be adapted to our modern uses, and will be, when artists catch its
+spirit instead of merely copying its old forms.  But just now we are
+taking the Gothic very literally, as we took the Greek at one time,
+or as we should probably have taken the Saracenic, if the Moors had
+not been colored.  Not even the cholera is so contagious in this
+country as a style of architecture which we happen to catch; the
+country is just now broken out all over with the Mansard-roof
+epidemic.
+
+And in secular architecture we do not study what is adapted to our
+climate any more than in ecclesiastic architecture we adopt that
+which is suited to our religion.
+
+We are building a great many costly churches here and there, we
+Protestants, and as the most of them are ill adapted to our forms of
+worship, it may be necessary and best for us to change our religion
+in order to save our investments.  I am aware that this would be a
+grave step, and we should not hasten to throw overboard Luther and
+the right of private judgment without reflection.  And yet, if it is
+necessary to revive the ecclesiastical Gothic architecture, not in
+its spirit (that we nowhere do), but in the form which served another
+age and another faith, and if, as it appears, we have already a great
+deal of money invested in this reproduction, it may be more prudent
+to go forward than to go back.  The question is, "Cannot one easier
+change his creed than his pew?"
+
+I occupy a seat in church which is an admirable one for reflection,
+but I cannot see or hear much that is going on in what we like to
+call the apse.  There is a splendid stone pillar, a clustered column,
+right in front of me, and I am as much protected from the minister as
+Old Put's troops were from the British, behind the stone wall at
+Bunker's Hill.  I can hear his voice occasionally wandering round in
+the arches overhead, and I recognize the tone, because he is a friend
+of mine and an excellent man, but what he is saying I can very seldom
+make out.  If there was any incense burning, I could smell it, and
+that would be something.  I rather like the smell of incense, and it
+has its holy associations.  But there is no smell in our church,
+except of bad air,--for there is no provision for ventilation in the
+splendid and costly edifice.  The reproduction of the old Gothic is
+so complete that the builders even seem to have brought over the
+ancient air from one of the churches of the Middle Ages,--you would
+declare it had n't been changed in two centuries.
+
+I am expected to fix my attention during the service upon one man,
+who stands in the centre of the apse and has a sounding-board behind
+him in order to throw his voice out of the sacred semicircular space
+(where the aitar used to stand, but now the sounding-board takes the
+place of the altar) and scatter it over the congregation at large,
+and send it echoing up in the groined roof I always like to hear a
+minister who is unfamiliar with the house, and who has a loud voice,
+try to fill the edifice.  The more he roars and gives himself with
+vehemence to the effort, the more the building roars in
+indistinguishable noise and hubbub.  By the time he has said (to
+suppose a case), "The Lord is in his holy temple," and has passed on
+to say, "let all the earth keep silence," the building is repeating
+"The Lord is in his holy temple" from half a dozen different angles
+and altitudes, rolling it and growling it, and is not keeping silence
+at all.  A man who understands it waits until the house has had its
+say, and has digested one passage, before he launches another into
+the vast, echoing spaces.  I am expected, as I said, to fix my eye
+and mind on the minister, the central point of the service.  But the
+pillar hides him.  Now if there were several ministers in the church,
+dressed in such gorgeous colors that I could see them at the distance
+from the apse at which my limited income compels me to sit, and
+candles were burning, and censers were swinging, and the platform was
+full of the sacred bustle of a gorgeous ritual worship, and a bell
+rang to tell me the holy moments, I should not mind the pillar at
+all.  I should sit there, like any other Goth, and enjoy it.  But, as
+I have said, the pastor is a friend of mine, and I like to look at
+him on Sunday, and hear what he says, for he always says something
+worth hearing.  I am on such terms with him, indeed we all are, that
+it would be pleasant to have the service of a little more social
+nature, and more human.  When we put him away off in the apse, and
+set him up for a Goth, and then seat ourselves at a distance,
+scattered about among the pillars, the whole thing seems to me a
+trifle unnatural.  Though I do not mean to say that the congregations
+do not "enjoy their religion " in their splendid edifices which cost
+so much money and are really so beautiful.
+
+A good many people have the idea, so it seems, that Gothic
+architecture and Christianity are essentially one and the same thing.
+Just as many regard it as an act of piety to work an altar cloth or
+to cushion a pulpit.  It may be, and it may not be.
+
+Our Gothic church is likely to prove to us a valuable religious
+experience, bringing out many of the Christian virtues.  It may have
+had its origin in pride, but it is all being overruled for our good.
+Of course I need n't explain that it is the thirteenth century
+ecclesiastic Gothic that is epidemic in this country; and I think it
+has attacked the Congregational and the other non-ritual churches
+more violently than any others.  We have had it here in its most
+beautiful and dangerous forms.  I believe we are pretty much all of
+us supplied with a Gothic church now.  Such has been the enthusiasm
+in this devout direction, that I should not be surprised to see our
+rich private citizens putting up Gothic churches for their individual
+amusement and sanctification.  As the day will probably come when
+every man in Hartford will live in his own mammoth, five-story
+granite insurance building, it may not be unreasonable to expect that
+every man will sport his own Gothic church.  It is beginning to be
+discovered that the Gothic sort of church edifice is fatal to the
+Congregational style of worship that has been prevalent here in New
+England; but it will do nicely (as they say in Boston) for private
+devotion.
+
+There isn't a finer or purer church than ours any where, inside and
+outside Gothic to the last.  The elevation of the nave gives it even
+that "high-shouldered" appearance which seemed more than anything
+else to impress Mr. Hawthorne in the cathedral at Amiens.  I fancy
+that for genuine high-shoulderness we are not exceeded by any church
+in the city.  Our chapel in the rear is as Gothic as the rest of it,-
+-a beautiful little edifice.  The committee forgot to make any more
+provision for ventilating that than the church, and it takes a pretty
+well-seasoned Christian to stay in it long at a time.  The Sunday-
+school is held there, and it is thought to be best to accustom the
+children to bad air before they go into the church.  The poor little
+dears shouldn't have the wickedness and impurity of this world break
+on them too suddenly.  If the stranger noticed any lack about our
+church, it would be that of a spire.  There is a place for one;
+indeed, it was begun, and then the builders seem to have stopped,
+with the notion that it would grow itself from such a good root.  It
+is a mistake however, to suppose that we do not know that the church
+has what the profane here call a "stump-tail" appearance.  But the
+profane are as ignorant of history as they are of true Gothic.  All
+the Old World cathedrals were the work of centuries.  That at Milan
+is scarcely finished yet; the unfinished spires of the Cologne
+cathedral are one of the best-known features of it.  I doubt if it
+would be in the Gothic spirit to finish a church at once.  We can
+tell cavilers that we shall have a spire at the proper time, and not
+a minute before.  It may depend a little upon what the Baptists do,
+who are to build near us.  I, for one, think we had better wait and
+see how high the Baptist spire is before we run ours up.  The church
+is everything that could be desired inside.  There is the nave, with
+its lofty and beautiful arched ceiling; there are the side aisles,
+and two elegant rows of stone pillars, stained so as to be a perfect
+imitation of stucco; there is the apse, with its stained glass and
+exquisite lines; and there is an organ-loft over the front entrance,
+with a rose window.  Nothing was wanting, so far as we could see,
+except that we should adapt ourselves to the circumstances; and that
+we have been trying to do ever since.  It may be well to relate how
+we do it, for the benefit of other inchoate Goths.
+
+It was found that if we put up the organ in the loft, it would hide
+the beautiful rose window.  Besides, we wanted congregational sing-
+ing, and if we hired a choir, and hung it up there under the roof,
+like a cage of birds, we should not have congregational singing.  We
+therefore left the organ-loft vacant, making no further use of it
+than to satisfy our Gothic cravings.  As for choir,--several of the
+singers of the church volunteered to sit together in the front
+side-seats, and as there was no place for an organ, they gallantly
+rallied round a melodeon,--or perhaps it is a cabinet organ,--a
+charming instrument, and, as everybody knows, entirely in keeping
+with the pillars, arches, and great spaces of a real Gothic edifice.
+It is the union of simplicity with grandeur, for which we have all
+been looking.  I need not say to those who have ever heard a
+melodeon, that there is nothing like it.  It is rare, even in the
+finest churches on the Continent.  And we had congregational singing.
+And it went very well indeed.  One of the advantages of pure
+congregational singing, is that you can join in the singing whether
+you have a voice or not.  The disadvantage is, that your neighbor can
+do the same.  It is strange what an uncommonly poor lot of voices
+there is, even among good people.  But we enjoy it.  If you do not
+enjoy it, you can change your seat until you get among a good lot.
+
+So far, everything went well.  But it was next discovered that it was
+difficult to hear the minister, who had a very handsome little desk
+in the apse, somewhat distant from the bulk of the congregation;
+still, we could most of us see him on a clear day.  The church was
+admirably built for echoes, and the centre of the house was very
+favorable to them.  When you sat in the centre of the house, it
+sometimes seemed as if three or four ministers were speaking.
+
+It is usually so in cathedrals; the Right Reverend So-and-So is
+assisted by the very Reverend Such-and-Such, and the good deal
+Reverend Thus-and-Thus, and so on.  But a good deal of the minister's
+voice appeared to go up into the groined arches, and, as there was no
+one up there, some of his best things were lost.  We also had a
+notion that some of it went into the cavernous organ-loft.  It would
+have been all right if there had been a choir there, for choirs
+usually need more preaching, and pay less heed to it, than any other
+part of the congregation.  Well, we drew a sort of screen over the
+organ-loft; but the result was not as marked as we had hoped.  We
+next devised a sounding-board,--a sort of mammoth clamshell, painted
+white,--and erected it behind the minister.  It had a good effect on
+the minister.  It kept him up straight to his work.  So long as he
+kept his head exactly in the focus, his voice went out and did not
+return to him; but if he moved either way, he was assailed by a Babel
+of clamoring echoes.  There was no opportunity for him to splurge
+about from side to side of the pulpit, as some do.  And if he raised
+his voice much, or attempted any extra flights, he was liable to be
+drowned in a refluent sea of his own eloquence.  And he could hear
+the congregation as well as they could hear him.  All the coughs,
+whispers, noises, were gathered in the wooden tympanum behind him,
+and poured into his ears.
+
+But the sounding-board was an improvement, and we advanced to bolder
+measures; having heard a little, we wanted to hear more.  Besides,
+those who sat in front began to be discontented with the melodeon.
+There are depths in music which the melodeon, even when it is called
+a cabinet organ, with a colored boy at the bellows, cannot sound.
+The melodeon was not, originally, designed for the Gothic worship.
+We determined to have an organ, and we speculated whether, by
+erecting it in the apse, we could not fill up that elegant portion of
+the church, and compel the preacher's voice to leave it, and go out
+over the pews.  It would of course do something to efface the main
+beauty of a Gothic church; but something must be done, and we began a
+series of experiments to test the probable effects of putting the
+organ and choir behind the minister.  We moved the desk to the very
+front of the platform, and erected behind it a high, square board
+screen, like a section of tight fence round the fair-grounds.  This
+did help matters.  The minister spoke with more ease, and we could
+hear him better.  If the screen had been intended to stay there, we
+should have agitated the subject of painting it.  But this was only
+an experiment.
+
+Our next move was to shove the screen back and mount the volunteer
+singers, melodeon and all, upon the platform,--some twenty of them
+crowded together behind the minister.  The,effect was beautiful.  It
+seemed as if we had taken care to select the finest-looking people in
+the congregation,--much to the injury of the congregation, of course,
+as seen from the platform.  There are few congregations that can
+stand this sort of culling, though ours can endure it as well as any;
+yet it devolves upon those of us who remain the responsibility of
+looking as well as we can.
+
+The experiment was a success, so far as appearances went, but when
+the screen went back, the minister's voice went back with it.  We
+could not hear him very well, though we could hear the choir as plain
+as day.  We have thought of remedying this last defect by putting the
+high screen in front of the singers, and close to the minister, as it
+was before.  This would make the singers invisible,--"though lost to
+sight, to memory dear,"--what is sometimes called an "angel choir,"
+when the singers (and the melodeon) are concealed, with the most
+subdued and religious effect.  It is often so in cathedrals.
+
+This plan would have another advantage.  The singers on the platform,
+all handsome and well dressed, distract our attention from the
+minister, and what he is saying.  We cannot help looking at them,
+studying all the faces and all the dresses.  If one of them sits up
+very straight, he is a rebuke to us; if he "lops" over, we wonder why
+he does n't sit up; if his hair is white, we wonder whether it is age
+or family peculiarity; if he yawns, we want to yawn; if he takes up a
+hymn-book, we wonder if he is uninterested in the sermon; we look at
+the bonnets, and query if that is the latest spring style, or whether
+we are to look for another; if he shaves close, we wonder why he
+doesn't let his beard grow; if he has long whiskers, we wonder why he
+does n't trim 'em; if she sighs, we feel sorry; if she smiles, we
+would like to know what it is about.  And, then, suppose any of the
+singers should ever want to eat fennel, or peppermints, or Brown's
+troches, and pass them round!  Suppose the singers, more or less of
+them, should sneeze!
+
+Suppose one or two of them, as the handsomest people sometimes will,
+should go to sleep!  In short, the singers there take away all our
+attention from the minister, and would do so if they were the
+homeliest people in the world.  We must try something else.
+
+It is needless to explain that a Gothic religious life is not an idle
+one.
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTH STUDY
+
+
+I
+
+Perhaps the clothes question is exhausted, philosophically.  I cannot
+but regret that the Poet of the Breakfast-Table, who appears to have
+an uncontrollable penchant for saying the things you would like to
+say yourself, has alluded to the anachronism of "Sir Coeur de Lion
+Plantagenet in the mutton-chop whiskers and the plain gray suit."
+
+A great many scribblers have felt the disadvantage of writing after
+Montaigne; and it is impossible to tell how much originality in
+others Dr. Holmes has destroyed in this country.  In whist there are
+some men you always prefer to have on your left hand, and I take it
+that this intuitive essayist, who is so alert to seize the few
+remaining unappropriated ideas and analogies in the world, is one of
+them.
+
+No doubt if the Plantagenets of this day were required to dress in a
+suit of chain-armor and wear iron pots on their heads, they would be
+as ridiculous as most tragedy actors on the stage.  The pit which
+recognizes Snooks in his tin breastplate and helmet laughs at him,
+and Snooks himself feels like a sheep; and when the great tragedian
+comes on, shining in mail, dragging a two-handed sword, and mouths
+the grandiloquence which poets have put into the speech of heroes,
+the dress-circle requires all its good-breeding and its feigned love
+of the traditionary drama not to titter.
+
+If this sort of acting, which is supposed to have come down to us
+from the Elizabethan age, and which culminated in the school of the
+Keans, Kembles, and Siddonses, ever had any fidelity to life, it must
+have been in a society as artificial as the prose of Sir Philip
+Sidney.  That anybody ever believed in it is difficult to think,
+especially when we read what privileges the fine beaux and gallants
+of the town took behind the scenes and on the stage in the golden
+days of the drama.  When a part of the audience sat on the stage, and
+gentlemen lounged or reeled across it in the midst of a play, to
+speak to acquaintances in the audience, the illusion could not have
+been very strong.
+
+Now and then a genius, like Rachel as Horatia, or Hackett as
+Falstaff, may actually seem to be the character assumed by virtue of
+a transforming imagination, but I suppose the fact to be that getting
+into a costume, absurdly antiquated and remote from all the habits
+and associations of the actor, largely accounts for the incongruity
+and ridiculousness of most of our modern acting.  Whether what is
+called the "legitimate drama" ever was legitimate we do not know, but
+the advocates of it appear to think that the theatre was some time
+cast in a mould, once for all, and is good for all times and peoples,
+like the propositions of Euclid.  To our eyes the legitimate drama of
+to-day is the one in which the day is reflected, both in costume and
+speech, and which touches the affections, the passions, the humor, of
+the present time.  The brilliant success of the few good plays that
+have been written out of the rich life which we now live--the most
+varied, fruitful, and dramatically suggestive--ought to rid us
+forever of the buskin-fustian, except as a pantomimic or spectacular
+curiosity.
+
+We have no objection to Julius Caesar or Richard III. stalking about
+in impossible clothes) and stepping four feet at a stride, if they
+want to, but let them not claim to be more "legitimate" than "Ours"
+or "Rip Van Winkle."  There will probably be some orator for years
+and years to come, at every Fourth of July, who will go on asking,
+Where is Thebes?  but he does not care anything about it, and he does
+not really expect an answer.  I have sometimes wished I knew the
+exact site of Thebes, so that I could rise in the audience, and stop
+that question, at any rate.  It is legitimate, but it is tiresome.
+
+If we went to the bottom of this subject, I think we should find that
+the putting upon actors clothes to which they are unaccustomed makes
+them act and talk artificially, and often in a manner intolerable.
+
+An actor who has not the habits or instincts of a gentleman cannot be
+made to appear like one on the stage by dress; he only caricatures
+and discredits what he tries to represent; and the unaccustomed
+clothes and situation make him much more unnatural and insufferable
+than he would otherwise be.  Dressed appropriately for parts for
+which he is fitted, he will act well enough, probably.  What I mean
+is, that the clothes inappropriate to the man make the incongruity of
+him and his part more apparent.  Vulgarity is never so conspicuous as
+in fine apparel, on or off the stage, and never so self-conscious.
+Shall we have, then, no refined characters on the stage?  Yes; but
+let them be taken by men and women of taste and refinement and let us
+have done with this masquerading in false raiment, ancient and
+modern, which makes nearly every stage a travesty of nature and the
+whole theatre a painful pretension.  We do not expect the modern
+theatre to be a place of instruction (that business is now turned
+over to the telegraphic operator, who is making a new language), but
+it may give amusement instead of torture, and do a little in
+satirizing folly and kindling love of home and country by the way.
+
+This is a sort of summary of what we all said, and no one in
+particular is responsible for it; and in this it is like public
+opinion.  The Parson, however, whose only experience of the theatre
+was the endurance of an oratorio once, was very cordial in his
+denunciation of the stage altogether.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  Yet, acting itself is delightful; nothing so entertains
+us as mimicry, the personation of character.  We enjoy it in private.
+I confess that I am always pleased with the Parson in the character
+of grumbler.  He would be an immense success on the stage.  I don't
+know but the theatre will have to go back into the hands of the
+priests, who once controlled it.
+
+THE PARSON.  Scoffer!
+
+MANDEVILLE.  I can imagine how enjoyable the stage might be, cleared
+of all its traditionary nonsense, stilted language, stilted behavior,
+all the rubbish of false sentiment, false dress, and the manners of
+times that were both artificial and immoral, and filled with living
+characters, who speak the thought of to-day, with the wit and culture
+that are current to-day.  I've seen private theatricals, where all
+the performers were persons of cultivation, that....
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  So have I.  For something particularly cheerful,
+commend me to amateur theatricals.  I have passed some melancholy
+hours at them.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  That's because the performers acted the worn stage
+plays, and attempted to do them in the manner they had seen on the
+stage.  It is not always so.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  I suppose Mandeville would say that acting has got
+into a mannerism which is well described as stagey, and is supposed
+to be natural to the stage; just as half the modern poets write in a
+recognized form of literary manufacture, without the least impulse
+from within, and not with the purpose of saying anything, but of
+turning out a piece of literary work.  That's the reason we have so
+much poetry that impresses one like sets of faultless cabinet-
+furniture made by machinery.
+
+THE PARSON.  But you need n't talk of nature or naturalness in acting
+or in anything.  I tell you nature is poor stuff.  It can't go alone.
+Amateur acting--they get it up at church sociables nowadays--is apt
+to be as near nature as a school-boy's declamation.  Acting is the
+Devil's art.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Do you object to such innocent amusement?
+
+MANDEVILLE.  What the Parson objects to is, that he isn't amused.
+
+THE PARSON.  What's the use of objecting?  It's the fashion of the
+day to amuse people into the kingdom of heaven.
+
+HERBERT.  The Parson has got us off the track.  My notion about the
+stage is, that it keeps along pretty evenly with the rest of the
+world; the stage is usually quite up to the level of the audience.
+Assumed dress on the stage, since you were speaking of that, makes
+people no more constrained and self-conscious than it does off the
+stage.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  What sarcasm is coming now?
+
+HERBERT.  Well, you may laugh, but the world has n't got used to good
+clothes yet.  The majority do not wear them with ease.  People who
+only put on their best on rare and stated occasions step into an
+artificial feeling.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  I wonder if that's the reason the Parson finds it so
+difficult to get hold of his congregation.
+
+HERBERT.  I don't know how else to account for the formality and
+vapidity of a set "party," where all the guests are clothed in a
+manner to which they are unaccustomed, dressed into a condition of
+vivid self-consciousness.  The same people, who know each other
+perfectly well, will enjoy themselves together without restraint in
+their ordinary apparel.  But nothing can be more artificial than the
+behavior of people together who rarely "dress up."  It seems
+impossible to make the conversation as fine as the clothes, and so it
+dies in a kind of inane helplessness.  Especially is this true in the
+country, where people have not obtained the mastery of their clothes
+that those who live in the city have.  It is really absurd, at this
+stage of our civilization, that we should be so affected by such an
+insignificant accident as dress.  Perhaps Mandeville can tell us
+whether this clothes panic prevails in the older societies.
+
+THE PARSON.  Don't.  We've heard it; about its being one of the
+Englishman's thirty-nine articles that he never shall sit down to
+dinner without a dress-coat, and all that.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  I wish, for my part, that everybody who has time to
+eat a dinner would dress for that, the principal event of the day,
+and do respectful and leisurely justice to it.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  It has always seemed singular to me that men who
+work so hard to build elegant houses, and have good dinners, should
+take so little leisure to enjoy either.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  If the Parson will permit me, I should say that the
+chief clothes question abroad just now is, how to get any; and it is
+the same with the dinners.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+It is quite unnecessary to say that the talk about clothes ran into
+the question of dress-reform, and ran out, of course.  You cannot
+converse on anything nowadays that you do not run into some reform.
+The Parson says that everybody is intent on reforming everything but
+himself.  We are all trying to associate ourselves to make everybody
+else behave as we do.  Said--
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  Dress reform!  As if people couldn't change their
+clothes without concert of action.  Resolved, that nobody should put
+on a clean collar oftener than his neighbor does.  I'm sick of every
+sort of reform.  I should like to retrograde awhile.  Let a dyspeptic
+ascertain that he can eat porridge three times a day and live, and
+straightway he insists that everybody ought to eat porridge and
+nothing else.  I mean to get up a society every member of which shall
+be pledged to do just as he pleases.
+
+THE PARSON.  That would be the most radical reform of the day.  That
+would be independence.  If people dressed according to their means,
+acted according to their convictions, and avowed their opinions, it
+would revolutionize society.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  I should like to walk into your church some Sunday
+and see the changes under such conditions.
+
+THE PARSON.  It might give you a novel sensation to walk in at any
+time.  And I'm not sure but the church would suit your retrograde
+ideas.  It's so Gothic that a Christian of the Middle Ages, if he
+were alive, couldn't see or hear in it.
+
+HERBERT.  I don't know whether these reformers who carry the world on
+their shoulders in such serious fashion, especially the little fussy
+fellows, who are themselves the standard of the regeneration they
+seek, are more ludicrous than pathetic.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  Pathetic, by all means.  But I don't know that they
+would be pathetic if they were not ludicrous.  There are those reform
+singers who have been piping away so sweetly now for thirty years,
+with never any diminution of cheerful, patient enthusiasm; their hair
+growing longer and longer, their eyes brighter and brighter, and
+their faces, I do believe, sweeter and sweeter; singing always with
+the same constancy for the slave, for the drunkard, for the
+snufftaker, for the suffragist,--"There'sa-good-time-com-ing-boys
+(nothing offensive is intended by "boys," it is put in for euphony,
+and sung pianissimo, not to offend the suffragists), it's-
+almost-here."  And what a brightening up of their faces there is when
+they say, "it's-al-most-here," not doubting for a moment that "it's"
+coming tomorrow; and the accompanying melodeon also wails its wheezy
+suggestion that "it's-al-most-here," that "good-time" (delayed so
+long, waiting perhaps for the invention of the melodeon) when we
+shall all sing and all play that cheerful instrument, and all vote,
+and none shall smoke, or drink, or eat meat, "boys."  I declare it
+almost makes me cry to hear them, so touching is their faith in the
+midst of a jeer-ing world.
+
+HERBERT.  I suspect that no one can be a genuine reformer and not be
+ridiculous.  I mean those who give themselves up to the unction of
+the reform.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Does n't that depend upon whether the reform is large
+or petty?
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  I should say rather that the reforms attracted to
+them all the ridiculous people, who almost always manage to become
+the most conspicuous.  I suppose that nobody dare write out all that
+was ludicrous in the great abolition movement.  But it was not at all
+comical to those most zealous in it; they never could see--more's the
+pity, for thereby they lose much--the humorous side of their per-
+formances, and that is why the pathos overcomes one's sense of the
+absurdity of such people.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  It is lucky for the world that so many are willing
+to be absurd.
+
+HERBERT.  Well, I think that, in the main, the reformers manage to
+look out for themselves tolerably well.  I knew once a lean and
+faithful agent of a great philanthropic scheme, who contrived to
+collect every year for the cause just enough to support him at a good
+hotel comfortably.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  That's identifying one's self with the cause.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  You remember the great free-soil convention at Buffalo,
+in 1848, when Van Buren was nominated.  All the world of hope and
+discontent went there, with its projects of reform.  There seemed to
+be no doubt, among hundreds that attended it, that if they could get
+a resolution passed that bread should be buttered on both sides, it
+would be so buttered.  The platform provided for every want and every
+woe.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  I remember.  If you could get the millennium by
+political action, we should have had it then.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  We went there on the Erie Canal, the exciting and
+fashionable mode of travel in those days.  I was a boy when we began
+the voyage.  The boat was full of conventionists; all the talk was of
+what must be done there.  I got the impression that as that boat-load
+went so would go the convention; and I was not alone in that feeling.
+I can never be grateful enough for one little scrubby fanatic who was
+on board, who spent most of his time in drafting resolutions and
+reading them privately to the passengers.  He was a very
+enthusiastic, nervous, and somewhat dirty little man, who wore a
+woolen muffler about his throat, although it was summer; he had
+nearly lost his voice, and could only speak in a hoarse, disagreeable
+whisper, and he always carried a teacup about, containing some sticky
+compound which he stirred frequently with a spoon, and took, whenever
+he talked, in order to improve his voice.  If he was separated from
+his cup for ten minutes, his whisper became inaudible.  I greatly
+delighted in him, for I never saw any one who had so much enjoyment
+of his own importance.  He was fond of telling what he would do if
+the conven-tion rejected such and such resolutions.  He'd make it hot
+for them.  I did n't know but he'd make them take his mixture.  The
+convention had got to take a stand on tobacco, for one thing.  He'd
+heard Gid-dings took snuff; he'd see.  When we at length reached
+Buffalo he took his teacup and carpet-bag of resolutions and went
+ashore in a great hurry.  I saw him once again in a cheap restaurant,
+whispering a resolution to another delegate, but he did n't appear in
+the con-vention.  I have often wondered what became of him.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  Probably he's consul somewhere.  They mostly are.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  After all, it's the easiest thing in the world to
+sit and sneer at eccentricities.  But what a dead and uninteresting
+world it would be if we were all proper, and kept within the lines!
+Affairs would soon be reduced to mere machinery.  There are moments,
+even days, when all interests and movements appear to be settled upon
+some universal plan of equilibrium; but just then some restless and
+absurd person is inspired to throw the machine out of gear.  These
+individual eccentricities seem to be the special providences in the
+general human scheme.
+
+HERBERT.  They make it very hard work for the rest of us, who are
+disposed to go along peaceably and smoothly.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  And stagnate.  I 'm not sure but the natural condition
+of this planet is war, and that when it is finally towed to its
+anchorage--if the universe has any harbor for worlds out of
+commission--it will look like the Fighting Temeraire in Turner's
+picture.
+
+HERBERT.  There is another thing I should like to understand: the
+tendency of people who take up one reform, perhaps a personal
+regeneration in regard to some bad habit, to run into a dozen other
+isms, and get all at sea in several vague and pernicious theories and
+practices.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  Herbert seems to think there is safety in a man's being
+anchored, even if it is to a bad habit.
+
+HERBERT.  Thank you.  But what is it in human nature that is apt to
+carry a man who may take a step in personal reform into so many
+extremes?
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  Probably it's human nature.
+
+HERBERT.  Why, for instance, should a reformed drunkard (one of the
+noblest examples of victory over self) incline, as I have known the
+reformed to do, to spiritism, or a woman suffragist to "pantarchism"
+(whatever that is), and want to pull up all the roots of society, and
+expect them to grow in the air, like orchids; or a Graham-bread
+disciple become enamored of Communism?
+
+MANDEVILLE.  I know an excellent Conservative who would, I think,
+suit you; he says that he does not see how a man who indulges in the
+theory and practice of total abstinence can be a consistent believer
+in the Christian religion.
+
+HERBERT.  Well, I can understand what he means: that a person is
+bound to hold himself in conditions of moderation and control, using
+and not abusing the things of this world, practicing temperance, not
+retiring into a convent of artificial restrictions in order to escape
+the full responsibility of self-control.  And yet his theory would
+certainly wreck most men and women.  What does the Parson say?
+
+THE PARSON. That the world is going crazy on the notion of individual
+ability.  Whenever a man attempts to reform himself, or anybody else,
+without the aid of the Christian religion, he is sure to go adrift,
+and is pretty certain to be blown about by absurd theories, and
+shipwrecked on some pernicious ism.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  I think the discussion has touched bottom.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+I never felt so much the value of a house with a backlog in it as
+during the late spring; for its lateness was its main feature.
+Everybody was grumbling about it, as if it were something ordered
+from the tailor, and not ready on the day.  Day after day it snowed,
+night after night it blew a gale from the northwest; the frost sunk
+deeper and deeper into the ground; there was a popular longing for
+spring that was almost a prayer; the weather bureau was active;
+Easter was set a week earlier than the year before, but nothing
+seemed to do any good.  The robins sat under the evergreens, and
+piped in a disconsolate mood, and at last the bluejays came and
+scolded in the midst of the snow-storm, as they always do scold in
+any weather.  The crocuses could n't be coaxed to come up, even with
+a pickaxe.  I'm almost ashamed now to recall what we said of the
+weather only I think that people are no more accountable for what
+they say of the weather than for their remarks when their corns are
+stepped on.
+
+We agreed, however, that, but for disappointed expectations and the
+prospect of late lettuce and peas, we were gaining by the fire as
+much as we were losing by the frost.  And the Mistress fell to
+chanting the comforts of modern civilization.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER said he should like to know, by the way, if our
+civilization differed essentially from any other in anything but its
+comforts.
+
+HERBERT.  We are no nearer religious unity.
+
+THE PARSON.  We have as much war as ever.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  There was never such a social turmoil.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  The artistic part of our nature does not appear to
+have grown.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  We are quarreling as to whether we are in fact
+radically different from the brutes.
+
+HERBERT.  Scarcely two people think alike about the proper kind of
+human government.
+
+THE PARSON.  Our poetry is made out of words, for the most part, and
+not drawn from the living sources.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  And Mr. Cumming is uncorking his seventh phial.  I
+never felt before what barbarians we are.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Yet you won't deny that the life of the average man is
+safer and every way more comfortable than it was even a century ago.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  But what I want to know is, whether what we call
+our civilization has done any thing more for mankind at large than to
+increase the ease and pleasure of living?  Science has multiplied
+wealth, and facilitated intercourse, and the result is refinement of
+manners and a diffusion of education and information.  Are men and
+women essentially changed, however?  I suppose the Parson would say
+we have lost faith, for one thing.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  And superstition; and gained toleration.
+
+HERBERT.  The question is, whether toleration is anything but
+indifference.
+
+THE PARSON.  Everything is tolerated now but Christian orthodoxy.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  It's easy enough to make a brilliant catalogue of
+external achievements, but I take it that real progress ought to be
+in man himself.  It is not a question of what a man enjoys, but what
+he can produce.  The best sculpture was executed two thousand years
+ago.  The best paintings are several centuries old.  We study the
+finest architecture in its ruins.  The standards of poetry are
+Shakespeare, Homer, Isaiah, and David.  The latest of the arts,
+music, culminated in composition, though not in execution, a century
+ago.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  Yet culture in music certainly distinguishes the
+civilization of this age.  It has taken eighteen hundred years for
+the principles of the Christian religion to begin to be practically
+incorporated in government and in ordinary business, and it will take
+a long time for Beethoven to be popularly recognized; but there is
+growth toward him, and not away from him, and when the average
+culture has reached his height, some other genius will still more
+profoundly and delicately express the highest thoughts.
+
+HERBERT.  I wish I could believe it.  The spirit of this age is
+expressed by the Calliope.
+
+THE PARSON.  Yes, it remained for us to add church-bells and cannon
+to the orchestra.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  It's a melancholy thought to me that we can no longer
+express ourselves with the bass-drum; there used to be the whole of
+the Fourth of July in its patriotic throbs.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  We certainly have made great progress in one art,--that
+of war.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  And in the humane alleviations of the miseries of
+war.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  The most discouraging symptom to me in our
+undoubted advance in the comforts and refinements of society is the
+facility with which men slip back into barbarism, if the artificial
+and external accidents of their lives are changed.  We have always
+kept a fringe of barbarism on our shifting western frontier; and I
+think there never was a worse society than that in California and
+Nevada in their early days.
+
+THE YOUNG LADY.  That is because women were absent.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  But women are not absent in London and New York,
+and they are conspicuous in the most exceptionable demonstrations of
+social anarchy.  Certainly they were not wanting in Paris.  Yes,
+there was a city widely accepted as the summit of our material
+civilization.  No city was so beautiful, so luxurious, so safe, so
+well ordered for the comfort of living, and yet it needed only a
+month or two to make it a kind of pandemonium of savagery.  Its
+citizens were the barbarians who destroyed its own monuments of
+civilization.  I don't mean to say that there was no apology for what
+was done there in the deceit and fraud that preceded it, but I simply
+notice how ready the tiger was to appear, and how little restraint
+all the material civilization was to the beast.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  I can't deny your instances, and yet I somehow feel
+that pretty much all you have been saying is in effect untrue.  Not
+one of you would be willing to change our civilization for any other.
+In your estimate you take no account, it seems to me, of the growth
+of charity.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  And you might add a recognition of the value of human
+life.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  I don't believe there was ever before diffused
+everywhere such an element of good-will, and never before were women
+so much engaged in philanthropic work.
+
+THE PARSON.  It must be confessed that one of the best signs of the
+times is woman's charity for woman.  That certainly never existed to
+the same extent in any other civilization.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  And there is another thing that distinguishes us, or is
+beginning to.  That is, the notion that you can do something more
+with a criminal than punish him; and that society has not done its
+duty when it has built a sufficient number of schools for one class,
+or of decent jails for another.
+
+HERBERT.  It will be a long time before we get decent jails.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  But when we do they will begin to be places of education
+and training as much as of punishment and disgrace.  The public will
+provide teachers in the prisons as it now does in the common schools.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  The imperfections of our methods and means of
+selecting those in the community who ought to be in prison are so
+great, that extra care in dealing with them becomes us.  We are
+beginning to learn that we cannot draw arbitrary lines with infal-
+lible justice.  Perhaps half those who are convicted of crimes are as
+capable of reformation as half those transgressors who are not
+convicted, or who keep inside the statutory law.
+
+HERBERT.  Would you remove the odium of prison?
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  No; but I would have criminals believe, and society
+believe, that in going to prison a man or woman does not pass an
+absolute line and go into a fixed state.
+
+THE PARSON.  That is, you would not have judgment and retribution
+begin in this world.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  Don't switch us off into theology.  I hate to go up
+in a balloon, or see any one else go.
+
+HERBERT.  Don't you think there is too much leniency toward crime and
+criminals, taking the place of justice, in these days?
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  There may be too much disposition to condone the
+crimes of those who have been considered respectable.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  That is, scarcely anybody wants to see his friend
+hung.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  I think a large part of the bitterness of the condemned
+arises from a sense of the inequality with which justice is
+administered.  I am surprised, in visiting jails, to find so few
+respectable-looking convicts.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  Nobody will go to jail nowadays who thinks anything
+of himself.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER.  When society seriously takes hold of the
+reformation of criminals (say with as much determination as it does
+to carry an election) this false leniency will disappear; for it
+partly springs from a feeling that punishment is unequal, and does
+not discriminate enough in individuals, and that society itself has
+no right to turn a man over to the Devil, simply because he shows a
+strong leaning that way.  A part of the scheme of those who work for
+the reformation of criminals is to render punishment more certain,
+and to let its extent depend upon reformation.  There is no reason
+why a professional criminal, who won't change his trade for an honest
+one, should have intervals of freedom in his prison life in which he
+is let loose to prey upon society.  Criminals ought to be discharged,
+like insane patients, when they are cured.
+
+OUR NEXT DOOR.  It's a wonder to me, what with our multitudes of
+statutes and hosts of detectives, that we are any of us out of jail.
+I never come away from a visit to a State-prison without a new spasm
+of fear and virtue.  The faculties for getting into jail seem to be
+ample.  We want more organizations for keeping people out.
+
+MANDEVILLE.  That is the sort of enterprise the women are engaged in,
+the frustration of the criminal tendencies of those born in vice.  I
+believe women have it in their power to regenerate the world morally.
+
+THE PARSON.  It's time they began to undo the mischief of their
+mother.
+
+THE MISTRESS.  The reason they have not made more progress is that
+they have usually confined their individual efforts to one man; they
+are now organizing for a general campaign.
+
+THE FIRE-TENDER. I'm not sure but here is where the ameliorations of
+the conditions of life, which are called the comforts of this
+civilization, come in, after all, and distinguish the age above all
+others.  They have enabled the finer powers of women to have play as
+they could not in a ruder age.  I should like to live a hundred years
+and see what they will do.
+
+HERBERT.  Not much but change the fashions, unless they submit them-
+selves to the same training and discipline that men do.
+
+I have no doubt that Herbert had to apologize for this remark
+afterwards in private, as men are quite willing to do in particular
+cases; it is only in general they are unjust.  The talk drifted off
+into general and particular depreciation of other times.  Mandeville
+described a picture, in which he appeared to have confidence, of a
+fight between an Iguanodon and a Megalosaurus, where these huge
+iron-clad brutes were represented chewing up different portions of
+each other's bodies in a forest of the lower cretaceous period.  So
+far as he could learn, that sort of thing went on unchecked for
+hundreds of thousands of years, and was typical of the intercourse of
+the races of man till a comparatively recent period.  There was also
+that gigantic swan, the Plesiosaurus; in fact, all the early brutes
+were disgusting.  He delighted to think that even the lower animals
+had improved, both in appearance and disposition.
+
+The conversation ended, therefore, in a very amicable manner, having
+been taken to a ground that nobody knew anything about.
+
+
+
+
+NINTH STUDY
+
+
+I
+
+Can you have a backlog in July?  That depends upon circumstances.
+
+In northern New England it is considered a sign of summer when the
+housewives fill the fireplaces with branches of mountain laurel, and,
+later, with the feathery stalks of the asparagus.  This is often,
+too, the timid expression of a tender feeling, under Puritanic
+repression, which has not sufficient vent in the sweet-william and
+hollyhock at the front door.  This is a yearning after beauty and
+ornamentation which has no other means of gratifying itself
+
+In the most rigid circumstances, the graceful nature of woman thus
+discloses itself in these mute expressions of an undeveloped taste.
+You may never doubt what the common flowers growing along the pathway
+to the front door mean to the maiden of many summers who tends them;
+--love and religion, and the weariness of an uneventful life.  The
+sacredness of the Sabbath, the hidden memory of an unrevealed and
+unrequited affection, the slow years of gathering and wasting
+sweetness, are in the smell of the pink and the sweet-clover.  These
+sentimental plants breathe something of the longing of the maiden who
+sits in the Sunday evenings of summer on the lonesome front
+doorstone, singing the hymns of the saints, and perennial as the
+myrtle that grows thereby.
+
+Yet not always in summer, even with the aid of unrequited love and
+devotional feeling, is it safe to let the fire go out on the hearth,
+in our latitude.  I remember when the last almost total eclipse of
+the sun happened in August, what a bone-piercing chill came over the
+world.  Perhaps the imagination had something to do with causing the
+chill from that temporary hiding of the sun to feel so much more
+penetrating than that from the coming on of night, which shortly
+followed.  It was impossible not to experience a shudder as of the
+approach of the Judgment Day, when the shadows were flung upon the
+green lawn, and we all stood in the wan light, looking unfamiliar to
+each other.  The birds in the trees felt the spell.  We could in
+fancy see those spectral camp-fires which men would build on the
+earth, if the sun should slow its fires down to about the brilliancy
+of the moon.  It was a great relief to all of us to go into the
+house, and, before a blazing wood-fire, talk of the end of the world.
+
+In New England it is scarcely ever safe to let the fire go out; it is
+best to bank it, for it needs but the turn of a weather-vane at any
+hour to sweep the
+
+Atlantic rains over us, or to bring down the chill of Hudson's Bay.
+There are days when the steam ship on the Atlantic glides calmly
+along under a full canvas, but its central fires must always be ready
+to make steam against head-winds and antagonistic waves.  Even in our
+most smiling summer days one needs to have the materials of a
+cheerful fire at hand.  It is only by this readiness for a change
+that one can preserve an equal mind.  We are made provident and
+sagacious by the fickleness of our climate.  We should be another
+sort of people if we could have that serene, unclouded trust in
+nature which the Egyptian has.  The gravity and repose of the Eastern
+peoples is due to the unchanging aspect of the sky, and the
+deliberation and reg-ularity of the great climatic processes.  Our
+literature, politics, religion, show the effect of unsettled weather.
+But they compare favorably with the Egyptian, for all that.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+You cannot know, the Young Lady wrote, with what longing I look back
+to those winter days by the fire; though all the windows are open to
+this May morning, and the brown thrush is singing in the chestnut-
+tree, and I see everywhere that first delicate flush of spring, which
+seems too evanescent to be color even, and amounts to little more
+than a suffusion of the atmosphere.  I doubt, indeed, if the spring
+is exactly what it used to be, or if, as we get on in years [no one
+ever speaks of "getting on in years" till she is virtually settled in
+life], its promises and suggestions do not seem empty in comparison
+with the sympathies and responses of human friendship, and the
+stimulation of society.  Sometimes nothing is so tiresome as a
+perfect day in a perfect season.
+
+I only imperfectly understand this.  The Parson says that woman is
+always most restless under the most favorable conditions, and that
+there is no state in which she is really happy except that of change.
+I suppose this is the truth taught in what has been called the "Myth
+of the Garden."  Woman is perpetual revolution, and is that element
+in the world which continually destroys and re-creates.  She is the
+experimenter and the suggester of new combinations.  She has no
+belief in any law of eternal fitness of things.  She is never even
+content with any arrangement of her own house.  The only reason the
+Mistress could give, when she rearranged her apartment, for hanging a
+picture in what seemed the most inappropriate place, was that it had
+never been there before.  Woman has no respect for tradition, and
+because a thing is as it is is sufficient reason for changing it.
+When she gets into law, as she has come into literature, we shall
+gain something in the destruction of all our vast and musty libraries
+of precedents, which now fetter our administration of individual
+justice.  It is Mandeville's opinion that women are not so
+sentimental as men, and are not so easily touched with the unspoken
+poetry of nature; being less poetical, and having less imagination,
+they are more fitted for practical affairs, and would make less
+failures in business.  I have noticed the almost selfish passion for
+their flowers which old gardeners have, and their reluctance to part
+with a leaf or a blossom from their family.  They love the flowers
+for themselves.  A woman raises flowers for their use.  She is
+destruct-ion in a conservatory.  She wants the flowers for her lover,
+for the sick, for the poor, for the Lord on Easter day, for the
+ornamentation of her house.  She delights in the costly pleasure of
+sacrificing them.  She never sees a flower but she has an intense but
+probably sinless desire to pick it.
+
+It has been so from the first, though from the first she has been
+thwarted by the accidental superior strength of man.  Whatever she
+has obtained has been by craft, and by the same coaxing which the sun
+uses to draw the blossoms out of the apple-trees.  I am not surprised
+to learn that she has become tired of indulgences, and wants some of
+the original rights.  We are just beginning to find out the extent to
+which she has been denied and subjected, and especially her condition
+among the primitive and barbarous races.  I have never seen it in a
+platform of grievances, but it is true that among the Fijians she is
+not, unless a better civilization has wrought a change in her behalf,
+permitted to eat people, even her own sex, at the feasts of the men;
+the dainty enjoyed by the men being considered too good to be wasted
+on women.  Is anything wanting to this picture of the degradation of
+woman?  By a refinement of cruelty she receives no benefit whatever
+from the missionaries who are sent out by--what to her must seem a
+new name for Tantalus--the American Board.
+
+I suppose the Young Lady expressed a nearly universal feeling in her
+regret at the breaking up of the winter-fireside company.  Society
+needs a certain seclusion and the sense of security.  Spring opens
+the doors and the windows, and the noise and unrest of the world are
+let in.  Even a winter thaw begets a desire to travel, and summer
+brings longings innumerable, and disturbs the most tranquil souls.
+Nature is, in fact, a suggester of uneasiness, a promoter of
+pilgrimages and of excursions of the fancy which never come to any
+satisfactory haven.  The summer in these latitudes is a campaign of
+sentiment and a season, for the most part, of restlessness and
+discontent.  We grow now in hot-houses roses which, in form and
+color, are magnificent, and appear to be full of passion; yet one
+simple June rose of the open air has for the Young Lady, I doubt not,
+more sentiment and suggestion of love than a conservatory full of
+them in January.  And this suggestion, leavened as it is with the
+inconstancy of nature, stimulated by the promises which are so often
+like the peach-blossom of the Judas-tree, unsatisfying by reason of
+its vague possibilities, differs so essentially from the more limited
+and attainable and home-like emotion born of quiet intercourse by the
+winter fireside, that I do not wonder the Young Lady feels as if some
+spell had been broken by the transition of her life from in-doors to
+out-doors.  Her secret, if secret she has, which I do not at all
+know, is shared by the birds and the new leaves and the blossoms on
+the fruit trees.  If we lived elsewhere, in that zone where the poets
+pretend always to dwell, we might be content, perhaps I should say
+drugged, by the sweet influences of an unchanging summer; but not
+living elsewhere, we can understand why the Young Lady probably now
+looks forward to the hearthstone as the most assured center of
+enduring attachment.
+
+If it should ever become the sad duty of this biographer to write of
+disappointed love, I am sure he would not have any sensational story
+to tell of the Young Lady.  She is one of those women whose
+unostentatious lives are the chief blessing of humanity; who, with a
+sigh heard only by herself and no change in her sunny face, would put
+behind her all the memories of winter evenings and the promises of
+May mornings, and give her life to some ministration of human
+kindness with an assiduity that would make her occupation appear like
+an election and a first choice.  The disappointed man scowls, and
+hates his race, and threatens self-destruction, choosing oftener the
+flowing bowl than the dagger, and becoming a reeling nuisance in the
+world.  It would be much more manly in him to become the secretary of
+a Dorcas society.
+
+I suppose it is true that women work for others with less expectation
+of reward than men, and give themselves to labors of self-sacrifice
+with much less thought of self.  At least, this is true unless woman
+goes into some public performance, where notoriety has its
+attractions, and mounts some cause, to ride it man-fashion, when I
+think she becomes just as eager for applause and just as willing that
+self-sacrifice should result in self-elevation as man.  For her,
+usually, are not those unbought--presentations which are forced upon
+firemen, philanthropists, legislators, railroad-men, and the
+superintendents of the moral instruction of the young.  These are
+almost always pleasing and unexpected tributes to worth and modesty,
+and must be received with satisfaction when the public service
+rendered has not been with a view to procuring them.  We should say
+that one ought to be most liable to receive a "testimonial" who,
+being a superintendent of any sort, did not superintend with a view
+to getting it.  But "testimonials" have become so common that a
+modest man ought really to be afraid to do his simple duty, for fear
+his motives will be misconstrued.  Yet there are instances of very
+worthy men who have had things publicly presented to them.  It is the
+blessed age of gifts and the reward of private virtue.  And the
+presentations have become so frequent that we wish there were a
+little more variety in them.  There never was much sense in giving a
+gallant fellow a big speaking-trumpet to carry home to aid him in his
+intercourse with his family; and the festive ice-pitcher has become a
+too universal sign of absolute devotion to the public interest.  The
+lack of one will soon be proof that a man is a knave.  The
+legislative cane with the gold head, also, is getting to be
+recognized as the sign of the immaculate public servant, as the
+inscription on it testifies, and the steps of suspicion must ere-long
+dog him who does not carry one.  The "testimonial" business is, in
+truth, a little demoralizing, almost as much so as the "donation;"
+and the demoralization has extended even to our language, so that a
+perfectly respectable man is often obliged to see himself "made the
+recipient of" this and that.  It would be much better, if
+testimonials must be, to give a man a barrel of flour or a keg of
+oysters, and let him eat himself at once back into the ranks of
+ordinary men.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+We may have a testimonial class in time, a sort of nobility here in
+America, made so by popular gift, the members of which will all be
+able to show some stick or piece of plated ware or massive chain, "of
+which they have been the recipients."  In time it may be a
+distinction not to belong to it, and it may come to be thought more
+blessed to give than to receive.  For it must have been remarked that
+it is not always to the cleverest and the most amiable and modest man
+that the deputation comes with the inevitable ice-pitcher (and
+"salver to match"), which has in it the magic and subtle quality of
+making the hour in which it is received the proudest of one's life.
+There has not been discovered any method of rewarding all the
+deserving people and bringing their virtues into the prominence of
+notoriety.  And, indeed, it would be an unreasonable world if there
+had, for its chief charm and sweetness lie in the excellences in it
+which are reluctantly disclosed; one of the chief pleasures of living
+is in the daily discovery of good traits, nobilities, and kindliness
+both in those we have long known and in the chance passenger whose
+way happens for a day to lie with ours.  The longer I live the more I
+am impressed with the excess of human kindness over human hatred, and
+the greater willingness to oblige than to disoblige that one meets at
+every turn.  The selfishness in politics, the jealousy in letters,
+the bickering in art, the bitterness in theology, are all as nothing
+compared to the sweet charities, sacrifices, and deferences of
+private life.  The people are few whom to know intimately is to
+dislike.  Of course you want to hate somebody, if you can, just to
+keep your powers of discrimination bright, and to save yourself from
+becoming a mere mush of good-nature; but perhaps it is well to hate
+some historical person who has been dead so long as to be indifferent
+to it.  It is more comfortable to hate people we have never seen.  I
+cannot but think that Judas Iscariot has been of great service to the
+world as a sort of buffer for moral indignation which might have made
+a collision nearer home but for his utilized treachery.  I used to
+know a venerable and most amiable gentleman and scholar, whose
+hospitable house was always overrun with wayside ministers, agents,
+and philanthropists, who loved their fellow-men better than they
+loved to work for their living; and he, I suspect, kept his moral
+balance even by indulgence in violent but most distant dislikes.
+When I met him casually in the street, his first salutation was
+likely to be such as this: "What a liar that Alison was!  Don't you
+hate him?"  And then would follow specifications of historical
+inveracity enough to make one's blood run cold.  When he was thus
+discharged of his hatred by such a conductor, I presume he had not a
+spark left for those whose mission was partly to live upon him and
+other generous souls.
+
+Mandeville and I were talking of the unknown people, one rainy night
+by the fire, while the Mistress was fitfully and interjectionally
+playing with the piano-keys in an improvising mood.  Mandeville has a
+good deal of sentiment about him, and without any effort talks so
+beautifully sometimes that I constantly regret I cannot report his
+language.  He has, besides, that sympathy of presence--I believe it
+is called magnetism by those who regard the brain as only a sort of
+galvanic battery--which makes it a greater pleasure to see him think,
+if I may say so, than to hear some people talk.
+
+It makes one homesick in this world to think that there are so many
+rare people he can never know; and so many excellent people that
+scarcely any one will know, in fact.  One discovers a friend by
+chance, and cannot but feel regret that twenty or thirty years of
+life maybe have been spent without the least knowledge of him.  When
+he is once known, through him opening is made into another little
+world, into a circle of culture and loving hearts and enthusiasm in a
+dozen congenial pursuits, and prejudices perhaps.  How instantly and
+easily the bachelor doubles his world when he marries, and enters
+into the unknown fellowship of the to him continually increasing
+company which is known in popular language as "all his wife's
+relations."
+
+Near at hand daily, no doubt, are those worth knowing intimately, if
+one had the time and the opportunity.  And when one travels he sees
+what a vast material there is for society and friendship, of which he
+can never avail himself.  Car-load after car-load of summer travel
+goes by one at any railway-station, out of which he is sure he could
+choose a score of life-long friends, if the conductor would introduce
+him.  There are faces of refinement, of quick wit, of sympathetic
+kindness,--interesting people, traveled people, entertaining people,
+--as you would say in Boston, "nice people you would admire to know,"
+whom you constantly meet and pass without a sign of recognition, many
+of whom are no doubt your long-lost brothers and sisters.  You can
+see that they also have their worlds and their interests, and they
+probably know a great many "nice" people.  The matter of personal
+liking and attachment is a good deal due to the mere fortune of
+association.  More fast friendships and pleasant acquaintanceships
+are formed on the Atlantic steamships between those who would have
+been only indifferent acquaintances elsewhere, than one would think
+possible on a voyage which naturally makes one as selfish as he is
+indifferent to his personal appearance.  The Atlantic is the only
+power on earth I know that can make a woman indifferent to her
+personal appearance.
+
+Mandeville remembers, and I think without detriment to himself, the
+glimpses he had in the White Mountains once of a young lady of whom
+his utmost efforts could give him no further information than her
+name.  Chance sight of her on a passing stage or amid a group on some
+mountain lookout was all he ever had, and he did not even know
+certainly whether she was the perfect beauty and the lovely character
+he thought her.  He said he would have known her, however, at a great
+distance; there was to her form that command of which we hear so much
+and which turns out to be nearly all command after the "ceremony;" or
+perhaps it was something in the glance of her eye or the turn of her
+head, or very likely it was a sweet inherited reserve or hauteur that
+captivated him, that filled his days with the expectation of seeing
+her, and made him hasten to the hotel-registers in the hope that her
+name was there recorded.  Whatever it was, she interested him as one
+of the people he would like to know; and it piqued him that there was
+a life, rich in friendships, no doubt, in tastes, in many
+noblenesses, one of thousands of such, that must be absolutely
+nothing to him,--nothing but a window into heaven momentarily opened
+and then closed.  I have myself no idea that she was a countess
+incognito, or that she had descended from any greater heights than
+those where Mandeville saw her, but I have always regretted that she
+went her way so mysteriously and left no glow, and that we shall wear
+out the remainder of our days without her society.  I have looked for
+her name, but always in vain, among the attendants at the rights-
+conventions, in the list of those good Americans presented at court,
+among those skeleton names that appear as the remains of beauty in
+the morning journals after a ball to the wandering prince, in the
+reports of railway collisions and steamboat explosions.  No news
+comes of her.  And so imperfect are our means of communication in
+this world that, for anything we know, she may have left it long ago
+by some private way.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+The lasting regret that we cannot know more of the bright, sincere,
+and genuine people of the world is increased by the fact that they
+are all different from each other.  Was it not Madame de Sevigne who
+said she had loved several different women for several different
+qualities?  Every real person--for there are persons as there are
+fruits that have no distinguishing flavor, mere gooseberries--has a
+distinct quality, and the finding it is always like the discovery of
+a new island to the voyager.  The physical world we shall exhaust
+some day, having a written description of every foot of it to which
+we can turn; but we shall never get the different qualities of people
+into a biographical dictionary, and the making acquaintance with a
+human being will never cease to be an exciting experiment.  We cannot
+even classify men so as to aid us much in our estimate of them.  The
+efforts in this direction are ingenious, but unsatisfactory.  If I
+hear that a man is lymphatic or nervous-sanguine, I cannot tell
+therefrom whether I shall like and trust him.  He may produce a
+phrenological chart showing that his knobby head is the home of all
+the virtues, and that the vicious tendencies are represented by holes
+in his cranium, and yet I cannot be sure that he will not be as
+disagreeable as if phrenology had not been invented.  I feel
+sometimes that phrenology is the refuge of mediocrity.  Its charts
+are almost as misleading concerning character as photographs.  And
+photography may be described as the art which enables commonplace
+mediocrity to look like genius.  The heavy-jowled man with shallow
+cerebrum has only to incline his head so that the lying instrument
+can select a favorable focus, to appear in the picture with the brow
+of a sage and the chin of a poet.  Of all the arts for ministering to
+human vanity the photographic is the most useful, but it is a poor
+aid in the revelation of character.  You shall learn more of a man's
+real nature by seeing him walk once up the broad aisle of his church
+to his pew on Sunday, than by studying his photograph for a month.
+
+No, we do not get any certain standard of men by a chart of their
+temperaments; it will hardly answer to select a wife by the color of
+her hair; though it be by nature as red as a cardinal's hat, she may
+be no more constant than if it were dyed.  The farmer who shuns all
+the lymphatic beauties in his neighborhood, and selects to wife the
+most nervous-sanguine, may find that she is unwilling to get up in
+the winter mornings and make the kitchen fire.  Many a man, even in
+this scientific age which professes to label us all, has been cruelly
+deceived in this way.  Neither the blondes nor the brunettes act
+according to the advertisement of their temperaments.  The truth is
+that men refuse to come under the classifications of the pseudo-
+scientists, and all our new nomenclatures do not add much to our
+knowledge.  You know what to expect--if the comparison will be
+pardoned--of a horse with certain points; but you wouldn't dare go on
+a journey with a man merely upon the strength of knowing that his
+temperament was the proper mixture of the sanguine and the
+phlegmatic.  Science is not able to teach us concerning men as it
+teaches us of horses, though I am very far from saying that there are
+not traits of nobleness and of meanness that run through families and
+can be calculated to appear in individuals with absolute certainty;
+one family will be trusty and another tricky through all its members
+for generations; noble strains and ignoble strains are perpetuated.
+When we hear that she has eloped with the stable-boy and married him,
+we are apt to remark, "Well, she was a Bogardus."  And when we read
+that she has gone on a mission and has died, distinguishing herself
+by some extraordinary devotion to the heathen at Ujiji, we think it
+sufficient to say, "Yes, her mother married into the Smiths."  But
+this knowledge comes of our experience of special families, and
+stands us in stead no further.
+
+If we cannot classify men scientifically and reduce them under a kind
+of botanical order, as if they had a calculable vegetable
+development, neither can we gain much knowledge of them by
+comparison.  It does not help me at all in my estimate of their
+characters to compare Mandeville with the Young Lady, or Our Next
+Door with the Parson.  The wise man does not permit himself to set up
+even in his own mind any comparison of his friends.  His friendship
+is capable of going to extremes with many people, evoked as it is by
+many qualities.  When Mandeville goes into my garden in June I can
+usually find him in a particular bed of strawberries, but he does not
+speak disrespectfully of the others.  When Nature, says Mandeville,
+consents to put herself into any sort of strawberry, I have no
+criticisms to make, I am only glad that I have been created into the
+same world with such a delicious manifestation of the Divine favor.
+If I left Mandeville alone in the garden long enough, I have no doubt
+he would impartially make an end of the fruit of all the beds, for
+his capacity in this direction is as all-embracing as it is in the
+matter of friendships.  The Young Lady has also her favorite patch of
+berries.  And the Parson, I am sorry to say, prefers to have them
+picked for him the  elect of the garden--and served in an orthodox
+manner.  The straw-berry has a sort of poetical precedence, and I
+presume that no fruit is jealous of it any more than any flower is
+jealous of the rose; but I remark the facility with which liking for
+it is transferred to the raspberry, and from the raspberry (not to
+make a tedious enumeration) to the melon, and from the melon to the
+grape, and the grape to the pear, and the pear to the apple.  And we
+do not mar our enjoyment of each by comparisons.
+
+Of course it would be a dull world if we could not criticise our
+friends, but the most unprofitable and unsatisfactory criticism is
+that by comparison.  Criticism is not necessarily uncharitableness,
+but a wholesome exercise of our powers of analysis and
+discrimination.  It is, however, a very idle exercise, leading to no
+results when we set the qualities of one over against the qualities
+of another, and disparage by contrast and not by independent
+judgment.  And this method of procedure creates jealousies and heart-
+burnings innumerable.
+
+Criticism by comparison is the refuge of incapables, and especially
+is this true in literature.  It is a lazy way of disposing of a young
+poet to bluntly declare, without any sort of discrimination of his
+defects or his excellences, that he equals Tennyson, and that Scott
+never wrote anything finer.  What is the justice of damning a
+meritorious novelist by comparing him with Dickens, and smothering
+him with thoughtless and good-natured eulogy?  The poet and the
+novelist may be well enough, and probably have qualities and gifts of
+their own which are worth the critic's attention, if he has any time
+to bestow on them; and it is certainly unjust to subject them to a
+comparison with somebody else, merely because the critic will not
+take the trouble to ascertain what they are.  If, indeed, the poet
+and novelist are mere imitators of a model and copyists of a style,
+they may be dismissed with such commendation as we bestow upon the
+machines who pass their lives in making bad copies of the pictures of
+the great painters.  But the critics of whom we speak do not intend
+depreciation, but eulogy, when they say that the author they have in
+hand has the wit of Sydney Smith and the brilliancy of Macaulay.
+Probably he is not like either of them, and may have a genuine though
+modest virtue of his own; but these names will certainly kill him,
+and he will never be anybody in the popular estimation.  The public
+finds out speedily that he is not Sydney Smith, and it resents the
+extravagant claim for him as if he were an impudent pretender.  How
+many authors of fair ability to interest the world have we known in
+our own day who have been thus sky-rocketed into notoriety by the
+lazy indiscrimination of the critic-by-comparison, and then have sunk
+into a popular contempt as undeserved!  I never see a young aspirant
+injudiciously compared to a great and resplendent name in literature,
+but I feel like saying, My poor fellow, your days are few and full of
+trouble; you begin life handicapped, and you cannot possibly run a
+creditable race.
+
+I think this sort of critical eulogy is more damaging even than that
+which kills by a different assumption, and one which is equally
+common, namely, that the author has not done what he probably never
+intended to do.  It is well known that most of the trouble in life
+comes from our inability to compel other people to do what we think
+they ought, and it is true in criticism that we are unwilling to take
+a book for what it is, and credit the author with that.  When the
+solemn critic, like a mastiff with a ladies' bonnet in his mouth,
+gets hold of a light piece of verse, or a graceful sketch which
+catches the humor of an hour for the entertainment of an hour, he
+tears it into a thousand shreds.  It adds nothing to human knowledge,
+it solves none of the problems of life, it touches none of the
+questions of social science, it is not a philosophical treatise, and
+it is not a dozen things that it might have been.  The critic cannot
+forgive the author for this disrespect to him.  This isn't a rose,
+says the critic, taking up a pansy and rending it; it is not at all
+like a rose, and the author is either a pretentious idiot or an
+idiotic pretender.  What business, indeed, has the author to send the
+critic a bunch of sweet-peas, when he knows that a cabbage would be
+preferred,--something not showy, but useful?
+
+A good deal of this is what Mandeville said and I am not sure that it
+is devoid of personal feeling.  He published, some years ago, a
+little volume giving an account of a trip through the Great West, and
+a very entertaining book it was.  But one of the heavy critics got
+hold of it, and made Mandeville appear, even to himself, he
+confessed, like an ass, because there was nothing in the volume about
+geology or mining prospects, and very little to instruct the student
+of physical geography.  With alternate sarcasm and ridicule, he
+literally basted the author, till Mandeville said that he felt almost
+like a depraved scoundrel, and thought he should be held up to less
+execration if he had committed a neat and scientific murder.
+
+But I confess that I have a good deal of sympathy with the critics.
+Consider what these public tasters have to endure!  None of us, I
+fancy, would like to be compelled to read all that they read, or to
+take into our mouths, even with the privilege of speedily ejecting it
+with a grimace, all that they sip.  The critics of the vintage, who
+pursue their calling in the dark vaults and amid mouldy casks, give
+their opinion, for the most part, only upon wine, upon juice that has
+matured and ripened into development of quality.  But what crude,
+unrestrained, unfermented--even raw and drugged liquor, must the
+literary taster put to his unwilling lips day after day!
+
+
+
+
+TENTH STUDY
+
+
+I
+
+It was my good fortune once to visit a man who remembered the
+rebellion of 1745.  Lest this confession should make me seem very
+aged, I will add that the visit took place in 1851, and that the man
+was then one hundred and thirteen years old.  He was quite a lad
+before Dr. Johnson drank Mrs. Thrale's tea.  That he was as old as he
+had the credit of being, I have the evidence of my own senses (and I
+am seldom mistaken in a person's age), of his own family, and his own
+word; and it is incredible that so old a person, and one so
+apparently near the grave, would deceive about his age.
+
+The testimony of the very aged is always to be received without
+question, as Alexander Hamilton once learned.  He was trying a
+land-title with Aaron Burr, and two of the witnesses upon whom Burr
+relied were venerable Dutchmen, who had, in their youth, carried the
+surveying chains over the land in dispute, and who were now aged
+respectively one hundred and four years and one hundred and six
+years.  Hamilton gently attempted to undervalue their testimony, but
+he was instantly put down by the Dutch justice, who suggested that
+Mr. Hamilton could not be aware of the age of the witnesses.
+
+My old man (the expression seems familiar and inelegant) had indeed
+an exaggerated idea of his own age, and sometimes said that he
+supposed he was going on four hundred, which was true enough, in
+fact; but for the exact date, he referred to his youngest son,--a
+frisky and humorsome lad of eighty years, who had received us at the
+gate, and whom we had at first mistaken for the veteran, his father.
+But when we beheld the old man, we saw the difference between age and
+age.  The latter had settled into a grizzliness and grimness which
+belong to a very aged and stunted but sturdy oak-tree, upon the bark
+of which the gray moss is thick and heavy.  The old man appeared hale
+enough, he could walk about, his sight and hearing were not seriously
+impaired, he ate with relish) and his teeth were so sound that he
+would not need a dentist for at least another century; but the moss
+was growing on him.  His boy of eighty seemed a green sapling beside
+him.
+
+He remembered absolutely nothing that had taken place within thirty
+years, but otherwise his mind was perhaps as good as it ever was, for
+he must always have been an ignoramus, and would never know anything
+if he lived to be as old as he said he was going on to be.  Why he
+was interested in the rebellion of 1745 I could not discover, for he
+of course did not go over to Scotland to carry a pike in it, and he
+only remembered to have heard it talked about as a great event in the
+Irish market-town near which he lived, and to which he had ridden
+when a boy.  And he knew much more about the horse that drew him, and
+the cart in which he rode, than he did about the rebellion of the
+Pretender.
+
+I hope I do not appear to speak harshly of this amiable old man, and
+if he is still living I wish him well, although his example was bad
+in some respects.  He had used tobacco for nearly a century, and the
+habit has very likely been the death of him.  If so, it is to be
+regretted.  For it would have been interesting to watch the process
+of his gradual disintegration and return to the ground: the loss of
+sense after sense, as decaying limbs fall from the oak; the failure
+of discrimination, of the power of choice, and finally of memory
+itself; the peaceful wearing out and passing away of body and mind
+without disease, the natural running down of a man.  The interesting
+fact about him at that time was that his bodily powers seemed in
+sufficient vigor, but that the mind had not force enough to manifest
+itself through his organs.  The complete battery was there, the
+appetite was there, the acid was eating the zinc; but the electric
+current was too weak to flash from the brain.  And yet he appeared so
+sound throughout, that it was difficult to say that his mind was not
+as good as it ever had been.  He had stored in it very little to feed
+on, and any mind would get enfeebled by a century's rumination on a
+hearsay idea of the rebellion of '45.
+
+It was possible with this man to fully test one's respect for age,
+which is in all civilized nations a duty.  And I found that my
+feelings were mixed about him.  I discovered in him a conceit in
+regard to his long sojourn on this earth, as if it were somehow a
+credit to him.  In the presence of his good opinion of himself, I
+could but question the real value of his continued life) to himself
+or to others.  If he ever had any friends he had outlived them,
+except his boy; his wives--a century of them--were all dead; the
+world had actually passed away for him.  He hung on the tree like a
+frost-nipped apple, which the farmer has neglected to gather.  The
+world always renews itself, and remains young.  What relation had he
+to it?
+
+I was delighted to find that this old man had never voted for George
+Washington.  I do not know that he had ever heard of him.  Washington
+may be said to have played his part since his time.  I am not sure
+that he perfectly remembered anything so recent as the American
+Revolution.  He was living quietly in Ireland during our French and
+Indian wars, and he did not emigrate to this country till long after
+our revolutionary and our constitutional struggles were over.  The
+Rebellion Of '45 was the great event of the world for him, and of
+that he knew nothing.
+
+I intend no disrespect to this man,--a cheerful and pleasant enough
+old person,--but he had evidently lived himself out of the world, as
+completely as people usually die out of it.  His only remaining value
+was to the moralist, who might perchance make something out of him.
+I suppose if he had died young, he would have been regretted, and his
+friends would have lamented that he did not fill out his days in the
+world, and would very likely have called him back, if tears and
+prayers could have done so.  They can see now what his prolonged life
+amounted to, and how the world has closed up the gap he once filled
+while he still lives in it.
+
+A great part of the unhappiness of this world consists in regret for
+those who depart, as it seems to us, prematurely.  We imagine that if
+they would return, the old conditions would be restored.  But would
+it be so?  If they, in any case, came back, would there be any place
+for them?  The world so quickly readjusts itself after any loss, that
+the return of the departed would nearly always throw it, even the
+circle most interested, into confusion.  Are the Enoch Ardens ever
+wanted?
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+A popular notion akin to this, that the world would have any room for
+the departed if they should now and then return, is the constant
+regret that people will not learn by the experience of others, that
+one generation learns little from the preceding, and that youth never
+will adopt the experience of age.  But if experience went for
+anything, we should all come to a standstill; for there is nothing so
+discouraging to effort.  Disbelief in Ecclesiastes is the mainspring
+of action.  In that lies the freshness and the interest of life, and
+it is the source of every endeavor.
+
+If the boy believed that the accumulation of wealth and the
+acquisition of power were what the old man says they are, the world
+would very soon be stagnant.  If he believed that his chances of
+obtaining either were as poor as the majority of men find them to be,
+ambition would die within him.  It is because he rejects the
+experience of those who have preceded him, that the world is kept in
+the topsy-turvy condition which we all rejoice in, and which we call
+progress.
+
+And yet I confess I have a soft place in my heart for that rare
+character in our New England life who is content with the world as he
+finds it, and who does not attempt to appropriate any more of it to
+himself than he absolutely needs from day to day.  He knows from the
+beginning that the world could get on without him, and he has never
+had any anxiety to leave any result behind him, any legacy for the
+world to quarrel over.
+
+He is really an exotic in our New England climate and society, and
+his life is perpetually misunderstood by his neighbors, because he
+shares none of their uneasiness about getting on in life.  He is even
+called lazy, good-for-nothing, and "shiftless,"--the final stigma
+that we put upon a person who has learned to wait without the
+exhausting process of laboring.
+
+I made his acquaintance last summer in the country, and I have not in
+a long time been so well pleased with any of our species.  He was a
+man past middle life, with a large family.  He had always been from
+boyhood of a contented and placid mind, slow in his movements, slow
+in his speech.  I think he never cherished a hard feeling toward
+anybody, nor envied any one, least of all the rich and prosperous
+about whom he liked to talk.  Indeed, his talk was a good deal about
+wealth, especially about his cousin who had been down South and "got
+fore-handed" within a few years.  He was genuinely pleased at his
+relation's good luck, and pointed him out to me with some pride.  But
+he had no envy of him, and he evinced no desire to imitate him.  I
+inferred from all his conversation about "piling it up" (of which he
+spoke with a gleam of enthusiasm in his eye), that there were moments
+when he would like to be rich himself; but it was evident that he
+would never make the least effort to be so, and I doubt if he could
+even overcome that delicious inertia of mind and body called
+laziness, sufficiently to inherit.
+
+Wealth seemed to have a far and peculiar fascination for him, and I
+suspect he was a visionary in the midst of his poverty.  Yet I
+suppose he had--hardly the personal property which the law exempts
+from execution.  He had lived in a great many towns, moving from one
+to another with his growing family, by easy stages, and was always
+the poorest man in the town, and lived on the most niggardly of its
+rocky and bramble-grown farms, the productiveness of which he reduced
+to zero in a couple of seasons by his careful neglect of culture.
+The fences of his hired domain always fell into ruins under him,
+perhaps because he sat on them so much, and the hovels he occupied
+rotted down during his placid residence in them.  He moved from
+desolation to desolation, but carried always with him the equal mind
+of a philosopher.  Not even the occasional tart remarks of his wife,
+about their nomadic life and his serenity in the midst of discomfort,
+could ruffle his smooth spirit.
+
+He was, in every respect, a most worthy man, truthful, honest,
+temperate, and, I need not say, frugal; and he had no bad habits,--
+perhaps he never had energy enough to acquire any.  Nor did he lack
+the knack of the Yankee race.  He could make a shoe, or build a
+house, or doctor a cow; but it never seemed to him, in this brief
+existence, worth while to do any of these things.  He was an
+excellent angler, but he rarely fished; partly because of the
+shortness of days, partly on account of the uncertainty of bites, but
+principally because the trout brooks were all arranged lengthwise and
+ran over so much ground.  But no man liked to look at a string of
+trout better than he did, and he was willing to sit down in a sunny
+place and talk about trout-fishing half a day at a time, and he would
+talk pleasantly and well too, though his wife might be continually
+interrupting him by a call for firewood.
+
+I should not do justice to his own idea of himself if I did not add
+that he was most respectably connected, and that he had a justifiable
+though feeble pride in his family.  It helped his self-respect, which
+no ignoble circumstances could destroy.  He was, as must appear by
+this time, a most intelligent man, and he was a well-informed man;
+that is to say, he read the weekly newspapers when he could get them,
+and he had the average country information about Beecher and Greeley
+and the Prussian war (" Napoleon is gettin' on't, ain't he?"), and
+the general prospect of the election campaigns.  Indeed, he was
+warmly, or rather luke-warmly, interested in politics.  He liked to
+talk about the inflated currency, and it seemed plain to him that his
+condition would somehow be improved if we could get to a specie
+basis.  He was, in fact, a little troubled by the national debt; it
+seemed to press on him somehow, while his own never did.  He
+exhibited more animation over the affairs of the government than he
+did over his own,--an evidence at once of his disinterestedness and
+his patriotism.  He had been an old abolitionist, and was strong on
+the rights of free labor, though he did not care to exercise his
+privilege much.  Of course he had the proper contempt for the poor
+whites down South.  I never saw a person with more correct notions on
+such a variety of subjects.  He was perfectly willing that churches
+(being himself a member), and Sunday-schools, and missionary
+enterprises should go on; in fact, I do not believe he ever opposed
+anything in his life.  No one was more willing to vote town taxes and
+road-repairs and schoolhouses than he.  If you could call him
+spirited at all, he was public-spirited.
+
+And with all this he was never very well; he had, from boyhood,
+"enjoyed poor health."  You would say he was not a man who would ever
+catch anything, not even an epidemic; but he was a person whom
+diseases would be likely to overtake, even the slowest of slow
+fevers.  And he was n't a man to shake off anything.  And yet
+sickness seemed to trouble him no more than poverty.  He was not
+discontented; he never grumbled.  I am not sure but he relished a
+"spell of sickness" in haying-time.
+
+An admirably balanced man, who accepts the world as it is, and
+evidently lives on the experience of others.  I have never seen a man
+with less envy, or more cheerfulness, or so contented with as little
+reason for being so.  The only drawback to his future is that rest
+beyond the grave will not be much change for him, and he has no works
+to follow him.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+This Yankee philosopher, who, without being a Brahmin, had, in an
+uncongenial atmosphere, reached the perfect condition of Nirvina,
+reminded us all of the ancient sages; and we queried whether a world
+that could produce such as he, and could, beside, lengthen a man's
+years to one hundred and thirteen, could fairly be called an old and
+worn-out world, having long passed the stage of its primeval poetry
+and simplicity.  Many an Eastern dervish has, I think, got
+immortality upon less laziness and resignation than this temporary
+sojourner in Massachusetts.  It is a common notion that the world
+(meaning the people in it) has become tame and commonplace, lost its
+primeval freshness and epigrammatic point.  Mandeville, in his
+argumentative way, dissents from this entirely.  He says that the
+world is more complex, varied, and a thousand times as interesting as
+it was in what we call its youth, and that it is as fresh, as
+individual and capable of producing odd and eccentric characters as
+ever.  He thought the creative vim had not in any degree abated, that
+both the types of men and of nations are as sharply stamped and
+defined as ever they were.
+
+Was there ever, he said, in the past, any figure more clearly cut and
+freshly minted than the Yankee?  Had the Old World anything to show
+more positive and uncompromising in all the elements of character
+than the Englishman?  And if the edges of these were being rounded
+off, was there not developing in the extreme West a type of men
+different from all preceding, which the world could not yet define?
+He believed that the production of original types was simply
+infinite.
+
+Herbert urged that he must at least admit that there was a freshness
+of legend and poetry in what we call the primeval peoples that is
+wanting now; the mythic period is gone, at any rate.
+
+Mandeville could not say about the myths.  We couldn't tell what
+interpretation succeeding ages would put upon our lives and history
+and literature when they have become remote and shadowy.  But we need
+not go to antiquity for epigrammatic wisdom, or for characters as
+racy of the fresh earth as those handed down to us from the dawn of
+history.  He would put Benjamin Franklin against any of the sages of
+the mythic or the classic period.  He would have been perfectly at
+home in ancient Athens, as Socrates would have been in modern Boston.
+There might have been more heroic characters at the siege of Troy
+than Abraham Lincoln, but there was not one more strongly marked
+individually; not one his superior in what we call primeval craft and
+humor.  He was just the man, if he could not have dislodged Priam by
+a writ of ejectment, to have invented the wooden horse, and then to
+have made Paris the hero of some ridiculous story that would have set
+all Asia in a roar.
+
+Mandeville said further, that as to poetry, he did not know much
+about that, and there was not much he cared to read except parts of
+Shakespeare and Homer, and passages of Milton.  But it did seem to
+him that we had men nowadays, who could, if they would give their
+minds to it, manufacture in quantity the same sort of epigrammatic
+sayings and legends that our scholars were digging out of the Orient.
+He did not know why Emerson in antique setting was not as good as
+Saadi.  Take for instance, said Mandeville, such a legend as this,
+and how easy it would be to make others like it:
+
+The son of an Emir had red hair, of which he was ashamed, and wished
+to dye it.  But his father said: "Nay, my son, rather behave in such
+a manner that all fathers shall wish their sons had red hair."
+
+This was too absurd.  Mandeville had gone too far, except in the
+opinion of Our Next Door, who declared that an imitation was just as
+good as an original, if you could not detect it.  But Herbert said
+that the closer an imitation is to an original, the more unendurable
+it is.  But nobody could tell exactly why.
+
+The Fire-Tender said that we are imposed on by forms.  The nuggets of
+wisdom that are dug out of the Oriental and remote literatures would
+often prove to be only commonplace if stripped of their quaint
+setting.  If you gave an Oriental twist to some of our modern
+thought, its value would be greatly enhanced for many people.
+
+I have seen those, said the Mistress, who seem to prefer dried fruit
+to fresh; but I like the strawberry and the peach of each season, and
+for me the last is always the best.
+
+Even the Parson admitted that there were no signs of fatigue or decay
+in the creative energy of the world; and if it is a question of
+Pagans, he preferred Mandeville to Saadi.
+
+
+
+
+ELEVENTH STUDY
+
+
+It happened, or rather, to tell the truth, it was contrived,--for I
+have waited too long for things to turn up to have much faith in
+"happen," that we who have sat by this hearthstone before should all
+be together on Christmas eve.  There was a splendid backlog of
+hickory just beginning to burn with a glow that promised to grow more
+fiery till long past midnight, which would have needed no apology in
+a loggers' camp,--not so much as the religion of which a lady (in a
+city which shall be nameless) said, "If you must have a religion,
+this one will do nicely."
+
+There was not much conversation, as is apt to be the case when people
+come together who have a great deal to say, and are intimate enough
+to permit the freedom of silence.  It was Mandeville who suggested
+that we read something, and the Young Lady, who was in a mood to
+enjoy her own thoughts, said, "Do."  And finally it came about that
+the Fire Tender, without more resistance to the urging than was
+becoming, went to his library, and returned with a manuscript, from
+which he read the story of
+
+
+MY UNCLE IN INDIA
+
+Not that it is my uncle, let me explain.  It is Polly's uncle, as I
+very well know, from the many times she has thrown him up to me, and
+is liable so to do at any moment.  Having small expectations myself,
+and having wedded Polly when they were smaller, I have come to feel
+the full force, the crushing weight, of her lightest remark about "My
+Uncle in India."  The words as I write them convey no idea of the
+tone in which they fall upon my ears.  I think it is the only fault
+of that estimable woman, that she has an "uncle in India" and does
+not let him quietly remain there.  I feel quite sure that if I had an
+uncle in Botany Bay, I should never, never throw him up to Polly in
+the way mentioned.  If there is any jar in our quiet life, he is the
+cause of it; all along of possible "expectations" on the one side
+calculated to overawe the other side not having expectations.  And
+yet I know that if her uncle in India were this night to roll a
+barrel of "India's golden sands," as I feel that he any moment may
+do, into our sitting-room, at Polly's feet, that charming wife, who
+is more generous than the month of May, and who has no thought but
+for my comfort in two worlds, would straightway make it over to me,
+to have and to hold, if I could lift it, forever and forever.  And
+that makes it more inexplicable that she, being a woman, will
+continue to mention him in the way she does.
+
+In a large and general way I regard uncles as not out of place in
+this transitory state of existence.  They stand for a great many
+possible advantages.  They are liable to "tip" you at school, they
+are resources in vacation, they come grandly in play about the
+holidays, at which season mv heart always did warm towards them with
+lively expectations, which were often turned into golden solidities;
+and then there is always the prospect, sad to a sensitive mind, that
+uncles are mortal, and, in their timely taking off, may prove as
+generous in the will as they were in the deed.  And there is always
+this redeeming possibility in a niggardly uncle.  Still there must be
+something wrong in the character of the uncle per se, or all history
+would not agree that nepotism is such a dreadful thing.
+
+But, to return from this unnecessary digression, I am reminded that
+the charioteer of the patient year has brought round the holiday
+time.  It has been a growing year, as most years are.  It is very
+pleasant to see how the shrubs in our little patch of ground widen
+and thicken and bloom at the right time, and to know that the great
+trees have added a laver to their trunks.  To be sure, our garden,--
+which I planted under Polly's directions, with seeds that must have
+been patented, and I forgot to buy the right of, for they are mostly
+still waiting the final resurrection,--gave evidence that it shared
+in the misfortune of the Fall, and was never an Eden from which one
+would have required to have been driven.  It was the easiest garden
+to keep the neighbor's pigs and hens out of I ever saw.  If its
+increase was small its temptations were smaller, and that is no
+little recommendation in this world of temptations.  But, as a
+general thing, everything has grown, except our house.  That little
+cottage, over which Polly presides with grace enough to adorn a
+palace, is still small outside and smaller inside; and if it has an
+air of comfort and of neatness, and its rooms are cozy and sunny by
+day and cheerful by night, and it is bursting with books, and not
+unattractive with modest pictures on the walls, which we think do
+well enough until my uncle--(but never mind my uncle, now),--and if,
+in the long winter evenings, when the largest lamp is lit, and the
+chestnuts glow in embers, and the kid turns on the spit, and the
+house-plants are green and flowering, and the ivy glistens in the
+firelight, and Polly sits with that contented, far-away look in her
+eyes that I like to see, her fingers busy upon one of those cruel
+mysteries which have delighted the sex since Penelope, and I read in
+one of my fascinating law-books, or perhaps regale ourselves with a
+taste of Montaigne,--if all this is true, there are times when the
+cottage seems small; though I can never find that Polly thinks so,
+except when she sometimes says that she does not know where she
+should bestow her uncle in it, if he should suddenly come back from
+India.
+
+There it is, again.  I sometimes think that my wife believes her
+uncle in India to be as large as two ordinary men; and if her ideas
+of him are any gauge of the reality, there is no place in the town
+large enough for him except the Town Hall.  She probably expects him
+to come with his bungalow, and his sedan, and his palanquin, and his
+elephants, and his retinue of servants, and his principalities, and
+his powers, and his ha--(no, not that), and his chowchow, and his--I
+scarcely know what besides.
+
+Christmas eve was a shiny cold night, a creaking cold night, a
+placid, calm, swingeing cold night.
+
+Out-doors had gone into a general state of crystallization.  The
+snow-fields were like the vast Arctic ice-fields that Kane looked on,
+and lay sparkling under the moonlight, crisp and Christmasy, and all
+the crystals on the trees and bushes hung glistening, as if ready, at
+a breath of air, to break out into metallic ringing, like a million
+silver joy-bells.  I mentioned the conceit to Polly, as we stood at
+the window, and she said it reminded her of Jean Paul.  She is a
+woman of most remarkable discernment.
+
+Christmas is a great festival at our house in a small way.  Among the
+many delightful customs we did not inherit from our Pilgrim Fathers,
+there is none so pleasant as that of giving presents at this season.
+It is the most exciting time of the year.  No one is too rich to
+receive something, and no one too poor to give a trifle.  And in the
+act of giving and receiving these tokens of regard, all the world is
+kin for once, and brighter for this transient glow of generosity.
+Delightful custom!  Hard is the lot of childhood that knows nothing
+of the visits of Kriss Kringle, or the stockings hung by the chimney
+at night; and cheerless is any age that is not brightened by some
+Christmas gift, however humble.  What a mystery of preparation there
+is in the preceding days, what planning and plottings of surprises!
+Polly and I keep up the custom in our simple way, and great is the
+perplexity to express the greatest amount of affection with a limited
+outlay.  For the excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness
+rather than in its value.  As we stood by the window that night, we
+wondered what we should receive this year, and indulged in I know not
+what little hypocrisies and deceptions.
+
+I wish, said Polly, "that my uncle in India would send me a
+camel's-hair shawl, or a string of pearls, each as big as the end of
+my thumb."
+
+"Or a white cow, which would give golden milk, that would make butter
+worth seventy-five cents a pound," I added, as we drew the curtains,
+and turned to our chairs before the open fire.
+
+It is our custom on every Christmas eve--as I believe I have
+somewhere said, or if I have not, I say it again, as the member from
+Erin might remark--to read one of Dickens's Christmas stories.  And
+this night, after punching the fire until it sent showers of sparks
+up the chimney, I read the opening chapter of "Mrs. Lirriper's
+Lodgings," in my best manner, and handed the book to Polly to
+continue; for I do not so much relish reading aloud the succeeding
+stories of Mr. Dickens's annual budget, since he wrote them, as men
+go to war in these days, by substitute.  And Polly read on, in her
+melodious voice, which is almost as pleasant to me as the Wasser-
+fluth of Schubert, which she often plays at twilight; and I looked
+into the fire, unconsciously constructing stories of my own out of
+the embers.  And her voice still went on, in a sort of running
+accompaniment to my airy or fiery fancies.
+
+"Sleep?" said Polly, stopping, with what seemed to me a sort of
+crash, in which all the castles tumbled into ashes.
+
+"Not in the least," I answered brightly never heard anything more
+agreeable."  And the reading flowed on and on and on, and I looked
+steadily into the fire, the fire, fire, fi....
+
+Suddenly the door opened, and into our cozy parlor walked the most
+venerable personage I ever laid eyes on, who saluted me with great
+dignity.  Summer seemed to have burst into the room, and I was
+conscious of a puff of Oriental airs, and a delightful, languid
+tranquillity.  I was not surprised that the figure before me was clad
+in full turban, baggy drawers, and a long loose robe, girt about the
+middle with a rich shawl.  Followed him a swart attendant, who
+hastened to spread a rug upon which my visitor sat down, with great
+gravity, as I am informed they do in farthest Ind.  The slave then
+filled the bowl of a long-stemmed chibouk, and, handing it to his
+master, retired behind him and began to fan him with the most
+prodigious palm-leaf I ever saw.  Soon the fumes of the delicate
+tobacco of Persia pervaded the room, like some costly aroma which you
+cannot buy, now the entertainment of the Arabian Nights is
+discontinued.
+
+Looking through the window I saw, if I saw anything, a palanquin at
+our door, and attendant on it four dusky, half-naked bearers, who did
+not seem to fancy the splendor of the night, for they jumped about on
+the snow crust, and I could see them shiver and shake in the keen
+air.  Oho!  thought!, this, then, is my uncle from India!
+
+"Yes, it is," now spoke my visitor extraordinary, in a gruff, harsh
+voice.
+
+"I think I have heard Polly speak of you," I rejoined, in an attempt
+to be civil, for I did n't like his face any better than I did his
+voice,--a red, fiery, irascible kind of face.
+
+"Yes I've come over to O Lord,--quick, Jamsetzee, lift up that foot,-
+-take care.  There, Mr.  Trimings, if that's your name, get me a
+glass of brandy, stiff."
+
+I got him our little apothecary-labeled bottle and poured out enough
+to preserve a whole can of peaches.  My uncle took it down without a
+wink, as if it had been water, and seemed relieved.  It was a very
+pleasant uncle to have at our fireside on Christmas eve, I felt.
+
+At a motion from my uncle, Jamsetzee handed me a parcel which I saw
+was directed to Polly, which I untied, and lo!  the most wonderful
+camel's-hair shawl that ever was, so fine that I immediately drew it
+through my finger-ring, and so large that I saw it would entirely
+cover our little room if I spread it out; a dingy red color, but
+splendid in appearance from the little white hieroglyphic worked in
+one corner, which is always worn outside, to show that it cost nobody
+knows how many thousands of dollars.
+
+"A Christmas trifle for Polly.  I have come home--as I was saying
+when that confounded twinge took me--to settle down; and I intend to
+make Polly my heir, and live at my ease and enjoy life.  Move that
+leg a little, Jamsetzee."
+
+I meekly replied that I had no doubt Polly would be delighted to see
+her dear uncle, and as for inheriting, if it came to that, I did n't
+know any one with a greater capacity for that than she.
+
+"That depends," said the gruff old smoker, "how I like ye.  A
+fortune, scraped up in forty years in Ingy, ain't to be thrown away
+in a minute.  But what a house this is to live in!"; the
+uncomfortable old relative went on, throwing a contemptuous glance
+round the humble cottage.  "Is this all of it?"
+
+"In the winter it is all of it," I said, flushing up; but in the
+summer, when the doors and windows are open, it is as large as
+anybody's house.  And," I went on, with some warmth, "it was large
+enough just before you came in, and pleasant enough.  And besides, I
+said, rising into indignation, "you can not get anything much better
+in this city short of eight hundred dollars a year, payable first
+days of January, April, July, and October, in advance, and my
+salary...."
+
+"Hang your salary, and confound your impudence and your seven-by-nine
+hovel!  Do you think you have anything to say about the use of my
+money, scraped up in forty years in Ingy?  THINGS HAVE GOT TO BE
+CHANGED!" he burst out, in a voice that rattled the glasses on the
+sideboard.
+
+I should think they were.  Even as I looked into the little fireplace
+it enlarged, and there was an enormous grate, level with the floor,
+glowing with seacoal; and a magnificent mantel carved in oak, old and
+brown; and over it hung a landscape, wide, deep, summer in the
+foreground with all the gorgeous coloring of the tropics, and beyond
+hills of blue and far mountains lying in rosy light.  I held my
+breath as I looked down the marvelous perspective.  Looking round for
+a second, I caught a glimpse of a Hindoo at each window, who vanished
+as if they had been whisked off by enchantment; and the close walls
+that shut us in fled away.  Had cohesion and gravitation given out?
+Was it the "Great Consummation" of the year 18-?  It was all like the
+swift transformation of a dream, and I pinched my arm to make sure
+that I was not the subject of some diablerie.
+
+The little house was gone; but that I scarcely minded, for I had
+suddenly come into possession of my wife's castle in Spain.  I sat in
+a spacious, lofty apartment, furnished with a princely magnificence.
+Rare pictures adorned the walls, statues looked down from deep
+niches, and over both the dark ivy of England ran and drooped in
+graceful luxuriance.  Upon the heavy tables were costly, illuminated
+volumes; luxurious chairs and ottomans invited to easy rest; and upon
+the ceiling Aurora led forth all the flower-strewing daughters of the
+dawn in brilliant frescoes.  Through the open doors my eyes wandered
+into magnificent apartment after apartment.  There to the south,
+through folding-doors, was the splendid library, with groined roof,
+colored light streaming in through painted windows, high shelves
+stowed with books, old armor hanging on the walls, great carved oaken
+chairs about a solid oaken table, and beyond a conservatory of
+flowers and plants with a fountain springing in the center, the
+splashing of whose waters I could hear.  Through the open windows I
+looked upon a lawn, green with close-shaven turf, set with ancient
+trees, and variegated with parterres of summer plants in bloom.  It
+was the month of June, and the smell of roses was in the air.
+
+I might have thought it only a freak of my fancy, but there by the
+fireplace sat a stout, red-faced, puffy-looking man, in the ordinary
+dress of an English gentleman, whom I had no difficulty in
+recognizing as my uncle from India.
+
+"One wants a fire every day in the year in this confounded climate,"
+remarked that amiable old person, addressing no one in particular.
+
+I had it on my lips to suggest that I trusted the day would come when
+he would have heat enough to satisfy him, in permanent supply.  I
+wish now that I had.
+
+I think things had changed.  For now into this apartment, full of the
+morning sunshine, came sweeping with the air of a countess born, and
+a maid of honor bred, and a queen in expectancy, my Polly, stepping
+with that lofty grace which I always knew she possessed, but which
+she never had space to exhibit in our little cottage, dressed with
+that elegance and richness that I should not have deemed possible to
+the most Dutch duchess that ever lived, and, giving me a complacent
+nod of recognition, approached her uncle, and said in her smiling,
+cheery way, "How is the dear uncle this morning?"  And, as she spoke,
+she actually bent down and kissed his horrid old cheek, red-hot with
+currie and brandy and all the biting pickles I can neither eat nor
+name, kissed him, and I did not turn into stone.
+
+"Comfortable as the weather will permit, my darling!"--and again I
+did not turn into stone.
+
+"Wouldn't uncle like to take a drive this charming morning?" Polly
+asked.
+
+Uncle finally grunted out his willingness, and Polly swept away again
+to prepare for the drive, taking no more notice of me than if I had
+been a poor assistant office lawyer on a salary.  And soon the
+carriage was at the door, and my uncle, bundled up like a mummy, and
+the charming Polly drove gayly away.
+
+How pleasant it is to be married rich, I thought, as I arose and
+strolled into the library, where everything was elegant and prim and
+neat, with no scraps of paper and piles of newspapers or evidences of
+literary slovenness on the table, and no books in attractive
+disorder, and where I seemed to see the legend staring at me from all
+the walls, "No smoking."  So I uneasily lounged out of the house.
+And a magnificent house it was, a palace, rather, that seemed to
+frown upon and bully insignificant me with its splendor, as I walked
+away from it towards town.
+
+And why town?  There was no use of doing anything at the dingy
+office.  Eight hundred dollars a year!  It wouldn't keep Polly in
+gloves, let alone dressing her for one of those fashionable
+entertainments to which we went night after night.  And so, after a
+weary day with nothing in it, I went home to dinner, to find my uncle
+quite chirruped up with his drive, and Polly regnant, sublimely
+engrossed in her new world of splendor, a dazzling object of
+admiration to me, but attentive and even tender to that
+hypochondriacal, gouty old subject from India.
+
+Yes, a magnificent dinner, with no end of servants, who seemed to
+know that I couldn't have paid the wages of one of them, and plate
+and courses endless.  I say, a miserable dinner, on the edge of which
+seemed to sit by permission of somebody, like an invited poor
+relation, who wishes he had sent a regret, and longing for some of
+those nice little dishes that Polly used to set before me with
+beaming face, in the dear old days.
+
+And after dinner, and proper attention to the comfort for the night
+of our benefactor, there was the Blibgims's party.  No long,
+confidential interviews, as heretofore, as to what she should wear
+and what I should wear, and whether it would do to wear it again.
+And Polly went in one coach, and I in another.  No crowding into the
+hired hack, with all the delightful care about tumbling dresses, and
+getting there in good order; and no coming home together to our
+little cozy cottage, in a pleasant, excited state of "flutteration,"
+and sitting down to talk it all over, and "Was n't it nice?" and "Did
+I look as well as anybody?" and "Of course you did to me," and all
+that nonsense.  We lived in a grand way now, and had our separate
+establishments and separate plans, and I used to think that a real
+separation couldn't make matters much different.  Not that Polly
+meant to be any different, or was, at heart; but, you know, she was
+so much absorbed in her new life of splendor, and perhaps I was a
+little old-fashioned.
+
+I don't wonder at it now, as I look back.  There was an army of
+dressmakers to see, and a world of shopping to do, and a houseful of
+servants to manage, and all the afternoon for calls, and her dear,
+dear friend, with the artless manners and merry heart of a girl, and
+the dignity and grace of a noble woman, the dear friend who lived in
+the house of the Seven Gables, to consult about all manner of im-
+portant things.  I could not, upon my honor, see that there was any
+place for me, and I went my own way, not that there was much comfort
+in it.
+
+And then I would rather have had charge of a hospital ward than take
+care of that uncle.  Such coddling as he needed, such humoring of
+whims.  And I am bound to say that Polly could n't have been more
+dutiful to him if he had been a Hindoo idol.  She read to him and
+talked to him, and sat by him with her embroidery, and was patient
+with his crossness, and wearied herself, that I could see, with her
+devoted ministrations.
+
+I fancied sometimes she was tired of it, and longed for the old
+homely simplicity.  I was.  Nepotism had no charms for me.  There was
+nothing that I could get Polly that she had not.  I could surprise
+her with no little delicacies or trifles, delightedly bought with
+money saved for the purpose.  There was no more coming home weary
+with office work and being met at the door with that warm, loving
+welcome which the King of England could not buy.  There was no long
+evening when we read alternately from some favorite book, or laid our
+deep housekeeping plans, rejoiced in a good bargain or made light of
+a poor one, and were contented and merry with little.  I recalled
+with longing my little den, where in the midst of the literary
+disorder I love, I wrote those stories for the "Antarctic" which
+Polly, if nobody else, liked to read.  There was no comfort for me in
+my magnificent library.  We were all rich and in splendor, and our
+uncle had come from India.  I wished, saving his soul, that the ship
+that brought him over had foundered off Barnegat Light.  It would
+always have been a tender and regretful memory to both of us.  And
+how sacred is the memory of such a loss!
+
+Christmas?  What delight could I have in long solicitude and
+ingenious devices touching a gift for Polly within my means, and
+hitting the border line between her necessities and her extravagant
+fancy?  A drove of white elephants would n't have been good enough
+for her now, if each one carried a castle on his back.
+
+"--and so they were married, and in their snug cottage lived happy
+ever after."--It was Polly's voice, as she closed the book.
+
+"There, I don't believe you have heard a word of it," she said half
+complaininglv.
+
+"Oh, yes, I have," I cried, starting up and giving the fire a jab
+with the poker; "I heard every word of it, except a few at the close
+I was thinking"--I stopped, and looked round.
+
+"Why, Polly, where is the camel's-hair shawl?"
+
+"Camel's-hair fiddlestick!  Now I know you have been asleep for an
+hour."
+
+And, sure enough, there was n't anv camel's-hair shawl there, nor any
+uncle, nor were there any Hindoos at our windows.
+
+And then I told Polly all about it; how her uncle came back, and we
+were rich and lived in a palace and had no end of money, but she
+didn't seem to have time to love me in it all, and all the comfort of
+the little house was blown away as by the winter wind.  And Polly
+vowed, half in tears, that she hoped her uncle never would come back,
+and she wanted nothing that we had not, and she wouldn't exchange our
+independent comfort and snug house, no, not for anybody's mansion.
+And then and there we made it all up, in a manner too particular for
+me to mention; and I never, to this day, heard Polly allude to My
+Uncle in India.
+
+And then, as the clock struck eleven, we each produced from the place
+where we had hidden them the modest Christmas gifts we had prepared
+for each other, and what surprise there was!  "Just the thing I
+needed."  And, "It's perfectly lovely."  And, "You should n't have
+done it."  And, then, a question I never will answer, "Ten?  fifteen?
+five?  twelve?" "My dear, it cost eight hundred dollars, for I have
+put my whole year into it, and I wish it was a thousand times
+better."
+
+And so, when the great iron tongue of the city bell swept over the
+snow the twelve strokes that announced Christmas day, if there was
+anywhere a happier home than ours, I am glad of it!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BADDECK AND THAT SORT OF THING
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+TO JOSEPH H.  TWICHELL
+
+It would be unfair to hold you responsible for these light sketches
+of a summer trip, which are now gathered into this little volume in
+response to the usual demand in such cases; yet you cannot escape
+altogether.  For it was you who first taught me to say the name
+Baddeck; it was you who showed me its position on the map, and a
+seductive letter from a home missionary on Cape Breton Island, in
+relation to the abundance of trout and salmon in his field of labor.
+That missionary, you may remember, we never found, nor did we see his
+tackle; but I have no reason to believe that he does not enjoy good
+fishing in the right season.  You understand the duties of a home
+missionary much better than I do, and you know whether he would be
+likely to let a couple of strangers into the best part of his
+preserve.
+
+But I am free to admit that after our expedition was started you
+speedily relieved yourself of all responsibility for it, and turned
+it over to your comrade with a profound geographical indifference;
+you would as readily have gone to Baddeck by Nova Zembla as by Nova
+Scotia.  The flight over the latter island was, you knew, however, no
+part of our original plan, and you were not obliged to take any
+interest in it.  You know that our design was to slip rapidly down,
+by the back way of Northumberland Sound, to the Bras d'Or, and spend
+a week fishing there; and that the greater part of this journey here
+imperfectly described is not really ours, but was put upon us by fate
+and by the peculiar arrangement of provincial travel.
+
+It would have been easy after our return to have made up from
+libraries a most engaging description of the Provinces, mixing it
+with historical, legendary, botanical, geographical, and ethnological
+information, and seasoning it with adventure from your glowing
+imagination.  But it seemed to me that it would be a more honest
+contribution if our account contained only what we saw, in our rapid
+travel; for I have a theory that any addition to the great body of
+print, however insignificant it may be, has a value in proportion to
+its originality and individuality,--however slight either is,--and
+very little value if it is a compilation of the observations of
+others.  In this case I know how slight the value is; and I can only
+hope that as the trip was very entertaining to us, the record of it
+may not be wholly unentertaining to those of like tastes.
+
+Of one thing, my dear friend, I am certain: if the readers of this
+little journey could have during its persual the companionship that
+the writer had when it was made, they would think it altogether
+delightful.  There is no pleasure comparable to that of going about
+the world, in pleasant weather, with a good comrade, if the mind is
+distracted neither by care, nor ambition, nor the greed of gain.  The
+delight there is in seeing things, without any hope of pecuniary
+profit from them!  We certainly enjoyed that inward peace which the
+philosopher associates with the absence of desire for money.  For, as
+Plato says in the Phaedo, "whence come wars and fightings and
+factions?  whence but from the body and the lusts of the body?  For
+wars are occasioned by the love of money."  So also are the majority
+of the anxieties of life.  We left these behind when we went into the
+Provinces with no design of acquiring anything there.  I hope it may
+be my fortune to travel further with you in this fair world, under
+similar circumstances.
+
+NOOK FARM, HARTFORD, April 10, 1874.
+
+C.  D.  W.
+
+
+
+
+BADDECK AND THAT SORT OF THING
+
+
+Ay, now I am in Arden: the more fool I; when I was at home,
+I was in a better place; but travellers must be content."--
+TOUCHSTONE.
+
+Two comrades and travelers, who sought a better country than the
+United States in the month of August, found themselves one
+evening in apparent possession of the ancient town of Boston.
+
+The shops were closed at early candle-light; the fashionable
+inhabitants had retired into the country, or into the
+second-story-back, of their princely residences, and even an air of
+tender gloom settled upon the Common.  The streets were almost empty,
+and one passed into the burnt district, where the scarred ruins and
+the uplifting piles of new brick and stone spread abroad under the
+flooding light of a full moon like another Pompeii, without any
+increase in his feeling of tranquil seclusion.  Even the news-offices
+had put up their shutters, and a confiding stranger could nowhere buy
+a guide-book to help his wandering feet about the reposeful city, or
+to show him how to get out of it.  There was, to be sure, a cheerful
+tinkle of horse-car bells in the air, and in the creeping vehicles
+which created this levity of sound were a few lonesome passengers on
+their way to Scollay's Square; but the two travelers, not having
+well-regulated minds, had no desire to go there.  What would have
+become of Boston if the great fire had reached this sacred point of
+pilg-rimage no merely human mind can imagine.  Without it, I suppose
+the horse-cars would go continually round and round, never stopping,
+until the cars fell away piecemeal on the track, and the horses
+collapsed into a mere mass of bones and harness, and the brown-
+covered books from the Public Library, in the hands of the fading
+virgins who carried them, had accumulated fines to an incalculable
+amount.
+
+Boston) notwithstanding its partial destruction by fire, is still a
+good place to start from.  When one meditates an excursion into an
+unknown and perhaps perilous land, where the flag will not protect
+him and the greenback will only partially support him, he likes to
+steady and tranquilize his mind by a peaceful halt and a serene
+start.  So we--for the intelligent reader has already identified us
+with the two travelers resolved to spend the last night, before
+beginning our journey, in the quiet of a Boston hotel.  Some people
+go into the country for quiet: we knew better.  The country is no
+place for sleep.  The general absence of sound which prevails at
+night is only a sort of background which brings out more vividly the
+special and unexpected disturbances which are suddenly sprung upon
+the restless listener.  There are a thousand pokerish noises that no
+one can account for, which excite the nerves to acute watchfulness.
+
+It is still early, and one is beginning to be lulled by the frogs and
+the crickets, when the faint rattle of a drum is heard,--just a few
+preliminary taps.  But the soul takes alarm, and well it may, for a
+roll follows, and then a rub-a-dub-dub, and the farmer's boy who is
+handling the sticks and pounding the distended skin in a neighboring
+horse-shed begins to pour out his patriotism in that unending
+repetition of rub-a-dub-dub which is supposed to represent love of
+country in the young.  When the boy is tired out and quits the field,
+the faithful watch-dog opens out upon the stilly night.  He is the
+guardian of his master's slumbers.  The howls of the faithful
+creature are answered by barks and yelps from all the farmhouses for
+a mile around, and exceedingly poor barking it usually is, until all
+the serenity of the night is torn to shreds.  This is, however, only
+the opening of the orchestra.  The cocks wake up if there is the
+faintest moonshine and begin an antiphonal service between responsive
+barn-yards.  It is not the clear clarion of chanticleer that is heard
+in the morn of English poetry, but a harsh chorus of cracked voices,
+hoarse and abortive attempts, squawks of young experimenters, and
+some indescribable thing besides, for I believe even the hens crow in
+these days.  Distracting as all this is, however, happy is the man
+who does not hear a goat lamenting in the night.  The goat is the
+most exasperating of the animal creation.  He cries like a deserted
+baby, but he does it without any regularity.  One can accustom
+himself to any expression of suffering that is regular.  The
+annoyance of the goat is in the dreadful waiting for the uncertain
+sound of the next wavering bleat.  It is the fearful expectation of
+that, mingled with the faint hope that the last was the last, that
+ag-gravates the tossing listener until he has murder in his heart.
+He longs for daylight, hoping that the voices of the night will then
+cease, and that sleep will come with the blessed morning.  But he has
+forgotten the birds, who at the first streak of gray in the east have
+assembled in the trees near his chamber-window, and keep up for an
+hour the most rasping dissonance,--an orchestra in which each artist
+is tuning his instrument, setting it in a different key and to play a
+different tune: each bird recalls a different tune, and none sings
+"Annie Laurie,"--to pervert Bayard Taylor's song.
+
+Give us the quiet of a city on the night before a journey.  As we
+mounted skyward in our hotel, and went to bed in a serene altitude,
+we congratulated ourselves upon a reposeful night.  It began well.
+But as we sank into the first doze, we were startled by a sudden
+crash.  Was it an earthquake, or another fire?  Were the neighboring
+buildings all tumbling in upon us, or had a bomb fallen into the
+neighboring crockery-store?  It was the suddenness of the onset that
+startled us, for we soon perceived that it began with the clash of
+cymbals, the pounding of drums, and the blaring of dreadful brass.
+It was somebody's idea of music.  It opened without warning.  The men
+composing the band of brass must have stolen silently into the alley
+about the sleeping hotel, and burst into the clamor of a rattling
+quickstep, on purpose.  The horrible sound thus suddenly let loose
+had no chance of escape; it bounded back from wall to wall, like the
+clapping of boards in a tunnel, rattling windows and stunning all
+cars, in a vain attempt to get out over the roofs.  But such music
+does not go up.  What could have been the intention of this assault
+we could not conjecture.  It was a time of profound peace through the
+country; we had ordered no spontaneous serenade, if it was a
+serenade.  Perhaps the Boston bands have that habit of going into an
+alley and disciplining their nerves by letting out a tune too big for
+the alley, and taking the shock of its reverberation.  It may be well
+enough for the band, but many a poor sinner in the hotel that night
+must have thought the judgment day had sprung upon him.  Perhaps the
+band had some remorse, for by and by it leaked out of the alley, in
+humble, apologetic retreat, as if somebody had thrown something at it
+from the sixth-story window, softly breathing as it retired the notes
+of "Fair Harvard."
+
+The band had scarcely departed for some other haunt of slumber and
+weariness, when the notes of singing floated up that prolific alley,
+like the sweet tenor voice of one bewailing the prohibitory movement;
+and for an hour or more a succession of young bacchanals, who were
+evidently wandering about in search of the Maine Law, lifted up their
+voices in song.  Boston seems to be full of good singers; but they
+will ruin their voices by this night exercise, and so the city will
+cease to be attractive to travelers who would like to sleep there.
+But this entertainment did not last the night out.
+
+It stopped just before the hotel porter began to come around to rouse
+the travelers who had said the night before that they wanted to be
+awakened.  In all well-regulated hotels this process begins at two
+o'clock and keeps up till seven.  If the porter is at all faithful,
+he wakes up everybody in the house; if he is a shirk, he only rouses
+the wrong people.  We treated the pounding of the porter on our door
+with silent contempt.  At the next door he had better luck.  Pound,
+pound.  An angry voice, "What do you want?"
+
+"Time to take the train, sir."
+
+"Not going to take any train."
+
+"Ain't your name Smith?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, Smith"--
+
+"I left no order to be called."  (Indistinct grumbling from Smith's
+room.)
+
+Porter is heard shuffling slowly off down the passage.  In a little
+while he returns to Smith's door, evidently not satisfied in his
+mind.  Rap, rap, rap!
+
+"Well, what now?"
+
+"What's your initials?  A. T.; clear out!"
+
+And the porter shambles away again in his slippers, grumbling
+something about a mistake.  The idea of waking a man up in the middle
+of the night to ask him his "initials" was ridiculous enough to
+banish sleep for another hour.  A person named Smith, when he
+travels, should leave his initials outside the door with his boots.
+
+Refreshed by this reposeful night, and eager to exchange the
+stagnation of the shore for the tumult of the ocean, we departed next
+morning for Baddeck by the most direct route.  This we found, by
+diligent study of fascinating prospectuses of travel, to be by the
+boats of the International Steamship Company; and when, at eight
+o'clock in the morning, we stepped aboard one of them from Commercial
+Wharf, we felt that half our journey and the most perplexing part of
+it was accomplished.  We had put ourselves upon a great line of
+travel, and had only to resign ourselves to its flow in order to
+reach the desired haven.  The agent at the wharf assured us that it
+was not necessary to buy through tickets to Baddeck,--he spoke of it
+as if it were as easy a place to find as Swampscott,--it was a
+conspicuous name on the cards of the company, we should go right on
+from St. John without difficulty.  The easy familiarity of this
+official with Baddeck, in short, made us ashamed to exhibit any
+anxiety about its situation or the means of approach to it.
+Subsequent experience led us to believe that the only man in the
+world, out of Baddeck, who knew anything about it lives in Boston,
+and sells tickets to it, or rather towards it.
+
+There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of
+it, when the traveler is settled simply as to his destination, and
+commits himself to his unknown fate and all the anticipations of
+adventure before him.  We experienced this pleasure as we ascended to
+the deck of the steamboat and snuffed the fresh air of Boston Harbor.
+What a beautiful harbor it is, everybody says, with its irregularly
+indented shores and its islands.  Being strangers, we want to know
+the names of the islands, and to have Fort Warren, which has a
+national reputation, pointed out.  As usual on a steamboat, no one is
+certain about the names, and the little geographical knowledge we
+have is soon hopelessly confused.  We make out South Boston very
+plainly : a tourist is looking at its warehouses through his opera-
+glass, and telling his boy about a recent fire there.  We find out
+afterwards that it was East Boston.  We pass to the stern of the boat
+for a last look at Boston itself; and while there we have the
+pleasure of showing inquirers the Monument and the State House.  We
+do this with easy familiarity; but where there are so many tall
+factory chimneys, it is not so easy to point out the Monument as one
+may think.
+
+The day is simply delicious, when we get away from the unozoned air
+of the land.  The sky is cloudless, and the water sparkles like the
+top of a glass of champagne.  We intend by and by to sit down and
+look at it for half a day, basking in the sunshine and pleasing
+ourselves with the shifting and dancing of the waves.  Now we are
+busy running about from side to side to see the islands, Governor's,
+Castle, Long, Deer, and the others.  When, at length, we find Fort
+Warren, it is not nearly so grim and gloomy as we had expected, and
+is rather a pleasure-place than a prison in appearance.  We are
+conscious, however, of a patriotic emotion as we pass its green turf
+and peeping guns.  Leaving on our right Lovell's Island and the Great
+and Outer Brewster, we stand away north along the jagged
+Massachusetts shore.  These outer islands look cold and wind-swept
+even in summer, and have a hardness of outline which is very far from
+the aspect of summer isles in summer seas.  They are too low and bare
+for beauty, and all the coast is of the most retiring and humble
+description.  Nature makes some compensation for this lowness by an
+eccentricity of indentation which looks very picturesque on the map,
+and sometimes striking, as where Lynn stretches out a slender arm
+with knobby Nahant at the end, like a New Zealand war club.  We sit
+and watch this shore as we glide by with a placid delight.  Its
+curves and low promontories are getting to be speckled with villages
+and dwellings, like the shores of the Bay of Naples; we see the white
+spires, the summer cottages of wealth, the brown farmhouses with an
+occasional orchard, the gleam of a white beach, and now and then the
+flag of some many-piazzaed hotel.  The sunlight is the glory of it
+all; it must have quite another attraction--that of melancholy--under
+a gray sky and with a lead-colored water foreground.
+
+There was not much on the steamboat to distract our attention from
+the study of physical geography.  All the fashionable travelers had
+gone on the previous boat or were waiting for the next one.  The
+passengers were mostly people who belonged in the Provinces and had
+the listless provincial air, with a Boston commercial traveler or
+two, and a few gentlemen from the republic of Ireland, dressed in
+their uncomfortable Sunday clothes.  If any accident should happen to
+the boat, it was doubtful if there were persons on board who could
+draw up and pass the proper resolutions of thanks to the officers.  I
+heard one of these Irish gentlemen, whose satin vest was insufficient
+to repress the mountainous protuberance of his shirt-bosom,
+enlightening an admiring friend as to his idiosyncrasies.  It
+appeared that he was that sort of a man that, if a man wanted
+anything of him, he had only to speak for it "wunst;" and that one of
+his peculiarities was an instant response of the deltoid muscle to
+the brain, though he did not express it in that language.  He went on
+to explain to his auditor that he was so constituted physically that
+whenever he saw a fight, no matter whose property it was, he lost all
+control of himself.  This sort of confidence poured out to a single
+friend, in a retired place on the guard of the boat, in an unexcited
+tone, was evidence of the man's simplicity and sincerity.  The very
+act of traveling, I have noticed, seems to open a man's heart, so
+that he will impart to a chance acquaintance his losses, his
+diseases, his table preferences, his disappointments in love or in
+politics, and his most secret hopes.  One sees everywhere this
+beautiful human trait, this craving for sympathy.  There was the old
+lady, in the antique bonnet and plain cotton gloves, who got aboard
+the express train at a way-station on the Connecticut River Road.
+She wanted to go, let us say, to Peak's Four Corners.  It seemed that
+the train did not usually stop there, but it appeared afterwards that
+the obliging conductor had told her to get aboard and he would let
+her off at Peak's.  When she stepped into the car, in a flustered
+condition, carrying her large bandbox, she began to ask all the
+passengers, in turn, if this was the right train, and if it stopped
+at Peak's.  The information she received was various, but the weight
+of it was discouraging, and some of the passengers urged her to get
+off without delay, before the train should start.  The poor woman got
+off, and pretty soon came back again, sent by the conductor; but her
+mind was not settled, for she repeated her questions to every person
+who passed her seat, and their answers still more discomposed her.
+"Sit perfectly still," said the conductor, when he came by.  "You
+must get out and wait for a way train," said the passengers, who
+knew.  In this confusion, the train moved off, just as the old lady
+had about made up her mind to quit the car, when her distraction was
+completed by the discovery that her hair trunk was not on board.  She
+saw it standing on the open platform, as we passed, and after one
+look of terror, and a dash at the window, she subsided into her seat,
+grasping her bandbox, with a vacant look of utter despair.  Fate now
+seemed to have done its worst, and she was resigned to it.  I am sure
+it was no mere curiosity, but a desire to be of service, that led me
+to approach her and say, "Madam, where are you going?"
+
+"The Lord only knows," was the utterly candid ,response; but then,
+forgetting everything in her last misfortune and impelled to a burst
+of confidence, she began to tell me her troubles.  She informed me
+that her youngest daughter was about to be married, and that all her
+wedding-clothes and all her summer clothes were in that trunk; and as
+she said this she gave a glance out of the window as if she hoped it
+might be following her.  What would become of them all now, all brand
+new, she did n't know, nor what would become of her or her daughter.
+And then she told me, article by article and piece by piece, all that
+that trunk contained, the very names of which had an unfamiliar sound
+in a railway-car, and how many sets and pairs there were of each.  It
+seemed to be a relief to the old lady to make public this catalogue
+which filled all her mind; and there was a pathos in the revelation
+that I cannot convey in words.  And though I am compelled, by way of
+illustration, to give this incident, no bribery or torture shall ever
+extract from me a statement of the contents of that hair trunk.
+
+We were now passing Nahant, and we should have seen Longfellow's
+cottage and the waves beating on the rocks before it, if we had been
+near enough.  As it was, we could only faintly distinguish the
+headland and note the white beach of Lynn.  The fact is, that in
+travel one is almost as much dependent upon imagination and memory as
+he is at home.  Somehow, we seldom get near enough to anything.  The
+interest of all this coast which we had come to inspect was mainly
+literary and historical.  And no country is of much interest until
+legends and poetry have draped it in hues that mere nature cannot
+produce.  We looked at Nahant for Longfellow's sake; we strained our
+eyes to make out Marblehead on account of Whittier's ballad; we
+scrutinized the entrance to Salem Harbor because a genius once sat in
+its decaying custom-house and made of it a throne of the imagination.
+Upon this low shore line, which lies blinking in the midday sun, the
+waves of history have beaten for two centuries and a half, and
+romance has had time to grow there.  Out of any of these coves might
+have sailed Sir Patrick Spens "to Noroway, to Noroway,"
+
+"They hadna sailed upon the sea
+A day but barely three,
+
+Till loud and boisterous grew the wind,
+And gurly grew the sea."
+
+The sea was anything but gurly now; it lay idle and shining in an
+August holiday.  It seemed as if we could sit all day and watch the
+suggestive shore and dream about it.  But we could not.  No man, and
+few women, can sit all day on those little round penitential stools
+that the company provide for the discomfort of their passengers.
+There is no scenery in the world that can be enjoyed from one of
+those stools.  And when the traveler is at sea, with the land failing
+away in his horizon, and has to create his own scenery by an effort
+of the imagination, these stools are no assistance to him.  The
+imagination, when one is sitting, will not work unless the back is
+supported.  Besides, it began to be cold; notwithstanding the shiny,
+specious appearance of things, it was cold, except in a sheltered
+nook or two where the sun beat.  This was nothing to be complained of
+by persons who had left the parching land in order to get cool.  They
+knew that there would be a wind and a draught everywhere, and that
+they would be occupied nearly all the time in moving the little
+stools about to get out of the wind, or out of the sun, or out of
+something that is inherent in a steamboat.  Most people enjoy riding
+on a steamboat, shaking and trembling and chow-chowing along in
+pleasant weather out of sight of land; and they do not feel any
+ennui, as may be inferred from the intense excitement which seizes
+them when a poor porpoise leaps from the water half a mile away.
+"Did you see the porpoise?" makes conversation for an hour.  On our
+steamboat there was a man who said he saw a whale, saw him just as
+plain, off to the east, come up to blow; appeared to be a young one.
+I wonder where all these men come from who always see a whale.  I
+never was on a sea-steamer yet that there was not one of these men.
+
+We sailed from Boston Harbor straight for Cape Ann, and passed close
+by the twin lighthouses of Thacher, so near that we could see the
+lanterns and the stone gardens, and the young barbarians of Thacher
+all at play; and then we bore away, straight over the trackless
+Atlantic, across that part of the map where the title and the
+publisher's name are usually printed, for the foreign city of St.
+John.  It was after we passed these lighthouses that we did n't see
+the whale, and began to regret the hard fate that took us away from a
+view of the Isles of Shoals.  I am not tempted to introduce them into
+this sketch, much as its surface needs their romantic color, for
+truth is stronger in me than the love of giving a deceitful pleasure.
+There will be nothing in this record that we did not see, or might
+not have seen.  For instance, it might not be wrong to describe a
+coast, a town, or an island that we passed while we were performing
+our morning toilets in our staterooms.  The traveler owes a duty to
+his readers, and if he is now and then too weary or too indifferent
+to go out from the cabin to survey a prosperous village where a
+landing is made, he has no right to cause the reader to suffer by his
+indolence.  He should describe the village.
+
+I had intended to describe the Maine coast, which is as fascinating
+on the map as that of Norway.  We had all the feelings appropriate to
+nearness to it, but we couldn't see it.  Before we came abreast of it
+night had settled down, and there was around us only a gray and
+melancholy waste of salt water.  To be sure it was a lovely night,
+with a young moon in its sky,
+
+"I saw the new moon late yestreen
+Wi' the auld moon in her arms,"
+
+and we kept an anxious lookout for the Maine hills that push so
+boldly down into the sea.  At length we saw them,--faint, dusky
+shadows in the horizon, looming up in an ashy color and with a most
+poetical light.  We made out clearly Mt. Desert, and felt repaid for
+our journey by the sight of this famous island, even at such a
+distance.  I pointed out the hills to the man at the wheel, and asked
+if we should go any nearer to Mt. Desert.
+
+"Them!" said he, with the merited contempt which officials in this
+country have for inquisitive travelers,--" them's Camden Hills.  You
+won't see Mt. Desert till midnight, and then you won't."
+
+One always likes to weave in a little romance with summer travel on a
+steamboat; and we came aboard this one with the purpose and the
+language to do so.  But there was an absolute want of material, that
+would hardly be credited if we went into details.  The first meeting
+of the passengers at the dinner-table revealed it.  There is a kind
+of female plainness which is pathetic, and many persons can truly say
+that to them it is homelike; and there are vulgarities of manner that
+are interesting; and there are peculiarities, pleasant or the
+reverse, which attract one's attention : but there was absolutely
+nothing of this sort on our boat.  The female passengers were all
+neutrals, incapable, I should say, of making any impression whatever
+even under the most favorable circumstances.  They were probably
+women of the Provinces, and took their neutral tint from the foggy
+land they inhabit, which is neither a republic nor a monarchy, but
+merely a languid expectation of something undefined.  My comrade was
+disposed to resent the dearth of beauty, not only on this vessel but
+throughout the Provinces generally,--a resentment that could be shown
+to be unjust, for this was evidently not the season for beauty in
+these lands, and it was probably a bad year for it.  Nor should an
+American of the United States be forward to set up his standard of
+taste in such matters; neither in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, nor
+Cape Breton have I heard the inhabitants complain of the plainness of
+the women.
+
+On such a night two lovers might have been seen, but not on our boat,
+leaning over the taffrail,--if that is the name of the fence around
+the cabin-deck, looking at the moon in the western sky and the long
+track of light in the steamer's wake with unutterable tenderness.
+For the sea was perfectly smooth, so smooth as not to interfere with
+the most perfect tenderness of feeling; and the vessel forged ahead
+under the stars of the soft night with an adventurous freedom that
+almost concealed the commercial nature of her mission.  It seemed--
+this voyaging through the sparkling water, under the scintillating
+heavens, this resolute pushing into the opening splendors of night--
+like a pleasure trip.  "It is the witching hour of half past ten,"
+said my comrade, "let us turn in."  (The reader will notice the
+consideration for her feelings which has omitted the usual
+description of "a sunset at sea.")
+
+When we looked from our state-room window in the morning we saw land.
+We were passing within a stone's throw of a pale-green and rather
+cold-looking coast, with few trees or other evidences of fertile
+soil.  Upon going out I found that we were in the harbor of Eastport.
+I found also the usual tourist who had been up, shivering in his
+winter overcoat, since four o'clock.  He described to me the
+magnificent sunrise, and the lifting of the fog from islands and
+capes, in language that made me rejoice that he had seen it.  He knew
+all about the harbor.  That wooden town at the foot of it, with the
+white spire, was Lubec; that wooden town we were approaching was
+Eastport.  The long island stretching clear across the harbor was
+Campobello.  We had been obliged to go round it, a dozen miles out of
+our way, to get in, because the tide was in such a stage that we
+could not enter by the Lubec Channel.  We had been obliged to enter
+an American harbor by British waters.
+
+We approached Eastport with a great deal of curiosity and
+considerable respect.  It had been one of the cities of the
+imagination.  Lying in the far east of our great territory, a
+military and even a sort of naval station, a conspicuous name on the
+map, prominent in boundary disputes and in war operations, frequent
+in telegraphic dispatches,--we had imagined it a solid city, with
+some Oriental, if decayed, peculiarity, a port of trade and commerce.
+The tourist informed me that Eastport looked very well at a distance,
+with the sun shining on its white houses.  When we landed at its
+wooden dock we saw that it consisted of a few piles of lumber, a
+sprinkling of small cheap houses along a sidehill, a big hotel with a
+flag-staff, and a very peaceful looking arsenal.  It is doubtless a
+very enterprising and deserving city, but its aspect that morning was
+that of cheapness, newness, and stagnation, with no compensating
+pictur-esqueness.  White paint always looks chilly under a gray sky
+and on naked hills.  Even in hot August the place seemed bleak.  The
+tour-ist, who went ashore with a view to breakfast, said that it
+would be a good place to stay in and go a-fishing and picnicking on
+Campobello Island.  It has another advantage for the wicked over
+other Maine towns.  Owing to the contiguity of British territory, the
+Maine Law is constantly evaded, in spirit.  The thirsty citizen or
+sailor has only to step into a boat and give it a shove or two across
+the narrow stream that separates the United States from Deer Island
+and land, when he can ruin his breath, and return before he is
+missed.
+
+This might be a cause of war with, England, but it is not the most
+serious grievance here.  The possession by the British of the island
+of Campobello is an insufferable menace and impertinence.  I write
+with the full knowledge of what war is.  We ought to instantly
+dislodge the British from Campobello.  It entirely shuts up and
+commands our harbor, one of our chief Eastern harbors and war
+stations, where we keep a flag and cannon and some soldiers, and
+where the customs officers look out for smuggling.  There is no way
+to get into our own harbor, except in favorable conditions of the
+tide, without begging the courtesy of a passage through British
+waters.  Why is England permitted to stretch along down our coast in
+this straggling and inquisitive manner?  She might almost as well own
+Long Island.  It was impossible to prevent our cheeks mantling with
+shame as we thought of this, and saw ourselves, free American
+citizens, land-locked by alien soil in our own harbor.
+
+We ought to have war, if war is necessary to possess Campobello and
+Deer Islands; or else we ought to give the British Eastport.  I am
+not sure but the latter would be the better course.
+
+With this war spirit in our hearts, we sailed away into the British
+waters of the Bay of Fundy, but keeping all the morning so close to
+the New Brunswick shore that we could see there was nothing on it;
+that is, nothing that would make one wish to land.  And yet the best
+part of going to sea is keeping close to the shore, however tame it
+may be, if the weather is pleasant.  A pretty bay now and then, a
+rocky cove with scant foliage, a lighthouse, a rude cabin, a level
+land, monotonous and without noble forests,--this was New Brunswick
+as we coasted along it under the most favorable circumstances.  But
+we were advancing into the Bay of Fundy; and my comrade, who had been
+brought up on its high tides in the district school, was on the
+lookout for this phenomenon.  The very name of Fundy is stimulating
+to the imagination, amid the geographical wastes of youth, and the
+young fancy reaches out to its tides with an enthusiasm that is given
+only to Fingal's Cave and other pictorial wonders of the text-book.
+I am sure the district schools would become what they are not now, if
+the geographers would make the other parts of the globe as attractive
+as the sonorous Bay of Fundy.  The recitation about that is always an
+easy one; there is a lusty pleasure in the mere shouting out of the
+name, as if the speaking it were an innocent sort of swearing.  From
+the Bay of Fundy the rivers run uphill half the time, and the tides
+are from forty to ninety feet high.  For myself, I confess that, in
+my imagination, I used to see the tides of this bay go stalking into
+the land like gigantic waterspouts; or, when I was better instructed,
+I could see them advancing on the coast like a solid wall of masonry
+eighty feet high.  "Where," we said, as we came easily, and neither
+uphill nor downhill, into the pleasant harbor of St. John,---where
+are the tides of our youth?"
+
+They were probably out, for when we came to the land we walked out
+upon the foot of a sloping platform that ran into the water by the
+side of the piles of the dock, which stood up naked and blackened
+high in the air.  It is not the purpose of this paper to describe St.
+John, nor to dwell upon its picturesque situation.  As one approaches
+it from the harbor it gives a promise which its rather shabby
+streets, decaying houses, and steep plank sidewalks do not keep.  A
+city set on a hill, with flags flying from a roof here and there, and
+a few shining spires and walls glistening in the sun, always looks
+well at a distance.  St. John is extravagant in the matter of
+flagstaffs; almost every well-to-do citizen seems to have one on his
+premises, as a sort of vent for his loyalty, I presume.  It is a good
+fashion, at any rate, and its more general adoption by us would add
+to the gayety of our cities when we celebrate the birthday of the
+President.  St. John is built on a steep sidehill, from which it
+would be in danger of sliding off, if its houses were not mortised
+into the solid rock.  This makes the house-foundations secure, but
+the labor of blasting out streets is considerable.  We note these
+things complacently as we toil in the sun up the hill to the Victoria
+Hotel, which stands well up on the backbone of the ridge, and from
+the upper windows of which we have a fine view of the harbor, and of
+the hill opposite, above Carleton, where there is the brokenly
+truncated ruin of a round stone tower.  This tower was one of the
+first things that caught our eyes as we entered the harbor.  It gave
+an antique picturesqueness to the landscape which it entirely wanted
+without this.  Round stone towers are not so common in this world
+that we can afford to be indifferent to them.  This is called a
+Martello tower, but I could not learn who built it.  I could not
+understand the indifference, almost amounting to contempt, of the
+citizens of St. John in regard to this their only piece of curious
+antiquity.  "It is nothing but the ruins of an old fort," they said;
+"you can see it as well from here as by going there."  It was, how-
+ever, the one thing at St.  John I was determined to see.  But we
+never got any nearer to it than the ferry-landing.  Want of time and
+the vis inertia of the place were against us.  And now, as I think of
+that tower and its perhaps mysterious origin, I have a longing for it
+that the possession of nothing else in the Provinces could satisfy.
+
+But it must not be forgotten that we were on our way to Baddeck; that
+the whole purpose of the journey was to reach Baddeck; that St. John
+was only an incident in the trip; that any information about St.
+John, which is here thrown in or mercifully withheld, is entirely
+gratuitous, and is not taken into account in the price the reader
+pays for this volume.  But if any one wants to know what sort of a
+place St. John is, we can tell him: it is the sort of a place that if
+you get into it after eight o'clock on Wednesday morning, you cannot
+get out of it in any direction until Thursday morning at eight
+o'clock, unless you want to smuggle goods on the night train to
+Bangor.  It was eleven o'clock Wednesday forenoon when we arrived at
+St. John.  The Intercolonial railway train had gone to Shediac; it
+had gone also on its roundabout Moncton, Missaquat River, Truro,
+Stewiack, and Shubenacadie way to Halifax; the boat had gone to Digby
+Gut and Annapolis to catch the train that way for Halifax; the boat
+had gone up the river to Frederick, the capital.  We could go to none
+of these places till the next day.  We had no desire to go to
+Frederick, but we made the fact that we were cut off from it an
+addition to our injury.  The people of St. John have this
+peculiarity: they never start to go anywhere except early in the
+morning.
+
+The reader to whom time is nothing does not yet appreciate the
+annoyance of our situation.  Our time was strictly limited.  The
+active world is so constituted that it could not spare us more than
+two weeks.  We must reach Baddeck Saturday night or never.  To go
+home without seeing Baddeck was simply intolerable.  Had we not told
+everybody that we were going to Baddeck?  Now, if we had gone to
+Shediac in the train that left St. John that morning, we should have
+taken the steamboat that would have carried us to Port Hawkesbury,
+whence a stage connected with a steamboat on the Bras d'Or, which
+(with all this profusion of relative pronouns) would land us at
+Baddeck on Friday.  How many times had we been over this route on the
+map and the prospectus of travel!  And now, what a delusion it
+seemed!  There would not another boat leave Shediac on this route
+till the following Tuesday,--quite too late for our purpose.  The
+reader sees where we were, and will be prepared, if he has a map (and
+any feelings), to appreciate the masterly strategy that followed.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+During the pilgrimage everything does not suit the tastes of the
+pilgrim. --TURKISH PROVERB.
+
+One seeking Baddeck, as a possession, would not like to be detained a
+prisoner even in Eden,--much less in St. John, which is unlike Eden
+in several important respects.  The tree of knowledge does not grow
+there, for one thing; at least St. John's ignorance of Baddeck
+amounts to a feature.  This encountered us everywhere.  So dense was
+this ignorance, that we, whose only knowledge of the desired place
+was obtained from the prospectus of travel, came to regard ourselves
+as missionaries of geographical information in this dark provincial
+city.
+
+The clerk at the Victoria was not unwilling to help us on our
+journey, but if he could have had his way, we would have gone to a
+place on Prince Edward Island which used to be called Bedeque, but is
+now named Summerside, in the hope of attracting summer visitors.  As
+to Cape Breton, he said the agent of the Intercolonial could tell us
+all about that, and put us on the route.  We repaired to the agent.
+The kindness of this person dwells in our memory.  He entered at once
+into our longings and perplexities.  He produced his maps and time-
+tables, and showed us clearly what we already knew.  The Port
+Hawkesbury steamboat from Shediac for that week had gone, to be sure,
+but we could take one of another line which would leave us at Pictou,
+whence we could take another across to Port Hood, on Cape Breton.
+This looked fair, until we showed the agent that there was no steamer
+to Port Hood.
+
+"Ah, then you can go another way.  You can take the Intercolonial
+railway round to Pictou, catch the steamer for Port Hawkesbury,
+connect with the steamer on the Bras d'Or, and you are all right."
+
+So it would seem.  It was a most obliging agent; and it took us half
+an hour to convince him that the train would reach Pictou half a day
+too late for the steamer, that no other boat would leave Pictou for
+Cape Breton that week, and that even if we could reach the Bras d'Or,
+we should have no means of crossing it, except by swimming.  The
+perplexed agent thereupon referred us to Mr. Brown, a shipper on the
+wharf, who knew all about Cape Breton, and could tell us exactly how
+to get there.  It is needless to say that a weight was taken off our
+minds.  We pinned our faith to Brown, and sought him in his
+warehouse.  Brown was a prompt business man, and a traveler, and
+would know every route and every conveyance from Nova Scotia to Cape
+Breton.
+
+Mr. Brown was not in.  He never is in.  His store is a rusty
+warehouse, low and musty, piled full of boxes of soap and candles and
+dried fish, with a little glass cubby in one corner, where a thin
+clerk sits at a high desk, like a spider in his web.  Perhaps he is a
+spider, for the cubby is swarming with flies, whose hum is the only
+noise of traffic; the glass of the window-sash has not been washed
+since it was put in apparently.  The clerk is not writing, and has
+evidently no other use for his steel pen than spearing flies.  Brown
+is out, says this young votary of commerce, and will not be in till
+half past five.  We remark upon the fact that nobody ever is "in"
+these dingy warehouses, wonder when the business is done, and go out
+into the street to wait for Brown.
+
+In front of the store is a dray, its horse fast-asleep, and waiting
+for the revival of commerce.  The travelers note that the dray is of
+a peculiar construction, the body being dropped down from the axles
+so as nearly to touch the ground,--a great convenience in loading and
+unloading; they propose to introduce it into their native land.  The
+dray is probably waiting for the tide to come in.  In the deep slip
+lie a dozen helpless vessels, coasting schooners mostly, tipped on
+their beam ends in the mud, or propped up by side-pieces as if they
+were built for land as well as for water.  At the end of the wharf is
+a long English steamboat unloading railroad iron, which will return
+to the Clyde full of Nova Scotia coal.  We sit down on the dock,
+where the fresh sea-breeze comes up the harbor, watch the lazily
+swinging crane on the vessel, and meditate upon the greatness of
+England and the peacefulness of the drowsy after noon.  One's feeling
+of rest is never complete--unless he can see somebody else at work,--
+but the labor must be without haste, as it is in the Provinces.
+
+While waiting for Brown, we had leisure to explore the shops of
+King's Street, and to climb up to the grand triumphal arch which
+stands on top of the hill and guards the entrance to King's Square.
+
+Of the shops for dry-goods I have nothing to say, for they tempt the
+unwary American to violate the revenue laws of his country; but he
+may safely go into the book-shops.  The literature which is displayed
+in the windows and on the counters has lost that freshness which it
+once may have had, and is, in fact, if one must use the term, fly-
+specked, like the cakes in the grocery windows on the side streets.
+There are old illustrated newspapers from the States, cheap novels
+from the same, and the flashy covers of the London and Edinburgh
+sixpenny editions.  But this is the dull season for literature, we
+reflect.
+
+It will always be matter of regret to us that we climbed up to the
+triumphal arch, which appeared so noble in the distance, with the
+trees behind it.  For when we reached it, we found that it was built
+of wood, painted and sanded, and in a shocking state of decay; and
+the grove to which it admitted us was only a scant assemblage of
+sickly locust-trees, which seemed to be tired of battling with the
+unfavorable climate, and had, in fact, already retired from the
+business of ornamental shade trees.  Adjoining this square is an
+ancient cemetery, the surface of which has decayed in sympathy with
+the mouldering remains it covers, and is quite a model in this
+respect.  I have called this cemetery ancient, but it may not be so,
+for its air of decay is thoroughly modern, and neglect, and not
+years, appears to have made it the melancholy place of repose it is.
+Whether it is the fashionable and favorite resort of the dead of the
+city we did not learn, but there were some old men sitting in its
+damp shades, and the nurses appeared to make it a rendezvous for
+their baby-carriages,--a cheerful place to bring up children in, and
+to familiarize their infant minds with the fleeting nature of
+provincial life.  The park and burying-ground, it is scarcely
+necessary to say, added greatly to the feeling of repose which stole
+over us on this sunny day.  And they made us long for Brown and his
+information about Baddeck.
+
+But Mr. Brown, when found, did not know as much as the agent.  He had
+been in Nova Scotia; he had never been in Cape Breton; but he
+presumed we would find no difficulty in reaching Baddeck by so and
+so, and so and so.  We consumed valuable time in convincing Brown
+that his directions to us were impracticable and valueless, and then
+he referred us to Mr. Cope.  An interview with Mr. Cope discouraged
+us; we found that we were imparting everywhere more geographical
+inform-ation than we were receiving, and as our own stock was small,
+we concluded that we should be unable to enlighten all the
+inhabitants of St. John upon the subject of Baddeck before we ran
+out.  Returning to the hotel, and taking our destiny into our own
+hands, we resolved upon a bold stroke.
+
+But to return for a moment to Brown.  I feel that Brown has been let
+off too easily in the above paragraph.  His conduct, to say the
+truth, was not such as we expected of a man in whom we had put our
+entire faith for half a day,--a long while to trust anybody in these
+times,--a man whom we had exalted as an encyclopedia of information,
+and idealized in every way.  A man of wealth and liberal views and
+courtly manners we had decided Brown would be.  Perhaps he had a
+suburban villa on the heights over-looking Kennebeckasis Bay, and,
+recognizing us as brothers in a common interest in Baddeck, not-
+withstanding our different nationality, would insist upon taking us
+to his house, to sip provincial tea with Mrs. Brown and Victoria
+Louise, his daughter.  When, therefore, Mr.  Brown whisked into his
+dingy office, and, but for our importunity, would have paid no more
+attention to us than to up-country customers without credit, and when
+he proved to be willingly, it seemed to us, ignorant of Baddeck, our
+feelings received a great shock.  It is incomprehensible that a man
+in the position of Brown with so many boxes of soap and candles to
+dispose of--should be so ignorant of a neighboring province.  We had
+heard of the cordial unity of the Provinces in the New Dominion.
+Heaven help it, if it depends upon such fellows as Brown!  Of course,
+his directing us to Cope was a mere fetch.  For as we have intimated,
+it would have taken us longer to have given Cope an idea of Baddeck,
+than it did to enlighten Brown.  But we had no bitter feelings about
+Cope, for we never had reposed confidence in him.
+
+Our plan of campaign was briefly this: To take the steamboat at eight
+o'clock, Thursday morning, for Digby Gut and Annapolis; thence to go
+by rail through the poetical Acadia down to Halifax; to turn north
+and east by rail from Halifax to New Glasgow, and from thence to push
+on by stage to the Gut of Canso.  This would carry us over the entire
+length of Nova Scotia, and, with good luck, land us on Cape Breton
+Island Saturday morning.  When we should set foot on that island, we
+trusted that we should be able to make our way to Baddeck, by walk-
+ing, swimming, or riding, whichever sort of locomotion should be most
+popular in that province.  Our imaginations were kindled by reading
+that the "most superb line of stages on the continent" ran from New
+Glasgow to the Gut of Canso.  If the reader perfectly understands
+this programme, he has the advantage of the two travelers at the time
+they made it.
+
+It was a gray morning when we embarked from St. John, and in fact a
+little drizzle of rain veiled the Martello tower, and checked, like
+the cross-strokes of a line engraving, the hill on which it stands.
+The miscellaneous shining of such a harbor appears best in a golden
+haze, or in the mist of a morning like this.  We had expected days of
+fog in this region; but the fog seemed to have gone out with the high
+tides of the geography.  And it is simple justice to these
+possessions of her Majesty, to say that in our two weeks'
+acquaintance of them they enjoyed as delicious weather as ever falls
+on sea and shore, with the exception of this day when we crossed the
+Bay of Fundy.  And this day was only one of those cool interludes of
+low color, which an artist would be thankful to introduce among a
+group of brilliant pictures.  Such a day rests the traveler, who is
+overstimulated by shifting scenes played upon by the dazzling sun.
+So the cool gray clouds spread a grateful umbrella above us as we ran
+across the Bay of Fundy, sighted the headlands of the Gut of Digby,
+and entered into the Annapolis Basin, and into the region of a
+romantic history.  The white houses of Digby, scattered over the
+downs like a flock of washed sheep, had a somewhat chilly aspect, it
+is true, and made us long for the sun on them.  But as I think of it
+now, I prefer to have the town and the pretty hillsides that stand
+about the basin in the light we saw them; and especially do I like to
+recall the high wooden pier at Digby, deserted by the tide and so
+blown by the wind that the passengers who came out on it, with their
+tossing drapery, brought to mind the windy Dutch harbors that
+Backhuysen painted.  We landed a priest here, and it was a pleasure
+to see him as he walked along the high pier, his broad hat flapping,
+and the wind blowing his long skirts away from his ecclesiastical
+legs.
+
+It was one of the coincidences of life, for which no one can account,
+that when we descended upon these coasts, the Governor-General of the
+Dominion was abroad in his Provinces.  There was an air of expec-
+tation of him everywhere, and of preparation for his coming; his
+lordship was the subject of conversation on the Digby boat, his
+movements were chronicled in the newspapers, and the gracious bearing
+of the Governor and Lady Dufferin at the civic receptions, balls, and
+picnics was recorded with loyal satisfaction; even a literary flavor
+was given to the provincial journals by quotations from his
+lordship's condescension to letters in the "High Latitudes."  It was
+not without pain, however, that even in this un-American region we
+discovered the old Adam of journalism in the disposition of the
+newspapers of St. John toward sarcasm touching the well-meant
+attempts to entertain the Governor and his lady in the provincial
+town of Halifax,--a disposition to turn, in short, upon the
+demonstrations of loyal worship the faint light of ridicule.  There
+were those upon the boat who were journeying to Halifax to take part
+in the civic ball about to be given to their excellencies, and as we
+were going in the same direction, we shared in the feeling of
+satisfaction which prox-imity to the Great often excites.
+
+We had other if not deeper causes of satisfaction.  We were sailing
+along the gracefully moulded and tree-covered hills of the Annapolis
+Basin, and up the mildly picturesque river of that name, and we were
+about to enter what the provincials all enthusiastically call the
+Garden of Nova Scotia.  This favored vale, skirted by low ranges of
+hills on either hand, and watered most of the way by the Annapolis
+River, extends from the mouth of the latter to the town of Windsor on
+the river Avon.  We expected to see something like the fertile
+valleys of the Connecticut or the Mohawk.  We should also pass
+through those meadows on the Basin of Minas which Mr.  Longfellow has
+made more sadly poetical than any other spot on the Western
+Continent.  It is,--this valley of the Annapolis,--in the belief of
+provincials, the most beautiful and blooming place in the world, with
+a soil and climate kind to the husbandman; a land of fair meadows,
+orchards, and vines.  It was doubtless our own fault that this land
+did not look to us like a garden, as it does to the inhabitants of
+Nova Scotia; and it was not until we had traveled over the rest of
+the country, that we saw the appropriateness of the designation.  The
+explanation is, that not so much is required of a garden here as in
+some other parts of the world.  Excellent apples, none finer, are
+exported from this valley to England, and the quality of the potatoes
+is said to ap-proach an ideal perfection here.  I should think that
+oats would ripen well also in a good year, and grass, for those who
+care for it, may be satisfactory.  I should judge that the other
+products of this garden are fish and building-stone.  But we
+anticipate.  And have we forgotten the "murmuring pines and the
+hemlocks"?  Nobody, I suppose, ever travels here without believing
+that he sees these trees of the imagination, so forcibly has the poet
+projected them upon the uni-versal consciousness.  But we were unable
+to see them, on this route.
+
+It would be a brutal thing for us to take seats in the railway train
+at Annapolis, and leave the ancient town, with its modern houses and
+remains of old fortifications, without a thought of the romantic
+history which saturates the region.  There is not much in the smart,
+new restaurant, where a tidy waiting-maid skillfully depreciates our
+currency in exchange for bread and cheese and ale, to recall the
+early drama of the French discovery and settlement.  For it is to the
+French that we owe the poetical interest that still invests, like a
+garment, all these islands and bays, just as it is to the Spaniards
+that we owe the romance of the Florida coast.  Every spot on this
+continent that either of these races has touched has a color that is
+wanting in the prosaic settlements of the English.
+
+Without the historical light of French adventure upon this town and
+basin of Annapolis, or Port Royal, as they were first named, I
+confess that I should have no longing to stay here for a week;
+notwithstanding the guide-book distinctly says that this harbor has
+"a striking resemblance to the beautiful Bay of Naples."  I am not
+offended at this remark, for it is the one always made about a
+harbor, and I am sure the passing traveler can stand it, if the Bay
+of Naples can.  And yet this tranquil basin must have seemed a haven
+of peace to the first discoverers.
+
+It was on a lovely summer day in 1604, that the Sieur de Monts and
+his comrades, Champlain and the Baron de Poutrincourt, beating about
+the shores of Nova Scotia, were invited by the rocky gateway of the
+Port Royal Basin.  They entered the small inlet, says Mr. Parkman,
+when suddenly the narrow strait dilated into a broad and tranquil
+basin, compassed with sunny hills, wrapped with woodland verdure and
+alive with waterfalls.  Poutrincourt was delighted with the scene,
+and would fain remove thither from France with his family.  Since
+Poutrincourt's day, the hills have been somewhat denuded of trees,
+and the waterfalls are not now in sight; at least, not under such a
+gray sky as we saw.
+
+The reader who once begins to look into the French occupancy of
+Acadia is in danger of getting into a sentimental vein, and sentiment
+is the one thing to be shunned in these days.  Yet I cannot but stay,
+though the train should leave us, to pay my respectful homage to one
+of the most heroic of women, whose name recalls the most romantic
+incident in the history of this region.  Out of this past there rises
+no figure so captivating to the imagination as that of Madame de la
+Tour.  And it is noticeable that woman has a curious habit of coming
+to the front in critical moments of history, and performing some
+exploit that eclipses in brilliancy all the deeds of contemporary
+men; and the exploit usually ends in a pathetic tragedy, that fixes
+it forever in the sympathy of the world.  I need not copy out of the
+pages of De Charlevoix the well-known story of Madame de la Tour; I
+only wish he had told us more about her.  It is here at Port Royal
+that we first see her with her husband.  Charles de St. Etienne, the
+Chevalier de la Tour,--there is a world of romance in these mere
+names,--was a Huguenot nobleman who had a grant of Port Royal and of
+La Hive, from Louis XIII.  He ceded La Hive to Razilli, the
+governor-in-chief of the provinces, who took a fancy to it, for a
+residence.  He was living peacefully at Port Royal in 1647, when the
+Chevalier d'Aunay Charnise, having succeeded his brother Razilli at
+La Hive, tired of that place and removed to Port Royal.  De Charnise
+was a Catholic; the difference in religion might not have produced
+any unpleasantness, but the two noblemen could not agree in dividing
+the profits of the peltry trade,--each being covetous, if we may so
+express it, of the hide of the savage continent, and determined to
+take it off for himself.  At any rate, disagreement arose, and De la
+Tour moved over to the St. John, of which region his father had
+enjoyed a grant from Charles I. of England,--whose sad fate it is not
+necessary now to recall to the reader's mind,--and built a fort at
+the mouth of the river.  But the differences of the two ambitious
+Frenchmen could not be composed.  De la Tour obtained aid from
+Governor Winthrop at Boston, thus verifying the Catholic prediction
+that the Huguenots would side with the enemies of France on occasion.
+De Charnise received orders from Louis to arrest De la Tour; but a
+little preliminary to the arrest was the possession of the fort of
+St. John, and this he could not obtain, although be sent all his
+force against it.  Taking advantage, however, of the absence of De la
+Tour, who had a habit of roving about, he one day besieged St. John.
+Madame de la Tour headed the little handful of men in the fort, and
+made such a gallant resistance that De Charnise was obliged to draw
+off his fleet with the loss of thirty-three men,--a very serious
+loss, when the supply of men was as distant as France.  But De
+Charnise would not be balked by a woman; he attacked again; and this
+time, one of the garrison, a Swiss, betrayed the fort, and let the
+invaders into the walls by an unguarded entrance.  It was Easter
+morning when this misfortune occurred, but the peaceful influence of
+the day did not avail.  When Madame saw that she was betrayed, her
+spirits did not quail; she took refuge with her little band in a
+detached part of the fort, and there made such a bold show of
+defense, that De Charnise was obliged to agree to the terms of her
+surrender, which she dictated.  No sooner had this unchivalrous
+fellow obtained possession of the fort and of this Historic Woman,
+than, overcome with a false shame that he had made terms with a
+woman, he violated his noble word, and condemned to death all the
+men, except one, who was spared on condition that he should be the
+executioner of the others.  And the poltroon compelled the brave
+woman to witness the execution, with the added indignity of a rope
+round her neck,--or as De Charlevoix much more neatly expresses it,
+"obligea sa prisonniere d'assister a l'execution, la corde au cou."
+
+To the shock of this horror the womanly spirit of Madame de la Tour
+succumbed; she fell into a decline and died soon after.  De la Tour,
+himself an exile from his province, wandered about the New World in
+his customary pursuit of peltry.  He was seen at Quebec for two
+years.  While there, he heard of the death of De Charnise, and
+straightway repaired to St. John.  The widow of his late enemy
+received him graciously, and he entered into possession of the estate
+of the late occupant with the consent of all the heirs.  To remove
+all roots of bitterness, De la Tour married Madame de Charnise, and
+history does not record any ill of either of them.  I trust they had
+the grace to plant a sweetbrier on the grave of the noble woman to
+whose faithfulness and courage they owe their rescue from obscurity.
+At least the parties to this singular union must have agreed to
+ignore the lamented existence of the Chevalier d'Aunay.
+
+With the Chevalier de la Tour, at any rate, it all went well
+thereafter.  When Cromwell drove the French from Acadia, he granted
+great territorial rights to De la Tour, which that thrifty adventurer
+sold out to one of his co-grantees for L16,000; and he no doubt
+invested the money in peltry for the London market.
+
+As we leave the station at Annapolis, we are obliged to put Madame de
+la Tour out of our minds to make room for another woman whose name,
+and we might say presence, fills all the valley before us.  So it is
+that woman continues to reign, where she has once got a foothold,
+long after her dear frame has become dust.  Evangeline, who is as
+real a personage as Queen Esther, must have been a different woman
+from Madame de la Tour.  If the latter had lived at Grand Pre, she
+would, I trust, have made it hot for the brutal English who drove the
+Acadians out of their salt-marsh paradise, and have died in her
+heroic shoes rather than float off into poetry.  But if it should
+come to the question of marrying the De la Tour or the Evangeline, I
+think no man who was not engaged in the peltry trade would hesitate
+which to choose.  At any rate, the women who love have more influence
+in the world than the women who fight, and so it happens that the
+sentimental traveler who passes through Port Royal without a tear for
+Madame de la Tour, begins to be in a glow of tender longing and
+regret for Evangeline as soon as he enters the valley of the
+Annapolis River.  For myself, I expected to see written over the
+railway crossings the legend,
+
+"Look out for Evangeline while the bell rings."
+
+When one rides into a region of romance he does not much notice his
+speed or his carriage; but I am obliged to say that we were not
+hurried up the valley, and that the cars were not too luxurious for
+the plain people, priests, clergymen, and belles of the region, who
+rode in them.  Evidently the latest fashions had not arrived in the
+Provinces, and we had an opportunity of studying anew those that had
+long passed away in the States, and of remarking how inappropriate a
+fashion is when it has ceased to be the fashion.
+
+The river becomes small shortly after we leave Annapolis and before
+we reach Paradise.  At this station of happy appellation we looked
+for the satirist who named it, but he has probably sold out and
+removed.  If the effect of wit is produced by the sudden recognition
+of a remote resemblance, there was nothing witty in the naming of
+this station.  Indeed, we looked in vain for the "garden" appearance
+of the valley.  There was nothing generous in the small meadows or
+the thin orchards; and if large trees ever grew on the bordering
+hills, they have given place to rather stunted evergreens; the
+scraggy firs and balsams, in fact, possess Nova Scotia generally as
+we saw it,--and there is nothing more uninteresting and wearisome
+than large tracts of these woods.  We are bound to believe that Nova
+Scotia has somewhere, or had, great pines and hemlocks that murmur,
+but we were not blessed with the sight of them.  Slightly picturesque
+this valley is with its winding river and high hills guarding it, and
+perhaps a person would enjoy a foot-tramp down it; but, I think he
+would find little peculiar or interesting after he left the
+neighborhood of the Basin of Minas.
+
+Before we reached Wolfville we came in sight of this basin and some
+of the estuaries and streams that run into it; that is, when the tide
+goes out; but they are only muddy ditches half the time.  The Acadia
+College was pointed out to us at Wolfville by a person who said that
+it is a feeble institution, a remark we were sorry to hear of a place
+described as "one of the foremost seats of learning in the Province."
+But our regret was at once extinguished by the announcement that the
+next station was Grand Pre!  We were within three miles of the most
+poetic place in North America.
+
+There was on the train a young man from Boston, who said that he was
+born in Grand Pre.  It seemed impossible that we should actually be
+near a person so felicitously born.  He had a justifiable pride in
+the fact, as well as in the bride by his side, whom he was taking to
+see for the first time his old home.  His local information, imparted
+to her, overflowed upon us; and when he found that we had read
+"Evangeline, his delight in making us acquainted with the scene of
+that poem was pleasant to see.  The village of Grand Pre is a mile
+from the station; and perhaps the reader would like to know exactly
+what the traveler, hastening on to Baddeck, can see of the famous
+locality.
+
+We looked over a well-grassed meadow, seamed here and there by beds
+of streams left bare by the receding tide, to a gentle swell in the
+ground upon which is a not heavy forest growth.  The trees partly
+conceal the street of Grand Pre, which is only a road bordered by
+common houses.  Beyond is the Basin of Minas, with its sedgy shore,
+its dreary flats; and beyond that projects a bold headland, standing
+perpendicular against the sky.  This is the Cape Blomidon, and it
+gives a certain dignity to the picture.
+
+The old Normandy picturesqueness has departed from the village of
+Grand Pre.  Yankee settlers, we were told, possess it now, and there
+are no descendants of the French Acadians in this valley.  I believe
+that Mr. Cozzens found some of them in humble circumstances in a
+village on the other coast, not far from Halifax, and it is there,
+probably, that the
+
+"Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun,
+And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story,
+While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring ocean
+Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest."
+
+At any rate, there is nothing here now except a faint tradition of
+the French Acadians; and the sentimental traveler who laments that
+they were driven out, and not left behind their dikes to rear their
+flocks, and cultivate the rural virtues, and live in the simplicity
+of ignorance, will temper his sadness by the reflection that it is to
+the expulsion he owes "Evangeline " and the luxury of his romantic
+grief.  So that if the traveler is honest, and examines his own soul
+faithfully, he will not know what state of mind to cherish as he
+passes through this region of sorrow.
+
+Our eyes lingered as long as possible and with all eagerness upon
+these meadows and marshes which the poet has made immortal, and we
+regretted that inexorable Baddeck would not permit us to be pilgrims
+for a day in this Acadian land.  Just as I was losing sight of the
+skirt of trees at Grand Pre, a gentleman in the dress of a rural
+clergyman left his seat, and complimented me with this remark: "I
+perceive, sir, that you are fond of reading."
+
+I could not but feel flattered by this unexpected discovery of my
+nature, which was no doubt due to the fact that I held in my hand one
+of the works of Charles Reade on social science, called "Love me
+Little, Love me Long," and I said, "Of some kinds, I am."
+
+"Did you ever see a work called 'Evangeline'?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I have frequently seen it."
+
+"You may remember," continued this Mass of Information, "that there
+is an allusion in it to Grand Pre.  That is the place, sir!"
+
+"Oh, indeed, is that the place?  Thank you."
+
+"And that mountain yonder is Cape Blomidon, blow me down, you know."
+
+And under cover of this pun, the amiable clergyman retired,
+unconscious, I presume, of his prosaic effect upon the atmosphere of
+the region.  With this intrusion of the commonplace, I suffered an
+eclipse of faith as to Evangeline, and was not sorry to have my
+attention taken up by the river Avon, along the banks of which we
+were running about this time.  It is really a broad arm of the basin,
+extending up to Windsor, and beyond in a small stream, and would have
+been a charming river if there had been a drop of water in it.  I
+never knew before how much water adds to a river.  Its slimy bottom
+was quite a ghastly spectacle, an ugly gash in the land that nothing
+could heal but the friendly returning tide.  I should think it would
+be confusing to dwell by a river that runs first one way and then the
+other, and then vanishes altogether.
+
+All the streams about this basin are famous for their salmon and
+shad, and the season for these fish was not yet passed.  There seems
+to be an untraced affinity between the shad and the strawberry; they
+appear and disappear in a region simultaneously.  When we reached
+Cape Breton, we were a day or two late for both.  It is impossible
+not to feel a little contempt for people who do not have these
+luxuries till July and August; but I suppose we are in turn despised
+by the Southerners because we do not have them till May and June.
+So, a great part of the enjoyment of life is in the knowledge that
+there are people living in a worse place than that you inhabit.
+
+Windsor, a most respectable old town round which the railroad sweeps,
+with its iron bridge, conspicuous King's College, and handsome church
+spire, is a great place for plaster and limestone, and would be a
+good location for a person interested in these substances.  Indeed,
+if a man can live on rocks, like a goat, he may settle anywhere
+between Windsor and Halifax.  It is one of the most sterile regions
+in the Province.  With the exception of a wild pond or two, we saw
+nothing but rocks and stunted firs, for forty-five miles, a monotony
+unrelieved by one picturesque feature.  Then we longed for the
+"Garden of Nova Scotia," and understood what is meant by the name.
+
+A member of the Ottawa government, who was on his way to the
+Governor-General's ball at Halifax, informed us that this country is
+rich in minerals, in iron especially, and he pointed out spots where
+gold had been washed out.  But we do not covet it.  And we were not
+sorry to learn from this gentleman, that since the formation of the
+Dominion, there is less and less desire in the Provinces for
+annexation to the United States.  One of the chief pleasures in
+traveling in Nova Scotia now is in the constant reflection that you
+are in a foreign country; and annexation would take that away.
+
+It is nearly dark when we reach the head of the Bedford Basin.  The
+noble harbor of Halifax narrows to a deep inlet for three miles along
+the rocky slope on which the city stands, and then suddenly expands
+into this beautiful sheet of water.  We ran along its bank for five
+miles, cheered occasionally by a twinkling light on the shore, and
+then came to a stop at the shabby terminus, three miles out of town.
+This basin is almost large enough to float the navy of Great Britain,
+and it could lie here, with the narrows fortified, secure from the
+attacks of the American navy, hovering outside in the fog.  With
+these patriotic thoughts we enter the town.  It is not the fault of
+the railroad, but its present inability to climb a rocky hill, that
+it does not run into the city.  The suburbs are not impressive in the
+night, but they look better then than they do in the daytime; and the
+same might be said of the city itself.  Probably there is not
+anywhere a more rusty, forlorn town, and this in spite of its
+magnificent situation.
+
+It is a gala-night when we rattle down the rough streets, and have
+pointed out to us the somber government buildings.  The Halifax Club
+House is a blaze of light, for the Governor-General is being received
+there, and workmen are still busy decorating the Provincial Building
+for the great ball.  The city is indeed pervaded by his lordship, and
+we regret that we cannot see it in its normal condition of quiet; the
+hotels are full, and it is impossible to escape the festive feeling
+that is abroad.  It ill accords with our desires, as tranquil
+travelers, to be plunged into such a vortex of slow dissipation.
+These people take their pleasures more gravely than we do, and
+probably will last the longer for their moderation.  Having
+ascertained that we can get no more information about Baddeck here
+than in St. John, we go to bed early, for we are to depart from this
+fascinating place at six o'clock.
+
+If any one objects that we are not competent to pass judgment on the
+city of Halifax by sleeping there one night, I beg leave to plead the
+usual custom of travelers,--where would be our books of travel, if
+more was expected than a night in a place?  --and to state a few
+facts.  The first is, that I saw the whole of Halifax.  If I were
+inclined, I could describe it building by building.  Cannot one see
+it all from the citadel hill, and by walking down by the
+horticultural garden and the Roman Catholic cemetery?  and did not I
+climb that hill through the most dilapidated rows of brown houses,
+and stand on the greensward of the fortress at five o'clock in the
+morning, and see the whole city, and the British navy riding at
+anchor, and the fog coming in from the Atlantic Ocean?  Let the
+reader go to!  and if he would know more of Halifax, go there.  We
+felt that if we remained there through the day, it would be a day of
+idleness and sadness.  I could draw a picture of Halifax.  I could
+relate its century of history; I could write about its free-school
+system, and its many noble charities.  But the reader always skips
+such things.  He hates information; and he himself would not stay in
+this dull garrison town any longer than he was obliged to.
+
+There was to be a military display that day in honor of the Governor.
+
+"Why," I asked the bright and light-minded colored boy who sold
+papers on the morning train, "don't you stay in the city and see it?"
+
+"Pho," said he, with contempt, "I'm sick of 'em.  Halifax is played
+out, and I'm going to quit it."
+
+The withdrawal of this lively trader will be a blow to the enterprise
+of the place.
+
+When I returned to the hotel for breakfast--which was exactly like
+the supper, and consisted mainly of green tea and dry toast--there
+was a commotion among the waiters and the hack-drivers over a nervous
+little old man, who was in haste to depart for the morning train.  He
+was a specimen of provincial antiquity such as could not be seen
+elsewhere.  His costume was of the oddest: a long-waisted coat
+reaching nearly to his heels, short trousers, a flowered silk vest,
+and a napless hat.  He carried his baggage tied up in mealbags, and
+his attention was divided between that and two buxom daughters, who
+were evidently enjoying their first taste of city life.  The little
+old man, who was not unlike a petrified Frenchman of the last
+century, had risen before daylight, roused up his daughters, and had
+them down on the sidewalk by four o'clock, waiting for hack, or
+horse-car, or something to take them to the station.  That he might
+be a man of some importance at home was evident, but he had lost his
+head in the bustle of this great town, and was at the mercy of all
+advisers, none of whom could understand his mongrel language.  As we
+came out to take the horse-car, he saw his helpless daughters driven
+off in one hack, while he was raving among his meal-bags on the
+sidewalk.  Afterwards we saw him at the station, flying about in the
+greatest excitement, asking everybody about the train; and at last he
+found his way into the private office of the ticket-seller.  "Get out
+of here!  "roared that official.  The old man persisted that he
+wanted a ticket.  "Go round to the window; clear out!"  In a very
+flustered state he was hustled out of the room.  When he came to the
+window and made known his destination, he was refused tickets,
+because his train did not start for two hours yet!
+
+This mercurial old gentleman only appears in these records because he
+was the only person we saw in this Province who was in a hurry to do
+anything, or to go anywhere.
+
+We cannot leave Halifax without remarking that it is a city of great
+private virtue, and that its banks are sound.  The appearance of its
+paper-money is not, however, inviting.  We of the United States lead
+the world in beautiful paper-money; and when I exchanged my crisp,
+handsome greenbacks for the dirty, flimsy, ill-executed notes of the
+Dominion, at a dead loss of value, I could not be reconciled to the
+transaction.  I sarcastically called the stuff I received
+"Confederate money;" but probably no one was wounded by the severity;
+for perhaps no one knew what a resemblance in badness there is
+between the "Confederate" notes of our civil war and the notes of the
+Dominion; and, besides, the Confederacy was too popular in the
+Provinces for the name to be a reproach to them.  I wish I had
+thought of something more insulting to say.
+
+By noon on Friday we came to New Glasgow, having passed through a
+country where wealth is to be won by hard digging if it is won at
+all; through Truro, at the head of the Cobequid Bay, a place
+exhibiting more thrift than any we have seen.  A pleasant enough
+country, on the whole, is this which the road runs through up the
+Salmon and down the East River.  New Glasgow is not many miles from
+Pictou, on the great Cumberland Strait; the inhabitants build
+vessels, and strangers drive out from here to see the neighboring
+coal mines.  Here we were to dine and take the stage for a ride of
+eighty miles to the Gut of Canso.
+
+The hotel at New Glasgow we can commend as one of the most
+unwholesome in the Province; but it is unnecessary to emphasize its
+condition, for if the traveler is in search of dirty hotels, he will
+scarcely go amiss anywhere in these regions.  There seems to be a
+fashion in diet which endures.  The early travelers as well as the
+later in these Atlantic provinces all note the prevalence of dry,
+limp toast and green tea; they are the staples of all the meals;
+though authorities differ in regard to the third element for
+discouraging hunger: it is sometimes boiled salt-fish and sometimes
+it is ham.  Toast was probably an inspiration of the first woman of
+this part of the New World, who served it hot; but it has become now
+a tradition blindly followed, without regard to temperature; and the
+custom speaks volumes for the non-inventiveness of woman.  At the inn
+in New Glasgow those who choose dine in their shirt-sleeves, and
+those skilled in the ways of this table get all they want in seven
+minutes.  A man who understands the use of edged tools can get along
+twice as fast with a knife and fork as he can with a fork alone.
+
+But the stage is at the door; the coach and four horses answer the
+advertisement of being "second to none on the continent."  We mount
+to the seat with the driver.  The sun is bright; the wind is in the
+southwest; the leaders are impatient to go; the start for the long
+ride is propitious.
+
+But on the back seat in the coach is the inevitable woman, young and
+sickly, with the baby in her arms.  The woman has paid her fare
+through to Guysborough, and holds her ticket.  It turns out, however,
+that she wants to go to the district of Guysborough, to St. Mary's
+Cross Roads, somewhere in it, and not to the village of Guysborough,
+which is away down on Chedabucto Bay.  (The reader will notice this
+geographical familiarity.)  And this stage does not go in the
+direction of St. Mary's.  She will not get out, she will not
+surrender her ticket, nor pay her fare again.  Why should she?  And
+the stage proprietor, the stage-driver, and the hostler mull over the
+problem, and sit down on the woman's hair trunk in front of the
+tavern to reason with her.  The baby joins its voice from the coach
+window in the clamor of the discussion.  The baby prevails.  The
+stage company comes to a compromise, the woman dismounts, and we are
+off, away from the white houses, over the sandy road, out upon a
+hilly and not cheerful country.  And the driver begins to tell us
+stories of winter hardships, drifted highways, a land buried in snow,
+and great peril to men and cattle.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+"It was then summer, and the weather very fine; so pleased was I with
+the country, in which I had never travelled before, that my delight
+proved equal to my wonder."--BENVENUTO CELLINI.
+
+There are few pleasures in life equal to that of riding on the
+box-seat of a stagecoach, through a country unknown to you and
+hearing the driver talk about his horses.  We made the intimate
+acquaintance of twelve horses on that day's ride, and learned the
+peculiar disposition and traits of each one of them, their ambition
+of display, their sensitiveness to praise or blame, their
+faithfulness, their playfulness, the readiness with which they
+yielded to kind treatment, their daintiness about food and lodging.
+
+May I never forget the spirited little jade, the off-leader in the
+third stage, the petted belle of the route, the nervous, coquettish,
+mincing mare of Marshy Hope.  A spoiled beauty she was; you could see
+that as she took the road with dancing step, tossing her pretty head
+about, and conscious of her shining black coat and her tail done up
+"in any simple knot,"--like the back hair of Shelley's Beatrice
+Cenci.  How she ambled and sidled and plumed herself, and now and
+then let fly her little heels high in air in mere excess of larkish
+feeling.
+
+"So!  girl; so!  Kitty," murmurs the driver in the softest tones of
+admiration; "she don't mean anything by it, she's just like a
+kitten."
+
+But the heels keep flying above the traces, and by and by the driver
+is obliged to "speak hash" to the beauty.  The reproof of the
+displeased tone is evidently felt, for she settles at once to her
+work, showing perhaps a little impatience, jerking her head up and
+down, and protesting by her nimble movements against the more
+deliberate trot of her companion.  I believe that a blow from the
+cruel lash would have broken her heart; or else it would have made a
+little fiend of the spirited creature.  The lash is hardly ever good
+for the sex.
+
+For thirteen years, winter and summer, this coachman had driven this
+monotonous, uninteresting route, with always the same sandy hills,
+scrubby firs, occasional cabins, in sight.  What a time to nurse his
+thought and feed on his heart!  How deliberately he can turn things
+over in his brain!  What a system of philosophy he might evolve out
+of his consciousness!  One would think so.  But, in fact, the
+stagebox is no place for thinking.  To handle twelve horses every
+day, to keep each to its proper work, stimulating the lazy and
+restraining the free, humoring each disposition, so that the greatest
+amount of work shall be obtained with the least friction, making each
+trip on time, and so as to leave each horse in as good condition at
+the close as at the start, taking advantage of the road, refreshing
+the team by an occasional spurt of speed,--all these things require
+constant attention; and if the driver was composing an epic, the
+coach might go into the ditch, or, if no accident happened, the
+horses would be worn out in a month, except for the driver's care.
+
+I conclude that the most delicate and important occupation in life is
+stage-driving.  It would be easier to "run" the Treasury Department
+of the United States than a four-in-hand.  I have a sense of the
+unimportance of everything else in comparison with this business in
+hand.  And I think the driver shares that feeling.  He is the
+autocrat of the situation.  He is lord of all the humble passengers,
+and they feel their inferiority.  They may have knowledge and skill
+in some things, but they are of no use here.  At all the stables the
+driver is king; all the people on the route are deferential to him;
+they are happy if he will crack a joke with them, and take it as a
+favor if he gives them better than they send.  And it is his joke
+that always raises the laugh, regardless of its quality.
+
+We carry the royal mail, and as we go along drop little sealed canvas
+bags at way offices.  The bags would not hold more than three pints
+of meal, and I can see that there is nothing in them.  Yet somebody
+along here must be expecting a letter, or they would not keep up the
+mail facilities.  At French River we change horses.  There is a mill
+here, and there are half a dozen houses, and a cranky bridge, which
+the driver thinks will not tumble down this trip.  The settlement may
+have seen better days, and will probably see worse.
+
+I preferred to cross the long, shaky wooden bridge on foot, leaving
+the inside passengers to take the risk, and get the worth of their
+money; and while the horses were being put to, I walked on over the
+hill.  And here I encountered a veritable foot-pad, with a club in
+his hand and a bundle on his shoulder, coming down the dusty road,
+with the wild-eyed aspect of one who travels into a far country in
+search of adventure.  He seemed to be of a cheerful and sociable
+turn, and desired that I should linger and converse with him.  But he
+was more meagerly supplied with the media of conversation than any
+person I ever met.  His opening address was in a tongue that failed
+to convey to me the least idea.  I replied in such language as I had
+with me, but it seemed to be equally lost upon him.  We then fell
+back upon gestures and ejaculations, and by these I learned that he
+was a native of Cape Breton, but not an aborigine.  By signs he asked
+me where I came from, and where I was going; and he was so much
+pleased with my destination, that he desired to know my name; and
+this I told him with all the injunction of secrecy I could convey;
+but he could no more pronounce it than I could speak his name.  It
+occurred to me that perhaps he spoke a French patois, and I asked
+him; but he only shook his head.  He would own neither to German nor
+Irish.  The happy thought came to me of inquiring if he knew English.
+But he shook his head again, and said,
+
+"No English, plenty garlic."
+
+This was entirely incomprehensible, for I knew that garlic is not a
+language, but a smell.  But when he had repeated the word several
+times, I found that he meant Gaelic; and when we had come to this
+understanding, we cordially shook hands and willingly parted.  One
+seldom encounters a wilder or more good-natured savage than this
+stalwart wanderer.  And meeting him raised my hopes of Cape Breton.
+
+We change horses again, for the last stage, at Marshy Hope.  As we
+turn down the hill into this place of the mournful name, we dash past
+a procession of five country wagons, which makes way for us:
+everything makes way for us; even death itself turns out for the
+stage with four horses.  The second wagon carries a long box, which
+reveals to us the mournful errand of the caravan.  We drive into the
+stable, and get down while the fresh horses are put to.  The
+company's stables are all alike, and open at each end with great
+doors.  The stable is the best house in the place; there are three or
+four houses besides, and one of them is white, and has vines growing
+over the front door, and hollyhocks by the front gate.  Three or four
+women, and as many barelegged girls, have come out to look at the
+proces-sion, and we lounge towards the group.
+
+"It had a winder in the top of it, and silver handles," says one.
+
+"Well, I declare; and you could 'a looked right in?"
+
+"If I'd been a mind to."
+
+"Who has died?" I ask.
+
+"It's old woman Larue; she lived on Gilead Hill, mostly alone.  It's
+better for her."
+
+"Had she any friends?"
+
+"One darter.  They're takin' her over Eden way, to bury her where she
+come from."
+
+"Was she a good woman?"  The traveler is naturally curious to know
+what sort of people die in Nova Scotia.
+
+"Well, good enough.  Both her husbands is dead."
+
+The gossips continued talking of the burying.  Poor old woman Larue!
+It was mournful enough to encounter you for the only time in this
+world in this plight, and to have this glimpse of your wretched life
+on lonesome Gilead Hill.  What pleasure, I wonder, had she in her
+life, and what pleasure have any of these hard-favored women in this
+doleful region?  It is pitiful to think of it.  Doubtless, however,
+the region isn't doleful, and the sentimental traveler would not have
+felt it so if he had not encountered this funereal flitting.
+
+But the horses are in.  We mount to our places; the big doors swing
+open.
+
+"Stand away," cries the driver.
+
+The hostler lets go Kitty's bridle, the horses plunge forward, and we
+are off at a gallop, taking the opposite direction from that pursued
+by old woman Larue.
+
+This last stage is eleven miles, through a pleasanter country, and we
+make it in a trifle over an hour, going at an exhilarating gait, that
+raises our spirits out of the Marshy Hope level.  The perfection of
+travel is ten miles an hour, on top of a stagecoach; it is greater
+speed than forty by rail.  It nurses one's pride to sit aloft, and
+rattle past the farmhouses, and give our dust to the cringing foot
+tramps.  There is something royal in the swaying of the coach body,
+and an excitement in the patter of the horses' hoofs.  And what an
+honor it must be to guide such a machine through a region of rustic
+admiration!
+
+The sun has set when we come thundering down into the pretty Catholic
+village of Antigonish,--the most home-like place we have seen on the
+island.  The twin stone towers of the unfinished cathedral loom up
+large in the fading light, and the bishop's palace on the hill--the
+home of the Bishop of Arichat--appears to be an imposing white barn
+with many staring windows.  At Antigonish--with the emphasis on the
+last syllable--let the reader know there is a most comfortable inn,
+kept by a cheery landlady, where the stranger is served by the comely
+handmaidens, her daughters, and feels that he has reached a home at
+last.  Here we wished to stay.  Here we wished to end this weary
+pilgrimage.  Could Baddeck be as attractive as this peaceful valley?
+Should we find any inn on Cape Breton like this one?
+
+"Never was on Cape Breton," our driver had said; "hope I never shall
+be.  Heard enough about it.  Taverns?  You'll find 'em occupied."
+
+"Fleas?
+
+"Wus."
+
+"But it is a lovely country?"
+
+"I don't think it."
+
+Into what unknown dangers were we going?  Why not stay here and be
+happy?  It was a soft summer night.  People were loitering in the
+street; the young beaux of the place going up and down with the
+belles, after the leisurely manner in youth and summer; perhaps they
+were students from St. Xavier College, or visiting gallants from
+Guysborough.  They look into the post-office and the fancy store.
+They stroll and take their little provincial pleasure and make love,
+for all we can see, as if Antigonish were a part of the world.  How
+they must look down on Marshy Hope and Addington Forks and Tracadie!
+What a charming place to live in is this!
+
+But the stage goes on at eight o'clock.  It will wait for no man.
+There is no other stage till eight the next night, and we have no
+alternative but a night ride.  We put aside all else except duty and
+Baddeck.  This is strictly a pleasure-trip.
+
+The stage establishment for the rest of the journey could hardly be
+called the finest on the continent.  The wagon was drawn by two
+horses.  It was a square box, covered with painted cloth.  Within
+were two narrow seats, facing each other, affording no room for the
+legs of passengers, and offering them no position but a strictly
+upright one.  It was a most ingeniously uncomfortable box in which to
+put sleepy travelers for the night.  The weather would be chilly
+before morning, and to sit upright on a narrow board all night, and
+shiver, is not cheerful.  Of course, the reader says that this is no
+hardship to talk about.  But the reader is mistaken.  Anything is a
+hardship when it is unpleasantly what one does not desire or expect.
+These travelers had spent wakeful nights, in the forests, in a cold
+rain, and never thought of complaining.  It is useless to talk about
+the Polar sufferings of Dr. Kane to a guest at a metropolitan hotel,
+in the midst of luxury, when the mosquito sings all night in his ear,
+and his mutton-chop is overdone at breakfast.  One does not like to
+be set up for a hero in trifles, in odd moments, and in inconspicuous
+places.
+
+There were two passengers besides ourselves, inhabitants of Cape
+Breton Island, who were returning from Halifax to Plaster Cove, where
+they were engaged in the occupation of distributing alcoholic liquors
+at retail.  This fact we ascertained incidentally, as we learned the
+nationality of our comrades by their brogue, and their religion by
+their lively ejaculations during the night.  We stowed ourselves into
+the rigid box, bade a sorrowing good-night to the landlady and her
+daughters, who stood at the inn door, and went jingling down the
+street towards the open country.
+
+The moon rises at eight o'clock in Nova Scotia.  It came above the
+horizon exactly as we began our journey, a harvest-moon, round and
+red.  When I first saw it, it lay on the edge of the horizon as if
+too heavy to lift itself, as big as a cart-wheel, and its disk cut by
+a fence-rail.  With what a flood of splendor it deluged farmhouses
+and farms, and the broad sweep of level country!  There could not be
+a more magnificent night in which to ride towards that geographical
+mystery of our boyhood, the Gut of Canso.
+
+A few miles out of town the stage stopped in the road before a post-
+station.  An old woman opened the door of the farmhouse to receive
+the bag which the driver carried to her.  A couple of sprightly
+little girls rushed out to "interview " the passengers, climbing up
+to ask their names and, with much giggling, to get a peep at their
+faces.  And upon the handsomeness or ugliness of the faces they saw
+in the moonlight they pronounced with perfect candor.  We are not
+obliged to say what their verdict was.  Girls here, no doubt, as
+elsewhere, lose this trustful candor as they grow older.
+
+Just as we were starting, the old woman screamed out from the door,
+in a shrill voice, addressing the driver, "Did you see ary a sick man
+'bout 'Tigonish?"
+
+"Nary."
+
+"There's one been round here for three or four days, pretty bad off;
+'s got the St. Vitus's.  He wanted me to get him some medicine for it
+up to Antigonish.  I've got it here in a vial, and I wished you could
+take it to him."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"I dunno.  I heern he'd gone east by the Gut. Perhaps you'll hear of
+him."  All this screamed out into the night.
+
+"Well, I'll take it."
+
+We took the vial aboard and went on; but the incident powerfully
+affected us.  The weird voice of the old woman was exciting in it-
+self, and we could not escape the image of this unknown man, dancing
+about this region without any medicine, fleeing perchance by night
+and alone, and finally flitting away down the Gut of Canso.  This
+fugitive mystery almost immediately shaped itself into the following
+simple poem:
+
+"There was an old man of Canso,
+Unable to sit or stan' so.
+When I asked him why he ran so,
+Says he, 'I've St. Vitus' dance so,
+All down the Gut of Canso.'"
+
+This melancholy song is now, I doubt not, sung by the maidens of
+Antigonish.
+
+In spite of the consolations of poetry, however, the night wore on
+slowly, and soothing sleep tried in vain to get a lodgment in the
+jolting wagon.  One can sleep upright, but not when his head is every
+moment knocked against the framework of a wagon-cover.  Even a jolly
+young Irishman of Plaster Cove, whose nature it is to sleep under
+whatever discouragement, is beaten by these circumstances.  He wishes
+he had his fiddle along.  We never know what men are on casual
+acquaintance.  This rather stupid-looking fellow is a devotee of
+music, and knows how to coax the sweetness out of the unwilling
+violin.  Sometimes he goes miles and miles on winter nights to draw
+the seductive bow for the Cape Breton dancers, and there is
+enthusiasm in his voice, as he relates exploits of fiddling from
+sunset till the dawn of day.  Other information, however, the young
+man has not; and when this is exhausted, he becomes sleepy again, and
+tries a dozen ways to twist himself into a posture in which sleep
+will be possible.  He doubles up his legs, he slides them under the
+seat, he sits on the wagon bottom; but the wagon swings and jolts and
+knocks him about.  His patience under this punishment is admirable,
+and there is something pathetic in his restraint from profanity.
+
+It is enough to look out upon the magnificent night; the moon is now
+high, and swinging clear and distant; the air has grown chilly; the
+stars cannot be eclipsed by the greater light, but glow with a
+chastened fervor.  It is on the whole a splendid display for the sake
+of four sleepy men, banging along in a coach,--an insignificant
+little vehicle with two horses.  No one is up at any of the
+farmhouses to see it; no one appears to take any interest in it,
+except an occasional baying dog, or a rooster that has mistaken the
+time of night.  By midnight we come to Tracadie, an orchard, a
+farmhouse, and a stable.  We are not far from the sea now, and can
+see a silver mist in the north.  An inlet comes lapping up by the old
+house with a salty smell and a suggestion of oyster-beds.  We knock
+up the sleeping hostlers, change.  horses, and go on again, dead
+sleepy, but unable to get a wink.  And all the night is blazing with
+beauty.  We think of the criminal who was sentenced to be kept awake
+till he died.
+
+The fiddler makes another trial.  Temperately remarking, "I am very
+sleepy," he kneels upon the floor and rests his head on the seat.
+This position for a second promises repose; but almost immediately
+his head begins to pound the seat, and beat a lively rat-a-plan on
+the board.  The head of a wooden idol couldn't stand this treatment
+more than a minute.  The fiddler twisted and turned, but his head
+went like a triphammer on the seat.  I have never seen a devotional
+attitude so deceptive, or one that produced less favorable results.
+The young man rose from his knees, and meekly said,
+
+"It's dam hard."
+
+If the recording angel took down this observation, he doubtless made
+a note of the injured tone in which it was uttered.
+
+How slowly the night passes to one tipping and swinging along in a
+slowly moving stage!  But the harbinger of the day came at last.
+When the fiddler rose from his knees, I saw the morning-star burst
+out of the east like a great diamond, and I knew that Venus was
+strong enough to pull up even the sun, from whom she is never distant
+more than an eighth of the heavenly circle.  The moon could not put
+her out of countenance.  She blazed and scintillated with a dazzling
+brilliance, a throbbing splendor, that made the moon seem a pale,
+sentimental invention.  Steadily she mounted, in her fresh beauty,
+with the confidence and vigor of new love, driving her more domestic
+rival out of the sky.  And this sort of thing, I suppose, goes on
+frequently.  These splendors burn and this panorama passes night
+after night down at the end of Nova Scotia, and all for the stage-
+driver, dozing along on his box, from Antigonish to the strait.
+
+"Here you are," cries the driver, at length, when we have become
+wearily indifferent to where we are.  We have reached the ferry.  The
+dawn has not come, but it is not far off.  We step out and find a
+chilly morning, and the dark waters of the Gut of Canso flowing
+before us lighted here and there by a patch of white mist.  The
+ferryman is asleep, and his door is shut.  We call him by all the
+names known among men.  We pound upon his house, but he makes no
+sign.  Before he awakes and comes out, growling, the sky in the east
+is lightened a shade, and the star of the dawn sparkles less
+brilliantly.  But the process is slow.  The twilight is long.  There
+is a surprising deliberation about the preparation of the sun for
+rising, as there is in the movements of the boatman.  Both appear to
+be reluctant to begin the day.
+
+The ferryman and his shaggy comrade get ready at last, and we step
+into the clumsy yawl, and the slowly moving oars begin to pull us
+upstream.  The strait is here less than a mile wide; the tide is
+running strongly, and the water is full of swirls,--the little
+whirlpools of the rip-tide.  The morning-star is now high in the sky;
+the moon, declining in the west, is more than ever like a silver
+shield; along the east is a faint flush of pink.  In the increasing
+light we can see the bold shores of the strait, and the square
+projection of Cape Porcupine below.
+
+On the rocks above the town of Plaster Cove, where there is a black
+and white sign,--Telegraph Cable,--we set ashore our companions of
+the night, and see them climb up to their station for retailing the
+necessary means of intoxication in their district, with the mournful
+thought that we may never behold them again.
+
+As we drop down along the shore, there is a white sea-gull asleep on
+the rock, rolled up in a ball, with his head under his wing.  The
+rock is dripping with dew, and the bird is as wet as his hard bed.
+We pass within an oar's length of him, but he does not heed us, and
+we do not disturb his morning slumbers.  For there is no such cruelty
+as the waking of anybody out of a morning nap.
+
+When we land, and take up our bags to ascend the hill to the white
+tavern of Port Hastings (as Plaster Cove now likes to be called), the
+sun lifts himself slowly over the treetops, and the magic of the
+night vanishes.
+
+And this is Cape Breton, reached after almost a week of travel.  Here
+is the Gut of Canso, but where is Baddeck?  It is Saturday morning;
+if we cannot make Baddeck by night, we might as well have remained in
+Boston.  And who knows what we shall find if we get there?  A forlorn
+fishing-station, a dreary hotel?  Suppose we cannot get on, and are
+forced to stay here?  Asking ourselves these questions, we enter the
+Plaster Cove tavern.  No one is stirring, but the house is open, and
+we take possession of the dirty public room, and almost immediately
+drop to sleep in the fluffy rocking-chairs; but even sleep is not
+strong enough to conquer our desire to push on, and we soon rouse up
+and go in pursuit of information.
+
+No landlord is to be found, but there is an unkempt servant in the
+kitchen, who probably does not see any use in making her toilet more
+than once a week.  To this fearful creature is intrusted the dainty
+duty of preparing breakfast.  Her indifference is equal to her lack
+of information, and her ability to convey information is fettered by
+her use of Gaelic as her native speech.  But she directs us to the
+stable.  There we find a driver hitching his horses to a two-horse
+stage-wagon.
+
+"Is this stage for Baddeck?"
+
+"Not much."
+
+"Is there any stage for Baddeck?"
+
+"Not to-day."
+
+"Where does this go, and when?"
+
+"St. Peter's.  Starts in fifteen minutes."
+
+This seems like "business," and we are inclined to try it, especially
+as we have no notion where St. Peter's is.
+
+"Does any other stage go from here to-day anywhere else?"
+
+"Yes.  Port Hood.  Quarter of an hour."
+
+Everything was about to happen in fifteen minutes.  We inquire
+further.  St. Peter's is on the east coast, on the road to Sydney.
+Port Hood is on the west coast.  There is a stage from Port Hood to
+Baddeck.  It would land us there some time Sunday morning; distance,
+eighty miles.
+
+Heavens!  what a pleasure-trip.  To ride eighty miles more without
+sleep!  We should simply be delivered dead on the Bras d'Or; that is
+all.  Tell us, gentle driver, is there no other way?
+
+"Well, there's Jim Hughes, come over at midnight with a passenger
+from Baddeck; he's in the hotel now; perhaps he'll take you."
+
+Our hope hung on Jim Hughes.  The frowzy servant piloted us up to his
+sleeping-room.  "Go right in," said she; and we went in, according to
+the simple custom of the country, though it was a bedroom that one
+would not enter except on business.  Mr. Hughes did not like to be
+disturbed, but he proved himself to be a man who could wake up
+suddenly, shake his head, and transact business,--a sort of Napoleon,
+in fact.  Mr.  Hughes stared at the intruders for a moment, as if he
+meditated an assault.
+
+"Do you live in Baddeck?" we asked.
+
+"No; Hogamah,--half-way there."
+
+"Will you take us to Baddeck to-day?
+
+Mr. Hughes thought.  He had intended to sleep--till noon.  He had
+then intended to go over the Judique Mountain and get a boy.  But he
+was disposed to accommodate.  Yes, for money--sum named--he would
+give up his plans, and start for Baddeck in an hour.  Distance, sixty
+miles.  Here was a man worth having; he could come to a decision
+before he was out of bed.  The bargain was closed.
+
+We would have closed any bargain to escape a Sunday in the Plaster
+Cove hotel.  There are different sorts of hotel uncleanliness.  There
+is the musty old inn, where the dirt has accumulated for years, and
+slow neglect has wrought a picturesque sort of dilapidation, the
+mouldiness of time, which has something to recommend it.  But there
+is nothing attractive in new nastiness, in the vulgar union of
+smartness and filth.  A dirty modern house, just built, a house
+smelling of poor whiskey and vile tobacco, its white paint grimy, its
+floors unclean, is ever so much worse than an old inn that never
+pretended to be anything but a rookery.  I say nothing against the
+hotel at Plaster Cove.  In fact, I recommend it.  There is a kind of
+harmony about it that I like.  There is a harmony between the
+breakfast and the frowzy Gaelic cook we saw "sozzling" about in the
+kitchen.  There is a harmony between the appearance of the house and
+the appearance of the buxom young housekeeper who comes upon the
+scene later, her hair saturated with the fatty matter of the bear.
+The traveler will experience a pleasure in paying his bill and
+departing.
+
+Although Plaster Cove seems remote on the map, we found that we were
+right in the track of the world's news there.  It is the transfer
+station of the Atlantic Cable Company, where it exchanges messages
+with the Western Union.  In a long wooden building, divided into two
+main apartments, twenty to thirty operators are employed.  At eight
+o'clock the English force was at work receiving the noon messages
+from London.  The American operators had not yet come on, for New
+York business would not begin for an hour.  Into these rooms is
+poured daily the news of the world, and these young fellows toss it
+about as lightly as if it were household gossip.  It is a marvelous
+exchange, however, and we had intended to make some reflections here
+upon the en rapport feeling, so to speak, with all the world, which
+we experienced while there; but our conveyance was waiting.  We
+telegraphed our coming to Baddeck, and departed.  For twenty-five
+cents one can send a dispatch to any part of the Dominion, except the
+region where the Western Union has still a foothold.
+
+Our conveyance was a one-horse wagon, with one seat.  The horse was
+well enough, but the seat was narrow for three people, and the entire
+establishment had in it not much prophecy of Baddeck for that day.
+But we knew little of the power of Cape Breton driving.  It became
+evident that we should reach Baddeck soon enough, if we could cling
+to that wagon-seat.  The morning sun was hot.  The way was so
+uninteresting that we almost wished ourselves back in Nova Scotia.
+The sandy road was bordered with discouraged evergreens, through
+which we had glimpses of sand-drifted farms.  If Baddeck was to be
+like this, we had come on a fool's errand.  There were some savage,
+low hills, and the Judique Mountain showed itself as we got away from
+the town.  In this first stage, the heat of the sun, the monotony of
+the road, and the scarcity of sleep during the past thirty-six hours
+were all unfavorable to our keeping on the wagon-seat.  We nodded
+separately, we nodded and reeled in unison.  But asleep or awake, the
+driver drove like a son of Jehu.  Such driving is the fashion on Cape
+Breton Island.  Especially downhill, we made the most of it; if the
+horse was on a run, that was only an inducement to apply the lash;
+speed gave the promise of greater possible speed.  The wagon rattled
+like a bark-mill; it swirled and leaped about, and we finally got the
+exciting impression that if the whole thing went to pieces, we should
+somehow go on,--such was our impetus.  Round corners, over ruts and
+stones, and uphill and down, we went jolting and swinging, holding
+fast to the seat, and putting our trust in things in general.  At the
+end of fifteen miles, we stopped at a Scotch farmhouse, where the
+driver kept a relay, and changed horse.
+
+The people were Highlanders, and spoke little English; we had struck
+the beginning of the Gaelic settlement.  From here to Hogamah we
+should encounter only the Gaelic tongue; the inhabitants are all
+Catholics.  Very civil people, apparently, and living in a kind of
+niggardly thrift, such as the cold land affords.  We saw of this
+family the old man, who had come from Scotland fifty years ago, his
+stalwart son, six feet and a half high, maybe, and two buxom
+daughters, going to the hay-field,--good solid Scotch lassies, who
+smiled in English, but spoke only Gaelic.  The old man could speak a
+little English, and was disposed to be both communicative and
+inquisitive.  He asked our business, names, and residence.  Of the
+United States he had only a dim conception, but his mind rather
+rested upon the statement that we lived "near Boston."  He complained
+of the degeneracy of the times.  All the young men had gone away from
+Cape Breton; might get rich if they would stay and work the farms.
+But no one liked to work nowadays.  From life, we diverted the talk
+to literature.  We inquired what books they had.
+
+"Of course you all have the poems of Burns?"
+
+"What's the name o' the mon?"
+
+"Burns, Robert Burns."
+
+"Never heard tell of such a mon.  Have heard of Robert Bruce.  He was
+a Scotchman."
+
+This was nothing short of refreshing, to find a Scotchman who had
+never heard of Robert Burns!  It was worth the whole journey to take
+this honest man by the hand.  How far would I not travel to talk with
+an American who had never heard of George Washington!
+
+The way was more varied during the next stage; we passed through some
+pleasant valleys and picturesque neighborhoods, and at length,
+winding around the base of a wooded range, and crossing its point, we
+came upon a sight that took all the sleep out of us.  This was the
+famous Bras d'Or.
+
+The Bras d'Or is the most beautiful salt-water lake I have ever seen,
+and more beautiful than we had imagined a body of salt water could
+be.  If the reader will take the map, he will see that two narrow
+estuaries, the Great and the Little Bras d'Or, enter the island of
+Cape Breton, on the ragged northeast coast, above the town of Sydney,
+and flow in, at length widening out and occupying the heart of the
+island.  The water seeks out all the low places, and ramifies the
+interior, running away into lovely bays and lagoons, leaving slender
+tongues of land and picturesque islands, and bringing into the
+recesses of the land, to the remote country farms and settlements,
+the flavor of salt, and the fish and mollusks of the briny sea.
+There is very little tide at any time, so that the shores are clean
+and sightly for the most part, like those of fresh-water lakes.  It
+has all the pleasantness of a fresh-water lake, with all the
+advantages of a salt one.  In the streams which run into it are the
+speckled trout, the shad, and the salmon; out of its depths are
+hooked the cod and the mackerel, and in its bays fattens the oyster.
+This irregular lake is about a hundred miles long, if you measure it
+skillfully, and in some places ten miles broad; but so indented is
+it, that I am not sure but one would need, as we were informed, to
+ride a thousand miles to go round it, following all its incursions
+into the land.  The hills about it are never more than five or six
+hundred feet high, but they are high enough for reposeful beauty, and
+offer everywhere pleasing lines.
+
+What we first saw was an inlet of the Bras d'Or, called, by the
+driver, Hogamah Bay.  At its entrance were long, wooded islands,
+beyond which we saw the backs of graceful hills, like the capes of
+some poetic sea-coast.  The bay narrowed to a mile in width where we
+came upon it, and ran several miles inland to a swamp, round the head
+of which we must go.  Opposite was the village of Hogamah.  I had my
+suspicions from the beginning about this name, and now asked the
+driver, who was liberally educated for a driver, how he spelled
+"Hogamah."
+
+"Why-ko-ko-magh.  Hogamah."
+
+Sometimes it is called Wykogamah.  Thus the innocent traveler is
+misled.  Along the Whykokomagh Bay we come to a permanent encampment
+of the Micmac Indians,--a dozen wigwams in the pine woods.  Though
+lumber is plenty, they refuse to live in houses.  The wigwams,
+however, are more picturesque than the square frame houses of the
+whites.  Built up conically of poles, with a hole in the top for the
+smoke to escape, and often set up a little from the ground on a
+timber foundation, they are as pleasing to the eye as a Chinese or
+Turkish dwelling.  They may be cold in winter, but blessed be the
+tenacity of barbarism, which retains this agreeable architecture.
+The men live by hunting in the season, and the women support the
+family by making moccasins and baskets.  These Indians are most of
+them good Catholics, and they try to go once a year to mass and a
+sort of religious festival held at St.  Peter's, where their sins are
+forgiven in a yearly lump.
+
+At Whykokomagh, a neat fishing village of white houses, we stopped
+for dinner at the Inverness House.  The house was very clean, and the
+tidy landlady gave us as good a dinner as she could of the inevitable
+green tea, toast, and salt fish.  She was Gaelic, but Protestant, as
+the village is, and showed us with pride her Gaelic Bible and
+hymn-book.  A peaceful place, this Whykokomagh; the lapsing waters of
+Bras d'Or made a summer music all along the quiet street; the bay lay
+smiling with its islands in front, and an amphitheater of hills rose
+behind.  But for the line of telegraph poles one might have fancied
+he could have security and repose here.
+
+We put a fresh pony into the shafts, a beast born with an everlasting
+uneasiness in his legs, and an amount of "go" in him which suited his
+reckless driver.  We no longer stood upon the order of our going; we
+went.  As we left the village, we passed a rocky hay-field, where the
+Gaelic farmer was gathering the scanty yield of grass.  A comely
+Indian girl was stowing the hay and treading it down on the wagon.
+The driver hailed the farmer, and they exchanged Gaelic repartee
+which set all the hay-makers in a roar, and caused the Indian maid to
+darkly and sweetly beam upon us.  We asked the driver what he had
+said.  He had only inquired what the man would take for the load--as
+it stood!  A joke is a joke down this way.
+
+I am not about to describe this drive at length, in order that the
+reader may skip it; for I know the reader, being of like passion and
+fashion with him.  From the time we first struck the Bras d'Or for
+thirty miles we rode in constant sight of its magnificent water.  Now
+we were two hundred feet above the water, on the hillside, skirting a
+point or following an indentation; and now we were diving into a
+narrow valley, crossing a stream, or turning a sharp corner, but
+always with the Bras d'Or in view, the afternoon sun shining on it,
+softening the outlines of its embracing hills, casting a shadow from
+its wooded islands.  Sometimes we opened on a broad water plain
+bounded by the Watchabaktchkt hills, and again we looked over hill
+after hill receding into the soft and hazy blue of the land beyond
+the great mass of the Bras d'Or.  The reader can compare the view and
+the ride to the Bay of Naples and the Cornice Road; we did nothing of
+the sort; we held on to the seat, prayed that the harness of the pony
+might not break, and gave constant expression to our wonder and
+delight.  For a week we had schooled ourselves to expect nothing more
+from this wicked world, but here was an enchanting vision.
+
+The only phenomenon worthy the attention of any inquiring mind, in
+this whole record, I will now describe.  As we drove along the side
+of a hill, and at least two hundred feet above the water, the road
+suddenly diverged and took a circuit higher up.  The driver said that
+was to avoid a sink-hole in the old road,--a great curiosity, which
+it was worth while to examine.  Beside the old road was a circular
+hole, which nipped out a part of the road-bed, some twenty-five feet
+in diameter, filled with water almost to the brim, but not running
+over.  The water was dark in color, and I fancied had a brackish
+taste.  The driver said that a few weeks before, when he came this
+way, it was solid ground where this well now opened, and that a large
+beech-tree stood there.  When he returned next day, he found this
+hole full of water, as we saw it, and the large tree had sunk in it.
+The size of the hole seemed to be determined by the reach of the
+roots of the tree.  The tree had so entirely disappeared, that he
+could not with a long pole touch its top.  Since then the water had
+neither subsided nor overflowed.  The ground about was compact
+gravel.  We tried sounding the hole with poles, but could make
+nothing of it.  The water seemed to have no outlet nor inlet; at
+least, it did not rise or fall.  Why should the solid hill give way
+at this place, and swallow up a tree?  and if the water had any
+connection with the lake, two hundred feet below and at some distance
+away, why didn't the water run out?  Why should the unscientific
+traveler have a thing of this kind thrown in his way?  The driver did
+not know.
+
+This phenomenon made us a little suspicious of the foundations of
+this island which is already invaded by the jealous ocean, and is
+anchored to the continent only by the cable.
+
+The drive became more charming as the sun went down, and we saw the
+hills grow purple beyond the Bras d'Or.  The road wound around lovely
+coves and across low promontories, giving us new beauties at every
+turn.  Before dark we had crossed the Middle River and the Big
+Baddeck, on long wooden bridges, which straggled over sluggish waters
+and long reaches of marsh, upon which Mary might have been sent to
+call the cattle home.  These bridges were shaky and wanted a plank at
+intervals, but they are in keeping with the enterprise of the
+country.  As dusk came on, we crossed the last hill, and were bowling
+along by the still gleaming water.  Lights began to appear in
+infrequent farmhouses, and under cover of the gathering night the
+houses seemed to be stately mansions; and we fancied we were on a
+noble highway, lined with elegant suburban seaside residences, and
+about to drive into a town of wealth and a port of great commerce.
+We were, nevertheless, anxious about Baddeck.  What sort of haven
+were we to reach after our heroic (with the reader's permission) week
+of travel?  Would the hotel be like that at Plaster Cove?  Were our
+thirty-six hours of sleepless staging to terminate in a night of
+misery and a Sunday of discomfort?
+
+We came into a straggling village; that we could see by the
+starlight.  But we stopped at the door of a very unhotel-like
+appearing hotel.  It had in front a flower-garden; it was blazing
+with welcome lights; it opened hospitable doors, and we were received
+by a family who expected us.  The house was a large one, for two
+guests; and we enjoyed the luxury of spacious rooms, an abundant
+supper, and a friendly welcome; and, in short, found ourselves at
+home.  The proprietor of the Telegraph House is the superintendent of
+the land lines of Cape Breton, a Scotchman, of course; but his wife
+is a Newfoundland lady.  We cannot violate the sanctity of what
+seemed like private hospitality by speaking freely of this lady and
+the lovely girls, her daughters, whose education has been so
+admirably advanced in the excellent school at Baddeck; but we can
+confidently advise any American who is going to Newfoundland, to get
+a wife there, if he wants one at all.  It is the only new article he
+can bring from the Provinces that he will not have to pay duty on.
+And here is a suggestion to our tariff-mongers for the "protection"
+of New England women.
+
+The reader probably cannot appreciate the delicious sense of rest and
+of achievement which we enjoyed in this tidy inn, nor share the
+anticipations of undisturbed, luxurious sleep, in which we indulged
+as we sat upon the upper balcony after supper, and saw the moon rise
+over the glistening Bras d'Or and flood with light the islands and
+headlands of the beautiful bay.  Anchored at some distance from the
+shore was a slender coasting vessel.  The big red moon happened to
+come up just behind it, and the masts and spars and ropes of the
+vessel came out, distinctly traced on the golden background, making
+such a night picture as I once saw painted of a ship in a fiord of
+Norway.  The scene was enchanting.  And we respected then the
+heretofore seemingly insane impulse that had driven us on to Baddeck.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"He had no ill-will to the Scotch; for, if he had been conscious of
+that, he never would have thrown himself into the bosom of their
+country, and trusted to the protection of its remote inhabitants with
+a fearless confidence."--BOSWELL'S JOHNSON.
+
+Although it was an open and flagrant violation of the Sabbath day as
+it is kept in Scotch Baddeck, our kind hosts let us sleep late on
+Sunday morning, with no reminder that we were not sleeping the sleep
+of the just.  It was the charming Maud, a flitting sunbeam of a girl,
+who waited to bring us our breakfast, and thereby lost the
+opportunity of going to church with the rest of the family,--an act
+of gracious hospitality which the tired travelers appreciated.
+
+The travelers were unable, indeed, to awaken into any feeling of
+Sabbatical straitness.  The morning was delicious,--such a morning as
+never visits any place except an island; a bright, sparkling morning,
+with the exhilaration of the air softened by the sea.  What a day it
+was for idleness, for voluptuous rest, after the flight by day and
+night from St. John!  It was enough, now that the morning was fully
+opened and advancing to the splendor of noon, to sit upon the upper
+balcony, looking upon the Bras d'Or and the peaceful hills beyond,
+reposeful and yet sparkling with the air and color of summer, and
+inhale the balmy air.  (We greatly need another word to describe good
+air, properly heated, besides this overworked "balmy.") Perhaps it
+might in some regions be considered Sabbath-keeping, simply to rest
+in such a soothing situation,--rest, and not incessant activity,
+having been one of the original designs of the day.
+
+But our travelers were from New England, and they were not willing to
+be outdone in the matter of Sunday observances by such an out-of-
+the-way and nameless place as Baddeck.  They did not set themselves
+up as missionaries to these benighted Gaelic people, to teach them by
+example that the notion of Sunday which obtained two hundred years
+ago in Scotland had been modified, and that the sacredness of it had
+pretty much disappeared with the unpleasantness of it.  They rather
+lent themselves to the humor of the hour, and probably by their
+demeanor encouraged the respect for the day on Cape Breton Island.
+Neither by birth nor education were the travelers fishermen on
+Sunday, and they were not moved to tempt the authorities to lock them
+up for dropping here a line and there a line on the Lord's day.
+
+In fact, before I had finished my second cup of Maud-mixed coffee, my
+companion, with a little show of haste, had gone in search of the
+kirk, and I followed him, with more scrupulousness, as soon as I
+could without breaking the day of rest.  Although it was Sunday, I
+could not but notice that Baddeck was a clean-looking village of
+white wooden houses, of perhaps seven or eight hundred inhabitants;
+that it stretched along the bay for a mile or more, straggling off
+into farmhouses at each end, lying for the most part on the sloping
+curve of the bay.  There were a few country-looking stores and shops,
+and on the shore three or four rather decayed and shaky wharves ran
+into the water, and a few schooners lay at anchor near them; and the
+usual decaying warehouses leaned about the docks.  A peaceful and
+perhaps a thriving place, but not a bustling place.  As I walked down
+the road, a sailboat put out from the shore and slowly disappeared
+round the island in the direction of the Grand Narrows.  It had a
+small pleasure party on board.  None of them were drowned that day,
+and I learned at night that they were Roman Catholics from
+Whykokornagh.
+
+The kirk, which stands near the water, and at a distance shows a
+pretty wooden spire, is after the pattern of a New England
+meeting-house.  When I reached it, the house was full and the service
+had begun.  There was something familiar in the bareness and
+uncompromising plainness and ugliness of the interior.  The pews had
+high backs, with narrow, uncushioned seats.  The pulpit was high,--a
+sort of theological fortification,--approached by wide, curving
+flights of stairs on either side.  Those who occupied the near seats
+to the right and left of the pulpit had in front of them a blank
+board partition, and could not by any possibility see the minister,
+though they broke their necks backwards over their high coat-collars.
+The congregation had a striking resemblance to a country New England
+congregation of say twenty years ago.  The clothes they wore had been
+Sunday clothes for at least that length of time.
+
+Such clothes have a look of I know not what devout and painful
+respectability, that is in keeping with the worldly notion of rigid
+Scotch Presbyterianism.  One saw with pleasure the fresh and rosy-
+cheeked children of this strict generation, but the women of the
+audience were not in appearance different from newly arrived and
+respectable Irish immigrants.  They wore a white cap with long frills
+over the forehead, and a black handkerchief thrown over it and
+hanging down the neck,--a quaint and not unpleasing disguise.
+
+The house, as I said, was crowded.  It is the custom in this region
+to go to church,--for whole families to go, even the smallest
+children; and they not unfrequently walk six or seven miles to attend
+the service.  There is a kind of merit in this act that makes up for
+the lack of certain other Christian virtues that are practiced
+elsewhere.  The service was worth coming seven miles to participate
+in!--it was about two hours long, and one might well feel as if he
+had performed a work of long-suffering to sit through it.  The
+singing was strictly congregational.  Congregational singing is good
+(for those who like it) when the congregation can sing.  This
+congregation could not sing, but it could grind the Psalms of David
+powerfully.  They sing nothing else but the old Scotch version of the
+Psalms, in a patient and faithful long meter.  And this is regarded,
+and with considerable plausibility, as an act of worship.  It
+certainly has small element of pleasure in it.  Here is a stanza from
+Psalm xlv., which the congregation, without any instrumental
+nonsense, went through in a dragging, drawling manner, and with
+perfect individual independence as to time:
+
+"Thine arrows sharply pierce the heart of th' enemies of the king,
+And under thy sub-jec-shi-on the people down do bring."
+
+The sermon was extempore, and in English with Scotch pronunciation;
+and it filled a solid hour of time.  I am not a good judge of ser-
+mons, and this one was mere chips to me; but my companion, who knows
+a sermon when he hears it, said that this was strictly theological,
+and Scotch theology at that, and not at all expository.  It was
+doubtless my fault that I got no idea whatever from it.  But the
+adults of the congregation appeared to be perfectly satisfied with
+it; at least they sat bolt upright and nodded assent continually.
+The children all went to sleep under it, without any hypocritical
+show of attention.  To be sure, the day was warm and the house was
+unventilated.  If the windows had been opened so as to admit the
+fresh air from the Bras d'Or, I presume the hard-working farmers and
+their wives would have resented such an interference with their
+ordained Sunday naps, and the preacher's sermon would have seemed
+more musty than it appeared to be in that congenial and drowsy air.
+Considering that only half of the congregation could understand the
+preacher, its behavior was exemplary.
+
+After the sermon, a collection was taken up for the minister; and I
+noticed that nothing but pennies rattled into the boxes,--a
+melancholy sound for the pastor.  This might appear niggardly on the
+part of these Scotch Presbyterians, but it is on principle that they
+put only a penny into the box; they say that they want a free gospel,
+and so far as they are concerned they have it.  Although the farmers
+about the Bras d'Or are well-to-do they do not give their minister
+enough to keep his soul in his Gaelic body, and his poor support is
+eked out by the contributions of a missionary society.  It was
+gratifying to learn that this was not from stinginess on the part of
+the people, but was due to their religious principle.  It seemed to
+us that everybody ought to be good in a country where it costs next
+to nothing.
+
+When the service was over, about half of the people departed; the
+rest remained in their seats and prepared to enter upon their Sabbath
+exercises.  These latter were all Gaelic people, who had understood
+little or nothing of the English service.  The minister turned
+himself at once into a Gaelic preacher and repeated in that language
+the long exercises of the morning.  The sermon and perhaps the
+prayers were quite as enjoyable in Gaelic as in English, and the
+singing was a great improvement.  It was of the same Psalms, but the
+congregation chanted them in a wild and weird tone and manner, as
+wailing and barbarous to modern ears as any Highland devotional
+outburst of two centuries ago.  This service also lasted about two
+hours; and as soon as it was over the faithful minister, without any
+rest or refreshment, organized the Sunday-school, and it must have
+been half past three o'clock before that was over.  And this is
+considered a day of rest.
+
+These Gaelic Christians, we were informed, are of a very old pattern;
+and some of them cling more closely to religious observances than to
+morality.  Sunday is nowhere observed with more strictness.  The
+community seems to be a very orderly and thrifty one, except upon
+solemn and stated occasions.  One of these occasions is the
+celebration of the Lord's Supper; and in this the ancient Highland
+traditions are preserved.  The rite is celebrated not oftener than
+once a year by any church.  It then invites the neighboring churches
+to partake with it,--the celebration being usually in the summer and
+early fall months.  It has some of the characteristics of a "camp-
+meeting."  People come from long distances, and as many as two
+thousand and three thousand assemble together.  They quarter
+themselves without special invitation upon the members of the
+inviting church.  Sometimes fifty people will pounce upon one farmer,
+overflowing his house and his barn and swarming all about his
+premises, consuming all the provisions he has laid up for his family,
+and all he can raise money to buy, and literally eating him out of
+house and home.  Not seldom a man is almost ruined by one of these
+religious raids,--at least he is left with a debt of hundreds of
+dollars.  The multitude assembles on Thursday and remains over
+Sunday.  There is preaching every day, but there is something
+besides.  Whatever may be the devotion of a part of the assembly, the
+four days are, in general, days of license, of carousing, of
+drinking, and of other excesses, which our informant said he would
+not particularize; we could understand what they were by reading St.
+Paul's rebuke of the Corinthians for similar offenses.  The evil has
+become so great and burdensome that the celebration of this sacred
+rite will have to be reformed altogether.
+
+Such a Sabbath quiet pervaded the street of Baddeck, that the fast
+driving of the Gaels in their rattling, one-horse wagons, crowded
+full of men, women, and children,--released from their long sanctuary
+privileges, and going home,--was a sort of profanation of the day;
+and we gladly turned aside to visit the rural jail of the town.
+
+Upon the principal street or road of Baddeck stands the dreadful
+prison-house.  It is a story and a quarter edifice, built of stone
+and substantially whitewashed; retired a little from the road, with a
+square of green turf in front of it, I should have taken it for the
+residence of the Dairyman's Daughter, but for the iron gratings at
+the lower windows.  A more inviting place to spend the summer in, a
+vicious person could not have.  The Scotch keeper of it is an old,
+garrulous, obliging man, and keeps codfish tackle to loan.  I think
+that if he had a prisoner who was fond of fishing, he would take him
+with him on the bay in pursuit of the mackerel and the cod.  If the
+prisoner were to take advantage of his freedom and attempt to escape,
+the jailer's feelings would be hurt, and public opinion would hardly
+approve the prisoner's conduct.
+
+The jail door was hospitably open, and the keeper invited us to
+enter.  Having seen the inside of a good many prisons in our own
+country (officially), we were interested in inspecting this.  It was
+a favorable time for doing so, for there happened to be a man
+confined there, a circumstance which seemed to increase the keeper's
+feeling of responsibility in his office.  The edifice had four rooms
+on the ground-floor, and an attic sleeping-room above.  Three of
+these rooms, which were perhaps twelve feet by fifteen feet, were
+cells; the third was occupied by the jailer's family.  The family
+were now also occupying the front cell,--a cheerful room commanding a
+view of the village street and of the bay.  A prisoner of a
+philosophic turn of mind, who had committed some crime of sufficient
+magnitude to make him willing to retire from the world for a season
+and rest, might enjoy himself here very well.
+
+The jailer exhibited his premises with an air of modesty.  In the
+rear was a small yard, surrounded by a board fence, in which the
+prisoner took his exercise.  An active boy could climb over it, and
+an enterprising pig could go through it almost anywhere.  The keeper
+said that he intended at the next court to ask the commissioners to
+build the fence higher and stop up the holes.  Otherwise the jail was
+in good condition.  Its inmates were few; in fact, it was rather apt
+to be empty: its occupants were usually prisoners for debt, or for
+some trifling breach of the peace, committed under the influence of
+the liquor that makes one "unco happy."  Whether or not the people of
+the region have a high moral standard, crime is almost unknown; the
+jail itself is an evidence of primeval simplicity.  The great
+incident in the old jailer's life had been the rescue of a well-known
+citizen who was confined on a charge of misuse of public money.  The
+keeper showed me a place in the outer wall of the front cell, where
+an attempt had been made to batter a hole through.  The Highland clan
+and kinsfolk of the alleged defaulter came one night and threatened
+to knock the jail in pieces if he was not given up.  They bruised the
+wall, broke the windows, and finally smashed in the door and took
+their man away.  The jailer was greatly excited at this rudeness, and
+went almost immediately and purchased a pistol.  He said that for a
+time he did n't feel safe in the jail without it.  The mob had thrown
+stones at the upper windows, in order to awaken him, and had insulted
+him with cursing and offensive language.
+
+Having finished inspecting the building, I was unfortunately moved by
+I know not what national pride and knowledge of institutions superior
+to this at home, to say,
+
+"This is a pleasant jail, but it doesn't look much like our great
+prisons; we have as many as a thousand to twelve hundred men in some
+of our institutions."
+
+"Ay, ay, I have heard tell," said the jailer, shaking his head in
+pity, "it's an awfu' place, an awfu' place,--the United States.  I
+suppose it's the wickedest country that ever was in the world.  I
+don't know,--I don't know what is to become of it.  It's worse than
+Sodom.  There was that dreadful war on the South; and I hear now it's
+very unsafe, full of murders and robberies and corruption."
+
+I did not attempt to correct this impression concerning my native
+land, for I saw it was a comfort to the simple jailer, but I tried to
+put a thorn into him by saying,
+
+"Yes, we have a good many criminals, but the majority of them, the
+majority of those in jails, are foreigners; they come from Ireland,
+England, and the Provinces."
+
+But the old man only shook his head more solemnly, and persisted,
+"It's an awfu' wicked country."
+
+Before I came away I was permitted to have an interview with the sole
+prisoner, a very pleasant and talkative man, who was glad to see
+company, especially intelligent company who understood about things,
+he was pleased to say.  I have seldom met a more agreeable rogue, or
+one so philosophical, a man of travel and varied experiences.  He was
+a lively, robust Provincial of middle age, bullet-headed, with a mass
+of curly black hair, and small, round black eyes, that danced and
+sparkled with good humor.  He was by trade a carpenter, and had a
+work-bench in his cell, at which he worked on week-days.  He had been
+put in jail on suspicion of stealing a buffalo-robe, and he lay in
+jail eight months, waiting for the judge to come to Baddeck on his
+yearly circuit.  He did not steal the robe, as he assured me, but it
+was found in his house, and the judge gave him four months in jail,
+making a year in all,--a month of which was still to serve.  But he
+was not at all anxious for the end of his term; for his wife was
+outside.
+
+Jock, for he was familiarly so called, asked me where I was from.  As
+I had not found it very profitable to hail from the United States,
+and had found, in fact, that the name United States did not convey
+any definite impression to the average Cape Breton mind, I ventured
+upon the bold assertion, for which I hope Bostonians will forgive me,
+that I was from Boston.  For Boston is known in the eastern
+Provinces.
+
+"Are you?" cried the man, delighted.  "I've lived in Boston, myself.
+There's just been an awful fire near there."
+
+"Indeed!" I said; "I heard nothing of it.' And I was startled with
+the possibility that Boston had burned up again while we were
+crawling along through Nova Scotia.
+
+"Yes, here it is, in the last paper."  The man bustled away and found
+his late paper, and thrust it through the grating, with the inquiry,
+"Can you read?"
+
+Though the question was unexpected, and I had never thought before
+whether I could read or not, I confessed that I could probably make
+out the meaning, and took the newspaper.  The report of the fire
+"near Boston" turned out to be the old news of the conflagration in
+Portland, Oregon!
+
+Disposed to devote a portion of this Sunday to the reformation of
+this lively criminal, I continued the conversation with him.  It
+seemed that he had been in jail before, and was not unaccustomed to
+the life.  He was not often lonesome; he had his workbench and
+newspapers, and it was a quiet place; on the whole, he enjoyed it,
+and should rather regret it when his time was up, a month from then.
+
+Had he any family?
+
+"Oh, yes.  When the census was round, I contributed more to it than
+anybody in town.  Got a wife and eleven children."
+
+"Well, don't you think it would pay best to be honest, and live with
+your family, out of jail?  You surely never had anything but trouble
+from dishonesty."
+
+"That's about so, boss.  I mean to go on the square after this.  But,
+you see," and here he began to speak confidentially, "things are
+fixed about so in this world, and a man's got to live his life.  I
+tell you how it was.  It all came about from a woman.  I was a
+carpenter, had a good trade, and went down to St. Peter's to work.
+There I got acquainted with a Frenchwoman,--you know what Frenchwomen
+are,--and I had to marry her.  The fact is, she was rather low
+family; not so very low, you know, but not so good as mine.  Well, I
+wanted to go to Boston to work at my trade, but she wouldn't go; and
+I went, but she would n't come to me, so in two or three years I came
+back.  A man can't help himself, you know, when he gets in with a
+woman, especially a Frenchwoman.  Things did n't go very well, and
+never have.  I can't make much out of it, but I reckon a man 's got
+to live his life.  Ain't that about so?"
+
+"Perhaps so.  But you'd better try to mend matters when you get out.
+Won't it seem rather good to get out and see your wife and family
+again?"
+
+"I don't know.  I have peace here."
+
+The question of his liberty seemed rather to depress this cheerful
+and vivacious philosopher, and I wondered what the woman could be
+from whose companionship the man chose to be protected by jail-bolts.
+I asked the landlord about her, and his reply was descriptive and
+sufficient.  He only said,
+
+"She's a yelper."
+
+Besides the church and the jail there are no public institutions in
+Baddeck to see on Sunday, or on any other day; but it has very good
+schools, and the examination-papers of Maud and her elder sister
+would do credit to Boston scholars even.  You would not say that the
+place was stuffed with books, or overrun by lecturers, but it is an
+orderly, Sabbath-keeping, fairly intelligent town.  Book-agents visit
+it with other commercial travelers, but the flood of knowledge, which
+is said to be the beginning of sorrow, is hardly turned in that
+direction yet.  I heard of a feeble lecture-course in Halifax,
+supplied by local celebrities, some of them from St. John; but so far
+as I can see, this is a virgin field for the platform philosophers
+under whose instructions we have become the well-informed people we
+are.
+
+The peaceful jail and the somewhat tiresome church exhaust one's
+opportunities for doing good in Baddeck on Sunday.  There seemed to
+be no idlers about, to reprove; the occasional lounger on the
+skeleton wharves was in his Sunday clothes, and therefore within the
+statute.  No one, probably, would have thought of rowing out beyond
+the island to fish for cod,--although, as that fish is ready to bite,
+and his associations are more or less sacred, there might be excuses
+for angling for him on Sunday, when it would be wicked to throw a
+line for another sort of fish.  My earliest recollections are of the
+codfish on the meeting-house spires in New England,--his sacred tail
+pointing the way the wind went.  I did not know then why this emblem
+should be placed upon a house of worship, any more than I knew why
+codfish-balls appeared always upon the Sunday breakfast-table.  But
+these associations invested this plebeian fish with something of a
+religious character, which he has never quite lost, in my mind.
+
+Having attributed the quiet of Baddeck on Sunday to religion, we did
+not know to what to lay the quiet on Monday.  But its peacefulness
+continued.  I have no doubt that the farmers began to farm, and the
+traders to trade, and the sailors to sail; but the tourist felt that
+he had come into a place of rest.  The promise of the red sky the
+evening before was fulfilled in another royal day.  There was an
+inspiration in the air that one looks for rather in the mountains
+than on the sea-coast; it seemed like some new and gentle compound of
+sea-air and land-air, which was the perfection of breathing material.
+In this atmosphere, which seemed to flow over all these Atlantic
+isles at this season, one endures a great deal of exertion with
+little fatigue; or he is content to sit still, and has no feeling of
+sluggishness.  Mere living is a kind of happiness, and the easy-going
+traveler is satisfied with little to do and less to see, Let the
+reader not understand that we are recommending him to go to Baddeck.
+Far from it.  The reader was never yet advised to go to any place,
+which he did not growl about if he took the advice and went there.
+If he discovers it himself, the case is different.  We know too well
+what would happen.  A shoal of travelers would pour down upon Cape
+Breton, taking with them their dyspepsia, their liver-complaints,
+their "lights" derangements, their discontent, their guns and
+fishing-tackle, their big trunks, their desire for rapid travel,
+their enthusiasm about the Gaelic language, their love for nature;
+and they would very likely declare that there was nothing in it.  And
+the traveler would probably be right, so far as he is concerned.
+There are few whom it would pay to go a thousand miles for the sake
+of sitting on the dock at Baddeck when the sun goes down, and
+watching the purple lights on the islands and the distant hills, the
+red flush in the horizon and on the lake, and the creeping on of gray
+twilight.  You can see all that as well elsewhere?  I am not so sure.
+There is a harmony of beauty about the Bras d'Or at Baddeck which is
+lacking in many scenes of more pretension.  No.  We advise no person
+to go to Cape Breton.  But if any one does go, he need not lack
+occupation. If he is there late in the fall or early in the winter,
+he may hunt, with good luck, if he is able to hit anything with a
+rifle, the moose and the caribou on that long wilderness peninsula
+between Baddeck and Aspy Bay, where the old cable landed.  He may
+also have his fill of salmon fishing in June and July, especially on
+the Matjorie River.  As late as August, at the time, of our visit, a
+hundred people were camped in tents on the Marjorie, wiling the
+salmon with the delusive fly, and leading him to death with a hook in
+his nose.  The speckled trout lives in all the streams, and can be
+caught whenever he will bite.  The day we went for him appeared to be
+an off-day, a sort of holiday with him.
+
+There is one place, however, which the traveler must not fail to
+visit.  That is St. Ann's Bay.  He will go light of baggage, for he
+must hire a farmer to carry him from the Bras d'Or to the branch of
+St. Ann's harbor, and a part of his journey will be in a row-boat.
+There is no ride on the continent, of the kind, so full of
+picturesque beauty and constant surprises as this around the
+indentations of St. Ann's harbor.  From the high promontory where
+rests the fishing village of St. Ann, the traveler will cross to
+English Town.  High bluffs, bold shores, exquisite sea-views,
+mountainous ranges, delicious air, the society of a member of the
+Dominion Parliament, these are some of the things to be enjoyed at
+this place.  In point of grandeur and beauty it surpasses Mt. Desert,
+and is really the most attractive place on the whole line of the
+Atlantic Cable.  If the traveler has any sentiment in him, he will
+visit here, not without emotion, the grave of the Nova Scotia Giant,
+who recently laid his huge frame along this, his native shore.  A man
+of gigantic height and awful breadth of shoulders, with a hand as big
+as a shovel, there was nothing mean or little in his soul.  While the
+visitor is gazing at his vast shoes, which now can be used only as
+sledges, he will be told that the Giant was greatly respected by his
+neighbors as a man of ability and simple integrity.  He was not
+spoiled by his metropolitan successes, bringing home from his foreign
+triumphs the same quiet and friendly demeanor he took away; he is
+almost the only example of a successful public man, who did not feel
+bigger than he was.  He performed his duty in life without
+ostentation, and returned to the home he loved unspoiled by the
+flattery of constant public curiosity.  He knew, having tried both,
+how much better it is to be good than to be great.  I should like to
+have known him.  I should like to know how the world looked to him
+from his altitude.  I should like to know how much food it took at
+one time to make an impression on him; I should like to know what
+effect an idea of ordinary size had in his capacious head.  I should
+like to feel that thrill of physical delight he must have experienced
+in merely closing his hand over something.  It is a pity that he
+could not have been educated all through, beginning at a high school,
+and ending in a university.  There was a field for the multifarious
+new education!  If we could have annexed him with his island, I
+should like to have seen him in the Senate of the United States.  He
+would have made foreign nations respect that body, and fear his
+lightest remark like a declaration of war.  And he would have been at
+home in that body of great men.  Alas!  he has passed away, leaving
+little influence except a good example of growth, and a grave which
+is a new promontory on that ragged coast swept by the winds of the
+untamed Atlantic.
+
+I could describe the Bay of St. Ann more minutely and graphically, if
+it were desirable to do so; but I trust that enough has been said to
+make the traveler wish to go there.  I more unreservedly urge him to
+go there, because we did not go, and we should feel no responsibility
+for his liking or disliking.  He will go upon the recommendation of
+two gentlemen of taste and travel whom we met at Baddeck, residents
+of Maine and familiar with most of the odd and striking combinations
+of land and water in coast scenery.  When a Maine man admits that
+there is any place finer than Mt. Desert, it is worth making a note
+of.
+
+On Monday we went a-fishing.  Davie hitched to a rattling wagon
+something that he called a horse, a small, rough animal with a great
+deal of "go" in him, if he could be coaxed to show it.  For the first
+half-hour he went mostly in a circle in front of the inn, moving
+indifferently backwards or forwards, perfectly willing to go down the
+road, but refusing to start along the bay in the direction of Middle
+River.  Of course a crowd collected to give advice and make remarks,
+and women appeared at the doors and windows of adjacent houses.
+Davie said he did n't care anything about the conduct of the horse,--
+he could start him after a while,--but he did n't like to have all
+the town looking at him, especially the girls; and besides, such an
+exhibition affected the market value of the horse.  We sat in the
+wagon circling round and round, sometimes in the ditch and sometimes
+out of it, and Davie "whaled" the horse with his whip and abused him
+with his tongue.  It was a pleasant day, and the spectators
+increased.
+
+There are two ways of managing a balky horse.  My companion knew one
+of them and I the other.  His method is to sit quietly in the wagon,
+and at short intervals throw a small pebble at the horse.  The theory
+is that these repeated sudden annoyances will operate on a horse's
+mind, and he will try to escape them by going on.  The spectators
+supplied my friend with stones, and he pelted the horse with measured
+gentleness.  Probably the horse understood this method, for he did
+not notice the attack at all.  My plan was to speak gently to the
+horse, requesting him to go, and then to follow the refusal by one
+sudden, sharp cut of the lash; to wait a moment, and then repeat the
+operation.  The dread of the coming lash after the gentle word will
+start any horse.  I tried this, and with a certain success.  The
+horse backed us into the ditch, and would probably have backed
+himself into the wagon, if I had continued.  When the animal was at
+length ready to go, Davie took him by the bridle, ran by his side,
+coaxed him into a gallop, and then, leaping in behind, lashed him
+into a run, which had little respite for ten miles, uphill or down.
+Remonstrance on behalf of the horse was in vain, and it was only on
+the return home that this specimen Cape Breton driver began to
+reflect how he could erase the welts from the horse's back before his
+father saw them.
+
+Our way lay along the charming bay of the Bras d'Or, over the
+sprawling bridge of the Big Baddeck, a black, sedgy, lonesome stream,
+to Middle River, which debouches out of a scraggy country into a
+bayou with ragged shores, about which the Indians have encampments,
+and in which are the skeleton stakes of fish-weirs.  Saturday night
+we had seen trout jumping in the still water above the bridge.  We
+followed the stream up two or three miles to a Gaelic settlement of
+farmers.  The river here flows through lovely meadows, sandy,
+fertile, and sheltered by hills,--a green Eden, one of the few
+peaceful inhabited spots in the world.  I could conceive of no news
+coming to these Highlanders later than the defeat of the Pretender.
+Turning from the road, through a lane and crossing a shallow brook,
+we reached the dwelling of one of the original McGregors, or at least
+as good as an original.  Mr. McGregor is a fiery-haired Scotchman and
+brother, cordial and hospitable, who entertained our wayward horse,
+and freely advised us where the trout on his farm were most likely to
+be found at this season of the year.
+
+It would be a great pleasure to speak well of Mr. McGregor's
+residence, but truth is older than Scotchmen) and the reader looks to
+us for truth and not flattery.  Though the McGregor seems to have a
+good farm, his house is little better than a shanty, a rather
+cheerless place for the "woman " to slave away her uneventful life
+in, and bring up her scantily clothed and semi-wild flock of
+children.  And yet I suppose there must be happiness in it,--there
+always is where there are plenty of children, and milk enough for
+them.  A white-haired boy who lacked adequate trousers, small though
+he was, was brought forward by his mother to describe a trout he had
+recently caught, which was nearly as long as the boy himself.  The
+young Gael's invention was rewarded by a present of real fish-hooks.
+We found here in this rude cabin the hospitality that exists in all
+remote regions where travelers are few.  Mrs. McGregor had none of
+that reluctance, which women feel in all more civilized agricultural
+regions, to "break a pan of milk," and Mr. McGregor even pressed us
+to partake freely of that simple drink.  And he refused to take any
+pay for it, in a sort of surprise that such a simple act of
+hospitality should have any commercial value.  But travelers
+themselves destroy one of their chief pleasures.  No doubt we planted
+the notion in the McGregor mind that the small kindnesses of life may
+be made profitable, by offering to pay for the milk; and probably the
+next travelers in that Eden will succeed in leaving some small change
+there, if they use a little tact.
+
+It was late in the season for trout.  Perhaps the McGregor was aware
+of that when he freely gave us the run of the stream in his meadows,
+and pointed out the pools where we should be sure of good luck.  It
+was a charming August day, just the day that trout enjoy lying in
+cool, deep places, and moving their fins in quiet content,
+indifferent to the skimming fly or to the proffered sport of rod and
+reel.  The Middle River gracefully winds through this Vale of Tempe,
+over a sandy bottom, sometimes sparkling in shallows, and then gently
+reposing in the broad bends of the grassy banks.  It was in one of
+these bends, where the stream swirled around in seductive eddies,
+that we tried our skill.  We heroically waded the stream and threw
+our flies from the highest bank; but neither in the black water nor
+in the sandy shallows could any trout be coaxed to spring to the
+deceitful leaders.  We enjoyed the distinction of being the only
+persons who had ever failed to strike trout in that pool, and this
+was something.  The meadows were sweet with the newly cut grass, the
+wind softly blew down the river, large white clouds sailed high
+overhead and cast shadows on the changing water; but to all these
+gentle influences the fish were insensible, and sulked in their cool
+retreats.  At length in a small brook flowing into the Middle River
+we found the trout more sociable; and it is lucky that we did so, for
+I should with reluctance stain these pages with a fiction; and yet
+the public would have just reason to resent a fish-story without any
+fish in it.  Under a bank, in a pool crossed by a log and shaded by a
+tree, we found a drove of the speckled beauties at home, dozens of
+them a foot long, each moving lazily a little, their black backs
+relieved by their colored fins.  They must have seen us, but at first
+they showed no desire for a closer acquaintance.  To the red ibis and
+the white miller and the brown hackle and the gray fly they were
+alike indifferent.  Perhaps the love for made flies is an artificial
+taste and has to be cultivated.  These at any rate were uncivilized
+-trout, and it was only when we took the advice of the young McGregor
+and baited our hooks with the angleworm, that the fish joined in our
+day's sport.  They could not resist the lively wiggle of the worm
+before their very noses, and we lifted them out one after an other,
+gently, and very much as if we were hooking them out of a barrel,
+until we had a handsome string.  It may have been fun for them but it
+was not much sport for us.  All the small ones the young McGregor
+contemptuously threw back into the water.  The sportsman will perhaps
+learn from this incident that there are plenty of trout in Cape
+Breton in August, but that the fishing is not exhilarating.
+
+The next morning the semi-weekly steamboat from Sydney came into the
+bay, and drew all the male inhabitants of Baddeck down to the wharf;
+and the two travelers, reluctant to leave the hospitable inn, and the
+peaceful jail, and the double-barreled church, and all the loveliness
+of this reposeful place, prepared to depart.  The most conspicuous
+person on the steamboat was a thin man, whose extraordinary height
+was made more striking by his very long-waisted black coat and his
+very short pantaloons.  He was so tall that he had a little
+difficulty in keeping his balance, and his hat was set upon the back
+of his head to preserve his equilibrium.  He had arrived at that
+stage when people affected as he was are oratorical, and overflowing
+with information and good-nature.  With what might in strict art be
+called an excess of expletives, he explained that he was a civil
+engineer, that he had lost his rubber coat, that he was a great
+traveler in the Provinces, and he seemed to find a humorous
+satisfaction in reiterating the fact of his familiarity with Painsec
+junction.  It evidently hovered in the misty horizon of his mind as a
+joke, and he contrived to present it to his audience in that light.
+>From the deck of the steamboat he addressed the town, and then, to
+the relief of the passengers, he decided to go ashore.  When the boat
+drew away on her voyage we left him swaying perilously near the edge
+of the wharf, good-naturedly resenting the grasp of his coat-tail by
+a friend, addressing us upon the topics of the day, and wishing us
+prosperity and the Fourth of July.  His was the only effort in the
+nature of a public lecture that we heard in the Provinces, and we
+could not judge of his ability without hearing a "course."
+
+Perhaps it needed this slight disturbance, and the contrast of this
+hazy mind with the serene clarity of the day, to put us into the most
+complete enjoyment of our voyage.  Certainly, as we glided out upon
+the summer waters and began to get the graceful outlines of the
+widening shores, it seemed as if we had taken passage to the
+Fortunate Islands.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+"One town, one country, is very like another; ...... there are indeed
+minute discriminations both of places and manners, which, perhaps,
+are not wanting of curiosity, but which a traveller seldom stays long
+enough to investigate and compare."  --DR.  JOHNSON.
+
+There was no prospect of any excitement or of any adventure on the
+steamboat from Baddeck to West Bay, the southern point of the Bras
+d'Or.  Judging from the appearance of the boat, the dinner might have
+been an experiment, but we ran no risks.  It was enough to sit on
+deck forward of the wheel-house, and absorb, by all the senses, the
+delicious day.  With such weather perpetual and such scenery always
+present, sin in this world would soon become an impossibility.  Even
+towards the passengers from Sydney, with their imitation English ways
+and little insular gossip, one could have only charity and the most
+kindly feeling.
+
+The most electric American, heir of all the nervous diseases of all
+the ages, could not but find peace in this scene of tranquil beauty,
+and sail on into a great and deepening contentment.  Would the voyage
+could last for an age, with the same sparkling but tranquil sea, and
+the same environment of hills, near and remote!  The hills approached
+and fell away in lines of undulating grace, draped with a tender
+color which helped to carry the imagination beyond the earth.  At
+this point the narrative needs to flow into verse, but my comrade did
+not feel like another attempt at poetry so soon after that on the Gut
+of Canso.  A man cannot always be keyed up to the pitch of
+production, though his emotions may be highly creditable to him.  But
+poetry-making in these days is a good deal like the use of profane
+language,--often without the least provocation.
+
+Twelve miles from Baddeck we passed through the Barra Strait, or the
+Grand Narrows, a picturesque feature in the Bras d'Or, and came into
+its widest expanse.  At the Narrows is a small settlement with a
+flag-staff and a hotel, and roads leading to farmhouses on the hills.
+Here is a Catholic chapel; and on shore a fat padre was waiting in
+his wagon for the inevitable priest we always set ashore at such a
+place.  The missionary we landed was the young father from Arichat,
+and in appearance the pleasing historical Jesuit.  Slender is too
+corpulent a word to describe his thinness, and his stature was
+primeval.  Enveloped in a black coat, the skirts of which reached his
+heels, and surmounted by a black hat with an enormous brim, he had
+the form of an elegant toadstool.  The traveler is always grateful
+for such figures, and is not disposed to quarrel with the faith which
+preserves so much of the ugly picturesque.  A peaceful farming
+country this, but an unremunerative field, one would say, for the
+colporteur and the book-agent; and winter must inclose it in a
+lonesome seclusion.
+
+The only other thing of note the Bras d'Or offered us before we
+reached West Bay was the finest show of medusm or jelly-fish that
+could be produced.  At first there were dozens of these disk-shaped,
+transparent creatures, and then hundreds, starring the water like
+marguerites sprinkled on a meadow, and of sizes from that of a teacup
+to a dinner-plate.  We soon ran into a school of them, a convention,
+a herd as extensive as the vast buffalo droves on the plains, a
+collection as thick as clover-blossoms in a field in June, miles of
+them, apparently; and at length the boat had to push its way through
+a mass of them which covered the water like the leaves of the
+pondlily, and filled the deeps far down with their beautiful
+contracting and expanding forms.  I did not suppose there were so
+many jelly-fishes in all the world.  What a repast they would have
+made for the Atlantic whale we did not see, and what inward comfort
+it would have given him to have swum through them once or twice with
+open mouth!  Our delight in this wondrous spectacle did not prevent
+this generous wish for the gratification of the whale.  It is
+probably a natural human desire to see big corporations swallow up
+little ones.
+
+At the West Bay landing, where there is nothing whatever attractive,
+we found a great concourse of country wagons and clamorous drivers,
+to transport the passengers over the rough and uninteresting nine
+miles to Port Hawkesbury.  Competition makes the fare low, but
+nothing makes the ride entertaining.  The only settlement passed
+through has the promising name of River Inhabitants, but we could see
+little river and less inhabitants; country and people seem to belong
+to that commonplace order out of which the traveler can extract
+nothing amusing, instructive, or disagreeable; and it was a great
+relief when we came over the last hill and looked down upon the
+straggling village of Port Hawkesbury and the winding Gut of Canso.
+
+One cannot but feel a respect for this historical strait, on account
+of the protection it once gave our British ancestors.  Smollett makes
+a certain Captain C---- tell this anecdote of George II. and his
+enlightened minister, the Duke of Newcastle: "In the beginning of the
+war this poor, half-witted creature told me, in a great fright, that
+thirty thousand French had marched from Acadie to Cape Breton.
+'Where did they find transports?' said I.  'Transports!' cried he; 'I
+tell you, they marched by land.'  By land to the island of Cape
+Breton?'  'What!  is Cape Breton an island?'  'Certainly.'  'Ha!  are
+you sure of that?'  When I pointed it out on the map, he examined it
+earnestly with his spectacles; then taking me in his arms, 'My dear
+C----!' cried he, you always bring us good news.  I'll go directly
+and tell the king that Cape Breton is an island.'"
+
+Port Hawkesbury is not a modern settlement, and its public house is
+one of the irregular, old-fashioned, stuffy taverns, with low rooms,
+chintz-covered lounges, and fat-cushioned rocking-chairs, the decay
+and untidiness of which are not offensive to the traveler.  It has a
+low back porch looking towards the water and over a mouldy garden,
+damp and unseemly.  Time was, no doubt, before the rush of travel
+rubbed off the bloom of its ancient hospitality and set a vigilant
+man at the door of the dining-room to collect pay for meals, that
+this was an abode of comfort and the resort of merry-making and
+frolicsome provincials.  On this now decaying porch no doubt lovers
+sat in the moonlight, and vowed by the Gut of Canso to be fond of
+each other forever.  The traveler cannot help it if he comes upon the
+traces of such sentiment.  There lingered yet in the house an air of
+the hospitable old time; the swift willingness of the waiting-maids
+at table, who were eager that we should miss none of the home-made
+dishes, spoke of it; and as we were not obliged to stay in the hotel
+and lodge in its six-by-four bedrooms, we could afford to make a
+little romance about its history.
+
+While we were at supper the steamboat arrived from Pictou.  We
+hastened on board, impatient for progress on our homeward journey.
+But haste was not called for.  The steamboat would not sail on her
+return till morning.  No one could tell why.  It was not on account
+of freight to take in or discharge; it was not in hope of more
+passengers, for they were all on board.  But if the boat had returned
+that night to Pictou, some of the passengers might have left her and
+gone west by rail, instead of wasting two, or three days lounging
+through Northumberland Sound and idling in the harbors of Prince
+Edward Island.  If the steamboat would leave at midnight, we could
+catch the railway train at Pictou.  Probably the officials were aware
+of this, and they preferred to have our company to Shediac.  We
+mention this so that the tourist who comes this way may learn to
+possess his soul in patience, and know that steamboats are not run
+for his accommodation, but to give him repose and to familiarize him
+with the country.  It is almost impossible to give the unscientific
+reader an idea of the slowness of travel by steamboat in these
+regions.  Let him first fix his mind on the fact that the earth moves
+through space at a speed of more than sixty-six thousand miles an
+hour.  This is a speed eleven hundred times greater than that of the
+most rapid express trains.  If the distance traversed by a locomotive
+in an hour is represented by one tenth of an inch, it would need a
+line nine feet long to indicate the corresponding advance of the
+earth in the same time.  But a tortoise, pursuing his ordinary gait
+without a wager, moves eleven hundred times slower than an express
+train.  We have here a basis of comparison with the provincial
+steamboats.  If we had seen a tortoise start that night from Port
+Hawkesbury for the west, we should have desired to send letters by
+him.
+
+In the early morning we stole out of the romantic strait, and by
+breakfast-time we were over St. George's Bay and round his cape, and
+making for the harbor of Pictou.  During the forenoon something in
+the nature of an excursion developed itself on the steamboat, but it
+had so few of the bustling features of an American excursion that I
+thought it might be a pilgrimage.  Yet it doubtless was a highly
+developed provincial lark.  For a certain portion of the passengers
+had the unmistakable excursion air: the half-jocular manner towards
+each other, the local facetiousness which is so offensive to
+uninterested fellow-travelers, that male obsequiousness about ladies'
+shawls and reticules, the clumsy pretense of gallantry with each
+other's wives, the anxiety about the company luggage and the company
+health.  It became painfully evident presently that it was an
+excursion, for we heard singing of that concerted and determined kind
+that depresses the spirits of all except those who join in it.  The
+excursion had assembled on the lee guards out of the wind, and was
+enjoying itself in an abandon of serious musical enthusiasm.  We
+feared at first that there might be some levity in this performance,
+and that the unrestrained spirit of the excursion was working itself
+off in social and convivial songs.  But it was not so.  The singers
+were provided with hymn-and-tune books, and what they sang they
+rendered in long meter and with a most doleful earnestness.  It is
+agreeable to the traveler to see that the provincials disport
+themselves within bounds, and that an hilarious spree here does not
+differ much in its exercises from a prayer-meeting elsewhere.  But
+the excursion enjoyed its staid dissipation amazingly.
+
+It is pleasant to sail into the long and broad harbor of Pictou on a
+sunny day.  On the left is the Halifax railway terminus, and three
+rivers flow into the harbor from the south.  On the right the town of
+Pictou, with its four thousand inhabitants, lies upon the side of the
+ridge that runs out towards the Sound.  The most conspicuous building
+in it as we approach is the Roman Catholic church; advanced to the
+edge of the town and occupying the highest ground, it appears large,
+and its gilt cross is a beacon miles away.  Its builders understood
+the value of a striking situation, a dominant position; it is a part
+of the universal policy of this church to secure the commanding
+places for its houses of worship.  We may have had no prejudices in
+favor of the Papal temporality when we landed at Pictou, but this
+church was the only one which impressed us, and the only one we took
+the trouble to visit.  We had ample time, for the steamboat after its
+arduous trip needed rest, and remained some hours in the harbor.
+Pictou is said to be a thriving place, and its streets have a cindery
+appearance, betokening the nearness of coal mines and the presence of
+furnaces.  But the town has rather a cheap and rusty look.  Its
+streets rise one above another on the hillside, and, except a few
+comfortable cottages, we saw no evidences of wealth in the dwellings.
+The church, when we reached it, was a commonplace brick structure,
+with a raw, unfinished interior, and weedy and untidy surroundings,
+so that our expectation of sitting on the inviting hill and enjoying
+the view was not realized; and we were obliged to descend to the hot
+wharf and wait for the ferry-boat to take us to the steamboat which
+lay at the railway terminus opposite.  It is the most unfair thing in
+the world for the traveler, without an object or any interest in the
+development of the country, on a sleepy day in August, to express any
+opinion whatever about such a town as Pictou.  But we may say of it,
+without offence, that it occupies a charming situation, and may have
+an interesting future; and that a person on a short acquaintance can
+leave it without regret.
+
+By stopping here we had the misfortune to lose our excursion, a loss
+that was soothed by no know ledge of its destination or hope of
+seeing it again, and a loss without a hope is nearly always painful.
+Going out of the harbor we encounter Pictou Island and Light, and
+presently see the low coast of Prince Edward Island,--a coast
+indented and agreeable to those idly sailing along it, in weather
+that seemed let down out of heaven and over a sea that sparkled but
+still slept in a summer quiet.  When fate puts a man in such a
+position and relieves him of all responsibility, with a book and a
+good comrade, and liberty to make sarcastic remarks upon his fellow-
+travelers, or to doze, or to look over the tranquil sea, he may be
+pronounced happy.  And I believe that my companion, except in the
+matter of the comrade, was happy.  But I could not resist a worrying
+anxiety about the future of the British Provinces, which not even the
+remembrance of their hostility to us during our mortal strife with
+the Rebellion could render agreeable.  For I could not but feel that
+the ostentatious and unconcealable prosperity of "the States" over-
+shadows this part of the continent.  And it was for once in vain that
+I said, "Have we not a common land and a common literature, and no
+copyright, and a common pride in Shakespeare and Hannah More and
+Colonel Newcome and Pepys's Diary?" I never knew this sort of
+consolation to fail before; it does not seem to answer in the
+Provinces as well as it does in England.
+
+New passengers had come on board at Pictou, new and hungry, and not
+all could get seats for dinner at the first table.  Notwithstanding
+the supposed traditionary advantage of our birthplace, we were unable
+to dispatch this meal with the celerity of our fellow-voyagers, and
+consequently, while we lingered over our tea, we found ourselves at
+the second table.  And we were rewarded by one of those pleasing
+sights that go to make up the entertainment of travel.  There sat
+down opposite to us a fat man whose noble proportions occupied at the
+board the space of three ordinary men.  His great face beamed delight
+the moment he came near the table.  He had a low forehead and a wide
+mouth and small eyes, and an internal capacity that was a prophecy of
+famine to his fellow-men.  But a more good-natured, pleased animal
+you may never see.  Seating himself with unrepressed joy, he looked
+at us, and a great smile of satisfaction came over his face, that
+plainly said, "Now my time has come."  Every part of his vast bulk
+said this.  Most generously, by his friendly glances, he made us
+partners in his pleasure.  With a Napoleonic grasp of his situation,
+he reached far and near, hauling this and that dish of fragments
+towards his plate, giving orders at the same time, and throwing into
+his cheerful mouth odd pieces of bread and pickles in an unstudied
+and preliminary manner.  When he had secured everything within his
+reach, he heaped his plate and began an attack upon the contents,
+using both knife and fork with wonderful proficiency.  The man's
+good-humor was contagious, and he did not regard our amusement as
+different in kind from his enjoyment.  The spectacle was worth a
+journey to see.  Indeed, its aspect of comicality almost overcame its
+grossness, and even when the hero loaded in faster than he could
+swallow, and was obliged to drop his knife for an instant to arrange
+matters in his mouth with his finger, it was done with such a beaming
+smile that a pig would not take offense at it.  The performance was
+not the merely vulgar thing it seems on paper, but an achievement
+unique and perfect, which one is not likely to see more than once in
+a lifetime.  It was only when the man left the table that his face
+became serious.  We had seen him at his best.
+
+Prince Edward Island, as we approached it, had a pleasing aspect, and
+nothing of that remote friendlessness which its appearance on the map
+conveys to one; a warm and sandy land, in a genial climate, without
+fogs, we are informed.  In the winter it has ice communication with
+Nova Scotia, from Cape Traverse to Cape Tormentine,--the route of the
+submarine cable.  The island is as flat from end to end as a floor.
+When it surrendered its independent government and joined the
+Dominion, one of the conditions of the union was that the government
+should build a railway the whole length of it.  This is in process of
+construction, and the portion that is built affords great
+satisfaction to the islanders, a railway being one of the necessary
+adjuncts of civilization; but that there was great need of it, or
+that it would pay, we were unable to learn.
+
+We sailed through Hillsborough Bay and a narrow strait to
+Charlottetown, the capital, which lies on a sandy spit of land
+between two rivers.  Our leisurely steamboat tied up here in the
+afternoon and spent the night, giving the passengers an opportunity
+to make thorough acquaintance with the town.  It has the appearance
+of a place from which something has departed; a wooden town, with
+wide and vacant streets, and the air of waiting for something.
+Almost melancholy is the aspect of its freestone colonial building,
+where once the colonial legislature held its momentous sessions, and
+the colonial governor shed the delightful aroma of royalty.  The
+mansion of the governor--now vacant of pomp, because that official
+does not exist--is a little withdrawn from the town, secluded among
+trees by the water-side.  It is dignified with a winding approach,
+but is itself only a cheap and decaying house.  On our way to it we
+passed the drill-shed of the local cavalry, which we mistook for a
+skating-rink, and thereby excited the contempt of an old lady of whom
+we inquired.  Tasteful residences we did not find, nor that attention
+to flowers and gardens which the mild climate would suggest.  Indeed,
+we should describe Charlottetown as a place where the hollyhock in
+the dooryard is considered an ornament.  A conspicuous building is a
+large market-house shingled all over (as many of the public buildings
+are), and this and other cheap public edifices stand in the midst of
+a large square, which is surrounded by shabby shops for the most
+part.  The town is laid out on a generous scale, and it is to be
+regretted that we could not have seen it when it enjoyed the glory of
+a governor and court and ministers of state, and all the
+paraphernalia of a royal parliament.  That the productive island,
+with its system of free schools, is about to enter upon a prosperous
+career, and that Charlottetown is soon to become a place of great
+activity, no one who converses with the natives can doubt; and I
+think that even now no traveler will regret spending an hour or two
+there; but it is necessary to say that the rosy inducements to
+tourists to spend the summer there exist only in the guide-books.
+
+We congratulated ourselves that we should at least have a night of
+delightful sleep on the steamboat in the quiet of this secluded
+harbor.  But it was wisely ordered otherwise, to the end that we
+should improve our time by an interesting study of human nature.
+Towards midnight, when the occupants of all the state-rooms were
+supposed to be in profound slumber, there was an invasion of the
+small cabin by a large and loquacious family, who had been making an
+excursion on the island railway.  This family might remind an
+antiquated novel-reader of the delightful Brangtons in "Evelina;"
+they had all the vivacity of the pleasant cousins of the heroine of
+that story, and the same generosity towards the public in regard to
+their family affairs.  Before they had been in the cabin an hour, we
+felt as if we knew every one of them.  There was a great squabble as
+to where and how they should sleep; and when this was over, the
+revelations of the nature of their beds and their peculiar habits of
+sleep continued to pierce the thin deal partitions of the adjoining
+state-rooms.  When all the possible trivialities of vacant minds
+seemed to have been exhausted, there followed a half-hour of
+"Goodnight, pa; good-night, ma;"  "Goodnight, pet;" and "Are you
+asleep, ma?"  "No."  "Are you asleep, pa?"  " No; go to sleep, pet."
+"I'm going.  Good-night, pa; good-night, ma."  " Goodnight, pet."
+"This bed is too short."  " Why don't you take the other?"  "I'm all
+fixed now."  "Well, go to sleep; good-night."  "Good-night, ma;
+goodnight, pa,"--no answer.  "Good-night,pa."  "Goodnight, pet."  "
+Ma, are you asleep?"  "Most."  "This bed is all lumps; I wish I'd
+gone downstairs."  "Well, pa will get up."  " Pa, are you asleep?"
+"Yes."  "It's better now; good-night, pa."  " Goodnight, pet."
+"Good-night, ma."  " Good-night, pet."  And so on in an exasperating
+repetition, until every passenger on the boat must have been
+thoroughly informed of the manner in which this interesting family
+habitually settled itself to repose.
+
+Half an hour passes with only a languid exchange of family feeling,
+and then: "Pa?"  "Well, pet."  "Don't call us in the morning; we
+don't want any breakfast; we want to sleep."  "I won't."  "Goodnight,
+pa; goodnight, ma.  Ma?"  "What is it, dear?"  "Good-night, ma."
+"Good-night, pet."  Alas for youthful expectations!  Pet shared her
+stateroom with a young companion, and the two were carrying on a
+private dialogue during this public performance.  Did these young
+ladies, after keeping all the passengers of the boat awake till near
+the summer dawn, imagine that it was in the power of pa and ma to
+insure them the coveted forenoon slumber, or even the morning snooze?
+The travelers, tossing in their state-room under this domestic
+infliction, anticipated the morning with grim satisfaction; for they
+had a presentiment that it would be impossible for them to arise and
+make their toilet without waking up every one in their part of the
+boat, and aggravating them to such an extent that they would stay
+awake.  And so it turned out.  The family grumbling at the unexpected
+disturbance was sweeter to the travelers than all the exchange of
+family affection during the night.
+
+No one, indeed, ought to sleep beyond breakfast-time while sailing
+along the southern coast of Prince Edward Island.  It was a sparkling
+morning.  When we went on deck we were abreast Cape Traverse; the
+faint outline of Nova Scotia was marked on the horizon, and New
+Brunswick thrust out Cape Tomentine to greet us.  On the still, sunny
+coasts and the placid sea, and in the serene, smiling sky, there was
+no sign of the coming tempest which was then raging from Hatteras to
+Cape Cod; nor could one imagine that this peaceful scene would, a few
+days later, be swept by a fearful tornado, which should raze to the
+ground trees and dwelling-houses, and strew all these now inviting
+shores with wrecked ships and drowning sailors,--a storm which has
+passed into literature in "The Lord's-Day Gale " of Mr Stedman.
+
+Through this delicious weather why should the steamboat hasten, in
+order to discharge its passengers into the sweeping unrest of
+continental travel?  Our eagerness to get on, indeed, almost melted
+away, and we were scarcely impatient at all when the boat lounged
+into Halifax Bay, past Salutation Point and stopped at Summerside.
+This little seaport is intended to be attractive, and it would give
+these travelers great pleasure to describe it, if they could at all
+remember how it looks.  But it is a place that, like some faces,
+makes no sort of impression on the memory.  We went ashore there, and
+tried to take an interest in the ship-building, and in the little
+oysters which the harbor yields; but whether we did take an interest
+or not has passed out of memory.  A small, unpicturesque, wooden
+town, in the languor of a provincial summer; why should we pretend an
+interest in it which we did not feel?  It did not disturb our
+reposeful frame of mind, nor much interfere with our enjoyment of the
+day.
+
+On the forward deck, when we were under way again, amid a group
+reading and nodding in the sunshine, we found a pretty girl with a
+companion and a gentleman, whom we knew by intuition as the "pa" of
+the pretty girl and of our night of anguish.  The pa might have been
+a clergyman in a small way, or the proprietor of a female boarding-
+school; at any rate, an excellent and improving person to travel
+with, whose willingness to impart information made even the travelers
+long for a pa.  It was no part of his plan of this family summer
+excursion, upon which he had come against his wish, to have any hour
+of it wasted in idleness.  He held an open volume in his hand, and
+was questioning his daughter on its contents.  He spoke in a loud
+voice, and without heeding the timidity of the young lady, who shrank
+from this public examination, and begged her father not to continue
+it.  The parent was, however, either proud of his daughter's
+acquirements, or he thought it a good opportunity to shame her out of
+her ignorance.  Doubtless, we said, he is instructing her upon the
+geography of the region we are passing through, its early settlement,
+the romantic incidents of its history when French and English fought
+over it, and so is making this a tour of profit as well as pleasure.
+But the excellent and pottering father proved to be no disciple of
+the new education.  Greece was his theme and he got his questions,
+and his answers too, from the ancient school history in his hand.
+The lesson went on:
+
+"Who was Alcibiades?
+
+"A Greek."
+
+"Yes.  When did he flourish?"
+
+"I can't think."
+
+"Can't think?  What was he noted for?"
+
+"I don't remember."
+
+"Don't remember?  I don't believe you studied this."
+
+"Yes, I did."
+
+"Well, take it now, and study it hard, and then I'll hear you again."
+
+The young girl, who is put to shame by this open persecution, begins
+to study, while the peevish and small tyrant, her pa, is nagging her
+with such soothing remarks as, "I thought you'd have more respect for
+your pride;" "Why don't you try to come up to the expectations of
+your teacher?"  By and by the student thinks she has "got it," and
+the public exposition begins again.  The date at which Alcibiades
+"flourished" was ascertained, but what he was "noted for" got
+hopelessly mixed with what Thernistocles was "noted for."  The
+momentary impression that the battle of Marathon was fought by
+Salamis was soon dissipated, and the questions continued.
+
+"What did Pericles do to the Greeks?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Elevated 'em, did n't he?  Did n't he elevate Pem?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Always remember that; you want to fix your mind on leading things.
+Remember that Pericles elevated the Greeks.  Who was Pericles?
+
+"He was a"--
+
+"Was he a philosopher?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"No, he was n't.  Socrates was a philosopher.  When did he flourish?
+And so on, and so on.
+
+O my charming young countrywomen, let us never forget that Pericles
+elevated the Greeks; and that he did it by cultivating the national
+genius, the national spirit, by stimulating art and oratory and the
+pursuit of learning, and infusing into all society a higher
+intellectual and social life!  Pa was this day sailing through seas
+and by shores that had witnessed some of the most stirring and
+romantic events in the early history of our continent.  He might have
+had the eager attention of his bright daughter if he had unfolded
+these things to her in the midst of this most living landscape, and
+given her an "object lesson" that she would not have forgotten all
+her days, instead of this pottering over names and dates that were as
+dry and meaningless to him as they were uninteresting to his
+daughter.  At least, O Pa, Educator of Youth, if you are insensible
+to the beauty of these summer isles and indifferent to their history,
+and your soul is wedded to ancient learning, why do you not teach
+your family to go to sleep when they go to bed, as the classic Greeks
+used to?
+
+Before the travelers reached Shediac, they had leisure to ruminate
+upon the education of American girls in the schools set apart for
+them, and to conjecture how much they are taught of the geography and
+history of America, or of its social and literary growth; and
+whether, when they travel on a summer tour like this, these coasts
+have any historical light upon them, or gain any interest from the
+daring and chivalric adventurers who played their parts here so long
+ago.  We did not hear pa ask when Madame de la Tour "flourished,"
+though "flourish" that determined woman did, in Boston as well as in
+the French provinces.  In the present woman revival, may we not hope
+that the heroic women of our colonial history will have the
+prominence that is their right, and that woman's achievements will
+assume their proper place in affairs?  When women write history, some
+of our popular men heroes will, we trust, be made to acknowledge the
+female sources of their wisdom and their courage.  But at present
+women do not much affect history, and they are more indifferent to
+the careers of the noted of their own sex than men are.
+
+We expected to approach Shediac with a great deal of interest.  It
+had been, when we started, one of the most prominent points in our
+projected tour.  It was the pivot upon which, so to speak, we
+expected to swing around the Provinces.  Upon the map it was so
+attractive, that we once resolved to go no farther than there.  It
+once seemed to us that, if we ever reached it, we should be contented
+to abide there, in a place so remote, in a port so picturesque and
+foreign.  But returning from the real east, our late interest in
+Shediac seemed unaccountable to us.  Firmly resolved as I was to note
+our entrance into the harbor, I could not keep the place in mind; and
+while we were in our state-room and before we knew it, the steamboat
+Jay at the wharf.  Shediac appeared to be nothing but a wharf with a
+railway train on it, and a few shanty buildings, a part of them
+devoted to the sale of whiskey and to cheap lodgings.  This landing,
+however, is called Point du Chene, and the village of Shediac is two
+or three miles distant from it; we had a pleasant glimpse of it from
+the car windows, and saw nothing in its situation to hinder its
+growth.  The country about it is perfectly level, and stripped of its
+forests.  At Painsec Junction we waited for the train from Halifax,
+and immediately found ourselves in the whirl of intercolonial travel.
+Why people should travel here, or why they should be excited about
+it, we could not see; we could not overcome a feeling of the
+unreality of the whole thing; but yet we humbly knew that we had no
+right to be otherwise than awed by the extraordinary intercolonial
+railway enterprise and by the new life which it is infusing into the
+Provinces.  We are free to say, however, that nothing can be less
+interesting than the line of this road until it strikes the
+Kennebeckasis River, when the traveler will be called upon to admire
+the Sussex Valley and a very fair farming region, which he would like
+to praise if it were not for exciting the jealousy of the "Garden of
+Nova Scotia."  The whole land is in fact a garden, but differing
+somewhat from the Isle of Wight.
+
+In all travel, however, people are more interesting than land, and so
+it was at this time.  As twilight shut down upon the valley of the
+Kennebeckasis, we heard the strident voice of pa going on with the
+Grecian catechism.  Pa was unmoved by the beauties of Sussex or by
+the colors of the sunset, which for the moment made picturesque the
+scraggy evergreens on the horizon.  His eyes were with his heart, and
+that was in Sparta.  Above the roar of the car-wheels we heard his
+nagging inquiries.
+
+"What did Lycurgus do then?"
+
+Answer not audible.
+
+"No.  He made laws.  Who did he make laws for?"
+
+"For the Greeks."
+
+"He made laws for the Lacedemonians.  Who was another great
+lawgiver?"
+
+"It was--it was--Pericles."
+
+"No, it was n't.  It was Solon.  Who was Solon?"
+
+"Solon was one of the wise men of Greece."
+
+"That's right.  When did he flourish?"
+
+When the train stops at a station the classics continue, and the
+studious group attracts the attention of the passengers.  Pa is well
+pleased, but not so the young lady, who beseechingly says,
+
+"Pa, everybody can hear us."
+
+"You would n't care how much they heard, if you knew it," replies
+this accomplished devotee of learning.
+
+In another lull of the car-wheels we find that pa has skipped over to
+Marathon; and this time it is the daughter who is asking a question.
+
+"Pa, what is a phalanx?"
+
+"Well, a phalanx--it's a--it's difficult to define a phalanx.  It's a
+stretch of men in one line,--a stretch of anything in a line.  When
+did Alexander flourish?"
+
+This domestic tyrant had this in common with the rest of us, that he
+was much better at asking questions than at answering them.  It
+certainly was not our fault that we were listeners to his instructive
+struggles with ancient history, nor that we heard his petulant
+complaining to his cowed family, whom he accused of dragging him away
+on this summer trip.  We are only grateful to him, for a more
+entertaining person the traveler does not often see.  It was with
+regret that we lost sight of him at St. John.
+
+Night has settled upon New Brunswick and upon ancient Greece before
+we reach the Kennebeckasis Bay, and we only see from the car windows
+dimly a pleasant and fertile country, and the peaceful homes of
+thrifty people.  While we are running along the valley and coming
+under the shadow of the hill whereon St. John sits, with a regal
+outlook upon a most variegated coast and upon the rising and falling
+of the great tides of Fundy, we feel a twinge of conscience at the
+injustice the passing traveler must perforce do any land he hurries
+over and does not study.  Here is picturesque St. John, with its
+couple of centuries of history and tradition, its commerce, its
+enterprise felt all along the coast and through the settlements of
+the territory to the northeast, with its no doubt charming society
+and solid English culture; and the summer tourist, in an idle mood
+regarding it for a day, says it is naught!  Behold what "travels"
+amount to!  Are they not for the most part the records of the
+misapprehensions of the misinformed?  Let us congratulate ourselves
+that in this flight through the Provinces we have not attempted to do
+any justice to them, geologically, economically, or historically,
+only trying to catch some of the salient points of the panorama as it
+unrolled itself.  Will Halifax rise up in judgment against us?  We
+look back upon it with softened memory, and already see it again in
+the light of history.  It stands, indeed, overlooking a gate of the
+ocean, in a beautiful morning light; and we can hear now the
+repetition of that profane phrase, used for the misdirection of
+wayward mortals,---"Go to Halifax!" without a shudder.
+
+We confess to some regret that our journey is so near its end.
+Perhaps it is the sentimental regret with which one always leaves the
+east, for we have been a thousand miles nearer Ireland than Boston
+is.  Collecting in the mind the detached pictures given to our eyes
+in all these brilliant and inspiring days, we realize afresh the
+variety, the extent, the richness of these northeastern lands which
+the Gulf Stream pets and tempers.  If it were not for attracting
+speculators, we should delight to speak of the beds of coal, the
+quarries of marble, the mines of gold.  Look on the map and follow
+the shores of these peninsulas and islands, the bays, the penetrating
+arms of the sea, the harbors filled with islands, the protected
+straits and sounds.  All this is favorable to the highest commercial
+activity and enterprise.  Greece itself and its islands are not more
+indented and inviting.  Fish swarm about the shores and in all the
+streams.  There are, I have no doubt, great forests which we did not
+see from the car windows, the inhabitants of which do not show
+themselves to the travelers at the railway-stations.  In the
+dining-room of a friend, who goes away every autumn into the wilds of
+Nova Scotia at the season when the snow falls, hang trophies-
+-enormous branching antlers of the caribou, and heads of the mighty
+moose--which I am assured came from there; and I have no reason to
+doubt that the noble creatures who once carried these superb horns
+were murdered by my friend at long range.  Many people have an
+insatiate longing to kill, once in their life, a moose, and would
+travel far and endure great hardships to gratify this ambition.  In
+the present state of the world it is more difficult to do it than it
+is to be written down as one who loves his fellow-men.
+
+We received everywhere in the Provinces courtesy and kindness, which
+were not based upon any expectation that we would invest in mines or
+railways, for the people are honest, kindly, and hearty by nature.
+What they will become when the railways are completed that are to
+bind St. John to Quebec, and make Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, and
+Newfoundland only stepping-stones to Europe, we cannot say.  Probably
+they will become like the rest of the world, and furnish no material
+for the kindly persiflage of the traveler.
+
+Regretting that we could see no more of St. John, that we could
+scarcely see our way through its dimly lighted streets, we found the
+ferry to Carleton, and a sleeping-car for Bangor.  It was in the
+heart of the negro porter to cause us alarm by the intelligence that
+the customs officer would, search our baggage during the night.  A
+search is a blow to one's self-respect, especially if one has
+anything dutiable.  But as the porter might be an agent of our
+government in disguise, we preserved an appearance of philosophical
+indifference in his presence.  It takes a sharp observer to tell
+innocence from assurance.  During the night, awaking, I saw a great
+light.  A man, crawling along the aisle of the car, and poking under
+the seats, had found my traveling-bag and was "going through" it.
+
+I felt a thrill of pride as I recognized in this crouching figure an
+officer of our government, and knew that I was in my native land.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN, BACKLOG
+STUDIES and BADDECK--Volume One of The Complete Writings of Charles
+Dudley Warner.
+