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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91,
+May, 1865, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: January 5, 2010 [EBook #30862]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY, MAY 1865 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by Cornell University Digital Collections.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+_A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics._
+
+VOL. XV.--MAY, 1865.--NO. XCI.
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by TICKNOR AND
+FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
+Massachusetts.
+
+
+
+
+WITH THE BIRDS.
+
+
+Not in the spirit of exact science, but rather with the freedom of love
+and old acquaintance, would I celebrate some of the minstrels of the
+field and forest,--these accredited and authenticated poets of Nature.
+
+All day, while the rain has pattered and murmured, have I heard the
+notes of the Robin and the Wood-Thrush; the Red-Eyed Flycatcher has
+pursued his game within a few feet of my window, darting with a low,
+complacent warble amid the dripping leaves, looking as dry and unruffled
+as if a drop of rain had never touched him; the Cat-Bird has flirted and
+attitudinized on my garden-fence; the House-Wren stopped a moment
+between the showers, and indulged in a short, but spirited, rehearsal
+under a large leaf in the grape-arbor; the King-Bird advised me of his
+proximity, as he went by on his mincing flight; and the Chimney-Swallows
+have been crying the child's riddle of "_Chippy, chippy, cherryo_,"
+about the house-top.
+
+With these angels and ministers of grace thus to attend me, even in the
+seclusion of my closet, I am led more than ever to expressions of love
+and admiration. I understand the enthusiasm of Wilson and Audubon, and
+see how one might forsake house and home and go and live with them the
+free life of the woods.
+
+To the dissecting, classifying scientist a bird may be no more perfect
+or lovable than a squirrel or a fish; yet to me it seems that all the
+excellences of the animal creation converge and centre in this nymph of
+the air; a warbler seems to be the finishing stroke.
+
+First, there is its light, delicate, aerial organization,--consequently,
+its vivacity, its high temperature, the depth and rapidity of its
+inspirations, and likewise the intense, gushing, lyrical character of
+its life. How hot he is! how fast he lives!--as if his air had more
+oxygen than ours, or his body less clay. How slight a wound kills him!
+how exquisite his sensations! how perfect his nervous system! and hence
+how large his brain! Why, look at the cerebral development of this tiny
+songster,--almost a third larger, in proportion to the size of its body,
+than that of Shakspeare even! Does it mean nothing? You may observe that
+a warbler has a much larger brain and a much finer cerebral
+organization throughout than a bird of prey, or any of the Picus family
+even. Does it signify nothing? I gaze into the eyes of the
+Gazelle,--eyes that will admit of no epithet or comparison,--and the old
+question of preexistence and transmigration rises afresh in my mind, and
+something like a dim recognition of kinship passes. I turn this Thrush
+in my hand,--I remember its strange ways, the curious look it gave me,
+its ineffable music, its freedom, and its ecstasy,--and I tremble lest I
+have slain a being diviner than myself.
+
+And then there is its freedom, its superior powers of locomotion, its
+triumph over time and space. The reptile measures its length upon the
+ground; the quadruped enjoys a more complete liberation, and is related
+to the earth less closely; man more still; and the bird most of all.
+Over our heads, where our eyes travel, but our bodies follow not,--in
+the free native air,--is his home. The trees are his temples and his
+dwellings, and the breezes sing his lullaby. He needs no sheltering; for
+the rain does not wet him. He need fear no cold; for the tropics wait
+upon his wings. He is the nearest visible representation of a spirit I
+know of. He _flies_,--the superlative of locomotion; the poet in his
+most audacious dreams dare confer no superior power on flesh and blood.
+Sound and odor are no more native to the air than is the Swallow. Look
+at this marvellous creature! He can reverse the order of the seasons,
+and almost keep the morning or the sunset constantly in his eye, or
+outstrip the west-wind cloud. Does he subsist upon air or odor, that he
+is forever upon the wing, and never deigns to pick a seed or crumb from
+the earth? Is he an embodied thought projected from the brain of some
+mad poet in the dim past, and sent to teach us a higher geometry of
+curves and spirals? See him with that feather high in air, dropping it
+and snapping it up again in the very glee of superabundant vitality, and
+in his sudden evolutions and spiral gambollings seeming more a creature
+of the imagination than of actual sight!
+
+And, again, their coming and going, how curious and suggestive! We go
+out in the morning, and no Thrush or Vireo is to be heard; we go out
+again, and every tree and grove is musical; yet again, and all is
+silent. Who saw them come? who saw them depart? This pert little
+Winter-Wren, for instance, darting in and out the fence, diving under
+the rubbish here and coming up yards away,--how does he manage with
+those little circular wings to compass degrees and zones, and arrive
+always in the nick of time? Last August I saw him in the remotest wilds
+of the Adirondack, impatient and inquisitive as usual; a few weeks
+later, on the Potomac, I was greeted by the same hardy little busybody.
+Does he travel by easy stages from bush to bush and from wood to wood?
+or has that compact little body force and courage to brave the night and
+the upper air, and so achieve leagues at one pull? And yonder Bluebird,
+with the hue of the Bermuda sky upon his back, as Thoreau would say, and
+the flush of its dawn upon his breast,--did he come down out of heaven
+on that bright March morning when he told us so softly and plaintively,
+that, if we pleased, spring had come?
+
+About the middle of September I go out in the woods, and am attracted by
+a faint piping and lisping in the tops of the Oaks and Chestnuts. Tiny
+figures dart to and fro so rapidly that it pains the eye to follow them,
+and I discover that the Black-Poll Warbler is paying me a return visit.
+Presently I likewise perceive a troop of Redstarts, or Green-Backed
+Warblers, or Golden and Ruby-Crowned Wrens, flashing through the
+Chestnut-branches, or hanging like jewels on the Cedar-sprays. A week of
+two later, and my darlings are gone, another love is in my heart, and
+other voices fill my ears. But so unapparent and mysterious are the
+coming and going, that I look upon each as a special Providence, and
+value them as visitants from another sphere.
+
+The migration of the Pigeons, Ducks, and Geese is obvious enough; we see
+them stream across the heavens, or hear their _clang_ in the night; but
+these minstrels of the field and forest add to their other charms a
+shade of mystery, and pique the imagination by their invisible and
+unknown journeyings. To be sure, we know they follow the opening season
+north and the retreating summer south; but who will point to the
+parallels that mark the limits of their wandering, or take us to their
+most secret haunts?
+
+What greater marvel than this simple gift of music? What beside birds
+and the human species sing? It is the crowning gift; through it the
+field and forest are justified. Nature said, "These rude forms and
+forces must have a spokesman of their own nursing; here are flowers and
+odor, let there be music also." I suspect the subtile spirit of the
+meadow took form in the Bobolink, that the high pasture-lands begot the
+Vesper-Sparrow, and that from the imprisoned sense and harmony of the
+forests sprang the Wood-Thrush.
+
+From the life of birds being on a more intense and vehement scale than
+that of other animals result their musical gifts and their holiday
+expression of joy. How restless and curious they are! Their poise and
+attitudes, how various, rapid, and graceful! They are a study for an
+artist, especially as exhibited in the Warblers and Flycatchers: their
+looks of alarm, of curiosity, of repose, of watchfulness, of joy, so
+obvious and expressive, yet as impossible of reproduction as their
+music. Even if the naturalist were to succeed in imparting all their
+wild extravagances of poise and motion to their inanimate forms, his
+birds, to say the least, would have a very theatrical or melodramatic
+aspect, and seem unreal in proportion to their fidelity to Nature. I
+have seen a Blue Jay alone, saluting and admiring himself in the mirror
+of a little pool of water from a low overhanging branch, assume so many
+graceful, novel, as well as ridiculous and fantastic attitudes, as would
+make a taxidermist run mad to attempt to reproduce; and the rich medley
+of notes he poured forth at the same time--chirping, warbling, cooing,
+whistling, chattering, revealing rare musical and imitative
+powers--would have been an equally severe test to the composer who
+should have aspired to report them; and the indignant air of outraged
+privacy he assumed, on finding himself discovered, together with his
+loud, angry protest, as, with crown depressed and plumage furled, he
+rapidly ascended to the topmost branch of a tall Birch, the better to
+proclaim my perfidy to the whole world, would have excited the interest
+and applause of the coolest observer.
+
+So much in a general sense; but let me discriminate; "for my purpose
+holds" to call my favorites by name, and point them out to you, as the
+tuneful procession passes.
+
+Every stage of the advancing season gives prominence to certain birds as
+to certain flowers. The Dandelion tells me when to look for the Swallow,
+and I know the Thrushes will not linger when the Orchis is in bloom. In
+my latitude, April is emphatically the month of the Robin. In large
+numbers they scour the fields and groves. You hear their piping in the
+meadow, in the pasture, on the hillside. Walk in the woods, and the dry
+leaves rustle with the whir of their wings, the air is vocal with their
+cheery call. In excess of joy and vivacity, they run, leap, scream,
+chase each other through the air, diving and sweeping among the trees
+with perilous rapidity.
+
+In that free, fascinating, half-work and half-play
+pursuit,--sugar-making,--a pursuit which still lingers in many parts of
+New York, as in New England, the Robin is one's boon companion. When the
+day is sunny and the ground bare, you meet him at all points and hear
+him at all hours. At sunset, on the tops of the tall Maples, with look
+heavenward, and in a spirit of utter abandonment, he carols his simple
+strain. And sitting thus amid the stark, silent trees, above the wet,
+cold earth, with the chill of winter still in the air, there is no
+fitter or sweeter songster in the whole round year. It is in keeping
+with the scene and the occasion. How round and genuine the notes are,
+and how eagerly our ears drink them in! The first utterance, and the
+spell of winter is thoroughly broken and the remembrance of it afar off.
+
+Robin is one of the most native and democratic of our birds; he is one
+of the family, and seems much nearer to us than those rare, exotic
+visitants, as the Orchard-Starling or Rose-Breasted Grosbeak, with their
+distant, high-bred ways. Hardy, noisy, frolicsome, neighborly and
+domestic in his ways, strong of wing and bold in spirit, he is the
+pioneer of the Thrush family, and well worthy of the finer artists whose
+coming he heralds and in a measure prepares us for.
+
+I could wish Robin less native and plebeian in one respect,--the
+building of his nest. Its coarse material and rough masonry are
+creditable neither to his skill as a workman nor to his taste as an
+artist. I am the more forcibly reminded of his deficiency in this
+respect from observing yonder Humming-Bird's nest, which is a marvel of
+fitness and adaptation, a proper setting for this winged gem,--the body
+of it composed of a white, felt-like substance, probably the down of
+some plant or the wool of some worm, and toned down in keeping with the
+branch on which it sits by minute tree-lichens, woven together by
+threads as fine and frail as gossamer. From Robin's good looks and
+musical turn we might reasonably predict a domicil of equal fitness and
+elegance. At least I demand of him as clean and handsome a nest as the
+King-Bird's, whose harsh jingle, compared with Robin's evening melody,
+is as the clatter of pots and kettles beside the tone of a flute. I love
+his note and ways better even than those of the Orchard-Starling or the
+Baltimore Oriole; yet his nest, compared with theirs, is a
+half-subterranean hut contrasted with a Roman villa. There is something
+courtly and poetical in a pensile nest. Next to a castle in the air is a
+dwelling suspended to the slender branch of a tall tree, swayed and
+rocked forever by the wind. Why need wings be afraid of falling? Why
+build only where boys can climb? After all, we must set it down to the
+account of Robin's democratic turn; he is no aristocrat, but one of the
+people; and therefore we should expect stability in his workmanship,
+rather than elegance.
+
+Another April bird, which makes her appearance sometimes earlier and
+sometimes later than Robin, and whose memory I fondly cherish, is the
+Phoebe-Bird, (_Muscicapa nunciola_,) the pioneer of the Flycatchers.
+In the inland farming districts, I used to notice her, on some bright
+morning about Easter-day, proclaiming her arrival with much variety of
+motion and attitude, from the peak of the barn or hay-shed. As yet, you
+may have heard only the plaintive, homesick note of the Bluebird, or the
+faint trill of the Song-Sparrow; and Phoebe's clear, vivacious
+assurance of her veritable bodily presence among us again is welcomed by
+all ears. At agreeable intervals in her lay she describes a circle or an
+ellipse in the air, ostensibly prospecting for insects, but really, I
+suspect, as an artistic flourish, thrown in to make up in some way for
+the deficiency of her musical performance. If plainness of dress
+indicates powers of song, as it usually does, then Phoebe ought to be
+unrivalled in musical ability, for surely that ashen-gray suit is the
+superlative of plainness; and that form, likewise, though it might pass
+for the "perfect figure" of a bird, measured by Joe Gargery's standard,
+to a fastidious taste would present exceptionable points. The
+seasonableness of her coming, however, and her civil, neighborly ways,
+shall make up for all deficiencies in song and plumage, and remove any
+suspicions we may have had, that, perhaps, from some cause or other, she
+was in some slight disfavor with Nature. After a few weeks Phoebe is
+seldom seen, except as she darts from her moss-covered nest beneath some
+bridge or shelving cliff.
+
+Another April comer, who arrives shortly after Robin-Redbreast, with
+whom he associates both at this season and in the autumn, is the
+Golden-Winged Woodpecker, _alias_, "High-Hole," _alias_, "Flicker,"
+_alias_, "Yarup." He is an old favorite of my boyhood, and his note to
+me means very much. He announces his arrival by a long, loud call,
+repeated from the dry branch of some tree, or a stake in the fence,--a
+thoroughly melodious April sound. I think how Solomon finished that
+beautiful climax on Spring, "And the voice of the turtle is heard in our
+land," and see that a description of Spring in this farming country, to
+be equally characteristic, should culminate in like manner,--"And the
+call of the High-Hole comes up from the wood."
+
+It is a loud, strong, sonorous call, and does not seem to imply an
+answer, but rather to subserve some purpose of love or music. It is
+"Yarup's" proclamation of peace and good-will to all. On looking at the
+matter closely, I perceive that most birds, not denominated songsters,
+have, in the spring, some note or sound or call that hints of a song,
+and answers imperfectly the end of beauty and art. As a "brighter iris
+comes upon the burnished dove," and the fancy of the young man turns
+lightly to thoughts of his pretty cousin, so the same renewing spirit
+touches the "silent singers," and they are no longer dumb; faintly they
+lisp the first syllables of the marvellous tale. Witness the clear,
+sweet whistle of the Gray-Crested Titmouse,--the soft, nasal piping of
+the Nuthatch,--the amorous, vivacious warble of the Bluebird,--the long,
+rich note of the Meadow-Lark,--the whistle of the Quail,--the drumming
+of the Partridge,--the animation and loquacity of the Swallows, and the
+like. Even the Hen has a homely, contented carol; and I credit the Owls
+with a desire to fill the night with music. All birds are incipient or
+would-be songsters in the spring. I find corroborative evidence of this
+even in the crowing of the Cock. The flowering of the Maple is not so
+obvious as that of the Magnolia; nevertheless, there is actual
+inflorescence. Neither Wilson nor Audubon, I believe, awards any song to
+that familiar little Sparrow, the _Socialis_; yet who that has observed
+him sitting by the wayside, and repeating, with devout attitude, that
+fine sliding chant, does not recognize the neglect? Who has heard the
+Snow-Bird sing? Not the ornithologist, it seems; yet he has a lisping
+warble very savory to the ear, I have heard him indulge in it even in
+February.
+
+Even the Cow-Bunting feels the musical tendency, and aspires to its
+expression, with the rest. Perched upon the topmost branch beside his
+mate or mates,--for he is quite a polygamist, and usually has two or
+three demure little ladies in faded black beside him,--generally in the
+early part of the day, he seems literally to vomit up his notes.
+Apparently with much labor and effort, they gurgle and blubber up out of
+him, falling on the ear with a peculiar subtile ring, as of turning
+water from a glass jug, and not without a certain pleasing cadence.
+
+Neither is the common Woodpecker entirely insensible to the wooing of
+the spring, and, like the Partridge, testifies his appreciation of
+melody after quite a primitive fashion. Passing through the woods, on
+some clear, still morning in March, while the metallic ring and tension
+of winter are still in the earth and air, the silence is suddenly broken
+by long, resonant hammering upon a dry limb or stub. It is Downy beating
+a reveille to Spring. In the utter stillness and amid the rigid forms we
+listen with pleasure, and as it comes to my ear oftener at this season
+than at any other, I freely exonerate the author of it from the
+imputation of any gastronomic motives, and credit him with a genuine
+musical performance.
+
+It is to be expected, therefore, that "Yellow-Hammer" will respond to
+the general tendency, and contribute his part to the spring chorus. His
+April call is his finest touch, his most musical expression.
+
+I recall an ancient Maple standing sentry to a large Sugar-Bush, that,
+year after year, afforded protection, to a brood of Yellow-Hammers in
+its decayed heart. A week or two before the nesting seemed actually to
+have begun, three or four of these birds might be seen, on almost any
+bright morning, gambolling and courting amid its decayed branches.
+Sometimes you would hear only a gentle, persuasive cooing, or a quiet,
+confidential chattering,--then that long, loud call, taken up by first
+one, then another, as they sat about upon the naked limbs,--anon, a sort
+of wild, rollicking laughter, intermingled with various cries, yelps,
+and squeals, as if some incident had excited their mirth and ridicule.
+Whether this social hilarity and boisterousness is in celebration of the
+pairing or mating ceremony, or whether it is only a sort of annual
+"house-warming" common among High-Holes on resuming their summer
+quarters, is a question upon which I reserve my judgment.
+
+Unlike most of his kinsmen, the Golden-Wing prefers the fields and the
+borders of the forest to the deeper seclusion of the woods,--and hence,
+contrary to the habit of his tribe, obtains most of his subsistence from
+the ground, boring for ants and crickets. He is not quite satisfied with
+being a Woodpecker. He courts the society of the Robin and the Finches,
+abandons the trees for the meadow, and feeds eagerly upon berries and
+grain. What may be the final upshot of this course of living is a
+question worthy the attention of Darwin. Will his taking to the ground
+and his pedestrian feats result in lengthening his legs, his feeding
+upon berries and grains subdue his tints and soften his voice, and his
+associating with Robin put a song into his heart?
+
+Indeed, what would be more interesting than the history of our birds for
+the last two or three centuries? There can be no doubt that the presence
+of man has exerted a very marked and friendly influence upon them, since
+they so multiply in his society. The birds of California, it is said,
+were mostly silent till after its settlement, and I doubt if the Indians
+heard the Wood-Thrush as we hear him. Where did the Bobolink disport
+himself before there were meadows in the North and rice-fields in the
+South? Was he the same blithe, merry-hearted beau then as now? And the
+Sparrow, the Lark, and the Goldfinch, birds that seem so indigenous to
+the open fields and so averse to the woods,--we cannot conceive of their
+existence in a vast wilderness and without man. Did they grow, like the
+flowers, when the conditions favorable to their existence were
+established?
+
+But to return. The Bluebird and Song-Sparrow, these universal favorites
+and firstlings of the spring, come before April, and their names are
+household words.
+
+May is the month of the Swallows and the Orioles. There are many other
+distinguished arrivals, indeed nine tenths of the birds are here by the
+last week in May, yet the Swallows and Orioles are the most conspicuous.
+The bright plumage of the latter seems really like an arrival from the
+tropics. I see them flash through the blossoming trees, and all the
+forenoon hear their incessant warbling and wooing. The Swallows dive and
+chatter about the barn, or squeak and build beneath the eaves; the
+Partridge drums in the fresh unfolding woods; the long, tender note of
+the Meadow-Lark comes up from the meadow; and at sunset, from every
+marsh and pond come the ten thousand voices of the Hylas. May is the
+transition month, and exists to connect April and June, the root with
+the flower.
+
+With June the cup is full, our hearts are satisfied, there is no more to
+be desired. The perfection of the season, among other things, has
+brought the perfection of the song and plumage of the birds. The master
+artists are all here; and the expectations excited by the Robin and the
+Song-Sparrow are fully justified. The Thrushes have all come; and I sit
+down upon the first rock, with hands full of the pink Azalea, to listen.
+With me, the Cuckoo does not arrive till June; and often the Goldfinch,
+the King-Bird, the Scarlet Tanager delay their coming till then. In the
+meadows the Bobolink is in all his glory; in the high pastures the
+Field-Sparrow sings his breezy vesper-hymn; and the woods are unfolding
+to the music of the Thrushes.
+
+The Cuckoo is one of the most solitary birds of our forests, and is
+strangely tame and quiet, appearing equally untouched by joy or grief,
+fear or anger. Is he an exile from some other sphere, and are his
+loneliness and indifference the result of a hopeless, yet resigned soul?
+Or has he passed through some terrible calamity or bereavement, that has
+overpowered his sensibilities, rendering him dreamy and semi-conscious?
+Something remote seems ever weighing upon his mind. He deposits his eggs
+in the nests of other birds, having no heart for work or domestic care.
+His note or call is as of one lost or wandering, and the farmer says is
+prophetic of rain. Amid the general joy and the sweet assurance of
+things, I love to listen to this strange clairvoyant call. Heard a
+quarter of a mile away, coming up from the dark bosom of the forest or
+out from the sombre recesses of the mountain, like the voice of a
+muezzin calling to prayer in the Oriental twilight, it has a peculiar
+fascination. He wanders from place to place,
+
+          "An invisible thing,
+    A voice, a mystery."
+
+You will probably hear him a score of times to seeing him once. I rarely
+discover him in the woods, except when on a protracted stay; but when in
+June he makes his gastronomic tour of the garden and orchard, regaling
+himself upon canker-worms, he is quite noticeable. Since food of some
+kind is a necessity, he seems resolved to burden himself as little as
+possible with the care of obtaining it, and so devours these creeping
+horrors with the utmost matter-of-course air. At this time he is one of
+the tamest birds in the orchard, and will allow you to approach within a
+few yards of him. I have even come within a few feet of one without
+seeming to excite his fear or suspicion. He is quite unsophisticated, or
+else royally indifferent.
+
+Without any exception, his plumage is the richest brown I am acquainted
+with in Nature, and is unsurpassed in the qualities both of firmness and
+fineness. Notwithstanding the disparity in size and color, he has
+certain peculiarities that remind one of the Passenger-pigeon. His eye,
+with its red circle, the shape of his head, and his motions on alighting
+and taking flight, quickly suggest the resemblance; though in grace and
+speed, when on the wing, he is far inferior. His tail seems
+disproportionately long, like that of the Red Thrush, and his flight
+among the trees is very still, contrasting strongly with the honest
+clatter of the Robin or Pigeon.
+
+Have you heard the song of the Field-Sparrow? If you have lived in a
+pastoral country with broad upland pastures, you could hardly have
+missed him. Wilson, I believe, calls him the Grass-Finch, and was
+evidently unacquainted with his powers of song. The two white lateral
+quills in his tail, and his habit of running and skulking a few yards in
+advance of you as you walk through the fields, are sufficient to
+identify him. Not in meadows or orchards, but in high, breezy
+pasture-grounds, will you look for him. His song is most noticeable
+after sundown, when other birds are silent; for which reason he has been
+aptly called the Vesper-Sparrow. The farmer following his team from the
+field at dusk catches his sweetest strain. His song is not so brisk and
+varied as that of the Song-Sparrow, being softer and wilder, sweeter and
+more plaintive. Add the best parts of the lay of the latter to the
+sweet, vibrating chant of the Wood-Sparrow, and you have the evening
+hymn of the Vesper-Bird,--the poet of the plain, unadorned pastures. Go
+to those broad, smooth, up-lying fields where the cattle and sheep are
+grazing, and sit down in the twilight on one of those warm, clean
+stones, and listen to this song. On every side, near and remote, from
+out the short grass which the herds are cropping, the strain rises. Two
+or three long, silver notes of peace and rest, ending in some subdued
+trills and quavers, constitute each separate song. Often you will catch
+only one or two of the bars, the breeze having blown the minor part
+away. Such unambitious, quiet, unconscious melody! It is one of the most
+characteristic sounds in Nature. The grass, the stones, the stubble, the
+furrow, the quiet herds, and the warm twilight among the hills are all
+subtilely expressed in this song; this is what they are at last capable
+of.
+
+The female builds a plain nest in the open field, without so much as a
+bush or thistle or tuft of grass to protect it or mark its site; you may
+step upon it, or the cattle may tread it into the ground. But the danger
+from this source, I presume, the bird considers less than that from
+another. Skunks and foxes have a very impertinent curiosity, as Finchie
+well knows,--and a bank or hedge, or a rank growth of grass or thistles,
+that might promise protection and cover to mouse or bird, these cunning
+rogues would be apt to explore most thoroughly. The Partridge is
+undoubtedly acquainted with the same process of reasoning; for, like the
+Vesper-Bird, she, too, nests in open, unprotected places, avoiding all
+show of concealment,--coming from the tangled and almost impenetrable
+parts of the forest, to the clean, open woods, where she can command all
+the approaches and fly with equal ease in any direction.
+
+One of the most marvellous little songsters whose acquaintance I claim
+is the White-Eyed Flycatcher. He seems to have been listened to by
+unappreciative ears, for I know no one who has made especial mention of
+him. His song is not particularly sweet and soft; on the contrary, it is
+a little hard and shrill, like that of the Indigo-Bird or Oriole; but
+for fluency, volubility, execution, and power of imitation, he is
+unsurpassed (and in the last-named particular unequalled) by any of our
+Northern birds. His ordinary note is forcible and emphatic, but, as
+stated, not especially musical: _Chick-a-re'r-chick_, he seems to say,
+hiding himself in the low, dense undergrowth, and eluding your most
+vigilant search, as if playing some part in a game. But in July or
+August, if you are on good terms with the sylvan deities, you may listen
+to a far more rare and artistic performance. Your first impression will
+be that that cluster of Azalea or that clump of Swamp-Huckleberry
+conceals three or four different songsters, each vying with the others
+to lead the chorus. Such a medley of notes, snatched from half the
+songsters of the field and forest, and uttered with the utmost clearness
+and rapidity, I am sure you cannot hear short of the haunts of the
+genuine Mocking-Bird. If not fully and accurately repeated, there are at
+least suggested the notes of the Robin, Wren, Cat-Bird, High-Hole,
+Goldfinch, and Song-Sparrow. The _pip, pip_, of the last is produced so
+accurately that I verily believe it would deceive the bird herself,--and
+the whole uttered in such rapid succession that it seems as if the
+movement that gives the concluding note of one strain must form the
+first note of the next. The effect is very rich, and, to my ear,
+entirely unique. The performer is very careful not to reveal himself in
+the mean time; yet there is a conscious air about the strain that
+impresses one with the idea that his presence is understood and his
+attention courted. A tone of pride and glee, and, occasionally, of
+bantering jocoseness, is discernible. I believe it is only rarely, and
+when he is sure of his audience, that he displays his parts in this
+manner. You are to look for him, not in tall trees or deep forests, but
+in low, dense shrubbery about wet places, where there are plenty of
+gnats and mosquitoes.
+
+The Winter-Wren is another marvellous songster, in speaking of whom it
+is difficult to avoid superlatives. He is not so conscious of his powers
+and so ambitious of effect as the White-Eyed Flycatcher, yet you will
+not be less astonished and delighted on hearing him. He possesses the
+fluency, volubility, and copiousness for which the Wrens are noted, and
+besides these qualities, and what is rarely found conjoined with them, a
+wild, sweet, rhythmical cadence that holds you entranced. I shall not
+soon forget that perfect June day, when, loitering in a low, ancient
+Hemlock, in whose cathedral aisles the coolness and freshness seemed
+perennial, the silence was suddenly broken by a strain so rapid and
+gushing, and touched with such a wild, sylvan plaintiveness, that I
+listened in amazement. And so shy and coy was the little minstrel, that
+I came twice to the woods before I was sure to whom I was listening. In
+summer, he is one of those birds of the deep Northern forests, that,
+like the Speckled Canada Warbler and the Hermit-Thrush, only the
+privileged ones hear.
+
+The distribution of plants in a given locality is not more marked and
+defined than that of the birds. Show a botanist a landscape, and he will
+tell you where to look for the Lady's-Slipper, the Columbine, or the
+Harebell. On the same principles the ornithologist will direct you where
+to look for the Hooded Warbler, the Wood-Sparrow, or the Chewink. In
+adjoining counties, in the same latitude, and equally inland, but
+possessing a different geological formation and different forest-timber,
+you will observe quite a different class of birds. In a country of the
+Beech and Maple I do not find the same songsters that I know where
+thrive the Oak, Chestnut, and Laurel. In going from a district of the
+Old Red Sandstone to where I walk upon the old Plutonic Rock, not fifty
+miles distant, I miss in the woods the Veery, the Hermit-Thrush, the
+Chestnut-Sided Warbler, the Blue-Backed Warbler, the Green-Backed
+Warbler, the Black and Yellow Warbler, and many others,--and find in
+their stead the Wood-Thrush, the Chewink, the Redstart, the
+Yellow-Throat, the Yellow-Breasted Flycatcher, the White-Eyed
+Flycatcher, the Quail, and the Turtle-Dove.
+
+In my neighborhood here in the Highlands the distribution is very
+marked. South of the village I invariably find one species of
+birds,--north of it, another. In only one locality, full of Azalea and
+Swamp-Huckleberry, I am always sure of finding the Hooded Warbler. In a
+dense undergrowth of Spice-Bush, Witch-Hazel, and Alder, I meet the
+Worm-Eating Warbler. In a remote clearing, covered with Heath and Fern,
+with here and there a Chestnut and an Oak, I go to hear in July the
+Wood-Sparrow, and returning by a stumpy, shallow pond, I am sure to find
+the Water-Thrush.
+
+Only one locality within my range seems to possess attractions for all
+comers. Here one may study almost the entire ornithology of the State.
+It is a rocky piece of ground, long ago cleared, but now fast relapsing
+into the wildness and freedom of Nature, and marked by those
+half-cultivated, half-wild features which birds and boys love. It is
+bounded on two sides by the village and highway, crossed at various
+points by carriage-roads, and threaded in all directions by paths and
+by-ways, along which soldiers, laborers, and truant schoolboys are
+passing at all hours of the day. It is so far escaping from the axe and
+the bushwhack as to have opened communication with the forest and
+mountain beyond by straggling lines of Cedar, Laurel, and Blackberry.
+The ground is mainly occupied with Cedar and Chestnut, with an
+undergrowth, in many places, of Heath and Bramble. The chief feature,
+however, is a dense growth in the centre, consisting of Dog-wood,
+Water-Beech, Swamp-Ash, Alder, Spice-Bush, Hazel, etc., with a network
+of Smilax and Frost-Grape. A little zig-zag stream, the draining of a
+swamp beyond, which passes through this tangle-wood, accounts for many
+of its features and productions, if not for its entire existence. Birds
+that are not attracted by the Heath or the Cedar and Chestnut are sure
+to find some excuse for visiting this miscellaneous growth in the
+centre. Most of the common birds literally throng this inclosure; and I
+have met here many of the rarer species, such as the Great-Crested
+Flycatcher, the Solitary Warbler, the Blue-Winged Swamp-Warbler, the
+Worm-Eating Warbler, the Fox-Sparrow, etc. The absence of all birds of
+prey, and the great number of flies and insects, both the result of
+proximity to the village, are considerations which no Hawk-fearing,
+peace-loving minstrel passes over lightly: hence the popularity of the
+resort.
+
+But the crowning glory of all these Robins, Flycatchers, and Warblers is
+the Wood-Thrush. More abundant than all other birds, except the Robin
+and Cat-Bird, he greets you from every rock and shrub. Shy and reserved
+when he first makes his appearance in May, before the end of June he is
+tame and familiar, and sings on the tree over your head, or on the rock
+a few paces in advance. A pair even built their nest and reared their
+brood within ten or twelve feet of the piazza of a large summer-house in
+the vicinity. But when the guests commenced to arrive and the piazza to
+be thronged with gay crowds, I noticed something like dread and
+foreboding in the manner of the mother-bird; and from her still, quiet
+ways, and habit of sitting long and silently within a few feet of the
+precious charge, it seemed as if the clear creature had resolved, if
+possible, to avoid all observation.
+
+The Hermit-Thrush, the Wood-Thrush, and the Veery (_Turdus Wilsonii_)
+are our peers of song. The Mocking-Bird undoubtedly possesses the
+greatest range of mere talent, the most varied executive ability, and
+never fails to surprise and delight one anew at each hearing; but being
+mostly an imitator, he never approaches the serene beauty and sublimity
+of the Hermit-Thrush. The word that best expresses my feelings, on
+hearing the Mocking-Bird, is admiration, though the first emotion is one
+of surprise and incredulity. That so many and such various notes should
+proceed from one throat is a marvel, and we regard the performance with
+feelings akin to those we experience on witnessing the astounding feats
+of the athlete or gymnast,--and this, notwithstanding many of the notes
+imitated have all the freshness and sweetness of the original. The
+emotions excited by the songs of these Thrushes belong to a higher
+order, springing as they do from our deepest sense of the beauty and
+harmony of the world.
+
+The Wood-Thrush is worthy of all, and more than all, the praises he has
+received; and considering the number of his appreciative listeners, it
+is not a little surprising that his relative and superior, the
+Hermit-Thrush, should have received so little notice. Both the great
+ornithologists, Wilson and Audubon, are lavish in their praises of the
+former, but have little or nothing to say of the song of the latter.
+Audubon says it is sometimes agreeable, but evidently has never heard
+it. Nuttall, I am glad to find, is more discriminating, and does the
+bird fuller justice. Professor Baird, of the Smithsonian Institution, a
+more recent authority, and an excellent observer, tells me he regards it
+as preeminently our finest songster.
+
+It is quite a rare bird, of very shy and secluded habits, being found in
+the Middle and Eastern States, during the period of song, only in the
+deepest and most remote forests, usually in damp and swampy localities.
+On this account the people in the Adirondack region call it the "Swamp
+Angel." Its being so much of a recluse accounts for the comparative
+ignorance that prevails in regard to it.
+
+The cast of its song is so much like that of the Wood-Thrush, that an
+enthusiastic admirer of the latter bird, as all admirers are, would be
+quite apt to mistake it for the strain of his favorite, observing only
+how unusually well he sings. I myself erred in this manner, and not till
+I had shot the bird in the midst of his solemn hymn--a hard thing to do,
+I assure you--was I aware that my Wood-Thrush had a superior. I believe
+so good an observer as Thoreau has confounded the songs of the two
+birds, as he speaks of having heard the Wood-Thrush in the forests of
+Northern Maine, where the law of geographical distribution would lead
+one to look for only the Hermit.
+
+The song of this Thrush is of unparalleled sweetness and sublimity.
+There is a calmness and solemnity about it that suggests in Nature
+perpetual Sabbath and perennial joy. How vain seem our hurry and
+ambition! Clear and serene, strong and melodious, falling softly, yet
+flowing far, these notes inspire me with a calm, sacred enthusiasm. I
+hear him most in the afternoon, but occasionally at nightfall he "pours
+his pure soprano,"
+
+    "Deepening the silence with diviner calm."
+
+I have known one to sit for hours in the upper branches of a tall Maple
+in an opening in a remote wood, and sing till all other birds seemed as
+if pausing to listen. Attempting to approach him at such times, I have
+called to my aid numerous devices,--such as keeping the range of a tree,
+skulking close to the ground, carrying a large bush in front of me,--but
+all to no purpose. Suddenly the strain would cease, and while waiting
+for him to commence again, I would see him dart off to a lower tree, or
+into a thick undergrowth of Witch-Hazel. When I had withdrawn, he would
+resume his perch and again take up his song. At other times I have come
+abruptly upon him while singing on a low stump, without his seeming to
+notice me at all.
+
+I think his song, in form and manner, is precisely that of the
+Wood-Thrush,--differing from it in being more wild and ethereal, as well
+as stronger and clearer. It is not the execution of the piece so much as
+the tone of the instrument that is superior. In the subdued trills and
+quavers that occur between the main bars, you think his tongue must be
+more resonant and of finer metal. In uttering the tinkling, bead-like
+_de, de, de_, he is more facile and exquisite; in the longer notes he
+possesses greater compass and power, and is more prodigal of his finer
+tones. How delicately he syllables the minor parts, weaving, as it were,
+the finest of silver embroideries to the main texture of his song!
+
+Those who have heard only the Wood-Thrush commit a very pardonable error
+in placing him first on the list of our songsters. He is truly a royal
+minstrel, and, considering his liberal distribution throughout our
+Atlantic seaboard, perhaps contributes more than any other bird to our
+sylvan melody. One may object, that he spends a little too much time in
+tuning his instrument, yet his careless and uncertain touches reveal its
+rare compass and power.
+
+He is the only songster of my acquaintance, excepting the Canary, that
+displays different degrees of proficiency in the exercise of his musical
+gifts. Not long since, while walking one Sunday in the edge of an
+orchard adjoining a wood, I heard one that so obviously and unmistakably
+surpassed all his rivals, that my companion, though slow to notice such
+things, remarked it wonderingly; and with one accord we threw ourselves
+upon the grass and drank in the bounteous melody. It was not different
+in quality so much as in quantity. Such a flood of it! Such magnificent
+copiousness! Such long, trilling, deferring, accelerating preludes! Such
+sudden, ecstatic overtures would have intoxicated the dullest ear. He
+was really without a compeer, a master artist. Twice afterward I was
+conscious of having heard the same bird.
+
+The Wood-Thrush is the handsomest species of this family. In grace and
+elegance of manner he has no equal. Such a gentle, high-bred air, and
+such inimitable ease and composure in his flight and movement! He is a
+poet in very word and deed. His carriage is music to the eye. His
+performance of the commonest act, as catching a beetle or picking a worm
+from the mud, pleases like a stroke of wit or eloquence. Was he a prince
+in the olden time, and do the regal grace and mien still adhere to him
+in his transformation? What a finely proportioned form! How plain, yet
+rich his color,--the bright russet of his back, the clear white of his
+breast, with the distinct heart-shaped spots! It may be objected to
+Robin that he is noisy and demonstrative; he hurries away or rises to a
+branch with an angry note, and flirts his wings in ill-bred suspicion.
+The Mavis, or Red Thrush, sneaks and skulks like a culprit, hiding in
+the densest Alders; the Cat-Bird is a coquette and a flirt, as well as a
+sort of female Paul Pry; and the Chewink shows his inhospitality by
+espying your movements like a Japanese. The Wood-Thrush has none of
+these under-bred traits. He regards me unsuspiciously, or avoids me with
+a noble reserve,--or, if I am quiet and incurious, graciously hops
+toward me, as if to pay his respects, or to make my acquaintance. Pass
+near his nest, under the very branch, within a few feet of his mate and
+brood, and he opens not his beak; he concedes you the right to pass
+there, if it lies in your course; but pause an instant, raise your hand
+toward the defenceless household, and his anger and indignation are
+beautiful to behold.
+
+What a noble pride he has! Late one October, after his mates and
+companions had long since gone South, I noticed one for several
+successive days in the dense part of this next-door wood, flitting
+noiselessly about, very grave and silent, as if doing penance for some
+violation of the code of honor. By many gentle, indirect approaches, I
+perceived that part of his tail-feathers were undeveloped. The sylvan
+prince could not think of returning to court in this plight,--and so,
+amid the falling leaves and cold rains of autumn, was patiently biding
+his time.
+
+The soft, mellow flute of the Veery fills a place in the chorus of the
+woods that the song of the Vesper-Sparrow fills in the chorus of the
+fields. It has the Nightingale's habit of singing in the twilight, and
+possesses, I believe, all of the Nightingale's mellowness and serenity.
+Walk out toward the forest in the warm twilight of a June day, and when
+fifty rods distant you will hear their soft, reverberating notes,
+repeated and prolonged with exquisite melodiousness, rising from a dozen
+different throats.
+
+It is one of the simplest strains to be heard,--as simple as the curve
+in form, and mellower than the tenderest tones of the flute,--delighting
+from the pure element of harmony and beauty it contains, and not from
+any novel or fantastic modulation of it,--thus contrasting strongly with
+such rollicking, hilarious songsters as the Bobolink, in whom we are
+chiefly pleased with the tintinnabulation, the verbal and labial
+excellence, and the evident conceit and delight of the performer.
+
+I hardly know whether I am more pleased or annoyed with the Cat-Bird.
+Perhaps she is a little too common, and her part in the general chorus a
+little too conspicuous. If you are listening for the note of another
+bird, she is sure to be prompted to the most loud and protracted
+singing, drowning all other sounds; if you sit quietly down to observe a
+favorite or study a new comer, her curiosity knows no bounds, and you
+are scanned and ridiculed from every point of observation. Yet I would
+not miss her; I would only subordinate her a little, make her less
+conspicuous.
+
+She is the parodist of the woods, and there is ever a mischievous,
+bantering, half-ironical undertone in her lay, as if she were conscious
+of mimicking and disconcerting some envied songster. Ambitious of song,
+practising and rehearsing in private, she yet seems the least sincere
+and genuine of the sylvan minstrels, as if she had taken up music only
+to be in the fashion, or not to be outdone by the Robins and Thrushes.
+In other words, she seems to sing from some outward motive, and not from
+inward joyousness. She is a good versifier, but not a great poet.
+Vigorous, rapid, copious, not without fine touches, but destitute of any
+high, serene melody, her performance, like that of Thoreau's squirrel,
+always implies a spectator.
+
+There is a certain air and polish about her strain, however, like that
+in the vivacious conversation of a well-bred lady of the world, that
+commands respect. Her maternal instinct, also, is very strong, and that
+simple structure of dead twigs and dry grass is the centre of much
+anxious solicitude. Not long since, while strolling through the woods,
+my attention was attracted to a small, densely grown swamp, hedged in
+with Eglantine, Brambles, and the everlasting Smilax, from which
+proceeded loud cries of distress and alarm, indicating that some
+terrible calamity was threatening my sombre-colored minstrel. On
+effecting an entrance, which, however, was not accomplished till I had
+doffed coat and hat, so as to diminish the surface exposed to the thorns
+and brambles, and looking around me from a square yard of terra firma, I
+found myself the spectator of a loathsome, yet fascinating scene. Three
+or four yards from me was the nest, beneath which, in long festoons,
+rested a huge black snake; a bird, two thirds grown, was slowly
+disappearing between his expanded jaws. As they seemed unconscious of my
+presence, I quietly observed the proceedings. By slow degrees he
+compassed the bird about with his elastic mouth; his head flattened, his
+neck writhed and swelled, and two or three undulatory movements of his
+glistening body finished the work. Then, with marvellous ease, he
+cautiously raised himself up, his tongue flaming from his mouth the
+while, curved over the nest, and, with wavy, subtle motions, explored
+the interior. I can conceive of nothing more overpoweringly terrible to
+an unsuspecting family of birds than the sudden appearance above their
+domicile of the head and neck of this arch-enemy. It is enough to
+petrify the blood in their veins. Not finding the object of his search,
+he came streaming down from the nest to a lower limb, and commenced
+extending his researches in other directions, sliding stealthily through
+the branches, bent on capturing one of the parent birds. That a legless,
+wingless creature should move with such ease and rapidity where only
+birds and squirrels are considered at home, lifting himself up, letting
+himself down, running out on the yielding boughs, and traversing with
+marvellous celerity the whole length and breadth of the thicket, was
+truly surprising. One thinks of the great myth, of the Tempter and the
+"cause of all our woe," and wonders if the Arch One is not now playing
+off some of his pranks before him. Whether we call it snake or devil
+matters little. I could but admire his terrible beauty, however, his
+black, shining folds, his easy, gliding movement, head erect, eyes
+glistening, tongue playing like subtile flame, and the invisible means
+of his almost winged locomotion.
+
+The parent birds, in the mean while, kept up the most agonizing cry,--at
+times fluttering furiously about their pursuer, and actually laying hold
+of his tail with their beaks and claws. On being thus attacked, the
+snake would suddenly double upon himself and follow his own body back,
+thus executing a strategic movement that at first seemed almost to
+paralyze his victim and place her within his grasp. Not quite, however.
+Before his jaws could close upon the coveted prize the bird would tear
+herself away, and, apparently faint and sobbing, retire to a higher
+branch. His reputed powers of fascination availed him little, though it
+is possible that a more timid and less combative bird might have been
+held by the fatal spell. Presently, as he came gliding down the slender
+body of a leaning Alder, his attention was attracted by a slight
+movement of my arm; eying me an instant, with that crouching, utter,
+motionless gaze which I believe only snakes and devils can assume, he
+turned quickly,--a feat which necessitated something like crawling over
+his own body,--and glided off through the branches, evidently
+recognizing in me a representative of the ancient parties he once so
+cunningly ruined. A few moments after, as he lay, carelessly disposed in
+the top of a rank Alder, trying to look as much like a crooked branch as
+his supple, shining form would admit, the old vengeance overtook him. I
+exercised my prerogative, and a well-directed missile in the shape of a
+stone, brought him looping and writhing to the ground. After I had
+completed his downfall, and quiet had been partially restored, a
+half-fledged member of the bereaved household came out from his
+hiding-place, and, jumping upon a decayed branch, chirped vigorously,
+no doubt in celebration of the victory. What the emotions of the parent
+birds were, on seeing their destroyer's head so thoroughly bruised, and
+a part of their little ones at least spared to them, I can only
+conjecture; but I imagined the news spread immediately, and that my
+praises as the deliverer were sung in that neighborhood ever after.
+
+Till the middle of July there is a general equilibrium; the tide stands
+poised; the holiday-spirit is unabated. But as the harvest ripens
+beneath the long, hot days, the melody gradually ceases. The young are
+out of the nest and must be cared for, and the moulting season is at
+hand. After the Cricket has commenced to drone his monotonous refrain
+beneath your window, you will not, till another season, hear the
+Wood-Thrush in all his matchless eloquence. The Bobolink has become
+careworn and fretful, and blurts out snatches of his song between his
+scolding and upbraiding, as you approach the vicinity of his nest,
+oscillating between anxiety for his brood and solicitude for his musical
+reputation. Some of the Sparrows still sing, and occasionally across the
+hot fields, from a tall tree in the edge of the forest, comes the rich
+note of the Scarlet Tanager. This tropical-colored bird loves the
+hottest weather, and I hear him more in dog-days than at any other time.
+
+The remainder of the summer is the carnival of the Swallows and
+Flycatchers. Flies and insects, to any amount, are to be had for the
+catching; and the opportunity is well improved. See that sombre,
+ashen-colored Pewee on yonder branch. A true sportsman he, who never
+takes his game at rest, but always on the wing. You vagrant Fly, you
+purblind Moth, beware how you come within his range! Observe his
+attitude. You might think him studying the atmosphere or the light, for
+he has an air of contemplation and not of watchfulness. But step closer;
+observe the curious movement of his head, his "eye in a fine frenzy
+rolling, glancing from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven." His sight
+is microscopic and his aim sure. Quick as thought he has seized his
+victim and is back to his perch. There is no strife, no pursuit,--one
+fell swoop and the matter is ended. That little Sparrow, as you will
+observe, is less skilled. It is the _Socialis_, and he finds his
+subsistence properly in various seeds and the larvae of insects, though
+he occasionally has higher aspirations, and seeks to emulate the Pewee,
+commencing and ending his career as a Flycatcher by an awkward chase
+after a Beetle or "Miller." He is hunting around in the grass now, I
+suspect, with the desire to indulge this favorite whim. There!--the
+opportunity is afforded him. Away goes a little cream-colored
+Meadow-Moth in the most tortuous course he is capable of, and away goes
+_Socialis_ in pursuit. The contest is quite comical, though I dare say
+it is serious enough to the Moth. The chase continues for a few yards,
+when there is a sudden rushing to cover in the grass,--then a taking to
+wing again, when the search has become too close, and the Moth has
+recovered his wind. _Socialis_ chirps angrily, and is determined not to
+be beaten. Keeping, with the slightest effort, upon the heels of the
+fugitive, he is ever on the point of halting to snap him up, but never
+quite does it,--and so, between disappointment and expectation, is soon
+disgusted, and returns to pursue his more legitimate means of
+subsistence.
+
+In striking contrast to this serio-comic strife of the Sparrow and the
+Moth, is the Pigeon-Hawk's pursuit of the Sparrow or the Goldfinch. It
+is a race of surprising speed and agility. It is a test of wing and
+wind. Every muscle is taxed, and every nerve strained. Such cries of
+terror and consternation on the part of the bird, tacking to the right
+and left, and making the most desperate efforts to escape, and such
+silent determination on the part of the Hawk, pressing the bird so
+closely, flashing and turning and timing his movements with those of the
+pursued as accurately and as inexorably as if the two constituted one
+body, excite feeling of a deep interest. You mount the fence or rush
+out of your way to see the issue. The only salvation for the bird is to
+adopt the tactics of the Moth, seeking instantly the cover of some tree,
+bush, or hedge, where its smaller size enables it to move about more
+rapidly. These pirates are aware of this, and therefore prefer to take
+their prey by one fell swoop. You may see one of them prowling through
+an orchard, with the Yellowbirds hovering about him, crying, _Pi-ty,
+pi-ty_, in the most desponding tone; yet he seems not to regard them,
+knowing, as do they, that in the close branches they are as safe as if
+in a wall of adamant.
+
+August is the month of the high-sailing Hawks. The Hen-Hawk is the most
+noticeable. He likes the haze and the calm of these long, warm days. He
+is a bird of leisure, and seems always at his ease. How beautiful and
+majestic are his movements! So self-poised and easy, such an entire
+absence of haste, such a magnificent amplitude of circles and spirals,
+such a haughty, imperial grace, and, occasionally, such daring aerial
+evolutions!
+
+With slow, leisurely movement, rarely vibrating his pinions, he mounts
+and mounts in an ascending spiral till he appears a mere speck against
+the summer sky; then, if the mood seizes him, with wings half-closed,
+like a bent bow, he will cleave the air almost perpendicularly, as if
+intent on dashing himself to pieces against the earth; but on nearing
+the ground, he suddenly mounts again on broad, expanded wing, as if
+rebounding upon the air, and sails leisurely away. It is the sublimest
+feat of the season. One holds his breath till he sees him rise again.
+Sometimes a squirrel or bird or an unsuspecting barn-fowl is scathed and
+withered beneath this terrible visitation.
+
+If inclined to a more gradual and less precipitous descent, he fixes his
+eye on some distant point in the earth beneath him, and thither bends
+his course. He is still almost meteoric in his speed and boldness. You
+see his path down the heavens, straight as a line; if near, you hear the
+rush of his wings; his shadow hurtles across the fields, and in an
+instant you see him quietly perched upon some low tree or decayed stub
+in a swamp or meadow, with reminiscences of frogs and mice stirring in
+his maw.
+
+When the south-wind blows, it is a study to see three or four of these
+air-kings at the head of the valley far up toward the mountain,
+balancing and oscillating upon the strong current: now quite stationary,
+except a slight tremulous motion like the poise of a rope-dancer, then
+rising and falling in long undulations, and seeming to resign themselves
+passively to the wind; or, again, sailing high and level far above the
+mountain's peak,--no bluster and haste, but, as stated, occasionally a
+terrible earnestness and speed. Fire at him as he sails overhead, and,
+unless wounded badly, he will not change his course or gait.
+
+His flight is a perfect picture of repose in motion. He might sleep
+dream in that level, effortless, aimless sail. It strikes the eye as
+more surprising than the flight of the Pigeon and Swallow even, in that
+the effort put forth is so uniform and delicate as to escape
+observation, giving to the movement an air of buoyancy and perpetuity,
+the effluence of power rather than the conscious application of it.
+
+The calmness and dignity of this Hawk, when attacked by Crows or the
+King-Bird, are well worthy of him. He seldom deigns to notice his noisy
+and furious antagonists, but deliberately wheels about in that aerial
+spiral, and mounts and mounts till his pursuers grow dizzy and return to
+earth again. It is quite original, this mode of getting rid of an
+unworthy opponent, rising to heights where the braggart is dazed and
+bewildered and loses his reckoning! I am not sure but it is worthy of
+imitation.
+
+But summer wanes, and autumn approaches. The songsters of the seed-time
+are silent at the reaping of the harvest. Other minstrels take up the
+strain. It is the heyday of insect life. The day is canopied with
+musical sound. All the songs of the spring and summer appear to be
+floating, softened and refined, in the upper air. The birds, in a new,
+but less holiday suit, turn their faces southward. The Swallows flock
+and go; the Bobolinks flock and go; silently and unobserved, the
+Thrushes go. Autumn arrives, bringing Finches, Warblers, Sparrows, and
+Kinglets from the North. Silently the procession passes. Yonder Hawk,
+sailing peacefully away till he is lost in the horizon, is a symbol of
+the closing season and the departing birds.
+
+
+
+
+GOLD EGG.--A DREAM-FANTASY.
+
+HOW A STUDENT IN SEARCH OF THE BEAUTIFUL FELL ASLEEP OVER HERR PROFESSOR
+DOCTOR VISCHER'S "WISSENSCHAFT DES SCHOeNEN," AND WHAT CAME THEREOF.
+
+
+    1.
+
+    I swam with undulation soft,
+      Adrift on Vischer's ocean,
+    And, from my cockboat up aloft,
+    Sent down my mental plummet oft,
+      In hope to reach a notion.
+
+
+    2.
+
+    But from the metaphysic sea
+      No bottom was forthcoming,
+    And all the while (so drowsily!)
+    In one eternal note of B
+      My German stove kept humming.
+
+
+    3.
+
+    What's Beauty? mused I. Is it told
+      By synthesis? analysis?
+    Have you not made us lead of gold?
+    To feed your crucible, not sold
+      Our temple's sacred chalices?
+
+
+    4.
+
+    Then o'er my senses came a change:
+      My book seemed all traditions,
+    Old legends of profoundest range,
+    Diablerie, and stories strange
+      Of goblins, elves, magicians.
+
+
+    5.
+
+    Truth was, my outward eyes were closed,
+      Although I did not know it;
+    Deep into Dreamland I had dozed,
+    And found me suddenly transposed
+      From proser into poet.
+
+
+    6.
+
+    So what I read took flesh and blood
+      And turned to living creatures;
+    The words were but the dingy bud
+    That bloomed, like Adam from the mud,
+      To human forms and features.
+
+
+    7.
+    I saw how Zeus was lodged once more
+      By Baucis and Philemon;
+    The text said, "Not alone of yore,
+    But every day at every door
+      Knocks still the masking Demon."
+
+
+    8.
+
+    DAIMON 't was printed in the book;
+      And as I read it slowly,
+    The letters moved and changed and took
+    Jove's stature, the Olympian look
+      Of painless melancholy.
+
+
+    9.
+
+    He paused upon the threshold worn:--
+      "With coin I cannot pay you;
+    Yet would I fain make some return,--
+    You will not the gift's cheapness spurn,--
+      Accept this fowl, I pray you.
+
+
+    10.
+
+    "Plain feathers wears my Hemera,
+      And has from ages olden;
+    She makes her nest in common hay;
+    And yet, of all the birds that lay,
+      Her eggs alone are golden."
+
+
+    11.
+
+    He turned and could no more be seen.
+      Old Baucis stared a moment,
+    Then tossed poor partlet on the green,
+    And with a tone half jest, half spleen,
+      Thus made her housewife's comment:
+
+
+    12.
+
+    "The stranger had a queerish face,
+      His smile was most unpleasant;
+    And though he meant it for a grace,
+    Yet this old hen of barnyard race
+      Was but a stingy present.
+
+
+    13.
+
+    "She's quite too old for laying eggs,
+      Nay, even to make a soup of;
+    It only needs to see her legs,--
+    You might as well boil down the pegs
+      I made the brood-hen's coop of!
+
+
+    14.
+
+    "More than three hundred such do I
+      Raise every year, her sisters;
+    Go, in the woods your fortune try,
+    All day for one poor earth-worm pry,
+      And scratch your toes to blisters!"
+
+
+    15.
+
+    Philemon found the rede was good;
+      And turning on the poor hen,
+    He clapped his hands, he stamped, hallooed,
+    Hunting the exile toward the wood,
+      To house with snipe and moor-hen.
+
+
+    16.
+
+    A poet saw and cried,--"Hold! hold!
+      What are you doing, madman?
+    Spurn you more wealth than can be told,
+    The fowl that lays the eggs of gold,
+      Because she's plainly clad, man?"
+
+
+    17.
+
+    To him Philemon,--"I'll not balk
+      Thy will with any shackle;
+    Wilt add a burden to thy walk?
+    Then take her without further talk;
+      You're both but fit to cackle!"
+
+
+    18.
+
+    But scarce the poet touched the bird,
+      It rose to stature regal;
+    And when her cloud-wide wings she stirred,
+    A whisper as of doom was heard,--
+      'T was Jove's bolt-bearing eagle.
+
+
+    19.
+
+    As when from far-off cloudbergs springs
+      A crag, and, hurtling under,
+    From cliff to cliff the rumor flings,
+    So she from flight-foreboding wings
+      Shook out a murmurous thunder.
+
+
+    20.
+
+    She gripped the poet to her breast,
+      And ever upward soaring,
+    Earth seemed a new-moon in the West,
+    And then one light among the rest
+      Where squadrons lie at mooring.
+
+
+    21.
+
+    How know I to what o'er-world seat
+      The eagle bent her courses?
+    The waves that seem its base to beat,
+    The gales that round it weave and fleet,
+      Are life's creative forces.
+
+
+    22.
+
+    Here was the bird's primeval nest,
+      High on a promontory
+    Star-pharosed, where she takes her rest,
+    And broods new aeons 'neath her breast,
+      The future's unfledged glory.
+
+
+    23.
+
+    I knew not how, but I was there,
+      All feeling, hearing, seeing;
+    It was not wind that stirred my hair,
+    But living breath, the essence rare
+      Of unembodied being.
+
+
+    24.
+
+    And in the nest an egg of gold
+      Lay wrapt in its own lustre,
+    Gazing whereon, what depths untold
+    Within, what wonders manifold
+      Seemed silently to muster!
+
+
+    25.
+
+    Do visions of such inward grace
+      Still haunt our life benighted?
+    It glowed as when St. Peter's face,
+    Illumed, forgets its stony race,
+      And seems to throb self-lighted.
+
+
+    26.
+
+    One saw therein the life of man,--
+      Or so the poet found it;
+    The yolk and white, conceive who can,
+    Were the glad earth, that, floating, span
+      In the soft heaven around it.
+
+
+    27.
+
+    I knew this as one knows in dream,
+      Where no effects to causes
+    Are chained as in our work-day scheme,
+    And then was wakened by a scream
+      Sent up by frightened Baucis.
+
+
+    28.
+
+    "Bless Zeus!" she cried, "I'm safe below!"
+      First pale, then red as coral;
+    And I, still drowsy, pondered slow,
+    And seemed to find, but hardly know,
+      Something like this for moral.
+
+
+    29.
+
+    Each day the world is born anew
+      For him who takes it rightly;
+    Not fresher that which Adam knew,
+    Not sweeter that whose moonlit dew
+      Dropped on Arcadia nightly.
+
+
+    30.
+
+    Rightly?--that's simply: 't is to see
+      _Some_ substance casts these shadows
+    Which we call Life and History,
+    That aimless seem to chase and flee
+      Like wind-gleams over meadows.
+
+
+    31.
+
+    Simply?--that's nobly: 't is to know
+      That God may still be met with,
+    Nor groweth old, nor doth bestow
+    This sense, this heart, this brain aglow,
+      To grovel and forget with.
+
+
+    32.
+
+    Beauty, Herr Doctor, trust in me,
+      No chemistry will win you;
+    Charis still rises from the sea:
+    If you can't find her, _might_ it be
+      The trouble was within you?
+
+
+
+
+OUT OF THE SEA.
+
+
+A raw, gusty afternoon: one of the last dragging breaths of a
+nor'easter, which swept, in the beginning of November, from the Atlantic
+coast to the base of the Alleghanies. It lasted a week, and brought the
+winter,--for autumn had lingered unusually late that year; the fat
+bottom-lands of Pennsylvania, yet green, deadened into swamps, as it
+passed over them: summery, gay bits of lakes among the hills glazed over
+with muddy ice; the forests had been kept warm between the western
+mountains, and held thus late even their summer's strength and darker
+autumn tints, but the fierce ploughing winds of this storm and its
+cutting sleet left them a mass of broken boughs and rotted leaves. In
+fact, the sun had loitered so long, with a friendly look back-turned
+into these inland States, that people forgot that the summer had gone,
+and skies and air and fields were merry-making together, when they lent
+their color and vitality to these few bleak days, and then suddenly
+found that they had entertained winter unawares.
+
+Down on the lee coast of New Jersey, however, where the sea and wind
+spend the year making ready for their winter's work of shipwreck, this
+storm, though grayer and colder there than elsewhere, toned into the
+days and nights as a something entirely matter-of-course and consonant.
+In summer it would have been at home there. Its aspect was different,
+also, as I said. But little rain fell here; the wind lashed the ocean
+into fury along the coast, and then rolled in long, melancholy howls
+into the stretches of barren sand and interminable pine forest; the
+horizon contracted, though at all times it is narrower than anywhere
+else, the dome of the sky wider,--clouds and atmosphere forming the
+scenery, and the land but a round, flat standing-place: but now the sun
+went out; the air grew livid, as though death were coming through it;
+solid masses of gray, wet mist moved, slower than the wind, from point
+to point, like gigantic ghosts gathering to the call of the murderous
+sea.
+
+"Yonder go the shades of Ossian's heroes," said Mary Defourchet to her
+companion, pointing through the darkening air.
+
+They were driving carefully in an old-fashioned gig, in one of the lulls
+of the storm, along the edge of a pine wood, early in the afternoon. The
+old Doctor,--for it was MacAulay, (Dennis,) from over in Monmouth
+County, she was with,--the old man did not answer, having enough to do
+to guide his mare, the sleet drove so in his eyes. Besides, he was
+gruffer than usual this afternoon, looking with the trained eyes of an
+old water-dog out to the yellow line of the sea to the north. Miss
+Defourchet pulled the oil-skin cloth closer about her knees, and held
+her tongue; she relished the excitement of this fierce fighting the
+wind, though; it suited the nervous tension which her mind had undergone
+lately.
+
+It was a queer, lonesome country, the lee coast,--never so solitary as
+now, perhaps; older than the rest of the world, she fancied,--so many of
+Nature's voices, both of bird and vegetable, had been entirely lost out
+of it: no wonder it had grown unfruitful, and older and dumber and sad,
+listening for ages to the unremorseful, cruel cries of the sea; these
+dead bodies, too, washed up every year on its beaches, must haunt it,
+though it was not guilty. She began to say something of this to Doctor
+Dennis, tired of being silent.
+
+"Your country seems to me always to shut itself out from the world," she
+said; "from the time I enter that desolate region on its border of dwarf
+oaks and gloomy fires of the charcoal-burners, I think of the old leper
+and his cry of 'Unclean! unclean!'"
+
+MacAulay glances anxiously at her, trying to keep pace with her meaning.
+
+"It's a lonesome place enough," he said, slowly. "There be but the two
+or three farm-keepers; and the places go from father to son, father to
+son. The linen and carpet-mats in that house you're in now come down
+from the times before Washington. Stay-at-home, quiet people,--only the
+men that follow the water, in each generation. There be but little to be
+made from these flats of white sand. Yes, quiet enough: the beasts of
+prey aren't scaret out of these pine forests yet, I heard the cry of a
+panther the other night only, coming from Tom's River: close by the road
+it was: sharp and sorrowful, like a lost child.--As for ghosts," he
+continued, after a thoughtful pause, "I don't know any that would have
+reason for walking, without it was Captain Kidd. His treasure's buried
+along-shore here."
+
+"Ay?" said Mary, looking up shrewdly into his face.
+
+"Yes," he answered, shaking his head slowly, and measuring his whip with
+one eye. "Along here, many's the Spanish half-dollar I've picked up
+myself among the kelp. They do say they're from a galleon that went
+ashore come next August thirty years ago, but I don't know that."
+
+"And the people in the hamlet?" questioned Mary, nodding to a group of
+scattered, low-roofed houses.
+
+"Clam-fishers, the maist o' them. There be quite a many wrackers, but
+they live farther on, towards Barnegat. But a wrack draws them, like
+buzzards to a carcass."
+
+Miss Defourchet's black eye kindled, as if at the prospect of a good
+tragedy.
+
+"Did you ever see a wreck going down?" she asked, eagerly.
+
+"Yes,"--shutting his grim lips tighter.
+
+"That emigrant ship last fall? Seven hundred and thirty souls lost, they
+told me."
+
+"I was not here to know, thank God," shortly.
+
+"It would be a sensation for a lifetime,"--cuddling back into her seat,
+with no hopes of a story from the old Doctor.
+
+MacAulay sat up stiffer, his stern gray eye scanning the ocean-line
+again, as the mare turned into the more open plains of sand sloping down
+to the sea. It was up-hill work with him, talking to this young lady. He
+was afraid of a woman who had lectured in public, nursed in the
+hospitals, whose blood seemed always at fever heat, and whose aesthetic
+taste could seek the point of view from which to observe a calamity so
+horrible as the emigrant ship going down with her load of lives. "She's
+been fed on books too much," he thought. "It's the trouble with young
+women nowadays." On the other hand, for himself, he had lost sight of
+the current of present knowledges,--he was aware of that, finding how
+few topics in common there were between them; but it troubled the
+self-reliant old fellow but little. Since he left Yale, where he and
+this girl's uncle, Doctor Bowdler, had been chums together, he had lived
+in this out-of-the-way corner of the world, and many of the rough ways
+of speaking and acting of the people had clung to him, as their red mud
+to his shoes. As he grew older, he did not care to brush either off.
+
+Miss Defourchet had been a weight on his mind for a week or more. Her
+guardian, Doctor Bowdler, had sent her down to board in one of the
+farm-houses. "The sea-air will do her good, physically," he said in a
+note to his old chum, with whom he always had kept up a lingering
+intercourse; "she's been over-worked lately,--sick soldiers, you know.
+Mary went into the war _con amore_, like all women, or other happy
+people who are blind of one eye. Besides, she is to be married about
+Christmas, and before she begins life in earnest it would do her good to
+face something real. Nothing like living by the sea, and with those
+homely, thorough-blood Quakers, for bringing people to their simple,
+natural selves. By the way, you have heard of Dr. Birkenshead, whom she
+marries? though he is a surgeon,--not exactly in your profession. A
+surprisingly young man to have gained his reputation. I'm glad Mary
+marries a man of so much mark; she has pulled alone so long, she needs a
+master." So MacAulay had taken pains to drive the young lady out, as
+to-day, and took a general fatherly sort of charge of her, for his old
+friend's sake.
+
+Doctor Bowdler had frankly told his niece his reasons for wishing her to
+go down to the sea-shore. They nettled her more than she chose to show.
+She was over thirty, an eager humanitarian, had taught the freedmen at
+Port Royal, gone to Gettysburg and Antietam with sanitary
+stores,--surely, she did not need to be told that she had yet to begin
+life in earnest! But she was not sorry for the chance to rest and think.
+After she married she would be taken from the quiet Quaker society in
+Philadelphia, in which she always had moved, to one that would put her
+personal and mental powers to a sharp proof; for Birkenshead, by right
+of his professional fame, and a curiously attractive personal
+eccentricity, had gradually become the nucleus of one of the best and
+most brilliant circles in the country, men and women alike distinguished
+for their wit and skill in extracting the finest tones from life while
+they lived. The quiet Quaker girl was secretly on her mettle,--secretly,
+too, a little afraid. The truth was, she knew Doctor Birkenshead only in
+the glare of public life; her love for him was, as yet, only a delicate
+intellectual appreciation that gave her a keen delight. She was anxious
+that in his own world he should not be ashamed of her. She was glad he
+was to share this breathing-space with her; they could see each other
+unmasked. Doctor Bowdler and he were coming down from New York on Ben
+Van Note's lumber-schooner. It was due yesterday, but had not yet
+arrived.
+
+"You are sure," MacAulay said to her, as they rode along, "that they
+will come with Ben?"
+
+"Quite sure. They preferred it to the cars for the novelty of the thing,
+and the storm lulled the day they were to sail. Could the schooner make
+this inlet in a sea like that?"
+
+Doctor Dennis, stooping to arrange the harness, pretended not to hear
+her.
+
+"Ben, at least," he thought, "knows that to near the bar to-day means
+death."
+
+"One would think," he added aloud, "that Dick Bowdler's gray hairs and
+thirty years of preaching would have sobered his love of adventure. He
+was a foolhardy chap at college."
+
+Miss Defourchet's glance grew troubled, as she looked out at the
+gathering gloom and the crisp bits of yellow foam blown up to the
+carriage-wheels. Doctor Dennis turned the mare's head, thus hiding the
+sea from them; but its cry sounded for miles inland to-day,--an awful,
+inarticulate roar. All else was solemn silence. The great salt marshes
+rolled away on one side of the road, lush and rank,--one solitary dead
+tree rising from them, with a fish-hawk's uncouth nest lumbering its
+black trunk; they were still as the grave; even the ill-boding bird was
+gone long ago, and kept no more its lonely vigil on the dead limb over
+wind and wave. She glanced uneasily from side to side: high up on the
+beach lay fragments of old wrecks; burnt spars of vessels drifted ashore
+to tell, in their dumb way, of captain and crew washed, in one quick
+moment, by this muddy water of the Atlantic, into that sea far off
+whence no voyager has come back to bring the tidings. Land and sea
+seemed to her to hint at this thing,--this awful sea, cold and dark
+beyond. What did the dark mystery in the cry of the surf mean but that?
+That was the only sound. The heavy silence without grew intolerable to
+her: it foreboded evil. The cold, yellow light of day lingered long.
+Overhead, cloud after cloud rose from the far watery horizon, and drove
+swiftly and silently inland, bellying dark as it went, carrying the
+storm. As the horse's hoofs struck hard on the beach, a bird rose out of
+the marsh and trailed through the air, its long legs dragging behind it,
+and a blaze of light feathers on its breast catching a dull glow in the
+fading evening.
+
+"The blue heron flies low," said the Doctor. "That means a heavier
+storm. It scents a wreck as keenly as a Barnegat pirate."
+
+"It is fishing, maybe?" said Mary, trying to rouse herself.
+
+"It's no a canny fisher that," shaking his head. "The fish you'd find in
+its nest come from the deep waters, where heron never flew. Well, they
+do say," in answer to her look of inquiry, "that on stormy nights it
+sits on the beach with a phosphoric light under its wing, and so draws
+them to shore."
+
+"How soon will the storm be on us?" after a pause.
+
+"In not less than two hours. Keep your heart up, child. Ben Van Note is
+no fool. He'd keep clear of Squan Beach as he would of hell's mouth,
+such a night as this is going to be. Your friends are all safe. We'll
+drive home as soon as we've been at the store to see if the mail's
+brought you a letter."
+
+He tucked in his hairy overcoat about his long legs, and tried to talk
+cheerfully as they drove along, seeing how pale she was.
+
+"The store" for these two counties was a large, one-roomed frame
+building on the edge of the great pine woods, painted bright pink, with
+a wooden blue lady, the old figure-head of some sloop, over the door.
+The stoop outside was filled with hogsheads and boxes; inside was the
+usual stock of calicoes, chinaware, molasses-barrels, and books; the
+post-office, a high desk, on which lay half a dozen letters. By the
+dingy little windows, on which the rain was now beating sharply, four or
+five dirty sailors and clam-diggers were gathered, lounging on the
+counter and kegs, while one read a newspaper aloud slowly. They stopped
+to look at Miss Defourchet, when she came in, and waited by the door for
+the Doctor. The gloomy air and forlorn-looking shop contrasted and threw
+into bright relief her pretty, delicate little figure, and the dainty
+carriage-dress she wore. All the daylight that was in the store seemed
+at once to cling to and caress the rare beauty of the small face, with
+its eager blue eyes and dark brown curls. There was one woman in the
+store, sitting on a beer-cask, a small, sharp-set old wife, who drew her
+muddy shoes up under her petticoats out of Mary's way, but did not look
+at her. Miss Defourchet belonged to a family to whom the ease that money
+gives and a certain epicureanism of taste were natural. She stood there
+wondering, not unkindly, what these poor creatures did with their lives,
+and their dull, cloddish days; what could they know of the keen pains,
+the pleasures, the ambitions, or loves, that ennobled wealthier souls?
+
+"This be yer papper, Doctor," said one; "but we've not just yet finished
+it."
+
+"All right, boys; Jem Dexter can leave it to-night, as he goes by. Any
+mail for me, Joe? But you're waiting, Mother Phebe?"--turning with a
+sudden gentleness to the old woman near Mary.
+
+"Yes, I be. But it don't matter. Joseph, serve the Doctor,"--beating a
+tattoo on the counter with her restless hands.
+
+The Doctor did not turn to take his letters, however, nor seem to heed
+the wind which was rising fitfully each moment without, but leaned
+leisurely on the counter.
+
+"Did you expect a letter to-day?"--in the same subdued voice.
+
+She gave a scared look at the men by the window, and then in a
+whisper,--
+
+"From my son, Derrick,--yes. The folks here take Derrick for a
+joke,--an' me. But I'm expectin'. He said he'd come, thee sees?"
+
+"So he did."
+
+"Well, there's none from Derrick to-day, Mother Phebe," said the burly
+storekeeper, taking his stubby pipe out of his mouth.
+
+She caught her breath.
+
+"Thee looked carefully, Joseph?"
+
+He nodded. She began to unbutton a patched cotton umbrella,--her lips
+moving as people's do sometimes in the beginning of second childhood.
+
+"I'll go home, then. I'll be back mail-day, Wednesday, Joseph. Four days
+that is,--Wednesday."
+
+"Lookee here now, Gran!" positively, laying down the pipe to give effect
+to his words; "you're killin' yerself, you are. Keep a-trottin' here all
+winter, an' what sort of a report of yerself'll yer make to Derrick by
+spring? When that 'ere letter comes, if come it do, I've said I'd put on
+my cut an' run up with it. See there!"--pulling out her thin calico
+skirt before the Doctor,--"soaked, she is."
+
+"Thee's kind, Joseph, but thee don't know,"--drawing her frock back with
+a certain dignity. "When my boy's handwrite comes, I must be here. I
+learned writin' on purpose that I might read it first,"--turning to
+Mary.
+
+"How long has your boy been gone?" asked Miss Defourchet, heedless of
+Joseph's warning "Hush-h!"
+
+"Twenty years, come Febuary," eagerly volunteered one or two voices by
+the window. "She's never heerd a word in that time, an' she never misses
+a mail-day, but she's expectin'," added one, with a coarse laugh.
+
+"None o' that, Sam Venners," said Joe, sharply. "If so be as Dirk said
+he'd come, be it half-a-hunder' years, he'll stan' to 't. I knowed Dirk.
+Many's the clam we toed out o' th' inlet yonner. He's not the sort to
+hang round, gnawin' out the old folk's meat-pot, as some I cud name.
+He"----
+
+"I'll go, if thee'll let me apast," said the old woman, humbly curtsying
+to the men, who now jammed up the doorway.
+
+"It's a cussed shame, Venners," said Joe, when she was out. "Why can't
+yer humor the old gran a bit? She's the chicken-heartedest woman ever I
+knowed," explanatory to Miss Defourchet, "an' these ten years she's been
+mad-like, waitin' for that hang-dog son of hers to come back."
+
+Mary followed her out on the stoop, where she stood, her ragged green
+umbrella up, her sharp little face turned anxiously to the far sea-line.
+
+"Bad! bad!" she muttered, looking at Mary.
+
+"The storm? Yes. But you ought not to be out in such weather," kindly,
+putting her furred hand on the skinny arm.
+
+The woman smiled,--a sweet, good-humored smile it was, in spite of her
+meagre, hungry old face.
+
+"Why, look there, young woman,"--pulling up her sleeve, and showing the
+knotted tendons and thick muscles of her arm. "I'm pretty tough, thee
+sees. There's not a boatman in Ocean County could pull an oar with me
+when I was a gell, an' I'm tough yet,"--hooking her sleeve again.
+
+The smile haunted Miss Defourchet; where had she seen it before?
+
+"Was Derrick strongly built?"--idly wishing to recall it.
+
+"Thee's a stranger; maybe thee has met my boy?"--turning on her sharply.
+"No, that's silly,"--the sad vagueness coming back into the faded eyes.
+After a pause,--"Derrick, thee said? He was short, the lad was,--but
+with legs and arms as tender and supple as a wild-cat's. I loss much of
+my strength when he was born; it was wonderful, for a woman, before; I
+giv it to him. I'm glad of that! I thank God that I giv it to him!"--her
+voice sinking, and growing wilder and faster. "Why! why!"
+
+Mary took her hand, half-scared, looking in at the store-door, wishing
+Doctor Dennis would come.
+
+The old woman tottered and sat down on the lower rung of a ladder
+standing there. Mary could see now how the long sickness of the hope
+deferred had touched the poor creature's brain, gentle and loving at
+first. She pushed the wet yellow sun-bonnet back from the gray hair; she
+thought she had never seen such unutterable pathos or tragedy as in this
+little cramped figure, and this old face, turned forever watching to the
+sea.
+
+"Thee doesn't know; how should thee?"--gently, but not looking at her.
+"Thee never had a son; an' when thee has, it will be born in wedlock.
+Thee's rich, an' well taught. I was jess a clam-fisher, an' knowed
+nothin' but my baby. His father was a gentleman: come in spring, an'
+gone in th' fall, an' that was the last of him. That hurt a bit, but I
+had Derrick. _Oh, Derrick! Derrick!_"--whispering, rocking herself to
+and fro as if she held a baby, cooing over the uncouth name with an
+awful longing and tenderness in the sound.
+
+Miss Defourchet was silent. Something in all this awed her; she did not
+understand it.
+
+"I mind," she wandered on, "when the day's work was done, I'd hold him
+in my arms,--so,--and his sleepy little face would turn up to mine. I
+seemed to begin to loss him after he was a baby,"--with an old, worn
+sigh. "He went with other boys. The Weirs and Hallets took him up; they
+were town-bred people, an' he soon got other notions from mine, an'
+talked of things I'd heerd nothin' of. I was very proud of my Derrick;
+but I knowed I'd loss him all the same. I did washin' an' ironin' by
+nights to keep him dressed like the others,--an' kep' myself out o'
+their way, not to shame him with his mother."
+
+"And was he ashamed of you?" said Mary, her face growing hot.
+
+"Thee did not know my little boy,"--the old woman stood up, drawing
+herself to her full height. "His wee body was too full of pluck an' good
+love to be shamed by his mother. I mind the day I come on them suddint,
+by the bridge, where they were standin', him an' two o' the Hallets. I
+was carryin' a basket of herrings. The Hallets they flushed up, an'
+looked at him to see what he'd do; for they never named his mother to
+him, I heerd. The road was deep with mud; an' as I stood a bit to
+balance myself, keepin' my head turned from him, before I knew aught, my
+boy had me in his arms, an' carried me t' other side. I'm not a heavy
+weight, thee sees, but his face was all aglow with the laugh.
+
+"'There you are, dear,' he says, puttin' me down, the wind blowin' his
+brown hair.
+
+"One of the Hallets brought my basket over then, an' touched his hat as
+if I'd been a lady. That was the last time my boy had his arms about me:
+next week he went away. That night I heerd him in his room in the loft,
+here an' there, here an' there, as if he couldn't sleep, an' so for many
+nights, comin' down in the mornin' with his eye red an' swollen, but
+full of the laugh an' joke as always. The Hallets were with him
+constant, those days, Judge Hallet, their father, were goin' across
+seas, Derrick said. So one night, I'd got his tea ready, an' were
+waitin' for him by the fire, knittin',--when he come in an' stood by the
+mantel-shelf, lookin' down at me, steady. He had on his Sunday suit of
+blue, Jim Devines giv him.
+
+"'Where be yer other clothes, my son?' I said.
+
+"'They're not clean,' says he. 'I've been haulin' marl for Springer this
+week. He paid me to-night; the money's in the kitchen-cupboard.'
+
+"I looked up at that, for it was work I'd never put him to.
+
+"'It'll buy thee new shoes,' said I.
+
+"'I did it for you, mother,' he says, suddint, puttin' his hand over his
+eyes. 'I wish things were different with you.'
+
+"'Yes, Derrick.'
+
+"I went on with my knittin'; for I never talked much to him, for the
+shame of my bad words, since he'd learned better. But I wondered what he
+meant; for wages was high that winter, an' I was doin' well.
+
+"'If ever,' he says, speakin' low an' faster, 'if ever I do anything
+that gives you pain, you'll know it was for love of you I did it. Not
+for myself, God knows! To make things different for you.'
+
+"'Yes, Derrick,' I says, knittin' on, for I didn't understan' thin.
+Afterwards I did. The room was dark, an' it were dead quiet for a bit;
+then the lad moved to the door.
+
+"'Where be thee goin', Derrick?' I said.
+
+"He come back an' leaned on my chair.
+
+"'Let me tell you when I come back,' he said. 'You'll wait for me?'
+stoopin' down an' kissin' me.
+
+"I noticed that, for he did not like to kiss,--Derrick. An' his lips
+were hot an' dry.
+
+"'Yes, I'll wait, my son,' I said. 'Thee'll not be gone long?'
+
+"He did not answer that, but kissed me again, an' went out quickly.
+
+"I sat an' waited long that night, an' searched till mornin'. There's
+been a many nights an' days since, but I've never found him. The Hallets
+all went that night, an' I heerd Derrick went as waiter-boy, so's to get
+across seas. It's twenty years now. But I think he'll come,"--looking up
+with a laugh.
+
+Miss Defourchet started; where had she known this woman? The sudden
+flicker of a smile, followed by a quick contraction of the eyelids and
+mouth, was peculiar and curiously sensitive and sad; somewhere, in a
+picture maybe, she had seen the same.
+
+Doctor Dennis, who had waited purposely, came out now on the stoop. Miss
+Defourchet looked up. The darkness had gathered while they stood there;
+the pine woods, close at the right, began to lower distant and
+shapeless; now and then the wind flapped a raw dash of rain in their
+faces, and then was suddenly still. Behind them, two or three tallow
+candles, just lighted in the store, sputtered dismal circles of dingy
+glare in the damp fog; in front, a vague slope of wet night, in which
+she knew lay the road and the salt marshes; and far beyond, distinct,
+the sea-line next the sky, a great yellow phosphorescent belt,
+apparently higher than their heads. Nearer, unseen, the night-tide was
+sent in: it came with a regular muffled throb that shook the ground.
+Doctor Dennis went down, and groped about his horse, adjusting the
+harness.
+
+"The poor beast is soaked to the marrow: it's a dull night: d'ye hear
+how full the air is of noises?"
+
+"It be the sea makin' ready," said Joe, in a whisper, as if it were a
+sentient thing and could hear. He touched the old woman on the arm and
+beckoned her inside to one of the candles.
+
+"There be a scrap of a letter come for you; but keep quiet. Ben Van
+Note's scrawl of a handwrite, think."
+
+The letters were large enough,--printed, in fact: she read it but once.
+
+"Your Dirk come Aboord the Chief at New York. I knowed him by a mark on
+his wrist--the time jim hallet cut him' you mind. he is aged and
+Differentt name. I kep close. we sail to-day and Ill Breng him Ashor
+tomorrer nite plese God. be on Handd."
+
+She folded the letter, crease by crease, and put it quietly in her
+pocket. Joe watched her curiously.
+
+"D' Ben say when the Chief ud run in?"
+
+"To-night."
+
+"Bah-h! there be n't a vessel within miles of this coast,--without a
+gale drives 'm in."
+
+She did not seem to hear him: was feeling her wet petticoats and
+sleeves. She would shame Derrick, after all, with this patched, muddy
+frock! She had worked so long to buy the black silk, gown and white
+neckercher that was folded in the bureau-drawer to wear the day he'd
+come back!
+
+"When he come back!"
+
+Then, for the first time, she realized what she was thinking about.
+_Coming to-night!_
+
+Presently Miss Defourchet went to her where she was sitting on a box in
+the dark and rain.
+
+"Are you sick?" said she, putting her hand out.
+
+"Oh, no, dear!" softly, putting the fingers in her own, close to her
+breast, crying and sobbing quietly. "Thee hand be a'most as soft as a
+baby's foot," after a while, fancying the little chap was creeping into
+her bosom again, thumping with his fat feet and fists as he used to do.
+Her very blood used to grow wild and hot when he did that, she loved him
+so. And her heart to-night was just as warm and light as then. He was
+coming back, her boy: maybe he was poor and sick, a worn-out man; but in
+a few hours he would be here, and lay his tired head on her breast, and
+be a baby again.
+
+Joe went down to the Doctor with a lantern.
+
+"Van Note meant to run in the Chief to-night,"--in an anxious, inquiring
+whisper.
+
+"He's not an idiot!"
+
+"No,--but, bein' near, the wind may drive 'em on the bar. Look yonder."
+
+"See that, too, Joe?" said bow-legged Phil, from Tom's River, who was
+up that night.
+
+"That yellow line has never been in the sky since the night the James
+Frazier--_Ach-h! it's come!_"
+
+He had stooped to help Doctor Dennis with his harness, but now fell
+forward, clapping his hands to his ears. A terrible darkness swept over
+them; the whole air was filled with a fierce, risping crackle; then came
+a sharp concussion, that seemed to tear the earth asunder. Miss
+Defourchet cried aloud: no one answered her. In a few moments the
+darkness slowly lifted, leaving the old yellow lights and fogs on sea
+and land. The men stood motionless as when the tornado passed, Doctor
+Dennis leaning on his old mare, having thrown one arm about her as if to
+protect her, his stern face awed.
+
+"There's where it went," said Joe, coolly, drawing his hands from his
+pockets, and pointing to a black gap in the pine woods. "The best farms
+in this Jersey country lie back o' that. I told you there was death in
+the pot, but I didn't think it ud 'a' come this fashion."
+
+"When will the storm be on us?" asked Mary, trembling.
+
+Joe laughed sardonically.
+
+"Haven't ye hed enough of it?"
+
+"There will be no rain after a gust like that," said MacAulay. "I'll try
+and get you home now. It has done its worst. It will take years to wipe
+out the woe this night has worked."
+
+The wind had fallen into a dead silence, frightened at itself. And now
+the sudden, awful thunder of the sea broke on them, shaking the sandy
+soil on which they stood.
+
+"Thank God that Van Note is so trusty a sailor as you say!" said Mary,
+buttoning her furs closer to her throat. "They're back in a safe harbor,
+I doubt not."
+
+Joe and Doctor Dennis exchanged significant glances as they stood by the
+mare, and then looked again out to sea.
+
+"Best get her home," said Joe, in a whisper.
+
+Doctor Dennis nodded, and they made haste to bring the gig up to the
+horse-block.
+
+Old Phebe Trull had been standing stirless since the gust passed. She
+drew a long breath when Mary touched her, telling her to come home with
+them.
+
+"That was a sharp blow. I'm an old Barnegat woman, an' I've known no
+such cutters as that. But he'll come. I'm expectin' my boy to-night,
+young woman. I'm goin' to the beach now to wait for him,--for Derrick."
+
+In spite of the queer old face peering out from the yellow sun-bonnet,
+with its flabby wrinkles and nut-cracker jaws, there was a fine,
+delicate meaning in the smile with which she waved her hand down to the
+stormy beach.
+
+"What's that?" said Doctor Dennis, starting up, and holding his hand
+behind his ear. His sandy face grew pale.
+
+"I heard nothing," said Mary.
+
+The next moment she caught a dull thud in the watery distance, as if
+some pulse of the night had throbbed feverishly.
+
+Bow-legged Phil started to his feet.
+
+"It's the gun of the Chief! Van Note's goin' down!" he cried, with a
+horrible oath, and hobbled off, followed by the other men.
+
+"His little brother Benny be on her," said Joe. "May God have mercy on
+their souls!"
+
+He had climbed like a cat to the rafters, and thrown down two or three
+cables and anchors, and, putting them over his shoulders, started
+soberly for the beach, stopping to look at Miss Defourchet, crouched on
+the floor of the store.
+
+"You'd best see after her, Doctor. Ropes is all we can do for 'em. No
+boat ud live in that sea, goin' out."
+
+Going down through the clammy fog, his feet sinking in the marsh with
+the weight he carried, he could see red lights in the mist, gathering
+towards shore.
+
+"It's the wrackers goin' down to be ready for mornin'."
+
+And in a few moments stood beside them a half-dozen brawny men, with
+their legs and chests bare. The beach on which they stood glared white
+in the yellow light, giving the effect of a landscape in Polar seas. One
+or two solitary headlands loomed gloomily up, covered with snow. In
+front, the waters at the edge of the sea broke at their feet in long,
+solemn, monotonous swells, that reverberated like thunder,--a death-song
+for the work going on in the chaos beyond.
+
+"Thar's no use doin' anything out thar," said one of the men, nodding
+gloomily to a black speck in the foaming hell. "She be on the bar this
+ten minutes, an' she 's a mean-built craft, that Chief."
+
+"Couldn't a boat run out from the inlet?" timidly ventured an eager,
+blue-eyed little fellow.
+
+"No, Snap," said Joe, letting his anchor fall, and clearing his throat.
+"Well, there be the end of old Ben, hey? Be yer never tired, yer cruel
+devil?" turning with a sudden fierceness to the sly foam creeping lazily
+about his feet.
+
+There was a long silence.
+
+"Bowlegs tried it, but his scow stud still, an' the breakers came atop
+as if it war a clam-shell. He warn't five yards from shore. His Ben's
+aboard." Another peal of a gun from the schooner broke through the dark
+and storm.
+
+"God! I be sick o' sittin' on shor', an' watchin' men drownin' like rats
+on a raft," said Joe, wiping the foam from his thick lips, and trotting
+up and down the sand, keeping his back to the vessel.
+
+Some of the men sat down, their hands clasped about their knees, looking
+gravely out.
+
+"What cud we do, Joey?" said one. "Thar be Hannah an' the children; we
+kin give Hannah a lift. But as for Ben, it 's no use thinkin' about Ben
+no more."
+
+The little clam-digger Snap was kindling a fire out of the old
+half-burnt wrecks of vessels.
+
+"It's too late to give 'em warnin'," he said; "but it'll let 'em see
+we're watchin' 'em at the last. One ud like friends at the last."
+
+The fire lighted up the shore, throwing long bars of hot, greenish flame
+up the fog.
+
+"Who be them, Joe?" whispered a wrecker, as two dim figures came down
+through the marsh.
+
+"She hev a sweetheart aboord. Don't watch her."
+
+The men got up, and moved away, leaving Miss Defourchet alone with
+Doctor Dennis. She stood so quiet, her eyes glued on the dull, shaking
+shadow yonder on the bar, that he thought she did not care. Two figures
+came round from the inlet to where the water shoaled, pulling a narrow
+skiff.
+
+"Hillo!" shouted Doctor Dennis. "Be you mad?"
+
+The stouter of the figures hobbled up. It was Bowlegs. His voice was
+deadened in the cold of the fog, but he wiped the hot sweat from his
+face.
+
+"In God's name, be thar none of ye ull bear a hand with me? Ud ye sit
+here an' see 'em drown? Benny's thar,--my Ben."
+
+Joe shook his head.
+
+"My best friend be there," said the old Doctor. "But what can ye do?
+Your boat will be paper in that sea, Phil."
+
+"That's so," droned out one or two of the wreckers, dully nodding.
+
+"Curses on ye for cowards, then!" cried Bowlegs, as he plunged into the
+surf, and righted his boat. "Look who's my mate, shame on ye!"
+
+His mate shoved the skiff out with an oar into the seething breakers,
+turning to do it, and showed them, by the far-reaching fire-light, old
+Phebe Trull, stripped to her red woollen chemise and flannel petticoat,
+her yellow, muscular arms and chest bare. Her peaked old face was set,
+and her faded blue eye aflame. She did not hear the cry of horror from
+the wreckers.
+
+"Ye've a better pull than any white-liver of 'em, from Tom's to
+Barnegat," gasped Bowlegs, struggling against the surf.
+
+She was wrestling for life with Death itself; but the quiet, tender
+smile did not leave her face.
+
+"My God! ef I cud pull as when I was a gell!" she muttered. "Derrick,
+I'm comin'! I'm comin', boy!"
+
+The salt spray wet their little fire of logs, beside which Snap sat
+crying,--put it out at last, leaving a heap of black cinders. The night
+fell heavier and cold; boat and schooner alike were long lost and gone
+in outer darkness. As they wandered up and down, chilled and hopeless,
+they could not see each other's faces,--only the patch of white sand at
+their feet. When they shouted, no gun or cry answered them again. All
+was silence, save the awful beat of the surf upon the shore, going on
+forever with its count, count of the hours until the time when the sea
+shall at last give up its dead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ben Van Note did not run the Chief in near shore purposely; but the fog
+was dense, and Ben was a better sailor than pilot. He took the wheel
+himself about an hour before they struck,--the two or three other men at
+their work on deck, with haggard, anxious faces, and silent: it is not
+the manner of these Jersey coast-men to chatter in heavy weather.
+
+Philbrick, Doctor Bowdler's boy, lounged beside Ben, twisting a greasy
+lantern: "a town-bred fellow," Ben said; "put him in mind of young, rank
+cheese."
+
+"You'd best keep a sharp eye, Van Note," he said; "this is a dirty bit
+of water, and you've two great men aboard: one patcher of the body, t'
+other of the soul."
+
+"I vally my own neck more than either," growled Ben, and after a while
+forced himself to add, "_He_'s no backbone,--the little fellow with your
+master, I mean."
+
+"Umph!" superciliously, "I'd like to see the 'little fellow' making neat
+bits out of that carcass of yours! His dainty white fingers carve off a
+fellow's legs and arms, caring no more than if they were painting
+flowers. He is a neat flower-painter, Dr. Birkenshead; moulds in clay,
+too."
+
+He stared as Van Note burst into a coarse guffaw.
+
+"Flower-painter, eh? Well, well, young man. You'd best go below. It's
+dirtier water than you think."
+
+Doctors Bowdler and Birkenshead were down in the little cabin, reading
+by the dull light of a coal-oil lamp. When the vessel began to toss so
+furiously, the elder man rose and paced fussily to and fro, rubbing his
+fingers through his iron-gray hair. His companion was too much engrossed
+by his paper to heed him. He had a small, elegantly shaped figure,--the
+famous surgeon,--a dark face, drawn by a few heavy lines; looking at it,
+you felt, that, in spite of his womanish delicacies of habit, which lay
+open to all, never apologized for, he was a man whom you could not
+approach familiarly, though he were your brother born. He stopped
+reading presently, slowly folding the newspaper straight, and laying it
+down.
+
+"That is a delicious blunder of the Administration," with a little
+gurgling laugh of thorough relish. "You remember La Rochefoucauld's
+aphorism, 'One is never so easily deceived as when one seeks to deceive
+others'?"
+
+Doctor Bowdler looked uncomfortable.
+
+"A selfish French Philister, La Rochefoucauld!" he blurted out. "I feel
+as if I had been steeped in meanness and vulgarity all my life, when I
+read him."
+
+"He knew men," said the other, coolly, resetting a pocket set of
+chessmen on the board where they had been playing,--"Frenchmen,"
+shortly.
+
+"Doctor Birkenshead," after a pause, "you appear to have no sympathies
+with either side, in this struggle for the nation's life. You neither
+attack nor defend our government."
+
+"In plain English, I have no patriotism? Well, to be honest, I don't
+comprehend how any earnest seeker for truth can have. If my country has
+truth, so far she nourishes me, and I am grateful; if not,--why, the air
+is no purer nor the government more worthy of reverence because I
+chanced to be born here."
+
+"Why, Sir," said the Doctor, stopping short and growing red, "you could
+apply such an argument as that to a man's feeling for his wife or child
+or mother!"
+
+"So you could," looking closely at the queen to see the carving.
+
+Doctor Bowdler looked at him searchingly, and then began his angry walk
+again in silence. What was the use of answering? No wonder a man who
+talked in that way was famed in this country and in Europe for his
+coolness and skill in cutting up living bodies. And yet--remorsefully,
+looking furtively at him--Birkenshead was not a hard fellow, after all.
+There was that pauper-hospital of his; and he had known him turn sick
+when operating on children, and damn the people who brought them to him.
+
+Doctor Bowdler was a little in dread of this future husband of his
+niece, feeling there was a great gulf between them intellectually, the
+surgeon having a rare power in a line of life of which he knew nothing.
+Besides, he could not understand him,--not his homely, keen little face
+even. The eyes held their own thought, and never answered yours; but on
+the mouth there was a forlorn depression sometimes, like that of a man
+who, in spite of his fame, felt himself alone and neglected. It rested
+there now, as he idly fingered the chessmen.
+
+"Mary will kiss it away in time, maybe,"--doubting, as he said it,
+whether Mary did not come nearer the man's head than his heart. He
+stopped, looking out of the hole by the ladder that served the purpose
+of a window.
+
+"It grows blacker every minute. I shall begin to repent tempting you on
+such a harebrained expedition, Doctor."
+
+"No. This Van Note seems a cautious sailor enough," carelessly.
+
+"Yes. He's on his own ground, too. We ought to run into Squan Inlet by
+morning. Did you speak?"
+
+Birkenshead shook his head; the Doctor noticed, however, that his hand
+had suddenly stopped moving the chessmen; he rested his chin in the
+other.
+
+"Some case he has left worries him," he thought. "He's not the man to
+relish this wild-goose chase of mine. It's bad enough for Mary to jar
+against his quiet tastes with her reforming whims, without my"----
+
+"I would regret bringing you here," he said aloud, "if I did not think
+you would find a novelty in this shore and people. This coast is hardly
+'canny,' as MacAulay would say. It came, literally, out of the sea.
+Sometime, ages ago, it belonged to the bed of the ocean, and it never
+has reconciled itself to the life of the land; its Flora is different
+from that of the boundaries; if you dig a few feet into its marl, you
+find layers of shells belonging to deep soundings, sharks' teeth and
+bones, and the like. The people, too, have a 'marvellously fishy and
+ancient smell.'"
+
+The little man at the table suddenly rose, pushing the chessmen from
+him.
+
+"What is there to wonder at?"--with a hoarse, unnatural laugh. "That's
+Nature. You cannot make fat pastures out of sea-sand, any more than a
+thorough-blood _gentilhomme_ out of a clam-digger. The shark's teeth
+will show, do what you will." He pulled at his whiskers nervously, went
+to the window, motioning Doctor Bowdler roughly aside. "Let me see what
+the night is doing."
+
+The old gentleman stared in a grave surprise. What had he said to
+startle Birkenshead so utterly out of himself? The color had left his
+face at the first mention of this beach; his very voice was changed,
+coarse and thick, as if some other man had broken out through him. At
+that moment, while Doctor Bowdler stood feebly adjusting his
+watch-chain, and eying his companion's back, like one who has found a
+panther in a domestic cat, and knows not when he will spring, the
+tornado struck the ocean a few feet from their side, cleaving a path for
+itself into deep watery walls. There was an instant's reeling and
+intense darkness, then the old Doctor tried to gather himself up,
+bruised and sick, from the companion-way, where he had been thrown.
+
+"Better lie still," said Birkenshead, in the gentle voice with which he
+was used to calm a patient.
+
+The old gentleman managed to sit up on the floor. By the dull glare of
+the cabin-lantern he could see the surgeon sitting on the lower rung of
+the ladder, leaning forward, holding his head in his hands.
+
+"Strike a light, can't you, Birkenshead? What has happened? Bah! this is
+horrible! I have swallowed the sea-water! Hear it swash against the
+sides of the boat! Is the boat going to pieces?"
+
+"And there met us 'a tempestuous wind called Euroclydon,'" said
+Birkenshead, looking up with a curious smile.
+
+"Did there?"--rubbing his shoulder. "I've kept clear of the sea so far,
+and I think in future--Hark! what's that?" as through the darkness and
+the thunderous surge of the water, and the short, fierce calls of the
+men on board, came a low shivering crack, distinct as a human whisper.
+"What is it, Birkenshead?" impatiently, when the other made no answer.
+
+"The schooner has struck the bar. She is going to pieces."
+
+The words recalled the old servant of Christ from his insane fright to
+himself.
+
+"That means death! does it not?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The two men stood silent,--Doctor Bowdler with his head bent and eyes
+closed. He looked up presently.
+
+"Let us go on deck now and see what we can do,"--turning cheerfully.
+"No, there are too many there already."
+
+There was an old tin life-preserver hanging on a hook by the door; the
+surgeon climbed up to get it, and began buckling it about the old man in
+spite of his remonstrances. The timbers groaned and strained, the boat
+trembled like some great beast in its death-agony, settled heavily, and
+then the beams on one side of them parted. They stood on a shelving
+plank floor, snapped off two feet from them, the yellow sky overhead,
+and the breakers crunching their footing away.
+
+"O God!" cried Bowdler, when he looked out at the sea. He was not a
+brave man; and he could not see it, when he looked; there was but a
+horror of great darkness, a thunder of sound, and a chilly creeping of
+salt-water up his legs, as if the great monster licked his victim with
+his lifeless tongue. Straight in front of them, at the very edge of the
+horizon, he thought the little clam-digger's fire opened a tunnel of
+greenish light into the night, "dull and melancholy as a scene in
+Hades." They saw the men sitting around the blaze with their hands
+clasped about their knees, the woman's figure alone, and watching.
+
+"Mary!" cried the old man, in the shrill extremity of his agony.
+
+His companion shivered.
+
+"Take this from me, boy!" cried Doctor Bowdler, trying to tear off the
+life-preserver. "It's a chance. I've neither wife nor child to care if I
+live or die. You're young; life's beginning for you. I've done with it.
+Ugh! this water is deadly cold. Take it, I say."
+
+"No," said the other, quietly restraining him.
+
+"Can you swim?"
+
+"In this sea?"--with a half-smile, and a glance at the tossing breakers.
+
+"You'll swim? Promise me you'll swim! And if I come to shore and see
+Mary?"
+
+Birkenshead had regained the reticent tone habitual to him.
+
+"Tell her, I wish I had loved her better. She will understand. I see the
+use of love in this last hour."
+
+"Is there any one else?"
+
+"There used to be some one. Twenty years ago I said I would come, and
+I'm coming now."
+
+"I don't hear you."
+
+Birkenshead laughed at his own thought, whatever it was. The devil who
+had tempted him might have found in the laugh an outcry more bitter than
+any agony of common men.
+
+The planks beneath their feet sank inch by inch. They were shut off
+from the larboard side of the vessel. For a time they had heard oaths
+and cries from the other men, but now all was silent.
+
+"There is no help coming from shore,"--(the old man's voice was
+weakening,)--"and this footing is giving way."
+
+"Yes, it's going. Lash your arms to me by your braces, Doctor. I can
+help you for a few moments."
+
+So saying, Birkenshead tore off his own coat and waistcoat; but as he
+turned, the coming breaker dashed over their heads, he heard a faint
+gasp, and when his eyes were clear of the salt, he saw the old man's
+gray hair in the midst of a sinking wave.
+
+"I wish I could have saved him," he said,--then made his way as best he
+could by feet and hands to a bulk of timber standing out of the water,
+and sitting down there, clutched his hands about his knees, very much as
+he used to do when he was a clam-digger and watched the other boys
+bringing in their hauls.
+
+"Twenty years ago I said I'd come, and I'm coming," he went on
+repeating.
+
+Derrick Trull was no coward, as boy or man, but he made no effort to
+save himself; the slimy water washed him about like a wet rag. He was
+alone now, if never before in those twenty years; his world of
+beautiful, cultured, graceful words and sights and deeds was not here,
+it was utterly gone out; there was no God here, that he thought of; he
+was quite alone: so, in sight of this lee coast, the old love in that
+life dead years ago roused, and the mean crime dragged on through every
+day since gnawed all the manliness and courage out of him.
+
+She would be asleep now, old Phebe Trull,--in the room off the brick
+kitchen, her wan limbs curled up under her check nightgown, her pipe and
+noggin of tea on the oven-shelf; he could smell the damp, musty odor of
+the slop-sink near by. What if he could reach shore? What if he were to
+steal up to her bed and waken her?
+
+"It's Derrick, back, mother," he would say. How the old creature would
+skirl and cry over her son Derrick!--Derrick! he hated the name. It
+belonged to that time of degradation and stinting and foulness.
+
+Doctor Birkenshead lifted himself up. Pish! the old fish-wife had long
+since forgotten her scapegrace son,--thought him dead. _He was dead._ He
+wondered--and this while every swash of the salt-water brought death
+closer up to his lips--if Miss Defourchet had seen "Mother Phebe."
+Doubtless she had, and had made a sketch of her to show him;--but no,
+she was not a picturesque pauper,--vulgar, simply. The water came up
+closer; the cold of it, and the extremity of peril, or, maybe, this old
+gnawing at the heart, more virulent than either, soon drew the strength
+out of his body: close study and high living had made the joints less
+supple than Derrick Trull's: he lay there limp and unable,--his brain
+alert, but fickle. It put the watery death out of sight, and brought his
+familiar every-day life about him: the dissecting-room; curious cases
+that had puzzled him; drawing-rooms, beautiful women; he sang airs from
+the operas, sad, broken little snatches, in a deep, mellow voice, finely
+trained,--fragments of a litany to the Virgin. Birkenshead's love of
+beauty was a hungry monomania; his brain was filled with memories of the
+pictures of the Ideal Mother and her Son. One by one they came to him
+now, the holy woman-type which for ages supplied to the world that
+tenderness and pity which the Church had stripped from God. Even in his
+delirium the man of fastidious instincts knew this was what he craved;
+even now he remembered other living mothers he had known, delicate,
+nobly born women, looking on their babes with eyes full of all gracious
+and pure thoughts. With the sharp contrast of a dream came the old
+clam-digger, barefoot in the mud, her basket of soiled clothes on her
+shoulder,--her son Derrick, a vulgar lad, aping gentility, behind her.
+Closer and closer came the waters; a shark's gray hide glittered a few
+feet from him. Death, sure of his prey, nibbled and played with it; in
+a little while he lay supine and unconscious.
+
+Reason came back to him like an electric shock; for all the parts of Dr.
+Birkenshead's organization were instinctive, nervous, like a woman's.
+When it came, the transient delirium had passed; he was his cool,
+observant self. He lay on the wet floor of a yawl skiff, his head
+resting on a man's leg; the man was rowing with even, powerful strokes,
+and he could feel rather than see in the darkness a figure steering. He
+was saved. His heart burned with a sudden glorious glow of joy, and
+genial, boyish zest of life,--one of the excesses of his nature. He
+tried to speak, but his tongue was stiff, his throat dry; he could have
+caressed the man's slimy sleeve that touched his cheek, he was so glad
+to live. The boatman was in no humor for caresses; he drew his labored
+breath sharply, fighting the waves, rasping out a sullen oath when they
+baffled him. The little surgeon had tact enough to keep silent; he did
+not care to talk, either. Life rose before him a splendid possibility,
+as never before. From the silent figure at the helm came neither word
+nor motion. Presently a bleak morning wind mingled with the fierce,
+incessant nor'easter; the three in the yawl, all sea-bred, knew the
+difference.
+
+"Night ull break soon," said Bowlegs.
+
+It did break in an hour or two into a ghastly gray dawn, bitter
+cold,--the slanting bars of sharp light from beyond the sea-line falling
+on the bare coast, on a headland of which moved some black, uneasy
+figures.
+
+"Th' wrackers be thar."
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"Starboard! Hoy, Mother Phebe!"
+
+She swayed her arms round, her head still fallen on her breast. Doctor
+Birkenshead, from his half-shut eyes, could see beside him the
+half-naked, withered old body, in its dripping flannel clothes, God! it
+had come, then, the time to choose! It was she who had saved, him! she
+was here,--alive!
+
+"Mother!" he cried, trying to rise.
+
+But the word died in his dry throat; his body, stiff and icy cold,
+refused to move.
+
+"What ails ye?" growled the man, looking at her. "Be ye giv' out so near
+land? We've had a jolly seinin' together," laughing savagely, "ef we did
+miss the fish we went for, an' brought in this herrin'."
+
+"Thee little brother's safe, Bowlegs," said the old woman, in a feeble,
+far-off voice. "My boy ull bring him to shore."
+
+The boatman gulped back his breath; it sounded like a cry, but he
+laughed it down.
+
+"You think yer Derrick ull make shore, eh? Well, I don't think that ar
+way o' Ben. Ben's gone under. It's not often the water gets a
+ten-year-older like that. I raised him. It was I sent him with Van Note
+this run. That makes it pleasanter now!" The words were grating out
+stern and sharp.
+
+"Thee knows Derrick said he'd come," the woman said simply.
+
+She stooped with an effort, after a while, and, thrusting her hand under
+Doctor Birkenshead's shirt, felt his chest.
+
+"It's a mere patchin' of a body. He's warm yet. Maybe," looking closely
+into the face, "he'd have seen my boy aboord, an' could say which way he
+tuk. A drop of raw liquor ull bring him round."
+
+Phil glanced contemptuously at the surgeon's fine linen, and the diamond
+_solitaire_ on the small, white hand.
+
+"It's not likely that chap ud know the deck-hands. It's the man Doctor
+Dennis was expectin'."
+
+"Ay?" vaguely.
+
+She kept her hand on the feebly beating heart, chafing it. He lay there,
+looking her straight in the eyes; in hers--dull with the love and
+waiting of a life--there was no instinct of recognition. The kind,
+simple, blue eyes, that had watched his baby limbs grow and strengthen
+in her arms! How gray the hair was! but its bit of curl was in it yet.
+The same dear old face that he used to hurry home at night to see!
+Nobody had loved him but this woman,--never; if he could but struggle up
+and get his head on her breast! How he used to lie there when he was a
+big boy, listening to the same old stories night after night,--the same
+old stories! Something homely and warm and true was waking in him
+to-night that had been dead for years and years; this was no matter of
+aesthetics or taste, it was real, _real_. He wondered if people felt in
+this way who had homes, or those simple folk who loved the Lord.
+
+Inch by inch, with hard, slow pulls, they were gaining shore. Mary
+Defourchet was there. If he came to her as the clam-digger's bastard
+son, owning the lie he had practised half his life,--what then? He had
+fought hard for his place in the world, for the ease and culture of his
+life,--most of all, for the society of thorough-bred and refined men,
+his own kindred. What would they say to Derrick Trull, and the mother he
+had kept smothered up so long? All this with his eyes fixed on hers. The
+cost was counted. It was to give up wife and place and fame,--all he had
+earned. It had not been cheaply earned. All Doctor Birkenshead's habits
+and intellect, the million nervous whims of a sensitive man, rebelled
+against the sacrifice. Nothing to battle them down but--what?
+
+"Be ye hurt, Mother Phebe? What d'yer hold yer breath for?"
+
+She evaded him with a sickly smile.
+
+"We're gamin', Bowlegs. It's but a few minutes till we make shore. He'll
+be there, if--if he be ever to come."
+
+"Yes, Gran," with a look of pity.
+
+The wind stood still; it held its breath, as though with her it waited.
+The man strained against the tide till the veins in his brawny neck
+stood out purple. On the bald shore, the dim figures gathered in a
+cluster, eagerly watching. Old Phebe leaned forward, shading her eyes
+with her hand, peering from misty headland to headland with bated
+breath. A faint cheer reached them from land.
+
+"Does thee know the voices, Bowlegs?"--in a dry whisper.
+
+"It be the wreckers."
+
+"Oh!--Derrick," after a pause, "would be too weak to cheer; he'd be worn
+with the swimmin'. Thee must listen sharp. Did they cry my name out? as
+if there was some 'ut for me?"
+
+"No, Mother," gruffly. "But don't ye lose heart after twenty years'
+waitin'."
+
+"I'll not."
+
+As he pulled, the boatman looked over at her steadily.
+
+"I never knowed what this was for ye, till now I've loss Ben," he said,
+gently. "It's as if you'd been lossin' him every day these twenty
+years."
+
+She did not hear him; her eyes, straining, scanned the shore; she seemed
+to grow blind as they came nearer; passed her wet sleeve over them again
+and again.
+
+"Thee look for me, Bowlegs," she said, weakly.
+
+The yawl grated on the shallow waters of the bar; the crowd rushed down
+to the edge of the shore, the black figures coming out distinct now,
+half a dozen of the wreckers going into the surf and dragging the boat
+up on the beach. She turned her head out to sea, catching his arm with
+both hands.
+
+"Be there any strange face to shore? Thee didn't know him. A little
+face, full o' th' laugh an' joke, an' brown curls blown by the wind."
+
+"The salt's in my eyes. I can't rightly see, Mother Phebe."
+
+The surgeon saw Doctor Bowdler waiting, pale and haggard, his fat little
+arms outstretched: the sea had spared him by some whim, then. When the
+men lifted him out, another familiar face looked down on him: it was
+Mary. She had run into the surf with them, and held his head in her
+arms.
+
+"I love you! I love you!" she sobbed, kissing his hand.
+
+"There be a fire up by the bathing-houses, an' hot coffee," said old
+Doctor Dennis, with a kindly, shrewd glance at the famous surgeon. "Miss
+Defourchet and Snap made it for you. _She_ knew you, lying in the
+yawl."
+
+Birkenshead, keeping her hand, turned to the forlorn figure standing
+shivering alone, holding both palms pressed to her temples, her gray
+hair and clothes dripping.
+
+"Thee don't tell me that he's here, Bowlegs," she said. "There might be
+some things the wrackers hes found up in the bathin'-houses. There
+might,--in the bathin'-houses. It's the last day,--it's twenty year"----
+
+Doctor Birkenshead looked down at the beautiful flushed face pressed
+close to his side, then pushed it slowly from him. He went over to where
+the old woman stood, and kneeled beside her in the sand, drawing her
+down to him.
+
+"Mother," he said, "it's Derrick, mother. Don't you know your boy?"
+
+With the words the boy's true spirit seemed to come back to
+him,--Derrick Trull again, who went with such a hot, indignant heart to
+win money and place for the old mother at home. He buried his head in
+her knees, as she crouched over him, silent, passing her hands quickly
+and lightly over his face.
+
+"God forgive me!" he cried. "Take my head in your arms, mother, as you
+used to do. Nobody has loved me as you did. Mother! mother!"
+
+Phebe Trull did not speak one word. She drew her son's head close into
+her trembling old arms, and held it there motionless. It was an old way
+she had of caressing him.
+
+Doctor Dennis drew the eager, wondering crowd away from them.
+
+"I don't understand," said Doctor Bowdler, excitedly.
+
+"I do," said his niece, and, sitting down in the sand, looked out
+steadfastly to sea.----
+
+Bow-legged Phil drove the anchor into the beach, and pulled it idly out
+again.
+
+"I've some 'ut here for you, Phil," said Joe, gravely. "The water washed
+it up."
+
+The fellow's teeth chattered as he took it.
+
+"Well, ye know what it is?" fiercely. "Only a bit of a Scotch
+cap,"--holding it up on his fist. "I bought it down at Port Monmouth,
+Saturday, for him. I was a-goin' to take him home this week up to the
+old folks in Connecticut. I kin take _that_ instead, an' tell 'em whar
+our Benny is."
+
+"That's so," said Joe, his eye twinkling as he looked over Phil's
+shoulder.
+
+A fat little hand slapped the said shoulder, and "Hillo, Bowlegs!" came
+in a small shout in his ear. Phil turned, looked at the boy from head to
+foot, gulped down one or two heavy breaths.
+
+"Hi! you young vagabond, you!" he said, and went suddenly back to his
+anchor, keeping his head down on his breast for a long while.----
+
+He had piled up the sand at her back to make her a seat while they
+waited for the wagons. Now he sat on her skirts, holding her hands to
+warm them. He had almost forgotten Mary and the Doctor. Nature or
+instinct, call it what you will, some subtile whim of blood called love,
+brought the old clam-digger nearer to him than all the rest of the
+world. He held the bony fingers tight, looked for an old ring she used
+to wear, tried to joke to bring out the flicker of a smile on her mouth,
+leaned near to catch her breath. He remembered how curiously sweet it
+used to be, like new milk.
+
+The dawn opened clear and dark blue; the sun yet waited below the stormy
+sea. Though they sat there a long while, she was strangely quiet,--did
+not seem so much afraid of him as she used to be when he began to rise
+above her,--held his hand, with a bright, contented face, and said
+little else than "My boy! my boy!" under her breath. Her eyes followed
+every movement of his face with an insatiate hunger; yet the hesitation
+and quiet in her motions and voice were unnatural. He asked her once or
+twice if she were ill.
+
+"Wait a bit, an' I'll tell thee, Derrick," she said. "Thee must remember
+I'm not as young as I was then," with a smile. "Thee must speak fast, my
+son. I'd like to hear of thee gran' home, if thee's willin'."
+
+He told her, as he would to please a child, of the place and fame and
+wealth he had won; but it had not the effect he expected. Before he had
+finished, the look in her eyes grew vague and distant. Some thought in
+the poor clam-digger's soul made these things but of little moment. She
+interrupted him.
+
+"There be one yonner that loves my boy. I'd like to speak a word to her
+before--Call her, Derrick."
+
+He rose and beckoned to Miss Defourchet. When she came near, and saw the
+old woman's face, she hurried, and, stooping down quickly, took her head
+in her arms.
+
+"Derrick has come back to you," she said. "Will you let him bring me
+with him to call you mother?"
+
+"Mary?"
+
+She did not look at him. Old Phebe pushed her back with a searching
+look.
+
+"Is it true love you'll give my boy?"
+
+"I'll try." In a lower voice,--"I never loved him so well as when he
+came back to you."
+
+The old woman was silent a long time.
+
+"Thee's right. It was good for Derrick to come back to me. I don't know
+what that big world be like where thee an' Derrick's been. The sea keeps
+talkin' of it, I used to think; it's kep' moanin' with the cries of it.
+But the true love at home be worth it all. I knowed that always. I kep'
+it for my boy. He went from it, but it brought him back. Out of the sea
+it brought him back."
+
+He knew this was not his mother's usual habit of speech. Some great
+truth seemed coming closer to the old fish-wife, lifting her forever out
+of her baser self. She leaned on the girl beside her, knowing her, in
+spite of blood and education, to be no truer woman than herself. The
+inscrutable meaning of the eyes deepened. The fine, sad smile came on
+the face, and grew fixed there. She was glad he had come,--that was all.
+Mary was a woman; her insight was quicker.
+
+"Where are you hurt?" she said, softly.
+
+"Hush! don't fret the boy. It was the pullin' last night, think. I'm not
+as strong as when I was a gell."
+
+They sat there, watching the dawn break into morning. Over the sea the
+sky opened into deeps of silence and light. The surf rolled in, in long,
+low, grand breakers, like riders to a battle-field, tossing back their
+gleaming white plumes of spray when they touched the shore. But the wind
+lulled as though something more solemn waited on the land than the sea's
+rage or the quiet of the clouds.
+
+"Does thee mind, Derrick," said his mother, with a low laugh, "how thee
+used to play with this curl ahint my ear? When thee was a bit baby, thee
+begun it. I've kep' it ever since. It be right gray now."
+
+"Yes, mother."
+
+He had crept closer to her now. In the last half-hour his eyes had grown
+clearer. He dared not look away from her. Joe and Bowlegs had drawn
+near, and Doctor Bowdler. They stood silent, with their hats off. Doctor
+Bowdler felt her pulse, but her son did not touch it. His own hand was
+cold and clammy; his heart sick with a nameless dread. Was he, then,
+just too late?
+
+"Yes, I did. I kep' it for thee, Derrick. I always knowed thee'd
+come,"--in a lower voice. "There's that dress, too. I'd like thee to've
+seen me in that; but"----
+
+"Take her hands in yours," whispered Mary.
+
+"Is it thee, my son?"--with a smile. After a long pause,--"I kep' it,
+an' I kep' true love for thee, Derrick. God brought thee back for 't, I
+think. It be the best, after all. He'll bring thee to me for 't at th'
+last, my boy,--my boy!"
+
+As the faint voice lingered and died upon the words, the morning sun
+shone out in clear, calm glory over the still figures on the beach. The
+others had crept away, and left the three alone with God and His great
+angel, in whose vast presence there is no life save Love, no future save
+Love's wide eternity.
+
+
+
+
+MY STUDENT LIFE AT HOFWYL.
+
+
+There flourished, in the heart of the Swiss Republic, during some twenty
+or twenty-five years, commencing about the year 1810, an educational
+institution, in the nature of a private college, which, though it
+attracted much public attention at the time, being noticed with
+commendation, as I remember, in a report made by the Count Capo d'Istria
+to the Emperor Alexander of Russia, yet has never, I think, been
+appreciated at its full deserts, nor generally recognized for the
+admirable institution it was,--unparalleled, in the character of the
+spirit which pervaded it, and in many of the practical results obtained,
+by any establishment for learning that has ever come under my
+observation.
+
+I was educated there, from the age of sixteen or seventeen to twenty.
+Passing into its tranquil scenes from the quiet of home and the hands of
+a private tutor, with the sunny hopes and high ideal and scanty
+experience of youth, much that I found there appeared to me at the time
+but natural and in the ordinary course of things, which now, by the
+light of a life's teachings, and by comparison with the realities as I
+have found them, seems to me, as I look back, rather in the nature of a
+dream of fancy, tinged with the glamour of optimism, than like the
+things one really meets with in the work-a-day world. I say this, after
+making what I think due allowance for the Claude-Lorraine tints in which
+youth is wont to invest its early recollections.
+
+It was one of several public institutions for education founded by the
+benevolent enterprise of a very remarkable man. EMANUEL VON FELLENBERG
+was born of a patrician family of Bern. His father had been a member of
+the Swiss Government, and a friend of the celebrated Pestalozzi,--a
+friendship which descended to the son. His mother was a descendant of
+the stout Van Tromp, the Dutch admiral, who was victor in more than
+thirty engagements, and whose spirit and courage she is said to have
+inherited. To this noble woman young Fellenberg owed ideas of liberty
+and philanthropy beyond the age in which he lived and the aristocratic
+class to which he belonged.
+
+Educated at Colmar and Tuebingen, the years immediately succeeding his
+college life were spent in travels, which brought him, at the age of
+twenty-three, and just after the death of Robespierre, to Paris, where
+he had an opportunity of studying men in the subsiding tumult of a
+terrible revolution.
+
+The result appears to have been a conviction that the true element of
+human progress was to be found less in correction of the adult than in
+training of the youth. His mind imbued with the two great ideas of
+freedom and education, he returned to his native Bern; but taking part
+there against the French, he was banished, remaining in Germany an exile
+for several years, and during that period planning emigration, with
+several friends, to the United States. This intention he abandoned, on
+being recalled to his native country, and there offered important
+diplomatic and military service. In the latter capacity he quelled an
+insurrection of the peasantry in the Oberland; but, prompted by that
+sympathy for the laboring classes which was a strong element in his
+character, he granted these people terms so liberal that his Government
+refused to ratify them, whereupon he threw up his commission, recurring
+to his favorite educational projects, and serving for a time on the
+Board of Education in Bern.
+
+But it soon became apparent that the ideas of his colleagues and himself
+differed too widely to permit united action. They were thinking of the
+commonplace routine of school instruction,--reading, writing,
+arithmetic, and the like. He looked to education as the regenerating
+agent of the world,--that agent without the aid of which liberty runs
+into license, and the rule of the many, as he had witnessed it in
+terror-stricken France, may become one of the worst forms of despotism.
+He looked beyond mere pedagogical routine or formal learning, to the
+living spirit,--to the harmonious development of every human faculty and
+affection, intellectual, moral, spiritual.
+
+Resigning his situation on the Bernese Board of Education, Fellenberg
+expended a large fortune in the purchase of the estate of HOFWYL, about
+two leagues from Bern, and the erection there of the building necessary
+to carry into effect his own peculiar views.
+
+It was a favorite idea of his, that society can be most effectually
+influenced for good by training its extremes in social position: those,
+on the one hand, who are born to wealth and station, whence are usually
+chosen lawgivers, statesmen, leaders of public opinion; and those, on
+the other hand, born to a heritage of ignorance and neglect, and too
+often trained even from tender age to vice and violence. He sought to
+bring these extremes of European society into harmonious relation with
+each other,--to raise the one from hereditary dependence and
+degradation, to imbue the other with healthy ideas of true nobility in
+place of the morbid prejudices of artificial rank. In both these efforts
+he was eminently successful,--in the latter, more so, in my judgment,
+than any educator of his age.
+
+The establishments of Hofwyl proper[A] were, accordingly, two in number,
+quite distinct from each other: the _Vehrli-Knaben_, (Vehrli's boys,) as
+they were called, from the name of their admirable young teacher,
+Vehrli, essentially an agricultural school, on the manual-labor
+principle; and the college, of which it is my chief object to sketch the
+plan and its results. To this latter institution, in consequence of the
+numerous and expensive branches taught and the great number of
+professors employed, (about one to each four students,) those only, with
+few exceptions, could obtain admission whose parents possessed ample
+means,--the exceptions being the sons of a few of Fellenberg's Swiss
+friends, in moderate circumstances, whom, when they showed great
+promise, he admitted with little or no charge. It was by associating
+these with his own children in their studies that the nucleus of this
+college was originally formed.
+
+From their very inception, these projects met with discouragement and
+opposition, especially from the patrician class, to which Fellenberg
+belonged. Even in republican Switzerland, these men held that their rank
+exonerated them from any occupation that savored much of utility; and it
+was with a feeling almost of dishonor to their order that they saw one
+of their number stoop (it was thus they phrased it) to the ignoble task
+of preceptor. It need hardly be said that Fellenberg held on his way,
+undisturbed by the idle noise of prejudice like this.
+
+Into the Vehrli school were received destitute orphans, foundlings, and
+those whose parents were too indigent to provide for their education.
+Their time was divided nearly equally between the labors of the field
+and the lessons of the school. They were trained as farmers and
+teachers. Besides the ordinary branches, they were well grounded in
+botany and drawing, and made great proficiency in vocal music. Vehrli
+devoted himself, heart and soul, to the instruction of these children.
+He worked with them, studied with them, wore the same homely dress,
+partook of the same plain fare, slept in the same dormitory,--in short,
+spent his life wholly among them. After a time his pupils were in great
+request throughout Europe, both as teachers and as agricultural
+superintendents. I found one of them, when many years since I visited
+Holland, intrusted with the care of a public seminary supported by the
+Dutch Government, and his employers highly appreciated his character and
+abilities. The children remained till they were of age, repaying by
+their labor in the latter years a portion of the expenses of their early
+education. Ultimately this school became nearly self-supporting.
+
+Between Vehrli's children, as we used to call them, and ourselves there
+was not much communication. We met occasionally only; but when we did
+meet, there existed the most friendly relations between us. I saw but
+little of the internal arrangements of that establishment, and am
+unable, at this distance of time, to furnish detailed information
+regarding it. I proceed to give some account of the college, of which,
+for three years, I was a student.
+
+Of that little republic it can truly be said, that its tranquillity was
+never disturbed by one dividing prejudice of rank, of country, or of
+religion. We had among our number (usually amounting to one hundred
+students) dukes and princes, some of them related to crowned heads; and
+we had the recipients, already alluded to, of Fellenberg's bounty; but
+not in word or bearing was there aught to mark difference of artificial
+rank. We had Swiss, Germans, Russians, Prussians, Dutch, French,
+Italians, English, and I know not what other nationalities; but not one
+unkindly sentiment or illiberal prejudice arose among us on account of
+birthplace. We had Protestants, Catholics, members of the Greek Church,
+and members of no church at all; but never, in language or feeling, did
+I perceive any shade of coldness or aversion that had its rise in
+theological differences. Fellenberg had succeeded in instilling into our
+little community his own noble principles of republican dignity,
+cosmopolitan amity, and religious toleration.
+
+No one was addressed by his title; and to the tuft-hunters of English
+universities it will appear scarcely credible that I lived several weeks
+as a student at Hofwyl before I accidentally learned who were the
+princes and other nobles, and who the objects of M. de Fellenberg's
+charity. It was, I think, some six weeks or two months after my arrival
+that I was conversing with a good-natured fellow-student, with whom I
+had become well acquainted under his familiar nickname of _Stoesser_. I
+remarked to him that before I reached Hofwyl I had heard that there were
+several noblemen there, and I asked what had become of them.
+
+"Why," said he, smiling, "they are here still."
+
+"Indeed!" said I; "which are they?"
+
+He requested me to guess. I named several of the students who had
+appeared to me to have the greatest consideration among their fellows.
+He shook his head, and laughed. "These are all merchants and commoners.
+Try again." I did so, but with no better success; and at last he named,
+to my surprise, several young men who had seemed to me to have but an
+indifferent share of influence or respect,--among the rest, one who was
+slightingly treated, and avoided rather than sought, by his companions.
+He was the nephew of the King of Wuertemberg.
+
+A day or two afterwards I chanced to learn that the young man whom I had
+thus questioned was himself a Russian prince, grandson of the noted
+Suwaroff,--Catharine's Suwaroff. He had charge of our flock of goats, of
+which I shall by-and-by have occasion to speak; and he took to the
+office very kindly.
+
+In like manner, it might have puzzled me, after a three-years'
+residence, to call to mind whether those with whom I was as intimate as
+with my own brother were Protestants or Catholics or neither; and at
+this distance of time I have forgotten. The reason is simple: we never
+debated on theological subjects at all. M. de Fellenberg read to us
+occasional lectures on religion; but they were practical, not
+doctrinal,--embracing those essentials which belong to all Christian
+sects, thus suiting Protestant and Catholic alike. The Catholics, it is
+true, had from time to time a priest to confess them, who doubtless
+enjoined the regular weekly fast; yet we of the Protestant persuasion
+used, I believe, to eat as much fish and as many frogs on Fridays as
+they.
+
+A striking feature in our system of instruction was the absence of all
+punishment, except such as was self-inflicted, under a code of laws of
+our own, hereafter to be noticed. Twice, or perhaps three times, during
+the term of my residence, one of the pupils, on account of repeated
+inattention, or for similar venial cause, was requested by the
+professor, during the course of the recitation, to leave the room. But
+this was quite an event, to be talked of for a week, so contrary was it
+to the regular, quiet, uncoercing routine of the institution. No
+expulsion ever occurred. I do not myself remember to have received,
+either from M. de Fellenberg or from any of his professors, one harsh
+word during the three happy years I spent at Hofwyl.
+
+The mildness with which the students were treated by their instructors
+reacted upon them in their intercourse with each other. Duels, so common
+among the students of German universities, were an unheard-of absurdity,
+though we had a fencing-master, and took regular lessons in the use of
+the small sword, skill in the management of which was considered an
+indispensable item in the education of a gentleman. Quarrels such as
+elsewhere terminate in blows were scarcely known among us. I recall but
+two, both of which were immediately arrested by the spectators, who felt
+their college dishonored by such an exhibition of evil passion and
+violence. One of these was commenced by a youth coming only two weeks
+before from an English school. The other occurred, one evening when a
+small party of us had assembled in a private room, between a fiery young
+Prussian count and a sturdy, unbending Swiss. The dispute grew warm, and
+was about to proceed to extremities, when we who were by-standers made
+no scruple to terminate it in our own way. We pounced upon the
+disputants without warning, carried them off, each to his own room, on
+our shoulders, and there, with a hearty laugh at their folly, set them
+down to cool. All this was done so suddenly and so good-naturedly that
+they themselves could not refrain from joining in the merriment which so
+whimsical a conclusion to their quarrel had elicited.
+
+I have heard and read much of the pluck and manliness that are supposed
+to grow out of the English habit of settling school quarrels by boxing,
+after the fashion of prize-fighters in the ring. But I do not think it
+would have been a very safe experiment for one of these pugilistic young
+gentlemen to offer an insult to a Hofwyl student, even though the
+manhood of this latter had never been tested by pounding another's face
+with his fist. Brutality and cowardice are often close allies; and his
+anger, when roused, is most to be dreaded, who so bears himself as to
+give no one just cause of offence. Boxing-matches and duels are
+becoming, as they ought to be, like the ordeal by combat, antiquated
+modes of testing the courage or settling the disputes whether of boys or
+men, among the civilized portion of mankind.
+
+But though little prone to quarrel, our indignation, I must confess, was
+sometimes readily enough roused, when occasion called it forth. I
+remember an instance in which, perhaps, the conservative portion of my
+readers may think we carried matters somewhat to an extreme.
+
+It happened that three officers of distinction from the Court of
+Wuertemberg arrived, one day, on a visit to M. de Fellenberg. They
+desired to see their sovereign's nephew, the same Prince Alexander of
+Wuertemberg to whom I have already alluded as being no favorite among us.
+He was accordingly sent for; and the interview took place in an open
+space in front of M. de Fellenberg's _Schloss_, where four or five
+students, of whom I was one, happened to be at the time, not more than
+eight or ten steps distant. The officers, as they approached the Prince,
+uncovered, and stood, during the conversation which ensued, with their
+plumed hats in their hands. The young man, on the contrary, whose silly
+airs had been a chief cause of his unpopularity among us, did not remove
+the little student-cap he wore, but remained covered, without any
+intimation to his visitors to resume their hats.
+
+This was too much for us. "Do look!" said one of our group,--"if there
+isn't that fellow Alexander standing with his cap on, and letting these
+officers talk to him bareheaded!" And then, raising his voice so as to
+be heard by the parties concerned, he said,--"Alexander, take off your
+cap!"
+
+But the cap did not stir. We took a step or two nearer, and another of
+our party said,--
+
+"Alexander, if you don't take that cap off, yourself, I'll come and take
+it off for you."
+
+This time the admonition had effect. The cap was slowly removed, and we
+remained to make sure that it was not resumed, until the officers,
+bowing low, took their leave,--carrying, I fear, to their royal master
+no very favorable report touching the courtly manners of Hofwyl.
+
+It was small marvel that an institution of practice so democratically
+heterodox should awaken the jealousy of European legitimacy. And it was
+probably with feelings more of sorrow than surprise, that Fellenberg,
+about the year 1822, received from the Austrian authorities a formal
+intimation that no Austrian subject would thereafter be allowed to enter
+the college, and an order that those who were then studying there should
+instantly return home. Than this tyrannical edict of the Austrian
+autocrat,[B] the same who did not blush to declare "that he desired to
+have loyal subjects, not learned men, in his dominions," no greater
+compliment could have been paid to Fellenberg or his institutions.
+
+The course of instruction pursued at Hofwyl included the study of the
+Greek, Latin, French, and German languages, the last of which was the
+language of our college,--history, geography, chemistry,
+mechanics,--mathematics, in a thorough course, embracing the highest
+branches,--drawing, and music, vocal and instrumental,--and, finally,
+riding, fencing, and gymnastics. The recitations (_Stunden_, that is,
+_hours_, we called them, for each lasted a single hour only) were
+essentially conversational. The lessons in drawing, however, extended to
+two consecutive hours, and included copying from the antique. There was
+a riding-school and a considerable stud attached to the college; and the
+highest class were in the habit of riding out once a week with M. de
+Fellenberg, many of whose practical life-lessons, given as I rode by his
+side during these pleasant excursions, I well remember yet.
+
+The number of professors was large, compared to that of the taught,
+being from twenty-five to thirty, though the college seldom contained
+more than one hundred students. The number in each class was small,
+usually from ten to fifteen.
+
+Latin and Greek, though thoroughly taught, did not engross the same
+proportion of time which in many other colleges is devoted to them. Not
+more time was given to each than to ancient and modern history, and less
+than to mathematics. This last was a special object of study. It was
+taught, as was history, by extempore lectures, while the students took
+notes in short-hand; and we seldom employed any printed work to aid us,
+in the evening, in making out from recollection, aided by these notes, a
+written statement of the propositions and their solution, to be handed,
+next day, to the professor. This plan impressed on our minds, not indeed
+the exact form of words or the particular set of phrases of the books,
+but the essential principles of the science,--so that, when, in after
+years, amid the business of life, details and demonstrations had faded
+from my memory, I have never found difficulty in working these out
+afresh, and recalling and rearranging them, without aid from books.
+
+One little incident connected with my mathematical studies still comes
+back to me with a pleasant impression. My chief college friend was young
+De Saussure, grandson of the naturalist of that name, who, the first
+with a single exception, reached the summit of Mont Blanc. The subject
+of our lecture was some puzzling proposition in the differential
+calculus, and De Saussure propounded to the professor a knotty
+difficulty in connection with it. The professor replied
+unsatisfactorily. My friend still pressed his point, and the professor
+rejoined very learnedly and ingeniously, but without really meeting the
+case; whereupon De Saussure silently assented, as if quite satisfied.
+
+"You were _not_ satisfied with that explanation," said I to De Saussure,
+as we walked to our rooms.
+
+"Of course not," was his reply; "but would you have had me before the
+class shame the good man who takes so much pains with us and is usually
+so clear-headed? We must work it out ourselves to-night."
+
+This trifle may afford a glimpse of the relation between professor and
+student at Hofwyl. There was no antagonism between them. The former was
+regarded, not as a pedagogue, from whom to stand aloof,--not, because of
+his position of authority, as a natural enemy, to be resisted, so far as
+resistance was safe,--but as an elder friend, whom it was a privilege
+(and it was one often enjoyed) to converse with, out of college hours,
+in a familiar way. During the hours of recreation, the professors
+frequently joined in our games. Nor did I observe that this at all
+diminished the respect we entertained for them or the progress we made
+under their care.
+
+Emulation was limited among us to that which naturally arises among
+young men prosecuting the same studies. It was not artificially excited.
+There were no prizes; there was no taking rank in classes; there was not
+even the excitement of public examinations. Many may think this a
+hazardous experiment. I am not sure whether classical proficiency did
+not, to a certain extent, suffer from it. I am not sure whether some
+sluggards did not, because of it, lag behind. Yet the general
+proficiency in learning was satisfactory; and the student, when he
+entered the world, missed no college excitants, but bore with him a love
+and a habit of study needing no spur, and which insured the continuance
+of education far beyond the term of his college years. For he had
+learned to seek knowledge for itself, for the pleasing occupation it
+brings, for the power it gives, for the satisfaction it leaves behind;
+and he required no more highly seasoned inducements to continue the
+search through life.
+
+Yet it was not the peculiar mode of imparting instruction, nor yet the
+variety, the extent, and the utility of the knowledge acquired, that
+chiefly characterized the institution of the Swiss patriot. It was the
+noble spirit of freedom, the purity of motive, the independence of
+purpose, the honesty of conduct, the kindness of intercourse, the union
+and forbearance and high-spirited republicanism, pervading alike our
+hours of study, of amusement, and of social converse. These it was that
+distinguished Hofwyl; and these it is that still cause its former pupils
+to look back on the years spent within its peaceful precincts as the
+best and the happiest of their lives.
+
+To such results there mainly contributed a remarkable feature in the
+economy of the institution I have been describing,--a feature, so far as
+I know, not adopted in any similar institution, at least to the extent
+to which it was carried by us.
+
+I have said that reward and punishment by the college authorities, or by
+M. de Fellenberg, their head, were virtually excluded from this system.
+Considering the heterogeneous materials that were collected together
+from half the nations of the world, some having been nursed and petted
+in the lap of aristocracy, and others, probably, sent thither because
+their parents could not manage them at home,--considering, too, the
+comparatively late age at which students enter such a college, many of
+them just from schools where severity was the rule and artificial reward
+the stimulant,--considering all this, I doubt whether the mild,
+uncoercing, paternal government of Hofwyl would have been a success, but
+for the peculiarity here referred to coming in aid of our teachers, and
+supplying motives and restraints to ourselves. It was in this wise.
+
+Hofwyl was not only an institution for education, it was also an
+independent, self-governing community. It had its code of laws, its
+council of legislation, its court of judges, its civil and military
+officers, its public treasury. It had its annual elections, by ballot,
+at which each student had a vote,--its privileges, equally accessible to
+all,--its labors and duties, in which all took a share. It proposed and
+debated and enacted its own laws, from time to time modifying them, but
+not often nor radically. It acted independently of the professors, and
+of Fellenberg himself, except that our foster-father (_Pflegevater_, as
+we used to call him) retained a veto, which, however, like Queen
+Victoria, he never exercised. Never, I think, were laws framed with a
+more single eye to the public good, or more strictly obeyed by those who
+framed them.
+
+Nor was this an unwilling obedience, an eye-service constrained by fear
+or force. It was given cheerfully, honestly. We had ourselves assisted
+in framing, and given our votes in enacting, our code of laws. We felt
+them to be our own, and as such it became a point of honor with us to
+conform to them in spirit as in letter.
+
+I know not whether the idea of this juvenile self-regulating republic
+(_Verein_, we called it) originated with Fellenberg or with some of the
+students; but, whatever its origin, I believe it to have been the chief
+lever that raised the moral and social character of our college to the
+height it ultimately attained. It gave birth to public spirit, and to
+social and civic virtues. It nurtured a conscious independence, that
+submitted with pleasure to what it knew to be the will of the whole, and
+felt itself bound to submit to nothing else. It created young
+republicans, and awakened in them that devotion to the public welfare
+and that zeal for the public good, which we seek too often, alas, in
+vain, in older, but not wiser, communities.
+
+When I said that we had no rewards at Hofwyl, I ought to have admitted
+that the annual election to the offices of our _Verein_ acted indirectly
+as a powerful stimulus to industry and good conduct. At these elections
+was to be read, as on a moral thermometer, the graduated scale of public
+opinion. The result of each election informed us with certainty who had
+risen and who had fallen in the estimate of his fellows.
+
+For it was felt that public opinion among us, enlightened and incorrupt,
+operated with strict justice. In that young commonwealth, to deserve
+well of the republic was to win its confidence and obtain testimonial of
+its approbation. There not one sinister motive swayed our
+votes,--neither favoritism, nor envy, nor any selfish inducement. There
+was not even canvassing for favorite candidates. There was quiet,
+dispassionate discussion of respective merits; but the one question
+which the elector asked himself or his neighbor was, "Who can fill most
+efficiently such or such an office?"--the answer to that question
+furnishing the motive for decision. I cannot call to mind a single
+instance, during the three years I passed at Hofwyl, in which even a
+suspicion of an electioneering cabal or other factious proceeding
+attached to an election among us. It can scarcely be said that there
+were candidates for any office. Preferment was, indeed, highly valued,
+as a testimonial of public confidence; but it was not sought, directly
+or indirectly, and was accepted rather as imposing duty than conferring
+privilege. The Lacedemonian, who, when he lost his election as one of
+the Three Hundred, went away rejoicing that there were found in Sparta
+three hundred better men than he, is extolled as a model, of ideal
+virtue. Yet such virtue was matter of common occurrence and of little
+remark at Hofwyl. There were not only one or two, but many among us, who
+would have sincerely rejoiced to find others, more capable than
+themselves, preferred to office in their stead.
+
+All this sounds, I dare say, Utopian and extravagant. As I write, it
+seems to myself so widely at variance with a five-and-twenty years'
+experience of public life, that I should scruple at this distance of
+time to record it, had I not, thirty years ago, when my recollections
+were fresh, noted them down minutely and conscientiously. It avails
+nothing to tell me that such things cannot be,--for at Hofwyl they were.
+I describe a state of society which I witnessed, of which I was myself a
+part.
+
+As partial explanation, I may state, that to office, among us, was
+attached no patronage and no salary.
+
+The proceeds of our public treasury, (_Armenkasse_, we called it,) to
+which each contributed according to his means and inclination, went
+exclusively for the relief of the poor. We had a superintendent of the
+poor, and a committee whose duty it was to visit the indigent families
+in our neighborhood, ascertain their wants and their character, and
+afford them relief, especially in winter. This relief was given in the
+form sometimes of money, sometimes of food, clothing, or furniture; to
+some we furnished goats, selected when in milk from a flock we had, and
+which were left with them for a longer or shorter period. Our fund was
+ample, and I think judiciously dispensed.
+
+The laws and regulations of our _Verein_ extended to the police and the
+moral government of our little community. The students were divided into
+six circles, (_Kreise_,) and for the government of each of these we
+elected a guardian or councillor (_Kreisrath_). These were our most
+important officers,--their province embracing the social life and moral
+deportment of each member of the _Kreis_. This, one might imagine, would
+degenerate into an inquisitorial or intermeddling surveillance; but in
+practice it never did. Each _Kreis_ was a band of friends, and its chief
+was the friend most valued and esteemed among them. It had its weekly
+meetings; and I remember, in all my life, no pleasanter gatherings than
+these. Myself a _Kreisrath_ towards the close of my student life, I bore
+home with me no more valued memorial than a brief letter of farewell,
+expressive of affection and gratitude, signed by each member of the
+_Kreis_.
+
+Our judiciary consisted of a bench of three judges, whose sessions were
+held in our principal hall with all due formality,--two sentinels, with
+swords drawn, guarding the doors. The punishments within its power to
+inflict were a vote of censure, fines, deprivation of the right of
+suffrage, declaration of ineligibility to office, and degradation from
+office. This last punishment was not inflicted on any student during my
+residence at Hofwyl. Trials were very rare; and I do not remember one,
+except for some venial offence. The offender usually pleaded his own
+cause; but, if he preferred it, he might procure a friend to act as his
+advocate.
+
+The dread of public censure, thus declared by sentence after formal
+trial, was great and influential among us. Its power may be judged from
+the following example.
+
+Two German princes, sons of a wealthy nobleman, the Prince of Tour and
+Taxis, having been furnished by their father with a larger allowance of
+pocket-money than they could legitimately spend at Hofwyl, conceived a
+somewhat irregular mode of disposing of part of it. They were in the
+habit of occasionally getting up late at night, after all their comrades
+had retired to rest, and proceeding to the neighboring village of
+Buchsee, there to spend an hour or two in a tavern, smoking and drinking
+_lager-bier_.
+
+Now we had no strict college bounds, and no prohibition against entering
+a tavern, though we knew that M. de Fellenberg objected to our
+contracting the latter habit. Our practice on Sundays may illustrate
+this. That day was strictly kept and devoted to religious exercises
+until midday, when we dined. After dinner it was given up to recreation,
+and our favorite Sunday recreation was, to form into parties of two or
+three and sally forth, _Ziegenhainer_ in hand, on excursions many miles
+into the beautiful and richly cultivated rolling country that surrounded
+us, usually ascending some eminence whence we could command a full view
+of the magnificent Bernese Alps, their summits covered with eternal
+snow. It sometimes happened that on these excursions we were overtaken
+by a storm, or perhaps, having wandered farther than we intended, were
+tired and hungry. In either case, we did not scruple to enter some
+country tavern and procure refreshments there. But whenever we did so,
+it was a custom--not a written law, but a custom sanctioned by all our
+college traditions--to visit, on our return, the professor who had
+charge of the domestic department of our institution,--a short, stout,
+middle-aged man, the picture of good-humor, but not deficient in
+decision and energy when occasion demanded,--it was our uniform custom
+to call upon this gentleman, Herr Lippe, and inform him that we _had_
+visited such or such a tavern, and the occasion of our doing so. A
+benignant smile, and his usual "It is very well, my sons," closed such
+interviews.
+
+But the use of tobacco--passing strange, that, in a German college!--was
+forbidden by our rules; so also was a departure, after the usual hour of
+rest, from the college buildings, except for good reason shown. Thus Max
+and Fritz Taxis (so the youths were called) had become offenders,
+amenable to justice.
+
+The irregularity of which they had been guilty, the only one of the kind
+I recollect, became known accidentally to one of our number. There
+existed among us not even the name of informer; it was considered a duty
+to give notice to the proper authorities of any breach of our laws. This
+was accordingly done in the present instance; and the brothers were
+officially notified that on the following day their case would be
+brought up, and they would be heard in their own defence. The elder of
+the two, Max, held some minor office; and the sentence would probably
+have been a vote of censure or a fine for both, and a forfeiture of the
+office in the case of the elder brother. But this was more than they
+could make up their minds to bear. Accordingly, the night previous to
+their trial, they decamped secretly, hired a carriage at a neighboring
+village, and, being well provided with money, returned to their parents.
+
+We afterwards ascertained that M. de Fellenberg did not send after them,
+in pursuit or otherwise,--did not even write to their parents, but
+suffered the fugitives to tell their own story in their own way.
+
+The result was, that in a few weeks the father came, bringing with him
+the runaways, and asking, as a favor, that M. de Fellenberg would once
+more make trial of them,--which he very willingly did. They were
+received by us with kindness, and no allusion was ever made to the cause
+of their absence. They remained several years, quiet and law-abiding
+members of our _Verein_, but neither attained to any office of trust
+again.
+
+Our recreations consisted of public games, athletic exercises,
+gymnastics, and--what was prized above all--an annual excursion on foot,
+of about six weeks' duration.
+
+One of our most favorite amusements in the way of athletic exercise was
+throwing the lance (_Lanzenwerfen_.) The weapons used were stout ashen
+spears, from six to seven feet long, heavily shod with iron, and
+sharp-pointed; the target, a squared log of hard wood firmly set in the
+ground, about six feet high,--the upper portion, or head, which it was
+the chief object to hit, a separate block, attached to the trunk by
+stout hinges. This exercise required great strength as well as skill. A
+dozen or more engaged in it at a time, divided into two sides of
+supposed equal force; and the points gained by each stroke were
+reckoned according to its power and accuracy,--double, if the head was
+struck, and one point added whenever the spear remained fixed in the
+wood without touching the ground. We attained great skill in this
+exercise.
+
+We had fencing-lessons twice a week; and there were many swordsmen in
+the elder classes who need not have feared any ordinary antagonist. Of
+this a fencing-master from a neighboring Canton, on occasion of a visit
+to our teacher, had one day tangible and somewhat mortifying proof.
+
+Much has been said, sometimes in ridicule, sometimes in condemnation, of
+gymnastic exercises. We spent an hour a day, just before dinner, in the
+gymnasium. And my three-years' experience induces me to regard these
+exercises, judiciously conducted, not only as beneficial, but
+indispensable to a complete system of education. They are to the body
+what intellectual labors are to the mind. They produce a vigor, an
+agility, an address, a hardihood, a presence of mind in danger, which I
+have never seen attained to the same extent under any other
+circumstances. They fortify the health and strengthen the nerves. Their
+mental and moral influence, also, is great. My observation convinces me
+that they equalize the spirits, invigorate the intellect, and calm the
+temper. I am witness to the fact that no one among the Hofwyl students
+was injured by them in any way, and that very many acquired a strength
+and an address that astonished themselves. I myself had been in feeble
+health for several years before my arrival; yet I left Hofwyl, not only
+perfectly well, but athletic; and I have not had a serious illness
+since. I cannot believe, that, under a well-regulated system, gymnastics
+cause injury or expose to danger.
+
+Our annual excursions, which were undertaken in the charming autumn of
+that bright and beautiful climate, by those among our students who, like
+myself, were too far from home to return thither during the holidays,
+were looked forward to, for weeks, with brilliant anticipations of
+pleasure, which, strange to say, were realized. Our favorite professor,
+Herr Lippe, accompanied us on these expeditions. Our number was commonly
+from thirty to thirty-five.
+
+It was usually about the first of August, that, equipped in the plain
+student-costume of the college, with knapsack on shoulder, and long,
+iron-shod mountain-staff in hand, we went forth, an exultant party, on
+"the journey," as we called it. Previously to our departure, Herr Lippe,
+at a public meeting of the intended excursionists, had chalked out for
+us the proposed route; and when we found, as on two occasions land to
+the lakes of Northern Italy, our enthusiasm broke forth in bursts of
+applause.
+
+Our usual day's journey was eighteen or twenty miles, sometimes
+twenty-five or even more. We breakfasted very early, walked till about
+midday, when we sought some shady nook where we could enjoy a lunch of
+bread and wine, with grapes, or goat's-milk cheese, when these luxuries
+could be procured. Then we despatched, in advance, some of our best
+pedestrians, as commissariat of the party, to order supper preparatory
+to our arrival. How joyfully we sat down to that evening meal! How we
+talked over the events of the day, the magnificent scenes we had passed
+through, the little adventures we had met with! The small country
+taverns seldom furnished more than six or eight beds; so that more than
+three fourths of our number usually slept in some barn well furnished
+with hay or straw. How soundly we slept, and how merry the awaking!
+There were among us, as among German students there always are,
+excellent musicians, well-trained to sing their stirring national airs,
+or gems from the best operas, or the like,--duets, trios, quartets.
+After our frugal noonday meal in the shade, or perhaps when we had
+surmounted some mountain-pass, and came suddenly, as we reached the
+verge of the descent, upon some magnificent expanse of valley or
+champaign scenery stretching out far beneath us, it was our habit to
+call a halt for music. The fresh grass, dotted, perhaps, with Alpine
+roses, furnished seats; and our vocalists drawing from their knapsacks
+the slender _cahier_ containing melodies expressly selected for the
+occasion and arranged in parts, we had, under the most charming
+circumstances, an impromptu concert. I have heard much better music
+since, but never any that I enjoyed more.
+
+On one of these excursions we passed by Napoleon's wonderful road, the
+Simplon, into one of the most beautiful regions of Italy. The first
+night at Baveno was delicious. The soft Italian air,--the moonlight on
+the placid lake, on the softly rounded olive-clad hills, on the
+trellised vines, so picturesque, compared to the formal vineyards of
+France,--all in such contrast to the giant mountain-peaks of granite,
+snow-covered, cutting through the clouds, the vast glacier, bristling
+with ice-blocks, sliding-down, an encroacher on the valley's
+verdure,--in such marvellous contrast to all that region of rock and ice
+and mountain-torrent and rugged path, and grand, rude, wild majesty of
+aspect, it seemed like passing in a single day into another and a
+gentler world.
+
+Then came the quiet excursions on the lakes,--Lugano, Maggiore, Como:
+such a rest to our blistered feet! Those blisters _were_ a drawback; but
+what episode in human life has none? We strayed through the lime-groves
+of the Isola Bella, where I exchanged the few words of Italian of which
+I was master with a fair and courteous madonna who crossed our
+path,--ascended, by clambering up within one of the folds of the Saint's
+short mantle, the gigantic bronze statue of the holy Borromeo, sat down
+inside the head, and looked out through the eyebrows on the lake under
+whose waters lies buried the wide-brimmed shovel-hat which once covered
+the shaven crown, but was swept off by the storm-wind one winter night.
+
+Throughout the term of these charming excursions the strictest order was
+observed. And herein was evinced the power of that honorable
+party-spirit prevalent among us, which imposed on every one of us a
+certain charge as to the good conduct of the whole,--making each, as it
+were, alive to the faults and responsible for the misconduct of our
+little community. Rude noise, unseemly confusion, the least approach to
+dissipation at a tavern, or any other violation of propriety on the
+road, would have been considered as an insult to the college. And thus
+it happened that we established throughout Switzerland a character for
+decorum such as no other institution ever obtained.
+
+Nor did influences thus salutary cease with the term of our college
+life. So far as I know anything of the after fortunes of my college
+mates, they did honor to their alma mater,--if older and more learned
+foundations will not grudge our institution that name. As a body, they
+were distinguished for probity and excellent conduct; some attained
+eminence. Even that Alexander of Wuertemberg, whom we so lightly
+esteemed, I afterwards heard spoken of as one of the most estimable
+young princes of the court he graced. Seven years ago I met at Naples
+(the first time since I left Hofwyl) our quondam Master of the Goats,
+now an officer of the Emperor of Russia's household, and governor of one
+of the Germano-Russian provinces. We embraced after the hearty German
+fashion,--still addressed each other, as of old, with the familiar _du_
+and _dich_,--sat down, forgetting the present, and were soon deep in
+college reminiscences, none the less interesting that they were more
+than thirty years old.
+
+Over these old reminiscences I find myself lingering. Yet they have
+stretched already, perhaps, as far as may interest others. With me they
+have left a blessing,--a belief which existing abuses cannot shake nor
+worldly skepticisms destroy: an abiding faith in human virtue and in
+social progress.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] There was, besides, a primary school for boys up to the age of
+twelve of thirteen at Diemerswyl, some miles from Hofwyl; and there had
+been originally a normal school, which, though popular among the
+teachers of Switzerland, gave umbrage to the Government, and was merged
+in the Vehrli institution.
+
+[B] Francis II., Metternich-led. His words were: "Je ne veux pas des
+savants dans mes Etats; je veux des bons sujets."
+
+
+
+
+THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE.
+
+
+    Where the Great Lake's sunny smiles
+    Dimple round its hundred isles,
+    And the mountain's granite ledge
+    Cleaves the water like a wedge,
+    Ringed about with smooth, gray stones,
+    Rest the giant's mighty bones.
+
+    Close beside, in shade and gleam,
+    Laughs and ripples Melvin stream;
+    Melvin water, mountain-born,
+    All fair flowers its banks adorn;
+    All the woodland's voices meet,
+    Mingling with its murmurs sweet.
+
+    Over lowlands forest-grown,
+    Over waters island-strown,
+    Over silver-sanded beach,
+    Leaf-locked bay and misty reach,
+    Melvin stream and burial-heap,
+    Watch and ward the mountains keep.
+
+    Who that Titan cromlech fills?
+    Forest-kaiser, lord o' the hills?
+    Knight who on the birchen tree
+    Carved his savage heraldry?
+    Priest o' the pine-wood temples dim,
+    Prophet, sage, or wizard grim?
+
+    Rugged type of primal man,
+    Grim utilitarian,
+    Loving woods for hunt and prowl,
+    Lake and hill for fish and fowl,
+    As the brown bear blind and dull
+    To the grand and beautiful:
+
+    Not for him the lesson drawn
+    From the mountains smit with dawn.
+    Star-rise, moon-rise, flowers of May,
+    Sunset's purple bloom of day,--
+    Took his life no hue from thence,
+    Poor amid such affluence?
+
+    Haply unto hill and tree
+    All too near akin was he:
+    Unto him who stands afar
+    Nature's marvels greatest are;
+    Who the mountain purple seeks
+    Must not climb the higher peaks.
+
+    Yet who knows in winter tramp,
+    Or the midnight of the camp,
+    What revealings faint and far,
+    Stealing down from moon and star,
+    Kindled in that human clod
+    Thought of destiny and God?
+
+    Stateliest forest patriarch,
+    Grand in robes of skin and bark,
+    What sepulchral mysteries,
+    What weird funeral-rites, were his?
+    What sharp wail, what drear lament,
+    Back scared wolf and eagle sent?
+
+    Now, whate'er he may have been,
+    Low he lies as other men;
+    On his mound the partridge drums,
+    There the noisy blue-jay comes;
+    Rank nor name nor pomp has he
+    In the grave's democracy.
+
+    Part thy blue lips, Northern lake!
+    Moss-grown rocks, your silence break!
+    Tell the tale, thou ancient tree!
+    Thou, too, slide-worn Ossipee!
+    Speak, and tell us how and when
+    Lived and died this king of men!
+
+    Wordless moans the ancient pine;
+    Lake and mountain give no sign;
+    Vain to trace this ring of stones;
+    Vain the search of crumbling bones:
+    Deepest of all mysteries,
+    And the saddest, silence is.
+
+    Nameless, noteless, clay with clay
+    Mingles slowly day by day;
+    But somewhere, for good or ill,
+    That dark soul is living still;
+    Somewhere yet that atom's force
+    Moves the light-poised universe.
+
+    Strange that on his burial-sod
+    Harebells bloom, and golden-rod,
+    While the soul's dark horoscope
+    Holds no starry sign of hope!
+    Is the Unseen with sight at odds?
+    Nature's pity more than God's?
+
+    Thus I mused by Melvin side,
+    While the summer eventide
+    Made the woods and inland sea
+    And the mountains mystery;
+    And the hush of earth and air
+    Seemed the pause before a prayer,--
+
+    Prayer for him, for all who rest,
+    Mother Earth, upon thy breast,--
+    Lapped on Christian turf, or hid
+    In rock-cave or pyramid:
+    All who sleep, as all who live,
+    Well may need the prayer, "Forgive!"
+
+    Desert-smothered caravan,
+    Knee-deep dust that once was man,
+    Battle-trenches ghastly piled,
+    Ocean-floors with white bones tiled,
+    Crowded tomb and mounded sod,
+    Dumbly crave that prayer to God.
+
+    Oh, the generations old
+    Over whom no church-bells tolled,
+    Christless, lifting up blind eyes
+    To the silence of the skies!
+    For the innumerable dead
+    Is my soul disquieted.
+
+    Where be now these silent hosts?
+    Where the camping-ground of ghosts?
+    Where the spectral conscripts led
+    To the white tents of the dead?
+    What strange shore or chartless sea
+    Holds the awful mystery?
+
+    Then the warm sky stooped to make
+    Double sunset in the lake;
+    While above I saw with it,
+    Range on range, the mountains lit;
+    And the calm and splendor stole
+    Like an answer to my soul.
+
+    Hear'st thou, O of little faith,
+    What to thee the mountain saith,
+    What is whispered by the trees?--
+    "Cast on God thy care for these;
+    Trust Him, if thy sight be dim:
+    Doubt for them is doubt of Him.
+
+    "Blind must be their close-shut eyes
+    Where like night the sunshine lies,
+    Fiery-linked the self-forged chain
+    Binding ever sin to pain,
+    Strong their prison-house of will,
+    But without He waiteth still.
+
+    "Not with hatred's undertow
+    Doth the Love Eternal flow;
+    Every chain that spirits wear
+    Crumbles in the breath of prayer;
+    And the penitent's desire
+    Opens every gate of fire.
+
+    "Still Thy love, O Christ arisen,
+    Yearns to reach these souls in prison!
+    Through all depths of sin and loss
+    Drops the plummet of Thy cross!
+    Never yet abyss was found
+    Deeper than that cross could sound!"
+
+    Therefore well may Nature keep
+    Equal faith with all who sleep,
+    Set her watch of hills around
+    Christian grave and heathen mound,
+    And to cairn and kirkyard send
+    Summer's flowery dividend.
+
+    Keep, O pleasant Melvin stream,
+    Thy sweet laugh in shade and gleam!
+    On the Indian's grassy tomb
+    Swing, O flowers, your bells of bloom!
+    Deep below, as high above,
+    Sweeps the circle of God's love.
+
+
+
+
+ICE AND ESQUIMAUX.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+TERRA INCOGNITA.
+
+Labrador, geologists tell us, is the oldest portion of the American
+Continent. It was also, and aside from the visits of the Scandinavians,
+the first to be discovered by Europeans,--the Cabots having come to land
+here more than a year before Columbus found the tropic mainland on his
+third voyage. And to-day it is that part of the continent which has been
+least explored. No one, to my knowledge, has ever crossed it: perhaps no
+one could do so. I am not aware that any European has penetrated it
+deeply. Hinds pushed up some hundred and fifty miles from the Gulf
+coast, and thought this feat one which deserved two octavos of
+commemoration. The coast, for some four hundred miles in extent, is
+visited annually by hosts of fishermen; but twenty miles from tide-water
+it is as little known to them as to the Bedouins.
+
+We are now, however, able to affirm that the interior is all one immense
+elevated plateau. Information which I obtained from an elderly
+missionary at Hopedale, together with numerous indications that an
+intelligent naturalist would know how to construe, enabled P---- to
+determine this fact with confidence. It is a table-land "varying from
+five to twenty-five hundred feet in height." Here not a tree grows, not
+a blade of grass, only lichens and moss, What a vast and terrible waste
+it must be! Where else upon the earth are all the elements of desolation
+so combined? The missionary in question had penetrated to the borders of
+this _cold_ desert and looked out over it. "No up _und_ down," he said.
+"No dree. Notting grow. All level."
+
+Within some one hundred and fifty miles of the coast this terrible
+table-land breaks up into wild hills, separated by valleys that plunge
+down suddenly, in rocky steeps, from the heights, more gorges than
+valleys. These hills are all fearfully scarred. One sees in them
+abundant record of the Titanic old-time warfare between rock and ice. A
+prodigious contest it was. Sometimes the top of a hill--clean, live
+rock--was sliced off, as with a knife. "Like the tops of our conical
+cheeses, when they came to the table," said P----
+
+The valleys are wooded with fir, spruce, larch, and, more to the south,
+with birch. At a distance from the sea and in favorable situations these
+trees grow to good forest size, even beyond the middle latitudes of
+Labrador. In latitude 53 deg. a resident told me that trees were found
+eighteen inches in diameter. This statement was derided when I told it
+on board, and the witty Judge kept the table in a roar for half an hour
+with pleasantries about it. But at Hopedale, two and a half degrees
+farther north, we learned that sticks of timber fifty feet in length
+were often brought to the station; while one had found its way there
+which was fifty-six feet long and ten inches in diameter at the smaller
+end.
+
+Toward the sea these forests dwindle, till on the immediate coast they
+wholly disappear. At Caribou Island, which, the reader will remember, is
+_south_ of the Strait of Belle Isle, I found in a ravine some sadly
+stunted spruces, firs, and larches, not more than three feet
+high,--melancholy, wind-draggled, frightened-looking shrubs, which had
+wondrously the air of lifelong ill-usage. The tangled tops were mostly
+flattened and pressed over to one side, and altogether they seemed so
+piteous, that one wished to say, "Nobody shall do so to you any more,
+poor things!" Excepting these, the immediate coast, for five or six
+hundred miles that we skirted it, was absolutely treeless.
+
+Up in the bays, however, trees were found, and, curiously enough, they
+were larger and more plentiful in high latitudes than farther south.
+This puzzled me much at first. Evidently, however, it was due in part to
+the nature of the rock. At Sleupe Harbor, latitude 51 deg., this was
+granite;[C] farther on it was sienite; then the sienite showed a strong
+predominance of feldspar; then it became an impure Labradorite; then
+passed into gneiss; the gneiss became soft, stratified, and frequently
+intersected by trap;--and with every softer quality of rock there was an
+improvement in vegetation. This was particularly observable at L'Anse du
+Loup, where there is a red sandstone formation extending some miles
+along the sea and a mile or two inland. Here we seemed suddenly
+transported to a Southern climate, so soft was the scenery, so green the
+surface. The effect was enhanced by the aspect of the sandstone cliff,
+which, in alternating horizontal shades of red, fronts the sea, with a
+vertical height of three hundred feet for the whole extent of this
+formation,--so ruddy and glowing under the sunshine, as we sailed past,
+that one felt warmed by the sight, But a little farther back rose the
+same old hard-hearted hills, cold, broken, and bare as ever.
+
+But the difference in soil does not wholly explain the difference in
+vegetation. In the mission-garden at Caribou Island next to nothing will
+grow; in the garden at Hopedale, four degrees farther north, though the
+rock here is very hard, I found half an acre of potatoes in blossom, the
+tops about six inches high, together with beets, carrots, cabbages,
+onions, nice currant-bushes, and rhubarb growing luxuriantly. These are
+all started under cover, and are not set out in the garden until toward
+the end of June, and a great deal of Esquimaux labor must go to their
+production; yet it is doubtful whether the same pains would bring about
+the same result at the Caribou station.
+
+It is the sea that dooms Labrador, and the relation of the coast to this
+does much to determine its fertility, or rather its barrenness. Half way
+across the ocean, in latitude 54 deg., Captain Linklater found the
+temperature of the water 54 deg., Fahrenheit; near the Labrador coast, in
+the same latitude, the temperature was but 34 deg., two degrees only above
+the freezing point! It is in facts like this that one gets a key to the
+climate not only of Labrador, but of Eastern North America. Out of the
+eternal ice of the North the current presses down along the coast,
+chilling land and air wherever it touches. Where the coast retreats
+somewhat, and is well barricaded with islands, the rigor of the climate
+is mitigated; where it lies fully exposed to the Arctic current, even
+though much farther south, the life is utterly chilled out of it. Now
+Hopedale lies behind a rampart of islands twenty miles deep; while the
+portion of the Arctic current which splits off at the head of
+Newfoundland, and pushes down through the strait, presses close past
+Caribou Island. This explains the sterility of the latter.
+
+The Arctic current varies much in different years, not only in the
+amount of ice it brings, but also in its direction. Unexpected effects
+depend upon this variation. It will be remembered that in 1863 several
+ships were wrecked on Cape Race, owing to some "unaccountable"
+disturbance of the currents. The Gulf Stream, it was found at length,
+ran thirty miles farther north than usual. _Was_ this unaccountable?
+When Captain Handy, our whaling Mentor, was penetrating Hudson's Strait
+in June, 1863, he found vast headlands of floe ice resting against the
+land, and pushing far out to sea.
+
+"Mr. Bailey," said he to his mate, "there will be many wrecks on Cape
+Race this year."
+
+The prediction was fulfilled. Do you see why it should be?
+
+The floe ice rose ten feet above the water; it therefore extended near
+one hundred feet beneath. At this depth it acted upon the current
+precisely as if it were land, pushing the former far to the east. The
+current, therefore, did not meet and repel the Gulf Stream at the usual
+point; and the latter was thus at liberty to press on beyond its custom
+to the north. Captain Handy not only saw the facts before him, but
+reasoned upon them. Even when these immense bodies of ice do not rest
+upon the land, they produce the same effect. At the depth of a hundred
+feet they go below the current into the still water or counter current
+beneath, and thus still resist the surface flow.
+
+The coast of Labrador has no fellow for sternness and abruptness on the
+earth. Huge headlands, stubborn cliffs, precipitous hills rise suddenly
+from the sea, bold, harsh, immitigable, yet softened by their aspect of
+gray endurance. Hacked and scored, tossed, fissured, and torn,
+weather-beaten and bleached, their bluntness becomes grave, their
+hardness pathetic. About their caverned bases the billow thunders in
+perpetual assault, proclaiming the purpose of the sea to reclaim what it
+has lost. Above, the frost inserts its potent lever, and flings down
+from time to time some bellowing fragment to its ally below. The shores,
+as if to escape from this warfare, hurry down, and plunge to quiet
+depths of ocean, where the surge never heaves, nor frost, even by the
+deep ploughshare of its icebergs, can reach. It is, indeed, a terrible
+coast, and remains to represent that period in Nature when her powers
+were all Titanic, untamed,--playing their wild game, with hills for
+toss-coppers and seas for soap-bubbles, or warring with the elements
+themselves for weapons.
+
+The harbors are very deep. In some twenty that we visited there was but
+a single exception. In fact, it is commonly only in little coves boxed
+up by high walls of rock, where one side threatens the ship's bowsprit
+and the other her stern, that an ordinary cable will reach bottom. You
+anchor in a granite tub, where one hardly dares lean over the rail for
+fear of bumping his head against the cliffs, and see half your chain
+spin out before ground is touched. Jack sometimes wonders, as the cable
+continues to rush through the hawse-hole, whether he has not dropped
+anchor into a hole through the earth, and speculates upon the
+probability of fishing up a South-Sea island when he shall again heave
+at the windlass.
+
+A Labrador summer has commonly a brief season during which the heat
+seems to Englishmen "intense," and even to an American noticeable.
+Captain French, the old pilot, told me that he had been at Indian Harbor
+(far to the north) when for three weeks an awning over the deck was
+absolutely necessary, and when a fish left in the sun an hour would be
+spoiled. Last summer, however, was the coldest and rainiest known for
+many years. Once the thermometer rose to 73 deg., Fahrenheit, once again to
+70 deg., but five days in six it did not at nine in the morning vary more
+than two or three degrees from 42 deg., and half the time the mercury would
+be found precisely at this mark. The lowest temperature observed was
+34 deg. This was on the 28th and 29th of July, when we had a furious
+snow-storm, which lasted twenty-four hours, with twelve hours of wild
+rain, sleet, and hail interposed. In consequence of this rain and of the
+constant melting, there remained on the steep hillsides only three
+inches' depth of snow when the storm ceased, though in the hollows it
+was found a foot deep. In the deeper ravines the snow of winter lasts
+through the year, and was found by us in the middle of August.
+
+We were, however, treated to a few days which left no room for a wish:
+for the best day of a Labrador summer is the best day of all summers
+whatsoever. Herodotus says that Ionia was allowed to possess the finest
+climate of all the world; and in Smyrna I believed him, for there were
+May days when each breath seemed worth one's being born to enjoy. But
+all days yield to those of Labrador when the better genius of its
+climate prevails. Then one feels the serenity of power, then all his
+blood is exalted and pure, and the globules sail through his veins like
+rich argosies before trade-winds. Then an irritable haste and a weak
+lassitude are alike impossible; one's nerves are made of a metal finer
+than steel, and he becomes truly a lord in Nature.
+
+It was on such a day that we ran some fifty miles through a passage,
+resembling a river, between islands and the main. The wind blew warm and
+vigorous from the land,--sometimes, when it came to us without passing
+over considerable spaces of water, seeming positively hot, as if it came
+from an oven; yet in such an atmosphere one felt that he could live
+forever, either in an oven or in the case of an iceberg, and wish only
+to live there forever! A great fleet of schooners was pushing swiftly
+along this passage, on its way to fishing-grounds in the North; and as
+we flew past one and another, while the astonished crews gathered at the
+side to stare at our speed, our schooner seemed the very genius of
+Victory, and our wishes to be supreme powers. I have never elsewhere
+experienced so _cool_ and perfect an exhilaration,--physical
+exhilaration, that is.
+
+In the early afternoon a dense haze filled the sky. The sun, seen
+through this, became a globe of glowing ruby, and its glade on the sea
+looked as if the water had been strown, almost enough to conceal it,
+with a crystalline ruby dust, or with fine mineral _spiculae_ of
+vermilion bordering upon crimson. The peculiarity of this ruddy dust was
+that it seemed to possess _body_, and, while it glowed, did not in the
+smallest degree dazzle,--as if the brilliancy of each ruby particle came
+from the heart of it rather than from the surface. The effect was in
+truth indescribable, and I try to suggest it with more sense of
+helplessness than I have felt hitherto in preparing these papers. It was
+beautiful _beyond_ expression,--any expression, at least, which is at
+my command.
+
+Such a spectacle, I suppose, one might chance to see anywhere, though
+the chance certainly never occurred to me before. It could scarcely have
+escaped me through want of attention, for I could well believe myself a
+child of the sun, so deep an appeal to my feeling is made by effects of
+light and color: light before all.
+
+But the atmosphere of Labrador has its own secret of beauty, and charms
+the eye with aspects which one may be pardoned for believing
+incomparable in their way. The blue of distant hills and mountains, when
+observed in clear sunshine, is subtile and luminous to a degree that
+surpasses admiration. I have seen the Camden Heights across the waters
+of Penobscot Bay when their blue was equally profound; for these hills,
+beheld over twenty miles or more of sea, do a wonderful thing in the way
+of color, lifting themselves up there through all the long summer days,
+a very marvel of solemn and glorious beauty. The AEgean Sea has a charm
+of atmosphere which is wanting to Penobscot Bay, but the hue of its
+heights cannot compare with that of the Camden Hills. Those of Labrador,
+however, maintain their supremacy above even these,--above all. They
+look like frozen sky. Or one might fancy that a vast heart or core of
+amethyst was deeply overlaid with colorless crystal, and shone through
+with a softened, lucent ray. Such transparency, such _intense_ delicacy,
+such refinement of hue! Sometimes, too, there is seen in the deep
+hollows, between the lofty billows of blue, a purple that were fit to
+clothe the royalty of immortal kings, while the blue itself is flecked
+as it were with a spray of white light, which one might guess to be a
+precipitate of sunshine.
+
+This was wonderful; but more wonderful and most wonderful was to come.
+It was given me once and once again to look on a vision, an enchantment,
+a miracle of all but impossible beauty, incredible until seen, and even
+when seen scarcely to be credited, save by an act of faith. We had
+sailed up a deep bay, and cast anchor in a fine large harbor of the
+exactest horseshoe shape. It was bordered immediately by a gentle ridge
+some three hundred feet high, which was densely wooded with spruce, fir,
+and larch. Beyond this ridge, to the west, rose mountainous hills, while
+to the south, where was the head of the harbor, it was overlooked
+immediately by a broad, noble mountain. It had been one of those
+white-skied days, when the heavens are covered by a uniform filmy
+fleece, and the light comes as if it had been filtered through milk. But
+just before sunset this fleece was rent, and a river of sunshine
+streamed across the ridge at the head of the harbor, leaving the
+mountain beyond, and the harbor itself, with its wooded sides, still in
+shadow. And where that shine fell, the foliage changed from green to a
+glowing, luminous red-brown, expressed with astonishing force,--not a
+trace, not a hint of green remaining! Beyond it, the mountain preserved
+its whited gray; nearer, on either side, the woods stood out in clear
+green; and separated from these by the sharpest line, rose this ridge of
+enchanted forest. You will incline to think that one might have seen
+through this illusion by trying hard enough. But never were the colors
+in a paint-pot more definite and determined.
+
+This was but the beginning. I had turned away, and was debating with
+myself whether some such color, seen on the Scotch and English hills,
+had not given the hint for those uniform browns which Turner in his
+youth copied from his earlier masters. When I looked back, the sunshine
+had flooded the mountain, and was bathing it all in the purest rose-red.
+Bathing it? No, the mountain was solidly converted, transformed to that
+hue! The power, the simplicity, the translucent, shining depth of the
+color were all that you can imagine, if you make no abatements, and task
+your imagination to the utmost. This roseate hue no rose in the garden
+of Orient or Occident ever surpassed. Small spaces were seen where the
+color became a pure ruby, which could not have been more lustrous and
+intense, had it proceeded from a polished ruby gem ten rods in
+dimension. Color could go no farther. Yet if the eye lost these for a
+moment, it was compelled somewhat to search for them,--so powerful, so
+brilliant was the rose setting in which they were embosomed.
+
+One must remember how near at hand all this was,--not more than a mile
+or two away. Rock, cavern, cliff, all the details of rounded swell,
+rising peak, and long descending slope, could be seen with entire
+distinctness. The mountain rose close upon us, broad, massive,
+real,--but all in this glorious, this truly ineffable transformation. It
+was not distance that lent enchantment here. It was not _lent_; it was
+real as rock, as Nature; it confronted, outfaced, overwhelmed you; for,
+enchantment so immediate and on such a scale of grandeur and
+gorgeousness,--who could stand up before it?
+
+In sailing out of the bay, next day, we saw this and the neighbor
+mountain under noon sunshine. (Lat. 55 deg. 20'.) They were the handsomest
+we saw, apparently composed in part of some fine mineral, perhaps pure
+Labradorite. In the full light of day these spaces shone like polished
+silver. My first impression was that they must be patches of snow, but a
+glance at real spots of snow corrected me. These last, though more
+distinctly white, had not the high, soft, silver shine of the mineral.
+Doubtless it was these mountain-gems which, under the magic touch of
+sunset light, had the evening before appeared like vast rubies, blazing
+amidst the rose which surrounded them.
+
+And this evening the spectacle of the preceding one was repeated, though
+more distantly and on a larger scale. Ph---- thought it the finer of the
+two. Far away the mountain height towered, a marvel of aerial blue,
+while broad spurs reaching out on either side were clothed, the one in
+shiny rose-red, the other in ethereal roseate tints super-imposed upon
+azure; and farther away, to the southeast, a mountain range lay all in
+solid carmine along the horizon, as if the earth blushed at the touch of
+heaven.
+
+"I invite and announce the mountains which possess pure brightness,
+which have much brightness, created by Mazda, pure, lords of purity." So
+sang the Zarathustrian priest, chanting the Vispereds of the
+Avesta,--deep-hearted child of the world, himself now shining on the
+far-away horizon of human history.
+
+All the wildness and waste, all the sternest desolations of the whole
+earth, brought together to wed and enhance each other, and then relieved
+by splendor without equal, perhaps, in the world,--that is Labrador.
+
+I have dreamed that it was created on this wise. Ahriman, having long
+been defeated in his evil purposes by Ormuzd, fled away secretly to a
+distant part of the world, and there in silence made a land which should
+be utterly his own. He brought together every element of dread and
+terror,--barrenness, brokenness, dreariness, fearful cold, blinding fog,
+crushing ice, sudden savage change. And when it was completed, he
+rejoiced in his heart and said, "This is perfect in badness, it cannot
+be redeemed, it is wholly and forever mine, it is mine!" Then Ormuzd,
+lord of light, heard the voice of that accursed joy, and, looking,
+beheld the evil work. And he saw that it could not be redeemed, that it
+was fixed forever in its evil state. Then he came to it, and, seeking to
+change nothing, uplifted over it a token of immortal, unutterable
+beauty, that even this land might bear witness to his celestial
+sovereignty.
+
+But these waste lands have use as well as beauty. At Sleupe Harbor dwelt
+one Michael Cante, the patriarch of the neighborhood, if neighborhood it
+were to be called, where were only three houses within a space of as
+many miles. His years were now threescore and ten, but he was hale as a
+pine forest and sweet as maple sap. A French Canadian, he spoke English,
+not only like a native, but like a well-bred native,--was not ignorant
+of thoughts and books,--and altogether seemed a man superior to most in
+nature, intelligence, and manners. His birthplace was Quebec, and he had
+formerly possessed a very considerable fortune; but losing this through
+fraud, and finding himself deserted by "summer friends," he had
+conceived a disgust at polite society, and escaped to these solitudes.
+Here his wounds had healed, and his nature recovered its tone. His
+labors prospered; a healthy and handsome family grew up to enrich his
+household; and no regrets drew him back to the big world he had left
+behind. Nature preserves to herself the right of asylum, no matter how
+the Louis Napoleon of civilization may demand its surrender,--preserves
+a place of rest and refuge for the weary hearts which are self-sent into
+spiritual exile.
+
+It is also to be considered whether this terrible region does not play a
+most serviceable part in the physical geography of the continent. I have
+not science enough to speak here with entire confidence; and yet I am
+rationally convinced. Without the ice-fields in the North, and the
+frigid current which these send down to meet the tepid waters of the
+Gulf Stream, would not this low and level America, with its dry
+atmosphere, suffer fearfully for want of rain? would it not, indeed, be
+one great desert? Could we dispense with the collisions and sudden
+interchanges of cold and hot currents of air which are due to these
+causes? Do we not obtain thus the same effects which in South America
+are produced by the snowy summits of the Andes? The cold current meets
+the warm, chills its vapor, precipitates this in fruitful rain. Our
+northeast winds are the chief bringers of rain. Take these away, and
+what about wheat and corn? Take away Labrador and the Arctic current,
+and what about northeast winds? They would still blow; would they still
+force the warm air to yield its vapor for the benefit of our fields? The
+extreme changeableness of our climate is, I am fully persuaded,
+connected very closely and indispensably with the fertility of the
+continent. Thank God, therefore, for Labrador!
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+LIFE ON BOARD.
+
+I have recounted above the manner in which the good divinity spoiled the
+Labrador triumph of the malign god. To that veracious history belongs
+the following _addendum_. The evil power was deeply chagrined to be so
+robbed of his victory. Rubbing his brow with vexation, he chanced to
+break the skin with his nails. The venom of the viper is poisonous to
+its own blood; and in like manner, the malignity of the demon afflicted
+his own flesh with a festering pain. The slight anguish gave him a
+thought. "Ha! now I have it!" he cried; "now I will be quits with him!"
+He caused, accordingly, a boggy moss to grow in the hollows of this
+dreary land, and made this to generate in countless multitudes a small,
+winged, venomous fiend, named _mosquito_. "Ahriman is victor, after
+all!" he shouted, as the humming imps trooped forth upon the air.
+
+I think he was!
+
+Delighted with this success, the demon tried to repeat it in other
+lands; but it fared with him as with every genius, good or bad, who
+begins to repeat himself: the imitation was but a feeble copy of the
+original. The mosquito of Labrador would spoil Eden itself. The imitated
+fiend I am indifferent to, but from the original spare me!
+
+We were spared in a degree. Ormuzd turned the weapons of his enemy
+against himself: rain, hail, and snow fought for us against the
+mosquito; but when fair weather came, this pest came with it. It is
+clear that Dante was not a man of genius! Otherwise he would have put
+the mosquito (the original, of course) in his "Inferno."
+
+_Ennui_ is always to be suffered on a long voyage. We had it, enough of
+it, and to spare, yet always broken by days of high delight.
+
+During the early part of the voyage, while we were still sailing, or
+even during considerable detentions in harbor, there was, novelty and
+incident enough to give the mind employment. The weather was fine; the
+sun shone; we lived on deck, in company with sun, sea, sky, horizon; and
+the mere relief from the narrowness of in-door life, the wide fellowship
+with the elements in which we were established, sufficed of themselves
+to invest our days with an unfailing charm. I was peculiarly happy, for
+I love the sea. All its ordinary aspects delight me in a very deep and
+heartfelt way. These were varied in the present instance with much that
+to me was far from being ordinary. Ever there was some ascending shore,
+some towering island or prodigious cliff, some enticing bird, some
+magnificence of morning or evening; and besides all these and a hundred
+attractions more, there were the beauty and terror of berg and
+floe-field, the marvel of the ice. For a time, therefore, all was
+enchantment. If we made a harbor, if we left one, expectation sailed
+with us; we fancied new scenes, new adventures,--the delight of
+exploration yet fierce in our souls.
+
+But now comes a change. The novelty wears away; we get in some degree
+the gauge of the scenery and the variety of circumstance; the dawdling,
+snail-foot, insufferable creep of the ship from one fisherman's
+dog's-hole to another becomes inexcusable; the weather conspires against
+us; the sportsman wonders why he had brought gun and fishing-rod; even
+Science grows weary at times in its limited and hampered inspection. For
+more than five weeks our average progress along the coast was eight
+miles a day! The ice and the weather were partly responsible for this
+lagging; but there were other causes, at which I forbear to hint more
+definitely. Suffice it to say that they were of a kind that one finds it
+hard to be charmed with; and the Elder will here confide to the reader
+that he was in the end a much vexed individual.
+
+_Ennui_ overtook us first in Square Island Harbor. During our long
+duress there, outward objects of interest began to fail, and each man
+was thrown back in some degree upon his own resources.
+
+Now follows a special development of idiosyncrasy, and with it of
+friction. Kept below much of the time by inclement weather, we are
+crowded and jumbled incessantly together; you jostle against the
+shoulders of one, you rub elbows with another, you clamber over the
+knees of a third; the members of the company are thrust together more
+closely than husband and wife in the narrowest household, and there is
+no exhaustless spousal love, no nameless mutual charm of man and woman,
+to relieve the sharpness of contact. Every man's peculiarities come out;
+and as there is no space between one and another, every man's
+peculiarities jar upon those of his neighbor. One is rampant just when
+another is moodily silent; one wishes to sleep when another must shout
+or split.
+
+For a while, however, these idiosyncrasies amuse. We are rather pleased
+with them as a resource than vexed by them as an annoyance. We are as
+yet full of the sense of power; we are equal to occasion, and like to
+feel our independence of outward support. So our young people run out
+into all sorts of riotous fun, and, sooth to say, the older do not
+always refuse a helping hand. The "Nightingale Club" becomes a
+"Night-Owl Club"; there are whistling choruses, laughing choruses,
+weeping, howling, stamping choruses, choruses of huzzas, of
+mock-complaint; there are burglaries, spectres, lampoons, and what not?
+At last these follies became tiresome, and every man was brought to the
+marrow-bones of his endurance.
+
+Now, then, impatience, impatience! The abominable cooking, the dawdling
+progress,--how was one to endure them? Especially when we had turned
+homeward, and were sluggishly repeating the ground already traversed,
+did the delay become almost insupportable. At length, on the 24th of
+August, we fairly said good-bye to Labrador, and came sweeping southward
+with the matchless speed of which our schooner was capable when she got
+a chance. It wellnigh tore Bradford's heart-strings to leave his
+icebergs once and for all behind; for a more fascinated human being I
+believe there never was than this true enthusiast while on that coast.
+He _must_ paint the bergs with rare power, must get the very spirit and
+suggestion of them on canvas, or his soul will quit him, and make off
+north!
+
+P----, the indefatigable, would also have gladly stayed longer, I
+believe. Our voyage had not extended so far as he desired to go, but had
+been fruitful of results, nevertheless. Besides making important
+observations upon the action of glacial and coast ice, counting upwards
+of seventy-five raised beaches, obtaining convincing indications of a
+great central table-land, and establishing by abundant detail a
+resemblance amounting almost to identity between the insect Fauna of
+Labrador and that of the summit of Mount Washington, he had been able to
+collect indubitable evidence that there exists a sub-Arctic group of
+marine animals inhabiting the shores of Labrador and Newfoundland. This
+last is a result of especial importance, as this group, owing to the
+want of material, had been overlooked by preceding naturalists. This
+gentleman, whose industry and zeal in scientific research are literally
+boundless, and are matched with much penetration, designs visiting the
+North of Europe to make comparisons between the land of the Lapps and
+Finns and the sub-Arctic regions of America; and I make no doubt that
+American science will obtain honor in his person.
+
+The rest of us, however, breathed freer now that we were
+
+
+HOMEWARD BOUND.
+
+    Wide swells aloft the snowy sail,
+    New life comes flowing on the gale.
+    Joy! joy! our exile all is past!
+    We're homeward bound, homeward at last!
+      Ill fates are strong, but God is stronger;
+      The loved that wait shall wait no longer;
+      Our wake is white with happy foam,
+      And blithe the skies to fan us home.
+
+    O bliss of friendship, bliss of heaven!
+    O heart of love, earth's angel leaven!
+    The speed of winds is in your feet,
+    Soon hands will join and lips will meet.
+
+    Now through our land roll far and wide
+    War's lurid flame and crimson tide;
+    But glory blushes through her woe,
+    And both to share with joy we go.
+
+    Farewell, grim North! Possess thy throne,
+    And reign amid thy bergs alone;
+    Now turn our hearts to truer poles,
+    To native shores and kindred souls.
+      Ill fates are strong, but God is stronger;
+      The loved that wait shall wait no longer;
+      Our wake is white with happy foam,
+      And blithe the skies to fan us home.
+
+_September 1._--The Gulf had waylaid us, with a fierce storm in
+readiness. Our reckoning was wrong; we just escaped going ashore in the
+pitchy darkness; and, to mend all, the ship took fire! The flames were
+soon quenched, but St. Lawrence Neptune kept trying to put them out for
+twelve hours afterward; and such a drenching! But here we are between
+the shores of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Isle. Fort Mulgrave, two miles
+away over the calm water and beneath the floods of sunshine, looks like
+a little paradise, (painted white,) after all my reviling it. And
+fields, too!--green fields and forests! Could one ever again wish more
+pleasure than to look on swarded fields and wooded hills? Yes,--besides
+this, the pleasure of _remembering_ Labrador!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[C] Possibly sienite. I omitted to make a note, and speak from
+recollection. If sienite, very hard, the quartz element predominating,
+as the feldspar does farther north.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES OF A PIANIST.
+
+
+III.
+
+New York, _February, 1862._--One thing surprises me. It is to find New
+York, to say the least of it, as brilliant as when I took my departure
+for the Antilles in 1857. In general, the press abroad relates the
+events of our war with such a predetermined pessimist spirit, that at a
+distance it is impossible to form a correct estimate of the state of the
+country. For the last year I have read in the papers statements to this
+effect:--"The theatres are closed; the terrorism of Robespierre sinks
+into insignificance, compared to the excesses of the Americans; the
+streets of New York are deluged with blood" (I very nearly had a duel in
+Puerto Rico for venturing to question the authenticity of this last
+assertion, propounded by a Spanish officer); "in short, the North is in
+a starving condition."
+
+"How can you think of giving concerts to people who are in want of
+bread?" was the remark of my friends, on being apprised of my resolution
+to return to the United States; and, in all humility, I must acknowledge
+that the same question suggested itself not unfrequently to my mind,
+when I discussed within me the expediency of my voyage. I have still in
+my possession a newspaper in which a correspondent states the
+depreciation of our currency to be such that he actually saw a baker
+refuse to take a dollar from a famished laborer in exchange for a loaf
+of bread.
+
+The number of these trustworhy correspondents has increased in the
+direct ratio of our prosperity, the development of our resources, and
+the umbrage these blessings give to the enemies of democratic
+principles. There are very few governments that would not deem it a
+matter of duty to exult over the ruin of our republican edifice. Fear
+actuates the less enlightened; jealousy is the motive of the more
+liberal. A celebrated statesman once said to me, "A republic is
+theoretically a very fine thing, but it is a Utopia." Like the man in
+antiquity, who, on hearing motion denied, refuted the assertion simply
+by rising and walking, we had hitherto put the "Utopia" into practice;
+and the _thing did_ march on, and proved a reality. The argument was
+peremptory. A principle can be discussed; a fact is undeniable. Although
+refracted by the organs of the foreign press, the light of truth still
+flashed at times upon the people in Europe, and taught it to reflect.
+When our troubles broke out, I was in Martinique. In all the
+Antilles,--Spanish, French, Danish, English, Swedish, Dutch,--it was but
+one unanimous cry, "Did not we say so?" and the truthful and independent
+correspondents immediately embraced this opportunity to redouble their
+zeal, and forthwith began to multiply like mosquitoes in a tropical
+swamp after a summer shower.
+
+But it is not my province to pronounce upon lofty political and moral
+questions. I would merely say that New York, for a deserted city, is
+singularly animated; that Broadway yesterday was thronged with pretty
+women, who, famished as they are, present, nevertheless, the delusive
+appearance of health, and brave with heroic indifference the bloody
+tumults of which our streets are daily the theatre; that Art is not so
+utterly dead among us but that Maretzek gives "Un Ballo in Maschera" to
+crowded houses, and Church sees his studio filled with amateurs desirous
+of admiring his magnificent and strange "Icebergs," which he has just
+finished.
+
+It is difficult to account for the extreme ignorance of many foreigners
+with regard to the political and intellectual standing of the United
+States, when one considers the extent of our commerce, which covers the
+entire world like a vast net, or when one views the incessant tide of
+immigration which thins the population of Europe to our profit. A French
+admiral, Viscount Duquesne, inquired of me at Havana, in 1853, if it
+were possible to venture in the vicinity of St. Louis without
+apprehending being massacred by the Indians. The father of a talented
+French pianist who resides in this country wrote a few years since to
+his son to know if the furrier business in the city of New York was
+exclusively carried on by Indians. Her Imperial Highness the
+Grand-Duchess of Russia, on seeing Barnum's name in an American paper,
+requested me to tell her if he were not one of our prominent statesmen.
+For very many individuals in Europe, the United States have remained
+just what they were when Chateaubriand wrote "Les Natchez," and saw
+parrots(?) on the boughs of the trees which the majestic "_Mechasebe_"
+rolled down the current of its mighty waters. All this may seem
+improbable, but I advance nothing that I am not fully prepared to prove.
+There is, assuredly, an intelligent class of people who read and know
+the truth; but, unfortunately, it is not the most numerous, nor the most
+inclined to render us justice. Proudhon himself--that bold, vast mind,
+ever struggling for the triumph of light and progress--regards the
+pioneer of the West merely as an heroic outlaw, and the Americans in
+general as half-civilized savages. From Talleyrand, who said,
+"_L'Amerique est un pays de cochons sales et de sales cochons,_" down to
+Zimmermann, the director of the piano-classes at the Conservatory of
+Paris, who, without hearing me, gave as a reason for refusing to receive
+me in 1841, that "America was a country that could produce nothing but
+steam-engines," there is scarcely an eminent man abroad who has not made
+a thrust at the Americans.--It may not be irrelevant to say here that
+the little Louisianian who was refused as a pupil in 1841 was called
+upon in 1851 to sit as a judge on the same bench with Zimmermann, at the
+"_Concours_" of the Conservatory.
+
+Unquestionably there are many blanks in certain branches of our
+civilization. Our appreciation of the fine arts is not always as
+enlightened, as discriminating, as elevated, as it might be. We look
+upon them somewhat as interlopers, parasites, occupying a place to which
+they have no legitimate right. Our manners, like the machinery of our
+government, are too new to be smooth and polished; they occasionally
+grate. We are more prone to worship the golden calf, in bowing down
+before the favorites of Fortune, than disposed to kill the fatted calf
+in honor of the elect of thought and mind. Each and every one of us
+thinks himself as good and better than any other man: an invaluable
+creed, when it engenders self-respect; but, alas! when we put it in
+practice, it is generally with a view of pulling down to our level those
+whose level we could never hope to reach. Fortunately, these little
+weaknesses are not national traits. They are inherent in all new
+societies, and will completely disappear when we shall attain the full
+development of our civilization with the maturity of age.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My _impresarios_, Strakosch and Gran, have made the important discovery,
+that my first concert in New York, on my return from Europe in 1853,
+took place the 11th of February, and consequently have decided to defer
+my reappearance for a few days in order that it may fall upon the 11th
+of February, 1862. The public (which takes not the remotest interest in
+the thing) has been duly informed of this memorable coincidence by all
+the papers.
+
+Query by some of my friends: "Why do you say such and such things in the
+advertisements? Why do you not eliminate such and such epithets from the
+bills?"
+
+Answer: Alas! are you ignorant of the fact that the artist is a piece of
+merchandise, which the _impresario_ has purchased, and which he sets off
+to the best advantage according to his own taste and views? You might as
+well upbraid certain pseudo-gold-mines for declaring dividends which
+they will never pay, as to render the artist responsible for the puffs
+of his managers. A poor old negress becomes, in the hands of the Jupiter
+of the Museum, the nurse of Washington; after that, can you marvel at
+the magniloquent titles coupled with my name?
+
+The artist is like the stock which is to be quoted at the board and
+thrown upon the market. The _impresario_ and his agents, the broker and
+his clique, cry out that it is "excellent, superb, unparalleled,--the
+shares are being carried off as by magic,--there remain but very few
+reserved seats." (The house will perhaps be full of dead-heads, and the
+broker may be meditating a timely failure.) Nevertheless, the public
+rushes in, and the money follows a similar course. If the stock be
+really good, the founders of the enterprise become millionnaires. If the
+artist has talent, the _impresario_ occasionally makes his (the
+_impresario's_) fortune. In case both stock and artist prove bad, they
+fall below par and vanish after having made (quite innocently) a certain
+number of victims. Now, in all sincerity, of the two humbugs, do you not
+prefer that of the _impresario_? At all events, it is less expensive.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I heard Brignoli yesterday evening in "Martha." The favorite tenor has
+still his charming voice, and has retained, despite the progress of an
+_embonpoint_ that gives him some uneasiness, the aristocratic elegance
+which, added to his fine hair and "beautiful throat," has made him so
+successful with the fair sex. Brignoli, notwithstanding the defects his
+detractors love to heap upon him, is an artist I sincerely admire. The
+reverse of vocalists, who, I am sorry to say, are for the most part
+vulgar ignoramuses, he is a thorough musician, and perfectly qualified
+to judge a musical work. His enemies would be surprised to learn that he
+knows by heart Hummel's Concerto in A minor. He learned it as a child
+when he contemplated becoming a pianist, and still plays it charmingly.
+Brignoli knows how to sing, and, were it not for the excessive fear that
+paralyzes all his faculties before an audience, he would rank among the
+best singers of the day.
+
+I met Brignoli for the first time at Paris in 1849. He was then very
+young, and had just made his _debut_ at the Theatre Italien, in "L'
+Elisire d' Amore," under the sentimental patronage of Mme. R., wife of
+the celebrated barytone. In those days Brignoli was very thin, very
+awkward, and his timidity was rendered more apparent by the proximity of
+his protectress. Mme. R. was an Italian of commanding stature,
+impassioned and jealous. She sang badly, although possessed of a fine
+voice, which she was less skilful in showing to advantage than in
+displaying the luxuriant splendor of her raven hair. The public,
+initiated into the secret of the green-room, used to be intensely amused
+at the piteous attitudes of Nemorino Brignoli, contrasting, as they did,
+with the ardent pantomime of Adina R., who looked by his side like a
+wounded lioness. Poor woman! What has been your fate? The glossy tresses
+of which you were so proud in your scenes of insanity, those tresses
+that brought down the house when your talent might have failed to do so,
+are now frosted with the snow of years. Your husband has forsaken you.
+After a long career of success, he has buried his fame under the
+orange-groves of the Alhambra. There he directs, according to his own
+statement, (but I can scarce credit it,) the phantom of a Conservatory
+for singing. I am convinced he has too much taste to break in upon the
+poetical silence of the old Moorish palace with _portamenti_, trills,
+and scales, and I flatter myself that the plaintive song of the
+nightingales of the Generalife and the soft murmur of the Fountain of
+the Lions are the only concerts that echo gives to the breeze that
+gently sighs at night from the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. Alas!
+poor woman, your locks are silvered, and Brignoli--has grown fat! "_Sic
+transit gloria mundi!_"
+
+
+
+
+DIPLOMACY OF THE REVOLUTION.
+
+
+When a European speaks about the American Revolution, he speaks of it as
+the work of Washington and Franklin. These two names embody for his mind
+all the phases of the contest, and explain its result. The military
+genius of Washington, going hand in hand with the civil genius of
+Franklin, fills the foreground of his picture. He has heard of other
+names, and may remember some of them; but these are the only ones which
+have taken their place in his memory at the side of the great names of
+European history.
+
+In part this is owing to the importance which all Europeans attach to
+the French alliance as one of the chief causes of our success. For then,
+as now, France held a place among the great powers of the world which
+gave importance to all her movements. With direct access to two of the
+principal theatres of European strife and easy access to the third, she
+never raised her arm without drawing immediate attention. If less
+powerful than England on the ocean, she was more powerful there than any
+other nation; and even England's superiority was often, and sometimes
+successfully, contested. The adoption by such a power of the cause of a
+people so obscure as the people of the "Thirteen Colonies" then were
+was, in the opinion of European statesmen, decisive of its success. The
+fact of our actual poverty was known to all; few, if any, knew that we
+possessed exhaustless sources of wealth. Our weakness was on the
+surface, palpable, manifest, forcing itself upon attention; our strength
+lay out of sight, in rich veins which none but eyes familiar with their
+secret windings could trace. Thus the French alliance, as the European
+interpreted it, was the alliance of wealth with poverty, of strength
+with weakness,--a magnanimous recognition of efforts which without that
+recognition would have been vain. What, then, must have been the
+persuasive powers, the commanding genius, of the man who procured that
+recognition!
+
+Partly, also, this opinion is owing to the personal character and
+personal position of Franklin. Franklin was preeminently a wise man,
+wise in the speculative science and wise in the practical art of life.
+Something of the maturity of age seems to have tempered the liveliest
+sallies of his youth, and much of the vivacity of youth mingles with the
+sober wisdom of his age. Thoughtful and self-controlling at twenty, at
+seventy his ripe experience was warmed by a genial glow. He entered upon
+life with the feeling that he had a part to perform, and the conviction
+that his happiness would depend upon his performing it well. What that
+part was to be was his earliest study; and a social temperament,
+combining with a sound judgment, quickly taught him that the happiness
+of the individual is inseparably connected with the happiness of the
+species. Thus life became his study as a condition of happiness; man and
+Nature, as the means of obtaining it. He sought to control his passions
+as he sought to control the lightning, that he might strip them of their
+power to harm. Sagacious in the study of causes, he was still more
+sagacious in tracing their connection with effects; and his speculations
+often lose somewhat of their grandeur by the simple and unpretending
+directness with which he adapts them to the common understanding and
+makes them minister to the common wants of life. The ambition which
+quickened his early exertions met an early reward. He was ambitious to
+write well, and he became one of the best writers in our language. He
+was ambitious of knowledge, and he laid it up in such stores that men
+sought his conversation in order to learn from him. He was ambitious of
+pecuniary independence, and he accumulated a fortune that made him
+master of his time and actions. He was ambitious of influence, and he
+obtained a rare control over the thoughts and the passions of men. He
+was ambitious of fame, and he connected his name with the boldest and
+grandest discovery of his age.
+
+Living thus in harmony with himself, he enjoyed the rare privilege of
+living in equal harmony with the common mind and the advanced mind of
+his contemporaries. He entered into every-day wants and feelings as if
+he had never looked beyond them, and thus made himself the counsellor of
+the people. He appreciated the higher wants and nobler aspirations of
+our nature, and thus became the companion and friend of the philosopher.
+His interest in the present--and it was a deep and active interest--did
+not prevent him from looking forward with kindling sympathies to the
+future. Like the diligent husbandman of whom Cicero tells us, he could
+plant trees without expecting to see their fruit. If he detected folly
+with a keen eye, he did not revile it with a bitter heart. Human
+weakness, in his estimate of life, formed an inseparable part of human
+nature, the extremes of virtue often becoming the starting-points of
+vice,--better treated, all of them, by playful ridicule than by stern
+reproof. He might never have gone with Howard in search of abuses, but
+he would have drawn such pictures of those near home as would have made
+some laugh and some blush and all unite heartily in doing away with
+them. With nothing of the ascetic, he could impose self-denial and bear
+it. Like Erasmus, he may not have aspired to become a martyr,--but in
+those long voyages and journeys, which, in his infirm old age, he
+undertook in his country's service, there was much of the sublimest
+spirit of martyrdom. His philosophy, a philosophy of observation and
+induction, had taught him caution in the formation of opinions, and
+candor in his judgments. With distinct ideas upon most subjects, he was
+never so wedded to his own views as to think that all who did not see
+things as he did must be wilfully blind. His justly tempered faculties
+lost none of their serene activity or gentle philanthropy by age.
+Hamilton himself, at thirty, did not labor with more earnestness in the
+formation of the Constitution than Franklin at eighty-one; and as if in
+solemn record of his own interpretation of it, his last public act, with
+eternity full in view, was to head a memorial to Congress for the
+abolition of the slave-trade.
+
+That such a man should produce a strong impression upon the excitable
+mind of France must be evident to every one who knows how excitable that
+mind is. But to understand his public as well as his personal position,
+not so much at the French Court as at the court of French opinion, we
+must go back a dozen years and see what that opinion had been since the
+Peace of 1763.
+
+The Treaty of Paris, like all treaties between equals founded upon the
+temporary superiority of one over the other, had deeply wounded, not the
+vanity only, but the pride of France. Humbled in the eyes of her rival,
+humbled in the eyes of Europe, she was still more profoundly humbled in
+her own eyes. It was a barbed and venomous arrow, haughtily left to
+rankle in the wound. For highminded Frenchmen, it was henceforth the
+wisdom as well as the duty of France to prepare the means and hasten the
+hour of revenge. It was then that the eyes of French statesmen were
+first opened to the true position of the American Colonies. It was then
+that they first saw how much the prosperity of the parent state depended
+upon the sure and constant flow of wealth and strength from this
+exhaustless source. Then, too, they first, saw, these Colonies, in due
+time, must grow into independence; and in this, independence, in this
+severing of ties which they foresaw English pride would cling to long
+after English avidity had stripped them of their natural strength, there
+was the prospect of full and sweet revenge.
+
+Scarce a twelvemonth had passed from the signing of the Treaty of
+Paris, when the first French emissary, an officer of the French navy,
+was already at his work in the Colonies. Passing to and fro, travelling
+here and there, moving from place to place as any common traveller might
+have done, his eyes and his ears were ever open, his note-book was ever
+in his hand, and, without awakening the suspicions of England, the first
+steps in a work to which the Duke of Choiseul looked forward as the
+crowning glory of his administration were wisely and surely taken. They
+were promptly followed up. The French Ambassador in England established
+relations with Colonial agents in London which enabled him to follow the
+progress of the growing discontent and anticipate the questions which
+must soon be brought forward for decision. Franklin's examination before
+the House of Commons became the text of an elaborate despatch,
+harmonizing with the report of his secret agent, and opening a prospect
+which even the weary eyes of Louis XV. could not look upon without some
+return of the spirit that had won for his youth the long forfeited title
+of the Well-Beloved. It was not the first time that the name of the
+great philosopher had been heard in the council-chamber of Versailles.
+But among the secret agents of France we now meet for the first time the
+name of De Kalb, a name consecrated in American history by the life that
+he laid down for us on the fatal field of Camden. Scarce a step was
+taken by the English Ministry that was not instantly communicated by the
+Ambassador in London to the French Minister at Versailles, with
+speculations, always ingenious, often profound, upon its probable
+results. Scarce a step was taken in the Colonies without attracting the
+instant attention of the French agent. Never were events more closely
+studied or their character better understood. When troops were sent to
+Boston, the English Ministry was not without serious apprehensions of
+resistance. But when the tidings of their peaceful landing came, while
+the English were exulting in their success, the French Ambassador
+rejoiced that the wisdom of the Colonial leaders had withheld them from
+a form of opposition for which they were not yet ready. The English
+Ministry was preparing to enter upon a system of coercion at the point
+of the bayonet. "If the Colonists submit under the pressure," said
+Choiseul, "it will only be in appearance and for a short time."
+
+Meanwhile his active brain was teeming with projects; the letters of his
+agents were teeming with suggestions. Frances counsels caution, dreads
+the effects of hasty measures; for the Colonists have not yet learned to
+look upon France as a friend, and premature action might serve only to
+bind them more firmly to England. Du Chatelet proposes that France and
+Spain, sacrificing their old colonial system, should open their colonial
+ports to the products of the English Colonies,--thus inflicting a fatal
+blow upon England's commerce, while they supplant her in the affections
+of the Colonists. A clerk in the Department of Commerce goes still
+farther, advocating a full emancipation of the French Colonies, both to
+throw off a useless burden and to increase the irritation of the English
+Colonies by the spectacle of an independence which they were not
+permitted to share.
+
+There is nothing in history more humiliating than to see on what small
+hinges great events sometimes turn. Of all the disgraceful intrigues of
+a palace filled with intrigues from the day of its foundation, there is
+none half so disgraceful as the overthrow of the Duke of Choiseul in
+1770. And yet, vile as it was both by its motive and by its agents, it
+marks an important point in the progress of American independence. A bow
+more, a sarcasm less, might have confirmed the power of a man whose
+deep-rooted hatred of England was fast hastening to its natural
+termination, an open rupture; and a premature rupture would have brought
+the Colonists into the field, either as the subjects of England or as
+the allies of France. To secure the dependence of the Colonies, England
+would have been compelled to make large concessions; and timely
+concessions might have put off the day of separation for another
+century. To secure the alliance of the Colonies, France would have been
+compelled to take upon herself the burden of the war; a French general
+might have led our armies; French gold might have paid our troops; we
+might have been spared the sufferings of Valley Forge, the humiliation
+of bankruptcy; but where would have been the wise discipline of
+adversity? and if great examples be as essential to the formation of
+national as of individual character, what would the name of independence
+have been to us, without the example of our Washington?
+
+French diplomacy had little to do with the American events of the next
+five years. England, unconscious how near she had been to a new war with
+her old enemy, held blindly on in her course of irritation and
+oppression; the Colonies continued to advance by sure steps from
+resistance by votes and resolves to resistance by the sword. When Louis
+XVI. ascended the throne in 1774, and Vergennes received the portfolio
+of Foreign Affairs, domestic interests pressed too hard upon them to
+allow of their resuming at once the vast plans of the fallen minister.
+Unlike that Minister, Vergennes, a diplomatist by profession, preferred
+watching and waiting events to hastening or anticipating hem. But to
+watch and wait events like those which were then passing in the Colonies
+without being drawn into the vortex was beyond the power of even his
+well-trained and sagacious mind. In 1775, a French emissary was again
+taking the measure of American perseverance, French ambassadors were
+again bringing forward American questions as the most important
+questions of their correspondence. That expression which has been put
+into so many mouths as a summing up of the value of a victory was
+applied in substance by Vergennes to the Battle of Bunker Hill,--"Two
+more victories of this kind, and the English will have no army left in
+America."
+
+And while thus tempted by this proof of American strength, his wavering
+mind was irritated by the apprehension of some sudden outbreak of
+English arrogance; for the Ambassador wrote that Whigs and Tories might
+yet unite in a war against France in order to put an end to the troubles
+in the Colonies,--and no Frenchman had forgotten that England began the
+War of 1755 by an open violation of international law, by seizing three
+hundred French merchant ships and casting into prison ten thousand
+French sailors before the declaration of hostilities. Thus events
+prepared the way for American diplomacy, and, more powerful than the
+prudence of Vergennes or the pacific longings of Louis XVI., compelled
+them to decide and act, when they would still gladly have discussed and
+waited.
+
+And, moreover, a new element had been introduced into the councils of
+statesmen,--or rather, an element hitherto circumscribed and resisted
+had begun to act with irresistible force. Public opinion, speaking
+through the press by eloquent pens, through coffee-houses and saloons by
+eloquent voices, called loudly for action in the name of humanity and in
+the still more exciting name of French honor. Little as most Frenchmen
+knew about America, they knew enough about England to believe that in
+her disputes with other nations she was apt to be in the wrong,--and if
+with other nations, why not with her own colonies? The longing for
+revenge, which ever since the Treaty of Paris filled some corner of
+every French heart, grew stronger at the near approach of so abundant a
+harvest; nor did it lose any of its sweetness from the reflection that
+their enemy himself was doing what they never could have done alone to
+prepare it for them.
+
+But humanity, too, was a powerful word. Men could not read Rousseau
+without being led to think more earnestly, if not always more
+profoundly, upon the laws of social organization. They could not read
+Voltaire without a clearer perception of abuses and a more vigorous
+contempt for the systems which had put the many into the hands of the
+few to be butchered or butchers at their will. They could not read
+Montesquieu without feeling that there was a future in store for them
+for which the long past had been patiently laboring, and longing, as
+they read, to hasten its coming. In that future, mankind were to rise
+higher than they had ever risen before; rulers and ruled were to act in
+fruitful harmony for their common good; the brightest virtues of Greece,
+the purest virtues of Rome, were to revive in some new form of society,
+not very definitely conceived by the understanding, but which floated in
+magnificent visions before the glowing imagination.
+
+I hasten reluctantly over this part of my subject; for the formation of
+public opinion in France and its action upon Government, even while all
+the forms of an almost absolute monarchy were preserved, is an important
+chapter in the history of European civilization. But hasten I must,
+merely calling attention to the existence of this element, and reminding
+my reader, that, chronologically, of the two parts which composed this
+opinion, hatred for England had been at work ever since 1763, while
+sympathy with the Colonists was rather an individual than a public
+feeling till late in 1776.
+
+It was at Versailles, and not at Paris, that action began. Vergennes's
+first step was to send another agent, no longer merely to observe and
+report, but to ascertain, though without compromising the French
+Government, how far the Americans were prepared for French intervention.
+English suspicions were already awakened. Already the English Minister
+had informed the French Ambassador, upon the authority of a private
+letter of General Lee to General Burgoyne, that the Americans were sure
+of French aid. It was not without great difficulty that the new agent,
+De Bonvouloir, could find a safe conveyance. But by December he was
+already in Philadelphia, and, though still pretending to be a mere
+traveller, soon in full communication with the Committee of Secret
+Correspondence.
+
+The appointment of this committee, on the 29th of November, 1775, is the
+beginning of the history of our foreign relations. Then began our
+attempts to gain admission into the great family of nations as an
+independent power,--attempts not always judiciously directed, attended
+in some instances with disappointment and mortification, but crowned at
+last with as full a measure of success as those who understood monarchy
+and Europe could have anticipated. Two of its members, Franklin and
+Dickinson, were already known abroad, where, at a later day, Jay also
+was to make himself an enduring name. The other two, Johnson and
+Harrison, enjoyed and merited a high Colonial reputation.
+
+There can be but little doubt that Franklin's keen eye quickly
+penetrated the veil under which De Bonvouloir attempted to conceal his
+real character. It was not the first time that he had been brought into
+contact with French diplomacy, nor the first proof he had seen that
+France was watching the contest in the hope of abasing the power of her
+rival. While agent in London for four Colonies,--a true ambassador, if
+to watch events, study character, give timely warning and wise counsel
+be the office of an ambassador,--he had lived on a friendly footing with
+the French legation, and profited by it to give them correct views of
+the character and feelings of the Colonies. And now, reducing the
+question to these simple heads, he asked,--
+
+"How is France disposed towards us? If favorably, what assurance will
+she give us of it?
+
+"Can we have from France two good engineers, and how shall we apply for
+them?
+
+"Can we have, by direct communication, arms and munitions of war, and
+free entrance and exit for our vessels in French ports?"
+
+But whatever reliance they may have placed on the French emissary, the
+Committee were unwilling to confine themselves to this as the only means
+of opening communication with European powers. During a visit to
+Holland, Franklin had formed the acquaintance of a Swiss gentleman of
+the name of Dumas,--a man of great learning and liberal sentiments, and
+whose social position gave him access to sure sources of information. To
+him he now addressed himself with the great question of the moment:--"If
+we throw off our dependence upon Great Britain, will any court enter
+into alliance with us and aid us for the sake of our commerce?"
+
+Such, then, was the starting-point of our diplomatic history, the end
+and aim of all our negotiations: alliance and aid for the sake of our
+commerce.
+
+But we should greatly mistake the character of the times, if we supposed
+that this point was reached without many and warm debates. When the
+question was first started in Congress, that body was found to be as
+much divided upon this as upon any of the other subjects which it was
+called upon to discuss. With Franklin, one party held, that, instead of
+asking for treaties with European powers, we should first conquer our
+independence, when those powers, allured by our commerce, would come and
+ask us; the other, with John Adams, that, as our true policy and a mark
+of respect from a new nation to old ones, we ought to send ministers to
+all the great courts of Europe, in order to obtain the recognition of
+our independence and form treaties of amity and commerce. Franklin, who
+had already outlived six treaties of "firm and lasting peace," and now
+saw the seventh swiftly approaching its end, might well doubt the
+efficacy of those acts to which his young and impetuous colleague
+attached so much importance. But in Congress the majority was with
+Adams, and for a while there was what Gouverneur Morris called a rage
+for treaties.
+
+The Committee of Secret Correspondence, as I have already said, was
+formed in November, 1775. One of its first measures was to appoint
+agents,--Arthur Lee for London, Dumas for the Hague, and, early in the
+following year, Silas Deane for France. Lee immediately opened relations
+with the French Court by means of the French Ambassador in London; and
+Deane, on his arrival in France in June, followed them up with great
+intelligence and zeal. A million of livres was placed by Vergennes in
+the hands of Beaumarchais, who assumed the name of Hortalez & Co., and
+arranged with Deane the measures for transmitting the amount to America
+in the shape of arms and supplies.
+
+And now the Declaration of Independence came to add the question of
+recognition to the question of aid. But recognition was a declaration of
+war, and to bring the French Government to this decisive pass required
+the highest diplomatic skill supported by dignity and weight of
+character. The Colonies had but one man possessed of these
+qualifications, and that man was Franklin.
+
+The history of diplomacy, with its long record of solemn entrances and
+brilliant processions, its dazzling pictures of thrones and courts,
+which make the head dizzy and the heart sick, has no scene half so grand
+as the entrance of this unattended, unushered old man into France, in
+December, 1776. No one knew of his coming until he stood among them; and
+then, as they looked upon his serene, yet grave and thoughtful
+face,--upon his gray hairs, which carried memory back to the fatal year
+of Ramillies and the waning glories of the great Louis,--on the right
+hand which had written words of persuasive wisdom for prince and
+peasant, which had drawn the lightning from its home in the heavens, and
+was now stretched forth with such an imperial grasp to strip a sceptre
+they all hated of its richest jewel,--a feeling of reverential awe came
+over them, and they bowed themselves before him as in the secret depths
+of their hearts they had never bowed to emperor or king. "He is at
+Nantes, he is on the road," was whispered from mouth to mouth in the
+saloons of the capital, as his landing became known. Some asserted
+confidently that he had already reached Paris, others that he might be
+hourly expected. Then came the certainty: he had slept at Versailles the
+night of the 21st, had come to Paris at two the next afternoon, and now
+was at his lodgings in the Rue de l'Universite.
+
+No one, perhaps, was more surprised than Franklin to find himself the
+object of such universal attention. But no one knew better than he how
+to turn it to account for the accomplishment of his purpose. In a few
+days he withdrew to the quiet little village of Passy, at easy distance
+both from the city and the court,--and, without endeavoring to increase
+the public curiosity by an air of mystery or seclusion, kept himself
+sufficiently in the background to prevent that curiosity from losing its
+stimulant by too great a familiarity with its object. Where men of
+science met for the discussion of a new theory or the trial of a new
+experiment, he was to be seen amongst them with an unpretending air of
+intelligent interest, and wise suggestions, never indiscreetly
+proffered, never indiscreetly withheld. Where humane men met to discuss
+some question of practical benevolence, or philosophers to debate some
+principle of social organization, he was always prepared to take his
+part with apt and far-reaching illustrations from the stores of his
+meditation and experience. Sometimes he was to be seen in places of
+amusement, and always with a genial smile, as if in his sympathy with
+the enjoyment of others he had forgotten his own perplexities and cares.
+In a short time he had drawn around him the best minds of the capital,
+and laid his skilful hand on the public pulse with an unerring accuracy
+of touch, which told him when to speak and when to be silent, when to
+urge and when to leave events to their natural progress. Ever active,
+ever vigilant, no opportunity was suffered to escape him, and yet no one
+whose good-will it was desirable to propitiate was disgusted by
+injudicious importunity. Even Vergennes, who knew that his coming was
+the signal of a new favor to be asked, found in his way of asking it
+such a cheerful recognition of its true character, so considerate an
+exposition of the necessities which made it urgent, that he never saw
+him come without pleasure. If he had been a vain man, he would have
+enjoyed his position too much to make good use of it for the cause he
+came to serve. If he had been a weak man, he would have fallen under the
+control of the opinion which it was his office to guide. If he had not
+possessed a pure and genuine sympathy with human nature, he would not
+have been able, at the age of seventy, to enter into the feelings of a
+people so different from those among whom he had always lived. And if he
+had not been stimulated by earnest convictions, and governed by high
+principles, he would not have been able to withstand the frequent and
+insidious attempts that were made to shake his fortitude and undermine
+his fidelity. But in him, as in Washington, there was a rare
+predominance of that sound common-sense which is man's surest guide in
+his relations with events, and that firm belief in the progress of
+humanity which is his best reliance in his relations with men.
+
+Congress had given him two associates in his commission to
+France,--Silas Deane of Connecticut, and Arthur Lee of Virginia. Deane
+had been a member of Congress, was active, enterprising, and
+industrious; but his judgment was not sound, his knowledge of men not
+extensive, his acquaintance with great interests and his experience of
+great affairs insufficient for the important position in which he was
+placed. Lee had lived long in England, was an accomplished scholar, a
+good writer, familiar with the character of European statesmen and the
+politics of European courts,--but vain, jealous, irritable, suspicious,
+ambitious of the first honors, and disposed to look upon every one who
+attracted more attention than himself as his natural enemy. Deane,
+deeply impressed with the importance of Franklin's social position for
+the fulfilment of their common duties, although energetic and active,
+cheerfully yielded the precedence to his more experienced colleague.
+Lee, conscious of his own accomplishments, regarded the deference paid
+to Franklin as an insult to himself, and promptly resumed in Paris the
+war of petty intrigue and secret accusation which a few years before he
+had waged against him in England. In this vile course Congress soon
+unwittingly gave him a worthy coadjutor, by appointing, as Commissioner
+to Tuscany, Ralph Izard of South Carolina, who, without rendering a
+single service, without even going near the court to which he was
+accredited, continued for two years to draw his salary and abuse Dr.
+Franklin.
+
+When Franklin reached Paris, he found that Deane had already made
+himself a respectable position, and that, through Caron de Beaumarchais,
+the brilliant author of "Figaro," the French Government had begun that
+system of pecuniary aid which it continued to render through the whole
+course of the war. Vergennes granted the Commissioners an early
+interview, listened respectfully to their statements, asked them for a
+memorial to lay before the King, assured them of the personal protection
+of the French Court, promised them every commercial facility not
+incompatible with treaty obligations with Great Britain, and advised
+them to seek an interview with the Spanish Ambassador. The memorial was
+promptly drawn up and presented. A copy of it was given to the Spanish
+Ambassador to lay before the Court of Madrid. Negotiations were fairly
+opened.
+
+But Franklin soon became convinced that the French Government had marked
+out for itself a line of policy, from which, as it was founded upon a
+just appreciation of its own interests, it would not swerve,--that it
+wished the Americans success, was prepared to give them secret aid in
+arms and money and by a partial opening of its ports,--but that it was
+compelled by the obligations of the Family Compact to time its own
+movements in a certain measure by those of Spain, and was not prepared
+to involve itself in a war with England by an open acknowledgment of the
+independence of the Colonies, until they had given fuller proof of the
+earnestness of their intentions and of their ability to bear their part
+in the contest. Nor was he long in perceiving that the French Government
+was giving the Colonies money which it sorely needed for paying its own
+debts and defraying its own expenses,--and thus, that, however
+well-disposed it might be, there were certain limits beyond which it was
+not in its power to go. It was evident, therefore, to his just and
+sagacious mind, that to accept the actual policy of France as the gauge
+of a more open avowal under more favorable circumstances, and to
+recognize the limits which her financial embarrassments set to her
+pecuniary grants, was the only course that he could pursue without
+incurring the danger of defeating his own negotiations by excess of
+zeal. Meanwhile there was enough to do in strengthening the ground
+already gained, in counteracting the insidious efforts of English
+emissaries, in correcting erroneous impressions, in awakening just
+expectations, in keeping up that public interest which had so large a
+part in the formation of public opinion, and in so regulating the action
+of that opinion as to make it bear with a firm and consistent and not
+unwelcome pressure upon the action of Government. And in doing this he
+had to contend not only with the local difficulties of his position, but
+with the difficulty of uncertain communications: months often
+intervening between the sending of a despatch and the receiving of an
+answer, and affording newsmongers abundant opportunities for idle
+reports and unfounded conjectures, and enemies ample scope for malicious
+falsehoods.
+
+It was a happy circumstance for the new state, that her chief
+representative was a man who knew how to wait with dignity and when to
+act with energy; for it was this just appreciation of circumstances that
+gave him such a strong hold upon the mind of Vergennes, and imparted
+such weight to all his applications for aid. No sooner had Congress
+begun to receive money from Europe than it began to draw bills upon its
+agents there, and often without any certainty that those agents would be
+in a condition to meet them. Bills were drawn on Mr. Jay when he was
+sent to Spain, and his already difficult position made doubly difficult
+and humiliating. Bills were drawn on Mr. Adams in Holland, and he was
+unable to meet them. But such was the confidence of the French Court in
+the representations of Dr. Franklin, that he was enabled not only to
+meet all the drafts which were made upon him directly, but to relieve
+his less fortunate colleagues from the embarrassments in which the
+precipitation of their own Government had involved them.
+
+And thus passed the first twelve months of his residence in
+France,--cloudy and anxious months, more especially during the summer of
+1777, when it was known that Burgoyne was coming down by Lake Champlain,
+and Howe preparing for a great expedition to the northward. Then came
+the tidings that Howe had taken Philadelphia. "Say rather," said
+Franklin, with that air of conviction which carries conviction with it,
+"that Philadelphia has taken Howe." Men paused as they repeated his
+words, and suspended their judgment; and when the news of the Battle of
+Germantown and the surrender of Burgoyne followed, they felt deeper
+reverence for the calm old man who had reasoned so wisely when all
+others desponded. It was on the 4th of December that these welcome
+tidings reached Paris; and the Commissioners lost no time in
+communicating them to the Court. The second day after, the secretary of
+the King's Council came to them with official congratulations.
+Negotiations were resumed and carried on rapidly, nothing but a desire
+to consult the Court of Madrid being allowed to retard them; and on the
+6th of February, 1778, the first treaty between the United States and a
+foreign power was signed with all the formalities which custom has
+attached to these acts. On the 20th of March the Commissioners were
+presented to the King.
+
+Nor was it mere curiosity which filled the halls of the royal palace
+with an eager throng on that eventful day. These were the halls which
+had witnessed the gathering of powerful men and of great men to the
+footstool of the haughtiest of French kings,--which had seen a Conde and
+a Turenne lay down their laurels at the royal feet, a Bossuet and a
+Boileau check the flow of independent thought to bask them in the beams
+of the royal smile, a Fenelon retiring with saddened brow to record for
+posterity the truths which he was not permitted to utter to the royal
+ear, a Racine shrinking from the cold glance of the royal eye and going
+home to die of a broken heart. Here Louis had signed the decree which
+sent his dragoons to force his Protestant subjects to the mass and the
+confessional; here he had received with a smile of triumph the tidings
+that the Pope himself had been compelled to yield to his arrogant
+pretensions; and here he had listened in haughty state, when one of the
+last of the glorious republics of the Middle Ages, the city of Columbus
+and Andrew Doria, which had once covered the Mediterranean with her
+ships, and sent forth her hardy mariners, as from a nursery of brave
+men, to impart their skill and communicate their enterprising genius to
+the rest of Europe, humbled herself before him through her Doge, as,
+bowing his venerable head, the old man asked pardon in her name, not for
+the wrongs that she had committed, but for the wrongs that she had
+borne.
+
+And now, up those marble stairs, through those tapestried halls, came
+three men of humble birth, two of whom had wrought for their daily bread
+and eaten it in the sweat of their brows, to receive their recognition
+as the representatives of a power which had taken its place among the
+nations, not by virtue of the divine right of kings, but in the name of
+the inalienable rights of the people. Happy would it have been for the
+young King who sat in Louis's seat, if he could have understood the full
+meaning of his act, and recognized at the same moment the claims of his
+own people to participate in that government which derived its strength
+from their labor and its security from their love!
+
+Nothing could have demonstrated more clearly the wisdom of Franklin's
+confidence in the sincerity of the French Government than the generous
+and liberal terms of the treaty. No present advantage was taken of the
+dependent condition of their new ally; no prospective advantage was
+reserved for future contingencies. Only one condition was
+stipulated,--and that as much in the interest of the Colonies as of
+France,--that they should never return to their allegiance. Only one
+reciprocal obligation was assumed,--that neither party should make peace
+with England without the knowledge and consent of the other. All the
+rest was full and free reciprocation in the future, and the assurance of
+efficient aid in the present; no ambiguities, no doubtful expressions,
+no debatable ground for interpretation to build upon and weave the mazes
+of her subtile web,--but clear, distinct, and definite, a mutual
+specification of mutual duties and mutual rights. Equal could not have
+treated more firmly with equal than this new power, as yet unrecognized
+in the congress of nations, with the oldest monarchy of Europe.
+
+I have already alluded to the rage for treaties which prevailed for a
+while in Congress. It was this that sent William and Arthur Lee upon
+their bootless errands to Vienna and Berlin, Francis Dana to St.
+Petersburg, John Jay to encounter embarrassment and mortification at
+Madrid, and gave Ralph Izard an opportunity to draw an unearned salary,
+through two successive years, from the scanty funds of the Congressional
+banker at Paris.
+
+Jay's situation was peculiarly trying. He had been Chief Justice of New
+York, President of Congress, had written some of the most eloquent state
+papers that were issued in the name of that body whose state papers were
+ranked by Chatham among the best that ever were written, and, at a
+personal sacrifice, had exchanged a position of honor and dignity at
+home for a doubtful position abroad. A clear-headed, industrious,
+decided man, he had to contend for more than two years with the two
+qualities most alien to his nature,--habitual dilatoriness and
+diplomatic reticence.
+
+Spain, like France, had marked out a path for herself, and it was
+impossible to move her from it. Jay obtained some money to help him pay
+some of the drafts of Congress, but neither treaty nor recognition.
+"They have taken four years," wrote Franklin, "to consider whether they
+would treat with us. I would give them forty, and let us mind our own
+business." And still viewing the question as he had viewed it in the
+beginning, he wrote in his diary in May, 1782,--"It seems to me that we
+have in most instances hurt our credit and importance by sending all
+over Europe, begging alliances and soliciting declarations of our
+independence. The nations, perhaps from thence, seemed to think that our
+independence is something they have to sell, and that we do not offer
+enough for it."[D]
+
+The most important European event in its American bearings, after the
+recognition by France, was the armed neutrality of the Northern
+powers,--a court intrigue in Russia, though a sober act in Spain,--and
+which was followed, in December, 1780, by the addition of Holland to the
+open enemies of England.
+
+Attempts had already been made to form a treaty with Holland,--first
+through William Lee, with such prospect of success as to induce Congress
+to send Henry Laurens to the Hague to continue the negotiations. Laurens
+was captured by an English cruiser, and soon after John Adams was
+directed to take his place. At Paris, Adams had failed singularly as a
+negotiator,--lending a ready ear to Lee, hardly attempting to disguise
+his jealousy of Franklin, and enforcing his own opinions in a manner
+equally offensive to the personal feelings of the Minister and the
+traditional usages of the Court. But at the Hague he found a field
+better suited to his ardent temperament, and, backed by the brilliant
+success of the campaign of 1781, and the votes of the House of Commons
+in favor of reconciliation, succeeded in obtaining a public recognition
+in the spring of 1782, and concluding a treaty in the autumn.
+
+All these things were more or less upon the surface,--done and doing
+more or less openly. But under the surface the while, and known only to
+those directly concerned therein, were covert attempts on the part of
+England to open communications with Franklin by means of personal
+friends. There had been nothing but the recognition of our independence
+that England would not have given to prevent the alliance with France;
+and now there was nothing that she was not ready to do to prevent it
+from accomplishing its purpose. And it adds wonderfully to our
+conception of Franklin to think of him as going about with this
+knowledge, in addition to the knowledge of so much else, in his
+mind,--this care, in addition to so many other cares, ever weighing upon
+his heart. Little did jealous, intriguing Lee know of these things;
+petulant, waspish Izard still less. A mind less sagacious than
+Franklin's might have grown suspicious under the influences that were
+employed to awaken his distrust of Vergennes. And a character less
+firmly established would have lost its hold upon Vergennes amid the
+constant efforts that were made to shake his confidence in the gratitude
+and good faith of America. But Franklin, who believed that timely faith
+was a part of wisdom, went directly to the French Minister with the
+propositions of the English emissaries, and frankly telling him all
+about them, and taking counsel of him as to the manner of meeting them,
+not only stripped them of their power to harm him, but converted the
+very measures which his enemies had so insidiously, and, as they deemed,
+so skilfully prepared for his ruin, into new sources of strength.
+
+Of the proffers of mediation in which first Spain and then Russia and
+the German Emperor were to take so important a part, as they bore no
+fruit, it is sufficient to observe, in passing, how little European
+statesmen understood the business in which they were so ready to
+intermeddle, and what a curious spectacle Catharine and Kaunitz present,
+seeking to usher into the congress of kings the first true
+representative of that great principle of popular sovereignty which was
+to make all their thrones totter and tremble under them. It may be
+added, that they furnished that self-dependence of John Adams which too
+often degenerated into arrogance an occasion to manifest itself in a
+nobler light; for he refused to take part in the discussions in any
+other character than as the representative of an independent power.
+
+Meanwhile events were hastening the inevitable termination. In Europe,
+England stood alone, without either open or secret sympathy. In June,
+1779, a war with Spain had followed the French war of 1778. In July,
+1780, the "armed neutrality" had defined the position of the Northern
+powers adversely to her maritime pretensions. War was declared with
+Holland in December of the same year. In America, the campaign of 1781
+had stripped her of her Southern conquests, and effaced the impression
+of her early victories. At home her people were daily growing more and
+more restless under the pressure of taxation; and even the country
+gentlemen, who had stood by the Ministry so long in the hope of
+transferring their own burden to the shoulders of their American
+brethren, began to give evident tokens of discontent. It was clear that
+England must consent to peace. And yet she still stood bravely up,
+presenting a bold front to each new enemy: a grand spectacle in one
+light, for there is always something grand in indomitable courage; but a
+sad one in the true light, and one from which a hundred years hence the
+philosophic historian will turn with a shudder, when, summing up all
+these events, and asking what all this blood was shed for, he shows that
+the only principle at stake on her part was that pernicious claim to
+control the industry of the world, which, had she succeeded, would have
+dried up the sources of prosperity in America, as it is fast drying them
+up in Ireland and in India.[E]
+
+Nor was peace less necessary to her rival. The social revolution which
+the two last reigns had rendered inevitable was moving with gigantic
+strides towards its bloody consummation. The last well-founded hope of
+reforms that should probe deep enough to anticipate revolution had
+disappeared with Turgot. The statesmanship of Vergennes had no remedy
+for social disease. It was a statesmanship of alliances and treaties and
+wars, traditional and sometimes brilliant, but all on the surface,
+leaving the wounded heart untouched, the sore spirit unconsoled. The
+financial skill of Necker could not reach the evil. It was mere banking
+skill, and nothing more,--very respectable in its time and place,
+filling a few mouths more with bread, but failing to see, although told
+of it long ago by one who never erred, that "man does not live by bread
+alone." The finances were in hopeless disorder. The resources of the
+country were almost exhausted. Public faith had been strained to the
+utmost. National forbearance had been put to humiliating tests under the
+last reign by the partition of Poland and the Peace of Kainardji; and
+the sense of self-respect had not been fully restored by the American
+War. And although no one yet dreamed of what seven swift years were to
+bring forth, all minds were agitated by a mysterious consciousness of
+the approaching tempest.
+
+In 1782 the overtures of England began to assume a more definite form.
+Franklin saw that the time for decisive action was at hand, and prepared
+himself for it with his wonted calm and deliberate appreciation of
+circumstances. That France was sincere he could not doubt, after all the
+proofs she had given of her sincerity; nor could he doubt that she would
+concur heartily in preparing the way for a lasting peace. He had the
+instructions of Congress to guide him in what America would claim; and
+his own mind was quickly made up as to what England must yield. Four
+points were indispensable: a full recognition of independence; an
+immediate withdrawal of her troops; a just settlement of
+boundaries,--those of Canada being confined, at least, to the limits of
+the Act of 1774; and the freedom of the fisheries. Without these there
+could be no treaty. But to make the work of peace sure, he suggested, as
+equally useful to both parties, four other concessions, the most
+important of which were the giving up of Canada, and securing equal
+privileges in English and Irish ports to the ships of both nations. The
+four necessary articles became the real basis of the treaty.
+
+John Adams, John Jay, and Henry Laurens were joined with him in the
+commission. Jay was first on the ground, reaching Paris in June; Adams
+came in October; Laurens not till November, when the preliminary
+articles were ready for signature. They all accepted Franklin's four
+articles as the starting-point. But, unfortunately, they did not all
+share Franklin's well-founded confidence in the sincerity of the French
+Government. Jay's mind was embittered by the tergiversations of Spain.
+Adams had not forgotten his former disagreements with Vergennes, and
+hated Franklin so bitterly that he could hardly be prevailed upon to
+treat him with the civility which his age and position demanded, much
+less with the consideration which the interest of his country required.
+Both Jay and Adams were under the influence of that hostility to France
+which prevailed as extensively in the Colonies as in the mother
+country,--an hostility which neither of them was at sufficient pains to
+conceal, although neither of them, perhaps, was fully conscious of it.
+It was this feeling that kept them both aloof from the French Minister,
+and made them so accessible to English influences. And it was a
+knowledge of this feeling which three years later suggested to George
+III. that well-known insinuation about Adams's dislike to French
+manners, which would have been a scathing sarcasm, if it had not been an
+inexcusable impertinence.
+
+The English agents availed themselves skilfully of those
+sentiments,--sowing suspicions, fostering doubts, and not shrinking,
+there is strong reason to suppose, from gross exaggeration and
+deliberate falsehood. The discussion of articles, like all such
+discussions, was protracted by the efforts of each party to make the
+best terms, and the concealing of real intentions in the hope of
+extorting greater concessions. But England was really prepared to yield
+all that America was really prepared to claim; France, in spite of the
+suspicions of Adams and Jay, was really sincere; and on the 30th of
+November, 1782, the preliminary articles were signed.
+
+Franklin's position was difficult and delicate. He knew the importance
+of peace. He knew that the instructions of Congress required perfect
+openness towards the French Minister. He believed that the Minister
+deserved, both by his past kindness and present good intentions, to be
+treated with perfect openness. But both his colleagues were against him.
+What should he do? Refer the difference to Congress, and meanwhile hold
+the country in painful and expensive suspense? What could he do but
+submit, as he had done through life, to the circumstances which he could
+not control, and give the appearance of unanimity to an act which the
+good of his country required to be unanimous?
+
+He signed the preliminaries, and submitted to the reproach of personal
+and public ingratitude as he had submitted to the taunts of Wedderburn.
+History has justified his confidence,--the most careful research having
+failed to bring to light any confirmation of the suspicions of his
+colleagues. And Vergennes, though nettled for the moment, understood
+Franklin's position too well to lay the act at his door as an expression
+of a real opinion.
+
+Much time and long discussions were still required to convert the
+preliminaries into a final treaty; for the complicated interests of
+England, France, and Spain were to be taken into the account. But each
+party longed for peace; each party needed it; and on the 3d of
+September, 1783, another Treaty of Paris gave once more the short-lived,
+though precious boon to Europe and America.
+
+During Franklin's residence at the Court of France, and mainly through
+his influence, that court had advanced to Congress three millions of
+livres a year as a loan, had increased it to four millions in 1781, had
+the same year added six millions as a free gift to the three millions
+with which she began, and become security for the regular payment of the
+interest upon a loan of ten millions to be raised in Holland.[F]
+
+Nor will it be inappropriate to add, that, before he sailed upon his
+mission to France, he called in all the money he could command in specie
+(between three and four thousand pounds) and put it into the public
+treasury as a loan,--and that while the young men, Adams and Jay, were
+provided with competent secretaries of legation, he, though bowed down
+by age and disease, and with ten times their work to do, was left to his
+own resources, and, but for the assistance of his grandson, would have
+been compelled to do it all with his own hand.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[D] Franklin's Works, Vol. IX. p. 284, Sparks's edition.
+
+[E] I cannot deny myself the pleasure of referring in this connection to
+Mr. Carey's admirable exposition of this fact in his "Principles of
+Political Science."
+
+[F] In all, eighteen millions as a loan, and nine millions as a free
+gift.
+
+
+
+
+OUR BATTLE-LAUREATE.
+
+
+"How came the Muses to settle in Connecticut?" This was the question of
+a writer in the "Atlantic Monthly" last February, whose history of the
+"Pleiades" of that State we read with a pleasure which we doubt not was
+shared by all who saw it, except perhaps a few who did not relish the
+familiar way in which the feather duster was whisked about the
+statuettes of the seven _dii minorum gentium_ who once reigned in
+Hartford and New Haven.
+
+"There still remain inventive machinists, acute money-changers, acutest
+peddlers; but the seed of the Muses has run out. No more Pleiades at
+Hartford."
+
+In the July number of our elder brother, the "North American," one of
+the ablest of American critic's said of an author who had just published
+a small volume, "In him the nation has found a new poet, vigorous,
+original, and thoroughly native." "We have had no such war-poetry, nor
+anything like it. His 'River-Fight' is the finest lyric of the kind
+since Drayton's 'Battle of Agincourt.'"
+
+The author of this volume, which is entitled "Lyrics of a Day, or
+Newspaper Poetry, by a Volunteer in the U. S. Service," and of which a
+second edition has just been issued by Carleton in New York, is Mr.
+HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL of East Hartford, taught in a school at that
+place, a graduate of Trinity College, a nephew of the late Bishop
+Brownell of Connecticut. The good which came out of Nazareth, as all
+remember, claimed another birthplace. If the author of the "Pleiades"
+asks Nathanael's question, putting Hartford for Nazareth, and we tell
+him to come and see, we shall have to say that Providence was our new
+poet's birthplace, and that his lineage divides itself between Rhode
+Island and Massachusetts. But the good has come to us from the
+Connecticut Nazareth.
+
+If Drayton had fought at Agincourt, if Campbell had held a sabre at
+Hohenlinden, if Scott had been in the saddle with Marmion, if Tennyson
+had charged with the Six Hundred at Balaklava, each of these poets might
+possibly have pictured what he said as faithfully and as fearfully as
+Mr. Brownell has painted the sea-fights in which he took part as a
+combatant. But no man can tell a story at second hand with the truth of
+incident which belongs to an eye-witness who was part of what he saw. As
+a mere relator, therefore, of the sights and sounds of great naval
+battles, Mr. Brownell has a fresh story to tell. Not only so, but these
+naval battles are not like any the Old World ever saw. One or two
+"Monitors" would have settled in half an hour the fight which Aeschylus
+shared at Salamis. The galleys "rammed" each other at Actium; but there
+was no Dahlgren or Sawyer to thunder from their decks or turrets. The
+artillery roared at Trafalgar; but there were no iron-clads to tilt at
+each other, meeting with a shock as of ten thousand knights in armor
+moulded into one mailed Centaur and crashing against such another
+monster.
+
+But, again, a man may see a fight and be able to describe it truthfully,
+yet he may be unable to describe it dramatically. He must have the
+impressibility of the poetical nature to take in all its scenes, and the
+vocabulary of an artist to reproduce them. But, for some reason or
+other, poets are not very often found under fire, unless it be that of
+the critics. The temperament which makes men insensible to danger is
+rarely the gift of those who are so organized as to be sensitive to the
+more ethereal skyey influences. The violet end of the spectrum and the
+invisible rays beyond it belong to the poet, farthest from the red,
+which is the light that shines round the soldier.
+
+It happens rarely that poets put their delicate-fibred brains in the
+paths of bullets, but it does happen. Koerner fell with his last song on
+his lips. Fitz-James O'Brien gave his life as well as his chants to our
+cause. Mr. Brownell has weathered the great battle-storms on the same
+deck with Farragut, and has told their story as nobly as his leader made
+the story for him to tell. We cannot find any such descriptions as his,
+if for no other reason than that already mentioned, that there have been
+no such scenes to describe.
+
+But Mr. Brownell's genius is exceptional, as well as his experience. He
+can compose his verses while the battle is going on around him. During
+the engagement with Fort Powell, he was actually pencilling down some
+portions of the "Bay Fight," when he received a polite invitation to
+step down to the gun-deck and "try a shot at 'em with the Sawyer." He
+took minutes of everything as it happened during the contest, so that
+the simple record and the poetical delineation run into each other. We
+take the liberty to quote a few words from a note he kindly sent in
+answer to some queries of our own.
+
+"Some of the descriptions [in the 'Bay Fight'] might seem exaggerated,
+but better authorities than I am say they are not. To be sure, blood and
+powder are pretty freely mixed for the painting of it; but these were
+the predominant elements of the scene,--the noise being almost
+indescribable, and the ship, for all the forward half of her, being an
+absolute 'slaughter-house.' Though we had only twenty-five killed and
+twenty-eight wounded (some of whom afterwards died) on that day, yet
+numbers were torn into fragments, (men with their muscles tense,
+subjected to violent concussion, seem as _brittle as glass_,) causing
+the deck and its surroundings to present a most strange spectacle."
+
+We can understand better after this the lines--
+
+    "And now, as we looked ahead,
+      All for'ard, the long white deck
+    Was growing a strange dull red,...
+    Red from mainmast to bitts!
+      Red on bulwark and wale,--
+    Red by combing and hatch,--
+      Red o'er netting and rail!"
+
+The two great battle-poems begin, each of them, with beautiful
+descriptive lines, move on with gradually kindling fire, reach the
+highest intensity of action, till the words themselves have the weight
+and the rush of shot and shell, and the verses seem aflame with the
+passion of the conflict,--then, as the strife calms itself after the
+victory is won, the wild dithyrambic stanzas rock themselves into sweet,
+even cadences. No one can fail to be struck with the freedom and
+robustness of the language, the irregular strength of the rhythm, the
+audacious felicities of the rhyme. There are hints which remind us of
+many famous poets,--hints, not imitations. There can be no doubt that
+these were either coincidences or unconscious tricks of memory. To us
+they seem beauties, not defects, in poems of such originality, as in a
+new musical composition a few notes in some well-remembered sequence
+often seem to harmonize the crudeness of the newer strain,--as in many
+flowers and fruits Nature herself repeats a streak of color or a dash of
+flavor belonging to some alien growth.
+
+Thus, Drayton says,--
+
+    "With Spanish yew so strong.
+    Arrows a cloth-yard long,
+    That like to serpents _stung_."
+
+And Brownell,--
+
+          "Trust me, our berth was hot;
+          Ah, wickedly well they shot;
+    How their death-bolts howled and _stung_!"
+
+A mere coincidence, in all probability, but the word one which none but
+a poet could have used. There are reminiscences of Cowper's grand and
+simple lines on the "Loss of the Royal George," of Campbell's "Battle of
+the Baltic," of Tennyson's "Charge of the Six Hundred," not one of which
+but has a pleasing effect in the midst of such vigorous pictures as the
+new poet has given us fresh from the terrible original. The most obvious
+criticism is one which applies to the "River Fight," and which is
+directed against what might be thought an overstraining of the singular
+power in the use of words which is one of Mr. Brownell's most
+remarkable characteristics. "General Orders," not essential to the
+poem, may be admired as a _tour de force_, but cannot be properly called
+poetry. It is a condensed, versified edict,--true, no doubt, to the
+prose original, but on the whole better printed by itself, if printed at
+all, than suffered to distract the reader from the main narration by its
+elaborate ingenuity.
+
+These two poems--the "River Fight" and the "Bay Fight"--are better
+adapted for public reading and declamation than almost any in our
+literature. They hush any circle of listeners, and many cannot hear
+those exquisitely tender passages which are found toward the close of
+each without yielding them the tribute of their tears. They are to all
+the drawing-room battle-poems as the torn flags of our victorious
+armadas to the stately ensigns that dressed their ships in the harbor.
+
+Such pictures, if they do not kill everything hung on the walls with
+them, make even a brilliant canvas look comparatively lustreless. Yet
+the first poem of Mr. Brownell's which ever attracted our attention,
+"The Fall of Al Accoub," is of great force, and shows much of the same
+red light and black shadow, much of the same Vulcanic power over words,
+as with blast and forge and hammer, which startle us in the two
+battle-pieces. The lines "Annus Memorabilis," dated Jan. 6th, 1861, read
+like prophecy in 1865. "Wood and Coal" (November, 1863) gives a presage
+of the fire which the flame of the conflict would kindle. "The Burial of
+the Dane" shows the true human sympathy of the writer, in its simple,
+pathetic narrative; and the story of the "Old Cove" had a wider
+circulation and a heartier reception than almost any prose effort which
+has been called forth by the "All we ask is to be let alone" of the arch
+traitor.
+
+The "Lyrics of a Day" are too modestly named. Our literature cannot
+forget the masterpieces in this little volume in a day, a year, or an
+age. The War of Freedom against Slavery has created a devilish enginery
+of its own: iron for wood, steam for wind and muscle, "Swamp-Angels" and
+thousand-pounders in place of the armaments that gained the Battle of
+the Nile and toppled over the chimneys of Copenhagen. New modes of
+warfare thundered their demand for a new poet to describe them; and
+Nature has answered in the voice of our Battle-Laureate, Henry Howard
+Brownell.
+
+
+
+
+DOCTOR JOHNS.
+
+
+XVI.
+
+Miss Eliza being fairly seated in the Doctor's study, with great
+eagerness to hear what might be the subject of his communication, the
+parson, with the letter in his hand, asked if she remembered an old
+college friend, Maverick, who had once paid them a vacation visit at
+Canterbury.
+
+"Perfectly," said Miss Eliza, whose memory was both keen and retentive;
+"and I remember that you have said he once passed a night with you,
+during the lifetime of poor Rachel, here at Ashfield. You have a letter
+from him?"
+
+"I have," said the parson; "and it brings a proposal about which I wish
+your opinion." And the Doctor cast his eye over the letter.
+
+"He expresses deep sympathy at my loss, and alludes very pleasantly to
+the visit you speak of, all which I will not read; after this he says,
+'I little thought, when bantering you in your little study upon your
+family prospects, that I too was destined to become the father of a
+child, within a couple of years. Yet it is even so; and the
+responsibility weighs upon me greatly. I love my Adele with my whole
+heart; I am sure you cannot love your boy more, though perhaps more
+wisely."
+
+"And he had never told you of his marriage?" said the spinster.
+
+"Never; it is the only line I have had from him since his visit ten
+years ago."
+
+The Doctor goes on with the reading:--
+
+"It may be from a recollection of your warnings and of your distrust of
+the French character, or possibly it may be from the prejudices of my
+New England education, but I cannot entertain pleasantly the thought of
+her growing up to womanhood under the influences which are about her
+here. What those influences are you will not expect me to explain in
+detail. I am sure it will be enough to win upon your sympathy to say
+that they are Popish and thoroughly French. I feel a strong wish,
+therefore,--much as I am attached to the dear child,--to give her the
+advantages of a New England education and training. And with this wish,
+my thought reverts naturally to the calm quietude of your little town
+and of your household; for I cannot doubt that it is the same under the
+care of your sister as in the old time."
+
+"I am glad he thinks so well of me," said Miss Eliza, but with an irony
+in her tone that she was sure the good parson would never detect.
+
+The Doctor looks at her thoughtfully a moment, over the edge of the
+letter,--as if he, too, had his quiet comparisons to make,--then goes on
+with the letter:--
+
+"This wish may surprise you, since you remember my old battlings with
+what I counted the rigors of a New England 'bringing-up'; but in this
+case I should not fear them, provided I could assure myself of your
+kindly supervision. For my little Adele, besides inheriting a great flow
+of spirits (from her father, you will say) and French blood, has been
+used thus far to a catholic latitude of talk and manner in all about
+her, which will so far counterbalance the gravities of your region as to
+leave her, I think, upon a safe middle ground. At any rate, I see enough
+to persuade me to choose rather the errors that may grow upon her
+girlhood there than those that would grow upon it here.
+
+"Frankly, now, may I ask you to undertake, with your good sister, for a
+few years, the responsibility which I have suggested?"
+
+The Doctor looked over the edge of the sheet toward Miss Eliza.
+
+"Read on, Benjamin," said she.
+
+"The matter of expenses, I am happy to say, is one which need not enter
+into your consideration of the question. My business successes have been
+such that any estimate which you may make of the moneys required will be
+at your call at the office of our house in Newburyport.
+
+"I have the utmost faith in you, my dear Johns; and I want you to have
+faith in the earnestness with which I press this proposal on your
+notice. You will wonder, perhaps, how the mother of my little Adele can
+be a party to such a plan; but I may assure you, that, if your consent
+be gained, it will meet with no opposition in that quarter. This fact
+may possibly confirm some of your worst theories in regard to French
+character; and in this letter, at least, you will not expect me to
+combat them.
+
+"I have said that she has lived thus far under Popish influences; but
+her religious character is of course unformed; indeed, she has as yet
+developed in no _serious_ direction whatever; I think you will find a
+_tabula rasa_ to write your tenets upon. But, if she comes to you, do
+not, I beg of you, grave them too harshly; she is too bird-like to be
+treated with severity; and I know that under all your gravity, my dear
+Johns, there is a kindliness of heart, which, if you only allowed it
+utterance, would win greatly upon this little fondling of mine. And I
+think that her open, laughing face may win upon you.
+
+"Adele has been taught English, and I have purposely held all my
+prattle with her in the same tongue, and her familiarity with it is such
+that you would hardly detect a French accent. I am not particularly
+anxious that she should maintain her knowledge of French; still, should
+a good opportunity occur, and a competent teacher be available, it might
+be well for her to do so. In all such matters I should rely greatly on
+your judgment.
+
+"Now, my dear Johns,"--
+
+Miss Eliza interrupts by saying, "I think your friend is very familiar,
+Benjamin."
+
+"Why not? why not, Eliza? We were boys together."
+
+And he continues with the letter:--
+
+"My dear Johns, I want you to consider this matter fairly; I need not
+tell you that it is one that lies very near my heart. Should you
+determine to accept the trust, there is a ship which will be due at this
+port some four or five months from now, whose master I know well, and
+with whom I should feel safe to trust my little Adele for the voyage,
+providing at the same time a female attendant upon whom I can rely, and
+who will not leave the little voyager until she is fairly under your
+wing. In two or three years thereafter, at most, I hope to come to
+receive her from you; and then, when she shall have made a return visit
+to Europe, it is quite possible that I may establish myself in my own
+country again. Should you wish it, I could arrange for the attendant
+remain with her; but I confess that I should prefer the contrary. I want
+to separate her for the time, so far as I can, from _all_ the influences
+to which she has been subject here; and further than this, I have a
+strong faith in that self-dependence which seems to me to grow out of
+your old-fashioned New England training."
+
+"That is all," said the Doctor, quietly folding the letter. "What do you
+think of the proposal, Eliza?"
+
+"I like it, Benjamin."
+
+The spinster was a woman of quick decision. Had it been proposed to
+receive an ordinary pupil in the house for any pecuniary consideration,
+her pride would have revolted on the instant. But here was a child of an
+old friend of the Doctor, a little Christian waif, as it were, floating
+toward them from that unbelieving world of France.
+
+"Surely it will be a worthy and an honorable task for Benjamin" (so
+thought Miss Eliza) "to redeem this little creature from its graceless
+fortune; possibly, too, the companionship may soften that wild boy,
+Reuben. This French girl, Adele, is rich, well-born; what if, from being
+inmates of the same house, the two should come by-and-by to be joined by
+some tenderer tie?"
+
+The possibility, even, of such a dawn of sentiment under the spinster's
+watchful tutelage was a delightful subject of reflection to her. It is
+remarkable how even the cunningest and the coolest of practical-minded
+women delight in watching the growth of sentiment in others,--and all
+the more strongly, if they can foster it by their artifices and provoke
+it into demonstration.
+
+Miss Johns, too, without being imaginative, prefigured in her mind the
+image of the little French stranger, with foreign air and dress,
+tripping beside her up the meeting-house aisle, looking into her face
+confidingly for guidance, attracting the attention of the simple
+townspeople in such sort that a distinction would belong to her
+_protegee_ which would be pleasantly reflected upon herself. A love of
+distinction was the spinster's prevailing sin,--a distinction growing
+out of the working of good deeds, if it might be, but at any rate some
+worthy and notable distinction. The Doctorate of her good brother, his
+occasional discourses which had been subject of a public mention that
+she never forgot, were objects of a more than sisterly fondness. If her
+sins were ever to meet with a punishment in the flesh, they would know
+no sharper one than in a humiliation of her pride.
+
+"I think," said she, "that you can hardly decline the proposal of Mr.
+Maverick, Benjamin."
+
+"And you will take the home care of her?" asked the Doctor.
+
+"Certainly. She would at first, I suppose, attend school with Reuben and
+the young Elderkins?"
+
+"Probably," returned the Doctor; "but the more special religious
+training which I fear the poor girl needs must be given at home, Eliza."
+
+"Of course, Benjamin."
+
+It was further agreed between the two that a French attendant would make
+a very undesirable addition to the household, as well as sadly
+compromise their efforts to build up the little stranger in full
+knowledge of the faith.
+
+The Doctor was earnest in his convictions of the duty that lay before
+him, and his sister's consent to share the charge left him free to act.
+He felt all the best impulses of his nature challenged by the proposal.
+Here, at least, was one chance to snatch a brand from the burning,--to
+lead this poor little misguided wayfarer into those paths which are
+"paths of pleasantness." No image of French grace or of French modes was
+prefigured to the mind of the parson; his imagination had different
+range. He saw a young innocent (so far as any child in his view could be
+innocent) who prattled in the terrible language of Rousseau and
+Voltaire, who by the providence of God had been born in a realm where
+all iniquities flourished, and to whom, by the further and richer
+providence of God, a means of escape was now offered. He would no more
+have thought of declining the proposed service, even though the poor
+girl were dressed in homespun and clattered in sabots, than he would
+have closed his ear to the cry of a drowning child.
+
+Within that very week the Doctor wrote his reply to Maverick. He assured
+him that he would most gladly undertake the trust he had
+proposed,--"hoping, by God's grace, to lead the little one away from the
+delusions of sense and the abominations of Antichrist, to the fold of
+the faithful."
+
+"I could wish," he continued, "that you had given me more definite
+information in regard to the character of her early religious
+instruction, and told me how far the child may still remain under the
+mother's influence in this respect; for, next to special interposition
+of Divine Grace, I know no influence so strong in determining religious
+tendencies as the early instruction or example of a mother.
+
+"My sister has promised to give home care to the little stranger, and
+will, I am sure, welcome her with zeal It will be our purpose to place
+your daughter at the day-school of a worthy person, Miss Betsey Onthank,
+who has had large experience, and under whose tuition my boy Reuben has
+been for some time established. My sister and myself are both of opinion
+that the presence of any French attendant upon the child would be
+undesirable.
+
+"I hope that God may have mercy upon the French people,--and that those
+who dwell temporarily among them may be watched over and be graciously
+snatched from the great destruction that awaits the ungodly."
+
+
+XVII.
+
+Meantime Reuben grew into a knowledge of all the town mischief, and into
+the practice of such as came within the scope of his years. The proposed
+introduction of the young stranger from abroad to the advantages of the
+parsonage home did not weigh upon his thought greatly. The prospect of
+such a change did not soften him, whatever might come of the event. In
+his private talk with Esther, he had said, "I hope that French girl'll
+be a _clever_ un; if she a'n't, I'll"----and he doubled up a little
+fist, and shook it, so that Esther laughed outright.
+
+Not that the boy had any cruelty in him, but he was just now learning
+from his older companions of the village, who were more steeped in
+iniquity, that defiant manner by which the Devil in all of us makes his
+first pose preparatory to the onslaught that is to come.
+
+"Nay, Ruby, boy," said Esther, when she had recovered from her laughter,
+"you wouldn't hurt the little un, would ye? Don't ye want a little
+playfellow, Ruby?"
+
+"I don't play with girls, I don't," said Reuben. "But, I say, Esther,
+what'll papa do, if she dances?"
+
+"What makes the boy think she'll dance?" said Esther.
+
+"Because the Geography says the French people dance; and Phil Elderkin
+showed me a picture with girls dancing under a tree, and, says he, 'That
+'s the sort that's comin' to y'r house.'"
+
+"Well, I don't know," said Esther, "but I guess your Aunt Eliza 'd cure
+the dancin'."
+
+"She wouldn't cure me, if I wanted to," said Reuben, who thought it
+needful to speak in terms of bravado about the spinster, with whom he
+kept up a series of skirmishing fights from week to week. The truth is,
+the keen eye of the good lady ferreted out a great many of his pet plans
+of mischief, and nipped them before they had time to ripen. Over and
+over, too, she warned him against the evil associates whom he would find
+about the village tavern, where he strayed from time to time to be
+witness to some dog-fight, or to receive a commendatory glance of
+recognition from one Nat Boody, the tavern-keeper's son, who had run
+away two years before and made a voyage down the river in a sloop laden
+with apples and onions to "York." He was a head taller than Reuben, and
+the latter admired him intensely: we never cease admiring those "a head
+taller" than ourselves. Reuben absolutely pined in longing wonderment at
+the way in which Nat Boody could crack a coach-whip, and with a couple
+of hickory sticks could "call the roll" upon a pine table equal to a
+drum-major. Wonderful were the stories this boy could tell, to special
+cronies, of his adventures in the city: they beat the Geography "all
+hollow." Such an air, too, as this Boody had, leaning against the
+pump-handle by his father's door, and making cuts at an imaginary span
+of horses!--such a pair of twilled trousers, cut like a man's!--such a
+jacket, with lapels to the pockets, which he said "the sailors wore on
+the sloops, and called 'em monkey-jackets"!--such a way as he had of
+putting a quid in his mouth! for Nat Boody chewed. It is not strange
+that Reuben, feeling a little of ugly constraint under the keen eye of
+the spinster Eliza, should admire greatly the free-and-easy manner of
+the tavern-boy, who had such familiarity with the world and such large
+range of action. The most of us never get over a wonderment at the
+composure and complacency which spring from a wide knowledge of the
+world; and the man who can crack his whip well, though only at an
+imaginary pair of horses, is sure to have a throng of admirers.
+
+By this politic lad, Nat Boody, the innocent Reuben was decoyed into
+many a little bargain which told more for the shrewdness of the tavern
+than for that of the parsonage. Thus, he bartered one day a new
+pocket-knife, the gift of his Aunt Mabel of Greenwich Street, for a knit
+Scotch cap, half-worn, which the tavern traveller assured him could not
+be matched for any money. And the parson's boy, going back with this
+trophy on his head, looking very consciously at those who give an
+admiring stare, is pounced upon at the very door-step by the
+indefatigable spinster.
+
+"What now, Reuben? Where in the world did you get that cap?"
+
+"Bought it,"--in a grand way.
+
+"But it's worn," says the aunt. "Ouf! whose was it?"
+
+"Bought it of Nat Boody," says Reuben; "and he says there isn't another
+can be had."
+
+"Bah!" says the spinster, making a dash at the cap, which she seizes,
+and, straightway rushing in-doors, souses in a kettle of boiling water.
+
+After which comes off a new skirmish, followed by the partial defeat of
+Reuben, who receives such a combing down (with sundry killed and
+wounded) as he remembers for a month thereafter.
+
+The truth is, that it was not altogether from admiration of the
+accomplished Nat Boody that Reuben was prone to linger about the tavern
+neighborhood. The spinster had so strongly and constantly impressed it
+upon him that it was a low and vulgar and wicked place, that the boy,
+growing vastly inquisitive in these years, was curious to find out what
+shape the wickedness took; and as he walked by, sometimes at dusk, when
+thoroughly infused with the last teachings of Miss Eliza, it seemed to
+him that he might possibly catch a glimpse of the hoofs of some devil
+(as he had seen devils pictured in an illustrated Milton) capering about
+the doorway,--and if he had seen them, truth compels us to say that he
+would have felt a strong inclination to follow them up, at a safe
+distance, in order to see what kind of creatures might be wearing them.
+But he was far more apt to see the lounging figure of the shoemaker from
+down the street, or of Mr. Postmaster Troop, coming thither to have an
+evening's chat about Vice-President Calhoun, or William Wirt and the
+Anti-Masons. Or possibly, it might be, he would see the light heels of
+Suke Boody, the pretty daughter of the tavern-keeper, who had been
+pronounced by Phil Elderkin, who knew, (being a year his senior,) the
+handsomest girl in the town. This might well be; for Suke was just
+turned of fifteen, with pink arms and pink cheeks and blue eyes and a
+great flock of brown hair: not very startling in her beauty on ordinary
+days, when she appeared in a pinned-up quilted petticoat, and her curls
+in papers, sweeping the tavern-steps; but of a Saturday afternoon, in
+red and white calico, with the curls all streaming,--no wonder Phil
+Elderkin, who was tall of his age, thought her handsome. So it happened
+that the inquisitive Reuben, not finding any cloven feet in his furtive
+observations, but encountering always either the rosy Suke, or "Scamp,"
+(which was Nat's pet fighting-dog,) or the shoemaker, or the round-faced
+Mr. Boody himself, could justify and explain his aunt's charge of the
+tavern wickedness only by distributing it over them all. And when, one
+Sunday, Miss Suke appeared at meeting (where she rarely went) in hat all
+aflame with ribbons, Reuben, sorely puzzled at the sight, says to his
+Aunt Eliza,--
+
+"Why didn't the sexton put her out?"
+
+"Put her out!" says the spinster, horrified,--"what do you mean,
+Reuben?"
+
+"Isn't she wicked?" says he; "she came from the tavern, and she lives at
+the tavern."
+
+"But don't you know that preaching is for the wicked, and that the good
+had much better stay away than the bad?"
+
+"Had they?" said Reuben, thoughtfully, pondering if there did not lie
+somewhere in this averment the basis for some new moral adjustment of
+his own conduct.
+
+There are a vast many prim preachers, both male and female, in all
+times, who imagine that certain styles of wickedness or vulgarity are to
+be approached with propriety only across a church;--as if better
+preaching did not lie, nine times out of ten, in the touch of a hand or
+a whisper in the ear!
+
+Pondering, as Reuben did, upon the repeated warnings of the spinster
+against any familiarity with the tavern or tavern people, he came in
+time to reckon the old creaking sign-board of Mr. Boody, and the pump in
+the inn-yard, as the pivotal points of all the town wickedness, just as
+the meeting-house was the centre of all the town goodness; and since the
+great world was very wicked, as he knew from overmuch iteration at home,
+and since communication with that wicked world was kept up mostly by the
+stage-coach that stopped every noon at the tavern-door, it seemed to him
+that relays of wickedness must flow into the tavern and town daily upon
+that old swaying stage-coach, just as relays of goodness might come to
+the meeting-house on some old lumbering chaise of a neighboring parson,
+who once a month, perhaps, would "exchange" with the Doctor. And it
+confirmed in Reuben's mind a good deal that was taught him about
+natural depravity, when he found himself looking out with very much more
+eagerness for the rumbling coach, that kept up a daily wicked activity
+about the tavern, than he did for Parson Hobson, who snuffled in his
+reading, and who drove an old, thin-tailed sorrel mare, with lopped ears
+and lank jaws, that made passes at himself and Phil, if they teased her,
+as they always did.
+
+So, too, he came to regard, in virtue of misplaced home instruction, the
+monkey-jacket of Nat Boody, and his fighting-dog "Scamp," and the pink
+arms and pink cheeks and brown ringlets of Suke Boody, as so many types
+of human wickedness; and, by parity of reasoning, he came to look upon
+the two flat curls on either temple of his Aunt Eliza, and her pragmatic
+way, and upon the yellow ribbons within the scoop-hat of Almira
+Tourtelot, who sang treble and never went to the tavern, as the types of
+goodness. What wonder, if he swayed more and more toward the broad and
+easy path that lay around the tavern-pump, ("Scamp" lying there biting
+at the flies,) and toward the barroom, with its flaming pictures of some
+past menagerie-show, and big tumblers with lemons atop, rather than to
+the strait and narrow path in which his Aunt Eliza and Miss Almira would
+guide him with sharp voices, thin faces, and decoy of dyspeptic
+doughnuts?
+
+Phil and he sauntering by one day, Phil says,--
+
+"Darst you go in, Reub?"
+
+Phil was under no law of prohibition. And Reuben, glancing around the
+Common, says,--
+
+"Yes, _I_'ll go."
+
+"Then," says Phil, "we'll call for a glass of lemonade. Fellows 'most
+always order somethin', when they go in."
+
+So Phil, swelling with his ten years, and tall of his age, walks to the
+bar and calls for two tumblers of lemonade, which Old Boody stirs with
+an appetizing rattle of the toddy-stick,--dropping, meantime, a query or
+two about the Squire, and a look askance at the parson's boy, who is
+trying very hard to wear an air as if _he_, too, were ten, and knew the
+ropes.
+
+"It's good, a'n't it?" says Phil, putting down his money, of which he
+always had a good stock.
+
+"Prime!" says Reuben, with a smack of the lips.
+
+And then Suke comes in, hunting over the room for last week's "Courant";
+and the boys, with furtive glances at those pink cheeks and brown
+ringlets, go down, the steps.
+
+"A'n't she handsome?" says Phil.
+
+Reuben is on the growth. And when he eats dinner that day, with the
+grave Doctor carving the rib-roast and the prim aunt ladling out the
+sauces, he is elated with the vague, but not unpleasant consciousness,
+that he is beginning to be familiar with the world.
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+It was some four or five months after the despatch of the Doctor's
+letter to Maverick before the reply came. His friend expressed the
+utmost gratitude for the Doctor's prompt and hearty acceptance of his
+proposal. With his little Adele frolicking by him, and fastening more
+tenderly upon his heart every year, he was sometimes half-disposed to
+regret the scheme; but, believing it to be for her good, and confident
+of the integrity of those to whom he intrusted her, he reconciled
+himself to the long separation.
+
+It does not come within the limits of this simple New England narrative
+to enter upon any extended review of the family relations or the life of
+Maverick abroad. Whatever details may appear incidentally, as the story
+progresses, the reader will please to regard as the shreds and ravelled
+edges of another and distinct life, which cannot be fairly interwoven
+with the homespun one of the parsonage, nor yet be wholly brushed clear
+of our story.
+
+"I want," said Maverick in his letter, "that Adele, while having a
+thorough womanly education, should grow up with simple tastes. I think I
+see a little tendency In her to a good many idle coquetries of dress,
+(which you will set down, I know, to her French blood,) which I trust
+your good sister will see the prudence of correcting. My fortune is now
+such that I may reasonably hope to put luxuries within her reach, if
+they be desirable; but of this I should prefer that she remain ignorant.
+I want to see established in her what you would call those moral and
+religious bases of character that will sustain her under any possible
+reverses or disappointments. You will smile, perhaps, at _my_ talking in
+this strain; but if I have been afloat in these matters, at least you
+will do me the credit that may belong to hoping better things for my
+little Adele. It's not much, I know; but I do sincerely desire that she
+may find some rallying-point of courage and of faith within herself
+against any possible misfortune. Is it too much to hope, that, under
+your guidance, and under the quiet religious atmosphere of your little
+town, she may find such, and that she may possess herself of the
+consolations of the faith you teach, without sacrificing altogether her
+natural French vivacity?
+
+"And now, my dear Johns, I come to refer to a certain allusion in your
+letter with some embarrassment. You speak of the weight of a mother's
+religious influence, and ask what it may have been. Since extreme
+childhood, Adele has been almost entirely under the care of her
+godmother, a quiet old lady, who, though a devotee of the Popish Church,
+you must allow me to say, is a downright good Christian woman. I am
+quite sure that she has not pressed upon the conscience of little Adele
+any bigotries of the Church. My wish in this matter I am confident that
+she has religiously regarded, and while giving the example of her own
+faith by constant and daily devotions, I think, as I said in my previous
+letter, that you will find the heart of my little girl as open as the
+sky. Why it is that the mother's relations with the child have been so
+broken you will spare me the pain of explaining.
+
+"Would to God, I think at times, that I had married years ago one
+nurtured in our old-fashioned faith of New England,--some gentle, pure,
+loving soul! Shall I confess it, Johns?--the little glimpse of your lost
+Rachel gave me an idea of the tenderness and depth of devotion and
+charming womanliness of many of those whom I had counted stiff and
+utterly repulsive, which I never had before.
+
+"Pardon me, my friend, for an allusion which may provoke your grief, and
+which may seem utterly out of place in the talk of one who is just now
+confiding to you his daughter.
+
+"Johns, I have this faith in you, from our college-days: I know that on
+the score of the things touched upon in the last paragraphs of my letter
+you will not press me with inquiries. It is enough for you to know that
+my life has not been all 'plain-sailing.' For the present, let us say
+nothing of the griefs.
+
+"As little Adele comes to me, and sits upon my knee, as I write, I
+almost lose courage.
+
+"'Adele,' I say, 'will you leave your father, and go far away over seas,
+to stay perhaps for years?'
+
+"'You talk nonsense, papa,' she says, and leaps into my arms.
+
+"My heart cleaves strangely to her: I do not know wholly why. And yet
+she must go: it is best.
+
+"The vessel of which I spoke will sail in three weeks from the date of
+my letter for the port of New York. I have made ample provision for her
+comfort on the passage; and as the date of the ship's arrival in New
+York is uncertain, I must beg you to arrange with some friend there, if
+possible, to protect the little stranger, until you are ready to receive
+her. I inclose my draft for three hundred dollars, which I trust may be
+sufficient for a year's maintenance, seeing that she goes well provided
+with clothing: if otherwise, you will please inform me."
+
+Dr. Johns was not a man to puzzle himself with idle conjectures in
+regard to the private affairs of his friend. With all kind feeling for
+him,--and Maverick's confidence in the Doctor had insensibly given
+large growth to it,--the parson dismissed the whole affair with this
+logical reflection:--
+
+"My poor friend has been decoyed into marrying a Frenchwoman.
+Frenchwomen (like Frenchmen) are all children of Satan. He is now
+reaping the bitter results.
+
+"As for the poor child," thought the Doctor, and his heart glowed at the
+thought, "I will plant her little feet upon safe places. With God's
+help, she shall come into the fold of the elect."
+
+He arranges with Mrs. Brindlock to receive the child temporarily upon
+her arrival. Miss Eliza puts even more than her usual vigor and system
+into her arrangements for the reception of the new comer. Nothing could
+be neater than the little chamber, provided with its white curtains, its
+spotless linen, its dark old mahogany furniture, its Testament and
+Catechism upon the toilet-table; one or two vases of old china had been
+brought up and placed upon brackets out of reach of the little hands
+that might have been tempted by their beauty, and a coquettish porcelain
+image of a flower-girl had been added to the other simple adornments
+which the ambitious spinster had lavished upon the chamber. Her pride as
+housekeeper was piqued. The young stranger must be duly impressed with
+the advantages of her position at the start.
+
+"There," said she to Esther, as she gave a finishing touch to the
+disposal of the blue and white hangings about the high-post bedstead, "I
+wonder if that will be to the taste of the little French lady!"
+
+"I should think it might, Marm; it's the beautifullest room I ever see,
+Marm."
+
+Reuben, boy-like, passes in and out with an air of affected
+indifference, as if the arrangements for the new arrival had no interest
+for him; and he whistles more defiantly than ever.
+
+
+XIX
+
+In early September of 1829, when the orchard behind the parsonage was
+glowing with its burden of fruit, when the white and crimson hollyhocks
+were lifting their slanted pagodas of bloom all down the garden, and the
+buckwheat was whitening with its blossoms broad patches of the hillsides
+east and west of Ashfield, news came to the Doctor that his expected
+guest had arrived safely in New York, and was waiting his presence there
+at the elegant home of Mrs. Brindlock. And Sister Mabel writes to the
+Doctor in the letter which conveys intelligence of the arrival,--"She's
+a charming little witch; and if you don't like to take her with you, she
+may stay here." Mrs. Brindlock had no children.
+
+A visit to New York was an event for the parson. The spinster, eager for
+his good appearance at the home of her stylish sister, insisted upon a
+toilet that made the poor man more awkward than ever. Yet he did not
+think of rebelling. He rejoiced, indeed, that he did not dwell where
+such hardships would be daily demanded; but remembering that he was
+bound to a city of strangers, he recalled the Scriptural
+injunction,--"Render unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's."
+
+The Brindlocks, well-meaning and showy people, received the parson with
+an effervescence of kindness that disturbed him almost as much as the
+stiff garniture in which he had been invested by the solicitude of Miss
+Eliza; and when, in addition to his double embarrassment, a little
+saucy-eyed, brown-faced girl, full of mirthful exuberance, with her dark
+hair banded in a way that was utterly strange to him, and with
+coquettish bows of ribbon at her throat, at either armlet of her jaunty
+frock, and all down either side of her silk pinafore, came toward him
+with a smiling air, as if she were confident of his caresses, the
+awkwardness of the poor Doctor was complete.
+
+But, catching sight of a certain frank outlook in the little face which
+reminded him of his friend Maverick, he felt his heart stirred within
+him, and in his grave way dropped a kiss upon her forehead, while he
+took both her hands in his.
+
+"This, then, is little Adaly?"
+
+"Ha! ha!" laughed Adele, merrily, and, turning round to her new-found
+friends, says,--"My new papa calls me Adaly!"
+
+The straightforward parson was, indeed, as inaccessible to French words
+as to French principles. Adele had somehow a smack in it of the Gallic
+Pandemonium: Adaly, to his ear, was a far honester sound.
+
+And the child seemed to fancy it,--whether for its novelty, or the
+kindliness that beamed on her from the gravest face she had ever seen,
+it would be hard to say.
+
+"Call me Adaly, and I will call you New Papa," said she.
+
+And though the parson was not a bargaining man, every impulse of his
+heart went to confirm this arrangement. It was flattering to his
+self-love, if not to his principles, to have apparent sanction to his
+prejudices against French forms of speech; and the "New Papa" on the
+lips of this young girl touched him to the quick. Wifeless men are more
+easily accessible to demonstrations of even apparent affection on the
+part of young girls than those whose sympathies are hedged about by
+matrimonial relations.
+
+From all this it chanced that the best possible understanding was
+speedily established between the Doctor and his little ward from beyond
+the seas. For an hour after his arrival, the little creature hung upon
+his chair, asking questions about her new home, about the schools, about
+her playmates, patting the great hand of the Doctor with her little
+fingers, and reminding him sadly of days utterly gone.
+
+Mrs. Brindlock, with her woman's curiosity, seizes an occasion, before
+they leave, to say privately to the Doctor,--
+
+"Benjamin, the child must have a strange mother to allow this long
+separation, and the little creature so loving as she is."
+
+"It would be strange enough for any but a Frenchwoman," said he.
+
+"But Adele is full of talk about her father and her godmother; yet she
+can tell me scarce anything of her mother. There's a mystery about it,
+Benjamin."
+
+"There's a mystery in all our lives, Mabel, and will be until the last
+day shall come."
+
+The parson said this with extreme gravity, and then added,--
+
+"He has written me regarding it,--a very unfortunate marriage, I fear.
+Only this much he has been disposed to communicate; and for myself, I am
+only concerned to redeem his little girl from gross worldly attachments
+to the truths which take hold upon heaven."
+
+The next day the Doctor set off homeward upon the magnificent new
+steamboat Victory, which, with two wonderful smoke-pipes, was then
+plying through the Sound and up the Connecticut River. It was an object
+of almost as much interest to the parson as to his little companion. A
+sober costume had now replaced the coquettish one with its furbelows,
+which Adele had worn in the city; but there was a bright lining to her
+little hat that made her brown face more piquant than ever. And as she
+inclined her head jauntily to this side or that, in order to a better
+listening to the old gentleman's somewhat tedious explanations, or with
+a saucy smile cut him short in the midst of them, the parson felt his
+heart warming more and more toward this poor child of heathen France.
+Nay, he felt almost tempted to lay his lips to the little white ears
+that peeped forth from the masses of dark hair and seemed fairly to
+quiver with the eagerness of their listening.
+
+With daylight of next morning came sight of the rambling old towns that
+lay at the river's mouth,--being little more than patches of gray and
+white, strewed over an almost treeless country, with some central spire
+rising above them. Then came great stretches of open pasture, scattered
+over with huge gray rocks, amid which little flocks of sheep were
+rambling; or some herd of young cattle, startled by the splashing of the
+paddles, and the great plumes of smoke, tossed their tails in the air,
+and galloped away in a fright,--at which Adele clapped her hands, and
+broke into a laugh that was as cheery as the new dawn. Next
+came low, flat meadows of sedge, over which the tide oozed slowly, and
+where flocks of wild ducks, scared from their feeding-ground, rose by
+scores, and went flapping off seaward in long, black lines. And from
+between the hills on either side came glimpses of swamp woodland, in the
+midst of which some maple, earlier than its green fellows, had taken a
+tinge of orange, and flamed in the eyes of the little traveller with a
+gorgeousness she had never seen in the woods of Provence. Then came
+towns nestling under bluffs of red quarry-stones, towns upon wooded
+plains,--all with a white newness about them; and a brig, with horses on
+its deck, piled over with bales of hay, comes drifting lazily down with
+the tide, to catch an offing for the West Indies; and queer-shaped
+flat-boats, propelled by broad-bladed oars, surge slowly athwart the
+stream, ferrying over some traveller, or some fish-peddler bound to the
+"P'int" for "sea-food".
+
+Toward noon the travellers land at a shambling dock that juts into the
+river, from which point they are to make their way, in such country
+vehicle as the little village will supply, across to Ashfield. And when
+they are fairly seated within, the parson, judging that acquaintance has
+ripened sufficiently to be put to serious uses, says, with more than
+usual gravity,--
+
+"I trust, Adaly, that you are grateful to God for having protected you
+from all the dangers of the deep."
+
+"Do you think there was much danger, New Papa?"
+
+"There's always danger, said the parson, gravely. "The Victory might
+have been blown in pieces last night, and we all been killed, Adaly."
+
+"Oh, terrible!" says Addle. "And did such a thing ever really happen?"
+
+"Yes, my child."
+
+"Tell me all about it, New Papa, please"; and she put her little hand in
+his.
+
+"Not now, Adaly,--not now. I want to know if you have been taught about
+God, in your old home."
+
+"Oh, the good God! To be sure I have, over and over and over"; and she
+made a little piquant gesture, as if the teaching had been sometimes
+wearisome.
+
+This gayety of speech on such a theme was painful to the Doctor.
+
+"And you have been taught to pray, Adaly?"
+
+"Oh, yes! Listen now. Shall I tell you one of my prayers, New Papa?
+<i>Voyons</i>, how is it"--
+
+"Never mind,--never mind, Adaly; not here, not here. We are taught to
+enter into our closets when we pray."
+
+"Closets?"
+
+"Yes, my child,--to be by ourselves, and to be solemn."
+
+"I don't like solemn people much," said Adele, in a quiet tone.
+
+"But do you love God, my child?"
+
+"Love Him? To be sure I do"; and after a little pause--"All good
+children love Him; and I m good, you know, New Papa, don't you?"--and
+she turned her eyes up toward him with a half-coaxing, half-mischievous
+look that came near to drive away all his solemnity.
+
+"Ah, Adaly! Adaly! we are all wicked!" said he.
+
+Adele stared at him in amazement.
+
+"You, too! Yet papa told me you were so good! Ah, you are telling me now
+a little--what you call--lie! a'n't you, New Papa?"
+
+And she looked at him with such a frank, arch smile,--so like the memory
+he cherished of the college-boy, Maverick,--that he could argue the
+matter no further, but only patted her little hand, as it lay upon the
+cushion of the carriage, as much as to say,--"Poor thing! poor thing!
+
+Upon this, he fell away into a train of grave reflection on the method
+which it would be best to pursue in bringing this little benighted
+wanderer into the fold of the faithful.
+
+And he was still musing thus, when suddenly the spire of Ashfield broke
+upon the view.
+
+"There it is, Adaly! There is to be your new home!"
+
+"Where? where?" says Adele, eagerly.
+
+And straightway she is all aglow with excitement. Her swift questions
+patter on the ears of the old gentleman thick as rain-drops. She
+looks at the houses, the hills, the trees, the face of every
+passer-by,--wondering how she shall like them all; fashioning to herself
+some image of the boy Reuben and of the Aunt Eliza who are to meet her;
+yet, through all the torrent of her vexed fancies, carrying a great glow
+of hope, and entering, with all her fresh, girlish enthusiasms
+unchecked, upon that new phase of life, so widely different from
+anything she has yet experienced, under the grave atmosphere of a New
+England parsonage.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHIMNEY-CORNER.
+
+V.
+
+LITTLE FOXES.--PART IV.
+
+
+PERSISTENCE.
+
+My little foxes are interesting little beasts; and I only hope my reader
+will not get tired of my charming menagerie before I have done showing
+him their nice points. He must recollect there are seven of them, and as
+yet we have shown up only three; so let him have patience.
+
+As before stated, little foxes are the little pet sins of us educated
+good Christians, who hope that we have got above and far out of sight of
+stealing, lying, and those other gross evils against which we pray every
+Sunday, when the Ten Commandments are read. They are not generally
+considered of dignity enough to be fired at from the pulpit; they seem
+to us too trifling to be remembered in church; they are like the red
+spiders on plants,--too small for the perception of the naked eye, and
+only to be known by the shrivelling and dropping of leaf after leaf that
+ought to be green and flourishing.
+
+I have another little fox in my eye, who is most active and most
+mischievous in despoiling the vines of domestic happiness,--in fact, who
+has been guilty of destroying more grapes than anybody knows of. His
+name I find it difficult to give with exactness. In my enumeration I
+called him _Self-Will_; another name for him--perhaps a better
+one--might be _Persistence_.
+
+Like many another, this fault is the overaction of a most necessary and
+praiseworthy quality. The power of firmness is given to man as the very
+granite foundation of life. Without it, there would be nothing
+accomplished; all human plans would be unstable as water on an inclined
+plane. In every well-constituted nature there must be a power of
+tenacity, a gift of perseverance of will; and that man might not be
+without a foundation for so needful a property, the Creator has laid it
+in an animal faculty, which he possesses in common with the brutes.
+
+The animal power of firmness is a brute force, a matter of brain and
+spinal cord, differing in different animals. The force by which a
+bulldog holds on to an antagonist, the persistence with which a mule
+will plant his four feet and set himself against blows and menaces, are
+good examples of the pure animal phase of a property which exists in
+human beings, and forms the foundation for that heroic endurance, for
+that perseverance, which carries on all the great and noble enterprises
+of life.
+
+The domestic fault we speak of is the wild, uncultured growth of this
+faculty, the instinctive action of firmness uncontrolled by reason or
+conscience,--in common parlance, the being "_set in one's way_." It is
+the _animal_ instinct of being "set in one's way" which we mean by
+self-will or persistence; and in domestic life it does the more mischief
+from its working as an instinct unwatched by reason and unchallenged by
+conscience.
+
+In that pretty new cottage which you see on yonder knoll are a pair of
+young people just in the midst of that happy bustle which attends the
+formation of a first home in prosperous circumstances, and with all the
+means of making it charming and agreeable. Carpenters, upholsterers, and
+artificers await their will; and there remains for them only the
+pleasant task of arranging and determining where all their pretty and
+agreeable things shall be placed. Our Hero and Leander are decidedly
+nice people, who have been through all the proper stages of being in
+love with each other for the requisite and suitable time. They have
+written each other a letter every day for two years, beginning with "My
+dearest," and ending with "Your own," etc.; they have sent each other
+flowers and rings and locks of hair; they have worn each other's
+pictures on their hearts; they have spent hours and hours talking over
+all subjects under the sun, and are convinced that never was there such
+sympathy of souls, such unanimity of opinion, such a just, reasonable,
+perfect foundation for mutual esteem.
+
+Now it is quite true that people may have a perfect agreement and
+sympathy in their higher intellectual nature,--may like the same books,
+quote the same poetry, agree in the same principles, be united in the
+same religion,--and nevertheless, when they come together in the
+simplest affair of every-day business, may find themselves jarring and
+impinging upon each other at every step, simply because there are to
+each person, in respect of daily personal habits and personal likes and
+dislikes, a thousand little individualities with which reason has
+nothing to do, which are not subjects for the use of logic, and to which
+they never think of applying the power of religion,--which can only be
+set down as the positive ultimate facts of existence with two people.
+
+Suppose a blue-jay courts and wins and weds a Baltimore oriole. During
+courtship there may have been delightfully sympathetic conversation on
+the charm of being free birds, the felicity of soaring in the blue
+summer air. Mr. Jay may have been all humility and all ecstasy in
+comparing the discordant screech of his own note with the warbling
+tenderness of Miss Oriole. But, once united, the two commence business
+relations. He is firmly convinced that a hole in a hollow tree is the
+only reasonable nest for a bird; she is positive that she should die
+there in a month of damp and rheumatism. She never heard of going to
+housekeeping in anything but a nice little pendulous bag swinging down
+from under the branches of a breezy elm; he is sure he should have water
+on the brain before summer was over, from constant vertigo, in such
+swaying, unsteady quarters,--he would be a sea-sick blue-jay on land,
+and he cannot think of it. She knows now he don't love her, or he never
+would think of shutting her up in an old mouldy hole picked out of
+rotten wood; and _he_ knows she doesn't love him, or she never would
+want to make him uncomfortable all his days by tilting and swinging him
+about as no decent bird ought to be swung. Both are dead-set in their
+own way and opinion; and how is either to be convinced that the way
+which seemeth right unto the other is not best? Nature knows this, and
+therefore, in her feathered tribes, blue-jays do not mate with orioles;
+and so bird-housekeeping goes on in peace.
+
+But men and women as diverse in their physical tastes and habits as
+blue-jays and orioles are wooing and wedding every day, and coming to
+the business of nest-building, _alias_ housekeeping, with predilections
+as violent, and as incapable of any logical defence, as the oriole's
+partiality for a swing-nest and the jay's preference of rotten wood.
+
+Our Hero and Leander, then, who are arranging their cottage to-day, are
+examples just in point. They have both of them been only children,--both
+the idols of circles where they have been universally deferred to. Each
+in his or her own circle has been looked up to as a model of good taste,
+and of course each has the habit of exercising and indulging very
+distinct personal tastes. They truly, deeply esteem, respect, and love
+each other, and for the very best of reasons,--because there are
+sympathies of the very highest kind between them. Both are generous and
+affectionate,--both are highly cultured in intellect and taste,--both
+are earnestly religious; and yet, with all this, let me tell you that
+the first year of their married life will be worthy to be recorded as _a
+year of battles_. Yes, these friends so true, these lovers so ardent,
+these individuals in themselves so admirable, cannot come into the
+intimate relations of life without an effervescence as great as that of
+an acid and alkali; and it will be impossible to decide which is most in
+fault, the acid or the alkali, both being in their way of the very best
+quality.
+
+The reason of it all is, that both are intensely "_set in their way_,"
+and the ways of no two human beings are altogether coincident. Both of
+them have the most sharply defined, exact tastes and preferences. In the
+simplest matter both have _a way_,--an exact way,--which seems to be
+dear to them as life's blood. In the simplest appetite or taste they
+know exactly what they want, and cannot, by any argument, persuasion, or
+coaxing, be made to want anything else.
+
+For example, this morning dawns bright upon them, as she, in her tidy
+morning wrapper and trimly laced boots, comes stepping over the bales
+and boxes which are discharged on the verandah; while he, for joy of his
+new acquisition, can hardly let her walk on her own pretty feet, and is
+making every fond excuse to lift her over obstacles and carry her into
+her new dwelling in triumph.
+
+Carpets are put down, the floors glow under the hands of obedient
+workmen, and now the furniture is being wheeled in.
+
+"Put the piano in the bow-window," says the lady.
+
+"No, not in the bow-window," says the gentleman.
+
+"Why, my dear, of course it must go in the bow-window. How awkward it
+would look anywhere else! I have always seen pianos in bow-windows."
+
+"My love, certainly you would not think of dashing that beautiful
+prospect from the bow-window by blocking it up with the piano. The
+proper place is just here, in the corner of the room. Now try it."
+
+"My dear, I think it looks dreadfully there; it spoils the appearance of
+the room."
+
+"Well, for my part, my love, I think the appearance of the room would be
+spoiled, if you filled up the bow-window. Think what a lovely place that
+would be to sit in!"
+
+"Just as if we couldn't sit there behind the piano, if we wanted to!"
+says the lady.
+
+"But then, how much more ample and airy the room looks as you open the
+door, and see through the bow-window down that little glen, and that
+distant peep of the village-spire!"
+
+"But I never could be reconciled to the piano standing in the corner in
+that way," says the lady. "_I insist_ upon it, it ought to stand in the
+bow-window: it's the way mamma's stands, and Aunt Jane's, and Mrs.
+Wilcox's; everybody has their piano so."
+
+"If it comes to _insisting_," says the gentleman, "it strikes me that is
+a game two can play at."
+
+"Why, my dear, you know a lady's parlor is her own ground."
+
+"Not a married lady's parlor, I imagine. I believe it is at least
+equally her husband's, as he expects to pass a good portion of his time
+there."
+
+"But I don't think you ought to insist on an arrangement that really is
+disagreeable to me," says the lady.
+
+And now Hero's cheeks flush, and the spirit burns within, as she says,--
+
+"Well, if you insist upon it, I suppose it must be as you say; but I
+shall never take any pleasure in playing on it"; and Hero sweeps from
+the apartment, leaving the victor very unhappy in his conquest.
+
+He rushes after her, and finds her up-stairs, sitting disconsolate and
+weeping on a packing-box.
+
+"Now, Hero, how silly! Do have it your own way. I'll give it up."
+
+"No,--let it be as you say. I forgot that it was a wife's duty to
+submit."
+
+"Nonsense, Hero! Do talk like a rational woman. Don't let us quarrel
+like children."
+
+"But it's so evident that I was in the right."
+
+"My dear, I cannot concede that you were in the right; but I am willing
+it should be as you say."
+
+"Now I perfectly wonder, Leander, that you don't see how awkward your
+way is. It would make me nervous every time I came into the room, and it
+would be so dark in that corner that I never could see the notes."
+
+"And I wonder, Hero, that a woman of your taste don't see how shutting
+up that bow-window spoils the parlor. It's the very prettiest feature of
+the room."
+
+And so round and round they go, stating and restating their arguments,
+both getting more and more nervous and combative, both declaring
+themselves perfectly ready to yield the point as an oppressive exaction,
+but to do battle for their own opinion as right and reason,--the animal
+instinct of self-will meanwhile rising and rising and growing stronger
+and stronger on both sides. But meanwhile in the heat of argument some
+side-issues and personal reflections fly out like splinters in the
+shivering of lances. He tells her, in his heat, that her notions are
+formed from deference to models in fashionable life, and that she has no
+idea of adaptation,--and she tells him that he is domineering, and
+dictatorial, and wanting to have everything his own way; and in fine,
+this battle is fought off and on through the day, with occasional
+armistices of kisses and makings-up,--treacherous truces, which are all
+broken up by the fatal words, "My dear, after all, you must admit _I_
+was in the right," which of course is the signal to fight the whole
+battle over again.
+
+One such prolonged struggle is the parent of many lesser ones,--the
+aforenamed splinters of injurious remark and accusation, which flew out
+in the heat of argument, remaining and festering and giving rise to
+nervous soreness; yet, where there is at the foundation real, genuine
+love, and a good deal of it, the pleasure of making up so balances the
+pain of the controversy that the two do not perceive exactly what they
+are doing, nor suspect that so deep and wide a love as theirs can be
+seriously affected by causes so insignificant.
+
+But the cause of difficulty in both, the silent, unwatched, intense
+power of self-will in trifles, is all the while precipitating them into
+new encounters. For example, in a bright hour between the showers, Hero
+arranges for her Leander a repast of peace and good-will, and compounds
+for him a salad which is a _chef d'oeuvre_ among salads. Leander is
+also bright and propitious; but after tasting the salad, he pushes it
+silently away.
+
+"My dear, you don't like your salad."
+
+"No, my dear; I never eat anything with salad oil in it."
+
+"Not eat salad oil? How absurd! I never heard of a salad without oil."
+And the lady looks disturbed.
+
+"But, my dear, as I tell you, I never take it. I prefer simple sugar and
+vinegar."
+
+"Sugar and vinegar! Why, Leander, I'm astonished! How very _bourgeois!_
+You must really try to like my salad"--(spoken in a coaxing tone).
+
+"My dear, I _never_ try to like anything new. I am satisfied with my old
+tastes."
+
+"Well, Leander, I must say that is very ungracious and disobliging of
+you."
+
+"Why any more than for you to annoy me by forcing on me what I don't
+like?"
+
+"But you would like it, if you would only try. People never like olives
+till they have eaten three or four, and then they become passionately
+fond of them."
+
+"Then I think they are very silly to go through all that trouble, when
+there are enough things that they do like."
+
+"Now, Leander, I don't think that seems amiable or pleasant at all. I
+think we ought to try to accommodate ourselves to the tastes of our
+friends."
+
+"Then, my dear, suppose you try to like your salad with sugar and
+vinegar."
+
+"But it's so _gauche_ and unfashionable! Did you ever hear of a salad
+made with sugar and vinegar on a table in good society?"
+
+"My mother's table, I believe, was good society, and I learned to like
+it there. The truth is, Hero, for a sensible woman, you are too fond of
+mere fashionable and society notions."
+
+"Yes, you told me that last week, and I think it was very unjust,--_very
+unjust, indeed_"--(uttered with emphasis).
+
+"No more unjust than your telling me that I was dictatorial and
+obstinate."
+
+"Well, now, Leander, dear, you must confess that you are rather
+obstinate."
+
+"I don't see the proof."
+
+"You insist on your own ways and opinions so, heaven and earth won't
+turn you."
+
+"Do I insist on mine more than you on yours?"
+
+"Certainly, you do."
+
+"I don't think so."
+
+Hero casts up her eyes and repeats with expression,--
+
+    "Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us
+    To see oursels as others see us!"
+
+"Precisely," says Leander. "I would that prayer were answered in your
+case, my dear."
+
+"I think you take pleasure in provoking me," says the lady.
+
+"My dear, how silly and childish all this is!" says the gentleman. "Why
+can't we let each other alone?"
+
+"You began it."
+
+"No, my dear, begging your pardon, I did not."
+
+"Certainly, Leander, you did."
+
+Now a conversation of this kind may go on hour after hour, as long as
+the respective parties have breath and strength, both becoming secretly
+more and more "set in their way". On both sides is the consciousness
+that they might end it at once by a very simple concession.
+
+She might say,--"Well, dear, you shall always have your salad as you
+like"; and he might say,--"My dear, I will try to like your salad, if
+you care much about it"; and if either of them would utter one of these
+sentences, the other would soon follow. Either would give up, if the
+other would set the example; but as it is, they remind us of nothing so
+much as two cows that we have seen standing with locked horns in a
+meadow, who can neither advance nor recede an inch. It is a mere
+deadlock of the animal instinct of firmness; reason, conscience,
+religion have nothing to do with it.
+
+The questions debated in this style by our young couple were
+surprisingly numerous: as, for example, whether their favorite copy of
+Turner should hang in the parlor or in the library,--whether their pet
+little landscape should hang against the wall, or be placed on an
+easel,--whether the bust of Psyche should stand on the marble table in
+the hall, or on a bracket in the library; all of which points were
+debated with a breadth of survey, a richness of imagery, a vigor of
+discussion, that would be perfectly astonishing to any one who did not
+know how much two very self-willed argumentative people might
+find to say on any point under heaven. Everything in classical
+antiquity,--everything in Kugler's "Hand-Book of Painting,"--every
+opinion of living artists,--besides questions social, moral, and
+religious,--all mingled in the grand _melee_: because there is nothing
+in creation that is not somehow connected with everything else.
+
+Dr. Johnson has said,--"There are a thousand familiar disputes which
+reason never can decide; questions that elude investigation, and make
+logic ridiculous; cases where something must be done, and where little
+can be said."
+
+With all deference to the great moralist, we must say that this
+statement argues a very limited knowledge of the resources of talk
+possessed by two very cultivated and very self-willed persons fairly
+pitted against each other in practical questions; the logic may indeed
+be ridiculous, but such people as our Hero and Leander find no cases
+under the sun where something is to be done, yet where little can be
+said. And these wretched wranglings, this interminable labyrinth of
+petty disputes, waste and crumble away that high ideal of truth and
+tenderness, which the real, deep sympathies and actual worth of their
+characters entitled them to form. Their married life is not what they
+expected; at times they are startled by the reflection that they nave
+somehow grown unlovely to each other; and yet, if Leander goes away to
+pass a week, and thinks of his Hero in the distance, he can compare no
+other woman to her; and the days seem long and the house empty to Hero
+while he is gone; both wonder at themselves when they look over their
+petty bickerings, but neither knows exactly how to catch the little fox
+that spoils their vines.
+
+It is astonishing how much we think about ourselves, yet to how little
+purpose,--how very clever people will talk and wonder about themselves
+and each other, and yet go on year after year, not knowing how to use
+either themselves or each other,--not having as much practical
+philosophy in the matter of their own characters and that of their
+friends as they have in respect of the screws of their gas-fixtures or
+the management of their water-pipes.
+
+"But _I_ won't have any such scenes with _my_ wife," says Don Positive.
+"I won't marry one of your clever women; they are always positive and
+disagreeable. _I_ look for a wife of a gentle and yielding nature, that
+shall take her opinions from me, and accommodate her tastes to mine."
+And so Don Positive goes and marries a pretty little pink-and-white
+concern, so lisping and soft and delicate that he is quite sure she
+cannot have a will of her own. She is the moon of his heavens, to shine
+only by his reflected light.
+
+We would advise our gentlemen friends who wish to enjoy the felicity of
+having their own way not to try the experiment with a pretty fool; for
+the obstinacy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinacy of
+folly and inanity.
+
+Let our friend once get in the seat opposite to him at table a pretty
+creature who cries for the moon, and insists that he don't love her
+because he doesn't get it for her; and in vain may he display his
+superior knowledge of astronomy, and prove to her that the moon is not
+to be got. She listens with her head on one side, and after he has
+talked himself quite out of breath, repeats the very same sentence she
+began the discussion with, without variation or addition.
+
+If she wants darling Johnny taken away from school, because cruel
+teachers will not give up the rules of the institution for his pleasure,
+in vain does Don Positive, in the most select and superior English,
+enlighten her on the necessity of habits of self-control and order for a
+boy,--the impossibility that a teacher should make exceptions for their
+particular darling,--the absolute, perishing need that the boy should
+begin to do something. She hears him all through, and then says, "I
+don't know anything about that. I know what I want: I want Johnny taken
+away." And so she weeps, sulks, storms, entreats, lies awake nights, has
+long fits of sick-headache,--in short, shows that a pretty animal,
+without reason or cultivation, can be, in her way, quite as formidable
+an antagonist as the most clever of her sex.
+
+Leander can sometimes vanquish his Hero in fair fight by the weapons of
+good logic, because she is a woman capable of appreciating reason, and
+able to feel the force of the considerations he adduces; and when he
+does vanquish and carry her captive by his bow and spear, he feels that
+he has gained a victory over no ignoble antagonist, and he becomes a
+hero in his own eyes. Though a woman of much will, still she is a woman
+of much reason; and if he has many vexations with her pertinacity, he is
+never without hope in her good sense; but alas for him whose wife has
+only the animal instinct of firmness, without any development of the
+judgment or reasoning faculties! The conflicts with a woman whom a man
+respects and admires are often extremely trying; but the conflicts with
+one whom he cannot help despising become in the end simply disgusting.
+
+But the inquiry now arises, What shall be done with all the questions
+Dr. Johnson speaks of, which reason cannot decide, which elude
+investigation, and make logic ridiculous,--cases where something must be
+done, and where little can be said?
+
+Read Mrs. Ellis's "Wives of England," and you have one solution of the
+problem. The good women of England are there informed that there is to
+be no discussion, that everything in the _menage_ is to follow the rule
+of the lord, and that the wife has but one hope, namely, that grace may
+be given him to know exactly what his own will is. "_L'etat, c'est
+moi_," is the lesson which every English husband learns of Mrs. Ellis,
+and we should judge from the pictures of English novels that this "awful
+right divine" is insisted on in detail in domestic life.
+
+Miss Edgeworth makes her magnificent General Clarendon talk about his
+"commands" to his accomplished and elegant wife; and he rings the
+parlor-bell with such an air, calls up and interrogates trembling
+servants with such awful majesty, and lays about him generally in so
+very military and tremendous a style, that we are not surprised that
+poor little Cecilia is frightened into lying, being half out of her wits
+in terror of so very martial a husband.
+
+During his hours of courtship he majestically informs her mother that he
+never could consent to receive as _his_ wife any woman who has had
+another attachment; and so the poor puss, like a naughty girl, conceals
+a little school-girl flirtation of bygone days, and thus gives rise to
+most agonizing and tragic scenes with her terrible lord, who petrifies
+her one morning by suddenly drawing the bed-curtains and flapping an old
+love-letter in her eyes, asking, in tones of suppressed thunder,
+"Cecilia, is this your writing?"
+
+The more modern female novelists of England give us representations of
+their view of the right divine no less stringent. In a very popular
+story, called "Agatha's Husband," the plot is as follows. A man marries
+a beautiful girl with a large fortune. Before the marriage, he discovers
+that his brother, who has been guardian of the estate, has fraudulently
+squandered the property, so that it can only be retrieved by the
+strictest economy. For the sake of getting her heroine into a situation
+to illustrate her moral, the authoress now makes her hero give a solemn
+promise not to divulge to his wife or to any human being the fraud by
+which she suffers.
+
+The plot of the story then proceeds to show how very badly the young
+wife behaves when her husband takes her to mean lodgings, deprives her
+of wonted luxuries and comforts, and obstinately refuses to give any
+kind of sensible reason for his conduct. Instead of looking up to him
+with blind faith and unquestioning obedience, following his directions
+without inquiry, and believing not only without evidence, but against
+apparent evidence, that he is the soul of honor and wisdom, this
+perverse Agatha murmurs, complains, thinks herself very ill-used, and
+occasionally is even wicked enough, in a very mild way, to say
+so,--whereat her husband looks like a martyr and suffers in silence; and
+thus we are treated to a volume of mutual distresses, which are at last
+ended by the truth coming out, the abused husband mounting the throne in
+glory, and the penitent wife falling in the dust at his feet, and
+confessing what a wretch she has been all along to doubt him.
+
+The authoress of Jane Eyre describes the process of courtship in much
+the same terms as one would describe the breaking of a horse. Shirley is
+contumacious and self-willed, and Moore, her lover and tutor, gives her
+"_Le Cheval dompte_" for a French lesson, as a gentle intimation of the
+work he has in hand in paying her his addresses; and after long
+struggling against his power, when at last she consents to his love, he
+addresses her thus, under the figure of a very fierce leopardess:--
+
+"Tame or wild, fierce or subdued, you are _mine_."
+
+And she responds:--
+
+"I am glad I know my keeper and am used to him. Only his voice will I
+follow, only his hand shall manage me, only at his feet will I repose."
+
+The accomplished authoress of "Nathalie" represents the struggles of a
+young girl engaged to a man far older than herself, extremely dark and
+heroic, fond of behaving in a very unaccountable manner, and declaring,
+nevertheless, in very awful and mysterious tones, that he has such a
+passion for being believed in, that, if any one of his friends, under
+the most suspicious circumstances, admits _one doubt_ of his honor, all
+will be over between them forever.
+
+After establishing his power over Nathalie fully, and amusing himself
+quietly for a time with the contemplation of her perplexities and
+anxieties, he at last unfolds to her the mysterious counsels of his will
+by declaring to another of her lovers, in her presence, that he "has the
+intention of asking this young lady to become his wife." During the
+engagement, however, he contrives to disturb her tranquillity by
+insisting prematurely on the right divine of husbands, and, as she
+proves fractious, announces to her, that, much as he loves her, he sees
+no prospect of future happiness in their union, and that they had better
+part.
+
+The rest of the story describe the struggles and anguish of the two, who
+pass through a volume of distresses, he growing more cold, proud,
+severe, and misanthropic than ever, all of which is supposed to be the
+fault of naughty Miss Nathalie, who might have made a saint of him,
+could she only have found her highest pleasure in letting him have his
+own way. Her conscience distresses her; it is all her fault; at last,
+worn out in the strife, she resolves to be a good girl, goes to his
+library, finds him alone, and, in spite of an insulting reception,
+humbles herself at his feet, gives up all her naughty pride, begs to be
+allowed to wait on him as a handmaid, and is rewarded by his graciously
+announcing, that, since she will stay with him at all events, she _may_
+stay as his wife; and the story leaves her in the last sentence sitting
+in what we are informed is the only true place of happiness for a woman,
+at her husband's feet.
+
+This is the solution which the most cultivated women of England give of
+the domestic problem, according to these fair interpreters of English
+ideas.
+
+The British lion on his own domestic hearth, standing in awful majesty
+with his back to the fire and his hands under his coat-tails, can be
+supposed to have no such disreputable discussions as we have described;
+since his partner, as Miss Bronte says, has learned to know her keeper,
+and her place at his feet, and can conceive no happiness so great as
+hanging the picture and setting the piano exactly as he likes.
+
+Of course this will be met with a general shriek of horror on the part
+of our fair republican friends, and an equally general disclaimer on the
+part of our American gentlemen, who, so far as we know, would be quite
+embarrassed by the idea of assuming any such pronounced position at the
+fireside.
+
+The genius of American institutions is not towards a display of
+authority. All needed authority exists among us, but exists silently,
+with as little external manifestation as possible.
+
+Our President is but a fellow-citizen, personally the equal of other
+citizens. We obey him because we have chosen him, and because we find it
+convenient, in regulating our affairs, to have one final appeal and one
+deciding voice.
+
+The position in which the Bible and the marriage service place the
+husband in the family amounts to no more. He is the head of the family
+in all that relates to its material interests, its legal relations, its
+honor and standing in society; and no true woman who respects herself
+would any more hesitate to promise to yield to him this position and the
+deference it implies than an officer of State to yield to the President.
+But because Mr. Lincoln is officially above Mr. Seward, it does not
+follow that there can be nothing between them but absolute command on
+the one part and prostrate submission on the other; neither does it
+follow that the superior claims in all respects to regulate the affairs
+and conduct of the inferior. There are still wide spheres of individual
+freedom, as there are in the case of husband and wife; and no sensible
+man but would feel himself ridiculous in entering another's proper
+sphere with the voice of authority.
+
+The inspired declaration, that "the husband is the head of the wife,
+even as Christ is the head of the Church," is certainly to be qualified
+by the evident points of difference in the subjects spoken of. It
+certainly does not mean that any man shall be invested with the rights
+of omnipotence and omniscience, but simply that in the family state he
+is the head and protector, even as in the Church is the Saviour. It is
+merely the announcement of a great natural law of society which obtains
+through all the tribes and races of men,--a great and obvious fact of
+human existence.
+
+The silly and senseless reaction against this idea in some otherwise
+sensible women is, I think, owing to the kind of extravagances and
+overstatements to which we have alluded. It is as absurd to cavil at the
+word _obey_ in the marriage ceremony as for a military officer to set
+himself against the etiquette of the army, or a man to refuse the
+freeman's oath.
+
+Two young men every way on a footing of equality and friendship may be
+one of them a battalion-commander and the other a staff-officer. It
+would be alike absurd for the one to take airs about not obeying a man
+every way his equal, and for the other to assume airs of lordly
+dictation out of the sphere of his military duties. The mooting of the
+question of marital authority between two well-bred, well-educated
+Christian people of the nineteenth century is no less absurd.
+
+While the husband has a certain power confided to him for the support
+and maintenance of the family, and for the preservation of those
+relations which involve its good name and well-being before the world,
+he has no claim to an authoritative exertion of will in reference to the
+little personal tastes and habits of the interior. He has no divine
+right to require that everything shall be arranged to please him, at the
+expense of his wife's preferences and feelings, any more than if he were
+not the head of the household. In a thousand indifferent matters which
+do not touch the credit and respectability of the family, he is just as
+much bound sometimes to give up his own will and way for the comfort of
+his wife as she is in certain other matters to submit to his decisions.
+In a large number of cases the husband and wife stand as equal human
+beings before God, and the indulgence of unchecked and inconsiderate
+self-will on either side is a sin.
+
+It is my serious belief that writings such as we have been considering
+do harm both to men and women, by insensibly inspiring in the one an
+idea of a licensed prerogative of selfishness and self-will, and in the
+other an irrational and indiscreet servility.
+
+Is it any benefit to a man to find in the wife of his bosom the
+flatterer of his egotism, the acquiescent victim of his little selfish
+exactions, to be nursed and petted and cajoled in all his faults and
+fault-findings, and to see everybody falling prostrate before his will
+in the domestic circle? Is this the true way to make him a manly and
+Christ-like man? It is my belief that many so-called good wives have
+been accessory to making their husbands very bad Christians.
+
+However, then, the little questions of difference in every-day life are
+to be disposed of between two individuals, it is in the worst possible
+taste and policy to undertake to settle them by mere authority. All
+romance, all poetry, all beauty are over forever with a couple between
+whom the struggle of mere authority has begun. No, there is no way out
+of difficulties of this description but by the application, on both
+sides, of good sense and religion to the little differences of life.
+
+A little reflection will enable any person to detect in himself that
+setness in trifles which is the result of the unwatched instinct of
+self-will, and to establish over himself a jealous guardianship.
+
+Everyman and every woman, in their self-training and self-culture,
+should study the art of giving up with a good grace. The charm of polite
+society is formed by that sort of freedom and facility in all the
+members of a circle which makes each one pliable to the influences of
+the others, and sympathetic to slide into the moods and tastes of others
+without a jar.
+
+In courteous and polished circles, there are no stiff railroad-tracks,
+cutting straight through everything, and grating harsh thunders all
+along their course, but smooth, meandering streams, tranquilly bending
+hither and thither to every undulation of the flowery banks. What makes
+the charm of polite society would make no less the charm of domestic
+life; but it can come only by watchfulness and self-discipline in each
+individual.
+
+Some people have much more to struggle with in this way than others.
+Nature has made them precise and exact. They are punctilious in their
+hours, rigid in their habits, pained by any deviation from regular rule.
+
+Now Nature is always perversely ordering that men and women of just this
+disposition should become desperately enamored of their exact opposites.
+The man of rules and formulas and hours has his heart carried off by a
+gay, careless little chit, who never knows the day of the month, tears
+up the newspaper, loses the door-key, and makes curlpapers out of the
+last bill; or, _per contra_, our exact and precise little woman, whose
+belongings are like the waxen cells of a bee, gives her heart to some
+careless fellow, who enters her sanctum in muddy boots, upsets all her
+little nice household divinities whenever he is going on a hunting or
+fishing bout, and can see no manner of sense in the discomposure she
+feels in the case.
+
+What can such couples do, if they do not adopt the compromises of reason
+and sense,--if each arms his or her own peculiarities with the back
+force of persistent self-will, and runs them over the territories of the
+other?
+
+A sensible man and woman, finding themselves thus placed, can govern
+themselves by a just philosophy, and, instead of carrying on a
+life-battle, can modify their own tastes and requirements, turn their
+eyes from traits which do not suit them to those which do, resolving, at
+all events, however reasonable be the taste or propensity which they
+sacrifice, to give up all rather than have domestic strife.
+
+There is one form which persistency takes that is peculiarly trying: I
+mean that persistency of opinion which deems it necessary to stop and
+raise an argument in self-defence on the slightest personal criticism.
+
+John tells his wife that she is half an hour late with her breakfast
+this morning, and she indignantly denies it.
+
+"But look at my watch!"
+
+"Your watch isn't right."
+
+"I set it by railroad time."
+
+"Well, that was a week ago; that watch of yours always gains."
+
+"No, my dear, you're mistaken."
+
+"Indeed I'm not. Did I not hear you telling Mr. B---- about it?"
+
+"My dear, that was a year ago,--before I had it cleaned."
+
+"How can you say so, John? It was only a month ago."
+
+"My dear, you are mistaken."
+
+And so the contest goes on, each striving for the last word.
+
+This love of the last word has made more bitterness in families and
+spoiled more Christians than it is worth. A thousand little differences
+of this kind would drop to the ground, if either party would let them
+drop. Suppose John is mistaken in saying breakfast is late,--suppose
+that fifty of the little criticisms which we make on one another are
+well- or ill-founded, are they worth a discussion? Are they worth
+ill-tempered words, such as are almost sure to grow out of a discussion?
+Are they worth throwing away peace and love for? Are they worth the
+destruction of the only fair ideal left on earth,--a quiet, happy home?
+Better let the most unjust statements pass in silence than risk one's
+temper in a discussion upon them.
+
+Discussions, assuming the form of warm arguments, are never pleasant
+ingredients of domestic life, never safe recreations between near
+friends. They are, generally speaking, mere unsuspected vents for
+self-will, and the cases are few where they do anything more than to
+make both parties more positive in their own way than they were before.
+
+A calm comparison of opposing views, a fair statement of reasons on
+either side, may be valuable; but when warmth and heat and love of
+victory and pride of opinion come in, good temper and good manners are
+too apt to step out.
+
+And now Christopher, having come to the end of his subject, pauses for a
+sentence to close with. There are a few lines of a poet that sum up so
+beautifully all he has been saying that he may be pardoned for closing
+with them.
+
+    "Alas! how light a cause may move
+    Dissension between hearts that love;
+    Hearts that the world has vainly tried,
+    And sorrow but more closely tied;
+    That stood the storm when waves were rough,
+    Yet in a sunny hour fall off,
+    Like ships that have gone down at sea
+    When heaven was all tranquillity!
+    A something light as air, a look,
+    A word unkind, or wrongly taken,--
+    Oh, love that tempests never shook,
+    A breath, a touch like this hath shaken!
+    For ruder words will soon rush in
+    To spread the breach that words begin,
+    And eyes forget the gentle ray
+    They wore in courtship's smiling day,
+    And voices lose the tone which shed
+    A tenderness round all they said,--
+    Till, fast declining, one by one,
+    The sweetnesses of love are gone,
+    And hearts so lately mingled seem
+    Like broken clouds, or like the stream,
+    That, smiling, left the mountain-brow
+    As though its waters ne'er could sever,
+    Yet, ere it reach the plain below,
+    Breaks into floods that part forever."
+
+
+
+
+NEEDLE AND GARDEN.
+
+THE STORY OF A SEAMSTRESS WHO LAID DOWN HER NEEDLE AND BECAME A
+STRAWBERRY-GIRL.
+
+WRITTEN BY HERSELF.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+I imagine, that, if one went into any of the numerous places, in this or
+any other city, where numbers of women are assembled as workers, or to
+any of the charitable institutions where orphan children are taken in
+and cared for, and were to institute a general examination of the
+inmates as to their personal history, he would find few of them but had
+experiences to relate of a kind to make the heart ache. From my own
+incidental inquiry and observation of these classes, it would appear
+that they afford representatives of every phase of domestic and
+pecuniary suffering. I read of kindred sufferings which occasionally
+happen to the high-born and wealthy, but here I have come in personal
+contact with those in humble life to whom such trials seem to be a
+perpetual inheritance.
+
+In our factory there was one operator on a machine with whom I never
+could gain an acquaintance beyond the usual morning salutation which
+passed between most of us as we came in to our daily employment. To me
+she was reserved and taciturn, and it was evident that there was no
+disposition on her part to be sociable. But somehow she fell in with my
+sister's gay, open, and prepossessing manner, and there grew up a sort
+of passionate intimacy between them that I could not account for, as she
+was much older than Jane. When we stopped work at noon, they always
+dined together by themselves, in a corner of the room, and a close and
+incessant conversation was carried on between them, for an hour at a
+time, as if they had been lovers. There must have been great mutual
+outpourings of confidence, for my sister soon became acquainted with the
+minutest particulars of her new friend's singular life.
+
+This woman's name was Vane. Who her father was no one knew but her
+mother. When a child, she had lived with the latter in what was at that
+time the remains of a wooden hut, that must have been among the very
+first buildings erected in the forest which covered the northwestern
+portion of what is now the suburbs of the great city around us. In this
+little obscure home the two lived entirely alone. They had neighbors, of
+course, but none of them could tell how they contrived to subsist. The
+mother did no work, except for herself and her child; she had but a
+small garden in front of the house, the embellishment of which was her
+particular care; and she was surrounded with books, in the reading of
+which she spent all her leisure time, having little intercourse with her
+neighbors. The gossips that exist everywhere in society, if curious
+about her affairs, could discover nothing as to how she lived so
+comfortably without any visible means.
+
+When the daughter, Sabrina, grew up to sixteen, her beauty, the
+character she developed, and her general conduct were the topic of quite
+as much rural conversation and remark as had been the mystery that hung
+around the mother. Gradually drawn out into the neighboring society, her
+great personal attractions, added to her shrewdness and good sense, made
+her so much admired as to collect around her a train of suitors, who
+seemed to consider her being fatherless as of no more consequence to
+them than it was to herself.
+
+But there was in her temperament an undercurrent of ambition so strong
+as to cause her to receive their advances toward tender acquaintance
+with a freezing coldness, while at the same time it rendered her
+positively unhappy. She felt superior to her condition, and she longed
+to rise above it. Her mind had attained to a premature development while
+feeding almost exclusively on its own thoughts,--for she had never been
+fond of books, though there were many around her. Her sole occupations
+had been the school, the needle, and assisting her mother in the
+management of their flower-garden. For this last she had a decided
+taste, and they had concealed the time-worn character of the old house
+they occupied by covering it with a luxuriance of floral wealth, so
+tastefully arranged, and so profuse and gorgeous, that travellers on the
+dusty highway on which it stood would stop to admire the remarkable
+blending of the climbing rose, the honeysuckle, and the grape.
+
+Thus filled with indefinite longings, she grew up to womanhood without
+any proper direction from her mother. She had no sympathy with her
+uncultivated suitors. She sighed for something higher, an ideal that was
+far off, indistinct, and dim. Good offers of marriage from neighboring
+workmen of fair character and prospects she stubbornly declined,
+sometimes with a tartness that quite confounded the swain whom her
+well-known character had half-intimidated before he ventured on the
+dangerous proposal. Love had not yet unsealed the deep fountain of her
+singularly constituted heart. But I suppose that there must somewhere be
+a key to every woman's affections, and that it is generally found in but
+few hands,--sometimes in safe ones, sometimes in very dangerous ones. It
+was so with Sabrina.
+
+One evening, at a party, she became acquainted with a young sprig of the
+medical profession, who was captivated by her beauty. The fellow was
+loquacious, prepossessing, and bold, with an air of high life and
+fashion about him to which Sabrina had not been accustomed. But though
+unsteady, insincere, and wholly unworthy of her, yet the glitter of his
+style and manner won her heart, and an engagement of marriage took place
+between them, which he, for some unexplained reason, required of her to
+keep secret. She was young and inexperienced, and so happy in her
+prospects as to give but little thought to the obligation to
+concealment. A future was opening to her such as she had longed for; her
+ambitious aspirations for a higher destiny were about to be realized.
+
+Somehow the neighborhood became possessed of her secret,--not, however,
+from her, but by that intuition which reveals to lookers-on the sure
+finale of an intimacy such as every one saw had grown up between her and
+the young physician. Her future was said to be a brilliant one; she was
+to be rich, and a great lady. There were absurd and wide-spread
+exaggerations of an almost every-day occurrence. Some sneered while they
+repeated them, as if envious of her elevation, while others went so far
+as to suggest surmises unworthy of her virtue. But Sabrina heard nothing
+of what the little world around her said or thought. Happy in her own
+heart, she was unconcerned as to all beyond.
+
+Months passed away, when all at once her lover ceased his visits. This,
+too, was immediately observed by all the gossips of the neighborhood. It
+was said that she had been cruelly deceived, even ruined. But she no
+more than others was able to account for this unexpected abandonment.
+The truth eventually came out, however. The father of her lover had
+heard the common rumor, that his son was about marrying an obscure and
+fatherless girl, questioned him, and warned him of the consequences. It
+was the first serious intimation the young man had received that his
+secret was known, and he resolved to cast off the poor girl, seeking to
+pacify the reproaches of his conscience by accusing her of having
+divulged it. There was not a manly impulse in his bosom; he gave her no
+opportunity for explanation, but forsook her on the instant.
+
+For a time the victim of this faithlessness sunk under the weight of her
+disappointment. To her proud spirit the mortification was almost beyond
+endurance. And if Divine Providence had not mercifully given to us, to
+woman especially, strength according to our day, tempering the wind to
+the shorn lamb, the world would be peopled with perpetual mourners. But
+there is
+
+    "No grief so great but runneth to an end;
+    No hap so hard but will in time amend."
+
+She bore up bravely, and in time her strong mind recovered in a good
+degree its equilibrium. But she was now a subdued and thoughtful woman.
+Four years passed away, during which her former admirers gradually
+gathered around her again, solicitous, as before, to win her favor. To
+one of them she gave her hand,--her heart was yet another's. Years of an
+unhappy married life went over her, brightening no cloud above her head,
+admitting no sunshine into her heart. All her ambitious aspirations had
+been blasted, all her early hopes wrecked. Marriage had proved no
+blessing to a mind so ill-regulated. Her mother died, and then her
+husband. The secret source from which the mother had been supplied with
+means was unknown to the daughter, and she had still pride enough to
+refrain from all endeavor to solve the mystery. No one was able to do so
+during the lifetime of the former,--who was there to do it after her
+death?
+
+Thus thrown upon herself when only twenty-six years of age, she went to
+work; and when we came to the factory, we found her there, the most
+industrious and skilful of all the operators. Employment gave a new turn
+to her thoughts. New associations opened other and more hopeful views to
+her mind. She became cheerful, sometimes animated, and, with my sister,
+intimate and confiding.
+
+But if interested in what my sister thus learned of her history, I was
+to be still more surprised by the subsequent portion of it to which I
+was myself a witness.
+
+One day a gentleman came into the room where we were at work, and
+obtained from the proprietor permission to examine the mode in which it
+was carried on. His age was probably fifty, and his dress and manner
+evinced polish and acquaintance with society: if dress was ever an index
+of wealth, his also indicated that. He went slowly round among the
+machines, stopping before each, and courteously addressing and entering
+into a brief conversation with the several operators in turn. Sabrina
+was working a machine between my sister and myself. When he came to her,
+he had more to say than to any of the others; and while conversing with
+her, the proprietor came up, and, speaking to her on some business
+matter, addressed her by name, "Sabrina."
+
+The stranger heard it. He gazed on her long and silently. Sabrina was
+his own child, for whose discovery he had come among us! There could be
+no mutual recognition by face and feature, because neither had ever seen
+the other before,--the heartless parent had never kissed or fondled his
+own child!--they had lived total strangers. There was no excitement at
+the moment, nothing that could be called a scene,--no symptom of remorse
+on the part of the one, nor of affectionate recognition by the other. I
+could know nothing, therefore, of their relations to each other, even
+though I saw them at the very moment the parent was identifying his
+daughter. All these curious facts were communicated to us afterwards.
+
+That very evening Sabrina quitted her employment at the factory, and was
+taken to her father's house, acknowledged as his child, her future to be
+made by him as cloudless as in the past his own shameless neglect had
+caused it to be gloomy.
+
+If in such a refuge as this factory there were gathered many examples of
+the ups and downs of life, it was a blessing that such an establishment
+existed. Here was a certainty of employment at wages on which a woman
+could live. But, generally, such factories accommodated only what might
+be called the better order of workers,--that is, the least necessitous.
+
+The press had been for years exalting the character and attainments of
+the working-women of New England, celebrating their thrift, their
+intelligence, their neatness, even their personal loveliness, until the
+fame of their numerous virtues has overshadowed, at least on paper, that
+of all others, extending even to European circles, and becoming a theme
+for foreign applause. But from what I have seen of the working-women of
+my native city, I am satisfied that their merits have been undervalued
+as much as their numbers have been underestimated. Both in the
+sewing-school and in the factory, there were girls who were patterns of
+all that is modest, beautiful, and womanly, many of them graduates of
+the public schools, and worthy to be wedded to the best among the other
+sex. No Lowell factory could turn out a larger or more interesting army
+of young and virtuous girls than some of the establishments here in
+which the sewing-machine is driven by steam.
+
+Then, as regards numbers, this city has a female manufacturing
+population to which that of the largest manufacturing towns in New
+England can bear no comparison. To particularize.
+
+The book-binderies reckon three thousand in their various
+establishments, who fold and sew the sheets, and work the
+ruling-machines. I have seen in one of these establishments a collection
+of young women whose manners and deportment could not be excelled in any
+assembly of their fashionable and wealthy sisters: the proprietor never
+came in among them without removing his hat. As the work they do is
+light and cleanly, so the dress of the workers is neat and tidy. These
+earn two dollars and upward per week. Some hundreds of others are
+employed in printing-offices, feeding the paper to book-presses: these
+are able to earn more. Another class are employed in coloring maps and
+prints, and among these are some who exhibit taste and skill fitted to a
+much higher department of the arts. Thus the business of publishing, in
+nearly all its branches, is largely aided by the labor of intelligent
+women,--and it might be still more so, if they were taught the truly
+feminine, as well as intellectual art, of type-setting.
+
+Thousands among us are engaged in binding shoes, some by machinery, and
+some by hand; but the wages they receive are miserably small. The
+clothing-stores employ some six thousand, but also paying so little that
+every tailor's working-woman seeks the earliest opportunity of changing
+her employment for something better. The hat-trimmers probably number
+two thousand, while the cap-makers constitute a numerous body, whose
+wages average three dollars per week. Several hundred educated girls,
+possessed of a fine taste, are employed in making artificial flowers.
+The establishments in which umbrellas and parasols are made depend
+almost exclusively on the labor of women, while the millinery and
+straw-goods branches owe most of their prosperity and merit to the
+handiwork of female taste and skill. There are many who work for the
+dentists, manufacturing artificial teeth. Even at the repulsive business
+of cigar-making, in a close, unwholesome atmosphere continually loaded
+with tobacco-fumes, there are many hundred women who earn bread for
+themselves and their families.
+
+There is a lower class of workers who find employment in the
+spinning-mills and power-loom factories that abound among us, and these
+number not less than two thousand. They are the children of weavers who
+came from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Germany. They have been
+brought up from childhood to fill the bobbin or attend the spindle or
+the loom, and are therefore skilled hands, young as many of them are. I
+have known more than one affecting instance of aged parents having been
+comfortably maintained by daughters belonging to this class.
+
+It has been one of the plumes in the cap of New England factory-girls,
+that they kept themselves genteel on factory-wages, educated their
+brothers, supported their parents, and yet had something over when they
+came to be married. I never could understand how such financial marvels
+could be accomplished on the wages of a mill-girl. But I have seen great
+things in the same line done among the untidy girls of foreign parentage
+who work in the cotton and woollen factories of our city. These,
+however, have toiled on silently and in obscurity, with no poet to
+celebrate their doings, no newspaper to sound their praises, no magazine
+to trumpet forth their devotion, their virtue, or even their beauty.
+
+I cannot give, with either fulness or accuracy, the industrial
+statistics of a city like this; nor would I volunteer thus to increase
+the dulness of my narrative, if it were in my power to do so. But it
+will be seen, that, wherever a door stands open into which woman may
+enter and obtain the privilege to toil, she is sure to ask for
+admission. Wages are always a consideration, but employment of some
+kind, whether remunerative or not, is a greater one. Of the thousands
+thus toiling at all kinds of labor, some descriptions of which are
+necessarily unhealthy, there are many whose once robust frames have
+become attenuated and weary unto wearing out, whose midnight couch,
+instead of being one of repose, is racked with cough and restlessness
+and pain. The once brilliant eyes have lost their lustre, the once rosy
+cheeks their fresh and glowing bloom. The young girl fades under
+unnatural labor protracted far into the night. If she should fail to
+toil thus, some infirm parent would go without food. The sick widow,
+older in years, and farther travelled round the long circuit of human
+sorrow, dares not indulge in the rest that is necessary even to life,
+lest hungry children, as well as herself, should be even more severely
+pinched by famine. No wonder that they knock at every door where a
+little money may be had for a great amount of labor.
+
+But it must be granted, that, if the employments to which American women
+are compelled to resort are often severe, and less remunerative than
+they ought to be, they are by no means so unsuited to the sex as some
+which women are forced into in other countries. Only a few years ago
+many thousands of females were working under-ground in the English
+coal-mines. When laws were enacted to abolish this unsuitable
+employment, they still continued to work at the mouth of the mine, and
+are thus employed at this moment. They labor in the coke-works and
+coal-pits; they receive the ores at the pit's mouth, and dress and sort
+them. The hard nature of the employment may not be actually injurious to
+health, yet it quite unsexes them. Their whole demeanor becomes as
+coarse and rude as their degrading occupation. As they labor at men's
+work, so they wear men's clothing. A stranger would feel sure that they
+were men, and it would be by their conversation alone that he could
+identify them as women. He would think it strange to hear persons
+dressed like men conversing together about their husbands, unless he had
+been informed who they were.
+
+A celebrated English author speaks thus particularly of these unhappy
+women:--"Some few months since, happening to be in Wigan, my attention
+was directed to the, to me, unwonted spectacle of one of those female
+colliers returning homewards from her daily labor. It was difficult to
+believe that the unwomanly-looking being who passed before me was
+actually a female; yet such was the case. Clad in coarse, greasy, and
+patched fustian unmentionables and jacket, thick canvas shirt, great
+heavy hob-nailed boots, her features completely begrimed with coal-dust,
+her hard and horny hands carrying the spade, pick, drinking-tin, sieve,
+and other paraphernalia of her occupation, her not irregular features
+wearing a bold, defiant expression, and nothing womanly about her except
+two or three latent evidences of feminine weakness, in the shape of a
+coral necklace, a pair of glittering ear-rings, and a bonnet, which, as
+regards shape, size, and color, strongly resembled the fan-tail hat of a
+London coal-heaver,--she proceeded unabashed through the crowded
+streets, no one appearing to regard the degrading spectacle as being
+anything unusual."
+
+Some work in the potteries at the laborious task of preparing the clay,
+and others in the brick-yards, in open weather, and on the wet clay with
+naked feet. At other times the same women are forced, by the nature of
+their employment, to walk over hot pipes, obliging them to wear heavy
+wooden shoes to protect their feet from being burned. Every stranger who
+sees these women at their work is shocked at the impropriety and
+dangerous nature of their occupation.
+
+So far exceeding masculine strength and endurance are the tasks imposed
+on thousands of English dairy-women, that they constitute a special
+class of patients with the medical faculty,--pining and perishing under
+maladies arising entirely from over-fatigue and insufficient rest.
+
+There are multitudes of women in Liverpool who work daily on the farms
+around that city. They walk four or five miles to the scene of their
+toil, where they are required to be by six in the summer months and
+seven in the winter. They work all day at the severest agricultural
+labor, wielding a heavy, clumsy hoe, digging potatoes, grubbing up
+stones from the soil, stooping on the ground in weeding, and compelled
+even to the unfeminine and offensive employment of spreading manure. For
+a day's work at what men alone should be required to do, they receive
+but a shilling! Then, worn out with fatigue, having eaten little more
+than the crust they brought with them,--for what more can be afforded by
+one who earns only a shilling a day?--they drag themselves back at
+nightfall over the increasingly weary miles which they traversed in the
+morning. What comforts can fall to the lot of such? What a domestic life
+must such unhappy creatures lead!
+
+There are yet others, in that land which boasts of its high
+civilization, who live by carrying to the city immense loads of sand for
+sixpence a day,--harder work than carrying a hod. Other women may be
+daily seen collecting fresh manure along the streets and docks of
+Liverpool.
+
+In certain rooms of the great English cotton-mills, the high temperature
+maintained there compels the women to work in a half-naked condition.
+This constant exposure of one half the body speedily destroys all
+feminine modesty. Added to this is an extreme, but unavoidable,
+filthiness of person. These poor creatures part with their health almost
+as quickly as with their modesty. They become hollow-cheeked and pale,
+while their coarse laugh and gestures indicate a deep demoralization.
+
+There are many English women engaged in the occupation of nail-making.
+They work in glass-houses, glue-works, nursery-gardens, at ordinary
+farm-work. On some of the canals they manage the boats, open the locks,
+drive the horses, and sometimes even draw the boats with the line across
+their shoulders. In short, wherever the lowest and dirtiest drudgery is
+to be done, there they are almost invariably to be found. For wages,
+they sometimes get tenpence a day, sometimes only sixpence. If they
+perform overwork, they get a penny an hour,--a penny for the hauling of
+a canal-boat for an hour! Here is poverty in its most abject condition,
+and hard work in its most killing form. Their victims are necessarily
+toilworn, degraded, and hopelessly immoral.
+
+It is such extreme destitution that drives women to crime. In an English
+paper-mill, where the girls worked at counting the sheets in a room by
+themselves, and made good wages, they were all well-behaved and
+respectable. In another department of the same mill, where the work was
+dirty and the wages only a shilling a day, they were almost uniformly of
+bad character. The base employment degraded them,--the starvation wages
+demoralized them. Philanthropy has not been deaf to the cries of these
+unhappy classes, and has made repeated and herculean efforts to improve
+their condition and reform their morals. But the stumbling-block of
+excessively low wages was always in the way. It was found, that, until
+the physical condition was improved, the ordinary wants of life
+supplied, the moral status was incapable of elevation.
+
+I grant that no one item of this long catalogue of calamities has yet
+overtaken the women of our own country. It would seem that the fact must
+be, that in other lands the sex is not more degraded than it was
+centuries ago, but that it has never been permitted to rise to its true
+level. Once put down, it has always been kept down.
+
+The contrast between the condition of women in foreign countries and
+their condition here is too striking to be overlooked. We have our
+hardships, our trials, our privations; but what are they to those of our
+European sisters? If we get low wages, they are in most cases sufficient
+to enable us to maintain a respectable position and a decent appearance.
+If the influence of caste is felt among us, if by some it is considered
+ungenteel to work, this prejudice is not of American growth, but was
+transferred to our shores from the very people with whom woman is
+degraded to the level of the brutes. The first settlers brought it with
+them, and it has descended to us as an inheritance. While it is our
+province to confront it, we should do so bravely.
+
+But as yet, no woman here is compelled to engage in labor that involves
+the necessity of dressing like a man. The law itself forbids such change
+of dress; and when it was proposed, some years ago, to so alter our
+costume as to make it half male and half female, not for working
+purposes, but for mere personal convenience, the public sentiment of the
+nation ridiculed and frowned it down. The other sex has been educated to
+regard us with a respect and deference too sincere to permit these
+foreign degradations to overtake us; while the spirit of independence
+infused by the nature of our government, the unrestricted intercourse of
+all classes with each other, and that robust training of thought which
+it is impossible that any American woman should fail to receive, will
+forever place us above the shocking contingencies to which the poor
+laborious Englishwoman is exposed. If, in common with her, we are
+compelled to work, our labor will keep us respectable, though it fail to
+make us rich.
+
+These are some of the compensations which fall to the lot of the
+American working-woman. There are many others,--too many, indeed, to be
+recited here. Chief among them is the respect and courtesy accorded to
+us by all classes. A public insult to a well-behaved woman is never
+heard of. We may travel unattended over the vast network of railroads
+that traverse our country, and passenger and conductor will vie with
+each other in paying us not only respect, but attention. The former
+instinctively rises from his seat that we may be accommodated. It is the
+same in all public places,--in the streets, in churches, and in places
+of public entertainment. At table we are served first. In short, as we
+respect ourselves, so will others respect us. The laws have been
+modified in our favor. The property of a woman is her own, whether
+married or single. It is subject to no invasion by her husband's
+creditors, yet her dower in his estate remains good.
+
+These are substantial concessions to our sex, and they are prime
+essentials to personal comfort. For my part, I am content with them,
+asking no other I have never slept uneasily because the law did not
+permit me to vote or to become a candidate for office. The time was, as
+I have heard, when women voted, all who were eighteen years old being
+entitled to deposit their ballots. They mingled in the crowds about the
+polls, and became as violently agitated by partisan excitements as the
+men. Those who would have been quiet home bodies, had no such foolish
+liberty been allowed them, became zealous politicians; while others, to
+whom excitement of some kind was a necessity of life, turned to this,
+and became so wild with political furor as to unsex themselves,--if
+throwing aside all modesty be doing so. They carried placards in their
+hands among the crowd to influence voters, distributed handbills and
+tickets, entered into familiar conversation with total strangers, many
+of them persons of infamous character, and pleaded and wrangled with
+them to secure their votes. They obeyed literally the injunction of
+modern political managers to "vote early,"--so many mere girls swearing
+that they were of legal age, when they were in reality much younger,
+that the singular statistical dislocation became apparent, that there
+were no women in the country under eighteen years old. With so loose a
+morality on this point, it cannot be doubted that the other injunction,
+to "vote often," was as generally obeyed. I have no positive information
+as to how the married women who thus devoted themselves to
+electioneering managed their domestic concerns,--who prepared the
+dinner, who rocked the cradle, who tended the baby,--or whether these
+cards were thrust upon the husbands. History is silent on this subject;
+but the more practical minds of the men of this generation can readily
+conceive how inconvenient it would be for them to be transformed into
+cooks and dry-nurses.
+
+I have had no ambition to parade in Bloomer costume, or to be otherwise
+eccentric, even where it happened to be more comfortable. Neither have I
+figured as the chairman or secretary of a woman's convention, nor had my
+name ringing through the newspapers as an impatient struggler after more
+rights than I now possess. I do not think that I should be happier by
+being permitted to vote, and am sure there is no office I can think of
+that I would have for the asking. But I was never one of the
+strong-minded of my sex. I know that there are such, and that even in
+this noisy world they have made themselves heard. How attentively they
+have been listened to I will not stop to inquire. I have always believed
+that the truest self-respect lies, not in the exaction of questionable
+prerogatives, but in seeking to attain that shining eminence to which
+the common sentiment of our fellow-beings will concede honor and
+admiration as its rightful due.
+
+Yet the picture which represents the true condition of our working-women
+has undeniably its harsh and melancholy features. It shows a daily,
+constant struggle for adequate compensation. There is everywhere a
+discrimination against them in the matter of wages, as compared with
+those of men. It looks, in some cases, indeed, as if women were employed
+only because they can be had at cheaper rates.
+
+Probably the gay ladies covered with brilliants that flash out
+accumulated lustre from the footlights of the theatres they nightly
+visit have no suspicion that the delicate and graceful girls they see
+upon the stage are victims of this same unjust discrimination as regards
+compensation. I have never been inside a theatre, and know nothing of
+the stage, or of the dancing-girls, except what I hear and read. But I
+can readily imagine how beautiful these young creatures must appear,
+dressed in light and graceful attire, bringing out by all the well-known
+artifices of theatrical costume the most captivating charms of face and
+figure. As they crowd upon the stage in tableaux, which without long and
+toilsome rehearsal would become more confused and aimless groupings of
+gayly dressed dancers, they take their appointed places, and with a
+symmetrical unity repeat the graceful combinations of attitude and
+movement they have so laboriously acquired in private. The crowded house
+is electrified by the complicated, yet truly beautiful display. All is
+fair and happy on the outside. No step in painful, no grief shows
+itself, no consciousness of wrong appears, no face but is wreathed in
+smiles. The show of perfect happiness is complete.
+
+But do the crowd of rich men who occupy box and pit bestow a thought on
+the domestic life of these young girls? Do their wives and daughters,
+lolling on cushioned seats, clothed in purple and fine linen, and waited
+on by a host of obsequious fops, ever think whether the dancing-girls
+have a domestic life of any kind or not? They came to the theatre to be
+amused,--not to meditate; why should they permit their amusement to be
+clouded by a single thought as to whether any others but themselves are
+happy?
+
+Sometimes, in the evolutions of the dance, the gossamer dresses of these
+ballet-girls are caught in the blaze of the footlights, instantly
+enveloping them in fire, and burning them to a crisp,--and they are
+borne from the theatre to the grave. Yet these girls, thus nightly
+exposed to so frightful a death, are paid a third to a half less than
+men employed in the same vocation, and who by dress are exempt from such
+hazards. Moreover, the wardrobe of the men is furnished by the
+theatrical manager,--while the girls, those even who receive but five
+dollars a week, are compelled out of this slender sum to supply their
+own. They must change it also at every caprice of fashion or of the
+manager, sometimes at very short notice, and are expected, no matter how
+heavy the heart or how light the purse, to come before the public the
+impersonation of taste and elegance and happiness. A single dress will
+at times consume the whole salary of a month; and to obtain it even at
+that cost, the ballet-girl must work on it with her own hands day and
+night. She must submit to these impositions, or give up her occupation,
+when perhaps she can find nothing better to do.
+
+The star-actor, the strutting luminary of the theatre, whether native or
+imported,--he who receives the highest salary for the least work,--when
+the performance is closed, unrobes himself and departs, with no care or
+oversight of the drapery in which he charmed his audience. He leaves it
+in the dressing-room,--it is the manager's tinsel, not his,--and the
+owner may see to it or not. Not so the poor ballet-girl, whose elaborate
+performances have been an indispensable feature of the evening's
+entertainment. Her gossamer dress, her costly wreaths of flowers, her
+nicely fitting slippers, are carefully packed up,--for they are her own,
+her capital in trade, and must be taken care of. The well-paid actor
+goes to the most fashionable restaurant, gorges himself with rich dishes
+and costly wines, then seeks his bed to dream blissfully over his fat
+salary and his luxurious supper. The ballet-girl takes up her solitary
+walk for the humble home in which perhaps an infirm mother is anxiously
+waiting her return, exposed to such libertine insults as the midnight
+appearance of a young girl on the street is sure to invite. It is many
+hours since she dined; she is fatigued and hungry, but she sups upon a
+crust, or the cold remains of what was at best a meagre dinner, with
+possibly a cup of tea, boiled by herself at midnight,--then goes wearily
+to bed, and sleeps as well as one so hard-worked and so poorly paid may
+be able to.
+
+The gay crowds who spend their evenings at the theatres are permitted to
+see but one side of this tableau. The curtain lifts upon the group of
+smiling ballet-girls, but it never unveils their private life. The
+theatre is intended to amuse, not to excite commiseration for the
+realities of every-day life around us. Why should anything disagreeable
+be allowed? If it sought to make people unhappy, it would soon become an
+obsolete institution.
+
+With all these impositions, actresses and ballet-girls are proverbially
+more tractable than actors, less exacting, more uncomplaining, more
+unfailingly prompt in their attendance and in the discharge of their
+arduous duties. Why, then, are they subjected to such grinding
+injustice, except because of their weakness? And who will wonder, that,
+thus kept constantly poor, they should sometimes fall away from virtue?
+Their profession surrounds them with temptations sufficiently numerous
+and insidious; and when to these is added the crowning one of promised
+relief from hopeless penury, shall Pity refuse a tear to the unhappy
+victims?
+
+
+
+
+CASTLES.
+
+
+    There is a picture in my brain
+    That only fades to come again:
+    The sunlight, through a veil of rain
+          To leeward, gilding
+    A narrow stretch of brown sea-sand;
+    A light-house half a league from land;
+    And two young lovers hand in hand
+          A-castle-building.
+
+    Upon the budded apple-trees
+    The robins sing by twos and threes,
+    And even at the faintest breeze
+          Down drops a blossom;
+    And ever would that lover be
+    The wind that robs the bourgeoned tree,
+    And lifts the soft tress daintily
+          On Beauty's bosom.
+
+    Ah, graybeard, what a happy thing
+    It was, when life was in its spring,
+    To peep through Love's betrothal ring
+          At Fields Elysian,
+    To move and breathe in magic air,
+    To think that all that seems is fair!--
+    Ah, ripe young mouth and golden hair,
+          Thou pretty vision!
+
+    Well, well,--I think not on these two,
+    But the old wound breaks out anew,
+    And the old dream, as if 't were true,
+          In my heart nestles;
+    Then tears come welling to my eyes,
+    For yonder, all in saintly guise,
+    As 't were, a sweet dead woman lies
+          Upon the trestles!
+
+
+
+
+FAIR PLAY THE BEST POLICY.
+
+
+It is said that Lord Eldon, the typical conservative of his day, shed
+tears of sincere regret on the abolition of the death-penalty for
+five-shilling thefts. The unfortunate Lord Eldons of our own day must be
+weeping in rivers. Slavery is dead, and the freedmen are its bequest.
+Through a Red Sea which no one would have dared to contemplate, we have
+attained to the Promised Land. By the sublimest revenge which history
+has placed on record, we have returned good for evil, and have punished
+those who wronged us by requiring them to cease from doing wrong. The
+grand poetic justice by which Maryland, the first State to shed her
+brothers' blood, has been the first to be transformed into a condition
+of happy liberty, only symbolizes a like severity of kindness in store
+for all. Five years of devastating war will have only rounded the
+sublime cycle of retribution predicted so tersely by Whittier long
+ago:--
+
+    "Have they chained our free-born men?
+      Let us unchain theirs."
+
+The time has come to put in practice that fine suggestion of the wise
+foreign traveller, Von Raumer, which some of us may remember to have
+read with almost hopeless incredulity twenty years ago. "The European
+abolition of the dependent relations between men of one and the same
+race was an easy matter, compared with the task which Americans have to
+perform. But if, on the one part, this task carries with it many cares,
+pains, and sufferings, on the other hand, the necessary instruction and
+guardianship of the blacks, and their final reconciliation with the
+whites, offer an employment so noble, influential, and sublime, that the
+Americans should testify with awe and humility their gratitude to
+Providence for intrusting them with this duty also, in addition to many
+others of the greatest importance to the progress of the race. Were its
+performance really impossible, it would not have been imposed."
+
+In important periods, words are events; and history may be read in the
+successive editions of a dictionary. The transition from the word "serf"
+to the word "citizen" marked no European epoch more momentous than that
+revealed by the changes in our American vocabulary since the war began.
+In the newspapers, the speeches, the general orders, one finds, up to a
+certain time, a certain class recognized only as "slaves." Suddenly the
+slaves vanish from the page, and a race of "contrabands" takes their
+place. After another interval, these, too, gradually disappear, and the
+liberated beings are called "freedmen." The revolution is then virtually
+accomplished; and nothing remains but to rectify the details, and drop
+the _d_. When the freedmen are lost in the mass of freemen, then the
+work will be absolutely complete; and the retrospect of its successive
+stages will be matter for the antiquary alone.
+
+Corresponding with these verbal milestones, one may notice successive
+stages of public sentiment as to the class thus variously designated. It
+was usually considered that the "slaves" were a vast and almost hopeless
+mass of imbruted humanity. It was generally feared that the
+"contrabands" would prove a race of helpless paupers, whose support
+would bankrupt the nation. It is almost universally admitted that the
+"freedmen" are industrious, intelligent, self-supporting, soldierly,
+eager for knowledge, and far more easily managed than an equal number of
+white refugees.
+
+There is no doubt that these last developments were in some degree a
+surprise to Abolitionists, as well as to pro-slavery prophets. They
+compelled the admission, either that slavery was less demoralizing than
+had been supposed, or else that this particular type of human nature was
+less easy to demoralize. It is but a few years since anti-slavery
+advocates indignantly rejected the assertion that the English peasantry
+were more degraded than the slaves of South Carolina. Yet no dweller on
+the Sea Islands can now read a book like Kay's "Social Condition of the
+English People," without perceiving that the families around him,
+however fresh from slavery, have the best of the comparison. In the one
+class the finer instincts of humanity seem dead; in the lowest specimens
+of the other those instincts are but sleeping. I have seen men and women
+collected from the rice-fields by the hundred, at the very instant of
+transition from slavery to freedom. They were starved, squalid, ragged,
+and ignorant to the last degree; but I could not call them degraded, for
+they had the instincts of courtesy and the profoundest religious
+emotions. There was none of that hard, stolid, besotted dulness which
+seems to reduce the English peasant below the level of the brutes he
+tends.
+
+And what is surprising, above all, in the freedman's condition, is, not
+that it shows a recuperative power, but that it has such a wonderful
+suddenness in the recoil. It is not a growth, but a spring. It reverses
+the _nihil per saltum_ of the philosophers. In watching them, one is
+constantly reminded of those trances produced by some violent blow upon
+the head, from which the patient suddenly recovers with powers intact.
+One looks for a gradual process, and beholds a sudden illumination. This
+abates a little of one's wrath at slavery, perhaps, though the residuum
+is quite sufficient; but it infinitely enhances one's hopes for the race
+set free. It shows that they have simply risen to the stature of men,
+and must be treated accordingly.
+
+And, indeed, when one thinks how unexampled in our tame experience is
+the event which has thus suddenly raised them from their low estate, one
+must expect to find something unexampled in the result. This is true
+even where liberty has come merely as a thing to be passively received;
+but in many cases the personal share of the freedman has been anything
+but passive. What can most of us know of the awful thrill which goes
+through the soul of a man, when, having come over a hundred miles of
+hourly danger out of slavery to our lines, with rifle-bullets whizzing
+round him and bloodhounds on the trail behind, he counts that for a
+preliminary trip only, and, having thus found the way, goes back through
+that hundred miles of peril yet again, and brings away his wife and
+child? As Hawthorne's artist flung his hopeless pencil into Niagara, so
+all one's puny literary art seems utterly merged and swept away in the
+magnificent flood of untaught eloquence with which some such nameless
+man will pour out his tale. Two things seem worth recording, and no
+third: the passionate emotions of the humblest negro, as they burst into
+language at such a time,--and the very highest triumph of the very
+greatest dramatic genius, if perchance some Shakespeare or Goethe could
+imagine a kindred utterance. Anything intermediate must be worthless and
+unavailing.
+
+Now there is no doubt, that, under this great stimulus, the freedmen
+will do their part; the anxious question is, whether we of the North are
+ready to do ours. Our part consists not chiefly in money and old
+clothes, nor even in school-books and teachers. The essential thing
+which we need to give them is justice; for that must be the first demand
+of every rational being. Give them justice, and they can dispense even
+with our love. Give them the most exuberant and zealous love, and it may
+only hurt them, if it leads us to subject them to fatal experiments, and
+to fancy them exceptions to the universal laws.
+
+Cochin well says,--"To have set men at liberty is not enough: it is
+necessary to place them in society." That American emancipation should
+be a success is more important to every one of us than the whole
+sugar-crop of Louisiana or the whole rice-crop of Georgia. Secure this
+result, and the future opens for this nation a larger horizon than the
+most impassioned Fourth-of-July orator in the old times dared to draw.
+Fail in this result, and the future holds endless disorders, with civil
+war reappearing at the end. If, therefore, there be any general
+principle to assert, any essential method to inculcate, its adoption is
+the most essential statesmanship. Twenty millions of white men, with
+ballots and school-houses, will be tolerably sure to thrive, whatever be
+the legislation: legislation for them is secondary, because they are
+assured in their own strength. But four millions of black men, just
+freed, and as yet unprovided with any of these tools,--the fate of the
+nation may hinge on a single error in legislating for them.
+
+Now there are but two systems possible in dealing with an emancipated
+people. All minor projects are modifications of these two. There is the
+theory of preparation, under some form, and there is the theory of fair
+play. Preparation is apprenticeship, prescription,--the bargains of the
+freedman made for him, not by him. Fair play is to remove all
+obstructions, including the previous monopoly of the soil,--to recognize
+the freedman's right to all social and political guaranties, and then to
+let him alone.
+
+There is undoubtedly room for an honest division of opinion on this
+fundamental matter, among persons equally sincere. Even among equally
+well-informed persons there may be room for difference, although it will
+hardly be denied that those who favor the theory of "preparation" are in
+general those who take a rather low view of the capacities of the
+emancipated race. The policy pursued in Louisiana, for instance, was
+undoubtedly based at the outset, whatever other reasons have since been
+adduced, on the theory that the freedmen would labor only under
+compulsion. I have seen an elaborate argument, from a leading officer in
+that Department, resting the whole theory on precisely this assumption.
+"The negro, born and reared in ignorance, could not for years be taught
+to properly understand and respect the obligations of a contract. His
+ideas of freedom were merged in the fact that he was to be fed and
+clothed and supported in idleness." Whatever excuses may since have been
+devised for the system, this was its original postulate. To suppose it
+true would be to reject the vast bulk of evidence already accumulated,
+all demonstrating the freedmen's willingness to work. Yet if the
+assumption be false, any system founded on it must be regarded by the
+freedmen as an insult, and must fail, unless greatly modified.
+
+In organizing emancipation, one great principle must be kept steadily in
+mind. All men will better endure the total withholding of all their
+rights than a system which concedes half and keeps back the other half.
+This has been admirably elucidated by De Tocqueville in his "Ancien
+Regime," in showing that the very prosperity of the reign of Louis XVI.
+prepared the way for its overthrow. "The French found their position the
+more insupportable, the better it became.... It often happens that a
+people which has endured the most oppressive laws without complaint, and
+as if it did not feel them, throws them off violently the instant the
+burden is lightened,... and experience shows that the most dangerous
+moment to a bad government is usually that in which it begins to mend.
+The evil which one suffers patiently as inevitable seems insupportable
+as soon as he conceives the idea of escaping it. All that is then taken
+from abuses seems to uncover what remains, and render the feeling of it
+more poignant. The evil has become less, it is true, but the sensibility
+is keener."
+
+Every one who is familiar with the freedmen knows that this could not be
+a truer description of their case, if every word had been written
+expressly for them. The most timid laborer on the remotest plantation
+will not bear from his superintendent or his teacher the injustice he
+bore from his master. The best-disciplined black soldier will not take
+from his captain one half the tyranny which his overseer might safely
+have inflicted. Freedom they understand; slavery they understand. When
+they become soldiers, they know that part of their civil rights are to
+be temporarily waived; and as soon as they can read, they study the
+"Army Regulations," to make sure that they concede no more. Neither as
+citizens nor as soldiers do they retain the faculty of dumb, dead
+submission which sustains them through every conceivable wrong while
+enslaved. Before a blow from his master the slave helplessly cowers, and
+takes refuge in silent and inert despair. He draws his head into his
+shell, like a turtle, and simply endures. Liberate him, he quits the
+shell forever, and the naked palpitating tissue is left bare.
+Afterwards, every touch reaches a nerve, and every nerve excites a whole
+muscular system in reflex action.
+
+I remember an amusing incident which took place while I was on picket at
+Port Royal. Complaints began to come in against a certain neighboring
+superintendent, an ex-clergyman, whose demeanor was certainly not
+creditable to his cloth, but whose offences would have seemed slight
+enough in the old plantation times. Still they were enough to exasperate
+the people under his charge, and the ill feeling extended rapidly among
+the black soldiers, many of whom had been slaves on that very island. At
+last their captain felt it necessary to interfere. "Has it ever occurred
+to you, my dear Sir," he one day asked the superintendent, "that you are
+in some danger from these soldiers whom you meet every day with their
+guns in the picket paths?"--The official colored and grew indignant. "Do
+you mean to say, Sir, that your men are forming a conspiracy to murder
+me?"--"By no means," returned the courteous captain. "I trust you will
+find my soldiers too well disciplined for any such impropriety. But you
+may not have noticed that the regiment has at present exceedingly poor
+guns which often go off at half-cock, so that no one can be held
+responsible. It was but the other day that one of our own officers was
+shot dead by such an accident,"--which was unhappily true,--"and
+consider, my dear Sir, how very painful"----"I understand you, I
+understand you," interrupted the excited divine, putting spurs to his
+horse. It was a remarkable coincidence that we never heard another
+complaint from that plantation.
+
+It was this new-born sensitiveness that brought to so sudden a close the
+attempted apprenticeship of the British West Indies. Cochin, the wisest
+recent critic, fully recognizes this connection of events. "Either the
+regulations were incomplete, or the masters failed in their observance,
+or such failures were not repressed, so that the slaves were in many
+places maltreated and mutinous. In proportion as the moment of freedom
+approached, some broke loose prematurely from their duties, others
+aspired prematurely to their rights. Patience long delayed is easier
+than patience whose end is approaching; it is at the last moment that
+one grows weary of waiting."
+
+The best preparation for freedom is freedom. It is of infinite
+importance that we should avail ourselves of the new-born self-reliance
+of the freedmen while its first vigor lasts, and guard against
+sacrificing those generous aspirations which are the basis of all our
+hope. It is not now doubted (except, perhaps, in Louisiana) that the
+first eager desire of the emancipated slave is to own land and support
+his own household. I remember that one of the ablest sergeants in the
+First South Carolina Volunteers, when some of us tried to convince him
+that the colored people attached too much importance to the mere
+ownership of land, utterly refused all acquiescence in the criticism.
+"We shall still be slaves," he said, in an impassioned way, "until eb'ry
+man can raise him own bale ob cotton, and put him brand upon it, and
+say, _Dis is mine_." And it was generally admitted in the Department of
+the South, that the freedmen on Port Royal Island, who had mostly worked
+for themselves, had made more decided progress, and were more fitted
+for entire self-reliance, than those who had remained as laborers on the
+plantations owned by Mr. Philbrick and his associates upon St. Helena
+Island. Yet it would be impossible to try the system of tenant-industry
+more judiciously than it was tried under those circumstances; and if
+even that was found, on the whole, to retard the development of
+self-reliance in the freedmen, what must it be where this is a part of a
+great system of coercion, and where the mass of the employers are still
+slaveholders at heart?
+
+It is a fact of the greatest importance, that King Cotton turns out to
+be a thorough citizen-king, and adapts himself very readily to changed
+events. The great Southern staple can be raised by small cultivators as
+easily as corn or potatoes; and difficulty begins only when sugar and
+rice are to be produced. Yet it will not be long before these also will
+come within reach of the freedmen, if they continue their present
+tendency towards joint-stock operations. In the colored regiments of
+South Carolina there are organizations owning plantations, saw-mills,
+town-lots, and a grocery or two: they even meditate a steamboat. A few
+of these associations no doubt will go to pieces, through fraud or
+inexperience. Indeed, I knew of one which was nearly broken asunder by
+the president's taking a fancy to send in his resignation: no other
+member knew the meaning of that hard word, and they were disposed to
+think it a declaration of hostilities from the presiding officer. But
+even if such associations all fail, for the present, the training which
+they give will be no failure; and when we consider that there are
+already individuals among the freedmen who have by profitable ventures
+laid up twenty or thirty thousand dollars within three years, it seems
+no extravagant ambition for a joint-stock company to aim at a rice-mill.
+
+The Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, where, from the very
+beginning, under the limited authority of General Saxton, the most
+favorable results of emancipation have been attained, are now to be the
+scene of a larger experiment, still under the same wise care. The
+objections urged by General Butler, with his usual acuteness, against
+some details of the project of General Sherman, must not blind us to its
+real importance. Its implied exclusions can easily be modified; but the
+rights which it vests in the freedmen are a substantial fact, which,
+when once established, it will require a revolution to overthrow. The
+locality fixed for the experiment is singularly favorable. There is no
+region of the country where a staple crop can be grown so profitably by
+small landholders. There is no agricultural region so defensible, in a
+military aspect. So difficult is the navigation of the muddy
+tide-streams which endlessly intersect these islands,--so narrow are the
+connecting causeways,--so completely is every plantation surrounded and
+subdivided by hedges, ditches, and earthworks, long since made for
+agricultural purposes, and now most available for defence,--that nothing
+this side of the famous military region of La Vendee (which this
+district much resembles) can be more easily held by peasant proprietors.
+
+The mere accidents of the war have often led to the experiment of
+leaving small bodies of colored settlers, in such favorable localities,
+to support and defend themselves. This was successfully done, for
+instance, on Barnwell Island, a tract two or three miles square, which
+lies between Port Royal Island and the main, in the direction of
+Pocotaligo, and is the site of the Rhett Plantation, described in Mr. W.
+H. Russell's letters. This region was entirely beyond our picket lines,
+and was separated from them by a navigable stream, while from the Rebel
+lines it was divided only by a narrow creek that would have been
+fordable at low water, but for the depth of mud beneath and around it.
+On this island a colony of a hundred or thereabouts dwelt, in peace,
+with no resident white man, and only an occasional visit from their
+superintendent. There were some twenty able-bodied settlers who did
+picket duty every night, by a system of their own, and for many months
+there was no alarm whatever,--the people raising their cotton and
+supporting themselves. This went on, until, by a fatal error of
+judgment, the men were all conscripted into the army. This was soon
+discovered by the Rebels, who presently began to make raids upon the
+island, so that ultimately the whole population had to be withdrawn.
+
+Extend such settlements indefinitely, and we have the system adopted by
+General Sherman. It is a system which, like every other practicable
+method, must depend on military authority at last, and for which the
+army should therefore be directly responsible. The main argument for
+intrusting the care of the freedmen to a bureau of the War Department
+is, that it must come to be controlled by that Department, at any rate,
+and that it is best to have the responsibility rest where the power
+lies. On conquered territory there can be but one authority, and no
+conceivable ingenuity can construct any other system. If authority is
+apparently divided, then either the military commander does not
+understand his business, or he is hampered by impracticable orders and
+should ask to be relieved. This is what has paralyzed the action of
+every military governor, a title which implies a perfectly anomalous
+function, certain to lead to trouble. Almost all the great good effected
+by General Saxton has been achieved in spite of that function, not by
+means of it; and it was not until he was placed in military command of
+the post of Beaufort that he was able, even in that limited region, to
+establish any satisfactory authority. All else that he did was by
+sufferance, and often he could not even obtain sufferance.
+
+While the war lasts, martial law must last. After martial law ceases,
+civil institutions, whatever they may then be, must resume control. It
+is therefore essential that all the rights of the freedmen should be put
+upon a sure basis during the contest; but, whatever method be adopted,
+the real control must inevitably rest with the War Department. It cannot
+be transferred to civilians; nor is there reason to suppose it desirable
+for the freedmen that it should. Whatever be the disorder resulting from
+military command, it has the advantage of being more definite and
+intelligible than civil mismanagement; there is always some one who can
+be held responsible, and the offender is far more easily brought to
+account. On this point I speak from personal experience. In South
+Carolina I have seen outrages persistently practised among the freedmen
+by civilians, for which a military officer could have been cashiered in
+a month. I have oftener been appealed to for redress against civilians
+than against officers or soldiers. I have been compelled to post
+sentinels to keep superintendents away from their own plantations, to
+prevent disturbance. I have been a member of a military commission which
+sentenced to the pillory an eminent Sunday-school teacher who had been
+convicted of the unlawful sale of whiskey,--and this in a community into
+which the majority of the civilians had come with professedly benevolent
+intent.
+
+The truth is, that abuses, acts of oppression towards the freedmen, do
+not proceed from mere antecedent prejudice in the army or anywhere else.
+They proceed from the temptations of power, and from that impatience
+which one is apt to restrain among his equals and to indulge among his
+inferiors. The irritability of an Abolitionist may lead him to outrages
+as great as those which spring from the selfishness of a mere soldier.
+It is becoming almost proverbial, in colored regiments, that radical
+anti-slavery men make the best and the worst officers: the best, because
+of their higher motives and more elevated standard; the worst, because
+they are often ungoverned, insubordinate, impatient, and will sometimes
+venture on high-handed acts, under the fervor of their zeal, such as a
+mere soldier would not venture to commit. Yet in an army such
+aberrations, like all others, yield to discipline. But on a solitary
+plantation the temptations and immunities of the slave-driver recur; and
+I have seen men yield to these, who had safely passed the ordeal of
+persecution and mobs at home.
+
+It was thus, perhaps, that General Sherman and his advisers felt
+justified in adopting the theory of absolute separation, on the Sea
+Islands,--seeing that the companionship of Southern white men would be
+an evil, and that of Northern men by no means an unmixed good. Yet it
+seems altogether likely that the system is so far wrong, and will be
+modified. Separation is better than "preparation," and is a good
+antidote to it. It is better to assume the freedmen too self-reliant
+than too feeble,--better to exclude white men than to give them the
+monopoly of power. Nevertheless, the principle of exclusion is wrong,
+though it is happily a wrong not fundamental to the system, and hence
+easily corrected. If the people of any village desire to introduce a
+white teacher, the prohibition would become an obvious outrage, which
+hardly any administration would risk the odium of maintaining. The
+injury, in a business point of view, done by separation would perhaps
+strike deeper, and be harder to correct. Here, for instance, is the
+flourishing negro village of Mitchellville, just outside of the
+fortifications of Hilton Head. All that is produced in the numerous
+garden-patches of the suburb is to be sold in the town; all the clothing
+that is to be worn in the suburb must be obtained in exchange for the
+garden-products. Yet, if newspaper correspondents tell truth, the
+temporary commander of that post has taken it on himself to forbid white
+men from trading in Mitchellville, or black men at Hilton Head. How,
+then, is business to be transacted? Are the inhabitants of the town to
+be allowed to come to the sally-port of the fortifications, hand out a
+yard of ribbon and receive two eggs in return? If the entire exchanges
+are to be intrusted to a few privileged favorites, black or white, then
+another source of fraud is added to those which lately, in connection
+with the recruiting bounties, have been brought to bear upon the
+freedmen of that Department, and, if the truth be told, under the same
+auspices from which this order proceeds. Be this as it may, it seems a
+pity that these poor people, who are just learning what competition
+means, and will walk five miles farther to a shop where dry goods are
+retailed a little cheaper, should be checked and hampered in their
+little commerce by an attempt to abolish all the laws of political
+economy in their favor.
+
+If the freedmen were a race like the Indians, wasting away by unseen
+laws through the mere contact of the white man, the case would be very
+different. Or if they were a timid and dependent race, needing to be
+thrust roughly from the nest, like young birds, and made self-dependent,
+the difference would be greater still. But it is not so. The negro race
+fits into the white race, and thrives by its side; and the farther
+South, the greater the thriving. The emancipated slave is also
+self-relying, and, if fair play be once given, can hold his own against
+his former master, whether in trade or in war. He is improvident while
+in slavery, as is the Irishman in Ireland, because he has no opportunity
+to be anything else. Shift the position, and the man changes with
+it,--becoming, whether Irishman or negro, a shrewd economist, and rather
+formidable at a bargain. Almost every freedman is cheated by a white man
+once after his emancipation, and many twice; but when it comes to the
+third bargain, it is observed that mere Anglo-Saxon blood is not
+sufficient to secure a victory.
+
+It is claimed that this principle of separation was adopted after
+consultation with the leading colored men of Savannah, and that the only
+dissenter was the Rev. James Lynch, a Northern colored man. But it also
+turns out that Mr. Lynch was the only man among them who had ever seen
+the experiment tried of the mingling of the races in a condition of
+liberty. He is a man of marked energy and ability, and has been for two
+years one of the most useful missionaries in the neighborhood of Port
+Royal. Some weight is, no doubt, to be attached to the opinions of those
+who had known white men only as masters; but we should not wholly ignore
+the judgment of the only delegate who had met them on equal terms. In
+restoring men from the trance of slavery, the instincts of the patient,
+though doubtless an important fact, are not the only point to be
+considered. It may be true, as Hippocrates said, that the second-best
+remedy will succeed better than the best, if the patient likes it best.
+But it is not safe to forget that those who have never known their
+brother-men except in the light of oppressors may have some crude
+notions on political economy which a milder experience might change. At
+any rate, the more exclusive features of General Sherman's project may
+be changed by a stroke of the pen; and so far as it tends to secure the
+freedmen in permanent possession of the Sea Islands, it is almost an
+unmingled good.
+
+The truth is, that, in these changing days, none of these specific
+"systems" are very important. "Separation" is interesting chiefly
+because it is the last project reported; "preparation," because it was
+the last but one. What is needed is not so much a "system" as the
+settled resolution to do daily justice. Let any military commander
+merely determine to treat the emancipated black population precisely as
+he would treat a white population under the same circumstances,--to
+encourage industry, schools, savings-banks, and all the rest, but not
+interfere with any of them too much,--and he will have General Saxton's
+method and his success. The question what to do with the soil is far
+more embarrassing than what to do with the freedmen; and happily the
+soil also can be let alone, and the freedmen will take care of that and
+of themselves too. We must say to the cotton lords, as Horne Tooke said
+to Lord Somebody in England,--"If, as you claim, power should follow
+property, then we will take from you the property, and the power shall
+follow." And fortunately for us, the same logic of events points to the
+political enfranchisement of the black loyalists, as the only way to
+prevent Congress from being replenished with plotting and disloyal men.
+Fair play to them is thus fair play to all of us; and, like Tony
+Lumpkin, in Goldsmith's comedy, if we are indifferent as to
+disappointing those who depend upon us, we may at least be trusted not
+to disappoint ourselves.
+
+The lingering caste-institutions in the Free States,--as the exclusive
+street-cars of Philadelphia, the separate schools of New York, the
+special gallery reserved for colored people in Boston theatres,--must
+inevitably pass away with the institution which they merely reflect. The
+perfect acquiescence with which abolition of these things is regarded,
+so soon as it takes effect, shows how little they are really sustained
+by public opinion. These are local matters, mere corollaries, and will
+settle themselves. They are not upheld by any conviction, and scarcely
+even by prejudice, but by an impression in each citizen's mind that
+there is some other citizen who is not prepared for the change. When it
+comes to the point, it is found that everybody is perfectly prepared,
+and that the objections were merely traditional. Who has ever heard of
+so much as a petition to restore any of the unjust distinctions which
+have thus been successively outgrown?
+
+But in our vast national dealings with the freedmen, we still drift from
+experiment to experiment, and adopt no settled purpose. Did this proceed
+from the difficulty of wise solution, in so vast a problem, one could
+blame it the less. But thus far the greatest want has been, not of
+wisdom, but of fidelity,--not of constructive statesmanship, but rather
+of pains to discern and of honesty to observe the humbler path of daily
+justice. When we consider that the order which laid the basis for the
+whole colored army--the "Instructions" of the Secretary of War to
+Brigadier-General Saxton, dated August 25, 1862--was so carelessly
+regarded by the War Department that it was not even placed on file, but
+a copy had to be supplied, the year following, by the officer to whom it
+was issued, it is obvious in what a hap-hazard way we have stumbled,
+into the most momentous acts. A government that still repudiates a duty
+so simple as the payment of arrears due under its own written pledges to
+the South Carolina soldiers can hardly shelter itself behind the plea of
+any complicated difficulties in its problem. Let us hope that the
+freedmen, on their part, will be led by some guidance better than our
+example: that they will not neglect their duties as their rights have
+been neglected, and not wrong others as they have been wronged.
+
+
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+
+     _Autobiography, Correspondence, etc., of Lyman Beecher, D. D._
+     Edited by CHARLES BEECHER. With Illustrations. In Two Volumes.
+     New York. Harper & Brothers.
+
+Reading this life of Dr. Beecher is like walking over an ancient
+battle-field, silent and grass-grown, but ridged with graves, and
+showing still by its conformation the disposition of the troops which
+once struggled there in deadly contest,--and while we linger, lo! the
+graves are graves no more. The dry bones come together,--sinew and flesh
+form upon them,--the skin covers them about,--the breath enters into
+them,--they live and stand upon their feet, an exceeding great and
+mighty army. Drums beat, swords flash, and the war of the Titans rages
+again around us.
+
+The life of Dr. Beecher is closely inwoven with the ecclesiastical
+history of New England. Ecclesiastical, like civil history, is chiefly a
+military record; and through both these volumes a sound of battle is in
+the land, and of great destruction. We who have fallen on comparatively
+quiet days can hardly conceive the intensity and violence of the
+excitement that glowed at our theological centres, and flamed out even
+to their circumferences, when the great Unitarian controversy was at its
+height,--when Park-Street Church alone of the Boston churches stood firm
+in the ancient faith, and her site was popularly christened "Hell-Fire
+Corner,"--when, later, the Hanover-Street Church was known as "Beecher's
+Stone Jug" and the firemen refused to play upon the flames that were
+destroying it. There were giants on the earth in those days, and they
+wrestled in giant fashion.
+
+All this conflict Dr. Beecher saw, and a large part of it he was. In
+Connecticut he had drawn his sword against intemperance, "Toleration,"
+and other forms of what he considered evil, and had been recognized as a
+mighty man of valor in his generation; but it was in this Unitarian
+controversy that he leaped to the battlements of Zion, sounded the alarm
+through the land, and took his place henceforth as leader of the hosts
+of the elect. "I had watched the whole progress," he says, "and read
+with eagerness everything that came out on the subject. My mind had been
+heating, heating, heating. Now I had a chance to strike." And strike he
+did, blows rapid and vigorous, whose echoes ring even through these
+silent pages. It was to him a real warfare. His speech ran naturally to
+military phrase. He saw the foe coming in like a flood. "The enemy,
+driven from the field by the immortal Edwards, have returned to the
+charge, and now the battle is to be fought over again." "The time has at
+length fully come to take hold of the Unitarian controversy by the
+horns." "The enemies ... are collecting their energies and meditating a
+comprehensive system of attack, which demands on our part a
+corresponding concert of action." "Let the stand taken be had in
+universal and everlasting remembrance, and we shall soon get the enemy
+out of the camp." "Wake up, ministers, form conspiracies against error,
+and scatter firebrands in the enemy's camp." "A schism in our ranks,
+with the enemy before and behind us, would indeed be confusion in the
+camp." "It is the moment to charge as Wellington did at Waterloo." "Will
+Walker and his friends feel as if my gun was loaded deep enough for the
+first shot, and will the Orthodox think I have done so far sufficient
+execution?... As the game is out of sight, I must depend on those who
+are near to tell me what are the effects of the first fire." "My sermons
+on Depravity ... are point-blank shot."
+
+Nor was the fight between Unitarian and Orthodox alone. Even within the
+ranks of the faithful dissensions arose, and many a time and oft had Dr.
+Beecher to defend himself against the charges, the insinuations, and the
+suspicions of his brethren. To the eyes of the more cautious or the more
+inert his adventurous feet seemed ever approaching the verge of heresy.
+Just where original sin ceases to be original and becomes
+acquired,--just where innate ill-desert meets voluntary
+transgression,--just where moral government raises the standard of
+rebellion against Absolutism,--just where New Haven theology branches
+off from ultra Orthodoxy on the debatable ground, the border-land of
+metaphysics and religion, Dr. Beecher and his brethren were engaged in
+perpetual skirmishing.
+
+It is not our province to decide or even to discuss the points at issue.
+Uninitiated laymen may perhaps be pardoned for hearing in all this din
+of battle but the echo of the Schoolmen's guns. Whether the two-year-old
+baby who dashes his bread-and-butter on the floor, in wrath at the lack
+of marmalade, does it because of a prevailing effectual tendency in his
+nature, or in consequence of his federal alliance with Adam, or from a
+previous surfeit of plum-cake, is a question which seems to bear a
+general family likeness to the inquiry, whether there is such a thing as
+generic bread-and-butter, or only such specific slices as arouse infant
+ire and nourish infant tissue. But around both classes of questions
+strife has waxed hot. Both have called out the utmost strength of the
+ablest minds, and both, however finespun they may seem to the
+uninstructed eye, have contributed in no small measure to the mental and
+moral health of the world. But while we would not make so great a
+mistake as to look with a supercilious smile either upon the conflict
+between Nominalism and Realism or on that between the Old and the New
+School theology, (notwithstanding we might find countenance in Dr. Pond
+of Bangor, who writes to Dr. Beecher, "In Maine we do not sympathize
+very deeply in your Presbyterian squabbles, except to look on and laugh
+at you all!") it may be permitted us as laymen to confess a greater
+interest in the phenomena than in the event of the struggle. We leave
+it, therefore, to our ecclesiastical contemporaries to descend into the
+arena and fight their battles o'er again, content ourselves to stand
+without and give thanks for the Divine voice that rises above the clash
+of contending creeds, saying alike to wise and foolish, "God so loved
+the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
+in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
+
+Spite of all the truculence of his language, and through all his
+strenuous thrust and parry, Dr. Beecher's sincerity, integrity, and
+piety shine forth unclouded. Looking at this memorial in one aspect, he
+seems to have assumed a charge which Mr. Lincoln has professed himself
+unable to undertake, namely, to "run the churches." He evidently
+believed that the Lord had committed to the clergy, of whom he was
+chief, the building up of a great ecclesiastical edifice, whose
+foundation should be laid in New England, but whose wings should
+presently cover the whole land. Individual churches were the pillars of
+this edifice. Now in Boston, now in New Haven, now at Cincinnati, he
+watched its progress, noting a fault, praising an excellence, repairing
+mistakes, strengthening weaknesses. It was the business and the delight
+of his life. He had his agents throughout the country. The churches
+might be many, but the cause was one. Ever watchful, ever active, he
+spoke of his measures and his plans in just such terse, homely phrase as
+any house-carpenter would use. Doubtless the fragile reverence of many a
+clerical cumberer of the ground was shocked by his familiar use of their
+sacred edge-tools. One can imagine the thrill of horror with which the
+Reverend Cream Cheese, of the Church of the Holy (Self-) Assumption,
+would hear the assertion, that "it was as finely organized a church as
+ever trod shoe-leather." Our elegant Unitarian friends have probably
+quite forgotten, and will hardly thank us for reminding them, that there
+ever was a time when they "put mouth to ear, and hand to pocket, and
+said, _St-boy!_" Our decorous Calvinistic D.D.s would scarcely recognize
+their own dogmas at the inquiry-meeting, where "language of simplicity
+came along, and they'd see me talking 'way down in language fit for
+children.... And then the language of free agency and ability came along
+... and they'd stick up their ears.... But next minute came along the
+plea of morality and self-dependence, and I took them by the nape of the
+neck and twisted their head off." There must have been great inertness
+in New England at the time of his first visit to Boston, when "nobody
+seemed to have an idea that there was anything but what God had locked
+up and frozen from all eternity. The bottom of accountability had fallen
+out. My first business was to put it in again." The coldness and
+indifference of the Church, which ministers usually employ the vivid
+language of the Bible regarding the ways of Zion to portray, he
+described in the equally vivid, but less dignified New England
+vernacular. "What did I do at Litchfield but to 'boost'? They all lay on
+me, and moved very little, except as myself and God moved them. I spent
+sixteen of the best years of my life at a dead lift in boosting." And we
+greatly fear that the reverend seigniors in Synod and Presbytery,
+notwithstanding their firm faith in Total Depravity, will be sadly
+scandalized at hearing it announced, "That was a scampy concern, that
+Old School General Assembly, and is still."
+
+But he would make a great mistake who should infer, that, in thus busily
+and energetically building up the temple, Dr. Beecher forgot the glory
+of the Lord which was to dwell in it. He treated it, indeed, as a
+business matter, but it was the business of immortal souls and of the
+Most High God. No merely professional attachment bound him to it; there
+was no contemplating it from a public and a private point of view; but
+his whole inner and outer life was enlisted. Not only the religious
+public, but, what is even more rare, his own family, were vitalized with
+his spirit and drawn into his train. The doctrines that he preached from
+the pulpit had been discussed over the woodpile in the cellar. His
+public teachings had first been household words. The Epistles, death, a
+preexistent state, were talked over by the fireside. Theology took
+precedence even of the baby in the family letters. One breath announces
+that he could not find any trout at Guilford, and the next that he has
+preached his sermon on Depravity. Catharine writes, that the house needs
+paper and paint very much, father's afternoon sermon perfectly
+electrified her, and his last article will make all smoke again. Harriet
+records, with great inward exultation, that, on their Western journey,
+father preached, and gave them the Taylorite heresy on Sin and Decrees
+to the highest notch, and what was amusing, he established it from the
+"Confession of Faith," and so it went high and dry above all objections,
+and delighted his audience, who had never heard it christened heresy. He
+sets forth to attend the Synod, accompanied by his son Henry, with one
+rein in the right hand, and one in the left, and an apple in each,
+biting them alternately, and alternately telling Tom how to get the
+harness mended, and showing Henry the true doctrine of Original Sin. His
+fatherly heart yearned over his children; with voice and pen and a
+constant watchful tenderness, he knew no rest till the whole eleven had
+adopted the faith for which he so earnestly contended. The genius of
+Napoleon elicited almost a personal affection, and he read every memoir
+from St. Helena with the earnest desire of shaping out of those last
+conversations some hope for his future. He mourned for Byron as for a
+friend, lamenting sorely that wasted life, and was sure, that, if Byron
+"could only have talked with Taylor and me, it might have got him out of
+his troubles." Indeed, he evidently considered "Taylor and me," not to
+say me and Taylor, the two pillars of Orthodoxy,--in no wise from
+vanity, but in the simplicity of truth. He spoke of his own feats with
+an openness that could proceed only from a guileless heart. The work of
+the Lord was the one thing that absorbed him, to the oblivion of all
+lesser interests. He was as absolutely free from vanity on the one side
+as from envy on the other. Lyman Beecher as Lyman Beecher had no
+existence. Lyman Beecher as God's servant was the verity. He rejoiced in
+the prosperity of the sacred cause: if it was Beecher's hand that
+furthered it, he exulted; if another than Beecher's, it was all the
+same. There was no room in his mind for any petty personal jealousy. He
+stood in nobody's way. He enjoyed every man's success. So the building
+rose, it was of small moment who wielded the hammer. Ever on the watch
+for indications of the mind and will of God, it was from zeal, not
+ambition, that he waited for no precedence, but pushed through the
+opened door, opened it never so narrowly. In doubt as to what is the
+true meaning of some "providence," he advises "to take hold of the end
+of the rope that is put into your hand, and pull it till we see what is
+on the other end."
+
+Yet, with all his electric enthusiasm, he was wise in his generation
+and beyond his generation, and in some respects beyond our own. He
+watched for souls as one that must give account. He adapted means to
+ends. He was careful not by fierce opposition to push doubt into error.
+When a drunkard died, he remembered that "his mother was an habitual
+drinker, and he was nursed on milk-punch, and the thirst was in his
+constitution"; so he hoped "that God saw it was a constitutional
+infirmity, like any other disease." He reduced the dogma of Total
+Depravity to the simple proposition, "that men by nature do not love God
+supremely, and their neighbor as themselves." He stoutly resisted the
+attempt to overawe belief, either his own or another's. He refused to
+expend his strength in contending with the friends of Christ, when there
+was so much to be done against his foes. Yet he was as far as possible
+from that narrow sectarianism, which sees no evil in its own ranks and
+no good in those of its adversaries. He denounced the faults of the
+Orthodox as heartily as those of the Unitarians. Standing in the
+forefront of Calvinism, he did not hesitate to say, "It is my deliberate
+opinion that the false philosophy which has been employed for the
+exposition of the Calvinistic system has done more to obstruct the march
+of Christianity, and to paralyze the saving power of the Gospel, and to
+raise up and organize around the Church the unnumbered multitude to
+behold and wonder and despise and perish, than all other causes
+beside.... Who of us are to suffer the loss of the most wood and hay by
+the process [of purging out this false philosophy] I cannot tell; but
+all mine is at the Lord's service at any time; and if all which is in
+New England should be brought out and laid in one pile, I think it would
+make a great bonfire."
+
+Unfortunately, there was something worse in the Church than false
+philosophy, unless this book very grievously falsifies facts. Her
+bitterest foe would hardly dare charge upon Zion such iniquity as the
+friendly unbosoming in these pages reveals. Wily intrigue, reckless
+perversion of language, rule or ruin, such things as we regret to see
+even in a political caucus, are to be found in abundance in the counsels
+of men who profess to be working only for the glory of God and the good
+of souls. Insinuations of craft and cowardice are set on foot, where
+direct charges fail for want of evidence. Rumor is made to do the work
+which reason cannot accomplish. Private letters are surreptitiously
+published, the publication defended as done with the permission of the
+writer, and testimony to the contrary refused a hearing. Extracts are
+taken out of their connection and made to carry a different meaning from
+that which they originally bore. What cannot be put down by evidence is
+to be put down by odium. There is a "cool and deliberate determination
+on the part of one half the Presbyterian Church to inflict upon the
+other half all the injury possible." Dr. Beecher's son, himself a
+prominent clergyman, is forced to confess, that, "for a combination of
+meanness and guilt and demoralising power in equal degrees of intensity,
+I have never known anything to exceed the conspiracy in New England and
+in the Presbyterian Church to crush by open falsehood and secret
+whisperings my father and others, whom they have in vain tried to
+silence by argument or to condemn in the courts of the Church." And yet,
+as Dr. Beecher stands forth in this biography, in native honor clad, so,
+undoubtedly, does Brother Nettleton stand forth in his biography, and
+Brother Woods in his, and Brother Wilson in his, and all the brethren in
+theirs,--all honorable men. We venture to say that not one of these
+reverend traducers and mischief-makers was "dealt with" by his church
+for his evil-doing. We make no doubt he went through life without loss
+of prestige or diminution of sanctity, and was bewailed at his death by
+the sons of the prophets in tenderest phrase, "My father! my father! the
+chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof."
+
+We do not attribute these shameful proceedings to Orthodoxy, still less
+to Christianity. "Perhaps it is a fact of our fallen nature, as Dr.
+Beecher asserted, that "Adam and grace will do twice as much as grace
+alone." But surely all these things happened unto them for ensamples,
+and they are written for our admonition. Seeing how unlovely is the
+spectacle of bickering and bitterness, let Christians of every name look
+well to their steps, saying often one to another, and especially
+repeating in concert, at the opening of every council, conference,
+synod, and assembly,--
+
+    "Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
+      For God hath made them so;
+    Let bears and lions growl and fight,
+      For 't is their nature, too.
+
+    "But bretheren, we will never let
+      Our angry passions rise:
+    Our little hands were never made
+      To tear each other's eyes."
+
+This biography, as the title-page asserts, is edited rather than
+written. By familiar talk and private letters, the subject is made, as
+far as possible, to tell his own story. What remains is supplied by the
+pens of different members of the family and of old friends. The result
+is a composite, the connections of whose parts we do not always readily
+discern. But what the book lacks in coherence is more than made up in
+accuracy and vividness. We obtain, by glimpses of the man, a far more
+exact knowledge of his character and work than we should by ever so
+steady a contemplation of some other man's symmetrical rendering of his
+life. We feel the beating of his great, fiery heart. We delight in his
+large, loving nature. We partake in his honest indignation. We smile,
+sometimes not without tears, at his childlike simplicity. We sit around
+the household hearth, join in the theological disputation, and share the
+naive satisfaction of the whole Beecher family with themselves and each
+other. We see how it was that the father set them all a-spinning each in
+his own groove, but all bearing the unmistakable Beecher stamp. We feel
+his irresistible energy, his burning zeal, his magnetic force yet
+thrilling through the land and arousing every sluggish power to come to
+the help of the Lord-against the mighty. For such a life there is indeed
+no death.
+
+
+     _Engineer and Artillery Operations against the Defences of
+     Charleston Harbor in 1863._ Comprising the Descent upon Morris
+     Island, the Demolition of Fort Sumter, the Reduction of Forts
+     Wagner and Gregg. With Observations on Heavy Ordnance,
+     Fortifications, etc. By L. A. GILLMORE, Major of Engineers,
+     Major-General of Volunteers, and Commanding General of the Land
+     Forces engaged. Published by Authority. New York: D. Van
+     Nostrand.
+
+Just after Major-General Hunter was removed--or, as the delicate
+military phrase went, "temporarily relieved"--from the command of the
+Department of the South, there was a report current in those parts of a
+conversation, perhaps imaginary, between President Lincoln and the
+relieved General, on his arrival at Washington. The gossip ran, that on
+General Hunter's inquiring the cause of his removal, the good-natured
+President could only say that "Horace Greeley said he had found a man
+who could _do the job_." The job was the taking of Charleston, and the
+"coming man" was Brigadier-General (now Major-General) Gillmore. The
+so-called "siege of Charleston," after being the nine-days'-wonder of
+two continents, dwindled to a mere daily item in the dingy newspapers of
+that defiant city,--an item contemptuously sandwiched between the
+meteorological record and the deaths and marriages. The "coming man"
+came and went, being in his turn "temporarily relieved," and consigned
+to that obscurity which is the Nemesis of major-generals. He is more
+fortunate, however, than some of his compeers, in experiencing almost at
+once the double resurrection of autobiography and reappointment. Whether
+his new career be more or less successful than the old one, the
+autobiography is at least worth printing, so far as it goes. Had an
+instalment of it appeared when the siege of Charleston was at its
+height, it would have been translated into a dozen European languages,
+and would have been read more eagerly in London and Paris than even in
+Washington. Even now it will be read with interest, and with respect to
+rifled ordnance will be a permanent authority.
+
+The total impression left behind by General Gillmore, in his former
+career in the Department of the South, was that of an unwearied worker
+and an admirable engineer officer. Military gifts are apt to be
+specific, and a specialist seldom gains reputation in the end by being
+raised to those elevated posts which require a combination of faculties.
+If the object of General Gillmore's original appointment was to silence
+Fort Sumter and to throw shell into Charleston, he was undoubtedly the
+man who could "do the job." If the aim was to take Charleston with a
+small military force, or even a large one, the wisdom of the choice was
+less clear. If the intent was to govern an important Department, without
+reference to further conquests,--to regulate trade, organize industry,
+free the slaves, educate the freedmen,--then the selection was still
+more doubtful. For this sphere of action, which had seemed so important
+to Mitchell and to Hunter, was foreign to Gillmore's whole habits and
+temperament, and he never could galvanize himself into caring for it.
+His strong point, after all, was in dealing with metal rather than with
+men, white or black. And as (since the disaster at Olustee) he can
+hardly be charged with any squeamish unwillingness to throw upon others
+the chief responsibility of any seeming failures of his own, it is
+perhaps fortunate that in this book he is able to keep chiefly upon the
+ground where he is strongest.
+
+Yet, after all, the work is historical as well as scientific. And there
+is in it such a mingling of great questions of philanthropy with mere
+questions of grooving, and black soldiers jostle so inextricably with
+black guns, that the common reader and the mere student of human nature
+will find an interest in the book, as well as that intelligent lady of
+our acquaintance, who, having heard of the brilliant ornithology of the
+tropics, was eager to read about the hundred-pound "Parrotts" of South
+Carolina.
+
+As to the guns, the contributions of this superbly illustrated volume
+are of the very greatest value. Nothing in print equals it, except Mr.
+Holley's recent great treatise, some of whose tables are here also
+employed by permission. Here we find the most authentic statements, both
+as to the work done by the large rifled guns, and as to that trick of
+bursting which is their gravest weakness. But for this, the heavy
+ordnance of Parrott would be a magnificent success. And when we consider
+that six two-hundred pounders and seventeen one-hundred pounders were
+burst during the siege of Charleston, as recorded in this volume,--that
+five one-hundred pounders are said to have been burst in a single week
+on Morris Island at a later period, and that Admiral Porter reports six
+similar instances during the first attack on Fort Fisher,--it was
+certainly worth while in the publisher of this work, with his usual
+liberality, to devote a long series of admirable plates, prepared under
+the direction of Captain Mordecai, to the details of these dangerous
+fractures.
+
+It is generally admitted that the smaller "Parrott" guns, including the
+thirty pounders, approach very near perfection. The large calibres have
+precisely the same merits, as respects range, accuracy, and simplicity
+of construction and manipulation. This their work against Fort Sumter
+shows. But the deficiency of endurance belongs to the large guns alone;
+since the smaller, after an immense amount of service, have shown no
+sort of weakness. Yet, if the principle be correct, on which the latter
+are strengthened, there seems no reason why the same degree of endurance
+may not yet be secured for the larger. It is simply a mechanical
+problem, whose solution cannot be far off.
+
+The guns have burst both longitudinally and laterally, and in quite a
+variety of position and service. General Turner's suggestion, that an
+important secondary cause of bursting is the presence of sand within the
+bore, among the ever-blowing sand-hills of the Sea Islands, seems
+justified by the fact that in the naval service the accidents have been
+far less frequent,--a thing in all respects fortunate, by the way, as
+such explosions on board ship involve far greater sacrifice of life than
+on land. Another secondary cause is the premature explosion of shell
+within the bore, a defect which should be also remediable. Indeed, the
+"Parrott" shell were at first notoriously defective, often bursting too
+soon or not at all, and thus losing much of their usefulness; though
+this defect has now been, in a great degree, remedied. The discussion of
+the whole subject in this book seems reasonable and unprejudiced, and a
+letter from the maker of the guns, at the end, gives with equal candor
+his side of the question.
+
+General Gillmore's narrative of his military operations is exceedingly
+interesting, and generally clear and simple. The descent upon Morris
+Island from Folly Island was undoubtedly one of the most skilful
+achievements of the war. Under the superintendence of Brigadier-General
+Vogdes, forty-seven pieces of artillery, with two hundred rounds of
+ammunition for each gun, and provided with suitable parapets,
+splinter-proof shelters, and magazines, were placed in position, by
+night, within speaking distance of the enemy's pickets, and within view
+of their observatories. And yet all this immense piece of work was done
+with such profound secrecy, that, when the first shot from these
+batteries fell among the enemy, it astounded them as if it had come from
+the planet Jupiter. At the time, this brilliant success was merged in
+the greater prospective brilliancy of the expected results. Now that the
+results have failed to follow, we can perhaps do more justice to the
+remarkable skill displayed in the preliminary movements.
+
+So far as this report is concerned, General Gillmore shows no
+disposition to do injustice to other officers. In reprinting the daily
+correspondence with Admiral Dahlgren it might have been better to omit
+or explain some hasty expressions of censure,--as where a young naval
+lieutenant is charged (on page 333) with defeating an important measure
+by acting without orders, though the fact was, that the officer was not
+under General Gillmore's orders at all, and simply followed the
+instructions of his immediate commander. But in dealing with officers of
+higher rank he is more discreet, and his implied criticisms on Admiral
+Dahlgren are not so severe as might have been expected. They are not
+nearly so sharp as those which were constantly heard, during the siege,
+from the officers of the navy; and the Admiral's telegraphic note on
+page 327, "My chief pilot informs me a gale is coming on, and I am
+coming into the creek," was the source of very unpardonable levity on
+board some of the gun-boats.
+
+In the few passages relating to the colored troops, in the main report,
+the author shows evident pains in the statement, with rather
+unsatisfactory results. The style suggests rather the adroitness of the
+politician than the frankness of the soldier. This is the case, for
+instance, in his narrative of the unsuccessful assault upon Fort Wagner,
+where he uses language which would convey the impression, to nine
+readers out of ten, that it was somehow a reproach to the Fifty-Fourth
+Massachusetts that it was thrown into disorder, and that this disorder
+checked the progress of the rest. Of course this was so,--because it led
+the charge. It is not usual to say, in preparing a very brief narrative
+of some railway collision, that the leading car "was thrown into a state
+of great disorder, which reacted unfavorably upon, and delayed the
+progress of, those which followed." Yet it is hardly less absurd to say
+it of the leading battalion in a night attack on a fortress almost
+impregnable. The leading car takes the brunt of the shock precisely
+because it is in that position, and so does the leading regiment. How
+well the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts bore the test is recognized by its
+being apparently included in the final admission, that "the behavior of
+the troops, under the circumstances, was unexceptionable." But a
+fractional share in a line and a half of rather chilly praise is hardly
+an equivalent for three lines of implied individual censure. Had
+Brigadier-General Strong lived to tell the story of that night, it would
+have been stated less diplomatically than by Major-General Gillmore.
+
+The report of Major Brooks on the working qualities of the colored
+troops is far more discriminating and more valuable, as are the appended
+statements of Captain Walker and Lieutenant Farrand. Major Brooks, as
+chief of engineering, sent circulars to six different officers who had
+superintended fatigue parties in the trenches, covering inquiries on
+five points relating to efficiency and courage. The report may be found
+at page 259 of the book, constituting Appendix XIX. (misprinted XIV.) to
+the Journal of Major Brooks.
+
+The statement is probably as fair as the facts in the compiler's
+possession could make it; yet it is seriously vitiated by the scantiness
+of those facts. In answer to one question, for example, we are told that
+"all agree that the colored troops recruited from Free States are
+superior to those recruited from Slave States." But only two regiments
+of the latter class appear to have come under Major Brooks's observation
+at all. One of these was a perfectly raw regiment, which had never had a
+day's drill when it was placed in the trenches, but which was kept
+constantly at work there, although an order had been issued forbidding
+white recruits from being so employed. The other was a regiment composed
+chiefly of South Carolina _conscripts_, enlisted in utter disregard of
+pledges previously given, and of course unwilling soldiers. It was
+absurd to institute a comparison between these troops and a regiment so
+well trained and officered as the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts. Longer
+experience has shown that there is no great choice between the Northern
+and Southern negro, as military material; and the preferences of an
+officer will usually depend upon which he has been accustomed to
+command. Many, certainly, are firm in the conviction that the freed
+slave makes the best soldier.
+
+In other points the report carries with it some of the needful
+corrections, at least for a careful reader. For instance, Major Brooks's
+general summary is, that "the black is more timorous than the white, but
+is in a corresponding degree more docile and obedient, hence more
+completely under the control of his commander, and much more influenced
+by his example." But when we read on the previous page that the white
+soldiers were allowed to take their arms into the trenches, and that the
+black soldiers were not, it makes the whole comparison nearly worthless.
+It is notorious that the presence or absence of manhood in the bravest
+soldier often seems to be determined by the mere fact that he has a gun
+in his hand; and had the object been to annihilate all vestige of
+military pride in the colored troops, it could not have been better
+planned than by this and other distinctions maintained during a large
+part of the siege of Charleston. That, while smarting under the double
+deprivation both of a soldier's duty and of a soldier's pay, they should
+have so behaved as to merit a report so favorable as that of Major
+Brooks, is one of the greatest triumphs they have yet achieved. This
+volume contains the record of what they did. The story of what they
+underwent is yet to be told; for even of his two famous "orders" General
+Gillmore judiciously makes no mention here.
+
+Thus mingled, in this superb work, are the points of strength and
+weakness. It remains only to add that the typographical and artistic
+execution is an honor to our literature, and adds to the laurels
+previously won in the same department by the publisher. Where all else
+is so admirable, it seems a pity to have to lament the absence of an
+index. The division of the work among several different authors makes
+this defect peculiarly inconvenient.
+
+
+     _General Todleben's History of the Defence of Sebastopol,
+     1854-5._ A Review. By WILLIAM HOWARD RUSSELL. New York: D. Van
+     Nostrand.
+
+It does not yet appear whether our great civil war will leave behind it
+materials for debate as acrimonious as that which has gathered round the
+affair in the Crimea. If General Butler and Admiral Porter live and
+thrive, there seems a fair chance that it may. In that case it will be
+interesting to read how General Todleben, in a parallel case,
+substitutes the Russian bear for the monkey in the fable, pats each
+combatant on the shoulder, and presents each with a shell, while
+extracting for himself the oyster.
+
+Mr. Russell's "Review" is rather a paraphrase and a condensation,--the
+original work of the Russian General being too costly even for the
+English market. The task of the English editor is done with his usual
+spirit, and with all the more zest from an evident enjoyment of finding
+Mr. Kinglake in the wrong. Between his sympathies as a Briton and his
+sympathies as a literary man there is sometimes a struggle. But we
+Americans can do more justice to Mr. Russell than in those days of
+national innocence when we knew not Mackay and Gallenga and Sala; and it
+must be admitted that the tone of the present book is manly and
+impartial.
+
+Kinglake's description of the Battle of the Alma will always remain as
+one of the masterpieces of literature in its way; but it is noticeable
+that Todleben entirely ignores some of the historian's most dramatic
+effects, and also knocks away much of his underpinning by demolishing
+the reputation of General Kiriakoff, his favorite Russian witness.
+Kinglake says that Eupatoria was occupied by a small body of English
+troops, and tells a good story about it: Todleben declares that the
+Allies occupied it with more than three thousand men and eight
+field-guns. Kinglake represents Lord Raglan as forcing the French
+officers, with great difficulty, to disembark the troops at a spot of
+his own selection: Todleben gives to Canrobert and Martinprey the whole
+credit of the final choice and of all the arrangements. And so on.
+
+On the side of the Russians, the most interesting points brought out by
+Todleben are their fearful disadvantage as regarded the armament of the
+infantry, (these being decimated by the rifles of the Allies long before
+the Russians were near enough to use their smooth-bores,) and the
+popular enthusiasm inspired by the war in Russia. "The Czar was aided by
+the spontaneous contributions of his people. Great supplies were
+forwarded by private individuals of all that an army could need." "From
+all parts of the empire persons sent lint, bandages, etc., by post to
+the army." These are phrases which bring us back to the daily experience
+of our own vaster struggle.
+
+As respects the Allies, Todleben uniformly credits the French army with
+more of every military quality than the English, save personal courage
+alone. From the commanding general to the lowest private, every
+technical detail of duty seems to have been better done by the French.
+At the height of the siege, it became "a war of sorties" on the part of
+the Russians, and Todleben says,--"_Apropos_ of those sorties, it is
+indispensable to make the remark here, that the French guarded their
+trenches with much more vigilance, and defended them with incomparably
+more tenacity, than the English. It frequently happened that our
+volunteers approached the English trenches without being perceived, and
+without even firing a single shot, and found the soldiers of the guard
+sitting in the trench in the most perfect security, far from their
+firelocks, which were stacked in piles. With the French, matters were
+quite different. They were always on the _qui vive_, so that it rarely
+happened we were able to get near them without having been remarked, and
+without having to receive beforehand a sharp fire of musketry."
+
+This, however, as Russell remarks, was when the English army was at its
+lowest condition of neglect; but that simply transfers the indictment to
+another count. And it is interesting to observe, that Russell's claim
+for the English army and Todleben's claim for the Russian army come at
+last to about the same point, namely, that the individual soldier is in
+each case tough and resolute to the last degree. But this is only the
+beginning of the merits of the French array, which to individual courage
+superadds all that organization can attain.
+
+As to the poor Turks, they are dismissed with much the same epitaph
+which might long since have been written for our colored troops, if some
+of our Department commanders had been suffered to have their way:--"As
+to the Turks, the Allies despised them, and the English used them as
+beasts of burden; in short, they lost three hundred men a day, till they
+almost perished out, and the remains of their army were sent away."
+
+In view of the grander issues of our own pending contest, with its
+vaster scale of munitions and of men, one cannot always feel the due
+interest in successive pages about battles like "Little Inkermann,"
+where the total of Russian killed and wounded comprised twenty-five
+officers and two hundred and forty-five men. But it is not numbers which
+make a contest memorable. Even the mere contemplation of the Crimean War
+had an appreciable influence on the military training of the American
+people; and the clear narratives of Todleben, written "in his usual
+elaborate engineering way, in which every word is used like a gabion,"
+form a good sequel to that unconscious instruction.
+
+
+     _Vanity Fair._ A Novel without a Hero. By WILLIAM MAKEPEACE
+     THACKERAY. With Illustrations by the Author. New York: Harper &
+     Brothers. 3 vols. 12mo.
+
+In the novels of Thackeray, essay is so much mixed up with narrative,
+and comment with characterization, that they can hardly be thoroughly
+appreciated in poor editions. The temptation to skip is almost
+irresistible, when wisdom can be purchased only at the expense of
+eyesight. We are therefore glad to welcome the commencement of a new
+edition of his writings, over whose pages the reader can linger at his
+pleasure, and quietly enjoy subtilties of humor and observation which in
+previous perusals he overlooked. The present volumes, published by the
+Harpers, are among the most tasteful and comely products of the
+Cambridge University Press. Printed in large type on tinted paper,
+elegantly bound in green cloth, and with a fac-simile of the author's
+autograph on the cover, every copy has the appearance of being a
+presentation copy. No English edition of "Vanity Fair" is equal to this
+American one in respect either to convenience of form or beauty of
+mechanical execution. The illustrations are numerous, well engraved, and
+embody the writer's own conceptions of his scenes and characters, and
+are often deliciously humorous.
+
+"Vanity Fair," though it does not include the whole extent of
+Thackeray's genius, is the most vigorous exhibition of its leading
+characteristics. In freshness of feeling, elasticity of movement, and
+unity of aim, it is favorably distinguished from its successors, which
+too often give the impression of being composed of successive
+accumulations of incidents and persons, that drift into the story on no
+principle of artistic selection and combination. The style, while it has
+the raciness of individual peculiarity and the careless ease of familiar
+gossip, is as clear, pure, and flexible as if its sentences had been
+subjected to repeated revision, and every pebble which obstructed its
+lucid and limpid flow had been laboriously removed. The characterization
+is almost perfect of its kind. Becky Sharp, the Marquis of Steyne, Sir
+Pitt Crawley and the whole Crawley family, Amelia, the Osbornes, Major
+Dobbin, not to mention others, are as well known to most cultivated
+people as their most intimate acquaintances in the Vanity Fair of the
+actual world. It has always seemed to us that Mr. Osborne, the father of
+George, a representation of the most hateful phase of English character,
+is one of the most vividly true and life-like of all the delineations in
+the book, and more of a typical personage than even Becky or the Marquis
+of Steyne. Thackeray's theory of characterization proceeds generally on
+the assumption that the acts of men and women are directed not by
+principle, but by instincts, selfish or amiable,--that toleration for
+human weakness is possible only by lowering the standard of human
+capacity and obligation,--and that the preliminary condition of an
+accurate knowledge of human character is distrust of ideals and
+repudiation of patterns. This view is narrow, and by no means covers
+all the facts of history and human life, but what relative truth it has
+is splendidly illustrated in "Vanity Fair." There is not a person in the
+book who excites the reader's respect, and not one who fails to excite
+his interest. The morbid quickness of the author's perceptions of the
+selfish element, even in his few amiable characters, is a constant
+source of surprise. The novel not only has no hero, but implies the
+non-existence of heroism. Yet the fascination of the book is
+indisputable, and it is due to a variety of causes besides its mere
+exhibition of the worldly side of life. Among these, the perfect
+intellectual honesty of the writer, the sad or satirical sincerity with
+which he gives in his evidence against human nature, is the most
+prominent. With all his lightness of manner, he is essentially a witness
+under oath, and testifies only to what he is confident he knows. Perhaps
+this quality, rare not only in novel-writing, but in all writing, would
+not compensate for the limitation of his perceptions and the
+repulsiveness of much that he perceives, were it not for the peculiar
+charm of his representation. It is here that the individuality of the
+man appears, and it presents a combination of sentiments and powers more
+original perhaps than the matter of his works. Take from "Vanity Fair"
+that special element of interest which comes from Thackeray's own
+nature, and it would lose the greater portion of its fascination. It is
+not so much what is done, as the way in which it is done, that surprises
+and delights; and the manner is always inimitable, even when the matter
+is common.
+
+
+     _Seaside and Fireside Fairies._ Translated from the German of
+     George Blum and Louis Wahl. By A. L. WISTAR. Philadelphia:
+     Ashmead & Evans.
+
+These pretty fairy stories peep at us out of German-land through a
+pleasant, clear translation, and they remind us how easily the
+supernatural and loves to dwell in airborn castles. The beautiful
+instinct of reverence common to child-life is readily taken advantage of
+by writers for the young; but where in England we find in stories some
+angel-mother who discovers the treachery of her governess and teaches
+her own children, or a rotund uncle who tips the boys, providentially,
+as it seems, in Germany the protectors of children possess no nearer
+abode than the land of Fairy, and their presence is as rare as that of
+the Indian "Vanishers." Perhaps, even among American children, the tales
+which approximate more nearly to their experience hold the strongest
+attractive power; yet, in the wide range of the commingled races of the
+United States, there must be many children who long for stories of that
+dear Dream-land familiar to their thoughts, and to whom these stories
+would be a happy era in childhood's experience.
+
+
+
+
+RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS.
+
+
+Lectures on the Science of Language, delivered at the Royal Institution
+of Great Britain, in February, March, April, and May, 1863. By Max
+Mueller, Fellow of All-Souls College, Oxford; Correspondent de l'Institut
+de France. Second Series. With Thirty-One Illustrations. New York. C.
+Scribner. 12mo. pp. 622. $3.00.
+
+Meditations on the Essence of Christianity, and on the Religious
+Questions of the Day. By M. Guizot. Translated from the French, under
+the Superintendence of the Author. New York. C. Scribner. 12mo. pp. 356.
+$1.75.
+
+The Beautiful Widow. By Mrs. Percy B. Shelley. Philadelphia. T. B.
+Peterson & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 244. $2.00.
+
+The Differential Calculus: with Unusual and Particular Analysis of its
+Elementary Principles, and Copious Illustrations of its Practical
+Application. By John Spare, A. M., M. D. Boston. Bradley, Dayton, & Co.
+12mo. pp. xx., 244. $2.00.
+
+Vest-Pocket Lexicon. An English Dictionary of all except Familiar Words;
+including the Principal Scientific and Technical Terms, and Foreign
+Moneys, Weights, and Measures. By Jabez Jenkins. Philadelphia. J. B.
+Lippincott & Co. 18mo. pp. 563. 62 cts.
+
+The American Conflict. A History of the Great Rebellion. By Horace
+Greeley. Volume One. Hartford. O. D. Case & Co, 8vo. pp. 648. $5.00.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No.
+91, May, 1865, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY, MAY 1865 ***
+
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