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+Project Gutenberg EBook, Tales and Sketches, by Whittier
+Part 3, From Volume V., The Works of Whittier: Tales and Sketches
+#34 in our series by John Greenleaf Whittier
+
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+Title: Tales and Sketches
+       Part 3, From Volume V., The Works of Whittier: Tales and Sketches
+
+
+Author: John Greenleaf Whittier
+
+Release Date: December 2005  [EBook #9589]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 18, 2003]
+
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, TALES AND SKETCHES ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+                          TALES AND SKETCHES
+
+                                   BY
+
+                        JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+
+     THE LITTLE IRON SOLDIER
+     PASSACONAWAY
+     THE OPIUM EATER
+     THE PROSELYTES
+     DAVID MATSON
+     THE FISH I DID N'T CATCH
+     YANKEE GYPSIES
+     THE TRAINING
+     THE CITY OF A DAY
+     PATUCKET FALLS
+     FIRST DAY IN LOWELL
+     THE LIGHTING UP
+     TAKING COMFORT
+     CHARMS AND FAIRY FAITH
+     MAGICIANS AND WITCH FOLK
+     THE BEAUTIFUL
+     THE WORLD'S END
+     THE HEROINE OF LONG POINT
+
+
+
+                        THE LITTLE IRON SOLDIER
+
+                OR, WHAT AMINADAB IVISON DREAMED ABOUT.
+
+AMINADAB IVISON started up in his bed.  The great clock at the head of
+the staircase, an old and respected heirloom of the family, struck one.
+
+"Ah," said he, heaving up a great sigh from the depths of his inner man,
+"I've had a tried time of it."
+
+"And so have I," said the wife.  "Thee's been kicking and threshing
+about all night.  I do wonder what ails thee."
+
+And well she might; for her husband, a well-to-do, portly, middle-aged
+gentleman, being blessed with an easy conscience, a genial temper, and a
+comfortable digestion, was able to bear a great deal of sleep, and
+seldom varied a note in the gamut of his snore from one year's end to
+another.
+
+"A very remarkable exercise," soliloquized Aminadab; "very."
+
+"Dear me! what was it?"  inquired his wife.
+
+"It must have been a dream," said Aminadab.
+
+"Oh, is that all?"  returned the good woman.  "I'm glad it's nothing
+worse.  But what has thee been dreaming about?"
+
+"It's the strangest thing, Hannah, that thee ever heard of," said
+Aminadab, settling himself slowly back into his bed.  Thee recollects
+Jones sent me yesterday a sample of castings from the foundry.  Well, I
+thought I opened the box and found in it a little iron man, in
+regimentals; with his sword by his side and a cocked hat on, looking
+very much like the picture in the transparency over neighbor O'Neal's
+oyster-cellar across the way.  I thought it rather out of place for
+Jones to furnish me with such a sample, as I should not feel easy to
+show it to my customers, on account of its warlike appearance.  However,
+as the work was well done, I took the little image and set him up on the
+table, against the wall; and, sitting down opposite, I began to think
+over my business concerns, calculating how much they would increase in
+profit in case a tariff man should be chosen our ruler for the next four
+years.  Thee knows I am not in favor of choosing men of blood and strife
+to bear rule in the land: but it nevertheless seems proper to consider
+all the circumstances in this case, and, as one or the other of the
+candidates of the two great parties must be chosen, to take the least of
+two evils.  All at once I heard a smart, quick tapping on the table;
+and, looking up, there stood the little iron man close at my elbow,
+winking and chuckling.  'That's right, Aminadab!' said he, clapping his
+little metal hands together till he rang over like a bell, 'take the
+least of two evils.'  His voice had a sharp, clear, jingling sound, like
+that of silver dollars falling into a till.  It startled me so that I
+woke up, but finding it only a dream presently fell asleep again.  Then
+I thought I was down in the Exchange, talking with neighbor Simkins
+about the election and the tariff.  'I want a change in the
+administration, but I can't vote for a military chieftain,' said
+neighbor Simkins, 'as I look upon it unbecoming a Christian people to
+elect men of blood for their rulers.'  'I don't know,' said I, 'what
+objection thee can have to a fighting man; for thee 's no Friend, and
+has n't any conscientious scruples against military matters.  For my own
+part, I do not take much interest in politics, and never attended a
+caucus in my life, believing it best to keep very much in the quiet, and
+avoid, as far as possible, all letting and hindering things; but there
+may be cases where a military man may be voted for as a choice of evils,
+and as a means of promoting the prosperity of the country in business
+matters.'  'What!' said neighbor Simkins, 'are you going to vote for a
+man whose whole life has been spent in killing people?'  This vexed me a
+little, and I told him there was such a thing as carrying a good
+principle too far, and that he night live to be sorry that he had thrown
+away his vote, instead of using it discreetly.  'Why, there's the iron
+business,' said I; but just then I heard a clatter beside me, and,
+looking round, there was the little iron soldier clapping his hands in
+great glee.  'That's it, Aminadab!' said he; 'business first, conscience
+afterwards!  Keep up the price of iron with peace if you can, but keep
+it up at any rate.'  This waked me again in a good deal of trouble; but,
+remembering that it is said that 'dreams come of the multitude of
+business,' I once more composed myself to sleep."
+
+"Well, what happened next?" asked his wife.
+
+"Why, I thought I was in the meeting-house, sitting on the facing-seat
+as usual.  I tried hard to settle my mind down into a quiet and humble
+state; but somehow the cares of the world got uppermost, and, before I
+was well aware of it, I was far gone in a calculation of the chances of
+the election, and the probable rise in the price of iron in the event of
+the choice of a President favorable to a high tariff.  Rap, tap, went
+something on the floor.  I opened my eyes, and there was the little
+image, red-hot, as if just out of the furnace, dancing, and chuckling,
+and clapping his hands.  'That's right, Aminadab!' said he; 'go on as
+you have begun; take care of yourself in this world, and I'll promise
+you you'll be taken care of in the next.  Peace and poverty, or war and
+money.  It's a choice of evils at best; and here's Scripture to decide
+the matter: "Be not righteous overmuch."'  Then the wicked-looking
+little image twisted his hot lips, and leered at me with his blazing
+eyes, and chuckled and laughed with a noise exactly as if a bag of
+dollars had been poured out upon the meeting-house floor.  This waked me
+just now in such a fright.  I wish thee would tell me, Hannah, what thee
+can make of these three dreams?"
+
+"It don't need a Daniel to interpret them," answered Hannah.  "Thee 's
+been thinking of voting for a wicked old soldier, because thee cares
+more for thy iron business than for thy testimony against wars and
+fightings.  I don't a bit wonder at thy seeing the iron soldier thee
+tells of; and if thee votes to-morrow for a man of blood, it wouldn't be
+strange if he should haunt thee all thy life."
+
+Aminadab Ivison was silent, for his conscience spoke in the words of his
+wife.  He slept no more that night, and rose up in the morning a wiser
+and better man.
+
+When he went forth to his place of business he saw the crowds hurrying
+to and fro; there were banners flying across the streets, huge placards
+were on the walls, and he heard all about him the bustle of the great
+election.
+
+"Friend Ivison," said a red-faced lawyer, almost breathless with his
+hurry, "more money is needed in the second ward; our committees are
+doing a great work there.  What shall I put you down for?  Fifty
+dollars?  If we carry the election, your property will rise twenty per
+cent.  Let me see; you are in the iron business, I think?"
+
+Aminadab thought of the little iron soldier of his dream, and excused
+himself.  Presently a bank director came tearing into his office.
+
+"Have you voted yet, Mr. Ivison?  It 's time to get your vote in.  I
+wonder you should be in your office now.  No business has so much at
+stake in this election as yours."
+
+"I don't think I should feel entirely easy to vote for the candidate,"
+said Aminadab.
+
+"Mr. Ivison," said the bank director, "I always took you to be a shrewd,
+sensible man, taking men and things as they are.  The candidate may not
+be all you could wish for; but when the question is between him and a
+worse man, the best you can do is to choose the least of the two evils."
+
+"Just so the little iron man said," thought Aminadab.  "'Get thee behind
+me, Satan!' No, neighbor Discount," said he, "I've made up my mind.  I
+see no warrant for choosing evil at all.  I can't vote for that man."
+
+"Very well," said the director, starting to leave the room; "you can do
+as you please; but if we are defeated through the ill-timed scruples of
+yourself and others, and your business pinches in consequence, you need
+n't expect us to help men who won't help themselves.  Good day, sir."
+
+Aminadab sighed heavily, and his heart sank within him; but he thought
+of his dream, and remained steadfast.  Presently he heard heavy steps
+and the tapping of a cane on the stairs; and as the door opened he saw
+the drab surtout of the worthy and much-esteemed friend who sat beside
+him at the head of the meeting.
+
+"How's thee do, Aminadab?"  said he.  "Thee's voted, I suppose?"
+
+"No, Jacob," said he; "I don't like the candidate.  I can't see my way
+clear to vote for a warrior."
+
+"Well, but thee does n't vote for him because he is a warrior,
+Aminadab," argued the other; "thee votes for him as a tariff man and an
+encourager of home industry.  I don't like his wars and fightings better
+than thee does; but I'm told he's an honest man, and that he disapproves
+of war in the abstract, although he has been brought up to the business.
+If thee feels tender about the matter, I don't like to urge thee; but it
+really seems to me thee had better vote.  Times have been rather hard,
+thou knows; and if by voting at this election we can make business
+matters easier, I don't see how we can justify ourselves in staying at
+home.  Thou knows we have a command to be diligent in business as well
+as fervent in spirit, and that the Apostle accounted him who provided
+not for his own household worse than an infidel.  I think it important
+to maintain on all proper occasions our Gospel testimony against wars
+and fightings; but there is such a thing as going to extremes, thou
+knows, and becoming over-scrupulous, as I think thou art in this case.
+It is said, thou knows, in Ecclesiastes, 'Be not righteous overmuch: why
+shouldst thou destroy thyself?'"
+
+"Ah," said Aminadab to himself, "that's what the little iron soldier
+said in meeting."  So he was strengthened in his resolution, and the
+persuasions of his friend were lost upon him.
+
+At night Aminadab sat by his parlor fire, comfortable alike in his inner
+and his outer man.  "Well, Hannah," said he, "I've taken thy advice.  I
+did n't vote for the great fighter to-day."
+
+"I'm glad of it," said the good woman, "and I dare say thee feels the
+better for it."
+
+Aminadab Ivison slept soundly that night, and saw no more of the little
+iron soldier.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             PASSACONAWAY.
+
+                                [1833.]
+
+          I know not, I ask not, what guilt's in thy heart, But I feel
+          that I love thee, whatever thou art.
+                                                  Moor.
+
+THE township of Haverhill, on the Merrimac, contained, in the autumn of
+1641, the second year of its settlement, but six dwelling-houses,
+situated near each other, on the site of the present village.  They were
+hastily constructed of rude logs, small and inconvenient, but one remove
+from the habitations of the native dwellers of the wilderness.  Around
+each a small opening had been made through the thick forest, down to the
+margin of the river, where, amidst the charred and frequent stumps and
+fragments of fallen trees, the first attempts at cultivation had been
+made.  A few small patches of Indian corn, which had now nearly reached
+maturity, exhibited their thick ears and tasselled stalks, bleached by
+the frost and sunshine; and, here and there a spot of yellow stubble,
+still lingering among the rough incumbrances of the soil, told where a
+scanty crop of common English grain had been recently gathered.  Traces
+of some of the earlier vegetables were perceptible, the melon, the pea,
+and the bean.  The pumpkin lay ripening on its frosted vines, its sunny
+side already changed to a bright golden color; and the turnip spread out
+its green mat of leaves in defiance of the season.  Everything around
+realized the vivid picture of Bryant's Emigrant, who:
+
+              "Hewed the dark old woods away,
+               And gave the virgin fields to the day
+               And the pea and the bean beside the door
+               Bloomed where such flowers ne'er bloomed before;
+               And the maize stood up, and the bearded rye
+               Bent low in the breath of an unknown sky."
+
+Beyond, extended the great forest, vast, limitless, unexplored, whose
+venerable trees had hitherto bowed only to the presence of the storm,
+the beaver's tooth, and the axe of Time, working in the melancholy
+silence of natural decay.  Before the dwellings of the white
+adventurers, the broad Merrimac rolled quietly onward the piled-up
+foliage of its shores, rich with the hues of a New England autumn.
+The first sharp frosts, the avant couriers of approaching winter, had
+fallen, and the whole wilderness was in blossom.  It was like some vivid
+picture of Claude Lorraine, crowded with his sunsets and rainbows, a
+natural kaleidoscope of a thousand colors.  The oak upon the hillside
+stood robed in summer's greenness, in strong contrast with the topaz-
+colored walnut.  The hemlock brooded gloomily in the lowlands, forming,
+with its unbroken mass of shadow, a dark background for the light maple
+beside it, bright with its peculiar beauty.  The solemn shadows of the
+pine rose high in the hazy atmosphere, checkered, here and there, with
+the pale yellow of the birch.
+
+"Truly, Alice, this is one of God's great marvels in the wilderness,"
+said John Ward, the minister, and the original projector of the
+settlement, to his young wife, as they stood in the door of their humble
+dwelling.  "This would be a rare sight for our friends in old Haverhill.
+The wood all about us hath, to my sight, the hues of the rainbow, when,
+in the words of the wise man, it compasseth the heavens as with a
+circle, and the hands of the Most High have bended it.  Very beautifully
+hath He indeed garnished the excellent works of His wisdom."
+
+"Yea, John," answered Alice, in her soft womanly tone; "the Lord is,
+indeed, no respecter of persons.  He hath given the wild savages a more
+goodly show than any in Old England.  Yet, John, I am sometimes very
+sorrowful, when I think of our old home, of the little parlor where you
+and I used to sit of a Sunday evening.  The Lord hath been very
+bountiful to this land, and it may be said of us, as it was said of
+Israel of old, 'How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob! and thy tabernacles,
+O Israel!'  But the people sit in darkness, and the Gentiles know not
+the God of our fathers."
+
+"Nay," answered her husband, "the heathen may be visited and redeemed,
+the spirit of the Lord may turn unto the Gentiles; but a more sure evil
+hath arisen among us.  I tell thee, Alice, it shall be more tolerable in
+the day of the Lord, for the Tyre and Sidon, the Sodom and Gomorrah of
+the heathen, than for the schemers, the ranters, the Familists, and the
+Quakers, who, like Satan of old, are coming among the sons of God."
+
+"I thought," said Alice, "that our godly governor had banished these out
+of the colony."
+
+"Truly he hath," answered Mr. Ward, "but the evil seed they have sown
+here continues to spring up and multiply.  The Quakers have, indeed,
+nearly ceased to molest us; but another set of fanatics, headed by
+Samuel Gorton, have of late been very troublesome.  Their family has
+been broken up, and the ring-leaders have been sentenced to be kept at
+hard labor for the colony's benefit; one being allotted to each of the
+old towns, where they are forbidden to speak on matters of religion.
+But there are said to be many still at large, who, under the
+encouragement of the arch-heretic, Williams, of the Providence
+plantation, are even now zealously doing the evil work of their master.
+But, Alice," he continued, as he saw his few neighbors gathering around
+a venerable oak which had been spared in the centre of the clearing, "it
+is now near our time of worship.  Let us join our friends."
+
+And the minister and his wife entered into the little circle of their
+neighbors.  No house of worship, with spire and tower, and decorated
+pulpit, had as yet been reared on the banks of the Merrimac.  The stern
+settlers came together under the open heavens, or beneath the shadow of
+the old trees, to kneel before that God, whose works and manifestations
+were around them.
+
+The exercises of the Sabhath commenced.  A psalm of the old and homely
+version was sung, with true feeling, if not with a perfect regard to
+musical effect and harmony.  The brief but fervent prayer was offered,
+and the good man had just announced the text for his sermon, when a
+sudden tramp of feet, and a confused murmur of human voices, fell on the
+ears of the assembly.
+
+The minister closed his Bible; and the whole group crowded closer
+together.  "It is surely a war party of the heathen," said Mr. Ward, as
+he listened intently to the approaching sound.  "God grant they mean us
+no evil!"
+
+The sounds drew nearer.  The swarthy figure of an Indian came gliding
+through the brush-wood into the clearing, followed closely by several
+Englishmen.  In answer to the eager inquiries of Mr. Ward, Captain
+Eaton, the leader of the party, stated that he had left Boston at
+the command of Governor Winthrop, to secure and disarm the sachem,
+Passaconaway, who was suspected of hostile intentions towards the
+whites.  They had missed of the old chief, but had captured his son,
+and were taking him to the governor as a hostage for the good faith of
+his father.  He then proceeded to inform Mr. Ward, that letters had been
+received from the governor of the settlements of Good Hoop and Piquag,
+in Connecticut, giving timely warning of a most diabolical plot of the
+Indians to cut off their white neighbors, root and branch.  He pointed
+out to the notice of the minister a member of his party as one of the
+messengers who had brought this alarming intelligence.
+
+He was a tall, lean man, with straight, lank, sandy hair, cut evenly all
+around his narrow forehead, and hanging down so as to remind one of
+Smollett's apt similitude of "a pound of candles."
+
+"What news do you bring us of the savages?" inquired Mr. Ward.
+
+"The people have sinned, and the heathen are the instruments whereby the
+Lord hath willed to chastise them," said the messenger, with that
+peculiar nasal inflection of voice, so characteristic of the "unco'
+guid."  "The great sachem, Miantonimo, chief of the Narragansetts, hath
+plotted to cut off the Lord's people, just after the time of harvest, to
+slay utterly old and young, both maids and little children."
+
+"How have ye known this?" asked the minister.
+
+"Even as Paul knew of those who had bound themselves together with a
+grievous oath to destroy him.  The Lord hath done it.  One of the bloody
+heathens was dreadfully gored by the oxen of our people, and, being in
+great bodily pain and tribulation thereat, he sent for Governor Haines,
+and told him that the Englishman's god was angry with him for concealing
+the plot to kill his people, and had sent the Englishman's cow to kill
+him."
+
+"Truly a marvellous providence," said Mr. Ward; "but what has been done
+in your settlements in consequence of it?"
+
+"We have fasted many days," returned the other, in a tone of great
+solemnity, "and our godly men have besought the Lord that he might now,
+as of old, rebuke Satan.  They have, moreover, diligently and earnestly
+inquired, Whence cometh this evil?  Who is the Achan in the camp of our
+Israel?  It hath been greatly feared that the Quakers and the Papists
+have been sowing tares in the garden of the true worship.  We have
+therefore banished these on pain of death; and have made it highly penal
+for any man to furnish either food or lodging to any of these heretics
+and idolaters.  We have ordered a more strict observance of the Sabbath
+of the Lord, no, one being permitted to walk or run on that day, except
+to and from public worship, and then, only in a reverent and becoming
+manner; and no one is allowed to cook food, sweep the house, shave or
+pare the nails, or kiss a child, on the day which is to be kept holy.
+We have also framed many wholesome laws, against the vanity and
+licentiousness of the age, in respect to apparel and deportment, and
+have forbidden any young man to kiss a maid during the time of
+courtship, as, to their shame be it said, is the manner of many in the
+old lands."
+
+"Ye have, indeed, done well for the spiritual," said Mr. Ward; "what
+have you done for your temporal defence?"
+
+"We have our garrisons and our captains, and a goodly store of carnal
+weapons," answered the other.  "And, besides, we have the good chief
+Uncas, of the Mohegans, to help us against the bloody Narragansetts."
+
+"But, my friend," said the minister, addressing Captain Eaton, "there
+must be surely some mistake about Passaconaway.  I verily believe him to
+be the friend of the white men.  And this is his son Wonolanset?  I saw
+him last year, and remember that he was the pride of the old savage, his
+father.  I will speak to him, for I know something of his barbarous
+tongue."
+
+"Wonolanset!"
+
+The young savage started suddenly at the word, and rolled his keen
+bright eye upon the speaker.
+
+"Why is the son of the great chief bound by my brothers?"
+
+The Indian looked one instant upon the cords which confined his arms,
+and then glanced fiercely upon his conductors.
+
+"Has the great chief forgotten his white friends?  Will he send his
+young men to take their scalps when the Narragansett bids him?"
+
+The growl of the young bear when roused from his hiding-place is not
+more fierce and threatening than were the harsh tones of Wonolanset as
+he uttered through his clenched teeth:--
+
+"Nummus quantum."
+
+"Nay, nay," said Mr. Ward, turning away from the savage, "his heart is
+full of bitterness; he says he is angry, and, verily, I like not his
+bearing.  I fear me there is evil on foot.  But ye have travelled far,
+and must needs be weary rest yourselves awhile, and haply, while ye
+refresh your bodies, I may also refresh your spirits with wholesome and
+comfortable doctrines."
+
+The party having acquiesced in this proposal, their captive was secured
+by fastening one end of his rope to a projecting branch of the tree.
+The minister again named his text, but had only proceeded to the minuter
+divisions of his sermon, when he was again interrupted by a loud, clear
+whistle from the river, and a sudden exclamation of surprise from those
+around him.  A single glance sufficed to show him the Indian, disengaged
+from his rope, and in full retreat.
+
+Eaton raised his rifle to his eye, and called out to the young sachem,
+in his own language, to stop, or he would fire upon him.  The Indian
+evidently understood the full extent of his danger.  He turned suddenly
+about, and, pointing, up the river towards the dwelling of his father,
+pronounced with a threatening gesture:--
+
+"Nosh, Passaconaway!"
+
+"Hold!" exclaimed Mr. Ward, grasping the arm of Eaton.  "He threatens us
+with his father's vengeance.  For God's sake keep your fire!" It was too
+late.  The report of the rifle broke sharply upon the Sabbath stillness.
+It was answered by a shout from the river, and a small canoe, rowed by
+an Indian and a white man, was seen darting along the shore.  Wonolanset
+bounded on unharmed, and, plunging into the river, he soon reached the
+canoe, which was hastily paddled to the opposite bank.  Captain Eaton
+and his party finding it impossible to retake their prisoner, after
+listening to the sermon of Mr. Ward, and partaking of some bodily
+refreshment, took their leave of the settlers of Pentucket, and departed
+for Boston.
+
+The evening, which followed the day whose events we have narrated, was
+one of those peculiar seasons of beauty when the climate of New England
+seems preferable to that of Italy.  The sun went down in the soft haze
+of the horizon, while the full moon was rising at the same time in the
+east.  Its mellow silver mingled with the deep gold of the sunset.  The
+south-west wind, as warm as that of summer, but softer, was heard, at
+long intervals, faintly harping amidst the pines, and blending its low
+sighing with the lulling murmurs of the river.  The inhabitants of
+Pentucket had taken the precaution, as night came on, to load their
+muskets carefully, and place them in readiness for instant use, in the
+event of an attack from the savages.  Such an occurrence, was, indeed,
+not unlikely, after the rude treatment which the son of old Passaconaway
+had received at the settlement.  It was well known that the old chief
+was able, at a word, to send every warrior from Pennacook to Naumkeag
+upon the war-path of Miantonimo; the vengeful character of the Indians
+was also understood; and, in the event of an out-breaking of their
+resentment, the settlement of Pentucket was, of all others, the most
+exposed to danger.
+
+"Don't go to neighbor Clements's to-night, Mary," said Alice Ward to her
+young, unmarried sister; "I'm afraid some of the tawny Indians may be
+lurking hereabout.  Mr. Ward says he thinks they will be dangerous
+neighbors for us."
+
+Mary had thrown her shawl over her head, and was just stepping out.
+"It is but a step, as it were, and I promised good-wife Clements that I
+would certainly come.  I am not afraid of the Indians.  There's none of
+them about here except Red Sam, who wanted to buy me of Mr. Ward for his
+squaw; and I shall not be afraid of my old spark."
+
+The girl tripped lightly from the, threshold towards the dwelling of her
+neighbor.  She had passed nearly half the distance when the pathway,
+before open to the moonlight, began to wind along the margin of the
+river, overhung with young sycamores and hemlocks.  With a beating heart
+and a quickened step she was stealing through the shadow, when the
+boughs on the river-side were suddenly parted, and a tall man sprang
+into the path before her.  Shrinking back with terror, she uttered a
+faint scream.
+
+"Mary Edmands!" said the stranger, "do not fear me."
+
+A thousand thoughts wildly chased each other through the mind of the
+astonished girl.  That familiar voice--that knowledge of her name--that
+tall and well-remembered form!  She leaned eagerly forward, and looked
+into the stranger's face.  A straggling gleam of moonshine fell across
+its dark features of manly beauty.
+
+"Richard Martin! can it be possible!"
+
+"Yea, Mary," answered the other, "I have followed thee to the new world,
+in that love which neither sea nor land can abate.  For many weary
+months I have waited earnestly for such a meeting as this, and, in that
+time, I have been in many and grievous perils by the flood and the
+wilderness, and by the heathen Indians and more heathen persecutors
+among my own people.  But I may not tarry, nor delay to tell my errand.
+Mary, thou knowest my love; wilt thou be my wife?"
+
+Mary hesitated.
+
+"I ask thee again, if thou wilt share the fortunes of one who hath loved
+thee ever since thou wast but a child, playing under the cottage trees
+in old Haverhill, and who hath sacrificed his worldly estate, and
+perilled his soul's salvation for thy sake.  Mary, dear Mary, for of a
+truth thou art very dear to me; wilt thou go with me and be my wife?"
+
+The tones of Richard Martin, usually harsh and forbidding, now fell soft
+and musical on the ear of Mary.  He was her first love, her only one.
+What marvel that she consented?
+
+"Let us hasten to depart," said Martin, "this is no place for me.  We
+will go to the Providence plantations.  Passaconaway will assist us in
+our journey."
+
+The bright flush of hope and joy faded from the face of the young girl.
+She started back from the embrace of her lover.
+
+"What mean you, Richard?  What was 't you said about our going to that
+sink of wickedness at Providence?  Why don't you go back with me to
+sister Ward's?"
+
+"Mary Edmands!" said Martin, in a tone of solemn sternness, "it is
+fitting that I should tell thee all.  I have renounced the evil
+doctrines of thy brother-in-law, and his brethren in false prophecy.  It
+was a hard struggle, Mary; the spirit was indeed willing, but the flesh
+was weak, exceeding weak, for I thought of thee, Mary, and of thy
+friends.  But I had a measure of strength given me, whereby I have been
+enabled to do the work which was appointed me."
+
+"Oh, Richard!" said Mary, bursting into tears, "I'm afraid you have
+become a Williamsite, one of them, who, Mr. Ward says, have nothing to
+hope for in this world or in that to come."
+
+"The Lord rebuke him!" said Martin, with a loud voice.  "Woe to such as
+speak evil of the witnesses of the truth.  I have seen the utter
+nakedness of the land of carnal professors, and I have obeyed the call
+to come out from among them and be separate.  I belong to that
+persecuted family whom the proud priests and rulers of this colony have
+driven from their borders.  I was brought, with many others, before the
+wicked magistrates of Boston, and sentenced to labor, without hire, for
+the ungodly.  But I have escaped from my bonds; and the Lord has raised
+up a friend for his servant, even the Indian Passaconaway, whose son I
+assisted, but a little time ago, to escape from his captors."
+
+"Can it be?" sobbed Mary, "can it be?  Richard, our own Richard,
+following the tribe of Gorton, the Familist!  Oh, Richard, if you love
+me, if you love God's people and his true worship, do come away from
+those wicked fanatics."
+
+"Thou art in the very gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity,"
+answered Martin.  "Listen, Mary Edmands, to the creed of those whom thou
+callest fanatics.  We believe in Christ, but not in man-worship.  The
+Christ we reverence is the shadow or image of God in man; he was
+crucified in Adam of old, and hath been crucified in all men since; his
+birth, his passion, and his death, were but manifestations or figures of
+his sufferings in Adam and his descendants.  Faith and Christ are the
+same, the spiritual image of God in the heart.  We acknowledge no rule
+but this Christ, this faith within us, either in temporal or spiritual
+things.  And the Lord hath blessed us, and will bless us, and truth
+shall be magnified and exalted in us; and the children of the heathen
+shall be brought to know and partake of this great redemption whereof we
+testify.  But woe to the false teachers, and to them who prophesy for
+hire and make gain of their soothsaying.  Their churches are the devices
+of Satan, the pride and vanity of the natural Adam.  Their baptism is
+blasphemy; and their sacrament is an abomination, yea, an incantation
+and a spell.  Woe to them who take the shadow for the substance, that
+bow down to the altars of human device and cunning workmanship, that
+make idols of their ceremonies!  Woe to the high priests and the
+Pharisees, and the captains and the rulers; woe to them who love the
+wages of unrighteousness!"
+
+The Familist paused from utter exhaustion, so vehemently had he poured
+forth the abundance of his zeal.  Mary Edmands, overwhelmed by his
+eloquence, but still unconvinced, could only urge the disgrace and
+danger attending his adherence to such pernicious doctrines.  She
+concluded by telling him, in a voice choked by tears, that she could
+never marry him while a follower of Gorton.
+
+"Stay then," said Martin, fiercely dashing her hand from his, "stay and
+partake of the curse of the ungodly, even of the curse of Meroz, who
+come not up to the help of the Lord, against the mighty Stay, till the
+Lord hath made a threshing instrument of the heathen, whereby the pride
+of the rulers, and the chief priests, and the captains of this land
+shall be humbled.  Stay, till the vials of His wrath are poured out upon
+ye, and the blood of the strong man, and the maid, and the little child
+is mingled together!"
+
+The wild language, the fierce tones and gestures of her lover, terrified
+the unhappy girl.  She looked wildly around her, all was dark and
+shadowy, an undefined fear of violence came over her; and, bursting into
+tears, she turned to fly.  "Stay yet a moment," said Martin, in a hoarse
+and subdued voice.  He caught hold of her arm.  She shrieked as if in
+mortal jeopardy.
+
+"Let go the gal, let her go!"  said old Job Clements, thrusting the long
+barrel of his gun through the bushes within a few feet of the head of
+the Familist.  "A white man, as sure as I live!  I thought, sartin, 't
+was a tarnal In-in."  Martin relinquished his hold, and, the next
+instant, found himself surrounded by the settlers.
+
+After a brief explanation had taken place between Mr. Ward and his
+sister-in-law, the former came forward and accosted the Familist.
+"Richard Martin!" he said, "I little thought to see thee so soon in the
+new world, still less to see thee such as thou art.  I am exceeding
+sorry that I cannot greet thee here as a brother, either in a temporal
+or a spiritual nature.  My sister tells me that you are a follower of
+that servant of Satan, Samuel Gorton, and that you have sought to entice
+her away with you to the colony of fanatics at Rhode Island, which may
+be fitly compared to that city which Philip of Macedonia peopled with
+rogues and vagabonds, and the offscouring of the whole earth."
+
+"John Ward, I know thee," said the unshrinking Familist; "I know thee
+for a man wise above what is written, a man vain, uncharitable, and
+given to evil speaking.  I value neither thy taunts nor thy wit; for the
+one hath its rise in the bitterness, and the other in the vanity, of the
+natural Adam.  Those who walk in the true light, and who have given over
+crucifying Christ in their hearts, heed not a jot of the reproaches and
+despiteful doings of the high and mighty in iniquity.  For of us it hath
+been written: 'I have given them thy word and the world hath hated them
+because they are not of the world.  If the world hate you, ye know that
+it hated me before it hated you.  If they have hated me they will hate
+you also; if they have persecuted me they will persecute you.'  And, of
+the scoffers and the scorners, the wise ones of this world, whose wisdom
+and knowledge have perverted them, and who have said in their hearts,
+There is none beside them, it hath been written, yea, and will be
+fulfilled: The day of the Lord of Hosts shall be upon every one that is
+proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up, and he shall be
+brought low; and the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the
+haughtiness of man shall be brought low; and the Lord alone shall be
+exalted in that day; and the idols shall he utterly abolish.'  Of thee,
+John Ward, and of thy priestly brotherhood, I ask nothing; and for the
+much evil I have received, and may yet receive at your hands, may ye be
+rewarded like Alexander the coppersmith, every man according to his
+works."
+
+"Such damnable heresy," said Mr. Ward, addressing his neighbors, "must
+not be permitted to spread among the people.  My friends, we must send
+this man to the magistrates."
+
+The Familist placed his hands to his month, and gave a whistle, similar
+to that which was heard in the morning, and which preceded the escape of
+Wonolanset.  It was answered by a shout from the river; and a score of
+Indians came struggling up through the brush-wood.
+
+"Vile heretic!" exclaimed Mr. Ward, snatching a musket from the hands of
+his neighbor, and levelling it full at the head of Martin; "you have
+betrayed us into this jeopardy."
+
+"Wagh! down um gun," said a powerful Indian, as he laid his rough hand
+on the shoulder of the minister.  "You catch Wonolanset, tie um, shoot
+um, scare squaw.  Old sachem come now, me tie white man, shoot um, roast
+um;" and the old savage smiled grimly and fiercely in the indistinct
+moonlight, as he witnessed the alarm and terror of his prisoner.
+
+"Hold, Passaconaway!" said Martin, in the Indian tongue.  "Will the
+great chief forget his promise?"
+
+The sachem dropped his hold on Mr. Ward's arm.  "My brother is good," he
+said; "me no kill um, me make um walk woods like Wonolanset."  Martin
+spoke a few words in the chief's ear.  The countenance of the old
+warrior for an instant seemed to express dissatisfaction; but, yielding
+to the powerful influence which the Familist had acquired over him, he
+said, with some reluctance, "My brother is wise, me do so."
+
+"John Ward," said the Familist, approaching the minister, "thou hast
+devised evil against one who hath never injured thee.  But I seek not
+carnal revenge.  I have even now restrained the anger of this heathen
+chief whom thou and thine have wronged deeply.  Let us part in peace,
+for we may never more meet in this world."  And he extended his hand and
+shook that of the minister.
+
+"For thee, Mary," he said, "I had hoped to pluck thee from the evil
+which is to come, even as a brand from the burning.  I had hoped to lead
+thee to the manna of true righteousness, but thou last chosen the flesh-
+pots of Egypt.  I had hoped to cherish thee always, but thou hast
+forgotten me and my love, which brought me over the great waters for thy
+sake.  I will go among the Gentiles, and if it be the Lord's will,
+peradventure I may turn away their wrath from my people.  When my
+wearisome pilgrimage is ended, none shall know the grave of Richard
+Martin; and none but the heathen shall mourn for him.  Mary! I forgive
+thee; may the God of all mercies bless thee! I shall never see thee
+more."
+
+Hot and fast fell the tears of that stern man upon the hand of Mary.
+The eyes of the young woman glanced hurriedly over the faces of her
+neighbors, and fixed tearfully upon that of her lover.  A thousand
+recollections of young affection, of vows and meetings in another land,
+came vividly before her.  Her sister's home, her brother's instructions,
+her own strong faith, and her bitter hatred of her lover's heresy were
+all forgotten.
+
+"Richard, dear Richard, I am your Mary as much as ever I was.  I'll go
+with you to the ends of the earth.  Your God shall be my God, and where
+you are buried there will I be also."
+
+Silent in the ecstasy of joyful surprise, the Familist pressed her to
+his bosom.  Passaconaway, who had hitherto been an unmoved spectator of
+the scene, relaxed the Indian gravity of his features, and murmured, in
+an undertone, "Good, good."
+
+"Will my brother go?"  he inquired, touching Martin's shoulder; "my
+squaws have fine mat, big wigwam, soft samp, for his young woman."
+
+"Mary," said Martin, "the sachem is impatient; and we must needs go with
+him."  Mary did not answer, but her head was reclined upon his bosom,
+and the Familist knew that she resigned herself wholly to his direction.
+He folded the shawl more carefully around her, and supported her down
+the precipitous and ragged bank of the river, followed closely by
+Passaconaway and his companions.
+
+"Come back, Mary Edmands!" shouted Mr. Ward.  "In God's name come back."
+
+Half a dozen canoes shot out into the clear moonlight from the shadow of
+the shore.  "It is too late!" said the minister, as he struggled down to
+the water's edge.  "Satan hath laid his hands upon her; but I will
+contend for her, even as did Michael of old for the body of Moses.
+Mary, sister Mary, for the love of Christ, answer me."
+
+No sound came back from the canoes, which glided like phantoms,
+noiselessly and swiftly, through the still waters of the river.
+"The enemy hath prevailed," said Mr. Ward; "two women were grinding at
+my mill, the one is taken and the other is left.  Let us go home, my
+friends, and wrestle in prayer against the Tempter."
+
+The heretic and his orthodox bride departed into the thick wilderness,
+under the guidance of Passaconaway, and in a few days reached the
+Eldorado of the heretic and the persecuted, the colony of Roger
+Williams.  Passaconaway, ever after, remained friendly to the white men.
+As civilization advanced he retired before it, to Pennacook, now
+Concord, on the Merrimac, where the tribes of the Naumkeags,
+Piscataquas, Accomentas, and Agawams acknowledged his authority.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            THE OPIUM EATER.
+
+                                [1833.]
+
+     Heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving from its lowest depths
+     of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me!
+     Here was a panacea, a pharmakon nepenthes for all human woes; here
+     was the secret of happiness about which philosophers had disputed
+     for so many ages: happiness might be bought for a penny, and
+     carried in the waistcoat pocket.--DEQUINCEY's "Confessions of an
+     Opium Eater."
+
+
+HE was a tall, thin personage, with a marked brow and a sunken eye.
+
+He stepped towards a closet of his apartment, and poured out a few drops
+of a dark liquid.  His hand shook, as he raised the glass which
+contained them to his lips; and with a strange shuddering, a nervous
+tremor, as if all the delicate chords of his system were unloosed and
+trembling, he turned away from his fearful draught.
+
+He saw that my eye was upon him; and I could perceive that his mind
+struggled desperately with the infirmity of his nature, as if ashamed of
+the utter weakness of its tabernacle.  He passed hastily up and down the
+room.  "You seem somewhat ill," I said, in the undecided tone of partial
+interrogatory.
+
+He paused, and passed his long thin fingers over his forehead.  "I am
+indeed ill," he said, slowly, and with that quavering, deep-drawn
+breathing, which is so indicative of anguish, mental and physical.
+"I am weak as a child, weak alike in mind and body, even when I am under
+the immediate influence of yonder drug."  And he pointed, as he spoke,
+to a phial, labelled "Laudanum," upon a table in the corner of the room.
+
+"My dear sir," said I, "for God's sake abandon your desperate practice:
+I know not, indeed, the nature of your afflictions, but I feel assured
+that you have yet the power to be happy.  You have, at least, warm
+friends to sympathize with you.  But forego, if possible, your
+pernicious stimulant of laudanum.  It is hurrying you to your grave."
+
+"It may be so," he replied, while another shudder ran along his nerves;
+"but why should I fear it?  I, who have become worthless to myself and
+annoying to my friends; exquisitely sensible of my true condition, yet
+wanting the power to change it; cursed with a lively apprehension of all
+that I ought now to be, yet totally incapable of even making an effort
+to be so!  My dear sir, I feel deeply the kindness of your motives, but
+it is too late for me to hope to profit by your advice."
+
+I was shocked at his answer.  "But can it be possible," said I, "that
+the influence of such an excessive use of opium can produce any
+alleviation of mental suffering? any real relief to the harassed mind?
+Is it not rather an aggravation?"
+
+"I know not," he said, seating himself with considerable calmness,--"I
+know not.  If it has not removed the evil, it has at least changed its
+character.  It has diverted my mind from its original grief; and has
+broken up and rendered divergent the concentrated agony which oppressed
+me.  It has, in a measure, substituted imaginary afflictions for real
+ones.  I cannot but confess, however, that the relief which it has
+afforded has been produced by the counteraction of one pain by another;
+very much like that of the Russian criminal, who gnaws his own flesh
+while undergoing the punishment of the knout.'"
+
+"For Heaven's sake," said I, "try to dispossess your mind of such horrid
+images.  There are many, very many resources yet left you.  Try the
+effect of society; and let it call into exercise those fine talents
+which all admit are so well calculated to be its ornament and pride.
+At least, leave this hypochondriacal atmosphere, and look out more
+frequently upon nature.  Your opium, if it be an alleviator, is, by your
+own confession, a most melancholy one.  It exorcises one demon to give
+place to a dozen others.
+
+              'With other ministrations, thou, O Nature!
+               Healest thy wandering and distempered child.'"
+
+He smiled bitterly; it was a heartless, melancholy relaxation of
+features, a mere muscular movement, with which the eye had no sympathy;
+for its wild and dreamy expression, the preternatural lustre, without
+transparency, remained unaltered, as if rebuking, with its cold, strange
+glare, the mockery around it.  He sat before me like a statue, whose eye
+alone retained its stony and stolid rigidity, while the other features
+were moved by some secret machinery into "a ghastly smile."
+
+"I am not desirous, even were it practicable," he said, "to defend the
+use of opium, or rather the abuse of it.  I can only say, that the
+substitutes you propose are not suited to my condition.  The world has
+now no enticements for me; society no charms.  Love, fame, wealth,
+honor, may engross the attention of the multitude; to me they are all
+shadows; and why should I grasp at them?  In the solitude of my own
+thoughts, looking on but not mingling in them, I have taken the full
+gauge of their hollow vanities.  No, leave me to myself, or rather to
+that new existence which I have entered upon, to the strange world to
+which my daily opiate invites me.  In society I am alone, fearfully
+solitary; for my mind broods gloomily over its besetting sorrow, and I
+make myself doubly miserable by contrasting my own darkness with the
+light and joy of all about me; nay, you cannot imagine what a very hard
+thing it is, at such times, to overcome some savage feelings of
+misanthropy which will present themselves.  But when I am alone, and
+under the influence of opium, I lose for a season my chief source of
+misery, myself; my mind takes a new and unnatural channel; and I have
+often thought that any one, even that of insanity, would be preferable
+to its natural one.  It is drawn, as it were, out of itself; and I
+realize in my own experience the fable of Pythagoras, of two distinct
+existences, enjoyed by the same intellectual being.
+
+"My first use of opium was the consequence of an early and very bitter
+disappointment.  I dislike to think of it, much more to speak of it.  I
+recollect, on a former occasion, you expressed some curiosity concerning
+it.  I then repelled that curiosity, for my mind was not in a situation
+to gratify it.  But now, since I have been talking of myself, I think I
+can go on with my story with a very decent composure.  In complying with
+your request, I cannot say that my own experience warrants, in any
+degree, the old and commonly received idea that sorrow loses half its
+poignancy by its revelation to others.  It was a humorous opinion of
+Sterne, that a blessing which ties up the tongue, and a mishap which
+unlooses it, are to be considered equal; and, indeed, I have known some
+people happy under all the changes of fortune, when they could find
+patient auditors.  Tully wept over his dead daughter, but when he
+chanced to think of the excellent things he could say on the subject,
+he considered it, on the whole, a happy circumstance.  But, for my own
+part, I cannot say with the Mariner in Coleridge's ballad, that
+
+            "'At an uncertain hour My agony returns;
+
+               And, till my ghastly tale is told,
+               This heart within me burns.'"
+
+He paused a moment, and rested his head upon his hand.  "You have seen
+Mrs. H------, of -------?" he inquired, somewhat abruptly.  I replied in
+the affirmative.
+
+"Do you not think her a fine woman?"
+
+"Yes, certainly, a fine woman.  She was once, I am told, very
+beautiful."
+
+"Once? is she not so now?" he asked.  "Well, I have heard the same
+before.  I sometimes think I should like to see her now, now that the
+mildew of years and perhaps of accusing recollections are upon her; and
+see her toss her gray curls as she used to do her dark ones, and act
+over again her old stratagem of smiles upon a face of wrinkles.  Just
+Heavens! were I revengeful to the full extent of my wrongs, I could wish
+her no worse punishment.
+
+"They told you truly, my dear sir,--she was beautiful, nay, externally,
+faultless.  Her figure was that of womanhood, just touching upon the
+meridian of perfection, from which nothing could be taken, and to which
+nothing could be added.  There was a very witchery in her smile,
+trembling, as it did, over her fine Grecian features, like the play of
+moonlight upon a shifting and beautiful cloud.
+
+"Her voice was music, low, sweet, bewildering.  I have heard it a
+thousand times in my dreams.  It floated around me, like the tones of
+some rare instrument, unseen by the hearer; for, beautiful as she was,
+you could not think of her, or of her loveliness, while she was
+speaking; it was that sweetly wonderful voice, seemingly abstracted from
+herself, pouring forth the soft current of its exquisite cadence, which
+alone absorbed the attention.  Like that one of Coleridge's heroines,
+you could half feel, half fancy, that it had a separate being of its
+own, a spiritual presence manifested to but one of the senses; a living
+something, whose mode of existence was for the ear alone.--[See Memoirs
+of Maria Eleonora Schoning.]
+
+"But what shall I say of the mind?  What of the spirit, the resident
+divinity of so fair a temple?  Vanity, vanity, all was vanity;
+a miserable, personal vanity, too, unrelieved by one noble aspiration,
+one generous feeling; the whited sepulchre spoken of of old, beautiful
+without, but dark and unseemly within.
+
+"I look back with wonder and astonishment to that period of my life,
+when such a being claimed and received the entire devotion of my heart.
+Her idea blended with or predominated over all others.  It was the
+common centre in my mind from which all the radii of thought had their
+direction; the nucleus around which I had gathered all that my ardent
+imagination could conceive, or a memory stored with all the delicious
+dreams of poetry and romances could embody, of female excellence and
+purity and constancy.
+
+"It is idle to talk of the superior attractions of intellectual beauty,
+when compared with mere external loveliness.  The mind, invisible and
+complicated and indefinite, does not address itself directly to the
+senses.  It is comprehended only by its similitude in others.  It
+reveals itself, even then, but slowly and imperfectly.  But the beauty
+of form and color, the grace of motion, the harmony of tone, are seen
+and felt and appreciated at once.  The image of substantial and material
+loveliness once seen leaves an impression as distinct and perfect upon
+the retina of memory as upon that of the eyes.  It does not rise before
+us in detached and disconnected proportions, like that of spiritual
+loveliness, but in crowds, and in solitude, and in all the throngful
+varieties of thought and feeling and action, the symmetrical whole, the
+beautiful perfection comes up in the vision of memory, and stands, like
+a bright angel, between us and all other impressions of outward or
+immaterial beauty.
+
+"I saw her, and could not forget her; I sought her society, and was
+gratified with it.  It is true, I sometimes (in the first stages of my
+attachment) had my misgivings in relation to her character.  I sometimes
+feared that her ideas were too much limited to the perishing beauty of
+her person.  But to look upon her graceful figure yielding to the dance,
+or reclining in its indolent symmetry; to watch the beautiful play of
+coloring upon her cheek, and the moonlight transit of her smile; to
+study her faultless features in their delicate and even thoughtful
+repose, or when lighted up into conversational vivacity, was to forget
+everything, save the exceeding and bewildering fascination before me.
+Like the silver veil of Khorassan it shut out from my view the mental
+deformity beneath it.  I could not reason with myself about her; I had
+no power of ratiocination which could overcome the blinding dazzle of
+her beauty.  The master-passion, which had wrestled down all others,
+gave to every sentiment of the mind something of its own peculiar
+character.
+
+"I will not trouble you with a connected history of my first love, my
+boyish love, you may perhaps call it.  Suffice it to say, that on the
+revelation of that love, it was answered by its object warmly and
+sympathizingly.  I had hardly dared to hope for her favor; for I had
+magnified her into something far beyond mortal desert; and to hear from
+her own lips an avowal of affection seemed more like the condescension
+of a pitying angel than the sympathy of a creature of passion and
+frailty like myself.  I was miserably self-deceived; and self-deception
+is of a nature most repugnant to the healthy operation of truth.  We
+suspect others, but seldom ourselves.  The deception becomes a part of
+our self-love; we hold back the error even when Reason would pluck it
+away from us.
+
+"Our whole life may be considered as made up of earnest yearnings after
+objects whose value increases with the difficulties of obtaining them,
+and which seem greater and more desirable, from our imperfect knowledge
+of their nature, just as the objects of the outward vision are magnified
+and exalted when seen through a natural telescope of mist.  Imagination
+fills up and supplies the picture, of which we can only catch the
+outlines, with colors brighter, and forms more perfect, than those of
+reality.  Yet, you may perhaps wonder why, after my earnest desire had
+been gratified, after my love had found sympathy in its object, I did
+not analyze more closely the inherent and actual qualities of her heart
+and intellect.  But living, as I did, at a considerable distance from
+her, and seeing her only under circumstances calculated to confirm
+previous impressions, I had few advantages, even had I desired to do so,
+of studying her true character.  The world had not yet taught me its
+ungenerous lesson.  I had not yet learned to apply the rack of
+philosophical analysis to the objects around me, and test, by a cold
+process of reasoning, deduced from jealous observation, the reality of
+all which wore the outward semblance of innocence and beauty.  And it
+may be, too, that the belief, nay, the assurance, from her own lips, and
+from the thousand voiceless but eloquent signs which marked our
+interviews, that I was beloved, made me anxious to deceive even myself,
+by investing her with those gifts of the intellect and the heart,
+without which her very love would have degraded its object.  It is not
+in human nature, at least it was not in mine, to embitter the delicious
+aliment which is offered to our vanity, by admitting any uncomfortable
+doubts of the source from which it is derived.
+
+"And thus it was that I came on, careless and secure, dreaming over and
+over the same bright dream; without any doubt, without fear, and in the
+perfect confidence of an unlimited trust, until the mask fell off, all
+at once; without giving me time for preparation, without warning or
+interlude; and the features of cold, heartless, systematic treachery
+glared full upon me.
+
+"I saw her wedded to another.  It was a beautiful morning; and never had
+the sun shone down on a gayer assemblage than that which gathered
+together at the village church.  I witnessed the imposing ceremony which
+united the only one being I had ever truly loved to a happy and favored,
+because more wealthy, rival.  As the grayhaired man pronounced the
+inquiring challenge, 'If any man can show just cause why they may not
+lawfully be joined together, let him now speak or else forever after
+hold his peace,' I struggled forward, and would have cried out, but the
+words died away in my throat.  And the ceremony went on, and the death-
+like trance into which I had fallen was broken by the voice of the
+priest: 'I require and charge ye both, as ye will answer at the dreadful
+day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that
+if either of you know of any impediment why ye may not lawfully be
+joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well
+assured, that if any persons are joined together otherwise than as God's
+word doth allow, their marriage is not lawful.'  As the solemn tones of
+the old man died away in the church aisles, I almost expected to hear a
+supernatural voice calling upon him to forbear.  But there was no sound.
+For an instant my eyes met those of the bride; the blood boiled rapidly
+to her forehead, and then sank back, and she was as pale as if death had
+been in the glance I had given her.  And I could see the folds of her
+rich dress tremble, and her beautiful lips quiver; and she turned away
+her eyes, and the solemn rites were concluded.
+
+"I returned to my lodgings.  I heeded not the gay smiles and free
+merriment of those around me.  I hurried along like one who wanders
+abroad in a dark dream; for I could hardly think of the events of the
+morning as things of reality.  But, when I spurred my horse aside, as
+the carriage which contained the newly married swept by me, the terrible
+truth came upon me like a tangible substance, and one black and evil
+thought passed over my mind, like the whispered suggestion of Satan.  It
+was a feeling of blood, a sensation like that of grasping the strangling
+throat of an enemy.  I started from it with horror.  For the first time
+a thought of murder had risen up in my bosom; and I quenched it with the
+natural abhorrence of a nature prone to mildness and peace.
+
+"I reached my chamber, and, exhausted alike in mind and body, I threw
+myself upon my bed, but not to sleep.  A sense of my utter desolation
+and loneliness came over me, blended with a feeling of bitter and
+unmerited wrong.  I recollected the many manifestations of affection
+which I had received from her who had that day given herself, in the
+presence of Heaven, to another; and I called to mind the thousand
+sacrifices I had made to her lightest caprices, to every shade and
+variation of her temper; and then came the maddening consciousness of
+the black ingratitude which had requited such tenderness.  Then, too,
+came the thought, bitter to a pride like mine, that the cold world had a
+knowledge of my misfortunes; that I should be pointed out as a
+disappointed man, a subject for the pity of some, and the scorn and
+jestings of others.  Rage and shame mingled with the keen agony of
+outraged feeling.  'I will not endure it,' I said, mentally, springing
+from my bed and crossing the chamber with a flushed brow and a strong
+step; 'never!'  And I ground my teeth upon each other, while a fierce
+light seemed to break in upon my brain; it was the light of the
+Tempter's smile, and I almost laughed aloud as the horrible thought of
+suicide started before me.  I felt that I might escape the ordeal of
+public scorn and pity; that I might bid the world and its falsehood
+defiance, and end, by one manly effort, the agony of an existence whose
+every breath was torment.
+
+"My resolution was fixed.  'I will never see another morrow!' I said,
+sternly, but with a calmness which almost astonished me.  Indeed, I
+seemed gifted with a supernatural firmness, as I made my arrangements
+for the last day of suffering which I was to endure.  A few friends had
+been invited to dine with me, and I prepared to meet them.  They came at
+the hour appointed with smiling faces and warm and friendly greetings;
+and I received them as if nothing had happened, with even a more
+enthusiastic welcome than was my wont.
+
+"Oh! it is terrible to smile when the heart is breaking! to talk
+lightly and freely and mirthfully, when every feeling of the mind is
+wrung with unutterable agony; to mingle in the laugh and in the gay
+volleys of convivial fellowship,
+
+              'With the difficult utterance of one
+               Whose heart is with an iron nerve put down.'
+
+"Yet all this I endured, hour after hour, until my friends departed and I
+had pressed their hands as at a common parting, while my heart whispered
+an everlasting farewell!
+
+"It was late when they left me.  I walked out to look for the last time
+upon Nature in her exceeding beauty.  I hardly acknowledged to myself
+that such was my purpose; but yet I did feel that it was so; and that I
+was taking an everlasting farewell of the beautiful things around me.
+The sun was just setting; and the hills, that rose like pillars of the
+blue horizon, were glowing with a light which was fast deserting the
+valleys.  It was an evening of summer; everything was still; not a leaf
+stirred in the dark, overshadowing foliage; but, silent and beautiful as
+a picture, the wide scenery of rock and hill and woodland, stretched
+away before me; and, beautiful as it was, it seemed to possess a newness
+and depth of beauty beyond its ordinary appearance, as if to aggravate
+the pangs of the last, long farewell.
+
+"They do not err who believe that man has a sympathy with even inanimate
+Nature, deduced from a common origin; a chain of co-existence and
+affinity connecting the outward forms of natural objects with his own
+fearful and wonderful machinery; something, in short, manifested in his
+love of flowing waters, and soft green shadows, and pleasant blowing
+flowers, and in his admiration of the mountain, stretching away into
+heaven, sublimed and awful in its cloudy distance; the heave and swell
+of the infinite ocean; the thunder of the leaping cataract; and the
+onward rush of mighty rivers, which tells of its original source, and
+bears evidence of its kindred affinities.  Nor was the dream of the
+ancient Chaldean 'all a dream.'  The stars of heaven, the beauty and the
+glory above us, have their influences and their power, not evil and
+malignant and partial and irrevocable, but holy and tranquillizing and
+benignant, a moral influence, by which all may profit if they will do
+so.  And I have often marvelled at the hard depravity of that human
+heart which could sanction a deed of violence and crime in the calm
+solitudes of Nature, and surrounded by the enduring evidences of an
+overruling Intelligence.  I could conceive of crime, growing up rank and
+monstrous in the unwholesome atmosphere of the thronged city, amidst the
+taint of moral as well as physical pestilence, and surrounded only by
+man and the works of man.  But there is something in the harmony and
+quiet of the natural world which presents a reproving antagonism to the
+fiercer passions of the human heart; an eye of solemn reprehension looks
+out from the still places of Nature, as if the Great Soul of the
+Universe had chosen the mute creations of his power to be the witnesses
+of the deeds done in the body, the researchers of the bosoms of men.
+
+"And then, even at that awful moment, I could feel the bland and gentle
+ministrations of Nature; I could feel the fever of my heart cooling, and
+a softer haze of melancholy stealing over the blackness of my despair;
+and the fierce passions which had distracted me giving place to the calm
+of a settled anguish, a profound sorrow, the quiet gloom of an
+overshadowing woe, in which love and hatred and wrong were swallowed up
+and lost.  I no longer hated the world; but I felt that it had nothing
+for me; that I was no longer a part and portion of its harmonious
+elements; affliction had shut me out forever from the pale of human
+happiness and sympathy, and hope pointed only to the resting-place of
+the grave!
+
+"I stood steadily gazing at the setting sun.  It touched and sat upon
+the hill-top like a great circle of fire.  I had never before fully
+comprehended the feeling of the amiable but misguided Rousseau, who at
+his death-hour desired to be brought into the open air, that the last
+glance of his failing eye might drink in the glory of the sunset
+heavens, and the light of his great intellect and that of Nature go out
+together.  For surely never did the Mexican idolater mark with deeper
+emotion the God of his worship, for the last time veiling his awful
+countenance, than did I, untainted by superstition, yet full of perfect
+love for the works of Infinite Wisdom, watch over the departure of the
+most glorious of them all.  I felt, even to agony, the truth of these
+exquisite lines of the Milesian poet:
+
+                   'Blest power of sunshine, genial day!
+                    What joy, what life is in thy ray!
+                    To feel thee is such real bliss,
+                    That, had the world no joy but this,
+                    To sit in sunshine, calm and sweet,
+                    It were a world too exquisite
+                    For man to leave it for the gloom,
+                    The dull, cold shadow of the tomb!'
+
+"Never shall I forget my sensations when the sun went down utterly from
+my sight.  It was like receiving the last look of a dying friend.  To
+others he might bring life and health and joy, on the morrow; but tome
+he would never rise.  As this thought came over me, I felt a stifling
+sensation in my throat, tears started in my eyes, and my heart almost
+wavered from its purpose.  But the bent bow had only relaxed for a
+single instant; it returned again to its strong and abiding tension.
+
+"I was alone in my chamber once more.  A single lamp burned gloomily
+before me; and on the table at my side stood a glass of laudanum.  I had
+prepared everything.  I had written my last letter, and had now only to
+drink the fatal draught, and lie down to my last sleep.  I heard the old
+village clock strike eleven.  'I may as well do it now as ever,' I said
+mentally, and my hand moved towards the glass.  But my courage failed
+me; my hand shook, and some moments elapsed before I could sufficiently
+quiet my nerves to lift the glass containing the fatal liquid.  The
+blood ran cold upon my heart, and my brain reeled, as again and again
+I lifted the poison to my closed lips.  'It must be done,' thought I,
+'I must drink it.'  With a desperate effort I unlocked my clenched teeth
+and the deed was done!
+
+"'O God, have mercy upon me!' I murmured, as the empty glass fell from
+my hand.  I threw myself upon the bed, and awaited the awful
+termination.  An age of unutterable misery seemed crowded into a brief
+moment.  All the events of my past life, a life, as it then seemed to
+me, made up of folly and crime, rose distinct before me, like accusing
+witnesses, as if the recording angel had unrolled to my view the full
+and black catalogue of my unnumbered sins:--
+
+              'O'er the soul Winters of memory seemed to roll,
+               And gather, in that drop of time,
+               A life of pain, an age of crime.'
+
+"I felt that what I had done was beyond recall; and the Phantom of Death,
+as it drew nearer, wore an aspect darker and more terrible.  I thought
+of the coffin, the shroud, and the still and narrow grave, into whose
+dumb and frozen solitude none but the gnawing worm intrudes.  And then
+my thoughts wandered away into the vagueness and mystery of eternity, I
+was rushing uncalled for into the presence of a just and pure God, with
+a spirit unrepenting, unannealed!  And I tried to pray and could not;
+for a heaviness, a dull strange torpor crept over me.  Consciousness
+went out slowly.  'This is death,' thought I; yet I felt no pain,
+nothing save a weary drowsiness, against which I struggled in vain.
+
+"My next sensations were those of calmness, deep, ineffable, an
+unearthly quiet; a suspension or rather oblivion of every mental
+affliction; a condition of the mind betwixt the thoughts of wakefulness
+and the dreams of sleep.  It seemed to me that the gulf between mind and
+matter had been passed over, and that I had entered upon a new
+existence.  I had no memory, no hope, no sorrow; nothing but a dim
+consciousness of a pleasurable and tranquil being.  Gradually, however,
+the delusion vanished.  I was sensible of still wearing the fetters of
+the flesh, yet they galled no longer; the burden was lifted from my
+heart, it beat happily and calmly, as in childhood.  As the stronger
+influences of my opiate (for I had really swallowed nothing more, as the
+druggist, suspecting from the incoherence of my language, that I was
+meditating some fearful purpose, furnished me with a harmless, though
+not ineffective draught) passed off, the events of the past came back to
+me.  It was like the slow lifting of a curtain from a picture of which I
+was a mere spectator, about which I could reason calmly, and trace
+dispassionately its light and shadow.  Having satisfied myself that I
+had been deceived in the quantity of opium I had taken, I became also
+convinced that I had at last discovered the great antidote for which
+philosophy had exhausted its resources, the fabled Lethe, the oblivion
+of human sorrow.  The strong necessity of suicide had passed away; life,
+even for me, might be rendered tolerable by the sovereign panacea of
+opium, the only true minister to a mind diseased, the sought 'kalon'
+found.
+
+"From that day I have been habitually an opium eater.  I am perfectly
+sensible that the constant use of the pernicious drug has impaired my
+health; but I cannot relinquish it.  Some time since I formed a
+resolution to abandon it, totally and at once; but had not strength
+enough to carry it into practice.  The very attempt to do so nearly
+drove me to madness.  The great load of mental agony which had been
+lifted up and held aloof by the daily applied power of opium sank back
+upon my heart like a crushing weight.  Then, too, my physical sufferings
+were extreme; an indescribable irritation, a general uneasiness
+tormented me incessantly.  I can only think of it as a total
+disarrangement of the whole nervous system, the jarring of all the
+thousand chords of sensitiveness, each nerve having its own particular
+pain.--[ Essay on the Effects of Opium, London, 1763.]
+
+"De Quincey, in his wild, metaphysical, and eloquent, yet, in many
+respects, fancy sketch, considers the great evil resulting from the use
+of opium to be the effect produced upon the mind during the hours of
+sleep, the fearful inquietude of unnatural dreams.  My own dreams have
+been certainly of a different order from those which haunted me previous
+to my experience in opium eating.  But I cannot easily believe that
+opium necessarily introduces a greater change in the mind's sleeping
+operations, than in those of its wakefulness.
+
+"At one period, indeed, while suffering under a general, nervous
+debility, from which I am even now but partially relieved, my troubled
+and broken sleep was overshadowed by what I can only express as
+'a horror of thick darkness.'  There was nothing distinct or certain in
+my visions, all was clouded, vague, hideous; sounds faint and awful, yet
+unknown; the sweep of heavy wings, the hollow sound of innumerable
+footsteps, the glimpse of countless apparitions, and darkness falling
+like a great cloud from heaven.
+
+"I can scarcely give you an adequate idea of my situation in these
+dreams, without comparing it with that of the ancient Egyptians while
+suffering under the plague of darkness.  I never read the awful
+description of this curse, without associating many of its horrors with
+those of my own experience.
+
+"'But they, sleeping the same sleep that night, which was indeed
+intolerable, and which came upon them out of the bottoms of inevitable
+hell,
+
+"'Were partly vexed with monstrous apparitions, and partly fainted; for
+a sudden fear and not looked for, came upon them.'
+
+"'For neither might the corner which held them keep them from fear; but
+noises, as of waters falling down, sounded about them, and sad visions
+appeared unto them, with heavy countenances.
+
+"'Whether it were a whistling wind, or a melodious voice of birds among
+the spreading branches, or a pleasing fall of water running violently;
+
+"'Or, a terrible sound of stones cast down, or, a running that could not
+be seen, of skipping beasts, or a roaring voice of most savage wild
+beasts, or a rebounding echo from the hollow mountains: these things
+made them to swoon for fear.'--[Wisdom of Solomon, chapter xvii.]
+
+"That creative faculty of the eye, upon which Mr. De Quincey dwells so
+strongly, I have myself experienced.  Indeed, it has been the principal
+cause of suffering which has connected itself with my habit of opium
+eating.  It developed itself at first in a recurrence of the childish
+faculty of painting upon the darkness whatever suggested itself to the
+mind; anon, those figures which had before been called up only at will
+became the cause, instead of the effect, of the mind's employment; in
+other words, they came before me in the night-time, like real images,
+and independent of any previous volition of thought.  I have often,
+after retiring to my bed, seen, looking through the thick wall of
+darkness round about me, the faces of those whom I had not known for
+years, nay, since childhood; faces, too, of the dead, called up, as it
+were, from the church-yard and the wilderness and the deep waters, and
+betraying nothing of the grave's terrible secrets.  And in the same way,
+some of the more important personages I had read of, in history and
+romance, glided often before me, like an assembly of apparitions, each
+preserving, amidst the multitudinous combinations of my visions, his own
+individuality and peculiar characteristics.--[Vide Emanuel Count
+Swedenborg, Nicolai of Berlin's Account of Spectral Illusion, Edinburgh
+Phrenological Journal.]
+
+"These images were, as you may suppose, sufficiently annoying, yet they
+came and went without exciting any emotions of terror.  But a change at
+length came over them, an awful distinctness and a semblance of reality,
+which, operating upon nerves weakened and diseased, shook the very
+depths of my spirit with a superstitious awe, and against which reason
+and philosophy, for a time, struggled in vain.
+
+"My mind had for some days been dwelling with considerable solicitude
+upon an intimate friend, residing in a distant city.  I had heard that
+he was extremely ill, indeed, that his life was despaired of; and I may
+mention that at this period all my mind's operations were dilatory;
+there were no sudden emotions; passion seemed exhausted; and when once
+any new train of thought had been suggested, it gradually incorporated
+itself with those which had preceded it, until it finally became sole
+and predominant, just as certain plants of the tropical islands wind
+about and blend with and finally take the place of those of another
+species.  And perhaps to this peculiarity of the mental economy, the
+gradual concentring of the mind in a channel, narrowing to that point of
+condensation where thought becomes sensible to sight as well as feeling,
+may be mainly attributed the vision I am about to describe.
+
+"I was lying in my bed, listless and inert; it was broad day, for the
+easterly light fell in strongly through the parted curtains.  I felt,
+all at once, a strong curiosity, blended with an unaccountable dread, to
+look upon a small table which stood near the bedside.  I felt certain of
+seeing something fearful, and yet I knew not what; there was an awe and
+a fascination upon me, more dreadful from their very vagueness.  I lay
+for some time hesitating and actually trembling, until the agony of
+suspense became too strong for endurance.  I opened my eyes and fixed
+them upon the dreaded object.  Upon the table lay what seemed to me a
+corpse, wrapped about in the wintry habiliments of the grave, the corpse
+of my friend.
+
+     [William Hone, celebrated for his antiquarian researches, has given
+     a distinct and highly interesting account of spectral illusion, in
+     his own experience, in his Every Day Book.  The artist Cellini has
+     made a similar statement.]
+
+"For a moment, the circumstances of time and place were forgotten; and
+the spectre seemed to me a natural reality, at which I might sorrow, but
+not wonder.  The utter fallacy of this idea was speedily detected; and
+then I endeavored to consider the present vision, like those which had
+preceded it, a mere delusion, a part of the phenomena of opium eating.
+I accordingly closed my eyes for an instant, and then looked again in
+full expectation that the frightful object would no longer be visible.
+It was still there; the body lay upon its side; the countenance turned
+full towards me,--calm, quiet, even beautiful, but certainly that of
+death:
+
+              'Ere yet Decay's effacing fingers
+               Had swept the lines where Beauty lingers'
+
+and the white brow, and its light shadowy hair, and the cold, still
+familiar features lay evident and manifest to the influx of the
+strengthening twilight.  A cold agony crept over me; I buried my head in
+the bed-clothes, in a child-like fear, and when I again ventured to look
+up, the spectre had vanished.  The event made a strong impression on my
+mind; and I can scarcely express the feeling of relief which was
+afforded, a few days after, by a letter from the identical friend in
+question, informing me of his recovery of health.
+
+"It would be a weary task, and one which you would no doubt thank me for
+declining, to detail the circumstances of a hundred similar visitations,
+most of which were, in fact, but different combinations of the same
+illusion.  One striking exception I will mention, as it relates to some
+passages of my early history which you have already heard.
+
+"I have never seen Mrs. H since her marriage.  Time, and the continued
+action of opium, deadening the old sensibilities of the heart and
+awakening new ones, have effected a wonderful change in my feelings
+towards her.  Little as the confession may argue in favor of my early
+passion, I seldom think of her, save with a feeling very closely allied
+to indifference.  Yet I have often seen her in my spectral illusions,
+young and beautiful as ever, but always under circumstances which formed
+a wide contrast between her spectral appearance and all my recollections
+of the real person.  The spectral face, which I often saw looking in
+upon me, in my study, when the door was ajar, and visible only in the
+uncertain lamplight, or peering over me in the moonlight solitude of my
+bed-chamber, when I was just waking from sleep, was uniformly subject
+to, and expressive of, some terrible hate, or yet more terrible anguish.
+Its first appearance was startling in the extreme.  It was the face of
+one of the fabled furies: the demon glared in the eye, the nostril was
+dilated, the pale lip compressed, and the brow bent and darkened; yet
+above all, and mingled with all, the supremacy of human beauty was
+manifest, as if the dream of Eastern superstition had been realized, and
+a fierce and foul spirit had sought out and animated into a fiendish
+existence some beautiful sleeper of the grave.  The other expression of
+the countenance of the apparition, that of agony, I accounted for on
+rational principles.  Some years ago I saw, and was deeply affected by,
+a series of paintings representing the tortures of a Jew in the Holy
+Inquisition; and the expression of pain in the countenance of the victim
+I at once recognized in that of the apparition, rendered yet more
+distressing by the feminine and beautiful features upon which it rested.
+
+"I am not naturally superstitious; but, shaken and clouded as my mind
+had been by the use of opium, I could not wholly divest it of fear when
+these phantoms beset me.  Yet, on all other occasions, save that of
+their immediate presence, I found no difficulty in assigning their
+existence to a diseased state of the bodily organs, and a corresponding
+sympathy of the mind, rendering it capable of receiving and reflecting
+the false, fantastic, and unnatural images presented to it.
+
+     [One of our most celebrated medical writers considers spectral
+     illusion a disease, in which false perceptions take place in some
+     of the senses; thus, when the excitement of motion is produced in a
+     particular organ, that organ does not vibrate with the impression
+     made upon it, but communicates it to another part on which a
+     similar impression was formerly made.  Nicolai states that he made
+     his illusion a source of philosophical amusement.  The spectres
+     which haunted him came in the day time as well as the night, and
+     frequently when he was surrounded by his friends; the ideal images
+     mingling with the real ones, and visible only to himself.  Bernard
+     Barton, the celebrated Quaker poet, describes an illusion of this
+     nature in a manner peculiarly striking:--
+
+               "I only knew thee as thou wert,
+               A being not of earth!
+               "I marvelled much they could not see
+               Thou comest from above
+               And often to myself I said,
+               'How can they thus approach the dead?'
+
+               "But though all these, with fondness warm,
+               Said welcome o'er and o'er,
+               Still that expressive shade or form
+               Was silent, as before!
+               And yet its stillness never brought
+               To them one hesitating thought."]
+
+"I recollected that the mode of exorcism which was successfully adopted
+by Nicolai of Berlin, when haunted by similar fantasies, was a resort to
+the simple process of blood-letting.  I accordingly made trial of it,
+but without the desired effect.  Fearful, from the representations of my
+physicians, and from some of my own sensations, that the almost daily
+recurrence of my visions might ultimately lead to insanity, I came to
+the resolution of reducing my daily allowance of opium; and, confining
+myself, with the most rigid pertinacity, to a quantity not exceeding one
+third of what I had formerly taken, I became speedily sensible of a most
+essential change in my condition.  A state of comparative health, mental
+and physical with calmer sleep and a more natural exercise of the organs
+of vision, succeeded.  I have made many attempts at a further reduction,
+but have been uniformly unsuccessful, owing to the extreme and almost
+unendurable agony occasioned thereby.
+
+"The peculiar creative faculty of the eye, the fearful gift of a
+diseased vision, still remains, but materially weakened and divested of
+its former terrors.  My mind has recovered in some degree its shaken and
+suspended faculties.  But happiness, the buoyant and elastic happiness
+of earlier days, has departed forever.  Although, apparently, a
+practical disciple of Behmen, I am no believer in his visionary creed.
+Quiet is not happiness; nor can the absence of all strong and painful
+emotion compensate for the weary heaviness of inert existence,
+passionless, dreamless, changeless.  The mind requires the excitement of
+active and changeful thought; the intellectual fountain, like the pool
+of Bethesda, has a more healthful influence when its deep waters are
+troubled.  There may, indeed, be happiness in those occasional 'sabbaths
+of the soul,' when calmness, like a canopy, overshadows it, and the
+mind, for a brief season, eddies quietly round and round, instead of
+sweeping onward; but none can exist in the long and weary stagnation of
+feeling, the silent, the monotonous, neverending calm, broken by neither
+hope nor fear."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            THE PROSELYTES.
+
+                                 [1833]
+
+THE student sat at his books.  All the day he had been poring over an
+old and time-worn volume; and the evening found him still absorbed in
+its contents.  It was one of that interminable series of controversial
+volumes, containing the theological speculations of the ancient fathers
+of the Church.  With the patient perseverance so characteristic of his
+countrymen, he was endeavoring to detect truth amidst the numberless
+inconsistencies of heated controversy; to reconcile jarring
+propositions; to search out the thread of scholastic argument amidst
+the rant of prejudice and the sallies of passion, and the coarse
+vituperations of a spirit of personal bitterness, but little in
+accordance with the awful gravity of the question at issue.
+
+Wearied and baffled in his researches, he at length closed the volume,
+and rested his care-worn forehead upon his hand.  "What avail," he said,
+"these long and painful endeavors, these midnight vigils, these weary
+studies, before which heart and flesh are failing?  What have I gained?
+I have pushed my researches wide and far; my life has been one long and
+weary lesson; I have shut out from me the busy and beautiful world; I
+have chastened every youthful impulse; and at an age when the heart
+should be lightest and the pulse the freest, I am grave and silent and
+sorrowful,' and the frost of a premature age is gathering around my
+heart.  Amidst these ponderous tomes, surrounded by the venerable
+receptacles of old wisdom, breathing, instead of the free air of heaven,
+the sepulchral dust of antiquity, I have become assimilated to the
+objects around me; my very nature has undergone a metamorphosis of which
+Pythagoras never dreamed.  I am no longer a reasoning creature, looking
+at everything within the circle of human investigation with a clear and
+self-sustained vision, but the cheated follower of metaphysical
+absurdities, a mere echo of scholastic subtilty.  God knows that my aim
+has been a lofty and pure one, that I have buried myself in this living
+tomb, and counted the health of this His feeble and outward image as
+nothing in comparison with that of the immortal and inward
+representation and shadow of His own Infinite Mind; that I have toiled
+through what the world calls wisdom, the lore of the old fathers and
+time-honored philosophy, not for the dream of power and gratified
+ambition, not for the alchemist's gold or life-giving elixir, but with
+an eye single to that which I conceived to be the most fitting object of
+a godlike spirit, the discovery of Truth,--truth perfect and unclouded,
+truth in its severe and perfect beauty, truth as it sits in awe and
+holiness in the presence of its Original and Source!
+
+"Was my aim too lofty?  It cannot be; for my Creator has given me a
+spirit which would spurn a meaner one.  I have studied to act in
+accordance with His will; yet have I felt all along like one walking in
+blindness.  I have listened to the living champions of the Church; I
+have pored over the remains of the dead; but doubt and heavy darkness
+still rest upon my pathway.  I find contradiction where I had looked for
+harmony; ambiguity where I had expected clearness; zeal taking the place
+of reason; anger, intolerance, personal feuds and sectarian bitterness,
+interminable discussions and weary controversies; while infinite Truth,
+for which I have been seeking, lies still beyond, or seen, if at all,
+only by transient and unsatisfying glimpses, obscured and darkened by
+miserable subtilties and cabalistic mysteries."
+
+He was interrupted by the entrance of a servant with a letter.  The
+student broke its well-known seal, and read, in a delicate chirography,
+the following words:--
+
+"DEAR ERNEST,--A stranger from the English Kingdom, of gentle birth and
+education, hath visited me at the request of the good Princess Elizabeth
+of the Palatine.  He is a preacher of the new faith, a zealous and
+earnest believer in the gifts of the Spirit, but not like John de
+Labadie or the lady Schurmans.
+
+     [J. de Labadie, Anna Maria Schurmans, and others, dissenters from
+     the French Protestants, established themselves in Holland, 1670.]
+
+"He speaks like one sent on a message from heaven, a message of wisdom
+and salvation.  Come, Ernest, and see him; for he hath but a brief hour
+to tarry with us.  Who knoweth but that this stranger may be
+commissioned to lead us to that which we have so long and anxiously
+sought for,--the truth as it is in God.
+                                            "LEONORA."
+
+"Now may Heaven bless the sweet enthusiast for this interruption of my
+bitter reflections!" said the student, in the earnest tenderness of
+impassioned feeling.  "She knows how gladly I shall obey her summons;
+she knows how readily I shall forsake the dogmas of our wisest
+schoolmen, to obey the slightest wishes of a heart pure and generous as
+hers."
+
+He passed hastily through one of the principal streets of the city to
+the dwelling of the lady, Eleonora.
+
+In a large and gorgeous apartment sat the Englishman, his plain and
+simple garb contrasting strongly with the richness and luxury around
+him.  He was apparently quite young, and of a tall and commanding
+figure.  His countenance was calm and benevolent; it bore no traces of
+passion; care had not marked it; there was a holy serenity in its
+expression, which seemed a token of that inward "peace which passeth all
+understanding."
+
+"And this is thy friend, Eleonora?" said the stranger, as he offered his
+hand to Ernest.  "I hear," he said, addressing the latter, "thou hast
+been a hard student and a lover of philosophy."
+
+"I am but a humble inquirer after Truth," replied Ernest.
+
+"From whence hast thou sought it?"
+
+"From the sacred volume, from the lore of the old fathers, from the
+fountains of philosophy, and from my own brief experience of human
+life."
+
+"And hast thou attained thy object?"
+
+"Alas, no!" replied the student; "I have thus far toiled in vain."
+
+"Ah! thus must the children of this world ever toil, wearily, wearily,
+but in vain.  We grasp at shadows, we grapple with the fashionless air,
+we walk in the blindness of our own vain imaginations, we compass heaven
+and earth for our objects, and marvel that we find them not.  The truth
+which is of God, the crown of wisdom, the pearl of exceeding price,
+demands not this vain-glorious research; easily to be entreated, it
+lieth within the reach of all.  The eye of the humblest spirit may
+discern it.  For He who respecteth not the persons of His children hath
+not set it afar off, unapproachable save to the proud and lofty; but
+hath made its refreshing fountains to murmur, as it were, at the very
+door of our hearts.  But in the encumbering hurry of the world we
+perceive it not; in the noise of our daily vanities we hear not the
+waters of Siloah which go softly.  We look widely abroad; we lose
+ourselves in vain speculation; we wander in the crooked paths of those
+who have gone before us; yea, in the language of one of the old fathers,
+we ask the earth and it replieth not, we question the sea and its
+inhabitants, we turn to the sun, and the moon, and the stars of heaven,
+and they may not satisfy us; we ask our eyes, and they cannot see, and
+our ears, and they cannot hear; we turn to books, and they delude us; we
+seek philosophy, and no response cometh from its dead and silent
+learning.
+
+     [August.  Soliloq.  Cap.  XXXI.  "Interrogavi Terram," etc.]
+
+"It is not in the sky above, nor in the air around, nor in the earth
+beneath; it is in our own spirits, it lives within us; and if we would
+find it, like the lost silver of the woman of the parable, we must look
+at home, to the inward temple, which the inward eye discovereth, and
+wherein the spirit of all truth is manifested.  The voice of that spirit
+is still and small, and the light about it shineth in darkness.  But
+truth is there; and if we seek it in low humility, in a patient waiting
+upon its author, with a giving up of our natural pride of knowledge, a
+seducing of self, a quiet from all outward endeavor, it will assuredly
+be revealed and fully made known.  For as the angel rose of old from the
+altar of Manoah even so shall truth arise from the humbling sacrifice of
+self-knowledge and human vanity, in all its eternal and ineffable
+beauty.
+
+"Seekest thou, like Pilate, after truth?  Look thou within.  The holy
+principle is there; that in whose light the pure hearts of all time have
+rejoiced.  It is 'the great light of ages' of which Pythagoras speaks,
+the 'good spirit' of Socrates; the 'divine mind' of Anaxagoras; the
+'perfect principle' of Plato; the 'infallible and immortal law, and
+divine power of reason' of Philo.  It is the 'unbegotten principle and
+source of all light,' whereof Timmus testifieth; the 'interior guide of
+the soul and everlasting foundation of virtue,' spoken of by Plutarch.
+Yea, it was the hope and guide of those virtuous Gentiles, who, doing by
+nature the things contained in the law, became a law unto themselves.
+
+"Look to thyself.  Turn thine eye inward.  Heed not the opinion of the
+world.  Lean not upon the broken reed of thy philosophy, thy verbal
+orthodoxy, thy skill in tongues, thy knowledge of the Fathers.  Remember
+that truth was seen by the humble fishermen of Galilee, and overlooked
+by the High Priest of the Temple, by the Rabbi and the Pharisee.  Thou
+canst not hope to reach it by the metaphysics of Fathers, Councils,
+Schoolmen, and Universities.  It lies not in the high places of human
+learning; it is in the silent sanctuary of thy own heart; for He, who
+gave thee an immortal soul, hath filled it with a portion of that truth
+which is the image of His own unapproachable light.  The voice of that
+truth is within thee; heed thou its whisper.  A light is kindled in thy
+soul, which, if thou carefully heedest it, shall shine more and more
+even unto the perfect day."
+
+The stranger paused, and the student melted into tears.  "Stranger!" he
+said, "thou hast taken a weary weight from my heart, and a heavy veil
+from my eyes.  I feel that thou hast revealed a wisdom which is not of
+this world."
+
+"Nay, I am but a humble instrument in the hand of Him who is the
+fountain of all truth, and the beginning and the end of all wisdom.  May
+the message which I have borne thee be sanctified to thy well-being."
+
+"Oh, heed him, Ernest!" said the lady.  "It is the holy truth which has
+been spoken.  Let us rejoice in this truth, and, forgetting the world,
+live only for it."
+
+"Oh, may He who watcheth over all His children keep thee in faith of thy
+resolution!" said the Preacher, fervently.  "Humble yourselves to
+receive instruction, and it shall be given you. Turn away now in your
+youth from the corrupting pleasures of the world, heed not its hollow
+vanities, and that peace which is not such as the world giveth, the
+peace of God which passeth all understanding, shall be yours.  Yet, let
+not yours be the world's righteousness, the world's peace, which shuts
+itself up in solitude.  Encloister not the body, but rather shut up the
+soul from sin.  Live in the world, but overcome it: lead a life of
+purity in the face of its allurements: learn, from the holy principle of
+truth within you, to do justly in the sight of its Author, to meet
+reproach without anger, to live without offence, to love those that
+offend you, to visit the widow and the fatherless, and keep yourselves
+unspotted from the world."
+
+"Eleonora!" said the humbled student, "truth is plain before us; can we
+follow its teachings?  Alas! canst thou, the daughter of a noble house,
+forget the glory of thy birth, and, in the beauty of thy years, tread in
+that lowly path, which the wisdom of the world accounteth foolishness?"
+
+"Yes, Ernest, rejoicingly can I do it!" said the lady; and the bright
+glow of a lofty purpose gave a spiritual expression to her majestic
+beauty.  "Glory to God in the highest, that He hath visited us in
+mercy!"
+
+"Lady!" said the Preacher, "the day-star of truth has arisen in thy
+heart; follow thou its light even unto salvation.  Live an harmonious
+life to the curious make and frame of thy creation; and let the beauty
+of thy person teach thee to beautify thy mind with holiness, the
+ornament of the beloved of God.  Remember that the King of Zion's
+daughter is all-glorious within; and if thy soul excel, thy body will
+only set off the lustre of thy mind.  Let not the spirit of this world,
+its cares and its many vanities, its fashions and discourse, prevail
+over the civility of thy nature.  Remember that sin brought the first
+coat, and thou wilt have little reason to be proud of dress or the
+adorning of thy body.  Seek rather the enduring ornament of a meek and
+quiet spirit, the beauty and the purity of the altar of God's temple,
+rather than the decoration of its outward walls.  For, as the Spartan
+monarch said of old to his daughter, when he restrained her from wearing
+the rich dresses of Sicily, 'Thou wilt seem more lovely to me without
+them,' so shalt thou seem, in thy lowliness and humility, more lovely in
+the sight of Heaven and in the eyes of the pure of earth.  Oh, preserve
+in their freshness thy present feelings, wait in humble resignation and
+in patience, even if it be all thy days, for the manifestations of Him
+who as a father careth for all His children."
+
+"I will endeavor, I will endeavor!"  said the lady, humbled in spirit,
+and in tears.
+
+The stranger took the hand of each.  "Farewell!" he said, "I must needs
+depart, for I have much work before me.  God's peace be with you; and
+that love be around you, which has been to me as the green pasture and
+the still water, the shadow in a weary land."
+
+And the stranger went his way; but the lady and her lover, in all their
+after life, and amidst the trials and persecutions which they were
+called to suffer in the cause of truth, remembered with joy and
+gratitude the instructions of the pure-hearted and eloquent William
+Penn.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             DAVID MATSON.
+
+             Published originally in Our Young Folks, 1865.
+
+WHO of my young friends have read the sorrowful story of "Enoch Arden,"
+so sweetly and simply told by the great English poet?  It is the story
+of a man who went to sea, leaving behind a sweet young wife and little
+daughter.  He was cast away on a desert island, where he remained
+several years, when he was discovered and taken off by a passing vessel.
+Coming back to his native town, he found his wife married to an old
+playmate, a good man, rich and honored, and with whom she was living
+happily.  The poor man, unwilling to cause her pain and perplexity,
+resolved not to make himself known to her, and lived and died alone.
+The poem has reminded me of a very similar story of my own New England
+neighborhood, which I have often heard, and which I will try to tell,
+not in poetry, like Alfred Tennyson's, but in my own poor prose.  I can
+assure my readers that in its main particulars it is a true tale.
+
+One bright summer morning, not more than fourscore years ago, David
+Matson, with his young wife and his two healthy, barefooted boys, stood
+on the bank of the river near their dwelling.  They were waiting for
+Pelatiah Curtis to come round the point with his wherry, and take the
+husband and father to the port, a few miles below.  The Lively Turtle
+was about to sail on a voyage to Spain, and David was to go in her as
+mate.  They stood there in the level morning sunshine talking
+cheerfully; but had you been near enough, you could have seen tears in
+Anna Matson's blue eyes, for she loved her husband and knew there was
+always danger on the sea.  And David's bluff, cheery voice trembled a
+little now and then, for the honest sailor loved his snug home on the
+Merrimac, with the dear wife and her pretty boys.  But presently the
+wherry came alongside, and David was just stepping into it, when he
+turned back to kiss his wife and children once more.
+
+"In with you, man," said Pelatiah Curtis.  "There is no time for kissing
+and such fooleries when the tide serves."
+
+And so they parted.  Anna and the boys went back to their home, and
+David to the Port, whence he sailed off in the Lively Turtle.  And
+months passed, autumn followed summer, and winter the autumn, and then
+spring came, and anon it was summer on the river-side, and he did not
+come back.  And another year passed, and then the old sailors and
+fishermen shook their heads solemnly, and, said that the Lively Turtle
+was a lost ship, and would never come back to port.  And poor Anna had
+her bombazine gown dyed black, and her straw bonnet trimmed in mourning
+ribbons, and thenceforth she was known only as the Widow Matson.
+
+And how was it all this time with David himself?
+
+Now you must know that the Mohammedan people of Algiers and Tripoli, and
+Mogadore and Sallee, on the Barbary coast, had been for a long time in
+the habit of fitting out galleys and armed boats to seize upon the
+merchant vessels of Christian nations, and make slaves of their crews
+and passengers, just as men calling themselves Christians in America
+were sending vessels to Africa to catch black slaves for their
+plantations.  The Lively Turtle fell into the hands of one of these sea-
+robbers, and the crew were taken to Algiers, and sold in the market
+place as slaves, poor David Matson among the rest.
+
+When a boy he had learned the trade of ship-carpenter with his father on
+the Merrimac; and now he was set to work in the dock-yards.  His master,
+who was naturally a kind man, did not overwork him.  He had daily his
+three loaves of bread, and when his clothing was worn out, its place was
+supplied by the coarse cloth of wool and camel's hair woven by the
+Berber women.  Three hours before sunset he was released from work, and
+Friday, which is the Mohammedan Sabhath, was a day of entire rest.  Once
+a year, at the season called Ramadan, he was left at leisure for a whole
+week.  So time went on,--days, weeks, months, and years.  His dark hair
+became gray.  He still dreamed of his old home on the Merrimac, and of
+his good Anna and the boys.  He wondered whether they yet lived, what
+they thought of him, and what they were doing.  The hope of ever seeing
+them again grew fainter and fainter, and at last nearly died out; and he
+resigned himself to his fate as a slave for life.
+
+But one day a handsome middle-aged gentleman, in the dress of one of his
+own countrymen, attended by a great officer of the Dey, entered the
+ship-yard, and called up before him the American captives.  The stranger
+was none other than Joel Barlow, Commissioner of the United States to
+procure the liberation of slaves belonging to that government.  He took
+the men by the hand as they came up, and told them that they were free.
+As you might expect, the poor fellows were very grateful; some laughed,
+some wept for joy, some shouted and sang, and threw up their caps, while
+others, with David Matson among them, knelt down on the chips, and
+thanked God for the great deliverance.
+
+"This is a very affecting scene," said the commissioner, wiping his
+eyes.  "I must keep the impression of it for my 'Columbiad';" and
+drawing out his tablet, he proceeded to write on the spot an apostrophe
+to Freedom, which afterwards found a place in his great epic.
+
+David Matson had saved a little money during his captivity by odd jobs
+and work on holidays.  He got a passage to Malaga, where he bought a
+nice shawl for his wife and a watch for each of his boys.  He then went
+to the quay, where an American ship was lying just ready to sail for
+Boston.
+
+Almost the first man he saw on board was Pelatiah Curtis, who had rowed
+him down to the port seven years before.  He found that his old neighbor
+did not know him, so changed was he with his long beard and Moorish
+dress, whereupon, without telling his name, he began to put questions
+about his old home, and finally asked him if he knew a Mrs. Matson.
+
+"I rather think I do," said Pelatiah; "she's my wife."
+
+"Your wife!" cried the other.  "She is mine before God and man.  I am
+David Matson, and she is the mother of my children."
+
+"And mine too!"  said Pelatiah.  "I left her with a baby in her arms.
+If you are David Matson, your right to her is outlawed; at any rate she
+is mine, and I am not the man to give her up."
+
+"God is great!" said poor David Matson, unconsciously repeating the
+familiar words of Moslem submission.  "His will be done.  I loved her,
+but I shall never see her again.  Give these, with my blessing, to the
+good woman and the boys," and he handed over, with a sigh, the little
+bundle containing the gifts for his wife and children.
+
+He shook hands with his rival.  "Pelatiah," he said, looking back as he
+left the ship, "be kind to Anna and my boys."
+
+"Ay, ay, sir!" responded the sailor in a careless tone.  He watched the
+poor man passing slowly up the narrow street until out of sight.  "It's
+a hard case for old David," he said, helping himself to a fresh quid of
+tobacco, "but I 'm glad I 've seen the last of him."
+
+When Pelatiah Curtis reached home he told Anna the story of her husband
+and laid his gifts in her lap.  She did not shriek nor faint, for she
+was a healthy woman with strong nerves; but she stole away by herself
+and wept bitterly.  She lived many years after, but could never be
+persuaded to wear the pretty shawl which the husband of her youth had
+sent as his farewell gift.  There is, however, a tradition that, in
+accordance with her dying wish, it was wrapped about her poor old
+shoulders in the coffin, and buried with her.
+
+The little old bull's-eye watch, which is still in the possession of one
+of her grandchildren, is now all that remains to tell of David Matson,--
+the lost man.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                       THE FISH I DID N'T CATCH.
+
+    Published originally in The Little Pilgrim, Philadelphia, 1843.
+
+OUR old homestead (the house was very old for a new country, having been
+built about the time that the Prince of, Orange drove out James the
+Second) nestled under a long range of hills which stretched off to the
+west.  It was surrounded by woods in all directions save to the
+southeast, where a break in the leafy wall revealed a vista of low green
+meadows, picturesque with wooded islands and jutting capes of upland.
+Through these, a small brook, noisy enough as it foamed, rippled, and
+laughed down its rocky falls by our gardenside, wound, silently and
+scarcely visible, to a still larger stream, known as the Country Brook.
+This brook in its turn, after doing duty at two or three saw and grist
+mills, the clack of which we could hear in still days across the
+intervening woodlands, found its way to the great river, and the river
+took it up and bore it down to the great sea.
+
+I have not much reason for speaking well of these meadows, or rather
+bogs, for they were wet most of the year; but in the early days they
+were highly prized by the settlers, as they furnished natural mowing
+before the uplands could be cleared of wood and stones and laid down to
+grass.  There is a tradition that the hay-harvesters of two adjoining
+towns quarrelled about a boundary question, and fought a hard battle one
+summer morning in that old time, not altogether bloodless, but by no
+means as fatal as the fight between the rival Highland clans, described
+by Scott in "The Fair Maid of Perth."  I used to wonder at their folly,
+when I was stumbling over the rough hassocks, and sinking knee-deep in
+the black mire, raking the sharp sickle-edged grass which we used to
+feed out to the young cattle in midwinter when the bitter cold gave them
+appetite for even such fodder.  I had an almost Irish hatred of snakes,
+and these meadows were full of them,--striped, green, dingy water-
+snakes, and now and then an ugly spotted adder by no means pleasant to
+touch with bare feet.  There were great black snakes, too, in the ledges
+of the neighboring knolls; and on one occasion in early spring I found
+myself in the midst of a score at least of them,--holding their wicked
+meeting of a Sabbath morning on the margin of a deep spring in the
+meadows.  One glimpse at their fierce shining beads in the sunshine, as
+they roused themselves at my approach, was sufficient to send me at full
+speed towards the nearest upland.  The snakes, equally scared, fled in
+the same direction; and, looking back, I saw the dark monsters following
+close at my heels, terrible as the Black Horse rebel regiment at Bull
+Run.  I had, happily, sense enough left to step aside and let the ugly
+troop glide into the bushes.
+
+Nevertheless, the meadows had their redeeming points.  In spring
+mornings the blackbirds and bobolinks made them musical with songs; and
+in the evenings great bullfrogs croaked and clamored; and on summer
+nights we loved to watch the white wreaths of fog rising and drifting in
+the moonlight like troops of ghosts, with the fireflies throwing up ever
+and anon signals of their coming.  But the Brook was far more
+attractive, for it had sheltered hathing-places, clear and white sanded,
+and weedy stretches, where the shy pickerel loved to linger, and deep
+pools, where the stupid sucker stirred the black mud with his fins.  I
+had followed it all the way from its birthplace among the pleasant New
+Hampshire hills, through the sunshine of broad, open meadows, and under
+the shadow of thick woods.  It was, for the most part, a sober, quiet
+little river; but at intervals it broke into a low, rippling laugh over
+rocks and trunks of fallen trees.  There had, so tradition said, once
+been a witch-meeting on its banks, of six little old women in short,
+sky-blue cloaks; and if a drunken teamster could be credited, a ghost
+was once seen bobbing for eels under Country Bridge.  It ground our corn
+and rye for us, at its two grist-mills; and we drove our sheep to it for
+their spring washing, an anniversary which was looked forward to with
+intense delight, for it was always rare fun for the youngsters.
+Macaulay has sung,--
+
+               "That year young lads in Umbro
+               Shall plunge the struggling sheep;"
+
+and his picture of the Roman sheep-washing recalled, when we read it,
+similar scenes in the Country Brook.  On its banks we could always find
+the earliest and the latest wild flowers, from the pale blue, three-
+lobed hepatica, and small, delicate wood-anemone, to the yellow bloom of
+the witch-hazel burning in the leafless October woods.
+
+Yet, after all, I think the chief attraction of the Brook to my brother
+and myself was the fine fishing it afforded us.  Our bachelor uncle who
+lived with us (there has always been one of that unfortunate class in
+every generation of our family) was a quiet, genial man, much given to
+hunting and fishing; and it was one of the great pleasures of our young
+life to accompany him on his expeditions to Great Hill, Brandy-brow
+Woods, the Pond, and, best of all, to the Country Brook.  We were quite
+willing to work hard in the cornfield or the haying-lot to finish the
+necessary day's labor in season for an afternoon stroll through the
+woods and along the brookside.  I remember my first fishing excursion as
+if it were but yesterday.  I have been happy many times in my life, but
+never more intensely so than when I received that first fishing-pole
+from my uncle's hand, and trudged off with him through the woods and
+meadows.  It was a still sweet day of early summer; the long afternoon
+shadows of the trees lay cool across our path; the leaves seemed
+greener, the flowers brighter, the birds merrier, than ever before.
+My uncle, who knew by long experience where were the best haunts of
+pickerel, considerately placed me at the most favorable point.  I threw
+out my line as I had so often seen others, and waited anxiously for a
+bite, moving the bait in rapid jerks on the surface of the water in
+imitation of the leap of a frog.  Nothing came of it.  "Try again," said
+my uncle.  Suddenly the bait sank out of sight.  "Now for it," thought
+I; "here is a fish at last."  I made a strong pull, and brought up a
+tangle of weeds.  Again and again I cast out my line with aching arms,
+and drew it back empty.  I looked to my uncle appealingly.  "Try once
+more," he said.  "We fishermen must have patience."
+
+Suddenly something tugged at my line and swept off with it into deep
+water.  Jerking it up, I saw a fine pickerel wriggling in the sun.
+"Uncle!" I cried, looking back in uncontrollable excitement, "I've got a
+fish!"  "Not yet," said my uncle.  As he spoke there was a plash in the
+water; I caught the arrowy gleam of a scared fish shooting into the
+middle of the stream; my hook hung empty from the line.  I had lost my
+prize.
+
+We are apt to speak of the sorrows of childhood as trifles in comparison
+with those of grown-up people; but we may depend upon it the young folks
+don't agree with us.  Our griefs, modified and restrained by reason,
+experience, and self-respect, keep the proprieties, and, if possible,
+avoid a scene; but the sorrow of childhood, unreasoning and all-
+absorbing, is a complete abandonment to the passion.  The doll's nose is
+broken, and the world breaks up with it; the marble rolls out of sight,
+and the solid globe rolls off with the marble.
+
+So, overcome by my great and bitter disappointment, I sat down on the
+nearest hassock, and for a time refused to be comforted, even by my
+uncle's assurance that there were more fish in the brook.  He refitted
+my bait, and, putting the pole again in my hands, told me to try my luck
+once more.
+
+"But remember, boy," he said, with his shrewd smile, "never brag of
+catching a fish until he is on dry ground.  I've seen older folks doing
+that in more ways than one, and so making fools of themselves.  It 's no
+use to boast of anything until it 's done, nor then either, for it
+speaks for itself."
+
+How often since I have been reminded of the fish that I did not catch!
+When I hear people boasting of a work as yet undone, and trying to
+anticipate the credit which belongs only to actual achievement, I call
+to mind that scene by the brookside, and the wise caution of my uncle in
+that particular instance takes the form of a proverb of universal
+application: "Never brag of your fish before you catch him."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             YANKEE GYPSIES.
+
+     "Here's to budgets, packs, and wallets; Here's to all the wandering
+     train."
+                                                  BURNS.
+
+I CONFESS it, I am keenly sensitive to "skyey influences."  I profess no
+indifference to the movements of that capricious old gentleman known as
+the clerk of the weather.  I cannot conceal my interest in the behavior
+of that patriarchal bird whose wooden similitude gyrates on the church
+spire.  Winter proper is well enough.  Let the thermometer go to zero if
+it will; so much the better, if thereby the very winds are frozen and
+unable to flap their stiff wings.  Sounds of bells in the keen air,
+clear, musical, heart-inspiring; quick tripping of fair moccasined feet
+on glittering ice pavements; bright eyes glancing above the uplifted
+muff like a sultana's behind the folds of her /yashmac/; schoolboys
+coasting down street like mad Greenlanders; the cold brilliance of
+oblique sunbeams flashing back from wide surfaces of glittering snow or
+blazing upon ice jewelry of tree and roof.  There is nothing in all this
+to complain of.  A storm of summer has its redeeming sublimities,--its
+slow, upheaving mountains of cloud glooming in the western horizon like
+new-created volcanoes, veined with fire, shattered by exploding
+thunders.  Even the wild gales of the equinox have their varieties,
+--sounds of wind-shaken woods and waters, creak and clatter of sign and
+casement, hurricane puffs and down-rushing rain-spouts.  But this dull,
+dark autumn day of thaw and rain, when the very clouds seem too
+spiritless and languid to storm outright or take themselves out of the
+way of fair weather; wet beneath and above; reminding one of that
+rayless atmosphere of Dante's Third Circle, where the infernal
+Priessnitz administers his hydropathic torment,--
+
+              "A heavy, cursed, and relentless drench,--
+               The land it soaks is putrid;"
+
+or rather, as everything animate and inanimate is seething in warm mist,
+suggesting the idea that Nature, grown old and rheumatic, is trying the
+efficacy of a Thompsonian steam-box on a grand scale; no sounds save the
+heavy plash of muddy feet on the pavements; the monotonous melancholy
+drip from trees and roofs; the distressful gurgling of waterducts,
+swallowing the dirty amalgam of the gutters; a dim, leaden-colored
+horizon of only a few yards in diameter, shutting down about one, beyond
+which nothing is visible save in faint line or dark projection; the
+ghost of a church spire or the eidolon of a chimney-pot.  He who can
+extract pleasurable emotions from the alembic of such a day has a trick
+of alchemy with which I am wholly unacquainted.
+
+Hark! a rap at my door.  Welcome anybody just now.  One gains nothing by
+attempting to shut out the sprites of the weather.  They come in at the
+keyhole; they peer through the dripping panes; they insinuate themselves
+through the crevices of the casement, or plump down chimney astride of
+the rain-drops.
+
+I rise and throw open the door.  A tall, shambling, loose-jointed
+figure; a pinched, shrewd face, sun-browned and wind-dried; small,
+quick-winking black eyes.  There he stands, the water dripping from his
+pulpy hat and ragged elbows.
+
+I speak to him, but he returns no answer.  With a dumb show of misery,
+quite touching, he hands me a soiled piece of parchment, whereon I read
+what purports to be a melancholy account of shipwreck and disaster, to
+the particular detriment, loss, and damnification of one Pietro Frugoni,
+who is, in consequence, sorely in want of the alms of all charitable
+Christian persons, and who is, in short, the bearer of this veracious
+document, duly certified and indorsed by an Italian consul in one of our
+Atlantic cities, of a high-sounding, but to Yankee organs
+unpronounceable name.
+
+Here commences a struggle.  Every man, the Mohammedans tell us, has two
+attendant angels,--the good one on his right shoulder, the bad on his
+left.  "Give," says Benevolence, as with some difficulty I fish up a
+small coin from the depths of my pocket.  "Not a cent," says selfish
+Prudence; and I drop it from my fingers.  "Think," says the good angel,
+"of the poor stranger in a strange land, just escaped from the terrors
+of the sea-storm, in which his little property has perished, thrown
+half-naked and helpless on our shores, ignorant of our language, and
+unable to find employment suited to his capacity."  "A vile impostor!"
+replies the lefthand sentinel.  "His paper, purchased from one of those
+ready-writers in New York who manufacture beggar-credentials at the low
+price of one dollar per copy, with earthquakes, fires, or shipwrecks, to
+suit customers."
+
+Amidst this confusion of tongues I take another survey of my visitant.
+Ha! a light dawns upon me.  That shrewd old face, with its sharp,
+winking eyes, is no stranger to me.  Pietro Frugoni, I have seen thee
+before.  Si, signor, that face of thine has looked at me over a dirty
+white neckcloth, with the corners of that cunning mouth drawn downwards,
+and those small eyes turned up in sanctimonious gravity, while thou wast
+offering to a crowd of halfgrown boys an extemporaneous exhortation in
+the capacity of a travelling preacher.  Have I not seen it peering out
+from under a blanket, as that of a poor Penobscot Indian, who had lost
+the use of his hands while trapping on the Madawaska?  Is it not the
+face of the forlorn father of six small children, whom the "marcury
+doctors" had "pisened" and crippled?  Did it not belong to that down-
+East unfortunate who had been out to the "Genesee country" and got the
+"fevern-nager," and whose hand shook so pitifully when held out to
+receive my poor gift?  The same, under all disguises,--Stephen Leathers,
+of Barrington,--him, and none other!  Let me conjure him into his own
+likeness:--
+
+"Well, Stephen, what news from old Barrington?"
+
+"Oh, well, I thought I knew ye," he answers, not the least disconcerted.
+"How do you do?  and how's your folks?  All well, I hope.  I took this
+'ere paper, you see, to help a poor furriner, who couldn't make himself
+understood any more than a wild goose.  I thought I 'd just start him
+for'ard a little.  It seemed a marcy to do it."
+
+Well and shiftily answered, thou ragged Proteus.  One cannot be angry
+with such a fellow.  I will just inquire into the present state of his
+Gospel mission and about the condition of his tribe on the Penobscot;
+and it may be not amiss to congratulate him on the success of the steam-
+doctors in sweating the "pisen" of the regular faculty out of him.  But
+he evidently has no'wish to enter into idle conversation.  Intent upon
+his benevolent errand, he is already clattering down stairs.
+Involuntarily I glance out of the window just in season to catch a
+single glimpse of him ere he is swallowed up in the mist.
+
+He has gone; and, knave as he is, I can hardly help exclaiming, "Luck go
+with him!"  He has broken in upon the sombre train of my thoughts and
+called up before me pleasant and grateful recollections.  The old farm-
+house nestling in its valley; hills stretching off to the south and
+green meadows to the east; the small stream which came noisily down its
+ravine, washing the old garden-wall and softly lapping on fallen stones
+and mossy roots of beeches and hemlocks; the tall sentinel poplars at
+the gateway; the oak-forest, sweeping unbroken to the northern horizon;
+the grass-grown carriage-path, with its rude and crazy bridge,--the dear
+old landscape of my boyhood lies outstretched before me like a
+daguerreotype from that picture within which I have borne with me in all
+my wanderings.  I am a boy again, once more conscious of the feeling,
+half terror, half exultation, with which I used to announce the approach
+of this very vagabond and his "kindred after the flesh."
+
+The advent of wandering beggars, or "old stragglers," as we were wont
+to call them, was an event of no ordinary interest in the generally
+monotonous quietude of our farm-life.  Many of them were well known;
+they had their periodical revolutions and transits; we could calculate
+them like eclipses or new moons.  Some were sturdy knaves, fat and
+saucy; and, whenever they ascertained that the "men folks" were absent,
+would order provisions and cider like men who expected to pay for them,
+seating themselves at the hearth or table with the air of Falstaff,--
+"Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?"  Others, poor, pale, patient,
+like Sterne's monk, came creeping up to the door, hat in hand, standing
+there in their gray wretchedness with a look of heartbreak and
+forlornness which was never without its effect on our juvenile
+sensibilities.  At times, however, we experienced a slight revulsion of
+feeling when even these humblest children of sorrow somewhat petulantly
+rejected our proffered bread and cheese, and demanded instead a glass of
+cider.  Whatever the temperance society might in such cases have done,
+it was not in our hearts to refuse the poor creatures a draught of their
+favorite beverage; and was n't it a satisfaction to see their sad,
+melancholy faces light up as we handed them the full pitcher, and, on
+receiving it back empty from their brown, wrinkled hands, to hear them,
+half breathless from their long, delicious draught, thanking us for the
+favor, as "dear, good children!"  Not unfrequently these wandering tests
+of our benevolence made their appearance in interesting groups of man,
+woman, and child, picturesque in their squalidness, and manifesting a
+maudlin affection which would have done honor to the revellers at
+Poosie-Nansie's, immortal in the cantata of Burns.  I remember some who
+were evidently the victims of monomania,--haunted and hunted by some
+dark thought,--possessed by a fixed idea.  One, a black-eyed, wild-
+haired woman, with a whole tragedy of sin, shame, and suffering written
+in her countenance, used often to visit us, warm herself by our winter
+fire, and supply herself with a stock of cakes and cold meat; but was
+never known to answer a question or to ask one.  She never smiled; the
+cold, stony look of her eye never changed; a silent, impassive face,
+frozen rigid by some great wrong or sin.  We used to look with awe upon
+the "still woman," and think of the demoniac of Scripture who had a
+"dumb spirit."
+
+One--I think I see him now, grim, gaunt, and ghastly, working his slow
+way up to our door--used to gather herbs by the wayside and call himself
+doctor.  He was bearded like a he goat and used to counterfeit lameness,
+yet, when he supposed himself alone, would travel on lustily as if
+walking for a wager.  At length, as if in punishment of his deceit, he
+met with an accident in his rambles and became lame in earnest, hobbling
+ever after with difficulty on his gnarled crutches.  Another used to go
+stooping, like Bunyan's pilgrim, under a pack made of an old bed-
+sacking, stuffed out into most plethoric dimensions, tottering on a pair
+of small, meagre legs, and peering out with his wild, hairy face from
+under his burden like a big-bodied spider.  That "man with the pack"
+always inspired me with awe and reverence.  Huge, almost sublime, in its
+tense rotundity, the father of all packs, never laid aside and never
+opened, what might there not be within it?  With what flesh-creeping
+curiosity I used to walk round about it at a safe distance, half
+expecting to see its striped covering stirred by the motions of a
+mysterious life, or that some evil monster would leap out of it, like
+robbers from Ali Baba's jars or armed men from the Trojan horse!
+
+There was another class of peripatetic philosophers--half pedler, half
+mendicant--who were in the habit of visiting us.  One we recollect, a
+lame, unshaven, sinister-eyed, unwholesome fellow, with his basket of
+old newspapers and pamphlets, and his tattered blue umbrella, serving
+rather as a walking staff than as a protection from the rain.  He told
+us on one occasion, in answer to our inquiring into the cause of his
+lameness, that when a young man he was employed on the farm of the chief
+magistrate of a neighboring State; where, as his ill-luck would have it,
+the governor's handsome daughter fell in love with him.  He was caught
+one day in the young lady's room by her father; whereupon the irascible
+old gentleman pitched him unceremoniously out of the window, laming him
+for life, on the brick pavement below, like Vulcan on the rocks of
+Lemnos.  As for the lady, he assured us "she took on dreadfully about
+it."  "Did she die?"  we inquired anxiously.  There was a cun-ing
+twinkle in the old rogue's eye as he responded, "Well, no, she did n't.
+She got married."
+
+Twice a year, usually in the spring and autumn, we were honored with a
+call from Jonathan Plummer, maker of verses, pedler and poet, physician
+and parson,--a Yankee troubadour,--first and last minstrel of the valley
+of the Merrimac, encircled, to my wondering young eyes, with the very
+nimbus of immortality. He brought with him pins, needles, tape, and
+cotton-thread for my mother; jack-knives, razors, and soap for my
+father; and verses of his own composing, coarsely printed and
+illustrated with rude wood-cuts, for the delectation of the younger
+branches of the family.  No lovesick youth could drown himself, no
+deserted maiden bewail the moon, no rogue mount the gallows, without
+fitting memorial in Plummer's verses.  Earthquakes, fires, fevers, and
+shipwrecks he regarded as personal favors from Providence, furnishing
+the raw material of song and ballad.  Welcome to us in our country
+seclusion as Autolycus to the clown in Winter's Tale, we listened with
+infinite satisfaction to his readings of his own verses, or to his ready
+improvisation upon some domestic incident or topic suggested by his
+auditors.  When once fairly over the difficulties at the outset of a new
+subject, his rhymes flowed freely, "as if he had eaten ballads and all
+men's ears grew to his tunes."  His productions answered, as nearly as I
+can remember, to Shakespeare's description of a proper ballad,--"doleful
+matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant theme sung lamentably."  He
+was scrupulously conscientious, devout, inclined to theological
+disquisitions, and withal mighty in Scripture.  He was thoroughly
+independent; flattered nobody, cared for nobody, trusted nobody.  When
+invited to sit down at our dinner-table, be invariably took the
+precaution to place his basket of valuables between his legs for safe
+keeping.  "Never mind thy basket, Jonathan," said my father; "we
+sha'n't steal thy verses."--"I'm not sure of that," returned the
+suspicious guest.  "It is written, 'Trust ye not in any brother.'"
+
+Thou too, O Parson B------, with thy pale student's brow and rubicund
+nose, with thy rusty and tattered black coat overswept by white flowing
+locks, with thy professional white neckcloth scrupulously preserved when
+even a shirt to thy back was problematical,--art by no means to be
+overlooked in the muster-roll of vagrant gentlemen possessing the entree
+of our farm-house.  Well do we remember with what grave and dignified
+courtesy he used to step over its threshold, saluting its inmates with
+the same air of gracious condescension and patronage with which in
+better days he had delighted the hearts of his parishioners.  Poor old
+man!  He had once been the admired and almost worshipped minister of the
+largest church in the town where he afterwards found support in the
+winter season as a pauper.  He had early fallen into intemperate habits;
+and at the age of threescore and ten, when I remember him, he was only
+sober when he lacked the means of being otherwise.  Drunk or sober,
+however, he never altogether forgot the proprieties of his profession;
+he was always grave, decorous, and gentlemanly; he held fast the form of
+sound words, and the weakness of the flesh abated nothing of the rigor
+of his stringent theology.  He had been a favorite pupil of the learned
+and astute Emmons, and was to the last a sturdy defender of the peculiar
+dogmas of his school.  The last time we saw him he was holding a meeting
+in our district school-house, with a vagabond pedler for deacon and
+travelling companion.  The tie which united the ill-assorted couple was
+doubtless the same which endeared Tam O'Shanter to the souter:--
+
+               "They had been fou for weeks thegither."
+
+He took for his text the first seven verses of the concluding chapter of
+Ecclesiastes, furnishing in himself its fitting illustration.  The evil
+days had come; the keepers of the house trembled; the windows of life
+were darkened.  A few months later the silver cord was loosened, the
+golden bowl was broken, and between the poor old man and the temptations
+which beset him fell the thick curtains of the grave.
+
+One day we had a call from a "pawky auld carle" of a wandering
+Scotchman.  To him I owe my first introduction to the songs of Burns.
+After eating his bread and cheese and drinking his mug of cider he gave
+us Bonny Doon, Highland Mary, and Auld Lang Syne.  He had a rich, full
+voice, and entered heartily into the spirit of his lyrics.  I have since
+listened to the same melodies from the lips of Dempster, than whom the
+Scottish bard has had no sweeter or truer interpreter; but the skilful
+performance of the artist lacked the novel charm of the gaberlunzie's
+singing in the old farmhouse kitchen.  Another wanderer made us
+acquainted with the humorous old ballad of "Our gude man cam hame at
+e'en."  He applied for supper and lodging, and the next morning was set
+at work splitting stones in the pasture.  While thus engaged the village
+doctor came riding along the highway on his fine, spirited horse, and
+stopped to talk with my father.  The fellow eyed the animal attentively,
+as if familiar with all his good points, and hummed over a stanza of the
+old poem:--
+
+                   "Our gude man cam hame at e'en,
+                    And hame cam be;
+                    And there he saw a saddle horse
+                    Where nae horse should be.
+                    'How cam this horse here?
+                    How can it be?
+                    How cam this horse here
+                    Without the leave of me?'
+                    'A horse?' quo she.
+                    'Ay, a horse,' quo he.
+                    'Ye auld fool, ye blind fool,--
+                    And blinder might ye be,--
+                    'T is naething but a milking cow
+                    My mamma sent to me.'
+                    A milch cow?' quo he.
+                    'Ay, a milch cow,' quo she.
+                    'Weel, far hae I ridden,
+                    And muckle hae I seen;
+                    But milking cows wi' saddles on
+                    Saw I never nane.'"
+
+That very night the rascal decamped, taking with him the doctor's horse,
+and was never after heard of.
+
+Often, in the gray of the morning, we used to see one or more
+"gaberlunzie men," pack on shoulder and staff in hand, emerging from the
+barn or other outbuildings where they had passed the night.  I was once
+sent to the barn to fodder the cattle late in the evening, and, climbing
+into the mow to pitch down hay for that purpose, I was startled by the
+sudden apparition of a man rising up before me, just discernible in the
+dim moonlight streaming through the seams of the boards.  I made a rapid
+retreat down the ladder; and was only reassured by hearing the object of
+my terror calling after me, and recognizing his voice as that of a
+harmless old pilgrim whom I had known before.  Our farm-house was
+situated in a lonely valley, half surrounded with woods, with no
+neighbors in sight.  One dark, cloudy night, when our parents chanced to
+be absent, we were sitting with our aged grandmother in the fading light
+of the kitchen-fire, working ourselves into a very satisfactory state of
+excitement and terror by recounting to each other all the dismal stories
+we could remember of ghosts, witches, haunted houses and robbers, when
+we were suddenly startled by a loud rap at the door.  A stripling of
+fourteen, I was very naturally regarded as the head of the household;
+so,--with many misgivings, I advanced to the door, which I slowly
+opened, holding the candle tremulously above my head and peering out
+into the darkness.  The feeble glimmer played upon the apparition of a
+gigantic horseman, mounted on a steed of a size worthy of such a rider--
+colossal, motionless, like images cut out of the solid night.  The
+strange visitant gruffly saluted me; and, after making several
+ineffectual efforts to urge his horse in at the door, dismounted and
+followed me into the room, evidently enjoying the terror which his huge
+presence excited.  Announcing himself as the great Indian doctor, he
+drew himself up before the fire, stretched his arms, clenched his fists,
+struck his broad chest, and invited our attention to what he called his
+"mortal frame."  He demanded in succession all kinds of intoxicating
+liquors; and, on being assured that we had none to give him, he grew
+angry, threatened to swallow my younger brother alive, and, seizing me
+by the hair of my head as the angel did the prophet at Babylon, led me
+about from room to room.  After an ineffectual search, in the course of
+which he mistook a jug of oil for one of brandy, and, contrary to my
+explanations and remonstrances, insisted upon swallowing a portion of
+its contents, he released me, fell to crying and sobbing, and confessed
+that he was so drunk already that his horse was ashamed of him.  After
+bemoaning and pitying himself to his satisfaction he wiped his eyes, and
+sat down by the side of my grandmother, giving her to understand that he
+was very much pleased with her appearance; adding, that if agreeable to
+her, he should like the privilege of paying his addresses to her.  While
+vainly endeavoring to make the excellent old lady comprehend his very
+flattering proposition, he was interrupted by the return of my father,
+who, at once understanding the matter, turned him out of doors without
+ceremony.
+
+On one occasion, a few years ago, on my return from the field at
+evening, I was told that a foreigner had asked for lodgings during the
+night, but that, influenced by his dark, repulsive appearance, my mother
+had very reluctantly refused his request.  I found her by no means
+satisfied with her decision.  "What if a son of mine was in a strange
+land?"  she inquired, self-reproachfully.  Greatly to her relief, I
+volunteered to go in pursuit of the wanderer, and, taking a cross-path
+over the fields, soon overtook him.  He had just been rejected at the
+house of our nearest neighbor, and was standing in a state of dubious
+perplexity in the street.  His looks quite justified my mother's
+suspicions.  He was an olive-complexioned, black-bearded Italian, with
+an eye like a live coal, such a face as perchance looks out on the
+traveller in the passes of the Abruzzi,--one of those bandit visages
+which Salvator has painted.  With some difficulty I gave him to
+understand my errand, when he overwhelmed me with thanks, and joyfully
+followed me back.  He took his seat with us at the supper-table; and,
+when we were all gathered around the hearth that cold autumnal evening,
+he told us, partly by words and, partly by gestures, the story of his
+life and misfortunes, amused us with descriptions of the grape-
+gatherings and festivals of his sunny clime, edified my mother with a
+recipe for making bread of chestnuts; and in the morning, when, after
+breakfast, his dark, sullen face lighted up and his fierce eye moistened
+with grateful emotion as in his own silvery Tuscan accent he poured out
+his thanks, we marvelled at the fears which had so nearly closed our
+door against him; and, as he departed, we all felt that he had left with
+us the blessing of the poor.
+
+It was not often that, as in the above instance, my mother's prudence
+got the better of her charity.  The regular "old stragglers" regarded
+her as an unfailing friend; and the sight of her plain cap was to them
+an assurance of forthcoming creature-comforts.  There was indeed a tribe
+of lazy strollers, having their place of rendezvous in the town of
+Barrington, New Hampshire, whose low vices had placed them beyond even
+the pale of her benevolence.  They were not unconscious of their evil
+reputation; and experience had taught them the necessity of concealing,
+under well-contrived disguises, their true character.  They came to us
+in all shapes and with all appearances save the true one, with most
+miserable stories of mishap and sickness and all "the ills which flesh
+is heir to."  It was particularly vexatious to discover, when too late,
+that our sympathies and charities had been expended upon such graceless
+vagabonds as the "Barrington beggars."  An old withered hag, known by
+the appellation of Hopping Pat,--the wise woman of her tribe,--was in
+the habit of visiting us, with her hopeful grandson, who had "a gift for
+preaching" as well as for many other things not exactly compatible with
+holy orders.  He sometimes brought with him a tame crow, a shrewd,
+knavish-looking bird, who, when in the humor for it, could talk like
+Barnaby Rudge's raven.  He used to say he could "do nothin' at exhortin'
+without a white handkercher on his neck and money in his pocket,"--a
+fact going far to confirm the opinions of the Bishop of Exeter and the
+Puseyites generally, that there can be no priest without tithes and
+surplice.
+
+These people have for several generations lived distinct from the great
+mass of the community, like the gypsies of Europe, whom in many respects
+they closely resemble.  They have the same settled aversion to labor and
+the same disposition to avail themselves of the fruits of the industry
+of others.  They love a wild, out-of-door life, sing songs, tell
+fortunes, and have an instinctive hatred of "missionaries and cold
+water."  It has been said--I know not upon what grounds--that their
+ancestors were indeed a veritable importation of English gypsyhood; but
+if so, they have undoubtedly lost a good deal of the picturesque charm
+of its unhoused and free condition.  I very much fear that my friend
+Mary Russell Mitford,--sweetest of England's rural painters,--who has a
+poet's eye for the fine points in gypsy character, would scarcely allow
+their claims to fraternity with her own vagrant friends, whose camp-
+fires welcomed her to her new home at Swallowfield.
+
+"The proper study of mankind is man," and, according to my view, no
+phase of our common humanity is altogether unworthy of investigation.
+Acting upon this belief two or three summers ago, when making, in
+company with my sister, a little excursion into the hill-country of New
+Hampshire, I turned my horse's head towards Barrington for the purpose
+of seeing these semi-civilized strollers in their own home, and
+returning, once for all, their numerous visits.  Taking leave of our
+hospitable cousins in old Lee with about as much solemnity as we may
+suppose Major Laing parted with his friends when he set out in search of
+desert-girdled Timbuctoo, we drove several miles over a rough road,
+passed the Devil's Den unmolested, crossed a fretful little streamlet
+noisily working its way into a valley, where it turned a lonely, half-
+ruinous mill, and climbing a steep hill beyond, saw before us a wide
+sandy level, skirted on the west and north by low, scraggy hills, and
+dotted here and there with dwarf pitch-pines.  In the centre of this
+desolate region were some twenty or thirty small dwellings, grouped
+together as irregularly as a Hottentot kraal.  Unfenced, unguarded, open
+to all comers and goers, stood that city of the beggars,--no wall or
+paling between the ragged cabins to remind one of the jealous
+distinctions of property.  The great idea of its founders seemed visible
+in its unappropriated freedom.  Was not the whole round world their own?
+and should they haggle about boundaries and title-deeds?  For them, on
+distant plains, ripened golden harvests; for them, in far-off workshops,
+busy hands were toiling; for them, if they had but the grace to note it,
+the broad earth put on her garniture of beauty, and over them hung the
+silent mystery of heaven and its stars.  That comfortable philosophy
+which modern transcendentalism has but dimly shadowed forth--that poetic
+agrarianism, which gives all to each and each to all--is the real life
+of this city of unwork.  To each of its dingy dwellers might be not
+unaptly applied the language of one who, I trust, will pardon me for
+quoting her beautiful poem in this connection:--
+
+         "Other hands may grasp the field or forest,
+          Proud proprietors in pomp may shine;
+          Thou art wealthier,--all the world is thine."
+
+
+But look!  the clouds are breaking.  "Fair weather cometh out of the
+north."  The wind has blown away the mists; on the gilded spire of John
+Street glimmers a beam of sunshine; and there is the sky again, hard,
+blue, and cold in its eternal purity, not a whit the worse for the
+storm.  In the beautiful present the past is no longer needed.
+Reverently and gratefully let its volume be laid aside; and when again
+the shadows of the outward world fall upon the spirit, may I not lack a
+good angel to remind me of its solace, even if he comes in the shape of
+a Barrington beggar.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             THE TRAINING.
+
+                "Send for the milingtary."
+                              NOAH CLAYPOLE in Oliver Twist.
+
+WHAT'S now in the wind?  Sounds of distant music float in at my window
+on this still October air.  Hurrying drum-beat, shrill fife-tones,
+wailing bugle-notes, and, by way of accompaniment, hurrahs from the
+urchins on the crowded sidewalks.  Here come the citizen-soldiers, each
+martial foot beating up the mud of yesterday's storm with the slow,
+regular, up-and-down movement of an old-fashioned churn-dasher.  Keeping
+time with the feet below, some threescore of plumed heads bob solemnly
+beneath me.  Slant sunshine glitters on polished gun-barrels and
+tinselled uniform.  Gravely and soberly they pass on, as if duly
+impressed with a sense of the deep responsibility of their position as
+self-constituted defenders of the world's last hope,--the United States
+of America, and possibly Texas.  They look out with honest, citizen
+faces under their leathern visors (their ferocity being mostly the work
+of the tailor and tinker), and, I doubt not, are at this moment as
+innocent of bloodthirstiness as yonder worthy tiller of the Tewksbury
+Hills, who sits quietly in his wagon dispensing apples and turnips
+without so much as giving a glance at the procession.  Probably there is
+not one of them who would hesitate to divide his last tobacco-quid with
+his worst enemy.  Social, kind-hearted, psalm-singing, sermon-hearing,
+Sabhath-keeping Christians; and yet, if we look at the fact of the
+matter, these very men have been out the whole afternoon of this
+beautiful day, under God's holy sunshine, as busily at work as Satan
+himself could wish in learning how to butcher their fellow-creatures and
+acquire the true scientific method of impaling a forlorn Mexican on a
+bayonet, or of sinking a leaden missile in the brain of some unfortunate
+Briton, urged within its range by the double incentive of sixpence per
+day in his pocket and the cat-o'-nine-tails on his back!
+
+Without intending any disparagement of my peaceable ancestry for many
+generations, I have still strong suspicions that somewhat of the old
+Norman blood, something of the grins Berserker spirit, has been
+bequeathed to me.  How else can I account for the intense childish
+eagerness with which I listened to the stories of old campaigners who
+sometimes fought their battles over again in my hearing?  Why did I,
+in my young fancy, go up with Jonathan, the son of Saul, to smite the
+garrisoned Philistines of Michmash, or with the fierce son of Nun
+against the cities of Canaan?  Why was Mr. Greatheart, in Pilgrim's
+Progress, my favorite character?  What gave such fascination to the
+narrative of the grand Homeric encounter between Christian and Apollyon
+in the valley?  Why did I follow Ossian over Morven's battle-fields,
+exulting in the vulture-screams of the blind scald over his fallen
+enemies?  Still later, why did the newspapers furnish me with subjects
+for hero-worship in the half-demented Sir Gregor McGregor, and Ypsilanti
+at the head of his knavish Greeks?  I can account for it only in the
+supposition that the mischief was inhered,--an heirloom from the old
+sea-kings of the ninth century.
+
+Education and reflection have, indeed, since wrought a change in my
+feelings.  The trumpet of the Cid, or Ziska's drum even, could not now
+waken that old martial spirit.  The bull-dog ferocity of a half-
+intoxicated Anglo-Saxon, pushing his blind way against the converging
+cannon-fire from the shattered walls of Ciudad Rodrigo, commends itself
+neither to my reason nor my fancy.  I now regard the accounts of the
+bloody passage of the Bridge of Lodi, and of French cuirassiers madly
+transfixing themselves upon the bayonets of Wellington's squares, with
+very much the same feeling of horror and loathing which is excited by a
+detail of the exploits of an Indian Thug, or those of a mad Malay
+running a-muck, creese in hand, through the streets of Pulo Penang.
+Your Waterloo, and battles of the Nile and Baltic,--what are they, in
+sober fact, but gladiatorial murder-games on a great scale,--human
+imitations of bull-fights, at which Satan sits as grand alguazil and
+master of ceremonies?  It is only when a great thought incarnates itself
+in action, desperately striving to find utterance even in sabre-clash
+and gun-fire, or when Truth and Freedom, in their mistaken zeal and
+distrustful of their own powers, put on battle-harness, that I can feel
+any sympathy with merely physical daring.  The brawny butcher-work of
+men whose wits, like those of Ajax, lie in their sinews, and who are
+"yoked like draught-oxen and made to plough up the wars," is no
+realization of my ideal of true courage.
+
+Yet I am not conscious of having lost in any degree my early admiration
+of heroic achievement.  The feeling remains; but it has found new and
+better objects.  I have learned to appreciate what Milton calls the
+martyr's "unresistible might of meekness,"--the calm, uncomplaining
+endurance of those who can bear up against persecution uncheered by
+sympathy or applause, and, with a full and keen appreciation of the
+value of all which they are called to sacrifice, confront danger and
+death in unselfish devotion to duty.  Fox, preaching through his prison-
+gates or rebuking Oliver Cromwell in the midst of his soldier-court
+Henry Vane beneath the axe of the headsman; Mary Dyer on the scaffold at
+Boston; Luther closing his speech at Worms with the sublime emphasis of
+his "Here stand I; I cannot otherwise; God help me;"  William Penn
+defending the rights of Englishmen from the baledock of the Fleet
+prison; Clarkson climbing the decks of Liverpool slaveships; Howard
+penetrating to infected dungeons; meek Sisters of Charity breathing
+contagion in thronged hospitals,--all these, and such as these, now help
+me to form the loftier ideal of Christian heroism.
+
+Blind Milton approaches nearly to my conception of a true hero.  What a
+picture have we of that sublime old man, as sick, poor, blind, and
+abandoned of friends, he still held fast his heroic integrity, rebuking
+with his unbending republicanism the treachery, cowardice, and servility
+of his old associates!  He had outlived the hopes and beatific visions
+of his youth; he had seen the loudmouthed advocates of liberty throwing
+down a nation's freedom at the feet of the shameless, debauched, and
+perjured Charles II., crouching to the harlot-thronged court of the
+tyrant, and forswearing at once their religion and their republicanism.
+The executioner's axe had been busy among his friends.  Vane and Hampden
+slept in their bloody graves.  Cromwell's ashes had been dragged from
+their resting-place; for even in death the effeminate monarch hated and
+feared the conquerer of Naseby and Marston Moor.  He was left alone, in
+age, and penury, and blindness, oppressed with the knowledge that all
+which his free soul abhorred had returned upon his beloved country.  Yet
+the spirit of the stern old republican remained to the last unbroken,
+realizing the truth of the language of his own Samson Agonistes:--
+
+              "But patience is more oft the exercise
+               Of saints, the trial of their fortitude,
+               Making them each his own deliverer
+               And victor over all
+               That tyranny or fortune can inflict."
+
+The curse of religious and political apostasy lay heavy on the land.
+Harlotry and atheism sat in the high places; and the "caresses of
+wantons and the jests of buffoons regulated the measures of a government
+which had just ability enough to deceive, just religion enough to
+persecute."  But, while Milton mourned over this disastrous change,
+no self-reproach mingled with his sorrow.  To the last he had striven
+against the oppressor; and when confined to his narrow alley, a prisoner
+in his own mean dwelling, like another Prometheus on his rock, he still
+turned upon him an eye of unsubdued defiance.  Who, that has read his
+powerful appeal to his countrymen when they were on the eve of welcoming
+back the tyranny and misrule which, at the expense of so much blood and
+treasure had been thrown off, can ever forget it?  How nobly does
+Liberty speak through him!  "If," said he, "ye welcome back a monarchy,
+it will be the triumph of all tyrants hereafter over any people who
+shall resist oppression; and their song shall then be to others, 'How
+sped the rebellious English?' but to our posterity, 'How sped the
+rebels, your fathers?'"  How solemn and awful is his closing paragraph!
+"What I have spoken is the language of that which is not called amiss
+'the good old cause.'  If it seem strange to any, it will not, I hope,
+seem more strange than convincing to backsliders.  This much I should
+have said though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and
+stones, and had none to cry to but with the prophet, 'O earth, earth,
+earth!' to tell the very soil itself what its perverse inhabitants are
+deaf to; nay, though what I have spoken should prove (which Thou suffer
+not, who didst make mankind free; nor Thou next, who didst redeem us
+from being servants of sin) to be the last words of our expiring
+liberties."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            THE CITY OF A DAY.
+
+The writer, when residing in Lowell, in 1843 contributed this and the
+companion pieces to 'The Stranger' in Lowell.
+
+This, then, is Lowell,--a city springing up, like the enchanted palaces
+of the Arabian tales, as it were in a single night, stretching far and
+wide its chaos of brick masonry and painted shingles, filling the angle
+of the confluence of the Concord and the Merrimac with the sights and
+sounds of trade and industry.  Marvellously here have art and labor
+wrought their modern miracles.  I can scarcely realize the fact that a
+few years ago these rivers, now tamed and subdued to the purposes of man
+and charmed into slavish subjection to the wizard of mechanism, rolled
+unchecked towards the ocean the waters of the Winnipesaukee and the
+rock-rimmed springs of the White Mountains, and rippled down their falls
+in the wild freedom of Nature.  A stranger, in view of all this
+wonderful change, feels himself, as it were, thrust forward into a new
+century; he seems treading on the outer circle of the millennium of
+steam engines and cotton mills.  Work is here the patron saint.
+Everything bears his image and superscription.  Here is no place for
+that respectable class of citizens called gentlemen, and their much
+vilified brethren, familiarly known as loafers.  Over the gateways of
+this new world Manchester glares the inscription, "Work, or die".
+Here
+
+               "Every worm beneath the moon
+               Draws different threads, and late or soon
+               Spins, toiling out his own cocoon."
+
+The founders of this city probably never dreamed of the theory of
+Charles Lamb in respect to the origin of labor:--
+
+          "Who first invented work, and thereby bound
+          The holiday rejoicing spirit down
+          To the never-ceasing importunity
+          Of business in the green fields and the town?
+
+          "Sabbathless Satan,--he who his unglad
+          Task ever plies midst rotatory burnings
+          For wrath divine has made him like a wheel
+          In that red realm from whence are no returnings."
+
+Rather, of course, would they adopt Carlyle's apostrophe of "Divine
+labor, noble, ever fruitful,--the grand, sole miracle of man;" for this
+is indeed a city consecrated to thrift,--dedicated, every square rod of
+it, to the divinity of work; the gospel of industry preached daily and
+hourly from some thirty temples, each huger than the Milan Cathedral or
+the Temple of Jeddo, the Mosque of St. Sophia or the Chinese pagoda of a
+hundred bells; its mighty sermons uttered by steam and water-power; its
+music the everlasting jar of mechanism and the organ-swell of many
+waters; scattering the cotton and woollen leaves of its evangel from the
+wings of steamboats and rail-cars throughout the land; its thousand
+priests and its thousands of priestesses ministering around their
+spinning-jenny and powerloom altars, or thronging the long, unshaded
+streets in the level light of sunset.  After all, it may well be
+questioned whether this gospel, according to Poor Richard's Almanac, is
+precisely calculated for the redemption of humanity.  Labor, graduated
+to man's simple wants, necessities, and unperverted tastes, is doubtless
+well; but all beyond this is weariness to flesh and spirit.  Every web
+which falls from these restless looms has a history more or less
+connected with sin and suffering, beginning with slavery and ending
+with overwork and premature death.
+
+A few years ago, while travelling in Pennsylvania, I encountered a
+small, dusky-browed German of the name of Etzler.  He was possessed by a
+belief that the world was to be restored to its paradisiacal state by
+the sole agency of mechanics, and that he had himself discovered the
+means of bringing about this very desirable consummation.  His whole
+mental atmosphere was thronged with spectral enginery; wheel within
+wheel; plans of hugest mechanism; Brobdignagian steam-engines; Niagaras
+of water-power; wind-mills with "sail-broad vans," like those of Satan
+in chaos, by the proper application of which every valley was to be
+exalted and every hill laid low; old forests seized by their shaggy tops
+and uprooted; old morasses drained; the tropics made cool; the eternal
+ices melted around the poles; the ocean itself covered with artificial
+islands, blossoming gardens of the blessed, rocking gently on the bosom
+of the deep.  Give him "three hundred thousand dollars and ten years'
+time," and he would undertake to do the work.
+
+Wrong, pain, and sin, being in his view but the results of our physical
+necessities, ill-gratified desires, and natural yearnings for a better
+state, were to vanish before the millennium of mechanism.  "It would
+be," said he, "as ridiculous then to dispute and quarrel about the means
+of life as it would be now about water to drink by the side of mighty
+rivers, or about permission to breathe the common air."  To his mind the
+great forces of Nature took the shape of mighty and benignant spirits,
+sent hitherward to be the servants of man in restoring to him his lost
+paradise; waiting only for his word of command to apply their giant
+energies to the task, but as yet struggling blindly and aimlessly,
+giving ever and anon gentle hints, in the way of earthquake, fire, and
+flood, that they are weary of idleness, and would fain be set at work.
+Looking down, as I now do, upon these huge brick workshops, I have
+thought of poor Etzler, and wondered whether he would admit, were he
+with me, that his mechanical forces have here found their proper
+employment of millennium making.  Grinding on, each in his iron harness,
+invisible, yet shaking, by his regulated and repressed power, his huge
+prison-house from basement to capstone, is it true that the genii of
+mechanism are really at work here, raising us, by wheel and pulley,
+steam and waterpower, slowly up that inclined plane from whose top
+stretches the broad table-land of promise?
+
+Many of the streets of Lowell present a lively and neat aspect, and are
+adorned with handsome public and private buildings; but they lack one
+pleasant feature of older towns,--broad, spreading shade-trees.  One
+feels disposed to quarrel with the characteristic utilitarianism of the
+first settlers, which swept so entirely away the green beauty of Nature.
+For the last few days it has been as hot here as Nebuchadnezzar's
+furnace or Monsieur Chabert's oven, the sun glaring down from a copper
+sky upon these naked, treeless streets, in traversing which one is
+tempted to adopt the language of a warm-weather poet:
+
+     "The lean, like walking skeletons, go stalking pale and gloomy;
+     The fat, like red-hot warming-pans, send hotter fancies through me;
+     I wake from dreams of polar ice, on which I've been a slider,
+     Like fishes dreaming of the sea and waking in the spider."
+
+How unlike the elm-lined avenues of New Haven, upon whose cool and
+graceful panorama the stranger looks down upon the Judge's Cave, or the
+vine-hung pinnacles of West Rock, its tall spires rising white and clear
+above the level greenness! or the breezy leafiness of Portland, with its
+wooded islands in the distance, and itself overhung with verdant beauty,
+rippling and waving in the same cool breeze which stirs the waters of
+the beautiful Bay of Casco!  But time will remedy all this; and, when
+Lowell shall have numbered half the years of her sister cities, her
+newly planted elms and maples, which now only cause us to contrast their
+shadeless stems with the leafy glory of their parents of the forest,
+will stretch out to the future visitor arms of welcome and repose.
+
+There is one beautiful grove in Lowell,--that on Chapel Hill,--where a
+cluster of fine old oaks lift their sturdy stems and green branches, in
+close proximity to the crowded city, blending the cool rustle of their
+leaves with the din of machinery.  As I look at them in this gray
+twilight they seem lonely and isolated, as if wondering what has become
+of their old forest companions, and vainly endeavoring to recognize in
+the thronged and dusty streets before them those old, graceful
+colonnades of maple and thick-shaded oaken vistas, stretching from river
+to river, carpeted with the flowers and grasses of spring, or ankle deep
+with leaves of autumn, through whose leafy canopy the sunlight melted in
+upon wild birds, shy deer, and red Indians.  Long may these oaks remain
+to remind us that, if there be utility in the new, there was beauty in
+the old, leafy Puseyites of Nature, calling us back to the past, but,
+like their Oxford brethren, calling in vain; for neither in polemics nor
+in art can we go backward in an age whose motto is ever "Onward."
+
+The population of Lowell is constituted mainly of New Englanders; but
+there are representatives here of almost every part of the civilized
+world.  The good-humored face of the Milesian meets one at almost every
+turn; the shrewdly solemn Scotchman, the transatlantic Yankee, blending
+the crafty thrift of Bryce Snailsfoot with the stern religious heroism
+of Cameron; the blue-eyed, fair-haired German from the towered hills
+which overlook the Rhine,--slow, heavy, and unpromising in his exterior,
+yet of the same mould and mettle of the men who rallied for "fatherland"
+at the Tyrtean call of Korner and beat back the chivalry of France from
+the banks of the Katzback,--the countrymen of Richter, and Goethe, and
+our own Follen.  Here, too, are pedlers from Hamburg, and Bavaria, and
+Poland, with their sharp Jewish faces, and black, keen eyes.  At this
+moment, beneath my window are two sturdy, sunbrowned Swiss maidens
+grinding music for a livelihood, rehearsing in a strange Yankee land the
+simple songs of their old mountain home, reminding me, by their foreign
+garb and language, of
+
+                    "Lauterbrunnen's peasant girl."
+
+Poor wanderers, I cannot say that I love their music; but now, as the
+notes die away, and, to use the words of Dr. Holmes, "silence comes like
+a poultice to heal the wounded ear," I feel grateful for their
+visitation.  Away from crowded thoroughfares, from brick walls and dusty
+avenues, at the sight of these poor peasants I have gone in thought to
+the vale of Chamouny, and seen, with Coleridge, the morning star pausing
+on the "bald, awful head of sovereign Blanc," and the sun rise and set
+upon snowy-crested mountains, down in whose valleys the night still
+lingers; and, following in the track of Byron and Rousseau, have watched
+the lengthening shadows of the hills on the beautiful waters of the
+Genevan lake.  Blessings, then, upon these young wayfarers, for they
+have "blessed me unawares."  In an hour of sickness and lassitude they
+have wrought for me the miracle of Loretto's Chapel, and, borne me away
+from the scenes around me and the sense of personal suffering to that
+wonderful land where Nature seems still uttering, from lake and valley,
+and from mountains whose eternal snows lean on the hard, blue heaven,
+the echoes of that mighty hymn of a new-created world, when "the morning
+stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy."
+
+But of all classes of foreigners the Irish are by far the most numerous.
+Light-hearted, wrongheaded, impulsive, uncalculating, with an Oriental
+love of hyperbole, and too often a common dislike of cold water and of
+that gem which the fable tells us rests at the bottom of the well, the
+Celtic elements of their character do not readily accommodate themselves
+to those of the hard, cool, self-relying Anglo-Saxon.  I am free to
+confess to a very thorough dislike of their religious intolerance and
+bigotry, but am content to wait for the change that time and the
+attrition of new circumstances and ideas must necessarily make in this
+respect.  Meanwhile I would strive to reverence man as man, irrespective
+of his birthplace.  A stranger in a strange land is always to me an
+object of sympathy and interest.  Amidst all his apparent gayety of
+heart and national drollery and wit, the poor Irish emigrant has sad
+thoughts of the "ould mother of him," sitting lonely in her solitary
+cabin by the bog-side; recollections of a father's blessing and a
+sister's farewell are haunting him; a grave mound in a distant
+churchyard far beyond the "wide wathers" has an eternal greenness in his
+memory; for there, perhaps, lies a "darlint child" or a "swate crather"
+who once loved him.  The new world is forgotten for the moment; blue
+Killarney and the Liffey sparkle before him, and Glendalough stretches
+beneath him its dark, still mirror; he sees the same evening sunshine
+rest upon and hallow alike with Nature's blessing the ruins of the Seven
+Churches of Ireland's apostolic age, the broken mound of the Druids, and
+the round towers of the Phoenician sun-worshippers; pleasant and
+mournful recollections of his home waken within him; and the rough and
+seemingly careless and light-hearted laborer melts into tears.  It is no
+light thing to abandon one's own country and household gods.  Touching
+and beautiful was the injunction of the prophet of the Hebrews:
+
+"Ye shall not oppress the stranger; for ye know the heart of the
+stranger, seeing that ye were strangers in the land of Egypt."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             PATUCKET FALLS.
+
+MANY years ago I read, in some old chronicle of the early history of New
+England, a paragraph which has ever since haunted my memory, calling up
+romantic associations of wild Nature and wilder man:--
+
+"The Sachem Wonolanset, who lived by the Groat Falls of Patucket, on the
+Merrimac."
+
+It was with this passage in my mind that I visited for the first time
+the Rapids of the Merrimac, above Lowell.
+
+Passing up the street by the Hospital, a large and elegant mansion
+surrounded by trees and shrubbery and climbing vines, I found myself,
+after walking a few rods farther, in full view of the Merrimac.  A deep
+and rocky channel stretched between me and the Dracut shore, along which
+rushed the shallow water,--a feeble, broken, and tortuous current,
+winding its way among splintered rocks, rising sharp and jagged in all
+directions.  Drained above the falls by the canal, it resembled some
+mountain streamlet of old Spain, or some Arabian wady, exhausted by a
+year's drought.  Higher up, the arches of the bridge spanned the quick,
+troubled water; and, higher still, the dam, so irregular in its outline
+as to seem less a work of Art than of Nature, crossed the bed of the
+river, a lakelike placidity above contrasting with the foam and murmur
+of the falls below.  And this was all which modern improvements had left
+of "the great Patucket Falls" of the olden time.  The wild river had
+been tamed; the spirit of the falls, whose hoarse voice the Indian once
+heard in the dashing of the great water down the rocks, had become the
+slave of the arch conjurer, Art; and, like a shorn and blinded giant,
+was grinding in the prison-house of his taskmaster.
+
+One would like to know how this spot must have seemed to the "twenty
+goodlie persons from Concord and Woburn" who first visited it in 1652,
+as, worn with fatigue, and wet from the passage of the sluggish Concord,
+"where ford there was none," they wound their slow way through the
+forest, following the growing murmur of the falls, until at length the
+broad, swift river stretched before them, its white spray flashing in
+the sun.  What cared these sturdy old Puritans for the wild beauty of
+the landscape thus revealed before them?  I think I see them standing
+there in the golden light of a closing October day, with their sombre
+brown doublets and slouched hats, and their heavy matchlocks,--such men
+as Ireton fronted death with on the battle-field of Naseby, or those who
+stalked with Cromwell over the broken wall of Drogheda, smiting, "in the
+name of the Lord," old and young, "both maid, and little children."
+Methinks I see the sunset light flooding the river valley, the western
+hills stretching to the horizon, overhung with trees gorgeous and
+glowing with the tints of autumn,--a mighty flower-garden, blossoming
+under the spell of the enchanter, Frost; the rushing river, with its
+graceful water-curves and white foam; and a steady murmur, low, deep
+voices of water, the softest, sweetest sound of Nature, blends with the
+sigh of the south wind in the pine-tops.  But these hard-featured saints
+of the New Canaan "care for none of these things."  The stout hearts
+which beat under their leathern doublets are proof against the sweet
+influences of Nature.  They see only "a great and howling wilderness,
+where be many Indians, but where fish may be taken, and where be meadows
+for ye subsistence of cattle," and which, on the whole, "is a
+comfortable place to accommodate a company of God's people upon, who
+may, with God's blessing, do good in that place for both church and
+state."  (Vide petition to the General Court, 1653.)
+
+In reading the journals and narratives of the early settlers of New
+England nothing is more remarkable than the entire silence of the worthy
+writers in respect to the natural beauty or grandeur of the scenery amid
+which their lot was cast.  They designated the grand and glorious
+forest, broken by lakes and crossed by great rivers, intersected by a
+thousand streams more beautiful than those which the Old World has given
+to song and romance, as "a desert and frightful wilderness."  The wildly
+picturesque Indian, darting his birch canoe down the Falls of the
+Amoskeag or gliding in the deer-track of the forest, was, in their view,
+nothing but a "dirty tawnie," a "salvage heathen," and "devil's imp."
+Many of them were well educated,--men of varied and profound erudition,
+and familiar with the best specimens of Greek and Roman literature; yet
+they seem to have been utterly devoid of that poetic feeling or fancy
+whose subtle alchemy detects the beautiful in the familiar.  Their very
+hymns and spiritual songs seem to have been expressly calculated, like
+"the music-grinders" of Holmes,--
+
+                   "To pluck the eyes of sentiment,
+                    And dock the tail of rhyme,
+                    To crack the voice of melody,
+                    And break the legs of time."
+
+They were sworn enemies of the Muses; haters of stage-play literature,
+profane songs, and wanton sonnets; of everything, in brief, which
+reminded them of the days of the roistering cavaliers and bedizened
+beauties of the court of "the man Charles," whose head had fallen
+beneath the sword of Puritan justice.  Hard, harsh, unlovely, yet with
+many virtues and noble points of character, they were fitted, doubtless,
+for their work of pioneers in the wilderness.  Sternly faithful to duty,
+in peril, and suffering, and self-denial, they wrought out the noblest
+of historical epics on the rough soil of New England.  They lived a
+truer poetry than Homer or Virgil wrote.
+
+The Patuckets, once a powerful native tribe, had their principal
+settlements around the falls at the time of the visit of the white men
+of Concord and Woburn in 1652.  Gookin, the Indian historian, states
+that this tribe was almost wholly destroyed by the great pestilence of
+1612.  In 1674 they had but two hundred and fifty males in the whole
+tribe.  Their chief sachem lived opposite the falls; and it was in his
+wigwam that the historian, in company with John Eliot, the Indian
+missionary, held a "meeting for worshippe on ye 5th of May, 1676," where
+Mr. Eliot preached from "ye twenty-second of Matthew."
+
+The white visitants from Concord and Woburn, pleased with the appearance
+of the place and the prospect it afforded for planting and fishing,
+petitioned the General Court for a grant of the entire tract of land now
+embraced in the limits of Lowell and Chelmsford.  They made no account
+whatever of the rights of the poor Patuckets; but, considering it
+"a comfortable place to accommodate God's people upon," were doubtless
+prepared to deal with the heathen inhabitants as Joshua the son of Nun
+did with the Jebusites and Perizzites, the Hivites and the Hittites, of
+old.  The Indians, however, found a friend in the apostle Eliot, who
+presented a petition in their behalf that the lands lying around the
+Patucket and Wamesit Falls should be appropriated exclusively for their
+benefit and use.  The Court granted the petition of the whites, with the
+exception of the tract in the angle of the two rivers on which the
+Patuckets were settled.  The Indian title to this tract was not finally
+extinguished until 1726, when the beautiful name of Wamesit was lost in
+that of Chelmsford, and the last of the Patuckets turned his back upon
+the graves of his fathers and sought a new home among the strange
+Indians of the North.
+
+But what has all this to do with the falls?  When the rail-cars came
+thundering through his lake country, Wordsworth attempted to exorcise
+them by a sonnet; and, were I not a very decided Yankee, I might
+possibly follow his example, and utter in this connection my protest
+against the desecration of Patucket Falls, and battle with objurgatory
+stanzas these dams and mills, as Balmawapple shot off his horse-pistol
+at Stirling Castle.  Rocks and trees, rapids, cascades, and other water-
+works are doubtless all very well; but on the whole, considering our
+seven months of frost, are not cotton shirts and woollen coats still
+better?  As for the spirits of the river, the Merrimac Naiads, or
+whatever may be their name in Indian vocabulary, they have no good
+reason for complaint; inasmuch as Nature, in marking and scooping out
+the channel of their stream, seems to have had an eye to the useful
+rather than the picturesque.  After a few preliminary antics and
+youthful vagaries up among the White Hills, the Merrimac comes down to
+the seaboard, a clear, cheerful, hard-working Yankee river.  Its
+numerous falls and rapids are such as seem to invite the engineer's
+level rather than the pencil of the tourist; and the mason who piles up
+the huge brick fabrics at their feet is seldom, I suspect, troubled with
+sentimental remorse or poetical misgivings.  Staid and matter of fact as
+the Merrimac is, it has, nevertheless, certain capricious and eccentric
+tributaries; the Powow, for instance, with its eighty feet fall in a few
+rods, and that wild, Indian-haunted Spicket, taking its wellnigh
+perpendicular leap of thirty feet, within sight of the village meeting-
+house, kicking up its Pagan heels, Sundays and all, in sheer contempt of
+Puritan tithing-men.  This latter waterfall is now somewhat modified by
+the hand of Art, but is still, as Professor Hitchcock's "Scenographical
+Geology" says of it, "an object of no little interest."  My friend T.,
+favorably known as the translator of "Undine" and as a writer of fine
+and delicate imagination, visited Spicket Falls before the sound of a
+hammer or the click of a trowel had been heard beside them.  His journal
+of "A Day on the Merrimac" gives a pleasing and vivid description of
+their original appearance as viewed through the telescope of a poetic
+fancy.  The readers of "Undine" will thank me for a passage or two from
+this sketch:--
+
+"The sound of the waters swells more deeply.  Something supernatural in
+their confused murmur; it makes me better understand and sympathize with
+the writer of the Apocalypse when he speaks of the voice of many waters,
+heaping image upon image, to impart the vigor of his conception.
+
+"Through yonder elm-branches I catch a few snowy glimpses of foam in the
+air.  See that spray and vapor rolling up the evergreen on my left The
+two side precipices, one hundred feet apart and excluding objects of
+inferior moment, darken and concentrate the view.  The waters between
+pour over the right-hand and left-hand summit, rushing down and uniting
+among the craggiest and abruptest of rocks.  Oh for a whole mountain-
+side of that living foam!  The sun impresses a faint prismatic hue.
+These falls, compared with those of the Missouri, are nothing,--nothing
+but the merest miniature; and yet they assist me in forming some
+conception of that glorious expanse.
+
+"A fragment of an oak, struck off by lightning, struggles with the
+current midway down; while the shattered trunk frowns above the
+desolation, majestic in ruin.  This is near the southern cliff.  Farther
+north a crag rises out of the stream, its upper surface covered with
+green clover of the most vivid freshness.  Not only all night, but all
+day, has the dew lain upon its purity.  With my eye attaining the
+uppermost margin, where the waters shoot over, I look away into the
+western sky, and discern there (what you least expect) a cow chewing her
+cud with admirable composure, and higher up several sheep and lambs
+browsing celestial buds.  They stand on the eminence that forms the
+background of my present view.  The illusion is extremely picturesque,--
+such as Allston himself would despair of producing.  'Who can paint like
+Nature'? "
+
+To a population like that of Lowell, the weekly respite from monotonous
+in-door toil afforded by the first day of the week is particularly
+grateful.  Sabbath comes to the weary and overworked operative
+emphatically as a day of rest.  It opens upon him somewhat as it did
+upon George Herbert, as he describes it in his exquisite little poem:--
+
+               "Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
+               The bridal of the earth and sky!"
+
+Apart from its soothing religious associations, it brings with it the
+assurance of physical comfort and freedom.  It is something to be able
+to doze out the morning from daybreak to breakfast in that luxurious
+state between sleeping and waking in which the mind eddies slowly and
+peacefully round and round instead of rushing onward,--the future a
+blank, the past annihilated, the present but a dim consciousness of
+pleasurable existence.  Then, too, the satisfaction is by no means
+inconsiderable of throwing aside the worn and soiled habiliments of
+labor and appearing in neat and comfortable attire.  The moral influence
+of dress has not been overrated even by Carlyle's Professor in his
+Sartor Resartus.  William Penn says that cleanliness is akin to
+godliness.  A well-dressed man, all other things being equal, is not
+half as likely to compromise his character as one who approximates to
+shabbiness.  Lawrence Sterne used to say that when he felt himself
+giving way to low spirits and a sense of depression and worthlessness,--
+a sort of predisposition for all sorts of little meannesses,--he
+forthwith shaved himself, brushed his wig, donned his best dress and his
+gold rings, and thus put to flight the azure demons of his unfortunate
+temperament.  There is somehow a close affinity between moral purity and
+clean linen; and the sprites of our daily temptation, who seem to find
+easy access to us through a broken hat or a rent in the elbow, are
+manifestly baffled by the "complete mail" of a clean and decent dress.
+I recollect on one occasion hearing my mother tell our family physician
+that a woman in the neighborhood, not remarkable for her tidiness, had
+become a church-member.  "Humph!" said the doctor, in his quick,
+sarcastic way, "What of that?  Don't you know that no unclean thing can
+enter the kingdom of heaven?"
+
+"If you would see" Lowell "aright," as Walter Scott says of Melrose
+Abbey, one must be here of a pleasant First day at the close of what is
+called the "afternoon service."  The streets are then blossoming like a
+peripatetic flower-garden; as if the tulips and lilies and roses of my
+friend W.'s nursery, in the vale of Nonantum, should take it into their
+heads to promenade for exercise.  Thousands swarm forth who during week-
+days are confined to the mills.  Gay colors alternate with snowy
+whiteness; extremest fashion elbows the plain demureness of old-
+fashioned Methodism.
+
+Fair pale faces catch a warmer tint from the free sunshine and fresh
+air.  The languid step becomes elastic with that "springy motion of the
+gait" which Charles Lamb admired.  Yet the general appearance of the
+city is that of quietude; the youthful multitude passes on calmly, its
+voices subdued to a lower and softened tone, as if fearful of breaking
+the repose of the day of rest.  A stranger fresh from the gayly spent
+Sabbaths of the continent of Europe would be undoubtedly amazed at the
+decorum and sobriety of these crowded streets.
+
+I am not over-precise in outward observances; but I nevertheless welcome
+with joy unfeigned this first day of the week,--sweetest pause in our
+hard life-march, greenest resting-place in the hot desert we are
+treading.  The errors of those who mistake its benignant rest for the
+iron rule of the Jewish Sabbath, and who consequently hedge it about
+with penalties and bow down before it in slavish terror, should not
+render us less grateful for the real blessing it brings us.  As a day
+wrested in some degree from the god of this world, as an opportunity
+afforded for thoughtful self-communing, let us receive it as a good gift
+of our heavenly Parent in love rather than fear.
+
+In passing along Central Street this morning my attention was directed
+by the friend who accompanied me to a group of laborers, with coats off
+and sleeves rolled up, heaving at levers, smiting with sledge-hammers,
+in full view of the street, on the margin of the canal, just above
+Central Street Bridge.  I rubbed my eyes, half expecting that I was the
+subject of mere optical illusion; but a second look only confirmed the
+first.  Around me were solemn, go-to-meeting faces,--smileless and
+awful; and close at hand were the delving, toiling, mud-begrimed
+laborers.  Nobody seemed surprised at it; nobody noticed it as a thing
+out of the common course of events.  And this, too, in a city where the
+Sabbath proprieties are sternly insisted upon; where some twenty pulpits
+deal out anathemas upon all who "desecrate the Lord's day;" where simple
+notices of meetings for moral purposes even can scarcely be read; where
+many count it wrong to speak on that day for the slave, who knows no
+Sabbath of rest, or for the drunkard, who, imbruted by his appetites,
+cannot enjoy it.  Verily there are strange contradictions in our
+conventional morality.  Eyes which, looking across the Atlantic on the
+gay Sabbath dances of French peasants are turned upward with horror, are
+somehow blind to matters close at home.  What would be sin past
+repentance in an individual becomes quite proper in a corporation.
+True, the Sabbath is holy; but the canals must be repaired.  Everybody
+ought to go to meeting; but the dividends must not be diminished.
+Church indulgences are not, after all, confined to Rome.
+
+To a close observer of human nature there is nothing surprising in the
+fact that a class of persons, who wink at this sacrifice of Sabhath
+sanctities to the demon of gain, look at the same time with stern
+disapprobation upon everything partaking of the character of amusement,
+however innocent and healthful, on this day.  But for myself, looking
+down through the light of a golden evening upon these quietly passing
+groups, I cannot find it in my heart to condemn them for seeking on this
+their sole day of leisure the needful influences of social enjoyment,
+unrestrained exercise, and fresh air.  I cannot think any essential
+service to religion or humanity would result from the conversion of
+their day of rest into a Jewish Sabbath, and their consequent
+confinement, like so many pining prisoners, in close and crowded
+boarding-houses.  Is not cheerfulness a duty, a better expression of our
+gratitude for God's blessings than mere words?  And even under the old
+law of rituals, what answer had the Pharisees to the question, "Is it
+not lawful to do good on the Sabbath day?"
+
+I am naturally of a sober temperament, and am, besides, a member of that
+sect which Dr. More has called, mistakenly indeed, "the most melancholy
+of all;" but I confess a special dislike of disfigured faces,
+ostentatious displays of piety, pride aping humility.  Asceticism,
+moroseness, self-torture, ingratitude in view of down-showering
+blessings, and painful restraint of the better feelings of our nature
+may befit a Hindoo fakir, or a Mandan medicine man with buffalo skulls
+strung to his lacerated muscles; but they look to me sadly out of place
+in a believer of the glad evangel of the New Testament.  The life of the
+divine Teacher affords no countenance to this sullen and gloomy
+saintliness, shutting up the heart against the sweet influences of human
+sympathy and the blessed ministrations of Nature.  To the horror and
+clothes-rending astonishment of blind Pharisees He uttered the
+significant truth, that "the Sabhath was made for man, and not man for
+the Sabhath."  From the close air of crowded cities, from thronged
+temples and synagogues,--where priest and Levite kept up a show of
+worship, drumming upon hollow ceremonials the more loudly for their
+emptiness of life, as the husk rustles the more when the grain is gone,
+--He led His disciples out into the country stillness, under clear
+Eastern heavens, on the breezy tops of mountains, in the shade of fruit-
+trees, by the side of fountains, and through yellow harvest-fields,
+enforcing the lessons of His divine morality by comparisons and parables
+suggested by the objects around Him or the cheerful incidents of social
+humanity,--the vineyard, the field-lily, the sparrow in the air, the
+sower in the seed-field, the feast and the marriage.  Thus gently, thus
+sweetly kind and cheerful, fell from His lips the gospel of humanity;
+love the fulfilling of every law; our love for one another measuring and
+manifesting our love of Him.  The baptism wherewith He was baptized was
+that of divine fulness in the wants of our humanity; the deep waters of
+our sorrows went over Him; ineffable purity sounding for our sakes the
+dark abysm of sin; yet how like a river of light runs that serene and
+beautiful life through the narratives of the evangelists!  He broke
+bread with the poor despised publican; He sat down with the fishermen by
+the Sea of Galilee; He spoke compassionate words to sin-sick Magdalen;
+He sanctified by His presence the social enjoyments of home and
+friendship in the family of Bethany; He laid His hand of blessing on the
+sunny brows of children; He had regard even to the merely animal wants
+of the multitude in the wilderness; He frowned upon none of life's
+simple and natural pleasures.  The burden of His Gospel was love; and in
+life and word He taught evermore the divided and scattered children of
+one great family that only as they drew near each other could they
+approach Him who was their common centre; and that while no ostentation
+of prayer nor rigid observance of ceremonies could elevate man to
+heaven, the simple exercise of love, in thought and action, could bring
+heaven down to man.  To weary and restless spirits He taught the great
+truth, that happiness consists in making others happy.  No cloister for
+idle genuflections and bead counting, no hair-cloth for the loins nor
+scourge for the limbs, but works of love and usefulness under the
+cheerful sunshine, making the waste places of humanity glad and causing
+the heart's desert to blossom.  Why, then, should we go searching after
+the cast-off sackcloth of the Pharisee?  Are we Jews, or Christians?
+Must even our gratitude for "glad tidings of great joy" be desponding?
+Must the hymn of our thanksgiving for countless mercies and the,
+unspeakable gift of His life have evermore an undertone of funeral
+wailing?  What! shall we go murmuring and lamenting, looking coldly on
+one another, seeing no beauty, nor light, nor gladness in this good
+world, wherein we have the glorious privilege of laboring in God's
+harvest-field, with angels for our task companions, blessing and being
+blessed?
+
+To him who, neglecting the revelations of immediate duty, looks
+regretfully behind and fearfully before him, life may well seem a solemn
+mystery, for, whichever way he turns, a wall of darkness rises before
+him; but down upon the present, as through a skylight between the
+shadows, falls a clear, still radiance, like beams from an eye of
+blessing; and, within the circle of that divine illumination, beauty and
+goodness, truth and love, purity and cheerfulness blend like primal
+colors into the clear harmony of light.  The author of Proverbial
+Philosophy has a passage not unworthy of note in this connection, when
+he speaks of the train which attends the just in heaven:--
+
+"Also in the lengthening troop see I some clad in robes of triumph,
+Whose fair and sunny faces I have known and loved on earth.
+Welcome, ye glorified Loves, Graces, Sciences, and Muses,
+That, like Sisters of Charity, tended in this world's hospital;
+Welcome, for verily I knew ye could not but be children of the light;
+Welcome, chiefly welcome, for I find I have friends in heaven,
+And some I have scarcely looked for; as thou, light-hearted Mirth;
+Thou, also, star-robed Urania; and thou with the curious glass,
+That rejoicest in tracking beauty where the eye was too dull to note it.
+And art thou, too, among the blessed, mild, much-injured Poetry?
+That quickenest with light and beauty the leaden face of matter,
+That not unheard, though silent, fillest earth's gardens with music,
+And not unseen, though a spirit, dost look down upon us from the stars."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             THE LIGHTING UP.
+
+          "He spak to the spynnsters to spynnen it oute."
+                                                  PIERS PLOUGHMAN.
+
+THIS evening, the 20th of the ninth month, is the time fixed upon for
+lighting the mills for night-labor; and I have just returned from
+witnessing for the first time the effect of the new illumination.
+
+Passing over the bridge, nearly to the Dracut shore, I had a fine view
+of the long line of mills, the city beyond, and the broad sweep of the
+river from the falls.  The light of a tranquil and gorgeous sunset was
+slowly fading from river and sky, and the shadows of the trees on the
+Dracut slopes were blending in dusky indistinctness with the great
+shadow of night.  Suddenly gleams of light broke from the black masses
+of masonry on the Lowell bank, at first feeble and scattered, flitting
+from window to window, appearing and disappearing, like will-o'-wisps in
+a forest or fireflies in a summer's night.  Anon tier after tier of
+windows became radiant, until the whole vast wall, stretching far up the
+river, from basement to roof, became checkered with light reflected with
+the starbeams from the still water beneath.  With a little effort of
+fancy, one could readily transform the huge mills, thus illuminated,
+into palaces lighted up for festival occasions, and the figures of the
+workers, passing to and fro before the windows, into forms of beauty and
+fashion, moving in graceful dances.
+
+Alas! this music of the shuttle and the daylong dance to it are not
+altogether of the kind which Milton speaks of when he invokes the "soft
+Lydian airs" of voluptuous leisure.  From this time henceforward for
+half a weary year, from the bell-call of morning twilight to half-past
+seven in the evening, with brief intermissions for two hasty meals, the
+operatives will be confined to their tasks.  The proverbial facility of
+the Yankees in despatching their dinners in the least possible time
+seems to have been taken advantage of and reduced to a system on the
+Lowell corporations.  Strange as it may seem to the uninitiated, the
+working-men and women here contrive to repair to their lodgings, make
+the necessary preliminary ablutions, devour their beef and pudding, and
+hurry back to their looms and jacks in the brief space of half an hour.
+In this way the working-day in Lowell is eked out to an average
+throughout the year of twelve and a half hours.  This is a serious evil,
+demanding the earnest consideration of the humane and philanthropic.
+Both classes--the employer and the employed--would in the end be greatly
+benefited by the general adoption of the "ten-hour system," although the
+one might suffer a slight diminution in daily wages and the other in
+yearly profits.  Yet it is difficult to see how this most desirable
+change is to be effected.  The stronger and healthier portion of the
+operatives might themselves object to it as strenuously as the distant
+stockholder who looks only to his semi-annual dividends.  Health is too
+often a matter of secondary consideration.  Gain is the great,
+all-absorbing object.  Very few, comparatively, regard Lowell as their
+"continuing city."  They look longingly back to green valleys of
+Vermont, to quiet farm-houses on the head-waters of the Connecticut and
+Merrimac, and to old familiar homes along the breezy seaboard of New
+England, whence they have been urged by the knowledge that here they can
+earn a larger amount of money in a given time than in any other place or
+employment.  They come here for gain, not for pleasure; for high wages,
+not for the comforts that cluster about home.  Here are poor widows
+toiling to educate their children; daughters hoarding their wages to
+redeem mortgaged paternal homesteads or to defray the expenses of sick
+and infirm parents; young betrothed girls, about to add their savings to
+those of their country lovers.  Others there are, of maturer age, lonely
+and poor, impelled hither by a proud unwillingness to test to its extent
+the charity of friends and relatives, and a strong yearning for the
+"glorious privilege of being independent."  All honor to them!  Whatever
+may have closed against them the gates of matrimony, whether their own
+obduracy or the faithlessness or indifference of others, instead of
+shutting themselves up in a nunnery or taxing the good nature of their
+friends by perpetual demands for sympathy and support, like weak vines,
+putting out their feelers in every direction for something to twine
+upon, is it not better and wiser for them to go quietly at work, to show
+that woman has a self-sustaining power; that she is something in and of
+herself; that she, too, has a part to bear in life, and, in common with
+the self-elected "lords of creation," has a direct relation to absolute
+being?  To such the factory presents the opportunity of taking the first
+and essential step of securing, within a reasonable space of time, a
+comfortable competency.
+
+There are undoubtedly many evils connected with the working of these
+mills; yet they are partly compensated by the fact that here, more than
+in any other mechanical employment, the labor of woman is placed
+essentially upon an equality with that of man.  Here, at least, one of
+the many social disabilities under which woman as a distinct individual,
+unconnected with the other sex, has labored in all time is removed; the
+work of her hands is adequately rewarded; and she goes to her daily task
+with the consciousness that she is not "spending her strength for
+naught."
+
+'The Lowell Offering', which has been for the last four years published
+monthly in this city, consisting entirely of articles written by females
+employed in the mills, has attracted much attention and obtained a wide
+circulation.  This may be in part owing to the novel circumstances of
+its publication; but it is something more and better than a mere
+novelty.  In its volumes may be found sprightly delineations of home
+scenes and characters, highly wrought imaginative pieces, tales of
+genuine pathos and humor, and pleasing fairy stories and fables.
+'The Offering' originated in a reading society of the mill girls, which,
+under the name of the 'Improvement Circle' was convened once in a month.
+At its meetings, pieces written by its members and dropped secretly into
+a sort of "lion's mouth," provided for the purpose of insuring the
+authors from detection, were read for the amusement and criticism of
+the company.  This circle is still in existence; and I owe to my
+introduction to it some of the most pleasant hours I have passed in
+Lowell.
+
+The manner in which the 'Offering' has been generally noticed in this
+country has not, to my thinking, been altogether in accordance with good
+taste or self-respect.  It is hardly excusable for men, who, whatever
+may be their present position, have, in common with all of us, brothers,
+sisters, or other relations busy in workshop and dairy, and who have
+scarcely washed from their own professional hands the soil of labor, to
+make very marked demonstrations of astonishment at the appearance of a
+magazine whose papers are written by factory girls.  As if the
+compatibility of mental cultivation with bodily labor and the equality
+and brotherhood of the human family were still open questions, depending
+for their decision very much on the production of positive proof that
+essays may be written and carpets woven by the same set of fingers!
+
+The truth is, our democracy lacks calmness and solidity, the repose and
+self-reliance which come of long habitude and settled conviction.  We
+have not yet learned to wear its simple truths with the graceful ease
+and quiet air of unsolicitous assurance with which the titled European
+does his social fictions.  As a people, we do not feel and live out our
+great Declaration.  We lack faith in man,--confidence in simple
+humanity, apart from its environments.
+
+         "The age shows, to my thinking, more infidels to Adam,
+          Than directly, by profession, simple infidels to God."
+
+                                        Elizabeth B. Browning.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             TAKING COMFORT.
+
+For the last few days the fine weather has lured me away from books and
+papers and the close air of dwellings into the open fields, and under
+the soft, warm sunshine, and the softer light of a full moon.  The
+loveliest season of the whole year--that transient but delightful
+interval between the storms of the "wild equinox, with all their wet,"
+and the dark, short, dismal days which precede the rigor of winter--is
+now with us.  The sun rises through a soft and hazy atmosphere; the
+light mist-clouds melt gradually away before him; and his noontide light
+rests warm and clear on still woods, tranquil waters, and grasses green
+with the late autumnal rains.  The rough-wooded slopes of Dracut,
+overlooking the falls of the river; Fort Hill, across the Concord, where
+the red man made his last stand, and where may still be seen the trench
+which he dug around his rude fortress; the beautiful woodlands on the
+Lowell and Tewksbury shores of the Concord; the cemetery; the Patucket
+Falls,--all within the reach of a moderate walk,--offer at this season
+their latest and loveliest attractions.
+
+One fine morning, not long ago, I strolled down the Merrimac, on the
+Tewksbury shore.  I know of no walk in the vicinity of Lowell so
+inviting as that along the margin of the river for nearly a mile from
+the village of Belvidere.  The path winds, green and flower-skirted,
+among beeches and oaks, through whose boughs you catch glimpses of
+waters sparkling and dashing below.  Rocks, huge and picturesque,
+jut out into the stream, affording beautiful views of the river and
+the distant city.
+
+Half fatigued with my walk, I threw myself down upon the rocky slope
+of the bank, where the panorama of earth, sky, and water lay clear and
+distinct about me.  Far above, silent and dim as a picture, was the
+city, with its huge mill-masonry, confused chimney-tops, and church-
+spires; nearer rose the height of Belvidere, with its deserted burial-
+place and neglected gravestones sharply defined on its bleak, bare
+summit against the sky; before me the river went dashing down its rugged
+channel, sending up its everlasting murmur; above me the birch-tree hung
+its tassels; and the last wild flowers of autumn profusely fringed the
+rocky rim of the water.  Right opposite, the Dracut woods stretched
+upwards from the shore, beautiful with the hues of frost, glowing with
+tints richer and deeper than those which Claude or Poussin mingled, as
+if the rainbows of a summer shower had fallen among them.  At a little
+distance to the right a group of cattle stood mid-leg deep in the river;
+and a troop of children, bright-eyed and mirthful, were casting pebbles
+at them from a projecting shelf of rock.  Over all a warm but softened
+sunshine melted down from a slumberous autumnal sky.
+
+My revery was disagreeably broken.  A low, grunting sound, half bestial,
+half human, attracted my attention.  I was not alone.  Close beside me,
+half hidden by a tuft of bushes, lay a human being, stretched out at
+full length, with his face literally rooted into the gravel.  A little
+boy, five or six years of age, clean and healthful, with his fair brown
+locks and blue eyes, stood on the bank above, gazing down upon him with
+an expression of childhood's simple and unaffected pity.
+
+"What ails you?" asked the boy at length.  "What makes you lie there?"
+
+The prostrate groveller struggled half-way up, exhibiting the bloated
+and filthy countenance of a drunkard.  He made two or three efforts to
+get upon his feet, lost his balance, and tumbled forward upon his face.
+
+"What are you doing there?"  inquired the boy.
+
+"I'm taking comfort," he muttered, with his mouth in the dirt.
+
+Taking his comfort!  There he lay,--squalid and loathsome under the
+bright heaven,--an imbruted man.  The holy harmonies of Nature, the
+sounds of gushing waters, the rustle of the leaves above him, the wild
+flowers, the frost-bloom of the woods,--what were they to him?
+Insensible, deaf, and blind, in the stupor of a living death, he lay
+there, literally realizing that most bitterly significant Eastern
+malediction, "May you eat dirt!"
+
+In contrasting the exceeding beauty and harmony of inanimate Nature with
+the human degradation and deformity before me, I felt, as I confess I
+had never done before, the truth of a remark of a rare thinker, that
+"Nature is loved as the city of God, although, or rather because, it has
+no citizen.  The beauty of Nature must ever be universal and mocking
+until the landscape has human figures as good as itself.  Man is fallen;
+Nature is erect."--[Emerson.]  As I turned once more to the calm blue
+sky, the hazy autumnal hills, and the slumberous water, dream-tinted by
+the foliage of its shores, it seemed as if a shadow of shame and sorrow
+fell over the pleasant picture; and even the west wind which stirred the
+tree-tops above me had a mournful murmur, as if Nature felt the
+desecration of her sanctities and the discord of sin and folly which
+marred her sweet harmonies.
+
+God bless the temperance movement!  And He will bless it; for it is His
+work.  It is one of the great miracles of our times.  Not Father Mathew
+in Ireland, nor Hawkins and his little band in Baltimore, but He whose
+care is over all the works of His hand, and who in His divine love and
+compassion "turneth the hearts of men as the rivers of waters are
+turned," hath done it.  To Him be all the glory.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         CHARMS AND FAIRY FAITH
+
+                         "Up the airy mountain,
+                         Down the rushy glen,
+                         We dare n't go a-hunting
+                         For fear of little men.
+                         Wee folk, good folk,
+                         Trooping all together;
+                         Green jacket, red cap,
+                         Gray cock's feather."
+                                        ALLINGHAM.
+
+IT was from a profound knowledge of human nature that Lord Bacon, in
+discoursing upon truth, remarked that a mixture of a lie doth ever add
+pleasure.  "Doth any man doubt," he asks, "that if there were taken out
+of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, and
+imaginations, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor,
+shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to
+themselves?"  This admitted tendency of our nature, this love of the
+pleasing intoxication of unveracity, exaggeration, and imagination, may
+perhaps account for the high relish which children and nations yet in
+the childhood of civilization find in fabulous legends and tales of
+wonder.  The Arab at the present day listens with eager interest to the
+same tales of genii and afrits, sorcerers and enchanted princesses,
+which delighted his ancestors in the times of Haroun al Raschid.  The
+gentle, church-going Icelander of our time beguiles the long night of
+his winter with the very sagas and runes which thrilled with not
+unpleasing horror the hearts of the old Norse sea-robbers.  What child,
+although Anglo-Saxon born, escapes a temporary sojourn in fairy-land?
+Who of us does not remember the intense satisfaction of throwing aside
+primer and spelling-book for stolen ethnographical studies of dwarfs,
+and giants?  Even in our own country and time old superstitions and
+credulities still cling to life with feline tenacity.  Here and there,
+oftenest in our fixed, valley-sheltered, inland villages,--slumberous
+Rip Van Winkles, unprogressive and seldom visited,--may be found the
+same old beliefs in omens, warnings, witchcraft, and supernatural charms
+which our ancestors brought with them two centuries ago from Europe.
+
+The practice of charms, or what is popularly called "trying projects,"
+is still, to some extent, continued in New England.  The inimitable
+description which Burns gives of similar practices in his Halloween may
+not in all respects apply to these domestic conjurations; but the
+following needs only the substitution of apple-seeds for nuts:--
+
+"The auld gude wife's wheel-hoordet nits
+Are round an' round divided;
+An' mony lads and lassies' fates
+Are there that night decided.
+Some kindle couthie side by side
+An' burn thegither trimly;
+Some start awa wi' saucy pride
+And jump out owre the chimlie."
+
+One of the most common of these "projects" is as follows: A young woman
+goes down into the cellar, or into a dark room, with a mirror in her
+hand, and looking in it, sees the face of her future husband peering at
+her through the darkness,--the mirror being, for the time, as potent as
+the famous Cambuscan glass of which Chaucer discourses.  A neighbor of
+mine, in speaking of this conjuration, adduces a case in point.  One of
+her schoolmates made the experiment and saw the face of a strange man in
+the glass; and many years afterwards she saw the very man pass her
+father's door.  He proved to be an English emigrant just landed, and in
+due time became her husband.  Burns alludes to something like the spell
+above described:--
+
+"Wee Jenny to her grannie says,
+'will ye go wi' me, grannie,
+To eat an apple at the glass
+I got from Uncle Johnnie?'
+She fuff't her pipe wi' sic a lunt,
+In wrath she was so vaporin',
+She noticed na an' azle brunt
+Her bran new worset apron.
+
+"Ye little skelpan-limmer's face,
+How dare ye try sic sportin',
+An' seek the foul thief ony place
+For him to try your fortune?
+Nae doubt but ye may get a sight;
+Great cause ye hae to fear it;
+For mony a one has gotten a fright,
+An' lived and died delecrit."
+
+It is not to be denied, and for truth's sake not to be regretted, that
+this amusing juvenile glammary has seen its best days in New England.
+The schoolmaster has been abroad to some purpose.  Not without results
+have our lyceum lecturers and travels of Peter Parley brought everything
+in heaven above and in the earth below to the level of childhood's
+capacities.  In our cities and large towns children nowadays pass
+through the opening acts of life's marvellous drama with as little
+manifestation of wonder and surprise as the Indian does through the
+streets of a civilized city which he has entered for the first time.
+Yet Nature, sooner or later, vindicates her mysteries; voices from the
+unseen penetrate the din of civilization.  The child philosopher and
+materialist often becomes the visionary of riper years, running into
+illuminism, magnetism, and transcendentalism, with its inspired priests
+and priestesses, its revelations and oracular responses.
+
+But in many a green valley of rural New England there are children yet;
+boys and girls are still to be found not quite overtaken by the march of
+mind.  There, too, are huskings, and apple-bees, and quilting parties,
+and huge old-fashioned fireplaces piled with crackling walnut, flinging
+its rosy light over happy countenances of youth and scarcely less happy
+age.  If it be true that, according to Cornelius Agrippa, "a wood fire
+doth drive away dark spirits," it is, nevertheless, also true that
+around it the simple superstitions of our ancestors still love to
+linger; and there the half-sportful, half-serious charms of which I have
+spoken are oftenest resorted to.  It would be altogether out of place to
+think of them by our black, unsightly stoves, or in the dull and dark
+monotony of our furnace-heated rooms.  Within the circle of the light of
+the open fire safely might the young conjurers question destiny; for
+none but kindly and gentle messengers from wonderland could venture
+among them.  And who of us, looking back to those long autumnal evenings
+of childhood when the glow of the kitchen-fire rested on the beloved
+faces of home, does not feel that there is truth and beauty in what the
+quaint old author just quoted affirms?  "As the spirits of darkness grow
+stronger in the dark, so good spirits, which are angels of light, are
+multiplied and strengthened, not only by the divine light of the sun and
+stars, but also by the light of our common wood-fires."  Even Lord
+Bacon, in condemning the superstitious beliefs of his day, admits that
+they might serve for winter talk around the fireside.
+
+Fairy faith is, we may safely say, now dead everywhere,--buried,
+indeed,--for the mad painter Blake saw the funeral of the last of the
+little people, and an irreverent English bishop has sung their requiem.
+It never had much hold upon the Yankee mind, our superstitions being
+mostly of a sterner and less poetical kind.  The Irish Presbyterians who
+settled in New Hampshire about the year 1720 brought indeed with them,
+among other strange matters, potatoes and fairies; but while the former
+took root and flourished among us, the latter died out, after lingering
+a few years in a very melancholy and disconsolate way, looking
+regretfully back to their green turf dances, moonlight revels, and
+cheerful nestling around the shealing fires of Ireland.  The last that
+has been heard of them was some forty or fifty years ago in a tavern
+house in S-------, New Hampshire.  The landlord was a spiteful little
+man, whose sour, pinched look was a standing libel upon the state of his
+larder.  He made his house so uncomfortable by his moroseness that
+travellers even at nightfall pushed by his door and drove to the next
+town.  Teamsters and drovers, who in those days were apt to be very
+thirsty, learned, even before temperance societies were thought of, to
+practice total abstinence on that road, and cracked their whips and
+goaded on their teams in full view of a most tempting array of bottles
+and glasses, from behind which the surly little landlord glared out upon
+them with a look which seemed expressive of all sorts of evil wishes,
+broken legs, overturned carriages, spavined horses, sprained oxen,
+unsavory poultry, damaged butter, and bad markets.  And if, as a matter
+of necessity, to "keep the cold out of his stomach," occasionally a
+wayfarer stopped his team and ventured to call for "somethin' warmin',"
+the testy publican stirred up the beverage in such a spiteful way, that,
+on receiving it foaming from his hand, the poor customer was half afraid
+to open his mouth, lest the red-hot flip iron should be plunged down his
+gullet.
+
+As a matter of course, poverty came upon the house and its tenants like
+an armed man.  Loose clapboards rattled in the wind; rags fluttered from
+the broken windows; within doors were tattered children and scanty fare.
+The landlord's wife was a stout, buxom woman, of Irish lineage, and,
+what with scolding her husband and liberally patronizing his bar in his
+absence, managed to keep, as she said, her "own heart whole," although
+the same could scarcely be said of her children's trousers and her own
+frock of homespun.  She confidently predicted that "a betther day was
+coming," being, in fact, the only thing hopeful about the premises.  And
+it did come, sure enough.  Not only all the regular travellers on the
+road made a point of stopping at the tavern, but guests from all the
+adjacent towns filled its long-deserted rooms,--the secret of which was,
+that it had somehow got abroad that a company of fairies had taken up
+their abode in the hostelry and daily held conversation with each other
+in the capacious parlor.  I have heard those who at the time visited the
+tavern say that it was literally thronged for several weeks.  Small,
+squeaking voices spoke in a sort of Yankee-Irish dialect, in the haunted
+room, to the astonishment and admiration of hundreds.  The inn, of
+course, was blessed by this fairy visitation; the clapboards ceased
+their racket, clear panes took the place of rags in the sashes, and the
+little till under the bar grew daily heavy with coin.  The magical
+influence extended even farther; for it was observable that the landlord
+wore a good-natured face, and that the landlady's visits to the gin-
+bottle were less and less frequent.  But the thing could not, in the
+nature of the case, continue long.  It was too late in the day and on
+the wrong side of the water.  As the novelty wore off, people began to
+doubt and reason about it.  Had the place been traversed by a ghost or
+disturbed by a witch they could have acquiesced in it very quietly; but
+this outlandish belief in fairies was altogether an overtask for Yankee
+credulity.  As might have been expected, the little strangers, unable to
+breathe in an atmosphere of doubt and suspicion, soon took their leave,
+shaking off the dust of their elfin feet as a testimony against an
+unbelieving generation.  It was, indeed, said that certain rude fellows
+from the Bay State pulled away a board from the ceiling and disclosed to
+view the fairies in the shape of the landlady's three slatternly
+daughters.  But the reader who has any degree of that charity which
+thinks no evil will rather credit the statement of the fairies
+themselves, as reported by the mistress of the house, "that they were
+tired of the new country, and had no pace of their lives among the
+Yankees, and were going back to Ould Ireland."
+
+It is a curious fact that the Indians had some notion of a race of
+beings corresponding in many respects to the English fairies.
+Schoolcraft describes them as small creatures in human shape, inhabiting
+rocks, crags, and romantic dells, and delighting especially in points of
+land jutting into lakes and rivers and which were covered with
+pinetrees.  They were called Puckweedjinees,--little vanishers.
+
+In a poetical point of view it is to be regretted that our ancestors did
+not think it worth their while to hand down to us more of the simple and
+beautiful traditions and beliefs of the "heathen round about" them.
+Some hints of them we glean from the writings of the missionary Mayhew
+and the curious little book of Roger Williams.  Especially would one
+like to know more of that domestic demon, Wetuomanit, who presided over
+household affairs, assisted the young squaw in her first essay at
+wigwam-keeping, gave timely note of danger, and kept evil spirits at a
+distance,--a kind of new-world brownie, gentle and useful.
+
+Very suggestive, too, is the story of Pumoolah,--a mighty spirit, whose
+home is on the great Katahdin Mountain, sitting there with his earthly
+bride (a beautiful daughter of the Penobscots transformed into an
+immortal by her love), in serenest sunshine, above the storm which
+crouches and growls at his feet.  None but the perfectly pure and good
+can reach his abode.  Many have from time to time attempted it in vain;
+some, after almost reaching the summit, have been driven back by
+thunderbolts or sleety whirlwinds.
+
+Not far from my place of residence are the ruins of a mill, in a narrow
+ravine fringed with trees.  Some forty years ago the mill was supposed
+to be haunted; and horse-shoes, in consequence, were nailed over its
+doors.  One worthy man, whose business lay beyond the mill, was afraid
+to pass it alone; and his wife, who was less fearful of supernatural
+annoyance, used to accompany him.  The little old white-coated miller,
+who there ground corn and wheat for his neighbors, whenever he made a
+particularly early visit to his mill, used to hear it in full
+operation,--the water-wheel dashing bravely, and the old rickety
+building clattering to the jar of the stones.  Yet the moment his hand
+touched the latch or his foot the threshold all was hushed save the
+melancholy drip of water from the dam or the low gurgle of the small
+stream eddying amidst willow roots and mossy stones in the ravine below.
+
+This haunted mill has always reminded me of that most beautiful of
+Scottish ballads, the Song of the Elfin Miller, in which fairies are
+represented as grinding the poor man's grist without toil:--
+
+              "Full merrily rings the mill-stone round;
+               Full merrily rings the wheel;
+               Full merrily gushes out the grist;
+               Come, taste my fragrant meal.
+               The miller he's a warldly man,
+               And maun hae double fee;
+               So draw the sluice in the churl's dam
+               And let the stream gae free!"
+
+Brainerd, who truly deserves the name of an American poet, has left
+behind him a ballad on the Indian legend of the black fox which haunted
+Salmon River, a tributary of the Connecticut.  Its wild and picturesque
+beauty causes us to regret that more of the still lingering traditions
+of the red men have not been made the themes of his verse:--
+
+
+                          THE BLACK FOX.
+
+               "How cold, how beautiful, how bright
+               The cloudless heaven above us shines!
+               But 't is a howling winter's night;
+               'T would freeze the very forest pines.
+
+               "The winds are up while mortals sleep;
+               The stars look forth while eyes are shut;
+               The bolted snow lies drifted deep
+               Around our poor and lonely hut.
+
+               "With silent step and listening ear,
+               With bow and arrow, dog and gun,
+               We'll mark his track,--his prowl we hear:
+               Now is our time!  Come on! come on!
+
+               "O'er many a fence, through many a wood,
+               Following the dog's bewildered scent,
+               In anxious haste and earnest mood,
+               The white man and the Indian went.
+
+               "The gun is cocked; the bow is bent;
+               The dog stands with uplifted paw;
+               And ball and arrow both are sent,
+               Aimed at the prowler's very jaw.
+
+               "The ball to kill that fox is run
+               Not in a mould by mortals made;
+               The arrow which that fox should shun
+               Was never shaped from earthly reed.
+
+               "The Indian Druids of the wood
+               Know where the fatal arrows grow;
+               They spring not by the summer flood;
+               They pierce not through the winter's snow.
+
+               "Why cowers the dog, whose snuffing nose
+               Was never once deceived till now?
+               And why amidst the chilling snows
+               Does either hunter wipe his brow?
+
+               "For once they see his fearful den;
+               'T is a dark cloud that slowly moves
+               By night around the homes of men,
+               By day along the stream it loves.
+
+               "Again the dog is on the track,
+               The hunters chase o'er dale and hill;
+               They may not, though they would, look back;
+               They must go forward, forward still.
+
+               "Onward they go, and never turn,
+               Amidst a night which knows no day;
+               For nevermore shall morning sun
+               Light them upon their endless way.
+
+               "The hut is desolate; and there
+               The famished dog alone returns;
+               On the cold steps he makes his lair;
+               By the shut door he lays his bones.
+
+               "Now the tired sportsman leans his gun
+               Against the ruins on its site,
+               And ponders on the hunting done
+               By the lost wanderers of the night.
+
+               "And there the little country girls
+               Will stop to whisper, listen, and look,
+               And tell, while dressing their sunny curls,
+               Of the Black Fox of Salmon Brook."
+
+The same writer has happily versified a pleasant superstition of the
+valley of the Connecticut.  It is supposed that shad are led from the
+Gulf of Mexico to the Connecticut by a kind of Yankee bogle in the shape
+of a bird.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         THE SHAD SPIRIT.
+
+          "Now drop the bolt, and securely nail
+          The horse-shoe over the door;
+          'T is a wise precaution; and, if it should fail,
+          It never failed before.
+
+          "Know ye the shepherd that gathers his flock
+          Where the gales of the equinox blow
+          From each unknown reef and sunken rock
+          In the Gulf of Mexico,--
+
+          "While the monsoons growl, and the trade-winds bark,
+          And the watch-dogs of the surge
+          Pursue through the wild waves the ravenous shark
+          That prowls around their charge?
+
+          "To fair Connecticut's northernmost source,
+          O'er sand-bars, rapids, and falls,
+          The Shad Spirit holds his onward course
+          With the flocks which his whistle calls.
+
+          "Oh, how shall he know where he went before?
+          Will he wander around forever?
+          The last year's shad heads shall shine on the shore,
+          To light him up the river.
+
+          "And well can he tell the very time
+          To undertake his task
+          When the pork-barrel's low he sits on the chine
+          And drums on the empty cask.
+
+          "The wind is light, and the wave is white
+          With the fleece of the flock that's near;
+          Like the breath of the breeze he comes over the seas
+          And faithfully leads them here.
+
+          "And now he 's passed the bolted door
+          Where the rusted horse-shoe clings;
+          So carry the nets to the nearest shore,
+          And take what the Shad Spirit brings."
+
+The comparatively innocent nature and simple poetic beauty of this class
+of superstitions have doubtless often induced the moralist to hesitate
+in exposing their absurdity, and, like Burns in view of his national
+thistle, to:
+
+              "Turn the weeding hook aside
+               And spare the symbol dear."
+
+But the age has fairly outgrown them, and they are falling away by a
+natural process of exfoliation.  The wonderland of childhood must
+henceforth be sought within the domains of truth.  The strange facts of
+natural history, and the sweet mysteries of flowers and forests, and
+hills and waters, will profitably take the place of the fairy lore of
+the past, and poetry and romance still hold their accustomed seats in
+the circle of home, without bringing with them the evil spirits of
+credulity and untruth.  Truth should be the first lesson of the child
+and the last aspiration of manhood; for it has been well said that the
+inquiry of truth, which is the lovemaking of it, the knowledge of truth,
+which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the
+enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                        MAGICIANS AND WITCH FOLK.
+
+FASCINATION, saith Henry Cornelius Agrippa, in the fiftieth chapter of
+his first book on Occult Philosophy, "is a binding which comes of the
+spirit of the witch through the eyes of him that is bewitched, entering
+to his heart; for the eye being opened and intent upon any one, with a
+strong imagination doth dart its beams, which are the vehiculum of the
+spirit, into the eyes of him that is opposite to her; which tender
+spirit strikes his eyes, stirs up and wounds his heart, and infects his
+spirit.  Whence Apuleius saith, 'Thy eyes, sliding down through my eyes
+into my inmost heart, stirreth up a most vehement burning.' And when
+eyes are reciprocally intent upon each other, and when rays are joined
+to rays, and lights to lights, then the spirit of the one is joined to
+that of the other; so are strong ligations made and vehement loves
+inflamed."  Taking this definition of witchcraft, we sadly fear it is
+still practised to a very great extent among us.  The best we can say of
+it is, that the business seems latterly to have fallen into younger
+hands; its victims do not appear to regard themselves as especial
+objects of compassion; and neither church nor state seems inclined to
+interfere with it.
+
+As might be expected in a shrewd community like ours, attempts are not
+unfrequently made to speculate in the supernatural,--to "make gain of
+sooth-saying."  In the autumn of last year a "wise woman" dreamed, or
+somnambulized, that a large sum of money, in gold and silver coin, lay
+buried in the centre of the great swamp in Poplin, New Hampshire;
+whereupon an immediate search was made for the precious metal.  Under
+the bleak sky of November, in biting frost and sleet rain, some twenty
+or more grown men, graduates of our common schools, and liable, every
+mother's son of them, to be made deacons, squires, and general court
+members, and such other drill officers as may be requisite in the march
+of mind, might be seen delving in grim earnest, breaking the frozen
+earth, uprooting swamp-maples and hemlocks, and waking, with sledge and
+crowbar, unwonted echoes in a solitude which had heretofore only
+answered to the woodman's axe or the scream of the wild fowl.  The snows
+of December put an end to their labors; but the yawning excavation still
+remains, a silent but somewhat expressive commentary upon the age of
+progress.
+
+Still later, in one of our Atlantic cities, an attempt was made,
+partially at least, successful, to form a company for the purpose of
+digging for money in one of the desolate sand-keys of the West Indies.
+It appears that some mesmerized "subject," in the course of one of those
+somnambulic voyages of discovery in which the traveller, like Satan in
+chaos,--
+
+    "O'er bog, o'er steep, through straight, rough, dense, or rare,
+     With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way,
+     And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies,"--
+
+while peering curiously into the earth's mysteries,chanced to have his
+eyes gladdened by the sight of a huge chest packed with Spanish coins,
+the spoil, doubtless, of some rich-freighted argosy, or Carthagena
+galleon, in the rare days of Queen Elizabeth's Christian buccaneers.
+
+During the last quarter of a century, a colored woman in one of the
+villages on the southern border of New Hampshire has been consulted by
+hundreds of anxious inquirers into the future.  Long experience in her
+profession has given her something of that ready estimate of character,
+that quick and keen appreciation of the capacity, habits, and wishes of
+her visitors, which so remarkably distinguished the late famous Madame
+Le Normand, of Paris; and if that old squalid sorceress, in her cramped
+Parisian attic, redolent of garlic and bestrewn with the greasy
+implements of sorry housewifery, was, as has been affirmed, consulted by
+such personages as the fair Josephine Beauharnois, and the "man of
+destiny," Napoleon himself, is it strange that the desire to lift the
+veil of the great mystery before us should overcome in some degree our
+peculiar and most republican prejudice against color, and reconcile us
+to the disagreeable necessity of looking at futurity through a black
+medium?
+
+Some forty years ago, on the banks of the pleasant little creek
+separating Berwick, in Maine, from Somersworth, in New Hampshire, within
+sight of my mother's home, dwelt a plain, sedate member of the society
+of Friends, named Bantum.  He passed throughout a circle of several
+miles as a conjurer and skilful adept in the art of magic.  To him
+resorted farmers who had lost their cattle, matrons whose household
+gear, silver spoons, and table-linen had been stolen, or young maidens
+whose lovers were absent; and the quiet, meek-spirited old man received
+them all kindly, put on his huge iron-rimmed spectacles, opened his
+"conjuring book," which my mother describes as a large clasped volume in
+strange language and black-letter type, and after due reflection and
+consideration gave the required answers without money and without price.
+The curious old volume is still in the possession of the conjurer's
+family.  Apparently inconsistent as was this practice of the black art
+with the simplicity and truthfulness of his religious profession, I have
+not been able to learn that he was ever subjected to censure on account
+of it.  It may be that our modern conjurer defended himself on grounds
+similar to those assumed by the celebrated knight of Nettesheim, in the
+preface to his first Book of Magic: "Some," says he, "may crie oute that
+I teach forbidden arts, sow the seed of heresies, offend pious ears, and
+scandalize excellent wits; that I am a sorcerer, superstitious and
+devilish, who indeed am a magician.  To whom I answer, that a magician
+doth not among learned men signifie a sorcerer or one that is
+superstitious or devilish, but a wise man, a priest, a prophet, and that
+the sibyls prophesied most clearly of Christ; that magicians, as wise
+men, by the wonderful secrets of the world, knew Christ to be born, and
+came to worship him, first of all; and that the name of magicke is
+received by philosophers, commended by divines, and not unacceptable to
+the Gospel."
+
+The study of astrology and occult philosophy, to which many of the
+finest minds of the Middle Ages devoted themselves without molestation
+from the Church, was never practised with impunity after the
+Reformation.  The Puritans and Presbyterians, taking the Bible for their
+rule, "suffered not a witch to live;" and, not content with burning the
+books of those who "used curious arts" after the manner of the
+Ephesians, they sacrificed the students themselves on the same pile.
+Hence we hear little of learned and scientific wizards in New England.
+One remarkable character of this kind seems, however, to have escaped
+the vigilance of our modern Doctors of the Mosaic Law.  Dr. Robert Child
+came to this country about the year 1644, and took up his residence in
+the Massachusetts colony.  He was a man of wealth, and owned plantations
+at Nashaway, now Lancaster, and at Saco, in Maine.  He was skilful in
+mineralogy and metallurgy, and seems to have spent a good deal of money
+in searching for mines.  He is well known as the author of the first
+decided movement for liberty of conscience in Massachusetts, his name
+standing at the head of the famous petition of 1646 for a modification
+of the laws in respect to religious worship, and complaining in strong
+terms of the disfranchisement of persons not members of the Church.  A
+tremendous excitement was produced by this remonstrance; clergy and
+magistrates joined in denouncing it; Dr. Child and his associates were
+arrested, tried for contempt of government, and heavily fined.  The
+Court, in passing sentence, assured the Doctor that his crime was only
+equalled by that of Korah and his troop, who rebelled against Moses and
+Aaron.  He resolved to appeal to the Parliament of England, and made
+arrangements for his departure, but was arrested, and ordered to be kept
+a prisoner in his own house until the vessel in which he was to sail had
+left Boston.  He was afterwards imprisoned for a considerable length of
+time, and on his release found means to return to England.  The Doctor's
+trunks were searched by the Puritan authorities while he was in prison;
+but it does not appear that they detected the occult studies to which
+lie was addicted, to which lucky circumstance it is doubtless owing that
+the first champion of religious liberty in the New World was not hung
+for a wizard.
+
+Dr. Child was a graduate of the renowned University of Padua, and had
+travelled extensively in the Old World.  Probably, like Michael Scott,
+be had:
+
+              "Learned the art of glammarye
+               In Padua, beyond the sea;"
+
+for I find in the dedication of an English translation of a Continental
+work on astrology and magic, printed in 1651 "at the sign of the Three
+Bibles," that his "sublime hermeticall and theomagicall lore" is
+compared to that of Hermes and Agrippa.  He is complimented as a master
+of the mysteries of Rome and Germany, and as one who had pursued his
+investigations among the philosophers of the Old World and the Indians
+of the New, "leaving no stone unturned, the turning whereof might
+conduce to the discovery of what is occult."
+
+There was still another member of the Friends' society in Vermont, of
+the name of Austin, who, in answer, as he supposed, to prayer and a
+long-cherished desire to benefit his afflicted fellow-creatures,
+received, as he believed, a special gift of healing.  For several years
+applicants from nearly all parts of New England visited him with the
+story of their sufferings and praying for a relief, which, it is
+averred, was in many instances really obtained.  Letters from the sick
+who were unable to visit him, describing their diseases, were sent him;
+and many are yet living who believe that they were restored miraculously
+at the precise period of time when Austin was engaged in reading their
+letters.  One of my uncles was commissioned to convey to him a large
+number of letters from sick persons in his neighborhood.  He found the
+old man sitting in his plain parlor in the simplest garb of his sect,--
+grave, thoughtful, venerable,--a drab-coated Prince Hohenlohe.  He
+received the letters in silence, read them slowly, casting them one
+after another upon a large pile of similar epistles in a corner of the
+apartment.
+
+Half a century ago nearly every neighborhood in New England was favored
+with one or more reputed dealers in magic.  Twenty years later there
+were two poor old sisters who used to frighten school urchins and
+"children of a larger growth" as they rode down from New Hampshire on
+their gaunt skeleton horses, strung over with baskets for the
+Newburyport market.  They were aware of the popular notion concerning
+them, and not unfrequently took advantage of it to levy a sort of black
+mail upon their credulous neighbors.  An attendant at the funeral of one
+of these sisters, who when living was about as unsubstantial as Ossian's
+ghost, through which the stars were visible, told me that her coffin was
+so heavy that four stout men could barely lift it.
+
+One, of my earliest recollections is that of an old woman, residing
+about two miles from the place of my nativity, who for many years had
+borne the unenviable reputation of a witch.  She certainly had the look
+of one,--a combination of form, voice, and features which would have
+made the fortune of an English witch finder in the days of Matthew Paris
+or the Sir John Podgers of Dickens, and insured her speedy conviction in
+King James's High Court of Justiciary.  She was accused of divers ill-
+doings,--such as preventing the cream in her neighbor's churn from
+becoming butter, and snuffing out candles at huskings and quilting-
+parties.
+
+              "She roamed the country far and near,
+               Bewitched the children of the peasants,
+               Dried up the cows, and lamed the deer,
+               And sucked the eggs, and killed the pheasants."
+
+The poor old woman was at length so sadly annoyed by her unfortunate
+reputation that she took the trouble to go before a justice of the
+peace, and made solemn oath that she was a Christian woman, and no
+witch.
+
+Not many years since a sad-visaged, middle-aged man might be seen in the
+streets of one of our seaboard towns at times suddenly arrested in the
+midst of a brisk walk and fixed motionless for some minutes in the busy
+thoroughfare.  No effort could induce him to stir until, in his opinion,
+the spell was removed and his invisible tormentor suffered him to
+proceed.  He explained his singular detention as the act of a whole
+family of witches whom he had unfortunately offended during a visit down
+East.  It was rumored that the offence consisted in breaking off a
+matrimonial engagement with the youngest member of the family,--a
+sorceress, perhaps, in more than one sense of the word, like that
+"winsome wench and walie" in Tam O'Shanter's witch-dance at Kirk
+Alloway.  His only hope was that he should outlive his persecutors; and
+it is said that at the very hour in which the event took place he
+exultingly assured his friends that the spell was forever broken, and
+that the last of the family of his tormentors was no more.
+
+When a boy, I occasionally met, at the house of a relative in an
+adjoining town, a stout, red-nosed old farmer of the neighborhood.
+A fine tableau he made of a winter's evening, in the red light of a
+birch-log fire, as he sat for hours watching its progress, with sleepy,
+half-shut eyes, changing his position only to reach the cider-mug on the
+shelf near him.  Although he seldom opened his lips save to assent to
+some remark of his host or to answer a direct question, yet at times,
+when the cider-mug got the better of his taciturnity, he would amuse us
+with interesting details of his early experiences in "the Ohio country."
+
+There was, however, one chapter in these experiences which he usually
+held in reserve, and with which "the stranger intermeddled not."  He was
+not willing to run the risk of hearing that which to him was a frightful
+reality turned into ridicule by scoffers and unbelievers.  The substance
+of it, as I received it from one of his neighbors, forms as clever a
+tale of witchcraft as modern times have produced.
+
+It seems that when quite a young man he left the homestead, and,
+strolling westward, worked his way from place to place until he found
+himself in one of the old French settlements on the Ohio River.  Here he
+procured employment on the farm of a widow; and being a smart, active
+fellow, and proving highly serviceable in his department, he rapidly
+gained favor in the eyes of his employer.  Ere long, contrary to the
+advice of the neighbors, and in spite of somewhat discouraging hints
+touching certain matrimonial infelicities experienced by the late
+husband, he resolutely stepped into the dead man's shoes: the mistress
+became the wife, and the servant was legally promoted to the head of the
+household.--
+
+For a time matters went on cosily and comfortably enough.  He was now
+lord of the soil; and, as he laid in his crops of corn and potatoes,
+salted down his pork, and piled up his wood for winter's use, he
+naturally enough congratulated himself upon his good fortune and laughed
+at the sinister forebodings of his neighbors.  But with the long winter
+months came a change over his "love's young dream."  An evil and
+mysterious influence seemed to be at work in his affairs.  Whatever he
+did after consulting his wife or at her suggestion resulted favorably
+enough; but all his own schemes and projects were unaccountably marred
+and defeated.  If he bought a horse, it was sure to prove spavined or
+wind-broken.  His cows either refused to give down their milk, or,
+giving it, perversely kicked it over.  A fine sow which he had bargained
+for repaid his partiality by devouring, like Saturn, her own children.
+By degrees a dark thought forced its way into his mind.  Comparing his
+repeated mischances with the ante-nuptial warnings of his neighbors, he
+at last came to the melancholy conclusion that his wife was a witch.
+The victim in Motherwell's ballad of the Demon Lady, or the poor fellow
+in the Arabian tale who discovered that he had married a ghoul in the
+guise of a young and blooming princess, was scarcely in a more sorrowful
+predicament.  He grew nervous and fretful.  Old dismal nursery stories
+and all the witch lore of boyhood came back to his memory; and he crept
+to his bed like a criminal to the gallows, half afraid to fall asleep
+lest his mysterious companion should take a fancy to transform him into
+a horse, get him shod at the smithy, and ride him to a witch-meeting.
+And, as if to make the matter worse, his wife's affection seemed to
+increase just in proportion as his troubles thickened upon him.  She
+aggravated him with all manner of caresses and endearments.  This was
+the drop too much.  The poor husband recoiled from her as from a waking
+nightmare.  His thoughts turned to New England; he longed to see once
+more the old homestead, with its tall well-sweep and butternut-trees by
+the roadside; and he sighed amidst the rich bottom-lands of his new home
+for his father's rocky pasture, with its crop of stinted mulleins.  So
+one cold November day, finding himself out of sight and hearing of his
+wife, he summoned courage to attempt an escape, and, resolutely turning
+his back on the West, plunged into the wilderness towards the sunrise.
+After a long and hard journey he reached his birthplace, and was kindly
+welcomed by his old friends.  Keeping a close mouth with respect to his
+unlucky adventure in Ohio, he soon after married one of his schoolmates,
+and, by dint of persevering industry and economy, in a few years found
+himself in possession of a comfortable home.
+
+But his evil star still lingered above the horizon.  One summer evening,
+on returning from the hayfield, who should meet him but his witch wife
+from Ohio!  She came riding up the street on her old white horse, with a
+pillion behind the saddle.  Accosting him in a kindly tone, yet not
+without something of gentle reproach for his unhandsome desertion of
+her, she informed him that she had come all the way from Ohio to take
+him back again.
+
+It was in vain that he pleaded his later engagements; it was in vain
+that his new wife raised her shrillest remonstrances, not unmingled with
+expressions of vehement indignation at the revelation of her husband's
+real position; the witch wife was inexorable; go he must, and that
+speedily.  Fully impressed with a belief in her supernatural power of
+compelling obedience, and perhaps dreading more than witchcraft itself
+the effects of the unlucky disclosure on the temper of his New England
+helpmate, he made a virtue of the necessity of the case, bade farewell
+to the latter amidst a perfect hurricane of reproaches, and mounted the
+white horse, with his old wife on the pillion behind him.
+
+Of that ride Burger might have written a counterpart to his ballad:--
+
+              "Tramp, tramp, along the shore they ride,
+               Splash, splash, along the sea."
+
+Two or three years had passed away, bringing no tidings of the
+unfortunate husband, when be once more made his appearance in his native
+village.  He was not disposed to be very communicative; but for one
+thing, at least, he seemed willing to express his gratitude.  His Ohio
+wife, having no spell against intermittent fever, had paid the debt of
+nature, and had left him free; in view of which, his surviving wife,
+after manifesting a due degree of resentment, consented to take him back
+to her bed and board; and I could never learn that she had cause to
+regret her clemency.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE BEAUTIFUL
+
+          "A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face;
+          a beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form;
+          it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures;
+          it is the finest of the fine arts."
+                         EMERSON'S Essays, Second Series, iv., p.  162.
+
+A FEW days since I was walking with a friend, who, unfortunately for
+himself, seldom meets with anything in the world of realities worthy of
+comparison with the ideal of his fancy, which, like the bird in the
+Arabian tale, glides perpetually before him, always near yet never
+overtaken.  He was half humorously, half seriously, complaining of the
+lack of beauty in the faces and forms that passed us on the crowded
+sidewalk.  Some defect was noticeable in all: one was too heavy, another
+too angular; here a nose was at fault, there a mouth put a set of
+otherwise fine features out of countenance; the fair complexions had red
+hair, and glossy black locks were wasted upon dingy ones.  In one way or
+another all fell below his impossible standard.
+
+The beauty which my friend seemed in search of was that of proportion
+and coloring; mechanical exactness; a due combination of soft curves and
+obtuse angles, of warm carnation and marble purity.  Such a man, for
+aught I can see, might love a graven image, like the girl of Florence
+who pined into a shadow for the Apollo Belvidere, looking coldly on her
+with stony eyes from his niche in the Vatican.  One thing is certain,--
+he will never find his faultless piece of artistical perfection by
+searching for it amidst flesh-and-blood realities.  Nature does not,
+as far as I can perceive, work with square and compass, or lay on her
+colors by the rules of royal artists or the dunces of the academies.
+She eschews regular outlines.  She does not shape her forms by a common
+model.  Not one of Eve's numerous progeny in all respects resembles her
+who first culled the flowers of Eden.  To the infinite variety and
+picturesque inequality of Nature we owe the great charm of her uncloying
+beauty.  Look at her primitive woods; scattered trees, with moist sward
+and bright mosses at their roots; great clumps of green shadow, where
+limb intwists with limb and the rustle of one leaf stirs a hundred
+others,--stretching up steep hillsides, flooding with green beauty the
+valleys, or arching over with leaves the sharp ravines, every tree and
+shrub unlike its neighbor in size and proportion,--the old and storm-
+broken leaning on the young and vigorous,--intricate and confused,
+without order or method.  Who would exchange this for artificial French
+gardens, where every tree stands stiff and regular, clipped and trimmed
+into unvarying conformity, like so many grenadiers under review?  Who
+wants eternal sunshine or shadow?  Who would fix forever the loveliest
+cloudwork of an autumn sunset, or hang over him an everlasting
+moonlight?  If the stream had no quiet eddying place, could we so admire
+its cascade over the rocks?  Were there no clouds, could we so hail the
+sky shining through them in its still, calm purity?  Who shall venture
+to ask our kind Mother Nature to remove from our sight any one of her
+forms or colors?  Who shall decide which is beautiful, or otherwise, in
+itself considered?
+
+There are too many, like my fastidious friend, who go through the world
+"from Dan to Beersheba, finding all barren,"--who have always some fault
+or other to find with Nature and Providence, seeming to consider
+themselves especially ill used because the one does not always coincide
+with their taste, nor the other with their narrow notions of personal
+convenience.  In one of his early poems, Coleridge has well expressed a
+truth, which is not the less important because it is not generally
+admitted.  The idea is briefly this: that the mind gives to all things
+their coloring, their gloom, or gladness; that the pleasure we derive
+from external nature is primarily from ourselves:--
+
+                      "from the mind itself must issue forth
+                    A light, a glory, a fair luminous mist,
+                    Enveloping the earth."
+
+The real difficulty of these lifelong hunters after the beautiful exists
+in their own spirits.  They set up certain models of perfection in their
+imaginations, and then go about the world in the vain expectation of
+finding them actually wrought out according to pattern; very
+unreasonably calculating that Nature will suspend her everlasting laws
+for the purpose of creating faultless prodigies for their especial
+gratification.
+
+The authors of Gayeties and Gravities give it as their opinion that no
+object of sight is regarded by us as a simple disconnected form, but
+that--an instantaneous reflection as to its history, purpose, or
+associations converts it into a concrete one,--a process, they shrewdly
+remark, which no thinking being can prevent, and which can only be
+avoided by the unmeaning and stolid stare of "a goose on the common or a
+cow on the green."  The senses and the faculties of the understanding
+are so blended with and dependent upon each other that not one of them
+can exercise its office alone and without the modification of some
+extrinsic interference or suggestion.  Grateful or unpleasant
+associations cluster around all which sense takes cognizance of; the
+beauty which we discern in an external object is often but the
+reflection of our own minds.
+
+What is beauty, after all?  Ask the lover who kneels in homage to one
+who has no attractions for others.  The cold onlooker wonders that he
+can call that unclassic combination of features and that awkward form
+beautiful.  Yet so it is.  He sees, like Desdemona, her "visage in her
+mind," or her affections.  A light from within shines through the
+external uncomeliness,--softens, irradiates, and glorifies it.  That
+which to others seems commonplace and unworthy of note is to him, in the
+words of Spenser,--
+
+                   "A sweet, attractive kind of grace;
+                    A full assurance given by looks;
+                    Continual comfort in a face;
+                    The lineaments of Gospel books."
+
+"Handsome is that handsome does,--hold up your heads, girls!" was the
+language of Primrose in the play when addressing her daughters.  The
+worthy matron was right.  Would that all my female readers who are
+sorrowing foolishly because they are not in all respects like Dubufe's
+Eve, or that statue of the Venus "which enchants the world," could be
+persuaded to listen to her.  What is good looking, as Horace Smith
+remarks, but looking good?  Be good, be womanly, be gentle,--generous in
+your sympathies, heedful of the well-being of all around you; and, my
+word for it, you will not lack kind words of admiration.  Loving and
+pleasant associations will gather about you.  Never mind the ugly
+reflection which your glass may give you.  That mirror has no heart.
+But quite another picture is yours on the retina of human sympathy.
+There the beauty of holiness, of purity, of that inward grace which
+passeth show, rests over it, softening and mellowing its features just
+as the full calm moonlight melts those of a rough landscape into
+harmonious loveliness.  "Hold up your heads, girls!" I repeat after
+Primrose.  Why should you not?  Every mother's daughter of you can be
+beautiful.  You can envelop yourselves in an atmosphere of moral and
+intellectual beauty, through which your otherwise plain faces will look
+forth like those of angels.  Beautiful to Ledyard, stiffening in the
+cold of a northern winter, seemed the diminutive, smokestained women of
+Lapland, who wrapped him in their furs and ministered to his necessities
+with kindness and gentle words of compassion.  Lovely to the homesick
+heart of Park seemed the dark maids of Sego, as they sung their low and
+simple song of welcome beside his bed, and sought to comfort the white
+stranger, who had "no mother to bring him milk and no wife to grind him
+corn."  Oh, talk as we may of beauty as a thing to be chiselled from
+marble or wrought out on canvas, speculate as we may upon its colors and
+outlines, what is it but an intellectual abstraction, after all?  The
+heart feels a beauty of another kind; looking through the outward
+environment, it discovers a deeper and more real loveliness.
+
+This was well understood by the old painters.  In their pictures of
+Mary, the virgin mother, the beauty which melts and subdues the gazer is
+that of the soul and the affections, uniting the awe and mystery of that
+mother's miraculous allotment with the irrepressible love, the
+unutterable tenderness, of young maternity,--Heaven's crowning miracle
+with Nature's holiest and sweetest instinct.  And their pale Magdalens,
+holy with the look of sins forgiven,--how the divine beauty of their
+penitence sinks into the heart!  Do we not feel that the only real
+deformity is sin, and that goodness evermore hallows and sanctifies its
+dwelling-place?  When the soul is at rest, when the passions and desires
+are all attuned to the divine harmony,--
+
+                   "Spirits moving musically
+                    To a lute's well-ordered law,"
+                         The Haunted Palace, by Edgar A. Poe.
+
+do we not read the placid significance thereof in the human countenance?
+"I have seen," said Charles Lamb, "faces upon which the dove of peace
+sat brooding."  In that simple and beautiful record of a holy life, the
+Journal of John Woolman, there is a passage of which I have been more
+than once reminded in my intercourse with my fellow-beings: "Some
+glances of real beauty may be seen in their faces who dwell in true
+meekness.  There is a harmony in the sound of that voice to which divine
+love gives utterance."
+
+Quite the ugliest face I ever saw was that of a woman whom the world
+calls beautiful.  Through its "silver veil" the evil and ungentle
+passions looked out hideous and hateful.  On the other hand, there are
+faces which the multitude at the first glance pronounce homely,
+unattractive, and such as "Nature fashions by the gross," which I always
+recognize with a warm heart-thrill; not for the world would I have one
+feature changed; they please me as they are; they are hallowed by kind
+memories; they are beautiful through their associations; nor are they
+any the less welcome that with my admiration of them "the stranger
+intermeddleth not."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             THE WORLD'S END.
+
+
+
+                    "Our Father Time is weak and gray,
+                    Awaiting for the better day;
+                    See how idiot-like he stands,
+                    Fumbling his old palsied hands!"
+                                   SHELLEY's Masque of Anarchy.
+
+"STAGE ready, gentlemen!  Stage for campground, Derry!  Second Advent
+camp-meeting!"
+
+Accustomed as I begin to feel to the ordinary sights and sounds of this
+busy city, I was, I confess, somewhat startled by this business-like
+annunciation from the driver of a stage, who stood beside his horses
+swinging his whip with some degree of impatience: "Seventy-five cents to
+the Second Advent camp-ground!"
+
+The stage was soon filled; the driver cracked his whip and went rattling
+down the street.
+
+The Second Advent,--the coming of our Lord in person upon this earth,
+with signs, and wonders, and terrible judgments,--the heavens robing
+together as a scroll, the elements melting with fervent heat!  The
+mighty consummation of all things at hand, with its destruction and its
+triumphs, sad wailings of the lost and rejoicing songs of the glorified!
+From this overswarming hive of industry,--from these crowded treadmills
+of gain,--here were men and women going out in solemn earnestness to
+prepare for the dread moment which they verily suppose is only a few
+months distant,--to lift up their warning voices in the midst of
+scoffers and doubters, and to cry aloud to blind priests and careless
+churches, "Behold, the Bridegroom cometh!"
+
+It was one of the most lovely mornings of this loveliest season of the
+year; a warm, soft atmosphere; clear sunshine falling on the city spires
+and roofs; the hills of Dracut quiet and green in the distance, with
+their white farm-houses and scattered trees; around me the continual
+tread of footsteps hurrying to the toils of the day; merchants spreading
+out their wares for the eyes of purchasers; sounds of hammers, the sharp
+clink of trowels, the murmur of the great manufactories subdued by
+distance.  How was it possible, in the midst of so much life, in that
+sunrise light, and in view of all abounding beauty, that the idea of the
+death of Nature--the baptism of the world in fire--could take such a
+practical shape as this?  Yet here were sober, intelligent men, gentle
+and pious women, who, verily believing the end to be close at hand, had
+left their counting-rooms, and workshops, and household cares to publish
+the great tidings, and to startle, if possible, a careless and
+unbelieving generation into preparation for the day of the Lord and for
+that blessed millennium,--the restored paradise,--when, renovated and
+renewed by its fire-purgation, the earth shall become as of old the
+garden of the Lord, and the saints alone shall inherit it.
+
+Very serious and impressive is the fact that this idea of a radical
+change in our planet is not only predicted in the Scriptures, but that
+the Earth herself, in her primitive rocks and varying formations, on
+which are lithographed the history of successive convulsions, darkly
+prophesies of others to come.  The old poet prophets, all the world
+over, have sung of a renovated world.  A vision of it haunted the
+contemplations of Plato.  It is seen in the half-inspired speculations
+of the old Indian mystics.  The Cumaean sibyl saw it in her trances.
+The apostles and martyrs of our faith looked for it anxiously and
+hopefully.  Gray anchorites in the deserts, worn pilgrims to the holy
+places of Jewish and Christian tradition, prayed for its coming.  It
+inspired the gorgeous visions of the early fathers.  In every age since
+the Christian era, from the caves, and forests, and secluded "upper
+chambers" of the times of the first missionaries of the cross, from the
+Gothic temples of the Middle Ages, from the bleak mountain gorges of the
+Alps, where the hunted heretics put up their expostulation, "How long,
+O Lord, how long?" down to the present time, and from this Derry
+campground, have been uttered the prophecy and the prayer for its
+fulfilment.
+
+How this great idea manifests itself in the, lives of the enthusiasts of
+the days of Cromwell!  Think of Sir Henry Vane, cool, sagacious
+statesman as he was, waiting with eagerness for the foreshadowings of
+the millennium, and listening, even in the very council hall, for the
+blast of the last trumpet!  Think of the Fifth Monarchy Men, weary with
+waiting for the long-desired consummation, rushing out with drawn swords
+and loaded matchlocks into the streets of London to establish at once
+the rule of King Jesus!  Think of the wild enthusiasts at Munster,
+verily imagining that the millennial reign had commenced in their mad
+city!  Still later, think of Granville Sharpe, diligently laboring in
+his vocation of philanthropy, laying plans for the slow but beneficent
+amelioration of the condition of his country and the world, and at the
+same time maintaining, with the zeal of Father Miller himself, that the
+earth was just on the point of combustion, and that the millennium would
+render all his benevolent schemes of no sort of consequence!
+
+And, after all, is the idea itself a vain one?  Shall to-morrow be as
+to-day?  Shall the antagonism of good and evil continue as heretofore
+forever?  Is there no hope that this world-wide prophecy of the human
+soul, uttered in all climes, in all times, shall yet be fulfilled?  Who
+shall say it may not be true?  Nay, is not its truth proved by its
+universality?  The hope of all earnest souls must be realized.  That
+which, through a distorted and doubtful medium, shone even upon the
+martyr enthusiasts of the French revolution,--soft gleams of heaven's
+light rising over the hell of man's passions and crimes,--the glorious
+ideal of Shelley, who, atheist as he was through early prejudice and
+defective education, saw the horizon of the world's future kindling with
+the light of a better day,--that hope and that faith which constitute,
+as it were, the world's life, and without which it would be dark and
+dead, cannot be in vain.
+
+I do not, I confess, sympathize with my Second Advent friends in their
+lamentable depreciation of Mother Earth even in her present state.  I
+find it extremely difficult to comprehend how it is that this goodly,
+green, sunlit home of ours is resting under a curse.  It really does not
+seem to me to be altogether like the roll which the angel bore in the
+prophet's vision, "written within and without with mourning,
+lamentation, and woe."  September sunsets, changing forests, moonrise
+and cloud, sun and rain,--I for one am contented with them.  They fill
+my heart with a sense of beauty.  I see in them the perfect work of
+infinite love as well as wisdom.  It may be that our Advent friends,
+however, coincide with the opinions of an old writer on the prophecies,
+who considered the hills and valleys of the earth's surface and its
+changes of seasons as so many visible manifestations of God's curse, and
+that in the millennium, as in the days of Adam's innocence, all these
+picturesque inequalities would be levelled nicely away, and the flat
+surface laid handsomely down to grass.
+
+As might be expected, the effect of this belief in the speedy
+destruction of the world and the personal coming of the Messiah, acting
+upon a class of uncultivated, and, in some cases, gross minds, is not
+always in keeping with the enlightened Christian's ideal of the better
+day.  One is shocked in reading some of the "hymns" of these believers.
+Sensual images,--semi-Mahometan descriptions of the condition of the
+"saints,"--exultations over the destruction of the "sinners,"--mingle
+with the beautiful and soothing promises of the prophets.  There are
+indeed occasionally to be found among the believers men of refined and
+exalted spiritualism, who in their lives and conversation remind one of
+Tennyson's Christian knight-errant in his yearning towards the hope set
+before him:
+
+                           "to me is given
+               Such hope I may not fear;
+               I long to breathe the airs of heaven,
+               Which sometimes meet me here.
+
+               "I muse on joys that cannot cease,
+               Pure spaces filled with living beams,
+               White lilies of eternal peace,
+               Whose odors haunt my dreams."
+
+One of the most ludicrous examples of the sensual phase of Millerism,
+the incongruous blending of the sublime with the ridiculous, was
+mentioned to me not long since.  A fashionable young woman in the
+western part of this State became an enthusiastic believer in the
+doctrine.  On the day which had been designated as the closing one of
+time she packed all her fine dresses and toilet valuables in a large
+trunk, with long straps attached to it, and, seating herself upon it,
+buckled the straps over her shoulders, patiently awaiting the crisis,--
+shrewdly calculating that, as she must herself go upwards, her goods and
+chattels would of necessity follow.
+
+Three or four years ago, on my way eastward, I spent an hour or two at a
+camp-ground of the Second Advent in East Kingston.  The spot was well
+chosen.  A tall growth of pine and hemlock threw its melancholy shadow
+over the multitude, who were arranged upon rough seats of boards and
+logs.  Several hundred--perhaps a thousand people--were present, and
+more were rapidly coming.  Drawn about in a circle, forming a background
+of snowy whiteness to the dark masses of men and foliage, were the white
+tents, and back of them the provision-stalls and cook-shops.  When I
+reached the ground, a hymn, the words of which I could not distinguish,
+was pealing through the dim aisles of the forest.  I could readily
+perceive that it had its effect upon the multitude before me, kindling
+to higher intensity their already excited enthusiasm.  The preachers
+were placed in a rude pulpit of rough boards, carpeted only by the dead
+forest-leaves and flowers, and tasselled, not with silk and velvet, but
+with the green boughs of the sombre hemlocks around it.  One of them
+followed the music in an earnest exhortation on the duty of preparing
+for the great event.  Occasionally he was really eloquent, and his
+description of the last day had the ghastly distinctness of Anelli's
+painting of the End of the World.
+
+Suspended from the front of the rude pulpit were two broad sheets of
+canvas, upon one of which was the figure of a man, the head of gold, the
+breast and arms of silver, the belly of brass, the legs of iron, and
+feet of clay,--the dream of Nebuchadnezzar.  On the other were depicted
+the wonders of the Apocalyptic vision,--the beasts, the dragons, the
+scarlet woman seen by the seer of Patmos, Oriental types, figures, and
+mystic symbols, translated into staring Yankee realities, and exhibited
+like the beasts of a travelling menagerie.  One horrible image, with its
+hideous heads and scaly caudal extremity, reminded me of the tremendous
+line of Milton, who, in speaking of the same evil dragon, describes him
+as
+
+          "Swinging the scaly horrors of his folded tail."
+
+To an imaginative mind the scene was full of novel interest.  The white
+circle of tents; the dim wood arches; the upturned, earnest faces; the
+loud voices of the speakers, burdened with the awful symbolic language
+of the Bible; the smoke from the fires, rising like incense,--carried me
+back to those days of primitive worship which tradition faintly whispers
+of, when on hill-tops and in the shade of old woods Religion had her
+first altars, with every man for her priest and the whole universe for
+her temple.
+
+Wisely and truthfully has Dr. Channing spoken of this doctrine of the
+Second Advent in his memorable discourse in Berkshire a little before
+his death:--
+
+"There are some among us at the present moment who are waiting for the
+speedy coming of Christ.  They expect, before another year closes, to
+see Him in the clouds, to hear His voice, to stand before His judgment-
+seat.  These illusions spring from misinterpretation of Scripture
+language.  Christ, in the New Testament, is said to come whenever His
+religion breaks out in new glory or gains new triumphs.  He came in the
+Holy Spirit in the day of Pentecost.  He came in the destruction of
+Jerusalem, which, by subverting the old ritual law and breaking the
+power of the worst enemies of His religion, insured to it new victories.
+He came in the reformation of the Church.  He came on this day four
+years ago, when, through His religion, eight hundred thousand men were
+raised from the lowest degradation to the rights, and dignity, and
+fellowship of men.  Christ's outward appearance is of little moment
+compared with the brighter manifestation of His spirit.  The Christian,
+whose inward eyes and ears are touched by God, discerns the coming of
+Christ, hears the sound of His chariot-wheels and the voice of His
+trumpet, when no other perceives them.  He discerns the Saviour's advent
+in the dawning of higher truth on the world, in new aspirations of the
+Church after perfection, in the prostration of prejudice and error, in
+brighter expressions of Christian love, in more enlightened and intense
+consecration of the Christian to the cause of humanity, freedom, and
+religion.  Christ comes in the conversion, the regeneration, the
+emancipation, of the world."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                       THE HEROINE OF LONG POINT.
+
+                                [1869.]
+
+LOOKING at the Government Chart of Lake Erie, one sees the outlines of a
+long, narrow island, stretching along the shore of Canada West, opposite
+the point where Loudon District pushes its low, wooded wedge into the
+lake.  This is Long Point Island, known and dreaded by the navigators of
+the inland sea which batters its yielding shores, and tosses into
+fantastic shapes its sandheaps.  The eastern end is some twenty miles
+from the Canada shore, while on the west it is only separated from the
+mainland by a narrow strait known as "The Cut."  It is a sandy, desolate
+region, broken by small ponds, with dreary tracts of fenland, its ridges
+covered with a low growth of pine, oak, beech, and birch, in the midst
+of which, in its season, the dogwood puts out its white blossoms.  Wild
+grapes trail over the sand-dunes and festoon the dwarf trees.  Here and
+there are almost impenetrable swamps, thick-set with white cedars,
+intertwisted and contorted by the lake winds, and broken by the weight
+of snow and ice in winter.  Swans and wild geese paddle in the shallow,
+reedy bayous; raccoons and even deer traverse the sparsely wooded
+ridges.  The shores of its creeks and fens are tenanted by minks and
+muskrats.  The tall tower of a light-house rises at the eastern
+extremity of the island, the keeper of which is now its solitary
+inhabitant.
+
+Fourteen years ago, another individual shared the proprietorship of Long
+Point.  This was John Becker, who dwelt on the south side of the island,
+near its westerly termination, in a miserable board shanty nestled
+between naked sand-hills.  He managed to make a poor living by trapping
+and spearing muskrats, the skins of which he sold to such boatmen and
+small-craft skippers as chanced to land on his forlorn territory.  His
+wife, a large, mild-eyed, patient young woman of some twenty-six years,
+kept her hut and children as tidy as circumstances admitted, assisted
+her husband in preparing the skins, and sometimes accompanied him on his
+trapping excursions.
+
+On that lonely coast, seldom visited in summer, and wholly cut off from
+human communication in winter, they might have lived and died with as
+little recognition from the world as the minks and wildfowl with whom
+they were tenants in common, but for a circumstance which called into
+exercise unsuspected qualities of generous courage and heroic self-
+sacrifice.
+
+The dark, stormy close of November, 1854, found many vessels on Lake
+Erie, but the fortunes of one alone have special interest for us.  About
+that time the schooner Conductor, owned by John McLeod, of the
+Provincial Parliament, a resident of Amherstburg, at the mouth of the
+Detroit River, entered the lake from that river, bound for Port
+Dalhousie, at the mouth of the Welland Canal.
+
+She was heavily loaded with grain.  Her crew consisted of Captain
+Hackett, a Highlander by birth, and a skilful and experienced navigator,
+and six sailors.  At nightfall, shortly after leaving the head of the
+lake, one of those terrific storms, with which the late autumnal
+navigators of that "Sea of the Woods" are all too familiar, overtook
+them.  The weather was intensely cold for the season; the air was filled
+with snow and sleet; the chilled water made ice rapidly, encumbering the
+schooner, and loading down her decks and rigging.  As the gale
+increased, the tops of the waves were shorn off by the fierce blasts,
+clouding the whole atmosphere with frozen spray, or what the sailors
+call "spoondrift," rendering it impossible to see any object a few rods
+distant.  Driving helplessly before the wind, yet in the direction of
+her place of destination, the schooner sped through the darkness.  At
+last, near midnight, running closer than her crew supposed to the
+Canadian shore, she struck on the outer bar off Long Point Island, beat
+heavily across it, and sunk in the deeper water between it and the inner
+bar.  The hull was entirely submerged, the waves rolling in heavily, and
+dashing over the rigging, to which the crew betook themselves.  Lashed
+there, numb with cold, drenched by the pitiless waves, and scourged by
+the showers of sleet driven before the wind, they waited for morning.
+The slow, dreadful hours wore away, and at length the dubious and
+doubtful gray of a morning of tempest succeeded to the utter darkness of
+night.
+
+Abigail Becker chanced at that time to be in her hut with none but her
+young children.  Her husband was absent on the Canada shore, and she was
+left the sole adult occupant of the island, save the light-keeper, at
+its lower end, some fifteen miles off.  Looking out at daylight on the
+beach in front of her door, she saw the shattered boat of the Conductor,
+east up by the waves.  Her experience of storm and disaster on that
+dangerous coast needed nothing more to convince her that somewhere in
+her neighborhood human life had been, or still was, in peril.  She
+followed the southwesterly trend of the island for a little distance,
+and, peering through the gloom of the stormy morning, discerned the
+spars of the sunken schooner, with what seemed to be human forms
+clinging to the rigging.  The heart of the strong woman sunk within her,
+as she gazed upon those helpless fellow-creatures, so near, yet so
+unapproachable.  She had no boat, and none could have lived on that wild
+water.  After a moment's reflection she went back to her dwelling, put
+the smaller children in charge of the eldest, took with her an iron
+kettle, tin teapot, and matches, and returned to the beach, at the
+nearest point to the vessel; and, gathering up the logs and drift-wood
+always abundant, on the coast, kindled a great fire, and, constantly
+walking back and forth between it and the water, strove to intimate to
+the sufferers that they were at least not beyond human sympathy.  As the
+wrecked sailors looked shoreward, and saw, through the thick haze of
+snow and sleet, the red light of the fire and the tall figure of the
+woman passing to and fro before it, a faint hope took the place of the
+utter despair which had prompted them to let go their hold and drop into
+the seething waters, that opened and closed about them like the jaws of
+death.  But the day wore on, bringing no abatement of the storm that
+tore through the frail spars, and clutched at and tossed them as it
+passed, and drenched them with ice-cold spray,--a pitiless, unrelenting
+horror of sight, sound, and touch!  At last the deepening gloom told
+them that night was approaching, and night under such circumstances was
+death.
+
+All day long Abigail Becker had fed her fire, and sought to induce the
+sailors by signals--for even her strong voice could not reach them--to
+throw themselves into the surf, and trust to Providence and her for
+succor.  In anticipation of this, she had her kettle boiling over the
+drift-wood, and her tea ready made for restoring warmth and life to the
+half-frozen survivors.  But either they did not understand her, or the
+chance of rescue seemed too small to induce them to abandon the
+temporary safety of the wreck.  They clung to it with the desperate
+instinct of life brought face to face with death.  Just at nightfall
+there was a slight break in the west; a red light glared across the
+thick air, as if for one instant the eye of the storm looked out upon
+the ruin it had wrought, and closed again under lids of cloud.  Taking
+advantage of this, the solitary watcher ashore made one more effort.
+She waded out into the water, every drop of which, as it struck the
+beach, became a particle of ice, and stretching out and drawing in her
+arms, invited, by her gestures, the sailors to throw themselves into the
+waves, and strive to reach her.  Captain Hackett understood her.  He
+called to his mate in the rigging of the other mast: "It is our last
+chance.  I will try!  If I live, follow me; if I drown, stay where you
+are!"  With a great effort he got off his stiffly frozen overcoat,
+paused for one moment in silent commendation of his soul to God, and,
+throwing himself into the waves, struck out for the shore.  Abigail
+Becker, breast-deep in the surf, awaited him.  He was almost within her
+reach, when the undertow swept him back.  By a mighty exertion she
+caught hold of him, bore him in her strong arms out of the water, and,
+laying him down by her fire, warmed his chilled blood with copious
+draughts of hot tea.  The mate, who had watched the rescue, now
+followed, and the captain, partially restored, insisted upon aiding him.
+As the former neared the shore, the recoiling water baffled him.
+Captain Hackett caught hold of him, but the undertow swept them both
+away, locked in each other's arms.  The brave woman plunged after them,
+and, with the strength of a giantess, bore them, clinging to each other,
+to the shore, and up to her fire.  The five sailors followed in
+succession, and were all rescued in the same way.
+
+A few days after, Captain Hackett and his crew were taken off Long Point
+by a passing vessel; and Abigail Becker resumed her simple daily duties
+without dreaming that she had done anything extraordinary enough to win
+for her the world's notice.  In her struggle every day for food and
+warmth for her children, she had no leisure for the indulgence of self-
+congratulation.  Like the woman of Scripture, she had only "done what
+she could," in the terrible exigency that had broken the dreary monotony
+of her life.
+
+It so chanced, however, that a gentleman from Buffalo, E. P. Dorr, who
+had, in his early days, commanded a vessel on the lake, found himself,
+shortly after, at a small port on the Canada shore, not far from Long
+Point Island.  Here he met an old shipmate, Captain Davis, whose vessel
+had gone ashore at a more favorable point, and who related to him the
+circumstances of the wreck of the Conductor.  Struck by the account,
+Captain Dorr procured a sleigh and drove across the frozen bay to the
+shanty of Abigail Becker.  He found her with her six children, all
+thinly clad and barefooted in the bitter cold.  She stood there six feet
+or more of substantial womanhood,--not in her stockings, for she had
+none,--a veritable daughter of Anak, broad-bosomed, large-limbed, with
+great, patient blue eyes, whose very smile had a certain pathos, as if
+one saw in it her hard and weary life-experience.  She might have passed
+for any amiable giantess, or one of those much--developed maids of honor
+who tossed Gulliver from hand to hand in the court of Brobdingnag.  The
+thing that most surprised her visitor was the childlike simplicity of
+the woman, her utter unconsciousness of deserving anything for an action
+that seemed to her merely a matter of course.  When he expressed his
+admiration with all the warmth of a generous nature, she only opened her
+wide blue eyes still wider with astonishment.
+
+"Well, I don't know," she said, slowly, as if pondering the matter for
+the first time,--"I don't know as I did more 'n I'd ought to, nor more'n
+I'd do again."
+
+Before Captain Dorr left, he took the measure of her own and her
+children's feet, and on his return to Buffalo sent her a box containing
+shoes, stockings, and such other comfortable articles of clothing as
+they most needed.  He published a brief account of his visit to the
+heroine of Long Point, which attracted the attention of some members of
+the Provincial Parliament, and through their exertions a grant of one
+hundred acres of land, on the Canada shore, near Port Rowan, was made to
+her.  Soon after she was invited to Buffalo, where she naturally excited
+much interest.  A generous contribution of one thousand dollars, to
+stock her farm, was made by the merchants, ship-owners and masters of
+the city, and she returned to her family a grateful and, in her own
+view, a rich woman.
+
+When the story of her adventure reached New York, the Life-Saving
+Benevolent Association sent her a gold medal with an appropriate
+inscription, and a request that she would send back a receipt in her own
+name.  As she did not know how to write, Captain Dorr hit upon the
+expedient of having her photograph taken with the medal in her hand, and
+sent that in lieu of her autograph.
+
+In a recent letter dictated at Walsingham, where Abigail Becker now
+lives,--a widow, cultivating with her own hands her little farm in the
+wilderness,--she speaks gratefully of the past and hopefully of the
+future.  She mentions a message received from Captain Hackett, who she
+feared had almost forgotten her, that he was about to make her a visit,
+adding with a touch of shrewdness: "After his second shipwreck last
+summer, I think likely that I must have recurred very fresh to him."
+
+The strong lake winds now blow unchecked over the sand-hills where once
+stood the board shanty of Abigail Becker.  But the summer tourist of the
+great lakes, who remembers her story, will not fail to give her a place
+in his imagination with Perry's battle-line and the Indian heroines of
+Cooper and Longfellow.  Through her the desolate island of Long Point is
+richly dowered with the interest which a brave and generous action gives
+to its locality.
+
+
+
+
+
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