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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10077 ***
+
+THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+VOL. X.--OCTOBER, 1862.--NO. LX.
+
+A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+AUTUMNAL TINTS.
+
+Europeans coming to America are surprised by the brilliancy of our
+autumnal foliage. There is no account of such a phenomenon in English
+poetry, because the trees acquire but few bright colors there. The most
+that Thomson says on this subject in his "Autumn" is contained in the
+lines,--
+
+  "But see the fading many-colored woods,
+  Shade deepening over shade, the country round
+  Imbrown; a crowded umbrage, dusk and dun,
+  Of every hue, from wan declining green to sooty dark":--
+
+and in the line in which he speaks of
+
+  "Autumn beaming o'er the yellow woods."
+
+The autumnal change of our woods has not made a deep impression on our
+own literature yet. October has hardly tinged our poetry.
+
+A great many, who have spent their lives in cities, and have never
+chanced to come into the country at this season, have never seen this,
+the flower, or rather the ripe fruit, of the year. I remember riding
+with one such citizen, who, though a fortnight too late for the most
+brilliant tints, was taken by surprise, and would not believe that there
+had been any brighter. He had never heard of this phenomenon before. Not
+only many in our towns have never witnessed it, but it is scarcely
+remembered by the majority from year to year.
+
+Most appear to confound changed leaves with withered ones, as if they
+were to confound ripe apples with rotten ones. I think that the change
+to some higher color in a leaf is an evidence that it has arrived at a
+late and perfect maturity, answering to the maturity of fruits. It is
+generally the lowest and oldest leaves which change first. But as the
+perfect winged and usually bright-colored insect is short-lived, so the
+leaves ripen but to fall.
+
+Generally, every fruit, on ripening, and just before it falls, when it
+commences a more independent and individual existence, requiring less
+nourishment from any source, and that not so much from the earth through
+its stem as from the sun and air, acquires a bright tint. So do leaves.
+The physiologist says it is "due to an increased absorption of oxygen."
+That is the scientific account of the matter,--only a reassertion of the
+fact. But I am more interested in the rosy cheek than I am to know what
+particular diet the maiden fed on. The very forest and herbage, the
+pellicle of the earth, must acquire a bright color, an evidence of its
+ripeness,--as if the globe itself were a fruit on its stem, with ever a
+cheek toward the sun.
+
+Flowers are but colored leaves, fruits but ripe ones. The edible part of
+most fruits is, as the physiologist says, "the parenchyma or fleshy
+tissue of the leaf" of which they are formed.
+
+Our appetites have commonly confined our views of ripeness and its
+phenomena, color, mellowness, and perfectness, to the fruits which we
+eat, and we are wont to forget that an immense harvest which we do not
+eat, hardly use at all, is annually ripened by Nature. At our annual
+Cattle Shows and Horticultural Exhibitions, we make, as we think, a
+great show of fair fruits, destined, however, to a rather ignoble end,
+fruits not valued for their beauty chiefly. But round about and within
+our towns there is annually another show of fruits, on an infinitely
+grander scale, fruits which address our taste for beauty alone.
+
+October is the month of painted leaves. Their rich glow now flashes
+round the world. As fruits and leaves and the day itself acquire a
+bright tint just before they fall, so the year near its setting. October
+is its sunset sky; November the later twilight.
+
+I formerly thought that it would be worth the while to get a specimen
+leaf from each changing tree, shrub, and herbaceous plant, when it had
+acquired its brightest characteristic color, in its transition from the
+green to the brown state, outline it, and copy its color exactly, with
+paint, in a book, which should be entitled, "_October, or Autumnal
+Tints_";--beginning with the earliest reddening,--Woodbine and the lake
+of radical leaves, and coming down through the Maples, Hickories, and
+Sumachs, and many beautifully freckled leaves less generally known, to
+the latest Oaks and Aspens. What a memento such a book would be! You
+would need only to turn over its leaves to take a ramble through the
+autumn woods whenever you pleased. Or if I could preserve the leaves
+themselves, unfaded, it would be better still. I have made but little
+progress toward such a book, but I have endeavored, instead, to describe
+all these bright tints in the order in which they present themselves.
+The following are some extracts from my notes.
+
+THE PURPLE GRASSES.
+
+By the twentieth of August, everywhere in woods and swamps, we are
+reminded of the fall, both by the richly spotted Sarsaparilla-leaves and
+Brakes, and the withering and blackened Skunk-Cabbage and Hellebore,
+and, by the river-side, the already blackening Pontederia.
+
+The Purple Grass (_Eragrostis pectinacea_) is now in the height of its
+beauty. I remember still when I first noticed this grass particularly.
+Standing on a hill-side near our river, I saw, thirty or forty rods off,
+a stripe of purple half a dozen rods long, under the edge of a wood,
+where the ground sloped toward a meadow. It was as high-colored and
+interesting, though not quite so bright, as the patches of Rhexia, being
+a darker purple, like a berry's stain laid on close and thick. On going
+to and examining it, I found it to be a kind of grass in bloom, hardly a
+foot high, with but few green blades, and a fine spreading panicle of
+purple flowers, a shallow, purplish mist trembling around me. Close at
+hand it appeared but a dull purple, and made little impression on the
+eye; it was even difficult to detect; and if you plucked a single plant,
+you were surprised to find how thin it was, and how little color it had.
+But viewed at a distance in a favorable light, it was of a fine lively
+purple, flower-like, enriching the earth. Such puny causes combine to
+produce these decided effects. I was the more surprised and charmed
+because grass is commonly of a sober and humble color.
+
+With its beautiful purple blush it reminds me, and supplies the place,
+of the Rhexia, which is now leaving off, and it is one of the most
+interesting phenomena of August. The finest patches of it grow on waste
+strips or selvages of land at the base of dry hills, just above the edge
+of the meadows, where the greedy mower does not deign to swing his
+scythe; for this is a thin and poor grass, beneath his notice. Or, it
+may be, because it is so beautiful he does not know that it exists; for
+the same eye does not see this and Timothy. He carefully gets the meadow
+hay and the more nutritious grasses which grow next to that, but he
+leaves this fine purple mist for the walker's harvest,--fodder for his
+fancy stock. Higher up the hill, perchance, grow also Blackberries,
+John's-Wort, and neglected, withered, and wiry June-Grass How fortunate
+that it grows in such places, and not in the midst of the rank grasses
+which are annually cut! Nature thus keeps use and beauty distinct. I
+know many such localities, where it does not fail to present itself
+annually, and paint the earth with its blush. It grows on the gentle
+slopes, either in a continuous patch or in scattered and rounded tufts a
+foot in diameter, and it lasts till it is killed by the first smart
+frosts.
+
+In most plants the corolla or calyx is the part which attains the
+highest color, and is the most attractive; in many it is the seed-vessel
+or fruit; in others, as the Red Maple, the leaves; and in others still
+it is the very culm itself which is the principal flower or blooming
+part.
+
+The last is especially the case with the Poke or Garget (_Phytolacca
+decandra_). Some which stand under our cliffs quite dazzle me with their
+purple stems now and early in September. They are as interesting to me
+as most flowers, and one of the most important fruits of our autumn.
+Every part is flower, (or fruit,) such is its superfluity of
+color,--stem, branch, peduncle, pedicel, petiole, and even the at length
+yellowish purple-veined leaves. Its cylindrical racemes of berries of
+various hues, from green to dark purple, six or seven inches long, are
+gracefully drooping on all sides, offering repasts to the birds; and
+even the sepals from which the birds have picked the berries are a
+brilliant lake-red, with crimson flame-like reflections, equal to
+anything of the kind,--all on fire with ripeness. Hence the _lacca_,
+from _lac_, lake. There are at the same time flower-buds, flowers, green
+berries, dark purple or ripe ones, and these flower-like sepals, all on
+the same plant.
+
+We love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It
+is the color of colors. This plant speaks to blood. It asks a bright sun
+on it to make it show to best advantage, and it must be seen at this
+season of the year. On warm hill-sides its stems are ripe by the
+twenty-third of August. At that date I walked through a beautiful grove
+of them, six or seven feet high, on the side of one of our cliffs, where
+they ripen early. Quite to the ground they were a deep brilliant purple
+with a bloom, contrasting with the still clear green leaves. It appears
+a rare triumph of Nature to have produced and perfected such a plant, as
+if this were enough for a summer. What a perfect maturity it arrives at!
+It is the emblem of a successful life concluded by a death not
+premature, which is an ornament to Nature. What if we were to mature as
+perfectly, root and branch, glowing in the midst of our decay, like the
+Poke! I confess that it excites me to behold them. I cut one for a cane,
+for I would fain handle and lean on it. I love to press the berries
+between my fingers, and see their juice staining my hand. To walk amid
+these upright, branching casks of purple wine, which retain and diffuse
+a sunset glow, tasting each one with your eye, instead of counting the
+pipes on a London dock, what a privilege! For Nature's vintage is not
+confined to the vine. Our poets have sung of wine, the product of a
+foreign plant which commonly they never saw, as if our own plants had no
+juice in them more than the singers. Indeed, this has been called by
+some the American Grape, and, though a native of America, its juices are
+used in some foreign countries to improve the color of the wine; so that
+the poetaster may be celebrating the virtues of the Poke without knowing
+it. Here are berries enough to paint afresh the western sky, and play
+the bacchanal with, if you will. And what flutes its ensanguined stems
+would make, to be used in such a dance! It is truly a royal plant. I
+could spend the evening of the year musing amid the Poke-stems. And
+perchance amid these groves might arise at last a new school of
+philosophy or poetry. It lasts all through September.
+
+At the same time with this, or near the end of August, a to me very
+interesting genus of grasses, Andropogons, or Beard-Grasses, is in its
+prime. _Andropogon furcatus_, Forked Beard-Grass, or call it
+Purple-Fingered Grass; _Andropogon scoparius_, Purple Wood-Grass; and
+_Andropogon_ (now called _Sorghum_) _nutans_, Indian-Grass. The first is
+a very tall and slender-culmed grass, three to seven feet high, with
+four or five purple finger-like spikes raying upward from the top. The
+second is also quite slender, growing in tufts two feet high by one
+wide, with culms often somewhat curving, which, as the spikes go out of
+bloom, have a whitish fuzzy look. These two are prevailing grasses at
+this season on dry and sandy fields and hill-sides. The culms of both,
+not to mention their pretty flowers, reflect a purple tinge, and help to
+declare the ripeness of the year. Perhaps I have the more sympathy with
+them because they are despised by the farmer, and occupy sterile and
+neglected soil. They are high-colored, like ripe grapes, and express a
+maturity which the spring did not suggest. Only the August sun could
+have thus burnished these culms and leaves. The farmer has long since
+done his upland haying, and he will not condescend to bring his scythe
+to where these slender wild grasses have at length flowered thinly; you
+often see spaces of bare sand amid them. But I walk encouraged between
+the tufts of Purple Wood-Grass, over the sandy fields, and along the
+edge of the Shrub-Oaks, glad to recognize these simple contemporaries.
+With thoughts cutting a broad swathe I "get" them, with horse-raking
+thoughts I gather them into windrows. The fine-eared poet may hear the
+whetting of my scythe. These two were almost the first grasses that I
+learned to distinguish, for I had not known by how many friends I was
+surrounded,--I had seen them simply as grasses standing. The purple of
+their culms also excites me like that of the Poke-Weed stems.
+
+Think what refuge there is for one, before August is over, from college
+commencements and society that isolates! I can skulk amid the tufts of
+Purple Wood-Grass on the borders of the "Great Fields." Wherever I walk
+these afternoons, the Purple-Fingered Grass also stands like a
+guide-board, and points my thoughts to more poetic paths than they have
+lately travelled.
+
+A man shall perhaps rush by and trample down plants as high as his head,
+and cannot be said to know that they exist, though he may have cut many
+tons of them, littered his stables with them, and fed them to his cattle
+for years. Yet, if he ever favorably attends to them, he may be overcome
+by their beauty. Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands
+there to express some thought or mood of ours; and yet how long it
+stands in vain! I had walked over those Great Fields so many Augusts,
+and never yet distinctly recognized these purple companions that I had
+there. I had brushed against them and trodden on them, forsooth; and
+now, at last, they, as it were, rose up and blessed me. Beauty and true
+wealth are always thus cheap and despised. Heaven might be defined as
+the place which men avoid. Who can doubt that these grasses, which the
+farmer says are of no account to him, find some compensation in your
+appreciation of them? I may say that I never saw them before,--though,
+when I came to look them face to face, there did come down to me a
+purple gleam from previous years; and now, wherever I go, I see hardly
+anything else. It is the reign and presidency of the Andropogons.
+
+Almost the very sands confess the ripening influence of the August sun,
+and methinks, together with the slender grasses waving over them,
+reflect a purple tinge. The impurpled sands! Such is the consequence of
+all this sunshine absorbed into the pores of plants and of the earth.
+All sap or blood is now wine-colored. At last we have not only the
+purple sea, but the purple land.
+
+The Chestnut Beard-Grass, Indian-Grass, or Wood-Grass, growing here and
+there in waste places, but more rare than the former, (from two to four
+or five feet high,) is still handsomer and of more vivid colors than its
+congeners, and might well have caught the Indian's eye. It has a long,
+narrow, one-sided, and slightly nodding panicle of bright purple and
+yellow flowers, like a banner raised above its reedy leaves. These
+bright standards are now advanced on the distant hill-sides, not in
+large armies, but in scattered troops or single file, like the red men.
+They stand thus fair and bright, representative of the race which they
+are named after, but for the most part unobserved as they. The
+expression of this grass haunted me for a week, after I first passed and
+noticed it, like the glance of an eye. It stands like an Indian chief
+taking a last look at his favorite hunting-grounds.
+
+THE RED MAPLE.
+
+By the twenty-fifth of September, the Red Maples generally are beginning
+to be ripe. Some large ones have been conspicuously changing for a week,
+and some single trees are now very brilliant. I notice a small one, half
+a mile off across a meadow, against the green wood-side there, a far
+brighter red than the blossoms of any tree in summer, and more
+conspicuous. I have observed this tree for several autumns invariably
+changing earlier than its fellows, just as one tree ripens its fruit
+earlier than another. It might serve to mark the season, perhaps. I
+should be sorry, if it were cut down. I know of two or three such trees
+in different parts of our town, which might, perhaps, be propagated
+from, as early ripeners or September trees, and their seed be advertised
+in the market, as well as that of radishes, if we cared as much about
+them.
+
+At present, these burning bushes stand chiefly along the edge of the
+meadows, or I distinguish them afar on the hill-sides here and there.
+Sometimes you will see many small ones in a swamp turned quite crimson
+when all other trees around are still perfectly green, and the former
+appear so much the brighter for it. They take you by surprise, as you
+are going by on one side, across the fields thus early in the season, as
+if it were some gay encampment of the red men, or other foresters, of
+whose arrival you had not heard.
+
+Some single trees, wholly bright scarlet, seen against others of their
+kind still freshly green, or against evergreens, are more memorable than
+whole groves will be by-and-by. How beautiful, when a whole tree is like
+one great scarlet fruit full of ripe juices, every leaf, from lowest
+limb to topmost spire, all aglow, especially if you look toward the sun!
+What more remarkable object can there be in the landscape? Visible for
+miles, too fair to be believed. If such a phenomenon occurred but once,
+it would be handed down by tradition to posterity, and get into the
+mythology at last.
+
+The whole tree thus ripening in advance of its fellows attains a
+singular preeminence, and sometimes maintains it for a week or two. I am
+thrilled at the sight of it, bearing aloft its scarlet standard for the
+regiment of green-clad foresters around, and I go half a mile out of my
+way to examine it. A single tree becomes thus the crowning beauty of
+some meadowy vale, and the expression of the whole surrounding forest is
+at once more spirited for it.
+
+A small Red Maple has grown, perchance, far away at the head of some
+retired valley, a mile from any road, unobserved. It has faithfully
+discharged the duties of a Maple there, all winter and summer, neglected
+none of its economies, but added to its stature in the virtue which
+belongs to a Maple, by a steady growth for so many months, never having
+gone gadding abroad, and is nearer heaven than it was in the spring. It
+has faithfully husbanded its sap, and afforded a shelter to the
+wandering bird, has long since ripened its seeds and committed them to
+the winds, and has the satisfaction of knowing, perhaps, that a thousand
+little well-behaved Maples are already settled in life somewhere. It
+deserves well of Mapledom. Its leaves have been asking it from time to
+time, in a whisper, "When shall we redden?" And now, in this month of
+September, this month of travelling, when men are hastening to the
+sea-side, or the mountains, or the lakes, this modest Maple, still
+without budging an inch, travels in its reputation,--runs up its scarlet
+flag on that hill-side, which shows that it has finished its summer's
+work before all other trees, and withdraws from the contest. At the
+eleventh hour of the year, the tree which no scrutiny could have
+detected here when it was most industrious is thus, by the tint of its
+maturity, by its very blushes, revealed at last to the careless and
+distant traveller, and leads his thoughts away from the dusty road into
+those brave solitudes which it inhabits. It flashes out conspicuous with
+all the virtue and beauty of a Maple,--_Acer rubrum_. We may now read
+its title, or _rubric_, clear. Its _virtues_, not its sins, are as
+scarlet.
+
+Notwithstanding the Red Maple is the most intense scarlet of any of our
+trees, the Sugar-Maple has been the most celebrated, and Michaux in his
+"Sylva" does not speak of the autumnal color of the former. About the
+second of October, these trees, both large and small, are most
+brilliant, though many are still green. In "sprout-lands" they seem to
+vie with one another, and ever some particular one in the midst of the
+crowd will be of a peculiarly pure scarlet, and by its more intense
+color attract our eye even at a distance, and carry off the palm. A
+large Red-Maple swamp, when at the height of its change, is the most
+obviously brilliant of all tangible things, where I dwell, so abundant
+is this tree with us. It varies much both in form and color. A great
+many are merely yellow, more scarlet, others scarlet deepening into
+crimson, more red than common. Look at yonder swamp of Maples mixed with
+Pines, at the base of a Pine-clad hill, a quarter of a mile off, so that
+you get the full effect of the bright colors, without detecting the
+imperfections of the leaves, and see their yellow, scarlet, and crimson
+fires, of all tints, mingled and contrasted with the green. Some Maples
+are yet green, only yellow or crimson-tipped on the edges of their
+flakes, like the edges of a Hazel-Nut burr; some are wholly brilliant
+scarlet, raying out regularly and finely every way, bilaterally, like
+the veins of a leaf; others, of more irregular form, when I turn my head
+slightly, emptying out some of its earthiness and concealing the trunk
+of the tree, seem to rest heavily flake on flake, like yellow and
+scarlet clouds, wreath upon wreath, or like snow-drifts driving through
+the air, stratified by the wind. It adds greatly to the beauty of such a
+swamp at this season, that, even though there may be no other trees
+interspersed, it is not seen as a simple mass of color, but, different
+trees being of different colors and hues, the outline of each crescent
+tree-top is distinct, and where one laps on to another. Yet a painter
+would hardly venture to make them thus distinct a quarter of a mile off.
+
+As I go across a meadow directly toward a low rising ground this bright
+afternoon, I see, some fifty rods off toward the sun, the top of a Maple
+swamp just appearing over the sheeny russet edge of the hill, a stripe
+apparently twenty rods long by ten feet deep, of the most intensely
+brilliant scarlet, orange, and yellow, equal to any flowers or fruits,
+or any tints ever painted. As I advance, lowering the edge of the hill
+which makes the firm foreground or lower frame of the picture, the depth
+of the brilliant grove revealed steadily increases, suggesting that the
+whole of the inclosed valley is filled with such color. One wonders that
+the tithing-men and fathers of the town are not out to see what the
+trees mean by their high colors and exuberance of spirits, fearing that
+some mischief is brewing. I do not see what the Puritans did at this
+season, when the Maples blaze out in scarlet. They certainly could not
+have worshipped in groves then. Perhaps that is what they built
+meeting-houses and fenced them round with horse-sheds for.
+
+THE ELM.
+
+Now, too, the first of October, or later, the Elms are at the height of
+their autumnal beauty, great brownish-yellow masses, warm from their
+September oven, hanging over the highway. Their leaves are perfectly
+ripe. I wonder if there is any answering ripeness in the lives of the
+men who live beneath them. As I look down our street, which is lined
+with them, they remind me both by their form and color of yellowing
+sheaves of grain, as if the harvest had indeed come to the village
+itself, and we might expect to find some maturity and flavor in the
+thoughts of the villagers at last. Under those bright rustling yellow
+piles just ready to fall on the heads of the walkers, how can any
+crudity or greenness of thought or act prevail? When I stand where half
+a dozen large Elms droop over a house, it is as if I stood within a ripe
+pumpkin-rind, and I feel as mellow as if I were the pulp, though I may
+be somewhat stringy and seedy withal. What is the late greenness of the
+English Elm, like a cucumber out of season, which does not know when to
+have done, compared with the early and golden maturity of the American
+tree? The street is the scene of a great harvest-home. It would be worth
+the while to set out these trees, if only for their autumnal value.
+Think of these great yellow canopies or parasols held over our heads and
+houses by the mile together, making the village all one and compact,--an
+_ulmarium_, which is at the same time a nursery of men! And then how
+gently and unobserved they drop their burden and let in the sun when it
+is wanted, their leaves not heard when they fall on our roofs and in our
+streets; and thus the village parasol is shut up and put away! I see the
+market-man driving into the village, and disappearing under its canopy
+of Elm-tops, with _his_ crop, as into a great granary or barnyard. I am
+tempted to go thither as to a husking of thoughts, now dry and ripe, and
+ready to be separated from their integuments; but, alas! I foresee that
+it will be chiefly husks and little thought, blasted pig-corn, fit only
+for cob-meal,--for, as you sow, so shall you reap.
+
+FALLEN LEAVES.
+
+By the sixth of October the leaves generally begin to fall, in
+successive showers, after frost or rain; but the principal leaf-harvest,
+the acme of the _Fall_, is commonly about the sixteenth. Some morning at
+that date there is perhaps a harder frost than we have seen, and ice
+formed under the pump, and now, when the morning wind rises, the leaves
+come down in denser showers than ever. They suddenly form thick beds or
+carpets on the ground, in this gentle air, or even without wind, just
+the size and form of the tree above. Some trees, as small Hickories,
+appear to have dropped their leaves instantaneously, as a soldier
+grounds arms at a signal; and those of the Hickory, being bright yellow
+still, though withered, reflect a blaze of light from the ground where
+they lie. Down they have come on all sides, at the first earnest touch
+of autumn's wand, making a sound like rain.
+
+Or else it is after moist and rainy weather that we notice how great a
+fall of leaves there has been in the night, though it may not yet be the
+touch that loosens the Rock-Maple leaf. The streets are thickly strewn
+with the trophies, and fallen Elm-leaves make a dark brown pavement
+under our feet. After some remarkably warm Indian-summer day or days, I
+perceive that it is the unusual heat which, more than anything, causes
+the leaves to fall, there having been, perhaps, no frost nor rain for
+some time. The intense heat suddenly ripens and wilts them, just as it
+softens and ripens peaches and other fruits, and causes them to drop.
+
+The leaves of late Red Maples, still bright, strew the earth, often
+crimson-spotted on a yellow ground, like some wild apples,--though they
+preserve these bright colors on the ground but a day or two, especially
+if it rains. On causeways I go by trees here and there all bare and
+smoke-like, having lost their brilliant clothing; but there it lies,
+nearly as bright as ever, on the ground on one side, and making nearly
+as regular a figure as lately on the tree. I would rather say that I
+first observe the trees thus flat on the ground like a permanent colored
+shadow, and they suggest to look for the boughs that bore them. A queen
+might be proud to walk where these gallant trees have spread their
+bright cloaks in the mud. I see wagons roll over them as a shadow or a
+reflection, and the drivers heed them just as little as they did their
+shadows before.
+
+Birds'-nests, in the Huckleberry and other shrubs, and in trees, are
+already being filled with the withered leaves. So many have fallen in
+the woods, that a squirrel cannot run after a falling nut without being
+heard. Boys are raking them in the streets, if only for the pleasure of
+dealing with such clean crisp substances. Some sweep the paths
+scrupulously neat, and then stand to see the next breath strew them with
+new trophies. The swamp-floor is thickly covered, and the _Lycopodium
+lucidulum_ looks suddenly greener amid them. In dense woods they
+half-cover pools that are three or four rods long. The other day I could
+hardly find a well-known spring, and even suspected that it had dried
+up, for it was completely concealed by freshly fallen leaves; and when I
+swept them aside and revealed it, it was like striking the earth, with
+Aaron's rod, for a new spring. Wet grounds about the edges of swamps
+look dry with them. At one swamp, where I was surveying, thinking to
+step on a leafy shore from a rail, I got into the water more than a foot
+deep.
+
+When I go to the river the day after the principal fall of leaves, the
+sixteenth, I find my boat all covered, bottom and seats, with the leaves
+of the Golden Willow under which it is moored, and I set sail with a
+cargo of them rustling under my feet. If I empty it, it will be full
+again to-morrow. I do not regard them as litter, to be swept out, but
+accept them as suitable straw or matting for the bottom of my carriage.
+When I turn up into the mouth of the Assabet, which is wooded, large
+fleets of leaves are floating on its surface, as it were getting out to
+sea, with room to tack; but next the shore, a little farther up, they
+are thicker than foam, quite concealing the water for a rod in width,
+under and amid the Alders, Button-Bushes, and Maples, still perfectly
+light and dry, with fibre unrelaxed; and at a rocky bend where they are
+met and stopped by the morning wind, they sometimes form a broad and
+dense crescent quite across the river. When I turn my prow that way, and
+the wave which it makes strikes them, list what a pleasant rustling from
+these dry substances grating on one another! Often it is their
+undulation only which reveals the water beneath them. Also every motion
+of the wood-turtle on the shore is betrayed by their rustling there. Or
+even in mid-channel, when the wind rises, I hear them blown with a
+rustling sound. Higher up they are slowly moving round and round in some
+great eddy which the river makes, as that at the "Leaning Hemlocks,"
+where the water is deep, and the current is wearing into the bank.
+
+Perchance, in the afternoon of such a day, when the water is perfectly
+calm and full of reflections, I paddle gently down the main stream, and,
+turning up the Assabet, reach a quiet cove, where I unexpectedly find
+myself surrounded by myriads of leaves, like fellow-voyagers, which seem
+to have the same purpose, or want of purpose, with myself. See this
+great fleet of scattered leaf-boats which we paddle amid, in this smooth
+river-bay, each one curled up on every side by the sun's skill, each
+nerve a stiff spruce-knee,--like boats of hide, and of all patterns,
+Charon's boat probably among the rest, and some with lofty prows and
+poops, like the stately vessels of the ancients, scarcely moving in the
+sluggish current,--like the great fleets, the dense Chinese cities of
+boats, with which you mingle on entering some great mart, some New York
+or Canton, which we are all steadily approaching together. How gently
+each has been deposited on the water! No violence has been used towards
+them yet, though, perchance, palpitating hearts were present at the
+launching. And painted ducks, too, the splendid wood-duck among the
+rest, often come to sail and float amid the painted leaves,--barks of a
+nobler model still!
+
+What wholesome herb-drinks are to be had in the swamps now! What strong
+medicinal, but rich, scents from the decaying leaves! The rain falling
+on the freshly dried herbs and leaves, and filling the pools and ditches
+into which they have dropped thus clean and rigid, will soon convert
+them into tea,--green, black, brown, and yellow teas, of all degrees of
+strength, enough to set all Nature a-gossiping. Whether we drink them or
+not, as yet, before their strength is drawn, these leaves, dried on
+great Nature's coppers, are of such various pure and delicate tints as
+might make the fame of Oriental teas.
+
+How they are mixed up, of all species, Oak and Maple and Chestnut and
+Birch! But Nature is not cluttered with them; she is a perfect
+husbandman; she stores them all. Consider what a vast crop is thus
+annually shed on the earth! This, more than any mere grain or seed, is
+the great harvest of the year. The trees are now repaying the earth with
+interest what they have taken from it. They are discounting. They are
+about to add a leaf's thickness to the depth of the soil. This is the
+beautiful way in which Nature gets her muck, while I chaffer with this
+man and that, who talks to me about sulphur and the cost of carting. We
+are all the richer for their decay. I am more interested in this crop
+than in the English grass alone or in the corn. It prepares the virgin
+mould for future cornfields and forests, on which the earth fattens. It
+keeps our homestead in good heart.
+
+For beautiful variety no crop can be compared with this. Here is not
+merely the plain yellow of the grains, but nearly all the colors that we
+know, the brightest blue not excepted: the early blushing Maple, the
+Poison-Sumach blazing its sins as scarlet, the mulberry Ash, the rich
+chrome-yellow of the Poplars, the brilliant red Huckleberry, with which
+the hills' backs are painted, like those of sheep. The frost touches
+them, and, with the slightest breath of returning day or jarring of
+earth's axle, see in what showers they come floating down! The ground is
+all party-colored with them. But they still live in the soil, whose
+fertility and bulk they increase, and in the forests that spring from
+it. They stoop to rise, to mount higher in coming years, by subtle
+chemistry, climbing by the sap in the trees, and the sapling's first
+fruits thus shed, transmuted at last, may adorn its crown, when, in
+after-years, it has become the monarch of the forest.
+
+It is pleasant to walk over the beds of these fresh, crisp, and rustling
+leaves. How beautifully they go to their graves! how gently lay
+themselves down and turn to mould!--painted of a thousand hues, and fit
+to make the beds of us living. So they troop to their last
+resting-place, light and frisky. They put on no weeds, but merrily they
+go scampering over the earth, selecting the spot, choosing a lot,
+ordering no iron fence, whispering all through the woods about it,--some
+choosing the spot where the bodies of men are mouldering beneath, and
+meeting them half-way. How many flutterings before they rest quietly in
+their graves! They that soared so loftily, how contentedly they return
+to dust again, and are laid low, resigned to lie and decay at the foot
+of the tree, and afford nourishment to new generations of their kind, as
+well as to flutter on high! They teach us how to die. One wonders if the
+time will ever come when men, with their boasted faith in immortality,
+will lie down as gracefully and as ripe,--with such an Indian-summer
+serenity will shed their bodies, as they do their hair and nails.
+
+When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk in.
+I love to wander and muse over them in their graves. Here are no lying
+nor vain epitaphs. What though you own no lot at Mount Auburn? Your lot
+is surely cast somewhere in this vast cemetery, which has been
+consecrated from of old. You need attend no auction to secure a place.
+There is room enough here. The Loose-strife shall bloom and the
+Huckleberry-bird sing over your bones. The woodman and hunter shall be
+your sextons, and the children shall tread upon the borders as much as
+they will. Let us walk in the cemetery of the leaves,--this is your true
+Greenwood Cemetery.
+
+THE SUGAR-MAPLE.
+
+But think not that the splendor of the year is over; for as one leaf
+does not make a summer, neither does one fallen leaf make an autumn. The
+smallest Sugar-Maples in our streets make a great show as early as the
+fifth of October, more than any other trees there. As I look up the Main
+Street, they appear like painted screens standing before the houses; yet
+many are green. But now, or generally by the seventeenth of October,
+when almost all Red Maples, and some White Maples, are bare, the large
+Sugar-Maples also are in their glory, glowing with yellow and red, and
+show unexpectedly bright and delicate tints. They are remarkable for the
+contrast they often afford of deep blushing red on one half and green on
+the other. They become at length dense masses of rich yellow with a deep
+scarlet blush, or more than blush, on the exposed surfaces. They are the
+brightest trees now in the street.
+
+The large ones on our Common are particularly beautiful. A delicate, but
+warmer than golden yellow is now the prevailing color, with scarlet
+cheeks. Yet, standing on the east side of the Common just before
+sundown, when the western light is transmitted through them, I see that
+their yellow even, compared with the pale lemon yellow of an Elm close
+by, amounts to a scarlet, without noticing the bright scarlet portions.
+Generally, they are great regular oval masses of yellow and scarlet. All
+the sunny warmth of the season, the Indian summer, seems to be absorbed
+in their leaves. The lowest and inmost leaves next the bole are, as
+usual, of the most delicate yellow and green, like the complexion of
+young men brought up in the house. There is an auction on the Common
+to-day, but its red flag is hard to be discerned amid this blaze of
+color.
+
+Little did the fathers of the town anticipate this brilliant success,
+when they caused to be imported from farther in the country some
+straight poles with their tops cut off, which they called Sugar-Maples;
+and, as I remember, after they were set out, a neighboring merchant's
+clerk, by way of jest, planted beans about them. Those which were then
+jestingly called bean-poles are to-day far the most beautiful objects
+noticeable in our streets. They are worth all and more than they have
+cost,--though one of the selectmen, while setting them out, took the
+cold which occasioned his death,--if only because they have filled the
+open eyes of children with their rich color unstintedly so many
+Octobers. We will not ask them to yield us sugar in the spring, while
+they afford us so fair a prospect in the autumn. Wealth in-doors may be
+the inheritance of few, but it is equally distributed on the Common. All
+children alike can revel in this golden harvest.
+
+Surely trees should be set in our streets with a view to their October
+splendor; though I doubt whether this is ever considered by the "Tree
+Society." Do you not think it will make some odds to these children that
+they were brought up under the Maples? Hundreds of eyes are steadily
+drinking in this color, and by these teachers even the truants are
+caught and educated the moment they step abroad. Indeed, neither the
+truant nor the studious is at present taught color in the schools. These
+are instead of the bright colors in apothecaries' shops and city
+windows. It is a pity that we have no more _Red_ Maples, and some
+Hickories, in our streets as well. Our paint-box is very imperfectly
+filled. Instead of, or beside, supplying such paint-boxes as we do, we
+might supply these natural colors to the young. Where else will they
+study color under greater advantages? What School of Design can vie with
+this? Think how much the eyes of painters of all kinds, and of
+manufacturers of cloth and paper, and paper-stainers, and countless
+others, are to be educated by these autumnal colors. The stationer's
+envelopes may be of very various tints, yet not so various as those of
+the leaves of a single tree. If you want a different shade or tint of a
+particular color, you have only to look farther within or without the
+tree or the wood. These leaves are not many dipped in one dye, as at the
+dye-house, but they are dyed in light of infinitely various degrees of
+strength, and left to set and dry there.
+
+Shall the names of so many of our colors continue to be derived from
+those of obscure foreign localities, as Naples yellow, Prussian blue,
+raw Sienna, burnt Umber, Gamboge?--(surely the Tyrian purple must have
+faded by this time)--or from comparatively trivial articles of
+commerce,--chocolate, lemon, coffee, cinnamon, claret?--(shall we
+compare our Hickory to a lemon, or a lemon to a Hickory?)--or from ores
+and oxides which few ever see? Shall we so often, when describing to our
+neighbors the color of something we have seen, refer them, not to some
+natural object in our neighborhood, but perchance to a bit of earth
+fetched from the other side of the planet, which possibly they may find
+at the apothecary's, but which probably neither they nor we ever saw?
+Have we not an _earth_ under our feet,--ay, and a sky over our heads? Or
+is the last _all_ ultramarine? What do we know of sapphire, amethyst,
+emerald, ruby, amber, and the like,--most of us who take these names in
+vain? Leave these precious words to cabinet-keepers, virtuosos, and
+maids-of-honor,--to the Nabobs, Begums, and Chobdars of Hindostan, or
+wherever else. I do not see why, since America and her autumn woods have
+been discovered, our leaves should not compete with the precious stones
+in giving names to colors; and, indeed, I believe that in course of time
+the names of some of our trees and shrubs, as well as flowers, will get
+into our popular chromatic nomenclature.
+
+But of much more importance than a knowledge of the names and
+distinctions of color is the joy and exhilaration which these colored
+leaves excite. Already these brilliant trees throughout the street,
+without any more variety, are at least equal to an annual festival and
+holiday, or a week of such. These are cheap and innocent gala-days,
+celebrated by one and all without the aid of committees or marshals,
+such a show as may safely be licensed, not attracting gamblers or
+rum-sellers, nor requiring any special police to keep the peace. And
+poor indeed must be that New-England village's October which has not the
+Maple in its streets. This October festival costs no powder, nor ringing
+of bells, but every tree is a living liberty-pole on which a thousand
+bright flags are waving.
+
+No wonder that we must have our annual Cattle-Show, and Fall Training,
+and perhaps Cornwallis, our September Courts, and the like. Nature
+herself holds her annual fair in October, not only in the streets, but
+in every hollow and on every hill-side. When lately we looked into that
+Red-Maple swamp all a-blaze,--where the trees were clothed in their
+vestures of most dazzling tints, did it not suggest a thousand gypsies
+beneath,--a race capable of wild delight,--or even the fabled fawns,
+satyrs, and wood-nymphs come back to earth? Or was it only a
+congregation of wearied wood-choppers, or of proprietors come to inspect
+their lots, that we thought of? Or, earlier still, when we paddled on
+the river through that fine-grained September air, did there not appear
+to be something new going on under the sparkling surface of the stream,
+a shaking of props, at least, so that we made haste in order to be up in
+time? Did not the rows of yellowing Willows and Button-Bushes on each
+side seem like rows of booths, under which, perhaps, some fluviatile
+egg-pop equally yellow was effervescing? Did not all these suggest that
+man's spirits should rise as high as Nature's,--should hang out their
+flag, and the routine of his life be interrupted by an analogous
+expression of joy and hilarity?
+
+No annual training or muster of soldiery, no celebration with its scarfs
+and banners, could import into the town a hundredth part of the annual
+splendor of our October. We have only to set the trees, or let them
+stand, and Nature will find the colored drapery,--flags of all her
+nations, some of whose private signals hardly the botanist can
+read,--while we walk under the triumphal arches of the Elms. Leave it to
+Nature to appoint the days, whether the same as in neighboring States or
+not, and let the clergy read her proclamations, if they can understand
+them. Behold what a brilliant drapery is her Woodbine flag! What
+public-spirited merchant, think you, has contributed this part of the
+show? There is no handsomer shingling and paint than this vine, at
+present covering a whole side of some houses. I do not believe that the
+Ivy _never sear_ is comparable to it. No wonder it has been extensively
+introduced into London. Let us have a good many Maples and Hickories and
+Scarlet Oaks, then, I say. Blaze away! Shall that dirty roll of bunting
+in the gun-house be all the colors a village can display? A village is
+not complete, unless it have these trees to mark the season in it. They
+are important, like the town-clock. A village that has them not will not
+be found to work well. It has a screw loose, an essential part is
+wanting. Let us have Willows for spring, Elms for summer, Maples and
+Walnuts and Tupeloes for autumn, Evergreens for winter, and Oaks for all
+seasons. What is a gallery in a house to a gallery in the streets, which
+every market-man rides through, whether he will or not? Of course, there
+is not a picture-gallery in the country which would be worth so much to
+us as is the western view at sunset under the Elms of our main street.
+They are the frame to a picture which is daily painted behind them. An
+avenue of Elms as large as our largest and three miles long would seem
+to lead to some admirable place, though only C---- were at the end of
+it.
+
+A village needs these innocent stimulants of bright and cheering
+prospects to keep off melancholy and superstition. Show me two villages,
+one embowered in trees and blazing with all the glories of October, the
+other a merely trivial and treeless waste, or with only a single tree or
+two for suicides, and I shall be sure that in the latter will be found
+the most starved and bigoted religionists and the most desperate
+drinkers. Every wash-tub and milk-can and gravestone will be exposed.
+The inhabitants will disappear abruptly behind their barns and houses,
+like desert Arabs amid their rocks, and I shall look to see spears in
+their hands. They will be ready to accept the most barren and forlorn
+doctrine,--as that the world is speedily coming to an end, or has
+already got to it, or that they themselves are turned wrong side
+outward. They will perchance crack their dry joints at one another and
+call it a spiritual communication.
+
+But to confine ourselves to the Maples. What if we were to take half as
+much pains in protecting them as we do in setting them out,--not
+stupidly tie our horses to our dahlia-stems?
+
+What meant the fathers by establishing this _perfectly living_
+institution before the church,--this institution which needs no
+repairing nor repainting, which is continually enlarged and repaired by
+its growth? Surely they
+
+  "Wrought in a sad sincerity;
+  Themselves from God they could not free;
+  They planted better than they knew;--
+  The conscious trees to beauty grew."
+
+Verily these Maples are cheap preachers, permanently settled, which
+preach their half-century, and century, ay, and century-and-a-half
+sermons, with constantly increasing unction and influence, ministering
+to many generations of men; and the least we can do is to supply them
+with suitable colleagues as they grow infirm.
+
+THE SCARLET OAK.
+
+Belonging to a genus which is remarkable for the beautiful form of its
+leaves, I suspect that some Scarlet-Oak leaves surpass those of all
+other Oaks in the rich and wild beauty of their outlines. I judge from
+an acquaintance with twelve species, and from drawings which I have seen
+of many others.
+
+Stand under this tree and see how finely its leaves are cut against the
+sky,--as it were, only a few sharp points extending from a midrib. They
+look like double, treble, or quadruple crosses. They are far more
+ethereal than the less deeply scolloped Oak-leaves. They have so little
+leafy _terra firma_ that they appear melting away in the light, and
+scarcely obstruct our view. The leaves of very young plants are, like
+those of full-grown Oaks of other species, more entire, simple, and
+lumpish in their outlines; but these, raised high on old trees, have
+solved the leafy problem. Lifted higher and higher, and sublimated more
+and more, putting off some earthiness and cultivating more intimacy with
+the light each year, they have at length the least possible amount of
+earthy matter, and the greatest spread and grasp of skyey influences.
+There they dance, arm in arm with the light,--tripping it on fantastic
+points, fit partners in those aërial halls. So intimately mingled are
+they with it, that, what with their slenderness and their glossy
+surfaces, you can hardly tell at last what in the dance is leaf and what
+is light. And when no zephyr stirs, they are at most but a rich tracery
+to the forest-windows.
+
+I am again struck with their beauty, when, a month later, they thickly
+strew the ground in the woods, piled one upon another under my feet.
+They are then brown above, but purple beneath. With their narrow lobes
+and their bold deep scollops reaching almost to the middle, they suggest
+that the material must be cheap, or else there has been a lavish expense
+in their creation, as if so much had been cut out. Or else they seem to
+us the remnants of the stuff out of which leaves have been cut with a
+die. Indeed, when they lie thus one upon another, they remind me of a
+pile of scrap-tin.[1]
+
+Or bring one home, and study it closely at your leisure, by the
+fireside. It is a type, not from any Oxford font, not in the Basque nor
+the arrow-headed character, not found on the Rosetta Stone, but destined
+to be copied in sculpture one day, if they ever get to whittling stone
+here. What a wild and pleasing outline, a combination of graceful curves
+and angles! The eye rests with equal delight on what is not leaf and on
+what is leaf,--on the broad, free, open sinuses, and on the long, sharp,
+bristle-pointed lobes. A simple oval outline would include it all, if
+you connected the points of the leaf; but how much richer is it than
+that, with its half-dozen deep scollops, in which the eye and thought of
+the beholder are embayed! If I were a drawing-master, I would set my
+pupils to copying these leaves, that they might learn to draw firmly and
+gracefully.
+
+Regarded as water, it is like a pond with half a dozen broad rounded
+promontories extending nearly to its middle, half from each side, while
+its watery bays extend far inland, like sharp friths, at each of whose
+heads several fine streams empty in,--almost a leafy archipelago.
+
+But it oftener suggests land, and, as Dionysius and Pliny compared the
+form of the Morea to that of the leaf of the Oriental Plane-tree, so
+this leaf reminds me of some fair wild island in the ocean, whose
+extensive coast, alternate rounded bays with smooth strands, and
+sharp-pointed rocky capes, mark it as fitted for the habitation of man,
+and destined to become a centre of civilization at last. To the sailor's
+eye. It is a much-indented shore. Is it not, in fact, a shore to the
+aërial ocean, on which the windy surf beats? At sight of this leaf we
+are all mariners,--if not vikings, buccaneers, and filibusters. Both our
+love of repose and our spirit of adventure are addressed. In our most
+casual glance, perchance, we think, that, if we succeed in doubling
+those sharp capes, we shall find deep, smooth, and secure havens in the
+ample bays. How different from the White-Oak leaf, with its rounded
+headlands, on which no light-house need be placed! That is an England,
+with its long civil history, that may be read. This is some still
+unsettled New-found Island or Celebes. Shall we go and be rajahs there?
+
+By the twenty-sixth of October the large Scarlet Oaks are in their
+prime, when other Oaks are usually withered. They have been kindling
+their fires for a week past, and now generally burst into a blaze. This
+alone of _our_ indigenous deciduous trees (excepting the Dogwood, of
+which I do not know half a dozen, and they are but large bushes) is now
+in its glory. The two Aspens and the Sugar-Maple come nearest to it in
+date, but they have lost the greater part of their leaves. Of
+evergreens, only the Pitch-Pine is still commonly bright.
+
+But it requires a particular alertness, if not devotion to these
+phenomena, to appreciate the wide-spread, but late and unexpected glory
+of the Scarlet Oaks. I do not speak here of the small trees and shrubs,
+which are commonly observed, and which are now withered, but of the
+large trees. Most go in and shut their doors, thinking that bleak and
+colorless November has already come, when some of the most brilliant and
+memorable colors are not yet lit.
+
+This very perfect and vigorous one, about forty feet high, standing in
+an open pasture, which was quite glossy green on the twelfth, is now,
+the twenty-sixth, completely changed to bright dark scarlet,--every
+leaf, between you and the sun, as if it had been dipped into a scarlet
+dye. The whole tree is much like a heart in form, as well as color. Was
+not this worth waiting for? Little did you think, ten days ago, that
+that cold green tree would assume such color as this. Its leaves are
+still firmly attached, while those of other trees are falling around it.
+It seems to say,--"I am the last to blush, but I blush deeper than any
+of ye. I bring up the rear in my red coat. We Scarlet ones, alone of
+Oaks, have not given up the fight."
+
+The sap is now, and even far into November, frequently flowing fast in
+these trees, as in Maples in the spring; and apparently their bright
+tints, now that most other Oaks are withered, are connected with this
+phenomenon. They are full of life. It has a pleasantly astringent,
+acorn-like taste, this strong Oak-wine, as I find on tapping them with
+my knife.
+
+Looking across this woodland valley, a quarter of a mile wide, how rich
+those Scarlet Oaks, embosomed in Pines, their bright red branches
+intimately intermingled with them! They have their full effect there.
+The Pine-boughs are the green calyx to their red petals. Or, as we go
+along a road in the woods, the sun striking endwise through it, and
+lighting up the red tents of the Oaks, which on each side are mingled
+with the liquid green of the Pines, makes a very gorgeous scene. Indeed,
+without the evergreens for contrast, the autumnal tints would lose much
+of their effect.
+
+The Scarlet Oak asks a clear sky and the brightness of late October
+days. These bring out its colors. If the sun goes into a cloud, they
+become comparatively indistinct. As I sit on a cliff in the southwest
+part of our town, the sun is now getting low, and the woods in Lincoln,
+south and east of me, are lit up by its more level rays; and in the
+Scarlet Oaks, scattered so equally over the forest, there is brought out
+a more brilliant redness than I had believed was in them. Every tree of
+this species which is visible in those directions, even to the horizon,
+now stands out distinctly red. Some great ones lift their red backs high
+above the woods, in the next town, like huge roses with a myriad of fine
+petals; and some more slender ones, in a small grove of White Pines on
+Pine Hill in the east, on the very verge of the horizon, alternating
+with the Pines on the edge of the grove, and shouldering them with their
+red coats, look like soldiers in red amid hunters in green. This time it
+is Lincoln green, too. Till the sun got low, I did not believe that
+there were so many redcoats in the forest army. Theirs is an intense
+burning red, which would lose some of its strength, methinks, with every
+step you might take toward them; for the shade that lurks amid their
+foliage does not report itself at this distance, and they are
+unanimously red. The focus of their reflected color is in the atmosphere
+far on this side. Every such tree becomes a nucleus of red, as it were,
+where, with the declining sun, that color grows and glows. It is partly
+borrowed fire, gathering strength from the sun on its way to your eye.
+It has only some comparatively dull red leaves for a rallying-point, or
+kindling-stuff, to start it, and it becomes an intense scarlet or red
+mist, or fire, which finds fuel for itself in the very atmosphere. So
+vivacious is redness. The very rails reflect a rosy light at this hour
+and season. You see a redder tree than exists.
+
+If you wish to count the Scarlet Oaks, do it now. In a clear day stand
+thus on a hill-top in the woods, when the sun is an hour high, and every
+one within range of your vision, excepting in the west, will be
+revealed. You might live to the age of Methuselah and never find a tithe
+of them, otherwise. Yet sometimes even in a dark day I have thought them
+as bright as I ever saw them. Looking westward, their colors are lost in
+a blaze of light; but in other directions the whole forest is a
+flower-garden, in which these late roses burn, alternating with green,
+while the so-called "gardeners," walking here and there, perchance,
+beneath, with spade and water-pot, see only a few little asters amid
+withered leaves.
+
+These are _my_ China-asters, _my_ late garden-flowers. It costs me
+nothing for a gardener. The falling leaves, all over the forest, are
+protecting the roots of my plants. Only look at what is to be seen, and
+you will have garden enough, without deepening the soil in your yard. We
+have only to elevate our view a little, to see the whole forest as a
+garden. The blossoming of the Scarlet Oak,--the forest-flower,
+surpassing all in splendor (at least since the Maple)! I do not know but
+they interest me more than the Maples, they are so widely and equally
+dispersed throughout the forest; they are so hardy, a nobler tree on the
+whole;--our chief November flower, abiding the approach of winter with
+us, imparting warmth to early November prospects. It is remarkable that
+the latest bright color that is general should be this deep, dark
+scarlet and red, the intensest of colors. The ripest fruit of the year;
+like the cheek of a hard, glossy, red apple from the cold Isle of
+Orleans, which will not be mellow for eating till next spring! When I
+rise to a hill-top, a thousand of these great Oak roses, distributed on
+every side, as far as the horizon! I admire them four or five miles off!
+This my unfailing prospect for a fortnight past! This late forest-flower
+surpasses all that spring or summer could do. Their colors were but rare
+and dainty specks comparatively, (created for the nearsighted, who walk
+amid the humblest herbs and underwoods,) and made no impression on a
+distant eye. Now it is an extended forest or a mountain-side, through or
+along which we journey from day to day, that bursts into bloom.
+Comparatively, our gardening is on a petty scale,--the gardener still
+nursing a few asters amid dead weeds, ignorant of the gigantic asters
+and roses, which, as it were, overshadow him, and ask for none of his
+care. It is like a little red paint ground on a saucer, and held up
+against the sunset sky. Why not take more elevated and broader views,
+walk in the great garden, not skulk in a little "debauched" nook of it?
+consider the beauty of the forest, and not merely of a few impounded
+herbs?
+
+Let your walks now be a little more adventurous; ascend the hills. If,
+about the last of October, you ascend any hill in the outskirts of our
+town, and probably of yours, and look over the forest, you may
+see--well, what I have endeavored to describe. All this you surely
+_will_ see, and much more, if you are prepared to see it,--if you _look_
+for it. Otherwise, regular and universal as this phenomenon is, whether
+you stand on the hill-top or in the hollow, you will think for
+threescore years and ten that all the wood is, at this season, sear and
+brown. Objects are concealed from our view, not so much because they are
+out of the course of our visual ray as because we do not bring our minds
+and eyes to bear on them; for there is no power to see in the eye
+itself, any more than in any other jelly. We do not realize how far and
+widely, or how near and narrowly, we are to look. The greater part of
+the phenomena of Nature are for this reason concealed from us all our
+lives. The gardener sees only the gardener's garden. Here, too, as in
+political economy, the supply answers to the demand. Nature does not
+cast pearls before swine. There is just as much beauty visible to us in
+the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate,--not a grain more. The
+actual objects which one man will see from a particular hill-top are
+just as different from those which another will see as the beholders are
+different The Scarlet Oak must, in a sense, be in your eye when you go
+forth. We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of
+it, take it into our heads,--and then we can hardly see anything else.
+In my botanical rambles, I find, that, first, the idea, or image, of a
+plant occupies my thoughts, though it may seem very foreign to this
+locality,--no nearer than Hudson's Bay,--and for some weeks or months I
+go thinking of it, and expecting it unconsciously, and at length I
+surely see it. This is the history of my finding a score or more of rare
+plants, which I could name. A man sees only what concerns him. A
+botanist absorbed in the study of grasses does not distinguish the
+grandest Pasture Oaks. He, as it were, tramples down Oaks unwittingly in
+his walk, or at most sees only their shadows. I have found that it
+required a different intention of the eye, in the same locality, to see
+different plants, even when they were closely allied, as _Juncaceoe_ and
+_Gramineoe_: when I was looking for the former, I did not see the latter
+in the midst of them. How much more, then, it requires different
+intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to different departments
+of knowledge! How differently the poet and the naturalist look at
+objects!
+
+Take a New-England selectman, and set him on the highest of our hills,
+and tell him to look,--sharpening his sight to the utmost, and putting
+on the glasses that suit him best, (ay, using a spy-glass, if he
+likes,)--and make a full report. What, probably, will he _spy_?--what
+will he _select_ to look at? Of course, he will see a Brocken spectre of
+himself. He will see several meeting-houses, at least, and, perhaps,
+that somebody ought to be assessed higher than he is, since he has so
+handsome a wood-lot. Now take Julius Caesar, or Immanuel Swedenborg, or
+a Fegee-Islander, and set him up there. Or suppose all together, and let
+them compare notes afterward. Will it appear that they have enjoyed the
+same prospect? What they will see will be as different as Rome was from
+Heaven or Hell, or the last from the Fegee Islands. For aught we know,
+as strange a man as any of these is always at our elbow.
+
+Why, it takes a sharp-shooter to bring down even such trivial game as
+snipes and woodcocks; he must take very particular aim, and know what he
+is aiming at. He would stand a very small chance, if he fired at random
+into the sky, being told that snipes were flying there. And so is it
+with him that shoots at beauty; though he wait till the sky falls, he
+will not bag any, if he does not already know its seasons and haunts,
+and the color of its wing,--if he has not dreamed of it, so that he can
+_anticipate_ it; then, indeed, he flushes it at every step, shoots
+double and on the wing, with both barrels, even in cornfields. The
+sportsman trains himself, dresses and watches unweariedly, and loads and
+primes for his particular game. He prays for it, and offers sacrifices,
+and so he gets it. After due and long preparation, schooling his eye and
+hand, dreaming awake and asleep, with gun and paddle and boat he goes
+out after meadow-hens, which most of his townsmen never saw nor dreamed
+of, and paddles for miles against a headwind, and wades in water up to
+his knees, being out all day without his dinner, and _therefore_ he gets
+them. He had them half-way into his bag when he started, and has only to
+shove them down. The true sportsman can shoot you almost any of his game
+from his windows: what else has he windows or eyes for? It comes and
+perches at last on the barrel of his gun; but the rest of the world
+never see it _with the feathers on_. The geese fly exactly under his
+zenith, and honk when they get there, and he will keep himself supplied
+by firing up his chimney; twenty musquash have the refusal of each one
+of his traps before it is empty. If he lives, and his game-spirit
+increases, heaven and earth shall fail him sooner than game; and when he
+dies, he will go to more extensive, and, perchance, happier
+hunting-grounds. The fisherman, too, dreams of fish, sees a bobbing cork
+in his dreams, till he can almost catch them in his sink-spout. I knew a
+girl who, being sent to pick huckleberries, picked wild gooseberries by
+the quart, where no one else knew that there were any, because she was
+accustomed to pick them up country where she came from. The astronomer
+knows where to go star-gathering, and sees one clearly in his mind
+before any have seen it with a glass. The hen scratches and finds her
+food right under where she stands; but such is not the way with the
+hawk.
+
+These bright leaves which I have mentioned are not the exception, but
+the rule; for I believe that all leaves, even grasses and mosses,
+acquire brighter colors just before their fall. When you come to observe
+faithfully the changes of each humblest plant, you find that each has,
+sooner or later, its peculiar autumnal tint; and if you undertake to
+make a complete list of the bright tints, it will be nearly as long as a
+catalogue of the plants in your vicinity.
+
+
+
+DAVID GAUNT.
+
+PART II.
+
+It was late. Palmer, unhitching his horse from the fence, mounted and
+rode briskly down the hill. He would lose the girl: saw the loss, faced
+it. Besides the love he bore her, she had made God a truth to him. He
+was jaded, defeated, as if some power outside of himself had taken him
+unexpectedly at advantage to-night, and wrung this thing from him. Life
+was not much to look forward to,--the stretch it had been before: study,
+and the war, and hard common sense,--the theatre,--card-playing. Not
+being a man, I cannot tell you how much his loss amounted to. I know,
+going down the rutted wagon-road, his mild face fell slowly into a
+haggard vacancy foreign to it: one or two people at the tavern where he
+stopped asked him if he were ill: I think, too, that he prayed once or
+twice to whatever God he had, looking up with dry eye and shut
+lips,--dumb prayers, wrung out of some depth within, such as Christian
+sent out of the slough, when he was like to die. But he did stop at the
+tavern, and there drank some brandy to steady his nerves; and he did not
+forget that there was an ambuscade of Rebels at Blue's Gap, and that he
+was to share in the attack on them at daylight: he spurred his horse, as
+he drew nearer Romney. Dode, being a woman, thinking love lost, sat by
+the fire, looking vacantly at nothing. Yet the loss was as costly to him
+as to her, and would be remembered as long.
+
+He came up to the church where the meeting had been held. It was just
+over; the crowded room was stifling with the smoke of tobacco and
+tallow-candles; there was an American flag hanging over the pulpit, a
+man pounding on a drum at the door, and a swarm of loafers on the steps,
+cheering for the Union, for Jeff Davis, etc. Palmer dismounted, and made
+his way to the pulpit, where Dyke, a lieutenant in his company, was.
+
+"All ready, Dyke?"
+
+"All right, Capt'n."
+
+Palmer lingered, listening to the talk of the men. Dyke had been an
+Ohio-River pilot; after the troubles began, had taken a pork-contract
+under Government; but was lieutenant now, as I said. It paid better than
+pork, he told Palmer,--a commission, especially in damp weather. Palmer
+did not sneer. Dykes, North and South, had quit the hog-killing for the
+man-killing business, with no other motive than the percentage, he knew;
+but he thought the rottenness lay lower than their hearts. Palmer stood
+looking down at the crowd: the poorer class of laborers,--their limbs
+cased in shaggy blouses and green baize leggings,--their faces dogged,
+anxious as their own oxen.
+
+"'Bout half on 'em Secesh," whispered Jim Dyke. "'T depends on who
+burned their barns fust."
+
+Jim was recruiting to fill up some vacancies in Palmer's company. He had
+been tolerably successful that day; as he said, with a wink, to the
+Captain,--
+
+"The twenty dollars a month on one side, an' the test-oath on t' other,
+brought loyalty up to the scratch."
+
+He presented some of the recruits to Palmer: pluming himself, adjusting
+the bogus chains over his pink shirt.
+
+"Hyur's Squire Pratt. Got two sons in th' army,--goin' hisself. That's
+the talk! Charley Orr, show yerself! This boy's father was shot in his
+bed by the Bushwhackers."
+
+A mere boy, thin, consumptive, hollow-chested: a mother's-boy, Palmer
+saw, with fair hair and dreamy eyes. He held out his hand to him.
+
+"Charley will fight for something better than revenge. I see it in his
+face."
+
+The little fellow's eyes flashed.
+
+"Yes, Captain."
+
+He watched Palmer after that with the look one of the Cavaliers might
+have turned to a Stuart. But he began to cough presently, and slipped
+back to the benches where the women were. Palmer heard one of them in
+rusty black sob out,--"Oh, Charley! Charley!"
+
+There was not much enthusiasm among the women; Palmer looked at them
+with a dreary trail of thought in his brain. They were of the raw,
+unclarified American type: thick-blooded, shrewish, with dish-shaped
+faces, inelastic limbs. They had taken the war into their whole
+strength, like their sisters, North and South: as women greedily do
+anything that promises to be an outlet for what power of brain, heart,
+or animal fervor they may have, over what is needed for wifehood or
+maternity. Theodora, he thought, angrily, looked at the war as these
+women did, had no poetic enthusiasm about it, did not grasp the grand
+abstract theory on either side. She would not accept it as a fiery,
+chivalric cause, as the Abolitionist did, nor as a stern necessity, like
+the Union-saver. The sickly Louisianian, following her son from Pickens
+to Richmond, besieging God for vengeance with the mad impatience of her
+blood, or the Puritan mother praying beside her dead hero-boy, would
+have called Dode cowardly and dull. So would those blue-eyed, gushing
+girls who lift the cup of blood to their lips with as fervid an
+_abandon_ as ever did French _bacchante_. Palmer despised them. Their
+sleazy lives had wanted color and substance, and they found it in a cant
+of patriotism, in illuminating their windows after slaughter, in
+dressing their tables with helmets of sugar, (after the fashion of the
+White House,)--delicate _souvenirs de la guerre!_
+
+But Theodora and these women had seen their door-posts slopped with
+blood,--that made a difference. This woman in front had found her boy's
+half-charred body left tied to a tree by Rebel scouts: this girl was the
+grandchild of Naylor, a man of seventy,--the Federal soldiers were fired
+at from his house one day,--the next, the old man stood dumb upon its
+threshold; in this world, he never would call to God for vengeance.
+Palmer knew these things were true. Yet Dode should not for this sink to
+low notions about the war. She did: she talked plain Saxon of it, and
+what it made of men; said no cause could sanctify a deed so
+vile,--nothing could be holy which turned honest men into thieves and
+assassins. Her notions were low to degradation, Palmer thought, with the
+quickening cause at his heart; they had talked of it the last time he
+was here. She thought they struck bottom on some eternal truth, a
+humanity broader than patriotism. Pah! he sickened at such whining cant!
+The little Captain was common-sensed to the backbone,--intolerant. He
+was an American, with the native taint of American conceit, but he was a
+man whose look was as true as his oath; therefore, talking of the war,
+he never glossed it over,--showed its worst phases, in Virginia and
+Missouri; but he accepted it, in all its horror, as a savage necessity.
+It was a thing that must be, while men were men, and not angels.
+
+While he stood looking at the crowd, Nabbes, a reporter for one of the
+New-York papers, who was lounging in the pulpit, began to laugh at him.
+
+"I say, Captain, you Virginia Loyalists don't go into this war with
+_vim_. It's a bitter job to you."
+
+Palmer's face reddened.
+
+"What you say is true, thank God,"--quietly.
+
+Nabbes stuck his hands into his pockets, whistling. He shrewdly
+suspected Palmer wasn't "sound." No patriot would go into the war with
+such a miserable phiz as that. Yet he fought like a tiger up in the
+mountains. Of course, the war was a bad business,--and the taxes--whew!
+Last summer things were smashed generally, and when Will (his brother)
+sailed in Sherman's expedition, it was a blue day enough: how his mother
+and the girls did carry on! (Nabbes and Will supported the family, by
+the way; and Nabbes, inside of his slang, billiards, etc., was a good,
+soft-hearted fellow.) However, the country was looking up now. There
+were our victories,--and his own salary was raised. Will was snug down
+at Port Royal,--sent the girls home some confoundedly pretty jewelry;
+they were as busy as bees, knitting socks, and--What, the Devil! were we
+to be ridden over rough-shod by Davis and his crew? Northern brain and
+muscle were toughest, and let water find its own level. So he tore out a
+fly-leaf from the big Bible, and jotted down notes of the meeting,--"An
+outpouring of the loyal heart of West Virginia,"--and yawned, ready for
+bed, contented with the world, himself, and God.
+
+Dyke touched Palmer's arm.
+
+"Lor', Capt'n," he whispered, "ef thar a'n't old Scofield! 'n the back
+o' th' house, watchin' you. Son killed at Manassas,--George,--d' ye
+know?"
+
+"I know."
+
+"Danged ef I don't respect Secesh like them," broke out Dyke. "Ye'll not
+sin his soul with a test-oath. Thar's grit thar. Well, God help us!"
+
+Palmer stepped down from the pulpit; but the old man, seeing him coming,
+turned and shouldered his way out of the crowd, his haggard face
+blood-red.
+
+"What'll the old chap say to Gaunt's enlistin'?" said Dyke.
+
+"Gaunt in? Bully for the parson!" said Squire Pratt.
+
+"Parson 'listed?" said the reporter. "They and the women led off in this
+war. I'm glad of it,--brings out the pith in 'em."
+
+"I dunno," said Dyke, looking round. "Gaunt's name brought in a dozen;
+but----It's a dirty business, the war. I wish 'n somebody's hands hed
+stayed clean of it."
+
+"It's the Lord's work," said Pratt, with a twang, being a class-leader.
+
+"Ye-s? So 'ud Bishop Polk say. Got a different Lord down thar? 'S
+likely. Henry Wise used to talk of the 'God of Virginia.'"
+
+"Was a fellow," said Nabbes, nursing one foot, "that set me easy about
+my soul, and the thing. A chaplain in Congress: after we took down that
+bitter Mason--and--Slidell pill, it was. Prayed to Jesus to keep us safe
+until our vengeance on England was ripe,--to 'aid us through the patient
+watch and vigil long of him who treasures up a wrong.' Old boy, thinks
+I, if that's Christianity, it's cheap. I'll take stock in it. Going at
+half-price, I think."
+
+"I am tired of this cant of Christians refusing to join in the war,"
+said Palmer, impatiently. "God allows it; it helps His plans."
+
+"Humph! So did Judas," muttered Dyke, shrewdly. "Well, I a'n't a
+purfessor myself.--Boys, come along! Drum-call time. You're in luck.
+We'll have work afore mornin',--an' darned ef you sha'n't be in it, in
+spite of rules!"
+
+When the recruits went out, the meeting broke up. Palmer put on his hat,
+and made his way out of a side-door into the snow-covered field about
+the church, glancing at his watch as he went. He had but little time to
+spare. The Federal camp lay on a distant hill-side below Romney: through
+the dim winter shadows he could see points of light shifting from tent
+to tent; a single bugle-call had shrilled through the mountains once or
+twice; the regiments ordered for the attack were under arms now, he
+concluded. They had a long march before them: the Gap, where the
+Confederate band were concealed, lay sixteen miles distant. Unless the
+Union troops succeeded in surprising the Rebels, the fight, Palmer knew,
+would be desperate; the position they held was almost impregnable,
+--camped behind a steep gash in the mountain: a handful of
+men could hold it against Dunning's whole brigade, unshielded, bare. A
+surprise was almost impossible in these mountains, where Rebel
+guerrillas lurked behind every tree, and every woman in the
+village-shanties was ready to risk limbs or life as a Rebel spy. Thus
+far, however, he thought this movement had been kept secret: even the
+men did not know where they were going.
+
+Crossing the field hurriedly, he saw two men talking eagerly behind a
+thorn-bush. One of them, turning, came towards him, his hat slouched
+over his face. It was Scofield. As he came into the clear starlight,
+Palmer recognized the thick-set, sluggish figure and haggard face, and
+waited for him,--with a quick remembrance of long summer days, when he
+and George, boys together, had looked on this man as the wisest and
+strongest, sitting at his side digging worms or making yellow flies for
+him to fish in the Big Cacapon,--how they would have the delicate
+broiled trout for supper,--how Dode was a chubby little puss then, with
+white apron and big brown eyes, choosing to sit on his lap when they
+went to the table, and putting her hand slyly into his coffee. An odd
+thing to think of then and there! George lay stiff now, with a wooden
+board only at his head to tell that he once lived. The thoughts struck
+through Palmer's brain in the waiting moment, making his hand unsteady
+as he held it out to the old man.
+
+"Uncle Scofield! Is the war to come between you and me? For George's
+sake! I saw him at Harper's Ferry before--before Manassas. We were no
+less friends then than ever before."
+
+The old man's eyes had glared defiance at Palmer under their gray brows
+when he faced him, but his big bony hand kept fumbling nervously with
+his cravat.
+
+"Yes, Dougl's. I didn't want to meet yer. Red an' white's my
+colors,--red an' white, so help me God!"
+
+"I know," said Palmer, quietly.
+
+There was a silence,--the men looking steadily at each other.
+
+"Ye saw George?" the old man said, his eyes falling.
+
+"Yes. At Harper's Ferry. I was making my way through the Confederate
+lines; George took me over, risking his own life to do it, then reported
+himself under arrest. He did not lose his commission; your general was
+just"----
+
+Scofield's face worked.
+
+"That was like my boy! Thar's not a grandfather he hes in the country
+whar he's gone to that would believe one of our blood could do a mean
+thing! The Scofields ar'n't well larned, but they've true honor,
+Dougl's Palmer!"
+
+Palmer's eyes lighted. Men of the old lion-breed know each other in
+spite of dress or heirship of opinion.
+
+"Ye've been to th' house to-night, boy?" said the old man, his voice
+softened. "Yes? That was right. Ye've truer notions nor me. I went away
+so 's not till meet yer. I'm sorry for it. George's gone, Dougl's, but
+he'd be glad till think you an' me was the same as ever,--he would!" He
+held out his hand. Something worthy the name of man in each met in the
+grasp, that no blood spilled could foul or embitter. They walked across
+the field together, the old man leaning his hand on Palmer's shoulder as
+if for support, though he did not need it. He had been used to walk so
+with George. This was his boy's friend: that thought filled and warmed
+his heart so utterly that he forgot his hand rested on a Federal
+uniform. Palmer was strangely silent.
+
+"I saw Theodora," he said at last, gravely.
+
+Scofield started at the tone, looked at him keenly, some new thought
+breaking in on him, frightening, troubling him. He did not answer; they
+crossed the broad field, coming at last to the hill-road. The old man
+spoke at last, with an effort.
+
+"You an' my little girl are friends, did you mean, Dougl's? The war
+didn't come between ye?"
+
+"Nothing shall come between us,"--quietly, his eye full upon the old
+man's. The story of a life lay in the look.
+
+Scofield met it questioningly, almost solemnly. It was no time for
+explanation. He pushed his trembling hand through his stubby gray hair.
+
+"Well, well, Dougl's. These days is harrd. But it'll come right! God
+knows all."
+
+The road was empty now,--lay narrow and bare down the hill; the moon had
+set, and the snow-clouds were graying heavily the pale light above. Only
+the sharp call of a discordant trumpet broke the solitude and dumbness
+of the hills. A lonesome, foreboding night. The old man rested his hand
+on the fence, choking down an uncertain groan now and then, digging into
+the snow with his foot, while Palmer watched him.
+
+"I must bid yer good-bye, Dougl's," he said at last. "I've a long tramp
+afore me to-night. Mebbe worse. Mayhap I mayn't see you agin; men can't
+hev a grip on the next hour, these days. I'm glad we 're friends.
+Whatever comes afore mornin', I'm glad o' that!"
+
+"Have you no more to say to me?"
+
+"Yes, Dougl's,--'s for my little girl,--ef so be as I should foller my
+boy sometime, I'd wish you'd be friends to Dode, Dougl's. Yes! I
+would,"--hesitating, something wet oozing from his small black eye, and
+losing itself in the snuffy wrinkles.
+
+Palmer was touched. It was a hard struggle with pain that had wrung out
+that tear. The old man held his hand a minute, then turned to the road.
+
+"Whichever of us sees Geordy first kin tell him t' other's livin' a
+true-grit honest life, call him Yankee or Virginian,--an' that's enough
+said! So good bye, Dougl's!"
+
+Palmer mounted his horse and galloped off to the camp, the old man
+plodding steadily down the road. When the echo of the horse's hoofs had
+ceased, a lean gangling figure came from out of the field-brush, and met
+him.
+
+"Why, David boy! whar were ye to-night?" Scofield's voice had grown
+strangely tender in the last hour.
+
+Gaunt hesitated. He had not the moral courage to tell the old man he had
+enlisted.
+
+"I waited. I must air the church,--it is polluted with foul smells."
+
+Scofield laughed to himself at David's "whimsey," but he halted, going
+with the young man as he strode across the field. He had a dull
+foreboding of the end of the night's battle: before he went to it, he
+clung with a womanish affection to anything belonging to his home, as
+this Gaunt did. He had not thought the poor young man was so dear to
+him, until now, as he jogged along beside him, thinking that before
+morning he might be lying dead at the Gap. How many people would care?
+David would, and Dode, and old Bone.
+
+Gaunt hurried in,--he ought to be in camp, but he could not leave the
+house of God polluted all night,--opening the windows, even carrying the
+flag outside. The emblem of freedom, of course,--but----He hardly knew
+why he did it. There were flags on every Methodist chapel, almost: the
+sect had thrown itself into the war _con amore_. But Gaunt had fallen
+into that sect by mistake; his animal nature was too weak for it: as for
+his feeling about the church, he had just that faint shade of Pantheism
+innate in him that would have made a good Episcopalian. The planks of
+the floor were more to him than other planks; something else than
+sunshine had often shone in to him through the little panes,--he touched
+them gently; he walked softly over the rag-carpet on the aisle. The LORD
+was in His holy temple. With another thought close behind that, of the
+time when the church was built, more than a year ago; what a happy,
+almost jolly time they had, the members giving the timber, and making a
+sort of frolic of putting it up, in the afternoons after harvest. They
+were all in one army or the other now: some of them in Blue's Gap. He
+would help ferret them out in the morning. He shivered, with the old
+doubt tugging fiercely at his heart. Was he right? The war was one of
+God's great judgments, but was it _his_ place to be in it? It was too
+late to question now.
+
+He went up into the pulpit, taking out the Bible that lay on the shelf,
+lighting a candle, glancing uneasily at the old man on the steps. He
+never had feared to meet his eye before. He turned to the fly-leaf,
+holding it to the candle. What odd fancy made him want to read the
+uncouth, blotted words written there? He knew them well enough. "To my
+Dear frend, David Gaunt. May, 1860. the Lord be Betwien mee And thee. J.
+Scofield." It was two years since he had given it to Gaunt, just after
+George had been so ill with cholera, and David had nursed him through
+with it. Gaunt fancied that nursing had made the hearts of both son and
+father more tender than all his sermons. He used to pray with them in
+the evenings as George grew better, hardly able to keep from weeping
+like a woman, for George was very dear to him. Afterwards the old man
+came to church more regularly, and George had quit swearing, and given
+up card-playing. He remembered the evening when the old man gave him the
+Bible. He had been down in Wheeling, and when he came home brought it
+out to Gaunt in the old corn-field, wrapped up in his best red bandanna
+handkerchief,--his face growing red and pale. "It's the Book, David. I
+thort ef you'd use this one till preach from. Mayhap it wouldn't be
+right till take it from a sinner like me, but--I thort I'd like it,
+somehow,"--showing him the fly-leaf. "I writ this,--ef it would be
+true,--what I writ,--'The Lord he between me and thee'?"
+
+Gaunt passed his fingers now over the misspelled words softly as he
+would stroke a dead face. Then he came out, putting out the candle, and
+buttoning the Bible inside of his coat.
+
+Scofield waited for him on the steps. Some trouble was in the old
+fellow's face, Gaunt thought, which he could not fathom. His coarse
+voice choked every now and then, and his eyes looked as though he never
+hoped to see the church or Gaunt again.
+
+"Heh, David!" with a silly laugh. "You'll think me humorsome, boy, but I
+hev an odd fancy."
+
+He stopped abruptly.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"It's lonesome here,"--looking around vaguely. "God seems near here on
+the hills, d' ye think? David, I'm goin' a bit out on the road to-night,
+an' life's uncertain these times. Whiles I think I might never be back
+to see Dode agin,--or you. David, you're nearer to Him than me; you
+brought me to Him, you know. S'pose,--you'll think me foolish now,--ef
+we said a bit prayer here afore I go; what d'ye think? Heh?"
+
+Gaunt was startled. Somehow to-night he did not feel as if God was near
+on the hills, as Scofield thought.
+
+"I will,"--hesitating. "Are you going to see Dode first, before you go?"
+
+"Dode? Don't speak of her, boy! I'm sick! Kneel down an' pray,--the
+Lord's Prayer,--that's enough,--mother taught me that,"--baring his gray
+head, while Gaunt, his worn face turned to the sky, said the old words
+over. "Forgive," he muttered,--"resist not evil,"--some fragments vexing
+his brain. "Did He mean that? David boy? Did He mean His people to trust
+in God to right them as He did? Pah! times is different now,"--pulling
+his hat over his forehead to go. "Good bye, David!"
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"I don't mind tellin' you,--you'll keep it. Bone's bringin' a horse
+yonder to the road. I'm goin' to warn the boys to be ready, an' help
+'em,--at the Gap, you know?"
+
+"The Gap? Merciful God, no!" cried Gaunt. "Go back"----
+
+The words stopped in his throat. What if he met this man there?
+
+Scofield looked at him, bewildered.
+
+"Thar's no danger," he said, calmly. "Yer nerves are weak. But yer love
+for me's true, David. That's sure,"--with a smile. "But I've got to warn
+the boys. Good bye,"--hesitating, his face growing red. "Ye'll mind, ef
+anything should happen,--what I writ in the Book,--once,--'The Lord be
+between me an' thee,' dead or alive? Them's good, friendly words. Good
+bye! God bless you, boy!"
+
+Gaunt wrung his hand, and watched him as he turned to the road. He saw
+Bone meet him, leading a horse. As the old man mounted, he turned, and,
+seeing Gaunt, nodded cheerfully, and going down the hill began to
+whistle. "Ef I should never come back, he kin tell Dode I hed a light
+heart at th' last," he thought. But when he was out of hearing, the
+whistle stopped, and he put spurs to the horse.
+
+Counting the hours, the minutes,--a turbid broil of thought in his
+brain, of Dode sitting alone, of George and his murderers, "stiffening
+his courage,"--right and wrong mixing each other inextricably together.
+If, now and then, a shadow crossed him of the meek Nazarene leaving this
+word to His followers, that, let the world do as it would, _they_ should
+resist not evil, he thrust it back. It did not suit to-day. Hours
+passed. The night crept on towards morning, colder, stiller. Faint bars
+of gray fell on the stretch of hill-tops, broad and pallid. The shaggy
+peaks blanched whiter in it. You could hear from the road-bushes the
+chirp of a snow-bird, wakened by the tramp of his horse, or the flutter
+of its wings. Overhead, the stars disappeared, like flakes of fire going
+out; the sky came nearer, tinged with healthier blue. He could see the
+mountain where the Gap was, close at hand, but a few miles distant.
+
+He had met no pickets: he believed the whole Confederate camp there was
+asleep. And behind him, on the road he had just passed, trailing up the
+side of a hill, was a wavering, stealthy line, creeping slowly nearer
+every minute,--the gray columns under Dunning. The old man struck the
+rowels into his horse,--the boys would be murdered in their sleep! The
+road was rutted deep: the horse, an old village hack, lumbered along,
+stumbling at every step. "Ef my old bones was what they used to be, I'd
+best trust them," he muttered. Another hour was over; there were but two
+miles before him to the Gap: but the old mare panted and balked at every
+ditch across the road. The Federal force was near; even the tap of their
+drum had ceased long since; their march was as silent as a tiger's
+spring. Close behind,--closer every minute! He pulled the rein
+savagely,--why could not the dumb brute know that life and death waited
+on her foot? The poor beast's eye lightened. She gathered her whole
+strength, sprang forward, struck upon a glaze of ice, and fell. The old
+man dragged himself out. "Poor old Jin! ye did what ye could!" he said.
+He was lamed by the fall. It was no time to think of that; he hobbled
+on, the cold drops of sweat oozing out on his face from pain. Reaching
+the bridge that crosses the stream there, he glanced back. He could not
+see the Federal troops, but he heard the dull march of their
+regiments,--like some giant's tread, slow, muffled in snow.
+Closer,--closer every minute! His heavy boots clogged with snow; the
+pain exhausted even his thick lungs,--they breathed heavily; he climbed
+the narrow ridge of ground that ran parallel with the road, and hurried
+on. Half an hour more, and he would save them!
+
+A cold, stirless air: Gaunt panted in it. Was there ever night so
+silent? Following his lead, came the long column, a dark, even-moving
+mass, shirred with steel. Sometimes he could catch glimpses of some
+vivid point in the bulk: a hand, moving nervously to the sword's hilt;
+faces,--sensual, or vapid, or royal, side by side, but sharpened alike
+by a high purpose, with shut jaws, and keen, side-glancing eyes.
+
+He was in advance of them, with one other man,--Dyke. Dyke took him, as
+knowing the country best, and being a trustworthy guide. So this was
+work! True work for a man. Marching hour after hour through the solitary
+night, he had time to think. Dyke talked to him but little: said once,
+"P'raps 't was as well the parsons had wakened up, and was mixin' with
+other folks. Gettin' into camp 'ud show 'em original sin, he guessed.
+Not but what this war-work brought out good in a man. Makes 'em, or
+breaks 'em, ginerally." And then was silent. Gaunt caught the words.
+Yes,--it was better preachers should lay off the prestige of the cloth,
+and rough it like their Master, face to face with men. There would be
+fewer despicable shams among them. But _this?_--clutching the loaded
+pistol in his hand. Thinking of Cromwell and Hedley Vicars. Freedom! It
+was a nobler cause than theirs. But a Face was before him, white,
+thorn-crowned, bent watchful over the world. He was sent of Jesus. To do
+what? Preach peace by murder? What said his Master? "That _ye_ resist
+not evil." Bah! Palmer said the doctrine of nonresistance was whining
+cant. As long as human nature was the same, right and wrong would be
+left to the arbitrament of brute force. And yet--was not Christianity a
+diviner breath than this passing through the ages? "Ye are the light of
+the world." Even the "roughs" sneered at the fighting parsons. It was
+too late to think now. He pushed back his thin yellow hair, his homesick
+eyes wandering upwards, his mouth growing dry and parched.
+
+They were nearing the mountain now. Dawn was coming. The gray sky heated
+and glowed into inner deeps of rose; the fresh morning air sprang from
+its warm nest somewhere, and came to meet them, like some one singing a
+heartsome song under his breath. The faces of the columns looked more
+rigid, paler, in the glow: men facing death have no time for fresh
+morning thoughts.
+
+They were within a few rods of the Gap. As yet there was no sign of
+sentinel,--not even the click of a musket was heard. "They sleep like
+the dead," muttered Dyke. "We'll be on them in five minutes more."
+Gaunt, keeping step with him, pressing up the hill, shivered. He thought
+he saw blood on his hands. Why, this was work! His whole body throbbed
+as with one pulse. Behind him, a long way, came the column; his
+quickened nerves felt the slow beat of their tread, like the breathing
+of some great animal. Crouching in a stubble-field at the road-side he
+saw a negro,--a horse at a little distance. It was Bone; he had followed
+his master: the thought passing vaguely before him without meaning. On!
+on! The man beside him, with his head bent, his teeth clenched, the
+pupils of his eyes contracted, like a cat's nearing its prey. The road
+lay bare before them.
+
+"Halt!" said Dyke. "Let them come up to us."
+
+Gaunt stopped in his shambling gait.
+
+"Look!" hissed Dyke,--"a spy!"--as the figure of a man climbed from a
+ditch where he had been concealed as he ran, and darted towards the
+rebel camp. "We'll miss them yet!"--firing after him with an oath. The
+pistol missed,--flashed in the pan. "Wet!"--dashing it on the ground.
+"Fire, Gaunt!--quick!"
+
+The man looked round; he ran lamely,--a thick, burly figure, a haggard
+face. Gaunt's pistol fell. Dode's father! the only man that loved him!
+
+"Damn you!" shouted Dyke, "are you going to shirk?"
+
+Why, this _was_ the work! Gaunt pulled the trigger; there was a blinding
+flash. The old man stood a moment on the ridge, the wind blowing his
+gray hair back, then staggered, and fell,--that was all.
+
+The column, sweeping up on the double-quick, carried the young disciple
+of Jesus with them. The jaws of the Gap were before them,--the enemy.
+What difference, if he turned pale, and cried out weakly, looking back
+at the man that he had killed?
+
+For a moment the silence was unbroken. The winter's dawn, with pink
+blushes, and restless soft sighs, was yet wakening into day. The next,
+the air was shattered with the thunder of the guns among the hills,
+shouts, curses, death-cries. The speech which this day was to utter in
+the years was the old vexed cry,--"How long, O Lord? how long?"
+
+A fight, short, but desperate. Where-ever it was hottest, the men
+crowded after one leader, a small man, with a mild, quiet face,--Douglas
+Palmer. Fighting with a purpose: high,--the highest, he thought: to
+uphold his Government. His blows fell heavy and sure.
+
+You know the end of the story. The Federal victory was complete. The
+Rebel forces were carried off prisoners to Romney. How many, on either
+side, were lost, as in every battle of our civil war, no one can tell:
+it is better, perhaps, we do not know.
+
+The Federal column did not return in an unbroken mass as they went.
+There were wounded and dying among them; some vacant places. Besides,
+they had work to do on their road back: the Rebels had been sheltered in
+the farmers' houses near; the "nest must be cleaned out": every
+homestead but two from Romney to the Gap was laid in ashes. It was not a
+pleasant sight for the officers to see women and children flying
+half-naked and homeless through the snow, nor did they think it would
+strengthen the Union sentiment; but what could they do? As great
+atrocities as these were committed by the Rebels. The war, as Palmer
+said, was a savage necessity.
+
+When the fight was nearly over, the horse which Palmer rode broke from
+the _mélée_ and rushed back to the road. His master did not guide him.
+His face was set, pale; there was a thin foam on his lips. He had felt a
+sabre-cut in his side in the first of the engagement, but had not heeded
+it: now, he was growing blind, reeling on the saddle. Every bound of the
+horse jarred him with pain. His sense was leaving him, he knew; he
+wondered dimly if he was dying. That was the end of it, was it? He hoped
+to God the Union cause would triumph. Theodora,--he wished Theodora and
+he had parted friends. The man fell heavily forward, and the horse,
+terrified to madness, sprang aside, on a shelving ledge on the
+road-side, the edge of a deep mountain-gully. It was only sand beneath
+the snow, and gave way as he touched it. The animal struggled
+frantically to regain his footing, but the whole mass slid, and horse
+and rider rolled senseless to the bottom. When the noon-sun struck its
+peering light that day down into the dark crevice, Palmer lay there,
+stiff and stark.
+
+When the Federal troops had passed by that morning, Scofield felt some
+one lift him gently, where he had fallen. It was Bone.
+
+"Don't yer try ter stan', Mars' Joe," he said. "I kin tote yer like a
+fedder. Lor' bress yer, dis is nuffin'. We'll hev yer roun' 'n no
+time,"--his face turning ash-colored as he talked, seeing how dark the
+stain was on the old man's waistcoat.
+
+His master could not help chuckling even then.
+
+"Bone," he gasped, "when will ye quit lyin'? Put me down, old fellow.
+Easy. I'm goin' fast."
+
+Death did not take him unawares. He had thought all day it would end in
+this way. But he never knew who killed him,--I am glad of that.
+
+Bone laid him on a pile of lumber behind some bushes. He could do
+little,--only held his big hand over the wound with all his force,
+having a vague notion he could so keep in life. He did not comprehend
+yet that his master was dying, enough to be sorry: he had a sort of
+pride in being nearest to Mars' Joe in a time like this,--in having him
+to himself. That was right: hadn't they always been together since they
+were boys and set rabbit-traps on the South-Branch Mountain? But there
+was a strange look in the old man's eyes Bone did not recognize,--a new
+and awful thought. Now and then the sharp crack of the musketry jarred
+him.
+
+"Tink dem Yankees is gettin' de Debbil in de Gap," Bone said,
+consolingly. "Would yer like ter know how de fight is goin', Mars'?"
+
+"What matters it?" mumbled the old man. "Them things is triflin', after
+all,--now,--now."
+
+"Is dar anyting yer'd like me ter git, Mars' Joe?" said Bone, through
+his sobs.
+
+The thought of the dying man was darkening fast; he began to mutter
+about Dode, and George at Harper's Ferry,--"Give Coly a warm mash
+to-night, Bone."
+
+"O Lord!" cried the negro, "ef Mist' Dode was hyur! Him's goin', an'
+him's las' breff is given ter de beast! Mars' Joe," calling in his ear,
+"fur God's sake say um prayer!"
+
+The man moved restlessly, half-conscious.
+
+"I wish David was here,--to pray for me."
+
+The negro gritted his teeth, choking down an oath.
+
+"I wish,--I thort I'd die at home,--allays. That bed I've slep' in come
+thirty years. I wish I was in th' house."
+
+His breath came heavy and at long intervals. Bone gave a crazed look
+toward the road, with a wild thought of picking his master up and
+carrying him home. But it was nearly over now. The old man's eyes were
+dull; they would never see Dode again. That very moment she stood
+watching for him on the porch, her face colorless from a sleepless
+night, thinking he had been at Romney, that every moment she would hear
+his "Hillo!" round the bend of the road. She did not know that could not
+be again. He lay now, his limbs stretched out, his grizzly old head in
+Bone's arms.
+
+"Tell Dode I didn't fight. She'll be glad o' that. Thar's no blood on my
+hands." He fumbled at his pocket. "My pipe? Was it broke when I fell?
+Dody 'd like to keep it, mayhap. She allays lit it for me."
+
+The moment's flash died down. He muttered once or twice, after
+that,--"Dode,"--and "Lord Jesus,"--and then his eyes shut. That was all.
+
+
+They had buried her dead out of her sight. They had no time for mourning
+or funeral-making now. They only left her for a day alone to hide her
+head from all the world in the coarse old waistcoat, where the heart
+that had been so big and warm for her lay dead beneath,--to hug the
+cold, haggard face to her breast, and smooth the gray hair. She knew
+what the old man had been to her--now! There was not a homely way he had
+of showing his unutterable pride and love for his little girl that did
+not wring her very soul. She had always loved him; but she knew now how
+much warmer and brighter his rough life might have been, if she had
+chosen to make it so. There was not a cross word of hers, nor an angry
+look, that she did not remember with a bitterness that made her sick as
+death. If she could but know he forgave her! It was too late. She
+loathed herself, her coldness, her want of love to him,--to all the
+world. If she could only tell him she loved him, once more!--hiding her
+face in his breast, wishing she could lie there as cold and still as he,
+whispering, continually, "Father! Father!" Could he not hear? When they
+took him away, she did not cry nor faint. When trouble stabbed Dode to
+the quick, she was one of those people who do not ask for help, but go
+alone, like a hurt deer, until the wound heals or kills. This was a loss
+for life. Of course, this throbbing pain would grieve itself down; but
+in all the years to come no one would take just the place her old father
+had left vacant. Husband and child might be dearer, but she would never
+be "Dody" to any one again. She shut the loss up in her own heart. She
+never named him afterwards.
+
+It was a cold winter's evening, that, after the funeral. The January
+wind came up with a sharp, dreary sough into the defiles of the hills,
+crusting over the snow-sweeps with a glaze of ice that glittered in the
+pearly sunlight, clear up the rugged peaks. There, at the edge of them,
+the snow fretted and arched and fell back in curling foam-waves with
+hints of delicate rose-bloom in their white shining. The trees, that had
+stood all winter bare and patient, lifting up their dumb arms in dreary
+supplication, suddenly, to-day, clothed themselves, every trunk and limb
+and twig, in flashing ice, that threw back into the gray air the royal
+greeting of a thousand splendid dyes, violet, amber, and crimson,--to
+show God they did not need to wait for summer days to praise Him. A cold
+afternoon: even the seeds hid in the mould down below the snow were
+chilled to the heart, and thought they surely could not live the winter
+out: the cows, when Bone went out drearily to feed them by himself, were
+watching the thin, frozen breath steaming from their nostrils with tears
+in their eyes, he thought.
+
+A cold day: cold for the sick and wounded soldiers that were jolted in
+ambulances down the mountain-roads through its creeping hours. For the
+Federal troops had evacuated Romney. The Rebel forces, under Jackson,
+had nearly closed around the mountain-camp before they were discovered:
+they were twenty thousand strong. Lander's force was but a handful in
+comparison: he escaped with them for their lives that day, leaving the
+town and the hills in full possession of the Confederates.
+
+A bleak, heartless day: coldest of all for Dode, lying on the floor of
+her little room. How wide and vacant the world looked to her! What could
+she do there? Why was she born? She must show her Master to others,--of
+course; but--she was alone: everybody she loved had been taken from her.
+She wished that she were dead. She lay there, trying to pray, now and
+then,--motionless, like some death in life; the gray sunlight looking in
+at her, in a wondering way. It was quite contented to be gray and cold,
+till summer came.
+
+Out in the little kitchen, the day had warmed up wonderfully. Dode's
+Aunt Perrine, a widow of thirty years' standing, had come over to "see
+to things durin' this murnful affliction." As she had brought her
+hair-trunk and bonnet-box, it was probable her stay would be indefinite.
+Dode was conscious of her as she would be of an attack of nettle-rash.
+Mrs. Perrine and her usual burying-colleague, "Mis' Browst," had gotten
+up a snug supper of fried oysters, and between that and the fresh relish
+of horror from the funeral were in a high state of enjoyment.
+
+Aunt Perrine, having officiated as chief mourner that very morning, was
+not disposed to bear her honors meekly.
+
+"It was little Jane Browst knew of sorrer. With eight gells well
+married,--_well_ married, Jane,--deny it, ef you can,--what can you know
+of my feelins this day? Hyur's Mahala's husband dead an' gone,--did you
+say tea or coffee, Jane?--Joseph Scofield, a good brother-in-law to me's
+lives, laid in the sod this day. You may well shake yer head! But who
+'ll take his place to me? Dode there's young an' 'll outgrow it. But it
+'s me that suffers the loss,"--with a fresh douse of tears, and a
+contemptuous shove of the oyster-plate to make room for her weeping
+head. "It's me that's the old 'n' withered trunk!"
+
+Mis' Browst helped herself freely to the oysters just then.
+
+"Not," said Aunt Perrine, with stern self-control, "that I don't submit,
+an' bear as a Christian ought."
+
+She took the spoon again.
+
+"'N' I could wish," severely, raising her voice, "'s all others could
+profit likewise by this dispensation. Them as is kerried off by
+tantrums, 'n' consorts with Papishers 'n' the Lord knows what, might see
+in this a judgment, ef they would."
+
+Mis' Browst groaned in concert.
+
+"Ye needn't girn that away, Jane Browst," whispered Aunt Perrine,
+emphatically. "Dode Scofield's a different guess sort of a gell from any
+Browst. Keep yer groans for yer own nest. Ef I improve the occasion
+while she's young an' tender, what's that to you? Look at home, you'd
+best, I say!"
+
+Mis' Browst was a woman of resources and English pluck. She always came
+out best at last, though her hair was toffy-colored and her eyes a
+washed-out blue, and Aunt Perrine was of the color of a mild Indian. Two
+of Mis' Browst's sons-in-law had been "burned out" by the Yankees;
+another was in the Union army: these trump-cards of misery she did now
+so produce and flourish and weep over that she utterly routed the enemy,
+reduced her to stolid silence.
+
+"Well, well," she muttered, getting breath. "We'll not talk of our
+individooal sorrers when affliction is general, Jane Browst. S'pose we
+hev Bone in, and hear the perticklers of the scrimmage at Blue's Gap.
+It's little time I've hed for news since,"--with a groan to close the
+subject finally.
+
+Mis' Browst sighed an assent, drinking her coffee with a resigned gulp,
+with the firm conviction that the civil war had been designed for her
+especial trial and enlargement in Christian grace.
+
+So Bone was called in from the cow-yard. His eyes were quite fiery, for
+the poor stupid fellow had been crying over the "warm mash" he was
+giving to Coly. "Him's las' words was referrin' ter yer, yer pore
+beast," he had said, snuffling out loud. He had stayed in the stables
+all day, "wishin' all ole she-cats was to home, an' him an' Mist' Dode
+could live in peace."
+
+However, he was rather flattered at the possession of so important a
+story just now, and in obedience to Aunt Perrine's nod seated himself
+with dignity on the lowest step of the garret-stairs, holding carefully
+his old felt hat, which he had decorated with streaming weepers of
+crape.
+
+Dode, pressing her hands to her ears, heard only the dull drone of their
+voices. She shut her eyes, sometimes, and tried to fancy that she was
+dreaming and would waken presently,--that she would hear her father rap
+on the window with his cowhide, and call, "Supper, Dody dear?"--that it
+was a dream that Douglas Palmer was gone forever, that she had put him
+away. Had she been right? God knew; she was not sure.
+
+It grew darker; the gray afternoon was wearing away with keen gusts and
+fitful snow-falls. Dode looked up wearily: a sharp exclamation, rasped
+out by Aunt Perrine, roused her.
+
+"Dead? Dougl's dead?"
+
+"Done gone, Mist'. I forgot dat--ter tell yer. Had somefin' else ter
+tink of."
+
+"Down in the gully?"
+
+"Saw him lyin' dar as I went ter git Flynn's cart ter--ter bring Mars'
+Joe, yer know,--home. Gone dead. Like he's dar yit. Snow 'ud kiver him
+fast, an' de Yankees hedn't much leisure ter hunt up de missin',--yi!
+yi!"--with an attempt at a chuckle.
+
+"Dougl's dead!" said Aunt Perrine. "Well!--in the midst of life--Yer not
+goin', Jane Browst? What's yer hurry, woman? You've but a step across
+the road. Stay to-night. Dode an' me'll be glad of yer company. It's
+better to come to the house of murnin' than the house of feastin', you
+know."
+
+"You may be thankful you've a house to cover you, Ann Perrine, an'"----
+
+"Yes,--I know. I'm resigned. But there's no affliction like
+death.--Bone, open the gate for Mis' Browst. Them hasps is needin'
+mendin', as I've often said to Joseph,--um!"
+
+The women kissed each other as often as women do whose kisses
+are--cheap, and Mis' Browst set off down the road. Bone, turning to shut
+the gate, felt a cold hand on his arm.
+
+"Gor-a'mighty! Mist' Dode, what is it?"
+
+The figure standing in the snow wrapt in a blue cloak shook as he
+touched it. Was she, too, struck with death? Her eyes were burning, her
+face white and clammy.
+
+"Where is he, Uncle Bone? where?"
+
+The old man understood--all.
+
+"Gone dead, darlin'."--holding her hand in his paw, tenderly. "Don't
+fret, chile! Down in de Tear-coat gully. Dead, chile, dead! Don't yer
+understan'?"
+
+"He is not dead," she said, quietly. "Open the gate," pulling at the
+broken hasp.
+
+"Fur de Lor's sake, Mist' Dode, come in 'n' bathe yer feet 'n' go to
+bed! Chile, yer crazy!"
+
+Common sense, and a flash of something behind to give it effect, spoke
+out of Dode's brown eyes, just then.
+
+"Go into the stable, and bring a horse after me. The cart is broken?"
+
+"Yes, 'm. Dat cussed Ben"----
+
+"Bring the horse,--and some brandy, Uncle Bone."
+
+"Danged ef yer shall kill yerself! Chile, I tell yer he's dead. I'll
+call Mist' Perrine."
+
+Her eyes were black now, for an instant; then they softened.
+
+"He is not dead. Come, Uncle Bone. You're all the help I have, now."
+
+The old man's flabby face worked. He did not say anything, but went into
+the stable, and presently came out, leading the horse, with fearful
+glances back at the windows. He soon overtook the girl going hurriedly
+down the road, and lifted her into the saddle.
+
+"Chile! chile! yer kin make a fool of ole Bone, allays."
+
+She did not speak; her face, with its straight-lidded eyes, turned to
+the mountain beyond which lay the Tear-coat gully. A fair face under its
+blue hood, even though white with pain,--an honorable face: the best a
+woman can know of pride and love in life spoke through it.
+
+"Mist' Dode," whined Ben, submissively, "what are yer goin' ter do?
+Bring him home?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Fur de lub o' heben!"--stopping short. "A Yankee captain in de house,
+an' Jackson's men rampin' over de country like devils! Dey'll burn de
+place ter de groun', ef dey fin' him."
+
+"I know."
+
+Bone groaned horribly, then went on doggedly. Fate was against him: his
+gray hairs were bound to go down with sorrow to the grave. He looked up
+at her wistfully, after a while.
+
+"What'll Mist' Perrine say?" he asked.
+
+Dode's face flushed scarlet. The winter mountain night, Jackson's army,
+she did not fear; but the staring malicious world in the face of Aunt
+Perrine did make her woman's heart blench.
+
+"It doesn't matter," she said, her eyes full of tears. "I can't help
+that, Uncle Bone,"--putting her little hand on his shoulder, as he
+walked beside her. The child was so utterly alone, you know.
+
+The road was lonely,--a mere mountain-path striking obliquely through
+the hills to the highway: darkening hills and sky and valleys strangely
+sinking into that desolate homesick mood of winter twilight. The sun was
+gone; one or two sad red shadows lay across the gray. Night would soon
+be here, and he lay stiff-cold beneath the snow. Not dead: her heart
+told her that imperiously from the first. But there was not one instant
+to lose.
+
+"I cannot wait for you, Uncle Bone. I must go alone."
+
+"Debbil de step! I'll take yer 'cross fields ter Gentry's, an' ride on
+myself."
+
+"You could not find him. No one could find him but me."
+
+Something possessed the girl, other than her common self. She pushed his
+hand gently from the reins, and left him. Bone wrung his hands.
+
+"'N' de guerrillas,--'n' de rest o' de incarnate debbils!"
+
+She knew that. Dode was no heroine,--a miserable coward. There was not a
+black stump of a tree by the road-side, nor the rustle of a squirrel in
+the trees, that did not make her heart jump and throb against her
+bodice. Her horse climbed the rocky path slowly. I told you the girl
+thought her Helper was alive, and very near. She did to-night. She
+thought He was beside her in this lonesome road, and knew she would be
+safe. She felt as if she could take hold of His very hand. It grew
+darker: the mountains of snow glowered wan like the dead kings in Hades;
+the sweeps of dark forests whispered some broken mysterious word, as she
+passed; sometimes, in a sudden opening, she could see on a far hill-side
+the red fires of a camp. She could not help the sick feeling in her
+throat, nor make her hand steady; but the more alone she was, the nearer
+He came,--the pale face of the Nazarene, who loved His mother and Mary,
+who took the little children in His arms before He blessed them. Nearer
+than ever before; so she was not afraid to tell Him, as she went, how
+she had suffered that day, and that she loved this man who lay dying
+under the snow: to ask that she might find him. A great gulf lay between
+them. Would _He_ go with her, if she crossed it? She knew He would.
+
+A strange peace came to the girl. She untied her hood and pushed it
+back, that her whole head might feel the still air. How pure it was! God
+was in it,--in all. The mountains, the sky, the armies yonder, her own
+heart, and his under the snow, rested in Him, like motes in the
+sunshine.
+
+The moon, rising behind a bank of cloud, threw patches of light now and
+then across the path: the girl's head, as she rode through them, came
+into quick relief. No saint's face,--a very woman's, its pale, reserved
+beauty unstrung with pain, her bosom full of earthly love, but in her
+eyes that look which Mary must have given, when, after she thought her
+Lord was dead, He called her, "Mary!" and she, looking up, said,
+"Master!"
+
+She had reached the highway at last. She could see where, some distance
+yet beyond, the gully struck black across the snow-covered fields. The
+road ran above it, zigzag along the hill-side. She thought, as her horse
+galloped up the path, she could see the very spot where Douglas was
+lying. Not dead,--she knew he was not dead! She came to it now. How
+deathly still it was! As she tied the horse to the fence, and climbed
+down the precipice through the snow, she was dimly conscious that the
+air was warmer, that the pure moonlight was about her, genial, hopeful.
+A startled snow-bird chirped to her, as she passed. Why, it was a happy
+promise! Why should it not be happy? He was not dead, and she had leave
+to come to him.
+
+Yet, before she gained the level field, the pulse in her body was weak
+and sick, and her eyes were growing blind. She did not see him. Half
+covered by snow, she found his gray horse, dead, killed by the fall.
+Palmer was gone. The gully was covered with muddy ice; there was a split
+in it, and underneath, the black water curdled and frothed. Had he
+fallen there? Was that thing that rose and fell in the roots of the old
+willow his dead hand? There was a floating gleam of yellow in the
+water,--it looked like hair. Dode put her hand to her hot breast, shut
+her dry lips. He was not dead! God could not lie to her!
+
+Stooping, she went over the ground again, an unbroken waste of white:
+until, close to the water's edge, she found the ginseng-weeds torn and
+trampled down. She never afterwards smelt their unclean, pungent odor,
+without a sudden pang of the smothered pain of this night coming back to
+her. She knelt, and found foot-marks,--one booted and spurred. She knew
+it: what was there he had touched that she did not know? He was alive:
+she did not cry out at this, or laugh, as her soul went up to God,--only
+thrust her hand deep into the snow where his foot had been, with a
+quick, fierce tenderness, blushing as she drew it back, as if she had
+forgotten herself, and from her heart caressed him. She heard a sound at
+the other side of a bend in the hill, a low drone, like somebody
+mumbling a hymn.
+
+She pushed her way through the thicket: the moon did not shine there;
+there was a dark crevice in the hill, where some farmer's boy had built
+a shed. There was a fire in it, now, smouldering, as though whoever made
+it feared its red light would be seen by the distant pickets. Coming up
+to it, she stood in the door-way. Douglas Palmer lay on a heap of
+blankets on the ground: she could not see his face, for a lank, slothful
+figure was stooping over him, chafing his head. It was Gaunt. Dode went
+in, and knelt down beside the wounded man,--quietly: it seemed to her
+natural and right she should be there. Palmer's eyes were shut, his
+breathing heavy, uncertain; but his clothes were dried, and his side was
+bandaged.
+
+"It was only a flesh-wound," said Gaunt, in his vague way,--"deep,
+though. I knew how to bind it. He'll live, Douglas will."
+
+He did not seem surprised to see the girl. Nothing could be so bizarre
+in the world, that his cloudy, crotchety brain did not accept it, and
+make a commonplace matter out of it. It never occurred to him to wonder
+how she came there. He stood with folded arms, his bony shoulders
+bolstering up the board wall, watching her as she knelt, her hands on
+Palmer's pillow, but not touching him. Gaunt's lean face had a pitiful
+look, sometimes,--the look of the child he was in his heart,--hungry,
+wistful, as though he sought for something, which you might have,
+perhaps. He looked at Dode,--the child of the man that he had killed.
+She did not know that. When she came in, he thought of shaking hands
+with her, as he used to do. That could never be again,--never. _The man
+that he had killed?_ Whatever that meant to him, his artist eye took
+keen note of Dode, as she knelt there, in spite of remorse or pain
+below: how her noble, delicate head rose from the coarse blue drapery,
+the dark rings of her curling hair, the pale, clear-cut face, the
+burning lips, the eyes whose earthly soul was for the man who lay there.
+He knew that, yet he never loved her so fiercely as now,--now, when her
+father's blood lay between them.
+
+"Did you find him?" she asked, without looking up. "I ought to have done
+it. I wish I had done that. I wish I had given him his life. It was my
+right."
+
+One would think she was talking in her sleep.
+
+"Why was it your right?" he asked, quietly.
+
+"Because I loved him."
+
+Gaunt raised his hand to his head suddenly.
+
+"Did you, Dode? I had a better right than that. Because I hated him."
+
+"He never harmed you, David Gaunt,"--with as proud composure as that
+with which a Roman wife would defend her lord.
+
+"I saved his life. Dode, I'm trying to do right: God knows I am. But I
+hated him; he took from me the only thing that would have loved me."
+
+She looked up timidly, her face growing crimson.
+
+"I never would have loved you, David."
+
+"No? I'm sorry you told me that, Dode."
+
+That was all he said. He helped her gently, as she arranged the carpets
+and old blanket under the wounded man; then he went out into the fresh
+air, saying he did not feel well. She was glad that he was gone; Palmer
+moved uneasily; she wanted his first look all to herself. She pushed
+back his fair hair: what a broad, melancholy forehead lay under it! The
+man wanted something to believe in,--a God in life: you could see that
+in his face. She was to bring it to him: she could not keep the tears
+back to think that this was so. The next minute she laughed in her
+childish fashion, as she put the brandy to his lips, and the color came
+to his face. He had been physician before; now it was her turn to master
+and rule. He looked up at last, into her eyes, bewildered,--his face
+struggling to gather sense, distinctness. When he spoke, though, it was
+in his quiet old voice.
+
+"I have been asleep. Where is Gaunt? He dressed my side."
+
+"He is out, sitting on the hill-side."
+
+"And you are here, Theodora?"
+
+"Yes, Douglas."
+
+He was silent. He was weak from loss of blood, but his thoughts were
+sharp, clear as never before. The years that were gone of his life
+seemed clogged into one bulk; how hungry they had been, hard, cruel! He
+never had felt it as now, while he lay helpless, his sultry look reading
+the woman's eyes bent on his. They were pure and restful; love and home
+waited in them; something beyond,--a peace he could not yet comprehend.
+But this life was not for him,--he remembered that; the girl was nothing
+to him now: he was not fool enough to taunt himself with false hopes.
+She came there out of pity: any woman would do as much for a wounded
+man. He would never fool himself to be so balked again. The loss cut too
+deep. So he forced his face to be cool and critical, while poor Dode
+waited, innocently wondering that he did not welcome her, pity her now
+that her father was dead, forgetting that he knew nothing of that. For
+him, he looked at the fire, wondering if the Rebel scouts could see
+it,--thinking it would not be many days before Lander would dislodge
+Jackson,--trying to think of anything rather than himself, and the
+beautiful woman kneeling there.
+
+Her eyes filled with tears at last, when he did not speak, and she
+turned away. The blood rushed to Palmer's face: surely that was more
+than pity! But he would not tempt her,--he would never vex her soul as
+he had done before: if she had come to him, as a sister might, because
+she thought he was dying, he would not taunt her with the old love she
+had for him.
+
+"I think I can stand up," he said, cheerfully; "lend me your arm,
+Theodora."
+
+Dode's arm was strong-nerved as well as fair; she helped him rise, and
+stood beside him as he went to the door, for he walked unsteadily. He
+took his hand from her shoulder instantly,--did not look at her:
+followed with his eye the black line of the fretted hills, the glimmer
+of the distant watch-fires. The path to the West lay through the Rebel
+camps.
+
+"It is a long trail out of danger," he said, smiling.
+
+"You are going? I thought you needed rest."
+
+Calm, icy enough now: he was indifferent to her. She knew how to keep
+the pain down until he was gone.
+
+"Rest? Yes. Where did you mean I should find it?"--facing her, sudden
+and keen. "Where am I to be sheltered? In your home, Theodora?"
+
+"I thought that. I see now that it was a foolish hope, Douglas."
+
+"How did you hope it? What brought you here?"--his voice thick,
+tremulous with passion. "Were you going to take me in as a Sister of
+Charity might some wounded dog? Are pity and gratitude all that is left
+between you and me?"
+
+She did not answer,--her face pale, unmoving in the moonlight, quietly
+turned to his. These mad heats did not touch her.
+
+"You may be cold enough to palter with fire that has burned you,
+Theodora. I am not."
+
+She did not speak.
+
+"Sooner than have gone to you for sisterly help and comfort, such as you
+gave just now, I would have frozen in the snow, and been less cold.
+Unless you break down the bar you put between us, I never want to see
+your face again,--never, living or dead! I want no sham farce of
+friendship between us, benefits given or received: your hand touching
+mine as it might touch Bone's or David Gaunt's; your voice cooing in my
+ear as it did just now, cool and friendly. It maddened me. Rest can
+scarcely come from you to me, now."
+
+"I understand you. I am to go back, then? It was a long road,--and cold,
+Douglas."
+
+He stopped abruptly, looked at her steadily.
+
+"Do not taunt me, child! I am a blunt man: what words say, they mean, to
+me. Do you love me, Theodora?"
+
+She did not speak, drawn back from him in the opposite shadow of the
+door-way. He leaned forward, his breath coming hurried, low.
+
+"Are you cold? See how shaggy this great cloak is,--is it wide enough
+for you and me? Will you come to me, Theodora?"
+
+"I did come to you. Look! you put me back: 'There shall be no benefits
+given or received between us.'"
+
+"How did you come?"--gravely, as a man should speak to a woman, childish
+trifling thrust aside. "How did you mean to take me home? As a pure,
+God-fearing woman should the man she loved? Into your heart, into your
+holiest thought? to gather strength from my strength, to make my power
+your power, your God my God? to be one with me? Was it so you came?"
+
+He waited a minute. How cold and lonely the night was! How near rest and
+home came to him in this woman standing there! Would he lose them? One
+moment more would tell. When he spoke again, his voice was lower,
+feeble.
+
+"There is a great gulf between you and me, Theodora. I know that. Will
+you cross it? Will you come to me?"
+
+She came to him. He gathered her into his arms as he might a little
+child, never to be cold again; he felt her full heart throb passionately
+against his own; he took from her burning lips the first pure, womanly
+kiss: she was all his. But when she turned her head, there was a quick
+upward glance of her eyes, he knew not whether of appeal or thanks.
+There was a Something in the world more near and real to her than he; he
+loved her the better for it: yet until he found that Unknown God, they
+were not one.
+
+It was an uncertain step broke the silence, cracking the crusted snow.
+
+"Why, Gaunt!" said Palmer, "what are you doing in the cold? Come to the
+fire, boy!"
+
+He could afford to speak cordially, heartily, out of the great warmth in
+big own breast. Theodora was heaping shavings on the ashes. Gaunt took
+them from her.
+
+"Let me do it," he muttered. "I'd like to make your whole life warm,
+Dode,--your life, and--any one's you love."
+
+Dode's face flushed with a happy smile. Even David never would think of
+her as alone again. Poor David! She never before had thought how
+guileless he was,--how pitiful and solitary his life.
+
+"Come home with us," she said, eagerly, holding out her hand.
+
+He drew back, wiping the sweat from his face.
+
+"You cannot see what is on my hand. I can't touch you, Dode. Never
+again. Let me alone."
+
+"She is right, Gaunt," said Palmer. "You stay here at the risk of your
+life. Come to the house. Theodora can hide us; and if they discover us,
+we can protect her together."
+
+Gaunt smiled faintly.
+
+"I must make my way to Springfield to-morrow. My work is there,--my new
+work, Palmer."
+
+Palmer looked troubled.
+
+"I wish you had not taken it up. This war may be needed to conquer a way
+for the day of peace and good-will among men; but you, who profess to be
+a seer and actor in that day, have only one work: to make it real to us
+now on earth, as your Master did, in the old time."
+
+Gaunt did not speak,--fumbled among the chips at the fire. He raised
+himself at last.
+
+"I'm trying to do what's right," he said, in a subdued voice. "I haven't
+had a pleasant life,--but it will come right at last, maybe."
+
+"It will come right, David!" said the girl.
+
+His face lighted: her cheery voice sounded like a welcome ringing
+through his future years. It was a good omen, coming from her whom he
+had wronged.
+
+"Are you going now, Gaunt?" asked Palmer, seeing him button his thin
+coat. "Take my blanket,--nay, you shall. As soon as I am strong enough,
+I'll find you at Springfield."
+
+He wished he could hearten the poor unnerved soul, somehow.
+
+Gaunt stopped outside, looking at them,--some uncertain thought coming
+and going in his face.
+
+"I'll speak it out, whatever you may think. Dode, I've done you a
+deadly hurt. Don't ask me what it is,--God knows. I'd like, before I go,
+to show you I love you in a pure, honorable way, you and your
+husband"----
+
+The words choked in his throat; he stopped abruptly.
+
+"Whatever you do, it will be honorable, David," said Palmer, gently.
+
+"I think--God might take it as expiation,"--holding his hand to his
+head.
+
+He did not speak again for a little while, then he said,----
+
+"I will never see these old Virginian hills again. I am going West; they
+will let me nurse in one of the hospitals;--that will be better than
+this that is on my hand."
+
+Whatever intolerable pain lay in these words, he smothered it down, kept
+his voice steady.
+
+"Do you understand, Douglas Palmer? I will never see you again. Nor
+Dode. You love this woman; so did I,--as well as you. Let me make her
+your wife before I go,--here, under this sky, with God looking down on
+us. Will you? I shall be happier to know that I have done it."
+
+He waited while Douglas spoke eagerly to the girl, and then said,----
+
+"Theodora, for God's sake don't refuse! I have hurt you,--the marks of
+it you and I will carry to the grave. Let me think you forgive me before
+I go. Grant me this one request."
+
+Did she guess the hurt he had done her? Through all her fright and
+blushes, the woman in her spoke out nobly.
+
+"I do not wish to know how you have wronged me. Whatever it be, it was
+innocently done. God will forgive you, and I do. There shall be peace
+between us, David."
+
+But she did not offer to touch his hand again: stood there, white and
+trembling.
+
+"It shall be as you say," said Palmer.
+
+So they were married, Douglas and Dode, in the wide winter night. A few
+short words, that struck the very depths of their being, to make them
+one: simple words, wrung out of the man's thin lips with what suffering
+only he knew.
+
+"Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder." Thus he
+shut himself out from her forever. But the prayer for a blessing on them
+came from as pure a heart as any child's that lives. He bade them
+good-bye, cheerfully, when he had finished, and turned away, but came
+back presently, and said good-night again, looking in their faces
+steadily, then took his solitary way across the hills. They never saw
+him again.
+
+Bone, who had secured two horses by love or money or--confiscation, had
+stood mutely in the background, gulping down his opinion of this
+extraordinary scene. He did not offer it now, only suggested it was
+"high time to be movin'," and when he was left alone, trudging through
+the snow, contented himself with smoothing his felt hat, and a
+breathless, "Ef dis nigger on'y knew what Mist' Perrine _would_ say!"
+
+
+A June day. These old Virginia hills have sucked in the winter's ice and
+snow, and throbbed it out again for the blue heaven to see in a whole
+summer's wealth of trees quivering with the luxury of being, in wreathed
+mosses, and bedded fern: the very blood that fell on them speaks in
+fair, grateful flowers to Him who doeth all things well. Some healthy
+hearts, like the hills, you know, accept pain, and utter it again in
+fresher-blooded peace and life and love. The evening sunshine lingers on
+Dode's little house to-day; the brown walls have the same cheery whim in
+life as the soul of their mistress, and catch the last ray of
+light,--will not let it go. Bone, smoking his pipe at the garden-gate,
+looks at the house with drowsy complacency. He calls it all "Mist'
+Dode's snuggery," now: he does not know that the rich, full-toned vigor
+of her happiness is the germ of all this life and beauty. But he does
+know that the sun never seemed so warm, the air so pure, as this
+summer,--that about the quiet farm and homestead there is a genial
+atmosphere of peace: the wounded soldiers who come there often to be
+cured grow strong and calm in it; the war seems far-off to them; they
+have come somehow a step nearer the inner heaven. Bone rejoices in
+showing off the wonders of the place to them, in matching Coly's shiny
+sides against the "Government beastesses," in talking of the giant red
+beets, or crumpled green cauliflower, breaking the rich garden-mould.
+"Yer've no sich cherries nor taters nor raspberries as dem in de Norf,
+I'll bet!" Even the crimson trumpet-flower on the wall is "a _Virginny_
+creeper, Sah!" But Bone learns something from them in exchange. He does
+not boast so often now of being "ole Mars' Joe's man,"--sits and thinks
+profoundly, till he goes to sleep. "Not of leavin' yer, Mist' Dode, I
+know what free darkies is, up dar; but dar's somefin' in a fellah's
+'longin' ter hisself, af'er all!" Dode only smiles at his deep
+cogitations, as he weeds the garden-beds, or fodders the stock. She is a
+half-Abolitionist herself, and then she knows her State will soon be
+free.
+
+So Dode, with deeper-lit eyes, and fresher rose in her cheek, stands in
+the door this summer evening waiting for her husband. She cannot see him
+often; he has yet the work to do which he calls just and holy. But he is
+coming now. It is very quiet; she can hear her own heart beat slow and
+full; the warm air holds moveless the delicate scent of the clover; the
+bees hum her a drowsy good-night, as they pass; the locusts in the
+lindens have just begun to sing themselves to sleep; but the glowless
+crimson in the West holds her thought the longest. She loves,
+understands color: it speaks to her of the Day waiting just behind this.
+Her eyes fill with tears, she knows not why: her life seems rounded,
+complete, wrapt in a great peace; the grave at Manassas, and that
+planted with moss on the hill yonder, are in it; they only make her joy
+in living more tender and holy.
+
+He has come now; stops to look at his wife's face, as though its
+fairness and meaning were new to him always. There is no look in her
+eyes he loves so well to see as that which tells her Master is near her.
+Sometimes she thinks he too----But she knows that "according to her
+faith it shall be unto her." They are alone to-night; even Bone is
+asleep. But in the midst of a crowd, they who love each other are alone
+together: as the first man and woman stood face to face in the great
+silent world, with God looking down, and only their love between them.
+
+
+The same June evening lights the windows of a Western hospital. There is
+not a fresh meadow-scented breath it gives that does not bring to some
+sick brain a thought of home, in a New-England village, or a Georgia
+rice-field. The windows are open; the pure light creeping into poisoned
+rooms carries with it a Sabbath peace, they think. One man stops in his
+hurried work, and looking out, grows cool in its tranquil calm. So the
+sun used to set in old Virginia, he thinks. A tall, slab-sided man, in
+the dress of a hospital-nurse: a worn face, but quick, sensitive; the
+patients like it better than any other: it looks as if the man had
+buried great pain in his life, and come now into its Indian-summer days.
+The eyes are childish, eager, ready to laugh as cry,--the voice warm,
+chordant,--the touch of the hand unutterably tender.
+
+A busy life, not one moment idle; but the man grows strong in it,--a
+healthy servant, doing a healthy work. The patients are glad when he
+comes to their ward in turn. How the windows open, and the fresh air
+comes in! how the lazy nurses find a masterful will over them! how full
+of innermost life he is! how real his God seems to him!
+
+He looks from the window now, his thought having time to close upon
+himself. He holds up his busy, solitary life to God, with a happy smile.
+He goes back to that bitter past, shrinking; but he knows its meaning
+now. As the warm evening wanes into coolness and gray, the one unspoken
+pain of his life comes back, and whitens his cheerful face. There is
+blood on his hands. He sees the old man's gray hairs blown again by the
+wind, sees him stagger and fall. Gaunt covers his bony face with his
+hands, but he cannot shut it out. Yet he is learning to look back on
+even that with healthy, hopeful eyes. He reads over again each day the
+misspelled words in the Bible,--thinking that the old man's haggard face
+looks down on him with the old kindly, forgiving smile. What if his
+blood be on his hands? He looks up now through the gathering night, into
+the land where spirits wait for us, as one who meets a friend's face,
+saying,--
+
+"Let it be true what you have writ,--'The _Lord_ be between me and
+thee,' forever!"
+
+
+
+EUPHORION.
+      "I will not longer
+      Earth-bound linger:
+      Loosen your hold on
+      Hand and on ringlet.
+      Girdle and garment;
+      Leave them: they're mine!"
+      "Bethink thee, bethink thee
+      To whom thou belongest!
+      Say, wouldst thou wound us,
+      Rudely destroying
+      Threefold the beauty,--
+      Mine, his, and thine?"
+      FAUST,--SECOND PART.
+
+  Nay, fold your arms, beloved Friends,
+    Above the hearts that vainly beat!
+  Or catch the rainbow where it bends,
+    And find your darling at its feet;
+
+  Or fix the fountain's varying shape,
+    The sunset-cloud's elusive dye,
+  The speech of winds that round the cape
+    Make music to the sea and sky:
+
+  So may you summon from the air
+    The loveliness that vanished hence,
+  And Twilight give his beauteous hair,
+    And Morning give his countenance,
+
+  And Life about his being clasp
+    Her rosy girdle once again:--
+  But no! let go your stubborn grasp
+    On some wild hope, and take your pain!
+
+  For, through the crystal of your tears,
+    His love and beauty fairer shine;
+  The shadows of advancing years
+    Draw back, and leave him all divine.
+
+  And Death, that took him, cannot claim
+    The smallest vesture of his birth,--
+  The little life, a dancing flame
+    That hovered o'er the hills of earth,--
+
+  The finer soul, that unto ours
+    A subtle perfume seemed to be,
+  Like incense blown from April flowers
+    Beside the scarred and stormy tree,--
+
+  The wondering eyes, that ever saw
+    Some fleeting mystery in the air,
+  And felt the stars of evening draw
+    His heart to silence, childhood's prayer!
+
+  Our suns were all too fierce for him;
+    Our rude winds pierced him through and through;
+  But Heaven has valleys cool and dim,
+    And boscage sweet with starry dew.
+
+  There knowledge breathes in balmy air,
+    Not wrung, as here, with panting breast:
+  The wisdom born of toil you share;
+    But he, the wisdom born of rest.
+
+  For every picture here that slept,
+    A living canvas is unrolled;
+  The silent harp he might have swept
+    Leans to his touch its strings of gold.
+
+  Believe, dear Friends, they murmur still
+    Some sweet accord to those you play,
+  That happier winds of Eden thrill
+    With echoes of the earthly lay;
+
+  That he, for every triumph won,
+    Whereto your poet-souls aspire,
+  Sees opening, in that perfect sun,
+    Another blossom's bud of fire!
+
+  Each song, of Love and Sorrow born,
+    Another flower to crown your boy,--
+  Each shadow here his ray of morn,
+    Till Grief shall clasp the hand of Joy!
+
+
+
+HOUSE-BUILDING.
+
+Because our architecture is bad, and because the architecture of our
+forefathers in the Middle Ages was good, Mr. Ruskin and others seem to
+think there is no salvation for us until we build in the same spirit as
+they did. But that we should do so no more follows than that we should
+envy those geological ages when the club-mosses were of the size of
+forest-trees, and the frogs as big as oxen. There are many advantages to
+be had in the forests of the Amazon and the interior of
+Borneo,--inexhaustible fertility, endless water-power,--but no one
+thinks of going there to live.
+
+No age is without its attractions. There would be much to envy in the
+Greek or the Roman life, if we could have them clear of drawbacks. Many
+persons would be glad always to find Emerson in State Street, or
+sauntering in the Mall, ready to talk with all comers,--or to hear the
+latest words of Bancroft or Lowell from their own lips at the
+cattle-show or the militia-muster. The Roman villas had some excellent
+features,--the peristyle of statues, the cryptoporticus with its
+midnight coolness and shade of a July noon, the mosaic floor, and the
+glimmering frescoes of the ceiling. But we are content to get our poets
+and historians in their books, and to take the pine-grove for our
+noonday walk, or to wait till night has transformed the street into a
+cryptoporticus nobler than Titus's. It is as history that these things
+charm us; but the charm vanishes, when, even in fancy, we bring them
+into contact with our actual lives. So it is with the medieval
+architecture. It is true, in studying these wonderful fossils, a regret
+for our present poverty, and a desire to appropriate something from the
+ancient riches, will at times come over us. But this feeling, if it be
+more than slight and transient, if it seriously influence our conduct,
+is somewhat factitious or somewhat morbid. Let us be a little
+disinterested in our admiration, and not, like children, cry for all we
+see. We have our share: let us leave the dead theirs.
+
+The fallacy lies in the supposition, that, besides all their advantages,
+they had all ours too. It is with our mental as with our bodily
+vision,--we see only what is remote; and the image to the mind depends,
+not only upon seeing, but upon _not seeing_. In the distant star, all
+foulness and gloom are lost, and only the pure splendor reaches us.
+Inspired by Mr. Ruskin's eloquence, the neophyte sets forth with
+contrition to put his precepts into practice. But the counterstatement
+which he had overlooked does not, therefore, cease to exist. At the
+outset, he finds unexpected sacrifices are demanded. And, as money is
+the common measure of the forces disposable, the hindrances take the
+form of increase of cost. Before the first step can be taken towards
+doing anything as Mr. Ruskin would have it done, he discovers that at
+least it will cost enormously more to do it in that way. The lamps of
+truth and sacrifice demand such expensive nourishment, that he is forced
+to ask himself whether they are of themselves really sufficient to live
+by.
+
+It is not that we are poorer or more penurious than our ancestors, but
+that we have more wants than they, and that the new wants overshadow the
+old. What is spent in one direction must be spared in another. The
+matter-of-course necessaries of our life were luxuries or were unknown
+to them. First of all, the luxury of freedom,--political, social, and
+domestic,--with the habits it creates, is the source of great and
+ever-increasing expense. We are still much behindhand in this matter,
+and shall by-and-by spend more largely upon it. But, compared with our
+ancestors, individual culture, to which freedom is the means, absorbs a
+large share of our expenditure. The noble architecture of the thirteenth
+century was the work of corporations, of a society that knew only
+corporations, and where individual culture was a crime. Dante had made
+the discovery that it is the man that creates his own position, not the
+accident of birth. But his life shows how this belief isolated him. Nor
+was the coincidence between the artistic spirit of the age and its
+limitations accidental. Just in proportion as the spirit of
+individualism penetrated society, and began to show itself as the
+Renaissance, architecture declined. The Egyptian pyramids are marvels to
+us, because we are accustomed to look upon the laborer as a man. But
+once allow that he is only so much brute force,--cheap, readily
+available, and to be had in endless supply, but as a moral entity less
+to be respected than a cat or a heron, and the marvel ceases. Should not
+the building be great to which man himself is sacrificed? Later, the
+builders are no longer slaves; but man is still subordinate to his own
+work, adores the work of his hands. This stands for him, undertakes to
+represent him, though, from its partial nature, it can only typify
+certain aspects or functions of him. A Gothic cathedral is an attempt at
+a universal expression of humanity, a stone image of society, in which
+each particle, insignificant by itself, has its meaning in the
+connection. It was the fresh interest in the attempt that gave birth to
+that wonderful architecture. This is the interest it still has, but now
+only historical, since the discovery was made that the particle is
+greater than the mass,--that it is for the sake of the individual that
+society and its institutions exist. Ever since, a process of
+disintegration has been going on, resulting in a progressive reversal of
+the previous relation. Not the private virtues of the structure, but its
+uses, are now uppermost, and ever more and more developed. Even in our
+own short annals something of this process may be traced. Old gentlemen
+complain of the cost of our houses. The houses of their boyhood, they
+say, were handsomer and better built, yet cost less. There is some truth
+in this, for the race of architect-builders hardly reaches into this
+century. But if the comparison be pushed into details, we soon come to
+the conviction that the owners of these houses were persons whose habits
+were, in many respects, uncouth and barbarous. It is easy to provide in
+the lump; but with decency, privacy, independence,--in short, with a
+high degree of respect on the part of the members of the household for
+each other's individuality,--expense begins. Letarouilly says it is
+difficult to discover in the Roman palaces of the Renaissance any
+reference to special uses of the different apartments. It was to the
+outside, the vestibule, courtyard, and staircase, that care and study
+were given: the inside was intended only as a measure of the riches and
+importance of the owner, not as his habitation. The part really
+inhabited by him was the _mezzanino_,--a low, intermediate story, where
+he and his family were kennelled out of the way. Has any admiring
+traveller ever asked himself how he could establish himself, with wife
+and children, in the Foscari or the Vendramin palace? To live in them,
+it would be necessary to build a house inside.
+
+Nor is there any ground for saying that the fault is in the
+builders,--that the old builders met the demands of their time, and
+would equally satisfy the demands of our time, without sacrifice of
+their art. The first demand in the days of good architecture was, that
+the building should have an independent artistic value beyond its use.
+This is what architecture requires; for architecture is building,
+_pure_,--building for its own sake, not as means. What Mr. Garbett says
+is, no doubt, quite true,--that nothing was ever made, for taste's sake,
+less efficient than it might have been. But many things were made _more_
+efficient than they might have been; or, rather, this is always the
+character of good architecture. It is in this surplus of perfection,
+above bare necessity, that its claim to rank among the fine arts
+consists. This character the builders of the good times, accordingly,
+never left out of sight; so that, if their means were limited, they
+lavished all upon one point,--made that overflow with riches, and left
+the rest plain and bare; never did they spread their pittance thin to
+cover the whole, as we do. It is for this reason that so few of the
+great cathedrals were finished, and that in buildings of all kinds we so
+often find the decoration in patches, sharply marked off from the rest
+of the structure. This noble profuseness is not, indeed, necessarily
+decoration; the essence of it is an independent value and interest in
+the building, aside from the temporary and accidental employment. The
+spires and the flying-buttresses of the Northern cathedrals cannot be
+defended on the ground of thrifty construction. The Italian churches
+accomplished that as well without either. How remote the reference to
+use in the mighty portals of Rheims, or the soaring vaultings of Amiens
+and Beauvais! Does anybody suppose that Michel Angelo, when he undertook
+to raise the dome of the Pantheon into the air, was thinking of the most
+economical way of roofing a given space? These fine works have their
+whole value as expression; it is with their visible contempt of thrift
+that our admiration begins. They pared away the stone to the minimum
+that safety demanded, and beyond it,--yet not from thrift, but to make
+the design more preëminent and necessary, and to owe as little as
+possible to the inert strength of the material.
+
+But though we admire the result, we have grown out of sympathy with the
+cause, the state of mind that produced it, and so the root wherefrom the
+like should be produced is cut off. There is no reason to suppose that
+the old builders were men of a different kind from ours, more earnest,
+more poetical. The stories about the science of the medieval masons are
+rubbish. All men are in earnest about something; our men are as good as
+they, and would have built as well, had they been born at the right time
+for it. But now they are thinking of other things. The Dilettanti
+Society sent Mr. Penrose to Athens to study in the ancient remains there
+the optical corrections which it was alleged the Greeks made in the
+horizontal lines of their buildings. Mr. Penrose made careful
+measurements, establishing the fact, and a folio volume of plates was
+published to illustrate the discovery, and evince the unequalled nicety
+of the Greek eye. But the main point, namely, that a horizontal line
+above the level of the eye, in order to appear horizontal, must bend
+slightly upwards, was pointed out to me years ago by a common plasterer.
+
+It is not that our builders are degenerate, but that their art is a
+trade, occupies only their hands, not their minds, and this by no fault
+in them or in anybody, but by the natural progress of the world. In each
+age by turn some one mental organ is in a state of hypertrophy;
+immediately that becomes the medium of expression,--not that it is the
+only possible or even the best, but that its time has come,--then it
+gives place to another. Architecture is dead and gone to dust long ago.
+We are not called upon to sing threnodies over it, still less to attempt
+to galvanize a semblance of life into it. If we must blame somebody, let
+it not be the builder, but his employers, who, caring less even than he
+for the reality of good architecture, (for the material itself teaches
+him something,) force him into these puerilities in order to gratify
+their dissolute fancies.
+
+If these views seem to any one low and prosaic, let me remind him that
+poetry does not differ from prose in being false. We must respect the
+facts. If there were in this country any considerable number of persons
+to whom the buildings they daily enter had any positive permanent value
+besides convenience,--who looked upon the church, the bank, or the
+house, as upon a poem or a statue,--the birth of a national architecture
+would be assured. But as the fact stands, while utility, and that of a
+temporary and makeshift sort, is really the first consideration, we are
+not yet ready to acknowledge this to others or to ourselves, and so fail
+to get from it what negative advantage we might, but blunder on under
+some fancied necessity, spending what we can ill spare, to the
+defrauding of legitimate demands, as a sort of sin-offering for our
+aesthetic deficiency, or as a blind to conceal it. The falsehood, like
+all falsehood, defeats itself; the pains we take only serve to make the
+failure more complete.
+
+This is displayed most fully in the doings of "Building Committees."
+Here we see what each member (perhaps it would be more just to say the
+least judicious among them) would do in his own case, were he free from
+the rude admonitions of necessity. He has at least to live in his own
+house, and so cannot escape some attention to the substantial
+requirements of it; though some houses, too, seem emancipated from such
+considerations, and to have been built for any end rather than to live
+in. But in catering for the public, it is the _outsiders_ alone that
+seem to be consulted, the careless passer-by, who for once will pause a
+moment to commend or to sneer at the façade,--not the persons whose
+lives for years, perhaps, are to be affected by the internal
+arrangement. It is doubtless from a suspicion, more or less obscure, of
+the incoherency of their purpose, that such committees usually fall into
+the hands of a "practical man,"--that is, a man impassive to principles,
+of hardihood or bluntness of perception enough to carry into effect
+their vague fancies, and spare them from coming face to face with their
+inconsistencies. Thus fairly adrift and kept adrift from the main
+purpose, there is no vagary impossible to them,--churches in which there
+is no hearing, hospitals contrived to develop disease, museums of
+tinder, libraries impossible to light or warm. And what gain comes to
+beauty from these sacrifices, let our streets answer. Good architecture
+requires before all things a definite aim, long persisted in. It never
+was an invention, anywhere, but always a gradual growth. What chance of
+that here?
+
+The only chance clearly is to cut away till we come to the solid ground
+of real, not fancied, requirement. As long as it is our whims, and not
+our necessities, that build, it matters little how much pains we take,
+how learned and assiduous we are. I have no hope of any considerable
+advantage from the abundant exhortation to frankness and genuineness in
+the use of materials, unless it lead first of all to a more frank and
+genuine consideration of the occasion for using the materials at all. If
+it lead only to open timber roofs and stone walls in place of the
+Renaissance stucco, I think the gain very questionable. The stucco is
+more comfortable, and at least we had got used to it. These are matters
+of detail: suppose your details _are_ more genuine, if the whole design
+is a sham, if the aim be only to excite the admiration of bystanders,
+the thing is not altered, whether the bystanders are learned in such
+matters or ignorant. The more excellent the work is in its kind, the
+more insidious and virulent the falsity, if the whole occasion of it be
+a pretence. If it must be false, let it by all means be gross and
+glaring,--we shall be the sooner rid of it.
+
+It may be asked whether, then, I surrender the whole matter of
+appearance,--whether the building may as well be ugly as beautiful. By
+no means; what I have said is in the interest of beauty, as far as it is
+possible to us. Positive beauty it may be often necessary to forego, but
+bad taste is never necessary. Ugliness is not mere absence of beauty,
+but absence of it where it ought to be present. It comes always from a
+disappointed expectation,--as where the lineaments that do not disgust
+in the potato meet us in the human face, or even in the hippopotamus,
+whom accordingly Nature kindly puts out of sight. It is bad taste that
+we suffer from,--not plainness, not indifference to appearance, but
+features misplaced, shallow mimicry of "effects" where their causes do
+not exist, transparent pretences of all kinds, forcing attention to the
+absence of the reality, otherwise perhaps unnoticed. The first step
+toward seemly building is to rectify the relation between the appearance
+and the uses of the building,--to give to each the weight that it really
+has with us, not what we fancy or are told it ought to have. Mr. Ruskin
+too often seems to imply that fine architecture is like virtue or the
+kingdom of Heaven: that, if it be sought first, all other things will be
+added. A sounder basis for design, beyond what is necessary to use,
+seems to me that proposed by Mr. Garbett, (to whom we are indebted for
+the most useful hints upon architecture,) namely, politeness, a decent
+regard for the eyes of other people (and for one's own, for politeness
+regards one's self as well). Politeness, however, as Mr. Garbett admits,
+is chiefly a negative art, and consists in abstaining and not meddling.
+The main character of the building being settled by the most
+unhesitating consideration of its uses, we are to see that it disfigures
+the world as little as possible.
+
+Let me, at the risk of tediousness, proceed to bring these generalities
+to a point by a few instances,--not intending to exhaust the topic, but
+only to exemplify the method of approaching it.
+
+The commonest case for counsel, and more common here than anywhere else,
+is where a man is to build for himself a house, especially in the
+country,--for town-houses are more governed by extraneous
+considerations. The first point is the _aspect_,--that the living-rooms
+be well open to the sun. Let no fancied advantages of view or of
+symmetrical position interfere with this. For they operate seldom and
+strike most at first, but the aspect tells on body and mind every day.
+It is astonishing how reckless people are of this vital point, suffering
+it to be determined for them by the direction of a road, or even of a
+division-fence,--as if they had never looked at their houses with their
+own eyes, but only with the casual view of a stranger. It does not
+follow, however, that the entrance must be on the sunny side, though
+this is generally best, as the loss of space in the rooms is more than
+made up by the cheeriness of the approach. For the same reason, unless
+you are sailing very close to the wind, let your entrance-hall be roomy.
+It is in no sense an unproductive outlay, for it avails above in
+chambers, and below in the refuge it affords to the children from the
+severer rules of the parlor.
+
+As to number and distribution of rooms, the field is somewhat wide. Here
+the differences of income, of pursuits, and the idiosyncrasies of taste
+come in; and more than all, not only are the circumstances originally
+different, but constantly varying. I speak not of the fluctuations of
+fortune, but of normal and expected changes. The young couple, or the
+old, are easily lodged. But in middle life,--since we are not content,
+like our forefathers, with bestowing our children out of sight,--it
+takes a great deal of room to provide for them on both floors, without
+either neglect or oppression, and to keep up the due oversight without
+sacrificing ourselves or them. For children are rather exclusive, and
+spoil for other use more room than they occupy. Here I counsel every man
+who must have a corner to himself to fix his study in the attic, for the
+only way to avoid noise without wasteful complication is to be above it.
+
+The smallest house must provide some escape from the dining-room. If
+dining-room and sitting-room are on the sunny side, and the entrance be
+also on that side, they will be separated, as indeed they always may be,
+without loss. The notion that the rooms must immediately connect is one
+of those whims to which houses are sacrificed. The only advantage is the
+facility for receiving company. But if the occasions when the guests
+will be too many for one room are likely to be frequent, rather than
+permanently spoil the living-room, it is better to set apart rooms for
+reception. Our position in this matter is in truth rather embarrassing.
+Formerly (and the view is not yet wholly obsolete) the whole house was a
+reception-hall, the domestic life of the inmates being a secondary
+matter, swept into some corner, such as the cells of the mediaeval
+castles or the _mezzanino_ of the Italian palaces. But the austere
+aspect of the shut-up "best parlor" of our grandfathers, with its closed
+blinds and chilly chintz covers, showed that the tables were beginning
+to turn, and the household to assert its rights and civilly to pay off
+the guest for his usurpations. Henceforth he is welcome, but he is
+secondary; it was not for him that the house was built; and if it comes
+to choosing, he can be dispensed with. It would be very agreeable to
+unite with all the new advantages all the old,--the easy hospitality,
+the disengaged suavity of the ancient manners. Now the brow of the host
+is clouded, he has too much on his mind to play his part perfectly. It
+is not that good-will is wanting, but that life is more complicated. The
+burdens are more evenly distributed, and no class is free and at
+leisure. But to fret over our disadvantages, and to extol the past, is
+only to ignore the price that was paid for those advantages we covet.
+There was always somebody to sweat for that leisure. Would a society
+divided into castes be better? Or again, who would like to have his
+children sleep three in a bed, and live in the kitchen, in order that
+the best rooms should always be swept and garnished for company?
+
+In every case, unless a man is rich enough to have two houses in one, it
+comes to choice between domestic comfort and these occasional
+facilities. Direct connection of rooms usually involves the sacrifice of
+the chimney-corner, on one or both sides; for it is not pleasant to sit
+in a passage-way, even if it be rarely used. For use in cold weather the
+available portion of a room may be reckoned as limited by the door
+nearest the fireplace.
+
+It will be noticed that this supposes the use of open fireplaces. The
+open fireplace is not a necessary of life, but it is one of the first
+luxuries, and one that no man who can afford to eat meat every day can
+afford to dispense with. No furnace can supply the place of it; for,
+though the furnace is an indispensable auxiliary in severe cold, and
+though, well managed, it need not vitiate the air, yet, like all
+contrivances for supplying heated air instead of heat, it has the
+insurmountable defect of not warming the body directly, nor until all
+the surrounding air be warmed first, and thus stops the natural reaction
+and the brace and stimulus derived from it. Used exclusively, it amounts
+to voluntarily incurring the disadvantage of a tropical climate.
+
+Let the walls of the second story be upright. The recent fashion of a
+mansard or "French roof" is only making part of the wall of the house
+look like roof, at equal expense, at the sacrifice of space inside, and
+above all, of tightness. For, though shingles and even slates will
+generally keep out the rain, the innumerable cracks between the sides of
+them can never be made air-tight, and therefore admit heat and cold much
+more freely than any proper wall-covering. A covering of metal would be
+too good a conductor of external temperature,--while clapboarding would
+endanger the resemblance to a roof, which is the only gain proposed.
+
+As to the size of the house, it is important to observe that its cost
+does not depend so much upon the size of the rooms (within reasonable
+limits) as upon the number of them, the complication of plan, and the
+number of doors and windows. For every door or window you can omit you
+may add three or four feet to your house. The height of the stories will
+be governed by the area of the largest rooms;--what will please each
+person depends very much upon what he is used to. In the old New-England
+houses the stories were very low, often less than eight feet in the best
+rooms. In favor of low rooms it is to be remembered that they are more
+easily lighted and warmed, and involve less climbing of stairs. Rooms
+are often made lofty under the impression that better ventilation is
+thereby secured; but there is a confusion here. A high room is less
+intolerable without ventilation, the vitiated air being more diluted;
+but a low room is usually more easily ventilated, because the windows
+are nearer the ceiling.
+
+Mr. Garbett advises that the windows be many and small. This costs more;
+and if it be understood to involve placing the windows on different
+sides, the effect, I think, will be generally less agreeable than where
+the room is lighted wholly from one side. A capital exception, however,
+is the dining-room, which should always, if possible, abound in
+cross-lights; else one half the table will be oppressed by a glare of
+light, and the other visible only in _silhouette_.
+
+As to material, stone is the handsomest, and the only one that
+constantly grows handsomer, and does not require that your creepers
+should be periodically disturbed for painting or repairs. But this is
+perhaps all that can be said in its favor. To make a stone house as good
+as a wooden one we must build a wooden one inside of it. Wood is our
+common material, and there is none better, if we take the pains to make
+it tight. There is a prevalent notion that it is the thinness of our
+cheap wooden houses that makes them pervious to heat and cold. But no
+wooden house, unless built of solid and well-fitted logs, could resist
+the external temperature by virtue of thickness. It is tightness that
+tells here. Wherever air passes, heat and cold pass with it. What is
+important, therefore, is, by good contrivance and careful execution, to
+stop all cracks as far as possible. For this, an outside covering of
+sheathing-felt, or some equivalent material, may be recommended, and
+especially a double plastering inside,--not the common "back-plastering,"
+but two separate compact surfaces of lime and sand, inside the frame.
+
+The position, the internal arrangement, and the material being
+determined upon, the next point is that the structure shall be as little
+of an eyesore as we can make it. Do what we will, every house, as long
+as it is new, is a standing defiance to the landscape. In color,
+texture, and form, it disconnects itself and resists assimilation to its
+surroundings. The "gentle incorporation into the scenery of Nature,"
+that Wordsworth demands, is the most difficult point to effect, as well
+as the most needful. This makes the importance of a background of trees,
+of shrubs, and creepers, and the uniting lines of sheds, piazzas, etc.,
+mediating and easing off the shock which the upstart mass inflicts upon
+the eye. Hence Sir Joshua Reynolds's rule for the color of a house, to
+imitate the tint of the soil where it is to stand. Hence the advantage
+of a well-assured base and generally of a pyramidal outline, because
+this is the figure of braced and balanced equilibrium, assured to all
+natural objects by the slow operation of natural laws, which we must
+take care not to violate in our haste, unless for due cause shown.
+
+We hear much of the importance of proportions, but the main point
+generally is that the house be not too high. This is the most universal
+difficulty, particularly in small houses, the area being diminished, but
+not the height of stories. In this respect the old farm-houses had a
+great advantage, and this is a main element in their good effect,--aided
+as it is by the height of the roof; for a high roof will often make a
+building seem lower than it would with a low roof or none at all. The
+dreary effect of the flat-roofed houses in the neighborhood of New York
+is due partly to the unrelieved height, and partly to the unfinished or
+truncated appearance of a thing without a top. The New York fashion
+gives, no doubt, the most for the money; but the effect is so offensive
+that I think it justifies us for once in violating Mr. Garbett's canon
+and sacrificing efficiency to taste.
+
+The most pleasing shape of roof, other things being equal, is the
+pyramidal or hipped, inclining from all sides towards the centre. The
+drawback is, that, if it must be pierced by windows, their lines will
+stick off from the roof, so that, as seen from below, they will be
+violently detached from the general mass. The good taste of the old
+builders made them avoid putting dormer-windows (at least in front) in
+roofs of one pitch; the windows were in the gables, carried out for this
+purpose; or if dormers were necessary, they made a mansard or
+double-pitched roof, in which the windows are less detached. Another
+excellent feature in the old New-England farm-houses is the long slope
+of the roof behind, and, in general, the habit of roofing porches,
+dormers, sheds, and other projections by continuing the main roof over
+them, with great gain to breadth and solidity of effect.
+
+In fact, were it possible, we could not do better for the outside than
+to take these old houses for our model. But here, as everywhere, we find
+the outside depends on the inside, and that what we most admire in them
+will conflict with the new requirements. For instance, the massive
+central chimney and the expanse on the ground point to the kitchen as
+the common living-room of the family; they are irreconcilable with our
+need of more chambers and of the possibility of more separation above
+and below. The later and more ambitious houses, such as were built in
+the neighborhood of Boston at the beginning of the century, come nearer
+to our wants; but they sacrifice too much to a cut-and-dried symmetry to
+be of much use to us. After that the way is downward through one set of
+absurdities after another, until of late some signs of more common-sense
+treatment begin to be visible.
+
+The way out of this quagmire is first of all to avoid confusion of aim.
+What is this that we are building? If it is a monument, let us seek only
+to make it beautiful. But if it is a house, let us always keep in mind
+that the appearance of it, being really secondary, must be seen to have
+been held so throughout. Else we shall not, in the long run, escape bad
+taste. Bad taste is not mere failure, but failure to do something which
+ought not to have been attempted. For instance, among the most frequent
+occasions for deformity in modern houses are the dormers, the windows
+that rise above the roof. In the Gothic buildings these are among the
+most attractive features. The reason is that the tendency of the outline
+to detach itself from the mass of the building furnishes to the Gothic a
+culminating point for the distinct legitimate aim at beauty of
+expression that pervades the whole; but to the modern builder, whose
+aim, as regards expression, should be wholly negative, it is at best an
+embarrassment, and often a snare.
+
+The chief obstacle to a rational view of the present position of
+architecture comes from the number of clever men who devote their lives
+to putting a good face on our absurdities, and by all sorts of tricks
+and sophistries in wood and stone prevent us from seeing our conduct in
+its proper deformity. They dazzle and bewilder us with beauties plucked
+at haphazard from all times and ages,--as much forgeries as any that men
+are hanged for,--and then, when the cheat begins to peep through, they
+fool us again with pretences of thoroughness, consistency of style,
+genuineness in the use of materials, etc., as if the danger were in the
+execution, and not in the main intention. So they fool us for a while
+longer, and we praise their fine doings, and even persuade ourselves
+there is something liberal and ennobling in their influence. But we tire
+at last of these exotics. A million of them is not worth one of those
+sober flowers of homely growth where use has by chance, as it were,
+blossomed into beauty. This is the only success in that kind that can be
+hoped for in our day. But it must come of itself; it cannot be had for
+the seeking, nor if sought for its own sake. The active competition that
+goes on in our streets is not the way to it, unless negatively, by way
+of disgust and exhaustion. For some help, meantime, I commend the
+opinion of an architect of my acquaintance, who said the highest
+compliment he ever received was from a drover, who could not account for
+it that "he had passed that way so often and never seen that _old
+house_." Nobody expects his house will be beautiful, do what he will;
+why pay for the certainty of failure? Not to be conspicuous, and, to
+that end, to respect the plain fundamental rules of statics, of good
+construction, of harmonious color, and to resist sacrificing any solid
+advantage to show, these are our safest rules at present.
+
+
+
+MR. AXTELL.
+
+PART III.
+
+The twilight was almost gone on the Saturday night when I went back to
+the grave, solemn house. There was no one dead in it now. It was the
+first time that I had approached it without the abyss of shadow under
+its roof. A little elasticity came back to me. Kino came out to give his
+welcome: we had become friendly. Katie let me in.
+
+"Perhaps you'd choose to wait down-stairs a bit," she said; "Mr.
+Abraham's getting his tea up in Miss Lettie's room."
+
+She lighted the lamp, and left me. After my two explorations in unknown
+realms,--the one voluntary, looking at the painting on the wall, the
+other involuntary, looking at a human soul in sorrow,--I resolved to
+shut my eyes to all that they ought not to see; and therefore I
+stationed myself in the green glade of a chair, and very properly
+decided that the only thing I would look at should be the fire. What I
+might see there surely could offend no one, unless it were the deity of
+Coal,--and Redleaf was not near any carboniferous group.
+
+Peculiar were the forms the fire took an elfish pleasure in assuming.
+Little blue flames came up into atmospheric life, through the rending
+fissures where so many years of ages they had been pent into the very
+blackness of darkness; and as they gained their freedom, they gave tiny,
+crackling shouts of liberty. "We're free! we're free!" they smally
+cried; and I wondered if a race, buried as deeply in the strata of races
+as these bits of burning coal had been in the geologic periods of earth,
+could utter such cries.
+
+The fire grew, the liberty paeans ceased. Deep opaline content burned
+lambescent amid the coals. Ashy cinders fell from the grate slowly,
+slumberously, as the one dead, that very afternoon buried, had gone to
+rest, in the night-time, when the household was asleep, without any one
+to hold her hand whilst she took the first step in the surging sea of
+river. Yes, she died alone,--"in the heart of the night," Dr. Eaton said
+it must have been "that the bridegroom came." Had she oil in her lamp?
+What was she like? Like her son Abraham, or her daughter Lettie? I tried
+to paint her face as it must have been. It is darker still in that grave
+where she lies than was the night wherein she died. Miss Lettie was
+right: they have a fathom of earth over her,--there's not one glimmer of
+light down there. When I am buried, won't _some one_ shut in one little
+sun-ray with me, that I may see to feel the gloom?
+
+I looked down upon the gravelly earth lying above her, as I had looked
+across at it when I left the parsonage at night fall, and passed by the
+church-yard. All the while, my eyes were in the depths of the fire. I
+went down through stone and soil to the coffin there. All was
+unutterable blackness. I put out my hand to feel. It was a cold,
+marbleized face that my warm, living fingers wandered over. I touched
+the forehead: it was very stony, granite-like,--not a woman's forehead.
+The eyes were large,--I felt them under the half-closed lids. The
+mouth--Yes, Miss Lettie was right. Love for Abraham had covered up this
+mother-love for her. And confession unto her dead was, it must have
+been, better than unto her living. The answer would have been much the
+same.
+
+Shudderingly, I picked up my hand, the one that had been lying upon the
+arm of the chair, whilst its life and spirit had gone out on their
+mission of discovery. It was very cold. I warmed it before the fire, and
+began to think that Aaron was right,--this House of Axtell was stealing
+away my proper self, or, at least, this hand of mine had been unlawfully
+employed, through occasion of them. As the warmth of burning coals
+revivified my hand, I saw something in the fire,--a face,--the very one
+these live fingers had just been tracing in yonder church-yard. Its eyes
+were open now,--large, luminous, earnest, with a wave of solid pride
+sweeping on through the irides and almost overwhelming the pupils. The
+mouth,--oh, those lips! _ever uttered they a prayer_? They look,
+trembling the while, so unutterably unforgiving! When they come to stand
+before the I AM, will they _ever_ plead? It is hard to think the Deity
+maketh such souls. Doth He? I looked a little farther on in the fiery
+group. Other forms of coal took the human face. I saw two. Whose were
+they? One was like unto my mother. How little I remember of her! and yet
+this was like my memory,--sweetly gentle, loving past expression's
+power, no taint of earth therein. Another came up. I did not know it.
+Something whispered, "It is of you." I almost heard the words with my
+outward ears. I looked around the room. No one was with me. Stillness
+reigned in the house.
+
+"It takes Mr. Axtell a very long time to take his tea," I thought; "he
+must know more of hunger's power than I.--I will look at the fire no
+more," I said, slowly, to myself, and closed my eyelids, somewhat
+willing to drop after all that they had endured that day.
+
+A soft, silver, "swimming sound" floated through the room. It was the
+clock upon the mantel sending out tones of time-hours. I looked up. It
+was eleven of the clock. "I must have fallen asleep," I thought, and
+threw off the folds of a shawl which I surely left on the sofa over
+there when I seated myself in this chair. My head was upon a pillow,
+downy and white, instead of the green vale of chair in which I had laid
+it down. I sprang up. There was little of lamp-light in the room. I saw
+something that looked marvellously like somebody, near the sofa. It was
+Katie, my good little friend Katie. She was sitting on a footstool with
+her head upon her hands, and, poor, tired child! fast asleep. I awoke
+her.
+
+"Who covered me up, Katie?" I asked.
+
+"Mr. Abraham," said Katie; and her waking senses came back.
+
+"And how did the pillow get under my head?"
+
+"Mr. Abraham said 'he was sorry that you had come.' You looked very
+white in your sleep, and he said 'you wouldn't wake up'; so I lifted
+your head just a mite, and he fixed the pillow under it. He told me to
+stay here until you awoke."
+
+"Which I have most decidedly done, Katie," I said; and I fully
+determined to take no more naps in this house.
+
+How could it have happened? I accounted for the fact in the most
+reasonable way I knew,--I, who rejoice in being reasonable,--by thinking
+it occurred in consequence of my long watchfulness, and sombreness of
+thought and soul.
+
+"I am sorry that you didn't wake me," I said to Katie, as she moved the
+chairs in the room to their respective places.
+
+With the most childlike implicitness in the world, the little maid stood
+still and looked at me.
+
+"I _couldn't_, you know, Miss Percival, when Mr. Abraham told me not
+to," were the positive words she used in giving her reason.
+
+I forgave Katie, and wondered what the secret of this man's commanding
+power could be, as on this Saturday night.
+
+I left the world, and went up to take my last watch with the
+convalescing lady. Her brother was with her. He looked a little
+surprised, when I went in; but the cloud of anger had gone away: folded
+it up he had, I fancied, all ready to shake out again upon the slightest
+provocation; and I did not care to see its folds waving around me, so I
+did not speak to him. Miss Axtell seemed pleased to see me; said "she
+trusted that this would be the last occasion on which she should require
+night-care."
+
+Her beauty was lovely now. A roseate hue was over her complexion: a
+little of the old fever rising, I suppose it must have been.
+
+"I've been talking with Abraham," she said, when I spoke of it.
+
+Why should a conversation with her brother occasion return of fever?
+Perhaps it was not that, but the mention of the fact, which increased
+the glow wonderfully.
+
+Mr. Axtell bade his sister good-night.
+
+"You will do it to-morrow, Abraham?" she asked, as he was going from the
+room.
+
+"I will think about it to-night, and give you my decision in the
+morning, Lettie."
+
+Mr. Axtell must have been very absent-minded, for he turned back, hoped
+I had not taken cold in the library, and ended the wish with a civil
+"Good night, Miss Percival."
+
+"Good night, Mr. Axtell," I said; and he was gone.
+
+There was no need of persuasion to quietude to-night, it seemed, for
+Miss Axtell gave me no field for the practice of oratory: she was quite
+ready and willing to sleep.
+
+"Can you not sleep, too?" she asked, as she closed her eyes; "if I need
+you, I can speak."
+
+No, I could not sleep. The night grew cold: a little edge of winter had
+come back. I felt chilled,--either because of my sleep down-stairs, or
+because the mercury was cold before me. My shawl I had not brought up
+with me. Might I not find one? The closet-door was just ajar: it was a
+place for shawls. I crossed the room, and, opening it a little more,
+went in. I saw something very like one hanging there, but it was close
+beside that grave brown plaid dress, and I had resolved to intrude no
+farther into the affair of the tower. Results had not pleased me.
+
+I grew colder than ever, standing hesitatingly in the closet, whence a
+draught blew from the dressing-room beyond. I must have the shawl. I
+reached forth my hand to take it down. The dress, I found, was hung over
+it. It must needs come off, before the shawl. I lifted it, catching, as
+I did so, my fingers in a rent,--was it? Yes, a piece was gone. I looked
+at the size and form of it, which agreed perfectly with the fragment I
+had found. This dress, then, had been in the tower, beyond all question.
+
+I thought myself very fairy-like in my movements, but the fire was not.
+Some one--it must have been Mr. Axtell or Katie--had put upon the hearth
+a stick of chestnut-wood, which, suddenly igniting, snapped vigorously.
+This began ere I was safely outside of the closet. Miss Lettie was
+awakened. She arose a little wildly, sitting up in the bed. I do not
+know that it was the fire that aroused her.
+
+"I've had a terrific dream, Miss Percival; don't let me fall asleep
+again"; and her heart beat fast and heavily. She pressed her hands upon
+it, and asked for some quieting medicine, which I gave. She was getting
+worse again, I knew; her hands wandered up to her head, in the same way
+that they had done when she was first ill.
+
+"I want some one to help me," she said, as if talking to herself; "the
+waters are very rough. I thought they would be all smooth after the
+great storm."
+
+"Perhaps it is only the healthful rising of the tide," I ventured to
+say.
+
+She looked at me, took her hands down from her head, her beautiful,
+classic head, with its wide, heavenly arch of forehead, and sat still
+thus, looking at me in that fixed way, that wellnigh sent me to call
+Katie again, for full ten minutes. I moved about the room, arranged the
+fire on a more quiet basis, and then, finding nothing else to do, stood
+before it, hoping that Miss Axtell would lie down again. In taking
+something from my pocket I must have drawn out the trophy of my
+tower-victory, for Miss Axtell suddenly said,--
+
+"You've dropped something, Miss Percival."
+
+Turning, I picked it up hastily, lest she should recognize it.
+
+She must have seen it quite well, for it had been lying in the full
+light of the blazing wood.
+
+"Have you a dress like that?" she asked, when I had restored the
+fragment.
+
+"I have not," I replied. "I am sorry I awakened you."
+
+"It was a dream that awakened me," she said. "Will you have the kindness
+to give me that bit of cloth you picked up? I have a fancy for it."
+
+I gave it to her.
+
+She hastily put away the gift I had given, and said,--
+
+"You like the old tower in the church-yard, Miss Percival, I believe?"
+
+"Oh, yes: it is a great attraction for me. Redleaf would be Redleaf no
+longer, if it were away."
+
+"Have you visited it since you've been here this time?"
+
+"Once only."
+
+"Were there any changes?" she asked.
+
+"A few," I said. "There is another entrance to the tower than by the
+door, Miss Axtell."
+
+Slowly the lady dropped back to the pillows whence she had arisen from
+the disturbing dream. She did not move again for many minutes; then it
+was a few low-spoken words that summoned me to her side.
+
+"I know there is another entrance to the tower," she said; "but I did
+not think that any one else knew of it. Who told you?"
+
+"Excuse me from answering, if you please," I said, unwilling to excite
+her more, for I knew that the fever was rising rapidly.
+
+"Who knows of this besides you? You don't mind telling me that much?"
+
+"No one knows it, I think; no person told me, and I have told no one.
+You seem to have more fever; can you not sleep?"
+
+"Not with all this equinoctial storm raging, and the tide you told me of
+coming up with the wind."
+
+She looked decidedly worse. Mr. Axtell let her have her own way. I
+thought it wise to follow his leading, and I asked,--
+
+"What tide do you mean? You cannot hear the sea, and it isn't time for
+the equinoctial gale."
+
+This question seemed to have quieted Miss Axtell beyond thought of
+reply. She did not speak again until the Sabbath-day had begun. Then, at
+the very point where she had ceased, she recommenced.
+
+"It is a pity to let the sea in on the fertile fields of your young
+life," she said; "but this tide,--it is not that that is now flowing in
+on the far-away beach of Redcliff. It is the tide of emotion, that _some
+one day_ in life begins to rise in the human heart,--and, oh, what a
+strange, wondrous thing it is! There are Bay-of-Fundy tides, and the
+uniform tides, and the tideless waters that rest around Pacific Isles;
+and no mortal knoweth the cause of their rise or fall. So in human
+hearts: some must endure the great throbbing surges that are so hard
+coming against one poor heart with nothing but the earth to rest upon,
+and yet _must stand fast_; then there are the many, the blessed
+congregation of hearts, that are only stirred by moderate, even-flowing
+emotions, that never rise over a tide-line, behind which the
+congregation are quite secure, and stand and censure the souls striving
+and toiling in waves that they only look upon, but never--no,
+never--feel. Is this right, Miss Percival?"
+
+"It seems not," I said; "but the tideless hearts, what of them?"
+
+"Oh, they are the hardest of all. Think! Imagine one of those serene,
+iridescent rings of land, moored close beside the cliff, at which the
+waves never rest from beating. Could the one forever at peace, with
+leave from wind and wave to grow its verdure and twine its tendrils just
+where it would,--_could_ it feel for the life-points against which the
+Gulf-Stream only now and then sent up a cheering bit of warmth, whilst
+the soul of the cliff saw its own land of greenness, only far, far away
+over the waters, but could not attain unto it, not whilst north-land
+winds blow or the earth-time endures?"
+
+Miss Axtell ceased, and the same fixed, absorbed expression came to her.
+She looked as she had done on the night, four days since, when I came in
+at that door for the first time. I thought of the question her brother
+had asked me concerning the turning of the key; and crossing the room, I
+turned it.
+
+"Why did you lock the door?" she asked.
+
+"I am constitutionally timid," was my apology.
+
+"You have never evinced it before; why now?"
+
+"Because I have not thought of it sooner."
+
+"Will you unlock it, please?" she asked; and her eyes were very bright
+with the fever-fire that I knew was burning up, until I feared the flame
+would touch her mind. "I don't like being locked in; I wish to be free,"
+she added.
+
+This lady has something of Mr. Axtell's command of manner. I could not
+think it right to refuse to comply, and I unlocked the door.
+
+She seemed restless. "Bring me the key, will you?" she asked, after a
+few moments of silence, in which her wandering eyes sought the door
+frequently.
+
+I gave it to her. I might have locked the door before giving her the
+key, but I could not do it even in her approach to wildness. I hate
+deception as devoutly as she disguises. She thanked me for my
+compliance, and said, with a scintillation of coaxingness in her
+manner,--
+
+"You need not be afraid; there's nothing to harm one in Redleaf."
+
+"Why did you come, to be kind to me, sick and in sorrow?" she suddenly
+asked, whilst I, unseen by her, was preparing one of the soothing
+powders that still were left from the night wherein I forgot my duty.
+
+I knew not how to reply. The very bit of material which she had hidden
+underneath a pillow was the cause; and so I answered,--
+
+"Town-life is so different; one becomes so accustomed to a ring of
+changes in the all-around of life, that, when in the country, one looks
+for something to remind one of the life that has been left."
+
+"Then you did not come from genuine kindness?"
+
+"No, I am afraid not."
+
+"Do not be afraid to be truthful, ever," she said, and added,--"Once
+more, will you tell me where you found the fragment you have given me?"
+
+"I cannot, Miss Axtell."
+
+She did not speak again, but lay looking at the ceiling until long after
+the moon had risen,--the waning moon, that comes up so weirdly, late in
+the night, like a spectre of light appointed to haunt the solemn old
+earth, and punish it with the remembrance of a brighter, better light
+gone, and a renewed consciousness of its own once unformed, chaotic
+existence. I saw rays from it coming in through the parted curtains, and
+distinctly traced tree-branches wavering to and fro out in the
+night-wind, set astir as the moon came up. At last she said,--
+
+"I wish you would go to sleep. Won't you wake Katie up, and then lie
+down? She has had a rest."
+
+"Poor, tired child," I said; "she had work to do yesterday; I had not."
+
+"Abraham, then, if not Katie."
+
+"He has been up three nights, Miss Axtell,--I only one."
+
+"I did not know it," she said. "I forgot that I had been so long ill."
+
+"Will you try and sleep?" once more I asked; "it is near morning."
+
+She wished to know the hour, made me give her watch into her own
+keeping, and then said "she would not talk, no, she would be very quiet,
+if I would only gratify her by making myself comfortable on the lounge."
+It did not seem very unreasonable, and I consented.
+
+"But you are looking at me," she said. "I hate to be watched; do shut
+your eyes."
+
+I looked away from her. Time went on. I heard the clock strike four
+times, in the March night. Miss Axtell was very quiet,--better, I was
+convinced. I arose once to rebuild the fire. Wood-fires burn down so
+soon. Then I took up my watch, thinking over the strange events, all
+unconsummated, that had been and still were in being under this roof.
+
+Five hours came booming up from the village-clock. The wind must have
+changed, or I could not have heard the strokes, so roundly full.
+
+"How short the hour has been!" was my first thought. Kino began a
+furious, untimely barking. "What for?" I wondered; and I lifted up my
+head and listened. No sound; the room was very still. Miss Axtell had
+dropped the curtains of the bed. It annoyed her, I supposed, to feel
+herself watched. "Her breathing is very soft," I thought; "I do not even
+hear it. Her sleep must be pleasant, after the fever."
+
+I laid my head down to its resting-place, listening still. Kino kept up
+a low, ominous growl, quite different from his first barking. Nothing
+more came. "I'm glad he doesn't waken Miss Axtell," I thought; and
+gradually Kino dropped his growls into low, plaintive moans, which in
+time died away. As they did so, another sound, not outside, but in the
+house, set my poor, weak heart into violent throbbings. Footsteps were
+in the upper hall, I felt sure. Miss Axtell might not hear them, if she
+had not heard Kino's louder noise. Slowly they came,--not heavy, with a
+stout, manly tread, but muffled. They came close to the door. If the key
+were only in it! But I could not move. I heard a hand going over it,
+just as I had heard that hand three days before in the dark tower. A
+moment's awful pour of feeling, and then came the gentlest, softest of
+knocks. Why did I not get up and see who it was? Simply because Nature
+made me cowardly, and meant me, therefore, to bear cowardice bravely. I
+never moved. A second time came the knock, but no more nerve of sound in
+it than at the first. A hand touched the knob after that, and turning it
+gently, the door was carefully pushed open, and a figure, looking very
+much like Mr. Axtell, only the long, dark hair fell over his face, came
+noiselessly in. I could not tell at the moment who it was. I watched him
+cautiously. He stood still, looking first at the bed, whose curtains
+were down, then around the room. For one moment I thought him looking at
+me, and involuntarily my eyelids closed, lest he might know himself
+watched. He put up his hand, and pushed back the heavy hair from his
+forehead. It was only Mr. Axtell. The relief was so great that I
+spoke,--softly, it is true.
+
+"What is it?" I asked. "Is anything wrong, Mr. Axtell?"
+
+"It seems not," he said. "Kino's barking aroused me,--it is so unusual.
+How has she slept?"
+
+"Very well. For the last hour she has not spoken."
+
+Kino began again his low, dismal howling.
+
+"Did not the dog disturb her when he barked?"
+
+Mr. Axtell had walked to the lounge from which I had risen, still
+speaking in the voice that has much of tone without much sound.
+
+"No,--she did not seem to hear it."
+
+"She must be sleeping very deeply," the brother said; and as he spoke,
+he cautiously uplifted a fold of the hangings.
+
+What was it that came over his face, made visible even in the gloom of
+the room? Something terrible.
+
+"What is it?" I asked, springing up; "what has happened?" and I put out
+my hand to take the look at the sleeper in there that he had done.
+
+He stayed my hand, waved it back, folded his arms, as if nothing unusual
+had occurred, and questioned me.
+
+"What has she talked about to-night?"
+
+"She has said very little."
+
+"Tell me something that she has said, immediately"; and he looked
+fearfully agitated.
+
+"What has happened?" I asked; and again I caught at the hangings which
+concealed the fearful thing that he had seen.
+
+"Answer me!" Two words only, but tremendously uttered.
+
+"She asked me if I liked the tower in the church-yard," I said.
+
+"You told her what?"
+
+"That I did like it."
+
+"Has she seemed worried about anything?" and Mr. Axtell threw up a
+window-sash, letting the cold March wind into this room of sickness. As
+he did so, I lifted the folds that the wind rudely swayed. _Miss Axtell
+was not there_.
+
+He turned around. I stood speechless.
+
+"How long have you been asleep?" he asked, coolly, as if nothing had
+occurred.
+
+"Not at all," I answered. Then I thought, "I must have slept, else she
+could not have gone out without my knowing it."--"I heard the stroke of
+four and of five," I said.
+
+He looked up and down the street, only a little lighted by the feeble,
+old, fading moon.
+
+"Have you any idea where she would go?" he asked.
+
+"She may be in the house," I said; "why not look?"
+
+"No; I found the front-door unfastened. I thought Katie might have
+forgotten it, when I went to see. She has gone out, I know."
+
+He looked for the wrappings she might have put on, searching, as he did
+so, for the small lamp that always was placed beside the larger one upon
+the table. It was gone. It had been there at four o'clock, when I put
+wood on the fire.
+
+"Where would she carry a lamp?" Mr. Axtell asked, as he went on,
+searching, in known places, for articles of apparel that were not in
+their wonted homes. Having found them, he went out hurriedly, went to
+his own room, came out thence a moment after, with boots on his feet in
+place of the slippers he had frightened me with, and an overcoat across
+his arm. He did not seem to see me, as I stood waiting in the hall.
+
+"Where are you going?" I asked of him, but he did not answer. He went
+straight on by me, and down, out of the house, closing the great
+hall-door after him with a force that shook the walls.
+
+I went into the deserted room, put down the window-sash that he had left
+open, laid more wood upon the dying embers, caught up Miss Axtell's
+shawl, and, throwing it over my head, started down the stairs. It was
+pitch-dark, not even moonlight, there. I went back for a lamp: the only
+one was the heavy bronze, in the lone room. Mr. Axtell's door was open.
+He had left a light. I went in and took it up, with a box of matches
+lying near, and once more started down the stairs. How full of trembling
+I was! yet not afraid: there was a life, perhaps, to save. I opened the
+heavy oaken door. The wind put out my light. I did not need it longer.
+The shred of moon, hanging prophetic of doom, let out its ghastly
+whiteness to ghost the village.
+
+Kino did not bark. The wind came down the street from churchward, whence
+I had heard the stroke of the village-clock. Ten minutes past five: it
+would be morning soon. I listened. The wind brought me footsteps, going
+farther and farther on: or was it the fluttering of my own garments that
+I heard? "I will know," I thought; and I ran a little way, then listened
+again. They seemed less far than before, but still going on. I ran
+again, farther than at first. I saw a figure before me, but, oh, _so_
+far! It seemed that I should never catch it. I tried, and called. I
+might as well have shouted to my father, miles away; for the wind
+carried my voice nearer to him than to Mr. Axtell, hurrying on. Where
+would he go? I tried to keep him in sight. He turned a corner, and the
+wind tormented me; it was almost a gale that blew, and I had the shawl
+to hold over my head. I came to the corner that he had turned: it was
+near the parsonage,--only two or three houses away. There was less of
+wind. I went on, half-breathless with the intensity of the effort I made
+to breathe. The stars looked cold. I was near the church-yard. First the
+church,--then the place of graves,--after that, the long, sloping
+garden, and the parsonage higher up. I passed by the last house. I drew
+near to the church. How fearful! I stopped. It was only a momentary
+weakness: a life was concerned; it was no place for idle fears. I crept
+on, shivering with the cold, and the night, and the loneliness, and the
+awful thought that the Deity was punishing me for having gone, in
+imagination, down to the cradle of His dead, by sending me out this
+night among graves. I heard the church-windows rattling coarse, woody
+tunes; but I tried not to hear, and went past. A low paling ran along
+the interval between the church and the parsonage-garden. I had crossed
+the street when I came up to the church; now I moved along opposite this
+fearful spot. The paling was white. I listened. No sound. A shadow from
+a tall pine-tree fell across a part of the paling. Therein I thought I
+saw what might be Mr. Axtell, leaning on the fence. I went a little of
+the distance across the street. Whatever it was, it stirred. I ran back,
+and started on, thinking to gain the parsonage. The figure--it was Mr.
+Axtell--came after me. As soon as I knew, for he called, "Lettie," I
+stopped and turned toward him.
+
+"It isn't your sister," I said.
+
+"You, Miss Percival? Why are you out?" and he seemed anxious. He said,
+"You are suffering too much from the 'strange people.'"
+
+How could he mention my hasty words at such a time? and I remembered the
+unforgiving face that I had touched a fathom deep under the hard ground.
+
+"I'm glad I've found you," I said. "Have you the church-key?"
+
+He told me that he had. I said,--
+
+"Come and open it."
+
+"What for?" and he still peered over among the tombstones, as if
+expecting to find Miss Lettie there.
+
+"It is not there that she would go, I think; come quickly with me," I
+said.
+
+We walked to the church-entrance, hastily. He searched for the key. He
+hadn't it. I put my hand out, and touched it in the door.
+
+"See here! I'm right!" and as I spoke, I drew a match across the stone
+step. The wind put out the flame. I guarded the second one with my
+shawl, and lighted the lamp.
+
+"Open quickly, before I lose it," I said.
+
+He did, and we went in,--in through the vestibule, where I first had
+seen this man, tolling the bell for his mother's death,--up the aisle,
+where I had gone the day I saw the thirsty, hungry, little mouse. I felt
+afraid, even with this strong man, for I did not know where I was going.
+We drew near the pulpit,--the pulpit in which Aaron preached.
+
+"She is not here," Mr. Axtell said; and he looked about the empty pews,
+feebly lighted from my small flame.
+
+He started forward as he spoke.
+
+"Don't leave me," I said; and I put my hand within his arm.
+
+What we saw was a change in the pulpit, an opening, as if some one had
+destroyed the panelled front of it.
+
+"Come," I said; and I drew near, and put the lamp through the opening,
+showing a few stone steps; perhaps there were a dozen of them; at least,
+they went down into undefined darkness.
+
+"What is this, Miss Percival?"
+
+"I don't know,--I have never seen it before; but I think it leads to the
+tower. You will find her there. Come!" and I went down the first step,
+with a feeling far stronger than the prisoner's doomed to step off into
+interminable depths, in that Old-World castle famous for wrongs to
+mankind,--for I knew my danger: he does not, as he comes to the last
+step, from off which he goes down to a deep, watery death.
+
+Mr. Axtell was aroused. He took the lamp from my unsteady hand, and,
+bidding me come back, went down before me. At the foot we found
+ourselves in a stone passage-way. It seemed below the reach of rains,
+and not very damp. Once I hit my foot against a stone, and fell. As Mr.
+Axtell turned back to see if I was hurt, he let the light fall
+distinctly on the ground. I saw a letter. He went on. I groped for it,
+one moment, then found it, and put it, with the torn piece of envelope
+to which it might belong, within my pocket. We came, at last,--a long
+distance it seemed for only a hundred feet,--to steps again. There were
+only three of them. Mr. Axtell held the lamp up; there was an opening. I
+shaded the light immediately, and whispered,--
+
+"She's up there, I'm sure. Don't alarm her."
+
+"How can I help it?" he asked.
+
+I had as little of wisdom on the point as he; but I heard a noise. I saw
+a glimmer of light, as I looked up; then it was gone. I put my head
+through the opening, then reached down for the lamp. I held it up, and
+called,--
+
+"Miss Axtell!"
+
+No answer.
+
+"We shall have to go up," her brother said.
+
+I entered the tower, the place I had so loved before,--and now seemed
+destined to atone for my love by suffering.
+
+"Don't let the light go out, Mr. Axtell," were all the words spoken; and
+we went up the long, winding stairway.
+
+At the top stood Miss Axtell, fixed and statue-like, with fever-excited
+eyes. She looked not at us, but far away, through the rough wood inside,
+through the stone of the tower: her gaze seemed limitless.
+
+"Come, Lettie! come, sister! come home with me," her brother said.
+
+She heeded not; the only seeming effect was a convulsion of the muscles
+used in holding the lamp. I ventured to take it from her.
+
+"Where did you find it?" she asked, in determined tones; "will you tell
+me now?"
+
+"Whom is she speaking to?" asked Mr. Axtell.
+
+I answered,--
+
+"Yes, Miss Axtell, it was in here."
+
+"Where is the rest?" and her beautiful eyes were coruscant.
+
+I handed to her the last of the trophies of my first visit. She seized
+it eagerly.
+
+"Don't do that," said Mr. Axtell, as she lighted it from the lamp he
+held. But she was not to be stayed; she held it aloft until the fire
+came down and touched her fingers; then she dropped it, burning still,
+down to the stone floor, far below.
+
+She seemed helpless then; she looked as she did when a few hours before
+she had said, "I want some one to help me."
+
+"Oh!--I've--lost--something!" and she tolled the words out, as slowly as
+the notes of the passing bell.
+
+"What is it, Lettie? Come home; the day is breaking"; and Mr. Axtell put
+his arm about her.
+
+I thought of the letter that I had picked up in the passage-way.
+
+"What have you lost, Miss Axtell? Is it anything that I could find for
+you?" and I laid my hand upon hers, as the only method of drawing away
+her eyes from their terrible immutation of expression.
+
+"You? No, I should think not; how could you? you only found a piece of
+it."
+
+"What is this?" I asked; and I held up the letter: the superscription
+was visible only to herself.
+
+What a change came over her! Soft, dewy tears melted in those burning
+eyes, and sent a mist of sweet effluence over her face. Mr. Axtell was
+still supporting her; she did not touch the letter I held; she reached
+out both of her hands, bent a little toward me,--for she was much taller
+than I am,--took my cold, shivering face in those two burning hands, and
+touched my forehead with her lips.
+
+"God has made you well," she said; "thank Him."
+
+She did not ask for the letter. I put it whence I had taken it. She
+evidently trusted me with it.
+
+"Abraham, I'm sick," she said; and she laid her head upon his shoulder,
+passively as an infant might have done.
+
+Her strength was gone; she could no longer support herself, and the day
+was breaking. Mr. Axtell, strong, vigorous, full-souled man as I knew
+him to be, looked at me, and his look said, "What am I to do with her?"
+
+I answered it by throwing off the shawl and putting it upon the floor
+where we were standing, and saying,--
+
+"Let her rest here, until I come."
+
+I took the still burning lamp and went down,--down through the entrance
+into the deep, walled passage-way, on, step after step, through this
+black tunnel, built, when, I knew not, or by whom; but I was brave now.
+_I had won the trust of a soul_: it was light unto my feet. I reached
+the twelve stone steps leading into the church. I ran lightly up them,
+and, stooping, crept into this still house of God. Silence held the
+place. The next reign would be that of worship. Is it thus in the
+church-yard, after the silence of Death,--the long waiting, listening
+for the slowly gathering voice of praise, that, one fair day in time,
+time, shall transfuse the reverent souls, until the voice of the dew God
+sends down shall be heard dropping on the grassy sod, and welcomed as
+the prelude to the archangel's grand semibreve that will usher in the
+sublime Psalm of Everlasting Life?
+
+Wait on, souls! it is good to wait the voice of the Lord God Almighty,
+who holdeth the earth in the hollow of His hand,--His hand, that we may
+feel for, when the way is dark, whose living fibres thrill both heart
+and soul. Yes, God's hand is never away from earth. I reached out anew
+for it in that dismal pathway through which I had come, and it guided me
+into this quiet, peaceful place, full of morning rays.
+
+I did not stop to think all this; I felt it; for feeling is swifter than
+thought. Thought is the tree; feeling, the blossom thereof. I closed the
+panelling behind me, leaving the church as it had been on the day when,
+I saw the little hungry mouse treading sacred places. I went down the
+aisle; and as I passed by the hempen rope in the vestibule that so often
+had set the bell a-ringing, a longing came to do it now, to tell the
+village-people, by voice of sacred bell, that there was a new-born
+worship come down from Heaven. But I did not. I hurried on, and went
+out, locking the door after me. The March morning was cold. I missed the
+shawl I had left. My hair was as much astir as Aaron's had been one
+morning, not long before, and I truly believe there was as much of
+theology in it. No one was abroad. People sleep late on Sunday mornings.
+The east was blossoming into a magnificent sunflower.
+
+Looking at myself, as I began my walk, I laughed aloud. I was still
+carrying a lighted lamp,--for the wind, like the village-people, slept
+at sunrise. I comforted myself by thinking of a predecessor somewhat
+famous for a like deed, and bent upon a like errand. The man that I
+searched for I should surely find, and honest, too; for it was Aaron.
+
+The parsonage was cruelly inhospitable. No door was left unfastened. I
+knocked at a window opening on the veranda. I gave the signal-knock that
+Sophie and I had listened and opened to, unhesitatingly, for many years.
+It needed nothing more. Instantly I heard Sophie say,--"That's Anna's
+knock"; and immediately thereafter the curtain was put aside, and
+Sophie's precious face and azure eyes peeped out. She looked in
+amazement to see me thus, and in one moment more had let me in.
+
+"Wake Aaron," I said, without giving her time to question me.
+
+"He is awake. What has happened? Is Miss Axtell dying?" she questioned.
+
+"No," I said; "but I want to speak to Aaron, directly. I'm going to my
+room one moment."
+
+I went up. The tower-key was hanging where I had left it. I took it
+down, and made myself respectable by covering up my breezy hair with a
+hood, with the further precaution of a cloak. I had not long to wait for
+Aaron's coming; but it was long enough to remind me to carry some
+restorative with me. Aaron came.
+
+"Miss Axtell is very ill," I said; "she is quite wild, and left the
+house in the night. She's up in the church-yard tower. Will you help her
+brother take her home, as soon as you possibly can?"
+
+"How strange!" were his only words; and as I went the garden way, Aaron
+started to arouse his horse from morning sleep.
+
+"No one need to know the church entrance," I thought; and as I went in,
+I tried to close down the heavy stone, which fitted in so well, that it
+seemed, like all the others, built to stay.
+
+I could not stir it. Perhaps Aaron would not look, when he came in; but
+doubting his special blindness, I asked Mr. Axtell to put it back. He
+seemed to comprehend my meaning. I took his place beside Miss Axtell.
+She was no longer wilful or determined. Her strength was gone. Her head
+drooped upon my shoulder, and when I held a spoon, filled with the
+restorative that I had brought, to her lips, they opened, and she took
+that which I gave, mechanically. Her eyelids were down. I looked at the
+fair, beautiful face that lay so near to my eyes. It was full of the
+softest pencillings; little golden sinuosities of light were woven all
+over it; and the blue lines along which emotion flies were wonderfully
+arrowy and sky-like in their wanderings, for they left no trace to tell
+whence they came or whither led. I heard the heavy, ponderous weight let
+fall. It was the same sound as that which I heard on that memorable
+night. Miss Axtell shivered a little; or was it but the effect of the
+concussion?
+
+The brother came up; he looked down, kindly at me, lovingly at his
+sister.
+
+"Shall I relieve you?" he asked.
+
+I folded my arm only a little more tightly for answer, and said,--
+
+"Mr. Wilton will be here soon; he is getting the carriage, to take your
+sister home."
+
+"I will go and help him, if you don't mind being left"; and he looked
+inquiringly.
+
+"There's no danger. I shall not fall asleep," I said.
+
+"She's harmless now, poor child! If we can only get her back safely!"
+And with these words he left me again.
+
+Sophie came up soon, quite fearless now. She brought a variety of
+comforting things, among them a pillow. Miss Axtell was too much
+exhausted to open her eyes, or speak. I thought two or three times that
+she had ceased to breathe. What if she should die here? They came. She
+was lifted up, and borne down to the carriage, that waited outside the
+graveyard. Helpless ones are carried in often: never before (it might
+be) had one been taken thence. And still the village-people seemed to be
+buried in rest.
+
+Sophie and I walked on, whilst slowly the carriage proceeded to the
+gable-roofed, high-chimneyed house, that arose, well defined and clear,
+in the early sunlight. Smoke was rising from the kitchen-fire. Sophie
+and I went in, just as the carriage stopped. She waited to receive the
+invalid, whilst I went up to see if the absence had been discovered. It
+was but little more than an hour since Mr. Axtell and I had gone out.
+Evidently there had been no visitors. The wood that had been put on the
+fire before I left had gone down into glowing coals that looked warm and
+inviting. I kneeled and stirred them to a brighter glow, and put on more
+wood, my fingers very stiff the while. I drew back the curtains from the
+bed, smoothed the pillows, and the disorder occasioned by our hasty
+exodus, and went down. Aaron and Mr. Axtell had carried the poor invalid
+to the library, and laid her upon the sofa there, but it was very cold.
+The fire was not yet built.
+
+There was a sound of some one coming from the kitchen-way. Mr. Axtell
+looked at me. "You know how to keep a secret," he said, and motioned me
+in the direction whence came the sound, I hurried out, closing the door,
+and met Katie running up to know "what had happened?"
+
+I sent her back on some slight pretext, and followed whither she went. I
+heard the cook mumblingly scolding about "noises in the night, dogs
+barking and doors shutting, she knew; such a house as it was, with
+people dying, getting sick, and putting every sort of a bothersome dream
+into a quiet body's head, that wanted to rest, just as she worked, like
+a Christian." And all the while she went on making preparations for a
+future breakfast.
+
+"What was 't now that ye heard? Kate, you're easy enough at hearing o'
+noises in the broad daylight: I wish 't ye would be as harksome at
+night."
+
+"Hush, Cooky!" said Katie; "Miss Percival is here."
+
+I went up to Cooky and soothed her, told her that I had heard the dog
+barking too, and that I thought that I _did_ hear something like the
+shutting of a door in the night. Cooky rewarded my efforts at sympathy
+by expressing gladness "that there was one sensible person in the house
+that had ears fit for Christian purposes."
+
+"Don't mind her, Miss Percival," Katie said; "she's cross because I
+wakened her too early; she'll get over it when she has had her
+breakfast"
+
+I gave Katie something to do, telling her to make coffee for Miss Axtell
+as soon as possible; and with a few more words, meant to be conciliating
+to Cooky, I took up the glass Katie brought me, and went back.
+
+They had carried Miss Axtell up-stairs. Sophie was taking her wrappings
+off. How carefully she had guarded herself, even in her illness, for the
+walk! and now, all the nerve of fever gone, she lay as white and
+strengthless as she had done in the tower. I went for Doctor Eaton, on
+my own responsibility.
+
+"He would come in a few minutes," was the message to me.
+
+Sophie said "that she would stay, for I must go home."
+
+As she said so, a little wavering cloud of doubt went across her
+forehead, eclipsing, for a moment, its light; then all was bright again.
+
+"What is it?" I asked. "Something for Aaron, I know."
+
+Sophie looked the least bit like a rather old child asking for
+sugar-candy; but she said,--
+
+"Just you tie his cravat for him, there's a good sister; don't forget;
+that's all. After that you may go to sleep, and sleep all day. You look
+as if you needed it."
+
+She came to say one more forgotten thing,--
+
+"Just see that Aaron gets a white handkerchief: he's fond of gay colors,
+you know. Two Sundays ago, when I wasn't looking, he carried off to
+church one of Chloe's turbans, and deliberately shook out the
+three-cornered article, and never knew the difference till his face told
+him it was cotton instead of silk."
+
+I promised extra caution on the second point, and had just closed the
+lower door--Aaron was already holding the gate open for me--when the
+softly purplish bands of hair came again into the wind.
+
+"One thing more, Anna: _do_ see what he takes for a sermon. The text is
+in the fifth chapter of First Thessalonians. He will certainly pick up a
+Fast-day or a Thanksgiving sermon, if you don't put the right one into
+his hands."
+
+"Hasn't he two sermons on the same chapter?" I asked.
+
+"Yes, half a dozen. You'll know the one for to-day; I wrote it for him
+the day he had the headache; the text is"--and there was a little moment
+of thought; then she said--"'Who died for us, that, whether we wake or
+sleep, we should live together with him.' Aaron's waiting; don't keep
+him; good bye!" and she was closed in.
+
+I felt faint and weary, now that there was no more to be done. The
+village-people were awake. Village-sounds were abroad in the Sunday
+atmosphere, vibrant with holiness. The farmers stopped in their care for
+their animals, and spent a moment in innocent wonder of the reason why
+their pastor should be abroad thus early.
+
+Chloe's turban welcomed us first, then Chloe's self. Breakfast, that
+morning, had a rare charm about it for me. I felt that I had a right to
+it; in some wise it was a breakfast earned. Aaron looked melancholy; his
+coffee was not charmful, I knew; the chemical changes that sugar and
+milk wrought were not the same as when Sophie presided over the
+laboratory of the breakfast-tray. I am not an absorbent, and so I
+reflected Aaron's discomfort. He was disposed to question me for a
+reason for Miss Axtell's aberration. I was not empowered to give one,
+and was fully determined to impart no information until such time as I
+could with honor tell all. Aaron desisted after a while, and changed
+interrogation for information.
+
+"We're to have a new sexton," he said.
+
+"Why, Aaron?" I asked,--and, in my surprise, put sugar, destined for my
+coffee, into a glass of water.
+
+"Because Abraham Axtell has resigned."
+
+"When?"
+
+"This very morning."
+
+"He will be sexton until you find another, will he not?"
+
+"For one week only," he said.
+
+I remembered that my pocket held the church-key. I could not send it to
+him without exciting question. Aaron would surely ask how I came by it,
+if I trusted him to restore it. So, sleepy, weary, I sat down at the
+window from which Sophie and her sister Anna had watched the strange man
+digging in the frosty earth,--sat down to my last watching, waiting to
+see Mr. Axtell come up to ring the first bell.
+
+I found I was an hour too early; so I went and talked to Chloe a little,
+scattered crumbs for the first-come birds and corn for the chickens, and
+looked down the deep, deep well, with its curb lichened over, into the
+dark pupil of water, whose iris is never disturbed, unless by the bucket
+that hung in such gibbety repose on the lofty extreme of the great
+sweep, that creaked dismally, uttering a pitiful cry of complaint. If it
+hadn't been Sunday, I would have coaxed Aaron to pour some oil on its
+turbulence; but since Sunday it was, I was to be content to let it
+screech on. It was not a "sheep fallen into a pit," only a disturbed
+well-sweep. Do well-sweeps feel, I wonder? Why not? Mr. Axtell asked how
+I knew that the dead cannot hear.
+
+Aaron came out in search of me. He had been assiduously trying to make a
+ministerial disposition of his cravat, until it was creased and wrinkled
+beyond repair.
+
+"I did not know that you put on the paraphernalia of pastorhood so
+early," I said, "or I would have come in."
+
+"I shall be very thankful, if you'll give me a respectable appearance,"
+he said, which I faithfully tried to do.
+
+I gave him the sermon and the proper handkerchief, then left him to his
+hour of seclusion before service, when even Sophie never went nigh.
+
+Half-past nine of the clock came. It was the time for the ringing of the
+first bell. No sexton appeared. I looked far down the street, having
+walked to the corner of the church for the purpose. Perhaps Mr. Axtell
+was searching for the key. What if I should ring the bell? I had wished
+to, still earlier in the morning. No one would see me go in.
+
+The third time I entered within the church. The bell-rope swayed to and
+fro with a mimic oscillation; a sort of admonitory premonition of what
+it must shortly do ran up its fibres. I had left the entrance into the
+place devoted to worship open. I closed it now. There was nothing very
+alarming in standing there. The floor was oaken and old; the walls were
+gray, and seamed with crevices; there were steps, at either extreme,
+leading into galleries,--one for the choir, two for happy children
+excluded by numbers from the straight family-pews, right under Aaron's
+gray eyes, that saw everything, except the few items that Sophie must
+watch for him, such as neckties, handkerchiefs, and sermons.
+
+There was a smooth place on the rope. The roughness had been worn away
+by contact of human hands. Abraham Axtell's hands--the same that covered
+his face before the young girl's picture, that digged the grave, and so
+gently soothed his sister that very morning--had worn it smooth. It was
+out of my reach, too high up for me to attain unto; and so I held it
+tightly lower down. The ungrateful rope was very prickly; it hurt me,
+but I held fast, and slowly, surely drew it down. Too slowly; there was
+not sound enough to frighten a bird out of the belfry, had one been
+there to listen; but Aaron, on his knees within his study, praying for
+the gift of healing, that he might restore sick souls, would hear. Once
+more I drew the rope, with a tiny persistence that was childish,
+amusing. A baby-tone came to me from the bell, accustomed to other
+things. I had gained courage from the two attempts; it grew rapidly; and
+soon, out into the people's homes, the sounding strokes were ringing,
+clear, sonorous, and true. I had never noticed how long a time the
+"first bell" rang. It was the last Sunday morning's service of the
+sexton. He might be expected to linger a little in the net-work of
+memory; and thus, anxious to do my duty well, I rang on.
+
+The neighbor's boy opened the door and put his head inside; and then he
+opened his eyes wondrously wide at me, and, frightened, ran away. I left
+my bell to tone itself to silence, with little sighing notes, like a
+child sobbing itself into sleep, and called after him. The rough boy
+came to me. I asked "if he would do me a favor." He said, "of course he
+would."
+
+"I wish you to build the church-fires; and don't tell any one that you
+saw me ringing the bell."
+
+"If you tell me not to, I sha'n't," was his laconic reply.
+
+I went home, my latest duty done. I saw, far down the willow-arched
+street, Mr. Axtell coming.
+
+With closed blinds, and room of silence, I ought to have found rest; but
+I did not. I heard Aaron go out. I trusted that he had got the proper
+sermon. I heard the second bell ring. It was so near, how could I help
+it? I heard the congregation singing. Triumphant joy was the impression
+that the song brought to my darkened room. I thought of the letter that
+was in my pocket. It did not please me to feel that it was out of my
+keeping. I took it thence, and held it in my hands. It had no envelope.
+It was written upon soft, white paper, and was addressed to some one: to
+whom I would not see. Not if my happiness depended upon it, would I
+sacrifice the trust reposed in me. Holding the letter thus, a face came
+to memory. It was the third face of the three that had been painted in
+anthracite. I could not tell where I had known it in life. It did not
+seem as if it belonged to mortal time. I got up, opened the blinds for a
+moment, and looked in the glass. I saw myself,--and yet,--yes, there was
+a similitude to that I saw in memory; and then that strange, sad seeming
+of soul-sense, that says, "Such as you are, you have been _somewhere_
+for ages," overwhelmed and sent shakings of solemn ague to me.
+
+"I'm getting ill," I thought; "I'll have no more of this."
+
+I looked at a bottle of chloroform standing conveniently near, took it
+up, and drew out the stopper. Lifting it to the light, I looked at it.
+Quiet and calm and peaceful it reposed, unconscious of ill done or to be
+done by itself. It was so innocent that I could not let it sin by
+hurting me. I gazed again at my reflection in the glass, and a sudden
+intuition taught me a startling truth.
+
+It may have been, nay, must have been, the innocence born of the lucent
+chloroform, reflected in my own face; but I was certain that the mirror
+and the Axtell house contained two pictures that were the one like the
+other. I smiled at the fancy. The illusion, if illusion it was, fled.
+The picture on the wall never smiled from out the canvas. I took dark
+winding-cloths and bound them about my head, covering the hair and
+forehead, all the while watching the effect produced in the mirror. The
+result was somewhat striking, it is true, but not of the agreeable
+style. I unbound my frontlet, taking off the black phylactery, whose
+memorable sentence, written in white letters, had been visible to myself
+alone. A contrast suggested itself to me. I would try white; and so I
+materialized the suggestion, and stood looking the least bit in the
+world like a nun, bound about with my white vestments, and had obtained
+only one very unsatisfactory glimpse of the effect produced upon the
+sensitive heart of quicksilver, when I found that that subtile heart
+responded to influences other than mine. What I discovered was another
+face, not in the most remote degree like mine,--as different as it could
+possibly be,--a face belonging to the carboniferous strata of the human
+ages. Had it been imitating me? Its race are eminent for imitative
+genius. A queer sort of a nun it was, wearing neither black nor white,
+but high tropical hues. Repose of being did not belong to this face. It
+darted around, and looked into my eyes.
+
+"Goodness o' mercy Miss Anna, what ails thee's little head? is it quite
+turned with being up o' nights? Lie down, little honey! let old Chloe
+bathe it for thee." And Chloe hummed around the room like a bee; she
+folded up the petals of light that I had unbudded when I wanted to see
+what manner of face I had. Strange fancy it is that the extra fairy
+gives to mortals, this breaking up of roses and dolls and joys, to find
+what is in them!
+
+I was pleased to have Chloe come in, to take charge of me. I had gone a
+little way beyond my own proper realm, and it was grateful to feel my
+centrifugal tendencies overcome by this sable centripetency of force,
+that took off my strange habitings,--only the paraphernalia of headache
+to her. Pillowing the head supposed to be tormented with pain, Chloe
+went about to remedy the evil by drowning it in lavender-water. I let
+her think what she pleased, and bravely lifted up the mount of my head,
+like Ararat of old unto the great deluge; but she would not let me talk
+as I pleased. Chloe was half a century old, with a warm, affectionate,
+red heart under her black seeming; and it pulsated around me now, as I
+lay there, under her care, in absolute quiet, hushed to content by her
+humming ways and words.
+
+The second hymn of the church-service was sending its voice of worship
+up unto the Lord of all the earth, and Chloe and I, two of the children
+of that Lord, upon His earth, were awed by it. "The neighbor's boy must
+have left a window open," I thought. The fruitage of song blossomed on,
+the petalled notes withered and fell, and Chloe garnered in her harvest
+from the field, with a quaintly expressed regret that she "wasn't in the
+meadows of the land of Canaan, where taller songs were growing."
+
+"Never mind, Chloe," I said; "the hymns of earth are very sweet; you can
+wait a little longer, can't you?"
+
+"Don't you talk, child; you'll make your head ache again. Yes, old Chloe
+is willing to wait; there's honey and sugar left on the ground for her
+to find, only she's old now, she can't _stoop to pick it up_ as well as
+she could once."
+
+"What do you mean, Chloe?"
+
+"Didn't I tell ye you mustn't talk, Miss Anna? Don't be trying to
+trouble yourself with old Chloe's meanings: they haven't any
+understanding in them for other people to find out."
+
+"Why not, Chloe?"
+
+"Thee's talking again, Miss Anna. It's the Lord's thoughts that are
+given to black Chloe, and she hasn't anything to dress them up in but
+her own, poor, old, ragged words, that a'n't fit to use any way; so
+Chloe'll wait until she gets something better to make 'em 'pear to
+belong to the Lord that owns 'em"; and Chloe still soothingly bathed my
+head, which I think was aching all the while, only I should not have
+found it out, if she had not told me it.
+
+"I want to ask you a question, Chloe."
+
+"Well, just one, honey!"
+
+"Am I much like--do I look as my mother used to?"
+
+"Blessed child! no, no more 'n I do; only ye've both got white faces
+from the good Lord, and He didn't please to give Chloe anything better
+than a black one."
+
+"What did she look like?"
+
+"Thee's not to talk one word more. Chloe must go and look after Master
+Aaron's dinner; he doesn't like husks to feed on. Mistress Percival was
+like an angel, when the Lord took her from the earth. I'm afraid old
+Chloe wouldn't know her now, she's been so long with Seraphim and
+Cherubim in the Great City with the light of the Celestial Sun shining
+in her face. I'm afraid Chloe wouldn't dare to speak to her, if she was
+to meet her in the shining street of the New Jerusalem."
+
+"She would know you, though, Chloe."
+
+"There isn't any night there, Miss Anna; she couldn't see me; I'm black
+and wicked"; and Chloe dropped something upon my hand. It was a tear
+from her great eyes.
+
+"Your soul will be white, Chloe. Christ will make it so."
+
+"Well, well, honey, don't you trouble yourself 'bout my soul. The Lord
+made it, and I guess He'll take care of it, when it gets free from the
+earth"; and Chloe went down to look after a fragment of the very earth
+she was anxious to escape from.
+
+I heard this child of "Afric's golden sands" singing a song to soothe
+her soul among the dinner-deeds that she was enacting. Then I thought me
+of the earth lying in the hollow of God's hand, and in some way I wished
+that I might get in-between the earth and the Holding Hand, and a wisp
+of the sweet hymn, "Nearer to Thee, my God," floated out from my heart's
+voice, almost with music in it. And the wishing words melted into an air
+of prayer. I felt the mighty Hand around me. I put myself fearlessly
+into the loving depths thereof, engraved with lines of life, and slept
+securely there. Did the divine fingers draw me a little more closely,
+and press the lines engraven on the Hand into my soul, and leave an
+impression of dreams there? I felt myself going swiftly on and up
+through a skyey gradient, and the soft, balmy air, displaced by my
+passing through, fell back into its own place with pearly music. I
+wanted to open my eyes and see where I was going; but I could not. I was
+passive in action, active in thought only. Then, the music growing
+fainter and fainter as the atmosphere became more celestially rarefied,
+I felt the supporting Hand going away from me. One after another the
+fingers loosened their hold, and yet I did not feel that I was falling.
+It was gone, and I floated on. With its absence came the wish for
+action. My eyes were unloosed, and I looked up. Far above me I saw the
+Hand that had brought me up hither. It had gone on before, and was
+waiting my coming. I made an effort to reach it.
+
+A voice came; and clouds, rosy, ambient, such as angels hang around the
+pavilion of the sun, were unfolding their glory-woven webs and weaving
+me in. "It is good to be here," I whispered to my spirit's inmost sense
+of hearing; and the voice that I heard spake these words unto me:--
+
+"You have been brought up hither to learn your mission upon the earth to
+which you go."
+
+Old, prophetic, syllabic sounds, lisped in the place whence I had come,
+were given unto me, and I answered,--
+
+"Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth!"
+
+Then a rushing wind of sound filled my ears, and I saw the flashing of a
+wing of angel in among the cumulosity of clouds, and it made an opening
+into an ethereous region beyond. An oval, azurous picture was before me,
+set in this rolling, surging frame of ambient gold and silver glory.
+
+"It is not for me to see in there," I thought; and I shut my eyes.
+
+The voice that I had heard before spake once more:--
+
+"Learn what thy God would have thee to do. Look up!"
+
+Obeying the mighty behest, I beheld, and an ovaline picture, painted in
+the artistry of heaven, let down from the crystalline walls, that I
+might not see, and held fast by a cord of gold, safe in an angel's
+keeping, God had sent for me to look upon.
+
+It was not such as masters of earth toil to paint. It was a living group
+that I saw.
+
+Four figures stood there.
+
+The first one was the face that I had just asked Chloe the semblance of.
+Loving past expression's power. The love emitted from those eyes brought
+tears into mine, and I heard one of them go dropping down, down into the
+cloudy deep below, as one day I had heard one falling elsewhere, on a
+cold stone.
+
+Two hands were wafted out towards me, and the lips were just parted, as
+if waiting for coming words. I looked and listened, a little blinded by
+the glory and my tears.
+
+"Go forth, dear child, to the work thy God appoints for thee to do!"
+
+I looked up a little higher, just over the face of my mother, and, in
+holiest benediction, the Hand that had brought me up hither was laid
+upon her head. One stood beside her, leaning upon her shoulder. I
+recognized the face of the mysterious young girl.
+
+"Will you do something for me on the earth, whence I have been called?"
+she asked.
+
+The mighty voice that rang amid the clouds bade me "Answer." And
+tremulously, as if my poor earth-words had no place in the exceeding
+brightness, I gave an "I will."
+
+"Comfort you the one afflicted. Tell him to look no longer into my
+grave. Let him not wander beside the marble foam that surges up from the
+Sea of Death, for that the Lord hath prepared another way for his
+footsteps. Lead him a little while on the earth, and then"----
+
+I know not what more she would have spoken, for the Hand closed her
+lips. I sought my mother's face. It was gone. Another came forward. I
+felt involuntarily for the cold Hand that one night wandered under the
+sod in search of the face that now I saw in this picture let down from
+crystalline walls.
+
+"I have a message for you," were the words I heard. "Tell her that I
+know what she would tell me: I have been made to know it here, where all
+things are clear: tell her that my forgiveness is as large as the heaven
+to which I have been permitted to enter in. Give her of the love that I
+did not when I might have done it."
+
+The Hand was offered to her. Pleadingly, she looked up at it. For a
+moment my eyelids were heavy. When the weight was lifted, only one
+figure remained upon the celestial canvas. I could not see the
+countenance thereof: hands were clasped tightly over it.
+
+"One more message the Lord permits for earth," said a touching,
+trembling, praying voice. "Say unto one sinning, that I have prayed unto
+the Christ that died for him,--that his mother is always praying for her
+son. Find out his sin, and solace his soul with the knowledge of my
+prayers."
+
+The angel-wing that had cleaved the sky to let this picture in lifted
+her upon its pinions, and bore her through the azure, and I saw the
+great Hand open, as of one casting out many seeds upon the earth. Again
+an angel-wing swept its way among the clouds, and folds of opaline glow
+pavilioned the entrance into cerulean heights, and a solemn voice
+uttered these words out of the great All-Where around me:--
+
+"I am the Lord thy God. I will show thee the way wherein I would have
+thee to walk. Rest thy soul in my love, and it shall satisfy thee."
+
+With heart and soul and voice, my all of being cried out.--
+
+"Only let Thy hand hold me!"
+
+I awoke with one of those awful heart-exciting starts that come in
+sleep, such as a new planet might give when first projected into its
+orbit, before centrifugal and centripetal forces have time to exert
+their influences. I wonder what it is. Can it be a misstep, in the
+darkness, into the abyss between the land of waking and the land where
+there are nor years nor months nor days, where the soul abides in
+Lethe,--save when some wing troubles the waters for a little while?
+
+I was wearied, with the weariness of one having come from long
+journeying. I closed my eyes again, and tried to sleep. Chloe looked in
+at me.
+
+"Have you had a nice sleep, Miss Anna?" she asked, as I moved at her
+coming.
+
+"I fear not, Chloe," I said; "my head doesn't behave nicely since I
+awoke. Bring me the bottle of chloroform: it's just there, upon the
+bureau."
+
+Chloe went hurrying, bustling out of the room, and brought me the
+chloroform from some other part of the house.
+
+"Where did you bring this from?" I asked; "do you use chloroform?"
+
+"I've a horror of all pisons," said Chloe; "I didn't like to leave this
+near you; pisons is very bad for young people."
+
+Smiling at Chloe's prudent fears for me, I inhaled a little of the
+friend, dangerous, and to be trusted only a little way, like the most of
+friends, and gave it back to Chloe. The honest woman restored it to her
+pocket in the presence of my two eyes. I had had enough of it, and I let
+her carry it away,--a victory she enjoyed, I knew, and it cost me
+nothing, save a smile at her idle fears for me. I did not know then that
+Chloe had, in her semi-century of life, found a reason for her dread of
+poisons, among which she evidently promoted chloroform to a high power
+in the field of active service.
+
+I arose with a _new_ feeling in my existence. I felt that I had been led
+into a strange avenue of life, constellated with the Southern Cross,
+which I had never yet seen. It was daylight now. I must await the coming
+of the hours when God maketh the darkness to curtain round the earth,
+that He may come down and walk in "the groves and grounds that His own
+feet have hallowed," that He may look near at what the children of men
+will to do. I must await this hour, when heaven will be thick with
+legions of starry eyes, that look down through the empyrean at their God
+walking among men.
+
+Is it wonderful that they tremble so, when He who saith, "Vengeance is
+mine, I will repay," seeth so much to awaken the eye that "never
+slumbereth nor sleepeth" to retribution? If angels tremble so, safe in
+heavenly heights, how ought poor sinful man to fear for himself, lest
+that vengeance overtake him, ere he have time to cry, "Have mercy!"
+
+I took up the Holy Bible, and opened it, as I often had done before,
+with the belief at work within my heart, that whatsoever words my eyes
+first fell upon would be prophetic to me. I opened and read, "I must
+work the works of Him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh,
+when no man can work."
+
+And I, kneeling, prayed, "Show me, my God, what Thou wilt have me to do,
+or to be! Work Thou within me! Let the one little atom of Thyself that
+Thou hast given into my keeping be so holily guarded, so sacredly kept,
+that, at the fast, it may come back a fibre of Thine own Self, and be
+received into the Great Existence that liveth forever and ever!"
+
+I arose and walked forth into this newness of life, enveloped with a
+halo of the Divine effluence, in which I hoped forever to dwell,--or if
+forever had any meaning to me, it was in an existent now.
+
+I passed through Aaron's study, and an awe of reverence led me to pause
+before the table where he had worked for so many days, worked to make
+God's salvation seem harmonious with man's free-will; and, in loving all
+suffering human kind, newness of love for Aaron and for his cool-browed
+wife came to me: not that I had not loved them long, but there come
+neap-tides into the oceans of emotion, and work solemnly, awfully, until
+great frothings from the storm lie all a-tremble on the coasts of the
+land whither our course tends in the daily, hourly round of life.
+
+I'm very glad Aaron didn't come in just then. It is good to be with God
+alone, in deep emotions. It never was meant by the Good Spirit for man
+to behold what is in his brother-man. I think we'd all fly--as far apart
+as the Universe would give us leave. Just let the effervescence of one
+life o'erlip the cup and fall into another, and the draught would be a
+drink of electricity. Who would care to taste it? Not Aaron, I'm sure.
+And so I shook out this crispy lace of emotion that was rather choking
+in my throat, and went down to where Chloe watched the elements whence
+all this chemistry had been evolved.
+
+"I thought ye'd be coming after somewhat to eat," Chloe said; "but I
+knew, if I asked you, you'd sure say,' No, honey'"; and she went about
+to "do me good," in her own way.
+
+I heard the afternoon's latest hymn sung in the church whilst I waited.
+I saw the great congregation come out, and, with divided ways, go each
+homeward. Sophie had not returned. I wanted to hear from Miss Axtell.
+Last of all walked Aaron. With bent head and slow musingness of step, he
+came to his home. I met him at the entrance.
+
+"Are you tired with preaching, Aaron?" I asked.
+
+He looked up, at my unusual accost; and I think there must have been
+somewhat unwonted about me, he looked at me so long.
+
+"No," he said, "I've had a pleasant field to-day: there are violets,
+even in my pathways, Anna."
+
+"Sophie's a pansy," I said.
+
+"Sophie's a Sharon rose," spake Aaron.
+
+He looked inquiringly at me, and added,--
+
+"And you, Anna?"
+
+"An aloe, Aaron."
+
+He smiled the least in the world, and said,--
+
+"Had I been asked, instead of being the asker, I should have made
+answer, 'She's a Japan rose.'"
+
+"Oh, Aaron, no fragrance! that's not complimentary."
+
+"Crush the leaves of heliotrope in the cup, Anna."
+
+I did not understand what he meant, then; perhaps I do not now: some
+figure of speech from the Orient, I fancy, with a glow of meaning about
+it visible only to poetic vision. I lost my way, blinded in seeking to
+penetrate the mystery, and was brought back to Redleaf by two welcome
+events: the cup Chloe brought, and the letter Aaron gave, with a
+beseeching of pardon for having forgotten to give it in the morning.
+
+I read my letter, interluding it with little commas of sipping at the
+cup. It was from my father, very brief, but somewhat stirring. Here it
+lies before me now.
+
+   "My MYRTLE-VINE,--
+
+   "I want you at home. I am well; but that is no reason why I should
+   not need your greenness on my walls. Come home, dear child, on the
+   morrow. Do not fail me. You never have; 't would be cruel now, when
+   spring is coming, the very time of hope. Waitingly,
+
+   "Your father,
+
+   "JULIUS PERCIVAL."
+
+"What puts you in such a turmoil, Anna?" Aaron asked. "What has happened
+at home?"
+
+I thought he had been duly attending to the state of his own inward
+hopes and fears, instead of mine. Slightly disconcerted by his gray
+eyes, the very same that disturb turbulent boys in church-time, I turned
+away from them, went to the door, and leaning against the side thereof,
+looking the while up at the sky, I answered,--
+
+"I'm going home on the morrow, Aaron."
+
+"Going home?" he repeated, as if the words had borne an uncertain
+import. "Pray tell me, what has occurred?"
+
+"It pleases my father to have me there. He gives no reason."
+
+"What will Sophie say? She's hardly seen you since you came, you've been
+so usefully employed. I hope you have not hurt yourself. I wish you were
+going back with brighter color in your cheeks."
+
+"There is something in Nature besides mere coloring," I said, and looked
+for the answer.
+
+It was better than I thought to get.
+
+"What?" he asked.
+
+"Two things, Aaron,--conception and form."
+
+Aaron mused awhile.
+
+"What gave you the idea?" he asked, his musing over.
+
+"Sermons in granite," I answered; and I looked at the sunshine, the
+afternoon radiance that fell soothingly into the winter-wearied grass
+lying in the graveyard, waiting like souls for the warmth of love to
+enlife them.
+
+Aaron said,--
+
+"Sandstone and limestone you mean, Anna."
+
+"Oh, no,--granite. I mean the Axtells."
+
+"I'm glad you've found anything comprehensible enough to call a sermon
+in them," he answered. "Ill, dying, and in affliction, they are
+impenetrable to me." And Aaron turned away and went in.
+
+
+
+LEAMINGTON SPA.
+
+   MY DEAR EDITOR,--
+
+   You can hardly have expected to hear from me again, (unless by
+   invitation to the field of honor,) after those cruel and terrible
+   notes upon my harmless article in the July Number. How could you find
+   it in your heart (a soft one, as I have hitherto supposed) to treat
+   an old friend and liege contributor in that unheard-of way? Not that
+   I should care a fig for any amount of vituperation, if you had only
+   let my article come before the public as I wrote it, instead of
+   suppressing precisely the passages--with which I had taken most
+   pains, and which I flattered myself were most cleverly done. The
+   interview with the President, for example: it would have been a
+   treasure to the future historian; and I hold you responsible to
+   posterity for thrusting it into the fire. However, I cannot lose so
+   good an opportunity of showing the world the placability and
+   sweetness that adorn my character, and therefore send you another
+   article, in which, I trust, you will find nothing to strike
+   out,--unless, peradventure, you think that I may disturb the
+   tranquillity of nations by my plan of annexing Great Britain, or my
+   attempted adumbration of a fat English dowager!
+
+   Truly, yours,
+
+   A PEACEABLE MAN.
+
+
+
+In the course of several visits and stays of considerable length we
+acquired a homelike feeling towards Leamington, and came back thither
+again and again, chiefly because we had been there before. Wandering and
+wayside people, such as we had long since become, retain a few of the
+instincts that belong to a more settled way of life, and often prefer
+familiar and commonplace objects (for the very reason that they are so)
+to the dreary strangeness of scenes that might be thought much better
+worth the seeing. There is a small nest of a place in Leamington--at No.
+16, Lansdowne Circus--upon which, to this day, my reminiscences are apt
+to settle as one of the coziest nooks in England, or in the world; not
+that it had any special charm of its own, but only that we stayed long
+enough to know it well, and even to grow a little tired of it. In my
+opinion, the very tediousness of home and friends makes a part of what
+we love them for; if it be not mixed in sufficiently with the other
+elements of life, there may be mad enjoyment, but no happiness.
+
+The modest abode to which I have alluded forms one of a circular range
+of pretty, moderate-sized, two-story houses, all built on nearly the
+same plan, and each provided with its little grass-plot, its flowers,
+its tufts of box trimmed into globes and other fantastic shapes, and its
+verdant hedges shutting the house in from the common drive and dividing
+it from its equally cozy neighbors. Coming out of the door, and taking a
+turn round the circle of sister-dwellings, it is difficult to find your
+way back by any distinguishing individuality of your own habitation. In
+the centre of the Circus is a space fenced in with iron railing, a small
+play-place and sylvan retreat for the children of the precinct,
+permeated by brief paths through the fresh English grass, and shadowed
+by various shrubbery; amid which, if you like, you may fancy yourself in
+a deep seclusion, though probably the mark of eye-shot from the windows
+of all the surrounding houses. But, in truth, with regard to the rest of
+the town and the world at large, an abode here is a genuine seclusion;
+for the ordinary stream of life does not run through this little, quiet
+pool, and few or none of the inhabitants seem to be troubled with any
+business or outside activities. I used to set them down as half-pay
+officers, dowagers of narrow income, elderly maiden ladies, and other
+people of respectability, but small account, such as hang on the world's
+skirts rather than actually belong to it. The quiet of the place was
+seldom disturbed, except by the grocer and butcher, who came to receive
+orders, or the cabs, hackney-coaches, and Bath-chairs, in which the
+ladies took an infrequent airing, or the livery-steed which the retired
+captain sometimes bestrode for a morning ride, or by the red-coated
+postman who went his rounds twice a day to deliver letters, and again in
+the evening, ringing a hand-bell, to take letters for the mail. In
+merely mentioning these slight interruptions of its sluggish stillness,
+I seem to myself to disturb too much the atmosphere of quiet that
+brooded over the spot; whereas its impression upon me was, that the
+world had never found the way hither, or had forgotten it, and that the
+fortunate inhabitants were the only ones who possessed the spell-word of
+admittance. Nothing could have suited me better, at the time; for I had
+been holding a position of public servitude, which imposed upon me
+(among a great many lighter duties) the ponderous necessity of being
+universally civil and sociable.
+
+Nevertheless, if a man were seeking the bustle of society, he might find
+it more readily in Leamington than in most other English towns. It is a
+permanent watering-place, a sort of institution to which I do not know
+any close parallel in American life: for such places as Saratoga bloom
+only for the summer season, and offer a thousand dissimilitudes even
+then; while Leamington seems to be always in flower, and serves as a
+home to the homeless all the year round. Its original nucleus, the
+plausible excuse for the town's coming into prosperous existence, lies
+in the fiction of a chalybeate well, which, indeed, is so far a reality
+that out of its magical depths have gushed streets, groves, gardens,
+mansions, shops, and churches, and spread themselves along the banks of
+the little river Leam. This miracle accomplished, the beneficent
+fountain has retired beneath a pump-room, and appears to have given up
+all pretensions to the remedial virtues formerly attributed to it. I
+know not whether its waters are ever tasted nowadays; but not the less
+does Leamington--in pleasant Warwickshire, at the very midmost point of
+England, in a good hunting neighborhood, and surrounded by country-seats
+and castles--continue to be a resort of transient visitors, and the more
+permanent abode of a class of genteel, unoccupied, well-to-do, but not
+very wealthy people, such as are hardly known among ourselves. Persons
+who have no country-houses, and whose fortunes are inadequate to a
+London expenditure, find here, I suppose, a sort of town and country
+life in one.
+
+In its present aspect, the town is of no great age. In contrast with the
+antiquity of many places in its neighborhood, it has a bright, new face,
+and seems almost to smile even amid the sombreness of an English autumn.
+Nevertheless, it is hundreds upon hundreds of years old, if we reckon up
+that sleepy lapse of time during which it existed as a small village of
+thatched houses, clustered round a priory; and it would still have been
+precisely such a rural village, but for a certain Doctor Jephson, who
+lived within the memory of man, and who found out the magic well, and
+foresaw what fairy wealth might be made to flow from it. A public garden
+has been laid out along the margin of the Leam, and called the Jephson
+Garden, in honor of him who created the prosperity of his native spot. A
+little way within the garden-gate there is a circular temple of Grecian
+architecture, beneath the dome of which stands a marble statue of the
+good Doctor, very well executed, and representing him with a face of
+fussy activity and benevolence: just the kind of man, if luck favored
+him, to build up the fortunes of those about him, or, quite as probably,
+to blight his whole neighborhood by some disastrous speculation.
+
+The Jephson Garden is very beautiful, like most other English
+pleasure-grounds; for, aided by their moist climate and not too fervid
+sun, the landscape-gardeners excel in converting flat or tame surfaces
+into attractive scenery, chiefly through the skilful arrangement of
+trees and shrubbery. An Englishman aims at this effect even in the
+little patches under the windows of a suburban villa, and achieves it on
+a larger scale in a tract of many acres. The Garden is shadowed with
+trees of a fine growth, standing alone, or in dusky groves and dense
+entanglements, pervaded by woodland paths; and emerging from these
+pleasant glooms, we come upon a breadth of sunshine, where the green
+sward--so vividly green that it has a kind of lustre in it--is spotted
+with beds of gemlike flowers. Rustic chairs and benches are scattered
+about, some of them ponderously fashioned out of the stumps of
+obtruncated trees, and others more artfully made with intertwining
+branches, or perhaps an imitation of such frail handiwork in iron. In a
+central part of the Garden is an archery-ground, where laughing maidens
+practise at the butts, generally missing their ostensible mark, but, by
+the mere grace of their action, sending an unseen shaft into some young
+man's heart. There is space, moreover, within these precincts, for an
+artificial lake, with a little green island in the midst of it; both
+lake and island being the haunt of swans, whose aspect and movement in
+the water are most beautiful and stately,--most infirm, disjointed, and
+decrepit, when, unadvisedly, they see fit to emerge, and try to walk
+upon dry land. In the latter case, they look like a breed of uncommonly
+ill-contrived geese; and I record the matter here for the sake of the
+moral,--that we should never pass judgment on the merits of any person
+or thing, unless we behold it in the sphere and circumstances to which
+it is specially adapted. In still another part of the Garden there is a
+labyrinthine maze, formed of an intricacy of hedge-bordered walks,
+involving himself in which, a man might wander for hours inextricably
+within a circuit of only a few yards,--a sad emblem, it seemed to me, of
+the mental and moral perplexities in which we sometimes go astray, petty
+in scope, yet large enough to entangle a lifetime, and bewilder us with
+a weary movement, but no genuine progress.
+
+The Leam, after drowsing across the principal street of the town beneath
+a handsome bridge, skirts along the margin of the Garden without any
+perceptible flow. Heretofore I had fancied the Concord the laziest river
+in the world, but now assign that amiable distinction to the little
+English stream. Its water is by no means transparent, but has a
+greenish, goose-puddly hue, which, however, accords well with the other
+coloring and characteristics of the scene, and is disagreeable neither
+to sight nor smell. Certainly, this river is a perfect feature of that
+gentle picturesqueness in which England is so rich, sleeping, as it
+does, beneath a margin of willows that droop into its bosom, and other
+trees, of deeper verdure than our own country can boast, inclining
+lovingly over it. On the Garden-side it is bordered by a shadowy,
+secluded grove, with winding paths among its boskiness, affording many a
+peep at the river's imperceptible lapse and tranquil gleam; and on the
+opposite shore stands the priory-church, with its church-yard full of
+shrubbery and tombstones.
+
+The business-portion of the town clusters about the banks of the Leam,
+and is naturally densest around the well to which the modern settlement
+owes its existence. Here are the commercial inns, the post-office, the
+furniture-dealers, the ironmongers, and all the heavy and homely
+establishments that connect themselves even with the airiest modes of
+human life; while upward from the river, by a long and gentle ascent,
+rises the principal street, which is very bright and cheerful in its
+physiognomy, and adorned with shop-fronts almost as splendid as those of
+London, though on a diminutive scale. There are likewise side-streets
+and cross-streets, many of which are bordered with the beautiful
+Warwickshire elm, a most unusual kind of adornment for an English town;
+and spacious avenues, wide enough to afford room for stately groves,
+with foot-paths running beneath the lofty shade, and rooks cawing and
+chattering so high In the tree-tops that their voices get musical before
+reaching the earth. The houses are mostly built in blocks and ranges, in
+which every separate tenement is a repetition of its fellow, though the
+architecture of the different ranges is sufficiently various. Some of
+them are almost palatial in size and sumptuousness of arrangement. Then,
+on the outskirts of the town, there are detached villas, inclosed within
+that separate domain of high stone fence and embowered shrubbery which
+an Englishman so loves to build and plant around his abode, presenting
+to the public only an iron gate, with a gravelled carriage-drive winding
+away towards the half-hidden mansion. Whether in street or suburb,
+Leamington may fairly be called beautiful, and, at some points,
+magnificent; but by-and-by you become doubtfully suspicious of a
+somewhat unreal finery: it is pretentious, though not glaringly so; it
+has been built, with malice aforethought, as a place of gentility and
+enjoyment. Moreover, splendid as the houses look, and comfortable as
+they often are, there is a nameless something about them, betokening
+that they have not grown out of human hearts, but are the creations of a
+skilfully applied human intellect: no man has reared any one of them,
+whether stately or humble, to be his life-long residence, wherein to
+bring up his children, who are to inherit it as a home. They are nicely
+contrived lodging-houses, one and all,--the best as well as the
+shabbiest of them,--and therefore inevitably lack some nameless property
+that a home should have. This was the case with our own little snuggery
+in Lansdowne Circus, as with all the rest: it had not grown out of
+anybody's individual need, but was built to let or sell, and was
+therefore like a ready-made garment,--a tolerable fit, but only
+tolerable.
+
+All these blocks, ranges, and detached villas are adorned with the
+finest and most aristocratic names that I have found anywhere in
+England, except, perhaps, in Bath, which is the great metropolis of that
+second-class gentility with which watering-places are chiefly populated.
+Lansdowne Crescent, Lansdowne Circus, Lansdowne Terrace, Regent Street,
+Warwick Street, Clarendon Street, the Upper and Lower Parade: such are a
+few of the designations. Parade, indeed, is a well-chosen name for the
+principal street, along which the population of the idle town draws
+itself out for daily review and display. I only wish that my descriptive
+powers would enable me to throw off a picture of the scene at a sunny
+noontide, individualizing each character with a touch: the great people
+alighting from their carriages at the principal shop-doors; the elderly
+ladies and infirm Indian officers drawn along in Bath-chairs; the
+comely, rather than pretty, English girls, with their deep, healthy
+bloom, which an American taste is apt to deem fitter for a milkmaid than
+for a lady; the moustached gentlemen with frogged surtouts and a
+military air; the nursemaids and chubby children, but no chubbier than
+our own, and scampering on slenderer legs; the sturdy figure of John
+Bull in all varieties and of all ages, but ever with the stamp of
+authenticity somewhere about him.
+
+To say the truth, I have been holding the pen over my paper, purposing
+to write a descriptive paragraph or two about the throng on the
+principal Parade of Leamington, so arranging it as to present a sketch
+of the British out-of-door aspect on a morning walk of gentility; but I
+find no personages quite sufficiently distinct and individual in my
+memory to supply the materials of such a panorama. Oddly enough, the
+only figure that comes fairly forth to my mind's eye is that of a
+dowager, one of hundreds whom I used to marvel at, all over England, but
+who have scarcely a representative among our own ladies of autumnal
+life, so thin, careworn, and frail, as age usually makes the latter. I
+have heard a good deal of the tenacity with which English ladies retain
+their personal beauty to a late period of life; but (not to suggest that
+an American eye needs use and cultivation before it can quite appreciate
+the charm of English beauty at any age) it strikes me that an English
+lady of fifty is apt to become a creature less refined and delicate, so
+far as her physique goes, than anything that we Western people class
+under the name of woman. She has an awful ponderosity of frame, not
+pulpy, like the looser development of our few fat women, but massive
+with solid beef and streaky tallow; so that (though struggling manfully
+against the idea) you inevitably think of her as made up of steaks and
+sirloins. When she walks, her advance is elephantine. When she sits
+down, it is on a great round space of her Maker's footstool, where she
+looks as if nothing could ever move her. She imposes awe and respect by
+the muchness of her personality, to such a degree that you probably
+credit her with far greater moral and intellectual force than she can
+fairly claim. Her visage is usually grim and stern, not always
+positively forbidding, yet calmly terrible, not merely by its breadth
+and weight of feature, but because it seems to express so much
+well-founded self-reliance, such acquaintance with the world, its toils,
+troubles, and dangers, and such sturdy capacity for trampling down a
+foe. Without anything positively salient, or actively offensive, or,
+indeed, unjustly formidable to her neighbors, she has the effect of a
+seventy-four gun-ship in time of peace; for, while you assure yourself
+that there is no real danger, you cannot help thinking how tremendous
+would be her onset, if pugnaciously inclined, and how futile the effort
+to inflict any counter-injury. She certainly looks tenfold--nay, a
+hundredfold--better able to take care of herself than our slender-framed
+and haggard womankind; but I have not found reason to suppose that the
+English dowager of fifty has actually greater courage, fortitude, and
+strength of character than our women of similar age, or even a tougher
+physical endurance than they. Morally, she is strong, I suspect, only in
+society, and in the common routine of social affairs, and would be found
+powerless and timid in any exceptional strait that might call for energy
+outside of the conventionalities amid which she has grown up.
+
+You can meet this figure in the street, and live, and even smile at the
+recollection. But conceive of her in a ball-room, with the bare, brawny
+arms that she invariably displays there, and all the other corresponding
+development, such as is beautiful in the maiden blossom, but a spectacle
+to howl at in such an overblown cabbage-rose as this.
+
+Yet, somewhere in this enormous bulk there must be hidden the modest,
+slender, violet-nature of a girl, whom an alien mass of earthliness has
+unkindly overgrown; for an English maiden in her teens, though very
+seldom so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, to say the truth, a
+certain charm of half-blossom, and delicately folded leaves, and tender
+womanhood shielded by maidenly reserves, with which, somehow or other,
+our American girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appreciable
+moment. It is a pity that the English violet should grow into such an
+outrageously developed peony as I have attempted to describe. I wonder
+whether a middle-aged husband ought to be considered as legally married
+to all the accretions that have overgrown the slenderness of his bride,
+since he led her to the altar, and which make her so much more than he
+ever bargained for! Is it not a sounder view of the case, that the
+matrimonial bond cannot be held to include the three-fourths of the wife
+that had no existence when the ceremony was performed? And as a matter
+of conscience and good morals, ought not an English married pair to
+insist upon the celebration of a Silver Wedding at the end of
+twenty-five years, in order to legalize and mutually appropriate that
+corporeal growth of which both parties have individually come into
+possession since they were pronounced one flesh?
+
+The chief enjoyment of my several visits to Leamington lay in rural
+walks about the neighborhood, and in jaunts to places of note and
+interest, which are particularly abundant in that region. The high-roads
+are made pleasant to the traveller by a border of trees, and often
+afford him the hospitality of a wayside-bench beneath a comfortable
+shade. But a fresher delight is to be found in the foot-paths, which go
+wandering away from stile to stile, along hedges, and across broad
+fields, and through wooded parks, leading you to little hamlets of
+thatched cottages, ancient, solitary farm-houses, picturesque old mills,
+streamlets, pools, and all those quiet, secret, unexpected, yet
+strangely familiar features of English scenery that Tennyson shows us in
+his idyls and eclogues. These by-paths admit the wayfarer into the very
+heart of rural life, and yet do not burden him with a sense of
+intrusiveness. He has a right to go whithersoever they lead him; for,
+with all their shaded privacy, they are as much the property of the
+public as the dusty high-road itself, and even by an older tenure. Their
+antiquity probably exceeds that of the Roman ways; the footsteps of the
+aboriginal Britons first wore away the grass, and the natural flow of
+intercourse between village and village has kept the track bare ever
+since. An American fanner would plough across any such path, and
+obliterate it with his hills of potatoes and Indian corn; but here it is
+protected by law, and still more by the sacredness that inevitably
+springs up, in this soil, along the well-defined footprints of
+centuries. Old associations are sure to be fragrant herbs in English
+nostrils: we pull them up as weeds.
+
+I remember such a path, the access to which is from Lovers' Grove, a
+range of tall old oaks and elms on a high hill-top, whence there is a
+view of Warwick Castle, and a wide extent of landscape, beautiful,
+though bedimmed with English mist. This particular foot-path, however,
+is not a remarkably good specimen of its kind, since it leads into no
+hollows and seclusions, and soon terminates in a high-road. It connects
+Leamington by a short cut with the small neighboring village of
+Lillington, a place which impresses an American observer with its many
+points of contrast to the rural aspects of his own country. The village
+consists chiefly of one row of contiguous dwellings, separated only by
+party-walls, but ill-matched among themselves, being of different
+heights, and apparently of various ages, though all are of an antiquity
+which we should call venerable. Some of the windows are leaden-framed
+lattices, opening on hinges. These houses are mostly built of gray
+stone; but others, in the same range, are of brick, and one or two are
+in a very old fashion,--Elizabethan, or still older,--having a ponderous
+framework of oak, painted black, and filled in with plastered stone or
+bricks. Judging by the patches of repair, the oak seems to be the more
+durable part of the structure. Some of the roofs are covered with
+earthen tiles; others (more decayed and poverty-stricken) with thatch,
+out of which sprouts a luxurious vegetation of grass, house-leeks, and
+yellow flowers. What especially strikes an American is the lack of that
+insulated space, the intervening gardens, grass-plots, orchards,
+broad-spreading shade-trees, which occur between our own village-houses.
+These English dwellings have no such separate surroundings; they all
+grow together, like the cells of a honey-comb.
+
+Beyond the first row of houses, and hidden from it by a turn of the
+road, there was another row (or block, as we should call it) of small,
+old cottages, stuck one against another, with their thatched roofs
+forming a single contiguity. These, I presume, were the habitations of
+the poorest order of rustic laborers; and the narrow precincts of each
+cottage, as well as the close neighborhood of the whole, gave the
+impression of a stifled, unhealthy atmosphere among the occupants. It
+seemed impossible that there should be a cleanly reserve, a proper
+self-respect among individuals, or a wholesome unfamiliarity between
+families, where human life was crowded and massed into such intimate
+communities as these. Nevertheless, not to look beyond the outside, I
+never saw a prettier rural scene than was presented by this range of
+contiguous huts; for in front of the whole row was a luxuriant and
+well-trimmed hawthorn hedge, and belonging to each cottage was a little
+square of garden-ground, separated from its neighbors by a line of the
+same verdant fence. The gardens were chock-full, not of esculent
+vegetables, but of flowers, familiar ones, but very bright-colored, and
+shrubs of box, some of which were trimmed into artistic shapes; and I
+remember, before one door, a representation of Warwick Castle, made of
+oyster-shells. The cottagers evidently loved the little nests in which
+they dwelt, and did their best to make them beautiful, and succeeded
+more than tolerably well,--so kindly did Nature help their humble
+efforts with its verdure, flowers, moss, lichens, and the green things
+that grew out of the thatch. Through some of the open door-ways we saw
+plump children rolling about on the stone floors, and their mothers, by
+no means very pretty, but as happy-looking as mothers generally are; and
+while we gazed at these domestic matters, an old woman rushed wildly out
+of one of the gates, upholding a shovel, on which she clanged and
+clattered with a key. At first we fancied that she intended an onslaught
+against ourselves, but soon discovered that a more dangerous enemy was
+abroad; for the old lady's bees had swarmed, and the air was full of
+them, whizzing by our heads like bullets.
+
+Not far from these two rows of houses and cottages, a green lane,
+overshadowed with trees, turned aside from the main road, and tended
+towards a square, gray tower, the battlements of which were just high
+enough to be visible above the foliage. Wending our way thitherward, we
+found the very picture and ideal of a country-church and church-yard.
+The tower seemed to be of Norman architecture, low, massive, and crowned
+with battlements. The body of the church was of very modest dimensions,
+and the eaves so low that I could touch them with my walking-stick. We
+looked into the windows, and beheld the dim and quiet interior, a narrow
+space, but venerable with the consecration of many centuries, and
+keeping its sanctity as entire and inviolate as that of a vast
+cathedral. The nave was divided from the side aisles of the church by
+pointed arches resting on very sturdy pillars: it was good to see how
+solemnly they held themselves to their age-long task of supporting that
+lowly roof. There was a small organ, suited in size to the vaulted
+hollow, which it weekly filled with religious sound. On the opposite
+wall of the church, between two windows, was a mural tablet of white
+marble, with an inscription in black letters,--the only such memorial
+that I could discern, although many dead people doubtless lay beneath
+the floor, and had paved it with their ancient tombstones, as is
+customary in old English churches. There were no modern painted windows,
+flaring with raw colors, nor other gorgeous adornments, such as the
+present taste for medieval restoration often patches upon the decorous
+simplicity of the gray village-church. It is probably the
+worshipping-place of no more distinguished a congregation than the
+farmers and peasantry who inhabit the houses and cottages which I have
+just described. Had the lord of the manor been one of the parishioners,
+there would have been an eminent pew near the chancel, walled high
+about, curtained, and softly cushioned, warmed by a fireplace of its
+own, and distinguished by hereditary tablets and escutcheons on the
+inclosed stone pillar.
+
+A well-trodden path led across the church-yard, and the gate being on
+the latch, we entered, and walked round among the graves and monuments.
+The latter were chiefly head-stones, none of which were very old, so far
+as was discoverable by the dates; some, indeed, in so ancient a
+cemetery, were disagreeably new, with inscriptions glittering like
+sunshine, in gold letters. The ground must have been dug over and over
+again, innumerable times, until the soil is made up of what was once
+human clay, out of which have sprung successive crops of gravestones,
+that flourish their allotted time, and disappear, like the weeds and
+flowers in their briefer period. The English climate is very unfavorable
+to the endurance of memorials in the open air. Twenty years of it
+suffice to give as much antiquity of aspect, whether to tombstone or
+edifice, as a hundred years of our own drier atmosphere,--so soon do the
+drizzly rains and constant moisture corrode the surface of marble or
+freestone. Sculptured edges lose their sharpness in a year or two;
+yellow lichens overspread a beloved name, and obliterate it while it is
+yet fresh upon some survivor's heart. Time gnaws an English gravestone
+with wonderful appetite; and when the inscription is quite illegible,
+the sexton takes the useless slab away, and perhaps makes a hearthstone
+of it, and digs up the unripe bones which it ineffectually tried to
+memorialize, and gives the bed to another sleeper. In the Charter-Street
+burial-ground at Salem, and in the old graveyard on the hill at Ipswich,
+I have seen more ancient gravestones, with legible inscriptions on them,
+than in any English church-yard.
+
+And yet this same ungenial climate, hostile as it generally is to the
+long remembrance of departed people, has sometimes a lovely way of
+dealing with the records on certain monuments that lie horizontally in
+the open air. The rain falls into the deep incisions of the letters, and
+has scarcely time to be dried away before another shower sprinkles the
+flat stone again, and replenishes those little reservoirs. The unseen,
+mysterious seeds of mosses find their way into the lettered furrows, and
+are made to germinate by the continual moisture and watery sunshine of
+the English sky; and by-and-by, in a year, or two years, or many years,
+behold the complete inscription--HERE LIETH THE BODY, and all the rest
+of the tender falsehood--beautifully embossed in raised letters of
+living green, a bas-relief of velvet moss on the marble slab! It becomes
+more legible, under the skyey influences, after the world has forgotten
+the deceased, than when it was fresh from the stone-cutter's hands. It
+outlives the grief of friends. I first saw an example of this in
+Bebbington church-yard, in Cheshire, and thought that Nature must needs
+have had a special tenderness for the person (no noted man, however, in
+the world's history) so long ago laid beneath that stone, since she took
+such wonderful pains to "keep his memory green." Perhaps the proverbial
+phrase just quoted may have had its origin in the natural phenomenon
+here described.
+
+While we rested ourselves on a horizontal monument, which was elevated
+just high enough to be a convenient seat, I observed that one of the
+gravestones lay very close to the church,--so close that the droppings
+of the eaves would fall upon it. It seemed as if the inmate of that
+grave had desired to creep under the church-wall. On closer inspection,
+we found an almost illegible epitaph on the stone, and with difficulty
+made out this forlorn verse:--
+
+  "Poorly lived,
+  And poorly died,
+  Poorly buried,
+  And no one cried."
+
+It would be hard to compress the story of a cold and luckless life,
+death, and burial into fewer words, or more impressive ones; at least,
+we found them impressive, perhaps because we had to re-create the
+inscription by scraping away the lichens from the faintly traced
+letters. The grave was on the shady and damp side of the church, endwise
+towards it, the head-stone being within about three feet of the
+foundation-wall; so that, unless the poor man was a dwarf, he must have
+been doubled up to fit him into his final resting-place. No wonder that
+his epitaph murmured against so poor a burial as this! His name, as well
+as I could make it out, was Treeo,--John Treeo, I think,--and he died in
+1810, at the age of seventy-four. The gravestone is so overgrown with
+grass and weeds, so covered with unsightly lichens, and crumbly with
+time and foul weather, that it is questionable whether anybody will ever
+be at the trouble of deciphering it again. But there is a quaint and sad
+kind of enjoyment in defeating (to such slight degree as my pen may do
+it) the probabilities of oblivion for poor John Treeo, and asking a
+little sympathy for him, half a century after his death, and making him
+better and more widely known, at least, than any other slumberer in
+Lillington church-yard: he having been, as appearances go, the outcast
+of them all.
+
+You find similar old churches and villages in all the neighboring
+country, at the distance of every two or three miles; and I describe
+them, not as being rare, but because they are so common and
+characteristic. The village of Whitnash, within twenty minutes' walk of
+Leamington, looks as secluded, as rural, and as little disturbed by the
+fashions of to-day, as if Doctor Jephson had never developed all those
+Parades and Crescents out of his magic well. I used to wonder whether
+the inhabitants had ever yet heard of railways, or, at their slow rate
+of progress, had even reached the epoch of stage-coaches. As you
+approach the village, while it is yet unseen, you observe a tall,
+overshadowing canopy of elm-tree tops, beneath which you almost hesitate
+to follow the public road, on account of the remoteness that seems to
+exist between the precincts of this old-world community and the thronged
+modern street out of which you have so recently emerged. Venturing
+onward, however, you soon find yourself in the heart of Whitnash, and
+see an irregular ring of ancient rustic dwellings surrounding the
+village-green, on one side of which stands the church, with its square
+Norman tower and battlements, while close adjoining is the vicarage,
+made picturesque by peaks and gables. At first glimpse, none of the
+houses appear to be less than two or three centuries old, and they are
+of the ancient, wooden-framed fashion, with thatched roofs, which give
+them the air of birds' nests, thereby assimilating them closely to the
+simplicity of Nature.
+
+The church-tower is mossy and much gnawed by time; it has narrow
+loop-holes up and down its front and sides, and an arched window over
+the low portal, set with small panes of glass, cracked, dim, and
+irregular, through which a bygone age is peeping out into the daylight.
+Some of those old, grotesque faces, called gargoyles, are seen on the
+projections of the architecture. The church-yard is very small, and is
+encompassed by a gray stone fence that looks as ancient as the church
+itself. In front of the tower, on the village-green, is a yew-tree of
+incalculable age, with a vast circumference of trunk, but a very scanty
+head of foliage; though its boughs still keep some of the vitality which
+perhaps was in its early prime when the Saxon invaders founded Whitnash.
+A thousand years is no extraordinary antiquity in the lifetime of a yew.
+We were pleasantly startled, however, by discovering an exuberance of
+more youthful life than we had thought possible in so old a tree; for
+the faces of two children laughed at us out of an opening in the trunk,
+which had become hollow with long decay. On one side of the yew stood a
+framework of worm-eaten timber, the use and meaning of which puzzled me
+exceedingly, till I made it out to be the village-stocks: a public
+institution that, in its day, had doubtless hampered many a pair of
+shank-bones, now crumbling in the adjacent church-yard. It is not to be
+supposed, however, that this old-fashioned mode of punishment is still
+in vogue among the good people of Whitnash. The vicar of the parish has
+antiquarian propensities, and had probably dragged the stocks out of
+some dusty hiding-place, and set them up on their former site as a
+curiosity.
+
+I disquiet myself in vain with the effort to hit upon some
+characteristic feature, or assemblage of features, that shall convey to
+the reader the influence of hoar antiquity lingering into the present
+daylight, as I so often felt it in these old English scenes. It is only
+an American who can feel it; and even he begins to find himself growing
+insensible to its effect, after a long residence in England. But while
+you are still new in the old country, it thrills you with strange
+emotion to think that this little church of Whitnash, humble as it
+seems, stood for ages under the Catholic faith, and has not materially
+changed since Wickcliffe's days, and that it looked as gray as now in
+Bloody Mary's time, and that Cromwell's troopers broke off the stone
+noses of those same gargoyles that are now grinning in your face. So,
+too, with the immemorial yew-tree: you see its great roots grasping hold
+of the earth like gigantic claws, clinging so sturdily that no effort of
+time can wrench them away; and there being life in the old tree, you
+feel all the more as if a contemporary witness were telling you of the
+things that have been. It has lived among men, and been a familiar
+object to them, and seen them brought to be christened and married and
+buried in the neighboring church and church-yard, through so many
+centuries, that it knows all about our race, so far as fifty generations
+of the Whitnash people can supply such knowledge. And, after all, what a
+weary life it must have been for the old tree! Tedious beyond
+imagination! Such, I think, is the final impression on the mind of an
+American visitor, when his delight at finding something permanent begins
+to yield to his Western love of change, and he becomes sensible of the
+heavy air of a spot where the forefathers and foremothers have grown up
+together, intermarried, and died, through a long succession of lives,
+without any intermixture of new elements, till family features and
+character are all run in the same inevitable mould. Life is there
+fossilized in its greenest leaf. The man who died yesterday or ever so
+long ago walks the village-street to-day, and chooses the same wife that
+he married a hundred years since, and must be buried again to-morrow
+under the same kindred dust that has already covered him half a score of
+times. The stone threshold of his cottage is worn away with his
+hob-nailed footsteps, scuffling over it from the reign of the first
+Plantagenet to that of Victoria. Better than this is the lot of our
+restless countrymen, whose modern instinct bids them tend always towards
+"fresh woods and pastures new." Rather than such monotony of sluggish
+ages, loitering on a village-green, toiling in hereditary fields,
+listening to the parson's drone lengthened through centuries in the gray
+Norman church, let us welcome whatever change may come,--change of
+place, social customs, political institutions, modes of
+worship,--trusting, that, if all present things shall vanish, they will
+but make room for better systems, and for a higher type of man to clothe
+his life in them, and to fling them off in turn.
+
+Nevertheless, while an American willingly accepts growth and change as
+the law of his own national and private existence, he has a singular
+tenderness for the stone-incrusted institutions of the mother-country.
+The reason may be (though I should prefer a more generous explanation)
+that he recognizes the tendency of these hardened forms to stiffen her
+joints and fetter her ankles, in the race and rivalry of improvement. I
+hated to see so much as a twig of ivy wrenched away from an old wall in
+England. Yet change is at work, even in such a village as Whitnash. At a
+subsequent visit, looking more critically at the irregular circle of
+dwellings that surround the yew-tree and confront the church, I
+perceived that some of the houses must have been built within no long
+time, although the thatch, the quaint gables, and the old oaken
+framework of the others diffused an air of antiquity over the whole
+assemblage. The church itself was undergoing repair and restoration,
+which is but another name for change. Masons were making patchwork on
+the front of the tower, and were sawing a slab of stone and piling up
+bricks to strengthen the side-wall, or enlarge the ancient edifice by an
+additional aisle. Moreover, they had dug an immense pit in the
+church-yard, long and broad, and fifteen feet deep, two-thirds of which
+profundity were discolored by human decay and mixed up with crumbly
+bones. What this excavation was intended for I could nowise imagine,
+unless it were the very pit in which Longfellow bids the "Dead Past bury
+its Dead," and Whitnash, of all places in the world, were going to avail
+itself of our poet's suggestion. If so, it must needs be confessed that
+many picturesque and delightful things would be thrown into the hole,
+and covered out of sight forever.
+
+The article which I am writing has taken its own course, and occupied
+itself almost wholly with country churches; whereas I had purposed to
+attempt a description of some of the many old towns--Warwick, Coventry,
+Kenilworth, Stratford-on-Avon--which lie within an easy scope of
+Leamington. And still another church presents itself to my remembrance.
+It is that of Hatton, on which I stumbled in the course of a forenoon's
+ramble, and paused a little while to look at it for the sake of old
+Doctor Parr, who was once its vicar. Hatton, so far as I could discover,
+has no public-house, no shop, no contiguity of roofs, (as in most
+English villages, however small,) but is merely an ancient neighborhood
+of farm-houses, spacious, and standing wide apart, each within its own
+precincts, and offering a most comfortable aspect of orchards,
+harvest-fields, barns, stacks, and all manner of rural plenty. It seemed
+to be a community of old settlers, among whom everything had been going
+on prosperously since an epoch beyond the memory of man; and they kept a
+certain privacy among themselves, and dwelt on a cross-road at the
+entrance of which was a barred gate, hospitably open, but still
+impressing me with a sense of scarcely warrantable intrusion. After all,
+in some shady nook of those gentle Warwickshire slopes there may have
+been a denser and more populous settlement, styled Hatton, which I never
+reached.
+
+Emerging from the by-road, and entering upon one that crossed it at
+right angles and led to Warwick, I espied the church of Doctor Parr.
+Like the others which I have described, it had a low stone tower,
+square, and battlemented at its summit: for all these little churches
+seem to have been built on the same model, and nearly at the same
+measurement, and have even a greater family-likeness than the
+cathedrals. As I approached, the bell of the tower (a remarkably
+deep-toned bell, considering how small it was) flung its voice abroad,
+and told me that it was noon. The church stands among its graves, a
+little removed from the wayside, quite apart from any collection of
+houses, and with no signs of a vicarage; it is a good deal shadowed by
+trees, and not wholly destitute of ivy. The body of the edifice,
+unfortunately, (and it is an outrage which the English churchwardens are
+fond of perpetrating,) has been newly covered with a yellowish plaster
+or wash, so as quite to destroy the aspect of antiquity, except upon the
+tower, which wears the dark gray hue of many centuries. The
+chancel-window is painted with a representation of Christ upon the
+Cross, and all the other windows are full of painted or stained glass,
+but none of it ancient, nor (if it be fair to judge from without of what
+ought to be seen within) possessing any of the tender glory that should
+be the inheritance of this branch of Art, revived from mediaeval times.
+I stepped over the graves, and peeped in at two or three of the windows,
+and saw the snug interior of the church glimmering through the
+many-colored panes, like a show of commonplace objects under the
+fantastic influence of a dream: for the floor was covered with modern
+pews, very like what we may see in a New-England meeting-house, though,
+I think, a little more favorable than those would be to the quiet
+slumbers of the Hatton farmers and their families. Those who slept under
+Doctor Parr's preaching now prolong their nap, I suppose, in the
+church-yard round about, and can scarcely have drawn much spiritual
+benefit from any truths that he contrived to tell them in their
+lifetime. It struck me as a rare example (even where examples are
+numerous) of a man utterly misplaced, that this enormous scholar, great
+in the classic tongues, and inevitably converting his own simplest
+vernacular into a learned language, should have been set up in this
+homely pulpit, and ordained to preach salvation to a rustic audience, to
+whom it is difficult to imagine how he could ever have spoken one
+available word.
+
+Almost always, in visiting such scenes as I have been attempting to
+describe, I had a singular sense of having been there before. The
+ivy-grown English churches (even that of Bebbington, the first that I
+beheld) were quite as familiar to me, when fresh from home, as the old
+wooden meeting-house in Salem, which used, on wintry Sabbaths, to be the
+frozen purgatory of my childhood. This was a bewildering, yet very
+delightful emotion, fluttering about me like a faint summer-wind, and
+filling my imagination with a thousand half-remembrances, which looked
+as vivid as sunshine, at a side-glance, but faded quite away whenever I
+attempted to grasp and define them. Of course, the explanation of the
+mystery was, that history, poetry, and fiction, books of travel, and the
+talk of tourists, had given me pretty accurate preconceptions of the
+common objects of English scenery, and these, being long ago vivified by
+a youthful fancy, had insensibly taken their places among the images of
+things actually seen. Yet the illusion was often so powerful, that I
+almost doubted whether such airy remembrances might not be a sort of
+innate idea, the print of a recollection in some ancestral mind,
+transmitted, with fainter and fainter impress through several descents,
+to my own. I felt, indeed, like the stalwart progenitor in person,
+returning to the hereditary haunts after more than two hundred years,
+and finding the church, the hall, the farm-house, the cottage, hardly
+changed during his long absence,--the same shady by-paths and
+hedge-lanes, the same veiled sky, and green lustre of the lawns and
+fields,--while his own affinities for these things, a little obscured by
+disuse, were reviving at every step.
+
+An American is not very apt to love the English people, as a whole, on
+whatever length of acquaintance. I fancy that they would value our
+regard, and even reciprocate it in their ungracious way, if we could
+give it to them in spite of all rebuffs; but they are beset by a curious
+and inevitable infelicity, which compels them, as it were, to keep up
+what they seem to consider a wholesome bitterness of feeling between
+themselves and all other nationalities, especially that of America. They
+will never confess it; nevertheless, it is as essential a tonic to them
+as their bitter ale. Therefore--and possibly, too, from a similar
+narrowness in his own character--an American seldom feels quite as if he
+were at home among the English people. If he do so, he has ceased to be
+an American. But it requires no long residence to make him love their
+island, and appreciate it as thoroughly as they themselves do. For my
+part, I used to wish that we could annex it, transferring their thirty
+millions of inhabitants to some convenient wilderness in the great West,
+and putting half or a quarter as many of ourselves into their places.
+The change would be beneficial to both parties. We, in our dry
+atmosphere, are getting too nervous, haggard, dyspeptic, extenuated,
+unsubstantial, theoretic, and need to be made grosser. John Bull, on the
+other hand, has grown bulbous, long-bodied, short-legged, heavy-witted,
+material, and, in a word, too intensely English. In a few more centuries
+he will be the earthliest creature that ever the earth saw. Heretofore
+Providence has obviated such a result by timely intermixtures of alien
+races with the old English stock; so that each successive conquest of
+England has proved a victory, by the revivification and improvement of
+its native manhood. Cannot America and England hit upon some scheme to
+secure even greater advantages to both nations?
+
+
+
+SANITARY CONDITION OF THE ARMY.
+
+The power and efficiency of an army consist in the amount of the power
+and efficiency of its elements, in the health, strength, and energy of
+its members. No army can be strong, however numerous its soldiers, if
+they are weak; nor is it completely strong, unless every member is in
+full vigor. The weakness of any part, however small, diminishes, to that
+extent, the force of the whole; and the increase of power in any part
+adds so much to the total strength.
+
+In order, then, to have a strong and effective army, it is necessary not
+only to have a sufficient number of men, but that each one of these
+should have in himself the greatest amount of force, the fullest health
+and energy the human body can present.
+
+This is usually regarded in the original creation of an army. The
+soldiers are picked men. None but those of perfect form, complete in all
+their organization and functions, and free from every defect or disease,
+are intended to be admitted. The general community, in civil life,
+includes not only the strong and healthy, but also the defective, the
+weak, and the sick, the blind, the halt, the consumptive, the rheumatic,
+the immature in childhood, and the exhausted and decrepit in age.
+
+In the enlistment of recruits, the candidates for the army are rigidly
+examined, and none are admitted except such as appear to be mentally and
+physically sound and perfect. Hence, many who offer their services to
+the Government are rejected, and sometimes the proportion accepted is
+very small.
+
+In Great Britain and Ireland, during the twenty years from 1832 to 1851
+inclusive, 305,897 applied for admission into the British army. Of
+these, 97,457, or 32 per cent., were rejected, and only 208,440, or 68
+per cent., were accepted.[2]
+
+In France, during thirteen years, 1831 to 1843 inclusive, 2,280,540 were
+offered for examination as candidates for the army. Of these, 182,664,
+being too short, though perhaps otherwise in possession of all the
+requisites of health, were not examined, leaving 2,097,876, who were
+considered as candidates for examination. Of these, 680,560, or 32.5 per
+cent, were rejected on account of physical unfitness, and only
+1,417,316, or 67.5 per cent., were allowed to join the army.[3]
+
+The men who ordinarily offer for the American army, in time of peace,
+are of still inferior grade, as to health and strength. In the year
+1852, at the several recruiting-stations, 16,114 presented themselves
+for enlistment, and 10,945, or 67.9 per cent., were rejected, for
+reasons not connected with health:--
+
+
+        3,162 too young,
+          732 too old,
+        1,806 too short,
+          657 married,
+        2,434 could not speak English,
+           32 extremely ignorant,
+        1,965 intemperate,
+          106 of bad morals,
+           51 had been in armies from which
+     --------- they had deserted,
+Total, 10,945
+
+
+All of these may have been in good health.
+
+Of the remainder, 5,169, who were subjects of further inquiry, 2,443
+were rejected for reasons connected with their physical or mental
+condition:--
+
+
+          243 mal-formed,
+          630 unsound in physical constitution,
+           16 unsound in mind,
+          314 had diseased eyes,
+           55 had diseased ears,
+          314 had hernia,
+        1,071 had varicose veins,
+
+       -------
+Total,  2,443
+
+
+Only 2,726 were accepted, being 52.7 per cent, of those who were
+examined, and less than 17 per cent., or about one-sixth, of all who
+offered themselves as candidates for the army, in that year.[4]
+
+In time of peace, the character of the men who desire to become soldiers
+differs with the degree of public prosperity. When business is good,
+most men obtain employment in the more desirable and profitable
+avocations of civil life. Then a larger proportion of those who are
+willing to enter the army are unfitted, by their habits or their health,
+for the occupations of peace, and go to the rendezvous only as a last
+resort, to obtain their bread. But when business falters, a larger and a
+better class are thrown out of work, and are glad to enter the service
+of the country by bearing arms. The year 1852 was one of prosperity, and
+affords, therefore, no indication of the class and character of men who
+are willing to enlist in the average years. The Government Reports state
+that in some other years 6,383 were accepted and 3,617 rejected out of
+10,000 that offered to enlist. But in time of war, when the country is
+endangered, and men have a higher motive for entering its service than
+mere employment and wages, those of a better class both as to character
+and health flock to the army; and in the present war, the army is
+composed, in great degree, of men of the highest personal character and
+social position, who leave the most desirable and lucrative employments
+to serve their country as soldiers.
+
+As, then, the army excludes, or intends to exclude, from its ranks all
+the defective, weak, and sick, it begins with a much higher average of
+health and vigor, a greater power of action, of endurance, and of
+resisting the causes of disease, than the mass of men of the same ages
+in civil life. It is composed of men in the fulness of strength and
+efficiency. This is the vital machinery with which Governments propose
+to do their martial work; and the amount of vital force which belongs to
+these living machines, severally and collectively, is the capital with
+which they intend to accomplish their purposes. Every wise Government
+begins the business of war with a good capital of life, a large quantity
+of vital force in its army. So far they do well; but more is necessary.
+This complete and fitting preparation alone is not sufficient to carry
+on the martial process through weeks and months of labor and privation.
+Not only must the living machinery of bone and flesh be well selected,
+but its force must be sustained, it must be kept in the most effective
+condition and in the best and most available working order. For this
+there are two established conditions, that admit of no variation nor
+neglect: first, a sufficient supply of suitable nutriment, and faithful
+regard to all the laws of health; and, second, the due appropriation of
+the vital force that is thus from day to day created.
+
+A due supply of appropriate food and of pure air, sufficient protection
+and cleansing of the surface, moderate labor and refreshing rest, are
+the necessary conditions of health, and cannot be disregarded, in the
+least degree, without a loss of force. The privation of even a single
+meal, or the use of food that is hard of digestion or innutritious, and
+the loss of any of the needful sleep, are followed by a corresponding
+loss of effective power, as surely as the slackened fire in the furnace
+is followed by lessened steam and power in the engine.
+
+Whosoever, then, wishes to sustain his own forces or those of his
+laborers with the least cost, and use them with the greatest effect,
+must take Nature on her own terms. It is vain to try to evade or alter
+her conditions. The Kingdom of Heaven is not divided against itself. It
+makes no compromises, not even for the necessities of nations. It will
+not consent that any one, even the least, of its laws shall be set
+aside, to advance any other, however important. Each single law stands
+by itself, and exacts complete obedience to its own requirements: it
+gives its own rewards and inflicts its own punishments. The stomach will
+not digest tough and hard or old salted meats, or heavy bread, without
+demanding and receiving a great and perhaps an almost exhausting
+proportion of the nervous energies. The nutritive organs will not create
+vigorous muscles and effective limbs, unless the blood is constantly and
+appropriately recruited. The lungs will not decarbonize and purify the
+blood with foul air, that has been breathed over and over and lost its
+oxygen. However noble or holy the purpose for which human power is to be
+used, it will not be created, except according to the established
+conditions. The strength of the warrior in battle cannot be sustained,
+except in the appointed way, even though the fate of all humanity depend
+on his exertions.
+
+Nature keeps an exact account with all her children, and gives power in
+proportion to their fulfilment of her conditions. She measures out and
+sustains vital force according to the kind and fitness of the raw
+material provided for her. When we deal liberally with her, she deals
+liberally with us. For everything we give to her she makes a just
+return. The stomach, the nutrient arteries, the lungs, have no love, no
+patriotism, no pity; but they are perfectly honest. The healthy
+digestive organs will extract and pay over to the blood-vessels just so
+much of the nutritive elements as the food we eat contains in an
+extractible form, and no more; and for this purpose they will demand and
+take just so much of the nervous energy as may be needed. The nutrient
+arteries will convert into living flesh just so much of the nutritive
+elements as the digestive organs give them, and no more. The lungs will
+send out from the body as many of the atoms of exhausted and dead flesh
+as the oxygen we give them will convert into carbonic acid and water,
+and this is all they can do. In these matters, the vital organs are as
+honest and as faithful as the boiler, that gives forth steam in the
+exact ratio of the heat which the burning fuel evolves and the fitness
+of the water that is supplied to it; and neither can be persuaded to do
+otherwise. The living machine of bone and flesh and the dead machine of
+iron prepare their forces according to the means they have, not
+according to the ulterior purpose to which those forces are to be
+applied. They do this alike for all. They do it as well for the sinner
+as for the saint,--as well for the traitorous Secessionist striving to
+destroy his country as for the patriot endeavoring to sustain it.
+
+In neither case is it a matter of will, but of necessity. The amount of
+power to be generated in both living and dead machines is simply a
+question of quality and quantity of provision for the purpose. So much
+food, air, protection given produce so much strength. A proposition to
+reduce the amount of either of these necessarily involves the
+proposition to reduce the available force. Whoever determines to eat or
+give his men less or poorer food, or impure air, practically determines
+to do less work. In all this management of the human body, we are sure
+to get what we pay for, and we are equally sure not to get what we do
+not pay for.
+
+All Governments have tried, and are now, in various degrees, trying, the
+experiment of privation in their armies. The soldier cannot carry with
+him the usual means and comforts of home. He must give these up the
+moment he enters the martial ranks, and reduce his apparatus of living
+to the smallest possible quantity. He must generally limit himself to a
+portable house, kitchen, cooking-apparatus, and wardrobe, and to an
+entire privation of furniture, and sometimes submit to a complete
+destitution of everything except the provision he may carry in his
+haversack and the blanket he can carry on his back. When stationary, he
+commonly sleeps in barracks; but he spends most of his time in the field
+and sleeps in tents. Occasionally he is compelled to sleep in the open
+air, without any covering but his blanket, and to cook in an
+extemporized kitchen, which he may make of a few stones piled together
+or of a hole in the earth, with only a kettle, that he carries on his
+back, for cooking-apparatus. In all cases and conditions, whether in
+fort or in field, in barrack, tent, or open air, he is limited to the
+smallest artificial habitation, the least amount of furniture and
+conveniences, the cheapest and most compact food, and the rudest
+cookery. He is, therefore, never so well protected against the elements,
+nor, when sleeping under cover, so well supplied with air for
+respiration, as he is at home. Moreover, when lodging abroad, he cannot
+take his choice of places; he is liable, from the necessities of war, to
+encamp in wet and malarious spots, and to be exposed to chills and
+miasms of unhealthy districts. He is necessarily exposed to weather of
+every kind,--to cold, to rains, to storms; and when wet, he has not the
+means of warming himself, nor of drying or changing his clothing. His
+life, though under martial discipline, is irregular. At times, he has to
+undergo severe and protracted labors, forced marches, and the violent
+and long-continued struggles of combat; at other times, he has not
+exercise sufficient for health. His food is irregularly served. He is
+sometimes short of provisions, and compelled to pass whole days in
+abstinence or on shore allowance. Occasionally he cannot obtain even
+water to drink, through hours of thirsty toil. No Government nor
+managers of war have ever yet been able to make exact and unfailing
+provision for the wants and necessities of their armies, as men usually
+do for themselves and their families at home.
+
+SUPPOSED DANGERS TO THE SOLDIER.
+
+From the earliest recorded periods of the world, men have gone forth to
+war, for the purpose of destroying or overcoming their enemies, and with
+the chance of being themselves destroyed or overthrown. Public
+authorities have generally taken account of the number of their own men
+who have been wounded and killed in battle, and of the casualties in the
+opposing armies. Gunpowder and steel, and the manifold weapons,
+instruments, and means of destruction in the hands of the enemy are
+commonly considered as the principal, if not the only sources of danger
+to the soldier, and ground of anxiety to his friends; and the nation
+reckons its losses in war by the number of those who were wounded and
+killed in battle. But the suffering and waste of life, apart from the
+combat, the sickness, the depreciation of vital force, the withering of
+constitutional energy, and the mortality in camp and fortress, in
+barrack, tent, and hospital, have not usually been the subjects of such
+careful observation, nor the grounds of fear to the soldier and of
+anxiety to those who are interested in his safety. Consequently, until
+within the present century, comparatively little attention has been
+given to the dangers that hang over the army out of the battle-field,
+and but little provision has been made, by the combatants or their
+rulers, to obviate or relieve them. No Government in former times, and
+few in later years, have taken and published complete accounts of the
+diseases of their armies, and of the deaths that followed in
+consequence. Some such records have been made and printed, but these are
+mostly fragmentary and partial, and on the authority of individuals,
+officers, surgeons, scholars, and philanthropists.
+
+It must not be forgotten that the army is originally composed of picked
+men, while the general community includes not only the imperfect,
+diseased, and weak that belong to itself, but also those who are
+rejected from the army. If, then, the conditions, circumstances, and
+habits of both were equally favorable, there would be less sickness and
+a lower rate of mortality among the soldiers than among men of the same
+ages at home. But if in the army there should be found more sickness and
+death than in the community at home, or even an equal amount, it is
+manifestly chargeable to the presence of more deteriorating and
+destructive influences in the military than in civil life.
+
+SICKNESS AND MORTALITY IN CIVIL LIFE.
+
+The amount of sickness among the people at home is not generally
+recognized, still less is it carefully measured and recorded. But the
+experience and calculations of the Friendly Societies of Great Britain,
+and of other associations for Health-Assurance there and elsewhere,
+afford sufficient data for determining the proportion of time lost in
+sickness by men of various ages. These Friendly Societies are composed
+mainly of men of the working-classes, from which most of the soldiers of
+the British army are drawn.
+
+According to the calculations and tables of Mr. Ansel, in his work on
+"Friendly Societies," the men of the army-ages, from 20 to 40, in the
+working-classes, lose, on an average, five days and six-tenths of a day
+by sickness in each year, which will make one and a half per cent, of
+the males of this age and class constantly sick. Mr. Neison's
+calculations and tables, in his "Contributions to Vital Statistics,"
+make this average somewhat over seven days' yearly sickness, and one and
+ninety-two hundredths of one per cent, constantly sick. These were the
+bases of the rates adopted by the Health-Assurance companies in New
+England, and their experience shows that the amount of sickness in these
+Northern States is about the same as, if not somewhat greater than, that
+in Great Britain, among any definite number of men.
+
+The rate of mortality is more easily ascertained, and is generally
+calculated and determined in civilized nations. This rate, among all
+classes of males, between 20 and 40 years old, in England and Wales, is
+.92 per cent.: that is, 92 will die out of 10,000 men of these ages, on
+an average, in each year; but in the healthiest districts the rate is
+only 77 in 10,000. The mortality among the males of Massachusetts, of
+the same ages, according to Mr. Elliott's calculations, is 1.11 per
+cent, or 111 in 10,000. This maybe safely assumed as the rate of
+mortality in all New England. That of the Southern States is somewhat
+greater.
+
+These rates of sickness and death--one and a half or one and ninety-two
+hundredths per cent, constantly sick, and seventy-seven to one hundred
+and eleven dying, in each year, among ten thousand living--may be
+considered as the proportion of males, of the army-ages, that should be
+constantly taken away from active labor and business by illness, and
+that should be annually lost by death. Whether at home, amidst the
+usually favorable circumstances and the average comforts, or in the
+army, under privation and exposure, men of these ages may be presumed to
+be necessarily subject to this amount, at least, of loss of vital force
+and life. And these rates may be adopted as the standard of comparison
+of the sanitary influences of civil and military life.
+
+SICKNESS AND MORTALITY OF THE ARMY IN PEACE.
+
+Soldiers are subject to different influences and exposures, and their
+waste and loss of life differ, in peace and war. In peace they are
+mostly stationary, at posts, forts, and in cantonments. They generally
+live in barracks, with fixed habits and sufficient means of subsistence.
+They have their regular supplies of food and clothing and labor, and are
+protected from the elements, heat, cold, and storms. They are seldom or
+never subjected to privation or excessive fatigue. But in war they are
+in the field, and sleep in tents which are generally too full and often
+densely crowded. Sometimes they sleep in huts, and occasionally in the
+open air. They are liable to exposures, hardships, and privations, to
+uncertain supplies of food and bad cookery.
+
+The report of the commission appointed by the British Government to
+inquire into the sanitary condition, of the army shows a remarkable and
+unexpected degree of mortality among the troops stationed at home under
+the most favorable circumstances, as well as among those abroad. The
+Foot-Guards are the very _élite_ of the whole army; they are the most
+perfect of the faultless in form and in health. They are the pets of the
+Government and the people. They are stationed at London and Windsor, and
+lodged in magnificent barracks, apparently ample for their
+accommodation. They are clothed and fed with extraordinary care, and are
+supposed to have every means of health. And yet their record shows a sad
+difference between their rate of mortality and that of men of the same
+ages in civil life. A similar excess of mortality was found to exist
+among all the home-army, which includes many thousand soldiers,
+stationed in various towns and places throughout the kingdom.
+
+The following table exhibits the annual mortality in these classes.[5]
+
+
+DEATHS IN 10,000.
+Age       Civilians   Foot-Guards   Home-Army
+
+20 to 25      84          216          170
+25 to 30      92          211          183
+30 to 35     102          195          184
+35 to 40     116          224          193
+
+
+Through the fifteen years from 1839 to 1853 inclusive, the annual
+mortality of all the army, excepting the artillery, engineers, and West
+India and colonial corps, was 330 among 10,000 living; while that among
+the same number of males of the army-ages, in all England and Wales, was
+92, and in the healthiest districts only 77.[6]
+
+There is no official account at hand of the general mortality in the
+Russian army on the peace-establishment; yet, according to Boudin, in
+one portion, consisting of 192,834 men, 144,352 had been sick, and
+7,541, or 38 per 1,000, died in one year.[7]
+
+The Prussian army, with an average of 150,582 men, lost by death, during
+the ten years 1829 to 1838, 1,975 in each year, which is at the rate of
+13 per 1,000 living.[8]
+
+The mortality of the Piedmontese army, from 1834 to 1843 inclusive, was
+158 in 10,000, while that of the males at home was 92 in the same number
+living.
+
+From 1775 to 1791, seventeen years, the mortality among the cavalry was
+181, and among the infantry 349, out of 10,000 living; but in the ten
+years from 1834 to 1843 these rates were only 108 and 215.[9]
+
+Colored troops are employed by the British Government in all their
+colonies and possessions in tropical climates. The mortality of these
+soldiers is known, and also that of the colored male civilians in the
+East Indies and in the West-India Islands and South-American Provinces.
+In four of these, the rate of mortality is higher among the male slaves
+than among the colored soldiers; but in all the others, this rate is
+higher in the army. In all the West-Indian and South-American
+possessions of Great Britain, the average rate of deaths is 25 per cent,
+greater among the black troops than among the black males of all ages on
+the plantations and in the towns. The soldiers are of the healthier
+ages, 20 to 40, but the civilians include both the young and the old: if
+these could be excluded, and the comparison made between soldiers and
+laborers of the same ages, the difference in favor of civil pursuits
+would appear much greater.
+
+Throughout the world, where the armies of Great Britain are stationed or
+serve, the death-rate is greater among the troops than among civilians
+of the same races and ages, except among the colored troops in Tobago,
+Montserrat, Antigua, and Granada in America, and among the Sepoys in the
+East Indies.[10]
+
+In the army of the United States, during the period from 1840 to 1854,
+not including the two years of the Mexican War, there was an average of
+9,278 men, or an aggregate of 120,622 years of service, equal to so many
+men serving one year. Among these and during this period, there were
+342,107 cases of sickness reported by the surgeons, and 3,416 deaths
+from disease, showing a rate of mortality of 2.83 per cent., or two and
+a half times as great as that among the males of Massachusetts of the
+army-ages, and three times as great as that in England and Wales. The
+attacks of sickness average almost three for each man in each year. This
+is manifestly more than that which falls upon men of these ages at
+home.[11]
+
+SICKNESS AND MORTALITY OF THE ARMY IN WAR.
+
+Thus far the sickness and mortality of the army in time of peace only
+has been considered. The experience of war tells a more painful story of
+the dangers of the men engaged in it. Sir John Pringle states, that, in
+the British armies that were sent to the Low Countries and Germany, in
+the years 1743 to 1747, a great amount of sickness and mortality
+prevailed. He says, that, besides those who were suffering from wounds,
+"at some periods more than one-fifth of the army were in the hospitals."
+"One regiment had over one-half of its men sick." "In July and August,
+1743, one-half of the army had the dysentery." "In 1747, four
+battalions," of 715 men each, "at South Beveland and Walcheren, both in
+field and in quarters, were so very sickly, that, at the height of the
+epidemic, some of these corps had but one hundred men fit for duty;
+six-sevenths of their numbers were sick."[12] "At the end of the
+campaign the Royal Battalion had but four men who had not been ill." And
+"when these corps went into winter-quarters, their sick, in proportion
+to their men fit for duty, were nearly as four to one."[13] In 1748,
+dysentery prevailed. "In one regiment of 500 men, 150 were sick at the
+end of five weeks; 200 were sick after two months; and at the end of the
+campaign, they had in all but thirty who had never been ill." "In
+Johnson's regiment sometimes one-half were sick; and in the Scotch
+Fusileers 300 were ill at one time."[14]
+
+The British army in Egypt, in 1801, had from 103 to 261 and an average
+of 182 sick in each thousand; and the French army had an average of 125
+in 1,000, or one-eighth of the whole, on the sick-list.[15]
+
+In July, 1809, the British Government sent another army, of 39,219 men,
+to the Netherlands. They were stationed at Walcheren, which was the
+principal seat of the sickness and suffering of their predecessors,
+sixty or seventy years before. Fever and dysentery attacked this second
+army as they had the first, and with a similar virulence and
+destructiveness. In two months after landing,
+
+
+Sept. 13, 7,626 were on the sick-list.
+  "   19, 8,123     "    "
+  "   21, 8,684     "    "
+  "   23, 9,046     "    "
+
+
+In ninety-seven days 12,867 were sent home sick; and on the 22d of
+October there were only 4,000 effective men left fit for duty out of
+this army of about 40,000 healthy men, who had left England within less
+than four months. On the 1st of February of the next year, there were
+11,513 on the sick-list, and 15,570 had been lost or disabled. Between
+January 1st and June of the same year, (1810,) 36,500 were admitted to
+the hospitals, and 8,000, or more than 20 per cent., died, which is
+equal to an annual rate of 48 per cent, mortality.
+
+The British army in Spain and Portugal suffered greatly through the
+Peninsular War, from 1808 to 1814. During the whole of that period,
+there was a constant average of 209 per 1,000 on the sick-list, and the
+proportion was sometimes swelled to 330 per 1,000. Through the forty-one
+months ending May 25th, 1814, with an average of 61,511 men, there was
+an average of 13,815 in the hospitals, which is 22.5 per cent.; of these
+only one-fifteenth, or 1.5 per cent. of the whole army, were laid up on
+account of injuries in battle, and 21 per cent. were disabled by
+diseases. From these causes 24,930 died, which is an annual average of
+7,296, or a rate of 11.8 per cent, mortality.[16]
+
+No better authority can be adduced, for the condition of men engaged in
+the actual service of war, than Lord Wellington. On the 14th of
+November, 1809, he wrote from his army in Spain to Lord Liverpool, then
+at the head of the British Government,--"In all times and places the
+sick-list of the army amounts to ten per cent of all."[17] He seemed to
+consider this the lowest attainable rate of sickness, and he hoped to be
+able to reduce that of his own army to it: this is more than five times
+as great as the rate of sickness among male civilians of the army-ages.
+The sickness in Lord Wellington's army, at the moment of writing this
+despatch, was fifteen per cent., or seven and a half times as great as
+that at home.
+
+In the same Peninsular War, there was of the sick in the French army a
+constant average of 136 per 1,000 in Spain, and 146 per 1,000 in
+Portugal. Mr. Edmonds says, that, just before the Battle of Talavera,
+the French army consisted of 275,000 men, of whom 61,000, or 22.2 per
+cent., were sick.[18] Lord Wellington wrote, Sept. 19, 1809, that the
+French army of 225,000 men had 30,000 to 40,000 sick, which is 13.3 to
+17.7 per cent. The French army in Portugal had at one time 64 per 1,000,
+and at another 235 per 1,000, and an average of 146 per 1,000, in the
+hospitals through the war.
+
+The British army that fought the Battle of Waterloo, in 1815, had an
+average of 60,992 men, through the campaign of four months, June to
+September; of these, there was an average of 7,909, or 12.9 per cent.,
+in the hospitals.[19]
+
+The British legion that went to Spain in 1836 consisted of 7,000 men. Of
+these, 5,000, or 71 per cent., were admitted into the hospitals in three
+and a half months, and 1,223 died in six months. This is equal to an
+annual rate of almost two and a half, 2.44, attacks for each man, and of
+34.9 per cent. mortality.[20]
+
+"Of 115,000 Russians who invaded Turkey in 1828 and 1829, only 10,000 or
+15,000 ever repassed the Pruth. The rest died there of intermittent
+fevers, dysenteries, and plague." "From May, 1828, to February, 1829,
+210,108 patients were admitted into the general and regimental
+hospitals." "In October, 1828, 20,000 entered the general hospitals."
+"The sickness was very fatal." "More than a quarter of the
+fever-patients died." "5,509 entered the hospitals, and of these, 3,959
+died in August, 1829, and only 614 ultimately recovered." "At Brailow
+the plague attacked 1,200 and destroyed 774." "Dysentery was equally
+fatal." "In the march across the Balkan, 1,000 men died of diarrhoea,
+fever, and scurvy." "In Bulgaria, during July, 37,000 men were taken
+sick." "At Adrianople a vast barrack was taken for a hospital, and in
+three days 1,616 patients were admitted. On the first of September there
+were 3,666, and on the 15th, 4,646 patients in the house. This was
+one-quarter of all the disposable force at that station." "In October,
+1,300 died of dysentery; and at the end of the month there were 4,700 in
+the hospitals." "In the whole army the loss to the Russians in the year
+1829 was at least 60,000 men."[21]
+
+CRIMEAN WAR.
+
+In 1854, twenty-five years after this fatal experience of the Russian
+army in Bulgaria, the British Government sent an army to the same
+province, where the men were exposed to the same diseases and suffered a
+similar depreciation of vital force in sickness and death. For two years
+and more they struggled with these destructive influences in their own
+camps, in Bulgaria and the Crimea, with the usual result of such
+exposures in waste of life. From April 10, 1854, to June 30, 1856,
+82,901 British soldiers were sent to the Black Sea and its coasts; and
+through these twenty-six and two-thirds months the British army had an
+average of 34,559 men engaged in that "War in the East" with Russia.
+From these there were furnished to the general and regimental, the
+stationary and movable hospitals 218,952 cases: 24,084, or 11 per cent,
+of these patients were wounded or injured in battle, and 194,868, or 89
+per cent, suffered from the diseases of the camp. This is equal to an
+annual average of two and a half attacks of sickness for each man. The
+published reports give an analysis of only 162,123 of these cases of
+disease. Of these, 110,673, or 68 per cent., were of the zymotic
+class,--fevers, dysenteries, scurvy, etc., which are generally supposed
+to be due to exposure and privation, and other causes which are subject
+to human control. During the two years ending with March, 1856, 16,224
+died of diseases, of which 14,476 were of the zymotic or preventable
+class, 2,755 were killed in battle, and 2,019 died of wounds and
+injuries received in battle. The annual rate of mortality, from all
+diseases, was 23 per cent; from zymotic diseases, 21 per cent.; from
+battle, 6.9 per cent. The rate of sickness and mortality varied
+exceedingly in different months. In April, May, and June, 1854, the
+deaths were at the annual rate of 8.7 per 1,000; in July, 159 per 1,000;
+in August and September, 310 per 1,000; in December, this rate again
+rose and reached 679 per 1,000; and in January, 1855, owing to the great
+exposures, hardships, and privations in the siege, and the very
+imperfect means of sustenance and protection, the mortality increased to
+the enormous rate of 1,142 per 1,000, so that, if it had continued
+unabated, it would have destroyed the whole army in ten and a half
+months.[22]
+
+AMERICAN ARMY, 1812 TO 1814.
+
+We need not go abroad to find proofs of the waste of life in military
+camps. Our own army, in the war with Great Britain in 1812-14, suffered,
+as the European armies have done, by sickness and death, far beyond men
+in civil occupations. There are no comprehensive reports, published by
+the Government, of the sanitary condition and history of the army on the
+Northern frontier during that war. But the partial and fragmentary
+statements of Dr. Mann, in his "Medical Sketches," and the occasional
+and apparently incidental allusions to the diseases and deaths by the
+commanding officers, in their letters and despatches to the Secretary of
+War, show that sickness was sometimes fearfully prevalent and fatal
+among our soldiers. Dr. Mann says: "One regiment on the frontier, at one
+time, counted 900 strong, but was reduced, by a total want of a good
+police, to less than 200 fit for duty." "At one period more than 340
+were in the hospitals, and, in addition to this, a large number were
+reported sick in camp."[23] "The aggregate of the army at Fort George
+and its dependencies was about 5,000. From an estimate of the number
+sick in the general and regimental hospitals, it was my persuasion that
+but little more than half of the army was capable of duty, at one
+period, during the summer months"[24] of 1813. "During the month of
+August more than one-third of the soldiers were on the sick-reports."[25]
+Dr. Mann quotes Dr. Lovell, another army-surgeon, who says,
+in the autumn of 1813: "A morning report, now before me, gives 75
+sick, out of a corps of 160. The several regiments of the army, in their
+reports, exhibit a proportional number unfit for duty."[26] Dr. Mann
+states that "the troops at Burlington, Vt., in the winter of 1812-13,
+did not number over 1,600, and the deaths did not exceed 200, from the
+last of November to the last of February."[27] But Dr. Gallup says: "The
+whole number of deaths is said to be not less than 700 to 800 in four
+months," and "the number of soldiers stationed at this encampment
+[Burlington] was about 2,500 to 2,800."[28] According to Dr. Mann's
+statement, the mortality was at the annual rate of 50 per cent.; and
+according to that of Dr. Gallup, it was at the rate of 75 to 96 per
+cent. This is nearly equal to the severest mortality in the Crimea.
+
+General William H. Harrison, writing to the Secretary of War from the
+borders of Lake Erie, Aug. 29, 1813, says: "You can form some estimate
+of the deadly effects of the immense body of stagnant water with which
+the vicinity of the lake abounds, from the state of the troops at
+Sandusky. Upwards of 90 are this morning reported sick, out of about
+220." This is a rate of over 40 per cent. "Those at Fort Meigs are not
+much better."[29]
+
+General Wilkinson wrote from Fort George, Sept. 16, 1813: "We count, on
+paper, 4,600, and could show 3,400 combatants"; that is, 25 per cent,
+and more are sick. "The enemy, from the best information we have, have
+about 3,000 on paper, of whom 1,400," or 46.6 per cent., "are sick."[30]
+
+MEXICAN WAR.
+
+There was a similar waste of life among our troops in the Mexican War.
+There is no published record of the number of the sick, nor of their
+diseases. But the letters of General Scott and General Taylor to the
+Secretary of War show that the loss of effective force in our army was
+at times very great by sickness in that war.
+
+General Scott wrote:--
+
+   "_Puebla_, July 25, 1847.
+
+   "May 30, the number of sick here was 1,017, of effectives 5,820."
+
+   "Since the arrival of General Pillow, we have effectives (rank and
+   file) 8,061, sick 2,215, beside 87 officers under the latter
+   head."[31]
+
+Again:--
+
+   "_Mexico_, Dec. 5,1847.
+
+   "The force at Chapultepec fit for duty is only about 6,000, rank and
+   file; the number of sick, exclusive of officers, being 2,041."[32]
+
+According to these statements, the proportions of the sick were 17.4 to
+27.4 and 24.7 per cent of all in these corps at the times specified.
+
+General Taylor wrote:--
+
+   "_Camp near Monterey_, July 27,1847.
+
+   "Great sickness and mortality have prevailed among the volunteer
+   troops in front of Saltillo."[33]
+
+August 10th, he said, that "nearly 23 per cent, of the force present was
+disabled by disease."
+
+The official reports show only the number that died, but make no
+distinction as to causes of death, except to separate the deaths from
+wounds received in battle from those from other causes.
+
+During that war, 100,454 men were sent to Mexico from the United States.
+They were enlisted for various periods, but served, on an average,
+thirteen months and one day each, making a total of 109,104 years of
+military service rendered by our soldiers in that war. The total loss of
+these men was 1,549 killed in battle or died of wounds, 10,986 died from
+diseases, making 12,535 deaths. Besides these, 12,252 were discharged
+for disability. The mortality from disease was almost equal to the
+annual rate of 11 per cent., which is about ten times as great as that
+of men in ordinary civil life at home.
+
+
+
+SICKNESS IN THE PRESENT UNION ARMY.
+
+There are not as yet, and for a long time there cannot be, any full
+Government reports of the amount and kind of sickness in the present
+army of the United States. But the excellent reports of the inquiries of
+the Sanitary Commission give much important and trustworthy information
+in respect to these matters. Most of the encampments of all the corps
+have been examined by their inspectors; and their returns show, that the
+average number sick, during the seven months ending with February last,
+was, among the troops who were recruited in New England 74.6, among
+those from the Middle States 56.6, and, during six months ending with
+January, among those from the Western States 104.3, in 1,000 men. From
+an examination of 217 regiments, during two months ending the middle of
+February, the rate of sickness among the troops in the Eastern Sanitary
+Department was 74, in the Central Department, Western Virginia and Ohio,
+90, and in the Western, 107, in 1,000 men. The average of all these
+regiments was 90 in 1,000. The highest rate in Eastern Virginia was 281
+per 1,000, in the Fifth Vermont; and the lowest, 9, in the Seventh
+Massachusetts. In the Central Department the highest was 260, in the
+Forty-First Ohio; and the lowest, 17, in the Sixth Ohio. In the Western
+Department the highest was 340, in the Forty-Second Illinois; and the
+lowest, 15, in the Thirty-Sixth Illinois.
+
+On the 22d of February, the number of men sick in each 1,000, in the
+several divisions of the Army of the Potomac, was ascertained to be,--
+
+
+|  Keyes's,               |   30.3   |
+|  Sedgwick's,            |   32.0   |
+|  Hooker's,              |   43.7   |
+|  McCall's               |   44.4   |
+|  Banks's,               |   45.0   |
+|  Porter's,              |   46.4   |
+|  Blenker's,             |   47.7   |
+|  McDowell's,            |   48.2   |
+|  Heintzelman's          |   49.0   |
+|  Franklin's             |   54.1   |
+|  Dix's,                 |   71.8   |
+|  United States Regulars,|   76.0   |
+|  Sumner's,              |   77.5   |
+|  Smiths's,              |   81.6   |
+|  Casey's                |   87.6[34]  |
+
+
+Probably there has been more sickness in all the armies, as they have
+gone farther southward and the warm season has advanced. This would
+naturally be expected, and the fear is strengthened by the occasional
+reports in the newspapers. Still, taking the trustworthy reports herein
+given, it is manifest that our Union army is one of the healthiest on
+record; and yet their rate of sickness is from three to five times as
+great as that of civilians of their own ages at home. Unquestionably,
+this better condition of our men is due to the better intelligence of
+the age and of our people,--especially in respect to the dangers of the
+field and the necessity of proper provision on the part of the
+Government and of self-care on the part of the men,--to the wisdom,
+labors, and comprehensive watchfulness of the Sanitary Commission, and
+to the universal sympathy of the men and women of the land, who have
+given their souls, their hands, and their money to the work of lessening
+the discomforts and alleviating the sufferings of the Army of Freedom.
+
+OTHER LIGHTER AND UNRECORDED SICKNESS.
+
+The records and reports of the sickness in the army do not include all
+the depreciations and curtailments of life and strength among the
+soldiers, nor all the losses of effective force which the Government
+suffers through them, on account of disease and debility. These records
+contain, at best, only such ailments as are of sufficient importance to
+come under the observation of the surgeon. But there are manifold
+lighter physical disturbances, which, though they neither prostrate the
+patient, nor even cause him to go to the hospital, yet none the less
+certainly unfit him for labor and duty. Of the regiment referred to by
+Dr. Mann, and already adduced in this article, in which 700 were unable
+to attend to duty, 340 were in the hospital under the surgeon's care,
+and 360 were ill in camp. It is probable that a similar, though smaller,
+discrepancy often exists between the surgeon's records and the absentees
+from parades, guard-duty, etc.
+
+It is improbable, and even impossible, that complete records and reports
+should always be made of all who are sick and unfit for duty, or even of
+all who come under the surgeon's care. Sir John Hall, principal Medical
+Officer of the British army in the Crimea, says that there were "218,952
+admissions into hospital."[35] "The general return, showing the primary
+admissions into the hospitals of the army in the East, from the 10th
+April, 1854, to the 30th June, 1856, gives only 162,123 cases of all
+kinds."[36] But another Government Report states the admissions to be
+162,073.[37] Miss Nightingale says, "There was, at first, no system of
+registration for general hospitals, for all were burdened with work
+beyond their strength."[38] Dr. Mann says, that, in the War of 1812, "no
+sick-records were found in the hospital at Burlington," one of the
+largest depositories of the sick then in the country. "The
+hospital-records on the Niagara were under no order."[39] It could
+hardly have been otherwise. The regimental hospitals then, as frequently
+must be the case in war, were merely extemporized shelters, not
+conveniences. They were churches, houses, barns, shops, sheds, or any
+building that happened to be within reach, or huts, cabins, or tents
+suddenly created for the purpose. In these all the surgeons' time,
+energy, and resources were expended in making their patients
+comfortable, in defending them from cold and storm, or from suffering in
+their crowded rooms or shanties. They were obliged to devote all their
+strength to taking care of the present. They could take little account
+of the past, and were often unable to make any record for the future.
+They could not do this for those under their own immediate eye in the
+hospital; much less could they do it for those who remained in their
+tents, and needed little or no medical attention, but only rest.
+Moreover, the exposures and labors of the campaign sometimes diminish
+the number and force of the surgeons as well as of the men, and reduce
+their strength at the very moment when the greatest demand is made for
+their exertions. Dr. Mann says, "The sick in the hospital were between
+six and seven hundred, and there were only three surgeons present for
+duty." "Of seven surgeons attached to the hospital department, one died,
+three were absent by reason of indisposition, and the other three were
+sick."[40] Fifty-four surgeons died in the Russian army in Turkey in the
+summer of 1828. "At Brailow, the pestilence spared neither surgeons nor
+nurses."[41] Sir John Hall says, "The medical officers got sick, a great
+number went away, and we were embarrassed." "Thirty per cent. were
+sometimes sick and absent" from their posts in the Crimea.[42] Seventy
+surgeons died in the French army in the same war. It is not reasonable,
+then, to suppose that all or nearly all the cases of sickness, whether
+in hospital or in camp, can be recorded, especially at times when they
+are the most abundant.
+
+Nor do the cases of sickness of every sort, grave and light, recorded
+and unrecorded, include all the depressions of vital energy and all the
+suspensions and loss of effective force in the army. Whenever any
+general cause of depression weighs upon a body of men, as fatigue, cold,
+storm, privation of food, or malaria, it vitiates the power of all, in
+various degrees and with various results; the weak and susceptible are
+sickened, and all lose some force and are less able to labor and attend
+to duty. No account is taken, none can be taken, of this discount of the
+general force of the army; yet it is none the less a loss of strength,
+and an impediment to the execution of the purposes of the Government.
+
+INVALIDING.
+
+The loss of force by death, by sickness in hospital and camp, and by
+temporary depression, is not all that the army is subject to. Those who
+are laboring under consumption, asthma, epilepsy, insanity, and other
+incurable disorders, and those whose constitutions are broken, or
+withered and reduced below the standard of military requirement, are
+generally, and by some Governments always, discharged. These pass back
+to the general community, where they finally die. By this process the
+army is continually sifting out its worst lives, and at the same time it
+fills their places with healthy recruits. It thus keeps up its average
+of health and diminishes its rate of mortality; but the sum and the
+rates of sickness and mortality in the community are both thereby
+increased.
+
+During the Crimean War, 17.34 per cent, were invalided and sent home
+from the British army, and 21 per cent, from the French army, as unable
+to do military service. By this means, 11,994[43] British and 65,069[44]
+French soldiers were lost to their Governments. The army of the United
+States, in the Mexican War, discharged and sent home 12,252 men, or 12
+per cent, of the entire number engaged in that war, on account of
+disability.
+
+The causes of this exhaustion of personal force are manifold and
+various, and so generally present that the number and proportion of
+those who are thus hopelessly reduced below the degree of efficient
+military usefulness, in the British army, has been determined by
+observation, and the Government calculates the rate of the loss which
+will happen in this way, at any period of service. Out of 10,000 men
+enlisted in their twenty-first year, 718 will be invalided during the
+first quinquennial period, or before they pass their twenty-fifth year,
+539 in the second, 673 in the third, and 854 in the fourth,--making
+2,784, or more than one-quarter of the whole, discharged for disability
+or chronic ailment, before they complete their twenty years of military
+service and their forty years of life.
+
+It is further to be considered, that, during these twenty years, the
+numbers are diminishing by death, and thus the ratio of enfeebled and
+invalided is increased. Out of 10,000 soldiers who survive and remain in
+the army in each successive quinquennial period, 768 will be invalided
+in the first, 680 in the second, 1,023 in the third, and 1,674 in the
+fourth. In the first year the ratio is 181, in the fifth 129, in the
+tenth 165, in the fifteenth 276, and in the twentieth 411, among 10,000
+surviving and remaining.
+
+The depressing and exhaustive force of military life on the soldiers is
+gradually accumulative, or the power of resistance gradually wastes,
+from the beginning to the end of service. There is an apparent exception
+to this law in the fact, that, in the British army, the ratio of those
+who were invalided was 181 in 10,000, but diminished, in the second,
+third, and fourth years, to 129 in the fifth and sixth, then again rose,
+through all the succeeding years, to 411 in the twentieth. The
+experience of the British army, in this respect, is corroborated by that
+of ours in the Mexican War. From the old standing army 502, from the
+additional force recently enlisted 548, and from the volunteers 1,178,
+in 10,000 of each, were discharged on account of disability. Some part
+of this great difference between the regulars and volunteers is
+doubtless due to the well-known fact, that the latter were originally
+enlisted, in part at least, for domestic trainings, and not for the
+actual service of war, and therefore were examined with less scrutiny,
+and included more of the weaker constitutions.
+
+The Sanitary Commission, after inspecting two hundred and seventeen
+regiments of the present army of the United States, and comparing the
+several corps with each other in respect of health, came to a similar
+conclusion. They found that the twenty-four regiments which had the
+least sickness had been in service one hundred and forty days on an
+average, and the twenty-four regiments which had the most sickness had
+been in the field only one hundred and eleven days. The Actuary adds, in
+explanation,--"The difference between the sickness of the older and
+newer regiments is probably attributable, in part, to the constant
+weeding out of the sickly by discharges from the service. The fact is
+notorious, that medical inspection of recruits, on enlistment, has been,
+as a rule, most imperfectly executed; and the city of Washington is
+constantly thronged with invalids awaiting their discharge-papers, who
+at the time of their enlistment were physically unfit for service."[45]
+In addition to this, it must be remembered, that, although all recruits
+are apparently perfect in form and free from disease when they enter the
+army, yet there may be differences in constitutional force, which cannot
+be detected by the most careful examiners. Some have more and some have
+less power of endurance. But the military burden and the work of war are
+arranged and determined for the strongest, and, of course, break down
+the weak, who retire in disability or sink in death.
+
+GENERAL VITAL DEPRESSION
+
+Two causes of depression operate, to a considerable degree in peace and
+to a very great degree in war, on the soldier, and reduce and sicken him
+more than the civilian. His vital force is not so well sustained by
+never-failing supplies of nutritious and digestible food and regular
+nightly sleep, and his powers are more exhausted in hardships and
+exposures, in excessive labors and want of due rest and protection
+against cold and heat, storms and rains. Consequently the army suffers
+mostly from diseases of depression,--those of the typhoid, adynamic, and
+scorbutic types. McGrigor says, that, in the British army in the
+Peninsula, of 176,007 cases treated and recorded by the surgeons, 68,894
+were fevers, 23,203 diseases of the bowels, 12,167 ulcers, and 4,027
+diseases of the lungs.[46] In the British hospitals in the Crimean War,
+39 per cent. were cholera, dysentery, and diarrhoea, 19 per cent.
+fevers, 1.2 per cent. scurvy, 8 per cent. diseases of the lungs, 8 per
+cent. diseases of the skin, 3.3 per cent. rheumatism, 2.5 per cent.
+diseases of the brain and nervous system, 1.4 per cent. frost-bite or
+mortification produced by low vitality and chills, 13, or one in 12,000,
+had sunstroke, 257 had the itch, and 68 per cent. of all were of the
+zymotic class,[47] which are considered as principally due to privation,
+exposure, and personal neglect. The deaths from these classes of causes
+were in a somewhat similar proportion to the mortality from all stated
+causes,--being 58 per cent. from cholera, dysentery, and diarrhoea, and
+1 per cent. from all other disorders of the digestive organs, 19 per
+cent. from fevers, 3.6 per cent. from diseases of the lungs, 1.3 per
+cent. from rheumatism, 1.3 per cent. from diseases of the brain and
+nervous system, and 79 per cent. from those of the zymotic class. The
+same classes of disease, with a much larger proportion of typhoid,
+pneumonia, prostrated and destroyed many in the American army in the War
+of 1812.
+
+In paper No. 40, p. 54, of the Sanitary Commission, is a report of the
+diseases that occurred in forty-nine regiments, while under inspection
+about forty days each, between July and October, 1861. 27,526 cases were
+reported; of these 67 per cent. were zymotic, 41 per cent. diseases of
+the digestive organs, 22 per cent. fevers 7 per cent. diseases of the
+lungs, 5 per cent. diseases of the brain. Among males of the army-ages
+the proportions of deaths from these classes of causes to those from all
+causes were, in Massachusetts, in 1859, zymotic 15 per cent., diseases
+of digestive organs 3.6 per cent., of lungs 50 per cent., fevers 9 per
+cent., diseases of brain 4.6 per cent[48]. According to the
+mortality-statistics of the seventh census of the United States, of the
+males between the ages of twenty and fifty, in Maryland, Virginia, North
+Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, whose deaths in the year ending
+June 1st, 1850, and their causes, were ascertained and reported by the
+marshals, 34.3 per cent. died of zymotic diseases, 8 per cent. of all
+the diseases of the digestive organs, 30.8 per cent. of diseases of the
+respiratory organs, 24.4 per cent. of fevers, and 5.7 per cent. of
+disorders of the brain and nervous system. In England and Wales, in
+1858, these proportions were, zymotic 14 per cent., fevers 8 per cent.,
+diseases of digestive organs 7.9 per cent., of lungs 8 per cent., and of
+the brain 7 per cent[49].
+
+If, however, we analyze the returns of mortality in civil life, and
+distinguish those of the poor and neglected dwellers in the crowded and
+filthy lanes and alleys of cities, whose animal forces are not well
+developed, or are reduced by insufficient and uncertain nutrition, by
+poor food or bad cookery, by foul air within and stenchy atmosphere
+without, by imperfect protection of house and clothing, we shall find
+the same diseases there as in the army. Wherever the vital forces are
+depressed, there these diseases of low vitality happen most frequently
+and are most fatal.
+
+Volumes of other facts and statements might be quoted to show that
+military service is exhaustive of vital force more than the pursuits of
+civil life. It is so even in time of peace, and it is remarkably so in
+time of war. Comparing the English statements of the mortality in the
+army with the calculations of the expectation of life in the general
+community, the difference is at once manifest.
+
+Of 10,000 men at the age of twenty, there will die before they complete
+their fortieth year,--
+
+
+British army in time of peace,         3,058
+England and Wales, English Life-Table, 1,853
+According to tables of Amicable and
+Equitable Life-Insurance Companies,    1,972
+New England and New York, according
+to the tables of the New-England
+Mutual Life-Insurance Company,         1,721
+
+
+DANGERS IN LAND-BATTLES.
+
+This large amount of disease and mortality in the army arises not from
+the battle-field, but belongs to the camp, the tent, the barrack, the
+cantonment; and it is as certain, though not so great, in time of peace,
+when no harm is inflicted by the instruments of destruction, as in time
+of war. The battle, which is the world's terror, is comparatively
+harmless. The official histories of the deadly struggles of armies show
+that they are not so wasteful of life as is generally supposed. Mr.
+William Barwick Hodge examined the records and despatches in the
+War-Office in London, and from these and other sources prepared an
+exceedingly valuable and instructive paper on "The Mortality arising
+from Military Operations," which was read before the London Statistical
+Society, and printed in the nineteenth volume of the Society's journal.
+Some of the tables will be as interesting to Americans as to Englishmen.
+On the following page is a tabular view, taken from this work, of the
+casualties in nineteen battles fought by the British armies with those
+of other nations.
+
+
+TABLE 1.--NINETEEN LAND-BATTLES.
+                                                           BRITISH
+                                                         Casualties
+                                                       Killed in battle
+                                               Officers ---------------
+                                                and men        Per 1000
+         Date.                 Battles.         engaged Number  engaged
+------------------------   --------------------  ------  ----   ----
+1801, March 21, . . . . .  Alexandria . . . . .  14,000   243     17.3
+1806, July 4, . . . . . .  Maida  . . . . . . .  5,675     45      7.9
+1808, August 21,  . . . .  Vimiciro . . . . . .  19,200   135      7.
+1809, January 16, . . . .  Corunna  . . . . . .  16,700   158      9.4
+ "    July 28,  . . . . .  Talavera . . . . . .  22,100   801      3.6
+1810, September . . . . .  Busaco . . . . . . .  27,800   106      3.9
+1811, March 5,  . . . . .  Barrosa  . . . . . .   5,230   202     38.6
+ "    May 5,  . . . . . .  Fuentes de Onore . .  22,900   170      7.4
+ "     "  16, . . . . . .  Albuera  . . . . . .   9,000   882     98.
+1812, July 22,  . . . . .  Salamanca  . . . . .  30,500   388     12.7
+1813, June 21,  . . . . .  Vittoria . . . . . .  42,000   501     11.9
+ "    July 25 to August 2  Pyrenees . . . . . .  30,000   559     18.6
+ "    November 10,  . . .  Nivelle  . . . . . .  47,600   277      5.7
+1814, February 27,  . . .  Orthés . . . . . . .  27,000   210      7.7
+ "    April 10, . . . . .  Toulouse . . . . . .  26,800   312     11.6
+1815, January 8,  . . . .  New Orleans  . . . .   6,000   386     64.3
+ "    June 16-18, . . . .  Waterloo . . . . . .  49,900 2,126     42.6
+1854, September 20, . . .  Alma . . . . . . . .  26,800   353     13.1
+ "    November 5, . . . .  Inkerman . . . . . .   9,000   632     70.2
+                                                -------  -----    ----
+                                                438,205  8,486    19.3
+Estimated deaths among the wounded  . . . . . .          4,894
+Estimated casualties among the missing  . . . .          1,137
+                                                         -----
+Total                                                   14,517    33.1
+
+
+TABLE 1.--NINETEEN LAND-BATTLES. (cont.)
+
+BRITISH. (cont.)
+                                         Deaths in battle
+                    Casualties (cont.)   from wounds, and
+                          Wounded        among the missing.
+                      Number. Per 1000   Number. Per 1000
+    Battles.                  engaged            engaged
+--------------------   -----  -----      -----   -----
+Alexandria . . . . .   1,193   85.2        393    28.1
+Maida  . . . . . . .     282   49.1         87    15.3
+Vimiciro . . . . . .     534   27.7        215    11.2
+Corunna  . . . . . .     634   37.9        257    15.4
+Talavera . . . . . .   3,913   17.7      1,455    65.8
+Busaco . . . . . . .     500   18.         183     6.6
+Barrosa  . . . . . .   1,040  198.8        360    68.8
+Fuentes de Onore . .   1,043   45.5        379    16.6
+Albuera  . . . . . .   2,672  296.6      1,358   151.
+Salamanca  . . . . .   2,714   89.         770    25.2
+Vittoria . . . . . .   2,807   66.8        890    21.2
+Pyrenees . . . . . .   3,693  123.1      1,197    39.9
+Nivelle  . . . . . .   1,777   37.3        675    14.2
+Orthés . . . . . . .   1,411   52.2        404    15.
+Toulouse . . . . . .   1,795   66.9        582    21.7
+New Orleans  . . . .   1,516  252.6        625   104.2
+Waterloo . . . . . .   8,140  163.1      3,245    65.
+Alma . . . . . . . .   1,619   60.4        559    20.9
+Inkerman . . . . . .   1,878  208.6        883    98.1
+                       -----  -----      -----   -----
+                      39,161   89.3     14,517    33.
+
+Total                          91.9
+
+TABLE 1.--NINETEEN LAND-BATTLES. (cont.)
+
+                        BRITISH AND ALLIES.
+                      Officers  Casualties.
+                      and men
+    Battles.          engaged.  Number. Per 1000
+--------------------
+Alexandria . . . . .
+Maida  . . . . . . .
+Vimiciro . . . . . .
+Corunna  . . . . . .
+Talavera . . . . . .   56,000   6,268    112
+Busaco . . . . . . .   57,000   1,300     23
+Barrosa  . . . . . .   14,500   1,610    111
+Fuentes de Onore . .   35,200   1,469     42
+Albuera  . . . . . .   37,000   6,500    176
+Salamanca  . . . . .   54,200   4,964     92
+Vittoria . . . . . .   95,800   4,829     50
+Pyrenees . . . . . .   65,000   6,540    101
+Nivelle  . . . . . .   90,600   2,621     29
+Orthés . . . . . . .   43,600   2,200     50
+Toulouse . . . . . .   54,400   4,641     85
+New Orleans  . . . .
+Waterloo . . . . . .  230,600  36,590    159
+Alma . . . . . . . .   55,000   3,545     64
+Inkerman . . . . . .
+                      -------  ------    ---
+                      888,900  83,077     92
+Estimated casualties
+among the missing  . . . .      3,787
+                               ------
+                               86,864     98
+
+Of those who were engaged in these nineteen battles one in 51.6, or 1.93
+per cent., were killed. The deaths in consequence of the battles,
+including both those who died of wounds and those that died among the
+missing, were one in 30, or 3.3 per cent. of all who were in the fight.
+It is worth noticing here, that the British loss in the Battle of New
+Orleans was larger than in any other battle here adduced, except in that
+of Albuera, in Spain, with the French, in 1811.
+
+In the British army, from 1793 to 1815, including twenty-one years of
+war, and excluding 1802, the year of peace, the number of officers
+varied from 3,576 in the first year to 13,248 in 1813, and the men
+varied from 74,500 in 1793 to 276,000 in 1813, making an annual average
+of 9,078 officers and 189,200 men, and equal to 199,727 officers and
+4,168,500 men serving one year. During these twenty-one years of war,
+among the officers 920 were killed and 4,685 were wounded, and among the
+men 15,392 were killed and 65,393 were wounded. This is an annual
+average of deaths from battle of 460 officers and 369 men, and of
+wounded 2,340 officers and 1,580 men, among 100,000 of each class. Of
+the officers less than half of one per cent., or 1 in 217, were killed,
+and a little more than two per cent., or 1 in 42, were wounded; and
+among the men a little more than a third of one per cent., 1 in 271,
+were killed, and one and a half per cent., 1 in 63, wounded, in each
+year. The comparative danger to the two is, of death, 46 officers to 37
+men, and of wounds, 234 officers to 158 men. A larger proportion of the
+officers than of the soldiers were killed and wounded; yet a larger
+proportion of the wounded officers recovered. This is attributed to the
+fact that the officers were injured by rifle-balls, being picked out by
+the marksmen, while the soldiers were injured by cannon- and
+musket-balls and shells, which inflict more deadly injuries.
+
+DANGERS IN NAVAL BATTLES.
+
+It may not be out of place here to show the dangers of naval warfare,
+which are discussed at length by Mr. Hodge, in a very elaborate paper in
+the eighteenth volume of the Statistical Society's journal. From one of
+his tables, containing a condensed statistical history of the English
+navy, through the wars with France, 1792-1815, the following facts are
+gathered.
+
+During those wars, the British Parliament, in its several annual grants,
+voted 2,527,390 men for the navy. But the number actually in the service
+is estimated not to have exceeded 2,424,000 in all, or a constant
+average force of 110,180 men. Within this time these men fought five
+hundred and seventy-six naval battles, and they were exposed to storms,
+to shipwreck, and to fire, in every sea. In all these exposures, the
+records show that the loss of life was less than was suffered by the
+soldiers on the land. There were--
+
+
+Killed in battle, officers, .    .    .    346
+ "         "       men,    .    .    .   4,441
+                                        ------
+                                Total,   4,787
+Wounded, officers,     .    .    .    .    935
+   "     men,         .    .    .    .  13,335
+                                        ------
+                               Total,   14,270
+Drowned and otherwise destroyed in
+ battle,     .    .    .    .    .    .    449
+Estimated deaths among the wounded,      1,427
+
+Total destroyed by battle,  .    .    .  6,663
+Lost by shipwreck, accidental drowning
+
+  and by fire,    .    .    .    .    . 13,621
+Total deaths, from other causes than
+  disease,   .    .    .    .    .    . 20,284
+
+
+Comparing the whole number of men in the naval service, during this
+period, with the mortality from causes incidental to the service, the
+average annual loss was--
+
+
+Killed in battle,   .    .    .    .   one in 506, or .197 per cent.
+Drowned and lost in battle, and died
+  of wounds    .    .    .    .    .   one in 1,292, or .077 per cent.
+Wounded,       .    .    .    .    .   one in 169, or .588 per cent.
+Drowned and lost by shipwreck, fire,
+  etc., otherwise than by battle,  .   one in 178, or .561 per cent.
+Total annual loss by battle and the
+  special dangers of the sea, .    .   one in 119, or .836 per cent.
+
+
+TABLE II.--BATTLES BETWEEN FLEETS OR SQUADRONS
+                        BRITISH.
+                                             Guns
+Date.                Place.       Ships.  Broadside.   Men.
+1782, April 12,    West Indies      36     1,315     21,608
+1794, June 1,      English Channel  26     1,087     17,241
+1795, March 14,    Genoa            14       557      8,810
+1797, February 14, Cape St. Vincent 15       620      9,508
+ "    October 11,  Camperdown       16       575      8,221
+1798, August 1,    Nile             14       507      7,985
+1801, July 12,     Algeziras         5       188      3,100
+1805, July 22,     Cape Finisterre  15       596     10,500
+ "    October 21,  Trafalgar        27     1,074     16,826
+ "    November 4,  Bay of Biscay     9       262      4,186
+1806, February 6,  San Domingo       7       257      4,094
+1811, March 12,    Lissa             4        59        886
+ "    May 20,      Madagascar        4        73        903
+                                   ---     -----    -------
+                                   192     7,170    113,863
+
+TABLE II.--BATTLES BETWEEN FLEETS OR SQUADRONS (cont.)
+                          BRITISH.                ENEMY.
+                   Killed.         Wounded.
+              Number. Per 1000. Number. Per 1000.
+West Indies       250    11      810     37       French.
+English Channel   290    16      858     47        do.
+Genoa              71     8      266     30        do.
+Cape St. Vincent   73     7      227     29       Spanish.
+Camperdown        203    24      622     75       Dutch.
+Nile              218    27      678     84       French.
+Algeziras          18     6      102     33       French and Spanish.
+Cape Finisterre    39     3      159     15        do.
+Trafalgar         449    26     1241     73        do.
+Bay of Biscay      24     5      111     26       French.
+San Domingo        74     1.8    264     64        do.
+Lissa              44    49      144    162       French and Italian.
+Madagascar         25    27       89     98       French.
+                 ----    ----   ----    -----
+                 1778    15.6   5571     48.9
+
+
+TABLE III.--BATTLES BETWEEN BRITISH AND AMERICAN SHIPS.
+                               BRITISH.           Loss.
+                                   Guns
+                 Duration         broad-
+Date.           of action. Ship.   side. Men. Killed. Wounded. Casualties.
+                                                            Number.  Per
+                   H.  M.                                            1000.
+
+1812, August. 19,  1  55 Guerrière   24   244    15    63      78     320
+  " September 17,     43 Frolic       9    92    15    47      62     674
+  " October 25,    2  40 Macedonian  24   254    31    64      95     374
+  " December 20,   3     Java        24   379    22   102     124     379
+1813, February 14,    25 Peacock      9   110     4    33      37     336
+  " June 1,           15 Shannon     25   306    24    59      83     271
+  " August 12,        45 Pelican      9   101     2     5       7      69
+1814, August 27,      45 Reindeer     9    98    25    41      66     673
+1815, January 15,  5  58 Endymion    24   319    11    14      25      78
+                                    --- -----   ---   ---     ---     ---
+                                    157 1,903   149   428     577     303
+
+
+TABLE III.--BATTLES BETWEEN BRITISH AND AMERICAN SHIPS. (cont.)
+                                        AMERICAN.
+                                  Guns.
+                       Ship.    Broadside. Men.  Killed and wounded.
+                                                 Number. Per 1000.
+1812, August. 19,     Constitution  28      460     20      43
+  " September 17,     Wasp           9      135     16     119
+  " October 25,       United States 28      474      6      13
+  " December 20,      Constitution  28      480     34      71
+1813, February 14,    Hornet        10      162      5      31
+  " June 1,           Chesapeake    25      376    146     389
+  " August 12,        Argus         10      122     24     397
+1814, August 27,      Wasp          11      173     26     150
+1815, January 15,     President     28      465    105     226
+                                   ---    -----    ---     ---
+                                   177    2,847    382     133
+
+
+Mr. Hodge's second table shows the conditions and casualties of thirteen
+battles between fleets and squadrons. This is condensed and quoted on
+the preceding page.
+
+His third table includes thirty-five actions with single ships on each
+side, between the years 1793 and 1815. 8,542 men were engaged, and 483,
+or 56.5 per 1,000, were killed, and 1,230, or 144 per 1,000, wounded.
+
+Twenty-six of these actions were with French ships, which are here
+omitted, and nine with American ships, which are shown in the second
+table on the preceding page.
+
+There is a very remarkable difference in the loss which the British
+suffered in naval and in land battles:--
+
+
+No. of    Vessels.              Killed.   Wounded.
+Battles                         One in    One in
+13        Fleets..............  64.0      20.4
+35        Single ships........  17.7       6.9
+28        French single ships.  19.8      10.6
+9         American do. do.  ..  12.7       4.4
+19        Land battles........  30.0      11.0
+
+
+The danger both of wounds and death in these contests was three times as
+great in the single ships as in fleets, and about five times as great in
+battles with the Americans as in fleet-battles with other nations. The
+dangers in fleet-battles were about half as great as those in
+land-battles, and these were but little more than half as great as those
+in fights with single ships.
+
+COMPARATIVE DANGER OF CAMP AND BATTLE-FIELD.
+
+These records of land-battles show that the dangers from that cause are
+not very great; probably they are less than the world imagines;
+certainly they are much less than those of the camp. Of the 176,007
+admitted into the regimental hospitals during the Peninsular War, only
+20,886 were from wounds, the rest from diseases; fourteen-fifteenths of
+the burden on the hospitals in that war, through forty-two months, were
+diseased patients, and only one-fifteenth were wounded. In the Crimean
+War, 11.2 per cent. in the hospitals suffered from injuries in battle,
+and 88.8 per cent. from other causes. 10 per cent. of the French
+patients in the same war were wounded, and 90 per cent. had fevers, etc.
+In the autumn of 1814, there were 815 patients in the great military
+hospital at Burlington, Vermont. Of these 50 were wounded, and the rest
+had the diseases of the camp.
+
+In the Crimean War, 16,296 died from disease, and 4,774 from injuries
+received in battle. In the Peninsular War, 25,304 died of disease, and
+9,450 from wounds.
+
+During eighteen years, 1840 to 1857, 19,504 were discharged from the
+home, and 21,325 from the foreign stations of the British army. Of
+these, 541, or 2.7 per cent. of those at home, and 3,708, or 17.3 per
+cent. abroad, were on account of wounds and fractures, and the others on
+account of disease, debility, and exhaustion.
+
+NATIONS DO NOT LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE TO PREPARE FOR ARMY-SICKNESS.
+
+Nations, when they go to war, prepare to inflict injury and death on
+their opponents, and make up their minds to receive the same in return;
+but they seem neither to look nor to prepare for sickness and death in
+their camps. And when these come upon their armies, they seem either to
+shut their eyes to the facts, or submit to the loss as to a disturbance
+in Nature, a storm, a drought, or an earthquake, which they can neither
+prevent nor provide for, and for which they feel no responsibility, but
+only hope that it will not happen again. Nevertheless, this waste of
+life has followed every army which has been made to violate the laws of
+health, in privations, exposures, and hardships, and whose internal
+history is known. The experience of such disastrous campaigns ought to
+induce Governments to inquire into the causes of the suffering and loss,
+and to learn whether they are not engaged in a struggle against Nature,
+in which they must certainly fail, and endeavoring to make the human
+body bear burdens and labors which are beyond its strength. But
+Governments are slow to learn, especially sanitary lessons. The British
+army suffered and died in great numbers at Walcheren and South Beveland,
+in the middle of the last century. Pringle described the sad condition
+of those troops, and warned his nation against a similar exposure; yet,
+sixty years later, the Ministry sent another army to the same place, to
+sink under the malarious influences and diseases in the same way. The
+English troops at Jamaica were stationed in the low grounds, where, "for
+many generations," "the average annual mortality was 13 per cent." "A
+recommendation for their removal from the plains to the mountains was
+made so far back as 1791. Numerous reports were sent to the Government,
+advising that a higher situation should be selected"; but it was not
+until 1837, after nearly half a century of experience and warning, that
+the Ministry opened their eyes to this cost of life and money in
+excessive sickness and mortality, and then removed the garrison to
+Maroontown, where the death-rate fell to 2 per cent., or less than
+one-sixth of what it had been[50].
+
+The American army, in the war with Great Britain fifty years ago,
+suffered from the want of proper provision for their necessities and
+comfort, from exposures and hardships, so that sometimes half its force
+was unavailable; yet, at the present moment, a monstrous army is
+collected and sent to the field, under the same regulations, and with
+the same idea of man's indefinite power of endurance, and the
+responsibility and superintendence of their health is left, in large
+measure, to an accidental and outside body of men, the Sanitary
+Commission, which, although an institution of great heart and energy,
+and supported by the sympathies and cooperation of the whole people, is
+yet doing a work that ought to be done by the Government, and carrying
+out a plan of operations that should be inseparably associated with the
+original creation of the army and the whole management of the war.
+
+CRIMEAN WAR.
+
+The lesson which the experience of the Russian army of 1828 and 1829
+taught the world of the mortal dangers of Bulgaria was lost on the
+British Government, which sent its own troops there in 1854, to be
+exposed to, and wither before, the same destructive influences. But at
+length sickness prevailed to such an extent, and death made such havoc,
+in the army in the East, that England's great sympathies were roused,
+and the Ministers' attention was drawn to the irresistible fact, that
+the strongest of Britain's soldiers were passing rapidly from the camp
+to the hospital, and from the hospital to the grave. Then a doubt
+occurred to the minds of the men in power, whether all was right in the
+Crimea, and whether something might not be done for the sanitary
+salvation of the army. They sent a commission, consisting of Dr. John
+Sutherland, one of the ablest sanitarians of the kingdom, Dr. Hector
+Gavin, and Robert Rawlinson, civil engineer, to the Black Sea, to
+inquire into the state of things there, to search out the causes of the
+sufferings of the army, and see if there might not be a remedy found and
+applied. At the same time, Miss Nightingale and a large corps of
+assistants, attendants, and nurses, women of station and culture and
+women of hire, went to that terrible scene of misery and death, to aid
+in any measures that might be devised to alleviate the condition of the
+men. Great abuses and negligence were found; and the causes of disease
+were manifest, manifold, and needless. But a reform was at once
+instituted; great changes were made in the general management of the
+camp and hospitals and in the condition of the soldiers. Disease began
+to diminish, the progress of mortality was arrested, and in the course
+of a few months the rate of death was as low as among men of the same
+ages at home.
+
+This commission made a full report, when they returned, and described
+the state of things they found in the Crimea and on the shores of the
+Black Sea,--the camps, barracks, huts, tents, food, manner of life, and
+general sanitary condition of the troops, their terrible sufferings, and
+the means and ways of caring for the sick, the measures of reform which
+they had proposed and carried out, and their effects on the health of
+the men. This report was published by the Government.
+
+Besides this commission, the Government sent Dr. Lyons, a surgeon and
+pathologist of great learning and acumen, to investigate the pathology
+or morbid condition of the army. According to his instructions, he spent
+four months in the Crimea and at the great hospitals on the Bosphorus.
+He examined and traced the course of disease and disturbance in the sick
+and wounded. He made very many thorough examinations after death, in
+order to determine the effects of vitiating influences upon the
+organization, and the condition of the textures and organs of the body
+in connection with the several kinds of disorders. Dr. Lyons's extremely
+instructive report was published by national authority as one of the
+Parliamentary folio volumes. After the war was over, Dr. W. Hanbury and
+Staff-Surgeon Matthew, under the direction of the Secretary of War,
+gathered, analyzed, and prepared the records of all the surgeons of the
+several corps of the Crimean army. To these they added a long and
+valuable treatise on the nature and character of the diseases, and their
+connection with the condition and habits of the men. These are published
+in two very thick folio volumes, and give a minute and almost daily
+history of the life, labors, exposures, privations, sufferings,
+sickness, and mortality of each regiment. These two works, of Dr. Lyons
+and Drs. Hanbury and Matthew, show the inseparable connection between
+the manner of living and the health, and demonstrate that the severe
+life of war, with its diminished creation of vital force, by imperfect
+and uncertain nutrition and excessive expenditure in exposures and
+labors, necessarily breaks down the constitution. It subjects the body
+to more abundant disorders, and especially to those of the depressive,
+adynamic type, which, from the want of the usual recuperative power, are
+more fatal than the diseases of civil life. These works may be
+considered generic as well as specific. They apply to and describe the
+sanitary condition and the pathological history of all armies engaged in
+hard and severe campaigns, as well as those of the Crimea. They should,
+therefore, be read by every Government that engages in or is forced into
+any war. They should be distributed to and thoroughly understood by
+every commander who directs the army, and every surgeon who superintends
+the sanitary condition of, and manages the sickness among, the men; and
+happy will it be for those soldiers whose military and sanitary
+directors avail themselves of the instructions contained in these
+volumes.
+
+There are several other works on the Crimean War, by surgeons and other
+officers, written mainly to give a knowledge of the general facts of
+those campaigns, but all incidentally corroborating and explaining the
+statements in the Government Reports, in respect to the health and
+sufferings of the British and French armies. In this view, Dr. Bryce's
+book, "England and France before Sebastopol," and M. Baudens's and M.
+Scrive's medical works in French, are worthy of great attention and
+confidence.
+
+The most important and valuable work, in this connection, is the Report
+of the British Commission appointed in May, 1854, "to inquire into the
+regulations affecting the sanitary condition of the British army, the
+organization of the military hospitals, and the treatment of the sick
+and wounded." This commission included some of the ablest and most
+learned physicians and surgeons in the civil and military service, some
+of the most accomplished statisticians, sanitarians, army-officers, and
+statesmen in the United Kingdom. They were authorized to inquire into
+the habits and duties, the moral and sanitary condition of the army, the
+amount and kinds of sickness, the causes and frequency of death, and the
+means of improvement. This commission sat for a long time in London.
+They called before them fifty-three witnesses, among whom were Sir
+Benjamin Brodie, the leading surgeon of England, Dr. Andrew Smith,
+Director-General of the Medical Department of the Army, Thomas
+Alexander, Inspector-General of Hospitals, Major-General Airey,
+Quartermaster-General, Dr. John Sutherland, late Crimean Commissioner,
+and one of the leading authorities of Great Britain in all sanitary
+matters, Dr. William Fair, the chief and master-spirit of the
+Registry-Office, and the highest authority in vital statistics, Colonel
+Sir Alexander Tulloch, author of the elaborate and valuable reports on
+the mortality in the British army, Francis G. P. Neison, author of
+"Contributions to Vital Statistics," Miss Nightingale, and others,
+surgeons, officers, purveyors, engineers, soldiers, and medical and
+sanitary scholars.
+
+The commission put forth 10,070 interrogatories relating to everything
+connected with the army, the persons and the _matériel_, to officers,
+surgeons, physicians, health-officers, soldiers, nurses, cooks,
+clothing, food, cooking, barracks, tents, huts, hospitals, duties,
+labors, exposures, and privations, and their effects on health and life,
+in every climate, wherever British troops are stationed or serve, at
+home and abroad. The same inquiry was extended to the armies of other
+nations, French, Turkish, Russian, etc. To these questions the witnesses
+returned answers, and statements of facts and opinions, all carefully
+prepared, and some of great length, and elaborate calculations in
+respect to the whole military and sanitary science and practice of the
+age. A large part of the inquiry was directed to the Crimean army, whose
+condition had been, and was then, a matter of the most intense interest.
+Many of the witnesses had, in various ways, been connected with that
+war: they were familiar with its history, and their answers revealed
+much that had not before been known. The result of all this
+investigation is published in a folio volume of 607 pages, filled with
+facts and principles, the lamentable history of the past, painful
+descriptions of the present, and wise suggestions for the future
+management of the army; and the whole is worthy of the careful attention
+of all who, as projectors, leaders, or followers, have anything to do
+with the active operations of war.
+
+The Crimean War has this remarkable interest, not that the suffering of
+the troops and their depreciation in effective power were greater than
+in many other wars, but that these happened in an age when the
+intelligence and philanthropy, and even the policy of the nation,
+demanded to know whether the vital depression and the loss of martial
+strength were as great as rumor reported, whether these were the
+necessary condition of war, and whether anything could be done to lessen
+them. By the investigations and reports of commissions, officers, and
+others, the internal history of this war is more completely revealed and
+better known than that of any other on record. It is placed on a hill,
+in the sight of all nations and governments, for their observation and
+warning, to be faithful to the laws of health in providing for, and in
+the use of, their armies, if they would obtain the most efficient
+service from them.
+
+WANT OF SANITARY PREPARATIONS FOR WAR.
+
+There are, and have been, faults--grievous, destructive, and costly
+faults--in all connected with armies, from the Governments at the head,
+down through all grades of officers, to the men in the ranks: they are
+faults of theory and faults of practice,--of plan in those who direct,
+and of self-management in those whose whole duty is to obey. The root of
+this is the failure to fully understand and count the cost, and to
+prepare to meet it as men generally do in the management of their common
+affairs. In civil life, when prudent men intend to effect any purpose by
+the aid of motive power, whether of water, steam, horse, or other kind,
+they carefully consider the means of generating that power, and the best
+and safest ways of applying and expending it. They include this in their
+plans, and make provision accordingly. Precisely determining the extent
+of the purpose they design to effect, and the amount of force that is
+and will be needed, they make their arrangements to provide or generate
+and maintain so much as long as they intend to do the work. During the
+whole process, they carefully guard and treasure it up and allow none to
+be wasted or applied to any other than the appointed purpose. But in the
+use and management of the vital machines, the human bodies, by which the
+purposes of war are to be accomplished, nations are less wise. There are
+few, perhaps no records of any Government, which, in creating,
+maintaining and operating with an army, has, at and during the same
+time, created and established the never-failing means of keeping the
+machinery of war in the best working order, by sustaining the health and
+force of the men in unfailing fulness.
+
+War is carried on by a partnership between the Government and soldiers,
+to which the Government contributes money and directing skill, and
+assumes the responsibility of management, and the soldiers contribute
+their vital force. In the operation of this joint concern, both the
+money of the nation and the lives of the men are put at risk. Although,
+by the terms of the contract, the Government is presumed to expend its
+money and the soldiers' vital force to the extent that may be necessary
+to effect the objects of the association, it has no right to do this for
+any other purpose or on any other condition. It may send the men to
+battle, where they may lose in wounds or in death a part or all that
+they have contributed; but it has no right, by any negligence or folly
+on its own part or in its agents, to expend any of the soldiers' health
+or strength in hunger, nakedness, foul air, miasma, or disease. There is
+a received glory attached to wounds, and even to death, received in a
+struggle with the enemies of one's country, and this is offered as a
+part of the compensation to the warrior for the risk that he runs; but
+there is no glory in sickness or death from typhus, cholera, or
+dysentery, and no compensation of this kind comes to those who suffer or
+perish from these, in camp or military hospital.
+
+DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CIVIL AND MILITARY LIFE.
+
+Military life, with the labors, exposures, and circumstances of war,
+differs widely from civil life. The social and domestic machinery of
+home spontaneously brings within the reach of families the things that
+are needful for their sustenance, comfortable for their enjoyment, and
+favorable to their health. But this self-acting machinery follows not
+the soldier through his campaigns. Everything he needs or enjoys is to
+be a matter of special thought, and obtained with a special effort and
+often with difficulty. Much that was very comfortable and salutary in
+civil life must be given up in the camp. The government is the purveyor
+for and the manager of the army; it undertakes to provide and care for,
+to sustain and nourish the men. But, with all its wisdom, power, and
+means, it is not equal to the thousand or thousands of housekeepers that
+cared and provided for these men when at home; and certainly it does
+not, and probably cannot, perform these domestic offices as well and as
+profitably for the soldiers as their natural providers did.
+Nevertheless, the Government is the sole provider for the army, and
+assumes the main responsibility of the physical condition of its
+members.
+
+Starting with the very common belief that the human body has an
+indefinite power of endurance, or, if it suffer from disease, or fall in
+death, it is from causes beyond man's control,--seeing, also, that it is
+impossible to carry the common means of sustaining life into the camp,
+Governments seem willing to try the experiment of requiring their men to
+do the hard work of war without a certain, full supply of sustenance.
+They expect from the army the largest expenditure of force, but
+sometimes give it the smallest means and poorest conditions of
+recuperating it.
+
+The business of war is not constant and permanent, like the pursuits of
+peace. It therefore comes to most managers as a new and unfamiliar work,
+to which they can bring little or no acquaintance from experience. They
+enter upon untried ground with imperfect knowledge of its
+responsibilities and dangers, and inadequate conceptions of the
+materials and powers with which they are to operate. They therefore make
+many and some very grave mistakes, every one of which, in its due
+proportion, is doubly paid for in drafts on the nation's treasury and on
+the soldiers' vital capital, neither of which is ever dishonored.
+
+Military life is equally new to the soldier, for which none of his
+previous education or experience has fitted him. He has had his mother,
+wife, sister, or other housekeeper, trained and appointed for the
+purpose, to look after his nutrition, his clothing, his personal
+comfort, and, consequently, his health. These do not come without
+thought and labor. The domestic administration of the household and the
+care of its members require as much talent, intelligence, and discipline
+as any of the ordinary occupations of men. Throughout the civilized
+world, this responsibility and the labor necessary for its fulfilment
+absorb a large portion of the mental and physical power of women.
+
+When the new recruit enters the army, he leaves all this care and
+protection behind, but finds no substitute, no compensation for his loss
+in his new position. The Government supposes either that this is all
+unnecessary, or that the man in arms has an inspired capacity or an
+instinctive aptitude for self-care as well as for labor, and that he can
+generate and sustain physical force as well as expend it. But he is no
+more fitted for this, by his previous training and habits, than his
+mother and wife are for making shoes or building houses by theirs.
+Nevertheless he is thrown upon his own resources to do what he may for
+himself. The army-regulations of the United States say, "Soldiers are
+expected to preserve, distribute, and cook their own subsistence"; and
+most other Governments require the same of their men. Washing, mending,
+sweeping, all manner of cleansing, arrangement and care of whatever
+pertains to clothing and housekeeping, come under the same law of
+prescription or necessity. The soldier must do these things, or they
+will be left undone. He who has never arranged, cared for, or cooked his
+own or any other food, who has never washed, mended, or swept, is
+expected to understand and required to do these for himself, or suffer
+the consequences of neglect.
+
+The want of knowledge and training for these purposes makes the soldier
+a bad cook, as well as an indiscreet, negligent, and often a slovenly
+self-manager, and consequently his nutrition and his personal and
+domestic habits are neither so healthy nor so invigorating as those of
+men in civil life; and the Government neither thinks of this deficiency
+nor provides for it by furnishing instruction in regard to this new
+responsibility and these new duties, nor does it exercise a rigid
+watchfulness over his habits to compel them to be as good and as healthy
+as they may be.
+
+MUCH SICKNESS DUE TO ERRORS OF GOVERNMENT.
+
+Whatever may be the excess of sickness and mortality among soldiers over
+those among civilians, it is manifest that a great portion is due to
+preventable causes; and it is equally manifest that a large part of
+these are owing to the negligence of the Government or its agents, the
+officers in command or the men themselves, in regard to encampments,
+tents, clothing, food, labors, exposures, etc.
+
+The places of encampment are usually selected for strategic purposes, or
+military convenience, and the soldiers are exposed to the endemic
+influences, whatever they may be. In some localities these influences
+are perfectly salubrious; in others they are intensely destructive.
+Malaria and miasms offer to the unpractised eye of the military officer
+no perceptible signs of their presence. The camp is liable to be pitched
+and the men required to sleep in malarious spots, or on the damp earth,
+or over a wet subsoil, exposed to noisome and dangerous exhalations from
+which disease may arise. Pringle says, that, in 1798, the regiment which
+had 52 per cent, sick in two months, and 94 per cent, sick in one
+season, "were cantoned on marshes whence noxious exhalations
+emanated."[51] "Another regiment encamped where meadows had been flowed
+all winter and just drained, and half the men became sick." Lord
+Wellington wrote, August 11, 1811, "Very recently, the officer
+commanding a brigade encamped in one of the most unwholesome situations,
+and every man of them is sick."[52] One of our regiments encamped at
+Worcester, Massachusetts, on the Agricultural Society's grounds, where
+the upper soil was not dry and the subsoil was wet. The men slept in
+tents on the ground, consequently there were thirty to forty cases of
+disordered bowels a day. The surgeon caused the tents to be floored, and
+the disease was mitigated. The Eleventh Massachusetts Regiment were
+encamped on a wet soil at Budd's Ferry, in Maryland. In a week, thirty
+cases of fever appeared. Dr. Russell, the surgeon, ordered the camp to
+be removed to a dry field, and the tents to be floored with brush; no
+new cases of fever appeared afterward. Moltka says that "the Russian
+army which suffered so terribly and fatally in 1828 and 1829 was badly
+clothed and badly nourished, and in no way protected against the climate
+of the Danubian Provinces, and especially of Bulgaria, where the
+temperature varies from 58° in the day to 29° at night, and where the
+falling dew is like a fine and penetrating rain."[53]
+
+Lord Wellington was a sagacious observer and a bold speaker. His
+despatches to his Government frequently mention, the errors of those who
+should provide for the army, and the consequent sufferings of the
+soldiers. November 14, 1809, he says, "In the English army of 30,000
+men, 6,000 are sick." "Want of proper food increases sickness." "With
+nothing but water for drink, with meat, but no salt, and bread very
+rarely for a month, and no other food; consequently, few, if any, were
+not affected with dysentery." Again he writes, "Men cannot perform the
+labors of soldiers without food. Three of General Park's brigade died of
+famine yesterday, on their march; and above a hundred and fifty have
+fallen out from weakness, many of whom must have died from the same
+cause." August 9, 1809, he wrote to Lord Castlereagh, "No troops can
+serve to any good purpose, unless they are regularly fed. It is an error
+to suppose that a Spaniard, or any man or animal of any country, can
+make an exertion without food." In February, 1811, he wrote, "The
+Portuguese army of 43,000 or 44,000 men has about 9,000 sick, which is
+rather more than a fifth. This is caused by want of proper and regular
+food, and of money to purchase hospital-stores. If this be continued,
+the whole army will be down, or must be disbanded."
+
+The British army in Spain suffered from want of clothing as well as of
+food. The Duke, who did not intend to be misunderstood, nor believe that
+this was without somebody's fault, wrote, November 3, 1810, to General
+Pane, "I wish it were in my power to give you well-clothed troops or
+hang those who ought to have given them clothing."
+
+The diaries of the medical officers in the Crimean army, quoted in the
+"Medical and Surgical History" of that war, already referred to, are
+full of similar complaints, and these are supported by Dr. Lyons's
+"Pathological Report." One says, "Some of the camps were very
+injudiciously chosen." "The men were very much weakened," "unable to
+undergo any fatigue," even "to carry their knapsacks." "At Balaklava,
+they built their huts on a very unhealthy site." Sir John Hall,
+Inspector-General of Hospitals, referring to this, said, "I protested
+against it, in the strongest way I could, but without effect; and the
+consequence was that shortly after the men had spotted fever."[54] Dr.
+Hanbury says: "November, 1854. Health of the army rapidly deteriorated
+from defective diet, harassing duties, hardships, privations, and
+exposures to the inclement season." "Cholera increased; cold, wet,
+innutritious and irritating diet produced dysentery, congestion and
+disorganization of the mucous membrane of the bowels, and scurvy."
+January, 1855, he says, "Fever and bowel affections indicated morbid
+action; scurvy and gangrene indicated privation and exposures."
+
+The surgeon of the Thirty-Fourth Regiment writes: "November, 1854.
+Cholera broke out. It rained constantly. Troops had no other protection
+from the damp ground than a single wet blanket." "Without warm clothing,
+on short allowance of provisions, in want of fuel." "The sanitary
+condition of the regiment deteriorated rapidly: 56 per cent. of the men
+admitted to the hospital."
+
+Forty-First Regiment, November and December. "No respite from severe
+duties; weather cold and wet; clothing ill-adapted for such climate and
+service; disease rapidly increased; 70 per cent. of the men in the
+hospital in two months."
+
+Thirty-Third Regiment, December, 1854. "Cold and wet weather, coupled
+with insufficient food, fuel, and clothing, and severe and arduous
+duties, all combined to keep up the sickness; 48.8 per cent. admitted to
+the hospital in this month."
+
+Twentieth Regiment. "The impoverished condition of the blood, dependent
+on long use of improper diet, exposure to wet and cold, and want of
+sufficient clothing and rest, had become evident." "Scurvy, diarrhoea,
+frost-bite, and ulceration of the feet followed."
+
+First Regiment. "December, 1854. Scarcely a soldier in perfect health,
+from sleeping on damp ground, in wet clothing, and no change of dress;
+cooking the worst; field-hospital over-crowded." "January, 1855. Type of
+disease becoming more unequivocally the result of bad feeding, exposure,
+and other hardships."
+
+Thirtieth Regiment. "Duties and employments extremely severe; exposure
+protracted; no means of personal cleanliness; clothing infested with
+vermin; since Nov. 14, short allowance of meat, and, on some days, of
+biscuit, sometimes no sugar, once no rice; food sometimes spoiled in
+cooking; tents leaked; floors and bedding wet; sanitary efficiency
+deteriorated in a decided manner."
+
+These quotations are but samples of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
+similar statements, showing the immediate connection between privations,
+exposures, and hardships, and depression of life and abundant disease.
+
+Dr. Sutherland went through all the camps, and makes similar statements.
+"The damp, unventilated, and undrained huts, in some parts of the camp,
+produced consequences similar to those in cellar-dwellings at
+home,"--that is, typhus and typhoid diseases. "The half-buried huts of
+the Sardinian camp furnished a large proportion of fever cases among
+their occupants," "That beautiful village of Balaklava was allowed to
+become a hot-bed of pestilence, so that fever, dysentery, and cholera,
+in it and its vicinity and on the ships in the harbor, were abundant."
+"Filth, manure, offal, dead carcasses, had been allowed to accumulate to
+such an extent, that we found, on our arrival, in March, 1855, it would
+have required the labor of three hundred men to remove the local causes
+of disease before the warm weather set in."[55] General Airey said: "The
+French General Canrobert came to me, complaining of the condition in
+which his men were. He said 'they were dying in the mud.'"[56]
+
+Dr. Bryce, one of the army-surgeons in that war, says, in his book: "The
+British army was exhausted by overwork and the deficiency of everything
+that would sustain health and strength."
+
+When the soldier, overcome by these morbific influences, became sick,
+and was taken to the hospital, he was still compelled to suffer, and
+often sank under, the privation of those comforts and means of
+restoration which the sick at home usually enjoy.
+
+Dr. Sutherland says: "The hospitals at Scutari were magnificent
+buildings, apparently admirably adapted to their purpose; but, when
+carefully examined, they were found to be little better than
+pest-houses."[57]
+
+Under direction of the Sanitary Commission, the hospitals were cleansed
+and ventilated, and the patients allowed more room. In the first three
+weeks of these improvements, the mortality from diseases fell to
+one-half; in the second three weeks, to one-third; in the third, to
+one-fifth; and in the fourth and fifth periods, to one-tenth of that
+which prevailed be before they were begun.[58]
+
+The reform was carried through the whole army, camp and barracks,
+Government supplies, and soldiers' habits and exposures; and the
+mortality from diseases, which had been at the annual rate of 114 per
+cent. in January, and 83 per cent. in February, fell to 19 per cent. in
+April and May, 5 per cent. in the autumn, and 1.6 per cent. in the
+winter following.[59]
+
+The exposures, privations, and sufferings of our own army in the last
+war with Great Britain, heart-rending even at this distance of time,
+were sufficient to account for much of the terrible sickness and
+mortality that prostrated and destroyed the men. They were at times in
+want of food, clothing, and tents; and yet, in the new and unsettled
+country, in the wilderness and forest, they performed great labors.
+"Long and unremitting exposures to wet, cold, and fatigue, with a diet
+which, under existing circumstances, could not prove nutritious,
+exhausted the vital principle, and diarrhoea and typhus fever
+supervened. The production of animal putrefaction and excrementitious
+materials were also sources of these diseases. Armies always accumulate
+these noxious principles about their encampments in a few days, when
+attention is not called to their daily removal."[60] Feeble, and
+destitute of clothing and provisions, they invaded Canada at the end of
+the autumn in 1813. "During the whole of October and part of November,
+most of them were subjected to excessive fatigues, and exposed in open
+boats on the lake, when it rained almost every day." "On the 14th of
+November the weather became intensely cold, and remained so all winter.
+In addition to their great fatigue, most of them lost their extra
+clothing and blankets on their march and in the battle of the 11th. Even
+the sick had no covering but tents until January. Provisions were
+scarce, and of a bad quality. Under these circumstances, sickness and
+mortality were very great." "Nearly one-half of the army," 47 per cent.,
+"were unfit for duty."[61]
+
+"Through the following winter, the want of necessaries for the support
+of the enfeebled and wretched soldier was most severely felt. The poor
+subsistence which bread of the worst quality afforded was almost the
+only support which could be had for seven weeks." "The sickness, deaths,
+and distress at French Mills excited much alarm. This great mortality
+had obvious causes for its existence." "Predispositions to sickness, the
+effects of obvious causes, the comfortless condition of men exposed to
+cold, wanting the common necessaries of life to support them in their
+exhausted states." Dr. Lovell adds: "It was impossible for the sick to
+be restored with nothing to subsist upon except damaged bread."[62]
+Among the causes of the abundant sickness, in March, along the Niagara
+frontier, given by the surgeons, were "severe duty during the inclement
+weather, exposure on the lake in open transports, bad bread made of
+damaged flour, either not nutritious or absolutely deleterious, bad
+water impregnated with the product of vegetable putrefaction, and the
+effluvia from materials of animal production with which the air was
+replete."[63] "The array, in consequence of its stationary position,
+suffered from diseases aggravated by filth accumulated in its vicinity."
+"The clothing was not sufficient to protect the men on the northern
+frontier, and even this short allowance failed to reach them in due
+season."[64] "The woollen garments have not been issued until the warm
+weather of summer commenced, when winter finds them either naked or clad
+in their summer dresses, perishing with cold."[65]
+
+The camps were sometimes in malarious districts. "At Fort George and the
+vicinity, the troops were exposed to intense heat during the day and to
+cold and chilly atmosphere at night." "The diseases consequent to this
+exposure, typhus and intermittent fever, dysentery and diarrhoea," and
+"but little more than half of the men were fit for duty."[66]
+
+Gen. Scott wrote from Mexico, February 14, 1848: "The army is also
+suffering from the want of necessary clothing. The new troops are as
+destitute as the others. They were first told that they should find
+abundant supplies at New Orleans, next at Vera Cruz, and finally
+here."[67]
+
+There is ever a danger of the sensibilities and perceptive faculties
+becoming blunted by exposure to and familiarity with offensive effluvia.
+"The General repeatedly called the attention of the officers at Fort
+George to the filthy state and foul effluvia of their camp, but they
+perceived no offensive odor; their olfactories had lost their acuteness,
+and failed to warn them of the noisome gases that pervaded the
+atmosphere."[68] If the officers fail of their duty as housekeepers to
+see that everything in the camp and tents is clean and healthy, the men
+fall into negligent habits, and become dirty and sick. It was the "total
+want of good police" that reduced the regiment already referred to from
+900 to 200 fit for duty. On the other hand, "The regiment of artillery,
+always subject to correct discipline, with quarters and encampments
+always in the best state, and the men mostly neat and clean, suffered
+less by disease than any on the northern frontier. Their better health
+may be much imputed to cleanliness."[69]
+
+Itch and lice, the natural progeny of negligence and uncleanness, often
+find their home in the army. Pringle, more than a hundred years ago,
+said that "itch was the most general distemper among soldiers." Personal
+and household vermin seem to have an instinctive apprehension of the
+homes that are prepared for them, and flock to the families and
+dwellings where washing and sweeping are not the paramount law and
+unfailing habit. They are found in the houses and on the bodies of the
+filthy and negligent everywhere. They especially delight in living with
+those who rarely change their body-linen and bedding. They were carried
+into and established themselves in the new barracks of Camp Cameron in
+Cambridge, Massachusetts; but they are never found in the Boston House
+of Correction, which receives its recruits from the filthiest dens of
+iniquity, because the energetic master enforces thorough cleansing on
+every new-comer, and continues it so long as he remains.
+
+The camps and police of the present Union army, though better than the
+average of others and far above some, are yet not in as healthy
+condition as they might be. The Report of the Sanitary Commission to the
+Secretary of War, December, 1861, says: "Of the camps inspected, 5 per
+cent, were in admirable order, 45 per cent, fairly clean and well
+policed. The condition of 26 per cent, was negligent and slovenly, and
+that of 21 per cent, decidedly bad, filthy, and dangerous." [70] The
+same Report adds: "On the whole, a very marked and gratifying
+improvement has occurred during the summer." And that improvement has
+been going on ever since. Yet the description of a camp at Grafton,
+Virginia, in March, shows that there a very bad and dangerous state of
+things existed at that time, and "one-seventh of the regiment was sick
+and unfit for duty"; but the bold and clear report of Dr. Hammond of the
+United States Army produced a decided and favorable change, and "the
+regiment has now less than the average amount of sickness." [71]
+
+The hospitals of the army are mostly buildings erected for other
+purposes, and not fitted for their present use; and the sudden influx of
+a large military population, with its usual amount of sickness, has
+often crowded these receptacles of the suffering soldiers. For want of
+experience on the part of the officers, surgeons, nurses, and men, in
+the management of such establishments, they are sometimes in very bad
+and unhealthy condition. In Cumberland, Maryland, fifteen buildings were
+occupied by about five hundred patients. These buildings had been
+warehouses, hotels, etc., with few or none of the conveniences for the
+sick. They were densely crowded; in some the men were "lying on the
+floor as thickly as they could be packed." One room with 960 feet of air
+contained four patients. Dr. Hammond's description of the eighty-three
+rooms and the condition of the patients in them seems to justify the
+terms he frequently uses. "Halls very dirty." "Rooms dismal and badly
+ventilated." "Utmost confusion appears to exist about each hospital;
+consequently, duties are neglected, and a state of the most disgusting
+want of cleanliness exists." [72] Happily, the wise and generous
+suggestions of the surgeon were carried out, and with the best results.
+This hospital was an exception; but it shows the need of intelligent
+watchfulness on the part of the Government.
+
+Crowded Quarters.
+
+It is to be expected that the soldier's dwelling, his tent and barrack,
+will be reduced to the lowest endurable dimensions in the campaign, for
+there is a seeming necessity for this economy of room; but in garrisons,
+stations, and cantonments, and even in encampments in, time of peace,
+this necessity ceases, and there is a power at least, if not a
+disposition, to give a more liberal supply of house--and lodging-room to
+the army, and a better opportunity for rest and recuperation. In common
+dwelling-houses, under favorable circumstances, each sleeper is usually
+allowed from 500 to 1,000 cubic feet of space: a chamber fifteen or
+sixteen feet square and eight feet high, with 1,800 to 2,048 feet of
+air, is considered a good lodging-room for two persons. This gives 900
+to 1,024 feet of air for each. The prudent always have some means of
+admitting fresh air, or some way for the foul air to escape, by an open
+window, or an opening into the chimney, or both. If such a room be
+occupied by three lodgers, it is crowded, and the air becomes
+perceptibly foul in the night. Sometimes more are allowed to sleep
+within a room of this size; but it is a matter of necessity, or of lower
+sensibility, and is not healthy. They do not find sufficient oxygen to
+purify or decarbonize their blood through the night; they consequently
+are not refreshed, nor invigorated and fully prepared for the labors of
+the following day.
+
+No nation has made this liberal and proper provision of lodging-room for
+its sleeping soldiers in peace or in war, in garrison or in the
+encampment.
+
+The British army-regulations formerly allowed 400 to 500 cubic feet for
+each soldier in barracks in temperate climates, and 480 to 600 in
+tropical climates. The new regulations allow 600 feet in temperate
+climates.[73] But the 356 barracks at the various military stations in
+Great Britain and Ireland give the soldiers much less breathing-room
+than the more recent regulations require. Of these,
+
+
+  3 allow 100 to 200 feet for each man.
+ 27  "    200 to 300 "         "
+123  "    300 to 400 "         "
+125  "    400 to 500 "         "
+
+ 59  "    500 to 600 "         "
+ 19  "    600 to 800 "         " [74]
+
+
+The French Government allows 444 feet for each infantry soldier, and 518
+feet for each man in the cavalry.
+
+The British soldiers, at these home-stations, have less breathing-space
+and are subject to more foulness of air than the people of England in
+civil life; and the natural consequence was discovered by the
+investigation of the Military Sanitary Commission, that consumption and
+other diseases of the lungs were much more prevalent and fatal among
+these soldiers, who were originally possessed of perfect constitutions
+and health, than among the people at large. The mortality from
+consumption and other diseases of the respiratory organs, among the
+Household Cavalry, the Queen's Body-Guard, and the most perfectly formed
+men in the kingdom, was 25 per cent., among the Dragoon Guards 59 per
+cent., among the Infantry of the Line 115 per cent., and among the
+Foot-Guards 172 per cent. greater than it was among the males of the
+same ages throughout England and Wales, and consumption was the
+prevailing cause of death.
+
+The huts of the British army are of various sizes, holding from
+twenty-five to seventy-two men, and allowing from 146 to 165 cubic feet
+for each. The "Portsmouth hut" is the favorite. It is twenty-seven feet
+long, fifteen feet wide, walls six feet, and ridge twelve feet high.
+This holds twenty-five men, and allows 146 feet of air to each man. All
+these huts have windows, and most of them are ventilated through
+openings under the eaves or just below the ridge, and some through both.
+
+Some of the temporary barracks erected at Newport News, Virginia, are
+one hundred feet long, twenty-two feet wide, and twelve and a half feet
+high at the ridge, and accommodate seventy-six men, giving each 360 feet
+of air. Some are larger, and allow more space; others allow less; in one
+each man has only 169 feet of breathing-space. All these buildings are
+well supplied with windows, which serve also for ventilators.
+
+In forts, the garrisons are usually more liberally supplied with
+sleeping-room, yet, on emergencies, they are densely crowded. At Fort
+Warren, in Boston Harbor, two regiments were temporarily stationed, in
+the summer of 1861. There was one large barrack divided into some large
+and many small rooms, and there was the usual supply of rooms in the
+casemates. There was one range of rooms in the barrack, each sixteen
+feet six inches long, seven feet four inches high, and varying in width
+from ten feet eight inches to thirteen feet two inches. In most of these
+rooms, including two of the narrowest, twelve men slept. They had from
+105 to 119 feet of air for each one. There was a large window in each
+room, which was opened at night, and might have served for healthy
+ventilation, except that there was an accumulation of disgusting filth
+within a few feet of the building, on that side, sending forth offensive
+and noisome effluvia, and rendering it doubtful which was the most
+disagreeable and dangerous, the foul air within or the foul atmosphere
+without. In two of the casemate-rooms, holding sixty and seventy-five
+men respectively, each man had 144 and 180 feet of air. At Fort
+Independence, in the same harbor, a battalion was stationed, and slept
+in thirteen casemate-rooms, where the men had from 150 to 297 feet of
+air. All the casemate-rooms, being in the thick walls, and covered with
+earth, in both forts, were cold and damp, and many of them were kept
+comfortable only by fires, even in June.
+
+The ten new barracks at Camp Cameron, in Cambridge, when full, according
+to the plan, give each soldier 202 feet of air for respiration; but in
+August last, when densely filled, as some of them were, the proportion
+of air for each man was reduced to 120 feet. The doors and windows were
+left open at night, however, and obviated in some degree the evil
+effects of the crowding.
+
+TENTS
+
+The portable house must necessarily be as small as possible, and must be
+made to give its occupants the smallest endurable space. The English
+bell-tent contains 512 cubic feet, and lodges twelve to fifteen men,
+when on march, and eight to twelve men in camp, affording 34 to 64 feet
+of breathing-space for each. Quartermaster-General Airey says this is
+the best tent in use.
+
+The American tents are of many varieties in shape and size. The Sibley
+tent gives 1,052 feet to seventeen or eighteen, and sometimes to twenty
+men, being 53 to 62 feet for each. The Fremont tent is somewhat larger,
+and, as used in the cavalry camp at Readville, gave the men more air
+than the Sibley. Both of these have means of ventilation. The
+wedge-tent, being the simplest in structure, is most easily pitched,
+struck, and packed by the soldiers, and therefore used by 58 per cent,
+of the regiments of the Union army, six me sleeping in each. But as
+occupied by two of the regiments in Massachusetts, in the summer of
+1861, it was the most crowded and unhealthy. Those used by the Second
+Regiment at West Roxbury, and the Ninth at Long Island, (in Boston
+Harbor,) were twelve and a half feet long, eight feet wide, and six feet
+high to the ridge, and held twelve men. Each sleeper had 8-1/3 square
+feet of floor to rest upon, and 25 cubic feet of air to breathe through
+the night, with no ventilation, except what air passed in through the
+door-way, when left open, and through the porous cloth that covered the
+tent. Some of the tents of one of the regiments encamped at Worcester
+had 56 feet of floor-surface, and 160 feet of air, which was divided
+among six men, giving each 27 feet of air.
+
+In all the camps of Massachusetts, and of most armies everywhere,
+economy, not only of room within the tents, but of ground where they are
+placed, seems to be deemed very important, even on those fields where
+there is opportunity for indefinite expansion of the encampment. The
+British army-regulations prescribe three plans of arranging the tents.
+The most liberal and loose arrangement gives to each soldier eighty
+square feet of ground, the next gives forty-two, and the most compact
+allows twenty-seven feet, without and within his tent. These are
+densities of population equal to having 348,000, 664,000, and 1,008,829
+people on a square mile. But enormous and incredible as this
+condensation of humanity may seem, we, in Massachusetts, have beaten it,
+in one instance at least. In the camp of the Ninth Regiment at Long
+Island, the tents were placed in compact rows, and touched each other on
+the two sides and at the back. Between the alternate rows there were
+narrow lanes, barely wide enough for carriages to pass. Thus arranged,
+the men, when in their tents, were packed at the rate of 1,152,000 on a
+square mile, or one man on every twenty--two square feet, including the
+lanes between, as well as the ground under, the tents.
+
+The city of London has 17,678 persons on a square mile, through its
+whole extent, including the open spaces, streets, squares, and parks.
+East London, the densest and most unhealthy district, has 175,816 on a
+mile. Boston, including East and South Boston, but not Washington
+Village, has 50,805 on a mile; and the Broad-Street section, densely
+filled with Irish families, had, when last examined for this purpose, in
+1845, a density of population at the rate of 413,000 on the same space.
+
+RESULTS OF SANITARY REFORMS.
+
+The errors and losses which have been adverted to are not all constant
+nor universal: not every army is hungry or has bad cookery; not every
+one encamps in malarious spots, or sleeps in crowded tents, or is cold,
+wet, or overworked: but, so far as the internal history of military life
+has been revealed, they have been and are sufficiently frequent to
+produce a greater depression of force, more sickness, and a higher rate
+of mortality among the soldiery than are found to exist among civilians.
+Every failure to meet the natural necessities or wants of the animal
+body, in respect to food, air, cleanliness, and protection, has, in its
+own way, and in its due proportion, diminished the power that might
+otherwise have been created; and every misapplication has again reduced
+that vital capital which was already at a discount. These first bind the
+strong man, and then, exposing him to morbific influences, rob him of
+his health. Perhaps in none of the common affairs of the world do men
+allow so large a part of the power they raise and the means they gather
+for any purpose to be lost, before they reach their object and strike
+their final and effective blow, as the rulers of nations allow to be
+lost in the gathering and application of human force to the purposes of
+war. And this is mainly because those rulers do not study and regard the
+nature and conditions of the living machines with which they operate,
+and the vital forces that move them, as faithfully as men in civil life
+study and regard the conditions of the dead machines they use, and the
+powers of water and steam that propel them, and form their plans
+accordingly.
+
+But it is satisfactory to know that great improvements have been made in
+this respect. From a careful and extended inquiry into the diseases of
+the army and their causes, it is manifest that they do not necessarily
+belong to the profession of war. Although sickness has been more
+prevalent, and death in consequence more frequent, in camps and military
+stations than in the dwellings of peace, this excess is not unavoidable,
+but may be mostly, if not entirely, prevented. Men are not more sick
+because they are soldiers and live apart from their homes, but because
+they are exposed to conditions or indulge in habits that would produce
+the same results in civil as in military life. Wherever civilians have
+fallen into these conditions and habits, they have suffered in the same
+way; and wherever the army has been redeemed from these, sickness and
+mortality have diminished, and the health and efficiency of the men have
+improved.
+
+Great Britain has made and is still making great and successful efforts
+to reform the sanitary condition of her army. The improvement in the
+health of the troops in the Crimea in 1856 and 1857 has already been
+described. The reduction of the annual rate of mortality caused by
+disease, from 1,142 to 13 in a thousand, in thirteen months, opened the
+eyes of the Government to the real state of matters in the army, and to
+their own connection with it. They saw that the excess of sickness and
+death among the troops had its origin in circumstances and conditions
+which they could control, and then they began to feel the responsibility
+resting upon them for the health and life of their soldiers. On further
+investigation, they discovered that soldiers in active service
+everywhere suffered more by sickness and death than civilians at home,
+and then they very naturally concluded that a similar application of
+sanitary measures and enforcement of the sanitary laws would be as
+advantageous to the health and life of the men at all other places as in
+the Crimea. A thorough reform was determined upon, and carried out with
+signal success in all the military stations at home and abroad. "The
+late Lord Herbert, first in a royal commission, then in a commission for
+carrying out its recommendations, and lastly as Secretary of State for
+War in Lord Palmerston's administration, neglecting the enjoyments which
+high rank and a splendid fortune placed at his command, devoted himself
+to the sanitary reform of the army."[75] He saw that the health of the
+soldiers was perilled more "by bad sanitary arrangements than by
+climate," and that these could be amended. "He had some courageous
+colleagues, among whom I must name as the foremost Florence Nightingale,
+who shares without diminishing his glory."[76] Both of these great
+sanitary reformers sacrificed themselves for the good of the suffering
+and perishing soldier. "Lord Herbert died at the age of fifty-one,
+broken down by work so entirely that his medical attendants hardly knew
+to what to attribute his death."[77] Although he probed the evil to the
+very bottom, and boldly laid bare the time-honored abuses, neglects, and
+ignorance of the natural laws, whence so much sickness had sprung to
+waste the army, yet he "did not think it enough to point out evils in a
+report; he got commissions of practical men to put an end to them."[78]
+A new and improved code of medical regulations, and a new and rational
+system of sanitary administration, suited to the wants and liabilities
+of the human body, were devised and adopted for the British army, and
+their conditions are established and carried out with the most happy
+results.
+
+These new systems connect with every corps of the army the means of
+protecting the health of the men, as well as of healing their diseases.
+
+   "The Medical Department of the British army includes,--
+
+   "1. Director-General, who is the sole responsible administrative head
+   of the medical service.
+
+   "2. Three Heads of Departments, to aid the Director-General with
+   their advice, and to work the routine-details.
+
+   "A Medical Head, to give advice and assistance on all subjects
+   connected with the medical service and hospitals of the army.
+
+   "A Sanitary Head, to give advice and assistance on all subjects
+   connected with the hygiene of the army.
+
+   "A Statistical Head, who will keep the medical statistics,
+   case-books, meteorological registers," etc.[79]
+
+Besides these medical officers, there are an Inspector-General of
+Hospitals, a Deputy Inspector-General of Hospitals, Staff and Regimental
+Surgeons, Staff and Regimental Assistant-Surgeons, and Apothecaries.
+
+The British army is plentifully supplied with these medical officers.
+For the army of 118,000 men there were provided one thousand and
+seventy-five medical officers under full pay in 1859. Four hundred and
+seventy surgeons and assistant-surgeons were attached to the hundred
+regiments of infantry.[80]
+
+It is made the duty of the medical officer to keep constant watch over
+all the means and habits of life among the troops,--"to see that all
+regulations for protecting the health of troops, in barracks, garrisons,
+stations, or camps, are duly observed." "He is to satisfy himself as to
+the sanitary condition of barracks," "as to their cleanliness, within
+and without, their ventilation, warming, and lighting," "as to the
+drainage, ash-pits, offal," etc. "He is to satisfy himself that the
+rations are good, that the kitchen-utensils are sufficient and in good
+order, and that the cooking is sufficiently varied."[81]
+
+Nothing in the condition, circumstances, or habits of the men, that can
+affect their health, must be allowed to escape the notice of these
+medical officers.
+
+In every plan for the location or movement of any body of troops, it is
+made the duty of the principal medical officer first to ascertain the
+effect which such movement or location will have upon the men, and
+advise the commander accordingly. It is his duty, also, to inspect all
+camp-sites and "give his opinion in writing on the salubrity or
+otherwise of the proposed position, with any recommendations he may have
+to make respecting the drainage, preparation of the ground, distance of
+the tents or huts from each other, the number of men to be placed in
+each tent or hut, the state of cleanliness, ventilation, and
+water-supply."[82] "The sanitary officer shall keep up a daily
+inspection of the whole camp, and especially inform himself as to the
+health of the troops, and of the appearance of any zymotic disease among
+them; and he shall immediately, on being informed of the appearance of
+any such disease, examine into the cause of the same, whether such
+disease proceed from, or is aggravated by, sanitary defects in
+cleansing, drainage, nuisances, overcrowding, defective ventilation, bad
+or deficient water supply, dampness, marshy ground, or from any other
+local cause, or from bad or deficient food, intemperance, unwholesome
+liquors, fruit, defective clothing or shelter, exposure, fatigue, or any
+other cause, and report immediately to the commander of the forces, on
+such causes, and the remedial measures he has to propose for their
+removal." "And he shall report at least daily on the progress or decline
+of the disease, and on the means adopted for the removal of its
+causes."[83]
+
+Thus the British army is furnished with the best sanitary instruction
+the nation can afford, to guide the officers and show the men how to
+live, and sustain their strength for the most effective labor in the
+service of the country.
+
+To make this system of vigilant watchfulness over the health of the men
+the more effectual, the medical officer of each corps is required to
+make weekly returns to the principal medical officer of the command, and
+this principal officer makes monthly returns to the central office at
+London. These weekly and monthly returns include all the matters that
+relate to the health of the troops, "to the sanitary condition of the
+barracks, quarters, hospitals, the rations, clothing, duties, etc., of
+the troops, and the effects of these on their health."[84]
+
+Under these new regulations, the exact condition of the army everywhere
+is always open to the eyes of medical and sanitary officers, and they
+are made responsible for the health of the soldiers. The consequence has
+been a great improvement in the condition and habits of the men. Camps
+have been better located and arranged. Food is better supplied. Cooking
+is more varied, and suited to the digestive powers. The old plan of
+boiling seven days in the week is abolished, and baking, stewing, and
+other more wholesome methods of preparation are adopted in the
+army-kitchens, with very great advantage to the health of the men and to
+the efficiency of the military service. Sickness has diminished and
+mortality very greatly lessened, and the most satisfactory evidence has
+been given from all the stations of the British army at home and abroad,
+that the great excess of disease and death among the troops over those
+of civilians at home is needless, and that health and life are measured
+out to the soldier, as well as to the citizen, according to the manner
+in which he fulfils or is allowed to fulfil the conditions established
+by Nature for his being here.
+
+The last army medical report shows the amount and rate of sickness and
+mortality of every corps, both in the year 1859, under the new system of
+watchfulness and proper provision, and at a former period, under the old
+_régime_ of neglect.
+
+
+THE NUMBER OF DEATHS IN 100,000.[85]
+                       Annual Average for
+                    10 years, 1837 to 1846.     1859.
+Household Cavalry            1,039               427
+Dragoon-Guards               1,208               794
+Foot-Guards                  1,872               859
+Infantry Regiments           1,706               758
+Men in healthy
+  districts of England                           723
+
+
+The Foot-Guards, which lost annually 1,415 from diseases of the chest
+before the reform, lost only 538 in 100,000 from the same cause in
+1859.[86]
+
+Among the infantry of the line, the annual attacks of fever were reduced
+to a little more than one-third, and the deaths from this cause to
+two-fifths of their former ratio. The cases of zymotic disease were
+diminished 33 per cent., and the mortality from this class of maladies
+was reduced 68 per cent.[87]
+
+The same happy accounts of improvement come from every province and
+every military station where the British Government has placed its
+armies.
+
+Our present army is in better condition than those of other times and
+other nations; and more and more will be done for this end. The
+Government has already admitted the Sanitary Commission into a sort of
+copartnership in the management of the army, and hereafter the
+principles of this excellent and useful association will be incorporated
+with, and become an inseparable part of, the machinery of war, to be
+conducted by the same hands that direct the movements of the armies,
+ever present and efficient to meet all the natural wants of the soldier,
+and to reduce his danger of sickness and mortality, as nearly as
+possible, to that of men of the same age at home.
+
+
+
+AN ARAB WELCOME.
+  I.
+    Because thou com'st, a tired guest,
+    Unto my tent, I bid thee rest.
+    This cruse of oil, this skin of wine,
+    These tamarinds and dates, are thine:
+    And while thou eatest, Hassan, there,
+  Shall bathe the heated nostrils of thy mare.
+  II.
+    _Allah il Allah_! Even so
+    An Arab chieftain treats a foe:
+    Holds him as one without a fault,
+    Who breaks his bread and tastes his salt;
+    And, in fair battle, strikes him dead
+  With the same pleasure that he gives him bread!
+
+
+
+ELIZABETH SARA SHEPPARD
+
+You ask from me some particulars of the valued life so recently closed.
+Miss Sheppard was my friend of many years; I was with her to the last
+hour of her existence; but this is not the time for other than a brief
+notice of her career, and I comply with your request by sending you a
+slight memorial, hardly full enough for publication.
+
+Elizabeth Sara Sheppard, the authoress of "Charles Auchester,"
+"Counterparts," etc., was born at Blackheath, in England. Her father was
+a clergyman of unusual scholastic attainments, and took high honors at
+St. John's College, Oxford. Mr. Sheppard, on the mother's side, could
+number Hebrew ancestors, and this was the pride of his second daughter,
+the subject of this notice. Her love for the whole Hebrew race amounted
+to a passion, which found its expression in the romance of "Charles
+Auchester."
+
+Very early she displayed a most decided poetic predisposition,--writing,
+when but ten years old, with surprising facility on every possible
+subject. No metre had any difficulties for her, and no theme seemed dull
+to her vivid intelligence,--her fancy being roused to action in a
+moment, by the barest hint given either by Nature or Art. Her first
+drama was written at this early age; it was called "Boadicea," and was
+composed immediately after she had been shown a field at Islington where
+this queen is said to have pitched her tent. Any one who asked was
+welcome to "some verses by 'Little Lizzie,'" written in her peculiar and
+fairy-like hand, (for when very young, her writing was remarkable for
+its extreme smallness and finish.) given with childlike simplicity, and
+artless ignorance of the worth of what she bestowed with a kiss and a
+smile.
+
+Her poems were composed at once, with scarcely a correction. Her earlier
+ones, for the most part, were written at the corner of a large table,
+covered with the usual heaps of "after-lessons," in a school-room, where
+some twenty enfranchised girls were putting away copybooks, French
+grammars, etc., and getting out play-boxes and fancy-work, with the
+common amount of chatter and noise. Contrasted with such young persons,
+this child looked a strange, unearthly creature,--her large, dark gray
+eye full of inspiration, and every movement of her frame and tone of her
+voice instinct with delicate energy.
+
+At the same age she would extemporize for hours on the organ, after
+wreathing the candlesticks with garden-flowers which she had brought in
+her hand,--their scent, she would say, suggesting the wild, sweet
+fancies which her fingers seemed able to call forth on the shortest
+notice. Persons straying into the church, as they often did, attracted
+by the sound of music, would declare the performer to be an experienced
+masculine musician.
+
+When but a year older, she was an excellent Latin scholar, and, to use
+her father's words, she might then have "gone in for honors at Oxford."
+French she spoke and wrote fluently, besides reading Goethe and Schiller
+with avidity, and translating as fast as she read,--Schiller having
+always the preference. At fourteen she began the study of Hebrew, of
+which language she was a worshipper, and could not at that early age
+even let Greek alone. Her wonderful power of seizing on the genius of a
+language, and becoming for the time a foreigner in spirit, was noticed
+by all her teachers; her ear was so delicate that no subtile inflection
+ever escaped her, nor any idiom.
+
+And now she surprised her most intimate friend by the present of a prose
+story, sent to her, when absent, in chapters by the post. This was
+succeeded by many other tales, and finally by "Charles Auchester,"
+--which romance, as well as that of "Counterparts," was written
+in the few hours she could command after her teaching was over:
+for in her mother's school she taught music the greater part of every
+day,--both theoretically and practically,--and also Latin.
+
+Her health, always delicate, suffered wofully from this constant strain,
+and caused her to experience the most painful exhaustion, which,
+however, she never permitted to be an excuse for shirking an occupation
+naturally distasteful to her,--and doubly so, that through all the din
+of practice her thousand fancies clamored like caged birds eager for
+liberty.
+
+The moment her hour of leisure came, she would hide herself with her
+best loved work in the quietest corner she could find; sometimes it was
+a little room in-doors, sometimes the summer-house, sometimes under a
+large mulberry-tree; and thus "Charles Auchester" and "Counterparts"
+were written, the former without one correction,--sheet after sheet,
+flung from her hand in the ardor of composition, being picked up and
+read by the friend who was in all her literary secrets. At last this
+same friend, finding she had no thought of publication, in a moment of
+playful daring, persuaded her to send the manuscript to Benjamin
+Disraeli, and he introduced it to his publishers. I quote from his
+letter to the author, which may not be out of place here:--
+
+"No greater book will ever be written upon music, and it will one day be
+recognized as the imaginative classic of that divine art."
+
+"Counterparts" and other tales soon followed. And about the same date
+she presented, anonymously, a volume of stories to the young daughter of
+Mr. John Hullah, of "Part Music" celebrity. They were in manuscript
+printing, (if such a term may be used,) written by her own hand, and
+remarkable for their curious beauty. The heading of each story was
+picked out in black and gold. The stories are named "Adelaide's Dream,"
+"Little Wonder, or, The Children's Fairy," "The Bird of Paradise,"
+"Sprömkari," (from a Scandinavian legend,) "The First Concert," "The
+Concert in the Hollow Tree," "Uncle, or, Which is the Prettiest?"
+"Little Ernest," "The Nautilus Voyage." These stories are illustrated,
+and have a lovely dedication to the little lady for whom they were
+written.
+
+The author had attended the "Upper Singing-Schools" for the sake of more
+musical experience. Yet she then sang at sight perfectly, with any
+number of voices. She has left three published songs, dedicated to the
+Marchioness of Hastings, and a large number of manuscript poems.
+
+Her character was in perfect keeping with the high tone of her books.
+Noble, generous, and self-forgetting, tender and most faithful in
+friendship, burning with indignation at injustice shown to another,
+longing to find virtues instead of digging for faults,--her greatest
+suffering arose from pained surprise, when persons proved themselves
+less noble than she had deemed them.
+
+Her rich imagination and slender purse were open to all beggars, but for
+herself she asked nothing, and was constantly a willing sufferer from
+her own inability to toady a patron or to make a good bargain with a
+publisher.
+
+She felt most warmly for her friends in America, whose comprehension of
+her views, and honest, open appreciation of her books, inspired her with
+an ardent desire to write for them a romance in her very best manner.
+She had sketched two, and, doubtful which to proceed with first,
+contemplated sending both to an American friend for his decision; but
+constant suffering stayed her hand.
+
+In the early spring she grew weaker day by day, and died on the 13th of
+March, at Brixton, in England, at the age of thirty-two.
+
+Those who loved either her person or her works will find her place
+forever empty.
+
+Among her manuscript papers I found this sketch, which has a peculiar
+significance now that the writer has passed away. It has never been
+printed.
+
+A NICHE IN THE HEART.
+
+I had been wandering, almost all day, in the cathedral of a town at some
+distance from London. I had sketched its carved pulpit, one or two
+cherub faces looking down from its columns, some of its best reliefs,
+and its oldest monument. It was evening, and I could no longer see to
+draw, though pencillings of light still fell on the pavement through the
+larger windows, whose colors were softened like those of the lunar
+rainbow; and still the edges of the stalls were gilded with the last
+gleams of sunset, though the seats were filled already with those
+phantoms which twilight seems to create in such a place. The monuments
+looked calmer and less formal than when daylight bared all their defects
+of design or finish; they seemed now worthy of their position beneath
+the vaulted roof, and even, adjuncts themselves to the harmony of the
+architecture. One among them, noticeable in the daytime for its refined
+workmanship, now gleamed out fresher and whiter than the rest, as was
+natural, for it had been placed there but a little while; but it had
+besides more _expression_, in its very simplicity, than such-like
+mementos of stone or marble usually contain. This was the memento of a
+husband's regret, and, as such, touching, however vain: a delicate form
+drooping on a bier, at whose head stood an angel, with an infant in his
+arms, which he raised to heaven with an air of triumph; while at the
+foot of the death-bed a figure knelt, in all the relaxed abandonment of
+woe. Marvellously, and out of small means, the chisel had conveyed this
+impression; for the kneeling figure was mantled from head to foot, and
+had its face hidden in the folds of the drapery which skirted the
+bier,--veiled, like the face of the tortured father in the old tragic
+tale.
+
+While I gazed, I insensibly approached the still group; and while musing
+what manner of grief it might be, which could solace by perpetuating its
+mere image, I observed two other persons, whose entrance I had not been
+aware of, but whose attention was evidently directed to what had
+attracted mine. They were a lady and a gentleman, and the latter seemed
+actually supporting the former, who leaned heavily upon his arm, as it
+appeared from her manner of carriage, so weakly and wearily she stood.
+Her form was extremely slight, and the outline of her countenance sharp
+from attenuation, and in that uncertain light, or rather shade, she
+looked almost as pale as the carved faces before us. The gentleman, who
+was of a stately height, bent over her with an anxious air, while she
+gazed fixedly upon the monument. Her silence seemed to oppress him, for
+after a minute or two he asked her whether it was not very beautiful.
+"You know," she answered, in one of those low voices that are more
+impressive than the loudest, "You know I always suspect those memorials.
+I would rather have a niche in the heart."
+
+They passed on, and left me standing there. I know not whether the
+fragile speaker has earned the monument she desired, whether those
+feeble footsteps have found their repose,--"a quiet conscience in a
+quiet breast,"--but her words struck me, and I have often thought of
+them since.
+
+There is always something which seems less than the intention in a
+monument to heroism or to goodness, the patriot of the country, or the
+missionary of civilization. Every one feels that the graves of War, the
+many in the one, where link is welded to link in the chain of glory, are
+more sublime, more sacred, than the exceptional mausoleum. Every one has
+been struck with repugnant melancholy in the city church-yard, where
+tomb presses against tomb, and multitude in death destroys identity,
+saving where the little greatness of wealth or rank may provide itself a
+separate railing or an overtopping urn. Even in the more suggestive
+solitude of the country, one cannot but contrast the few hillocks here
+and there carefully weeded, and their trained and tended rose-bushes,
+with the many more neglected and sunken, whose distained stones the
+brier-tangle half conceals, and whose forget-me-nots have long since
+died for want of water. One may even muse unprofitably (despite the
+moralist) in our picturesque cemeteries, and as unprofitably in those
+abroad, with their crowds of crosses and monotony of immortal wreaths.
+In fact, whether on grounds philosophical or religious, it is not good
+to brood on mortality for itself alone; better rather to recall the
+living past, and in the living present prepare for the perfect future.
+
+None die to be forgotten who deserve to be remembered. Even the fame for
+which some are ardent to sacrifice their lives, enjoyed early at that
+crisis of existence we call _success_, will in most cases change the
+desire for renown into a necessity, and stimulate the mind to the lowest
+motive but one, ambition,--possibly, to emulation, the lowest of all.
+Fame is valuable simply as the test of excellence; and there is a
+certain kind of popularity, sudden alike in its rise and subsidency,
+which deserves not the other and lasting name, for it fails to soothe
+that intellectual conscience which a great writer has declared to exist
+equally with the moral conscience. After all, it is a question whether
+fame is as precious to the celebrated during their lifetime as it is to
+those who love them, or who are attached to them by interest.
+
+There are persons who die and are forgotten, when their exit from the
+stage of human affairs is a source of advantage to their survivors.
+Witness those possessed of large fortunes, which they have it in their
+power to bequeath, and over whose dwellings of mortality vigilant
+relations hover like the carrion-fowl above the dying battle-steed. I
+remember a good story to this effect, in which a lady and gentleman took
+a grateful vow to pic-nic annually, on the anniversary of his death, at
+the tomb of a relation who had greatly enriched them. They did so,
+actually, _once_; succeeding years saw them no more at the solemn tryst.
+
+Even as to those who have excelled in art, or portrayed in language the
+imaginative side of life, it may be that their works abide and they not
+be recognized in them, that their words may be echoed in many tongues
+while the writer is put out of the question almost as entirely as he who
+carved the first hieroglyph on the archaic stone. It will ever be found,
+whether in works or words, that what touches the heart rather than what
+strikes the fancy, what draws the tear rather than excites the smile,
+will embalm the memory of the man of genius. But of all posthumous
+distinctions the noblest is that awarded to the philanthropist; even the
+meed of the man of science, which consists in the complete working of
+some great discovery skilfully applied, falls short of the reward of
+those who have contributed their utmost to the physical improvement and
+social elevation of man,--from the munificent endowment whose benefits
+increase and multiply in each succeeding generation, to the smallest
+seed of charity scattered by the frailest hand, as sure as the strong to
+gather together at the harvest its countless sheaves. To fill a niche in
+a heart, or a niche in each of a thousand hearts,--_either_ a holier
+place than that of the poet, who lives in the imagination he renders
+restless, or that of the hero, who renders the mind more restless still
+for his suggestion of the glory which may surround a name, a glory
+rather to be dreaded than desired,--too often, in such cases, must evil
+be done or tolerated that good may be brought forth.
+
+Then there is consolation for those not gifted either with worldly means
+or powers of mind or healthful daring. Some will ever remember and
+regret the man or woman who carries true feeling into the affairs of
+life, important or minute: gentle courtesies, heart-warm words, delicate
+regards,--as surely part of consummate charity as the drop is a portion
+of the deep whose fountains it helps to fill. Precious, too, is
+self-denial, not austerely invoked from conscience by the voice of duty,
+but welling from the heart as a natural and necessary return for all it
+owes to a Power it cannot reward. It has been said, that, to be
+respected in old age, one should be kind to _little children_ all one's
+life. May we not, therefore, show just such helpful tenderness to the
+childlike or appealing weakness of every person with whom we have to
+do?--for few hearts, alas! have not a weak string. Then no burden shall
+be left to the last hour, except that of mortality, of which time itself
+relieves us kindly,--nor shall we have an account to settle with the
+future to which it consigns the faithful.
+
+
+
+RESOURCES OF THE SOUTH.
+
+In the spring of 1860, a passenger left Massachusetts for the sunny
+South. As he passed slowly down to the Battery to embark from New York,
+the sun shone brightly on acres of drays awaiting their turn to approach
+the Southern steamers. Some of them had waited patiently from early morn
+for an opportunity to discharge, and it was a current rumor that twenty
+dollars had been paid for a chance to reach the steamers. The previous
+season had been a good one, and Cotton wore its robes of royalty.
+Southern credit stood at the highest point, while the West was out of
+favor; and doubtless many of the keen traders of the South, having some
+inkling of coming events, were preparing for future emergencies.
+
+In the spring of 1860, the South was literally overrun with goods. Some
+sixteen powerful steamers were running between Savannah and New York; an
+equal number were on the line to Charleston; steamers and flat-boats in
+countless numbers were bearing down the Mississippi their tribute of
+flour, lard, and corn. The Northern and Western merchants were counting
+down their money for rice, cotton, and sugar, and giving long credits on
+the produce of the North and West.
+
+Before hostilities began, the South was allowed to supply itself freely
+with powder and arms, and for months after they had begun, large
+supplies of fire-arms were drawn through Kentucky. Down to a recent
+period the South has continued to receive supplies from Missouri,
+Virginia, and Tennessee. With these resources, and with a capital drawn
+from a debt of two hundred millions to the North and West, it has been
+able to support, for the first fifteen months at least, three hundred
+thousand men in the field, and successfully to resist, in some cases,
+the advance of the Federal Army. While these resources lasted, while the
+blockade was ineffective, while the Confederacy could produce men to
+replace all who fell, while a paper currency and scrip could be floated,
+and while the nation hesitated to put forth its strength, the South was
+able to maintain a strong front, although driven successively from
+Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, Western Virginia, and Tennessee, and thus
+deprived of nearly half the population and resources on which it
+originally relied.
+
+The enlarged canal of New York, and the great railways which furnish
+direct routes from the West to the Atlantic, have of late years diverted
+from the Father of Waters a very large proportion of the exports of the
+West, but the steamers and flat-boats which floated down the Mississippi
+literally fed the Cotton States. Laden with corn, flour, and lard, with
+ploughs, glass, and nails, with horses and mules, and live stock of
+every description, they distributed their cargoes from Memphis to New
+Orleans, and came back freighted with sugar and cotton.
+
+At length this great commerce has been interrupted, and the South, cut
+off from this almost indispensable supply of the necessaries of life, is
+now struggling for existence, and diverts its negroes from the
+remunerative culture of sugar and cotton to the cultivation of grain and
+corn.
+
+There are few at the North who appreciate the sacrifice which attends
+this diversion, or the extent of the pressure which led to this
+disastrous change.
+
+In Illinois, Iowa, or Indiana, the farmer can grow rich while selling
+his corn for ten cents per bushel, and it is now common for a man and a
+boy to cultivate a hundred acres and to gather five thousand bushels in
+a single season. The South does not possess the rich and exhaustless
+soil of the prairies, which for half a century will yield without return
+successive and luxuriant crops of corn. Its soil is generally light and
+easily exhausted, and is tilled by the rude and unwilling labor of the
+slave. The census apprises us that its average crop of corn is but
+fifteen bushels to the acre, in place of fifty to sixty in Illinois, and
+even this depends in part on guano or artificial stimulants. The average
+yield of wheat south of Tennessee is but six bushels to the acre, in
+place of twenty to forty in Ohio. The Southern planters, who can sell
+cotton with profit at ten cents per pound, cannot produce corn for less
+than one dollar per bushel, or tenfold the cost in the West, and in past
+years a dollar has been the customary price from North Carolina to
+Texas.
+
+Before the war, the cotton-crop of the South had risen to five millions
+of bales; but now four-fifths of the land in cultivation is devoted to
+corn and grain. In place of five millions of bales, worth at former
+prices two hundred millions of dollars, and at present rates at least
+eight hundred millions, the South, in its folly, to the injury of the
+world, and the ruin of most of its planters, is now producing, in place
+of its cotton, less corn than could be furnished in Illinois in ordinary
+seasons for twenty millions of dollars. But even this is inadequate to
+the wants of its people and its stock. Its small farmers are diverted
+from the cultivation of the soil. The conscript-law is drafting all the
+able-bodied white men into the army.
+
+The States from Tennessee and North Carolina to Texas have neither
+pasture nor mowing; their feeble stock gains but a precarious livelihood
+from the cane-brakes or weeds of the forests and Northern hay. Corn and
+grain were transported by railway more than three hundred miles into the
+interior. The writer has stood beside a yoke of Georgia oxen in Atlanta
+so small that they might well pass for calves at the North. Two Illinois
+steers would weigh down a half-dozen such animals. But, diminutive as
+they are, they, as well as the people of the South, require Northern
+supplies. And at this moment their last dependence is placed upon the
+valley of Virginia and the valleys of East Tennessee. Let us hope that
+the Union armies which now possess Nashville, Memphis, and Cumberland
+Gap may soon occupy Knoxville.
+
+In the language of the "Richmond Examiner," "the possession of the lead,
+copper, and salt mines, and the pork, corn, and hay-crop of these
+countries, Eastern Tennessee and Western Virginia, is now vital to the
+existence of the Confederacy. This section of the country is the
+keystone of the Southern arch. It is now in great peril, as is the great
+artery through which the life-blood of the South now circulates. Whether
+the East Tennessee and Virginia railroad is to be surrendered, whether
+the only adequate supply of salt is to be lost, whether the only
+hay-crop of the South is to be surrendered, are questions of vast and
+pressing importance."
+
+The wall of fire to which allusion has sometimes been made in debate is
+now closing in around the Southern Confederacy. The Mississippi is
+closed. But a single point of contact, at Vicksburg, remains between the
+States west of the Mississippi and the Atlantic States. Texas is
+insulated. The blockade is daily becoming more stringent upon the
+seaboard. One effort more, soon to be made, must sever the rich valleys,
+mines, and furnaces of Tennessee from the cotton districts, and the
+exhaustion of supplies of every description will soon become more and
+more apparent.
+
+It is undoubtedly true that an occasional cargo escapes the blockade,
+that a few boat-loads of supplies are ferried by treason at the midnight
+hour across the Chesapeake, and sold at extravagant prices; but what
+does this amount to? What a contrast this trade presents to the millions
+of tons which used to reach the South from the Free States and Europe
+before it was crushed by the rebellion! And what a contrast does it
+present to-day to the commerce of the North,--to the barks and
+propellers which float down the Lakes deeply laden with grain,--to the
+weekly exports of New York, (twelve millions for the last three
+weeks,)--to its vast income from duties,--to the ships of the North
+visiting every ocean, earning more freight than for years past, although
+deprived of the carrying-trade of the South, and contending successfully
+with the marine of Great Britain for the supremacy on the ocean! How
+signal has thus far been the failure of the Southern prophecies made
+before the outbreak!
+
+New York, we were told, was dependent on Southern commerce, and was to
+be ruined by the war; there were to be riots in the streets, and its
+palaces were to fall in ruins: but the riots and the ruins are to be
+found only in Southern latitudes.
+
+The manufacturers of Massachusetts were to be broken down: but the
+woollen trade and the shoe-trade have received a new impetus,--are
+highly prosperous; and the cotton-spinners, with more than a year's
+supply of cotton, have by the rise of prices enjoyed a profit
+unprecedented. Having used their cotton with moderation, they have at
+the close of each six months seen their stocks of raw material and
+goods, by the rise of prices, undiminished in value, and blessed like
+the widow's cruse of oil. Nearly all have paid large dividends, many
+have earned dividends for the year to come, and are now sending their
+male operatives to the war, and their females to their rural homes,
+where they expect to perform some of the duties of brothers who have
+volunteered for the war. The ruin predicted falls not upon the spinner,
+but upon the authors of Secession.
+
+Let us glance for a moment at the present condition of the South.
+General Butler found at New Orleans proof of its exhaustion in the
+prices of food,--with corn, for instance, at three dollars per bushel,
+flour twenty to thirty dollars per barrel, and hay at one hundred
+dollars per ton.
+
+If we pass on to Mobile, we hear of similar prices, and learn that not a
+carpet can be found on the floor of any resident: they have all been cut
+into blankets for the army. White curtains and drapery have been
+converted into shirts; for cotton cloth cannot be had for a dollar a
+yard.
+
+As we come on toward the North, we find the shops of Savannah nearly
+empty, with shoes and boots quoted at thirty dollars per pair. At such
+rates, what must it cost to put an army in condition to move?
+
+At Charleston, the stores which two years since were overflowing with
+merchandise, and the daily recipients, of entire cargoes, are utterly
+empty; and when we reach Richmond, we see sugar quoted at three-fourths
+of a dollar, coffee at two dollars, and tea at sixteen dollars per
+pound, broadcloth at fifty dollars per yard, while whiskey, worth at
+Cincinnati twenty cents per gallon, commands at Richmond six dollars.
+
+Such is the condition of affairs, while the South still has access to
+Virginia and East Tennessee, and after it has received a year's supply
+of Northern productions for which no payment has been made.
+
+
+Having thus pictured the physical resources of the enemy, let us inquire
+what is the force which he can bring into the field, and his means of
+maintaining it.
+
+There is conclusive evidence that at no period during the war has the
+Confederacy had more than three hundred and fifty thousand effective men
+in the field, and it has no power to carry that number beyond four
+hundred thousand. The population of the Union, by the census of 1860,
+was thirty-two millions. At the usual rate of increase it now amounts to
+thirty-four millions; of these, four millions are blacks, and of the
+residue, twenty-six millions are in the loyal districts, and but four
+millions in the Confederacy, if we exclude New Orleans and those
+portions of Virginia and Tennessee which have been subdued by the
+Federal arms.
+
+In our Northern States the militia has rarely exceeded ten per cent. of
+the population. At least one-half of the population is composed of
+females; one-half of the residue is below the age of sixteen. If we
+deduct from the remainder three-twentieths for those below eighteen,
+those above forty-five, and those exempted by law or infirmity,
+one-tenth alone will remain.
+
+It is said that the Confederacy has called out all the white males
+between sixteen and thirty-five, and proposes to summon all those
+between thirty-five and fifty. If it does so, we may well expect such
+forces to break down in heavy marches or suffer from exposure. But let
+us assume that it can bring into the field fourteen per cent. of its
+entire population--(and we must not forget that this is a high estimate,
+as all the able-bodied men of Massachusetts are but twelve per cent. of
+her population, or one hundred and fifty-five thousand): upon this
+assumption, the effective force of the Confederacy at the start was but
+five hundred and sixty thousand, and if to this we add forty thousand
+more for volunteers and conscripts from Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky,
+and East Tennessee, we have a capacity for six hundred thousand only. Of
+these there has been a continual waste from the outset by sickness,
+desertions, capture, and the casualties of war. The Union army has lost
+at least one-third, and been reduced from six hundred thousand to four
+hundred thousand by such depletion; and in the same ratio, the South,
+with inferior supplies and stores, and with greater exposure, must have
+lost at least an equal number.
+
+In estimating its present capacity at four hundred thousand men, we
+undoubtedly exceed the actual resources of the South. To meet this we
+have at least four hundred thousand effective men now in the field, to
+be increased to a million by the new levies, and soon to be aided by
+thirty mail-clad steamers added to our present fleet on the ocean and
+the Mississippi,--a naval force equivalent to at least two hundred
+thousand more.
+
+To sustain such forces in the field and on the water will doubtless tax
+all the energies of the Union; but how is the inferior force of four
+hundred thousand to be clad, fed, and paid by the exhausted Confederacy,
+with a white population less than one-sixth of that opposed to them,
+without commerce and the mechanic arts, and with no productive
+agriculture?
+
+The pecuniary resources of the South for carrying on this war have thus
+far consisted principally of a paper currency and bonds, with a forced
+circulation. It has drawn little from taxes or forfeiture, although it
+has been aided by the appropriation of both public and private property
+of the United States.
+
+We have no record of the currency issued, but we know that both prices
+and pay have been higher in Southern than in Northern armies; and if
+with us it has cost a thousand dollars per annum to sustain a soldier in
+the field, it has cost at that rate four hundred and sixty-seven
+millions to maintain three hundred and fifty thousand men for the last
+sixteen months in the Southern army, and of this at least four hundred
+millions has been met by the issue of paper.
+
+Such an issue would be equivalent to an issue of seven times that
+amount, or of twenty-eight hundred millions, to be borne by the whites
+who now recognize the Union. How long can the South continue to float
+such a currency? Does it not already equal or exceed the paper currency
+of our Revolution, which became utterly worthless, notwithstanding our
+nation achieved its independence?
+
+Our fathers, long before the surrender at Yorktown, resorted to specie,
+to the bank of Morris, and to French and Dutch subsidies: but how is the
+South to command bank-notes or specie, or to buy arms, powder, or
+provisions, or to satisfy soldiers with a currency such as has been
+described, or to make new issues at the rate of twenty-five millions per
+month?
+
+At Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, gold ranges from 125 to 150
+per cent. premium. Must not this advance require a double or triple
+issue of currency, namely, fifty to seventy-five millions per month, to
+accomplish as much as has already been effected? And how as has already
+been effected? and how long can such a currency be floated within a
+contracting circle, and in the face of our new levies and our unbounded
+national credit? If the war should last another year, and this
+depreciating currency can be floated at all, it is safe to infer from
+the history of the past that the debt of the South must increase at
+least one thousand millions. Under the pressure of such growing weight
+its end may be safely predicted.
+
+Thus far in the contest the South has possessed one great advantage. The
+planter's son, reared to no profession, in a region where the pursuits
+of trade and the mechanic arts have little honor, has been accustomed
+from childhood to the use of the horse and rifle. In most of the towns
+of the South you will find a military academy, and here the young cadet
+has been trained to arms and qualified for office: we have no such class
+in the Free States, except a few graduates from West Point. Under such
+officers, a motley army has been collected, composed of foreigners who
+have toiled in Southern cities as draymen and porters, of Northern
+clerks driven by coercion or sheer necessity to enlist, the poor whites,
+the outcasts of the South, a class the most degraded in public
+estimate,--a class which has the respect of neither the white man nor
+the negro. These people inhabit to a great extent the scrub-oak or
+black-jack forests, the second growth which has sprung up on exhausted
+plantations. Destitute of schools, churches, and newspapers, unable to
+read or write, without culture, generally steeped in whiskey, their sole
+property a cabin, and perhaps a few swine, which roam through the
+forests, these Pariahs of society gain a precarious subsistence by
+hunting, fishing, and occasional depredations upon the property of the
+planters. During a brief visit to Columbia, in 1860, one of these
+outcasts was arraigned before the Court of Sessions for stealing
+black-jack from a plantation and selling it in the streets of Columbia;
+and the judge in his flowing robes, while enlarging upon the offence,
+facetiously remarked, that the prisoner had doubtless swallowed the
+black-jack,--an allusion to the habits of the class which seemed well
+understood by the bar.
+
+The position of this class has thus far been improved by the war. In the
+army the poor white has associated with the officer, far above him in
+social life. His aid has been courted, he has received high wages in
+Confederate notes, he has found better fare and clothing than he could
+procure at home, and has been lured to the contest by the eloquent
+appeals of the planter, by bitter attacks upon the North, and glowing
+pictures of the ruin which the abolitionists would bring upon the South.
+The Confederate notes have until recently proved sufficient for his
+purposes, while other classes have supplied the means to prosecute the
+war. But as the circle contracts and these notes prove worthless, food
+and clothing, tobacco and whiskey will cease to be attainable; and when
+the provost marshal has swept the plantation, and comes to the poor
+man's cabin to take his last bushel of meal and to shoot down his swine
+for the subsistence of the army, he will at length ask what he has to
+gain from the further prosecution of the war.
+
+When this crisis arrives, and it must be approaching, how can the
+Southern army retain in its ranks either the poor white, the foreigner,
+or the Northern clerk, whose sympathies have never been with the
+Confederacy?
+
+It may be said, that the Confederacy can continue the war by wealth
+accumulated in former years. But that wealth vested in land, slaves, or
+railways, now unproductive, or in banks whose funds have been advanced
+to planters still under protest. This wealth will not suffice to
+prosecute the war. Thus far it has been sustained by funds on hand, the
+seizure of national forts, arms, and arsenals, by the appropriation of
+debts due to Northern merchants, by supplies from Kentucky, Tennessee,
+and Missouri, and by the issue of paper already greatly depreciated.
+With these resources it has conducted a losing warfare while we were
+creating an army and a navy, and during this contest has lost three of
+the most important border States, nearly half of a fourth, several of
+its chief seaports, nearly all its shipping, and the navigation of the
+Mississippi.
+
+But it may be urged, Has not McClellan retired from his intrenchments
+before Richmond? Have we not fought with varying results successive
+battles around Manassas? Are not our troops retiring to their old lines
+before Washington? Have not the enemy again broken into Kentucky? and do
+they not menace the banks of the Potomac and the Ohio? Let us concede
+all this. Let us admit that our new levies are for the moment
+inert,--that we are now marshalling, arming, and drilling our raw
+recruits; let us concede that the giant of the North has not yet put
+forth his energies,--that, although roused from his torpor, one of his
+arms is still benumbed, and that his lithe and active opponent is for
+the moment pommelling him on every side, and has a momentary advantage;
+let us admit that our go-ahead nation is indignant at the idea of one
+step backward in this great contest: still it is safe to predict that
+within sixty days our new army of superior men will be ready to take the
+field and advance upon the foe in overwhelming force,--that soon our
+iron fleet will be ready to batter down the fortresses of Charleston,
+Savannah, Mobile, Vicksburg, and Galveston, the last strongholds of the
+enemy. And when his army of conscripts shall have wasted away, after
+their last flurry and struggle, where is he to recruit or procure a new
+army for resistance or offence? The South is now taking the field with
+all its strength; but when that strength is broken, what power will
+remain to confront the forces of the Union?
+
+The South has driven to the war its whole white population able to bear
+arms, and when that force is exhausted, at least two-thirds of the adult
+males of the North and the whole black population will still remain to
+sustain the Government, and births and emigration will soon fill the
+vacuum.
+
+Let us place at the helm men of character and tried activity,--men of
+intelligence and forecast,--men who can appreciate the leaders of the
+South, reckless alike of property, character, and life, and the result
+cannot be doubtful.
+
+The South is now commencing a new campaign, and is to confront a navy
+hourly improving, and an invulnerable fleet, armed with cannon more
+effective than any yet used in naval warfare. It is to encounter, with
+conscripts, a million of hardy volunteers, and to do this with its
+supplies reduced and its credit broken. It has but one reliance: a slave
+population of four millions, competent to maintain themselves, but
+incompetent to furnish to their masters a full supply of the coarsest
+food. While it furnishes a scanty supply, while it toils in the
+trenches, and feeds the horses of the cavalry, or drives the
+army-wagons, it is still an element of strength to the masters, and the
+question occurs, Shall the nation, now so severely taxed by the
+slaveholder, and compelled to pour forth its best blood like water to
+preserve its existence, remove this element of present and future
+strength by liberating the slave?
+
+Can the slaveholder claim the preservation of slavery, when he relies
+upon it and uses it to aid him in destroying the Government? And if
+one-half of the population of the South is ready to sustain the
+Government, and to withdraw its aid from the foe, shall not the
+loyalist, whether white or black, be accepted and allowed the privileges
+of a citizen when he takes refuge under the national flag?
+
+Can we expect future peace, unless we reduce to order lawless men,
+unless we draw them from the war-path by making labor and the arts of
+peace respected?
+
+This is a momentous question which addresses itself to our nation at the
+present juncture. There are some who imagine that the negro, if
+liberated, would renew the scenes of San Domingo, and massacre the
+people of the South. But such has not been the case in the French and
+British Isles of the West Indies, although in those islands the
+proportion of the white population is far below that at the South. In
+the Cotton States the whites and the negroes are nearly equal in
+numbers; and if, in Jamaica, Barbadoes, Santa Cruz, and Martinique, the
+slaves, when liberated, have respected the rights of the masters, and
+recognized their title to the land, and have submitted to toil for
+moderate wages, where a handful of whites monopolized the soil, and
+demanded for it prices far beyond the value of the slave and land
+together, may we not well anticipate that the slave population, barely
+equal in number to the white population, trained to submission in a
+region where land is of little value, will, if liberated, continue to be
+a quiet and peaceful population?
+
+There are some who predict that the negroes, if emancipated, will
+overrun the North and West. But why should they fly from the South to
+the cold winters and less genial climate of the North or West? It is
+servitude which degrades the negro; and if the stigma which he now bears
+is removed, why should he not cling to the region in which he was born
+and bred, and to which he is adapted by nature?
+
+Should the institution of slavery survive the war into which we have
+been plunged by its adherents and propagators, we might well fear that
+our Northern and Western States would be overrun by the fugitives, who,
+having escaped during the war, would be disposed to place distance
+between themselves and their late masters, and to fly from the borders
+of States which would not hesitate to reduce them again to servitude;
+but if the institution itself should be terminated by the war, why
+should the free man be a fugitive from his home?
+
+Our Western States are desirous to perpetuate in its purity the
+Anglo-Saxon blood, and would colonize the West with men raised under
+free institutions. They shrink from all contact with a race of bondmen.
+Our President, himself a Western man, proposes to colonize the free
+negro in Central America, and thriving colonies already exist on the
+coast of Africa. But why should we send from this country her millions
+of laborers? Is our land exhausted? Is there no room for the negro in
+the region where he lives? Has not the demand for sugar and cotton, for
+naval stores and timber, overtaken the supply? and has not the frank and
+truthful Mr. Spratt, of South Carolina, announced in the councils of
+that State, that the South must import more savages from Africa, to
+reclaim and improve its soil? Why, then, banish the well-trained laborer
+now on the spot?
+
+Does not history apprise us how Spain suffered in her agriculture, and
+the arts of life declined, when the Moriscos were driven from her soil?
+how Belgium, the garden of Europe, decayed when Spanish intolerance
+banished to England the Protestant weavers and spinners, who laid the
+foundation of English opulence? how France retrograded when superstition
+exiled from her shores the industrious Huguenots? And are we to draw no
+light from history? Would we, at this moment, when our cotton-mills are
+closing their gates,--when the cotton-spinner of England appeals to the
+British minister for intervention,--when the weaver of Rouen demands the
+raw material of Louis Napoleon,--shall we, at a time when a single crop
+of cotton is worth, at current prices, nearly a thousand millions, or
+twice the debt contracted for the war,--impair our national strength by
+destroying the sources of supply? At least one crop has been lost, and
+this will for a term of years insure high prices. Are we to deprive our
+nation of these prices, and of the freights which would attend the
+shipments to Europe? Shall not cotton contribute to make good our
+losses, and to the progress of the nation?
+
+Why is colonization necessary?
+
+There is a belt of territory, now sparsely populated, and inhabited
+chiefly by negroes, extending from the Dismal Swamp to the Capes of
+Florida, and from these Capes to the Brazos,--generally level, and free
+from rocks and stones,--of the average width of nearly one hundred
+miles,--its area at least two hundred millions of acres,--competent to
+sustain forty millions of negroes, or ten times the number which now
+exist within the United States. Here are vast forests, unctuous with
+turpentine, annually producing pitch, tar, rosin, and ship-timber, with
+material for houses, boats, fuel, and lightwood, while the mossy drapery
+of the trees in suitable for pillows and cushions. Here is a soil which,
+with proper cultivation, can produce rice, corn, cotton, tobacco, and
+indigo, and is admirably adapted to the culture of the ground-nut and
+sweet potato. Here are rivers and inlets abounding in fish and
+shell-fish. Here is a climate, often fatal to the white, but suited to
+the negro. Here are no harsh winters or chilling snows. Along the coast
+we may rear black seamen for our Southern steamers,--cooks, stewards,
+and mariners for our West India voyages.
+
+Has not Nature designed a black fringe for this coast? Has not the
+importation of the negro been designed by Providence to reclaim this
+coast, and to give his progeny permanent and appropriate homes? And, to
+use a favorite phrase of the South, does not Manifest Destiny point to
+this consummation? and why should the negro be exiled from these shores?
+Does he not cling like the white man to his native land? and are not his
+tastes, wishes, and attachments to be consulted,--a question so
+important to his race?
+
+But it may be urged, that this is not public domain,--that it has been
+already appropriated, and is now the property of the Southern planter.
+But here is a public exigency, and the remedy should be proportioned to
+the exigency. The right of eminent domain should be exercised by the
+nation either directly after conquest, or through the States or
+Territories it may establish. By that right, in England and in most of
+our States, private property is taken for highways or railways. In New
+York it is thus appropriated for markets, hospitals, and other public
+purposes.
+
+The land in question, if we deduct the sites of towns and villages and
+cities, as should be done, will not average in value three dollars per
+acre. Let it be valued at twice that price, and be charged with the
+interest of that price as a ground-rent to be paid by the settler. And
+if, in Barbadoes, the free negro has raised the value of land to three
+hundred dollars per acre, surely on this coast he can prosper upon land
+costing one-fiftieth part of the average price of that of Barbadoes.
+
+If six dollars would not suffice, the land might be rated at an average
+value of ten dollars, and the settler charged with a quit-rent of half a
+dollar per acre, and allowed to convert his tenure into a fee-simple by
+the payment of the principal. The planter whose land should be
+appropriated would thus realize more than its value, and in great part
+the value of his slaves,--while the negro would secure at once a settled
+home, with an interest in the soil and the means of subsistence.
+
+Is not this the true solution of the great problem?
+
+If we can give to the negro a fixed tenure in the soil under the
+tutelage of the nation, he will soon have every incentive to exertion.
+With peace must come a continuous demand for all the produce of the
+South,--for cotton, tobacco, timber, and naval stores,--in exchange for
+which the negro would require at least threefold the amount of boots,
+shoes, clothing, and utensils which he at present consumes. Labor would
+then become honored and respected. Upon the uplands of the South the
+white man can toil effectively in the open air. In the warehouse and the
+workshop he can actually toil more hours during the year than in New
+York or New England, for his fingers will not there be benumbed by the
+intense cold of the North. When labor ceases to be degrading, the
+military school will give place to the academy, commerce will be
+honored, and a check be given to military aspirations; and should an
+insurrection again occur, the loyal population bordering the coast may
+be armed to resist alike insurrection at home and intervention from
+abroad, and unite with our navy in preserving the peace of the country.
+
+
+
+THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862.
+
+  The flags of war like storm-birds fly,
+    The charging trumpets blow;
+  Yet rolls no thunder in the sky,
+    No earthquake strives below.
+
+  And, calm and patient, Nature keeps
+    Her ancient promise well,
+  Though o'er her bloom and greenness sweeps
+    The battle's breath of hell.
+
+  And still she walks in golden hours
+    Through harvest-happy farms,
+  And still she wears her fruits and flowers
+    Like jewels on her arms.
+
+  What mean the gladness of the plain,
+    This joy of eve and morn,
+  The mirth that shakes the beard of grain
+    And yellow locks of corn?
+
+  Ah! eyes may well be full of tears,
+    And hearts with hate are hot;
+  But even-paced come round the years,
+    And Nature changes not.
+
+  She meets with smiles our bitter grief,
+    With songs our groans of pain;
+  She mocks with tint of flower and leaf
+    The war-field's crimson stain.
+
+  Still, in the cannon's pause, we hear
+    Her sweet thanksgiving-psalm;
+  Too near to God for doubt or fear,
+    She shares the eternal calm
+
+  She knows the seed lies safe below
+    The fires that blast and burn;
+  For all the tears of blood we sow
+    She waits the rich return.
+
+  She sees with clearer eye than ours
+    The good of suffering born,--
+  The hearts that blossom like her flowers
+    And ripen like her corn.
+
+  Oh, give to us, in times like these,
+    The vision of her eyes;
+  And make her fields and fruited trees
+    Our golden prophecies!
+
+  Oh, give to us her finer ear!
+    Above this stormy din,
+  We, too, would hear the bells of cheer
+    Ring peace and freedom in!
+
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+_The Tabernacle_: A Collection of Hymn-Tunes, Chants, Sentences, Motets,
+and Anthems, adapted to Public and Private Worship, and to the Use of
+Choirs, Singing-Schools, Musical Societies, and Conventions. Together
+with a Complete Treatise on the Principles of Musical Notation. By B.F.
+BAKER and W.O. PERKINS. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
+
+This thoroughly prepared book will prove of much service in those
+departments of musical study and practice for which it is intended. The
+style of church-music throughout the country has undergone material
+changes within the last five-and-twenty years. In the cities and larger
+towns, such societies as can afford the expense have established
+quartette choirs of trained vocalists, who deliver the hymns and anthems
+of the service to selections from the music of the great masters, which
+they are expected to render in a manner that shall be satisfactory to a
+taste educated and refined by the instruction of good teachers and the
+public performances of skilful musicians. In the country churches, the
+congregations still unite in the singing; or, where it has been the
+custom for those who could sing to "sit in the seats" and form a chorus
+choir, such custom still obtains. Some notion of city taste, however,
+has gone abroad in the country, and the choirs, although old-fashioned
+in their organization, are not quite content with the psalm-books of old
+time, and are constantly asking for something newer and better. A great
+many volumes have been published in order to supply this want, some of
+which have done good, while, if we say of others that they have done no
+harm, it is as much as they deserve.
+
+A music-book for general use in churches which do not have quartette
+choirs and "classical" music must be prepared with care and good
+judgment. It must contain, of course, certain old standard tunes which
+seem justly destined to live in perpetual favor, and it must surround
+these with clusters of new tunes, which shall be as solid and correct in
+their harmony as the older, while their lightness and fluency of melody
+belong to the present day. There must be anthems and chants, and there
+must be a clear and thorough exposition of the elements of vocal music
+to help on the tyros who aspire to join the choir.
+
+The work of which we are writing answers these requirements well. Its
+editors are practical men; they have not only taught music to city
+pupils, but they have conducted choirs and singing-schools, and have
+discovered the wants of ordinary singers by much experience in normal
+schools and musical conventions.
+
+"The Tabernacle" contains the fruits of their observation and
+experience, and will be found to meet the requirements of many singers
+who have hitherto been unsatisfied. It commences with the rudiments of
+music and a glossary of technical terms, to which is appended a good
+collection of part-songs, especially prepared for social and festival
+occasions. Then follow the hymn-tunes, which are adapted not only to the
+ordinary metres, but also to all the irregular metres which are to be
+found in any collection of hymns which is known to be used in the
+country. Next come the chants and anthems: among these are arrangements
+from Mozart, Beethoven, Chapple, Rossini, (the "Inflammatus" from the
+"Stabat Mater"), Curschmann, (the celebrated trio, "Ti prego,")
+Lambillote, and other standard authors. Indices, remarkably full, and
+prepared upon an ingenious system, by which the metre and rhythm of
+every tune are indicated, conclude the volume.
+
+We are confident that choristers will find "The Tabernacle" to be just
+such a book as they like to use in instructing and leading their choirs,
+and that choirs will consider it to be one of the books from which they
+are best pleased to sing.
+
+_The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events, with Documents,
+Narratives, Illustrative Incidents, Poetry, etc_. Edited by FRANK MOORE,
+Author of "Diary of the American Revolution." New York: G.P. Putnam.
+Charles T. Evans, General Agent.
+
+Three large volumes of this valuable record of the momentous events now
+transpiring on this continent have been published. The maps, diagrams,
+and portraits are excellent in their way. No fuller documentary history
+of the Great Rebellion could be desired; and as every detail is given
+from day-to-day's journals, the "Record" of Mr. Moore must always stand
+a comprehensive and accurate cyclopedia of the War. For the public and
+household library it is a work of sterling interest, for it gathers up
+every important fact connected with the struggle now pending, and
+presents it in a form easy to be examined. It begins as far back as
+December 17, 1860, and the third volume ends with the events of 1861.
+
+
+
+RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS
+
+RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+The Artist's Married Life; being that of Albert Dürer. Translated from
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+with Memoir. New York. James Miller. 16mo. pp. xxviii., 204. 88 cts.
+
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+296. $1.00.
+
+Sister Rose; or, The Ominous Marriage. By Wilkie Collins. Philadelphia.
+T.B. Peterson & Brothers. 8vo. paper, pp 65. 25 cts.
+
+Rifle-Shots at Past and Passing Events. A Poem in Three Cantos. Being
+Hits at Time on the Wing. By an Inhabitant of the Comet of 1861.
+Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & Brothers. 8vo. paper, pp. 112. 25 cts.
+
+Agnes Stanhope. A Tale of English Life. By Miss Martha Remick. Boston,
+James M. Usher. 12mo. pp. 444. $1.00.
+
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+Philadelphia. T. B. Peterson & Brothers. 8vo. paper, pp. 65. 25 cts.
+
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+T.O.H.P. Burnham. 8vo. paper, pp. 155. 50 cts.
+
+Cursory Thoughts on some Natural Phenomena. Bearing chiefly on the
+Primary Cause of the Succession of New Species, and on the Unity of
+Force. New York. C. Scribner. 8vo. paper, pp. 32. 25 cts.
+
+The Trail-Hunter. A Tale of the Far West. By Gustave Aimard.
+Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & Brothers. 8vo. paper, pp. 175. 50 cts.
+
+The Crisis: its Rationale. By Thomas J. Sizer. Buffalo. Breed, Butler, &
+Co. 8vo. paper, pp. 100. 25 cts.
+
+Footnotes:
+
+1: The original of the leaf copied on the next page was picked from such
+a pile.
+
+2: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p. 498.
+
+3: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p. 499.
+
+4: _Medical Statistics of the United States Army_, 1839-54, p.625.
+
+5: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army.
+
+_6: _Ibid.
+
+_7: _Traité de Géographie et de Statistique Médicales_, Tom. II. p. 289.
+
+8: _Ibid_. p. 286.
+
+9: _Traité de Géographie et de Statistique Médicales_, Tom. II. p. 284.
+
+10: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_.
+
+11: Medical Statistics U.S. Army, 1839-54, p. 491, etc.
+
+12: Observations on the Diseases of the Army, p. 51.
+
+13: Ib., p. 53.
+
+14: Observations on the Diseases of the Army, p. 59.
+
+15: London Statistical Journal, Vol. XIX. p. 247.
+
+16: Edmonds in _London Lancet_, Vol. XXXVI. p. 143.
+
+17: _Despatches_.
+
+18: Edmonds in _London Lancet_, Vol. XXXVI. p. 145.
+
+19: Edmonds in _London Lancet_, Vol. XXXVI. p. 148.
+
+20: _Ib_., p. 219.
+
+21: Boudin, _Traité de Géographie et de Statistique Médicales_, Tom. II.
+p. 289, etc., quoted by him from Major Moltka.
+
+22: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p. 524.
+
+23: _Medical Sketches_, p. 39.
+
+24: _Ib_., p. 204.
+
+25: _Ib_., p. 66.
+
+26: _Medical Sketches_, p. 119.
+
+27: _Ib_., p. 199.
+
+28: _On Epidemics_, p. 70.
+
+29: _United States Documents_, 1814.
+
+30: _Ib_., 1814.
+
+31: _Executive Documents, U.S._, 1847-48, Vol. VII. p. 1013.
+
+32: _Ib_., p. 1033.
+
+33: _Ib_., p. 1185.
+
+34: _MS. Letter of Mr. Elliott_, Actuary of the Sanitary Commission.
+
+35: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p. 180.
+
+36: Ib., 525.
+
+37: _Medical and Surgical History of the War in the East_, Vol. II. p.
+252.
+
+38: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p. 377.
+
+39: _Medical Sketches_, p. 246.
+
+40: _Medical Sketches_, p. 66.
+
+41: Boudin, _Traité de Géographie et de Statistique Médicales_, Tom.
+II., p. 289.
+
+42: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p. 180.
+
+43: _Medical and Surgical History of the British Army in the East_, Vol.
+II. p. 227.
+
+44: _British and Foreign Medical and Surgical Journal_, Vol. XXI.
+
+45: _MS. Letter of Mr. Elliott.
+
+_46: _Medico-Chirurgical Transactions_, Vol. VI. p.478, etc.
+
+47: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p.
+525.--_Medical and Surgical History of the War in the East_.
+
+48: Calculated from the _Eighteenth Registration Report_.
+
+49: Calculated from _Twenty-First Report of Registrar General_.
+
+50: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p. 212.
+Colonel Tulloch.
+
+51: _Diseases of the Army_, p. 50.
+
+52: _Despatches_.
+
+53: Boudin, _Traité de Géographie et de Statistique Médicales_, Tom. II.
+p. 289.
+
+54: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p. 178.
+
+55: _Report of the Sanitary Commission.--Report on the Sanitary
+Condition of the British Army_, p. 335.
+
+56: _Report of the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p 97.
+
+57: _Ib._, p. 334.
+
+58: _Ib._, p. 365.
+
+59: _Ib._, p. 524.
+
+60: Dr. Mann, _Medical Sketches_, p. 64.
+
+61: Dr. Lovell, quoted by Mann, _Medical Sketches_, p. 119.
+
+62: Mann, _Medical Sketches_, pp. 120, 121.
+
+63: _Ib._, p. 78.
+
+64: _Ib._, p. 92.
+
+65: _Ib._, p. 124.
+
+66: _Ib._, p. 204.
+
+67: _Executive Documents, U.S._, 1848, Vol. VII. p. 1224.
+
+68: Mann, _Medical Sketches_, p. 66.
+
+69: _Ib._, p. 39.
+
+70: p. 23.
+
+71: Report of the Sanitary Commission, No. 41.
+
+72: Report of the Sanitary Commission, No. 41.
+
+73: _Report of Barrack Commission_, p. 160.
+
+74: _Report on the Sanitary Condition of the British Army_, p. 439.
+
+75: Dr. Farr, in _Journal of the London Statistical Society_, Vol. XXIV.
+p. 472.
+
+76: _Ibid_.
+
+77: _MS. Letter of Dr. Sutherland.
+
+_78: Section Dr. Farr, _ubi supra_.
+
+79: _Army Medical Regulations_, p. 27, etc.
+
+80: _Report of the Army Medical Department for 1859_.
+
+81: _Army Medical Regulations_, p. 29.
+
+82: _Army Medical Regulations_, p. 83.
+
+83: _Ib_., p. 84.
+
+84: _Army Medical Regulations_, p. 93.
+
+85: _Report of the Army Medical Department for 1859_, p. 6.
+
+86: _Report of the Army Medical Department for_ 1859, p. 10.
+
+87: _Ibid_.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10077 ***