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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101,
+March, 1866, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: May 4, 2007 [EBook #21288]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by Cornell University Digital Collections).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+ATLANTIC MONTHLY
+
+_A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics._
+
+VOL. XVII.--MARCH, 1866.--NO. CI.
+
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by TICKNOR AND
+FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
+Massachusetts.
+
+Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved
+to the end of the article.
+
+
+
+
+PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.
+
+
+III.
+
+Maine, _Thursday, July 20, 1837._--A drive, yesterday afternoon, to a
+pond in the vicinity of Augusta, about nine miles off, to fish for white
+perch. Remarkables: the steering of the boat through the crooked,
+labyrinthine brook, into the open pond,--the man who acted as
+pilot,--his talking with B----about politics, the bank, the iron money
+of "a king who came to reign, in Greece, over a city called
+Sparta,"--his advice to B---- to come amongst the laborers on the
+mill-dam, because it stimulated them "to see a man grinning amongst
+them." The man took hearty tugs at a bottle of good Scotch whiskey, and
+became pretty merry. The fish caught were the yellow perch, which are
+not esteemed for eating; the white perch, a beautiful, silvery,
+round-backed fish, which bites eagerly, runs about with the line while
+being pulled up, makes good sport for the angler, and an admirable dish;
+a great chub; and three horned pouts, which swallow the hook into their
+lowest entrails. Several dozen fish were taken in an hour or two, and
+then we returned to the shop where we had left our horse and wagon, the
+pilot very eccentric behind us. It was a small, dingy shop, dimly
+lighted by a single inch of candle, faintly disclosing various boxes,
+barrels standing on end, articles hanging from the ceiling; the
+proprietor at the counter, whereon appear gin and brandy, respectively
+contained in a tin pint-measure and an earthenware jug, with two or
+three tumblers beside them, out of which nearly all the party drank;
+some coming up to the counter frankly, others lingering in the
+background, waiting to be pressed, two paying for their own liquor and
+withdrawing. B---- treated them twice round. The pilot, after drinking
+his brandy, gave a history of our fishing expedition, and how many and
+how large fish we caught. B---- making acquaintances and renewing them,
+and gaining great credit for liberality and free-heartedness,--two or
+three boys looking on and listening to the talk,--the shopkeeper smiling
+behind his counter, with the tarnished tin scales beside him,--the inch
+of candle burned down almost to extinction. So we got into our wagon,
+with the fish, and drove to Robinson's tavern, almost five miles off,
+where we supped and passed the night. In the bar-room was a fat old
+countryman on a journey, and a quack doctor of the vicinity, and an
+Englishman with a peculiar accent. Seeing B----'s jointed and
+brass-mounted fishing-pole, he took it for a theodolite, and supposed
+that we had been on a surveying expedition. At supper, which consisted
+of bread, butter, cheese, cake, doughnuts, and gooseberry-pie, we were
+waited upon by a tall, very tall woman, young and maiden-looking, yet
+with a strongly outlined and determined face. Afterwards we found her to
+be the wife of mine host. She poured out our tea, came in when we rang
+the table-bell to refill our cups, and again retired. While at supper,
+the fat old traveller was ushered through the room into a contiguous
+bedroom. My own chamber, apparently the best in the house, had its walls
+ornamented with a small, gilt-framed, foot-square looking-glass, with a
+hair-brush hanging beneath it; a record of the deaths of the family,
+written on a black tomb, in an engraving, where a father, mother, and
+child were represented in a graveyard, weeping over said tomb; the
+mourners dressed in black, country-cut clothes; the engraving executed
+in Vermont. There was also a wood engraving of the Declaration of
+Independence, with fac-similes of the autographs; a portrait of the
+Empress Josephine, and another of Spring. In the two closets of this
+chamber were mine hostess's cloak, best bonnet, and go-to-meeting
+apparel. There was a good bed, in which I slept tolerably well, and,
+rising betimes, ate breakfast, consisting of some of our own fish, and
+then started for Augusta. The fat old traveller had gone off with the
+harness of our wagon, which the hostler had put on to his horse by
+mistake. The tavern-keeper gave us his own harness, and started in
+pursuit of the old man, who was probably aware of the exchange, and well
+satisfied with it.
+
+Our drive to Augusta, six or seven miles, was very pleasant, a heavy
+rain having fallen during the night and laid the oppressive dust of the
+day before. The road lay parallel with the Kennebec, of which we
+occasionally had near glimpses. The country swells back from the river
+in hills and ridges, without any interval of level ground; and there
+were frequent woods, filling up the valleys or crowning the summits. The
+land is good, the farms looked neat, and the houses comfortable. The
+latter are generally but of one story, but with large barns; and it was
+a good sign, that, while we saw no houses unfinished nor out of repair,
+one man, at least, had found it expedient to make an addition to his
+dwelling. At the distance of more than two miles, we had a view of white
+Augusta, with its steeples, and the State-House, at the farther end of
+the town. Observable matters along the road were the stage,--all the
+dust of yesterday brushed off, and no new dust contracted,--full of
+passengers, inside and out; among them some gentlemanly people and
+pretty girls, all looking fresh and unsullied, rosy, cheerful, and
+curious as to the face of the country, the faces of passing travellers,
+and the incidents of their journey; not yet damped, in the morning
+sunshine, by long miles of jolting over rough and hilly roads,--to
+compare this with their appearance at midday, and as they drive into
+Bangor at dusk;--two women dashing along in a wagon, and with a child,
+rattling pretty speedily down hill;--people looking at us from the open
+doors and windows;--the children staring from the wayside;--the mowers
+stopping, for a moment, the sway of their scythes;--the matron of a
+family, indistinctly seen at some distance within the house, her head
+and shoulders appearing through the window, drawing her handkerchief
+over her bosom, which had been uncovered to give the baby its
+breakfast,--the said baby, or its immediate predecessor, sitting at the
+door, turning round to creep away on all fours;--a man building a
+flat-bottomed boat by the roadside: he talked with B---- about the
+Boundary question, and swore fervently in favor of driving the British
+"into hell's kitchen" by main force.
+
+Colonel B----, the engineer of the mill-dam, is now here, after about a
+fortnight's absence. He is a plain country squire, with a good figure,
+but with rather a ponderous brow; a rough complexion; a gait stiff, and
+a general rigidity of manner, something like that of a schoolmaster. He
+originated in a country town, and is a self-educated man. As he walked
+down the gravel path to-day, after dinner, he took up a scythe, which
+one of the mowers had left on the sward, and began to mow, with quite a
+scientific swing. On the coming of the mower, he laid it down, perhaps a
+little ashamed of his amusement. I was interested in this; to see a man,
+after twenty-five years of scientific occupation, thus trying whether
+his arms retained their strength and skill for the labors of his
+youth,--mindful of the day when he wore striped trousers, and toiled in
+his shirt-sleeves,--and now tasting again, for pastime, this drudgery
+beneath a fervid sun. He stood awhile, looking at the workmen, and then
+went to oversee the laborers at the mill-dam.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Monday, July 24th._--I bathed in the river on Thursday evening, and in
+the brook at the old dam on Saturday and Sunday,--the former time at
+noon. The aspect of the solitude at noon was peculiarly impressive,
+there being a cloudless sunshine, no wind, no rustling of the
+forest-leaves, no waving of the boughs, no noise but the brawling and
+babbling of the stream, making its way among the stones, and pouring in
+a little cataract round one side of the mouldering dam. Looking up the
+brook, there was a long vista,--now ripples, now smooth and glassy
+spaces, now large rocks, almost blocking up the channel; while the trees
+stood upon either side, mostly straight, but here and there a branch
+thrusting itself out irregularly, and one tree, a pine, leaning
+over,--not bending,--but leaning at an angle over the brook, rough and
+ragged; birches, alders; the tallest of all the trees an old, dead,
+leafless pine, rising white and lonely, though closely surrounded by
+others. Along the brook, now the grass and herbage extended close to the
+water; now a small, sandy beach. The wall of rock before described,
+looking as if it had been hewn, but with irregular strokes of the
+workman, doing his job by rough and ponderous strength,--now chancing to
+hew it away smoothly and cleanly, now carelessly smiting, and making
+gaps, or piling on the slabs of rock, so as to leave vacant spaces. In
+the interstices grow brake and broad-leaved forest grass. The trees that
+spring from the top of this wall have their roots pressing close to the
+rock, so that there is no soil between; they cling powerfully, and grasp
+the crag tightly with their knotty fingers. The trees on both sides are
+so thick, that the sight and the thoughts are almost immediately lost
+among confused stems, branches, and clustering green leaves,--a narrow
+strip of bright blue sky above, the sunshine falling lustrously down,
+and making the pathway of the brook luminous below. Entering among the
+thickets, I find the soil strewn with old leaves of preceding seasons,
+through which may be seen a black or dark mould; the roots of trees
+stretch frequently across the path; often a moss-grown brown log lies
+athwart, and when you set your foot down, it sinks into the decaying
+substance,--into the heart of oak or pine. The leafy boughs and twigs of
+the underbrush enlace themselves before you, so that you must stoop your
+head to pass under, or thrust yourself through amain, while they sweep
+against your face, and perhaps knock off your hat. There are rocks mossy
+and slippery; sometimes you stagger, with a great rustling of branches,
+against a clump of bushes, and into the midst of it. From end to end of
+all this tangled shade goes a pathway scarcely worn, for the leaves are
+not trodden through, yet plain enough to the eye, winding gently to
+avoid tree-trunks and rocks and little hillocks. In the more open
+ground, the aspect of a tall, fire-blackened stump, standing alone, high
+up on a swell of land, that rises gradually from one side of the brook,
+like a monument. Yesterday, I passed a group of children in this
+solitary valley,--two boys, I think, and two girls. One of the little
+girls seemed to have suffered some wrong from her companions, for she
+was weeping and complaining violently. Another time, I came suddenly on
+a small Canadian boy, who was in a hollow place, among the ruined logs
+of an old causeway, picking raspberries,--lonely among bushes and
+gorges, far up the wild valley,--and the lonelier seemed the little boy
+for the bright sunshine, that showed no one else in a wide space of view
+except him and me.
+
+Remarkable items: the observation of Mons. S---- when B---- was saying
+something against the character of the French people,--"You ought not to
+form an unfavorable judgment of a great nation from mean fellows like
+me, strolling about in a foreign country." I thought it very noble thus
+to protest against anything discreditable in himself personally being
+used against the honor of his country. He is a very singular person,
+with an originality in all his notions;--not that nobody has ever had
+such before, but that he has thought them out for himself. He told me
+yesterday that one of his sisters was a waiting-maid in the Rocher de
+Caucale. He is about the sincerest man I ever knew, never pretending to
+feelings that are not in him,--never flattering. His feelings do not
+seem to be warm, though they are kindly. He is so single-minded that he
+cannot understand badinage, but takes it all as if meant in earnest,--a
+German trait. Revalues himself greatly on being a Frenchman, though all
+his most valuable qualities come from Germany. His temperament is cool
+and pure, and he is greatly delighted with any attentions from the
+ladies. A short time since, a lady gave him a bouquet of roses and
+pinks; he capered and danced and sang, put it in water, and carried it
+to his own chamber; but he brought it out for us to see and admire two
+or three times a day, bestowing on it all the epithets of admiration in
+the French language,--"_Superbe! magnifique!_" When some of the flowers
+began to fade, he made the rest, with others, into a new nosegay, and
+consulted us whether it would be fit to give to another lady. Contrast
+this French foppery with his solemn moods, when we sit in the twilight,
+or after B---- is abed, talking of Christianity and Deism, of ways of
+life, of marriage, of benevolence,--in short, of all deep matters of
+this world and the next. An evening or two since, he began singing all
+manner of English songs,--such as Mrs. Hemans's "Landing of the
+Pilgrims," "Auld Lang Syne," and some of Moore's,--the singing pretty
+fair, but in the oddest tone and accent. Occasionally he breaks out with
+scraps from French tragedies, which he spouts with corresponding action.
+He generally gets close to me in these displays of musical and
+histrionic talent Once he offered to magnetize me in the manner of
+Monsieur P----.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Wednesday, July 26th._--Dined at Barker's yesterday. Before dinner, sat
+with several other persons in the stoop of the tavern. There was B----,
+J. A. Chandler, Clerk of the Court, a man of middle age or beyond, two
+or three stage people, and, nearby, a negro, whom they call "the
+Doctor," a crafty-looking fellow, one of whose occupations is nameless.
+In presence of this goodly company, a man of a depressed, neglected air,
+a soft, simple-looking fellow, with an anxious expression, in a
+laborer's dress, approached and inquired for Mr. Barker. Mine host being
+gone to Portland, the stranger was directed to the bar-keeper, who stood
+at the door. The man asked where he should find one Mary Ann Russell,--a
+question which excited general and hardly-suppressed mirth; for the said
+Mary Ann is one of a knot of women who were routed on Sunday evening by
+Barker and a constable. The man was told that the black fellow would
+give him all the information he wanted. The black fellow asked,--
+
+"Do you want to see her?"
+
+Others of the by-standers or by-sitters put various questions as to the
+nature of the man's business with Mary Ann. One asked,--
+
+"Is she your daughter?"
+
+"Why, a little nearer than that, I calkilate," said the poor devil.
+
+Here the mirth was increased, it being evident that the woman was his
+wife. The man seemed too simple and obtuse to comprehend the ridicule of
+his situation, or to be rendered very miserable by it. Nevertheless, he
+made some touching points.
+
+"A man generally places some little dependence on his wife," said he,
+"whether she's good or not."
+
+He meant, probably, that he rests some affection on her. He told us that
+she had behaved well, till committed to jail for striking a child; and I
+believe he was absent from home at the time, and had not seen her since.
+And now he was in search of her, intending, doubtless, to do his best to
+get her out of her troubles, and then to take her back to his home. Some
+advised him not to look after her; others recommended him to pay "the
+Doctor" aforesaid for guiding him to her; which finally "the Doctor"
+did, in consideration of a treat; and the fellow went off, having heard
+little but gibes, and not one word of sympathy! I would like to have
+witnessed his meeting with his wife.
+
+There was a moral picturesqueness in the contrasts of the scene,--a man
+moved as deeply as his nature would admit, in the midst of hardened,
+gibing spectators, heartless towards him. It is worth thinking over and
+studying out. He seemed rather hurt and pricked by the jests thrown at
+him, yet bore it patiently, and sometimes almost joined in the laugh,
+being of an easy, unenergetic temper.
+
+Hints for characters:--Nancy, a pretty, black-eyed, intelligent
+servant-girl, living in Captain H----'s family. She comes daily to make
+the beds in our part of the house, and exchanges a good-morning with me,
+in a pleasant voice, and with a glance and smile,--somewhat shy, because
+we are not acquainted, yet capable of being made conversable. She washes
+once a week, and may be seen standing over her tub, with her
+handkerchief somewhat displaced from her white neck, because it is hot.
+Often she stands with her bare arms in the water, talking with Mrs.
+H----, or looks through the window, perhaps, at B---- or somebody else
+crossing the yard,--rather thoughtfully, but soon smiling or laughing.
+Then goeth she for a pail of water. In the afternoon, very probably, she
+dresses herself in silks, looking not only pretty, but lady-like, and
+strolls round the house, not unconscious that some gentleman may be
+staring at her from behind the green blinds. After supper, she walks to
+the village. Morning and evening, she goes a-milking. And thus passes
+her life, cheerfully, usefully, virtuously, with hopes, doubtless, of a
+husband and children.--Mrs. H---- is a particularly plump, soft-fleshed,
+fair-complexioned, comely woman enough, with rather a simple
+countenance, not nearly so piquant as Nancy's. Her walk has something of
+the roll or waddle of a fat woman, though it were too much to call her
+fat. She seems to be a sociable body, probably laughter-loving. Captain
+H---- himself has commanded a steamboat, and has a certain knowledge of
+life.
+
+Query, in relation to the man's missing wife, how much desire and
+resolution of doing her duty by her husband can a wife retain, while
+injuring him in what is deemed the most essential point?
+
+Observation. The effect of morning sunshine on the wet grass, on sloping
+and swelling land, between the spectator and the sun at some distance,
+as across a lawn. It diffused a dim brilliancy over the whole surface of
+the field. The mists, slow-rising farther off, part resting on the
+earth, the remainder of the column already ascending so high that you
+doubt whether to call it a fog or a cloud.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Friday, July 28th._--Saw my classmate and formerly intimate friend,
+Cilley, for the first time since we graduated. He has met with good
+success in life, in spite of circumstance, having struggled upward
+against bitter opposition, by the force of his own abilities, to be a
+member of Congress, after having been for some time the leader of his
+party in the State Legislature. We met like old friends, and conversed
+almost as freely as we used to do in college days, twelve years ago and
+more. He is a singular man, shrewd, crafty, insinuating, with wonderful
+tact, seizing on each man by his manageable point, and using him for his
+own purpose, often without the man's suspecting that he is made a tool
+of; and yet, artificial as his character would seem to be, his
+conversation, at least to myself, was full of natural feeling, the
+expression of which can hardly be mistaken, and his revelations with
+regard to himself had really a great deal of frankness. He spoke of his
+ambition, of the obstacles which he had encountered, of the means by
+which he had overcome them, imputing great efficacy to his personal
+intercourse with people, and his study of their characters; then of his
+course as a member of the Legislature and Speaker, and his style of
+speaking and its effects; of the dishonorable things which had been
+imputed to him, and in what manner he had repelled the charges. In
+short, he would seem to have opened himself very freely as to his public
+life. Then, as to his private affairs, he spoke of his marriage, of his
+wife, his children, and told me, with tears in his eyes, of the death of
+a dear little girl, and how it affected him, and how impossible it had
+been for him to believe that she was really to die. A man of the most
+open nature might well have been more reserved to a friend, after twelve
+years' separation, than Cilley was to me. Nevertheless, he is really a
+crafty man, concealing, like a murder-secret, anything that it is not
+good for him to have known. He by no means feigns the good-feeling that
+he professes, nor is there anything affected in the frankness of his
+conversation; and it is this that makes him so very fascinating. There
+is such a quantity of truth and kindliness and warm affections, that a
+man's heart opens to him, in spite of himself. He deceives by truth. And
+not only is he crafty, but, when occasion demands, bold and fierce as a
+tiger, determined, and even straightforward and undisguised in his
+measures,--a daring fellow as well as a sly one. Yet, notwithstanding
+his consummate art, the general estimate of his character seems to be
+pretty just. Hardly anybody, probably, thinks him better than he is, and
+many think him worse. Nevertheless, if no overwhelming discovery of
+rascality be made, he will always possess influence; though I should
+hardly think that he would take any prominent part in Congress. As to
+any rascality, I rather believe that he has thought out for himself a
+much higher system of morality than any natural integrity would have
+prompted him to adopt; that he has seen the thorough advantage of
+morality and honesty; and the sentiment of these qualities has now got
+into his mind and spirit, and pretty well impregnated them. I believe
+him to be about as honest as the great run of the world, with something
+even approaching to high-mindedness. His person in some degree accords
+with his character,--thin and with a thin face, sharp features, sallow,
+a projecting brow not very high, deep-set eyes, an insinuating smile and
+look, when he meets you, and is about to address you. I should think
+that he would do away with this peculiar expression, for it reveals more
+of himself than can be detected in any other way, in personal
+intercourse with him. Upon the whole, I have quite a good liking for
+him, and mean to go to Thomaston to see him.
+
+Observation. A steam-engine across the river, which almost continually
+during the day, and sometimes all night, may be heard puffing and
+panting, as if it uttered groans for being compelled to labor in the
+heat and sunshine, and when the world is asleep also.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Monday, July 31st._--Nothing remarkable to record. A child asleep in a
+young lady's arms,--a little baby, two or three months old. Whenever
+anything partially disturbed the child, as, for instance, when the young
+lady or a by-stander patted its cheek or rubbed its chin, the child
+would smile; then all its dreams seemed to be of pleasure and happiness.
+At first the smile was so faint, that I doubted whether it were really a
+smile or no; but on further efforts, it brightened forth very decidedly.
+This, without opening its eyes.--A constable, a homely, good-natured,
+business-looking man, with a warrant against an Irishman's wife for
+throwing a brickbat at a fellow. He gave good advice to the Irishman
+about the best method of coming easiest through the affair. Finally
+settled,--the justice agreeing to relinquish his fees, on condition that
+the Irishman would pay for the mending of his old boots!
+
+I went with Monsieur S---- yesterday to pick raspberries. He fell
+through an old log bridge thrown over a hollow; looking back, only his
+head and shoulders appeared through the rotten logs and among the
+bushes.--A shower coming on, the rapid running of a little barefooted
+boy, coming up unheard, and dashing swiftly past us, and showing the
+soles of his naked feet as he ran adown the path before us, and up the
+opposite rise.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Tuesday, August 1st._--There having been a heavy rain yesterday, a nest
+of chimney-swallows was washed down the chimney into the fireplace of
+one of the front-rooms. My attention was drawn to them by a most
+obstreperous twittering; and looking behind the fire-board, there were
+three young birds, clinging with their feet against one of the jambs,
+looking at me, open-mouthed, and all clamoring together, so as quite to
+fill the room with the short, eager, frightened sound. The old birds, by
+certain signs upon the floor of the room, appeared to have fallen
+victims to the appetite of the cat. La belle Nancy provided a basket
+filled with cotton-wool, into which the poor little devils were put; and
+I tried to feed them with soaked bread, of which, however, they did not
+eat with much relish. Tom, the Irish boy, gave it as his opinion that
+they were not old enough to be weaned. I hung the basket out of the
+window, in the sunshine, and upon looking in, an hour or two after,
+found that two of the birds had escaped. The other I tried to feed, and
+sometimes, when a morsel of bread was thrust into its open mouth, it
+would swallow it. But it appeared to suffer a good deal, vociferating
+loudly when disturbed, and panting, in a sluggish agony, with eyes
+closed, or half opened, when let alone. It distressed me a good deal;
+and I felt relieved, though somewhat shocked, when B---- put an end to
+its misery by squeezing its head and throwing it out of the window. They
+were of a slate-color, and might, I suppose, have been able to shift for
+themselves.--The other day a little yellow bird flew into one of the
+empty rooms, of which there are half a dozen on the lower floor, and
+could not find his way out again, flying at the glass of the windows,
+instead of at the door, thumping his head against the panes or against
+the ceiling. I drove him into the entry and chased him from end to end,
+endeavoring to make him fly through one of the open doors. He would fly
+at the circular light over the door, clinging to the casement, sometimes
+alighting on one of the two glass lamps, or on the cords that suspended
+them, uttering an affrighted and melancholy cry whenever I came near and
+flapped my handkerchief, and appearing quite tired and sinking into
+despair. At last he happened to fly low enough to pass through the door,
+and immediately vanished into the gladsome sunshine.--Ludicrous
+situation of a man, drawing his chaise down a sloping bank, to wash in
+the river. The chaise got the better of him, and, rushing downward as if
+it were possessed, compelled him to run at full speed, and drove him up
+to his chin into the water. A singular instance, that a chaise may run
+away with a man without a horse!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Saturday, August 12th._--Left Augusta a week ago this morning for
+Thomaston. Nothing particular in our drive across the country.
+Fellow-passenger, a Boston dry-goods dealer, travelling to collect
+bills. At many of the country shops he would get out, and show his
+unwelcome visage. In the tavern, prints from Scripture, varnished and on
+rollers,--such as the Judgment of Christ; also, a droll set of colored
+engravings of the story of the Prodigal Son, the figures being clad in
+modern costume,--or, at least, that of not more than half a century ago.
+The father, a grave, clerical person, with a white wig and black
+broadcloth suit; the son, with a cocked hat and laced clothes, drinking
+wine out of a glass, and caressing a woman in fashionable dress. At
+Thomaston, a nice, comfortable, boarding-house tavern, without a bar or
+any sort of wines or spirits. An old lady from Boston, with her three
+daughters, one of whom was teaching music, and the other two were
+school-mistresses. A frank, free, mirthful daughter of the landlady,
+about twenty-four years old, between whom and myself there immediately
+sprang up a flirtation, which made us both feel rather melancholy when
+we parted on Tuesday morning. Music in the evening, with a song by a
+rather pretty, fantastic little mischief of a brunette, about eighteen
+years old, who has married within a year, and spent the last summer in a
+trip to the Springs and elsewhere. Her manner of walking is by jerks,
+with a quiver, as if she were made of calves-feet jelly. I talk with
+everybody: to Mrs. Trott, good sense,--to Mary, good sense, with a
+mixture of fun,--to Mrs. Gleason, sentiment, romance, and nonsense.
+
+Walked with Cilley to see General Knox's old mansion,--a large,
+rusty-looking edifice of wood, with some grandeur in the architecture,
+standing on the banks of the river, close by the site of an old
+burial-ground, and near where an ancient fort had been erected for
+defence against the French and Indians. General Knox once owned a square
+of thirty miles in this part of the country; and he wished to settle it
+with a tenantry, after the fashion of English gentlemen. He would permit
+no edifice to be erected within a certain distance of his mansion. His
+patent covered, of course, the whole present town of Thomaston, with
+Waldoborough and divers other flourishing commercial and country
+villages, and would have been of incalculable value could it have
+remained unbroken to the present time. But the General lived in grand
+style, and received throngs of visitors from foreign parts, and was
+obliged to part with large tracts of his possessions, till now there is
+little left but the ruinous mansion and the ground immediately around
+it. His tomb stands near the house,--a spacious receptacle, an iron door
+at the end of a turf-covered mound, and surmounted by an obelisk of the
+Thomaston marble. There are inscriptions to the memory of several of his
+family; for he had many children, all of whom are now dead, except one
+daughter, a widow of fifty, recently married to Hon. John H----. There
+is a stone fence round the monument. On the outside of this are
+the gravestones, and large, flat tombstones of the ancient
+burial-ground,--the tombstones being of red freestone, with vacant
+spaces, formerly inlaid with slate, on which were the inscriptions, and
+perhaps coats-of-arms. One of these spaces was in the shape of a heart.
+The people of Thomaston were very wrathful that the General should have
+laid out his grounds over this old burial-place; and he dared never
+throw down the gravestones, though his wife, a haughty English lady,
+often teased him to do so. But when the old General was dead, Lady Knox
+(as they called her) caused them to be prostrated, as they now lie. She
+was a woman of violent passions, and so proud an aristocrat, that, as
+long as she lived, she would never enter any house in Thomaston except
+her own. When a married daughter was ill, she used to go in her carriage
+to the door, and send up to inquire how she did. The General was
+personally very popular; but his wife ruled him. The house and its
+vicinity, and the whole tract covered by Knox's patent, may be taken as
+an illustration of what must be the result of American schemes of
+aristocracy. It is not forty years since this house was built, and Knox
+was in his glory; but now the house is all in decay, while within a
+stone's throw of it there is a street of smart white edifices of one and
+two stories, occupied chiefly by thriving mechanics, which has been laid
+out where Knox meant to have forests and parks. On the banks of the
+river, where he intended to have only one wharf for his own West Indian
+vessels and yacht, there are two wharves, with stores and a lime-kiln.
+Little appertains to the mansion, except the tomb and the old
+burial-ground, and the old fort.
+
+The descendants are all poor, and the inheritance was merely sufficient
+to make a dissipated and drunken fellow of the only one of the old
+General's sons who survived to middle age. The man's habits were as bad
+as possible as long as he had any money; but when quite ruined, he
+reformed. The daughter, the only survivor among Knox's children,
+(herself childless,) is a mild, amiable woman, therein totally differing
+from her mother. Knox, when he first visited his estate, arriving in a
+vessel, was waited upon by a deputation of the squatters, who had
+resolved to resist him to the death. He received them with genial
+courtesy, made them dine with him aboard the vessel, and sent them back
+to their constituents in great love and admiration of him. He used to
+have a vessel running to Philadelphia, I think, and bringing him all
+sorts of delicacies. His way of raising money was to give a mortgage on
+his estate of a hundred thousand dollars at a time, and receive that
+nominal amount in goods, which he would immediately sell at auction for
+perhaps thirty thousand. He died by a chicken-bone. Near the house are
+the remains of a covered way, by which the French once attempted to gain
+admittance into the fort; but the work caved in and buried a good many
+of them, and the rest gave up the siege. There was recently an old
+inhabitant living, who remembered when the people used to reside in the
+fort.
+
+Owl's Head,--a watering-place, terminating a point of land, six or seven
+miles from Thomaston. A long island shuts out the prospect of the sea.
+Hither coasters and fishing-smacks run in when a storm is anticipated.
+Two fat landlords, both young men, with something of a contrast in their
+dispositions;--one of them being a brisk, lively, active, jesting fat
+man; the other more heavy and inert, making jests sluggishly, if at all.
+Aboard the steamboat, Professor Stuart of Andover, sitting on a sofa in
+the saloon, generally in conversation with some person, resolving their
+doubts on one point or another, speaking in a very audible voice; and
+strangers standing or sitting around to hear him, as if he were an
+ancient apostle or philosopher. He is a bulky man, with a large, massive
+face, particularly calm in its expression, and mild enough to be
+pleasing. When not otherwise occupied, he reads, without much notice of
+what is going on around him. He speaks without effort, yet thoughtfully.
+
+We got lost in a fog the morning after leaving Owl's Head. Fired a brass
+cannon, rang bell, blew steam like a whale snorting. After one of the
+reports of the cannon, we heard a horn blown at no great distance, the
+sound coming soon after the report. Doubtful whether it came from the
+shore or a vessel. Continued our ringing and snorting; and by and by
+something was seen to mingle with the fog that obscured everything
+beyond fifty yards from us. At first it seemed only like a denser wreath
+of fog; it darkened still more, till it took the aspect of sails; then
+the hull of a small schooner came beating down towards us, the wind
+laying her over towards us, so that her gunwale was almost in the water,
+and we could see the whole of her sloping deck.
+
+"Schooner ahoy!" say we. "Halloo! Have you seen Boston Light this
+morning?"
+
+"Yes; it bears north-northwest, two miles distant."
+
+"Very much obliged to you," cries our captain.
+
+So the schooner vanishes into the mist behind. We get up our steam, and
+soon enter the harbor, meeting vessels of every rig; and the fog,
+clearing away, shows a cloudy sky. Aboard, an old one-eyed sailor, who
+had lost one of his feet, and had walked on the stump from Eastport to
+Bangor, thereby making a shocking ulcer.
+
+Penobscot Bay is full of islands, close to which the steamboat is
+continually passing. Some are large, with portions of forest and
+portions of cleared land; some are mere rocks, with a little green or
+none, and inhabited by sea-birds, which fly and flap about hoarsely.
+Their eggs may be gathered by the bushel, and are good to eat. Other
+islands have one house and barn on them, this sole family being lords
+and rulers of all the land which the sea girds. The owner of such an
+island must have a peculiar sense of property and lordship; he must feel
+more like his own master and his own man than other people can. Other
+islands, perhaps high, precipitous, black bluffs, are crowned with a
+white light-house, whence, as evening comes on, twinkles a star across
+the melancholy deep,--seen by vessels coming on the coast, seen from the
+mainland, seen from island to island. Darkness descending, and looking
+down at the broad wake left by the wheels of the steamboat, we may see
+sparkles of sea-fire glittering through the gloom.
+
+
+
+
+AN OLD MAN'S IDYL.
+
+
+    By the waters of Life we sat together,
+      Hand in hand in the golden days
+    Of the beautiful early summer weather,
+      When skies were purple and breath was praise,
+    When the heart kept tune to the carol of birds
+      And the birds kept tune to the songs which ran
+    Through shimmer of flowers on grassy swards,
+      And trees with voices Æolian.
+
+    By the rivers of Life we walked together,
+      I and my darling, unafraid;
+    And lighter than any linnet's feather
+      The burdens of Being on us weighed.
+    And Love's sweet miracles o'er us threw
+      Mantles of joy outlasting Time,
+    And up from the rosy morrows grew
+      A sound that seemed like a marriage chime.
+
+    In the gardens of Life we strayed together;
+      And the luscious apples were ripe and red,
+    And the languid lilac and honeyed heather
+      Swooned with the fragrance which they shed.
+    And under the trees the angels walked,
+      And up in the air a sense of wings
+    Awed us tenderly while we talked
+      Softly in sacred communings.
+
+    In the meadows of Life we strayed together,
+      Watching the waving harvests grow;
+    And under the benison of the Father
+      Our hearts, like the lambs, skipped to and fro.
+    And the cowslips, hearing our low replies,
+      Broidered fairer the emerald banks,
+    And glad tears shone in the daisies' eyes,
+      And the timid violet glistened thanks.
+
+    Who was with us, and what was round us,
+      Neither myself nor my darling guessed;
+    Only we knew that something crowned us
+      Out from the heavens with crowns of rest;
+    Only we knew that something bright
+      Lingered lovingly where we stood,
+    Clothed with the incandescent light
+      Of something higher than humanhood.
+
+    O the riches Love doth inherit!
+      Ah, the alchemy which doth change
+    Dross of body and dregs of spirit
+      Into sanctities rare and strange!
+    My flesh is feeble and dry and old,
+      My darling's beautiful hair is gray;
+    But our elixir and precious gold
+      Laugh at the footsteps of decay.
+
+    Harms of the world have come unto us,
+      Cups of sorrow we yet shall drain;
+    But we have a secret which cloth show us
+      Wonderful rainbows in the rain.
+    And we hear the tread of the years move by,
+      And the sun is setting behind the hills;
+    But my darling does not fear to die,
+      And I am happy in what God wills.
+
+    So we sit by our household fires together,
+      Dreaming the dreams of long ago:
+    Then it was balmy summer weather,
+      And now the valleys are laid in snow.
+    Icicles hang from the slippery eaves;
+      The wind blows cold,--'tis growing late;
+    Well, well! we have garnered all our sheaves,
+      I and my darling, and we wait.
+
+
+
+
+A RAMBLE THROUGH THE MARKET.
+
+
+As a man puts on the stoutness and thicksetness of middle life, he
+begins to find himself contemplating well-filled meat and fish stalls,
+and piles of lusty garden vegetables, with unfeigned interest and
+delight. He walks through Quincy Market, for instance, with far more
+pleasure than through the dewy and moonlit groves which were the scenes
+of his youthful wooings. Then he was all sentiment and poetry. Now he
+finds the gratification of the mouth and stomach a chief source of
+mundane delight. It is said that all the ships on the sea are sailing in
+the direction of the human mouth. The stomach, with its fierce
+assimilative power, is a great stimulator of commercial activity. The
+table of the civilized man, loaded with the products of so many climes,
+bears witness to this. The demands of the stomach are imperious. Its
+ukases and decrees must be obeyed, else the whole corporeal commonwealth
+of man, and the spirit which makes the human organism its vehicle in
+time and space, are in a state of trouble and insurrection.
+
+A large part of the lower organic world, both animal and vegetable, is
+ground between man's molars and incisors, and assimilated through the
+stomach with his body. This may be called the final cause of that part
+of the lower organic world which is edible. Man is a scientific
+eater,--a cooking animal. Laughter and speech are not so distinctive
+traits of him as cookery. Improve his food, and he is improved both
+physically and mentally. His tissue becomes finer, his skin clearer and
+brighter, and his hair more glossy and hyacinthine. Cattle-breeders and
+the improvers of horticulture are indirectly improving their own race by
+furnishing finer and more healthful materials to be built into man's
+body. Marble, cedar, rosewood, gold, and gems make a finer edifice than
+thatch and ordinary timber and stones. So South-Down mutton and Devonian
+beef fattened on the blue-grass pastures of the West, and the
+magnificent prize vegetables and rich appetizing fruits, equal to
+anything grown in the famed gardens of Alcinoüs or the Hesperides, which
+are displayed at our annual autumnal fairs as evidences of our
+scientific horticulture and fructiculture, adorn the frame into which
+they are incorporated by mastication and digestion, as rosewood and
+marble and cedar and gold adorn a house or temple.
+
+The subject of eating and drinking is a serious one. The stomach is the
+great motive power of society. It is the true sharpener of human
+ingenuity, _curis acuens mortalia corda_. Cookery is the first of arts.
+Chemistry is a mere subordinate science, whose chief value is that it
+enables man to impart greater relish and gust to his viands. The
+greatest poets, such as Homer, Milton, and Scott, treat the subject of
+eating and drinking with much seriousness, minuteness of detail, and
+lusciousness of description. Homer's heroes are all good
+cooks,--swift-footed Achilles, much-enduring Ulysses, and the rest of
+them. Read Milton's appetizing description of the feast which the
+Tempter set before the fasting Saviour:--
+
+    "Our Saviour, lifting up his eyes, beheld
+    In ample space, under the broadest shade,
+    A table richly spread in regal mode,
+    With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort
+    And savor: beasts of chase or fowl of game
+    In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled,
+    Gris-amber steamed; all fish from sea or shore,
+    Freshet or purling brook, of shell or fin,
+    And exquisitest name, for which was drained
+    Pontus and Lucrine bay and Afric coast;
+    And at a stately sideboard, by the wine
+    That fragrant smell diffused in order stood
+    Tall stripling youths, rich clad, of fairer hue
+    Than Ganymed or Hylas."
+
+It is evident that the sublime Milton had a keen relish for a good
+dinner. Keats's description of that delicious moonlight spread by
+Porphyro, in the room of his fair Madeline, asleep, on St. Agnes' eve,
+"in lap of legends old," is another delicate morsel of Apician poetry.
+"Those lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon and sugared dainties" from
+Samarcand to cedared Lebanon, show that Keats had not got over his
+boyish taste for sweet things, and reached the maturity and gravity of
+appetite which dictated the Miltonian description. He died at
+twenty-four years. Had he lived longer, he might have sung of roast and
+boiled as sublimely as Milton has done.
+
+Epicurus, in exalting cookery and eating and drinking to a plane of
+philosophical importance, was a true friend of his race, and showed
+himself the most sensible and wisest of all the Greek philosophers. A
+psychometrical critic of the philosopher of the garden says:--
+
+"The first and last necessity is eating. The animated world is
+unceasingly eating and digesting itself. None could see this truth
+clearly but an enthusiast in diet like Epicurus, who, discovering the
+unexceptionableness of the natural law, proceeded to the work of
+adaptation. Ocean, lake, streamlet, was separately interrogated, 'How
+much delicious food do you contain? What are your preparations? When
+should man partake?' In like manner did the enthusiast peregrinate
+through Nature's empire, fixing his chemical eye upon plant and shrub
+and berry and vine,--asking every creeping thing, and the animal
+creation also, 'What can you do for man?' And such truths as the angels
+sent! Sea, earth, and air were overflowing and heavily laden with
+countless means of happiness. 'The whole was a cupboard of food or
+cabinet of pleasure.' Life must not be sacrificed by man, for thereby he
+would defeat the end sought. Man's fine love of life must save him from
+taking life." (This is not doctrine to promulgate in the latitude of
+Quincy Market, O clairvoyant Davis!) "In the world of fruit, berries,
+vines, flowers, herbs, grains, grasses, could be found all proper food
+for 'bodily ease and mental tranquillity.'
+
+"Behold the enthusiast! classifying man's senses to be gratified at the
+table. All dishes must be beautifully prepared and disposed to woo and
+win the sense of sight; the assembled articles must give off odors
+harmoniously blended to delight and cultivate the sense of smell; and
+each substance must balance with every other in point of flavor, to meet
+the natural demands of taste; otherwise the entertainment is shorn of
+its virtue to bless and tranquillize the soul!...
+
+"But lo, the fanatic in eating appears! Miserably hot with gluttonous
+debauchery. He has feasted upon a thousand deaths! Belshazzar's court
+fed on fish of every type, birds of every flight, brutes of every clime,
+and added thereto each finer luxury known in the catalogue of the
+temperate Epicurus....
+
+"Behold the sceptics. A shivering group of acid ghouls at their scanty
+board.... Bread, milk, bran, turnips, onions, potatoes, apples, yield so
+much starch, so much sugar, so much nitrogen, so much nutriment! Enough!
+to live is the _end_ of eating, not to be pleased and made better with
+objects, odors, flavors. Therefore welcome a few articles of food in
+violation of every fine sensibility. Stuff in and masticate the crudest
+forms of eatables,--bad-cooking, bad-looking, bad-smelling, bad-tasting,
+and worse-feeling,--down with them hastily,--and then, between your
+headaches and gastric spasms, pride yourself upon virtues and temperance
+not possessed by any student in the gastronomic school of Epicurus! Let
+it be perpetually remembered to the credit of this apostle of
+alimentation and vitativeness with temperance, that, in his religious
+system, eating was a 'sacramental' process, and not a physical
+indulgence merely, as the ignorant allege."
+
+Bravo for the seer of Poughkeepsie! In the above extracts, quoted from
+his "Thinker," he has vindicated the much maligned Epicurus better than
+his disciples Lucretius and Gassendi have done, and by some mysterious
+process (he calls it psychometry) he seems to know more of the old
+Athenian, and to have a more intimate knowledge of his doctrines, than
+can be found in Brucker or Ritter.
+
+When it is considered how our mental states may be modified by what we
+eat and drink, the importance of good _ingesta_, both fluid and solid,
+becomes apparent. Among the good things which attached Charles Lamb to
+this present life was his love of the delicious juices of meats and
+fishes.
+
+But these things are preliminary, although not impertinent to the main
+subject, which is Quincy Market. After having perambulated the principal
+markets of the other leading American cities, I must pronounce it
+_facile princeps_ among New-World markets. A walk through it is equal to
+a dose of dandelion syrup in the way of exciting an appetite for one's
+dinner. Such a walk is tonic and medicinal, and should be prescribed to
+dyspeptic patients. To the hungry, penniless man such a walk is like the
+torture administered to the old Phrygian who blabbed to mortals the
+secrets of the celestial banquets. Autumn is the season in which to
+indulge in a promenade through Quincy Market, after the leaf has been
+nipped by the frost and crimson-tinted, when the morning air is cool and
+bracing. Then the stalls and precincts of the chief Boston market are a
+goodly spectacle. Athenæus himself, the classic historian of classic
+gluttons and classic bills of fare, could not but feel a glow at the
+sight of the good things here displayed, if he were alive. Quincy Market
+culminates at Thanksgiving time. It then attains to the zenith of good
+fare.
+
+Cleanliness and spruceness are the rule among the Quincy Market men and
+stall-keepers. The matutinal display outside of apples, pears, onions,
+turnips, beets, carrots, egg-plants, cranberries, squashes, etc., is
+magnificent in the variety and richness of its hues. What a multitude of
+orchards, meadows, gardens, and fields have been laid under contribution
+to furnish this vegetable abundance! And here are their choicest
+products. The foodful Earth and the arch-chemic Sun, the great
+agriculturist and life-fountain, have done their best in concocting
+these Quincy Market culinary vegetables. They wear a healthful,
+resplendent look. Inside, what a goodly vista stretches away of fish,
+flesh, and fowl! From these white stalls the Tempter could have
+furnished forth the banquet the Miltonic description of which has been
+quoted.
+
+Here is a stall of ripe, juicy mutton, perhaps from the county of St.
+Lawrence, in Northeastern New York. This is the most healthful and
+easily digested of all meats. Its juiciness and nutritiousness are
+visible in the trumpeter-like cheeks of the well-fed John Bull. The
+domestic Anglo-Saxon is a mutton-eater. Let his offshoots here and
+elsewhere follow suit. There is no such timber to repair the waste of
+the human frame. It is a fuel easily combustible in the visceral grate
+of the stomach. The mutton-eater is eupeptic. His dreams are airy and
+lightsome. Somnus descends smiling to his nocturnal pillow, and not clad
+in the portentous panoply of indigestion, which rivals a guilty
+conscience in its night visions. The mutton department of Quincy Market
+is all that it should be.
+
+Next we come upon "fowl of game," wild ducks, pigeons, etc.--What has
+become of those shoals of pigeons, those herrings of the air, which used
+in the gloom and glory of a breezy autumnal day to darken the sun in
+their flight, like the discharge of the Xerxean arrows at Thermopylæ?
+The eye sweeps the autumnal sky in vain now for any such winged
+phenomenon, at least here in New England. The days of the bough-house
+and pigeon-stand strewn with barley seem to have gone by. Swift of
+flight and shapely in body is the North American wild pigeon, running
+upon the air fleeter than Anacreon's dove. He can lay any latitude under
+contribution in a few hours, flying incredible distances during the
+process of digestion. He is an ornament to the air, and the pot
+also.--Here might be a descendant of Bryant's waterfowl; but its
+journeyings along the pathless coast of the upper atmosphere are at an
+end.
+
+"All flesh is not the same flesh; but there is one kind of flesh of men,
+another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds." The
+matter composing the vegetables and the lower animals is promoted, as
+it were, by being eaten by man and incorporated into his body, which is
+a breathing house not made with hands built over the boundary-line of
+two worlds, the sensible and noumenal. "The human body is the highest
+chemical laboratory which matter can reach. In that body the highest
+qualities and richest emoluments are imparted to it, and it is indorsed
+with a divine superscription." It there becomes part and parcel of the
+eye, the organ of light and the throne of expression,--of the blood,
+which is so eloquent in cheek and brow,--of the nerves, the
+telegraph-wires of the soul,--of the persuasive tongue,--of the
+tear-drop, the dew of emotion, which only the human eye can shed,--of
+the glossy tresses of beauty, the nets of love.
+
+The provision markets of a community are a good index of the grade of
+its civilization. Tell me what a nation eats, what is its diet, and I
+will tell you what is its literature, its religious belief, and so
+forth. Solid, practical John Bull is a mutton, beef, and pudding eater.
+He drinks strong ale or beer, and thinks beer. He drives fat oxen, and
+is himself fat. He is no idealist in philosophy. He hates generalization
+and abstract thought. He is for the real and concrete. Plain, unadorned
+Protestantism is most to the taste of the middle classes of Great
+Britain. Music, sculpture, and painting add not their charms to the
+Englishman's dull and respectable devotions. Cross the Channel and
+behold his whilom hereditary foeman, but now firm ally, the Frenchman!
+He is a dainty feeder and the most accomplished of cooks. He
+etherealizes ordinary fish, flesh, and fowl by his exquisite cuisine. He
+educates the palate to a daintiness whereof the gross-feeding John Bull
+never dreamed. He extracts the finest flavors and quintessential
+principles from flesh and vegetables. He drinks light and sparkling
+wines, the vintage of Champagne and Burgundy. Accordingly the Frenchman
+is lightsome and buoyant. He is a great theorist and classifier. He
+adheres to the ornate worship of the Mother Church when religiously
+disposed. His literature is perspicuous and clear. He is an admirable
+doctrinaire and generalizer,--witness Guizot and Montesquieu. He puts
+philosophy and science into a readable, comprehensible shape. The
+Teutonic diet of sauer-kraut, sausages, cheese, ham, etc., is
+indigestible, giving rise to a vaporous, cloudy cerebral state. German
+philosophy and mysticism are its natural outcome.
+
+Baked beans, pumpkin pie, apple-sauce, onions, codfish, and Medford
+rum,--these were the staple items of the primitive New England larder;
+and they were an appropriate diet whereon to nourish the caucus-loving,
+inventive, acute, methodically fanatical Yankee. The bean, the most
+venerable and nutritious of lentils, was anciently used as a ballot or
+vote. Hence it symbolized in the old Greek democracies politics and a
+public career. Hence Pythagoras and his disciples, though they were
+vegetable-eaters, eschewed the bean as an article of diet, from its
+association with politics, demagogism, and ochlocracy. They preferred
+the life contemplative and the _fallentis semita vitæ_. Hence their
+utter detestation of beans, the symbols of noisy gatherings, of
+demagogues and party strife and every species of political trickery. The
+primitive Yankee, in view of his destiny as the founder of this
+caucus-loving nation and American democracy, seems to have been
+providentially guided in selecting beans for his most characteristic
+article of diet.
+
+But to move on through the market. The butter and cheese stalls have
+their special attractions. The butyraceous gold in tubs and huge lumps
+displayed in these stalls looks as though it was precipitated from milk
+squeezed from Channel Island cows, those fawn-colored, fairest of dairy
+animals. In its present shape it is the herbage of a thousand
+clover-blooming meads and dewy hill-pastures in old Berkshire, in
+Vermont and Northern New York, transformed by the housewife's churn into
+edible gold. Not only butter and cheese are grass or of gramineous
+origin, but all flesh is grass,--a physiological fact enunciated by
+Holy Writ and strictly true.
+
+Porcine flesh is too abundant here. How the New-Englander, whose Puritan
+forefathers were almost Jews, and hardly got beyond the Old Testament in
+their Scriptural studies, has come to make pork so capital an article in
+his diet, is a mystery. Small-boned swine of the Chinese breed, which
+are kept in the temple sties of the Josses, and which are capable of an
+obeseness in which all form and feature are swallowed up and lost in
+fat, seem to be plenty in Quincy Market. They are hooked upright upon
+their haunches, in a sitting posture, against the posts of the stall.
+How many pots of Sabbath morning beans one of these porkers will
+lubricate!
+
+Beef tongues are abundant here, and eloquent of good living. The mighty
+hind and fore quarters and ribs of the ox,
+
+    "With their red and yellow,
+    Lean and tallow,"
+
+appeal to the good-liver on all sides. They seem to be the staple flesh
+of the stalls.
+
+But let us move on to the stalls frequented by the ichthyophagi. Homer
+calls the sea the barren, the harvestless! Our Cape Ann fishermen do not
+find it so.
+
+    "The sounds and seas, with all their finny droves,
+    That to the Moon in wavering morrice move,"
+
+are as foodful as the most fertile parts of _terra firma_. Here lie the
+blue, delicate mackerel in heaps, and piles of white perch from the
+South Shore, cod, haddock, eels, lobsters, huge segments of swordfish,
+and the flesh of various other voiceless tenants of the deep, both
+finned and shell-clad. The codfish, the symbol of Puritan aristocracy,
+as the grasshopper was of the ancient Athenians, seems to predominate.
+Our _frutti di mare_, in the shape of oysters, clams, and other
+mollusks, are the delight of all true gastronomers. What vegetable, or
+land animal, is so nutritious? Here are some silvery shad from the
+Penobscot, or Kennebec, or Merrimac, or Connecticut. The dams of our
+great manufacturing corporations are sadly interfering with the annual
+movements of these luscious and beautiful fish. Lake Winnipiseogee no
+longer receives these ocean visitors into its clear, mountain-mirroring
+waters. The greedy pike is also here, from inland pond and lake, and the
+beautiful trout from the quick mountain brook, "with his waved coat
+dropped with gold." Who eats the trout partakes of pure diet. He loves
+the silver-sanded stream, and silent pools, and eddies of limpid water.
+In fact, all fish, from sea or shore, freshet or purling brook, of shell
+or fin, are here, on clean marble slabs, fresh and hard. Ours is the
+latitude of the fish-eater. The British marine provinces, north of us,
+and Norway in the Old World, are his paradise.
+
+Man is a universal eater.
+
+    "He cannot spare water or wine,
+    Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose,
+    From the earth-poles to the line,
+    All between that works and grows.
+
+    * * * * * *
+
+    Give him agates for his meat;
+    Give him cantharids to eat;
+    From air and ocean bring him foods,
+    From all zones and altitudes;--
+    From all natures sharp and slimy,
+    Salt and basalt, wild and tame;
+    Tree and lichen, ape, sea-lion,
+    Bird and reptile, be his game."
+
+Quincy Market sticks to the cloven hoof, I am happy to say,
+notwithstanding the favorable verdict of the French _savans_ on the
+flavor and nutritious properties of horse-flesh. The femurs and tibias
+of frogs are not visible here. At this point I will quote _in extenso_
+from Wilkinson's chapter on Assimilation and its Organs.
+
+"In this late age, the human home has one universal season and one
+universal climate. The produce of every zone and month is for the board
+where toil is compensated and industry refreshed. For man alone, the
+universal animal, can wield the powers of fire, the universal element,
+whereby seasons, latitudes, and altitudes are levelled into one genial
+temperature. Man alone, that is to say, the social man alone, can want
+and duly conceive and invent that which is digestion going forth into
+nature as a creative art, namely, cookery, which by recondite processes
+of division and combination,--by cunning varieties of shape,--by the
+insinuation of subtle flavors,--by tincturings with precious spice, as
+with vegetable flames,--by fluids extracted, and added again, absorbed,
+dissolving, and surrounding,--by the discovery and cementing of new
+amities between different substances, provinces, and kingdoms of
+nature,--by the old truth of wine and the reasonable order of
+service,--in short, by the superior unity which it produces in the
+eatable world,--also by a new birth of feelings, properly termed
+_convivial_, which run between food and friendship, and make eating
+festive,--all through the conjunction of our Promethean with our
+culinary fire raises up new powers and species of food to the human
+frame, and indeed performs by machinery a part of the work of
+assimilation, enriching the sense of taste with a world of profound
+objects, and making it the refined participator, percipient, and
+stimulus of the most exquisite operations of digestion. Man, then, as
+the universal eater, enters from his own faculties into the natural
+viands, and gives them a social form, and thereby a thousand new aromas,
+answering to as many possible tastes in his wonderful constitution, and
+therefore his food is as different from that of animals in quality as it
+is plainly different in quantity and resource. How wise should not
+reason become, in order to our making a wise use of so vast an apparatus
+of nutrition!...
+
+"There is nothing more general in life than the digestive apparatus,
+because matter is the largest, if not the greatest, fact in the material
+universe. Every creature which is here must be made of something, and be
+maintained by something, or must be landlord of itself.... The planetary
+dinner-table has its various latitudes and longitudes, and plant and
+animal and mineral and wine are grown around it, and set upon it,
+according to the map of taste in the spherical appetite of our race....
+Hunger is the child of cold and night, and comes upwards from the
+all-swallowing ground; but thirst descends from above, and is born of
+the solar rays.... Hunger and thirst are strong terms, and the things
+themselves are too feverish provocations for civilized man. They are
+incompatible with the sense of taste in its epicureanism, and their
+gratification is of a very bodily order. The savage man, like a
+boa-constrictor, would swallow his animals whole, if his gullet would
+let him. This is to cheat the taste with unmanageable objects, as though
+we should give an estate to a child. On the other hand, civilization,
+house-building, warm apartments and kitchen fires, well-stored larders,
+and especially exemption from rude toil, abolish these extreme
+caricatures; and keeping appetite down to a middling level by the rote
+of meals, and thus taking away the incentives to ravenous haste, they
+allow the mind to tutor and variegate the tongue, and to substitute the
+harmonies and melodies of deliberate gustation for such unseemly
+bolting. Under this direction, hunger becomes polite; a long-drawn,
+many-colored taste; the tongue, like a skilful instrument, holds its
+notes; and thirst, redeemed from drowning, rises from the throat to the
+tongue and lips, and, full of discrimination, becomes the gladdening
+love of all delicious flavors.... In the stomach, judging by what there
+is done, what a scene we are about to enter! What a palatial kitchen and
+more than monasterial refectory! The sipping of aromatic nectar, the
+brief and elegant repast of that Apicius, the tongue, are supplanted at
+this lower board by eating and drinking in downright earnest. What a
+variety of solvents, sauces, and condiments, both springing up at call
+from the blood, and raining down from the mouth into the natural patines
+of the meats! What a quenching of desires, what an end and goal of the
+world is here! No wonder; for the stomach sits for four or five
+assiduous hours at the same meal that the dainty tongue will despatch in
+a twentieth portion of the time. For the stomach is bound to supply the
+extended body, while the tongue wafts only fairy gifts to the close and
+spiritual brain."
+
+So far Wilkinson, the Milton of physiologists.
+
+But lest these lucubrations should seem to be those of a mere glutton
+and gastrolater,--of one like the gourmand of old time, who longed for
+the neck of an ostrich or crane that the pleasure of swallowing dainty
+morsels might be as protracted as possible,--let me assume a vegetable,
+Pythagorean standpoint, and thence survey this accumulation of creature
+comforts, that is, that portion of them which consists of dead flesh.
+The vegetables and the fruits, the blazonry of autumn, are of course
+ignored from this point of view. Thus beheld, Quincy Market presents a
+spectacle that excites disgust and loathing, and exemplifies the fallen,
+depraved, and sophisticated state of human nature and human society. In
+those juicy quarters and surloins of beef and those fat porcine
+carcasses the vegetable-eater, Grahamite or Brahmin, sees nothing but
+the cause of beastly appetites, scrofula, apoplexy, corpulence, cheeks
+flushed with ungovernable propensities, tendencies downward toward the
+plane of the lower animals, bloodshot eyes, swollen veins, impure blood,
+violent passions, fetid breath, stertorous respiration, sudden
+death,--in fact, disease and brutishness of all sorts. A Brahmin
+traversing this goodly market would regard it as a vast charnel, a
+loathsome receptacle of dead flesh on its way to putrescence. His gorge
+would rise in rebellion at the sight. To the Brahmin, the lower animal
+kingdom is a vast masquerade of transmigratory souls. If he should
+devour a goose or turkey or hen, or a part of a bullock or sheep or
+goat, he might, according to his creed, be eating the temporary organism
+of his grandmother. The poet Pope wrote in the true Brahminical spirit,
+when he said,--"Nothing can be more shocking and horrid than one of our
+kitchens sprinkled with blood, and abounding with cries of creatures
+expiring, or with the limbs of dead animals scattered or hung up there.
+It gives one an image of a giant's den in romance, bestrewed with the
+scattered heads and mangled limbs of those who were slain by his
+cruelty." Think of the porcine shambles of Cincinnati, with their
+swift-handed swine-slayers!
+
+    "What loud lament and dismal miserere,"
+
+ear-deafening and horrible, must issue from them. How can a Jew reside
+in that porkopolitan municipality? The brutishness of the Bowery
+butchers is proverbial. A late number of Leslie's Pictorial represents a
+Bowery butcher's wagon crowded with sheep and calves so densely that
+their heads are protruded against the wheels, which revolve with the
+utmost speed, the brutal driver urging his horse furiously.
+
+The first advocate of a purely vegetable diet was Pythagoras, the Samian
+philosopher. His discourse delivered at Crotona, a city of Magna Græcia,
+is ably reported for posterity by the poet Ovid. From what materials he
+made up his report, it is impossible now to say. Pythagoras says that
+flesh-eaters make their stomachs the sepulchres of the lower animals,
+the cemeteries of beasts. About thirty years ago there was a vegetable
+diet movement hereabouts, which created some excitement at the time. Its
+adherents were variously denominated as Grahamites, and, from the fact
+of their using bread made of unbolted wheat-meal, bran-eaters. There was
+little of muscular Christianity in them. They were a pale, harmless set
+of valetudinarians, who were, like all weakly persons, morbidly alive to
+their own bodily states, and principally employed in experimenting on
+the effects of various insipid articles of diet. Tea and coffee were
+tabooed by these people. Ale and wine were abominations in their Index
+Expurgatorius of forbidden _ingesta_. The presence of a boiled egg on
+their breakfast-tables would cause some of the more sensitive of these
+New England Brahmins to betake themselves to their beds for the rest of
+the day. They kept themselves in a semi-famished state on principle. One
+of the most liberal and latitudinarian of the sect wrote, in 1835,--"For
+two years past I have abstained from the use of all the diffusible
+stimulants, using no animal food, either flesh, fish, or fowl, nor any
+alcoholic or vinous spirits, no form of ale, beer, or porter, no cider,
+tea, or coffee; but using milk and water as my only liquid aliment, and
+feeding sparingly, or rather moderately, upon farinaceous food,
+vegetables, and fruit, seasoned with unmelted butter, slightly boiled
+eggs, and sugar and molasses, with no condiment but common salt."
+
+These ultra-temperance dietetical philosophers never flourished greatly.
+They were too languid and too little enthusiastic to propagate their
+rules of living and make converts. In a country where meat is within
+reach of all, a vegetable dietary is not popular. Doubtless a less
+frequent use of fleshly food would be greatly to our advantage as a
+people. But utter abstinence is out of the question. A vegetable diet,
+however, has great authorities in its favor, both ancient and modern.
+Plautus, Plutarch, Porphyry of Tyre, Lord Bacon, Sir William Temple,
+Cicero, Cyrus the Great, Pope, Newton, and Shelley have all left their
+testimony in favor of it and of simplicity of living. Poor Shelley, who
+in his abstract moods forgot even to take vegetable sustenance for days
+together, makes a furious onslaught upon flesh-eating in his Notes to
+"Queen Mab." The notes, as well as the poem, are crude productions, the
+outgivings of a boy; but that boy was Shelley. It was said that he was
+traceable, in his lonely wanderings in secluded places in Italy, by the
+crumbs of bread which he let fall. Speculative thinkers have generally
+been light feeders, eschewing stimulants, both solid and liquid, and
+preferring mild food and water for drink. Those who lead an interior
+life sedentary and contemplative need not gross pabulum, but would find
+their inward joy at the contemplation and discovery of truth seriously
+qualified and deadened by it. Spare fast is the companion of the
+ecstatic moods of a high truth-seeker such as Newton, Malebranche, etc.
+Immanuel Kant was almost the only profound speculative thinker who was
+decidedly convivial, and given to gulosity, at least at his dinner.
+Asceticism ordinarily reigns in the cloister and student's bower. The
+Oxford scholar long ago, as described by Chaucer, was adust and thin.
+
+    "As lene was his hors as is a rake,
+    And he was not right fat, I undertake."
+
+The ancient anchorets of the East, the children of St. Anthony, were a
+long-lived sect, rivalling the many-wintered crow in longevity. Yet
+their lives were vapid monotonies, only long in months and years. They
+were devoid of vivid sensations, and vegetated merely. Milk-eaters were,
+in the days of Homer, the longest-lived of men.
+
+Without the ministry of culinary fire, man could not gratify his
+carnivorous propensities. He would be obliged to content himself with a
+vegetable diet; for, according to the comparative anatomists, man is not
+structurally a flesh-eater. At any rate he is not fanged or clawed. His
+teeth and nails are not like the natural cutlery found in the mouths and
+paws of beasts of prey. He cannot eat raw flesh. Digger Indians are left
+to do that when the meat is putrescent. Prometheus was the inventor of
+roast and boiled beef, and of cookery generally, and therefore the
+destroyer of the original simplicity of living which characterized
+primitive man, when milk and fruits cooked by the sun, and acorns, were
+the standing repasts of unsophisticated humanity. _Per contra_, Horace
+makes man, in his mast-eating days, a poor creature.
+
+    "Forth from the earth when human kind
+    First crept, a dull and brutish herd, with nails
+    And fists they fought for dens wherein to couch, and _acorns_."
+
+Don Quixote, however, in his eloquent harangue to the shepherds in the
+Sierra Morena, took a different view of man during the acorn period. He
+saw in it the golden age.
+
+There are vast rice-eating populations in China and India, who are a low
+grade of men, morally and physically. Exceptional cases of longevity,
+like those of old Parr, Jenkins, Francisco, Pratt, and Farnham, are
+often-times adduced as the results of abstemiousness and frugality of
+living. These exceptional cases prove nothing whatever. These
+individuals happened to reach an almost antediluvian longevity, thanks
+to their inherited vitality and their listless, uneventful, monotonous
+lives. Their hearts beat a dull funeral march through four or five
+generations, and finally stopped. But the longevity of such mighty
+thinkers and superb men as Humboldt and Goethe is glorious to
+contemplate. They were never old, but were vernal in spirit to the last,
+and, for aught that appears to the contrary, generous livers, not "acid
+ghouls" or bran-eating valetudinarians. Shakespeare died at fifty-one,
+but great thinkers and poets have generally been long-lived. "Better
+fifty years of Europe" or America "than a cycle of" rice-eating
+"Cathay."
+
+The value of the animals slaughtered in this country in 1860 was, in
+round numbers, $212,000,000, a sum to make the vegetable feeder stare
+and gasp. How many thousands and tens of thousands of acres of herbage,
+which could not be directly available for human consumption as food, had
+these slaughtered animals incorporated into their frames, and rendered
+edible for man! "The most fertile districts of the habitable globe,"
+says Shelley, "are now actually cultivated by men for animals, at a
+delay and waste of aliment absolutely incalculable." On the contrary,
+the close-feeding sheep and the cow and ox utilize for man millions of
+acres of vegetation which would otherwise be useless. The domestic
+animals which everywhere accompany civilized man were a part of them
+intended as machines to convert herbage into milk and flesh for man's
+sustenance. The tame villatic fowl scratches and picks with might and
+main, converting a thousand refuse things into dainty human food. A
+vegetable diet is out of the question for the blubber-eating Esquimaux
+and Greenlander, even if it would keep the flame of life burning in
+their Polar latitudes.
+
+The better and more nutritious the diet, the better the health. It is to
+the improved garden vegetables and domestic animals that man will
+hereafter owe the superior health and personal comeliness which he will
+undoubtedly enjoy as our planet becomes more and more humanized, and man
+asserts his proper lordship over Nature. This matter of vegetable and
+animal food is dictated by climate. In the temperate zone they go well
+mixed. In the tropics man is naturally a Pythagorean, but he is not so
+strong, or so healthy, or moral, or intellectual, as the flesh-eating
+nations of northern latitudes.
+
+
+
+
+THE FREEDMAN'S STORY.
+
+IN TWO PARTS.
+
+
+PART II.
+
+As the Freedman relates only events which came under his own
+observation, it is necessary to preface the remaining portion of his
+narrative with a brief account of the Christiana riot. This I extract
+mainly from a statement made at the time by a member of the Philadelphia
+bar, making only a few alterations to give the account greater clearness
+and brevity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the 9th of September, 1851, Mr. Edward Gorsuch, a citizen of
+Maryland, residing near Baltimore, appeared before Edward D. Ingraham,
+Esquire, United States Commissioner at Philadelphia, and asked for
+warrants under the act of Congress of September 18, 1850, for the arrest
+of four of his slaves, whom he had heard were secreted somewhere in
+Lancaster County. Warrants were issued forthwith, directed to H. H.
+Kline, a deputy United States Marshal, authorizing him to arrest George
+Hammond, Joshua Hammond, Nelson Ford, and Noah Buley, persons held to
+service or labor in the State of Maryland, and to bring them before the
+said Commissioner.
+
+Mr. Gorsuch then made arrangements with John Agin and Thompson Tully,
+residents of Philadelphia, and police officers, to assist Kline in
+making the arrests. They were to meet Mr. Gorsuch and some companions at
+Penningtonville, a small place on the State Railroad, about fifty miles
+from Philadelphia. Kline, with the warrants, left Philadelphia on the
+same day, about 2 P.M., for West Chester. There he hired a conveyance
+and rode to Gallagherville, where he hired another conveyance to take
+him to Penningtonville. Before he had driven very far, the carriage
+breaking down, he returned to Gallagherville, procured another, and
+started again. Owing to this detention, he was prevented from meeting
+Mr. Gorsuch and his friends at the appointed time, and when he reached
+Penningtonville, about 2 A.M. on the 10th of September, they had gone.
+
+On entering the tavern, the place of rendezvous, he saw a colored man
+whom he recognized as Samuel Williams, a resident of Philadelphia. To
+put Williams off his guard, Kline asked the landlord some questions
+about horse thieves. Williams remarked that he had seen the "horse
+thieves," and told Kline he had come too late.
+
+Kline then drove on to a place called the Gap. Seeing a person he
+believed to be Williams following him, he stopped at several taverns
+along the road and made inquiries about horse thieves. He reached the
+Gap about 3 A.M., put up his horses, and went to bed. At half past four
+he rose, ate breakfast, and rode to Parkesburg, about forty-five miles
+from Philadelphia, and on the same railroad. Here he found Agin and
+Tully asleep in the bar-room. He awoke Agin, called him aside, and
+inquired for Mr. Gorsuch and his party. He was told they had gone to
+Sadsbury, a small place on the turnpike, four or five miles from
+Parkesburg.
+
+On going there, he found them, about 9 A.M. on the 10th of September.
+Kline told them he had seen Agin and Tully, who had determined to return
+to Philadelphia, and proposed that the whole party should return to
+Gallagherville. Mr. Gorsuch, however, determined to go to Parkesburg
+instead, to see Agin and Tully, and attempt to persuade them not to
+return. The rest of the party were to go to Gallagherville, while Kline
+returned to Downingtown, to see Agin and Tully, should Mr. Gorsuch fail
+to meet them at Parkesburg. He left Gallagherville about 11 A.M., and
+met Agin and Tully at Downingtown. Agin said he had seen Mr. Gorsuch,
+but refused to go back. He promised, however, to return from
+Philadelphia in the evening cars. Kline returned to Downingtown, and
+then met all the party except Mr. Edward Gorsuch, who had remained
+behind to make the necessary arrangements for procuring a guide to the
+houses where he had been informed his negroes were to be found.
+
+About 3 P.M., Mr. Edward Gorsuch joined them at Gallagherville, and at
+11 P.M. on the night of the 10th of September they all went in the cars
+to Downingtown, where they waited for the evening train from
+Philadelphia.
+
+When it arrived, neither Agin nor Tully was to be seen. The rest of the
+party went on to the Gap, which they reached about half past one on the
+morning of the 11th of September. They then continued their journey on
+foot towards Christiana, where Parker was residing, and where the slaves
+of Mr. Gorsuch were supposed to be living. The party then consisted of
+Kline, Edward Gorsuch, Dickinson Gorsuch, his son, Joshua M. Gorsuch,
+his nephew, Dr. Thomas Pierce, Nicholas T. Hutchings, and Nathan
+Nelson.
+
+After they had proceeded about a mile they met a man who was represented
+to be a guide. He is said to have been disguised in such a way that none
+of the party could recognize him, and his name is not mentioned in any
+proceedings. It is probable that he was employed by Mr. Edward Gorsuch,
+and one condition of his services may have been that he should be
+allowed to use every possible means of concealing his face and name from
+the rest of the party. Under his conduct, the party went on, and soon
+reached a house in which they were told one of the slaves was to be
+found. Mr. Gorsuch wished to send part of the company after him, but
+Kline was unwilling to divide their strength, and they walked on,
+intending to return that way after making the other arrests.
+
+The guide led them by a circuitous route, until they reached the Valley
+Road, near the house of William Parker, the writer of the annexed
+narrative, which was their point of destination. They halted in a lane
+near by, ate some crackers and cheese, examined the condition of their
+fire-arms, and consulted upon the plan of attack. A short walk brought
+them to the orchard in front of Parker's house, which the guide pointed
+out and left them. He had no desire to remain and witness the result of
+his false information. His disguise and desertion of his employer are
+strong circumstances in proof of the fact that he knew he was misleading
+the party. On the trial of Hanway, it was proved by the defence that
+Nelson Ford, one of the fugitives, was not on the ground until after the
+sun was up. Joshua Hammond had lived in the vicinity up to the time that
+a man by the name of Williams had been kidnapped, when he and several
+others departed, and had not since been heard from. Of the other two,
+one at least, if the evidence for the prosecution is to be relied upon,
+was in the house at which the party first halted, so that there could
+not have been more than one of Mr. Gorsuch's slaves in Parker's house,
+and of this there is no positive testimony.
+
+It was not yet daybreak when the party approached the house. They made
+demand for the slaves, and threatened to burn the house and shoot the
+occupants, if they would not surrender. At this time, the number of
+besiegers seems to have been increased, and as many as fifteen are said
+to have been near the house. About daybreak, when they were advancing a
+second or third time, they saw a negro coming out, whom Mr. Gorsuch
+thought he recognized as one of his slaves. Kline pursued him with a
+revolver in his hand, and stumbled over the bars near the house. Some of
+the company came up before Kline, and found the door open. They entered,
+and Kline, following, called for the owner, ordered all to come down,
+and said he had two warrants for the arrest of Nelson Ford and Joshua
+Hammond. He was answered that there were no such men in the house.
+Kline, followed by Mr. Gorsuch, attempted to go up stairs. They were
+prevented from ascending by what appears to have been an ordinary _fish
+gig_. Some of the witnesses described it as "like a pitchfork with blunt
+prongs," and others were at a loss what to call this, the first weapon
+used in the contest. An axe was next thrown down, but hit no one.
+
+Mr. Gorsuch and others then went outside to talk with the negroes at the
+window. Just at this time Kline fired his pistol up stairs. The warrants
+were then read outside the house, and demand made upon the landlord. No
+answer was heard. After a short interview, Kline proposed to withdraw
+his men, but Mr. Gorsuch refused, and said he would not leave the ground
+until he made the arrests. Kline then in a loud voice ordered some one
+to go to the sheriff and bring a hundred men, thinking, as he afterwards
+said, this would intimidate them. The threat appears to have had some
+effect, for the negroes asked time to consider. The party outside agreed
+to give fifteen minutes.
+
+While these scenes were passing at the house, occurrences transpired
+elsewhere that are worthy of attention, but which cannot be understood
+without a short statement of previous events.
+
+In the month of September, 1850, a colored man, known in the
+neighborhood around Christiana to be free, was seized and carried away
+by men known to be professional kidnappers, and had not been seen by his
+family since. In March, 1851, in the same neighborhood, under the roof
+of his employer, during the night, another colored man was tied, gagged,
+and carried away, marking the road along which he was dragged with his
+blood. No authority for this outrage was ever shown, and the man was
+never heard from. These and many other acts of a similar kind had so
+alarmed the neighborhood, that the very name of kidnapper was sufficient
+to create a panic. The blacks feared for their own safety; and the
+whites, knowing their feelings, were apprehensive that any attempt to
+repeat these outrages would be the cause of bloodshed. Many good
+citizens were determined to do all in their power to prevent these
+lawless depredations, though they were ready to submit to any measures
+sanctioned by legal process. They regretted the existence among them of
+a body of people liable to such violence; but without combination had,
+each for himself, resolved that they would do everything dictated by
+humanity to resist barbarous oppression.
+
+On the morning in question, a colored man living in the neighborhood,
+who was passing Parker's house at an early hour, saw the yard full of
+men. He halted, and was met by a man who presented a pistol at him, and
+ordered him to leave the place. He went away and hastened to a store
+kept by Elijah Lewis, which, like all places of that kind, was probably
+the head-quarters of news in the neighborhood. Mr. Lewis was in the act
+of opening his store when this man told him that "Parker's house was
+surrounded by _kidnappers_, who had broken into the house, and _were
+trying to get him away_." Lewis, not questioning the truth of the
+statement, repaired immediately to the place. On the way he passed the
+house of Castner Hanway, and, telling him what he had heard, asked him
+to go over to Parker's. Hanway was in feeble health and unable to
+undergo the fatigue of walking that distance; but he saddled his horse,
+and reached Parker's during the armistice.
+
+Having no reason to believe he was acting under legal authority, when
+Kline approached and demanded assistance in making the arrests, Hanway
+made no answer. Kline then handed him the warrants, which Hanway
+examined, saw they appeared genuine, and returned.
+
+At this time, several colored men, who no doubt had heard the report
+that kidnappers were about, came up, armed with such weapons as they
+could suddenly lay hands upon. How many were on the ground during the
+affray it is _now_ impossible to determine. The witnesses on both sides
+vary materially in their estimate. Some said they saw a dozen or
+fifteen; some, thirty or forty; and others maintained, as many as two or
+three hundred. It is known there were not two hundred colored men within
+eight miles of Parker's house, nor half that number within four miles;
+and it would have been almost impossible to get together even thirty at
+an hour's notice. It is probable there were about twenty-five, all told,
+at or near the house from the beginning of the affray until all was
+quiet again. These the fears of those who afterwards testified to larger
+numbers might easily have magnified to fifty or a hundred.
+
+While Kline and Hanway were in conversation, Elijah Lewis came up.
+Hanway said to him, "Here is the Marshal." Lewis asked to see his
+authority, and Kline handed him one of the warrants. When he saw the
+signature of the United States Commissioner, "he took it for granted
+that Kline had authority." Kline then ordered Hanway and Lewis to assist
+in arresting the alleged fugitives. Hanway refused to have anything to
+do with it. The negroes around these three men seeming disposed to make
+an attack, Hanway "motioned to them and urged them back." He then
+"advised Kline that it would be dangerous to attempt making arrests, and
+that they had better leave." Kline, after saying he would hold them
+accountable for the fugitives, promised to leave, and beckoned two or
+three times to his men to retire.
+
+The negroes then rushed up, some armed with guns, some with
+corn-cutters, staves, or clubs, others with stones or whatever weapon
+chance offered. Hanway and Lewis in vain endeavored to restrain them.
+
+Kline leaped the fence, passed through the standing grain in the field,
+and for a few moments was out of sight. Mr. Gorsuch refused to leave the
+spot, saying his "property was there, and he would have it or perish in
+the attempt." The rest of his party endeavored to retreat when they
+heard the Marshal calling to them, but they were too late; the negroes
+rushed up, and the firing began. How many times each party fired, it is
+impossible to tell. For a few moments everything was confusion, and each
+attempted to save himself. Nathan Nelson went down the short land,
+thence into the woods and towards Penningtonville. Nicholas Hutchings,
+by direction of Kline, followed Lewis to see where he went. Thomas
+Pierce and Joshua Gorsuch went down the long lane, pursued by some of
+the negroes, caught up with Hanway, and, shielding themselves behind his
+horse, followed him to a stream of water near by. Dickinson Gorsuch was
+with his father near the house. They were both wounded; the father
+mortally. Dickinson escaped down the lane, where he was met by Kline,
+who had returned from the woods at the end of the field. Kline rendered
+him assistance, and went towards Penningtonville for a physician. On his
+way he met Joshua M. Gorsuch, who was also wounded and delirious. Kline
+led him over to Penningtonville and placed him on the upward train from
+Philadelphia. Before this time several persons living in the
+neighborhood had arrived at Parker's house. Lewis Cooper found Dickinson
+Gorsuch in the place where Kline had left him, attended by Joseph
+Scarlett. He placed him in his dearborn, and carried him to the house of
+Levi Pownall, where he remained till he had sufficiently recovered to
+return home. Mr. Cooper then returned to Parker's, placed the body of
+Mr. Edward Gorsuch in the same dearborn, and carried it to Christiana.
+Neither Nelson nor Hutchings rejoined their party, but during the day
+went by the railroad to Lancaster.
+
+Thus ended an occurrence which was the theme of conversation throughout
+the land. Not more than two hours elapsed from the time demand was first
+made at Parker's house until the dead body of Edward Gorsuch was carried
+to Christiana. In that brief time the blood of strangers had been
+spilled in a sudden affray, an unfortunate man had been killed, and two
+others badly wounded.
+
+When rumor spread abroad the result of the affray, the neighborhood was
+appalled. The inhabitants of the farm-houses and the villages around,
+unused to such scenes, could not at first believe that it had occurred
+in their midst. Before midday, exaggerated accounts had reached
+Philadelphia, and were transmitted by telegraph throughout the country.
+
+Many persons were arrested for participation in the riot; and, after a
+long imprisonment, were arraigned for trial, on the charge of treason,
+before Judges Grier and Kane, of the United States Court, sitting at
+Philadelphia.
+
+Every one knows the result. The prisoners were all acquitted; and the
+country was aroused to the danger of a law which allowed bad men to
+incarcerate peaceful citizens for months in prison, and put them in
+peril of their lives, for refusing to aid in entrapping, and sending
+back to hopeless slavery, men struggling for the very same freedom we
+value as the best part of our birthright.
+
+The Freedman's narrative is now resumed.
+
+A short time after the events narrated in the preceding number, it was
+whispered about that the slaveholders intended to make an attack on my
+house; but, as I had often been threatened, I gave the report little
+attention. About the same time, however, two letters were found thrown
+carelessly about, as if to attract notice. These letters stated that
+kidnappers would be at my house on a certain night, and warned me to be
+on my guard. Still I did not let the matter trouble me. But it was no
+idle rumor. The bloodhounds were upon my track.
+
+I was not at this time aware that in the city of Philadelphia there was
+a band of devoted, determined men,--few in number, but strong in
+purpose,--who were fully resolved to leave no means untried to thwart
+the barbarous and inhuman monsters who crawled in the gloom of midnight,
+like the ferocious tiger, and, stealthily springing on their
+unsuspecting victims, seized, bound, and hurled them into the ever open
+jaws of Slavery. Under the pretext of enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law,
+the slaveholders did not hesitate to violate all other laws made for the
+good government and protection of society, and converted the old State
+of Pennsylvania, so long the hope of the fleeing bondman, wearied and
+heartbroken, into a common hunting-ground for their human prey. But this
+little band of true patriots in Philadelphia united for the purpose of
+standing between the pursuer and the pursued, the kidnapper and his
+victim, and, regardless of all personal considerations, were ever on the
+alert, ready to sound the alarm to save their fellows from a fate far
+more to be dreaded than death. In this they had frequently succeeded,
+and many times had turned the hunter home bootless of his prey. They
+began their operations at the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, and had
+thoroughly examined all matters connected with it, and were perfectly
+cognizant of the plans adopted to carry out its provisions in
+Pennsylvania, and, through a correspondence with reliable persons in
+various sections of the South, were enabled to know these hunters of
+men, their agents, spies, tools, and betrayers. They knew who performed
+this work in Richmond, Alexandria, Washington, Baltimore, Wilmington,
+Philadelphia, Lancaster, and Harrisburg, those principal depots of
+villany, where organized bands prowled about at all times, ready to
+entrap the unwary fugitive.
+
+They also discovered that this nefarious business was conducted mainly
+through one channel; for, spite of man's inclination to vice and crime,
+there are but few men, thank God, so low in the scale of humanity as to
+be willing to degrade themselves by doing the dirty work of four-legged
+bloodhounds. Yet such men, actuated by the love of gold and their own
+base and brutal natures, were found ready for the work. These fellows
+consorted with constables, police-officers, aldermen, and even with
+learned members of the legal profession, who disgraced their respectable
+calling by low, contemptible arts, and were willing to clasp hands with
+the lowest ruffian in order to pocket the reward that was the price of
+blood. Every facility was offered these bad men; and whether it was
+night or day, it was only necessary to whisper in a certain circle that
+a negro was to be caught, and horses and wagons, men and officers, spies
+and betrayers, were ready, at the shortest notice, armed and equipped,
+and eager for the chase.
+
+Thus matters stood in Philadelphia on the 9th of September, 1851, when
+Mr. Gorsuch and his gang of Maryland kidnappers arrived there. Their
+presence was soon known to the little band of true men who were called
+"The Special Secret Committee." They had agents faithful and true as
+steel; and through these agents the whereabouts and business of Gorsuch
+and his minions were soon discovered. They were noticed in close
+converse with a certain member of the Philadelphia bar, who had lost the
+little reputation he ever had by continual dabbling in negro-catching,
+as well as by association with and support of the notorious Henry H.
+Kline, a professional kidnapper of the basest stamp. Having determined
+as to the character and object of these Marylanders, there remained to
+ascertain the spot selected for their deadly spring; and this required
+no small degree of shrewdness, resolution, and tact.
+
+Some one's liberty was imperilled; the hunters were abroad; the time was
+short, and the risk imminent. The little band bent themselves to the
+task they were pledged to perform with zeal and devotion; and success
+attended their efforts. They knew that one false step would jeopardize
+their own liberty, and very likely their lives, and utterly destroy
+every prospect of carrying out their objects. They knew, too, that they
+were matched against the most desperate, daring, and brutal men in the
+kidnappers' ranks,--men who, to obtain the proffered reward, would rush
+willingly into any enterprise, regardless alike of its character or its
+consequences. That this was the deepest, the most thoroughly organized
+and best-planned project for man-catching that had been concocted since
+the infamous Fugitive Slave Law had gone into operation, they also knew;
+and consequently this nest of hornets was approached with great care.
+But by walking directly into their camp, watching their plans as they
+were developed, and secretly testing every inch of ground on which they
+trod, they discovered enough to counterplot these plotters, and to
+spring upon them a mine which shook the whole country, and put an end to
+man-stealing in Pennsylvania forever.
+
+The trusty agent of this Special Committee, Mr. Samuel Williams, of
+Philadelphia,--a man true and faithful to his race, and courageous in
+the highest degree,--came to Christiana, travelling most of the way in
+company with the very men whom Gorsuch had employed to drag into slavery
+four as good men as ever trod the earth. These Philadelphia roughs, with
+their Maryland associates, little dreamed that the man who sat by their
+side carried with him their inglorious defeat, and the death-warrant of
+at least one of their party. Williams listened to their conversation,
+and marked well their faces, and, being fully satisfied by their awkward
+movements that they were heavily armed, managed to slip out of the cars
+at the village of Downington unobserved, and proceeded to
+Penningtonville, where he encountered Kline, who had started several
+hours in advance of the others. Kline was terribly frightened, as he
+knew Williams, and felt that his presence was an omen of ill to his base
+designs. He spoke of horse thieves; but Williams replied,--"I know the
+kind of horse thieves you are after. They are all gone; and you had
+better not go after them."
+
+Kline immediately jumped into his wagon, and rode away, whilst Williams
+crossed the country, and arrived at Christiana in advance of him.
+
+The manner in which information of Gorsuch's designs was obtained will
+probably ever remain a secret; and I doubt if any one outside of the
+little band who so masterly managed the affair knows anything of it.
+This was wise; and I would to God other friends had acted thus. Mr.
+Williams's trip to Christiana, and the many incidents connected
+therewith, will be found in the account of his trial; for he was
+subsequently arrested and thrown into the cold cells of a loathsome jail
+for this good act of simple Christian duty; but, resolute to the last,
+he publicly stated that he had been to Christiana, and, to use his own
+words, "I done it, and will do it again." Brave man, receive my thanks!
+
+Of the Special Committee I can only say that they proved themselves men;
+and through the darkest hours of the trials that followed, they were
+found faithful to their trust, never for one moment deserting those who
+were compelled to suffer. Many, many innocent men residing in the
+vicinity of Christiana, the ground where the first battle was fought for
+liberty in Pennsylvania, were seized, torn from their families, and,
+like Williams, thrown into prison for long, weary months, to be tried
+for their lives. By them this Committee stood, giving them every
+consolation and comfort, furnishing them with clothes, and attending to
+their wants, giving money to themselves and families, and procuring for
+them the best legal counsel. This I know, and much more of which it is
+not wise, even now, to speak: 't is enough to say they were friends when
+and where it cost something to be friends, and true brothers where
+brothers were needed.
+
+After this lengthy digression, I will return, and speak of the riot and
+the events immediately preceding it.
+
+The information brought by Mr. Williams spread through the vicinity like
+a fire in the prairies; and when I went home from my work in the
+evening, I found Pinckney (whom I should have said before was my
+brother-in-law), Abraham Johnson, Samuel Thompson, and Joshua Kite at my
+house, all of them excited about the rumor. I laughed at them, and said
+it was all talk. This was the 10th of September, 1851. They stopped for
+the night with us, and we went to bed as usual. Before daylight, Joshua
+Kite rose, and started for his home. Directly, he ran back to the house,
+burst open the door, crying, "O William! kidnappers! kidnappers!"
+
+He said that, when he was just beyond the yard, two men crossed before
+him, as if to stop him, and others came up on either side. As he said
+this, they had reached the door. Joshua ran up stairs, (we slept up
+stairs,) and they followed him; but I met them at the landing, and
+asked, "Who are you?"
+
+The leader, Kline, replied, "I am the United States Marshal."
+
+I then told him to take another step, and I would break his neck.
+
+He again said, "I am the United States Marshal."
+
+I told him I did not care for him nor the United States. At that he
+turned and went down stairs.
+
+Pinckney said, as he turned to go down,--"Where is the use in fighting?
+They will take us."
+
+Kline heard him, and said, "Yes, give up, for we can and will take you
+anyhow."
+
+I told them all not to be afraid, nor to give up to any slaveholder, but
+to fight until death.
+
+"Yes," said Kline, "I have heard many a negro talk as big as you, and
+then have taken him; and I'll take you."
+
+"You have not taken me yet," I replied; "and if you undertake it you
+will have your name recorded in history for this day's work."
+
+Mr. Gorsuch then spoke, and said,--"Come, Mr. Kline, let's go up stairs
+and take them. We _can_ take them. Come, follow me. I'll go up and get
+my property. What's in the way? The law is in my favor, and the people
+are in my favor."
+
+At that he began to ascend the stair; but I said to him,--"See here, old
+man, you can come up, but you can't go down again. Once up here, you are
+mine."
+
+Kline then said,--"Stop, Mr. Gorsuch. I will read the warrant, and then,
+I think, they will give up."
+
+He then read the warrant, and said,--"Now, you see, we are commanded to
+take you, dead or alive; so you may as well give up at once."
+
+"Go up, Mr. Kline," then said Gorsuch, "you are the Marshal."
+
+Kline started, and when a little way up said, "I am coming."
+
+I said, "Well, come on."
+
+But he was too cowardly to show his face. He went down again and
+said,--"You had better give up without any more fuss, for we are bound
+to take you anyhow. I told you before that I was the United States
+Marshal, yet you will not give up. I'll not trouble the slaves. I will
+take you and make you pay for all."
+
+"Well," I answered, "take me and make me pay for all. I'll pay for all."
+
+Mr. Gorsuch then said, "You have my property."
+
+To which I replied,--"Go in the room down there, and see if there is
+anything there belonging to you. There are beds and a bureau, chairs,
+and other things. Then go out to the barn; there you will find a cow and
+some hogs. See if any of them are yours."
+
+He said,--"They are not mine; I want my men. They are here, and I am
+bound to have them."
+
+Thus we parleyed for a time, all because of the pusillanimity of the
+Marshal, when he, at last, said,--"I am tired waiting on you; I see you
+are not going to give up. Go to the barn and fetch some straw," said he
+to one of his men, "I will set the house on fire, and burn them up."
+
+"Burn us up and welcome," said I. "None but a coward would say the like.
+You can burn us, but you can't take us; before I give up, you will see
+my ashes scattered on the earth."
+
+By this time day had begun to dawn; and then my wife came to me and
+asked if she should blow the horn, to bring friends to our assistance. I
+assented, and she went to the garret for the purpose. When the horn
+sounded from the garret window, one of the ruffians asked the others
+what it meant; and Kline said to me, "What do you mean by blowing that
+horn?"
+
+I did not answer. It was a custom with us, when a horn was blown at an
+unusual hour, to proceed to the spot promptly to see what was the
+matter. Kline ordered his men to shoot any one they saw blowing the
+horn. There was a peach-tree at that end of the house. Up it two of the
+men climbed; and when my wife went a second time to the window, they
+fired as soon as they heard the blast, but missed their aim. My wife
+then went down on her knees, and, drawing her head and body below the
+range of the window, the horn resting on the sill, blew blast after
+blast, while the shots poured thick and fast around her. They must have
+fired ten or twelve times. The house was of stone, and the windows were
+deep, which alone preserved her life.
+
+They were evidently disconcerted by the blowing of the horn. Gorsuch
+said again, "I want my property, and I will have it."
+
+"Old man," said I, "you look as if you belonged to some persuasion."
+
+"Never mind," he answered, "what persuasion I belong to; I want my
+property."
+
+While I was leaning out of the window, Kline fired a pistol at me, but
+the shot went too high; the ball broke the glass just above my head. I
+was talking to Gorsuch at the time. I seized a gun and aimed it at
+Gorsuch's breast, for he evidently had instigated Kline to fire; but
+Pinckney caught my arm and said, "Don't shoot." The gun went off, just
+grazing Gorsuch's shoulder. Another conversation then ensued between
+Gorsuch, Kline, and myself, when another one of the party fired at me,
+but missed. Dickinson Gorsuch, I then saw, was preparing to shoot; and I
+told him if he missed, I would show him where shooting first came from.
+
+I asked them to consider what they would have done, had they been in our
+position. "I know you want to kill us," I said, "for you have shot at us
+time and again. We have only fired twice, although we have guns and
+ammunition, and could kill you all if we would, but we do not want to
+shed blood."
+
+"If you do not shoot any more," then said Kline, "I will stop my men
+from firing."
+
+They then ceased for a time. This was about sunrise.
+
+Mr. Gorsuch now said,--"Give up, and let me have my property. Hear what
+the Marshal says; the Marshal is your friend. He advises you to give up
+without more fuss, for my property I will have."
+
+I denied that I had his property, when he replied, "You have my men."
+
+"Am I your man?" I asked.
+
+"No."
+
+I then called Pinckney forward.
+
+"Is that your man?"
+
+"No."
+
+Abraham Johnson I called next, but Gorsuch said he was not his man.
+
+The only plan left was to call both Pinckney and Johnson again; for had
+I called the others, he would have recognized them, for they were his
+slaves.
+
+Abraham Johnson said, "Does such a shrivelled up old slaveholder as you
+own such a nice, genteel young man as I am?"
+
+At this Gorsuch took offence, and charged me with dictating his
+language. I then told him there were but five of us, which he denied,
+and still insisted that I had his property. One of the party then
+attacked the Abolitionists, affirming that, although they declared there
+could not be property in man, the Bible was conclusive authority in
+favor of property in human flesh.
+
+"Yes," said Gorsuch, "does not the Bible say, 'Servants, obey your
+masters'?"
+
+I said that it did, but the same Bible said, "Give unto your servants
+that which is just and equal."
+
+At this stage of the proceedings, we went into a mutual Scripture
+inquiry, and bandied views in the manner of garrulous old wives.
+
+When I spoke of duty to servants, Gorsuch said, "Do you know that?"
+
+"Where," I asked, "do you see it in Scripture, that a man should traffic
+in his brother's blood?"
+
+"Do you call a nigger my brother?" said Gorsuch.
+
+"Yes," said I.
+
+"William," said Samuel Thompson, "he has been a class-leader."
+
+When Gorsuch heard that, he hung his head, but said nothing. We then all
+joined in singing,--
+
+    "Leader, what do you say
+    About the judgment day?
+      I will die on the field of battle,
+        Die on the field of battle,
+      With glory in my soul."
+
+Then we all began to shout, singing meantime, and shouted for a long
+while. Gorsuch, who was standing head bowed, said, "What are you doing
+now?"
+
+Samuel Thompson replied, "Preaching a sinner's funeral sermon."
+
+"You had better give up, and come down."
+
+I then said to Gorsuch,--"'If a brother see a sword coming, and he warn
+not his brother, then the brother's blood is required at his hands; but
+if the brother see the sword coming, and warn his brother, and his
+brother flee not, then his brother's blood is required at his own hand.'
+I see the sword coming, and, old man, I warn you to flee; if you flee
+not, your blood be upon your own hand."
+
+It was now about seven o'clock.
+
+"You had better give up," said old Mr. Gorsuch, after another while,
+"and come down, for I have come a long way this morning, and want my
+breakfast; for my property I will have, or I'll breakfast in hell. I
+will go up and get it."
+
+He then started up stairs, and came far enough to see us all plainly. We
+were just about to fire upon him, when Dickinson Gorsuch, who was
+standing on the old oven, before the door, and could see into the
+up-stairs room through the window, jumped down and caught his father,
+saying,--"O father, do come down! do come down! They have guns, swords,
+and all kinds of weapons! They'll kill you! Do come down!"
+
+The old man turned and left. When down with him, young Gorsuch could
+scarce draw breath, and the father looked more like a dead than a living
+man, so frightened were they at their supposed danger. The old man stood
+some time without saying anything; at last he said, as if soliloquizing,
+"I want my property, and I will have it."
+
+Kline broke forth, "If you don't give up by fair means, you will have to
+by foul."
+
+I told him we would not surrender on any conditions.
+
+Young Gorsuch then said,--"Don't ask them to give up,--_make_ them do
+it. We have money, and can call men to take them. What is it that money
+won't buy?"
+
+Then said Kline,--"I am getting tired waiting on you; I see you are not
+going to give up."
+
+He then wrote a note and handed it to Joshua Gorsuch, saying at the same
+time,--"Take it, and bring a hundred men from Lancaster."
+
+As he started, I said,--"See here! When you go to Lancaster, don't bring
+a hundred men,--bring five hundred. It will take all the men in
+Lancaster to change our purpose or take us alive."
+
+He stopped to confer with Kline, when Pinckney said, "We had better give
+up."
+
+"You are getting afraid," said I.
+
+"Yes," said Kline, "give up like men. The rest would give up if it were
+not for you."
+
+"I am not afraid," said Pinckney; "but where is the sense in fighting
+against so many men, and only five of us?"
+
+The whites, at this time, were coming from all quarters, and Kline was
+enrolling them as fast as they came. Their numbers alarmed Pinckney, and
+I told him to go and sit down; but he said, "No, I will go down stairs."
+
+I told him, if he attempted it, I should be compelled to blow out his
+brains. "Don't believe that any living man can take you," I said. "Don't
+give up to any slaveholder."
+
+To Abraham Johnson, who was near me, I then turned. He declared he was
+not afraid. "I will fight till I die," he said.
+
+At this time, Hannah, Pinckney's wife, had become impatient of our
+persistent course; and my wife, who brought me her message urging us to
+surrender, seized a corn-cutter, and declared she would cut off the head
+of the first one who should attempt to give up.
+
+Another one of Gorsuch's slaves was coming along the highroad at this
+time, and I beckoned to him to go around. Pinckney saw him, and soon
+became more inspirited. Elijah Lewis, a Quaker, also came along about
+this time; I beckoned to him, likewise; but he came straight on, and was
+met by Kline, who ordered him to assist him. Lewis asked for his
+authority, and Kline handed him the warrant. While Lewis was reading,
+Castner Hanway came up, and Lewis handed the warrant to him. Lewis asked
+Kline what Parker said.
+
+Kline replied, "He won't give up."
+
+Then Lewis and Hanway both said to the Marshal,--"If Parker says they
+will not give up, you had better let them alone, for he will kill some
+of you. We are not going to risk our lives";--and they turned to go
+away.
+
+While they were talking, I came down and stood in the doorway, my men
+following behind.
+
+Old Mr. Gorsuch said, when I appeared, "They'll come out, and get away!"
+and he came back to the gate.
+
+I then said to him,--"You said you could and would take us. Now you have
+the chance."
+
+They were a cowardly-looking set of men.
+
+Mr. Gorsuch said, "You can't come out here."
+
+"Why?" said I. "This is my place, I pay rent for it. I'll let you see if
+I can't come out."
+
+"I don't care if you do pay rent for it," said he. "If you come out, I
+will give you the contents of these";--presenting, at the same time, two
+revolvers, one in each hand.
+
+I said, "Old man, if you don't go away, I will break your neck."
+
+I then walked up to where he stood, his arms resting on the gate,
+trembling as if afflicted with palsy, and laid my hand on his shoulder,
+saying, "I have seen pistols before to-day."
+
+Kline now came running up, and entreated Gorsuch to come away.
+
+"No," said the latter, "I will have my property, or go to hell."
+
+"What do you intend to do?" said Kline to me.
+
+"I intend to fight," said I. "I intend to try your strength."
+
+"If you will withdraw your men," he replied, "I will withdraw mine."
+
+I told him it was too late. "You would not withdraw when you had the
+chance,--you shall not now."
+
+Kline then went back to Hanway and Lewis. Gorsuch made a signal to his
+men, and they all fell into line. I followed his example as well as I
+could; but as we were not more than ten paces apart, it was difficult to
+do so. At this time we numbered but ten, while there were between thirty
+and forty of the white men.
+
+While I was talking to Gorsuch, his son said, "Father, will you take all
+this from a nigger?"
+
+I answered him by saying that I respected old age; but that, if he
+would repeat that, I should knock his teeth down his throat. At this he
+fired upon me, and I ran up to him and knocked the pistol out of his
+hand, when he let the other one fall and ran in the field.
+
+My brother-in-law, who was standing near, then said, "I can stop
+him";--and with his double-barrel gun he fired.
+
+Young Gorsuch fell, but rose and ran on again. Pinckney fired a second
+time, and again Gorsuch fell, but was soon up again, and, running into
+the cornfield, lay down in the fence corner.
+
+I returned to my men, and found Samuel Thompson talking to old Mr.
+Gorsuch, his master. They were both angry.
+
+"Old man, you had better go home to Maryland," said Samuel.
+
+"You had better give up, and come home with me," said the old man.
+
+Thompson took Pinckney's gun from him, struck Gorsuch, and brought him
+to his knees. Gorsuch rose and signalled to his men. Thompson then
+knocked him down again, and he again rose. At this time all the white
+men opened fire, and we rushed upon them; when they turned, threw down
+their guns, and ran away. We, being closely engaged, clubbed our rifles.
+We were too closely pressed to fire, but we found a good deal could be
+done with empty guns.
+
+Old Mr. Gorsuch was the bravest of his party; he held on to his pistols
+until the last, while all the others threw away their weapons. I saw as
+many as three at a time fighting with him. Sometimes he was on his
+knees, then on his back, and again his feet would be where his head
+should be. He was a fine soldier and a brave man. Whenever he saw the
+least opportunity, he would take aim. While in close quarters with the
+whites, we could load and fire but two or three times. Our guns got bent
+and out of order. So damaged did they become, that we could shoot with
+but two or three of them. Samuel Thompson bent his gun on old Mr.
+Gorsuch so badly, that it was of no use to us.
+
+When the white men ran, they scattered. I ran after Nathan Nelson, but
+could not catch him. I never saw a man run faster. Returning, I saw
+Joshua Gorsuch coming, and Pinckney behind him. I reminded him that he
+would like "to take hold of a nigger," told him that now was his
+"chance," and struck him a blow on the side of the head, which stopped
+him. Pinckney came up behind, and gave him a blow which brought him to
+the ground; as the others passed, they gave him a kick or jumped upon
+him, until the blood oozed out at his ears.
+
+Nicholas Hutchings, and Nathan Nelson of Baltimore County, Maryland,
+could outrun any men I ever saw. They and Kline were not brave, like the
+Gorsuches. Could our men have got them, they would have been satisfied.
+
+One of our men ran after Dr. Pierce, as he richly deserved attention;
+but Pierce caught up with Castner Hanway, who rode between the fugitive
+and the Doctor, to shield him and some others. Hanway was told to get
+out of the way, or he would forfeit his life; he went aside quickly, and
+the man fired at the Marylander, but missed him,--he was too far off. I
+do not know whether he was wounded or not; but I do know, that, if it
+had not been for Hanway, he would have been killed.
+
+Having driven the slavocrats off in every direction, our party now
+turned towards their several homes. Some of us, however, went back to my
+house, where we found several of the neighbors.
+
+The scene at the house beggars description. Old Mr. Gorsuch was lying in
+the yard in a pool of blood, and confusion reigned both inside and
+outside of the house.
+
+Levi Pownell said to me, "The weather is so hot and the flies are so
+bad, will you give me a sheet to put over the corpse?"
+
+In reply, I gave him permission to get anything he needed from the
+house.
+
+"Dickinson Gorsuch is lying in the fence-corner, and I believe he is
+dying. Give me something for him to drink," said Pownell, who seemed to
+be acting the part of the Good Samaritan.
+
+When he returned from ministering to Dickinson, he told me he could not
+live.
+
+The riot, so called, was now entirely ended. The elder Gorsuch was dead;
+his son and nephew were both wounded, and I have reason to believe
+others were,--how many, it would be difficult to say. Of our party, only
+two were wounded. One received a ball in his hand, near the wrist; but
+it only entered the skin, and he pushed it out with his thumb. Another
+received a ball in the fleshy part of his thigh, which had to be
+extracted; but neither of them were sick or crippled by the wounds. When
+young Gorsuch fired at me in the early part of the battle, both balls
+passed through my hat, cutting off my hair close to the skin, but they
+drew no blood. The marks were not more than an inch apart.
+
+A story was afterwards circulated that Mr. Gorsuch shot his own slave,
+and in retaliation his slave shot him; but it was without foundation.
+His slave struck him the first and second blows; then three or four
+sprang upon him, and, when he became helpless, left him to pursue
+others. _The women put an end to him._ His slaves, so far from meeting
+death at his hands, are all still living.
+
+After the fight, my wife was obliged to secrete herself, leaving the
+children in care of her mother, and to the charities of our neighbors. I
+was questioned by my friends as to what I should do, as they were
+looking for officers to arrest me. I determined not to be taken alive,
+and told them so; but, thinking advice as to our future course
+necessary, went to see some old friends and consult about it. Their
+advice was to leave, as, were we captured and imprisoned, they could not
+foresee the result. Acting upon this hint, we set out for home, when we
+met some female friends, who told us that forty or fifty armed men were
+at my house, looking for me, and that we had better stay away from the
+place, if we did not want to be taken. Abraham Johnson and Pinckney
+hereupon halted, to agree upon the best course, while I turned around
+and went another way.
+
+Before setting out on my long journey northward, I determined to have an
+interview with my family, if possible, and to that end changed my
+course. As we went along the road to where I found them, we met men in
+companies of three and four, who had been drawn together by the
+excitement. On one occasion, we met ten or twelve together. They all
+left the road, and climbed over the fences into fields to let us pass;
+and then, after we had passed, turned, and looked after us as far as
+they could see. Had we been carrying destruction to all human kind, they
+could not have acted more absurdly. We went to a friend's house and
+stayed for the rest of the day, and until nine o'clock that night, when
+we set out for Canada.
+
+The great trial now was to leave my wife and family. Uncertain as to the
+result of the journey, I felt I would rather die than be separated from
+them. It had to be done, however; and we went forth with heavy hearts,
+outcasts for the sake of liberty. When we had walked as far as
+Christiana, we saw a large crowd, late as it was, to some of whom, at
+least, I must have been known, as we heard distinctly, "A'n't that
+Parker?"
+
+"Yes," was answered, "that's Parker."
+
+Kline was called for, and he, with some nine or ten more, followed
+after. We stopped, and then they stopped. One said to his comrades, "Go
+on,--that's him." And another replied, "You go." So they contended for a
+time who should come to us. At last they went back. I was sorry to see
+them go back, for I wanted to meet Kline and end the day's transactions.
+
+We went on unmolested to Penningtonville; and, in consequence of the
+excitement, thought best to continue on to Parkersburg. Nothing worth
+mention occurred for a time. We proceeded to Downingtown, and thence six
+miles beyond, to the house of a friend. We stopped with him on Saturday
+night, and on the evening of the 14th went fifteen miles farther. Here I
+learned from a preacher, directly from the city, that the excitement in
+Philadelphia was too great for us to risk our safety by going there.
+Another man present advised us to go to Norristown.
+
+At Norristown we rested a day. The friends gave us ten dollars, and sent
+us in a vehicle to Quakertown. Our driver, being partly intoxicated, set
+us down at the wrong place, which obliged us to stay out all night. At
+eleven o'clock the next day we got to Quakertown. We had gone about six
+miles out of the way, and had to go directly across the country. We
+rested the 16th, and set out in the evening for Friendsville.
+
+A friend piloted us some distance, and we travelled until we became very
+tired, when we went to bed under a haystack. On the 17th, we took
+breakfast at an inn. We passed a small village, and asked a man whom we
+met with a dearborn, what would be his charge to Windgap. "One dollar
+and fifty cents," was the ready answer. So in we got, and rode to that
+place.
+
+As we wanted to make some inquiries when we struck the north and south
+road, I went into the post-office, and asked for a letter for John
+Thomas, which of course I did not get. The postmaster scrutinized us
+closely,--more so, indeed, than any one had done on the Blue
+Mountains,--but informed us that Friendsville was between forty and
+fifty miles away. After going about nine miles, we stopped in the
+evening of the 18th at an inn, got supper, were politely served, and had
+an excellent night's rest. On the next day we set out for Tannersville,
+hiring a conveyance for twenty-two miles of the way. We had no further
+difficulty on the entire road to Rochester,--more than five hundred
+miles by the route we travelled.
+
+Some amusing incidents occurred, however, which it may be well to relate
+in this connection. The next morning, after stopping at the tavern, we
+took the cars and rode to Homerville, where, after waiting an hour, as
+our landlord of the night previous had directed us, we took stage. Being
+the first applicants for tickets, we secured inside seats, and, from the
+number of us, we took up all of the places inside; but, another
+traveller coming, I tendered him mine, and rode with the driver. The
+passenger thanked me; but the driver, a churl, and the most prejudiced
+person I ever came in contact with, would never wait after a stop until
+I could get on, but would drive away, and leave me to swing, climb, or
+cling on to the stage as best I could. Our traveller, at last noticing
+his behavior, told him promptly not to be so fast, but let all
+passengers get on, which had the effect to restrain him a little.
+
+At Big Eddy we took the cars. Directly opposite me sat a gentleman, who,
+on learning that I was for Rochester, said he was going there too, and
+afterwards proved an agreeable travelling-companion.
+
+A newsboy came in with papers, some of which the passengers bought. Upon
+opening them, they read of the fight at Christiana.
+
+"O, see here!" said my neighbor; "great excitement at Christiana; a--a
+statesman killed, and his son and nephew badly wounded."
+
+After reading, the passengers began to exchange opinions on the case.
+Some said they would like to catch Parker, and get the thousand dollars
+reward offered by the State; but the man opposite to me said, "Parker
+must be a powerful man."
+
+I thought to myself, "If you could tell what I can, you could judge
+about that."
+
+Pinckney and Johnson became alarmed, and wanted to leave the cars at the
+next stopping-place; but I told them there was no danger. I then asked
+particularly about Christiana, where it was, on what railroad, and other
+questions, to all of which I received correct replies. One of the men
+became so much attached to me, that, when we would go to an
+eating-saloon, he would pay for both. At Jefferson we thought of
+leaving the cars, and taking the boat; but they told us to keep on the
+cars, and we would get to Rochester by nine o'clock the next night.
+
+We left Jefferson about four o'clock in the morning, and arrived at
+Rochester at nine the same morning. Just before reaching Rochester, when
+in conversation with my travelling friend, I ventured to ask what would
+be done with Parker, should he be taken.
+
+"I do not know," he replied; "but the laws of Pennsylvania would not
+hang him,--they might imprison him. But it would be different, very
+different, should they get him into Maryland. The people in all the
+Slave States are so prejudiced against colored people, that they never
+give them justice. But I don't believe they will get Parker. I think he
+is in Canada by this time; at least, I hope so,--for I believe he did
+right, and, had I been in his place, I would have done as he did. Any
+good citizen will say the same. I believe Parker to be a brave man; and
+all you colored people should look at it as we white people look at our
+brave men, and do as we do. You see Parker was not fighting for a
+country, nor for praise. He was fighting for freedom: he only wanted
+liberty, as other men do. You colored people should protect him, and
+remember him as long as you live. We are coming near our parting-place,
+and I do not know if we shall ever meet again. I shall be in Rochester
+some two or three days before I return home; and I would like to have
+your company back."
+
+I told him it would be some time before we returned.
+
+The cars then stopped, when he bade me good by. As strange as it may
+appear, he did not ask me my name; and I was afraid to inquire his, from
+fear he would.
+
+On leaving the cars, after walking two or three squares, we overtook a
+colored man, who conducted us to the house of--a friend of mine. He
+welcomed me at once, as we were acquainted before, took me up stairs to
+wash and comb, and prepare, as he said, for company.
+
+As I was combing, a lady came up and said, "Which of you is Mr. Parker?"
+
+"I am," said I,--"what there is left of me."
+
+She gave me her hand, and said, "And this is William Parker!"
+
+She appeared to be so excited that she could not say what she wished to.
+We were told we would not get much rest, and we did not; for visitors
+were constantly coming. One gentleman was surprised that we got away
+from the cars, as spies were all about, and there were two thousand
+dollars reward for the party.
+
+We left at eight o'clock that evening, in a carriage, for the boat,
+bound for Kingston in Canada. As we went on board, the bell was ringing.
+After walking about a little, a friend pointed out to me the officers on
+the "hunt" for us; and just as the boat pushed off from the wharf, some
+of our friends on shore called me by name. Our pursuers looked very much
+like fools, as they were. I told one of the gentlemen on shore to write
+to Kline that I was in Canada. Ten dollars were generously contributed
+by the Rochester friends for our expenses; and altogether their kindness
+was heartfelt, and was most gratefully appreciated by us.
+
+Once on the boat, and fairly out at sea towards the land of liberty, my
+mind became calm, and my spirits very much depressed at thought of my
+wife and children. Before, I had little time to think much about them,
+my mind being on my journey. Now I became silent and abstracted.
+Although fond of company, no one was company for me now.
+
+We landed at Kingston on the 21st of September, at six o'clock in the
+morning, and walked around for a long time, without meeting any one we
+had ever known. At last, however, I saw a colored man I knew in
+Maryland. He at first pretended to have no knowledge of me, but finally
+recognized me. I made known our distressed condition, when he said he
+was not going home then, but, if we would have breakfast, he would pay
+for it. How different the treatment received from this man--himself an
+exile for the sake of liberty, and in its full enjoyment on free
+soil--and the self-sacrificing spirit of our Rochester colored brother,
+who made haste to welcome us to his ample home,--the well-earned reward
+of his faithful labors!
+
+On Monday evening, the 23d, we started for Toronto, where we arrived
+safely the next day. Directly after landing, we heard that Governor
+Johnston, of Pennsylvania, had made a demand on the Governor of Canada
+for me, under the Extradition Treaty. Pinckney and Johnson advised me to
+go to the country, and remain where I should not be known; but I
+refused. I intended to see what they would do with me. Going at once to
+the Government House, I entered the first office I came to. The official
+requested me to be seated. The following is the substance of the
+conversation between us, as near as I can remember. I told him I had
+heard that Governor Johnston, of Pennsylvania, had requested his
+government to send me back. At this he came forward, held forth his
+hand, and said, "Is this William Parker?"
+
+I took his hand, and assured him I was the man. When he started to come,
+I thought he was intending to seize me, and I prepared myself to knock
+him down. His genial, sympathetic manner it was that convinced me he
+meant well.
+
+He made me sit down, and said,--"Yes, they want you back again. Will you
+go?"
+
+"I will not be taken back alive," said I. "I ran away from my master to
+be free,--I have run from the United States to be free. I am now going
+to stop running."
+
+"Are you a fugitive from labor?" he asked.
+
+I told him I was.
+
+"Why," he answered, "they say you are a fugitive from justice." He then
+asked me where my master lived.
+
+I told him, "In Anne Arundel County, Maryland."
+
+"Is there such a county in Maryland?" he asked.
+
+"There is," I answered.
+
+He took down a map, examined it, and said, "You are right."
+
+I then told him the name of the farm, and my master's name. Further
+questions bearing upon the country towns near, the nearest river, etc.,
+followed, all of which I answered to his satisfaction.
+
+"How does it happen," he then asked, "that you lived in Pennsylvania so
+long, and no person knew you were a fugitive from labor?"
+
+"I do not get other people to keep my secrets, sir," I replied. "My
+brother and family only knew that I had been a slave."
+
+He then assured me that I would not, in his opinion, have to go back.
+Many coming in at this time on business, I was told to call again at
+three o'clock, which I did. The person in the office, a clerk, told me
+to take no further trouble about it, until that day four weeks. "But you
+are as free a man as I am," said he. When I told the news to Pinckney
+and Johnson, they were greatly relieved in mind.
+
+I ate breakfast with the greatest relish, got a letter written to a
+friend in Chester County for my wife, and set about arrangements to
+settle at or near Toronto.
+
+We tried hard to get work, but the task was difficult. I think three
+weeks elapsed before we got work that could be called work. Sometimes we
+would secure a small job, worth two or three shillings, and sometimes a
+smaller one, worth not more than one shilling; and these not oftener
+than once or twice in a week. We became greatly discouraged; and, to add
+to my misery, I was constantly hearing some alarming report about my
+wife and children. Sometimes they had carried her back into
+slavery,--sometimes the children, and sometimes the entire party. Then
+there would come a contradiction. I was soon so completely worn down by
+my fears for them, that I thought my heart would break. To add to my
+disquietude, no answer came to my letters, although I went to the office
+regularly every day. At last I got a letter with the glad news that my
+wife and children were safe, and would be sent to Canada. I told the
+person reading for me to stop, and tell them to send her "right now,"--I
+could not wait to hear the rest of the letter.
+
+Two months from the day I landed in Toronto, my wife arrived, but
+without the children. She had had a very bad time. Twice they had her in
+custody; and, a third time, her young master came after her, which
+obliged her to flee before day, so that the children had to remain
+behind for the time. I was so glad to see her that I forgot about the
+children.
+
+The day my wife came, I had nothing but the clothes on my back, and was
+in debt for my board, without any work to depend upon. My situation was
+truly distressing. I took the resolution, and went to a store where I
+made known my circumstances to the proprietor, offering to work for him
+to pay for some necessaries. He readily consented, and I supplied myself
+with bedding, meal, and flour. As I had selected a place before, we went
+that evening about two miles into the country, and settled ourselves for
+the winter.
+
+When in Kingston, I had heard of the Buxton settlement, and of the
+Revds. Dr. Willis and Mr. King, the agents. My informant, after stating
+all the particulars, induced me to think it was a desirable place; and
+having quite a little sum of money due to me in the States, I wrote for
+it, and waited until May. It not being sent, I called upon Dr. Willis,
+who treated me kindly. I proposed to settle in Elgin, if he would loan
+means for the first instalment. He said he would see about it, and I
+should call again. On my second visit, he agreed to assist me, and
+proposed that I should get another man to go on a lot with me.
+
+Abraham Johnson and I arranged to settle together, and, with Dr.
+Willis's letter to Mr. King on our behalf, I embarked with my family on
+a schooner for the West. After five days' sailing, we reached Windsor.
+Not having the means to take us to Chatham, I called upon Henry Bibb,
+and laid my case before him. He took us in, treated us with great
+politeness, and afterwards, took me with him to Detroit, where, after an
+introduction to some friends, a purse of five dollars was made up. I
+divided the money among my companions, and started them for Chatham, but
+was obliged to stay at Windsor and Detroit two days longer.
+
+While stopping at Windsor, I went again to Detroit, with two or three
+friends, when, at one of the steamboats just landed, some officers
+arrested three fugitives, on the pretence of being horse thieves. I was
+satisfied they were slaves, and said so, when Henry Bibb went to the
+telegraph office and learned through a message that they were. In the
+crowd and excitement, the sheriff threatened to imprison me for my
+interference. I felt indignant, and told him to do so, whereupon he
+opened the door. About this time there was more excitement, and then a
+man slipped into the jail, unseen by the officers, opened the gate, and
+the three prisoners went out, and made their escape to Windsor. I
+stopped through that night in Detroit, and started the next day for
+Chatham, where I found my family snugly provided for at a boarding-house
+kept by Mr. Younge.
+
+Chatham was a thriving town at that time, and the genuine liberty
+enjoyed by its numerous colored residents pleased me greatly; but our
+destination was Buxton, and thither we went on the following day. We
+arrived there in the evening, and I called immediately upon Mr. King,
+and presented Dr. Willis's letter. He received me very politely, and
+said that, after I should feel rested, I could go out and select a lot.
+He also kindly offered to give me meal and pork for my family, until I
+could get work.
+
+In due time, Johnson and I each chose a fifty-acre lot; for although
+when in Toronto we agreed with Dr. Willis to take one lot between us,
+when we saw the land we thought we could pay for two lots. I got the
+money in a little time, and paid the Doctor back. I built a house, and
+we moved into it that same fall, and in it I live yet.
+
+When I first settled in Buxton, the white settlers in the vicinity were
+much opposed to colored people. Their prejudices were very strong; but
+the spread of intelligence and religion in the community has wrought a
+great change in them. Prejudice is fast being uprooted; indeed, they do
+not appear like the same people that they were. In a short time I hope
+the foul spirit will depart entirely.
+
+I have now to bring my narrative to a close; and in so doing I would
+return thanks to Almighty God for the many mercies and favors he has
+bestowed upon me, and especially for delivering me out of the hands of
+slaveholders, and placing me in a land of liberty, where I can worship
+God under my own vine and fig-tree, with none to molest or make me
+afraid. I am also particularly thankful to my old friends and neighbors
+in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania,--to the friends in Norristown,
+Quakertown, Rochester, and Detroit, and to Dr. Willis of Toronto, for
+their disinterested benevolence and kindness to me and my family. When
+hunted, they sheltered me; when hungry and naked, they clothed and fed
+me; and when a stranger in a strange land, they aided and encouraged me.
+May the Lord in his great mercy remember and bless them, as they
+remembered and blessed me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The events following the riot at Christiana and my escape have become
+matters of history, and can only be spoken of as such. The failure of
+Gorsuch in his attempt; his death, and the terrible wounds of his son;
+the discomfiture and final rout of his crestfallen associates in crime;
+and their subsequent attempt at revenge by a merciless raid through
+Lancaster County, arresting every one unfortunate enough to have a dark
+skin,--is all to be found in the printed account of the trial of Castner
+Hanway and others for treason. It is true that some of the things which
+did occur are spoken of but slightly, there being good and valid reasons
+why they were passed over thus at that time in these cases, many of
+which might be interesting to place here, and which I certainly should
+do, did not the same reasons still exist in full force for keeping
+silent. I shall be compelled to let them pass just as they are recorded.
+
+But one event, in which there seems no reason to observe silence, I will
+introduce in this place. I allude to the escape of George Williams, one
+of our men, and the very one who had the letters brought up from
+Philadelphia by Mr. Samuel Williams. George lay in prison with the
+others who had been arrested by Kline, but was rendered more uneasy by
+the number of rascals who daily visited that place for the purpose of
+identifying, if possible, some of its many inmates as slaves. One day
+the lawyer previously alluded to, whose chief business seemed to be
+negro-catching, came with another man, who had employed him for that
+purpose, and, stopping in front of the cell wherein George and old
+Ezekiel Thompson were confined, cried out, "_That's_ him!" At which the
+man exclaimed, "_It is, by God! that is him!_"
+
+These ejaculations, as a matter of course, brought George and Ezekiel,
+who were lying down, to their feet,--the first frightened and uneasy,
+the latter stern and resolute. Some mysterious conversation then took
+place between the two, which resulted in George lying down and covering
+himself with Ezekiel's blanket. In the mean time off sped the man and
+lawyer to obtain the key, open the cell, and institute a more complete
+inspection. They returned in high glee, but to their surprise saw only
+the old man standing at the door, his grim visage anything but inviting.
+They inserted the key, click went the lock, back shot the bolt, open
+flew the door, but old Ezekiel stood there firm, his eyes flashing fire,
+his brawny hands flourishing a stout oak stool furnished him to rest on
+by friends of whom I have so often spoken, and crying out in the most
+unmistakable manner, every word leaving a deep impression on his
+visitors, "The first man that puts his head inside of this cell I will
+split to pieces."
+
+The men leaped back, but soon recovered their self-possession; and the
+lawyer said,--"Do you know who I am? I am the lawyer who has charge of
+this whole matter, you impudent nigger, I will come in whenever I
+choose."
+
+The old man, if possible looking more stern and savage than before,
+replied,--"I don't care who you are; but if you or any other
+nigger-catcher steps inside of my cell-door I will beat out his brains."
+
+It is needless to say more. The old man's fixed look, clenched teeth,
+and bony frame had their effect. The man and the lawyer left, growling
+as they went, that, if there was rope to be had, that old Indian nigger
+should certainly hang.
+
+This was but the beginning of poor George's troubles. His friends were
+at work; but all went wrong, and his fate seemed sealed. He stood
+charged with treason, murder, and riot, and there appeared no way to
+relieve him. When discharged by the United States Court for the first
+crime, he was taken to Lancaster to meet the second and third. There,
+too, the man and the lawyer followed, taking with them that infamous
+wretch, Kline. The Devil seemed to favor all they undertook; and when
+Ezekiel was at last discharged, with some thirty more, from all that had
+been so unjustly brought against him, and for which he had lain in the
+damp prison for more than three months, these rascals lodged a warrant
+in the Lancaster jail, and at midnight Kline and the man who claimed to
+be George's owner arrested him as a fugitive from labor, whilst the
+lawyer returned to Philadelphia to prepare the case for trial, and to
+await the arrival of his shameless partners in guilt. This seemed the
+climax of George's misfortunes. He was hurried into a wagon, ready at
+the door, and, fearing a rescue, was driven at a killing pace to the
+town of Parkesburg, where they were compelled to stop for the night,
+their horses being completely used up. This was in the month of January,
+and the coldest night that had been known for many years. On their
+route, these wretches, who had George handcuffed and tied in the wagon,
+indulged deeply in bad whiskey, with which they were plentifully
+supplied, and by the time they reached the public-house their fury was
+at its height. 'T is said there is honor among thieves, but villains of
+the sort I am now speaking of seem to possess none. Each fears the
+other. When in the bar-room, Kline said to the other,--"Sir, you can go
+to sleep. I will watch this nigger."
+
+"No," replied the other, "I will do that business myself. You don't fool
+me, sir."
+
+To which Kline replied, "Take something, sir?"--and down went more
+whiskey.
+
+Things went on in this way awhile, until Kline drew a chair to the
+stove, and, overcome by the heat and liquor, was soon sleeping soundly,
+and, I suppose, dreaming of the profits which were sure to arise from
+the job. The other walked about till the barkeeper went to bed, leaving
+the hostler to attend in his place, and he also, somehow or other, soon
+fell asleep. Then he walked up to George, who was lying on the bench,
+apparently as soundly asleep as any of them, and, saying to himself,
+"The damn nigger is asleep,--I'll just take a little rest myself,"--he
+suited the action to the word. Spreading himself out on two chairs, in a
+few moments he was snoring at a fearful rate. Rum, the devil, and
+fatigue, combined, had completely prostrated George's foes. It was now
+his time for action; and, true to the hope of being free, the last to
+leave the poor, hunted, toil-worn bondman's heart, he opened first one
+eye, then the other, and carefully examined things around. Then he rose
+slowly, and keeping step to the deep-drawn snores of the miserable,
+debased wretch who claimed him, he stealthily crawled towards the door,
+when, to his consternation, he found the eye of the hostler on him. He
+paused, knowing his fate hung by a single hair. It was only necessary
+for the man to speak, and he would be shot instantly dead; for both
+Kline and his brother ruffian slept pistol in hand. As I said, George
+stopped, and, in the softest manner in which it was possible for him to
+speak, whispered, "A drink of water, if you please, sir." The man
+replied not, but, pointing his finger to the door again, closed his
+eyes, and was apparently lost in slumber.
+
+I have already said it was cold; and, in addition, snow and ice covered
+the ground. There could not possibly be a worse night. George shivered
+as he stepped forth into the keen night air. He took one look at the
+clouds above, and then at the ice-clad ground below. He trembled; but
+freedom beckoned, and on he sped. He knew where he was,--the place was
+familiar. On, on, he pressed, nor paused till fifteen miles lay between
+him and his drunken claimant; then he stopped at the house of a tried
+friend to have his handcuffs removed; but, with their united efforts,
+one side only could be got off, and the poor fellow, not daring to rest,
+continued his journey, forty odd miles, to Philadelphia, with the other
+on. Frozen, stiff, and sore, he arrived there on the following day, and
+every care was extended to him by his old friends. He was nursed and
+attended by the late Dr. James, Joshua Gould Bias, one of the faithful
+few, whose labors for the oppressed will never be forgotten, and whose
+heart, purse, and hand were always open to the poor, flying slave. God
+has blessed him, and his reward is obtained.
+
+I shall here take leave of George, only saying, that he recovered and
+went to the land of freedom, to be safe under the protection of British
+law. Of the wretches he left in the _tavern_, much might be said; but it
+is enough to know that they awoke to find him gone, and to pour their
+curses and blasphemy on each other. They swore most frightfully; and the
+disappointed Southerner threatened to blow out the brains of Kline, who
+turned his wrath on the hostler, declaring he should be taken and held
+responsible for the loss. This so raised the ire of that worthy, that,
+seizing an iron bar that was used to fasten the door, he drove the whole
+party from the house, swearing they were damned kidnappers, and ought to
+be all sent after old Gorsuch, and that he would raise the whole
+township on them if they said one word more. This had the desired
+effect. They left, not to pursue poor George, but to avoid pursuit; for
+these worthless man-stealers knew the released men brought up from
+Philadelphia and discharged at Lancaster were all in the neighborhood,
+and that nothing would please these brave fellows--who had patiently and
+heroically suffered for long and weary months in a felon's cell for the
+cause of human freedom--more, than to get a sight at them; and Kline, he
+knew this well,--particularly old Ezekiel Thompson, who had sworn by his
+heart's blood, that, if he could only get hold of that Marshal Kline, he
+should kill him and go to the gallows in peace. In fact, he said the
+only thing he had to feel sorry about was, that he did not do it when he
+threatened to, whilst the scoundrel stood talking to Hanway; and but for
+Castner Hanway he would have done it, anyhow. Much more I could say; but
+short stories are read, while long ones are like the sermons we go to
+sleep under.
+
+
+
+
+NANTUCKET.
+
+
+Thompson and I had a fortnight's holiday, and the question arose how
+could we pass it best, and for the least money.
+
+We are both clerks, that is to say, shopmen, in a large jobbing house;
+but although, like most Americans, we spend our lives in the din and
+bustle of a colossal shop, where selling and packing are the only
+pastime, and daybooks and ledgers the only literature, we wish it to be
+understood that we have souls capable of speculating upon some other
+matters that have no cash value, yet which mankind cannot neglect
+without becoming something little better than magnified busy bees, or
+gigantic ants, or overgrown social caterpillars. And although I say it
+myself, I have quite a reputation among our fellows, that I have earned
+by the confident way in which I lay down a great principle of science,
+æsthetics, or morals. I confess that I am perhaps a little given to
+generalize from a single fact; but my manner is imposing to the weaker
+brethren, and my credit for great wisdom is well established in our
+street.
+
+Under these circumstances it became a matter of some importance to
+decide the question, Where can we go to the best advantage, pecuniary
+and æsthetical?
+
+We had both of us, in the pursuit of our calling,--that is to say, in
+hunting after bad debts and drumming up new business,--travelled over
+most of this country on those long lines of rails that always remind me
+of the parallels of latitude on globes and maps; and we wondered why
+people who had once gratified a natural curiosity to see this land
+should ever travel over it again, unless with the hope of making money
+by their labor. Health, certainly, no one can expect to get from the
+tough upper-leathers and sodden soles of the pies offered at the
+ten-minutes-for-refreshment stations, nor from their saturated
+spongecakes. As to pleasure, I said to Thompson,--"the pleasure of
+travelling consists in the new agreeable sensations it affords. Above
+all, they must be new. You wish to move out of your set of thoughts and
+feelings, or else why move at all? But all the civilized world over,
+locomotives, like huge flat-irons, are smoothing customs, costumes,
+thoughts, and feelings into one plane, homogeneous surface. And in this
+country not only does Nature appear to do everything by wholesale, but
+there is as little variety in human beings. We have discovered the
+political alkahest or universal solvent of the alchemists, and with it
+we reduce at once the national characteristics of foreigners into our
+well-known American compound. Hence, on all the great lines of travel,
+Monotony has marked us for her own. Coming from the West, you are
+whirled through twelve hundred miles of towns, so alike in their outward
+features that they seem to have been started in New England nurseries
+and sent to be planted wherever they might be wanted;--square brick
+buildings, covered with signs, and a stoutish sentry-box on each flat
+roof; telegraph offices; express companies; a crowd of people dressed
+alike, 'earnest,' and bustling as ants, with seemingly but one idea,--to
+furnish materials for the statistical tables of the next census. Then,
+beyond, you catch glimpses of many smaller and neater buildings, with
+grass and trees and white fences about them. Some are Gothic, some
+Italian, some native American. But the glory of one Gothic is like the
+glory of another Gothic, the Italian are all built upon the same
+pattern, and the native American differ only in size. There are three
+marked currents of architectural taste, but no individual character in
+particular buildings. Everywhere you see comfort and abundance; your
+mind is easy on the great subject of imports, exports, products of the
+soil, and manufactures;--a pleasant and strengthening prospect for a
+political economist, or for shareholders in railways or owners of lands
+in the vicinity. This 'unparalleled prosperity' must be exciting to a
+foreigner who sees it for the first time; but we Yankees are to the
+manner born and bred up. We take it all as a matter of course, as the
+young Plutuses do their father's fine house and horses and servants.
+Kingsley says there is a great, unspoken poetry in sanitary reform. It
+may be so; but as yet the words only suggest sewers, ventilation, and
+chloride of lime. The poetry has not yet become vocal; and I think the
+same may be said of our 'material progress.' It seems thus far very
+prosaic. 'Only a great poet sees the poetry of his own age,' we are
+told. We every-day people are unfortunately blind to it."
+
+Here I was silent. I had dived into the deepest recesses of my soul.
+Thompson waited patiently until I should rise to the surface and blow
+again. It was thus:--
+
+"Have you not noticed that the people we sit beside in railway cars are
+becoming as much alike as their brown linen 'dusters,' and unsuggestive
+except on that point of statistics? They are intelligent, but they carry
+their shops on their backs, as snails do their houses. Their thoughts
+are fixed upon the one great subject. On all others, politics included,
+they talk from hand to mouth, offering you a cold hash of their favorite
+morning paper. Even those praiseworthy persons who devote their time to
+temperance, missions, tract-societies, seem more like men of business
+than apostles. They lay their charities before you much as they would
+display their goods, and urge their excellence and comparative cheapness
+to induce you to lay out your money.
+
+"The fact is, that the traveller is daily losing his human character,
+and becoming more and more a package, to be handled, stowed, and
+'forwarded' as may best suit the convenience and profit of the
+enterprising parties engaged in the business. If at night he stops at a
+hotel, he rises to the dignity of an animal, is marked by a number, and
+driven to his food and litter by the herdsmen employed by the master of
+the establishment. To a thinking man, it is a sad indication for the
+future to see what slaves this hotel-railroad-steamboat system has made
+of the brave and the free when they travel. How they toady captains and
+conductors, and without murmuring put up with any imposition they please
+to practise upon them, even unto taking away their lives! As we all pay
+the same price at hotels, each one hopes by smirks and servility to
+induce the head-clerk to treat him a little better than his neighbors.
+There is no despotism more absolute than that of these servants of the
+public. As Cobbett said, 'In America, public servant means master.' None
+of us can sing, 'Yankees never will be slaves,' unless we stay at home.
+We have liberated the blacks, but I see little chance of emancipation
+for ourselves. The only liberty that is vigorously vindicated here is
+the liberty of doing wrong."
+
+Here I stopped short. It was evident that my wind was gone, and any
+further exertion of eloquence out of the question for some time. I was
+as exhausted as a _Gymnotus_ that has parted with all its electricity.
+Thompson took advantage of my helpless condition, and carried me off
+unresisting to a place which railways can never reach, and where there
+is nothing to attract fashionable travellers. The surly Atlantic keeps
+watch over it and growls off the pestilent crowd of excursionists who
+bring uncleanness and greediness in their train, and are pursued by the
+land-sharks who prey upon such frivolous flying-fish. A little town,
+whose life stands still, or rather goes backward, whose ships have
+sailed away to other ports, whose inhabitants have followed the ships,
+and whose houses seem to be going after the inhabitants; but a town in
+its decline, not in its decay. Everything is clean and in good repair;
+everybody well dressed, healthy, and cheerful. Paupers there are none;
+and the new school-house would be an ornament to any town in
+Massachusetts. That there is no lack of spirit and vigor may be known
+from the fact that the island furnished five hundred men for the late
+war.
+
+When we caught sight of Nantucket, the sun was shining his best, and the
+sea too smooth to raise a qualm in the bosom of the most delicately
+organized female. The island first makes its appearance, as a long, thin
+strip of yellow underlying a long, thinner strip of green. In the middle
+of this double line the horizon is broken by two square towers. As you
+approach, the towers resolve themselves into meeting-houses, and a large
+white town lies before you.
+
+At the wharf there were no baggage smashers. Our trunks were
+
+    "Taken up tenderly,
+    Lifted with care,"
+
+and carried to the hotel for twenty-five cents in paper. I immediately
+established the fact, that there are no fellow-citizens in Nantucket of
+foreign descent. "For," said I, "if you offered that obsolete fraction
+of a dollar to the turbulent hackmen of our cities, you would meet with
+offensive demonstrations of contempt." I seized the opportunity to add,
+_apropos_ of the ways of that class of persons: "Theoretically, I am a
+thorough democrat; but when democracy drives a hack, smells of bad
+whiskey and cheap tobacco, ruins my portmanteau, robs me of my money,
+and damns my eyes when it does not blacken them, if I dare protest,--I
+hate it."
+
+The streets are paved and clean. There are few horses on the island, and
+these are harnessed single to box-wagons, painted green, the sides of
+which are high enough to hold safely a child, four or five years of age,
+standing. We often inquired the reasons for this peculiar build; but the
+replies were so unsatisfactory, that we put the green box down as one of
+the mysteries of the spot.
+
+It seemed to us a healthy symptom, that we saw in our inn none of those
+alarming notices that the keepers of hotels on the mainland paste up so
+conspicuously, no doubt from the very natural dislike to competition,
+"Beware of pickpockets," "Bolt your doors before retiring," "Deposit
+your valuables in the safe, or the proprietors will not be responsible."
+There are no thieves in Nantucket; if for no other reason, because they
+cannot get away with the spoils. And we were credibly informed, that the
+one criminal in the town jail had given notice to the authorities that
+he would not remain there any longer, unless they repaired the door, as
+he was afraid of catching cold from the damp night air.
+
+In the afternoons, good-looking young women swarm in the streets,
+
+                "Airy creatures,
+    Alike in voice, though not in features,"
+
+I could wish their voices were as sweet as their faces; but the American
+climate, or perhaps the pertness of democracy, has an unfavorable effect
+on the organs of speech. Governor Andrew must have visited Nantucket
+before he wrote his eloquent lamentation over the excess of women in
+Massachusetts. I am fond of ladies' society, and do not sympathize with
+the Governor. But if that day should ever come, which is prophesied by
+Isaiah, when seven women shall lay hold of one man, saying, "We will eat
+our own bread and wear our own apparel, only let us be called by thy
+name," I think Nantucket will be the scene of the fulfilment, the women
+are so numerous and apparently so well off. I confess that I envy the
+good fortune of the young gentlemen who may be living there at that
+time. We saw a foreshadowing of this delightful future in the water. The
+bathing "facilities" consist of many miles of beach, and one
+bathing-house, in which ladies exchange their shore finery for their
+sea-weeds. Two brisk young fellows, Messrs. Whitey and Pypey, had come
+over in the same boat with us. We had fallen into a traveller's
+acquaintance with them, and listened to the story of the pleasant life
+they had led on the island during previous visits. We lost sight of them
+on the wharf. We found them again near the bath-house, in the hour of
+their glory. There they were, disporting themselves in the clear water,
+swimming, diving, floating, while around them laughed and splashed
+fourteen bright-eyed water-nymphs, half a dozen of them as bewitching as
+any Nixes that ever spread their nets for soft-hearted young _Ritters_
+in the old German romance waters. Neptune in a triumphal progress, with
+his Naiads tumbling about him, was no better off than Whitey and Pypey.
+They had, to be sure, no car, nor conch shells, nor dolphins; but, as
+Thompson remarked, these were unimportant accessories, that added but
+little to Neptune's comfort. The nymphs were the essential. The
+spectacle was a saddening one for us, I confess; the more so, because
+our forlorn condition evidently gave a new zest to the enjoyment of our
+friends, and stimulated them to increased vigor in their aquatic
+flirtations. Alone, unintroduced, melancholy, and a little sheepish, we
+hired towels at two cents each from the ladylike and obliging colored
+person who superintended the bath-house, and, withdrawing to the
+friendly shelter of distance, dropped our clothes upon the sand, and hid
+our envy and insignificance in the bosom of the deep.
+
+And the town was brilliant from the absence of the unclean
+advertisements of quack-medicine men. That irrepressible species have
+not, as yet, committed their nuisance in its streets, and disfigured the
+walls and fences with their portentous placards. It is the only clean
+place I know of. The nostrum-makers have labelled all the features of
+Nature on the mainland, as if our country were a vast apothecary's shop.
+The Romans had a gloomy fashion of lining their great roads with tombs
+and mortuary inscriptions. The modern practice is quite as dreary. The
+long lines of railway that lead to our cities are decorated with
+cure-alls for the sick, the _ante-mortem_ epitaphs of the fools who buy
+them and try them.
+
+    "No place is sacred to the meddling crew
+    Whose trade is----"
+
+posting what we all should take. The walls of our domestic castles are
+outraged with _graffiti_ of this class; highways and byways display
+them; and if the good Duke with the melancholy Jaques were to wander in
+some forest of New Arden, in the United States, they would be sure to
+
+    "Find _elixirs_ on trees, _bitters_ in the running brooks,
+    _Syrups_ on stones, and _lies_ in everything."
+
+Last year, weary of shop, and feeling the necessity of restoring tone to
+the mind by a course of the sublime, Thompson and I paid many dollars,
+travelled many miles, ran many risks, and suffered much from
+impertinence and from dust, in order that we might see the wonders of
+the Lord, his mountains and his waterfalls. We stood at the foot of the
+mountain, and, gazing upward at a precipice, the sublime we were in
+search of began to swell within our hearts, when our eyes were struck by
+huge Roman letters painted on the face of the rock, and held fast, as if
+by a spell, until we had read them all. They asked the question, "Are
+you troubled with worms?"
+
+It is hardly necessary to say that the sublime within us was instantly
+killed. It would be fortunate, indeed, for the afflicted, if the
+specific of this charlatan St. George were half as destructive to the
+intestinal dragons he promises to destroy. Then we turned away to the
+glen down which the torrent plunged. And there, at the foot of the fall,
+in the midst of the boiling water, the foam, and spray, rose a tall crag
+crowned with silver birch, and hung with moss and creeping vines,
+bearing on its gray, weather-beaten face: "Rotterdam Schnapps." Bah! it
+made us sick. The caldron looked like a punch-bowl, and the breath of
+the zephyrs smelt of gin and water.
+
+Thousands of us see this dirty desecration of the shrines to which we
+make our summer pilgrimage, and bear with the sacrilege meekly, perhaps
+laugh at the wicked generation of pill-venders, that seeks for places to
+put up its sign. But does not this tolerance indicate the note of
+vulgarity in us, as Father Newman might say? Is it not a blot on the
+people as well as on the rocks? Let them fill the columns of newspapers
+with their ill-smelling advertisements, and sham testimonials from the
+Reverend Smith, Brown, and Jones; but let us prevent them from setting
+their traps for our infirmities in the spots God has chosen for his
+noblest works. What a triple brass must such men have about their
+consciences to dare to flaunt their falsehoods in such places! It is a
+blasphemy against Nature. We might use Peter's words to them,--"Thou
+hast not lied unto men, but unto God." Ananias and Sapphira were slain
+for less. But they think, I suppose, that the age of miracles has
+passed, or survives only in their miraculous cures, and so coolly defy
+the lightnings of Heaven. I was so much excited on this subject that
+Thompson suggested to me to give up my situation, turn Peter the Hermit,
+and carry a fiery scrubbing-brush through the country, preaching to all
+lovers of Nature to join in a crusade to wash the Holy Places clean of
+these unbelieving quacks.
+
+It is pleasant to see that the Nantucket people are all healthy, or, if
+ailing, have no idea of being treated as they treat bluefish,--offered a
+red rag or a white bone, some taking sham to bite upon, and so be hauled
+in and die. As regards the salubrity of the climate, I think there can
+be no doubt. The faces of the inhabitants speak for themselves on that
+point. I heard an old lady, not very well preserved, who had been a
+fortnight on the island, say to a sympathizing friend, into whose ear
+she was pouring her complaints, "I sleeps better, and my stomach is
+sweeter." She might have expressed herself more elegantly, but she had
+touched the two grand secrets of life,--sound sleep and good digestion.
+
+Another comfort on this island is, that there are few shops, no
+temptation to part with one's pelf, and no beggars, barelegged or
+barefaced, to ask for it. I do not believe that there are any cases of
+the _cacoethes subscribendi_. The natives have got out of the habit of
+making money, and appear to want nothing in particular, except to go
+a-fishing.
+
+They have plenty of time to answer questions good-humoredly and
+_gratis_, and do not look upon a stranger as they do upon a stranded
+blackfish,--to be stripped of his oil and bone for their benefit. "I
+feel like a man among Christians," I declaimed,--"not, as I have often
+felt in my wanderings on shore, like Mungo Park or Burton, a traveller
+among savages, who are watching for an opportunity to rob me. I catch a
+glimpse again of the golden age when money was money. The blessed old
+prices of my youth, which have long since been driven from the continent
+by
+
+            'paper credit, last and best supply,
+    That lends corruption lighter wings to fly,'
+
+have taken refuge here before leaving this wicked world forever. The
+_cordon sanitaire_ of the Atlantic has kept off the pestilence of
+inflation."
+
+One bright afternoon we took horse and "shay" for Siasconset, on the
+south side of the island. A drive of seven miles over a country as flat
+and as naked of trees as a Western prairie, the sandy soil covered with
+a low, thick growth of bayberry, whortleberry, a false cranberry called
+the meal-plum, and other plants bearing a strong family likeness, with
+here and there a bit of greensward,--a legacy, probably, of the flocks
+of sheep the natives foolishly turned off the island,--brought us to the
+spot. We passed occasional water-holes, that reminded us also of the
+West, and a few cattle. Two or three lonely farm-houses loomed up in the
+distance, like ships at sea. We halted our rattle-trap on a bluff
+covered with thick green turf. On the edge of this bluff, forty feet
+above the beach, is Siasconset, looking southward over the ocean,--no
+land between it and Porto Rico. It is only a fishing village; but if
+there were many like it, the conventional shepherd, with his ribbons,
+his crooks, and his pipes, would have to give way to the fisherman.
+Seventy-five cosey, one-story cottages, so small and snug that a
+well-grown man might touch the gables without rising on tip-toe, are
+drawn up in three rows parallel to the sea, with narrow lanes of turf
+between them,--all of a weather-beaten gray tinged with purple, with
+pale-blue blinds, vines over the porch, flowers in the windows, and
+about each one a little green yard enclosed by white palings. Inside are
+odd little rooms, fitted with lockers, like the cabin of a vessel.
+Cottages, yards, palings, lanes, all are in proportion and harmony.
+Nothing common or unclean was visible,--no heaps of fish-heads, served
+up on clam-shells, and garnished with bean-pods, potato-skins, and
+corn-husks; no pigs in sight, nor in the air,--not even a cow to imperil
+the neatness of the place. There was the brisk, vigorous smell of the
+sea-shore, flavored, perhaps, with a suspicion of oil, that seemed to be
+in keeping with the locality.
+
+We sat for a long time gazing with silent astonishment upon this
+delightful little toy village, that looked almost as if it had been made
+at Nuremberg, and could be picked up and put away when not wanted to
+play with. It was a bright, still afternoon. The purple light of sunset
+gave an additional charm of color to the scene. Suddenly the _lumen
+juventæ purpureum_, the purple light of youth, broke upon it. Handsome,
+well-dressed girls, with a few polygynic young men in the usual island
+proportion of the sexes, came out of the cottages, and stood in the
+lanes talking and laughing, or walked to the edge of the bluff to see
+the sun go down. We rubbed our eyes. Was this real, or were we looking
+into some showman's box? It seemed like the Petit Trianon adapted to an
+island in the Atlantic, with Louis XV. and his marquises playing at
+fishing instead of farming.
+
+A venerable codfisher had been standing off and on our vehicle for some
+time, with the signal for speaking set in his inquisitive countenance. I
+hailed him as Mr. Coffin; for Cooper has made Long Tom the legitimate
+father of all Nantucketers. He hove to, and gave us information about
+his home. There was a picnic, or some sort of summer festival, going on;
+and the gay lady-birds we saw were either from Nantucket, or relatives
+from the main. There had once been another row of cottages outside of
+those now standing; but the Atlantic came ashore one day in a storm, and
+swallowed them up. Nevertheless, real property had risen of late. "Why,"
+said he, "do you see that little gray cottage yonder? It rents this
+summer for ten dollars a month; and there are some young men here from
+the mainland who pay one dollar a week for their rooms without board."
+
+Thompson said his sensations were similar to those of Captain Cook or
+Herman Melville when they first landed to skim the cream of the fairy
+islands of the Pacific.
+
+I was deeply moved, and gave tongue at once. "It is sad to think that
+these unsophisticated, uninflated people must undergo the change
+civilization brings with it. The time will come when the evil spirit
+that presides over watering-places will descend upon this dear little
+village, and say to the inhabitants that henceforth they must catch men.
+Neatness, cheapness, good-feeling, will vanish; a five-story hotel will
+be put up,--the process cannot be called building; and the sharks that
+infest the coast will come ashore in shabby coats and trousers, to prey
+upon summer pleasure-seekers."
+
+"In the mean time," said Thompson, "why should not we come here to live?
+We can wear old clothes, and smoke cigars of the _Hippalektryon_ brand.
+Dr. Johnson must have had a poetic prevision of Nantucket when he wrote
+his _impecunious_ lines:
+
+    'Has Heaven reserved, in pity for the poor,
+    No pathless waste or undiscovered shore,
+    No secret island in the boundless main?'
+
+This is the island. What an opening for young men of immoderately small
+means! The climate healthy and cool; no mosquitoes; a choice among seven
+beauties, perhaps the reversion of the remaining six, if Isaiah can be
+relied upon. In our regions, a thing of beauty is an expense for life;
+but with a house for three hundred dollars, and bluefish at a cent and a
+half a pound, there is no need any more to think of high prices and the
+expense of bringing up a family. If the origin of evil was, that
+Providence did not create money enough, here it is in some sort
+Paradise."
+
+"That's Heine," said I; "but Heine forgot to add, that one of the
+Devil's most dangerous tricks is to pretend to supply this sinful want
+by his cunning device of inconvertible paper money, which lures men to
+destruction and something worse."
+
+Our holiday was nearly over. We packed up our new sensations, and
+steamed away to piles of goods and columns of figures. Town and steeples
+vanished in the haze, like the domes and minarets of the enchanted isle
+of Borondon. Was not this as near to an enchanted island as one could
+hope to find within twenty-five miles of New England? Nantucket is the
+gem of the ocean without the Irish, which I think is an improvement.
+
+
+
+
+THE SNOW-WALKERS.
+
+
+He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal
+cause for wonder and admiration in winter. It is true the pomp and the
+pageantry are swept away, but the essential elements remain,--the day
+and the night, the mountain and the valley, the elemental play and
+succession and the perpetual presence of the infinite sky. In winter the
+stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller
+triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity.
+Summer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and human, appeals
+to the affections and the sentiments, and fosters inquiry and the art
+impulse. Winter is of a more heroic cast, and addresses the intellect.
+The severe studies and disciplines come easier in winter. One imposes
+larger tasks upon himself, and is less tolerant of his own weaknesses.
+
+The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in
+winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone
+and sinew to Literature, summer the tissues and blood.
+
+The simplicity of winter has a deep moral. The return of Nature, after
+such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and
+austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. It is the
+philosopher coming back from the banquet and the wine to a cup of water
+and a crust of bread.
+
+And then this beautiful masquerade of the elements,--the novel disguises
+our nearest friends put on! Here is another rain and another dew, water
+that will not flow, nor spill, nor receive the taint of an unclean
+vessel. And if we see truly, the same old beneficence and willingness to
+serve lurk beneath all.
+
+Look up at the miracle of the falling snow,--the air a dizzy maze of
+whirling, eddying flakes, noiselessly transforming the world, the
+exquisite crystals dropping in ditch and gutter, and disguising in the
+same suit of spotless livery all objects upon which they fall. How novel
+and fine the first drifts! The old, dilapidated fence is suddenly set
+off with the most fantastic ruffles, scalloped and fluted after an
+unheard-of fashion! Looking down a long line of decrepit stone-wall, in
+the trimming of which the wind had fairly run riot, I saw, as for the
+first time, what a severe yet master artist old Winter is. Ah, a severe
+artist! How stern the woods look, dark and cold and as rigid against the
+horizon as iron!
+
+All life and action upon the snow have an added emphasis and
+significance. Every expression is underscored. Summer has few finer
+pictures than this winter one of the farmer foddering his cattle from a
+stack upon the clean snow,--the movement, the sharply-defined figures,
+the great green flakes of hay, the long file of patient cows,--the
+advance just arriving and pressing eagerly for the choicest
+morsels,--and the bounty and providence it suggests. Or the chopper in
+the woods,--the prostrate tree, the white new chips scattered about, his
+easy triumph over the cold, coat hanging to a limb, and the clear, sharp
+ring of his axe. The woods are rigid and tense, keyed up by the frost,
+and resound like a stringed instrument. Or the road-breakers, sallying
+forth with oxen and sleds in the still, white world, the day after the
+storm, to restore the lost track and demolish the beleaguering drifts.
+
+All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better. At night I
+hear more distinctly the steady roar of the North Mountain. In summer it
+is a sort of complacent pur, as the breezes stroke down its sides; but
+in winter always the same low, sullen growl.
+
+A severe artist! No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble
+and the chisel. When the nights are calm and the moon full, I go out to
+gaze upon the wonderful purity of the moonlight and the snow. The air is
+full of latent fire, and the cold warms me--after a different fashion
+from that of the kitchen-stove. The world lies about me in a "trance of
+snow." The clouds are pearly and iridescent, and seem the farthest
+possible remove from the condition of a storm,--the ghosts of clouds,
+the indwelling beauty freed from all dross. I see the hills, bulging
+with great drifts, lift themselves up cold and white against the sky,
+the black lines of fences here and there obliterated by the depth of the
+snow. Presently a fox barks away up next the mountain, and I imagine I
+can almost see him sitting there, in his furs, upon the illuminated
+surface, and looking down in my direction. As I listen, one answers him
+from behind the woods in the valley. What a wild winter sound,--wild and
+weird, up among the ghostly hills. Since the wolf has ceased to howl
+upon these mountains, and the panther to scream, there is nothing to be
+compared with it. So wild! I get up in the middle of the night to hear
+it. It is refreshing to the ear, and one delights to know that such wild
+creatures are still among us. At this season Nature makes the most of
+every throb of life that can withstand her severity. How heartily she
+indorses this fox! In what bold relief stand out the lives of all
+walkers of the snow! The snow is a great telltale, and blabs as
+effectually as it obliterates. I go into the woods, and know all that
+has happened. I cross the fields, and if only a mouse has visited his
+neighbor, the fact is chronicled.
+
+The Red Fox is the only species that abounds in my locality; the little
+Gray Fox seems to prefer a more rocky and precipitous country, and a
+less vigorous climate; the Cross Fox is occasionally seen, and there are
+traditions of the Silver Gray among the oldest hunters. But the Red Fox
+is the sportsman's prize, and the only fur-bearer worthy of note in
+these mountains.[A] I go out in the morning, after a fresh fall of snow,
+and see at all points where he has crossed the road. Here he has
+leisurely passed within rifle-range of the house, evidently
+reconnoitring the premises, with an eye to the hen-coop. That sharp,
+clear, nervous track,--there is no mistaking it for the clumsy
+foot-print of a little dog. All his wildness and agility are
+photographed in that track. Here he has taken fright, or suddenly
+recollected an engagement, and, in long, graceful leaps, barely touching
+the fence, has gone careering up the hill as fleet as the wind.
+
+The wild, buoyant creature, how beautiful he is! I had often seen his
+dead carcase, and, at a distance, had witnessed the hounds drive him
+across the upper fields; but the thrill and excitement of meeting him in
+his wild freedom in the woods were unknown to me, till, one cold winter
+day, drawn thither by the baying of a hound, I stood far up toward the
+mountain's brow, waiting a renewal of the sound, that I might determine
+the course of the dog and choose my position,--stimulated by the
+ambition of all young Nimrods, to bag some notable game. Long I waited,
+and patiently, till, chilled and benumbed, I was about to turn back,
+when, hearing a slight noise, I looked up and beheld a most superb fox,
+loping along with inimitable grace and ease, evidently disturbed, but
+not pursued by the hound, and so absorbed in his private meditations
+that he failed to see me, though I stood transfixed with amazement and
+admiration not ten yards distant. I took his measure at a glance,--a
+large male, with dark legs, and massive tail tipped with white,--a most
+magnificent creature; but so astonished and fascinated was I by his
+sudden appearance and matchless beauty, that not till I had caught the
+last glimpse of him, as he disappeared over a knoll, did I awake to my
+position as a sportsman, and realize what an opportunity to distinguish
+myself I had unconsciously let slip. I clutched my gun, half angrily, as
+if it was to blame, and went home out of humor with myself and all
+fox-kind. But I have since thought better of the experience, and
+concluded that I bagged the game after all, the best part of it, and
+fleeced Reynard of something more valuable than his fur without his
+knowledge.
+
+This is thoroughly a winter sound,--this voice of the hound upon the
+mountain,--and one that is music to many ears. The long, trumpet-like
+bay, heard for a mile or more,--now faintly back in the deep recesses of
+the mountain,--now distinct, but still faint, as the hound comes over
+some prominent point, and the wind favors,--anon entirely lost in the
+gully,--then breaking out again much nearer, and growing more and more
+pronounced as the dog approaches, till, when he comes around the brow of
+the mountain, directly above you, the barking is loud and sharp. On he
+goes along the northern spur, his voice rising and sinking, as the wind
+and lay of the ground modify it, till lost to hearing.
+
+The fox usually keeps half a mile ahead, regulating his speed by that of
+the hound, occasionally pausing a moment to divert himself with a mouse,
+or to contemplate the landscape, or to listen for his pursuer. If the
+hound press him too closely, he leads off from mountain to mountain, and
+so generally escapes the hunter; but if the pursuit be slow, he plays
+about some ridge or peak, and falls a prey, though not an easy one, to
+the experienced sportsman.
+
+A most spirited and exciting chase occurs when the farm-dog gets close
+upon one in the open field, as sometimes happens in the early morning.
+The fox relies so confidently upon his superior speed, that I imagine he
+half tempts the dog to the race. But if the dog be a smart one, and
+their course lies down hill, over smooth ground, Reynard must put his
+best foot forward; and then, sometimes, suffer the ignominy of being run
+over by his pursuer, who, however, is quite unable to pick him up, owing
+to the speed. But when they mount the hill, or enter the woods, the
+superior nimbleness and agility of the fox tell at once, and he easily
+leaves the dog far in his rear. For a cur less than his own size he
+manifests little fear, especially if the two meet alone, remote from the
+house. In such cases, I have seen first one turn tail, then the other.
+
+A novel spectacle often occurs in summer, when the female has young. You
+are rambling on the mountain, accompanied by your dog, when you are
+startled by that wild, half-threatening squall, and in a moment perceive
+your dog, with inverted tail and shame and confusion in his looks,
+sneaking toward you, the old fox but a few rods in his rear. You speak
+to him sharply, when he bristles up, turns about, and, barking, starts
+off vigorously, as if to wipe out the dishonor; but in a moment comes
+sneaking back more abashed than ever, and owns himself unworthy to be
+called a dog. The fox fairly shames him out of the woods. The secret of
+the matter is her sex, though her conduct, for the honor of the fox be
+it said, seems to be prompted only by solicitude for the safety of her
+young.
+
+One of the most notable features of the fox is his large and massive
+tail. Seen running on the snow, at a distance, his tail is quite as
+conspicuous as his body; and, so far from appearing a burden, seems to
+contribute to his lightness and buoyancy. It softens the outline of his
+movements, and repeats or continues to the eye the ease and poise of his
+carriage. But, pursued by the hound on a wet, thawy day, it often
+becomes so heavy and bedraggled as to prove a serious inconvenience, and
+compels him to take refuge in his den. He is very loath to do this; both
+his pride and the traditions of his race stimulate him to run it out,
+and win by fair superiority of wind and speed; and only a wound or a
+heavy and mopish tail will drive him to avoid the issue in this manner.
+
+To learn his surpassing shrewdness and cunning, attempt to take him with
+a trap. Rogue that he is, he always suspects some trick, and one must be
+more of a fox than he is himself to overreach him. At first sight it
+would appear easy enough. With apparent indifference he crosses your
+path, or walks in your footsteps in the field, or travels along the
+beaten highway, or lingers in the vicinity of stacks and remote barns.
+Carry the carcass of a pig, or a fowl, or a dog, to a distant field in
+midwinter, and in a few nights his tracks cover the snow about it.
+
+The inexperienced country youth, misled by this seeming carelessness of
+Reynard, suddenly conceives a project to enrich himself with fur, and
+wonders that the idea has not occurred to him before, and to others. I
+knew a youthful yeoman of this kind, who imagined he had found a mine of
+wealth on discovering on a remote side-hill, between two woods, a dead
+porker, upon which it appeared all the foxes of the neighborhood had
+nightly banqueted. The clouds were burdened with snow; and as the first
+flakes commenced to eddy down, he set out, trap and broom in hand,
+already counting over in imagination the silver quarters he would
+receive for his first fox-skin. With the utmost care, and with a
+palpitating heart, he removed enough of the trodden snow to allow the
+trap to sink below the surface. Then, carefully sifting the light
+element over it and sweeping his tracks full, he quickly withdrew,
+laughing exultingly over the little surprise he had prepared for the
+cunning rogue. The elements conspired to aid him, and the falling snow
+rapidly obliterated all vestiges of his work. The next morning at dawn,
+he was on his way to bring in his fur. The snow had done its work
+effectually, and, he believed, had kept his secret well. Arrived in
+sight of the locality, he strained his vision to make out his prize
+lodged against the fence at the foot of the hill. Approaching nearer,
+the surface was unbroken, and doubt usurped the place of certainty in
+his mind. A slight mound marked the site of the porker, but there was no
+foot-print near it. Looking up the hill, he saw where Reynard had walked
+leisurely down toward his wonted bacon, till within a few yards of it,
+when he had wheeled, and with prodigious strides disappeared in the
+woods. The young trapper saw at a glance what a comment this was upon
+his skill in the art, and, indignantly exhuming the iron, he walked home
+with it, the stream of silver quarters suddenly setting in another
+direction.
+
+The successful trapper commences in the fall, or before the first deep
+snow. In a field not too remote, with an old axe, he cuts a small place,
+say ten inches by fourteen, in the frozen ground, and removes the earth
+to the depth of three or four inches, then fills the cavity with dry
+ashes, in which are placed bits of roasted cheese. Reynard is very
+suspicious at first, and gives the place a wide berth. It looks like
+design, and he will see how the thing behaves before he approaches too
+near. But the cheese is savory and the cold severe. He ventures a little
+closer every night, until he can reach and pick a piece from the
+surface. Emboldened by success, like other foxes, he presently digs
+freely among the ashes, and, finding a fresh supply of the delectable
+morsels every night, is soon thrown off his guard, and his suspicions
+are quite lulled. After a week of baiting in this manner, and on the eve
+of a light fall of snow, the trapper carefully conceals his trap in the
+bed, first smoking it thoroughly with hemlock boughs to kill or
+neutralize all smell of the iron. If the weather favors and the proper
+precautions have been taken, he may succeed, though the chances are
+still greatly against him.
+
+Reynard is usually caught very lightly, seldom more than the ends of his
+toes being between the jaws. He sometimes works so cautiously as to
+spring the trap without injury even to his toes; or may remove the
+cheese night after night without even springing it. I knew an old
+trapper who, on finding himself outwitted in this manner, tied a bit of
+cheese to the pan, and next morning had poor Reynard by the jaw. The
+trap is not fastened, but only encumbered with a clog, and is all the
+more sure in its hold by yielding to every effort of the animal to
+extricate himself.
+
+When Reynard sees his captor approaching, he would fain drop into a
+mouse-hole to render himself invisible. He crouches to the ground and
+remains perfectly motionless until he perceives himself discovered, when
+he makes one desperate and final effort to escape, but ceases all
+struggling as you come up, and behaves in a manner that stamps him a
+very timid warrior,--cowering to the earth with a mingled look of shame,
+guilt, and abject fear. A young farmer told me of tracing one with his
+trap to the border of a wood, where he discovered the cunning rogue
+trying to hide by embracing a small tree. Most animals, when taken in a
+trap, show fight; but Reynard has more faith in the nimbleness of his
+feet than in the terror of his teeth.
+
+Entering the woods, the number and variety of the tracks contrast
+strongly with the rigid, frozen aspect of things. Warm jets of life
+still shoot and play amid this snowy desolation. Fox-tracks are far less
+numerous than in the fields; but those of hares, skunks, partridges,
+squirrels, and mice abound. The mice-tracks are very pretty, and look
+like a sort of fantastic stitching on the coverlid of the snow. One is
+curious to know what brings these tiny creatures from their retreats;
+they do not seem to be in quest of food, but rather to be travelling
+about for pleasure or sociability, though always going post-haste, and
+linking stump with stump and tree with tree by fine, hurried strides.
+That is when they travel openly; but they have hidden passages and
+winding galleries under the snow, which undoubtedly are their main
+avenues of communication. Here and there these passages rise so near the
+surface as to be covered by only a frail arch of snow, and a slight
+ridge betrays their course to the eye. I know him well. He is known to
+the farmer as the deer-mouse, to the naturalist as the _Hesperomys
+leucopus_,--a very beautiful creature, nocturnal in his habits, with
+large ears, and large, fine eyes, full of a wild, harmless look. He
+leaps like a rabbit, and is daintily marked, with white feet and a white
+belly.
+
+It is he who, far up in the hollow trunk of some tree, lays by a store
+of beech-nuts for winter use. Every nut is carefully shelled, and the
+cavity that serves as storehouse lined with grass and leaves. The
+wood-chopper frequently squanders this precious store. I have seen half
+a peck taken from one tree, as clean and white as if put up by the most
+delicate hands,--as they were. How long it must have taken the little
+creature to collect this quantity, to hull them one by one, and convey
+them up to his fifth-story chamber! He is not confined to the woods, but
+is quite as common in the fields, particularly in the fall, amid the
+corn and potatoes. When routed by the plough, I have seen the old one
+take flight with half a dozen young hanging to her teats, and with such
+reckless speed, that some of the young would lose their hold, and fly
+off amid the weeds. Taking refuge in a stump with the rest of her
+family, the anxious mother would presently come back and hunt up the
+missing ones.
+
+The snow-walkers are mostly night-walkers also, and the record they
+leave upon the snow is the main clew one has to their life and doings.
+The hare is nocturnal in his habits, and though a very lively creature
+at night, with regular courses and run-ways through the wood, is
+entirely quiet by day. Timid as he is, he makes little effort to conceal
+himself, usually squatting beside a log, stump, or tree, and seeming to
+avoid rocks and ledges where he might be partially housed from the cold
+and the snow, but where also--and this consideration undoubtedly
+determines his choice--he would be more apt to fall a prey to his
+enemies. In this as well as in many other respects he differs from the
+rabbit proper (_Lepus sylvaticus_); he never burrows in the ground, or
+takes refuge in a den or hole, when pursued. If caught in the open
+fields, he is much confused and easily overtaken by the dog; but in the
+woods, he leaves him at a bound. In summer, when first disturbed, he
+beats the ground violently with his feet, by which means he would
+express to you his surprise or displeasure; it is a dumb way he has of
+scolding. After leaping a few yards, he pauses an instant, as if to
+determine the degree of danger, and then hurries away with a much
+lighter tread.
+
+His feet are like great pads, and his track has little of the sharp,
+articulated expression of Reynard's, or of animals that climb or dig.
+Yet it is very pretty, like all the rest, and tells its own tale. There
+is nothing bold or vicious or vulpine in it, and his timid, harmless
+character is published at every leap. He abounds in dense woods,
+preferring localities filled with a small undergrowth of beech and
+birch, upon the bark of which he feeds. Nature is rather partial to him
+and matches his extreme local habits and character with a suit that
+corresponds with his surroundings,--reddish-gray in summer and white in
+winter.
+
+The sharp-rayed track of the partridge adds another figure to this
+fantastic embroidery upon the winter snow. Her course is a clear, strong
+line, sometimes quite wayward, but generally very direct, steering for
+the densest, most impenetrable places,--leading you over logs and
+through brush, alert and expectant, till, suddenly, she bursts up a few
+yards from you, and goes humming through the trees,--the complete
+triumph of endurance and vigor. Hardy native bird, may your tracks never
+be fewer, or your visits to the birch-tree less frequent!
+
+The squirrel-tracks--sharp, nervous, and wiry--have their histories
+also. But who ever saw squirrels in winter? The naturalist says they are
+mostly torpid; yet evidently that little pocket-faced depredator, the
+chipmunk, was not carrying buckwheat for so many days to his hole for
+nothing;--was he anticipating a state of torpidity, or the demands of a
+very active appetite? Red and gray squirrels are more or less active all
+winter, though very shy, and, I am inclined to think, partially
+nocturnal in their habits. Here a gray one has just passed,--came down
+that tree and went up this; there he dug for a beech-nut, and left the
+bur on the snow. How did he know where to dig? During an unusually
+severe winter I have known him to make long journeys to a barn, in a
+remote field, where wheat was stored. How did he know there was wheat
+there? In attempting to return, the adventurous creature was frequently
+run down and caught in the deep snow.
+
+His home is in the trunk of some old birch or maple, with an entrance
+far up amid the branches. In the spring he builds himself a summer-house
+of small leafy twigs in the top of a neighboring beech, where the young
+are reared and much of the time passed. But the safer retreat in the
+maple is not abandoned, and both old and young resort thither in the
+fall, or when danger threatens. Whether this temporary residence amid
+the branches is for elegance or pleasure, or for sanitary reasons or
+domestic convenience, the naturalist has forgotten to mention.
+
+The elegant creature, so cleanly in its habits, so graceful in its
+carriage, so nimble and daring in its movements, excites feelings of
+admiration akin to those awakened by the birds and the fairer forms of
+nature. His passage through the trees is almost a flight. Indeed, the
+flying-squirrel has little or no advantage over him, and in speed and
+nimbleness cannot compare with him at all. If he miss his footing and
+fall, he is sure to catch on the next branch; if the connection be
+broken, he leaps recklessly for the nearest spray or limb, and secures
+his hold, even if it be by the aid of his teeth.
+
+His career of frolic and festivity begins in the fall, after the birds
+have left us and the holiday spirit of nature has commenced to subside.
+How absorbing the pastime of the sportsman, who goes to the woods in the
+still October morning in quest of him! You step lightly across the
+threshold of the forest, and sit down upon the first log or rock to
+await the signals. It is so still that the ear suddenly seems to have
+acquired new powers, and there is no movement to confuse the eye.
+Presently you hear the rustling of a branch, and see it sway or spring
+as the squirrel leaps from or to it; or else you hear a disturbance in
+the dry leaves, and mark one running upon the ground. He has probably
+seen the intruder, and, not liking his stealthy movements, desires to
+avoid a nearer acquaintance. Now he mounts a stump to see if the way is
+clear, then pauses a moment at the foot of a tree to take his bearings,
+his tail, as he skims along, undulating behind him, and adding to the
+easy grace and dignity of his movements. Or else you are first advised
+of his proximity by the dropping of a false nut, or the fragments of the
+shucks rattling upon the leaves. Or, again, after contemplating you
+awhile unobserved, and making up his mind that you are not dangerous, he
+strikes an attitude on a branch, and commences to quack and bark, with
+an accompanying movement of his tail. Late in the afternoon, when the
+same stillness reigns, the same scenes are repeated. There is a black
+variety, quite rare, but mating freely with the gray, from which he
+seems to be distinguished only in color.
+
+The track of the red squirrel may be known by its smaller size. He is
+more common and less dignified than the gray, and oftener guilty of
+petty larceny about the barns and grain-fields. He is most abundant in
+old bark-peelings, and low, dilapidated hemlocks, from which he makes
+excursions to the fields and orchards, spinning along the tops of the
+fences, which afford, not only convenient lines of communication, but a
+safe retreat if danger threatens. He loves to linger about the orchard;
+and, sitting upright on the topmost stone in the wall, or on the tallest
+stake in the fence, chipping up an apple for the seeds, his tail
+conforming to the curve of his back, his paws shifting and turning the
+apple, he is a pretty sight, and his bright, pert appearance atones for
+all the mischief he does. At home, in the woods, he is the most
+frolicsome and loquacious. The appearance of anything unusual, if, after
+contemplating it a moment, he concludes it not dangerous, excites his
+unbounded mirth and ridicule, and he snickers and chatters, hardly able
+to contain himself; now darting up the trunk of a tree and squealing in
+derision, then hopping into position on a limb and dancing to the music
+of his own cackle, and all for your special benefit.
+
+There is something very human in this apparent mirth and mockery of the
+squirrels. It seems to be a sort of ironical laughter, and implies
+self-conscious pride and exultation in the laugher, "What a ridiculous
+thing you are, to be sure!" he seems to say; "how clumsy and awkward,
+and what a poor show for a tail! Look at me, look at me!"--and he capers
+about in his best style. Again, he would seem to tease you and to
+provoke your attention; then suddenly assumes a tone of good-natured,
+childlike defiance and derision; that pretty little imp, the chipmunk,
+will sit on the stone above his den, and defy you, as plainly as if he
+said so, to catch him before he can get into his hole if you can. You
+hurl a stone at him, and "No you didn't" comes up from the depth of his
+retreat.
+
+In February another track appears upon the snow, slender and delicate,
+about a third larger than that of the gray squirrel, indicating no haste
+or speed, but, on the contrary, denoting the most imperturbable ease and
+leisure, the footprints so close together that the trail appears like a
+chain of curiously carved links. Sir _Mephitis chinga_, or, in plain
+English, the skunk, has woke up from his six-weeks nap, and come out
+into society again. He is a nocturnal traveller, very bold and impudent,
+coming quite up to the barn and outbuildings, and sometimes taking up
+his quarters for the season under the hay-mow. There is no such word as
+hurry in his dictionary, as you may see by his path upon the snow. He
+has a very sneaking, insinuating way, and goes creeping about the fields
+and woods, never once in a perceptible degree altering his gait, and, if
+a fence crosses his course, steers for a break or opening to avoid
+climbing. He is too indolent even to dig his own hole, but appropriates
+that of a woodchuck, or hunts out a crevice in the rocks, from which he
+extends his rambling in all directions, preferring damp, thawy weather.
+He has very little discretion or cunning, and holds a trap in utter
+contempt, stepping into it as soon as beside it, relying implicitly for
+defence against all forms of danger upon the unsavory punishment he is
+capable of inflicting. He is quite indifferent to both man and beast,
+and will not hurry himself to get out of the way of either. Walking
+through the summer fields at twilight, I have come near stepping upon
+him, and was much the more disturbed of the two. When attacked in the
+open fields he confounds the plans of his enemies by the unheard-of
+tactics of exposing his rear rather than his front. "Come if you dare,"
+he says, and his attitude makes even the farm-dog pause. After a few
+encounters of this kind, and if you entertain the usual hostility
+towards him, your mode of attack will speedily resolve itself into
+moving about him in a circle, the radius of which will be the exact
+distance at which you can hurl a stone with accuracy and effect.
+
+He has a secret to keep, and knows it, and is careful not to betray
+himself until he can do so with the most telling effect. I have known
+him to preserve his serenity even when caught in a steel trap, and look
+the very picture of injured innocence, manoeuvring carefully and
+deliberately to extricate his foot from the grasp of the naughty jaws.
+Do not by any means take pity on him, and lend a helping hand.
+
+How pretty his face and head! How fine and delicate his teeth, like a
+weasel's or cat's! When about a third grown, he looks so well that one
+covets him for a pet. He is quite precocious however, and capable, even
+at this tender age, of making a very strong appeal to your sense of
+smell.
+
+No animal is more cleanly in its habits than he. He is not an awkward
+boy, who cuts his own face with his whip; and neither his flesh nor his
+fur hints the weapon with which he is armed. The most silent creature
+known to me, he makes no sound, so far as I have observed, save a
+diffuse, impatient noise, like that produced by beating your hand with a
+whisk-broom, when the farm-dog has discovered his retreat in the stone
+fence. He renders himself obnoxious to the farmer by his partiality for
+hens' eggs and young poultry. He is a confirmed epicure, and at
+plundering hen-roosts an expert. Not the full-grown fowls are his
+victims, but the youngest and most tender. At night Mother Hen receives
+under her maternal wings a dozen newly hatched chickens, and with much
+pride and satisfaction feels them all safely tucked away in her
+feathers. In the morning she is walking about disconsolately, attended
+by only two or three of all that pretty brood. What has happened? Where
+are they gone? That pickpocket, Sir Mephitis, could solve the mystery.
+Quietly has he approached, under cover of darkness, and, one by one,
+relieved her of her precious charge. Look closely, and you will see
+their little yellow legs and beaks, or part of a mangled form, lying
+about on the ground. Or, before the hen has hatched, he may find her
+out, and, by the same sleight of hand, remove every egg, leaving only
+the empty blood-stained shells to witness against him. The birds,
+especially the ground-builders, suffer in like manner from his
+plundering propensities.
+
+The secretion upon which he relies for defence, and which is the chief
+source of his unpopularity, while it affords good reasons against
+cultivating him as a pet, and mars his attractiveness as game, is by no
+means the greatest indignity that can be offered to a nose. It is a
+rank, living smell, and has none of the sickening qualities of disease
+or putrefaction. Indeed, I think a good smeller will enjoy its most
+refined intensity. It approaches the sublime, and makes the nose tingle.
+It is tonic and bracing, and, I can readily believe, has rare medicinal
+qualities. I do not recommend its use as eye-water, though an old farmer
+assures me it has undoubted virtues when thus applied. Hearing, one
+night, a disturbance among his hens, he rushed suddenly out to catch the
+thief, when Sir Mephitis, taken by surprise, and, no doubt, much annoyed
+at being interrupted, discharged the vials of his wrath full in the
+farmer's face, and with such admirable effect, that, for a few moments,
+he was completely blinded, and powerless to revenge himself upon the
+rogue; but he declared that afterwards his eyes felt as if purged by
+fire, and his sight was much clearer.
+
+In March, that brief summary of a bear, the raccoon, comes out of his
+den in the ledges, and leaves his sharp digitigrade track upon the
+snow,--travelling not unfrequently in pairs,--a lean, hungry couple,
+bent on pillage and plunder. They have an unenviable time of
+it,--feasting in the summer and fall, hibernating in winter, and
+starving in spring. In April, I have found the young of the previous
+year creeping about the fields, so reduced by starvation as to be quite
+helpless, and offering no resistance to my taking them up by the tail,
+and carrying them home.
+
+But with March our interest in these phases of animal life, which winter
+has so emphasized and brought out, begins to decline. Vague rumors are
+afloat in the air of a great and coming change. We are eager for Winter
+to be gone, since he too is fugitive, and cannot keep his place.
+Invisible hands deface his icy statuary; his chisel has lost its
+cunning. The drifts, so pure and exquisite, are now earth-stained and
+weather-worn,--the flutes and scallops, and fine, firm lines, all gone;
+and what was a grace and an ornament to the hills is now a
+disfiguration. Like worn and unwashed linen appear the remains of that
+spotless robe with which he clothed the world as his bride.
+
+But he will not abdicate without a struggle. Day after day he rallies
+his scattered forces, and night after night pitches his white tents on
+the hills, and forges his spears at the eaves and by the dripping rocks;
+but the young Prince in every encounter prevails. Slowly and reluctantly
+the gray old hero retreats up the mountain, till finally the south rain
+comes in earnest, and in a night he is dead.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] A spur of the Catskills.
+
+
+
+
+TO HERSA.
+
+
+    Maiden, there is something more
+    Than raiment to adore;
+    Thou must have more than a dress,
+    More than any mode or mould,
+    More than mortal loveliness,
+    To captivate the cold.
+
+    Bow the knightly when they bow,
+    To a star behind the brow,--
+    Not to marble, not to dust,
+      But to that which warms them;
+    Not to contour nor to bust,
+      But to that which forms them,--
+    Not to languid lid nor lash,
+    Satin fold nor purple sash,
+    But unto the living flash
+    So mysteriously hid
+    Under lash and under lid.
+
+    But, vanity of vanities,--
+    If the red-rose in a young cheek lies,
+        Fatal disguise!
+    For the most terrible lances
+    Of the true, true knight
+    Are his bold eyebeams;
+    And every time that he opens his eyes,
+    The falsehood that he looks on dies.
+
+    If the heavenly light be latent,
+    It can need no earthly patent.
+        Unbeholden unto art--
+        Fashion or lore,
+        Scrip or store,
+        Earth or ore--
+        Be thy heart,
+    Which was music from the start,
+    Music, music to the core!
+
+    Music, which, though voiceless,
+    Can create
+    Both form and fate,
+    As Petrarch could a sonnet
+    That, taking flesh upon it,
+    Spirit-noiseless,
+    Doth the same inform and fill
+    With a music sweeter still!
+    Lives and breathes and palpitates,
+    Moves and moulds and animates,
+    And sleeps not from its duty
+    Till the maid in whom 'tis pent--
+    From a mortal rudiment,
+    From the earth-cell
+      And the love-cell,
+    By the birth-spell
+      And the love-spell--
+    Come to beauty.
+
+    Beauty, that, (Celestial Child,
+      From above,
+    Born of Wisdom and of Love,)
+      Can never die!
+    That ever, as she passeth by,
+    But casteth down the mild
+      Effulgence of her eye,
+    And, lo! the broken heart is healed,
+    The maimed, perverted soul
+    Ariseth and is whole!
+    That ever doing the fair deed,
+    And therein taking joy,
+    (A pure and priceless meed
+    That of this earth hath least alloy,)
+        It comes at last,
+    All mischance forever past,--
+    Every beautiful procedure
+    Manifest in form and feature,--
+        To be revealed:
+    There walks the earth an heavenly creature!
+
+    Beauty is music mute,--
+    Music's flower and fruit,
+    Music's creature--
+    Form and feature--
+    Music's lute.
+    Music's lute be thou,
+    Maiden of the starry brow!
+    (Keep thy _heart_ true to know how!)
+    A Lute which he alone,
+    As all in good time shall be shown,
+    Shall prove, and thereby make his own,
+    Who is god enough to play upon it.
+
+    Happy, happy maid is she
+    Who is wedded unto Truth:
+    Thou shalt know him when he comes,
+        (Welcome youth!)
+    Not by any din of drums,
+    Nor the vantage of his airs;
+    Neither by his crown,
+    Nor his gown,
+    Nor by anything he wears.
+    He shall only well known be
+    By the holy harmony
+    That his coming makes in thee!
+
+
+
+
+AN AMAZONIAN PICNIC.
+
+
+It was about half past six o'clock on the morning of the 27th of
+October, 1865, that we left Manaos, (or as the maps usually call it,
+Barra do Rio Negro,) on an excursion to the Lake of Hyanuary, on the
+western side of the Rio Negro. The morning was unusually fresh for these
+latitudes, and a strong wind was blowing up so heavy a sea in the river,
+that, if it did not actually make one sea-sick, it certainly called up
+very vivid and painful associations. We were in a large eight-oared
+custom-house barge, our company consisting of his Excellency, Dr.
+Epaminondas, President of the Province,[B] his secretary, Senhor
+Codicera, Senhor Tavares Bastos, the distinguished young deputy from the
+Province of Alagoas, Major Coutinho, of the Brazilian Engineer Service,
+Mr. Agassiz and myself, Mr. Bourkhardt, his artist, and two of our
+volunteer assistants. We were preceded by a smaller boat, an Indian
+montaria, in which was our friend and kind host, Senhor Honorio, who had
+undertaken to provide for our creature comforts, and had the care of a
+boatful of provisions. After an hour's row we left the rough waters of
+the Rio Negro, and rounding a wooded point, turned into one of those
+narrow, winding igarapés (literally, "boat-paths"), with green forest
+walls, which make the charm of canoe excursions in this country. A
+ragged drapery of long, faded grass hung from the lower branches of the
+trees, marking the height of the last rise of the river,--some eighteen
+or twenty feet above its present level. Here and there a white heron
+stood on the shore, his snowy plumage glittering in the sunlight;
+numbers of ciganas (the pheasants of the Amazons) clustered in the
+bushes; once a pair of king vultures rested for a moment within gunshot,
+but flew out of sight as our canoe approached; and now and then an
+alligator showed his head above water. As we floated along through this
+picturesque channel, so characteristic of the wonderful region to which
+we were all more or less strangers,--for even Dr. Epaminondas and Senhor
+Tavares Bastos were here for the first time,--the conversation turned
+naturally enough upon the nature of this Amazonian Valley, its physical
+conformation, its origin and resources, its history past and to come,
+both alike and obscure, both the subject of wonder and speculation.
+Senhor Tavares Bastos, although not yet thirty, is already distinguished
+in the politics of his country; and from the moment he entered upon
+public life to the present time, the legislation in regard to the
+Amazons, its relation to the future progress and development of the
+Brazilian empire, has been the object of his deepening interest. He is a
+leader in that class of men who advocate the most liberal policy in this
+matter, and has already urged upon his countrymen the importance, even
+from selfish motives, of sharing their great treasure with the world. He
+was little more than twenty years of age when he published his papers on
+the opening of the Amazons, which have done more, perhaps, than anything
+else of late years to attract attention to the subject.
+
+There are points where the researches of the statesman and the
+investigator meet, and natural science is not without its influence,
+even on the practical bearings of this question. Shall this region be
+legislated for as sea or land? Shall the interests of agriculture or
+navigation prevail in its councils? Is it essentially aquatic or
+terrestrial? Such were some of the inquiries which came up in the course
+of the discussion. A region of country which stretches across a whole
+continent, and is flooded for half the year, where there can never be
+railroads, or highways, or even pedestrian travelling, to any great
+extent, can hardly be considered as dry land. It is true that, in this
+oceanic river system, the tidal action has an annual, instead of a
+daily, ebb and flow; that its rise and fall obey a larger light, and are
+regulated by the sun, and not the moon; but it is nevertheless subject
+to all the conditions of a submerged district, and must be treated as
+such. Indeed, these semiannual changes of level are far more powerful in
+their influence on the life of the inhabitants than any marine tides.
+People sail half the year over districts where, for the other half, they
+walk, though hardly dry-shod, over the soaked ground; their occupations,
+their dress, their habits, are modified in accordance with the dry and
+wet seasons. And not only the ways of life, but the whole aspect of the
+country, the character of the landscape, are changed. At this moment
+there are two most picturesque falls in the neighborhood of Manaos,--the
+Great and Little Cascades, as they are called,--favorite resorts for
+bathing, picnics, etc., which, in a few months, when the river shall
+have risen above their highest level, will have completely disappeared.
+Their bold rocks and shady nooks will have become river-bottom. All that
+one hears or reads of the extent of the Amazons and its tributaries does
+not give one an idea of its immensity as a whole. One must float for
+months upon its surface, in order to understand how fully water has the
+mastery over land along its borders. Its watery labyrinth is not so much
+a network of rivers, as an ocean of fresh water cut up and divided by
+land, the land being often nothing more than an archipelago of islands
+in its midst. The valley of the Amazons is indeed an aquatic, not a
+terrestrial, basin; and it is not strange, when looked upon from this
+point of view, that its forests should be less full of life,
+comparatively, than its rivers.
+
+But while we were discussing these points, talking of the time when the
+banks of the Amazons will teem with a population more active and
+vigorous than any it has yet seen,--when all civilized nations shall
+share in its wealth,--when the twin continents will shake hands, and
+Americans of the North come to help Americans of the South in developing
+its resources,--when it will be navigated from north to south, as well
+as from east to west, and small steamers will run up to the head-waters
+of all its tributaries,--while we were speculating on these things, we
+were approaching the end of our journey; and, as we neared the lake,
+there issued from its entrance a small, two-masted canoe, evidently
+bound on some official mission, for it carried the Brazilian flag, and
+was adorned with many brightly colored streamers. As it drew near we
+heard music; and a salvo of rockets, the favorite Brazilian artillery on
+all festive occasions, whether by day or night, shot up into the air.
+Our arrival had been announced by Dr. Carnavaro of Manaos, who had come
+out the day before to make some preparations for our reception, and this
+was a welcome to the President on his first visit to the Indian village.
+When they came within speaking distance, a succession of hearty cheers
+went up for the President; for Tavares Bastos, whose character as the
+political advocate of the Amazons makes him especially welcome here; for
+Major Coutinho, already well known from his former explorations in this
+region; and for the strangers within their gates,--for the Professor and
+his party. When the reception was over, they fell into line behind our
+boat, and so we came into the little port with something of state and
+ceremony.
+
+This pretty Indian village is hardly recognized as a village at once,
+for it consists of a number of _sitios_ (palm-thatched houses),
+scattered through the forest; and though the inhabitants look on each
+other as friends and neighbors, yet from our landing-place only one
+_sitio_ was to be seen,--that at which we were to stay. It stood on a
+hill which sloped gently up from the lake shore, and consisted of a mud
+house,--the rough frame being filled in and plastered with
+mud,--containing two rooms, beside several large palm-thatched sheds
+outside. The word _shed_, which we connect with a low, narrow out-house,
+gives no correct idea, however, of this kind of structure, universal
+throughout the Indian settlements, and common also among the whites. The
+space enclosed is generally large, the sloping roof of palm-thatch is
+lifted very high on poles made of the trunks of trees, thus allowing a
+free circulation of air, and there are usually no walls at all. They are
+great open porches, or verandas, rather than sheds. One of these rooms
+was used for the various processes by which the mandioca root is
+transformed into farinha, tapioca, and tucupi, a kind of intoxicating
+liquor. It was furnished with the large clay ovens, covered with immense
+shallow copper pans, for drying the farinha, with the troughs for
+kneading the mandioca, the long straw tubes for expressing the juice,
+and the sieves for straining the tapioca. The mandioca room is an
+important part of every Indian _sitio_; for the natives not only depend,
+in a great degree, upon the different articles manufactured from this
+root for their own food, but it makes an essential part of the commerce
+of the Amazons. Another of these open rooms was a kitchen; while a
+third, which served as our dining-room, is used on festa days and
+occasional Sundays as a chapel. It differed from the rest in having the
+upper end closed in with a neat thatched wall, against which, in time of
+need, the altar-table may stand, with candles and rough prints or
+figures of the Virgin and Saints. A little removed from this more
+central part of the establishment was another smaller mud house, where
+most of the party arranged their hammocks; Mr. Agassiz and myself being
+accommodated in the other one, where we were very hospitably received by
+the senhora of the _sitio_, an old Indian woman, whose gold ornaments,
+necklace, and ear-rings were rather out of keeping with her calico skirt
+and cotton waist. This is, however, by no means an unusual combination
+here. Beside the old lady, the family consisted, at this moment, of her
+_afilhada_ (god-daughter), with her little boy, and several other women
+employed about the place; but it is difficult to judge of the population
+of the _sitios_ now, because a great number of the men have been taken
+as recruits for the war with Paraguay, and others are hiding in the
+forest for fear of being pressed into the same service.
+
+The breakfast-table, covered with dishes of fish fresh from the lake,
+and dressed in a variety of ways, with stewed chicken, rice, etc., was
+by no means an unwelcome sight, as it was already eleven o'clock, and we
+had had nothing since rising, at half past five in the morning, except a
+hot cup of coffee; nor was the meal the less appetizing that it was
+spread under the palm-thatched roof of our open, airy dining-room,
+surrounded by the forest, and commanding a view of the lake and wooded
+hillside opposite, the little landing below, where were moored our barge
+with its white awning, the gay canoe, and two or three Indian montarias,
+making the foreground of the picture. After breakfast our party
+dispersed, some to rest in their hammocks, others to hunt or fish, while
+Mr. Agassiz was fully engaged in examining a large basket of
+fish,--Tucunarés, Acaras, Curimatas, Surubims, etc.,--just brought in
+from the lake for his inspection, and showing again what every
+investigation demonstrates afresh, namely, the distinct localization of
+species in every different water-basin, be it river, lake, igarapé, or
+forest pool. Though the scientific results of the expedition have no
+place in this little sketch of a single excursion, let me make a general
+statement as to Mr. Agassiz's collections, to give you some idea of his
+success. Since arriving in Pará, although his exploration of the
+Amazonian waters is but half completed, he has collected more species
+than were known to exist in the whole world fifty years ago. Up to this
+time, something more than a hundred species of fish were known to
+science from the Amazons;[C] Mr. Agassiz has already more than eight
+hundred on hand, and every day adds new treasures. He is himself
+astonished at this result, revealing a richness and variety in the
+distribution of life throughout these waters of which he had formed no
+conception. As his own attention has been especially directed to their
+localization and development, his collection of fishes is larger than
+any other; still, with the help of his companions, volunteers as well as
+regular assistants, he has a good assortment of specimens from all the
+other classes of the animal kingdom likewise.
+
+One does not see much of the world between one o'clock and four in this
+climate. These are the hottest hours of the day, and there are few who
+can resist the temptation of the cool swinging hammock, slung in some
+shady spot within doors or without. I found a quiet retreat by the lake
+shore, where, though I had a book in my hand, the wind in the trees
+overhead, and the water rippling softly around the montarias moored at
+my side, lulled me into that mood of mind when one may be lazy without
+remorse or ennui, and one's highest duty seems to be to do nothing. The
+monotonous notes of a _violon_, a kind of lute or guitar, came to me
+from a group of trees at a little distance, where our boatmen were
+resting in the shade, the red fringes of their hammocks giving to the
+landscape just the bit of color which it needed. Occasionally a rustling
+flight of paroquets or ciganas overhead startled me for a moment, or a
+large pirarucu plashed out of the water; but except for these sounds,
+Nature was silent, and animals as well as men seemed to pause in the
+heat and seek shelter.
+
+Dinner brought us all together again at the close of the afternoon in
+our airy banqueting-hall. As we were with the President, our picnic was
+of a much more magnificent character than are our purely scientific
+excursions, of which we have had many. On such occasions, we are forced
+to adapt our wants to our means; and the make-shifts to which we are
+obliged to resort, if they are sometimes inconvenient, are often very
+amusing. But now, instead of teacups doing duty as tumblers, empty
+barrels serving as chairs, and the like incongruities, we had a silver
+soup tureen and a cook and a waiter, and knives and forks enough to go
+round, and many other luxuries which such wayfarers as ourselves learn
+to do without. While we were dining, the Indians began to come in from
+the surrounding forest to pay their respects to the President; for his
+visit was the cause of great rejoicing, and there was to be a ball in
+his honor in the evening. They brought an enormous cluster of game as an
+offering. What a mass of color it was, looking more like an immense
+bouquet of flowers than like a bunch of birds! It was composed entirely
+of toucans with their red and yellow beaks, blue eyes, and soft white
+breasts bordered with crimson, and of parrots, or papagaios, as they
+call them here, with their gorgeous plumage of green, blue, purple, and
+red.
+
+When we had dined we took coffee outside, while our places around the
+table were filled by the Indian guests, who were to have a dinner-party
+in their turn. It was pleasant to see with how much courtesy several of
+the Brazilian gentlemen of our party waited upon these Indian senhoras,
+passing them a variety of dishes, helping them to wine, and treating
+them with as much attention as if they had been the highest ladies of
+the land. They seemed, however, rather shy and embarrassed, scarcely
+touching the nice things placed before them, till one of the gentlemen
+who has lived a good deal among the Indians, and knows their habits
+perfectly, took the knife and fork from one of them, exclaiming,--"Make
+no ceremony, and don't be ashamed; eat with your fingers, all of you, as
+you're accustomed to do, and then you'll find your appetites and enjoy
+your dinner." His advice was followed; and I must say they seemed much
+more comfortable in consequence, and did better justice to the good
+fare. Although the Indians who live in the neighborhood of the towns
+have seen too much of the conventionalities of civilization not to
+understand the use of a knife and fork, no Indian will eat with one if
+he can help it; and, strange to say, there are many of the whites in the
+upper Amazonian settlements who have adopted the same habits. I have
+dined with Brazilian senhoras of good class and condition, belonging to
+the gentry of the land, who, although they provided a very nice service
+for their guests, used themselves only the implements with which Nature
+had provided them.
+
+When the dinner was over, the room was cleared of the tables, and swept;
+the music, consisting of a guitar, flute, and violin, called in; and the
+ball was opened. At first the forest belles were rather shy in the
+presence of strangers; but they soon warmed up, and began to dance with
+more animation. They were all dressed in calico or muslin skirts, with
+loose white cotton waists, finished around the neck with a kind of lace
+they make themselves by drawing out the threads from cotton or cambric
+so as to form an open pattern, sewing those which remain over and over
+to secure them. Much of this lace is quite elaborate, and very fine.
+Many of them had their hair dressed either with white jessamine or with
+roses stuck into their round combs, and several wore gold beads and
+ear-rings. Some of the Indian dances are very pretty; but one thing is
+noticeable, at least in all that I have seen. The man makes all the
+advances, while the woman is coy and retiring, her movements being very
+languid. Her partner throws himself at her feet, but does not elicit a
+smile or a gesture; he stoops, and pretends to be fishing, making
+motions as if he were drawing her in with a line; he dances around her,
+snapping his fingers as though playing on the castanets, and half
+encircling her with his arms; but she remains reserved and cold. Now and
+then they join together in something like a waltz; but this is only
+occasionally, and for a moment. How different from the negro dances, of
+which we saw many in the neighborhood of Rio! In those the advances come
+chiefly from the women, and are not always of a very modest character.
+
+The moon was shining brightly over lake and forest, and the ball was
+gayer than ever, at ten o'clock, when I went to my room, or rather to
+the room where my hammock was slung, and which I shared with Indian
+women and children, with a cat and her family of kittens, who slept on
+the edge of my mosquito-net, and made frequent inroads upon the inside,
+with hens and chickens and sundry dogs, who went in and out at will. The
+music and dancing, the laughter and talking outside, continued till the
+small hours. Every now and then an Indian girl would come in to rest for
+a while, take a nap in a hammock, and then return to the dance. When we
+first arrived in South America, we could hardly have slept soundly under
+such circumstances; but one soon becomes accustomed, on the Amazons, to
+sleeping in rooms with mud floors and mud walls, or with no walls at
+all, where rats and birds and bats rustle about in the thatch over one's
+head, and all sorts of unwonted noises in the night remind you that you
+are by no means the sole occupant of your apartment. This remark does
+not apply to the towns, where the houses are comfortable enough; but if
+you attempt to go off the beaten track, to make canoe excursions, and
+see something of the forest population, you must submit to these
+inconveniences. There is one thing, however, which makes it far
+pleasanter to lodge in the Indian houses here than in the houses of our
+poorer class at home. One is quite independent in the matter of bedding;
+no one travels without his own hammock and the net which in many places
+is a necessity on account of the mosquitoes. Beds and bedding are almost
+unknown here; and there are none so poor as not to possess two or three
+of the strong and neat twine hammocks made by the Indians themselves
+from the fibres of the palm. Then the open character of their houses, as
+well as the personal cleanliness of the Indians, makes the atmosphere
+fresher and purer there than in the houses of our poor. However untidy
+they may be in other respects, they always bathe once or twice a day, if
+not oftener, and wash their clothes frequently. We have never yet
+entered an Indian house where there was any disagreeable odor, unless it
+might be the peculiar smell from the preparation of the mandioca in the
+working-room outside, which has, at a certain stage in the process, a
+slightly sour smell. We certainly could not say as much for many houses
+where we have lodged when travelling in the West, or even "Down East,"
+where the suspicious look of the bedding and the close air of the room
+often make one doubtful about the night's rest.
+
+We were up at five o'clock; for the morning hours are very precious in
+this climate, and the Brazilian day begins with the dawn. At six o'clock
+we had had coffee, and were ready for the various projects suggested for
+our amusement. Our sportsmen were already in the forest; others had gone
+off on a fishing excursion in a montaria; and I joined a party on a
+visit to a _sitio_ higher up the lake. Mr. Agassiz, as has been
+constantly the case throughout our journey, was obliged to deny himself
+all these parties of pleasure; for the novelty and variety of the
+species of fish brought in kept him and his artist constantly at work.
+In this climate the process of decomposition goes on so rapidly, that,
+unless the specimens are attended to at once, they are lost; and the
+paintings must be made while they are quite fresh, in order to give any
+idea of their vividness of tint. We therefore left Mr. Agassiz busy with
+the preparation of his collections, and Mr. Bourkhardt painting, while
+we went up the lake through a strange, half-aquatic, half-terrestrial
+region, where the land seemed hardly redeemed from the water. Groups of
+trees rose directly from the lake, their roots hidden below its surface,
+while numerous blackened and decayed trunks stood up from the water in
+all sorts of picturesque and fantastic forms. Sometimes the trees had
+thrown down from their branches those singular aerial roots so common
+here, and seemed standing on stilts. Here and there, when we coasted
+along by the bank, we had a glimpse into the deeper forest, with its
+drapery of lianas and various creeping vines, and its parasitic sipos
+twining close around the trunks, or swinging themselves from branch to
+branch like loose cordage. But usually the margin of the lake was a
+gently sloping bank, covered with a green so vivid and yet so soft that
+it seemed as if the earth had been born afresh in its six months'
+baptism, and had come out like a new creation. Here and there a palm
+lifted its head above the line of the forest, especially the light,
+graceful Assai palm, with its tall, slender, smooth stem and crown of
+feathery leaves vibrating with every breeze.
+
+Half an hour's row brought us to the landing of the _sitio_ for which we
+were bound. Usually the _sitios_ stand on the bank of the lake or river,
+a stone's throw from the shore, for convenience of fishing, bathing,
+etc. But this one was at some distance, with a very nicely-kept winding
+path leading through the forest; and as it was far the neatest and
+prettiest _sitio_ I have seen here, I may describe it more at length. It
+stood on the brow of a hill which dipped down on the other side into a
+wide and deep ravine. Through this ravine ran an igarapé, beyond which
+the land rose again in an undulating line of hilly ground, most
+refreshing to the eye after the flat character of the upper Amazonian
+scenery. The fact that this _sitio_, standing now on a hill overlooking
+the valley and the little stream at its bottom, will have the water
+nearly flush with the ground around it when the igarapé is swollen by
+the rise of the river, gives an idea of the change of aspect between the
+dry and wet seasons. The establishment consisted of a number of
+buildings, the most conspicuous of which was a large and lofty open
+room, which the Indian senhora told me was their reception-room, and was
+often used, she said, by the _brancos_ (whites) from Manaos and the
+neighborhood for an evening dance, when they came out in a large
+company, and passed the night. A low wall, some three or four feet in
+height, ran along the sides of this room, wooden benches being placed
+against them for their whole length. The two ends were closed from top
+to bottom by very neat thatched walls; the palm-thatch here, when it is
+made with care, being exceedingly pretty, fine, and smooth, and of a
+soft straw color. At the upper end stood an immense embroidery-frame,
+looking as if it might have served for Penelope's web, but in which was
+stretched an unfinished hammock of palm-thread, the senhora's work. She
+sat down on the low stool before it, and worked a little for my benefit,
+showing me how the two layers of transverse threads were kept apart by a
+thick, polished piece of wood, something like a long, broad ruler.
+Through the opening thus made the shuttle is passed with the
+cross-thread, which is then pushed down and straightened in its place by
+means of the same piece of wood.
+
+When we arrived, with the exception of the benches I have mentioned and
+a few of the low wooden stools roughly cut out of a single piece of wood
+and common in every _sitio_, this room was empty; but immediately a
+number of hammocks, of various color and texture, were brought and slung
+across the room from side to side, between the poles supporting the
+roof, and we were invited to rest. This is the first act of hospitality
+on arriving at a country-house here; and the guests are soon stretched
+in every attitude of luxurious ease. After we had rested, the gentlemen
+went down to the igarapé to bathe, while the senhora and her daughter, a
+very pretty Indian woman, showed me over the rest of the establishment.
+She had the direction of everything now; for the master of the house was
+absent, having a captain's commission in the army; and I heard here the
+same complaints which meet you everywhere in the forest settlements, of
+the deficiency of men on account of the recruiting. The room I have
+described stood on one side of a cleared and neatly swept ground, around
+which, at various distances, stood a number of little thatched
+houses,--_casinhas_, as they call them,--consisting mostly only of one
+room. But beside these there was one larger house, with mud walls and
+floor, containing two or three rooms, and having a wooden veranda in
+front. This was the senhora's private establishment. At a little
+distance farther down on the hill was the mandioca kitchen, with several
+large ovens, troughs, etc. Nothing could be neater than the whole area
+of this _sitio_; and while we were there, two or three black girls were
+sent out to sweep it afresh with their stiff twig brooms. Around was the
+plantation of mandioca and cacao, with here and there a few
+coffee-shrubs. It is difficult to judge of the extent of these _sitio_
+plantations, because they are so irregular, and comprise such a variety
+of trees,--mandioca, coffee, cacao, and often cotton, being planted
+pellmell together. But every _sitio_ has its plantation, large or small,
+of one or other or all of these productions.
+
+On the return of the gentlemen from the igarapé, we took leave, though
+very kindly pressed to stay and breakfast. At parting, the senhora
+presented me with a wicker-basket of fresh eggs, and some _abacatys_, or
+alligator pears, as we call them. We reached the house just in time for
+a ten-o'clock breakfast, which assembled all the different parties once
+more from their various occupations, whether of work or play. The
+sportsmen returned from the forest, bringing a goodly supply of toucans,
+papagaios, and paroquets, with a variety of other birds; and the
+fishermen brought in treasures again for Mr. Agassiz.
+
+After breakfast I retired to the room where we had passed the night,
+hoping to find a quiet time for writing up letters and journal. But it
+was already occupied by the old senhora and her guests, lounging about
+in the hammocks or squatting on the floor and smoking their pipes. The
+house was, indeed, full to overflowing, as the whole party assembled for
+the ball were to stay during the President's visit. In this way of
+living it is an easy matter to accommodate any number of people; for if
+they cannot all be received under the roof, they are quite as well
+satisfied to put up their hammocks under the trees outside. As I went to
+my room the evening before, I stopped to look at quite a pretty picture
+of an Indian mother with her two little children asleep on either arm,
+all in one hammock, in the open air.
+
+My Indian friends were too much interested in my occupations to allow of
+my continuing them uninterruptedly. They were delighted with my books,
+(I happened to have Bates's "Naturalist on the Amazons" with me, in
+which I showed them some pictures of Amazonian scenery and insects,) and
+asked me many questions about my country, my voyage, and my travels
+here. In return, they gave me much information about their own way of
+life. They said the present gathering of neighbors and friends was no
+unusual occurrence; for they have a great many festas which, though
+partly religious in character, are also occasions of great festivity.
+These festas are celebrated at different _sitios_ in turn, the saint of
+the day being carried, with all his ornaments, candles, bouquets, etc.,
+to the house where the ceremony is to take place, and where all the
+people of the the village congregate. Sometimes they last for several
+days, and are accompanied by processions, music, and dances in the
+evening. But the women said the forest was very sad now, because their
+men had all been taken as recruits, or were seeking safety in the woods.
+The old senhora told me a sad story of the brutality exercised in
+recruiting the Indians. She assured me that they were taken wherever
+they were caught, without reference to age or circumstances, often
+having women and children dependent upon them; and, if they made
+resistance, were carried off by force, frequently handcuffed, or with
+heavy weights attached to their feet. Such proceedings are entirely
+illegal; but these forest villages are so remote, that the men employed
+to recruit may practise any cruelty without being called to account for
+it. If they bring in their recruits in good condition, no questions are
+asked. These women assured me that all the work of the _sitios_--the
+making of farinha, the fishing, the turtle-hunting--was stopped for want
+of hands. The appearance of things certainly confirms this, for one sees
+scarcely any men about in the villages, and the canoes one meets are
+mostly rowed by women.
+
+I must say that the life of the Indian woman, so far as we have seen it,
+and this is by no means the only time that we have been indebted to
+Indians for hospitality, seems to me enviable in comparison with that of
+the Brazilian lady in the Amazonian towns. The former has a healthful
+out-of-door life; she has her canoe on the lake or river, and her paths
+through the forest, with perfect liberty to come and go; she has her
+appointed daily occupations, being busy not only with the care of her
+house and children, but in making farinha or tapioca, or in drying and
+rolling tobacco, while the men are fishing and turtle-hunting; and she
+has her frequent festa days to enliven her working life. It is, on the
+contrary, impossible to imagine anything more dreary and monotonous than
+the life of the Brazilian senhora in any of the smaller towns. In the
+northern provinces, especially, old Portuguese notions about shutting
+women up and making their home-life as colorless as that of a cloistered
+nun, without even the element of religious enthusiasm to give it zest,
+still prevail. Many a Brazilian lady passes day after day without
+stirring beyond her four walls, scarcely even showing herself at the
+door or window; for she is always in a careless dishabille, unless she
+expects company. It is sad to see these stifled existences; without any
+contact with the world outside, without any charm of domestic life,
+without books or culture of any kind, the Brazilian senhora in this part
+of the country either sinks contentedly into a vapid, empty, aimless
+life, or frets against her chains, and is as discontented as she is
+useless.
+
+On the day of our arrival the dinner had been interrupted by the
+entrance of the Indians with their greetings and presents of game to the
+President; but on the second day it was enlivened by quite a number of
+appropriate toasts and speeches. I thought, as we sat around the
+dinner-table, there had probably never before been gathered under the
+palm-roof of an Indian house on the Amazons a party combining so many
+different elements and objects. There was the President, whose interest
+is, of course, in administering the affairs of the province, in which
+the Indians come in for a large share of his attention;--there was the
+young statesman, whose whole heart is in the great national question of
+peopling the Amazonian region and opening it to the world, and in the
+effect this movement is to have upon his country;--there was the able
+engineer, whose scientific life has been passed in surveying the great
+river and its tributaries with a view to their future navigation;--and
+there was the man of pure science, come to study the distribution of
+animal life in their waters, with no view to practical questions. The
+speeches touched upon all these interests, and were received with
+enthusiasm, each one closing with a toast and music, for our little band
+of the night before had been brought in to enliven the scene. The
+Brazilians are very happy in their after-dinner speeches, and have great
+facility in them, whether from a natural gift or from much practice. The
+habit of drinking healths and giving toasts is very general throughout
+the country; and the most informal dinner among intimate friends does
+not conclude without some mutual greetings of this kind.
+
+As we were sitting under the trees afterwards, having yielded our places
+in the primitive dining-room to the Indian guests, the President
+suggested a sunset row on the lake. The hour and the light were most
+tempting; and we were soon off in the canoe, taking no boatmen, the
+gentlemen preferring to row themselves. We went through the same lovely
+region, half water, half land, over which we had passed in the morning,
+floating between patches of greenest grass, and large forest-trees, and
+blackened trunks standing out of the lake like ruins. We did not go very
+fast nor very far, for our amateur boatmen found the evening warm, and
+their rowing was rather play than work; they stopped, too, every now and
+then, to get a shot at a white heron or into a flock of paroquets or
+ciganas, whereby they wasted a good deal of powder to no effect. As we
+turned to come back, we were met by one of the prettiest sights I have
+ever seen. The Indian women, having finished their dinner, had taken the
+little two-masted canoe, dressed with flags, which had been prepared for
+the President's reception, and had come out to meet us. They had the
+music on board, and there were two or three men in the boat; but the
+women were some twelve or fifteen in number, and seemed, like genuine
+Amazons, to have taken things into their own hands. They were rowing
+with a will; and as the canoe drew near, with music playing and flags
+flying, the purple lake, dyed in the sunset and smooth as a mirror, gave
+back the picture. Every tawny figure at the oars, every flutter of the
+crimson and blue streamers, every fold of the green and yellow national
+flag at the prow, was as distinct below the surface as above it. The
+fairy boat, for so it looked floating between glowing sky and water, and
+seeming to borrow color from both, came on apace, and as it approached
+our friends greeted us with many a _Viva!_ to which we responded as
+heartily. Then the two canoes joined company, and we went on together,
+taking the guitar sometimes into one and sometimes into the other, while
+Brazilian and Indian songs followed each other. Anything more national,
+more completely imbued with tropical coloring and character, than this
+evening scene on the lake, can hardly be conceived. When we reached the
+landing, the gold and rose-colored clouds were fading into soft masses
+of white and ashen gray, and moonlight was taking the place of sunset.
+As we went up the green slope to the _sitio_, a dance on the grass was
+proposed, and the Indian girls formed a quadrille; for thus much of
+outside civilization has crept into their native manners, though they
+throw into it so much of their own characteristic movements that it
+loses something of its conventional aspect. Then we returned to the
+house, where while here and there groups sat about on the ground
+laughing and talking, and the women smoking with as much enjoyment as
+the men. Smoking is almost universal among the common women here, nor is
+it confined to the lower classes. Many a senhora, at least in this part
+of Brazil, (for one must distinguish between the civilization upon the
+banks of the Amazons and in the interior, and that in the cities along
+the coast,) enjoys her pipe while she lounges in her hammock through the
+heat of the day.
+
+The following day the party broke up. The Indian women came to bid us
+good by after breakfast, and dispersed in various directions, through
+the forest paths, to their several homes, going off in little groups,
+with their babies, of whom there were a goodly number, astride on their
+hips, and the older children following. Mr. Agassiz passed the morning
+in packing and arranging his fishes, having collected in these two days
+more than seventy new species: such is the wealth of life everywhere in
+these waters. His studies had been the subject of great curiosity to the
+people about the _sitio_; one or two were always hovering around to look
+at his work, and to watch Mr. Bourkhardt's drawing. They seemed to think
+it extraordinary that any one should care to take the portrait of a
+fish. The familiarity of these children of the forest with the natural
+objects about them--plants, birds, insects, fishes--is remarkable. They
+frequently ask to see the drawings, and, in turning over a pile
+containing several hundred colored drawings of fish, they will scarcely
+make a mistake; even the children giving the name instantly, and often
+adding, "_He filho d'elle_,"--"It is the child of such a one,"--thus
+distinguishing the young from the adult, and pointing out their
+relation. The scientific work excites great wonder among the Indians,
+wherever we go; and when Mr. Agassiz succeeds in making them understand
+the value he attaches to his collections, he often finds them efficient
+assistants.
+
+We dined rather earlier than usual,--our chief dish being a stew of
+parrots and toucans,--and left the _sitio_ at about five o'clock, in
+three canoes, the music accompanying us in the smaller boat. Our Indian
+friends stood on the shore as we left, giving us a farewell greeting
+with cheers and waving hats and hands. The row through the lake and
+igarapé was delicious; and we saw many alligators lying lazily about in
+the quiet water, who seemed to enjoy it, after their fashion, as much as
+we did. The sun had long set as we issued from the little river, and the
+Rio Negro, where it opens broadly out into the Amazons, was a sea of
+silver. The boat with the music presently joined our canoe; and we had a
+number of the Brazilian _modinhas_, as they call them,--songs which seem
+especially adapted for the guitar and moonlight. These _modinhas_ have
+quite a peculiar character. They are little, graceful, lyrical snatches
+of song, with a rather melancholy cadence; even those of which the words
+are gay not being quite free from this undertone of sadness. One hears
+them constantly sung to the guitar, a favorite instrument with the
+Brazilians as well as the Indians. This put us all into a somewhat
+dreamy mood, and we approached the end of our journey rather silently.
+But as we came toward the landing, we heard the sound of a band of brass
+instruments, effectually drowning our feeble efforts, and saw a crowded
+canoe coming towards us. They were the boys from an Indian school in the
+neighborhood of Manaos, where a certain number of boys of Indian
+parentage, though not all of pure descent, receive an education at the
+expense of the province, and are taught a number of trades. Among other
+things, they are trained to play on a variety of instruments, and are
+said to show a remarkable facility for music. The boat, which, from its
+size, was a barge rather than a canoe, looked very pretty as it came
+towards us in the moonlight; it seemed full to overflowing, the children
+all standing up, dressed in white uniforms. This little band comes
+always on Sunday evenings and festa days to play before the President's
+house. They were just returning, it being nearly ten o'clock; but the
+President called to them to turn back, and they accompanied us to the
+beach, playing all the while. Thus our pleasant three-days picnic ended
+with music and moonlight.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[B] Without entering here upon the generosity shown not only by the
+Brazilian government, but by individuals also, to this expedition,--a
+debt which it will be my pleasant duty to acknowledge fully hereafter in
+a more extended report of our journey,--I cannot omit this opportunity
+of thanking Dr. Epaminondas, the enlightened President of the Province
+of the Amazonas, for the facilities accorded to me during my whole stay
+in the region now under his administration.--_Louis Agassiz._
+
+[C] Mr. Wallace speaks of having collected over two hundred species in
+the Rio Negro; but as these were unfortunately lost, and never
+described, they cannot be counted as belonging among the possessions of
+the scientific world.
+
+
+
+
+DOCTOR JOHNS.
+
+
+XLIX.
+
+At about the date of this interview which we have described as having
+taken place beyond the seas,--upon one of those warm days of early
+winter, which, even in New England, sometimes cheat one into a feeling
+of spring,--Adèle came strolling up the little path that led from the
+parsonage gate to the door, twirling her muff upon her hand, and
+thinking--thinking--But who shall undertake to translate the thought of
+a girl of nineteen in such moment of revery? With the most matter of
+fact of lives it would be difficult. But in view of the experience of
+Adèle, and of that fateful mystery overhanging her,--well, think for
+yourself,--you who touch upon a score of years, with their hopes,--you
+who have a passionate, clinging nature, and only some austere, prim
+matron to whom you may whisper your confidences,--what would you have
+thought, as you twirled your muff, and sauntered up the path to a home
+that was yours only by sufferance, and yet, thus far, your only home?
+
+The chance villagers, seeing her lithe figure, her well-fitting pelisse,
+her jaunty hat, her blooming cheeks, may have said, "There goes a
+fortunate one!" But if the thought of poor Adèle took one shape more
+than another, as she returned that day from a visit to her sweet friend
+Rose, it was this: "How drearily unfortunate I am!" And here a little
+burst of childish laughter breaks on her ear. Adèle, turning to the
+sound, sees that poor outcast woman who had been the last and most
+constant attendant upon Madame Arles coming down the street, with her
+little boy frolicking beside her. Obeying an impulse she was in no mood
+to resist, she turns back to the gate to greet them; she caresses the
+boy; she has kindly words for the mother, who could have worshipped her
+for the caress she has given to her outcast child.
+
+"I likes you," says the sturdy urchin, sidling closer to the parsonage
+gate, over which Adèle leans. "You's like the French ooman."
+
+Whereupon Adèle, in the exuberance of her kindly feelings, can only lean
+over and kiss the child again.
+
+Miss Johns, looking from her chamber, is horrified. Had it been summer,
+she would have lifted her window and summoned Adèle. But she never
+forgot--that exemplary woman--the proprieties of the seasons, any more
+than other proprieties; she tapped upon the glass with her thimble, and
+beckoned the innocent offender into the parsonage.
+
+"I am astonished, Adèle!"--these were her first words; and she went on
+to belabor the poor girl in fearful ways,--all the more fearful because
+she spoke in the calmest possible tones. She never used others, indeed;
+and it is not to be doubted that she reckoned this forbearance among her
+virtues.
+
+Adèle made no reply,--too wise now for that; but she winced, and bit her
+lip severely, as the irate spinster "gave Miss Maverick to understand
+that an intercourse which might possibly be agreeable to her French
+associations could never be tolerated at the home of Dr. Johns. For
+herself, she had a reputation for propriety to sustain; and while Miss
+Maverick made a portion of her household, she must comply with the rules
+of decorum; and if Miss Maverick were ignorant of those rules, she had
+better inform herself."
+
+No reply, as we have said,--unless it may have been by an impatient
+stamp of her little foot, which the spinster could not perceive.
+
+But it is the signal, in her quick, fiery nature, of a determination to
+leave the parsonage, if the thing be possible. From her chamber, where
+she goes only to arrange her hair and to wipe off an angry tear or two,
+she walks straight into the study of the parson.
+
+"Doctor," (the "New Papa" is reserved for her tenderer or playful
+moments now,) "are you quite sure that papa will come for me in the
+spring?"
+
+"He writes me so, Adaly. Why?"
+
+Adèle seeks to control herself, but she cannot wholly. "It's not
+pleasant for me any longer here, New Papa,--indeed it is not";--and her
+voice breaks utterly.
+
+"But, Adaly!--child!" says the Doctor, closing his book.
+
+"It's wholly different from what it once was; it's irksome to Miss
+Eliza,--I know it is; it's irksome to me. I want to leave. Why doesn't
+papa come for me at once? Why shouldn't he? What is this mystery, New
+Papa? Will you not tell me?"--and she comes toward him, and lays her
+hand upon his shoulder in her old winning, fond way. "Why may I not
+know? Do you think I am not brave to bear whatever must some day be
+known? What if my poor mother be unworthy? I can love her! I can love
+her!"
+
+"Ah, Adaly," said the parson, "whatever may have been her unworthiness,
+it can never afflict you more; I believe that she is in her grave,
+Adaly."
+
+Adèle sunk upon her knees, with her hands clasped as if in prayer. Was
+it strange that the child should pray for the mother she had never seen?
+
+From the day when Maverick had declared her unworthiness, Adèle had
+cherished secretly the hope of some day meeting her, of winning her by
+her love, of clasping her arms about her neck and whispering in her ear,
+"God is good, and we are all God's children!" But in her grave! Well, at
+least justice will be done her then; and, calmed by this thought, Adèle
+is herself once more,--earnest as ever to break away from the scathing
+looks of the spinster.
+
+The Doctor has not spoken without authority, since Maverick, in his
+reply to the parson's suggestions respecting marriage, has urged that
+the party was totally unfit, to a degree of which the parson himself was
+a witness, and by further hints had served fully to identify, in the
+mind of the old gentleman, poor Madame Arles with the mother of Adèle. A
+knowledge of this fact had grievously wounded the Doctor; he could not
+cease to recall the austerity with which he had debarred the poor woman
+all intercourse with Adèle upon her sick-bed. And it seemed to him a
+grave thing, wherever sin might lie, thus to alienate the mother and
+daughter. His unwitting agency in the matter had made him of late
+specially mindful of all the wishes and even caprices of Adèle,--much to
+the annoyance of Miss Eliza.
+
+"Adaly, my child, you are very dear to me," said he; and she stood by
+him now, toying with those gray locks of his, in a caressing manner
+which he could never know from a child of his own,--never. "If it be
+your wish to change your home for the little time that remains, it shall
+be. I have your father's authority to do so."
+
+"Indeed I do wish it, New Papa";--and she dropped a kiss upon his
+forehead,--upon the forehead where so few tender tokens of love had ever
+fallen, or ever would fall. Yet it was very grateful to the old
+gentleman, though it made him think with a sigh of the lost ones.
+
+The Doctor talked over the affair with Miss Eliza, who avowed herself as
+eager as Adèle for a change in her home, and suggested that Benjamin
+should take counsel with his old friend, Mr. Elderkin; and it is quite
+possible that she shrewdly anticipated the result of such a
+consultation.
+
+Certain it is that the old Squire caught at the suggestion in a moment.
+
+"The very thing, Doctor! I see how it is. Miss Eliza is getting on in
+years; a little irritable, possibly,--though a most excellent person,
+Doctor,--most excellent! and there being no young people in the house,
+it's a little dull for Miss Adèle, eh, Doctor? Grace, you know, is not
+with us this winter; so your lodger shall come straight to my house, and
+she shall take the room of Grace, and Rose will be delighted, and Mrs.
+Elderkin will be delighted; and as for Phil, when he happens with
+us,--as he does only off and on now,--he'll be falling in love with her,
+I haven't a doubt; or, if he doesn't, I shall be tempted to myself.
+She's a fine girl, eh, Doctor?"
+
+"She's a good Christian, I believe," said the Doctor gravely.
+
+"I haven't a doubt of it," said the Squire; "and I hope that a bit of a
+dance about Christmas time, if we should fall into that wickedness,
+wouldn't harm her on that score,--eh, Doctor?"
+
+"I should wish, Mr. Elderkin, that she maintain her usual propriety of
+conduct, until she is again in her father's charge."
+
+"Well, well, Doctor, you shall talk with Mrs. Elderkin of that matter."
+
+So, it is all arranged. Miss Johns expresses a quiet gratification at
+the result, and--it is specially agreeable to her to feel that the
+responsibility of giving shelter and countenance to Miss Maverick is now
+shared by so influential a family as that of the Elderkins. Rose is
+overjoyed, and can hardly do enough to make the new home agreeable to
+Adèle; while the mistress of the house--mild, and cheerful, and sunny,
+diffusing content every evening over the little circle around her
+hearth--wins Adèle to a new cheer. Yet it is a cheer that is tempered by
+many sad thoughts of her own loneliness, and of her alienation from any
+motherly smiles and greetings that are truly hers.
+
+Phil is away at her coming; but a week after he bursts into the house on
+a snowy December night, and there is a great stamping in the hall, and a
+little grandchild of the house pipes from the half-opened door, "It's
+Uncle Phil!" and there is a loud smack upon the cheek of Rose, who runs
+to give him welcome, and a hearty, honest grapple with the hand of the
+old Squire, and then another kiss upon the cheek of the old mother, who
+meets him before he is fairly in the room,--a kiss upon her cheek, and
+another, and another, Phil loves the old lady with an honest warmth that
+kindles the admiration of poor Adèle, who, amid all this demonstration
+of family affection, feels herself more cruelly than ever a stranger in
+the household,--a stranger, indeed, to the interior and private joys of
+any household.
+
+Yet such enthusiasm is, somehow, contagious; and when Phil meets Adèle
+with a shake of the hand and a hearty greeting, she returns it with an
+outspoken, homely warmth, at thought of which she finds herself blushing
+a moment after. To tell truth, Phil is rather a fine-looking fellow at
+this time,--strong, manly, with a comfortable assurance of manner,--a
+face beaming with _bonhomie_, cheeks glowing with that sharp December
+drive, and a wild, glad sparkle in his eye, as Rose whispers him that
+Adèle has become one of the household. It is no wonder, perhaps, that
+the latter finds the bit of embroidery she is upon somewhat perplexing,
+so that she has to consult Rose pretty often in regard to the different
+shades, and twirl the worsteds over and over, until confusion about the
+colors shall restore her own equanimity. Phil, meantime, dashes on, in
+his own open, frank way, about his drive, and the state of the ice in
+the river, and some shipments he had made from New York to Porto
+Rico,--on capital terms, too.
+
+"And did you see much of Reuben?" asks Mrs. Elderkin.
+
+"Not much," and Phil (glancing that way) sees that Adèle is studying her
+crimsons; "but he tells me he is doing splendidly in some business
+venture to the Mediterranean with Brindlock; he could hardly talk of
+anything else. It's odd to find him so wrapped up in money-making."
+
+"I hope he'll not be wrapped up in anything worse," said Mrs. Elderkin,
+with a sigh.
+
+"Nonsense, mother!" burst in the old Squire; "Reuben'll come out all
+right yet."
+
+"He says he means to know all sides of the world, now," says Phil, with
+a little laugh.
+
+"He's not so bad as he pretends to be, Phil," answered the Squire. "I
+knew the Major's hot ways; so did you, Grace (turning to the wife). It's
+a boy's talk. There's good blood in him."
+
+And the two girls,--yonder, the other side of the hearth,--Adèle and
+Rose, have given over their little earnest comparison of views about the
+colors, and sit stitching, and stitching, and thinking--and thinking--
+
+
+L.
+
+Phil had at no time given over his thought of Adèle, and of the
+possibility of some day winning her for himself, though he had been
+somewhat staggered by the interview already described with Reuben. It is
+doubtful, even, if the quiet _permission_ which this latter had granted
+(or, with an affectation of arrogance, had seemed to grant) had not
+itself made him pause. There are some things which a man never wants any
+permission to do; and one of those is--to love a woman. All the
+permissions--whether of competent authority or of incompetent--only
+retard him. It is an affair in which he must find his own permit, by his
+own power; and without it there can be no joy in conquest.
+
+So when Phil recalled Reuben's expression on that memorable afternoon in
+his chamber,--"You _may_ marry her, Phil,"--it operated powerfully to
+dispossess him of all intention and all earnestness of pursuit. The
+little doubt and mystery which Reuben had thrown, in the same interview,
+upon the family relations of Adèle, did not weigh a straw in the
+comparison. But for months that "may" had angered him and made him
+distant. He had plunged into his business pursuits with a new zeal, and
+easily put away all present thought of matrimony, by virtue of that
+simple "may" of Reuben's.
+
+But now when, on coming back, he found her in his own home,--so tenderly
+cared for by mother and by sister,--so coy and reticent in his presence,
+the old fever burned again. It was not now a simple watching of her
+figure upon the street that told upon him; but her constant
+presence;--the rustle of her dress up and down the stairs; her fresh,
+fair face every day at table; the tapping of her light feet along the
+hall; the little musical bursts of laughter (not Rose's,--oh, no!) that
+came from time to time floating through the open door of his chamber.
+All this Rose saw and watched with the highest glee,--finding her own
+little, quiet means of promoting such accidents,--and rejoicing (as
+sisters will, where the enslaver is a friend) in the captivity of poor
+Phil. For an honest lover, propinquity is always dangerous,--most of
+all, the propinquity in one's own home. The sister's caresses of the
+charmer, the mother's kind looks, the father's playful banter, and the
+whisk of a silken dress (with a new music in it) along the balusters you
+have passed night and morning for years, have a terrible executive
+power.
+
+In short, Adèle had not been a month with the Elderkins before Phil was
+tied there by bonds he had never known the force of before.
+
+And how was it with Adèle?
+
+That strong, religious element in her,--abating no jot in its
+fervor,--which had found a shock in the case of Reuben, met none with
+Philip. He had slipped into the mother's belief and reverence, not by
+any spell of suffering or harrowing convictions, but by a kind of
+insensible growth toward them, and an easy, deliberate, moderate living
+by them, which more active and incisive minds cannot comprehend. He had
+no great wastes of doubt to perplex him, like Reuben, simply because his
+intelligence was of a more submissive order, and never tested its faiths
+or beliefs by that delicately sensitive mental apparel with which Reuben
+was clothed all over, and which suggested a doubt or a hindrance where
+Phil would have recognized none;--the best stuff in him, after all, of
+which a hale, hearty, contented man can be made,--the stuff that takes
+on age with dignity, that wastes no power, that conserves every element
+of manliness to fourscore. Too great keenness does not know the name of
+content; its only experience of joy is by spasms, when Idealism puts its
+prism to the eye and shows all things in those gorgeous hues, which
+to-morrow fade. Such mind and temper shock the _physique_, shake it
+down, strain the nervous organization; and the body, writhing under
+fierce cerebral thrusts, goes tottering to the grave. Is it strange if
+doubts belong to those writhings? Are there no such creatures as
+constitutional doubters, or, possibly, constitutional believers?
+
+It would have been strange if the calm, mature repose of Phil's
+manner,--never disturbed except when Adèle broke upon him suddenly and
+put him to a momentary confusion, of which the pleasant fluttering of
+her own heart gave account,--strange, if this had not won upon her
+regard,--strange, if it had not given hint of that cool, masculine
+superiority in him, with which even the most ethereal of women like to
+be impressed. There was about him also a quiet, business-like
+concentration of mind which the imaginative girl might have overlooked
+or undervalued, but which the budding, thoughtful woman must needs
+recognize and respect. Nor will it seem strange, if, by contrast, it
+made the excitable Reuben seem more dismally afloat and vagrant. Yet how
+could she forget the passionate pressure of his hand, the appealing
+depth of that gray eye of the parson's son, and the burning words of his
+that stuck in her memory like thorns?
+
+Phil, indeed, might have spoken in a way that would have driven the
+blood back upon her heart; for there was a world of passionate
+capability under his calm exterior. She dreaded lest he might. She
+shunned all provoking occasion, as a bird shuns the grasp of even the
+most tender hand, under whose clasp the pinions will flutter vainly.
+
+When Rose said now, as she was wont to say, after some generous deed of
+his, "Phil is a good, kind, noble fellow!" Adèle affected not to hear,
+and asked Rose, with a bustling air, if she was "quite sure that she had
+the right shade of brown" in the worsted work they were upon.
+
+So the Christmas season came and went. The Squire cherished a
+traditional regard for its old festivities, not only by reason of a
+general festive inclination that was very strong in him, but from a
+desire to protest in a quiet way against what he called the pestilent
+religious severities of a great many of the parish, who ignored the day
+because it was a high holiday in the Popish Church, and in that other,
+which, under the wing of Episcopacy, was following, in their view, fast
+after the Babylonish traditions. There was Deacon Tourtelot, for
+instance, who never failed on a Christmas morning--if weather and
+sledding were good--to get up his long team (the restive two-year-olds
+upon the neap) and drive through the main street, with a great clamor of
+"Haw, Diamond!" and "Gee, Buck and Bright!"--as if to insist upon the
+secular character of the day. Indeed, with the old-fashioned New-England
+religious faith, an exuberant, demonstrative joyousness could not
+gracefully or easily be welded. The hopes that reposed even upon
+Christ's coming, with its tidings of great joy, must be solemn. And the
+anniversary of a glorious birth, which, by traditionary impulse, made
+half the world glad, was to such believers like any other day in the
+calendar. Even the good Doctor pointed his Christmas prayer with no
+special unction. What, indeed, were anniversaries, or a yearly
+proclamation of peace and good-will to men, with those who, on every
+Sabbath morning, saw the heavens open above the sacred desk, and heard
+the golden promises expounded, and the thunders of coming retribution
+echo under the ceiling of the Tabernacle?
+
+The Christmas came and went with a great lighting-up of the Elderkin
+house; and there were green garlands which Rose and Adèle have plaited
+over the mantel, and over the stiff family portraits; and good Phil--in
+the character of Santa Claus--has stuffed the stockings of all the
+grandchildren, and--in the character of the bashful lover--has played
+like a moth about the blazing eyes of Adèle.
+
+Yet the current of the village gossip has it, that they are to marry.
+Miss Eliza, indeed, shakes her head wisely, and keeps her own counsel.
+But Dame Tourtelot reports to old Mistress Tew,--"Phil Elderkin is goin'
+to marry the French girl."
+
+"Haöw?" says Mrs. Tew, adjusting her tin trumpet.
+
+"Philip Elderkin--is--a-goin' to marry the French girl," screams the
+Dame.
+
+"Du tell! Goin' to settle in Ashfield?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"No! Where, then?" says Mistress Tew.
+
+I don't KNOW," shrieks the Dame.
+
+"Oh!" chimes Mrs. Tew; and after reflecting awhile and smoothing out her
+cap-strings, she says,--"I've heerd the French gurl keeps a cross in her
+chamber."
+
+"_She_ DOOZ," explodes the Dame.
+
+"I want to know! I wonder the Squire don't put a stop to 't."
+
+"Doan't believe _he would if he_ COULD," says the Dame, snappishly.
+
+"Waal, waal! it's a wicked world we're a-livin' in, Miss Tourtelot." And
+she elevates her trumpet, as if she were eager to get a confirmation of
+that fact.
+
+
+LI.
+
+In those days to which our narrative has now reached, the Doctor was far
+more feeble than when we first met him. His pace has slackened, and
+there is an occasional totter in his step. There are those among his
+parishioners who say that his memory is failing. On one or two Sabbaths
+of the winter he has preached sermons scarce two years old. There are
+acute listeners who are sure of it. And the spinster has been horrified
+on learning that, once or twice, the old gentleman--escaping her
+eye--has taken his walk to the post-office, unwittingly wearing his best
+cloak wrong-side out; as if--for so good a man--the green baize were not
+as proper a covering as the brown camlet!
+
+The parson is himself conscious of these short-comings, and speaks with
+resignation of the growing infirmities which, as he modestly hints, will
+compel him shortly to give place to some younger and more zealous
+expounder of the faith. His parochial visits grow more and more rare.
+All other failings could be more easily pardoned than this; but in a
+country parish like Ashfield, it was quite imperative that the old
+chaise should keep up its familiar rounds, and the occasional tea-fights
+in the out-lying houses be honored by the gray head of the Doctor or by
+his evening benediction. Two hour-long sermons a week and a Wednesday
+evening discourse were very well in their way, but by no means met all
+the requirements of those steadfast old ladies whose socialities were
+both exhaustive and exacting. Indeed, it is doubtful if there do not
+exist even now, in most country parishes of New England, a few most
+excellent and notable women, who delight in an overworked parson, for
+the pleasure they take in recommending their teas, and plasters, and
+nostrums. The more frail and attenuated the teacher, the more he takes
+hold upon their pity; and in losing the vigor of the flesh, he seems to
+their compassionate eyes to grow into the spiritualities they pine for.
+But he must not give over his visitings; _that_ hair-cloth shirt of
+penance he must wear to the end, if he would achieve saintship.
+
+Now, just at this crisis, it happens that there is a tall, thin, pale
+young man--Rev. Theophilus Catesby by name, and nephew of the late
+Deacon Simmons (now unhappily deceased)--who has preached in Ashfield on
+several occasions to the "great acceptance" of the people. Talk is
+imminent of naming him colleague to Dr. Johns. The matter is discussed,
+at first, (agreeably to custom,) in the sewing-circle of the town. After
+this, it comes informally before the church brethren. The duty to the
+Doctor and to the parish is plain enough. The practical question is, how
+cheaply can the matter be accomplished?
+
+The salary of the good Doctor has grown, by progressive increase, to be
+at this date some seven hundred dollars a year,--a very considerable
+stipend for a country parish in that day. It was understood that the
+proposed colleague would expect six hundred. The two joined made a
+somewhat appalling sum for the people of Ashfield. They tried to combat
+it in a variety of ways,--over tea-tables and barn-yard gates, as well
+as in their formal conclaves; earnest for a good thing in the way of
+preaching, but earnest for a good bargain, too.
+
+"I say, Huldy," said the Deacon, in discussion of the affair over his
+wife's fireside, "I wouldn't wonder if the Doctor 'ad put up somethin'
+handsome between the French girl's boardin', and odds and ends."
+
+"What if he ha'n't, Tourtelot? Miss Johns's got property, and what's
+_she_ goin' to do with it, I want to know?"
+
+On this hint the Deacon spoke, in his next encounter with the Squire
+upon the street, with more boldness.
+
+"It's my opinion, Squire, the Doctor's folks are pooty well off, now;
+and if we make a trade with the new minister, so's he'll take the
+biggest half o' the hard work of the parish, I think the old Doctor 'ud
+worry along tol'able well on three or four hundred a year; heh, Squire?"
+
+"Well, Deacon, I don't know about that;--don't know. Butcher's meat is
+always butcher's meat, Deacon."
+
+"So it is, Squire; and not so dreadful high, nuther. I've got a likely
+two-year-old in the yard, that'll dress abaout a hundred to a quarter,
+and I don't pretend to ask but twenty-five dollars; know anybody that
+wants such a critter, Squire?"
+
+With very much of the same relevancy of observation the affair is
+bandied about for a week or more in the discussions at the
+society-meetings, with danger of never coming to any practical issue,
+when a wiry little man--in a black Sunday coat, whose tall collar chafes
+the back of his head near to the middle--rises from a corner where he
+has grown vexed with the delay, and bursts upon the solemn conclave in
+this style:--
+
+"Brethren, I ha'n't been home to chore-time in the last three days, and
+my wife is gittin' worked up abaout it. Here we've bin a-settin' and
+a-talkin' night arter night, and arternoon arter arternoon for more 'n a
+week, and 'pears to me it 's abaout time as tho' somethin' o' ruther
+ought to be done. There's nobody got nothin' agin the Doctor that I've
+_heerd_ of. He's a smart old gentleman, and he's a clever old gentleman,
+and he preaches what I call good, stiff doctrine; but we don't feel much
+like payin' for light work same as what we paid when the work was
+heavy,--'specially if we git a new minister on our hands. But then,
+brethren, I don't for one feel like turnin' an old hoss that's done good
+sarvice, when he gits stiff in the j'ints, into slim pastur', and I
+don't feel like stuffin' on 'em with bog hay in the winter. There's
+folks that dooz; but _I_ don't. Now, brethren, I motion that we
+continner to give as much as five hundred dollars to the old Doctor, and
+make the best dicker we can with the new minister; and I'll clap ten
+dollars on to my pew-rent; and the Deacon there, if he's anything of a
+man, 'll do as much agin. I know he's able to."
+
+Let no one smile. The halting prudence, the inevitable calculating
+process through which the small country New-Englander arrives at his
+charities, is but the growth of his associations. He gets hardly; and
+what he gets hardly he must bestow with self-questionings. If he lives
+"in the small," he cannot give "in the large." His pennies, by the
+necessities of his toil, are each as big as pounds; yet his charities,
+in nine cases out of ten, bear as large a proportion to his revenue as
+the charities of those who count gains by tens of thousands. Liberality
+is, after all, comparative, and is exceptionally great only when its
+sources are exceptionally small. That "_widow's mite_"--the only charity
+ever specially commended by the great Master of charities--will tinkle
+pleasantly on the ear of humanity ages hence, when the clinking millions
+of cities are forgotten.
+
+The new arrangement all comes to the ear of Reuben, who writes back in a
+very brusque way to the Doctor: "Why on earth, father, don't you cut all
+connection with the parish? You've surely done your part in that
+service. Don't let the 'minister's pay' be any hindrance to you, for I
+am getting on swimmingly in my business ventures,--thanks to Mr.
+Brindlock. I enclose a check for two hundred dollars, and can send you
+one of equal amount every quarter, without feeling it. Why shouldn't a
+man of your years have rest?"
+
+And the Doctor, in his reply, says: "My rest, Reuben, is God's work. I
+am deeply grateful to you, and only wish that your generosity were
+hallowed by a deeper trust in His providence and mercy. O Reuben!
+Reuben! a night cometh, when no man can work! You seem to imagine, my
+son, that some slight has been put upon me by recent arrangements in the
+parish. It is not so; and I am sure that none has been intended. A
+servant of Christ can receive no reproach at the hands of his people,
+save this,--that he has failed to warn them of the judgment to come, and
+to point out to them, the ark of safety."
+
+Correspondence between the father and son is not infrequent in these
+days; for, since Reuben has slipped away from home control
+utterly,--being now well past one and twenty,--the Doctor has forborne
+that magisterial tone which, in his old-fashioned way, it was his wont
+to employ, while yet the son was subject to his legal authority. Under
+these conditions, Reuben is won into more communicativeness,--even upon
+those religious topics which are always prominent in the Doctor's
+letters; indeed, it would seem that the son rather enjoyed a little
+logical fence with the old gentleman, and a passing lunge, now and then,
+at his severities; still weltering in his unbelief, but wearing it more
+lightly (as the father saw with pain) by reason of the great crowd of
+sympathizers at his back.
+
+"It is so rare," he writes, "to fall in with one who earnestly and
+heartily seems to believe what he says he believes. And if you meet him
+in a preacher at a street-corner, declaiming with a mad fervor, people
+cry out, 'A fanatic!' Why shouldn't he be? I can't, for my life, see.
+Why shouldn't every fervent believer of the truths he teaches rush
+through the streets to divert the great crowd, with voice and hand, from
+the inevitable doom? I see the honesty of your faith, father, though
+there seems a strained harshness in it when I think of the complacency
+with which you must needs contemplate the irremediable perdition of such
+hosts of outcasts. In Adèle, too, there seems a beautiful singleness of
+trust; but I suppose God made the birds to live in the sky.
+
+"You need not fear my falling into what you call the Pantheism of the
+moralists; it is every way too cold for my hot blood. It seems to me
+that the moral icicles with which their doctrine is fringed (and the
+fringe is the beauty of it) must needs melt under any passionate human
+clasp,--such clasp as I should want to give (if I gave any) to a great
+hope for the future. I should feel more like groping my way into such
+hope by the light of the golden candlesticks of Rome even. But do not be
+disturbed, father; I fear I should make, just now, no better Papist than
+Presbyterian."
+
+The Doctor reads such letters in a maze. Can it indeed be a son of his
+own loins who thus bandies language about the solemn truths of
+Christianity?
+
+"How shall I give thee up, Ephraim! How shall I set thee as Zeboim!"
+
+
+LII.
+
+In the early spring of 1842,--we are not quite sure of the date, but it
+was at any rate shortly after the establishment of the Reverend
+Theophilus Catesby at Ashfield,--the Doctor was in the receipt of a new
+letter from his friend Maverick, which set all his old calculations
+adrift. It was not Madame Arles, after all, who was the mother of Adèle;
+and the poor gentleman found that he had wasted a great deal of needless
+sympathy in that direction. But we shall give the details of the news
+more succinctly and straightforwardly by laying before our readers some
+portions of Maverick's letter.
+
+"I find, my dear Johns," he writes, "that my suspicions in regard to a
+matter of which I wrote you very fully in my last were wholly untrue.
+How I could have been so deceived, I cannot even now fairly explain; but
+nothing is more certain, than that the person calling herself Madame
+Arles (since dead, as I learn from Adèle) was not the mother of my
+child. My mistake in this will the more surprise you, when I state that
+I had a glimpse of this personage (unknown to you) upon my visit to
+America; and though it was but a passing glimpse, it seemed to
+me--though many years had gone by since my last sight of her--that I
+could have sworn to her identity. And coupling this resemblance, as I
+very naturally did, with her devotion to my poor Adèle, I could form but
+one conclusion.
+
+"The mother of my child, however, still lives. I have seen her. You will
+commiserate me in advance with the thought that I have found her among
+the vile ones of what you count this vile land. But you are wrong, my
+dear Johns. So far as appearance and present conduct go, no more
+reputable lady ever crossed your own threshold. The meeting was
+accidental, but the recognition on both sides absolute, and, on the part
+of the lady, so emotional as to draw the attention of the _habitués_ of
+the café where I chanced to be dining. Her manner and bearing, indeed,
+were such as to provoke me to a renewal of our old acquaintance, with
+honorable intentions,--even independent of those suggestions of duty to
+herself and to Adèle which you have urged.
+
+"But I have to give you, my dear Johns, a new surprise. All overtures of
+my own toward a renewal of acquaintance have been decisively repulsed. I
+learn that she has been living for the past fifteen years or more with
+her brother, now a wealthy merchant of Smyrna, and that she has a
+reputation there as a _dévote_, and is widely known for the charities
+which her brother's means place within her reach. It would thus seem
+that even this French woman, contrary to your old theory, is atoning for
+an early sin by a life of penance.
+
+"And now, my dear Johns, I have to confess to you another deceit of
+mine. This woman--Julie Chalet when I knew her of old, and still wearing
+the name--has no knowledge that she has a child now living. To divert
+all inquiry, and to insure entire alienation of my little girl from all
+French ties, I caused a false mention of the death of Adèle to be
+inserted in the Gazette of Marseilles. I know you will be very much
+shocked at this, my dear Johns, and perhaps count it as large a sin as
+the grosser one; that I committed it for the child's sake will be no
+excuse in your eye, I know. You may count me as bad as you
+choose,--only give me credit for the fatherly affection which would
+still make the path as easy and as thornless as I can for my poor
+daughter.
+
+"If Julie, the mother of Adèle, knew to-day of her existence,--if I
+should carry that information to her,--I am sure that all her rigidities
+would be consumed like flax in a flame. That method, at least, is left
+for winning her to any action upon which I may determine. Shall I use
+it? I ask you as one who, I am sure, has learned to love Adèle, and who,
+I hope, has not wholly given over a friendly feeling toward me. Consider
+well, however, that the mother is now one of the most rigid of
+Catholics; I learn that she is even thinking of conventual life. I know
+her spirit and temper well enough to be sure that, if she were to meet
+the child again which she believes lost, it would be with an impetuosity
+of feeling and a devotion that would absorb every aim of her life. This
+disclosure is the only one by which I could hope to win her to any
+consideration of marriage; and with a mother's rights and a mother's
+love, would she not sweep away all that Protestant faith which you, for
+so many years, have been laboring to build up in the mind of my child?
+Whatever you may think, I do not conceive this to be impossible; and if
+possible, is it to be avoided at all hazards? Whatever I might have owed
+to the mother I feel in a measure absolved from by her rejection of all
+present advances. And inasmuch as I am making you my father confessor, I
+may as well tell you, my dear Johns, that no particular self-denial
+would be involved in a marriage with Mademoiselle Chalet. For myself, I
+am past the age of sentiment; my fortune is now established; neither
+myself nor my child can want for any luxury. The mother, by her present
+associations and by the propriety of her life, is above all suspicion;
+and her air and bearing are such as would be a passport to friendly
+association with refined people here or elsewhere. You may count this a
+failure of Providence to fix its punishment upon transgressors: I count
+it only one of those accidents of life which are all the while
+surprising us.
+
+"There was a time when I would have had ambition to do otherwise; but
+now, with my love for Adèle established by my intercourse with her and
+by her letters, I have no other aim, if I know my own heart, than her
+welfare. It should be kept in mind, I think, that the marriage spoken
+of, if it ever take place, will probably involve, sooner or later, a
+full exposure to Adèle of all the circumstances of her birth and
+history. I say this will be involved, because I am sure that the warm
+affections of Mademoiselle Chalet will never allow of the concealment of
+her maternal relations, and that her present religious perversity (if
+you will excuse the word) will not admit of further deceits. I tremble
+to think of the possible consequences to Adèle, and query very much in
+my own mind, if her present blissful ignorance be not better than
+reunion with a mother through whom she must learn of the ignominy of her
+birth. Of Adèle's fortitude to bear such a shock, and to maintain any
+elasticity of spirits under it, you can judge better than I.
+
+"I propose to delay action, my dear Johns, and of course my sailing for
+America, until I shall hear from you."
+
+Our readers can surely anticipate the tone of the Doctor's reply. He
+writes:--
+
+"Duty, Maverick, is always duty. The issues we must leave in the hands
+of Providence. One sin makes a crowd of entanglements; it is never weary
+of disguises and deceits. We must come out from them all, if we would
+aim at purity. From my heart's core I shall feel whatever shock may come
+to poor, innocent Adèle by reason of the light that may be thrown upon
+her history; but if it be a light that flows from the performance of
+Christian duty, I shall never fear its revelations. If we had been
+always true, such dark corners would never have existed to fright us
+with their goblins of terror. It is never too late, Maverick, to begin
+to be true.
+
+"I find a strange comfort, too, in what you tell me of that religious
+perversity of Mademoiselle Chalet which so chafes you. I have never
+ceased to believe that most of the Romish traditions are of the Devil;
+but with waning years I have learned that the Divine mysteries are
+beyond our comprehension, and that we cannot map out His purposes by any
+human chart. The pure faith of your child, joined to her buoyant
+elasticity,--I freely confess it,--has smoothed away the harshness of
+many opinions I once held.
+
+"Maverick, do your duty. Leave the rest to Heaven."
+
+
+
+
+COMMUNICATION WITH THE PACIFIC.
+
+
+It is remarkable that, while we have been fighting for national
+existence, there has been a constant growth of the Republic. This is not
+wholly due to the power of democratic ideas, but owing in part to the
+native wealth of the country,--its virgin soil, its mineral riches. So
+rapid has been the development that the maps of 1864 are obsolete in
+1866. Civilization at a stride has moved a thousand miles, and taken
+possession of the home of the buffalo. Miners with pick and spade are
+tramping over the Rocky Mountains, exploring every ravine, digging
+canals, building mills, and rearing their log cabins. The merchant, the
+farmer, and the mechanic follow them. The long solitude of the centuries
+is broken by mill-wheels, the buzzing of saws, the stroke of the axe,
+the blow of the hammer and trowel. The stageman cracks his whip in the
+passes of the mountains. The click of the telegraph and the rumbling of
+the printing-press are heard at the head-waters of the Missouri, and
+borne on the breezes there is the laughter of children and the sweet
+music of Sabbath hymns, sung by the pioneers of civilization.
+
+Communities do not grow by chance, but by the operation of physical
+laws. Position, climate, latitude, mountains, lakes, rivers, coal, iron,
+silver, and gold are forces which decree occupation, character, and the
+measure of power and influence which a people shall have among the
+nations. Rivers are natural highways of trade, while mountains are the
+natural barriers. The Atlantic coast is open everywhere to commerce; but
+on the Pacific shore, from British Columbia to Central America, the
+rugged wall of the coast mountains, cloud-capped and white with snow,
+rises sharp and precipitous from the sea, with but one river flowing
+outward from the heart of the continent. The statesman and the political
+economist who would truly cast the horoscope of our future must take
+into consideration the Columbia River, its latitude, its connection with
+the Missouri, the Mississippi, the Lakes, and the St. Lawrence.
+
+How wonderful the development of the Pacific and Rocky Mountain sections
+of the public domain! In 1860 the population of California, Oregon, and
+the territories lying west of Kansas, was six hundred and twenty-three
+thousand; while the present population is estimated at one million,
+wanting only facility of communication with the States to increase in a
+far greater ratio.
+
+In 1853 a series of surveys were made by government to ascertain the
+practicability of a railroad to the Pacific. The country, however, at
+that time, was not prepared to engage in such an enterprise; but now the
+people are calling for greater facility of communication with a section
+of the country abounding in mineral wealth.
+
+Of the several routes surveyed, we shall have space in this article to
+notice only the line running from Lake Superior to the head-waters of
+the Missouri, the Columbia, and Puget Sound, known as the Northern
+Pacific Railroad.
+
+The public domain north of latitude 42°, through which it lies,
+comprises about seven hundred thousand square miles,--a territory larger
+than England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium,
+Holland, all the German States, Switzerland, Denmark, and Sweden.
+
+The route surveyed by Governor Stevens runs north of the Missouri River,
+and crosses the mountains through Clark's Pass. Governor Stevens
+intended to survey another line up the valley of the Yellow Stone; and
+Lieutenant Mullan commenced a reconnoissance of the route when orders
+were received from Jeff Davis, then Secretary of War, to disband the
+engineering force.
+
+
+THE ROUTE.
+
+Recent explorations indicate that the best route to the Pacific will be
+found up the valley of this magnificent river. The distances are as
+follows:--From the Mississippi above St. Paul to the western boundary of
+Minnesota, thence to Missouri River, two hundred and eighty miles, over
+the table-land known as the Plateau du Coteau du Missouri, where a road
+may be constructed with as much facility and as little expense as in the
+State of Illinois. Crossing the Missouri, the line strikes directly west
+to the Little Missouri,--the Wah-Pa-Chan-Shoka,--the _heavy-timbered_
+river of the Indians, one hundred and thirty miles. This river runs
+north, and enters the Missouri near its northern bend. Seventy miles
+farther carries us to the Yellow Stone. Following now the valley of this
+stream two hundred and eighty miles, the town of Gallatin is reached, at
+the junction of the Missouri Forks and at the head of navigation on that
+stream. The valley of the Yellow Stone is very fertile, abounding in
+pine, cedar, cotton-wood, and elm. The river has a deeper channel than
+the Missouri, and is navigable through the summer months. At the
+junction of the Big Horn, its largest tributary, two hundred and twenty
+miles from the mouth of the Yellow Stone, in midsummer there are ten
+feet of water. The Big Horn is reported navigable for one hundred and
+fifty miles. From Gallatin, following up the Jefferson Fork and Wisdom
+River, one hundred and forty miles, we reach the Big Hole Pass of the
+Rocky Mountains, where the line enters the valley of the St. Mary's, or
+Bitter Root Fork, which flows into the Columbia. The distance from Big
+Hole Pass to Puget Sound will be about five hundred and twenty miles,
+making the entire distance from St. Paul to Puget Sound about sixteen
+hundred miles, or one hundred and forty-three miles shorter than that
+surveyed by Governor Stevens. The distance from the navigable waters of
+the Missouri to the navigable waters of the Columbia is less than three
+hundred miles.
+
+
+CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LINE.
+
+"Rivers are the natural highways of nations," says Humboldt. This route,
+then, is one of Nature's highways. The line is very direct. The country
+is mostly a rolling prairie, where a road may be constructed as easily
+as through the State of Iowa. It may be built with great rapidity.
+Parties working west from St. Paul and east from the Missouri would meet
+on the plains of Dacotah. Other parties working west from the Missouri
+and east from the Yellow Stone would meet on the "heavy-timbered river."
+Iron, locomotives, material of all kinds, provisions for laborers, can
+be delivered at any point along the Yellow Stone to within a hundred
+miles of the town of Gallatin, and they can be taken up the Missouri to
+that point by portage around the Great Falls. Thus the entire line east
+of the Rocky Mountains may be under construction at once, with iron and
+locomotives delivered by water transportation, with timber near at hand.
+
+The character of the country is sufficient to maintain a dense
+population. It has always been the home of the buffalo, the favorite
+hunting-ground of the Indians. The grasses of the Yellow Stone Valley
+are tender and succulent. The climate is milder than that of Illinois.
+Warm springs gush up on the head-waters of the Yellow Stone. Lewis and
+Clark, on their return from the Columbia, boiled their meat in water
+heated by subterraneous fires. There are numerous beds of coal, and also
+petroleum springs.
+
+"Large quantities of coal seen in the cliffs to-day,"[D] is a note in
+the diary of Captain Clark, as he sailed down the Yellow Stone, who also
+has this note regarding the country: "High waving plains, rich, fertile
+land, bordered by stony hills, partially supplied by pine."[E]
+
+Of the country of the Big Horn he says: "It is a rich, open country,
+supplied with a great quantity of timber."
+
+Coal abounds on the Missouri, where the proposed line crosses that
+stream.[F]
+
+The gold mines of Montana, on the head-waters of the Missouri, are
+hardly surpassed for richness by any in the world. They were discovered
+in 1862. The product for the year 1865 is estimated at $16,000,000. The
+Salmon River Mines, west of the mountains, in Idaho, do not yield so
+fine a quality of gold, but are exceedingly rich.
+
+Many towns have sprung into existence on both sides of the mountains. In
+Eastern Montana we have Gallatin, Beaver Head, Virginia, Nevada,
+Centreville, Bannock, Silver City, Montana, Jefferson, and other mining
+centres. In Western Montana, Labarge, Deer Lodge City, Owen, Higginson,
+Jordan, Frenchtown, Harrytown, and Hot Spring. Idaho has Boisee, Bannock
+City, Centreville, Warren, Richmond, Washington, Placerville, Lemhi,
+Millersburg, Florence, Lewiston, Craigs, Clearwater, Elk City, Pierce,
+and Lake City,--all mining towns.
+
+A gentleman who has resided in the territory gives us the following
+information:--
+
+"The southern portion of Montana Territory is mild; and from the
+testimony of explorers and settlers, as well as from my own experience
+and observation, the extreme northern portion is favored by a climate
+healthful to a high degree, and quite as mild as that of many of the
+Northern and Western States. This is particularly the case west of the
+mountains, in accordance with the well-known fact, that the isothermal
+line, or the line of heat, is farther north as you go westward from the
+Eastern States toward the Pacific.
+
+"At Fort Benton [one hundred and thirty miles directly north from
+Gallatin], in about 48° of north latitude, a trading post of the
+American Fur Company, their horses and cattle, of which they have large
+numbers, are never housed or fed in winter, but get their own living
+without difficulty....
+
+"Northeastern Montana is traversed by the Yellow Stone, whose source is
+high up in the mountains, from thence winding its way eastward across
+the Territory and flowing into the Missouri at Fort Union; thus crossing
+seven degrees of longitude, with many tributaries flowing into it from
+the south, in whose valleys, in connection with that of the Yellow
+Stone, there are hundreds of thousands of acres of tillable land, to say
+nothing of the tributaries of the Missouri, among which are the
+Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin forks, along which settlements are
+springing up, and agriculture is becoming a lucrative business. These
+valleys are inviting to the settler. They are surrounded with hills and
+mountains, clad with pine, while a growth of cotton-wood skirts the
+meandering streams that everywhere flow through them, affording
+abundance of water-power.
+
+"The first attempt at farming was made in the summer of 1863, which was
+a success, and indicates the productiveness of these valleys. Messrs.
+Wilson and Company broke thirty acres last spring, planting twelve acres
+of potatoes,--also corn, turnips, and a variety of garden sauce, all of
+which did well. The potatoes, they informed me, yielded two hundred
+bushels per acre, and sold in Virginia City, fifty miles distant, at
+twenty-five cents per pound, turnips at twenty cents, onions at forty
+cents, cabbage at sixty cents, peas and beans at fifty cents per pound
+in the pod, and corn at two dollars a dozen ears. Vines of all kinds
+seem to flourish; and we see no reason why fruit may not be grown here,
+as the climate is much more mild than in many of the States where it is
+a staple.
+
+"The valley at the Three Forks, as also the valley along the streams, as
+they recede from the junction, are spacious, and yield a spontaneous
+growth of herbage, upon which cattle fatten during the winter....
+
+"The Yellow Stone is navigable for several hundred miles from its mouth,
+penetrating the heart of the agricultural and mineral regions of Eastern
+Montana.... The section is undulating, with ranges of mountains, clad
+with evergreens, between which are beautiful valleys and winding
+streams, where towns and cities will spring up to adorn these mountain
+retreats, and give room for expanding civilization....
+
+"On the east side of the mountains the mines are rich beyond
+calculation, the yield thus far having equalled the most productive
+locality of California of equal extent. The Bannock or Grasshopper mines
+were discovered in July, 1862, and are situated on Grasshopper Creek,
+which is a tributary of the Jefferson fork of the Missouri. The mining
+district here extends five miles down the creek, from Bannock City,
+which is situated at the head of the gulch, while upon either side of
+the creek the mountains are intersected with gold-bearing quartz lodes,
+many of which have been found to be very rich....
+
+"While gold has been found in paying quantities all along the Rocky
+chain, its deposits are not confined to this locality, but sweep across
+the country eastward some hundreds of miles, to the Big Horn Mountains.
+The gold discoveries there cover a large area of country."[G]
+
+Governor Stevens says: "Voyagers travel all winter from Lake Superior to
+the Missouri, with horses and sleds, having to make their own roads, and
+are not deterred by snows."
+
+Alexander Culbertson, the great voyager and trader of the Upper
+Missouri, who, for the last twenty years, has made frequent trips from
+St. Louis to Fort Benton, has never found the snow drifted enough to
+interfere with travelling. The average depth is twelve inches, and
+frequently it does not exceed six.[H]
+
+Through such a country, east of the mountains, lies the shortest line of
+railway between the Atlantic and Pacific,--a country rich in mineral
+wealth, of fertile soil, mild climate, verdant valleys, timbered hills,
+arable lands yielding grains and grass, with mountain streams for the
+turning of mill-wheels, rich coal beds, and springs of petroleum!
+
+
+THE MOUNTAINS.
+
+There are several passes at the head-waters of the Missouri which may be
+used;--the Hell-Gate Pass; the Deer Lodge; and the Wisdom River, or Big
+Hole, as it is sometimes called, which leads into the valley of the
+Bitter Root, or St. Mary's. The Big Hole is thus described by Lieutenant
+Mullan:--
+
+"The descent towards the Missouri side is very gradual; so much so,
+that, were it not for the direction taken by the waters, it might be
+considered an almost level prairie country."[I]
+
+Governor Stevens thus speaks of the valley of the Bitter Root:--
+
+"The faint attempts made by the Indians at cultivating the soil have
+been attended with good success; and fair returns might be expected of
+all such crops as are adapted to the Northern States of our country. The
+pasturage grounds are unsurpassed. The extensive bands of horses, owned
+by the Flathead Indians occupying St. Mary's village, on the Bitter Root
+River, thrive well winter and summer. One hundred horses, belonging to
+the exploration, are wintered in the valley; and up to the 9th of March
+the grass was fair, but little snow had fallen, and the weather was
+mild. The oxen and cows, owned here by the half-breeds and Indians,
+obtain good feed, and are in good condition."[J]
+
+This village of St Mary's is sixty miles down the valley from the Big
+Hole Pass; yet, though so near, snow seldom falls, and the grass is so
+verdant that horses and cattle subsist the year round on the natural
+pasturage.
+
+Lieutenant Mullan says of it: "The fact of the exceedingly mild winters
+in this valley has been noticed and remarked by all who have ever been
+in it during the winter season. It is the home of the Flathead Indians,
+who, through the instrumentality and exertions of the Jesuit priests,
+have built up a village,--not of logs, but of houses,--where they repair
+every winter, and, with this valley covered with an abundance of rich
+and nutritious grass, they live as comfortably as any tribe west of the
+Rocky Mountains....
+
+"The numerous mountain rivulets, tributary to the Bitter Root River,
+that run through the valley, afford excellent and abundant mill-seats;
+and the land bordering these is fertile and productive, and has been
+found, beyond cavil or doubt, to be well suited to every branch of
+agriculture. I have seen oats, grown by Mr. John Owen, that are as heavy
+and as excellent as any I have ever seen in the States; and the same
+gentleman informs me that he has grown excellent wheat, and that, from
+his experience while in the mountains, he hesitated not in saying that
+agriculture might be carried on here in all its numerous branches, and
+to the exceeding great interest and gain of those engaged in it. The
+valley and mountain slopes are well timbered with an excellent growth of
+pine, which is equal, in every respect, to the well-known pine of
+Oregon. The valley is not only capable of grazing immense bands of stock
+of every kind, but is also capable of supporting a dense population.
+
+"The provisions of Nature here, therefore, are on no small scale, and of
+no small importance; and let those who have imagined--as some have been
+bold to say it--that there exists only one immense bed of mountains at
+the head-waters of the Missouri to the Cascade Range, turn their
+attention to this section, and let them contemplate its advantages and
+resources, and ask themselves, since these things exist, can it be long
+before public attention shall be attracted and fastened upon this
+heretofore unknown region?"[K]
+
+
+CLIMATE OF THE MOUNTAINS.
+
+We have been accustomed to think of the Rocky Mountains as an impassable
+barrier, as a wild, dreary solitude, where the storms of winter piled
+the mountain passes with snow. How different the fact! In 1852-53, from
+the 28th of November to the 10th of January, there were but twelve
+inches of snow in the pass. The recorded observations during the winter
+of 1861-62 give the following measurements in the Big Hole Pass:
+December 4, eighteen inches; January 10, fourteen; January 14, ten;
+February 16, six; March 21, none.
+
+We have been told that there could be no winter travel across the
+mountains,--that the snow would lie in drifts fifteen or twenty feet
+deep; but instead, there is daily communication by teams through the Big
+Hole Pass every day in the year! The belt of snow is narrow, existing
+only in the Pass.
+
+Says Lieutenant Mullan, in his late Report on the wagon road: "The snow
+will offer no great obstacle to travel, with horses or locomotives, from
+the Missouri to the Columbia."
+
+This able and efficient government officer, in the same Report, says of
+this section of the country:--
+
+"The trade and travel along the Upper Columbia, where several steamers
+now ply between busy marts, of themselves attest what magical effects
+the years have wrought. Besides gold, lead for miles is found along the
+Kootenay. Red hermatite, iron ore, traces of copper, and plumbago are
+found along the main Bitter Root. Cinnabar is said to exist along the
+Hell Gate. Coal is found along the Upper Missouri, and a deposit of
+cannel coal near the Three Butts, northwest of Fort Benton, is also said
+to exist. Iron ore has been found on Thompson's farms on the Clark's
+Fork. Sulphur is found on the Loo Loo Fork, and on the tributaries of
+the Yellow Stone, and coal oil is said to exist on the Big Horn....
+These great mineral deposits must have an ultimate bearing upon the
+location of the Pacific Railroad, adding, as they will, trade, travel,
+and wealth to its every mile when built....
+
+"The great depots for building material exist principally in the
+mountain sections, but the plains on either side are not destitute in
+that particular. All through the Bitter Root and Rocky Mountains, the
+finest white and red cedar, white pine, and red fir that I ever have
+seen are found."[L]
+
+
+GEOLOGICAL FEATURES.
+
+The geological formation of the heart of the continent promises to open
+a rich field for scientific exploration and investigation. The Wind
+River Mountain, which divides the Yellow Stone from the Great Basin, is
+a marked and distinct geological boundary. From the northern slope flow
+the tributaries of the Yellow Stone, fed by springs of boiling water,
+which perceptibly affect the temperature of the region, clothing the
+valleys with verdure, and making them the winter home of the
+buffalo,--the favorite hunting-grounds of the Indians,--while the
+streams which flow from the southern slope of the mountains are
+alkaline, and, instead of luxuriant vegetation, there are vast regions
+covered with wild sage and cactus. They run into the Great Salt Lake,
+and have no outlet to the ocean. A late writer, describing the
+geological features of that section, says:--
+
+"Upon the great interior desert streams and fuel are almost unknown.
+Wells must be very deep, and no simple and cheap machinery adequate to
+drawing up the water is yet invented. Cultivation, to a great extent,
+must be carried on by irrigation."[M]
+
+Such are the slopes of the mountains which form the rim of the Great
+Basin, while the valley of the Yellow Stone is literally the land which
+buds and blossoms like the rose. The Rosebud River is so named because
+the valley through which it meanders is a garden of roses.
+
+And here, along the head-waters of the Yellow Stone and its tributaries,
+at the northern deflection of the Wind River chain of mountains, flows a
+_river of hot wind_, which is not only one of the most remarkable
+features of the climatology of the continent, but which is destined to
+have a great bearing upon the civilization of this portion of the
+continent. St. Joseph in Missouri, in latitude 40°, has the same mean
+temperature as that at the base of the Rocky Mountains in latitude 47°!
+The high temperature of the hot boiling springs warms the air which
+flows northwest along the base of the mountains, sweeping through the
+Big Hole Pass, the Deer Lodge, Little Blackfoot, and Mullan Pass, giving
+a delightful winter climate to the valley of the St. Mary's, or Bitter
+Root. It flows like the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic. Says Captain
+Mullan: "On its either side, north and south, are walls of cold air, and
+which are so clearly perceptible that you always detect the river when
+you are on its shores."[N]
+
+This great river of heat always flowing is sufficient to account for the
+slight depth of snow in the passes at the head-waters of the Missouri,
+which have an altitude of six thousand feet. The South Pass has an
+altitude of seven thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine feet. The
+passes of the Wasatch Range, on the route to California, are higher by
+three thousand feet than those at the head-waters of the Missouri, and,
+not being swept by a stream of hot air, are filled with snows during the
+winter months. The passes at the head-waters of the Saskatchawan, in the
+British possessions, though a few hundred feet lower than those at the
+head-waters of the Missouri, are not reached by the heated Wind River,
+and are impassable in winter. Even Cadotte's Pass, through which
+Governor Stevens located the line of the proposed road, is outside of
+the heat stream, so sharp and perpendicular are its walls.
+
+Captain Mullan says: "From whatsoever cause it arises, it exists as a
+fact that must for all time enter as an element worthy of every
+attention in lines of travel and communication from the Eastern plains
+to the North Pacific."[O]
+
+
+DISTANCES.
+
+That this line is the natural highway of the continent is evident from
+other considerations. The distances between the centres of trade and San
+Francisco, and with Puget Sound, will appear from the following tabular
+statement:--
+
+                         APPROXIMATE DISTANCES.
+
+           | to San Francisco | to Puget Sound | Difference
+           |------------------|----------------|-----------
+Chicago    |   2,448 miles[P] |   1,906 miles  |  542 miles
+St. Louis  |   2,345   "      |   1,981   "    |  364   "
+Cincinnati |   2,685   "      |   2,200   "    |  486   "
+New York   |   3,417   "      |   2,892   "    |  525   "
+Boston     |   3,484   "      |   2,942   "    |  542   "
+
+The line to Puget Sound will require no tunnel in the pass of the Rocky
+Mountains. The approaches of the Big Hole and Deer Lodge in both
+directions are eminently feasible, requiring little rock excavation, and
+with no grades exceeding eighty feet per mile.
+
+All of the places east of the latitude of Chicago, and north of the Ohio
+River, are from three hundred to five hundred and fifty miles nearer the
+Pacific at Puget Sound than at San Francisco,--due to greater directness
+of the route and the shortening of longitude. These on both lines are
+the approximate distances. The distance from Puget Sound to St. Louis is
+estimated--via Desmoines--on the supposition that the time will come
+when that line of railway will extend north far enough to intersect with
+the North Pacific.
+
+
+COST OF CONSTRUCTION.
+
+The census of 1860 gives thirty thousand miles of railroad in operation,
+which cost, including land damages, equipment, and all charges of
+construction, $37,120 per mile. The average cost of fifteen New England
+roads, including the Boston and Lowell, Boston and Maine, Vermont
+Central, Western, Eastern, and Boston and Providence, was $36,305 per
+mile. In the construction of this line, there will be no charge for land
+damages, and nothing for timber, which exists along nearly the entire
+line. But as iron and labor command a higher price than when those roads
+were constructed, there should be a liberal estimate. Lieutenant Mullan,
+in his late Report upon the Construction of the Wagon Road, discusses
+the probability of a railroad at length, and with much ability. His
+highest estimate for any portion of the line is sixty thousand dollars
+per mile,--an estimate given before civilization made an opening in the
+wilderness. There is no reason to believe that this line will be any
+more costly than the average of roads in the United States.
+
+In 1850 there were 7,355 miles of road in operation; in 1860, 30,793;
+showing that 2,343 miles per annum were constructed by the people of the
+United States. The following table shows the number of miles built in
+each year from 1853 to 1856, together with the cost of the same.
+
+Year.             Miles.               Cost.
+
+1852              2,541             $ 94,000,000
+1853              2,748              101,576,000
+1854              3,549              125,313,000
+1855              2,736              101,232,000
+1856              3,578              132,386,000
+                                     -----------
+Total expenditure for five years,   $554,507,000
+
+This exhibit is sufficient to indicate that there need be no question of
+our financial ability to construct the road.
+
+In 1856, the country had expended $776,000,000 in the construction of
+railroads, incurring a debt of about $300,000,000. The entire amount of
+stock and bonds held abroad at that time was estimated at only
+$81,000,000.[Q]
+
+
+AID FROM GOVERNMENT.
+
+The desire of the people for the speedy opening of this great national
+highway is manifested by the action of the government, which, by act of
+Congress, July 2, 1864, granted the alternate sections of land for
+twenty miles on each side of the road in aid of the enterprise. The land
+thus appropriated amounts to forty-seven million acres,--more than is
+comprised in the States of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and
+New York! If all of these lands were sold at the price fixed by
+government,--$2.50 per acre,--they would yield $118,000,000,--a sum
+sufficient to build and equip the road. But years must elapse before
+these lands can be put upon the market, and the government, undoubtedly,
+will give the same aid to this road which has already been given to the
+Central Pacific Road, guaranteeing the bonds or stock of the company,
+and taking a lien on the road for security. Such bonds would at once
+command the necessary capital for building the road.
+
+
+THE WESTERN TERMINUS.
+
+Puget Sound, with its numerous inlets, is a deep indentation of the
+Pacific coast, one hundred miles north of the Columbia. It has spacious
+harbors, securely land-locked, with a surrounding country abounding in
+timber, with exhaustless beds of coal, rich in agricultural resources,
+and with numerous mill-streams. Nature has stamped it with her seal, and
+set it apart to be the New England of the Pacific coast.
+
+That portion of the country is to be peopled by farmers, mechanics, and
+artisans. California is rich in mineral wealth. Her valleys and
+mountain-slopes yield abundant harvests; but she has few mill-streams,
+and is dependent upon Oregon and Washington for her coal and lumber. An
+inferior quality of coal is mined at Mount Diablo in California; but
+most of the coal consumed in that State is brought from Puget Sound.
+Hence Nature has fixed the locality of the future manufacturing industry
+of the Pacific. Puget Sound is nearer than San Francisco, by several
+hundred miles, to Japan, China, and Australia. It is therefore the
+natural port of entry and departure for our Pacific trade. It has
+advantages over San Francisco, not only in being nearer to those
+countries, but in having coal near at hand, which settles the question
+of the future steam marine of the Pacific.
+
+Passengers, goods of high cost, and bills of exchange, move on the
+shortest and quickest lines of travel. No business man takes the
+way-train in preference to the express. Sailing vessels make the voyage
+from Puget Sound to Shanghai in from thirty to forty days. Steamers will
+make it in twenty.
+
+
+TRADE WITH ASIA.
+
+Far-seeing men in England are looking forward to the time when the trade
+between that country and the Pacific will be carried on across this
+continent. Colonel Synge, of the Queen's Royal Engineers, says:--
+
+"America is geographically a connecting link between the continents of
+Europe and Asia, and not a monstrous barrier between them. It lies in
+the track of their nearest and best connection; and this fact needs only
+to be fully recognized to render it in practice what it unquestionably
+is in the essential points of distance and direction."[R]
+
+Another English writer says:--
+
+"It is believed that the amount of direct traffic which would be created
+between Australia, China, and Japan, and England, by a railway from
+Halifax to the Gulf of Georgia, would soon more than cover the interest
+upon the capital expended.... If the intended railway were connected
+with a line of steamers plying between Victoria (Puget Sound), Sydney,
+or New Zealand, mails, quick freight, passengers to and from our
+colonies in the southern hemisphere, would, for the most part, be
+secured for this route.
+
+"Vancouver's Island is nearer to Sydney than Panama by nine hundred
+miles; and, with the exception of the proposed route by a Trans-American
+railway, the latter is the most expeditious that has been found.
+
+"By this interoceanic communication, the time to New Zealand would be
+reduced to forty-two, and to Sydney to forty-seven days, being at least
+ten less than by steam from England via Panama."[S]
+
+Lord Bury says:--
+
+"Our trade [English] in the Pacific Ocean with China and with India must
+ultimately be carried through our North American possessions. At any
+rate, our political and commercial supremacy will have utterly departed
+from us, if we neglect that great and important consideration, and if we
+fail to carry out to its fullest extent the physical advantages which
+the country offers to us, and which we have only to stretch out our
+hands to take advantage of."[T]
+
+Shanghai is rapidly becoming the great commercial emporium of China. It
+is situated at the mouth of the Yangtse-Kiang, the largest river of
+Asia, navigable for fifteen hundred miles. Hong-Kong, which has been the
+English centre in China, is nine hundred and sixty miles farther south.
+
+With a line of railway across this continent, the position of England
+would be as follows:--
+
+To Shanghai via Suez,              60 days.
+"     "    "    Puget Sound,       33   "
+
+Mr. Maciff divides the time as follows by the Puget Sound route:--
+
+Southampton to Halifax,       9 days.
+Halifax to Puget Sound,       6    "
+Puget Sound to Hong-Kong,    21    "
+                             --
+                             36
+
+The voyage by Suez is made in the Peninsular and Oriental line of
+steamers. The passage is proverbially comfortless,--through the Red Sea
+and Persian Gulf, across the Bay of Bengal, through the Straits of
+Malacca, and up the Chinese coast, under a tropical sun. Bayard Taylor
+thus describes the trip down the Red Sea:--
+
+"We had a violent head-wind, or rather gale. Yet, in spite of this
+current of air, the thermometer stood at 85° on deck, and 90° in the
+cabin. For two or three days we had a temperature of 90° to 95°. This
+part of the Red Sea is considered to be the hottest portion of the
+earth's surface. In the summer the air is like that of a furnace, and
+the bare red mountains glow like heaps of live coals. The steamers at
+that time almost invariably lose some of their firemen and stewards.
+Cooking is quite given up."[U]
+
+Bankok, Singapore, and Java can be reached more quickly from England by
+Puget Sound than by Suez.
+
+Notwithstanding the discomforts of the passage down the Red Sea, the
+steamers are always overcrowded with passengers, and loaded to their
+utmost capacity with freight. The French line, the Messageries Imperials
+de France, has been established, and is fully employed. Both lines pay
+large dividends.
+
+The growth of the English trade with China during the last sixteen years
+has been very rapid. Tea has increased 1300 per cent, and silk 950.[V]
+
+The trade between the single port of Shanghai and England and America in
+the two great staples of export is seen from the following statement of
+the export of tea and silk from that port from July 1, 1859, to July 1,
+1860:--
+
+                      Tea, lbs.       Silk, bales.
+Great Britain,       31,621,000         19,084
+United States,       18,299,000          1,554
+Canada,               1,172,000
+France,                                 47,000
+
+The total value of exports from England to China in 1860 was
+$26,590,000. Says Colonel Sykes:--
+
+"Our trade with China resolves itself into our taking almost exclusively
+from them teas and raw silk, and their taking from us cotton, cotton
+yarns, and woollens."[W]
+
+The exports of the United States to the Pacific in 1861 were as
+follows:--
+
+To China,               $5,809,724
+Australia,               3,410,000
+Islands of the Pacific     484,000
+                        ----------
+       Total,           $9,703,724
+
+By the late treaty between the United States and China, that empire is
+thrown open to trade; and already a large fleet of American-built
+steamers is afloat on the gleaming waters of the Yang-tse. Mr.
+Burlingame, our present Minister, is soon to take his departure for that
+empire, with instructions to use his utmost endeavor to promote friendly
+relations between the two countries. That this country is to have an
+immense trade with China is evident from the fact that no other country
+can compete with us in the manufacture of coarse cotton goods, which,
+with cotton at its normal price, will be greatly sought after by the
+majority of the people of that country, who of necessity are compelled
+to wear the cheapest clothing.
+
+Shanghai is the silk emporium of the empire. A ton of silk goods is
+worth from ten to fifteen thousand dollars. Nearly all of the silk is
+now shipped by the Peninsular and Oriental line, at a charge of $125 to
+$150 per ton; and notwithstanding these exorbitant rates, Shanghai
+merchants are compelled to make written application weeks in advance,
+and accept proportional allotments for shipping. In May, 1863, the
+screw-steamer Bahama made the trip from Foochow to London in eighty days
+with a cargo of tea, and obtained sixty dollars per ton, while freights
+by sailing vessels were but twenty dollars; the shippers being willing
+to pay forty dollars per ton for forty days' quicker delivery. With the
+Northern Pacific line constructed, the British importer could receive
+his Shanghai goods across this continent in fifty days, and at a rate
+lower than by the Peninsular line.
+
+The route by the Peninsular line runs within eighty miles of the
+Equator; and the entire voyage is through a tropical climate, which
+injures the flavor of the tea. Hence the high price of the celebrated
+"brick tea," brought across the steppes of Russia. The route by Puget
+Sound is wholly through temperate latitudes, across a smooth and
+peaceful sea, seldom vexed by storms, and where currents, like the Gulf
+Stream of Mexico, and favoring trade-winds, may be taken advantage of by
+vessels plying between that port and the Asiatic coast.
+
+Japan is only four thousand miles distant from Puget Sound. The teas and
+silks of that country are rapidly coming into market. Coal is found
+there, and on the island of Formosa, and up the Yang-tse.
+
+
+CLIMATE
+
+The climate of Puget Sound is thus set forth by an English writer, who
+has passed several months at Victoria:--
+
+"From October to March we are liable to frequent rains; but this period
+of damp is ever and anon relieved by prolonged intervals of bright dry
+weather. In March, winter gives signs of taking its departure, and the
+warm breath of spring begins to cover the trees with tinted buds and the
+fields with verdure.... The sensations produced by the aspects of nature
+in May are indescribably delightful. The freshness of the air, the
+warbling of birds, the clearness of the sky, the profusion and fragrance
+of wild roses, the widespread, variegated hues of buttercups and
+daisies, the islets and violets, together with the distant snow-peaks
+bursting upon the view, combine in that month to fill the mind with
+enchantment unequalled out of Paradise. I know gentlemen who have lived
+in China, Italy, Canada, and England; but, after a residence of some
+years in Vancouver Island, they entertained a preference for the climate
+of the colony which approached affectionate enthusiasm."[X]
+
+The climate of the whole section through which the line passes is
+milder than that of the Grand Trunk line. The lowest degree of
+temperature in 1853--54 at Quebec was 29 below zero; Montreal, 34; St.
+Paul, 36; Bitter Root Valley, forty miles from Big Hole Pass, 20.
+
+In 1858 a party of Royal Engineers, under Captain Pallissir, surveyed
+the country of the Saskatchawan for a line to Puget Sound which should
+lie wholly within the British possessions. They found a level and
+fertile country, receding to the very base of the mountains, and a
+practicable pass, of less altitude than those at the head-waters of the
+Missouri; but in winter the snow is deep and the climate severe. That
+section of Canada north of Superior is an unbroken, uninhabitable
+wilderness. The character of the region is thus set forth by Agassiz. He
+says:--
+
+"Unless the mines should attract and support a population, one sees not
+how this region should ever be inhabited. Its stern and northern
+character is shown in nothing more clearly than in the scarcity of
+animals. The woods are silent, and as if deserted. One may walk for
+hours without hearing an animal sound; and when he does, it is of a wild
+and lonely character.... It is like being transported to the early ages
+of the earth, when mosses and pines had just begun to cover the primeval
+rock, and the animals as yet ventured timidly forth into the new
+world."[Y]
+
+
+THE FUTURE.
+
+The census returns of the United States indicate that, thirty-four years
+hence, in the year 1900, the population of this country will exceed one
+hundred millions. What an outlook! The country a teeming hive of
+industry; innumerable sails whitening the Western Ocean; unnumbered
+steamers ploughing its peaceful waters; great cities in the unexplored
+solitudes of to-day; America the highway of the nations; and New York
+the banking-house of the world!
+
+This is the age of the people. They are the sovereigns of the future. It
+is the age of ideas. The people of America stand on the threshold of a
+new era. We are to come in contact with a people numbering nearly half
+the population of the globe, claiming a nationality dating back to the
+time of Moses. A hundred thousand Chinese are in California and Oregon,
+and every ship sailing into the harbor of San Francisco brings its load
+of emigrants from Asia. What is to be the effect of this contact with
+the Orient upon our civilization? What the result of this pouring in of
+emigrants from every country of the world,--of all languages, manners,
+customs, nationalities, and religions? Can they be assimilated into a
+homogeneous mass? These are grave questions, demanding the earnest and
+careful consideration of every Christian, philanthropist, and patriot.
+We have fought for existence, and have a name among the nations. But we
+have still the nation to save. Railroads, telegraphs, steamships,
+printing-presses, schools, platforms, and pulpits are the agents of
+modern civilization. Through them we are to secure unity, strength, and
+national life. Securing these, Asia may send over her millions of
+idol-worshippers without detriment to ourselves. With these, America is
+to give life to the long-slumbering Orient.
+
+So ever toward the setting sun the course of empire takes its way,--not
+the empire of despotism, but of life, liberty,--of civilization and the
+Christian religion.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[D] Lewis and Clark's Expedition to the Columbia, Vol. II. p. 392.
+
+[E] Ibid., p. 397.
+
+[F] See Pacific Railroad Report, Vol. I. p. 239.
+
+[G] Idaho: Six Months among the New Gold Diggings, by J. L. Campbell,
+pp. 15-28.
+
+[H] Pacific Railroad Report, Vol. I. p. 130.
+
+[I] Ibid., Vol. XII. p. 169.
+
+[J] Governor Stevens's Report of the Pacific Railroad Survey.
+
+[K] Pacific Railroad Survey. Lieutenant Mullan's Report.
+
+[L] Lieutenant Mullan's Report on the Construction of Wagon Road from
+Fort Benton to Walla-Walla, p. 45.
+
+[M] New York Tribune, December 2, 1865, correspondence of "A. D. R."
+
+[N] Report of Captain Mullan, p. 54.
+
+[O] Report of Captain Mullan, p. 54.
+
+[P] Hall's Guide,--via Omaha, Denver, and Salt Lake.
+
+[Q] Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, 1857.
+
+[R] Paper read before the British North American Association, July 21,
+1864.
+
+[S] Vancouver's Island and British Columbia, Maciff, p. 343.
+
+[T] Speech by Lord Bury, quoted by Maciff.
+
+[U] India, China, and Japan, p. 23.
+
+[V] Statistical Journal, 1862.
+
+[W] Statistical Journal, 1862, p. 15.
+
+[X] Vancouver and British Columbia, Maciff, p. 179.
+
+[Y] Agassiz, Lake Superior, p. 124.
+
+
+
+
+IN THE SEA.
+
+
+    The salt wind blows upon my cheek
+      As it blew a year ago,
+    When twenty boats were crushed among
+      The rocks of Norman's Woe.
+    'Twas dark then; 't is light now,
+      And the sails are leaning low.
+
+    In dreams, I pull the sea-weed o'er,
+      And find a face not his,
+    And hope another tide will be
+      More pitying than this:
+    The wind turns, the tide turns,--
+      They take what hope there is.
+
+    My life goes on as thine would go,
+      With all its sweetness spilled:
+    My God, why should one heart of two
+      Beat on, when one is stilled?
+    Through heart-wreck, or home-wreck,
+      Thy happy sparrows build.
+
+    Though boats go down, men build anew,
+      Whatever winds may blow;
+    If blight be in the wheat one year,
+      We trust again and sow,
+    Though grief comes, and changes
+      The sunshine into snow.
+
+    Some have their dead, where, sweet and soon,
+      The summers bloom and go:
+    The sea withholds my dead,--I walk
+      The bar when tides are low,
+    And wonder the grave-grass
+      Can have the heart to grow!
+
+    Flow on, O unconsenting sea,
+      And keep my dead below;
+    Though night--O utter night!--my soul,
+      Delude thee long, I know,
+    Or Life comes or Death comes,
+      God leads the eternal flow.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.
+
+
+III.
+
+IS WOMAN A WORKER?
+
+"Papa, do you see what the Evening Post says of your New-Year's article
+on Reconstruction?" said Jennie, as we were all sitting in the library
+after tea.
+
+"I have not seen it."
+
+"Well, then, the charming writer, whoever he is, takes up for us girls
+and women, and maintains that no work of any sort ought to be expected
+of us; that our only mission in life is to be beautiful, and to refresh
+and elevate the spirits of men by being so. If I get a husband, my
+mission is to be always becomingly dressed, to display most captivating
+toilettes, and to be always in good spirits,--as, under the
+circumstances, I always should be,--and thus 'renew his spirits' when he
+comes in weary with the toils of life. Household cares are to be far
+from me: they destroy my cheerfulness and injure my beauty.
+
+"He says that the New England standard of excellence as applied to woman
+has been a mistaken one; and, in consequence, though the girls are
+beautiful, the matrons are faded, overworked, and uninteresting; and
+that such a state of society tends to immorality, because, when wives
+are no longer charming, men are open to the temptation to desert their
+firesides, and get into mischief generally. He seems particularly to
+complain of your calling ladies who do nothing the 'fascinating
+_lazzaroni_ of the parlor and boudoir.'"
+
+"There was too much truth back of that arrow not to wound," said
+Theophilus Thoro, who was ensconced, as usual, in his dark corner,
+whence he supervises our discussions.
+
+"Come, Mr. Thoro, we won't have any of your bitter moralities," said
+Jennie; "they are only to be taken as the invariable bay-leaf which
+Professor Blot introduces into all his recipes for soups and stews,--a
+little elegant bitterness, to be kept tastefully in the background. You
+see now, papa, I should like the vocation of being beautiful. It would
+just suit me to wear point-lace and jewelry, and to have life revolve
+round me, as some beautiful star, and feel that I had nothing to do but
+shine and refresh the spirits of all gazers, and that in this way I was
+truly useful, and fulfilling the great end of my being; but alas for
+this doctrine! all women have not beauty. The most of us can only hope
+not to be called ill-looking, and, when we get ourselves up with care,
+to look fresh and trim and agreeable; which fact interferes with the
+theory."
+
+"Well, for my part," said young Rudolph, "I go for the theory of the
+beautiful. If ever I marry, it is to find an asylum for ideality. I
+don't want to make a culinary marriage or a business partnership. I want
+a being whom I can keep in a sphere of poetry and beauty, out of the
+dust and grime of every-day life."
+
+"Then," said Mr. Theophilus, "you must either be a rich man in your own
+right, or your fair ideal must have a handsome fortune of her own."
+
+"I never will marry a rich wife," quoth Rudolph. "My wife must be
+supported by me, not I by her."
+
+Rudolph is another of the _habitués_ of our chimney-corner, representing
+the order of young knighthood in America, and his dreams and fancies, if
+impracticable, are always of a kind to make every one think him a good
+fellow. He who has no romantic dreams at twenty-one will be a horribly
+dry peascod at fifty; therefore it is that I gaze reverently at all
+Rudolph's chateaus in Spain, which want nothing to complete them except
+solid earth to stand on.
+
+"And pray," said Theophilus, "how long will it take a young lawyer or
+physician, starting with no heritage but his own brain, to create a
+sphere of poetry and beauty in which to keep his goddess? How much a
+year will be necessary, as the English say, to _do_ this garden of Eden,
+whereinto shall enter only the poetry of life?"
+
+"I don't know. I haven't seen it near enough to consider. It is because
+I know the difficulty of its attainment that I have no present thoughts
+of marriage. Marriage is to me in the bluest of all blue distances,--far
+off, mysterious, and dreamy as the Mountains of the Moon or sources of
+the Nile. It shall come only when I have secured a fortune that shall
+place my wife above all necessity of work or care."
+
+"I desire to hear from you," said Theophilus, "when you have found the
+sum that will keep a woman from care. I know of women now inhabiting
+palaces, waited on at every turn by servants, with carriages, horses,
+jewels, laces, cashmeres, enough for princesses, who are eaten up by
+care. One lies awake all night on account of a wrinkle in the waist of
+her dress; another is dying because no silk of a certain inexpressible
+shade is to be found in New York; a third has had a dress sent home,
+which has proved such a failure that life seems no longer worth having.
+If it were not for the consolations of religion, one doesn't know what
+would become of her. The fact is, that care and labor are as much
+correlated to human existence as shadow is to light; there is no such
+thing as excluding them from any mortal lot. You may make a canary-bird
+or a gold-fish live in absolute contentment without a care or labor, but
+a human being you cannot. Human beings are restless and active in their
+very nature, and will do something, and that something will prove a
+care, a labor, and a fatigue, arrange it how you will. As long as there
+is anything to be desired and not yet attained, so long its attainment
+will be attempted; so long as that attainment is doubtful or difficult,
+so long will there be care and anxiety. When boundless wealth releases
+woman from every family care, she immediately makes herself a new set of
+cares in another direction, and has just as many anxieties as the most
+toilful housekeeper, only they are of a different kind. Talk of labor,
+and look at the upper classes in London or in New York in the
+fashionable season. Do any women work harder? To rush from crowd to
+crowd all night, night after night, seeing what they are tired of,
+making the agreeable over an abyss of inward yawning, crowded, jostled,
+breathing hot air, and crushed in halls and stairways, without a moment
+of leisure for months and months, till brain and nerve and sense reel,
+and the country is longed for as a period of resuscitation and relief!
+Such is the release from labor and fatigue brought by wealth. The only
+thing that makes all this labor at all endurable is, that it is utterly
+and entirely useless, and does not good to any one in creation; this
+alone makes it genteel, and distinguishes it from the vulgar toils of a
+housekeeper. These delicate creatures, who can go to three or four
+parties a night for three months, would be utterly desolate if they had
+to watch one night in a sick-room; and though they can exhibit any
+amount of physical endurance and vigor in crowding into assembly rooms,
+and breathe tainted air in an opera-house with the most martyr-like
+constancy, they could not sit one half-hour in the close room where the
+sister of charity spends hours in consoling the sick or aged poor."
+
+"Mr. Theophilus is quite at home now," said Jennie; "only start him on
+the track of fashionable life, and he takes the course like a hound. But
+hear, now, our champion of the Evening Post:--
+
+"'The instinct of women to seek a life of repose, their eagerness to
+attain the life of elegance, does not mean contempt for labor, but it is
+the confession of unfitness for labor. Women were not intended to
+work,--not because work is ignoble, but because it is as disastrous to
+the beauty of a woman as is friction to the bloom and softness of a
+flower. Woman is to be kept in the garden of life; she is to rest, to
+receive, to praise; she is to be kept from the workshop world, where
+innocence is snatched with rude hands, and softness is blistered into
+unsightliness or hardened into adamant. No social truth is more in need
+of exposition and illustration than this one; and, above all, the people
+of New England need to know it, and, better, they need to believe it.
+
+"'It is therefore with regret that we discover Christopher Crowfield
+applying so harshly, and, as we think, so indiscriminatingly, the theory
+of work to women, and teaching a society made up of women sacrificed in
+the workshops of the state, or to the dust-pans and kitchens of the
+house, that women must work, ought to work, and are dishonored if they
+do not work; and that a woman committed to the drudgery of a household
+is more creditably employed than when she is charming, fascinating,
+irresistible, in the parlor or boudoir. The consequence of this fatal
+mistake is manifest throughout New England,--in New England, where the
+girls are all beautiful and the wives and mothers faded, disfigured, and
+without charm or attractiveness. The moment a girl marries in New
+England she is apt to become a drudge, or a lay figure on which to
+exhibit the latest fashions. She never has beautiful hands, and she
+would not have a beautiful face if a utilitarian society could "apply"
+her face to anything but the pleasure of the eye. Her hands lose their
+shape and softness after childhood, and domestic drudgery destroys her
+beauty of form and softness and bloom of complexion after marriage. To
+correct, or rather to break up, this despotism of household cares, or of
+work, over woman, American society must be taught that women will
+inevitably fade and deteriorate, unless it insures repose and comfort to
+them. It must be taught that reverence for beauty is the normal
+condition, while the theory of work, applied to women, is disastrous
+alike to beauty and morals. Work, when it is destructive to men or
+women, is forced and unjust.
+
+"'All the great masculine or creative epochs have been distinguished by
+spontaneous work on the part of men, and universal reverence and care
+for beauty. The praise of work, and sacrifice of women to this great
+heartless devil of work, belong only to, and are the social doctrine of,
+a mechanical age and a utilitarian epoch. And if the New England idea of
+social life continues to bear so cruelly on woman, we shall have a
+reaction somewhat unexpected and shocking.'"
+
+"Well now, say what you will," said Rudolph, "you have expressed my idea
+of the conditions of the sex. Woman was not made to work; she was made
+to be taken care of by man. All that is severe and trying, whether in
+study or in practical life, is and ought to be in its very nature
+essentially the work of the male sex. The value of woman is precisely
+the value of those priceless works of art for which we build
+museums,--which we shelter and guard as the world's choicest heritage;
+and a lovely, cultivated, refined woman, thus sheltered, and guarded,
+and developed, has a worth that cannot be estimated by any gross,
+material standard. So I subscribe to the sentiments of Miss Jennie's
+friend without scruple."
+
+"The great trouble in settling all these society questions," said I,
+"lies in the gold-washing,--the cradling I think the miners call it. If
+all the quartz were in one stratum and all the gold in another, it would
+save us a vast deal of trouble. In the ideas of Jennie's friend of the
+Evening Post there is a line of truth and a line of falsehood so
+interwoven and threaded together that it is impossible wholly to assent
+or dissent. So with your ideas, Rudolph, there is a degree of truth in
+them, but there is also a fallacy.
+
+"It is a truth, that woman as a sex ought not to do the hard work of the
+world, either social, intellectual, or moral. There are evidences in her
+physiology that this was not intended for her, and our friend of the
+Evening Post is right in saying that any country will advance more
+rapidly in civilization and refinement where woman is thus sheltered and
+protected. And I think, furthermore, that there is no country in the
+world where women _are_ so much considered and cared for and sheltered,
+in every walk of life, as in America. In England and France,--all over
+the continent of Europe, in fact,--the other sex are deferential to
+women only from some presumption of their social standing, or from the
+fact of acquaintanceship; but among strangers, and under circumstances
+where no particular rank or position can be inferred, a woman travelling
+in England or France is jostled and pushed to the wall, and left to take
+her own chance, precisely as if she were not a woman. Deference to
+delicacy and weakness, the instinct of protection, does not appear to
+characterize the masculine population of any other quarter of the world
+so much as that of America. In France, _les Messieurs_ will form a
+circle round the fire in the receiving-room of a railroad station, and
+sit, tranquilly smoking their cigars, while ladies who do not happen to
+be of their acquaintance are standing shivering at the other side of the
+room. In England, if a lady is incautiously booked for an outside place
+on a coach, in hope of seeing the scenery, and the day turns out
+hopelessly rainy, no gentleman in the coach below ever thinks of
+offering to change seats with her, though it pour torrents. In America,
+the roughest backwoods steamboat or canal-boat captain always, as a
+matter of course, considers himself charged with the protection of the
+ladies. '_Place aux dames_' is written in the heart of many a shaggy
+fellow who could not utter a French word any more than could a buffalo.
+It is just as I have before said,--women are the recognized aristocracy,
+the _only_ aristocracy, of America; and, so far from regarding this fact
+as objectionable, it is an unceasing source of pride in my country.
+
+"That kind of knightly feeling towards woman which reverences her
+delicacy, her frailty, which protects and cares for her, is, I think,
+the crown of manhood; and without it a man is only a rough animal. But
+our fair aristocrats and their knightly defenders need to be cautioned
+lest they lose their position, as many privileged orders have before
+done, by an arrogant and selfish use of power.
+
+"I have said that the vices of aristocracy are more developed among
+women in America than among men, and that, while there are no men in the
+Northern States who are not ashamed of living a merely idle life of
+pleasure, there are many women who make a boast of helplessness and
+ignorance in woman's family duties which any man would be ashamed to
+make with regard to man's duties, as if such helplessness and ignorance
+were a grace and a charm.
+
+"There are women who contentedly live on, year after year, a life of
+idleness, while the husband and father is straining every nerve, growing
+prematurely old and gray, abridged of almost every form of recreation or
+pleasure,--all that he may keep them in a state of careless ease and
+festivity. It may be very fine, very generous, very knightly, in the man
+who thus toils at the oar that his princesses may enjoy their painted
+voyages; but what is it for the women?
+
+"A woman is a moral being,--an immortal soul,--before she is a woman;
+and as such she is charged by her Maker with some share of the great
+burden of _work_ which lies on the world.
+
+"Self-denial, the bearing of the cross, are stated by Christ as
+indispensable conditions to the entrance into his kingdom, and no
+exception is made for man or woman. Some task, some burden, some cross,
+each one must carry; and there must be something done in every true and
+worthy life, not as amusement, but as duty,--not as play, but as earnest
+_work_,--and no human being can attain to the Christian standard without
+this.
+
+"When Jesus Christ took a towel and girded himself, poured water into a
+basin, and washed his disciples' feet, he performed a significant and
+sacramental act, which no man or woman should ever forget. If wealth and
+rank and power absolve from the services of life, then certainly were
+Jesus Christ absolved, as he says,--'Ye call me Master, and Lord. If I,
+then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash
+one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do
+as I have done to you.'
+
+"Let a man who seeks to make a terrestrial paradise for the woman of his
+heart,--to absolve her from all care, from all labor,--to teach her to
+accept and to receive the labor of others without any attempt to offer
+labor in return,--consider whether he is not thus going directly against
+the fundamental idea of Christianity,--taking the direct way to make his
+idol selfish and exacting, to rob her of the highest and noblest beauty
+of womanhood.
+
+"In that chapter of the Bible where the relation between man and woman
+is stated, it is thus said, with quaint simplicity:--'It is not good
+that the man should be alone; I will make him an _help meet_ for him.'
+Woman the _helper_ of man, not his toy,--not a picture, not a statue,
+not a work of art, but a HELPER, a doer,--such is the view of the Bible
+and the Christian religion.
+
+"It is not necessary that women should work physically or morally to an
+extent which impairs beauty. In France, where woman is harnessed with an
+ass to the plough which her husband drives,--where she digs, and wields
+the pick-axe,--she becomes prematurely hideous; but in America, where
+woman reigns as queen in every household, she may surely be a good and
+thoughtful housekeeper, she may have physical strength exercised in
+lighter domestic toils, not only without injuring her beauty, but with
+manifest advantage to it. Almost every growing young girl would be the
+better in health, and therefore handsomer, for two hours of active
+housework daily; and the habit of usefulness thereby gained would be an
+equal advantage to her moral development. The labors of modern,
+well-arranged houses are not in any sense severe; they are as gentle as
+any kind of exercise that can be devised, and they bring into play
+muscles that ought to be exercised to be healthily developed.
+
+"The great danger to the beauty of American women does not lie, as the
+writer of the Post contends, in an overworking of the physical system
+which shall stunt and deform; on the contrary, American women of the
+comfortable classes are in danger of a loss of physical beauty from the
+entire deterioration of the muscular system for want of exercise. Take
+the life of any American girl in one of our large towns, and see what it
+is. We have an educational system of public schools which for
+intellectual culture is a just matter of pride to any country. From the
+time that the girl is seven years old, her first thought, when she rises
+in the morning, is to eat her breakfast and be off to her school. There
+really is no more time than enough to allow her to make that complete
+toilet which every well-bred female ought to make, and to take her
+morning meal before her school begins. She returns at noon with just
+time to eat her dinner, and the afternoon session begins. She comes home
+at night with books, slate, and lessons enough to occupy her evening.
+What time is there for teaching her any household work, for teaching her
+to cut or fit or sew, or to inspire her with any taste for domestic
+duties? Her arms have no exercise; her chest and lungs, and all the
+complex system of muscles which are to be perfected by quick and active
+movement, are compressed while she bends over book and slate and
+drawing-board; while the ever-active brain is kept all the while going
+at the top of its speed. She grows up spare, thin, and delicate; and
+while the Irish girl, who sweeps the parlors, rubs the silver, and irons
+the muslins, is developing a finely rounded arm and bust, the American
+girl has a pair of bones at her sides, and a bust composed of cotton
+padding, the work of a skilful dressmaker. Nature, who is no respecter
+of persons, gives to Colleen Bawn, who uses her arms and chest, a beauty
+which perishes in the gentle, languid Edith, who does nothing but study
+and read."
+
+"But is it not a fact," said Rudolph, "as stated by our friend of the
+Post, that American matrons are perishing, and their beauty and grace
+all withered, from overwork?"
+
+"It is," said my wife; "but why? It is because they are brought up
+without vigor or muscular strength, without the least practical
+experience of household labor, or those means of saving it which come by
+daily practice; and then, after marriage, when physically weakened by
+maternity, embarrassed by the care of young children, they are often
+suddenly deserted by every efficient servant, and the whole machinery of
+a complicated household left in their weak, inexperienced hands. In the
+country, you see a household perhaps made void some fine morning by
+Biddy's sudden departure, and nobody to make the bread, or cook the
+steak, or sweep the parlors, or do one of the complicated offices of a
+family, and no bakery, cookshop, or laundry to turn to for alleviation.
+A lovely, refined home becomes in a few hours a howling desolation; and
+then ensues a long season of breakage, waste, distraction, as one wild
+Irish immigrant after another introduces the style of Irish cottage life
+into an elegant dwelling.
+
+"Now suppose I grant to the Evening Post that woman ought to rest, to be
+kept in the garden of life, and all that, how is this to be done in a
+country where a state of things like this is the commonest of
+occurrences? And is it any kindness or reverence to woman, to educate
+her for such an inevitable destiny by a life of complete physical
+delicacy and incapacity? Many a woman who has been brought into these
+cruel circumstances would willingly exchange all her knowledge of German
+and Italian, and all her graceful accomplishments, for a good physical
+development, and some respectable _savoir faire_ in ordinary life.
+
+"Moreover, American matrons are overworked because some unaccountable
+glamour leads them to continue to bring up their girls in the same
+inefficient physical habits which resulted in so much misery to
+themselves. Housework as they are obliged to do it, untrained, untaught,
+exhausted, and in company with rude, dirty, unkempt foreigners, seems to
+them a degradation which they will spare to their daughters. The
+daughter goes on with her schools and accomplishments, and leads in the
+family the life of an elegant little visitor during all those years when
+a young girl might be gradually developing and strengthening her muscles
+in healthy household work. It never occurs to her that she can or ought
+to fill any of these domestic gaps into which her mother always steps;
+and she comforts herself with the thought, 'I don't know how; I can't; I
+haven't the strength. I _cant'_ sweep; it blisters my hands. If I should
+stand at the ironing-table an hour, I should be ill for a week. As to
+cooking, I don't know anything about it.' And so, when the cook, or the
+chambermaid, or nurse, or all together, vacate the premises, it is the
+mamma who is successively cook, and chambermaid, and nurse; and this is
+the reason why matrons fade and are overworked.
+
+"Now, Mr. Rudolph, do you think a woman any less beautiful or
+interesting because she is a fully developed physical being,--because
+her muscles have been rounded and matured into strength, so that she can
+meet the inevitable emergencies of life without feeling them to be
+distressing hardships? If there be a competent, well-trained servant to
+sweep and dust the parlor, and keep all the machinery of the house in
+motion, she may very properly select her work out of the family, in some
+form of benevolent helpfulness; but when the inevitable evil hour comes,
+which is likely to come first or last in every American household, is a
+woman any less an elegant woman because her love of neatness, order, and
+beauty leads her to make vigorous personal exertions to keep her own
+home undefiled? For my part, I think a disorderly, ill-kept home, a
+sordid, uninviting table, has driven more husbands from domestic life
+than the unattractiveness of any overworked woman. So long as a woman
+makes her home harmonious and orderly, so long as the hour of assembling
+around the family table is something to be looked forward to as a
+comfort and a refreshment, a man cannot see that the good house fairy,
+who by some magic keeps everything so delightfully, has either a wrinkle
+or a gray hair.
+
+"Besides," said I, "I must tell you, Rudolph, what you fellows of
+twenty-one are slow to believe; and that is, that the kind of ideal
+paradise you propose in marriage is, in the very nature of things, an
+impossibility,--that the familiarities of every-day life between two
+people who keep house together must and will destroy it. Suppose you are
+married to Cytherea herself, and the next week attacked with a rheumatic
+fever. If the tie between you is that of true and honest love, Cytherea
+will put on a gingham wrapper, and with her own sculptured hands wring
+out the flannels which shall relieve your pains; and she will be no true
+woman if she do not prefer to do this to employing any nurse that could
+be hired. True love ennobles and dignifies the material labors of life;
+and homely services rendered for love's sake have in them a poetry that
+is immortal.
+
+"No true-hearted woman can find herself, in real, actual life, unskilled
+and unfit to minister to the wants and sorrows of those dearest to her,
+without a secret sense of degradation. The feeling of uselessness is an
+extremely unpleasant one. Tom Hood, in a very humorous paper, describes
+a most accomplished schoolmistress, a teacher of all the arts and crafts
+which are supposed to make up fine gentlewomen, who is stranded in a
+rude German inn, with her father writhing in the anguish of a severe
+attack of gastric inflammation. The helpless lady gazes on her suffering
+parent, longing to help him, and thinking over all her various little
+store of accomplishments, not one of which bear the remotest relation to
+the case. She could knit him a bead-purse, or make him a guard-chain, or
+work him a footstool, or festoon him with cut tissue-paper, or sketch
+his likeness, or crust him over with alum crystals, or stick him over
+with little rosettes of red and white wafers; but none of these being
+applicable to his present case, she sits gazing in resigned imbecility,
+till finally she desperately resolves to improvise him some gruel, and,
+after a laborious turn in the kitchen,--after burning her dress and
+blacking her fingers,--succeeds only in bringing him a bowl of _paste_!
+
+"Not unlike this might be the feeling of many and elegant and
+accomplished woman, whose education has taught and practised her in
+everything that woman ought to know, except those identical ones which
+fit her for the care of a home, for the comfort of a sick-room; and so I
+say again, that, whatever a woman may be in the way of beauty and
+elegance, she must have the strength and skill of a _practical worker_,
+or she is nothing. She is not simply to _be_ the beautiful,--she is to
+_make_ the beautiful, and preserve it; and she who makes and she who
+keeps the beautiful must be able _to work_, and to know how to work.
+Whatever offices of life are performed by women of culture and
+refinement are thenceforth elevated; they cease to be mere servile
+toils, and become expressions of the ideas of superior beings. If a true
+lady makes even a plate of toast, in arranging a _petit souper_ for her
+invalid friend, she does it as a lady should. She does not cut
+blundering and uneven slices; she does not burn the edges; she does not
+deluge it with bad butter, and serve it cold; but she arranges and
+serves all with an artistic care, with a nicety and delicacy, which make
+it worth one's while to have a lady friend in sickness.
+
+"And I am glad to hear that Monsieur Blot is teaching classes of New
+York ladies that cooking is not a vulgar kitchen toil, to be left to
+blundering servants, but an elegant feminine accomplishment, better
+worth a woman's learning than crochet or embroidery; and that a
+well-kept culinary apartment may be so inviting and orderly that no lady
+need feel her ladyhood compromised by participating in its pleasant
+toils. I am glad to know that his cooking academy is thronged with more
+scholars than he can accommodate, and from ladies in the best classes of
+society.
+
+"Moreover, I am glad to see that in New Bedford, recently, a public
+course of instruction in the art of bread-making has been commenced by a
+lady, and that classes of the most respectable young and married ladies
+in the place are attending them.
+
+"These are steps in the right direction, and show that our fair
+country-women, with the grand good sense which is their leading
+characteristic, are resolved to supply whatever in our national life is
+wanting.
+
+"I do not fear that women of such sense and energy will listen to the
+sophistries which would persuade them that elegant imbecility and
+inefficiency are charms of cultivated womanhood or ingredients in the
+poetry of life. She alone can keep the poetry and beauty of married life
+who has this poetry in her soul; who with energy and discretion can
+throw back and out of sight the sordid and disagreeable details which
+beset all human living, and can keep in the foreground that which is
+agreeable; who has enough knowledge of practical household matters to
+make unskilled and rude hands minister to her cultivated and refined
+tastes, and constitute her skilled brain the guide of unskilled hands.
+From such a home, with such a mistress, no sirens will seduce a man,
+even though the hair grow gray, and the merely physical charms of early
+days gradually pass away. The enchantment that was about her person
+alone in the days of courtship seems in the course of years to have
+interfused and penetrated the _home_ which she has created, and which in
+every detail is only an expression of her personality. Her thoughts, her
+plans, her provident care, are everywhere; and the _home_ attracts and
+holds by a thousand ties the heart which before marriage was held by the
+woman alone."
+
+
+
+
+POOR CHLOE.
+
+A TRUE STORY OF MASSACHUSETTS IN THE OLDEN TIME.
+
+    "Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
+      Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
+    Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
+      The short and simple annals of the poor."
+
+    GRAY'S _Elegy_.
+
+
+It was a long, long time ago, before the flame of gas was seen in the
+streets, or the sounds of the railroad were heard in the land; so long
+before, that, had any prophet then living foretold such magical doings,
+he would have been deemed a fit inhabitant of Bedlam. In those primitive
+times, the Widow Lawton was considered a rich woman, though her income
+would not go far toward clothing a city-fashionable in these days. She
+owned a convenient house on the sea-shore, some twelve or fifteen miles
+from Cape Ann; she cultivated ten acres of sandy soil, and had a
+well-tended fish-flake a quarter of a mile long. To own an extensive
+fish-flake was, in that neighborhood, a sure sign of being well to do in
+the world. The process of transmuting it into money was slow and
+circuitous; but those were not fast days. The fish were to be caught,
+and cleaned, and salted, and spread on the flake, and turned day after
+day till thoroughly dry. Then they were packed, and sent in vessels to
+Maryland or Virginia, to be exchanged for flour or tobacco; then the
+flour and tobacco were sold in foreign ports, and silks, muslins, and
+other articles of luxury procured with the money.
+
+The Widow Lawton was a notable, stirring woman, and it was generally
+agreed that no one in that region kept a sharper look-out for the main
+chance. Nobody sent better fish to market; nobody had such good luck in
+hiving bees; nobody could spin more knots of yarn in a day, or weave
+such handsome table-cloths. Great was her store of goodies for the
+winter. The smoke-house was filled with hams, and the ceiling of the
+kitchen was festooned with dried apples and pumpkins. In summer, there
+was a fly-cage suspended from the centre. It was made of bristles, in a
+sort of basket-work, in which were arranged bits of red, yellow, and
+green woollen cloth tipped with honey. Flies, deceived by the fair
+appearance, sipped the honey, and remained glued to the woollen; their
+black bodies serving to set off the bright colors to advantage. In those
+days, such a cage was considered a very genteel ornament for a New
+England kitchen. Rich men sometimes have their coats of arms sketched on
+the floor in colored crayons, to be effaced in one night by the feet of
+dancers. The Widow Lawton ornamented her kitchen floor in a manner as
+ephemeral, though less expensive. Every afternoon it was strewn with
+white sand from the beach, and marked all over with the broom in a
+herring-bone pattern; a very suitable coat of arms for the owner of a
+fish-flake. In the parlor was an ingrained carpet, the admiration and
+envy of the neighborhood. A large glass was surmounted by a gilded eagle
+upholding a chain,--prophetic of the principal employment of the bird of
+freedom for three quarters of a century thereafter. In the Franklin
+fireplace, tall brass andirons, brightly burnished, gleamed through a
+feathery forest of asparagus, interspersed with scarlet berries. The
+high, mahogany case of drawers, grown black with time, and lustrous with
+much waxing, had innumerable great drawers and little drawers, all
+resplendent with brass ornaments, kept as bright as new gold.
+
+The Widow was accustomed to say, "It takes a good deal of elbow-grease
+to keep everything trig and shiny"; and though she was by no means
+sparing of her own, the neat and thriving condition of the household and
+the premises was largely owing to the black Chloe, her slave and
+servant-of-all-work. When Chloe was a babe strapped on her mother's
+shoulders, they were stolen from Africa and packed in a ship. What
+became of her mother she knew not. How the Widow Lawton obtained the
+right to make her work from morning till night, without wages, she never
+inquired. It had always been so, ever since she could remember, and she
+had heard the minister say, again and again, that it was an ordination
+of Providence. She did not know what ordination was, or who Providence
+was; but she had a vague idea that both were up in the sky, and that she
+had nothing to do but submit to them. So year after year she patiently
+cooked meals, and weeded the garden, and cut and dried the apples, and
+scoured the brasses, and sanded the floor in herring-bone pattern, and
+tended the fish-flake till the profitable crop of the sea was ready for
+market. There was a melancholy expression in the eyes of poor, ignorant
+Chloe, which seemed to indicate that there might be in her soul a
+fountain that was deep, though it was sealed by the heavy stone of
+slavery. Carlyle said of a dog that howled at the moon, "He would have
+been a poet, if he could have found a publisher." And Chloe, though she
+never thought about the Infinite, was sometimes impressed with a feeling
+of its mysterious presence, as she walked back and forth tending the
+fish-flake; with the sad song of the sea forever resounding in her ears,
+and a glittering orb of light sailing through the great blue arch over
+her head, and at evening sinking into the waves amid a gorgeous drapery
+of clouds. When the moon looked on the sea, the sealed fountain within
+her soul was strangely stirred. The shadow of rocks on the beach, the
+white sails of fishing-boats glimmering in the distance, the everlasting
+sighing of the sea, made her think of ghosts; though the oppressive
+feeling never shaped itself into words, except in the statement, "I'se
+sort o' feared o' moonlight." So poor Chloe paced her small round upon
+the earth, as unconscious as the ant in her molehill that she was
+whirling round among the stars. The extent of her moral development was,
+that it was her duty to obey her mistress and believe all the minister
+said. She had often been told that was sufficient for her salvation, and
+she supposed it was so.
+
+But the dream that takes possession of young hearts came to Chloe also;
+though in her case it proved merely the shadow of a dream, or a dream of
+a shadow. On board of one of the sloops that carried fish to Baltimore
+was a free colored man, named Jim Saunders. The first time she saw him,
+she thought his large brown eyes were marvellously handsome, and that he
+had a very pleasant way of speaking to her. She always watched for the
+ship in which he came, and was very particular to have on a clean apron
+when she was likely to meet him. She looked at her own eyes in a bit of
+broken looking-glass, and wondered whether they seemed as handsome to
+him as his eyes did to her. In her own opinion she had rather pretty
+eyes, and she was not mistaken; for the Scriptural description, "black,
+but comely," was applicable to her. Jim never told her so, but she had
+somehow received an impression that perhaps he thought so. Sometimes he
+helped her turn the fish on the Flake, and afterward walked with her
+along the beach, as she wended her way homeward. On such occasions there
+was a happy sound in the song of the sea, and her heart seemed to dance
+up in sparkles, like the waves kissed by the sunshine. It was the first
+free, strong emotion she had ever experienced, and it sent a glow
+through the cold dulness of her lonely life.
+
+Jim went away on a long voyage. He said perhaps he should be gone two
+years. The evening before he sailed, he walked with Chloe on the beach;
+and when he bade her good by, he gave her a pretty little pink shell,
+with a look that she never forgot. She gazed long after him, and felt
+flustered when he turned and saw her watching him. As he passed round a
+rock that would conceal him from her sight, he waved his cap toward her,
+and she turned homeward, murmuring to herself, "He didn't say nothin';
+but he looked just as ef he _wanted_ to say suthin'." On that look the
+poor hungry heart fed itself. It was the one thing in the world that was
+her own, that nobody could take from her,--the memory of a look.
+
+Time passed on, and Chloe went her rounds, from house-service to the
+field, and from field-service to the fish-flake. The Widow Lawton had
+strongly impressed upon her mind that the Scripture said, "Six days
+shalt thou work." On the Sabbath no out-door work was carried on, for
+the Widow was a careful observer of established forms; but there were so
+many chores to be done inside the house, that Chloe was on her feet most
+of the day, except when she was dozing in a dark corner of the
+meeting-house gallery, while the Reverend Mr. Gordonmammon explained the
+difference between justification and sanctification. Chloe didn't
+understand it, any more than she did the moaning of the sea; and the
+continuous sound without significance had the same tendency to lull her
+to sleep. But she regarded the minister with great awe. It never entered
+her mind that he belonged to the same species as herself. She supposed
+God had sent him into the world with special instructions to warn
+sinners; and that sinners were sent into the world to listen to him and
+obey him. Her visage lengthened visibly whenever she saw him approaching
+with his cocked hat and ivory-headed cane. He was something far-off and
+mysterious to her imagination, like the man in the moon; and it never
+occurred to her that he might enter as a disturbing element into the
+narrow sphere of her humble affairs. But so it was destined to be.
+
+The minister was one of the nearest neighbors, and not unfrequently had
+occasion to negotiate with the Widow Lawton concerning the curing of
+hams in her smoke-house, or the exchange of pumpkins for dried fish.
+When their business was transacted, the Widow usually asked him to "stop
+and take a dish o' tea"; and he was inclined to accept the invitation,
+for he particularly liked the flavor of her doughnuts and pies. On one
+of these occasions, he said: "I have another matter of business to speak
+with you about, Mrs. Lawton,--a matter nearly connected with my temporal
+interest and convenience. My Tom has taken it into his head that he
+wants a wife, and he is getting more and more uneasy about it. Last
+night he strayed off three miles to see Black Dinah. Now if he gets set
+in that direction, it will make it very inconvenient for me; for it will
+take him a good deal of time to go back and forth, and I may happen to
+want him when he is out of the way. But if you would consent to have him
+marry your Chloe, I could easily summon him if I stood in need of him."
+
+"I can't say it would be altogether convenient," replied Mrs. Lawton.
+"He'd be coming here often, bringing mud or dust into the house, and
+he'd be very likely to take Chloe's mind off from her work."
+
+"There need be no trouble on that score," said Mr. Gordonmammon. "I
+should tell Tom he must never come here except on Saturday evenings, and
+that he must return early on Sunday morning. My good woman has taught
+him to be so careful about his feet, that he will bring no mud or dust
+into your house. His board will cost you nothing for he will come after
+supper and leave before breakfast; and perhaps you may now and then find
+it handy for him to do a chore for you."
+
+Notwithstanding these arguments, the Widow still seemed rather
+disinclined to the arrangement. She feared that some moments of Chloe's
+time might thereby be lost to her.
+
+The minister rose, and said, with much gravity: "When a pastor devotes
+his life to the spiritual welfare of his flock, it would seem reasonable
+that his parishioners should feel some desire to serve his temporal
+interests in return. But since you are unwilling to accommodate me in
+this small matter, I will bid you good evening, Mrs. Lawton."
+
+The solemnity of his manner intimidated the Widow, and she hastened to
+say: "Of course I am always happy to oblige you, Mr. Gordonmammon; and
+since you have set your mind on Tom's having Chloe, I have no objection
+to your speaking to her about it."
+
+The minister at once proceeded to the kitchen. Chloe, who was carefully
+instructed to use up every scrap of time for the benefit of her
+mistress, had seated herself to braid rags for a carpet, as soon as the
+tea things were disposed of. The entrance of the minister into her
+apartment surprised her, for it was very unusual. She rose, made a
+profound courtesy, and remained standing.
+
+"Sit down, Chloe! sit down!" said he, with a condescending wave of his
+hand. "I have come to speak to you about an important matter. You have
+heard me read from the Scriptures that marriage is honorable. You are
+old enough to be married, Chloe, and it is right and proper you should
+be married. My Tom wants a wife, and there is nobody I should like so
+well for him as you. I will go home and send Tom to talk with you about
+it."
+
+Chloe looked very much frightened, and exclaimed: "Please don't, Massa
+Gordonmammon, I don't want to be married."
+
+"But it's right and proper you should be married," rejoined the
+minister; "and Tom wants a wife. It's your duty, Chloe, to do whatever
+your minister and your mistress tell you to do."
+
+That look from Jim came up as a bright vision before poor Chloe, and she
+burst into tears.
+
+"I will come again when your mind is in a state more suited to your
+condition," said the minister. "At present your disposition seems to be
+rebellious. I will leave you to think of what I have said."
+
+But thinking made Chloe feel still more rebellious. Tom was fat and
+stupid, with thick lips, and small, dull-looking eyes. He compared very
+unfavorably with her bright and handsome Jim. She swayed back and forth,
+and groaned. She thought over all the particulars of that last walk on
+the beach, and murmured to herself, "He looked jest as ef he _wanted_ to
+say suthin'."
+
+She thought of Tom and groaned again; and underlying all her confusion
+of thoughts there was a miserable feeling that, if the minister and her
+mistress both said she must marry Tom, there was no help for it.
+
+The next day, she slashed and slammed round in an extraordinary manner.
+She broke a mug and a bowl, and sanded the floor with a general
+conglomeration of scratches, instead of the neat herring-bone on which
+she usually prided herself. It was the only way she had to exercise her
+free-will in its desperate struggle with necessity.
+
+Mrs. Lawton, who never thought of her in any other light than as a
+machine, did not know what to make of these singular proceedings. "What
+upon airth ails you?" exclaimed she. "I do believe the gal's gone
+crazy."
+
+Chloe paused in her harum-scarum sweeping, and said, with a look and
+tone almost defiant, "I don't _want_ to marry Tom."
+
+"But the minister wants you to marry him," replied Mrs. Lawton, "and you
+ought to mind the minister."
+
+Chloe did not dare to dispute that assertion, but she dashed her broom
+round in the sand, in a very rebellious manner.
+
+"Mind what you're about, gal!" exclaimed Mrs. Lawton. "I am not going to
+put up with such tantrums."
+
+Chloe was acquainted with the weight of her mistress's hand, and she
+moved the broom round in more systematic fashion; but there was a
+tempest raging in her soul.
+
+In the course of a few days the minister visited the kitchen again, and
+found Chloe still averse to his proposition. If his spiritual ear had
+been delicate, he would have noticed anguish in her pleading tone, when
+she said: "Please, Massa Gordonmammon, don't say nothin' more 'bout it.
+I don't _want_ to be married." But his spiritual ear was _not_ delicate;
+and her voice sounded to him merely as that of a refractory wench, who
+was behaving in a manner very unseemly and ungrateful in a bondwoman who
+had been taken from the heathen round about, and brought under the
+guidance of Christians. He therefore assumed his sternest look when he
+said: "I supposed you knew it was your duty to obey whatever your
+minister and your mistress tell you. The Bible says, 'He is the minister
+of God unto you.' It also says, 'Servants, obey your masters in all
+things'; and your mistress stands to you in the place of your deceased
+master. How are you going to account to God for your disobedience to his
+commands?"
+
+Chloe, half frightened and half rebellious, replied, "I don't think
+Missis would like it, if you made Missy Katy marry somebody when she
+said she didn't want to be married."
+
+"Chloe, it is very presumptuous in _you_ to talk in that way," rejoined
+the minister. "There is no similarity between _your_ condition and that
+of your young mistress. You are descended from Ham, Chloe; and Ham was
+accursed of God on account of his sin, and his posterity were ordained
+to be servants; and the Bible says, 'Servants, obey your masters in all
+things'; and it says that the minister is a 'minister of God unto you.'
+You were born among heathen and brought to a land of Gospel privileges;
+and you ought to be grateful that you have protectors capable of
+teaching you what to do. Now your mistress wants you to marry Tom, and I
+want you to marry him; and we expect that you will do as we bid you,
+without any more words. I will come again, Chloe; though you ought to
+feel ashamed of yourself for giving your minister so much trouble about
+such a trifling matter."
+
+Receiving no answer, he returned to the sitting-room to talk with Mrs.
+Lawton.
+
+Chloe, like most people who are alone much of their time, had a
+confirmed habit of talking to herself; and her soliloquies were apt to
+be rather promiscuous and disjointed.
+
+"Trifling matter!" said she. "S'pose it's trifling matter to _you_,
+Massa Minister. Ugh! S'pose they'll _make_ me. Don't know nothin' 'bout
+Ham. Never hearn tell o' Ham afore, only ham in the smoke-house. If
+ham's cussed in the Bible, what fur do folks eat it? Hearn Missis read
+in the Bible that the Divil went into the swine. Don't see what fur I
+must marry Tom 'cause Ham was cussed for his sin." She was silent for a
+while, and, being unable to bring any order out of the chaos of her
+thoughts, she turned them toward a more pleasant subject. "He didn't say
+nothin'," murmured she; "but he looked jest as ef he _wanted_ to say
+suthin'." The tender expression of those great brown eyes came before
+her again, and she laid her head down on the table and sobbed.
+
+Her protectors, as they styled themselves, never dreamed that she had a
+heart. In their thoughts she was merely a bondwoman taken from the
+heathen, and consigned to their keeping for their uses.
+
+Tom made another visit to Dinah, and was out of the way when his master
+wanted him. This caused the minister to hasten in making his third visit
+to Chloe. She met him with the same frightened look; and when he asked
+if she had made up her mind to obey her mistress, she timidly and sadly
+repeated, "Massa Minister, I don't _want_ to be married."
+
+"You don't want to do your duty; that's what it is, you disobedient
+wench," said the minister sternly. "I will wrestle with the Lord in
+prayer for you, that your rebellious heart may be taken away, and a
+submissive temper given you, more befitting your servile condition."
+
+He spread forth his hands, covered with very long-fingered, dangling
+black-silk gloves, and lifted his voice in the following petition to the
+Throne of Grace: "O Lord, we pray thee that this rebellious descendant
+of Ham, whom thou hast been pleased to place under our protection, may
+learn that it is her duty to obey thy Holy Word; wherein it is written
+that I am unto her a minister of God, and that she is to obey her
+mistress in all things. May she be brought to a proper sense of her
+duty; and, by submission to her superiors, gain a humble place in thy
+heavenly kingdom, where the curse inherited from her sinful progenitor
+may be removed. This we ask in the name of thy Son, our Saviour Jesus
+Christ, who died that sinners might be redeemed by believing on his
+name; even sinners who, like this disobedient handmaid, were born in a
+land of heathens."
+
+He paused and looked at Chloe, who could do nothing but weep. There were
+many words in the prayer which conveyed to her no meaning; and why she
+was accursed on account of the sin of Ham remained a perplexing puzzle
+to her mind. But she felt as if she must, somehow or other, be doing
+something wicked, or the minister would not come and pray for her in
+such a solemn manner.
+
+Mr. Gordonmammon, having reiterated his rebukes and expostulations
+without receiving any answer but tears, called Mrs. Lawton to his
+assistance. "I have preached to Chloe, and prayed for her," said he;
+"but she remains stubborn."
+
+"I am surprised at you, Chloe!" exclaimed the Widow. "You have been told
+a great many times that it is your duty to obey the minister and to obey
+me; yet you have put him to the trouble of coming three times to talk
+with you. I sha'n't put up with any more such doings. You must make up
+your mind once for all to marry Tom. What have you to say about it, you
+silly wench?"
+
+With a great break-down of sobs, poor Chloe blubbered out, "S'pose I
+_must_."
+
+They left her alone; and O how dreadfully alone she felt, with the
+memory of that treasured look, and the thought that, whatever it was Jim
+wanted to say, he could never say it now!
+
+The next day, soon after dinner, Mrs. Lawton entered the kitchen, and
+said: "Chloe, the minister has brought Tom. Make haste, and do up your
+dishes, and put on a clean apron, and come in to be married."
+
+Chloe's first impulse was to run away; but she had nowhere to run. She
+was recognized as the property of her mistress, and wherever she went
+she would be sure to be sent back. She washed the dishes so slowly that
+Mrs. Lawton came again to say the minister was waiting. Chloe merely
+replied, "Yes, missis." But when the door closed after her, she muttered
+to herself: "_Let_ him wait. I didn't ax him to come here plaguing me
+about the cuss o' Ham. Don't know nothin' 'bout Ham. Never hearn tell
+'bout him afore."
+
+Again her mistress came to summon her, and this time in a somewhat angry
+mood. "Have you got lead tied to your heels, you lazy wench?" said she.
+"How many times must I tell you the minister's waiting?" And she
+emphasized the question with a smart box on the ear.
+
+Like a cowardly soldier driven up to the cannon's mouth by bayonets,
+Chloe put on a clean apron, and went to the sitting-room. When the
+minister told Tom to stand up, she did not even look at him; and he, on
+his part, seemed very much frightened. After a brief form of words had
+been repeated, they were told that they were husband and wife. Then the
+bridegroom was ordered to go to ploughing, and the bride was sent to the
+fish-flake.
+
+Two witnesses were present at this dismal wedding beside Mrs. Lawton.
+One was the Widow's daughter, a girl of seventeen, whom Chloe called
+"Missy Katy." The other was Sukey Larkin, who lived twenty miles off,
+but occasionally came to visit an aunt in the neighborhood. Both the
+young girls were dressed in their best; for they were going to a
+quilting-party, where they expected to meet many beaux. But Catherine
+Lawton's best was very superior to Sukey Larkin's. Her gown was of a
+more wonderful pattern than had been seen in that region. It had been
+brought from London, in exchange for tobacco. Sukey had heard of it, and
+had stopped at the Widow Lawton's to make sure of seeing it, in case
+Catharine did not wear it to the quilting-party. Though she had heard
+much talk about it, it surpassed her expectations, and made her very
+discontented with her own gown of India-cotton, dotted all over with red
+spots, like barley-corns. The fabric of Catharine's dress was fine,
+thick linen, covered with pictures, like a fancifully illustrated volume
+of Natural History. Butterflies of all sizes and colors were fluttering
+over great baskets of flowers, birds were swinging on blossoming vines,
+bees were hovering round their hives, and doves were billing and cooing
+on the roof of their cots. One of the beaux in the neighborhood
+expressed his admiration of it by saying "It beats all natur'." It was
+made in bodice-fashion, with a frill of fine linen nicely crimped; and
+the short, tight sleeves were edged just above the elbow with a similar
+frill.
+
+Sukey had before envied Catharine the possession of a gold necklace; but
+that grew dim before the glory of this London gown. She repeated several
+times that it was the handsomest thing she ever saw, and that it was
+remarkably becoming. But at the quilting-party the bitterness of her
+spirit betrayed itself in such remarks as these: "Folks wonder where the
+Widow Lawton gets money to set herself up so much above other folks. But
+she knows how to drive a bargain. She can skin a flint, and tan the
+hide. She makes a fool of Catharine, dressing her up like a London
+doll. I wonder who she expects is going to marry her, if she brings her
+up with such extravagant notions."
+
+"Mr. Gordonmammon thinks a deal of the Widow Lawton," said the hostess
+of the quilting-party.
+
+"Yes, I know he does," replied Sukey. "If he was a widower, I guess
+they'd be the town's talk. Some folks think he goes there full often
+enough. He brought his Tom there to-day to marry Chloe. I wonder the
+Widow could spare her time to be married,--though, to be sure, it didn't
+take long, for the minister made a mighty short prayer."
+
+Poor Chloe! Thus they dismissed a subject which gave her a life-long
+heart-ache. There was no honey in her bridal moon. She told Tom several
+times she wished he would stay at home; but he was so perseveringly
+good-natured, there was no possibility of quarrelling with him. By
+degrees, she began to find his visits on Saturday evening rather more
+entertaining than talking to herself.
+
+"I wouldn't mind bein' so druv wi' work," said Tom, "ef I could live
+like white folks do when _they_ gits married. I duz more work than them
+as has a cabin o' their own, an' keeps a cow and a pig. But black folks
+don't seem to git no good o' their work."
+
+"Massa Minister says it's 'cause God cussed Ham," replied Chloe. "I
+thought 'twas wicked to cuss, but Massa Minister says Ham was cussed in
+the Bible. Ef I could have some o' the fish I clean and dry, I could
+sen' to Lunnun for a gownd; but Missy Katy she gits all the gownds,
+'cause Ham was cussed in the Bible. I don't know nothin' 'bout it; seems
+drefful queer."
+
+"Massa tole me I mus' work for nothin', 'cause Ham was cussed," rejoined
+Tom. "But it seems like Ham cussed some black folks _worse_ nor others.
+There's Jim Saunders, he's a nigger, too; but he gits his feed and six
+dollars a month."
+
+The words were like a stab to Chloe. She dropped half a needleful of
+stitches in her knitting, and told Tom she wished he'd hold his tongue,
+for he kept up such a jabbering that he made all her stitches run down.
+Tom, thus silenced, soon fell asleep. She glanced at him as he sat
+snoring by her side, and contrasted him with the genteel figure and
+handsome features that had been so indelibly photographed on her memory
+by the sunbeams of love. Tears dropped fast on her knitting-work; but
+when Tom woke up, she spoke kindly, and tried to atone for her
+ill-temper. Time, which gradually reconciles us to all things, produced
+the same effect on her as on others. When the minister asked her, six
+months afterward, how she and Tom were getting along, she replied, "I's
+got used to him."
+
+Yet life seemed more dreary to her than it did before she had that brief
+experience of a free feeling. She never thought of that look without
+longing to know what it was Jim wanted to say. But, as months passed on,
+the tantalizing vision came less frequently, and at the end of a year
+Chloe experienced the second happy emotion of her life. When she looked
+upon her babe, a great fountain of love leaped up in her heart. She was
+never too tired to wait upon little Tommy; and if his cries disturbed
+her deep sleep, she folded the helpless little creature to her bosom,
+with the feeling that he was better than rest. She was accustomed to
+carry him to the fish-flake in a big basket, and lay him on a bed of dry
+leaves, with her apron for an awning. As she paced backwards and
+forwards at her daily toil, it was a perpetual entertainment to see him
+lying there sucking his thumbs. But that was nothing compared with the
+joy of nursing him. When his hunger was partially satisfied, he would
+stop to smile in his mother's face; and Chloe had never seen anything so
+beautiful as that baby smile. As he lay on her lap, laughing and cooing,
+there was something in the expression of his eyes that reminded her of
+the look she could never forget. He had taken the picture from her soul,
+and brought it with him to the outer world; but as he lay there, playing
+with his toes, he knew no more about his mother's heart than did the
+Rev. Mr. Gordonmammon.
+
+One balmy day in June, she was sitting on a rock by the sea-shore,
+nursing her babe, pinching his little plump cheeks, and chirruping to
+make him smile, when she heard the sound of footsteps. She looked up,
+and saw Jim approaching. Her heart jumped into her throat. She felt very
+hot, and then very cold. When Jim came near enough to look upon the
+babe, he stopped an instant, said, in a constrained way, "How d' ye,
+Chloe," then turned and walked quickly away. She gazed after him so
+wistfully that for a few moments the cooing of her babe was disregarded.
+"'Pears like he was affronted," she murmured, at last; and the big tears
+dropped slowly. Little Tommy had a fit that night; for, by the strange
+interfusion of spirit into all forms of matter, the quick revulsion of
+the blood in his mother's heart passed into his nourishment, and
+convulsed his body, as her soul had been convulsed.
+
+But the disturbance passed away, and Chloe's life rolled on in its
+accustomed grooves. Tommy grew strong enough to run by her side when she
+went to the beach. Hour after hour he busied himself with pebbles and
+shells, every now and then bringing her his treasures, and calling out,
+"Pooty!" When he held out a shell, and looked at her with his great
+brown eyes, it stirred up memories; but the pain was gone from them. Her
+heart was no longer famished; it was filled with little Tommy.
+
+This engrossing love was not agreeable to the Widow Lawton. If less was
+accomplished in a day than usual, she would often exclaim, "That brat
+takes up too much of your time." And not unfrequently Chloe was
+compelled to go to the beach and leave Tommy fastened up in the kitchen;
+though this was never done without some outcries on his part, and some
+suppressed mutterings on hers.
+
+On one of these occasions, Sukey Larkin came to make a call. When Mrs.
+Lawton saw her at the gate, she said to her daughter, "How long do you
+suppose she'll be in the house before she asks to see your silk gown?"
+
+Catharine smiled and kept on spinning flax till her visitor entered.
+
+"Good morning, Sukey," said Mrs. Lawton. "I didn't know you was about in
+these parts."
+
+"I come yesterday to do some business for mother," replied Sukey, "and
+I'm going back in an hour. But I thought I would just run in to see you,
+Catharine. Aunt says you're going to Jane Horton's wedding. Are you
+going to wear your new silk?"
+
+"So you've heard about the new silk?" said Mrs. Lawton.
+
+"To be sure I have," rejoined Sukey. "Everybody's talking about it. Do
+show it to me, Catharine; that's a dear."
+
+The dress was brought forth from its envelope of white linen. It was a
+very lustrous silk, changeable between rose-color and apple-green, and
+the delicate hues glanced beautifully in the sunlight.
+
+Sukey was in raptures, and exclaimed, "I don't wonder Mr. Gordonmammon
+said Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like Catharine, when she
+went to the great party at Cape Ann. I do declare, you've got lace at
+the elbows and round the neck!" She heaved a deep sigh when the dress
+was refolded; and after a moment's silence said, "I wish mother had a
+fish-flake, and knew how to manage as well as you do, Mrs. Lawton; then
+she could trade round with the sloops and get me a silk gown."
+
+"O, I dare say you will have one some time or other," rejoined
+Catharine.
+
+"No, I shall never have one, if I live to be a hundred years old,"
+replied Sukey. "I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth, like some
+folks."
+
+"I wonder what Tommy's doing in the kitchen," said Mrs. Lawton. "He's
+generally about some mischief when he's so still. I declare I'd as lief
+have a colt in the house as that little nigger." She looked into the
+kitchen and added, "He's sound asleep on the floor."
+
+"If he's so much trouble to you," said Sukey, "I wish you'd give him to
+me. I always thought I should like to have a nigger."
+
+"You may have him if you want him," replied Mrs. Lawton. "He's nothing
+but a pester, and he takes up a quarter part of Chloe's time. But you'd
+better take him before she gets home, for she'll make a fuss; and if he
+wakes up he'll cry."
+
+Sukey had a plan in her mind, suggested by the sight of the silk gown,
+and she was eager to get possession of little Tommy. She said her horse
+was tackled to the wagon, all ready to start for home, and there was
+some straw in the bottom of it. The vehicle was soon at the widow's
+door, and by careful management the child was placed on the straw
+without waking; though Catharine said she heard him cry before the wagon
+was out of sight.
+
+Chloe hurried through her work on the beach, and came home at a quick
+pace; for she was longing to see her darling, and she had some
+misgivings as to how he was treated in her absence. She opened the
+kitchen-door with the expectation that Tommy would spring toward her, as
+usual, exclaiming, "Mammy! mammy!" The disappointment gave her a chill,
+and she ran out to call him. When no little voice responded to the call,
+she went to the sitting-room and said, "Missis, have you seen Tommy?"
+
+"He a'n't been here," replied Mrs. Lawton, evasively. "Can't you find
+him?"
+
+The Widow was a regular communicant of the Reverend Mr. Gordonmammon's
+church; but she was so blinded by slavery that it never occurred to her
+there was any sin in thus trifling with a mother's feelings. When Chloe
+had hurried out of the room, she said to her daughter, in a tone of
+indifference, "One good thing will come of giving Tommy to Sukey
+Larkin,--she won't come spying about here for one spell; she'll be
+afraid to face Chloe."
+
+In fact, she herself soon found it rather unpleasant to face Chloe; for
+the bereaved mother grew so wild with anxiety, that the hardest heart
+could not remain untouched. "O missis! why didn't you let me take Tommy
+with me" exclaimed she. "He played with hisself, and wasn't no care to
+me. I s'pose he was lonesome, and runned down to the beach to look for
+mammy; an' he's got drownded." With that thought she rushed to the door
+to go and hunt for him on the sea-shore.
+
+Her mistress held her back with a strong arm, and, finding it impossible
+to pacify her, she at last said, "Sukey Larkin wanted Tommy, and I told
+her she might have him; she'll take good care of him."
+
+The unhappy bondwoman gazed at her with an expression of intense misery,
+which she was never afterward able to forget. "O missis! how _could_ you
+do it?" she exclaimed; and, sinking upon a chair, she covered her face
+with her apron.
+
+"Sukey will be good to him," said Mrs. Lawton, in tones more gentle than
+usual.
+
+"He'll cry for his mammy," sobbed Chloe. "O missis! 't was cruel to take
+away my little Tommy."
+
+The Widow crept noiselessly out of the room, and left her to wrestle
+with her grief as she could. She found the minister in the sitting-room,
+and told him she had given away little Tommy, but that she wouldn't have
+done it if she had thought Chloe would be so wild about it; for she
+doubted whether she should get any work out of her for a week to come.
+
+"She'll get over it soon," said the minister. "My cow lowed dismally,
+and wouldn't eat, when I sold her calf; but she soon got used to doing
+without it."
+
+It did not occur to him as included within his pastoral duties to pray
+with the stricken slave; and poor Chloe, oppressed with an unutterable
+sense of loneliness, retired to her straw pallet, and late in the night
+sobbed herself to sleep. She woke with a weight on her heart, as if
+there was somebody dead in the house; and quickly there rushed upon her
+the remembrance that her darling was gone. A ragged gown of his was
+hanging on a nail. How she kissed it, and cried over it! Then she took
+Jim's pink shell from her box, folded them carefully together, and laid
+them away. No mortal but herself knew what memories were wrapped up with
+them. She went through the usual routine of housework like a laborer who
+drags after him a ball and chain. At the appointed time, she wandered
+forth to the beach with no little voice to chirp music to her as she
+went. When she saw prints of Tommy's little feet in the sand, she sat
+down on a stone, and covered her face with her apron. For a long time
+her sobs and groans mingled with the moan of the sea. She raised her
+head, and looked inland, in the direction where she supposed Sukey
+Larkin lived. She revolved in her mind the possibility of going there.
+But stages were almost unknown in those days; and no wagoner would take
+her, without consent of her mistress, if she pleaded ever so hard. She
+thought of running away at midnight; but Mrs. Lawton would be sure to
+overtake her, and bring her back. Thoughts of what her mistress might do
+in such a case reminded her that she was neglecting the fish. Like a
+machine wound up, she began to go her customary rounds; but she had lost
+so much time that it was late before her task was completed. Then she
+wandered away to a little heap of moss and pebbles, that Tommy had built
+the last time they were together on the beach. On a wet rock near by she
+sat down and cried. Black clouds gathered over her head, a cold
+northeast wind blew upon her, and the spray sprinkled her naked feet.
+Still she sat there and cried. Louder and louder whistled the wind;
+wilder and wilder grew the moan of the sea. She heard the uproar without
+caring for it. She wished the big waves would come and wash her away.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Lawton noticed the gathering darkness, and looked out
+anxiously for the return of her servant. "What upon airth can have
+become of her?" said she. "She oughter been home an hour ago."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if she had set out to go to Sukey Larkin's," replied
+Catharine.
+
+The Widow had thought of that; she had also thought of the sea; for she
+had an uneasy remembrance of that look of utter misery when Chloe said,
+"How _could_ you do it?"
+
+It was Saturday evening; and, according to custom, Tom came to see his
+wife, all unconscious of the affliction that had befallen them. Mrs.
+Lawton went out to meet him, and said: "Tom, I wish you would go right
+down to the beach, and see what has become of Chloe. She a'n't come home
+yet, and I'm afraid something has happened." She returned to the house,
+thinking to herself, "If the wench is drowned, where shall I get such
+another?"
+
+Tom found Chloe still sitting on the wet stone. When he spoke to her,
+she started, as if from sleep; and her first exclamation was, "O Tom!
+missis has guv away little Tommy."
+
+It was some time before he could understand what had happened; but when
+he realized that his child was gone, his strong frame shook with sobs.
+Little Tommy was the only creature on earth that loved him,--his only
+treasure, his only plaything. "It's cruel hard," said he.
+
+"O, how little Tommy is crying for mammy!" sobbed Chloe; "and I can't
+git to him nohow. Oh! oh!"
+
+Tom tried to comfort her, as well as he knew how. Among other things, he
+suggested running away.
+
+"I've been thinking 'bout that," rejoined Chloe; "but there a'n't
+nowhere to run to. The white folks has got all the money, and all the
+hosses, and all the law."
+
+"O, what a cuss that Ham was!" groaned Tom.
+
+"Don't know nothin' 'bout that ole cuss," replied Chloe. "Missis was
+cruel. What makes God let white folks cruellize black folks so?"
+
+The question was altogether too large for Tom, or anybody else, to
+answer. After a moment's silence, he said, "P'r'aps Sukey Larkin will
+come sometimes, and bring little Tommy to see us."
+
+"She shouldn't have him ag'in!" exclaimed Chloe. "I'd scratch her eyes
+out, if she tried to carry him off ag'in."
+
+The sudden anger roused her from her lethargy; and she rose immediately
+when Tom reminded her that it was late, and they ought to be going home.
+Home! how the word seemed to mock her desolation!
+
+Mrs. Lawton was so glad to see her faithful servant alive, and was so
+averse to receiving another accusing look from those sad eyes, that she
+forbore to reprimand her for her unwonted tardiness. Chloe spoke no word
+of explanation, but, after arranging a few things, retired silently to
+her pallet. She had been accustomed to exercise out of doors in all
+weathers, but was unused to sitting still in the wet and cold. She was
+seized with strong shiverings in the night, and continued feverish for
+some days. Her mistress nursed her, as she would a valuable horse or
+cow.
+
+In a short time she resumed her customary tasks, but coughed incessantly
+and moved about slowly and listlessly. Her mistress, annoyed not to have
+the work going on faster, said to her reproachfully one day, "You got
+this cold by staying out so late that night."
+
+"Yes, missis," replied Chloe, very sadly. "I shouldn't have stayed out
+ef little Tommy had been with me."
+
+"What a fuss you make about that little nigger!" exclaimed Mrs. Lawton.
+"Tommy was my property, and I'd a right to give him away."
+
+"'Twas cruel of you, missis," rejoined Chloe. "Tommy was all the comfort
+I had; an' I's worked hard for you, missis, many a year."
+
+Mrs. Lawton, unaccustomed to any remonstrance from her bondwoman, seized
+a switch and shook it threateningly.
+
+But Catherine said, in a low tone: "Don't, mother! She feels bad about
+little Tommy."
+
+Chloe overheard the words of pity; and the first time she was alone with
+her young mistress, she said, "Please, Missy Katy, write to Sukey Larkin
+and ask her to bring little Tommy."
+
+Catharine promised she would; but her mother objected to it, as making
+unnecessary trouble, and the promise was not fulfilled.
+
+Week after week Chloe looked out upon the road, in hopes of seeing Sukey
+Larkin's wagon. But Sukey had no thoughts of coming to encounter her
+entreaties. She was feeding and fatting Tommy, with a view to selling
+him and buying a silk gown with the money. The little boy cried and
+moped for some days; but, after the manner of children, he soon became
+reconciled to his new situation. He ran about in the fields, and
+gradually forgot the sea, the moss, the pebbles, and mammy's lullaby.
+
+One day Mrs. Lawton said to her daughter, "How that dreadful cough hangs
+on! I begin to be afraid Chloe's going into a consumption. I hope not;
+for I don't know where I shall find such another wench to work."
+
+She mentioned her fears to the minister, and he said, "When she gets
+over worrying about Tommy, she'll pick up her crumbs."
+
+But the only change that came over Chloe was increasing listlessness of
+mind and fatigue of body. At last, she was unable to rise from her
+pallet. She lay there looking at her thin hands, and talking to herself,
+according to her old habit. The words Mrs. Lawton most frequently heard
+were, "It was cruel of missis to take away little Tommy."
+Notwithstanding all the clerical arguments she had heard to prove the
+righteousness of slavery, the moan of the dying mother made her feel
+uncomfortable. Sometimes the mind of the invalid wandered, and she would
+hug Tommy's little gown, pat it lovingly, and sing to it the lullaby her
+baby loved. Sometimes she murmured, "He looked jest as ef he _wanted_ to
+say suthin'"; and sometimes a smiled lighted up her face, as if she saw
+some pleasant vision.
+
+The minister came to pray with her, and to talk what he called religion.
+But it sounded to poor Chloe more than ever like the murmuring of the
+sea. She turned her face away from him and said nothing. With what
+little mental strength she had, she rejected the idea that the curse of
+Ham, whoever he might be, justified the treatment she had received. She
+had no idea what a heathen was, but she concluded it meant something
+bad; and she had often told Tom she didn't like to have the minister
+talk that way, for it sounded like calling her names.
+
+At last the weary one passed away from a world where the doings had all
+been dark and incomprehensible to her. But her soul was like that of a
+little child; and Jesus has said, "Of such are the kingdom of heaven."
+They found under her pillow little Tommy's ragged gown, and a pink
+shell. Why the shell was there no one could conjecture. The pine box
+containing her remains was placed across the foot of Mr. Lawton's grave,
+at whose side his widow would repose when her hour should come. It was
+the custom to place slaves thus at the feet of their masters, even in
+the graveyard.
+
+The Reverend Mr. Gordonmammon concluded to buy a young black woman, that
+Tom might not be again induced to stray off after Dinah; and Tom
+passively yielded to the second arrangement, as he had to the first.
+
+In two years after Sukey Larkin took possession of little Tommy, she
+sent him to Virginia to be exchanged for tobacco; with the proceeds of
+which she bought a gold necklace, and a flashy silk dress, changeable
+between grass-green and orange; and great was her satisfaction to
+astonish Catharine Lawton with her splendor the next time they met at a
+party.
+
+I never heard that poor Chloe's ghost haunted either them or the Widow
+Lawton. Wherever slavery exerts its baneful influence, it produces the
+same results,--searing the conscience and blinding the understanding to
+the most obvious distinctions between right and wrong.
+
+There is no record of little Tommy's fate. He disappeared among "the
+dark, sad millions," who knew not father or mother, and had no portion
+in wife or child.
+
+
+
+
+SNOW.
+
+
+    The Summer comes, and the Summer goes.
+      Wild-flowers are fringing the dusty lanes,
+      The sparrows go darting through fragrant rains,
+    And, all of a sudden,--it snows!
+
+    Dear Heart! our lives so happily flow,
+      So lightly we heed the flying hours,
+      We only know Winter is gone--by the flowers,
+    We only know Winter is come--by the Snow!
+
+
+
+
+GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Griffith, with an effort he had not the skill to hide, stammered out,
+"Mistress Kate, I do wish you joy." Then, with sudden and touching
+earnestness, "Never did good fortune light on one so worthy of it."
+
+"Thank you, Griffith," replied Kate, softly. (She had called him "Mr.
+Gaunt" in public till now.) "But money and lands do not always bring
+content. I think I was happier a minute ago than I feel now," said she,
+quietly.
+
+The blood rushed into Griffith's face at this; for a minute ago might
+mean when he and she were talking almost like lovers about to wed. He
+was so overcome by this, he turned on his heel, and retreated hastily to
+hide his emotion, and regain, if possible, composure to play his part of
+host in the house that was his no longer.
+
+Kate herself soon after retired, nominally to make her toilet before
+dinner; but really to escape the public and think it all over.
+
+The news of her advancement had spread like wildfire; she was waylaid at
+the very door by the housekeeper, who insisted on showing her her house.
+
+"Nay, never mind the house," said Kate; "just show me one room where I
+can wash my face and do my hair."
+
+Mrs. Hill conducted her to the best bedroom; it was lined with tapestry,
+and all the colors flown; the curtains were a deadish yellow.
+
+"Lud! here's a colored room to show _me_ into," said the blonde Kate;
+"and a black grate, too. Why not take me out o' doors and bid me wash in
+the snow?"
+
+"Alack, mistress," said the woman, feeling very uneasy, "we had no
+orders from Mr. Gaunt to light fires _up_ stairs."
+
+"O, if you wait for gentlemen's orders to make your house fit to live
+in! You knew there were a dozen ladies coming, yet you were not woman
+enough to light them fires. Come, take me to your own bedroom."
+
+The woman turned red. "Mine is but a small room, my lady," she
+stammered.
+
+"But there's a fire in it," said Kate, spitefully. "You servants don't
+wait for gentlemen's orders, to take care of yourselves."
+
+Mrs. Hill said to herself, "I'm to leave; that's flat." However, she led
+the way down a passage, and opened the door of a pleasant little room in
+a square turret; a large bay window occupied one whole side of the room,
+and made it inexpressibly bright and cheerful, though rather hot and
+stuffy; a clear coal fire burned in the grate.
+
+"Ah!" said Kate, "how nice! Please open those little windows, every one.
+I suppose you have sworn never to let wholesome air into a room. Thank
+you: now go and forget every cross word I have said to you,--I am out of
+sorts, and nervous, and irritable. There, run away, my good soul, and
+light fires in every room; and don't you let a creature come near me, or
+you and I shall quarrel downright."
+
+Mrs. Hill beat a hasty retreat. Kate locked the door and threw herself
+backwards on the bed, with such a weary recklessness and _abandon_ as if
+she was throwing herself into the sea, to end all her trouble,--and
+burst out crying.
+
+It was one thing to refuse to marry her old sweetheart; it was another
+to take his property and reduce him to poverty. But here was she doing
+both, and going to be persuaded to marry Neville, and swell his wealth
+with the very possessions she had taken from Griffith; and him wounded
+into the bargain for love of her. It was really too cruel. It was an
+accumulation of different cruelties. Her bosom revolted; she was
+agitated, perplexed, irritated, unhappy, and all in a tumult; and
+although she had but one fit of crying,--to the naked eye,--yet a
+person of her own sex would have seen that at one moment she was crying
+from agitated nerves, at another from worry, and at the next from pity,
+and then from grief.
+
+In short, she had a good long, hearty, multiform cry; and it relieved
+her swelling heart, so far that she felt able to go down now, and hide
+her feelings, one and all, from friend and foe; to do which was
+unfortunately a part of her nature.
+
+She rose and plunged her face into cold water, and then smoothed her
+hair.
+
+Now, as she stood at the glass, two familiar voices came in through the
+open window, and arrested her attention directly. It was her father
+conversing with Griffith Gaunt. Kate pricked up her quick ears and
+listened, with her back hair in her hand. She caught the substance of
+their talk, only now and then she missed a word or two.
+
+Mr. Peyton was speaking rather kindly to Griffith, and telling him he
+was as sorry for his disappointment as any father could be whose
+daughter had just come into a fortune. But then he went on and rather
+spoiled this by asking Griffith bluntly what on earth had ever made him
+think Mr. Charlton intended to leave him Bolton and Hernshaw.
+
+Griffith replied, with manifest agitation, that Mr. Charlton had
+repeatedly told him he was to be his heir. "Not," said Griffith, "that
+he meant to wrong Mistress Kate, neither: poor old man, he always
+thought she and I should be one."
+
+"Ah! well," said Squire Peyton, coolly, "there is an end of all that
+now."
+
+At this observation Kate glided to the window, and laid her cheek on the
+sill to listen more closely.
+
+But Griffith made no reply.
+
+Mr. Peyton seemed dissatisfied at his silence, and being a person who,
+notwithstanding a certain superficial good-nature, saw his own side of a
+question very big, and his neighbor's very little, he was harder than
+perhaps he intended to be.
+
+"Why, Master Gaunt," said he, "surely you would not follow my daughter
+now,--to feed upon a woman's bread. Come, be a man; and, if you are the
+girl's friend, don't stand in her light. You know she can wed your
+betters, and clap Bolton Hall on to Neville's Court. No doubt it is a
+disappointment to _you_: but what can't be cured must be endured; pluck
+up a bit of courage, and turn your heart another way; and then I shall
+always be a good friend to you, and my doors open to you come when you
+will."
+
+Griffith made no reply. Kate strained her ears, but could not hear a
+syllable, A tremor ran through her. She was in distance farther from
+Griffith than her father was; but superior intelligence provided her
+with a bridge from her window to her old servant's mind. And now she
+felt that this great silence was the silence of despair.
+
+But the Squire pressed him for a definite answer, and finally insisted
+on one. "Come, don't be so sulky," said he; "I'm her father: give me an
+answer, ay or no."
+
+Then Kate heard a violent sigh, and out rushed a torrent of words that
+each seemed tinged with blood from the unfortunate speaker's heart. "Old
+man," he almost shrieked, "what did I ever do to you, that you torment
+me so? Sure you were born without bowels. Beggared but an hour agone,
+and now you must come and tell me I have lost _her_ by losing house and
+lands! D'ye think I need to be _told_ it? She was too far above me
+before, and now she is gone quite out of my reach. But why come and
+fling it in my face? Can't you give a poor, undone man one hour to draw
+his breath in trouble? And when you know I have got to play the host
+this bitter day, and smile, and smirk, and make you all merry, with my
+heart breaking! O Christ, look down and pity me, for men are made of
+stone! Well, then, no; I will not, I cannot say the word to give her up.
+_She_ will discharge _me_, and then I'll fly the country and never
+trouble you more. And to think that one little hour ago she was so kind,
+and I was so happy! Ah, sir, if you were born of a woman, have a little
+pity, and don't speak to me of her at all, one way or other. What are
+you afraid of? I am a gentleman and a man, though sore my trouble: I
+shall not run after the lady of Bolton Hall. Why, sir, I have ordered
+the servants to set her chair in the middle of the table, where I shall
+not be able to speak to her, or even see her. Indeed I dare not look at
+her: for I must be merry. Merry! My arm it worries me, my head it aches,
+my heart is sick to death. Man! man! show me some little grace, and do
+not torture me more than flesh and blood can bear."
+
+"You are mad, young sir," said the Squire, sternly, "and want locking up
+on bread and water for a month."
+
+"I _am_ almost mad," said Griffith, humbly. "But if you would only let
+me alone, and not tear my heart out of my body, I can hide my agony from
+the whole pack of ye, and go through my part like a man. I wish I was
+lying where I laid my only friend this afternoon."
+
+"O, I don't want to speak to you," said Peyton, angrily; "and, by the
+same token, don't you speak to my daughter no more."
+
+"Well, sir, if she speaks to me, I shall be sure to speak to her,
+without asking your leave or any man's. But I will not force myself upon
+the lady of Bolton Hall; don't you think it. Only for God's sake let me
+alone. I want to be by myself." And with this he hurried away, unable to
+bear it any more.
+
+Peyton gave a hostile and contemptuous snort, and also turned on his
+heel, and went off in the opposite direction.
+
+The effect of this dialogue on the listener was not to melt, but
+exasperate her. Perhaps she had just cried away her stock of tenderness.
+At any rate, she rose from her ambush a very basilisk; her eyes, usually
+so languid, flashed fire, and her forehead was red with indignation. She
+bit her lip, and clenched her hands, and her little foot beat the ground
+swiftly.
+
+She was still in this state, when a timid tap came to the door, and Mrs.
+Hill asked her pardon, but dinner was ready, and the ladies and
+gentlemen all a waiting for her to sit down.
+
+This reminded Kate she was the mistress of the house. She answered
+civilly she would be down immediately. She then took a last look in the
+glass; and her own face startled her.
+
+"No," she thought, "they shall none of them know nor guess what I feel."
+And she stood before the glass and deliberately extracted all emotion
+from her countenance, and by way of preparation screwed on a spiteful
+smile.
+
+When she had got her face to her mind, she went down stairs.
+
+The gentlemen awaited her with impatience, the ladies with curiosity, to
+see how she would comport herself in her new situation. She entered,
+made a formal courtesy, and was conducted to her seat by Mr. Gaunt. He
+placed her in the middle of the table. "I play the host for this one
+day," said he, with some dignity; and took the bottom of the table
+himself.
+
+Mr. Hammersley was to have sat on Kate's left, but the sly Neville
+persuaded him to change, and so got next to his inamorata; opposite to
+her sat her father, Major Rickards, and others unknown to fame.
+
+Neville was in high spirits. He had the good taste to try and hide his
+satisfaction at the fatal blow his rival had received, and he entirely
+avoided the topic; but Kate saw at once, by his demure complacency, he
+was delighted at the turn things had taken, and he gained nothing by it:
+he found her a changed girl. Cold monosyllables were all he could
+extract from her. He returned to the charge a hundred times, with
+indomitable gallantry, but it was no use. Cold, haughty, sullen!
+
+Her other neighbor fared little better; and in short the lady of the
+house made a vile impression. She was an iceberg,--a beautiful
+kill-joy,--a wet blanket of charming texture.
+
+And presently Nature began to co-operate with her: long before sunset it
+grew prodigiously dark; and the cause was soon revealed by a fall of
+snow in flakes as large as a biscuit. A shiver ran through the people;
+and old Peyton blurted out, "I shall not go home to-night." Then he
+bawled across the table to his daughter: "_You_ are at home. We will
+stay and take possession."
+
+"O papa!" said Kate, reddening with disgust.
+
+But if dulness reigned around the lady of the house, it was not so
+everywhere. Loud bursts of merriment were heard at the bottom of the
+table. Kate glanced that way in some surprise, and found it was Griffith
+making the company merry,--Griffith of all people.
+
+The laughter broke out at short intervals, and by and by became
+uproarious and constant. At last she looked at Neville inquiringly.
+
+"Our worthy host is setting us an example of conviviality," said he. "He
+is getting drunk."
+
+"O, I hope not," said Kate. "Has he no friend to tell him not to make a
+fool of himself?"
+
+"You take a great interest in him," said Neville, bitterly.
+
+"Of course I do. Pray, do you desert your friends when ill luck falls on
+them?"
+
+"Nay, Mistress Kate, I hope not."
+
+"You only triumph over the misfortunes of your enemies, eh?" said the
+stinging beauty.
+
+"Not even that. And as for Mr. Gaunt, I am not his enemy."
+
+"O no, of course not. You are his best friend. Witness his arm at this
+moment."
+
+"I am his rival, but not his enemy. I'll give you a proof." Then he
+lowered his voice, and said in her ear: "You are grieved at his losing
+Bolton; and, as you are very generous and noble-minded, you are all the
+more grieved because his loss is your gain." (Kate blushed at this
+shrewd hit.) Neville went on: "You don't like him well enough to marry
+him; and since you cannot make him happy, it hurts your good heart to
+make him poor."
+
+"It is you for reading a lady's heart," said Kate, ironically.
+
+George proceeded steadily. "I'll show you an easy way out of this
+dilemma."
+
+"Thank you," said Kate, rather insolently.
+
+"Give Mr. Gaunt Bolton and Hernshaw, and give me--your hand."
+
+Kate turned and looked at him with surprise; she saw by his eye it was
+no jest. For all that, she affected to take it as one. "That would be
+long and short division," said she; but her voice faltered in saying it.
+
+"So it would," replied George, coolly; "for Bolton and Hernshaw both are
+not worth one finger of that hand I ask of you. But the value of things
+lies in the mind that weighs 'em. Mr. Gaunt, you see, values Bolton and
+Hernshaw very highly; why, he is in despair at losing them. Look at him;
+he is getting rid of his reason before your very eyes, to drown his
+disappointment."
+
+"Ah! oh! that is it, is it?" And, strange to say, she looked rather
+relieved.
+
+"That is it, believe me: it is a way we men have. But, as I was saying,
+_I_ don't care one straw for Bolton and Hernshaw. It is _you_ I
+love,--not your land nor your house, but your sweet self; so give me
+that, and let the lawyers make over this famous house and lands to Mr.
+Gaunt. His antagonist I have been in the field, and his rival I am and
+must be, but not his enemy, you see, and not his ill-wisher."
+
+Kate was softened a little. "This is all mighty romantic," said she,
+"and very like a _preux chevalier_, as you are; but you know very well
+he would fling land and house in your face, if you offered them him on
+these terms."
+
+"Ay, in my face, if I offered them; but not in yours, if you."
+
+"I am sure he would, all the same."
+
+"Try him."
+
+"What is the use?"
+
+"Try him."
+
+Kate showed symptoms of uneasiness. "Well, I will," said she, stoutly.
+"No, that I will not. You begin by bribing me; and then you would set me
+to bribe him."
+
+"It is the only way to make two honest men happy."
+
+"If I thought that--"
+
+"You know it. Try him."
+
+"And suppose he says nay?"
+
+"Then we shall be no worse than we are."
+
+"And suppose he says ay?"
+
+"Then he will wed Bolton Hall and Hernshaw, and the pearl of England
+will wed me."
+
+"I have a great mind to take you at your word," said Kate; "but no; it
+is really too indelicate."
+
+George Neville fixed his eyes on her. "Are you not deceiving yourself?"
+said he. "Do you not like Mr. Gaunt better than you think? I begin to
+fear you dare not put him to this test: you fear his love would not
+stand it?"
+
+Kate colored high, and tossed her head proudly. "How shrewd you
+gentlemen are!" she said. "Much you know of a lady's heart. Now the
+truth is, I don't know what might not happen were I to do what you bid
+me. Nay, I'm wiser than you would have me; and I'll pity Mr. Gaunt at a
+safe distance, if you please, sir."
+
+Neville bowed gravely. He felt sure this was a plausible evasion, and
+that she really was afraid to apply his test to his rival's love.
+
+So now, for the first time, he became silent and reserved by her side.
+The change was noticed by Father Francis, and he fixed a grave,
+remonstrating glance on Kate. She received it, understood it, affected
+not to notice it, and acted upon it.
+
+Drive a donkey too hard, it kicks.
+
+Drive a man too hard, it hits.
+
+Drive a woman too hard, it cajoles.
+
+Now amongst them they had driven Kate Peyton too hard; so she secretly
+formed a bold resolution; and, this done, her whole manner changed for
+the better. She turned to Neville, and flattered and fascinated him. The
+most feline of her sex could scarcely equal her _calinerie_ on this
+occasion. But she did not confine her fascination to him. She broke out,
+_pro bono publico_, like the sun in April, with quips and cranks and
+dimpled smiles, and made everybody near her quite forget her late
+hauteur and coldness, and bask in this sunny, sweet hostess. When the
+charm was at its height, the siren cast a seeming merry glance at
+Griffith, and said to a lady opposite, "Methinks some of the gentlemen
+will be glad to be rid of us," and so carried the ladies off to the
+drawing-room.
+
+There her first act was to dismiss her smiles without ceremony; and her
+second was to sit down and write four lines to the gentleman at the head
+of the dining-table.
+
+And he was as drunk as a fiddler.
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Griffith's friends laughed heartily with him while he was getting drunk;
+and when he had got drunk, they laughed still louder, only at him.
+
+They "knocked him down" for a song; and he sang a rather Anacreontic one
+very melodiously, and so loud that certain of the servants, listening
+outside, derived great delectation from it; and Neville applauded
+ironically.
+
+Soon after, they "knocked him down" for a story; and as it requires more
+brains to tell a story than to sing a song, the poor butt made an ass of
+himself. He maundered and wandered, and stopped, and went on, and lost
+one thread and took up another, and got into a perfect maze. And while
+he was thus entangled, a servant came in and brought him a note, and put
+it in his hand. The unhappy narrator received it with a sapient nod, but
+was too polite, or else too stupid, to open it, so closed his fingers on
+it, and went maundering on till his story trickled into the sand of the
+desert, and somehow ceased; for it could not be said to end, being a
+thing without head or tail.
+
+He sat down amidst derisive cheers. About five minutes afterwards, in
+some intermittent flash of reason, he found he had got hold of
+something. He opened his hand, and lo, a note! On this he chuckled
+unreasonably, and distributed sage, cunning winks around, as if he, by
+special ingenuity, had caught a nightingale, or the like; then, with
+sudden hauteur and gravity, proceeded to examine his prize.
+
+But he knew the handwriting at once; and it gave him a galvanic shock
+that half sobered him for the moment.
+
+He opened the note, and spelled it with great difficulty. It was
+beautifully written, in long, clear letters; but then those letters kept
+dancing so!
+
+     "I much desire to speak to you before 'tis too late, but can
+     think of no way save one. I lie in the turreted room: come
+     under my window at nine of the clock; and prithee come sober,
+     if you respect yourself, or
+
+     "KATE."
+
+Griffith put the note in his pocket, and tried to think; but he could
+not think to much purpose. Then this made him suspect he was drunk. Then
+he tried to be sober; but he found he could not. He sat in a sort of
+stupid agony, with Love and Drink battling for his brain. It was piteous
+to see the poor fool's struggles to regain the reason he had so madly
+parted with. He could not do it; and when he found that, he took up a
+finger-glass, and gravely poured the contents upon his head.
+
+At this there was a burst of laughter.
+
+This irritated Mr. Gaunt; and, with that rapid change of sentiments
+which marks the sober savage and the drunken European, he offered to
+fight a gentleman he had been hitherto holding up to the company as his
+best friend. But his best friend (a very distant acquaintance) was by
+this time as tipsy as himself, and offered a piteous disclaimer, mingled
+with tears; and these maudlin drops so affected Griffith that he flung
+his one available arm round his best friend's head, and wept in turn;
+and down went both their lachrymose, empty noddles on the table.
+Griffith's remained there; but his best friend extricated himself, and,
+shaking his skull, said, dolefully, "He is very drunk." This notable
+discovery, coming from such a quarter, caused considerable merriment.
+
+"Let him alone," said an old toper; and Griffith remained a good hour
+with his head on the table. Meantime the other gentlemen soon put it out
+of their power to ridicule him on the score of intoxication.
+
+Griffith, keeping quiet, got a little better, and suddenly started up
+with a notion he was to go to Kate this very moment. He muttered an
+excuse, and staggered to a glass door that led to the lawn. He opened
+this door, and rushed out into the open air. He thought it would set him
+all right; but, instead of that, it made him so much worse that
+presently his legs came to a misunderstanding, and he measured his
+length on the ground, and could not get up again, but kept slipping
+down.
+
+Upon this he groaned and lay quiet.
+
+Now there was a foot of snow on the ground; and it melted about
+Griffith's hot temples and flushed face, and mightily refreshed and
+revived him.
+
+He sat up and kissed Kate's letter, and Love began to get the upper hand
+of Liquor a little.
+
+Finally he got up and half strutted, half staggered, to the turret, and
+stood under Kate's window.
+
+The turret was covered with luxuriant ivy, and that ivy with snow. So
+the glass of the window was set in a massive frame of winter; but a
+bright fire burned inside the room, and this set the panes all aflame.
+It was cheery and glorious to see the window glow like a sheet of
+transparent fire in its deep frame of snow; but Griffith could not
+appreciate all that. He stood there a sorrowful man. The wine he had
+taken to drown his despair had lost its stimulating effect, and had
+given him a heavy head, but left him his sick heart.
+
+He stood and puzzled his drowsy faculties why Kate had sent for him.
+Was it to bid him good by forever, or to lessen his misery by telling
+him she would not marry another? He soon gave up cudgelling his
+enfeebled brains. Kate was a superior being to him, and often said
+things, and did things, that surprised him. She had sent for him, and
+that was enough. He should see her and speak to her once more, at all
+events. He stood, alternately nodding and looking up at her glowing
+room, and longing for its owner to appear. But as Bacchus had inspired
+him to mistake eight o'clock for nine, and as she was not a votary of
+Bacchus, she did not appear; and he stood there till he began to shiver.
+
+The shadow of a female passed along the wall; and Griffith gave a great
+start. Then he heard the fire poked. Soon after he saw the shadow again;
+but it had a large servant's cap on: so his heart had beaten high for
+Mary or Susan. He hung his head disappointed; and, holding on by the
+ivy, fell a nodding again.
+
+By and by one of the little casements was opened softly. He looked up,
+and there was the right face peering out.
+
+O, what a picture she was in the moonlight and the firelight! They both
+fought for that fair head, and each got a share of it: the full moon's
+silvery beams shone on her rose-like cheeks and lilified them a shade,
+and lit her great gray eyes and made them gleam astoundingly; but the
+ruby firelight rushed at her from behind, and flowed over her golden
+hair, and reddened and glorified it till it seemed more than mortal. And
+all this in a very picture-frame of snow.
+
+Imagine, then, how sweet and glorious she glowed on him who loved her,
+and who looked at her perhaps for the last time.
+
+The sight did wonders to clear his head; he stood open-mouthed, with his
+heart beating. She looked him all over a moment. "Ah!" said she. Then,
+quietly, "I am so glad you are come." Then, kindly and regretfully, "How
+pale you look! you are unhappy."
+
+This greeting, so gentle and kind, overpowered Griffith. His heart was
+too full to speak.
+
+Kate waited a moment; and then, as he did not reply to her, she began to
+plead to him. "I hope you are not angry with _me_," she said. "_I_ did
+not want him to leave me your estates. I would not rob you of them for
+the world, if I had my way."
+
+"Angry with you!" said Griffith. "I'm not such a villain. Mr. Charlton
+did the right thing, and--" He could say no more.
+
+"I do not think so," said Kate. "But don't you fret: all shall be
+settled to your satisfaction. I cannot quite love you, but I have a
+sincere affection for you; and so I ought. Cheer up, dear Griffith;
+don't you be down-hearted about what has happened to-day."
+
+Griffith smiled. "I don't feel unhappy," he said; "I did feel as if my
+heart was broken. But then you seemed parted from me. Now we are
+together, I feel as happy as ever. Mistress, don't you ever shut that
+window and leave me in the dark again. Let me stand and look at your
+sweet face all night, and I shall be the happiest man in Cumberland."
+
+"Ay," said Kate, blushing at his ardor; "happy for a single night; but
+when I go away you will be in the dumps again, and perhaps get tipsy; as
+if that could mend matters! Nay, I must set your happiness on stronger
+legs than that. Do you know I have got permission to undo this cruel
+will, and let you have Bolton Hall and Hernshaw again?"
+
+Griffith looked pleased, but rather puzzled.
+
+Kate went on, but not so glibly now. "However," said she, a little
+nervously, "there is one condition to it that will cost us both some
+pain. If you consent to accept these two estates from me, who don't
+value them one straw, why then--"
+
+"Well, what?" he gasped.
+
+"Why, then, my poor Griffith, we shall be bound in honor--you and I--not
+to meet for some months, perhaps for a whole year: in one word,--do not
+hate me,--not till you can bear to see me--another--man's--wife."
+
+The murder being out, she hid her face in her hands directly, and in
+that attitude awaited his reply.
+
+Griffith stood petrified a moment; and I don't think his intellects were
+even yet quite clear enough to take it all in at once. But at last he
+did comprehend it, and when he did, he just uttered a loud cry of agony,
+and then turned his back on her without a word.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Man does not speak by words alone. A mute glance of reproach has ere now
+pierced the heart a tirade would have left untouched; and even an
+inarticulate cry may utter volumes.
+
+Such an eloquent cry was that with which Griffith Gaunt turned his back
+upon the angelical face he adored, and the soft, persuasive tongue.
+There was agony, there was shame, there was wrath, all in that one
+ejaculation.
+
+It frightened Kate. She called him back. "Don't leave me so," she said.
+"I know I have affronted you; but I meant all for the best. Do not let
+us part in anger."
+
+At this Griffith returned in violent agitation. "It is your fault for
+making me speak," he cried. "I was going away without a word, as a man
+should, that is insulted by a woman. You heartless girl! What! you bid
+me sell you to that man for two dirty farms! O, well you know Bolton and
+Hernshaw were but the steps by which I hoped to climb to you: and now
+you tell me to part with you, and take those miserable acres instead of
+my darling. Ah, mistress, you have never loved, or you would hate
+yourself and despise yourself for what you have done. Love! if you had
+known what that word means, you couldn't look in my face and stab me to
+the heart like this. God forgive you! And sure I hope he will; for,
+after all, it is not _your_ fault that you were born without a heart.
+WHY, KATE, YOU ARE CRYING."
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+"Crying!" said Kate. "I could cry my eyes out to think what I have done;
+but it is not my fault: they egged me on. I knew you would fling those
+two miserable things in my face if I did, and I said so; but they would
+be wiser than me, and insist on my putting you to the proof."
+
+"They? Who is they?"
+
+"No matter. Whoever it was, they will gain nothing by it, and you will
+lose nothing. Ah, Griffith, I am so ashamed of myself,--and so proud of
+you."
+
+"They?" repeated Griffith, suspiciously. "Who is this they?"
+
+"What does that matter, so long as it was not Me? Are you going to be
+jealous again? Let us talk of you and me, and never mind who _them_ is.
+You have rejected my proposal with just scorn: so now let me hear yours;
+for we must agree on something this very night. Tell me, now, what can I
+say or do to make you happy?"
+
+Griffith was sore puzzled. "Alas! sweet Kate," said he, "I don't know
+what you can do for me now, except stay single for my sake."
+
+"I should like nothing better," replied Kate warmly; "but unfortunately
+they won't let me do that. Father Francis will be at me to-morrow, and
+insist on my marrying Mr. Neville."
+
+"But you will refuse."
+
+"I would, if I could but find a good excuse."
+
+"Excuse? why, say you don't love him."
+
+"O, they won't allow that for a reason."
+
+"Then I am undone," sighed Griffith.
+
+"No, no, you are not; if I could be brought to pretend I love somebody
+else. And really, if I don't quite love you, I like you too well to let
+you be unhappy. Besides, I cannot bear to rob you of these unlucky
+farms: I think there is nothing I would not do rather than that. I
+think--I would rather--do--something very silly indeed. But I suppose
+you don't want me to do that now? Why don't you answer me? Why don't you
+say something? Are you drunk, sir, as they pretend? or are you asleep?
+O, I can't speak any plainer: this is intolerable. Mr. Gaunt, I'm going
+to shut the window."
+
+Griffith got alarmed, and it sharpened his wits. "Kate, Kate!" he cried,
+"what do you mean? am I in a dream? would you marry poor me after all?"
+
+"How on earth can I tell, till I am asked?" inquired Kate, with an air
+of childlike innocence, and inspecting the stars attentively.
+
+"Kate, will you marry me?" said Griffith, all in a flutter.
+
+"Of course I will--if you will let me," replied Kate, coolly, but rather
+tenderly, too.
+
+Griffith burst into raptures. Kate listened to them with a complacent
+smile, then delivered herself after this fashion: "You have very little
+to thank me for, dear Griffith. I don't exactly downright love you, but
+I could not rob you of those unlucky farms, and you refuse to take them
+back any way but this; so what can I do? And then, for all I don't love
+you, I find I am always unhappy if you are unhappy, and happy when you
+are happy; so it comes pretty much to the same thing. I declare I am
+sick of giving you pain, and a little sick of crying in consequence.
+There, I have cried more in the last fortnight than in all my life
+before, and you know nothing spoils one's beauty like crying. And then
+you are so good, and kind, and true, and brave; and everybody is so
+unjust and so unkind to you, papa and all. You were quite in the right
+about the duel, dear. He _is_ an impudent puppy; and I threw dust in
+your eyes, and made you own you were in the wrong, and it was a great
+shame of me, but it was because I liked you best. I could take liberties
+with _you_, dear. And you are wounded for me, and now I have
+disinherited you. O, I can't bear it, and I won't. My heart yearns for
+you,--bleeds for you. I would rather die than you should be unhappy; I
+would rather follow you in rags round the world than marry a prince and
+make you wretched. Yes, dear, I am yours. Make me your wife; and then
+some day I dare say I shall love you as I ought."
+
+She had never showed her heart to him like this before; and now it
+overpowered him. So, being also a little under vinous influence, he
+stammered out something, and then fairly blubbered for joy. Then what
+does Kate do, but cry for company?
+
+Presently, to her surprise, he was half-way up the turret, coming to
+her.
+
+"O, take care! take care!" she cried. "You'll break your neck."
+
+"Nay," cried he; "I must come at you, if I die for it."
+
+The turret was ornamented from top to bottom with short ledges
+consisting of half-bricks. This ledge, shallow as it was, gave a slight
+foothold, insufficient in itself; but he grasped the strong branches of
+the ivy with a powerful hand, and so between the two contrived to get up
+and hang himself out close to her.
+
+"Sweet mistress," said he, "put out your hand to me; for I can't take it
+against your will this time. I have got but one arm."
+
+But this she declined. "No, no," said she; "you do nothing but torment
+and terrify me,--there." And so gave it him; and he mumbled it.
+
+This last feat won her quite. She thought no other man could have got to
+her there with two arms; and Griffith had done it with one. She said to
+herself, "How he loves me!--more than his own neck." And then she
+thought, "I shall be wife to a strong man; that is one comfort."
+
+In this softened mood she asked him demurely, would he take a friend's
+advice.
+
+"If that friend is you, ay."
+
+"Then," said she, "I'll do a downright brazen thing, now my hand is in.
+I declare I'll tell you how to secure me. You make me plight my troth
+with you this minute, and exchange rings with you, _whether I like or
+not_; engage my honor in this foolish business, and if you do that, I
+really do think you will have me in spite of them all. But
+there,--la!--am I worth all this trouble?"
+
+Griffith did not share this chilling doubt. He poured forth his
+gratitude, and then told her he had got his mother's ring in his pocket;
+"I meant to ask you to wear it," said he.
+
+"And why didn't you?"
+
+"Because you became an heiress all of a sudden."
+
+"Well, what signifies which of us has the dross, so that there is enough
+for both?"
+
+"That is true," said Griffith, approving his own sentiment, but not
+recognizing his own words. "Here's my mother's ring, on my little
+finger, sweet mistress. But I must ask you to draw it off, for I have
+but one hand."
+
+Kate made a wry face, "Well, that is my fault," said she, "or I would
+not take it from you so."
+
+She drew off his ring, and put it on her finger. Then she gave him her
+largest ring, and had to put it on his little finger for him.
+
+"You are making a very forward girl of me," said she, pouting
+exquisitely.
+
+He kissed her hand while she was doing it.
+
+"Don't you be so silly," said she; "and, you horrid creature, how you
+smell of wine! The bullet, please."
+
+"The bullet!" exclaimed Griffith. "What bullet?"
+
+"_The_ bullet. The one you were wounded with for my sake. I am told you
+put it in your pocket; and I see something bulge in your waistcoat. That
+bullet belongs to me now."
+
+"I think you are a witch," said he. "I do carry it about next my heart.
+Take it out of my waistcoat, if you will be so good."
+
+She blushed and declined, and, with the refusal on her very lips, fished
+it out with her taper fingers. She eyed it with a sort of tender horror.
+The sight of it made her feel faint a moment. She told him so, and that
+she would keep it to her dying day. Presently her delicate finger found
+something was written on it. She did not ask him what it was, but
+withdrew, and examined it by her candle. Griffith had engraved it with
+these words:--
+
+    "I LOVE KATE."
+
+He looked through the window, and saw her examine it by the candle. As
+she read the inscription, her face, glorified by the light, assumed a
+celestial tenderness he had never seen it wear before.
+
+She came back and leaned eloquently out as if she would fly to him. "O
+Griffith, Griffith!" she murmured, and somehow or other their lips met,
+in spite of all the difficulties, and grew together in a long and tender
+embrace.
+
+It was the first time she had ever given him more than her hand to kiss,
+and the rapture repaid him for all.
+
+But as soon as she had made this great advance, virginal instinct
+suggested a proportionate retreat.
+
+"You must go to bed," she said, austerely; "you will catch your death of
+cold out here."
+
+He remonstrated: she insisted. He held out: she smiled sweetly in his
+face, and shut the window in it pretty sharply, and disappeared. He went
+disconsolately down his ivy ladder. As soon as he was at the bottom, she
+opened the window again, and asked him, demurely, if he would do
+something to oblige her.
+
+He replied like a lover; he was ready to be cut in pieces, drawn asunder
+with wild horses, and so on.
+
+"O, I know you would do anything stupid for me," said she; "but will you
+do something clever for a poor girl that is in a fright at what she is
+going to do for you?"
+
+"Give your orders, mistress," said Griffith, "and don't talk of me
+obliging you. I feel quite ashamed to hear you talk so,--to-night
+especially."
+
+"Well, then," said Kate, "first and foremost, I want you to throw
+yourself on Father Francis's neck."
+
+"I'll throw myself on Father Francis's neck," said Griffith, stoutly.
+"Is that all?"
+
+"No, nor half. Once upon his neck you must say something. Then I had
+better settle the very words, or perhaps you will make a mess of it. Say
+after me now: O Father Francis, 'tis to you I owe her."
+
+"O Father Francis, 'tis to you I owe her."
+
+"You and I are friends for life."
+
+"You and I are friends for life."
+
+"And, mind, there is always a bed in our home for you, and a plate at
+our table, and a right welcome, come when you will."
+
+Griffith repeated this line correctly, but, when requested to say the
+whole, broke down. Kate had to repeat the oration a dozen times; and he
+said it after her, like a Sunday-school scholar, till he had it pat.
+
+The task achieved, he inquired of her what Father Francis was to say in
+reply.
+
+At this simple question Kate showed considerable alarm. "Gracious
+heavens!" she cried, "you must not stop talking to him; he will turn you
+inside out, and I shall be undone. Nay, you must gabble these words out,
+and then run away as hard as you can gallop."
+
+"But is it true?" asked Griffith. "Is he so much my friend?"
+
+"Hum!" said Kate, "it is quite true, and he is not at all your friend.
+There, don't you puzzle yourself, and pester me; but do as you are bid,
+or we are both undone."
+
+Quelled by a menace so mysterious, Griffith promised blind obedience;
+and Kate thanked him, and bade him good night, and ordered him
+peremptorily to bed.
+
+He went.
+
+She beckoned him back.
+
+He came.
+
+She leaned out, and inquired, in a soft, delicious whisper, as follows:
+"Are you happy, dearest?"
+
+"Ay, Kate, the happiest of the happy."
+
+"Then so am I," she murmured.
+
+And now she slowly closed the window, and gradually retired from the
+eyes of her enraptured lover.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+But while Griffith was thus sweetly employed, his neglected guests were
+dispersing, not without satirical comments on their truant host. Two or
+three, however, remained, and slept in the house, upon special
+invitation. And that invitation came from Squire Peyton. He chose to
+conclude that Griffith, disappointed by the will, had vacated the
+premises in disgust, and left him in charge of them; accordingly he
+assumed the master with alacrity, and ordered beds for Neville, and
+Father Francis, and Major Rickards, and another. The weather was
+inclement, and the roads heavy; so the gentlemen thus distinguished
+accepted Mr. Peyton's offer cordially.
+
+There were a great many things sung and said at the festive board in the
+course of the evening, but very few of them would amuse or interest the
+reader as they did the hearers. One thing, however, must not be passed
+by, as it had its consequences. Major Rickards drank bumpers apiece to
+the King, the Prince, Church and State, the Army, the Navy, and Kate
+Peyton. By the time he got to her, two thirds of his discretion had
+oozed away in loyalty, _esprit du corps_, and port wine; so he sang the
+young lady's praises in vinous terms, and of course immortalized the
+very exploit she most desired to consign to oblivion: _Arma viraginemque
+canebat_. He sang the duel, and in a style which I could not,
+consistently with the interests of literature, reproduce on a large
+scale. Hasten we to the concluding versicles of his song.
+
+"So then, sir, we placed our men for the third time, and, you may take
+my word for it, one or both of these heroes would have bit the dust at
+that discharge. But, by Jove, sir, just as they were going to pull
+trigger, in galloped your adorable daughter, and swooned off her foaming
+horse in the middle of us,--disarmed us, sir, in a moment, melted our
+valor, bewitched our senses, and the great god of war had to retreat
+before little Cupid and the charms of beauty in distress."
+
+"Little idiot!" observed the tender parent; and was much distempered.
+
+He said no more about it to Major Rickards; but when they all retired
+for the night, he undertook to show Father Francis his room, and sat in
+it with him a good half-hour talking about Kate.
+
+"Here's a pretty scandal," said he. "I must marry the silly girl out of
+hand before this gets wind, and you must help me."
+
+In a word, the result of the conference was that Kate should be publicly
+engaged to Neville to-morrow, and married to him as soon as her month's
+mourning should be over.
+
+The conduct of the affair was confided to Father Francis, as having
+unbounded influence with her.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Next morning Mr. Peyton was up betimes in his character of host, and
+ordered the servants about, and was in high spirits; only they gave
+place to amazement when Griffith Gaunt came down, and played the host,
+and was in high spirits.
+
+Neville too watched his rival, and was puzzled at his radiancy.
+
+So breakfast passed in general mystification. Kate, who could have
+thrown a light, did not come down to breakfast. She was on her defence.
+
+She made her first appearance out of doors.
+
+Very early in the morning, Mr. Peyton, in his quality of master, had
+ordered the gardener to cut and sweep the snow off the gravel walk that
+went round the lawn. And on this path Miss Peyton was seen walking
+briskly to and fro in the frosty, but sunny air.
+
+Griffith saw her first, and ran out to bid her good morning.
+
+Her reception of him was a farce. She made him a stately courtesy for
+the benefit of the three faces glued against the panes, but her words
+were incongruous. "You wretch," said she, "don't come here. Hide about,
+dearest, till you see me with Father Francis. I'll raise my hand _so_
+when you are to cuddle him, and fib. There, make me a low bow, and
+retire."
+
+He obeyed, and the whole thing looked mighty formal and ceremonious from
+the breakfast-room.
+
+"With your good leave, gentlemen," said Father Francis, dryly, "I will
+be the next to pay my respects to her." With this he opened the window
+and stepped out.
+
+Kate saw him, and felt very nervous. She met him with apparent delight.
+
+He bestowed his morning benediction on her, and then they walked
+silently side by side on the gravel; and from the dining-room window it
+looked like anything but what it was,--a fencing match.
+
+Father Francis was the first to break silence. He congratulated her on
+her good fortune, and on the advantage it might prove to the true
+Church.
+
+Kate waited quietly till he had quite done, and then said, "What, I may
+go into a convent _now_ that I can bribe the door open?"
+
+The scratch was feline, feminine, sudden, and sharp. But, alas! Father
+Francis only smiled at it. Though not what we call spiritually-minded,
+he was a man of a Christian temper. "Not with my good-will, my
+daughter," said he; "I am of the same mind still, and more than ever.
+You must marry forthwith, and rear children in the true faith."
+
+"What a hurry you are in."
+
+"Your own conduct has made it necessary."
+
+"Why, what have I done now?"
+
+"No harm. It was a good and humane action to prevent bloodshed, but the
+world is not always worthy of good actions. People are beginning to make
+free with your name for your interfering in the duel."
+
+Kate fired up. "Why can't people mind their own business?"
+
+"I do not exactly know," said the priest, coolly, "nor is it worth
+inquiring. We must take human nature as it is, and do for the best. You
+must marry him, and stop their tongues."
+
+Kate pretended to reflect. "I believe you are right," said she, at last;
+"and indeed I must do as you would have me; for, to tell the truth, in
+an unguarded moment, I pitied him so that I half promised I _would_."
+
+"Indeed!" said Father Francis. "This is the first I have heard of it."
+
+Kate replied that was no wonder, for it was only last night she had so
+committed herself.
+
+"Last night!" said Father Francis; "how can that be? He was never out of
+my sight till we went to bed."
+
+"O, there I beg to differ," said the lady. "While you were all tippling
+in the dining-room, he was better employed,--making love by moonlight.
+And O what a terrible thing opportunity is, and the moon another! There!
+what with the moonlight, and my pitying him so, and all he has suffered
+for me, and my being rich now, and having something to give him, we two
+are engaged. See else: this was his mother's ring, and he has mine."
+
+"Mr. Neville?"
+
+"Mr. Neville? No. My old servant, to be sure. What, do you think I would
+go and marry for wealth, when I have enough and to spare of my own? O,
+what an opinion you must have of me!"
+
+Father Francis was staggered by this adroit thrust. However, after a
+considerable silence he recovered himself, and inquired gravely why she
+had given him no hint of all this the other night, when he had diverted
+her from a convent, and advised her to marry Neville.
+
+"That you never did, I'll be sworn," said Kate.
+
+Father Francis reflected.
+
+"Not in so many words, perhaps; but I said enough to show you."
+
+"O!" said Kate, "such a matter was too serious for hints and innuendoes;
+if you wanted me to jilt my old servant and wed an acquaintance of
+yesterday, why not say so plainly? I dare say I should have obeyed you,
+and been unhappy for life; but now my honor is solemnly engaged; my
+faith is plighted; and were even you to urge me to break faith, and
+behave dishonorably, I should resist. I would liever take poison, and
+die."
+
+Father Francis looked at her steadily, and she colored to the brow.
+
+"You are a very apt young lady," said he; "you have outwitted your
+director. That may be my fault as much as yours; so I advise you to
+provide yourself with another director, whom you will be unable, or
+unwilling, to outwit."
+
+Kate's high spirit fell before this: she turned her eyes, full of tears,
+on him. "O, do not desert me, now that I shall need you more than ever,
+to guide me in my new duties. Forgive me; I did not know my own
+heart--quite. I'll go into a convent now, if I must; but I can't marry
+any man but poor Griffith. Ah, father, he is more generous than any of
+us! Would you believe it? when he thought Bolton and Hernshaw were
+coming to him, he said if I married him I should have the money to build
+a convent with. He knows how fond I am of a convent."
+
+"He was jesting; his religion would not allow it."
+
+"His religion!" cried Kate. Then, lifting her eyes to Heaven, and
+looking just like an angel, "Love is _his_ religion!" said she, warmly.
+
+"Then his religion is Heathenism," said the priest, grimly.
+
+"Nay, there is too much charity in it for that," retorted Kate, keenly.
+
+Then she looked down, like a cunning, guilty thing, and murmured: "One
+of the things I esteem him for is he always speaks well of _you_. To be
+sure, just now the poor soul thinks you are his best friend with me. But
+that is my fault; I as good as told him so: and it is true, after a
+fashion; for you kept me out of the convent that was his only real
+rival. Why, here he comes. O father, now don't you go and tell him you
+side with Mr. Neville."
+
+At this crisis Griffith, who, to tell the truth, had received a signal
+from Kate, rushed at Father Francis and fell upon his neck, and said
+with great rapidity: "O Father Francis, 'tis to you I owe her,--you and
+I are friends for life. So long as we have a house there is a bed in it
+for you, and whilst we have a table to sit down to there's a plate at it
+for you, and a welcome, come when you will."
+
+Having gabbled these words he winked at Kate, and fled swiftly.
+
+Father Francis was taken aback a little by this sudden burst of
+affection. First he stared,--then he knitted his brows,--then he
+pondered.
+
+Kate stole a look at him, and her eyes sought the ground.
+
+"That is the gentleman you arranged matters with last night?" said he,
+drily.
+
+"Yes," replied Kate, faintly.
+
+"Was this scene part of the business?"
+
+"O father!"
+
+"Why I ask, he did it so unnatural. Mr. Gaunt is a worthy, hospitable
+gentleman; he and I are very good friends; and really I never doubted
+that I should be welcome in his house----until this moment."
+
+"And can you doubt it now?"
+
+"Almost: his manner just now was so hollow, so forced; not a word of all
+that came from his heart, you know."
+
+"Then his heart is changed very lately."
+
+The priest shook his head. "Anything more like a puppet, and a parrot to
+boot, I never saw. 'Twas done so timely, too. He ran in upon our
+discourse. Let me see your hand, mistress. Why, where is the string with
+which you pulled yonder machine in so pat upon the word?"
+
+"Spare me!" muttered Kate, faintly.
+
+"Then do you drop deceit and the silly cunning of your sex, and speak to
+me from your heart, or not at all." (Diapason.)
+
+At this Kate began to whimper.
+
+"Father," she said, "show me some mercy." Then, suddenly clasping her
+hands: "HAVE PITY ON HIM, AND ON ME."
+
+This time Nature herself seemed to speak, and the eloquent cry went
+clean through the priest's heart.
+
+"Ah!" said he; and his own voice trembled a little: "now you are as
+strong as your cunning was weak. Come, I see how it is with you; and I
+am human, and have been young, and a lover into the bargain, before I
+was a priest. There, dry thy eyes, child, and go to thy room; he thou
+couldst not trust shall bear the brunt for thee this once."
+
+Then Kate bowed her fair head and kissed the horrid paw of him that had
+administered so severe but salutary a pat. She hurried away up stairs,
+right joyful at the unexpected turn things had taken.
+
+Father Francis, thus converted to her side, lost no time; he walked into
+the dining-room and told Neville he had bad news for him.
+
+"Summon all your courage, my young friend," said he, with feeling, "and
+remember that this world is full of disappointments."
+
+Neville said nothing, but rose and stood rather pale, waiting like a man
+for the blow. Its nature he more than half guessed: he had been at the
+window.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It fell.
+
+"She is engaged to Gaunt, since last night; and she loves him."
+
+"The double-faced jade!" cried Peyton, with an oath.
+
+"The heartless coquette!" groaned Neville.
+
+Father Francis made excuses for her: "Nay, nay, she is not the first of
+her sex that did not know her own mind all at once. Besides, we men are
+blind in matters of love; perhaps a woman would have read her from the
+first. After all, she was not bound to give us the eyes to read a female
+heart."
+
+He next reminded Neville that Gaunt had been her servant for years.
+"You knew that," said he, "yet you came between them----at your peril.
+Put yourself in his place: say you had succeeded: would not his wrong be
+greater than yours is now? Come, be brave; be generous; he is wounded,
+he is disinherited; only his love is left him: 'tis the poor man's lamb;
+and would you take it?"
+
+"O, I have not a word to say against the _man_," said George, with a
+mighty effort.
+
+"And what use is your quarrelling with the woman?" suggested the
+practical priest.
+
+"None whatever," said George, sullenly. After a moment's silence he rang
+the bell feverishly. "Order my horse round directly," said he. Then he
+sat down, and buried his face in his hands, and did not, and could not,
+listen to the voice of consolation.
+
+Now the house was full of spies in petticoats, amateur spies, that ran
+and told the mistress everything of their own accord, to curry favor.
+
+And this no doubt was the cause that, just as the groom walked the
+piebald out of the stable towards the hall door, a maid came to Father
+Francis with a little note: he opened it, and found these words written
+faintly, in a fine Italian hand:--
+
+     "I scarce knew my own heart till I saw him wounded and poor,
+     and myself rich at his expense. Entreat Mr. Neville to forgive
+     me."
+
+He handed the note to Neville without a word.
+
+Neville read it, and his lip trembled; but he said nothing, and
+presently went out into the hall, and put on his hat, for he saw his nag
+at the door.
+
+Father Francis followed him, and said, sorrowfully, "What, not one word
+in reply to so humble a request?"
+
+"Well, here's my reply," said George, grinding his teeth. "She knows
+French, though she pretends not.
+
+    'Le bruit est pour le fat, la plainte est pour le sot,
+    L'honnête homme trompé s'eloigne et ne dit mot.'"
+
+And with this he galloped furiously away.
+
+He buried himself at Neville's Cross for several days, and would neither
+see nor speak to a soul. His heart was sick, his pride lacerated. He
+even shed some scalding tears in secret; though, to look at him, that
+seemed impossible.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So passed a bitter week: and in the course of it he bethought him of the
+tears he had made a true Italian lady shed, and never pitied her a grain
+till now.
+
+He was going abroad: on his desk lay a little crumpled paper. It was
+Kate's entreaty for forgiveness. He had ground it in his hand, and
+ridden away with it.
+
+Now he was going away, he resolved to answer her.
+
+He wrote a letter full of bitter reproaches; read it over; and tore it
+up.
+
+He wrote a satirical and cutting letter; read it; and tore it up.
+
+He wrote her a mawkish letter; read it; and tore it up.
+
+The priest's words, scorned at first, had sunk into him a little.
+
+He walked about the room, and tried to see it all like a by-stander.
+
+He examined her writing closely: the pen had scarcely marked the paper.
+They were the timidest strokes. The writer seemed to kneel to him. He
+summoned all his manhood, his fortitude, his generosity, and, above all,
+his high-breeding; and produced the following letter; and this one he
+sent:--
+
+     "MISTRESS KATE,--I leave England to-day for your sake; and
+     shall never return unless the day shall come when I can look on
+     you but as a friend. The love that ends in hate, that is too
+     sorry a thing to come betwixt you and me.
+
+     "If you have used me ill, your punishment is this; you have
+     given me the right to say to you----I forgive you.
+
+     "GEORGE NEVILLE."
+
+And he went straight to Italy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kate laid his note upon her knee, and sighed deeply; and said, "Poor
+fellow! How noble of him! What _can_ such men as this see in any woman
+to go and fall in love with her?"
+
+Griffith found her with a tear in her eye. He took her out walking, and
+laid all his radiant plans of wedded life before her. She came back
+flushed, and beaming with complacency and beauty.
+
+Old Peyton was brought to consent to the marriage. Only he attached one
+condition, that Bolton and Hernshaw should be settled on Kate for her
+separate use.
+
+To this Griffith assented readily; but Kate refused plump. "What, give
+him _myself_, and then grudge him my _estates_!" said she, with a look
+of lofty and beautiful scorn at her male advisers.
+
+But Father Francis, having regard to the temporal interests of his
+Church, exerted his strength and pertinacity, and tired her out; so
+those estates were put into trustees' hands, and tied up tight as wax.
+
+This done, Griffith Gaunt and Kate Peyton were married, and made the
+finest pair that wedded in the county that year.
+
+As the bells burst into a merry peal, and they walked out of church man
+and wife, their path across the churchyard was strewed thick with
+flowers, emblematic, no doubt, of the path of life that lay before so
+handsome a couple.
+
+They spent the honeymoon in London, and tasted earthly felicity.
+
+Yet did not quarrel after it; but subsided into the quiet complacency of
+wedded life.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Gaunt lived happily together--as times went.
+
+A fine girl and boy were born to them; and need I say how their hearts
+expanded and exulted, and seemed to grow twice as large.
+
+The little boy was taken from them at three years old; and how can I
+convey to any but a parent the anguish of that first bereavement?
+
+Well, they suffered it together, and that poignant grief was one tie
+more between them.
+
+For many years they did not furnish any exciting or even interesting
+matter to this narrator. And all the better for them: without these
+happy periods of dulness our lives would be hell, and our hearts
+eternally bubbling and boiling in a huge pot made hot with thorns.
+
+In the absence of striking incidents, it may be well to notice the
+progress of character, and note the tiny seeds of events to come.
+
+Neither the intellectual nor the moral character of any person stands
+stock-still: a man improves, or he declines. Mrs. Gaunt had a great
+taste for reading; Mr. Gaunt had not: what was the consequence? At the
+end of seven years the lady's understanding had made great strides; the
+gentleman's had apparently retrograded.
+
+Now we all need a little excitement, and we all seek it, and get it by
+hook or by crook. The girl who satisfies that natural craving with what
+the canting dunces of the day call a "sensational" novel, and the girl
+who does it by waltzing till daybreak, are sisters; only one obtains the
+result intellectually, and the other obtains it like a young animal, and
+a pain in her empty head next day.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt could enjoy company, but was never dull with a good book. Mr.
+Gaunt was a pleasant companion, but dull out of company. So, rather than
+not have it, he would go to the parlor of the "Red Lion," and chat and
+sing with the yeomen and rollicking young squires that resorted thither:
+and this was matter of grief and astonishment to Mrs. Gaunt.
+
+It was balanced by good qualities she knew how to appreciate. Morals
+were much looser then than now; and more than one wife of her
+acquaintance had a rival in the village, or even among her own
+domestics; but Griffith had no loose inclinations of that kind, and
+never gave her a moment's uneasiness. He was constancy and fidelity in
+person.
+
+Sobriety had not yet been invented. But Griffith was not so intemperate
+as most squires; he could always mount the stairs to tea, and generally
+without staggering.
+
+He was uxorious, and it used to come out after his wine. This Mrs. Gaunt
+permitted at first, but by and by says she, expanding her delicate
+nostrils: "You may be as affectionate as you please, dear, and you may
+smell of wine, if you will; but please not to smell of wine and be
+affectionate at the same moment. I value your affection too highly to
+let you disgust me with it."
+
+And the model husband yielded to this severe restriction; and, as it
+never occurred to him to give up his wine, he forbore to be affectionate
+in his cups.
+
+One great fear Mrs. Gaunt had entertained before marriage ceased to
+haunt her. Now and then her quick eye saw Griffith writhe at the great
+influence her director had with her; but he never spoke out to offend
+her, and she, like a good wife, saw, smiled, and adroitly, tenderly
+soothed: and this was nothing compared to what she had feared.
+
+Griffith saw his wife admired by other men, yet never chid nor chafed.
+The merit of this belonged in a high degree to herself. The fact is,
+that Kate Peyton, even before marriage, was not a coquette at heart,
+though her conduct might easily bear that construction; and she was now
+an experienced matron, and knew how to be as charming as ever, yet check
+or parry all approaches to gallantry on the part of her admirers. Then
+Griffith observed how delicate and prudent his lovely wife was, without
+ostentatious prudery; and his heart was at peace.
+
+He was the happier of the two, for he looked up to his wife, as well as
+loved her; whereas she was troubled at times with a sense of superiority
+to her husband. She was amiable enough, and wise enough, to try and shut
+her eyes to it; and often succeeded, but not always.
+
+Upon the whole, they were a contented couple; though the lady's dreamy
+eyes seemed still to be exploring earth and sky in search of something
+they had not yet found, even in wedded life.
+
+They lived at Hernshaw. A letter had been found among Mr. Charlton's
+papers explaining his will. He counted on their marrying, and begged
+them to live at the castle. He had left it on his wife's death; it
+reminded him too keenly of happier days; but, as he drew near his end,
+and must leave all earthly things, he remembered the old house with
+tenderness, and put out his dying hand to save it from falling into
+decay.
+
+Unfortunately, considerable repairs were needed; and, as Kate's property
+was tied up so tight, Griffith's two thousand pounds went in repairing
+the house, lawn, park palings, and walled gardens; went, every penny,
+and left the bridge over the lake still in a battered, rotten, and, in a
+word, picturesque condition.
+
+This lake was by the older inhabitants sometimes called the "mere," and
+sometimes "the fish-pools"; it resembled an hour-glass in shape, only
+curved like a crescent.
+
+In mediæval times it had no doubt been a main defence of the place. It
+was very deep in parts, especially at the waist or narrow that was
+spanned by the decayed bridge. There were hundreds of carp and tench in
+it older than any He in Cumberland, and also enormous pike and eels; and
+fish from one to five pounds' weight by the million. The water literally
+teemed from end to end; and this was a great comfort to so good a
+Catholic as Mrs. Gaunt. When she was seized with a desire to fast, and
+that was pretty often, the gardener just went down to the lake and flung
+a casting-net in some favorite hole, and drew out half a bushel the
+first cast; or planted a flue-net round a patch of weeds, then belabored
+the weeds with a long pole, and a score of fine fish were sure to run
+out into the meshes.
+
+The "mere" was clear as plate glass, and came to the edge of the shaven
+lawn, and reflected flowers, turf, and overhanging shrubs deliciously.
+
+Yet an ill name brooded over its seductive waters; for two persons had
+been drowned in it during the last hundred years: and the last one was
+the parson of the parish, returning from the squire's dinner in the
+normal condition of a guest, A.D. 1740-50. But what most affected the
+popular mind was, not the jovial soul hurried into eternity, but the
+material circumstance that the greedy pike had cleared the flesh off his
+bones in a single night, so that little more than a skeleton, with here
+and there a black rag hanging to it, had been recovered next morning.
+
+This ghastly detail being stoutly maintained and constantly repeated by
+two ancient eye-witnesses, whose one melodramatic incident and treasure
+it was, the rustic mind saw no beauty whatever in those pellucid and
+delicious waters, where flowers did glass themselves.
+
+As for the women of the village, they looked on this sheet of water as a
+trap for their poor bodies and those of their children, and spoke of it
+as a singular hardship in their lot, that Hernshaw Mere had not been
+filled up threescore years agone.
+
+The castle itself was no castle, nor had it been for centuries. It was
+just a house with battlements; but attached to the stable was an old
+square tower, that really had formed part of the mediæval castle.
+
+However, that unsubstantial shadow, a name, is often more durable than
+the thing, especially in rural parts; but, indeed, what is there in a
+name for Time's teeth to catch hold of?
+
+Though no castle, it was a delightful abode. The drawing-room and
+dining-room had both spacious bay-windows, opening on to the lawn that
+sloped very gradually down to the pellucid lake, and there was mirrored.
+On this sweet lawn the inmates and guests walked for sun and mellow air,
+and often played bowls at eventide.
+
+On the other side was the drive up to the house-door, and a sweep, or
+small oval plot, of turf, surrounded by gravel; and a gate at the corner
+of this sweep opened into a grove of the grandest old spruce-firs in the
+island.
+
+This grove, dismal in winter and awful at night, was deliciously cool
+and sombre in the dog-days. The trees were spires; and their great stems
+stood serried like infantry in column, and flung a grand canopy of
+sombre plumes overhead. A strange, antique, and classic grove,--_nulli
+penetrabilis astro_.
+
+This retreat was enclosed on three sides by a wall, and on the east side
+came nearly to the house. A few laurel-bushes separated the two. At
+night it was shunned religiously, on account of the ghosts. Even by
+daylight it was little frequented, except by one person,--and she took
+to it amazingly. That person was Mrs. Gaunt. There seems to be, even in
+educated women, a singular, instinctive love of twilight; and here was
+twilight at high noon. The place, too, suited her dreamy, meditative
+nature. Hither, then, she often retired for peace and religious
+contemplation, and moved slowly in and out among the tall stems, or sat
+still, with her thoughtful brow leaned on her white hand,--till the
+cool, umbrageous retreat got to be called, among the servants, "The
+Dame's Haunt."
+
+This, I think, is all needs be told about the mere place, where the
+Gaunts lived comfortably many years, and little dreamed of the strange
+events in store for them; little knew the passions that slumbered in
+their own bosoms, and, like other volcanoes, bided their time.
+
+
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+
+_Snow-Bound: a Winter Idyl._ By JOHN G. WHITTIER. Boston: Ticknor and
+Fields.
+
+What Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" has long been to Old England,
+Whittier's "Snow-Bound" will always be to New England. Both poems have
+the flavor of native soil in them. Neither of them is a reminder of
+anything else, but each is individual and special in those qualities
+which interest and charm the reader. If "The Deserted Village" had never
+been written, Whittier would have composed his "Snow-Bound," no doubt;
+and the latter only recalls the former on account of that genuine
+home-atmosphere which surrounds both these exquisite productions. After
+a perusal of this new American idyl, no competent critic will contend
+that we lack proper themes for poetry in our own land. The "Snow-Bound"
+will be a sufficient reminder to all cavillers, at home or abroad, that
+the American Muse need not travel far away for poetic situations.
+
+Whittier has been most fortunate in the subject-matter of this new poem.
+Every page has beauties on it so easy to discern, that the common as
+well as the cultured mind will at once feel them without an effort. We
+have only space for a few passages from the earlier portion of the idyl.
+
+    "The sun that brief December day
+    Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
+    And, darkly circled, gave at noon
+    A sadder light than waning moon.
+    Slow tracing down the thickening sky
+    Its mute and ominous prophecy,
+    A portent seeming less than threat,
+    It sank from sight before it set.
+    A chill no coat, however stout,
+    Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
+    A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
+      That checked, mid-vein, the circling race
+      Of life-blood in the sharpened face,
+    The coming of the snow-storm told.
+    The wind blew east: we heard the roar
+    Of Ocean on his wintry shore,
+    And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
+    Beat with low rhythm our inland air.
+
+    "Meanwhile we did our nightly chores,--
+    Brought in the wood from out of doors,
+    Littered the stalls, and from the mows
+    Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows;
+    Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;
+    And, sharply clashing horn on horn,
+    Impatient down the stanchion rows
+    The cattle shake their walnut bows;
+    While, peering from his early perch
+    Upon the scaffold's pole of birch,
+    The cock his crested helmet bent
+    And down his querulous challenge sent.
+
+    "Unwarmed by any sunset light
+    The gray day darkened into night,
+    A night made hoary with the swarm
+    And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
+    As zigzag wavering to and fro
+    Crossed and recrossed the wingéd snow:
+    And ere the early bed-time came
+    The white drift piled the window-frame,
+    And through the glass the clothes-line posts
+    Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.
+
+    "So all night long the storm roared on:
+    The morning broke without the sun;
+    In tiny spherule traced with lines
+    Of Nature's geometric signs,
+    In starry flake, and pellicle,
+    All day the hoary meteor fell;
+    And, when the second morning shone,
+    We looked upon a world unknown,
+    On nothing we could call our own.
+    Around the glistening wonder bent
+    The blue walls of the firmament,
+    No cloud above, no earth below,--
+    A universe of sky and snow!
+    The old familiar sights of ours
+    Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers
+    Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,
+    Or garden wall, or belt of wood;
+    A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,
+    A fenceless drift what once was road;
+    The bridle-post an old man sat
+    With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;
+    The well-curb had a Chinese roof;
+    And even the long sweep, high aloof,
+    In its slant splendor, seemed to tell
+    Of Pisa's leaning miracle.
+
+    "A prompt, decisive man, no breath
+    Our father wasted: 'Boys, a path!'
+    Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy
+    Count such a summons less than joy?)
+    Our buskins on our feet we drew;
+      With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,
+      To guard our necks and ears from snow,
+    We cut the solid whiteness through.
+    And, where the drift was deepest, made
+    A tunnel walled and overlaid
+    With dazzling crystal: we had read
+    Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave,
+    And to our own his name we gave,
+    With many a wish the luck were ours
+    To test his lamp's supernal powers.
+
+    "We reached the barn with merry din,
+    And roused the prisoned brutes within.
+    The old horse thrust his long head out,
+    And grave with wonder gazed about;
+    The cock his lusty greeting said,
+    And forth his speckled harem led;
+    The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked,
+    And mild reproach of hunger looked;
+    The hornéd patriarch of the sheep,
+    Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep,
+    Shook his sage head with gesture mute,
+    And emphasized with stamp of foot."
+
+
+_Lives of Boulton and Watt._ Principally from the original Soho MSS.
+Comprising also a History of the Invention and Introduction of the
+Steam-Engine. By SAMUEL SMILES. London: John Murray.
+
+The author of this book is an enthusiast in biography. He has given the
+best years of his life to the task of recording the struggles and
+successes of men who have labored for the good of their kind; and his
+own name will always be honorably mentioned in connection with
+Stephenson, Watt, Flaxman, and others, of whom he has written so well.
+Of all his published books, next to "Self-Help," this volume, lately
+issued, is his most interesting one. James Watt, with his nervous
+sensibility, his headaches, his pecuniary embarrassments, and his gloomy
+temperament, has never till now been revealed precisely as he lived and
+struggled. The extensive collection of Soho documents to which Mr.
+Smiles had access has enabled him to add so much that is new and
+valuable to the story of his hero's career, that hereafter this
+biography must take the first place as a record of the great inventor.
+
+As a tribute to Boulton, so many years the friend, partner, and consoler
+of Watt, the book is deeply interesting. Fighting many a hard battle for
+his timid, shrinking associate, Boulton stands forth a noble
+representative of strength, courage, and perseverance. Never was
+partnership more admirably conducted; never was success more richly
+earned. Mr. Smiles is neither a Macaulay nor a Motley, but he is so
+honest and earnest in every work he undertakes, he rarely fails to make
+a book deeply instructive and entertaining.
+
+
+_Winifred Bertram and the World she lived in._ By the Author of the
+Schönberg-Cotta Family. New York: M. W. Dodd.
+
+The previous works of this prolific author have proved by their
+popularity that they meet a genuine demand. Such a fact can no more be
+reached by literary criticism, than can the popularity of Tupper's
+poetry. It is no reproach to a book which actually finds readers to say
+that it is not high art. Winifred Bertram has this advantage over her
+predecessors, that she takes part in no theological controversies except
+those of the present day, and therefore seems more real and truthful
+than the others. In regard to present issues, however, the book deals in
+the usual proportion of rather one-sided dialogues, and of arguments
+studiously debilitated in order to be knocked down by other arguments.
+Yet there is much that is lovely and touching in the characters
+delineated; there is a good deal of practical sense and sweet human
+charity; and the different heroes and heroines show some human variety
+in their action, although in conversation they all preach very much
+alike. Indeed, the book is overhung with rather an oppressive weight of
+clergyman; and when the loveliest of the saints is at last wedded to the
+youngest of the divines, she throws an awful shade over clerical
+connubiality by invariably addressing him as "Mr. Bertram." In this
+respect, at least, the fashionable novels hold out brighter hopes to the
+heart of woman.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No.
+101, March, 1866, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101,
+March, 1866, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: May 4, 2007 [EBook #21288]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by Cornell University Digital Collections).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>THE</h4>
+
+<h1>ATLANTIC MONTHLY</h1>
+
+<h2><i>A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics.</i></h2>
+
+<h3>VOL. XVII.&mdash;MARCH, 1866.&mdash;NO. CI.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by <span class="smcap">Ticknor and
+Fields</span>, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
+Massachusetts.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved
+to the end of the article. Table of contents has been generated for the HTML version.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<p>
+<a href="#PASSAGES_FROM_HAWTHORNES_NOTE-BOOKS"><b>PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#AN_OLD_MANS_IDYL"><b>AN OLD MAN'S IDYL.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#A_RAMBLE_THROUGH_THE_MARKET"><b>A RAMBLE THROUGH THE MARKET.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_FREEDMANS_STORY"><b>THE FREEDMAN'S STORY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#NANTUCKET"><b>NANTUCKET.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_SNOW-WALKERS"><b>THE SNOW-WALKERS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#TO_HERSA"><b>TO HERSA.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#AN_AMAZONIAN_PICNIC"><b>AN AMAZONIAN PICNIC.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#DOCTOR_JOHNS"><b>DOCTOR JOHNS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#COMMUNICATION_WITH_THE_PACIFIC"><b>COMMUNICATION WITH THE PACIFIC.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#IN_THE_SEA"><b>IN THE SEA.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_CHIMNEY-CORNER_FOR_1866"><b>THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#POOR_CHLOE"><b>POOR CHLOE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#SNOW"><b>SNOW.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GRIFFITH_GAUNT_OR_JEALOUSY"><b>GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#REVIEWS_AND_LITERARY_NOTICES"><b>REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.</b></a><br />
+</p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PASSAGES_FROM_HAWTHORNES_NOTE-BOOKS" id="PASSAGES_FROM_HAWTHORNES_NOTE-BOOKS"></a>PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<p>Maine, <i>Thursday, July 20, 1837.</i>&mdash;A drive, yesterday afternoon, to a
+pond in the vicinity of Augusta, about nine miles off, to fish for white
+perch. Remarkables: the steering of the boat through the crooked,
+labyrinthine brook, into the open pond,&mdash;the man who acted as
+pilot,&mdash;his talking with B&mdash;&mdash;about politics, the bank, the iron money
+of "a king who came to reign, in Greece, over a city called
+Sparta,"&mdash;his advice to B&mdash;&mdash; to come amongst the laborers on the
+mill-dam, because it stimulated them "to see a man grinning amongst
+them." The man took hearty tugs at a bottle of good Scotch whiskey, and
+became pretty merry. The fish caught were the yellow perch, which are
+not esteemed for eating; the white perch, a beautiful, silvery,
+round-backed fish, which bites eagerly, runs about with the line while
+being pulled up, makes good sport for the angler, and an admirable dish;
+a great chub; and three horned pouts, which swallow the hook into their
+lowest entrails. Several dozen fish were taken in an hour or two, and
+then we returned to the shop where we had left our horse and wagon, the
+pilot very eccentric behind us. It was a small, dingy shop, dimly
+lighted by a single inch of candle, faintly disclosing various boxes,
+barrels standing on end, articles hanging from the ceiling; the
+proprietor at the counter, whereon appear gin and brandy, respectively
+contained in a tin pint-measure and an earthenware jug, with two or
+three tumblers beside them, out of which nearly all the party drank;
+some coming up to the counter frankly, others lingering in the
+background, waiting to be pressed, two paying for their own liquor and
+withdrawing. B&mdash;&mdash; treated them twice round. The pilot, after drinking
+his brandy, gave a history of our fishing expedition, and how many and
+how large fish we caught. B&mdash;&mdash; making acquaintances and renewing them,
+and gaining great credit for liberality and free-heartedness,&mdash;two or
+three boys looking on and listening to the talk,&mdash;the shopkeeper smiling
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>behind his counter, with the tarnished tin scales beside him,&mdash;the inch
+of candle burned down almost to extinction. So we got into our wagon,
+with the fish, and drove to Robinson's tavern, almost five miles off,
+where we supped and passed the night. In the bar-room was a fat old
+countryman on a journey, and a quack doctor of the vicinity, and an
+Englishman with a peculiar accent. Seeing B&mdash;&mdash;'s jointed and
+brass-mounted fishing-pole, he took it for a theodolite, and supposed
+that we had been on a surveying expedition. At supper, which consisted
+of bread, butter, cheese, cake, doughnuts, and gooseberry-pie, we were
+waited upon by a tall, very tall woman, young and maiden-looking, yet
+with a strongly outlined and determined face. Afterwards we found her to
+be the wife of mine host. She poured out our tea, came in when we rang
+the table-bell to refill our cups, and again retired. While at supper,
+the fat old traveller was ushered through the room into a contiguous
+bedroom. My own chamber, apparently the best in the house, had its walls
+ornamented with a small, gilt-framed, foot-square looking-glass, with a
+hair-brush hanging beneath it; a record of the deaths of the family,
+written on a black tomb, in an engraving, where a father, mother, and
+child were represented in a graveyard, weeping over said tomb; the
+mourners dressed in black, country-cut clothes; the engraving executed
+in Vermont. There was also a wood engraving of the Declaration of
+Independence, with fac-similes of the autographs; a portrait of the
+Empress Josephine, and another of Spring. In the two closets of this
+chamber were mine hostess's cloak, best bonnet, and go-to-meeting
+apparel. There was a good bed, in which I slept tolerably well, and,
+rising betimes, ate breakfast, consisting of some of our own fish, and
+then started for Augusta. The fat old traveller had gone off with the
+harness of our wagon, which the hostler had put on to his horse by
+mistake. The tavern-keeper gave us his own harness, and started in
+pursuit of the old man, who was probably aware of the exchange, and well
+satisfied with it.</p>
+
+<p>Our drive to Augusta, six or seven miles, was very pleasant, a heavy
+rain having fallen during the night and laid the oppressive dust of the
+day before. The road lay parallel with the Kennebec, of which we
+occasionally had near glimpses. The country swells back from the river
+in hills and ridges, without any interval of level ground; and there
+were frequent woods, filling up the valleys or crowning the summits. The
+land is good, the farms looked neat, and the houses comfortable. The
+latter are generally but of one story, but with large barns; and it was
+a good sign, that, while we saw no houses unfinished nor out of repair,
+one man, at least, had found it expedient to make an addition to his
+dwelling. At the distance of more than two miles, we had a view of white
+Augusta, with its steeples, and the State-House, at the farther end of
+the town. Observable matters along the road were the stage,&mdash;all the
+dust of yesterday brushed off, and no new dust contracted,&mdash;full of
+passengers, inside and out; among them some gentlemanly people and
+pretty girls, all looking fresh and unsullied, rosy, cheerful, and
+curious as to the face of the country, the faces of passing travellers,
+and the incidents of their journey; not yet damped, in the morning
+sunshine, by long miles of jolting over rough and hilly roads,&mdash;to
+compare this with their appearance at midday, and as they drive into
+Bangor at dusk;&mdash;two women dashing along in a wagon, and with a child,
+rattling pretty speedily down hill;&mdash;people looking at us from the open
+doors and windows;&mdash;the children staring from the wayside;&mdash;the mowers
+stopping, for a moment, the sway of their scythes;&mdash;the matron of a
+family, indistinctly seen at some distance within the house, her head
+and shoulders appearing through the window, drawing her handkerchief
+over her bosom, which had been uncovered to give the baby its
+breakfast,&mdash;the said baby, or its immediate predecessor, sitting at the
+door, turning round to creep away on all fours;&mdash;a man building a
+flat-bottomed boat by the roadside: he talked with B&mdash;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>&mdash; about the
+Boundary question, and swore fervently in favor of driving the British
+"into hell's kitchen" by main force.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel B&mdash;&mdash;, the engineer of the mill-dam, is now here, after about a
+fortnight's absence. He is a plain country squire, with a good figure,
+but with rather a ponderous brow; a rough complexion; a gait stiff, and
+a general rigidity of manner, something like that of a schoolmaster. He
+originated in a country town, and is a self-educated man. As he walked
+down the gravel path to-day, after dinner, he took up a scythe, which
+one of the mowers had left on the sward, and began to mow, with quite a
+scientific swing. On the coming of the mower, he laid it down, perhaps a
+little ashamed of his amusement. I was interested in this; to see a man,
+after twenty-five years of scientific occupation, thus trying whether
+his arms retained their strength and skill for the labors of his
+youth,&mdash;mindful of the day when he wore striped trousers, and toiled in
+his shirt-sleeves,&mdash;and now tasting again, for pastime, this drudgery
+beneath a fervid sun. He stood awhile, looking at the workmen, and then
+went to oversee the laborers at the mill-dam.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Monday, July 24th.</i>&mdash;I bathed in the river on Thursday evening, and in
+the brook at the old dam on Saturday and Sunday,&mdash;the former time at
+noon. The aspect of the solitude at noon was peculiarly impressive,
+there being a cloudless sunshine, no wind, no rustling of the
+forest-leaves, no waving of the boughs, no noise but the brawling and
+babbling of the stream, making its way among the stones, and pouring in
+a little cataract round one side of the mouldering dam. Looking up the
+brook, there was a long vista,&mdash;now ripples, now smooth and glassy
+spaces, now large rocks, almost blocking up the channel; while the trees
+stood upon either side, mostly straight, but here and there a branch
+thrusting itself out irregularly, and one tree, a pine, leaning
+over,&mdash;not bending,&mdash;but leaning at an angle over the brook, rough and
+ragged; birches, alders; the tallest of all the trees an old, dead,
+leafless pine, rising white and lonely, though closely surrounded by
+others. Along the brook, now the grass and herbage extended close to the
+water; now a small, sandy beach. The wall of rock before described,
+looking as if it had been hewn, but with irregular strokes of the
+workman, doing his job by rough and ponderous strength,&mdash;now chancing to
+hew it away smoothly and cleanly, now carelessly smiting, and making
+gaps, or piling on the slabs of rock, so as to leave vacant spaces. In
+the interstices grow brake and broad-leaved forest grass. The trees that
+spring from the top of this wall have their roots pressing close to the
+rock, so that there is no soil between; they cling powerfully, and grasp
+the crag tightly with their knotty fingers. The trees on both sides are
+so thick, that the sight and the thoughts are almost immediately lost
+among confused stems, branches, and clustering green leaves,&mdash;a narrow
+strip of bright blue sky above, the sunshine falling lustrously down,
+and making the pathway of the brook luminous below. Entering among the
+thickets, I find the soil strewn with old leaves of preceding seasons,
+through which may be seen a black or dark mould; the roots of trees
+stretch frequently across the path; often a moss-grown brown log lies
+athwart, and when you set your foot down, it sinks into the decaying
+substance,&mdash;into the heart of oak or pine. The leafy boughs and twigs of
+the underbrush enlace themselves before you, so that you must stoop your
+head to pass under, or thrust yourself through amain, while they sweep
+against your face, and perhaps knock off your hat. There are rocks mossy
+and slippery; sometimes you stagger, with a great rustling of branches,
+against a clump of bushes, and into the midst of it. From end to end of
+all this tangled shade goes a pathway scarcely worn, for the leaves are
+not trodden through, yet plain enough to the eye, winding gently to
+avoid tree-trunks and rocks and little hillocks. In the more open
+ground, the aspect of a tall, fire-blackened stump, standing alone, high
+up on a swell of land, that rises<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> gradually from one side of the brook,
+like a monument. Yesterday, I passed a group of children in this
+solitary valley,&mdash;two boys, I think, and two girls. One of the little
+girls seemed to have suffered some wrong from her companions, for she
+was weeping and complaining violently. Another time, I came suddenly on
+a small Canadian boy, who was in a hollow place, among the ruined logs
+of an old causeway, picking raspberries,&mdash;lonely among bushes and
+gorges, far up the wild valley,&mdash;and the lonelier seemed the little boy
+for the bright sunshine, that showed no one else in a wide space of view
+except him and me.</p>
+
+<p>Remarkable items: the observation of Mons. S&mdash;&mdash; when B&mdash;&mdash; was saying
+something against the character of the French people,&mdash;"You ought not to
+form an unfavorable judgment of a great nation from mean fellows like
+me, strolling about in a foreign country." I thought it very noble thus
+to protest against anything discreditable in himself personally being
+used against the honor of his country. He is a very singular person,
+with an originality in all his notions;&mdash;not that nobody has ever had
+such before, but that he has thought them out for himself. He told me
+yesterday that one of his sisters was a waiting-maid in the Rocher de
+Caucale. He is about the sincerest man I ever knew, never pretending to
+feelings that are not in him,&mdash;never flattering. His feelings do not
+seem to be warm, though they are kindly. He is so single-minded that he
+cannot understand badinage, but takes it all as if meant in earnest,&mdash;a
+German trait. Revalues himself greatly on being a Frenchman, though all
+his most valuable qualities come from Germany. His temperament is cool
+and pure, and he is greatly delighted with any attentions from the
+ladies. A short time since, a lady gave him a bouquet of roses and
+pinks; he capered and danced and sang, put it in water, and carried it
+to his own chamber; but he brought it out for us to see and admire two
+or three times a day, bestowing on it all the epithets of admiration in
+the French language,&mdash;"<i>Superbe! magnifique!</i>" When some of the flowers
+began to fade, he made the rest, with others, into a new nosegay, and
+consulted us whether it would be fit to give to another lady. Contrast
+this French foppery with his solemn moods, when we sit in the twilight,
+or after B&mdash;&mdash; is abed, talking of Christianity and Deism, of ways of
+life, of marriage, of benevolence,&mdash;in short, of all deep matters of
+this world and the next. An evening or two since, he began singing all
+manner of English songs,&mdash;such as Mrs. Hemans's "Landing of the
+Pilgrims," "Auld Lang Syne," and some of Moore's,&mdash;the singing pretty
+fair, but in the oddest tone and accent. Occasionally he breaks out with
+scraps from French tragedies, which he spouts with corresponding action.
+He generally gets close to me in these displays of musical and
+histrionic talent Once he offered to magnetize me in the manner of
+Monsieur P&mdash;&mdash;.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Wednesday, July 26th.</i>&mdash;Dined at Barker's yesterday. Before dinner, sat
+with several other persons in the stoop of the tavern. There was B&mdash;&mdash;,
+J. A. Chandler, Clerk of the Court, a man of middle age or beyond, two
+or three stage people, and, nearby, a negro, whom they call "the
+Doctor," a crafty-looking fellow, one of whose occupations is nameless.
+In presence of this goodly company, a man of a depressed, neglected air,
+a soft, simple-looking fellow, with an anxious expression, in a
+laborer's dress, approached and inquired for Mr. Barker. Mine host being
+gone to Portland, the stranger was directed to the bar-keeper, who stood
+at the door. The man asked where he should find one Mary Ann Russell,&mdash;a
+question which excited general and hardly-suppressed mirth; for the said
+Mary Ann is one of a knot of women who were routed on Sunday evening by
+Barker and a constable. The man was told that the black fellow would
+give him all the information he wanted. The black fellow asked,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want to see her?"</p>
+
+<p>Others of the by-standers or by-sitters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> put various questions as to the
+nature of the man's business with Mary Ann. One asked,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Is she your daughter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, a little nearer than that, I calkilate," said the poor devil.</p>
+
+<p>Here the mirth was increased, it being evident that the woman was his
+wife. The man seemed too simple and obtuse to comprehend the ridicule of
+his situation, or to be rendered very miserable by it. Nevertheless, he
+made some touching points.</p>
+
+<p>"A man generally places some little dependence on his wife," said he,
+"whether she's good or not."</p>
+
+<p>He meant, probably, that he rests some affection on her. He told us that
+she had behaved well, till committed to jail for striking a child; and I
+believe he was absent from home at the time, and had not seen her since.
+And now he was in search of her, intending, doubtless, to do his best to
+get her out of her troubles, and then to take her back to his home. Some
+advised him not to look after her; others recommended him to pay "the
+Doctor" aforesaid for guiding him to her; which finally "the Doctor"
+did, in consideration of a treat; and the fellow went off, having heard
+little but gibes, and not one word of sympathy! I would like to have
+witnessed his meeting with his wife.</p>
+
+<p>There was a moral picturesqueness in the contrasts of the scene,&mdash;a man
+moved as deeply as his nature would admit, in the midst of hardened,
+gibing spectators, heartless towards him. It is worth thinking over and
+studying out. He seemed rather hurt and pricked by the jests thrown at
+him, yet bore it patiently, and sometimes almost joined in the laugh,
+being of an easy, unenergetic temper.</p>
+
+<p>Hints for characters:&mdash;Nancy, a pretty, black-eyed, intelligent
+servant-girl, living in Captain H&mdash;&mdash;'s family. She comes daily to make
+the beds in our part of the house, and exchanges a good-morning with me,
+in a pleasant voice, and with a glance and smile,&mdash;somewhat shy, because
+we are not acquainted, yet capable of being made conversable. She washes
+once a week, and may be seen standing over her tub, with her
+handkerchief somewhat displaced from her white neck, because it is hot.
+Often she stands with her bare arms in the water, talking with Mrs.
+H&mdash;&mdash;, or looks through the window, perhaps, at B&mdash;&mdash; or somebody else
+crossing the yard,&mdash;rather thoughtfully, but soon smiling or laughing.
+Then goeth she for a pail of water. In the afternoon, very probably, she
+dresses herself in silks, looking not only pretty, but lady-like, and
+strolls round the house, not unconscious that some gentleman may be
+staring at her from behind the green blinds. After supper, she walks to
+the village. Morning and evening, she goes a-milking. And thus passes
+her life, cheerfully, usefully, virtuously, with hopes, doubtless, of a
+husband and children.&mdash;Mrs. H&mdash;&mdash; is a particularly plump, soft-fleshed,
+fair-complexioned, comely woman enough, with rather a simple
+countenance, not nearly so piquant as Nancy's. Her walk has something of
+the roll or waddle of a fat woman, though it were too much to call her
+fat. She seems to be a sociable body, probably laughter-loving. Captain
+H&mdash;&mdash; himself has commanded a steamboat, and has a certain knowledge of
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Query, in relation to the man's missing wife, how much desire and
+resolution of doing her duty by her husband can a wife retain, while
+injuring him in what is deemed the most essential point?</p>
+
+<p>Observation. The effect of morning sunshine on the wet grass, on sloping
+and swelling land, between the spectator and the sun at some distance,
+as across a lawn. It diffused a dim brilliancy over the whole surface of
+the field. The mists, slow-rising farther off, part resting on the
+earth, the remainder of the column already ascending so high that you
+doubt whether to call it a fog or a cloud.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Friday, July 28th.</i>&mdash;Saw my classmate and formerly intimate friend,
+Cilley,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> for the first time since we graduated. He has met with good
+success in life, in spite of circumstance, having struggled upward
+against bitter opposition, by the force of his own abilities, to be a
+member of Congress, after having been for some time the leader of his
+party in the State Legislature. We met like old friends, and conversed
+almost as freely as we used to do in college days, twelve years ago and
+more. He is a singular man, shrewd, crafty, insinuating, with wonderful
+tact, seizing on each man by his manageable point, and using him for his
+own purpose, often without the man's suspecting that he is made a tool
+of; and yet, artificial as his character would seem to be, his
+conversation, at least to myself, was full of natural feeling, the
+expression of which can hardly be mistaken, and his revelations with
+regard to himself had really a great deal of frankness. He spoke of his
+ambition, of the obstacles which he had encountered, of the means by
+which he had overcome them, imputing great efficacy to his personal
+intercourse with people, and his study of their characters; then of his
+course as a member of the Legislature and Speaker, and his style of
+speaking and its effects; of the dishonorable things which had been
+imputed to him, and in what manner he had repelled the charges. In
+short, he would seem to have opened himself very freely as to his public
+life. Then, as to his private affairs, he spoke of his marriage, of his
+wife, his children, and told me, with tears in his eyes, of the death of
+a dear little girl, and how it affected him, and how impossible it had
+been for him to believe that she was really to die. A man of the most
+open nature might well have been more reserved to a friend, after twelve
+years' separation, than Cilley was to me. Nevertheless, he is really a
+crafty man, concealing, like a murder-secret, anything that it is not
+good for him to have known. He by no means feigns the good-feeling that
+he professes, nor is there anything affected in the frankness of his
+conversation; and it is this that makes him so very fascinating. There
+is such a quantity of truth and kindliness and warm affections, that a
+man's heart opens to him, in spite of himself. He deceives by truth. And
+not only is he crafty, but, when occasion demands, bold and fierce as a
+tiger, determined, and even straightforward and undisguised in his
+measures,&mdash;a daring fellow as well as a sly one. Yet, notwithstanding
+his consummate art, the general estimate of his character seems to be
+pretty just. Hardly anybody, probably, thinks him better than he is, and
+many think him worse. Nevertheless, if no overwhelming discovery of
+rascality be made, he will always possess influence; though I should
+hardly think that he would take any prominent part in Congress. As to
+any rascality, I rather believe that he has thought out for himself a
+much higher system of morality than any natural integrity would have
+prompted him to adopt; that he has seen the thorough advantage of
+morality and honesty; and the sentiment of these qualities has now got
+into his mind and spirit, and pretty well impregnated them. I believe
+him to be about as honest as the great run of the world, with something
+even approaching to high-mindedness. His person in some degree accords
+with his character,&mdash;thin and with a thin face, sharp features, sallow,
+a projecting brow not very high, deep-set eyes, an insinuating smile and
+look, when he meets you, and is about to address you. I should think
+that he would do away with this peculiar expression, for it reveals more
+of himself than can be detected in any other way, in personal
+intercourse with him. Upon the whole, I have quite a good liking for
+him, and mean to go to Thomaston to see him.</p>
+
+<p>Observation. A steam-engine across the river, which almost continually
+during the day, and sometimes all night, may be heard puffing and
+panting, as if it uttered groans for being compelled to labor in the
+heat and sunshine, and when the world is asleep also.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Monday, July 31st.</i>&mdash;Nothing remarkable to record. A child asleep in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> a
+young lady's arms,&mdash;a little baby, two or three months old. Whenever
+anything partially disturbed the child, as, for instance, when the young
+lady or a by-stander patted its cheek or rubbed its chin, the child
+would smile; then all its dreams seemed to be of pleasure and happiness.
+At first the smile was so faint, that I doubted whether it were really a
+smile or no; but on further efforts, it brightened forth very decidedly.
+This, without opening its eyes.&mdash;A constable, a homely, good-natured,
+business-looking man, with a warrant against an Irishman's wife for
+throwing a brickbat at a fellow. He gave good advice to the Irishman
+about the best method of coming easiest through the affair. Finally
+settled,&mdash;the justice agreeing to relinquish his fees, on condition that
+the Irishman would pay for the mending of his old boots!</p>
+
+<p>I went with Monsieur S&mdash;&mdash; yesterday to pick raspberries. He fell
+through an old log bridge thrown over a hollow; looking back, only his
+head and shoulders appeared through the rotten logs and among the
+bushes.&mdash;A shower coming on, the rapid running of a little barefooted
+boy, coming up unheard, and dashing swiftly past us, and showing the
+soles of his naked feet as he ran adown the path before us, and up the
+opposite rise.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Tuesday, August 1st.</i>&mdash;There having been a heavy rain yesterday, a nest
+of chimney-swallows was washed down the chimney into the fireplace of
+one of the front-rooms. My attention was drawn to them by a most
+obstreperous twittering; and looking behind the fire-board, there were
+three young birds, clinging with their feet against one of the jambs,
+looking at me, open-mouthed, and all clamoring together, so as quite to
+fill the room with the short, eager, frightened sound. The old birds, by
+certain signs upon the floor of the room, appeared to have fallen
+victims to the appetite of the cat. La belle Nancy provided a basket
+filled with cotton-wool, into which the poor little devils were put; and
+I tried to feed them with soaked bread, of which, however, they did not
+eat with much relish. Tom, the Irish boy, gave it as his opinion that
+they were not old enough to be weaned. I hung the basket out of the
+window, in the sunshine, and upon looking in, an hour or two after,
+found that two of the birds had escaped. The other I tried to feed, and
+sometimes, when a morsel of bread was thrust into its open mouth, it
+would swallow it. But it appeared to suffer a good deal, vociferating
+loudly when disturbed, and panting, in a sluggish agony, with eyes
+closed, or half opened, when let alone. It distressed me a good deal;
+and I felt relieved, though somewhat shocked, when B&mdash;&mdash; put an end to
+its misery by squeezing its head and throwing it out of the window. They
+were of a slate-color, and might, I suppose, have been able to shift for
+themselves.&mdash;The other day a little yellow bird flew into one of the
+empty rooms, of which there are half a dozen on the lower floor, and
+could not find his way out again, flying at the glass of the windows,
+instead of at the door, thumping his head against the panes or against
+the ceiling. I drove him into the entry and chased him from end to end,
+endeavoring to make him fly through one of the open doors. He would fly
+at the circular light over the door, clinging to the casement, sometimes
+alighting on one of the two glass lamps, or on the cords that suspended
+them, uttering an affrighted and melancholy cry whenever I came near and
+flapped my handkerchief, and appearing quite tired and sinking into
+despair. At last he happened to fly low enough to pass through the door,
+and immediately vanished into the gladsome sunshine.&mdash;Ludicrous
+situation of a man, drawing his chaise down a sloping bank, to wash in
+the river. The chaise got the better of him, and, rushing downward as if
+it were possessed, compelled him to run at full speed, and drove him up
+to his chin into the water. A singular instance, that a chaise may run
+away with a man without a horse!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Saturday, August 12th.</i>&mdash;Left Augusta a week ago this morning for
+Thomaston. Nothing particular in our drive across the country.
+Fellow-passenger, a Boston dry-goods dealer, travelling to collect
+bills. At many of the country shops he would get out, and show his
+unwelcome visage. In the tavern, prints from Scripture, varnished and on
+rollers,&mdash;such as the Judgment of Christ; also, a droll set of colored
+engravings of the story of the Prodigal Son, the figures being clad in
+modern costume,&mdash;or, at least, that of not more than half a century ago.
+The father, a grave, clerical person, with a white wig and black
+broadcloth suit; the son, with a cocked hat and laced clothes, drinking
+wine out of a glass, and caressing a woman in fashionable dress. At
+Thomaston, a nice, comfortable, boarding-house tavern, without a bar or
+any sort of wines or spirits. An old lady from Boston, with her three
+daughters, one of whom was teaching music, and the other two were
+school-mistresses. A frank, free, mirthful daughter of the landlady,
+about twenty-four years old, between whom and myself there immediately
+sprang up a flirtation, which made us both feel rather melancholy when
+we parted on Tuesday morning. Music in the evening, with a song by a
+rather pretty, fantastic little mischief of a brunette, about eighteen
+years old, who has married within a year, and spent the last summer in a
+trip to the Springs and elsewhere. Her manner of walking is by jerks,
+with a quiver, as if she were made of calves-feet jelly. I talk with
+everybody: to Mrs. Trott, good sense,&mdash;to Mary, good sense, with a
+mixture of fun,&mdash;to Mrs. Gleason, sentiment, romance, and nonsense.</p>
+
+<p>Walked with Cilley to see General Knox's old mansion,&mdash;a large,
+rusty-looking edifice of wood, with some grandeur in the architecture,
+standing on the banks of the river, close by the site of an old
+burial-ground, and near where an ancient fort had been erected for
+defence against the French and Indians. General Knox once owned a square
+of thirty miles in this part of the country; and he wished to settle it
+with a tenantry, after the fashion of English gentlemen. He would permit
+no edifice to be erected within a certain distance of his mansion. His
+patent covered, of course, the whole present town of Thomaston, with
+Waldoborough and divers other flourishing commercial and country
+villages, and would have been of incalculable value could it have
+remained unbroken to the present time. But the General lived in grand
+style, and received throngs of visitors from foreign parts, and was
+obliged to part with large tracts of his possessions, till now there is
+little left but the ruinous mansion and the ground immediately around
+it. His tomb stands near the house,&mdash;a spacious receptacle, an iron door
+at the end of a turf-covered mound, and surmounted by an obelisk of the
+Thomaston marble. There are inscriptions to the memory of several of his
+family; for he had many children, all of whom are now dead, except one
+daughter, a widow of fifty, recently married to Hon. John H&mdash;&mdash;. There
+is a stone fence round the monument. On the outside of this are the
+gravestones, and large, flat tombstones of the ancient
+burial-ground,&mdash;the tombstones being of red freestone, with vacant
+spaces, formerly inlaid with slate, on which were the inscriptions, and
+perhaps coats-of-arms. One of these spaces was in the shape of a heart.
+The people of Thomaston were very wrathful that the General should have
+laid out his grounds over this old burial-place; and he dared never
+throw down the gravestones, though his wife, a haughty English lady,
+often teased him to do so. But when the old General was dead, Lady Knox
+(as they called her) caused them to be prostrated, as they now lie. She
+was a woman of violent passions, and so proud an aristocrat, that, as
+long as she lived, she would never enter any house in Thomaston except
+her own. When a married daughter was ill, she used to go in her carriage
+to the door, and send up to inquire how she did. The General<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> was
+personally very popular; but his wife ruled him. The house and its
+vicinity, and the whole tract covered by Knox's patent, may be taken as
+an illustration of what must be the result of American schemes of
+aristocracy. It is not forty years since this house was built, and Knox
+was in his glory; but now the house is all in decay, while within a
+stone's throw of it there is a street of smart white edifices of one and
+two stories, occupied chiefly by thriving mechanics, which has been laid
+out where Knox meant to have forests and parks. On the banks of the
+river, where he intended to have only one wharf for his own West Indian
+vessels and yacht, there are two wharves, with stores and a lime-kiln.
+Little appertains to the mansion, except the tomb and the old
+burial-ground, and the old fort.</p>
+
+<p>The descendants are all poor, and the inheritance was merely sufficient
+to make a dissipated and drunken fellow of the only one of the old
+General's sons who survived to middle age. The man's habits were as bad
+as possible as long as he had any money; but when quite ruined, he
+reformed. The daughter, the only survivor among Knox's children,
+(herself childless,) is a mild, amiable woman, therein totally differing
+from her mother. Knox, when he first visited his estate, arriving in a
+vessel, was waited upon by a deputation of the squatters, who had
+resolved to resist him to the death. He received them with genial
+courtesy, made them dine with him aboard the vessel, and sent them back
+to their constituents in great love and admiration of him. He used to
+have a vessel running to Philadelphia, I think, and bringing him all
+sorts of delicacies. His way of raising money was to give a mortgage on
+his estate of a hundred thousand dollars at a time, and receive that
+nominal amount in goods, which he would immediately sell at auction for
+perhaps thirty thousand. He died by a chicken-bone. Near the house are
+the remains of a covered way, by which the French once attempted to gain
+admittance into the fort; but the work caved in and buried a good many
+of them, and the rest gave up the siege. There was recently an old
+inhabitant living, who remembered when the people used to reside in the
+fort.</p>
+
+<p>Owl's Head,&mdash;a watering-place, terminating a point of land, six or seven
+miles from Thomaston. A long island shuts out the prospect of the sea.
+Hither coasters and fishing-smacks run in when a storm is anticipated.
+Two fat landlords, both young men, with something of a contrast in their
+dispositions;&mdash;one of them being a brisk, lively, active, jesting fat
+man; the other more heavy and inert, making jests sluggishly, if at all.
+Aboard the steamboat, Professor Stuart of Andover, sitting on a sofa in
+the saloon, generally in conversation with some person, resolving their
+doubts on one point or another, speaking in a very audible voice; and
+strangers standing or sitting around to hear him, as if he were an
+ancient apostle or philosopher. He is a bulky man, with a large, massive
+face, particularly calm in its expression, and mild enough to be
+pleasing. When not otherwise occupied, he reads, without much notice of
+what is going on around him. He speaks without effort, yet thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>We got lost in a fog the morning after leaving Owl's Head. Fired a brass
+cannon, rang bell, blew steam like a whale snorting. After one of the
+reports of the cannon, we heard a horn blown at no great distance, the
+sound coming soon after the report. Doubtful whether it came from the
+shore or a vessel. Continued our ringing and snorting; and by and by
+something was seen to mingle with the fog that obscured everything
+beyond fifty yards from us. At first it seemed only like a denser wreath
+of fog; it darkened still more, till it took the aspect of sails; then
+the hull of a small schooner came beating down towards us, the wind
+laying her over towards us, so that her gunwale was almost in the water,
+and we could see the whole of her sloping deck.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Schooner ahoy!" say we. "Halloo! Have you seen Boston Light this
+morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; it bears north-northwest, two miles distant."</p>
+
+<p>"Very much obliged to you," cries our captain.</p>
+
+<p>So the schooner vanishes into the mist behind. We get up our steam, and
+soon enter the harbor, meeting vessels of every rig; and the fog,
+clearing away, shows a cloudy sky. Aboard, an old one-eyed sailor, who
+had lost one of his feet, and had walked on the stump from Eastport to
+Bangor, thereby making a shocking ulcer.</p>
+
+<p>Penobscot Bay is full of islands, close to which the steamboat is
+continually passing. Some are large, with portions of forest and
+portions of cleared land; some are mere rocks, with a little green or
+none, and inhabited by sea-birds, which fly and flap about hoarsely.
+Their eggs may be gathered by the bushel, and are good to eat. Other
+islands have one house and barn on them, this sole family being lords
+and rulers of all the land which the sea girds. The owner of such an
+island must have a peculiar sense of property and lordship; he must feel
+more like his own master and his own man than other people can. Other
+islands, perhaps high, precipitous, black bluffs, are crowned with a
+white light-house, whence, as evening comes on, twinkles a star across
+the melancholy deep,&mdash;seen by vessels coming on the coast, seen from the
+mainland, seen from island to island. Darkness descending, and looking
+down at the broad wake left by the wheels of the steamboat, we may see
+sparkles of sea-fire glittering through the gloom.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="AN_OLD_MANS_IDYL" id="AN_OLD_MANS_IDYL"></a>AN OLD MAN'S IDYL.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By the waters of Life we sat together,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Hand in hand in the golden days<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the beautiful early summer weather,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When skies were purple and breath was praise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the heart kept tune to the carol of birds<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the birds kept tune to the songs which ran<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through shimmer of flowers on grassy swards,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And trees with voices &AElig;olian.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By the rivers of Life we walked together,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I and my darling, unafraid;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lighter than any linnet's feather<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The burdens of Being on us weighed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Love's sweet miracles o'er us threw<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mantles of joy outlasting Time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And up from the rosy morrows grew<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A sound that seemed like a marriage chime.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In the gardens of Life we strayed together;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the luscious apples were ripe and red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the languid lilac and honeyed heather<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Swooned with the fragrance which they shed.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">And under the trees the angels walked,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And up in the air a sense of wings<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Awed us tenderly while we talked<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Softly in sacred communings.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In the meadows of Life we strayed together,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Watching the waving harvests grow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And under the benison of the Father<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our hearts, like the lambs, skipped to and fro.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the cowslips, hearing our low replies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Broidered fairer the emerald banks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And glad tears shone in the daisies' eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the timid violet glistened thanks.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who was with us, and what was round us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Neither myself nor my darling guessed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only we knew that something crowned us<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Out from the heavens with crowns of rest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only we knew that something bright<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lingered lovingly where we stood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clothed with the incandescent light<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of something higher than humanhood.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O the riches Love doth inherit!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ah, the alchemy which doth change<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dross of body and dregs of spirit<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Into sanctities rare and strange!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My flesh is feeble and dry and old,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My darling's beautiful hair is gray;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But our elixir and precious gold<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Laugh at the footsteps of decay.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Harms of the world have come unto us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Cups of sorrow we yet shall drain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But we have a secret which cloth show us<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wonderful rainbows in the rain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And we hear the tread of the years move by,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the sun is setting behind the hills;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But my darling does not fear to die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And I am happy in what God wills.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So we sit by our household fires together,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Dreaming the dreams of long ago:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then it was balmy summer weather,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And now the valleys are laid in snow.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Icicles hang from the slippery eaves;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The wind blows cold,&mdash;'tis growing late;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Well, well! we have garnered all our sheaves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I and my darling, and we wait.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="A_RAMBLE_THROUGH_THE_MARKET" id="A_RAMBLE_THROUGH_THE_MARKET"></a>A RAMBLE THROUGH THE MARKET.</h2>
+
+
+<p>As a man puts on the stoutness and thicksetness of middle life, he
+begins to find himself contemplating well-filled meat and fish stalls,
+and piles of lusty garden vegetables, with unfeigned interest and
+delight. He walks through Quincy Market, for instance, with far more
+pleasure than through the dewy and moonlit groves which were the scenes
+of his youthful wooings. Then he was all sentiment and poetry. Now he
+finds the gratification of the mouth and stomach a chief source of
+mundane delight. It is said that all the ships on the sea are sailing in
+the direction of the human mouth. The stomach, with its fierce
+assimilative power, is a great stimulator of commercial activity. The
+table of the civilized man, loaded with the products of so many climes,
+bears witness to this. The demands of the stomach are imperious. Its
+ukases and decrees must be obeyed, else the whole corporeal commonwealth
+of man, and the spirit which makes the human organism its vehicle in
+time and space, are in a state of trouble and insurrection.</p>
+
+<p>A large part of the lower organic world, both animal and vegetable, is
+ground between man's molars and incisors, and assimilated through the
+stomach with his body. This may be called the final cause of that part
+of the lower organic world which is edible. Man is a scientific
+eater,&mdash;a cooking animal. Laughter and speech are not so distinctive
+traits of him as cookery. Improve his food, and he is improved both
+physically and mentally. His tissue becomes finer, his skin clearer and
+brighter, and his hair more glossy and hyacinthine. Cattle-breeders and
+the improvers of horticulture are indirectly improving their own race by
+furnishing finer and more healthful materials to be built into man's
+body. Marble, cedar, rosewood, gold, and gems make a finer edifice than
+thatch and ordinary timber and stones. So South-Down mutton and Devonian
+beef fattened on the blue-grass pastures of the West, and the
+magnificent prize vegetables and rich appetizing fruits, equal to
+anything grown in the famed gardens of Alcino&uuml;s or the Hesperides, which
+are displayed at our annual autumnal fairs as evidences of our
+scientific horticulture and fructiculture, adorn the frame into which
+they are incorporated by mastication and digestion, as rosewood and
+marble and cedar and gold adorn a house or temple.</p>
+
+<p>The subject of eating and drinking is a serious one. The stomach is the
+great motive power of society. It is the true sharpener of human
+ingenuity, <i>curis acuens mortalia corda</i>. Cookery is the first of arts.
+Chemistry is a mere subordinate science, whose chief value is that it
+enables man to impart greater relish and gust to his viands. The
+greatest poets, such as Homer, Milton, and Scott, treat the subject of
+eating and drinking with much seriousness, minuteness of detail, and
+lusciousness of description. Homer's heroes are all good
+cooks,&mdash;swift-footed Achilles, much-enduring Ulysses, and the rest of
+them. Read Milton's appetizing description of the feast which the
+Tempter set before the fasting Saviour:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Our Saviour, lifting up his eyes, beheld<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In ample space, under the broadest shade,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A table richly spread in regal mode,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And savor: beasts of chase or fowl of game<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gris-amber steamed; all fish from sea or shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Freshet or purling brook, of shell or fin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And exquisitest name, for which was drained<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pontus and Lucrine bay and Afric coast;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And at a stately sideboard, by the wine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That fragrant smell diffused in order stood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tall stripling youths, rich clad, of fairer hue<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than Ganymed or Hylas."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is evident that the sublime Milton had a keen relish for a good
+dinner. Keats's description of that delicious moonlight spread by
+Porphyro, in the room of his fair Madeline, asleep, on St. Agnes' eve,
+"in lap of legends old," is another delicate morsel of Apician<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> poetry.
+"Those lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon and sugared dainties" from
+Samarcand to cedared Lebanon, show that Keats had not got over his
+boyish taste for sweet things, and reached the maturity and gravity of
+appetite which dictated the Miltonian description. He died at
+twenty-four years. Had he lived longer, he might have sung of roast and
+boiled as sublimely as Milton has done.</p>
+
+<p>Epicurus, in exalting cookery and eating and drinking to a plane of
+philosophical importance, was a true friend of his race, and showed
+himself the most sensible and wisest of all the Greek philosophers. A
+psychometrical critic of the philosopher of the garden says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The first and last necessity is eating. The animated world is
+unceasingly eating and digesting itself. None could see this truth
+clearly but an enthusiast in diet like Epicurus, who, discovering the
+unexceptionableness of the natural law, proceeded to the work of
+adaptation. Ocean, lake, streamlet, was separately interrogated, 'How
+much delicious food do you contain? What are your preparations? When
+should man partake?' In like manner did the enthusiast peregrinate
+through Nature's empire, fixing his chemical eye upon plant and shrub
+and berry and vine,&mdash;asking every creeping thing, and the animal
+creation also, 'What can you do for man?' And such truths as the angels
+sent! Sea, earth, and air were overflowing and heavily laden with
+countless means of happiness. 'The whole was a cupboard of food or
+cabinet of pleasure.' Life must not be sacrificed by man, for thereby he
+would defeat the end sought. Man's fine love of life must save him from
+taking life." (This is not doctrine to promulgate in the latitude of
+Quincy Market, O clairvoyant Davis!) "In the world of fruit, berries,
+vines, flowers, herbs, grains, grasses, could be found all proper food
+for 'bodily ease and mental tranquillity.'</p>
+
+<p>"Behold the enthusiast! classifying man's senses to be gratified at the
+table. All dishes must be beautifully prepared and disposed to woo and
+win the sense of sight; the assembled articles must give off odors
+harmoniously blended to delight and cultivate the sense of smell; and
+each substance must balance with every other in point of flavor, to meet
+the natural demands of taste; otherwise the entertainment is shorn of
+its virtue to bless and tranquillize the soul!...</p>
+
+<p>"But lo, the fanatic in eating appears! Miserably hot with gluttonous
+debauchery. He has feasted upon a thousand deaths! Belshazzar's court
+fed on fish of every type, birds of every flight, brutes of every clime,
+and added thereto each finer luxury known in the catalogue of the
+temperate Epicurus....</p>
+
+<p>"Behold the sceptics. A shivering group of acid ghouls at their scanty
+board.... Bread, milk, bran, turnips, onions, potatoes, apples, yield so
+much starch, so much sugar, so much nitrogen, so much nutriment! Enough!
+to live is the <i>end</i> of eating, not to be pleased and made better with
+objects, odors, flavors. Therefore welcome a few articles of food in
+violation of every fine sensibility. Stuff in and masticate the crudest
+forms of eatables,&mdash;bad-cooking, bad-looking, bad-smelling, bad-tasting,
+and worse-feeling,&mdash;down with them hastily,&mdash;and then, between your
+headaches and gastric spasms, pride yourself upon virtues and temperance
+not possessed by any student in the gastronomic school of Epicurus! Let
+it be perpetually remembered to the credit of this apostle of
+alimentation and vitativeness with temperance, that, in his religious
+system, eating was a 'sacramental' process, and not a physical
+indulgence merely, as the ignorant allege."</p>
+
+<p>Bravo for the seer of Poughkeepsie! In the above extracts, quoted from
+his "Thinker," he has vindicated the much maligned Epicurus better than
+his disciples Lucretius and Gassendi have done, and by some mysterious
+process (he calls it psychometry) he seems to know more of the old
+Athenian, and to have a more intimate knowledge of his doctrines, than
+can be found in Brucker or Ritter.</p>
+
+<p>When it is considered how our mental states may be modified by what we
+eat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> and drink, the importance of good <i>ingesta</i>, both fluid and solid,
+becomes apparent. Among the good things which attached Charles Lamb to
+this present life was his love of the delicious juices of meats and
+fishes.</p>
+
+<p>But these things are preliminary, although not impertinent to the main
+subject, which is Quincy Market. After having perambulated the principal
+markets of the other leading American cities, I must pronounce it
+<i>facile princeps</i> among New-World markets. A walk through it is equal to
+a dose of dandelion syrup in the way of exciting an appetite for one's
+dinner. Such a walk is tonic and medicinal, and should be prescribed to
+dyspeptic patients. To the hungry, penniless man such a walk is like the
+torture administered to the old Phrygian who blabbed to mortals the
+secrets of the celestial banquets. Autumn is the season in which to
+indulge in a promenade through Quincy Market, after the leaf has been
+nipped by the frost and crimson-tinted, when the morning air is cool and
+bracing. Then the stalls and precincts of the chief Boston market are a
+goodly spectacle. Athen&aelig;us himself, the classic historian of classic
+gluttons and classic bills of fare, could not but feel a glow at the
+sight of the good things here displayed, if he were alive. Quincy Market
+culminates at Thanksgiving time. It then attains to the zenith of good
+fare.</p>
+
+<p>Cleanliness and spruceness are the rule among the Quincy Market men and
+stall-keepers. The matutinal display outside of apples, pears, onions,
+turnips, beets, carrots, egg-plants, cranberries, squashes, etc., is
+magnificent in the variety and richness of its hues. What a multitude of
+orchards, meadows, gardens, and fields have been laid under contribution
+to furnish this vegetable abundance! And here are their choicest
+products. The foodful Earth and the arch-chemic Sun, the great
+agriculturist and life-fountain, have done their best in concocting
+these Quincy Market culinary vegetables. They wear a healthful,
+resplendent look. Inside, what a goodly vista stretches away of fish,
+flesh, and fowl! From these white stalls the Tempter could have
+furnished forth the banquet the Miltonic description of which has been
+quoted.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a stall of ripe, juicy mutton, perhaps from the county of St.
+Lawrence, in Northeastern New York. This is the most healthful and
+easily digested of all meats. Its juiciness and nutritiousness are
+visible in the trumpeter-like cheeks of the well-fed John Bull. The
+domestic Anglo-Saxon is a mutton-eater. Let his offshoots here and
+elsewhere follow suit. There is no such timber to repair the waste of
+the human frame. It is a fuel easily combustible in the visceral grate
+of the stomach. The mutton-eater is eupeptic. His dreams are airy and
+lightsome. Somnus descends smiling to his nocturnal pillow, and not clad
+in the portentous panoply of indigestion, which rivals a guilty
+conscience in its night visions. The mutton department of Quincy Market
+is all that it should be.</p>
+
+<p>Next we come upon "fowl of game," wild ducks, pigeons, etc.&mdash;What has
+become of those shoals of pigeons, those herrings of the air, which used
+in the gloom and glory of a breezy autumnal day to darken the sun in
+their flight, like the discharge of the Xerxean arrows at Thermopyl&aelig;?
+The eye sweeps the autumnal sky in vain now for any such winged
+phenomenon, at least here in New England. The days of the bough-house
+and pigeon-stand strewn with barley seem to have gone by. Swift of
+flight and shapely in body is the North American wild pigeon, running
+upon the air fleeter than Anacreon's dove. He can lay any latitude under
+contribution in a few hours, flying incredible distances during the
+process of digestion. He is an ornament to the air, and the pot
+also.&mdash;Here might be a descendant of Bryant's waterfowl; but its
+journeyings along the pathless coast of the upper atmosphere are at an
+end.</p>
+
+<p>"All flesh is not the same flesh; but there is one kind of flesh of men,
+another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds." The
+matter composing the vegetables and the lower animals<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> is promoted, as
+it were, by being eaten by man and incorporated into his body, which is
+a breathing house not made with hands built over the boundary-line of
+two worlds, the sensible and noumenal. "The human body is the highest
+chemical laboratory which matter can reach. In that body the highest
+qualities and richest emoluments are imparted to it, and it is indorsed
+with a divine superscription." It there becomes part and parcel of the
+eye, the organ of light and the throne of expression,&mdash;of the blood,
+which is so eloquent in cheek and brow,&mdash;of the nerves, the
+telegraph-wires of the soul,&mdash;of the persuasive tongue,&mdash;of the
+tear-drop, the dew of emotion, which only the human eye can shed,&mdash;of
+the glossy tresses of beauty, the nets of love.</p>
+
+<p>The provision markets of a community are a good index of the grade of
+its civilization. Tell me what a nation eats, what is its diet, and I
+will tell you what is its literature, its religious belief, and so
+forth. Solid, practical John Bull is a mutton, beef, and pudding eater.
+He drinks strong ale or beer, and thinks beer. He drives fat oxen, and
+is himself fat. He is no idealist in philosophy. He hates generalization
+and abstract thought. He is for the real and concrete. Plain, unadorned
+Protestantism is most to the taste of the middle classes of Great
+Britain. Music, sculpture, and painting add not their charms to the
+Englishman's dull and respectable devotions. Cross the Channel and
+behold his whilom hereditary foeman, but now firm ally, the Frenchman!
+He is a dainty feeder and the most accomplished of cooks. He
+etherealizes ordinary fish, flesh, and fowl by his exquisite cuisine. He
+educates the palate to a daintiness whereof the gross-feeding John Bull
+never dreamed. He extracts the finest flavors and quintessential
+principles from flesh and vegetables. He drinks light and sparkling
+wines, the vintage of Champagne and Burgundy. Accordingly the Frenchman
+is lightsome and buoyant. He is a great theorist and classifier. He
+adheres to the ornate worship of the Mother Church when religiously
+disposed. His literature is perspicuous and clear. He is an admirable
+doctrinaire and generalizer,&mdash;witness Guizot and Montesquieu. He puts
+philosophy and science into a readable, comprehensible shape. The
+Teutonic diet of sauer-kraut, sausages, cheese, ham, etc., is
+indigestible, giving rise to a vaporous, cloudy cerebral state. German
+philosophy and mysticism are its natural outcome.</p>
+
+<p>Baked beans, pumpkin pie, apple-sauce, onions, codfish, and Medford
+rum,&mdash;these were the staple items of the primitive New England larder;
+and they were an appropriate diet whereon to nourish the caucus-loving,
+inventive, acute, methodically fanatical Yankee. The bean, the most
+venerable and nutritious of lentils, was anciently used as a ballot or
+vote. Hence it symbolized in the old Greek democracies politics and a
+public career. Hence Pythagoras and his disciples, though they were
+vegetable-eaters, eschewed the bean as an article of diet, from its
+association with politics, demagogism, and ochlocracy. They preferred
+the life contemplative and the <i>fallentis semita vit&aelig;</i>. Hence their
+utter detestation of beans, the symbols of noisy gatherings, of
+demagogues and party strife and every species of political trickery. The
+primitive Yankee, in view of his destiny as the founder of this
+caucus-loving nation and American democracy, seems to have been
+providentially guided in selecting beans for his most characteristic
+article of diet.</p>
+
+<p>But to move on through the market. The butter and cheese stalls have
+their special attractions. The butyraceous gold in tubs and huge lumps
+displayed in these stalls looks as though it was precipitated from milk
+squeezed from Channel Island cows, those fawn-colored, fairest of dairy
+animals. In its present shape it is the herbage of a thousand
+clover-blooming meads and dewy hill-pastures in old Berkshire, in
+Vermont and Northern New York, transformed by the housewife's churn into
+edible gold. Not only butter and cheese are grass or of gramineous
+origin,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> but all flesh is grass,&mdash;a physiological fact enunciated by
+Holy Writ and strictly true.</p>
+
+<p>Porcine flesh is too abundant here. How the New-Englander, whose Puritan
+forefathers were almost Jews, and hardly got beyond the Old Testament in
+their Scriptural studies, has come to make pork so capital an article in
+his diet, is a mystery. Small-boned swine of the Chinese breed, which
+are kept in the temple sties of the Josses, and which are capable of an
+obeseness in which all form and feature are swallowed up and lost in
+fat, seem to be plenty in Quincy Market. They are hooked upright upon
+their haunches, in a sitting posture, against the posts of the stall.
+How many pots of Sabbath morning beans one of these porkers will
+lubricate!</p>
+
+<p>Beef tongues are abundant here, and eloquent of good living. The mighty
+hind and fore quarters and ribs of the ox,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"With their red and yellow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lean and tallow,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>appeal to the good-liver on all sides. They seem to be the staple flesh
+of the stalls.</p>
+
+<p>But let us move on to the stalls frequented by the ichthyophagi. Homer
+calls the sea the barren, the harvestless! Our Cape Ann fishermen do not
+find it so.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The sounds and seas, with all their finny droves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That to the Moon in wavering morrice move,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>are as foodful as the most fertile parts of <i>terra firma</i>. Here lie the
+blue, delicate mackerel in heaps, and piles of white perch from the
+South Shore, cod, haddock, eels, lobsters, huge segments of swordfish,
+and the flesh of various other voiceless tenants of the deep, both
+finned and shell-clad. The codfish, the symbol of Puritan aristocracy,
+as the grasshopper was of the ancient Athenians, seems to predominate.
+Our <i>frutti di mare</i>, in the shape of oysters, clams, and other
+mollusks, are the delight of all true gastronomers. What vegetable, or
+land animal, is so nutritious? Here are some silvery shad from the
+Penobscot, or Kennebec, or Merrimac, or Connecticut. The dams of our
+great manufacturing corporations are sadly interfering with the annual
+movements of these luscious and beautiful fish. Lake Winnipiseogee no
+longer receives these ocean visitors into its clear, mountain-mirroring
+waters. The greedy pike is also here, from inland pond and lake, and the
+beautiful trout from the quick mountain brook, "with his waved coat
+dropped with gold." Who eats the trout partakes of pure diet. He loves
+the silver-sanded stream, and silent pools, and eddies of limpid water.
+In fact, all fish, from sea or shore, freshet or purling brook, of shell
+or fin, are here, on clean marble slabs, fresh and hard. Ours is the
+latitude of the fish-eater. The British marine provinces, north of us,
+and Norway in the Old World, are his paradise.</p>
+
+<p>Man is a universal eater.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"He cannot spare water or wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the earth-poles to the line,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All between that works and grows.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">* * * * * *<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Give him agates for his meat;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give him cantharids to eat;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From air and ocean bring him foods,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From all zones and altitudes;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From all natures sharp and slimy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Salt and basalt, wild and tame;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tree and lichen, ape, sea-lion,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bird and reptile, be his game."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Quincy Market sticks to the cloven hoof, I am happy to say,
+notwithstanding the favorable verdict of the French <i>savans</i> on the
+flavor and nutritious properties of horse-flesh. The femurs and tibias
+of frogs are not visible here. At this point I will quote <i>in extenso</i>
+from Wilkinson's chapter on Assimilation and its Organs.</p>
+
+<p>"In this late age, the human home has one universal season and one
+universal climate. The produce of every zone and month is for the board
+where toil is compensated and industry refreshed. For man alone, the
+universal animal, can wield the powers of fire, the universal element,
+whereby seasons, latitudes, and altitudes are levelled into one genial
+temperature. Man alone, that is to say, the social man alone, can want
+and duly conceive and invent that which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> is digestion going forth into
+nature as a creative art, namely, cookery, which by recondite processes
+of division and combination,&mdash;by cunning varieties of shape,&mdash;by the
+insinuation of subtle flavors,&mdash;by tincturings with precious spice, as
+with vegetable flames,&mdash;by fluids extracted, and added again, absorbed,
+dissolving, and surrounding,&mdash;by the discovery and cementing of new
+amities between different substances, provinces, and kingdoms of
+nature,&mdash;by the old truth of wine and the reasonable order of
+service,&mdash;in short, by the superior unity which it produces in the
+eatable world,&mdash;also by a new birth of feelings, properly termed
+<i>convivial</i>, which run between food and friendship, and make eating
+festive,&mdash;all through the conjunction of our Promethean with our
+culinary fire raises up new powers and species of food to the human
+frame, and indeed performs by machinery a part of the work of
+assimilation, enriching the sense of taste with a world of profound
+objects, and making it the refined participator, percipient, and
+stimulus of the most exquisite operations of digestion. Man, then, as
+the universal eater, enters from his own faculties into the natural
+viands, and gives them a social form, and thereby a thousand new aromas,
+answering to as many possible tastes in his wonderful constitution, and
+therefore his food is as different from that of animals in quality as it
+is plainly different in quantity and resource. How wise should not
+reason become, in order to our making a wise use of so vast an apparatus
+of nutrition!...</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing more general in life than the digestive apparatus,
+because matter is the largest, if not the greatest, fact in the material
+universe. Every creature which is here must be made of something, and be
+maintained by something, or must be landlord of itself.... The planetary
+dinner-table has its various latitudes and longitudes, and plant and
+animal and mineral and wine are grown around it, and set upon it,
+according to the map of taste in the spherical appetite of our race....
+Hunger is the child of cold and night, and comes upwards from the
+all-swallowing ground; but thirst descends from above, and is born of
+the solar rays.... Hunger and thirst are strong terms, and the things
+themselves are too feverish provocations for civilized man. They are
+incompatible with the sense of taste in its epicureanism, and their
+gratification is of a very bodily order. The savage man, like a
+boa-constrictor, would swallow his animals whole, if his gullet would
+let him. This is to cheat the taste with unmanageable objects, as though
+we should give an estate to a child. On the other hand, civilization,
+house-building, warm apartments and kitchen fires, well-stored larders,
+and especially exemption from rude toil, abolish these extreme
+caricatures; and keeping appetite down to a middling level by the rote
+of meals, and thus taking away the incentives to ravenous haste, they
+allow the mind to tutor and variegate the tongue, and to substitute the
+harmonies and melodies of deliberate gustation for such unseemly
+bolting. Under this direction, hunger becomes polite; a long-drawn,
+many-colored taste; the tongue, like a skilful instrument, holds its
+notes; and thirst, redeemed from drowning, rises from the throat to the
+tongue and lips, and, full of discrimination, becomes the gladdening
+love of all delicious flavors.... In the stomach, judging by what there
+is done, what a scene we are about to enter! What a palatial kitchen and
+more than monasterial refectory! The sipping of aromatic nectar, the
+brief and elegant repast of that Apicius, the tongue, are supplanted at
+this lower board by eating and drinking in downright earnest. What a
+variety of solvents, sauces, and condiments, both springing up at call
+from the blood, and raining down from the mouth into the natural patines
+of the meats! What a quenching of desires, what an end and goal of the
+world is here! No wonder; for the stomach sits for four or five
+assiduous hours at the same meal that the dainty tongue will despatch in
+a twentieth portion of the time. For the stomach is bound to supply the
+extended body, while the tongue wafts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> only fairy gifts to the close and
+spiritual brain."</p>
+
+<p>So far Wilkinson, the Milton of physiologists.</p>
+
+<p>But lest these lucubrations should seem to be those of a mere glutton
+and gastrolater,&mdash;of one like the gourmand of old time, who longed for
+the neck of an ostrich or crane that the pleasure of swallowing dainty
+morsels might be as protracted as possible,&mdash;let me assume a vegetable,
+Pythagorean standpoint, and thence survey this accumulation of creature
+comforts, that is, that portion of them which consists of dead flesh.
+The vegetables and the fruits, the blazonry of autumn, are of course
+ignored from this point of view. Thus beheld, Quincy Market presents a
+spectacle that excites disgust and loathing, and exemplifies the fallen,
+depraved, and sophisticated state of human nature and human society. In
+those juicy quarters and surloins of beef and those fat porcine
+carcasses the vegetable-eater, Grahamite or Brahmin, sees nothing but
+the cause of beastly appetites, scrofula, apoplexy, corpulence, cheeks
+flushed with ungovernable propensities, tendencies downward toward the
+plane of the lower animals, bloodshot eyes, swollen veins, impure blood,
+violent passions, fetid breath, stertorous respiration, sudden
+death,&mdash;in fact, disease and brutishness of all sorts. A Brahmin
+traversing this goodly market would regard it as a vast charnel, a
+loathsome receptacle of dead flesh on its way to putrescence. His gorge
+would rise in rebellion at the sight. To the Brahmin, the lower animal
+kingdom is a vast masquerade of transmigratory souls. If he should
+devour a goose or turkey or hen, or a part of a bullock or sheep or
+goat, he might, according to his creed, be eating the temporary organism
+of his grandmother. The poet Pope wrote in the true Brahminical spirit,
+when he said,&mdash;"Nothing can be more shocking and horrid than one of our
+kitchens sprinkled with blood, and abounding with cries of creatures
+expiring, or with the limbs of dead animals scattered or hung up there.
+It gives one an image of a giant's den in romance, bestrewed with the
+scattered heads and mangled limbs of those who were slain by his
+cruelty." Think of the porcine shambles of Cincinnati, with their
+swift-handed swine-slayers!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"What loud lament and dismal miserere,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>ear-deafening and horrible, must issue from them. How can a Jew reside
+in that porkopolitan municipality? The brutishness of the Bowery
+butchers is proverbial. A late number of Leslie's Pictorial represents a
+Bowery butcher's wagon crowded with sheep and calves so densely that
+their heads are protruded against the wheels, which revolve with the
+utmost speed, the brutal driver urging his horse furiously.</p>
+
+<p>The first advocate of a purely vegetable diet was Pythagoras, the Samian
+philosopher. His discourse delivered at Crotona, a city of Magna Gr&aelig;cia,
+is ably reported for posterity by the poet Ovid. From what materials he
+made up his report, it is impossible now to say. Pythagoras says that
+flesh-eaters make their stomachs the sepulchres of the lower animals,
+the cemeteries of beasts. About thirty years ago there was a vegetable
+diet movement hereabouts, which created some excitement at the time. Its
+adherents were variously denominated as Grahamites, and, from the fact
+of their using bread made of unbolted wheat-meal, bran-eaters. There was
+little of muscular Christianity in them. They were a pale, harmless set
+of valetudinarians, who were, like all weakly persons, morbidly alive to
+their own bodily states, and principally employed in experimenting on
+the effects of various insipid articles of diet. Tea and coffee were
+tabooed by these people. Ale and wine were abominations in their Index
+Expurgatorius of forbidden <i>ingesta</i>. The presence of a boiled egg on
+their breakfast-tables would cause some of the more sensitive of these
+New England Brahmins to betake themselves to their beds for the rest of
+the day. They kept themselves in a semi-famished state on principle. One
+of the most liberal and latitudinarian of the sect wrote, in 1835,&mdash;"For
+two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> years past I have abstained from the use of all the diffusible
+stimulants, using no animal food, either flesh, fish, or fowl, nor any
+alcoholic or vinous spirits, no form of ale, beer, or porter, no cider,
+tea, or coffee; but using milk and water as my only liquid aliment, and
+feeding sparingly, or rather moderately, upon farinaceous food,
+vegetables, and fruit, seasoned with unmelted butter, slightly boiled
+eggs, and sugar and molasses, with no condiment but common salt."</p>
+
+<p>These ultra-temperance dietetical philosophers never flourished greatly.
+They were too languid and too little enthusiastic to propagate their
+rules of living and make converts. In a country where meat is within
+reach of all, a vegetable dietary is not popular. Doubtless a less
+frequent use of fleshly food would be greatly to our advantage as a
+people. But utter abstinence is out of the question. A vegetable diet,
+however, has great authorities in its favor, both ancient and modern.
+Plautus, Plutarch, Porphyry of Tyre, Lord Bacon, Sir William Temple,
+Cicero, Cyrus the Great, Pope, Newton, and Shelley have all left their
+testimony in favor of it and of simplicity of living. Poor Shelley, who
+in his abstract moods forgot even to take vegetable sustenance for days
+together, makes a furious onslaught upon flesh-eating in his Notes to
+"Queen Mab." The notes, as well as the poem, are crude productions, the
+outgivings of a boy; but that boy was Shelley. It was said that he was
+traceable, in his lonely wanderings in secluded places in Italy, by the
+crumbs of bread which he let fall. Speculative thinkers have generally
+been light feeders, eschewing stimulants, both solid and liquid, and
+preferring mild food and water for drink. Those who lead an interior
+life sedentary and contemplative need not gross pabulum, but would find
+their inward joy at the contemplation and discovery of truth seriously
+qualified and deadened by it. Spare fast is the companion of the
+ecstatic moods of a high truth-seeker such as Newton, Malebranche, etc.
+Immanuel Kant was almost the only profound speculative thinker who was
+decidedly convivial, and given to gulosity, at least at his dinner.
+Asceticism ordinarily reigns in the cloister and student's bower. The
+Oxford scholar long ago, as described by Chaucer, was adust and thin.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"As lene was his hors as is a rake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he was not right fat, I undertake."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The ancient anchorets of the East, the children of St. Anthony, were a
+long-lived sect, rivalling the many-wintered crow in longevity. Yet
+their lives were vapid monotonies, only long in months and years. They
+were devoid of vivid sensations, and vegetated merely. Milk-eaters were,
+in the days of Homer, the longest-lived of men.</p>
+
+<p>Without the ministry of culinary fire, man could not gratify his
+carnivorous propensities. He would be obliged to content himself with a
+vegetable diet; for, according to the comparative anatomists, man is not
+structurally a flesh-eater. At any rate he is not fanged or clawed. His
+teeth and nails are not like the natural cutlery found in the mouths and
+paws of beasts of prey. He cannot eat raw flesh. Digger Indians are left
+to do that when the meat is putrescent. Prometheus was the inventor of
+roast and boiled beef, and of cookery generally, and therefore the
+destroyer of the original simplicity of living which characterized
+primitive man, when milk and fruits cooked by the sun, and acorns, were
+the standing repasts of unsophisticated humanity. <i>Per contra</i>, Horace
+makes man, in his mast-eating days, a poor creature.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Forth from the earth when human kind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">First crept, a dull and brutish herd, with nails<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fists they fought for dens wherein to couch, and <i>acorns</i>."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Don Quixote, however, in his eloquent harangue to the shepherds in the
+Sierra Morena, took a different view of man during the acorn period. He
+saw in it the golden age.</p>
+
+<p>There are vast rice-eating populations in China and India, who are a low
+grade of men, morally and physically. Exceptional cases of longevity,
+like those of old Parr, Jenkins, Francisco,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> Pratt, and Farnham, are
+often-times adduced as the results of abstemiousness and frugality of
+living. These exceptional cases prove nothing whatever. These
+individuals happened to reach an almost antediluvian longevity, thanks
+to their inherited vitality and their listless, uneventful, monotonous
+lives. Their hearts beat a dull funeral march through four or five
+generations, and finally stopped. But the longevity of such mighty
+thinkers and superb men as Humboldt and Goethe is glorious to
+contemplate. They were never old, but were vernal in spirit to the last,
+and, for aught that appears to the contrary, generous livers, not "acid
+ghouls" or bran-eating valetudinarians. Shakespeare died at fifty-one,
+but great thinkers and poets have generally been long-lived. "Better
+fifty years of Europe" or America "than a cycle of" rice-eating
+"Cathay."</p>
+
+<p>The value of the animals slaughtered in this country in 1860 was, in
+round numbers, $212,000,000, a sum to make the vegetable feeder stare
+and gasp. How many thousands and tens of thousands of acres of herbage,
+which could not be directly available for human consumption as food, had
+these slaughtered animals incorporated into their frames, and rendered
+edible for man! "The most fertile districts of the habitable globe,"
+says Shelley, "are now actually cultivated by men for animals, at a
+delay and waste of aliment absolutely incalculable." On the contrary,
+the close-feeding sheep and the cow and ox utilize for man millions of
+acres of vegetation which would otherwise be useless. The domestic
+animals which everywhere accompany civilized man were a part of them
+intended as machines to convert herbage into milk and flesh for man's
+sustenance. The tame villatic fowl scratches and picks with might and
+main, converting a thousand refuse things into dainty human food. A
+vegetable diet is out of the question for the blubber-eating Esquimaux
+and Greenlander, even if it would keep the flame of life burning in
+their Polar latitudes.</p>
+
+<p>The better and more nutritious the diet, the better the health. It is to
+the improved garden vegetables and domestic animals that man will
+hereafter owe the superior health and personal comeliness which he will
+undoubtedly enjoy as our planet becomes more and more humanized, and man
+asserts his proper lordship over Nature. This matter of vegetable and
+animal food is dictated by climate. In the temperate zone they go well
+mixed. In the tropics man is naturally a Pythagorean, but he is not so
+strong, or so healthy, or moral, or intellectual, as the flesh-eating
+nations of northern latitudes.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_FREEDMANS_STORY" id="THE_FREEDMANS_STORY"></a>THE FREEDMAN'S STORY.</h2>
+
+<h3>IN TWO PARTS.</h3>
+
+
+<h4>PART II.</h4>
+
+<p>As the Freedman relates only events which came under his own
+observation, it is necessary to preface the remaining portion of his
+narrative with a brief account of the Christiana riot. This I extract
+mainly from a statement made at the time by a member of the Philadelphia
+bar, making only a few alterations to give the account greater clearness
+and brevity.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>On the 9th of September, 1851, Mr. Edward Gorsuch, a citizen of
+Maryland, residing near Baltimore, appeared before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> Edward D. Ingraham,
+Esquire, United States Commissioner at Philadelphia, and asked for
+warrants under the act of Congress of September 18, 1850, for the arrest
+of four of his slaves, whom he had heard were secreted somewhere in
+Lancaster County. Warrants were issued forthwith, directed to H. H.
+Kline, a deputy United States Marshal, authorizing him to arrest George
+Hammond, Joshua Hammond, Nelson Ford, and Noah Buley, persons held to
+service or labor in the State of Maryland, and to bring them before the
+said Commissioner.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gorsuch then made arrangements with John Agin and Thompson Tully,
+residents of Philadelphia, and police officers, to assist Kline in
+making the arrests. They were to meet Mr. Gorsuch and some companions at
+Penningtonville, a small place on the State Railroad, about fifty miles
+from Philadelphia. Kline, with the warrants, left Philadelphia on the
+same day, about 2 <span class="smcap">p.m.</span>, for West Chester. There he hired a conveyance
+and rode to Gallagherville, where he hired another conveyance to take
+him to Penningtonville. Before he had driven very far, the carriage
+breaking down, he returned to Gallagherville, procured another, and
+started again. Owing to this detention, he was prevented from meeting
+Mr. Gorsuch and his friends at the appointed time, and when he reached
+Penningtonville, about 2 <span class="smcap">a.m.</span> on the 10th of September, they had gone.</p>
+
+<p>On entering the tavern, the place of rendezvous, he saw a colored man
+whom he recognized as Samuel Williams, a resident of Philadelphia. To
+put Williams off his guard, Kline asked the landlord some questions
+about horse thieves. Williams remarked that he had seen the "horse
+thieves," and told Kline he had come too late.</p>
+
+<p>Kline then drove on to a place called the Gap. Seeing a person he
+believed to be Williams following him, he stopped at several taverns
+along the road and made inquiries about horse thieves. He reached the
+Gap about 3 <span class="smcap">a.m.</span>, put up his horses, and went to bed. At half past four
+he rose, ate breakfast, and rode to Parkesburg, about forty-five miles
+from Philadelphia, and on the same railroad. Here he found Agin and
+Tully asleep in the bar-room. He awoke Agin, called him aside, and
+inquired for Mr. Gorsuch and his party. He was told they had gone to
+Sadsbury, a small place on the turnpike, four or five miles from
+Parkesburg.</p>
+
+<p>On going there, he found them, about 9 <span class="smcap">a.m.</span> on the 10th of September.
+Kline told them he had seen Agin and Tully, who had determined to return
+to Philadelphia, and proposed that the whole party should return to
+Gallagherville. Mr. Gorsuch, however, determined to go to Parkesburg
+instead, to see Agin and Tully, and attempt to persuade them not to
+return. The rest of the party were to go to Gallagherville, while Kline
+returned to Downingtown, to see Agin and Tully, should Mr. Gorsuch fail
+to meet them at Parkesburg. He left Gallagherville about 11 <span class="smcap">a.m.</span>, and
+met Agin and Tully at Downingtown. Agin said he had seen Mr. Gorsuch,
+but refused to go back. He promised, however, to return from
+Philadelphia in the evening cars. Kline returned to Downingtown, and
+then met all the party except Mr. Edward Gorsuch, who had remained
+behind to make the necessary arrangements for procuring a guide to the
+houses where he had been informed his negroes were to be found.</p>
+
+<p>About 3 <span class="smcap">p.m.</span>, Mr. Edward Gorsuch joined them at Gallagherville, and at
+11 <span class="smcap">p.m.</span> on the night of the 10th of September they all went in the cars
+to Downingtown, where they waited for the evening train from
+Philadelphia.</p>
+
+<p>When it arrived, neither Agin nor Tully was to be seen. The rest of the
+party went on to the Gap, which they reached about half past one on the
+morning of the 11th of September. They then continued their journey on
+foot towards Christiana, where Parker was residing, and where the slaves
+of Mr. Gorsuch were supposed to be living. The party then consisted of
+Kline, Edward Gorsuch, Dickinson Gorsuch, his son, Joshua M. Gorsuch,
+his nephew,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> Dr. Thomas Pierce, Nicholas T. Hutchings, and Nathan
+Nelson.</p>
+
+<p>After they had proceeded about a mile they met a man who was represented
+to be a guide. He is said to have been disguised in such a way that none
+of the party could recognize him, and his name is not mentioned in any
+proceedings. It is probable that he was employed by Mr. Edward Gorsuch,
+and one condition of his services may have been that he should be
+allowed to use every possible means of concealing his face and name from
+the rest of the party. Under his conduct, the party went on, and soon
+reached a house in which they were told one of the slaves was to be
+found. Mr. Gorsuch wished to send part of the company after him, but
+Kline was unwilling to divide their strength, and they walked on,
+intending to return that way after making the other arrests.</p>
+
+<p>The guide led them by a circuitous route, until they reached the Valley
+Road, near the house of William Parker, the writer of the annexed
+narrative, which was their point of destination. They halted in a lane
+near by, ate some crackers and cheese, examined the condition of their
+fire-arms, and consulted upon the plan of attack. A short walk brought
+them to the orchard in front of Parker's house, which the guide pointed
+out and left them. He had no desire to remain and witness the result of
+his false information. His disguise and desertion of his employer are
+strong circumstances in proof of the fact that he knew he was misleading
+the party. On the trial of Hanway, it was proved by the defence that
+Nelson Ford, one of the fugitives, was not on the ground until after the
+sun was up. Joshua Hammond had lived in the vicinity up to the time that
+a man by the name of Williams had been kidnapped, when he and several
+others departed, and had not since been heard from. Of the other two,
+one at least, if the evidence for the prosecution is to be relied upon,
+was in the house at which the party first halted, so that there could
+not have been more than one of Mr. Gorsuch's slaves in Parker's house,
+and of this there is no positive testimony.</p>
+
+<p>It was not yet daybreak when the party approached the house. They made
+demand for the slaves, and threatened to burn the house and shoot the
+occupants, if they would not surrender. At this time, the number of
+besiegers seems to have been increased, and as many as fifteen are said
+to have been near the house. About daybreak, when they were advancing a
+second or third time, they saw a negro coming out, whom Mr. Gorsuch
+thought he recognized as one of his slaves. Kline pursued him with a
+revolver in his hand, and stumbled over the bars near the house. Some of
+the company came up before Kline, and found the door open. They entered,
+and Kline, following, called for the owner, ordered all to come down,
+and said he had two warrants for the arrest of Nelson Ford and Joshua
+Hammond. He was answered that there were no such men in the house.
+Kline, followed by Mr. Gorsuch, attempted to go up stairs. They were
+prevented from ascending by what appears to have been an ordinary <i>fish
+gig</i>. Some of the witnesses described it as "like a pitchfork with blunt
+prongs," and others were at a loss what to call this, the first weapon
+used in the contest. An axe was next thrown down, but hit no one.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gorsuch and others then went outside to talk with the negroes at the
+window. Just at this time Kline fired his pistol up stairs. The warrants
+were then read outside the house, and demand made upon the landlord. No
+answer was heard. After a short interview, Kline proposed to withdraw
+his men, but Mr. Gorsuch refused, and said he would not leave the ground
+until he made the arrests. Kline then in a loud voice ordered some one
+to go to the sheriff and bring a hundred men, thinking, as he afterwards
+said, this would intimidate them. The threat appears to have had some
+effect, for the negroes asked time to consider. The party outside agreed
+to give fifteen minutes.</p>
+
+<p>While these scenes were passing at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> the house, occurrences transpired
+elsewhere that are worthy of attention, but which cannot be understood
+without a short statement of previous events.</p>
+
+<p>In the month of September, 1850, a colored man, known in the
+neighborhood around Christiana to be free, was seized and carried away
+by men known to be professional kidnappers, and had not been seen by his
+family since. In March, 1851, in the same neighborhood, under the roof
+of his employer, during the night, another colored man was tied, gagged,
+and carried away, marking the road along which he was dragged with his
+blood. No authority for this outrage was ever shown, and the man was
+never heard from. These and many other acts of a similar kind had so
+alarmed the neighborhood, that the very name of kidnapper was sufficient
+to create a panic. The blacks feared for their own safety; and the
+whites, knowing their feelings, were apprehensive that any attempt to
+repeat these outrages would be the cause of bloodshed. Many good
+citizens were determined to do all in their power to prevent these
+lawless depredations, though they were ready to submit to any measures
+sanctioned by legal process. They regretted the existence among them of
+a body of people liable to such violence; but without combination had,
+each for himself, resolved that they would do everything dictated by
+humanity to resist barbarous oppression.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning in question, a colored man living in the neighborhood,
+who was passing Parker's house at an early hour, saw the yard full of
+men. He halted, and was met by a man who presented a pistol at him, and
+ordered him to leave the place. He went away and hastened to a store
+kept by Elijah Lewis, which, like all places of that kind, was probably
+the head-quarters of news in the neighborhood. Mr. Lewis was in the act
+of opening his store when this man told him that "Parker's house was
+surrounded by <i>kidnappers</i>, who had broken into the house, and <i>were
+trying to get him away</i>." Lewis, not questioning the truth of the
+statement, repaired immediately to the place. On the way he passed the
+house of Castner Hanway, and, telling him what he had heard, asked him
+to go over to Parker's. Hanway was in feeble health and unable to
+undergo the fatigue of walking that distance; but he saddled his horse,
+and reached Parker's during the armistice.</p>
+
+<p>Having no reason to believe he was acting under legal authority, when
+Kline approached and demanded assistance in making the arrests, Hanway
+made no answer. Kline then handed him the warrants, which Hanway
+examined, saw they appeared genuine, and returned.</p>
+
+<p>At this time, several colored men, who no doubt had heard the report
+that kidnappers were about, came up, armed with such weapons as they
+could suddenly lay hands upon. How many were on the ground during the
+affray it is <i>now</i> impossible to determine. The witnesses on both sides
+vary materially in their estimate. Some said they saw a dozen or
+fifteen; some, thirty or forty; and others maintained, as many as two or
+three hundred. It is known there were not two hundred colored men within
+eight miles of Parker's house, nor half that number within four miles;
+and it would have been almost impossible to get together even thirty at
+an hour's notice. It is probable there were about twenty-five, all told,
+at or near the house from the beginning of the affray until all was
+quiet again. These the fears of those who afterwards testified to larger
+numbers might easily have magnified to fifty or a hundred.</p>
+
+<p>While Kline and Hanway were in conversation, Elijah Lewis came up.
+Hanway said to him, "Here is the Marshal." Lewis asked to see his
+authority, and Kline handed him one of the warrants. When he saw the
+signature of the United States Commissioner, "he took it for granted
+that Kline had authority." Kline then ordered Hanway and Lewis to assist
+in arresting the alleged fugitives. Hanway refused<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> to have anything to
+do with it. The negroes around these three men seeming disposed to make
+an attack, Hanway "motioned to them and urged them back." He then
+"advised Kline that it would be dangerous to attempt making arrests, and
+that they had better leave." Kline, after saying he would hold them
+accountable for the fugitives, promised to leave, and beckoned two or
+three times to his men to retire.</p>
+
+<p>The negroes then rushed up, some armed with guns, some with
+corn-cutters, staves, or clubs, others with stones or whatever weapon
+chance offered. Hanway and Lewis in vain endeavored to restrain them.</p>
+
+<p>Kline leaped the fence, passed through the standing grain in the field,
+and for a few moments was out of sight. Mr. Gorsuch refused to leave the
+spot, saying his "property was there, and he would have it or perish in
+the attempt." The rest of his party endeavored to retreat when they
+heard the Marshal calling to them, but they were too late; the negroes
+rushed up, and the firing began. How many times each party fired, it is
+impossible to tell. For a few moments everything was confusion, and each
+attempted to save himself. Nathan Nelson went down the short land,
+thence into the woods and towards Penningtonville. Nicholas Hutchings,
+by direction of Kline, followed Lewis to see where he went. Thomas
+Pierce and Joshua Gorsuch went down the long lane, pursued by some of
+the negroes, caught up with Hanway, and, shielding themselves behind his
+horse, followed him to a stream of water near by. Dickinson Gorsuch was
+with his father near the house. They were both wounded; the father
+mortally. Dickinson escaped down the lane, where he was met by Kline,
+who had returned from the woods at the end of the field. Kline rendered
+him assistance, and went towards Penningtonville for a physician. On his
+way he met Joshua M. Gorsuch, who was also wounded and delirious. Kline
+led him over to Penningtonville and placed him on the upward train from
+Philadelphia. Before this time several persons living in the
+neighborhood had arrived at Parker's house. Lewis Cooper found Dickinson
+Gorsuch in the place where Kline had left him, attended by Joseph
+Scarlett. He placed him in his dearborn, and carried him to the house of
+Levi Pownall, where he remained till he had sufficiently recovered to
+return home. Mr. Cooper then returned to Parker's, placed the body of
+Mr. Edward Gorsuch in the same dearborn, and carried it to Christiana.
+Neither Nelson nor Hutchings rejoined their party, but during the day
+went by the railroad to Lancaster.</p>
+
+<p>Thus ended an occurrence which was the theme of conversation throughout
+the land. Not more than two hours elapsed from the time demand was first
+made at Parker's house until the dead body of Edward Gorsuch was carried
+to Christiana. In that brief time the blood of strangers had been
+spilled in a sudden affray, an unfortunate man had been killed, and two
+others badly wounded.</p>
+
+<p>When rumor spread abroad the result of the affray, the neighborhood was
+appalled. The inhabitants of the farm-houses and the villages around,
+unused to such scenes, could not at first believe that it had occurred
+in their midst. Before midday, exaggerated accounts had reached
+Philadelphia, and were transmitted by telegraph throughout the country.</p>
+
+<p>Many persons were arrested for participation in the riot; and, after a
+long imprisonment, were arraigned for trial, on the charge of treason,
+before Judges Grier and Kane, of the United States Court, sitting at
+Philadelphia.</p>
+
+<p>Every one knows the result. The prisoners were all acquitted; and the
+country was aroused to the danger of a law which allowed bad men to
+incarcerate peaceful citizens for months in prison, and put them in
+peril of their lives, for refusing to aid in entrapping, and sending
+back to hopeless slavery, men struggling for the very same freedom we
+value as the best part of our birthright.</p>
+
+<p>The Freedman's narrative is now resumed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A short time after the events narrated in the preceding number, it was
+whispered about that the slaveholders intended to make an attack on my
+house; but, as I had often been threatened, I gave the report little
+attention. About the same time, however, two letters were found thrown
+carelessly about, as if to attract notice. These letters stated that
+kidnappers would be at my house on a certain night, and warned me to be
+on my guard. Still I did not let the matter trouble me. But it was no
+idle rumor. The bloodhounds were upon my track.</p>
+
+<p>I was not at this time aware that in the city of Philadelphia there was
+a band of devoted, determined men,&mdash;few in number, but strong in
+purpose,&mdash;who were fully resolved to leave no means untried to thwart
+the barbarous and inhuman monsters who crawled in the gloom of midnight,
+like the ferocious tiger, and, stealthily springing on their
+unsuspecting victims, seized, bound, and hurled them into the ever open
+jaws of Slavery. Under the pretext of enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law,
+the slaveholders did not hesitate to violate all other laws made for the
+good government and protection of society, and converted the old State
+of Pennsylvania, so long the hope of the fleeing bondman, wearied and
+heartbroken, into a common hunting-ground for their human prey. But this
+little band of true patriots in Philadelphia united for the purpose of
+standing between the pursuer and the pursued, the kidnapper and his
+victim, and, regardless of all personal considerations, were ever on the
+alert, ready to sound the alarm to save their fellows from a fate far
+more to be dreaded than death. In this they had frequently succeeded,
+and many times had turned the hunter home bootless of his prey. They
+began their operations at the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, and had
+thoroughly examined all matters connected with it, and were perfectly
+cognizant of the plans adopted to carry out its provisions in
+Pennsylvania, and, through a correspondence with reliable persons in
+various sections of the South, were enabled to know these hunters of
+men, their agents, spies, tools, and betrayers. They knew who performed
+this work in Richmond, Alexandria, Washington, Baltimore, Wilmington,
+Philadelphia, Lancaster, and Harrisburg, those principal depots of
+villany, where organized bands prowled about at all times, ready to
+entrap the unwary fugitive.</p>
+
+<p>They also discovered that this nefarious business was conducted mainly
+through one channel; for, spite of man's inclination to vice and crime,
+there are but few men, thank God, so low in the scale of humanity as to
+be willing to degrade themselves by doing the dirty work of four-legged
+bloodhounds. Yet such men, actuated by the love of gold and their own
+base and brutal natures, were found ready for the work. These fellows
+consorted with constables, police-officers, aldermen, and even with
+learned members of the legal profession, who disgraced their respectable
+calling by low, contemptible arts, and were willing to clasp hands with
+the lowest ruffian in order to pocket the reward that was the price of
+blood. Every facility was offered these bad men; and whether it was
+night or day, it was only necessary to whisper in a certain circle that
+a negro was to be caught, and horses and wagons, men and officers, spies
+and betrayers, were ready, at the shortest notice, armed and equipped,
+and eager for the chase.</p>
+
+<p>Thus matters stood in Philadelphia on the 9th of September, 1851, when
+Mr. Gorsuch and his gang of Maryland kidnappers arrived there. Their
+presence was soon known to the little band of true men who were called
+"The Special Secret Committee." They had agents faithful and true as
+steel; and through these agents the whereabouts and business of Gorsuch
+and his minions were soon discovered. They were noticed in close
+converse with a certain member of the Philadelphia bar, who had lost the
+little reputation he ever had by continual dabbling in negro-catching,
+as well as by association with and support of the notorious Henry H.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
+Kline, a professional kidnapper of the basest stamp. Having determined
+as to the character and object of these Marylanders, there remained to
+ascertain the spot selected for their deadly spring; and this required
+no small degree of shrewdness, resolution, and tact.</p>
+
+<p>Some one's liberty was imperilled; the hunters were abroad; the time was
+short, and the risk imminent. The little band bent themselves to the
+task they were pledged to perform with zeal and devotion; and success
+attended their efforts. They knew that one false step would jeopardize
+their own liberty, and very likely their lives, and utterly destroy
+every prospect of carrying out their objects. They knew, too, that they
+were matched against the most desperate, daring, and brutal men in the
+kidnappers' ranks,&mdash;men who, to obtain the proffered reward, would rush
+willingly into any enterprise, regardless alike of its character or its
+consequences. That this was the deepest, the most thoroughly organized
+and best-planned project for man-catching that had been concocted since
+the infamous Fugitive Slave Law had gone into operation, they also knew;
+and consequently this nest of hornets was approached with great care.
+But by walking directly into their camp, watching their plans as they
+were developed, and secretly testing every inch of ground on which they
+trod, they discovered enough to counterplot these plotters, and to
+spring upon them a mine which shook the whole country, and put an end to
+man-stealing in Pennsylvania forever.</p>
+
+<p>The trusty agent of this Special Committee, Mr. Samuel Williams, of
+Philadelphia,&mdash;a man true and faithful to his race, and courageous in
+the highest degree,&mdash;came to Christiana, travelling most of the way in
+company with the very men whom Gorsuch had employed to drag into slavery
+four as good men as ever trod the earth. These Philadelphia roughs, with
+their Maryland associates, little dreamed that the man who sat by their
+side carried with him their inglorious defeat, and the death-warrant of
+at least one of their party. Williams listened to their conversation,
+and marked well their faces, and, being fully satisfied by their awkward
+movements that they were heavily armed, managed to slip out of the cars
+at the village of Downington unobserved, and proceeded to
+Penningtonville, where he encountered Kline, who had started several
+hours in advance of the others. Kline was terribly frightened, as he
+knew Williams, and felt that his presence was an omen of ill to his base
+designs. He spoke of horse thieves; but Williams replied,&mdash;"I know the
+kind of horse thieves you are after. They are all gone; and you had
+better not go after them."</p>
+
+<p>Kline immediately jumped into his wagon, and rode away, whilst Williams
+crossed the country, and arrived at Christiana in advance of him.</p>
+
+<p>The manner in which information of Gorsuch's designs was obtained will
+probably ever remain a secret; and I doubt if any one outside of the
+little band who so masterly managed the affair knows anything of it.
+This was wise; and I would to God other friends had acted thus. Mr.
+Williams's trip to Christiana, and the many incidents connected
+therewith, will be found in the account of his trial; for he was
+subsequently arrested and thrown into the cold cells of a loathsome jail
+for this good act of simple Christian duty; but, resolute to the last,
+he publicly stated that he had been to Christiana, and, to use his own
+words, "I done it, and will do it again." Brave man, receive my thanks!</p>
+
+<p>Of the Special Committee I can only say that they proved themselves men;
+and through the darkest hours of the trials that followed, they were
+found faithful to their trust, never for one moment deserting those who
+were compelled to suffer. Many, many innocent men residing in the
+vicinity of Christiana, the ground where the first battle was fought for
+liberty in Pennsylvania, were seized, torn from their families, and,
+like Williams, thrown into prison for long, weary months, to be tried
+for their lives. By them this Committee<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> stood, giving them every
+consolation and comfort, furnishing them with clothes, and attending to
+their wants, giving money to themselves and families, and procuring for
+them the best legal counsel. This I know, and much more of which it is
+not wise, even now, to speak: 't is enough to say they were friends when
+and where it cost something to be friends, and true brothers where
+brothers were needed.</p>
+
+<p>After this lengthy digression, I will return, and speak of the riot and
+the events immediately preceding it.</p>
+
+<p>The information brought by Mr. Williams spread through the vicinity like
+a fire in the prairies; and when I went home from my work in the
+evening, I found Pinckney (whom I should have said before was my
+brother-in-law), Abraham Johnson, Samuel Thompson, and Joshua Kite at my
+house, all of them excited about the rumor. I laughed at them, and said
+it was all talk. This was the 10th of September, 1851. They stopped for
+the night with us, and we went to bed as usual. Before daylight, Joshua
+Kite rose, and started for his home. Directly, he ran back to the house,
+burst open the door, crying, "O William! kidnappers! kidnappers!"</p>
+
+<p>He said that, when he was just beyond the yard, two men crossed before
+him, as if to stop him, and others came up on either side. As he said
+this, they had reached the door. Joshua ran up stairs, (we slept up
+stairs,) and they followed him; but I met them at the landing, and
+asked, "Who are you?"</p>
+
+<p>The leader, Kline, replied, "I am the United States Marshal."</p>
+
+<p>I then told him to take another step, and I would break his neck.</p>
+
+<p>He again said, "I am the United States Marshal."</p>
+
+<p>I told him I did not care for him nor the United States. At that he
+turned and went down stairs.</p>
+
+<p>Pinckney said, as he turned to go down,&mdash;"Where is the use in fighting?
+They will take us."</p>
+
+<p>Kline heard him, and said, "Yes, give up, for we can and will take you
+anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>I told them all not to be afraid, nor to give up to any slaveholder, but
+to fight until death.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Kline, "I have heard many a negro talk as big as you, and
+then have taken him; and I'll take you."</p>
+
+<p>"You have not taken me yet," I replied; "and if you undertake it you
+will have your name recorded in history for this day's work."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gorsuch then spoke, and said,&mdash;"Come, Mr. Kline, let's go up stairs
+and take them. We <i>can</i> take them. Come, follow me. I'll go up and get
+my property. What's in the way? The law is in my favor, and the people
+are in my favor."</p>
+
+<p>At that he began to ascend the stair; but I said to him,&mdash;"See here, old
+man, you can come up, but you can't go down again. Once up here, you are
+mine."</p>
+
+<p>Kline then said,&mdash;"Stop, Mr. Gorsuch. I will read the warrant, and then,
+I think, they will give up."</p>
+
+<p>He then read the warrant, and said,&mdash;"Now, you see, we are commanded to
+take you, dead or alive; so you may as well give up at once."</p>
+
+<p>"Go up, Mr. Kline," then said Gorsuch, "you are the Marshal."</p>
+
+<p>Kline started, and when a little way up said, "I am coming."</p>
+
+<p>I said, "Well, come on."</p>
+
+<p>But he was too cowardly to show his face. He went down again and
+said,&mdash;"You had better give up without any more fuss, for we are bound
+to take you anyhow. I told you before that I was the United States
+Marshal, yet you will not give up. I'll not trouble the slaves. I will
+take you and make you pay for all."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," I answered, "take me and make me pay for all. I'll pay for all."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gorsuch then said, "You have my property."</p>
+
+<p>To which I replied,&mdash;"Go in the room down there, and see if there is
+anything there belonging to you. There are beds and a bureau, chairs,
+and other things. Then go out to the barn; there you will find a cow and
+some hogs. See if any of them are yours."</p>
+
+<p>He said,&mdash;"They are not mine; I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> want my men. They are here, and I am
+bound to have them."</p>
+
+<p>Thus we parleyed for a time, all because of the pusillanimity of the
+Marshal, when he, at last, said,&mdash;"I am tired waiting on you; I see you
+are not going to give up. Go to the barn and fetch some straw," said he
+to one of his men, "I will set the house on fire, and burn them up."</p>
+
+<p>"Burn us up and welcome," said I. "None but a coward would say the like.
+You can burn us, but you can't take us; before I give up, you will see
+my ashes scattered on the earth."</p>
+
+<p>By this time day had begun to dawn; and then my wife came to me and
+asked if she should blow the horn, to bring friends to our assistance. I
+assented, and she went to the garret for the purpose. When the horn
+sounded from the garret window, one of the ruffians asked the others
+what it meant; and Kline said to me, "What do you mean by blowing that
+horn?"</p>
+
+<p>I did not answer. It was a custom with us, when a horn was blown at an
+unusual hour, to proceed to the spot promptly to see what was the
+matter. Kline ordered his men to shoot any one they saw blowing the
+horn. There was a peach-tree at that end of the house. Up it two of the
+men climbed; and when my wife went a second time to the window, they
+fired as soon as they heard the blast, but missed their aim. My wife
+then went down on her knees, and, drawing her head and body below the
+range of the window, the horn resting on the sill, blew blast after
+blast, while the shots poured thick and fast around her. They must have
+fired ten or twelve times. The house was of stone, and the windows were
+deep, which alone preserved her life.</p>
+
+<p>They were evidently disconcerted by the blowing of the horn. Gorsuch
+said again, "I want my property, and I will have it."</p>
+
+<p>"Old man," said I, "you look as if you belonged to some persuasion."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind," he answered, "what persuasion I belong to; I want my
+property."</p>
+
+<p>While I was leaning out of the window, Kline fired a pistol at me, but
+the shot went too high; the ball broke the glass just above my head. I
+was talking to Gorsuch at the time. I seized a gun and aimed it at
+Gorsuch's breast, for he evidently had instigated Kline to fire; but
+Pinckney caught my arm and said, "Don't shoot." The gun went off, just
+grazing Gorsuch's shoulder. Another conversation then ensued between
+Gorsuch, Kline, and myself, when another one of the party fired at me,
+but missed. Dickinson Gorsuch, I then saw, was preparing to shoot; and I
+told him if he missed, I would show him where shooting first came from.</p>
+
+<p>I asked them to consider what they would have done, had they been in our
+position. "I know you want to kill us," I said, "for you have shot at us
+time and again. We have only fired twice, although we have guns and
+ammunition, and could kill you all if we would, but we do not want to
+shed blood."</p>
+
+<p>"If you do not shoot any more," then said Kline, "I will stop my men
+from firing."</p>
+
+<p>They then ceased for a time. This was about sunrise.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gorsuch now said,&mdash;"Give up, and let me have my property. Hear what
+the Marshal says; the Marshal is your friend. He advises you to give up
+without more fuss, for my property I will have."</p>
+
+<p>I denied that I had his property, when he replied, "You have my men."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I your man?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>I then called Pinckney forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that your man?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>Abraham Johnson I called next, but Gorsuch said he was not his man.</p>
+
+<p>The only plan left was to call both Pinckney and Johnson again; for had
+I called the others, he would have recognized them, for they were his
+slaves.</p>
+
+<p>Abraham Johnson said, "Does such a shrivelled up old slaveholder as you
+own such a nice, genteel young man as I am?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At this Gorsuch took offence, and charged me with dictating his
+language. I then told him there were but five of us, which he denied,
+and still insisted that I had his property. One of the party then
+attacked the Abolitionists, affirming that, although they declared there
+could not be property in man, the Bible was conclusive authority in
+favor of property in human flesh.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Gorsuch, "does not the Bible say, 'Servants, obey your
+masters'?"</p>
+
+<p>I said that it did, but the same Bible said, "Give unto your servants
+that which is just and equal."</p>
+
+<p>At this stage of the proceedings, we went into a mutual Scripture
+inquiry, and bandied views in the manner of garrulous old wives.</p>
+
+<p>When I spoke of duty to servants, Gorsuch said, "Do you know that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where," I asked, "do you see it in Scripture, that a man should traffic
+in his brother's blood?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you call a nigger my brother?" said Gorsuch.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said I.</p>
+
+<p>"William," said Samuel Thompson, "he has been a class-leader."</p>
+
+<p>When Gorsuch heard that, he hung his head, but said nothing. We then all
+joined in singing,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Leader, what do you say<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">About the judgment day?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I will die on the field of battle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Die on the field of battle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With glory in my soul."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Then we all began to shout, singing meantime, and shouted for a long
+while. Gorsuch, who was standing head bowed, said, "What are you doing
+now?"</p>
+
+<p>Samuel Thompson replied, "Preaching a sinner's funeral sermon."</p>
+
+<p>"You had better give up, and come down."</p>
+
+<p>I then said to Gorsuch,&mdash;"'If a brother see a sword coming, and he warn
+not his brother, then the brother's blood is required at his hands; but
+if the brother see the sword coming, and warn his brother, and his
+brother flee not, then his brother's blood is required at his own hand.'
+I see the sword coming, and, old man, I warn you to flee; if you flee
+not, your blood be upon your own hand."</p>
+
+<p>It was now about seven o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>"You had better give up," said old Mr. Gorsuch, after another while,
+"and come down, for I have come a long way this morning, and want my
+breakfast; for my property I will have, or I'll breakfast in hell. I
+will go up and get it."</p>
+
+<p>He then started up stairs, and came far enough to see us all plainly. We
+were just about to fire upon him, when Dickinson Gorsuch, who was
+standing on the old oven, before the door, and could see into the
+up-stairs room through the window, jumped down and caught his father,
+saying,&mdash;"O father, do come down! do come down! They have guns, swords,
+and all kinds of weapons! They'll kill you! Do come down!"</p>
+
+<p>The old man turned and left. When down with him, young Gorsuch could
+scarce draw breath, and the father looked more like a dead than a living
+man, so frightened were they at their supposed danger. The old man stood
+some time without saying anything; at last he said, as if soliloquizing,
+"I want my property, and I will have it."</p>
+
+<p>Kline broke forth, "If you don't give up by fair means, you will have to
+by foul."</p>
+
+<p>I told him we would not surrender on any conditions.</p>
+
+<p>Young Gorsuch then said,&mdash;"Don't ask them to give up,&mdash;<i>make</i> them do
+it. We have money, and can call men to take them. What is it that money
+won't buy?"</p>
+
+<p>Then said Kline,&mdash;"I am getting tired waiting on you; I see you are not
+going to give up."</p>
+
+<p>He then wrote a note and handed it to Joshua Gorsuch, saying at the same
+time,&mdash;"Take it, and bring a hundred men from Lancaster."</p>
+
+<p>As he started, I said,&mdash;"See here! When you go to Lancaster, don't bring
+a hundred men,&mdash;bring five hundred. It will take all the men in
+Lancaster to change our purpose or take us alive."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He stopped to confer with Kline, when Pinckney said, "We had better give
+up."</p>
+
+<p>"You are getting afraid," said I.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Kline, "give up like men. The rest would give up if it were
+not for you."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not afraid," said Pinckney; "but where is the sense in fighting
+against so many men, and only five of us?"</p>
+
+<p>The whites, at this time, were coming from all quarters, and Kline was
+enrolling them as fast as they came. Their numbers alarmed Pinckney, and
+I told him to go and sit down; but he said, "No, I will go down stairs."</p>
+
+<p>I told him, if he attempted it, I should be compelled to blow out his
+brains. "Don't believe that any living man can take you," I said. "Don't
+give up to any slaveholder."</p>
+
+<p>To Abraham Johnson, who was near me, I then turned. He declared he was
+not afraid. "I will fight till I die," he said.</p>
+
+<p>At this time, Hannah, Pinckney's wife, had become impatient of our
+persistent course; and my wife, who brought me her message urging us to
+surrender, seized a corn-cutter, and declared she would cut off the head
+of the first one who should attempt to give up.</p>
+
+<p>Another one of Gorsuch's slaves was coming along the highroad at this
+time, and I beckoned to him to go around. Pinckney saw him, and soon
+became more inspirited. Elijah Lewis, a Quaker, also came along about
+this time; I beckoned to him, likewise; but he came straight on, and was
+met by Kline, who ordered him to assist him. Lewis asked for his
+authority, and Kline handed him the warrant. While Lewis was reading,
+Castner Hanway came up, and Lewis handed the warrant to him. Lewis asked
+Kline what Parker said.</p>
+
+<p>Kline replied, "He won't give up."</p>
+
+<p>Then Lewis and Hanway both said to the Marshal,&mdash;"If Parker says they
+will not give up, you had better let them alone, for he will kill some
+of you. We are not going to risk our lives";&mdash;and they turned to go
+away.</p>
+
+<p>While they were talking, I came down and stood in the doorway, my men
+following behind.</p>
+
+<p>Old Mr. Gorsuch said, when I appeared, "They'll come out, and get away!"
+and he came back to the gate.</p>
+
+<p>I then said to him,&mdash;"You said you could and would take us. Now you have
+the chance."</p>
+
+<p>They were a cowardly-looking set of men.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gorsuch said, "You can't come out here."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" said I. "This is my place, I pay rent for it. I'll let you see if
+I can't come out."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care if you do pay rent for it," said he. "If you come out, I
+will give you the contents of these";&mdash;presenting, at the same time, two
+revolvers, one in each hand.</p>
+
+<p>I said, "Old man, if you don't go away, I will break your neck."</p>
+
+<p>I then walked up to where he stood, his arms resting on the gate,
+trembling as if afflicted with palsy, and laid my hand on his shoulder,
+saying, "I have seen pistols before to-day."</p>
+
+<p>Kline now came running up, and entreated Gorsuch to come away.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said the latter, "I will have my property, or go to hell."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you intend to do?" said Kline to me.</p>
+
+<p>"I intend to fight," said I. "I intend to try your strength."</p>
+
+<p>"If you will withdraw your men," he replied, "I will withdraw mine."</p>
+
+<p>I told him it was too late. "You would not withdraw when you had the
+chance,&mdash;you shall not now."</p>
+
+<p>Kline then went back to Hanway and Lewis. Gorsuch made a signal to his
+men, and they all fell into line. I followed his example as well as I
+could; but as we were not more than ten paces apart, it was difficult to
+do so. At this time we numbered but ten, while there were between thirty
+and forty of the white men.</p>
+
+<p>While I was talking to Gorsuch, his son said, "Father, will you take all
+this from a nigger?"</p>
+
+<p>I answered him by saying that I respected<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> old age; but that, if he
+would repeat that, I should knock his teeth down his throat. At this he
+fired upon me, and I ran up to him and knocked the pistol out of his
+hand, when he let the other one fall and ran in the field.</p>
+
+<p>My brother-in-law, who was standing near, then said, "I can stop
+him";&mdash;and with his double-barrel gun he fired.</p>
+
+<p>Young Gorsuch fell, but rose and ran on again. Pinckney fired a second
+time, and again Gorsuch fell, but was soon up again, and, running into
+the cornfield, lay down in the fence corner.</p>
+
+<p>I returned to my men, and found Samuel Thompson talking to old Mr.
+Gorsuch, his master. They were both angry.</p>
+
+<p>"Old man, you had better go home to Maryland," said Samuel.</p>
+
+<p>"You had better give up, and come home with me," said the old man.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson took Pinckney's gun from him, struck Gorsuch, and brought him
+to his knees. Gorsuch rose and signalled to his men. Thompson then
+knocked him down again, and he again rose. At this time all the white
+men opened fire, and we rushed upon them; when they turned, threw down
+their guns, and ran away. We, being closely engaged, clubbed our rifles.
+We were too closely pressed to fire, but we found a good deal could be
+done with empty guns.</p>
+
+<p>Old Mr. Gorsuch was the bravest of his party; he held on to his pistols
+until the last, while all the others threw away their weapons. I saw as
+many as three at a time fighting with him. Sometimes he was on his
+knees, then on his back, and again his feet would be where his head
+should be. He was a fine soldier and a brave man. Whenever he saw the
+least opportunity, he would take aim. While in close quarters with the
+whites, we could load and fire but two or three times. Our guns got bent
+and out of order. So damaged did they become, that we could shoot with
+but two or three of them. Samuel Thompson bent his gun on old Mr.
+Gorsuch so badly, that it was of no use to us.</p>
+
+<p>When the white men ran, they scattered. I ran after Nathan Nelson, but
+could not catch him. I never saw a man run faster. Returning, I saw
+Joshua Gorsuch coming, and Pinckney behind him. I reminded him that he
+would like "to take hold of a nigger," told him that now was his
+"chance," and struck him a blow on the side of the head, which stopped
+him. Pinckney came up behind, and gave him a blow which brought him to
+the ground; as the others passed, they gave him a kick or jumped upon
+him, until the blood oozed out at his ears.</p>
+
+<p>Nicholas Hutchings, and Nathan Nelson of Baltimore County, Maryland,
+could outrun any men I ever saw. They and Kline were not brave, like the
+Gorsuches. Could our men have got them, they would have been satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>One of our men ran after Dr. Pierce, as he richly deserved attention;
+but Pierce caught up with Castner Hanway, who rode between the fugitive
+and the Doctor, to shield him and some others. Hanway was told to get
+out of the way, or he would forfeit his life; he went aside quickly, and
+the man fired at the Marylander, but missed him,&mdash;he was too far off. I
+do not know whether he was wounded or not; but I do know, that, if it
+had not been for Hanway, he would have been killed.</p>
+
+<p>Having driven the slavocrats off in every direction, our party now
+turned towards their several homes. Some of us, however, went back to my
+house, where we found several of the neighbors.</p>
+
+<p>The scene at the house beggars description. Old Mr. Gorsuch was lying in
+the yard in a pool of blood, and confusion reigned both inside and
+outside of the house.</p>
+
+<p>Levi Pownell said to me, "The weather is so hot and the flies are so
+bad, will you give me a sheet to put over the corpse?"</p>
+
+<p>In reply, I gave him permission to get anything he needed from the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>"Dickinson Gorsuch is lying in the fence-corner, and I believe he is
+dying. Give me something for him to drink,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> said Pownell, who seemed to
+be acting the part of the Good Samaritan.</p>
+
+<p>When he returned from ministering to Dickinson, he told me he could not
+live.</p>
+
+<p>The riot, so called, was now entirely ended. The elder Gorsuch was dead;
+his son and nephew were both wounded, and I have reason to believe
+others were,&mdash;how many, it would be difficult to say. Of our party, only
+two were wounded. One received a ball in his hand, near the wrist; but
+it only entered the skin, and he pushed it out with his thumb. Another
+received a ball in the fleshy part of his thigh, which had to be
+extracted; but neither of them were sick or crippled by the wounds. When
+young Gorsuch fired at me in the early part of the battle, both balls
+passed through my hat, cutting off my hair close to the skin, but they
+drew no blood. The marks were not more than an inch apart.</p>
+
+<p>A story was afterwards circulated that Mr. Gorsuch shot his own slave,
+and in retaliation his slave shot him; but it was without foundation.
+His slave struck him the first and second blows; then three or four
+sprang upon him, and, when he became helpless, left him to pursue
+others. <i>The women put an end to him.</i> His slaves, so far from meeting
+death at his hands, are all still living.</p>
+
+<p>After the fight, my wife was obliged to secrete herself, leaving the
+children in care of her mother, and to the charities of our neighbors. I
+was questioned by my friends as to what I should do, as they were
+looking for officers to arrest me. I determined not to be taken alive,
+and told them so; but, thinking advice as to our future course
+necessary, went to see some old friends and consult about it. Their
+advice was to leave, as, were we captured and imprisoned, they could not
+foresee the result. Acting upon this hint, we set out for home, when we
+met some female friends, who told us that forty or fifty armed men were
+at my house, looking for me, and that we had better stay away from the
+place, if we did not want to be taken. Abraham Johnson and Pinckney
+hereupon halted, to agree upon the best course, while I turned around
+and went another way.</p>
+
+<p>Before setting out on my long journey northward, I determined to have an
+interview with my family, if possible, and to that end changed my
+course. As we went along the road to where I found them, we met men in
+companies of three and four, who had been drawn together by the
+excitement. On one occasion, we met ten or twelve together. They all
+left the road, and climbed over the fences into fields to let us pass;
+and then, after we had passed, turned, and looked after us as far as
+they could see. Had we been carrying destruction to all human kind, they
+could not have acted more absurdly. We went to a friend's house and
+stayed for the rest of the day, and until nine o'clock that night, when
+we set out for Canada.</p>
+
+<p>The great trial now was to leave my wife and family. Uncertain as to the
+result of the journey, I felt I would rather die than be separated from
+them. It had to be done, however; and we went forth with heavy hearts,
+outcasts for the sake of liberty. When we had walked as far as
+Christiana, we saw a large crowd, late as it was, to some of whom, at
+least, I must have been known, as we heard distinctly, "A'n't that
+Parker?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," was answered, "that's Parker."</p>
+
+<p>Kline was called for, and he, with some nine or ten more, followed
+after. We stopped, and then they stopped. One said to his comrades, "Go
+on,&mdash;that's him." And another replied, "You go." So they contended for a
+time who should come to us. At last they went back. I was sorry to see
+them go back, for I wanted to meet Kline and end the day's transactions.</p>
+
+<p>We went on unmolested to Penningtonville; and, in consequence of the
+excitement, thought best to continue on to Parkersburg. Nothing worth
+mention occurred for a time. We proceeded to Downingtown, and thence six
+miles beyond, to the house of a friend.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> We stopped with him on Saturday
+night, and on the evening of the 14th went fifteen miles farther. Here I
+learned from a preacher, directly from the city, that the excitement in
+Philadelphia was too great for us to risk our safety by going there.
+Another man present advised us to go to Norristown.</p>
+
+<p>At Norristown we rested a day. The friends gave us ten dollars, and sent
+us in a vehicle to Quakertown. Our driver, being partly intoxicated, set
+us down at the wrong place, which obliged us to stay out all night. At
+eleven o'clock the next day we got to Quakertown. We had gone about six
+miles out of the way, and had to go directly across the country. We
+rested the 16th, and set out in the evening for Friendsville.</p>
+
+<p>A friend piloted us some distance, and we travelled until we became very
+tired, when we went to bed under a haystack. On the 17th, we took
+breakfast at an inn. We passed a small village, and asked a man whom we
+met with a dearborn, what would be his charge to Windgap. "One dollar
+and fifty cents," was the ready answer. So in we got, and rode to that
+place.</p>
+
+<p>As we wanted to make some inquiries when we struck the north and south
+road, I went into the post-office, and asked for a letter for John
+Thomas, which of course I did not get. The postmaster scrutinized us
+closely,&mdash;more so, indeed, than any one had done on the Blue
+Mountains,&mdash;but informed us that Friendsville was between forty and
+fifty miles away. After going about nine miles, we stopped in the
+evening of the 18th at an inn, got supper, were politely served, and had
+an excellent night's rest. On the next day we set out for Tannersville,
+hiring a conveyance for twenty-two miles of the way. We had no further
+difficulty on the entire road to Rochester,&mdash;more than five hundred
+miles by the route we travelled.</p>
+
+<p>Some amusing incidents occurred, however, which it may be well to relate
+in this connection. The next morning, after stopping at the tavern, we
+took the cars and rode to Homerville, where, after waiting an hour, as
+our landlord of the night previous had directed us, we took stage. Being
+the first applicants for tickets, we secured inside seats, and, from the
+number of us, we took up all of the places inside; but, another
+traveller coming, I tendered him mine, and rode with the driver. The
+passenger thanked me; but the driver, a churl, and the most prejudiced
+person I ever came in contact with, would never wait after a stop until
+I could get on, but would drive away, and leave me to swing, climb, or
+cling on to the stage as best I could. Our traveller, at last noticing
+his behavior, told him promptly not to be so fast, but let all
+passengers get on, which had the effect to restrain him a little.</p>
+
+<p>At Big Eddy we took the cars. Directly opposite me sat a gentleman, who,
+on learning that I was for Rochester, said he was going there too, and
+afterwards proved an agreeable travelling-companion.</p>
+
+<p>A newsboy came in with papers, some of which the passengers bought. Upon
+opening them, they read of the fight at Christiana.</p>
+
+<p>"O, see here!" said my neighbor; "great excitement at Christiana; a&mdash;a
+statesman killed, and his son and nephew badly wounded."</p>
+
+<p>After reading, the passengers began to exchange opinions on the case.
+Some said they would like to catch Parker, and get the thousand dollars
+reward offered by the State; but the man opposite to me said, "Parker
+must be a powerful man."</p>
+
+<p>I thought to myself, "If you could tell what I can, you could judge
+about that."</p>
+
+<p>Pinckney and Johnson became alarmed, and wanted to leave the cars at the
+next stopping-place; but I told them there was no danger. I then asked
+particularly about Christiana, where it was, on what railroad, and other
+questions, to all of which I received correct replies. One of the men
+became so much attached to me, that, when we would go to an
+eating-saloon, he would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> pay for both. At Jefferson we thought of
+leaving the cars, and taking the boat; but they told us to keep on the
+cars, and we would get to Rochester by nine o'clock the next night.</p>
+
+<p>We left Jefferson about four o'clock in the morning, and arrived at
+Rochester at nine the same morning. Just before reaching Rochester, when
+in conversation with my travelling friend, I ventured to ask what would
+be done with Parker, should he be taken.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know," he replied; "but the laws of Pennsylvania would not
+hang him,&mdash;they might imprison him. But it would be different, very
+different, should they get him into Maryland. The people in all the
+Slave States are so prejudiced against colored people, that they never
+give them justice. But I don't believe they will get Parker. I think he
+is in Canada by this time; at least, I hope so,&mdash;for I believe he did
+right, and, had I been in his place, I would have done as he did. Any
+good citizen will say the same. I believe Parker to be a brave man; and
+all you colored people should look at it as we white people look at our
+brave men, and do as we do. You see Parker was not fighting for a
+country, nor for praise. He was fighting for freedom: he only wanted
+liberty, as other men do. You colored people should protect him, and
+remember him as long as you live. We are coming near our parting-place,
+and I do not know if we shall ever meet again. I shall be in Rochester
+some two or three days before I return home; and I would like to have
+your company back."</p>
+
+<p>I told him it would be some time before we returned.</p>
+
+<p>The cars then stopped, when he bade me good by. As strange as it may
+appear, he did not ask me my name; and I was afraid to inquire his, from
+fear he would.</p>
+
+<p>On leaving the cars, after walking two or three squares, we overtook a
+colored man, who conducted us to the house of&mdash;a friend of mine. He
+welcomed me at once, as we were acquainted before, took me up stairs to
+wash and comb, and prepare, as he said, for company.</p>
+
+<p>As I was combing, a lady came up and said, "Which of you is Mr. Parker?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am," said I,&mdash;"what there is left of me."</p>
+
+<p>She gave me her hand, and said, "And this is William Parker!"</p>
+
+<p>She appeared to be so excited that she could not say what she wished to.
+We were told we would not get much rest, and we did not; for visitors
+were constantly coming. One gentleman was surprised that we got away
+from the cars, as spies were all about, and there were two thousand
+dollars reward for the party.</p>
+
+<p>We left at eight o'clock that evening, in a carriage, for the boat,
+bound for Kingston in Canada. As we went on board, the bell was ringing.
+After walking about a little, a friend pointed out to me the officers on
+the "hunt" for us; and just as the boat pushed off from the wharf, some
+of our friends on shore called me by name. Our pursuers looked very much
+like fools, as they were. I told one of the gentlemen on shore to write
+to Kline that I was in Canada. Ten dollars were generously contributed
+by the Rochester friends for our expenses; and altogether their kindness
+was heartfelt, and was most gratefully appreciated by us.</p>
+
+<p>Once on the boat, and fairly out at sea towards the land of liberty, my
+mind became calm, and my spirits very much depressed at thought of my
+wife and children. Before, I had little time to think much about them,
+my mind being on my journey. Now I became silent and abstracted.
+Although fond of company, no one was company for me now.</p>
+
+<p>We landed at Kingston on the 21st of September, at six o'clock in the
+morning, and walked around for a long time, without meeting any one we
+had ever known. At last, however, I saw a colored man I knew in
+Maryland. He at first pretended to have no knowledge of me, but finally
+recognized me. I made known our distressed condition,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> when he said he
+was not going home then, but, if we would have breakfast, he would pay
+for it. How different the treatment received from this man&mdash;himself an
+exile for the sake of liberty, and in its full enjoyment on free
+soil&mdash;and the self-sacrificing spirit of our Rochester colored brother,
+who made haste to welcome us to his ample home,&mdash;the well-earned reward
+of his faithful labors!</p>
+
+<p>On Monday evening, the 23d, we started for Toronto, where we arrived
+safely the next day. Directly after landing, we heard that Governor
+Johnston, of Pennsylvania, had made a demand on the Governor of Canada
+for me, under the Extradition Treaty. Pinckney and Johnson advised me to
+go to the country, and remain where I should not be known; but I
+refused. I intended to see what they would do with me. Going at once to
+the Government House, I entered the first office I came to. The official
+requested me to be seated. The following is the substance of the
+conversation between us, as near as I can remember. I told him I had
+heard that Governor Johnston, of Pennsylvania, had requested his
+government to send me back. At this he came forward, held forth his
+hand, and said, "Is this William Parker?"</p>
+
+<p>I took his hand, and assured him I was the man. When he started to come,
+I thought he was intending to seize me, and I prepared myself to knock
+him down. His genial, sympathetic manner it was that convinced me he
+meant well.</p>
+
+<p>He made me sit down, and said,&mdash;"Yes, they want you back again. Will you
+go?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will not be taken back alive," said I. "I ran away from my master to
+be free,&mdash;I have run from the United States to be free. I am now going
+to stop running."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you a fugitive from labor?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>I told him I was.</p>
+
+<p>"Why," he answered, "they say you are a fugitive from justice." He then
+asked me where my master lived.</p>
+
+<p>I told him, "In Anne Arundel County, Maryland."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there such a county in Maryland?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"There is," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>He took down a map, examined it, and said, "You are right."</p>
+
+<p>I then told him the name of the farm, and my master's name. Further
+questions bearing upon the country towns near, the nearest river, etc.,
+followed, all of which I answered to his satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"How does it happen," he then asked, "that you lived in Pennsylvania so
+long, and no person knew you were a fugitive from labor?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not get other people to keep my secrets, sir," I replied. "My
+brother and family only knew that I had been a slave."</p>
+
+<p>He then assured me that I would not, in his opinion, have to go back.
+Many coming in at this time on business, I was told to call again at
+three o'clock, which I did. The person in the office, a clerk, told me
+to take no further trouble about it, until that day four weeks. "But you
+are as free a man as I am," said he. When I told the news to Pinckney
+and Johnson, they were greatly relieved in mind.</p>
+
+<p>I ate breakfast with the greatest relish, got a letter written to a
+friend in Chester County for my wife, and set about arrangements to
+settle at or near Toronto.</p>
+
+<p>We tried hard to get work, but the task was difficult. I think three
+weeks elapsed before we got work that could be called work. Sometimes we
+would secure a small job, worth two or three shillings, and sometimes a
+smaller one, worth not more than one shilling; and these not oftener
+than once or twice in a week. We became greatly discouraged; and, to add
+to my misery, I was constantly hearing some alarming report about my
+wife and children. Sometimes they had carried her back into
+slavery,&mdash;sometimes the children, and sometimes the entire party. Then
+there would come a contradiction. I was soon so completely worn down by
+my fears for them, that I thought my heart<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> would break. To add to my
+disquietude, no answer came to my letters, although I went to the office
+regularly every day. At last I got a letter with the glad news that my
+wife and children were safe, and would be sent to Canada. I told the
+person reading for me to stop, and tell them to send her "right now,"&mdash;I
+could not wait to hear the rest of the letter.</p>
+
+<p>Two months from the day I landed in Toronto, my wife arrived, but
+without the children. She had had a very bad time. Twice they had her in
+custody; and, a third time, her young master came after her, which
+obliged her to flee before day, so that the children had to remain
+behind for the time. I was so glad to see her that I forgot about the
+children.</p>
+
+<p>The day my wife came, I had nothing but the clothes on my back, and was
+in debt for my board, without any work to depend upon. My situation was
+truly distressing. I took the resolution, and went to a store where I
+made known my circumstances to the proprietor, offering to work for him
+to pay for some necessaries. He readily consented, and I supplied myself
+with bedding, meal, and flour. As I had selected a place before, we went
+that evening about two miles into the country, and settled ourselves for
+the winter.</p>
+
+<p>When in Kingston, I had heard of the Buxton settlement, and of the
+Revds. Dr. Willis and Mr. King, the agents. My informant, after stating
+all the particulars, induced me to think it was a desirable place; and
+having quite a little sum of money due to me in the States, I wrote for
+it, and waited until May. It not being sent, I called upon Dr. Willis,
+who treated me kindly. I proposed to settle in Elgin, if he would loan
+means for the first instalment. He said he would see about it, and I
+should call again. On my second visit, he agreed to assist me, and
+proposed that I should get another man to go on a lot with me.</p>
+
+<p>Abraham Johnson and I arranged to settle together, and, with Dr.
+Willis's letter to Mr. King on our behalf, I embarked with my family on
+a schooner for the West. After five days' sailing, we reached Windsor.
+Not having the means to take us to Chatham, I called upon Henry Bibb,
+and laid my case before him. He took us in, treated us with great
+politeness, and afterwards, took me with him to Detroit, where, after an
+introduction to some friends, a purse of five dollars was made up. I
+divided the money among my companions, and started them for Chatham, but
+was obliged to stay at Windsor and Detroit two days longer.</p>
+
+<p>While stopping at Windsor, I went again to Detroit, with two or three
+friends, when, at one of the steamboats just landed, some officers
+arrested three fugitives, on the pretence of being horse thieves. I was
+satisfied they were slaves, and said so, when Henry Bibb went to the
+telegraph office and learned through a message that they were. In the
+crowd and excitement, the sheriff threatened to imprison me for my
+interference. I felt indignant, and told him to do so, whereupon he
+opened the door. About this time there was more excitement, and then a
+man slipped into the jail, unseen by the officers, opened the gate, and
+the three prisoners went out, and made their escape to Windsor. I
+stopped through that night in Detroit, and started the next day for
+Chatham, where I found my family snugly provided for at a boarding-house
+kept by Mr. Younge.</p>
+
+<p>Chatham was a thriving town at that time, and the genuine liberty
+enjoyed by its numerous colored residents pleased me greatly; but our
+destination was Buxton, and thither we went on the following day. We
+arrived there in the evening, and I called immediately upon Mr. King,
+and presented Dr. Willis's letter. He received me very politely, and
+said that, after I should feel rested, I could go out and select a lot.
+He also kindly offered to give me meal and pork for my family, until I
+could get work.</p>
+
+<p>In due time, Johnson and I each chose a fifty-acre lot; for although
+when in Toronto we agreed with Dr. Willis to take one lot between us,
+when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> we saw the land we thought we could pay for two lots. I got the
+money in a little time, and paid the Doctor back. I built a house, and
+we moved into it that same fall, and in it I live yet.</p>
+
+<p>When I first settled in Buxton, the white settlers in the vicinity were
+much opposed to colored people. Their prejudices were very strong; but
+the spread of intelligence and religion in the community has wrought a
+great change in them. Prejudice is fast being uprooted; indeed, they do
+not appear like the same people that they were. In a short time I hope
+the foul spirit will depart entirely.</p>
+
+<p>I have now to bring my narrative to a close; and in so doing I would
+return thanks to Almighty God for the many mercies and favors he has
+bestowed upon me, and especially for delivering me out of the hands of
+slaveholders, and placing me in a land of liberty, where I can worship
+God under my own vine and fig-tree, with none to molest or make me
+afraid. I am also particularly thankful to my old friends and neighbors
+in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania,&mdash;to the friends in Norristown,
+Quakertown, Rochester, and Detroit, and to Dr. Willis of Toronto, for
+their disinterested benevolence and kindness to me and my family. When
+hunted, they sheltered me; when hungry and naked, they clothed and fed
+me; and when a stranger in a strange land, they aided and encouraged me.
+May the Lord in his great mercy remember and bless them, as they
+remembered and blessed me.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The events following the riot at Christiana and my escape have become
+matters of history, and can only be spoken of as such. The failure of
+Gorsuch in his attempt; his death, and the terrible wounds of his son;
+the discomfiture and final rout of his crestfallen associates in crime;
+and their subsequent attempt at revenge by a merciless raid through
+Lancaster County, arresting every one unfortunate enough to have a dark
+skin,&mdash;is all to be found in the printed account of the trial of Castner
+Hanway and others for treason. It is true that some of the things which
+did occur are spoken of but slightly, there being good and valid reasons
+why they were passed over thus at that time in these cases, many of
+which might be interesting to place here, and which I certainly should
+do, did not the same reasons still exist in full force for keeping
+silent. I shall be compelled to let them pass just as they are recorded.</p>
+
+<p>But one event, in which there seems no reason to observe silence, I will
+introduce in this place. I allude to the escape of George Williams, one
+of our men, and the very one who had the letters brought up from
+Philadelphia by Mr. Samuel Williams. George lay in prison with the
+others who had been arrested by Kline, but was rendered more uneasy by
+the number of rascals who daily visited that place for the purpose of
+identifying, if possible, some of its many inmates as slaves. One day
+the lawyer previously alluded to, whose chief business seemed to be
+negro-catching, came with another man, who had employed him for that
+purpose, and, stopping in front of the cell wherein George and old
+Ezekiel Thompson were confined, cried out, "<i>That's</i> him!" At which the
+man exclaimed, "<i>It is, by God! that is him!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>These ejaculations, as a matter of course, brought George and Ezekiel,
+who were lying down, to their feet,&mdash;the first frightened and uneasy,
+the latter stern and resolute. Some mysterious conversation then took
+place between the two, which resulted in George lying down and covering
+himself with Ezekiel's blanket. In the mean time off sped the man and
+lawyer to obtain the key, open the cell, and institute a more complete
+inspection. They returned in high glee, but to their surprise saw only
+the old man standing at the door, his grim visage anything but inviting.
+They inserted the key, click went the lock, back shot the bolt, open
+flew the door, but old Ezekiel stood there firm, his eyes flashing fire,
+his brawny hands flourishing a stout oak stool furnished him to rest on
+by friends of whom I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> have so often spoken, and crying out in the most
+unmistakable manner, every word leaving a deep impression on his
+visitors, "The first man that puts his head inside of this cell I will
+split to pieces."</p>
+
+<p>The men leaped back, but soon recovered their self-possession; and the
+lawyer said,&mdash;"Do you know who I am? I am the lawyer who has charge of
+this whole matter, you impudent nigger, I will come in whenever I
+choose."</p>
+
+<p>The old man, if possible looking more stern and savage than before,
+replied,&mdash;"I don't care who you are; but if you or any other
+nigger-catcher steps inside of my cell-door I will beat out his brains."</p>
+
+<p>It is needless to say more. The old man's fixed look, clenched teeth,
+and bony frame had their effect. The man and the lawyer left, growling
+as they went, that, if there was rope to be had, that old Indian nigger
+should certainly hang.</p>
+
+<p>This was but the beginning of poor George's troubles. His friends were
+at work; but all went wrong, and his fate seemed sealed. He stood
+charged with treason, murder, and riot, and there appeared no way to
+relieve him. When discharged by the United States Court for the first
+crime, he was taken to Lancaster to meet the second and third. There,
+too, the man and the lawyer followed, taking with them that infamous
+wretch, Kline. The Devil seemed to favor all they undertook; and when
+Ezekiel was at last discharged, with some thirty more, from all that had
+been so unjustly brought against him, and for which he had lain in the
+damp prison for more than three months, these rascals lodged a warrant
+in the Lancaster jail, and at midnight Kline and the man who claimed to
+be George's owner arrested him as a fugitive from labor, whilst the
+lawyer returned to Philadelphia to prepare the case for trial, and to
+await the arrival of his shameless partners in guilt. This seemed the
+climax of George's misfortunes. He was hurried into a wagon, ready at
+the door, and, fearing a rescue, was driven at a killing pace to the
+town of Parkesburg, where they were compelled to stop for the night,
+their horses being completely used up. This was in the month of January,
+and the coldest night that had been known for many years. On their
+route, these wretches, who had George handcuffed and tied in the wagon,
+indulged deeply in bad whiskey, with which they were plentifully
+supplied, and by the time they reached the public-house their fury was
+at its height. 'T is said there is honor among thieves, but villains of
+the sort I am now speaking of seem to possess none. Each fears the
+other. When in the bar-room, Kline said to the other,&mdash;"Sir, you can go
+to sleep. I will watch this nigger."</p>
+
+<p>"No," replied the other, "I will do that business myself. You don't fool
+me, sir."</p>
+
+<p>To which Kline replied, "Take something, sir?"&mdash;and down went more
+whiskey.</p>
+
+<p>Things went on in this way awhile, until Kline drew a chair to the
+stove, and, overcome by the heat and liquor, was soon sleeping soundly,
+and, I suppose, dreaming of the profits which were sure to arise from
+the job. The other walked about till the barkeeper went to bed, leaving
+the hostler to attend in his place, and he also, somehow or other, soon
+fell asleep. Then he walked up to George, who was lying on the bench,
+apparently as soundly asleep as any of them, and, saying to himself,
+"The damn nigger is asleep,&mdash;I'll just take a little rest myself,"&mdash;he
+suited the action to the word. Spreading himself out on two chairs, in a
+few moments he was snoring at a fearful rate. Rum, the devil, and
+fatigue, combined, had completely prostrated George's foes. It was now
+his time for action; and, true to the hope of being free, the last to
+leave the poor, hunted, toil-worn bondman's heart, he opened first one
+eye, then the other, and carefully examined things around. Then he rose
+slowly, and keeping step to the deep-drawn snores of the miserable,
+debased wretch who claimed him, he stealthily crawled towards the door,
+when, to his consternation, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> found the eye of the hostler on him. He
+paused, knowing his fate hung by a single hair. It was only necessary
+for the man to speak, and he would be shot instantly dead; for both
+Kline and his brother ruffian slept pistol in hand. As I said, George
+stopped, and, in the softest manner in which it was possible for him to
+speak, whispered, "A drink of water, if you please, sir." The man
+replied not, but, pointing his finger to the door again, closed his
+eyes, and was apparently lost in slumber.</p>
+
+<p>I have already said it was cold; and, in addition, snow and ice covered
+the ground. There could not possibly be a worse night. George shivered
+as he stepped forth into the keen night air. He took one look at the
+clouds above, and then at the ice-clad ground below. He trembled; but
+freedom beckoned, and on he sped. He knew where he was,&mdash;the place was
+familiar. On, on, he pressed, nor paused till fifteen miles lay between
+him and his drunken claimant; then he stopped at the house of a tried
+friend to have his handcuffs removed; but, with their united efforts,
+one side only could be got off, and the poor fellow, not daring to rest,
+continued his journey, forty odd miles, to Philadelphia, with the other
+on. Frozen, stiff, and sore, he arrived there on the following day, and
+every care was extended to him by his old friends. He was nursed and
+attended by the late Dr. James, Joshua Gould Bias, one of the faithful
+few, whose labors for the oppressed will never be forgotten, and whose
+heart, purse, and hand were always open to the poor, flying slave. God
+has blessed him, and his reward is obtained.</p>
+
+<p>I shall here take leave of George, only saying, that he recovered and
+went to the land of freedom, to be safe under the protection of British
+law. Of the wretches he left in the <i>tavern</i>, much might be said; but it
+is enough to know that they awoke to find him gone, and to pour their
+curses and blasphemy on each other. They swore most frightfully; and the
+disappointed Southerner threatened to blow out the brains of Kline, who
+turned his wrath on the hostler, declaring he should be taken and held
+responsible for the loss. This so raised the ire of that worthy, that,
+seizing an iron bar that was used to fasten the door, he drove the whole
+party from the house, swearing they were damned kidnappers, and ought to
+be all sent after old Gorsuch, and that he would raise the whole
+township on them if they said one word more. This had the desired
+effect. They left, not to pursue poor George, but to avoid pursuit; for
+these worthless man-stealers knew the released men brought up from
+Philadelphia and discharged at Lancaster were all in the neighborhood,
+and that nothing would please these brave fellows&mdash;who had patiently and
+heroically suffered for long and weary months in a felon's cell for the
+cause of human freedom&mdash;more, than to get a sight at them; and Kline, he
+knew this well,&mdash;particularly old Ezekiel Thompson, who had sworn by his
+heart's blood, that, if he could only get hold of that Marshal Kline, he
+should kill him and go to the gallows in peace. In fact, he said the
+only thing he had to feel sorry about was, that he did not do it when he
+threatened to, whilst the scoundrel stood talking to Hanway; and but for
+Castner Hanway he would have done it, anyhow. Much more I could say; but
+short stories are read, while long ones are like the sermons we go to
+sleep under.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="NANTUCKET" id="NANTUCKET"></a>NANTUCKET.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Thompson and I had a fortnight's holiday, and the question arose how
+could we pass it best, and for the least money.</p>
+
+<p>We are both clerks, that is to say, shopmen, in a large jobbing house;
+but although, like most Americans, we spend our lives in the din and
+bustle of a colossal shop, where selling and packing are the only
+pastime, and daybooks and ledgers the only literature, we wish it to be
+understood that we have souls capable of speculating upon some other
+matters that have no cash value, yet which mankind cannot neglect
+without becoming something little better than magnified busy bees, or
+gigantic ants, or overgrown social caterpillars. And although I say it
+myself, I have quite a reputation among our fellows, that I have earned
+by the confident way in which I lay down a great principle of science,
+&aelig;sthetics, or morals. I confess that I am perhaps a little given to
+generalize from a single fact; but my manner is imposing to the weaker
+brethren, and my credit for great wisdom is well established in our
+street.</p>
+
+<p>Under these circumstances it became a matter of some importance to
+decide the question, Where can we go to the best advantage, pecuniary
+and &aelig;sthetical?</p>
+
+<p>We had both of us, in the pursuit of our calling,&mdash;that is to say, in
+hunting after bad debts and drumming up new business,&mdash;travelled over
+most of this country on those long lines of rails that always remind me
+of the parallels of latitude on globes and maps; and we wondered why
+people who had once gratified a natural curiosity to see this land
+should ever travel over it again, unless with the hope of making money
+by their labor. Health, certainly, no one can expect to get from the
+tough upper-leathers and sodden soles of the pies offered at the
+ten-minutes-for-refreshment stations, nor from their saturated
+spongecakes. As to pleasure, I said to Thompson,&mdash;"the pleasure of
+travelling consists in the new agreeable sensations it affords. Above
+all, they must be new. You wish to move out of your set of thoughts and
+feelings, or else why move at all? But all the civilized world over,
+locomotives, like huge flat-irons, are smoothing customs, costumes,
+thoughts, and feelings into one plane, homogeneous surface. And in this
+country not only does Nature appear to do everything by wholesale, but
+there is as little variety in human beings. We have discovered the
+political alkahest or universal solvent of the alchemists, and with it
+we reduce at once the national characteristics of foreigners into our
+well-known American compound. Hence, on all the great lines of travel,
+Monotony has marked us for her own. Coming from the West, you are
+whirled through twelve hundred miles of towns, so alike in their outward
+features that they seem to have been started in New England nurseries
+and sent to be planted wherever they might be wanted;&mdash;square brick
+buildings, covered with signs, and a stoutish sentry-box on each flat
+roof; telegraph offices; express companies; a crowd of people dressed
+alike, 'earnest,' and bustling as ants, with seemingly but one idea,&mdash;to
+furnish materials for the statistical tables of the next census. Then,
+beyond, you catch glimpses of many smaller and neater buildings, with
+grass and trees and white fences about them. Some are Gothic, some
+Italian, some native American. But the glory of one Gothic is like the
+glory of another Gothic, the Italian are all built upon the same
+pattern, and the native American differ only in size. There are three
+marked currents of architectural taste, but no individual character in
+particular buildings. Everywhere you see comfort and abundance; your
+mind is easy on the great subject of imports, exports, products of the
+soil, and manufactures;&mdash;a pleasant and strengthening<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> prospect for a
+political economist, or for shareholders in railways or owners of lands
+in the vicinity. This 'unparalleled prosperity' must be exciting to a
+foreigner who sees it for the first time; but we Yankees are to the
+manner born and bred up. We take it all as a matter of course, as the
+young Plutuses do their father's fine house and horses and servants.
+Kingsley says there is a great, unspoken poetry in sanitary reform. It
+may be so; but as yet the words only suggest sewers, ventilation, and
+chloride of lime. The poetry has not yet become vocal; and I think the
+same may be said of our 'material progress.' It seems thus far very
+prosaic. 'Only a great poet sees the poetry of his own age,' we are
+told. We every-day people are unfortunately blind to it."</p>
+
+<p>Here I was silent. I had dived into the deepest recesses of my soul.
+Thompson waited patiently until I should rise to the surface and blow
+again. It was thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Have you not noticed that the people we sit beside in railway cars are
+becoming as much alike as their brown linen 'dusters,' and unsuggestive
+except on that point of statistics? They are intelligent, but they carry
+their shops on their backs, as snails do their houses. Their thoughts
+are fixed upon the one great subject. On all others, politics included,
+they talk from hand to mouth, offering you a cold hash of their favorite
+morning paper. Even those praiseworthy persons who devote their time to
+temperance, missions, tract-societies, seem more like men of business
+than apostles. They lay their charities before you much as they would
+display their goods, and urge their excellence and comparative cheapness
+to induce you to lay out your money.</p>
+
+<p>"The fact is, that the traveller is daily losing his human character,
+and becoming more and more a package, to be handled, stowed, and
+'forwarded' as may best suit the convenience and profit of the
+enterprising parties engaged in the business. If at night he stops at a
+hotel, he rises to the dignity of an animal, is marked by a number, and
+driven to his food and litter by the herdsmen employed by the master of
+the establishment. To a thinking man, it is a sad indication for the
+future to see what slaves this hotel-railroad-steamboat system has made
+of the brave and the free when they travel. How they toady captains and
+conductors, and without murmuring put up with any imposition they please
+to practise upon them, even unto taking away their lives! As we all pay
+the same price at hotels, each one hopes by smirks and servility to
+induce the head-clerk to treat him a little better than his neighbors.
+There is no despotism more absolute than that of these servants of the
+public. As Cobbett said, 'In America, public servant means master.' None
+of us can sing, 'Yankees never will be slaves,' unless we stay at home.
+We have liberated the blacks, but I see little chance of emancipation
+for ourselves. The only liberty that is vigorously vindicated here is
+the liberty of doing wrong."</p>
+
+<p>Here I stopped short. It was evident that my wind was gone, and any
+further exertion of eloquence out of the question for some time. I was
+as exhausted as a <i>Gymnotus</i> that has parted with all its electricity.
+Thompson took advantage of my helpless condition, and carried me off
+unresisting to a place which railways can never reach, and where there
+is nothing to attract fashionable travellers. The surly Atlantic keeps
+watch over it and growls off the pestilent crowd of excursionists who
+bring uncleanness and greediness in their train, and are pursued by the
+land-sharks who prey upon such frivolous flying-fish. A little town,
+whose life stands still, or rather goes backward, whose ships have
+sailed away to other ports, whose inhabitants have followed the ships,
+and whose houses seem to be going after the inhabitants; but a town in
+its decline, not in its decay. Everything is clean and in good repair;
+everybody well dressed, healthy, and cheerful. Paupers there are none;
+and the new school-house would be an ornament<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> to any town in
+Massachusetts. That there is no lack of spirit and vigor may be known
+from the fact that the island furnished five hundred men for the late
+war.</p>
+
+<p>When we caught sight of Nantucket, the sun was shining his best, and the
+sea too smooth to raise a qualm in the bosom of the most delicately
+organized female. The island first makes its appearance, as a long, thin
+strip of yellow underlying a long, thinner strip of green. In the middle
+of this double line the horizon is broken by two square towers. As you
+approach, the towers resolve themselves into meeting-houses, and a large
+white town lies before you.</p>
+
+<p>At the wharf there were no baggage smashers. Our trunks were</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Taken up tenderly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lifted with care,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and carried to the hotel for twenty-five cents in paper. I immediately
+established the fact, that there are no fellow-citizens in Nantucket of
+foreign descent. "For," said I, "if you offered that obsolete fraction
+of a dollar to the turbulent hackmen of our cities, you would meet with
+offensive demonstrations of contempt." I seized the opportunity to add,
+<i>apropos</i> of the ways of that class of persons: "Theoretically, I am a
+thorough democrat; but when democracy drives a hack, smells of bad
+whiskey and cheap tobacco, ruins my portmanteau, robs me of my money,
+and damns my eyes when it does not blacken them, if I dare protest,&mdash;I
+hate it."</p>
+
+<p>The streets are paved and clean. There are few horses on the island, and
+these are harnessed single to box-wagons, painted green, the sides of
+which are high enough to hold safely a child, four or five years of age,
+standing. We often inquired the reasons for this peculiar build; but the
+replies were so unsatisfactory, that we put the green box down as one of
+the mysteries of the spot.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to us a healthy symptom, that we saw in our inn none of those
+alarming notices that the keepers of hotels on the mainland paste up so
+conspicuously, no doubt from the very natural dislike to competition,
+"Beware of pickpockets," "Bolt your doors before retiring," "Deposit
+your valuables in the safe, or the proprietors will not be responsible."
+There are no thieves in Nantucket; if for no other reason, because they
+cannot get away with the spoils. And we were credibly informed, that the
+one criminal in the town jail had given notice to the authorities that
+he would not remain there any longer, unless they repaired the door, as
+he was afraid of catching cold from the damp night air.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoons, good-looking young women swarm in the streets,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">"Airy creatures,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alike in voice, though not in features,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I could wish their voices were as sweet as their faces; but the American
+climate, or perhaps the pertness of democracy, has an unfavorable effect
+on the organs of speech. Governor Andrew must have visited Nantucket
+before he wrote his eloquent lamentation over the excess of women in
+Massachusetts. I am fond of ladies' society, and do not sympathize with
+the Governor. But if that day should ever come, which is prophesied by
+Isaiah, when seven women shall lay hold of one man, saying, "We will eat
+our own bread and wear our own apparel, only let us be called by thy
+name," I think Nantucket will be the scene of the fulfilment, the women
+are so numerous and apparently so well off. I confess that I envy the
+good fortune of the young gentlemen who may be living there at that
+time. We saw a foreshadowing of this delightful future in the water. The
+bathing "facilities" consist of many miles of beach, and one
+bathing-house, in which ladies exchange their shore finery for their
+sea-weeds. Two brisk young fellows, Messrs. Whitey and Pypey, had come
+over in the same boat with us. We had fallen into a traveller's
+acquaintance with them, and listened to the story of the pleasant life
+they had led on the island during previous visits. We lost sight of them
+on the wharf. We found them again near the bath-house, in the hour of
+their glory. There they were, disporting themselves in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> clear water,
+swimming, diving, floating, while around them laughed and splashed
+fourteen bright-eyed water-nymphs, half a dozen of them as bewitching as
+any Nixes that ever spread their nets for soft-hearted young <i>Ritters</i>
+in the old German romance waters. Neptune in a triumphal progress, with
+his Naiads tumbling about him, was no better off than Whitey and Pypey.
+They had, to be sure, no car, nor conch shells, nor dolphins; but, as
+Thompson remarked, these were unimportant accessories, that added but
+little to Neptune's comfort. The nymphs were the essential. The
+spectacle was a saddening one for us, I confess; the more so, because
+our forlorn condition evidently gave a new zest to the enjoyment of our
+friends, and stimulated them to increased vigor in their aquatic
+flirtations. Alone, unintroduced, melancholy, and a little sheepish, we
+hired towels at two cents each from the ladylike and obliging colored
+person who superintended the bath-house, and, withdrawing to the
+friendly shelter of distance, dropped our clothes upon the sand, and hid
+our envy and insignificance in the bosom of the deep.</p>
+
+<p>And the town was brilliant from the absence of the unclean
+advertisements of quack-medicine men. That irrepressible species have
+not, as yet, committed their nuisance in its streets, and disfigured the
+walls and fences with their portentous placards. It is the only clean
+place I know of. The nostrum-makers have labelled all the features of
+Nature on the mainland, as if our country were a vast apothecary's shop.
+The Romans had a gloomy fashion of lining their great roads with tombs
+and mortuary inscriptions. The modern practice is quite as dreary. The
+long lines of railway that lead to our cities are decorated with
+cure-alls for the sick, the <i>ante-mortem</i> epitaphs of the fools who buy
+them and try them.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"No place is sacred to the meddling crew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose trade is&mdash;&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>posting what we all should take. The walls of our domestic castles are
+outraged with <i>graffiti</i> of this class; highways and byways display
+them; and if the good Duke with the melancholy Jaques were to wander in
+some forest of New Arden, in the United States, they would be sure to</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Find <i>elixirs</i> on trees, <i>bitters</i> in the running brooks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Syrups</i> on stones, and <i>lies</i> in everything."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Last year, weary of shop, and feeling the necessity of restoring tone to
+the mind by a course of the sublime, Thompson and I paid many dollars,
+travelled many miles, ran many risks, and suffered much from
+impertinence and from dust, in order that we might see the wonders of
+the Lord, his mountains and his waterfalls. We stood at the foot of the
+mountain, and, gazing upward at a precipice, the sublime we were in
+search of began to swell within our hearts, when our eyes were struck by
+huge Roman letters painted on the face of the rock, and held fast, as if
+by a spell, until we had read them all. They asked the question, "Are
+you troubled with worms?"</p>
+
+<p>It is hardly necessary to say that the sublime within us was instantly
+killed. It would be fortunate, indeed, for the afflicted, if the
+specific of this charlatan St. George were half as destructive to the
+intestinal dragons he promises to destroy. Then we turned away to the
+glen down which the torrent plunged. And there, at the foot of the fall,
+in the midst of the boiling water, the foam, and spray, rose a tall crag
+crowned with silver birch, and hung with moss and creeping vines,
+bearing on its gray, weather-beaten face: "Rotterdam Schnapps." Bah! it
+made us sick. The caldron looked like a punch-bowl, and the breath of
+the zephyrs smelt of gin and water.</p>
+
+<p>Thousands of us see this dirty desecration of the shrines to which we
+make our summer pilgrimage, and bear with the sacrilege meekly, perhaps
+laugh at the wicked generation of pill-venders, that seeks for places to
+put up its sign. But does not this tolerance indicate the note of
+vulgarity in us, as Father Newman might say? Is it not a blot on the
+people as well as on the rocks? Let them fill the columns of newspapers
+with their ill-smelling advertisements, and sham testimonials from the
+Reverend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> Smith, Brown, and Jones; but let us prevent them from setting
+their traps for our infirmities in the spots God has chosen for his
+noblest works. What a triple brass must such men have about their
+consciences to dare to flaunt their falsehoods in such places! It is a
+blasphemy against Nature. We might use Peter's words to them,&mdash;"Thou
+hast not lied unto men, but unto God." Ananias and Sapphira were slain
+for less. But they think, I suppose, that the age of miracles has
+passed, or survives only in their miraculous cures, and so coolly defy
+the lightnings of Heaven. I was so much excited on this subject that
+Thompson suggested to me to give up my situation, turn Peter the Hermit,
+and carry a fiery scrubbing-brush through the country, preaching to all
+lovers of Nature to join in a crusade to wash the Holy Places clean of
+these unbelieving quacks.</p>
+
+<p>It is pleasant to see that the Nantucket people are all healthy, or, if
+ailing, have no idea of being treated as they treat bluefish,&mdash;offered a
+red rag or a white bone, some taking sham to bite upon, and so be hauled
+in and die. As regards the salubrity of the climate, I think there can
+be no doubt. The faces of the inhabitants speak for themselves on that
+point. I heard an old lady, not very well preserved, who had been a
+fortnight on the island, say to a sympathizing friend, into whose ear
+she was pouring her complaints, "I sleeps better, and my stomach is
+sweeter." She might have expressed herself more elegantly, but she had
+touched the two grand secrets of life,&mdash;sound sleep and good digestion.</p>
+
+<p>Another comfort on this island is, that there are few shops, no
+temptation to part with one's pelf, and no beggars, barelegged or
+barefaced, to ask for it. I do not believe that there are any cases of
+the <i>cacoethes subscribendi</i>. The natives have got out of the habit of
+making money, and appear to want nothing in particular, except to go
+a-fishing.</p>
+
+<p>They have plenty of time to answer questions good-humoredly and
+<i>gratis</i>, and do not look upon a stranger as they do upon a stranded
+blackfish,&mdash;to be stripped of his oil and bone for their benefit. "I
+feel like a man among Christians," I declaimed,&mdash;"not, as I have often
+felt in my wanderings on shore, like Mungo Park or Burton, a traveller
+among savages, who are watching for an opportunity to rob me. I catch a
+glimpse again of the golden age when money was money. The blessed old
+prices of my youth, which have long since been driven from the continent
+by</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">'paper credit, last and best supply,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That lends corruption lighter wings to fly,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>have taken refuge here before leaving this wicked world forever. The
+<i>cordon sanitaire</i> of the Atlantic has kept off the pestilence of
+inflation."</p>
+
+<p>One bright afternoon we took horse and "shay" for Siasconset, on the
+south side of the island. A drive of seven miles over a country as flat
+and as naked of trees as a Western prairie, the sandy soil covered with
+a low, thick growth of bayberry, whortleberry, a false cranberry called
+the meal-plum, and other plants bearing a strong family likeness, with
+here and there a bit of greensward,&mdash;a legacy, probably, of the flocks
+of sheep the natives foolishly turned off the island,&mdash;brought us to the
+spot. We passed occasional water-holes, that reminded us also of the
+West, and a few cattle. Two or three lonely farm-houses loomed up in the
+distance, like ships at sea. We halted our rattle-trap on a bluff
+covered with thick green turf. On the edge of this bluff, forty feet
+above the beach, is Siasconset, looking southward over the ocean,&mdash;no
+land between it and Porto Rico. It is only a fishing village; but if
+there were many like it, the conventional shepherd, with his ribbons,
+his crooks, and his pipes, would have to give way to the fisherman.
+Seventy-five cosey, one-story cottages, so small and snug that a
+well-grown man might touch the gables without rising on tip-toe, are
+drawn up in three rows parallel to the sea, with narrow lanes of turf
+between them,&mdash;all of a weather-beaten gray tinged with purple, with
+pale-blue<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> blinds, vines over the porch, flowers in the windows, and
+about each one a little green yard enclosed by white palings. Inside are
+odd little rooms, fitted with lockers, like the cabin of a vessel.
+Cottages, yards, palings, lanes, all are in proportion and harmony.
+Nothing common or unclean was visible,&mdash;no heaps of fish-heads, served
+up on clam-shells, and garnished with bean-pods, potato-skins, and
+corn-husks; no pigs in sight, nor in the air,&mdash;not even a cow to imperil
+the neatness of the place. There was the brisk, vigorous smell of the
+sea-shore, flavored, perhaps, with a suspicion of oil, that seemed to be
+in keeping with the locality.</p>
+
+<p>We sat for a long time gazing with silent astonishment upon this
+delightful little toy village, that looked almost as if it had been made
+at Nuremberg, and could be picked up and put away when not wanted to
+play with. It was a bright, still afternoon. The purple light of sunset
+gave an additional charm of color to the scene. Suddenly the <i>lumen
+juvent&aelig; purpureum</i>, the purple light of youth, broke upon it. Handsome,
+well-dressed girls, with a few polygynic young men in the usual island
+proportion of the sexes, came out of the cottages, and stood in the
+lanes talking and laughing, or walked to the edge of the bluff to see
+the sun go down. We rubbed our eyes. Was this real, or were we looking
+into some showman's box? It seemed like the Petit Trianon adapted to an
+island in the Atlantic, with Louis XV. and his marquises playing at
+fishing instead of farming.</p>
+
+<p>A venerable codfisher had been standing off and on our vehicle for some
+time, with the signal for speaking set in his inquisitive countenance. I
+hailed him as Mr. Coffin; for Cooper has made Long Tom the legitimate
+father of all Nantucketers. He hove to, and gave us information about
+his home. There was a picnic, or some sort of summer festival, going on;
+and the gay lady-birds we saw were either from Nantucket, or relatives
+from the main. There had once been another row of cottages outside of
+those now standing; but the Atlantic came ashore one day in a storm, and
+swallowed them up. Nevertheless, real property had risen of late. "Why,"
+said he, "do you see that little gray cottage yonder? It rents this
+summer for ten dollars a month; and there are some young men here from
+the mainland who pay one dollar a week for their rooms without board."</p>
+
+<p>Thompson said his sensations were similar to those of Captain Cook or
+Herman Melville when they first landed to skim the cream of the fairy
+islands of the Pacific.</p>
+
+<p>I was deeply moved, and gave tongue at once. "It is sad to think that
+these unsophisticated, uninflated people must undergo the change
+civilization brings with it. The time will come when the evil spirit
+that presides over watering-places will descend upon this dear little
+village, and say to the inhabitants that henceforth they must catch men.
+Neatness, cheapness, good-feeling, will vanish; a five-story hotel will
+be put up,&mdash;the process cannot be called building; and the sharks that
+infest the coast will come ashore in shabby coats and trousers, to prey
+upon summer pleasure-seekers."</p>
+
+<p>"In the mean time," said Thompson, "why should not we come here to live?
+We can wear old clothes, and smoke cigars of the <i>Hippalektryon</i> brand.
+Dr. Johnson must have had a poetic prevision of Nantucket when he wrote
+his <i>impecunious</i> lines:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Has Heaven reserved, in pity for the poor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No pathless waste or undiscovered shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No secret island in the boundless main?'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is the island. What an opening for young men of immoderately small
+means! The climate healthy and cool; no mosquitoes; a choice among seven
+beauties, perhaps the reversion of the remaining six, if Isaiah can be
+relied upon. In our regions, a thing of beauty is an expense for life;
+but with a house for three hundred dollars, and bluefish at a cent and a
+half a pound, there is no need any more to think of high prices and the
+expense of bringing up a family. If the origin of evil was,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> that
+Providence did not create money enough, here it is in some sort
+Paradise."</p>
+
+<p>"That's Heine," said I; "but Heine forgot to add, that one of the
+Devil's most dangerous tricks is to pretend to supply this sinful want
+by his cunning device of inconvertible paper money, which lures men to
+destruction and something worse."</p>
+
+<p>Our holiday was nearly over. We packed up our new sensations, and
+steamed away to piles of goods and columns of figures. Town and steeples
+vanished in the haze, like the domes and minarets of the enchanted isle
+of Borondon. Was not this as near to an enchanted island as one could
+hope to find within twenty-five miles of New England? Nantucket is the
+gem of the ocean without the Irish, which I think is an improvement.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_SNOW-WALKERS" id="THE_SNOW-WALKERS"></a>THE SNOW-WALKERS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal
+cause for wonder and admiration in winter. It is true the pomp and the
+pageantry are swept away, but the essential elements remain,&mdash;the day
+and the night, the mountain and the valley, the elemental play and
+succession and the perpetual presence of the infinite sky. In winter the
+stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller
+triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity.
+Summer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and human, appeals
+to the affections and the sentiments, and fosters inquiry and the art
+impulse. Winter is of a more heroic cast, and addresses the intellect.
+The severe studies and disciplines come easier in winter. One imposes
+larger tasks upon himself, and is less tolerant of his own weaknesses.</p>
+
+<p>The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in
+winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone
+and sinew to Literature, summer the tissues and blood.</p>
+
+<p>The simplicity of winter has a deep moral. The return of Nature, after
+such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and
+austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. It is the
+philosopher coming back from the banquet and the wine to a cup of water
+and a crust of bread.</p>
+
+<p>And then this beautiful masquerade of the elements,&mdash;the novel disguises
+our nearest friends put on! Here is another rain and another dew, water
+that will not flow, nor spill, nor receive the taint of an unclean
+vessel. And if we see truly, the same old beneficence and willingness to
+serve lurk beneath all.</p>
+
+<p>Look up at the miracle of the falling snow,&mdash;the air a dizzy maze of
+whirling, eddying flakes, noiselessly transforming the world, the
+exquisite crystals dropping in ditch and gutter, and disguising in the
+same suit of spotless livery all objects upon which they fall. How novel
+and fine the first drifts! The old, dilapidated fence is suddenly set
+off with the most fantastic ruffles, scalloped and fluted after an
+unheard-of fashion! Looking down a long line of decrepit stone-wall, in
+the trimming of which the wind had fairly run riot, I saw, as for the
+first time, what a severe yet master artist old Winter is. Ah, a severe
+artist! How stern the woods look, dark and cold and as rigid against the
+horizon as iron!</p>
+
+<p>All life and action upon the snow have an added emphasis and
+significance. Every expression is underscored. Summer has few finer
+pictures than this winter one of the farmer foddering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> his cattle from a
+stack upon the clean snow,&mdash;the movement, the sharply-defined figures,
+the great green flakes of hay, the long file of patient cows,&mdash;the
+advance just arriving and pressing eagerly for the choicest
+morsels,&mdash;and the bounty and providence it suggests. Or the chopper in
+the woods,&mdash;the prostrate tree, the white new chips scattered about, his
+easy triumph over the cold, coat hanging to a limb, and the clear, sharp
+ring of his axe. The woods are rigid and tense, keyed up by the frost,
+and resound like a stringed instrument. Or the road-breakers, sallying
+forth with oxen and sleds in the still, white world, the day after the
+storm, to restore the lost track and demolish the beleaguering drifts.</p>
+
+<p>All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better. At night I
+hear more distinctly the steady roar of the North Mountain. In summer it
+is a sort of complacent pur, as the breezes stroke down its sides; but
+in winter always the same low, sullen growl.</p>
+
+<p>A severe artist! No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble
+and the chisel. When the nights are calm and the moon full, I go out to
+gaze upon the wonderful purity of the moonlight and the snow. The air is
+full of latent fire, and the cold warms me&mdash;after a different fashion
+from that of the kitchen-stove. The world lies about me in a "trance of
+snow." The clouds are pearly and iridescent, and seem the farthest
+possible remove from the condition of a storm,&mdash;the ghosts of clouds,
+the indwelling beauty freed from all dross. I see the hills, bulging
+with great drifts, lift themselves up cold and white against the sky,
+the black lines of fences here and there obliterated by the depth of the
+snow. Presently a fox barks away up next the mountain, and I imagine I
+can almost see him sitting there, in his furs, upon the illuminated
+surface, and looking down in my direction. As I listen, one answers him
+from behind the woods in the valley. What a wild winter sound,&mdash;wild and
+weird, up among the ghostly hills. Since the wolf has ceased to howl
+upon these mountains, and the panther to scream, there is nothing to be
+compared with it. So wild! I get up in the middle of the night to hear
+it. It is refreshing to the ear, and one delights to know that such wild
+creatures are still among us. At this season Nature makes the most of
+every throb of life that can withstand her severity. How heartily she
+indorses this fox! In what bold relief stand out the lives of all
+walkers of the snow! The snow is a great telltale, and blabs as
+effectually as it obliterates. I go into the woods, and know all that
+has happened. I cross the fields, and if only a mouse has visited his
+neighbor, the fact is chronicled.</p>
+
+<p>The Red Fox is the only species that abounds in my locality; the little
+Gray Fox seems to prefer a more rocky and precipitous country, and a
+less vigorous climate; the Cross Fox is occasionally seen, and there are
+traditions of the Silver Gray among the oldest hunters. But the Red Fox
+is the sportsman's prize, and the only fur-bearer worthy of note in
+these mountains.<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> I go out in the morning, after a fresh fall of snow,
+and see at all points where he has crossed the road. Here he has
+leisurely passed within rifle-range of the house, evidently
+reconnoitring the premises, with an eye to the hen-coop. That sharp,
+clear, nervous track,&mdash;there is no mistaking it for the clumsy
+foot-print of a little dog. All his wildness and agility are
+photographed in that track. Here he has taken fright, or suddenly
+recollected an engagement, and, in long, graceful leaps, barely touching
+the fence, has gone careering up the hill as fleet as the wind.</p>
+
+<p>The wild, buoyant creature, how beautiful he is! I had often seen his
+dead carcase, and, at a distance, had witnessed the hounds drive him
+across the upper fields; but the thrill and excitement of meeting him in
+his wild freedom in the woods were unknown to me, till, one cold winter
+day, drawn thither by the baying of a hound, I stood far up toward the
+mountain's brow, waiting a renewal of the sound, that I might determine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>
+the course of the dog and choose my position,&mdash;stimulated by the
+ambition of all young Nimrods, to bag some notable game. Long I waited,
+and patiently, till, chilled and benumbed, I was about to turn back,
+when, hearing a slight noise, I looked up and beheld a most superb fox,
+loping along with inimitable grace and ease, evidently disturbed, but
+not pursued by the hound, and so absorbed in his private meditations
+that he failed to see me, though I stood transfixed with amazement and
+admiration not ten yards distant. I took his measure at a glance,&mdash;a
+large male, with dark legs, and massive tail tipped with white,&mdash;a most
+magnificent creature; but so astonished and fascinated was I by his
+sudden appearance and matchless beauty, that not till I had caught the
+last glimpse of him, as he disappeared over a knoll, did I awake to my
+position as a sportsman, and realize what an opportunity to distinguish
+myself I had unconsciously let slip. I clutched my gun, half angrily, as
+if it was to blame, and went home out of humor with myself and all
+fox-kind. But I have since thought better of the experience, and
+concluded that I bagged the game after all, the best part of it, and
+fleeced Reynard of something more valuable than his fur without his
+knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>This is thoroughly a winter sound,&mdash;this voice of the hound upon the
+mountain,&mdash;and one that is music to many ears. The long, trumpet-like
+bay, heard for a mile or more,&mdash;now faintly back in the deep recesses of
+the mountain,&mdash;now distinct, but still faint, as the hound comes over
+some prominent point, and the wind favors,&mdash;anon entirely lost in the
+gully,&mdash;then breaking out again much nearer, and growing more and more
+pronounced as the dog approaches, till, when he comes around the brow of
+the mountain, directly above you, the barking is loud and sharp. On he
+goes along the northern spur, his voice rising and sinking, as the wind
+and lay of the ground modify it, till lost to hearing.</p>
+
+<p>The fox usually keeps half a mile ahead, regulating his speed by that of
+the hound, occasionally pausing a moment to divert himself with a mouse,
+or to contemplate the landscape, or to listen for his pursuer. If the
+hound press him too closely, he leads off from mountain to mountain, and
+so generally escapes the hunter; but if the pursuit be slow, he plays
+about some ridge or peak, and falls a prey, though not an easy one, to
+the experienced sportsman.</p>
+
+<p>A most spirited and exciting chase occurs when the farm-dog gets close
+upon one in the open field, as sometimes happens in the early morning.
+The fox relies so confidently upon his superior speed, that I imagine he
+half tempts the dog to the race. But if the dog be a smart one, and
+their course lies down hill, over smooth ground, Reynard must put his
+best foot forward; and then, sometimes, suffer the ignominy of being run
+over by his pursuer, who, however, is quite unable to pick him up, owing
+to the speed. But when they mount the hill, or enter the woods, the
+superior nimbleness and agility of the fox tell at once, and he easily
+leaves the dog far in his rear. For a cur less than his own size he
+manifests little fear, especially if the two meet alone, remote from the
+house. In such cases, I have seen first one turn tail, then the other.</p>
+
+<p>A novel spectacle often occurs in summer, when the female has young. You
+are rambling on the mountain, accompanied by your dog, when you are
+startled by that wild, half-threatening squall, and in a moment perceive
+your dog, with inverted tail and shame and confusion in his looks,
+sneaking toward you, the old fox but a few rods in his rear. You speak
+to him sharply, when he bristles up, turns about, and, barking, starts
+off vigorously, as if to wipe out the dishonor; but in a moment comes
+sneaking back more abashed than ever, and owns himself unworthy to be
+called a dog. The fox fairly shames him out of the woods. The secret of
+the matter is her sex, though her conduct, for the honor of the fox be
+it said, seems to be prompted only by solicitude for the safety of her
+young.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most notable features of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> the fox is his large and massive
+tail. Seen running on the snow, at a distance, his tail is quite as
+conspicuous as his body; and, so far from appearing a burden, seems to
+contribute to his lightness and buoyancy. It softens the outline of his
+movements, and repeats or continues to the eye the ease and poise of his
+carriage. But, pursued by the hound on a wet, thawy day, it often
+becomes so heavy and bedraggled as to prove a serious inconvenience, and
+compels him to take refuge in his den. He is very loath to do this; both
+his pride and the traditions of his race stimulate him to run it out,
+and win by fair superiority of wind and speed; and only a wound or a
+heavy and mopish tail will drive him to avoid the issue in this manner.</p>
+
+<p>To learn his surpassing shrewdness and cunning, attempt to take him with
+a trap. Rogue that he is, he always suspects some trick, and one must be
+more of a fox than he is himself to overreach him. At first sight it
+would appear easy enough. With apparent indifference he crosses your
+path, or walks in your footsteps in the field, or travels along the
+beaten highway, or lingers in the vicinity of stacks and remote barns.
+Carry the carcass of a pig, or a fowl, or a dog, to a distant field in
+midwinter, and in a few nights his tracks cover the snow about it.</p>
+
+<p>The inexperienced country youth, misled by this seeming carelessness of
+Reynard, suddenly conceives a project to enrich himself with fur, and
+wonders that the idea has not occurred to him before, and to others. I
+knew a youthful yeoman of this kind, who imagined he had found a mine of
+wealth on discovering on a remote side-hill, between two woods, a dead
+porker, upon which it appeared all the foxes of the neighborhood had
+nightly banqueted. The clouds were burdened with snow; and as the first
+flakes commenced to eddy down, he set out, trap and broom in hand,
+already counting over in imagination the silver quarters he would
+receive for his first fox-skin. With the utmost care, and with a
+palpitating heart, he removed enough of the trodden snow to allow the
+trap to sink below the surface. Then, carefully sifting the light
+element over it and sweeping his tracks full, he quickly withdrew,
+laughing exultingly over the little surprise he had prepared for the
+cunning rogue. The elements conspired to aid him, and the falling snow
+rapidly obliterated all vestiges of his work. The next morning at dawn,
+he was on his way to bring in his fur. The snow had done its work
+effectually, and, he believed, had kept his secret well. Arrived in
+sight of the locality, he strained his vision to make out his prize
+lodged against the fence at the foot of the hill. Approaching nearer,
+the surface was unbroken, and doubt usurped the place of certainty in
+his mind. A slight mound marked the site of the porker, but there was no
+foot-print near it. Looking up the hill, he saw where Reynard had walked
+leisurely down toward his wonted bacon, till within a few yards of it,
+when he had wheeled, and with prodigious strides disappeared in the
+woods. The young trapper saw at a glance what a comment this was upon
+his skill in the art, and, indignantly exhuming the iron, he walked home
+with it, the stream of silver quarters suddenly setting in another
+direction.</p>
+
+<p>The successful trapper commences in the fall, or before the first deep
+snow. In a field not too remote, with an old axe, he cuts a small place,
+say ten inches by fourteen, in the frozen ground, and removes the earth
+to the depth of three or four inches, then fills the cavity with dry
+ashes, in which are placed bits of roasted cheese. Reynard is very
+suspicious at first, and gives the place a wide berth. It looks like
+design, and he will see how the thing behaves before he approaches too
+near. But the cheese is savory and the cold severe. He ventures a little
+closer every night, until he can reach and pick a piece from the
+surface. Emboldened by success, like other foxes, he presently digs
+freely among the ashes, and, finding a fresh supply of the delectable
+morsels every night, is soon thrown off his guard, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> his suspicions
+are quite lulled. After a week of baiting in this manner, and on the eve
+of a light fall of snow, the trapper carefully conceals his trap in the
+bed, first smoking it thoroughly with hemlock boughs to kill or
+neutralize all smell of the iron. If the weather favors and the proper
+precautions have been taken, he may succeed, though the chances are
+still greatly against him.</p>
+
+<p>Reynard is usually caught very lightly, seldom more than the ends of his
+toes being between the jaws. He sometimes works so cautiously as to
+spring the trap without injury even to his toes; or may remove the
+cheese night after night without even springing it. I knew an old
+trapper who, on finding himself outwitted in this manner, tied a bit of
+cheese to the pan, and next morning had poor Reynard by the jaw. The
+trap is not fastened, but only encumbered with a clog, and is all the
+more sure in its hold by yielding to every effort of the animal to
+extricate himself.</p>
+
+<p>When Reynard sees his captor approaching, he would fain drop into a
+mouse-hole to render himself invisible. He crouches to the ground and
+remains perfectly motionless until he perceives himself discovered, when
+he makes one desperate and final effort to escape, but ceases all
+struggling as you come up, and behaves in a manner that stamps him a
+very timid warrior,&mdash;cowering to the earth with a mingled look of shame,
+guilt, and abject fear. A young farmer told me of tracing one with his
+trap to the border of a wood, where he discovered the cunning rogue
+trying to hide by embracing a small tree. Most animals, when taken in a
+trap, show fight; but Reynard has more faith in the nimbleness of his
+feet than in the terror of his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>Entering the woods, the number and variety of the tracks contrast
+strongly with the rigid, frozen aspect of things. Warm jets of life
+still shoot and play amid this snowy desolation. Fox-tracks are far less
+numerous than in the fields; but those of hares, skunks, partridges,
+squirrels, and mice abound. The mice-tracks are very pretty, and look
+like a sort of fantastic stitching on the coverlid of the snow. One is
+curious to know what brings these tiny creatures from their retreats;
+they do not seem to be in quest of food, but rather to be travelling
+about for pleasure or sociability, though always going post-haste, and
+linking stump with stump and tree with tree by fine, hurried strides.
+That is when they travel openly; but they have hidden passages and
+winding galleries under the snow, which undoubtedly are their main
+avenues of communication. Here and there these passages rise so near the
+surface as to be covered by only a frail arch of snow, and a slight
+ridge betrays their course to the eye. I know him well. He is known to
+the farmer as the deer-mouse, to the naturalist as the <i>Hesperomys
+leucopus</i>,&mdash;a very beautiful creature, nocturnal in his habits, with
+large ears, and large, fine eyes, full of a wild, harmless look. He
+leaps like a rabbit, and is daintily marked, with white feet and a white
+belly.</p>
+
+<p>It is he who, far up in the hollow trunk of some tree, lays by a store
+of beech-nuts for winter use. Every nut is carefully shelled, and the
+cavity that serves as storehouse lined with grass and leaves. The
+wood-chopper frequently squanders this precious store. I have seen half
+a peck taken from one tree, as clean and white as if put up by the most
+delicate hands,&mdash;as they were. How long it must have taken the little
+creature to collect this quantity, to hull them one by one, and convey
+them up to his fifth-story chamber! He is not confined to the woods, but
+is quite as common in the fields, particularly in the fall, amid the
+corn and potatoes. When routed by the plough, I have seen the old one
+take flight with half a dozen young hanging to her teats, and with such
+reckless speed, that some of the young would lose their hold, and fly
+off amid the weeds. Taking refuge in a stump with the rest of her
+family, the anxious mother would presently come back and hunt up the
+missing ones.</p>
+
+<p>The snow-walkers are mostly night-walkers also, and the record they
+leave upon the snow is the main clew one has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> to their life and doings.
+The hare is nocturnal in his habits, and though a very lively creature
+at night, with regular courses and run-ways through the wood, is
+entirely quiet by day. Timid as he is, he makes little effort to conceal
+himself, usually squatting beside a log, stump, or tree, and seeming to
+avoid rocks and ledges where he might be partially housed from the cold
+and the snow, but where also&mdash;and this consideration undoubtedly
+determines his choice&mdash;he would be more apt to fall a prey to his
+enemies. In this as well as in many other respects he differs from the
+rabbit proper (<i>Lepus sylvaticus</i>); he never burrows in the ground, or
+takes refuge in a den or hole, when pursued. If caught in the open
+fields, he is much confused and easily overtaken by the dog; but in the
+woods, he leaves him at a bound. In summer, when first disturbed, he
+beats the ground violently with his feet, by which means he would
+express to you his surprise or displeasure; it is a dumb way he has of
+scolding. After leaping a few yards, he pauses an instant, as if to
+determine the degree of danger, and then hurries away with a much
+lighter tread.</p>
+
+<p>His feet are like great pads, and his track has little of the sharp,
+articulated expression of Reynard's, or of animals that climb or dig.
+Yet it is very pretty, like all the rest, and tells its own tale. There
+is nothing bold or vicious or vulpine in it, and his timid, harmless
+character is published at every leap. He abounds in dense woods,
+preferring localities filled with a small undergrowth of beech and
+birch, upon the bark of which he feeds. Nature is rather partial to him
+and matches his extreme local habits and character with a suit that
+corresponds with his surroundings,&mdash;reddish-gray in summer and white in
+winter.</p>
+
+<p>The sharp-rayed track of the partridge adds another figure to this
+fantastic embroidery upon the winter snow. Her course is a clear, strong
+line, sometimes quite wayward, but generally very direct, steering for
+the densest, most impenetrable places,&mdash;leading you over logs and
+through brush, alert and expectant, till, suddenly, she bursts up a few
+yards from you, and goes humming through the trees,&mdash;the complete
+triumph of endurance and vigor. Hardy native bird, may your tracks never
+be fewer, or your visits to the birch-tree less frequent!</p>
+
+<p>The squirrel-tracks&mdash;sharp, nervous, and wiry&mdash;have their histories
+also. But who ever saw squirrels in winter? The naturalist says they are
+mostly torpid; yet evidently that little pocket-faced depredator, the
+chipmunk, was not carrying buckwheat for so many days to his hole for
+nothing;&mdash;was he anticipating a state of torpidity, or the demands of a
+very active appetite? Red and gray squirrels are more or less active all
+winter, though very shy, and, I am inclined to think, partially
+nocturnal in their habits. Here a gray one has just passed,&mdash;came down
+that tree and went up this; there he dug for a beech-nut, and left the
+bur on the snow. How did he know where to dig? During an unusually
+severe winter I have known him to make long journeys to a barn, in a
+remote field, where wheat was stored. How did he know there was wheat
+there? In attempting to return, the adventurous creature was frequently
+run down and caught in the deep snow.</p>
+
+<p>His home is in the trunk of some old birch or maple, with an entrance
+far up amid the branches. In the spring he builds himself a summer-house
+of small leafy twigs in the top of a neighboring beech, where the young
+are reared and much of the time passed. But the safer retreat in the
+maple is not abandoned, and both old and young resort thither in the
+fall, or when danger threatens. Whether this temporary residence amid
+the branches is for elegance or pleasure, or for sanitary reasons or
+domestic convenience, the naturalist has forgotten to mention.</p>
+
+<p>The elegant creature, so cleanly in its habits, so graceful in its
+carriage, so nimble and daring in its movements, excites feelings of
+admiration akin to those awakened by the birds and the fairer forms of
+nature. His passage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> through the trees is almost a flight. Indeed, the
+flying-squirrel has little or no advantage over him, and in speed and
+nimbleness cannot compare with him at all. If he miss his footing and
+fall, he is sure to catch on the next branch; if the connection be
+broken, he leaps recklessly for the nearest spray or limb, and secures
+his hold, even if it be by the aid of his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>His career of frolic and festivity begins in the fall, after the birds
+have left us and the holiday spirit of nature has commenced to subside.
+How absorbing the pastime of the sportsman, who goes to the woods in the
+still October morning in quest of him! You step lightly across the
+threshold of the forest, and sit down upon the first log or rock to
+await the signals. It is so still that the ear suddenly seems to have
+acquired new powers, and there is no movement to confuse the eye.
+Presently you hear the rustling of a branch, and see it sway or spring
+as the squirrel leaps from or to it; or else you hear a disturbance in
+the dry leaves, and mark one running upon the ground. He has probably
+seen the intruder, and, not liking his stealthy movements, desires to
+avoid a nearer acquaintance. Now he mounts a stump to see if the way is
+clear, then pauses a moment at the foot of a tree to take his bearings,
+his tail, as he skims along, undulating behind him, and adding to the
+easy grace and dignity of his movements. Or else you are first advised
+of his proximity by the dropping of a false nut, or the fragments of the
+shucks rattling upon the leaves. Or, again, after contemplating you
+awhile unobserved, and making up his mind that you are not dangerous, he
+strikes an attitude on a branch, and commences to quack and bark, with
+an accompanying movement of his tail. Late in the afternoon, when the
+same stillness reigns, the same scenes are repeated. There is a black
+variety, quite rare, but mating freely with the gray, from which he
+seems to be distinguished only in color.</p>
+
+<p>The track of the red squirrel may be known by its smaller size. He is
+more common and less dignified than the gray, and oftener guilty of
+petty larceny about the barns and grain-fields. He is most abundant in
+old bark-peelings, and low, dilapidated hemlocks, from which he makes
+excursions to the fields and orchards, spinning along the tops of the
+fences, which afford, not only convenient lines of communication, but a
+safe retreat if danger threatens. He loves to linger about the orchard;
+and, sitting upright on the topmost stone in the wall, or on the tallest
+stake in the fence, chipping up an apple for the seeds, his tail
+conforming to the curve of his back, his paws shifting and turning the
+apple, he is a pretty sight, and his bright, pert appearance atones for
+all the mischief he does. At home, in the woods, he is the most
+frolicsome and loquacious. The appearance of anything unusual, if, after
+contemplating it a moment, he concludes it not dangerous, excites his
+unbounded mirth and ridicule, and he snickers and chatters, hardly able
+to contain himself; now darting up the trunk of a tree and squealing in
+derision, then hopping into position on a limb and dancing to the music
+of his own cackle, and all for your special benefit.</p>
+
+<p>There is something very human in this apparent mirth and mockery of the
+squirrels. It seems to be a sort of ironical laughter, and implies
+self-conscious pride and exultation in the laugher, "What a ridiculous
+thing you are, to be sure!" he seems to say; "how clumsy and awkward,
+and what a poor show for a tail! Look at me, look at me!"&mdash;and he capers
+about in his best style. Again, he would seem to tease you and to
+provoke your attention; then suddenly assumes a tone of good-natured,
+childlike defiance and derision; that pretty little imp, the chipmunk,
+will sit on the stone above his den, and defy you, as plainly as if he
+said so, to catch him before he can get into his hole if you can. You
+hurl a stone at him, and "No you didn't" comes up from the depth of his
+retreat.</p>
+
+<p>In February another track appears upon the snow, slender and delicate,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>
+about a third larger than that of the gray squirrel, indicating no haste
+or speed, but, on the contrary, denoting the most imperturbable ease and
+leisure, the footprints so close together that the trail appears like a
+chain of curiously carved links. Sir <i>Mephitis chinga</i>, or, in plain
+English, the skunk, has woke up from his six-weeks nap, and come out
+into society again. He is a nocturnal traveller, very bold and impudent,
+coming quite up to the barn and outbuildings, and sometimes taking up
+his quarters for the season under the hay-mow. There is no such word as
+hurry in his dictionary, as you may see by his path upon the snow. He
+has a very sneaking, insinuating way, and goes creeping about the fields
+and woods, never once in a perceptible degree altering his gait, and, if
+a fence crosses his course, steers for a break or opening to avoid
+climbing. He is too indolent even to dig his own hole, but appropriates
+that of a woodchuck, or hunts out a crevice in the rocks, from which he
+extends his rambling in all directions, preferring damp, thawy weather.
+He has very little discretion or cunning, and holds a trap in utter
+contempt, stepping into it as soon as beside it, relying implicitly for
+defence against all forms of danger upon the unsavory punishment he is
+capable of inflicting. He is quite indifferent to both man and beast,
+and will not hurry himself to get out of the way of either. Walking
+through the summer fields at twilight, I have come near stepping upon
+him, and was much the more disturbed of the two. When attacked in the
+open fields he confounds the plans of his enemies by the unheard-of
+tactics of exposing his rear rather than his front. "Come if you dare,"
+he says, and his attitude makes even the farm-dog pause. After a few
+encounters of this kind, and if you entertain the usual hostility
+towards him, your mode of attack will speedily resolve itself into
+moving about him in a circle, the radius of which will be the exact
+distance at which you can hurl a stone with accuracy and effect.</p>
+
+<p>He has a secret to keep, and knows it, and is careful not to betray
+himself until he can do so with the most telling effect. I have known
+him to preserve his serenity even when caught in a steel trap, and look
+the very picture of injured innocence, man&oelig;uvring carefully and
+deliberately to extricate his foot from the grasp of the naughty jaws.
+Do not by any means take pity on him, and lend a helping hand.</p>
+
+<p>How pretty his face and head! How fine and delicate his teeth, like a
+weasel's or cat's! When about a third grown, he looks so well that one
+covets him for a pet. He is quite precocious however, and capable, even
+at this tender age, of making a very strong appeal to your sense of
+smell.</p>
+
+<p>No animal is more cleanly in its habits than he. He is not an awkward
+boy, who cuts his own face with his whip; and neither his flesh nor his
+fur hints the weapon with which he is armed. The most silent creature
+known to me, he makes no sound, so far as I have observed, save a
+diffuse, impatient noise, like that produced by beating your hand with a
+whisk-broom, when the farm-dog has discovered his retreat in the stone
+fence. He renders himself obnoxious to the farmer by his partiality for
+hens' eggs and young poultry. He is a confirmed epicure, and at
+plundering hen-roosts an expert. Not the full-grown fowls are his
+victims, but the youngest and most tender. At night Mother Hen receives
+under her maternal wings a dozen newly hatched chickens, and with much
+pride and satisfaction feels them all safely tucked away in her
+feathers. In the morning she is walking about disconsolately, attended
+by only two or three of all that pretty brood. What has happened? Where
+are they gone? That pickpocket, Sir Mephitis, could solve the mystery.
+Quietly has he approached, under cover of darkness, and, one by one,
+relieved her of her precious charge. Look closely, and you will see
+their little yellow legs and beaks, or part of a mangled form, lying
+about on the ground. Or, before the hen has hatched, he may find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> her
+out, and, by the same sleight of hand, remove every egg, leaving only
+the empty blood-stained shells to witness against him. The birds,
+especially the ground-builders, suffer in like manner from his
+plundering propensities.</p>
+
+<p>The secretion upon which he relies for defence, and which is the chief
+source of his unpopularity, while it affords good reasons against
+cultivating him as a pet, and mars his attractiveness as game, is by no
+means the greatest indignity that can be offered to a nose. It is a
+rank, living smell, and has none of the sickening qualities of disease
+or putrefaction. Indeed, I think a good smeller will enjoy its most
+refined intensity. It approaches the sublime, and makes the nose tingle.
+It is tonic and bracing, and, I can readily believe, has rare medicinal
+qualities. I do not recommend its use as eye-water, though an old farmer
+assures me it has undoubted virtues when thus applied. Hearing, one
+night, a disturbance among his hens, he rushed suddenly out to catch the
+thief, when Sir Mephitis, taken by surprise, and, no doubt, much annoyed
+at being interrupted, discharged the vials of his wrath full in the
+farmer's face, and with such admirable effect, that, for a few moments,
+he was completely blinded, and powerless to revenge himself upon the
+rogue; but he declared that afterwards his eyes felt as if purged by
+fire, and his sight was much clearer.</p>
+
+<p>In March, that brief summary of a bear, the raccoon, comes out of his
+den in the ledges, and leaves his sharp digitigrade track upon the
+snow,&mdash;travelling not unfrequently in pairs,&mdash;a lean, hungry couple,
+bent on pillage and plunder. They have an unenviable time of
+it,&mdash;feasting in the summer and fall, hibernating in winter, and
+starving in spring. In April, I have found the young of the previous
+year creeping about the fields, so reduced by starvation as to be quite
+helpless, and offering no resistance to my taking them up by the tail,
+and carrying them home.</p>
+
+<p>But with March our interest in these phases of animal life, which winter
+has so emphasized and brought out, begins to decline. Vague rumors are
+afloat in the air of a great and coming change. We are eager for Winter
+to be gone, since he too is fugitive, and cannot keep his place.
+Invisible hands deface his icy statuary; his chisel has lost its
+cunning. The drifts, so pure and exquisite, are now earth-stained and
+weather-worn,&mdash;the flutes and scallops, and fine, firm lines, all gone;
+and what was a grace and an ornament to the hills is now a
+disfiguration. Like worn and unwashed linen appear the remains of that
+spotless robe with which he clothed the world as his bride.</p>
+
+<p>But he will not abdicate without a struggle. Day after day he rallies
+his scattered forces, and night after night pitches his white tents on
+the hills, and forges his spears at the eaves and by the dripping rocks;
+but the young Prince in every encounter prevails. Slowly and reluctantly
+the gray old hero retreats up the mountain, till finally the south rain
+comes in earnest, and in a night he is dead.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> A spur of the Catskills.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="TO_HERSA" id="TO_HERSA"></a>TO HERSA.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Maiden, there is something more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than raiment to adore;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou must have more than a dress,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More than any mode or mould,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More than mortal loveliness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To captivate the cold.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bow the knightly when they bow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To a star behind the brow,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not to marble, not to dust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But to that which warms them;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not to contour nor to bust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But to that which forms them,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not to languid lid nor lash,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Satin fold nor purple sash,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But unto the living flash<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So mysteriously hid<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Under lash and under lid.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But, vanity of vanities,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If the red-rose in a young cheek lies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Fatal disguise!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the most terrible lances<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the true, true knight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are his bold eyebeams;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And every time that he opens his eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The falsehood that he looks on dies.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If the heavenly light be latent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It can need no earthly patent.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Unbeholden unto art&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Fashion or lore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Scrip or store,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Earth or ore&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Be thy heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which was music from the start,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Music, music to the core!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Music, which, though voiceless,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can create<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both form and fate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As Petrarch could a sonnet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That, taking flesh upon it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spirit-noiseless,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Doth the same inform and fill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a music sweeter still!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lives and breathes and palpitates,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Moves and moulds and animates,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sleeps not from its duty<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the maid in whom 'tis pent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From a mortal rudiment,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the earth-cell<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the love-cell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the birth-spell<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the love-spell&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Come to beauty.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Beauty, that, (Celestial Child,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From above,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Born of Wisdom and of Love,)<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Can never die!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That ever, as she passeth by,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But casteth down the mild<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Effulgence of her eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, lo! the broken heart is healed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The maimed, perverted soul<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ariseth and is whole!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That ever doing the fair deed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And therein taking joy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(A pure and priceless meed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That of this earth hath least alloy,)<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">It comes at last,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All mischance forever past,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Every beautiful procedure<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Manifest in form and feature,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To be revealed:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There walks the earth an heavenly creature!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Beauty is music mute,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Music's flower and fruit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Music's creature&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Form and feature&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Music's lute.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Music's lute be thou,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Maiden of the starry brow!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Keep thy <i>heart</i> true to know how!)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A Lute which he alone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As all in good time shall be shown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall prove, and thereby make his own,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who is god enough to play upon it.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Happy, happy maid is she<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who is wedded unto Truth:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou shalt know him when he comes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">(Welcome youth!)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not by any din of drums,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor the vantage of his airs;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Neither by his crown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor his gown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor by anything he wears.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He shall only well known be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the holy harmony<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That his coming makes in thee!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="AN_AMAZONIAN_PICNIC" id="AN_AMAZONIAN_PICNIC"></a>AN AMAZONIAN PICNIC.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was about half past six o'clock on the morning of the 27th of
+October, 1865, that we left Manaos, (or as the maps usually call it,
+Barra do Rio Negro,) on an excursion to the Lake of Hyanuary, on the
+western side of the Rio Negro. The morning was unusually fresh for these
+latitudes, and a strong wind was blowing up so heavy a sea in the river,
+that, if it did not actually make one sea-sick, it certainly called up
+very vivid and painful associations. We were in a large eight-oared
+custom-house barge, our company consisting of his Excellency, Dr.
+Epaminondas, President of the Province,<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> his secretary, Senhor
+Codicera, Senhor Tavares Bastos, the distinguished young deputy from the
+Province of Alagoas, Major Coutinho, of the Brazilian Engineer Service,
+Mr. Agassiz and myself, Mr. Bourkhardt, his artist, and two of our
+volunteer assistants. We were preceded by a smaller boat, an Indian
+montaria, in which was our friend and kind host, Senhor Honorio, who had
+undertaken to provide for our creature comforts, and had the care of a
+boatful of provisions. After an hour's row we left the rough waters of
+the Rio Negro, and rounding a wooded point, turned into one of those
+narrow, winding igarap&eacute;s (literally, "boat-paths"), with green forest
+walls, which make the charm of canoe excursions in this country. A
+ragged drapery of long, faded grass hung from the lower branches of the
+trees, marking the height of the last rise of the river,&mdash;some eighteen
+or twenty feet above its present level. Here and there a white heron
+stood on the shore, his snowy plumage glittering in the sunlight;
+numbers of ciganas (the pheasants of the Amazons) clustered in the
+bushes; once a pair of king vultures rested for a moment within gunshot,
+but flew out of sight as our canoe approached; and now and then an
+alligator showed his head above water. As we floated along through this
+picturesque channel, so characteristic of the wonderful region to which
+we were all more or less strangers,&mdash;for even Dr. Epaminondas and Senhor
+Tavares Bastos were here for the first time,&mdash;the conversation turned
+naturally enough upon the nature of this Amazonian Valley, its physical
+conformation, its origin and resources, its history past and to come,
+both alike and obscure, both the subject of wonder and speculation.
+Senhor Tavares Bastos, although not yet thirty, is already distinguished
+in the politics of his country; and from the moment he entered upon
+public life to the present time, the legislation in regard to the
+Amazons, its relation to the future progress and development of the
+Brazilian empire, has been the object of his deepening interest. He is a
+leader in that class of men who advocate the most liberal policy in this
+matter, and has already urged upon his countrymen the importance, even
+from selfish motives, of sharing their great treasure with the world. He
+was little more than twenty years of age when he published his papers on
+the opening of the Amazons, which have done more, perhaps, than anything
+else of late years to attract attention to the subject.</p>
+
+<p>There are points where the researches of the statesman and the
+investigator meet, and natural science is not without its influence,
+even on the practical bearings of this question. Shall this region be
+legislated for as sea or land? Shall the interests of agriculture or
+navigation prevail in its councils? Is it essentially aquatic or
+terrestrial? Such were some of the inquiries which came up in the course
+of the discussion. A region<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> of country which stretches across a whole
+continent, and is flooded for half the year, where there can never be
+railroads, or highways, or even pedestrian travelling, to any great
+extent, can hardly be considered as dry land. It is true that, in this
+oceanic river system, the tidal action has an annual, instead of a
+daily, ebb and flow; that its rise and fall obey a larger light, and are
+regulated by the sun, and not the moon; but it is nevertheless subject
+to all the conditions of a submerged district, and must be treated as
+such. Indeed, these semiannual changes of level are far more powerful in
+their influence on the life of the inhabitants than any marine tides.
+People sail half the year over districts where, for the other half, they
+walk, though hardly dry-shod, over the soaked ground; their occupations,
+their dress, their habits, are modified in accordance with the dry and
+wet seasons. And not only the ways of life, but the whole aspect of the
+country, the character of the landscape, are changed. At this moment
+there are two most picturesque falls in the neighborhood of Manaos,&mdash;the
+Great and Little Cascades, as they are called,&mdash;favorite resorts for
+bathing, picnics, etc., which, in a few months, when the river shall
+have risen above their highest level, will have completely disappeared.
+Their bold rocks and shady nooks will have become river-bottom. All that
+one hears or reads of the extent of the Amazons and its tributaries does
+not give one an idea of its immensity as a whole. One must float for
+months upon its surface, in order to understand how fully water has the
+mastery over land along its borders. Its watery labyrinth is not so much
+a network of rivers, as an ocean of fresh water cut up and divided by
+land, the land being often nothing more than an archipelago of islands
+in its midst. The valley of the Amazons is indeed an aquatic, not a
+terrestrial, basin; and it is not strange, when looked upon from this
+point of view, that its forests should be less full of life,
+comparatively, than its rivers.</p>
+
+<p>But while we were discussing these points, talking of the time when the
+banks of the Amazons will teem with a population more active and
+vigorous than any it has yet seen,&mdash;when all civilized nations shall
+share in its wealth,&mdash;when the twin continents will shake hands, and
+Americans of the North come to help Americans of the South in developing
+its resources,&mdash;when it will be navigated from north to south, as well
+as from east to west, and small steamers will run up to the head-waters
+of all its tributaries,&mdash;while we were speculating on these things, we
+were approaching the end of our journey; and, as we neared the lake,
+there issued from its entrance a small, two-masted canoe, evidently
+bound on some official mission, for it carried the Brazilian flag, and
+was adorned with many brightly colored streamers. As it drew near we
+heard music; and a salvo of rockets, the favorite Brazilian artillery on
+all festive occasions, whether by day or night, shot up into the air.
+Our arrival had been announced by Dr. Carnavaro of Manaos, who had come
+out the day before to make some preparations for our reception, and this
+was a welcome to the President on his first visit to the Indian village.
+When they came within speaking distance, a succession of hearty cheers
+went up for the President; for Tavares Bastos, whose character as the
+political advocate of the Amazons makes him especially welcome here; for
+Major Coutinho, already well known from his former explorations in this
+region; and for the strangers within their gates,&mdash;for the Professor and
+his party. When the reception was over, they fell into line behind our
+boat, and so we came into the little port with something of state and
+ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>This pretty Indian village is hardly recognized as a village at once,
+for it consists of a number of <i>sitios</i> (palm-thatched houses),
+scattered through the forest; and though the inhabitants look on each
+other as friends and neighbors, yet from our landing-place only one
+<i>sitio</i> was to be seen,&mdash;that at which we were to stay. It stood on a
+hill which sloped gently up from the lake shore, and consisted of a mud
+house,&mdash;the rough frame<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> being filled in and plastered with
+mud,&mdash;containing two rooms, beside several large palm-thatched sheds
+outside. The word <i>shed</i>, which we connect with a low, narrow out-house,
+gives no correct idea, however, of this kind of structure, universal
+throughout the Indian settlements, and common also among the whites. The
+space enclosed is generally large, the sloping roof of palm-thatch is
+lifted very high on poles made of the trunks of trees, thus allowing a
+free circulation of air, and there are usually no walls at all. They are
+great open porches, or verandas, rather than sheds. One of these rooms
+was used for the various processes by which the mandioca root is
+transformed into farinha, tapioca, and tucupi, a kind of intoxicating
+liquor. It was furnished with the large clay ovens, covered with immense
+shallow copper pans, for drying the farinha, with the troughs for
+kneading the mandioca, the long straw tubes for expressing the juice,
+and the sieves for straining the tapioca. The mandioca room is an
+important part of every Indian <i>sitio</i>; for the natives not only depend,
+in a great degree, upon the different articles manufactured from this
+root for their own food, but it makes an essential part of the commerce
+of the Amazons. Another of these open rooms was a kitchen; while a
+third, which served as our dining-room, is used on festa days and
+occasional Sundays as a chapel. It differed from the rest in having the
+upper end closed in with a neat thatched wall, against which, in time of
+need, the altar-table may stand, with candles and rough prints or
+figures of the Virgin and Saints. A little removed from this more
+central part of the establishment was another smaller mud house, where
+most of the party arranged their hammocks; Mr. Agassiz and myself being
+accommodated in the other one, where we were very hospitably received by
+the senhora of the <i>sitio</i>, an old Indian woman, whose gold ornaments,
+necklace, and ear-rings were rather out of keeping with her calico skirt
+and cotton waist. This is, however, by no means an unusual combination
+here. Beside the old lady, the family consisted, at this moment, of her
+<i>afilhada</i> (god-daughter), with her little boy, and several other women
+employed about the place; but it is difficult to judge of the population
+of the <i>sitios</i> now, because a great number of the men have been taken
+as recruits for the war with Paraguay, and others are hiding in the
+forest for fear of being pressed into the same service.</p>
+
+<p>The breakfast-table, covered with dishes of fish fresh from the lake,
+and dressed in a variety of ways, with stewed chicken, rice, etc., was
+by no means an unwelcome sight, as it was already eleven o'clock, and we
+had had nothing since rising, at half past five in the morning, except a
+hot cup of coffee; nor was the meal the less appetizing that it was
+spread under the palm-thatched roof of our open, airy dining-room,
+surrounded by the forest, and commanding a view of the lake and wooded
+hillside opposite, the little landing below, where were moored our barge
+with its white awning, the gay canoe, and two or three Indian montarias,
+making the foreground of the picture. After breakfast our party
+dispersed, some to rest in their hammocks, others to hunt or fish, while
+Mr. Agassiz was fully engaged in examining a large basket of
+fish,&mdash;Tucunar&eacute;s, Acaras, Curimatas, Surubims, etc.,&mdash;just brought in
+from the lake for his inspection, and showing again what every
+investigation demonstrates afresh, namely, the distinct localization of
+species in every different water-basin, be it river, lake, igarap&eacute;, or
+forest pool. Though the scientific results of the expedition have no
+place in this little sketch of a single excursion, let me make a general
+statement as to Mr. Agassiz's collections, to give you some idea of his
+success. Since arriving in Par&aacute;, although his exploration of the
+Amazonian waters is but half completed, he has collected more species
+than were known to exist in the whole world fifty years ago. Up to this
+time, something more than a hundred species of fish were known to
+science from the Amazons;<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> Mr. Agassiz has already<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> more than eight
+hundred on hand, and every day adds new treasures. He is himself
+astonished at this result, revealing a richness and variety in the
+distribution of life throughout these waters of which he had formed no
+conception. As his own attention has been especially directed to their
+localization and development, his collection of fishes is larger than
+any other; still, with the help of his companions, volunteers as well as
+regular assistants, he has a good assortment of specimens from all the
+other classes of the animal kingdom likewise.</p>
+
+<p>One does not see much of the world between one o'clock and four in this
+climate. These are the hottest hours of the day, and there are few who
+can resist the temptation of the cool swinging hammock, slung in some
+shady spot within doors or without. I found a quiet retreat by the lake
+shore, where, though I had a book in my hand, the wind in the trees
+overhead, and the water rippling softly around the montarias moored at
+my side, lulled me into that mood of mind when one may be lazy without
+remorse or ennui, and one's highest duty seems to be to do nothing. The
+monotonous notes of a <i>violon</i>, a kind of lute or guitar, came to me
+from a group of trees at a little distance, where our boatmen were
+resting in the shade, the red fringes of their hammocks giving to the
+landscape just the bit of color which it needed. Occasionally a rustling
+flight of paroquets or ciganas overhead startled me for a moment, or a
+large pirarucu plashed out of the water; but except for these sounds,
+Nature was silent, and animals as well as men seemed to pause in the
+heat and seek shelter.</p>
+
+<p>Dinner brought us all together again at the close of the afternoon in
+our airy banqueting-hall. As we were with the President, our picnic was
+of a much more magnificent character than are our purely scientific
+excursions, of which we have had many. On such occasions, we are forced
+to adapt our wants to our means; and the make-shifts to which we are
+obliged to resort, if they are sometimes inconvenient, are often very
+amusing. But now, instead of teacups doing duty as tumblers, empty
+barrels serving as chairs, and the like incongruities, we had a silver
+soup tureen and a cook and a waiter, and knives and forks enough to go
+round, and many other luxuries which such wayfarers as ourselves learn
+to do without. While we were dining, the Indians began to come in from
+the surrounding forest to pay their respects to the President; for his
+visit was the cause of great rejoicing, and there was to be a ball in
+his honor in the evening. They brought an enormous cluster of game as an
+offering. What a mass of color it was, looking more like an immense
+bouquet of flowers than like a bunch of birds! It was composed entirely
+of toucans with their red and yellow beaks, blue eyes, and soft white
+breasts bordered with crimson, and of parrots, or papagaios, as they
+call them here, with their gorgeous plumage of green, blue, purple, and
+red.</p>
+
+<p>When we had dined we took coffee outside, while our places around the
+table were filled by the Indian guests, who were to have a dinner-party
+in their turn. It was pleasant to see with how much courtesy several of
+the Brazilian gentlemen of our party waited upon these Indian senhoras,
+passing them a variety of dishes, helping them to wine, and treating
+them with as much attention as if they had been the highest ladies of
+the land. They seemed, however, rather shy and embarrassed, scarcely
+touching the nice things placed before them, till one of the gentlemen
+who has lived a good deal among the Indians, and knows their habits
+perfectly, took the knife and fork from one of them, exclaiming,&mdash;"Make
+no ceremony, and don't be ashamed; eat with your fingers, all of you, as
+you're accustomed to do, and then you'll find your appetites and enjoy
+your dinner." His advice was followed; and I must say they seemed much
+more comfortable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> in consequence, and did better justice to the good
+fare. Although the Indians who live in the neighborhood of the towns
+have seen too much of the conventionalities of civilization not to
+understand the use of a knife and fork, no Indian will eat with one if
+he can help it; and, strange to say, there are many of the whites in the
+upper Amazonian settlements who have adopted the same habits. I have
+dined with Brazilian senhoras of good class and condition, belonging to
+the gentry of the land, who, although they provided a very nice service
+for their guests, used themselves only the implements with which Nature
+had provided them.</p>
+
+<p>When the dinner was over, the room was cleared of the tables, and swept;
+the music, consisting of a guitar, flute, and violin, called in; and the
+ball was opened. At first the forest belles were rather shy in the
+presence of strangers; but they soon warmed up, and began to dance with
+more animation. They were all dressed in calico or muslin skirts, with
+loose white cotton waists, finished around the neck with a kind of lace
+they make themselves by drawing out the threads from cotton or cambric
+so as to form an open pattern, sewing those which remain over and over
+to secure them. Much of this lace is quite elaborate, and very fine.
+Many of them had their hair dressed either with white jessamine or with
+roses stuck into their round combs, and several wore gold beads and
+ear-rings. Some of the Indian dances are very pretty; but one thing is
+noticeable, at least in all that I have seen. The man makes all the
+advances, while the woman is coy and retiring, her movements being very
+languid. Her partner throws himself at her feet, but does not elicit a
+smile or a gesture; he stoops, and pretends to be fishing, making
+motions as if he were drawing her in with a line; he dances around her,
+snapping his fingers as though playing on the castanets, and half
+encircling her with his arms; but she remains reserved and cold. Now and
+then they join together in something like a waltz; but this is only
+occasionally, and for a moment. How different from the negro dances, of
+which we saw many in the neighborhood of Rio! In those the advances come
+chiefly from the women, and are not always of a very modest character.</p>
+
+<p>The moon was shining brightly over lake and forest, and the ball was
+gayer than ever, at ten o'clock, when I went to my room, or rather to
+the room where my hammock was slung, and which I shared with Indian
+women and children, with a cat and her family of kittens, who slept on
+the edge of my mosquito-net, and made frequent inroads upon the inside,
+with hens and chickens and sundry dogs, who went in and out at will. The
+music and dancing, the laughter and talking outside, continued till the
+small hours. Every now and then an Indian girl would come in to rest for
+a while, take a nap in a hammock, and then return to the dance. When we
+first arrived in South America, we could hardly have slept soundly under
+such circumstances; but one soon becomes accustomed, on the Amazons, to
+sleeping in rooms with mud floors and mud walls, or with no walls at
+all, where rats and birds and bats rustle about in the thatch over one's
+head, and all sorts of unwonted noises in the night remind you that you
+are by no means the sole occupant of your apartment. This remark does
+not apply to the towns, where the houses are comfortable enough; but if
+you attempt to go off the beaten track, to make canoe excursions, and
+see something of the forest population, you must submit to these
+inconveniences. There is one thing, however, which makes it far
+pleasanter to lodge in the Indian houses here than in the houses of our
+poorer class at home. One is quite independent in the matter of bedding;
+no one travels without his own hammock and the net which in many places
+is a necessity on account of the mosquitoes. Beds and bedding are almost
+unknown here; and there are none so poor as not to possess two or three
+of the strong and neat twine hammocks<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> made by the Indians themselves
+from the fibres of the palm. Then the open character of their houses, as
+well as the personal cleanliness of the Indians, makes the atmosphere
+fresher and purer there than in the houses of our poor. However untidy
+they may be in other respects, they always bathe once or twice a day, if
+not oftener, and wash their clothes frequently. We have never yet
+entered an Indian house where there was any disagreeable odor, unless it
+might be the peculiar smell from the preparation of the mandioca in the
+working-room outside, which has, at a certain stage in the process, a
+slightly sour smell. We certainly could not say as much for many houses
+where we have lodged when travelling in the West, or even "Down East,"
+where the suspicious look of the bedding and the close air of the room
+often make one doubtful about the night's rest.</p>
+
+<p>We were up at five o'clock; for the morning hours are very precious in
+this climate, and the Brazilian day begins with the dawn. At six o'clock
+we had had coffee, and were ready for the various projects suggested for
+our amusement. Our sportsmen were already in the forest; others had gone
+off on a fishing excursion in a montaria; and I joined a party on a
+visit to a <i>sitio</i> higher up the lake. Mr. Agassiz, as has been
+constantly the case throughout our journey, was obliged to deny himself
+all these parties of pleasure; for the novelty and variety of the
+species of fish brought in kept him and his artist constantly at work.
+In this climate the process of decomposition goes on so rapidly, that,
+unless the specimens are attended to at once, they are lost; and the
+paintings must be made while they are quite fresh, in order to give any
+idea of their vividness of tint. We therefore left Mr. Agassiz busy with
+the preparation of his collections, and Mr. Bourkhardt painting, while
+we went up the lake through a strange, half-aquatic, half-terrestrial
+region, where the land seemed hardly redeemed from the water. Groups of
+trees rose directly from the lake, their roots hidden below its surface,
+while numerous blackened and decayed trunks stood up from the water in
+all sorts of picturesque and fantastic forms. Sometimes the trees had
+thrown down from their branches those singular aerial roots so common
+here, and seemed standing on stilts. Here and there, when we coasted
+along by the bank, we had a glimpse into the deeper forest, with its
+drapery of lianas and various creeping vines, and its parasitic sipos
+twining close around the trunks, or swinging themselves from branch to
+branch like loose cordage. But usually the margin of the lake was a
+gently sloping bank, covered with a green so vivid and yet so soft that
+it seemed as if the earth had been born afresh in its six months'
+baptism, and had come out like a new creation. Here and there a palm
+lifted its head above the line of the forest, especially the light,
+graceful Assai palm, with its tall, slender, smooth stem and crown of
+feathery leaves vibrating with every breeze.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour's row brought us to the landing of the <i>sitio</i> for which we
+were bound. Usually the <i>sitios</i> stand on the bank of the lake or river,
+a stone's throw from the shore, for convenience of fishing, bathing,
+etc. But this one was at some distance, with a very nicely-kept winding
+path leading through the forest; and as it was far the neatest and
+prettiest <i>sitio</i> I have seen here, I may describe it more at length. It
+stood on the brow of a hill which dipped down on the other side into a
+wide and deep ravine. Through this ravine ran an igarap&eacute;, beyond which
+the land rose again in an undulating line of hilly ground, most
+refreshing to the eye after the flat character of the upper Amazonian
+scenery. The fact that this <i>sitio</i>, standing now on a hill overlooking
+the valley and the little stream at its bottom, will have the water
+nearly flush with the ground around it when the igarap&eacute; is swollen by
+the rise of the river, gives an idea of the change of aspect between the
+dry and wet seasons. The establishment consisted of a number<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> of
+buildings, the most conspicuous of which was a large and lofty open
+room, which the Indian senhora told me was their reception-room, and was
+often used, she said, by the <i>brancos</i> (whites) from Manaos and the
+neighborhood for an evening dance, when they came out in a large
+company, and passed the night. A low wall, some three or four feet in
+height, ran along the sides of this room, wooden benches being placed
+against them for their whole length. The two ends were closed from top
+to bottom by very neat thatched walls; the palm-thatch here, when it is
+made with care, being exceedingly pretty, fine, and smooth, and of a
+soft straw color. At the upper end stood an immense embroidery-frame,
+looking as if it might have served for Penelope's web, but in which was
+stretched an unfinished hammock of palm-thread, the senhora's work. She
+sat down on the low stool before it, and worked a little for my benefit,
+showing me how the two layers of transverse threads were kept apart by a
+thick, polished piece of wood, something like a long, broad ruler.
+Through the opening thus made the shuttle is passed with the
+cross-thread, which is then pushed down and straightened in its place by
+means of the same piece of wood.</p>
+
+<p>When we arrived, with the exception of the benches I have mentioned and
+a few of the low wooden stools roughly cut out of a single piece of wood
+and common in every <i>sitio</i>, this room was empty; but immediately a
+number of hammocks, of various color and texture, were brought and slung
+across the room from side to side, between the poles supporting the
+roof, and we were invited to rest. This is the first act of hospitality
+on arriving at a country-house here; and the guests are soon stretched
+in every attitude of luxurious ease. After we had rested, the gentlemen
+went down to the igarap&eacute; to bathe, while the senhora and her daughter, a
+very pretty Indian woman, showed me over the rest of the establishment.
+She had the direction of everything now; for the master of the house was
+absent, having a captain's commission in the army; and I heard here the
+same complaints which meet you everywhere in the forest settlements, of
+the deficiency of men on account of the recruiting. The room I have
+described stood on one side of a cleared and neatly swept ground, around
+which, at various distances, stood a number of little thatched
+houses,&mdash;<i>casinhas</i>, as they call them,&mdash;consisting mostly only of one
+room. But beside these there was one larger house, with mud walls and
+floor, containing two or three rooms, and having a wooden veranda in
+front. This was the senhora's private establishment. At a little
+distance farther down on the hill was the mandioca kitchen, with several
+large ovens, troughs, etc. Nothing could be neater than the whole area
+of this <i>sitio</i>; and while we were there, two or three black girls were
+sent out to sweep it afresh with their stiff twig brooms. Around was the
+plantation of mandioca and cacao, with here and there a few
+coffee-shrubs. It is difficult to judge of the extent of these <i>sitio</i>
+plantations, because they are so irregular, and comprise such a variety
+of trees,&mdash;mandioca, coffee, cacao, and often cotton, being planted
+pellmell together. But every <i>sitio</i> has its plantation, large or small,
+of one or other or all of these productions.</p>
+
+<p>On the return of the gentlemen from the igarap&eacute;, we took leave, though
+very kindly pressed to stay and breakfast. At parting, the senhora
+presented me with a wicker-basket of fresh eggs, and some <i>abacatys</i>, or
+alligator pears, as we call them. We reached the house just in time for
+a ten-o'clock breakfast, which assembled all the different parties once
+more from their various occupations, whether of work or play. The
+sportsmen returned from the forest, bringing a goodly supply of toucans,
+papagaios, and paroquets, with a variety of other birds; and the
+fishermen brought in treasures again for Mr. Agassiz.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast I retired to the room where we had passed the night,
+hoping to find a quiet time for writing up letters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> and journal. But it
+was already occupied by the old senhora and her guests, lounging about
+in the hammocks or squatting on the floor and smoking their pipes. The
+house was, indeed, full to overflowing, as the whole party assembled for
+the ball were to stay during the President's visit. In this way of
+living it is an easy matter to accommodate any number of people; for if
+they cannot all be received under the roof, they are quite as well
+satisfied to put up their hammocks under the trees outside. As I went to
+my room the evening before, I stopped to look at quite a pretty picture
+of an Indian mother with her two little children asleep on either arm,
+all in one hammock, in the open air.</p>
+
+<p>My Indian friends were too much interested in my occupations to allow of
+my continuing them uninterruptedly. They were delighted with my books,
+(I happened to have Bates's "Naturalist on the Amazons" with me, in
+which I showed them some pictures of Amazonian scenery and insects,) and
+asked me many questions about my country, my voyage, and my travels
+here. In return, they gave me much information about their own way of
+life. They said the present gathering of neighbors and friends was no
+unusual occurrence; for they have a great many festas which, though
+partly religious in character, are also occasions of great festivity.
+These festas are celebrated at different <i>sitios</i> in turn, the saint of
+the day being carried, with all his ornaments, candles, bouquets, etc.,
+to the house where the ceremony is to take place, and where all the
+people of the the village congregate. Sometimes they last for several
+days, and are accompanied by processions, music, and dances in the
+evening. But the women said the forest was very sad now, because their
+men had all been taken as recruits, or were seeking safety in the woods.
+The old senhora told me a sad story of the brutality exercised in
+recruiting the Indians. She assured me that they were taken wherever
+they were caught, without reference to age or circumstances, often
+having women and children dependent upon them; and, if they made
+resistance, were carried off by force, frequently handcuffed, or with
+heavy weights attached to their feet. Such proceedings are entirely
+illegal; but these forest villages are so remote, that the men employed
+to recruit may practise any cruelty without being called to account for
+it. If they bring in their recruits in good condition, no questions are
+asked. These women assured me that all the work of the <i>sitios</i>&mdash;the
+making of farinha, the fishing, the turtle-hunting&mdash;was stopped for want
+of hands. The appearance of things certainly confirms this, for one sees
+scarcely any men about in the villages, and the canoes one meets are
+mostly rowed by women.</p>
+
+<p>I must say that the life of the Indian woman, so far as we have seen it,
+and this is by no means the only time that we have been indebted to
+Indians for hospitality, seems to me enviable in comparison with that of
+the Brazilian lady in the Amazonian towns. The former has a healthful
+out-of-door life; she has her canoe on the lake or river, and her paths
+through the forest, with perfect liberty to come and go; she has her
+appointed daily occupations, being busy not only with the care of her
+house and children, but in making farinha or tapioca, or in drying and
+rolling tobacco, while the men are fishing and turtle-hunting; and she
+has her frequent festa days to enliven her working life. It is, on the
+contrary, impossible to imagine anything more dreary and monotonous than
+the life of the Brazilian senhora in any of the smaller towns. In the
+northern provinces, especially, old Portuguese notions about shutting
+women up and making their home-life as colorless as that of a cloistered
+nun, without even the element of religious enthusiasm to give it zest,
+still prevail. Many a Brazilian lady passes day after day without
+stirring beyond her four walls, scarcely even showing herself at the
+door or window; for she is always in a careless dishabille, unless she
+expects company. It is sad to see these stifled existences; without any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>
+contact with the world outside, without any charm of domestic life,
+without books or culture of any kind, the Brazilian senhora in this part
+of the country either sinks contentedly into a vapid, empty, aimless
+life, or frets against her chains, and is as discontented as she is
+useless.</p>
+
+<p>On the day of our arrival the dinner had been interrupted by the
+entrance of the Indians with their greetings and presents of game to the
+President; but on the second day it was enlivened by quite a number of
+appropriate toasts and speeches. I thought, as we sat around the
+dinner-table, there had probably never before been gathered under the
+palm-roof of an Indian house on the Amazons a party combining so many
+different elements and objects. There was the President, whose interest
+is, of course, in administering the affairs of the province, in which
+the Indians come in for a large share of his attention;&mdash;there was the
+young statesman, whose whole heart is in the great national question of
+peopling the Amazonian region and opening it to the world, and in the
+effect this movement is to have upon his country;&mdash;there was the able
+engineer, whose scientific life has been passed in surveying the great
+river and its tributaries with a view to their future navigation;&mdash;and
+there was the man of pure science, come to study the distribution of
+animal life in their waters, with no view to practical questions. The
+speeches touched upon all these interests, and were received with
+enthusiasm, each one closing with a toast and music, for our little band
+of the night before had been brought in to enliven the scene. The
+Brazilians are very happy in their after-dinner speeches, and have great
+facility in them, whether from a natural gift or from much practice. The
+habit of drinking healths and giving toasts is very general throughout
+the country; and the most informal dinner among intimate friends does
+not conclude without some mutual greetings of this kind.</p>
+
+<p>As we were sitting under the trees afterwards, having yielded our places
+in the primitive dining-room to the Indian guests, the President
+suggested a sunset row on the lake. The hour and the light were most
+tempting; and we were soon off in the canoe, taking no boatmen, the
+gentlemen preferring to row themselves. We went through the same lovely
+region, half water, half land, over which we had passed in the morning,
+floating between patches of greenest grass, and large forest-trees, and
+blackened trunks standing out of the lake like ruins. We did not go very
+fast nor very far, for our amateur boatmen found the evening warm, and
+their rowing was rather play than work; they stopped, too, every now and
+then, to get a shot at a white heron or into a flock of paroquets or
+ciganas, whereby they wasted a good deal of powder to no effect. As we
+turned to come back, we were met by one of the prettiest sights I have
+ever seen. The Indian women, having finished their dinner, had taken the
+little two-masted canoe, dressed with flags, which had been prepared for
+the President's reception, and had come out to meet us. They had the
+music on board, and there were two or three men in the boat; but the
+women were some twelve or fifteen in number, and seemed, like genuine
+Amazons, to have taken things into their own hands. They were rowing
+with a will; and as the canoe drew near, with music playing and flags
+flying, the purple lake, dyed in the sunset and smooth as a mirror, gave
+back the picture. Every tawny figure at the oars, every flutter of the
+crimson and blue streamers, every fold of the green and yellow national
+flag at the prow, was as distinct below the surface as above it. The
+fairy boat, for so it looked floating between glowing sky and water, and
+seeming to borrow color from both, came on apace, and as it approached
+our friends greeted us with many a <i>Viva!</i> to which we responded as
+heartily. Then the two canoes joined company, and we went on together,
+taking the guitar sometimes into one and sometimes into the other, while
+Brazilian and Indian songs followed each other. Anything more national,
+more completely imbued with tropical coloring and character,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> than this
+evening scene on the lake, can hardly be conceived. When we reached the
+landing, the gold and rose-colored clouds were fading into soft masses
+of white and ashen gray, and moonlight was taking the place of sunset.
+As we went up the green slope to the <i>sitio</i>, a dance on the grass was
+proposed, and the Indian girls formed a quadrille; for thus much of
+outside civilization has crept into their native manners, though they
+throw into it so much of their own characteristic movements that it
+loses something of its conventional aspect. Then we returned to the
+house, where while here and there groups sat about on the ground
+laughing and talking, and the women smoking with as much enjoyment as
+the men. Smoking is almost universal among the common women here, nor is
+it confined to the lower classes. Many a senhora, at least in this part
+of Brazil, (for one must distinguish between the civilization upon the
+banks of the Amazons and in the interior, and that in the cities along
+the coast,) enjoys her pipe while she lounges in her hammock through the
+heat of the day.</p>
+
+<p>The following day the party broke up. The Indian women came to bid us
+good by after breakfast, and dispersed in various directions, through
+the forest paths, to their several homes, going off in little groups,
+with their babies, of whom there were a goodly number, astride on their
+hips, and the older children following. Mr. Agassiz passed the morning
+in packing and arranging his fishes, having collected in these two days
+more than seventy new species: such is the wealth of life everywhere in
+these waters. His studies had been the subject of great curiosity to the
+people about the <i>sitio</i>; one or two were always hovering around to look
+at his work, and to watch Mr. Bourkhardt's drawing. They seemed to think
+it extraordinary that any one should care to take the portrait of a
+fish. The familiarity of these children of the forest with the natural
+objects about them&mdash;plants, birds, insects, fishes&mdash;is remarkable. They
+frequently ask to see the drawings, and, in turning over a pile
+containing several hundred colored drawings of fish, they will scarcely
+make a mistake; even the children giving the name instantly, and often
+adding, "<i>He filho d'elle</i>,"&mdash;"It is the child of such a one,"&mdash;thus
+distinguishing the young from the adult, and pointing out their
+relation. The scientific work excites great wonder among the Indians,
+wherever we go; and when Mr. Agassiz succeeds in making them understand
+the value he attaches to his collections, he often finds them efficient
+assistants.</p>
+
+<p>We dined rather earlier than usual,&mdash;our chief dish being a stew of
+parrots and toucans,&mdash;and left the <i>sitio</i> at about five o'clock, in
+three canoes, the music accompanying us in the smaller boat. Our Indian
+friends stood on the shore as we left, giving us a farewell greeting
+with cheers and waving hats and hands. The row through the lake and
+igarap&eacute; was delicious; and we saw many alligators lying lazily about in
+the quiet water, who seemed to enjoy it, after their fashion, as much as
+we did. The sun had long set as we issued from the little river, and the
+Rio Negro, where it opens broadly out into the Amazons, was a sea of
+silver. The boat with the music presently joined our canoe; and we had a
+number of the Brazilian <i>modinhas</i>, as they call them,&mdash;songs which seem
+especially adapted for the guitar and moonlight. These <i>modinhas</i> have
+quite a peculiar character. They are little, graceful, lyrical snatches
+of song, with a rather melancholy cadence; even those of which the words
+are gay not being quite free from this undertone of sadness. One hears
+them constantly sung to the guitar, a favorite instrument with the
+Brazilians as well as the Indians. This put us all into a somewhat
+dreamy mood, and we approached the end of our journey rather silently.
+But as we came toward the landing, we heard the sound of a band of brass
+instruments, effectually drowning our feeble efforts, and saw a crowded
+canoe coming towards us. They were the boys from an Indian school in the
+neighborhood of Manaos, where a certain number<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> of boys of Indian
+parentage, though not all of pure descent, receive an education at the
+expense of the province, and are taught a number of trades. Among other
+things, they are trained to play on a variety of instruments, and are
+said to show a remarkable facility for music. The boat, which, from its
+size, was a barge rather than a canoe, looked very pretty as it came
+towards us in the moonlight; it seemed full to overflowing, the children
+all standing up, dressed in white uniforms. This little band comes
+always on Sunday evenings and festa days to play before the President's
+house. They were just returning, it being nearly ten o'clock; but the
+President called to them to turn back, and they accompanied us to the
+beach, playing all the while. Thus our pleasant three-days picnic ended
+with music and moonlight.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> Without entering here upon the generosity shown not only by
+the Brazilian government, but by individuals also, to this
+expedition,&mdash;a debt which it will be my pleasant duty to acknowledge
+fully hereafter in a more extended report of our journey,&mdash;I cannot omit
+this opportunity of thanking Dr. Epaminondas, the enlightened President
+of the Province of the Amazonas, for the facilities accorded to me
+during my whole stay in the region now under his administration.&mdash;<i>Louis
+Agassiz.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> Mr. Wallace speaks of having collected over two hundred
+species in the Rio Negro; but as these were unfortunately lost, and
+never described, they cannot be counted as belonging among the
+possessions of the scientific world.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="DOCTOR_JOHNS" id="DOCTOR_JOHNS"></a>DOCTOR JOHNS.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>XLIX.</h3>
+
+<p>At about the date of this interview which we have described as having
+taken place beyond the seas,&mdash;upon one of those warm days of early
+winter, which, even in New England, sometimes cheat one into a feeling
+of spring,&mdash;Ad&egrave;le came strolling up the little path that led from the
+parsonage gate to the door, twirling her muff upon her hand, and
+thinking&mdash;thinking&mdash;But who shall undertake to translate the thought of
+a girl of nineteen in such moment of revery? With the most matter of
+fact of lives it would be difficult. But in view of the experience of
+Ad&egrave;le, and of that fateful mystery overhanging her,&mdash;well, think for
+yourself,&mdash;you who touch upon a score of years, with their hopes,&mdash;you
+who have a passionate, clinging nature, and only some austere, prim
+matron to whom you may whisper your confidences,&mdash;what would you have
+thought, as you twirled your muff, and sauntered up the path to a home
+that was yours only by sufferance, and yet, thus far, your only home?</p>
+
+<p>The chance villagers, seeing her lithe figure, her well-fitting pelisse,
+her jaunty hat, her blooming cheeks, may have said, "There goes a
+fortunate one!" But if the thought of poor Ad&egrave;le took one shape more
+than another, as she returned that day from a visit to her sweet friend
+Rose, it was this: "How drearily unfortunate I am!" And here a little
+burst of childish laughter breaks on her ear. Ad&egrave;le, turning to the
+sound, sees that poor outcast woman who had been the last and most
+constant attendant upon Madame Arles coming down the street, with her
+little boy frolicking beside her. Obeying an impulse she was in no mood
+to resist, she turns back to the gate to greet them; she caresses the
+boy; she has kindly words for the mother, who could have worshipped her
+for the caress she has given to her outcast child.</p>
+
+<p>"I likes you," says the sturdy urchin, sidling closer to the parsonage
+gate, over which Ad&egrave;le leans. "You's like the French ooman."</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon Ad&egrave;le, in the exuberance of her kindly feelings, can only lean
+over and kiss the child again.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Johns, looking from her chamber, is horrified. Had it been summer,
+she would have lifted her window and summoned Ad&egrave;le. But she never
+forgot&mdash;that exemplary woman&mdash;the proprieties of the seasons, any more
+than other proprieties; she tapped upon the glass with her thimble, and
+beckoned the innocent offender into the parsonage.</p>
+
+<p>"I am astonished, Ad&egrave;le!"&mdash;these were her first words; and she went on
+to belabor the poor girl in fearful ways,&mdash;all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> the more fearful because
+she spoke in the calmest possible tones. She never used others, indeed;
+and it is not to be doubted that she reckoned this forbearance among her
+virtues.</p>
+
+<p>Ad&egrave;le made no reply,&mdash;too wise now for that; but she winced, and bit her
+lip severely, as the irate spinster "gave Miss Maverick to understand
+that an intercourse which might possibly be agreeable to her French
+associations could never be tolerated at the home of Dr. Johns. For
+herself, she had a reputation for propriety to sustain; and while Miss
+Maverick made a portion of her household, she must comply with the rules
+of decorum; and if Miss Maverick were ignorant of those rules, she had
+better inform herself."</p>
+
+<p>No reply, as we have said,&mdash;unless it may have been by an impatient
+stamp of her little foot, which the spinster could not perceive.</p>
+
+<p>But it is the signal, in her quick, fiery nature, of a determination to
+leave the parsonage, if the thing be possible. From her chamber, where
+she goes only to arrange her hair and to wipe off an angry tear or two,
+she walks straight into the study of the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"Doctor," (the "New Papa" is reserved for her tenderer or playful
+moments now,) "are you quite sure that papa will come for me in the
+spring?"</p>
+
+<p>"He writes me so, Adaly. Why?"</p>
+
+<p>Ad&egrave;le seeks to control herself, but she cannot wholly. "It's not
+pleasant for me any longer here, New Papa,&mdash;indeed it is not";&mdash;and her
+voice breaks utterly.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Adaly!&mdash;child!" says the Doctor, closing his book.</p>
+
+<p>"It's wholly different from what it once was; it's irksome to Miss
+Eliza,&mdash;I know it is; it's irksome to me. I want to leave. Why doesn't
+papa come for me at once? Why shouldn't he? What is this mystery, New
+Papa? Will you not tell me?"&mdash;and she comes toward him, and lays her
+hand upon his shoulder in her old winning, fond way. "Why may I not
+know? Do you think I am not brave to bear whatever must some day be
+known? What if my poor mother be unworthy? I can love her! I can love
+her!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Adaly," said the parson, "whatever may have been her unworthiness,
+it can never afflict you more; I believe that she is in her grave,
+Adaly."</p>
+
+<p>Ad&egrave;le sunk upon her knees, with her hands clasped as if in prayer. Was
+it strange that the child should pray for the mother she had never seen?</p>
+
+<p>From the day when Maverick had declared her unworthiness, Ad&egrave;le had
+cherished secretly the hope of some day meeting her, of winning her by
+her love, of clasping her arms about her neck and whispering in her ear,
+"God is good, and we are all God's children!" But in her grave! Well, at
+least justice will be done her then; and, calmed by this thought, Ad&egrave;le
+is herself once more,&mdash;earnest as ever to break away from the scathing
+looks of the spinster.</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor has not spoken without authority, since Maverick, in his
+reply to the parson's suggestions respecting marriage, has urged that
+the party was totally unfit, to a degree of which the parson himself was
+a witness, and by further hints had served fully to identify, in the
+mind of the old gentleman, poor Madame Arles with the mother of Ad&egrave;le. A
+knowledge of this fact had grievously wounded the Doctor; he could not
+cease to recall the austerity with which he had debarred the poor woman
+all intercourse with Ad&egrave;le upon her sick-bed. And it seemed to him a
+grave thing, wherever sin might lie, thus to alienate the mother and
+daughter. His unwitting agency in the matter had made him of late
+specially mindful of all the wishes and even caprices of Ad&egrave;le,&mdash;much to
+the annoyance of Miss Eliza.</p>
+
+<p>"Adaly, my child, you are very dear to me," said he; and she stood by
+him now, toying with those gray locks of his, in a caressing manner
+which he could never know from a child of his own,&mdash;never. "If it be
+your wish to change your home for the little time that remains, it shall
+be. I have your father's authority to do so."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed I do wish it, New Papa";&mdash;and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> she dropped a kiss upon his
+forehead,&mdash;upon the forehead where so few tender tokens of love had ever
+fallen, or ever would fall. Yet it was very grateful to the old
+gentleman, though it made him think with a sigh of the lost ones.</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor talked over the affair with Miss Eliza, who avowed herself as
+eager as Ad&egrave;le for a change in her home, and suggested that Benjamin
+should take counsel with his old friend, Mr. Elderkin; and it is quite
+possible that she shrewdly anticipated the result of such a
+consultation.</p>
+
+<p>Certain it is that the old Squire caught at the suggestion in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"The very thing, Doctor! I see how it is. Miss Eliza is getting on in
+years; a little irritable, possibly,&mdash;though a most excellent person,
+Doctor,&mdash;most excellent! and there being no young people in the house,
+it's a little dull for Miss Ad&egrave;le, eh, Doctor? Grace, you know, is not
+with us this winter; so your lodger shall come straight to my house, and
+she shall take the room of Grace, and Rose will be delighted, and Mrs.
+Elderkin will be delighted; and as for Phil, when he happens with
+us,&mdash;as he does only off and on now,&mdash;he'll be falling in love with her,
+I haven't a doubt; or, if he doesn't, I shall be tempted to myself.
+She's a fine girl, eh, Doctor?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's a good Christian, I believe," said the Doctor gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't a doubt of it," said the Squire; "and I hope that a bit of a
+dance about Christmas time, if we should fall into that wickedness,
+wouldn't harm her on that score,&mdash;eh, Doctor?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should wish, Mr. Elderkin, that she maintain her usual propriety of
+conduct, until she is again in her father's charge."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, Doctor, you shall talk with Mrs. Elderkin of that matter."</p>
+
+<p>So, it is all arranged. Miss Johns expresses a quiet gratification at
+the result, and&mdash;it is specially agreeable to her to feel that the
+responsibility of giving shelter and countenance to Miss Maverick is now
+shared by so influential a family as that of the Elderkins. Rose is
+overjoyed, and can hardly do enough to make the new home agreeable to
+Ad&egrave;le; while the mistress of the house&mdash;mild, and cheerful, and sunny,
+diffusing content every evening over the little circle around her
+hearth&mdash;wins Ad&egrave;le to a new cheer. Yet it is a cheer that is tempered by
+many sad thoughts of her own loneliness, and of her alienation from any
+motherly smiles and greetings that are truly hers.</p>
+
+<p>Phil is away at her coming; but a week after he bursts into the house on
+a snowy December night, and there is a great stamping in the hall, and a
+little grandchild of the house pipes from the half-opened door, "It's
+Uncle Phil!" and there is a loud smack upon the cheek of Rose, who runs
+to give him welcome, and a hearty, honest grapple with the hand of the
+old Squire, and then another kiss upon the cheek of the old mother, who
+meets him before he is fairly in the room,&mdash;a kiss upon her cheek, and
+another, and another, Phil loves the old lady with an honest warmth that
+kindles the admiration of poor Ad&egrave;le, who, amid all this demonstration
+of family affection, feels herself more cruelly than ever a stranger in
+the household,&mdash;a stranger, indeed, to the interior and private joys of
+any household.</p>
+
+<p>Yet such enthusiasm is, somehow, contagious; and when Phil meets Ad&egrave;le
+with a shake of the hand and a hearty greeting, she returns it with an
+outspoken, homely warmth, at thought of which she finds herself blushing
+a moment after. To tell truth, Phil is rather a fine-looking fellow at
+this time,&mdash;strong, manly, with a comfortable assurance of manner,&mdash;a
+face beaming with <i>bonhomie</i>, cheeks glowing with that sharp December
+drive, and a wild, glad sparkle in his eye, as Rose whispers him that
+Ad&egrave;le has become one of the household. It is no wonder, perhaps, that
+the latter finds the bit of embroidery she is upon somewhat perplexing,
+so that she has to consult Rose pretty often in regard to the different
+shades, and twirl the worsteds over and over, until confusion about the
+colors shall restore her own equanimity. Phil, meantime,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> dashes on, in
+his own open, frank way, about his drive, and the state of the ice in
+the river, and some shipments he had made from New York to Porto
+Rico,&mdash;on capital terms, too.</p>
+
+<p>"And did you see much of Reuben?" asks Mrs. Elderkin.</p>
+
+<p>"Not much," and Phil (glancing that way) sees that Ad&egrave;le is studying her
+crimsons; "but he tells me he is doing splendidly in some business
+venture to the Mediterranean with Brindlock; he could hardly talk of
+anything else. It's odd to find him so wrapped up in money-making."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope he'll not be wrapped up in anything worse," said Mrs. Elderkin,
+with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, mother!" burst in the old Squire; "Reuben'll come out all
+right yet."</p>
+
+<p>"He says he means to know all sides of the world, now," says Phil, with
+a little laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"He's not so bad as he pretends to be, Phil," answered the Squire. "I
+knew the Major's hot ways; so did you, Grace (turning to the wife). It's
+a boy's talk. There's good blood in him."</p>
+
+<p>And the two girls,&mdash;yonder, the other side of the hearth,&mdash;Ad&egrave;le and
+Rose, have given over their little earnest comparison of views about the
+colors, and sit stitching, and stitching, and thinking&mdash;and thinking&mdash;</p>
+
+<h3>L.</h3>
+
+<p>Phil had at no time given over his thought of Ad&egrave;le, and of the
+possibility of some day winning her for himself, though he had been
+somewhat staggered by the interview already described with Reuben. It is
+doubtful, even, if the quiet <i>permission</i> which this latter had granted
+(or, with an affectation of arrogance, had seemed to grant) had not
+itself made him pause. There are some things which a man never wants any
+permission to do; and one of those is&mdash;to love a woman. All the
+permissions&mdash;whether of competent authority or of incompetent&mdash;only
+retard him. It is an affair in which he must find his own permit, by his
+own power; and without it there can be no joy in conquest.</p>
+
+<p>So when Phil recalled Reuben's expression on that memorable afternoon in
+his chamber,&mdash;"You <i>may</i> marry her, Phil,"&mdash;it operated powerfully to
+dispossess him of all intention and all earnestness of pursuit. The
+little doubt and mystery which Reuben had thrown, in the same interview,
+upon the family relations of Ad&egrave;le, did not weigh a straw in the
+comparison. But for months that "may" had angered him and made him
+distant. He had plunged into his business pursuits with a new zeal, and
+easily put away all present thought of matrimony, by virtue of that
+simple "may" of Reuben's.</p>
+
+<p>But now when, on coming back, he found her in his own home,&mdash;so tenderly
+cared for by mother and by sister,&mdash;so coy and reticent in his presence,
+the old fever burned again. It was not now a simple watching of her
+figure upon the street that told upon him; but her constant
+presence;&mdash;the rustle of her dress up and down the stairs; her fresh,
+fair face every day at table; the tapping of her light feet along the
+hall; the little musical bursts of laughter (not Rose's,&mdash;oh, no!) that
+came from time to time floating through the open door of his chamber.
+All this Rose saw and watched with the highest glee,&mdash;finding her own
+little, quiet means of promoting such accidents,&mdash;and rejoicing (as
+sisters will, where the enslaver is a friend) in the captivity of poor
+Phil. For an honest lover, propinquity is always dangerous,&mdash;most of
+all, the propinquity in one's own home. The sister's caresses of the
+charmer, the mother's kind looks, the father's playful banter, and the
+whisk of a silken dress (with a new music in it) along the balusters you
+have passed night and morning for years, have a terrible executive
+power.</p>
+
+<p>In short, Ad&egrave;le had not been a month with the Elderkins before Phil was
+tied there by bonds he had never known the force of before.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And how was it with Ad&egrave;le?</p>
+
+<p>That strong, religious element in her,&mdash;abating no jot in its
+fervor,&mdash;which had found a shock in the case of Reuben, met none with
+Philip. He had slipped into the mother's belief and reverence, not by
+any spell of suffering or harrowing convictions, but by a kind of
+insensible growth toward them, and an easy, deliberate, moderate living
+by them, which more active and incisive minds cannot comprehend. He had
+no great wastes of doubt to perplex him, like Reuben, simply because his
+intelligence was of a more submissive order, and never tested its faiths
+or beliefs by that delicately sensitive mental apparel with which Reuben
+was clothed all over, and which suggested a doubt or a hindrance where
+Phil would have recognized none;&mdash;the best stuff in him, after all, of
+which a hale, hearty, contented man can be made,&mdash;the stuff that takes
+on age with dignity, that wastes no power, that conserves every element
+of manliness to fourscore. Too great keenness does not know the name of
+content; its only experience of joy is by spasms, when Idealism puts its
+prism to the eye and shows all things in those gorgeous hues, which
+to-morrow fade. Such mind and temper shock the <i>physique</i>, shake it
+down, strain the nervous organization; and the body, writhing under
+fierce cerebral thrusts, goes tottering to the grave. Is it strange if
+doubts belong to those writhings? Are there no such creatures as
+constitutional doubters, or, possibly, constitutional believers?</p>
+
+<p>It would have been strange if the calm, mature repose of Phil's
+manner,&mdash;never disturbed except when Ad&egrave;le broke upon him suddenly and
+put him to a momentary confusion, of which the pleasant fluttering of
+her own heart gave account,&mdash;strange, if this had not won upon her
+regard,&mdash;strange, if it had not given hint of that cool, masculine
+superiority in him, with which even the most ethereal of women like to
+be impressed. There was about him also a quiet, business-like
+concentration of mind which the imaginative girl might have overlooked
+or undervalued, but which the budding, thoughtful woman must needs
+recognize and respect. Nor will it seem strange, if, by contrast, it
+made the excitable Reuben seem more dismally afloat and vagrant. Yet how
+could she forget the passionate pressure of his hand, the appealing
+depth of that gray eye of the parson's son, and the burning words of his
+that stuck in her memory like thorns?</p>
+
+<p>Phil, indeed, might have spoken in a way that would have driven the
+blood back upon her heart; for there was a world of passionate
+capability under his calm exterior. She dreaded lest he might. She
+shunned all provoking occasion, as a bird shuns the grasp of even the
+most tender hand, under whose clasp the pinions will flutter vainly.</p>
+
+<p>When Rose said now, as she was wont to say, after some generous deed of
+his, "Phil is a good, kind, noble fellow!" Ad&egrave;le affected not to hear,
+and asked Rose, with a bustling air, if she was "quite sure that she had
+the right shade of brown" in the worsted work they were upon.</p>
+
+<p>So the Christmas season came and went. The Squire cherished a
+traditional regard for its old festivities, not only by reason of a
+general festive inclination that was very strong in him, but from a
+desire to protest in a quiet way against what he called the pestilent
+religious severities of a great many of the parish, who ignored the day
+because it was a high holiday in the Popish Church, and in that other,
+which, under the wing of Episcopacy, was following, in their view, fast
+after the Babylonish traditions. There was Deacon Tourtelot, for
+instance, who never failed on a Christmas morning&mdash;if weather and
+sledding were good&mdash;to get up his long team (the restive two-year-olds
+upon the neap) and drive through the main street, with a great clamor of
+"Haw, Diamond!" and "Gee, Buck and Bright!"&mdash;as if to insist upon the
+secular character of the day. Indeed, with the old-fashioned New-England
+religious faith, an exuberant, demonstrative joyousness could not
+gracefully or easily be welded.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> The hopes that reposed even upon
+Christ's coming, with its tidings of great joy, must be solemn. And the
+anniversary of a glorious birth, which, by traditionary impulse, made
+half the world glad, was to such believers like any other day in the
+calendar. Even the good Doctor pointed his Christmas prayer with no
+special unction. What, indeed, were anniversaries, or a yearly
+proclamation of peace and good-will to men, with those who, on every
+Sabbath morning, saw the heavens open above the sacred desk, and heard
+the golden promises expounded, and the thunders of coming retribution
+echo under the ceiling of the Tabernacle?</p>
+
+<p>The Christmas came and went with a great lighting-up of the Elderkin
+house; and there were green garlands which Rose and Ad&egrave;le have plaited
+over the mantel, and over the stiff family portraits; and good Phil&mdash;in
+the character of Santa Claus&mdash;has stuffed the stockings of all the
+grandchildren, and&mdash;in the character of the bashful lover&mdash;has played
+like a moth about the blazing eyes of Ad&egrave;le.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the current of the village gossip has it, that they are to marry.
+Miss Eliza, indeed, shakes her head wisely, and keeps her own counsel.
+But Dame Tourtelot reports to old Mistress Tew,&mdash;"Phil Elderkin is goin'
+to marry the French girl."</p>
+
+<p>"Ha&ouml;w?" says Mrs. Tew, adjusting her tin trumpet.</p>
+
+<p>"Philip Elderkin&mdash;is&mdash;a-goin' to marry the French girl," screams the
+Dame.</p>
+
+<p>"Du tell! Goin' to settle in Ashfield?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"No! Where, then?" says Mistress Tew.</p>
+
+<p>I don't <span class="smcap">know</span>," shrieks the Dame.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" chimes Mrs. Tew; and after reflecting awhile and smoothing out her
+cap-strings, she says,&mdash;"I've heerd the French gurl keeps a cross in her
+chamber."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>She</i> <span class="smcap">dooz</span>," explodes the Dame.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to know! I wonder the Squire don't put a stop to 't."</p>
+
+<p>"Doan't believe <i>he would if he</i> <span class="smcap">could</span>," says the Dame, snappishly.</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, waal! it's a wicked world we're a-livin' in, Miss Tourtelot." And
+she elevates her trumpet, as if she were eager to get a confirmation of
+that fact.</p>
+
+
+<h3>LI.</h3>
+
+<p>In those days to which our narrative has now reached, the Doctor was far
+more feeble than when we first met him. His pace has slackened, and
+there is an occasional totter in his step. There are those among his
+parishioners who say that his memory is failing. On one or two Sabbaths
+of the winter he has preached sermons scarce two years old. There are
+acute listeners who are sure of it. And the spinster has been horrified
+on learning that, once or twice, the old gentleman&mdash;escaping her
+eye&mdash;has taken his walk to the post-office, unwittingly wearing his best
+cloak wrong-side out; as if&mdash;for so good a man&mdash;the green baize were not
+as proper a covering as the brown camlet!</p>
+
+<p>The parson is himself conscious of these short-comings, and speaks with
+resignation of the growing infirmities which, as he modestly hints, will
+compel him shortly to give place to some younger and more zealous
+expounder of the faith. His parochial visits grow more and more rare.
+All other failings could be more easily pardoned than this; but in a
+country parish like Ashfield, it was quite imperative that the old
+chaise should keep up its familiar rounds, and the occasional tea-fights
+in the out-lying houses be honored by the gray head of the Doctor or by
+his evening benediction. Two hour-long sermons a week and a Wednesday
+evening discourse were very well in their way, but by no means met all
+the requirements of those steadfast old ladies whose socialities were
+both exhaustive and exacting. Indeed, it is doubtful if there do not
+exist even now, in most country parishes of New England, a few most
+excellent and notable women, who delight in an overworked parson,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> for
+the pleasure they take in recommending their teas, and plasters, and
+nostrums. The more frail and attenuated the teacher, the more he takes
+hold upon their pity; and in losing the vigor of the flesh, he seems to
+their compassionate eyes to grow into the spiritualities they pine for.
+But he must not give over his visitings; <i>that</i> hair-cloth shirt of
+penance he must wear to the end, if he would achieve saintship.</p>
+
+<p>Now, just at this crisis, it happens that there is a tall, thin, pale
+young man&mdash;Rev. Theophilus Catesby by name, and nephew of the late
+Deacon Simmons (now unhappily deceased)&mdash;who has preached in Ashfield on
+several occasions to the "great acceptance" of the people. Talk is
+imminent of naming him colleague to Dr. Johns. The matter is discussed,
+at first, (agreeably to custom,) in the sewing-circle of the town. After
+this, it comes informally before the church brethren. The duty to the
+Doctor and to the parish is plain enough. The practical question is, how
+cheaply can the matter be accomplished?</p>
+
+<p>The salary of the good Doctor has grown, by progressive increase, to be
+at this date some seven hundred dollars a year,&mdash;a very considerable
+stipend for a country parish in that day. It was understood that the
+proposed colleague would expect six hundred. The two joined made a
+somewhat appalling sum for the people of Ashfield. They tried to combat
+it in a variety of ways,&mdash;over tea-tables and barn-yard gates, as well
+as in their formal conclaves; earnest for a good thing in the way of
+preaching, but earnest for a good bargain, too.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, Huldy," said the Deacon, in discussion of the affair over his
+wife's fireside, "I wouldn't wonder if the Doctor 'ad put up somethin'
+handsome between the French girl's boardin', and odds and ends."</p>
+
+<p>"What if he ha'n't, Tourtelot? Miss Johns's got property, and what's
+<i>she</i> goin' to do with it, I want to know?"</p>
+
+<p>On this hint the Deacon spoke, in his next encounter with the Squire
+upon the street, with more boldness.</p>
+
+<p>"It's my opinion, Squire, the Doctor's folks are pooty well off, now;
+and if we make a trade with the new minister, so's he'll take the
+biggest half o' the hard work of the parish, I think the old Doctor 'ud
+worry along tol'able well on three or four hundred a year; heh, Squire?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Deacon, I don't know about that;&mdash;don't know. Butcher's meat is
+always butcher's meat, Deacon."</p>
+
+<p>"So it is, Squire; and not so dreadful high, nuther. I've got a likely
+two-year-old in the yard, that'll dress abaout a hundred to a quarter,
+and I don't pretend to ask but twenty-five dollars; know anybody that
+wants such a critter, Squire?"</p>
+
+<p>With very much of the same relevancy of observation the affair is
+bandied about for a week or more in the discussions at the
+society-meetings, with danger of never coming to any practical issue,
+when a wiry little man&mdash;in a black Sunday coat, whose tall collar chafes
+the back of his head near to the middle&mdash;rises from a corner where he
+has grown vexed with the delay, and bursts upon the solemn conclave in
+this style:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Brethren, I ha'n't been home to chore-time in the last three days, and
+my wife is gittin' worked up abaout it. Here we've bin a-settin' and
+a-talkin' night arter night, and arternoon arter arternoon for more 'n a
+week, and 'pears to me it 's abaout time as tho' somethin' o' ruther
+ought to be done. There's nobody got nothin' agin the Doctor that I've
+<i>heerd</i> of. He's a smart old gentleman, and he's a clever old gentleman,
+and he preaches what I call good, stiff doctrine; but we don't feel much
+like payin' for light work same as what we paid when the work was
+heavy,&mdash;'specially if we git a new minister on our hands. But then,
+brethren, I don't for one feel like turnin' an old hoss that's done good
+sarvice, when he gits stiff in the j'ints, into slim pastur', and I
+don't feel like stuffin' on 'em with bog hay in the winter. There's
+folks that dooz; but <i>I</i> don't. Now, brethren, I motion that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> we
+continner to give as much as five hundred dollars to the old Doctor, and
+make the best dicker we can with the new minister; and I'll clap ten
+dollars on to my pew-rent; and the Deacon there, if he's anything of a
+man, 'll do as much agin. I know he's able to."</p>
+
+<p>Let no one smile. The halting prudence, the inevitable calculating
+process through which the small country New-Englander arrives at his
+charities, is but the growth of his associations. He gets hardly; and
+what he gets hardly he must bestow with self-questionings. If he lives
+"in the small," he cannot give "in the large." His pennies, by the
+necessities of his toil, are each as big as pounds; yet his charities,
+in nine cases out of ten, bear as large a proportion to his revenue as
+the charities of those who count gains by tens of thousands. Liberality
+is, after all, comparative, and is exceptionally great only when its
+sources are exceptionally small. That "<i>widow's mite</i>"&mdash;the only charity
+ever specially commended by the great Master of charities&mdash;will tinkle
+pleasantly on the ear of humanity ages hence, when the clinking millions
+of cities are forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>The new arrangement all comes to the ear of Reuben, who writes back in a
+very brusque way to the Doctor: "Why on earth, father, don't you cut all
+connection with the parish? You've surely done your part in that
+service. Don't let the 'minister's pay' be any hindrance to you, for I
+am getting on swimmingly in my business ventures,&mdash;thanks to Mr.
+Brindlock. I enclose a check for two hundred dollars, and can send you
+one of equal amount every quarter, without feeling it. Why shouldn't a
+man of your years have rest?"</p>
+
+<p>And the Doctor, in his reply, says: "My rest, Reuben, is God's work. I
+am deeply grateful to you, and only wish that your generosity were
+hallowed by a deeper trust in His providence and mercy. O Reuben!
+Reuben! a night cometh, when no man can work! You seem to imagine, my
+son, that some slight has been put upon me by recent arrangements in the
+parish. It is not so; and I am sure that none has been intended. A
+servant of Christ can receive no reproach at the hands of his people,
+save this,&mdash;that he has failed to warn them of the judgment to come, and
+to point out to them, the ark of safety."</p>
+
+<p>Correspondence between the father and son is not infrequent in these
+days; for, since Reuben has slipped away from home control
+utterly,&mdash;being now well past one and twenty,&mdash;the Doctor has forborne
+that magisterial tone which, in his old-fashioned way, it was his wont
+to employ, while yet the son was subject to his legal authority. Under
+these conditions, Reuben is won into more communicativeness,&mdash;even upon
+those religious topics which are always prominent in the Doctor's
+letters; indeed, it would seem that the son rather enjoyed a little
+logical fence with the old gentleman, and a passing lunge, now and then,
+at his severities; still weltering in his unbelief, but wearing it more
+lightly (as the father saw with pain) by reason of the great crowd of
+sympathizers at his back.</p>
+
+<p>"It is so rare," he writes, "to fall in with one who earnestly and
+heartily seems to believe what he says he believes. And if you meet him
+in a preacher at a street-corner, declaiming with a mad fervor, people
+cry out, 'A fanatic!' Why shouldn't he be? I can't, for my life, see.
+Why shouldn't every fervent believer of the truths he teaches rush
+through the streets to divert the great crowd, with voice and hand, from
+the inevitable doom? I see the honesty of your faith, father, though
+there seems a strained harshness in it when I think of the complacency
+with which you must needs contemplate the irremediable perdition of such
+hosts of outcasts. In Ad&egrave;le, too, there seems a beautiful singleness of
+trust; but I suppose God made the birds to live in the sky.</p>
+
+<p>"You need not fear my falling into what you call the Pantheism of the
+moralists; it is every way too cold for my hot blood. It seems to me
+that the moral icicles with which their doctrine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> is fringed (and the
+fringe is the beauty of it) must needs melt under any passionate human
+clasp,&mdash;such clasp as I should want to give (if I gave any) to a great
+hope for the future. I should feel more like groping my way into such
+hope by the light of the golden candlesticks of Rome even. But do not be
+disturbed, father; I fear I should make, just now, no better Papist than
+Presbyterian."</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor reads such letters in a maze. Can it indeed be a son of his
+own loins who thus bandies language about the solemn truths of
+Christianity?</p>
+
+<p>"How shall I give thee up, Ephraim! How shall I set thee as Zeboim!"</p>
+
+
+<h3>LII.</h3>
+
+<p>In the early spring of 1842,&mdash;we are not quite sure of the date, but it
+was at any rate shortly after the establishment of the Reverend
+Theophilus Catesby at Ashfield,&mdash;the Doctor was in the receipt of a new
+letter from his friend Maverick, which set all his old calculations
+adrift. It was not Madame Arles, after all, who was the mother of Ad&egrave;le;
+and the poor gentleman found that he had wasted a great deal of needless
+sympathy in that direction. But we shall give the details of the news
+more succinctly and straightforwardly by laying before our readers some
+portions of Maverick's letter.</p>
+
+<p>"I find, my dear Johns," he writes, "that my suspicions in regard to a
+matter of which I wrote you very fully in my last were wholly untrue.
+How I could have been so deceived, I cannot even now fairly explain; but
+nothing is more certain, than that the person calling herself Madame
+Arles (since dead, as I learn from Ad&egrave;le) was not the mother of my
+child. My mistake in this will the more surprise you, when I state that
+I had a glimpse of this personage (unknown to you) upon my visit to
+America; and though it was but a passing glimpse, it seemed to
+me&mdash;though many years had gone by since my last sight of her&mdash;that I
+could have sworn to her identity. And coupling this resemblance, as I
+very naturally did, with her devotion to my poor Ad&egrave;le, I could form but
+one conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>"The mother of my child, however, still lives. I have seen her. You will
+commiserate me in advance with the thought that I have found her among
+the vile ones of what you count this vile land. But you are wrong, my
+dear Johns. So far as appearance and present conduct go, no more
+reputable lady ever crossed your own threshold. The meeting was
+accidental, but the recognition on both sides absolute, and, on the part
+of the lady, so emotional as to draw the attention of the <i>habitu&eacute;s</i> of
+the caf&eacute; where I chanced to be dining. Her manner and bearing, indeed,
+were such as to provoke me to a renewal of our old acquaintance, with
+honorable intentions,&mdash;even independent of those suggestions of duty to
+herself and to Ad&egrave;le which you have urged.</p>
+
+<p>"But I have to give you, my dear Johns, a new surprise. All overtures of
+my own toward a renewal of acquaintance have been decisively repulsed. I
+learn that she has been living for the past fifteen years or more with
+her brother, now a wealthy merchant of Smyrna, and that she has a
+reputation there as a <i>d&eacute;vote</i>, and is widely known for the charities
+which her brother's means place within her reach. It would thus seem
+that even this French woman, contrary to your old theory, is atoning for
+an early sin by a life of penance.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, my dear Johns, I have to confess to you another deceit of
+mine. This woman&mdash;Julie Chalet when I knew her of old, and still wearing
+the name&mdash;has no knowledge that she has a child now living. To divert
+all inquiry, and to insure entire alienation of my little girl from all
+French ties, I caused a false mention of the death of Ad&egrave;le to be
+inserted in the Gazette of Marseilles. I know you will be very much
+shocked at this, my dear Johns, and perhaps count it as large a sin as
+the grosser one; that I committed it for the child's sake will be no
+excuse in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> your eye, I know. You may count me as bad as you
+choose,&mdash;only give me credit for the fatherly affection which would
+still make the path as easy and as thornless as I can for my poor
+daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"If Julie, the mother of Ad&egrave;le, knew to-day of her existence,&mdash;if I
+should carry that information to her,&mdash;I am sure that all her rigidities
+would be consumed like flax in a flame. That method, at least, is left
+for winning her to any action upon which I may determine. Shall I use
+it? I ask you as one who, I am sure, has learned to love Ad&egrave;le, and who,
+I hope, has not wholly given over a friendly feeling toward me. Consider
+well, however, that the mother is now one of the most rigid of
+Catholics; I learn that she is even thinking of conventual life. I know
+her spirit and temper well enough to be sure that, if she were to meet
+the child again which she believes lost, it would be with an impetuosity
+of feeling and a devotion that would absorb every aim of her life. This
+disclosure is the only one by which I could hope to win her to any
+consideration of marriage; and with a mother's rights and a mother's
+love, would she not sweep away all that Protestant faith which you, for
+so many years, have been laboring to build up in the mind of my child?
+Whatever you may think, I do not conceive this to be impossible; and if
+possible, is it to be avoided at all hazards? Whatever I might have owed
+to the mother I feel in a measure absolved from by her rejection of all
+present advances. And inasmuch as I am making you my father confessor, I
+may as well tell you, my dear Johns, that no particular self-denial
+would be involved in a marriage with Mademoiselle Chalet. For myself, I
+am past the age of sentiment; my fortune is now established; neither
+myself nor my child can want for any luxury. The mother, by her present
+associations and by the propriety of her life, is above all suspicion;
+and her air and bearing are such as would be a passport to friendly
+association with refined people here or elsewhere. You may count this a
+failure of Providence to fix its punishment upon transgressors: I count
+it only one of those accidents of life which are all the while
+surprising us.</p>
+
+<p>"There was a time when I would have had ambition to do otherwise; but
+now, with my love for Ad&egrave;le established by my intercourse with her and
+by her letters, I have no other aim, if I know my own heart, than her
+welfare. It should be kept in mind, I think, that the marriage spoken
+of, if it ever take place, will probably involve, sooner or later, a
+full exposure to Ad&egrave;le of all the circumstances of her birth and
+history. I say this will be involved, because I am sure that the warm
+affections of Mademoiselle Chalet will never allow of the concealment of
+her maternal relations, and that her present religious perversity (if
+you will excuse the word) will not admit of further deceits. I tremble
+to think of the possible consequences to Ad&egrave;le, and query very much in
+my own mind, if her present blissful ignorance be not better than
+reunion with a mother through whom she must learn of the ignominy of her
+birth. Of Ad&egrave;le's fortitude to bear such a shock, and to maintain any
+elasticity of spirits under it, you can judge better than I.</p>
+
+<p>"I propose to delay action, my dear Johns, and of course my sailing for
+America, until I shall hear from you."</p>
+
+<p>Our readers can surely anticipate the tone of the Doctor's reply. He
+writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Duty, Maverick, is always duty. The issues we must leave in the hands
+of Providence. One sin makes a crowd of entanglements; it is never weary
+of disguises and deceits. We must come out from them all, if we would
+aim at purity. From my heart's core I shall feel whatever shock may come
+to poor, innocent Ad&egrave;le by reason of the light that may be thrown upon
+her history; but if it be a light that flows from the performance of
+Christian duty, I shall never fear its revelations. If we had been
+always true, such dark corners would never have existed to fright us
+with their goblins of terror. It is never too late, Maverick, to begin
+to be true.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I find a strange comfort, too, in what you tell me of that religious
+perversity of Mademoiselle Chalet which so chafes you. I have never
+ceased to believe that most of the Romish traditions are of the Devil;
+but with waning years I have learned that the Divine mysteries are
+beyond our comprehension, and that we cannot map out His purposes by any
+human chart. The pure faith of your child, joined to her buoyant
+elasticity,&mdash;I freely confess it,&mdash;has smoothed away the harshness of
+many opinions I once held.</p>
+
+<p>"Maverick, do your duty. Leave the rest to Heaven."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="COMMUNICATION_WITH_THE_PACIFIC" id="COMMUNICATION_WITH_THE_PACIFIC"></a>COMMUNICATION WITH THE PACIFIC.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It is remarkable that, while we have been fighting for national
+existence, there has been a constant growth of the Republic. This is not
+wholly due to the power of democratic ideas, but owing in part to the
+native wealth of the country,&mdash;its virgin soil, its mineral riches. So
+rapid has been the development that the maps of 1864 are obsolete in
+1866. Civilization at a stride has moved a thousand miles, and taken
+possession of the home of the buffalo. Miners with pick and spade are
+tramping over the Rocky Mountains, exploring every ravine, digging
+canals, building mills, and rearing their log cabins. The merchant, the
+farmer, and the mechanic follow them. The long solitude of the centuries
+is broken by mill-wheels, the buzzing of saws, the stroke of the axe,
+the blow of the hammer and trowel. The stageman cracks his whip in the
+passes of the mountains. The click of the telegraph and the rumbling of
+the printing-press are heard at the head-waters of the Missouri, and
+borne on the breezes there is the laughter of children and the sweet
+music of Sabbath hymns, sung by the pioneers of civilization.</p>
+
+<p>Communities do not grow by chance, but by the operation of physical
+laws. Position, climate, latitude, mountains, lakes, rivers, coal, iron,
+silver, and gold are forces which decree occupation, character, and the
+measure of power and influence which a people shall have among the
+nations. Rivers are natural highways of trade, while mountains are the
+natural barriers. The Atlantic coast is open everywhere to commerce; but
+on the Pacific shore, from British Columbia to Central America, the
+rugged wall of the coast mountains, cloud-capped and white with snow,
+rises sharp and precipitous from the sea, with but one river flowing
+outward from the heart of the continent. The statesman and the political
+economist who would truly cast the horoscope of our future must take
+into consideration the Columbia River, its latitude, its connection with
+the Missouri, the Mississippi, the Lakes, and the St. Lawrence.</p>
+
+<p>How wonderful the development of the Pacific and Rocky Mountain sections
+of the public domain! In 1860 the population of California, Oregon, and
+the territories lying west of Kansas, was six hundred and twenty-three
+thousand; while the present population is estimated at one million,
+wanting only facility of communication with the States to increase in a
+far greater ratio.</p>
+
+<p>In 1853 a series of surveys were made by government to ascertain the
+practicability of a railroad to the Pacific. The country, however, at
+that time, was not prepared to engage in such an enterprise; but now the
+people are calling for greater facility of communication with a section
+of the country abounding in mineral wealth.</p>
+
+<p>Of the several routes surveyed, we shall have space in this article to
+notice only the line running from Lake Superior<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> to the head-waters of
+the Missouri, the Columbia, and Puget Sound, known as the Northern
+Pacific Railroad.</p>
+
+<p>The public domain north of latitude 42&deg;, through which it lies,
+comprises about seven hundred thousand square miles,&mdash;a territory larger
+than England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium,
+Holland, all the German States, Switzerland, Denmark, and Sweden.</p>
+
+<p>The route surveyed by Governor Stevens runs north of the Missouri River,
+and crosses the mountains through Clark's Pass. Governor Stevens
+intended to survey another line up the valley of the Yellow Stone; and
+Lieutenant Mullan commenced a reconnoissance of the route when orders
+were received from Jeff Davis, then Secretary of War, to disband the
+engineering force.</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE ROUTE.</h3>
+
+<p>Recent explorations indicate that the best route to the Pacific will be
+found up the valley of this magnificent river. The distances are as
+follows:&mdash;From the Mississippi above St. Paul to the western boundary of
+Minnesota, thence to Missouri River, two hundred and eighty miles, over
+the table-land known as the Plateau du Coteau du Missouri, where a road
+may be constructed with as much facility and as little expense as in the
+State of Illinois. Crossing the Missouri, the line strikes directly west
+to the Little Missouri,&mdash;the Wah-Pa-Chan-Shoka,&mdash;the <i>heavy-timbered</i>
+river of the Indians, one hundred and thirty miles. This river runs
+north, and enters the Missouri near its northern bend. Seventy miles
+farther carries us to the Yellow Stone. Following now the valley of this
+stream two hundred and eighty miles, the town of Gallatin is reached, at
+the junction of the Missouri Forks and at the head of navigation on that
+stream. The valley of the Yellow Stone is very fertile, abounding in
+pine, cedar, cotton-wood, and elm. The river has a deeper channel than
+the Missouri, and is navigable through the summer months. At the
+junction of the Big Horn, its largest tributary, two hundred and twenty
+miles from the mouth of the Yellow Stone, in midsummer there are ten
+feet of water. The Big Horn is reported navigable for one hundred and
+fifty miles. From Gallatin, following up the Jefferson Fork and Wisdom
+River, one hundred and forty miles, we reach the Big Hole Pass of the
+Rocky Mountains, where the line enters the valley of the St. Mary's, or
+Bitter Root Fork, which flows into the Columbia. The distance from Big
+Hole Pass to Puget Sound will be about five hundred and twenty miles,
+making the entire distance from St. Paul to Puget Sound about sixteen
+hundred miles, or one hundred and forty-three miles shorter than that
+surveyed by Governor Stevens. The distance from the navigable waters of
+the Missouri to the navigable waters of the Columbia is less than three
+hundred miles.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LINE.</h3>
+
+<p>"Rivers are the natural highways of nations," says Humboldt. This route,
+then, is one of Nature's highways. The line is very direct. The country
+is mostly a rolling prairie, where a road may be constructed as easily
+as through the State of Iowa. It may be built with great rapidity.
+Parties working west from St. Paul and east from the Missouri would meet
+on the plains of Dacotah. Other parties working west from the Missouri
+and east from the Yellow Stone would meet on the "heavy-timbered river."
+Iron, locomotives, material of all kinds, provisions for laborers, can
+be delivered at any point along the Yellow Stone to within a hundred
+miles of the town of Gallatin, and they can be taken up the Missouri to
+that point by portage around the Great Falls. Thus the entire line east
+of the Rocky Mountains may be under construction at once, with iron and
+locomotives delivered by water transportation, with timber near at hand.</p>
+
+<p>The character of the country is sufficient to maintain a dense
+population. It has always been the home of the buffalo, the favorite
+hunting-ground of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> Indians. The grasses of the Yellow Stone Valley
+are tender and succulent. The climate is milder than that of Illinois.
+Warm springs gush up on the head-waters of the Yellow Stone. Lewis and
+Clark, on their return from the Columbia, boiled their meat in water
+heated by subterraneous fires. There are numerous beds of coal, and also
+petroleum springs.</p>
+
+<p>"Large quantities of coal seen in the cliffs to-day,"<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a> is a note in
+the diary of Captain Clark, as he sailed down the Yellow Stone, who also
+has this note regarding the country: "High waving plains, rich, fertile
+land, bordered by stony hills, partially supplied by pine."<a name="FNanchor_E_5" id="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a></p>
+
+<p>Of the country of the Big Horn he says: "It is a rich, open country,
+supplied with a great quantity of timber."</p>
+
+<p>Coal abounds on the Missouri, where the proposed line crosses that
+stream.<a name="FNanchor_F_6" id="FNanchor_F_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_F_6" class="fnanchor">[F]</a></p>
+
+<p>The gold mines of Montana, on the head-waters of the Missouri, are
+hardly surpassed for richness by any in the world. They were discovered
+in 1862. The product for the year 1865 is estimated at $16,000,000. The
+Salmon River Mines, west of the mountains, in Idaho, do not yield so
+fine a quality of gold, but are exceedingly rich.</p>
+
+<p>Many towns have sprung into existence on both sides of the mountains. In
+Eastern Montana we have Gallatin, Beaver Head, Virginia, Nevada,
+Centreville, Bannock, Silver City, Montana, Jefferson, and other mining
+centres. In Western Montana, Labarge, Deer Lodge City, Owen, Higginson,
+Jordan, Frenchtown, Harrytown, and Hot Spring. Idaho has Boisee, Bannock
+City, Centreville, Warren, Richmond, Washington, Placerville, Lemhi,
+Millersburg, Florence, Lewiston, Craigs, Clearwater, Elk City, Pierce,
+and Lake City,&mdash;all mining towns.</p>
+
+<p>A gentleman who has resided in the territory gives us the following
+information:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The southern portion of Montana Territory is mild; and from the
+testimony of explorers and settlers, as well as from my own experience
+and observation, the extreme northern portion is favored by a climate
+healthful to a high degree, and quite as mild as that of many of the
+Northern and Western States. This is particularly the case west of the
+mountains, in accordance with the well-known fact, that the isothermal
+line, or the line of heat, is farther north as you go westward from the
+Eastern States toward the Pacific.</p>
+
+<p>"At Fort Benton [one hundred and thirty miles directly north from
+Gallatin], in about 48&deg; of north latitude, a trading post of the
+American Fur Company, their horses and cattle, of which they have large
+numbers, are never housed or fed in winter, but get their own living
+without difficulty....</p>
+
+<p>"Northeastern Montana is traversed by the Yellow Stone, whose source is
+high up in the mountains, from thence winding its way eastward across
+the Territory and flowing into the Missouri at Fort Union; thus crossing
+seven degrees of longitude, with many tributaries flowing into it from
+the south, in whose valleys, in connection with that of the Yellow
+Stone, there are hundreds of thousands of acres of tillable land, to say
+nothing of the tributaries of the Missouri, among which are the
+Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin forks, along which settlements are
+springing up, and agriculture is becoming a lucrative business. These
+valleys are inviting to the settler. They are surrounded with hills and
+mountains, clad with pine, while a growth of cotton-wood skirts the
+meandering streams that everywhere flow through them, affording
+abundance of water-power.</p>
+
+<p>"The first attempt at farming was made in the summer of 1863, which was
+a success, and indicates the productiveness of these valleys. Messrs.
+Wilson and Company broke thirty acres last spring, planting twelve acres
+of potatoes,&mdash;also corn, turnips, and a variety of garden sauce, all of
+which did well. The potatoes, they informed me, yielded two hundred
+bushels per acre, and sold<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> in Virginia City, fifty miles distant, at
+twenty-five cents per pound, turnips at twenty cents, onions at forty
+cents, cabbage at sixty cents, peas and beans at fifty cents per pound
+in the pod, and corn at two dollars a dozen ears. Vines of all kinds
+seem to flourish; and we see no reason why fruit may not be grown here,
+as the climate is much more mild than in many of the States where it is
+a staple.</p>
+
+<p>"The valley at the Three Forks, as also the valley along the streams, as
+they recede from the junction, are spacious, and yield a spontaneous
+growth of herbage, upon which cattle fatten during the winter....</p>
+
+<p>"The Yellow Stone is navigable for several hundred miles from its mouth,
+penetrating the heart of the agricultural and mineral regions of Eastern
+Montana.... The section is undulating, with ranges of mountains, clad
+with evergreens, between which are beautiful valleys and winding
+streams, where towns and cities will spring up to adorn these mountain
+retreats, and give room for expanding civilization....</p>
+
+<p>"On the east side of the mountains the mines are rich beyond
+calculation, the yield thus far having equalled the most productive
+locality of California of equal extent. The Bannock or Grasshopper mines
+were discovered in July, 1862, and are situated on Grasshopper Creek,
+which is a tributary of the Jefferson fork of the Missouri. The mining
+district here extends five miles down the creek, from Bannock City,
+which is situated at the head of the gulch, while upon either side of
+the creek the mountains are intersected with gold-bearing quartz lodes,
+many of which have been found to be very rich....</p>
+
+<p>"While gold has been found in paying quantities all along the Rocky
+chain, its deposits are not confined to this locality, but sweep across
+the country eastward some hundreds of miles, to the Big Horn Mountains.
+The gold discoveries there cover a large area of country."<a name="FNanchor_G_7" id="FNanchor_G_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_G_7" class="fnanchor">[G]</a></p>
+
+<p>Governor Stevens says: "Voyagers travel all winter from Lake Superior to
+the Missouri, with horses and sleds, having to make their own roads, and
+are not deterred by snows."</p>
+
+<p>Alexander Culbertson, the great voyager and trader of the Upper
+Missouri, who, for the last twenty years, has made frequent trips from
+St. Louis to Fort Benton, has never found the snow drifted enough to
+interfere with travelling. The average depth is twelve inches, and
+frequently it does not exceed six.<a name="FNanchor_H_8" id="FNanchor_H_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_H_8" class="fnanchor">[H]</a></p>
+
+<p>Through such a country, east of the mountains, lies the shortest line of
+railway between the Atlantic and Pacific,&mdash;a country rich in mineral
+wealth, of fertile soil, mild climate, verdant valleys, timbered hills,
+arable lands yielding grains and grass, with mountain streams for the
+turning of mill-wheels, rich coal beds, and springs of petroleum!</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE MOUNTAINS.</h3>
+
+<p>There are several passes at the head-waters of the Missouri which may be
+used;&mdash;the Hell-Gate Pass; the Deer Lodge; and the Wisdom River, or Big
+Hole, as it is sometimes called, which leads into the valley of the
+Bitter Root, or St. Mary's. The Big Hole is thus described by Lieutenant
+Mullan:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The descent towards the Missouri side is very gradual; so much so,
+that, were it not for the direction taken by the waters, it might be
+considered an almost level prairie country."<a name="FNanchor_I_9" id="FNanchor_I_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_I_9" class="fnanchor">[I]</a></p>
+
+<p>Governor Stevens thus speaks of the valley of the Bitter Root:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The faint attempts made by the Indians at cultivating the soil have
+been attended with good success; and fair returns might be expected of
+all such crops as are adapted to the Northern States of our country. The
+pasturage grounds are unsurpassed. The extensive bands of horses, owned
+by the Flathead Indians occupying St. Mary's village, on the Bitter Root
+River, thrive well winter and summer. One hundred horses, belonging to
+the exploration, are wintered in the valley; and up to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> 9th of March
+the grass was fair, but little snow had fallen, and the weather was
+mild. The oxen and cows, owned here by the half-breeds and Indians,
+obtain good feed, and are in good condition."<a name="FNanchor_J_10" id="FNanchor_J_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_J_10" class="fnanchor">[J]</a></p>
+
+<p>This village of St Mary's is sixty miles down the valley from the Big
+Hole Pass; yet, though so near, snow seldom falls, and the grass is so
+verdant that horses and cattle subsist the year round on the natural
+pasturage.</p>
+
+<p>Lieutenant Mullan says of it: "The fact of the exceedingly mild winters
+in this valley has been noticed and remarked by all who have ever been
+in it during the winter season. It is the home of the Flathead Indians,
+who, through the instrumentality and exertions of the Jesuit priests,
+have built up a village,&mdash;not of logs, but of houses,&mdash;where they repair
+every winter, and, with this valley covered with an abundance of rich
+and nutritious grass, they live as comfortably as any tribe west of the
+Rocky Mountains....</p>
+
+<p>"The numerous mountain rivulets, tributary to the Bitter Root River,
+that run through the valley, afford excellent and abundant mill-seats;
+and the land bordering these is fertile and productive, and has been
+found, beyond cavil or doubt, to be well suited to every branch of
+agriculture. I have seen oats, grown by Mr. John Owen, that are as heavy
+and as excellent as any I have ever seen in the States; and the same
+gentleman informs me that he has grown excellent wheat, and that, from
+his experience while in the mountains, he hesitated not in saying that
+agriculture might be carried on here in all its numerous branches, and
+to the exceeding great interest and gain of those engaged in it. The
+valley and mountain slopes are well timbered with an excellent growth of
+pine, which is equal, in every respect, to the well-known pine of
+Oregon. The valley is not only capable of grazing immense bands of stock
+of every kind, but is also capable of supporting a dense population.</p>
+
+<p>"The provisions of Nature here, therefore, are on no small scale, and of
+no small importance; and let those who have imagined&mdash;as some have been
+bold to say it&mdash;that there exists only one immense bed of mountains at
+the head-waters of the Missouri to the Cascade Range, turn their
+attention to this section, and let them contemplate its advantages and
+resources, and ask themselves, since these things exist, can it be long
+before public attention shall be attracted and fastened upon this
+heretofore unknown region?"<a name="FNanchor_K_11" id="FNanchor_K_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_K_11" class="fnanchor">[K]</a></p>
+
+
+<h3>CLIMATE OF THE MOUNTAINS.</h3>
+
+<p>We have been accustomed to think of the Rocky Mountains as an impassable
+barrier, as a wild, dreary solitude, where the storms of winter piled
+the mountain passes with snow. How different the fact! In 1852-53, from
+the 28th of November to the 10th of January, there were but twelve
+inches of snow in the pass. The recorded observations during the winter
+of 1861-62 give the following measurements in the Big Hole Pass:
+December 4, eighteen inches; January 10, fourteen; January 14, ten;
+February 16, six; March 21, none.</p>
+
+<p>We have been told that there could be no winter travel across the
+mountains,&mdash;that the snow would lie in drifts fifteen or twenty feet
+deep; but instead, there is daily communication by teams through the Big
+Hole Pass every day in the year! The belt of snow is narrow, existing
+only in the Pass.</p>
+
+<p>Says Lieutenant Mullan, in his late Report on the wagon road: "The snow
+will offer no great obstacle to travel, with horses or locomotives, from
+the Missouri to the Columbia."</p>
+
+<p>This able and efficient government officer, in the same Report, says of
+this section of the country:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The trade and travel along the Upper Columbia, where several steamers
+now ply between busy marts, of themselves attest what magical effects
+the years have wrought. Besides gold, lead for miles is found along the
+Kootenay.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> Red hermatite, iron ore, traces of copper, and plumbago are
+found along the main Bitter Root. Cinnabar is said to exist along the
+Hell Gate. Coal is found along the Upper Missouri, and a deposit of
+cannel coal near the Three Butts, northwest of Fort Benton, is also said
+to exist. Iron ore has been found on Thompson's farms on the Clark's
+Fork. Sulphur is found on the Loo Loo Fork, and on the tributaries of
+the Yellow Stone, and coal oil is said to exist on the Big Horn....
+These great mineral deposits must have an ultimate bearing upon the
+location of the Pacific Railroad, adding, as they will, trade, travel,
+and wealth to its every mile when built....</p>
+
+<p>"The great depots for building material exist principally in the
+mountain sections, but the plains on either side are not destitute in
+that particular. All through the Bitter Root and Rocky Mountains, the
+finest white and red cedar, white pine, and red fir that I ever have
+seen are found."<a name="FNanchor_L_12" id="FNanchor_L_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_L_12" class="fnanchor">[L]</a></p>
+
+
+<h3>GEOLOGICAL FEATURES.</h3>
+
+<p>The geological formation of the heart of the continent promises to open
+a rich field for scientific exploration and investigation. The Wind
+River Mountain, which divides the Yellow Stone from the Great Basin, is
+a marked and distinct geological boundary. From the northern slope flow
+the tributaries of the Yellow Stone, fed by springs of boiling water,
+which perceptibly affect the temperature of the region, clothing the
+valleys with verdure, and making them the winter home of the
+buffalo,&mdash;the favorite hunting-grounds of the Indians,&mdash;while the
+streams which flow from the southern slope of the mountains are
+alkaline, and, instead of luxuriant vegetation, there are vast regions
+covered with wild sage and cactus. They run into the Great Salt Lake,
+and have no outlet to the ocean. A late writer, describing the
+geological features of that section, says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Upon the great interior desert streams and fuel are almost unknown.
+Wells must be very deep, and no simple and cheap machinery adequate to
+drawing up the water is yet invented. Cultivation, to a great extent,
+must be carried on by irrigation."<a name="FNanchor_M_13" id="FNanchor_M_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_M_13" class="fnanchor">[M]</a></p>
+
+<p>Such are the slopes of the mountains which form the rim of the Great
+Basin, while the valley of the Yellow Stone is literally the land which
+buds and blossoms like the rose. The Rosebud River is so named because
+the valley through which it meanders is a garden of roses.</p>
+
+<p>And here, along the head-waters of the Yellow Stone and its tributaries,
+at the northern deflection of the Wind River chain of mountains, flows a
+<i>river of hot wind</i>, which is not only one of the most remarkable
+features of the climatology of the continent, but which is destined to
+have a great bearing upon the civilization of this portion of the
+continent. St. Joseph in Missouri, in latitude 40&deg;, has the same mean
+temperature as that at the base of the Rocky Mountains in latitude 47&deg;!
+The high temperature of the hot boiling springs warms the air which
+flows northwest along the base of the mountains, sweeping through the
+Big Hole Pass, the Deer Lodge, Little Blackfoot, and Mullan Pass, giving
+a delightful winter climate to the valley of the St. Mary's, or Bitter
+Root. It flows like the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic. Says Captain
+Mullan: "On its either side, north and south, are walls of cold air, and
+which are so clearly perceptible that you always detect the river when
+you are on its shores."<a name="FNanchor_N_14" id="FNanchor_N_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_N_14" class="fnanchor">[N]</a></p>
+
+<p>This great river of heat always flowing is sufficient to account for the
+slight depth of snow in the passes at the head-waters of the Missouri,
+which have an altitude of six thousand feet. The South Pass has an
+altitude of seven thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine feet. The
+passes of the Wasatch Range, on the route to California, are higher by
+three thousand feet than those at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> head-waters of the Missouri, and,
+not being swept by a stream of hot air, are filled with snows during the
+winter months. The passes at the head-waters of the Saskatchawan, in the
+British possessions, though a few hundred feet lower than those at the
+head-waters of the Missouri, are not reached by the heated Wind River,
+and are impassable in winter. Even Cadotte's Pass, through which
+Governor Stevens located the line of the proposed road, is outside of
+the heat stream, so sharp and perpendicular are its walls.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Mullan says: "From whatsoever cause it arises, it exists as a
+fact that must for all time enter as an element worthy of every
+attention in lines of travel and communication from the Eastern plains
+to the North Pacific."<a name="FNanchor_O_15" id="FNanchor_O_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_O_15" class="fnanchor">[O]</a></p>
+
+
+<h3>DISTANCES.</h3>
+
+<p>That this line is the natural highway of the continent is evident from
+other considerations. The distances between the centres of trade and San
+Francisco, and with Puget Sound, will appear from the following tabular
+statement:&mdash;</p>
+
+<h4>Approximate Distances.</h4>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='center'></td><td align='center'>to San Francisco</td><td align='center'>to Puget Sound</td><td align='center'>Difference</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>Chicago</td><td align='center'>2,448 miles<a name="FNanchor_P_16" id="FNanchor_P_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_P_16" class="fnanchor">[P]</a></td><td align='center'>1,906 miles</td><td align='center'>542 miles</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>St. Louis</td><td align='center'>2,345 "</td><td align='center'>1,981 "</td><td align='center'>364 "</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>Cincinnati</td><td align='center'>2,685 "</td><td align='center'>2,200 "</td><td align='center'>486 "</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>New York</td><td align='center'>3,417 "</td><td align='center'>2,892 "</td><td align='center'>525 "</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>Boston</td><td align='center'>3,484 "</td><td align='center'>2,942 "</td><td align='center'>542 "</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>The line to Puget Sound will require no tunnel in the pass of the Rocky
+Mountains. The approaches of the Big Hole and Deer Lodge in both
+directions are eminently feasible, requiring little rock excavation, and
+with no grades exceeding eighty feet per mile.</p>
+
+<p>All of the places east of the latitude of Chicago, and north of the Ohio
+River, are from three hundred to five hundred and fifty miles nearer the
+Pacific at Puget Sound than at San Francisco,&mdash;due to greater directness
+of the route and the shortening of longitude. These on both lines are
+the approximate distances. The distance from Puget Sound to St. Louis is
+estimated&mdash;via Desmoines&mdash;on the supposition that the time will come
+when that line of railway will extend north far enough to intersect with
+the North Pacific.</p>
+
+
+<h3>COST OF CONSTRUCTION.</h3>
+
+<p>The census of 1860 gives thirty thousand miles of railroad in operation,
+which cost, including land damages, equipment, and all charges of
+construction, $37,120 per mile. The average cost of fifteen New England
+roads, including the Boston and Lowell, Boston and Maine, Vermont
+Central, Western, Eastern, and Boston and Providence, was $36,305 per
+mile. In the construction of this line, there will be no charge for land
+damages, and nothing for timber, which exists along nearly the entire
+line. But as iron and labor command a higher price than when those roads
+were constructed, there should be a liberal estimate. Lieutenant Mullan,
+in his late Report upon the Construction of the Wagon Road, discusses
+the probability of a railroad at length, and with much ability. His
+highest estimate for any portion of the line is sixty thousand dollars
+per mile,&mdash;an estimate given before civilization made an opening in the
+wilderness. There is no reason to believe that this line will be any
+more costly than the average of roads in the United States.</p>
+
+<p>In 1850 there were 7,355 miles of road in operation; in 1860, 30,793;
+showing that 2,343 miles per annum were constructed by the people of the
+United States. The following table shows the number of miles built in
+each year from 1853 to 1856, together with the cost of the same.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>Year.</td><td align='left'>Miles.</td><td align='left'>Cost.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1852</td><td align='left'>2,541</td><td align='left'>$ 94,000,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1853</td><td align='left'>2,748</td><td align='left'>101,576,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1854</td><td align='left'>3,549</td><td align='left'>125,313,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1855</td><td align='left'>2,736</td><td align='left'>101,232,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1856</td><td align='left'>3,578</td><td align='left'>132,386,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan='2'></td><td align='left'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan='2'>Total expenditure for five years,</td><td align='left'>$554,507,000</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This exhibit is sufficient to indicate that there need be no question of
+our financial ability to construct the road.</p>
+
+<p>In 1856, the country had expended $776,000,000 in the construction of
+railroads, incurring a debt of about $300,000,000. The entire amount of
+stock and bonds held abroad at that time was estimated at only
+$81,000,000.<a name="FNanchor_Q_17" id="FNanchor_Q_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_Q_17" class="fnanchor">[Q]</a></p>
+
+
+<h3>AID FROM GOVERNMENT.</h3>
+
+<p>The desire of the people for the speedy opening of this great national
+highway is manifested by the action of the government, which, by act of
+Congress, July 2, 1864, granted the alternate sections of land for
+twenty miles on each side of the road in aid of the enterprise. The land
+thus appropriated amounts to forty-seven million acres,&mdash;more than is
+comprised in the States of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and
+New York! If all of these lands were sold at the price fixed by
+government,&mdash;$2.50 per acre,&mdash;they would yield $118,000,000,&mdash;a sum
+sufficient to build and equip the road. But years must elapse before
+these lands can be put upon the market, and the government, undoubtedly,
+will give the same aid to this road which has already been given to the
+Central Pacific Road, guaranteeing the bonds or stock of the company,
+and taking a lien on the road for security. Such bonds would at once
+command the necessary capital for building the road.</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE WESTERN TERMINUS.</h3>
+
+<p>Puget Sound, with its numerous inlets, is a deep indentation of the
+Pacific coast, one hundred miles north of the Columbia. It has spacious
+harbors, securely land-locked, with a surrounding country abounding in
+timber, with exhaustless beds of coal, rich in agricultural resources,
+and with numerous mill-streams. Nature has stamped it with her seal, and
+set it apart to be the New England of the Pacific coast.</p>
+
+<p>That portion of the country is to be peopled by farmers, mechanics, and
+artisans. California is rich in mineral wealth. Her valleys and
+mountain-slopes yield abundant harvests; but she has few mill-streams,
+and is dependent upon Oregon and Washington for her coal and lumber. An
+inferior quality of coal is mined at Mount Diablo in California; but
+most of the coal consumed in that State is brought from Puget Sound.
+Hence Nature has fixed the locality of the future manufacturing industry
+of the Pacific. Puget Sound is nearer than San Francisco, by several
+hundred miles, to Japan, China, and Australia. It is therefore the
+natural port of entry and departure for our Pacific trade. It has
+advantages over San Francisco, not only in being nearer to those
+countries, but in having coal near at hand, which settles the question
+of the future steam marine of the Pacific.</p>
+
+<p>Passengers, goods of high cost, and bills of exchange, move on the
+shortest and quickest lines of travel. No business man takes the
+way-train in preference to the express. Sailing vessels make the voyage
+from Puget Sound to Shanghai in from thirty to forty days. Steamers will
+make it in twenty.</p>
+
+
+<h3>TRADE WITH ASIA.</h3>
+
+<p>Far-seeing men in England are looking forward to the time when the trade
+between that country and the Pacific will be carried on across this
+continent. Colonel Synge, of the Queen's Royal Engineers, says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"America is geographically a connecting link between the continents of
+Europe and Asia, and not a monstrous barrier between them. It lies in
+the track of their nearest and best connection; and this fact needs only
+to be fully recognized to render it in practice what it unquestionably
+is in the essential points of distance and direction."<a name="FNanchor_R_18" id="FNanchor_R_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_R_18" class="fnanchor">[R]</a></p>
+
+<p>Another English writer says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It is believed that the amount of direct traffic which would be created
+between Australia, China, and Japan, and England, by a railway from
+Halifax to the Gulf of Georgia, would soon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> more than cover the interest
+upon the capital expended.... If the intended railway were connected
+with a line of steamers plying between Victoria (Puget Sound), Sydney,
+or New Zealand, mails, quick freight, passengers to and from our
+colonies in the southern hemisphere, would, for the most part, be
+secured for this route.</p>
+
+<p>"Vancouver's Island is nearer to Sydney than Panama by nine hundred
+miles; and, with the exception of the proposed route by a Trans-American
+railway, the latter is the most expeditious that has been found.</p>
+
+<p>"By this interoceanic communication, the time to New Zealand would be
+reduced to forty-two, and to Sydney to forty-seven days, being at least
+ten less than by steam from England via Panama."<a name="FNanchor_S_19" id="FNanchor_S_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_S_19" class="fnanchor">[S]</a></p>
+
+<p>Lord Bury says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Our trade [English] in the Pacific Ocean with China and with India must
+ultimately be carried through our North American possessions. At any
+rate, our political and commercial supremacy will have utterly departed
+from us, if we neglect that great and important consideration, and if we
+fail to carry out to its fullest extent the physical advantages which
+the country offers to us, and which we have only to stretch out our
+hands to take advantage of."<a name="FNanchor_T_20" id="FNanchor_T_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_T_20" class="fnanchor">[T]</a></p>
+
+<p>Shanghai is rapidly becoming the great commercial emporium of China. It
+is situated at the mouth of the Yangtse-Kiang, the largest river of
+Asia, navigable for fifteen hundred miles. Hong-Kong, which has been the
+English centre in China, is nine hundred and sixty miles farther south.</p>
+
+<p>With a line of railway across this continent, the position of England
+would be as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>To</td><td align='left'>Shanghai</td><td align='left'>via</td><td align='left'>Suez,</td><td align='left'>60</td><td align='left'>days.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>Puget Sound,</td><td align='left'>33</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Maciff divides the time as follows by the Puget Sound route:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>Southampton to Halifax,</td><td align='left'>9</td><td align='center'>days.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Halifax to Puget Sound,</td><td align='left'>6</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Puget Sound to Hong-Kong,</td><td align='left'>21</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>36</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>The voyage by Suez is made in the Peninsular and Oriental line of
+steamers. The passage is proverbially comfortless,&mdash;through the Red Sea
+and Persian Gulf, across the Bay of Bengal, through the Straits of
+Malacca, and up the Chinese coast, under a tropical sun. Bayard Taylor
+thus describes the trip down the Red Sea:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We had a violent head-wind, or rather gale. Yet, in spite of this
+current of air, the thermometer stood at 85&deg; on deck, and 90&deg; in the
+cabin. For two or three days we had a temperature of 90&deg; to 95&deg;. This
+part of the Red Sea is considered to be the hottest portion of the
+earth's surface. In the summer the air is like that of a furnace, and
+the bare red mountains glow like heaps of live coals. The steamers at
+that time almost invariably lose some of their firemen and stewards.
+Cooking is quite given up."<a name="FNanchor_U_21" id="FNanchor_U_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_U_21" class="fnanchor">[U]</a></p>
+
+<p>Bankok, Singapore, and Java can be reached more quickly from England by
+Puget Sound than by Suez.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding the discomforts of the passage down the Red Sea, the
+steamers are always overcrowded with passengers, and loaded to their
+utmost capacity with freight. The French line, the Messageries Imperials
+de France, has been established, and is fully employed. Both lines pay
+large dividends.</p>
+
+<p>The growth of the English trade with China during the last sixteen years
+has been very rapid. Tea has increased 1300 per cent, and silk 950.<a name="FNanchor_V_22" id="FNanchor_V_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_V_22" class="fnanchor">[V]</a></p>
+
+<p>The trade between the single port of Shanghai and England and America in
+the two great staples of export is seen from the following statement of
+the export of tea and silk from that port from July 1, 1859, to July 1,
+1860:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>Tea, lbs.</td><td align='left'>Silk, bales.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Great Britain,</td><td align='left'>31,621,000</td><td align='left'>19,084</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>United States,</td><td align='left'>18,299,000</td><td align='left'>1,554</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Canada,</td><td align='left'>1,172,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>France,</td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>47,000</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>The total value of exports from England to China in 1860 was
+$26,590,000. Says Colonel Sykes:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Our trade with China resolves itself into our taking almost exclusively
+from them teas and raw silk, and their taking from us cotton, cotton
+yarns, and woollens."<a name="FNanchor_W_23" id="FNanchor_W_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_W_23" class="fnanchor">[W]</a></p>
+
+<p>The exports of the United States to the Pacific in 1861 were as
+follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>To China,</td><td align='right'>$5,809,724</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Australia,</td><td align='right'>3,410,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Islands of the Pacific</td><td align='right'>484,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>Total,</td><td align='right'>$9,703,724</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>By the late treaty between the United States and China, that empire is
+thrown open to trade; and already a large fleet of American-built
+steamers is afloat on the gleaming waters of the Yang-tse. Mr.
+Burlingame, our present Minister, is soon to take his departure for that
+empire, with instructions to use his utmost endeavor to promote friendly
+relations between the two countries. That this country is to have an
+immense trade with China is evident from the fact that no other country
+can compete with us in the manufacture of coarse cotton goods, which,
+with cotton at its normal price, will be greatly sought after by the
+majority of the people of that country, who of necessity are compelled
+to wear the cheapest clothing.</p>
+
+<p>Shanghai is the silk emporium of the empire. A ton of silk goods is
+worth from ten to fifteen thousand dollars. Nearly all of the silk is
+now shipped by the Peninsular and Oriental line, at a charge of $125 to
+$150 per ton; and notwithstanding these exorbitant rates, Shanghai
+merchants are compelled to make written application weeks in advance,
+and accept proportional allotments for shipping. In May, 1863, the
+screw-steamer Bahama made the trip from Foochow to London in eighty days
+with a cargo of tea, and obtained sixty dollars per ton, while freights
+by sailing vessels were but twenty dollars; the shippers being willing
+to pay forty dollars per ton for forty days' quicker delivery. With the
+Northern Pacific line constructed, the British importer could receive
+his Shanghai goods across this continent in fifty days, and at a rate
+lower than by the Peninsular line.</p>
+
+<p>The route by the Peninsular line runs within eighty miles of the
+Equator; and the entire voyage is through a tropical climate, which
+injures the flavor of the tea. Hence the high price of the celebrated
+"brick tea," brought across the steppes of Russia. The route by Puget
+Sound is wholly through temperate latitudes, across a smooth and
+peaceful sea, seldom vexed by storms, and where currents, like the Gulf
+Stream of Mexico, and favoring trade-winds, may be taken advantage of by
+vessels plying between that port and the Asiatic coast.</p>
+
+<p>Japan is only four thousand miles distant from Puget Sound. The teas and
+silks of that country are rapidly coming into market. Coal is found
+there, and on the island of Formosa, and up the Yang-tse.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CLIMATE</h3>
+
+<p>The climate of Puget Sound is thus set forth by an English writer, who
+has passed several months at Victoria:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"From October to March we are liable to frequent rains; but this period
+of damp is ever and anon relieved by prolonged intervals of bright dry
+weather. In March, winter gives signs of taking its departure, and the
+warm breath of spring begins to cover the trees with tinted buds and the
+fields with verdure.... The sensations produced by the aspects of nature
+in May are indescribably delightful. The freshness of the air, the
+warbling of birds, the clearness of the sky, the profusion and fragrance
+of wild roses, the widespread, variegated hues of buttercups and
+daisies, the islets and violets, together with the distant snow-peaks
+bursting upon the view, combine in that month to fill the mind with
+enchantment unequalled out of Paradise. I know gentlemen who have lived
+in China, Italy, Canada, and England; but, after a residence of some
+years in Vancouver Island, they entertained a preference for the climate
+of the colony which approached affectionate enthusiasm."<a name="FNanchor_X_24" id="FNanchor_X_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_X_24" class="fnanchor">[X]</a></p>
+
+<p>The climate of the whole section through which the line passes is
+milder<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> than that of the Grand Trunk line. The lowest degree of
+temperature in 1853&mdash;54 at Quebec was 29 below zero; Montreal, 34; St.
+Paul, 36; Bitter Root Valley, forty miles from Big Hole Pass, 20.</p>
+
+<p>In 1858 a party of Royal Engineers, under Captain Pallissir, surveyed
+the country of the Saskatchawan for a line to Puget Sound which should
+lie wholly within the British possessions. They found a level and
+fertile country, receding to the very base of the mountains, and a
+practicable pass, of less altitude than those at the head-waters of the
+Missouri; but in winter the snow is deep and the climate severe. That
+section of Canada north of Superior is an unbroken, uninhabitable
+wilderness. The character of the region is thus set forth by Agassiz. He
+says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Unless the mines should attract and support a population, one sees not
+how this region should ever be inhabited. Its stern and northern
+character is shown in nothing more clearly than in the scarcity of
+animals. The woods are silent, and as if deserted. One may walk for
+hours without hearing an animal sound; and when he does, it is of a wild
+and lonely character.... It is like being transported to the early ages
+of the earth, when mosses and pines had just begun to cover the primeval
+rock, and the animals as yet ventured timidly forth into the new
+world."<a name="FNanchor_Y_25" id="FNanchor_Y_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_Y_25" class="fnanchor">[Y]</a></p>
+
+
+<h3>THE FUTURE.</h3>
+
+<p>The census returns of the United States indicate that, thirty-four years
+hence, in the year 1900, the population of this country will exceed one
+hundred millions. What an outlook! The country a teeming hive of
+industry; innumerable sails whitening the Western Ocean; unnumbered
+steamers ploughing its peaceful waters; great cities in the unexplored
+solitudes of to-day; America the highway of the nations; and New York
+the banking-house of the world!</p>
+
+<p>This is the age of the people. They are the sovereigns of the future. It
+is the age of ideas. The people of America stand on the threshold of a
+new era. We are to come in contact with a people numbering nearly half
+the population of the globe, claiming a nationality dating back to the
+time of Moses. A hundred thousand Chinese are in California and Oregon,
+and every ship sailing into the harbor of San Francisco brings its load
+of emigrants from Asia. What is to be the effect of this contact with
+the Orient upon our civilization? What the result of this pouring in of
+emigrants from every country of the world,&mdash;of all languages, manners,
+customs, nationalities, and religions? Can they be assimilated into a
+homogeneous mass? These are grave questions, demanding the earnest and
+careful consideration of every Christian, philanthropist, and patriot.
+We have fought for existence, and have a name among the nations. But we
+have still the nation to save. Railroads, telegraphs, steamships,
+printing-presses, schools, platforms, and pulpits are the agents of
+modern civilization. Through them we are to secure unity, strength, and
+national life. Securing these, Asia may send over her millions of
+idol-worshippers without detriment to ourselves. With these, America is
+to give life to the long-slumbering Orient.</p>
+
+<p>So ever toward the setting sun the course of empire takes its way,&mdash;not
+the empire of despotism, but of life, liberty,&mdash;of civilization and the
+Christian religion.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_D_4" id="Footnote_D_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_4"><span class="label">[D]</span></a> Lewis and Clark's Expedition to the Columbia, Vol. II. p.
+392.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_E_5" id="Footnote_E_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_E_5"><span class="label">[E]</span></a> Ibid., p. 397.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_F_6" id="Footnote_F_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_F_6"><span class="label">[F]</span></a> See Pacific Railroad Report, Vol. I. p. 239.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_G_7" id="Footnote_G_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_G_7"><span class="label">[G]</span></a> Idaho: Six Months among the New Gold Diggings, by J. L.
+Campbell, pp. 15-28.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_H_8" id="Footnote_H_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_H_8"><span class="label">[H]</span></a> Pacific Railroad Report, Vol. I. p. 130.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_I_9" id="Footnote_I_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_I_9"><span class="label">[I]</span></a> Ibid., Vol. XII. p. 169.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_J_10" id="Footnote_J_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_J_10"><span class="label">[J]</span></a> Governor Stevens's Report of the Pacific Railroad Survey.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_K_11" id="Footnote_K_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_K_11"><span class="label">[K]</span></a> Pacific Railroad Survey. Lieutenant Mullan's Report.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_L_12" id="Footnote_L_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_L_12"><span class="label">[L]</span></a> Lieutenant Mullan's Report on the Construction of Wagon
+Road from Fort Benton to Walla-Walla, p. 45.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_M_13" id="Footnote_M_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_M_13"><span class="label">[M]</span></a> New York Tribune, December 2, 1865, correspondence of "A.
+D. R."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_N_14" id="Footnote_N_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_N_14"><span class="label">[N]</span></a> Report of Captain Mullan, p. 54.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_O_15" id="Footnote_O_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_O_15"><span class="label">[O]</span></a> Report of Captain Mullan, p. 54.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_P_16" id="Footnote_P_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_P_16"><span class="label">[P]</span></a> Hall's Guide,&mdash;via Omaha, Denver, and Salt Lake.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_Q_17" id="Footnote_Q_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_Q_17"><span class="label">[Q]</span></a> Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, 1857.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_R_18" id="Footnote_R_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_R_18"><span class="label">[R]</span></a> Paper read before the British North American Association,
+July 21, 1864.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_S_19" id="Footnote_S_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_S_19"><span class="label">[S]</span></a> Vancouver's Island and British Columbia, Maciff, p. 343.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_T_20" id="Footnote_T_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_T_20"><span class="label">[T]</span></a> Speech by Lord Bury, quoted by Maciff.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_U_21" id="Footnote_U_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_U_21"><span class="label">[U]</span></a> India, China, and Japan, p. 23.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_V_22" id="Footnote_V_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_V_22"><span class="label">[V]</span></a> Statistical Journal, 1862.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_W_23" id="Footnote_W_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_W_23"><span class="label">[W]</span></a> Statistical Journal, 1862, p. 15.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_X_24" id="Footnote_X_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_X_24"><span class="label">[X]</span></a> Vancouver and British Columbia, Maciff, p. 179.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_Y_25" id="Footnote_Y_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_Y_25"><span class="label">[Y]</span></a> Agassiz, Lake Superior, p. 124.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IN_THE_SEA" id="IN_THE_SEA"></a>IN THE SEA.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The salt wind blows upon my cheek<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As it blew a year ago,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When twenty boats were crushed among<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The rocks of Norman's Woe.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Twas dark then; 't is light now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the sails are leaning low.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In dreams, I pull the sea-weed o'er,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And find a face not his,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hope another tide will be<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">More pitying than this:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wind turns, the tide turns,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They take what hope there is.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My life goes on as thine would go,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With all its sweetness spilled:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My God, why should one heart of two<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Beat on, when one is stilled?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through heart-wreck, or home-wreck,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thy happy sparrows build.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Though boats go down, men build anew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whatever winds may blow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If blight be in the wheat one year,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We trust again and sow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though grief comes, and changes<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The sunshine into snow.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Some have their dead, where, sweet and soon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The summers bloom and go:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sea withholds my dead,&mdash;I walk<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The bar when tides are low,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wonder the grave-grass<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Can have the heart to grow!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Flow on, O unconsenting sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And keep my dead below;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though night&mdash;O utter night!&mdash;my soul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Delude thee long, I know,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or Life comes or Death comes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">God leads the eternal flow.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_CHIMNEY-CORNER_FOR_1866" id="THE_CHIMNEY-CORNER_FOR_1866"></a>THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<h4>IS WOMAN A WORKER?</h4>
+
+<p>"Papa, do you see what the Evening Post says of your New-Year's article
+on Reconstruction?" said Jennie, as we were all sitting in the library
+after tea.</p>
+
+<p>"I have not seen it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, the charming writer, whoever he is, takes up for us girls
+and women, and maintains that no work of any sort ought to be expected
+of us; that our only mission in life is to be beautiful, and to refresh
+and elevate the spirits of men by being so. If I get a husband, my
+mission is to be always becomingly dressed, to display most captivating
+toilettes, and to be always in good spirits,&mdash;as, under the
+circumstances, I always should be,&mdash;and thus 'renew his spirits' when he
+comes in weary with the toils of life. Household cares are to be far
+from me: they destroy my cheerfulness and injure my beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"He says that the New England standard of excellence as applied to woman
+has been a mistaken one; and, in consequence, though the girls are
+beautiful, the matrons are faded, overworked, and uninteresting; and
+that such a state of society tends to immorality, because, when wives
+are no longer charming, men are open to the temptation to desert their
+firesides, and get into mischief generally. He seems particularly to
+complain of your calling ladies who do nothing the 'fascinating
+<i>lazzaroni</i> of the parlor and boudoir.'"</p>
+
+<p>"There was too much truth back of that arrow not to wound," said
+Theophilus Thoro, who was ensconced, as usual, in his dark corner,
+whence he supervises our discussions.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Mr. Thoro, we won't have any of your bitter moralities," said
+Jennie; "they are only to be taken as the invariable bay-leaf which
+Professor Blot introduces into all his recipes for soups and stews,&mdash;a
+little elegant bitterness, to be kept tastefully in the background. You
+see now, papa, I should like the vocation of being beautiful. It would
+just suit me to wear point-lace and jewelry, and to have life revolve
+round me, as some beautiful star, and feel that I had nothing to do but
+shine and refresh the spirits of all gazers, and that in this way I was
+truly useful, and fulfilling the great end of my being; but alas for
+this doctrine! all women have not beauty. The most of us can only hope
+not to be called ill-looking, and, when we get ourselves up with care,
+to look fresh and trim and agreeable; which fact interferes with the
+theory."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, for my part," said young Rudolph, "I go for the theory of the
+beautiful. If ever I marry, it is to find an asylum for ideality. I
+don't want to make a culinary marriage or a business partnership. I want
+a being whom I can keep in a sphere of poetry and beauty, out of the
+dust and grime of every-day life."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said Mr. Theophilus, "you must either be a rich man in your own
+right, or your fair ideal must have a handsome fortune of her own."</p>
+
+<p>"I never will marry a rich wife," quoth Rudolph. "My wife must be
+supported by me, not I by her."</p>
+
+<p>Rudolph is another of the <i>habitu&eacute;s</i> of our chimney-corner, representing
+the order of young knighthood in America, and his dreams and fancies, if
+impracticable, are always of a kind to make every one think him a good
+fellow. He who has no romantic dreams at twenty-one will be a horribly
+dry peascod at fifty; therefore it is that I gaze reverently at all
+Rudolph's chateaus in Spain,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> which want nothing to complete them except
+solid earth to stand on.</p>
+
+<p>"And pray," said Theophilus, "how long will it take a young lawyer or
+physician, starting with no heritage but his own brain, to create a
+sphere of poetry and beauty in which to keep his goddess? How much a
+year will be necessary, as the English say, to <i>do</i> this garden of Eden,
+whereinto shall enter only the poetry of life?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I haven't seen it near enough to consider. It is because
+I know the difficulty of its attainment that I have no present thoughts
+of marriage. Marriage is to me in the bluest of all blue distances,&mdash;far
+off, mysterious, and dreamy as the Mountains of the Moon or sources of
+the Nile. It shall come only when I have secured a fortune that shall
+place my wife above all necessity of work or care."</p>
+
+<p>"I desire to hear from you," said Theophilus, "when you have found the
+sum that will keep a woman from care. I know of women now inhabiting
+palaces, waited on at every turn by servants, with carriages, horses,
+jewels, laces, cashmeres, enough for princesses, who are eaten up by
+care. One lies awake all night on account of a wrinkle in the waist of
+her dress; another is dying because no silk of a certain inexpressible
+shade is to be found in New York; a third has had a dress sent home,
+which has proved such a failure that life seems no longer worth having.
+If it were not for the consolations of religion, one doesn't know what
+would become of her. The fact is, that care and labor are as much
+correlated to human existence as shadow is to light; there is no such
+thing as excluding them from any mortal lot. You may make a canary-bird
+or a gold-fish live in absolute contentment without a care or labor, but
+a human being you cannot. Human beings are restless and active in their
+very nature, and will do something, and that something will prove a
+care, a labor, and a fatigue, arrange it how you will. As long as there
+is anything to be desired and not yet attained, so long its attainment
+will be attempted; so long as that attainment is doubtful or difficult,
+so long will there be care and anxiety. When boundless wealth releases
+woman from every family care, she immediately makes herself a new set of
+cares in another direction, and has just as many anxieties as the most
+toilful housekeeper, only they are of a different kind. Talk of labor,
+and look at the upper classes in London or in New York in the
+fashionable season. Do any women work harder? To rush from crowd to
+crowd all night, night after night, seeing what they are tired of,
+making the agreeable over an abyss of inward yawning, crowded, jostled,
+breathing hot air, and crushed in halls and stairways, without a moment
+of leisure for months and months, till brain and nerve and sense reel,
+and the country is longed for as a period of resuscitation and relief!
+Such is the release from labor and fatigue brought by wealth. The only
+thing that makes all this labor at all endurable is, that it is utterly
+and entirely useless, and does not good to any one in creation; this
+alone makes it genteel, and distinguishes it from the vulgar toils of a
+housekeeper. These delicate creatures, who can go to three or four
+parties a night for three months, would be utterly desolate if they had
+to watch one night in a sick-room; and though they can exhibit any
+amount of physical endurance and vigor in crowding into assembly rooms,
+and breathe tainted air in an opera-house with the most martyr-like
+constancy, they could not sit one half-hour in the close room where the
+sister of charity spends hours in consoling the sick or aged poor."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Theophilus is quite at home now," said Jennie; "only start him on
+the track of fashionable life, and he takes the course like a hound. But
+hear, now, our champion of the Evening Post:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'The instinct of women to seek a life of repose, their eagerness to
+attain the life of elegance, does not mean contempt for labor, but it is
+the confession of unfitness for labor. Women were not intended to
+work,&mdash;not because work is ignoble, but because it is as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> disastrous to
+the beauty of a woman as is friction to the bloom and softness of a
+flower. Woman is to be kept in the garden of life; she is to rest, to
+receive, to praise; she is to be kept from the workshop world, where
+innocence is snatched with rude hands, and softness is blistered into
+unsightliness or hardened into adamant. No social truth is more in need
+of exposition and illustration than this one; and, above all, the people
+of New England need to know it, and, better, they need to believe it.</p>
+
+<p>"'It is therefore with regret that we discover Christopher Crowfield
+applying so harshly, and, as we think, so indiscriminatingly, the theory
+of work to women, and teaching a society made up of women sacrificed in
+the workshops of the state, or to the dust-pans and kitchens of the
+house, that women must work, ought to work, and are dishonored if they
+do not work; and that a woman committed to the drudgery of a household
+is more creditably employed than when she is charming, fascinating,
+irresistible, in the parlor or boudoir. The consequence of this fatal
+mistake is manifest throughout New England,&mdash;in New England, where the
+girls are all beautiful and the wives and mothers faded, disfigured, and
+without charm or attractiveness. The moment a girl marries in New
+England she is apt to become a drudge, or a lay figure on which to
+exhibit the latest fashions. She never has beautiful hands, and she
+would not have a beautiful face if a utilitarian society could "apply"
+her face to anything but the pleasure of the eye. Her hands lose their
+shape and softness after childhood, and domestic drudgery destroys her
+beauty of form and softness and bloom of complexion after marriage. To
+correct, or rather to break up, this despotism of household cares, or of
+work, over woman, American society must be taught that women will
+inevitably fade and deteriorate, unless it insures repose and comfort to
+them. It must be taught that reverence for beauty is the normal
+condition, while the theory of work, applied to women, is disastrous
+alike to beauty and morals. Work, when it is destructive to men or
+women, is forced and unjust.</p>
+
+<p>"'All the great masculine or creative epochs have been distinguished by
+spontaneous work on the part of men, and universal reverence and care
+for beauty. The praise of work, and sacrifice of women to this great
+heartless devil of work, belong only to, and are the social doctrine of,
+a mechanical age and a utilitarian epoch. And if the New England idea of
+social life continues to bear so cruelly on woman, we shall have a
+reaction somewhat unexpected and shocking.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Well now, say what you will," said Rudolph, "you have expressed my idea
+of the conditions of the sex. Woman was not made to work; she was made
+to be taken care of by man. All that is severe and trying, whether in
+study or in practical life, is and ought to be in its very nature
+essentially the work of the male sex. The value of woman is precisely
+the value of those priceless works of art for which we build
+museums,&mdash;which we shelter and guard as the world's choicest heritage;
+and a lovely, cultivated, refined woman, thus sheltered, and guarded,
+and developed, has a worth that cannot be estimated by any gross,
+material standard. So I subscribe to the sentiments of Miss Jennie's
+friend without scruple."</p>
+
+<p>"The great trouble in settling all these society questions," said I,
+"lies in the gold-washing,&mdash;the cradling I think the miners call it. If
+all the quartz were in one stratum and all the gold in another, it would
+save us a vast deal of trouble. In the ideas of Jennie's friend of the
+Evening Post there is a line of truth and a line of falsehood so
+interwoven and threaded together that it is impossible wholly to assent
+or dissent. So with your ideas, Rudolph, there is a degree of truth in
+them, but there is also a fallacy.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a truth, that woman as a sex ought not to do the hard work of the
+world, either social, intellectual, or moral. There are evidences in her
+physiology that this was not intended for her, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> our friend of the
+Evening Post is right in saying that any country will advance more
+rapidly in civilization and refinement where woman is thus sheltered and
+protected. And I think, furthermore, that there is no country in the
+world where women <i>are</i> so much considered and cared for and sheltered,
+in every walk of life, as in America. In England and France,&mdash;all over
+the continent of Europe, in fact,&mdash;the other sex are deferential to
+women only from some presumption of their social standing, or from the
+fact of acquaintanceship; but among strangers, and under circumstances
+where no particular rank or position can be inferred, a woman travelling
+in England or France is jostled and pushed to the wall, and left to take
+her own chance, precisely as if she were not a woman. Deference to
+delicacy and weakness, the instinct of protection, does not appear to
+characterize the masculine population of any other quarter of the world
+so much as that of America. In France, <i>les Messieurs</i> will form a
+circle round the fire in the receiving-room of a railroad station, and
+sit, tranquilly smoking their cigars, while ladies who do not happen to
+be of their acquaintance are standing shivering at the other side of the
+room. In England, if a lady is incautiously booked for an outside place
+on a coach, in hope of seeing the scenery, and the day turns out
+hopelessly rainy, no gentleman in the coach below ever thinks of
+offering to change seats with her, though it pour torrents. In America,
+the roughest backwoods steamboat or canal-boat captain always, as a
+matter of course, considers himself charged with the protection of the
+ladies. '<i>Place aux dames</i>' is written in the heart of many a shaggy
+fellow who could not utter a French word any more than could a buffalo.
+It is just as I have before said,&mdash;women are the recognized aristocracy,
+the <i>only</i> aristocracy, of America; and, so far from regarding this fact
+as objectionable, it is an unceasing source of pride in my country.</p>
+
+<p>"That kind of knightly feeling towards woman which reverences her
+delicacy, her frailty, which protects and cares for her, is, I think,
+the crown of manhood; and without it a man is only a rough animal. But
+our fair aristocrats and their knightly defenders need to be cautioned
+lest they lose their position, as many privileged orders have before
+done, by an arrogant and selfish use of power.</p>
+
+<p>"I have said that the vices of aristocracy are more developed among
+women in America than among men, and that, while there are no men in the
+Northern States who are not ashamed of living a merely idle life of
+pleasure, there are many women who make a boast of helplessness and
+ignorance in woman's family duties which any man would be ashamed to
+make with regard to man's duties, as if such helplessness and ignorance
+were a grace and a charm.</p>
+
+<p>"There are women who contentedly live on, year after year, a life of
+idleness, while the husband and father is straining every nerve, growing
+prematurely old and gray, abridged of almost every form of recreation or
+pleasure,&mdash;all that he may keep them in a state of careless ease and
+festivity. It may be very fine, very generous, very knightly, in the man
+who thus toils at the oar that his princesses may enjoy their painted
+voyages; but what is it for the women?</p>
+
+<p>"A woman is a moral being,&mdash;an immortal soul,&mdash;before she is a woman;
+and as such she is charged by her Maker with some share of the great
+burden of <i>work</i> which lies on the world.</p>
+
+<p>"Self-denial, the bearing of the cross, are stated by Christ as
+indispensable conditions to the entrance into his kingdom, and no
+exception is made for man or woman. Some task, some burden, some cross,
+each one must carry; and there must be something done in every true and
+worthy life, not as amusement, but as duty,&mdash;not as play, but as earnest
+<i>work</i>,&mdash;and no human being can attain to the Christian standard without
+this.</p>
+
+<p>"When Jesus Christ took a towel and girded himself, poured water into a
+basin, and washed his disciples' feet, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> performed a significant and
+sacramental act, which no man or woman should ever forget. If wealth and
+rank and power absolve from the services of life, then certainly were
+Jesus Christ absolved, as he says,&mdash;'Ye call me Master, and Lord. If I,
+then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash
+one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do
+as I have done to you.'</p>
+
+<p>"Let a man who seeks to make a terrestrial paradise for the woman of his
+heart,&mdash;to absolve her from all care, from all labor,&mdash;to teach her to
+accept and to receive the labor of others without any attempt to offer
+labor in return,&mdash;consider whether he is not thus going directly against
+the fundamental idea of Christianity,&mdash;taking the direct way to make his
+idol selfish and exacting, to rob her of the highest and noblest beauty
+of womanhood.</p>
+
+<p>"In that chapter of the Bible where the relation between man and woman
+is stated, it is thus said, with quaint simplicity:&mdash;'It is not good
+that the man should be alone; I will make him an <i>help meet</i> for him.'
+Woman the <i>helper</i> of man, not his toy,&mdash;not a picture, not a statue,
+not a work of art, but a <span class="smcap">helper</span>, a doer,&mdash;such is the view of the Bible
+and the Christian religion.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not necessary that women should work physically or morally to an
+extent which impairs beauty. In France, where woman is harnessed with an
+ass to the plough which her husband drives,&mdash;where she digs, and wields
+the pick-axe,&mdash;she becomes prematurely hideous; but in America, where
+woman reigns as queen in every household, she may surely be a good and
+thoughtful housekeeper, she may have physical strength exercised in
+lighter domestic toils, not only without injuring her beauty, but with
+manifest advantage to it. Almost every growing young girl would be the
+better in health, and therefore handsomer, for two hours of active
+housework daily; and the habit of usefulness thereby gained would be an
+equal advantage to her moral development. The labors of modern,
+well-arranged houses are not in any sense severe; they are as gentle as
+any kind of exercise that can be devised, and they bring into play
+muscles that ought to be exercised to be healthily developed.</p>
+
+<p>"The great danger to the beauty of American women does not lie, as the
+writer of the Post contends, in an overworking of the physical system
+which shall stunt and deform; on the contrary, American women of the
+comfortable classes are in danger of a loss of physical beauty from the
+entire deterioration of the muscular system for want of exercise. Take
+the life of any American girl in one of our large towns, and see what it
+is. We have an educational system of public schools which for
+intellectual culture is a just matter of pride to any country. From the
+time that the girl is seven years old, her first thought, when she rises
+in the morning, is to eat her breakfast and be off to her school. There
+really is no more time than enough to allow her to make that complete
+toilet which every well-bred female ought to make, and to take her
+morning meal before her school begins. She returns at noon with just
+time to eat her dinner, and the afternoon session begins. She comes home
+at night with books, slate, and lessons enough to occupy her evening.
+What time is there for teaching her any household work, for teaching her
+to cut or fit or sew, or to inspire her with any taste for domestic
+duties? Her arms have no exercise; her chest and lungs, and all the
+complex system of muscles which are to be perfected by quick and active
+movement, are compressed while she bends over book and slate and
+drawing-board; while the ever-active brain is kept all the while going
+at the top of its speed. She grows up spare, thin, and delicate; and
+while the Irish girl, who sweeps the parlors, rubs the silver, and irons
+the muslins, is developing a finely rounded arm and bust, the American
+girl has a pair of bones at her sides, and a bust composed of cotton
+padding, the work of a skilful dressmaker. Nature,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> who is no respecter
+of persons, gives to Colleen Bawn, who uses her arms and chest, a beauty
+which perishes in the gentle, languid Edith, who does nothing but study
+and read."</p>
+
+<p>"But is it not a fact," said Rudolph, "as stated by our friend of the
+Post, that American matrons are perishing, and their beauty and grace
+all withered, from overwork?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is," said my wife; "but why? It is because they are brought up
+without vigor or muscular strength, without the least practical
+experience of household labor, or those means of saving it which come by
+daily practice; and then, after marriage, when physically weakened by
+maternity, embarrassed by the care of young children, they are often
+suddenly deserted by every efficient servant, and the whole machinery of
+a complicated household left in their weak, inexperienced hands. In the
+country, you see a household perhaps made void some fine morning by
+Biddy's sudden departure, and nobody to make the bread, or cook the
+steak, or sweep the parlors, or do one of the complicated offices of a
+family, and no bakery, cookshop, or laundry to turn to for alleviation.
+A lovely, refined home becomes in a few hours a howling desolation; and
+then ensues a long season of breakage, waste, distraction, as one wild
+Irish immigrant after another introduces the style of Irish cottage life
+into an elegant dwelling.</p>
+
+<p>"Now suppose I grant to the Evening Post that woman ought to rest, to be
+kept in the garden of life, and all that, how is this to be done in a
+country where a state of things like this is the commonest of
+occurrences? And is it any kindness or reverence to woman, to educate
+her for such an inevitable destiny by a life of complete physical
+delicacy and incapacity? Many a woman who has been brought into these
+cruel circumstances would willingly exchange all her knowledge of German
+and Italian, and all her graceful accomplishments, for a good physical
+development, and some respectable <i>savoir faire</i> in ordinary life.</p>
+
+<p>"Moreover, American matrons are overworked because some unaccountable
+glamour leads them to continue to bring up their girls in the same
+inefficient physical habits which resulted in so much misery to
+themselves. Housework as they are obliged to do it, untrained, untaught,
+exhausted, and in company with rude, dirty, unkempt foreigners, seems to
+them a degradation which they will spare to their daughters. The
+daughter goes on with her schools and accomplishments, and leads in the
+family the life of an elegant little visitor during all those years when
+a young girl might be gradually developing and strengthening her muscles
+in healthy household work. It never occurs to her that she can or ought
+to fill any of these domestic gaps into which her mother always steps;
+and she comforts herself with the thought, 'I don't know how; I can't; I
+haven't the strength. I <i>cant'</i> sweep; it blisters my hands. If I should
+stand at the ironing-table an hour, I should be ill for a week. As to
+cooking, I don't know anything about it.' And so, when the cook, or the
+chambermaid, or nurse, or all together, vacate the premises, it is the
+mamma who is successively cook, and chambermaid, and nurse; and this is
+the reason why matrons fade and are overworked.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Mr. Rudolph, do you think a woman any less beautiful or
+interesting because she is a fully developed physical being,&mdash;because
+her muscles have been rounded and matured into strength, so that she can
+meet the inevitable emergencies of life without feeling them to be
+distressing hardships? If there be a competent, well-trained servant to
+sweep and dust the parlor, and keep all the machinery of the house in
+motion, she may very properly select her work out of the family, in some
+form of benevolent helpfulness; but when the inevitable evil hour comes,
+which is likely to come first or last in every American household, is a
+woman any less an elegant woman because her love of neatness, order, and
+beauty leads her to make vigorous personal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> exertions to keep her own
+home undefiled? For my part, I think a disorderly, ill-kept home, a
+sordid, uninviting table, has driven more husbands from domestic life
+than the unattractiveness of any overworked woman. So long as a woman
+makes her home harmonious and orderly, so long as the hour of assembling
+around the family table is something to be looked forward to as a
+comfort and a refreshment, a man cannot see that the good house fairy,
+who by some magic keeps everything so delightfully, has either a wrinkle
+or a gray hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides," said I, "I must tell you, Rudolph, what you fellows of
+twenty-one are slow to believe; and that is, that the kind of ideal
+paradise you propose in marriage is, in the very nature of things, an
+impossibility,&mdash;that the familiarities of every-day life between two
+people who keep house together must and will destroy it. Suppose you are
+married to Cytherea herself, and the next week attacked with a rheumatic
+fever. If the tie between you is that of true and honest love, Cytherea
+will put on a gingham wrapper, and with her own sculptured hands wring
+out the flannels which shall relieve your pains; and she will be no true
+woman if she do not prefer to do this to employing any nurse that could
+be hired. True love ennobles and dignifies the material labors of life;
+and homely services rendered for love's sake have in them a poetry that
+is immortal.</p>
+
+<p>"No true-hearted woman can find herself, in real, actual life, unskilled
+and unfit to minister to the wants and sorrows of those dearest to her,
+without a secret sense of degradation. The feeling of uselessness is an
+extremely unpleasant one. Tom Hood, in a very humorous paper, describes
+a most accomplished schoolmistress, a teacher of all the arts and crafts
+which are supposed to make up fine gentlewomen, who is stranded in a
+rude German inn, with her father writhing in the anguish of a severe
+attack of gastric inflammation. The helpless lady gazes on her suffering
+parent, longing to help him, and thinking over all her various little
+store of accomplishments, not one of which bear the remotest relation to
+the case. She could knit him a bead-purse, or make him a guard-chain, or
+work him a footstool, or festoon him with cut tissue-paper, or sketch
+his likeness, or crust him over with alum crystals, or stick him over
+with little rosettes of red and white wafers; but none of these being
+applicable to his present case, she sits gazing in resigned imbecility,
+till finally she desperately resolves to improvise him some gruel, and,
+after a laborious turn in the kitchen,&mdash;after burning her dress and
+blacking her fingers,&mdash;succeeds only in bringing him a bowl of <i>paste</i>!</p>
+
+<p>"Not unlike this might be the feeling of many and elegant and
+accomplished woman, whose education has taught and practised her in
+everything that woman ought to know, except those identical ones which
+fit her for the care of a home, for the comfort of a sick-room; and so I
+say again, that, whatever a woman may be in the way of beauty and
+elegance, she must have the strength and skill of a <i>practical worker</i>,
+or she is nothing. She is not simply to <i>be</i> the beautiful,&mdash;she is to
+<i>make</i> the beautiful, and preserve it; and she who makes and she who
+keeps the beautiful must be able <i>to work</i>, and to know how to work.
+Whatever offices of life are performed by women of culture and
+refinement are thenceforth elevated; they cease to be mere servile
+toils, and become expressions of the ideas of superior beings. If a true
+lady makes even a plate of toast, in arranging a <i>petit souper</i> for her
+invalid friend, she does it as a lady should. She does not cut
+blundering and uneven slices; she does not burn the edges; she does not
+deluge it with bad butter, and serve it cold; but she arranges and
+serves all with an artistic care, with a nicety and delicacy, which make
+it worth one's while to have a lady friend in sickness.</p>
+
+<p>"And I am glad to hear that Monsieur Blot is teaching classes of New
+York ladies that cooking is not a vulgar kitchen toil, to be left to
+blundering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> servants, but an elegant feminine accomplishment, better
+worth a woman's learning than crochet or embroidery; and that a
+well-kept culinary apartment may be so inviting and orderly that no lady
+need feel her ladyhood compromised by participating in its pleasant
+toils. I am glad to know that his cooking academy is thronged with more
+scholars than he can accommodate, and from ladies in the best classes of
+society.</p>
+
+<p>"Moreover, I am glad to see that in New Bedford, recently, a public
+course of instruction in the art of bread-making has been commenced by a
+lady, and that classes of the most respectable young and married ladies
+in the place are attending them.</p>
+
+<p>"These are steps in the right direction, and show that our fair
+country-women, with the grand good sense which is their leading
+characteristic, are resolved to supply whatever in our national life is
+wanting.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not fear that women of such sense and energy will listen to the
+sophistries which would persuade them that elegant imbecility and
+inefficiency are charms of cultivated womanhood or ingredients in the
+poetry of life. She alone can keep the poetry and beauty of married life
+who has this poetry in her soul; who with energy and discretion can
+throw back and out of sight the sordid and disagreeable details which
+beset all human living, and can keep in the foreground that which is
+agreeable; who has enough knowledge of practical household matters to
+make unskilled and rude hands minister to her cultivated and refined
+tastes, and constitute her skilled brain the guide of unskilled hands.
+From such a home, with such a mistress, no sirens will seduce a man,
+even though the hair grow gray, and the merely physical charms of early
+days gradually pass away. The enchantment that was about her person
+alone in the days of courtship seems in the course of years to have
+interfused and penetrated the <i>home</i> which she has created, and which in
+every detail is only an expression of her personality. Her thoughts, her
+plans, her provident care, are everywhere; and the <i>home</i> attracts and
+holds by a thousand ties the heart which before marriage was held by the
+woman alone."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="POOR_CHLOE" id="POOR_CHLOE"></a>POOR CHLOE.</h2>
+
+<h3>A TRUE STORY OF MASSACHUSETTS IN THE OLDEN TIME.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Let not ambition mock their useful toil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The short and simple annals of the poor."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8"><span class="smcap">Gray's</span> <i>Elegy</i>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>It was a long, long time ago, before the flame of gas was seen in the
+streets, or the sounds of the railroad were heard in the land; so long
+before, that, had any prophet then living foretold such magical doings,
+he would have been deemed a fit inhabitant of Bedlam. In those primitive
+times, the Widow Lawton was considered a rich woman, though her income
+would not go far toward clothing a city-fashionable in these days. She
+owned a convenient house on the sea-shore, some twelve or fifteen miles
+from Cape Ann; she cultivated ten acres of sandy soil, and had a
+well-tended fish-flake a quarter of a mile long. To own an extensive
+fish-flake was, in that neighborhood, a sure sign of being well to do in
+the world. The process of transmuting it into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> money was slow and
+circuitous; but those were not fast days. The fish were to be caught,
+and cleaned, and salted, and spread on the flake, and turned day after
+day till thoroughly dry. Then they were packed, and sent in vessels to
+Maryland or Virginia, to be exchanged for flour or tobacco; then the
+flour and tobacco were sold in foreign ports, and silks, muslins, and
+other articles of luxury procured with the money.</p>
+
+<p>The Widow Lawton was a notable, stirring woman, and it was generally
+agreed that no one in that region kept a sharper look-out for the main
+chance. Nobody sent better fish to market; nobody had such good luck in
+hiving bees; nobody could spin more knots of yarn in a day, or weave
+such handsome table-cloths. Great was her store of goodies for the
+winter. The smoke-house was filled with hams, and the ceiling of the
+kitchen was festooned with dried apples and pumpkins. In summer, there
+was a fly-cage suspended from the centre. It was made of bristles, in a
+sort of basket-work, in which were arranged bits of red, yellow, and
+green woollen cloth tipped with honey. Flies, deceived by the fair
+appearance, sipped the honey, and remained glued to the woollen; their
+black bodies serving to set off the bright colors to advantage. In those
+days, such a cage was considered a very genteel ornament for a New
+England kitchen. Rich men sometimes have their coats of arms sketched on
+the floor in colored crayons, to be effaced in one night by the feet of
+dancers. The Widow Lawton ornamented her kitchen floor in a manner as
+ephemeral, though less expensive. Every afternoon it was strewn with
+white sand from the beach, and marked all over with the broom in a
+herring-bone pattern; a very suitable coat of arms for the owner of a
+fish-flake. In the parlor was an ingrained carpet, the admiration and
+envy of the neighborhood. A large glass was surmounted by a gilded eagle
+upholding a chain,&mdash;prophetic of the principal employment of the bird of
+freedom for three quarters of a century thereafter. In the Franklin
+fireplace, tall brass andirons, brightly burnished, gleamed through a
+feathery forest of asparagus, interspersed with scarlet berries. The
+high, mahogany case of drawers, grown black with time, and lustrous with
+much waxing, had innumerable great drawers and little drawers, all
+resplendent with brass ornaments, kept as bright as new gold.</p>
+
+<p>The Widow was accustomed to say, "It takes a good deal of elbow-grease
+to keep everything trig and shiny"; and though she was by no means
+sparing of her own, the neat and thriving condition of the household and
+the premises was largely owing to the black Chloe, her slave and
+servant-of-all-work. When Chloe was a babe strapped on her mother's
+shoulders, they were stolen from Africa and packed in a ship. What
+became of her mother she knew not. How the Widow Lawton obtained the
+right to make her work from morning till night, without wages, she never
+inquired. It had always been so, ever since she could remember, and she
+had heard the minister say, again and again, that it was an ordination
+of Providence. She did not know what ordination was, or who Providence
+was; but she had a vague idea that both were up in the sky, and that she
+had nothing to do but submit to them. So year after year she patiently
+cooked meals, and weeded the garden, and cut and dried the apples, and
+scoured the brasses, and sanded the floor in herring-bone pattern, and
+tended the fish-flake till the profitable crop of the sea was ready for
+market. There was a melancholy expression in the eyes of poor, ignorant
+Chloe, which seemed to indicate that there might be in her soul a
+fountain that was deep, though it was sealed by the heavy stone of
+slavery. Carlyle said of a dog that howled at the moon, "He would have
+been a poet, if he could have found a publisher." And Chloe, though she
+never thought about the Infinite, was sometimes impressed with a feeling
+of its mysterious presence, as she walked back and forth tending the
+fish-flake; with the sad song of the sea forever resounding in her ears,
+and a glittering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> orb of light sailing through the great blue arch over
+her head, and at evening sinking into the waves amid a gorgeous drapery
+of clouds. When the moon looked on the sea, the sealed fountain within
+her soul was strangely stirred. The shadow of rocks on the beach, the
+white sails of fishing-boats glimmering in the distance, the everlasting
+sighing of the sea, made her think of ghosts; though the oppressive
+feeling never shaped itself into words, except in the statement, "I'se
+sort o' feared o' moonlight." So poor Chloe paced her small round upon
+the earth, as unconscious as the ant in her molehill that she was
+whirling round among the stars. The extent of her moral development was,
+that it was her duty to obey her mistress and believe all the minister
+said. She had often been told that was sufficient for her salvation, and
+she supposed it was so.</p>
+
+<p>But the dream that takes possession of young hearts came to Chloe also;
+though in her case it proved merely the shadow of a dream, or a dream of
+a shadow. On board of one of the sloops that carried fish to Baltimore
+was a free colored man, named Jim Saunders. The first time she saw him,
+she thought his large brown eyes were marvellously handsome, and that he
+had a very pleasant way of speaking to her. She always watched for the
+ship in which he came, and was very particular to have on a clean apron
+when she was likely to meet him. She looked at her own eyes in a bit of
+broken looking-glass, and wondered whether they seemed as handsome to
+him as his eyes did to her. In her own opinion she had rather pretty
+eyes, and she was not mistaken; for the Scriptural description, "black,
+but comely," was applicable to her. Jim never told her so, but she had
+somehow received an impression that perhaps he thought so. Sometimes he
+helped her turn the fish on the Flake, and afterward walked with her
+along the beach, as she wended her way homeward. On such occasions there
+was a happy sound in the song of the sea, and her heart seemed to dance
+up in sparkles, like the waves kissed by the sunshine. It was the first
+free, strong emotion she had ever experienced, and it sent a glow
+through the cold dulness of her lonely life.</p>
+
+<p>Jim went away on a long voyage. He said perhaps he should be gone two
+years. The evening before he sailed, he walked with Chloe on the beach;
+and when he bade her good by, he gave her a pretty little pink shell,
+with a look that she never forgot. She gazed long after him, and felt
+flustered when he turned and saw her watching him. As he passed round a
+rock that would conceal him from her sight, he waved his cap toward her,
+and she turned homeward, murmuring to herself, "He didn't say nothin';
+but he looked just as ef he <i>wanted</i> to say suthin'." On that look the
+poor hungry heart fed itself. It was the one thing in the world that was
+her own, that nobody could take from her,&mdash;the memory of a look.</p>
+
+<p>Time passed on, and Chloe went her rounds, from house-service to the
+field, and from field-service to the fish-flake. The Widow Lawton had
+strongly impressed upon her mind that the Scripture said, "Six days
+shalt thou work." On the Sabbath no out-door work was carried on, for
+the Widow was a careful observer of established forms; but there were so
+many chores to be done inside the house, that Chloe was on her feet most
+of the day, except when she was dozing in a dark corner of the
+meeting-house gallery, while the Reverend Mr. Gordonmammon explained the
+difference between justification and sanctification. Chloe didn't
+understand it, any more than she did the moaning of the sea; and the
+continuous sound without significance had the same tendency to lull her
+to sleep. But she regarded the minister with great awe. It never entered
+her mind that he belonged to the same species as herself. She supposed
+God had sent him into the world with special instructions to warn
+sinners; and that sinners were sent into the world to listen to him and
+obey him. Her visage lengthened visibly whenever she saw him approaching
+with his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> cocked hat and ivory-headed cane. He was something far-off and
+mysterious to her imagination, like the man in the moon; and it never
+occurred to her that he might enter as a disturbing element into the
+narrow sphere of her humble affairs. But so it was destined to be.</p>
+
+<p>The minister was one of the nearest neighbors, and not unfrequently had
+occasion to negotiate with the Widow Lawton concerning the curing of
+hams in her smoke-house, or the exchange of pumpkins for dried fish.
+When their business was transacted, the Widow usually asked him to "stop
+and take a dish o' tea"; and he was inclined to accept the invitation,
+for he particularly liked the flavor of her doughnuts and pies. On one
+of these occasions, he said: "I have another matter of business to speak
+with you about, Mrs. Lawton,&mdash;a matter nearly connected with my temporal
+interest and convenience. My Tom has taken it into his head that he
+wants a wife, and he is getting more and more uneasy about it. Last
+night he strayed off three miles to see Black Dinah. Now if he gets set
+in that direction, it will make it very inconvenient for me; for it will
+take him a good deal of time to go back and forth, and I may happen to
+want him when he is out of the way. But if you would consent to have him
+marry your Chloe, I could easily summon him if I stood in need of him."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't say it would be altogether convenient," replied Mrs. Lawton.
+"He'd be coming here often, bringing mud or dust into the house, and
+he'd be very likely to take Chloe's mind off from her work."</p>
+
+<p>"There need be no trouble on that score," said Mr. Gordonmammon. "I
+should tell Tom he must never come here except on Saturday evenings, and
+that he must return early on Sunday morning. My good woman has taught
+him to be so careful about his feet, that he will bring no mud or dust
+into your house. His board will cost you nothing for he will come after
+supper and leave before breakfast; and perhaps you may now and then find
+it handy for him to do a chore for you."</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding these arguments, the Widow still seemed rather
+disinclined to the arrangement. She feared that some moments of Chloe's
+time might thereby be lost to her.</p>
+
+<p>The minister rose, and said, with much gravity: "When a pastor devotes
+his life to the spiritual welfare of his flock, it would seem reasonable
+that his parishioners should feel some desire to serve his temporal
+interests in return. But since you are unwilling to accommodate me in
+this small matter, I will bid you good evening, Mrs. Lawton."</p>
+
+<p>The solemnity of his manner intimidated the Widow, and she hastened to
+say: "Of course I am always happy to oblige you, Mr. Gordonmammon; and
+since you have set your mind on Tom's having Chloe, I have no objection
+to your speaking to her about it."</p>
+
+<p>The minister at once proceeded to the kitchen. Chloe, who was carefully
+instructed to use up every scrap of time for the benefit of her
+mistress, had seated herself to braid rags for a carpet, as soon as the
+tea things were disposed of. The entrance of the minister into her
+apartment surprised her, for it was very unusual. She rose, made a
+profound courtesy, and remained standing.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, Chloe! sit down!" said he, with a condescending wave of his
+hand. "I have come to speak to you about an important matter. You have
+heard me read from the Scriptures that marriage is honorable. You are
+old enough to be married, Chloe, and it is right and proper you should
+be married. My Tom wants a wife, and there is nobody I should like so
+well for him as you. I will go home and send Tom to talk with you about
+it."</p>
+
+<p>Chloe looked very much frightened, and exclaimed: "Please don't, Massa
+Gordonmammon, I don't want to be married."</p>
+
+<p>"But it's right and proper you should be married," rejoined the
+minister; "and Tom wants a wife. It's your duty, Chloe, to do whatever
+your minister<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> and your mistress tell you to do."</p>
+
+<p>That look from Jim came up as a bright vision before poor Chloe, and she
+burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>"I will come again when your mind is in a state more suited to your
+condition," said the minister. "At present your disposition seems to be
+rebellious. I will leave you to think of what I have said."</p>
+
+<p>But thinking made Chloe feel still more rebellious. Tom was fat and
+stupid, with thick lips, and small, dull-looking eyes. He compared very
+unfavorably with her bright and handsome Jim. She swayed back and forth,
+and groaned. She thought over all the particulars of that last walk on
+the beach, and murmured to herself, "He looked jest as ef he <i>wanted</i> to
+say suthin'."</p>
+
+<p>She thought of Tom and groaned again; and underlying all her confusion
+of thoughts there was a miserable feeling that, if the minister and her
+mistress both said she must marry Tom, there was no help for it.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, she slashed and slammed round in an extraordinary manner.
+She broke a mug and a bowl, and sanded the floor with a general
+conglomeration of scratches, instead of the neat herring-bone on which
+she usually prided herself. It was the only way she had to exercise her
+free-will in its desperate struggle with necessity.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Lawton, who never thought of her in any other light than as a
+machine, did not know what to make of these singular proceedings. "What
+upon airth ails you?" exclaimed she. "I do believe the gal's gone
+crazy."</p>
+
+<p>Chloe paused in her harum-scarum sweeping, and said, with a look and
+tone almost defiant, "I don't <i>want</i> to marry Tom."</p>
+
+<p>"But the minister wants you to marry him," replied Mrs. Lawton, "and you
+ought to mind the minister."</p>
+
+<p>Chloe did not dare to dispute that assertion, but she dashed her broom
+round in the sand, in a very rebellious manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Mind what you're about, gal!" exclaimed Mrs. Lawton. "I am not going to
+put up with such tantrums."</p>
+
+<p>Chloe was acquainted with the weight of her mistress's hand, and she
+moved the broom round in more systematic fashion; but there was a
+tempest raging in her soul.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of a few days the minister visited the kitchen again, and
+found Chloe still averse to his proposition. If his spiritual ear had
+been delicate, he would have noticed anguish in her pleading tone, when
+she said: "Please, Massa Gordonmammon, don't say nothin' more 'bout it.
+I don't <i>want</i> to be married." But his spiritual ear was <i>not</i> delicate;
+and her voice sounded to him merely as that of a refractory wench, who
+was behaving in a manner very unseemly and ungrateful in a bondwoman who
+had been taken from the heathen round about, and brought under the
+guidance of Christians. He therefore assumed his sternest look when he
+said: "I supposed you knew it was your duty to obey whatever your
+minister and your mistress tell you. The Bible says, 'He is the minister
+of God unto you.' It also says, 'Servants, obey your masters in all
+things'; and your mistress stands to you in the place of your deceased
+master. How are you going to account to God for your disobedience to his
+commands?"</p>
+
+<p>Chloe, half frightened and half rebellious, replied, "I don't think
+Missis would like it, if you made Missy Katy marry somebody when she
+said she didn't want to be married."</p>
+
+<p>"Chloe, it is very presumptuous in <i>you</i> to talk in that way," rejoined
+the minister. "There is no similarity between <i>your</i> condition and that
+of your young mistress. You are descended from Ham, Chloe; and Ham was
+accursed of God on account of his sin, and his posterity were ordained
+to be servants; and the Bible says, 'Servants, obey your masters in all
+things'; and it says that the minister is a 'minister of God unto you.'
+You were born among heathen and brought to a land of Gospel privileges;
+and you ought to be grateful that you have protectors capable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> of
+teaching you what to do. Now your mistress wants you to marry Tom, and I
+want you to marry him; and we expect that you will do as we bid you,
+without any more words. I will come again, Chloe; though you ought to
+feel ashamed of yourself for giving your minister so much trouble about
+such a trifling matter."</p>
+
+<p>Receiving no answer, he returned to the sitting-room to talk with Mrs.
+Lawton.</p>
+
+<p>Chloe, like most people who are alone much of their time, had a
+confirmed habit of talking to herself; and her soliloquies were apt to
+be rather promiscuous and disjointed.</p>
+
+<p>"Trifling matter!" said she. "S'pose it's trifling matter to <i>you</i>,
+Massa Minister. Ugh! S'pose they'll <i>make</i> me. Don't know nothin' 'bout
+Ham. Never hearn tell o' Ham afore, only ham in the smoke-house. If
+ham's cussed in the Bible, what fur do folks eat it? Hearn Missis read
+in the Bible that the Divil went into the swine. Don't see what fur I
+must marry Tom 'cause Ham was cussed for his sin." She was silent for a
+while, and, being unable to bring any order out of the chaos of her
+thoughts, she turned them toward a more pleasant subject. "He didn't say
+nothin'," murmured she; "but he looked jest as ef he <i>wanted</i> to say
+suthin'." The tender expression of those great brown eyes came before
+her again, and she laid her head down on the table and sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>Her protectors, as they styled themselves, never dreamed that she had a
+heart. In their thoughts she was merely a bondwoman taken from the
+heathen, and consigned to their keeping for their uses.</p>
+
+<p>Tom made another visit to Dinah, and was out of the way when his master
+wanted him. This caused the minister to hasten in making his third visit
+to Chloe. She met him with the same frightened look; and when he asked
+if she had made up her mind to obey her mistress, she timidly and sadly
+repeated, "Massa Minister, I don't <i>want</i> to be married."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't want to do your duty; that's what it is, you disobedient
+wench," said the minister sternly. "I will wrestle with the Lord in
+prayer for you, that your rebellious heart may be taken away, and a
+submissive temper given you, more befitting your servile condition."</p>
+
+<p>He spread forth his hands, covered with very long-fingered, dangling
+black-silk gloves, and lifted his voice in the following petition to the
+Throne of Grace: "O Lord, we pray thee that this rebellious descendant
+of Ham, whom thou hast been pleased to place under our protection, may
+learn that it is her duty to obey thy Holy Word; wherein it is written
+that I am unto her a minister of God, and that she is to obey her
+mistress in all things. May she be brought to a proper sense of her
+duty; and, by submission to her superiors, gain a humble place in thy
+heavenly kingdom, where the curse inherited from her sinful progenitor
+may be removed. This we ask in the name of thy Son, our Saviour Jesus
+Christ, who died that sinners might be redeemed by believing on his
+name; even sinners who, like this disobedient handmaid, were born in a
+land of heathens."</p>
+
+<p>He paused and looked at Chloe, who could do nothing but weep. There were
+many words in the prayer which conveyed to her no meaning; and why she
+was accursed on account of the sin of Ham remained a perplexing puzzle
+to her mind. But she felt as if she must, somehow or other, be doing
+something wicked, or the minister would not come and pray for her in
+such a solemn manner.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gordonmammon, having reiterated his rebukes and expostulations
+without receiving any answer but tears, called Mrs. Lawton to his
+assistance. "I have preached to Chloe, and prayed for her," said he;
+"but she remains stubborn."</p>
+
+<p>"I am surprised at you, Chloe!" exclaimed the Widow. "You have been told
+a great many times that it is your duty to obey the minister and to obey
+me; yet you have put him to the trouble of coming three times to talk
+with you.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> I sha'n't put up with any more such doings. You must make up
+your mind once for all to marry Tom. What have you to say about it, you
+silly wench?"</p>
+
+<p>With a great break-down of sobs, poor Chloe blubbered out, "S'pose I
+<i>must</i>."</p>
+
+<p>They left her alone; and O how dreadfully alone she felt, with the
+memory of that treasured look, and the thought that, whatever it was Jim
+wanted to say, he could never say it now!</p>
+
+<p>The next day, soon after dinner, Mrs. Lawton entered the kitchen, and
+said: "Chloe, the minister has brought Tom. Make haste, and do up your
+dishes, and put on a clean apron, and come in to be married."</p>
+
+<p>Chloe's first impulse was to run away; but she had nowhere to run. She
+was recognized as the property of her mistress, and wherever she went
+she would be sure to be sent back. She washed the dishes so slowly that
+Mrs. Lawton came again to say the minister was waiting. Chloe merely
+replied, "Yes, missis." But when the door closed after her, she muttered
+to herself: "<i>Let</i> him wait. I didn't ax him to come here plaguing me
+about the cuss o' Ham. Don't know nothin' 'bout Ham. Never hearn tell
+'bout him afore."</p>
+
+<p>Again her mistress came to summon her, and this time in a somewhat angry
+mood. "Have you got lead tied to your heels, you lazy wench?" said she.
+"How many times must I tell you the minister's waiting?" And she
+emphasized the question with a smart box on the ear.</p>
+
+<p>Like a cowardly soldier driven up to the cannon's mouth by bayonets,
+Chloe put on a clean apron, and went to the sitting-room. When the
+minister told Tom to stand up, she did not even look at him; and he, on
+his part, seemed very much frightened. After a brief form of words had
+been repeated, they were told that they were husband and wife. Then the
+bridegroom was ordered to go to ploughing, and the bride was sent to the
+fish-flake.</p>
+
+<p>Two witnesses were present at this dismal wedding beside Mrs. Lawton.
+One was the Widow's daughter, a girl of seventeen, whom Chloe called
+"Missy Katy." The other was Sukey Larkin, who lived twenty miles off,
+but occasionally came to visit an aunt in the neighborhood. Both the
+young girls were dressed in their best; for they were going to a
+quilting-party, where they expected to meet many beaux. But Catherine
+Lawton's best was very superior to Sukey Larkin's. Her gown was of a
+more wonderful pattern than had been seen in that region. It had been
+brought from London, in exchange for tobacco. Sukey had heard of it, and
+had stopped at the Widow Lawton's to make sure of seeing it, in case
+Catharine did not wear it to the quilting-party. Though she had heard
+much talk about it, it surpassed her expectations, and made her very
+discontented with her own gown of India-cotton, dotted all over with red
+spots, like barley-corns. The fabric of Catharine's dress was fine,
+thick linen, covered with pictures, like a fancifully illustrated volume
+of Natural History. Butterflies of all sizes and colors were fluttering
+over great baskets of flowers, birds were swinging on blossoming vines,
+bees were hovering round their hives, and doves were billing and cooing
+on the roof of their cots. One of the beaux in the neighborhood
+expressed his admiration of it by saying "It beats all natur'." It was
+made in bodice-fashion, with a frill of fine linen nicely crimped; and
+the short, tight sleeves were edged just above the elbow with a similar
+frill.</p>
+
+<p>Sukey had before envied Catharine the possession of a gold necklace; but
+that grew dim before the glory of this London gown. She repeated several
+times that it was the handsomest thing she ever saw, and that it was
+remarkably becoming. But at the quilting-party the bitterness of her
+spirit betrayed itself in such remarks as these: "Folks wonder where the
+Widow Lawton gets money to set herself up so much above other folks. But
+she knows how to drive a bargain. She can skin a flint, and tan the
+hide. She makes a fool of Catharine, dressing her up like a London<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span>
+doll. I wonder who she expects is going to marry her, if she brings her
+up with such extravagant notions."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Gordonmammon thinks a deal of the Widow Lawton," said the hostess
+of the quilting-party.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know he does," replied Sukey. "If he was a widower, I guess
+they'd be the town's talk. Some folks think he goes there full often
+enough. He brought his Tom there to-day to marry Chloe. I wonder the
+Widow could spare her time to be married,&mdash;though, to be sure, it didn't
+take long, for the minister made a mighty short prayer."</p>
+
+<p>Poor Chloe! Thus they dismissed a subject which gave her a life-long
+heart-ache. There was no honey in her bridal moon. She told Tom several
+times she wished he would stay at home; but he was so perseveringly
+good-natured, there was no possibility of quarrelling with him. By
+degrees, she began to find his visits on Saturday evening rather more
+entertaining than talking to herself.</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't mind bein' so druv wi' work," said Tom, "ef I could live
+like white folks do when <i>they</i> gits married. I duz more work than them
+as has a cabin o' their own, an' keeps a cow and a pig. But black folks
+don't seem to git no good o' their work."</p>
+
+<p>"Massa Minister says it's 'cause God cussed Ham," replied Chloe. "I
+thought 'twas wicked to cuss, but Massa Minister says Ham was cussed in
+the Bible. Ef I could have some o' the fish I clean and dry, I could
+sen' to Lunnun for a gownd; but Missy Katy she gits all the gownds,
+'cause Ham was cussed in the Bible. I don't know nothin' 'bout it; seems
+drefful queer."</p>
+
+<p>"Massa tole me I mus' work for nothin', 'cause Ham was cussed," rejoined
+Tom. "But it seems like Ham cussed some black folks <i>worse</i> nor others.
+There's Jim Saunders, he's a nigger, too; but he gits his feed and six
+dollars a month."</p>
+
+<p>The words were like a stab to Chloe. She dropped half a needleful of
+stitches in her knitting, and told Tom she wished he'd hold his tongue,
+for he kept up such a jabbering that he made all her stitches run down.
+Tom, thus silenced, soon fell asleep. She glanced at him as he sat
+snoring by her side, and contrasted him with the genteel figure and
+handsome features that had been so indelibly photographed on her memory
+by the sunbeams of love. Tears dropped fast on her knitting-work; but
+when Tom woke up, she spoke kindly, and tried to atone for her
+ill-temper. Time, which gradually reconciles us to all things, produced
+the same effect on her as on others. When the minister asked her, six
+months afterward, how she and Tom were getting along, she replied, "I's
+got used to him."</p>
+
+<p>Yet life seemed more dreary to her than it did before she had that brief
+experience of a free feeling. She never thought of that look without
+longing to know what it was Jim wanted to say. But, as months passed on,
+the tantalizing vision came less frequently, and at the end of a year
+Chloe experienced the second happy emotion of her life. When she looked
+upon her babe, a great fountain of love leaped up in her heart. She was
+never too tired to wait upon little Tommy; and if his cries disturbed
+her deep sleep, she folded the helpless little creature to her bosom,
+with the feeling that he was better than rest. She was accustomed to
+carry him to the fish-flake in a big basket, and lay him on a bed of dry
+leaves, with her apron for an awning. As she paced backwards and
+forwards at her daily toil, it was a perpetual entertainment to see him
+lying there sucking his thumbs. But that was nothing compared with the
+joy of nursing him. When his hunger was partially satisfied, he would
+stop to smile in his mother's face; and Chloe had never seen anything so
+beautiful as that baby smile. As he lay on her lap, laughing and cooing,
+there was something in the expression of his eyes that reminded her of
+the look she could never forget. He had taken the picture from her soul,
+and brought it with him to the outer world; but as he lay there, playing
+with his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> toes, he knew no more about his mother's heart than did the
+Rev. Mr. Gordonmammon.</p>
+
+<p>One balmy day in June, she was sitting on a rock by the sea-shore,
+nursing her babe, pinching his little plump cheeks, and chirruping to
+make him smile, when she heard the sound of footsteps. She looked up,
+and saw Jim approaching. Her heart jumped into her throat. She felt very
+hot, and then very cold. When Jim came near enough to look upon the
+babe, he stopped an instant, said, in a constrained way, "How d' ye,
+Chloe," then turned and walked quickly away. She gazed after him so
+wistfully that for a few moments the cooing of her babe was disregarded.
+"'Pears like he was affronted," she murmured, at last; and the big tears
+dropped slowly. Little Tommy had a fit that night; for, by the strange
+interfusion of spirit into all forms of matter, the quick revulsion of
+the blood in his mother's heart passed into his nourishment, and
+convulsed his body, as her soul had been convulsed.</p>
+
+<p>But the disturbance passed away, and Chloe's life rolled on in its
+accustomed grooves. Tommy grew strong enough to run by her side when she
+went to the beach. Hour after hour he busied himself with pebbles and
+shells, every now and then bringing her his treasures, and calling out,
+"Pooty!" When he held out a shell, and looked at her with his great
+brown eyes, it stirred up memories; but the pain was gone from them. Her
+heart was no longer famished; it was filled with little Tommy.</p>
+
+<p>This engrossing love was not agreeable to the Widow Lawton. If less was
+accomplished in a day than usual, she would often exclaim, "That brat
+takes up too much of your time." And not unfrequently Chloe was
+compelled to go to the beach and leave Tommy fastened up in the kitchen;
+though this was never done without some outcries on his part, and some
+suppressed mutterings on hers.</p>
+
+<p>On one of these occasions, Sukey Larkin came to make a call. When Mrs.
+Lawton saw her at the gate, she said to her daughter, "How long do you
+suppose she'll be in the house before she asks to see your silk gown?"</p>
+
+<p>Catharine smiled and kept on spinning flax till her visitor entered.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, Sukey," said Mrs. Lawton. "I didn't know you was about in
+these parts."</p>
+
+<p>"I come yesterday to do some business for mother," replied Sukey, "and
+I'm going back in an hour. But I thought I would just run in to see you,
+Catharine. Aunt says you're going to Jane Horton's wedding. Are you
+going to wear your new silk?"</p>
+
+<p>"So you've heard about the new silk?" said Mrs. Lawton.</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure I have," rejoined Sukey. "Everybody's talking about it. Do
+show it to me, Catharine; that's a dear."</p>
+
+<p>The dress was brought forth from its envelope of white linen. It was a
+very lustrous silk, changeable between rose-color and apple-green, and
+the delicate hues glanced beautifully in the sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>Sukey was in raptures, and exclaimed, "I don't wonder Mr. Gordonmammon
+said Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like Catharine, when she
+went to the great party at Cape Ann. I do declare, you've got lace at
+the elbows and round the neck!" She heaved a deep sigh when the dress
+was refolded; and after a moment's silence said, "I wish mother had a
+fish-flake, and knew how to manage as well as you do, Mrs. Lawton; then
+she could trade round with the sloops and get me a silk gown."</p>
+
+<p>"O, I dare say you will have one some time or other," rejoined
+Catharine.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I shall never have one, if I live to be a hundred years old,"
+replied Sukey. "I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth, like some
+folks."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what Tommy's doing in the kitchen," said Mrs. Lawton. "He's
+generally about some mischief when he's so still. I declare I'd as lief
+have a colt in the house as that little nigger." She looked into the
+kitchen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> and added, "He's sound asleep on the floor."</p>
+
+<p>"If he's so much trouble to you," said Sukey, "I wish you'd give him to
+me. I always thought I should like to have a nigger."</p>
+
+<p>"You may have him if you want him," replied Mrs. Lawton. "He's nothing
+but a pester, and he takes up a quarter part of Chloe's time. But you'd
+better take him before she gets home, for she'll make a fuss; and if he
+wakes up he'll cry."</p>
+
+<p>Sukey had a plan in her mind, suggested by the sight of the silk gown,
+and she was eager to get possession of little Tommy. She said her horse
+was tackled to the wagon, all ready to start for home, and there was
+some straw in the bottom of it. The vehicle was soon at the widow's
+door, and by careful management the child was placed on the straw
+without waking; though Catharine said she heard him cry before the wagon
+was out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>Chloe hurried through her work on the beach, and came home at a quick
+pace; for she was longing to see her darling, and she had some
+misgivings as to how he was treated in her absence. She opened the
+kitchen-door with the expectation that Tommy would spring toward her, as
+usual, exclaiming, "Mammy! mammy!" The disappointment gave her a chill,
+and she ran out to call him. When no little voice responded to the call,
+she went to the sitting-room and said, "Missis, have you seen Tommy?"</p>
+
+<p>"He a'n't been here," replied Mrs. Lawton, evasively. "Can't you find
+him?"</p>
+
+<p>The Widow was a regular communicant of the Reverend Mr. Gordonmammon's
+church; but she was so blinded by slavery that it never occurred to her
+there was any sin in thus trifling with a mother's feelings. When Chloe
+had hurried out of the room, she said to her daughter, in a tone of
+indifference, "One good thing will come of giving Tommy to Sukey
+Larkin,&mdash;she won't come spying about here for one spell; she'll be
+afraid to face Chloe."</p>
+
+<p>In fact, she herself soon found it rather unpleasant to face Chloe; for
+the bereaved mother grew so wild with anxiety, that the hardest heart
+could not remain untouched. "O missis! why didn't you let me take Tommy
+with me" exclaimed she. "He played with hisself, and wasn't no care to
+me. I s'pose he was lonesome, and runned down to the beach to look for
+mammy; an' he's got drownded." With that thought she rushed to the door
+to go and hunt for him on the sea-shore.</p>
+
+<p>Her mistress held her back with a strong arm, and, finding it impossible
+to pacify her, she at last said, "Sukey Larkin wanted Tommy, and I told
+her she might have him; she'll take good care of him."</p>
+
+<p>The unhappy bondwoman gazed at her with an expression of intense misery,
+which she was never afterward able to forget. "O missis! how <i>could</i> you
+do it?" she exclaimed; and, sinking upon a chair, she covered her face
+with her apron.</p>
+
+<p>"Sukey will be good to him," said Mrs. Lawton, in tones more gentle than
+usual.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll cry for his mammy," sobbed Chloe. "O missis! 't was cruel to take
+away my little Tommy."</p>
+
+<p>The Widow crept noiselessly out of the room, and left her to wrestle
+with her grief as she could. She found the minister in the sitting-room,
+and told him she had given away little Tommy, but that she wouldn't have
+done it if she had thought Chloe would be so wild about it; for she
+doubted whether she should get any work out of her for a week to come.</p>
+
+<p>"She'll get over it soon," said the minister. "My cow lowed dismally,
+and wouldn't eat, when I sold her calf; but she soon got used to doing
+without it."</p>
+
+<p>It did not occur to him as included within his pastoral duties to pray
+with the stricken slave; and poor Chloe, oppressed with an unutterable
+sense of loneliness, retired to her straw pallet, and late in the night
+sobbed herself to sleep. She woke with a weight on her heart, as if
+there was somebody dead in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> the house; and quickly there rushed upon her
+the remembrance that her darling was gone. A ragged gown of his was
+hanging on a nail. How she kissed it, and cried over it! Then she took
+Jim's pink shell from her box, folded them carefully together, and laid
+them away. No mortal but herself knew what memories were wrapped up with
+them. She went through the usual routine of housework like a laborer who
+drags after him a ball and chain. At the appointed time, she wandered
+forth to the beach with no little voice to chirp music to her as she
+went. When she saw prints of Tommy's little feet in the sand, she sat
+down on a stone, and covered her face with her apron. For a long time
+her sobs and groans mingled with the moan of the sea. She raised her
+head, and looked inland, in the direction where she supposed Sukey
+Larkin lived. She revolved in her mind the possibility of going there.
+But stages were almost unknown in those days; and no wagoner would take
+her, without consent of her mistress, if she pleaded ever so hard. She
+thought of running away at midnight; but Mrs. Lawton would be sure to
+overtake her, and bring her back. Thoughts of what her mistress might do
+in such a case reminded her that she was neglecting the fish. Like a
+machine wound up, she began to go her customary rounds; but she had lost
+so much time that it was late before her task was completed. Then she
+wandered away to a little heap of moss and pebbles, that Tommy had built
+the last time they were together on the beach. On a wet rock near by she
+sat down and cried. Black clouds gathered over her head, a cold
+northeast wind blew upon her, and the spray sprinkled her naked feet.
+Still she sat there and cried. Louder and louder whistled the wind;
+wilder and wilder grew the moan of the sea. She heard the uproar without
+caring for it. She wished the big waves would come and wash her away.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Mrs. Lawton noticed the gathering darkness, and looked out
+anxiously for the return of her servant. "What upon airth can have
+become of her?" said she. "She oughter been home an hour ago."</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't wonder if she had set out to go to Sukey Larkin's," replied
+Catharine.</p>
+
+<p>The Widow had thought of that; she had also thought of the sea; for she
+had an uneasy remembrance of that look of utter misery when Chloe said,
+"How <i>could</i> you do it?"</p>
+
+<p>It was Saturday evening; and, according to custom, Tom came to see his
+wife, all unconscious of the affliction that had befallen them. Mrs.
+Lawton went out to meet him, and said: "Tom, I wish you would go right
+down to the beach, and see what has become of Chloe. She a'n't come home
+yet, and I'm afraid something has happened." She returned to the house,
+thinking to herself, "If the wench is drowned, where shall I get such
+another?"</p>
+
+<p>Tom found Chloe still sitting on the wet stone. When he spoke to her,
+she started, as if from sleep; and her first exclamation was, "O Tom!
+missis has guv away little Tommy."</p>
+
+<p>It was some time before he could understand what had happened; but when
+he realized that his child was gone, his strong frame shook with sobs.
+Little Tommy was the only creature on earth that loved him,&mdash;his only
+treasure, his only plaything. "It's cruel hard," said he.</p>
+
+<p>"O, how little Tommy is crying for mammy!" sobbed Chloe; "and I can't
+git to him nohow. Oh! oh!"</p>
+
+<p>Tom tried to comfort her, as well as he knew how. Among other things, he
+suggested running away.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been thinking 'bout that," rejoined Chloe; "but there a'n't
+nowhere to run to. The white folks has got all the money, and all the
+hosses, and all the law."</p>
+
+<p>"O, what a cuss that Ham was!" groaned Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know nothin' 'bout that ole cuss," replied Chloe. "Missis was
+cruel. What makes God let white folks cruellize black folks so?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The question was altogether too large for Tom, or anybody else, to
+answer. After a moment's silence, he said, "P'r'aps Sukey Larkin will
+come sometimes, and bring little Tommy to see us."</p>
+
+<p>"She shouldn't have him ag'in!" exclaimed Chloe. "I'd scratch her eyes
+out, if she tried to carry him off ag'in."</p>
+
+<p>The sudden anger roused her from her lethargy; and she rose immediately
+when Tom reminded her that it was late, and they ought to be going home.
+Home! how the word seemed to mock her desolation!</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Lawton was so glad to see her faithful servant alive, and was so
+averse to receiving another accusing look from those sad eyes, that she
+forbore to reprimand her for her unwonted tardiness. Chloe spoke no word
+of explanation, but, after arranging a few things, retired silently to
+her pallet. She had been accustomed to exercise out of doors in all
+weathers, but was unused to sitting still in the wet and cold. She was
+seized with strong shiverings in the night, and continued feverish for
+some days. Her mistress nursed her, as she would a valuable horse or
+cow.</p>
+
+<p>In a short time she resumed her customary tasks, but coughed incessantly
+and moved about slowly and listlessly. Her mistress, annoyed not to have
+the work going on faster, said to her reproachfully one day, "You got
+this cold by staying out so late that night."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, missis," replied Chloe, very sadly. "I shouldn't have stayed out
+ef little Tommy had been with me."</p>
+
+<p>"What a fuss you make about that little nigger!" exclaimed Mrs. Lawton.
+"Tommy was my property, and I'd a right to give him away."</p>
+
+<p>"'Twas cruel of you, missis," rejoined Chloe. "Tommy was all the comfort
+I had; an' I's worked hard for you, missis, many a year."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Lawton, unaccustomed to any remonstrance from her bondwoman, seized
+a switch and shook it threateningly.</p>
+
+<p>But Catherine said, in a low tone: "Don't, mother! She feels bad about
+little Tommy."</p>
+
+<p>Chloe overheard the words of pity; and the first time she was alone with
+her young mistress, she said, "Please, Missy Katy, write to Sukey Larkin
+and ask her to bring little Tommy."</p>
+
+<p>Catharine promised she would; but her mother objected to it, as making
+unnecessary trouble, and the promise was not fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p>Week after week Chloe looked out upon the road, in hopes of seeing Sukey
+Larkin's wagon. But Sukey had no thoughts of coming to encounter her
+entreaties. She was feeding and fatting Tommy, with a view to selling
+him and buying a silk gown with the money. The little boy cried and
+moped for some days; but, after the manner of children, he soon became
+reconciled to his new situation. He ran about in the fields, and
+gradually forgot the sea, the moss, the pebbles, and mammy's lullaby.</p>
+
+<p>One day Mrs. Lawton said to her daughter, "How that dreadful cough hangs
+on! I begin to be afraid Chloe's going into a consumption. I hope not;
+for I don't know where I shall find such another wench to work."</p>
+
+<p>She mentioned her fears to the minister, and he said, "When she gets
+over worrying about Tommy, she'll pick up her crumbs."</p>
+
+<p>But the only change that came over Chloe was increasing listlessness of
+mind and fatigue of body. At last, she was unable to rise from her
+pallet. She lay there looking at her thin hands, and talking to herself,
+according to her old habit. The words Mrs. Lawton most frequently heard
+were, "It was cruel of missis to take away little Tommy."
+Notwithstanding all the clerical arguments she had heard to prove the
+righteousness of slavery, the moan of the dying mother made her feel
+uncomfortable. Sometimes the mind of the invalid wandered, and she would
+hug Tommy's little gown, pat it lovingly, and sing to it the lullaby her
+baby loved. Sometimes she murmured, "He looked jest as ef he <i>wanted</i> to
+say suthin'"; and sometimes a smiled lighted up her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> face, as if she saw
+some pleasant vision.</p>
+
+<p>The minister came to pray with her, and to talk what he called religion.
+But it sounded to poor Chloe more than ever like the murmuring of the
+sea. She turned her face away from him and said nothing. With what
+little mental strength she had, she rejected the idea that the curse of
+Ham, whoever he might be, justified the treatment she had received. She
+had no idea what a heathen was, but she concluded it meant something
+bad; and she had often told Tom she didn't like to have the minister
+talk that way, for it sounded like calling her names.</p>
+
+<p>At last the weary one passed away from a world where the doings had all
+been dark and incomprehensible to her. But her soul was like that of a
+little child; and Jesus has said, "Of such are the kingdom of heaven."
+They found under her pillow little Tommy's ragged gown, and a pink
+shell. Why the shell was there no one could conjecture. The pine box
+containing her remains was placed across the foot of Mr. Lawton's grave,
+at whose side his widow would repose when her hour should come. It was
+the custom to place slaves thus at the feet of their masters, even in
+the graveyard.</p>
+
+<p>The Reverend Mr. Gordonmammon concluded to buy a young black woman, that
+Tom might not be again induced to stray off after Dinah; and Tom
+passively yielded to the second arrangement, as he had to the first.</p>
+
+<p>In two years after Sukey Larkin took possession of little Tommy, she
+sent him to Virginia to be exchanged for tobacco; with the proceeds of
+which she bought a gold necklace, and a flashy silk dress, changeable
+between grass-green and orange; and great was her satisfaction to
+astonish Catharine Lawton with her splendor the next time they met at a
+party.</p>
+
+<p>I never heard that poor Chloe's ghost haunted either them or the Widow
+Lawton. Wherever slavery exerts its baneful influence, it produces the
+same results,&mdash;searing the conscience and blinding the understanding to
+the most obvious distinctions between right and wrong.</p>
+
+<p>There is no record of little Tommy's fate. He disappeared among "the
+dark, sad millions," who knew not father or mother, and had no portion
+in wife or child.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SNOW" id="SNOW"></a>SNOW.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Summer comes, and the Summer goes.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wild-flowers are fringing the dusty lanes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The sparrows go darting through fragrant rains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, all of a sudden,&mdash;it snows!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Dear Heart! our lives so happily flow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So lightly we heed the flying hours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We only know Winter is gone&mdash;by the flowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We only know Winter is come&mdash;by the Snow!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="GRIFFITH_GAUNT_OR_JEALOUSY" id="GRIFFITH_GAUNT_OR_JEALOUSY"></a>GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER IX.</h3>
+
+<p>Griffith, with an effort he had not the skill to hide, stammered out,
+"Mistress Kate, I do wish you joy." Then, with sudden and touching
+earnestness, "Never did good fortune light on one so worthy of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Griffith," replied Kate, softly. (She had called him "Mr.
+Gaunt" in public till now.) "But money and lands do not always bring
+content. I think I was happier a minute ago than I feel now," said she,
+quietly.</p>
+
+<p>The blood rushed into Griffith's face at this; for a minute ago might
+mean when he and she were talking almost like lovers about to wed. He
+was so overcome by this, he turned on his heel, and retreated hastily to
+hide his emotion, and regain, if possible, composure to play his part of
+host in the house that was his no longer.</p>
+
+<p>Kate herself soon after retired, nominally to make her toilet before
+dinner; but really to escape the public and think it all over.</p>
+
+<p>The news of her advancement had spread like wildfire; she was waylaid at
+the very door by the housekeeper, who insisted on showing her her house.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, never mind the house," said Kate; "just show me one room where I
+can wash my face and do my hair."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hill conducted her to the best bedroom; it was lined with tapestry,
+and all the colors flown; the curtains were a deadish yellow.</p>
+
+<p>"Lud! here's a colored room to show <i>me</i> into," said the blonde Kate;
+"and a black grate, too. Why not take me out o' doors and bid me wash in
+the snow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Alack, mistress," said the woman, feeling very uneasy, "we had no
+orders from Mr. Gaunt to light fires <i>up</i> stairs."</p>
+
+<p>"O, if you wait for gentlemen's orders to make your house fit to live
+in! You knew there were a dozen ladies coming, yet you were not woman
+enough to light them fires. Come, take me to your own bedroom."</p>
+
+<p>The woman turned red. "Mine is but a small room, my lady," she
+stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"But there's a fire in it," said Kate, spitefully. "You servants don't
+wait for gentlemen's orders, to take care of yourselves."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hill said to herself, "I'm to leave; that's flat." However, she led
+the way down a passage, and opened the door of a pleasant little room in
+a square turret; a large bay window occupied one whole side of the room,
+and made it inexpressibly bright and cheerful, though rather hot and
+stuffy; a clear coal fire burned in the grate.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said Kate, "how nice! Please open those little windows, every one.
+I suppose you have sworn never to let wholesome air into a room. Thank
+you: now go and forget every cross word I have said to you,&mdash;I am out of
+sorts, and nervous, and irritable. There, run away, my good soul, and
+light fires in every room; and don't you let a creature come near me, or
+you and I shall quarrel downright."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hill beat a hasty retreat. Kate locked the door and threw herself
+backwards on the bed, with such a weary recklessness and <i>abandon</i> as if
+she was throwing herself into the sea, to end all her trouble,&mdash;and
+burst out crying.</p>
+
+<p>It was one thing to refuse to marry her old sweetheart; it was another
+to take his property and reduce him to poverty. But here was she doing
+both, and going to be persuaded to marry Neville, and swell his wealth
+with the very possessions she had taken from Griffith; and him wounded
+into the bargain for love of her. It was really too cruel. It was an
+accumulation of different cruelties. Her bosom revolted; she was
+agitated, perplexed, irritated, unhappy, and all in a tumult; and
+although she had but one fit of crying,&mdash;to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> the naked eye,&mdash;yet a
+person of her own sex would have seen that at one moment she was crying
+from agitated nerves, at another from worry, and at the next from pity,
+and then from grief.</p>
+
+<p>In short, she had a good long, hearty, multiform cry; and it relieved
+her swelling heart, so far that she felt able to go down now, and hide
+her feelings, one and all, from friend and foe; to do which was
+unfortunately a part of her nature.</p>
+
+<p>She rose and plunged her face into cold water, and then smoothed her
+hair.</p>
+
+<p>Now, as she stood at the glass, two familiar voices came in through the
+open window, and arrested her attention directly. It was her father
+conversing with Griffith Gaunt. Kate pricked up her quick ears and
+listened, with her back hair in her hand. She caught the substance of
+their talk, only now and then she missed a word or two.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Peyton was speaking rather kindly to Griffith, and telling him he
+was as sorry for his disappointment as any father could be whose
+daughter had just come into a fortune. But then he went on and rather
+spoiled this by asking Griffith bluntly what on earth had ever made him
+think Mr. Charlton intended to leave him Bolton and Hernshaw.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith replied, with manifest agitation, that Mr. Charlton had
+repeatedly told him he was to be his heir. "Not," said Griffith, "that
+he meant to wrong Mistress Kate, neither: poor old man, he always
+thought she and I should be one."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! well," said Squire Peyton, coolly, "there is an end of all that
+now."</p>
+
+<p>At this observation Kate glided to the window, and laid her cheek on the
+sill to listen more closely.</p>
+
+<p>But Griffith made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Peyton seemed dissatisfied at his silence, and being a person who,
+notwithstanding a certain superficial good-nature, saw his own side of a
+question very big, and his neighbor's very little, he was harder than
+perhaps he intended to be.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Master Gaunt," said he, "surely you would not follow my daughter
+now,&mdash;to feed upon a woman's bread. Come, be a man; and, if you are the
+girl's friend, don't stand in her light. You know she can wed your
+betters, and clap Bolton Hall on to Neville's Court. No doubt it is a
+disappointment to <i>you</i>: but what can't be cured must be endured; pluck
+up a bit of courage, and turn your heart another way; and then I shall
+always be a good friend to you, and my doors open to you come when you
+will."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith made no reply. Kate strained her ears, but could not hear a
+syllable, A tremor ran through her. She was in distance farther from
+Griffith than her father was; but superior intelligence provided her
+with a bridge from her window to her old servant's mind. And now she
+felt that this great silence was the silence of despair.</p>
+
+<p>But the Squire pressed him for a definite answer, and finally insisted
+on one. "Come, don't be so sulky," said he; "I'm her father: give me an
+answer, ay or no."</p>
+
+<p>Then Kate heard a violent sigh, and out rushed a torrent of words that
+each seemed tinged with blood from the unfortunate speaker's heart. "Old
+man," he almost shrieked, "what did I ever do to you, that you torment
+me so? Sure you were born without bowels. Beggared but an hour agone,
+and now you must come and tell me I have lost <i>her</i> by losing house and
+lands! D'ye think I need to be <i>told</i> it? She was too far above me
+before, and now she is gone quite out of my reach. But why come and
+fling it in my face? Can't you give a poor, undone man one hour to draw
+his breath in trouble? And when you know I have got to play the host
+this bitter day, and smile, and smirk, and make you all merry, with my
+heart breaking! O Christ, look down and pity me, for men are made of
+stone! Well, then, no; I will not, I cannot say the word to give her up.
+<i>She</i> will discharge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> <i>me</i>, and then I'll fly the country and never
+trouble you more. And to think that one little hour ago she was so kind,
+and I was so happy! Ah, sir, if you were born of a woman, have a little
+pity, and don't speak to me of her at all, one way or other. What are
+you afraid of? I am a gentleman and a man, though sore my trouble: I
+shall not run after the lady of Bolton Hall. Why, sir, I have ordered
+the servants to set her chair in the middle of the table, where I shall
+not be able to speak to her, or even see her. Indeed I dare not look at
+her: for I must be merry. Merry! My arm it worries me, my head it aches,
+my heart is sick to death. Man! man! show me some little grace, and do
+not torture me more than flesh and blood can bear."</p>
+
+<p>"You are mad, young sir," said the Squire, sternly, "and want locking up
+on bread and water for a month."</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>am</i> almost mad," said Griffith, humbly. "But if you would only let
+me alone, and not tear my heart out of my body, I can hide my agony from
+the whole pack of ye, and go through my part like a man. I wish I was
+lying where I laid my only friend this afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"O, I don't want to speak to you," said Peyton, angrily; "and, by the
+same token, don't you speak to my daughter no more."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, if she speaks to me, I shall be sure to speak to her,
+without asking your leave or any man's. But I will not force myself upon
+the lady of Bolton Hall; don't you think it. Only for God's sake let me
+alone. I want to be by myself." And with this he hurried away, unable to
+bear it any more.</p>
+
+<p>Peyton gave a hostile and contemptuous snort, and also turned on his
+heel, and went off in the opposite direction.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of this dialogue on the listener was not to melt, but
+exasperate her. Perhaps she had just cried away her stock of tenderness.
+At any rate, she rose from her ambush a very basilisk; her eyes, usually
+so languid, flashed fire, and her forehead was red with indignation. She
+bit her lip, and clenched her hands, and her little foot beat the ground
+swiftly.</p>
+
+<p>She was still in this state, when a timid tap came to the door, and Mrs.
+Hill asked her pardon, but dinner was ready, and the ladies and
+gentlemen all a waiting for her to sit down.</p>
+
+<p>This reminded Kate she was the mistress of the house. She answered
+civilly she would be down immediately. She then took a last look in the
+glass; and her own face startled her.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she thought, "they shall none of them know nor guess what I feel."
+And she stood before the glass and deliberately extracted all emotion
+from her countenance, and by way of preparation screwed on a spiteful
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>When she had got her face to her mind, she went down stairs.</p>
+
+<p>The gentlemen awaited her with impatience, the ladies with curiosity, to
+see how she would comport herself in her new situation. She entered,
+made a formal courtesy, and was conducted to her seat by Mr. Gaunt. He
+placed her in the middle of the table. "I play the host for this one
+day," said he, with some dignity; and took the bottom of the table
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hammersley was to have sat on Kate's left, but the sly Neville
+persuaded him to change, and so got next to his inamorata; opposite to
+her sat her father, Major Rickards, and others unknown to fame.</p>
+
+<p>Neville was in high spirits. He had the good taste to try and hide his
+satisfaction at the fatal blow his rival had received, and he entirely
+avoided the topic; but Kate saw at once, by his demure complacency, he
+was delighted at the turn things had taken, and he gained nothing by it:
+he found her a changed girl. Cold monosyllables were all he could
+extract from her. He returned to the charge a hundred times, with
+indomitable gallantry, but it was no use. Cold, haughty, sullen!</p>
+
+<p>Her other neighbor fared little better; and in short the lady of the
+house made a vile impression. She was an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> iceberg,&mdash;a beautiful
+kill-joy,&mdash;a wet blanket of charming texture.</p>
+
+<p>And presently Nature began to co-operate with her: long before sunset it
+grew prodigiously dark; and the cause was soon revealed by a fall of
+snow in flakes as large as a biscuit. A shiver ran through the people;
+and old Peyton blurted out, "I shall not go home to-night." Then he
+bawled across the table to his daughter: "<i>You</i> are at home. We will
+stay and take possession."</p>
+
+<p>"O papa!" said Kate, reddening with disgust.</p>
+
+<p>But if dulness reigned around the lady of the house, it was not so
+everywhere. Loud bursts of merriment were heard at the bottom of the
+table. Kate glanced that way in some surprise, and found it was Griffith
+making the company merry,&mdash;Griffith of all people.</p>
+
+<p>The laughter broke out at short intervals, and by and by became
+uproarious and constant. At last she looked at Neville inquiringly.</p>
+
+<p>"Our worthy host is setting us an example of conviviality," said he. "He
+is getting drunk."</p>
+
+<p>"O, I hope not," said Kate. "Has he no friend to tell him not to make a
+fool of himself?"</p>
+
+<p>"You take a great interest in him," said Neville, bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I do. Pray, do you desert your friends when ill luck falls on
+them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, Mistress Kate, I hope not."</p>
+
+<p>"You only triumph over the misfortunes of your enemies, eh?" said the
+stinging beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"Not even that. And as for Mr. Gaunt, I am not his enemy."</p>
+
+<p>"O no, of course not. You are his best friend. Witness his arm at this
+moment."</p>
+
+<p>"I am his rival, but not his enemy. I'll give you a proof." Then he
+lowered his voice, and said in her ear: "You are grieved at his losing
+Bolton; and, as you are very generous and noble-minded, you are all the
+more grieved because his loss is your gain." (Kate blushed at this
+shrewd hit.) Neville went on: "You don't like him well enough to marry
+him; and since you cannot make him happy, it hurts your good heart to
+make him poor."</p>
+
+<p>"It is you for reading a lady's heart," said Kate, ironically.</p>
+
+<p>George proceeded steadily. "I'll show you an easy way out of this
+dilemma."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Kate, rather insolently.</p>
+
+<p>"Give Mr. Gaunt Bolton and Hernshaw, and give me&mdash;your hand."</p>
+
+<p>Kate turned and looked at him with surprise; she saw by his eye it was
+no jest. For all that, she affected to take it as one. "That would be
+long and short division," said she; but her voice faltered in saying it.</p>
+
+<p>"So it would," replied George, coolly; "for Bolton and Hernshaw both are
+not worth one finger of that hand I ask of you. But the value of things
+lies in the mind that weighs 'em. Mr. Gaunt, you see, values Bolton and
+Hernshaw very highly; why, he is in despair at losing them. Look at him;
+he is getting rid of his reason before your very eyes, to drown his
+disappointment."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! oh! that is it, is it?" And, strange to say, she looked rather
+relieved.</p>
+
+<p>"That is it, believe me: it is a way we men have. But, as I was saying,
+<i>I</i> don't care one straw for Bolton and Hernshaw. It is <i>you</i> I
+love,&mdash;not your land nor your house, but your sweet self; so give me
+that, and let the lawyers make over this famous house and lands to Mr.
+Gaunt. His antagonist I have been in the field, and his rival I am and
+must be, but not his enemy, you see, and not his ill-wisher."</p>
+
+<p>Kate was softened a little. "This is all mighty romantic," said she,
+"and very like a <i>preux chevalier</i>, as you are; but you know very well
+he would fling land and house in your face, if you offered them him on
+these terms."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, in my face, if I offered them; but not in yours, if you."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure he would, all the same."</p>
+
+<p>"Try him."</p>
+
+<p>"What is the use?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Try him."</p>
+
+<p>Kate showed symptoms of uneasiness. "Well, I will," said she, stoutly.
+"No, that I will not. You begin by bribing me; and then you would set me
+to bribe him."</p>
+
+<p>"It is the only way to make two honest men happy."</p>
+
+<p>"If I thought that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You know it. Try him."</p>
+
+<p>"And suppose he says nay?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then we shall be no worse than we are."</p>
+
+<p>"And suppose he says ay?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then he will wed Bolton Hall and Hernshaw, and the pearl of England
+will wed me."</p>
+
+<p>"I have a great mind to take you at your word," said Kate; "but no; it
+is really too indelicate."</p>
+
+<p>George Neville fixed his eyes on her. "Are you not deceiving yourself?"
+said he. "Do you not like Mr. Gaunt better than you think? I begin to
+fear you dare not put him to this test: you fear his love would not
+stand it?"</p>
+
+<p>Kate colored high, and tossed her head proudly. "How shrewd you
+gentlemen are!" she said. "Much you know of a lady's heart. Now the
+truth is, I don't know what might not happen were I to do what you bid
+me. Nay, I'm wiser than you would have me; and I'll pity Mr. Gaunt at a
+safe distance, if you please, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Neville bowed gravely. He felt sure this was a plausible evasion, and
+that she really was afraid to apply his test to his rival's love.</p>
+
+<p>So now, for the first time, he became silent and reserved by her side.
+The change was noticed by Father Francis, and he fixed a grave,
+remonstrating glance on Kate. She received it, understood it, affected
+not to notice it, and acted upon it.</p>
+
+<p>Drive a donkey too hard, it kicks.</p>
+
+<p>Drive a man too hard, it hits.</p>
+
+<p>Drive a woman too hard, it cajoles.</p>
+
+<p>Now amongst them they had driven Kate Peyton too hard; so she secretly
+formed a bold resolution; and, this done, her whole manner changed for
+the better. She turned to Neville, and flattered and fascinated him. The
+most feline of her sex could scarcely equal her <i>calinerie</i> on this
+occasion. But she did not confine her fascination to him. She broke out,
+<i>pro bono publico</i>, like the sun in April, with quips and cranks and
+dimpled smiles, and made everybody near her quite forget her late
+hauteur and coldness, and bask in this sunny, sweet hostess. When the
+charm was at its height, the siren cast a seeming merry glance at
+Griffith, and said to a lady opposite, "Methinks some of the gentlemen
+will be glad to be rid of us," and so carried the ladies off to the
+drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>There her first act was to dismiss her smiles without ceremony; and her
+second was to sit down and write four lines to the gentleman at the head
+of the dining-table.</p>
+
+<p>And he was as drunk as a fiddler.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER X.</h3>
+
+<p>Griffith's friends laughed heartily with him while he was getting drunk;
+and when he had got drunk, they laughed still louder, only at him.</p>
+
+<p>They "knocked him down" for a song; and he sang a rather Anacreontic one
+very melodiously, and so loud that certain of the servants, listening
+outside, derived great delectation from it; and Neville applauded
+ironically.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after, they "knocked him down" for a story; and as it requires more
+brains to tell a story than to sing a song, the poor butt made an ass of
+himself. He maundered and wandered, and stopped, and went on, and lost
+one thread and took up another, and got into a perfect maze. And while
+he was thus entangled, a servant came in and brought him a note, and put
+it in his hand. The unhappy narrator received it with a sapient nod, but
+was too polite, or else too stupid, to open it, so closed his fingers on
+it, and went maundering on till his story trickled into the sand of the
+desert, and somehow ceased; for it could not be said to end, being a
+thing without head or tail.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He sat down amidst derisive cheers. About five minutes afterwards, in
+some intermittent flash of reason, he found he had got hold of
+something. He opened his hand, and lo, a note! On this he chuckled
+unreasonably, and distributed sage, cunning winks around, as if he, by
+special ingenuity, had caught a nightingale, or the like; then, with
+sudden hauteur and gravity, proceeded to examine his prize.</p>
+
+<p>But he knew the handwriting at once; and it gave him a galvanic shock
+that half sobered him for the moment.</p>
+
+<p>He opened the note, and spelled it with great difficulty. It was
+beautifully written, in long, clear letters; but then those letters kept
+dancing so!</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I much desire to speak to you before 'tis too late, but can
+think of no way save one. I lie in the turreted room: come
+under my window at nine of the clock; and prithee come sober,
+if you respect yourself, or</p></div>
+
+<p class="right">
+"<span class="smcap">Kate.</span>"<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Griffith put the note in his pocket, and tried to think; but he could
+not think to much purpose. Then this made him suspect he was drunk. Then
+he tried to be sober; but he found he could not. He sat in a sort of
+stupid agony, with Love and Drink battling for his brain. It was piteous
+to see the poor fool's struggles to regain the reason he had so madly
+parted with. He could not do it; and when he found that, he took up a
+finger-glass, and gravely poured the contents upon his head.</p>
+
+<p>At this there was a burst of laughter.</p>
+
+<p>This irritated Mr. Gaunt; and, with that rapid change of sentiments
+which marks the sober savage and the drunken European, he offered to
+fight a gentleman he had been hitherto holding up to the company as his
+best friend. But his best friend (a very distant acquaintance) was by
+this time as tipsy as himself, and offered a piteous disclaimer, mingled
+with tears; and these maudlin drops so affected Griffith that he flung
+his one available arm round his best friend's head, and wept in turn;
+and down went both their lachrymose, empty noddles on the table.
+Griffith's remained there; but his best friend extricated himself, and,
+shaking his skull, said, dolefully, "He is very drunk." This notable
+discovery, coming from such a quarter, caused considerable merriment.</p>
+
+<p>"Let him alone," said an old toper; and Griffith remained a good hour
+with his head on the table. Meantime the other gentlemen soon put it out
+of their power to ridicule him on the score of intoxication.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith, keeping quiet, got a little better, and suddenly started up
+with a notion he was to go to Kate this very moment. He muttered an
+excuse, and staggered to a glass door that led to the lawn. He opened
+this door, and rushed out into the open air. He thought it would set him
+all right; but, instead of that, it made him so much worse that
+presently his legs came to a misunderstanding, and he measured his
+length on the ground, and could not get up again, but kept slipping
+down.</p>
+
+<p>Upon this he groaned and lay quiet.</p>
+
+<p>Now there was a foot of snow on the ground; and it melted about
+Griffith's hot temples and flushed face, and mightily refreshed and
+revived him.</p>
+
+<p>He sat up and kissed Kate's letter, and Love began to get the upper hand
+of Liquor a little.</p>
+
+<p>Finally he got up and half strutted, half staggered, to the turret, and
+stood under Kate's window.</p>
+
+<p>The turret was covered with luxuriant ivy, and that ivy with snow. So
+the glass of the window was set in a massive frame of winter; but a
+bright fire burned inside the room, and this set the panes all aflame.
+It was cheery and glorious to see the window glow like a sheet of
+transparent fire in its deep frame of snow; but Griffith could not
+appreciate all that. He stood there a sorrowful man. The wine he had
+taken to drown his despair had lost its stimulating effect, and had
+given him a heavy head, but left him his sick heart.</p>
+
+<p>He stood and puzzled his drowsy faculties<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> why Kate had sent for him.
+Was it to bid him good by forever, or to lessen his misery by telling
+him she would not marry another? He soon gave up cudgelling his
+enfeebled brains. Kate was a superior being to him, and often said
+things, and did things, that surprised him. She had sent for him, and
+that was enough. He should see her and speak to her once more, at all
+events. He stood, alternately nodding and looking up at her glowing
+room, and longing for its owner to appear. But as Bacchus had inspired
+him to mistake eight o'clock for nine, and as she was not a votary of
+Bacchus, she did not appear; and he stood there till he began to shiver.</p>
+
+<p>The shadow of a female passed along the wall; and Griffith gave a great
+start. Then he heard the fire poked. Soon after he saw the shadow again;
+but it had a large servant's cap on: so his heart had beaten high for
+Mary or Susan. He hung his head disappointed; and, holding on by the
+ivy, fell a nodding again.</p>
+
+<p>By and by one of the little casements was opened softly. He looked up,
+and there was the right face peering out.</p>
+
+<p>O, what a picture she was in the moonlight and the firelight! They both
+fought for that fair head, and each got a share of it: the full moon's
+silvery beams shone on her rose-like cheeks and lilified them a shade,
+and lit her great gray eyes and made them gleam astoundingly; but the
+ruby firelight rushed at her from behind, and flowed over her golden
+hair, and reddened and glorified it till it seemed more than mortal. And
+all this in a very picture-frame of snow.</p>
+
+<p>Imagine, then, how sweet and glorious she glowed on him who loved her,
+and who looked at her perhaps for the last time.</p>
+
+<p>The sight did wonders to clear his head; he stood open-mouthed, with his
+heart beating. She looked him all over a moment. "Ah!" said she. Then,
+quietly, "I am so glad you are come." Then, kindly and regretfully, "How
+pale you look! you are unhappy."</p>
+
+<p>This greeting, so gentle and kind, overpowered Griffith. His heart was
+too full to speak.</p>
+
+<p>Kate waited a moment; and then, as he did not reply to her, she began to
+plead to him. "I hope you are not angry with <i>me</i>," she said. "<i>I</i> did
+not want him to leave me your estates. I would not rob you of them for
+the world, if I had my way."</p>
+
+<p>"Angry with you!" said Griffith. "I'm not such a villain. Mr. Charlton
+did the right thing, and&mdash;" He could say no more.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not think so," said Kate. "But don't you fret: all shall be
+settled to your satisfaction. I cannot quite love you, but I have a
+sincere affection for you; and so I ought. Cheer up, dear Griffith;
+don't you be down-hearted about what has happened to-day."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith smiled. "I don't feel unhappy," he said; "I did feel as if my
+heart was broken. But then you seemed parted from me. Now we are
+together, I feel as happy as ever. Mistress, don't you ever shut that
+window and leave me in the dark again. Let me stand and look at your
+sweet face all night, and I shall be the happiest man in Cumberland."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," said Kate, blushing at his ardor; "happy for a single night; but
+when I go away you will be in the dumps again, and perhaps get tipsy; as
+if that could mend matters! Nay, I must set your happiness on stronger
+legs than that. Do you know I have got permission to undo this cruel
+will, and let you have Bolton Hall and Hernshaw again?"</p>
+
+<p>Griffith looked pleased, but rather puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>Kate went on, but not so glibly now. "However," said she, a little
+nervously, "there is one condition to it that will cost us both some
+pain. If you consent to accept these two estates from me, who don't
+value them one straw, why then&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what?" he gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, then, my poor Griffith, we shall be bound in honor&mdash;you and I&mdash;not
+to meet for some months, perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> for a whole year: in one word,&mdash;do not
+hate me,&mdash;not till you can bear to see me&mdash;another&mdash;man's&mdash;wife."</p>
+
+<p>The murder being out, she hid her face in her hands directly, and in
+that attitude awaited his reply.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith stood petrified a moment; and I don't think his intellects were
+even yet quite clear enough to take it all in at once. But at last he
+did comprehend it, and when he did, he just uttered a loud cry of agony,
+and then turned his back on her without a word.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Man does not speak by words alone. A mute glance of reproach has ere now
+pierced the heart a tirade would have left untouched; and even an
+inarticulate cry may utter volumes.</p>
+
+<p>Such an eloquent cry was that with which Griffith Gaunt turned his back
+upon the angelical face he adored, and the soft, persuasive tongue.
+There was agony, there was shame, there was wrath, all in that one
+ejaculation.</p>
+
+<p>It frightened Kate. She called him back. "Don't leave me so," she said.
+"I know I have affronted you; but I meant all for the best. Do not let
+us part in anger."</p>
+
+<p>At this Griffith returned in violent agitation. "It is your fault for
+making me speak," he cried. "I was going away without a word, as a man
+should, that is insulted by a woman. You heartless girl! What! you bid
+me sell you to that man for two dirty farms! O, well you know Bolton and
+Hernshaw were but the steps by which I hoped to climb to you: and now
+you tell me to part with you, and take those miserable acres instead of
+my darling. Ah, mistress, you have never loved, or you would hate
+yourself and despise yourself for what you have done. Love! if you had
+known what that word means, you couldn't look in my face and stab me to
+the heart like this. God forgive you! And sure I hope he will; for,
+after all, it is not <i>your</i> fault that you were born without a heart.
+<span class="smcap">Why, Kate, you are crying.</span>"</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XI.</h3>
+
+<p>"Crying!" said Kate. "I could cry my eyes out to think what I have done;
+but it is not my fault: they egged me on. I knew you would fling those
+two miserable things in my face if I did, and I said so; but they would
+be wiser than me, and insist on my putting you to the proof."</p>
+
+<p>"They? Who is they?"</p>
+
+<p>"No matter. Whoever it was, they will gain nothing by it, and you will
+lose nothing. Ah, Griffith, I am so ashamed of myself,&mdash;and so proud of
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"They?" repeated Griffith, suspiciously. "Who is this they?"</p>
+
+<p>"What does that matter, so long as it was not Me? Are you going to be
+jealous again? Let us talk of you and me, and never mind who <i>them</i> is.
+You have rejected my proposal with just scorn: so now let me hear yours;
+for we must agree on something this very night. Tell me, now, what can I
+say or do to make you happy?"</p>
+
+<p>Griffith was sore puzzled. "Alas! sweet Kate," said he, "I don't know
+what you can do for me now, except stay single for my sake."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like nothing better," replied Kate warmly; "but unfortunately
+they won't let me do that. Father Francis will be at me to-morrow, and
+insist on my marrying Mr. Neville."</p>
+
+<p>"But you will refuse."</p>
+
+<p>"I would, if I could but find a good excuse."</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse? why, say you don't love him."</p>
+
+<p>"O, they won't allow that for a reason."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I am undone," sighed Griffith.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, you are not; if I could be brought to pretend I love somebody
+else. And really, if I don't quite love you, I like you too well to let
+you be unhappy. Besides, I cannot bear to rob you of these unlucky
+farms: I think there is nothing I would not do rather than that. I
+think&mdash;I would rather&mdash;do&mdash;something very silly indeed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> But I suppose
+you don't want me to do that now? Why don't you answer me? Why don't you
+say something? Are you drunk, sir, as they pretend? or are you asleep?
+O, I can't speak any plainer: this is intolerable. Mr. Gaunt, I'm going
+to shut the window."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith got alarmed, and it sharpened his wits. "Kate, Kate!" he cried,
+"what do you mean? am I in a dream? would you marry poor me after all?"</p>
+
+<p>"How on earth can I tell, till I am asked?" inquired Kate, with an air
+of childlike innocence, and inspecting the stars attentively.</p>
+
+<p>"Kate, will you marry me?" said Griffith, all in a flutter.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I will&mdash;if you will let me," replied Kate, coolly, but rather
+tenderly, too.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith burst into raptures. Kate listened to them with a complacent
+smile, then delivered herself after this fashion: "You have very little
+to thank me for, dear Griffith. I don't exactly downright love you, but
+I could not rob you of those unlucky farms, and you refuse to take them
+back any way but this; so what can I do? And then, for all I don't love
+you, I find I am always unhappy if you are unhappy, and happy when you
+are happy; so it comes pretty much to the same thing. I declare I am
+sick of giving you pain, and a little sick of crying in consequence.
+There, I have cried more in the last fortnight than in all my life
+before, and you know nothing spoils one's beauty like crying. And then
+you are so good, and kind, and true, and brave; and everybody is so
+unjust and so unkind to you, papa and all. You were quite in the right
+about the duel, dear. He <i>is</i> an impudent puppy; and I threw dust in
+your eyes, and made you own you were in the wrong, and it was a great
+shame of me, but it was because I liked you best. I could take liberties
+with <i>you</i>, dear. And you are wounded for me, and now I have
+disinherited you. O, I can't bear it, and I won't. My heart yearns for
+you,&mdash;bleeds for you. I would rather die than you should be unhappy; I
+would rather follow you in rags round the world than marry a prince and
+make you wretched. Yes, dear, I am yours. Make me your wife; and then
+some day I dare say I shall love you as I ought."</p>
+
+<p>She had never showed her heart to him like this before; and now it
+overpowered him. So, being also a little under vinous influence, he
+stammered out something, and then fairly blubbered for joy. Then what
+does Kate do, but cry for company?</p>
+
+<p>Presently, to her surprise, he was half-way up the turret, coming to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"O, take care! take care!" she cried. "You'll break your neck."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay," cried he; "I must come at you, if I die for it."</p>
+
+<p>The turret was ornamented from top to bottom with short ledges
+consisting of half-bricks. This ledge, shallow as it was, gave a slight
+foothold, insufficient in itself; but he grasped the strong branches of
+the ivy with a powerful hand, and so between the two contrived to get up
+and hang himself out close to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Sweet mistress," said he, "put out your hand to me; for I can't take it
+against your will this time. I have got but one arm."</p>
+
+<p>But this she declined. "No, no," said she; "you do nothing but torment
+and terrify me,&mdash;there." And so gave it him; and he mumbled it.</p>
+
+<p>This last feat won her quite. She thought no other man could have got to
+her there with two arms; and Griffith had done it with one. She said to
+herself, "How he loves me!&mdash;more than his own neck." And then she
+thought, "I shall be wife to a strong man; that is one comfort."</p>
+
+<p>In this softened mood she asked him demurely, would he take a friend's
+advice.</p>
+
+<p>"If that friend is you, ay."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said she, "I'll do a downright brazen thing, now my hand is in.
+I declare I'll tell you how to secure me. You make me plight my troth
+with you this minute, and exchange rings with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> you, <i>whether I like or
+not</i>; engage my honor in this foolish business, and if you do that, I
+really do think you will have me in spite of them all. But
+there,&mdash;la!&mdash;am I worth all this trouble?"</p>
+
+<p>Griffith did not share this chilling doubt. He poured forth his
+gratitude, and then told her he had got his mother's ring in his pocket;
+"I meant to ask you to wear it," said he.</p>
+
+<p>"And why didn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because you became an heiress all of a sudden."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what signifies which of us has the dross, so that there is enough
+for both?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is true," said Griffith, approving his own sentiment, but not
+recognizing his own words. "Here's my mother's ring, on my little
+finger, sweet mistress. But I must ask you to draw it off, for I have
+but one hand."</p>
+
+<p>Kate made a wry face, "Well, that is my fault," said she, "or I would
+not take it from you so."</p>
+
+<p>She drew off his ring, and put it on her finger. Then she gave him her
+largest ring, and had to put it on his little finger for him.</p>
+
+<p>"You are making a very forward girl of me," said she, pouting
+exquisitely.</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her hand while she was doing it.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you be so silly," said she; "and, you horrid creature, how you
+smell of wine! The bullet, please."</p>
+
+<p>"The bullet!" exclaimed Griffith. "What bullet?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>The</i> bullet. The one you were wounded with for my sake. I am told you
+put it in your pocket; and I see something bulge in your waistcoat. That
+bullet belongs to me now."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you are a witch," said he. "I do carry it about next my heart.
+Take it out of my waistcoat, if you will be so good."</p>
+
+<p>She blushed and declined, and, with the refusal on her very lips, fished
+it out with her taper fingers. She eyed it with a sort of tender horror.
+The sight of it made her feel faint a moment. She told him so, and that
+she would keep it to her dying day. Presently her delicate finger found
+something was written on it. She did not ask him what it was, but
+withdrew, and examined it by her candle. Griffith had engraved it with
+these words:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I LOVE KATE."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He looked through the window, and saw her examine it by the candle. As
+she read the inscription, her face, glorified by the light, assumed a
+celestial tenderness he had never seen it wear before.</p>
+
+<p>She came back and leaned eloquently out as if she would fly to him. "O
+Griffith, Griffith!" she murmured, and somehow or other their lips met,
+in spite of all the difficulties, and grew together in a long and tender
+embrace.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first time she had ever given him more than her hand to kiss,
+and the rapture repaid him for all.</p>
+
+<p>But as soon as she had made this great advance, virginal instinct
+suggested a proportionate retreat.</p>
+
+<p>"You must go to bed," she said, austerely; "you will catch your death of
+cold out here."</p>
+
+<p>He remonstrated: she insisted. He held out: she smiled sweetly in his
+face, and shut the window in it pretty sharply, and disappeared. He went
+disconsolately down his ivy ladder. As soon as he was at the bottom, she
+opened the window again, and asked him, demurely, if he would do
+something to oblige her.</p>
+
+<p>He replied like a lover; he was ready to be cut in pieces, drawn asunder
+with wild horses, and so on.</p>
+
+<p>"O, I know you would do anything stupid for me," said she; "but will you
+do something clever for a poor girl that is in a fright at what she is
+going to do for you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Give your orders, mistress," said Griffith, "and don't talk of me
+obliging you. I feel quite ashamed to hear you talk so,&mdash;to-night
+especially."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then," said Kate, "first and foremost, I want you to throw
+yourself on Father Francis's neck."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll throw myself on Father Francis's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> neck," said Griffith, stoutly.
+"Is that all?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, nor half. Once upon his neck you must say something. Then I had
+better settle the very words, or perhaps you will make a mess of it. Say
+after me now: O Father Francis, 'tis to you I owe her."</p>
+
+<p>"O Father Francis, 'tis to you I owe her."</p>
+
+<p>"You and I are friends for life."</p>
+
+<p>"You and I are friends for life."</p>
+
+<p>"And, mind, there is always a bed in our home for you, and a plate at
+our table, and a right welcome, come when you will."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith repeated this line correctly, but, when requested to say the
+whole, broke down. Kate had to repeat the oration a dozen times; and he
+said it after her, like a Sunday-school scholar, till he had it pat.</p>
+
+<p>The task achieved, he inquired of her what Father Francis was to say in
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>At this simple question Kate showed considerable alarm. "Gracious
+heavens!" she cried, "you must not stop talking to him; he will turn you
+inside out, and I shall be undone. Nay, you must gabble these words out,
+and then run away as hard as you can gallop."</p>
+
+<p>"But is it true?" asked Griffith. "Is he so much my friend?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hum!" said Kate, "it is quite true, and he is not at all your friend.
+There, don't you puzzle yourself, and pester me; but do as you are bid,
+or we are both undone."</p>
+
+<p>Quelled by a menace so mysterious, Griffith promised blind obedience;
+and Kate thanked him, and bade him good night, and ordered him
+peremptorily to bed.</p>
+
+<p>He went.</p>
+
+<p>She beckoned him back.</p>
+
+<p>He came.</p>
+
+<p>She leaned out, and inquired, in a soft, delicious whisper, as follows:
+"Are you happy, dearest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, Kate, the happiest of the happy."</p>
+
+<p>"Then so am I," she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>And now she slowly closed the window, and gradually retired from the
+eyes of her enraptured lover.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XII.</h3>
+
+<p>But while Griffith was thus sweetly employed, his neglected guests were
+dispersing, not without satirical comments on their truant host. Two or
+three, however, remained, and slept in the house, upon special
+invitation. And that invitation came from Squire Peyton. He chose to
+conclude that Griffith, disappointed by the will, had vacated the
+premises in disgust, and left him in charge of them; accordingly he
+assumed the master with alacrity, and ordered beds for Neville, and
+Father Francis, and Major Rickards, and another. The weather was
+inclement, and the roads heavy; so the gentlemen thus distinguished
+accepted Mr. Peyton's offer cordially.</p>
+
+<p>There were a great many things sung and said at the festive board in the
+course of the evening, but very few of them would amuse or interest the
+reader as they did the hearers. One thing, however, must not be passed
+by, as it had its consequences. Major Rickards drank bumpers apiece to
+the King, the Prince, Church and State, the Army, the Navy, and Kate
+Peyton. By the time he got to her, two thirds of his discretion had
+oozed away in loyalty, <i>esprit du corps</i>, and port wine; so he sang the
+young lady's praises in vinous terms, and of course immortalized the
+very exploit she most desired to consign to oblivion: <i>Arma viraginemque
+canebat</i>. He sang the duel, and in a style which I could not,
+consistently with the interests of literature, reproduce on a large
+scale. Hasten we to the concluding versicles of his song.</p>
+
+<p>"So then, sir, we placed our men for the third time, and, you may take
+my word for it, one or both of these heroes would have bit the dust at
+that discharge. But, by Jove, sir, just as they were going to pull
+trigger, in galloped your adorable daughter, and swooned off her foaming
+horse in the middle of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> us,&mdash;disarmed us, sir, in a moment, melted our
+valor, bewitched our senses, and the great god of war had to retreat
+before little Cupid and the charms of beauty in distress."</p>
+
+<p>"Little idiot!" observed the tender parent; and was much distempered.</p>
+
+<p>He said no more about it to Major Rickards; but when they all retired
+for the night, he undertook to show Father Francis his room, and sat in
+it with him a good half-hour talking about Kate.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's a pretty scandal," said he. "I must marry the silly girl out of
+hand before this gets wind, and you must help me."</p>
+
+<p>In a word, the result of the conference was that Kate should be publicly
+engaged to Neville to-morrow, and married to him as soon as her month's
+mourning should be over.</p>
+
+<p>The conduct of the affair was confided to Father Francis, as having
+unbounded influence with her.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XIII.</h3>
+
+<p>Next morning Mr. Peyton was up betimes in his character of host, and
+ordered the servants about, and was in high spirits; only they gave
+place to amazement when Griffith Gaunt came down, and played the host,
+and was in high spirits.</p>
+
+<p>Neville too watched his rival, and was puzzled at his radiancy.</p>
+
+<p>So breakfast passed in general mystification. Kate, who could have
+thrown a light, did not come down to breakfast. She was on her defence.</p>
+
+<p>She made her first appearance out of doors.</p>
+
+<p>Very early in the morning, Mr. Peyton, in his quality of master, had
+ordered the gardener to cut and sweep the snow off the gravel walk that
+went round the lawn. And on this path Miss Peyton was seen walking
+briskly to and fro in the frosty, but sunny air.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith saw her first, and ran out to bid her good morning.</p>
+
+<p>Her reception of him was a farce. She made him a stately courtesy for
+the benefit of the three faces glued against the panes, but her words
+were incongruous. "You wretch," said she, "don't come here. Hide about,
+dearest, till you see me with Father Francis. I'll raise my hand <i>so</i>
+when you are to cuddle him, and fib. There, make me a low bow, and
+retire."</p>
+
+<p>He obeyed, and the whole thing looked mighty formal and ceremonious from
+the breakfast-room.</p>
+
+<p>"With your good leave, gentlemen," said Father Francis, dryly, "I will
+be the next to pay my respects to her." With this he opened the window
+and stepped out.</p>
+
+<p>Kate saw him, and felt very nervous. She met him with apparent delight.</p>
+
+<p>He bestowed his morning benediction on her, and then they walked
+silently side by side on the gravel; and from the dining-room window it
+looked like anything but what it was,&mdash;a fencing match.</p>
+
+<p>Father Francis was the first to break silence. He congratulated her on
+her good fortune, and on the advantage it might prove to the true
+Church.</p>
+
+<p>Kate waited quietly till he had quite done, and then said, "What, I may
+go into a convent <i>now</i> that I can bribe the door open?"</p>
+
+<p>The scratch was feline, feminine, sudden, and sharp. But, alas! Father
+Francis only smiled at it. Though not what we call spiritually-minded,
+he was a man of a Christian temper. "Not with my good-will, my
+daughter," said he; "I am of the same mind still, and more than ever.
+You must marry forthwith, and rear children in the true faith."</p>
+
+<p>"What a hurry you are in."</p>
+
+<p>"Your own conduct has made it necessary."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what have I done now?"</p>
+
+<p>"No harm. It was a good and humane action to prevent bloodshed, but the
+world is not always worthy of good actions. People are beginning to make
+free with your name for your interfering in the duel."</p>
+
+<p>Kate fired up. "Why can't people mind their own business?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I do not exactly know," said the priest, coolly, "nor is it worth
+inquiring. We must take human nature as it is, and do for the best. You
+must marry him, and stop their tongues."</p>
+
+<p>Kate pretended to reflect. "I believe you are right," said she, at last;
+"and indeed I must do as you would have me; for, to tell the truth, in
+an unguarded moment, I pitied him so that I half promised I <i>would</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed!" said Father Francis. "This is the first I have heard of it."</p>
+
+<p>Kate replied that was no wonder, for it was only last night she had so
+committed herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Last night!" said Father Francis; "how can that be? He was never out of
+my sight till we went to bed."</p>
+
+<p>"O, there I beg to differ," said the lady. "While you were all tippling
+in the dining-room, he was better employed,&mdash;making love by moonlight.
+And O what a terrible thing opportunity is, and the moon another! There!
+what with the moonlight, and my pitying him so, and all he has suffered
+for me, and my being rich now, and having something to give him, we two
+are engaged. See else: this was his mother's ring, and he has mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Neville?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Neville? No. My old servant, to be sure. What, do you think I would
+go and marry for wealth, when I have enough and to spare of my own? O,
+what an opinion you must have of me!"</p>
+
+<p>Father Francis was staggered by this adroit thrust. However, after a
+considerable silence he recovered himself, and inquired gravely why she
+had given him no hint of all this the other night, when he had diverted
+her from a convent, and advised her to marry Neville.</p>
+
+<p>"That you never did, I'll be sworn," said Kate.</p>
+
+<p>Father Francis reflected.</p>
+
+<p>"Not in so many words, perhaps; but I said enough to show you."</p>
+
+<p>"O!" said Kate, "such a matter was too serious for hints and innuendoes;
+if you wanted me to jilt my old servant and wed an acquaintance of
+yesterday, why not say so plainly? I dare say I should have obeyed you,
+and been unhappy for life; but now my honor is solemnly engaged; my
+faith is plighted; and were even you to urge me to break faith, and
+behave dishonorably, I should resist. I would liever take poison, and
+die."</p>
+
+<p>Father Francis looked at her steadily, and she colored to the brow.</p>
+
+<p>"You are a very apt young lady," said he; "you have outwitted your
+director. That may be my fault as much as yours; so I advise you to
+provide yourself with another director, whom you will be unable, or
+unwilling, to outwit."</p>
+
+<p>Kate's high spirit fell before this: she turned her eyes, full of tears,
+on him. "O, do not desert me, now that I shall need you more than ever,
+to guide me in my new duties. Forgive me; I did not know my own
+heart&mdash;quite. I'll go into a convent now, if I must; but I can't marry
+any man but poor Griffith. Ah, father, he is more generous than any of
+us! Would you believe it? when he thought Bolton and Hernshaw were
+coming to him, he said if I married him I should have the money to build
+a convent with. He knows how fond I am of a convent."</p>
+
+<p>"He was jesting; his religion would not allow it."</p>
+
+<p>"His religion!" cried Kate. Then, lifting her eyes to Heaven, and
+looking just like an angel, "Love is <i>his</i> religion!" said she, warmly.</p>
+
+<p>"Then his religion is Heathenism," said the priest, grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, there is too much charity in it for that," retorted Kate, keenly.</p>
+
+<p>Then she looked down, like a cunning, guilty thing, and murmured: "One
+of the things I esteem him for is he always speaks well of <i>you</i>. To be
+sure, just now the poor soul thinks you are his best friend with me. But
+that is my fault; I as good as told him so: and it is true, after a
+fashion; for you kept me out of the convent that was his only real
+rival. Why, here he comes. O<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> father, now don't you go and tell him you
+side with Mr. Neville."</p>
+
+<p>At this crisis Griffith, who, to tell the truth, had received a signal
+from Kate, rushed at Father Francis and fell upon his neck, and said
+with great rapidity: "O Father Francis, 'tis to you I owe her,&mdash;you and
+I are friends for life. So long as we have a house there is a bed in it
+for you, and whilst we have a table to sit down to there's a plate at it
+for you, and a welcome, come when you will."</p>
+
+<p>Having gabbled these words he winked at Kate, and fled swiftly.</p>
+
+<p>Father Francis was taken aback a little by this sudden burst of
+affection. First he stared,&mdash;then he knitted his brows,&mdash;then he
+pondered.</p>
+
+<p>Kate stole a look at him, and her eyes sought the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"That is the gentleman you arranged matters with last night?" said he,
+drily.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," replied Kate, faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"Was this scene part of the business?"</p>
+
+<p>"O father!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why I ask, he did it so unnatural. Mr. Gaunt is a worthy, hospitable
+gentleman; he and I are very good friends; and really I never doubted
+that I should be welcome in his house&mdash;&mdash;until this moment."</p>
+
+<p>"And can you doubt it now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Almost: his manner just now was so hollow, so forced; not a word of all
+that came from his heart, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Then his heart is changed very lately."</p>
+
+<p>The priest shook his head. "Anything more like a puppet, and a parrot to
+boot, I never saw. 'Twas done so timely, too. He ran in upon our
+discourse. Let me see your hand, mistress. Why, where is the string with
+which you pulled yonder machine in so pat upon the word?"</p>
+
+<p>"Spare me!" muttered Kate, faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"Then do you drop deceit and the silly cunning of your sex, and speak to
+me from your heart, or not at all." (Diapason.)</p>
+
+<p>At this Kate began to whimper.</p>
+
+<p>"Father," she said, "show me some mercy." Then, suddenly clasping her
+hands: "<span class="smcap">Have pity on him, and on me.</span>"</p>
+
+<p>This time Nature herself seemed to speak, and the eloquent cry went
+clean through the priest's heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said he; and his own voice trembled a little: "now you are as
+strong as your cunning was weak. Come, I see how it is with you; and I
+am human, and have been young, and a lover into the bargain, before I
+was a priest. There, dry thy eyes, child, and go to thy room; he thou
+couldst not trust shall bear the brunt for thee this once."</p>
+
+<p>Then Kate bowed her fair head and kissed the horrid paw of him that had
+administered so severe but salutary a pat. She hurried away up stairs,
+right joyful at the unexpected turn things had taken.</p>
+
+<p>Father Francis, thus converted to her side, lost no time; he walked into
+the dining-room and told Neville he had bad news for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Summon all your courage, my young friend," said he, with feeling, "and
+remember that this world is full of disappointments."</p>
+
+<p>Neville said nothing, but rose and stood rather pale, waiting like a man
+for the blow. Its nature he more than half guessed: he had been at the
+window.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It fell.</p>
+
+<p>"She is engaged to Gaunt, since last night; and she loves him."</p>
+
+<p>"The double-faced jade!" cried Peyton, with an oath.</p>
+
+<p>"The heartless coquette!" groaned Neville.</p>
+
+<p>Father Francis made excuses for her: "Nay, nay, she is not the first of
+her sex that did not know her own mind all at once. Besides, we men are
+blind in matters of love; perhaps a woman would have read her from the
+first. After all, she was not bound to give us the eyes to read a female
+heart."</p>
+
+<p>He next reminded Neville that Gaunt had been her servant for years.
+"You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span> knew that," said he, "yet you came between them&mdash;&mdash;at your peril.
+Put yourself in his place: say you had succeeded: would not his wrong be
+greater than yours is now? Come, be brave; be generous; he is wounded,
+he is disinherited; only his love is left him: 'tis the poor man's lamb;
+and would you take it?"</p>
+
+<p>"O, I have not a word to say against the <i>man</i>," said George, with a
+mighty effort.</p>
+
+<p>"And what use is your quarrelling with the woman?" suggested the
+practical priest.</p>
+
+<p>"None whatever," said George, sullenly. After a moment's silence he rang
+the bell feverishly. "Order my horse round directly," said he. Then he
+sat down, and buried his face in his hands, and did not, and could not,
+listen to the voice of consolation.</p>
+
+<p>Now the house was full of spies in petticoats, amateur spies, that ran
+and told the mistress everything of their own accord, to curry favor.</p>
+
+<p>And this no doubt was the cause that, just as the groom walked the
+piebald out of the stable towards the hall door, a maid came to Father
+Francis with a little note: he opened it, and found these words written
+faintly, in a fine Italian hand:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I scarce knew my own heart till I saw him wounded and poor,
+and myself rich at his expense. Entreat Mr. Neville to forgive
+me."</p></div>
+
+<p>He handed the note to Neville without a word.</p>
+
+<p>Neville read it, and his lip trembled; but he said nothing, and
+presently went out into the hall, and put on his hat, for he saw his nag
+at the door.</p>
+
+<p>Father Francis followed him, and said, sorrowfully, "What, not one word
+in reply to so humble a request?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, here's my reply," said George, grinding his teeth. "She knows
+French, though she pretends not.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Le bruit est pour le fat, la plainte est pour le sot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">L'honn&ecirc;te homme tromp&eacute; s'eloigne et ne dit mot.'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And with this he galloped furiously away.</p>
+
+<p>He buried himself at Neville's Cross for several days, and would neither
+see nor speak to a soul. His heart was sick, his pride lacerated. He
+even shed some scalding tears in secret; though, to look at him, that
+seemed impossible.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>So passed a bitter week: and in the course of it he bethought him of the
+tears he had made a true Italian lady shed, and never pitied her a grain
+till now.</p>
+
+<p>He was going abroad: on his desk lay a little crumpled paper. It was
+Kate's entreaty for forgiveness. He had ground it in his hand, and
+ridden away with it.</p>
+
+<p>Now he was going away, he resolved to answer her.</p>
+
+<p>He wrote a letter full of bitter reproaches; read it over; and tore it
+up.</p>
+
+<p>He wrote a satirical and cutting letter; read it; and tore it up.</p>
+
+<p>He wrote her a mawkish letter; read it; and tore it up.</p>
+
+<p>The priest's words, scorned at first, had sunk into him a little.</p>
+
+<p>He walked about the room, and tried to see it all like a by-stander.</p>
+
+<p>He examined her writing closely: the pen had scarcely marked the paper.
+They were the timidest strokes. The writer seemed to kneel to him. He
+summoned all his manhood, his fortitude, his generosity, and, above all,
+his high-breeding; and produced the following letter; and this one he
+sent:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Mistress Kate</span>,&mdash;I leave England to-day for your sake; and
+shall never return unless the day shall come when I can look on
+you but as a friend. The love that ends in hate, that is too
+sorry a thing to come betwixt you and me.</p>
+
+<p>"If you have used me ill, your punishment is this; you have
+given me the right to say to you&mdash;&mdash;I forgive you.</p></div>
+
+<p class="right">
+"<span class="smcap">George Neville.</span>"<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>And he went straight to Italy.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Kate laid his note upon her knee, and sighed deeply; and said, "Poor
+fellow! How noble of him! What <i>can</i> such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span> men as this see in any woman
+to go and fall in love with her?"</p>
+
+<p>Griffith found her with a tear in her eye. He took her out walking, and
+laid all his radiant plans of wedded life before her. She came back
+flushed, and beaming with complacency and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Old Peyton was brought to consent to the marriage. Only he attached one
+condition, that Bolton and Hernshaw should be settled on Kate for her
+separate use.</p>
+
+<p>To this Griffith assented readily; but Kate refused plump. "What, give
+him <i>myself</i>, and then grudge him my <i>estates</i>!" said she, with a look
+of lofty and beautiful scorn at her male advisers.</p>
+
+<p>But Father Francis, having regard to the temporal interests of his
+Church, exerted his strength and pertinacity, and tired her out; so
+those estates were put into trustees' hands, and tied up tight as wax.</p>
+
+<p>This done, Griffith Gaunt and Kate Peyton were married, and made the
+finest pair that wedded in the county that year.</p>
+
+<p>As the bells burst into a merry peal, and they walked out of church man
+and wife, their path across the churchyard was strewed thick with
+flowers, emblematic, no doubt, of the path of life that lay before so
+handsome a couple.</p>
+
+<p>They spent the honeymoon in London, and tasted earthly felicity.</p>
+
+<p>Yet did not quarrel after it; but subsided into the quiet complacency of
+wedded life.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XIV.</h3>
+
+<p>Mr. and Mrs. Gaunt lived happily together&mdash;as times went.</p>
+
+<p>A fine girl and boy were born to them; and need I say how their hearts
+expanded and exulted, and seemed to grow twice as large.</p>
+
+<p>The little boy was taken from them at three years old; and how can I
+convey to any but a parent the anguish of that first bereavement?</p>
+
+<p>Well, they suffered it together, and that poignant grief was one tie
+more between them.</p>
+
+<p>For many years they did not furnish any exciting or even interesting
+matter to this narrator. And all the better for them: without these
+happy periods of dulness our lives would be hell, and our hearts
+eternally bubbling and boiling in a huge pot made hot with thorns.</p>
+
+<p>In the absence of striking incidents, it may be well to notice the
+progress of character, and note the tiny seeds of events to come.</p>
+
+<p>Neither the intellectual nor the moral character of any person stands
+stock-still: a man improves, or he declines. Mrs. Gaunt had a great
+taste for reading; Mr. Gaunt had not: what was the consequence? At the
+end of seven years the lady's understanding had made great strides; the
+gentleman's had apparently retrograded.</p>
+
+<p>Now we all need a little excitement, and we all seek it, and get it by
+hook or by crook. The girl who satisfies that natural craving with what
+the canting dunces of the day call a "sensational" novel, and the girl
+who does it by waltzing till daybreak, are sisters; only one obtains the
+result intellectually, and the other obtains it like a young animal, and
+a pain in her empty head next day.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt could enjoy company, but was never dull with a good book. Mr.
+Gaunt was a pleasant companion, but dull out of company. So, rather than
+not have it, he would go to the parlor of the "Red Lion," and chat and
+sing with the yeomen and rollicking young squires that resorted thither:
+and this was matter of grief and astonishment to Mrs. Gaunt.</p>
+
+<p>It was balanced by good qualities she knew how to appreciate. Morals
+were much looser then than now; and more than one wife of her
+acquaintance had a rival in the village, or even among her own
+domestics; but Griffith had no loose inclinations of that kind, and
+never gave her a moment's uneasiness. He was constancy and fidelity in
+person.</p>
+
+<p>Sobriety had not yet been invented.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> But Griffith was not so intemperate
+as most squires; he could always mount the stairs to tea, and generally
+without staggering.</p>
+
+<p>He was uxorious, and it used to come out after his wine. This Mrs. Gaunt
+permitted at first, but by and by says she, expanding her delicate
+nostrils: "You may be as affectionate as you please, dear, and you may
+smell of wine, if you will; but please not to smell of wine and be
+affectionate at the same moment. I value your affection too highly to
+let you disgust me with it."</p>
+
+<p>And the model husband yielded to this severe restriction; and, as it
+never occurred to him to give up his wine, he forbore to be affectionate
+in his cups.</p>
+
+<p>One great fear Mrs. Gaunt had entertained before marriage ceased to
+haunt her. Now and then her quick eye saw Griffith writhe at the great
+influence her director had with her; but he never spoke out to offend
+her, and she, like a good wife, saw, smiled, and adroitly, tenderly
+soothed: and this was nothing compared to what she had feared.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith saw his wife admired by other men, yet never chid nor chafed.
+The merit of this belonged in a high degree to herself. The fact is,
+that Kate Peyton, even before marriage, was not a coquette at heart,
+though her conduct might easily bear that construction; and she was now
+an experienced matron, and knew how to be as charming as ever, yet check
+or parry all approaches to gallantry on the part of her admirers. Then
+Griffith observed how delicate and prudent his lovely wife was, without
+ostentatious prudery; and his heart was at peace.</p>
+
+<p>He was the happier of the two, for he looked up to his wife, as well as
+loved her; whereas she was troubled at times with a sense of superiority
+to her husband. She was amiable enough, and wise enough, to try and shut
+her eyes to it; and often succeeded, but not always.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the whole, they were a contented couple; though the lady's dreamy
+eyes seemed still to be exploring earth and sky in search of something
+they had not yet found, even in wedded life.</p>
+
+<p>They lived at Hernshaw. A letter had been found among Mr. Charlton's
+papers explaining his will. He counted on their marrying, and begged
+them to live at the castle. He had left it on his wife's death; it
+reminded him too keenly of happier days; but, as he drew near his end,
+and must leave all earthly things, he remembered the old house with
+tenderness, and put out his dying hand to save it from falling into
+decay.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, considerable repairs were needed; and, as Kate's property
+was tied up so tight, Griffith's two thousand pounds went in repairing
+the house, lawn, park palings, and walled gardens; went, every penny,
+and left the bridge over the lake still in a battered, rotten, and, in a
+word, picturesque condition.</p>
+
+<p>This lake was by the older inhabitants sometimes called the "mere," and
+sometimes "the fish-pools"; it resembled an hour-glass in shape, only
+curved like a crescent.</p>
+
+<p>In medi&aelig;val times it had no doubt been a main defence of the place. It
+was very deep in parts, especially at the waist or narrow that was
+spanned by the decayed bridge. There were hundreds of carp and tench in
+it older than any He in Cumberland, and also enormous pike and eels; and
+fish from one to five pounds' weight by the million. The water literally
+teemed from end to end; and this was a great comfort to so good a
+Catholic as Mrs. Gaunt. When she was seized with a desire to fast, and
+that was pretty often, the gardener just went down to the lake and flung
+a casting-net in some favorite hole, and drew out half a bushel the
+first cast; or planted a flue-net round a patch of weeds, then belabored
+the weeds with a long pole, and a score of fine fish were sure to run
+out into the meshes.</p>
+
+<p>The "mere" was clear as plate glass, and came to the edge of the shaven
+lawn, and reflected flowers, turf, and overhanging shrubs deliciously.</p>
+
+<p>Yet an ill name brooded over its seductive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> waters; for two persons had
+been drowned in it during the last hundred years: and the last one was
+the parson of the parish, returning from the squire's dinner in the
+normal condition of a guest, <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 1740-50. But what most affected the
+popular mind was, not the jovial soul hurried into eternity, but the
+material circumstance that the greedy pike had cleared the flesh off his
+bones in a single night, so that little more than a skeleton, with here
+and there a black rag hanging to it, had been recovered next morning.</p>
+
+<p>This ghastly detail being stoutly maintained and constantly repeated by
+two ancient eye-witnesses, whose one melodramatic incident and treasure
+it was, the rustic mind saw no beauty whatever in those pellucid and
+delicious waters, where flowers did glass themselves.</p>
+
+<p>As for the women of the village, they looked on this sheet of water as a
+trap for their poor bodies and those of their children, and spoke of it
+as a singular hardship in their lot, that Hernshaw Mere had not been
+filled up threescore years agone.</p>
+
+<p>The castle itself was no castle, nor had it been for centuries. It was
+just a house with battlements; but attached to the stable was an old
+square tower, that really had formed part of the medi&aelig;val castle.</p>
+
+<p>However, that unsubstantial shadow, a name, is often more durable than
+the thing, especially in rural parts; but, indeed, what is there in a
+name for Time's teeth to catch hold of?</p>
+
+<p>Though no castle, it was a delightful abode. The drawing-room and
+dining-room had both spacious bay-windows, opening on to the lawn that
+sloped very gradually down to the pellucid lake, and there was mirrored.
+On this sweet lawn the inmates and guests walked for sun and mellow air,
+and often played bowls at eventide.</p>
+
+<p>On the other side was the drive up to the house-door, and a sweep, or
+small oval plot, of turf, surrounded by gravel; and a gate at the corner
+of this sweep opened into a grove of the grandest old spruce-firs in the
+island.</p>
+
+<p>This grove, dismal in winter and awful at night, was deliciously cool
+and sombre in the dog-days. The trees were spires; and their great stems
+stood serried like infantry in column, and flung a grand canopy of
+sombre plumes overhead. A strange, antique, and classic grove,&mdash;<i>nulli
+penetrabilis astro</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This retreat was enclosed on three sides by a wall, and on the east side
+came nearly to the house. A few laurel-bushes separated the two. At
+night it was shunned religiously, on account of the ghosts. Even by
+daylight it was little frequented, except by one person,&mdash;and she took
+to it amazingly. That person was Mrs. Gaunt. There seems to be, even in
+educated women, a singular, instinctive love of twilight; and here was
+twilight at high noon. The place, too, suited her dreamy, meditative
+nature. Hither, then, she often retired for peace and religious
+contemplation, and moved slowly in and out among the tall stems, or sat
+still, with her thoughtful brow leaned on her white hand,&mdash;till the
+cool, umbrageous retreat got to be called, among the servants, "The
+Dame's Haunt."</p>
+
+<p>This, I think, is all needs be told about the mere place, where the
+Gaunts lived comfortably many years, and little dreamed of the strange
+events in store for them; little knew the passions that slumbered in
+their own bosoms, and, like other volcanoes, bided their time.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="REVIEWS_AND_LITERARY_NOTICES" id="REVIEWS_AND_LITERARY_NOTICES"></a>REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Snow-Bound: a Winter Idyl.</i> By <span class="smcap">John G. Whittier.</span> Boston: Ticknor and
+Fields.</p>
+
+<p>What Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" has long been to Old England,
+Whittier's "Snow-Bound" will always be to New England. Both poems have
+the flavor of native soil in them. Neither of them is a reminder of
+anything else, but each is individual and special in those qualities
+which interest and charm the reader. If "The Deserted Village" had never
+been written, Whittier would have composed his "Snow-Bound," no doubt;
+and the latter only recalls the former on account of that genuine
+home-atmosphere which surrounds both these exquisite productions. After
+a perusal of this new American idyl, no competent critic will contend
+that we lack proper themes for poetry in our own land. The "Snow-Bound"
+will be a sufficient reminder to all cavillers, at home or abroad, that
+the American Muse need not travel far away for poetic situations.</p>
+
+<p>Whittier has been most fortunate in the subject-matter of this new poem.
+Every page has beauties on it so easy to discern, that the common as
+well as the cultured mind will at once feel them without an effort. We
+have only space for a few passages from the earlier portion of the idyl.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The sun that brief December day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rose cheerless over hills of gray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, darkly circled, gave at noon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sadder light than waning moon.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Slow tracing down the thickening sky<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its mute and ominous prophecy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A portent seeming less than threat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It sank from sight before it set.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A chill no coat, however stout,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A hard, dull bitterness of cold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That checked, mid-vein, the circling race<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of life-blood in the sharpened face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The coming of the snow-storm told.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wind blew east: we heard the roar<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Ocean on his wintry shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And felt the strong pulse throbbing there<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beat with low rhythm our inland air.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Meanwhile we did our nightly chores,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brought in the wood from out of doors,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Littered the stalls, and from the mows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, sharply clashing horn on horn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Impatient down the stanchion rows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The cattle shake their walnut bows;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While, peering from his early perch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon the scaffold's pole of birch,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The cock his crested helmet bent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And down his querulous challenge sent.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Unwarmed by any sunset light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The gray day darkened into night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A night made hoary with the swarm<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As zigzag wavering to and fro<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crossed and recrossed the wing&eacute;d snow:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ere the early bed-time came<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The white drift piled the window-frame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And through the glass the clothes-line posts<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"So all night long the storm roared on:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The morning broke without the sun;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In tiny spherule traced with lines<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Nature's geometric signs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In starry flake, and pellicle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All day the hoary meteor fell;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, when the second morning shone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We looked upon a world unknown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On nothing we could call our own.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Around the glistening wonder bent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The blue walls of the firmament,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No cloud above, no earth below,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A universe of sky and snow!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The old familiar sights of ours<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or garden wall, or belt of wood;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A fenceless drift what once was road;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bridle-post an old man sat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The well-curb had a Chinese roof;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And even the long sweep, high aloof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In its slant splendor, seemed to tell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Pisa's leaning miracle.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"A prompt, decisive man, no breath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our father wasted: 'Boys, a path!'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Count such a summons less than joy?)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our buskins on our feet we drew;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To guard our necks and ears from snow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We cut the solid whiteness through.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, where the drift was deepest, made<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A tunnel walled and overlaid<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With dazzling crystal: we had read<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And to our own his name we gave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With many a wish the luck were ours<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To test his lamp's supernal powers.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"We reached the barn with merry din,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And roused the prisoned brutes within.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The old horse thrust his long head out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And grave with wonder gazed about;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The cock his lusty greeting said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And forth his speckled harem led;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And mild reproach of hunger looked;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The horn&eacute;d patriarch of the sheep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shook his sage head with gesture mute,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And emphasized with stamp of foot."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span></p>
+<p><i>Lives of Boulton and Watt.</i> Principally from the original Soho MSS.
+Comprising also a History of the Invention and Introduction of the
+Steam-Engine. By <span class="smcap">Samuel Smiles.</span> London: John Murray.</p>
+
+<p>The author of this book is an enthusiast in biography. He has given the
+best years of his life to the task of recording the struggles and
+successes of men who have labored for the good of their kind; and his
+own name will always be honorably mentioned in connection with
+Stephenson, Watt, Flaxman, and others, of whom he has written so well.
+Of all his published books, next to "Self-Help," this volume, lately
+issued, is his most interesting one. James Watt, with his nervous
+sensibility, his headaches, his pecuniary embarrassments, and his gloomy
+temperament, has never till now been revealed precisely as he lived and
+struggled. The extensive collection of Soho documents to which Mr.
+Smiles had access has enabled him to add so much that is new and
+valuable to the story of his hero's career, that hereafter this
+biography must take the first place as a record of the great inventor.</p>
+
+<p>As a tribute to Boulton, so many years the friend, partner, and consoler
+of Watt, the book is deeply interesting. Fighting many a hard battle for
+his timid, shrinking associate, Boulton stands forth a noble
+representative of strength, courage, and perseverance. Never was
+partnership more admirably conducted; never was success more richly
+earned. Mr. Smiles is neither a Macaulay nor a Motley, but he is so
+honest and earnest in every work he undertakes, he rarely fails to make
+a book deeply instructive and entertaining.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Winifred Bertram and the World she lived in.</i> By the Author of the
+Sch&ouml;nberg-Cotta Family. New York: M. W. Dodd.</p>
+
+<p>The previous works of this prolific author have proved by their
+popularity that they meet a genuine demand. Such a fact can no more be
+reached by literary criticism, than can the popularity of Tupper's
+poetry. It is no reproach to a book which actually finds readers to say
+that it is not high art. Winifred Bertram has this advantage over her
+predecessors, that she takes part in no theological controversies except
+those of the present day, and therefore seems more real and truthful
+than the others. In regard to present issues, however, the book deals in
+the usual proportion of rather one-sided dialogues, and of arguments
+studiously debilitated in order to be knocked down by other arguments.
+Yet there is much that is lovely and touching in the characters
+delineated; there is a good deal of practical sense and sweet human
+charity; and the different heroes and heroines show some human variety
+in their action, although in conversation they all preach very much
+alike. Indeed, the book is overhung with rather an oppressive weight of
+clergyman; and when the loveliest of the saints is at last wedded to the
+youngest of the divines, she throws an awful shade over clerical
+connubiality by invariably addressing him as "Mr. Bertram." In this
+respect, at least, the fashionable novels hold out brighter hopes to the
+heart of woman.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No.
+101, March, 1866, by Various
+
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@@ -0,0 +1,9296 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101,
+March, 1866, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: May 4, 2007 [EBook #21288]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by Cornell University Digital Collections).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+ATLANTIC MONTHLY
+
+_A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics._
+
+VOL. XVII.--MARCH, 1866.--NO. CI.
+
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by TICKNOR AND
+FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
+Massachusetts.
+
+Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved
+to the end of the article.
+
+
+
+
+PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.
+
+
+III.
+
+Maine, _Thursday, July 20, 1837._--A drive, yesterday afternoon, to a
+pond in the vicinity of Augusta, about nine miles off, to fish for white
+perch. Remarkables: the steering of the boat through the crooked,
+labyrinthine brook, into the open pond,--the man who acted as
+pilot,--his talking with B----about politics, the bank, the iron money
+of "a king who came to reign, in Greece, over a city called
+Sparta,"--his advice to B---- to come amongst the laborers on the
+mill-dam, because it stimulated them "to see a man grinning amongst
+them." The man took hearty tugs at a bottle of good Scotch whiskey, and
+became pretty merry. The fish caught were the yellow perch, which are
+not esteemed for eating; the white perch, a beautiful, silvery,
+round-backed fish, which bites eagerly, runs about with the line while
+being pulled up, makes good sport for the angler, and an admirable dish;
+a great chub; and three horned pouts, which swallow the hook into their
+lowest entrails. Several dozen fish were taken in an hour or two, and
+then we returned to the shop where we had left our horse and wagon, the
+pilot very eccentric behind us. It was a small, dingy shop, dimly
+lighted by a single inch of candle, faintly disclosing various boxes,
+barrels standing on end, articles hanging from the ceiling; the
+proprietor at the counter, whereon appear gin and brandy, respectively
+contained in a tin pint-measure and an earthenware jug, with two or
+three tumblers beside them, out of which nearly all the party drank;
+some coming up to the counter frankly, others lingering in the
+background, waiting to be pressed, two paying for their own liquor and
+withdrawing. B---- treated them twice round. The pilot, after drinking
+his brandy, gave a history of our fishing expedition, and how many and
+how large fish we caught. B---- making acquaintances and renewing them,
+and gaining great credit for liberality and free-heartedness,--two or
+three boys looking on and listening to the talk,--the shopkeeper smiling
+behind his counter, with the tarnished tin scales beside him,--the inch
+of candle burned down almost to extinction. So we got into our wagon,
+with the fish, and drove to Robinson's tavern, almost five miles off,
+where we supped and passed the night. In the bar-room was a fat old
+countryman on a journey, and a quack doctor of the vicinity, and an
+Englishman with a peculiar accent. Seeing B----'s jointed and
+brass-mounted fishing-pole, he took it for a theodolite, and supposed
+that we had been on a surveying expedition. At supper, which consisted
+of bread, butter, cheese, cake, doughnuts, and gooseberry-pie, we were
+waited upon by a tall, very tall woman, young and maiden-looking, yet
+with a strongly outlined and determined face. Afterwards we found her to
+be the wife of mine host. She poured out our tea, came in when we rang
+the table-bell to refill our cups, and again retired. While at supper,
+the fat old traveller was ushered through the room into a contiguous
+bedroom. My own chamber, apparently the best in the house, had its walls
+ornamented with a small, gilt-framed, foot-square looking-glass, with a
+hair-brush hanging beneath it; a record of the deaths of the family,
+written on a black tomb, in an engraving, where a father, mother, and
+child were represented in a graveyard, weeping over said tomb; the
+mourners dressed in black, country-cut clothes; the engraving executed
+in Vermont. There was also a wood engraving of the Declaration of
+Independence, with fac-similes of the autographs; a portrait of the
+Empress Josephine, and another of Spring. In the two closets of this
+chamber were mine hostess's cloak, best bonnet, and go-to-meeting
+apparel. There was a good bed, in which I slept tolerably well, and,
+rising betimes, ate breakfast, consisting of some of our own fish, and
+then started for Augusta. The fat old traveller had gone off with the
+harness of our wagon, which the hostler had put on to his horse by
+mistake. The tavern-keeper gave us his own harness, and started in
+pursuit of the old man, who was probably aware of the exchange, and well
+satisfied with it.
+
+Our drive to Augusta, six or seven miles, was very pleasant, a heavy
+rain having fallen during the night and laid the oppressive dust of the
+day before. The road lay parallel with the Kennebec, of which we
+occasionally had near glimpses. The country swells back from the river
+in hills and ridges, without any interval of level ground; and there
+were frequent woods, filling up the valleys or crowning the summits. The
+land is good, the farms looked neat, and the houses comfortable. The
+latter are generally but of one story, but with large barns; and it was
+a good sign, that, while we saw no houses unfinished nor out of repair,
+one man, at least, had found it expedient to make an addition to his
+dwelling. At the distance of more than two miles, we had a view of white
+Augusta, with its steeples, and the State-House, at the farther end of
+the town. Observable matters along the road were the stage,--all the
+dust of yesterday brushed off, and no new dust contracted,--full of
+passengers, inside and out; among them some gentlemanly people and
+pretty girls, all looking fresh and unsullied, rosy, cheerful, and
+curious as to the face of the country, the faces of passing travellers,
+and the incidents of their journey; not yet damped, in the morning
+sunshine, by long miles of jolting over rough and hilly roads,--to
+compare this with their appearance at midday, and as they drive into
+Bangor at dusk;--two women dashing along in a wagon, and with a child,
+rattling pretty speedily down hill;--people looking at us from the open
+doors and windows;--the children staring from the wayside;--the mowers
+stopping, for a moment, the sway of their scythes;--the matron of a
+family, indistinctly seen at some distance within the house, her head
+and shoulders appearing through the window, drawing her handkerchief
+over her bosom, which had been uncovered to give the baby its
+breakfast,--the said baby, or its immediate predecessor, sitting at the
+door, turning round to creep away on all fours;--a man building a
+flat-bottomed boat by the roadside: he talked with B---- about the
+Boundary question, and swore fervently in favor of driving the British
+"into hell's kitchen" by main force.
+
+Colonel B----, the engineer of the mill-dam, is now here, after about a
+fortnight's absence. He is a plain country squire, with a good figure,
+but with rather a ponderous brow; a rough complexion; a gait stiff, and
+a general rigidity of manner, something like that of a schoolmaster. He
+originated in a country town, and is a self-educated man. As he walked
+down the gravel path to-day, after dinner, he took up a scythe, which
+one of the mowers had left on the sward, and began to mow, with quite a
+scientific swing. On the coming of the mower, he laid it down, perhaps a
+little ashamed of his amusement. I was interested in this; to see a man,
+after twenty-five years of scientific occupation, thus trying whether
+his arms retained their strength and skill for the labors of his
+youth,--mindful of the day when he wore striped trousers, and toiled in
+his shirt-sleeves,--and now tasting again, for pastime, this drudgery
+beneath a fervid sun. He stood awhile, looking at the workmen, and then
+went to oversee the laborers at the mill-dam.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Monday, July 24th._--I bathed in the river on Thursday evening, and in
+the brook at the old dam on Saturday and Sunday,--the former time at
+noon. The aspect of the solitude at noon was peculiarly impressive,
+there being a cloudless sunshine, no wind, no rustling of the
+forest-leaves, no waving of the boughs, no noise but the brawling and
+babbling of the stream, making its way among the stones, and pouring in
+a little cataract round one side of the mouldering dam. Looking up the
+brook, there was a long vista,--now ripples, now smooth and glassy
+spaces, now large rocks, almost blocking up the channel; while the trees
+stood upon either side, mostly straight, but here and there a branch
+thrusting itself out irregularly, and one tree, a pine, leaning
+over,--not bending,--but leaning at an angle over the brook, rough and
+ragged; birches, alders; the tallest of all the trees an old, dead,
+leafless pine, rising white and lonely, though closely surrounded by
+others. Along the brook, now the grass and herbage extended close to the
+water; now a small, sandy beach. The wall of rock before described,
+looking as if it had been hewn, but with irregular strokes of the
+workman, doing his job by rough and ponderous strength,--now chancing to
+hew it away smoothly and cleanly, now carelessly smiting, and making
+gaps, or piling on the slabs of rock, so as to leave vacant spaces. In
+the interstices grow brake and broad-leaved forest grass. The trees that
+spring from the top of this wall have their roots pressing close to the
+rock, so that there is no soil between; they cling powerfully, and grasp
+the crag tightly with their knotty fingers. The trees on both sides are
+so thick, that the sight and the thoughts are almost immediately lost
+among confused stems, branches, and clustering green leaves,--a narrow
+strip of bright blue sky above, the sunshine falling lustrously down,
+and making the pathway of the brook luminous below. Entering among the
+thickets, I find the soil strewn with old leaves of preceding seasons,
+through which may be seen a black or dark mould; the roots of trees
+stretch frequently across the path; often a moss-grown brown log lies
+athwart, and when you set your foot down, it sinks into the decaying
+substance,--into the heart of oak or pine. The leafy boughs and twigs of
+the underbrush enlace themselves before you, so that you must stoop your
+head to pass under, or thrust yourself through amain, while they sweep
+against your face, and perhaps knock off your hat. There are rocks mossy
+and slippery; sometimes you stagger, with a great rustling of branches,
+against a clump of bushes, and into the midst of it. From end to end of
+all this tangled shade goes a pathway scarcely worn, for the leaves are
+not trodden through, yet plain enough to the eye, winding gently to
+avoid tree-trunks and rocks and little hillocks. In the more open
+ground, the aspect of a tall, fire-blackened stump, standing alone, high
+up on a swell of land, that rises gradually from one side of the brook,
+like a monument. Yesterday, I passed a group of children in this
+solitary valley,--two boys, I think, and two girls. One of the little
+girls seemed to have suffered some wrong from her companions, for she
+was weeping and complaining violently. Another time, I came suddenly on
+a small Canadian boy, who was in a hollow place, among the ruined logs
+of an old causeway, picking raspberries,--lonely among bushes and
+gorges, far up the wild valley,--and the lonelier seemed the little boy
+for the bright sunshine, that showed no one else in a wide space of view
+except him and me.
+
+Remarkable items: the observation of Mons. S---- when B---- was saying
+something against the character of the French people,--"You ought not to
+form an unfavorable judgment of a great nation from mean fellows like
+me, strolling about in a foreign country." I thought it very noble thus
+to protest against anything discreditable in himself personally being
+used against the honor of his country. He is a very singular person,
+with an originality in all his notions;--not that nobody has ever had
+such before, but that he has thought them out for himself. He told me
+yesterday that one of his sisters was a waiting-maid in the Rocher de
+Caucale. He is about the sincerest man I ever knew, never pretending to
+feelings that are not in him,--never flattering. His feelings do not
+seem to be warm, though they are kindly. He is so single-minded that he
+cannot understand badinage, but takes it all as if meant in earnest,--a
+German trait. Revalues himself greatly on being a Frenchman, though all
+his most valuable qualities come from Germany. His temperament is cool
+and pure, and he is greatly delighted with any attentions from the
+ladies. A short time since, a lady gave him a bouquet of roses and
+pinks; he capered and danced and sang, put it in water, and carried it
+to his own chamber; but he brought it out for us to see and admire two
+or three times a day, bestowing on it all the epithets of admiration in
+the French language,--"_Superbe! magnifique!_" When some of the flowers
+began to fade, he made the rest, with others, into a new nosegay, and
+consulted us whether it would be fit to give to another lady. Contrast
+this French foppery with his solemn moods, when we sit in the twilight,
+or after B---- is abed, talking of Christianity and Deism, of ways of
+life, of marriage, of benevolence,--in short, of all deep matters of
+this world and the next. An evening or two since, he began singing all
+manner of English songs,--such as Mrs. Hemans's "Landing of the
+Pilgrims," "Auld Lang Syne," and some of Moore's,--the singing pretty
+fair, but in the oddest tone and accent. Occasionally he breaks out with
+scraps from French tragedies, which he spouts with corresponding action.
+He generally gets close to me in these displays of musical and
+histrionic talent Once he offered to magnetize me in the manner of
+Monsieur P----.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Wednesday, July 26th._--Dined at Barker's yesterday. Before dinner, sat
+with several other persons in the stoop of the tavern. There was B----,
+J. A. Chandler, Clerk of the Court, a man of middle age or beyond, two
+or three stage people, and, nearby, a negro, whom they call "the
+Doctor," a crafty-looking fellow, one of whose occupations is nameless.
+In presence of this goodly company, a man of a depressed, neglected air,
+a soft, simple-looking fellow, with an anxious expression, in a
+laborer's dress, approached and inquired for Mr. Barker. Mine host being
+gone to Portland, the stranger was directed to the bar-keeper, who stood
+at the door. The man asked where he should find one Mary Ann Russell,--a
+question which excited general and hardly-suppressed mirth; for the said
+Mary Ann is one of a knot of women who were routed on Sunday evening by
+Barker and a constable. The man was told that the black fellow would
+give him all the information he wanted. The black fellow asked,--
+
+"Do you want to see her?"
+
+Others of the by-standers or by-sitters put various questions as to the
+nature of the man's business with Mary Ann. One asked,--
+
+"Is she your daughter?"
+
+"Why, a little nearer than that, I calkilate," said the poor devil.
+
+Here the mirth was increased, it being evident that the woman was his
+wife. The man seemed too simple and obtuse to comprehend the ridicule of
+his situation, or to be rendered very miserable by it. Nevertheless, he
+made some touching points.
+
+"A man generally places some little dependence on his wife," said he,
+"whether she's good or not."
+
+He meant, probably, that he rests some affection on her. He told us that
+she had behaved well, till committed to jail for striking a child; and I
+believe he was absent from home at the time, and had not seen her since.
+And now he was in search of her, intending, doubtless, to do his best to
+get her out of her troubles, and then to take her back to his home. Some
+advised him not to look after her; others recommended him to pay "the
+Doctor" aforesaid for guiding him to her; which finally "the Doctor"
+did, in consideration of a treat; and the fellow went off, having heard
+little but gibes, and not one word of sympathy! I would like to have
+witnessed his meeting with his wife.
+
+There was a moral picturesqueness in the contrasts of the scene,--a man
+moved as deeply as his nature would admit, in the midst of hardened,
+gibing spectators, heartless towards him. It is worth thinking over and
+studying out. He seemed rather hurt and pricked by the jests thrown at
+him, yet bore it patiently, and sometimes almost joined in the laugh,
+being of an easy, unenergetic temper.
+
+Hints for characters:--Nancy, a pretty, black-eyed, intelligent
+servant-girl, living in Captain H----'s family. She comes daily to make
+the beds in our part of the house, and exchanges a good-morning with me,
+in a pleasant voice, and with a glance and smile,--somewhat shy, because
+we are not acquainted, yet capable of being made conversable. She washes
+once a week, and may be seen standing over her tub, with her
+handkerchief somewhat displaced from her white neck, because it is hot.
+Often she stands with her bare arms in the water, talking with Mrs.
+H----, or looks through the window, perhaps, at B---- or somebody else
+crossing the yard,--rather thoughtfully, but soon smiling or laughing.
+Then goeth she for a pail of water. In the afternoon, very probably, she
+dresses herself in silks, looking not only pretty, but lady-like, and
+strolls round the house, not unconscious that some gentleman may be
+staring at her from behind the green blinds. After supper, she walks to
+the village. Morning and evening, she goes a-milking. And thus passes
+her life, cheerfully, usefully, virtuously, with hopes, doubtless, of a
+husband and children.--Mrs. H---- is a particularly plump, soft-fleshed,
+fair-complexioned, comely woman enough, with rather a simple
+countenance, not nearly so piquant as Nancy's. Her walk has something of
+the roll or waddle of a fat woman, though it were too much to call her
+fat. She seems to be a sociable body, probably laughter-loving. Captain
+H---- himself has commanded a steamboat, and has a certain knowledge of
+life.
+
+Query, in relation to the man's missing wife, how much desire and
+resolution of doing her duty by her husband can a wife retain, while
+injuring him in what is deemed the most essential point?
+
+Observation. The effect of morning sunshine on the wet grass, on sloping
+and swelling land, between the spectator and the sun at some distance,
+as across a lawn. It diffused a dim brilliancy over the whole surface of
+the field. The mists, slow-rising farther off, part resting on the
+earth, the remainder of the column already ascending so high that you
+doubt whether to call it a fog or a cloud.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Friday, July 28th._--Saw my classmate and formerly intimate friend,
+Cilley, for the first time since we graduated. He has met with good
+success in life, in spite of circumstance, having struggled upward
+against bitter opposition, by the force of his own abilities, to be a
+member of Congress, after having been for some time the leader of his
+party in the State Legislature. We met like old friends, and conversed
+almost as freely as we used to do in college days, twelve years ago and
+more. He is a singular man, shrewd, crafty, insinuating, with wonderful
+tact, seizing on each man by his manageable point, and using him for his
+own purpose, often without the man's suspecting that he is made a tool
+of; and yet, artificial as his character would seem to be, his
+conversation, at least to myself, was full of natural feeling, the
+expression of which can hardly be mistaken, and his revelations with
+regard to himself had really a great deal of frankness. He spoke of his
+ambition, of the obstacles which he had encountered, of the means by
+which he had overcome them, imputing great efficacy to his personal
+intercourse with people, and his study of their characters; then of his
+course as a member of the Legislature and Speaker, and his style of
+speaking and its effects; of the dishonorable things which had been
+imputed to him, and in what manner he had repelled the charges. In
+short, he would seem to have opened himself very freely as to his public
+life. Then, as to his private affairs, he spoke of his marriage, of his
+wife, his children, and told me, with tears in his eyes, of the death of
+a dear little girl, and how it affected him, and how impossible it had
+been for him to believe that she was really to die. A man of the most
+open nature might well have been more reserved to a friend, after twelve
+years' separation, than Cilley was to me. Nevertheless, he is really a
+crafty man, concealing, like a murder-secret, anything that it is not
+good for him to have known. He by no means feigns the good-feeling that
+he professes, nor is there anything affected in the frankness of his
+conversation; and it is this that makes him so very fascinating. There
+is such a quantity of truth and kindliness and warm affections, that a
+man's heart opens to him, in spite of himself. He deceives by truth. And
+not only is he crafty, but, when occasion demands, bold and fierce as a
+tiger, determined, and even straightforward and undisguised in his
+measures,--a daring fellow as well as a sly one. Yet, notwithstanding
+his consummate art, the general estimate of his character seems to be
+pretty just. Hardly anybody, probably, thinks him better than he is, and
+many think him worse. Nevertheless, if no overwhelming discovery of
+rascality be made, he will always possess influence; though I should
+hardly think that he would take any prominent part in Congress. As to
+any rascality, I rather believe that he has thought out for himself a
+much higher system of morality than any natural integrity would have
+prompted him to adopt; that he has seen the thorough advantage of
+morality and honesty; and the sentiment of these qualities has now got
+into his mind and spirit, and pretty well impregnated them. I believe
+him to be about as honest as the great run of the world, with something
+even approaching to high-mindedness. His person in some degree accords
+with his character,--thin and with a thin face, sharp features, sallow,
+a projecting brow not very high, deep-set eyes, an insinuating smile and
+look, when he meets you, and is about to address you. I should think
+that he would do away with this peculiar expression, for it reveals more
+of himself than can be detected in any other way, in personal
+intercourse with him. Upon the whole, I have quite a good liking for
+him, and mean to go to Thomaston to see him.
+
+Observation. A steam-engine across the river, which almost continually
+during the day, and sometimes all night, may be heard puffing and
+panting, as if it uttered groans for being compelled to labor in the
+heat and sunshine, and when the world is asleep also.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Monday, July 31st._--Nothing remarkable to record. A child asleep in a
+young lady's arms,--a little baby, two or three months old. Whenever
+anything partially disturbed the child, as, for instance, when the young
+lady or a by-stander patted its cheek or rubbed its chin, the child
+would smile; then all its dreams seemed to be of pleasure and happiness.
+At first the smile was so faint, that I doubted whether it were really a
+smile or no; but on further efforts, it brightened forth very decidedly.
+This, without opening its eyes.--A constable, a homely, good-natured,
+business-looking man, with a warrant against an Irishman's wife for
+throwing a brickbat at a fellow. He gave good advice to the Irishman
+about the best method of coming easiest through the affair. Finally
+settled,--the justice agreeing to relinquish his fees, on condition that
+the Irishman would pay for the mending of his old boots!
+
+I went with Monsieur S---- yesterday to pick raspberries. He fell
+through an old log bridge thrown over a hollow; looking back, only his
+head and shoulders appeared through the rotten logs and among the
+bushes.--A shower coming on, the rapid running of a little barefooted
+boy, coming up unheard, and dashing swiftly past us, and showing the
+soles of his naked feet as he ran adown the path before us, and up the
+opposite rise.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Tuesday, August 1st._--There having been a heavy rain yesterday, a nest
+of chimney-swallows was washed down the chimney into the fireplace of
+one of the front-rooms. My attention was drawn to them by a most
+obstreperous twittering; and looking behind the fire-board, there were
+three young birds, clinging with their feet against one of the jambs,
+looking at me, open-mouthed, and all clamoring together, so as quite to
+fill the room with the short, eager, frightened sound. The old birds, by
+certain signs upon the floor of the room, appeared to have fallen
+victims to the appetite of the cat. La belle Nancy provided a basket
+filled with cotton-wool, into which the poor little devils were put; and
+I tried to feed them with soaked bread, of which, however, they did not
+eat with much relish. Tom, the Irish boy, gave it as his opinion that
+they were not old enough to be weaned. I hung the basket out of the
+window, in the sunshine, and upon looking in, an hour or two after,
+found that two of the birds had escaped. The other I tried to feed, and
+sometimes, when a morsel of bread was thrust into its open mouth, it
+would swallow it. But it appeared to suffer a good deal, vociferating
+loudly when disturbed, and panting, in a sluggish agony, with eyes
+closed, or half opened, when let alone. It distressed me a good deal;
+and I felt relieved, though somewhat shocked, when B---- put an end to
+its misery by squeezing its head and throwing it out of the window. They
+were of a slate-color, and might, I suppose, have been able to shift for
+themselves.--The other day a little yellow bird flew into one of the
+empty rooms, of which there are half a dozen on the lower floor, and
+could not find his way out again, flying at the glass of the windows,
+instead of at the door, thumping his head against the panes or against
+the ceiling. I drove him into the entry and chased him from end to end,
+endeavoring to make him fly through one of the open doors. He would fly
+at the circular light over the door, clinging to the casement, sometimes
+alighting on one of the two glass lamps, or on the cords that suspended
+them, uttering an affrighted and melancholy cry whenever I came near and
+flapped my handkerchief, and appearing quite tired and sinking into
+despair. At last he happened to fly low enough to pass through the door,
+and immediately vanished into the gladsome sunshine.--Ludicrous
+situation of a man, drawing his chaise down a sloping bank, to wash in
+the river. The chaise got the better of him, and, rushing downward as if
+it were possessed, compelled him to run at full speed, and drove him up
+to his chin into the water. A singular instance, that a chaise may run
+away with a man without a horse!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Saturday, August 12th._--Left Augusta a week ago this morning for
+Thomaston. Nothing particular in our drive across the country.
+Fellow-passenger, a Boston dry-goods dealer, travelling to collect
+bills. At many of the country shops he would get out, and show his
+unwelcome visage. In the tavern, prints from Scripture, varnished and on
+rollers,--such as the Judgment of Christ; also, a droll set of colored
+engravings of the story of the Prodigal Son, the figures being clad in
+modern costume,--or, at least, that of not more than half a century ago.
+The father, a grave, clerical person, with a white wig and black
+broadcloth suit; the son, with a cocked hat and laced clothes, drinking
+wine out of a glass, and caressing a woman in fashionable dress. At
+Thomaston, a nice, comfortable, boarding-house tavern, without a bar or
+any sort of wines or spirits. An old lady from Boston, with her three
+daughters, one of whom was teaching music, and the other two were
+school-mistresses. A frank, free, mirthful daughter of the landlady,
+about twenty-four years old, between whom and myself there immediately
+sprang up a flirtation, which made us both feel rather melancholy when
+we parted on Tuesday morning. Music in the evening, with a song by a
+rather pretty, fantastic little mischief of a brunette, about eighteen
+years old, who has married within a year, and spent the last summer in a
+trip to the Springs and elsewhere. Her manner of walking is by jerks,
+with a quiver, as if she were made of calves-feet jelly. I talk with
+everybody: to Mrs. Trott, good sense,--to Mary, good sense, with a
+mixture of fun,--to Mrs. Gleason, sentiment, romance, and nonsense.
+
+Walked with Cilley to see General Knox's old mansion,--a large,
+rusty-looking edifice of wood, with some grandeur in the architecture,
+standing on the banks of the river, close by the site of an old
+burial-ground, and near where an ancient fort had been erected for
+defence against the French and Indians. General Knox once owned a square
+of thirty miles in this part of the country; and he wished to settle it
+with a tenantry, after the fashion of English gentlemen. He would permit
+no edifice to be erected within a certain distance of his mansion. His
+patent covered, of course, the whole present town of Thomaston, with
+Waldoborough and divers other flourishing commercial and country
+villages, and would have been of incalculable value could it have
+remained unbroken to the present time. But the General lived in grand
+style, and received throngs of visitors from foreign parts, and was
+obliged to part with large tracts of his possessions, till now there is
+little left but the ruinous mansion and the ground immediately around
+it. His tomb stands near the house,--a spacious receptacle, an iron door
+at the end of a turf-covered mound, and surmounted by an obelisk of the
+Thomaston marble. There are inscriptions to the memory of several of his
+family; for he had many children, all of whom are now dead, except one
+daughter, a widow of fifty, recently married to Hon. John H----. There
+is a stone fence round the monument. On the outside of this are
+the gravestones, and large, flat tombstones of the ancient
+burial-ground,--the tombstones being of red freestone, with vacant
+spaces, formerly inlaid with slate, on which were the inscriptions, and
+perhaps coats-of-arms. One of these spaces was in the shape of a heart.
+The people of Thomaston were very wrathful that the General should have
+laid out his grounds over this old burial-place; and he dared never
+throw down the gravestones, though his wife, a haughty English lady,
+often teased him to do so. But when the old General was dead, Lady Knox
+(as they called her) caused them to be prostrated, as they now lie. She
+was a woman of violent passions, and so proud an aristocrat, that, as
+long as she lived, she would never enter any house in Thomaston except
+her own. When a married daughter was ill, she used to go in her carriage
+to the door, and send up to inquire how she did. The General was
+personally very popular; but his wife ruled him. The house and its
+vicinity, and the whole tract covered by Knox's patent, may be taken as
+an illustration of what must be the result of American schemes of
+aristocracy. It is not forty years since this house was built, and Knox
+was in his glory; but now the house is all in decay, while within a
+stone's throw of it there is a street of smart white edifices of one and
+two stories, occupied chiefly by thriving mechanics, which has been laid
+out where Knox meant to have forests and parks. On the banks of the
+river, where he intended to have only one wharf for his own West Indian
+vessels and yacht, there are two wharves, with stores and a lime-kiln.
+Little appertains to the mansion, except the tomb and the old
+burial-ground, and the old fort.
+
+The descendants are all poor, and the inheritance was merely sufficient
+to make a dissipated and drunken fellow of the only one of the old
+General's sons who survived to middle age. The man's habits were as bad
+as possible as long as he had any money; but when quite ruined, he
+reformed. The daughter, the only survivor among Knox's children,
+(herself childless,) is a mild, amiable woman, therein totally differing
+from her mother. Knox, when he first visited his estate, arriving in a
+vessel, was waited upon by a deputation of the squatters, who had
+resolved to resist him to the death. He received them with genial
+courtesy, made them dine with him aboard the vessel, and sent them back
+to their constituents in great love and admiration of him. He used to
+have a vessel running to Philadelphia, I think, and bringing him all
+sorts of delicacies. His way of raising money was to give a mortgage on
+his estate of a hundred thousand dollars at a time, and receive that
+nominal amount in goods, which he would immediately sell at auction for
+perhaps thirty thousand. He died by a chicken-bone. Near the house are
+the remains of a covered way, by which the French once attempted to gain
+admittance into the fort; but the work caved in and buried a good many
+of them, and the rest gave up the siege. There was recently an old
+inhabitant living, who remembered when the people used to reside in the
+fort.
+
+Owl's Head,--a watering-place, terminating a point of land, six or seven
+miles from Thomaston. A long island shuts out the prospect of the sea.
+Hither coasters and fishing-smacks run in when a storm is anticipated.
+Two fat landlords, both young men, with something of a contrast in their
+dispositions;--one of them being a brisk, lively, active, jesting fat
+man; the other more heavy and inert, making jests sluggishly, if at all.
+Aboard the steamboat, Professor Stuart of Andover, sitting on a sofa in
+the saloon, generally in conversation with some person, resolving their
+doubts on one point or another, speaking in a very audible voice; and
+strangers standing or sitting around to hear him, as if he were an
+ancient apostle or philosopher. He is a bulky man, with a large, massive
+face, particularly calm in its expression, and mild enough to be
+pleasing. When not otherwise occupied, he reads, without much notice of
+what is going on around him. He speaks without effort, yet thoughtfully.
+
+We got lost in a fog the morning after leaving Owl's Head. Fired a brass
+cannon, rang bell, blew steam like a whale snorting. After one of the
+reports of the cannon, we heard a horn blown at no great distance, the
+sound coming soon after the report. Doubtful whether it came from the
+shore or a vessel. Continued our ringing and snorting; and by and by
+something was seen to mingle with the fog that obscured everything
+beyond fifty yards from us. At first it seemed only like a denser wreath
+of fog; it darkened still more, till it took the aspect of sails; then
+the hull of a small schooner came beating down towards us, the wind
+laying her over towards us, so that her gunwale was almost in the water,
+and we could see the whole of her sloping deck.
+
+"Schooner ahoy!" say we. "Halloo! Have you seen Boston Light this
+morning?"
+
+"Yes; it bears north-northwest, two miles distant."
+
+"Very much obliged to you," cries our captain.
+
+So the schooner vanishes into the mist behind. We get up our steam, and
+soon enter the harbor, meeting vessels of every rig; and the fog,
+clearing away, shows a cloudy sky. Aboard, an old one-eyed sailor, who
+had lost one of his feet, and had walked on the stump from Eastport to
+Bangor, thereby making a shocking ulcer.
+
+Penobscot Bay is full of islands, close to which the steamboat is
+continually passing. Some are large, with portions of forest and
+portions of cleared land; some are mere rocks, with a little green or
+none, and inhabited by sea-birds, which fly and flap about hoarsely.
+Their eggs may be gathered by the bushel, and are good to eat. Other
+islands have one house and barn on them, this sole family being lords
+and rulers of all the land which the sea girds. The owner of such an
+island must have a peculiar sense of property and lordship; he must feel
+more like his own master and his own man than other people can. Other
+islands, perhaps high, precipitous, black bluffs, are crowned with a
+white light-house, whence, as evening comes on, twinkles a star across
+the melancholy deep,--seen by vessels coming on the coast, seen from the
+mainland, seen from island to island. Darkness descending, and looking
+down at the broad wake left by the wheels of the steamboat, we may see
+sparkles of sea-fire glittering through the gloom.
+
+
+
+
+AN OLD MAN'S IDYL.
+
+
+    By the waters of Life we sat together,
+      Hand in hand in the golden days
+    Of the beautiful early summer weather,
+      When skies were purple and breath was praise,
+    When the heart kept tune to the carol of birds
+      And the birds kept tune to the songs which ran
+    Through shimmer of flowers on grassy swards,
+      And trees with voices AEolian.
+
+    By the rivers of Life we walked together,
+      I and my darling, unafraid;
+    And lighter than any linnet's feather
+      The burdens of Being on us weighed.
+    And Love's sweet miracles o'er us threw
+      Mantles of joy outlasting Time,
+    And up from the rosy morrows grew
+      A sound that seemed like a marriage chime.
+
+    In the gardens of Life we strayed together;
+      And the luscious apples were ripe and red,
+    And the languid lilac and honeyed heather
+      Swooned with the fragrance which they shed.
+    And under the trees the angels walked,
+      And up in the air a sense of wings
+    Awed us tenderly while we talked
+      Softly in sacred communings.
+
+    In the meadows of Life we strayed together,
+      Watching the waving harvests grow;
+    And under the benison of the Father
+      Our hearts, like the lambs, skipped to and fro.
+    And the cowslips, hearing our low replies,
+      Broidered fairer the emerald banks,
+    And glad tears shone in the daisies' eyes,
+      And the timid violet glistened thanks.
+
+    Who was with us, and what was round us,
+      Neither myself nor my darling guessed;
+    Only we knew that something crowned us
+      Out from the heavens with crowns of rest;
+    Only we knew that something bright
+      Lingered lovingly where we stood,
+    Clothed with the incandescent light
+      Of something higher than humanhood.
+
+    O the riches Love doth inherit!
+      Ah, the alchemy which doth change
+    Dross of body and dregs of spirit
+      Into sanctities rare and strange!
+    My flesh is feeble and dry and old,
+      My darling's beautiful hair is gray;
+    But our elixir and precious gold
+      Laugh at the footsteps of decay.
+
+    Harms of the world have come unto us,
+      Cups of sorrow we yet shall drain;
+    But we have a secret which cloth show us
+      Wonderful rainbows in the rain.
+    And we hear the tread of the years move by,
+      And the sun is setting behind the hills;
+    But my darling does not fear to die,
+      And I am happy in what God wills.
+
+    So we sit by our household fires together,
+      Dreaming the dreams of long ago:
+    Then it was balmy summer weather,
+      And now the valleys are laid in snow.
+    Icicles hang from the slippery eaves;
+      The wind blows cold,--'tis growing late;
+    Well, well! we have garnered all our sheaves,
+      I and my darling, and we wait.
+
+
+
+
+A RAMBLE THROUGH THE MARKET.
+
+
+As a man puts on the stoutness and thicksetness of middle life, he
+begins to find himself contemplating well-filled meat and fish stalls,
+and piles of lusty garden vegetables, with unfeigned interest and
+delight. He walks through Quincy Market, for instance, with far more
+pleasure than through the dewy and moonlit groves which were the scenes
+of his youthful wooings. Then he was all sentiment and poetry. Now he
+finds the gratification of the mouth and stomach a chief source of
+mundane delight. It is said that all the ships on the sea are sailing in
+the direction of the human mouth. The stomach, with its fierce
+assimilative power, is a great stimulator of commercial activity. The
+table of the civilized man, loaded with the products of so many climes,
+bears witness to this. The demands of the stomach are imperious. Its
+ukases and decrees must be obeyed, else the whole corporeal commonwealth
+of man, and the spirit which makes the human organism its vehicle in
+time and space, are in a state of trouble and insurrection.
+
+A large part of the lower organic world, both animal and vegetable, is
+ground between man's molars and incisors, and assimilated through the
+stomach with his body. This may be called the final cause of that part
+of the lower organic world which is edible. Man is a scientific
+eater,--a cooking animal. Laughter and speech are not so distinctive
+traits of him as cookery. Improve his food, and he is improved both
+physically and mentally. His tissue becomes finer, his skin clearer and
+brighter, and his hair more glossy and hyacinthine. Cattle-breeders and
+the improvers of horticulture are indirectly improving their own race by
+furnishing finer and more healthful materials to be built into man's
+body. Marble, cedar, rosewood, gold, and gems make a finer edifice than
+thatch and ordinary timber and stones. So South-Down mutton and Devonian
+beef fattened on the blue-grass pastures of the West, and the
+magnificent prize vegetables and rich appetizing fruits, equal to
+anything grown in the famed gardens of Alcinoues or the Hesperides, which
+are displayed at our annual autumnal fairs as evidences of our
+scientific horticulture and fructiculture, adorn the frame into which
+they are incorporated by mastication and digestion, as rosewood and
+marble and cedar and gold adorn a house or temple.
+
+The subject of eating and drinking is a serious one. The stomach is the
+great motive power of society. It is the true sharpener of human
+ingenuity, _curis acuens mortalia corda_. Cookery is the first of arts.
+Chemistry is a mere subordinate science, whose chief value is that it
+enables man to impart greater relish and gust to his viands. The
+greatest poets, such as Homer, Milton, and Scott, treat the subject of
+eating and drinking with much seriousness, minuteness of detail, and
+lusciousness of description. Homer's heroes are all good
+cooks,--swift-footed Achilles, much-enduring Ulysses, and the rest of
+them. Read Milton's appetizing description of the feast which the
+Tempter set before the fasting Saviour:--
+
+    "Our Saviour, lifting up his eyes, beheld
+    In ample space, under the broadest shade,
+    A table richly spread in regal mode,
+    With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort
+    And savor: beasts of chase or fowl of game
+    In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled,
+    Gris-amber steamed; all fish from sea or shore,
+    Freshet or purling brook, of shell or fin,
+    And exquisitest name, for which was drained
+    Pontus and Lucrine bay and Afric coast;
+    And at a stately sideboard, by the wine
+    That fragrant smell diffused in order stood
+    Tall stripling youths, rich clad, of fairer hue
+    Than Ganymed or Hylas."
+
+It is evident that the sublime Milton had a keen relish for a good
+dinner. Keats's description of that delicious moonlight spread by
+Porphyro, in the room of his fair Madeline, asleep, on St. Agnes' eve,
+"in lap of legends old," is another delicate morsel of Apician poetry.
+"Those lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon and sugared dainties" from
+Samarcand to cedared Lebanon, show that Keats had not got over his
+boyish taste for sweet things, and reached the maturity and gravity of
+appetite which dictated the Miltonian description. He died at
+twenty-four years. Had he lived longer, he might have sung of roast and
+boiled as sublimely as Milton has done.
+
+Epicurus, in exalting cookery and eating and drinking to a plane of
+philosophical importance, was a true friend of his race, and showed
+himself the most sensible and wisest of all the Greek philosophers. A
+psychometrical critic of the philosopher of the garden says:--
+
+"The first and last necessity is eating. The animated world is
+unceasingly eating and digesting itself. None could see this truth
+clearly but an enthusiast in diet like Epicurus, who, discovering the
+unexceptionableness of the natural law, proceeded to the work of
+adaptation. Ocean, lake, streamlet, was separately interrogated, 'How
+much delicious food do you contain? What are your preparations? When
+should man partake?' In like manner did the enthusiast peregrinate
+through Nature's empire, fixing his chemical eye upon plant and shrub
+and berry and vine,--asking every creeping thing, and the animal
+creation also, 'What can you do for man?' And such truths as the angels
+sent! Sea, earth, and air were overflowing and heavily laden with
+countless means of happiness. 'The whole was a cupboard of food or
+cabinet of pleasure.' Life must not be sacrificed by man, for thereby he
+would defeat the end sought. Man's fine love of life must save him from
+taking life." (This is not doctrine to promulgate in the latitude of
+Quincy Market, O clairvoyant Davis!) "In the world of fruit, berries,
+vines, flowers, herbs, grains, grasses, could be found all proper food
+for 'bodily ease and mental tranquillity.'
+
+"Behold the enthusiast! classifying man's senses to be gratified at the
+table. All dishes must be beautifully prepared and disposed to woo and
+win the sense of sight; the assembled articles must give off odors
+harmoniously blended to delight and cultivate the sense of smell; and
+each substance must balance with every other in point of flavor, to meet
+the natural demands of taste; otherwise the entertainment is shorn of
+its virtue to bless and tranquillize the soul!...
+
+"But lo, the fanatic in eating appears! Miserably hot with gluttonous
+debauchery. He has feasted upon a thousand deaths! Belshazzar's court
+fed on fish of every type, birds of every flight, brutes of every clime,
+and added thereto each finer luxury known in the catalogue of the
+temperate Epicurus....
+
+"Behold the sceptics. A shivering group of acid ghouls at their scanty
+board.... Bread, milk, bran, turnips, onions, potatoes, apples, yield so
+much starch, so much sugar, so much nitrogen, so much nutriment! Enough!
+to live is the _end_ of eating, not to be pleased and made better with
+objects, odors, flavors. Therefore welcome a few articles of food in
+violation of every fine sensibility. Stuff in and masticate the crudest
+forms of eatables,--bad-cooking, bad-looking, bad-smelling, bad-tasting,
+and worse-feeling,--down with them hastily,--and then, between your
+headaches and gastric spasms, pride yourself upon virtues and temperance
+not possessed by any student in the gastronomic school of Epicurus! Let
+it be perpetually remembered to the credit of this apostle of
+alimentation and vitativeness with temperance, that, in his religious
+system, eating was a 'sacramental' process, and not a physical
+indulgence merely, as the ignorant allege."
+
+Bravo for the seer of Poughkeepsie! In the above extracts, quoted from
+his "Thinker," he has vindicated the much maligned Epicurus better than
+his disciples Lucretius and Gassendi have done, and by some mysterious
+process (he calls it psychometry) he seems to know more of the old
+Athenian, and to have a more intimate knowledge of his doctrines, than
+can be found in Brucker or Ritter.
+
+When it is considered how our mental states may be modified by what we
+eat and drink, the importance of good _ingesta_, both fluid and solid,
+becomes apparent. Among the good things which attached Charles Lamb to
+this present life was his love of the delicious juices of meats and
+fishes.
+
+But these things are preliminary, although not impertinent to the main
+subject, which is Quincy Market. After having perambulated the principal
+markets of the other leading American cities, I must pronounce it
+_facile princeps_ among New-World markets. A walk through it is equal to
+a dose of dandelion syrup in the way of exciting an appetite for one's
+dinner. Such a walk is tonic and medicinal, and should be prescribed to
+dyspeptic patients. To the hungry, penniless man such a walk is like the
+torture administered to the old Phrygian who blabbed to mortals the
+secrets of the celestial banquets. Autumn is the season in which to
+indulge in a promenade through Quincy Market, after the leaf has been
+nipped by the frost and crimson-tinted, when the morning air is cool and
+bracing. Then the stalls and precincts of the chief Boston market are a
+goodly spectacle. Athenaeus himself, the classic historian of classic
+gluttons and classic bills of fare, could not but feel a glow at the
+sight of the good things here displayed, if he were alive. Quincy Market
+culminates at Thanksgiving time. It then attains to the zenith of good
+fare.
+
+Cleanliness and spruceness are the rule among the Quincy Market men and
+stall-keepers. The matutinal display outside of apples, pears, onions,
+turnips, beets, carrots, egg-plants, cranberries, squashes, etc., is
+magnificent in the variety and richness of its hues. What a multitude of
+orchards, meadows, gardens, and fields have been laid under contribution
+to furnish this vegetable abundance! And here are their choicest
+products. The foodful Earth and the arch-chemic Sun, the great
+agriculturist and life-fountain, have done their best in concocting
+these Quincy Market culinary vegetables. They wear a healthful,
+resplendent look. Inside, what a goodly vista stretches away of fish,
+flesh, and fowl! From these white stalls the Tempter could have
+furnished forth the banquet the Miltonic description of which has been
+quoted.
+
+Here is a stall of ripe, juicy mutton, perhaps from the county of St.
+Lawrence, in Northeastern New York. This is the most healthful and
+easily digested of all meats. Its juiciness and nutritiousness are
+visible in the trumpeter-like cheeks of the well-fed John Bull. The
+domestic Anglo-Saxon is a mutton-eater. Let his offshoots here and
+elsewhere follow suit. There is no such timber to repair the waste of
+the human frame. It is a fuel easily combustible in the visceral grate
+of the stomach. The mutton-eater is eupeptic. His dreams are airy and
+lightsome. Somnus descends smiling to his nocturnal pillow, and not clad
+in the portentous panoply of indigestion, which rivals a guilty
+conscience in its night visions. The mutton department of Quincy Market
+is all that it should be.
+
+Next we come upon "fowl of game," wild ducks, pigeons, etc.--What has
+become of those shoals of pigeons, those herrings of the air, which used
+in the gloom and glory of a breezy autumnal day to darken the sun in
+their flight, like the discharge of the Xerxean arrows at Thermopylae?
+The eye sweeps the autumnal sky in vain now for any such winged
+phenomenon, at least here in New England. The days of the bough-house
+and pigeon-stand strewn with barley seem to have gone by. Swift of
+flight and shapely in body is the North American wild pigeon, running
+upon the air fleeter than Anacreon's dove. He can lay any latitude under
+contribution in a few hours, flying incredible distances during the
+process of digestion. He is an ornament to the air, and the pot
+also.--Here might be a descendant of Bryant's waterfowl; but its
+journeyings along the pathless coast of the upper atmosphere are at an
+end.
+
+"All flesh is not the same flesh; but there is one kind of flesh of men,
+another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds." The
+matter composing the vegetables and the lower animals is promoted, as
+it were, by being eaten by man and incorporated into his body, which is
+a breathing house not made with hands built over the boundary-line of
+two worlds, the sensible and noumenal. "The human body is the highest
+chemical laboratory which matter can reach. In that body the highest
+qualities and richest emoluments are imparted to it, and it is indorsed
+with a divine superscription." It there becomes part and parcel of the
+eye, the organ of light and the throne of expression,--of the blood,
+which is so eloquent in cheek and brow,--of the nerves, the
+telegraph-wires of the soul,--of the persuasive tongue,--of the
+tear-drop, the dew of emotion, which only the human eye can shed,--of
+the glossy tresses of beauty, the nets of love.
+
+The provision markets of a community are a good index of the grade of
+its civilization. Tell me what a nation eats, what is its diet, and I
+will tell you what is its literature, its religious belief, and so
+forth. Solid, practical John Bull is a mutton, beef, and pudding eater.
+He drinks strong ale or beer, and thinks beer. He drives fat oxen, and
+is himself fat. He is no idealist in philosophy. He hates generalization
+and abstract thought. He is for the real and concrete. Plain, unadorned
+Protestantism is most to the taste of the middle classes of Great
+Britain. Music, sculpture, and painting add not their charms to the
+Englishman's dull and respectable devotions. Cross the Channel and
+behold his whilom hereditary foeman, but now firm ally, the Frenchman!
+He is a dainty feeder and the most accomplished of cooks. He
+etherealizes ordinary fish, flesh, and fowl by his exquisite cuisine. He
+educates the palate to a daintiness whereof the gross-feeding John Bull
+never dreamed. He extracts the finest flavors and quintessential
+principles from flesh and vegetables. He drinks light and sparkling
+wines, the vintage of Champagne and Burgundy. Accordingly the Frenchman
+is lightsome and buoyant. He is a great theorist and classifier. He
+adheres to the ornate worship of the Mother Church when religiously
+disposed. His literature is perspicuous and clear. He is an admirable
+doctrinaire and generalizer,--witness Guizot and Montesquieu. He puts
+philosophy and science into a readable, comprehensible shape. The
+Teutonic diet of sauer-kraut, sausages, cheese, ham, etc., is
+indigestible, giving rise to a vaporous, cloudy cerebral state. German
+philosophy and mysticism are its natural outcome.
+
+Baked beans, pumpkin pie, apple-sauce, onions, codfish, and Medford
+rum,--these were the staple items of the primitive New England larder;
+and they were an appropriate diet whereon to nourish the caucus-loving,
+inventive, acute, methodically fanatical Yankee. The bean, the most
+venerable and nutritious of lentils, was anciently used as a ballot or
+vote. Hence it symbolized in the old Greek democracies politics and a
+public career. Hence Pythagoras and his disciples, though they were
+vegetable-eaters, eschewed the bean as an article of diet, from its
+association with politics, demagogism, and ochlocracy. They preferred
+the life contemplative and the _fallentis semita vitae_. Hence their
+utter detestation of beans, the symbols of noisy gatherings, of
+demagogues and party strife and every species of political trickery. The
+primitive Yankee, in view of his destiny as the founder of this
+caucus-loving nation and American democracy, seems to have been
+providentially guided in selecting beans for his most characteristic
+article of diet.
+
+But to move on through the market. The butter and cheese stalls have
+their special attractions. The butyraceous gold in tubs and huge lumps
+displayed in these stalls looks as though it was precipitated from milk
+squeezed from Channel Island cows, those fawn-colored, fairest of dairy
+animals. In its present shape it is the herbage of a thousand
+clover-blooming meads and dewy hill-pastures in old Berkshire, in
+Vermont and Northern New York, transformed by the housewife's churn into
+edible gold. Not only butter and cheese are grass or of gramineous
+origin, but all flesh is grass,--a physiological fact enunciated by
+Holy Writ and strictly true.
+
+Porcine flesh is too abundant here. How the New-Englander, whose Puritan
+forefathers were almost Jews, and hardly got beyond the Old Testament in
+their Scriptural studies, has come to make pork so capital an article in
+his diet, is a mystery. Small-boned swine of the Chinese breed, which
+are kept in the temple sties of the Josses, and which are capable of an
+obeseness in which all form and feature are swallowed up and lost in
+fat, seem to be plenty in Quincy Market. They are hooked upright upon
+their haunches, in a sitting posture, against the posts of the stall.
+How many pots of Sabbath morning beans one of these porkers will
+lubricate!
+
+Beef tongues are abundant here, and eloquent of good living. The mighty
+hind and fore quarters and ribs of the ox,
+
+    "With their red and yellow,
+    Lean and tallow,"
+
+appeal to the good-liver on all sides. They seem to be the staple flesh
+of the stalls.
+
+But let us move on to the stalls frequented by the ichthyophagi. Homer
+calls the sea the barren, the harvestless! Our Cape Ann fishermen do not
+find it so.
+
+    "The sounds and seas, with all their finny droves,
+    That to the Moon in wavering morrice move,"
+
+are as foodful as the most fertile parts of _terra firma_. Here lie the
+blue, delicate mackerel in heaps, and piles of white perch from the
+South Shore, cod, haddock, eels, lobsters, huge segments of swordfish,
+and the flesh of various other voiceless tenants of the deep, both
+finned and shell-clad. The codfish, the symbol of Puritan aristocracy,
+as the grasshopper was of the ancient Athenians, seems to predominate.
+Our _frutti di mare_, in the shape of oysters, clams, and other
+mollusks, are the delight of all true gastronomers. What vegetable, or
+land animal, is so nutritious? Here are some silvery shad from the
+Penobscot, or Kennebec, or Merrimac, or Connecticut. The dams of our
+great manufacturing corporations are sadly interfering with the annual
+movements of these luscious and beautiful fish. Lake Winnipiseogee no
+longer receives these ocean visitors into its clear, mountain-mirroring
+waters. The greedy pike is also here, from inland pond and lake, and the
+beautiful trout from the quick mountain brook, "with his waved coat
+dropped with gold." Who eats the trout partakes of pure diet. He loves
+the silver-sanded stream, and silent pools, and eddies of limpid water.
+In fact, all fish, from sea or shore, freshet or purling brook, of shell
+or fin, are here, on clean marble slabs, fresh and hard. Ours is the
+latitude of the fish-eater. The British marine provinces, north of us,
+and Norway in the Old World, are his paradise.
+
+Man is a universal eater.
+
+    "He cannot spare water or wine,
+    Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose,
+    From the earth-poles to the line,
+    All between that works and grows.
+
+    * * * * * *
+
+    Give him agates for his meat;
+    Give him cantharids to eat;
+    From air and ocean bring him foods,
+    From all zones and altitudes;--
+    From all natures sharp and slimy,
+    Salt and basalt, wild and tame;
+    Tree and lichen, ape, sea-lion,
+    Bird and reptile, be his game."
+
+Quincy Market sticks to the cloven hoof, I am happy to say,
+notwithstanding the favorable verdict of the French _savans_ on the
+flavor and nutritious properties of horse-flesh. The femurs and tibias
+of frogs are not visible here. At this point I will quote _in extenso_
+from Wilkinson's chapter on Assimilation and its Organs.
+
+"In this late age, the human home has one universal season and one
+universal climate. The produce of every zone and month is for the board
+where toil is compensated and industry refreshed. For man alone, the
+universal animal, can wield the powers of fire, the universal element,
+whereby seasons, latitudes, and altitudes are levelled into one genial
+temperature. Man alone, that is to say, the social man alone, can want
+and duly conceive and invent that which is digestion going forth into
+nature as a creative art, namely, cookery, which by recondite processes
+of division and combination,--by cunning varieties of shape,--by the
+insinuation of subtle flavors,--by tincturings with precious spice, as
+with vegetable flames,--by fluids extracted, and added again, absorbed,
+dissolving, and surrounding,--by the discovery and cementing of new
+amities between different substances, provinces, and kingdoms of
+nature,--by the old truth of wine and the reasonable order of
+service,--in short, by the superior unity which it produces in the
+eatable world,--also by a new birth of feelings, properly termed
+_convivial_, which run between food and friendship, and make eating
+festive,--all through the conjunction of our Promethean with our
+culinary fire raises up new powers and species of food to the human
+frame, and indeed performs by machinery a part of the work of
+assimilation, enriching the sense of taste with a world of profound
+objects, and making it the refined participator, percipient, and
+stimulus of the most exquisite operations of digestion. Man, then, as
+the universal eater, enters from his own faculties into the natural
+viands, and gives them a social form, and thereby a thousand new aromas,
+answering to as many possible tastes in his wonderful constitution, and
+therefore his food is as different from that of animals in quality as it
+is plainly different in quantity and resource. How wise should not
+reason become, in order to our making a wise use of so vast an apparatus
+of nutrition!...
+
+"There is nothing more general in life than the digestive apparatus,
+because matter is the largest, if not the greatest, fact in the material
+universe. Every creature which is here must be made of something, and be
+maintained by something, or must be landlord of itself.... The planetary
+dinner-table has its various latitudes and longitudes, and plant and
+animal and mineral and wine are grown around it, and set upon it,
+according to the map of taste in the spherical appetite of our race....
+Hunger is the child of cold and night, and comes upwards from the
+all-swallowing ground; but thirst descends from above, and is born of
+the solar rays.... Hunger and thirst are strong terms, and the things
+themselves are too feverish provocations for civilized man. They are
+incompatible with the sense of taste in its epicureanism, and their
+gratification is of a very bodily order. The savage man, like a
+boa-constrictor, would swallow his animals whole, if his gullet would
+let him. This is to cheat the taste with unmanageable objects, as though
+we should give an estate to a child. On the other hand, civilization,
+house-building, warm apartments and kitchen fires, well-stored larders,
+and especially exemption from rude toil, abolish these extreme
+caricatures; and keeping appetite down to a middling level by the rote
+of meals, and thus taking away the incentives to ravenous haste, they
+allow the mind to tutor and variegate the tongue, and to substitute the
+harmonies and melodies of deliberate gustation for such unseemly
+bolting. Under this direction, hunger becomes polite; a long-drawn,
+many-colored taste; the tongue, like a skilful instrument, holds its
+notes; and thirst, redeemed from drowning, rises from the throat to the
+tongue and lips, and, full of discrimination, becomes the gladdening
+love of all delicious flavors.... In the stomach, judging by what there
+is done, what a scene we are about to enter! What a palatial kitchen and
+more than monasterial refectory! The sipping of aromatic nectar, the
+brief and elegant repast of that Apicius, the tongue, are supplanted at
+this lower board by eating and drinking in downright earnest. What a
+variety of solvents, sauces, and condiments, both springing up at call
+from the blood, and raining down from the mouth into the natural patines
+of the meats! What a quenching of desires, what an end and goal of the
+world is here! No wonder; for the stomach sits for four or five
+assiduous hours at the same meal that the dainty tongue will despatch in
+a twentieth portion of the time. For the stomach is bound to supply the
+extended body, while the tongue wafts only fairy gifts to the close and
+spiritual brain."
+
+So far Wilkinson, the Milton of physiologists.
+
+But lest these lucubrations should seem to be those of a mere glutton
+and gastrolater,--of one like the gourmand of old time, who longed for
+the neck of an ostrich or crane that the pleasure of swallowing dainty
+morsels might be as protracted as possible,--let me assume a vegetable,
+Pythagorean standpoint, and thence survey this accumulation of creature
+comforts, that is, that portion of them which consists of dead flesh.
+The vegetables and the fruits, the blazonry of autumn, are of course
+ignored from this point of view. Thus beheld, Quincy Market presents a
+spectacle that excites disgust and loathing, and exemplifies the fallen,
+depraved, and sophisticated state of human nature and human society. In
+those juicy quarters and surloins of beef and those fat porcine
+carcasses the vegetable-eater, Grahamite or Brahmin, sees nothing but
+the cause of beastly appetites, scrofula, apoplexy, corpulence, cheeks
+flushed with ungovernable propensities, tendencies downward toward the
+plane of the lower animals, bloodshot eyes, swollen veins, impure blood,
+violent passions, fetid breath, stertorous respiration, sudden
+death,--in fact, disease and brutishness of all sorts. A Brahmin
+traversing this goodly market would regard it as a vast charnel, a
+loathsome receptacle of dead flesh on its way to putrescence. His gorge
+would rise in rebellion at the sight. To the Brahmin, the lower animal
+kingdom is a vast masquerade of transmigratory souls. If he should
+devour a goose or turkey or hen, or a part of a bullock or sheep or
+goat, he might, according to his creed, be eating the temporary organism
+of his grandmother. The poet Pope wrote in the true Brahminical spirit,
+when he said,--"Nothing can be more shocking and horrid than one of our
+kitchens sprinkled with blood, and abounding with cries of creatures
+expiring, or with the limbs of dead animals scattered or hung up there.
+It gives one an image of a giant's den in romance, bestrewed with the
+scattered heads and mangled limbs of those who were slain by his
+cruelty." Think of the porcine shambles of Cincinnati, with their
+swift-handed swine-slayers!
+
+    "What loud lament and dismal miserere,"
+
+ear-deafening and horrible, must issue from them. How can a Jew reside
+in that porkopolitan municipality? The brutishness of the Bowery
+butchers is proverbial. A late number of Leslie's Pictorial represents a
+Bowery butcher's wagon crowded with sheep and calves so densely that
+their heads are protruded against the wheels, which revolve with the
+utmost speed, the brutal driver urging his horse furiously.
+
+The first advocate of a purely vegetable diet was Pythagoras, the Samian
+philosopher. His discourse delivered at Crotona, a city of Magna Graecia,
+is ably reported for posterity by the poet Ovid. From what materials he
+made up his report, it is impossible now to say. Pythagoras says that
+flesh-eaters make their stomachs the sepulchres of the lower animals,
+the cemeteries of beasts. About thirty years ago there was a vegetable
+diet movement hereabouts, which created some excitement at the time. Its
+adherents were variously denominated as Grahamites, and, from the fact
+of their using bread made of unbolted wheat-meal, bran-eaters. There was
+little of muscular Christianity in them. They were a pale, harmless set
+of valetudinarians, who were, like all weakly persons, morbidly alive to
+their own bodily states, and principally employed in experimenting on
+the effects of various insipid articles of diet. Tea and coffee were
+tabooed by these people. Ale and wine were abominations in their Index
+Expurgatorius of forbidden _ingesta_. The presence of a boiled egg on
+their breakfast-tables would cause some of the more sensitive of these
+New England Brahmins to betake themselves to their beds for the rest of
+the day. They kept themselves in a semi-famished state on principle. One
+of the most liberal and latitudinarian of the sect wrote, in 1835,--"For
+two years past I have abstained from the use of all the diffusible
+stimulants, using no animal food, either flesh, fish, or fowl, nor any
+alcoholic or vinous spirits, no form of ale, beer, or porter, no cider,
+tea, or coffee; but using milk and water as my only liquid aliment, and
+feeding sparingly, or rather moderately, upon farinaceous food,
+vegetables, and fruit, seasoned with unmelted butter, slightly boiled
+eggs, and sugar and molasses, with no condiment but common salt."
+
+These ultra-temperance dietetical philosophers never flourished greatly.
+They were too languid and too little enthusiastic to propagate their
+rules of living and make converts. In a country where meat is within
+reach of all, a vegetable dietary is not popular. Doubtless a less
+frequent use of fleshly food would be greatly to our advantage as a
+people. But utter abstinence is out of the question. A vegetable diet,
+however, has great authorities in its favor, both ancient and modern.
+Plautus, Plutarch, Porphyry of Tyre, Lord Bacon, Sir William Temple,
+Cicero, Cyrus the Great, Pope, Newton, and Shelley have all left their
+testimony in favor of it and of simplicity of living. Poor Shelley, who
+in his abstract moods forgot even to take vegetable sustenance for days
+together, makes a furious onslaught upon flesh-eating in his Notes to
+"Queen Mab." The notes, as well as the poem, are crude productions, the
+outgivings of a boy; but that boy was Shelley. It was said that he was
+traceable, in his lonely wanderings in secluded places in Italy, by the
+crumbs of bread which he let fall. Speculative thinkers have generally
+been light feeders, eschewing stimulants, both solid and liquid, and
+preferring mild food and water for drink. Those who lead an interior
+life sedentary and contemplative need not gross pabulum, but would find
+their inward joy at the contemplation and discovery of truth seriously
+qualified and deadened by it. Spare fast is the companion of the
+ecstatic moods of a high truth-seeker such as Newton, Malebranche, etc.
+Immanuel Kant was almost the only profound speculative thinker who was
+decidedly convivial, and given to gulosity, at least at his dinner.
+Asceticism ordinarily reigns in the cloister and student's bower. The
+Oxford scholar long ago, as described by Chaucer, was adust and thin.
+
+    "As lene was his hors as is a rake,
+    And he was not right fat, I undertake."
+
+The ancient anchorets of the East, the children of St. Anthony, were a
+long-lived sect, rivalling the many-wintered crow in longevity. Yet
+their lives were vapid monotonies, only long in months and years. They
+were devoid of vivid sensations, and vegetated merely. Milk-eaters were,
+in the days of Homer, the longest-lived of men.
+
+Without the ministry of culinary fire, man could not gratify his
+carnivorous propensities. He would be obliged to content himself with a
+vegetable diet; for, according to the comparative anatomists, man is not
+structurally a flesh-eater. At any rate he is not fanged or clawed. His
+teeth and nails are not like the natural cutlery found in the mouths and
+paws of beasts of prey. He cannot eat raw flesh. Digger Indians are left
+to do that when the meat is putrescent. Prometheus was the inventor of
+roast and boiled beef, and of cookery generally, and therefore the
+destroyer of the original simplicity of living which characterized
+primitive man, when milk and fruits cooked by the sun, and acorns, were
+the standing repasts of unsophisticated humanity. _Per contra_, Horace
+makes man, in his mast-eating days, a poor creature.
+
+    "Forth from the earth when human kind
+    First crept, a dull and brutish herd, with nails
+    And fists they fought for dens wherein to couch, and _acorns_."
+
+Don Quixote, however, in his eloquent harangue to the shepherds in the
+Sierra Morena, took a different view of man during the acorn period. He
+saw in it the golden age.
+
+There are vast rice-eating populations in China and India, who are a low
+grade of men, morally and physically. Exceptional cases of longevity,
+like those of old Parr, Jenkins, Francisco, Pratt, and Farnham, are
+often-times adduced as the results of abstemiousness and frugality of
+living. These exceptional cases prove nothing whatever. These
+individuals happened to reach an almost antediluvian longevity, thanks
+to their inherited vitality and their listless, uneventful, monotonous
+lives. Their hearts beat a dull funeral march through four or five
+generations, and finally stopped. But the longevity of such mighty
+thinkers and superb men as Humboldt and Goethe is glorious to
+contemplate. They were never old, but were vernal in spirit to the last,
+and, for aught that appears to the contrary, generous livers, not "acid
+ghouls" or bran-eating valetudinarians. Shakespeare died at fifty-one,
+but great thinkers and poets have generally been long-lived. "Better
+fifty years of Europe" or America "than a cycle of" rice-eating
+"Cathay."
+
+The value of the animals slaughtered in this country in 1860 was, in
+round numbers, $212,000,000, a sum to make the vegetable feeder stare
+and gasp. How many thousands and tens of thousands of acres of herbage,
+which could not be directly available for human consumption as food, had
+these slaughtered animals incorporated into their frames, and rendered
+edible for man! "The most fertile districts of the habitable globe,"
+says Shelley, "are now actually cultivated by men for animals, at a
+delay and waste of aliment absolutely incalculable." On the contrary,
+the close-feeding sheep and the cow and ox utilize for man millions of
+acres of vegetation which would otherwise be useless. The domestic
+animals which everywhere accompany civilized man were a part of them
+intended as machines to convert herbage into milk and flesh for man's
+sustenance. The tame villatic fowl scratches and picks with might and
+main, converting a thousand refuse things into dainty human food. A
+vegetable diet is out of the question for the blubber-eating Esquimaux
+and Greenlander, even if it would keep the flame of life burning in
+their Polar latitudes.
+
+The better and more nutritious the diet, the better the health. It is to
+the improved garden vegetables and domestic animals that man will
+hereafter owe the superior health and personal comeliness which he will
+undoubtedly enjoy as our planet becomes more and more humanized, and man
+asserts his proper lordship over Nature. This matter of vegetable and
+animal food is dictated by climate. In the temperate zone they go well
+mixed. In the tropics man is naturally a Pythagorean, but he is not so
+strong, or so healthy, or moral, or intellectual, as the flesh-eating
+nations of northern latitudes.
+
+
+
+
+THE FREEDMAN'S STORY.
+
+IN TWO PARTS.
+
+
+PART II.
+
+As the Freedman relates only events which came under his own
+observation, it is necessary to preface the remaining portion of his
+narrative with a brief account of the Christiana riot. This I extract
+mainly from a statement made at the time by a member of the Philadelphia
+bar, making only a few alterations to give the account greater clearness
+and brevity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the 9th of September, 1851, Mr. Edward Gorsuch, a citizen of
+Maryland, residing near Baltimore, appeared before Edward D. Ingraham,
+Esquire, United States Commissioner at Philadelphia, and asked for
+warrants under the act of Congress of September 18, 1850, for the arrest
+of four of his slaves, whom he had heard were secreted somewhere in
+Lancaster County. Warrants were issued forthwith, directed to H. H.
+Kline, a deputy United States Marshal, authorizing him to arrest George
+Hammond, Joshua Hammond, Nelson Ford, and Noah Buley, persons held to
+service or labor in the State of Maryland, and to bring them before the
+said Commissioner.
+
+Mr. Gorsuch then made arrangements with John Agin and Thompson Tully,
+residents of Philadelphia, and police officers, to assist Kline in
+making the arrests. They were to meet Mr. Gorsuch and some companions at
+Penningtonville, a small place on the State Railroad, about fifty miles
+from Philadelphia. Kline, with the warrants, left Philadelphia on the
+same day, about 2 P.M., for West Chester. There he hired a conveyance
+and rode to Gallagherville, where he hired another conveyance to take
+him to Penningtonville. Before he had driven very far, the carriage
+breaking down, he returned to Gallagherville, procured another, and
+started again. Owing to this detention, he was prevented from meeting
+Mr. Gorsuch and his friends at the appointed time, and when he reached
+Penningtonville, about 2 A.M. on the 10th of September, they had gone.
+
+On entering the tavern, the place of rendezvous, he saw a colored man
+whom he recognized as Samuel Williams, a resident of Philadelphia. To
+put Williams off his guard, Kline asked the landlord some questions
+about horse thieves. Williams remarked that he had seen the "horse
+thieves," and told Kline he had come too late.
+
+Kline then drove on to a place called the Gap. Seeing a person he
+believed to be Williams following him, he stopped at several taverns
+along the road and made inquiries about horse thieves. He reached the
+Gap about 3 A.M., put up his horses, and went to bed. At half past four
+he rose, ate breakfast, and rode to Parkesburg, about forty-five miles
+from Philadelphia, and on the same railroad. Here he found Agin and
+Tully asleep in the bar-room. He awoke Agin, called him aside, and
+inquired for Mr. Gorsuch and his party. He was told they had gone to
+Sadsbury, a small place on the turnpike, four or five miles from
+Parkesburg.
+
+On going there, he found them, about 9 A.M. on the 10th of September.
+Kline told them he had seen Agin and Tully, who had determined to return
+to Philadelphia, and proposed that the whole party should return to
+Gallagherville. Mr. Gorsuch, however, determined to go to Parkesburg
+instead, to see Agin and Tully, and attempt to persuade them not to
+return. The rest of the party were to go to Gallagherville, while Kline
+returned to Downingtown, to see Agin and Tully, should Mr. Gorsuch fail
+to meet them at Parkesburg. He left Gallagherville about 11 A.M., and
+met Agin and Tully at Downingtown. Agin said he had seen Mr. Gorsuch,
+but refused to go back. He promised, however, to return from
+Philadelphia in the evening cars. Kline returned to Downingtown, and
+then met all the party except Mr. Edward Gorsuch, who had remained
+behind to make the necessary arrangements for procuring a guide to the
+houses where he had been informed his negroes were to be found.
+
+About 3 P.M., Mr. Edward Gorsuch joined them at Gallagherville, and at
+11 P.M. on the night of the 10th of September they all went in the cars
+to Downingtown, where they waited for the evening train from
+Philadelphia.
+
+When it arrived, neither Agin nor Tully was to be seen. The rest of the
+party went on to the Gap, which they reached about half past one on the
+morning of the 11th of September. They then continued their journey on
+foot towards Christiana, where Parker was residing, and where the slaves
+of Mr. Gorsuch were supposed to be living. The party then consisted of
+Kline, Edward Gorsuch, Dickinson Gorsuch, his son, Joshua M. Gorsuch,
+his nephew, Dr. Thomas Pierce, Nicholas T. Hutchings, and Nathan
+Nelson.
+
+After they had proceeded about a mile they met a man who was represented
+to be a guide. He is said to have been disguised in such a way that none
+of the party could recognize him, and his name is not mentioned in any
+proceedings. It is probable that he was employed by Mr. Edward Gorsuch,
+and one condition of his services may have been that he should be
+allowed to use every possible means of concealing his face and name from
+the rest of the party. Under his conduct, the party went on, and soon
+reached a house in which they were told one of the slaves was to be
+found. Mr. Gorsuch wished to send part of the company after him, but
+Kline was unwilling to divide their strength, and they walked on,
+intending to return that way after making the other arrests.
+
+The guide led them by a circuitous route, until they reached the Valley
+Road, near the house of William Parker, the writer of the annexed
+narrative, which was their point of destination. They halted in a lane
+near by, ate some crackers and cheese, examined the condition of their
+fire-arms, and consulted upon the plan of attack. A short walk brought
+them to the orchard in front of Parker's house, which the guide pointed
+out and left them. He had no desire to remain and witness the result of
+his false information. His disguise and desertion of his employer are
+strong circumstances in proof of the fact that he knew he was misleading
+the party. On the trial of Hanway, it was proved by the defence that
+Nelson Ford, one of the fugitives, was not on the ground until after the
+sun was up. Joshua Hammond had lived in the vicinity up to the time that
+a man by the name of Williams had been kidnapped, when he and several
+others departed, and had not since been heard from. Of the other two,
+one at least, if the evidence for the prosecution is to be relied upon,
+was in the house at which the party first halted, so that there could
+not have been more than one of Mr. Gorsuch's slaves in Parker's house,
+and of this there is no positive testimony.
+
+It was not yet daybreak when the party approached the house. They made
+demand for the slaves, and threatened to burn the house and shoot the
+occupants, if they would not surrender. At this time, the number of
+besiegers seems to have been increased, and as many as fifteen are said
+to have been near the house. About daybreak, when they were advancing a
+second or third time, they saw a negro coming out, whom Mr. Gorsuch
+thought he recognized as one of his slaves. Kline pursued him with a
+revolver in his hand, and stumbled over the bars near the house. Some of
+the company came up before Kline, and found the door open. They entered,
+and Kline, following, called for the owner, ordered all to come down,
+and said he had two warrants for the arrest of Nelson Ford and Joshua
+Hammond. He was answered that there were no such men in the house.
+Kline, followed by Mr. Gorsuch, attempted to go up stairs. They were
+prevented from ascending by what appears to have been an ordinary _fish
+gig_. Some of the witnesses described it as "like a pitchfork with blunt
+prongs," and others were at a loss what to call this, the first weapon
+used in the contest. An axe was next thrown down, but hit no one.
+
+Mr. Gorsuch and others then went outside to talk with the negroes at the
+window. Just at this time Kline fired his pistol up stairs. The warrants
+were then read outside the house, and demand made upon the landlord. No
+answer was heard. After a short interview, Kline proposed to withdraw
+his men, but Mr. Gorsuch refused, and said he would not leave the ground
+until he made the arrests. Kline then in a loud voice ordered some one
+to go to the sheriff and bring a hundred men, thinking, as he afterwards
+said, this would intimidate them. The threat appears to have had some
+effect, for the negroes asked time to consider. The party outside agreed
+to give fifteen minutes.
+
+While these scenes were passing at the house, occurrences transpired
+elsewhere that are worthy of attention, but which cannot be understood
+without a short statement of previous events.
+
+In the month of September, 1850, a colored man, known in the
+neighborhood around Christiana to be free, was seized and carried away
+by men known to be professional kidnappers, and had not been seen by his
+family since. In March, 1851, in the same neighborhood, under the roof
+of his employer, during the night, another colored man was tied, gagged,
+and carried away, marking the road along which he was dragged with his
+blood. No authority for this outrage was ever shown, and the man was
+never heard from. These and many other acts of a similar kind had so
+alarmed the neighborhood, that the very name of kidnapper was sufficient
+to create a panic. The blacks feared for their own safety; and the
+whites, knowing their feelings, were apprehensive that any attempt to
+repeat these outrages would be the cause of bloodshed. Many good
+citizens were determined to do all in their power to prevent these
+lawless depredations, though they were ready to submit to any measures
+sanctioned by legal process. They regretted the existence among them of
+a body of people liable to such violence; but without combination had,
+each for himself, resolved that they would do everything dictated by
+humanity to resist barbarous oppression.
+
+On the morning in question, a colored man living in the neighborhood,
+who was passing Parker's house at an early hour, saw the yard full of
+men. He halted, and was met by a man who presented a pistol at him, and
+ordered him to leave the place. He went away and hastened to a store
+kept by Elijah Lewis, which, like all places of that kind, was probably
+the head-quarters of news in the neighborhood. Mr. Lewis was in the act
+of opening his store when this man told him that "Parker's house was
+surrounded by _kidnappers_, who had broken into the house, and _were
+trying to get him away_." Lewis, not questioning the truth of the
+statement, repaired immediately to the place. On the way he passed the
+house of Castner Hanway, and, telling him what he had heard, asked him
+to go over to Parker's. Hanway was in feeble health and unable to
+undergo the fatigue of walking that distance; but he saddled his horse,
+and reached Parker's during the armistice.
+
+Having no reason to believe he was acting under legal authority, when
+Kline approached and demanded assistance in making the arrests, Hanway
+made no answer. Kline then handed him the warrants, which Hanway
+examined, saw they appeared genuine, and returned.
+
+At this time, several colored men, who no doubt had heard the report
+that kidnappers were about, came up, armed with such weapons as they
+could suddenly lay hands upon. How many were on the ground during the
+affray it is _now_ impossible to determine. The witnesses on both sides
+vary materially in their estimate. Some said they saw a dozen or
+fifteen; some, thirty or forty; and others maintained, as many as two or
+three hundred. It is known there were not two hundred colored men within
+eight miles of Parker's house, nor half that number within four miles;
+and it would have been almost impossible to get together even thirty at
+an hour's notice. It is probable there were about twenty-five, all told,
+at or near the house from the beginning of the affray until all was
+quiet again. These the fears of those who afterwards testified to larger
+numbers might easily have magnified to fifty or a hundred.
+
+While Kline and Hanway were in conversation, Elijah Lewis came up.
+Hanway said to him, "Here is the Marshal." Lewis asked to see his
+authority, and Kline handed him one of the warrants. When he saw the
+signature of the United States Commissioner, "he took it for granted
+that Kline had authority." Kline then ordered Hanway and Lewis to assist
+in arresting the alleged fugitives. Hanway refused to have anything to
+do with it. The negroes around these three men seeming disposed to make
+an attack, Hanway "motioned to them and urged them back." He then
+"advised Kline that it would be dangerous to attempt making arrests, and
+that they had better leave." Kline, after saying he would hold them
+accountable for the fugitives, promised to leave, and beckoned two or
+three times to his men to retire.
+
+The negroes then rushed up, some armed with guns, some with
+corn-cutters, staves, or clubs, others with stones or whatever weapon
+chance offered. Hanway and Lewis in vain endeavored to restrain them.
+
+Kline leaped the fence, passed through the standing grain in the field,
+and for a few moments was out of sight. Mr. Gorsuch refused to leave the
+spot, saying his "property was there, and he would have it or perish in
+the attempt." The rest of his party endeavored to retreat when they
+heard the Marshal calling to them, but they were too late; the negroes
+rushed up, and the firing began. How many times each party fired, it is
+impossible to tell. For a few moments everything was confusion, and each
+attempted to save himself. Nathan Nelson went down the short land,
+thence into the woods and towards Penningtonville. Nicholas Hutchings,
+by direction of Kline, followed Lewis to see where he went. Thomas
+Pierce and Joshua Gorsuch went down the long lane, pursued by some of
+the negroes, caught up with Hanway, and, shielding themselves behind his
+horse, followed him to a stream of water near by. Dickinson Gorsuch was
+with his father near the house. They were both wounded; the father
+mortally. Dickinson escaped down the lane, where he was met by Kline,
+who had returned from the woods at the end of the field. Kline rendered
+him assistance, and went towards Penningtonville for a physician. On his
+way he met Joshua M. Gorsuch, who was also wounded and delirious. Kline
+led him over to Penningtonville and placed him on the upward train from
+Philadelphia. Before this time several persons living in the
+neighborhood had arrived at Parker's house. Lewis Cooper found Dickinson
+Gorsuch in the place where Kline had left him, attended by Joseph
+Scarlett. He placed him in his dearborn, and carried him to the house of
+Levi Pownall, where he remained till he had sufficiently recovered to
+return home. Mr. Cooper then returned to Parker's, placed the body of
+Mr. Edward Gorsuch in the same dearborn, and carried it to Christiana.
+Neither Nelson nor Hutchings rejoined their party, but during the day
+went by the railroad to Lancaster.
+
+Thus ended an occurrence which was the theme of conversation throughout
+the land. Not more than two hours elapsed from the time demand was first
+made at Parker's house until the dead body of Edward Gorsuch was carried
+to Christiana. In that brief time the blood of strangers had been
+spilled in a sudden affray, an unfortunate man had been killed, and two
+others badly wounded.
+
+When rumor spread abroad the result of the affray, the neighborhood was
+appalled. The inhabitants of the farm-houses and the villages around,
+unused to such scenes, could not at first believe that it had occurred
+in their midst. Before midday, exaggerated accounts had reached
+Philadelphia, and were transmitted by telegraph throughout the country.
+
+Many persons were arrested for participation in the riot; and, after a
+long imprisonment, were arraigned for trial, on the charge of treason,
+before Judges Grier and Kane, of the United States Court, sitting at
+Philadelphia.
+
+Every one knows the result. The prisoners were all acquitted; and the
+country was aroused to the danger of a law which allowed bad men to
+incarcerate peaceful citizens for months in prison, and put them in
+peril of their lives, for refusing to aid in entrapping, and sending
+back to hopeless slavery, men struggling for the very same freedom we
+value as the best part of our birthright.
+
+The Freedman's narrative is now resumed.
+
+A short time after the events narrated in the preceding number, it was
+whispered about that the slaveholders intended to make an attack on my
+house; but, as I had often been threatened, I gave the report little
+attention. About the same time, however, two letters were found thrown
+carelessly about, as if to attract notice. These letters stated that
+kidnappers would be at my house on a certain night, and warned me to be
+on my guard. Still I did not let the matter trouble me. But it was no
+idle rumor. The bloodhounds were upon my track.
+
+I was not at this time aware that in the city of Philadelphia there was
+a band of devoted, determined men,--few in number, but strong in
+purpose,--who were fully resolved to leave no means untried to thwart
+the barbarous and inhuman monsters who crawled in the gloom of midnight,
+like the ferocious tiger, and, stealthily springing on their
+unsuspecting victims, seized, bound, and hurled them into the ever open
+jaws of Slavery. Under the pretext of enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law,
+the slaveholders did not hesitate to violate all other laws made for the
+good government and protection of society, and converted the old State
+of Pennsylvania, so long the hope of the fleeing bondman, wearied and
+heartbroken, into a common hunting-ground for their human prey. But this
+little band of true patriots in Philadelphia united for the purpose of
+standing between the pursuer and the pursued, the kidnapper and his
+victim, and, regardless of all personal considerations, were ever on the
+alert, ready to sound the alarm to save their fellows from a fate far
+more to be dreaded than death. In this they had frequently succeeded,
+and many times had turned the hunter home bootless of his prey. They
+began their operations at the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, and had
+thoroughly examined all matters connected with it, and were perfectly
+cognizant of the plans adopted to carry out its provisions in
+Pennsylvania, and, through a correspondence with reliable persons in
+various sections of the South, were enabled to know these hunters of
+men, their agents, spies, tools, and betrayers. They knew who performed
+this work in Richmond, Alexandria, Washington, Baltimore, Wilmington,
+Philadelphia, Lancaster, and Harrisburg, those principal depots of
+villany, where organized bands prowled about at all times, ready to
+entrap the unwary fugitive.
+
+They also discovered that this nefarious business was conducted mainly
+through one channel; for, spite of man's inclination to vice and crime,
+there are but few men, thank God, so low in the scale of humanity as to
+be willing to degrade themselves by doing the dirty work of four-legged
+bloodhounds. Yet such men, actuated by the love of gold and their own
+base and brutal natures, were found ready for the work. These fellows
+consorted with constables, police-officers, aldermen, and even with
+learned members of the legal profession, who disgraced their respectable
+calling by low, contemptible arts, and were willing to clasp hands with
+the lowest ruffian in order to pocket the reward that was the price of
+blood. Every facility was offered these bad men; and whether it was
+night or day, it was only necessary to whisper in a certain circle that
+a negro was to be caught, and horses and wagons, men and officers, spies
+and betrayers, were ready, at the shortest notice, armed and equipped,
+and eager for the chase.
+
+Thus matters stood in Philadelphia on the 9th of September, 1851, when
+Mr. Gorsuch and his gang of Maryland kidnappers arrived there. Their
+presence was soon known to the little band of true men who were called
+"The Special Secret Committee." They had agents faithful and true as
+steel; and through these agents the whereabouts and business of Gorsuch
+and his minions were soon discovered. They were noticed in close
+converse with a certain member of the Philadelphia bar, who had lost the
+little reputation he ever had by continual dabbling in negro-catching,
+as well as by association with and support of the notorious Henry H.
+Kline, a professional kidnapper of the basest stamp. Having determined
+as to the character and object of these Marylanders, there remained to
+ascertain the spot selected for their deadly spring; and this required
+no small degree of shrewdness, resolution, and tact.
+
+Some one's liberty was imperilled; the hunters were abroad; the time was
+short, and the risk imminent. The little band bent themselves to the
+task they were pledged to perform with zeal and devotion; and success
+attended their efforts. They knew that one false step would jeopardize
+their own liberty, and very likely their lives, and utterly destroy
+every prospect of carrying out their objects. They knew, too, that they
+were matched against the most desperate, daring, and brutal men in the
+kidnappers' ranks,--men who, to obtain the proffered reward, would rush
+willingly into any enterprise, regardless alike of its character or its
+consequences. That this was the deepest, the most thoroughly organized
+and best-planned project for man-catching that had been concocted since
+the infamous Fugitive Slave Law had gone into operation, they also knew;
+and consequently this nest of hornets was approached with great care.
+But by walking directly into their camp, watching their plans as they
+were developed, and secretly testing every inch of ground on which they
+trod, they discovered enough to counterplot these plotters, and to
+spring upon them a mine which shook the whole country, and put an end to
+man-stealing in Pennsylvania forever.
+
+The trusty agent of this Special Committee, Mr. Samuel Williams, of
+Philadelphia,--a man true and faithful to his race, and courageous in
+the highest degree,--came to Christiana, travelling most of the way in
+company with the very men whom Gorsuch had employed to drag into slavery
+four as good men as ever trod the earth. These Philadelphia roughs, with
+their Maryland associates, little dreamed that the man who sat by their
+side carried with him their inglorious defeat, and the death-warrant of
+at least one of their party. Williams listened to their conversation,
+and marked well their faces, and, being fully satisfied by their awkward
+movements that they were heavily armed, managed to slip out of the cars
+at the village of Downington unobserved, and proceeded to
+Penningtonville, where he encountered Kline, who had started several
+hours in advance of the others. Kline was terribly frightened, as he
+knew Williams, and felt that his presence was an omen of ill to his base
+designs. He spoke of horse thieves; but Williams replied,--"I know the
+kind of horse thieves you are after. They are all gone; and you had
+better not go after them."
+
+Kline immediately jumped into his wagon, and rode away, whilst Williams
+crossed the country, and arrived at Christiana in advance of him.
+
+The manner in which information of Gorsuch's designs was obtained will
+probably ever remain a secret; and I doubt if any one outside of the
+little band who so masterly managed the affair knows anything of it.
+This was wise; and I would to God other friends had acted thus. Mr.
+Williams's trip to Christiana, and the many incidents connected
+therewith, will be found in the account of his trial; for he was
+subsequently arrested and thrown into the cold cells of a loathsome jail
+for this good act of simple Christian duty; but, resolute to the last,
+he publicly stated that he had been to Christiana, and, to use his own
+words, "I done it, and will do it again." Brave man, receive my thanks!
+
+Of the Special Committee I can only say that they proved themselves men;
+and through the darkest hours of the trials that followed, they were
+found faithful to their trust, never for one moment deserting those who
+were compelled to suffer. Many, many innocent men residing in the
+vicinity of Christiana, the ground where the first battle was fought for
+liberty in Pennsylvania, were seized, torn from their families, and,
+like Williams, thrown into prison for long, weary months, to be tried
+for their lives. By them this Committee stood, giving them every
+consolation and comfort, furnishing them with clothes, and attending to
+their wants, giving money to themselves and families, and procuring for
+them the best legal counsel. This I know, and much more of which it is
+not wise, even now, to speak: 't is enough to say they were friends when
+and where it cost something to be friends, and true brothers where
+brothers were needed.
+
+After this lengthy digression, I will return, and speak of the riot and
+the events immediately preceding it.
+
+The information brought by Mr. Williams spread through the vicinity like
+a fire in the prairies; and when I went home from my work in the
+evening, I found Pinckney (whom I should have said before was my
+brother-in-law), Abraham Johnson, Samuel Thompson, and Joshua Kite at my
+house, all of them excited about the rumor. I laughed at them, and said
+it was all talk. This was the 10th of September, 1851. They stopped for
+the night with us, and we went to bed as usual. Before daylight, Joshua
+Kite rose, and started for his home. Directly, he ran back to the house,
+burst open the door, crying, "O William! kidnappers! kidnappers!"
+
+He said that, when he was just beyond the yard, two men crossed before
+him, as if to stop him, and others came up on either side. As he said
+this, they had reached the door. Joshua ran up stairs, (we slept up
+stairs,) and they followed him; but I met them at the landing, and
+asked, "Who are you?"
+
+The leader, Kline, replied, "I am the United States Marshal."
+
+I then told him to take another step, and I would break his neck.
+
+He again said, "I am the United States Marshal."
+
+I told him I did not care for him nor the United States. At that he
+turned and went down stairs.
+
+Pinckney said, as he turned to go down,--"Where is the use in fighting?
+They will take us."
+
+Kline heard him, and said, "Yes, give up, for we can and will take you
+anyhow."
+
+I told them all not to be afraid, nor to give up to any slaveholder, but
+to fight until death.
+
+"Yes," said Kline, "I have heard many a negro talk as big as you, and
+then have taken him; and I'll take you."
+
+"You have not taken me yet," I replied; "and if you undertake it you
+will have your name recorded in history for this day's work."
+
+Mr. Gorsuch then spoke, and said,--"Come, Mr. Kline, let's go up stairs
+and take them. We _can_ take them. Come, follow me. I'll go up and get
+my property. What's in the way? The law is in my favor, and the people
+are in my favor."
+
+At that he began to ascend the stair; but I said to him,--"See here, old
+man, you can come up, but you can't go down again. Once up here, you are
+mine."
+
+Kline then said,--"Stop, Mr. Gorsuch. I will read the warrant, and then,
+I think, they will give up."
+
+He then read the warrant, and said,--"Now, you see, we are commanded to
+take you, dead or alive; so you may as well give up at once."
+
+"Go up, Mr. Kline," then said Gorsuch, "you are the Marshal."
+
+Kline started, and when a little way up said, "I am coming."
+
+I said, "Well, come on."
+
+But he was too cowardly to show his face. He went down again and
+said,--"You had better give up without any more fuss, for we are bound
+to take you anyhow. I told you before that I was the United States
+Marshal, yet you will not give up. I'll not trouble the slaves. I will
+take you and make you pay for all."
+
+"Well," I answered, "take me and make me pay for all. I'll pay for all."
+
+Mr. Gorsuch then said, "You have my property."
+
+To which I replied,--"Go in the room down there, and see if there is
+anything there belonging to you. There are beds and a bureau, chairs,
+and other things. Then go out to the barn; there you will find a cow and
+some hogs. See if any of them are yours."
+
+He said,--"They are not mine; I want my men. They are here, and I am
+bound to have them."
+
+Thus we parleyed for a time, all because of the pusillanimity of the
+Marshal, when he, at last, said,--"I am tired waiting on you; I see you
+are not going to give up. Go to the barn and fetch some straw," said he
+to one of his men, "I will set the house on fire, and burn them up."
+
+"Burn us up and welcome," said I. "None but a coward would say the like.
+You can burn us, but you can't take us; before I give up, you will see
+my ashes scattered on the earth."
+
+By this time day had begun to dawn; and then my wife came to me and
+asked if she should blow the horn, to bring friends to our assistance. I
+assented, and she went to the garret for the purpose. When the horn
+sounded from the garret window, one of the ruffians asked the others
+what it meant; and Kline said to me, "What do you mean by blowing that
+horn?"
+
+I did not answer. It was a custom with us, when a horn was blown at an
+unusual hour, to proceed to the spot promptly to see what was the
+matter. Kline ordered his men to shoot any one they saw blowing the
+horn. There was a peach-tree at that end of the house. Up it two of the
+men climbed; and when my wife went a second time to the window, they
+fired as soon as they heard the blast, but missed their aim. My wife
+then went down on her knees, and, drawing her head and body below the
+range of the window, the horn resting on the sill, blew blast after
+blast, while the shots poured thick and fast around her. They must have
+fired ten or twelve times. The house was of stone, and the windows were
+deep, which alone preserved her life.
+
+They were evidently disconcerted by the blowing of the horn. Gorsuch
+said again, "I want my property, and I will have it."
+
+"Old man," said I, "you look as if you belonged to some persuasion."
+
+"Never mind," he answered, "what persuasion I belong to; I want my
+property."
+
+While I was leaning out of the window, Kline fired a pistol at me, but
+the shot went too high; the ball broke the glass just above my head. I
+was talking to Gorsuch at the time. I seized a gun and aimed it at
+Gorsuch's breast, for he evidently had instigated Kline to fire; but
+Pinckney caught my arm and said, "Don't shoot." The gun went off, just
+grazing Gorsuch's shoulder. Another conversation then ensued between
+Gorsuch, Kline, and myself, when another one of the party fired at me,
+but missed. Dickinson Gorsuch, I then saw, was preparing to shoot; and I
+told him if he missed, I would show him where shooting first came from.
+
+I asked them to consider what they would have done, had they been in our
+position. "I know you want to kill us," I said, "for you have shot at us
+time and again. We have only fired twice, although we have guns and
+ammunition, and could kill you all if we would, but we do not want to
+shed blood."
+
+"If you do not shoot any more," then said Kline, "I will stop my men
+from firing."
+
+They then ceased for a time. This was about sunrise.
+
+Mr. Gorsuch now said,--"Give up, and let me have my property. Hear what
+the Marshal says; the Marshal is your friend. He advises you to give up
+without more fuss, for my property I will have."
+
+I denied that I had his property, when he replied, "You have my men."
+
+"Am I your man?" I asked.
+
+"No."
+
+I then called Pinckney forward.
+
+"Is that your man?"
+
+"No."
+
+Abraham Johnson I called next, but Gorsuch said he was not his man.
+
+The only plan left was to call both Pinckney and Johnson again; for had
+I called the others, he would have recognized them, for they were his
+slaves.
+
+Abraham Johnson said, "Does such a shrivelled up old slaveholder as you
+own such a nice, genteel young man as I am?"
+
+At this Gorsuch took offence, and charged me with dictating his
+language. I then told him there were but five of us, which he denied,
+and still insisted that I had his property. One of the party then
+attacked the Abolitionists, affirming that, although they declared there
+could not be property in man, the Bible was conclusive authority in
+favor of property in human flesh.
+
+"Yes," said Gorsuch, "does not the Bible say, 'Servants, obey your
+masters'?"
+
+I said that it did, but the same Bible said, "Give unto your servants
+that which is just and equal."
+
+At this stage of the proceedings, we went into a mutual Scripture
+inquiry, and bandied views in the manner of garrulous old wives.
+
+When I spoke of duty to servants, Gorsuch said, "Do you know that?"
+
+"Where," I asked, "do you see it in Scripture, that a man should traffic
+in his brother's blood?"
+
+"Do you call a nigger my brother?" said Gorsuch.
+
+"Yes," said I.
+
+"William," said Samuel Thompson, "he has been a class-leader."
+
+When Gorsuch heard that, he hung his head, but said nothing. We then all
+joined in singing,--
+
+    "Leader, what do you say
+    About the judgment day?
+      I will die on the field of battle,
+        Die on the field of battle,
+      With glory in my soul."
+
+Then we all began to shout, singing meantime, and shouted for a long
+while. Gorsuch, who was standing head bowed, said, "What are you doing
+now?"
+
+Samuel Thompson replied, "Preaching a sinner's funeral sermon."
+
+"You had better give up, and come down."
+
+I then said to Gorsuch,--"'If a brother see a sword coming, and he warn
+not his brother, then the brother's blood is required at his hands; but
+if the brother see the sword coming, and warn his brother, and his
+brother flee not, then his brother's blood is required at his own hand.'
+I see the sword coming, and, old man, I warn you to flee; if you flee
+not, your blood be upon your own hand."
+
+It was now about seven o'clock.
+
+"You had better give up," said old Mr. Gorsuch, after another while,
+"and come down, for I have come a long way this morning, and want my
+breakfast; for my property I will have, or I'll breakfast in hell. I
+will go up and get it."
+
+He then started up stairs, and came far enough to see us all plainly. We
+were just about to fire upon him, when Dickinson Gorsuch, who was
+standing on the old oven, before the door, and could see into the
+up-stairs room through the window, jumped down and caught his father,
+saying,--"O father, do come down! do come down! They have guns, swords,
+and all kinds of weapons! They'll kill you! Do come down!"
+
+The old man turned and left. When down with him, young Gorsuch could
+scarce draw breath, and the father looked more like a dead than a living
+man, so frightened were they at their supposed danger. The old man stood
+some time without saying anything; at last he said, as if soliloquizing,
+"I want my property, and I will have it."
+
+Kline broke forth, "If you don't give up by fair means, you will have to
+by foul."
+
+I told him we would not surrender on any conditions.
+
+Young Gorsuch then said,--"Don't ask them to give up,--_make_ them do
+it. We have money, and can call men to take them. What is it that money
+won't buy?"
+
+Then said Kline,--"I am getting tired waiting on you; I see you are not
+going to give up."
+
+He then wrote a note and handed it to Joshua Gorsuch, saying at the same
+time,--"Take it, and bring a hundred men from Lancaster."
+
+As he started, I said,--"See here! When you go to Lancaster, don't bring
+a hundred men,--bring five hundred. It will take all the men in
+Lancaster to change our purpose or take us alive."
+
+He stopped to confer with Kline, when Pinckney said, "We had better give
+up."
+
+"You are getting afraid," said I.
+
+"Yes," said Kline, "give up like men. The rest would give up if it were
+not for you."
+
+"I am not afraid," said Pinckney; "but where is the sense in fighting
+against so many men, and only five of us?"
+
+The whites, at this time, were coming from all quarters, and Kline was
+enrolling them as fast as they came. Their numbers alarmed Pinckney, and
+I told him to go and sit down; but he said, "No, I will go down stairs."
+
+I told him, if he attempted it, I should be compelled to blow out his
+brains. "Don't believe that any living man can take you," I said. "Don't
+give up to any slaveholder."
+
+To Abraham Johnson, who was near me, I then turned. He declared he was
+not afraid. "I will fight till I die," he said.
+
+At this time, Hannah, Pinckney's wife, had become impatient of our
+persistent course; and my wife, who brought me her message urging us to
+surrender, seized a corn-cutter, and declared she would cut off the head
+of the first one who should attempt to give up.
+
+Another one of Gorsuch's slaves was coming along the highroad at this
+time, and I beckoned to him to go around. Pinckney saw him, and soon
+became more inspirited. Elijah Lewis, a Quaker, also came along about
+this time; I beckoned to him, likewise; but he came straight on, and was
+met by Kline, who ordered him to assist him. Lewis asked for his
+authority, and Kline handed him the warrant. While Lewis was reading,
+Castner Hanway came up, and Lewis handed the warrant to him. Lewis asked
+Kline what Parker said.
+
+Kline replied, "He won't give up."
+
+Then Lewis and Hanway both said to the Marshal,--"If Parker says they
+will not give up, you had better let them alone, for he will kill some
+of you. We are not going to risk our lives";--and they turned to go
+away.
+
+While they were talking, I came down and stood in the doorway, my men
+following behind.
+
+Old Mr. Gorsuch said, when I appeared, "They'll come out, and get away!"
+and he came back to the gate.
+
+I then said to him,--"You said you could and would take us. Now you have
+the chance."
+
+They were a cowardly-looking set of men.
+
+Mr. Gorsuch said, "You can't come out here."
+
+"Why?" said I. "This is my place, I pay rent for it. I'll let you see if
+I can't come out."
+
+"I don't care if you do pay rent for it," said he. "If you come out, I
+will give you the contents of these";--presenting, at the same time, two
+revolvers, one in each hand.
+
+I said, "Old man, if you don't go away, I will break your neck."
+
+I then walked up to where he stood, his arms resting on the gate,
+trembling as if afflicted with palsy, and laid my hand on his shoulder,
+saying, "I have seen pistols before to-day."
+
+Kline now came running up, and entreated Gorsuch to come away.
+
+"No," said the latter, "I will have my property, or go to hell."
+
+"What do you intend to do?" said Kline to me.
+
+"I intend to fight," said I. "I intend to try your strength."
+
+"If you will withdraw your men," he replied, "I will withdraw mine."
+
+I told him it was too late. "You would not withdraw when you had the
+chance,--you shall not now."
+
+Kline then went back to Hanway and Lewis. Gorsuch made a signal to his
+men, and they all fell into line. I followed his example as well as I
+could; but as we were not more than ten paces apart, it was difficult to
+do so. At this time we numbered but ten, while there were between thirty
+and forty of the white men.
+
+While I was talking to Gorsuch, his son said, "Father, will you take all
+this from a nigger?"
+
+I answered him by saying that I respected old age; but that, if he
+would repeat that, I should knock his teeth down his throat. At this he
+fired upon me, and I ran up to him and knocked the pistol out of his
+hand, when he let the other one fall and ran in the field.
+
+My brother-in-law, who was standing near, then said, "I can stop
+him";--and with his double-barrel gun he fired.
+
+Young Gorsuch fell, but rose and ran on again. Pinckney fired a second
+time, and again Gorsuch fell, but was soon up again, and, running into
+the cornfield, lay down in the fence corner.
+
+I returned to my men, and found Samuel Thompson talking to old Mr.
+Gorsuch, his master. They were both angry.
+
+"Old man, you had better go home to Maryland," said Samuel.
+
+"You had better give up, and come home with me," said the old man.
+
+Thompson took Pinckney's gun from him, struck Gorsuch, and brought him
+to his knees. Gorsuch rose and signalled to his men. Thompson then
+knocked him down again, and he again rose. At this time all the white
+men opened fire, and we rushed upon them; when they turned, threw down
+their guns, and ran away. We, being closely engaged, clubbed our rifles.
+We were too closely pressed to fire, but we found a good deal could be
+done with empty guns.
+
+Old Mr. Gorsuch was the bravest of his party; he held on to his pistols
+until the last, while all the others threw away their weapons. I saw as
+many as three at a time fighting with him. Sometimes he was on his
+knees, then on his back, and again his feet would be where his head
+should be. He was a fine soldier and a brave man. Whenever he saw the
+least opportunity, he would take aim. While in close quarters with the
+whites, we could load and fire but two or three times. Our guns got bent
+and out of order. So damaged did they become, that we could shoot with
+but two or three of them. Samuel Thompson bent his gun on old Mr.
+Gorsuch so badly, that it was of no use to us.
+
+When the white men ran, they scattered. I ran after Nathan Nelson, but
+could not catch him. I never saw a man run faster. Returning, I saw
+Joshua Gorsuch coming, and Pinckney behind him. I reminded him that he
+would like "to take hold of a nigger," told him that now was his
+"chance," and struck him a blow on the side of the head, which stopped
+him. Pinckney came up behind, and gave him a blow which brought him to
+the ground; as the others passed, they gave him a kick or jumped upon
+him, until the blood oozed out at his ears.
+
+Nicholas Hutchings, and Nathan Nelson of Baltimore County, Maryland,
+could outrun any men I ever saw. They and Kline were not brave, like the
+Gorsuches. Could our men have got them, they would have been satisfied.
+
+One of our men ran after Dr. Pierce, as he richly deserved attention;
+but Pierce caught up with Castner Hanway, who rode between the fugitive
+and the Doctor, to shield him and some others. Hanway was told to get
+out of the way, or he would forfeit his life; he went aside quickly, and
+the man fired at the Marylander, but missed him,--he was too far off. I
+do not know whether he was wounded or not; but I do know, that, if it
+had not been for Hanway, he would have been killed.
+
+Having driven the slavocrats off in every direction, our party now
+turned towards their several homes. Some of us, however, went back to my
+house, where we found several of the neighbors.
+
+The scene at the house beggars description. Old Mr. Gorsuch was lying in
+the yard in a pool of blood, and confusion reigned both inside and
+outside of the house.
+
+Levi Pownell said to me, "The weather is so hot and the flies are so
+bad, will you give me a sheet to put over the corpse?"
+
+In reply, I gave him permission to get anything he needed from the
+house.
+
+"Dickinson Gorsuch is lying in the fence-corner, and I believe he is
+dying. Give me something for him to drink," said Pownell, who seemed to
+be acting the part of the Good Samaritan.
+
+When he returned from ministering to Dickinson, he told me he could not
+live.
+
+The riot, so called, was now entirely ended. The elder Gorsuch was dead;
+his son and nephew were both wounded, and I have reason to believe
+others were,--how many, it would be difficult to say. Of our party, only
+two were wounded. One received a ball in his hand, near the wrist; but
+it only entered the skin, and he pushed it out with his thumb. Another
+received a ball in the fleshy part of his thigh, which had to be
+extracted; but neither of them were sick or crippled by the wounds. When
+young Gorsuch fired at me in the early part of the battle, both balls
+passed through my hat, cutting off my hair close to the skin, but they
+drew no blood. The marks were not more than an inch apart.
+
+A story was afterwards circulated that Mr. Gorsuch shot his own slave,
+and in retaliation his slave shot him; but it was without foundation.
+His slave struck him the first and second blows; then three or four
+sprang upon him, and, when he became helpless, left him to pursue
+others. _The women put an end to him._ His slaves, so far from meeting
+death at his hands, are all still living.
+
+After the fight, my wife was obliged to secrete herself, leaving the
+children in care of her mother, and to the charities of our neighbors. I
+was questioned by my friends as to what I should do, as they were
+looking for officers to arrest me. I determined not to be taken alive,
+and told them so; but, thinking advice as to our future course
+necessary, went to see some old friends and consult about it. Their
+advice was to leave, as, were we captured and imprisoned, they could not
+foresee the result. Acting upon this hint, we set out for home, when we
+met some female friends, who told us that forty or fifty armed men were
+at my house, looking for me, and that we had better stay away from the
+place, if we did not want to be taken. Abraham Johnson and Pinckney
+hereupon halted, to agree upon the best course, while I turned around
+and went another way.
+
+Before setting out on my long journey northward, I determined to have an
+interview with my family, if possible, and to that end changed my
+course. As we went along the road to where I found them, we met men in
+companies of three and four, who had been drawn together by the
+excitement. On one occasion, we met ten or twelve together. They all
+left the road, and climbed over the fences into fields to let us pass;
+and then, after we had passed, turned, and looked after us as far as
+they could see. Had we been carrying destruction to all human kind, they
+could not have acted more absurdly. We went to a friend's house and
+stayed for the rest of the day, and until nine o'clock that night, when
+we set out for Canada.
+
+The great trial now was to leave my wife and family. Uncertain as to the
+result of the journey, I felt I would rather die than be separated from
+them. It had to be done, however; and we went forth with heavy hearts,
+outcasts for the sake of liberty. When we had walked as far as
+Christiana, we saw a large crowd, late as it was, to some of whom, at
+least, I must have been known, as we heard distinctly, "A'n't that
+Parker?"
+
+"Yes," was answered, "that's Parker."
+
+Kline was called for, and he, with some nine or ten more, followed
+after. We stopped, and then they stopped. One said to his comrades, "Go
+on,--that's him." And another replied, "You go." So they contended for a
+time who should come to us. At last they went back. I was sorry to see
+them go back, for I wanted to meet Kline and end the day's transactions.
+
+We went on unmolested to Penningtonville; and, in consequence of the
+excitement, thought best to continue on to Parkersburg. Nothing worth
+mention occurred for a time. We proceeded to Downingtown, and thence six
+miles beyond, to the house of a friend. We stopped with him on Saturday
+night, and on the evening of the 14th went fifteen miles farther. Here I
+learned from a preacher, directly from the city, that the excitement in
+Philadelphia was too great for us to risk our safety by going there.
+Another man present advised us to go to Norristown.
+
+At Norristown we rested a day. The friends gave us ten dollars, and sent
+us in a vehicle to Quakertown. Our driver, being partly intoxicated, set
+us down at the wrong place, which obliged us to stay out all night. At
+eleven o'clock the next day we got to Quakertown. We had gone about six
+miles out of the way, and had to go directly across the country. We
+rested the 16th, and set out in the evening for Friendsville.
+
+A friend piloted us some distance, and we travelled until we became very
+tired, when we went to bed under a haystack. On the 17th, we took
+breakfast at an inn. We passed a small village, and asked a man whom we
+met with a dearborn, what would be his charge to Windgap. "One dollar
+and fifty cents," was the ready answer. So in we got, and rode to that
+place.
+
+As we wanted to make some inquiries when we struck the north and south
+road, I went into the post-office, and asked for a letter for John
+Thomas, which of course I did not get. The postmaster scrutinized us
+closely,--more so, indeed, than any one had done on the Blue
+Mountains,--but informed us that Friendsville was between forty and
+fifty miles away. After going about nine miles, we stopped in the
+evening of the 18th at an inn, got supper, were politely served, and had
+an excellent night's rest. On the next day we set out for Tannersville,
+hiring a conveyance for twenty-two miles of the way. We had no further
+difficulty on the entire road to Rochester,--more than five hundred
+miles by the route we travelled.
+
+Some amusing incidents occurred, however, which it may be well to relate
+in this connection. The next morning, after stopping at the tavern, we
+took the cars and rode to Homerville, where, after waiting an hour, as
+our landlord of the night previous had directed us, we took stage. Being
+the first applicants for tickets, we secured inside seats, and, from the
+number of us, we took up all of the places inside; but, another
+traveller coming, I tendered him mine, and rode with the driver. The
+passenger thanked me; but the driver, a churl, and the most prejudiced
+person I ever came in contact with, would never wait after a stop until
+I could get on, but would drive away, and leave me to swing, climb, or
+cling on to the stage as best I could. Our traveller, at last noticing
+his behavior, told him promptly not to be so fast, but let all
+passengers get on, which had the effect to restrain him a little.
+
+At Big Eddy we took the cars. Directly opposite me sat a gentleman, who,
+on learning that I was for Rochester, said he was going there too, and
+afterwards proved an agreeable travelling-companion.
+
+A newsboy came in with papers, some of which the passengers bought. Upon
+opening them, they read of the fight at Christiana.
+
+"O, see here!" said my neighbor; "great excitement at Christiana; a--a
+statesman killed, and his son and nephew badly wounded."
+
+After reading, the passengers began to exchange opinions on the case.
+Some said they would like to catch Parker, and get the thousand dollars
+reward offered by the State; but the man opposite to me said, "Parker
+must be a powerful man."
+
+I thought to myself, "If you could tell what I can, you could judge
+about that."
+
+Pinckney and Johnson became alarmed, and wanted to leave the cars at the
+next stopping-place; but I told them there was no danger. I then asked
+particularly about Christiana, where it was, on what railroad, and other
+questions, to all of which I received correct replies. One of the men
+became so much attached to me, that, when we would go to an
+eating-saloon, he would pay for both. At Jefferson we thought of
+leaving the cars, and taking the boat; but they told us to keep on the
+cars, and we would get to Rochester by nine o'clock the next night.
+
+We left Jefferson about four o'clock in the morning, and arrived at
+Rochester at nine the same morning. Just before reaching Rochester, when
+in conversation with my travelling friend, I ventured to ask what would
+be done with Parker, should he be taken.
+
+"I do not know," he replied; "but the laws of Pennsylvania would not
+hang him,--they might imprison him. But it would be different, very
+different, should they get him into Maryland. The people in all the
+Slave States are so prejudiced against colored people, that they never
+give them justice. But I don't believe they will get Parker. I think he
+is in Canada by this time; at least, I hope so,--for I believe he did
+right, and, had I been in his place, I would have done as he did. Any
+good citizen will say the same. I believe Parker to be a brave man; and
+all you colored people should look at it as we white people look at our
+brave men, and do as we do. You see Parker was not fighting for a
+country, nor for praise. He was fighting for freedom: he only wanted
+liberty, as other men do. You colored people should protect him, and
+remember him as long as you live. We are coming near our parting-place,
+and I do not know if we shall ever meet again. I shall be in Rochester
+some two or three days before I return home; and I would like to have
+your company back."
+
+I told him it would be some time before we returned.
+
+The cars then stopped, when he bade me good by. As strange as it may
+appear, he did not ask me my name; and I was afraid to inquire his, from
+fear he would.
+
+On leaving the cars, after walking two or three squares, we overtook a
+colored man, who conducted us to the house of--a friend of mine. He
+welcomed me at once, as we were acquainted before, took me up stairs to
+wash and comb, and prepare, as he said, for company.
+
+As I was combing, a lady came up and said, "Which of you is Mr. Parker?"
+
+"I am," said I,--"what there is left of me."
+
+She gave me her hand, and said, "And this is William Parker!"
+
+She appeared to be so excited that she could not say what she wished to.
+We were told we would not get much rest, and we did not; for visitors
+were constantly coming. One gentleman was surprised that we got away
+from the cars, as spies were all about, and there were two thousand
+dollars reward for the party.
+
+We left at eight o'clock that evening, in a carriage, for the boat,
+bound for Kingston in Canada. As we went on board, the bell was ringing.
+After walking about a little, a friend pointed out to me the officers on
+the "hunt" for us; and just as the boat pushed off from the wharf, some
+of our friends on shore called me by name. Our pursuers looked very much
+like fools, as they were. I told one of the gentlemen on shore to write
+to Kline that I was in Canada. Ten dollars were generously contributed
+by the Rochester friends for our expenses; and altogether their kindness
+was heartfelt, and was most gratefully appreciated by us.
+
+Once on the boat, and fairly out at sea towards the land of liberty, my
+mind became calm, and my spirits very much depressed at thought of my
+wife and children. Before, I had little time to think much about them,
+my mind being on my journey. Now I became silent and abstracted.
+Although fond of company, no one was company for me now.
+
+We landed at Kingston on the 21st of September, at six o'clock in the
+morning, and walked around for a long time, without meeting any one we
+had ever known. At last, however, I saw a colored man I knew in
+Maryland. He at first pretended to have no knowledge of me, but finally
+recognized me. I made known our distressed condition, when he said he
+was not going home then, but, if we would have breakfast, he would pay
+for it. How different the treatment received from this man--himself an
+exile for the sake of liberty, and in its full enjoyment on free
+soil--and the self-sacrificing spirit of our Rochester colored brother,
+who made haste to welcome us to his ample home,--the well-earned reward
+of his faithful labors!
+
+On Monday evening, the 23d, we started for Toronto, where we arrived
+safely the next day. Directly after landing, we heard that Governor
+Johnston, of Pennsylvania, had made a demand on the Governor of Canada
+for me, under the Extradition Treaty. Pinckney and Johnson advised me to
+go to the country, and remain where I should not be known; but I
+refused. I intended to see what they would do with me. Going at once to
+the Government House, I entered the first office I came to. The official
+requested me to be seated. The following is the substance of the
+conversation between us, as near as I can remember. I told him I had
+heard that Governor Johnston, of Pennsylvania, had requested his
+government to send me back. At this he came forward, held forth his
+hand, and said, "Is this William Parker?"
+
+I took his hand, and assured him I was the man. When he started to come,
+I thought he was intending to seize me, and I prepared myself to knock
+him down. His genial, sympathetic manner it was that convinced me he
+meant well.
+
+He made me sit down, and said,--"Yes, they want you back again. Will you
+go?"
+
+"I will not be taken back alive," said I. "I ran away from my master to
+be free,--I have run from the United States to be free. I am now going
+to stop running."
+
+"Are you a fugitive from labor?" he asked.
+
+I told him I was.
+
+"Why," he answered, "they say you are a fugitive from justice." He then
+asked me where my master lived.
+
+I told him, "In Anne Arundel County, Maryland."
+
+"Is there such a county in Maryland?" he asked.
+
+"There is," I answered.
+
+He took down a map, examined it, and said, "You are right."
+
+I then told him the name of the farm, and my master's name. Further
+questions bearing upon the country towns near, the nearest river, etc.,
+followed, all of which I answered to his satisfaction.
+
+"How does it happen," he then asked, "that you lived in Pennsylvania so
+long, and no person knew you were a fugitive from labor?"
+
+"I do not get other people to keep my secrets, sir," I replied. "My
+brother and family only knew that I had been a slave."
+
+He then assured me that I would not, in his opinion, have to go back.
+Many coming in at this time on business, I was told to call again at
+three o'clock, which I did. The person in the office, a clerk, told me
+to take no further trouble about it, until that day four weeks. "But you
+are as free a man as I am," said he. When I told the news to Pinckney
+and Johnson, they were greatly relieved in mind.
+
+I ate breakfast with the greatest relish, got a letter written to a
+friend in Chester County for my wife, and set about arrangements to
+settle at or near Toronto.
+
+We tried hard to get work, but the task was difficult. I think three
+weeks elapsed before we got work that could be called work. Sometimes we
+would secure a small job, worth two or three shillings, and sometimes a
+smaller one, worth not more than one shilling; and these not oftener
+than once or twice in a week. We became greatly discouraged; and, to add
+to my misery, I was constantly hearing some alarming report about my
+wife and children. Sometimes they had carried her back into
+slavery,--sometimes the children, and sometimes the entire party. Then
+there would come a contradiction. I was soon so completely worn down by
+my fears for them, that I thought my heart would break. To add to my
+disquietude, no answer came to my letters, although I went to the office
+regularly every day. At last I got a letter with the glad news that my
+wife and children were safe, and would be sent to Canada. I told the
+person reading for me to stop, and tell them to send her "right now,"--I
+could not wait to hear the rest of the letter.
+
+Two months from the day I landed in Toronto, my wife arrived, but
+without the children. She had had a very bad time. Twice they had her in
+custody; and, a third time, her young master came after her, which
+obliged her to flee before day, so that the children had to remain
+behind for the time. I was so glad to see her that I forgot about the
+children.
+
+The day my wife came, I had nothing but the clothes on my back, and was
+in debt for my board, without any work to depend upon. My situation was
+truly distressing. I took the resolution, and went to a store where I
+made known my circumstances to the proprietor, offering to work for him
+to pay for some necessaries. He readily consented, and I supplied myself
+with bedding, meal, and flour. As I had selected a place before, we went
+that evening about two miles into the country, and settled ourselves for
+the winter.
+
+When in Kingston, I had heard of the Buxton settlement, and of the
+Revds. Dr. Willis and Mr. King, the agents. My informant, after stating
+all the particulars, induced me to think it was a desirable place; and
+having quite a little sum of money due to me in the States, I wrote for
+it, and waited until May. It not being sent, I called upon Dr. Willis,
+who treated me kindly. I proposed to settle in Elgin, if he would loan
+means for the first instalment. He said he would see about it, and I
+should call again. On my second visit, he agreed to assist me, and
+proposed that I should get another man to go on a lot with me.
+
+Abraham Johnson and I arranged to settle together, and, with Dr.
+Willis's letter to Mr. King on our behalf, I embarked with my family on
+a schooner for the West. After five days' sailing, we reached Windsor.
+Not having the means to take us to Chatham, I called upon Henry Bibb,
+and laid my case before him. He took us in, treated us with great
+politeness, and afterwards, took me with him to Detroit, where, after an
+introduction to some friends, a purse of five dollars was made up. I
+divided the money among my companions, and started them for Chatham, but
+was obliged to stay at Windsor and Detroit two days longer.
+
+While stopping at Windsor, I went again to Detroit, with two or three
+friends, when, at one of the steamboats just landed, some officers
+arrested three fugitives, on the pretence of being horse thieves. I was
+satisfied they were slaves, and said so, when Henry Bibb went to the
+telegraph office and learned through a message that they were. In the
+crowd and excitement, the sheriff threatened to imprison me for my
+interference. I felt indignant, and told him to do so, whereupon he
+opened the door. About this time there was more excitement, and then a
+man slipped into the jail, unseen by the officers, opened the gate, and
+the three prisoners went out, and made their escape to Windsor. I
+stopped through that night in Detroit, and started the next day for
+Chatham, where I found my family snugly provided for at a boarding-house
+kept by Mr. Younge.
+
+Chatham was a thriving town at that time, and the genuine liberty
+enjoyed by its numerous colored residents pleased me greatly; but our
+destination was Buxton, and thither we went on the following day. We
+arrived there in the evening, and I called immediately upon Mr. King,
+and presented Dr. Willis's letter. He received me very politely, and
+said that, after I should feel rested, I could go out and select a lot.
+He also kindly offered to give me meal and pork for my family, until I
+could get work.
+
+In due time, Johnson and I each chose a fifty-acre lot; for although
+when in Toronto we agreed with Dr. Willis to take one lot between us,
+when we saw the land we thought we could pay for two lots. I got the
+money in a little time, and paid the Doctor back. I built a house, and
+we moved into it that same fall, and in it I live yet.
+
+When I first settled in Buxton, the white settlers in the vicinity were
+much opposed to colored people. Their prejudices were very strong; but
+the spread of intelligence and religion in the community has wrought a
+great change in them. Prejudice is fast being uprooted; indeed, they do
+not appear like the same people that they were. In a short time I hope
+the foul spirit will depart entirely.
+
+I have now to bring my narrative to a close; and in so doing I would
+return thanks to Almighty God for the many mercies and favors he has
+bestowed upon me, and especially for delivering me out of the hands of
+slaveholders, and placing me in a land of liberty, where I can worship
+God under my own vine and fig-tree, with none to molest or make me
+afraid. I am also particularly thankful to my old friends and neighbors
+in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania,--to the friends in Norristown,
+Quakertown, Rochester, and Detroit, and to Dr. Willis of Toronto, for
+their disinterested benevolence and kindness to me and my family. When
+hunted, they sheltered me; when hungry and naked, they clothed and fed
+me; and when a stranger in a strange land, they aided and encouraged me.
+May the Lord in his great mercy remember and bless them, as they
+remembered and blessed me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The events following the riot at Christiana and my escape have become
+matters of history, and can only be spoken of as such. The failure of
+Gorsuch in his attempt; his death, and the terrible wounds of his son;
+the discomfiture and final rout of his crestfallen associates in crime;
+and their subsequent attempt at revenge by a merciless raid through
+Lancaster County, arresting every one unfortunate enough to have a dark
+skin,--is all to be found in the printed account of the trial of Castner
+Hanway and others for treason. It is true that some of the things which
+did occur are spoken of but slightly, there being good and valid reasons
+why they were passed over thus at that time in these cases, many of
+which might be interesting to place here, and which I certainly should
+do, did not the same reasons still exist in full force for keeping
+silent. I shall be compelled to let them pass just as they are recorded.
+
+But one event, in which there seems no reason to observe silence, I will
+introduce in this place. I allude to the escape of George Williams, one
+of our men, and the very one who had the letters brought up from
+Philadelphia by Mr. Samuel Williams. George lay in prison with the
+others who had been arrested by Kline, but was rendered more uneasy by
+the number of rascals who daily visited that place for the purpose of
+identifying, if possible, some of its many inmates as slaves. One day
+the lawyer previously alluded to, whose chief business seemed to be
+negro-catching, came with another man, who had employed him for that
+purpose, and, stopping in front of the cell wherein George and old
+Ezekiel Thompson were confined, cried out, "_That's_ him!" At which the
+man exclaimed, "_It is, by God! that is him!_"
+
+These ejaculations, as a matter of course, brought George and Ezekiel,
+who were lying down, to their feet,--the first frightened and uneasy,
+the latter stern and resolute. Some mysterious conversation then took
+place between the two, which resulted in George lying down and covering
+himself with Ezekiel's blanket. In the mean time off sped the man and
+lawyer to obtain the key, open the cell, and institute a more complete
+inspection. They returned in high glee, but to their surprise saw only
+the old man standing at the door, his grim visage anything but inviting.
+They inserted the key, click went the lock, back shot the bolt, open
+flew the door, but old Ezekiel stood there firm, his eyes flashing fire,
+his brawny hands flourishing a stout oak stool furnished him to rest on
+by friends of whom I have so often spoken, and crying out in the most
+unmistakable manner, every word leaving a deep impression on his
+visitors, "The first man that puts his head inside of this cell I will
+split to pieces."
+
+The men leaped back, but soon recovered their self-possession; and the
+lawyer said,--"Do you know who I am? I am the lawyer who has charge of
+this whole matter, you impudent nigger, I will come in whenever I
+choose."
+
+The old man, if possible looking more stern and savage than before,
+replied,--"I don't care who you are; but if you or any other
+nigger-catcher steps inside of my cell-door I will beat out his brains."
+
+It is needless to say more. The old man's fixed look, clenched teeth,
+and bony frame had their effect. The man and the lawyer left, growling
+as they went, that, if there was rope to be had, that old Indian nigger
+should certainly hang.
+
+This was but the beginning of poor George's troubles. His friends were
+at work; but all went wrong, and his fate seemed sealed. He stood
+charged with treason, murder, and riot, and there appeared no way to
+relieve him. When discharged by the United States Court for the first
+crime, he was taken to Lancaster to meet the second and third. There,
+too, the man and the lawyer followed, taking with them that infamous
+wretch, Kline. The Devil seemed to favor all they undertook; and when
+Ezekiel was at last discharged, with some thirty more, from all that had
+been so unjustly brought against him, and for which he had lain in the
+damp prison for more than three months, these rascals lodged a warrant
+in the Lancaster jail, and at midnight Kline and the man who claimed to
+be George's owner arrested him as a fugitive from labor, whilst the
+lawyer returned to Philadelphia to prepare the case for trial, and to
+await the arrival of his shameless partners in guilt. This seemed the
+climax of George's misfortunes. He was hurried into a wagon, ready at
+the door, and, fearing a rescue, was driven at a killing pace to the
+town of Parkesburg, where they were compelled to stop for the night,
+their horses being completely used up. This was in the month of January,
+and the coldest night that had been known for many years. On their
+route, these wretches, who had George handcuffed and tied in the wagon,
+indulged deeply in bad whiskey, with which they were plentifully
+supplied, and by the time they reached the public-house their fury was
+at its height. 'T is said there is honor among thieves, but villains of
+the sort I am now speaking of seem to possess none. Each fears the
+other. When in the bar-room, Kline said to the other,--"Sir, you can go
+to sleep. I will watch this nigger."
+
+"No," replied the other, "I will do that business myself. You don't fool
+me, sir."
+
+To which Kline replied, "Take something, sir?"--and down went more
+whiskey.
+
+Things went on in this way awhile, until Kline drew a chair to the
+stove, and, overcome by the heat and liquor, was soon sleeping soundly,
+and, I suppose, dreaming of the profits which were sure to arise from
+the job. The other walked about till the barkeeper went to bed, leaving
+the hostler to attend in his place, and he also, somehow or other, soon
+fell asleep. Then he walked up to George, who was lying on the bench,
+apparently as soundly asleep as any of them, and, saying to himself,
+"The damn nigger is asleep,--I'll just take a little rest myself,"--he
+suited the action to the word. Spreading himself out on two chairs, in a
+few moments he was snoring at a fearful rate. Rum, the devil, and
+fatigue, combined, had completely prostrated George's foes. It was now
+his time for action; and, true to the hope of being free, the last to
+leave the poor, hunted, toil-worn bondman's heart, he opened first one
+eye, then the other, and carefully examined things around. Then he rose
+slowly, and keeping step to the deep-drawn snores of the miserable,
+debased wretch who claimed him, he stealthily crawled towards the door,
+when, to his consternation, he found the eye of the hostler on him. He
+paused, knowing his fate hung by a single hair. It was only necessary
+for the man to speak, and he would be shot instantly dead; for both
+Kline and his brother ruffian slept pistol in hand. As I said, George
+stopped, and, in the softest manner in which it was possible for him to
+speak, whispered, "A drink of water, if you please, sir." The man
+replied not, but, pointing his finger to the door again, closed his
+eyes, and was apparently lost in slumber.
+
+I have already said it was cold; and, in addition, snow and ice covered
+the ground. There could not possibly be a worse night. George shivered
+as he stepped forth into the keen night air. He took one look at the
+clouds above, and then at the ice-clad ground below. He trembled; but
+freedom beckoned, and on he sped. He knew where he was,--the place was
+familiar. On, on, he pressed, nor paused till fifteen miles lay between
+him and his drunken claimant; then he stopped at the house of a tried
+friend to have his handcuffs removed; but, with their united efforts,
+one side only could be got off, and the poor fellow, not daring to rest,
+continued his journey, forty odd miles, to Philadelphia, with the other
+on. Frozen, stiff, and sore, he arrived there on the following day, and
+every care was extended to him by his old friends. He was nursed and
+attended by the late Dr. James, Joshua Gould Bias, one of the faithful
+few, whose labors for the oppressed will never be forgotten, and whose
+heart, purse, and hand were always open to the poor, flying slave. God
+has blessed him, and his reward is obtained.
+
+I shall here take leave of George, only saying, that he recovered and
+went to the land of freedom, to be safe under the protection of British
+law. Of the wretches he left in the _tavern_, much might be said; but it
+is enough to know that they awoke to find him gone, and to pour their
+curses and blasphemy on each other. They swore most frightfully; and the
+disappointed Southerner threatened to blow out the brains of Kline, who
+turned his wrath on the hostler, declaring he should be taken and held
+responsible for the loss. This so raised the ire of that worthy, that,
+seizing an iron bar that was used to fasten the door, he drove the whole
+party from the house, swearing they were damned kidnappers, and ought to
+be all sent after old Gorsuch, and that he would raise the whole
+township on them if they said one word more. This had the desired
+effect. They left, not to pursue poor George, but to avoid pursuit; for
+these worthless man-stealers knew the released men brought up from
+Philadelphia and discharged at Lancaster were all in the neighborhood,
+and that nothing would please these brave fellows--who had patiently and
+heroically suffered for long and weary months in a felon's cell for the
+cause of human freedom--more, than to get a sight at them; and Kline, he
+knew this well,--particularly old Ezekiel Thompson, who had sworn by his
+heart's blood, that, if he could only get hold of that Marshal Kline, he
+should kill him and go to the gallows in peace. In fact, he said the
+only thing he had to feel sorry about was, that he did not do it when he
+threatened to, whilst the scoundrel stood talking to Hanway; and but for
+Castner Hanway he would have done it, anyhow. Much more I could say; but
+short stories are read, while long ones are like the sermons we go to
+sleep under.
+
+
+
+
+NANTUCKET.
+
+
+Thompson and I had a fortnight's holiday, and the question arose how
+could we pass it best, and for the least money.
+
+We are both clerks, that is to say, shopmen, in a large jobbing house;
+but although, like most Americans, we spend our lives in the din and
+bustle of a colossal shop, where selling and packing are the only
+pastime, and daybooks and ledgers the only literature, we wish it to be
+understood that we have souls capable of speculating upon some other
+matters that have no cash value, yet which mankind cannot neglect
+without becoming something little better than magnified busy bees, or
+gigantic ants, or overgrown social caterpillars. And although I say it
+myself, I have quite a reputation among our fellows, that I have earned
+by the confident way in which I lay down a great principle of science,
+aesthetics, or morals. I confess that I am perhaps a little given to
+generalize from a single fact; but my manner is imposing to the weaker
+brethren, and my credit for great wisdom is well established in our
+street.
+
+Under these circumstances it became a matter of some importance to
+decide the question, Where can we go to the best advantage, pecuniary
+and aesthetical?
+
+We had both of us, in the pursuit of our calling,--that is to say, in
+hunting after bad debts and drumming up new business,--travelled over
+most of this country on those long lines of rails that always remind me
+of the parallels of latitude on globes and maps; and we wondered why
+people who had once gratified a natural curiosity to see this land
+should ever travel over it again, unless with the hope of making money
+by their labor. Health, certainly, no one can expect to get from the
+tough upper-leathers and sodden soles of the pies offered at the
+ten-minutes-for-refreshment stations, nor from their saturated
+spongecakes. As to pleasure, I said to Thompson,--"the pleasure of
+travelling consists in the new agreeable sensations it affords. Above
+all, they must be new. You wish to move out of your set of thoughts and
+feelings, or else why move at all? But all the civilized world over,
+locomotives, like huge flat-irons, are smoothing customs, costumes,
+thoughts, and feelings into one plane, homogeneous surface. And in this
+country not only does Nature appear to do everything by wholesale, but
+there is as little variety in human beings. We have discovered the
+political alkahest or universal solvent of the alchemists, and with it
+we reduce at once the national characteristics of foreigners into our
+well-known American compound. Hence, on all the great lines of travel,
+Monotony has marked us for her own. Coming from the West, you are
+whirled through twelve hundred miles of towns, so alike in their outward
+features that they seem to have been started in New England nurseries
+and sent to be planted wherever they might be wanted;--square brick
+buildings, covered with signs, and a stoutish sentry-box on each flat
+roof; telegraph offices; express companies; a crowd of people dressed
+alike, 'earnest,' and bustling as ants, with seemingly but one idea,--to
+furnish materials for the statistical tables of the next census. Then,
+beyond, you catch glimpses of many smaller and neater buildings, with
+grass and trees and white fences about them. Some are Gothic, some
+Italian, some native American. But the glory of one Gothic is like the
+glory of another Gothic, the Italian are all built upon the same
+pattern, and the native American differ only in size. There are three
+marked currents of architectural taste, but no individual character in
+particular buildings. Everywhere you see comfort and abundance; your
+mind is easy on the great subject of imports, exports, products of the
+soil, and manufactures;--a pleasant and strengthening prospect for a
+political economist, or for shareholders in railways or owners of lands
+in the vicinity. This 'unparalleled prosperity' must be exciting to a
+foreigner who sees it for the first time; but we Yankees are to the
+manner born and bred up. We take it all as a matter of course, as the
+young Plutuses do their father's fine house and horses and servants.
+Kingsley says there is a great, unspoken poetry in sanitary reform. It
+may be so; but as yet the words only suggest sewers, ventilation, and
+chloride of lime. The poetry has not yet become vocal; and I think the
+same may be said of our 'material progress.' It seems thus far very
+prosaic. 'Only a great poet sees the poetry of his own age,' we are
+told. We every-day people are unfortunately blind to it."
+
+Here I was silent. I had dived into the deepest recesses of my soul.
+Thompson waited patiently until I should rise to the surface and blow
+again. It was thus:--
+
+"Have you not noticed that the people we sit beside in railway cars are
+becoming as much alike as their brown linen 'dusters,' and unsuggestive
+except on that point of statistics? They are intelligent, but they carry
+their shops on their backs, as snails do their houses. Their thoughts
+are fixed upon the one great subject. On all others, politics included,
+they talk from hand to mouth, offering you a cold hash of their favorite
+morning paper. Even those praiseworthy persons who devote their time to
+temperance, missions, tract-societies, seem more like men of business
+than apostles. They lay their charities before you much as they would
+display their goods, and urge their excellence and comparative cheapness
+to induce you to lay out your money.
+
+"The fact is, that the traveller is daily losing his human character,
+and becoming more and more a package, to be handled, stowed, and
+'forwarded' as may best suit the convenience and profit of the
+enterprising parties engaged in the business. If at night he stops at a
+hotel, he rises to the dignity of an animal, is marked by a number, and
+driven to his food and litter by the herdsmen employed by the master of
+the establishment. To a thinking man, it is a sad indication for the
+future to see what slaves this hotel-railroad-steamboat system has made
+of the brave and the free when they travel. How they toady captains and
+conductors, and without murmuring put up with any imposition they please
+to practise upon them, even unto taking away their lives! As we all pay
+the same price at hotels, each one hopes by smirks and servility to
+induce the head-clerk to treat him a little better than his neighbors.
+There is no despotism more absolute than that of these servants of the
+public. As Cobbett said, 'In America, public servant means master.' None
+of us can sing, 'Yankees never will be slaves,' unless we stay at home.
+We have liberated the blacks, but I see little chance of emancipation
+for ourselves. The only liberty that is vigorously vindicated here is
+the liberty of doing wrong."
+
+Here I stopped short. It was evident that my wind was gone, and any
+further exertion of eloquence out of the question for some time. I was
+as exhausted as a _Gymnotus_ that has parted with all its electricity.
+Thompson took advantage of my helpless condition, and carried me off
+unresisting to a place which railways can never reach, and where there
+is nothing to attract fashionable travellers. The surly Atlantic keeps
+watch over it and growls off the pestilent crowd of excursionists who
+bring uncleanness and greediness in their train, and are pursued by the
+land-sharks who prey upon such frivolous flying-fish. A little town,
+whose life stands still, or rather goes backward, whose ships have
+sailed away to other ports, whose inhabitants have followed the ships,
+and whose houses seem to be going after the inhabitants; but a town in
+its decline, not in its decay. Everything is clean and in good repair;
+everybody well dressed, healthy, and cheerful. Paupers there are none;
+and the new school-house would be an ornament to any town in
+Massachusetts. That there is no lack of spirit and vigor may be known
+from the fact that the island furnished five hundred men for the late
+war.
+
+When we caught sight of Nantucket, the sun was shining his best, and the
+sea too smooth to raise a qualm in the bosom of the most delicately
+organized female. The island first makes its appearance, as a long, thin
+strip of yellow underlying a long, thinner strip of green. In the middle
+of this double line the horizon is broken by two square towers. As you
+approach, the towers resolve themselves into meeting-houses, and a large
+white town lies before you.
+
+At the wharf there were no baggage smashers. Our trunks were
+
+    "Taken up tenderly,
+    Lifted with care,"
+
+and carried to the hotel for twenty-five cents in paper. I immediately
+established the fact, that there are no fellow-citizens in Nantucket of
+foreign descent. "For," said I, "if you offered that obsolete fraction
+of a dollar to the turbulent hackmen of our cities, you would meet with
+offensive demonstrations of contempt." I seized the opportunity to add,
+_apropos_ of the ways of that class of persons: "Theoretically, I am a
+thorough democrat; but when democracy drives a hack, smells of bad
+whiskey and cheap tobacco, ruins my portmanteau, robs me of my money,
+and damns my eyes when it does not blacken them, if I dare protest,--I
+hate it."
+
+The streets are paved and clean. There are few horses on the island, and
+these are harnessed single to box-wagons, painted green, the sides of
+which are high enough to hold safely a child, four or five years of age,
+standing. We often inquired the reasons for this peculiar build; but the
+replies were so unsatisfactory, that we put the green box down as one of
+the mysteries of the spot.
+
+It seemed to us a healthy symptom, that we saw in our inn none of those
+alarming notices that the keepers of hotels on the mainland paste up so
+conspicuously, no doubt from the very natural dislike to competition,
+"Beware of pickpockets," "Bolt your doors before retiring," "Deposit
+your valuables in the safe, or the proprietors will not be responsible."
+There are no thieves in Nantucket; if for no other reason, because they
+cannot get away with the spoils. And we were credibly informed, that the
+one criminal in the town jail had given notice to the authorities that
+he would not remain there any longer, unless they repaired the door, as
+he was afraid of catching cold from the damp night air.
+
+In the afternoons, good-looking young women swarm in the streets,
+
+                "Airy creatures,
+    Alike in voice, though not in features,"
+
+I could wish their voices were as sweet as their faces; but the American
+climate, or perhaps the pertness of democracy, has an unfavorable effect
+on the organs of speech. Governor Andrew must have visited Nantucket
+before he wrote his eloquent lamentation over the excess of women in
+Massachusetts. I am fond of ladies' society, and do not sympathize with
+the Governor. But if that day should ever come, which is prophesied by
+Isaiah, when seven women shall lay hold of one man, saying, "We will eat
+our own bread and wear our own apparel, only let us be called by thy
+name," I think Nantucket will be the scene of the fulfilment, the women
+are so numerous and apparently so well off. I confess that I envy the
+good fortune of the young gentlemen who may be living there at that
+time. We saw a foreshadowing of this delightful future in the water. The
+bathing "facilities" consist of many miles of beach, and one
+bathing-house, in which ladies exchange their shore finery for their
+sea-weeds. Two brisk young fellows, Messrs. Whitey and Pypey, had come
+over in the same boat with us. We had fallen into a traveller's
+acquaintance with them, and listened to the story of the pleasant life
+they had led on the island during previous visits. We lost sight of them
+on the wharf. We found them again near the bath-house, in the hour of
+their glory. There they were, disporting themselves in the clear water,
+swimming, diving, floating, while around them laughed and splashed
+fourteen bright-eyed water-nymphs, half a dozen of them as bewitching as
+any Nixes that ever spread their nets for soft-hearted young _Ritters_
+in the old German romance waters. Neptune in a triumphal progress, with
+his Naiads tumbling about him, was no better off than Whitey and Pypey.
+They had, to be sure, no car, nor conch shells, nor dolphins; but, as
+Thompson remarked, these were unimportant accessories, that added but
+little to Neptune's comfort. The nymphs were the essential. The
+spectacle was a saddening one for us, I confess; the more so, because
+our forlorn condition evidently gave a new zest to the enjoyment of our
+friends, and stimulated them to increased vigor in their aquatic
+flirtations. Alone, unintroduced, melancholy, and a little sheepish, we
+hired towels at two cents each from the ladylike and obliging colored
+person who superintended the bath-house, and, withdrawing to the
+friendly shelter of distance, dropped our clothes upon the sand, and hid
+our envy and insignificance in the bosom of the deep.
+
+And the town was brilliant from the absence of the unclean
+advertisements of quack-medicine men. That irrepressible species have
+not, as yet, committed their nuisance in its streets, and disfigured the
+walls and fences with their portentous placards. It is the only clean
+place I know of. The nostrum-makers have labelled all the features of
+Nature on the mainland, as if our country were a vast apothecary's shop.
+The Romans had a gloomy fashion of lining their great roads with tombs
+and mortuary inscriptions. The modern practice is quite as dreary. The
+long lines of railway that lead to our cities are decorated with
+cure-alls for the sick, the _ante-mortem_ epitaphs of the fools who buy
+them and try them.
+
+    "No place is sacred to the meddling crew
+    Whose trade is----"
+
+posting what we all should take. The walls of our domestic castles are
+outraged with _graffiti_ of this class; highways and byways display
+them; and if the good Duke with the melancholy Jaques were to wander in
+some forest of New Arden, in the United States, they would be sure to
+
+    "Find _elixirs_ on trees, _bitters_ in the running brooks,
+    _Syrups_ on stones, and _lies_ in everything."
+
+Last year, weary of shop, and feeling the necessity of restoring tone to
+the mind by a course of the sublime, Thompson and I paid many dollars,
+travelled many miles, ran many risks, and suffered much from
+impertinence and from dust, in order that we might see the wonders of
+the Lord, his mountains and his waterfalls. We stood at the foot of the
+mountain, and, gazing upward at a precipice, the sublime we were in
+search of began to swell within our hearts, when our eyes were struck by
+huge Roman letters painted on the face of the rock, and held fast, as if
+by a spell, until we had read them all. They asked the question, "Are
+you troubled with worms?"
+
+It is hardly necessary to say that the sublime within us was instantly
+killed. It would be fortunate, indeed, for the afflicted, if the
+specific of this charlatan St. George were half as destructive to the
+intestinal dragons he promises to destroy. Then we turned away to the
+glen down which the torrent plunged. And there, at the foot of the fall,
+in the midst of the boiling water, the foam, and spray, rose a tall crag
+crowned with silver birch, and hung with moss and creeping vines,
+bearing on its gray, weather-beaten face: "Rotterdam Schnapps." Bah! it
+made us sick. The caldron looked like a punch-bowl, and the breath of
+the zephyrs smelt of gin and water.
+
+Thousands of us see this dirty desecration of the shrines to which we
+make our summer pilgrimage, and bear with the sacrilege meekly, perhaps
+laugh at the wicked generation of pill-venders, that seeks for places to
+put up its sign. But does not this tolerance indicate the note of
+vulgarity in us, as Father Newman might say? Is it not a blot on the
+people as well as on the rocks? Let them fill the columns of newspapers
+with their ill-smelling advertisements, and sham testimonials from the
+Reverend Smith, Brown, and Jones; but let us prevent them from setting
+their traps for our infirmities in the spots God has chosen for his
+noblest works. What a triple brass must such men have about their
+consciences to dare to flaunt their falsehoods in such places! It is a
+blasphemy against Nature. We might use Peter's words to them,--"Thou
+hast not lied unto men, but unto God." Ananias and Sapphira were slain
+for less. But they think, I suppose, that the age of miracles has
+passed, or survives only in their miraculous cures, and so coolly defy
+the lightnings of Heaven. I was so much excited on this subject that
+Thompson suggested to me to give up my situation, turn Peter the Hermit,
+and carry a fiery scrubbing-brush through the country, preaching to all
+lovers of Nature to join in a crusade to wash the Holy Places clean of
+these unbelieving quacks.
+
+It is pleasant to see that the Nantucket people are all healthy, or, if
+ailing, have no idea of being treated as they treat bluefish,--offered a
+red rag or a white bone, some taking sham to bite upon, and so be hauled
+in and die. As regards the salubrity of the climate, I think there can
+be no doubt. The faces of the inhabitants speak for themselves on that
+point. I heard an old lady, not very well preserved, who had been a
+fortnight on the island, say to a sympathizing friend, into whose ear
+she was pouring her complaints, "I sleeps better, and my stomach is
+sweeter." She might have expressed herself more elegantly, but she had
+touched the two grand secrets of life,--sound sleep and good digestion.
+
+Another comfort on this island is, that there are few shops, no
+temptation to part with one's pelf, and no beggars, barelegged or
+barefaced, to ask for it. I do not believe that there are any cases of
+the _cacoethes subscribendi_. The natives have got out of the habit of
+making money, and appear to want nothing in particular, except to go
+a-fishing.
+
+They have plenty of time to answer questions good-humoredly and
+_gratis_, and do not look upon a stranger as they do upon a stranded
+blackfish,--to be stripped of his oil and bone for their benefit. "I
+feel like a man among Christians," I declaimed,--"not, as I have often
+felt in my wanderings on shore, like Mungo Park or Burton, a traveller
+among savages, who are watching for an opportunity to rob me. I catch a
+glimpse again of the golden age when money was money. The blessed old
+prices of my youth, which have long since been driven from the continent
+by
+
+            'paper credit, last and best supply,
+    That lends corruption lighter wings to fly,'
+
+have taken refuge here before leaving this wicked world forever. The
+_cordon sanitaire_ of the Atlantic has kept off the pestilence of
+inflation."
+
+One bright afternoon we took horse and "shay" for Siasconset, on the
+south side of the island. A drive of seven miles over a country as flat
+and as naked of trees as a Western prairie, the sandy soil covered with
+a low, thick growth of bayberry, whortleberry, a false cranberry called
+the meal-plum, and other plants bearing a strong family likeness, with
+here and there a bit of greensward,--a legacy, probably, of the flocks
+of sheep the natives foolishly turned off the island,--brought us to the
+spot. We passed occasional water-holes, that reminded us also of the
+West, and a few cattle. Two or three lonely farm-houses loomed up in the
+distance, like ships at sea. We halted our rattle-trap on a bluff
+covered with thick green turf. On the edge of this bluff, forty feet
+above the beach, is Siasconset, looking southward over the ocean,--no
+land between it and Porto Rico. It is only a fishing village; but if
+there were many like it, the conventional shepherd, with his ribbons,
+his crooks, and his pipes, would have to give way to the fisherman.
+Seventy-five cosey, one-story cottages, so small and snug that a
+well-grown man might touch the gables without rising on tip-toe, are
+drawn up in three rows parallel to the sea, with narrow lanes of turf
+between them,--all of a weather-beaten gray tinged with purple, with
+pale-blue blinds, vines over the porch, flowers in the windows, and
+about each one a little green yard enclosed by white palings. Inside are
+odd little rooms, fitted with lockers, like the cabin of a vessel.
+Cottages, yards, palings, lanes, all are in proportion and harmony.
+Nothing common or unclean was visible,--no heaps of fish-heads, served
+up on clam-shells, and garnished with bean-pods, potato-skins, and
+corn-husks; no pigs in sight, nor in the air,--not even a cow to imperil
+the neatness of the place. There was the brisk, vigorous smell of the
+sea-shore, flavored, perhaps, with a suspicion of oil, that seemed to be
+in keeping with the locality.
+
+We sat for a long time gazing with silent astonishment upon this
+delightful little toy village, that looked almost as if it had been made
+at Nuremberg, and could be picked up and put away when not wanted to
+play with. It was a bright, still afternoon. The purple light of sunset
+gave an additional charm of color to the scene. Suddenly the _lumen
+juventae purpureum_, the purple light of youth, broke upon it. Handsome,
+well-dressed girls, with a few polygynic young men in the usual island
+proportion of the sexes, came out of the cottages, and stood in the
+lanes talking and laughing, or walked to the edge of the bluff to see
+the sun go down. We rubbed our eyes. Was this real, or were we looking
+into some showman's box? It seemed like the Petit Trianon adapted to an
+island in the Atlantic, with Louis XV. and his marquises playing at
+fishing instead of farming.
+
+A venerable codfisher had been standing off and on our vehicle for some
+time, with the signal for speaking set in his inquisitive countenance. I
+hailed him as Mr. Coffin; for Cooper has made Long Tom the legitimate
+father of all Nantucketers. He hove to, and gave us information about
+his home. There was a picnic, or some sort of summer festival, going on;
+and the gay lady-birds we saw were either from Nantucket, or relatives
+from the main. There had once been another row of cottages outside of
+those now standing; but the Atlantic came ashore one day in a storm, and
+swallowed them up. Nevertheless, real property had risen of late. "Why,"
+said he, "do you see that little gray cottage yonder? It rents this
+summer for ten dollars a month; and there are some young men here from
+the mainland who pay one dollar a week for their rooms without board."
+
+Thompson said his sensations were similar to those of Captain Cook or
+Herman Melville when they first landed to skim the cream of the fairy
+islands of the Pacific.
+
+I was deeply moved, and gave tongue at once. "It is sad to think that
+these unsophisticated, uninflated people must undergo the change
+civilization brings with it. The time will come when the evil spirit
+that presides over watering-places will descend upon this dear little
+village, and say to the inhabitants that henceforth they must catch men.
+Neatness, cheapness, good-feeling, will vanish; a five-story hotel will
+be put up,--the process cannot be called building; and the sharks that
+infest the coast will come ashore in shabby coats and trousers, to prey
+upon summer pleasure-seekers."
+
+"In the mean time," said Thompson, "why should not we come here to live?
+We can wear old clothes, and smoke cigars of the _Hippalektryon_ brand.
+Dr. Johnson must have had a poetic prevision of Nantucket when he wrote
+his _impecunious_ lines:
+
+    'Has Heaven reserved, in pity for the poor,
+    No pathless waste or undiscovered shore,
+    No secret island in the boundless main?'
+
+This is the island. What an opening for young men of immoderately small
+means! The climate healthy and cool; no mosquitoes; a choice among seven
+beauties, perhaps the reversion of the remaining six, if Isaiah can be
+relied upon. In our regions, a thing of beauty is an expense for life;
+but with a house for three hundred dollars, and bluefish at a cent and a
+half a pound, there is no need any more to think of high prices and the
+expense of bringing up a family. If the origin of evil was, that
+Providence did not create money enough, here it is in some sort
+Paradise."
+
+"That's Heine," said I; "but Heine forgot to add, that one of the
+Devil's most dangerous tricks is to pretend to supply this sinful want
+by his cunning device of inconvertible paper money, which lures men to
+destruction and something worse."
+
+Our holiday was nearly over. We packed up our new sensations, and
+steamed away to piles of goods and columns of figures. Town and steeples
+vanished in the haze, like the domes and minarets of the enchanted isle
+of Borondon. Was not this as near to an enchanted island as one could
+hope to find within twenty-five miles of New England? Nantucket is the
+gem of the ocean without the Irish, which I think is an improvement.
+
+
+
+
+THE SNOW-WALKERS.
+
+
+He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal
+cause for wonder and admiration in winter. It is true the pomp and the
+pageantry are swept away, but the essential elements remain,--the day
+and the night, the mountain and the valley, the elemental play and
+succession and the perpetual presence of the infinite sky. In winter the
+stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller
+triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity.
+Summer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and human, appeals
+to the affections and the sentiments, and fosters inquiry and the art
+impulse. Winter is of a more heroic cast, and addresses the intellect.
+The severe studies and disciplines come easier in winter. One imposes
+larger tasks upon himself, and is less tolerant of his own weaknesses.
+
+The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in
+winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone
+and sinew to Literature, summer the tissues and blood.
+
+The simplicity of winter has a deep moral. The return of Nature, after
+such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and
+austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. It is the
+philosopher coming back from the banquet and the wine to a cup of water
+and a crust of bread.
+
+And then this beautiful masquerade of the elements,--the novel disguises
+our nearest friends put on! Here is another rain and another dew, water
+that will not flow, nor spill, nor receive the taint of an unclean
+vessel. And if we see truly, the same old beneficence and willingness to
+serve lurk beneath all.
+
+Look up at the miracle of the falling snow,--the air a dizzy maze of
+whirling, eddying flakes, noiselessly transforming the world, the
+exquisite crystals dropping in ditch and gutter, and disguising in the
+same suit of spotless livery all objects upon which they fall. How novel
+and fine the first drifts! The old, dilapidated fence is suddenly set
+off with the most fantastic ruffles, scalloped and fluted after an
+unheard-of fashion! Looking down a long line of decrepit stone-wall, in
+the trimming of which the wind had fairly run riot, I saw, as for the
+first time, what a severe yet master artist old Winter is. Ah, a severe
+artist! How stern the woods look, dark and cold and as rigid against the
+horizon as iron!
+
+All life and action upon the snow have an added emphasis and
+significance. Every expression is underscored. Summer has few finer
+pictures than this winter one of the farmer foddering his cattle from a
+stack upon the clean snow,--the movement, the sharply-defined figures,
+the great green flakes of hay, the long file of patient cows,--the
+advance just arriving and pressing eagerly for the choicest
+morsels,--and the bounty and providence it suggests. Or the chopper in
+the woods,--the prostrate tree, the white new chips scattered about, his
+easy triumph over the cold, coat hanging to a limb, and the clear, sharp
+ring of his axe. The woods are rigid and tense, keyed up by the frost,
+and resound like a stringed instrument. Or the road-breakers, sallying
+forth with oxen and sleds in the still, white world, the day after the
+storm, to restore the lost track and demolish the beleaguering drifts.
+
+All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better. At night I
+hear more distinctly the steady roar of the North Mountain. In summer it
+is a sort of complacent pur, as the breezes stroke down its sides; but
+in winter always the same low, sullen growl.
+
+A severe artist! No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble
+and the chisel. When the nights are calm and the moon full, I go out to
+gaze upon the wonderful purity of the moonlight and the snow. The air is
+full of latent fire, and the cold warms me--after a different fashion
+from that of the kitchen-stove. The world lies about me in a "trance of
+snow." The clouds are pearly and iridescent, and seem the farthest
+possible remove from the condition of a storm,--the ghosts of clouds,
+the indwelling beauty freed from all dross. I see the hills, bulging
+with great drifts, lift themselves up cold and white against the sky,
+the black lines of fences here and there obliterated by the depth of the
+snow. Presently a fox barks away up next the mountain, and I imagine I
+can almost see him sitting there, in his furs, upon the illuminated
+surface, and looking down in my direction. As I listen, one answers him
+from behind the woods in the valley. What a wild winter sound,--wild and
+weird, up among the ghostly hills. Since the wolf has ceased to howl
+upon these mountains, and the panther to scream, there is nothing to be
+compared with it. So wild! I get up in the middle of the night to hear
+it. It is refreshing to the ear, and one delights to know that such wild
+creatures are still among us. At this season Nature makes the most of
+every throb of life that can withstand her severity. How heartily she
+indorses this fox! In what bold relief stand out the lives of all
+walkers of the snow! The snow is a great telltale, and blabs as
+effectually as it obliterates. I go into the woods, and know all that
+has happened. I cross the fields, and if only a mouse has visited his
+neighbor, the fact is chronicled.
+
+The Red Fox is the only species that abounds in my locality; the little
+Gray Fox seems to prefer a more rocky and precipitous country, and a
+less vigorous climate; the Cross Fox is occasionally seen, and there are
+traditions of the Silver Gray among the oldest hunters. But the Red Fox
+is the sportsman's prize, and the only fur-bearer worthy of note in
+these mountains.[A] I go out in the morning, after a fresh fall of snow,
+and see at all points where he has crossed the road. Here he has
+leisurely passed within rifle-range of the house, evidently
+reconnoitring the premises, with an eye to the hen-coop. That sharp,
+clear, nervous track,--there is no mistaking it for the clumsy
+foot-print of a little dog. All his wildness and agility are
+photographed in that track. Here he has taken fright, or suddenly
+recollected an engagement, and, in long, graceful leaps, barely touching
+the fence, has gone careering up the hill as fleet as the wind.
+
+The wild, buoyant creature, how beautiful he is! I had often seen his
+dead carcase, and, at a distance, had witnessed the hounds drive him
+across the upper fields; but the thrill and excitement of meeting him in
+his wild freedom in the woods were unknown to me, till, one cold winter
+day, drawn thither by the baying of a hound, I stood far up toward the
+mountain's brow, waiting a renewal of the sound, that I might determine
+the course of the dog and choose my position,--stimulated by the
+ambition of all young Nimrods, to bag some notable game. Long I waited,
+and patiently, till, chilled and benumbed, I was about to turn back,
+when, hearing a slight noise, I looked up and beheld a most superb fox,
+loping along with inimitable grace and ease, evidently disturbed, but
+not pursued by the hound, and so absorbed in his private meditations
+that he failed to see me, though I stood transfixed with amazement and
+admiration not ten yards distant. I took his measure at a glance,--a
+large male, with dark legs, and massive tail tipped with white,--a most
+magnificent creature; but so astonished and fascinated was I by his
+sudden appearance and matchless beauty, that not till I had caught the
+last glimpse of him, as he disappeared over a knoll, did I awake to my
+position as a sportsman, and realize what an opportunity to distinguish
+myself I had unconsciously let slip. I clutched my gun, half angrily, as
+if it was to blame, and went home out of humor with myself and all
+fox-kind. But I have since thought better of the experience, and
+concluded that I bagged the game after all, the best part of it, and
+fleeced Reynard of something more valuable than his fur without his
+knowledge.
+
+This is thoroughly a winter sound,--this voice of the hound upon the
+mountain,--and one that is music to many ears. The long, trumpet-like
+bay, heard for a mile or more,--now faintly back in the deep recesses of
+the mountain,--now distinct, but still faint, as the hound comes over
+some prominent point, and the wind favors,--anon entirely lost in the
+gully,--then breaking out again much nearer, and growing more and more
+pronounced as the dog approaches, till, when he comes around the brow of
+the mountain, directly above you, the barking is loud and sharp. On he
+goes along the northern spur, his voice rising and sinking, as the wind
+and lay of the ground modify it, till lost to hearing.
+
+The fox usually keeps half a mile ahead, regulating his speed by that of
+the hound, occasionally pausing a moment to divert himself with a mouse,
+or to contemplate the landscape, or to listen for his pursuer. If the
+hound press him too closely, he leads off from mountain to mountain, and
+so generally escapes the hunter; but if the pursuit be slow, he plays
+about some ridge or peak, and falls a prey, though not an easy one, to
+the experienced sportsman.
+
+A most spirited and exciting chase occurs when the farm-dog gets close
+upon one in the open field, as sometimes happens in the early morning.
+The fox relies so confidently upon his superior speed, that I imagine he
+half tempts the dog to the race. But if the dog be a smart one, and
+their course lies down hill, over smooth ground, Reynard must put his
+best foot forward; and then, sometimes, suffer the ignominy of being run
+over by his pursuer, who, however, is quite unable to pick him up, owing
+to the speed. But when they mount the hill, or enter the woods, the
+superior nimbleness and agility of the fox tell at once, and he easily
+leaves the dog far in his rear. For a cur less than his own size he
+manifests little fear, especially if the two meet alone, remote from the
+house. In such cases, I have seen first one turn tail, then the other.
+
+A novel spectacle often occurs in summer, when the female has young. You
+are rambling on the mountain, accompanied by your dog, when you are
+startled by that wild, half-threatening squall, and in a moment perceive
+your dog, with inverted tail and shame and confusion in his looks,
+sneaking toward you, the old fox but a few rods in his rear. You speak
+to him sharply, when he bristles up, turns about, and, barking, starts
+off vigorously, as if to wipe out the dishonor; but in a moment comes
+sneaking back more abashed than ever, and owns himself unworthy to be
+called a dog. The fox fairly shames him out of the woods. The secret of
+the matter is her sex, though her conduct, for the honor of the fox be
+it said, seems to be prompted only by solicitude for the safety of her
+young.
+
+One of the most notable features of the fox is his large and massive
+tail. Seen running on the snow, at a distance, his tail is quite as
+conspicuous as his body; and, so far from appearing a burden, seems to
+contribute to his lightness and buoyancy. It softens the outline of his
+movements, and repeats or continues to the eye the ease and poise of his
+carriage. But, pursued by the hound on a wet, thawy day, it often
+becomes so heavy and bedraggled as to prove a serious inconvenience, and
+compels him to take refuge in his den. He is very loath to do this; both
+his pride and the traditions of his race stimulate him to run it out,
+and win by fair superiority of wind and speed; and only a wound or a
+heavy and mopish tail will drive him to avoid the issue in this manner.
+
+To learn his surpassing shrewdness and cunning, attempt to take him with
+a trap. Rogue that he is, he always suspects some trick, and one must be
+more of a fox than he is himself to overreach him. At first sight it
+would appear easy enough. With apparent indifference he crosses your
+path, or walks in your footsteps in the field, or travels along the
+beaten highway, or lingers in the vicinity of stacks and remote barns.
+Carry the carcass of a pig, or a fowl, or a dog, to a distant field in
+midwinter, and in a few nights his tracks cover the snow about it.
+
+The inexperienced country youth, misled by this seeming carelessness of
+Reynard, suddenly conceives a project to enrich himself with fur, and
+wonders that the idea has not occurred to him before, and to others. I
+knew a youthful yeoman of this kind, who imagined he had found a mine of
+wealth on discovering on a remote side-hill, between two woods, a dead
+porker, upon which it appeared all the foxes of the neighborhood had
+nightly banqueted. The clouds were burdened with snow; and as the first
+flakes commenced to eddy down, he set out, trap and broom in hand,
+already counting over in imagination the silver quarters he would
+receive for his first fox-skin. With the utmost care, and with a
+palpitating heart, he removed enough of the trodden snow to allow the
+trap to sink below the surface. Then, carefully sifting the light
+element over it and sweeping his tracks full, he quickly withdrew,
+laughing exultingly over the little surprise he had prepared for the
+cunning rogue. The elements conspired to aid him, and the falling snow
+rapidly obliterated all vestiges of his work. The next morning at dawn,
+he was on his way to bring in his fur. The snow had done its work
+effectually, and, he believed, had kept his secret well. Arrived in
+sight of the locality, he strained his vision to make out his prize
+lodged against the fence at the foot of the hill. Approaching nearer,
+the surface was unbroken, and doubt usurped the place of certainty in
+his mind. A slight mound marked the site of the porker, but there was no
+foot-print near it. Looking up the hill, he saw where Reynard had walked
+leisurely down toward his wonted bacon, till within a few yards of it,
+when he had wheeled, and with prodigious strides disappeared in the
+woods. The young trapper saw at a glance what a comment this was upon
+his skill in the art, and, indignantly exhuming the iron, he walked home
+with it, the stream of silver quarters suddenly setting in another
+direction.
+
+The successful trapper commences in the fall, or before the first deep
+snow. In a field not too remote, with an old axe, he cuts a small place,
+say ten inches by fourteen, in the frozen ground, and removes the earth
+to the depth of three or four inches, then fills the cavity with dry
+ashes, in which are placed bits of roasted cheese. Reynard is very
+suspicious at first, and gives the place a wide berth. It looks like
+design, and he will see how the thing behaves before he approaches too
+near. But the cheese is savory and the cold severe. He ventures a little
+closer every night, until he can reach and pick a piece from the
+surface. Emboldened by success, like other foxes, he presently digs
+freely among the ashes, and, finding a fresh supply of the delectable
+morsels every night, is soon thrown off his guard, and his suspicions
+are quite lulled. After a week of baiting in this manner, and on the eve
+of a light fall of snow, the trapper carefully conceals his trap in the
+bed, first smoking it thoroughly with hemlock boughs to kill or
+neutralize all smell of the iron. If the weather favors and the proper
+precautions have been taken, he may succeed, though the chances are
+still greatly against him.
+
+Reynard is usually caught very lightly, seldom more than the ends of his
+toes being between the jaws. He sometimes works so cautiously as to
+spring the trap without injury even to his toes; or may remove the
+cheese night after night without even springing it. I knew an old
+trapper who, on finding himself outwitted in this manner, tied a bit of
+cheese to the pan, and next morning had poor Reynard by the jaw. The
+trap is not fastened, but only encumbered with a clog, and is all the
+more sure in its hold by yielding to every effort of the animal to
+extricate himself.
+
+When Reynard sees his captor approaching, he would fain drop into a
+mouse-hole to render himself invisible. He crouches to the ground and
+remains perfectly motionless until he perceives himself discovered, when
+he makes one desperate and final effort to escape, but ceases all
+struggling as you come up, and behaves in a manner that stamps him a
+very timid warrior,--cowering to the earth with a mingled look of shame,
+guilt, and abject fear. A young farmer told me of tracing one with his
+trap to the border of a wood, where he discovered the cunning rogue
+trying to hide by embracing a small tree. Most animals, when taken in a
+trap, show fight; but Reynard has more faith in the nimbleness of his
+feet than in the terror of his teeth.
+
+Entering the woods, the number and variety of the tracks contrast
+strongly with the rigid, frozen aspect of things. Warm jets of life
+still shoot and play amid this snowy desolation. Fox-tracks are far less
+numerous than in the fields; but those of hares, skunks, partridges,
+squirrels, and mice abound. The mice-tracks are very pretty, and look
+like a sort of fantastic stitching on the coverlid of the snow. One is
+curious to know what brings these tiny creatures from their retreats;
+they do not seem to be in quest of food, but rather to be travelling
+about for pleasure or sociability, though always going post-haste, and
+linking stump with stump and tree with tree by fine, hurried strides.
+That is when they travel openly; but they have hidden passages and
+winding galleries under the snow, which undoubtedly are their main
+avenues of communication. Here and there these passages rise so near the
+surface as to be covered by only a frail arch of snow, and a slight
+ridge betrays their course to the eye. I know him well. He is known to
+the farmer as the deer-mouse, to the naturalist as the _Hesperomys
+leucopus_,--a very beautiful creature, nocturnal in his habits, with
+large ears, and large, fine eyes, full of a wild, harmless look. He
+leaps like a rabbit, and is daintily marked, with white feet and a white
+belly.
+
+It is he who, far up in the hollow trunk of some tree, lays by a store
+of beech-nuts for winter use. Every nut is carefully shelled, and the
+cavity that serves as storehouse lined with grass and leaves. The
+wood-chopper frequently squanders this precious store. I have seen half
+a peck taken from one tree, as clean and white as if put up by the most
+delicate hands,--as they were. How long it must have taken the little
+creature to collect this quantity, to hull them one by one, and convey
+them up to his fifth-story chamber! He is not confined to the woods, but
+is quite as common in the fields, particularly in the fall, amid the
+corn and potatoes. When routed by the plough, I have seen the old one
+take flight with half a dozen young hanging to her teats, and with such
+reckless speed, that some of the young would lose their hold, and fly
+off amid the weeds. Taking refuge in a stump with the rest of her
+family, the anxious mother would presently come back and hunt up the
+missing ones.
+
+The snow-walkers are mostly night-walkers also, and the record they
+leave upon the snow is the main clew one has to their life and doings.
+The hare is nocturnal in his habits, and though a very lively creature
+at night, with regular courses and run-ways through the wood, is
+entirely quiet by day. Timid as he is, he makes little effort to conceal
+himself, usually squatting beside a log, stump, or tree, and seeming to
+avoid rocks and ledges where he might be partially housed from the cold
+and the snow, but where also--and this consideration undoubtedly
+determines his choice--he would be more apt to fall a prey to his
+enemies. In this as well as in many other respects he differs from the
+rabbit proper (_Lepus sylvaticus_); he never burrows in the ground, or
+takes refuge in a den or hole, when pursued. If caught in the open
+fields, he is much confused and easily overtaken by the dog; but in the
+woods, he leaves him at a bound. In summer, when first disturbed, he
+beats the ground violently with his feet, by which means he would
+express to you his surprise or displeasure; it is a dumb way he has of
+scolding. After leaping a few yards, he pauses an instant, as if to
+determine the degree of danger, and then hurries away with a much
+lighter tread.
+
+His feet are like great pads, and his track has little of the sharp,
+articulated expression of Reynard's, or of animals that climb or dig.
+Yet it is very pretty, like all the rest, and tells its own tale. There
+is nothing bold or vicious or vulpine in it, and his timid, harmless
+character is published at every leap. He abounds in dense woods,
+preferring localities filled with a small undergrowth of beech and
+birch, upon the bark of which he feeds. Nature is rather partial to him
+and matches his extreme local habits and character with a suit that
+corresponds with his surroundings,--reddish-gray in summer and white in
+winter.
+
+The sharp-rayed track of the partridge adds another figure to this
+fantastic embroidery upon the winter snow. Her course is a clear, strong
+line, sometimes quite wayward, but generally very direct, steering for
+the densest, most impenetrable places,--leading you over logs and
+through brush, alert and expectant, till, suddenly, she bursts up a few
+yards from you, and goes humming through the trees,--the complete
+triumph of endurance and vigor. Hardy native bird, may your tracks never
+be fewer, or your visits to the birch-tree less frequent!
+
+The squirrel-tracks--sharp, nervous, and wiry--have their histories
+also. But who ever saw squirrels in winter? The naturalist says they are
+mostly torpid; yet evidently that little pocket-faced depredator, the
+chipmunk, was not carrying buckwheat for so many days to his hole for
+nothing;--was he anticipating a state of torpidity, or the demands of a
+very active appetite? Red and gray squirrels are more or less active all
+winter, though very shy, and, I am inclined to think, partially
+nocturnal in their habits. Here a gray one has just passed,--came down
+that tree and went up this; there he dug for a beech-nut, and left the
+bur on the snow. How did he know where to dig? During an unusually
+severe winter I have known him to make long journeys to a barn, in a
+remote field, where wheat was stored. How did he know there was wheat
+there? In attempting to return, the adventurous creature was frequently
+run down and caught in the deep snow.
+
+His home is in the trunk of some old birch or maple, with an entrance
+far up amid the branches. In the spring he builds himself a summer-house
+of small leafy twigs in the top of a neighboring beech, where the young
+are reared and much of the time passed. But the safer retreat in the
+maple is not abandoned, and both old and young resort thither in the
+fall, or when danger threatens. Whether this temporary residence amid
+the branches is for elegance or pleasure, or for sanitary reasons or
+domestic convenience, the naturalist has forgotten to mention.
+
+The elegant creature, so cleanly in its habits, so graceful in its
+carriage, so nimble and daring in its movements, excites feelings of
+admiration akin to those awakened by the birds and the fairer forms of
+nature. His passage through the trees is almost a flight. Indeed, the
+flying-squirrel has little or no advantage over him, and in speed and
+nimbleness cannot compare with him at all. If he miss his footing and
+fall, he is sure to catch on the next branch; if the connection be
+broken, he leaps recklessly for the nearest spray or limb, and secures
+his hold, even if it be by the aid of his teeth.
+
+His career of frolic and festivity begins in the fall, after the birds
+have left us and the holiday spirit of nature has commenced to subside.
+How absorbing the pastime of the sportsman, who goes to the woods in the
+still October morning in quest of him! You step lightly across the
+threshold of the forest, and sit down upon the first log or rock to
+await the signals. It is so still that the ear suddenly seems to have
+acquired new powers, and there is no movement to confuse the eye.
+Presently you hear the rustling of a branch, and see it sway or spring
+as the squirrel leaps from or to it; or else you hear a disturbance in
+the dry leaves, and mark one running upon the ground. He has probably
+seen the intruder, and, not liking his stealthy movements, desires to
+avoid a nearer acquaintance. Now he mounts a stump to see if the way is
+clear, then pauses a moment at the foot of a tree to take his bearings,
+his tail, as he skims along, undulating behind him, and adding to the
+easy grace and dignity of his movements. Or else you are first advised
+of his proximity by the dropping of a false nut, or the fragments of the
+shucks rattling upon the leaves. Or, again, after contemplating you
+awhile unobserved, and making up his mind that you are not dangerous, he
+strikes an attitude on a branch, and commences to quack and bark, with
+an accompanying movement of his tail. Late in the afternoon, when the
+same stillness reigns, the same scenes are repeated. There is a black
+variety, quite rare, but mating freely with the gray, from which he
+seems to be distinguished only in color.
+
+The track of the red squirrel may be known by its smaller size. He is
+more common and less dignified than the gray, and oftener guilty of
+petty larceny about the barns and grain-fields. He is most abundant in
+old bark-peelings, and low, dilapidated hemlocks, from which he makes
+excursions to the fields and orchards, spinning along the tops of the
+fences, which afford, not only convenient lines of communication, but a
+safe retreat if danger threatens. He loves to linger about the orchard;
+and, sitting upright on the topmost stone in the wall, or on the tallest
+stake in the fence, chipping up an apple for the seeds, his tail
+conforming to the curve of his back, his paws shifting and turning the
+apple, he is a pretty sight, and his bright, pert appearance atones for
+all the mischief he does. At home, in the woods, he is the most
+frolicsome and loquacious. The appearance of anything unusual, if, after
+contemplating it a moment, he concludes it not dangerous, excites his
+unbounded mirth and ridicule, and he snickers and chatters, hardly able
+to contain himself; now darting up the trunk of a tree and squealing in
+derision, then hopping into position on a limb and dancing to the music
+of his own cackle, and all for your special benefit.
+
+There is something very human in this apparent mirth and mockery of the
+squirrels. It seems to be a sort of ironical laughter, and implies
+self-conscious pride and exultation in the laugher, "What a ridiculous
+thing you are, to be sure!" he seems to say; "how clumsy and awkward,
+and what a poor show for a tail! Look at me, look at me!"--and he capers
+about in his best style. Again, he would seem to tease you and to
+provoke your attention; then suddenly assumes a tone of good-natured,
+childlike defiance and derision; that pretty little imp, the chipmunk,
+will sit on the stone above his den, and defy you, as plainly as if he
+said so, to catch him before he can get into his hole if you can. You
+hurl a stone at him, and "No you didn't" comes up from the depth of his
+retreat.
+
+In February another track appears upon the snow, slender and delicate,
+about a third larger than that of the gray squirrel, indicating no haste
+or speed, but, on the contrary, denoting the most imperturbable ease and
+leisure, the footprints so close together that the trail appears like a
+chain of curiously carved links. Sir _Mephitis chinga_, or, in plain
+English, the skunk, has woke up from his six-weeks nap, and come out
+into society again. He is a nocturnal traveller, very bold and impudent,
+coming quite up to the barn and outbuildings, and sometimes taking up
+his quarters for the season under the hay-mow. There is no such word as
+hurry in his dictionary, as you may see by his path upon the snow. He
+has a very sneaking, insinuating way, and goes creeping about the fields
+and woods, never once in a perceptible degree altering his gait, and, if
+a fence crosses his course, steers for a break or opening to avoid
+climbing. He is too indolent even to dig his own hole, but appropriates
+that of a woodchuck, or hunts out a crevice in the rocks, from which he
+extends his rambling in all directions, preferring damp, thawy weather.
+He has very little discretion or cunning, and holds a trap in utter
+contempt, stepping into it as soon as beside it, relying implicitly for
+defence against all forms of danger upon the unsavory punishment he is
+capable of inflicting. He is quite indifferent to both man and beast,
+and will not hurry himself to get out of the way of either. Walking
+through the summer fields at twilight, I have come near stepping upon
+him, and was much the more disturbed of the two. When attacked in the
+open fields he confounds the plans of his enemies by the unheard-of
+tactics of exposing his rear rather than his front. "Come if you dare,"
+he says, and his attitude makes even the farm-dog pause. After a few
+encounters of this kind, and if you entertain the usual hostility
+towards him, your mode of attack will speedily resolve itself into
+moving about him in a circle, the radius of which will be the exact
+distance at which you can hurl a stone with accuracy and effect.
+
+He has a secret to keep, and knows it, and is careful not to betray
+himself until he can do so with the most telling effect. I have known
+him to preserve his serenity even when caught in a steel trap, and look
+the very picture of injured innocence, manoeuvring carefully and
+deliberately to extricate his foot from the grasp of the naughty jaws.
+Do not by any means take pity on him, and lend a helping hand.
+
+How pretty his face and head! How fine and delicate his teeth, like a
+weasel's or cat's! When about a third grown, he looks so well that one
+covets him for a pet. He is quite precocious however, and capable, even
+at this tender age, of making a very strong appeal to your sense of
+smell.
+
+No animal is more cleanly in its habits than he. He is not an awkward
+boy, who cuts his own face with his whip; and neither his flesh nor his
+fur hints the weapon with which he is armed. The most silent creature
+known to me, he makes no sound, so far as I have observed, save a
+diffuse, impatient noise, like that produced by beating your hand with a
+whisk-broom, when the farm-dog has discovered his retreat in the stone
+fence. He renders himself obnoxious to the farmer by his partiality for
+hens' eggs and young poultry. He is a confirmed epicure, and at
+plundering hen-roosts an expert. Not the full-grown fowls are his
+victims, but the youngest and most tender. At night Mother Hen receives
+under her maternal wings a dozen newly hatched chickens, and with much
+pride and satisfaction feels them all safely tucked away in her
+feathers. In the morning she is walking about disconsolately, attended
+by only two or three of all that pretty brood. What has happened? Where
+are they gone? That pickpocket, Sir Mephitis, could solve the mystery.
+Quietly has he approached, under cover of darkness, and, one by one,
+relieved her of her precious charge. Look closely, and you will see
+their little yellow legs and beaks, or part of a mangled form, lying
+about on the ground. Or, before the hen has hatched, he may find her
+out, and, by the same sleight of hand, remove every egg, leaving only
+the empty blood-stained shells to witness against him. The birds,
+especially the ground-builders, suffer in like manner from his
+plundering propensities.
+
+The secretion upon which he relies for defence, and which is the chief
+source of his unpopularity, while it affords good reasons against
+cultivating him as a pet, and mars his attractiveness as game, is by no
+means the greatest indignity that can be offered to a nose. It is a
+rank, living smell, and has none of the sickening qualities of disease
+or putrefaction. Indeed, I think a good smeller will enjoy its most
+refined intensity. It approaches the sublime, and makes the nose tingle.
+It is tonic and bracing, and, I can readily believe, has rare medicinal
+qualities. I do not recommend its use as eye-water, though an old farmer
+assures me it has undoubted virtues when thus applied. Hearing, one
+night, a disturbance among his hens, he rushed suddenly out to catch the
+thief, when Sir Mephitis, taken by surprise, and, no doubt, much annoyed
+at being interrupted, discharged the vials of his wrath full in the
+farmer's face, and with such admirable effect, that, for a few moments,
+he was completely blinded, and powerless to revenge himself upon the
+rogue; but he declared that afterwards his eyes felt as if purged by
+fire, and his sight was much clearer.
+
+In March, that brief summary of a bear, the raccoon, comes out of his
+den in the ledges, and leaves his sharp digitigrade track upon the
+snow,--travelling not unfrequently in pairs,--a lean, hungry couple,
+bent on pillage and plunder. They have an unenviable time of
+it,--feasting in the summer and fall, hibernating in winter, and
+starving in spring. In April, I have found the young of the previous
+year creeping about the fields, so reduced by starvation as to be quite
+helpless, and offering no resistance to my taking them up by the tail,
+and carrying them home.
+
+But with March our interest in these phases of animal life, which winter
+has so emphasized and brought out, begins to decline. Vague rumors are
+afloat in the air of a great and coming change. We are eager for Winter
+to be gone, since he too is fugitive, and cannot keep his place.
+Invisible hands deface his icy statuary; his chisel has lost its
+cunning. The drifts, so pure and exquisite, are now earth-stained and
+weather-worn,--the flutes and scallops, and fine, firm lines, all gone;
+and what was a grace and an ornament to the hills is now a
+disfiguration. Like worn and unwashed linen appear the remains of that
+spotless robe with which he clothed the world as his bride.
+
+But he will not abdicate without a struggle. Day after day he rallies
+his scattered forces, and night after night pitches his white tents on
+the hills, and forges his spears at the eaves and by the dripping rocks;
+but the young Prince in every encounter prevails. Slowly and reluctantly
+the gray old hero retreats up the mountain, till finally the south rain
+comes in earnest, and in a night he is dead.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] A spur of the Catskills.
+
+
+
+
+TO HERSA.
+
+
+    Maiden, there is something more
+    Than raiment to adore;
+    Thou must have more than a dress,
+    More than any mode or mould,
+    More than mortal loveliness,
+    To captivate the cold.
+
+    Bow the knightly when they bow,
+    To a star behind the brow,--
+    Not to marble, not to dust,
+      But to that which warms them;
+    Not to contour nor to bust,
+      But to that which forms them,--
+    Not to languid lid nor lash,
+    Satin fold nor purple sash,
+    But unto the living flash
+    So mysteriously hid
+    Under lash and under lid.
+
+    But, vanity of vanities,--
+    If the red-rose in a young cheek lies,
+        Fatal disguise!
+    For the most terrible lances
+    Of the true, true knight
+    Are his bold eyebeams;
+    And every time that he opens his eyes,
+    The falsehood that he looks on dies.
+
+    If the heavenly light be latent,
+    It can need no earthly patent.
+        Unbeholden unto art--
+        Fashion or lore,
+        Scrip or store,
+        Earth or ore--
+        Be thy heart,
+    Which was music from the start,
+    Music, music to the core!
+
+    Music, which, though voiceless,
+    Can create
+    Both form and fate,
+    As Petrarch could a sonnet
+    That, taking flesh upon it,
+    Spirit-noiseless,
+    Doth the same inform and fill
+    With a music sweeter still!
+    Lives and breathes and palpitates,
+    Moves and moulds and animates,
+    And sleeps not from its duty
+    Till the maid in whom 'tis pent--
+    From a mortal rudiment,
+    From the earth-cell
+      And the love-cell,
+    By the birth-spell
+      And the love-spell--
+    Come to beauty.
+
+    Beauty, that, (Celestial Child,
+      From above,
+    Born of Wisdom and of Love,)
+      Can never die!
+    That ever, as she passeth by,
+    But casteth down the mild
+      Effulgence of her eye,
+    And, lo! the broken heart is healed,
+    The maimed, perverted soul
+    Ariseth and is whole!
+    That ever doing the fair deed,
+    And therein taking joy,
+    (A pure and priceless meed
+    That of this earth hath least alloy,)
+        It comes at last,
+    All mischance forever past,--
+    Every beautiful procedure
+    Manifest in form and feature,--
+        To be revealed:
+    There walks the earth an heavenly creature!
+
+    Beauty is music mute,--
+    Music's flower and fruit,
+    Music's creature--
+    Form and feature--
+    Music's lute.
+    Music's lute be thou,
+    Maiden of the starry brow!
+    (Keep thy _heart_ true to know how!)
+    A Lute which he alone,
+    As all in good time shall be shown,
+    Shall prove, and thereby make his own,
+    Who is god enough to play upon it.
+
+    Happy, happy maid is she
+    Who is wedded unto Truth:
+    Thou shalt know him when he comes,
+        (Welcome youth!)
+    Not by any din of drums,
+    Nor the vantage of his airs;
+    Neither by his crown,
+    Nor his gown,
+    Nor by anything he wears.
+    He shall only well known be
+    By the holy harmony
+    That his coming makes in thee!
+
+
+
+
+AN AMAZONIAN PICNIC.
+
+
+It was about half past six o'clock on the morning of the 27th of
+October, 1865, that we left Manaos, (or as the maps usually call it,
+Barra do Rio Negro,) on an excursion to the Lake of Hyanuary, on the
+western side of the Rio Negro. The morning was unusually fresh for these
+latitudes, and a strong wind was blowing up so heavy a sea in the river,
+that, if it did not actually make one sea-sick, it certainly called up
+very vivid and painful associations. We were in a large eight-oared
+custom-house barge, our company consisting of his Excellency, Dr.
+Epaminondas, President of the Province,[B] his secretary, Senhor
+Codicera, Senhor Tavares Bastos, the distinguished young deputy from the
+Province of Alagoas, Major Coutinho, of the Brazilian Engineer Service,
+Mr. Agassiz and myself, Mr. Bourkhardt, his artist, and two of our
+volunteer assistants. We were preceded by a smaller boat, an Indian
+montaria, in which was our friend and kind host, Senhor Honorio, who had
+undertaken to provide for our creature comforts, and had the care of a
+boatful of provisions. After an hour's row we left the rough waters of
+the Rio Negro, and rounding a wooded point, turned into one of those
+narrow, winding igarapes (literally, "boat-paths"), with green forest
+walls, which make the charm of canoe excursions in this country. A
+ragged drapery of long, faded grass hung from the lower branches of the
+trees, marking the height of the last rise of the river,--some eighteen
+or twenty feet above its present level. Here and there a white heron
+stood on the shore, his snowy plumage glittering in the sunlight;
+numbers of ciganas (the pheasants of the Amazons) clustered in the
+bushes; once a pair of king vultures rested for a moment within gunshot,
+but flew out of sight as our canoe approached; and now and then an
+alligator showed his head above water. As we floated along through this
+picturesque channel, so characteristic of the wonderful region to which
+we were all more or less strangers,--for even Dr. Epaminondas and Senhor
+Tavares Bastos were here for the first time,--the conversation turned
+naturally enough upon the nature of this Amazonian Valley, its physical
+conformation, its origin and resources, its history past and to come,
+both alike and obscure, both the subject of wonder and speculation.
+Senhor Tavares Bastos, although not yet thirty, is already distinguished
+in the politics of his country; and from the moment he entered upon
+public life to the present time, the legislation in regard to the
+Amazons, its relation to the future progress and development of the
+Brazilian empire, has been the object of his deepening interest. He is a
+leader in that class of men who advocate the most liberal policy in this
+matter, and has already urged upon his countrymen the importance, even
+from selfish motives, of sharing their great treasure with the world. He
+was little more than twenty years of age when he published his papers on
+the opening of the Amazons, which have done more, perhaps, than anything
+else of late years to attract attention to the subject.
+
+There are points where the researches of the statesman and the
+investigator meet, and natural science is not without its influence,
+even on the practical bearings of this question. Shall this region be
+legislated for as sea or land? Shall the interests of agriculture or
+navigation prevail in its councils? Is it essentially aquatic or
+terrestrial? Such were some of the inquiries which came up in the course
+of the discussion. A region of country which stretches across a whole
+continent, and is flooded for half the year, where there can never be
+railroads, or highways, or even pedestrian travelling, to any great
+extent, can hardly be considered as dry land. It is true that, in this
+oceanic river system, the tidal action has an annual, instead of a
+daily, ebb and flow; that its rise and fall obey a larger light, and are
+regulated by the sun, and not the moon; but it is nevertheless subject
+to all the conditions of a submerged district, and must be treated as
+such. Indeed, these semiannual changes of level are far more powerful in
+their influence on the life of the inhabitants than any marine tides.
+People sail half the year over districts where, for the other half, they
+walk, though hardly dry-shod, over the soaked ground; their occupations,
+their dress, their habits, are modified in accordance with the dry and
+wet seasons. And not only the ways of life, but the whole aspect of the
+country, the character of the landscape, are changed. At this moment
+there are two most picturesque falls in the neighborhood of Manaos,--the
+Great and Little Cascades, as they are called,--favorite resorts for
+bathing, picnics, etc., which, in a few months, when the river shall
+have risen above their highest level, will have completely disappeared.
+Their bold rocks and shady nooks will have become river-bottom. All that
+one hears or reads of the extent of the Amazons and its tributaries does
+not give one an idea of its immensity as a whole. One must float for
+months upon its surface, in order to understand how fully water has the
+mastery over land along its borders. Its watery labyrinth is not so much
+a network of rivers, as an ocean of fresh water cut up and divided by
+land, the land being often nothing more than an archipelago of islands
+in its midst. The valley of the Amazons is indeed an aquatic, not a
+terrestrial, basin; and it is not strange, when looked upon from this
+point of view, that its forests should be less full of life,
+comparatively, than its rivers.
+
+But while we were discussing these points, talking of the time when the
+banks of the Amazons will teem with a population more active and
+vigorous than any it has yet seen,--when all civilized nations shall
+share in its wealth,--when the twin continents will shake hands, and
+Americans of the North come to help Americans of the South in developing
+its resources,--when it will be navigated from north to south, as well
+as from east to west, and small steamers will run up to the head-waters
+of all its tributaries,--while we were speculating on these things, we
+were approaching the end of our journey; and, as we neared the lake,
+there issued from its entrance a small, two-masted canoe, evidently
+bound on some official mission, for it carried the Brazilian flag, and
+was adorned with many brightly colored streamers. As it drew near we
+heard music; and a salvo of rockets, the favorite Brazilian artillery on
+all festive occasions, whether by day or night, shot up into the air.
+Our arrival had been announced by Dr. Carnavaro of Manaos, who had come
+out the day before to make some preparations for our reception, and this
+was a welcome to the President on his first visit to the Indian village.
+When they came within speaking distance, a succession of hearty cheers
+went up for the President; for Tavares Bastos, whose character as the
+political advocate of the Amazons makes him especially welcome here; for
+Major Coutinho, already well known from his former explorations in this
+region; and for the strangers within their gates,--for the Professor and
+his party. When the reception was over, they fell into line behind our
+boat, and so we came into the little port with something of state and
+ceremony.
+
+This pretty Indian village is hardly recognized as a village at once,
+for it consists of a number of _sitios_ (palm-thatched houses),
+scattered through the forest; and though the inhabitants look on each
+other as friends and neighbors, yet from our landing-place only one
+_sitio_ was to be seen,--that at which we were to stay. It stood on a
+hill which sloped gently up from the lake shore, and consisted of a mud
+house,--the rough frame being filled in and plastered with
+mud,--containing two rooms, beside several large palm-thatched sheds
+outside. The word _shed_, which we connect with a low, narrow out-house,
+gives no correct idea, however, of this kind of structure, universal
+throughout the Indian settlements, and common also among the whites. The
+space enclosed is generally large, the sloping roof of palm-thatch is
+lifted very high on poles made of the trunks of trees, thus allowing a
+free circulation of air, and there are usually no walls at all. They are
+great open porches, or verandas, rather than sheds. One of these rooms
+was used for the various processes by which the mandioca root is
+transformed into farinha, tapioca, and tucupi, a kind of intoxicating
+liquor. It was furnished with the large clay ovens, covered with immense
+shallow copper pans, for drying the farinha, with the troughs for
+kneading the mandioca, the long straw tubes for expressing the juice,
+and the sieves for straining the tapioca. The mandioca room is an
+important part of every Indian _sitio_; for the natives not only depend,
+in a great degree, upon the different articles manufactured from this
+root for their own food, but it makes an essential part of the commerce
+of the Amazons. Another of these open rooms was a kitchen; while a
+third, which served as our dining-room, is used on festa days and
+occasional Sundays as a chapel. It differed from the rest in having the
+upper end closed in with a neat thatched wall, against which, in time of
+need, the altar-table may stand, with candles and rough prints or
+figures of the Virgin and Saints. A little removed from this more
+central part of the establishment was another smaller mud house, where
+most of the party arranged their hammocks; Mr. Agassiz and myself being
+accommodated in the other one, where we were very hospitably received by
+the senhora of the _sitio_, an old Indian woman, whose gold ornaments,
+necklace, and ear-rings were rather out of keeping with her calico skirt
+and cotton waist. This is, however, by no means an unusual combination
+here. Beside the old lady, the family consisted, at this moment, of her
+_afilhada_ (god-daughter), with her little boy, and several other women
+employed about the place; but it is difficult to judge of the population
+of the _sitios_ now, because a great number of the men have been taken
+as recruits for the war with Paraguay, and others are hiding in the
+forest for fear of being pressed into the same service.
+
+The breakfast-table, covered with dishes of fish fresh from the lake,
+and dressed in a variety of ways, with stewed chicken, rice, etc., was
+by no means an unwelcome sight, as it was already eleven o'clock, and we
+had had nothing since rising, at half past five in the morning, except a
+hot cup of coffee; nor was the meal the less appetizing that it was
+spread under the palm-thatched roof of our open, airy dining-room,
+surrounded by the forest, and commanding a view of the lake and wooded
+hillside opposite, the little landing below, where were moored our barge
+with its white awning, the gay canoe, and two or three Indian montarias,
+making the foreground of the picture. After breakfast our party
+dispersed, some to rest in their hammocks, others to hunt or fish, while
+Mr. Agassiz was fully engaged in examining a large basket of
+fish,--Tucunares, Acaras, Curimatas, Surubims, etc.,--just brought in
+from the lake for his inspection, and showing again what every
+investigation demonstrates afresh, namely, the distinct localization of
+species in every different water-basin, be it river, lake, igarape, or
+forest pool. Though the scientific results of the expedition have no
+place in this little sketch of a single excursion, let me make a general
+statement as to Mr. Agassiz's collections, to give you some idea of his
+success. Since arriving in Para, although his exploration of the
+Amazonian waters is but half completed, he has collected more species
+than were known to exist in the whole world fifty years ago. Up to this
+time, something more than a hundred species of fish were known to
+science from the Amazons;[C] Mr. Agassiz has already more than eight
+hundred on hand, and every day adds new treasures. He is himself
+astonished at this result, revealing a richness and variety in the
+distribution of life throughout these waters of which he had formed no
+conception. As his own attention has been especially directed to their
+localization and development, his collection of fishes is larger than
+any other; still, with the help of his companions, volunteers as well as
+regular assistants, he has a good assortment of specimens from all the
+other classes of the animal kingdom likewise.
+
+One does not see much of the world between one o'clock and four in this
+climate. These are the hottest hours of the day, and there are few who
+can resist the temptation of the cool swinging hammock, slung in some
+shady spot within doors or without. I found a quiet retreat by the lake
+shore, where, though I had a book in my hand, the wind in the trees
+overhead, and the water rippling softly around the montarias moored at
+my side, lulled me into that mood of mind when one may be lazy without
+remorse or ennui, and one's highest duty seems to be to do nothing. The
+monotonous notes of a _violon_, a kind of lute or guitar, came to me
+from a group of trees at a little distance, where our boatmen were
+resting in the shade, the red fringes of their hammocks giving to the
+landscape just the bit of color which it needed. Occasionally a rustling
+flight of paroquets or ciganas overhead startled me for a moment, or a
+large pirarucu plashed out of the water; but except for these sounds,
+Nature was silent, and animals as well as men seemed to pause in the
+heat and seek shelter.
+
+Dinner brought us all together again at the close of the afternoon in
+our airy banqueting-hall. As we were with the President, our picnic was
+of a much more magnificent character than are our purely scientific
+excursions, of which we have had many. On such occasions, we are forced
+to adapt our wants to our means; and the make-shifts to which we are
+obliged to resort, if they are sometimes inconvenient, are often very
+amusing. But now, instead of teacups doing duty as tumblers, empty
+barrels serving as chairs, and the like incongruities, we had a silver
+soup tureen and a cook and a waiter, and knives and forks enough to go
+round, and many other luxuries which such wayfarers as ourselves learn
+to do without. While we were dining, the Indians began to come in from
+the surrounding forest to pay their respects to the President; for his
+visit was the cause of great rejoicing, and there was to be a ball in
+his honor in the evening. They brought an enormous cluster of game as an
+offering. What a mass of color it was, looking more like an immense
+bouquet of flowers than like a bunch of birds! It was composed entirely
+of toucans with their red and yellow beaks, blue eyes, and soft white
+breasts bordered with crimson, and of parrots, or papagaios, as they
+call them here, with their gorgeous plumage of green, blue, purple, and
+red.
+
+When we had dined we took coffee outside, while our places around the
+table were filled by the Indian guests, who were to have a dinner-party
+in their turn. It was pleasant to see with how much courtesy several of
+the Brazilian gentlemen of our party waited upon these Indian senhoras,
+passing them a variety of dishes, helping them to wine, and treating
+them with as much attention as if they had been the highest ladies of
+the land. They seemed, however, rather shy and embarrassed, scarcely
+touching the nice things placed before them, till one of the gentlemen
+who has lived a good deal among the Indians, and knows their habits
+perfectly, took the knife and fork from one of them, exclaiming,--"Make
+no ceremony, and don't be ashamed; eat with your fingers, all of you, as
+you're accustomed to do, and then you'll find your appetites and enjoy
+your dinner." His advice was followed; and I must say they seemed much
+more comfortable in consequence, and did better justice to the good
+fare. Although the Indians who live in the neighborhood of the towns
+have seen too much of the conventionalities of civilization not to
+understand the use of a knife and fork, no Indian will eat with one if
+he can help it; and, strange to say, there are many of the whites in the
+upper Amazonian settlements who have adopted the same habits. I have
+dined with Brazilian senhoras of good class and condition, belonging to
+the gentry of the land, who, although they provided a very nice service
+for their guests, used themselves only the implements with which Nature
+had provided them.
+
+When the dinner was over, the room was cleared of the tables, and swept;
+the music, consisting of a guitar, flute, and violin, called in; and the
+ball was opened. At first the forest belles were rather shy in the
+presence of strangers; but they soon warmed up, and began to dance with
+more animation. They were all dressed in calico or muslin skirts, with
+loose white cotton waists, finished around the neck with a kind of lace
+they make themselves by drawing out the threads from cotton or cambric
+so as to form an open pattern, sewing those which remain over and over
+to secure them. Much of this lace is quite elaborate, and very fine.
+Many of them had their hair dressed either with white jessamine or with
+roses stuck into their round combs, and several wore gold beads and
+ear-rings. Some of the Indian dances are very pretty; but one thing is
+noticeable, at least in all that I have seen. The man makes all the
+advances, while the woman is coy and retiring, her movements being very
+languid. Her partner throws himself at her feet, but does not elicit a
+smile or a gesture; he stoops, and pretends to be fishing, making
+motions as if he were drawing her in with a line; he dances around her,
+snapping his fingers as though playing on the castanets, and half
+encircling her with his arms; but she remains reserved and cold. Now and
+then they join together in something like a waltz; but this is only
+occasionally, and for a moment. How different from the negro dances, of
+which we saw many in the neighborhood of Rio! In those the advances come
+chiefly from the women, and are not always of a very modest character.
+
+The moon was shining brightly over lake and forest, and the ball was
+gayer than ever, at ten o'clock, when I went to my room, or rather to
+the room where my hammock was slung, and which I shared with Indian
+women and children, with a cat and her family of kittens, who slept on
+the edge of my mosquito-net, and made frequent inroads upon the inside,
+with hens and chickens and sundry dogs, who went in and out at will. The
+music and dancing, the laughter and talking outside, continued till the
+small hours. Every now and then an Indian girl would come in to rest for
+a while, take a nap in a hammock, and then return to the dance. When we
+first arrived in South America, we could hardly have slept soundly under
+such circumstances; but one soon becomes accustomed, on the Amazons, to
+sleeping in rooms with mud floors and mud walls, or with no walls at
+all, where rats and birds and bats rustle about in the thatch over one's
+head, and all sorts of unwonted noises in the night remind you that you
+are by no means the sole occupant of your apartment. This remark does
+not apply to the towns, where the houses are comfortable enough; but if
+you attempt to go off the beaten track, to make canoe excursions, and
+see something of the forest population, you must submit to these
+inconveniences. There is one thing, however, which makes it far
+pleasanter to lodge in the Indian houses here than in the houses of our
+poorer class at home. One is quite independent in the matter of bedding;
+no one travels without his own hammock and the net which in many places
+is a necessity on account of the mosquitoes. Beds and bedding are almost
+unknown here; and there are none so poor as not to possess two or three
+of the strong and neat twine hammocks made by the Indians themselves
+from the fibres of the palm. Then the open character of their houses, as
+well as the personal cleanliness of the Indians, makes the atmosphere
+fresher and purer there than in the houses of our poor. However untidy
+they may be in other respects, they always bathe once or twice a day, if
+not oftener, and wash their clothes frequently. We have never yet
+entered an Indian house where there was any disagreeable odor, unless it
+might be the peculiar smell from the preparation of the mandioca in the
+working-room outside, which has, at a certain stage in the process, a
+slightly sour smell. We certainly could not say as much for many houses
+where we have lodged when travelling in the West, or even "Down East,"
+where the suspicious look of the bedding and the close air of the room
+often make one doubtful about the night's rest.
+
+We were up at five o'clock; for the morning hours are very precious in
+this climate, and the Brazilian day begins with the dawn. At six o'clock
+we had had coffee, and were ready for the various projects suggested for
+our amusement. Our sportsmen were already in the forest; others had gone
+off on a fishing excursion in a montaria; and I joined a party on a
+visit to a _sitio_ higher up the lake. Mr. Agassiz, as has been
+constantly the case throughout our journey, was obliged to deny himself
+all these parties of pleasure; for the novelty and variety of the
+species of fish brought in kept him and his artist constantly at work.
+In this climate the process of decomposition goes on so rapidly, that,
+unless the specimens are attended to at once, they are lost; and the
+paintings must be made while they are quite fresh, in order to give any
+idea of their vividness of tint. We therefore left Mr. Agassiz busy with
+the preparation of his collections, and Mr. Bourkhardt painting, while
+we went up the lake through a strange, half-aquatic, half-terrestrial
+region, where the land seemed hardly redeemed from the water. Groups of
+trees rose directly from the lake, their roots hidden below its surface,
+while numerous blackened and decayed trunks stood up from the water in
+all sorts of picturesque and fantastic forms. Sometimes the trees had
+thrown down from their branches those singular aerial roots so common
+here, and seemed standing on stilts. Here and there, when we coasted
+along by the bank, we had a glimpse into the deeper forest, with its
+drapery of lianas and various creeping vines, and its parasitic sipos
+twining close around the trunks, or swinging themselves from branch to
+branch like loose cordage. But usually the margin of the lake was a
+gently sloping bank, covered with a green so vivid and yet so soft that
+it seemed as if the earth had been born afresh in its six months'
+baptism, and had come out like a new creation. Here and there a palm
+lifted its head above the line of the forest, especially the light,
+graceful Assai palm, with its tall, slender, smooth stem and crown of
+feathery leaves vibrating with every breeze.
+
+Half an hour's row brought us to the landing of the _sitio_ for which we
+were bound. Usually the _sitios_ stand on the bank of the lake or river,
+a stone's throw from the shore, for convenience of fishing, bathing,
+etc. But this one was at some distance, with a very nicely-kept winding
+path leading through the forest; and as it was far the neatest and
+prettiest _sitio_ I have seen here, I may describe it more at length. It
+stood on the brow of a hill which dipped down on the other side into a
+wide and deep ravine. Through this ravine ran an igarape, beyond which
+the land rose again in an undulating line of hilly ground, most
+refreshing to the eye after the flat character of the upper Amazonian
+scenery. The fact that this _sitio_, standing now on a hill overlooking
+the valley and the little stream at its bottom, will have the water
+nearly flush with the ground around it when the igarape is swollen by
+the rise of the river, gives an idea of the change of aspect between the
+dry and wet seasons. The establishment consisted of a number of
+buildings, the most conspicuous of which was a large and lofty open
+room, which the Indian senhora told me was their reception-room, and was
+often used, she said, by the _brancos_ (whites) from Manaos and the
+neighborhood for an evening dance, when they came out in a large
+company, and passed the night. A low wall, some three or four feet in
+height, ran along the sides of this room, wooden benches being placed
+against them for their whole length. The two ends were closed from top
+to bottom by very neat thatched walls; the palm-thatch here, when it is
+made with care, being exceedingly pretty, fine, and smooth, and of a
+soft straw color. At the upper end stood an immense embroidery-frame,
+looking as if it might have served for Penelope's web, but in which was
+stretched an unfinished hammock of palm-thread, the senhora's work. She
+sat down on the low stool before it, and worked a little for my benefit,
+showing me how the two layers of transverse threads were kept apart by a
+thick, polished piece of wood, something like a long, broad ruler.
+Through the opening thus made the shuttle is passed with the
+cross-thread, which is then pushed down and straightened in its place by
+means of the same piece of wood.
+
+When we arrived, with the exception of the benches I have mentioned and
+a few of the low wooden stools roughly cut out of a single piece of wood
+and common in every _sitio_, this room was empty; but immediately a
+number of hammocks, of various color and texture, were brought and slung
+across the room from side to side, between the poles supporting the
+roof, and we were invited to rest. This is the first act of hospitality
+on arriving at a country-house here; and the guests are soon stretched
+in every attitude of luxurious ease. After we had rested, the gentlemen
+went down to the igarape to bathe, while the senhora and her daughter, a
+very pretty Indian woman, showed me over the rest of the establishment.
+She had the direction of everything now; for the master of the house was
+absent, having a captain's commission in the army; and I heard here the
+same complaints which meet you everywhere in the forest settlements, of
+the deficiency of men on account of the recruiting. The room I have
+described stood on one side of a cleared and neatly swept ground, around
+which, at various distances, stood a number of little thatched
+houses,--_casinhas_, as they call them,--consisting mostly only of one
+room. But beside these there was one larger house, with mud walls and
+floor, containing two or three rooms, and having a wooden veranda in
+front. This was the senhora's private establishment. At a little
+distance farther down on the hill was the mandioca kitchen, with several
+large ovens, troughs, etc. Nothing could be neater than the whole area
+of this _sitio_; and while we were there, two or three black girls were
+sent out to sweep it afresh with their stiff twig brooms. Around was the
+plantation of mandioca and cacao, with here and there a few
+coffee-shrubs. It is difficult to judge of the extent of these _sitio_
+plantations, because they are so irregular, and comprise such a variety
+of trees,--mandioca, coffee, cacao, and often cotton, being planted
+pellmell together. But every _sitio_ has its plantation, large or small,
+of one or other or all of these productions.
+
+On the return of the gentlemen from the igarape, we took leave, though
+very kindly pressed to stay and breakfast. At parting, the senhora
+presented me with a wicker-basket of fresh eggs, and some _abacatys_, or
+alligator pears, as we call them. We reached the house just in time for
+a ten-o'clock breakfast, which assembled all the different parties once
+more from their various occupations, whether of work or play. The
+sportsmen returned from the forest, bringing a goodly supply of toucans,
+papagaios, and paroquets, with a variety of other birds; and the
+fishermen brought in treasures again for Mr. Agassiz.
+
+After breakfast I retired to the room where we had passed the night,
+hoping to find a quiet time for writing up letters and journal. But it
+was already occupied by the old senhora and her guests, lounging about
+in the hammocks or squatting on the floor and smoking their pipes. The
+house was, indeed, full to overflowing, as the whole party assembled for
+the ball were to stay during the President's visit. In this way of
+living it is an easy matter to accommodate any number of people; for if
+they cannot all be received under the roof, they are quite as well
+satisfied to put up their hammocks under the trees outside. As I went to
+my room the evening before, I stopped to look at quite a pretty picture
+of an Indian mother with her two little children asleep on either arm,
+all in one hammock, in the open air.
+
+My Indian friends were too much interested in my occupations to allow of
+my continuing them uninterruptedly. They were delighted with my books,
+(I happened to have Bates's "Naturalist on the Amazons" with me, in
+which I showed them some pictures of Amazonian scenery and insects,) and
+asked me many questions about my country, my voyage, and my travels
+here. In return, they gave me much information about their own way of
+life. They said the present gathering of neighbors and friends was no
+unusual occurrence; for they have a great many festas which, though
+partly religious in character, are also occasions of great festivity.
+These festas are celebrated at different _sitios_ in turn, the saint of
+the day being carried, with all his ornaments, candles, bouquets, etc.,
+to the house where the ceremony is to take place, and where all the
+people of the the village congregate. Sometimes they last for several
+days, and are accompanied by processions, music, and dances in the
+evening. But the women said the forest was very sad now, because their
+men had all been taken as recruits, or were seeking safety in the woods.
+The old senhora told me a sad story of the brutality exercised in
+recruiting the Indians. She assured me that they were taken wherever
+they were caught, without reference to age or circumstances, often
+having women and children dependent upon them; and, if they made
+resistance, were carried off by force, frequently handcuffed, or with
+heavy weights attached to their feet. Such proceedings are entirely
+illegal; but these forest villages are so remote, that the men employed
+to recruit may practise any cruelty without being called to account for
+it. If they bring in their recruits in good condition, no questions are
+asked. These women assured me that all the work of the _sitios_--the
+making of farinha, the fishing, the turtle-hunting--was stopped for want
+of hands. The appearance of things certainly confirms this, for one sees
+scarcely any men about in the villages, and the canoes one meets are
+mostly rowed by women.
+
+I must say that the life of the Indian woman, so far as we have seen it,
+and this is by no means the only time that we have been indebted to
+Indians for hospitality, seems to me enviable in comparison with that of
+the Brazilian lady in the Amazonian towns. The former has a healthful
+out-of-door life; she has her canoe on the lake or river, and her paths
+through the forest, with perfect liberty to come and go; she has her
+appointed daily occupations, being busy not only with the care of her
+house and children, but in making farinha or tapioca, or in drying and
+rolling tobacco, while the men are fishing and turtle-hunting; and she
+has her frequent festa days to enliven her working life. It is, on the
+contrary, impossible to imagine anything more dreary and monotonous than
+the life of the Brazilian senhora in any of the smaller towns. In the
+northern provinces, especially, old Portuguese notions about shutting
+women up and making their home-life as colorless as that of a cloistered
+nun, without even the element of religious enthusiasm to give it zest,
+still prevail. Many a Brazilian lady passes day after day without
+stirring beyond her four walls, scarcely even showing herself at the
+door or window; for she is always in a careless dishabille, unless she
+expects company. It is sad to see these stifled existences; without any
+contact with the world outside, without any charm of domestic life,
+without books or culture of any kind, the Brazilian senhora in this part
+of the country either sinks contentedly into a vapid, empty, aimless
+life, or frets against her chains, and is as discontented as she is
+useless.
+
+On the day of our arrival the dinner had been interrupted by the
+entrance of the Indians with their greetings and presents of game to the
+President; but on the second day it was enlivened by quite a number of
+appropriate toasts and speeches. I thought, as we sat around the
+dinner-table, there had probably never before been gathered under the
+palm-roof of an Indian house on the Amazons a party combining so many
+different elements and objects. There was the President, whose interest
+is, of course, in administering the affairs of the province, in which
+the Indians come in for a large share of his attention;--there was the
+young statesman, whose whole heart is in the great national question of
+peopling the Amazonian region and opening it to the world, and in the
+effect this movement is to have upon his country;--there was the able
+engineer, whose scientific life has been passed in surveying the great
+river and its tributaries with a view to their future navigation;--and
+there was the man of pure science, come to study the distribution of
+animal life in their waters, with no view to practical questions. The
+speeches touched upon all these interests, and were received with
+enthusiasm, each one closing with a toast and music, for our little band
+of the night before had been brought in to enliven the scene. The
+Brazilians are very happy in their after-dinner speeches, and have great
+facility in them, whether from a natural gift or from much practice. The
+habit of drinking healths and giving toasts is very general throughout
+the country; and the most informal dinner among intimate friends does
+not conclude without some mutual greetings of this kind.
+
+As we were sitting under the trees afterwards, having yielded our places
+in the primitive dining-room to the Indian guests, the President
+suggested a sunset row on the lake. The hour and the light were most
+tempting; and we were soon off in the canoe, taking no boatmen, the
+gentlemen preferring to row themselves. We went through the same lovely
+region, half water, half land, over which we had passed in the morning,
+floating between patches of greenest grass, and large forest-trees, and
+blackened trunks standing out of the lake like ruins. We did not go very
+fast nor very far, for our amateur boatmen found the evening warm, and
+their rowing was rather play than work; they stopped, too, every now and
+then, to get a shot at a white heron or into a flock of paroquets or
+ciganas, whereby they wasted a good deal of powder to no effect. As we
+turned to come back, we were met by one of the prettiest sights I have
+ever seen. The Indian women, having finished their dinner, had taken the
+little two-masted canoe, dressed with flags, which had been prepared for
+the President's reception, and had come out to meet us. They had the
+music on board, and there were two or three men in the boat; but the
+women were some twelve or fifteen in number, and seemed, like genuine
+Amazons, to have taken things into their own hands. They were rowing
+with a will; and as the canoe drew near, with music playing and flags
+flying, the purple lake, dyed in the sunset and smooth as a mirror, gave
+back the picture. Every tawny figure at the oars, every flutter of the
+crimson and blue streamers, every fold of the green and yellow national
+flag at the prow, was as distinct below the surface as above it. The
+fairy boat, for so it looked floating between glowing sky and water, and
+seeming to borrow color from both, came on apace, and as it approached
+our friends greeted us with many a _Viva!_ to which we responded as
+heartily. Then the two canoes joined company, and we went on together,
+taking the guitar sometimes into one and sometimes into the other, while
+Brazilian and Indian songs followed each other. Anything more national,
+more completely imbued with tropical coloring and character, than this
+evening scene on the lake, can hardly be conceived. When we reached the
+landing, the gold and rose-colored clouds were fading into soft masses
+of white and ashen gray, and moonlight was taking the place of sunset.
+As we went up the green slope to the _sitio_, a dance on the grass was
+proposed, and the Indian girls formed a quadrille; for thus much of
+outside civilization has crept into their native manners, though they
+throw into it so much of their own characteristic movements that it
+loses something of its conventional aspect. Then we returned to the
+house, where while here and there groups sat about on the ground
+laughing and talking, and the women smoking with as much enjoyment as
+the men. Smoking is almost universal among the common women here, nor is
+it confined to the lower classes. Many a senhora, at least in this part
+of Brazil, (for one must distinguish between the civilization upon the
+banks of the Amazons and in the interior, and that in the cities along
+the coast,) enjoys her pipe while she lounges in her hammock through the
+heat of the day.
+
+The following day the party broke up. The Indian women came to bid us
+good by after breakfast, and dispersed in various directions, through
+the forest paths, to their several homes, going off in little groups,
+with their babies, of whom there were a goodly number, astride on their
+hips, and the older children following. Mr. Agassiz passed the morning
+in packing and arranging his fishes, having collected in these two days
+more than seventy new species: such is the wealth of life everywhere in
+these waters. His studies had been the subject of great curiosity to the
+people about the _sitio_; one or two were always hovering around to look
+at his work, and to watch Mr. Bourkhardt's drawing. They seemed to think
+it extraordinary that any one should care to take the portrait of a
+fish. The familiarity of these children of the forest with the natural
+objects about them--plants, birds, insects, fishes--is remarkable. They
+frequently ask to see the drawings, and, in turning over a pile
+containing several hundred colored drawings of fish, they will scarcely
+make a mistake; even the children giving the name instantly, and often
+adding, "_He filho d'elle_,"--"It is the child of such a one,"--thus
+distinguishing the young from the adult, and pointing out their
+relation. The scientific work excites great wonder among the Indians,
+wherever we go; and when Mr. Agassiz succeeds in making them understand
+the value he attaches to his collections, he often finds them efficient
+assistants.
+
+We dined rather earlier than usual,--our chief dish being a stew of
+parrots and toucans,--and left the _sitio_ at about five o'clock, in
+three canoes, the music accompanying us in the smaller boat. Our Indian
+friends stood on the shore as we left, giving us a farewell greeting
+with cheers and waving hats and hands. The row through the lake and
+igarape was delicious; and we saw many alligators lying lazily about in
+the quiet water, who seemed to enjoy it, after their fashion, as much as
+we did. The sun had long set as we issued from the little river, and the
+Rio Negro, where it opens broadly out into the Amazons, was a sea of
+silver. The boat with the music presently joined our canoe; and we had a
+number of the Brazilian _modinhas_, as they call them,--songs which seem
+especially adapted for the guitar and moonlight. These _modinhas_ have
+quite a peculiar character. They are little, graceful, lyrical snatches
+of song, with a rather melancholy cadence; even those of which the words
+are gay not being quite free from this undertone of sadness. One hears
+them constantly sung to the guitar, a favorite instrument with the
+Brazilians as well as the Indians. This put us all into a somewhat
+dreamy mood, and we approached the end of our journey rather silently.
+But as we came toward the landing, we heard the sound of a band of brass
+instruments, effectually drowning our feeble efforts, and saw a crowded
+canoe coming towards us. They were the boys from an Indian school in the
+neighborhood of Manaos, where a certain number of boys of Indian
+parentage, though not all of pure descent, receive an education at the
+expense of the province, and are taught a number of trades. Among other
+things, they are trained to play on a variety of instruments, and are
+said to show a remarkable facility for music. The boat, which, from its
+size, was a barge rather than a canoe, looked very pretty as it came
+towards us in the moonlight; it seemed full to overflowing, the children
+all standing up, dressed in white uniforms. This little band comes
+always on Sunday evenings and festa days to play before the President's
+house. They were just returning, it being nearly ten o'clock; but the
+President called to them to turn back, and they accompanied us to the
+beach, playing all the while. Thus our pleasant three-days picnic ended
+with music and moonlight.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[B] Without entering here upon the generosity shown not only by the
+Brazilian government, but by individuals also, to this expedition,--a
+debt which it will be my pleasant duty to acknowledge fully hereafter in
+a more extended report of our journey,--I cannot omit this opportunity
+of thanking Dr. Epaminondas, the enlightened President of the Province
+of the Amazonas, for the facilities accorded to me during my whole stay
+in the region now under his administration.--_Louis Agassiz._
+
+[C] Mr. Wallace speaks of having collected over two hundred species in
+the Rio Negro; but as these were unfortunately lost, and never
+described, they cannot be counted as belonging among the possessions of
+the scientific world.
+
+
+
+
+DOCTOR JOHNS.
+
+
+XLIX.
+
+At about the date of this interview which we have described as having
+taken place beyond the seas,--upon one of those warm days of early
+winter, which, even in New England, sometimes cheat one into a feeling
+of spring,--Adele came strolling up the little path that led from the
+parsonage gate to the door, twirling her muff upon her hand, and
+thinking--thinking--But who shall undertake to translate the thought of
+a girl of nineteen in such moment of revery? With the most matter of
+fact of lives it would be difficult. But in view of the experience of
+Adele, and of that fateful mystery overhanging her,--well, think for
+yourself,--you who touch upon a score of years, with their hopes,--you
+who have a passionate, clinging nature, and only some austere, prim
+matron to whom you may whisper your confidences,--what would you have
+thought, as you twirled your muff, and sauntered up the path to a home
+that was yours only by sufferance, and yet, thus far, your only home?
+
+The chance villagers, seeing her lithe figure, her well-fitting pelisse,
+her jaunty hat, her blooming cheeks, may have said, "There goes a
+fortunate one!" But if the thought of poor Adele took one shape more
+than another, as she returned that day from a visit to her sweet friend
+Rose, it was this: "How drearily unfortunate I am!" And here a little
+burst of childish laughter breaks on her ear. Adele, turning to the
+sound, sees that poor outcast woman who had been the last and most
+constant attendant upon Madame Arles coming down the street, with her
+little boy frolicking beside her. Obeying an impulse she was in no mood
+to resist, she turns back to the gate to greet them; she caresses the
+boy; she has kindly words for the mother, who could have worshipped her
+for the caress she has given to her outcast child.
+
+"I likes you," says the sturdy urchin, sidling closer to the parsonage
+gate, over which Adele leans. "You's like the French ooman."
+
+Whereupon Adele, in the exuberance of her kindly feelings, can only lean
+over and kiss the child again.
+
+Miss Johns, looking from her chamber, is horrified. Had it been summer,
+she would have lifted her window and summoned Adele. But she never
+forgot--that exemplary woman--the proprieties of the seasons, any more
+than other proprieties; she tapped upon the glass with her thimble, and
+beckoned the innocent offender into the parsonage.
+
+"I am astonished, Adele!"--these were her first words; and she went on
+to belabor the poor girl in fearful ways,--all the more fearful because
+she spoke in the calmest possible tones. She never used others, indeed;
+and it is not to be doubted that she reckoned this forbearance among her
+virtues.
+
+Adele made no reply,--too wise now for that; but she winced, and bit her
+lip severely, as the irate spinster "gave Miss Maverick to understand
+that an intercourse which might possibly be agreeable to her French
+associations could never be tolerated at the home of Dr. Johns. For
+herself, she had a reputation for propriety to sustain; and while Miss
+Maverick made a portion of her household, she must comply with the rules
+of decorum; and if Miss Maverick were ignorant of those rules, she had
+better inform herself."
+
+No reply, as we have said,--unless it may have been by an impatient
+stamp of her little foot, which the spinster could not perceive.
+
+But it is the signal, in her quick, fiery nature, of a determination to
+leave the parsonage, if the thing be possible. From her chamber, where
+she goes only to arrange her hair and to wipe off an angry tear or two,
+she walks straight into the study of the parson.
+
+"Doctor," (the "New Papa" is reserved for her tenderer or playful
+moments now,) "are you quite sure that papa will come for me in the
+spring?"
+
+"He writes me so, Adaly. Why?"
+
+Adele seeks to control herself, but she cannot wholly. "It's not
+pleasant for me any longer here, New Papa,--indeed it is not";--and her
+voice breaks utterly.
+
+"But, Adaly!--child!" says the Doctor, closing his book.
+
+"It's wholly different from what it once was; it's irksome to Miss
+Eliza,--I know it is; it's irksome to me. I want to leave. Why doesn't
+papa come for me at once? Why shouldn't he? What is this mystery, New
+Papa? Will you not tell me?"--and she comes toward him, and lays her
+hand upon his shoulder in her old winning, fond way. "Why may I not
+know? Do you think I am not brave to bear whatever must some day be
+known? What if my poor mother be unworthy? I can love her! I can love
+her!"
+
+"Ah, Adaly," said the parson, "whatever may have been her unworthiness,
+it can never afflict you more; I believe that she is in her grave,
+Adaly."
+
+Adele sunk upon her knees, with her hands clasped as if in prayer. Was
+it strange that the child should pray for the mother she had never seen?
+
+From the day when Maverick had declared her unworthiness, Adele had
+cherished secretly the hope of some day meeting her, of winning her by
+her love, of clasping her arms about her neck and whispering in her ear,
+"God is good, and we are all God's children!" But in her grave! Well, at
+least justice will be done her then; and, calmed by this thought, Adele
+is herself once more,--earnest as ever to break away from the scathing
+looks of the spinster.
+
+The Doctor has not spoken without authority, since Maverick, in his
+reply to the parson's suggestions respecting marriage, has urged that
+the party was totally unfit, to a degree of which the parson himself was
+a witness, and by further hints had served fully to identify, in the
+mind of the old gentleman, poor Madame Arles with the mother of Adele. A
+knowledge of this fact had grievously wounded the Doctor; he could not
+cease to recall the austerity with which he had debarred the poor woman
+all intercourse with Adele upon her sick-bed. And it seemed to him a
+grave thing, wherever sin might lie, thus to alienate the mother and
+daughter. His unwitting agency in the matter had made him of late
+specially mindful of all the wishes and even caprices of Adele,--much to
+the annoyance of Miss Eliza.
+
+"Adaly, my child, you are very dear to me," said he; and she stood by
+him now, toying with those gray locks of his, in a caressing manner
+which he could never know from a child of his own,--never. "If it be
+your wish to change your home for the little time that remains, it shall
+be. I have your father's authority to do so."
+
+"Indeed I do wish it, New Papa";--and she dropped a kiss upon his
+forehead,--upon the forehead where so few tender tokens of love had ever
+fallen, or ever would fall. Yet it was very grateful to the old
+gentleman, though it made him think with a sigh of the lost ones.
+
+The Doctor talked over the affair with Miss Eliza, who avowed herself as
+eager as Adele for a change in her home, and suggested that Benjamin
+should take counsel with his old friend, Mr. Elderkin; and it is quite
+possible that she shrewdly anticipated the result of such a
+consultation.
+
+Certain it is that the old Squire caught at the suggestion in a moment.
+
+"The very thing, Doctor! I see how it is. Miss Eliza is getting on in
+years; a little irritable, possibly,--though a most excellent person,
+Doctor,--most excellent! and there being no young people in the house,
+it's a little dull for Miss Adele, eh, Doctor? Grace, you know, is not
+with us this winter; so your lodger shall come straight to my house, and
+she shall take the room of Grace, and Rose will be delighted, and Mrs.
+Elderkin will be delighted; and as for Phil, when he happens with
+us,--as he does only off and on now,--he'll be falling in love with her,
+I haven't a doubt; or, if he doesn't, I shall be tempted to myself.
+She's a fine girl, eh, Doctor?"
+
+"She's a good Christian, I believe," said the Doctor gravely.
+
+"I haven't a doubt of it," said the Squire; "and I hope that a bit of a
+dance about Christmas time, if we should fall into that wickedness,
+wouldn't harm her on that score,--eh, Doctor?"
+
+"I should wish, Mr. Elderkin, that she maintain her usual propriety of
+conduct, until she is again in her father's charge."
+
+"Well, well, Doctor, you shall talk with Mrs. Elderkin of that matter."
+
+So, it is all arranged. Miss Johns expresses a quiet gratification at
+the result, and--it is specially agreeable to her to feel that the
+responsibility of giving shelter and countenance to Miss Maverick is now
+shared by so influential a family as that of the Elderkins. Rose is
+overjoyed, and can hardly do enough to make the new home agreeable to
+Adele; while the mistress of the house--mild, and cheerful, and sunny,
+diffusing content every evening over the little circle around her
+hearth--wins Adele to a new cheer. Yet it is a cheer that is tempered by
+many sad thoughts of her own loneliness, and of her alienation from any
+motherly smiles and greetings that are truly hers.
+
+Phil is away at her coming; but a week after he bursts into the house on
+a snowy December night, and there is a great stamping in the hall, and a
+little grandchild of the house pipes from the half-opened door, "It's
+Uncle Phil!" and there is a loud smack upon the cheek of Rose, who runs
+to give him welcome, and a hearty, honest grapple with the hand of the
+old Squire, and then another kiss upon the cheek of the old mother, who
+meets him before he is fairly in the room,--a kiss upon her cheek, and
+another, and another, Phil loves the old lady with an honest warmth that
+kindles the admiration of poor Adele, who, amid all this demonstration
+of family affection, feels herself more cruelly than ever a stranger in
+the household,--a stranger, indeed, to the interior and private joys of
+any household.
+
+Yet such enthusiasm is, somehow, contagious; and when Phil meets Adele
+with a shake of the hand and a hearty greeting, she returns it with an
+outspoken, homely warmth, at thought of which she finds herself blushing
+a moment after. To tell truth, Phil is rather a fine-looking fellow at
+this time,--strong, manly, with a comfortable assurance of manner,--a
+face beaming with _bonhomie_, cheeks glowing with that sharp December
+drive, and a wild, glad sparkle in his eye, as Rose whispers him that
+Adele has become one of the household. It is no wonder, perhaps, that
+the latter finds the bit of embroidery she is upon somewhat perplexing,
+so that she has to consult Rose pretty often in regard to the different
+shades, and twirl the worsteds over and over, until confusion about the
+colors shall restore her own equanimity. Phil, meantime, dashes on, in
+his own open, frank way, about his drive, and the state of the ice in
+the river, and some shipments he had made from New York to Porto
+Rico,--on capital terms, too.
+
+"And did you see much of Reuben?" asks Mrs. Elderkin.
+
+"Not much," and Phil (glancing that way) sees that Adele is studying her
+crimsons; "but he tells me he is doing splendidly in some business
+venture to the Mediterranean with Brindlock; he could hardly talk of
+anything else. It's odd to find him so wrapped up in money-making."
+
+"I hope he'll not be wrapped up in anything worse," said Mrs. Elderkin,
+with a sigh.
+
+"Nonsense, mother!" burst in the old Squire; "Reuben'll come out all
+right yet."
+
+"He says he means to know all sides of the world, now," says Phil, with
+a little laugh.
+
+"He's not so bad as he pretends to be, Phil," answered the Squire. "I
+knew the Major's hot ways; so did you, Grace (turning to the wife). It's
+a boy's talk. There's good blood in him."
+
+And the two girls,--yonder, the other side of the hearth,--Adele and
+Rose, have given over their little earnest comparison of views about the
+colors, and sit stitching, and stitching, and thinking--and thinking--
+
+
+L.
+
+Phil had at no time given over his thought of Adele, and of the
+possibility of some day winning her for himself, though he had been
+somewhat staggered by the interview already described with Reuben. It is
+doubtful, even, if the quiet _permission_ which this latter had granted
+(or, with an affectation of arrogance, had seemed to grant) had not
+itself made him pause. There are some things which a man never wants any
+permission to do; and one of those is--to love a woman. All the
+permissions--whether of competent authority or of incompetent--only
+retard him. It is an affair in which he must find his own permit, by his
+own power; and without it there can be no joy in conquest.
+
+So when Phil recalled Reuben's expression on that memorable afternoon in
+his chamber,--"You _may_ marry her, Phil,"--it operated powerfully to
+dispossess him of all intention and all earnestness of pursuit. The
+little doubt and mystery which Reuben had thrown, in the same interview,
+upon the family relations of Adele, did not weigh a straw in the
+comparison. But for months that "may" had angered him and made him
+distant. He had plunged into his business pursuits with a new zeal, and
+easily put away all present thought of matrimony, by virtue of that
+simple "may" of Reuben's.
+
+But now when, on coming back, he found her in his own home,--so tenderly
+cared for by mother and by sister,--so coy and reticent in his presence,
+the old fever burned again. It was not now a simple watching of her
+figure upon the street that told upon him; but her constant
+presence;--the rustle of her dress up and down the stairs; her fresh,
+fair face every day at table; the tapping of her light feet along the
+hall; the little musical bursts of laughter (not Rose's,--oh, no!) that
+came from time to time floating through the open door of his chamber.
+All this Rose saw and watched with the highest glee,--finding her own
+little, quiet means of promoting such accidents,--and rejoicing (as
+sisters will, where the enslaver is a friend) in the captivity of poor
+Phil. For an honest lover, propinquity is always dangerous,--most of
+all, the propinquity in one's own home. The sister's caresses of the
+charmer, the mother's kind looks, the father's playful banter, and the
+whisk of a silken dress (with a new music in it) along the balusters you
+have passed night and morning for years, have a terrible executive
+power.
+
+In short, Adele had not been a month with the Elderkins before Phil was
+tied there by bonds he had never known the force of before.
+
+And how was it with Adele?
+
+That strong, religious element in her,--abating no jot in its
+fervor,--which had found a shock in the case of Reuben, met none with
+Philip. He had slipped into the mother's belief and reverence, not by
+any spell of suffering or harrowing convictions, but by a kind of
+insensible growth toward them, and an easy, deliberate, moderate living
+by them, which more active and incisive minds cannot comprehend. He had
+no great wastes of doubt to perplex him, like Reuben, simply because his
+intelligence was of a more submissive order, and never tested its faiths
+or beliefs by that delicately sensitive mental apparel with which Reuben
+was clothed all over, and which suggested a doubt or a hindrance where
+Phil would have recognized none;--the best stuff in him, after all, of
+which a hale, hearty, contented man can be made,--the stuff that takes
+on age with dignity, that wastes no power, that conserves every element
+of manliness to fourscore. Too great keenness does not know the name of
+content; its only experience of joy is by spasms, when Idealism puts its
+prism to the eye and shows all things in those gorgeous hues, which
+to-morrow fade. Such mind and temper shock the _physique_, shake it
+down, strain the nervous organization; and the body, writhing under
+fierce cerebral thrusts, goes tottering to the grave. Is it strange if
+doubts belong to those writhings? Are there no such creatures as
+constitutional doubters, or, possibly, constitutional believers?
+
+It would have been strange if the calm, mature repose of Phil's
+manner,--never disturbed except when Adele broke upon him suddenly and
+put him to a momentary confusion, of which the pleasant fluttering of
+her own heart gave account,--strange, if this had not won upon her
+regard,--strange, if it had not given hint of that cool, masculine
+superiority in him, with which even the most ethereal of women like to
+be impressed. There was about him also a quiet, business-like
+concentration of mind which the imaginative girl might have overlooked
+or undervalued, but which the budding, thoughtful woman must needs
+recognize and respect. Nor will it seem strange, if, by contrast, it
+made the excitable Reuben seem more dismally afloat and vagrant. Yet how
+could she forget the passionate pressure of his hand, the appealing
+depth of that gray eye of the parson's son, and the burning words of his
+that stuck in her memory like thorns?
+
+Phil, indeed, might have spoken in a way that would have driven the
+blood back upon her heart; for there was a world of passionate
+capability under his calm exterior. She dreaded lest he might. She
+shunned all provoking occasion, as a bird shuns the grasp of even the
+most tender hand, under whose clasp the pinions will flutter vainly.
+
+When Rose said now, as she was wont to say, after some generous deed of
+his, "Phil is a good, kind, noble fellow!" Adele affected not to hear,
+and asked Rose, with a bustling air, if she was "quite sure that she had
+the right shade of brown" in the worsted work they were upon.
+
+So the Christmas season came and went. The Squire cherished a
+traditional regard for its old festivities, not only by reason of a
+general festive inclination that was very strong in him, but from a
+desire to protest in a quiet way against what he called the pestilent
+religious severities of a great many of the parish, who ignored the day
+because it was a high holiday in the Popish Church, and in that other,
+which, under the wing of Episcopacy, was following, in their view, fast
+after the Babylonish traditions. There was Deacon Tourtelot, for
+instance, who never failed on a Christmas morning--if weather and
+sledding were good--to get up his long team (the restive two-year-olds
+upon the neap) and drive through the main street, with a great clamor of
+"Haw, Diamond!" and "Gee, Buck and Bright!"--as if to insist upon the
+secular character of the day. Indeed, with the old-fashioned New-England
+religious faith, an exuberant, demonstrative joyousness could not
+gracefully or easily be welded. The hopes that reposed even upon
+Christ's coming, with its tidings of great joy, must be solemn. And the
+anniversary of a glorious birth, which, by traditionary impulse, made
+half the world glad, was to such believers like any other day in the
+calendar. Even the good Doctor pointed his Christmas prayer with no
+special unction. What, indeed, were anniversaries, or a yearly
+proclamation of peace and good-will to men, with those who, on every
+Sabbath morning, saw the heavens open above the sacred desk, and heard
+the golden promises expounded, and the thunders of coming retribution
+echo under the ceiling of the Tabernacle?
+
+The Christmas came and went with a great lighting-up of the Elderkin
+house; and there were green garlands which Rose and Adele have plaited
+over the mantel, and over the stiff family portraits; and good Phil--in
+the character of Santa Claus--has stuffed the stockings of all the
+grandchildren, and--in the character of the bashful lover--has played
+like a moth about the blazing eyes of Adele.
+
+Yet the current of the village gossip has it, that they are to marry.
+Miss Eliza, indeed, shakes her head wisely, and keeps her own counsel.
+But Dame Tourtelot reports to old Mistress Tew,--"Phil Elderkin is goin'
+to marry the French girl."
+
+"Haoew?" says Mrs. Tew, adjusting her tin trumpet.
+
+"Philip Elderkin--is--a-goin' to marry the French girl," screams the
+Dame.
+
+"Du tell! Goin' to settle in Ashfield?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"No! Where, then?" says Mistress Tew.
+
+I don't KNOW," shrieks the Dame.
+
+"Oh!" chimes Mrs. Tew; and after reflecting awhile and smoothing out her
+cap-strings, she says,--"I've heerd the French gurl keeps a cross in her
+chamber."
+
+"_She_ DOOZ," explodes the Dame.
+
+"I want to know! I wonder the Squire don't put a stop to 't."
+
+"Doan't believe _he would if he_ COULD," says the Dame, snappishly.
+
+"Waal, waal! it's a wicked world we're a-livin' in, Miss Tourtelot." And
+she elevates her trumpet, as if she were eager to get a confirmation of
+that fact.
+
+
+LI.
+
+In those days to which our narrative has now reached, the Doctor was far
+more feeble than when we first met him. His pace has slackened, and
+there is an occasional totter in his step. There are those among his
+parishioners who say that his memory is failing. On one or two Sabbaths
+of the winter he has preached sermons scarce two years old. There are
+acute listeners who are sure of it. And the spinster has been horrified
+on learning that, once or twice, the old gentleman--escaping her
+eye--has taken his walk to the post-office, unwittingly wearing his best
+cloak wrong-side out; as if--for so good a man--the green baize were not
+as proper a covering as the brown camlet!
+
+The parson is himself conscious of these short-comings, and speaks with
+resignation of the growing infirmities which, as he modestly hints, will
+compel him shortly to give place to some younger and more zealous
+expounder of the faith. His parochial visits grow more and more rare.
+All other failings could be more easily pardoned than this; but in a
+country parish like Ashfield, it was quite imperative that the old
+chaise should keep up its familiar rounds, and the occasional tea-fights
+in the out-lying houses be honored by the gray head of the Doctor or by
+his evening benediction. Two hour-long sermons a week and a Wednesday
+evening discourse were very well in their way, but by no means met all
+the requirements of those steadfast old ladies whose socialities were
+both exhaustive and exacting. Indeed, it is doubtful if there do not
+exist even now, in most country parishes of New England, a few most
+excellent and notable women, who delight in an overworked parson, for
+the pleasure they take in recommending their teas, and plasters, and
+nostrums. The more frail and attenuated the teacher, the more he takes
+hold upon their pity; and in losing the vigor of the flesh, he seems to
+their compassionate eyes to grow into the spiritualities they pine for.
+But he must not give over his visitings; _that_ hair-cloth shirt of
+penance he must wear to the end, if he would achieve saintship.
+
+Now, just at this crisis, it happens that there is a tall, thin, pale
+young man--Rev. Theophilus Catesby by name, and nephew of the late
+Deacon Simmons (now unhappily deceased)--who has preached in Ashfield on
+several occasions to the "great acceptance" of the people. Talk is
+imminent of naming him colleague to Dr. Johns. The matter is discussed,
+at first, (agreeably to custom,) in the sewing-circle of the town. After
+this, it comes informally before the church brethren. The duty to the
+Doctor and to the parish is plain enough. The practical question is, how
+cheaply can the matter be accomplished?
+
+The salary of the good Doctor has grown, by progressive increase, to be
+at this date some seven hundred dollars a year,--a very considerable
+stipend for a country parish in that day. It was understood that the
+proposed colleague would expect six hundred. The two joined made a
+somewhat appalling sum for the people of Ashfield. They tried to combat
+it in a variety of ways,--over tea-tables and barn-yard gates, as well
+as in their formal conclaves; earnest for a good thing in the way of
+preaching, but earnest for a good bargain, too.
+
+"I say, Huldy," said the Deacon, in discussion of the affair over his
+wife's fireside, "I wouldn't wonder if the Doctor 'ad put up somethin'
+handsome between the French girl's boardin', and odds and ends."
+
+"What if he ha'n't, Tourtelot? Miss Johns's got property, and what's
+_she_ goin' to do with it, I want to know?"
+
+On this hint the Deacon spoke, in his next encounter with the Squire
+upon the street, with more boldness.
+
+"It's my opinion, Squire, the Doctor's folks are pooty well off, now;
+and if we make a trade with the new minister, so's he'll take the
+biggest half o' the hard work of the parish, I think the old Doctor 'ud
+worry along tol'able well on three or four hundred a year; heh, Squire?"
+
+"Well, Deacon, I don't know about that;--don't know. Butcher's meat is
+always butcher's meat, Deacon."
+
+"So it is, Squire; and not so dreadful high, nuther. I've got a likely
+two-year-old in the yard, that'll dress abaout a hundred to a quarter,
+and I don't pretend to ask but twenty-five dollars; know anybody that
+wants such a critter, Squire?"
+
+With very much of the same relevancy of observation the affair is
+bandied about for a week or more in the discussions at the
+society-meetings, with danger of never coming to any practical issue,
+when a wiry little man--in a black Sunday coat, whose tall collar chafes
+the back of his head near to the middle--rises from a corner where he
+has grown vexed with the delay, and bursts upon the solemn conclave in
+this style:--
+
+"Brethren, I ha'n't been home to chore-time in the last three days, and
+my wife is gittin' worked up abaout it. Here we've bin a-settin' and
+a-talkin' night arter night, and arternoon arter arternoon for more 'n a
+week, and 'pears to me it 's abaout time as tho' somethin' o' ruther
+ought to be done. There's nobody got nothin' agin the Doctor that I've
+_heerd_ of. He's a smart old gentleman, and he's a clever old gentleman,
+and he preaches what I call good, stiff doctrine; but we don't feel much
+like payin' for light work same as what we paid when the work was
+heavy,--'specially if we git a new minister on our hands. But then,
+brethren, I don't for one feel like turnin' an old hoss that's done good
+sarvice, when he gits stiff in the j'ints, into slim pastur', and I
+don't feel like stuffin' on 'em with bog hay in the winter. There's
+folks that dooz; but _I_ don't. Now, brethren, I motion that we
+continner to give as much as five hundred dollars to the old Doctor, and
+make the best dicker we can with the new minister; and I'll clap ten
+dollars on to my pew-rent; and the Deacon there, if he's anything of a
+man, 'll do as much agin. I know he's able to."
+
+Let no one smile. The halting prudence, the inevitable calculating
+process through which the small country New-Englander arrives at his
+charities, is but the growth of his associations. He gets hardly; and
+what he gets hardly he must bestow with self-questionings. If he lives
+"in the small," he cannot give "in the large." His pennies, by the
+necessities of his toil, are each as big as pounds; yet his charities,
+in nine cases out of ten, bear as large a proportion to his revenue as
+the charities of those who count gains by tens of thousands. Liberality
+is, after all, comparative, and is exceptionally great only when its
+sources are exceptionally small. That "_widow's mite_"--the only charity
+ever specially commended by the great Master of charities--will tinkle
+pleasantly on the ear of humanity ages hence, when the clinking millions
+of cities are forgotten.
+
+The new arrangement all comes to the ear of Reuben, who writes back in a
+very brusque way to the Doctor: "Why on earth, father, don't you cut all
+connection with the parish? You've surely done your part in that
+service. Don't let the 'minister's pay' be any hindrance to you, for I
+am getting on swimmingly in my business ventures,--thanks to Mr.
+Brindlock. I enclose a check for two hundred dollars, and can send you
+one of equal amount every quarter, without feeling it. Why shouldn't a
+man of your years have rest?"
+
+And the Doctor, in his reply, says: "My rest, Reuben, is God's work. I
+am deeply grateful to you, and only wish that your generosity were
+hallowed by a deeper trust in His providence and mercy. O Reuben!
+Reuben! a night cometh, when no man can work! You seem to imagine, my
+son, that some slight has been put upon me by recent arrangements in the
+parish. It is not so; and I am sure that none has been intended. A
+servant of Christ can receive no reproach at the hands of his people,
+save this,--that he has failed to warn them of the judgment to come, and
+to point out to them, the ark of safety."
+
+Correspondence between the father and son is not infrequent in these
+days; for, since Reuben has slipped away from home control
+utterly,--being now well past one and twenty,--the Doctor has forborne
+that magisterial tone which, in his old-fashioned way, it was his wont
+to employ, while yet the son was subject to his legal authority. Under
+these conditions, Reuben is won into more communicativeness,--even upon
+those religious topics which are always prominent in the Doctor's
+letters; indeed, it would seem that the son rather enjoyed a little
+logical fence with the old gentleman, and a passing lunge, now and then,
+at his severities; still weltering in his unbelief, but wearing it more
+lightly (as the father saw with pain) by reason of the great crowd of
+sympathizers at his back.
+
+"It is so rare," he writes, "to fall in with one who earnestly and
+heartily seems to believe what he says he believes. And if you meet him
+in a preacher at a street-corner, declaiming with a mad fervor, people
+cry out, 'A fanatic!' Why shouldn't he be? I can't, for my life, see.
+Why shouldn't every fervent believer of the truths he teaches rush
+through the streets to divert the great crowd, with voice and hand, from
+the inevitable doom? I see the honesty of your faith, father, though
+there seems a strained harshness in it when I think of the complacency
+with which you must needs contemplate the irremediable perdition of such
+hosts of outcasts. In Adele, too, there seems a beautiful singleness of
+trust; but I suppose God made the birds to live in the sky.
+
+"You need not fear my falling into what you call the Pantheism of the
+moralists; it is every way too cold for my hot blood. It seems to me
+that the moral icicles with which their doctrine is fringed (and the
+fringe is the beauty of it) must needs melt under any passionate human
+clasp,--such clasp as I should want to give (if I gave any) to a great
+hope for the future. I should feel more like groping my way into such
+hope by the light of the golden candlesticks of Rome even. But do not be
+disturbed, father; I fear I should make, just now, no better Papist than
+Presbyterian."
+
+The Doctor reads such letters in a maze. Can it indeed be a son of his
+own loins who thus bandies language about the solemn truths of
+Christianity?
+
+"How shall I give thee up, Ephraim! How shall I set thee as Zeboim!"
+
+
+LII.
+
+In the early spring of 1842,--we are not quite sure of the date, but it
+was at any rate shortly after the establishment of the Reverend
+Theophilus Catesby at Ashfield,--the Doctor was in the receipt of a new
+letter from his friend Maverick, which set all his old calculations
+adrift. It was not Madame Arles, after all, who was the mother of Adele;
+and the poor gentleman found that he had wasted a great deal of needless
+sympathy in that direction. But we shall give the details of the news
+more succinctly and straightforwardly by laying before our readers some
+portions of Maverick's letter.
+
+"I find, my dear Johns," he writes, "that my suspicions in regard to a
+matter of which I wrote you very fully in my last were wholly untrue.
+How I could have been so deceived, I cannot even now fairly explain; but
+nothing is more certain, than that the person calling herself Madame
+Arles (since dead, as I learn from Adele) was not the mother of my
+child. My mistake in this will the more surprise you, when I state that
+I had a glimpse of this personage (unknown to you) upon my visit to
+America; and though it was but a passing glimpse, it seemed to
+me--though many years had gone by since my last sight of her--that I
+could have sworn to her identity. And coupling this resemblance, as I
+very naturally did, with her devotion to my poor Adele, I could form but
+one conclusion.
+
+"The mother of my child, however, still lives. I have seen her. You will
+commiserate me in advance with the thought that I have found her among
+the vile ones of what you count this vile land. But you are wrong, my
+dear Johns. So far as appearance and present conduct go, no more
+reputable lady ever crossed your own threshold. The meeting was
+accidental, but the recognition on both sides absolute, and, on the part
+of the lady, so emotional as to draw the attention of the _habitues_ of
+the cafe where I chanced to be dining. Her manner and bearing, indeed,
+were such as to provoke me to a renewal of our old acquaintance, with
+honorable intentions,--even independent of those suggestions of duty to
+herself and to Adele which you have urged.
+
+"But I have to give you, my dear Johns, a new surprise. All overtures of
+my own toward a renewal of acquaintance have been decisively repulsed. I
+learn that she has been living for the past fifteen years or more with
+her brother, now a wealthy merchant of Smyrna, and that she has a
+reputation there as a _devote_, and is widely known for the charities
+which her brother's means place within her reach. It would thus seem
+that even this French woman, contrary to your old theory, is atoning for
+an early sin by a life of penance.
+
+"And now, my dear Johns, I have to confess to you another deceit of
+mine. This woman--Julie Chalet when I knew her of old, and still wearing
+the name--has no knowledge that she has a child now living. To divert
+all inquiry, and to insure entire alienation of my little girl from all
+French ties, I caused a false mention of the death of Adele to be
+inserted in the Gazette of Marseilles. I know you will be very much
+shocked at this, my dear Johns, and perhaps count it as large a sin as
+the grosser one; that I committed it for the child's sake will be no
+excuse in your eye, I know. You may count me as bad as you
+choose,--only give me credit for the fatherly affection which would
+still make the path as easy and as thornless as I can for my poor
+daughter.
+
+"If Julie, the mother of Adele, knew to-day of her existence,--if I
+should carry that information to her,--I am sure that all her rigidities
+would be consumed like flax in a flame. That method, at least, is left
+for winning her to any action upon which I may determine. Shall I use
+it? I ask you as one who, I am sure, has learned to love Adele, and who,
+I hope, has not wholly given over a friendly feeling toward me. Consider
+well, however, that the mother is now one of the most rigid of
+Catholics; I learn that she is even thinking of conventual life. I know
+her spirit and temper well enough to be sure that, if she were to meet
+the child again which she believes lost, it would be with an impetuosity
+of feeling and a devotion that would absorb every aim of her life. This
+disclosure is the only one by which I could hope to win her to any
+consideration of marriage; and with a mother's rights and a mother's
+love, would she not sweep away all that Protestant faith which you, for
+so many years, have been laboring to build up in the mind of my child?
+Whatever you may think, I do not conceive this to be impossible; and if
+possible, is it to be avoided at all hazards? Whatever I might have owed
+to the mother I feel in a measure absolved from by her rejection of all
+present advances. And inasmuch as I am making you my father confessor, I
+may as well tell you, my dear Johns, that no particular self-denial
+would be involved in a marriage with Mademoiselle Chalet. For myself, I
+am past the age of sentiment; my fortune is now established; neither
+myself nor my child can want for any luxury. The mother, by her present
+associations and by the propriety of her life, is above all suspicion;
+and her air and bearing are such as would be a passport to friendly
+association with refined people here or elsewhere. You may count this a
+failure of Providence to fix its punishment upon transgressors: I count
+it only one of those accidents of life which are all the while
+surprising us.
+
+"There was a time when I would have had ambition to do otherwise; but
+now, with my love for Adele established by my intercourse with her and
+by her letters, I have no other aim, if I know my own heart, than her
+welfare. It should be kept in mind, I think, that the marriage spoken
+of, if it ever take place, will probably involve, sooner or later, a
+full exposure to Adele of all the circumstances of her birth and
+history. I say this will be involved, because I am sure that the warm
+affections of Mademoiselle Chalet will never allow of the concealment of
+her maternal relations, and that her present religious perversity (if
+you will excuse the word) will not admit of further deceits. I tremble
+to think of the possible consequences to Adele, and query very much in
+my own mind, if her present blissful ignorance be not better than
+reunion with a mother through whom she must learn of the ignominy of her
+birth. Of Adele's fortitude to bear such a shock, and to maintain any
+elasticity of spirits under it, you can judge better than I.
+
+"I propose to delay action, my dear Johns, and of course my sailing for
+America, until I shall hear from you."
+
+Our readers can surely anticipate the tone of the Doctor's reply. He
+writes:--
+
+"Duty, Maverick, is always duty. The issues we must leave in the hands
+of Providence. One sin makes a crowd of entanglements; it is never weary
+of disguises and deceits. We must come out from them all, if we would
+aim at purity. From my heart's core I shall feel whatever shock may come
+to poor, innocent Adele by reason of the light that may be thrown upon
+her history; but if it be a light that flows from the performance of
+Christian duty, I shall never fear its revelations. If we had been
+always true, such dark corners would never have existed to fright us
+with their goblins of terror. It is never too late, Maverick, to begin
+to be true.
+
+"I find a strange comfort, too, in what you tell me of that religious
+perversity of Mademoiselle Chalet which so chafes you. I have never
+ceased to believe that most of the Romish traditions are of the Devil;
+but with waning years I have learned that the Divine mysteries are
+beyond our comprehension, and that we cannot map out His purposes by any
+human chart. The pure faith of your child, joined to her buoyant
+elasticity,--I freely confess it,--has smoothed away the harshness of
+many opinions I once held.
+
+"Maverick, do your duty. Leave the rest to Heaven."
+
+
+
+
+COMMUNICATION WITH THE PACIFIC.
+
+
+It is remarkable that, while we have been fighting for national
+existence, there has been a constant growth of the Republic. This is not
+wholly due to the power of democratic ideas, but owing in part to the
+native wealth of the country,--its virgin soil, its mineral riches. So
+rapid has been the development that the maps of 1864 are obsolete in
+1866. Civilization at a stride has moved a thousand miles, and taken
+possession of the home of the buffalo. Miners with pick and spade are
+tramping over the Rocky Mountains, exploring every ravine, digging
+canals, building mills, and rearing their log cabins. The merchant, the
+farmer, and the mechanic follow them. The long solitude of the centuries
+is broken by mill-wheels, the buzzing of saws, the stroke of the axe,
+the blow of the hammer and trowel. The stageman cracks his whip in the
+passes of the mountains. The click of the telegraph and the rumbling of
+the printing-press are heard at the head-waters of the Missouri, and
+borne on the breezes there is the laughter of children and the sweet
+music of Sabbath hymns, sung by the pioneers of civilization.
+
+Communities do not grow by chance, but by the operation of physical
+laws. Position, climate, latitude, mountains, lakes, rivers, coal, iron,
+silver, and gold are forces which decree occupation, character, and the
+measure of power and influence which a people shall have among the
+nations. Rivers are natural highways of trade, while mountains are the
+natural barriers. The Atlantic coast is open everywhere to commerce; but
+on the Pacific shore, from British Columbia to Central America, the
+rugged wall of the coast mountains, cloud-capped and white with snow,
+rises sharp and precipitous from the sea, with but one river flowing
+outward from the heart of the continent. The statesman and the political
+economist who would truly cast the horoscope of our future must take
+into consideration the Columbia River, its latitude, its connection with
+the Missouri, the Mississippi, the Lakes, and the St. Lawrence.
+
+How wonderful the development of the Pacific and Rocky Mountain sections
+of the public domain! In 1860 the population of California, Oregon, and
+the territories lying west of Kansas, was six hundred and twenty-three
+thousand; while the present population is estimated at one million,
+wanting only facility of communication with the States to increase in a
+far greater ratio.
+
+In 1853 a series of surveys were made by government to ascertain the
+practicability of a railroad to the Pacific. The country, however, at
+that time, was not prepared to engage in such an enterprise; but now the
+people are calling for greater facility of communication with a section
+of the country abounding in mineral wealth.
+
+Of the several routes surveyed, we shall have space in this article to
+notice only the line running from Lake Superior to the head-waters of
+the Missouri, the Columbia, and Puget Sound, known as the Northern
+Pacific Railroad.
+
+The public domain north of latitude 42 deg., through which it lies,
+comprises about seven hundred thousand square miles,--a territory larger
+than England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium,
+Holland, all the German States, Switzerland, Denmark, and Sweden.
+
+The route surveyed by Governor Stevens runs north of the Missouri River,
+and crosses the mountains through Clark's Pass. Governor Stevens
+intended to survey another line up the valley of the Yellow Stone; and
+Lieutenant Mullan commenced a reconnoissance of the route when orders
+were received from Jeff Davis, then Secretary of War, to disband the
+engineering force.
+
+
+THE ROUTE.
+
+Recent explorations indicate that the best route to the Pacific will be
+found up the valley of this magnificent river. The distances are as
+follows:--From the Mississippi above St. Paul to the western boundary of
+Minnesota, thence to Missouri River, two hundred and eighty miles, over
+the table-land known as the Plateau du Coteau du Missouri, where a road
+may be constructed with as much facility and as little expense as in the
+State of Illinois. Crossing the Missouri, the line strikes directly west
+to the Little Missouri,--the Wah-Pa-Chan-Shoka,--the _heavy-timbered_
+river of the Indians, one hundred and thirty miles. This river runs
+north, and enters the Missouri near its northern bend. Seventy miles
+farther carries us to the Yellow Stone. Following now the valley of this
+stream two hundred and eighty miles, the town of Gallatin is reached, at
+the junction of the Missouri Forks and at the head of navigation on that
+stream. The valley of the Yellow Stone is very fertile, abounding in
+pine, cedar, cotton-wood, and elm. The river has a deeper channel than
+the Missouri, and is navigable through the summer months. At the
+junction of the Big Horn, its largest tributary, two hundred and twenty
+miles from the mouth of the Yellow Stone, in midsummer there are ten
+feet of water. The Big Horn is reported navigable for one hundred and
+fifty miles. From Gallatin, following up the Jefferson Fork and Wisdom
+River, one hundred and forty miles, we reach the Big Hole Pass of the
+Rocky Mountains, where the line enters the valley of the St. Mary's, or
+Bitter Root Fork, which flows into the Columbia. The distance from Big
+Hole Pass to Puget Sound will be about five hundred and twenty miles,
+making the entire distance from St. Paul to Puget Sound about sixteen
+hundred miles, or one hundred and forty-three miles shorter than that
+surveyed by Governor Stevens. The distance from the navigable waters of
+the Missouri to the navigable waters of the Columbia is less than three
+hundred miles.
+
+
+CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LINE.
+
+"Rivers are the natural highways of nations," says Humboldt. This route,
+then, is one of Nature's highways. The line is very direct. The country
+is mostly a rolling prairie, where a road may be constructed as easily
+as through the State of Iowa. It may be built with great rapidity.
+Parties working west from St. Paul and east from the Missouri would meet
+on the plains of Dacotah. Other parties working west from the Missouri
+and east from the Yellow Stone would meet on the "heavy-timbered river."
+Iron, locomotives, material of all kinds, provisions for laborers, can
+be delivered at any point along the Yellow Stone to within a hundred
+miles of the town of Gallatin, and they can be taken up the Missouri to
+that point by portage around the Great Falls. Thus the entire line east
+of the Rocky Mountains may be under construction at once, with iron and
+locomotives delivered by water transportation, with timber near at hand.
+
+The character of the country is sufficient to maintain a dense
+population. It has always been the home of the buffalo, the favorite
+hunting-ground of the Indians. The grasses of the Yellow Stone Valley
+are tender and succulent. The climate is milder than that of Illinois.
+Warm springs gush up on the head-waters of the Yellow Stone. Lewis and
+Clark, on their return from the Columbia, boiled their meat in water
+heated by subterraneous fires. There are numerous beds of coal, and also
+petroleum springs.
+
+"Large quantities of coal seen in the cliffs to-day,"[D] is a note in
+the diary of Captain Clark, as he sailed down the Yellow Stone, who also
+has this note regarding the country: "High waving plains, rich, fertile
+land, bordered by stony hills, partially supplied by pine."[E]
+
+Of the country of the Big Horn he says: "It is a rich, open country,
+supplied with a great quantity of timber."
+
+Coal abounds on the Missouri, where the proposed line crosses that
+stream.[F]
+
+The gold mines of Montana, on the head-waters of the Missouri, are
+hardly surpassed for richness by any in the world. They were discovered
+in 1862. The product for the year 1865 is estimated at $16,000,000. The
+Salmon River Mines, west of the mountains, in Idaho, do not yield so
+fine a quality of gold, but are exceedingly rich.
+
+Many towns have sprung into existence on both sides of the mountains. In
+Eastern Montana we have Gallatin, Beaver Head, Virginia, Nevada,
+Centreville, Bannock, Silver City, Montana, Jefferson, and other mining
+centres. In Western Montana, Labarge, Deer Lodge City, Owen, Higginson,
+Jordan, Frenchtown, Harrytown, and Hot Spring. Idaho has Boisee, Bannock
+City, Centreville, Warren, Richmond, Washington, Placerville, Lemhi,
+Millersburg, Florence, Lewiston, Craigs, Clearwater, Elk City, Pierce,
+and Lake City,--all mining towns.
+
+A gentleman who has resided in the territory gives us the following
+information:--
+
+"The southern portion of Montana Territory is mild; and from the
+testimony of explorers and settlers, as well as from my own experience
+and observation, the extreme northern portion is favored by a climate
+healthful to a high degree, and quite as mild as that of many of the
+Northern and Western States. This is particularly the case west of the
+mountains, in accordance with the well-known fact, that the isothermal
+line, or the line of heat, is farther north as you go westward from the
+Eastern States toward the Pacific.
+
+"At Fort Benton [one hundred and thirty miles directly north from
+Gallatin], in about 48 deg. of north latitude, a trading post of the
+American Fur Company, their horses and cattle, of which they have large
+numbers, are never housed or fed in winter, but get their own living
+without difficulty....
+
+"Northeastern Montana is traversed by the Yellow Stone, whose source is
+high up in the mountains, from thence winding its way eastward across
+the Territory and flowing into the Missouri at Fort Union; thus crossing
+seven degrees of longitude, with many tributaries flowing into it from
+the south, in whose valleys, in connection with that of the Yellow
+Stone, there are hundreds of thousands of acres of tillable land, to say
+nothing of the tributaries of the Missouri, among which are the
+Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin forks, along which settlements are
+springing up, and agriculture is becoming a lucrative business. These
+valleys are inviting to the settler. They are surrounded with hills and
+mountains, clad with pine, while a growth of cotton-wood skirts the
+meandering streams that everywhere flow through them, affording
+abundance of water-power.
+
+"The first attempt at farming was made in the summer of 1863, which was
+a success, and indicates the productiveness of these valleys. Messrs.
+Wilson and Company broke thirty acres last spring, planting twelve acres
+of potatoes,--also corn, turnips, and a variety of garden sauce, all of
+which did well. The potatoes, they informed me, yielded two hundred
+bushels per acre, and sold in Virginia City, fifty miles distant, at
+twenty-five cents per pound, turnips at twenty cents, onions at forty
+cents, cabbage at sixty cents, peas and beans at fifty cents per pound
+in the pod, and corn at two dollars a dozen ears. Vines of all kinds
+seem to flourish; and we see no reason why fruit may not be grown here,
+as the climate is much more mild than in many of the States where it is
+a staple.
+
+"The valley at the Three Forks, as also the valley along the streams, as
+they recede from the junction, are spacious, and yield a spontaneous
+growth of herbage, upon which cattle fatten during the winter....
+
+"The Yellow Stone is navigable for several hundred miles from its mouth,
+penetrating the heart of the agricultural and mineral regions of Eastern
+Montana.... The section is undulating, with ranges of mountains, clad
+with evergreens, between which are beautiful valleys and winding
+streams, where towns and cities will spring up to adorn these mountain
+retreats, and give room for expanding civilization....
+
+"On the east side of the mountains the mines are rich beyond
+calculation, the yield thus far having equalled the most productive
+locality of California of equal extent. The Bannock or Grasshopper mines
+were discovered in July, 1862, and are situated on Grasshopper Creek,
+which is a tributary of the Jefferson fork of the Missouri. The mining
+district here extends five miles down the creek, from Bannock City,
+which is situated at the head of the gulch, while upon either side of
+the creek the mountains are intersected with gold-bearing quartz lodes,
+many of which have been found to be very rich....
+
+"While gold has been found in paying quantities all along the Rocky
+chain, its deposits are not confined to this locality, but sweep across
+the country eastward some hundreds of miles, to the Big Horn Mountains.
+The gold discoveries there cover a large area of country."[G]
+
+Governor Stevens says: "Voyagers travel all winter from Lake Superior to
+the Missouri, with horses and sleds, having to make their own roads, and
+are not deterred by snows."
+
+Alexander Culbertson, the great voyager and trader of the Upper
+Missouri, who, for the last twenty years, has made frequent trips from
+St. Louis to Fort Benton, has never found the snow drifted enough to
+interfere with travelling. The average depth is twelve inches, and
+frequently it does not exceed six.[H]
+
+Through such a country, east of the mountains, lies the shortest line of
+railway between the Atlantic and Pacific,--a country rich in mineral
+wealth, of fertile soil, mild climate, verdant valleys, timbered hills,
+arable lands yielding grains and grass, with mountain streams for the
+turning of mill-wheels, rich coal beds, and springs of petroleum!
+
+
+THE MOUNTAINS.
+
+There are several passes at the head-waters of the Missouri which may be
+used;--the Hell-Gate Pass; the Deer Lodge; and the Wisdom River, or Big
+Hole, as it is sometimes called, which leads into the valley of the
+Bitter Root, or St. Mary's. The Big Hole is thus described by Lieutenant
+Mullan:--
+
+"The descent towards the Missouri side is very gradual; so much so,
+that, were it not for the direction taken by the waters, it might be
+considered an almost level prairie country."[I]
+
+Governor Stevens thus speaks of the valley of the Bitter Root:--
+
+"The faint attempts made by the Indians at cultivating the soil have
+been attended with good success; and fair returns might be expected of
+all such crops as are adapted to the Northern States of our country. The
+pasturage grounds are unsurpassed. The extensive bands of horses, owned
+by the Flathead Indians occupying St. Mary's village, on the Bitter Root
+River, thrive well winter and summer. One hundred horses, belonging to
+the exploration, are wintered in the valley; and up to the 9th of March
+the grass was fair, but little snow had fallen, and the weather was
+mild. The oxen and cows, owned here by the half-breeds and Indians,
+obtain good feed, and are in good condition."[J]
+
+This village of St Mary's is sixty miles down the valley from the Big
+Hole Pass; yet, though so near, snow seldom falls, and the grass is so
+verdant that horses and cattle subsist the year round on the natural
+pasturage.
+
+Lieutenant Mullan says of it: "The fact of the exceedingly mild winters
+in this valley has been noticed and remarked by all who have ever been
+in it during the winter season. It is the home of the Flathead Indians,
+who, through the instrumentality and exertions of the Jesuit priests,
+have built up a village,--not of logs, but of houses,--where they repair
+every winter, and, with this valley covered with an abundance of rich
+and nutritious grass, they live as comfortably as any tribe west of the
+Rocky Mountains....
+
+"The numerous mountain rivulets, tributary to the Bitter Root River,
+that run through the valley, afford excellent and abundant mill-seats;
+and the land bordering these is fertile and productive, and has been
+found, beyond cavil or doubt, to be well suited to every branch of
+agriculture. I have seen oats, grown by Mr. John Owen, that are as heavy
+and as excellent as any I have ever seen in the States; and the same
+gentleman informs me that he has grown excellent wheat, and that, from
+his experience while in the mountains, he hesitated not in saying that
+agriculture might be carried on here in all its numerous branches, and
+to the exceeding great interest and gain of those engaged in it. The
+valley and mountain slopes are well timbered with an excellent growth of
+pine, which is equal, in every respect, to the well-known pine of
+Oregon. The valley is not only capable of grazing immense bands of stock
+of every kind, but is also capable of supporting a dense population.
+
+"The provisions of Nature here, therefore, are on no small scale, and of
+no small importance; and let those who have imagined--as some have been
+bold to say it--that there exists only one immense bed of mountains at
+the head-waters of the Missouri to the Cascade Range, turn their
+attention to this section, and let them contemplate its advantages and
+resources, and ask themselves, since these things exist, can it be long
+before public attention shall be attracted and fastened upon this
+heretofore unknown region?"[K]
+
+
+CLIMATE OF THE MOUNTAINS.
+
+We have been accustomed to think of the Rocky Mountains as an impassable
+barrier, as a wild, dreary solitude, where the storms of winter piled
+the mountain passes with snow. How different the fact! In 1852-53, from
+the 28th of November to the 10th of January, there were but twelve
+inches of snow in the pass. The recorded observations during the winter
+of 1861-62 give the following measurements in the Big Hole Pass:
+December 4, eighteen inches; January 10, fourteen; January 14, ten;
+February 16, six; March 21, none.
+
+We have been told that there could be no winter travel across the
+mountains,--that the snow would lie in drifts fifteen or twenty feet
+deep; but instead, there is daily communication by teams through the Big
+Hole Pass every day in the year! The belt of snow is narrow, existing
+only in the Pass.
+
+Says Lieutenant Mullan, in his late Report on the wagon road: "The snow
+will offer no great obstacle to travel, with horses or locomotives, from
+the Missouri to the Columbia."
+
+This able and efficient government officer, in the same Report, says of
+this section of the country:--
+
+"The trade and travel along the Upper Columbia, where several steamers
+now ply between busy marts, of themselves attest what magical effects
+the years have wrought. Besides gold, lead for miles is found along the
+Kootenay. Red hermatite, iron ore, traces of copper, and plumbago are
+found along the main Bitter Root. Cinnabar is said to exist along the
+Hell Gate. Coal is found along the Upper Missouri, and a deposit of
+cannel coal near the Three Butts, northwest of Fort Benton, is also said
+to exist. Iron ore has been found on Thompson's farms on the Clark's
+Fork. Sulphur is found on the Loo Loo Fork, and on the tributaries of
+the Yellow Stone, and coal oil is said to exist on the Big Horn....
+These great mineral deposits must have an ultimate bearing upon the
+location of the Pacific Railroad, adding, as they will, trade, travel,
+and wealth to its every mile when built....
+
+"The great depots for building material exist principally in the
+mountain sections, but the plains on either side are not destitute in
+that particular. All through the Bitter Root and Rocky Mountains, the
+finest white and red cedar, white pine, and red fir that I ever have
+seen are found."[L]
+
+
+GEOLOGICAL FEATURES.
+
+The geological formation of the heart of the continent promises to open
+a rich field for scientific exploration and investigation. The Wind
+River Mountain, which divides the Yellow Stone from the Great Basin, is
+a marked and distinct geological boundary. From the northern slope flow
+the tributaries of the Yellow Stone, fed by springs of boiling water,
+which perceptibly affect the temperature of the region, clothing the
+valleys with verdure, and making them the winter home of the
+buffalo,--the favorite hunting-grounds of the Indians,--while the
+streams which flow from the southern slope of the mountains are
+alkaline, and, instead of luxuriant vegetation, there are vast regions
+covered with wild sage and cactus. They run into the Great Salt Lake,
+and have no outlet to the ocean. A late writer, describing the
+geological features of that section, says:--
+
+"Upon the great interior desert streams and fuel are almost unknown.
+Wells must be very deep, and no simple and cheap machinery adequate to
+drawing up the water is yet invented. Cultivation, to a great extent,
+must be carried on by irrigation."[M]
+
+Such are the slopes of the mountains which form the rim of the Great
+Basin, while the valley of the Yellow Stone is literally the land which
+buds and blossoms like the rose. The Rosebud River is so named because
+the valley through which it meanders is a garden of roses.
+
+And here, along the head-waters of the Yellow Stone and its tributaries,
+at the northern deflection of the Wind River chain of mountains, flows a
+_river of hot wind_, which is not only one of the most remarkable
+features of the climatology of the continent, but which is destined to
+have a great bearing upon the civilization of this portion of the
+continent. St. Joseph in Missouri, in latitude 40 deg., has the same mean
+temperature as that at the base of the Rocky Mountains in latitude 47 deg.!
+The high temperature of the hot boiling springs warms the air which
+flows northwest along the base of the mountains, sweeping through the
+Big Hole Pass, the Deer Lodge, Little Blackfoot, and Mullan Pass, giving
+a delightful winter climate to the valley of the St. Mary's, or Bitter
+Root. It flows like the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic. Says Captain
+Mullan: "On its either side, north and south, are walls of cold air, and
+which are so clearly perceptible that you always detect the river when
+you are on its shores."[N]
+
+This great river of heat always flowing is sufficient to account for the
+slight depth of snow in the passes at the head-waters of the Missouri,
+which have an altitude of six thousand feet. The South Pass has an
+altitude of seven thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine feet. The
+passes of the Wasatch Range, on the route to California, are higher by
+three thousand feet than those at the head-waters of the Missouri, and,
+not being swept by a stream of hot air, are filled with snows during the
+winter months. The passes at the head-waters of the Saskatchawan, in the
+British possessions, though a few hundred feet lower than those at the
+head-waters of the Missouri, are not reached by the heated Wind River,
+and are impassable in winter. Even Cadotte's Pass, through which
+Governor Stevens located the line of the proposed road, is outside of
+the heat stream, so sharp and perpendicular are its walls.
+
+Captain Mullan says: "From whatsoever cause it arises, it exists as a
+fact that must for all time enter as an element worthy of every
+attention in lines of travel and communication from the Eastern plains
+to the North Pacific."[O]
+
+
+DISTANCES.
+
+That this line is the natural highway of the continent is evident from
+other considerations. The distances between the centres of trade and San
+Francisco, and with Puget Sound, will appear from the following tabular
+statement:--
+
+                         APPROXIMATE DISTANCES.
+
+           | to San Francisco | to Puget Sound | Difference
+           |------------------|----------------|-----------
+Chicago    |   2,448 miles[P] |   1,906 miles  |  542 miles
+St. Louis  |   2,345   "      |   1,981   "    |  364   "
+Cincinnati |   2,685   "      |   2,200   "    |  486   "
+New York   |   3,417   "      |   2,892   "    |  525   "
+Boston     |   3,484   "      |   2,942   "    |  542   "
+
+The line to Puget Sound will require no tunnel in the pass of the Rocky
+Mountains. The approaches of the Big Hole and Deer Lodge in both
+directions are eminently feasible, requiring little rock excavation, and
+with no grades exceeding eighty feet per mile.
+
+All of the places east of the latitude of Chicago, and north of the Ohio
+River, are from three hundred to five hundred and fifty miles nearer the
+Pacific at Puget Sound than at San Francisco,--due to greater directness
+of the route and the shortening of longitude. These on both lines are
+the approximate distances. The distance from Puget Sound to St. Louis is
+estimated--via Desmoines--on the supposition that the time will come
+when that line of railway will extend north far enough to intersect with
+the North Pacific.
+
+
+COST OF CONSTRUCTION.
+
+The census of 1860 gives thirty thousand miles of railroad in operation,
+which cost, including land damages, equipment, and all charges of
+construction, $37,120 per mile. The average cost of fifteen New England
+roads, including the Boston and Lowell, Boston and Maine, Vermont
+Central, Western, Eastern, and Boston and Providence, was $36,305 per
+mile. In the construction of this line, there will be no charge for land
+damages, and nothing for timber, which exists along nearly the entire
+line. But as iron and labor command a higher price than when those roads
+were constructed, there should be a liberal estimate. Lieutenant Mullan,
+in his late Report upon the Construction of the Wagon Road, discusses
+the probability of a railroad at length, and with much ability. His
+highest estimate for any portion of the line is sixty thousand dollars
+per mile,--an estimate given before civilization made an opening in the
+wilderness. There is no reason to believe that this line will be any
+more costly than the average of roads in the United States.
+
+In 1850 there were 7,355 miles of road in operation; in 1860, 30,793;
+showing that 2,343 miles per annum were constructed by the people of the
+United States. The following table shows the number of miles built in
+each year from 1853 to 1856, together with the cost of the same.
+
+Year.             Miles.               Cost.
+
+1852              2,541             $ 94,000,000
+1853              2,748              101,576,000
+1854              3,549              125,313,000
+1855              2,736              101,232,000
+1856              3,578              132,386,000
+                                     -----------
+Total expenditure for five years,   $554,507,000
+
+This exhibit is sufficient to indicate that there need be no question of
+our financial ability to construct the road.
+
+In 1856, the country had expended $776,000,000 in the construction of
+railroads, incurring a debt of about $300,000,000. The entire amount of
+stock and bonds held abroad at that time was estimated at only
+$81,000,000.[Q]
+
+
+AID FROM GOVERNMENT.
+
+The desire of the people for the speedy opening of this great national
+highway is manifested by the action of the government, which, by act of
+Congress, July 2, 1864, granted the alternate sections of land for
+twenty miles on each side of the road in aid of the enterprise. The land
+thus appropriated amounts to forty-seven million acres,--more than is
+comprised in the States of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and
+New York! If all of these lands were sold at the price fixed by
+government,--$2.50 per acre,--they would yield $118,000,000,--a sum
+sufficient to build and equip the road. But years must elapse before
+these lands can be put upon the market, and the government, undoubtedly,
+will give the same aid to this road which has already been given to the
+Central Pacific Road, guaranteeing the bonds or stock of the company,
+and taking a lien on the road for security. Such bonds would at once
+command the necessary capital for building the road.
+
+
+THE WESTERN TERMINUS.
+
+Puget Sound, with its numerous inlets, is a deep indentation of the
+Pacific coast, one hundred miles north of the Columbia. It has spacious
+harbors, securely land-locked, with a surrounding country abounding in
+timber, with exhaustless beds of coal, rich in agricultural resources,
+and with numerous mill-streams. Nature has stamped it with her seal, and
+set it apart to be the New England of the Pacific coast.
+
+That portion of the country is to be peopled by farmers, mechanics, and
+artisans. California is rich in mineral wealth. Her valleys and
+mountain-slopes yield abundant harvests; but she has few mill-streams,
+and is dependent upon Oregon and Washington for her coal and lumber. An
+inferior quality of coal is mined at Mount Diablo in California; but
+most of the coal consumed in that State is brought from Puget Sound.
+Hence Nature has fixed the locality of the future manufacturing industry
+of the Pacific. Puget Sound is nearer than San Francisco, by several
+hundred miles, to Japan, China, and Australia. It is therefore the
+natural port of entry and departure for our Pacific trade. It has
+advantages over San Francisco, not only in being nearer to those
+countries, but in having coal near at hand, which settles the question
+of the future steam marine of the Pacific.
+
+Passengers, goods of high cost, and bills of exchange, move on the
+shortest and quickest lines of travel. No business man takes the
+way-train in preference to the express. Sailing vessels make the voyage
+from Puget Sound to Shanghai in from thirty to forty days. Steamers will
+make it in twenty.
+
+
+TRADE WITH ASIA.
+
+Far-seeing men in England are looking forward to the time when the trade
+between that country and the Pacific will be carried on across this
+continent. Colonel Synge, of the Queen's Royal Engineers, says:--
+
+"America is geographically a connecting link between the continents of
+Europe and Asia, and not a monstrous barrier between them. It lies in
+the track of their nearest and best connection; and this fact needs only
+to be fully recognized to render it in practice what it unquestionably
+is in the essential points of distance and direction."[R]
+
+Another English writer says:--
+
+"It is believed that the amount of direct traffic which would be created
+between Australia, China, and Japan, and England, by a railway from
+Halifax to the Gulf of Georgia, would soon more than cover the interest
+upon the capital expended.... If the intended railway were connected
+with a line of steamers plying between Victoria (Puget Sound), Sydney,
+or New Zealand, mails, quick freight, passengers to and from our
+colonies in the southern hemisphere, would, for the most part, be
+secured for this route.
+
+"Vancouver's Island is nearer to Sydney than Panama by nine hundred
+miles; and, with the exception of the proposed route by a Trans-American
+railway, the latter is the most expeditious that has been found.
+
+"By this interoceanic communication, the time to New Zealand would be
+reduced to forty-two, and to Sydney to forty-seven days, being at least
+ten less than by steam from England via Panama."[S]
+
+Lord Bury says:--
+
+"Our trade [English] in the Pacific Ocean with China and with India must
+ultimately be carried through our North American possessions. At any
+rate, our political and commercial supremacy will have utterly departed
+from us, if we neglect that great and important consideration, and if we
+fail to carry out to its fullest extent the physical advantages which
+the country offers to us, and which we have only to stretch out our
+hands to take advantage of."[T]
+
+Shanghai is rapidly becoming the great commercial emporium of China. It
+is situated at the mouth of the Yangtse-Kiang, the largest river of
+Asia, navigable for fifteen hundred miles. Hong-Kong, which has been the
+English centre in China, is nine hundred and sixty miles farther south.
+
+With a line of railway across this continent, the position of England
+would be as follows:--
+
+To Shanghai via Suez,              60 days.
+"     "    "    Puget Sound,       33   "
+
+Mr. Maciff divides the time as follows by the Puget Sound route:--
+
+Southampton to Halifax,       9 days.
+Halifax to Puget Sound,       6    "
+Puget Sound to Hong-Kong,    21    "
+                             --
+                             36
+
+The voyage by Suez is made in the Peninsular and Oriental line of
+steamers. The passage is proverbially comfortless,--through the Red Sea
+and Persian Gulf, across the Bay of Bengal, through the Straits of
+Malacca, and up the Chinese coast, under a tropical sun. Bayard Taylor
+thus describes the trip down the Red Sea:--
+
+"We had a violent head-wind, or rather gale. Yet, in spite of this
+current of air, the thermometer stood at 85 deg. on deck, and 90 deg. in the
+cabin. For two or three days we had a temperature of 90 deg. to 95 deg.. This
+part of the Red Sea is considered to be the hottest portion of the
+earth's surface. In the summer the air is like that of a furnace, and
+the bare red mountains glow like heaps of live coals. The steamers at
+that time almost invariably lose some of their firemen and stewards.
+Cooking is quite given up."[U]
+
+Bankok, Singapore, and Java can be reached more quickly from England by
+Puget Sound than by Suez.
+
+Notwithstanding the discomforts of the passage down the Red Sea, the
+steamers are always overcrowded with passengers, and loaded to their
+utmost capacity with freight. The French line, the Messageries Imperials
+de France, has been established, and is fully employed. Both lines pay
+large dividends.
+
+The growth of the English trade with China during the last sixteen years
+has been very rapid. Tea has increased 1300 per cent, and silk 950.[V]
+
+The trade between the single port of Shanghai and England and America in
+the two great staples of export is seen from the following statement of
+the export of tea and silk from that port from July 1, 1859, to July 1,
+1860:--
+
+                      Tea, lbs.       Silk, bales.
+Great Britain,       31,621,000         19,084
+United States,       18,299,000          1,554
+Canada,               1,172,000
+France,                                 47,000
+
+The total value of exports from England to China in 1860 was
+$26,590,000. Says Colonel Sykes:--
+
+"Our trade with China resolves itself into our taking almost exclusively
+from them teas and raw silk, and their taking from us cotton, cotton
+yarns, and woollens."[W]
+
+The exports of the United States to the Pacific in 1861 were as
+follows:--
+
+To China,               $5,809,724
+Australia,               3,410,000
+Islands of the Pacific     484,000
+                        ----------
+       Total,           $9,703,724
+
+By the late treaty between the United States and China, that empire is
+thrown open to trade; and already a large fleet of American-built
+steamers is afloat on the gleaming waters of the Yang-tse. Mr.
+Burlingame, our present Minister, is soon to take his departure for that
+empire, with instructions to use his utmost endeavor to promote friendly
+relations between the two countries. That this country is to have an
+immense trade with China is evident from the fact that no other country
+can compete with us in the manufacture of coarse cotton goods, which,
+with cotton at its normal price, will be greatly sought after by the
+majority of the people of that country, who of necessity are compelled
+to wear the cheapest clothing.
+
+Shanghai is the silk emporium of the empire. A ton of silk goods is
+worth from ten to fifteen thousand dollars. Nearly all of the silk is
+now shipped by the Peninsular and Oriental line, at a charge of $125 to
+$150 per ton; and notwithstanding these exorbitant rates, Shanghai
+merchants are compelled to make written application weeks in advance,
+and accept proportional allotments for shipping. In May, 1863, the
+screw-steamer Bahama made the trip from Foochow to London in eighty days
+with a cargo of tea, and obtained sixty dollars per ton, while freights
+by sailing vessels were but twenty dollars; the shippers being willing
+to pay forty dollars per ton for forty days' quicker delivery. With the
+Northern Pacific line constructed, the British importer could receive
+his Shanghai goods across this continent in fifty days, and at a rate
+lower than by the Peninsular line.
+
+The route by the Peninsular line runs within eighty miles of the
+Equator; and the entire voyage is through a tropical climate, which
+injures the flavor of the tea. Hence the high price of the celebrated
+"brick tea," brought across the steppes of Russia. The route by Puget
+Sound is wholly through temperate latitudes, across a smooth and
+peaceful sea, seldom vexed by storms, and where currents, like the Gulf
+Stream of Mexico, and favoring trade-winds, may be taken advantage of by
+vessels plying between that port and the Asiatic coast.
+
+Japan is only four thousand miles distant from Puget Sound. The teas and
+silks of that country are rapidly coming into market. Coal is found
+there, and on the island of Formosa, and up the Yang-tse.
+
+
+CLIMATE
+
+The climate of Puget Sound is thus set forth by an English writer, who
+has passed several months at Victoria:--
+
+"From October to March we are liable to frequent rains; but this period
+of damp is ever and anon relieved by prolonged intervals of bright dry
+weather. In March, winter gives signs of taking its departure, and the
+warm breath of spring begins to cover the trees with tinted buds and the
+fields with verdure.... The sensations produced by the aspects of nature
+in May are indescribably delightful. The freshness of the air, the
+warbling of birds, the clearness of the sky, the profusion and fragrance
+of wild roses, the widespread, variegated hues of buttercups and
+daisies, the islets and violets, together with the distant snow-peaks
+bursting upon the view, combine in that month to fill the mind with
+enchantment unequalled out of Paradise. I know gentlemen who have lived
+in China, Italy, Canada, and England; but, after a residence of some
+years in Vancouver Island, they entertained a preference for the climate
+of the colony which approached affectionate enthusiasm."[X]
+
+The climate of the whole section through which the line passes is
+milder than that of the Grand Trunk line. The lowest degree of
+temperature in 1853--54 at Quebec was 29 below zero; Montreal, 34; St.
+Paul, 36; Bitter Root Valley, forty miles from Big Hole Pass, 20.
+
+In 1858 a party of Royal Engineers, under Captain Pallissir, surveyed
+the country of the Saskatchawan for a line to Puget Sound which should
+lie wholly within the British possessions. They found a level and
+fertile country, receding to the very base of the mountains, and a
+practicable pass, of less altitude than those at the head-waters of the
+Missouri; but in winter the snow is deep and the climate severe. That
+section of Canada north of Superior is an unbroken, uninhabitable
+wilderness. The character of the region is thus set forth by Agassiz. He
+says:--
+
+"Unless the mines should attract and support a population, one sees not
+how this region should ever be inhabited. Its stern and northern
+character is shown in nothing more clearly than in the scarcity of
+animals. The woods are silent, and as if deserted. One may walk for
+hours without hearing an animal sound; and when he does, it is of a wild
+and lonely character.... It is like being transported to the early ages
+of the earth, when mosses and pines had just begun to cover the primeval
+rock, and the animals as yet ventured timidly forth into the new
+world."[Y]
+
+
+THE FUTURE.
+
+The census returns of the United States indicate that, thirty-four years
+hence, in the year 1900, the population of this country will exceed one
+hundred millions. What an outlook! The country a teeming hive of
+industry; innumerable sails whitening the Western Ocean; unnumbered
+steamers ploughing its peaceful waters; great cities in the unexplored
+solitudes of to-day; America the highway of the nations; and New York
+the banking-house of the world!
+
+This is the age of the people. They are the sovereigns of the future. It
+is the age of ideas. The people of America stand on the threshold of a
+new era. We are to come in contact with a people numbering nearly half
+the population of the globe, claiming a nationality dating back to the
+time of Moses. A hundred thousand Chinese are in California and Oregon,
+and every ship sailing into the harbor of San Francisco brings its load
+of emigrants from Asia. What is to be the effect of this contact with
+the Orient upon our civilization? What the result of this pouring in of
+emigrants from every country of the world,--of all languages, manners,
+customs, nationalities, and religions? Can they be assimilated into a
+homogeneous mass? These are grave questions, demanding the earnest and
+careful consideration of every Christian, philanthropist, and patriot.
+We have fought for existence, and have a name among the nations. But we
+have still the nation to save. Railroads, telegraphs, steamships,
+printing-presses, schools, platforms, and pulpits are the agents of
+modern civilization. Through them we are to secure unity, strength, and
+national life. Securing these, Asia may send over her millions of
+idol-worshippers without detriment to ourselves. With these, America is
+to give life to the long-slumbering Orient.
+
+So ever toward the setting sun the course of empire takes its way,--not
+the empire of despotism, but of life, liberty,--of civilization and the
+Christian religion.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[D] Lewis and Clark's Expedition to the Columbia, Vol. II. p. 392.
+
+[E] Ibid., p. 397.
+
+[F] See Pacific Railroad Report, Vol. I. p. 239.
+
+[G] Idaho: Six Months among the New Gold Diggings, by J. L. Campbell,
+pp. 15-28.
+
+[H] Pacific Railroad Report, Vol. I. p. 130.
+
+[I] Ibid., Vol. XII. p. 169.
+
+[J] Governor Stevens's Report of the Pacific Railroad Survey.
+
+[K] Pacific Railroad Survey. Lieutenant Mullan's Report.
+
+[L] Lieutenant Mullan's Report on the Construction of Wagon Road from
+Fort Benton to Walla-Walla, p. 45.
+
+[M] New York Tribune, December 2, 1865, correspondence of "A. D. R."
+
+[N] Report of Captain Mullan, p. 54.
+
+[O] Report of Captain Mullan, p. 54.
+
+[P] Hall's Guide,--via Omaha, Denver, and Salt Lake.
+
+[Q] Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, 1857.
+
+[R] Paper read before the British North American Association, July 21,
+1864.
+
+[S] Vancouver's Island and British Columbia, Maciff, p. 343.
+
+[T] Speech by Lord Bury, quoted by Maciff.
+
+[U] India, China, and Japan, p. 23.
+
+[V] Statistical Journal, 1862.
+
+[W] Statistical Journal, 1862, p. 15.
+
+[X] Vancouver and British Columbia, Maciff, p. 179.
+
+[Y] Agassiz, Lake Superior, p. 124.
+
+
+
+
+IN THE SEA.
+
+
+    The salt wind blows upon my cheek
+      As it blew a year ago,
+    When twenty boats were crushed among
+      The rocks of Norman's Woe.
+    'Twas dark then; 't is light now,
+      And the sails are leaning low.
+
+    In dreams, I pull the sea-weed o'er,
+      And find a face not his,
+    And hope another tide will be
+      More pitying than this:
+    The wind turns, the tide turns,--
+      They take what hope there is.
+
+    My life goes on as thine would go,
+      With all its sweetness spilled:
+    My God, why should one heart of two
+      Beat on, when one is stilled?
+    Through heart-wreck, or home-wreck,
+      Thy happy sparrows build.
+
+    Though boats go down, men build anew,
+      Whatever winds may blow;
+    If blight be in the wheat one year,
+      We trust again and sow,
+    Though grief comes, and changes
+      The sunshine into snow.
+
+    Some have their dead, where, sweet and soon,
+      The summers bloom and go:
+    The sea withholds my dead,--I walk
+      The bar when tides are low,
+    And wonder the grave-grass
+      Can have the heart to grow!
+
+    Flow on, O unconsenting sea,
+      And keep my dead below;
+    Though night--O utter night!--my soul,
+      Delude thee long, I know,
+    Or Life comes or Death comes,
+      God leads the eternal flow.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.
+
+
+III.
+
+IS WOMAN A WORKER?
+
+"Papa, do you see what the Evening Post says of your New-Year's article
+on Reconstruction?" said Jennie, as we were all sitting in the library
+after tea.
+
+"I have not seen it."
+
+"Well, then, the charming writer, whoever he is, takes up for us girls
+and women, and maintains that no work of any sort ought to be expected
+of us; that our only mission in life is to be beautiful, and to refresh
+and elevate the spirits of men by being so. If I get a husband, my
+mission is to be always becomingly dressed, to display most captivating
+toilettes, and to be always in good spirits,--as, under the
+circumstances, I always should be,--and thus 'renew his spirits' when he
+comes in weary with the toils of life. Household cares are to be far
+from me: they destroy my cheerfulness and injure my beauty.
+
+"He says that the New England standard of excellence as applied to woman
+has been a mistaken one; and, in consequence, though the girls are
+beautiful, the matrons are faded, overworked, and uninteresting; and
+that such a state of society tends to immorality, because, when wives
+are no longer charming, men are open to the temptation to desert their
+firesides, and get into mischief generally. He seems particularly to
+complain of your calling ladies who do nothing the 'fascinating
+_lazzaroni_ of the parlor and boudoir.'"
+
+"There was too much truth back of that arrow not to wound," said
+Theophilus Thoro, who was ensconced, as usual, in his dark corner,
+whence he supervises our discussions.
+
+"Come, Mr. Thoro, we won't have any of your bitter moralities," said
+Jennie; "they are only to be taken as the invariable bay-leaf which
+Professor Blot introduces into all his recipes for soups and stews,--a
+little elegant bitterness, to be kept tastefully in the background. You
+see now, papa, I should like the vocation of being beautiful. It would
+just suit me to wear point-lace and jewelry, and to have life revolve
+round me, as some beautiful star, and feel that I had nothing to do but
+shine and refresh the spirits of all gazers, and that in this way I was
+truly useful, and fulfilling the great end of my being; but alas for
+this doctrine! all women have not beauty. The most of us can only hope
+not to be called ill-looking, and, when we get ourselves up with care,
+to look fresh and trim and agreeable; which fact interferes with the
+theory."
+
+"Well, for my part," said young Rudolph, "I go for the theory of the
+beautiful. If ever I marry, it is to find an asylum for ideality. I
+don't want to make a culinary marriage or a business partnership. I want
+a being whom I can keep in a sphere of poetry and beauty, out of the
+dust and grime of every-day life."
+
+"Then," said Mr. Theophilus, "you must either be a rich man in your own
+right, or your fair ideal must have a handsome fortune of her own."
+
+"I never will marry a rich wife," quoth Rudolph. "My wife must be
+supported by me, not I by her."
+
+Rudolph is another of the _habitues_ of our chimney-corner, representing
+the order of young knighthood in America, and his dreams and fancies, if
+impracticable, are always of a kind to make every one think him a good
+fellow. He who has no romantic dreams at twenty-one will be a horribly
+dry peascod at fifty; therefore it is that I gaze reverently at all
+Rudolph's chateaus in Spain, which want nothing to complete them except
+solid earth to stand on.
+
+"And pray," said Theophilus, "how long will it take a young lawyer or
+physician, starting with no heritage but his own brain, to create a
+sphere of poetry and beauty in which to keep his goddess? How much a
+year will be necessary, as the English say, to _do_ this garden of Eden,
+whereinto shall enter only the poetry of life?"
+
+"I don't know. I haven't seen it near enough to consider. It is because
+I know the difficulty of its attainment that I have no present thoughts
+of marriage. Marriage is to me in the bluest of all blue distances,--far
+off, mysterious, and dreamy as the Mountains of the Moon or sources of
+the Nile. It shall come only when I have secured a fortune that shall
+place my wife above all necessity of work or care."
+
+"I desire to hear from you," said Theophilus, "when you have found the
+sum that will keep a woman from care. I know of women now inhabiting
+palaces, waited on at every turn by servants, with carriages, horses,
+jewels, laces, cashmeres, enough for princesses, who are eaten up by
+care. One lies awake all night on account of a wrinkle in the waist of
+her dress; another is dying because no silk of a certain inexpressible
+shade is to be found in New York; a third has had a dress sent home,
+which has proved such a failure that life seems no longer worth having.
+If it were not for the consolations of religion, one doesn't know what
+would become of her. The fact is, that care and labor are as much
+correlated to human existence as shadow is to light; there is no such
+thing as excluding them from any mortal lot. You may make a canary-bird
+or a gold-fish live in absolute contentment without a care or labor, but
+a human being you cannot. Human beings are restless and active in their
+very nature, and will do something, and that something will prove a
+care, a labor, and a fatigue, arrange it how you will. As long as there
+is anything to be desired and not yet attained, so long its attainment
+will be attempted; so long as that attainment is doubtful or difficult,
+so long will there be care and anxiety. When boundless wealth releases
+woman from every family care, she immediately makes herself a new set of
+cares in another direction, and has just as many anxieties as the most
+toilful housekeeper, only they are of a different kind. Talk of labor,
+and look at the upper classes in London or in New York in the
+fashionable season. Do any women work harder? To rush from crowd to
+crowd all night, night after night, seeing what they are tired of,
+making the agreeable over an abyss of inward yawning, crowded, jostled,
+breathing hot air, and crushed in halls and stairways, without a moment
+of leisure for months and months, till brain and nerve and sense reel,
+and the country is longed for as a period of resuscitation and relief!
+Such is the release from labor and fatigue brought by wealth. The only
+thing that makes all this labor at all endurable is, that it is utterly
+and entirely useless, and does not good to any one in creation; this
+alone makes it genteel, and distinguishes it from the vulgar toils of a
+housekeeper. These delicate creatures, who can go to three or four
+parties a night for three months, would be utterly desolate if they had
+to watch one night in a sick-room; and though they can exhibit any
+amount of physical endurance and vigor in crowding into assembly rooms,
+and breathe tainted air in an opera-house with the most martyr-like
+constancy, they could not sit one half-hour in the close room where the
+sister of charity spends hours in consoling the sick or aged poor."
+
+"Mr. Theophilus is quite at home now," said Jennie; "only start him on
+the track of fashionable life, and he takes the course like a hound. But
+hear, now, our champion of the Evening Post:--
+
+"'The instinct of women to seek a life of repose, their eagerness to
+attain the life of elegance, does not mean contempt for labor, but it is
+the confession of unfitness for labor. Women were not intended to
+work,--not because work is ignoble, but because it is as disastrous to
+the beauty of a woman as is friction to the bloom and softness of a
+flower. Woman is to be kept in the garden of life; she is to rest, to
+receive, to praise; she is to be kept from the workshop world, where
+innocence is snatched with rude hands, and softness is blistered into
+unsightliness or hardened into adamant. No social truth is more in need
+of exposition and illustration than this one; and, above all, the people
+of New England need to know it, and, better, they need to believe it.
+
+"'It is therefore with regret that we discover Christopher Crowfield
+applying so harshly, and, as we think, so indiscriminatingly, the theory
+of work to women, and teaching a society made up of women sacrificed in
+the workshops of the state, or to the dust-pans and kitchens of the
+house, that women must work, ought to work, and are dishonored if they
+do not work; and that a woman committed to the drudgery of a household
+is more creditably employed than when she is charming, fascinating,
+irresistible, in the parlor or boudoir. The consequence of this fatal
+mistake is manifest throughout New England,--in New England, where the
+girls are all beautiful and the wives and mothers faded, disfigured, and
+without charm or attractiveness. The moment a girl marries in New
+England she is apt to become a drudge, or a lay figure on which to
+exhibit the latest fashions. She never has beautiful hands, and she
+would not have a beautiful face if a utilitarian society could "apply"
+her face to anything but the pleasure of the eye. Her hands lose their
+shape and softness after childhood, and domestic drudgery destroys her
+beauty of form and softness and bloom of complexion after marriage. To
+correct, or rather to break up, this despotism of household cares, or of
+work, over woman, American society must be taught that women will
+inevitably fade and deteriorate, unless it insures repose and comfort to
+them. It must be taught that reverence for beauty is the normal
+condition, while the theory of work, applied to women, is disastrous
+alike to beauty and morals. Work, when it is destructive to men or
+women, is forced and unjust.
+
+"'All the great masculine or creative epochs have been distinguished by
+spontaneous work on the part of men, and universal reverence and care
+for beauty. The praise of work, and sacrifice of women to this great
+heartless devil of work, belong only to, and are the social doctrine of,
+a mechanical age and a utilitarian epoch. And if the New England idea of
+social life continues to bear so cruelly on woman, we shall have a
+reaction somewhat unexpected and shocking.'"
+
+"Well now, say what you will," said Rudolph, "you have expressed my idea
+of the conditions of the sex. Woman was not made to work; she was made
+to be taken care of by man. All that is severe and trying, whether in
+study or in practical life, is and ought to be in its very nature
+essentially the work of the male sex. The value of woman is precisely
+the value of those priceless works of art for which we build
+museums,--which we shelter and guard as the world's choicest heritage;
+and a lovely, cultivated, refined woman, thus sheltered, and guarded,
+and developed, has a worth that cannot be estimated by any gross,
+material standard. So I subscribe to the sentiments of Miss Jennie's
+friend without scruple."
+
+"The great trouble in settling all these society questions," said I,
+"lies in the gold-washing,--the cradling I think the miners call it. If
+all the quartz were in one stratum and all the gold in another, it would
+save us a vast deal of trouble. In the ideas of Jennie's friend of the
+Evening Post there is a line of truth and a line of falsehood so
+interwoven and threaded together that it is impossible wholly to assent
+or dissent. So with your ideas, Rudolph, there is a degree of truth in
+them, but there is also a fallacy.
+
+"It is a truth, that woman as a sex ought not to do the hard work of the
+world, either social, intellectual, or moral. There are evidences in her
+physiology that this was not intended for her, and our friend of the
+Evening Post is right in saying that any country will advance more
+rapidly in civilization and refinement where woman is thus sheltered and
+protected. And I think, furthermore, that there is no country in the
+world where women _are_ so much considered and cared for and sheltered,
+in every walk of life, as in America. In England and France,--all over
+the continent of Europe, in fact,--the other sex are deferential to
+women only from some presumption of their social standing, or from the
+fact of acquaintanceship; but among strangers, and under circumstances
+where no particular rank or position can be inferred, a woman travelling
+in England or France is jostled and pushed to the wall, and left to take
+her own chance, precisely as if she were not a woman. Deference to
+delicacy and weakness, the instinct of protection, does not appear to
+characterize the masculine population of any other quarter of the world
+so much as that of America. In France, _les Messieurs_ will form a
+circle round the fire in the receiving-room of a railroad station, and
+sit, tranquilly smoking their cigars, while ladies who do not happen to
+be of their acquaintance are standing shivering at the other side of the
+room. In England, if a lady is incautiously booked for an outside place
+on a coach, in hope of seeing the scenery, and the day turns out
+hopelessly rainy, no gentleman in the coach below ever thinks of
+offering to change seats with her, though it pour torrents. In America,
+the roughest backwoods steamboat or canal-boat captain always, as a
+matter of course, considers himself charged with the protection of the
+ladies. '_Place aux dames_' is written in the heart of many a shaggy
+fellow who could not utter a French word any more than could a buffalo.
+It is just as I have before said,--women are the recognized aristocracy,
+the _only_ aristocracy, of America; and, so far from regarding this fact
+as objectionable, it is an unceasing source of pride in my country.
+
+"That kind of knightly feeling towards woman which reverences her
+delicacy, her frailty, which protects and cares for her, is, I think,
+the crown of manhood; and without it a man is only a rough animal. But
+our fair aristocrats and their knightly defenders need to be cautioned
+lest they lose their position, as many privileged orders have before
+done, by an arrogant and selfish use of power.
+
+"I have said that the vices of aristocracy are more developed among
+women in America than among men, and that, while there are no men in the
+Northern States who are not ashamed of living a merely idle life of
+pleasure, there are many women who make a boast of helplessness and
+ignorance in woman's family duties which any man would be ashamed to
+make with regard to man's duties, as if such helplessness and ignorance
+were a grace and a charm.
+
+"There are women who contentedly live on, year after year, a life of
+idleness, while the husband and father is straining every nerve, growing
+prematurely old and gray, abridged of almost every form of recreation or
+pleasure,--all that he may keep them in a state of careless ease and
+festivity. It may be very fine, very generous, very knightly, in the man
+who thus toils at the oar that his princesses may enjoy their painted
+voyages; but what is it for the women?
+
+"A woman is a moral being,--an immortal soul,--before she is a woman;
+and as such she is charged by her Maker with some share of the great
+burden of _work_ which lies on the world.
+
+"Self-denial, the bearing of the cross, are stated by Christ as
+indispensable conditions to the entrance into his kingdom, and no
+exception is made for man or woman. Some task, some burden, some cross,
+each one must carry; and there must be something done in every true and
+worthy life, not as amusement, but as duty,--not as play, but as earnest
+_work_,--and no human being can attain to the Christian standard without
+this.
+
+"When Jesus Christ took a towel and girded himself, poured water into a
+basin, and washed his disciples' feet, he performed a significant and
+sacramental act, which no man or woman should ever forget. If wealth and
+rank and power absolve from the services of life, then certainly were
+Jesus Christ absolved, as he says,--'Ye call me Master, and Lord. If I,
+then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash
+one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do
+as I have done to you.'
+
+"Let a man who seeks to make a terrestrial paradise for the woman of his
+heart,--to absolve her from all care, from all labor,--to teach her to
+accept and to receive the labor of others without any attempt to offer
+labor in return,--consider whether he is not thus going directly against
+the fundamental idea of Christianity,--taking the direct way to make his
+idol selfish and exacting, to rob her of the highest and noblest beauty
+of womanhood.
+
+"In that chapter of the Bible where the relation between man and woman
+is stated, it is thus said, with quaint simplicity:--'It is not good
+that the man should be alone; I will make him an _help meet_ for him.'
+Woman the _helper_ of man, not his toy,--not a picture, not a statue,
+not a work of art, but a HELPER, a doer,--such is the view of the Bible
+and the Christian religion.
+
+"It is not necessary that women should work physically or morally to an
+extent which impairs beauty. In France, where woman is harnessed with an
+ass to the plough which her husband drives,--where she digs, and wields
+the pick-axe,--she becomes prematurely hideous; but in America, where
+woman reigns as queen in every household, she may surely be a good and
+thoughtful housekeeper, she may have physical strength exercised in
+lighter domestic toils, not only without injuring her beauty, but with
+manifest advantage to it. Almost every growing young girl would be the
+better in health, and therefore handsomer, for two hours of active
+housework daily; and the habit of usefulness thereby gained would be an
+equal advantage to her moral development. The labors of modern,
+well-arranged houses are not in any sense severe; they are as gentle as
+any kind of exercise that can be devised, and they bring into play
+muscles that ought to be exercised to be healthily developed.
+
+"The great danger to the beauty of American women does not lie, as the
+writer of the Post contends, in an overworking of the physical system
+which shall stunt and deform; on the contrary, American women of the
+comfortable classes are in danger of a loss of physical beauty from the
+entire deterioration of the muscular system for want of exercise. Take
+the life of any American girl in one of our large towns, and see what it
+is. We have an educational system of public schools which for
+intellectual culture is a just matter of pride to any country. From the
+time that the girl is seven years old, her first thought, when she rises
+in the morning, is to eat her breakfast and be off to her school. There
+really is no more time than enough to allow her to make that complete
+toilet which every well-bred female ought to make, and to take her
+morning meal before her school begins. She returns at noon with just
+time to eat her dinner, and the afternoon session begins. She comes home
+at night with books, slate, and lessons enough to occupy her evening.
+What time is there for teaching her any household work, for teaching her
+to cut or fit or sew, or to inspire her with any taste for domestic
+duties? Her arms have no exercise; her chest and lungs, and all the
+complex system of muscles which are to be perfected by quick and active
+movement, are compressed while she bends over book and slate and
+drawing-board; while the ever-active brain is kept all the while going
+at the top of its speed. She grows up spare, thin, and delicate; and
+while the Irish girl, who sweeps the parlors, rubs the silver, and irons
+the muslins, is developing a finely rounded arm and bust, the American
+girl has a pair of bones at her sides, and a bust composed of cotton
+padding, the work of a skilful dressmaker. Nature, who is no respecter
+of persons, gives to Colleen Bawn, who uses her arms and chest, a beauty
+which perishes in the gentle, languid Edith, who does nothing but study
+and read."
+
+"But is it not a fact," said Rudolph, "as stated by our friend of the
+Post, that American matrons are perishing, and their beauty and grace
+all withered, from overwork?"
+
+"It is," said my wife; "but why? It is because they are brought up
+without vigor or muscular strength, without the least practical
+experience of household labor, or those means of saving it which come by
+daily practice; and then, after marriage, when physically weakened by
+maternity, embarrassed by the care of young children, they are often
+suddenly deserted by every efficient servant, and the whole machinery of
+a complicated household left in their weak, inexperienced hands. In the
+country, you see a household perhaps made void some fine morning by
+Biddy's sudden departure, and nobody to make the bread, or cook the
+steak, or sweep the parlors, or do one of the complicated offices of a
+family, and no bakery, cookshop, or laundry to turn to for alleviation.
+A lovely, refined home becomes in a few hours a howling desolation; and
+then ensues a long season of breakage, waste, distraction, as one wild
+Irish immigrant after another introduces the style of Irish cottage life
+into an elegant dwelling.
+
+"Now suppose I grant to the Evening Post that woman ought to rest, to be
+kept in the garden of life, and all that, how is this to be done in a
+country where a state of things like this is the commonest of
+occurrences? And is it any kindness or reverence to woman, to educate
+her for such an inevitable destiny by a life of complete physical
+delicacy and incapacity? Many a woman who has been brought into these
+cruel circumstances would willingly exchange all her knowledge of German
+and Italian, and all her graceful accomplishments, for a good physical
+development, and some respectable _savoir faire_ in ordinary life.
+
+"Moreover, American matrons are overworked because some unaccountable
+glamour leads them to continue to bring up their girls in the same
+inefficient physical habits which resulted in so much misery to
+themselves. Housework as they are obliged to do it, untrained, untaught,
+exhausted, and in company with rude, dirty, unkempt foreigners, seems to
+them a degradation which they will spare to their daughters. The
+daughter goes on with her schools and accomplishments, and leads in the
+family the life of an elegant little visitor during all those years when
+a young girl might be gradually developing and strengthening her muscles
+in healthy household work. It never occurs to her that she can or ought
+to fill any of these domestic gaps into which her mother always steps;
+and she comforts herself with the thought, 'I don't know how; I can't; I
+haven't the strength. I _cant'_ sweep; it blisters my hands. If I should
+stand at the ironing-table an hour, I should be ill for a week. As to
+cooking, I don't know anything about it.' And so, when the cook, or the
+chambermaid, or nurse, or all together, vacate the premises, it is the
+mamma who is successively cook, and chambermaid, and nurse; and this is
+the reason why matrons fade and are overworked.
+
+"Now, Mr. Rudolph, do you think a woman any less beautiful or
+interesting because she is a fully developed physical being,--because
+her muscles have been rounded and matured into strength, so that she can
+meet the inevitable emergencies of life without feeling them to be
+distressing hardships? If there be a competent, well-trained servant to
+sweep and dust the parlor, and keep all the machinery of the house in
+motion, she may very properly select her work out of the family, in some
+form of benevolent helpfulness; but when the inevitable evil hour comes,
+which is likely to come first or last in every American household, is a
+woman any less an elegant woman because her love of neatness, order, and
+beauty leads her to make vigorous personal exertions to keep her own
+home undefiled? For my part, I think a disorderly, ill-kept home, a
+sordid, uninviting table, has driven more husbands from domestic life
+than the unattractiveness of any overworked woman. So long as a woman
+makes her home harmonious and orderly, so long as the hour of assembling
+around the family table is something to be looked forward to as a
+comfort and a refreshment, a man cannot see that the good house fairy,
+who by some magic keeps everything so delightfully, has either a wrinkle
+or a gray hair.
+
+"Besides," said I, "I must tell you, Rudolph, what you fellows of
+twenty-one are slow to believe; and that is, that the kind of ideal
+paradise you propose in marriage is, in the very nature of things, an
+impossibility,--that the familiarities of every-day life between two
+people who keep house together must and will destroy it. Suppose you are
+married to Cytherea herself, and the next week attacked with a rheumatic
+fever. If the tie between you is that of true and honest love, Cytherea
+will put on a gingham wrapper, and with her own sculptured hands wring
+out the flannels which shall relieve your pains; and she will be no true
+woman if she do not prefer to do this to employing any nurse that could
+be hired. True love ennobles and dignifies the material labors of life;
+and homely services rendered for love's sake have in them a poetry that
+is immortal.
+
+"No true-hearted woman can find herself, in real, actual life, unskilled
+and unfit to minister to the wants and sorrows of those dearest to her,
+without a secret sense of degradation. The feeling of uselessness is an
+extremely unpleasant one. Tom Hood, in a very humorous paper, describes
+a most accomplished schoolmistress, a teacher of all the arts and crafts
+which are supposed to make up fine gentlewomen, who is stranded in a
+rude German inn, with her father writhing in the anguish of a severe
+attack of gastric inflammation. The helpless lady gazes on her suffering
+parent, longing to help him, and thinking over all her various little
+store of accomplishments, not one of which bear the remotest relation to
+the case. She could knit him a bead-purse, or make him a guard-chain, or
+work him a footstool, or festoon him with cut tissue-paper, or sketch
+his likeness, or crust him over with alum crystals, or stick him over
+with little rosettes of red and white wafers; but none of these being
+applicable to his present case, she sits gazing in resigned imbecility,
+till finally she desperately resolves to improvise him some gruel, and,
+after a laborious turn in the kitchen,--after burning her dress and
+blacking her fingers,--succeeds only in bringing him a bowl of _paste_!
+
+"Not unlike this might be the feeling of many and elegant and
+accomplished woman, whose education has taught and practised her in
+everything that woman ought to know, except those identical ones which
+fit her for the care of a home, for the comfort of a sick-room; and so I
+say again, that, whatever a woman may be in the way of beauty and
+elegance, she must have the strength and skill of a _practical worker_,
+or she is nothing. She is not simply to _be_ the beautiful,--she is to
+_make_ the beautiful, and preserve it; and she who makes and she who
+keeps the beautiful must be able _to work_, and to know how to work.
+Whatever offices of life are performed by women of culture and
+refinement are thenceforth elevated; they cease to be mere servile
+toils, and become expressions of the ideas of superior beings. If a true
+lady makes even a plate of toast, in arranging a _petit souper_ for her
+invalid friend, she does it as a lady should. She does not cut
+blundering and uneven slices; she does not burn the edges; she does not
+deluge it with bad butter, and serve it cold; but she arranges and
+serves all with an artistic care, with a nicety and delicacy, which make
+it worth one's while to have a lady friend in sickness.
+
+"And I am glad to hear that Monsieur Blot is teaching classes of New
+York ladies that cooking is not a vulgar kitchen toil, to be left to
+blundering servants, but an elegant feminine accomplishment, better
+worth a woman's learning than crochet or embroidery; and that a
+well-kept culinary apartment may be so inviting and orderly that no lady
+need feel her ladyhood compromised by participating in its pleasant
+toils. I am glad to know that his cooking academy is thronged with more
+scholars than he can accommodate, and from ladies in the best classes of
+society.
+
+"Moreover, I am glad to see that in New Bedford, recently, a public
+course of instruction in the art of bread-making has been commenced by a
+lady, and that classes of the most respectable young and married ladies
+in the place are attending them.
+
+"These are steps in the right direction, and show that our fair
+country-women, with the grand good sense which is their leading
+characteristic, are resolved to supply whatever in our national life is
+wanting.
+
+"I do not fear that women of such sense and energy will listen to the
+sophistries which would persuade them that elegant imbecility and
+inefficiency are charms of cultivated womanhood or ingredients in the
+poetry of life. She alone can keep the poetry and beauty of married life
+who has this poetry in her soul; who with energy and discretion can
+throw back and out of sight the sordid and disagreeable details which
+beset all human living, and can keep in the foreground that which is
+agreeable; who has enough knowledge of practical household matters to
+make unskilled and rude hands minister to her cultivated and refined
+tastes, and constitute her skilled brain the guide of unskilled hands.
+From such a home, with such a mistress, no sirens will seduce a man,
+even though the hair grow gray, and the merely physical charms of early
+days gradually pass away. The enchantment that was about her person
+alone in the days of courtship seems in the course of years to have
+interfused and penetrated the _home_ which she has created, and which in
+every detail is only an expression of her personality. Her thoughts, her
+plans, her provident care, are everywhere; and the _home_ attracts and
+holds by a thousand ties the heart which before marriage was held by the
+woman alone."
+
+
+
+
+POOR CHLOE.
+
+A TRUE STORY OF MASSACHUSETTS IN THE OLDEN TIME.
+
+    "Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
+      Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
+    Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
+      The short and simple annals of the poor."
+
+    GRAY'S _Elegy_.
+
+
+It was a long, long time ago, before the flame of gas was seen in the
+streets, or the sounds of the railroad were heard in the land; so long
+before, that, had any prophet then living foretold such magical doings,
+he would have been deemed a fit inhabitant of Bedlam. In those primitive
+times, the Widow Lawton was considered a rich woman, though her income
+would not go far toward clothing a city-fashionable in these days. She
+owned a convenient house on the sea-shore, some twelve or fifteen miles
+from Cape Ann; she cultivated ten acres of sandy soil, and had a
+well-tended fish-flake a quarter of a mile long. To own an extensive
+fish-flake was, in that neighborhood, a sure sign of being well to do in
+the world. The process of transmuting it into money was slow and
+circuitous; but those were not fast days. The fish were to be caught,
+and cleaned, and salted, and spread on the flake, and turned day after
+day till thoroughly dry. Then they were packed, and sent in vessels to
+Maryland or Virginia, to be exchanged for flour or tobacco; then the
+flour and tobacco were sold in foreign ports, and silks, muslins, and
+other articles of luxury procured with the money.
+
+The Widow Lawton was a notable, stirring woman, and it was generally
+agreed that no one in that region kept a sharper look-out for the main
+chance. Nobody sent better fish to market; nobody had such good luck in
+hiving bees; nobody could spin more knots of yarn in a day, or weave
+such handsome table-cloths. Great was her store of goodies for the
+winter. The smoke-house was filled with hams, and the ceiling of the
+kitchen was festooned with dried apples and pumpkins. In summer, there
+was a fly-cage suspended from the centre. It was made of bristles, in a
+sort of basket-work, in which were arranged bits of red, yellow, and
+green woollen cloth tipped with honey. Flies, deceived by the fair
+appearance, sipped the honey, and remained glued to the woollen; their
+black bodies serving to set off the bright colors to advantage. In those
+days, such a cage was considered a very genteel ornament for a New
+England kitchen. Rich men sometimes have their coats of arms sketched on
+the floor in colored crayons, to be effaced in one night by the feet of
+dancers. The Widow Lawton ornamented her kitchen floor in a manner as
+ephemeral, though less expensive. Every afternoon it was strewn with
+white sand from the beach, and marked all over with the broom in a
+herring-bone pattern; a very suitable coat of arms for the owner of a
+fish-flake. In the parlor was an ingrained carpet, the admiration and
+envy of the neighborhood. A large glass was surmounted by a gilded eagle
+upholding a chain,--prophetic of the principal employment of the bird of
+freedom for three quarters of a century thereafter. In the Franklin
+fireplace, tall brass andirons, brightly burnished, gleamed through a
+feathery forest of asparagus, interspersed with scarlet berries. The
+high, mahogany case of drawers, grown black with time, and lustrous with
+much waxing, had innumerable great drawers and little drawers, all
+resplendent with brass ornaments, kept as bright as new gold.
+
+The Widow was accustomed to say, "It takes a good deal of elbow-grease
+to keep everything trig and shiny"; and though she was by no means
+sparing of her own, the neat and thriving condition of the household and
+the premises was largely owing to the black Chloe, her slave and
+servant-of-all-work. When Chloe was a babe strapped on her mother's
+shoulders, they were stolen from Africa and packed in a ship. What
+became of her mother she knew not. How the Widow Lawton obtained the
+right to make her work from morning till night, without wages, she never
+inquired. It had always been so, ever since she could remember, and she
+had heard the minister say, again and again, that it was an ordination
+of Providence. She did not know what ordination was, or who Providence
+was; but she had a vague idea that both were up in the sky, and that she
+had nothing to do but submit to them. So year after year she patiently
+cooked meals, and weeded the garden, and cut and dried the apples, and
+scoured the brasses, and sanded the floor in herring-bone pattern, and
+tended the fish-flake till the profitable crop of the sea was ready for
+market. There was a melancholy expression in the eyes of poor, ignorant
+Chloe, which seemed to indicate that there might be in her soul a
+fountain that was deep, though it was sealed by the heavy stone of
+slavery. Carlyle said of a dog that howled at the moon, "He would have
+been a poet, if he could have found a publisher." And Chloe, though she
+never thought about the Infinite, was sometimes impressed with a feeling
+of its mysterious presence, as she walked back and forth tending the
+fish-flake; with the sad song of the sea forever resounding in her ears,
+and a glittering orb of light sailing through the great blue arch over
+her head, and at evening sinking into the waves amid a gorgeous drapery
+of clouds. When the moon looked on the sea, the sealed fountain within
+her soul was strangely stirred. The shadow of rocks on the beach, the
+white sails of fishing-boats glimmering in the distance, the everlasting
+sighing of the sea, made her think of ghosts; though the oppressive
+feeling never shaped itself into words, except in the statement, "I'se
+sort o' feared o' moonlight." So poor Chloe paced her small round upon
+the earth, as unconscious as the ant in her molehill that she was
+whirling round among the stars. The extent of her moral development was,
+that it was her duty to obey her mistress and believe all the minister
+said. She had often been told that was sufficient for her salvation, and
+she supposed it was so.
+
+But the dream that takes possession of young hearts came to Chloe also;
+though in her case it proved merely the shadow of a dream, or a dream of
+a shadow. On board of one of the sloops that carried fish to Baltimore
+was a free colored man, named Jim Saunders. The first time she saw him,
+she thought his large brown eyes were marvellously handsome, and that he
+had a very pleasant way of speaking to her. She always watched for the
+ship in which he came, and was very particular to have on a clean apron
+when she was likely to meet him. She looked at her own eyes in a bit of
+broken looking-glass, and wondered whether they seemed as handsome to
+him as his eyes did to her. In her own opinion she had rather pretty
+eyes, and she was not mistaken; for the Scriptural description, "black,
+but comely," was applicable to her. Jim never told her so, but she had
+somehow received an impression that perhaps he thought so. Sometimes he
+helped her turn the fish on the Flake, and afterward walked with her
+along the beach, as she wended her way homeward. On such occasions there
+was a happy sound in the song of the sea, and her heart seemed to dance
+up in sparkles, like the waves kissed by the sunshine. It was the first
+free, strong emotion she had ever experienced, and it sent a glow
+through the cold dulness of her lonely life.
+
+Jim went away on a long voyage. He said perhaps he should be gone two
+years. The evening before he sailed, he walked with Chloe on the beach;
+and when he bade her good by, he gave her a pretty little pink shell,
+with a look that she never forgot. She gazed long after him, and felt
+flustered when he turned and saw her watching him. As he passed round a
+rock that would conceal him from her sight, he waved his cap toward her,
+and she turned homeward, murmuring to herself, "He didn't say nothin';
+but he looked just as ef he _wanted_ to say suthin'." On that look the
+poor hungry heart fed itself. It was the one thing in the world that was
+her own, that nobody could take from her,--the memory of a look.
+
+Time passed on, and Chloe went her rounds, from house-service to the
+field, and from field-service to the fish-flake. The Widow Lawton had
+strongly impressed upon her mind that the Scripture said, "Six days
+shalt thou work." On the Sabbath no out-door work was carried on, for
+the Widow was a careful observer of established forms; but there were so
+many chores to be done inside the house, that Chloe was on her feet most
+of the day, except when she was dozing in a dark corner of the
+meeting-house gallery, while the Reverend Mr. Gordonmammon explained the
+difference between justification and sanctification. Chloe didn't
+understand it, any more than she did the moaning of the sea; and the
+continuous sound without significance had the same tendency to lull her
+to sleep. But she regarded the minister with great awe. It never entered
+her mind that he belonged to the same species as herself. She supposed
+God had sent him into the world with special instructions to warn
+sinners; and that sinners were sent into the world to listen to him and
+obey him. Her visage lengthened visibly whenever she saw him approaching
+with his cocked hat and ivory-headed cane. He was something far-off and
+mysterious to her imagination, like the man in the moon; and it never
+occurred to her that he might enter as a disturbing element into the
+narrow sphere of her humble affairs. But so it was destined to be.
+
+The minister was one of the nearest neighbors, and not unfrequently had
+occasion to negotiate with the Widow Lawton concerning the curing of
+hams in her smoke-house, or the exchange of pumpkins for dried fish.
+When their business was transacted, the Widow usually asked him to "stop
+and take a dish o' tea"; and he was inclined to accept the invitation,
+for he particularly liked the flavor of her doughnuts and pies. On one
+of these occasions, he said: "I have another matter of business to speak
+with you about, Mrs. Lawton,--a matter nearly connected with my temporal
+interest and convenience. My Tom has taken it into his head that he
+wants a wife, and he is getting more and more uneasy about it. Last
+night he strayed off three miles to see Black Dinah. Now if he gets set
+in that direction, it will make it very inconvenient for me; for it will
+take him a good deal of time to go back and forth, and I may happen to
+want him when he is out of the way. But if you would consent to have him
+marry your Chloe, I could easily summon him if I stood in need of him."
+
+"I can't say it would be altogether convenient," replied Mrs. Lawton.
+"He'd be coming here often, bringing mud or dust into the house, and
+he'd be very likely to take Chloe's mind off from her work."
+
+"There need be no trouble on that score," said Mr. Gordonmammon. "I
+should tell Tom he must never come here except on Saturday evenings, and
+that he must return early on Sunday morning. My good woman has taught
+him to be so careful about his feet, that he will bring no mud or dust
+into your house. His board will cost you nothing for he will come after
+supper and leave before breakfast; and perhaps you may now and then find
+it handy for him to do a chore for you."
+
+Notwithstanding these arguments, the Widow still seemed rather
+disinclined to the arrangement. She feared that some moments of Chloe's
+time might thereby be lost to her.
+
+The minister rose, and said, with much gravity: "When a pastor devotes
+his life to the spiritual welfare of his flock, it would seem reasonable
+that his parishioners should feel some desire to serve his temporal
+interests in return. But since you are unwilling to accommodate me in
+this small matter, I will bid you good evening, Mrs. Lawton."
+
+The solemnity of his manner intimidated the Widow, and she hastened to
+say: "Of course I am always happy to oblige you, Mr. Gordonmammon; and
+since you have set your mind on Tom's having Chloe, I have no objection
+to your speaking to her about it."
+
+The minister at once proceeded to the kitchen. Chloe, who was carefully
+instructed to use up every scrap of time for the benefit of her
+mistress, had seated herself to braid rags for a carpet, as soon as the
+tea things were disposed of. The entrance of the minister into her
+apartment surprised her, for it was very unusual. She rose, made a
+profound courtesy, and remained standing.
+
+"Sit down, Chloe! sit down!" said he, with a condescending wave of his
+hand. "I have come to speak to you about an important matter. You have
+heard me read from the Scriptures that marriage is honorable. You are
+old enough to be married, Chloe, and it is right and proper you should
+be married. My Tom wants a wife, and there is nobody I should like so
+well for him as you. I will go home and send Tom to talk with you about
+it."
+
+Chloe looked very much frightened, and exclaimed: "Please don't, Massa
+Gordonmammon, I don't want to be married."
+
+"But it's right and proper you should be married," rejoined the
+minister; "and Tom wants a wife. It's your duty, Chloe, to do whatever
+your minister and your mistress tell you to do."
+
+That look from Jim came up as a bright vision before poor Chloe, and she
+burst into tears.
+
+"I will come again when your mind is in a state more suited to your
+condition," said the minister. "At present your disposition seems to be
+rebellious. I will leave you to think of what I have said."
+
+But thinking made Chloe feel still more rebellious. Tom was fat and
+stupid, with thick lips, and small, dull-looking eyes. He compared very
+unfavorably with her bright and handsome Jim. She swayed back and forth,
+and groaned. She thought over all the particulars of that last walk on
+the beach, and murmured to herself, "He looked jest as ef he _wanted_ to
+say suthin'."
+
+She thought of Tom and groaned again; and underlying all her confusion
+of thoughts there was a miserable feeling that, if the minister and her
+mistress both said she must marry Tom, there was no help for it.
+
+The next day, she slashed and slammed round in an extraordinary manner.
+She broke a mug and a bowl, and sanded the floor with a general
+conglomeration of scratches, instead of the neat herring-bone on which
+she usually prided herself. It was the only way she had to exercise her
+free-will in its desperate struggle with necessity.
+
+Mrs. Lawton, who never thought of her in any other light than as a
+machine, did not know what to make of these singular proceedings. "What
+upon airth ails you?" exclaimed she. "I do believe the gal's gone
+crazy."
+
+Chloe paused in her harum-scarum sweeping, and said, with a look and
+tone almost defiant, "I don't _want_ to marry Tom."
+
+"But the minister wants you to marry him," replied Mrs. Lawton, "and you
+ought to mind the minister."
+
+Chloe did not dare to dispute that assertion, but she dashed her broom
+round in the sand, in a very rebellious manner.
+
+"Mind what you're about, gal!" exclaimed Mrs. Lawton. "I am not going to
+put up with such tantrums."
+
+Chloe was acquainted with the weight of her mistress's hand, and she
+moved the broom round in more systematic fashion; but there was a
+tempest raging in her soul.
+
+In the course of a few days the minister visited the kitchen again, and
+found Chloe still averse to his proposition. If his spiritual ear had
+been delicate, he would have noticed anguish in her pleading tone, when
+she said: "Please, Massa Gordonmammon, don't say nothin' more 'bout it.
+I don't _want_ to be married." But his spiritual ear was _not_ delicate;
+and her voice sounded to him merely as that of a refractory wench, who
+was behaving in a manner very unseemly and ungrateful in a bondwoman who
+had been taken from the heathen round about, and brought under the
+guidance of Christians. He therefore assumed his sternest look when he
+said: "I supposed you knew it was your duty to obey whatever your
+minister and your mistress tell you. The Bible says, 'He is the minister
+of God unto you.' It also says, 'Servants, obey your masters in all
+things'; and your mistress stands to you in the place of your deceased
+master. How are you going to account to God for your disobedience to his
+commands?"
+
+Chloe, half frightened and half rebellious, replied, "I don't think
+Missis would like it, if you made Missy Katy marry somebody when she
+said she didn't want to be married."
+
+"Chloe, it is very presumptuous in _you_ to talk in that way," rejoined
+the minister. "There is no similarity between _your_ condition and that
+of your young mistress. You are descended from Ham, Chloe; and Ham was
+accursed of God on account of his sin, and his posterity were ordained
+to be servants; and the Bible says, 'Servants, obey your masters in all
+things'; and it says that the minister is a 'minister of God unto you.'
+You were born among heathen and brought to a land of Gospel privileges;
+and you ought to be grateful that you have protectors capable of
+teaching you what to do. Now your mistress wants you to marry Tom, and I
+want you to marry him; and we expect that you will do as we bid you,
+without any more words. I will come again, Chloe; though you ought to
+feel ashamed of yourself for giving your minister so much trouble about
+such a trifling matter."
+
+Receiving no answer, he returned to the sitting-room to talk with Mrs.
+Lawton.
+
+Chloe, like most people who are alone much of their time, had a
+confirmed habit of talking to herself; and her soliloquies were apt to
+be rather promiscuous and disjointed.
+
+"Trifling matter!" said she. "S'pose it's trifling matter to _you_,
+Massa Minister. Ugh! S'pose they'll _make_ me. Don't know nothin' 'bout
+Ham. Never hearn tell o' Ham afore, only ham in the smoke-house. If
+ham's cussed in the Bible, what fur do folks eat it? Hearn Missis read
+in the Bible that the Divil went into the swine. Don't see what fur I
+must marry Tom 'cause Ham was cussed for his sin." She was silent for a
+while, and, being unable to bring any order out of the chaos of her
+thoughts, she turned them toward a more pleasant subject. "He didn't say
+nothin'," murmured she; "but he looked jest as ef he _wanted_ to say
+suthin'." The tender expression of those great brown eyes came before
+her again, and she laid her head down on the table and sobbed.
+
+Her protectors, as they styled themselves, never dreamed that she had a
+heart. In their thoughts she was merely a bondwoman taken from the
+heathen, and consigned to their keeping for their uses.
+
+Tom made another visit to Dinah, and was out of the way when his master
+wanted him. This caused the minister to hasten in making his third visit
+to Chloe. She met him with the same frightened look; and when he asked
+if she had made up her mind to obey her mistress, she timidly and sadly
+repeated, "Massa Minister, I don't _want_ to be married."
+
+"You don't want to do your duty; that's what it is, you disobedient
+wench," said the minister sternly. "I will wrestle with the Lord in
+prayer for you, that your rebellious heart may be taken away, and a
+submissive temper given you, more befitting your servile condition."
+
+He spread forth his hands, covered with very long-fingered, dangling
+black-silk gloves, and lifted his voice in the following petition to the
+Throne of Grace: "O Lord, we pray thee that this rebellious descendant
+of Ham, whom thou hast been pleased to place under our protection, may
+learn that it is her duty to obey thy Holy Word; wherein it is written
+that I am unto her a minister of God, and that she is to obey her
+mistress in all things. May she be brought to a proper sense of her
+duty; and, by submission to her superiors, gain a humble place in thy
+heavenly kingdom, where the curse inherited from her sinful progenitor
+may be removed. This we ask in the name of thy Son, our Saviour Jesus
+Christ, who died that sinners might be redeemed by believing on his
+name; even sinners who, like this disobedient handmaid, were born in a
+land of heathens."
+
+He paused and looked at Chloe, who could do nothing but weep. There were
+many words in the prayer which conveyed to her no meaning; and why she
+was accursed on account of the sin of Ham remained a perplexing puzzle
+to her mind. But she felt as if she must, somehow or other, be doing
+something wicked, or the minister would not come and pray for her in
+such a solemn manner.
+
+Mr. Gordonmammon, having reiterated his rebukes and expostulations
+without receiving any answer but tears, called Mrs. Lawton to his
+assistance. "I have preached to Chloe, and prayed for her," said he;
+"but she remains stubborn."
+
+"I am surprised at you, Chloe!" exclaimed the Widow. "You have been told
+a great many times that it is your duty to obey the minister and to obey
+me; yet you have put him to the trouble of coming three times to talk
+with you. I sha'n't put up with any more such doings. You must make up
+your mind once for all to marry Tom. What have you to say about it, you
+silly wench?"
+
+With a great break-down of sobs, poor Chloe blubbered out, "S'pose I
+_must_."
+
+They left her alone; and O how dreadfully alone she felt, with the
+memory of that treasured look, and the thought that, whatever it was Jim
+wanted to say, he could never say it now!
+
+The next day, soon after dinner, Mrs. Lawton entered the kitchen, and
+said: "Chloe, the minister has brought Tom. Make haste, and do up your
+dishes, and put on a clean apron, and come in to be married."
+
+Chloe's first impulse was to run away; but she had nowhere to run. She
+was recognized as the property of her mistress, and wherever she went
+she would be sure to be sent back. She washed the dishes so slowly that
+Mrs. Lawton came again to say the minister was waiting. Chloe merely
+replied, "Yes, missis." But when the door closed after her, she muttered
+to herself: "_Let_ him wait. I didn't ax him to come here plaguing me
+about the cuss o' Ham. Don't know nothin' 'bout Ham. Never hearn tell
+'bout him afore."
+
+Again her mistress came to summon her, and this time in a somewhat angry
+mood. "Have you got lead tied to your heels, you lazy wench?" said she.
+"How many times must I tell you the minister's waiting?" And she
+emphasized the question with a smart box on the ear.
+
+Like a cowardly soldier driven up to the cannon's mouth by bayonets,
+Chloe put on a clean apron, and went to the sitting-room. When the
+minister told Tom to stand up, she did not even look at him; and he, on
+his part, seemed very much frightened. After a brief form of words had
+been repeated, they were told that they were husband and wife. Then the
+bridegroom was ordered to go to ploughing, and the bride was sent to the
+fish-flake.
+
+Two witnesses were present at this dismal wedding beside Mrs. Lawton.
+One was the Widow's daughter, a girl of seventeen, whom Chloe called
+"Missy Katy." The other was Sukey Larkin, who lived twenty miles off,
+but occasionally came to visit an aunt in the neighborhood. Both the
+young girls were dressed in their best; for they were going to a
+quilting-party, where they expected to meet many beaux. But Catherine
+Lawton's best was very superior to Sukey Larkin's. Her gown was of a
+more wonderful pattern than had been seen in that region. It had been
+brought from London, in exchange for tobacco. Sukey had heard of it, and
+had stopped at the Widow Lawton's to make sure of seeing it, in case
+Catharine did not wear it to the quilting-party. Though she had heard
+much talk about it, it surpassed her expectations, and made her very
+discontented with her own gown of India-cotton, dotted all over with red
+spots, like barley-corns. The fabric of Catharine's dress was fine,
+thick linen, covered with pictures, like a fancifully illustrated volume
+of Natural History. Butterflies of all sizes and colors were fluttering
+over great baskets of flowers, birds were swinging on blossoming vines,
+bees were hovering round their hives, and doves were billing and cooing
+on the roof of their cots. One of the beaux in the neighborhood
+expressed his admiration of it by saying "It beats all natur'." It was
+made in bodice-fashion, with a frill of fine linen nicely crimped; and
+the short, tight sleeves were edged just above the elbow with a similar
+frill.
+
+Sukey had before envied Catharine the possession of a gold necklace; but
+that grew dim before the glory of this London gown. She repeated several
+times that it was the handsomest thing she ever saw, and that it was
+remarkably becoming. But at the quilting-party the bitterness of her
+spirit betrayed itself in such remarks as these: "Folks wonder where the
+Widow Lawton gets money to set herself up so much above other folks. But
+she knows how to drive a bargain. She can skin a flint, and tan the
+hide. She makes a fool of Catharine, dressing her up like a London
+doll. I wonder who she expects is going to marry her, if she brings her
+up with such extravagant notions."
+
+"Mr. Gordonmammon thinks a deal of the Widow Lawton," said the hostess
+of the quilting-party.
+
+"Yes, I know he does," replied Sukey. "If he was a widower, I guess
+they'd be the town's talk. Some folks think he goes there full often
+enough. He brought his Tom there to-day to marry Chloe. I wonder the
+Widow could spare her time to be married,--though, to be sure, it didn't
+take long, for the minister made a mighty short prayer."
+
+Poor Chloe! Thus they dismissed a subject which gave her a life-long
+heart-ache. There was no honey in her bridal moon. She told Tom several
+times she wished he would stay at home; but he was so perseveringly
+good-natured, there was no possibility of quarrelling with him. By
+degrees, she began to find his visits on Saturday evening rather more
+entertaining than talking to herself.
+
+"I wouldn't mind bein' so druv wi' work," said Tom, "ef I could live
+like white folks do when _they_ gits married. I duz more work than them
+as has a cabin o' their own, an' keeps a cow and a pig. But black folks
+don't seem to git no good o' their work."
+
+"Massa Minister says it's 'cause God cussed Ham," replied Chloe. "I
+thought 'twas wicked to cuss, but Massa Minister says Ham was cussed in
+the Bible. Ef I could have some o' the fish I clean and dry, I could
+sen' to Lunnun for a gownd; but Missy Katy she gits all the gownds,
+'cause Ham was cussed in the Bible. I don't know nothin' 'bout it; seems
+drefful queer."
+
+"Massa tole me I mus' work for nothin', 'cause Ham was cussed," rejoined
+Tom. "But it seems like Ham cussed some black folks _worse_ nor others.
+There's Jim Saunders, he's a nigger, too; but he gits his feed and six
+dollars a month."
+
+The words were like a stab to Chloe. She dropped half a needleful of
+stitches in her knitting, and told Tom she wished he'd hold his tongue,
+for he kept up such a jabbering that he made all her stitches run down.
+Tom, thus silenced, soon fell asleep. She glanced at him as he sat
+snoring by her side, and contrasted him with the genteel figure and
+handsome features that had been so indelibly photographed on her memory
+by the sunbeams of love. Tears dropped fast on her knitting-work; but
+when Tom woke up, she spoke kindly, and tried to atone for her
+ill-temper. Time, which gradually reconciles us to all things, produced
+the same effect on her as on others. When the minister asked her, six
+months afterward, how she and Tom were getting along, she replied, "I's
+got used to him."
+
+Yet life seemed more dreary to her than it did before she had that brief
+experience of a free feeling. She never thought of that look without
+longing to know what it was Jim wanted to say. But, as months passed on,
+the tantalizing vision came less frequently, and at the end of a year
+Chloe experienced the second happy emotion of her life. When she looked
+upon her babe, a great fountain of love leaped up in her heart. She was
+never too tired to wait upon little Tommy; and if his cries disturbed
+her deep sleep, she folded the helpless little creature to her bosom,
+with the feeling that he was better than rest. She was accustomed to
+carry him to the fish-flake in a big basket, and lay him on a bed of dry
+leaves, with her apron for an awning. As she paced backwards and
+forwards at her daily toil, it was a perpetual entertainment to see him
+lying there sucking his thumbs. But that was nothing compared with the
+joy of nursing him. When his hunger was partially satisfied, he would
+stop to smile in his mother's face; and Chloe had never seen anything so
+beautiful as that baby smile. As he lay on her lap, laughing and cooing,
+there was something in the expression of his eyes that reminded her of
+the look she could never forget. He had taken the picture from her soul,
+and brought it with him to the outer world; but as he lay there, playing
+with his toes, he knew no more about his mother's heart than did the
+Rev. Mr. Gordonmammon.
+
+One balmy day in June, she was sitting on a rock by the sea-shore,
+nursing her babe, pinching his little plump cheeks, and chirruping to
+make him smile, when she heard the sound of footsteps. She looked up,
+and saw Jim approaching. Her heart jumped into her throat. She felt very
+hot, and then very cold. When Jim came near enough to look upon the
+babe, he stopped an instant, said, in a constrained way, "How d' ye,
+Chloe," then turned and walked quickly away. She gazed after him so
+wistfully that for a few moments the cooing of her babe was disregarded.
+"'Pears like he was affronted," she murmured, at last; and the big tears
+dropped slowly. Little Tommy had a fit that night; for, by the strange
+interfusion of spirit into all forms of matter, the quick revulsion of
+the blood in his mother's heart passed into his nourishment, and
+convulsed his body, as her soul had been convulsed.
+
+But the disturbance passed away, and Chloe's life rolled on in its
+accustomed grooves. Tommy grew strong enough to run by her side when she
+went to the beach. Hour after hour he busied himself with pebbles and
+shells, every now and then bringing her his treasures, and calling out,
+"Pooty!" When he held out a shell, and looked at her with his great
+brown eyes, it stirred up memories; but the pain was gone from them. Her
+heart was no longer famished; it was filled with little Tommy.
+
+This engrossing love was not agreeable to the Widow Lawton. If less was
+accomplished in a day than usual, she would often exclaim, "That brat
+takes up too much of your time." And not unfrequently Chloe was
+compelled to go to the beach and leave Tommy fastened up in the kitchen;
+though this was never done without some outcries on his part, and some
+suppressed mutterings on hers.
+
+On one of these occasions, Sukey Larkin came to make a call. When Mrs.
+Lawton saw her at the gate, she said to her daughter, "How long do you
+suppose she'll be in the house before she asks to see your silk gown?"
+
+Catharine smiled and kept on spinning flax till her visitor entered.
+
+"Good morning, Sukey," said Mrs. Lawton. "I didn't know you was about in
+these parts."
+
+"I come yesterday to do some business for mother," replied Sukey, "and
+I'm going back in an hour. But I thought I would just run in to see you,
+Catharine. Aunt says you're going to Jane Horton's wedding. Are you
+going to wear your new silk?"
+
+"So you've heard about the new silk?" said Mrs. Lawton.
+
+"To be sure I have," rejoined Sukey. "Everybody's talking about it. Do
+show it to me, Catharine; that's a dear."
+
+The dress was brought forth from its envelope of white linen. It was a
+very lustrous silk, changeable between rose-color and apple-green, and
+the delicate hues glanced beautifully in the sunlight.
+
+Sukey was in raptures, and exclaimed, "I don't wonder Mr. Gordonmammon
+said Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like Catharine, when she
+went to the great party at Cape Ann. I do declare, you've got lace at
+the elbows and round the neck!" She heaved a deep sigh when the dress
+was refolded; and after a moment's silence said, "I wish mother had a
+fish-flake, and knew how to manage as well as you do, Mrs. Lawton; then
+she could trade round with the sloops and get me a silk gown."
+
+"O, I dare say you will have one some time or other," rejoined
+Catharine.
+
+"No, I shall never have one, if I live to be a hundred years old,"
+replied Sukey. "I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth, like some
+folks."
+
+"I wonder what Tommy's doing in the kitchen," said Mrs. Lawton. "He's
+generally about some mischief when he's so still. I declare I'd as lief
+have a colt in the house as that little nigger." She looked into the
+kitchen and added, "He's sound asleep on the floor."
+
+"If he's so much trouble to you," said Sukey, "I wish you'd give him to
+me. I always thought I should like to have a nigger."
+
+"You may have him if you want him," replied Mrs. Lawton. "He's nothing
+but a pester, and he takes up a quarter part of Chloe's time. But you'd
+better take him before she gets home, for she'll make a fuss; and if he
+wakes up he'll cry."
+
+Sukey had a plan in her mind, suggested by the sight of the silk gown,
+and she was eager to get possession of little Tommy. She said her horse
+was tackled to the wagon, all ready to start for home, and there was
+some straw in the bottom of it. The vehicle was soon at the widow's
+door, and by careful management the child was placed on the straw
+without waking; though Catharine said she heard him cry before the wagon
+was out of sight.
+
+Chloe hurried through her work on the beach, and came home at a quick
+pace; for she was longing to see her darling, and she had some
+misgivings as to how he was treated in her absence. She opened the
+kitchen-door with the expectation that Tommy would spring toward her, as
+usual, exclaiming, "Mammy! mammy!" The disappointment gave her a chill,
+and she ran out to call him. When no little voice responded to the call,
+she went to the sitting-room and said, "Missis, have you seen Tommy?"
+
+"He a'n't been here," replied Mrs. Lawton, evasively. "Can't you find
+him?"
+
+The Widow was a regular communicant of the Reverend Mr. Gordonmammon's
+church; but she was so blinded by slavery that it never occurred to her
+there was any sin in thus trifling with a mother's feelings. When Chloe
+had hurried out of the room, she said to her daughter, in a tone of
+indifference, "One good thing will come of giving Tommy to Sukey
+Larkin,--she won't come spying about here for one spell; she'll be
+afraid to face Chloe."
+
+In fact, she herself soon found it rather unpleasant to face Chloe; for
+the bereaved mother grew so wild with anxiety, that the hardest heart
+could not remain untouched. "O missis! why didn't you let me take Tommy
+with me" exclaimed she. "He played with hisself, and wasn't no care to
+me. I s'pose he was lonesome, and runned down to the beach to look for
+mammy; an' he's got drownded." With that thought she rushed to the door
+to go and hunt for him on the sea-shore.
+
+Her mistress held her back with a strong arm, and, finding it impossible
+to pacify her, she at last said, "Sukey Larkin wanted Tommy, and I told
+her she might have him; she'll take good care of him."
+
+The unhappy bondwoman gazed at her with an expression of intense misery,
+which she was never afterward able to forget. "O missis! how _could_ you
+do it?" she exclaimed; and, sinking upon a chair, she covered her face
+with her apron.
+
+"Sukey will be good to him," said Mrs. Lawton, in tones more gentle than
+usual.
+
+"He'll cry for his mammy," sobbed Chloe. "O missis! 't was cruel to take
+away my little Tommy."
+
+The Widow crept noiselessly out of the room, and left her to wrestle
+with her grief as she could. She found the minister in the sitting-room,
+and told him she had given away little Tommy, but that she wouldn't have
+done it if she had thought Chloe would be so wild about it; for she
+doubted whether she should get any work out of her for a week to come.
+
+"She'll get over it soon," said the minister. "My cow lowed dismally,
+and wouldn't eat, when I sold her calf; but she soon got used to doing
+without it."
+
+It did not occur to him as included within his pastoral duties to pray
+with the stricken slave; and poor Chloe, oppressed with an unutterable
+sense of loneliness, retired to her straw pallet, and late in the night
+sobbed herself to sleep. She woke with a weight on her heart, as if
+there was somebody dead in the house; and quickly there rushed upon her
+the remembrance that her darling was gone. A ragged gown of his was
+hanging on a nail. How she kissed it, and cried over it! Then she took
+Jim's pink shell from her box, folded them carefully together, and laid
+them away. No mortal but herself knew what memories were wrapped up with
+them. She went through the usual routine of housework like a laborer who
+drags after him a ball and chain. At the appointed time, she wandered
+forth to the beach with no little voice to chirp music to her as she
+went. When she saw prints of Tommy's little feet in the sand, she sat
+down on a stone, and covered her face with her apron. For a long time
+her sobs and groans mingled with the moan of the sea. She raised her
+head, and looked inland, in the direction where she supposed Sukey
+Larkin lived. She revolved in her mind the possibility of going there.
+But stages were almost unknown in those days; and no wagoner would take
+her, without consent of her mistress, if she pleaded ever so hard. She
+thought of running away at midnight; but Mrs. Lawton would be sure to
+overtake her, and bring her back. Thoughts of what her mistress might do
+in such a case reminded her that she was neglecting the fish. Like a
+machine wound up, she began to go her customary rounds; but she had lost
+so much time that it was late before her task was completed. Then she
+wandered away to a little heap of moss and pebbles, that Tommy had built
+the last time they were together on the beach. On a wet rock near by she
+sat down and cried. Black clouds gathered over her head, a cold
+northeast wind blew upon her, and the spray sprinkled her naked feet.
+Still she sat there and cried. Louder and louder whistled the wind;
+wilder and wilder grew the moan of the sea. She heard the uproar without
+caring for it. She wished the big waves would come and wash her away.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Lawton noticed the gathering darkness, and looked out
+anxiously for the return of her servant. "What upon airth can have
+become of her?" said she. "She oughter been home an hour ago."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if she had set out to go to Sukey Larkin's," replied
+Catharine.
+
+The Widow had thought of that; she had also thought of the sea; for she
+had an uneasy remembrance of that look of utter misery when Chloe said,
+"How _could_ you do it?"
+
+It was Saturday evening; and, according to custom, Tom came to see his
+wife, all unconscious of the affliction that had befallen them. Mrs.
+Lawton went out to meet him, and said: "Tom, I wish you would go right
+down to the beach, and see what has become of Chloe. She a'n't come home
+yet, and I'm afraid something has happened." She returned to the house,
+thinking to herself, "If the wench is drowned, where shall I get such
+another?"
+
+Tom found Chloe still sitting on the wet stone. When he spoke to her,
+she started, as if from sleep; and her first exclamation was, "O Tom!
+missis has guv away little Tommy."
+
+It was some time before he could understand what had happened; but when
+he realized that his child was gone, his strong frame shook with sobs.
+Little Tommy was the only creature on earth that loved him,--his only
+treasure, his only plaything. "It's cruel hard," said he.
+
+"O, how little Tommy is crying for mammy!" sobbed Chloe; "and I can't
+git to him nohow. Oh! oh!"
+
+Tom tried to comfort her, as well as he knew how. Among other things, he
+suggested running away.
+
+"I've been thinking 'bout that," rejoined Chloe; "but there a'n't
+nowhere to run to. The white folks has got all the money, and all the
+hosses, and all the law."
+
+"O, what a cuss that Ham was!" groaned Tom.
+
+"Don't know nothin' 'bout that ole cuss," replied Chloe. "Missis was
+cruel. What makes God let white folks cruellize black folks so?"
+
+The question was altogether too large for Tom, or anybody else, to
+answer. After a moment's silence, he said, "P'r'aps Sukey Larkin will
+come sometimes, and bring little Tommy to see us."
+
+"She shouldn't have him ag'in!" exclaimed Chloe. "I'd scratch her eyes
+out, if she tried to carry him off ag'in."
+
+The sudden anger roused her from her lethargy; and she rose immediately
+when Tom reminded her that it was late, and they ought to be going home.
+Home! how the word seemed to mock her desolation!
+
+Mrs. Lawton was so glad to see her faithful servant alive, and was so
+averse to receiving another accusing look from those sad eyes, that she
+forbore to reprimand her for her unwonted tardiness. Chloe spoke no word
+of explanation, but, after arranging a few things, retired silently to
+her pallet. She had been accustomed to exercise out of doors in all
+weathers, but was unused to sitting still in the wet and cold. She was
+seized with strong shiverings in the night, and continued feverish for
+some days. Her mistress nursed her, as she would a valuable horse or
+cow.
+
+In a short time she resumed her customary tasks, but coughed incessantly
+and moved about slowly and listlessly. Her mistress, annoyed not to have
+the work going on faster, said to her reproachfully one day, "You got
+this cold by staying out so late that night."
+
+"Yes, missis," replied Chloe, very sadly. "I shouldn't have stayed out
+ef little Tommy had been with me."
+
+"What a fuss you make about that little nigger!" exclaimed Mrs. Lawton.
+"Tommy was my property, and I'd a right to give him away."
+
+"'Twas cruel of you, missis," rejoined Chloe. "Tommy was all the comfort
+I had; an' I's worked hard for you, missis, many a year."
+
+Mrs. Lawton, unaccustomed to any remonstrance from her bondwoman, seized
+a switch and shook it threateningly.
+
+But Catherine said, in a low tone: "Don't, mother! She feels bad about
+little Tommy."
+
+Chloe overheard the words of pity; and the first time she was alone with
+her young mistress, she said, "Please, Missy Katy, write to Sukey Larkin
+and ask her to bring little Tommy."
+
+Catharine promised she would; but her mother objected to it, as making
+unnecessary trouble, and the promise was not fulfilled.
+
+Week after week Chloe looked out upon the road, in hopes of seeing Sukey
+Larkin's wagon. But Sukey had no thoughts of coming to encounter her
+entreaties. She was feeding and fatting Tommy, with a view to selling
+him and buying a silk gown with the money. The little boy cried and
+moped for some days; but, after the manner of children, he soon became
+reconciled to his new situation. He ran about in the fields, and
+gradually forgot the sea, the moss, the pebbles, and mammy's lullaby.
+
+One day Mrs. Lawton said to her daughter, "How that dreadful cough hangs
+on! I begin to be afraid Chloe's going into a consumption. I hope not;
+for I don't know where I shall find such another wench to work."
+
+She mentioned her fears to the minister, and he said, "When she gets
+over worrying about Tommy, she'll pick up her crumbs."
+
+But the only change that came over Chloe was increasing listlessness of
+mind and fatigue of body. At last, she was unable to rise from her
+pallet. She lay there looking at her thin hands, and talking to herself,
+according to her old habit. The words Mrs. Lawton most frequently heard
+were, "It was cruel of missis to take away little Tommy."
+Notwithstanding all the clerical arguments she had heard to prove the
+righteousness of slavery, the moan of the dying mother made her feel
+uncomfortable. Sometimes the mind of the invalid wandered, and she would
+hug Tommy's little gown, pat it lovingly, and sing to it the lullaby her
+baby loved. Sometimes she murmured, "He looked jest as ef he _wanted_ to
+say suthin'"; and sometimes a smiled lighted up her face, as if she saw
+some pleasant vision.
+
+The minister came to pray with her, and to talk what he called religion.
+But it sounded to poor Chloe more than ever like the murmuring of the
+sea. She turned her face away from him and said nothing. With what
+little mental strength she had, she rejected the idea that the curse of
+Ham, whoever he might be, justified the treatment she had received. She
+had no idea what a heathen was, but she concluded it meant something
+bad; and she had often told Tom she didn't like to have the minister
+talk that way, for it sounded like calling her names.
+
+At last the weary one passed away from a world where the doings had all
+been dark and incomprehensible to her. But her soul was like that of a
+little child; and Jesus has said, "Of such are the kingdom of heaven."
+They found under her pillow little Tommy's ragged gown, and a pink
+shell. Why the shell was there no one could conjecture. The pine box
+containing her remains was placed across the foot of Mr. Lawton's grave,
+at whose side his widow would repose when her hour should come. It was
+the custom to place slaves thus at the feet of their masters, even in
+the graveyard.
+
+The Reverend Mr. Gordonmammon concluded to buy a young black woman, that
+Tom might not be again induced to stray off after Dinah; and Tom
+passively yielded to the second arrangement, as he had to the first.
+
+In two years after Sukey Larkin took possession of little Tommy, she
+sent him to Virginia to be exchanged for tobacco; with the proceeds of
+which she bought a gold necklace, and a flashy silk dress, changeable
+between grass-green and orange; and great was her satisfaction to
+astonish Catharine Lawton with her splendor the next time they met at a
+party.
+
+I never heard that poor Chloe's ghost haunted either them or the Widow
+Lawton. Wherever slavery exerts its baneful influence, it produces the
+same results,--searing the conscience and blinding the understanding to
+the most obvious distinctions between right and wrong.
+
+There is no record of little Tommy's fate. He disappeared among "the
+dark, sad millions," who knew not father or mother, and had no portion
+in wife or child.
+
+
+
+
+SNOW.
+
+
+    The Summer comes, and the Summer goes.
+      Wild-flowers are fringing the dusty lanes,
+      The sparrows go darting through fragrant rains,
+    And, all of a sudden,--it snows!
+
+    Dear Heart! our lives so happily flow,
+      So lightly we heed the flying hours,
+      We only know Winter is gone--by the flowers,
+    We only know Winter is come--by the Snow!
+
+
+
+
+GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Griffith, with an effort he had not the skill to hide, stammered out,
+"Mistress Kate, I do wish you joy." Then, with sudden and touching
+earnestness, "Never did good fortune light on one so worthy of it."
+
+"Thank you, Griffith," replied Kate, softly. (She had called him "Mr.
+Gaunt" in public till now.) "But money and lands do not always bring
+content. I think I was happier a minute ago than I feel now," said she,
+quietly.
+
+The blood rushed into Griffith's face at this; for a minute ago might
+mean when he and she were talking almost like lovers about to wed. He
+was so overcome by this, he turned on his heel, and retreated hastily to
+hide his emotion, and regain, if possible, composure to play his part of
+host in the house that was his no longer.
+
+Kate herself soon after retired, nominally to make her toilet before
+dinner; but really to escape the public and think it all over.
+
+The news of her advancement had spread like wildfire; she was waylaid at
+the very door by the housekeeper, who insisted on showing her her house.
+
+"Nay, never mind the house," said Kate; "just show me one room where I
+can wash my face and do my hair."
+
+Mrs. Hill conducted her to the best bedroom; it was lined with tapestry,
+and all the colors flown; the curtains were a deadish yellow.
+
+"Lud! here's a colored room to show _me_ into," said the blonde Kate;
+"and a black grate, too. Why not take me out o' doors and bid me wash in
+the snow?"
+
+"Alack, mistress," said the woman, feeling very uneasy, "we had no
+orders from Mr. Gaunt to light fires _up_ stairs."
+
+"O, if you wait for gentlemen's orders to make your house fit to live
+in! You knew there were a dozen ladies coming, yet you were not woman
+enough to light them fires. Come, take me to your own bedroom."
+
+The woman turned red. "Mine is but a small room, my lady," she
+stammered.
+
+"But there's a fire in it," said Kate, spitefully. "You servants don't
+wait for gentlemen's orders, to take care of yourselves."
+
+Mrs. Hill said to herself, "I'm to leave; that's flat." However, she led
+the way down a passage, and opened the door of a pleasant little room in
+a square turret; a large bay window occupied one whole side of the room,
+and made it inexpressibly bright and cheerful, though rather hot and
+stuffy; a clear coal fire burned in the grate.
+
+"Ah!" said Kate, "how nice! Please open those little windows, every one.
+I suppose you have sworn never to let wholesome air into a room. Thank
+you: now go and forget every cross word I have said to you,--I am out of
+sorts, and nervous, and irritable. There, run away, my good soul, and
+light fires in every room; and don't you let a creature come near me, or
+you and I shall quarrel downright."
+
+Mrs. Hill beat a hasty retreat. Kate locked the door and threw herself
+backwards on the bed, with such a weary recklessness and _abandon_ as if
+she was throwing herself into the sea, to end all her trouble,--and
+burst out crying.
+
+It was one thing to refuse to marry her old sweetheart; it was another
+to take his property and reduce him to poverty. But here was she doing
+both, and going to be persuaded to marry Neville, and swell his wealth
+with the very possessions she had taken from Griffith; and him wounded
+into the bargain for love of her. It was really too cruel. It was an
+accumulation of different cruelties. Her bosom revolted; she was
+agitated, perplexed, irritated, unhappy, and all in a tumult; and
+although she had but one fit of crying,--to the naked eye,--yet a
+person of her own sex would have seen that at one moment she was crying
+from agitated nerves, at another from worry, and at the next from pity,
+and then from grief.
+
+In short, she had a good long, hearty, multiform cry; and it relieved
+her swelling heart, so far that she felt able to go down now, and hide
+her feelings, one and all, from friend and foe; to do which was
+unfortunately a part of her nature.
+
+She rose and plunged her face into cold water, and then smoothed her
+hair.
+
+Now, as she stood at the glass, two familiar voices came in through the
+open window, and arrested her attention directly. It was her father
+conversing with Griffith Gaunt. Kate pricked up her quick ears and
+listened, with her back hair in her hand. She caught the substance of
+their talk, only now and then she missed a word or two.
+
+Mr. Peyton was speaking rather kindly to Griffith, and telling him he
+was as sorry for his disappointment as any father could be whose
+daughter had just come into a fortune. But then he went on and rather
+spoiled this by asking Griffith bluntly what on earth had ever made him
+think Mr. Charlton intended to leave him Bolton and Hernshaw.
+
+Griffith replied, with manifest agitation, that Mr. Charlton had
+repeatedly told him he was to be his heir. "Not," said Griffith, "that
+he meant to wrong Mistress Kate, neither: poor old man, he always
+thought she and I should be one."
+
+"Ah! well," said Squire Peyton, coolly, "there is an end of all that
+now."
+
+At this observation Kate glided to the window, and laid her cheek on the
+sill to listen more closely.
+
+But Griffith made no reply.
+
+Mr. Peyton seemed dissatisfied at his silence, and being a person who,
+notwithstanding a certain superficial good-nature, saw his own side of a
+question very big, and his neighbor's very little, he was harder than
+perhaps he intended to be.
+
+"Why, Master Gaunt," said he, "surely you would not follow my daughter
+now,--to feed upon a woman's bread. Come, be a man; and, if you are the
+girl's friend, don't stand in her light. You know she can wed your
+betters, and clap Bolton Hall on to Neville's Court. No doubt it is a
+disappointment to _you_: but what can't be cured must be endured; pluck
+up a bit of courage, and turn your heart another way; and then I shall
+always be a good friend to you, and my doors open to you come when you
+will."
+
+Griffith made no reply. Kate strained her ears, but could not hear a
+syllable, A tremor ran through her. She was in distance farther from
+Griffith than her father was; but superior intelligence provided her
+with a bridge from her window to her old servant's mind. And now she
+felt that this great silence was the silence of despair.
+
+But the Squire pressed him for a definite answer, and finally insisted
+on one. "Come, don't be so sulky," said he; "I'm her father: give me an
+answer, ay or no."
+
+Then Kate heard a violent sigh, and out rushed a torrent of words that
+each seemed tinged with blood from the unfortunate speaker's heart. "Old
+man," he almost shrieked, "what did I ever do to you, that you torment
+me so? Sure you were born without bowels. Beggared but an hour agone,
+and now you must come and tell me I have lost _her_ by losing house and
+lands! D'ye think I need to be _told_ it? She was too far above me
+before, and now she is gone quite out of my reach. But why come and
+fling it in my face? Can't you give a poor, undone man one hour to draw
+his breath in trouble? And when you know I have got to play the host
+this bitter day, and smile, and smirk, and make you all merry, with my
+heart breaking! O Christ, look down and pity me, for men are made of
+stone! Well, then, no; I will not, I cannot say the word to give her up.
+_She_ will discharge _me_, and then I'll fly the country and never
+trouble you more. And to think that one little hour ago she was so kind,
+and I was so happy! Ah, sir, if you were born of a woman, have a little
+pity, and don't speak to me of her at all, one way or other. What are
+you afraid of? I am a gentleman and a man, though sore my trouble: I
+shall not run after the lady of Bolton Hall. Why, sir, I have ordered
+the servants to set her chair in the middle of the table, where I shall
+not be able to speak to her, or even see her. Indeed I dare not look at
+her: for I must be merry. Merry! My arm it worries me, my head it aches,
+my heart is sick to death. Man! man! show me some little grace, and do
+not torture me more than flesh and blood can bear."
+
+"You are mad, young sir," said the Squire, sternly, "and want locking up
+on bread and water for a month."
+
+"I _am_ almost mad," said Griffith, humbly. "But if you would only let
+me alone, and not tear my heart out of my body, I can hide my agony from
+the whole pack of ye, and go through my part like a man. I wish I was
+lying where I laid my only friend this afternoon."
+
+"O, I don't want to speak to you," said Peyton, angrily; "and, by the
+same token, don't you speak to my daughter no more."
+
+"Well, sir, if she speaks to me, I shall be sure to speak to her,
+without asking your leave or any man's. But I will not force myself upon
+the lady of Bolton Hall; don't you think it. Only for God's sake let me
+alone. I want to be by myself." And with this he hurried away, unable to
+bear it any more.
+
+Peyton gave a hostile and contemptuous snort, and also turned on his
+heel, and went off in the opposite direction.
+
+The effect of this dialogue on the listener was not to melt, but
+exasperate her. Perhaps she had just cried away her stock of tenderness.
+At any rate, she rose from her ambush a very basilisk; her eyes, usually
+so languid, flashed fire, and her forehead was red with indignation. She
+bit her lip, and clenched her hands, and her little foot beat the ground
+swiftly.
+
+She was still in this state, when a timid tap came to the door, and Mrs.
+Hill asked her pardon, but dinner was ready, and the ladies and
+gentlemen all a waiting for her to sit down.
+
+This reminded Kate she was the mistress of the house. She answered
+civilly she would be down immediately. She then took a last look in the
+glass; and her own face startled her.
+
+"No," she thought, "they shall none of them know nor guess what I feel."
+And she stood before the glass and deliberately extracted all emotion
+from her countenance, and by way of preparation screwed on a spiteful
+smile.
+
+When she had got her face to her mind, she went down stairs.
+
+The gentlemen awaited her with impatience, the ladies with curiosity, to
+see how she would comport herself in her new situation. She entered,
+made a formal courtesy, and was conducted to her seat by Mr. Gaunt. He
+placed her in the middle of the table. "I play the host for this one
+day," said he, with some dignity; and took the bottom of the table
+himself.
+
+Mr. Hammersley was to have sat on Kate's left, but the sly Neville
+persuaded him to change, and so got next to his inamorata; opposite to
+her sat her father, Major Rickards, and others unknown to fame.
+
+Neville was in high spirits. He had the good taste to try and hide his
+satisfaction at the fatal blow his rival had received, and he entirely
+avoided the topic; but Kate saw at once, by his demure complacency, he
+was delighted at the turn things had taken, and he gained nothing by it:
+he found her a changed girl. Cold monosyllables were all he could
+extract from her. He returned to the charge a hundred times, with
+indomitable gallantry, but it was no use. Cold, haughty, sullen!
+
+Her other neighbor fared little better; and in short the lady of the
+house made a vile impression. She was an iceberg,--a beautiful
+kill-joy,--a wet blanket of charming texture.
+
+And presently Nature began to co-operate with her: long before sunset it
+grew prodigiously dark; and the cause was soon revealed by a fall of
+snow in flakes as large as a biscuit. A shiver ran through the people;
+and old Peyton blurted out, "I shall not go home to-night." Then he
+bawled across the table to his daughter: "_You_ are at home. We will
+stay and take possession."
+
+"O papa!" said Kate, reddening with disgust.
+
+But if dulness reigned around the lady of the house, it was not so
+everywhere. Loud bursts of merriment were heard at the bottom of the
+table. Kate glanced that way in some surprise, and found it was Griffith
+making the company merry,--Griffith of all people.
+
+The laughter broke out at short intervals, and by and by became
+uproarious and constant. At last she looked at Neville inquiringly.
+
+"Our worthy host is setting us an example of conviviality," said he. "He
+is getting drunk."
+
+"O, I hope not," said Kate. "Has he no friend to tell him not to make a
+fool of himself?"
+
+"You take a great interest in him," said Neville, bitterly.
+
+"Of course I do. Pray, do you desert your friends when ill luck falls on
+them?"
+
+"Nay, Mistress Kate, I hope not."
+
+"You only triumph over the misfortunes of your enemies, eh?" said the
+stinging beauty.
+
+"Not even that. And as for Mr. Gaunt, I am not his enemy."
+
+"O no, of course not. You are his best friend. Witness his arm at this
+moment."
+
+"I am his rival, but not his enemy. I'll give you a proof." Then he
+lowered his voice, and said in her ear: "You are grieved at his losing
+Bolton; and, as you are very generous and noble-minded, you are all the
+more grieved because his loss is your gain." (Kate blushed at this
+shrewd hit.) Neville went on: "You don't like him well enough to marry
+him; and since you cannot make him happy, it hurts your good heart to
+make him poor."
+
+"It is you for reading a lady's heart," said Kate, ironically.
+
+George proceeded steadily. "I'll show you an easy way out of this
+dilemma."
+
+"Thank you," said Kate, rather insolently.
+
+"Give Mr. Gaunt Bolton and Hernshaw, and give me--your hand."
+
+Kate turned and looked at him with surprise; she saw by his eye it was
+no jest. For all that, she affected to take it as one. "That would be
+long and short division," said she; but her voice faltered in saying it.
+
+"So it would," replied George, coolly; "for Bolton and Hernshaw both are
+not worth one finger of that hand I ask of you. But the value of things
+lies in the mind that weighs 'em. Mr. Gaunt, you see, values Bolton and
+Hernshaw very highly; why, he is in despair at losing them. Look at him;
+he is getting rid of his reason before your very eyes, to drown his
+disappointment."
+
+"Ah! oh! that is it, is it?" And, strange to say, she looked rather
+relieved.
+
+"That is it, believe me: it is a way we men have. But, as I was saying,
+_I_ don't care one straw for Bolton and Hernshaw. It is _you_ I
+love,--not your land nor your house, but your sweet self; so give me
+that, and let the lawyers make over this famous house and lands to Mr.
+Gaunt. His antagonist I have been in the field, and his rival I am and
+must be, but not his enemy, you see, and not his ill-wisher."
+
+Kate was softened a little. "This is all mighty romantic," said she,
+"and very like a _preux chevalier_, as you are; but you know very well
+he would fling land and house in your face, if you offered them him on
+these terms."
+
+"Ay, in my face, if I offered them; but not in yours, if you."
+
+"I am sure he would, all the same."
+
+"Try him."
+
+"What is the use?"
+
+"Try him."
+
+Kate showed symptoms of uneasiness. "Well, I will," said she, stoutly.
+"No, that I will not. You begin by bribing me; and then you would set me
+to bribe him."
+
+"It is the only way to make two honest men happy."
+
+"If I thought that--"
+
+"You know it. Try him."
+
+"And suppose he says nay?"
+
+"Then we shall be no worse than we are."
+
+"And suppose he says ay?"
+
+"Then he will wed Bolton Hall and Hernshaw, and the pearl of England
+will wed me."
+
+"I have a great mind to take you at your word," said Kate; "but no; it
+is really too indelicate."
+
+George Neville fixed his eyes on her. "Are you not deceiving yourself?"
+said he. "Do you not like Mr. Gaunt better than you think? I begin to
+fear you dare not put him to this test: you fear his love would not
+stand it?"
+
+Kate colored high, and tossed her head proudly. "How shrewd you
+gentlemen are!" she said. "Much you know of a lady's heart. Now the
+truth is, I don't know what might not happen were I to do what you bid
+me. Nay, I'm wiser than you would have me; and I'll pity Mr. Gaunt at a
+safe distance, if you please, sir."
+
+Neville bowed gravely. He felt sure this was a plausible evasion, and
+that she really was afraid to apply his test to his rival's love.
+
+So now, for the first time, he became silent and reserved by her side.
+The change was noticed by Father Francis, and he fixed a grave,
+remonstrating glance on Kate. She received it, understood it, affected
+not to notice it, and acted upon it.
+
+Drive a donkey too hard, it kicks.
+
+Drive a man too hard, it hits.
+
+Drive a woman too hard, it cajoles.
+
+Now amongst them they had driven Kate Peyton too hard; so she secretly
+formed a bold resolution; and, this done, her whole manner changed for
+the better. She turned to Neville, and flattered and fascinated him. The
+most feline of her sex could scarcely equal her _calinerie_ on this
+occasion. But she did not confine her fascination to him. She broke out,
+_pro bono publico_, like the sun in April, with quips and cranks and
+dimpled smiles, and made everybody near her quite forget her late
+hauteur and coldness, and bask in this sunny, sweet hostess. When the
+charm was at its height, the siren cast a seeming merry glance at
+Griffith, and said to a lady opposite, "Methinks some of the gentlemen
+will be glad to be rid of us," and so carried the ladies off to the
+drawing-room.
+
+There her first act was to dismiss her smiles without ceremony; and her
+second was to sit down and write four lines to the gentleman at the head
+of the dining-table.
+
+And he was as drunk as a fiddler.
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Griffith's friends laughed heartily with him while he was getting drunk;
+and when he had got drunk, they laughed still louder, only at him.
+
+They "knocked him down" for a song; and he sang a rather Anacreontic one
+very melodiously, and so loud that certain of the servants, listening
+outside, derived great delectation from it; and Neville applauded
+ironically.
+
+Soon after, they "knocked him down" for a story; and as it requires more
+brains to tell a story than to sing a song, the poor butt made an ass of
+himself. He maundered and wandered, and stopped, and went on, and lost
+one thread and took up another, and got into a perfect maze. And while
+he was thus entangled, a servant came in and brought him a note, and put
+it in his hand. The unhappy narrator received it with a sapient nod, but
+was too polite, or else too stupid, to open it, so closed his fingers on
+it, and went maundering on till his story trickled into the sand of the
+desert, and somehow ceased; for it could not be said to end, being a
+thing without head or tail.
+
+He sat down amidst derisive cheers. About five minutes afterwards, in
+some intermittent flash of reason, he found he had got hold of
+something. He opened his hand, and lo, a note! On this he chuckled
+unreasonably, and distributed sage, cunning winks around, as if he, by
+special ingenuity, had caught a nightingale, or the like; then, with
+sudden hauteur and gravity, proceeded to examine his prize.
+
+But he knew the handwriting at once; and it gave him a galvanic shock
+that half sobered him for the moment.
+
+He opened the note, and spelled it with great difficulty. It was
+beautifully written, in long, clear letters; but then those letters kept
+dancing so!
+
+     "I much desire to speak to you before 'tis too late, but can
+     think of no way save one. I lie in the turreted room: come
+     under my window at nine of the clock; and prithee come sober,
+     if you respect yourself, or
+
+     "KATE."
+
+Griffith put the note in his pocket, and tried to think; but he could
+not think to much purpose. Then this made him suspect he was drunk. Then
+he tried to be sober; but he found he could not. He sat in a sort of
+stupid agony, with Love and Drink battling for his brain. It was piteous
+to see the poor fool's struggles to regain the reason he had so madly
+parted with. He could not do it; and when he found that, he took up a
+finger-glass, and gravely poured the contents upon his head.
+
+At this there was a burst of laughter.
+
+This irritated Mr. Gaunt; and, with that rapid change of sentiments
+which marks the sober savage and the drunken European, he offered to
+fight a gentleman he had been hitherto holding up to the company as his
+best friend. But his best friend (a very distant acquaintance) was by
+this time as tipsy as himself, and offered a piteous disclaimer, mingled
+with tears; and these maudlin drops so affected Griffith that he flung
+his one available arm round his best friend's head, and wept in turn;
+and down went both their lachrymose, empty noddles on the table.
+Griffith's remained there; but his best friend extricated himself, and,
+shaking his skull, said, dolefully, "He is very drunk." This notable
+discovery, coming from such a quarter, caused considerable merriment.
+
+"Let him alone," said an old toper; and Griffith remained a good hour
+with his head on the table. Meantime the other gentlemen soon put it out
+of their power to ridicule him on the score of intoxication.
+
+Griffith, keeping quiet, got a little better, and suddenly started up
+with a notion he was to go to Kate this very moment. He muttered an
+excuse, and staggered to a glass door that led to the lawn. He opened
+this door, and rushed out into the open air. He thought it would set him
+all right; but, instead of that, it made him so much worse that
+presently his legs came to a misunderstanding, and he measured his
+length on the ground, and could not get up again, but kept slipping
+down.
+
+Upon this he groaned and lay quiet.
+
+Now there was a foot of snow on the ground; and it melted about
+Griffith's hot temples and flushed face, and mightily refreshed and
+revived him.
+
+He sat up and kissed Kate's letter, and Love began to get the upper hand
+of Liquor a little.
+
+Finally he got up and half strutted, half staggered, to the turret, and
+stood under Kate's window.
+
+The turret was covered with luxuriant ivy, and that ivy with snow. So
+the glass of the window was set in a massive frame of winter; but a
+bright fire burned inside the room, and this set the panes all aflame.
+It was cheery and glorious to see the window glow like a sheet of
+transparent fire in its deep frame of snow; but Griffith could not
+appreciate all that. He stood there a sorrowful man. The wine he had
+taken to drown his despair had lost its stimulating effect, and had
+given him a heavy head, but left him his sick heart.
+
+He stood and puzzled his drowsy faculties why Kate had sent for him.
+Was it to bid him good by forever, or to lessen his misery by telling
+him she would not marry another? He soon gave up cudgelling his
+enfeebled brains. Kate was a superior being to him, and often said
+things, and did things, that surprised him. She had sent for him, and
+that was enough. He should see her and speak to her once more, at all
+events. He stood, alternately nodding and looking up at her glowing
+room, and longing for its owner to appear. But as Bacchus had inspired
+him to mistake eight o'clock for nine, and as she was not a votary of
+Bacchus, she did not appear; and he stood there till he began to shiver.
+
+The shadow of a female passed along the wall; and Griffith gave a great
+start. Then he heard the fire poked. Soon after he saw the shadow again;
+but it had a large servant's cap on: so his heart had beaten high for
+Mary or Susan. He hung his head disappointed; and, holding on by the
+ivy, fell a nodding again.
+
+By and by one of the little casements was opened softly. He looked up,
+and there was the right face peering out.
+
+O, what a picture she was in the moonlight and the firelight! They both
+fought for that fair head, and each got a share of it: the full moon's
+silvery beams shone on her rose-like cheeks and lilified them a shade,
+and lit her great gray eyes and made them gleam astoundingly; but the
+ruby firelight rushed at her from behind, and flowed over her golden
+hair, and reddened and glorified it till it seemed more than mortal. And
+all this in a very picture-frame of snow.
+
+Imagine, then, how sweet and glorious she glowed on him who loved her,
+and who looked at her perhaps for the last time.
+
+The sight did wonders to clear his head; he stood open-mouthed, with his
+heart beating. She looked him all over a moment. "Ah!" said she. Then,
+quietly, "I am so glad you are come." Then, kindly and regretfully, "How
+pale you look! you are unhappy."
+
+This greeting, so gentle and kind, overpowered Griffith. His heart was
+too full to speak.
+
+Kate waited a moment; and then, as he did not reply to her, she began to
+plead to him. "I hope you are not angry with _me_," she said. "_I_ did
+not want him to leave me your estates. I would not rob you of them for
+the world, if I had my way."
+
+"Angry with you!" said Griffith. "I'm not such a villain. Mr. Charlton
+did the right thing, and--" He could say no more.
+
+"I do not think so," said Kate. "But don't you fret: all shall be
+settled to your satisfaction. I cannot quite love you, but I have a
+sincere affection for you; and so I ought. Cheer up, dear Griffith;
+don't you be down-hearted about what has happened to-day."
+
+Griffith smiled. "I don't feel unhappy," he said; "I did feel as if my
+heart was broken. But then you seemed parted from me. Now we are
+together, I feel as happy as ever. Mistress, don't you ever shut that
+window and leave me in the dark again. Let me stand and look at your
+sweet face all night, and I shall be the happiest man in Cumberland."
+
+"Ay," said Kate, blushing at his ardor; "happy for a single night; but
+when I go away you will be in the dumps again, and perhaps get tipsy; as
+if that could mend matters! Nay, I must set your happiness on stronger
+legs than that. Do you know I have got permission to undo this cruel
+will, and let you have Bolton Hall and Hernshaw again?"
+
+Griffith looked pleased, but rather puzzled.
+
+Kate went on, but not so glibly now. "However," said she, a little
+nervously, "there is one condition to it that will cost us both some
+pain. If you consent to accept these two estates from me, who don't
+value them one straw, why then--"
+
+"Well, what?" he gasped.
+
+"Why, then, my poor Griffith, we shall be bound in honor--you and I--not
+to meet for some months, perhaps for a whole year: in one word,--do not
+hate me,--not till you can bear to see me--another--man's--wife."
+
+The murder being out, she hid her face in her hands directly, and in
+that attitude awaited his reply.
+
+Griffith stood petrified a moment; and I don't think his intellects were
+even yet quite clear enough to take it all in at once. But at last he
+did comprehend it, and when he did, he just uttered a loud cry of agony,
+and then turned his back on her without a word.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Man does not speak by words alone. A mute glance of reproach has ere now
+pierced the heart a tirade would have left untouched; and even an
+inarticulate cry may utter volumes.
+
+Such an eloquent cry was that with which Griffith Gaunt turned his back
+upon the angelical face he adored, and the soft, persuasive tongue.
+There was agony, there was shame, there was wrath, all in that one
+ejaculation.
+
+It frightened Kate. She called him back. "Don't leave me so," she said.
+"I know I have affronted you; but I meant all for the best. Do not let
+us part in anger."
+
+At this Griffith returned in violent agitation. "It is your fault for
+making me speak," he cried. "I was going away without a word, as a man
+should, that is insulted by a woman. You heartless girl! What! you bid
+me sell you to that man for two dirty farms! O, well you know Bolton and
+Hernshaw were but the steps by which I hoped to climb to you: and now
+you tell me to part with you, and take those miserable acres instead of
+my darling. Ah, mistress, you have never loved, or you would hate
+yourself and despise yourself for what you have done. Love! if you had
+known what that word means, you couldn't look in my face and stab me to
+the heart like this. God forgive you! And sure I hope he will; for,
+after all, it is not _your_ fault that you were born without a heart.
+WHY, KATE, YOU ARE CRYING."
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+"Crying!" said Kate. "I could cry my eyes out to think what I have done;
+but it is not my fault: they egged me on. I knew you would fling those
+two miserable things in my face if I did, and I said so; but they would
+be wiser than me, and insist on my putting you to the proof."
+
+"They? Who is they?"
+
+"No matter. Whoever it was, they will gain nothing by it, and you will
+lose nothing. Ah, Griffith, I am so ashamed of myself,--and so proud of
+you."
+
+"They?" repeated Griffith, suspiciously. "Who is this they?"
+
+"What does that matter, so long as it was not Me? Are you going to be
+jealous again? Let us talk of you and me, and never mind who _them_ is.
+You have rejected my proposal with just scorn: so now let me hear yours;
+for we must agree on something this very night. Tell me, now, what can I
+say or do to make you happy?"
+
+Griffith was sore puzzled. "Alas! sweet Kate," said he, "I don't know
+what you can do for me now, except stay single for my sake."
+
+"I should like nothing better," replied Kate warmly; "but unfortunately
+they won't let me do that. Father Francis will be at me to-morrow, and
+insist on my marrying Mr. Neville."
+
+"But you will refuse."
+
+"I would, if I could but find a good excuse."
+
+"Excuse? why, say you don't love him."
+
+"O, they won't allow that for a reason."
+
+"Then I am undone," sighed Griffith.
+
+"No, no, you are not; if I could be brought to pretend I love somebody
+else. And really, if I don't quite love you, I like you too well to let
+you be unhappy. Besides, I cannot bear to rob you of these unlucky
+farms: I think there is nothing I would not do rather than that. I
+think--I would rather--do--something very silly indeed. But I suppose
+you don't want me to do that now? Why don't you answer me? Why don't you
+say something? Are you drunk, sir, as they pretend? or are you asleep?
+O, I can't speak any plainer: this is intolerable. Mr. Gaunt, I'm going
+to shut the window."
+
+Griffith got alarmed, and it sharpened his wits. "Kate, Kate!" he cried,
+"what do you mean? am I in a dream? would you marry poor me after all?"
+
+"How on earth can I tell, till I am asked?" inquired Kate, with an air
+of childlike innocence, and inspecting the stars attentively.
+
+"Kate, will you marry me?" said Griffith, all in a flutter.
+
+"Of course I will--if you will let me," replied Kate, coolly, but rather
+tenderly, too.
+
+Griffith burst into raptures. Kate listened to them with a complacent
+smile, then delivered herself after this fashion: "You have very little
+to thank me for, dear Griffith. I don't exactly downright love you, but
+I could not rob you of those unlucky farms, and you refuse to take them
+back any way but this; so what can I do? And then, for all I don't love
+you, I find I am always unhappy if you are unhappy, and happy when you
+are happy; so it comes pretty much to the same thing. I declare I am
+sick of giving you pain, and a little sick of crying in consequence.
+There, I have cried more in the last fortnight than in all my life
+before, and you know nothing spoils one's beauty like crying. And then
+you are so good, and kind, and true, and brave; and everybody is so
+unjust and so unkind to you, papa and all. You were quite in the right
+about the duel, dear. He _is_ an impudent puppy; and I threw dust in
+your eyes, and made you own you were in the wrong, and it was a great
+shame of me, but it was because I liked you best. I could take liberties
+with _you_, dear. And you are wounded for me, and now I have
+disinherited you. O, I can't bear it, and I won't. My heart yearns for
+you,--bleeds for you. I would rather die than you should be unhappy; I
+would rather follow you in rags round the world than marry a prince and
+make you wretched. Yes, dear, I am yours. Make me your wife; and then
+some day I dare say I shall love you as I ought."
+
+She had never showed her heart to him like this before; and now it
+overpowered him. So, being also a little under vinous influence, he
+stammered out something, and then fairly blubbered for joy. Then what
+does Kate do, but cry for company?
+
+Presently, to her surprise, he was half-way up the turret, coming to
+her.
+
+"O, take care! take care!" she cried. "You'll break your neck."
+
+"Nay," cried he; "I must come at you, if I die for it."
+
+The turret was ornamented from top to bottom with short ledges
+consisting of half-bricks. This ledge, shallow as it was, gave a slight
+foothold, insufficient in itself; but he grasped the strong branches of
+the ivy with a powerful hand, and so between the two contrived to get up
+and hang himself out close to her.
+
+"Sweet mistress," said he, "put out your hand to me; for I can't take it
+against your will this time. I have got but one arm."
+
+But this she declined. "No, no," said she; "you do nothing but torment
+and terrify me,--there." And so gave it him; and he mumbled it.
+
+This last feat won her quite. She thought no other man could have got to
+her there with two arms; and Griffith had done it with one. She said to
+herself, "How he loves me!--more than his own neck." And then she
+thought, "I shall be wife to a strong man; that is one comfort."
+
+In this softened mood she asked him demurely, would he take a friend's
+advice.
+
+"If that friend is you, ay."
+
+"Then," said she, "I'll do a downright brazen thing, now my hand is in.
+I declare I'll tell you how to secure me. You make me plight my troth
+with you this minute, and exchange rings with you, _whether I like or
+not_; engage my honor in this foolish business, and if you do that, I
+really do think you will have me in spite of them all. But
+there,--la!--am I worth all this trouble?"
+
+Griffith did not share this chilling doubt. He poured forth his
+gratitude, and then told her he had got his mother's ring in his pocket;
+"I meant to ask you to wear it," said he.
+
+"And why didn't you?"
+
+"Because you became an heiress all of a sudden."
+
+"Well, what signifies which of us has the dross, so that there is enough
+for both?"
+
+"That is true," said Griffith, approving his own sentiment, but not
+recognizing his own words. "Here's my mother's ring, on my little
+finger, sweet mistress. But I must ask you to draw it off, for I have
+but one hand."
+
+Kate made a wry face, "Well, that is my fault," said she, "or I would
+not take it from you so."
+
+She drew off his ring, and put it on her finger. Then she gave him her
+largest ring, and had to put it on his little finger for him.
+
+"You are making a very forward girl of me," said she, pouting
+exquisitely.
+
+He kissed her hand while she was doing it.
+
+"Don't you be so silly," said she; "and, you horrid creature, how you
+smell of wine! The bullet, please."
+
+"The bullet!" exclaimed Griffith. "What bullet?"
+
+"_The_ bullet. The one you were wounded with for my sake. I am told you
+put it in your pocket; and I see something bulge in your waistcoat. That
+bullet belongs to me now."
+
+"I think you are a witch," said he. "I do carry it about next my heart.
+Take it out of my waistcoat, if you will be so good."
+
+She blushed and declined, and, with the refusal on her very lips, fished
+it out with her taper fingers. She eyed it with a sort of tender horror.
+The sight of it made her feel faint a moment. She told him so, and that
+she would keep it to her dying day. Presently her delicate finger found
+something was written on it. She did not ask him what it was, but
+withdrew, and examined it by her candle. Griffith had engraved it with
+these words:--
+
+    "I LOVE KATE."
+
+He looked through the window, and saw her examine it by the candle. As
+she read the inscription, her face, glorified by the light, assumed a
+celestial tenderness he had never seen it wear before.
+
+She came back and leaned eloquently out as if she would fly to him. "O
+Griffith, Griffith!" she murmured, and somehow or other their lips met,
+in spite of all the difficulties, and grew together in a long and tender
+embrace.
+
+It was the first time she had ever given him more than her hand to kiss,
+and the rapture repaid him for all.
+
+But as soon as she had made this great advance, virginal instinct
+suggested a proportionate retreat.
+
+"You must go to bed," she said, austerely; "you will catch your death of
+cold out here."
+
+He remonstrated: she insisted. He held out: she smiled sweetly in his
+face, and shut the window in it pretty sharply, and disappeared. He went
+disconsolately down his ivy ladder. As soon as he was at the bottom, she
+opened the window again, and asked him, demurely, if he would do
+something to oblige her.
+
+He replied like a lover; he was ready to be cut in pieces, drawn asunder
+with wild horses, and so on.
+
+"O, I know you would do anything stupid for me," said she; "but will you
+do something clever for a poor girl that is in a fright at what she is
+going to do for you?"
+
+"Give your orders, mistress," said Griffith, "and don't talk of me
+obliging you. I feel quite ashamed to hear you talk so,--to-night
+especially."
+
+"Well, then," said Kate, "first and foremost, I want you to throw
+yourself on Father Francis's neck."
+
+"I'll throw myself on Father Francis's neck," said Griffith, stoutly.
+"Is that all?"
+
+"No, nor half. Once upon his neck you must say something. Then I had
+better settle the very words, or perhaps you will make a mess of it. Say
+after me now: O Father Francis, 'tis to you I owe her."
+
+"O Father Francis, 'tis to you I owe her."
+
+"You and I are friends for life."
+
+"You and I are friends for life."
+
+"And, mind, there is always a bed in our home for you, and a plate at
+our table, and a right welcome, come when you will."
+
+Griffith repeated this line correctly, but, when requested to say the
+whole, broke down. Kate had to repeat the oration a dozen times; and he
+said it after her, like a Sunday-school scholar, till he had it pat.
+
+The task achieved, he inquired of her what Father Francis was to say in
+reply.
+
+At this simple question Kate showed considerable alarm. "Gracious
+heavens!" she cried, "you must not stop talking to him; he will turn you
+inside out, and I shall be undone. Nay, you must gabble these words out,
+and then run away as hard as you can gallop."
+
+"But is it true?" asked Griffith. "Is he so much my friend?"
+
+"Hum!" said Kate, "it is quite true, and he is not at all your friend.
+There, don't you puzzle yourself, and pester me; but do as you are bid,
+or we are both undone."
+
+Quelled by a menace so mysterious, Griffith promised blind obedience;
+and Kate thanked him, and bade him good night, and ordered him
+peremptorily to bed.
+
+He went.
+
+She beckoned him back.
+
+He came.
+
+She leaned out, and inquired, in a soft, delicious whisper, as follows:
+"Are you happy, dearest?"
+
+"Ay, Kate, the happiest of the happy."
+
+"Then so am I," she murmured.
+
+And now she slowly closed the window, and gradually retired from the
+eyes of her enraptured lover.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+But while Griffith was thus sweetly employed, his neglected guests were
+dispersing, not without satirical comments on their truant host. Two or
+three, however, remained, and slept in the house, upon special
+invitation. And that invitation came from Squire Peyton. He chose to
+conclude that Griffith, disappointed by the will, had vacated the
+premises in disgust, and left him in charge of them; accordingly he
+assumed the master with alacrity, and ordered beds for Neville, and
+Father Francis, and Major Rickards, and another. The weather was
+inclement, and the roads heavy; so the gentlemen thus distinguished
+accepted Mr. Peyton's offer cordially.
+
+There were a great many things sung and said at the festive board in the
+course of the evening, but very few of them would amuse or interest the
+reader as they did the hearers. One thing, however, must not be passed
+by, as it had its consequences. Major Rickards drank bumpers apiece to
+the King, the Prince, Church and State, the Army, the Navy, and Kate
+Peyton. By the time he got to her, two thirds of his discretion had
+oozed away in loyalty, _esprit du corps_, and port wine; so he sang the
+young lady's praises in vinous terms, and of course immortalized the
+very exploit she most desired to consign to oblivion: _Arma viraginemque
+canebat_. He sang the duel, and in a style which I could not,
+consistently with the interests of literature, reproduce on a large
+scale. Hasten we to the concluding versicles of his song.
+
+"So then, sir, we placed our men for the third time, and, you may take
+my word for it, one or both of these heroes would have bit the dust at
+that discharge. But, by Jove, sir, just as they were going to pull
+trigger, in galloped your adorable daughter, and swooned off her foaming
+horse in the middle of us,--disarmed us, sir, in a moment, melted our
+valor, bewitched our senses, and the great god of war had to retreat
+before little Cupid and the charms of beauty in distress."
+
+"Little idiot!" observed the tender parent; and was much distempered.
+
+He said no more about it to Major Rickards; but when they all retired
+for the night, he undertook to show Father Francis his room, and sat in
+it with him a good half-hour talking about Kate.
+
+"Here's a pretty scandal," said he. "I must marry the silly girl out of
+hand before this gets wind, and you must help me."
+
+In a word, the result of the conference was that Kate should be publicly
+engaged to Neville to-morrow, and married to him as soon as her month's
+mourning should be over.
+
+The conduct of the affair was confided to Father Francis, as having
+unbounded influence with her.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Next morning Mr. Peyton was up betimes in his character of host, and
+ordered the servants about, and was in high spirits; only they gave
+place to amazement when Griffith Gaunt came down, and played the host,
+and was in high spirits.
+
+Neville too watched his rival, and was puzzled at his radiancy.
+
+So breakfast passed in general mystification. Kate, who could have
+thrown a light, did not come down to breakfast. She was on her defence.
+
+She made her first appearance out of doors.
+
+Very early in the morning, Mr. Peyton, in his quality of master, had
+ordered the gardener to cut and sweep the snow off the gravel walk that
+went round the lawn. And on this path Miss Peyton was seen walking
+briskly to and fro in the frosty, but sunny air.
+
+Griffith saw her first, and ran out to bid her good morning.
+
+Her reception of him was a farce. She made him a stately courtesy for
+the benefit of the three faces glued against the panes, but her words
+were incongruous. "You wretch," said she, "don't come here. Hide about,
+dearest, till you see me with Father Francis. I'll raise my hand _so_
+when you are to cuddle him, and fib. There, make me a low bow, and
+retire."
+
+He obeyed, and the whole thing looked mighty formal and ceremonious from
+the breakfast-room.
+
+"With your good leave, gentlemen," said Father Francis, dryly, "I will
+be the next to pay my respects to her." With this he opened the window
+and stepped out.
+
+Kate saw him, and felt very nervous. She met him with apparent delight.
+
+He bestowed his morning benediction on her, and then they walked
+silently side by side on the gravel; and from the dining-room window it
+looked like anything but what it was,--a fencing match.
+
+Father Francis was the first to break silence. He congratulated her on
+her good fortune, and on the advantage it might prove to the true
+Church.
+
+Kate waited quietly till he had quite done, and then said, "What, I may
+go into a convent _now_ that I can bribe the door open?"
+
+The scratch was feline, feminine, sudden, and sharp. But, alas! Father
+Francis only smiled at it. Though not what we call spiritually-minded,
+he was a man of a Christian temper. "Not with my good-will, my
+daughter," said he; "I am of the same mind still, and more than ever.
+You must marry forthwith, and rear children in the true faith."
+
+"What a hurry you are in."
+
+"Your own conduct has made it necessary."
+
+"Why, what have I done now?"
+
+"No harm. It was a good and humane action to prevent bloodshed, but the
+world is not always worthy of good actions. People are beginning to make
+free with your name for your interfering in the duel."
+
+Kate fired up. "Why can't people mind their own business?"
+
+"I do not exactly know," said the priest, coolly, "nor is it worth
+inquiring. We must take human nature as it is, and do for the best. You
+must marry him, and stop their tongues."
+
+Kate pretended to reflect. "I believe you are right," said she, at last;
+"and indeed I must do as you would have me; for, to tell the truth, in
+an unguarded moment, I pitied him so that I half promised I _would_."
+
+"Indeed!" said Father Francis. "This is the first I have heard of it."
+
+Kate replied that was no wonder, for it was only last night she had so
+committed herself.
+
+"Last night!" said Father Francis; "how can that be? He was never out of
+my sight till we went to bed."
+
+"O, there I beg to differ," said the lady. "While you were all tippling
+in the dining-room, he was better employed,--making love by moonlight.
+And O what a terrible thing opportunity is, and the moon another! There!
+what with the moonlight, and my pitying him so, and all he has suffered
+for me, and my being rich now, and having something to give him, we two
+are engaged. See else: this was his mother's ring, and he has mine."
+
+"Mr. Neville?"
+
+"Mr. Neville? No. My old servant, to be sure. What, do you think I would
+go and marry for wealth, when I have enough and to spare of my own? O,
+what an opinion you must have of me!"
+
+Father Francis was staggered by this adroit thrust. However, after a
+considerable silence he recovered himself, and inquired gravely why she
+had given him no hint of all this the other night, when he had diverted
+her from a convent, and advised her to marry Neville.
+
+"That you never did, I'll be sworn," said Kate.
+
+Father Francis reflected.
+
+"Not in so many words, perhaps; but I said enough to show you."
+
+"O!" said Kate, "such a matter was too serious for hints and innuendoes;
+if you wanted me to jilt my old servant and wed an acquaintance of
+yesterday, why not say so plainly? I dare say I should have obeyed you,
+and been unhappy for life; but now my honor is solemnly engaged; my
+faith is plighted; and were even you to urge me to break faith, and
+behave dishonorably, I should resist. I would liever take poison, and
+die."
+
+Father Francis looked at her steadily, and she colored to the brow.
+
+"You are a very apt young lady," said he; "you have outwitted your
+director. That may be my fault as much as yours; so I advise you to
+provide yourself with another director, whom you will be unable, or
+unwilling, to outwit."
+
+Kate's high spirit fell before this: she turned her eyes, full of tears,
+on him. "O, do not desert me, now that I shall need you more than ever,
+to guide me in my new duties. Forgive me; I did not know my own
+heart--quite. I'll go into a convent now, if I must; but I can't marry
+any man but poor Griffith. Ah, father, he is more generous than any of
+us! Would you believe it? when he thought Bolton and Hernshaw were
+coming to him, he said if I married him I should have the money to build
+a convent with. He knows how fond I am of a convent."
+
+"He was jesting; his religion would not allow it."
+
+"His religion!" cried Kate. Then, lifting her eyes to Heaven, and
+looking just like an angel, "Love is _his_ religion!" said she, warmly.
+
+"Then his religion is Heathenism," said the priest, grimly.
+
+"Nay, there is too much charity in it for that," retorted Kate, keenly.
+
+Then she looked down, like a cunning, guilty thing, and murmured: "One
+of the things I esteem him for is he always speaks well of _you_. To be
+sure, just now the poor soul thinks you are his best friend with me. But
+that is my fault; I as good as told him so: and it is true, after a
+fashion; for you kept me out of the convent that was his only real
+rival. Why, here he comes. O father, now don't you go and tell him you
+side with Mr. Neville."
+
+At this crisis Griffith, who, to tell the truth, had received a signal
+from Kate, rushed at Father Francis and fell upon his neck, and said
+with great rapidity: "O Father Francis, 'tis to you I owe her,--you and
+I are friends for life. So long as we have a house there is a bed in it
+for you, and whilst we have a table to sit down to there's a plate at it
+for you, and a welcome, come when you will."
+
+Having gabbled these words he winked at Kate, and fled swiftly.
+
+Father Francis was taken aback a little by this sudden burst of
+affection. First he stared,--then he knitted his brows,--then he
+pondered.
+
+Kate stole a look at him, and her eyes sought the ground.
+
+"That is the gentleman you arranged matters with last night?" said he,
+drily.
+
+"Yes," replied Kate, faintly.
+
+"Was this scene part of the business?"
+
+"O father!"
+
+"Why I ask, he did it so unnatural. Mr. Gaunt is a worthy, hospitable
+gentleman; he and I are very good friends; and really I never doubted
+that I should be welcome in his house----until this moment."
+
+"And can you doubt it now?"
+
+"Almost: his manner just now was so hollow, so forced; not a word of all
+that came from his heart, you know."
+
+"Then his heart is changed very lately."
+
+The priest shook his head. "Anything more like a puppet, and a parrot to
+boot, I never saw. 'Twas done so timely, too. He ran in upon our
+discourse. Let me see your hand, mistress. Why, where is the string with
+which you pulled yonder machine in so pat upon the word?"
+
+"Spare me!" muttered Kate, faintly.
+
+"Then do you drop deceit and the silly cunning of your sex, and speak to
+me from your heart, or not at all." (Diapason.)
+
+At this Kate began to whimper.
+
+"Father," she said, "show me some mercy." Then, suddenly clasping her
+hands: "HAVE PITY ON HIM, AND ON ME."
+
+This time Nature herself seemed to speak, and the eloquent cry went
+clean through the priest's heart.
+
+"Ah!" said he; and his own voice trembled a little: "now you are as
+strong as your cunning was weak. Come, I see how it is with you; and I
+am human, and have been young, and a lover into the bargain, before I
+was a priest. There, dry thy eyes, child, and go to thy room; he thou
+couldst not trust shall bear the brunt for thee this once."
+
+Then Kate bowed her fair head and kissed the horrid paw of him that had
+administered so severe but salutary a pat. She hurried away up stairs,
+right joyful at the unexpected turn things had taken.
+
+Father Francis, thus converted to her side, lost no time; he walked into
+the dining-room and told Neville he had bad news for him.
+
+"Summon all your courage, my young friend," said he, with feeling, "and
+remember that this world is full of disappointments."
+
+Neville said nothing, but rose and stood rather pale, waiting like a man
+for the blow. Its nature he more than half guessed: he had been at the
+window.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It fell.
+
+"She is engaged to Gaunt, since last night; and she loves him."
+
+"The double-faced jade!" cried Peyton, with an oath.
+
+"The heartless coquette!" groaned Neville.
+
+Father Francis made excuses for her: "Nay, nay, she is not the first of
+her sex that did not know her own mind all at once. Besides, we men are
+blind in matters of love; perhaps a woman would have read her from the
+first. After all, she was not bound to give us the eyes to read a female
+heart."
+
+He next reminded Neville that Gaunt had been her servant for years.
+"You knew that," said he, "yet you came between them----at your peril.
+Put yourself in his place: say you had succeeded: would not his wrong be
+greater than yours is now? Come, be brave; be generous; he is wounded,
+he is disinherited; only his love is left him: 'tis the poor man's lamb;
+and would you take it?"
+
+"O, I have not a word to say against the _man_," said George, with a
+mighty effort.
+
+"And what use is your quarrelling with the woman?" suggested the
+practical priest.
+
+"None whatever," said George, sullenly. After a moment's silence he rang
+the bell feverishly. "Order my horse round directly," said he. Then he
+sat down, and buried his face in his hands, and did not, and could not,
+listen to the voice of consolation.
+
+Now the house was full of spies in petticoats, amateur spies, that ran
+and told the mistress everything of their own accord, to curry favor.
+
+And this no doubt was the cause that, just as the groom walked the
+piebald out of the stable towards the hall door, a maid came to Father
+Francis with a little note: he opened it, and found these words written
+faintly, in a fine Italian hand:--
+
+     "I scarce knew my own heart till I saw him wounded and poor,
+     and myself rich at his expense. Entreat Mr. Neville to forgive
+     me."
+
+He handed the note to Neville without a word.
+
+Neville read it, and his lip trembled; but he said nothing, and
+presently went out into the hall, and put on his hat, for he saw his nag
+at the door.
+
+Father Francis followed him, and said, sorrowfully, "What, not one word
+in reply to so humble a request?"
+
+"Well, here's my reply," said George, grinding his teeth. "She knows
+French, though she pretends not.
+
+    'Le bruit est pour le fat, la plainte est pour le sot,
+    L'honnete homme trompe s'eloigne et ne dit mot.'"
+
+And with this he galloped furiously away.
+
+He buried himself at Neville's Cross for several days, and would neither
+see nor speak to a soul. His heart was sick, his pride lacerated. He
+even shed some scalding tears in secret; though, to look at him, that
+seemed impossible.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So passed a bitter week: and in the course of it he bethought him of the
+tears he had made a true Italian lady shed, and never pitied her a grain
+till now.
+
+He was going abroad: on his desk lay a little crumpled paper. It was
+Kate's entreaty for forgiveness. He had ground it in his hand, and
+ridden away with it.
+
+Now he was going away, he resolved to answer her.
+
+He wrote a letter full of bitter reproaches; read it over; and tore it
+up.
+
+He wrote a satirical and cutting letter; read it; and tore it up.
+
+He wrote her a mawkish letter; read it; and tore it up.
+
+The priest's words, scorned at first, had sunk into him a little.
+
+He walked about the room, and tried to see it all like a by-stander.
+
+He examined her writing closely: the pen had scarcely marked the paper.
+They were the timidest strokes. The writer seemed to kneel to him. He
+summoned all his manhood, his fortitude, his generosity, and, above all,
+his high-breeding; and produced the following letter; and this one he
+sent:--
+
+     "MISTRESS KATE,--I leave England to-day for your sake; and
+     shall never return unless the day shall come when I can look on
+     you but as a friend. The love that ends in hate, that is too
+     sorry a thing to come betwixt you and me.
+
+     "If you have used me ill, your punishment is this; you have
+     given me the right to say to you----I forgive you.
+
+     "GEORGE NEVILLE."
+
+And he went straight to Italy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kate laid his note upon her knee, and sighed deeply; and said, "Poor
+fellow! How noble of him! What _can_ such men as this see in any woman
+to go and fall in love with her?"
+
+Griffith found her with a tear in her eye. He took her out walking, and
+laid all his radiant plans of wedded life before her. She came back
+flushed, and beaming with complacency and beauty.
+
+Old Peyton was brought to consent to the marriage. Only he attached one
+condition, that Bolton and Hernshaw should be settled on Kate for her
+separate use.
+
+To this Griffith assented readily; but Kate refused plump. "What, give
+him _myself_, and then grudge him my _estates_!" said she, with a look
+of lofty and beautiful scorn at her male advisers.
+
+But Father Francis, having regard to the temporal interests of his
+Church, exerted his strength and pertinacity, and tired her out; so
+those estates were put into trustees' hands, and tied up tight as wax.
+
+This done, Griffith Gaunt and Kate Peyton were married, and made the
+finest pair that wedded in the county that year.
+
+As the bells burst into a merry peal, and they walked out of church man
+and wife, their path across the churchyard was strewed thick with
+flowers, emblematic, no doubt, of the path of life that lay before so
+handsome a couple.
+
+They spent the honeymoon in London, and tasted earthly felicity.
+
+Yet did not quarrel after it; but subsided into the quiet complacency of
+wedded life.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Gaunt lived happily together--as times went.
+
+A fine girl and boy were born to them; and need I say how their hearts
+expanded and exulted, and seemed to grow twice as large.
+
+The little boy was taken from them at three years old; and how can I
+convey to any but a parent the anguish of that first bereavement?
+
+Well, they suffered it together, and that poignant grief was one tie
+more between them.
+
+For many years they did not furnish any exciting or even interesting
+matter to this narrator. And all the better for them: without these
+happy periods of dulness our lives would be hell, and our hearts
+eternally bubbling and boiling in a huge pot made hot with thorns.
+
+In the absence of striking incidents, it may be well to notice the
+progress of character, and note the tiny seeds of events to come.
+
+Neither the intellectual nor the moral character of any person stands
+stock-still: a man improves, or he declines. Mrs. Gaunt had a great
+taste for reading; Mr. Gaunt had not: what was the consequence? At the
+end of seven years the lady's understanding had made great strides; the
+gentleman's had apparently retrograded.
+
+Now we all need a little excitement, and we all seek it, and get it by
+hook or by crook. The girl who satisfies that natural craving with what
+the canting dunces of the day call a "sensational" novel, and the girl
+who does it by waltzing till daybreak, are sisters; only one obtains the
+result intellectually, and the other obtains it like a young animal, and
+a pain in her empty head next day.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt could enjoy company, but was never dull with a good book. Mr.
+Gaunt was a pleasant companion, but dull out of company. So, rather than
+not have it, he would go to the parlor of the "Red Lion," and chat and
+sing with the yeomen and rollicking young squires that resorted thither:
+and this was matter of grief and astonishment to Mrs. Gaunt.
+
+It was balanced by good qualities she knew how to appreciate. Morals
+were much looser then than now; and more than one wife of her
+acquaintance had a rival in the village, or even among her own
+domestics; but Griffith had no loose inclinations of that kind, and
+never gave her a moment's uneasiness. He was constancy and fidelity in
+person.
+
+Sobriety had not yet been invented. But Griffith was not so intemperate
+as most squires; he could always mount the stairs to tea, and generally
+without staggering.
+
+He was uxorious, and it used to come out after his wine. This Mrs. Gaunt
+permitted at first, but by and by says she, expanding her delicate
+nostrils: "You may be as affectionate as you please, dear, and you may
+smell of wine, if you will; but please not to smell of wine and be
+affectionate at the same moment. I value your affection too highly to
+let you disgust me with it."
+
+And the model husband yielded to this severe restriction; and, as it
+never occurred to him to give up his wine, he forbore to be affectionate
+in his cups.
+
+One great fear Mrs. Gaunt had entertained before marriage ceased to
+haunt her. Now and then her quick eye saw Griffith writhe at the great
+influence her director had with her; but he never spoke out to offend
+her, and she, like a good wife, saw, smiled, and adroitly, tenderly
+soothed: and this was nothing compared to what she had feared.
+
+Griffith saw his wife admired by other men, yet never chid nor chafed.
+The merit of this belonged in a high degree to herself. The fact is,
+that Kate Peyton, even before marriage, was not a coquette at heart,
+though her conduct might easily bear that construction; and she was now
+an experienced matron, and knew how to be as charming as ever, yet check
+or parry all approaches to gallantry on the part of her admirers. Then
+Griffith observed how delicate and prudent his lovely wife was, without
+ostentatious prudery; and his heart was at peace.
+
+He was the happier of the two, for he looked up to his wife, as well as
+loved her; whereas she was troubled at times with a sense of superiority
+to her husband. She was amiable enough, and wise enough, to try and shut
+her eyes to it; and often succeeded, but not always.
+
+Upon the whole, they were a contented couple; though the lady's dreamy
+eyes seemed still to be exploring earth and sky in search of something
+they had not yet found, even in wedded life.
+
+They lived at Hernshaw. A letter had been found among Mr. Charlton's
+papers explaining his will. He counted on their marrying, and begged
+them to live at the castle. He had left it on his wife's death; it
+reminded him too keenly of happier days; but, as he drew near his end,
+and must leave all earthly things, he remembered the old house with
+tenderness, and put out his dying hand to save it from falling into
+decay.
+
+Unfortunately, considerable repairs were needed; and, as Kate's property
+was tied up so tight, Griffith's two thousand pounds went in repairing
+the house, lawn, park palings, and walled gardens; went, every penny,
+and left the bridge over the lake still in a battered, rotten, and, in a
+word, picturesque condition.
+
+This lake was by the older inhabitants sometimes called the "mere," and
+sometimes "the fish-pools"; it resembled an hour-glass in shape, only
+curved like a crescent.
+
+In mediaeval times it had no doubt been a main defence of the place. It
+was very deep in parts, especially at the waist or narrow that was
+spanned by the decayed bridge. There were hundreds of carp and tench in
+it older than any He in Cumberland, and also enormous pike and eels; and
+fish from one to five pounds' weight by the million. The water literally
+teemed from end to end; and this was a great comfort to so good a
+Catholic as Mrs. Gaunt. When she was seized with a desire to fast, and
+that was pretty often, the gardener just went down to the lake and flung
+a casting-net in some favorite hole, and drew out half a bushel the
+first cast; or planted a flue-net round a patch of weeds, then belabored
+the weeds with a long pole, and a score of fine fish were sure to run
+out into the meshes.
+
+The "mere" was clear as plate glass, and came to the edge of the shaven
+lawn, and reflected flowers, turf, and overhanging shrubs deliciously.
+
+Yet an ill name brooded over its seductive waters; for two persons had
+been drowned in it during the last hundred years: and the last one was
+the parson of the parish, returning from the squire's dinner in the
+normal condition of a guest, A.D. 1740-50. But what most affected the
+popular mind was, not the jovial soul hurried into eternity, but the
+material circumstance that the greedy pike had cleared the flesh off his
+bones in a single night, so that little more than a skeleton, with here
+and there a black rag hanging to it, had been recovered next morning.
+
+This ghastly detail being stoutly maintained and constantly repeated by
+two ancient eye-witnesses, whose one melodramatic incident and treasure
+it was, the rustic mind saw no beauty whatever in those pellucid and
+delicious waters, where flowers did glass themselves.
+
+As for the women of the village, they looked on this sheet of water as a
+trap for their poor bodies and those of their children, and spoke of it
+as a singular hardship in their lot, that Hernshaw Mere had not been
+filled up threescore years agone.
+
+The castle itself was no castle, nor had it been for centuries. It was
+just a house with battlements; but attached to the stable was an old
+square tower, that really had formed part of the mediaeval castle.
+
+However, that unsubstantial shadow, a name, is often more durable than
+the thing, especially in rural parts; but, indeed, what is there in a
+name for Time's teeth to catch hold of?
+
+Though no castle, it was a delightful abode. The drawing-room and
+dining-room had both spacious bay-windows, opening on to the lawn that
+sloped very gradually down to the pellucid lake, and there was mirrored.
+On this sweet lawn the inmates and guests walked for sun and mellow air,
+and often played bowls at eventide.
+
+On the other side was the drive up to the house-door, and a sweep, or
+small oval plot, of turf, surrounded by gravel; and a gate at the corner
+of this sweep opened into a grove of the grandest old spruce-firs in the
+island.
+
+This grove, dismal in winter and awful at night, was deliciously cool
+and sombre in the dog-days. The trees were spires; and their great stems
+stood serried like infantry in column, and flung a grand canopy of
+sombre plumes overhead. A strange, antique, and classic grove,--_nulli
+penetrabilis astro_.
+
+This retreat was enclosed on three sides by a wall, and on the east side
+came nearly to the house. A few laurel-bushes separated the two. At
+night it was shunned religiously, on account of the ghosts. Even by
+daylight it was little frequented, except by one person,--and she took
+to it amazingly. That person was Mrs. Gaunt. There seems to be, even in
+educated women, a singular, instinctive love of twilight; and here was
+twilight at high noon. The place, too, suited her dreamy, meditative
+nature. Hither, then, she often retired for peace and religious
+contemplation, and moved slowly in and out among the tall stems, or sat
+still, with her thoughtful brow leaned on her white hand,--till the
+cool, umbrageous retreat got to be called, among the servants, "The
+Dame's Haunt."
+
+This, I think, is all needs be told about the mere place, where the
+Gaunts lived comfortably many years, and little dreamed of the strange
+events in store for them; little knew the passions that slumbered in
+their own bosoms, and, like other volcanoes, bided their time.
+
+
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+
+_Snow-Bound: a Winter Idyl._ By JOHN G. WHITTIER. Boston: Ticknor and
+Fields.
+
+What Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" has long been to Old England,
+Whittier's "Snow-Bound" will always be to New England. Both poems have
+the flavor of native soil in them. Neither of them is a reminder of
+anything else, but each is individual and special in those qualities
+which interest and charm the reader. If "The Deserted Village" had never
+been written, Whittier would have composed his "Snow-Bound," no doubt;
+and the latter only recalls the former on account of that genuine
+home-atmosphere which surrounds both these exquisite productions. After
+a perusal of this new American idyl, no competent critic will contend
+that we lack proper themes for poetry in our own land. The "Snow-Bound"
+will be a sufficient reminder to all cavillers, at home or abroad, that
+the American Muse need not travel far away for poetic situations.
+
+Whittier has been most fortunate in the subject-matter of this new poem.
+Every page has beauties on it so easy to discern, that the common as
+well as the cultured mind will at once feel them without an effort. We
+have only space for a few passages from the earlier portion of the idyl.
+
+    "The sun that brief December day
+    Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
+    And, darkly circled, gave at noon
+    A sadder light than waning moon.
+    Slow tracing down the thickening sky
+    Its mute and ominous prophecy,
+    A portent seeming less than threat,
+    It sank from sight before it set.
+    A chill no coat, however stout,
+    Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
+    A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
+      That checked, mid-vein, the circling race
+      Of life-blood in the sharpened face,
+    The coming of the snow-storm told.
+    The wind blew east: we heard the roar
+    Of Ocean on his wintry shore,
+    And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
+    Beat with low rhythm our inland air.
+
+    "Meanwhile we did our nightly chores,--
+    Brought in the wood from out of doors,
+    Littered the stalls, and from the mows
+    Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows;
+    Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;
+    And, sharply clashing horn on horn,
+    Impatient down the stanchion rows
+    The cattle shake their walnut bows;
+    While, peering from his early perch
+    Upon the scaffold's pole of birch,
+    The cock his crested helmet bent
+    And down his querulous challenge sent.
+
+    "Unwarmed by any sunset light
+    The gray day darkened into night,
+    A night made hoary with the swarm
+    And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
+    As zigzag wavering to and fro
+    Crossed and recrossed the winged snow:
+    And ere the early bed-time came
+    The white drift piled the window-frame,
+    And through the glass the clothes-line posts
+    Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.
+
+    "So all night long the storm roared on:
+    The morning broke without the sun;
+    In tiny spherule traced with lines
+    Of Nature's geometric signs,
+    In starry flake, and pellicle,
+    All day the hoary meteor fell;
+    And, when the second morning shone,
+    We looked upon a world unknown,
+    On nothing we could call our own.
+    Around the glistening wonder bent
+    The blue walls of the firmament,
+    No cloud above, no earth below,--
+    A universe of sky and snow!
+    The old familiar sights of ours
+    Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers
+    Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,
+    Or garden wall, or belt of wood;
+    A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,
+    A fenceless drift what once was road;
+    The bridle-post an old man sat
+    With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;
+    The well-curb had a Chinese roof;
+    And even the long sweep, high aloof,
+    In its slant splendor, seemed to tell
+    Of Pisa's leaning miracle.
+
+    "A prompt, decisive man, no breath
+    Our father wasted: 'Boys, a path!'
+    Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy
+    Count such a summons less than joy?)
+    Our buskins on our feet we drew;
+      With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,
+      To guard our necks and ears from snow,
+    We cut the solid whiteness through.
+    And, where the drift was deepest, made
+    A tunnel walled and overlaid
+    With dazzling crystal: we had read
+    Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave,
+    And to our own his name we gave,
+    With many a wish the luck were ours
+    To test his lamp's supernal powers.
+
+    "We reached the barn with merry din,
+    And roused the prisoned brutes within.
+    The old horse thrust his long head out,
+    And grave with wonder gazed about;
+    The cock his lusty greeting said,
+    And forth his speckled harem led;
+    The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked,
+    And mild reproach of hunger looked;
+    The horned patriarch of the sheep,
+    Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep,
+    Shook his sage head with gesture mute,
+    And emphasized with stamp of foot."
+
+
+_Lives of Boulton and Watt._ Principally from the original Soho MSS.
+Comprising also a History of the Invention and Introduction of the
+Steam-Engine. By SAMUEL SMILES. London: John Murray.
+
+The author of this book is an enthusiast in biography. He has given the
+best years of his life to the task of recording the struggles and
+successes of men who have labored for the good of their kind; and his
+own name will always be honorably mentioned in connection with
+Stephenson, Watt, Flaxman, and others, of whom he has written so well.
+Of all his published books, next to "Self-Help," this volume, lately
+issued, is his most interesting one. James Watt, with his nervous
+sensibility, his headaches, his pecuniary embarrassments, and his gloomy
+temperament, has never till now been revealed precisely as he lived and
+struggled. The extensive collection of Soho documents to which Mr.
+Smiles had access has enabled him to add so much that is new and
+valuable to the story of his hero's career, that hereafter this
+biography must take the first place as a record of the great inventor.
+
+As a tribute to Boulton, so many years the friend, partner, and consoler
+of Watt, the book is deeply interesting. Fighting many a hard battle for
+his timid, shrinking associate, Boulton stands forth a noble
+representative of strength, courage, and perseverance. Never was
+partnership more admirably conducted; never was success more richly
+earned. Mr. Smiles is neither a Macaulay nor a Motley, but he is so
+honest and earnest in every work he undertakes, he rarely fails to make
+a book deeply instructive and entertaining.
+
+
+_Winifred Bertram and the World she lived in._ By the Author of the
+Schoenberg-Cotta Family. New York: M. W. Dodd.
+
+The previous works of this prolific author have proved by their
+popularity that they meet a genuine demand. Such a fact can no more be
+reached by literary criticism, than can the popularity of Tupper's
+poetry. It is no reproach to a book which actually finds readers to say
+that it is not high art. Winifred Bertram has this advantage over her
+predecessors, that she takes part in no theological controversies except
+those of the present day, and therefore seems more real and truthful
+than the others. In regard to present issues, however, the book deals in
+the usual proportion of rather one-sided dialogues, and of arguments
+studiously debilitated in order to be knocked down by other arguments.
+Yet there is much that is lovely and touching in the characters
+delineated; there is a good deal of practical sense and sweet human
+charity; and the different heroes and heroines show some human variety
+in their action, although in conversation they all preach very much
+alike. Indeed, the book is overhung with rather an oppressive weight of
+clergyman; and when the loveliest of the saints is at last wedded to the
+youngest of the divines, she throws an awful shade over clerical
+connubiality by invariably addressing him as "Mr. Bertram." In this
+respect, at least, the fashionable novels hold out brighter hopes to the
+heart of woman.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No.
+101, March, 1866, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***
+
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+
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+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
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