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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106,
+August, 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 18, No. 106, August, 1866
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: October 16, 2007 [EBook #23040]
+
+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. XVIII.--AUGUST, 1866.--NO. CVI.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+HOW MY NEW ACQUAINTANCES SPIN.
+
+
+The strictly professional man may have overcome his natural aversion to
+some of the most interesting objects of his study, such as snakes, and
+toads, and spiders, and vermin of all kinds; but people in general have
+always required that any attempt to force such abominations upon their
+notice should be preceded by a more or less elaborate and humble
+acknowledgment of their hideous aspect, their ferocious disposition,
+their dark and bloody deeds, and the utter impossibility of their
+conducing in any way to human comfort and convenience.
+
+But, while admitting the truth of much that has been thus urged against
+spiders as a class, I must decline, or at least defer, conforming to
+custom in speaking of the particular variety which we are about to
+consider, and I believe that it will need only a glance at the insect
+and its silk, and a brief notice of its habits, to justify my
+indisposition to follow the usual routine.
+
+Without apology, then, I shall endeavor to show that in the structure,
+the habits, the mode of growth, and, above all, in the productions of
+this spider are to be found subjects worthy the attention of every class
+of minds; for to the naturalist is exhibited a species which, though not
+absolutely new to science, was never seen nor heard of by Professor
+Agassiz till the spring of 1865, and which is so narrowly circumscribed
+in its geographical distribution that, so far as I can ascertain, it was
+never observed by Hentz,--a Southern entomologist, who devoted himself
+particularly to spiders,--and is met with only upon a few low, marshy
+islands on the coast of South Carolina, and perhaps of other Southern
+States. Its habits, too, are so interesting, and so different in many
+respects from those recorded of other species, that the observer of
+living creatures has here an abundant opportunity, not only for
+increasing his own knowledge, but for enlarging the domain of science.
+And this more especially in America; for while, in England, Blackwall
+and others have been laboring for more than thirty years, spiders seem
+to have received little attention on this side of the Atlantic.
+
+We have now, moreover, in our observation of these insects, an
+incentive of sovereign effect, namely, the hope of increasing our
+national wealth; for to the practical man, to the manufacturer and the
+mechanic, is offered a new silken material which far surpasses in beauty
+and elegance that of the silk-worm, and which, however small in quantity
+at present, demands some attention in view of the alarming decrease in
+the silk crops of Europe. This material is obtained in a manner entirely
+new,--not, as with the worm, by unwinding the cocoons, nor yet, as might
+be suggested for the spider, by unravelling the web, but by _drawing_ or
+_winding_ or _reeling directly from the body of the living insect_, even
+as you would milk a cow, or, more aptly, as wire is pulled through a
+wire-drawing machine.
+
+To the admirer of the beautiful and perfect in nature is presented a
+fibre of absolute smoothness, roundness, and finish, the colors of which
+resemble, and in the sunlight even excel in brilliancy those of the two
+precious metals, silver and gold; while the moralist who loves to
+illustrate the workings of God's providence in bringing forth good out
+of evil, by comparing the disgusting silk-worm with its beautiful and
+useful product, may now enforce the lesson by the still more striking
+contrast between this silk and the loathed and hated spider.
+
+The statesman who, after a four years' war, sees few indications of a
+better spirit on the part of the South, and is almost ready to exclaim,
+"Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" may now perhaps discern a
+spot, small indeed, but brilliant, on the very edge of the dark Carolina
+cloud; and it may not be too much to hope that, in course of time, the
+cords of our spider's golden and silver silk may prove potent bonds of
+union with the first of the rebellious States.
+
+As to the mathematician who believes in the inborn tendency of mankind
+to variation and imperfection, and holds up to us, as shining examples
+of mathematical accuracy, the work of certain insects, and who--since
+Professor Wyman has shown that the hexagonal form of the bee's cell is
+not of original design, but rather the necessary result of difficulties
+met and overcome in the most economical manner, though by no means
+always with perfect exactness and uniformity--has fallen back upon the
+ancient and still prevalent belief in the precise construction of the
+spider's web, (which, as will be seen, really displays it no more than
+does the bee's cell,)--to this disappointed man of geometry and figures
+is now offered the alternative of either finding a new and truer
+illustration, or of abandoning his position entirely.
+
+Let us, then, wait till we have seen this spider and heard his story.
+_His_ story! That reminds me of another class which may possibly be
+represented among my readers, and whose members, in the contemplation of
+the domestic economy of these insects, will, I fear, discover many and
+weighty arguments in favor of the various opinions entertained by the
+advocates of Woman's Rights; for here is a community in which the
+females not only far exceed the males in number, but present so great a
+contrast to them in size and importance, that, but for absolute proof,
+they never would be regarded as belonging to the same species.
+
+Here, then, is a life-size picture of our spider and of--I was about to
+say, _his_ partner; but in truth it is _she_ who is _the_ spider, and
+_he_ is only _her_ partner. Such is the real physical, and, so to speak,
+mental superiority of the female, that, even if we insist upon the legal
+equality at least of the masculine element, we can do so only in name,
+and will find it hard to avoid speaking of him as the male of the
+_Nephila plumipes_, thus tacitly admitting her as the truer
+representative of the species. Their relative size and appearance are
+shown by the figures; but it may be added that she is very handsome; the
+fore part of her body, which, being composed of the head and chest
+soldered together, is termed _cephalothorax_, is glossy-black and
+covered, except in spots, with white hairs; she has also upon six of
+her legs one or two brushes of black hairs;--while he is an
+insignificant-looking insect of a dull-brown color and half-starved
+look, with only a few scattered bristles upon his slender limbs. He does
+nothing for himself, leaving her to make the web and provide the food,
+and even to carry him on her back when removal is necessary; but she
+makes up for the imposition by keeping him on short allowance and at a
+respectful distance, excepting when the impregnation of her eggs is
+necessary; and even then she is mistress of the situation, and, _etiam
+in amoribus s�va_, may afterward eat him up. But of this contrast
+between the two sexes, of their functions and their relations to each
+other, more hereafter. It is sufficient to observe that, when this
+spider is mentioned, and the sex is not specified, the _female_ is
+always referred to.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 1. Male and Female _Nephila plumipes_.]
+
+When, where, and how was this spider discovered? and why is it that we
+have never heard of it before? To answer these questions, we must go
+back three years, to the 19th of August, 1863, and to the camp of the
+Fifty-fifth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, on a desolate island a
+little south from the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, and in sight
+of the fortress which Gillmore had just begun to strengthen by the
+addition of tons of Union shot and shell, till, from tolerably strong
+masonry, its walls became solid earthworks which nothing could pierce or
+greatly injure. There, at the north end of Folly Island,--scarce wider
+than our camp at that point, and narrower than the magnificent beach
+which, at low tide, afforded ample space for the battalion drill,--I
+found in a tree a very large and handsome spider, whose web was at least
+three feet in diameter.
+
+Glad enough to meet with anything new, and bearing in mind the interest
+with which, when a boy, I had watched and recorded the operations of our
+common house and hunting spiders, I entangled him--I didn't then know it
+was _her_, so let it pass--in the web, and carried it to my tent. The
+insect was very quiet, and did not attempt to escape; but presently,
+after crawling slowly along my sleeve, she let herself down to the
+floor, taking first the precaution, after the prudent fashion of most
+spiders, to attach to the point she left a silken line, which, as she
+descended, came from her body. Rather than seize the insect itself, I
+caught the thread and pulled. The spider was not moved, but the line
+readily drew out, and, being wound upon my hands, seemed so strong that
+I attached the end to a little quill, and, having placed the spider upon
+the side of the tent, lay down on my couch and turned the quill between
+my fingers at such a rate that in one minute six feet of silk were wound
+upon it. At the end of an hour and a half I estimated, with due
+allowance for stop-pages, that I had four hundred and fifty feet, or
+_one hundred and fifty yards_, of the most brilliant and beautiful
+golden silk I had ever seen.
+
+During all this operation the spider had remained perfectly quiet, but
+finally put an end to my proceedings by grasping the line with the tip
+of one of her hind legs so that it snapped. I was tired, however, and
+contented myself with the quantity already obtained, which now formed a
+raised band of gold upon the quill. This specimen is now in my
+possession, but has been removed from the quill to ascertain its weight,
+which is one third of a grain.
+
+It is worthy of notice, perhaps, that in all this was involved no new
+_fact_, but only a happy deduction from one known ages ago; namely, that
+a spider, when dropping, leaves her line attached, and so allows it to
+be drawn from her body. Nothing was more natural than to simply reverse
+the position of the fixed point, and, instead of letting the spider go
+away from the end of her line, to take the end of her line away from
+her. So natural, indeed, did it seem, that my gratification at having
+been (as was then supposed) the first to do it was, on reflection, mixed
+with surprise that no one had ever thought of it before, and I am very
+glad to find that at least _four_ individuals have, within the last
+century, pulled silk out of a spider, though of these only one, whose
+researches I hope to make known, regarded the matter as anything more
+than a curious experiment.
+
+I had never before seen such a spider, nor even paid attention to any
+geometrical species; though one large black and yellow variety is, or
+used to be, common enough in our fields at the North. Neither had I ever
+heard of such a method of obtaining silk. But though my first specimen
+was not preserved, and a second was never seen on Folly Island, yet I
+was so impressed with its size and brilliant colors, and especially with
+the curious brushes of black hairs on its legs, that when, during the
+following summer, another officer described to me a great spider which
+was very common on Long Island, where he was stationed, I knew it was
+the same, and told him what I had done the year before, adding that I
+was sure something would come of it in time.
+
+With leisure and many spiders at his command, this officer improved upon
+my suggestion, by substituting for my quill turned in the fingers a
+wooden cylinder worked by a crank, and by securing, at a proper
+distance, (between pins, I think,) one or more spiders, whose threads
+were guided between pins upon the cylinder. He thus produced more of the
+silk, winding it upon rings of hard rubber so as to make very pretty
+ornaments. With this simple machine I wound the silk in two grooves cut
+on a ring of hard rubber and parallel except at one point, where they
+crossed so as to form a kind of signet. Another officer now suggested
+and put in operation still another improvement, in the shape of the
+"gear-drill-stock" of our armorer's chest. This, being a machine for
+drilling iron, was rough in its construction and uneven in its action,
+but, having cog-wheels, a rapid and nearly steady motion could be given
+to its shaft. To this shaft he attached a little cross of rubber, and
+covered it with silk, which was of a silver-white color instead of
+golden-yellow, as in other cases. The difference in color was then
+supposed to depend upon individual peculiarities, but the true
+explanation will be given farther on. With this gear-drill-stock, upon a
+larger ring, one inch in diameter and three eighths of an inch in width,
+in a groove upon its periphery one fourth of an inch in width, and
+across the sides of the ring in two directions, I wound _three thousand
+four hundred and eighty-four yards_, or _nearly two miles, of silk_. The
+length was estimated by accurately determining the different dimensions
+of the ring where wound upon, and multiplying by this the number of
+revolutions of the cylinder per minute (170), and this product again by
+the number of minutes of actual winding (285), deducting from the gross
+time of winding (about nine hours) each moment of stoppage for any
+cause.
+
+This was late in the fall of 1864, and, our specimens being sent home,
+further experiments, and even thoughts upon the subject, were prevented
+by the expedition against the Charleston and Savannah Railroad, and the
+many changes of station that followed the disastrous battle of Honey
+Hill. But, when I was at the North in February, 1865, a friend expressed
+to me his confident belief that this new silken product could be made of
+practical utility, and advised me to make inquiries on the subject. So,
+before presenting it to the scientific societies, I tested the strength
+of the silk by attaching to a fixed point one end of a thread _one
+four-thousandth_ of an inch in diameter, and tying the other end upon
+the arm of an accurate balance: weights were then dropped in to the
+amount of _fifty-four grains_ before the line was broken. By a
+calculation from this, a solid bar of spider's silk, one inch in
+diameter, would sustain a weight of more than _seventy tons_; while a
+similar bar of steel will sustain only fifty-six, and one of iron
+twenty-eight tons. The specimens were then exhibited to Professors
+Wyman, Agassiz, and Cooke, of Harvard University, to all of whom the
+species of spider was unknown, though Professor Wyman has since found a
+single specimen among some insects collected at the South; while to them
+as well as to the silk-manufacturers the idea of reeling silk directly
+from a living insect was entirely new. The latter, of course, wished to
+see a quantity of it before pronouncing upon its usefulness. So most of
+my furlough was spent in making arrangements for securing a number of
+the spiders, and reeling their silk during the coming summer. These
+comprised six light wooden boxes with sliding fronts, each eighteen
+inches wide and high and one foot deep, and containing six tin trays one
+above another, each of which, again, held twenty-four square paper boxes
+two and a half inches in diameter, and with lids closed by an elastic.
+Into these the spiders were to be put for transportation. Then I had
+made a costly machine for reeling the silk, which, however, proved of no
+practical value.
+
+In March, with these and other real or fancied adjuvants, (some of which
+proved even less useful and trustworthy than the machine,) but, above
+all, with a determination to put this matter to the test of actual
+experiment, I rejoined the regiment at Charleston, which had just fallen
+into our hands. It was not until April, however, that we were so
+situated that I could make any attempt to get spiders. Of course it was
+not expected that the full-grown ones should be found at that season,
+but the eggs or young should be abundant where the spiders had been in
+the summer.
+
+Before recounting my adventures in pursuit of my spinster friends, it
+may be well to say a few words of the locality which they inhabited.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 2. Map of Charleston and Vicinity.]
+
+Charleston stands upon the extremity of a narrow peninsula, between the
+Cooper and the Ashley Rivers. Charleston Harbor, supplied by these and
+some smaller streams, lies between Mt. Pleasant and Sullivan's Island on
+the northeast, and James and Morris Islands on the southwest. One cannot
+but be struck with the resemblance, so great as to be almost
+symmetrical, between the two sides of the harbor. Mt. Pleasant and James
+Island are quite high land,--high at least for the coast of South
+Carolina,--and are separated from the mainland, the one by the Wando
+River, the other by Wappoo Creek; while Sullivan's Island, where stand
+Fort Moultrie and other Rebel batteries, corresponds almost precisely to
+Morris Island, both being low and sandy, and being, as it were, bent
+inland from the sea, with sharp points looking toward the city, their
+convex shores forming a rounded entrance to the harbor. Extending
+southward from Morris Island, and separated from it by Lighthouse Inlet,
+is Folly Island; and in exact correspondence to the latter, north of
+Sullivan's Island, and separated from it by Breach Inlet, is a similar
+sand-ridge called Long Island. But now occurs a difference; for while
+between Long and Sullivan's Islands and Christ's Church Parish is an
+immense salt marsh intersected by creeks, but presenting an unbroken
+surface, in the midst of the corresponding marsh between Morris and
+Folly Islands and James Island is a group of low wooded islands, the
+largest of which lies opposite the upper or north end of Folly Island.
+To this no name is given on the maps, nor is it even distinguished from
+the marsh. It is, however, completely surrounded by water; and, though
+this is in the form of creeks neither wide nor deep, yet the peculiar
+softness of the mud, and the absence of any landing-place except upon
+the side toward Folly Island, render it almost inaccessible.
+
+To this narrow strip of land, not three miles in length, was given the
+name of Long Island,--perhaps by our own troops, who knew nothing of an
+island of the same name _north_ of the harbor; and in case it is found
+that no other name belongs to it, we may properly avoid a confusion, and
+christen it _Spider_ Island, in honor of the remarkable insects for
+whose especial benefit it seems to have been made, and which, with the
+exception of the mosquitoes, are its sole inhabitants.
+
+As was said, the first spider was found on Folly Island on the 19th of
+August, 1863: it was also the last there seen. During the summer of
+1864, many were found on Long Island (so called); and when, in the
+spring of 1865, our regiment was encamped on James Island near Wappoo
+Creek, it was toward Long Island that all my attention, so far as
+concerned spiders, was directed.
+
+But first, as a bit of collateral history, and to show how easily and
+how far one may go astray when one of the links in the chain of argument
+is only an _inference_, let me relate that, while riding over James
+Island, I observed upon trees and bushes numbers of small brown bags,
+from half an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, pear-shaped, and
+suspended by strong silken cords. The bags themselves were made of a
+finer silk so closely woven as to resemble brown paper, and, when
+opened, were found to contain a mass of loose silk filled with young
+spiders to the number of five hundred or more. In certain localities,
+especially in a swampy field just outside the first line of Rebel works,
+they were quite abundant. I had soon collected about four hundred of
+them, which, by a moderate estimate, contained _two hundred thousand
+little spiders_,--quite enough, I thought, with which to commence
+operations. But one hot day in June I placed them all on a tray in the
+sun. I was called away, and on my return found my one fifth of a million
+young spiders dead,--baked to death.
+
+Prior to this catastrophe, however, I had become convinced that these
+were not the spiders I sought. Indeed, my only reasons for thinking they
+might be were, first, the abundance of these cocoons in a locality so
+near Long Island; and, second, my own great desire that they should
+prove the spiders I wanted. The young spiders, it is true, did not at
+all resemble their supposed progenitors, as to either shape, or color,
+or markings; yet all of these evidently changed during growth, and would
+not of themselves disprove the relationship.
+
+One day in April, however, a cocoon was found in a tree on James Island,
+of a very different appearance from the others. It was of loose
+texture, and, instead of being pear-shaped, was hemispherical in form,
+and attached by its flat surface to the lower side of a leaf. This also
+contained young spiders, a little larger and a little brighter in color
+than the others, but really bearing no resemblance to the full-grown
+spiders of Long Island. This single cocoon formed the entering wedge of
+doubt, and soon it was clear that the only means of proof lay on Long
+Island itself.
+
+But how was this to be reached? Easily enough while we were upon Folly
+Island and could row through the creeks to a wharf on the east side of
+Long Island. But now the case was altered; for between James and Long
+Islands was the immense marsh already mentioned, intersected by creeks,
+and composed of mud practically without bottom, and ranging from
+eighteen to twenty-three feet in depth by actual measurement. Around or
+over or through this marsh it was necessary to go, in order to reach
+Long Island, the home of the spiders.
+
+I could easily occupy the rest of my allotted space in recounting my
+various attempts to reach this El Dorado, which my fancy, excited by
+every delay, stocked with innumerable cocoons of the kind already found
+so abundantly on James Island. These I expected would furnish thousands
+of spiders, the care of which, with the reeling of their silk, would
+give employment to all the freed people in South Carolina,--for even
+then the poor creatures were finding their way to the coast. And
+perhaps, I thought, some day, the Sea-Island silk may be as famous as
+the choice Sea-Island cotton. This hope I still cherish, together with
+the belief that, under certain conditions, the spiders may also be
+reared at the North.
+
+After riding miles and miles in all directions in search of the readiest
+point of attack; after having once engaged a row-boat to go around
+through Stono River and meet me at the nearest point of land,--on which
+occasion I dismounted to give my horse a better chance of getting over a
+bad place in the road, and the ungrateful beast left me in the lurch and
+went home much faster than he came, while I, being now half-way, walked
+on through the marsh, and had the pleasure of sitting on a log in a
+pouring rain for an hour, with Long Island just on the other side of a
+creek over which no boat came to carry me,--after this and other
+disappointments, I at last made sure by going in the boat myself, and so
+finally reached the island. But now, to my discomfiture, after a most
+careful search, I saw only two or three cocoons of the kind I looked
+for, while the others, of loose texture, were quite abundant, and
+doubtless would have been found in still greater numbers but for their
+always being under leaves, and often at a considerable height. It was
+probable now that these latter cocoons contained _the_ spiders, and that
+the former were a different species.
+
+The regiment now removed to the interior of the State, and while there
+occurred the _coup de soleil_ above mentioned. We remained at Orangeburg
+until the middle of August, and then, being stationed at Mt. Pleasant, I
+again made raids for spiders. Upon James Island, in the localities where
+during the spring the cocoons were abundant, I found many large
+geometrical spiders, all of one kind, but not of the kind I sought. They
+were bad-tempered, and their legs were so short and strong that it was
+not easy to handle them, while their silk was of a light, and not
+brilliant, yellow.
+
+My first attempt upon Long Island was made by leaving Charleston in a
+boat, which, after touching at Sumter, landed me at Fort Johnson. Here I
+was joined by a sergeant and corporal of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts,
+and we walked across to a little settlement of freed people not far from
+Secessionville, where a boat and crew were engaged. It would be tedious
+to relate how, after sticking on invisible oyster-beds and mud-flats,
+and losing our way among the creeks, at two o'clock we found ourselves
+about one hundred yards from the north end of the island; and how,
+since it was too late to try to reach the wharf on the east side, even
+had we been sure of the way, the two Fifty-fourth boys and myself got
+out of the boat and essayed to cross upon the marsh. Such a marsh! We
+have marshes at the North, but they are as dry land in comparison. I had
+seen them at the South, had stepped upon and into them, but never one
+like this. It was clear mud, as soft as mud could be and not run like
+the water that covered it at high tide. Even the tall rushes wore an
+unsteady look; and the few oysters upon its surface evidently required
+all their balancing powers to lie upon their flat sides and avoid
+sinking edgewise into the oozy depths. In we sank, over ankles, at the
+first step, and deeper and deeper till we took a second; for our only
+safety lay in pushing down the rushes with the inside of one foot and
+treading upon them, till the other could be withdrawn from its yielding
+bed, and a spot selected for the next step forward. I say _selected_,
+for even this mud was more firm than a hole in it filled with water and
+treacherously concealed by a few rushes. A misstep into one of these
+pitfalls brought me to my knees, and well-nigh compelled me to call for
+help; but a sudden and determined spring, and a friendly bunch of rushes
+beyond, spared me that mortification. When two thirds of the way across,
+and while thinking we should soon reach dry land, we came upon the edge
+of a creek, not wide, it is true, but with soft, slimy, sloping sides,
+(for _banks_ they could not properly be called,) and no one knew how
+many feet of mud beneath its sluggish stream. Under ordinary
+circumstances I might have sounded a retreat; but, remembering that
+there was twice as much mud behind as before us, and feeling ourselves
+sinking slowly but surely in our tracks, we slid down the sides into the
+water. This received our bodies to the waist, the mud our legs to the
+knees; but we struggled through, and, after another terrible thirty
+yards of mud, reached Long Island. Leaving my faithful companions to
+rest, I struck off down the east side of the island, and soon found
+spiders in plenty. Stopping at the wharf, and returning upon the west
+side, I counted one hundred spiders in less than an hour. This was only
+a voyage of discovery, but I could not resist the temptation to capture
+one big fellow and put it in my hat, which, with the edges brought
+together, I was forced to carry in my teeth, for one hand was required
+to break down the webs stretched across my path, and the other to do
+battle in vain with the thousands of mosquitoes, of huge size and bloody
+intent, besetting me on every side. What with the extreme heat and my
+previous fatigue, and the dread lest my captive should escape and
+revenge herself upon my face while I was avoiding the nets of her
+friends, and the relentless attacks of their smaller but more venomous
+associates, it was the most uncomfortable walk imaginable. To complete
+my misery, the path led me out upon the marsh where I could see nothing
+of the boat or my companions, and whence, to reach them, I had to walk
+across the head of the island. Excepting the dreaded recrossing of the
+mud, I hardly remember how we made our way back; but by one means and
+another I finally reached Charleston at nine o'clock, about as
+disreputable-looking a medical man as ever was seen.
+
+However, all this was soon forgotten, and, being now assured of the
+presence of the spiders in their former haunts, on the 30th of August,
+1865, I organized a new expedition, which was to proceed entirely by
+water, and which consisted of a sail-boat and crew of picked volunteers.
+Leaving Mt. Pleasant in the morning, we crossed the harbor, and were
+soon lost in the meanderings of the creeks behind Morris Island. _Lost_
+is appropriate, for, once in these creeks, you know nothing, you see and
+hear nothing, and, if you change your course, must do so by mere guess.
+But the most annoying thing is, after an apparent advance of a quarter
+of a mile, to find yourself not twenty yards from your starting-point,
+so tortuous are the windings of the creeks.
+
+By dint of hard rowing (in the wrong direction, as we soon found), then
+by walking across Morris Island to Light-House Inlet, and still harder
+rowing from there to the wharf of Long Island, we succeeded in securing
+sixty spiders; but now arose a furious storm of wind and rain, which not
+only compelled our retreat, but drenched us to the skin, blew us back
+faster than we could row, and threatened to overturn our boat if we
+hoisted the sail; so slow was our progress, that it was eleven o'clock
+at night before we reached Mt. Pleasant. Thus ended my last and only
+successful raid upon Long Island.
+
+It may seem that I have dwelt longer than was necessary upon the
+circumstances attending the discovery of this spider and its silk. If
+so, it is not merely because at that time both were new to myself and
+all to whom I showed them, and everything concerning them was likely to
+be impressed upon my mind, but also because I then hoped that the idea
+of obtaining silk directly from a living insect might be found of
+practical importance, as I still hope it may. The incidents illustrate,
+too, the nature of the obstacles daily encountered and overcome by our
+troops; for no one who has never seen or stepped into a Sea-Island marsh
+can realize how difficult it was for our forces to obtain a foothold in
+the vicinity of Charleston. This was appreciated by the old freedman
+whom we left in the boat while crossing the mud. "No wonder," he said,
+"the Yankees whipped the Rebels, if they will do such things for to
+catch _spiders_."
+
+The sixty spiders so obtained were kept for several weeks in the little
+boxes in which they had been deposited when caught. Every day each box
+was opened, the occupant examined, and its condition, if altered, noted
+on the cover. They generally spun a few irregular lines on which to
+hang, and so remained quiet except when the boxes were opened: then, of
+course, they tried to escape. Half a dozen of the larger ones were
+placed on the window-seats and in corners of the room, where they
+speedily constructed webs. By preference these were stretched across the
+windows, illustrating one of the three principal instincts of this
+spider, which are, first, to _seek the light_; second, to _ascend_; and
+third, to take a position with the _head downward_.
+
+It was now a question how they were to be fed; not so much while there,
+where flies were abundant, but after their arrival at the North. So,
+remembering that the young ones had seemed to relish blood, I took the
+tender liver of a chicken, cut it into little pieces, and dipped them in
+water, not, I am sorry to say, with any view to supply them with that
+fluid for the want of which they afterward perished, but in order that
+the bits of liver should be more easily pulled from the pins by the
+spiders. To my delight they greedily accepted the new food, and now I
+felt assured of keeping them during the winter.
+
+Deferring, however, a more particular account of what was observed at
+Mt. Pleasant, until their habits and mode of life are taken up in order,
+it should be understood that, during our short stay, my attention was
+chiefly directed to getting from the spiders as much silk as possible;
+for it was evident that practical men would not credit the usefulness of
+spiders' silk until an appreciable quantity could be shown to them. The
+first trial of the machine with a live spider proved it an utter
+failure; for though quite ingenious and complicated, it had been devised
+with reference only to _dead_ spiders. In regard to the arrangement
+(wherein lay its chief, if not sole, peculiarity) by which a thin slip
+of brass was sprung against a rubber band by the latter's elasticity,
+with a view to secure the spider's legs between them, it was found that,
+as the spider was alive, and, literally, kicking, and two of its legs
+were smaller than the rest, these were at once extricated, and the
+others soon followed; while, if the spring was made forcible enough to
+hold the smaller legs, the larger were in danger of being crushed, and
+the spider, fearing this, often disjointed them, according to the
+convenient, though loose habit of most Arachnida, crabs, and other
+articulates. It was also proposed to secure several spiders in the above
+manner upon the periphery of a wheel, the revolution of which would give
+a twist to their conjoined threads, carried through a common eyelet upon
+the spindle; but this can be accomplished without the inconvenience of
+whirling the spiders out of sight, by modifications of the apparatus
+which has always been used for twisting ordinary silk. It will probably
+be inferred from the above, that, in securing the spider, two points are
+to be considered; first, to prevent its escape, and second, so to
+confine the legs that it cannot reach with their tips either the _silk_
+or the _spinners_. Now the machine accomplished this by putting all the
+legs together in a vice, as it were, entailing upon the captive much
+discomfort and perhaps the loss of some of its legs, which, though eight
+in number, are each appropriated to a special use by their possessor.
+
+So, abandoning the machine, I fell back upon a simple reel, and a
+modification of my little contrivance of the previous year; which was,
+to grasp the spider by all the legs, holding them behind her back, and
+to let her body down into a deep notch or slot cut in a thin card, the
+edges of which reached the constriction between the two regions of the
+body, the _cephalothorax_ and _abdomen_; so that, when a second piece of
+card was let down upon it, the _cephalothorax_, with the _legs_ of the
+spider, was upon one side of a partition, while on the other was the
+_abdomen_, bearing upon its posterior extremity the spinning organs. The
+head and horns of a cow to be milked are secured in a similar manner. By
+placing in a row, or one behind another, several spiders thus secured, a
+compound thread was simultaneously obtained from them, and wound upon a
+spindle of hard rubber.
+
+By this means were produced several very handsome bands of bright yellow
+silk; but the time was so short, and the means of constructing and
+improving my apparatus so deficient, that I could procure no more than
+these few specimens, which were very beautiful, and shone in the sun
+like polished and almost translucent gold; but which, being wound upon a
+cylinder only an inch in diameter, and from several spiders at different
+times, could not be unwound, and so made of any further use.
+
+I tried now to ascertain how much silk could be obtained from a single
+spider at once. It will be remembered that the first specimen, wound on
+Folly Island, was one hundred and fifty yards in length, and weighed one
+third of a grain. I now exhausted the supply of a spider for three days,
+using the same spindle, one inch in diameter, and turning this at the
+rate of one hundred and sixty times per minute. On the first day I
+reeled for twenty minutes, which gave two hundred and sixty-six and two
+thirds yards; on the third day, the second being Sunday, for twenty-five
+minutes, giving three hundred and thirty-three and one third yards; and
+on the fourth day, for eighteen minutes, giving two hundred and
+thirty-three and one third yards,--amounting in all to eight hundred and
+thirty-three and one third yards in three or four days. This was all
+that could be got, and the spider herself seemed unable to evolve any
+more; but on killing her and opening her abdomen, plenty of the gum was
+found in the little silk bags into which it is secreted. As this has
+always been the case, I have concluded that the evolution of the silk is
+almost entirely a mechanical process, which is but little controlled by
+the spinners themselves, and that the gum requires some degree of
+preparation after it is secreted before it is fit for use as silk; for
+it must be remembered that with the spider, as with the silk-worm, the
+silk is formed and contained in little bags or glands in the abdomen,
+not as _threads_, but as a very viscid gum. This passes in little tubes
+or ducts to the spinners, through minute openings, in which it is drawn
+out into filaments, uniting and drying instantly in the air, and so
+forming the single fibre from each spinner.
+
+The silk obtained the first day was of a deep yellow; to my great
+astonishment, the second reeling from the same spider gave silk of a
+brilliant silver-white color; while on the third occasion, as if by
+magic, the color had changed again, and I got only _yellow_ silk. The
+hypothesis of individual peculiarity, adopted the previous year to
+explain why some spiders gave yellow, and others white silk, was now
+untenable; and, remembering that, beside these two positive colors there
+was also (and indeed more commonly) a _light yellow_, as if a
+combination of the other two, I saw that the real solution of the
+mystery must lie in the spinners themselves. Examining carefully the
+thread as it came from the body, it was seen to be composed of two
+distinct portions, differing materially in their size, their color,
+their elasticity, and their relative position; for one of them was
+_white_ and _inelastic_, crinkling and flying up when relaxed, and
+seemed to proceed from the _posterior_ of the two principal pairs of
+spinners, while the other was _larger_, _yellow_, so _elastic_ that when
+relaxed it kept its direction, and seemed to come from the _anterior_
+pair of spinners, and so, in the inverted position of the spider, was
+_above_ the other. By putting a spider under the influence of
+chloroform, and then carrying the first thread under a pin stuck in a
+cork to one part of a spindle, and the second or yellow line over
+another pin to a different part of the spindle, I reeled off from the
+same spider, at the same time, two distinct bands of silk, of which one
+was a deep golden-yellow, the other a bright silver-white; while, if
+both threads ran together, there was formed a band of _light yellow_
+from the union of the two. Thinking such a difference must subserve some
+use in the economy of the insect, I made a more careful examination of
+its webs. At first sight these resembled those of most geometrical
+spiders, in being broad, rounded, nearly vertical nets; but they were
+unusually large, and in their native woods often stretched between trees
+and across the paths, so as to be two, three, and even more, feet in
+diameter, and in my room at Mt. Pleasant hung like curtains before the
+windows. They were of a bright yellow color and very viscid; but now I
+noticed that neither the color nor the viscidity pertained to the entire
+net, for although the concentric circles constituting the principal part
+of the web were _yellow_, and very _elastic_, and studded with little
+beads of _gum_, (Fig 3,) yet the diverging lines or _radii_ of the
+wheel-shaped structure, with all the guys and stays by which it was
+suspended and braced, were _dry_ and _inelastic_, and of a _white_ or
+lighter yellow color.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 3. Silk threads, viscid and dry.]
+
+Now, however, a new mystery presented itself. We will admit that the
+spider had the power, not only to vary the _size_ of her lines according
+to the number of spinners, or of the minute holes in each spinner, which
+were applied to the surface whence the line was to proceed, but also to
+make use of either golden or silver silk at will. But how was it that
+this yellow silk--which was quite dry and firm, though elastic, as
+reeled from the spider, or as spun by her in the formation of her
+cocoons--was nevertheless, when used for the concentric circles of the
+web, so viscid as to follow the point of a pin, stretching in so doing
+many times its length? A satisfactory explanation of this has never yet
+been offered, nor can be until the minute anatomy of the spinning organs
+is better understood, and the evolution of the silk more carefully
+observed at every stage, and under all conditions. I will merely state
+very briefly the few facts already established, with some of the
+possible explanations.
+
+The spinning _mammul�_ are placed in pairs at the lower part of the
+abdomen, near its hinder end, and number four, six, or eight in
+different species. They are little conical or cylindrical papill�,
+closely resembling the pro-legs of caterpillars, and are composed of two
+or three joints, the terminal one of which is pierced with a greater or
+less number of minute holes, the sides of these, in some, if not all,
+cases, being prolonged into tubes. Through these holes or tubes issue
+the fine filaments, which, uniting as they dry in the air, constitute
+the line from each spinner.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 4. Spinners.]
+
+Now the _Nephila plumipes_ possesses at least three pairs of spinners.
+Of these, two are much larger than the third, which indeed does not
+appear till they are separated. From the _posterior_ of the two largest
+pairs _seems_ to proceed the _white_, and from the _anterior_ the
+_yellow_ silk, while from the small intermediate pair seem to proceed
+very fine filaments of a pale-blue color, the use of which is to envelop
+the prey after it has been seized and killed, being drawn out by the
+bristles near the tips of the spider's hinder legs. Beside these six
+papill� there is, just in front of the anterior pair, a single small
+papilla on the middle line, the nature and use of which I have not
+ascertained, though I feel quite sure that no silk comes from it. The
+large median papilla, just _behind_ the posterior pair, surrounds the
+termination of the intestines, and through it the excrement is voided,
+the insect for this purpose turning back the abdomen as she hangs head
+downward, so that neither the web nor the spinners shall be
+contaminated. Now it has recently been ascertained that the minute
+globules with which the circles are studded, and the number of which on
+a web of average size is estimated at _one hundred thousand_, do not
+exist in that form when the viscid lines are first spun by the spider,
+but as a uniform coating of gum upon a thread; this gum, of itself and
+according to physical laws, soon exhibits little undulations, and then
+separates into the globules which have long been observed and supposed
+to be formed by the spider. The fact of spiders selecting the night for
+the construction of their webs, the difficulty of making any close
+observations upon them while so engaged without disturbing them, and the
+near approximation of the two larger pairs of spinners while the viscid
+line is slowly drawn out by the hind leg, have hitherto prevented my
+determining its exact source and manner of formation. If it comes from
+the anterior pair only, then one and the same organ has the power of
+evolving a central axis and covering it with viscid gum; and it seems
+less improbable that the axis is white and formed by the posterior pair,
+the yellow gum being spread upon it by the anterior pair, which also
+would then have the power to evolve this same gum at other times as an
+equally dry, though more elastic thread. But in either case we have only
+_three_ pairs of spinners and _four_ kinds of silk, the _pale-blue
+fasciculi_ the _dry white_, the _dry yellow_, and the _viscid_ and very
+_elastic_ silk which is employed only in the circles of the web, and
+which often does not become yellow till after exposure to the light.
+Apparently the surest method of investigation will be carefully to
+destroy one pair of spinners at a time without injuring the others, and
+then note the effect upon the spinning.
+
+Let us go back now to the sixty spiders left at Mt. Pleasant. A few of
+these died on the way North, but the majority reached Boston in safety
+about the 20th of September, 1865; for some time I had observed that
+they all were becoming more or less emaciated, and relished their food
+less than at first. Occasionally one died from no apparent cause. The
+mortality increasing toward the end of the month, and all of them losing
+both flesh and vigor, I was persuaded to try them with water,--a thing I
+had thus far declined to do, never having heard of a spider's drinking
+water, and knowing that our common house species can hardly get it at
+all. The result was most gratifying: a drop of water upon the tip of a
+camel's-hair pencil, not only was not avoided, but greedily seized and
+slowly swallowed, being held between the jaws and the palpi. All of the
+spiders took it, and some even five or six drops in succession. You will
+exclaim, "Poor things! what tortures they must have suffered!" I admit
+that it could not have been pleasant for them to go so long without that
+which they crave every day, but I cannot believe that creatures whose
+legs drop off on very slight provocation, and which never show any sign
+whatever of real pain, suffered very acute pangs even when subjected to
+what occasions such distress to ourselves.
+
+The few survivors straightway improved in health and spirits; but being
+now convinced that a moist atmosphere was almost as needful as water to
+drink, I turned them loose in the north wing of the hot-house in Dr.
+Gray's Botanical Garden at Cambridge. They all mysteriously disappeared,
+excepting one, which made a nice web at one end just under the
+ridge-pole, and for several weeks lived and grew fat upon the flies; but
+a thorough fumigation of the house with tobacco so shocked her not yet
+civilized organization that she died.
+
+Her untimely death, however, afforded opportunity for a closer
+examination of the web itself. The first one she had made was not
+_vertical_; and, following the prevalent ideas as to the precise
+construction of the spider's web, I had felt somewhat ashamed of my pet,
+but supposed the next she made would be an improvement. But no, the
+rebellious insect constantly made them all (for, it should have been
+said before, this spider seldom uses the same web more than forty-eight
+hours) after the same manner, and finally I laid it to a depraved
+idiocrasy, incident to captivity and poor health. But now another and
+most unexpected feature developed itself; for, on attempting to remove
+the last web by placing against it a large wire ring, and cutting the
+guy-lines, I found that this most degenerate spider had not only failed
+to make her house _perpendicular_, but had so far departed from the
+traditions of our ancestors as to have the centre thereof decidedly
+eccentric, and four times as near the upper as the lower border of the
+web, so that its upper portion was only a confused array of irregular
+lines, which it was impossible to secure to the frame. For any accurate
+observation my web was of no value. But perhaps this was best; for had I
+then learned what I have since, that our spider utterly ignores every
+precedent, not only in the _position_ and _shape_ of her web, but also
+in its _minute arrangement_, I might have been so affected by her
+evident bad character and radical proclivities, as to have feared paying
+her any further attentions,--much more, presenting her to the world.
+
+But in order to understand how these further discoveries were made, we
+must again go back to the original sixty spiders in my room at Mt.
+Pleasant, South Carolina.
+
+At the time of their capture, I had observed upon a few of the webs
+little brown spiders, which I then imagined might be the half-grown
+young. Six of these were found among the sixty larger spiders, and a
+moment's examination of their palpi or feelers (Fig. 5) showed that they
+were males, though even then I could not believe they had reached their
+maturity; for their bodies were only about one fourth of an inch in
+length, and weighed only one thirty-second part of a grain, while the
+females were from an inch to an inch and a quarter in length, and
+weighed from three to four grains. It was as absurd as if a man
+weighing one hundred and fifty pounds were joined to a bigger half of
+_eighteen thousand pounds' weight_, and I was not fully convinced that
+these small spiders were really the males of the _Nephila plumipes_ till
+I had witnessed the impregnation of the eggs of the females by them.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 5. Palpi, or Feelers.]
+
+One morning, in the cell of a large female, I found a cocoon of
+beautiful yellow silk containing a rounded mass of eggs. Soon the same
+occurred with other females, and there were fifteen cocoons, which would
+give about _seven thousand spiders_. Early in October, just one month
+after they were laid, the eggs of the first cocoon were broken and
+disclosed little spiders with rounded yellow bodies and short legs,
+looking about as little like their parents as could be imagined. The
+eggs in the other cocoons followed in their order, and now each
+contained four or five hundred little spiders closely packed.
+
+For some time they seemed to eat nothing at all; but within a few days
+all had shed their skins, and now the abdomen was smaller, while the
+_cephalothorax_ and legs were larger and darker; but they showed no
+desire to leave their cocoons. Still they grew perceptibly; and
+coincident with this was a less pleasing fact: their numbers were
+decreasing in the same proportion, and occasionally one was seen eating
+another. It was some time before I could reconcile the good temper and
+quiet behavior of the parents with this instinctive and habitual
+fratricide on the part of their children. But look at it in this way:
+here were several hundred active little creatures in a space just large
+enough to contain them; presently they were hungry, and as no two could
+be of exactly the same size, the smaller and weaker naturally fell a
+prey to their larger brethren, or rather sisters, for either very few
+males are hatched, or else they are particularly good eating, and a very
+small proportion survive the perils of infancy. It is evidently an
+established and well-understood thing among them: all seem to be aware
+of their destiny, to _eat_ or _be eaten_. What else can they do? Human
+beings would do the same under the same circumstances; and I have never
+seen the least sign of personal spite or malignity in the spider. There
+is no pursuit, for there is no escape; and we can only conclude that, as
+the new-born fish's first nourishment is the contents of the yolk-sac,
+partly outside, though still a portion of its body, so the first food of
+the young spiders is, if not themselves, the next best thing,--each
+other. Thus it is provided that the smaller and less vigorous shall
+furnish food for the larger until the latter are strong enough to
+venture forth in search of other means of support.
+
+In consequence of this mutual destruction, aided materially by the
+depredations of birds and of other insects, and by exposure to the
+weather, only about one per cent of those hatched reach maturity. If
+properly protected, however, a far larger proportion may be saved; and
+as their multiplication is so rapid, no fear need be entertained of a
+limit to the supply.
+
+By keeping these little spiders in glass jars, inverted, and with a wet
+sponge at the bottom, they were easily watched and cared for. At first
+only about one twentieth of an inch long and nearly as wide, they
+increased in length as they grew, but for many weeks lived in common on
+an irregular web, feeding together on the crushed flies or bugs thrown
+to them. But when one fourth of an inch in length, they showed a
+disposition to separate, and to spin each for herself a regular web,
+out of which all intruders were kept. And now it was found that all
+these webs were _inclined_ at nearly the same angle, and were _never
+exactly vertical_; that, like the spider in the first web she made in
+the Botanical Garden, the insect took a position much nearer the upper
+than the lower border; and also that, instead of a web of _perfect
+circles_ laid upon _regular radii_, as used to be described and is still
+figured in our books, or even one of a _spiral line_, as is now more
+correctly described of ordinary geometrical spiders (Fig. 6), these
+never made a circle, nor even a spiral, but a _series of concentric
+loops_ or arcs of circles, the lines turning back upon themselves before
+reaching a point over the spider, and leaving the larger portion of the
+web below her; and more than this, that the lines, though quite regular,
+were by no means perfectly so, as may be seen in Fig. 7, copied from a
+photograph.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 6. Web of common Garden Spider.]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 7. Web of _Nephila plumipes_.]
+
+As usual, the _radii_, or _spokes_, of the wheel-shaped structure are
+first made; then the spider begins a little way from the centre, and,
+passing from one radius to another, spins a series of loops at
+considerable distances from each other till she reaches the
+circumference. These first loops, like the radii, are of _white, dry_,
+and _inelastic_ silk, and may be recognized by the little notches at
+their junction with the radii. The notches are made by the spider's
+drawing her body a little inward toward the centre of the web at the
+time of attaching them to the radii, and so they always point in the
+direction in which the spider is moving at that time, and in opposite
+directions on any two successive lines (Fig. 8). Having reached what is
+to be the border of her web, and thus constructed a firm framework or
+scaffolding, she begins to retrace her steps, moving more slowly and
+spinning now in the _intervals_ of the dry loops two or three similar
+loops, but much nearer together and made of the _elastic_ and _viscid_
+silk, till she has again reached her starting-point near the middle of
+the web, where, on its under side, she takes a position, head downward,
+hanging by her claws, and thus keeping her body from direct contact with
+the web.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 8. Section of Web.]
+
+Here she will remain quiet for hours as if asleep; but no sooner does a
+fly or other insect strike the web, than she darts in the direction
+whence the vibrations proceed, and usually seizes her prey; but,
+strangely enough, if the insect have ceased its struggles before she
+reaches it, she stops, and if she cannot renew them by shaking the web
+with her claws, will slowly and disconsolately return to the centre of
+the web, there to await fresh vibrations. These and many other facts,
+even more conclusive, have satisfied me that, although this spider has
+eight eyes (Fig. 9), it is as blind as a man with his eyelids shut, and
+can only distinguish light from darkness, nothing more. This seems to be
+the case with other geometrical species, but not at all with the field
+and hunting spiders, some of which will boldly turn upon you and look
+right in your eyes; they alone, of all insects, seeming to recognize the
+_face_ of man as different from his body.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 9. Face and Jaws, magnified (eyes dimly seen).]
+
+The hearing and touch of this spider are very acute. The latter is
+exercised by the palpi and the tips of the legs, especially the first
+pair, but no ear has yet been discovered; neither is anything known of
+the organs of taste and smell, or even whether the insect possesses
+these senses at all.
+
+I ought before this to have anticipated and answered a question which
+nine out of ten, perhaps, of my readers have already asked themselves,
+"Do not spiders bite? and is not their bite poisonous, nay, at times,
+deadly even to man?" The answer is, in brief, Yes, spiders do bite,
+probably all of them, if provoked and so confined that they cannot
+escape; though only a few tropical species can be said to seek of their
+own accord an opportunity for attacking man, or any creature larger than
+the insects that form their natural prey. Even the _Nephila plumipes_,
+which, it has been intimated, is "Christian in its disposition, and
+well-behaved beyond most of its kind," will readily bite, if it is held
+in the fingers and anything is put to its jaws. But that is nothing. So
+would you, most gentle reader, if a great giant pinched you between his
+thumb and finger, and held your hands and feet and head; and if, too,
+like our spider, you could not see enough to distinguish friends from
+foes. Spiders, then, will bite. But to the second part of the inquiry
+our answer must be less positive. They have a very bad name; but much of
+this is due to their grim and forbidding aspect, and their bloody trade
+of trapping and eating poor little insects. It is to be remembered that
+there are very few, if any, medical reports of injuries from the bites
+of spiders, and that the accounts of such cases occurring in the
+newspapers consist in great measure of inference, and either make no
+mention of the offender at all, or merely speak of a little black or
+gray spider being found in the vicinity. A number of experiments have
+been made in England to ascertain the effect of the bite of the larger
+geometrical spiders upon the experimenter himself, upon other spiders,
+and upon common insects; and the conclusion was, that it produces no
+greater effect than the prick of a pin, or any other injury of equal
+extent and severity; while the speedy death of its victim is ascribed to
+the spider's sucking its juices, rather than to any poison instilled
+into the wound. But these experiments, though somewhat reassuring, are
+not conclusive; for they were tried only on one person, and people vary
+much in their susceptibility to poison of all kinds; moreover, the
+spiders employed were of the _geometrical_ kinds, which have never been
+so much feared as the larger _field_ and _hunting_ spiders. Indeed, it
+may be found that among spiders there is as great a difference in
+respect to venom as among serpents, and that those which depend upon
+their jaws for taking and holding their prey, such as the field and
+hunting spiders, are poisonous, while the web-builders which ensnare
+their victims are not so. In regard to our spiders, I have caused a
+large one to bite, so as to draw blood, a kitten three days old, and the
+kitten has not appeared to suffer in the least on that account.
+
+They are very quiet insects, and never appear disturbed at what goes on
+about them; neither do they run away and hide in holes and corners, like
+our common spiders; but if their webs are injured, or they are startled
+by a noise, they will shake themselves from side to side in their webs,
+so as to be wholly invisible. Their natural food is insects of all
+kinds; but they soon learn to eat soft flesh, such as the liver of
+chickens, for which, as well as for water, they will sometimes stretch
+themselves and turn in their webs so as to take it from the point of a
+pin or camel's-hair pencil. Besides water to drink, they require an
+atmosphere saturated with moisture, like that of their native island,
+the relative humidity being about _seventy_ on the Hygrodeik scale. If
+stroked upon the back, they often raise their bodies as a cat does, and
+sometimes put back a leg to push away your finger. They may be allowed
+to run over one's person with perfect safety, but, if suddenly seized,
+will hold on with tooth as well as nail.
+
+They are quite economical, and every few days, when the web has become
+too dry and dusty for use, will gather it up in a mass, which they stuff
+into their jaws and masticate for hours, swallowing the gum, but
+throwing out the rest, with the little particles of dust, in the form of
+a hard black pellet,--an instance rare, if not indeed unique, of an
+animal eating a substance already excreted from its body.
+
+Here I must close, though much against my will. It would please me to
+describe, as it has almost fascinated me to observe, the doings of my
+spiders, as they grew older and made their webs in the Wardian cases to
+which they were removed when too many and too large for the jars; how
+the young are gregarious, and move from place to place in a close
+column, protected on all sides by skirmishers, which continually report
+to the main body; how some of these young, whose parents were caught on
+Long Island, South Carolina, a year ago, and which were hatched from the
+egg in October last, have grown up during a Northern winter, have
+themselves become parents and laid eggs; how they periodically cast off
+their skins, even to that of the eyes, the jaws, and the breathing
+tubes, and how, from too great impatience, sad accidents sometimes
+befall them on these occasions; how, also, I have reeled silk from
+several of these spiders, and made a thread which has been woven in a
+power-loom as a woof or filling upon a warp of common black silk, so as
+to make a bit of ribbon two inches wide, thereby proving that it is real
+silk and can be treated as such.
+
+Much, too, could be said of the only other attempts to utilize spiders'
+silk, a knowledge of which would have materially aided me. In France,
+one hundred and fifty years ago, M. Bon made gloves and stockings of
+silk got by carding spiders' cocoons, and seventy years later, as I have
+but recently ascertained, Termeyer, a Spaniard, not only used the
+cocoons, but also, by an observation similar to my own, was led to reel
+the silk from the living insect. He, however, had poorer spiders or too
+little perseverance, or friends and a government influenced by a most
+short-sighted economy and prudence, else the highly interesting and
+instructive account of his experiments would have been familiar to some
+one in this country, and would not have waited these many years to be
+found by accident last spring in an obscure corner of the Astor Library.
+
+I will add, finally, that I believe some other geometrical spiders,
+especially of the genus _Nephila_, may be found as docile, and as
+productive of beautiful silk, as the species I have described. At any
+rate, you cannot find a more interesting inmate of your Wardian case
+than some large geometrical spider.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT DID SHE SEE WITH?
+
+
+I could not have been more than seven or eight years old, when it
+happened; but it might have been yesterday. Among all other childish
+memories, it stands alone. To this very day it brings with it the old,
+utter sinking of the heart, and the old, dull sense of mystery.
+
+To read the story, you should have known my mother. To understand it,
+you should understand her. But that is quite impossible now, for there
+is a quiet spot over the hill, and past the church, and beside the
+little brook where the crimsoned mosses grow thick and wet and cool,
+from which I cannot call her. It is all I have left of her now. But
+after all, it is not of her that you will chiefly care to hear. The
+object of my story is simply to acquaint you with a few facts, which,
+though interwoven with the events of her life, are quite independent of
+it as objects of interest. It is, I know, only my own heart that makes
+these pages a memorial,--but, you see, I cannot help it.
+
+Yet, I confess, no glamour of any earthly love has ever utterly dazzled
+me,--not even hers. Of imperfections, of mistakes, of sins, I knew she
+was guilty. I know it now,--even with the sanctity of those crimsoned
+mosses, and the hush of the rest beneath, so close to my heart, I cannot
+forget them. Yet somehow--I do not know how--the imperfections, the
+mistakes, the very sins, bring her nearer to me as the years slip by,
+and make her dearer.
+
+The key to her life is the key to my story. That given, as I can give
+it, I will try to compress. It lies in the fact that my mother was what
+we call an aristocrat, I do not like the term, as the term is used. I am
+sure she does not now; but I have no other word. She was a royal-looking
+woman, and she had the blood of princes in her veins. Generations
+back--how we children used to reckon the thing over!--she was cradled in
+a throne. A miserable race, to be sure, they were,--the Stuarts; and the
+most devout genealogist might deem it dubious honor to own them for
+great-grandfathers by innumerable degrees removed. So she used to tell
+us, over and over, as a damper on our childish vanity, looking such a
+very queen as she spoke, in every play of feature, and every motion of
+her hand, that it was the old story of preachers who did not practise.
+The very baby was proud of her. The beauty of a face, and the elegant
+repose of a manner, are by no means influences more unfelt at three
+years than at thirty.
+
+As insanity will hide itself away, and lie sleeping, and die out,--while
+old men are gathered to their fathers scathless, and young men follow in
+their footsteps safe and free,--and start into life, and claim its own
+when children's children have forgotten it; as a single trait of a
+single scholar in a race of clods will bury itself in day-laborers and
+criminals, unto the third and fourth generation, and spring then, like a
+creation from a chaos, into statesmen and poets and sculptors;--so, I
+have sometimes fancied, the better and truer nature of voluptuaries and
+tyrants was sifted down through the years, and purified in our little
+New England home, and the essential autocracy of monarchical blood
+refined and ennobled in my mother into royalty.
+
+A broad and liberal culture had moulded her; she knew its worth, in
+every fibre of her heart; scholarly parents had blessed her with their
+legacies of scholarly mind and name. With the soul of an artist, she
+quivered under every grace and every defect; and the blessing of a
+beauty as rare as rich had been given to her. With every instinct of her
+nature recoiling from the very shadow of crimes the world winks at, as
+from a loathsome reptile, the family record had been stainless for a
+generation. God had indeed blessed her; but the very blessing was a
+temptation.
+
+I knew, before she left me, what she might have been, but for the
+merciful and tender watch of Him who was despised and rejected of men. I
+know, for she told me, one still night when we were alone together, how
+she sometimes shuddered at herself, and what those daily and hourly
+struggles between her nature and her Christianity _meant_.
+
+I think we were as near to one another as mother and daughter can be;
+but yet as utterly different. Since I have been talking in such lordly
+style of those miserable Jameses and Charleses, I will take the
+opportunity to confess that I have inherited my father's thorough-going
+democracy,--double measure, pressed down and running over. She not only
+pardoned it, but I think she loved it in me, for his sake.
+
+It was about a year and a half, I think, after he died, that she sent
+for Aunt Alice to come to Creston. "Your aunt loves me," she said, when
+she told us in her quiet way, "and I am so lonely now."
+
+They had been the only children, and they loved each other,--how much, I
+afterwards knew. And how much they love each other _now_, I like to
+think,--quite freely and fully, and without shadow or doubt between
+them, I dare to hope.
+
+A picture of Aunt Alice always hung in mother's room. It was taken down
+years ago. I never asked her where she put it. I remember it, though,
+quite well; for mother's sake I am glad I do. For it was a pleasant face
+to look upon, and a young, pure, happy face,--beautiful too, though with
+none of the regal beauty crowned by my mother's massive hair, and
+pencilled brows. It was a timid, girlish face, with reverent eyes, and
+ripe, tremulous lips,--weak lips, as I remember them. From babyhood, I
+felt a want in the face. I had, of course, no capacity to define it; it
+was represented to me only by the fact that it differed from my
+mother's.
+
+She was teaching school out West when mother sent for her. I saw the
+letter. It was just like my mother:--"Alice, I need you. You and I ought
+to have but one home now. Will you come?"
+
+I saw, too, a bit of a postscript to the answer,--"I'm not fit that you
+should love me so, Marie."
+
+And how mother laughed at it!
+
+When it was all settled, and the waiting weeks became at last a single
+day, I hardly knew my mother. She was in her early married years; she
+was a girl; she was a child; she was every young thing, and merry thing,
+that she could have ever been. So full of fitful moods, and little
+fantastic jokes! such a flush on her cheeks too, as she ran to the
+window every five minutes, like a child! I remember how we went all over
+the house together, she and I, to see that everything looked neat, and
+bright, and welcome. And how we lingered in the guest-room, to put the
+little finishing touches to its stillness, and coolness, and coseyness.
+The best spread on the bed, and the white folds smoothed as only
+mother's fingers could smooth them; the curtain freshly washed, and
+looped with its crimson cord; the blinds drawn, cool and green; the late
+afternoon sunlight slanting through, in flecks upon the floor. Flowers,
+too, upon the table. I remember they were all white,--lilies of the
+valley, I think; and the vase of Parian marble, itself a solitary lily,
+unfolding stainless leaves. Over the mantle she had hung the finest
+picture in the house,--an "Ecce Homo," and an exquisite engraving. It
+used to hang in grandmother's room in the old house. We children
+wondered a little that she took it up stairs.
+
+"I want your aunt to feel at home, and see home things," she said. "I
+wish I could think of something more to make it pleasant in here."
+
+Just as we left the room she turned and looked into it. "Pleasant, isn't
+it? I am so glad, Sarah," her eyes dimming a little. "She's a very dear
+sister to me."
+
+She stepped in again to raise a stem of the lilies that had fallen from
+the vase, and lay like wax upon the table, then she shut the door and
+came away.
+
+That door was shut just so for years; the lonely bars of sunlight
+flecked the solitude of the room, and the lilies faded on the table. We
+children passed it with hushed footfall, and shrank from it at twilight,
+as from a room that held the dead. But into it we never went.
+
+Mother was tired out that afternoon; for she had been on her feet all
+day, busied in her loving cares to make our simple home as pleasant and
+as welcome as home could be. But yet she stopped to dress us in our
+Sunday clothes,--and no sinecure was it to dress three persistently
+undressable children; Winthrop was a host in himself. "Auntie must see
+us look our prettiest," she said.
+
+She was a picture herself when she came down. She had taken off her
+widow's cap and coiled her heavy hair low in her neck, and she always
+looked like a queen in that lustreless black silk. I do not know why
+these little things should have made such an impression on me then. They
+are priceless to me now. I remember how she looked, framed there in the
+doorway, while we were watching for the coach,--the late light ebbing in
+golden tides over the grass at her feet, and touching her face now and
+then through the branches of trees, her head bent a little, with eager,
+parted lips, and the girlish color on her cheeks, her hand shading her
+eyes as they strained for a sight of the lumbering coach. She must have
+been a magnificent woman when she was young,--not unlike, I have heard
+it said, to that far-off ancestress whose name she bore, and whose
+sorrowful story has made her sorrowful beauty immortal. Somewhere abroad
+there is a reclining statue of Queen Mary, to which, when my mother
+stood beside it, her resemblance was so strong that the by-standers
+clustered about her, whispering curiously. "Ah, mon Dieu!" said a little
+Frenchman, aloud, "c'est une r�surrection."
+
+We must have tried her that afternoon, Clara and Winthrop and I; for the
+spirit of her own excitement had made us completely wild. Winthrop's
+scream of delight when, stationed on the gate-post, he caught the first
+sight of the old yellow coach, might have been heard a quarter of a
+mile.
+
+"Coming?" said mother, nervously, and stepped out to the gate, full in
+the sunlight that crowned her like royal gold.
+
+The coach lumbered on, and rattled up, and passed.
+
+"Why, she hasn't come!" All the eager color died out of her face. "I am
+so disappointed!" speaking like a troubled child, and turning slowly
+into the house.
+
+Then, after a while, she drew me aside from the others,--I was the
+oldest, and she was used to make a sort of confidence between us,
+instinctively, as it seemed, and often quite forgetting how very few my
+years were. "Sarah, I don't understand. You think she might have lost
+the train? But Alice is so punctual, Alice never lost a train. And she
+said she would come." And then, a while after, "I _don't_ understand."
+
+It was not like my mother to worry. The next day the coach lumbered up
+and rattled past, and did not stop,--and the next, and the next.
+
+"We shall have a letter," mother said, her eyes saddening every
+afternoon. But we had no letter. And another day went by, and another.
+
+"She is sick," we said; and mother wrote to her, and watched for the
+lumbering coach, and grew silent day by day. But to the letter there was
+no answer.
+
+Ten days passed. Mother came to me one afternoon to ask for her pen,
+which I had borrowed. Something in her face troubled me vaguely.
+
+"What are you going to do, mother?"
+
+"Write to your aunt's boarding-place. I can't bear this any longer,"
+sharply. She had already grown unlike herself.
+
+She wrote, and asked for an answer by return of mail.
+
+It was on a Wednesday, I remember, that we looked for it. I remember
+everything that happened that day. I came home early from school. Mother
+was sewing at the parlor window, her eyes wandering from her work, up
+the road. It was an ugly day. It had rained drearily from eight o'clock
+till two, and closed in suffocating mist, creeping and dense and chill.
+It gave me a childish fancy of long-closed tombs and lowland graveyards,
+as I walked home in it.
+
+I tried to keep the younger children quiet when we went in, mother was
+so nervous. As the early, uncanny twilight fell, we grouped around her
+timidly. A dull sense of awe and mystery clung to the night, and clung
+to her watching face, and clung even then to that closed room up stairs
+where the lilies were fading.
+
+Mother sat leaning her head upon her hand, the outline of her face dim
+in the dusk against the falling curtain. She was sitting so when we
+heard the first rumble of the distant coach-wheels. At the sound, she
+folded her hands in her lap and stirred a little, rose slowly from her
+chair, and sat down again.
+
+"Sarah."
+
+I crept up to her. At the near sight of her face, I was so frightened I
+could have cried.
+
+"Sarah, you may go out and get the letter. I--I can't."
+
+I went slowly out at the door and down the walk. At the gate I looked
+back. The outline of her face was there against the window-pane, white
+in the gathering gloom.
+
+It seems to me that my older and less sensitive years have never known
+such a night. The world was stifling in a deluge of gray, cold mists,
+unstirred by a breath of air. A robin with feathers all ruffled, and
+head hidden, sat on the gate-post, and chirped a little mournful chirp,
+like a creature dying in a vacuum. The very daisy that nodded and
+drooped in the grass at my feet seemed to be gasping for breath. The
+neighbor's house, not forty paces across the street, was invisible. I
+remember the sensation it gave me, as I struggled to find its outlines,
+of a world washed out, like the figures I washed out on my slate. As I
+trudged, half frightened, into the road, and the fog closed about me, it
+seemed to my childish superstition like a horde of long-imprisoned
+ghosts let loose and angry. The distant sound of the coach, which I
+could not see, added to the fancy.
+
+The coach turned the corner presently. On a clear day I could see the
+brass buttons on the driver's coat at that distance. There was nothing
+visible now of the whole dark structure but the two lamps in front, like
+the eyes of some evil thing, glaring and defiant, borne with swift
+motion down upon me by a power utterly unseen,--it had a curious effect.
+Even at this time, I confess I do not like to see a lighted carriage
+driven through a fog.
+
+I summoned all my little courage, and piped out the driver's name,
+standing there in the road.
+
+He reined up his horses with a shout,--he had nearly driven over me.
+After some searching, he discovered the small object cowering down in
+the mist, handed me a letter, with a muttered oath at being intercepted
+on such a night, and lumbered on and out of sight in three rods.
+
+I went slowly into the house. Mother had lighted a lamp, and stood at
+the parlor door. She did not come into the hall to meet me.
+
+She took the letter and went to the light, holding it with the seal
+unbroken. She might have stood so two minutes.
+
+"Why don't you read, mamma?" spoke up Winthrop. I hushed him.
+
+She opened it then, read it, laid it down upon the table, and went out
+of the room without a word. I had not seen her face. We heard her go up
+stairs and shut the door.
+
+She had left the letter open there before us. After a little awed
+silence, Clara broke out into sobs. I went up and read the few and
+simple lines.
+
+_Aunt Alice had left for Creston on the appointed day._
+
+Mother spent that night in the closed room where the lilies had drooped
+and died. Clara and I heard her pacing the floor till we cried ourselves
+to sleep. When we woke in the morning, she was pacing it still.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, weeks wore into months, and the months became many years. More
+than that we never knew. Some inquiry revealed the fact, after a while,
+that a slight accident had occurred upon the Erie Railroad to the train
+which she should have taken. There was some disabling, but no deaths,
+the conductor had supposed. The car had fallen into the water. She might
+not have been missed when the half-drowned passengers were all drawn
+out.
+
+So mother added a little crape to her widow's weeds, the key of the
+closed room lay henceforth in her drawer, and all things went on as
+before. To her children my mother was never gloomy,--it was not her way.
+No shadow of household affliction was placed like a skeleton confronting
+our uncomprehending joy. Of what those weeks and months and years were
+to her,--a widow, and quite uncomforted in their dark places by any
+human love,--she gave no sign. We thought her a shade paler, perhaps. We
+found her often alone with her little Bible. Sometimes, on the Sabbath,
+we missed her, and knew that she had gone into that closed room. But she
+was just as tender with us in our little faults and sorrows, as merry
+with us in our plays, as eager in our gayest plans, as she had always
+been. As she had always been,--our mother.
+
+And so the years slipped by, to her and to us. Winthrop went into
+business in Boston; he never took to his books, and mother was too wise
+to _push_ him through college; but I think she was disappointed. He was
+her only boy, and she would have chosen for him the profession of his
+father and grandfather. Clara and I graduated in our white dresses and
+blue ribbons, like other girls, and came home to mother, crochet-work,
+and Tennyson. And then something happened, as the veriest little
+things--which, unnoticed and uncomprehended, hold the destinies of lives
+in their control--will happen.
+
+I mean that our old and long-tried cook, Bathsheba, who had been an
+heirloom in the family, suddenly fell in love with the older sexton, who
+had rung the passing-bell for every soul who died in the village for
+forty years, and took it into her head to marry him, and desert our
+kitchen for his little brown house under the hill.
+
+So it came about that we hunted the township for a handmaiden; and it
+also came about that our inquiring steps led us to the poor-house. A
+stout, not over-brilliant-looking girl, about twelve years of age, was
+to be had for her board and clothes, and such schooling as we could give
+her,--in country fashion, to be "bound out" till she should be eighteen.
+The economy of the arrangement decided in her favor; for, in spite of
+our grand descent and grander notions, we were poor enough, after father
+died, and the education of three children had made no small gap in our
+little principal, and she came.
+
+Her name was a singular one,--Selphar. It always savored too nearly of
+brimstone to please me. I used to call her Sel, "for short." She was a
+good, sensible, uninteresting-looking girl, with broad face, large
+features, and limp, tow-colored curls. I doubt if I ever see curls like
+them now without a little shudder. They used to hang straight down about
+her eyes, and were never otherwise than perfectly smooth. She proved to
+be of good temper, which is worth quite as much as brains in a servant,
+as honest as the daylight, dull enough at her books, but a good,
+plodding worker, if you marked out every step of the way for her
+beforehand. I do not think she would ever have discovered the laws of
+gravitation; but she might have jumped off a precipice to prove them,
+if she had been bidden.
+
+Until she was seventeen, she was precisely like any other rather stupid
+girl; never given to novel-reading or fancies; never frightened by the
+dark or ghost-stories; proving herself warmly attached to us, after a
+while, and rousing in us, in return, the kindly interest naturally
+felt for a faithful servant; but she was not in any respect
+_un_common,--quite far from it,--except in the circumstance that she
+never told a falsehood.
+
+At seventeen she had a violent attack of diphtheria, and her life hung
+by a thread. Mother's aristocracy had nothing of that false pride which
+is afraid of contamination from kindly association with its inferiors.
+She was too thoroughly a lady. She was as tender and unwearying in her
+care of Selphar as the girl's own mother might have been. She was
+somehow touched by the child's orphaned life,--suffering always, in all
+places, appealed to her so strongly,--every sorrow found so warm a place
+in her heart.
+
+From that time, I believe Sel was immovable in her faith in my mother's
+divinity. Under such nursing as she had, she slowly recovered, but her
+old, stolid strength never came back to her. Severe headaches became of
+frequent occurrence. Her stout, muscular arms grew weak. As weeks went
+on, it became evident in many ways that, though the diphtheria itself
+was quite out of her system, it had left her thoroughly diseased.
+Strange fits of silence came over her: her volubility had been the
+greatest objection we had to her hitherto. Her face began to wear a
+troubled look. She was often found in places where she had stolen away
+to be alone.
+
+One morning she slept late in her little garret-chamber, and we did not
+call her. The girl had gone up stairs the night before crying with the
+pain in her temples, and mother, who was always thoughtful of her
+servants, said it was a pity to wake her, and, as there were only three
+of us, we might get our own breakfast for once. While we were at work
+together in the kitchen, Clara heard her kitten mewing out in the snow,
+and went to the door to let her in. The creature, possessed by some
+sudden frolic, darted away behind the well-curb. Clara was always a bit
+of a romp, and, with never a thought of her daintily-slippered feet, she
+flung her trailing dress over one arm and was off over the three-inch
+snow. The cat led her a brisk chase, and she came in flushed, and
+panting, and pretty, her little feet drenched, and the tip of a Maltese
+tail just visible above a great bundle she had made of her apron.
+
+"Why!" said mother, "you have lost your ear-ring."
+
+Clara dropped the kitten with unceremonious haste on the floor, felt of
+her little pink ear, shook her apron, and the corners of her mouth went
+down into her dimpled chin.
+
+"They're the ones Winthrop sent, of all things in the world!"
+
+"You'd better put on your rubbers, and have a hunt out-doors," said
+mother.
+
+We hunted out-doors,--on the steps, on the well-boards, in the
+wood-shed, in the snow; Clara looked down the well till her nose and
+fingers were blue, but the ear-ring was not to be found. We hunted
+in-doors, under the stove, and the chairs, and the table, in every
+possible and impossible nook, cranny, and crevice, but gave up the
+search in despair. It was a pretty trinket,--a leaf of delicately
+wrought gold, with a pearl dew-drop on it,--very becoming to Clara, and
+the first present Winthrop had sent her from his earnings. If she had
+been a little younger she would have cried. She came very near it as it
+was, I suspect, for when she went after the plates she stayed in the
+cupboard long enough to set two tables.
+
+When we were half through breakfast, Selphar came down, blushing, and
+frightened half out of her wits, her apologies tumbling over each other
+with such skill as to render each one unintelligible,--and evidently
+undecided in, her own mind whether she was to be hung or burnt at the
+stake.
+
+"It's no matter at all," said mother, kindly; "I knew you felt sick last
+night. I should have called you if I had needed you."
+
+Having set the girl at her ease, as only she could do, she went on with
+her breakfast, and we forgot all about her. She stayed, however, in the
+room to wait on the table. It was afterwards remembered that she had not
+been out of our sight since she came down the garret-stairs. Also, that
+her room looked out upon the opposite side of the house from that on
+which the well-curb stood.
+
+"Why, look at Sel!" said Clara, suddenly, "she has her eyes shut."
+
+The girl was just passing the toast. Mother spoke to her. "Selphar, what
+is the matter?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Why don't you open your eyes?"
+
+"I can't."
+
+"Hand the salt to Miss Sarah."
+
+She took it up and brought it around the table to me, with perfect
+precision.
+
+"Sel, how you act!" said Clara, petulantly. "Of course you saw."
+
+"Yes'm, I saw," said the girl in a puzzled way, "but my eyes are shut,
+Miss Clara."
+
+"Tight?"
+
+"Tight."
+
+Whatever this freak meant, we thought best to take no notice of it. My
+mother told her, somewhat gravely, that she might sit down until she was
+wanted, and we returned to our conversation about the ear-ring.
+
+"Why!" said Sel, with a little jump, "I see your ear-ring, Miss
+Clara,--the one with a white drop on the leaf. It's out by the well."
+
+The girl was sitting with her back to the window, her eyes, to all
+appearance, tightly closed.
+
+"It's on the right-hand side, under the snow, between the well and the
+wood-pile. Why, don't you see?"
+
+Clara began to look frightened, mother displeased.
+
+"Selphar," she said, "this is nonsense. It is impossible for you to see
+through the walls of two rooms and a wood-shed."
+
+"May I go and get it?" said the girl, quietly.
+
+"Sel," said Clara, "on your word and honor, are your eyes shut
+_perfectly_ tight?"
+
+"If they ain't, Miss Clara, then they never was."
+
+Sel never told a lie. We looked at each other, and let her go. I
+followed her out, and kept my eyes on her closed lids. She did not once
+raise them; nor did they tremble, as lids will tremble, if only
+partially closed.
+
+She walked without the slightest hesitation directly to the well-curb,
+to the spot which she had mentioned, stooped down, and brushed away the
+three-inch fall of snow. The ear-ring lay there, where it had sunk in
+falling. She picked it up, carried it in, and gave it to Clara.
+
+That Clara had the thing on when she started after her kitten, there
+could be no doubt. She and I both remembered it. That Sel, asleep on the
+opposite side of the house, could not have seen it drop, was also
+settled. That she, with her eyes closed and her back to the window, had
+seen through three walls, and through three inches of snow, at a
+distance of fifty feet, was an inference.
+
+"I don't believe it!" said my mother, "it's some nonsensical mistake."
+Clara looked a little pale, and I laughed.
+
+We watched her carefully through the day. Her eyes remained tightly
+closed. She understood all that was said to her, answered correctly, but
+did not seem inclined to talk. She went about her work as usual, and
+performed it without a mistake. It could not be seen that she groped at
+all with her hands to feel her way, as is the case with the blind. On
+the contrary, she touched everything with her usual decision. It was
+impossible to believe, without seeing them, that her eyes were closed.
+
+We tied a handkerchief tightly over them; see through it or below it she
+could not, if she had tried. We then sent her into the parlor, with
+orders to bring from the book-case two Bibles which had been given as
+prizes to Clara and me at school, when we were children. The books were
+of precisely the same size, color, and texture. Our names in gilt
+letters were printed upon the binding. We followed her in, and watched
+her narrowly. She went directly to the book-case, laid her hands upon
+the books at once, and brought them to my mother. Mother changed them
+from, hand to hand several times, and turned them with the gilt
+lettering downwards upon her lap.
+
+"Now, Selphar, which is Miss Sarah's?"
+
+The girl quietly took mine up. The experiment was repeated and varied
+again and again. In every case the result was the same. She made no
+mistake. It was no guess-work. All this was done with the bandage
+tightly drawn about her eyes. _She did not see those letters with them._
+
+That evening we were sitting quietly in the dining-room. Selphar sat a
+little apart with her sewing, her eyes still closed. We kept her with
+us, and kept her in sight. The parlor, which was a long room, was
+between us and the front of the house. The distance was so great that we
+had often thought, if prowlers were to come around at night, how
+impossible it would be to hear them. The curtains and shutters were
+closely drawn. Sel was sitting by the fire. Suddenly she turned pale,
+dropped her sewing, and sprang from her chair.
+
+"Robbers, robbers!" she cried. "Don't you see? they're getting in the
+east parlor window! There's three of 'em, and a lantern. They've just
+opened the window,--hurry, hurry!"
+
+"I believe the girl is insane," said mother, decidedly. Nevertheless,
+she put out the light, opened the parlor door noiselessly, and went in.
+
+The east window was open. There was a quick vision of three men and a
+dark lantern. Then Clara screamed, and it disappeared. We went to the
+window, and saw the men running down the street. The snow the next
+morning was found trodden down under the window, and their footprints
+were traced out to the road.
+
+When we went back to the other room, Selphar was standing in the middle
+of it, a puzzled, frightened look on her face, her eyes wide open.
+
+"Selphar," said my mother, a little suspiciously, "how did you know the
+robbers were there?"
+
+"Robbers!" said the girl, aghast.
+
+She knew nothing of the robbers. She knew nothing of the ear-ring. She
+remembered nothing that had happened since she went up the garret-stairs
+to bed, the night before. And, as I said, the girl was as honest as the
+sunlight. When we told her what had happened, she burst into terrified
+tears.
+
+For some time after this there was no return of the "tantrums," as
+Selphar had called the condition, whatever it was. I began to get up
+vague theories of a trance state. But mother said, "Nonsense!" and Clara
+was too much frightened to reason at all about the matter.
+
+One Sunday morning Sel complained of a headache. There was an evening
+service that night, and we all went to church. Mother let Sel take the
+empty seat in the carryall beside her.
+
+It was very dark when we started to come home. But Creston was a safe
+old Orthodox town, the roads were filled with returning church-goers
+like ourselves, and mother drove like a man. A darker night I think I
+have never seen. Literally, we could not see a hand before our eyes. We
+met a carriage on a narrow road, and the horses' heads touched, before
+either driver had seen the other.
+
+Selphar had been quite silent during the drive. I leaned forward, looked
+closely into her face, and could dimly see through the darkness that her
+eyes were closed.
+
+"Why!" she said at last, "see those gloves!"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Down in the ditch; we passed them before I spoke. I see them on a
+blackberry-bush; they've got little brass buttons on the wrist."
+
+Three rods past now, and we could not see our horse's head.
+
+"Selphar," said my mother, quickly, "what _is_ the matter with you?"
+
+"If you please, ma'am, I don't know," replied the girl, hanging her
+head. "May I get out and bring 'em to you?"
+
+Prince was reined up, and Sel got out. She went so far back, that,
+though we strained our eyes to do it, we could not see her. In about two
+minutes she came up, a pair of gentleman's gloves in her hand. They were
+rolled together, were of cloth so black that on a bright night it would
+never have been seen, and had small brass buttons at the wrist.
+
+Mother took them without a word.
+
+The story leaked out somehow, and spread all over town. It raised a
+great hue and cry. Four or five antediluvian ladies declared at once
+that we were nothing more nor less than a family of "them spirituous
+mediums," and seriously proposed to expel mother from the
+prayer-meeting. Masculine Creston did worse. It smiled a pitying smile,
+and pronounced the whole thing the fancy of "scared women-folks." I
+could endure with calmness any slander upon earth but that. I sent by
+the next mail for Winthrop, and stated the case to him in a condition of
+suppressed fury. He very politely bit back an incredulous smile, and
+said he should be _very_ happy to see her perform. The answer was
+somewhat dubious. I accepted it in silent suspicion.
+
+He came on Saturday noon. That afternoon we attended _en masse_ one of
+those refined inquisitions commonly known as picnics, and Winthrop lost
+his pocket-knife. Selphar, of course, kept house at home.
+
+When we returned, Winthrop made some careless reference to his loss in
+her presence, and thought no more of it. About half an hour after, we
+observed that she was washing the dishes with her eyes shut. The
+condition had not been upon her five minutes before she dropped the
+spoon suddenly into the water, and asked permission to go out to walk.
+She "saw Mr. Winthrop's knife somewhere under a stone, and wanted to get
+it." It was fully two miles to the picnic grounds, and nearly dark.
+Winthrop followed the girl, unknown to her, and kept her in sight. She
+went rapidly, and without the slightest hesitation or search, to an
+out-of-the-way gully down by the pond, where Winthrop afterwards
+remembered having gone to cut some willow-twigs for the girls, parted a
+thick cluster of bushes, lifted a large, loose stone under which the
+knife had rolled, and picked it up. She returned it to Winthrop,
+quietly, and hurried away about her work to avoid being thanked.
+
+I observed that, after this incident, masculine Creston became more
+respectful.
+
+Of several peculiarities in this development of the girl I made at the
+time careful memoranda, and the exactness of these can be relied upon.
+
+1. She herself, so far from attempting to bring on these trance states,
+or taking any pride therein, was intensely troubled and mortified by
+them,--would run out of the room, if she felt them coming on in the
+presence of visitors.
+
+2. They were apt to be preceded by severe headaches, but came often
+without any warning.
+
+3. She never, in any instance, recalled anything that happened during
+the trance, after it was passed.
+
+4. She was powerfully and unpleasantly affected by electricity from a
+battery, or acting in milder forms. She was also unable at any time to
+put her hands and arms into hot water; the effect was to paralyze them
+at once.
+
+5. Space proved to be no impediment to her vision. She has been known to
+follow the acts, words, and expressions of countenance of members of the
+family hundreds of miles away, with accuracy; as was afterwards proved
+by comparing notes as to time.
+
+6. The girl's eyes, after her trances became habitual, assumed, and
+always retained, the most singular expression I ever saw on any face.
+They were oblong and narrow, and set back in her head like the eyes of a
+snake. They were not--smile if you will, O practical and incredulous
+reader!--but they were not _human_ eyes. The eyes of Elsie Venner are
+the only eyes I can think of as at all like them. The most horrible
+circumstance about them--a circumstance that always made me shudder,
+familiar as I was with it--was, that, though turned fully on you, _they
+never looked at you_. Something behind them or out of them did the
+seeing, not they.
+
+7. She not only saw substance, but soul. She has repeatedly told me my
+thoughts when they were upon subjects to which she could not by any
+possibility have had the slightest clew.
+
+8. We were never able to detect a shadow of deceit about her.
+
+9. The clairvoyance never failed in any instance to be correct, so far
+as we were able to trace it.
+
+As will be readily imagined, the girl became a useful member of the
+family. The lost valuables restored and the warnings against mischances
+given by her quite balanced her incapacity for peculiar kinds of work.
+This incapacity, however, rather increased than diminished, and,
+together with her fickle health, which also grew more unsettled, caused
+us a great deal of care. The Creston physician--who was a keen man in
+his way, for a country doctor--pronounced the case altogether undreamt
+of before in Horatio's philosophy, and kept constant notes of it. Some
+of these have, I believe, found their way into the medical journals.
+
+After a while there came, like a thief in the night, that which I
+suppose was poor Selphar's one unconscious, golden mission in this
+world. It came on a quiet summer night, that ended a long trance of a
+week's continuance. Mother had gone out into the kitchen to give an
+order for breakfast. I heard a few eager words in Selphar's voice, and
+then the door shut quickly, and it was an hour before it was opened.
+
+Then my mother came to me without a particle of color in lips or cheek,
+and drew me away alone, and told the secret to me.
+
+Selphar had seen Aunt Alice.
+
+We sat down and looked at one another. There was a singular pinched look
+about my mother's mouth.
+
+"Sarah."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She says"--and then she told me what she said. She had seen Alice
+Stuart in a Western town, seven hundred miles away. Among the living,
+she desired to be counted of the dead. And that was all.
+
+My mother paced the room three times back and forth, her hands locked.
+
+"Sarah." There was a chill in her voice--it had been such a gentle
+voice!--that froze me. "Sarah, the girl is an impostor."
+
+"Mother!"
+
+She paced the room, once more, three times, back and forth. "At any
+rate, she is a poor, self-deluded creature. How _can_ she see, seven
+hundred miles away, a dead woman who has been an angel all these years?
+Think! an _angel_, Sarah! So much better than I, and I--I loved--"
+
+Before or since, I never heard my mother speak like that. She broke off
+sharply, and froze back into her chilling voice.
+
+"We will say nothing about this, if you please. I do not believe a word
+of it."
+
+We said nothing about it, but Selphar did. The delusion, if delusion it
+were, clung to her, haunted her, pursued her, week after week. To rid
+her of it, or to silence her, was impossible. She added no new facts to
+her first statement, but insisted that the long-lost dead was yet alive,
+with a quiet pertinacity that it was simply impossible to ridicule,
+frighten, threaten, or cross-question out of her, Clara was so
+thoroughly alarmed that she would not have slept alone for any
+mortal--perhaps not for any immortal--considerations. Winthrop and I
+talked the matter over often and gravely when we were alone and in quiet
+places. Mother's lips were sealed. From the day when Sel made the first
+disclosure, she was never heard once to refer to the matter. A
+perceptible haughtiness crept into her manner towards the girl. She even
+talked of dismissing her; but repented it, and melted into momentary
+gentleness. I could have cried over her that night. I was beginning to
+understand what a pitiful struggle her life had become, and how utterly
+alone she must be in it. She _would_ not believe--she knew not what. She
+could not doubt the girl. And with the conflict even her children could
+not intermeddle.
+
+To understand the crisis into which she was brought, the reader must
+bear in mind our long habit of belief, not only in Selphar's personal
+honesty, but in the infallibility of her mysterious power. Indeed, it
+had almost ceased to be mysterious to us, from daily familiarity. We had
+come to regard it as the curious working of physical disease, had taken
+its results as a matter of course, and had ceased, in common with
+converted Creston, to doubt the girl's capacity for seeing anything that
+she chose to, at any place.
+
+Thus a year wore on. My mother grew sleepless and pallid. She laughed
+often, in a nervous, shallow way, as unlike her as a butterfly is unlike
+a sunset; and her face settled into an habitual sharpness and hardness
+unutterably painful to me.
+
+Once only I ventured to break into the silence of the haunting thought
+that she knew, and we knew, was never escaped by either. "Mother, it
+would do no harm for Winthrop to go out West, and--"
+
+She interrupted me sternly: "Sarah, I had not thought you capable of
+such childish superstition. I wish that girl and her nonsense had never
+come into this house!"--turning sharply away, and out of the room.
+
+Just what that year was to my mother, I suppose only God and she have
+ever known, or will know.
+
+But it ended. It ended at last, as I had prayed every night and morning
+of it that it should end. Mother came into my room one night, locked the
+door behind her, and, walking over to the window, stood with her face
+turned from me.
+
+"Sarah."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Sarah."
+
+But that was all for a little while. Then,--"Sick and in suffering,
+Sarah,--the girl--she may be right, God Almighty knows! _Sick and in
+suffering_, you see. I am going. I think, I--"
+
+The voice broke and melted utterly. I stole away and left her alone.
+
+Creston put on its spectacles and looked wise on learning, the next day,
+that Mrs. Dugald had taken the earliest morning train for the West, on
+sudden and important business. It was precisely what Creston expected,
+and just like the Dugalds for all the world,--gone to hunt up material
+for that genealogical book, or map, or tree, or something, that they
+thought nobody knew they were going to publish. O yes, Creston
+understood it perfectly.
+
+Space forbids me to relate in detail the clews which Selphar had given
+as to the whereabouts of the wanderer. Her trances, just at this time,
+were somewhat scarce and fragmentary, and the information she had
+professed to give had come in snatches and very imperfectly,--the trance
+being apt to end suddenly at the moment when some important question was
+pending, and then, of course, all memory of what she had said, or was
+about to say, was gone. The names and appearance of persons and places
+necessary to the search had, however, been given with sufficient
+distinctness to serve as a guide in my mother's rather chimerical
+undertaking. I suppose ninety-nine persons out of a hundred would have
+thought her a candidate for the State Lunatic Asylum. Exactly what she
+herself expected, hoped, or feared, I think it doubtful if she knew. I
+confess to a condition of simple bewilderment, when she was fairly
+gone, and Clara and I were left alone with Selphar's ghostly eyes
+forever on us. One night I had to lock the poor thing into her
+garret-room before I could sleep.
+
+Just three weeks from the day mother started for the West, the coach
+rattled up to the door, and two women, arm in arm, came slowly up the
+walk. The one, erect, royal, with her great steadfast eyes alight; the
+other, bent and worn, gray-haired and sallow and dumb, crawling feebly
+through the golden afternoon sunshine, as the ghost of a glorious life
+might crawl back to its grave.
+
+Mother threw open the door, and stood there like a queen. "Children,
+your aunt has come home. She is too tired to talk just now. By and by
+she will be glad to see you."
+
+We took her gently up stairs, into the room where the lilies were
+mouldering to dust, and laid her down upon the bed. She closed her eyes
+wearily, turned her face over to the wall, and said no word.
+
+What was the story of those tired eyes I never asked, and I never knew.
+Once, as I passed the room, a quick picture showed through the open
+door. The two women lying with their arms about each other's neck, as
+they used to do when they were children together; and above them, still
+and watchful, the wounded Face that had waited there so many years for
+this.
+
+One was speaking with weak sobs, and very low. It was Aunt Alice. I
+caught but two words,--"My husband."
+
+But what that husband was remains unknown till the day when the grave
+shall give up its dead, and the secrets of hearts oppressed and sinned
+against and sorrowful shall be revealed.
+
+She lingered weakly there, within the restful room, for seven days, and
+then one morning we found her with her eyes upon the thorn-crowned face,
+her own quite still and smiling.
+
+A little funeral train wound away one night behind the church, and left
+her down among those red-cup mosses that opened in so few months again
+to cradle the sister who had loved her. Two words only, by mother's
+orders, marked the simple headstone,--
+
+     "ALICE BROWNING."
+
+I have given you facts. Explain them as you will. I do not attempt it,
+for the simple reason that I cannot.
+
+A word must be said as to the fate of poor Sel, which was mournful
+enough. Her trances grew gradually more frequent and erratic, till she
+became so thoroughly diseased in mind and body as to be entirely
+unfitted for household work, and, in short, nothing but an encumbrance.
+We kept her, however, for the sake of charity, and should have done so,
+till her poor, tormented life wore itself out; but after the advent of a
+new servant, and my mother's death, she conceived the idea that she was
+a burden, cried over it a few weeks, and at last one bitter winter's
+night she disappeared. We did not give up all search for her for years,
+but nothing was ever heard from her. He, I hope, who permitted life to
+be such a terrible mystery to her, has cared for her somehow, and
+kindly, and well.
+
+
+
+
+THE MINER.
+
+
+    Down 'mid the tangled roots of things
+    That coil about the central fire,
+    I seek for that which giveth wings,
+    To stoop, not soar, to my desire.
+
+    Sometimes I hear, as 't were a sigh,
+    The sea's deep yearning far above.
+    "Thou hast the secret not," I cry,
+    "In deeper deeps is hid my Love."
+
+    They think I burrow from the sun,
+    In darkness, all alone and weak;
+    Such loss were gain if He were won.
+    For 't is the sun's own Sun I seek.
+
+    The earth, they murmur, is the tomb
+    That vainly sought his life to prison;
+    Why grovel longer in its gloom?
+    He is not here; He hath arisen.
+
+    More life for me where He hath lain
+    Hidden, while ye believed him dead,
+    Than in cathedrals cold and vain,
+    Built on loose sands of "It is said."
+
+    My search is for the living gold,
+    Him I desire who dwells recluse,
+    And not his image, worn and old,
+    Day-servant of our sordid use.
+
+    If Him I find not, yet I find
+    The ancient joy of cell and church,
+    The glimpse, the surety undefined,
+    The unquenched ardor of the search.
+
+    Happier to chase a flying goal,
+    Than to sit counting laurelled gains,
+    To guess the Soul within the soul,
+    Than to be lord of what remains.
+
+
+
+
+PHYSICAL HISTORY OF THE VALLEY OF THE AMAZONS.
+
+
+II.
+
+Major Coutinho and myself passed three days in the investigation of the
+Serra of Errer�. We found it to consist wholly of the sandstone deposits
+described in my previous article, and to have exactly the same
+geological constitution. In short, the Serra of Monte Alegre, and of
+course all those connected with it on the northern side of the river,
+lie in the prolongation of the lower beds forming the banks of the
+river, their greater height being due simply to the fact that they have
+not been worn to the same low level. The opposite range of Santarem,
+which has the same general outline and character, shares, no doubt, the
+same geological structure. In one word, all these hills were formerly
+part of a continuous formation, and owe their present outline and their
+isolated position to a colossal denudation. The surface of the once
+unbroken strata, which in their original condition must have formed an
+immense plain covered by water, has been cut into ravines or carried
+away over large tracts, to a greater or less depth, leaving only such
+portions standing as from their hardness could resist the floods which
+swept over it. The longitudinal trend of these hills is to be ascribed
+to the direction of the current which caused the denudation, while their
+level summits are due to the regularity of the stratification. They are
+not all table-topped, however; among them are many of smaller size, in
+which the sides have been gradually worn down, producing a gently
+rounded surface. Of course, under the heavy tropical rains this
+denudation is still going on, though in a greatly modified form.
+
+I cannot leave this Serra without alluding to the great beauty and
+extraordinary extent of the view to be obtained from it. Indeed, it was
+here that for the first time the geography of the country presented
+itself to my mind as a living reality, in all its completeness.
+Insignificant as is its actual height, the Serra of Errer� commands a
+wider prospect than is to be had from many a more imposing mountain; for
+the surrounding plain, covered with forests, and ploughed by countless
+rivers, stretches away for hundreds of leagues in every direction,
+without any object to obstruct the view. Standing on the brow of the
+Serra, with the numerous lakes intersecting the low lands at its base,
+you look across the Valley of the Amazons, as far as the eye can reach,
+and through its midst you follow for miles on either side the broad
+flood of the great river, carrying its yellow waters to the sea. As I
+stood there, panoramas from the Swiss mountains came up to my memory,
+and I fancied myself standing on the Alps, looking across the plain of
+Switzerland, instead of the bed of the Amazons, the distant line of the
+Santarem hills on the southern bank of the river, and lower than the
+northern chain, representing the Jura range. As if to complete the
+comparison, I found Alpine lichens growing among cactus and palms, and a
+crust of Arctic cryptogamous growth covered rocks, between which sprang
+tropical flowers. On the northern flank of this Serra I found the only
+genuine erratic boulders I have seen in the whole length of the
+Amazonian Valley, from Par� to the frontier of Peru, though there are
+many detached masses of rock, as, for instance, at Pedreira, near the
+junction of the Rio Negro and Rio Branco, which might be mistaken for
+them, but are due to the decomposition of the rocks in place. The
+boulders of Errer� are entirely distinct from the rock of the Serra, and
+consist of masses of compact hornblende.
+
+It would seem that these two ranges skirting a part of the northern and
+southern banks of the Lower Amazons are not the only remnants of this
+arenaceous formation in its primitive altitude. On the banks of the
+Japura, in the Serra of Cupati, Major Coutinho has found the same beds
+rising to the same height. It thus appears, by positive evidence, that
+over an extent of a thousand miles these deposits had a very
+considerable thickness in the present direction of the valley. How far
+they extended in width has not been ascertained by direct observation,
+for we have not seen how they sink away to the northward, and towards
+the south the denudation has been so complete that, except in the very
+low range of hills in the neighborhood of Santarem, they do not rise
+above the plain. But the fact that this formation once had a thickness
+of more than eight hundred feet within the limits where we have had an
+opportunity of observing it, leaves no doubt that it must have extended
+to the edge of the basin, filling it to the same height throughout its
+whole extent. The thickness of the deposits gives a measure for the
+colossal scale of the denudations by which this immense accumulation was
+reduced to its present level. Here then is a system of high hills,
+having the prominence of mountains in the landscape, produced by causes
+to whose agency inequalities on the earth's surface of this magnitude
+have never yet been ascribed. We may fairly call them denudation
+mountains.
+
+At this stage of the inquiry we have to account for two remarkable
+phenomena. First, the filling of the Amazonian bottom with coarse
+arenaceous materials and finely laminated clays, immediately followed by
+sandstones rising to a height of more than eight hundred feet above the
+sea; the basin meanwhile having no rocky barrier towards the ocean on
+its eastern side. Second, the wearing away and reduction of these
+formations to their present level, by a denudation, more extensive than
+any thus far recorded in the annals of geology, which has given rise to
+all the most prominent hills and mountain chains along the northern bank
+of the river. Before seeking an explanation of these facts, let us look
+at the third and uppermost deposit.
+
+This deposit, essentially the same as the Rio drift, has been minutely
+described in my former article; but in the north, it presents itself
+under a somewhat different aspect. As in Rio, it is a clayey deposit,
+containing more or less sand, and reddish in color, though varying from
+deep ochre to a brownish tint. It is not so absolutely destitute of
+stratification here as in its more southern range, though the traces of
+stratification are rare, and, when they do occur, are faint and
+indistinct. The materials are also more completely comminuted, and, as I
+have said above, contain hardly any large masses, though quartz pebbles
+are sometimes scattered throughout the deposit, and occasionally a thin
+seam of pebbles, exactly as in the Rio drift, is seen resting between it
+and the underlying sandstone. In some places this bed of pebbles even
+intersects the mass of the clay, giving it in such instances an
+unquestionably stratified character. There can be no question that this
+more recent formation rests unconformably upon the sandstone beds
+beneath it; for it fills all the inequalities of their denudated
+surfaces, whether they be more or less limited furrows, or wide,
+undulating depressions. It may be seen everywhere along the banks of the
+river, above the stratified sandstone, sometimes with the river mud
+accumulated against it; at the season of the _enchente_, or high water,
+it is the only formation left exposed above the water level. Its
+thickness is not great; it varies from twenty or thirty to fifty feet,
+and may occasionally rise nearly to a hundred feet in height, though
+this is rarely the case. It is evident that this formation also was once
+continuous, stretching over the whole basin at one level. Though it is
+now worn down in many places, and has wholly disappeared in others, its
+connection may be readily traced; since it is everywhere visible, not
+only on opposite banks of the Amazons, but also on those of all its
+tributaries, as far as their shores have been examined. I have said that
+it rests always above the sandstone beds. This is true, with one
+exception. Wherever the sandstone deposits retain their original
+thickness, as in the hills of Monte Alegre and Almeyrim, the red clay is
+not found on their summits, but occurs only in their ravines and
+hollows, or resting against their sides. This shows that it is not only
+posterior to the sandstone, but was accumulated in a shallower basin,
+and consequently never reached so high a level. The boulders of Errer�
+do not rest on the stratified sandstone of the Serra, but are sunk in
+the unstratified mass of the clay. This should be remembered, as it will
+presently be seen that their position associates them with a later
+period than that of the mountain itself. The unconformability of the
+ochraceous clay and the underlying sandstones might lead to the idea
+that the two formations belong to distinct geological periods, and are
+not due to the same agency, acting at successive times. One feature,
+however, shows their close connection. The ochraceous clay exhibits a
+remarkable identity of configuration with the underlying sandstones. An
+extensive survey of the two, in their mutual relations, shows clearly
+that they were both deposited by the same water-system within the same
+basin, but at different levels. Here and there the clay formation has so
+pale and grayish a tint, that it may be confounded with the mud deposits
+of the river. These latter, however, never rise so high as the
+ochraceous clay, but are everywhere confined within the limits of high
+and low water. The islands also in the main course of the Amazons
+consist invariably of river-mud, while those arising from the
+intersection and cutting off of portions of the land by diverging
+branches of the main stream always consist of the well-known sandstones,
+capped by the ochre-colored clay.
+
+It may truly be said that there does not exist on the surface of the
+earth a formation known to geologists resembling that of the Amazons.
+Its extent is stupendous; it stretches from the Atlantic shore, through
+the whole width of Brazil, into Peru, to the very foot of the Andes.
+Humboldt speaks of it "in the vast plains of the Amazons, in the eastern
+boundary of Jaen de Bracamoros," and says, "This prodigious extension of
+red sandstone in the low grounds stretching along the east of the Andes
+is one of the most striking phenomena I observed during my examination
+of rocks in the equinoctial regions."[A] When the great natural
+philosopher wrote these lines, he had no idea how much these deposits
+extended beyond the field of his observations. Indeed, they are not
+limited to the main bed of the Amazons; they have been followed along
+the banks of its tributaries to the south and north as far as these have
+been ascended. They occur on the margins of the Huallaga and the
+Ucayall, on those of the I�a, the Jutahy, the Jurua, the Japura, and the
+Purus. On the banks of the Japura, where Major Coutinho has traced them,
+they are found as far as the Cataract of Cupati. I have followed them
+along the Rio Negro to its junction with the Rio Branco; and Humboldt
+not only describes them from a higher point on this same river, but also
+from the valley of the Orinoco. Finally, they may be tracked along the
+banks of the Madeira, the Tapajos, the Xingu, and the Tocantins, as well
+as on the shores of the Guatuma, the Trombetas, and other northern
+affluents of the Amazons. The observations of Martius, those of Gardner,
+and the recent survey above alluded to, made by my assistant, Mr. St.
+John, of the valley of the Rio Guruguea and that of the Rio Paranahyba,
+show that the great basin of Piauhy is also identical in its geological
+structure with the lateral valleys of the Amazons. The same is true of
+the large island of Marajo, lying at the mouth of the Amazons. And yet I
+believe that even this does not cover the whole ground, and that some
+future writer may say of my estimate, as I have said of Humboldt's, that
+it falls short of the truth; for, if my generalizations are correct, the
+same formation will be found extending over the whole basin of the
+Paraguay and the Rio de la Plata, and along their tributaries, to the
+very heart of the Andes.
+
+Such are the facts. The question now arises, How were these vast
+deposits formed? The easiest answer, and the one which most readily
+suggests itself, is that of a submersion of the continent at successive
+periods to allow the accumulation of these materials, and its subsequent
+elevation. I reject this explanation for the simple reason that the
+deposits show no sign whatever of a marine origin. No seashells nor
+remains of any marine animal have as yet been found throughout their
+whole extent, over a region several thousand miles in length and from
+five to seven hundred miles in width. It is contrary to all our
+knowledge of geological deposits to suppose that an ocean basin of this
+size, which must have been submerged during an immensely long period in
+order to accumulate formations of such a thickness, should not contain
+numerous remains of the animals formerly inhabiting it.[B] The only
+fossil remains of any kind truly belonging to it, which I have found in
+the formation, are the leaves mentioned above, taken from the lower
+clays on the banks of the Solimoens at Tomantins; and these show a
+vegetation similar in general character to that which prevails there
+to-day. Evidently, then, this basin was a fresh-water basin; these
+deposits are fresh-water deposits. But as the Valley of the Amazons
+exists to-day, it is widely open to the ocean on the east, with a gentle
+slope from the Andes to the Atlantic, determining a powerful seaward
+current. When these vast accumulations took place, the basin must have
+been closed; otherwise the loose materials would constantly have been
+carried down to the ocean.
+
+It is my belief that all these deposits belong to the ice period in its
+earlier or later phases, and to this cosmic winter, which, judging from
+all the phenomena connected with it, may have lasted for thousands of
+centuries, we must look for the key to the geological history of the
+Amazonian Valley. I am aware that this suggestion will appear
+extravagant. But is it, after all, so improbable that, when Central
+Europe was covered with ice thousands of feet thick; when the glaciers
+of Great Britain ploughed into the sea, and when those of the Swiss
+mountains had ten times their present altitude; when every lake in
+Northern Italy was filled with ice, and these frozen masses extended
+even into Northern Africa; when a sheet of ice, reaching nearly to the
+summit of Mount Washington in the White Mountains (that is, having a
+thickness of nearly six thousand feet), moved over the continent of
+North America,--is it so improbable that, in this epoch of universal
+cold, the Valley of the Amazons also had its glacier poured down into it
+from the accumulations of snow in the Cordilleras, and swollen
+laterally by the tributary glaciers descending from the table-lands of
+Guiana and Brazil? The movement of this immense glacier would be
+eastward, and determined as well by the vast reservoirs of snow in the
+Andes as by the direction of the valley itself. It must have ploughed
+the valley bottom over and over again, grinding all the materials
+beneath it into a fine powder or reducing them to small pebbles, and it
+must have accumulated at its lower end a moraine of proportions as
+gigantic as its own; thus building a colossal sea-wall across the mouth
+of the valley. I shall be asked at once whether I have found here also
+the glacial inscriptions,--the furrows, stri�, and polished surfaces so
+characteristic of the ground over which glaciers have travelled. I
+answer, not a trace of them; for the simple reason that there is not a
+natural rock surface to be found throughout the whole Amazonian Valley.
+The rocks themselves are of so friable a nature, and the decomposition
+caused by the warm torrential rains and by exposure to the burning sun
+of the tropics so great and unceasing, that it is hopeless to look for
+marks which in colder climates and on harder substances are preserved
+through ages unchanged. With the exception of the rounded surfaces so
+well known in Switzerland as the _roches moutonn�es_ heretofore alluded
+to, which may be seen in many localities, and the boulders of Errer�,
+the direct traces of glaciers as seen in other countries are wanting
+here. I am, indeed, quite willing to admit that, from the nature of the
+circumstances, I have not here the positive evidence which has guided me
+in my previous glacial investigations. My conviction in this instance is
+founded, first, on the materials in the Amazonian Valley, which
+correspond exactly in their character to materials accumulated in
+glacier bottoms; secondly, on the resemblance of the upper or third
+Amazonian formation to the Rio drift,[C] of the glacial origin of which
+there cannot, in my opinion, be any doubt; thirdly, on the fact that
+this fresh-water basin must have been closed against the sea by some
+powerful barrier, the removal of which would naturally give an outlet to
+the waters, and cause the extraordinary denudations, the evidences of
+which meet us everywhere throughout the valley.
+
+On a smaller scale, phenomena of this kind have long been familiar to
+us. In the present lakes of Northern Italy, in those of Switzerland,
+Norway, and Sweden, as well as in those of New England, especially in
+the State of Maine, the waters are held back in their basins by
+moraines. In the ice period these depressions were filled with glaciers,
+which, in the course of time, accumulated at their lower end a wall of
+loose materials. These walls still remain, and serve as dams to prevent
+the escape of the waters. But for their moraines, all these lakes would
+be open valleys. In the Roads of Glen Roy, in Scotland, we have an
+instance of a fresh-water lake, which has now wholly disappeared, formed
+in the same manner, and reduced successively to lower and lower levels
+by the breaking down or wearing away of the moraines which originally
+prevented its waters from flowing out. Assuming then, that, under the
+low temperature of the ice period, the climatic conditions necessary for
+the formation of land-ice existed in the Valley of the Amazons, and that
+it was actually filled with an immense glacier, it follows that, when
+these fields of ice yielded to a gradual change of climate, and slowly
+melted away, the whole basin, then closed against the sea by a huge
+wall of _d�bris_, was transformed into a vast fresh-water lake. The
+first effect of the thawing process must have been to separate the
+glacier from its foundation, raising it from immediate contact with the
+valley bottom, and thus giving room for the accumulation of a certain
+amount of water beneath it; while the valley as a whole would still be
+occupied by the glacier. In this shallow sheet of water under the ice,
+and protected by it from any violent disturbance, those finer triturated
+materials always found at a glacier bottom, and ground sometimes to
+powder by its action, would be deposited, and gradually transformed from
+an unstratified paste containing the finest sand and mud, together with
+coarse pebbles and gravel, into a regularly stratified formation. In
+this formation the coarse materials would of course fall to the bottom,
+while the most minute would settle above them. It is at this time and
+under such circumstances that I believe the first formation of the
+Amazonian Valley, with the coarse, pebbly sand beneath, and the finely
+laminated clays above, to have been accumulated.
+
+I shall perhaps be reminded here of my fossil leaves, and asked how any
+vegetation would be possible under such circumstances. But it must be
+remembered, that, in considering all these periods, we must allow for
+immense lapses of time and for very gradual changes; that the close of
+this first period would be very different from its beginning; and that a
+rich vegetation springs on the very borders of the snow and ice fields
+in Switzerland. The fact that these were accumulated in a glacial basin
+would, indeed, at once account for the traces of vegetable life, and for
+the absence, or at least the great scarcity, of animal remains in these
+deposits. For while fruits may ripen and flowers bloom on the very edge
+of the glaciers, it is also well known that the fresh-water lakes formed
+by the melting of the ice are singularly deficient in life. There are
+indeed hardly any animals to be found in glacial lakes.
+
+The second formation belongs to a later period, when, the whole body of
+ice being more or less disintegrated, the basin contained a larger
+quantity of water. Beside that arising from the melting of the ice, this
+immense valley bottom must have received, then as now, all which was
+condensed from the atmosphere above, and poured into it in the form of
+rain or dew. Thus an amount of water equal to that now flowing in from
+all the tributaries of the main stream must have been rushing towards
+the axis of the valley, seeking its natural level, but spreading over a
+more extensive surface than now, until, finally gathered up as separate
+rivers, it flowed in distinct beds. In its general movement toward the
+central and lower part of the valley, the broad stream would carry along
+all the materials small enough to be so transported, as well as those so
+minute as to remain suspended in the waters. It would gradually deposit
+them in the valley bottom in horizontal beds, more or less regular, or
+here and there, wherever eddies gave rise to more rapid and irregular
+currents, characterized by torrential stratification. Thus has been
+consolidated in the course of ages that continuous sand formation
+spreading over the whole Amazonian basin, and attaining a thickness of
+eight hundred feet.
+
+While these accumulations were taking place within this basin, it must
+not be forgotten that the sea was beating against its outer
+walls,--against that gigantic moraine which I suppose to have closed it
+at its eastern end. It would seem that, either from this cause, or
+perhaps in consequence of some turbulent action from within, a break was
+made in this defence, and the waters rushed violently out. It is very
+possible that the waters, gradually swollen at the close of this period
+by the further melting of the ice, by the additions poured in from
+lateral tributaries, by the rains, and also by the filling of the basin
+with loose materials, would overflow, and thus contribute to destroy
+the moraine. However this may be, it follows from my premises that, in
+the end, these waters obtained a sudden release, and poured seaward with
+a violence which cut and denuded the deposits already formed, wearing
+them down to a much lower level, and leaving only a few remnants
+standing out in their original thickness, where the strata were solid
+enough to resist the action of the currents. Such are the hills of Monte
+Alegre, of Obydos, Almeyrim, and Cupati, as well as the lower ridges of
+Santarem. This escape of the waters did not, however, entirely empty the
+whole basin; for the period of denudation was again followed by one of
+quiet accumulation, during which was deposited the ochraceous sandy clay
+resting upon the denudated surfaces of the underlying sandstone. To this
+period I refer the boulders of Errer�, sunk as they are in the clay of
+this final deposit. I suppose them to have been brought to their present
+position by floating ice at the close of the glacial period, when
+nothing remained of the ice-fields except such isolated
+masses,--ice-rafts as it were; or perhaps by icebergs dropped into the
+basin from glaciers still remaining in the Andes and on the edges of the
+plateaus of Guiana and Brazil. From the general absence of
+stratification in this clay formation, it would seem that the
+comparatively shallow sheet of water in which it was deposited was very
+tranquil. Indeed, after the waters had sunk much below the level which
+they held during the deposition of the sandstone, and the currents which
+gave rise to the denudation of the latter had ceased, the whole sheet of
+water would naturally become much more placid. But the time came when
+the water broke through its boundaries again, perhaps owing to the
+further encroachment of the sea and consequent destruction of the
+moraine. In this second drainage, however, the waters, carrying away a
+considerable part of the new deposit, furrowing it to its very
+foundation, and even cutting through it into the underlying sandstone,
+were, in the end, reduced to something like their present level, and
+confined within their present beds. This is shown by the fact that in
+this ochre-colored clay, and penetrating to a greater or less depth the
+sandstone below, are dug, not only the great longitudinal channel of the
+Amazons itself, but also the lateral furrows through which its
+tributaries reach the main stream, and the network of anastomosing
+branches flowing between them; the whole forming the most extraordinary
+river system in the world.
+
+My assumption that the sea has produced very extensive changes in the
+coast of Brazil--changes more than sufficient to account for the
+disappearance of the glacial wall which I suppose to have closed the
+Amazonian Valley in the ice period--is by no means hypothetical. This
+action is still going on to a remarkable degree, and is even now rapidly
+modifying the outline of the shore. When I first arrived at Par�, I was
+struck with the fact that the Amazons, the largest river in the world,
+has no delta. All the other rivers which we call great, though some of
+them are insignificant as compared with the Amazons,--the Mississippi,
+the Nile, the Ganges, and the Danube,--deposit extensive deltas, and the
+smaller rivers also, with few exceptions, are constantly building up the
+land at their mouths by the materials they bring along with them. Even
+the little river Kander, emptying into the Lake of Thun, is not without
+its delta. Since my return from the Upper Amazons to Par�, I have made
+an examination of some of the harbor islands, and also of parts of the
+coast, and have satisfied myself that, with the exception of a few
+small, low islands, never rising above the sea-level, and composed of
+alluvial deposit, they are portions of the mainland detached from it,
+partly by the action of the river itself, and partly by the encroachment
+of the ocean. In fact the sea is eating away the land much faster than
+the river can build it up. The great island of Marajo was originally a
+continuation of the Valley of the Amazons, and is identical with it in
+every detail of its geological structure. My investigation of the island
+itself, in connection with the coast and the river, leads me to suppose
+that, having been at one time an integral part of the deposits described
+above, at a later period it became an island in the bed of the Amazons,
+which, dividing in two arms, encircled it completely, and then, joining
+again to form a single stream, flowed onward to the sea-shore, which in
+those days lay much farther to the eastward than it now does. I suppose
+the position of the island of Marajo at that time to have corresponded
+very nearly to the present position of the island of Tupinambaranas,
+just at the junction of the Madeira with the Amazons. It is a question
+among geographers whether the Tocantins is a branch of the Amazons, or
+should be considered as forming an independent river system. It will be
+seen that, if my view is correct, it must formerly have borne the same
+relation to the Amazons that the Madeira River now does, joining it just
+where Marajo divided the main stream, as the Madeira now joins it at the
+head of the island of Tupinambaranas. If in countless centuries to come
+the ocean should continue to eat its way into the Valley of the Amazons,
+once more transforming the lower part of the basin into a gulf, as it
+was during the cretaceous period, the time might arrive when
+geographers, finding the Madeira emptying almost immediately into the
+sea, would ask themselves whether it had ever been indeed a branch of
+the Amazons, just as they now question whether the Tocantins is a
+tributary of the main stream or an independent river. But to return to
+Marajo, and to the facts actually in our possession.
+
+The island is intersected, in its south-eastern end, by a considerable
+river called the Igarap� Grande. The cut made through the land by this
+stream seems intended to serve as a geological section, so perfectly
+does it display the three characteristic Amazonian formations above
+described. At its mouth, near the town of Sour�, and at Salvaterra, on
+the opposite bank, may be seen, lowest, the well-stratified sandstone,
+with the finely laminated clays resting upon it, overtopped by a crust;
+then the cross-stratified, highly ferruginous sandstone, with quartz
+pebbles here and there; and, above all, the well-known ochraceous,
+unstratified sandy clay, spreading over the undulating surface of the
+denudated sandstone, following all its inequalities, and filling all its
+depressions and furrows. But while the Igarap� Grande has dug its
+channel down to the sea, cutting these formations, as I ascertained, to
+a depth of twenty-five fathoms, it has thus opened the way for the
+encroachments of the tides, and the ocean is now, in its turn, gaining
+upon the land. Were there no other evidence of the action of the tides
+in this locality, the steep cut of the Igarap� Grande, contrasting with
+the gentle slope of the banks near its mouth, wherever they have been,
+modified by the invasion of the sea, would enable us to distinguish the
+work of the river from that of the ocean, and to prove that the
+denudation now going on is due in part to both. But besides this, I was
+so fortunate as to discover here unmistakable and perfectly convincing
+evidence of the onward movement of the sea. At the mouth of the Igarap�
+Grande, both at Sour� and at Salvaterra, on the southern side of the
+Igarap�, is a submerged forest. Evidently this forest grew in one of
+those marshy lands constantly inundated, for between the stumps is
+accumulated the loose, felt-like peat characteristic of such grounds,
+and containing about as much mud as vegetable matter. Such a marshy
+forest, with the stumps of the trees still standing erect in the peat,
+has been laid bare on both sides of the Igarap� Grande by the
+encroachments of the ocean. That this is the work of the sea is
+undeniable, for all the little depressions and indentations of the peat
+are filled with sea-sand, and a ridge of tidal sand divides it from the
+forest still standing behind. Nor is this all. At Vigia, immediately
+opposite to Sour�, on the continental side of the Par� River, just where
+it meets the sea, we have the counterpart of this submerged forest.
+Another peat-bog, with the stumps of innumerable trees standing in it,
+and encroached upon in the same way by tidal sand, is exposed here also.
+No doubt these forests were once all continuous, and stretched across
+the whole basin of what is now called the Par� River.
+
+Since I have been pursuing this inquiry, I have gathered much
+information to the same effect from persons living on the coast. It is
+well remembered that, twenty years ago, there existed an island, more
+than a mile in width, to the northeast of the entrance of the Bay of
+Vigia, which has now entirely disappeared. Farther eastward, the Bay of
+Braganza has doubled its width in the last twenty years, and on the
+shore, within the bay, the sea has gained upon the land for a distance
+of two hundred yards during a period of only ten years. The latter fact
+is ascertained by the position of some houses, which were two hundred
+yards farther from the sea ten years ago than they now are. From these
+and the like reports, from my own observations on this part of the
+Brazilian coast, from some investigations made by Major Coutinho at the
+mouth of the Amazons, on its northern continental shore, near Macapa,
+and from the reports of Mr. St. John respecting the formations in the
+valley of the Paranahyba, it is my belief that the changes I have been
+describing are but a small part of the destruction wrought by the sea on
+the northeastern shore of this continent. I think it will be found, when
+the coast has been fully surveyed, that a strip of land not less than a
+hundred leagues in width, stretching from Cape St. Roque to the northern
+extremity of South America, has been eaten away by the ocean. If this be
+so, the Paranahyba and the rivers to the northwest of it, in the
+province of Maranham, were formerly tributaries of the Amazons; and all
+that we know thus far of their geological character goes to prove that
+this was actually the case. Such an extensive oceanic denudation must
+have carried away not only the gigantic glacial moraine here assumed to
+have closed the mouth of the Amazonian basin, but the very ground on
+which it stood.
+
+During the last four or five years I have been engaged in a series of
+investigations, in the United States, upon the subject of the
+denudations connected with the close of the glacial period there, and
+the encroachments of the ocean upon the drift deposits along the
+Atlantic coast. Had these investigations been published in detail, with
+the necessary maps, it would have been far easier for me to explain the
+facts I have lately observed in the Amazonian Valley, to connect them
+with facts of a like character on the continent of North America, and to
+show how remarkably they correspond with facts accomplished during the
+same period in other parts of the world. While the glacial epoch itself
+has been very extensively studied in the last half-century, little
+attention has been paid to the results connected with the breaking up of
+the geological winter and the final disappearance of the ice. I believe
+that the true explanation of the presence of a large part of the
+superficial deposits lately ascribed to the agency of the sea, during
+temporary subsidences of the land, will be found in the melting of the
+ice-fields. To this cause I would refer all those deposits which I have
+designated in former publications as remodelled drift. When the sheet of
+ice, extending from the Arctic regions over a great part of North
+America and coming down to the sea, slowly melted away, the waters were
+not distributed over the face of the country as they now are. They
+rested upon the bottom deposits of the ice-fields, upon the glacial
+paste, consisting of clay, sand, pebbles, boulders, etc., underlying the
+ice. This bottom deposit did not, of course, present an even surface,
+but must have had extensive undulations and depressions. After the
+waters had been drained off from the more elevated ridges, these
+depressions would still remain full. In the lakes and pools thus formed,
+stratified deposits would be accumulated, consisting of the most
+minutely comminuted clay, deposited in thin laminated layers, or
+sometimes in considerable masses, without any sign of stratification;
+such differences in the formation being determined by the state of the
+water, whether perfectly stagnant or more or less agitated. Of such pool
+deposits overlying the drift there are many instances in the Northern
+United States. By the overflowing of some of these lakes, and by the
+emptying of the higher ones into those on a lower level, channels would
+gradually be formed between the depressions. So began to be marked out
+our independent river-systems,--the waters always seeking their natural
+level, gradually widening and deepening the channels in which they
+flowed, as they worked their way down to the sea. When they reached the
+shore, there followed that antagonism between the rush of the rivers and
+the action of the tides,--between continental outflows and oceanic
+encroachments,--which still goes on, and has led to the formation of our
+eastern rivers, with their wide, open estuaries, such as the James, the
+Potomac, and the Delaware. All these estuaries are embanked by drift, as
+are also, in their lower course, the rivers connected with them. Where
+the country was low and flat, and the drift extended far into the ocean,
+the encroachment of the sea gave rise, not only to our large estuaries,
+but also to the sounds and deep bays forming the most prominent
+indentations of the continental coast, such as the Bay of Fundy,
+Massachusetts Bay, Long Island Sound, and others. The unmistakable
+traces of glacial action upon all the islands along the coast of New
+England, sometimes lying at a very considerable distance from the
+mainland, give an approximate, though a minimum, measure of the former
+extent of the glacial drift seaward, and the subsequent advance of the
+ocean upon the land. Like those of the harbor of Par�, all these islands
+have the same geological structure as the continent, and were evidently
+continuous with it at some former period. All the rocky islands along
+the coast of Maine and Massachusetts exhibit the glacial traces wherever
+their surfaces are exposed by the washing away of the drift; and where
+the drift remains, its character shows that it was once continuous from
+one island to another, and from all the islands to the mainland.
+
+It is difficult to determine with precision the ancient limit of the
+glacial drift, but I think it can be shown that it connected the shoals
+of Newfoundland with the continent; that Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard,
+and Long Island made part of the mainland; that, in like manner, Nova
+Scotia, including Sable Island, was united to the southern shore of New
+Brunswick and Maine, and that the same sheet of drift extended thence to
+Cape Cod, and stretched southward as far as Cape Hatteras;--in short,
+that the line of shallow soundings along the whole coast of the United
+States marks the former extent of glacial drift. The ocean has gradually
+eaten its way into this deposit, and given its present outlines to the
+continent. These denudations of the sea no doubt began as soon as the
+breaking up of the ice exposed the drift to its invasion; in other
+words, at a time when colossal glaciers still poured forth their load of
+ice into the Atlantic, and fleets of icebergs, far larger and more
+numerous than those now floated off from the Arctic seas, were launched
+from the northeastern shore of the United States. Many such masses must
+have stranded along the shore, and have left various signs of their
+presence. In fact, the glacial phenomena of the United States and
+elsewhere are due to two distinct periods: the first of these was the
+glacial epoch proper, when the ice was a solid sheet; while to the
+second belongs the breaking up of this epoch, with the gradual
+disintegration and dispersion of the ice. We talk of the theory of
+glaciers and the theory of icebergs in reference to these phenomena, as
+if they were exclusively due to one or the other, and whoever accepted
+the former must reject the latter, and _vice versa_. When geologists
+have combined these now discordant elements, and consider these two
+periods as consecutive,--part of the phenomena being due to the
+glaciers, part to the icebergs and to freshets consequent on their
+breaking up,--they will find they have covered the whole ground, and
+that the two theories are perfectly consistent with each other. I think
+the present disputes upon this subject will end somewhat like those
+which divided the Neptunic and Plutonic schools of geologists in the
+early part of this century; the former of whom would have it that all
+the rocks were due to the action of water, the latter that they were
+wholly due to the action of fire. The problem was solved, and harmony
+restored, when it was found that both elements had been equally at work
+in forming the solid crust of the globe. To the stranded icebergs
+alluded to above, I have no doubt, is to be referred the origin of the
+many lakes without outlet existing all over the sandy tract along our
+coast of which Cape Cod forms a part. Not only the formation of these
+lakes, but also that of our salt marshes and cranberry-fields, I believe
+to be connected with the waning of the ice period.
+
+I hope at some future time to publish in detail, with the appropriate
+maps and illustrations, my observations on our coast changes, and upon
+other phenomena connected with the close of the glacial epoch in the
+United States. It is reversing the natural order of things to give
+results without the investigations which have led to them; and I should
+not have introduced the subject here except to show that the fresh-water
+denudations and the oceanic encroachments which have formed the
+Amazonian Valley, with its river system, are not isolated facts, but
+that the process has been the same in both continents. The extraordinary
+continuity and uniformity of the Amazonian deposits are due to the
+immense size of the basin enclosed, and the identity of the materials
+contained in it.
+
+A glance at any geological map of the world will show the reader that
+the Valley of the Amazons, so far as any attempt is made to explain its
+structure, is represented as containing isolated tracts of Devonian,
+Triassic, Jurassic, cretaceous, tertiary, and alluvial deposits. As is
+shown by the above sketch, this is wholly inaccurate; and whatever may
+be thought of my interpretation of the actual phenomena, I trust that,
+in presenting for the first time the formations of the Amazonian basin
+in their natural connection and sequence, as consisting of three uniform
+sets of comparatively recent deposits, extending throughout the whole
+valley, the investigations here recorded have contributed something to
+the results of modern geology.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] Bohn's edition of Humboldt's Personal Narrative, p. 134. Humboldt
+alludes to these formations repeatedly; it is true that he refers them
+to the ancient conglomerates of the Devonian age, but his description
+agrees so perfectly with what I have observed along the banks of the
+Amazons, that there can be no doubt he speaks of the same thing. He
+wrote at a time when many of the results of modern geology were unknown,
+and his explanation of the phenomena was then perfectly natural. The
+passage from which the few lines in the text are taken shows that these
+deposits extend even to the Llanos.
+
+[B] I am aware that Bates mentions having heard, that at Obydos
+calcareous layers, thickly studded with marine shells, had been found
+interstratified with the clay, but he did not himself examine the
+strata. The Obydos shells are not marine, but are fresh-water Unios,
+greatly resembling Aviculas, Solens, and Arcas. Such would-be marine
+fossils have been brought to me from the shore opposite to Obydos, near
+Santarem, and I have readily recognised them for what they truly are,
+fresh-water shells of the family of Naiades. I have myself collected
+specimens of these shells in the clay beds along the banks of the
+Solimoens, near Teffe, and might have mistaken them for fossils of that
+formation had I not known how Naiades burrow in the mud. Their
+resemblance to the marine genera mentioned above is very remarkable, and
+the mistake as to their true zoological character is as natural as that
+by which earlier ichthyologists, and even travellers of very recent
+date, have confounded some fresh-water fishes from the Upper Amazons of
+the genus Pterophyllum (Heckel) with the marine genus Platax.
+
+[C] As I have stated in the beginning, I am satisfied that the
+unstratified clay deposit of Rio and its vicinity is genuine glacial
+drift, resulting from the grinding of the loose materials interposed
+between the glacier and the solid rock in place, and retaining to this
+day the position in which it was left by the ice. Like all such
+accumulations, it is totally free from stratification. If this be so, it
+is evident, on comparing the two formations, that the ochraceous sandy
+clay of the Valley of the Amazons has been deposited under different
+circumstances; that, while it owes its resemblance to the Rio drift to
+the fact that its materials were originally ground by glaciers in the
+upper part of the valley, these materials have subsequently been spread
+throughout the whole basin and actually deposited under the agency of
+water.
+
+
+
+
+A MANIAC'S CONFESSION.
+
+
+I am a maniac. I have for some years been the victim of a peculiar
+insanity, which has greatly distressed several of my friends and
+relatives. They generally soften it in their talk by the name
+_mono_mania; but they do not hesitate to aver, when speaking their
+minds, that it has in truth infected my whole soul, and made me
+incapable of doing or thinking anything useful or rational. This sad
+delusion, which they endeavor to remove by serious advice, by playful
+banter, or by seeming to take an interest in my folly for a moment, is
+encountered with great acrimony by less gentle friends. They who are not
+bound to me by blood or intimacy--and some who are--deride, insult, and
+revile me in every way for my subjection to a mental aberration which is
+rapidly consuming a pretty property, more than average talents, and
+unrivalled opportunities.
+
+Of course, like all madmen, I think just the reverse. When the fit is on
+me, I assert that this fever--this madness--far from being the bane of
+my life, is a blessing to it; that I am habitually devoting money, time,
+and wits to an object at once beautiful and elevating; that I have found
+consolation in its visions for many sufferings, which all the amusements
+offered me by my revilers are utterly inadequate to touch. I declare
+that I have found a better investment for my money than all the West
+Virginia coal companies that ever sunk oil-wells, and am making more
+useful acquaintances than if I danced every German during the season. I
+have not been shut up yet, for my friends know that, if they attempt any
+such thing, the Finance Committee on the Harvard Memorial and Alumni
+Hall are in possession of a bond conveying all my money to them; so I am
+still at large, scolded by my brother Henry, laughed at by my sister
+Bathsheba, the aversion of Beacon Street, and the scorn of Winthrop
+Square.
+
+The other day, I took a little journey to Europe, with the view of
+feeding my madness on that whereby it grows. My friends did not choose
+to stop me, for they thought the charms of foreign travel might win me
+from my waywardness. To be sure, when they found, on my return, that I
+had never left England, they were convinced, if never before, that I was
+hopelessly insane; for what American, they very sanely said, "would stay
+in that dull, dingy island, among those stupid, cowardly bullies, when
+he might live in that lovely Paris, the most interesting and amusing
+city in the world, unless he were incomprehensibly mad." And, in truth,
+I begin to think I must be mad, when I find myself, like the man shut up
+with eleven obstinate jurymen, alone in thinking England a gay,
+beautiful, happy country, teeming with every gratification of art or
+nature, and inhabited by a manly, generous, and intelligent race; and
+that life in Paris, as Americans live it, is a senseless rush after
+excitement, where comfort is abandoned for unreal luxury, and society
+for vicious boon-companionship. Still I am very willing to admit that my
+special mania can be very capitally gratified in Paris, and I am
+meditating a little trip there for the purpose.
+
+On my return from England, I was observed to be in great distress about
+a certain box that I missed at Liverpool, looked for at Halifax, and all
+but lost at East Boston; and when it was found and opened, it only
+contained two suits of clothes, when, as Henry said, "I might have
+brought forty, the only thing they did have decent in England," and all
+the rest--mad, mad! I beg the readers of the Atlantic to listen to my
+humble confession of madness, as it culminated in this box.
+
+It is this. The most valuable property a man can possibly have is books;
+if he has a hundred or a thousand dollars to spare, he had better at
+once put it into books than into any "paying investments," or any
+horses, clothes, pictures, or opera-tickets. A life passed among books,
+thinking, talking, living only for books, is the most amusing and
+improving life; and to make this possible, the acquisition of a library
+should be the first object of any one who makes any claim to the
+possession of luxuries. (My madness only allows me to make one
+exception,--I do acknowledge the solemn duty of laying in a stock of old
+Madeira.) But so far I have many fellow-maniacs. The special reason why
+I ought always to stop the Lowell cars at Somerville is, that I consider
+the reading of books only half the battle. I must have them in choice
+bindings, in rare imprints, in original editions, and in the most select
+forms. I must have several copies of a book I have read forty times, as
+long as there is anything about each copy that makes it peculiar, _sui
+generis_. I must own the first edition of Paradise Lost, because it is
+the first, and in ten books; the second, because it is the first in
+twelve; then Newton's, then Todd's, then Mitford's, and so on, till my
+catalogue of Miltons gets to equal Jeames de la Pluche's portraits of
+the "Dook." "And when," as Henry indignantly says, "he could read Milton
+all he wanted to, more than I should ever want to, notes and all, in
+Little and Brown's edition that father gave him, he must go spending
+money on a parcel of old truck printed a thousand years ago." Mad, quite
+mad.
+
+Now, to finish the melancholy picture, I am classic mad. I prefer the
+ancient authors, decidedly, to the moderns. I love them as I never can
+the moderns; they are my most intimate friends, my heart's own darlings.
+And how I love to lavish money on them, to see them adorned in every
+way! How I love to heap them up, Aldines, and Elzevirs, and
+Baskervilles, and Biponts, in all their grace and majesty. This was what
+filled that London box. This was all I had to show for twenty-five or
+thirty guineas of good money; a parcel of trumpery old Greek and Latin
+books I had by dozens already! Mad, mad.
+
+Will you come in and see them, ladies and gentlemen? Here they are, all
+ranged out on my table, large and small, clean and dirty. What have we
+first?
+
+A goodly fat quarto in white vellum, "Plinii Panegyricus, cum notis
+Schwarzii, Norimberg�, 1733." A fine, clean, fresh copy,--one of those
+brave old Teutonic classics of the last century, less exquisitely
+printed than the Elzevirs, less learnedly critical than the later
+Germans, but perfectly trustworthy and satisfactory, and attracting
+every one's eye on a library shelf, by the rich sturdiness of their
+creamy binding, that smacks of the true Dutch and German burgher wealth.
+The model of them all is Oudendorp's C�sar. But there is nothing very
+great about Pliny's Panegyric, and a man must be a very queer
+bibliomaniac who would buy up all the vellum classics of the last
+century he saw. Look inside the cover; read under the book-plate the
+engraved name, "Edward Gibbon, Esq." What will you, my sanest friend,
+not give for a book that belonged to the author of the "Decline and
+Fall"?
+
+The next is also a large quarto, but of a very different character. It
+is the Baskerville impression of the elegiac poets,--Catullus, Tibullus,
+and Propertius: Birmingham, 1772. No books are more delightful to sight
+and touch than the Baskerville classics. This Catullus of mine is
+printed on the softest and glossiest post paper, with a mighty margin of
+two inches and a half at the side, and rich broad letters,--the standard
+_n_ is a tenth of an inch wide,--of a glorious blackness in spite of
+their ninety-two years of age. The classics of all languages have never
+been more fitly printed than by Baskerville; and the present book may
+serve as an admirable lesson to those who think a large-paper book means
+an ordinary octavo page printed in the middle of a quarto leaf,--for
+instance; Irving's Washington. My Catullus is bound in glossy calf,
+with a richly gilt back, and bears within the inscription, "From H. S.
+C. | to her valued friend | Doctor Southey | Feb'y y'e 24th, 1813,"
+in a true English lady's hand. This cannot be the poet Southey, who was
+not made LL. D. till 1821; but it may be his brother, Henry Herbert
+Southey, M. D.
+
+Next comes a very neat and compact little Seneca, in four 18mo volumes,
+bound in rich old Russia, and bearing the esteemed imprint, "Amstelodami
+apud Ludovicum et Danielem Elzevirios, M.D.CLVIII." As the Baskerville
+classics are the noblest for the library table, so the Elzevirs are the
+neatest and prettiest for the pocket or the lecture-room. And to their
+great beauty of mechanical execution is generally added a scrupulous
+textual accuracy, which the great Birmingham printer did not boast. This
+edition of Seneca, for instance, is that of Gronovius. His dedicatory
+epistle, and the title-pages of Vols. II., III. and IV., are all dated
+1658, but the general title-page in Vol. I. is 1659, as if, like White's
+Shakespeare, the first volume was the last published. Contrasting a
+_bijou_ edition with a magnificent one, it may be noted that in the
+Elzevir the four words and two stops, "Moriar: die ergo verum," occupy
+just an inch, exactly the space of the one word "compositis" in the
+Baskerville; but the printing of each is in its way exquisite.
+
+Just about a century after the Elzevirs, and contemporary with
+Baskerville, an English publisher of the name of Sandby, who appears to
+have been, as we should say, the University printer and bookseller at
+Cambridge, projected a series of classics, which are highly prized on
+large paper and not despised on small. I possess two of the latter, a
+Terence and a Juvenal; the second, curiously enough, lettered
+"Juvenal_u_s," a regular binder's blunder. They are called pocket
+editions, but are much larger than the Elzevirs, and, though very
+pretty, just miss that peculiar beauty and finish which have made the
+former the delight of all scholars. There is a carelessness
+somewhere--it is hard to say where--about the printing, which prevents
+their being perfect; but a "Sandby" is a very nice thing.
+
+My next "wanity" is a Virgil,--Justice's Virgil; a most elaborate and
+elegant edition, in five octavo volumes, published in the middle of the
+last century. It is noted, first, for the great richness and beauty of
+its engravings from ancient gems, coins, and drawings, which form an
+unrivalled body of illustration to the text. But, secondly, it will be
+seen, on inspection, that the whole book is one vast engraving, every
+line, word, and letter being cut on a metallic plate. Consequently, only
+every other page is printed on. The same idea was still more perfectly
+carried out by Pine, a few years later, who executed all Horace in this
+way, but only lived to complete one volume of Virgil, choicer even than
+Justice's. It is well bound, in perfect order, and ranks with the
+choicest of ornamental classics.
+
+Side by side with this Virgil is another, the rare Elzevir Virgil, and a
+gem, if ever there was one. It is the corrected text of Heinsius, and
+thus has a fair claim to rank as the earliest of the modern critical
+editions of Maro. The elegance of this little book in size and shape,
+the clearness and beauty of the type, and the truly classical taste and
+finish of the whole design, can never be surpassed in Virgilian
+bibliography, unless by Didot's matchless little copies. Elzevir Virgils
+are common enough; but mine is, as I have said, the rare Elzevir, known
+by the pages introductory to the Eclogues and �neid being printed in
+rubric, while the ordinary Elzevirs have them in black. It dates
+1637,--the year when John Harvard left his money to the College at
+Newtowne, and the first printing-press in the United States was set up
+hard by.
+
+The books, then, that I have described so far all date within the two
+hundred and thirty years of our collegiate history. But I have behind
+three of an earlier--a much earlier date; books which John Cotton and
+Charles Chauncy might have gazed upon as old in Emmanuel College
+Library.
+
+First, I show you a pair of Aldines, and, what is better, a pair
+_editionum principum_,--the first Sophocles and the first Thucydides.
+Both have the proper attestation at the end that they come from the Aldi
+in Venice in the year 1502,--the Thucydides in May, and the Sophocles in
+August; hence the former has not the Aldine anchor at the extreme end.
+Both are in exquisitely clean condition; but the Sophocles, though
+taller than other known copies of the same edition, has suffered from
+the knife of a modern binder, who otherwise has done his work with the
+greatest elegance and judgment. The Thucydides has a grand page, over
+twelve inches by eight; the Sophocles is about seven by four. The type
+of both is small, and, though distinct, especially the Thucydides, not
+at all what we should call elegant. In fact, elegant Greek type is a
+very late invention. There is, I believe, no claim to textual criticism
+in these early Aldines; the publishers printed from such manuscripts as
+they could get. The Thucydides has a long dedicatory address by Aldus to
+a Roman patrician; the Sophocles has no such introduction. But it is, at
+any rate, most curious to consider that these two writers, who stand at
+the very head of Greek, or at least Attic, prose and verse, both for
+matter and style, should not have found a printer till the fifteenth
+century was long past, and then in a style which, for the Sophocles, can
+only be called neat. The Thucydides is handsome, but far inferior to the
+glory of the _princeps_ Homer. And to own them--for a maniac--O, it is
+glorious!
+
+Last comes my special treasure,--my fifteener,--my book as old as
+America,--my darling copy of my darling author. Here, at the culmination
+of my madness, my friends, especially my brother Henry, are all ready to
+say at once what author I mean. For it has been my special mania for
+twenty years--thereby causing the deepest distress to nearly all my
+friends, even those who have been thought fellow-lunatics, except
+one,[D] who is for me about the only sane man alive--to prefer VIRGIL to
+all authors, living or dead, and to seek to accumulate as many different
+editions and copies of him as possible. I have in these pages chronicled
+two. My library holds twelve more, besides two translations, and I
+consider myself very short; for to my mind no breadth of paper, no
+weight of binding, no brilliancy of print, no delicacy of engraving, no
+elaboration of learning, can ever do honor enough to the last and best
+of the ancients, who was all but the first of the Christians,--who would
+have been, if his frame had not broken down under a genius too mighty
+and a soul too sweet for earth. (Mad, you see, beyond all question.
+Virgil is allowed to be a servile copyist, far inferior to Lucretius.
+Compare Lucr. V. 750 with Georg. II. 478, and Heyne's note.) This Virgil
+of mine bears the imprint of Antony Koburger, Nuremberg, 1492. It is in
+the original binding of very solid boards overlaid with stamped vellum,
+and is still clasped with the original skin and metal. It is a small
+folio, on very coarse paper, and the only one of my rare classics not in
+the cleanest condition. Its stains appear to be caused by its use in a
+school; for it is covered with notes, in German current hand, very
+antiquated, and very elementary in their scholarship. It has all the
+poetry ascribed to Virgil, and the Commentaries of Servius and Landini,
+which are so voluminous that the page looks like a ha'p'orth of sack to
+an intolerable deal of very dry bread. It is very rare, being unknown to
+the great Dibdin, and was snapped up by me for three guineas out of a
+London bookseller's catalogue. A Virgil printed by Koburger in the year
+America was discovered, original binding and clasps, not in Dibdin, for
+three guineas! Hurrah! It excites my madness so that I must rush
+straight to Piper's and buy right and left. Kind friends, come and take
+me away ere I am reduced to beggary.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[D] F. W. H. M., you know I mean you.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT DOCTOR.
+
+A STORY IN TWO PARTS.
+
+
+II.
+
+Five or six years of the life of our hero we must now pass over in
+silence, saying of them, simply, that Fancy had not cheated much in her
+promises concerning them. The first rude cabin had given place to a
+whitewashed cottage; the chimney-corner was bright and warm; the
+easy-chair was in it, and the Widow Walker often sat there with her
+grandson on her knee, getting much comfort from the reflection that he
+looked just as her own Johnny did when he was a baby!
+
+The garden smiled at the doorside, and the village had sprung up just as
+Fancy promised; and Hobert and Jenny walked to church of a Sunday, and
+after service shook hands with their neighbors,--for everybody delighted
+to take their strong, willing hands, and look into their honest,
+cheerful faces,--they were amongst the first settlers of the place, and
+held an honored position in society. Jenny was grown a little more
+stout, and her cheek a little more ruddy, than it used to be; but the
+new country seemed not so well suited to Hobert, and the well-wishing
+neighbor often said when he met him, "You mustn't be too ambitious, and
+overdo! Your shoulders ain't so straight as they was when you come here!
+Be careful in time; nothing like that, Walker, nothing like that." And
+Hobert laughed at these suggestions, saying he was as strong as the rest
+of them; and that, though his cheek was pale, and his chest hollow, he
+was a better man than he seemed.
+
+The summer had been one of the wildest luxuriance ever known in the
+valley of the Wabash; for it was in that beautiful valley that our
+friend Hobert had settled. The woods cast their leaves early, and the
+drifts lay rotting knee-deep in places. Then came the long, hot, soaking
+rains, with hotter sunshine between. Chills and fever prevailed, and
+half the people of the neighborhood were shivering and burning at once.
+It was a healthy region, everybody said, but the weather had been
+unusually trying; as soon as the frost came, the ague would vanish; the
+water was the best in the world, to be sure, and the air the purest.
+
+Hobert was ploughing a piece of low ground for wheat, cutting a black
+snake in two now and then, and his furrow behind him fast filling with
+water that looked almost as black as the soil. Often he stopped to
+frighten from the quivering flank of the brown mare before him the
+voracious horse-flies, colored like the scum of the stagnant pools, and
+clinging and sucking like leeches. She was his favorite, the pride of
+his farm,--for had she not, years before, brought Jenny on her faithful
+shoulder to the new, happy home? Many a fond caress her neck had had
+from his arm; and the fine bridle with the silver bit, hanging on the
+wall at home, would not have been afforded for any other creature in the
+world. Hobert often said he would never sell her as long as he lived;
+and in the seasons of hard work he favored her more than he did himself.
+She had been named Fleetfoot, in honor of her successful achievement
+when her master had intrusted to her carrying the treasure of his life;
+but that name proving too formal, she was usually called Fleety. She
+would put down her forehead to the white hands of little Jenny, four
+years old and upward now, and tread so slow and so carefully when she
+had her on her back! Even the white dress of Johnny Hobert had swept
+down her silken side more than once, while his dimpled hands clutched
+her mane, and his rosy feet paddled against her. He was going to be her
+master after a while, and take care of her in her old age, when the time
+of her rest was come; he knew her name as well as he knew his own, and
+went wild with delight when he saw her taking clover from the tiny hand
+of his sister or drinking water from the bucket at the well.
+
+"She grows handsomer every year," Hobert often said; "and with a little
+training I would not be afraid to match her against the speediest racer
+they can bring." And this remark was always intended as in some sort a
+compliment to Jenny, and was always so received by her.
+
+On this special day he had stopped oftener in the furrow than common;
+and as often as he stopped Fleety twisted round her neck, bent her soft
+eyes upon him, and twitched her little ears as though she would say, "Is
+not all right, my master?" And then he would walk round to her head, and
+pass his hand along her throat and through her foretop, calling her by
+her pet name, and pulling for her handfuls of fresh grass, and while she
+ate it resting himself against her, and feeling in her nearness almost a
+sense of human protection. His feet seemed to drag under him, and there
+was a dull aching in all his limbs; the world appeared to be receding
+from him, and at times he could hardly tell whether he stood upon solid
+ground. Then he accused himself of being lazy and good for nothing, and
+with fictitious energy took up the reins and started the plough.
+
+He looked at the sun again and again. He was not used to leaving off
+work while the sun shone, and the clear waters of the Wabash held as yet
+no faintest evening flush. There were yet two good hours of working time
+before him, when the quick shooting of a pain, like the running of a
+knife through his heart, caused him to stagger in the furrow. Fleety
+stopped of her own accord, and looked pityingly back. He sat down beside
+the plough to gather up his courage a little. A strange sensation that
+he could not explain had taken possession of him, a feeling as if the
+hope of his life was cut off. The pain was gone, but the feeling of
+helpless surrender remained. He opened his shirt and passed his hand
+along his breast. He could feel nothing,--could see nothing; but he had,
+for all that, a clearly defined consciousness as of some deadly thing
+hold of him that he would fain be rid of.
+
+He had chanced to stop his plough under an elm-tree, and, looking up, he
+perceived that from the fork upward one half of it was dead; mistletoe
+had sucked the life out of it, and lower and lower to the main body,
+deeper and deeper to the vital heart of it, the sap was being drawn
+away. An irresistible impulse impelled him to take the jack-knife from
+his pocket, and as far as he could reach cut away this alien and deadly
+growth. The sympathy into which he was come with the dying tree was
+positively painful to him, and yet he was withheld from moving on by a
+sort of fascination,--_he_ was that tree, and the mistletoe was rooted
+in his bosom!
+
+The last yellow leaves fluttered down and lodged on his head and
+shoulders and in his bosom,--he did not lift his hand to brush them
+away; the blue lizard slid across his bare ankle and silently vanished
+out of sight, but he did not move a muscle. The brown mare bent her side
+round like a bow, and stretched her slender neck out more and more, and
+at last her nose touched his cheek, and then he roused himself and shook
+the dead leaves from his head and shoulders, and stood up. "Come,
+Fleety," he said, "we won't leave the plough in the middle of the
+furrow." She did not move. "Come, come!" he repeated, "it seems like a
+bad sign to stop here";--and then he put his hand suddenly to his heart,
+and an involuntary shudder passed over him. Fleety had not unbent her
+side, and her dumb, beseeching eyes were still upon him. He looked at
+the sun, low, but still shining out bright, and almost as hot as ever;
+he looked at his shadow stretching so far over the rough, weedy ground,
+and it appeared to him strange and fantastic. Then he loosed the traces,
+and, winding up the long rein, hung it over the harness; the plough
+dropped aslant, and Fleety turned herself about and walked slowly
+homeward,--her master following, his head down and his hands locked
+together behind him.
+
+The chimney was sending up its hospitable smoke, and Jenny was at the
+well with the teakettle in her hand when he came into the dooryard.
+
+"What in the world is going to happen?" she exclaimed, cheerfully. "I
+never knew you to leave work before while the sun shone. I am glad you
+have, for once. But what is the matter?"
+
+He had come nearer now, and she saw that something of light and hope had
+gone out of his face. And then Hobert made twenty excuses,--there wasn't
+anything the matter, he said, but the plough was dull, and the ground
+wet and heavy, and full of green roots; besides, the flies were bad, and
+the mare tired.
+
+"But you look so worn out, I am afraid you are sick, yourself!"
+interposed the good wife; and she went close to him, and pushed the
+hair, growing thinner now, away from his forehead, and looked anxiously
+in his face,--so anxiously, so tenderly, that he felt constrained to
+relieve her fears, even at some expense of the truth.
+
+"Not to look well in your eyes is bad enough," he answered, with forced
+cheerfulness, "but I feel all right; never better, never better, Jenny!"
+And stooping to his little daughter, who was holding his knees, he
+caught her up, and tossed her high in the air, but put her down at once,
+seeming almost to let her fall out of his hands, and, catching for
+breath, leaned against the well-curb.
+
+"What is it, Hobert? what is it?" and Jenny had her arm about him, and
+was drawing him toward the house.
+
+"Nothing, nothing,--a touch of rheumatism, I guess,--no, no! I must take
+care of the mare first." And as she drank the water from the full bucket
+he held poised on the curb for her, he thought of the elm-tree in the
+field he had left, of the mistletoe sucking the life out of it, and of
+the unfinished furrow. "Never mind, Fleety," he said, as he led her away
+to the stable, "we'll be up betimes to-morrow, and make amends, won't
+we?"
+
+"I believe, mother, I'll put on the new teacups!" Jenny said, as she set
+a chair before the cupboard, and climbed on it so as to reach the upper
+shelf. She had already spread the best table-cloth.
+
+"Why, what for?" asked the provident mother, looking up from the sock
+she was knitting.
+
+"O, I don't know; I want to make things look nice, that's all."
+
+But she did know, though the feeling was only half defined. It seemed to
+her as if Hobert were some visitor coming,--not her husband. A shadowy
+feeling of insecurity had touched her; the commonness of custom was
+gone, and she looked from the window often, as the preparation for
+supper went on, with all the sweetness of solicitude with which she used
+to watch for his coming from under the grape-vines. Little Jenny was
+ready with the towel when he came with his face dripping, and the
+easy-chair was set by the door that looked out on the garden. "I don't
+want it," the good grandmother said, as he hesitated; "I have been
+sitting in it all day, and am tired of it!"
+
+And as he sat there with his boy on his knee, and his little girl, who
+had climbed up behind him, combing his hair with her slender white
+fingers,--his own fields before him, and his busy wife making music
+about the house with her cheerful, hopeful talk,--he looked like a man
+to be envied; and so just then he was.
+
+The next morning he did not fulfil his promise to himself by rising
+early; he had been restless and feverish all night, and now was chilly.
+If he lay till breakfast was ready, he would feel better, Jenny said;
+she could milk, to be sure, and do all the rest of the work, and so he
+was persuaded. But when the breakfast was ready the chilliness had
+become a downright chill, so that the blankets that were over him shook
+like leaves in a strong wind.
+
+Jenny had a little money of her own hidden away in the bottom of the new
+cream-pitcher. She had saved it, unknown to Hobert, from the sale of
+eggs and other trifles, and had meant to surprise him by appearing in a
+new dress some morning when the church-bell rang; but now she turned the
+silver into her hand and counted it, thinking what nice warm flannel it
+would buy to make shirts for Hobert. Of course he had them, and Jenny
+had not made any sacrifice that she knew of,--indeed, that is a word of
+which love knows not the meaning.
+
+"We will have him up in a day or two," the women said, one to the other,
+as they busied themselves about the house, or sat at the bedside, doing
+those things that only the blessed hands of women can do, making those
+plans that only the loving hearts of women can make. But the day or two
+went by, and they didn't have Hobert up. Then they said to one another,
+"We must set to work in earnest; we have really done nothing for him as
+yet." And they plied their skill of nursing with new hope and new
+energy. Every morning he told them he was better, but in the afternoon
+it happened that he didn't feel quite like stirring about; he was still
+better, but he had a little headache, and was afraid of bringing on a
+chill.
+
+"To be sure! you need rest and quiet; you have been working too hard,
+and it's only a wonder you didn't give out sooner!" So the two women
+said to him; and then they told him he looked better than he did
+yesterday, and, with much tender little caressing of neck and arms and
+hands, assured him that his flesh felt as healthy and nice as could be.
+Nevertheless, his eyes settled deeper and deeper, and gathered more and
+more of a leaden color about them; his skin grew yellow, and fell into
+wrinkles that were almost rigid, and that beseeching, yearning
+expression, made up of confidence in you, and terror of some nameless
+thing,--that look, as of a soul calling and crying to you, which follows
+you when you go farther than common from a sick-pillow,--all that
+terrible appealing was in his face; and often Jenny paused with her eyes
+away from him, when she saw that look,--paused, and steadied up her
+heart, before she could turn back and meet him with a smile.
+
+And friendly neighbors came in of an evening, and told of the sick wife
+or boy at home; of the mildewed crop, and the lamed horse; of the
+brackish well, and of the clock bought from the pedler that wouldn't go,
+and wouldn't strike when it did go;--dwelling, in short, on all the
+darker incidents and accidents of life, and thus establishing a nearness
+and equality of relation to the sick man, that somehow soothed and
+cheered him. At these times he would be propped up in bed, and listen
+with sad satisfaction, sometimes himself entering with a sort of
+melancholy animation into the subject.
+
+He would not as yet accept any offers of assistance. The wood-pile was
+getting low, certainly, and the plough still lying slantwise in the
+furrow; the corn-crop was to be gathered, and the potatoes to be got out
+of the ground,--but there was time enough yet! He didn't mean to indulge
+his laziness much longer,--not he!
+
+And then the neighbor who had offered to serve him would laugh, and
+answer that he had not been altogether disinterested: he had only
+proposed to _lend_ a helping hand, expecting to need the like himself
+some day. "Trouble comes to us all, Mr. Walker, and we don't know whose
+turn it will be next. I want to take out a little insurance,--that's
+all!"
+
+"Well, another day, if I don't get better!"
+
+And the long hot rains were over at last; the clouds drew themselves
+off, and the sharp frosts, of a morning, were glistening far and near;
+the pumpkin-vines lay black along the ground, and the ungathered ears of
+corn hung black on the stalk.
+
+Hobert was no better. But still the two women told each other they
+didn't think he was any worse. His disease was only an ague, common to
+the time of year and to the new country. It had come on so late it was
+not likely now that he would get the better of it before spring; making
+some little sacrifices for the present, they must all be patient and
+wait; and the nursing went on, till every device of nursing was
+exhausted, and one remedy after another was tried, and one after another
+utterly failed, and the fond hearts almost gave out. But there was the
+winter coming on, cold and long, and there was little Hobert, only
+beginning to stand alone, and prattling Jenny, with the toes coming
+through her shoes, and her shoulder showing flat and thin above her
+summer dress. Ah! there could be no giving out; the mother's petticoat
+must be turned into aprons for the pinched shoulders, and the knit-wool
+stockings must make amends for the worn-out shoes. So they worked, and
+work was their greatest blessing. A good many things were done without
+consulting Hobert at all, and he was led to believe that all went easily
+and comfortably; the neighbors, from time to time, lent the helping
+hand, without so much as asking leave; and by these means there were a
+few potatoes in the cellar, a little corn in the barn, and a load of
+wood under the snow at the door.
+
+The table was not spread in the sickroom any more, as it had been for a
+while. They had thought it would amuse Hobert to see the little
+household ceremonies going on; but now they said it was better to avoid
+all unnecessary stir. Perhaps they thought it better that he should not
+see their scantier fare. Still they came into his presence very
+cheerfully, never hinting of hardship, never breathing the apprehension
+that began to trouble their hearts.
+
+It was during these long winter evenings, when the neighbors sat by the
+fire and did what they could to cheer the sick man and the sad women,
+that the wonderful merits of the great Doctor Killmany began to be
+frequently discussed. Marvellous stories were told of his almost
+superhuman skill. He had brought back from the very gate of death scores
+of men and women who had been given up to die by their physicians,--so
+it was said; and special instances of cures were related that were
+certainly calculated to inspire hope and confidence. None of these good
+people could of their own knowledge attest these wonderful cures; but
+there were many circumstances that added weight to the force of the
+general rumor.
+
+Dr. Killmany lived a great way off, and he charged a great price. He
+would not look at a man for less than a hundred dollars, so report said,
+and that was much in his favor. He had a very short way with
+patients,--asked no questions, and never listened to explanations,--but
+could tie down a man and take off his leg or arm, as the case might be,
+in an incredibly short space of time, paying as little heed to the cries
+and groans as to the buzzing of the flies. If anything further had been
+needed to establish his fame, it would have been found in the fact that
+he was very rich, wearing diamonds in his shirt-bosom, driving fine
+horses, and being, in fact, surrounded with all the luxuries that money
+can procure. Of course, he was a great doctor. How could it be
+otherwise? And it was enough to know that a Mr. A had seen a Mr. B who
+knew a Mr. C whose wife's mother was cured by him!
+
+At first these things were talked of in hearing of the sick man; then
+there began to be whispers about the fire as to the possibility of
+persuading him to sell all that he had and go to the great Doctor; for
+it was now pretty generally felt that the ague was only the
+accompaniment of a more terrible disease.
+
+Then at last it was suggested, as a wild pleasantry, by some daring
+visitor, "Suppose, Hobert, we should send you off one of these days,
+and have you back after a few weeks, sound and vigorous as a young colt!
+What should you say to that, my boy?"
+
+To the surprise of everybody, Hobert replied that he only wished it were
+possible.
+
+"Possible! Why, of course it's possible! Where there's a will, you
+know!" And then it began to be talked of less as an insane dream.
+
+One morning, as Jenny came into the sick man's room, she found him
+sitting up in bed with his shirt open and his hand on his breast.
+
+"What is it, Hobert?" she said; for there was a look in his eyes that
+made her tremble.
+
+"I don't know, Jenny; but whatever it is, it will be my death," he
+answered, and, falling upon her shoulder,--for she had come close to him
+and had her arm about his neck,--he sobbed like a child.
+
+The little hand was slipped under his, but Jenny said she could feel
+nothing; and I think she will be forgiven for that falsehood. He was
+sick, she said, worn out, and it was no wonder that strange fancies
+should take possession of him. She had neglected him too much; but now,
+though everything should go to pieces, he should have her first care,
+and her last care, and all her care; he should not be left alone any
+more to conjure up horrors; and when he said he was weak and foolish and
+ashamed of his tears, she pacified him with petting and with praises. He
+was everything that was right, everything that was strong and manly. A
+little more patience, and then it would be spring, and the sunshine
+would make him well. She put the hair away from his forehead, and told
+him how fair in the face he was grown; and then she shoved his sleeve to
+his elbow, and told him that his arms were almost as plump as they ever
+were; and so he was comforted, cheered even, and they talked over the
+plans and prospects of years to come. At last he fell asleep with a
+bright smile of hope in his face, and Jenny stooped softly and kissed
+him, and, stealing away on tiptoe, hid herself from her good old mother
+and from the eyes of her children, and wept long and bitterly.
+
+And the spring came, and Hobert crept out into the sunshine; but his
+cheek was pale, and his chest hollow, and there was more than the old
+listlessness upon him. As a tree that is dying will sometimes put forth
+sickly leaves and blossoms, and still be dying all the while, so it was
+with him. His hand was often on his breast, and his look often said,
+"This will be the death of me." The bees hummed in the flowers about his
+feet, the birds built their nests in the boughs above his head, and his
+children played about his knees; but his thoughts were otherwhere,--away
+beyond the dark river, away in that beautiful country where the
+inhabitants never say, "I am sick."
+
+It was about midsummer that one Mrs. Brown, well known to Mrs. Walker's
+family, and to all the people of the neighborhood, as having suffered
+for many years with some strange malady which none of the doctors
+understood, sold the remnant of her property, having previously wasted
+nearly all she had upon physicians, and betook herself to the great Dr.
+Killmany. What her condition had actually been is not material to my
+story, nor is it necessary to say anything about the treatment she
+received at the hands of the great doctor. It is enough to say that it
+cost her her last dollar,--that she worked her slow way home as best she
+could, arriving there at last with shoes nearly off her feet and gown
+torn and faded, but with health considerably improved. That she had sold
+her last cow, and her feather-bed, and her teakettle, and her
+sheep-shears, and her grandfather's musket, all added wonderfully to the
+great doctor's reputation.
+
+"You can't go to him if you don't go full-handed," said one to another;
+and he that heard it, and he that said it, laughed as though it were a
+good joke.
+
+Some said he could see right through a man: there was no need of words
+with him! And others, that he could take the brains out of the skull, or
+the bones out of the ankles, and leave the patient all the better for
+it. In short, there was nothing too extravagant to be said of
+him; and as for Mrs. Brown, the person who had seen her became
+semi-distinguished. She was invited all over the neighborhood, and her
+conversation was the most delightful of entertainments. Amongst the
+rest, she visited Mr. Walker; and through her instrumentality, his
+strong desire to see the great Dr. Killmany was shaped into purpose.
+
+Two of the cows were sold, most of the farming implements, and such
+articles of household furniture as could be spared; and with all this
+the money realized was but a hundred and fifty dollars. Then Jenny
+proposed to sell her side-saddle; and when that was gone, she said
+Fleety might as well go with it. "If you only come home well, Hobert,"
+she said, "we will soon be able to buy her back again; and if you
+don't--but you will!"
+
+So Fleetfoot went with the rest; and when for the last time she was led
+up before the door, and ate grass from the lap of little Jenny, and put
+her neck down to the caressing hands of young Hobert, it was a sore
+trial to them all. She seemed half conscious herself, indeed, and
+exhibited none of her accustomed playfulness with the children, but
+stood in a drooping attitude, with her eye intent upon her master; and
+when they would have taken her away, she hung back, and, stretching her
+neck till it reached his knees, licked his hands with a tenderness that
+was pitiful to see.
+
+"Don't, Hobert, don't take on about it," Jenny said, putting back the
+heart that was in her mouth; "we will have her back again, you
+know!"--and she gave Fleetfoot a little box on the ear that was half
+approval and half reproach, and so led Hobert back into the house.
+
+And that day was the saddest they had yet seen. And that night, when the
+sick man was asleep, the two women talked together and cried together,
+and in the end got such comfort as women get out of great sacrifices and
+bitter tears.
+
+They counted their little hoard. They had gathered three hundred dollars
+now, and there required to be yet as much more; and then they made plans
+as to what yet remained to be done. "We must mortgage the land," Jenny
+said, "that is all,--don't mind, mother. I don't mind anything, so that
+we only have Hobert well again." And then they talked of what they would
+do another year when they should be all together once more, and all
+well. "Think what Dr. Killmany has done for Mrs. Brown!" they said.
+
+And now came busy days; and in the earnestness of the preparation the
+sorrow of the coming parting was in some sort dissipated. Hobert's
+wearing-apparel was all brought out, and turned and overturned, and the
+most and the best made of everything. The wedding coat and the wedding
+shirt were almost as good as ever, Jenny said; and when the one had been
+brushed and pressed, and the other done up, she held them up before them
+all, and commented upon them with pride and admiration. The fashions had
+changed a little, to be sure, but what of that? The new fashions were
+not so nice as the old ones, to her thinking. Hobert would look smart in
+the old garments, at any rate, and perhaps nobody would notice. She was
+only desirous that he should make a good impression on the Doctor. And
+all that could be done to that end was done, many friends contributing,
+by way of little presents, to the comfort and respectability of the
+invalid. "Here is a leather pouch," said one, "that I bought of a pedler
+the other day. I don't want it; but as you are going to travel, may be
+you can make use of it, Walker; take it, any how."
+
+"I have got a new pair of saddle-bags," said the circuit-rider, "but I
+believe I like the old ones best. So, Brother Walker, you will oblige me
+by taking these off my hands. I find extra things more trouble to take
+care of than they are worth."
+
+It was not proposed that Hobert should travel with a trunk, so the
+saddle-bags were just what was required.
+
+"Here is a pair of shoes," said another. "Try them on, Walker, and see
+if you can wear them: they are too small for my clumsy feet!" They had
+been made by the village shoemaker to Mr. Walker's measure. Of course
+they fitted him, and of course he had them.
+
+"I'll bet you a new hat," said another, "that I come to see you ag'in,
+day after to-morrer, fur off as I live."
+
+The day after the morrow he did not come: he was "onaccountably
+hendered," he said; but when he did come he brought the new hat. He
+thought he would be as good as his word in one thing if not in another,
+and redeem his bet at any rate.
+
+"I'll bring my team: I want to go to town anyhow; and we'll all see you
+off together!" This was the offer of the farmer whose land adjoined Mr.
+Walker's; and the day of departure was fixed, and the morning of the day
+saw everything in readiness.
+
+"Hobert looks a'most like a storekeeper or a schoolmaster, don't he,
+mother?" Jenny said, looking upon him proudly, when he was arrayed in
+the new hat and the wedding coat.
+
+"Why, you are as spry as a boy!" exclaimed the farmer who was to drive
+them to town, seeing that Hobert managed to climb into the wagon without
+assistance. "I don't believe there is any need of Dr. Killmany, after
+all!" And the neighbors, as one after another they leaned over the
+sideboard of the wagon, and shook hands with Mr. Walker, made some
+cheerful and light-hearted remark, calculated to convey the impression
+that the leave-taking was a mere matter of form, and only for a day.
+
+As Jenny looked back at the homestead, and thought of the possibilities,
+the tears would come; but the owner of the team, determined to carry it
+bravely through, immediately gathered up the slack reins, and, with a
+lively crack of his whip, started the horses upon a brisk trot.
+
+"Don't spare the money," Jenny entreated, as she put the pocket-book in
+Hobert's hand; but she thought in her heart that Dr. Killmany would be
+touched when he saw her husband, and knew how far he had travelled to
+see him, and what sacrifices he had made to do so. "He must be good, if
+he is so great as they say," she argued; "and perhaps Hobert may even
+bring home enough to buy back Fleety." This was a wild dream. And the
+last parting words were said, the last promises exacted and given; the
+silent tears and the lingering looks all were past, and the farmer's
+wagon, with an empty chair by the side of Jenny's, rattled home again.
+
+It was perhaps a month after this that a pale, sickly-looking man, with
+a pair of saddle-bags over his arm, went ashore from the steamboat Arrow
+of Light, just landed at New Orleans, and made his slow way along the
+wharf, crowded with barrels, boxes, and cotton-bales, and thence to the
+open streets. The sun was oppressively hot, and the new fur hat became
+almost intolerable, so that the sick man stopped more than once in the
+shade of some friendly tree, and, placing the saddle-bags on the ground,
+wiped the sweat from his forehead, and looked wistfully at the strange
+faces that passed him by.
+
+"Can you tell me, my friend," he said at last, addressing a slave-woman
+who was passing by with a great bundle on her head,--"Can you tell me
+where to find Doctor Killmany, who lives somewhere here?"
+
+The woman put her bundle on the ground, and, resting her hands on her
+hips, looked pitifully upon the stranger. "No, masser, cante say, not
+for sure," she answered. "I knows dar's sich a doctor somewhars 'bout,
+but just whars I cante say, an' he's a poor doctor fur the likes o'
+you,--don't have noffen to do with him, nohow."
+
+"A poor doctor!" exclaimed the stranger. "Why, I understood he was the
+greatest doctor in the world; and I've come all the way from the Wabash
+country to see him."
+
+"Warbash! whar's dat? Norf, reckon; well you jes be gwine back Norf de
+fus boat, an dat's de bery bes' advice dis yere nigger can guv."
+
+"But what do you know about Dr. Killmany."
+
+"I knows dis yere, masser: he mos'ly sends dem ar' as ar' doctored by
+him to dar homes in a box!"
+
+Mr. Walker shuddered. "I don't want your advice," he said directly; "I
+only want to know where Dr. Killmany lives."
+
+"Cante say, masser, not percisely, as to dat ar'; kind o' seems to me
+he's done gone from hur, clar an' all; but jes over thar's a mighty good
+doctor; you can see his name afore the door if you'll step this yere way
+a bit. He doctors all de pour, an' dem dat ar' halt, and dem dat ar'
+struck with paralasy, jes for de love ob de ark and de covenant; an'
+he's jes de purtiest man to look at dat you ever sot eyes onto. Go in
+dar whar ye sees de white bline at de winder an' ax for Dr. Shepard, an'
+when you's once seen him, I reckon you won't want to find de udder man;
+but if you does, why he can pint de way. An' de Lord bless you and hab
+mercy on your soul."
+
+The sick man felt a good deal discouraged by what the old slave had
+said, and her last words impressed him with feelings of especial
+discomfort. He knew not which way to turn; and, in fact, found himself
+growing dizzy and blind, and was only able, with great effort, to stand
+at all. He must ask his way somewhere, however, and it might as well be
+there as another place.
+
+Dr. Shepard, who happened to be in his office, answered the inquiry
+promptly. Dr. Killmany was in quite another part of the city. "You don't
+look able to walk there, my good friend," he said; "but if you will sit
+here and wait for an hour, I shall be driving that way, and will take
+you with pleasure."
+
+Mr. Walker gratefully accepted the proffered chair, as indeed he was
+almost obliged to do; for within a few minutes the partial blindness had
+become total darkness, and the whole world seemed, as it were, slipping
+away from him.
+
+When he came to himself he was lying on a sofa in an inner room, and Dr.
+Shepard, who had just administered some cordial, was bending over him in
+the most kindly and sympathetic manner. It seemed not so much what he
+said, not so much what he did, but as though he carried about him an
+atmosphere of sweetness and healing that comforted and assured without
+words and without medicine. He made no pretence and no noise, but his
+smile was sunshine to the heart, and the touch of his hand imparted
+strength and courage to the despairing soul. It was as if good spirits
+went with him, and his very silence was pleasant company. Mr. Walker was
+in no haste to be gone. All his anxious cares seemed to fall away, and a
+peaceful sense of comfort and security came over him; his eyes followed
+Dr. Shepard as he moved about, and when a door interposed between them
+he felt lost and homesick. "If this were the man I had come to see, I
+should be happy." That was his thought all the while. Perhaps--who shall
+say not?--it was the blessings of the poor, to whom he most generously
+ministered, which gave to his manner that graciousness and charm which
+no words can convey, and to his touch that magnetism which is at once
+life-giving and love-inspiring.
+
+How it was Mr. Walker could not tell, and indeed wiser men than he could
+not have told, but he presently found himself opening his heart to this
+new doctor, as he had never opened it to anybody in all his life,--how
+he had married Jenny, how they had gone to the new country, the birth of
+the boy and the girl, the slow coming on of disease, the selling of
+Fleety, and the mortgaging of the farm. Doctor Shepard knew it all, and,
+more than this, he knew how much money had been accumulated, and how
+much of it was still left. He had examined the tumor in the breast, and
+knew that it could end in but one way. He had told Mr. Walker that he
+could be made more comfortable, and might live for years, perhaps, but
+that he must not hope to be cured, and that to get home to his family
+with all possible speed was the best advice he could give him. His words
+carried with them the weight of conviction, and the sick man was almost
+persuaded; but the thought of what would be said at home if he should
+come back without having seen the great Dr. Killmany urged him to try
+one last experiment.
+
+"What do you suppose he will charge me to look at this?" he inquired of
+Dr. Shepard, laying his hand on his breast.
+
+"Half you have, my friend."
+
+"And if he cuts it out?"
+
+"The other half."
+
+"O, dear me!"--and the sick man fell back upon the sofa, and for a good
+while thought to himself. Then came one of those wild suggestions of a
+vain hope. "Perhaps this man is the impostor, and not the other!" it
+said. "And what do I owe you for all you have done for me to-day?" he
+inquired.
+
+"Why, nothing, my good friend. I have done nothing for you; and my
+advice has certainly been disinterested. I don't want pay for that."
+
+"And suppose you should operate?"
+
+And then the doctor told him that he could not do that on any
+terms,--that no surgeon under the sun could perform a successful
+operation,--that all his hope was in quiet and care. "I will keep you
+here a few days," he said, "and build you up all I can, and when the
+Arrow of Light goes back again, I will see you aboard, and bespeak the
+kind attentions of the captain for you on the journey." That was not
+much like an impostor, and in his heart the sick man knew it was the
+right course to take,--the only course; and then he thought of Mrs.
+Brown and her wonderful cure, and of the great hopes they were
+entertaining at home, and he became silent, and again thought to
+himself.
+
+Three days he remained with Dr. Shepard, undecided, and resting and
+improving a little all the while. On the morning of the fourth day he
+said, placing his hand on his breast, "If I were only rid of this, I
+believe I should get quite well again." He could not give up the great
+Dr. Killmany. "I do not intend to put myself in his hands,--indeed, I am
+almost resolved that I will not do so," he said to Dr. Shepard; "but I
+will just call at his office, so that I can tell my folks I have seen
+him."
+
+"I must not say more to discourage you," replied Dr. Shepard; "perhaps I
+have already said too much,--certainly I have said much more than it is
+my habit to say, more than in any ordinary circumstances I would permit
+myself to say; but in your case I have felt constrained to acquit myself
+to my conscience";--and he turned away with a shadow of the tenderest
+and saddest gloom upon his face.
+
+"Are you, sir, going to Dr. Killmany?" asked an old man, who had been
+sitting by, eying Mr. Walker with deep concern; and on receiving an
+affirmative nod, he went on with zeal, if not with discretion: "Then,
+sir, you might as well knock your own brains out! I regard him, sir, as
+worse than a highway robber,--a good deal worse! The robber will
+sometimes spare your life, if he can as well as not, but Dr. Killmany
+has no more regard for human life than you have for that of a fly. He
+has a skilful hand to be sure, but his heart is as hard as flint. In
+short, sir, he is utterly without conscience, without humanity, without
+principle. Gain is his first object, his last object, his sole object;
+and if he ever did any good, it was simply incidental. Don't put
+yourself in his hands, whatever you do,--certainly not without first
+making your will!" And the old man, with a flushed and angry
+countenance, went away.
+
+Presently the sick man, relapsing into silent thought, drowsed into
+sleep, and a strange dream came to him. He seemed at home, sitting under
+the tree with the mistletoe in its boughs; he was tired and hungry, and
+there came to him a raven with food in its mouth, and the shadow of its
+wings was pleasant. He thought, at first, the food was for him; but the
+bird, perching on his shoulder, devoured the food, and afterward pecked
+at his breast until it opened a way to his heart, and with that in its
+claws flew away; and when it was gone, he knew it was not a bird, but
+that it was Dr. Killmany who had thus taken out his heart. "I will go
+home," he thought, "and tell Jenny"; and when he arose and put his hand
+on the neck of Fleety, who had been standing in the furrow close by, she
+became a shadow, and instantly vanished out of sight. He then strove to
+walk, and, lo! the strength was gone out of his limbs, and, as he sank
+down, the roots of the mistletoe struck in his bosom, ran through and
+through him, and fastened themselves in the earth beneath, and he became
+as one dead, only with the consciousness of being dead.
+
+When he awoke, he related the dream, having given it, as it appeared, a
+melancholy interpretation, for he expressed himself determined to return
+home immediately. "I will take passage on the Arrow," he said to Dr.
+Shepard; and then he counted up the number of days that must go by
+before he could have his own green fields beneath his eyes, and his
+little ones climbing about his knees.
+
+"I wish I had never left my home," he said; "I wish I had never heard of
+Dr. Killmany!" and then he returned to his dream and repeated portions
+of it; and then he said, seeming to be thinking aloud, "My good old
+mother! my dear, poor Jenny!"
+
+"The sick man's brain is liable to strange fancies," says Dr. Shepard;
+"you must not think too seriously of it, but your resolve is very wise."
+He then said he would see the captain of the Arrow, as he had promised,
+and went away with a smile on his face, and a great weight lifted off
+his heart.
+
+A few minutes after this, Hobert Walker was again in the street, the
+heavy fur hat on his head, and the well-filled saddle-bags across his
+arm.
+
+Perhaps sickness is in some sort insanity. At any rate, he no sooner
+found himself alone than the desire to see the great Dr. Killmany came
+upon him with all the force of insanity; his intention probably being to
+go and return within an hour, and keep his little secret to himself.
+Perhaps, too, he wished to have it to say at home that he had seen the
+great man for himself, and decided against him of his own knowledge.
+
+Dr. Killmany was found without much difficulty; but his rooms were
+crowded with patients, and there was no possibility of access to him for
+hours.
+
+"It cannot be that so many are deceived," thought Hobert. "I will wait
+with the rest." Then came the encouraging hope, "What if I should go
+home cured, after all!" He felt almost as if Dr. Shepard had defrauded
+him out of two or three days, and talked eagerly with one and another,
+as patient after patient came forth from consultation with Dr. Killmany,
+all aglow with hope and animation. It was near sunset when his turn
+came. He had waited five hours, but it was come at last; and with his
+heart in his mouth, and his knees shaking under him, he stood face to
+face with the arbitrator of his destiny. There was no smile on the face
+of the man, no sweetness in his voice as he said, looking at Hobert from
+under scowling brows, "What brings _you_, sir? Tell it, and be brief:
+time with me is money."
+
+Then Hobert, catching at a chair to sustain himself, for he was not
+asked to sit, explained his condition as well as fright and awkwardness
+would permit him to do; going back to the commencement of his disease,
+and entering unnecessarily into many particulars, as well as making
+superfluous mention of wife and mother. "It isn't with your wife and
+mother that I have to deal," interposed Dr. Killmany;--"dear to you, I
+dare say, but nothing to me, sir,--nothing at all. I have no time to
+devote to your relatives. Open your shirt, sir! there, that'll do! A
+mere trifle, sir, but it is well you have come in time."
+
+"Do you mean to say you can cure me?" inquired Hobert, all his heart
+a-flutter with the excitement of hope.
+
+"Exactly so. I can remove that difficulty of yours in five minutes, and
+have you on your feet again,--operation neglected, death certain within
+a year, perhaps sooner. Done with you sir. You now have your choice,
+make way!"
+
+Hobert went staggering out of the room, feeling as if the raven of his
+dream already had its beak in his heart, when a pert official reached
+out his hand with the demand, "Consultation fee, if you please, sir."
+
+"How much?" asked Hobert, leaning against the wall, and searching for
+his pocket-book.
+
+"Fifty dollars, sir,"--and the official spoke as though that were a
+trifle scarcely worth mentioning. The hands of the sick man trembled,
+and his eyes grew blind as he sought to count up the sum; and as his
+entire treasure was formed out of the smallest notes, the process was a
+slow one, and before it was accomplished it seemed to him that not only
+Fleety was turning to a shadow, but the whole world as well.
+
+Somehow, he hardly knew how, he found himself in the fresh air, and the
+official still at his elbow. "You are not going to leave us this way?"
+he said. "You will only have thrown your money away." And he pocketed
+the sum Hobert had just put in his hand.
+
+"Better that than more," Hobert answered, and was turning sadly away.
+
+"Allow me to detain you, sir, one moment, only just one moment!" And the
+official, or rather decoy, whispered in his ear tales of such wonderful
+cures as almost dissuaded him from his purpose.
+
+"But I am resolved to go home on the Arrow," he said, making a last
+stand, "and I must have something to leave my poor Jenny."
+
+And then the official told him that he could go home aboard the Arrow,
+if he chose, and go a well man, or the same as a well man; and what
+could he bring to his wife so acceptable as himself, safe and sound! And
+then he told other tales of sick men who had been carried to Dr.
+Killmany on their beds, and within a few hours walked away on their
+feet, blessing his name, and publishing his fame far and wide.
+
+Hobert began to waver, nor is it strange; for what will not a man give
+for his life? The world had not loosened its hold upon him much as yet;
+the grass under his feet and the sunshine over his head were pleasant
+things to him, and his love for his good little wife was still invested
+with all the old romance; and to die and go he knew not where, there was
+a terror about that which his faith was not strong enough to dissipate.
+The decoy watched and waited. He contrasted the husband returning home
+with haggard cheek and listless step and the shadow of dark doom all
+about him, having a few hundred dollars in his pocket, with a husband
+empty-handed, but with bright cheeks, and cheerful spirits, and with
+strong legs under him! Then Hobert repeated the story he had told to Dr.
+Shepard,--all about the little treasure with which he had set out, how
+hardly it had been gathered together, what had been already fruitlessly
+expended, and just how much remained,--he told it all as he had told it
+in the first instance, but with what different effect!
+
+Dr. Killmany never touched any case for a sum like that! Indeed, his
+services were in such requisition, it was almost impossible to obtain
+them on any terms; but he, the decoy, for reasons which he did not
+state, would exert to the utmost his own personal influence in Hobert's
+favor. "I cannot promise you a favorable answer," he said; "there is
+just a possibility, and that is all. A man like Dr. Killmany, sir, can't
+be haggling about dollars and cents!" And then he intimated that such
+things might be well enough for Dr. Shepard and his sort of practice.
+
+There was some further talk, and the time ran by, and it was night.
+Against his will almost, Hobert had been persuaded. He was to sleep in
+the Doctor's office that night, and his case was to be the first
+attended to in the morning. "You can rest very well on the floor, I
+suppose," the decoy had said, "taking your saddle-bags for a pillow. The
+whole thing will be over in half an hour, and I myself will see you
+aboard the Arrow before ten o'clock, and so you need take no more
+thought for yourself."
+
+That night, when at last Hobert made a pillow of his saddle-bags and
+coiled himself together, he felt as if a circle of fire were narrowing
+around him, and yet utter inability to escape.
+
+"You need take no more thought for yourself." These words kept ringing
+in his ears like a knell, and the mistletoe striking through his bosom,
+and the beak of the raven in his heart,--these were the sensations with
+which, long after midnight, he drowsed into sleep.
+
+When he awoke, there was a rough hand on his shoulder and a harsh voice
+in his ear. The room was light with the light of morning, but dark with
+the shadow of coming doom. There came upon him a strange and great
+calmness when he found himself in the operating-room. There were all the
+frightful preparations,--the water, the sponges, the cloths and
+bandages, the Doctor with his case of instruments before him, and
+looking more like a murderer than a surgeon. Almost his heart misgave
+him as he looked around, and remembered Jenny and the little ones at
+home; but the carriage that was to take him aboard the Arrow already
+waited at the door, and the sight of it reassured him.
+
+"You will hardly know where you are till you find yourself safe in your
+berth," said Dr. Killmany; "and to avoid any delay after the operation,
+from which you will necessarily be somewhat weak, you had perhaps better
+pay me now." And these were the most civil words he had yet spoken.
+
+So Hobert paid into his hand the last dollar he had.
+
+"Now, sir," he said; and Hobert laid himself down on the table. A
+minute, and of what befell him after that he was quite unconscious. It
+was as the doctor had told him; he knew not where he was until he found
+himself in his berth aboard the Arrow. "Where am I?" was his first
+inquiry, feeling a sense of strangeness,--feeling, indeed, as though he
+were a stranger to himself.
+
+"You are going home, my poor friend,--going home a little sooner than
+you expected,--that is all."
+
+Then the sick man opened his eyes; for he had recognized the tender
+voice, and saw Dr. Shepard bending over him, and he knew where he was,
+and what had happened; for he was shivering from head to foot. The
+sleeve of his right arm was red and wet, and there was a dull, slow
+aching in his bosom. "Ay, Doctor," he answered, pressing faintly the
+hand that held his, "I am going home,--home to a better country. 'T is
+all like a shadow about me now, and I am cold,--so cold!" He never came
+out of that chill, and these were the last words he ever spoke.
+
+"That man has been just the same as murdered, I take it!" exclaimed the
+captain of the Arrow, meeting Dr. Shepard as he turned away from the
+bedside.
+
+"I must not say that," replied the Doctor; "but if I had performed the
+operation, under the circumstances, I should think myself his murderer."
+
+"And if you had taken his money, you would perhaps think yourself a
+thief, too! At any rate, I should think you one," was the answer of the
+captain. And he then related to Dr. Shepard how the man, in an almost
+dying condition, had been brought aboard the Arrow by one of Dr.
+Killmany's menials, hustled into bed, and so left to his fate; and he
+concluded by saying, "And what are we to do now, Doctor?"
+
+What the Doctor's reply was need not be reported at length. Suffice it
+to say, that the departure of the Arrow was deferred for an hour, and
+when she sailed the state-room in which Hobert had breathed his last was
+occupied by a lively little lady and two gayly-dressed children, and on
+the wall from which the fur hat and the saddle-bags had been removed
+fluttered a variety of rainbow-hued scarfs and ribbons, and in the
+window where the shadow had been a golden-winged bird was singing in the
+sunshine.
+
+Some two or three weeks went by, and the farmer who had driven to town
+when Hobert was about to set out on his long journey, starting so
+smartly, and making so light of the farewells, drove thither again, and
+this time his wagon-bed was empty, except for the deep cushion of straw.
+He drove slowly and with downcast looks; and as he returned, a dozen men
+met him at the entrance of the village, and at sober pace followed to
+the meeting-house, the door of which stood wide.
+
+A little low talk as they all gathered round, and then four of them
+lifted from the wagon the long box it contained, and bore it on their
+shoulders reverently and tenderly within the open gate, through the wide
+door, along the solemn aisle and close beneath the pulpit, where they
+placed it very softly, and then stood back with uncovered heads, while a
+troop of little girls, who waited, with aprons full of flowers, drew
+near and emptied them on the ground, so that nothing was to be seen but
+a great heap of flowers; and beneath them was the body of HOBERT WALKER.
+
+
+
+
+MY FARM: A FABLE.
+
+
+    Within a green and pleasant land
+      I own a favorite plantation,
+    Whose woods and meads, if rudely planned,
+      Are still, at least, my own creation.
+          Some genial sun or kindly shower
+          Has here and there wooed forth a flower,
+      And touched the fields with expectation.
+
+    I know what feeds the soil I till,
+      What harvest-growth it best produces.
+    My forests shape themselves at will,
+      My grapes mature their proper juices.
+          I know the brambles and the weeds,
+          But know the fruits and wholesome seeds,--
+      Of those the hurt, of these the uses.
+
+    And working early, working late,
+      Directing crude and random Nature,
+    'T is joy to see my small estate
+      Grow fairer in the slightest feature.
+          If but a single wild-rose blow,
+          Or fruit-tree bend with April snow,
+      That day am I the happiest creature!
+
+    But round the borders of the land
+      Dwell many neighbors, fond of roving;
+    With curious eye and prying hand
+      About my fields I see them moving.
+          Some tread my choicest herbage down,
+          And some of weeds would weave a crown,
+      And bid me wear it, unreproving.
+
+    "What trees!" says one; "whoever saw
+      A grove, like this, of _my_ possessing?
+    This vale offends my upland's law;
+      This sheltered garden needs suppressing.
+          My rocks this grass would never yield,
+          And how absurd the level field!
+      What here will grow is past my guessing."
+
+    "Behold the slope!" another cries:
+      "No sign of bog or meadow near it!
+    A varied surface I despise:
+      There's not a stagnant pool to cheer it!"
+          "Why plough at all?" remarked a third,
+          "Heaven help the man!" a fourth I heard,--
+      "His farm's a jungle: let him clear it!"
+
+    No friendly counsel I disdain:
+      My fields are free to every comer;
+    Yet that, which one to praise is fain,
+      But makes another's visage glummer.
+          I bow them out, and welcome in,
+          But while I seek some truth to win
+      Goes by, unused, the golden summer!
+
+    Ah! vain the hope to find in each
+      The wisdom each denies the other;
+    These mazes of conflicting speech
+      All theories of culture smother.
+          I'll raise and reap, with honest hand,
+          The native harvest of my land;
+      Do thou the same, my wiser brother!
+
+
+
+
+PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+Concord, _Saturday, August 13, 1842._--My life, at this time, is more
+like that of a boy, externally, than it has been since I was really a
+boy. It is usually supposed that the cares of life come with matrimony;
+but I seem to have cast off all care, and live on with as much easy
+trust in Providence as Adam could possibly have felt before he had
+learned that there was a world beyond Paradise. My chief anxiety
+consists in watching the prosperity of my vegetables, in observing how
+they are affected by the rain or sunshine, in lamenting the blight of
+one squash and rejoicing at the luxurious growth of another. It is as if
+the original relation between man and Nature were restored in my case,
+and that I were to look exclusively to her for the support of my Eve and
+myself,--to trust to her for food and clothing, and all things needful,
+with the full assurance that she would not fail me. The fight with the
+world,--the struggle of a man among men,--the agony of the universal
+effort to wrench the means of living from a host of greedy
+competitors,--all this seems like a dream to me. My business is merely
+to live and to enjoy; and whatever is essential to life and enjoyment
+will come as naturally as the dew from heaven. This is, practically at
+least, my faith. And so I awake in the morning with a boyish
+thoughtlessness as to how the outgoings of the day are to be provided
+for, and its incomings rendered certain. After breakfast, I go forth
+into my garden, and gather whatever the bountiful Mother has made fit
+for our present sustenance; and of late days she generally gives me two
+squashes and a cucumber, and promises me green corn and shell-beans very
+soon. Then I pass down through our orchard to the river-side, and ramble
+along its margin in search of flowers. Usually I discern a fragrant
+white lily, here and there along the shore, growing, with sweet
+prudishness, beyond the grasp of mortal arm. But it does not escape me
+so. I know what is its fitting destiny better than the silly flower
+knows for itself; so I wade in, heedless of wet trousers, and seize the
+shy lily by its slender stem. Thus I make prize of five or six, which
+are as many as usually blossom within my reach in a single
+morning;--some of them partially worm-eaten or blighted, like virgins
+with an eating sorrow at the heart; others as fair and perfect as
+Nature's own idea was, when she first imagined this lovely flower. A
+perfect pond-lily is the most satisfactory of flowers. Besides these, I
+gather whatever else of beautiful chances to be growing in the moist
+soil by the river-side,--an amphibious tribe, yet with more richness and
+grace than the wild-flowers of the deep and dry woodlands and
+hedge-rows,--sometimes the white arrow-head, always the blue spires and
+broad green leaves of the pickerel-flower, which contrast and harmonize
+so well with the white lilies. For the last two or three days, I have
+found scattered stalks of the cardinal-flower, the gorgeous scarlet of
+which it is a joy even to remember. The world is made brighter and
+sunnier by flowers of such a hue. Even perfume, which otherwise is the
+soul and spirit of a flower, may be spared when it arrays itself in this
+scarlet glory. It is a flower of thought and feeling, too; it seems to
+have its roots deep down in the hearts of those who gaze at it. Other
+bright flowers sometimes impress me as wanting sentiment; but it is not
+so with this.
+
+Well, having made up my bunch of flowers, I return home with them....
+Then I ascend to my study, and generally read, or perchance scribble in
+this journal, and otherwise suffer Time to loiter onward at his own
+pleasure, till the dinner-hour. In pleasant days, the chief event of the
+afternoon, and the happiest one of the day, is our walk.... So comes the
+night; and I look back upon a day spent in what the world would call
+idleness, and for which I myself can suggest no more appropriate
+epithet, but which, nevertheless, I cannot feel to have been spent
+amiss. True, it might be a sin and shame, in such a world as ours, to
+spend a lifetime in this manner; but for a few summer weeks it is good
+to live as if this world were heaven. And so it is, and so it shall be,
+although, in a little while, a flitting shadow of earthly care and toil
+will mingle itself with our realities.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Monday, August 15th._--George Hillard and his wife arrived from Boston
+in the dusk of Saturday evening, to spend Sunday with us. It was a
+pleasant sensation, when the coach rumbled up our avenue, and wheeled
+round at the door; for I felt that I was regarded as a man with a
+household,--a man having a tangible existence and locality in the
+world,--when friends came to avail themselves of our hospitality. It was
+a sort of acknowledgment and reception of us into the corps of married
+people,--a sanction by no means essential to our peace and well-being,
+but yet agreeable enough to receive. So we welcomed them cordially at
+the door, and ushered them into our parlor, and soon into the
+supper-room.... The night flitted over us all, and passed away, and up
+rose a gray and sullen morning,... and we had a splendid breakfast of
+flapjacks, or slapjacks, and whortleberries, which I gathered on a
+neighboring hill, and perch, bream, and pout, which I hooked out of the
+river the evening before. About nine o'clock, Hillard and I set out for
+a walk to Walden Pond, calling by the way at Mr. Emerson's, to obtain
+his guidance or directions, and he accompanied us in his own illustrious
+person. We turned aside a little from our way, to visit Mr. ----, a
+yeoman, of whose homely and self-acquired wisdom Mr. Emerson has a very
+high opinion. We found him walking in his fields, a short and stalwart
+and sturdy personage of middle age, with a face of shrewd and kind
+expression, and manners of natural courtesy. He had a very free flow of
+talk, and not much diffidence about his own opinions; for, with a little
+induction from Mr. Emerson, he began to discourse about the state of the
+nation, agriculture, and business in general, uttering thoughts that had
+come to him at the plough, and which had a sort of flavor of the fresh
+earth about them. I was not impressed with any remarkable originality in
+his views; but they were sensible and characteristic, and had grown in
+the soil where we found them;... and he is certainly a man of
+intellectual and moral substance, a sturdy fact, a reality, something to
+be felt and touched, whose ideas seem to be dug out of his mind as he
+digs potatoes, beets, carrots, and turnips out of the ground.
+
+After leaving Mr. ----, we proceeded through wood paths to Walden Pond,
+picking blackberries of enormous size along the way. The pond itself was
+beautiful and refreshing to my soul, after such long and exclusive
+familiarity with our tawny and sluggish river. It lies embosomed among
+wooded hills,--it is not very extensive, but large enough for waves to
+dance upon its surface, and to look like a piece of blue firmament,
+earth-encircled. The shore has a narrow, pebbly strand, which it was
+worth a day's journey to look at, for the sake of the contrast between
+it and the weedy, oozy margin of the river. Farther within its depths,
+you perceive a bottom of pure white sand, sparkling through the
+transparent water, which, methought, was the very purest liquid in the
+world. After Mr. Emerson left us, Hillard and I bathed in the pond, and
+it does really seem as if my spirit, as well as corporeal person, were
+refreshed by that bath. A good deal of mud and river slime had
+accumulated on my soul; but these bright waters washed it all away.
+
+We returned home in due season for dinner.... To my misfortune, however,
+a box of Mediterranean wine proved to have undergone the acetous
+fermentation; so that the splendor of the festival suffered some
+diminution. Nevertheless, we ate our dinner with a good appetite, and
+afterwards went universally to take our several siestas. Meantime there
+came a shower, which so besprinkled the grass and shrubbery as to make
+it rather wet for our after-tea ramble. The chief result of the walk was
+the bringing home of an immense burden of the trailing clematis-vine,
+now just in blossom, and with which all our flower-stands and vases are
+this morning decorated. On our return we found Mr. and Mrs. S----, and
+E. H----, who shortly took their leave, and we sat up late, telling
+ghost-stories. This morning, at seven, our friends left us. We were both
+pleased with the visit, and so I think were our guests.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Monday, August 22nd._--I took a walk through the woods yesterday
+afternoon, to Mr. Emerson's, with a book which Margaret Fuller had left,
+after a call on Saturday eve. I missed the nearest way, and wandered
+into a very secluded portion of the forest; for forest it might justly
+be called, so dense and sombre was the shade of oaks and pines. Once I
+wandered into a tract so overgrown with bushes and underbrush that I
+could scarcely force a passage through. Nothing is more annoying than a
+walk of this kind, where one is tormented by an innumerable host of
+petty impediments. It incenses and depresses me at the same time. Always
+when I flounder into the midst of bushes, which cross and intertwine
+themselves about my legs, and brush my face, and seize hold of my
+clothes, with their multitudinous grip,--always, in such a difficulty, I
+feel as if it were almost as well to lie down and die in rage and
+despair as to go one step farther. It is laughable, after I have got out
+of the moil, to think how miserably it affected me for the moment; but I
+had better learn patience betimes, for there are many such bushy tracts
+in this vicinity, on the margins of meadows, and my walks will often
+lead me into them. Escaping from the bushes, I soon came to an open
+space among the woods,--a very lovely spot, with the tall old trees
+standing around as quietly as if no one had intruded there throughout
+the whole summer. A company of crows were holding their Sabbath on their
+summits. Apparently they felt themselves injured or insulted by my
+presence; for, with one consent, they began to Caw! caw! caw! and,
+launching themselves sullenly on the air, took flight to some securer
+solitude. Mine, probably, was the first human shape that they had seen
+all day long,--at least, if they had been stationary in that spot; but
+perhaps they had winged their way over miles and miles of country, had
+breakfasted on the summit of Greylock, and dined at the base of
+Wachusett, and were merely come to sup and sleep among the quiet woods
+of Concord. But it was my impression at the time, that they had sat
+still and silent on the tops of the trees all through the Sabbath day,
+and I felt like one who should unawares disturb an assembly of
+worshippers. A crow, however, has no real pretensions to religion, in
+spite of his gravity of mien and black attire. Crows are certainly
+thieves, and probably infidels. Nevertheless, their voices yesterday
+were in admirable accordance with the influences of the quiet, sunny,
+warm, yet autumnal afternoon. They were so far above my head that their
+loud clamor added to the quiet of the scene, instead of disturbing it.
+There was no other sound, except the song of the cricket, which is but
+an audible stillness; for, though it be very loud and heard afar, yet
+the mind does not take note of it as a sound, so entirely does it mingle
+and lose its individuality among the other characteristics of coming
+autumn. Alas for the summer! The grass is still verdant on the hills and
+in the valleys; the foliage of the trees is as dense as ever, and as
+green; the flowers are abundant along the margin of the river, and in
+the hedge-rows, and deep among the woods; the days, too, are as fervid
+as they were a month ago; and yet in every breath of wind and in every
+beam of sunshine there is an autumnal influence. I know not how to
+describe it. Methinks there is a sort of coolness amid all the heat, and
+a mildness in the brightest of the sunshine. A breeze cannot stir,
+without thrilling me with the breath of autumn, and I behold its pensive
+glory in the far, golden gleams among the long shadows of the trees. The
+flowers, even the brightest of them,--the golden-rod and the gorgeous
+cardinals,--the most glorious flowers of the year,--have this gentle
+sadness amid their pomp. Pensive autumn is expressed in the glow of
+every one of them. I have felt this influence earlier in some years than
+in others. Sometimes autumn may be perceived even in the early days of
+July. There is no other feeling like that caused by this faint,
+doubtful, yet real perception, or rather prophecy, of the year's decay,
+so deliciously sweet and sad at the same time.
+
+After leaving the book at Mr. Emerson's I returned through the woods,
+and, entering Sleepy Hollow, I perceived a lady reclining near the path
+which bends along its verge. It was Margaret herself. She had been there
+the whole afternoon, meditating or reading; for she had a book in her
+hand, with some strange title, which I did not understand, and have
+forgotten. She said that nobody had broken her solitude, and was just
+giving utterance to a theory that no inhabitant of Concord ever visited
+Sleepy Hollow, when we saw a group of people entering the sacred
+precincts. Most of them followed a path which led them away from us; but
+an old man passed near us, and smiled to see Margaret reclining on the
+ground, and me sitting by her side. He made some remark about the beauty
+of the afternoon, and withdrew himself into the shadow of the wood. Then
+we talked about autumn, and about the pleasures of being lost in the
+woods, and about the crows, whose voices Margaret had heard; and about
+the experiences of early childhood, whose influence remains upon the
+character after the recollection of them has passed away; and about the
+sight of mountains from a distance, and the view from their summits; and
+about other matters of high and low philosophy. In the midst of our
+talk, we heard footsteps above us, on the high bank; and while the
+person was still hidden among the trees, he called to Margaret, of whom
+he had gotten a glimpse. Then he emerged from the green shade, and,
+behold! it was Mr. Emerson. He appeared to have had a pleasant time; for
+he said that there were Muses in the woods to-day, and whispers to be
+heard in the breezes. It being now nearly six o'clock, we
+separated,--Margaret and Mr. Emerson towards his home, and I towards
+mine....
+
+Last evening there was the most beautiful moonlight that ever hallowed
+this earthly world; and when I went to bathe in the river, which was as
+calm as death, it seemed like plunging down into the sky. But I had
+rather be on earth than even in the seventh heaven, just now.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Wednesday, August 24th._--I left home at five o'clock this morning to
+catch some fish for breakfast. I shook our summer apple-tree, and ate
+the golden apple which fell from it. Methinks these early apples, which
+come as a golden promise before the treasures of autumnal fruit, are
+almost more delicious than anything that comes afterwards. We have but
+one such tree in our orchard; but it supplies us with a daily abundance,
+and probably will do so for at least a week to come. Meantime other
+trees begin to cast their ripening windfalls upon the grass; and when I
+taste them, and perceive their mellowed flavor and blackening seeds, I
+feel somewhat overwhelmed with the impending bounties of Providence. I
+suppose Adam, in Paradise, did not like to see his fruits decaying on
+the ground, after he had watched them through the sunny days of the
+world's first summer. However, insects, at the worst, will hold a
+festival upon them, so that they will not be thrown away, in the great
+scheme of Nature. Moreover, I have one advantage over the primeval Adam,
+inasmuch as there is a chance of disposing of my superfluous fruits
+among people who inhabit no Paradise of their own.
+
+Passing a little way down along the river-side, I threw in my line, and
+soon drew out one of the smallest possible of fishes. It seemed to be a
+pretty good morning for the angler,--an autumnal coolness in the air, a
+clear sky, but with a fog across the lowlands and on the surface of the
+river, which a gentle breeze sometimes condensed into wreaths. At first
+I could barely discern the opposite shore of the river; but, as the sun
+arose, the vapors gradually dispersed, till only a warm, smoky tint was
+left along the water's surface. The farm-houses across the river made
+their appearance out of the dusky cloud; the voices of boys were heard,
+shouting to the cattle as they drove them to the pastures; a man whetted
+his scythe, and set to work in a neighboring meadow. Meantime, I
+continued to stand on the oozy margin of the stream, beguiling the
+little fish; and though the scaly inhabitants of our river partake
+somewhat of the character of their native element, and are but sluggish
+biters, still I contrived to pull out not far from two dozen. They were
+all bream, a broad, flat, almost circular fish, shaped a good deal like
+a flounder, but swimming on their edges, instead of on their sides. As
+far as mere pleasure is concerned, it is hardly worth while to fish in
+our river, it is so much like angling in a mud-puddle; and one does not
+attach the idea of freshness and purity to the fishes, as we do to those
+which inhabit swift, transparent streams, or haunt the shores of the
+great briny deep. Standing on the weedy margin, and throwing the line
+over the elder-bushes that dip into the water, it seems as if we could
+catch nothing but frogs and mud-turtles, or reptiles akin to them. And
+even when a fish of reputable aspect is drawn out, one feels a shyness
+about touching him. As to our river, its character was admirably
+expressed last night by some one who said "it was too lazy to keep
+itself clean." I might write pages and pages, and only obscure the
+impression which this brief sentence conveys. Nevertheless, we made bold
+to eat some of my fish for breakfast, and found them very savory; and
+the rest shall meet with due entertainment at dinner, together with some
+shell-beans, green corn, and cucumbers from our garden; so this day's
+food comes directly and entirely from beneficent Nature, without the
+intervention of any third person between her and us.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Saturday, August 27th._--A peach-tree, which grows beside our house and
+brushes against the window, is so burdened with fruit that I have had to
+prop it up. I never saw more splendid peaches in appearance,--great,
+round, crimson-cheeked beauties, clustering all over the tree. A
+pear-tree, likewise, is maturing a generous burden of small, sweet
+fruit, which will require to be eaten at about the same time as the
+peaches. There is something pleasantly annoying in this superfluous
+abundance; it is like standing under a tree of ripe apples, and giving
+it a shake, with the intention of bringing down a single one, when,
+behold, a dozen come thumping about our ears. But the idea of the
+infinite generosity and exhaustless bounty of our Mother Nature is well
+worth attaining; and I never had it so vividly as now, when I find
+myself, with the few mouths which I am to feed, the sole inheritor of
+the old clergyman's wealth of fruits. His children, his friends in the
+village, and the clerical guests who came to preach in his pulpit, were
+all wont to eat and be filled from these trees. Now, all these hearty
+old people have passed away, and in their stead is a solitary pair,
+whose appetites are more than satisfied with the windfalls which the
+trees throw down at their feet. Howbeit, we shall have now and then a
+guest to keep our peaches and pears from decaying.
+
+G---- B----, my old fellow-laborer at the community at Brook Farm,
+called on me last evening, and dined here to-day. He has been
+cultivating vegetables at Plymouth this summer, and selling them in the
+market. What a singular mode of life for a man of education and
+refinement,--to spend his days in hard and earnest bodily toil, and then
+to convey the products of his labor, in a wheelbarrow, to the public
+market, and there retail them out,--a peck of peas or beans, a bunch of
+turnips, a squash, a dozen ears of green corn! Few men, without some
+eccentricity of character, would have the moral strength to do this; and
+it is very striking to find such strength combined with the utmost
+gentleness, and an uncommon regularity of nature. Occasionally he
+returns for a day or two to resume his place among scholars and idle
+people, as, for instance, the present week, when he has thrown aside his
+spade and hoe to attend the Commencement at Cambridge. He is a rare
+man,--a perfect original, yet without any one salient point; a character
+to be felt and understood, but almost impossible to describe: for,
+should you seize upon any characteristic, it would inevitably be altered
+and distorted in the process of writing it down.
+
+Our few remaining days of summer have been latterly grievously darkened
+with clouds. To-day there has been an hour or two of hot sunshine; but
+the sun rose amid cloud and mist, and before he could dry up the
+moisture of last night's shower upon the trees and grass, the clouds
+have gathered between him and us again. This afternoon the thunder
+rumbles in the distance, and I believe a few drops of rain have fallen;
+but the weight of the shower has burst elsewhere, leaving us nothing but
+its sullen gloom. There is a muggy warmth in the atmosphere, which takes
+all the spring and vivacity out of the mind and body.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Sunday, August 28th._--Still another rainy day,--the heaviest rain, I
+believe, that has fallen since we came to Concord (not two months ago).
+There never was a more sombre aspect of all external nature. I gaze from
+the open window of my study, somewhat disconsolately, and observe the
+great willow-tree which shades the house, and which has caught and
+retained a whole cataract of rain among its leaves and boughs; and all
+the fruit-trees, too, are dripping continually, even in the brief
+intervals when the clouds give us a respite. If shaken to bring down the
+fruit, they will discharge a shower upon the head of him who stands
+beneath. The rain is warm, coming from some southern region; but the
+willow attests that it is an autumnal spell of weather, by scattering
+down no infrequent multitude of yellow leaves, which rest upon the
+sloping roof of the house, and strew the gravel-path and the grass. The
+other trees do not yet shed their leaves, though in some of them a
+lighter tint of verdure, tending towards yellow, is perceptible. All day
+long we hear the water drip, drip, dripping, splash, splash, splashing,
+from the eaves, and babbling and foaming into the tubs which have been
+set out to receive it. The old unpainted shingles and boards of the
+mansion and out-houses are black with the moisture which they have
+imbibed. Looking at the river, we perceive that its usually smooth and
+mirrored surface is blurred by the infinity of rain-drops; the whole
+landscape--grass, trees, and houses--has a completely water-soaked
+aspect, as if the earth were wet through. The wooded hill, about a mile
+distant, whither we went to gather whortleberries, has a mist upon its
+summit, as if the demon of the rain were enthroned there; and if we look
+to the sky, it seems as if all the water that had been poured down upon
+us were as nothing to what is to come. Once in a while, indeed, there is
+a gleam of sky along the horizon, or a half-cheerful, half-sullen
+lighting up of the atmosphere; the rain-drops cease to patter down,
+except when the trees shake off a gentle shower; but soon we hear the
+broad, quiet, slow, and sure recommencement of the rain. The river, if I
+mistake not, has risen considerably during the day, and its current will
+acquire some degree of energy.
+
+In this sombre weather, when some mortals almost forget that there ever
+was any golden sunshine, or ever will be any hereafter, others seem
+absolutely to radiate it from their own hearts and minds. The gloom
+cannot pervade them; they conquer it, and drive it quite out of their
+sphere, and create a moral rainbow of hope upon the blackest cloud. As
+for myself, I am little other than a cloud at such seasons, but such
+persons contrive to make me a sunny one, shining all through me. And
+thus, even without the support of a stated occupation, I survive these
+sullen days and am happy.
+
+This morning we read the Sermon on the Mount. In the course of the
+forenoon, the rain abated for a season, and I went out and gathered some
+corn and summer-squashes, and picked up the windfalls of apples and
+pears and peaches. Wet, wet, wet,--everything was wet; the blades of the
+corn-stalks moistened me; the wet grass soaked my boots quite through;
+the trees threw their reserved showers upon my head; and soon the
+remorseless rain began anew, and drove me into the house. When shall we
+be able to walk again to the far hills, and plunge into the deep woods,
+and gather more cardinals along the river's margin? The track along
+which we trod is probably under water now. How inhospitable Nature is
+during a rain! In the fervid heat of sunny days, she still retains some
+degree of mercy for us; she has shady spots, whither the sun cannot
+come; but she provides no shelter against her storms. It makes one
+shiver to think how dripping with wet are those deep, umbrageous nooks,
+those overshadowed banks, where we find such enjoyment during sultry
+afternoons. And what becomes of the birds in such a soaking rain as
+this? Is hope and an instinctive faith so mixed up with their nature,
+that they can be cheered by the thought that the sunshine will return?
+or do they think, as I almost do, that there is to be no sunshine any
+more? Very disconsolate must they be among the dripping leaves; and when
+a single summer makes so important a portion of their lives, it seems
+hard that so much of it should be dissolved in rain. I, likewise, am
+greedy of the summer-days for my own sake: the life of man does not
+contain so many of them that one can be spared without regret.
+
+
+_Tuesday, August 30th._--I was promised, in the midst of Sunday's rain,
+that Monday should be fair, and, behold! the sun came back to us, and
+brought one of the most perfect days ever made since Adam was driven out
+of Paradise. By the by, was there ever any rain in Paradise? If so, how
+comfortless must Eve's bower have been! It makes me shiver to think of
+it. Well, it seemed as if the world was newly created yesterday morning,
+and I beheld its birth; for I had risen before the sun was over the
+hill, and had gone forth to fish. How instantaneously did all dreariness
+and heaviness of the earth's spirit flit away before one smile of the
+beneficent sun! This proves that all gloom is but a dream and a shadow,
+and that cheerfulness is the real truth. It requires many clouds, long
+brooding over us, to make us sad, but one gleam of sunshine always
+suffices to cheer up the landscape. The banks of the river actually
+laughed when the sunshine fell upon them; and the river itself was alive
+and cheerful, and, by way of fun and amusement, it had swept away many
+wreaths of meadow-hay, and old, rotten branches of trees, and all such
+trumpery. These matters came floating downwards, whirling round and
+round in the eddies, or hastening onward in the main current; and many
+of them, before this time, have probably been carried into the
+Merrimack, and will be borne onward to the sea. The spots where I stood
+to fish, on my preceding excursion, were now under water; and the tops
+of many of the bushes, along the river's margin, barely emerged from the
+stream. Large spaces of meadow are overflowed.
+
+There was a northwest wind throughout the day; and as many clouds, the
+remnants of departed gloom, were scattered about the sky, the breeze was
+continually blowing them across the sun. For the most part, they were
+gone again in a moment; but sometimes the shadow remained long enough to
+make me dread a return of sulky weather. Then would come the burst of
+sunshine, making me feel as if a rainy day were henceforth an
+impossibility....
+
+In the afternoon Mr. Emerson called, bringing Mr. ----. He is a good
+sort of humdrum parson enough, and well fitted to increase the stock of
+manuscript sermons, of which there must be a fearful quantity already in
+the world. Mr. ----, however, is probably one of the best and most
+useful of his class, because no suspicion of the necessity of his
+profession, constituted as it now is, to mankind, and of his own
+usefulness and success in it, has hitherto disturbed him; and therefore
+he labors with faith and confidence, as ministers did a hundred years
+ago.
+
+After the visitors were gone, I sat at the gallery window, looking down
+the avenue, and soon there appeared an elderly woman,--a homely, decent
+old matron, dressed in a dark gown, and with what seemed a manuscript
+book under her arm. The wind sported with her gown, and blew her veil
+across her face, and seemed to make game of her, though on a nearer view
+she looked like a sad old creature, with a pale, thin countenance, and
+somewhat of a wild and wandering expression. She had a singular gait,
+reeling, as it were, and yet not quite reeling, from one side of the
+path to the other; going onward as if it were not much matter whether
+she went straight or crooked. Such were my observations as she
+approached through the scattered sunshine and shade of our long avenue,
+until, reaching the door, she gave a knock, and inquired for the lady of
+the house. Her manuscript contained a certificate, stating that the old
+woman was a widow from a foreign land, who had recently lost her son,
+and was now utterly destitute of friends and kindred, and without means
+of support. Appended to the certificate there was a list of names of
+people who had bestowed charity on her, with the amounts of their
+several donations,--none, as I recollect, higher than twenty-five cents.
+Here is a strange life, and a character fit for romance and poetry. All
+the early part of her life, I suppose, and much of her widowhood were
+spent in the quiet of a home, with kinsfolk around her, and children,
+and the life-long gossiping acquaintances that some women always create
+about them. But in her decline she has wandered away from all these, and
+from her native country itself, and is a vagrant, yet with something of
+the homeliness and decency of aspect belonging to one who has been a
+wife and mother, and has had a roof of her own above her head,--and,
+with all this, a wildness proper to her present life. I have a liking
+for vagrants of all sorts, and never, that I know of, refused my mite to
+a wandering beggar, when I had anything in my own pocket. There is so
+much wretchedness in the world, that we may safely take the word of any
+mortal professing to need our assistance; and even should we be
+deceived, still the good to ourselves resulting from a kind act is worth
+more than the trifle by which we purchase it. It is desirable, I think,
+that such persons should be permitted to roam through our land of
+plenty, scattering the seeds of tenderness and charity, as birds of
+passage bear the seeds of precious plants from land to land, without
+even dreaming of the office which they perform.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+HOW SHALL WE ENTERTAIN OUR COMPANY?
+
+"The fact is," said Marianne, "we must have a party. Bob don't like to
+hear of it, but it must come. We are in debt to everybody: we have been
+invited everywhere, and never had anything like a party since we were
+married, and it won't do."
+
+"For my part, I hate parties," said Bob. "They put your house all out of
+order, give all the women a sick-headache, and all the men an
+indigestion; you never see anybody to any purpose; the girls look
+bewitched, and the women answer you at cross-purposes, and call you by
+the name of your next-door neighbor, in their agitation of mind. We stay
+out beyond our usual bedtime, come home and find some baby crying, or
+child who has been sitting up till nobody knows when; and the next
+morning, when I must be at my office by eight, and wife must attend to
+her children, we are sleepy and headachy. I protest against making
+overtures to entrap some hundred of my respectable married friends into
+this snare which has so often entangled me. If I had my way, I would
+never go to another party; and as to giving one--I suppose, since my
+empress has declared her intentions, that I shall be brought into doing
+it; but it shall be under protest."
+
+"But, you see, we must keep up society," said Marianne.
+
+"But I insist on it," said Bob, "it isn't keeping up society. What
+earthly thing do you learn about people by meeting them in a general
+crush, where all are coming, going, laughing, talking, and looking at
+each other? No person of common sense ever puts forth any idea he cares
+twopence about, under such circumstances; all that is exchanged is a
+certain set of common-places and platitudes which people keep for
+parties, just as they do their kid gloves and finery. Now there are our
+neighbors, the Browns. When they drop in of an evening, she knitting,
+and he with the last article in the paper, she really comes out with a
+great deal of fresh, lively, earnest, original talk. We have a good
+time, and I like her so much that it quite verges on loving; but see her
+in a party, when she manifests herself over five or six flounces of pink
+silk and a perfect egg-froth of tulle, her head adorned with a thicket
+of craped hair and roses, and it is plain at first view that _talking_
+with her is quite out of the question. What has been done to her head on
+the outside has evidently had some effect within, for she is no longer
+the Mrs. Brown you knew in her every-day dress, but Mrs. Brown in a
+party state of mind, and too distracted to think of anything in
+particular. She has a few words that she answers to everything you say,
+as, for example, 'O, very!' 'Certainly!' 'How extraordinary!' 'So happy
+to,' &c. The fact is, that she has come into a state in which any real
+communication with her mind and character must be suspended till the
+party is over and she is rested. Now I like society, which is the reason
+why I hate parties."
+
+"But you see," said Marianne, "what are we to do? Everybody can't drop
+in to spend an evening with you. If it were not for these parties, there
+are quantities of your acquaintances whom you would never meet."
+
+"And of what use is it to meet them? Do you really know them any better
+for meeting them, got up in unusual dresses, and sitting down together
+when the only thing exchanged is the remark that it is hot or cold, or
+it rains, or it is dry, or any other patent surface-fact that answers
+the purpose of making believe you are talking when neither of you is
+saying a word?"
+
+"Well, now, for my part," said Marianne, "I confess I _like_ parties:
+they amuse me. I come home feeling kinder and better to people, just for
+the little I see of them when they are all dressed up and in good humor
+with themselves. To be sure we don't say anything very profound,--I
+don't think the most of us have anything very profound to say; but I ask
+Mrs. Brown where she buys her lace, and she tells me how she washes it,
+and somebody else tells me about her baby, and promises me a new
+sack-pattern. Then I like to see the pretty, nice young girls flirting
+with the nice young men; and I like to be dressed up a little myself,
+even if my finery is all old and many times made over. It does me good
+to be rubbed up and brightened."
+
+"Like old silver," said Bob.
+
+"Yes, like old silver, precisely; and even if I do come home tired, it
+does my mind good to have that change of scene and faces. You men do not
+know what it is to be tied to house and nursery all day, and what a
+perfect weariness and lassitude it often brings on us women. For my
+part, I think parties are a beneficial institution of society, and that
+it is worth a good deal of fatigue and trouble to get one up."
+
+"Then there's the expense," said Bob. "What earthly need is there of a
+grand regale of oysters, chicken-salad, ice-creams, coffee, and
+champagne, between eleven and twelve o'clock at night, when no one of us
+would ever think of wanting or taking any such articles upon our
+stomachs in our own homes? If we were all of us in the habit of having a
+regular repast at that hour, it might be well enough to enjoy one with
+our neighbor; but the party fare is generally just so much in addition
+to the honest three meals which we have eaten during the day. Now, to
+spend from fifty to one, two, or three hundred dollars in giving all our
+friends an indigestion from a midnight meal, seems to me a very poor
+investment. Yet if we once begin to give the party, we must have
+everything that is given at the other parties, or wherefore do we live?
+And caterers and waiters rack their brains to devise new forms of
+expense and extravagance; and when the bill comes in, one is sure to
+feel that one is paying a great deal of money for a great deal of
+nonsense. It is, in fact, worse than nonsense, because our dear friends
+are in half the cases, not only no better, but a great deal worse, for
+what they have eaten."
+
+"But there is this advantage to society," said Rudolph,--"it helps us
+young physicians. What would the physicians do if parties were
+abolished? Take all the colds that are caught by our fair friends with
+low necks and short sleeves, all the troubles from dancing in tight
+dresses and inhaling bad air, and all the headaches and indigestions
+from the _m�lange_ of lobster-salad, two or three kinds of ice-cream,
+cake, and coffee on delicate stomachs, and our profession gets a degree
+of encouragement that is worthy to be thought of."
+
+"But the question arises," said my wife, "whether there are not ways of
+promoting social feeling less expensive, more simple and natural and
+rational. I am inclined to think that there are."
+
+"Yes," said Theophilus Thoro; "for large parties are not, as a general
+thing, given with any wish or intention of really improving our
+acquaintance with our neighbors. In many cases they are openly and
+avowedly a general tribute paid at intervals to society, for and in
+consideration of which you are to sit with closed blinds and doors and
+be let alone for the rest of the year. Mrs. Bogus, for instance, lives
+to keep her house in order, her closets locked, her silver counted and
+in the safe, and her china-closet in undisturbed order. Her 'best
+things' are put away with such admirable precision, in so many wrappings
+and foldings, and secured with so many a twist and twine, that to get
+them out is one of the seven labors of Hercules, not to be lightly or
+unadvisedly taken in hand, but reverently, discreetly, and once for
+all, in an annual or biennial party. Then says Mrs. Bogus, 'For Heaven's
+sake, let's have every creature we can think of, and have 'em all over
+with at once. For pity's sake, let's have no driblets left that we shall
+have to be inviting to dinner or to tea. No matter whether they can come
+or not,--only send them the invitation, and our part is done; and, thank
+Heaven! we shall be free for a year.'"
+
+"Yes," said my wife; "a great stand-up party bears just the same
+relation towards the offer of real hospitality and good-will as Miss
+Sally Brass's offer of meat to the little hungry Marchioness, when, with
+a bit uplifted on the end of a fork, she addressed her, 'Will you have
+this piece of meat? No? Well, then, remember and don't say you haven't
+had meat _offered_ to you!' You are invited to a general jam, at the
+risk of your life and health; and if you refuse, don't say you haven't
+had hospitality offered to you. All our debts are wiped out and our
+slate clean; now we will have our own closed doors, no company and no
+trouble, and our best china shall repose undisturbed on its shelves.
+Mrs. Bogus says she never could exist in the way that Mrs. Easygo does,
+with a constant drip of company,--two or three to breakfast one day,
+half a dozen to dinner the next, and little evening gatherings once or
+twice a week. It must keep her house in confusion all the time; yet, for
+real social feeling, real exchange of thought and opinion, there is more
+of it in one half-hour at Mrs. Easygo's than in a dozen of Mrs. Bogus's
+great parties.
+
+"The fact is, that Mrs. Easygo really does like the society of human
+beings. She is genuinely and heartily social; and, in consequence,
+though she has very limited means, and no money to spend in giving great
+entertainments, her domestic establishment is a sort of social exchange,
+where more friendships are formed, more real acquaintance made, and more
+agreeable hours spent, than in any other place that can be named. She
+never has large parties,--great general pay-days of social debts,--but
+small, well-chosen circles of people, selected so thoughtfully, with a
+view to the pleasure which congenial persons give each other, as to make
+the invitation an act of real personal kindness. She always manages to
+have something for the entertainment of her friends, so that they are
+not reduced to the simple alternatives of gaping at each other's dresses
+and eating lobster-salad and ice-cream. There is either some choice
+music, or a reading of fine poetry, or a well-acted charade, or a
+portfolio of photographs and pictures, to enliven the hour and start
+conversation; and as the people are skilfully chosen with reference to
+each other, as there is no hurry or heat or confusion, conversation, in
+its best sense, can bubble up, fresh, genuine, clear, and sparkling as a
+woodland spring, and one goes away really rested and refreshed. The
+slight entertainment provided is just enough to enable you to eat salt
+together in Arab fashion,--not enough to form the leading feature of the
+evening. A cup of tea and a basket of cake, or a salver of ices,
+silently passed at quiet intervals, do not interrupt conversation or
+overload the stomach."
+
+"The fact is," said I, "that the art of society among us Anglo-Saxons is
+yet in its ruder stages. We are not, as a race, social and confiding,
+like the French and Italians and Germans. We have a word for home, and
+our home is often a moated grange, an island, a castle with its
+drawbridge up, cutting us off from all but our own home-circle. In
+France and Germany and Italy there are the boulevards and public
+gardens, where people do their family living in common. Mr. A is
+breakfasting under one tree, with wife and children around, and Mr. B is
+breakfasting under another tree, hard by; and messages, nods, and smiles
+pass backward and forward. Families see each other daily in these public
+resorts, and exchange mutual offices of good-will. Perhaps from these
+customs of society come that na�ve simplicity and _abandon_ which one
+remarks in the Continental, in opposition to the Anglo-Saxon, habits of
+conversation. A Frenchman or an Italian will talk to you of his feelings
+and plans and prospects with an unreserve that is perfectly
+unaccountable to you, who have always felt that such things must be kept
+for the very innermost circle of home privacy. But the Frenchman or
+Italian has from a child been brought up to pass his family life in
+places of public resort, in constant contact and intercommunion with
+other families; and the social and conversational instinct has thus been
+daily strengthened. Hence the reunions of these people have been
+characterized by a sprightliness and vigor and spirit that the
+Anglo-Saxon has in vain attempted to seize and reproduce. English and
+American _conversazioni_ have very generally proved a failure, from the
+rooted, frozen habit of reticence and reserve which grows with our
+growth and strengthens with our strength. The fact is, that the
+Anglo-Saxon race as a race does not enjoy talking, and, except in rare
+instances, does not talk well. A daily convocation of people, without
+refreshments or any extraneous object but the simple pleasure of seeing
+and talking with each other, is a thing that can scarcely be understood
+in English or American society. Social entertainment presupposes in the
+Anglo-Saxon mind _something to eat_, and not only something, but a great
+deal. Enormous dinners or great suppers constitute the entertainment.
+Nobody seems to have formed the idea that the talking--the simple
+exchange of the social feelings--_is_, of itself, the entertainment, and
+that _being together_ is the pleasure.
+
+"Madame Recamier for years had a circle of friends who met every
+afternoon in her _salon_, from four to six o'clock, for the simple and
+sole pleasure of talking with each other. The very first wits and men of
+letters and statesmen and _savans_ were enrolled in it, and each brought
+to the entertainment some choice _morceau_ which he had laid aside from
+his own particular field to add to the feast. The daily intimacy gave
+each one such perfect insight into all the others' habits of thought,
+tastes, and preferences, that the conversation was like the celebrated
+music of the _Conservatoire_ in Paris, a concert of perfectly chorded
+instruments taught by long habit of harmonious intercourse to keep exact
+time and tune together.
+
+"_Real_ conversation presupposes intimate acquaintance. People must see
+each other often enough to wear off the rough bark and outside rind of
+common-places and conventionalities in which their real ideas are
+enwrapped, and give forth without reserve their innermost and best
+feelings. Now what is called a large party is the first and rudest form
+of social intercourse. The most we can say of it is, that it is better
+than nothing. Men and women are crowded together like cattle in a pen.
+They look at each other, they jostle each other, exchange a few common
+bleatings, and eat together; and so the performance terminates. One may
+be crushed evening after evening against men or women, and learn very
+little about them. You may decide that a lady is good-tempered, when any
+amount of trampling on the skirt of her new silk dress brings no cloud
+to her brow. But _is_ it good temper, or only wanton carelessness, which
+cares nothing for waste? You can see that a man is not a gentleman who
+squares his back to ladies at the supper-table, and devours boned turkey
+and _pat� de fois gras_, while they vainly reach over and around him for
+something, and that another is a gentleman so far as to prefer the care
+of his weaker neighbors to the immediate indulgence of his own
+appetites; but further than this you learn little. Sometimes, it is
+true, in some secluded corner, two people of fine nervous system,
+undisturbed by the general confusion, may have a sociable half-hour, and
+really part feeling that they like each other better, and know more of
+each other than before. Yet these general gatherings have, after all,
+their value. They are not so good as something better would be, but
+they cannot be wholly dispensed with. It is far better that Mrs. Bogus
+should give an annual party, when she takes down all her bedsteads and
+throws open her whole house, than that she should never see her friends
+and neighbors inside her doors at all. She may feel that she has neither
+the taste nor the talent for constant small reunions. Such things, she
+may feel, require a social tact which she has not. She would be utterly
+at a loss how to conduct them. Each one would cost her as much anxiety
+and thought as her annual gathering, and prove a failure after all;
+whereas the annual demonstration can be put wholly into the hands of the
+caterer, who comes in force, with flowers, silver, china, servants, and,
+taking the house into his own hands, gives her entertainment for her,
+leaving to her no responsibility but the payment of the bills; and if
+Mr. Bogus does not quarrel with them, we know no reason why any one else
+should; and I think Mrs. Bogus merits well of the republic, for doing
+what she can do towards the hospitalities of the season. I'm sure I
+never cursed her in my heart, even when her strong coffee has held mine
+eyes open till morning, and her superlative lobster-salads have given me
+the very darkest views of human life that ever dyspepsia and east wind
+could engender. Mrs. Bogus is the Eve who offers the apple; but, after
+all, I am the foolish Adam who take and eat what I know is going to hurt
+me, and I am too gallant to visit my sins on the head of my too obliging
+tempter. In country places in particular, where little is going on and
+life is apt to stagnate, a good, large, generous party, which brings the
+whole neighborhood into one house to have a jolly time, to eat, drink,
+and be merry, is really quite a work of love and mercy. People see one
+another in their best clothes, and that is something; the elders
+exchange all manner of simple pleasantries and civilities, and talk over
+their domestic affairs, while the young people flirt, in that wholesome
+manner which is one of the safest of youthful follies. A country party,
+in fact, may be set down as a work of benevolence, and the money
+expended thereon fairly charged to the account of the great cause of
+peace and good-will on earth."
+
+"But don't you think," said my wife, "that, if the charge of providing
+the entertainment were less laborious, these gatherings could be more
+frequent? You see, if a woman feels that she must have five kinds of
+cake, and six kinds of preserves, and even ice-cream and jellies in a
+region where no confectioner comes in to abbreviate her labors, she will
+sit with closed doors, and do nothing towards the general exchange of
+life, because she cannot do as much as Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Parsons. If
+the idea of meeting together had some other focal point than eating, I
+think there would be more social feeling. It might be a musical reunion,
+where the various young people of a circle agreed to furnish each a song
+or an instrumental performance. It might be an impromptu charade party,
+bringing out something of that taste in arrangement of costume, and
+capacity for dramatic effect, of which there is more latent in society
+than we think. It might be the reading of articles in prose and poetry
+furnished to a common paper or portfolio, which would awaken an
+abundance of interest and speculation on the authorship, or it might be
+dramatic readings and recitations. Any or all of these pastimes might
+make an evening so entertaining that a simple cup of tea and a plate of
+cake or biscuit would be all the refreshment needed."
+
+"We may with advantage steal a leaf now and then from some foreign
+book," said I. "In France and Italy, families have their peculiar days
+set apart for the reception of friends at their own houses. The whole
+house is put upon a footing of hospitality and invitation, and the whole
+mind is given to receiving the various friends. In the evening the
+_salon_ is filled. The guests, coming from week to week, for years,
+become in time friends; the resort has the charm of a home circle; there
+are certain faces that you are always sure to meet there. A lady once
+said to me of a certain gentleman and lady whom she missed from her
+circle, 'They have been at our house every Wednesday evening for twenty
+years.' It seems to me that this frequency of meeting is the great
+secret of agreeable society. One sees, in our American life, abundance
+of people who are everything that is charming and cultivated, but one
+never sees enough of them. One meets them at some quiet reunion, passes
+a delightful hour, thinks how charming they are, and wishes one could
+see more of them. But the pleasant meeting is like the encounter of two
+ships in mid-ocean: away we sail, each on his respective course, to see
+each other no more till the pleasant remembrance has died away. Yet were
+there some quiet, home-like resort where we might turn in to renew from
+time to time the pleasant intercourse, to continue the last
+conversation, and to compare anew our readings and our experiences, the
+pleasant hour of liking would ripen into a warm friendship.
+
+"But in order that this may be made possible and practicable, the utmost
+simplicity of entertainment must prevail. In a French _salon_, all is,
+to the last degree, informal. The _bouilloire_, the French teakettle, is
+often tended by one of the gentlemen, who aids his fair neighbors in the
+mysteries of tea-making. One nymph is always to be found at the table
+dispensing tea and talk; and a basket of simple biscuit and cakes,
+offered by another, is all the further repast. The teacups and
+cake-basket are a real addition to the scene, because they cause a
+little lively social bustle, a little chatter and motion,--always of
+advantage in breaking up stiffness, and giving occasion for those
+graceful, airy nothings that answer so good a purpose in facilitating
+acquaintance.
+
+"Nothing can be more charming than the description which Edmond About
+gives, in his novel of 'Tolla,' of the reception evenings of an old
+noble Roman family,--the spirit of repose and quietude through all the
+apartments,--the ease of coming and going,--the perfect homelike spirit
+in which the guests settle themselves to any employment of the hour that
+best suits them,--some to lively chat, some to dreamy, silent lounging,
+some to a game, others, in a distant apartment, to music, and others
+still to a promenade along the terraces.
+
+"One is often in a state of mind and nerves which indisposes for the
+effort of active conversation; one wishes to rest, to observe, to be
+amused without an effort; and a mansion which opens wide its hospitable
+arms, and offers itself to you as a sort of home, where you may rest,
+and do just as the humor suits you, is a perfect godsend at such times.
+You are at home there, your ways are understood, you can do as you
+please,--come early or late, be brilliant or dull,--you are always
+welcome. If you can do nothing for the social whole to-night, it matters
+not. There are many more nights to come in the future, and you are
+entertained on trust, without a challenge.
+
+"I have one friend,--a man of genius, subject to the ebbs and flows of
+animal spirits which attend that organization. Of general society he has
+a nervous horror. A regular dinner or evening party is to him a terror,
+an impossibility; but there is a quiet parlor where stands a much-worn
+old sofa, and it is his delight to enter without knocking, and be found
+lying with half-shut eyes on this friendly couch, while the family life
+goes on around him without a question. Nobody is to mind him, to tease
+him with inquiries or salutations. If he will, he breaks into the stream
+of conversation, and sometimes, rousing up from one of these dreamy
+trances, finds himself, ere he or they know how, in the mood for free
+and friendly talk. People often wonder, 'How do you catch So-and-so? He
+is so shy! I have invited and invited, and he never comes.' We never
+invite, and he comes. We take no note of his coming or his going; we do
+not startle his entrance with acclamation, nor clog his departure with
+expostulation; it is fully understood that with us he shall do just as
+he chooses; and so he chooses to do much that we like.
+
+"The sum of this whole doctrine of society is, that we are to try the
+value of all modes and forms of social entertainment by their effect in
+producing real acquaintance and real friendship and good-will. The first
+and rudest form of seeking this is by a great promiscuous party, which
+simply effects this,--that people at least see each other on the
+outside, and eat together. Next come all those various forms of reunion
+in which the entertainment consists of something higher than staring and
+eating,--some exercise of the faculties of the guests in music, acting,
+recitation, reading, etc.; and these are a great advance, because they
+show people what is in them, and thus lay a foundation for a more
+intelligent appreciation and acquaintance. These are the best substitute
+for the expense, show, and trouble of large parties. They are in their
+nature more refining and intellectual. It is astonishing, when people
+really put together, in some one club or association, all the different
+talents for pleasing possessed by different persons, how clever a circle
+may be gathered--in the least promising neighborhood. A club of ladies
+in one of our cities has had quite a brilliant success. It is held every
+fortnight at the house of the members, according to alphabetical
+sequence. The lady who receives has charge of arranging what the
+entertainment shall be,--whether charade, tableau, reading, recitation,
+or music; and the interest is much increased by the individual taste
+shown in the choice of the diversion and the variety which thence
+follows.
+
+"In the summer time, in the country, open-air reunions are charming
+forms of social entertainment. Croquet parties, which bring young people
+together by daylight for a healthy exercise, and end with a moderate
+share of the evening, are a very desirable amusement. What are called
+'lawn teas' are finding great favor in England and some parts of our
+country. They are simply an early tea enjoyed in a sort of picnic style
+in the grounds about the house. Such an entertainment enables one to
+receive a great many at a time, without crowding, and, being in its very
+idea rustic and informal, can be arranged with very little expense or
+trouble. With the addition of lanterns in the trees and a little music,
+this entertainment may be carried on far into the evening with a very
+pretty effect.
+
+"As to dancing, I have this much to say of it. Either our houses must be
+all built over and made larger, or female crinolines must be made
+smaller, or dancing must continue as it now is, the most absurd and
+ungraceful of all attempts at amusement. The effort to execute round
+dances in the limits of modern houses, in the prevailing style of dress,
+can only lead to developments more startling than agreeable. Dancing in
+the open air, on the shaven green of lawns, is a pretty and graceful
+exercise, and there only can full sweep be allowed for the present
+feminine toilet.
+
+"The English breakfast is an institution growing in favor here, and
+rightfully, too; for a party of fresh, good-natured, well-dressed
+people, assembled at breakfast on a summer morning, is as nearly perfect
+a form of reunion as can be devised. All are in full strength from their
+night's rest; the hour is fresh and lovely, and they are in condition to
+give each other the very cream of their thoughts, the first keen sparkle
+of the uncorked nervous system. The only drawback is, that, in our busy
+American life, the most desirable gentlemen often cannot spare their
+morning hours. Breakfast parties presuppose a condition of leisure; but
+when they can be compassed, they are perhaps the most perfectly
+enjoyable of entertainments."
+
+"Well," said Marianne, "I begin to waver about my party. I don't know,
+after all, but the desire of paying off social debts prompted the idea;
+perhaps we might try some of the agreeable things suggested. But, dear
+me! there's the baby. We'll finish the talk some other time."
+
+
+
+
+GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+He went straight to the stable, and saddled Black Dick.
+
+But, in the very act, his nature revolted. What, turn his back on her
+the moment he had got hold of her money, to take to the other. He could
+not do it.
+
+He went back to her room, and came so suddenly that he caught her
+crying. He asked her what was the matter.
+
+"Nothing," said she, with a sigh: "only a woman's foolish misgivings. I
+was afraid perhaps you would not come back. Forgive me."
+
+"No fear of that," said he. "However, I have taken a resolve not to go
+to-day. If I go to-morrow, I shall be just in time; and Dick wants a
+good day's rest."
+
+Mrs. Gaunt said nothing; but her expressive face was triumphant.
+
+Griffith and she took a walk together; and he, who used to be the more
+genial of the two, was dull, and she full of animation.
+
+This whole day she laid herself out to bewitch her husband, and put him
+in high spirits.
+
+It was up-hill work; but when such a woman sets herself in earnest to
+delight a man, she reads our sex a lesson in the art, that shows us we
+are all babies at it.
+
+However, it was at supper she finally conquered.
+
+Here the lights, her beauty set off with art, her deepening eyes, her
+satin skin, her happy excitement, her wit and tenderness, and joyous
+sprightliness, enveloped Griffith in an atmosphere of delight, and drove
+everything out of his head but herself; and with this, if the truth must
+be told, the sparkling wines co-operated.
+
+Griffith plied the bottle a little too freely. But Mrs. Gaunt, on this
+one occasion, had not the heart to check him. The more he toasted her,
+the more uxorious he became, and she could not deny herself even this
+joy; but, besides, she had less of the prudent wife in her just then
+than of the weak, indulgent mother. Anything rather than check his love:
+she was greedy of it.
+
+At last, however, she said to him, "Sweetheart, I shall go to bed; for,
+I see, if I stay longer, I shall lead thee into a debauch. Be good now;
+drink no more when I am gone. Else I'll say thou lovest thy bottle more
+than thy wife."
+
+He promised faithfully. But, when she was gone, modified his pledge by
+drinking just one bumper to her health, which bumper let in another;
+and, when at last he retired to rest, he was in that state of mental
+confusion wherein the limbs appear to have a memory independent of the
+mind.
+
+In this condition do some men's hands wind up their watches, the mind
+taking no appreciable part in the ceremony.
+
+By some such act of what physicians call "organic memory," Griffith's
+feet carried him to the chamber he had slept in a thousand times, and
+not into the one Mrs. Rider had taken him to the night before.
+
+The next morning he came down rather late for him, and found himself
+treated with a great access of respect by the servants.
+
+His position was no longer doubtful; he was the master of the house.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt followed in due course, and sat at breakfast with him,
+looking young and blooming as Hebe, and her eye never off him long.
+
+She had lived temperately, and had not yet passed the age when happiness
+can restore a woman's beauty and brightness in a single day.
+
+As for him, he was like a man in a heavenly dream: he floated in the
+past and the present: the recent and the future seemed obscure and
+distant, and comparatively in a mist.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But that same afternoon, after a most affectionate farewell, and many
+promises to return as soon as ever he had discharged his obligations,
+Griffith Gaunt started for the "Packhorse," to carry to Mercy Leicester,
+alias Vint, the money Catharine Gaunt had saved by self-denial and
+economy.
+
+And he went south a worse man than he came.
+
+When he left Mercy Leicester, he was a bigamist in law, but not at
+heart. Kate was dead to him: he had given her up forever, and was
+constant and true to his new wife.
+
+But now he was false to Mercy, yet not true to Kate; and, curiously
+enough, it was a day or two passed with his lawful wife that had
+demoralized him. His unlawful wife had hitherto done nothing but improve
+his character.
+
+A great fault once committed is often the first link in a chain of acts
+that look like crimes, but are, strictly speaking, consequences.
+
+This man, blinded at first by his own foible, and after that the sport
+of circumstances, was single-hearted by nature; and his conscience was
+not hardened. He desired earnestly to free himself and both his wives
+from the cruel situation; but to do this, one of them, he saw, must be
+abandoned entirely; and his heart bled for her.
+
+A villain or a fool would have relished the situation; many men would
+have dallied with it; but, to do this erring man justice, he writhed and
+sorrowed under it, and sincerely desired to end it.
+
+And this was why he prized Kate's money so. It enabled him to render a
+great service to her he had injured worse than he had the other, to her
+he saw he must abandon.
+
+But this was feeble comfort, after all. He rode along a miserable man;
+none the less wretched and remorseful, that, ere he got into Lancashire,
+he saw his way clear. This was his resolve: to pay old Vint's debts with
+Kate's money; take the "Packhorse," get it made over to Mercy, give her
+the odd two hundred pounds and his jewels, and fly. He would never see
+her again; but would return home, and get the rest of the two thousand
+pounds from Kate, and send it Mercy by a friend, who should tell her he
+was dead, and had left word with his relations to send her all his
+substance.
+
+At last the "Packhorse" came in sight. He drew rein, and had half a mind
+to turn back; but, instead of that, he crawled on, and very sick and
+cold he felt.
+
+Many a man has marched to the scaffold with a less quaking heart than he
+to the "Packhorse."
+
+His dejection contrasted strangely with the warm reception he met from
+everybody there. And the house was full of women; and they seemed,
+somehow, all cock-a-hoop, and filled with admiration of _him_.
+
+"Where is she?" said he, faintly.
+
+"Hark to the poor soul!" said a gossip. "Dame Vint, where's thy
+daughter? gone out a-walking be-like?"
+
+At this, the other women present chuckled and clucked.
+
+"I'll bring you to her," said Mrs. Vint; "but prithee be quiet and
+reasonable; for to be sure she is none too strong."
+
+There was some little preparation, and then Griffith was ushered into
+Mercy's room, and found her in bed, looking a little pale, but sweeter
+and comelier than ever. She had the bedclothes up to her chin.
+
+"You look wan, my poor lass," said he; "what ails ye?"
+
+"Naught ails me now thou art come," said she, lovingly.
+
+Griffith put the bag on the table. "There," said he, "there's five
+hundred pounds in gold. I come not to thee empty-handed."
+
+"Nor I to thee," said Mercy, with a heavenly smile. "See!"
+
+And she drew down the bedclothes a little, and showed the face of a
+babe scarcely three days old,--a little boy.
+
+She turned in the bed, and tried to hold him up to his father, and said,
+"Here's _my_ treasure for thee!" And the effort, the flush on her cheek,
+and the deep light in her dove-like eyes, told plainly that the poor
+soul thought she had contributed to their domestic wealth something far
+richer than Griffith had with his bag of gold.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The father uttered an ejaculation, and came to her side, and, for a
+moment, Nature overpowered everything else. He kissed the child; he
+kissed Mercy again and again.
+
+"Now God be praised for both," said he, passionately; "but most for
+thee, the best wife, the truest friend--" Here, thinking of her virtues,
+and the blow he had come to strike her, he broke down, and was almost
+choked with emotion; whereupon Mrs. Vint exerted female authority, and
+bundled him out of the room. "Is that the way to carry on at such an a
+time?" said she. "'T was enow to upset her altogether. O, but you men
+have little sense in women's matters. I looked to you to give her
+courage, not to set her off into hysterics after a manner. Nay, keep up
+her heart, or keep your distance, say I, that am her mother."
+
+Griffith took this hint, and ever after took pity on Mercy's weak
+condition; and, suspending the fatal blow, did all he could to restore
+her to health and spirits.
+
+Of course, to do that, he must deceive her; and so his life became a
+lie.
+
+For, hitherto, she had never looked forward much; but now her eyes were
+always diving into futurity; and she lay smiling and discussing the
+prospects of her boy; and Griffith had to sit by her side, and see her
+gnaw the boy's hand, and kiss his feet, and anticipate his brilliant
+career. He had to look and listen with an aching heart, and assent with
+feigned warmth, and an inward chill of horror and remorse.
+
+One Drummond, a travelling artist, called; and Mercy, who had often
+refused to sit to him, consented now; "for," she said, "when he grows
+up, he shall know how his parents looked in their youth, the very year
+their darling was born." So Griffith had to sit with her, and excellent
+likenesses the man produced; but a horrible one of the child. And
+Griffith thought, "Poor soul! a little while and this picture will be
+all that shall be left to thee of me."
+
+For all this time he was actually transacting the preliminaries of
+separation. He got a man of law to make all sure. The farm, the stock,
+the furniture and good-will of the "Packhorse," all these he got
+assigned to Mercy Leicester for her own use, in consideration of three
+hundred and fifty pounds, whereof three hundred were devoted to clearing
+the concern of its debts, the odd fifty was to sweeten the pill to Harry
+Vint.
+
+When the deed came to be executed, Mercy was surprised, and uttered a
+gentle remonstrance. "What have I to do with it?" said she. "'T is thy
+money, not mine."
+
+"No matter," said Griffith; "I choose to have it so."
+
+"Your will is my law," said Mercy.
+
+"Besides," said Griffith, "the old folk will not feel so sore, nor be
+afraid of being turned out, if it is in thy name."
+
+"And that is true," said Mercy. "Now who had thought of that, but my
+good man?" And she threw her arms lovingly round his neck, and gazed on
+him adoringly.
+
+But his lion-like eyes avoided her dove-like eyes; and an involuntary
+shudder ran through him.
+
+The habit of deceiving Mercy led to a consequence he had not
+anticipated. It tightened the chain that held him. She opened his eyes
+more and more to her deep affection, and he began to fear she would die
+if he abandoned her.
+
+And then her present situation was so touching. She had borne him a
+lovely boy; that must be abandoned too, if he left her; and somehow the
+birth of this child had embellished the mother; a delicious pink had
+taken the place of her rustic bloom; and her beauty was more refined and
+delicate. So pure, so loving, so fair, so maternal, to wound her heart
+now, it seemed like stabbing an angel.
+
+One day succeeded to another, and still Griffith had not the heart to
+carry out his resolve. He temporized; he wrote to Kate that he was
+detained by the business; and he stayed on and on, strengthening his
+gratitude and his affection, and weakening his love for the absent, and
+his resolution; till, at last, he became so distracted and divided in
+heart, and so demoralized, that he began to give up the idea of
+abandoning Mercy, and babbled to himself about fate and destiny, and
+decided that the most merciful course would be to deceive both women.
+Mercy was patient. Mercy was unsuspicious. She would content herself
+with occasional visits, if he could only feign some plausible tale to
+account for long absences.
+
+Before he got into this mess, he was a singularly truthful person; but
+now a lie was nothing to him. But, for that matter, many a man has been
+first made a liar by his connection with two women; and by degrees has
+carried his mendacity into other things.
+
+However, though now blessed with mendacity, he was cursed with a lack of
+invention; and sorely puzzled how to live at Hernshaw, yet visit the
+"Packhorse."
+
+The best thing he could hit upon was to pretend to turn bagman; and so
+Mercy would believe he was travelling all over England, when all the
+time he was quietly living at Hernshaw.
+
+And perhaps these long separations might prepare her heart for a final
+parting, and so let in his original plan a few years hence.
+
+He prepared this manoeuvre with some art: he told her, one day, he had
+been to Lancaster, and there fallen in with a friend, who had as good as
+promised him the place of a commercial traveller for a mercantile house
+there.
+
+"A traveller!" said Mercy. "Heaven forbid! If you knew how I wearied for
+you when you went to Cumberland!"
+
+"To Cumberland! How know you I went thither?"
+
+"O, I but guessed that; but now I know it, by your face. But go where
+thou wilt, the house is dull directly. Thou art our sunshine. Isn't he,
+my poppet?"
+
+"Well, well; if it kept me too long from thee, I could give it up. But,
+child, we must think of young master. You could manage the inn, and your
+mother the farm, without me; and I should be earning money on my side. I
+want to make a gentleman of him."
+
+"Anything for _him_," said Mercy: "anything in the world." But the tears
+stood in her eyes.
+
+In furtherance of this deceit, Griffith did one day actually ride to
+Lancaster, and slept there. He wrote to Kate from that town, to say he
+was detained by a slight illness, but hoped to be home in a week: and
+the next day brought Mercy home some ribbons, and told her he had seen
+the merchant, and his brother, and they had made him a very fair offer.
+"But I've a week to think of it," said he; "so there's no hurry."
+
+Mercy fixed her eyes on him in a very peculiar way, and made no reply.
+You must know that something very curious had happened whilst Griffith
+was gone to Lancaster.
+
+A travelling pedler, passing by, was struck with the name on the
+signboard. "Hallo!" said he, "why here's a namesake of mine; I'll have a
+glass of his ale any way."
+
+So he came into the public room, and called for a glass; taking care to
+open his pack, and display his inviting wares. Harry Vint served him.
+"Here's your health," said the pedler. "You must drink with me, you
+must."
+
+"And welcome," said the old man.
+
+"Well," said the pedler, "I do travel five counties; but for all that,
+you are the first namesake I have found. I am Thomas Leicester, too, as
+sure as you are a living sinner."
+
+The old man laughed, and said, "Then no namesake of mine are you; for
+they call me Harry Vint. Thomas Leicester, he that keeps this inn now,
+is my son-in-law: he is gone to Lancaster this morning."
+
+The pedler said that was a pity, he should have liked to see his
+namesake, and drink a glass with him.
+
+"Come again to-morrow," said Harry Vint, ironically. "Dame," he cried,
+"come hither. Here's another Thomas Leicester for ye, wants to see our
+one."
+
+Mrs. Vint turned her head, and inspected the pedler from afar, as if he
+was some natural curiosity.
+
+"Where do you come from, young man?" said she.
+
+"Well, I came from Kendal last; but I am Cumberland born."
+
+"Why, that is where t'other comes from," suggested Paul Carrick, who was
+once more a frequenter of the house.
+
+"Like enow," said Mrs. Vint.
+
+With that she dropped the matter as one of no consequence, and retired.
+But she went straight to Mercy, in the parlor, and told her there was a
+man in the kitchen that called himself Thomas Leicester.
+
+"Well, mother?" said Mercy, with high indifference, for she was trying
+new socks on King Baby.
+
+"He comes from Cumberland."
+
+"Well, to be sure, names do run in counties."
+
+"That is true; but, seems to me, he favors your man: much of a height,
+and--There, do just step into the kitchen a moment."
+
+"La, mother," said Mercy, "I don't desire to see any more Thomas
+Leicesters than my own: 'tis the man, not the name. Isn't it, my lamb?"
+
+Mrs. Vint went back to the kitchen discomfited; but, with quiet
+pertinacity, she brought Thomas Leicester into the parlor, pack and all.
+
+"There, Mercy," said she, "lay out a penny with thy husband's namesake."
+
+Mercy did not reply, for at that moment Thomas Leicester caught sight of
+Griffith's portrait, and gave a sudden start, and a most extraordinary
+look besides.
+
+Both the women's eyes happened to be upon him, and they saw at once that
+he knew the original.
+
+"You know my husband?" said Mercy Vint, after a while.
+
+"Not I," said Leicester, looking askant at the picture.
+
+"Don't tell no lies," said Mrs. Vint. "You do know him well." And she
+pointed her assertion by looking at the portrait.
+
+"O, I know him whose picture hangs there, of course," said Leicester.
+
+"Well, and that _is_ her husband."
+
+"O, that is her husband, is it?" And he was unaffectedly puzzled.
+
+Mercy turned pale. "Yes, he is my husband," said she, "and this is our
+child. Can you tell me anything about him? for he came a stranger to
+these parts. Belike you are a kinsman of his?"
+
+"So they say."
+
+This reply puzzled both women.
+
+"Any way," said the pedler, "you see we are marked alike." And he showed
+a long black mole on his forehead.
+
+Mercy was now as curious as she had been indifferent. "Tell me all about
+him," said she: "how comes it that he is a gentleman and thou a pedler?"
+
+"Well, because my mother was a gypsy, and his a gentlewoman."
+
+"What brought him to these parts?"
+
+"Trouble, they say."
+
+"What trouble?"
+
+"Nay, I know not." This after a slight but visible hesitation.
+
+"But you have heard say."
+
+"Well, I am always on the foot, and don't bide long enough in one place
+to learn all the gossip. But I do remember hearing he was gone to sea:
+and that was a lie, for he had settled here, and married you. I'fackins,
+he might have done worse. He has got a bonny buxom wife, and a rare fine
+boy, to be sure."
+
+And now the pedler was on his guard, and determined he would not be the
+one to break up the household he saw before him, and afflict the
+dove-eyed wife and mother. He was a good-natured fellow, and averse to
+make mischief with his own hands. Besides, he took for granted Griffith
+loved his new wife better than the old one; and, above all, the
+punishment of bigamy was severe, and was it for him to get the Squire
+indicted, and branded in the hand for a felon?
+
+So the women could get nothing more out of him; he lied, evaded,
+shuffled, and feigned utter ignorance; pleading, adroitly enough, his
+vagrant life.
+
+All this, however, aroused vague suspicions in Mrs. Vint's mind, and she
+went and whispered them to her favorite, Paul Carrick. "And, Paul," said
+she, "call for what you like, and score it to me; only treat this pedler
+till he leaks out summut: to be sure he'll tell a man more than he will
+us."
+
+Paul entered with zeal into this commission: treated the pedler to a
+chop, and plied him well with the best ale.
+
+All this failed to loose the pedler's tongue at the time, but it muddled
+his judgment: on resuming his journey, he gave his entertainer a wink.
+Carrick rose and followed him out.
+
+"You seem a decent lad," said the pedler, "and a good-hearted one. Wilt
+do me a favor?"
+
+Carrick said he would, if it lay in his power.
+
+"O, it is easy enow," said the pedler. "'T is just to give young Thomas
+Leicester, into his own hand, this here trifle as soon as ever he comes
+home." And he handed Carrick a hard substance wrapped up in paper.
+Carrick promised.
+
+"Ay, ay, lad," said the pedler, "but see you play fair, and give it him
+unbeknown. Now don't you be so simple as show it to any of the
+womenfolk. D' ye understand?"
+
+"All right," said Carrick, knowingly. And so the boon companions for a
+day shook hands and parted.
+
+And Carrick took the little parcel straight to Mrs. Vint, and told her
+every word the pedler had said.
+
+And Mrs. Vint took the little parcel straight to Mercy, and told her
+what Carrick said the pedler had said.
+
+And the pedler went off flushed with beer and self-complacency; for he
+thought he had drawn the line precisely; had faithfully discharged his
+promise to his lady and benefactress, but not so as to make mischief in
+another household.
+
+Such was the power of Ale--in the last century.
+
+Mercy undid the paper and found the bullet, on which was engraved
+
+    "I LOVE KATE."
+
+As she read these words a knife seemed to enter her heart, the pang was
+so keen.
+
+But she soon took herself to task. "Thou naughty woman," said she.
+"What! jealous of the dead?"
+
+She wrapped the bullet up; put it carefully away; had a good cry; and
+was herself again.
+
+But all this set her watching Griffith, and reading his face. She had
+subtle, vague misgivings, and forbade her mother to mention the pedler's
+visit to Griffith yet awhile. Womanlike she preferred to worm out the
+truth.
+
+On the evening of his return from Lancaster, as he was smoking his pipe,
+she quietly tested him. She fixed her eyes on him, and said, "One was
+here to-day that knows thee, and brought thee this." She then handed him
+the bullet, and watched his face.
+
+Griffith undid the paper carelessly enough; but, at sight of the bullet,
+uttered a loud cry, and his eyes seemed ready to start out of his head.
+
+He turned as pale as ashes, and stammered piteously, "What? what? what
+d'ye mean? In Heaven's name, what is this? How? Who?"
+
+Mercy was surprised, but also much concerned at his distress; and tried
+to soothe him. She also asked him piteously, whether she had done wrong
+to give it him. "God knows," said she, "'t is no business of mine to go
+and remind thee of her thou hast loved better mayhap than thou lovest
+me. But to keep it from thee, and she in her grave,--O, I had not the
+heart."
+
+But Griffith's agitation increased instead of diminishing; and, even
+while she was trying to soothe him, he rushed wildly out of the room,
+and into the open air.
+
+Mercy went, in perplexity and distress, and told her mother.
+
+Mrs. Vint, not being blinded by affection, thought the whole thing had a
+very ugly look, and said as much. She gave it as her opinion that this
+Kate was alive, and had sent the token herself, to make mischief between
+man and wife.
+
+"That shall she never," said Mercy, stoutly; but now her suspicions were
+thoroughly excited, and her happiness disturbed.
+
+The next day, Griffith found her in tears. He asked her what was the
+matter. She would not tell him.
+
+"You have your secrets," said she; "and so now I have mine."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Griffith became very uneasy.
+
+For now Mercy was often in tears, and Mrs. Vint looked daggers at him.
+
+All this was mysterious and unintelligible, and, to a guilty man, very
+alarming.
+
+At last he implored Mercy to speak out. He wanted to know the worst.
+
+Then Mercy did speak out. "You have deceived me," said she. "Kate is
+alive. This very morning, between sleeping and waking, you whispered her
+name; ay, false man, whispered it like a lover. You told me she was
+dead. But she is alive, and has sent you a reminder, and the bare sight
+of it hath turned your heart her way again. What shall I do? Why did you
+marry me, if you could not forget her? I did not want you to desert any
+woman for me. The desire of my heart was always for your happiness. But
+O Thomas, deceit and falsehood will not bring you happiness, no more
+than they will me. What shall I do? what shall I do?"
+
+Her tears flowed freely, and Griffith sat down, and groaned with horror
+and remorse, beside her.
+
+He had not the courage to tell her the horrible truth,--that Kate was
+his wife, and she was not.
+
+"Do not thou afflict thyself," he muttered. "Of course, with you putting
+that bullet in my hand so sudden, it set my fancy a wandering back to
+other days."
+
+"Ah!" said Mercy, "if it be no worse than that, there's little harm. But
+why did thy namesake start so at sight of thy picture?"
+
+"My namesake!" cried Griffith, all aghast.
+
+"Ay, he that brought thee that love-token,--Thomas Leicester. Nay, for
+very shame, feign not ignorance of him. Why, he hath thy very mole on
+his temple, and knew thy picture in a moment. He is thy half-brother; is
+he not?"
+
+"I am a ruined man," cried Griffith, and sank into a chair without power
+of motion.
+
+"God help me, what is all this?" cried Mercy. "O Thomas, Thomas, I could
+forgive thee aught but deceit: for both our sakes speak out, and tell me
+the worst. No harm shall come near thee while I live."
+
+"How can I tell thee? I am an unfortunate man. The world will call me a
+villain; yet I am not a villain at heart. But who will believe me? I
+have broken the law. Thee I could trust, but not thy folk; they never
+loved me. Mercy, for pity's sake, when was that Thomas Leicester here?"
+
+"Four days ago."
+
+"Which way went he?"
+
+"I hear he told Paul he was going to Cumberland."
+
+"If he gets there before me, I shall rot in gaol."
+
+"Now God forbid! O Thomas, then mount and ride after him."
+
+"I will, and this very moment."
+
+He saddled Black Dick, and loaded his pistols for the journey; but, ere
+he went, a pale face looked out into the yard, and a finger beckoned. It
+was Mercy. She bade him follow her. She took him to her room, where
+their child was sleeping; and then she closed and even locked the door.
+
+"No soul can hear us," said she; "now look me in the face, and tell me
+God's truth. Who and what are you?"
+
+Griffith shuddered at this exordium; he made no reply.
+
+Mercy went to a box and took out an old shirt of his,--the one he wore
+when he first came to the "Packhorse." She brought it to him and showed
+him "G. G." embroidered on it with a woman's hair. (Ryder's.)
+
+"Here are your initials," said she; "now leave useless falsehoods; be a
+man, and tell me your real name."
+
+"My name is Griffith Gaunt."
+
+Mercy, sick at heart, turned her head away; but she had the resolution
+to urge him on. "Go on," said she, in an agonized whisper: "if you
+believe in God and a judgment to come, deceive me no more. The truth, I
+say! the truth!"
+
+"So be it," said Griffith, desperately: "when I have told thee what a
+villain I am, I can die at thy feet, and then thou wilt forgive me.
+
+"Who is Kate?" was all she replied.
+
+"Kate is my wife."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I thought her false; who could think any other? appearances were so
+strong against her: others thought so beside me. I raised my hand to
+kill her; but she never winced. I trampled on him I believed her
+paramour: I fled, and soon I lay a-dying in this house for her sake. I
+told thee she was dead. Alas! I thought her dead to me. I went back to
+our house (it is her house) sore against the grain, to get money for
+thee and thine. Then she cleared herself, bright as the sun, and pure as
+snow. She was all in black for me; she had put by money, against I
+should come to my senses and need it. I told her I owed a debt in
+Lancashire, a debt of gratitude as well as money: and so I did. How have
+I repaid it? The poor soul forced five hundred pounds on me. I had much
+ado to keep her from bringing it hither with her own hands. O, villain!
+villain! Then I thought to leave thee, and send thee word I was dead,
+and heap money on thee. Money! But how could I? thou wast my
+benefactress, my more than wife. All the riches of the world can make no
+return to thee. What, what shall I do? Shall I fly with thee and thy
+child across the seas? Shall I go back to her? No; the best thing I can
+do is to take this good pistol, and let the life out of my dishonorable
+carcass, and free two honest women from me by one resolute act."
+
+In his despair he cocked the pistol; and, at a word from Mercy, this
+tale had ended.
+
+But the poor woman, pale and trembling, tottered across the room, and
+took it out of his hand. "I would not harm thy body, nor thy soul," she
+gasped. "Let me draw my breath and think."
+
+She rocked herself to and fro in silence.
+
+Griffith stood trembling like a criminal before his judge.
+
+It was long ere she could speak, for anguish. Yet when she did speak, it
+was with a sort of deadly calm.
+
+"Go tell the truth to _her_, as you have done to me; and, if she can
+forgive you, all the better for you. I can never forgive you, nor yet
+can harm you. My child! my child! Thy father is our ruin. O, begone,
+man, or the sight of you will kill us both."
+
+Then he fell at her knees; kissed, and wept over her cold hand; and, in
+his pity and despair, offered to cross the seas with her and her child,
+and so repair the wrong he had done her.
+
+"Tempt me not," she sobbed. "Go, leave me! None here shall ever know thy
+crime, but she whose heart thou hast broken, and ruined her good name."
+
+He took her in his arms, in spite of her resistance, and kissed her
+passionately; but, for the first time, she shuddered at his embrace; and
+that gave him the power to leave her.
+
+He rushed from her, all but distracted, and rode away to Cumberland;
+but not to tell the truth to Kate, if he could possibly help it.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+At this particular time, no man's presence was more desired in that
+county than Griffith Gaunt's.
+
+And this I need not now be telling the reader, if I had related this
+story on the plan of a miscellaneous chronicle. But the affairs of the
+heart are so absorbing, that, even in a narrative, they thrust aside
+important circumstances of a less moving kind.
+
+I must therefore go back a step, before I advance further. You must know
+that forty years before our Griffith Gaunt saw the light, another
+Griffith Gaunt was born in Cumberland: a younger son, and the family
+estate entailed; but a shrewd lad, who chose rather to hunt fortune
+elsewhere than to live in miserable dependence on his elder brother. His
+godfather, a city merchant, encouraged him, and he left Cumberland. He
+went into commerce, and in twenty years became a wealthy man,--so
+wealthy that he lived to look down on his brother's estate, which he had
+once thought opulence. His life was all prosperity, with a single
+exception; but that a bitter one. He laid out some of his funds in a
+fashionable and beautiful wife. He loved her before marriage; and, as
+she was always cold to him, he loved her more and more.
+
+In the second year of their marriage she ran away from him; and no
+beggar in the streets of London was so miserable as the wealthy
+merchant.
+
+It blighted the man, and left him a sore heart all his days. He never
+married again; and railed on all womankind for this one. He led a
+solitary life in London till he was sixty-nine; and then, all of a
+sudden, Nature, or accident, or both, changed his whole habits. Word
+came to him that the family estate, already deeply mortgaged, was for
+sale, and a farmer who had rented a principal farm on it, and held a
+heavy mortgage, had made the highest offer.
+
+Old Griffith sent down Mr. Atkins, his solicitor, post haste, and
+snapped the estate out of that purchaser's hands.
+
+When the lands and house had been duly conveyed to him, he came down,
+and his heart seemed to bud again, in the scenes of his childhood.
+
+Finding the house small, and built in a valley instead of on rising
+ground, he got an army of bricklayers, and began to build a mansion with
+a rapidity unheard of in those parts; and he looked about for some one
+to inherit it.
+
+The name of Gaunt had dwindled down to three, since he left Cumberland;
+but a rich man never lacks relations. Featherstonhaughs, and Underhills,
+and even Smiths, poured in, with parish registers in their laps, and
+proved themselves Gauntesses, and flattered and carneyed the new head of
+the family.
+
+Then the perverse old gentleman felt inclined to look elsewhere. He knew
+he had a namesake at the other side of the county, but this namesake did
+not come near him.
+
+This independent Gaunt excited his curiosity and interest. He made
+inquiries, and heard that young Griffith had just quarrelled with his
+wife, and gone away in despair.
+
+Griffith senior took for granted that the fault lay with Mrs. Gaunt, and
+wasted some good sympathy on Griffith junior.
+
+On further inquiry he learned that the truant was dependent on his wife.
+Then, argued the moneyed man, he would not run away from her but that
+his wound was deep.
+
+The consequence of all this was, that he made a will very favorable to
+his absent and injured (?) namesake. He left numerous bequests; but made
+Griffith his residuary legatee; and, having settled this matter, urged
+on, and superintended his workmen.
+
+Alas! just as the roof was going on, a narrower house claimed him, and
+he made good the saying of the wise bard,--
+
+              "Tu secanda marmora
+    Locas sub ipsum funus et sepulchri
+    Immemor struis domos."
+
+The heir of his own choosing could not be found to attend his funeral;
+and Mr. Atkins, his solicitor, a very worthy man, was really hurt at
+this. With the quiet bitterness of a displeased attorney, he merely sent
+Mrs. Gaunt word her husband inherited something under the will, and she
+would do well to produce him, or else furnish him (Atkins) with proof of
+his decease.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt was offended by this cavalier note, and replied very like a
+woman, and very unlike Business.
+
+"I do not know where he is," said she, "nor whether he is alive or dead.
+Nor do I feel disposed to raise the hue and cry after him. But favor me
+with your address, and I shall let you know should I hear anything about
+him."
+
+Mr. Atkins was half annoyed, half amused, at this piece of indifference.
+It never occurred to him that it might be all put on.
+
+He wrote back to say that the estate was large, and, owing to the terms
+of the will, could not be administered without Mr. Griffith Gaunt; and,
+in the interest of the said Griffith Gaunt, and also of the other
+legatees, he really must advertise for him.
+
+La Gaunt replied, that he was very welcome to advertise for whomsoever
+he pleased.
+
+Mr. Atkins was a very worthy man; but human. To tell the truth, he was
+himself one of the other legatees. He inherited (and, to be just, had
+well deserved) four thousand guineas, under the will, and could not
+legally touch it without Griffith Gaunt. This little circumstance
+spurred his professional zeal.
+
+Mr. Atkins advertised for Griffith Gaunt, in the London and Cumberland
+papers, and in the usual enticing form. He was to apply to Mr. Atkins,
+Solicitor, of Gray's Inn, and he would hear of something greatly to his
+advantage.
+
+These advertisements had not been out a fortnight, when Griffith Gaunt
+came home, as I have related.
+
+But Mr. Atkins had punished Mrs. Gaunt for her _insouciance_, by not
+informing her of the extent of her good fortune; so she merely told
+Griffith, casually, that old Griffith Gaunt had left him some money, and
+the solicitor, Mr. Atkins, could not get on without him. Even this
+information she did not vouchsafe until she had given him her �500, for
+she grudged Atkins the pleasure of supplying her husband with money.
+
+However, as soon as Griffith left her, she wrote to Mr. Atkins to say
+that her husband had come home in perfect health, thank God; had only
+stayed two days, but was to return in a week.
+
+When ten days had elapsed, Atkins wrote to inquire.
+
+She replied he had not yet returned; and this went on till Mr. Atkins
+showed considerable impatience.
+
+As for Mrs. Gaunt, she made light of the matter to Mr. Atkins; but, in
+truth, this new mystery irritated her and pained her deeply.
+
+In one respect she was more unhappy than she had been before he came
+back at all. Then she was alone; her door was closed to commentators.
+But now, on the strength of so happy a reconciliation, she had
+re-entered the world, and received visits from Sir George Neville, and
+others; and, above all, had announced that Griffith would be back for
+good in a few days. So now his continued absence exposed her to sly
+questions from her own sex, to the interchange of glances between female
+visitors, as well as to the internal torture of doubt and suspense.
+
+But what distracted her most was the view Mrs. Ryder took of the matter.
+
+That experienced lady had begun to suspect some other woman was at the
+bottom of Griffith's conduct; and her own love for Griffith was now
+soured. Repeated disappointments and affronts, _spret�que injuria
+form�_, had not quite extinguished it, but had mixed so much spite with
+it that she was equally ready to kiss or to stab him.
+
+So she took every opportunity to instil into her mistress, whose
+confidence she had won at last, that Griffith was false to her.
+
+"That is the way with these men that are so ready to suspect others.
+Take my word for it, Dame, he has carried your money to his leman. 'Tis
+still the honest woman that must bleed for some nasty trollop or other."
+
+She enforced this theory by examples drawn from her own observations in
+families, and gave the very names; and drove Mrs. Gaunt almost mad with
+fear, anger, jealousy, and cruel suspense. She could not sleep, she
+could not eat; she was in a constant fever.
+
+Yet before the world she battled it out bravely, and indeed none but
+Ryder knew the anguish of her spirit, and her passionate wrath.
+
+At last there came a most eventful day.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt had summoned all her pride and fortitude, and invited certain
+ladies and gentlemen to dine and sup.
+
+She was one of the true Spartan breed, and played the hostess as well as
+if her heart had been at ease. It was an age in which the host struggled
+fiercely to entertain the guests; and Mrs. Gaunt was taxing all her
+powers of pleasing in the dining-room, when an unexpected guest strolled
+into the kitchen: the pedler, Thomas Leicester.
+
+Jane welcomed him cordially, and he was soon seated at a table eating
+his share of the feast.
+
+Presently Mrs. Ryder came down, dressed in her best, and looking
+handsomer than ever.
+
+At sight of her, Tom Leicester's affection revived; and he soon took
+occasion to whisper an inquiry whether she was still single.
+
+"Ay," said she, "and like to be."
+
+"Waiting for the master still? Mayhap I could cure you of that
+complaint. But least said is soonest mended."
+
+This mysterious hint showed Ryder he had a secret burning his bosom. The
+sly hussy said nothing just then, but plied him with ale and flattery;
+and, when he whispered a request for a private meeting out of doors, she
+cast her eyes down, and assented.
+
+And in that meeting she carried herself so adroitly, that he renewed his
+offer of marriage, and told her not to waste her fancy on a man who
+cared neither for her nor any other she in Cumberland.
+
+"Prove that to me," said Ryder, cunningly, "and may be I'll take you at
+your word."
+
+The bribe was not to be resisted. Tom revealed to her, under a solemn
+promise of secrecy, that the Squire had got a wife and child in
+Lancashire; and had a farm and an inn, which latter he kept under the
+name of--Thomas Leicester.
+
+In short, he told her, in his way, all the particulars I have told in
+mine.
+
+Which told it the best will never be known in this world.
+
+She led him on with a voice of very velvet. He did not see how her cheek
+paled and her eyes flashed jealous fury.
+
+When she had sucked him dry, she suddenly turned on him, with a cold
+voice, and said, "I can't stay any longer with you just now. She will
+want me."
+
+"You will meet me here again, lass?" said Tom, ruefully.
+
+"Yes, for a minute, after supper."
+
+She then left him, and went to Mrs. Gaunt's room, and sat crouching
+before the fire, all hate and bitterness.
+
+What? he had left the wife he loved, and yet had not turned to her!
+
+She sat there, waiting for Mrs. Gaunt, and nursing her vindictive fury,
+two mortal hours.
+
+At last, just before supper, Mrs. Gaunt came up to her room, to cool her
+fevered hands and brow, and found this creature crouched by her fire,
+all in a heap, with pale cheek, and black eyes that glittered like
+basilisk's.
+
+"What is the matter, child?" said Mrs. Gaunt. "Good heavens! what hath
+happened?"
+
+"Dame!" said Ryder, sternly, "I have got news of him."
+
+"News of _him_?" faltered Mrs. Gaunt. "Bad news?"
+
+"I don't know whether to tell you or not," said Ryder, sulkily, but with
+a touch of human feeling.
+
+"What cannot I bear? What have I not borne? Tell me the truth."
+
+The words were stout, but she trembled all over in uttering them.
+
+"Well, it is as I said, only worse. Dame, he has got a wife and child in
+another county; and no doubt been deceiving her, as he has _us_."
+
+"A wife!" gasped Mrs. Gaunt, and one white hand clutched her bosom, and
+the other the mantel-piece.
+
+"Ay, Thomas Leicester, that is in the kitchen now, saw her, and saw his
+picture hanging aside hers on the wall. And he goes by the name of
+Thomas Leicester. That was what made Tom go into the inn, seeing his own
+name on the signboard. Nay, Dame, never give way like that. Lean on
+me,--so. He is a villain,--a false, jealous, double-faced villain."
+
+Mrs. Gaunt's head fell back on Ryder's shoulder, and she said no word;
+but only moaned and moaned, and her white teeth clicked convulsively
+together.
+
+Ryder wept over her sad state: the tears were half impulse, half
+crocodile.
+
+She applied hartshorn to the sufferer's nostrils, and tried to rouse her
+mind by exciting her anger. But all was in vain. There hung the betrayed
+wife, pale, crushed, and quivering under the cruel blow.
+
+Ryder asked her if she should go down and excuse her to her guests.
+
+She nodded a feeble assent.
+
+Ryder then laid her down on the bed with her head low, and was just
+about to leave her on that errand, when hurried steps were heard outside
+the door; and one of the female servants knocked; and, not waiting to be
+invited, put her head in, and cried, "O, Dame, the Master is come home.
+He is in the kitchen."
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+Mrs. Ryder made an agitated motion with her hand, and gave the girl such
+a look withal, that she retired precipitately.
+
+But Mrs. Gaunt had caught the words, and they literally transformed her.
+She sprang off the bed, and stood erect, and looked a Saxon Pythoness:
+golden hair streaming down her back, and gray eyes gleaming with fury.
+
+She caught up a little ivory-handled knife, and held it above her head.
+
+"I'll drive this into his heart before them all," she cried, "and tell
+them the reason _afterwards_."
+
+Ryder looked at her for a moment in utter terror. She saw a woman with
+grander passions than herself; a woman that looked quite capable of
+executing her sanguinary threat. Ryder made no more ado, but slipped out
+directly to prevent a meeting that might be attended with terrible
+consequences.
+
+She found her master in the kitchen, splashed with mud, drinking a horn
+of ale after his ride, and looking rather troubled and anxious; and, by
+the keen eye of her sex, she saw that the female servants were also in
+considerable anxiety. The fact is, they had just extemporized a lie.
+
+Tom Leicester, being near the kitchen window, had seen Griffith ride
+into the court-yard.
+
+At sight of that well-known figure, he drew back, and his heart quaked
+at his own imprudence, in confiding Griffith's secret to Caroline Ryder.
+
+"Lasses," said he, hastily, "do me a kindness for old acquaintance.
+Here's the Squire. For Heaven's sake, don't let him know I am in the
+house, or there will be bloodshed between us. He is a hasty man, and I'm
+another. I'll tell ye more by and by."
+
+The next moment Griffith's tread was heard approaching the very door,
+and Leicester darted into the housekeeper's room, and hid in a cupboard
+there.
+
+Griffith opened the kitchen door, and stood upon the threshold.
+
+The women courtesied to him, and were loud in welcome.
+
+He returned their civilities briefly; and then his first word was, "Hath
+Thomas Leicester been here?"
+
+You know how servants stick together against their master! The girls
+looked him in the face, like candid doves, and told him Leicester had
+not been that way for six months or more.
+
+"Why, I have tracked him to within two miles," said Griffith,
+doubtfully.
+
+"Then he is sure to come here," said Jane, adroitly. "He wouldn't ever
+think to go by us."
+
+"The moment he enters the house, you let me know. He is a
+mischief-making loon."
+
+He then asked for a horn of ale; and, as he finished it, Ryder came in,
+and he turned to her, and asked her after her mistress.
+
+"She was well, just now," said Ryder; "but she has been took with a
+spasm; and it would be well, sir, if you could dress, and entertain the
+company in her place awhile. For I must tell you, your being so long
+away hath set their tongues going, and almost broken my lady's heart."
+
+Griffith sighed, and said he could not help it, and now he was here, he
+would do all in his power to please her. "I'll go to her at once," said
+he.
+
+"No, sir!" said Ryder, firmly. "Come with me. I want to speak to you."
+
+She took him to his bachelor's room, and stayed a few minutes to talk to
+him.
+
+"Master," said she, solemnly, "things are very serious here. Why did you
+stay so long away? Our dame says some woman is at the bottom of it, and
+she'll put a knife into you if you come a-nigh her."
+
+This threat did not appall Griffith, as Ryder expected. Indeed, he
+seemed rather flattered.
+
+"Poor Kate!" said he; "she is just the woman to do it. But I am afraid
+she does not love me enough for that. But indeed how should she?"
+
+"Well, sir," replied Ryder, "oblige me by keeping clear of her for a
+little while. I have got orders to make your bed here. Now, dress, like
+a good soul, and then go down and show respect to the company that is in
+your house; for they know you are here."
+
+"Why, that is the least I can do," said Griffith. "Put you out what I am
+to wear, and then run and say I'll be with them anon."
+
+Griffith walked into the dining-room, and, somewhat to his surprise,
+after what Ryder had said, found Mrs. Gaunt seated at the head of her
+own table, and presiding like a radiant queen over a brilliant assembly.
+
+He walked in, and made a low bow to his guests first: then he approached
+to greet his wife more freely; but she drew back decidedly, and made him
+a courtesy, the dignity and distance of which struck the whole company.
+
+Sir George Neville, who was at the bottom of the table, proposed, with
+his usual courtesy, to resign his place to Griffith. But Mrs. Gaunt
+forbade the arrangement.
+
+"No, Sir George," said she; "this is but an occasional visitor; you are
+my constant friend."
+
+If this had been said pleasantly, well and good; but the guests looked
+in vain into their hostess's face for the smile that ought to have
+accompanied so strange a speech and disarmed it.
+
+"Rarities are the more welcome," said a lady, coming to the rescue; and
+edged aside to make room for him.
+
+"Madam," said Griffith, "I am in your debt for that explanation; but I
+hope you will be no rarity here, for all that."
+
+Supper proceeded; but the mirth languished. Somehow or other, the chill
+fact that there was a grave quarrel between two at the table, and those
+two man and wife, insinuated itself into the spirits of the guests.
+There began to be lulls,--fatal lulls. And in one of these, some unlucky
+voice was heard to murmur, "Such a meeting of man and wife I never
+saw."
+
+The hearers felt miserable at this personality, that fell upon the ear
+of silence like a thunderbolt.
+
+Griffith was ill-advised enough to notice the remark, though clearly not
+intended for his ears. For one thing, his jealousy had actually revived
+at the cool preference Kate had shown his old rival, Neville.
+
+"Oh!" said he, bitterly, "a man is not always his wife's favorite."
+
+"He does not always deserve to be," said Mrs. Gaunt, sternly.
+
+When matters had gone that length, one idea seemed to occur pretty
+simultaneously to all the well-bred guests; and that idea was, _Sauve
+qui peut_.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt took leave of them, one by one, and husband and wife were
+left alone.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt by this time was alarmed at the violence of her own passions,
+and wished to avoid Griffith for that night at all events. So she cast
+one terribly stern look upon him, and was about to retire in grim
+silence. But he, indignant at the public affront she had put on him, and
+not aware of the true cause, unfortunately detained her. He said,
+sulkily, "What sort of a reception was that you gave me?"
+
+This was too much. She turned on him furiously. "Too good for thee, thou
+heartless creature! Thomas Leicester is here, and I know thee for a
+villain."
+
+"You know nothing," cried Griffith. "Would you believe that
+mischief-making knave? What has he told you?"
+
+"Go back to _her_!" cried Mrs. Gaunt furiously. "Me you can deceive and
+pillage no more. So, this was your jealousy! False and forsworn
+yourself, you dared to suspect and insult me. Ah! and you think I am the
+woman to endure this? I'll have your life for it! I'll have your life."
+
+Griffith endeavored to soften her,--protested that, notwithstanding
+appearances, he had never loved but her.
+
+"I'll soon be rid of you, and your love," said the raging woman. "The
+constables shall come for you to-morrow. You have seen how I can love,
+you shall know how I can hate."
+
+She then, in her fury, poured out a torrent of reproaches and threats
+that made his blood run cold. He could not answer her: he _had_
+suspected her wrongfully, and been false to her himself. He _had_ abused
+her generosity, and taken her money for Mercy Vint.
+
+After one or two vain efforts to check the torrent, he sank into a
+chair, and hid his face in his hands.
+
+But this did not disarm her, at the time. Her raging voice and raging
+words were heard by the very servants, long after he had ceased to
+defend himself.
+
+At last she came out, pale with fury, and, finding Ryder near the door,
+shrieked out, "Take that reptile to his den, if he is mean enough to lie
+in this house,"--then, lowering her voice, "and bring Thomas Leicester
+to me."
+
+Ryder went to Leicester, and told him. But he objected to come. "You
+have betrayed me," said he. "Curse my weak heart and my loose tongue. I
+have done the poor Squire an ill turn. I can never look him in the face
+again. But 'tis all thy fault, double-face. I hate the sight of thee."
+
+At this Ryder shed some crocodile tears; and very soon, by her
+blandishments, obtained forgiveness.
+
+And Leicester, since the mischief was done, was persuaded to see the
+dame, who was his recent benefactor, you know. He bargained, however,
+that the Squire should be got to bed first; for he had a great dread of
+meeting him. "He'll break every bone in my skin," said Tom; "or else I
+shall do _him_ a mischief in my defence."
+
+Ryder herself saw the wisdom of this. She bade him stay quiet, and she
+went to look after Griffith.
+
+She found him in the drawing-room, with his head on the table, in deep
+dejection.
+
+She assumed authority, and said he must go to bed.
+
+He rose humbly, and followed her like a submissive dog.
+
+She took him to his room. There was no fire.
+
+"That is where you are to sleep," said she, spitefully.
+
+"It is better than I deserve," said he, humbly.
+
+The absurd rule about not hitting a man when he is down has never
+obtained a place in the great female soul; so Ryder lashed him without
+mercy.
+
+"Well, sir," said she, "methinks you have gained little by breaking
+faith with me. Y' had better have set up your inn with me, than gone and
+sinned against the law."
+
+"Much better: would to Heaven I had!"
+
+"What d' ye mean to do now? You know the saying. Between two stools--"
+
+"Child," said Griffith, faintly, "methinks I shall trouble neither long.
+I am not so ill a man as I seem; but who will believe that? I shall not
+live long. And I shall leave an ill name behind me. _She_ told me so
+just now. And oh! her eye was so cruel; I saw my death in it."
+
+"Come, come," said Ryder, relenting a little; "you mustn't believe every
+word an angry woman says. There, take my advice; go to bed; and in the
+morning don't speak to her. Keep out of her way a day or two."
+
+And with this piece of friendly advice she left him; and waited about
+till she thought he was in bed and asleep.
+
+Then she brought Thomas Leicester up to her mistress.
+
+But Griffith was not in bed; and he heard Leicester's heavy tread cross
+the landing. He waited and waited behind his door for more than half an
+hour, and then he heard the same heavy tread go away again.
+
+By this time nearly all the inmates of the house were asleep.
+
+About twenty-five minutes after Leicester left Mrs. Gaunt, Caroline
+Ryder stole quietly up stairs from the kitchen, and sat down to think it
+all over.
+
+She then proceeded to undress; but had only taken off her gown, when she
+started and listened; for a cry of distress reached her from outside the
+house.
+
+She darted to the window and threw it open.
+
+Then she heard a cry more distinct, "Help! help!"
+
+It was a clear starlight night, but no moon.
+
+The mere shone before her, and the cries were on the bank.
+
+Now came something more alarming still. A flash,--a pistol shot,--and an
+agonized voice cried loudly, "Murder! Help! Murder!"
+
+That voice she knew directly. It was Griffith Gaunt's.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+Ryder ran screaming, and alarmed the other servants.
+
+All the windows that looked on the mere were flung open.
+
+But no more sounds were heard. A terrible silence brooded now over those
+clear waters.
+
+The female servants huddled together, and quaked; for who could doubt
+that a bloody deed had been done?
+
+It was some time before they mustered the presence of mind to go and
+tell Mrs. Gaunt. At last they opened her door. She was not in her room.
+
+Ryder ran to Griffith's. It was locked. She called to him. He made no
+reply.
+
+They burst the door open. He was not there; and the window was open.
+
+While their tongues were all going, in consternation, Mrs. Gaunt was
+suddenly among them, very pale.
+
+They turned, and looked at her aghast.
+
+"What means all this?" said she. "Did not I hear cries outside?"
+
+"Ay," said Ryder. "Murder! and a pistol fired. O, my poor master!"
+
+Mrs. Gaunt was white as death; but self-possessed. "Light torches this
+moment, and search the place," said she.
+
+There was only one man in the house; and he declined to go out alone.
+So Ryder and Mrs. Gaunt went with him, all three bearing lighted links.
+
+They searched the place where Ryder had heard the cries. They went up
+and down the whole bank of the mere, and cast their torches' red light
+over the placid waters themselves. But there was nothing to be seen,
+alive or dead,--no trace either of calamity or crime.
+
+They roused the neighbors, and came back to the house with their clothes
+all draggled and dirty.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt took Ryder apart, and asked her if she could guess at what
+time of the night Griffith had made his escape. "He is a villain," said
+she, "yet I would not have him come to harm, God knows. There are
+thieves abroad. But I hope he ran away as soon as your back was turned,
+and so fell not in with them."
+
+"Humph!" said Ryder. Then, looking Mrs. Gaunt in the face, she said,
+quietly, "Where were you when you heard the cries?"
+
+"I was on the other side of the house."
+
+"What, out o' doors, at that time of night!"
+
+"Ay; I was in the grove,--praying."
+
+"Did you hear any voice you knew?"
+
+"No: all was too indistinct. I heard a pistol, but no words. Did you?"
+
+"I heard no more than you, madam," said Ryder, trembling.
+
+No one went to bed any more that night in Hernshaw Castle.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+This mysterious circumstance made a great talk in the village and in the
+kitchen of Hernshaw Castle; but not in the drawing-room; for Mrs. Gaunt
+instantly closed her door to visitors, and let it be known that it was
+her intention to retire to a convent; and, in the mean time, she desired
+not to be disturbed.
+
+Ryder made one or two attempts to draw her out upon the subject, but was
+sternly checked.
+
+Pale, gloomy, and silent, the mistress of Hernshaw Castle moved about
+the place, like the ghost of her former self. She never mentioned
+Griffith; forbade his name to be uttered in her hearing; and, strange to
+say, gave Ryder strict orders not to tell any one what she had heard
+from Thomas Leicester.
+
+"This last insult is known but to you and me. If it ever gets abroad,
+you leave my service that very hour."
+
+This injunction set Ryder thinking. However, she obeyed it to the
+letter. Her place was getting better and better; and she was a woman
+accustomed to keep secrets.
+
+A pressing letter came from Mr. Atkins.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt replied that her husband had come to Hernshaw, but had left
+again; and the period of his ultimate return was now more uncertain than
+ever.
+
+On this Mr. Atkins came down to Hernshaw Castle. But Mrs. Gaunt would
+not see him. He retired very angry, and renewed his advertisements, but
+in a more explicit form. He now published that Griffith Gaunt, of
+Hernshaw and Bolton, was executor and residuary legatee to the late
+Griffith Gaunt of Coggleswade; and requested him to apply directly to
+James Atkins, Solicitor, of Gray's Inn, London.
+
+In due course this advertisement was read by the servants at Hernshaw,
+and shown by Ryder to Mrs. Gaunt.
+
+She made no comment whatever; and contrived to render her pale face
+impenetrable.
+
+Ryder became as silent and thoughtful as herself, and often sat bending
+her black judicial brows.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By and by dark mysterious words began to be thrown out in Hernshaw
+village.
+
+"He will never come back at all."
+
+"He will never come into that fortune."
+
+"'T is no use advertising for a man that is past reading."
+
+These, and the like equivocal sayings, were followed by a vague buzz,
+which was traceable to no individual author, but seemed to rise on all
+sides, like a dark mist, and envelop that unhappy house.
+
+And that dark mist of Rumor soon condensed itself into a palpable and
+terrible whisper,--"Griffith Gaunt hath met with foul play."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No one of the servants told Mrs. Gaunt this horrid rumor.
+
+But the women used to look at her, and after her, with strange eyes.
+
+She noticed this, and felt, somehow, that her people were falling away
+from her. It added one drop to her bitter cup. She began to droop into a
+sort of calm, despondent lethargy.
+
+Then came fresh trouble to rouse her.
+
+Two of the county magistrates called on her in their official capacity,
+and, with perfect politeness, but a very grave air, requested her to
+inform them of all the circumstances attending her husband's
+disappearance.
+
+She replied, coldly and curtly, that she knew very little about it. Her
+husband had left in the middle of the night.
+
+"He came to stay?"
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"Came on horseback?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did he go away on horseback?"
+
+"No; for the horse is now in my stable."
+
+"Is it true there was a quarrel between you and him that evening?"
+
+"Gentlemen," said Mrs. Gaunt, drawing herself back, haughtily, "did you
+come here to gratify your curiosity?"
+
+"No, madam," said the elder of the two; "but to discharge a very serious
+and painful duty, in which I earnestly request you, and even advise you,
+to aid us. Was there a quarrel?"
+
+"There was--a mortal quarrel."
+
+The gentlemen exchanged glances, and the elder made a note.
+
+"May we ask the subject of that quarrel?"
+
+Mrs. Gaunt declined, positively, to enter into a matter so delicate.
+
+A note was taken of this refusal.
+
+"Are you aware, madam, that your husband's voice was heard calling for
+help, and that a pistol-shot was fired?"
+
+Mrs. Gaunt trembled visibly.
+
+"I heard the pistol-shot," said she; "but not the voice distinctly. O, I
+hope it was not his voice Ryder heard!"
+
+"Ryder, who is he?"
+
+"Ryder is my lady's maid: her bedroom is on that side the house."
+
+"Can we see Mrs. Ryder?"
+
+"Certainly," said Mrs. Gaunt, and rose and rang the bell.
+
+Mrs. Ryder answered the bell, in person, very promptly; for she was
+listening at the door.
+
+Being questioned, she told the magistrates what she had heard down by
+"the mere"; and said she was sure it was her master's voice that cried
+"Help!" and "Murder!" And with this she began to cry.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt trembled and turned pale.
+
+The magistrates confined their questions to Ryder.
+
+They elicited, however, very little more from her. She saw the drift of
+their questions, and had an impulse to defend her mistress there
+present. Behind her back it would have been otherwise.
+
+That resolution once taken, two children might as well have tried to
+extract evidence from her as two justices of the peace.
+
+And then Mrs. Gaunt's pale face and noble features touched them. The
+case was mysterious, but no more; and they departed little the wiser,
+and with some apologies for the trouble they had given her.
+
+The next week down came Mr. Atkins, out of all patience, and determined
+to find Griffith Gaunt, or else obtain some proof of his decease.
+
+He obtained two interviews with Ryder, and bribed her to tell him all
+she knew. He prosecuted other inquiries with more method than had
+hitherto been used, and elicited an important fact, namely, that
+Griffith Gaunt had been seen walking in a certain direction at one
+o'clock in the morning, followed at a short distance by a tall man with
+a knapsack, or the like, on his back.
+
+The person who gave this tardy information was the wife of a certain
+farmer's man, who wired hares upon the sly. The man himself, being
+assured that, in a case so serious as this, no particular inquiries
+should be made how he came to be out so late, confirmed what his wife
+had let out, and added, that both men had taken the way that would lead
+them to the bridge, meaning the bridge over the mere. More than that he
+could not say, for he had met them, and was full half a mile from the
+mere before those men could have reached it.
+
+Following up this clew, Mr. Atkins learned so many ugly things, that he
+went to the Bench on justicing day, and demanded a full and searching
+inquiry on the premises.
+
+Sir George Neville, after in vain opposing this, rode off straight from
+the Bench to Hernshaw, and in feeling terms conveyed the bad news to
+Mrs. Gaunt; and then, with the utmost delicacy, let her know that some
+suspicion rested upon herself, which she would do well to meet with the
+bold front of innocence.
+
+"What suspicion, pray?" said Mrs. Gaunt, haughtily.
+
+Sir George shrugged his shoulders, and replied, "That you have done
+Gaunt the honor to put him out of the way."
+
+Mrs. Gaunt took this very differently from what Sir George expected.
+
+"What!" she cried, "are they so sure he is dead,--murdered?"
+
+And with this she went into a passion of grief and remorse.
+
+Even Sir George was puzzled, as well as affected, by her convulsive
+agitation.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+Though it was known the proposed inquiry might result in the committal
+of Mrs. Gaunt on a charge of murder, yet the respect in which she had
+hitherto been held, and the influence of Sir George Neville, who, having
+been her lover, stoutly maintained her innocence, prevailed so far that
+even this inquiry was private, and at her own house. Only she was
+present in the character of a suspected person, and the witnesses were
+examined before her.
+
+First, the poacher gave his evidence.
+
+Then Jane, the cook, proved that a pedler called Thomas Leicester had
+been in the kitchen, and secreted about the premises till a late hour;
+and this Thomas Leicester corresponded exactly to the description given
+by the poacher.
+
+This threw suspicion on Thomas Leicester, but did not connect Mrs. Gaunt
+with the deed in any way.
+
+But Ryder's evidence filled this gap. She revealed three serious
+facts:--
+
+First, that, by her mistress's orders, she had introduced this very
+Leicester into her mistress's room about midnight, where he had remained
+nearly half an hour, and had then left the house.
+
+Secondly, that Mrs. Gaunt herself had been out of doors after midnight.
+
+And, thirdly, that she had listened at the door, and heard her threaten
+Griffith Gaunt's life.
+
+This is a mere _pr�cis_ of the evidence, and altogether it looked so
+suspicious, that the magistrates, after telling Mrs. Gaunt she could ask
+the witnesses any question she chose, a suggestion she treated with
+marked contempt, put their heads together a moment and whispered. Then
+the eldest of them, Mr. Underhill, who lived at a considerable distance,
+told her gravely he must commit her to take her trial at the next
+assizes.
+
+"Do what you conceive to be your duty, gentlemen," said Mrs. Gaunt, with
+marvellous dignity. "If I do not assert my innocence, it is because I
+disdain the accusation too much."
+
+"I shall take no part in the committal of this innocent lady," said Sir
+George Neville, and was about to leave the room.
+
+But Mrs. Gaunt begged him to stay. "To be guilty is one thing," said
+she, "to be accused is another. I shall go to prison as easy as to my
+dinner; and to the gallows as to my bed."
+
+The presiding magistrate was staggered a moment by these words; and it
+was not without considerable hesitation he took the warrant and prepared
+to fill it up.
+
+Then Mr. Houseman, who had watched the proceedings very keenly, put in
+his word. "I am here for the accused person, sir, and, with your good
+leave, object to her committal--on grounds of law."
+
+"What may they be, Mr. Houseman?" said the magistrate, civilly; and laid
+his pen down to hear them.
+
+"Briefly, sir, these. Where a murder is proven, you can commit a subject
+of this realm upon suspicion. But you cannot suspect the murder as well
+as the culprit, and so commit. The murder must be proved to the senses.
+Now in this case, the death of Mr. Gaunt by violence is not proved.
+Indeed, his very death rests but upon suspicion. I admit that the law of
+England in this respect has once or twice been tampered with, and
+persons have even been executed where no _corpus delicti_ was found; but
+what was the consequence? In each case the murdered man turned out to be
+alive, and justice was the only murderer. After Harrison's case, and
+----'s, no Cumberland jury will ever commit for murder, unless the
+_corpus delicti_ has been found, and with signs of violence upon it.
+Come, come, Mr. Atkins, you are too good a lawyer, and too humane a man,
+to send my client to prison on the suspicion of a suspicion, which you
+know the very breath of the judge will blow away, even if the grand jury
+let it go into court. I offer bail, ten thousand pounds in two sureties;
+Sir George Neville here present, and myself."
+
+The magistrate looked to Mr. Atkins.
+
+"I am not employed by the crown," said that gentleman, "but acting on
+mere civil grounds, and have no right nor wish to be severe. Bail by all
+means: but is the lady so sure of her innocence as to lend me her
+assistance to find the _corpus delicti_?"
+
+The question was so shrewdly put, that any hesitation would have ruined
+Mrs. Gaunt.
+
+Houseman, therefore, replied eagerly and promptly, "I answer for her,
+she will."
+
+Mrs. Gaunt bowed her head in assent.
+
+"Then," said Atkins, "I ask leave to drag, and, if need be, to drain
+that piece of water there, called 'the mere.'"
+
+"Drag it or drain it, which you will," said Houseman.
+
+Said Atkins, very impressively, "And, mark my words, at the bottom of
+that very sheet of water there, I shall find the remains of the late
+Griffith Gaunt."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At these solemn words, coming as they did, not from a loose
+unprofessional speaker, but from a lawyer, a man who measured all his
+words, a very keen observer might have seen a sort of tremor run all
+through Mr. Houseman's frame. The more admirable, I think, was the
+perfect coolness and seeming indifference with which he replied, "Find
+him, and I'll admit suicide; find him, with signs of violence, and I'll
+admit homicide--by some person or persons unknown."
+
+All further remarks were interrupted by bustle and confusion.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt had fainted dead away.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+Of course pity was the first feeling; but, by the time Mrs. Gaunt
+revived, her fainting, so soon after Mr. Atkins's proposal, had produced
+a sinister effect on the minds of all present; and every face showed it,
+except the wary Houseman's.
+
+On her retiring, it broke out first in murmurs, then in plain words.
+
+As for Mr. Atkins, he now showed the moderation of an able man who feels
+he has a strong cause.
+
+He merely said, "I think there should be constables about, in case of an
+escape being attempted; but I agree with Mr. Houseman that your
+worships will be quite justified in taking bail, provided the _corpus
+delicti_ should not be found. Gentlemen, you were most of you neighbors
+and friends of the deceased, and are, I am sure, lovers of justice; I do
+entreat you to aid me in searching that piece of water, by the side of
+which the deceased gentleman was heard to cry for help; and, much I
+fear, he cried in vain."
+
+The persons thus appealed to entered into the matter with all the ardor
+of just men, whose curiosity as well as justice is inflamed.
+
+A set of old, rusty drags was found on the premises; and men went
+punting up and down the mere, and dragged it.
+
+Rude hooks were made by the village blacksmith, and fitted to
+cart-ropes; another boat was brought to Hernshaw in a wagon; and all
+that afternoon the bottom of the mere was raked, and some curious things
+fished up. But no dead man.
+
+The next day a score of amateur dragsmen were out; some throwing their
+drags from the bridge; some circulating in boats, and even in large
+tubs.
+
+And, meantime, Mr. Atkins and his crew went steadily up and down,
+dragging every foot of those placid waters.
+
+They worked till dinner-time, and brought up a good copper pot with two
+handles, a horse's head, and several decayed trunks of trees, which had
+become saturated, and sunk to the bottom.
+
+At about three in the afternoon, two boys, who, for want of a boat, were
+dragging from the bridge, found something heavy but elastic at the end
+of their drag: they pulled up eagerly, and a thing like a huge turnip,
+half gnawed, came up, with a great bob, and blasted their sight.
+
+They let go, drags and all, and stood shrieking, and shrieking.
+
+Those who were nearest them called out, and asked what was the matter;
+but the boys did not reply, and their faces showed so white, that a
+woman, who saw them, hailed Mr. Atkins, and said she was sure those boys
+had seen something out of the common.
+
+Mr. Atkins came up, and found the boys blubbering. He encouraged them,
+and they told him a fearful thing had come up; it was like a man's head
+and shoulders all scooped out and gnawed by the fishes, and had torn the
+drags out of their hands.
+
+Mr. Atkins made them tell him the exact place; and he was soon upon it
+with his boat.
+
+The water here was very deep; and though the boys kept pointing to the
+very spot, the drags found nothing for some time.
+
+But at last they showed, by their resistance, that they had clawed hold
+of something.
+
+"Draw slowly," said Mr. Atkins: "and, _if it is_, be men, and hold
+fast."
+
+The men drew slowly, slowly, and presently there rose to the surface a
+Thing to strike terror and loathing into the stoutest heart.
+
+The mutilated remains of a human face and body.
+
+The greedy pike had cleared, not the features only, but the entire flesh
+off the face; but had left the hair, and the tight skin of the forehead,
+though their teeth had raked this last. The remnants they had left made
+what they had mutilated doubly horrible; since now it was not a skull,
+not a skeleton; but a face and a man gnawed down to the bones and hair
+and feet. These last were in stout shoes, that resisted even those
+voracious teeth; and a leathern stock had offered some little protection
+to the throat.
+
+The men groaned, and hid their faces with one hand, and pulled softly to
+the shore with the other; and then, with half-averted faces, they drew
+the ghastly remains and fluttering rags gently and reverently to land.
+
+Mr. Atkins yielded to nature, and was violently sick at the sight he had
+searched for so eagerly.
+
+As soon as he recovered his powers, he bade the constables guard the
+body (it was a body, in law), and see that no one laid so much as a
+finger on it until some magistrate had taken a deposition. He also sent
+a messenger to Mr. Houseman, telling him the _corpus delicti_ was found.
+He did this, partly to show that gentleman he was right in his judgment,
+and partly out of common humanity; since, after this discovery, Mr.
+Houseman's client was sure to be tried for her life.
+
+A magistrate soon came, and viewed the remains, and took careful notes
+of the state in which they were found.
+
+Houseman came, and was much affected both by the sight of his dead
+friend, so mutilated, and by the probable consequences to Mrs. Gaunt.
+However, as lawyers fight very hard, he recovered himself enough to
+remark that there were no marks of violence before death, and insisted
+on this being inserted in the magistrate's notes.
+
+An inquest was ordered next day, and, meantime, Mrs. Gaunt was told she
+could not quit the upper apartments of her own house. Two constables
+were placed on the ground-floor night and day.
+
+Next day the remains were removed to the little inn where Griffith had
+spent so many jovial hours; laid on a table, and covered with a white
+sheet.
+
+The coroner's jury sat in the same room, and the evidence I have already
+noticed was gone into, and the finding of the body deposed to. The jury,
+without hesitation, returned a verdict of wilful murder.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt was then brought in. She came, white as a ghost, leaning upon
+Houseman's shoulder.
+
+Upon her entering, a juryman, by a humane impulse, drew the sheet over
+the remains again.
+
+The coroner, according to the custom of the day, put a question to Mrs.
+Gaunt, with the view of eliciting her guilt. If I remember right, he
+asked her how she came to be out of doors so late on the night of the
+murder. Mrs. Gaunt, however, was in no condition to answer queries. I
+doubt if she even heard this one. Her lovely eyes, dilated with horror,
+were fixed on that terrible sheet, with a stony glance. "Show me," she
+gasped, "and let me die too."
+
+The jurymen looked, with doubtful faces, at the coroner. He bowed a
+grave assent.
+
+The nearest juryman withdrew the sheet. The belief was not yet extinct
+that the dead body shows some signs of its murderer's approach. So every
+eye glanced on her and on It by turns; as she, with dilated,
+horror-stricken eyes, looked on that awful Thing.
+
+
+
+
+LONDON FORTY YEARS AGO.
+
+FROM THE MEMORANDA OF A TRAVELLER.
+
+
+The Court of Chancery.--Feeling a desire to see for myself the highest
+embodiment of English law where it lurked--a huge and bloated
+personification of all that was monstrous and discouraging to
+suitors--in the secret place of thunder, just behind the altar of
+sacrifice, forever spinning the web that for hundreds of years hath
+enmeshed and overspread the mightiest empire upon earth with
+entanglement, perplexity, and procrastination, till estates have
+disappeared and families have died out, sometimes, while waiting for a
+decision,--I dropped into the Court of Chancery.
+
+The first thing I saw was the Lord Chancellor himself,--Lord Eldon,--the
+mildest, wisest, slowest, and most benignant of men,--milder than
+Byron's Ali Pacha, wiser than Lord Bacon himself; and, if not altogether
+worthy of being called "the greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind," like
+his prototype, yet great enough as a lawyer to set people wondering what
+he would say next. He was quite capable of arguing a question on both
+sides, and then of deciding against himself; and so patient, withal,
+that he had just then finished a sitting of three whole days to Sir
+Thomas Lawrence, for a portrait of his hand,--a beautiful hand, it must
+be acknowledged, though undecided and womanish, as if he had never quite
+made up his mind whether to keep it open or shut.
+
+And the next thing I took notice of, after a hurried glance at the
+carved ceiling and painted windows, and over the array of bewigged and
+powdered solicitors and masters,--a magnificent bed of cauliflowers, in
+appearance, with some of the finest heads I ever saw in my life--out of
+a cabbage-garden,--was a large, dark, heavy picture of Paul before
+Felix, by Hogarth, representing these great personages at the moment
+when Felix, that earliest of Lord Chancellors, having heard Paul
+through, says: "Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient
+season, I will call for thee." Lord Eldon was larger than I supposed
+from the portrait above mentioned. And this is the more extraordinary,
+because the heads of Lawrence, like those of ancient statuary, are
+always smaller than life, to give them an aristocratic, high-bred air,
+and the bodies are larger. The expression of countenance, too, was
+benignity itself,--just such as Titian would have been delighted
+with,--calm, clear, passionless, without a prevailing characteristic of
+any strength. "Felix trembled," they say. Whatever Felix may have done,
+I do not believe that Lord Eldon would have trembled till he had put on
+his night-cap and weighed the whole question by himself at his chambers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Kean._--Wishing to see how this grotesque but wonderful actor--a
+mountebank sometimes and sometimes a living truth--would play at home
+after driving us all mad in America, I went to see him in Sir Giles
+Overreach. He played with more spirit, more of settled purpose, than
+with us, being more in earnest, I think, and better supported. There is
+one absurdity in the play, which was made particularly offensive by
+Oxberry's exaggeration. The dinner is kept waiting, and the whole
+business of the play suspended, for the Justice to make speeches. But
+the last scene was capital,--prodigious,--full of that dark, dismal,
+despairing energy you would look for in a dethroned spirit, baffled,
+like Mephistopheles, at the very moment his arm is outstretched, and his
+long, lean fingers are clutching at the shoulder of his victim. Being
+about to cross blades with his adversary, in a paroxysm of rage he
+plucks at the hilt of his sword, and stops suddenly, as if struck with
+paralysis, pale, and gasping for breath, and says,--in that far-off,
+moaning voice we all remember in his famous farewell to the "big wars
+that make ambition virtue,"--"The widow sits upon my arm, and the
+wronged orphan's tear glues it to the scabbard,--it will _not_ be
+drawn," etc., etc.,--or something of the sort. It was not so much a
+thrilling as a curdling you felt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Young, in Sir Pertinax._--Very good, though full of stage trick, or
+what they call, when they get bothered, or would like to bother you,
+stage _business_;--as where he throws his pocket-handkerchief before him
+on leaving the stage, somewhat after the style of Macready in Hamlet,
+which Forrest called _le pas � mouchoir_, and took the liberty of
+hissing. Good Scotch, generally, with a few wretched blunders, though
+his "booin', and booin', and booin'," and his vehement snuff-taking, and
+the declaration that "he could never stand oopright in the presence of a
+great mon in a' his life," were evidently copied from, or suggested by,
+George Frederick Cooke, who borrowed both from Macklin, if we may trust
+surviving contemporaries.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Robert Owen._--Breakfasted with Robert Owen, after having attended a
+conference of the brotherhood, where they talked a world of nonsense,
+and argued for a whole hour, without coming to a conclusion, about
+whether we are governed by circumstances or circumstances are governed
+by us. You would swear Owen was a Yankee, born and bred. He has the
+shrewd, inquisitive look, the spare frame, the sharp features, of a
+Connecticut farmer, and constantly reminds me of Henry Clay when he
+moves about. He is evidently sincere; but such a visionary! and so
+thoroughly satisfied that the world is coming to an end just as he would
+have it, that he allows no misgivings to trouble him, and never loses
+his temper, nor "bates one jot of heart or hope," happen what may. The
+last time we met--only three days ago--his great project was coming up
+before Parliament, and he told me, in confidence, that he was sure of a
+favorable result,--that he had counted noses, and had the most
+comfortable assurances from all the great leaders of the day,--and in
+short, between ourselves, that grass would be growing on the London
+Exchange within two years. The petition came up on the day appointed,
+and was allowed to drop out of the tail end of the cart, almost without
+a remark. But so far was he from being disheartened, that he lost no
+time in preparing for a trip across the Atlantic, which he had long had
+in contemplation, but was hindered from taking by the hopes he had been
+persuaded to entertain from his friends in Parliament, and by the
+business at Lanark,--a manufacturing place which he had built up of
+himself in Scotland, with eminent success, and most undoubted practical
+wisdom.
+
+Wishing to leave a record with me for future ages, he wrote as follows
+in my album, with a cheerfulness, an imperturbability, a serene
+self-confidence, past all my conceptions of a visionary or enthusiast.
+
+     "I leave this country with a deep impression that my visit to
+     America will be productive of permanent benefit to the Indian
+     tribes, to the negro race, and to the whole population of the
+     Western Continent, North and South, and to Europe.
+
+     "ROBERT OWEN.
+
+     "LONDON, 4th September, 1824."
+
+What a magnificent scheme! How comprehensive and how vast! But nothing
+came of it, beyond the translation of his son, Robert Dale Owen, to this
+country,--a very clever, well-educated, and earnest, though rather
+awkward and sluggish young man, who has achieved a large reputation
+here, and will be yet more distinguished if he lives, being well
+grounded and rooted in the foundation principles of government, and both
+conscientious and fearless.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Old Bailey._--This and other like places, of which we have all read so
+much that we feel acquainted with them, not as pictures or descriptions,
+at second hand, but as decided and positive realities, I lost no time in
+seeing.
+
+I found the court-room small, much smaller than the average with us,
+badly arranged, and worse lighted. A prisoner was up for burglary. He
+was a sullen, turbulent-looking fellow; and his counsel, an Old Bailey
+lawyer, was inquiring, with a pertinacity that astonished while it
+amused me, about the dirt in a comb. His object was to ascertain
+"whether it had been used or _not_"; and, as there were two sides to it,
+which side had become dirty from being carried in the pocket, and which
+from legitimate use. Before the prisoner was a toilet-glass, in which he
+could not help seeing his own pale, haggard, frightened face whenever he
+looked up,--a refinement of barbarism I was not prepared for in a
+British court of justice. I occupied a seat in the gallery, surrounded
+by professional pickpockets, burglars, and highwaymen, I dare say; for
+they talked freely of the poor fellow's chances, and like experts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Joanna Baillie._--"Here," said Lady Bentham, wife of General Sir
+Samuel Bentham, the originator of that Panopticon, which was the germ
+of all our prison discipline as well as of all penitentiary
+improvements, the world over,--"Here is an autograph you will think
+worth having, I am sure, after what I have heard you say of the writer,
+and of her tragedies, and I want you to see her";--handing me, as she
+spoke, the following brief note, written upon a bit of coarse paper
+about six inches by four.
+
+     "If you are perfectly disengaged this evening, Agnes and I will
+     have the pleasure of taking tea with you, if you give us leave.
+
+     "J. BAILLIE."
+
+
+Now, if there was a woman in the world I wanted to see, or one that I
+most heartily reverenced, it was Joanna Baillie. Her "De Montfort" I had
+always looked upon as one of the greatest tragedies ever written,--equal
+to anything of Shakespeare's for strength of delineation, simplicity,
+and effect, however inferior it might be in the superfluities of genius,
+in the overcharging of character and passion, of which we find so much
+in Shakespeare; and, on the whole, not unlike that wonderful Danish
+drama, "Dyveke," or a part of "Wallenstein."
+
+My great desire was now to be satisfied. We met, and I passed one of the
+pleasantest evenings of my life with _Mrs._ Baillie, as they called her,
+Lady Bentham, her most intimate if not her oldest friend, and "sister
+Agnes."
+
+I found Mrs. Baillie wholly unlike the misrepresentations I had seen of
+her. She was rather small,--though far from being diminutive, like her
+sister Agnes,--with a charming countenance, full of placid serenity,
+almost Quakerish, beautiful eyes, and gray hair, nearly white indeed,
+combed smoothly away from her forehead. We talked freely together,
+avoiding the shop, and the impression she left on my mind was that of a
+modest, unpretending gentlewoman, full of quiet strength and shrewd
+pleasantry, with a Scottish flavor, but altogether above being brilliant
+or showy, even in conversation with a stranger and an author. She
+questioned me closely about my country and about the people, and
+appeared to take much interest in our doings and prospects. Her sister
+Agnes never opened her mouth, to the best of my recollection and belief,
+though she listened with her eyes and ears to the conversation, and
+appeared to enjoy it exceedingly; and as for Lady Bentham, though a
+clever woman of large experience and great resources, such was her
+self-denial and her generous admiration of the "queenly stranger," as I
+had called her friend in sport,--remembering how it was applied to the
+magnificent Siddons, when she represented Jane de Montfort,--that she
+did nothing more and said nothing more than what was calculated to bring
+out her friend to advantage. There was nothing said, however, from which
+a person unacquainted with the writings of Joanna Baillie would have
+inferred her true character,--no flashing lights, no surprises, no
+thunder-bursts. The conversation was, at the best, but sociable and
+free, as if we were all of the same neighborhood or household; but
+knowing her by her great work on the Passions, I was profoundly
+impressed, nevertheless, and left her well satisfied with her
+revelations of character.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Catalani._--What a magnificent creature! How majestic and easy and
+graceful! And then what a voice! One would swear she had a nest of
+nightingales and a trumpet obligato in her throat. No wonder she sets
+the great glass chandeliers of the Argyle rooms ringing and rattling
+when she charges in a bravura.
+
+That she is, in some passages, a little--not vulgar--but almost vulgar,
+with a dash of the contadina, is undeniable; and she certainly has not a
+delicate ear, and often sings false; yet, when that tempestuous warbling
+in her throat breaks forth, and the flush of her heart's blood hurries
+over her face and empurples her neck, why then "bow the high banners,
+roll the answering drums," and shut up, if you wouldn't be torn to
+pieces by a London mob.
+
+Say what you will, you must acknowledge--you _must_--that you never
+heard such a voice before, if there ever was one like it on earth,--so
+full and so impassioned, so rich and sympathetic. More educated, more
+brilliant organs there may be, like those of Pasta or Velluti, poor
+fellow!--more satisfying to the ear,--but none, I believe, so satisfying
+to the heart; none that so surely lifts you off your feet, and blinds
+and deafens you to all defects, and sets you wandering far away through
+the empyrean of musical sounds, till you are lost in a labyrinth of
+triumphant harmonies. The sad, mournful intonations of Velluti may bring
+tears into your eyes, but you are never transported beyond yourself by
+his piteous wailing.
+
+And yet, if you will believe me, this woman has just been called out of
+bed to a London audience, who, instead of paying a guinea or half a
+guinea to hear her in opera, are paying only 2_s._ 6_d._ a head to hear
+her let off "God s_h_ave the King!" like a roll of musical thunder. She
+appears "in _dish-abille_" as they call it here, and in _tears_. And why
+is she summoned? Because the _sufferin'_ people, having understood that
+she shares the house, insist on having their half-crowns and sixpences
+returned. It has been quite impossible to hear a word, ever since they
+were informed that she had been taken suddenly ill, and was not allowed
+to appear by her medical attendants. But what of that? Dead or alive, a
+British audience must have her out. And so a great banner was lifted on
+which was inscribed "Catalani sent for!" and then, after a while, as the
+uproar continued, and the outcries grew more violent, and the white
+handkerchiefs more and more stormy and threatening, another inscription
+appeared, "Catalani coming!" And lo! she comes! and comes weeping. But
+the people refuse to be comforted. And why? Because of their
+disappointment? Because of their passion for music? No indeed; but
+because they are told that she is to go snacks with the manager; and,
+her parsimony being proverbial, they are determined to rebuke it in a
+liberal spirit. Pshaw!
+
+These people pretend to love music, and to love it with such a devouring
+passion that nothing less than the very best will satisfy them, cost
+what it may. Yet the opera-house, with the patronage of the royal
+family, the nobility, and the gentry, and open only twice a week, is
+never full even at the representation of the finest works of genius; and
+when such an artist as Catalani is engaged at one of the theatres, and
+the people are admitted for theatre prices, the first thing they do,
+after crowding the house to suffocation, is to call for "God save the
+King," or, if Braham is out, for "Kelvin Grove." Enthusiasts
+indeed,--carried away, and justly, by "Black-eyed Susan," or "Cherry
+Ripe," which they do understand, feel, and enjoy,--they are all ready to
+swear, and expect you to believe, that their passion is for opera
+music,--Italian or German, the Barber of Seville, or _Der Freisch�tz_.
+And therefore I say again, Pshaw!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_John Dunn Hunter._--This luckiest and boldest of humbugs, whose book,
+by the merest accident, has obtained for him the favor of the Duke of
+Sussex, and, through the Duke, access to the highest nobility, has just
+been presented at Court, and is not a little mortified that his Majesty,
+on receiving a copy of the book, Hunter's "Captivity among the Indians,"
+did not inquire after his health or make him a speech. He does not so
+much mind paying five guineas for the loan of a court suit, consisting
+of a single-breasted claret coat with steel buttons, a powdered tie,
+small-clothes, white-silk stockings, and a dress sword,--with
+instructions on which side it is to be worn, and how it is to be managed
+in backing out so as not to get between his legs and trip him up,--nor
+the having to pay for being mentioned in the Court Journal by a fellow
+who is called the King's Reporter; but then he will have the worth of
+his money, and so takes it out in grumbling and sulking. Not long ago
+he sent a note through the penny-post, sealed with a wafer, directed to
+the Marchioness of Conyngham, the king's mistress, in reply to an
+invitation from her ladyship, which he accepted, to meet the king! At
+least, such was the interpretation he put upon it. And now, after all
+this, to be fobbed off with a bow by "Gentleman George," the "fat
+friend" of poor Brummell, was indeed a little too bad.
+
+Nothing he can say or do, however, will undeceive these people. Though
+he cannot shout decently, cannot bear fatigue or pain, is so far from
+being swift of foot that he is not even a good walker, talks little or
+no Indian, and is continually outraging all the customs of society after
+getting well acquainted with them, and doing all this by calculation, as
+in the case of the note referred to above, they persist in believing his
+story. I shall have to expose him.--P. S. I have exposed him.
+
+While speaking just now of his acquaintance with the Duke of Sussex, who
+was very kind to him, and a believer to the last, I said that it was
+obtained for him by accident. It was in this way. At the house where he
+lodged a Mr. Norgate of Norfolk--not far from Holkham, the seat of Mr.
+Coke afterward Earl of Leicester--was also a lodger. Mr. Norgate invited
+Hunter down to his father's, and they went over to Holkham together. And
+there they met the Duke of Sussex, a great friend of Mr. Coke, both
+being Liberals and Oppositionists. His Royal Highness took a great fancy
+to Hunter, got him to sit to Chester Harding for his picture, gave him a
+gold watch and lots of agricultural tools to subdue the Indians with,
+and stuck to him through thick and thin, till I found it necessary to
+tear off the fellow's mask.
+
+On separating from me, before I had got possession of the facts which
+soon after appeared in the "London Magazine," he wrote in my album the
+following sententious and pithy apothegm, which, of course, only went to
+show the marvellous power of adaptation to circumstances which would
+naturally characterize the man, if his story were true. It was in this
+way his dupes reasoned. If he sealed a letter with a wafer, and sent it
+through the penny-post to a woman of rank, that proved his neglected
+education or a natural disregard of polite usage, and of course that he
+had been carried off in childhood by the Indians, and knew not where to
+look for father or mother, sister or brother,--while, on the contrary,
+if he used wax, and set the seal upon it which had been given to him by
+the Duke of Sussex, that showed, of course, the sagacity and readiness
+of adaptation which ought to characterize the hero of Hunter's
+narrative. In short, he was another Princess Caraboo, or young
+Chatterton, or Cagliostro, or Count Eliorich, all of whom were made
+great impostors by the help of others, the over-credulous and the
+over-confident in themselves.
+
+     "He who would do great actions," writes our enormous bug-a-boo,
+     "must learn to _empoly_ his powers to the least possible loss.
+     The possession of brilliant and extraordinary talents" (this
+     was probably meant for me, as he had been trying to prevail
+     upon my "brilliant and extraordinary talents" to return to
+     America with him, and go among the savages about the
+     neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains, and there establish a
+     confederacy of our own) "is not always the most valuable to its
+     possessor. Moderate talents, properly directed, will enable one
+     to do a great deal; and the most distinguished gifts of nature
+     may be thrown away by an unskilful application of them.
+
+     "J. D. HUNTER.
+
+     "LONDON, 15th May, 1824."
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Kean at a Public Dinner._--A terrible outcry just now, in consequence
+of certain exposures and a published correspondence. At a public dinner,
+he says he is going to America. The Duke of York, who presides, cries
+out, "No, no!" Shouts follow and the rattling of glasses, and men leap
+on the chairs and almost on the tables, repeating the Duke's "No, no!"
+till at last Kean promises to make an apology from the stage,--a
+perilous experiment, he will find, after which he cannot stay here. The
+object of Price, who has engaged him, is to kill off Cooper. The best
+actors now get fifty guineas a week, or twenty-five pounds a night for
+so many nights, play or pay, with a benefit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Architecture._--I have seen no greater barbarisms anywhere than I find
+here. The screen of Carleton House,--a long row of double columns, with
+a heavy entablature supporting the arms of Great Britain,--"that and
+nothing more"; the doings of Inigo Jones in his water-gates and arches,
+with two or three orders intermixed; and the late achievements of Mr.
+Nash along Regent Street,--with the church spire, which has the
+attractiveness and symmetry of an exaggerated marlin-spike, for a
+vanishing point,--are of themselves enough to show that the people here
+have no taste, and no feeling for this department of the Fine Arts,
+however much they may brag and bluster.
+
+But I have just returned from a visit to one of Sir Christopher Wren's
+masterpieces, which has greatly disturbed my equanimity, and obliges me
+to modify my opinion. It is a church back of the Mansion House; and is
+the original of Godefroy's Unitarian church at Baltimore, beyond all
+question: the dome rests on arches, and springs into the air, as if
+buoyed up and aspiring of itself. Bad for the music, however. Here I
+find West's picture of the Martyrdom of St. Stephen, with a figure which
+he has repeated in "Christ Healing the Sick," and a woman,--or young
+man, you do not feel certain which,--weeping upon the hand of the
+martyr, precisely as in a painting in Baltimore Cathedral by Renou, who
+must have borrowed or stolen it from West, if West did not borrow or
+steal it from him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Drawings._--I have just returned from visiting a collection of drawings
+by the old masters,--Raphael, Michael Angelo, Rembrandt, Titian, &c.,
+&c. Wonderful, to be sure! There is a pen-and-ink drawing by Munro, of
+uncommon merit; another from a capital old engraving by Tiffen, hardly
+to be distinguished from an elaborate line engraving, full of good faces
+and straight lines, with nothing picturesque. A moonlight and cottage by
+Gainsborough, very fine. Jackson's and Robinson's miniatures, and
+sketches in water-colors,--charming. Leslie's designs, with Stothard's
+on the same subject, are delightfully contrasted: Leslie's, neatly
+finished and full of individuality; Stothard's, a beautiful, free
+generalization, without finish. (But the engraver understands him, and
+finishes for him, adding the hands and feet in his own way.) It is a
+representation of Jeanie Deans's interview with the Queen. Leslie's
+figure is standing; Stothard's, kneeling: yet both are expressive and
+helpful to our conceptions. Here, too, I saw Rembrandt's celebrated
+"Battle of Death," with a skeleton blowing a horn, and helmeted and
+plumed, and having a thigh-bone for a battle-axe,--shadows on the
+shoulders of horsemen, and skeleton feet;--on the whole, a monstrous
+nightmare, such as you might expect from Fuseli after a supper on raw
+beef, but never from such a painter as Rembrandt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Phrenology._--There must be something in this new science,--for they
+persist in calling it a science,--though I cannot say how much. Just
+returned from a visit to De Ville, in the Strand, in company with
+Chester Harding, Robert M. Sully, the painter, and Humphries, the
+engraver,--each differing from the others in character and purpose; yet,
+after manipulating our crania, this man says of each what all the rest
+acknowledge to be true, and what, said of any but the particular person
+described, would be preposterous. Why are the busts of Socrates and
+Solon what they should be, according to this theory of Gall and
+Spurzheim? Were they modelled from life, or from characters resembling
+them? Compared the head of a Greek boy with that of a young Hottentot.
+One was largely developed in the intellectual region, the other in the
+animal region, and the latter cries whenever his home or his mother is
+mentioned. Both are at school here. Thurtell's head is a great
+confirmation, which anybody can judge of. I must find time for a
+thorough investigation.
+
+P. S.--I have kept my promise, and am thoroughly satisfied. Phrenology
+deserves to be called a science, and one of the greatest and best of
+sciences, notwithstanding all the quackery and self-delusion that I find
+among the professors. I have now studied it and experimented upon it for
+more than thirty years, and have no longer any misgivings upon the
+subject, so far as the great leading principles are involved.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Manners._--If we do not record our first impressions they soon
+disappear; and the greatest novelties are overlooked or forgotten.
+Already I begin to see women with heavily-laden wheel-barrows, without
+surprise. I have now learned, I hope, that a postman's rap is _one_,
+_two_, and no more; a servant's, _one_; while a footman gives from four
+to twenty, as hard as he can bang, so as to startle the whole
+neighborhood and make everybody run to the windows. Eating fish with a
+knife said to be fatal. Great personages give you a finger to shake. I
+did not know this when I took the forefinger of a cast-off mistress, the
+original of Washington Irving's Lady Sillicraft, a painted and withered
+old vixen, who meant to signify her liking for me, as I had reason to
+believe. Moles are reckoned such a positive beauty here that my
+attention has been called to them, as to fine eyes or a queenly bearing.
+A _fine_ woman here means a large woman, tall, dignified, and showy,
+like a fine horse or a fine bullock.
+
+Never shall I forget the looks and tones of a bashful friend, in
+describing his embarrassment. He was at Holkham, the seat of Mr. Coke,
+our Revolutionary champion, who, being in Parliament at the time, moved,
+session after session, the acknowledgment of our independence,--am I
+right here?--and actually gave the health of George Washington at a
+large dinner-party while the Revolutionary fires were raging. There was
+a large company at dinner, but for his life my friend did not know what
+to do with the ladies nor with his hands. Goes through room after room
+to get his dinner; is called upon to serve a dish he has never seen
+before, and knows not how to manage. Asked to take wine, and wants to
+ask somebody else, but cannot recall the name of a single person within
+reach, and whispers to the servant for relief, while his eye travels up
+and down both sides of the long table; is reminded of the guest who said
+to himself, loud enough to be overheard by the waiter behind his chair,
+"I wish I had some bread," to which the waiter replied without moving,
+"I wish you had." Durst not offer his arm to a lady, lest he should
+violate some of the multitudinous every-day usages of society, and so,
+instead of enjoying his dinner, just nibbled and choked and watched how
+others ate of the dishes he had never seen before. Yet this man was no
+fool, he was not even a blockhead; but he was frightened out of all
+propriety nevertheless. Poor fellow! Soon after this he went to Paris,
+and, having picked up a few French sentences, undertook to pass off one
+upon a servant who took his cloak as he entered the hotel of a French
+celebrity in a violent rainstorm. He flung the phrase off with an air,
+saying, "Mauvais temps," whereupon the word was passed up from mouth to
+mouth, and, to his unutterable horror, he was introduced to the company
+as M. Mauvais Temps.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Painting._--I have just been to see Mulready's famous "Lion and Lamb."
+He is a Royal Academician; and, spite of the cleverness we see in every
+touch, we are reminded of Pison's reply to the Academician, who asked
+what he was,--"I? O, I am nobody; not even an Academician." The picture
+is about eighteen by twenty-two inches, and belongs to his Majesty,
+George the Fourth. It represents two boys, a little child, a woman, and
+a dog. One boy has broken the strap of his trousers, and, bracing
+himself up for a clinch, is evidently encroaching on the other with his
+foot. He stands with his legs on the straddle, both fists made up for
+mischief, and head turned away in profile, with hat and books flung down
+upon the turf; while the other--the lamb--keeps his satchel in his hand,
+with one arm raised to parry the blow he is expecting. He has a meek,
+boyish face, and we have it in full. The back of the child is towards
+you, the mother terribly frightened; parts very fine, but as a whole the
+picture is not worthy of its reputation, to say nothing of the
+extravagant price paid for it,--some hundreds of guineas, they say.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Greenwich Fair._--Having read so much in story-books and novels, from
+my earliest childhood,--at one time in the gilt-covered publication of
+E. Newbury, St. Paul's Church Yard, and after that in larger books,--of
+the rioting at Greenwich Fair (another Donnybrook in its way), I
+determined to see for myself, and went down for the purpose, April 19th,
+1824. Universal decorum characterized the whole proceedings till the day
+was over, after which there was a large amount of dancing and frolicking
+and sight-seeing and beer-drinking, but no drunkenness and no
+quarrelling. The people were saucy, but good-natured, like the Italian
+rabble, with their plaster confectionery, at a carnival. Women and girls
+would run down the long green slope together, which it is said the
+cockneys believe to be the highest land in the world, after Richmond
+Hill; and many of them stumble and slip and roll to the bottom,
+screaming and laughing as they go. This I understand to be a favorite
+pastime with people who are big enough to know better; for a part of the
+fun, and that which all seem to enjoy most, is in tripping one another
+up. Plenty of giants and dwarfs to be seen for a penny, with white
+Circassians, silver-haired, and actors of all sorts and sizes. "Walk in,
+ladies and gentlemen! walk in! Here's the rope-dancing and juggling,
+with lots of gilt gingerbread,--and all for sixpence! Here is the great
+Numidian lion!"--leading forth a creature not larger than a
+moderate-sized English mastiff,--"with a throat like a turnpike gate,
+and teeth like mile-stones, and every hair on his mane as big as a
+broomstick!" It was worth sixpence to see the fellow's face when he said
+this; but most of the people round me seemed to believe what they heard
+rather than what they saw. Actors and actresses turn out and dance and
+strut before the curtain.
+
+Went into the Hospital, of which we have all heard so much, and into the
+Chapel. Here is the best picture West ever painted, I think. It is the
+shipwreck of St. Paul, with the viper and the fire: rocks rather crowded
+and confused; on the right are two figures, frequently, I had almost
+said always, to be found in his pictures, and always together. Old man
+on the right, capital!--Roof of the Hospital highly ornamented, though
+chaste, with painted pilasters, fluted; ceiling done by Sir James
+Thornhill, and is really a grand affair, not only for coloring and
+drawing, but for composition and general treatment. Architecture of the
+building, once a palace, worthy of the highest commendation, though it
+needs a back part to correspond with the two wings. Cupolas made to
+correspond, but seem rather out of place,--not wanted.
+
+Had quite an adventure before I got away. I saw a young girl running
+down hill by herself. She fell, and stained her white frock all over one
+hip of a grass-green. She seemed to be much hurt and near fainting. I
+found her young, pretty, and modest, as you may readily infer from what
+follows,--usually if you hear of a woman being run over in the street,
+you may be sure she is neither young nor pretty,--and so seeing her
+greatly distressed about the figure she cut, and companionless, I took
+pity on her, and going with her found, after some search, an old woman
+in a garret with a husband, child, and grandchild, all huddled and
+starving in one room together. The husband was a waterman. He had
+"stove" his boat some years before, and was never able to get another;
+had two sons at sea; paid two shillings a week for the room, which they
+said was one shilling too dear, being only large enough to allow of two
+or three chairs, a table, and a turn-up bed. Poor Sarah took off her
+frock and washed it before me, without a sign of distress or
+embarrassment; and then we went off together and had a bit of a
+dance,--a rough-and-tumble fore-and-after,--at the nearest booth. With
+her bonnet off, and neat cap, her beautiful complexion and dark hair and
+eyes, how happened it that she was really modest and well-behaved? And
+how came she there? After some resolute questioning, I determined to see
+her home, at least so far as to set her down in safety in the
+neighborhood where she lived. The coach was crowded with strangers. It
+was late, and they were silent, and I thought sulky. Just as we were
+passing a lamp, after we had entered a wide thoroughfare, I saw a man's
+face under a woman's bonnet. Though not absolutely frightened, I was
+rather startled, and more and more unwilling to leave the poor girl to
+the mercy of strangers; for I saw, or thought I saw, signs of
+intelligence between two of the party; and in short, I never left her
+till the danger was over.
+
+There were mountebanks and fortune-tellers and gypsies at every turn.
+The prettiest I met with told my fortune. "You are liked better by the
+women," said she, "than by the men." Very true. "You are loved by a
+widow named Mary." My landlady was a widow, and her name was Mary.
+"Which do you like best, Mary or Bessie?" In addition to Mary, there was
+another pleasant friend, supposed to be a natural daughter of George
+IV., named Bessie. But how the plague did the little gypsy know this? I
+found out, I believe, long after the whole affair was forgotten. There
+was present, without my knowledge, a man who was always full of such
+tricks, who knew me well, and who threw the gypsy in my way and put her
+up to all she knew. This was Humphries the engraver.
+
+There was a great ball too,--a magnificent ball,--one shilling entrance.
+More than fifty couples stood up for a contra-dance, and tore down the
+middle and up outside, and cast off, as if they were all just out of a
+lunatic hospital. And yet, as I have said before, I believe, there was
+no drunkenness and no quarrelling.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Shooting the Bridge._--Wanting to go to the Tower, I took a boat above
+London Bridge at the wrong time of the tide, in spite of all
+remonstrances, and came near being swamped. Not being a good swimmer,
+and aware that people were often drowned there, I cannot understand what
+possessed me; but as the watermen were not afraid, and asked no
+questions, why should I be troubled? For aught they knew, I might be
+made of cork, or have a swimming-jacket underneath my coat, or a pocket
+life-preserver ready to be blown up at a moment's notice; and they were
+sure of the fee. At the mouth of the St. John's River, New Brunswick,
+they have a fall both ways, at a certain time of tide, through which and
+up and down which boats and rafts plunge headlong so as to take away
+your breath, while you are watching them from the bridge; but really,
+this little pitch of not more than three or four feet under London
+Bridge I should think more dangerous, and the people seem to think so
+too, for they are always on the watch after the tide turns, and swarm
+along the parapets, and rush from one side to the other, as the wherry
+shoots through the main arch, with a feeling akin to that of the man who
+followed Van Amburgh month after month to see him "chawed up" by the
+lion or tiger.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Major Cartwright._--Another fast friend of our country and the
+institutions of our country, and always ready to take up the
+quarter-staff in our defence. A great reformer, and honest as the day is
+long. Wrote much in favor of American independence in 1774, and, with
+Sir Francis Burdett and others, who chose to meddle with the British
+Constitution wherever they found a fragment large enough to talk about,
+has been visited by the government, and tried and imprisoned. His book
+on the British Constitution is, though somewhat visionary, both original
+and ingenious. He is six feet high, with a very broad chest; wears a fur
+cap and blue cotton-velvet dressing-gown in the sultriest weather; is a
+great admirer of Jeremy Bentham, Mrs. Wheeler, and Fanny Wright, by the
+way.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Woolwich._--After spending a day here under special advantages, I have
+succeeded in seeing whatever was worth seeing for my purpose, and in
+getting a fine sketch of a Woolwich Pensioner by Sully,--Robert M.
+Sully, nephew of Thomas Sully, and a capital draughtsman,--to serve as a
+companion piece for the Greenwich Pensioner by the same artist. The man
+had served against us in the Revolutionary War, and participated in the
+"affair" of Bunker Hill. The shovel hats, the long chins and retreating
+mouths of these aged men at Greenwich, are wonderfully hit off by
+Cruikshank, with a mere flourish of the pen. I have a scene in a
+watch-house, with half a score of heads, thoroughly Irish, drunk or
+sleepy, and as many more of these shovel hats, which the clever artist
+amused himself with scratching off,--as we sat talking together at a
+table,--on a little bit of waste paper, which fluttered away in the
+draft from a window, and fell upon the floor.
+
+Saw a prodigious quantity of guns to be "let loose" in the dock-yard, to
+which I was admitted as a great privilege. When Alexander of Russia and
+the king of Prussia were admitted after the war, they were greatly
+disappointed and mortified, I was told, at seeing such a vast
+accumulation of warlike material. They supposed England to be exhausted.
+
+The English artillery is far superior in details to the French, though
+not half so abundant. Where the French bring eighty pieces at once into
+the field, the English never have more than twenty pieces. The English
+lost only two guns in the whole Peninsular war; the French lost nearly
+eleven hundred, Waterloo included.
+
+At Woolwich there are two or three hundred acres full of machinery, with
+saw-mills, planing-mills, &c. Saw, among other inventions and
+improvements, anchor shanks made largest about one third of the distance
+from the crown, where they always bend or break; an original
+screw-cutter of uncommon merit; and a perpetual capstan for drawing in
+wood for the mill.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Illuminations._--His Majesty's birthday. By one odd arrangement of
+colored lamps, which was intended for George IV., it reads thus,
+_Giver_, being G. IV. R. The populace break windows which are not
+lighted up. The king's tradesmen are most astonishing in their
+manifestations of loyalty; and, among others, I see an establishment
+with this inscription: "Bug Destroyer to his Majesty."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Chimney-Sweeps._--May 1. The little monsters appear in cocked hats and
+gilt paper, with their faces painted, and with dancing and music, and a
+very pretty girl pirouetting in a hogshead of cut paper, with large boys
+about her, like trees dancing. Of course, we are constantly reminded of
+Edward Wortley Montagu, and of his delightful experience with the
+chimney-sweeps.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_John Randolph._--This madman is full of his vagaries here; says the
+most offensive things, but in such a high-bred, supercilious, if not
+gentlemanly way, that people cannot make up their minds about him, nor
+whether to cut him dead or acknowledge him for a genius and a humorist.
+Sir Robert Inglis says, publicly, that Mr. Randolph "on these boards"
+claimed for Virginia the first attempt at abolition. "And I am disposed
+to believe the gentleman correct," adds Sir Robert, "because of his
+opportunities for knowledge." Whatever related to the United States was
+received better than anything else in the proceedings of to-day at the
+Freemasons' Tavern. Very comfortable and gratifying.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Marquis of Stafford's Gallery._--Here I find about three hundred fine
+pictures, most of them by the old masters, and a large part worthy of
+enthusiastic admiration. Thirty-eight in the National Gallery cost sixty
+thousand pounds. What, then, are these worth as a collection?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Cary, the Translator of Dante._--Met him at Mr. Griffith's,--Sylvanus
+Urban's,--another great friend of our country, who insisted on my
+occupying the seat which Dr. Franklin used to sit in, and after him Lord
+Byron. Mr. Cary has a good, sensible face, is about five feet seven in
+height, and forty-six years old, very moderate of speech, and talks with
+a low voice. Among the guests were Captain Brace, who was with Lord
+Exmouth when he put through the Dey of Algiers after the fashion of our
+Preble. He seemed about sixty, with gray hair, and a youthful
+countenance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Horticultural Exhibition._--Great show and surprising. No sales made.
+Pears better than ours; peaches nearly as good, and sell from a shilling
+to one and sixpence apiece. They resemble not our New Jersey or Maryland
+peaches, but such as grow about Boston. Grapes fine, nectarines capital;
+gooseberries, plums, mulberries, currants, all better than ours; apples
+wretched, "not fit to give the pigs," liked all the better for being
+hard, or ligneous.
+
+I have just understood here, on the best authority, that Mr. Coke, of
+Norfolk, did move for an abandonment of the war, session after session,
+and finally gave the casting vote as mover. He did also give
+Washington's health at his own table once, with a large company of
+leading men about him, in the hottest part of the struggle. He looks
+like one of Trumbull's generals or statesmen, of the old Revolutionary
+type, and not unlike Washington himself, or General Knox.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Duke of Sussex._--Prodigious; even Chester Harding, who is a large man,
+over six feet, appears under-sized alongside of his Royal Highness. Went
+to a meeting for the encouragement of the arts. The Duke presided, and,
+being popular and willing so to continue, he made a speech. "Ladies and
+gentlemen," said he, "it affords me gratification to see, to recognize,
+so many persons assembled for the encouragement of what I may say is one
+of the best institutions of the country. Good deal of business coming
+up. I shall therefore reserve myself for the conclusion, and now call
+upon the Secretary to read the proceedings." Effect of the show seems to
+be very good. Some persons, girls and women, received three prizes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Theatre._--Munden's farewell. Dosey and Sir Robert Bramble; among the
+finest pieces of acting I ever saw,--rich, warm, and full of
+unadulterated strength. Terrible crush at the entrance, the corners
+being neither stuffed nor rounded. Great screaming and screeching. "Take
+care o' that corner!" "Mind there!" "Oh! oh! you'll kill me!" "There
+now, lady's killed!" And it was indeed about as much as a woman's life
+was worth to venture into such a brutal mob. No consideration for women,
+as usual. They are pushed, crowded, overthrown sometimes, and sometimes
+trampled on without remorse or shame, as at the Duke of York's funeral.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Washington Irving._--Met him for the second time, and had more reason
+than ever for believing that, with all his daintiness and
+fastidiousness, he is altogether a man, hearty and generous, and his
+books, with all their shifting shadows, but a transcript of himself and
+of his unacknowledged visions and meditations. His pleasantry, too, is
+delightful; and, as you cannot question his truthfulness, he gains upon
+you continually, even while you pity his girlish sensitiveness. I do not
+see any picture of him that satisfies me, or does him justice. Newton
+cannot paint a portrait, nor indeed can Leslie; and the result is, that
+what we have foisted off upon us for portraits are only
+misunderstandings.
+
+
+
+
+A YEAR IN MONTANA.
+
+
+Where the Wind River Chain of the Rocky Mountains stretches far away to
+the east, and the Bitter Root Range far away to the northwest, like
+giant arms holding in their embrace the fertile valleys whence the
+myriad springs which form the two great rivers of the continent take
+their rise,--on the northern border of the United States, and accessible
+only through leagues of desert,--lie the gold fields of Montana. Four
+years ago all this region was _terra incognita_. In 1805, Lewis and
+Clarke passed through it; but beyond a liberal gift of geographical
+inaccuracies, they have left only a few venerable half-breeds as relics
+of their journey. Among the Indians, what they did and said has passed
+into tradition; and the tribes of which they speak, the Ke-heet-sas,
+Minnetarees, Hohilpoes, and Tus-he-pahs, are as extinct as the dodo.
+Later explorers have added little to the scanty stock of information,
+save interesting descriptions of rich valleys and rough mountain scenery
+and severe hardships in the winters. For the most part, it was a country
+unexplored and unknown, and held by the various Indian tribes in the
+Northwest as a common hunting-ground.
+
+One bright morning in August, 1864, after a brief rest at Salt Lake, we
+left Brigham's seraglios for this new El Dorado. We had taken the long
+trip of twelve hundred miles on the overland stage, which Mr. Bowles
+describes in his admirable book "Across the Continent." But his was the
+gala-day excursion of Speaker Colfax and his party, so full of studied
+and constant attention as to lead Governor Bross to tell the good people
+of Salt Lake, a little extravagantly, that the height of human happiness
+was to live in one of Holladay's stages. This life loses its rose-color
+when nine inside passengers, to fortune and to fame unknown, are viewed
+as so much freight, and transported accordingly.
+
+It is four hundred miles due north from Salt Lake City to Montana. The
+low canvas-covered Concord hack, in which we travel, is constructed with
+an eye rather to safety than comfort, and, like a city omnibus, is never
+full. Still, our passengers look upon even their discomforts as a joke.
+They are most of them old miners, hard-featured but genial and kindly,
+and easily distinguished from men reared in the easy life of cities. Mr.
+Bowles describes them as characterized by a broader grasp and more
+intense vitality. I could not but notice, particularly, their freedom
+from all the quarrels and disagreements sometimes known among travellers
+in the States. The heavy revolver at every man's belt, and the miner's
+proverbial love of fair play, keep in every one's mind a clear
+perception of the bounds of _meum_ and _tuum_.
+
+I must hurry over our four days' journey and its many objects of
+interest. All the first day we ride through brisk Mormon villages,
+prosperous in their waving cornfields and their heavy trade with the
+mines. At a distance is the Great Salt Lake,--properly an inland sea,
+like the Caspian and Sea of Aral,--having a large tributary, the Bear
+River, and no outlet. Crossing Bear River, and the low mountains beyond,
+we follow down the Portneuf Ca�on to Snake River, or Lewis's Fork of the
+Columbia, along which and its affluents lies the rest of our journey.
+
+Hurrying past the solitary station-houses, and over here and there a
+little creek, our fourth night brings us to a low hill, which we need to
+be told is a pass of the Rocky Mountains. We cross this during the
+night, and morning dawns upon us in a level prairie among the network of
+brooks which form the extreme sources of the Missouri. Here, more than
+sixty years ago, Lewis and Clarke followed the river up to the "tiny
+bright beck," so narrow that "one of the party in a fit of enthusiasm,
+with a foot on each side, thanked God that he had lived to bestride the
+Missouri." It is called Horse Prairie, from the circumstance that they
+here bartered for horses with the Shoshonee Indians. They had often seen
+the men, mounted on fleet steeds, watching them like timid antelopes at
+a distance, but never allowing this distance to lessen. No signs or
+proffered presents could induce a near approach. One lucky day, however,
+Captain Lewis surprised a chattering bevy of their squaws and made
+prisoner a belle of the tribe. Finding all effort to escape hopeless,
+the woman held down her head as if ready for death. There was among them
+the same effeminate fear of capture and the same heroic fortitude when
+death seemed inevitable, that Clive and Hastings found in the Bengalee.
+But the Captain gallantly painted her tawny cheeks with vermilion, and
+dismissed her loaded with presents. It is hardly necessary to add, that
+captures of Shoshonee Sabines were not long matters of difficult
+accomplishment. Very soon all the chiefs followed, with a rather
+exuberant cordiality towards the party, and with forced smiles the
+explorers "received the caresses and no small share of the grease and
+paint of their new friends."
+
+Lewis and Clarke called Horse Prairie by the prettier name of Shoshonee
+Cove. But the names they gave have passed into as deep oblivion as the
+forgotten great man, Rush, whose pills they publish to the world as a
+sovereign specific in bilious fevers. Of all the names on their map only
+those of the three forks of the Missouri, from President Jefferson and
+his Secretaries Madison and Gallatin, remain. The unpoetical miner has
+invented a ruder nomenclature; and on the rivers which they called
+Wisdom, Philosophy, and Philanthropy, he bestows the barbarous names of
+Big Hole, Willow Creek, and Stinking Water.
+
+A few hours' ride brings us to Grasshopper Creek, another affluent of
+the Missouri, and, like them all, a crooked little stream of clear cold
+water, fringed with alders and willows, and with a firm pebbly bed,
+along which the water tinkles a merry tune. What a pity that these pure
+mountain children should develop to such a maturity as the muddy
+Missouri! Parallel with this little stream, where it winds into a narrow
+chasm between abrupt mountain walls, winds a crooked street, with a
+straggling row of log-cabins on either side, and looking from the
+mountain-tops very much like the vertebr� of a huge serpent. This is
+Bannack, so called from the Indian tribe whose homes were in the
+vicinity. These were the bravest, the proudest, and the noblest looking
+Indians of the mountains till the white man came. Yet seldom has there
+been a stronger illustration of the inexorable law, that when a superior
+and inferior race come in contact the lower is annihilated. Every step
+of the white man's progress has been a step of the red man's decay. And
+now this tribe, once so warlike, is a nation of spiritless beggars,
+crouching near the white settlements for protection from their old
+foes, over whom in times past they were easy victors.
+
+At Bannack, in the summer of 1862, a party of Colorado miners, lost on
+their way to Gold Creek in the Deer Lodge Valley, discovered the first
+rich placer diggings of Montana. A mining town grew up straightway; and
+ere winter a nondescript crowd of two thousand people--miners from the
+exhausted gulches of Colorado, desperadoes banished from Idaho, bankrupt
+speculators from Nevada, guerilla refugees from Missouri, with a very
+little leaven of good and true men--were gathered in. Few of them speak
+with pleasant memories of that winter. The mines were not extensive, and
+they were difficult to work. Scanty supplies were brought in from Denver
+and Salt Lake, and held at fabulous prices. An organized band of
+ruffians, styled Road Agents, ruled the town. Street murders were daily
+committed with impunity, and travellers upon the road were everywhere
+plundered. Care was not even taken to conceal the bodies of the victims,
+which were left as food for the wolves by the roadside.
+
+Next year, the discovery of richer mines at Virginia left Bannack a
+deserted village of hardly two hundred people. It is a dull town for the
+visitor; but the inhabitants have all Micawber's enthusiastic trust in
+the future, and live in expectation of the wealth which is to turn up in
+the development of the quartz lodes. We visited the most famous of these
+lodes,--the Dacotah,--almost every specimen from which is brilliant with
+little shining stars of gold. And deep down in the shaft of this lode
+has been found a spacious cave full of stones of a metallic lustre,
+sending out all the tints of the rainbow, and many-colored translucent
+crystallizations, varying from the large stalactites to the fragile
+glass-work that crumbles at the touch.
+
+Leaving Bannack, the road ascends a very lofty range of mountains, and
+passes by much wild and picturesque scenery. Mountaineers call these
+ranges, where they separate two streams, by the name of "divides." They
+have a scanty but nutritious herbage, and are for many months in the
+year covered with snow. On many of them a stunted growth of hybrid pines
+and cedars flourishes in great abundance. These, with the quaking ash
+and cottonwood along the streams, are the only woods of Montana. None of
+the harder woods, such as oak or maple, are found. It is inconceivably
+grand from the top of this range to look out upon the endless succession
+of vast peaks rolling away on every side, like waves in the purple
+distance. High above them all towers Bald Mountain,--the old Indian
+landmark of this section,--like Saul among his brethren. I have crossed
+this range in the gray of a February morning, with the thermometer at
+thirty-five below zero, and I never felt such a sense of loneliness as
+in gazing out from our sleigh--little atom of life as it seemed--upon
+this boundless ocean of snow, whose winters had been unbroken solitude
+through all the centuries.
+
+Over this divide we pass among a low range of hills seamed with veins of
+silver, having already a more than local reputation. The hills embosom a
+clear little creek called after the yellow rattlesnake, which is almost
+as plentiful a luxury in these wilds as the grasshopper. It is, however,
+less venomous than its Eastern brethren, for not even the oldest
+inhabitant can instance a death from its bite. Nervous people avoid it
+studiously, but it has many friends among the other animals. The
+prairie-dog, the owl, and the rattlesnake live a happy family in one
+burrow, and the serpent has another fast friend in the turtle-dove.
+These doves are called the rattlesnake's brothers-in-law, and there runs
+a pretty legend, that when an Indian kills one of them, or mocks their
+plaintive cry, they tell the rattlesnake, who lies in wait and avenges
+the wrong by a deadly sting. And when one of the snakes is killed, the
+turtle-doves watch long over his dead body and chant mournful dirges at
+his funeral.
+
+The road to Virginia passes through the basin in which lie the
+tributaries of Jefferson Fork. It is a barren waste. Being in the rich
+mineral section of the country, its agricultural resources are
+proportionally deficient. Providence does not sprinkle the gold among
+the grain lands, but, by the wise law of compensation, apportions it to
+remote and volcanic regions which boast of little else. Along the
+water-courses is a narrow belt of cottonwood, and then rise the low
+table-lands, too high for irrigation, and with a parched, alkaline soil
+which produces only the wild sage and cactus. Miners curse this
+sprawling cactus most heartily, and their horses avoid its poisonous
+porcupine thorns with great care. All through these brown wastes one
+sees no shelter for the herds, no harvests of grain or hay, and wonders
+not a little how animal life--as well the flocks of antelope, elk, and
+deer in the mountains, as the cattle and horses of the rancheros--is
+preserved through the deep snows of the Northern winter. But even when
+the mountains are impassable, there is seldom snow in the valleys; and
+along the sides of the hills grow stunted tufts of bunch-grass, full of
+sweetness and nutriment. Horses always hunt for it in preference to the
+greener growth at the water's edge. And it is not an annual, but a
+perennial, preserving its juices during the winters, and drawing up sap
+and greenness into the old blades in the first suns of spring. This
+bunch-grass grows in great abundance, and it is only in winters of
+extreme severity that animals suffer from a lack of nourishing food.
+
+Specks of gold may be found in a pan of dirt from any of these streams,
+followed back to the mountain chasm of its source. Upon one of them, in
+June, 1863, a party of gold-hunters stopped to camp on their return to
+Bannack, after an unsuccessful trip to the Yellowstone. While dinner was
+being cooked, one of them washed out a pan of dirt and obtained more
+than a dollar. Further washings showed even greater richness; and,
+hurrying to Bannack, they returned at once with supplies and friends,
+and formed a mining district. In the absence of law, the miners frame
+their own law; and so long as its provisions are equal and impartial, it
+is everywhere recognized. The general principle of such laws is to grant
+a number of linear feet up and down the gulch or ravine to the first
+squatter, upon compliance with certain conditions necessary for mutual
+benefit. In deliberations upon these laws, technicalities and ornament
+are of little weight, and only the plainest common-sense prevails.
+Prominent among their conditions was a provision--for the exorcism of
+drones--that every claim must be worked a fixed number of days in each
+week, or else, in the miners' expressive vocabulary, it should be
+considered "jumpable." Compliance with law was never more rigidly
+exacted by Lord Eldon than by the miners' judges and courts, and in the
+first days of this legislation a hundred revolvers, voiceless before any
+principle of justice, yet too ready before any technicality, fixed the
+construction of every provision beyond all cavil.
+
+This was the beginning of Virginia Gulch, from which twenty-five
+millions of dollars in gold have been taken, and which has to-day a
+population of ten thousand souls. The placer proved to be singularly
+regular, almost every claim for fifteen miles being found profitable.
+From the mouth of the ca�on to its very end, among snows almost
+perpetual, are the one-storied log-cabins, gathered now and then into
+clusters, which are called cities, and named by the miner from his old
+homes in Colorado and Nevada. In travelling up the crazy road, with
+frowning mountains at our left, and yawning pit-holes at our right, we
+pass seven of these cities,--Junction, Nevada, Central, Virginia,
+Highland, Pine Grove, and Summit.
+
+Virginia, the chief of the hamlets, has since developed into an
+organized city, and the capital of the Territory. Its site was certainly
+not chosen for its natural beauty. Along the main gulch are the
+mines,--huge piles of earth turned up in unsightly heaps. At one side
+of the mines, and up a ravine which crosses the gulch at right angles,
+lies the city. In shape it was originally like the letter T, but its
+later growth has forced new streets and houses far up the hillsides. Not
+so much regard was paid, in laying the foundations of the new city, to
+its future greatness, as Penn gave when he planned Philadelphia. The
+miner only wanted a temporary shelter, and every new-comer placed a
+log-cabin of his own style of architecture next the one last built.
+Where convenience required a street, lo! a street appeared. There were
+no gardens, for beyond the narrow centre of the ravine only sage-brush
+and cactus would grow. But the mines thrived, and also grew and thrived
+the little city and its vices.
+
+Gradually a better class of buildings appeared. What were called hotels
+began to flourish; but it was long before the monotony of bacon, bread,
+and dried apples was varied by a potato. And for sleeping
+accommodations, a limited space was allotted upon the floor, the guest
+furnishing his own blankets. A theatre soon sprang up. And either
+because of the refined taste of some of the auditors, or the advanced
+talent of the performers, the playing was not the broad farce which
+might have been entertaining, but was confined to Shakespeare and heavy
+tragedy, which was simply disgusting. This style of acting culminated in
+the _d�but_ of a local celebrity, possessed of a sonorous voice and
+seized with a sudden longing for Thespian laurels. He chose the part of
+Othello, and all Virginia assembled to applaud. The part was not well
+committed, and sentences were commenced with Shakespearian loftiness and
+ended with the actor's own emendations, which were certainly
+questionable improvements. Anything but a tragic effect was produced by
+seeing the swarthy Moor turn to the prompter at frequent intervals, and
+inquire, "What?" in a hoarse whisper. A running colloquy took place
+between Othello and his audience, in which he made good his assertion
+that he was rude in speech. Since then, Shakespeare has not been
+attempted on the Virginia boards. "Othello's occupation's gone"; and all
+tragic efforts are confined to the legitimate Rocky Mountain drama.
+"Nick of the Woods" has frequently been produced with great applause,
+though the illusion is somewhat marred by the audible creaking of the
+wheels of the boat in which the Jibbenainosay sails triumphantly over
+the cataract.
+
+Sunday is distinguished from other days in being the great day of
+business. The mines are not worked and it is the miners' holiday. All is
+bustle and confusion. A dozen rival auctioneers vend their wares, and
+gallop fast horses up and down the street. The drinking and gambling
+saloons and dance-houses are in full blast, all with bands of music to
+allure the passing miner, who comes into town on Sunday to spend his
+earnings. The discoverer of Virginia is the miner _par excellence_,--a
+good-natured Hercules clad in buckskin, or a lion in repose. All the
+week he toils hard in some hole in the earth for this Sunday folly. The
+programme for the day is prepared on a scale of grandeur in direct ratio
+to the length of his purse. The necessity of spending the entire week's
+earnings is obvious, and to assist him in doing so seems to be the only
+visible means of support of half the people of the town. The dance-house
+and the gambling-saloon, flaunting their gaudy attractions, own him for
+the hour their king. His Midas touch is all-powerful. I must confess,
+with all my admiration for his character, that his tastes are low. I
+know that the civilization of the East would bore him immeasurably, and
+that he considers Colt, with his revolvers, a broader philanthropist
+than Raikes with his Sunday schools. But he is frank and open, generous
+and confiding, honorable and honest, scorning anything mean and
+cowardly. Mention to him, in his prodigal waste of money, that a poor
+woman or child is in want of the necessaries of life, and the
+purse-strings open with a tear. Tell him that corruption and wrong have
+worked an injury to a comrade or a stranger, and his pistol flashes only
+too quickly, to right it. Circumstances have made him coarse and brutal,
+but below all this surface beats a heart full of true instincts and
+honest impulses. I am certain the recording angel will blot out many of
+his sins, as he did those of Uncle Toby. His means exhausted, he
+abdicates his ephemeral kingdom, and, uncomplaining, takes his pick and
+shovel, his frying-pan, bacon, and flour, and starts over the mountains
+for new diggings. Yet he gains no wisdom by experience. The same
+bacchanalian orgies follow the next full purse.
+
+The Road Agents came to the new city from Bannack increased in strength
+and boldness. Long impunity had made them scarcely anxious to conceal
+their connection with the band. Life and property were nowhere secure.
+Spies in Virginia announced to confederates on the road every ounce of
+treasure that left the city, and sometimes reports came back of
+robberies of the coaches, sometimes of murder of the travellers, and
+still more frequently the poor victim was never heard of after his
+departure. There were no laws or courts, except the miners' courts, and
+these were powerless. Self-protection demanded vigorous measures, and a
+few good men of Bannack and Virginia met together and formed a Vigilance
+Committee, similar in all respects to that which has had such a
+beneficent influence in the growth of California. It was, of course,
+secret, and composed of a mere handful. It must be secret, for the Road
+Agents had so overawed the people that few dared acknowledge themselves
+as champions of law and order. They had threatened, and they had the
+power to crush such an organization at its inception, by taking the
+lives of its members. But moving stealthily and unknown, the little
+organization grew. Whenever a good man and true was found, he became a
+link of the chain. At last it tried its power over a notorious desperado
+named Ives, by calling a public trial of the miners. It was a citizens'
+trial, but the Vigilantes were the leading spirits. Ives confronted his
+accusers boldly, relying on the promised aid of his confederates. They
+lay in wait to offer it, but the criminal was too infamous for just men
+to hesitate which side to take, and the cowards, as always in such
+cases, though probably a numerical majority, dared not meet the issue.
+Ives was hanged without any attempt at rescue.
+
+The proceedings thus vigorously commenced were as vigorously continued.
+The Road Agents still trusted their power, and the contest was not
+settled. The Vigilantes settled it soon and forever. One morning their
+pickets barred every point of egress from Virginia. A secret trial had
+been held and six well-known robbers sentenced to death. Five of them
+were one by one found in the city. The quickness of their captors had
+foiled their attempts at escape or resistance, and their impotent rage
+at seeing every point guarded sternly by armed Vigilantes knew no
+bounds. They were all executed together at noon. It was a sickening
+scene,--five men, with the most revolting crimes to answer for, summoned
+with hardly an hour's preparation into eternity. Yet they are frequently
+spoken of with respect because they "died game." All of them, drinking
+heavily to keep up their courage, died with the most impious gibes and
+curses on their lips. Boone Helm, a hoary reprobate, actually said, as
+the block was being removed from him, "Good by, boys! I will meet you in
+hell in five minutes." Harsh measures were these, but their effect was
+magical. One of the leaders had been hanged at Bannack, and the others
+as fast as found were promptly executed,--perhaps thirty in all. A few
+fled, and are heard of now and then among the robbers of Portneuf Ca�on;
+but under the sway of the Vigilantes life and property in Virginia
+became safer than to-day in Boston. For minor offences they banished the
+guilty, and for grave offences they took life. As their history is now
+recounted by the people, there is no man who does not praise their work
+and agree that their acts were just and for the public good. The first
+courts were held in December, 1864, and the Vigilantes were the earliest
+to support their authority. They are still in existence, but as a
+support and ally of the courts, and only appearing when the public
+safety demands the most rigorous dealing.
+
+Virginia can never be a pretty city, but in many respects it is a model
+one. The earlier log-houses are now giving way to substantial stores of
+granite; and the number of gambling and tippling shops is steadily
+decreasing, the buildings being taken up by the wholesale traders. An
+organized city government preserves strict police regulations. Two
+thriving churches have grown up, and very recently the principal
+merchants have agreed to close their houses on the Sabbath. The old
+residents are bringing in their wives and children, and society
+constantly gains in tone. Erelong, it will compare favorably with the
+steadiest town in the land of steady habits.
+
+Eight miles above Virginia is Summit. Its name sufficiently designates
+its location, which is at the head of the gulch and among the highest
+mountains. The sun is not seen there till a late hour in the winter, and
+the few who make it their home burrow closely as rabbits from the bitter
+cold and deep snows. The placer diggings are at their greatest depth
+here, but exceedingly rich. Here also are the richest gold lodes of the
+Territory. All the quartz seems impregnated with gold, sometimes in
+little pockets of nuggets, sometimes spattered by the intense heat of
+old into all forms of wires and spangles.
+
+Quartz mining is yet in its rudest form. The gold is buried in solid
+rock, and requires heavy crushing-mills and cumbrous machinery, which
+must be built and transported at immense expense by capitalists. It is a
+question with such capitalists how certain is the promise of returns.
+The uncertainty of mining, as shown by the results of ventures in
+Colorado, has naturally deterred them. Under the old process of crushing
+the quartz to powder by stamps, and then separating the gold by
+amalgamation with quicksilver, but twenty-five per cent of the gold is
+saved. After the amalgamation a practical chemist could take the
+"tailings" of the Dacotah ore, and produce almost the full assay of the
+original rock. Very much depends in the mountain territories upon the
+success of experiments, now in operation, with the various new
+desulphurizing processes. This success established, the wealth of the
+territories is incalculable.
+
+All the mining of Montana is now confined to the placer or gulch
+diggings. There are many of these, but probably none to compare in all
+respects with those at Virginia. At Bannack is found purer gold, at
+Biven's are larger nuggets, and many diggings at McClellan's yield
+larger amounts per day. But these are lotteries,--some claims paying
+largely to-day and nothing to-morrow, or one yielding enormously, while
+the next, after all the labor and expense of opening, gives nothing.
+They are called "spotted," while nearly every claim at Virginia has
+yielded with great regularity. How the gold came into these gulches is
+of little consequence to the miner. It suffices him to know that it is
+there, and his practical experience enables him to point out its
+location with great accuracy, though without any scientific knowledge of
+its origin. Most probably, far away in the Preadamite periods, when
+these mountains were much loftier than to-day, they were cloven and
+pierced by volcanic fires, and then into their innumerable vents and
+fissures infiltrated the molten quartz and the base and precious metals.
+Afterwards followed the period of the glaciers, and all the working of
+the seasons and chemical decompositions. Traces of the glaciers and the
+rotten burnt quartz of the volcanic periods exist everywhere. Thus
+washing and crumbling away in the waters and suns of untold springs and
+summers, the gold has come down the mountain gorges into the valleys
+below. The manner of gathering it is rude and incomplete enough. In all
+the gulches, at depths varying from six to fifty feet, is a _bed-rock_
+of the same general conformation as the surface. Usually this is
+granite; but sometimes before reaching the primitive rock two or three
+strata of pipe-clay--the later beds of the stream, upon which frequently
+lies a deposit of gold--are passed. Upon the bed-rock is a deposit, from
+three to four feet in depth, of gravel and boulders, in which the gold
+is hidden. This is called by the miners "pay-dirt," and to remove it to
+the surface and wash it is the end of mining. It is an expensive and
+laborious process indeed. The water has first to be controlled; and in
+mines of not too great depth this is done by a drain ditch along the
+bed-rock, commenced many claims below. In this all the claim-holders are
+interested, and all contribute their quota of the labor and expense of
+digging it. The district laws permit every person to run such a drain
+through all the claims below his own, and force every man to contribute
+alike towards its construction, on pain of not being allowed to use the
+water, even though it flows through his own land. The water controlled,
+the rest is mere physical labor, which only bones and sinews of iron can
+endure. In the shallow diggings the superincumbent earth above the
+pay-dirt is removed, and the process is called "stripping." In deep
+diggings a shaft is sunk to the bed-rock, and tunnels are run in every
+direction,--and this is called "drifting." The roof is supported by
+strong piles, but these supports too frequently give way, and hurry the
+poor miners to untimely deaths. The pay-dirt, in whichever way obtained,
+is then shovelled into the sluice-boxes,--a series of long troughs, set
+at the proper angle to prevent the gold from washing past, or the dirt
+from settling to the bottom. Managed with the skill which experience has
+taught, the constant stream of water carries over the sand, while the
+gold, being seven times heavier, sinks to the bottom, and is caught by
+cross-bars called "_riffles_," placed there for the purpose. In the
+lower boxes is frequently placed quicksilver, with which the lighter
+particles amalgamate. During the washings the larger stones and boulders
+are removed by a fork. These boxes, after a successful day's work, are a
+pleasant sight to see, all brilliant with gold and black sand and
+magnetic iron. All is gold that glitters. The heavy sand and iron are
+separated by a more careful washing by hand and by the magnet. Of
+course, all this system is very rude and imperfect,--so much so, that it
+has been found profitable in California to wash over the same earth nine
+times.
+
+The gold-dust thus obtained is the only circulating medium in the
+Territory, and is the standard of trade. Treasury notes and coin are
+articles of merchandise. Everybody who has gold has also his little
+buckskin pouch to hold it. Every store has its scales, and in these is
+weighed out the fixed amount for all purchases according to Troy weight.
+An ounce is valued at eighteen dollars, a pennyweight at ninety cents,
+and so on. It is amusing to notice how the friction of the scales is
+made by some men--particularly the Jews, whose name is legion--to work
+them no loss. In _weighing in_, the scale-beam bows most deferentially
+to the gold side; but in _weighing out_, it makes profound obeisance to
+the weights. The same cupidity has given rise to two new terms in the
+miners' glossary,--_trade dust_ and _bankable dust_. Bankable dust means
+simply gold, pure and undefiled. Trade dust is gold with a plentiful
+sprinkling of black sand, and is of three grades, described very clearly
+by the terms _good_, _fair_, and _dirty_. The trader, in receiving our
+money, complains if it does not approximate what is bankable, but in
+paying us his money pours out a combination in which black sand is a
+predominating ingredient. Many merchants even keep a saucer of black
+sand in readiness to dilute their bankable gold to the utmost thinness
+it will bear.
+
+As might be expected, the courts were hardly opened before grave
+questions arose as to the construction of contracts based on this
+anomalous currency. Notes were usually made to pay a given number of
+"dollars, in good, bankable dust." But the laws recognized no such
+commodity as a dollar in dust. The decision of the court protecting a
+trickster in paying treasury-notes worth but fifty cents for the gold
+loaned by a friend, savored to the plain miner of rank injustice. To
+avoid even this opportunity for a legal tender, sometimes notes promised
+to pay a certain number of ounces and pennyweights, with interest at a
+fixed rate. The question was immediately sprung as to whether such an
+agreement was to be construed as a promissory note, or was to be sued
+for as a contract to do a specified act, by setting out a breach and
+claiming damages for the non-performance. The miners listened to the
+long discussions on these points impatiently, and compared the courts
+unfavorably with the miners' courts, which unloosed all such Gordian
+knots with Alexander's directness.
+
+In the month of September, 1864, reports came to Virginia of mines on
+the Yellowstone. The reports were founded on some strange tales of old
+trappers, and were clothed with a vagueness and mystery as uncertain as
+dreams. Yet on such unsubstantial bases every miner built a pet theory,
+and a large "stampede" took place in consequence. I started with a party
+for the new mines, early in October. A day's ride brought us to the
+Madison Fork, a broad, shallow stream, difficult of fording on account
+of its large boulders, and flowing through a narrow strip of arable
+land. Very different is the Gallatin, beyond. It is cut up into narrow
+streams of a very rapid current, and waters a valley of surprising
+fertility. The Snakes called it Swift River. This valley is forty miles
+long and from ten to fifteen wide, and rising at its sides into low
+plateaus plenteously covered with rich bunch-grass. It is already
+pre-empted by farmers, and by easy irrigation are produced all the
+hardier vegetables and cereals, in quantity, size, and closeness of
+fibre not equalled on the Iowa prairies. The valley gradually widens as
+you descend the stream, until, at the junction of the Three Forks, it
+stretches into a broad prairie, sufficient alone to supply all the mines
+with grain and vegetables. A few enterprising speculators once laid out
+a town here, with all the pomp and circumstance of Martin Chuzzlewit's
+Eden. Pictures of it were made, with steamers lying at the wharves and a
+university in the suburbs. Liberal donations of lots were made to the
+first woman married, to the first newspaper, to the first church, to the
+first child born. But there were no mines near, and the city never had
+an inhabitant. The half-dozen buildings put up by the proprietors are
+left for the nightly carnivals of bats and owls.
+
+On our road we passed a half-dozen huts, dignified with the name of
+Bozeman City. Here lives a Cincinnatus in retirement, one of the great
+pioneers of mountain civilization, named Bozeman. To him belongs the
+credit of having laid out the Bozeman Cut-off, on the road from Fort
+Laramie to Virginia, and he is looked up to among emigrants much as
+Chief-Justice Marshall is among lawyers. I saw the great man, with one
+foot moccasoned and the other as Nature made it, giving Bunsby opinions
+to a crowd of miners as to the location of the mythical mines.
+
+Parting from him, we crossed a high range of mountains, and from their
+tops looked down upon the spiral line of the Yellowstone, marked by the
+rich tints of its willows and cottonwoods, red, yellow, and green, in
+the crisp frosts of October. The air on these mountain-tops is much
+rarefied, and so very clear and pure that objects at a great distance
+seem within the reach of an easy walk. The Yellowstone flows in the
+eastern portion of Montana through an uninhabitable desert called the
+Mauvaises Terres, or Bad Lands, which, mingling their soil with its
+waters, give it the yellow color from which it is named. These lands are
+vast wastes, covered with what appears to be pine ashes. No signs of
+vegetation are found, but they are abundant in strange petrifactions. I
+have seen from them petrified reptiles and portions of the human body,
+having a pearly lustre and inlaid with veins, and looking like the
+finest work in _papier-mach�_.
+
+The valley of the Upper Yellowstone has a thin, rocky soil, almost
+worthless for farming land. But what a paradise it would be for Izaak
+Walton and Daniel Boone! Quaint old Izaak would have realized a dream of
+Utopia in watching in the crystal stream its millions of speckled trout.
+It almost seems as if the New England trout had learned their proverbial
+wariness from long experience. There is none of it in these Yellowstone
+fish. They leap at the bare hook with the most guileless innocence.
+Trout are rarely found in the waters of the Missouri, but they fill all
+the brooks west of the mountains. They bite ravenously; one veracious
+traveller going so far as to assert that they followed him from the
+water far into the woods, and bit at the spurs on his boots. But
+mountaineers, even of the most scrupulous veracity, are occasionally
+given to hyperbole. Daniel Boone, too, would have found his paradise of
+a solitude undisturbed by white men, and full of wild game. Every night
+our camp was entertained with the hungry cry of wolves, the melancholy
+hooting of owls, and the growls of bears crackling the underbrush. The
+grizzly bear is not found in Montana; only the small black and cinnamon
+bears are seen. When wounded, these exhibit the most extreme ferocity;
+but persons who choose to avoid them will find them always willing to
+preserve the most distant relations. The most interesting of all the
+wild animals is the antelope. Every hour we passed flocks of these
+little fellows. They are timid as school-girls, but as inquisitive as
+village gossips; and while frightened and trembling at our presence,
+they could not resist keeping long in our view, and stopping every few
+moments to watch us, with most childish curiosity. Though fleet as the
+wind, I have seen many of the meek-eyed little fellows watch too long,
+and pay for their curiosity with their lives.
+
+The most eastern settlement of Montana is at the mouth of a ca�on near
+the Yellowstone, one hundred and thirty miles from Virginia. A party of
+Iowa emigrants found fair prospects here, and made it their home,
+calling their mines Emigrant Gulch, and their half-dozen log-huts
+Yellowstone City. Their gulch is rich in gold, but the huge boulders,
+many tons in weight, make it impossible to obtain the treasure by the
+present rude methods. The few profitable claims are high up in the
+mountains, and are free from ice only in the hottest days of summer.
+Even the donkeys, so much in use in transporting supplies to the
+mountain miners, cannot travel here, and every pound of flour is carried
+on men's backs over giddy paths almost impassable for the chamois. Still
+the emigrants went to work with a will, and full of confidence. They
+built themselves log-cabins, not so convenient as those at
+Virginia,--for they had not the miner's knack of reaping large results
+from such limited resources,--but still substantial and comfortable.
+They enacted written laws, as ample as the Code Napoleon. Almost every
+day during our visit they met to revise this code and enact new
+provisions. Its most prominent feature was the ample protection it
+afforded to women in the distribution of lots in their prospective city,
+and the terrible punishment with which it visited any man who dared
+offer one of them an insult. They certainly founded their republic on
+principles of adamant, but in spite of high hopes and wise laws the
+boulders refused to move. Even Iowa enterprise at last gave way under
+constant disaster, and the people of the little city are one by one
+forsaking it for the older mines.
+
+The swift Yellowstone and the Colorado rise in lakes in the enchanted
+Wind River Mountains. Mr. Stuart mentions the weird tales, told by
+trappers and hunters, of places--avoided, if possible, by man and
+beast--in these mountains where trees and game and even Indians are
+petrified, and yet look natural as in life. These trappers are
+accustomed to exaggerate. I remember hearing a very serious account from
+one of them of a vast mountain of quartz so transparent that he could
+see mules feeding on the other side. There is also a story of a trapper
+who was lost in the fastnesses of the mountains years ago, and wandered
+for many days among streams whose bottoms were pebbled with gold. It is
+the miner's romance to repeat these fables of the Wind River Mountains,
+and to look forward to the day when the Indians shall be forced to yield
+them to his enterprise.
+
+We arrived at Virginia at the end of October, and the commencement of
+the long mountain winter. The snows were soon blown in deep drifts over
+the hills, and the roads became almost impassable. A few hardy
+prospecters braved them in the search for quartz lodes, but many
+perished, and others were brought back to the city with frozen limbs.
+The mines lay idle, and the business of the city, dependent upon them
+for support, was completely stagnant. It was humanity living a squirrel
+life among its little garners of roots and nuts. But as usual, the
+reason of humanity fell far behind the instinct of the squirrel. Before
+spring came, the supply of flour at Virginia failed, and the most
+hideous of all calamities was threatened,--a famine. The range on the
+Salt Lake road lay utterly impassable under more than fifteen feet of
+snow. No mails had arrived for three months. The fear of famine soon
+became a panic, and flour speedily rose from twenty dollars per sack of
+one hundred pounds to one hundred and ten dollars in gold. A mob was
+organized by the drones, who would rather steal than work; and the
+miners were wrought upon by statements that a few speculators held an
+abundance of flour, and were extorting money from the necessities of the
+people. The Robespierres of the new reform drew the miners into passing
+a resolution to place all the flour in Virginia in the hands of a
+committee, with authority to distribute it among the most needy, at a
+fair and reasonable compensation, payable to the owner. A riot followed,
+and the flour-merchants quietly awaited the mob behind barricades of
+their own flour. The County Sheriff stood at the front of these with
+cocked revolver, and threatened to kill the first who advanced. The
+thieves knew that he did not threaten idly, and, though a hundred were
+ready to follow, not one was bold enough to lead. The riot failed for
+want of a courageous leader, and towards night slowly dwindled away.
+Another mob followed in a few days; but the merchants had sold their
+flour at sacrifices, and the booty was only a few sacks. The want of
+this staff of life caused great suffering. All other vegetable food was
+rapidly consumed, and for six weeks the poorer classes were forced to
+live on beef alone. The effect was in all cases an inability to labor,
+and in some cases serious sickness.
+
+While thus cut off from all communication with the outer world, and
+buried in the dull town, there was little for us to do save to study
+each other's characters and talk the miners' language. In all new and
+thinly settled countries, many ideas are expressed by figures drawn from
+the pursuits of the people. Among the Indians, more than half of every
+sentence is expressed by signs. And miners illustrate their conversation
+by the various terms used in mining. I have always noticed how clearly
+these terms conveyed the idea sought. Awkwardness in comprehending this
+dialect easily reveals that the hearer bears the disgrace of being a
+"pilgrim," or a "tender-foot," as they style the new emigrant. To master
+it is an object of prime necessity to him who would win the miner's
+respect. Thus the term "adobe," the sun-dried brick, as applied to a
+man, signifies vealiness and verdancy. A "corral" is an enclosure into
+which the herds are gathered; hence a person who has everything arranged
+to his satisfaction announces that he has everything "corralled." A man
+fortunate in any business has "struck the pay-dirt"; unfortunate, has
+"reached the bed-rock." Everything viewed in the aggregate, as a train,
+a family, or a town, is an "outfit." I was much at a loss, on my first
+arrival, to comprehend the exact purport of a miner's criticism upon a
+windy lawyer of Virginia,--"When you come to pan him out, you don't find
+color." But this vocabulary is not extensive, and the pilgrim soon
+learns to perceive and use its beauties.
+
+Helena, the second point of importance in the Territory, is one hundred
+and twenty-five miles north from Virginia. We travel to it over a fine,
+hard road, through the low valleys of the Missouri. The beauty and
+richness of these valleys increase as we leave Virginia, and everywhere
+the green spots are becoming the homes of thrifty farmers. On the divide
+near Boulder Creek are wonderful proofs of the gradual levelling of the
+mountains, in the huge blocks of rock piled up in the most grotesque
+shapes. Many of these are colossal pillars, surmounted by boulders
+weighing many tons. The softer rock and gravel have washed down the
+ravines, leaving these as monuments of the primal ages. The ravines
+penetrate the mountain on every side, and little by little wear the
+monster away. The beavers choose the prettiest nooks in them for their
+villages, and the miner, finding the water cut off, often learns that in
+a single night these busy architects have built a tight and closely
+interwoven dam up the stream, which it takes him many hours to demolish.
+Is it strange that, in speaking of the beaver dam, he should sometimes
+transpose the words?
+
+We ride down the pleasantest of the ravines, till it develops into the
+Prickly Pear River, and past embryo cities,--at present noticeable for
+nothing except their rivalry of each other,--and hurry on to Last Chance
+Gulch and the city of Helena. A few emigrants from Minnesota had been
+here for many months. They made no excitement, no parade, but steadily
+worked on amid their majestic mountain scenery, and asked no heralding
+of their wealth. On either side of their cabins grew tall pines straight
+as arrows, and in front spread a vast fertile valley watered by clear
+rivulets, marked here and there with the low cottages of the rancheros,
+and dotted everywhere with innumerable herds of cattle. Beyond the
+Missouri rose abruptly chains of snow-capped mountains, glistening in
+the sunlight and veined with gold and silver. Reports of these men came
+at times to Virginia,--reports always of a quiet and unostentatious
+prosperity. In the winter of 1864 their secret became known, and half
+the nomadic population of Virginia hurried to the new mines, and puzzled
+the slow-moving Minnesotians by their bustle and activity. Claims
+advanced rapidly in price, and the discoverers reaped fortunes. A city
+rose like an exhalation. Yet I never saw better order than in the
+earliest days of Helena, though I am afraid that Hangman's Tree could
+tell some stories of too much haste and injustice in taking the lives of
+criminals.
+
+The hundred ravines near Helena showed gold, and every one of them was
+soon claimed from mouth to source. Every night I heard the clattering
+hoofs of the stampeders for some new gulch, starting in the utmost
+secrecy to gain the first right for themselves and friends. A trifling
+hint induces these stampedes. A wink from one old miner to another, and
+hundreds mounted their horses to seek some inaccessible mountain
+fissure. The more remote the diggings, so much the greater the
+excitement. Half the people of Helena lately hurried, in the depth of
+winter, to diggings on Sun River, (where many and many a brave fellow
+perished in the snows,) to learn that far richer mines had lain
+unclaimed for months within a stone's throw of their homes. The
+excitement over quartz lodes rapidly followed; and every spot on the
+mountains which showed any slight indications of auriferous quartz was
+claimed by the prospecters. Hardly a third of these can ever prove rich,
+but here and there is one of great value.
+
+Helena, supported by the trade of the surrounding mines, already rivals
+Virginia. Perhaps in years to come it may have a larger population and a
+more reckless enterprise. One hundred and fifty miles north from Helena
+is Fort Benton, an old fortified post of the American Fur Company, and
+the head of navigation on the Missouri. Steamers have arrived here in
+the spring, but the uncertainty of the water will fix the terminus of
+travel at some point farther down. A town charter for such a terminus
+was granted to a party of Virginia speculators at the mouth of Maria's
+River. They called it Ophir, which a friend of mine says is a very
+appropriate name and of poetic origin, being derived from Cowper's line,
+
+    "O for a lodge in some vast wilderness!"
+
+On the first visit of the proprietors to their new site, every one of
+them was murdered and scalped by the Indians.
+
+These regions are held by the Blackfeet, who, with their offshoots, the
+Bloods, Gros Ventres, and Piegans, are the most formidable Indians of
+Montana. They are polygamists, being in that respect exceptional among
+the Indians. But Catlin rather unsentimentally apologizes for this, on
+the ground that the chiefs are required to give expensive
+entertainments, in getting up which the labor of a hundred wives is no
+trifling assistance. Attempts have long been made to civilize and
+Christianize these savages by the Catholic missions under Father de
+Smet, and the government has furthered these attempts by establishing a
+fine farm on Sun River. The chiefs would sometimes be induced to
+stolidly witness the grain-planting; but Captain Mullan quietly
+describes all this waste of philanthropy in the words: "I can only
+regret that the results as yet obtained would not seem commensurate with
+the endeavors so manfully put forth."
+
+The noble Indians of history and poetry do not exist among the Indians
+of to-day. You seek in vain for Logan or Pocahontas, for Uncas or
+Minnehaha. The real Indians are cruel and treacherous, lazy and filthy,
+crafty and ungrateful. Many of them live upon ants and grasshoppers, and
+at the best only know enough to preserve in the rudest manner a few of
+the commonest roots and berries.
+
+These tribes have no history and no growth. They live a mere animal
+life. Even their few traditions are rude and disgusting enough. I am
+indebted to Mr. Stuart for a fair example of the Bannack superstitions,
+from which not even Longfellow could glean any poetry or beauty. Among
+the caves in the rocks dwells a race of fairy imps, who, with arrow and
+quiver, kill game upon the mountains, and sing boisterous songs on the
+cliffs in summer evenings. Whenever an Indian mother leaves her infant,
+one of these pleasant cannibals devours it straightway, and takes its
+place, crying piteously. When the poor woman returns and seeks to pacify
+her child, the little usurper falls ravenously upon her. Fire-arms,
+knives, and stones are all powerless; and when the screams of the woman
+bring the men to her help, the destroyer runs away and leaves her in a
+dying condition. She always dies before morning. When little children
+play at a distance from camp, these fairies seek to sport among them.
+Lucky is it for those timid few who, frightened at the long tail,
+scamper away from the intruder; for, when allowed to mingle in the
+sport, he suddenly seizes the fairest child, and hurries away to make a
+dainty meal off him with his little wives in elfin-land. To the Indian
+men the fairies profess a real friendship; and when they meet one near
+their dwellings they invite him in and feast him, and press him to stay
+all night. He invariably declines the polite invitation with his thanks,
+and his regrets that he has killed an elk and must take it home before
+the wolves can eat it.
+
+Beyond the main chain of the Rocky Mountains are the Deer Lodge and
+Bitter Root Valleys, celebrated for their great grazing capabilities. I
+rode through these valleys in June, passing up the Pipestone Creek,
+whose waters flow into the Missouri, and down the Silver Bow, whose
+waters flow into the Columbia. At the highest point we could almost see
+the springs of either river, flowing on one hand to the Atlantic, on the
+other to the Pacific. How widely are these children of the same mother
+separated! Summer sprinkles all the ravines with innumerable
+wild-flowers, which make a rich carpet even up close to the white line
+of the snow. I found among them wild varieties of the harebell,
+larkspur, and sunflower, and many pansies. Upon the Silver Bow Creek is
+a city of the same name, built in the winter, when it was hoped that
+spring would prove the richness of its mines. From a distance it looked
+like a large town; but upon riding in, we found only here and there a
+straggling inhabitant. Other mines proved richer, and any purchaser can
+buy its best house for less than the cost of drawing the logs to build
+it. At Deer Lodge in this valley,--almost equal in extent and fertility
+to that of the Gallatin,--old Johnny Grant lived for many years a life
+of patriarchal serenity among his wives and concubines, his flocks and
+herds. By constant presents of beads and whiskey, and many a warm meal
+when on the war-path, he had raised himself high in the esteem of the
+savages, and had a favorite squaw from almost every tribe among his
+wives. When the Flatheads passed by, no woman appeared at his hearth but
+a Flathead; when the Blackfeet came, the sole wife of his bosom was a
+Blackfoot. Thus for many years, almost the only white man in these
+solitudes, he lived at peace with the natives, a sharer in all their
+spoils and arbiter in all their quarrels. And when the patriarch was
+gathered to his fathers, he left cattle on a thousand hills to his son.
+Young Johnny is a mere repetition of his father. He cannot read or
+write, and in conversation his nominatives are not always true to his
+verbs; but he has all the slyness and craftiness of the Indian. I heard
+that he was immensely disgusted at the white immigration. He
+acknowledges that his beeves are of greater value, and he has no small
+admiration for dollars and cents; but he fears that his moral and
+intellectual standing will suffer.
+
+Passing down the Deer Lodge River,--
+
+            "In the continuous woods
+    Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
+    Save his own dashings,"--
+
+we come to a pass through the mountains, called Hell-Gate by the
+Flatheads, because through it rode the scalping parties of the Eastern
+tribes. Beyond is the sunny valley of the Bitter Root. It has long been
+settled by hardy trappers and hunters, and by comfortable farmers with
+well-stored barns and granaries and fenced fields. There is a charm
+about this isolated life, and a freshness and exhilaration about these
+Daniel Boones, that one meets nowhere else. Many of them are old army
+officers, men of education, who left the exploring parties to which they
+were attached to make their homes among the wild allurements of this
+fascinating valley. It is pleasant to hear their stories of life among
+the Indians, and their accounts of the strange features of the
+mountains, their animal life, their flora and minerals. Most of them
+have squaw wives, and are rearing large families of ugly pappooses, and
+many have amassed wealth by their long trade with the fur companies. The
+great Hudson's Bay Company has for many years had a station in this
+valley, and drawn from it large quantities of costly furs and skins.
+Here and farther west is spoken the famous Chinnook jargon, invented by
+the Company to facilitate its trade with the Indians. It borrows words
+from the English, from the French, from all the Indian tongues, and
+works them all into an incongruous combination. It has an entire lack of
+system or rule, but is quickly learned, and is designed to express only
+the simplest ideas. The powerful influence of the Company introduced it
+everywhere, and it was found of indispensable utility. Ardent
+Oregonians are said to woo their coy maidens in its unpronounceable
+gutturals. The white man is called "Boston" in this tongue, because the
+first whites whom the Oregon Indians met came in a Boston ship.
+
+The best Indians of the mountains dwell in this valley,--the Flatheads
+and Pend' d'Oreilles. Many of them are devoted Catholics, but liable at
+times to lapse into intoxication. The Jesuits have a thriving mission
+among them, with a neat church, whose clear ringing bell sounds
+strangely enough in the mountain recesses. The strict asceticism of the
+fathers, their careful nursing of the sick and wounded, and their
+cordial co-operation in all objects of philanthropy, have enabled them
+to wield an immense influence among the Indians. The white miners also,
+who have often lain sick or frost-bitten in their hospitals, except
+these zealous priests in their too common sneers at religion. Captain
+Mullan quite reflects the universal sentiment when he says: "The only
+good that I have ever seen effected among these people [the Indians] has
+been due to the exertions of these Catholic missionaries."
+
+I have hurried over the points of interest in the early days of Montana.
+But any picture of its shifting life can only be a view of one of the
+combinations of the kaleidoscope. The discovery of new mines, and the
+abandonment of old ones, the fresh advent of gold-seekers and the exodus
+of the winners of fortunes, the increase of facilities for travel and of
+all the comforts of life, are daily and perceptibly working out new
+combinations. But while welcoming all changes tending towards refinement
+and a higher civilization, the careful observer of the life of these
+remote people can point to some qualities among them which he would have
+unchangeable as their grand old mountains,--their frankness and honesty
+of purpose, their love of justice, and their sturdy democracy.
+
+
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+
+_The Poems of_ THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.
+
+The things which please in these poems are so obvious, that we feel it
+all but idle to point them out; for who loves not graceful form, bright
+color, and delicate perfume? Of our younger singers, Mr. Aldrich is one
+of the best known and the best liked, for he has been wise as well as
+poetical in his generation. The simple theme, the easy measure, have
+been his choice; while he is a very Porphyro in the profusion with which
+he heaps his board with delicates:--
+
+      "Candied apple, quince and plum and gourd;
+    With jellies soother than the creamy curd,
+    And lucent syrops tinct with cinnamon;
+    Manna and dates, in argosy transferred
+    From Fez; and spic�d dainties, every one,
+    From silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon."
+
+And the feast is well lighted, and the guest has not to third his way
+through knotty sentences, past perilous punctuation-points, to reach the
+table, nor to grope in the dark for the dainties when he has found it.
+We imagine that it is this charm of perfect clearness and accessibility
+which attracts popular liking to Mr. Aldrich's poetry; afterwards, its
+other qualities easily hold the favor won. He is endowed with a singular
+richness of fancy, and he has well chosen most of his themes from among
+those which allow the exercise of his best gifts. He has seldom,
+therefore, attempted to poetize any feature or incident of our national
+life; for this might have demanded a realistic treatment foreign to his
+genius. But it is poetry, the result, which we want, and we do not care
+from what material it is produced. The honey is the same, whether the
+bee stores it from the meadow-clover and the wild-flower of our own
+fields, or, loitering over city wharves, gathers it from ships laden
+with tropic oranges and orient dates.
+
+If Mr. Aldrich needed any defence for the poems in which he gives rein
+to his love for the East and the South, he would have it in the fact
+that they are very beautiful, and distinctively his own, while they
+breathe full east in their sumptousness of diction, and are genuinely
+southern in their summer-warmth of feeling. We doubt if any poet of
+Persia could have told more exquisitely than he what takes place
+
+    "WHEN THE SULTAN GOES TO ISPAHAN.
+
+    "_When the Sultan Shah-Zaman_
+    _Goes to the city Ispahan_,
+    Even before he gets so far
+    As the place where the clustered palm-trees are,
+    At the last of the thirty palace-gates,
+    The pet of the harem, Rose-in-Bloom,
+    Orders a feast in his favorite room,--
+    Glittering squares of colored ice,
+    Sweetened with syrop, tinctured with spice,
+    Creams, and cordials, and sugared dates,
+    Syrian apples, Othmanee quinces,
+    Limes, and citrons, and apricots,
+    And wines that are known to Eastern princes;
+    And Nubian slaves, with smoking pots
+    Of spic�d meats and costliest fish,
+    And all that the curious palate could wish,
+    Pass in and out of the cedarn doors:
+    Scattered over mosaic floors
+    Are anemones, myrtles, and violets,
+    And a musical fountain throws its jets
+    Of a hundred colors into the air.
+    The dusk Sultana loosens her hair,
+    And stains with the henna-plant the tips
+    Of her pearly nails, and bites her lips
+    Till they bloom again,--but, alas! _that_ rose
+    Not for the Sultan buds and blows;
+    _Not for the Sultan Shah-Zaman,
+    When he goes to the city Ispahan._
+
+      "Then, at a wave of her sunny hand,
+    the dancing girls of Samarcand
+    Float in like mists from Fairy-land!
+    And to the low voluptuous swoons
+    Of music rise and fall the moons
+    Of their full, brown bosoms. Orient blood
+    Runs in their veins, shines in their eyes:
+    And there, in this Eastern Paradise,
+    Filled with the fumes of sandal-wood,
+    And Khoten musk, and aloes and myrrh,
+    Sits Rose-in-Bloom on a silk divan,
+    Sipping the wines of Astrakhan;
+    And her Arab lover sits with her.
+    _That's when the Sultan Shah-Zaman
+    Goes to the city Ispahan._
+
+      "Now, when I see an extra light,
+    Flaming, flickering on the night
+    From my neighbor's casement opposite,
+    I know as well as I know to pray,
+    I know as well as a tongue can say,
+    _That the innocent Sultan Shah-Zaman
+    Has gone to the city Ispahan._"
+
+As subtilely beautiful as this, and even richer in color and flavor than
+this, is the complete little poem which Mr. Aldrich calls a fragment:--
+
+    "DRESSING THE BRIDE.
+
+    "So, after bath, the slave-girls brought
+    The broidered raiment for her wear,
+    The misty izar from Mosul,
+    The pearls and opals for her hair,
+    The slippers for her supple feet,
+    (Two radiant crescent moons they were,)
+    And lavender, and spikenard sweet,
+    And attars, nedd, and richest musk.
+    When they had finished dressing her,
+    (The eye of morn, the heart's desire!)
+    Like one pale star against the dusk,
+    A single diamond on her brow
+    Trembled with its imprisoned fire!"
+
+Too long for quotation here, but by no means too long to be read many
+times over, is "Pampinea," an idyl in which the poet's fancy plays
+lightly and gracefully with the romance of life in Boccaccio's
+Florentine garden, and returns again to the beauty which inspired his
+dream of Italy, as he lay musing beside our northern sea. The thread of
+thought running through the poem is slight as the plot of
+dreams,--breaks, perhaps, if you take it up too abruptly; but how
+beautiful are the hues and the artificing of the jewels strung upon it!
+
+    "And knowing how in other times
+    Her lips were ripe with Tuscan rhymes
+    Of love and wine and dance, I spread
+    My mantle by almond-tree,
+    'And here, beneath the rose,' I said,
+    'I'll hear thy Tuscan melody.'
+    I heard a tale that was not told
+    In those ten dreamy days of old,
+    When Heaven, for some divine offence,
+    Smote Florence with the pestilence;
+    And in that garden's odorous shade,
+    The dames of the Decameron,
+    With each a loyal lover, strayed,
+    To laugh and sing, at sorest need,
+    To lie in the lilies in the sun
+    With glint of plume and silver brede!
+    And while she whispered in my ear,
+    The pleasant Arno murmured near,
+    The dewy, slim chameleons run
+    Through twenty colors in the sun;
+    The breezes broke the fountain's glass,
+    And woke �olian melodies,
+    And shook from out the scented trees
+    The lemon-blossoms on the grass.
+    The tale? I have forgot the tale,--
+    A Lady all for love forlorn,
+    A rose-bud, and a nightingale
+    That bruised his bosom on the thorn:
+    A pot of rubies buried deep,
+    A glen, a corpse, a child asleep,
+    A Monk, that was no monk at all,
+    In the moonlight by a castle wall."
+
+As to "Babie Bell," that ballad has passed too deeply into the popular
+heart to be affected for good or ill by criticism,--and we have only to
+express our love of it. Simple, pathetic, and real, it early made the
+poet a reputation and friends in every home visited by the newspapers,
+in which it has been printed over and over again. It is but one of
+various poems by Mr. Aldrich which enjoy a sort of perennial fame, and
+for which we have come to look in the papers, as we do for certain
+flowers in the fields, at their proper season. In the middle of June,
+when the beauty of earth and sky drives one to despair, we know that it
+is time to find the delicately sensuous and pensive little poem
+"Nameless Pain" in all our exchanges; and later, when the summer is
+subject to sudden thunderstorms, we look out for "Before the Rain," and
+"After the Rain." It is very high praise of these charming lyrics, that
+they have thus associated themselves with a common feeling for certain
+aspects of nature, and we confess that we recur to them with greater
+pleasure than we find in some of our poet's more ambitious efforts.
+Indeed, we think Mr. Aldrich's fame destined to gain very little from
+his recent poems, "Judith," "Garnaut Hall," and "Pythagoras"; for when
+it comes to be decided what is his and what is his period's, these poems
+cannot be justly awarded to him. To borrow a figure from the polygamic
+usages of our Mormon brethren, they are sealed to Mr. Aldrich for time
+and to Mr. Tennyson for eternity. They contain many fine and original
+passages: the "Judith" contains some very grand ones, but they must bear
+the penalty of the error common to all our younger poets,--the error of
+an imitation more or less unconscious. It is to the example of the
+dangerous poet named that Mr. Aldrich evidently owes, among other minor
+blemishes, a mouse which does some mischief in his verses. It is a
+wainscot mouse, and a blood-relation, we believe, to the very mouse that
+shrieked behind the mouldering wainscot in the lonely moated grange.
+This mouse of Mr. Aldrich's appears twice in a brief lyric called
+"December"; in "Garnaut Hall," she makes
+
+          "A lodging for her glossy young
+    In dead Sir Egbert's empty coat of mail,"
+
+and immediately afterwards drags the poet over the precipice of
+anti-climax:--
+
+            "'T was a haunted spot.
+    A legend killed it for a kindly home,--
+    A grim estate, which every heir in turn
+    Left to the orgies of the wind and rain,
+    The newt, the toad, the spider, and the mouse."
+
+A little of Costar's well-known exterminator would rid Mr. Aldrich of
+this rascal rodent. Perhaps, when the mouse is disposed of, the poet
+will use some other word than _torso_ to describe a headless, but not
+limbless body, and will relieve Agnes Vail of either her shield or her
+buckler, since she can hardly need both.
+
+We have always thought Mr. Aldrich's "Palabras Cari�osas" among the most
+delicious and winning that he has spoken, and nearly all of his earlier
+poems please us; but on the whole it seems to us that his finest is his
+latest poem, "Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book"; for it is original in
+conception and expression, and noble and elevated in feeling, with all
+our poet's wonted artistic grace and felicity of diction. We think it
+also a visible growth from what was strong and individual in his style,
+before he allowed himself to be so deeply influenced by study of one
+whose flower indeed becomes a weed in the garden of another.
+
+
+_The United States during the War._ By AUGUST LAUGEL. New York:
+Bailli�re Brothers. Paris: Germer Bailli�re.
+
+_The Civil War in America._ An Address read at the last Meeting of the
+Manchester Union and Emancipation Society. By GOLDWIN SMITH. London:
+Simpkin, Marshall, & Co. Manchester: A. Ireland & Co.
+
+As a people, we are so used to policeman-like severity or snobbish
+ridicule from European criticism, that we hardly know what to make of
+the attentions of a Frenchman who is not an Inspector Javert, or of an
+Englishman who is not a Commercial Traveller. M. Laugel eulogizes us
+without the least patronage in his manner; Mr. Goldwin Smith praises us
+with those reserves which enhance the value of applause. We are
+ourselves accustomed to deal generously and approvingly with the facts
+of our civilization, but our pride in them falls short of M. Laugel's;
+and our most sanguine faith in the national future is not more cordial
+than Mr. Goldwin Smith's.
+
+The diverse methods in which these writers discuss the same aspects and
+events of our history are characteristic and interesting, and the
+difference in spirit is even greater than that of form,--greater than
+the difference between a book, which, made from articles in the _Revue
+de Deux Mondes_, recounts the political, military, and financial
+occurrences of the last four years, sketches popular scenes and
+characters, and deals with the wonders of our statistics, and a slender
+pamphlet address, in which the author concerns himself rather with the
+results than the events of our recent war. This is always Mr. Smith's
+manner of dealing with the past; but in considering a period known in
+all its particulars to his audience, he has been able to philosophize
+history more purely and thoroughly than usual. He arrives directly and
+clearly at the moral of the Ilias Americana, and sees that Christianity
+is the life of our political system, and that this principle, without
+which democracy is a passing dream, and equality an idle fallacy,
+triumphed forever in the downfall of slavery. He has been the first of
+our commentators to discern that the heroism displayed in the war could
+only come from that principle which made our social life decent and
+orderly, built the school-house and the church, and filled city and
+country with prosperous and religious homes. He has seen this principle
+at work under changing names and passing creeds, and has recognized that
+here, for the first time in the history of the world, a whole nation
+strives to govern itself according to the Example and the Word that
+govern good men everywhere.
+
+In the Introduction to his book, M. Laugel declares as the reasons for
+his admiration of the United States, that they "have shown that men can
+found a government on reason, where equality does not stifle liberty,
+and democracy does not yield to despotism; they have shown that a people
+can be religious when the State neither pays the Church nor regulates
+belief; they have given to woman the place that is her due in a
+Christian and civilized society." It is this Introduction, indeed, that
+will most interest the American reader, for here also the author
+presents the result of his study of our national character in a sketch
+that the nation may well glass itself in when low-spirited. The truth
+is, that we looked our very best to the friendly eyes of M. Laugel, and
+we cannot but be gratified with the portrait he has made of us. An
+American would hardly have ventured to draw so flattering a picture, but
+he cannot help exulting that an alien should see us poetic in our
+realism, curious of truth and wisdom as well as of the stranger's
+personal history, cordial in our friendships, and not ignoble even in
+our pursuit of wealth, but having the Republic's greatness at heart as
+well as our own gain.
+
+In the chapters which succeed this Introduction, M. Laugel discusses, in
+a spirit of generous admiration, the facts of our civilization as they
+present themselves in nearly all the States of the North and West; and
+while he does not pretend to see polished society everywhere, but very
+often an elemental ferment, he finds also that the material of national
+goodness and greatness is sound and of unquestionable strength. He falls
+into marvellously few errors, and even his figures have not that bad
+habit of lying to which the figures of travellers so often fall victims.
+
+The books of M. Laugel and Mr. Goldwin Smith come to us, as we hinted,
+after infinite stupid and dishonest censure from their countrymen; but
+the intelligent friendship of such writers is not the less welcome to us
+because we have ceased to care for the misrepresentations of the French
+and English tourists.
+
+
+_Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac._ By WILLIAM HOWELL REED.
+Boston; William V. Spencer.
+
+The advice of friends, so often mistaken, and so productive of mischief
+in goading reluctant authorship to the publication of unwise, immature,
+or feeble literature, prevailed upon Mr. Reed to give the world the
+present book; and we have a real pleasure in saying that for once this
+affectionate counsel has done the world a favor and a service. We have
+read the volume through with great interest, and with a lively
+impression of the author's good sense and modesty. In great part it is a
+personal narrative; but Mr. Reed, in recounting the story of the
+unwearied vigilance and tenderness and dauntless courage with which the
+corps of the Sanitary Commission discharged their high duties, contrives
+to present his individual acts as representative of those of the whole
+body, and to withdraw himself from the reader's notice. With the same
+spirit, in describing scenes of misery and suffering, he has more
+directly celebrated the patience and heroism of the soldiers who bore
+the pain than the indefatigable goodness that ministered to them,
+though he does full justice to this also. The book is a record of every
+variety of wretchedness; yet one comes from its perusal strengthened and
+elevated rather than depressed, and with new feelings of honor for the
+humanity that could do and endure so much. Mr. Reed does not fail to
+draw from the scenes and experiences of hospital life their religious
+lesson, and throughout his work are scattered pictures of anguish
+heroically borne, and of Christian resignation to death, which are all
+the more touching because the example of courage through simple and
+perfect faith is enforced without cant or sentimentality.
+
+The history of the great Christian aspect of our war cannot be too
+minutely written nor too often read. There is some danger, now the
+occasion of mercy is past, that we may forget how wonderfully complete
+the organization of the Sanitary Commission was, and how unfailingly it
+gave to the wounded and disabled of our hosts all the succor that human
+foresight could afford,--how, beginning with the establishment of depots
+convenient for the requisitions of the surgeons, it came to send out its
+own corps of nurses and watchers, until its lines of mercy were
+stretched everywhere almost in sight of the lines of battle, and its
+healing began almost at the hour the hurt was given. Mr. Reed devotes a
+chapter to this history, in which he briefly and clearly describes the
+practical operation of the system of national charity, accrediting to
+Mr. Frank B. Fay the organization of the auxiliary corps, and speaking
+with just praise of its members who perished in the service, or clung to
+it, till, overtaken by contagion or malaria, they returned home to die.
+The subject is dealt with very frankly; and Mr. Reed, while striving to
+keep in view the consoling and self-recompensing character of their
+work, does not conceal that, though they were rewarded by patience and
+thankfulness in far the greater number of cases, their charities were
+sometimes met by disheartening selfishness and ingratitude. But they
+bore up under all, and gave the world such an illustration of practical
+Christianity as it had never seen before.
+
+Mr. Reed's little book is so earnestly and unambitiously written, that
+its graphic power may escape notice. Yet it is full of picturesque
+touches; and in the line of rapidly succeeding anecdote there is nothing
+of repetition.
+
+
+_A History of the Gypsies: with Specimens of the Gypsy Language._ By
+WALTER SIMPSON. Edited, with Preface, Introduction, and Notes, and a
+Disquisition on the Past, Present, and Future of Gypsydom, by JAMES
+SIMPSON. New York: M. Doolady.
+
+The history of the Gypsies, according to the editor of the present work,
+is best presented in a series of desultory anecdotes which relate
+chiefly to the Egyptian usages of murder, pocket-picking, and
+horse-stealing, and the behavior of the rogues when they come to be
+hanged for their crimes. Incidentally, a good deal of interesting
+character is developed, and both author and editor show a very intimate
+acquaintance with the life and customs and speech of an inexplicable
+people. But here the value of their book ends; and we imagine that the
+earlier Simpson, who contributed the greater part of it in articles to
+Blackwood's Magazine, scarcely supposed himself to be writing anything
+more than sketches of the Scotch Gypsies whom he found in the different
+shires, and of the Continental and English Gypsies of whom he had read.
+The later Simpson thought it, as we have seen, a history of the Gypsies,
+and he has furnished it with an Introduction and a Disquisition of
+amusingly pompous and inconsequent nature. His subject has been too much
+for him, and his mental vision, disordered by too ardent contemplation
+of Gypsies, reproduces them wherever he turns his thought. If he values
+any one of his illusions above the rest,--for they all seem equally
+pleasant to him,--it is his persuasion that John Bunyan was a Gypsy. "He
+was a tinker," says our editor. "And who were the tinkers?" "Why,
+Gypsies, without a doubt," answers the reader, and makes no struggle to
+escape the conclusion thus skilfully sprung upon him. Will it be
+credited that the inventor of this theory was denied admittance to the
+columns of the religious newspapers in this country, on the flimsy
+pretext that the editors could not afford the space for a disquisition
+on John Bunyan's Gypsy origin?
+
+The comparison of the Gypsy language in this book with a dialect of the
+Hindostanee is interesting and useful, and the accounts of Gypsy habits
+and usages are novel and curious; and otherwise the work is a mass of
+rather entertaining rubbish.
+
+
+_Eros. A Series of connected Poems._ By LORENZO SOMERVILLE, London:
+Tr�bner & Co.
+
+_Patriotic Poems._ By FRANCIS DE HAES JANVIER. Philadelphia: J. B.
+Lippincott & Co.
+
+_The Contest: a Poem._ By G. P. CARR. Chicago: P. L. Hanscom.
+
+_Poems._ By ANNIE E. CLARK. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.
+
+All these little books are very prettily printed and very pleasingly
+bound. Each has its little index and its little dedication, and each its
+hundred pages of rhymes, and so each flutters forth into the world.
+
+    "Dove vai, povera foglia frale?"
+
+To oblivion, by the briefest route, we think; and we find a pensive
+satisfaction in speculating upon the incidents of the journey. Shall any
+one challenge the wanderers in their flight, and seek to stay them?
+Shall they all reach an utter forgetfulness, and be resolved again into
+elemental milk and water, or shall one of them lodge in a dusty library,
+here and there, and, having ceased to be literature, lead the idle life
+of a curiosity? We imagine another as finding a moment's pause upon the
+centre-table of a country parlor. Perhaps a third, hastily bought at a
+railway station as the train started, and abandoned by the purchaser,
+may at this hour have entered upon a series of railway journeys in
+company with the brakeman's lamps and oil-bottles, with a fair prospect
+of surviving many generations of short-lived railway travellers. We
+figure to ourselves the heart-breaking desolation of a village-tavern,
+where, on the bureau under the mirror, to which the public comb and
+brush are chained, a fourth might linger for a while.
+
+But in all the world shall anybody read one of these books? We fancy not
+even a critic; for the race so vigilantly malign in other days has lost
+its bitterness, or has been broken of its courage by the myriad numbers
+of the versifiers once so exultingly destroyed. Indeed, that cruel
+slaughter was but a combat with Nature,--
+
+    "So careful of the type she seems,
+    So careless of the single life";
+
+and from the exanimate dust of one crushed poetaster she bade a thousand
+rhymesters rise. Yet one cannot help thinking with a shudder of the
+hideous spectacle of "Eros" in the jaws of Blackwood or the mortal
+Quarterly, thirty years ago; or of how ruthlessly our own Raven would
+have plucked the poor trembling life from the "Patriotic Poems," or "The
+Contest," or the "Poems."
+
+The world grows wiser and better-natured every day, and the tender
+statistician has long since stayed the hand of the critic. "Why strike,"
+says the gentle sage, "when figures will do your work so much more
+effectually, and leave you the repose of a compassionate soul? Do you
+not know that but one book in a thousand survives the year of its
+publication?" etc., etc., etc. "And then as to the infinite reproduction
+of the species," adds Science, "_is_ Nature,
+
+    "'So careful of the single type?' But no,
+    From scarped cliff and quarried stone
+    She cries, 'A thousand types are gone.'"
+
+Patience! the glyptodon and the dodo have been dead for ages. Perhaps in
+a million years the poetaster also shall pass.
+
+
+_Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border._ By COLONEL R. B. MARCY, U. S.
+A. With Numerous Illustrations. New York: Harper and Brothers.
+
+There is not much variety in frontier life, it must be confessed, though
+there is abundant adventure. A family likeness runs through nearly all
+histories of bear-fights, and one Indian-fight might readily be mistaken
+for another. So also bear-fighters and Indian-fighters are akin in
+character, and the pioneers who appear in literature leave a sense of
+sameness upon the reader's mind. Nevertheless, one continues to read of
+them with considerable patience, and likes the stories because he liked
+their ancestral legends when a boy.
+
+Colonel Marcy's book offers something more than the usual attractions of
+the class to which it belongs; for it contains the history of his own
+famous passage of the Rocky Mountains in mid-winter, and notices of many
+frontiersmen of original and striking character (like the immortal
+Captain Scott), as well as much shrewd observation of Indian nature and
+other wild-beast nature. All topics are treated with perfect
+common-sense; if our soldierly author sometimes philosophizes rather
+narrowly, he never sentimentalizes, though he is not without poetry; and
+he is thoroughly imbued with the importance of his theme. One,
+therefore, suffers a great deal from him, in the way of unnecessary
+detail, without a murmur, and now and then willingly accepts an old
+story from him, charmed by the simplicity and good faith with which he
+attempts to pass it off as new.
+
+The style of the book is clear and direct, except in those parts where
+light and humorous narration is required. There it is bad, and seems to
+have been formed upon the style of the sporting newspapers and the local
+reporters, with now and then a hint from the witty passages of the
+circus, as in this colloquy:--
+
+"'Mought you be the boss hossifer of that thar army?'
+
+"'I am the commanding officer of that detachment, sir.'
+
+"'Wall, Mr. Hossifer, be them sure 'nuff sogers, or is they only
+make-believe chaps, like I see down to Orleans?'
+
+"'They have passed through the Mexican war, and I trust have proved
+themselves not only worthy of the appellation of real, genuine soldiers,
+but of veterans, sir.'"
+
+And so forth. We like Colonel Mercy when he talks of himself better than
+when he talks for himself. In the latter case he is often what we see
+him above, and in the former he is always modest, discreet, and
+entertaining.
+
+
+_Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing._ From the German of JOSEPH VON
+EICHENDORFF, by CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. With Vignettes by E. B. Bensell.
+New York: Leypoldt and Holt.
+
+When, as Heine says, Napoleon, who was Classic like C�sar and Alexander,
+fell to the ground, and Herren August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel,
+who were Romantic like Puss in Boots, arose as victors, Baron von
+Eichendorff was one of those who shared the triumph. He wrote plays and
+poems and novels to the tunes set by the masters of his school, but for
+himself practically he was a wise man,--held comfortable offices all his
+life long, and, in spite of vast literary yearning, sentiment, and
+misanthropy, was a Philister of the Philisters. The tale which Mr.
+Leland translates so gracefully is an extravaganza, in marked contrast
+to all the other romances of Eichendorff, in so far as it is purposely
+farcical, and they are serious; but we imagine it does not differ from
+them greatly in its leading qualities of fanciful incoherency and
+unbridled feebleness. An idle boy, who is driven from home by his
+father, the miller, and is found with his violin on the road to nowhere
+by two great ladies and carried to their castle near Vienna,--who falls
+in love with one of these lovely countesses, and runs away for love of
+her to Italy, and, after passing through many confused adventures there,
+with no relation to anything that went before or comes after, returns to
+the castle, and finds that his lovely countess is not a countess, but a
+poor orphan adopted by the great folk,--and so happily marries
+her,--this is the Good-for-Nothing and his story. A young student of the
+German language, struggling through the dusty paths of the dictionary to
+a comprehension of the tale, would perhaps think it a wonderful romance,
+when once he had achieved its meaning; but being translated into our
+pitiless English, its poverty of wit and feeling and imagination is
+apparent; and one is soon weary of its mere fantasticality.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No.
+106, August, 1866, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106,
+August, 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 18, No. 106, August, 1866
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: October 16, 2007 [EBook #23040]
+
+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>
+
+
+
+<h4>THE</h4>
+
+<h1>ATLANTIC MONTHLY.</h1>
+
+<h2><i>A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics.</i></h2>
+
+
+<h3>VOL. XVIII.&mdash;AUGUST, 1866.&mdash;NO. CVI.</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>
+
+<p class="notes">Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved
+to the end of the article. Table of contents has been created for the HTML version.</p>
+
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<p>
+<a href="#HOW_MY_NEW_ACQUAINTANCES_SPIN"><b>HOW MY NEW ACQUAINTANCES SPIN.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#WHAT_DID_SHE_SEE_WITH"><b>WHAT DID SHE SEE WITH?</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_MINER"><b>THE MINER.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#PHYSICAL_HISTORY_OF_THE_VALLEY_OF_THE_AMAZONS"><b>PHYSICAL HISTORY OF THE VALLEY OF THE AMAZONS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#A_MANIACS_CONFESSION"><b>A MANIAC'S CONFESSION.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_GREAT_DOCTOR"><b>THE GREAT DOCTOR.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#MY_FARM_A_FABLE"><b>MY FARM: A FABLE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#PASSAGES_FROM_HAWTHORNES_NOTE-BOOKS"><b>PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_CHIMNEY-CORNER_FOR_1866"><b>THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GRIFFITH_GAUNT_OR_JEALOUSY"><b>GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#LONDON_FORTY_YEARS_AGO"><b>LONDON FORTY YEARS AGO.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#A_YEAR_IN_MONTANA"><b>A YEAR IN MONTANA.</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%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="HOW_MY_NEW_ACQUAINTANCES_SPIN" id="HOW_MY_NEW_ACQUAINTANCES_SPIN"></a>HOW MY NEW ACQUAINTANCES SPIN.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The strictly professional man may have overcome his natural aversion to
+some of the most interesting objects of his study, such as snakes, and
+toads, and spiders, and vermin of all kinds; but people in general have
+always required that any attempt to force such abominations upon their
+notice should be preceded by a more or less elaborate and humble
+acknowledgment of their hideous aspect, their ferocious disposition,
+their dark and bloody deeds, and the utter impossibility of their
+conducing in any way to human comfort and convenience.</p>
+
+<p>But, while admitting the truth of much that has been thus urged against
+spiders as a class, I must decline, or at least defer, conforming to
+custom in speaking of the particular variety which we are about to
+consider, and I believe that it will need only a glance at the insect
+and its silk, and a brief notice of its habits, to justify my
+indisposition to follow the usual routine.</p>
+
+<p>Without apology, then, I shall endeavor to show that in the structure,
+the habits, the mode of growth, and, above all, in the productions of
+this spider are to be found subjects worthy the attention of every class
+of minds; for to the naturalist is exhibited a species which, though not
+absolutely new to science, was never seen nor heard of by Professor
+Agassiz till the spring of 1865, and which is so narrowly circumscribed
+in its geographical distribution that, so far as I can ascertain, it was
+never observed by Hentz,&mdash;a Southern entomologist, who devoted himself
+particularly to spiders,&mdash;and is met with only upon a few low, marshy
+islands on the coast of South Carolina, and perhaps of other Southern
+States. Its habits, too, are so interesting, and so different in many
+respects from those recorded of other species, that the observer of
+living creatures has here an abundant opportunity, not only for
+increasing his own knowledge, but for enlarging the domain of science.
+And this more especially in America; for while, in England, Blackwall
+and others have been laboring for more than thirty years, spiders seem
+to have received little attention on this side of the Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p><p>We have now, moreover, in our observation of these insects, an
+incentive of sovereign effect, namely, the hope of increasing our
+national wealth; for to the practical man, to the manufacturer and the
+mechanic, is offered a new silken material which far surpasses in beauty
+and elegance that of the silk-worm, and which, however small in quantity
+at present, demands some attention in view of the alarming decrease in
+the silk crops of Europe. This material is obtained in a manner entirely
+new,&mdash;not, as with the worm, by unwinding the cocoons, nor yet, as might
+be suggested for the spider, by unravelling the web, but by <i>drawing</i> or
+<i>winding</i> or <i>reeling directly from the body of the living insect</i>, even
+as you would milk a cow, or, more aptly, as wire is pulled through a
+wire-drawing machine.</p>
+
+<p>To the admirer of the beautiful and perfect in nature is presented a
+fibre of absolute smoothness, roundness, and finish, the colors of which
+resemble, and in the sunlight even excel in brilliancy those of the two
+precious metals, silver and gold; while the moralist who loves to
+illustrate the workings of God's providence in bringing forth good out
+of evil, by comparing the disgusting silk-worm with its beautiful and
+useful product, may now enforce the lesson by the still more striking
+contrast between this silk and the loathed and hated spider.</p>
+
+<p>The statesman who, after a four years' war, sees few indications of a
+better spirit on the part of the South, and is almost ready to exclaim,
+"Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" may now perhaps discern a
+spot, small indeed, but brilliant, on the very edge of the dark Carolina
+cloud; and it may not be too much to hope that, in course of time, the
+cords of our spider's golden and silver silk may prove potent bonds of
+union with the first of the rebellious States.</p>
+
+<p>As to the mathematician who believes in the inborn tendency of mankind
+to variation and imperfection, and holds up to us, as shining examples
+of mathematical accuracy, the work of certain insects, and who&mdash;since
+Professor Wyman has shown that the hexagonal form of the bee's cell is
+not of original design, but rather the necessary result of difficulties
+met and overcome in the most economical manner, though by no means
+always with perfect exactness and uniformity&mdash;has fallen back upon the
+ancient and still prevalent belief in the precise construction of the
+spider's web, (which, as will be seen, really displays it no more than
+does the bee's cell,)&mdash;to this disappointed man of geometry and figures
+is now offered the alternative of either finding a new and truer
+illustration, or of abandoning his position entirely.</p>
+
+<p>Let us, then, wait till we have seen this spider and heard his story.
+<i>His</i> story! That reminds me of another class which may possibly be
+represented among my readers, and whose members, in the contemplation of
+the domestic economy of these insects, will, I fear, discover many and
+weighty arguments in favor of the various opinions entertained by the
+advocates of Woman's Rights; for here is a community in which the
+females not only far exceed the males in number, but present so great a
+contrast to them in size and importance, that, but for absolute proof,
+they never would be regarded as belonging to the same species.</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, is a life-size picture of our spider and of&mdash;I was about to
+say, <i>his</i> partner; but in truth it is <i>she</i> who is <i>the</i> spider, and
+<i>he</i> is only <i>her</i> partner. Such is the real physical, and, so to speak,
+mental superiority of the female, that, even if we insist upon the legal
+equality at least of the masculine element, we can do so only in name,
+and will find it hard to avoid speaking of him as the male of the
+<i>Nephila plumipes</i>, thus tacitly admitting her as the truer
+representative of the species. Their relative size and appearance are
+shown by the figures; but it may be added that she is very handsome; the
+fore part of her body, which, being composed of the head and chest
+soldered together, is termed <i>cephalothorax</i>, is glossy-black and
+covered, except in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> spots, with white hairs; she has also upon six of
+her legs one or two brushes of black hairs;&mdash;while he is an
+insignificant-looking insect of a dull-brown color and half-starved
+look, with only a few scattered bristles upon his slender limbs. He does
+nothing for himself, leaving her to make the web and provide the food,
+and even to carry him on her back when removal is necessary; but she
+makes up for the imposition by keeping him on short allowance and at a
+respectful distance, excepting when the impregnation of her eggs is
+necessary; and even then she is mistress of the situation, and, <i>etiam
+in amoribus s&aelig;va</i>, may afterward eat him up. But of this contrast
+between the two sexes, of their functions and their relations to each
+other, more hereafter. It is sufficient to observe that, when this
+spider is mentioned, and the sex is not specified, the <i>female</i> is
+always referred to.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 228px;">
+<img src="images/fig1.jpg" width="228" height="300" alt="Fig. 1. Male and Female Nephila plumipes." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 1. Male and Female Nephila plumipes.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>When, where, and how was this spider discovered? and why is it that we
+have never heard of it before? To answer these questions, we must go
+back three years, to the 19th of August, 1863, and to the camp of the
+Fifty-fifth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, on a desolate island a
+little south from the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, and in sight
+of the fortress which Gillmore had just begun to strengthen by the
+addition of tons of Union shot and shell, till, from tolerably strong
+masonry, its walls became solid earthworks which nothing could pierce or
+greatly injure. There, at the north end of Folly Island,&mdash;scarce wider
+than our camp at that point, and narrower than the magnificent beach
+which, at low tide, afforded ample space for the battalion drill,&mdash;I
+found in a tree a very large and handsome spider, whose web was at least
+three feet in diameter.</p>
+
+<p>Glad enough to meet with anything new, and bearing in mind the interest
+with which, when a boy, I had watched and recorded the operations of our
+common house and hunting spiders, I entangled him&mdash;I didn't then know it
+was <i>her</i>, so let it pass&mdash;in the web, and carried it to my tent. The
+insect was very quiet, and did not attempt to escape; but presently,
+after crawling slowly along my sleeve, she let herself down to the
+floor, taking first the precaution, after the prudent fashion of most
+spiders, to attach to the point she left a silken line, which, as she
+descended, came from her body. Rather than seize the insect itself, I
+caught the thread and pulled. The spider was not moved, but the line
+readily drew out, and, being wound upon my hands, seemed so strong that
+I attached the end to a little quill, and, having placed the spider upon
+the side of the tent, lay down on my couch and turned the quill between
+my fingers at such a rate that in one minute six feet of silk were wound
+upon it. At the end of an hour and a half I estimated, with due
+allowance for stop-pages,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> that I had four hundred and fifty feet, or
+<i>one hundred and fifty yards</i>, of the most brilliant and beautiful
+golden silk I had ever seen.</p>
+
+<p>During all this operation the spider had remained perfectly quiet, but
+finally put an end to my proceedings by grasping the line with the tip
+of one of her hind legs so that it snapped. I was tired, however, and
+contented myself with the quantity already obtained, which now formed a
+raised band of gold upon the quill. This specimen is now in my
+possession, but has been removed from the quill to ascertain its weight,
+which is one third of a grain.</p>
+
+<p>It is worthy of notice, perhaps, that in all this was involved no new
+<i>fact</i>, but only a happy deduction from one known ages ago; namely, that
+a spider, when dropping, leaves her line attached, and so allows it to
+be drawn from her body. Nothing was more natural than to simply reverse
+the position of the fixed point, and, instead of letting the spider go
+away from the end of her line, to take the end of her line away from
+her. So natural, indeed, did it seem, that my gratification at having
+been (as was then supposed) the first to do it was, on reflection, mixed
+with surprise that no one had ever thought of it before, and I am very
+glad to find that at least <i>four</i> individuals have, within the last
+century, pulled silk out of a spider, though of these only one, whose
+researches I hope to make known, regarded the matter as anything more
+than a curious experiment.</p>
+
+<p>I had never before seen such a spider, nor even paid attention to any
+geometrical species; though one large black and yellow variety is, or
+used to be, common enough in our fields at the North. Neither had I ever
+heard of such a method of obtaining silk. But though my first specimen
+was not preserved, and a second was never seen on Folly Island, yet I
+was so impressed with its size and brilliant colors, and especially with
+the curious brushes of black hairs on its legs, that when, during the
+following summer, another officer described to me a great spider which
+was very common on Long Island, where he was stationed, I knew it was
+the same, and told him what I had done the year before, adding that I
+was sure something would come of it in time.</p>
+
+<p>With leisure and many spiders at his command, this officer improved upon
+my suggestion, by substituting for my quill turned in the fingers a
+wooden cylinder worked by a crank, and by securing, at a proper
+distance, (between pins, I think,) one or more spiders, whose threads
+were guided between pins upon the cylinder. He thus produced more of the
+silk, winding it upon rings of hard rubber so as to make very pretty
+ornaments. With this simple machine I wound the silk in two grooves cut
+on a ring of hard rubber and parallel except at one point, where they
+crossed so as to form a kind of signet. Another officer now suggested
+and put in operation still another improvement, in the shape of the
+"gear-drill-stock" of our armorer's chest. This, being a machine for
+drilling iron, was rough in its construction and uneven in its action,
+but, having cog-wheels, a rapid and nearly steady motion could be given
+to its shaft. To this shaft he attached a little cross of rubber, and
+covered it with silk, which was of a silver-white color instead of
+golden-yellow, as in other cases. The difference in color was then
+supposed to depend upon individual peculiarities, but the true
+explanation will be given farther on. With this gear-drill-stock, upon a
+larger ring, one inch in diameter and three eighths of an inch in width,
+in a groove upon its periphery one fourth of an inch in width, and
+across the sides of the ring in two directions, I wound <i>three thousand
+four hundred and eighty-four yards</i>, or <i>nearly two miles, of silk</i>. The
+length was estimated by accurately determining the different dimensions
+of the ring where wound upon, and multiplying by this the number of
+revolutions of the cylinder per minute (170), and this product again by
+the number of minutes of actual winding (285), deducting from the gross
+time of winding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> (about nine hours) each moment of stoppage for any
+cause.</p>
+
+<p>This was late in the fall of 1864, and, our specimens being sent home,
+further experiments, and even thoughts upon the subject, were prevented
+by the expedition against the Charleston and Savannah Railroad, and the
+many changes of station that followed the disastrous battle of Honey
+Hill. But, when I was at the North in February, 1865, a friend expressed
+to me his confident belief that this new silken product could be made of
+practical utility, and advised me to make inquiries on the subject. So,
+before presenting it to the scientific societies, I tested the strength
+of the silk by attaching to a fixed point one end of a thread <i>one
+four-thousandth</i> of an inch in diameter, and tying the other end upon
+the arm of an accurate balance: weights were then dropped in to the
+amount of <i>fifty-four grains</i> before the line was broken. By a
+calculation from this, a solid bar of spider's silk, one inch in
+diameter, would sustain a weight of more than <i>seventy tons</i>; while a
+similar bar of steel will sustain only fifty-six, and one of iron
+twenty-eight tons. The specimens were then exhibited to Professors
+Wyman, Agassiz, and Cooke, of Harvard University, to all of whom the
+species of spider was unknown, though Professor Wyman has since found a
+single specimen among some insects collected at the South; while to them
+as well as to the silk-manufacturers the idea of reeling silk directly
+from a living insect was entirely new. The latter, of course, wished to
+see a quantity of it before pronouncing upon its usefulness. So most of
+my furlough was spent in making arrangements for securing a number of
+the spiders, and reeling their silk during the coming summer. These
+comprised six light wooden boxes with sliding fronts, each eighteen
+inches wide and high and one foot deep, and containing six tin trays one
+above another, each of which, again, held twenty-four square paper boxes
+two and a half inches in diameter, and with lids closed by an elastic.
+Into these the spiders were to be put for transportation. Then I had
+made a costly machine for reeling the silk, which, however, proved of no
+practical value.</p>
+
+<p>In March, with these and other real or fancied adjuvants, (some of which
+proved even less useful and trustworthy than the machine,) but, above
+all, with a determination to put this matter to the test of actual
+experiment, I rejoined the regiment at Charleston, which had just fallen
+into our hands. It was not until April, however, that we were so
+situated that I could make any attempt to get spiders. Of course it was
+not expected that the full-grown ones should be found at that season,
+but the eggs or young should be abundant where the spiders had been in
+the summer.</p>
+
+<p>Before recounting my adventures in pursuit of my spinster friends, it
+may be well to say a few words of the locality which they inhabited.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/fig2.jpg" width="350" height="337" alt="Fig. 2. Map of Charleston and Vicinity." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 2. Map of Charleston and Vicinity.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Charleston stands upon the extremity of a narrow peninsula, between the
+Cooper and the Ashley Rivers. Charleston Harbor, supplied by these and
+some smaller streams, lies between Mt. Pleasant and Sullivan's Island on
+the northeast, and James and Morris Islands on the southwest. One cannot
+but be struck with the resemblance, so great as to be almost
+symmetrical, between the two sides of the harbor. Mt. Pleasant and James
+Island are quite high land,&mdash;high at least for the coast of South
+Carolina,&mdash;and are separated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> from the mainland, the one by the Wando
+River, the other by Wappoo Creek; while Sullivan's Island, where stand
+Fort Moultrie and other Rebel batteries, corresponds almost precisely to
+Morris Island, both being low and sandy, and being, as it were, bent
+inland from the sea, with sharp points looking toward the city, their
+convex shores forming a rounded entrance to the harbor. Extending
+southward from Morris Island, and separated from it by Lighthouse Inlet,
+is Folly Island; and in exact correspondence to the latter, north of
+Sullivan's Island, and separated from it by Breach Inlet, is a similar
+sand-ridge called Long Island. But now occurs a difference; for while
+between Long and Sullivan's Islands and Christ's Church Parish is an
+immense salt marsh intersected by creeks, but presenting an unbroken
+surface, in the midst of the corresponding marsh between Morris and
+Folly Islands and James Island is a group of low wooded islands, the
+largest of which lies opposite the upper or north end of Folly Island.
+To this no name is given on the maps, nor is it even distinguished from
+the marsh. It is, however, completely surrounded by water; and, though
+this is in the form of creeks neither wide nor deep, yet the peculiar
+softness of the mud, and the absence of any landing-place except upon
+the side toward Folly Island, render it almost inaccessible.</p>
+
+<p>To this narrow strip of land, not three miles in length, was given the
+name of Long Island,&mdash;perhaps by our own troops, who knew nothing of an
+island of the same name <i>north</i> of the harbor; and in case it is found
+that no other name belongs to it, we may properly avoid a confusion, and
+christen it <i>Spider</i> Island, in honor of the remarkable insects for
+whose especial benefit it seems to have been made, and which, with the
+exception of the mosquitoes, are its sole inhabitants.</p>
+
+<p>As was said, the first spider was found on Folly Island on the 19th of
+August, 1863: it was also the last there seen. During the summer of
+1864, many were found on Long Island (so called); and when, in the
+spring of 1865, our regiment was encamped on James Island near Wappoo
+Creek, it was toward Long Island that all my attention, so far as
+concerned spiders, was directed.</p>
+
+<p>But first, as a bit of collateral history, and to show how easily and
+how far one may go astray when one of the links in the chain of argument
+is only an <i>inference</i>, let me relate that, while riding over James
+Island, I observed upon trees and bushes numbers of small brown bags,
+from half an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, pear-shaped, and
+suspended by strong silken cords. The bags themselves were made of a
+finer silk so closely woven as to resemble brown paper, and, when
+opened, were found to contain a mass of loose silk filled with young
+spiders to the number of five hundred or more. In certain localities,
+especially in a swampy field just outside the first line of Rebel works,
+they were quite abundant. I had soon collected about four hundred of
+them, which, by a moderate estimate, contained <i>two hundred thousand
+little spiders</i>,&mdash;quite enough, I thought, with which to commence
+operations. But one hot day in June I placed them all on a tray in the
+sun. I was called away, and on my return found my one fifth of a million
+young spiders dead,&mdash;baked to death.</p>
+
+<p>Prior to this catastrophe, however, I had become convinced that these
+were not the spiders I sought. Indeed, my only reasons for thinking they
+might be were, first, the abundance of these cocoons in a locality so
+near Long Island; and, second, my own great desire that they should
+prove the spiders I wanted. The young spiders, it is true, did not at
+all resemble their supposed progenitors, as to either shape, or color,
+or markings; yet all of these evidently changed during growth, and would
+not of themselves disprove the relationship.</p>
+
+<p>One day in April, however, a cocoon was found in a tree on James Island,
+of a very different appearance from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> others. It was of loose
+texture, and, instead of being pear-shaped, was hemispherical in form,
+and attached by its flat surface to the lower side of a leaf. This also
+contained young spiders, a little larger and a little brighter in color
+than the others, but really bearing no resemblance to the full-grown
+spiders of Long Island. This single cocoon formed the entering wedge of
+doubt, and soon it was clear that the only means of proof lay on Long
+Island itself.</p>
+
+<p>But how was this to be reached? Easily enough while we were upon Folly
+Island and could row through the creeks to a wharf on the east side of
+Long Island. But now the case was altered; for between James and Long
+Islands was the immense marsh already mentioned, intersected by creeks,
+and composed of mud practically without bottom, and ranging from
+eighteen to twenty-three feet in depth by actual measurement. Around or
+over or through this marsh it was necessary to go, in order to reach
+Long Island, the home of the spiders.</p>
+
+<p>I could easily occupy the rest of my allotted space in recounting my
+various attempts to reach this El Dorado, which my fancy, excited by
+every delay, stocked with innumerable cocoons of the kind already found
+so abundantly on James Island. These I expected would furnish thousands
+of spiders, the care of which, with the reeling of their silk, would
+give employment to all the freed people in South Carolina,&mdash;for even
+then the poor creatures were finding their way to the coast. And
+perhaps, I thought, some day, the Sea-Island silk may be as famous as
+the choice Sea-Island cotton. This hope I still cherish, together with
+the belief that, under certain conditions, the spiders may also be
+reared at the North.</p>
+
+<p>After riding miles and miles in all directions in search of the readiest
+point of attack; after having once engaged a row-boat to go around
+through Stono River and meet me at the nearest point of land,&mdash;on which
+occasion I dismounted to give my horse a better chance of getting over a
+bad place in the road, and the ungrateful beast left me in the lurch and
+went home much faster than he came, while I, being now half-way, walked
+on through the marsh, and had the pleasure of sitting on a log in a
+pouring rain for an hour, with Long Island just on the other side of a
+creek over which no boat came to carry me,&mdash;after this and other
+disappointments, I at last made sure by going in the boat myself, and so
+finally reached the island. But now, to my discomfiture, after a most
+careful search, I saw only two or three cocoons of the kind I looked
+for, while the others, of loose texture, were quite abundant, and
+doubtless would have been found in still greater numbers but for their
+always being under leaves, and often at a considerable height. It was
+probable now that these latter cocoons contained <i>the</i> spiders, and that
+the former were a different species.</p>
+
+<p>The regiment now removed to the interior of the State, and while there
+occurred the <i>coup de soleil</i> above mentioned. We remained at Orangeburg
+until the middle of August, and then, being stationed at Mt. Pleasant, I
+again made raids for spiders. Upon James Island, in the localities where
+during the spring the cocoons were abundant, I found many large
+geometrical spiders, all of one kind, but not of the kind I sought. They
+were bad-tempered, and their legs were so short and strong that it was
+not easy to handle them, while their silk was of a light, and not
+brilliant, yellow.</p>
+
+<p>My first attempt upon Long Island was made by leaving Charleston in a
+boat, which, after touching at Sumter, landed me at Fort Johnson. Here I
+was joined by a sergeant and corporal of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts,
+and we walked across to a little settlement of freed people not far from
+Secessionville, where a boat and crew were engaged. It would be tedious
+to relate how, after sticking on invisible oyster-beds and mud-flats,
+and losing our way among the creeks, at two o'clock we found ourselves
+about one hundred<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> yards from the north end of the island; and how,
+since it was too late to try to reach the wharf on the east side, even
+had we been sure of the way, the two Fifty-fourth boys and myself got
+out of the boat and essayed to cross upon the marsh. Such a marsh! We
+have marshes at the North, but they are as dry land in comparison. I had
+seen them at the South, had stepped upon and into them, but never one
+like this. It was clear mud, as soft as mud could be and not run like
+the water that covered it at high tide. Even the tall rushes wore an
+unsteady look; and the few oysters upon its surface evidently required
+all their balancing powers to lie upon their flat sides and avoid
+sinking edgewise into the oozy depths. In we sank, over ankles, at the
+first step, and deeper and deeper till we took a second; for our only
+safety lay in pushing down the rushes with the inside of one foot and
+treading upon them, till the other could be withdrawn from its yielding
+bed, and a spot selected for the next step forward. I say <i>selected</i>,
+for even this mud was more firm than a hole in it filled with water and
+treacherously concealed by a few rushes. A misstep into one of these
+pitfalls brought me to my knees, and well-nigh compelled me to call for
+help; but a sudden and determined spring, and a friendly bunch of rushes
+beyond, spared me that mortification. When two thirds of the way across,
+and while thinking we should soon reach dry land, we came upon the edge
+of a creek, not wide, it is true, but with soft, slimy, sloping sides,
+(for <i>banks</i> they could not properly be called,) and no one knew how
+many feet of mud beneath its sluggish stream. Under ordinary
+circumstances I might have sounded a retreat; but, remembering that
+there was twice as much mud behind as before us, and feeling ourselves
+sinking slowly but surely in our tracks, we slid down the sides into the
+water. This received our bodies to the waist, the mud our legs to the
+knees; but we struggled through, and, after another terrible thirty
+yards of mud, reached Long Island. Leaving my faithful companions to
+rest, I struck off down the east side of the island, and soon found
+spiders in plenty. Stopping at the wharf, and returning upon the west
+side, I counted one hundred spiders in less than an hour. This was only
+a voyage of discovery, but I could not resist the temptation to capture
+one big fellow and put it in my hat, which, with the edges brought
+together, I was forced to carry in my teeth, for one hand was required
+to break down the webs stretched across my path, and the other to do
+battle in vain with the thousands of mosquitoes, of huge size and bloody
+intent, besetting me on every side. What with the extreme heat and my
+previous fatigue, and the dread lest my captive should escape and
+revenge herself upon my face while I was avoiding the nets of her
+friends, and the relentless attacks of their smaller but more venomous
+associates, it was the most uncomfortable walk imaginable. To complete
+my misery, the path led me out upon the marsh where I could see nothing
+of the boat or my companions, and whence, to reach them, I had to walk
+across the head of the island. Excepting the dreaded recrossing of the
+mud, I hardly remember how we made our way back; but by one means and
+another I finally reached Charleston at nine o'clock, about as
+disreputable-looking a medical man as ever was seen.</p>
+
+<p>However, all this was soon forgotten, and, being now assured of the
+presence of the spiders in their former haunts, on the 30th of August,
+1865, I organized a new expedition, which was to proceed entirely by
+water, and which consisted of a sail-boat and crew of picked volunteers.
+Leaving Mt. Pleasant in the morning, we crossed the harbor, and were
+soon lost in the meanderings of the creeks behind Morris Island. <i>Lost</i>
+is appropriate, for, once in these creeks, you know nothing, you see and
+hear nothing, and, if you change your course, must do so by mere guess.
+But the most annoying thing is, after an apparent advance of a quarter
+of a mile,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> to find yourself not twenty yards from your starting-point,
+so tortuous are the windings of the creeks.</p>
+
+<p>By dint of hard rowing (in the wrong direction, as we soon found), then
+by walking across Morris Island to Light-House Inlet, and still harder
+rowing from there to the wharf of Long Island, we succeeded in securing
+sixty spiders; but now arose a furious storm of wind and rain, which not
+only compelled our retreat, but drenched us to the skin, blew us back
+faster than we could row, and threatened to overturn our boat if we
+hoisted the sail; so slow was our progress, that it was eleven o'clock
+at night before we reached Mt. Pleasant. Thus ended my last and only
+successful raid upon Long Island.</p>
+
+<p>It may seem that I have dwelt longer than was necessary upon the
+circumstances attending the discovery of this spider and its silk. If
+so, it is not merely because at that time both were new to myself and
+all to whom I showed them, and everything concerning them was likely to
+be impressed upon my mind, but also because I then hoped that the idea
+of obtaining silk directly from a living insect might be found of
+practical importance, as I still hope it may. The incidents illustrate,
+too, the nature of the obstacles daily encountered and overcome by our
+troops; for no one who has never seen or stepped into a Sea-Island marsh
+can realize how difficult it was for our forces to obtain a foothold in
+the vicinity of Charleston. This was appreciated by the old freedman
+whom we left in the boat while crossing the mud. "No wonder," he said,
+"the Yankees whipped the Rebels, if they will do such things for to
+catch <i>spiders</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The sixty spiders so obtained were kept for several weeks in the little
+boxes in which they had been deposited when caught. Every day each box
+was opened, the occupant examined, and its condition, if altered, noted
+on the cover. They generally spun a few irregular lines on which to
+hang, and so remained quiet except when the boxes were opened: then, of
+course, they tried to escape. Half a dozen of the larger ones were
+placed on the window-seats and in corners of the room, where they
+speedily constructed webs. By preference these were stretched across the
+windows, illustrating one of the three principal instincts of this
+spider, which are, first, to <i>seek the light</i>; second, to <i>ascend</i>; and
+third, to take a position with the <i>head downward</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It was now a question how they were to be fed; not so much while there,
+where flies were abundant, but after their arrival at the North. So,
+remembering that the young ones had seemed to relish blood, I took the
+tender liver of a chicken, cut it into little pieces, and dipped them in
+water, not, I am sorry to say, with any view to supply them with that
+fluid for the want of which they afterward perished, but in order that
+the bits of liver should be more easily pulled from the pins by the
+spiders. To my delight they greedily accepted the new food, and now I
+felt assured of keeping them during the winter.</p>
+
+<p>Deferring, however, a more particular account of what was observed at
+Mt. Pleasant, until their habits and mode of life are taken up in order,
+it should be understood that, during our short stay, my attention was
+chiefly directed to getting from the spiders as much silk as possible;
+for it was evident that practical men would not credit the usefulness of
+spiders' silk until an appreciable quantity could be shown to them. The
+first trial of the machine with a live spider proved it an utter
+failure; for though quite ingenious and complicated, it had been devised
+with reference only to <i>dead</i> spiders. In regard to the arrangement
+(wherein lay its chief, if not sole, peculiarity) by which a thin slip
+of brass was sprung against a rubber band by the latter's elasticity,
+with a view to secure the spider's legs between them, it was found that,
+as the spider was alive, and, literally, kicking, and two of its legs
+were smaller than the rest, these were at once extricated, and the
+others soon followed; while, if the spring was made forcible enough to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+hold the smaller legs, the larger were in danger of being crushed, and
+the spider, fearing this, often disjointed them, according to the
+convenient, though loose habit of most Arachnida, crabs, and other
+articulates. It was also proposed to secure several spiders in the above
+manner upon the periphery of a wheel, the revolution of which would give
+a twist to their conjoined threads, carried through a common eyelet upon
+the spindle; but this can be accomplished without the inconvenience of
+whirling the spiders out of sight, by modifications of the apparatus
+which has always been used for twisting ordinary silk. It will probably
+be inferred from the above, that, in securing the spider, two points are
+to be considered; first, to prevent its escape, and second, so to
+confine the legs that it cannot reach with their tips either the <i>silk</i>
+or the <i>spinners</i>. Now the machine accomplished this by putting all the
+legs together in a vice, as it were, entailing upon the captive much
+discomfort and perhaps the loss of some of its legs, which, though eight
+in number, are each appropriated to a special use by their possessor.</p>
+
+<p>So, abandoning the machine, I fell back upon a simple reel, and a
+modification of my little contrivance of the previous year; which was,
+to grasp the spider by all the legs, holding them behind her back, and
+to let her body down into a deep notch or slot cut in a thin card, the
+edges of which reached the constriction between the two regions of the
+body, the <i>cephalothorax</i> and <i>abdomen</i>; so that, when a second piece of
+card was let down upon it, the <i>cephalothorax</i>, with the <i>legs</i> of the
+spider, was upon one side of a partition, while on the other was the
+<i>abdomen</i>, bearing upon its posterior extremity the spinning organs. The
+head and horns of a cow to be milked are secured in a similar manner. By
+placing in a row, or one behind another, several spiders thus secured, a
+compound thread was simultaneously obtained from them, and wound upon a
+spindle of hard rubber.</p>
+
+<p>By this means were produced several very handsome bands of bright yellow
+silk; but the time was so short, and the means of constructing and
+improving my apparatus so deficient, that I could procure no more than
+these few specimens, which were very beautiful, and shone in the sun
+like polished and almost translucent gold; but which, being wound upon a
+cylinder only an inch in diameter, and from several spiders at different
+times, could not be unwound, and so made of any further use.</p>
+
+<p>I tried now to ascertain how much silk could be obtained from a single
+spider at once. It will be remembered that the first specimen, wound on
+Folly Island, was one hundred and fifty yards in length, and weighed one
+third of a grain. I now exhausted the supply of a spider for three days,
+using the same spindle, one inch in diameter, and turning this at the
+rate of one hundred and sixty times per minute. On the first day I
+reeled for twenty minutes, which gave two hundred and sixty-six and two
+thirds yards; on the third day, the second being Sunday, for twenty-five
+minutes, giving three hundred and thirty-three and one third yards; and
+on the fourth day, for eighteen minutes, giving two hundred and
+thirty-three and one third yards,&mdash;amounting in all to eight hundred and
+thirty-three and one third yards in three or four days. This was all
+that could be got, and the spider herself seemed unable to evolve any
+more; but on killing her and opening her abdomen, plenty of the gum was
+found in the little silk bags into which it is secreted. As this has
+always been the case, I have concluded that the evolution of the silk is
+almost entirely a mechanical process, which is but little controlled by
+the spinners themselves, and that the gum requires some degree of
+preparation after it is secreted before it is fit for use as silk; for
+it must be remembered that with the spider, as with the silk-worm, the
+silk is formed and contained in little bags or glands in the abdomen,
+not as <i>threads</i>, but as a very viscid gum. This passes in little tubes
+or ducts to the spinners, through minute openings, in which it is drawn
+out into filaments,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> uniting and drying instantly in the air, and so
+forming the single fibre from each spinner.</p>
+
+<p>The silk obtained the first day was of a deep yellow; to my great
+astonishment, the second reeling from the same spider gave silk of a
+brilliant silver-white color; while on the third occasion, as if by
+magic, the color had changed again, and I got only <i>yellow</i> silk. The
+hypothesis of individual peculiarity, adopted the previous year to
+explain why some spiders gave yellow, and others white silk, was now
+untenable; and, remembering that, beside these two positive colors there
+was also (and indeed more commonly) a <i>light yellow</i>, as if a
+combination of the other two, I saw that the real solution of the
+mystery must lie in the spinners themselves. Examining carefully the
+thread as it came from the body, it was seen to be composed of two
+distinct portions, differing materially in their size, their color,
+their elasticity, and their relative position; for one of them was
+<i>white</i> and <i>inelastic</i>, crinkling and flying up when relaxed, and
+seemed to proceed from the <i>posterior</i> of the two principal pairs of
+spinners, while the other was <i>larger</i>, <i>yellow</i>, so <i>elastic</i> that when
+relaxed it kept its direction, and seemed to come from the <i>anterior</i>
+pair of spinners, and so, in the inverted position of the spider, was
+<i>above</i> the other. By putting a spider under the influence of
+chloroform, and then carrying the first thread under a pin stuck in a
+cork to one part of a spindle, and the second or yellow line over
+another pin to a different part of the spindle, I reeled off from the
+same spider, at the same time, two distinct bands of silk, of which one
+was a deep golden-yellow, the other a bright silver-white; while, if
+both threads ran together, there was formed a band of <i>light yellow</i>
+from the union of the two. Thinking such a difference must subserve some
+use in the economy of the insect, I made a more careful examination of
+its webs. At first sight these resembled those of most geometrical
+spiders, in being broad, rounded, nearly vertical nets; but they were
+unusually large, and in their native woods often stretched between trees
+and across the paths, so as to be two, three, and even more, feet in
+diameter, and in my room at Mt. Pleasant hung like curtains before the
+windows. They were of a bright yellow color and very viscid; but now I
+noticed that neither the color nor the viscidity pertained to the entire
+net, for although the concentric circles constituting the principal part
+of the web were <i>yellow</i>, and very <i>elastic</i>, and studded with little
+beads of <i>gum</i>, (Fig 3,) yet the diverging lines or <i>radii</i> of the
+wheel-shaped structure, with all the guys and stays by which it was
+suspended and braced, were <i>dry</i> and <i>inelastic</i>, and of a <i>white</i> or
+lighter yellow color.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 209px;">
+<img src="images/fig3.jpg" width="209" height="300" alt="Fig. 3. Silk threads, viscid and dry." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 3. Silk threads, viscid and dry.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Now, however, a new mystery presented itself. We will admit that the
+spider had the power, not only to vary the <i>size</i> of her lines according
+to the number of spinners, or of the minute holes in each spinner, which
+were applied to the surface whence the line was to proceed, but also to
+make use of either golden or silver silk at will. But how was it that
+this yellow silk&mdash;which was quite dry and firm, though elastic, as
+reeled from the spider, or as spun by her in the formation of her
+cocoons&mdash;was nevertheless, when used for the concentric circles of the
+web, so viscid as to follow the point of a pin, stretching in so doing
+many times its length? A satisfactory explanation of this has never yet
+been offered, nor can be until the minute anatomy of the spinning organs
+is better understood, and the evolution of the silk more carefully
+observed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> at every stage, and under all conditions. I will merely state
+very briefly the few facts already established, with some of the
+possible explanations.</p>
+
+<p>The spinning <i>mammul&aelig;</i> are placed in pairs at the lower part of the
+abdomen, near its hinder end, and number four, six, or eight in
+different species. They are little conical or cylindrical papill&aelig;,
+closely resembling the pro-legs of caterpillars, and are composed of two
+or three joints, the terminal one of which is pierced with a greater or
+less number of minute holes, the sides of these, in some, if not all,
+cases, being prolonged into tubes. Through these holes or tubes issue
+the fine filaments, which, uniting as they dry in the air, constitute
+the line from each spinner.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 201px;">
+<img src="images/fig4.jpg" width="201" height="225" alt="Fig. 4. Spinners." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 4. Spinners.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Now the <i>Nephila plumipes</i> possesses at least three pairs of spinners.
+Of these, two are much larger than the third, which indeed does not
+appear till they are separated. From the <i>posterior</i> of the two largest
+pairs <i>seems</i> to proceed the <i>white</i>, and from the <i>anterior</i> the
+<i>yellow</i> silk, while from the small intermediate pair seem to proceed
+very fine filaments of a pale-blue color, the use of which is to envelop
+the prey after it has been seized and killed, being drawn out by the
+bristles near the tips of the spider's hinder legs. Beside these six
+papill&aelig; there is, just in front of the anterior pair, a single small
+papilla on the middle line, the nature and use of which I have not
+ascertained, though I feel quite sure that no silk comes from it. The
+large median papilla, just <i>behind</i> the posterior pair, surrounds the
+termination of the intestines, and through it the excrement is voided,
+the insect for this purpose turning back the abdomen as she hangs head
+downward, so that neither the web nor the spinners shall be
+contaminated. Now it has recently been ascertained that the minute
+globules with which the circles are studded, and the number of which on
+a web of average size is estimated at <i>one hundred thousand</i>, do not
+exist in that form when the viscid lines are first spun by the spider,
+but as a uniform coating of gum upon a thread; this gum, of itself and
+according to physical laws, soon exhibits little undulations, and then
+separates into the globules which have long been observed and supposed
+to be formed by the spider. The fact of spiders selecting the night for
+the construction of their webs, the difficulty of making any close
+observations upon them while so engaged without disturbing them, and the
+near approximation of the two larger pairs of spinners while the viscid
+line is slowly drawn out by the hind leg, have hitherto prevented my
+determining its exact source and manner of formation. If it comes from
+the anterior pair only, then one and the same organ has the power of
+evolving a central axis and covering it with viscid gum; and it seems
+less improbable that the axis is white and formed by the posterior pair,
+the yellow gum being spread upon it by the anterior pair, which also
+would then have the power to evolve this same gum at other times as an
+equally dry, though more elastic thread. But in either case we have only
+<i>three</i> pairs of spinners and <i>four</i> kinds of silk, the <i>pale-blue
+fasciculi</i> the <i>dry white</i>, the <i>dry yellow</i>, and the <i>viscid</i> and very
+<i>elastic</i> silk which is employed only in the circles of the web, and
+which often does not become yellow till after exposure to the light.
+Apparently the surest method of investigation will be carefully to
+destroy one pair of spinners at a time without injuring the others, and
+then note the effect upon the spinning.</p>
+
+<p>Let us go back now to the sixty spiders left at Mt. Pleasant. A few of
+these died on the way North, but the majority reached Boston in safety
+about the 20th of September, 1865;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> for some time I had observed that
+they all were becoming more or less emaciated, and relished their food
+less than at first. Occasionally one died from no apparent cause. The
+mortality increasing toward the end of the month, and all of them losing
+both flesh and vigor, I was persuaded to try them with water,&mdash;a thing I
+had thus far declined to do, never having heard of a spider's drinking
+water, and knowing that our common house species can hardly get it at
+all. The result was most gratifying: a drop of water upon the tip of a
+camel's-hair pencil, not only was not avoided, but greedily seized and
+slowly swallowed, being held between the jaws and the palpi. All of the
+spiders took it, and some even five or six drops in succession. You will
+exclaim, "Poor things! what tortures they must have suffered!" I admit
+that it could not have been pleasant for them to go so long without that
+which they crave every day, but I cannot believe that creatures whose
+legs drop off on very slight provocation, and which never show any sign
+whatever of real pain, suffered very acute pangs even when subjected to
+what occasions such distress to ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>The few survivors straightway improved in health and spirits; but being
+now convinced that a moist atmosphere was almost as needful as water to
+drink, I turned them loose in the north wing of the hot-house in Dr.
+Gray's Botanical Garden at Cambridge. They all mysteriously disappeared,
+excepting one, which made a nice web at one end just under the
+ridge-pole, and for several weeks lived and grew fat upon the flies; but
+a thorough fumigation of the house with tobacco so shocked her not yet
+civilized organization that she died.</p>
+
+<p>Her untimely death, however, afforded opportunity for a closer
+examination of the web itself. The first one she had made was not
+<i>vertical</i>; and, following the prevalent ideas as to the precise
+construction of the spider's web, I had felt somewhat ashamed of my pet,
+but supposed the next she made would be an improvement. But no, the
+rebellious insect constantly made them all (for, it should have been
+said before, this spider seldom uses the same web more than forty-eight
+hours) after the same manner, and finally I laid it to a depraved
+idiocrasy, incident to captivity and poor health. But now another and
+most unexpected feature developed itself; for, on attempting to remove
+the last web by placing against it a large wire ring, and cutting the
+guy-lines, I found that this most degenerate spider had not only failed
+to make her house <i>perpendicular</i>, but had so far departed from the
+traditions of our ancestors as to have the centre thereof decidedly
+eccentric, and four times as near the upper as the lower border of the
+web, so that its upper portion was only a confused array of irregular
+lines, which it was impossible to secure to the frame. For any accurate
+observation my web was of no value. But perhaps this was best; for had I
+then learned what I have since, that our spider utterly ignores every
+precedent, not only in the <i>position</i> and <i>shape</i> of her web, but also
+in its <i>minute arrangement</i>, I might have been so affected by her
+evident bad character and radical proclivities, as to have feared paying
+her any further attentions,&mdash;much more, presenting her to the world.</p>
+
+<p>But in order to understand how these further discoveries were made, we
+must again go back to the original sixty spiders in my room at Mt.
+Pleasant, South Carolina.</p>
+
+<p>At the time of their capture, I had observed upon a few of the webs
+little brown spiders, which I then imagined might be the half-grown
+young. Six of these were found among the sixty larger spiders, and a
+moment's examination of their palpi or feelers (Fig. 5) showed that they
+were males, though even then I could not believe they had reached their
+maturity; for their bodies were only about one fourth of an inch in
+length, and weighed only one thirty-second part of a grain, while the
+females were from an inch to an inch and a quarter in length, and
+weighed from three to four grains. It was as absurd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> as if a man
+weighing one hundred and fifty pounds were joined to a bigger half of
+<i>eighteen thousand pounds' weight</i>, and I was not fully convinced that
+these small spiders were really the males of the <i>Nephila plumipes</i> till
+I had witnessed the impregnation of the eggs of the females by them.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 202px;">
+<img src="images/fig5.jpg" width="202" height="300" alt="Fig. 5. Palpi, or Feelers." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 5. Palpi, or Feelers.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>One morning, in the cell of a large female, I found a cocoon of
+beautiful yellow silk containing a rounded mass of eggs. Soon the same
+occurred with other females, and there were fifteen cocoons, which would
+give about <i>seven thousand spiders</i>. Early in October, just one month
+after they were laid, the eggs of the first cocoon were broken and
+disclosed little spiders with rounded yellow bodies and short legs,
+looking about as little like their parents as could be imagined. The
+eggs in the other cocoons followed in their order, and now each
+contained four or five hundred little spiders closely packed.</p>
+
+<p>For some time they seemed to eat nothing at all; but within a few days
+all had shed their skins, and now the abdomen was smaller, while the
+<i>cephalothorax</i> and legs were larger and darker; but they showed no
+desire to leave their cocoons. Still they grew perceptibly; and
+coincident with this was a less pleasing fact: their numbers were
+decreasing in the same proportion, and occasionally one was seen eating
+another. It was some time before I could reconcile the good temper and
+quiet behavior of the parents with this instinctive and habitual
+fratricide on the part of their children. But look at it in this way:
+here were several hundred active little creatures in a space just large
+enough to contain them; presently they were hungry, and as no two could
+be of exactly the same size, the smaller and weaker naturally fell a
+prey to their larger brethren, or rather sisters, for either very few
+males are hatched, or else they are particularly good eating, and a very
+small proportion survive the perils of infancy. It is evidently an
+established and well-understood thing among them: all seem to be aware
+of their destiny, to <i>eat</i> or <i>be eaten</i>. What else can they do? Human
+beings would do the same under the same circumstances; and I have never
+seen the least sign of personal spite or malignity in the spider. There
+is no pursuit, for there is no escape; and we can only conclude that, as
+the new-born fish's first nourishment is the contents of the yolk-sac,
+partly outside, though still a portion of its body, so the first food of
+the young spiders is, if not themselves, the next best thing,&mdash;each
+other. Thus it is provided that the smaller and less vigorous shall
+furnish food for the larger until the latter are strong enough to
+venture forth in search of other means of support.</p>
+
+<p>In consequence of this mutual destruction, aided materially by the
+depredations of birds and of other insects, and by exposure to the
+weather, only about one per cent of those hatched reach maturity. If
+properly protected, however, a far larger proportion may be saved; and
+as their multiplication is so rapid, no fear need be entertained of a
+limit to the supply.</p>
+
+<p>By keeping these little spiders in glass jars, inverted, and with a wet
+sponge at the bottom, they were easily watched and cared for. At first
+only about one twentieth of an inch long and nearly as wide, they
+increased in length as they grew, but for many weeks lived in common on
+an irregular web, feeding together on the crushed flies or bugs thrown
+to them. But when one fourth of an inch in length, they showed a
+disposition to separate, and to spin each for herself a regular<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> web,
+out of which all intruders were kept. And now it was found that all
+these webs were <i>inclined</i> at nearly the same angle, and were <i>never
+exactly vertical</i>; that, like the spider in the first web she made in
+the Botanical Garden, the insect took a position much nearer the upper
+than the lower border; and also that, instead of a web of <i>perfect
+circles</i> laid upon <i>regular radii</i>, as used to be described and is still
+figured in our books, or even one of a <i>spiral line</i>, as is now more
+correctly described of ordinary geometrical spiders (Fig. 6), these
+never made a circle, nor even a spiral, but a <i>series of concentric
+loops</i> or arcs of circles, the lines turning back upon themselves before
+reaching a point over the spider, and leaving the larger portion of the
+web below her; and more than this, that the lines, though quite regular,
+were by no means perfectly so, as may be seen in Fig. 7, copied from a
+photograph.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 297px;">
+<img src="images/fig6.jpg" width="297" height="300" alt="Fig. 6. Web of common Garden Spider." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 6. Web of common Garden Spider.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 293px;">
+<img src="images/fig7.jpg" width="293" height="300" alt="Fig. 7. Web of Nephila plumipes." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 7. Web of Nephila plumipes.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>As usual, the <i>radii</i>, or <i>spokes</i>, of the wheel-shaped structure are
+first made; then the spider begins a little way from the centre, and,
+passing from one radius to another, spins a series of loops at
+considerable distances from each other till she reaches the
+circumference. These first loops, like the radii, are of <i>white, dry</i>,
+and <i>inelastic</i> silk, and may be recognized by the little notches at
+their junction with the radii. The notches are made by the spider's
+drawing her body a little inward toward the centre of the web at the
+time of attaching them to the radii, and so they always point in the
+direction in which the spider is moving at that time, and in opposite
+directions on any two successive lines (Fig. 8). Having reached what is
+to be the border of her web, and thus constructed a firm framework or
+scaffolding, she begins to retrace her steps, moving more slowly and
+spinning now in the <i>intervals</i> of the dry loops two or three similar
+loops, but much nearer together and made of the <i>elastic</i> and <i>viscid</i>
+silk, till she has again reached her starting-point near the middle of
+the web, where, on its under side, she takes a position, head downward,
+hanging by her claws, and thus keeping her body from direct contact with
+the web.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 293px;">
+<img src="images/fig8.jpg" width="293" height="300" alt="Fig. 8. Section of Web." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 8. Section of Web.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Here she will remain quiet for hours as if asleep; but no sooner does a
+fly or other insect strike the web, than she darts in the direction
+whence the vibrations proceed, and usually seizes her prey; but,
+strangely enough, if the insect have ceased its struggles before she
+reaches it, she stops, and if she cannot renew them by shaking the web
+with her claws, will slowly and disconsolately return to the centre of
+the web, there to await fresh vibrations. These and many other facts,
+even more conclusive, have satisfied me that, although this spider has
+eight eyes (Fig. 9), it is as blind as a man with his eyelids shut, and
+can only distinguish light from darkness, nothing more. This seems to be
+the case with other geometrical species, but not at all with the field
+and hunting spiders, some of which will boldly turn upon you and look
+right in your eyes; they alone, of all insects, seeming to recognize the
+<i>face</i> of man as different from his body.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/fig9.jpg" width="200" height="159" alt="Fig. 9. Face and Jaws, magnified (eyes dimly seen)." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 9. Face and Jaws, magnified (eyes dimly seen).</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The hearing and touch of this spider are very acute. The latter is
+exercised by the palpi and the tips of the legs, especially the first
+pair, but no ear has yet been discovered; neither is anything known of
+the organs of taste and smell, or even whether the insect possesses
+these senses at all.</p>
+
+<p>I ought before this to have anticipated and answered a question which
+nine out of ten, perhaps, of my readers have already asked themselves,
+"Do not spiders bite? and is not their bite poisonous, nay, at times,
+deadly even to man?" The answer is, in brief, Yes, spiders do bite,
+probably all of them, if provoked and so confined that they cannot
+escape; though only a few tropical species can be said to seek of their
+own accord an opportunity for attacking man, or any creature larger than
+the insects that form their natural prey. Even the <i>Nephila plumipes</i>,
+which, it has been intimated, is "Christian in its disposition, and
+well-behaved beyond most of its kind," will readily bite, if it is held
+in the fingers and anything is put to its jaws. But that is nothing. So
+would you, most gentle reader, if a great giant pinched you between his
+thumb and finger, and held your hands and feet and head; and if, too,
+like our spider, you could not see enough to distinguish friends from
+foes. Spiders, then, will bite. But to the second part of the inquiry
+our answer must be less positive. They have a very bad name; but much of
+this is due to their grim and forbidding aspect, and their bloody trade
+of trapping and eating poor little insects. It is to be remembered that
+there are very few, if any, medical reports of injuries from the bites
+of spiders, and that the accounts of such cases occurring in the
+newspapers consist in great measure of inference, and either make no
+mention of the offender at all, or merely speak of a little black or
+gray spider being found in the vicinity. A number of experiments have
+been made in England to ascertain the effect of the bite of the larger
+geometrical spiders upon the experimenter himself, upon other spiders,
+and upon common insects; and the conclusion was, that it produces no
+greater effect than the prick of a pin, or any other injury of equal
+extent and severity; while the speedy death of its victim is ascribed to
+the spider's sucking its juices, rather than to any poison instilled
+into the wound. But these experiments, though somewhat reassuring, are
+not conclusive; for they were tried only on one person, and people vary
+much in their susceptibility to poison of all kinds; moreover, the
+spiders employed were of the <i>geometrical</i> kinds, which have never been
+so much feared as the larger <i>field</i> and <i>hunting</i> spiders. Indeed, it
+may be found that among spiders there is as great a difference in
+respect to venom as among serpents, and that those which depend upon
+their jaws for taking and holding their prey, such as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> field and
+hunting spiders, are poisonous, while the web-builders which ensnare
+their victims are not so. In regard to our spiders, I have caused a
+large one to bite, so as to draw blood, a kitten three days old, and the
+kitten has not appeared to suffer in the least on that account.</p>
+
+<p>They are very quiet insects, and never appear disturbed at what goes on
+about them; neither do they run away and hide in holes and corners, like
+our common spiders; but if their webs are injured, or they are startled
+by a noise, they will shake themselves from side to side in their webs,
+so as to be wholly invisible. Their natural food is insects of all
+kinds; but they soon learn to eat soft flesh, such as the liver of
+chickens, for which, as well as for water, they will sometimes stretch
+themselves and turn in their webs so as to take it from the point of a
+pin or camel's-hair pencil. Besides water to drink, they require an
+atmosphere saturated with moisture, like that of their native island,
+the relative humidity being about <i>seventy</i> on the Hygrodeik scale. If
+stroked upon the back, they often raise their bodies as a cat does, and
+sometimes put back a leg to push away your finger. They may be allowed
+to run over one's person with perfect safety, but, if suddenly seized,
+will hold on with tooth as well as nail.</p>
+
+<p>They are quite economical, and every few days, when the web has become
+too dry and dusty for use, will gather it up in a mass, which they stuff
+into their jaws and masticate for hours, swallowing the gum, but
+throwing out the rest, with the little particles of dust, in the form of
+a hard black pellet,&mdash;an instance rare, if not indeed unique, of an
+animal eating a substance already excreted from its body.</p>
+
+<p>Here I must close, though much against my will. It would please me to
+describe, as it has almost fascinated me to observe, the doings of my
+spiders, as they grew older and made their webs in the Wardian cases to
+which they were removed when too many and too large for the jars; how
+the young are gregarious, and move from place to place in a close
+column, protected on all sides by skirmishers, which continually report
+to the main body; how some of these young, whose parents were caught on
+Long Island, South Carolina, a year ago, and which were hatched from the
+egg in October last, have grown up during a Northern winter, have
+themselves become parents and laid eggs; how they periodically cast off
+their skins, even to that of the eyes, the jaws, and the breathing
+tubes, and how, from too great impatience, sad accidents sometimes
+befall them on these occasions; how, also, I have reeled silk from
+several of these spiders, and made a thread which has been woven in a
+power-loom as a woof or filling upon a warp of common black silk, so as
+to make a bit of ribbon two inches wide, thereby proving that it is real
+silk and can be treated as such.</p>
+
+<p>Much, too, could be said of the only other attempts to utilize spiders'
+silk, a knowledge of which would have materially aided me. In France,
+one hundred and fifty years ago, M. Bon made gloves and stockings of
+silk got by carding spiders' cocoons, and seventy years later, as I have
+but recently ascertained, Termeyer, a Spaniard, not only used the
+cocoons, but also, by an observation similar to my own, was led to reel
+the silk from the living insect. He, however, had poorer spiders or too
+little perseverance, or friends and a government influenced by a most
+short-sighted economy and prudence, else the highly interesting and
+instructive account of his experiments would have been familiar to some
+one in this country, and would not have waited these many years to be
+found by accident last spring in an obscure corner of the Astor Library.</p>
+
+<p>I will add, finally, that I believe some other geometrical spiders,
+especially of the genus <i>Nephila</i>, may be found as docile, and as
+productive of beautiful silk, as the species I have described. At any
+rate, you cannot find a more interesting inmate of your Wardian case
+than some large geometrical spider.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="WHAT_DID_SHE_SEE_WITH" id="WHAT_DID_SHE_SEE_WITH"></a>WHAT DID SHE SEE WITH?</h2>
+
+
+<p>I could not have been more than seven or eight years old, when it
+happened; but it might have been yesterday. Among all other childish
+memories, it stands alone. To this very day it brings with it the old,
+utter sinking of the heart, and the old, dull sense of mystery.</p>
+
+<p>To read the story, you should have known my mother. To understand it,
+you should understand her. But that is quite impossible now, for there
+is a quiet spot over the hill, and past the church, and beside the
+little brook where the crimsoned mosses grow thick and wet and cool,
+from which I cannot call her. It is all I have left of her now. But
+after all, it is not of her that you will chiefly care to hear. The
+object of my story is simply to acquaint you with a few facts, which,
+though interwoven with the events of her life, are quite independent of
+it as objects of interest. It is, I know, only my own heart that makes
+these pages a memorial,&mdash;but, you see, I cannot help it.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, I confess, no glamour of any earthly love has ever utterly dazzled
+me,&mdash;not even hers. Of imperfections, of mistakes, of sins, I knew she
+was guilty. I know it now,&mdash;even with the sanctity of those crimsoned
+mosses, and the hush of the rest beneath, so close to my heart, I cannot
+forget them. Yet somehow&mdash;I do not know how&mdash;the imperfections, the
+mistakes, the very sins, bring her nearer to me as the years slip by,
+and make her dearer.</p>
+
+<p>The key to her life is the key to my story. That given, as I can give
+it, I will try to compress. It lies in the fact that my mother was what
+we call an aristocrat, I do not like the term, as the term is used. I am
+sure she does not now; but I have no other word. She was a royal-looking
+woman, and she had the blood of princes in her veins. Generations
+back&mdash;how we children used to reckon the thing over!&mdash;she was cradled in
+a throne. A miserable race, to be sure, they were,&mdash;the Stuarts; and the
+most devout genealogist might deem it dubious honor to own them for
+great-grandfathers by innumerable degrees removed. So she used to tell
+us, over and over, as a damper on our childish vanity, looking such a
+very queen as she spoke, in every play of feature, and every motion of
+her hand, that it was the old story of preachers who did not practise.
+The very baby was proud of her. The beauty of a face, and the elegant
+repose of a manner, are by no means influences more unfelt at three
+years than at thirty.</p>
+
+<p>As insanity will hide itself away, and lie sleeping, and die out,&mdash;while
+old men are gathered to their fathers scathless, and young men follow in
+their footsteps safe and free,&mdash;and start into life, and claim its own
+when children's children have forgotten it; as a single trait of a
+single scholar in a race of clods will bury itself in day-laborers and
+criminals, unto the third and fourth generation, and spring then, like a
+creation from a chaos, into statesmen and poets and sculptors;&mdash;so, I
+have sometimes fancied, the better and truer nature of voluptuaries and
+tyrants was sifted down through the years, and purified in our little
+New England home, and the essential autocracy of monarchical blood
+refined and ennobled in my mother into royalty.</p>
+
+<p>A broad and liberal culture had moulded her; she knew its worth, in
+every fibre of her heart; scholarly parents had blessed her with their
+legacies of scholarly mind and name. With the soul of an artist, she
+quivered under every grace and every defect; and the blessing of a
+beauty as rare as rich had been given to her. With every instinct of her
+nature recoiling from the very shadow of crimes the world winks at, as
+from a loathsome reptile, the family record had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> stainless for a
+generation. God had indeed blessed her; but the very blessing was a
+temptation.</p>
+
+<p>I knew, before she left me, what she might have been, but for the
+merciful and tender watch of Him who was despised and rejected of men. I
+know, for she told me, one still night when we were alone together, how
+she sometimes shuddered at herself, and what those daily and hourly
+struggles between her nature and her Christianity <i>meant</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I think we were as near to one another as mother and daughter can be;
+but yet as utterly different. Since I have been talking in such lordly
+style of those miserable Jameses and Charleses, I will take the
+opportunity to confess that I have inherited my father's thorough-going
+democracy,&mdash;double measure, pressed down and running over. She not only
+pardoned it, but I think she loved it in me, for his sake.</p>
+
+<p>It was about a year and a half, I think, after he died, that she sent
+for Aunt Alice to come to Creston. "Your aunt loves me," she said, when
+she told us in her quiet way, "and I am so lonely now."</p>
+
+<p>They had been the only children, and they loved each other,&mdash;how much, I
+afterwards knew. And how much they love each other <i>now</i>, I like to
+think,&mdash;quite freely and fully, and without shadow or doubt between
+them, I dare to hope.</p>
+
+<p>A picture of Aunt Alice always hung in mother's room. It was taken down
+years ago. I never asked her where she put it. I remember it, though,
+quite well; for mother's sake I am glad I do. For it was a pleasant face
+to look upon, and a young, pure, happy face,&mdash;beautiful too, though with
+none of the regal beauty crowned by my mother's massive hair, and
+pencilled brows. It was a timid, girlish face, with reverent eyes, and
+ripe, tremulous lips,&mdash;weak lips, as I remember them. From babyhood, I
+felt a want in the face. I had, of course, no capacity to define it; it
+was represented to me only by the fact that it differed from my
+mother's.</p>
+
+<p>She was teaching school out West when mother sent for her. I saw the
+letter. It was just like my mother:&mdash;"Alice, I need you. You and I ought
+to have but one home now. Will you come?"</p>
+
+<p>I saw, too, a bit of a postscript to the answer,&mdash;"I'm not fit that you
+should love me so, Marie."</p>
+
+<p>And how mother laughed at it!</p>
+
+<p>When it was all settled, and the waiting weeks became at last a single
+day, I hardly knew my mother. She was in her early married years; she
+was a girl; she was a child; she was every young thing, and merry thing,
+that she could have ever been. So full of fitful moods, and little
+fantastic jokes! such a flush on her cheeks too, as she ran to the
+window every five minutes, like a child! I remember how we went all over
+the house together, she and I, to see that everything looked neat, and
+bright, and welcome. And how we lingered in the guest-room, to put the
+little finishing touches to its stillness, and coolness, and coseyness.
+The best spread on the bed, and the white folds smoothed as only
+mother's fingers could smooth them; the curtain freshly washed, and
+looped with its crimson cord; the blinds drawn, cool and green; the late
+afternoon sunlight slanting through, in flecks upon the floor. Flowers,
+too, upon the table. I remember they were all white,&mdash;lilies of the
+valley, I think; and the vase of Parian marble, itself a solitary lily,
+unfolding stainless leaves. Over the mantle she had hung the finest
+picture in the house,&mdash;an "Ecce Homo," and an exquisite engraving. It
+used to hang in grandmother's room in the old house. We children
+wondered a little that she took it up stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"I want your aunt to feel at home, and see home things," she said. "I
+wish I could think of something more to make it pleasant in here."</p>
+
+<p>Just as we left the room she turned and looked into it. "Pleasant, isn't
+it? I am so glad, Sarah," her eyes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> dimming a little. "She's a very dear
+sister to me."</p>
+
+<p>She stepped in again to raise a stem of the lilies that had fallen from
+the vase, and lay like wax upon the table, then she shut the door and
+came away.</p>
+
+<p>That door was shut just so for years; the lonely bars of sunlight
+flecked the solitude of the room, and the lilies faded on the table. We
+children passed it with hushed footfall, and shrank from it at twilight,
+as from a room that held the dead. But into it we never went.</p>
+
+<p>Mother was tired out that afternoon; for she had been on her feet all
+day, busied in her loving cares to make our simple home as pleasant and
+as welcome as home could be. But yet she stopped to dress us in our
+Sunday clothes,&mdash;and no sinecure was it to dress three persistently
+undressable children; Winthrop was a host in himself. "Auntie must see
+us look our prettiest," she said.</p>
+
+<p>She was a picture herself when she came down. She had taken off her
+widow's cap and coiled her heavy hair low in her neck, and she always
+looked like a queen in that lustreless black silk. I do not know why
+these little things should have made such an impression on me then. They
+are priceless to me now. I remember how she looked, framed there in the
+doorway, while we were watching for the coach,&mdash;the late light ebbing in
+golden tides over the grass at her feet, and touching her face now and
+then through the branches of trees, her head bent a little, with eager,
+parted lips, and the girlish color on her cheeks, her hand shading her
+eyes as they strained for a sight of the lumbering coach. She must have
+been a magnificent woman when she was young,&mdash;not unlike, I have heard
+it said, to that far-off ancestress whose name she bore, and whose
+sorrowful story has made her sorrowful beauty immortal. Somewhere abroad
+there is a reclining statue of Queen Mary, to which, when my mother
+stood beside it, her resemblance was so strong that the by-standers
+clustered about her, whispering curiously. "Ah, mon Dieu!" said a little
+Frenchman, aloud, "c'est une r&eacute;surrection."</p>
+
+<p>We must have tried her that afternoon, Clara and Winthrop and I; for the
+spirit of her own excitement had made us completely wild. Winthrop's
+scream of delight when, stationed on the gate-post, he caught the first
+sight of the old yellow coach, might have been heard a quarter of a
+mile.</p>
+
+<p>"Coming?" said mother, nervously, and stepped out to the gate, full in
+the sunlight that crowned her like royal gold.</p>
+
+<p>The coach lumbered on, and rattled up, and passed.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, she hasn't come!" All the eager color died out of her face. "I am
+so disappointed!" speaking like a troubled child, and turning slowly
+into the house.</p>
+
+<p>Then, after a while, she drew me aside from the others,&mdash;I was the
+oldest, and she was used to make a sort of confidence between us,
+instinctively, as it seemed, and often quite forgetting how very few my
+years were. "Sarah, I don't understand. You think she might have lost
+the train? But Alice is so punctual, Alice never lost a train. And she
+said she would come." And then, a while after, "I <i>don't</i> understand."</p>
+
+<p>It was not like my mother to worry. The next day the coach lumbered up
+and rattled past, and did not stop,&mdash;and the next, and the next.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall have a letter," mother said, her eyes saddening every
+afternoon. But we had no letter. And another day went by, and another.</p>
+
+<p>"She is sick," we said; and mother wrote to her, and watched for the
+lumbering coach, and grew silent day by day. But to the letter there was
+no answer.</p>
+
+<p>Ten days passed. Mother came to me one afternoon to ask for her pen,
+which I had borrowed. Something in her face troubled me vaguely.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do, mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Write to your aunt's boarding-place.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> I can't bear this any longer,"
+sharply. She had already grown unlike herself.</p>
+
+<p>She wrote, and asked for an answer by return of mail.</p>
+
+<p>It was on a Wednesday, I remember, that we looked for it. I remember
+everything that happened that day. I came home early from school. Mother
+was sewing at the parlor window, her eyes wandering from her work, up
+the road. It was an ugly day. It had rained drearily from eight o'clock
+till two, and closed in suffocating mist, creeping and dense and chill.
+It gave me a childish fancy of long-closed tombs and lowland graveyards,
+as I walked home in it.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to keep the younger children quiet when we went in, mother was
+so nervous. As the early, uncanny twilight fell, we grouped around her
+timidly. A dull sense of awe and mystery clung to the night, and clung
+to her watching face, and clung even then to that closed room up stairs
+where the lilies were fading.</p>
+
+<p>Mother sat leaning her head upon her hand, the outline of her face dim
+in the dusk against the falling curtain. She was sitting so when we
+heard the first rumble of the distant coach-wheels. At the sound, she
+folded her hands in her lap and stirred a little, rose slowly from her
+chair, and sat down again.</p>
+
+<p>"Sarah."</p>
+
+<p>I crept up to her. At the near sight of her face, I was so frightened I
+could have cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Sarah, you may go out and get the letter. I&mdash;I can't."</p>
+
+<p>I went slowly out at the door and down the walk. At the gate I looked
+back. The outline of her face was there against the window-pane, white
+in the gathering gloom.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to me that my older and less sensitive years have never known
+such a night. The world was stifling in a deluge of gray, cold mists,
+unstirred by a breath of air. A robin with feathers all ruffled, and
+head hidden, sat on the gate-post, and chirped a little mournful chirp,
+like a creature dying in a vacuum. The very daisy that nodded and
+drooped in the grass at my feet seemed to be gasping for breath. The
+neighbor's house, not forty paces across the street, was invisible. I
+remember the sensation it gave me, as I struggled to find its outlines,
+of a world washed out, like the figures I washed out on my slate. As I
+trudged, half frightened, into the road, and the fog closed about me, it
+seemed to my childish superstition like a horde of long-imprisoned
+ghosts let loose and angry. The distant sound of the coach, which I
+could not see, added to the fancy.</p>
+
+<p>The coach turned the corner presently. On a clear day I could see the
+brass buttons on the driver's coat at that distance. There was nothing
+visible now of the whole dark structure but the two lamps in front, like
+the eyes of some evil thing, glaring and defiant, borne with swift
+motion down upon me by a power utterly unseen,&mdash;it had a curious effect.
+Even at this time, I confess I do not like to see a lighted carriage
+driven through a fog.</p>
+
+<p>I summoned all my little courage, and piped out the driver's name,
+standing there in the road.</p>
+
+<p>He reined up his horses with a shout,&mdash;he had nearly driven over me.
+After some searching, he discovered the small object cowering down in
+the mist, handed me a letter, with a muttered oath at being intercepted
+on such a night, and lumbered on and out of sight in three rods.</p>
+
+<p>I went slowly into the house. Mother had lighted a lamp, and stood at
+the parlor door. She did not come into the hall to meet me.</p>
+
+<p>She took the letter and went to the light, holding it with the seal
+unbroken. She might have stood so two minutes.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you read, mamma?" spoke up Winthrop. I hushed him.</p>
+
+<p>She opened it then, read it, laid it down upon the table, and went out
+of the room without a word. I had not seen her face. We heard her go up
+stairs and shut the door.</p>
+
+<p>She had left the letter open there before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> us. After a little awed
+silence, Clara broke out into sobs. I went up and read the few and
+simple lines.</p>
+
+<p><i>Aunt Alice had left for Creston on the appointed day.</i></p>
+
+<p>Mother spent that night in the closed room where the lilies had drooped
+and died. Clara and I heard her pacing the floor till we cried ourselves
+to sleep. When we woke in the morning, she was pacing it still.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Well, weeks wore into months, and the months became many years. More
+than that we never knew. Some inquiry revealed the fact, after a while,
+that a slight accident had occurred upon the Erie Railroad to the train
+which she should have taken. There was some disabling, but no deaths,
+the conductor had supposed. The car had fallen into the water. She might
+not have been missed when the half-drowned passengers were all drawn
+out.</p>
+
+<p>So mother added a little crape to her widow's weeds, the key of the
+closed room lay henceforth in her drawer, and all things went on as
+before. To her children my mother was never gloomy,&mdash;it was not her way.
+No shadow of household affliction was placed like a skeleton confronting
+our uncomprehending joy. Of what those weeks and months and years were
+to her,&mdash;a widow, and quite uncomforted in their dark places by any
+human love,&mdash;she gave no sign. We thought her a shade paler, perhaps. We
+found her often alone with her little Bible. Sometimes, on the Sabbath,
+we missed her, and knew that she had gone into that closed room. But she
+was just as tender with us in our little faults and sorrows, as merry
+with us in our plays, as eager in our gayest plans, as she had always
+been. As she had always been,&mdash;our mother.</p>
+
+<p>And so the years slipped by, to her and to us. Winthrop went into
+business in Boston; he never took to his books, and mother was too wise
+to <i>push</i> him through college; but I think she was disappointed. He was
+her only boy, and she would have chosen for him the profession of his
+father and grandfather. Clara and I graduated in our white dresses and
+blue ribbons, like other girls, and came home to mother, crochet-work,
+and Tennyson. And then something happened, as the veriest little
+things&mdash;which, unnoticed and uncomprehended, hold the destinies of lives
+in their control&mdash;will happen.</p>
+
+<p>I mean that our old and long-tried cook, Bathsheba, who had been an
+heirloom in the family, suddenly fell in love with the older sexton, who
+had rung the passing-bell for every soul who died in the village for
+forty years, and took it into her head to marry him, and desert our
+kitchen for his little brown house under the hill.</p>
+
+<p>So it came about that we hunted the township for a handmaiden; and it
+also came about that our inquiring steps led us to the poor-house. A
+stout, not over-brilliant-looking girl, about twelve years of age, was
+to be had for her board and clothes, and such schooling as we could give
+her,&mdash;in country fashion, to be "bound out" till she should be eighteen.
+The economy of the arrangement decided in her favor; for, in spite of
+our grand descent and grander notions, we were poor enough, after father
+died, and the education of three children had made no small gap in our
+little principal, and she came.</p>
+
+<p>Her name was a singular one,&mdash;Selphar. It always savored too nearly of
+brimstone to please me. I used to call her Sel, "for short." She was a
+good, sensible, uninteresting-looking girl, with broad face, large
+features, and limp, tow-colored curls. I doubt if I ever see curls like
+them now without a little shudder. They used to hang straight down about
+her eyes, and were never otherwise than perfectly smooth. She proved to
+be of good temper, which is worth quite as much as brains in a servant,
+as honest as the daylight, dull enough at her books, but a good,
+plodding worker, if you marked out every step of the way for her
+beforehand. I do not think she would ever have discovered the laws of
+gravitation; but she might have jumped off a precipice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> to prove them,
+if she had been bidden.</p>
+
+<p>Until she was seventeen, she was precisely like any other rather stupid
+girl; never given to novel-reading or fancies; never frightened by the
+dark or ghost-stories; proving herself warmly attached to us, after a
+while, and rousing in us, in return, the kindly interest naturally
+felt for a faithful servant; but she was not in any respect
+<i>un</i>common,&mdash;quite far from it,&mdash;except in the circumstance that she
+never told a falsehood.</p>
+
+<p>At seventeen she had a violent attack of diphtheria, and her life hung
+by a thread. Mother's aristocracy had nothing of that false pride which
+is afraid of contamination from kindly association with its inferiors.
+She was too thoroughly a lady. She was as tender and unwearying in her
+care of Selphar as the girl's own mother might have been. She was
+somehow touched by the child's orphaned life,&mdash;suffering always, in all
+places, appealed to her so strongly,&mdash;every sorrow found so warm a place
+in her heart.</p>
+
+<p>From that time, I believe Sel was immovable in her faith in my mother's
+divinity. Under such nursing as she had, she slowly recovered, but her
+old, stolid strength never came back to her. Severe headaches became of
+frequent occurrence. Her stout, muscular arms grew weak. As weeks went
+on, it became evident in many ways that, though the diphtheria itself
+was quite out of her system, it had left her thoroughly diseased.
+Strange fits of silence came over her: her volubility had been the
+greatest objection we had to her hitherto. Her face began to wear a
+troubled look. She was often found in places where she had stolen away
+to be alone.</p>
+
+<p>One morning she slept late in her little garret-chamber, and we did not
+call her. The girl had gone up stairs the night before crying with the
+pain in her temples, and mother, who was always thoughtful of her
+servants, said it was a pity to wake her, and, as there were only three
+of us, we might get our own breakfast for once. While we were at work
+together in the kitchen, Clara heard her kitten mewing out in the snow,
+and went to the door to let her in. The creature, possessed by some
+sudden frolic, darted away behind the well-curb. Clara was always a bit
+of a romp, and, with never a thought of her daintily-slippered feet, she
+flung her trailing dress over one arm and was off over the three-inch
+snow. The cat led her a brisk chase, and she came in flushed, and
+panting, and pretty, her little feet drenched, and the tip of a Maltese
+tail just visible above a great bundle she had made of her apron.</p>
+
+<p>"Why!" said mother, "you have lost your ear-ring."</p>
+
+<p>Clara dropped the kitten with unceremonious haste on the floor, felt of
+her little pink ear, shook her apron, and the corners of her mouth went
+down into her dimpled chin.</p>
+
+<p>"They're the ones Winthrop sent, of all things in the world!"</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better put on your rubbers, and have a hunt out-doors," said
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>We hunted out-doors,&mdash;on the steps, on the well-boards, in the
+wood-shed, in the snow; Clara looked down the well till her nose and
+fingers were blue, but the ear-ring was not to be found. We hunted
+in-doors, under the stove, and the chairs, and the table, in every
+possible and impossible nook, cranny, and crevice, but gave up the
+search in despair. It was a pretty trinket,&mdash;a leaf of delicately
+wrought gold, with a pearl dew-drop on it,&mdash;very becoming to Clara, and
+the first present Winthrop had sent her from his earnings. If she had
+been a little younger she would have cried. She came very near it as it
+was, I suspect, for when she went after the plates she stayed in the
+cupboard long enough to set two tables.</p>
+
+<p>When we were half through breakfast, Selphar came down, blushing, and
+frightened half out of her wits, her apologies tumbling over each other
+with such skill as to render each one unintelligible,&mdash;and evidently
+undecided<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> in, her own mind whether she was to be hung or burnt at the
+stake.</p>
+
+<p>"It's no matter at all," said mother, kindly; "I knew you felt sick last
+night. I should have called you if I had needed you."</p>
+
+<p>Having set the girl at her ease, as only she could do, she went on with
+her breakfast, and we forgot all about her. She stayed, however, in the
+room to wait on the table. It was afterwards remembered that she had not
+been out of our sight since she came down the garret-stairs. Also, that
+her room looked out upon the opposite side of the house from that on
+which the well-curb stood.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, look at Sel!" said Clara, suddenly, "she has her eyes shut."</p>
+
+<p>The girl was just passing the toast. Mother spoke to her. "Selphar, what
+is the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you open your eyes?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't."</p>
+
+<p>"Hand the salt to Miss Sarah."</p>
+
+<p>She took it up and brought it around the table to me, with perfect
+precision.</p>
+
+<p>"Sel, how you act!" said Clara, petulantly. "Of course you saw."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes'm, I saw," said the girl in a puzzled way, "but my eyes are shut,
+Miss Clara."</p>
+
+<p>"Tight?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tight."</p>
+
+<p>Whatever this freak meant, we thought best to take no notice of it. My
+mother told her, somewhat gravely, that she might sit down until she was
+wanted, and we returned to our conversation about the ear-ring.</p>
+
+<p>"Why!" said Sel, with a little jump, "I see your ear-ring, Miss
+Clara,&mdash;the one with a white drop on the leaf. It's out by the well."</p>
+
+<p>The girl was sitting with her back to the window, her eyes, to all
+appearance, tightly closed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's on the right-hand side, under the snow, between the well and the
+wood-pile. Why, don't you see?"</p>
+
+<p>Clara began to look frightened, mother displeased.</p>
+
+<p>"Selphar," she said, "this is nonsense. It is impossible for you to see
+through the walls of two rooms and a wood-shed."</p>
+
+<p>"May I go and get it?" said the girl, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Sel," said Clara, "on your word and honor, are your eyes shut
+<i>perfectly</i> tight?"</p>
+
+<p>"If they ain't, Miss Clara, then they never was."</p>
+
+<p>Sel never told a lie. We looked at each other, and let her go. I
+followed her out, and kept my eyes on her closed lids. She did not once
+raise them; nor did they tremble, as lids will tremble, if only
+partially closed.</p>
+
+<p>She walked without the slightest hesitation directly to the well-curb,
+to the spot which she had mentioned, stooped down, and brushed away the
+three-inch fall of snow. The ear-ring lay there, where it had sunk in
+falling. She picked it up, carried it in, and gave it to Clara.</p>
+
+<p>That Clara had the thing on when she started after her kitten, there
+could be no doubt. She and I both remembered it. That Sel, asleep on the
+opposite side of the house, could not have seen it drop, was also
+settled. That she, with her eyes closed and her back to the window, had
+seen through three walls, and through three inches of snow, at a
+distance of fifty feet, was an inference.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe it!" said my mother, "it's some nonsensical mistake."
+Clara looked a little pale, and I laughed.</p>
+
+<p>We watched her carefully through the day. Her eyes remained tightly
+closed. She understood all that was said to her, answered correctly, but
+did not seem inclined to talk. She went about her work as usual, and
+performed it without a mistake. It could not be seen that she groped at
+all with her hands to feel her way, as is the case with the blind. On
+the contrary, she touched everything with her usual decision. It was
+impossible to believe, without seeing them, that her eyes were closed.</p>
+
+<p>We tied a handkerchief tightly over them; see through it or below it she
+could not, if she had tried. We<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> then sent her into the parlor, with
+orders to bring from the book-case two Bibles which had been given as
+prizes to Clara and me at school, when we were children. The books were
+of precisely the same size, color, and texture. Our names in gilt
+letters were printed upon the binding. We followed her in, and watched
+her narrowly. She went directly to the book-case, laid her hands upon
+the books at once, and brought them to my mother. Mother changed them
+from, hand to hand several times, and turned them with the gilt
+lettering downwards upon her lap.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Selphar, which is Miss Sarah's?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl quietly took mine up. The experiment was repeated and varied
+again and again. In every case the result was the same. She made no
+mistake. It was no guess-work. All this was done with the bandage
+tightly drawn about her eyes. <i>She did not see those letters with them.</i></p>
+
+<p>That evening we were sitting quietly in the dining-room. Selphar sat a
+little apart with her sewing, her eyes still closed. We kept her with
+us, and kept her in sight. The parlor, which was a long room, was
+between us and the front of the house. The distance was so great that we
+had often thought, if prowlers were to come around at night, how
+impossible it would be to hear them. The curtains and shutters were
+closely drawn. Sel was sitting by the fire. Suddenly she turned pale,
+dropped her sewing, and sprang from her chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Robbers, robbers!" she cried. "Don't you see? they're getting in the
+east parlor window! There's three of 'em, and a lantern. They've just
+opened the window,&mdash;hurry, hurry!"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe the girl is insane," said mother, decidedly. Nevertheless,
+she put out the light, opened the parlor door noiselessly, and went in.</p>
+
+<p>The east window was open. There was a quick vision of three men and a
+dark lantern. Then Clara screamed, and it disappeared. We went to the
+window, and saw the men running down the street. The snow the next
+morning was found trodden down under the window, and their footprints
+were traced out to the road.</p>
+
+<p>When we went back to the other room, Selphar was standing in the middle
+of it, a puzzled, frightened look on her face, her eyes wide open.</p>
+
+<p>"Selphar," said my mother, a little suspiciously, "how did you know the
+robbers were there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Robbers!" said the girl, aghast.</p>
+
+<p>She knew nothing of the robbers. She knew nothing of the ear-ring. She
+remembered nothing that had happened since she went up the garret-stairs
+to bed, the night before. And, as I said, the girl was as honest as the
+sunlight. When we told her what had happened, she burst into terrified
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>For some time after this there was no return of the "tantrums," as
+Selphar had called the condition, whatever it was. I began to get up
+vague theories of a trance state. But mother said, "Nonsense!" and Clara
+was too much frightened to reason at all about the matter.</p>
+
+<p>One Sunday morning Sel complained of a headache. There was an evening
+service that night, and we all went to church. Mother let Sel take the
+empty seat in the carryall beside her.</p>
+
+<p>It was very dark when we started to come home. But Creston was a safe
+old Orthodox town, the roads were filled with returning church-goers
+like ourselves, and mother drove like a man. A darker night I think I
+have never seen. Literally, we could not see a hand before our eyes. We
+met a carriage on a narrow road, and the horses' heads touched, before
+either driver had seen the other.</p>
+
+<p>Selphar had been quite silent during the drive. I leaned forward, looked
+closely into her face, and could dimly see through the darkness that her
+eyes were closed.</p>
+
+<p>"Why!" she said at last, "see those gloves!"</p>
+
+<p>"Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"Down in the ditch; we passed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> them before I spoke. I see them on a
+blackberry-bush; they've got little brass buttons on the wrist."</p>
+
+<p>Three rods past now, and we could not see our horse's head.</p>
+
+<p>"Selphar," said my mother, quickly, "what <i>is</i> the matter with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you please, ma'am, I don't know," replied the girl, hanging her
+head. "May I get out and bring 'em to you?"</p>
+
+<p>Prince was reined up, and Sel got out. She went so far back, that,
+though we strained our eyes to do it, we could not see her. In about two
+minutes she came up, a pair of gentleman's gloves in her hand. They were
+rolled together, were of cloth so black that on a bright night it would
+never have been seen, and had small brass buttons at the wrist.</p>
+
+<p>Mother took them without a word.</p>
+
+<p>The story leaked out somehow, and spread all over town. It raised a
+great hue and cry. Four or five antediluvian ladies declared at once
+that we were nothing more nor less than a family of "them spirituous
+mediums," and seriously proposed to expel mother from the
+prayer-meeting. Masculine Creston did worse. It smiled a pitying smile,
+and pronounced the whole thing the fancy of "scared women-folks." I
+could endure with calmness any slander upon earth but that. I sent by
+the next mail for Winthrop, and stated the case to him in a condition of
+suppressed fury. He very politely bit back an incredulous smile, and
+said he should be <i>very</i> happy to see her perform. The answer was
+somewhat dubious. I accepted it in silent suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>He came on Saturday noon. That afternoon we attended <i>en masse</i> one of
+those refined inquisitions commonly known as picnics, and Winthrop lost
+his pocket-knife. Selphar, of course, kept house at home.</p>
+
+<p>When we returned, Winthrop made some careless reference to his loss in
+her presence, and thought no more of it. About half an hour after, we
+observed that she was washing the dishes with her eyes shut. The
+condition had not been upon her five minutes before she dropped the
+spoon suddenly into the water, and asked permission to go out to walk.
+She "saw Mr. Winthrop's knife somewhere under a stone, and wanted to get
+it." It was fully two miles to the picnic grounds, and nearly dark.
+Winthrop followed the girl, unknown to her, and kept her in sight. She
+went rapidly, and without the slightest hesitation or search, to an
+out-of-the-way gully down by the pond, where Winthrop afterwards
+remembered having gone to cut some willow-twigs for the girls, parted a
+thick cluster of bushes, lifted a large, loose stone under which the
+knife had rolled, and picked it up. She returned it to Winthrop,
+quietly, and hurried away about her work to avoid being thanked.</p>
+
+<p>I observed that, after this incident, masculine Creston became more
+respectful.</p>
+
+<p>Of several peculiarities in this development of the girl I made at the
+time careful memoranda, and the exactness of these can be relied upon.</p>
+
+<p>1. She herself, so far from attempting to bring on these trance states,
+or taking any pride therein, was intensely troubled and mortified by
+them,&mdash;would run out of the room, if she felt them coming on in the
+presence of visitors.</p>
+
+<p>2. They were apt to be preceded by severe headaches, but came often
+without any warning.</p>
+
+<p>3. She never, in any instance, recalled anything that happened during
+the trance, after it was passed.</p>
+
+<p>4. She was powerfully and unpleasantly affected by electricity from a
+battery, or acting in milder forms. She was also unable at any time to
+put her hands and arms into hot water; the effect was to paralyze them
+at once.</p>
+
+<p>5. Space proved to be no impediment to her vision. She has been known to
+follow the acts, words, and expressions of countenance of members of the
+family hundreds of miles away, with accuracy; as was afterwards proved
+by comparing notes as to time.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>6. The girl's eyes, after her trances became habitual, assumed, and
+always retained, the most singular expression I ever saw on any face.
+They were oblong and narrow, and set back in her head like the eyes of a
+snake. They were not&mdash;smile if you will, O practical and incredulous
+reader!&mdash;but they were not <i>human</i> eyes. The eyes of Elsie Venner are
+the only eyes I can think of as at all like them. The most horrible
+circumstance about them&mdash;a circumstance that always made me shudder,
+familiar as I was with it&mdash;was, that, though turned fully on you, <i>they
+never looked at you</i>. Something behind them or out of them did the
+seeing, not they.</p>
+
+<p>7. She not only saw substance, but soul. She has repeatedly told me my
+thoughts when they were upon subjects to which she could not by any
+possibility have had the slightest clew.</p>
+
+<p>8. We were never able to detect a shadow of deceit about her.</p>
+
+<p>9. The clairvoyance never failed in any instance to be correct, so far
+as we were able to trace it.</p>
+
+<p>As will be readily imagined, the girl became a useful member of the
+family. The lost valuables restored and the warnings against mischances
+given by her quite balanced her incapacity for peculiar kinds of work.
+This incapacity, however, rather increased than diminished, and,
+together with her fickle health, which also grew more unsettled, caused
+us a great deal of care. The Creston physician&mdash;who was a keen man in
+his way, for a country doctor&mdash;pronounced the case altogether undreamt
+of before in Horatio's philosophy, and kept constant notes of it. Some
+of these have, I believe, found their way into the medical journals.</p>
+
+<p>After a while there came, like a thief in the night, that which I
+suppose was poor Selphar's one unconscious, golden mission in this
+world. It came on a quiet summer night, that ended a long trance of a
+week's continuance. Mother had gone out into the kitchen to give an
+order for breakfast. I heard a few eager words in Selphar's voice, and
+then the door shut quickly, and it was an hour before it was opened.</p>
+
+<p>Then my mother came to me without a particle of color in lips or cheek,
+and drew me away alone, and told the secret to me.</p>
+
+<p>Selphar had seen Aunt Alice.</p>
+
+<p>We sat down and looked at one another. There was a singular pinched look
+about my mother's mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Sarah."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"She says"&mdash;and then she told me what she said. She had seen Alice
+Stuart in a Western town, seven hundred miles away. Among the living,
+she desired to be counted of the dead. And that was all.</p>
+
+<p>My mother paced the room three times back and forth, her hands locked.</p>
+
+<p>"Sarah." There was a chill in her voice&mdash;it had been such a gentle
+voice!&mdash;that froze me. "Sarah, the girl is an impostor."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!"</p>
+
+<p>She paced the room, once more, three times, back and forth. "At any
+rate, she is a poor, self-deluded creature. How <i>can</i> she see, seven
+hundred miles away, a dead woman who has been an angel all these years?
+Think! an <i>angel</i>, Sarah! So much better than I, and I&mdash;I loved&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Before or since, I never heard my mother speak like that. She broke off
+sharply, and froze back into her chilling voice.</p>
+
+<p>"We will say nothing about this, if you please. I do not believe a word
+of it."</p>
+
+<p>We said nothing about it, but Selphar did. The delusion, if delusion it
+were, clung to her, haunted her, pursued her, week after week. To rid
+her of it, or to silence her, was impossible. She added no new facts to
+her first statement, but insisted that the long-lost dead was yet alive,
+with a quiet pertinacity that it was simply impossible to ridicule,
+frighten, threaten, or cross-question out of her, Clara was so
+thoroughly alarmed that she would not have slept alone for any
+mortal&mdash;perhaps not for any immortal&mdash;considerations. Winthrop<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> and I
+talked the matter over often and gravely when we were alone and in quiet
+places. Mother's lips were sealed. From the day when Sel made the first
+disclosure, she was never heard once to refer to the matter. A
+perceptible haughtiness crept into her manner towards the girl. She even
+talked of dismissing her; but repented it, and melted into momentary
+gentleness. I could have cried over her that night. I was beginning to
+understand what a pitiful struggle her life had become, and how utterly
+alone she must be in it. She <i>would</i> not believe&mdash;she knew not what. She
+could not doubt the girl. And with the conflict even her children could
+not intermeddle.</p>
+
+<p>To understand the crisis into which she was brought, the reader must
+bear in mind our long habit of belief, not only in Selphar's personal
+honesty, but in the infallibility of her mysterious power. Indeed, it
+had almost ceased to be mysterious to us, from daily familiarity. We had
+come to regard it as the curious working of physical disease, had taken
+its results as a matter of course, and had ceased, in common with
+converted Creston, to doubt the girl's capacity for seeing anything that
+she chose to, at any place.</p>
+
+<p>Thus a year wore on. My mother grew sleepless and pallid. She laughed
+often, in a nervous, shallow way, as unlike her as a butterfly is unlike
+a sunset; and her face settled into an habitual sharpness and hardness
+unutterably painful to me.</p>
+
+<p>Once only I ventured to break into the silence of the haunting thought
+that she knew, and we knew, was never escaped by either. "Mother, it
+would do no harm for Winthrop to go out West, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She interrupted me sternly: "Sarah, I had not thought you capable of
+such childish superstition. I wish that girl and her nonsense had never
+come into this house!"&mdash;turning sharply away, and out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>Just what that year was to my mother, I suppose only God and she have
+ever known, or will know.</p>
+
+<p>But it ended. It ended at last, as I had prayed every night and morning
+of it that it should end. Mother came into my room one night, locked the
+door behind her, and, walking over to the window, stood with her face
+turned from me.</p>
+
+<p>"Sarah."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Sarah."</p>
+
+<p>But that was all for a little while. Then,&mdash;"Sick and in suffering,
+Sarah,&mdash;the girl&mdash;she may be right, God Almighty knows! <i>Sick and in
+suffering</i>, you see. I am going. I think, I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The voice broke and melted utterly. I stole away and left her alone.</p>
+
+<p>Creston put on its spectacles and looked wise on learning, the next day,
+that Mrs. Dugald had taken the earliest morning train for the West, on
+sudden and important business. It was precisely what Creston expected,
+and just like the Dugalds for all the world,&mdash;gone to hunt up material
+for that genealogical book, or map, or tree, or something, that they
+thought nobody knew they were going to publish. O yes, Creston
+understood it perfectly.</p>
+
+<p>Space forbids me to relate in detail the clews which Selphar had given
+as to the whereabouts of the wanderer. Her trances, just at this time,
+were somewhat scarce and fragmentary, and the information she had
+professed to give had come in snatches and very imperfectly,&mdash;the trance
+being apt to end suddenly at the moment when some important question was
+pending, and then, of course, all memory of what she had said, or was
+about to say, was gone. The names and appearance of persons and places
+necessary to the search had, however, been given with sufficient
+distinctness to serve as a guide in my mother's rather chimerical
+undertaking. I suppose ninety-nine persons out of a hundred would have
+thought her a candidate for the State Lunatic Asylum. Exactly what she
+herself expected, hoped, or feared, I think it doubtful if she knew. I
+confess to a condition of simple bewilderment, when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> she was fairly
+gone, and Clara and I were left alone with Selphar's ghostly eyes
+forever on us. One night I had to lock the poor thing into her
+garret-room before I could sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Just three weeks from the day mother started for the West, the coach
+rattled up to the door, and two women, arm in arm, came slowly up the
+walk. The one, erect, royal, with her great steadfast eyes alight; the
+other, bent and worn, gray-haired and sallow and dumb, crawling feebly
+through the golden afternoon sunshine, as the ghost of a glorious life
+might crawl back to its grave.</p>
+
+<p>Mother threw open the door, and stood there like a queen. "Children,
+your aunt has come home. She is too tired to talk just now. By and by
+she will be glad to see you."</p>
+
+<p>We took her gently up stairs, into the room where the lilies were
+mouldering to dust, and laid her down upon the bed. She closed her eyes
+wearily, turned her face over to the wall, and said no word.</p>
+
+<p>What was the story of those tired eyes I never asked, and I never knew.
+Once, as I passed the room, a quick picture showed through the open
+door. The two women lying with their arms about each other's neck, as
+they used to do when they were children together; and above them, still
+and watchful, the wounded Face that had waited there so many years for
+this.</p>
+
+<p>One was speaking with weak sobs, and very low. It was Aunt Alice. I
+caught but two words,&mdash;"My husband."</p>
+
+<p>But what that husband was remains unknown till the day when the grave
+shall give up its dead, and the secrets of hearts oppressed and sinned
+against and sorrowful shall be revealed.</p>
+
+<p>She lingered weakly there, within the restful room, for seven days, and
+then one morning we found her with her eyes upon the thorn-crowned face,
+her own quite still and smiling.</p>
+
+<p>A little funeral train wound away one night behind the church, and left
+her down among those red-cup mosses that opened in so few months again
+to cradle the sister who had loved her. Two words only, by mother's
+orders, marked the simple headstone,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">"<span class="smcap">Alice Browning</span>."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I have given you facts. Explain them as you will. I do not attempt it,
+for the simple reason that I cannot.</p>
+
+<p>A word must be said as to the fate of poor Sel, which was mournful
+enough. Her trances grew gradually more frequent and erratic, till she
+became so thoroughly diseased in mind and body as to be entirely
+unfitted for household work, and, in short, nothing but an encumbrance.
+We kept her, however, for the sake of charity, and should have done so,
+till her poor, tormented life wore itself out; but after the advent of a
+new servant, and my mother's death, she conceived the idea that she was
+a burden, cried over it a few weeks, and at last one bitter winter's
+night she disappeared. We did not give up all search for her for years,
+but nothing was ever heard from her. He, I hope, who permitted life to
+be such a terrible mystery to her, has cared for her somehow, and
+kindly, and well.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_MINER" id="THE_MINER"></a>THE MINER.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Down 'mid the tangled roots of things<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That coil about the central fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I seek for that which giveth wings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To stoop, not soar, to my desire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sometimes I hear, as 't were a sigh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sea's deep yearning far above.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Thou hast the secret not," I cry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"In deeper deeps is hid my Love."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They think I burrow from the sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In darkness, all alone and weak;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such loss were gain if He were won.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For 't is the sun's own Sun I seek.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The earth, they murmur, is the tomb<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That vainly sought his life to prison;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why grovel longer in its gloom?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He is not here; He hath arisen.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">More life for me where He hath lain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hidden, while ye believed him dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than in cathedrals cold and vain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Built on loose sands of "It is said."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My search is for the living gold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Him I desire who dwells recluse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And not his image, worn and old,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Day-servant of our sordid use.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If Him I find not, yet I find<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ancient joy of cell and church,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The glimpse, the surety undefined,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The unquenched ardor of the search.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Happier to chase a flying goal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than to sit counting laurelled gains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To guess the Soul within the soul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than to be lord of what remains.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="PHYSICAL_HISTORY_OF_THE_VALLEY_OF_THE_AMAZONS" id="PHYSICAL_HISTORY_OF_THE_VALLEY_OF_THE_AMAZONS"></a>PHYSICAL HISTORY OF THE VALLEY OF THE AMAZONS.</h2>
+
+
+<h4>II.</h4>
+
+<p>Major Coutinho and myself passed three days in the investigation of the
+Serra of Errer&eacute;. We found it to consist wholly of the sandstone deposits
+described in my previous article, and to have exactly the same
+geological constitution. In short, the Serra of Monte Alegre, and of
+course all those connected with it on the northern side of the river,
+lie in the prolongation of the lower beds forming the banks of the
+river, their greater height being due simply to the fact that they have
+not been worn to the same low level. The opposite range of Santarem,
+which has the same general outline and character, shares, no doubt, the
+same geological structure. In one word, all these hills were formerly
+part of a continuous formation, and owe their present outline and their
+isolated position to a colossal denudation. The surface of the once
+unbroken strata, which in their original condition must have formed an
+immense plain covered by water, has been cut into ravines or carried
+away over large tracts, to a greater or less depth, leaving only such
+portions standing as from their hardness could resist the floods which
+swept over it. The longitudinal trend of these hills is to be ascribed
+to the direction of the current which caused the denudation, while their
+level summits are due to the regularity of the stratification. They are
+not all table-topped, however; among them are many of smaller size, in
+which the sides have been gradually worn down, producing a gently
+rounded surface. Of course, under the heavy tropical rains this
+denudation is still going on, though in a greatly modified form.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot leave this Serra without alluding to the great beauty and
+extraordinary extent of the view to be obtained from it. Indeed, it was
+here that for the first time the geography of the country presented
+itself to my mind as a living reality, in all its completeness.
+Insignificant as is its actual height, the Serra of Errer&eacute; commands a
+wider prospect than is to be had from many a more imposing mountain; for
+the surrounding plain, covered with forests, and ploughed by countless
+rivers, stretches away for hundreds of leagues in every direction,
+without any object to obstruct the view. Standing on the brow of the
+Serra, with the numerous lakes intersecting the low lands at its base,
+you look across the Valley of the Amazons, as far as the eye can reach,
+and through its midst you follow for miles on either side the broad
+flood of the great river, carrying its yellow waters to the sea. As I
+stood there, panoramas from the Swiss mountains came up to my memory,
+and I fancied myself standing on the Alps, looking across the plain of
+Switzerland, instead of the bed of the Amazons, the distant line of the
+Santarem hills on the southern bank of the river, and lower than the
+northern chain, representing the Jura range. As if to complete the
+comparison, I found Alpine lichens growing among cactus and palms, and a
+crust of Arctic cryptogamous growth covered rocks, between which sprang
+tropical flowers. On the northern flank of this Serra I found the only
+genuine erratic boulders I have seen in the whole length of the
+Amazonian Valley, from Par&aacute; to the frontier of Peru, though there are
+many detached masses of rock, as, for instance, at Pedreira, near the
+junction of the Rio Negro and Rio Branco, which might be mistaken for
+them, but are due to the decomposition of the rocks in place. The
+boulders of Errer&eacute; are entirely distinct from the rock of the Serra, and
+consist of masses of compact hornblende.</p>
+
+<p>It would seem that these two ranges<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> skirting a part of the northern and
+southern banks of the Lower Amazons are not the only remnants of this
+arenaceous formation in its primitive altitude. On the banks of the
+Japura, in the Serra of Cupati, Major Coutinho has found the same beds
+rising to the same height. It thus appears, by positive evidence, that
+over an extent of a thousand miles these deposits had a very
+considerable thickness in the present direction of the valley. How far
+they extended in width has not been ascertained by direct observation,
+for we have not seen how they sink away to the northward, and towards
+the south the denudation has been so complete that, except in the very
+low range of hills in the neighborhood of Santarem, they do not rise
+above the plain. But the fact that this formation once had a thickness
+of more than eight hundred feet within the limits where we have had an
+opportunity of observing it, leaves no doubt that it must have extended
+to the edge of the basin, filling it to the same height throughout its
+whole extent. The thickness of the deposits gives a measure for the
+colossal scale of the denudations by which this immense accumulation was
+reduced to its present level. Here then is a system of high hills,
+having the prominence of mountains in the landscape, produced by causes
+to whose agency inequalities on the earth's surface of this magnitude
+have never yet been ascribed. We may fairly call them denudation
+mountains.</p>
+
+<p>At this stage of the inquiry we have to account for two remarkable
+phenomena. First, the filling of the Amazonian bottom with coarse
+arenaceous materials and finely laminated clays, immediately followed by
+sandstones rising to a height of more than eight hundred feet above the
+sea; the basin meanwhile having no rocky barrier towards the ocean on
+its eastern side. Second, the wearing away and reduction of these
+formations to their present level, by a denudation, more extensive than
+any thus far recorded in the annals of geology, which has given rise to
+all the most prominent hills and mountain chains along the northern bank
+of the river. Before seeking an explanation of these facts, let us look
+at the third and uppermost deposit.</p>
+
+<p>This deposit, essentially the same as the Rio drift, has been minutely
+described in my former article; but in the north, it presents itself
+under a somewhat different aspect. As in Rio, it is a clayey deposit,
+containing more or less sand, and reddish in color, though varying from
+deep ochre to a brownish tint. It is not so absolutely destitute of
+stratification here as in its more southern range, though the traces of
+stratification are rare, and, when they do occur, are faint and
+indistinct. The materials are also more completely comminuted, and, as I
+have said above, contain hardly any large masses, though quartz pebbles
+are sometimes scattered throughout the deposit, and occasionally a thin
+seam of pebbles, exactly as in the Rio drift, is seen resting between it
+and the underlying sandstone. In some places this bed of pebbles even
+intersects the mass of the clay, giving it in such instances an
+unquestionably stratified character. There can be no question that this
+more recent formation rests unconformably upon the sandstone beds
+beneath it; for it fills all the inequalities of their denudated
+surfaces, whether they be more or less limited furrows, or wide,
+undulating depressions. It may be seen everywhere along the banks of the
+river, above the stratified sandstone, sometimes with the river mud
+accumulated against it; at the season of the <i>enchente</i>, or high water,
+it is the only formation left exposed above the water level. Its
+thickness is not great; it varies from twenty or thirty to fifty feet,
+and may occasionally rise nearly to a hundred feet in height, though
+this is rarely the case. It is evident that this formation also was once
+continuous, stretching over the whole basin at one level. Though it is
+now worn down in many places, and has wholly disappeared in others, its
+connection may be readily traced; since it is everywhere visible,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> not
+only on opposite banks of the Amazons, but also on those of all its
+tributaries, as far as their shores have been examined. I have said that
+it rests always above the sandstone beds. This is true, with one
+exception. Wherever the sandstone deposits retain their original
+thickness, as in the hills of Monte Alegre and Almeyrim, the red clay is
+not found on their summits, but occurs only in their ravines and
+hollows, or resting against their sides. This shows that it is not only
+posterior to the sandstone, but was accumulated in a shallower basin,
+and consequently never reached so high a level. The boulders of Errer&eacute;
+do not rest on the stratified sandstone of the Serra, but are sunk in
+the unstratified mass of the clay. This should be remembered, as it will
+presently be seen that their position associates them with a later
+period than that of the mountain itself. The unconformability of the
+ochraceous clay and the underlying sandstones might lead to the idea
+that the two formations belong to distinct geological periods, and are
+not due to the same agency, acting at successive times. One feature,
+however, shows their close connection. The ochraceous clay exhibits a
+remarkable identity of configuration with the underlying sandstones. An
+extensive survey of the two, in their mutual relations, shows clearly
+that they were both deposited by the same water-system within the same
+basin, but at different levels. Here and there the clay formation has so
+pale and grayish a tint, that it may be confounded with the mud deposits
+of the river. These latter, however, never rise so high as the
+ochraceous clay, but are everywhere confined within the limits of high
+and low water. The islands also in the main course of the Amazons
+consist invariably of river-mud, while those arising from the
+intersection and cutting off of portions of the land by diverging
+branches of the main stream always consist of the well-known sandstones,
+capped by the ochre-colored clay.</p>
+
+<p>It may truly be said that there does not exist on the surface of the
+earth a formation known to geologists resembling that of the Amazons.
+Its extent is stupendous; it stretches from the Atlantic shore, through
+the whole width of Brazil, into Peru, to the very foot of the Andes.
+Humboldt speaks of it "in the vast plains of the Amazons, in the eastern
+boundary of Jaen de Bracamoros," and says, "This prodigious extension of
+red sandstone in the low grounds stretching along the east of the Andes
+is one of the most striking phenomena I observed during my examination
+of rocks in the equinoctial regions."<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> When the great natural
+philosopher wrote these lines, he had no idea how much these deposits
+extended beyond the field of his observations. Indeed, they are not
+limited to the main bed of the Amazons; they have been followed along
+the banks of its tributaries to the south and north as far as these have
+been ascended. They occur on the margins of the Huallaga and the
+Ucayall, on those of the I&ccedil;a, the Jutahy, the Jurua, the Japura, and the
+Purus. On the banks of the Japura, where Major Coutinho has traced them,
+they are found as far as the Cataract of Cupati. I have followed them
+along the Rio Negro to its junction with the Rio Branco; and Humboldt
+not only describes them from a higher point on this same river, but also
+from the valley of the Orinoco. Finally, they may be tracked along the
+banks of the Madeira, the Tapajos, the Xingu, and the Tocantins, as well
+as on the shores of the Guatuma, the Trombetas, and other northern
+affluents of the Amazons. The observations of Martius, those of Gardner,
+and the recent survey above<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> alluded to, made by my assistant, Mr. St.
+John, of the valley of the Rio Guruguea and that of the Rio Paranahyba,
+show that the great basin of Piauhy is also identical in its geological
+structure with the lateral valleys of the Amazons. The same is true of
+the large island of Marajo, lying at the mouth of the Amazons. And yet I
+believe that even this does not cover the whole ground, and that some
+future writer may say of my estimate, as I have said of Humboldt's, that
+it falls short of the truth; for, if my generalizations are correct, the
+same formation will be found extending over the whole basin of the
+Paraguay and the Rio de la Plata, and along their tributaries, to the
+very heart of the Andes.</p>
+
+<p>Such are the facts. The question now arises, How were these vast
+deposits formed? The easiest answer, and the one which most readily
+suggests itself, is that of a submersion of the continent at successive
+periods to allow the accumulation of these materials, and its subsequent
+elevation. I reject this explanation for the simple reason that the
+deposits show no sign whatever of a marine origin. No seashells nor
+remains of any marine animal have as yet been found throughout their
+whole extent, over a region several thousand miles in length and from
+five to seven hundred miles in width. It is contrary to all our
+knowledge of geological deposits to suppose that an ocean basin of this
+size, which must have been submerged during an immensely long period in
+order to accumulate formations of such a thickness, should not contain
+numerous remains of the animals formerly inhabiting it.<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> The only
+fossil remains of any kind truly belonging to it, which I have found in
+the formation, are the leaves mentioned above, taken from the lower
+clays on the banks of the Solimoens at Tomantins; and these show a
+vegetation similar in general character to that which prevails there
+to-day. Evidently, then, this basin was a fresh-water basin; these
+deposits are fresh-water deposits. But as the Valley of the Amazons
+exists to-day, it is widely open to the ocean on the east, with a gentle
+slope from the Andes to the Atlantic, determining a powerful seaward
+current. When these vast accumulations took place, the basin must have
+been closed; otherwise the loose materials would constantly have been
+carried down to the ocean.</p>
+
+<p>It is my belief that all these deposits belong to the ice period in its
+earlier or later phases, and to this cosmic winter, which, judging from
+all the phenomena connected with it, may have lasted for thousands of
+centuries, we must look for the key to the geological history of the
+Amazonian Valley. I am aware that this suggestion will appear
+extravagant. But is it, after all, so improbable that, when Central
+Europe was covered with ice thousands of feet thick; when the glaciers
+of Great Britain ploughed into the sea, and when those of the Swiss
+mountains had ten times their present altitude; when every lake in
+Northern Italy was filled with ice, and these frozen masses extended
+even into Northern Africa; when a sheet of ice, reaching nearly to the
+summit of Mount Washington in the White Mountains (that is, having a
+thickness of nearly six thousand feet), moved over the continent of
+North America,&mdash;is it so improbable that, in this epoch of universal
+cold, the Valley of the Amazons also had its glacier poured down into it
+from the accumulations of snow in the Cordilleras,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> and swollen
+laterally by the tributary glaciers descending from the table-lands of
+Guiana and Brazil? The movement of this immense glacier would be
+eastward, and determined as well by the vast reservoirs of snow in the
+Andes as by the direction of the valley itself. It must have ploughed
+the valley bottom over and over again, grinding all the materials
+beneath it into a fine powder or reducing them to small pebbles, and it
+must have accumulated at its lower end a moraine of proportions as
+gigantic as its own; thus building a colossal sea-wall across the mouth
+of the valley. I shall be asked at once whether I have found here also
+the glacial inscriptions,&mdash;the furrows, stri&aelig;, and polished surfaces so
+characteristic of the ground over which glaciers have travelled. I
+answer, not a trace of them; for the simple reason that there is not a
+natural rock surface to be found throughout the whole Amazonian Valley.
+The rocks themselves are of so friable a nature, and the decomposition
+caused by the warm torrential rains and by exposure to the burning sun
+of the tropics so great and unceasing, that it is hopeless to look for
+marks which in colder climates and on harder substances are preserved
+through ages unchanged. With the exception of the rounded surfaces so
+well known in Switzerland as the <i>roches moutonn&eacute;es</i> heretofore alluded
+to, which may be seen in many localities, and the boulders of Errer&eacute;,
+the direct traces of glaciers as seen in other countries are wanting
+here. I am, indeed, quite willing to admit that, from the nature of the
+circumstances, I have not here the positive evidence which has guided me
+in my previous glacial investigations. My conviction in this instance is
+founded, first, on the materials in the Amazonian Valley, which
+correspond exactly in their character to materials accumulated in
+glacier bottoms; secondly, on the resemblance of the upper or third
+Amazonian formation to the Rio drift,<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> of the glacial origin of which
+there cannot, in my opinion, be any doubt; thirdly, on the fact that
+this fresh-water basin must have been closed against the sea by some
+powerful barrier, the removal of which would naturally give an outlet to
+the waters, and cause the extraordinary denudations, the evidences of
+which meet us everywhere throughout the valley.</p>
+
+<p>On a smaller scale, phenomena of this kind have long been familiar to
+us. In the present lakes of Northern Italy, in those of Switzerland,
+Norway, and Sweden, as well as in those of New England, especially in
+the State of Maine, the waters are held back in their basins by
+moraines. In the ice period these depressions were filled with glaciers,
+which, in the course of time, accumulated at their lower end a wall of
+loose materials. These walls still remain, and serve as dams to prevent
+the escape of the waters. But for their moraines, all these lakes would
+be open valleys. In the Roads of Glen Roy, in Scotland, we have an
+instance of a fresh-water lake, which has now wholly disappeared, formed
+in the same manner, and reduced successively to lower and lower levels
+by the breaking down or wearing away of the moraines which originally
+prevented its waters from flowing out. Assuming then, that, under the
+low temperature of the ice period, the climatic conditions necessary for
+the formation of land-ice existed in the Valley of the Amazons, and that
+it was actually filled with an immense glacier, it follows that, when
+these fields of ice yielded to a gradual change of climate, and slowly
+melted away, the whole basin, then closed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> against the sea by a huge
+wall of <i>d&eacute;bris</i>, was transformed into a vast fresh-water lake. The
+first effect of the thawing process must have been to separate the
+glacier from its foundation, raising it from immediate contact with the
+valley bottom, and thus giving room for the accumulation of a certain
+amount of water beneath it; while the valley as a whole would still be
+occupied by the glacier. In this shallow sheet of water under the ice,
+and protected by it from any violent disturbance, those finer triturated
+materials always found at a glacier bottom, and ground sometimes to
+powder by its action, would be deposited, and gradually transformed from
+an unstratified paste containing the finest sand and mud, together with
+coarse pebbles and gravel, into a regularly stratified formation. In
+this formation the coarse materials would of course fall to the bottom,
+while the most minute would settle above them. It is at this time and
+under such circumstances that I believe the first formation of the
+Amazonian Valley, with the coarse, pebbly sand beneath, and the finely
+laminated clays above, to have been accumulated.</p>
+
+<p>I shall perhaps be reminded here of my fossil leaves, and asked how any
+vegetation would be possible under such circumstances. But it must be
+remembered, that, in considering all these periods, we must allow for
+immense lapses of time and for very gradual changes; that the close of
+this first period would be very different from its beginning; and that a
+rich vegetation springs on the very borders of the snow and ice fields
+in Switzerland. The fact that these were accumulated in a glacial basin
+would, indeed, at once account for the traces of vegetable life, and for
+the absence, or at least the great scarcity, of animal remains in these
+deposits. For while fruits may ripen and flowers bloom on the very edge
+of the glaciers, it is also well known that the fresh-water lakes formed
+by the melting of the ice are singularly deficient in life. There are
+indeed hardly any animals to be found in glacial lakes.</p>
+
+<p>The second formation belongs to a later period, when, the whole body of
+ice being more or less disintegrated, the basin contained a larger
+quantity of water. Beside that arising from the melting of the ice, this
+immense valley bottom must have received, then as now, all which was
+condensed from the atmosphere above, and poured into it in the form of
+rain or dew. Thus an amount of water equal to that now flowing in from
+all the tributaries of the main stream must have been rushing towards
+the axis of the valley, seeking its natural level, but spreading over a
+more extensive surface than now, until, finally gathered up as separate
+rivers, it flowed in distinct beds. In its general movement toward the
+central and lower part of the valley, the broad stream would carry along
+all the materials small enough to be so transported, as well as those so
+minute as to remain suspended in the waters. It would gradually deposit
+them in the valley bottom in horizontal beds, more or less regular, or
+here and there, wherever eddies gave rise to more rapid and irregular
+currents, characterized by torrential stratification. Thus has been
+consolidated in the course of ages that continuous sand formation
+spreading over the whole Amazonian basin, and attaining a thickness of
+eight hundred feet.</p>
+
+<p>While these accumulations were taking place within this basin, it must
+not be forgotten that the sea was beating against its outer
+walls,&mdash;against that gigantic moraine which I suppose to have closed it
+at its eastern end. It would seem that, either from this cause, or
+perhaps in consequence of some turbulent action from within, a break was
+made in this defence, and the waters rushed violently out. It is very
+possible that the waters, gradually swollen at the close of this period
+by the further melting of the ice, by the additions poured in from
+lateral tributaries, by the rains, and also by the filling of the basin
+with loose materials, would overflow, and thus contribute to destroy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+the moraine. However this may be, it follows from my premises that, in
+the end, these waters obtained a sudden release, and poured seaward with
+a violence which cut and denuded the deposits already formed, wearing
+them down to a much lower level, and leaving only a few remnants
+standing out in their original thickness, where the strata were solid
+enough to resist the action of the currents. Such are the hills of Monte
+Alegre, of Obydos, Almeyrim, and Cupati, as well as the lower ridges of
+Santarem. This escape of the waters did not, however, entirely empty the
+whole basin; for the period of denudation was again followed by one of
+quiet accumulation, during which was deposited the ochraceous sandy clay
+resting upon the denudated surfaces of the underlying sandstone. To this
+period I refer the boulders of Errer&eacute;, sunk as they are in the clay of
+this final deposit. I suppose them to have been brought to their present
+position by floating ice at the close of the glacial period, when
+nothing remained of the ice-fields except such isolated
+masses,&mdash;ice-rafts as it were; or perhaps by icebergs dropped into the
+basin from glaciers still remaining in the Andes and on the edges of the
+plateaus of Guiana and Brazil. From the general absence of
+stratification in this clay formation, it would seem that the
+comparatively shallow sheet of water in which it was deposited was very
+tranquil. Indeed, after the waters had sunk much below the level which
+they held during the deposition of the sandstone, and the currents which
+gave rise to the denudation of the latter had ceased, the whole sheet of
+water would naturally become much more placid. But the time came when
+the water broke through its boundaries again, perhaps owing to the
+further encroachment of the sea and consequent destruction of the
+moraine. In this second drainage, however, the waters, carrying away a
+considerable part of the new deposit, furrowing it to its very
+foundation, and even cutting through it into the underlying sandstone,
+were, in the end, reduced to something like their present level, and
+confined within their present beds. This is shown by the fact that in
+this ochre-colored clay, and penetrating to a greater or less depth the
+sandstone below, are dug, not only the great longitudinal channel of the
+Amazons itself, but also the lateral furrows through which its
+tributaries reach the main stream, and the network of anastomosing
+branches flowing between them; the whole forming the most extraordinary
+river system in the world.</p>
+
+<p>My assumption that the sea has produced very extensive changes in the
+coast of Brazil&mdash;changes more than sufficient to account for the
+disappearance of the glacial wall which I suppose to have closed the
+Amazonian Valley in the ice period&mdash;is by no means hypothetical. This
+action is still going on to a remarkable degree, and is even now rapidly
+modifying the outline of the shore. When I first arrived at Par&aacute;, I was
+struck with the fact that the Amazons, the largest river in the world,
+has no delta. All the other rivers which we call great, though some of
+them are insignificant as compared with the Amazons,&mdash;the Mississippi,
+the Nile, the Ganges, and the Danube,&mdash;deposit extensive deltas, and the
+smaller rivers also, with few exceptions, are constantly building up the
+land at their mouths by the materials they bring along with them. Even
+the little river Kander, emptying into the Lake of Thun, is not without
+its delta. Since my return from the Upper Amazons to Par&aacute;, I have made
+an examination of some of the harbor islands, and also of parts of the
+coast, and have satisfied myself that, with the exception of a few
+small, low islands, never rising above the sea-level, and composed of
+alluvial deposit, they are portions of the mainland detached from it,
+partly by the action of the river itself, and partly by the encroachment
+of the ocean. In fact the sea is eating away the land much faster than
+the river can build it up. The great island of Marajo was originally a
+continuation of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> Valley of the Amazons, and is identical with it in
+every detail of its geological structure. My investigation of the island
+itself, in connection with the coast and the river, leads me to suppose
+that, having been at one time an integral part of the deposits described
+above, at a later period it became an island in the bed of the Amazons,
+which, dividing in two arms, encircled it completely, and then, joining
+again to form a single stream, flowed onward to the sea-shore, which in
+those days lay much farther to the eastward than it now does. I suppose
+the position of the island of Marajo at that time to have corresponded
+very nearly to the present position of the island of Tupinambaranas,
+just at the junction of the Madeira with the Amazons. It is a question
+among geographers whether the Tocantins is a branch of the Amazons, or
+should be considered as forming an independent river system. It will be
+seen that, if my view is correct, it must formerly have borne the same
+relation to the Amazons that the Madeira River now does, joining it just
+where Marajo divided the main stream, as the Madeira now joins it at the
+head of the island of Tupinambaranas. If in countless centuries to come
+the ocean should continue to eat its way into the Valley of the Amazons,
+once more transforming the lower part of the basin into a gulf, as it
+was during the cretaceous period, the time might arrive when
+geographers, finding the Madeira emptying almost immediately into the
+sea, would ask themselves whether it had ever been indeed a branch of
+the Amazons, just as they now question whether the Tocantins is a
+tributary of the main stream or an independent river. But to return to
+Marajo, and to the facts actually in our possession.</p>
+
+<p>The island is intersected, in its south-eastern end, by a considerable
+river called the Igarap&eacute; Grande. The cut made through the land by this
+stream seems intended to serve as a geological section, so perfectly
+does it display the three characteristic Amazonian formations above
+described. At its mouth, near the town of Sour&eacute;, and at Salvaterra, on
+the opposite bank, may be seen, lowest, the well-stratified sandstone,
+with the finely laminated clays resting upon it, overtopped by a crust;
+then the cross-stratified, highly ferruginous sandstone, with quartz
+pebbles here and there; and, above all, the well-known ochraceous,
+unstratified sandy clay, spreading over the undulating surface of the
+denudated sandstone, following all its inequalities, and filling all its
+depressions and furrows. But while the Igarap&eacute; Grande has dug its
+channel down to the sea, cutting these formations, as I ascertained, to
+a depth of twenty-five fathoms, it has thus opened the way for the
+encroachments of the tides, and the ocean is now, in its turn, gaining
+upon the land. Were there no other evidence of the action of the tides
+in this locality, the steep cut of the Igarap&eacute; Grande, contrasting with
+the gentle slope of the banks near its mouth, wherever they have been,
+modified by the invasion of the sea, would enable us to distinguish the
+work of the river from that of the ocean, and to prove that the
+denudation now going on is due in part to both. But besides this, I was
+so fortunate as to discover here unmistakable and perfectly convincing
+evidence of the onward movement of the sea. At the mouth of the Igarap&eacute;
+Grande, both at Sour&eacute; and at Salvaterra, on the southern side of the
+Igarap&eacute;, is a submerged forest. Evidently this forest grew in one of
+those marshy lands constantly inundated, for between the stumps is
+accumulated the loose, felt-like peat characteristic of such grounds,
+and containing about as much mud as vegetable matter. Such a marshy
+forest, with the stumps of the trees still standing erect in the peat,
+has been laid bare on both sides of the Igarap&eacute; Grande by the
+encroachments of the ocean. That this is the work of the sea is
+undeniable, for all the little depressions and indentations of the peat
+are filled with sea-sand, and a ridge of tidal sand divides it from the
+forest still standing behind. Nor is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> this all. At Vigia, immediately
+opposite to Sour&eacute;, on the continental side of the Par&aacute; River, just where
+it meets the sea, we have the counterpart of this submerged forest.
+Another peat-bog, with the stumps of innumerable trees standing in it,
+and encroached upon in the same way by tidal sand, is exposed here also.
+No doubt these forests were once all continuous, and stretched across
+the whole basin of what is now called the Par&aacute; River.</p>
+
+<p>Since I have been pursuing this inquiry, I have gathered much
+information to the same effect from persons living on the coast. It is
+well remembered that, twenty years ago, there existed an island, more
+than a mile in width, to the northeast of the entrance of the Bay of
+Vigia, which has now entirely disappeared. Farther eastward, the Bay of
+Braganza has doubled its width in the last twenty years, and on the
+shore, within the bay, the sea has gained upon the land for a distance
+of two hundred yards during a period of only ten years. The latter fact
+is ascertained by the position of some houses, which were two hundred
+yards farther from the sea ten years ago than they now are. From these
+and the like reports, from my own observations on this part of the
+Brazilian coast, from some investigations made by Major Coutinho at the
+mouth of the Amazons, on its northern continental shore, near Macapa,
+and from the reports of Mr. St. John respecting the formations in the
+valley of the Paranahyba, it is my belief that the changes I have been
+describing are but a small part of the destruction wrought by the sea on
+the northeastern shore of this continent. I think it will be found, when
+the coast has been fully surveyed, that a strip of land not less than a
+hundred leagues in width, stretching from Cape St. Roque to the northern
+extremity of South America, has been eaten away by the ocean. If this be
+so, the Paranahyba and the rivers to the northwest of it, in the
+province of Maranham, were formerly tributaries of the Amazons; and all
+that we know thus far of their geological character goes to prove that
+this was actually the case. Such an extensive oceanic denudation must
+have carried away not only the gigantic glacial moraine here assumed to
+have closed the mouth of the Amazonian basin, but the very ground on
+which it stood.</p>
+
+<p>During the last four or five years I have been engaged in a series of
+investigations, in the United States, upon the subject of the
+denudations connected with the close of the glacial period there, and
+the encroachments of the ocean upon the drift deposits along the
+Atlantic coast. Had these investigations been published in detail, with
+the necessary maps, it would have been far easier for me to explain the
+facts I have lately observed in the Amazonian Valley, to connect them
+with facts of a like character on the continent of North America, and to
+show how remarkably they correspond with facts accomplished during the
+same period in other parts of the world. While the glacial epoch itself
+has been very extensively studied in the last half-century, little
+attention has been paid to the results connected with the breaking up of
+the geological winter and the final disappearance of the ice. I believe
+that the true explanation of the presence of a large part of the
+superficial deposits lately ascribed to the agency of the sea, during
+temporary subsidences of the land, will be found in the melting of the
+ice-fields. To this cause I would refer all those deposits which I have
+designated in former publications as remodelled drift. When the sheet of
+ice, extending from the Arctic regions over a great part of North
+America and coming down to the sea, slowly melted away, the waters were
+not distributed over the face of the country as they now are. They
+rested upon the bottom deposits of the ice-fields, upon the glacial
+paste, consisting of clay, sand, pebbles, boulders, etc., underlying the
+ice. This bottom deposit did not, of course, present an even surface,
+but must have had extensive undulations and depressions. After<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> the
+waters had been drained off from the more elevated ridges, these
+depressions would still remain full. In the lakes and pools thus formed,
+stratified deposits would be accumulated, consisting of the most
+minutely comminuted clay, deposited in thin laminated layers, or
+sometimes in considerable masses, without any sign of stratification;
+such differences in the formation being determined by the state of the
+water, whether perfectly stagnant or more or less agitated. Of such pool
+deposits overlying the drift there are many instances in the Northern
+United States. By the overflowing of some of these lakes, and by the
+emptying of the higher ones into those on a lower level, channels would
+gradually be formed between the depressions. So began to be marked out
+our independent river-systems,&mdash;the waters always seeking their natural
+level, gradually widening and deepening the channels in which they
+flowed, as they worked their way down to the sea. When they reached the
+shore, there followed that antagonism between the rush of the rivers and
+the action of the tides,&mdash;between continental outflows and oceanic
+encroachments,&mdash;which still goes on, and has led to the formation of our
+eastern rivers, with their wide, open estuaries, such as the James, the
+Potomac, and the Delaware. All these estuaries are embanked by drift, as
+are also, in their lower course, the rivers connected with them. Where
+the country was low and flat, and the drift extended far into the ocean,
+the encroachment of the sea gave rise, not only to our large estuaries,
+but also to the sounds and deep bays forming the most prominent
+indentations of the continental coast, such as the Bay of Fundy,
+Massachusetts Bay, Long Island Sound, and others. The unmistakable
+traces of glacial action upon all the islands along the coast of New
+England, sometimes lying at a very considerable distance from the
+mainland, give an approximate, though a minimum, measure of the former
+extent of the glacial drift seaward, and the subsequent advance of the
+ocean upon the land. Like those of the harbor of Par&aacute;, all these islands
+have the same geological structure as the continent, and were evidently
+continuous with it at some former period. All the rocky islands along
+the coast of Maine and Massachusetts exhibit the glacial traces wherever
+their surfaces are exposed by the washing away of the drift; and where
+the drift remains, its character shows that it was once continuous from
+one island to another, and from all the islands to the mainland.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to determine with precision the ancient limit of the
+glacial drift, but I think it can be shown that it connected the shoals
+of Newfoundland with the continent; that Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard,
+and Long Island made part of the mainland; that, in like manner, Nova
+Scotia, including Sable Island, was united to the southern shore of New
+Brunswick and Maine, and that the same sheet of drift extended thence to
+Cape Cod, and stretched southward as far as Cape Hatteras;&mdash;in short,
+that the line of shallow soundings along the whole coast of the United
+States marks the former extent of glacial drift. The ocean has gradually
+eaten its way into this deposit, and given its present outlines to the
+continent. These denudations of the sea no doubt began as soon as the
+breaking up of the ice exposed the drift to its invasion; in other
+words, at a time when colossal glaciers still poured forth their load of
+ice into the Atlantic, and fleets of icebergs, far larger and more
+numerous than those now floated off from the Arctic seas, were launched
+from the northeastern shore of the United States. Many such masses must
+have stranded along the shore, and have left various signs of their
+presence. In fact, the glacial phenomena of the United States and
+elsewhere are due to two distinct periods: the first of these was the
+glacial epoch proper, when the ice was a solid sheet; while to the
+second belongs the breaking up of this epoch, with the gradual
+disintegration and dispersion of the ice. We<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> talk of the theory of
+glaciers and the theory of icebergs in reference to these phenomena, as
+if they were exclusively due to one or the other, and whoever accepted
+the former must reject the latter, and <i>vice versa</i>. When geologists
+have combined these now discordant elements, and consider these two
+periods as consecutive,&mdash;part of the phenomena being due to the
+glaciers, part to the icebergs and to freshets consequent on their
+breaking up,&mdash;they will find they have covered the whole ground, and
+that the two theories are perfectly consistent with each other. I think
+the present disputes upon this subject will end somewhat like those
+which divided the Neptunic and Plutonic schools of geologists in the
+early part of this century; the former of whom would have it that all
+the rocks were due to the action of water, the latter that they were
+wholly due to the action of fire. The problem was solved, and harmony
+restored, when it was found that both elements had been equally at work
+in forming the solid crust of the globe. To the stranded icebergs
+alluded to above, I have no doubt, is to be referred the origin of the
+many lakes without outlet existing all over the sandy tract along our
+coast of which Cape Cod forms a part. Not only the formation of these
+lakes, but also that of our salt marshes and cranberry-fields, I believe
+to be connected with the waning of the ice period.</p>
+
+<p>I hope at some future time to publish in detail, with the appropriate
+maps and illustrations, my observations on our coast changes, and upon
+other phenomena connected with the close of the glacial epoch in the
+United States. It is reversing the natural order of things to give
+results without the investigations which have led to them; and I should
+not have introduced the subject here except to show that the fresh-water
+denudations and the oceanic encroachments which have formed the
+Amazonian Valley, with its river system, are not isolated facts, but
+that the process has been the same in both continents. The extraordinary
+continuity and uniformity of the Amazonian deposits are due to the
+immense size of the basin enclosed, and the identity of the materials
+contained in it.</p>
+
+<p>A glance at any geological map of the world will show the reader that
+the Valley of the Amazons, so far as any attempt is made to explain its
+structure, is represented as containing isolated tracts of Devonian,
+Triassic, Jurassic, cretaceous, tertiary, and alluvial deposits. As is
+shown by the above sketch, this is wholly inaccurate; and whatever may
+be thought of my interpretation of the actual phenomena, I trust that,
+in presenting for the first time the formations of the Amazonian basin
+in their natural connection and sequence, as consisting of three uniform
+sets of comparatively recent deposits, extending throughout the whole
+valley, the investigations here recorded have contributed something to
+the results of modern geology.</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> Bohn's edition of Humboldt's Personal Narrative, p. 134.
+Humboldt alludes to these formations repeatedly; it is true that he
+refers them to the ancient conglomerates of the Devonian age, but his
+description agrees so perfectly with what I have observed along the
+banks of the Amazons, that there can be no doubt he speaks of the same
+thing. He wrote at a time when many of the results of modern geology
+were unknown, and his explanation of the phenomena was then perfectly
+natural. The passage from which the few lines in the text are taken
+shows that these deposits extend even to the Llanos.</p></div>
+
+<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> I am aware that Bates mentions having heard, that at Obydos
+calcareous layers, thickly studded with marine shells, had been found
+interstratified with the clay, but he did not himself examine the
+strata. The Obydos shells are not marine, but are fresh-water Unios,
+greatly resembling Aviculas, Solens, and Arcas. Such would-be marine
+fossils have been brought to me from the shore opposite to Obydos, near
+Santarem, and I have readily recognised them for what they truly are,
+fresh-water shells of the family of Naiades. I have myself collected
+specimens of these shells in the clay beds along the banks of the
+Solimoens, near Teffe, and might have mistaken them for fossils of that
+formation had I not known how Naiades burrow in the mud. Their
+resemblance to the marine genera mentioned above is very remarkable, and
+the mistake as to their true zoological character is as natural as that
+by which earlier ichthyologists, and even travellers of very recent
+date, have confounded some fresh-water fishes from the Upper Amazons of
+the genus Pterophyllum (Heckel) with the marine genus Platax.</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> As I have stated in the beginning, I am satisfied that the
+unstratified clay deposit of Rio and its vicinity is genuine glacial
+drift, resulting from the grinding of the loose materials interposed
+between the glacier and the solid rock in place, and retaining to this
+day the position in which it was left by the ice. Like all such
+accumulations, it is totally free from stratification. If this be so, it
+is evident, on comparing the two formations, that the ochraceous sandy
+clay of the Valley of the Amazons has been deposited under different
+circumstances; that, while it owes its resemblance to the Rio drift to
+the fact that its materials were originally ground by glaciers in the
+upper part of the valley, these materials have subsequently been spread
+throughout the whole basin and actually deposited under the agency of
+water.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="A_MANIACS_CONFESSION" id="A_MANIACS_CONFESSION"></a>A MANIAC'S CONFESSION.</h2>
+
+
+<p>I am a maniac. I have for some years been the victim of a peculiar
+insanity, which has greatly distressed several of my friends and
+relatives. They generally soften it in their talk by the name
+<i>mono</i>mania; but they do not hesitate to aver, when speaking their
+minds, that it has in truth infected my whole soul, and made me
+incapable of doing or thinking anything useful or rational. This sad
+delusion, which they endeavor to remove by serious advice, by playful
+banter, or by seeming to take an interest in my folly for a moment, is
+encountered with great acrimony by less gentle friends. They who are not
+bound to me by blood or intimacy&mdash;and some who are&mdash;deride, insult, and
+revile me in every way for my subjection to a mental aberration which is
+rapidly consuming a pretty property, more than average talents, and
+unrivalled opportunities.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, like all madmen, I think just the reverse. When the fit is on
+me, I assert that this fever&mdash;this madness&mdash;far from being the bane of
+my life, is a blessing to it; that I am habitually devoting money, time,
+and wits to an object at once beautiful and elevating; that I have found
+consolation in its visions for many sufferings, which all the amusements
+offered me by my revilers are utterly inadequate to touch. I declare
+that I have found a better investment for my money than all the West
+Virginia coal companies that ever sunk oil-wells, and am making more
+useful acquaintances than if I danced every German during the season. I
+have not been shut up yet, for my friends know that, if they attempt any
+such thing, the Finance Committee on the Harvard Memorial and Alumni
+Hall are in possession of a bond conveying all my money to them; so I am
+still at large, scolded by my brother Henry, laughed at by my sister
+Bathsheba, the aversion of Beacon Street, and the scorn of Winthrop
+Square.</p>
+
+<p>The other day, I took a little journey to Europe, with the view of
+feeding my madness on that whereby it grows. My friends did not choose
+to stop me, for they thought the charms of foreign travel might win me
+from my waywardness. To be sure, when they found, on my return, that I
+had never left England, they were convinced, if never before, that I was
+hopelessly insane; for what American, they very sanely said, "would stay
+in that dull, dingy island, among those stupid, cowardly bullies, when
+he might live in that lovely Paris, the most interesting and amusing
+city in the world, unless he were incomprehensibly mad." And, in truth,
+I begin to think I must be mad, when I find myself, like the man shut up
+with eleven obstinate jurymen, alone in thinking England a gay,
+beautiful, happy country, teeming with every gratification of art or
+nature, and inhabited by a manly, generous, and intelligent race; and
+that life in Paris, as Americans live it, is a senseless rush after
+excitement, where comfort is abandoned for unreal luxury, and society
+for vicious boon-companionship. Still I am very willing to admit that my
+special mania can be very capitally gratified in Paris, and I am
+meditating a little trip there for the purpose.</p>
+
+<p>On my return from England, I was observed to be in great distress about
+a certain box that I missed at Liverpool, looked for at Halifax, and all
+but lost at East Boston; and when it was found and opened, it only
+contained two suits of clothes, when, as Henry said, "I might have
+brought forty, the only thing they did have decent in England," and all
+the rest&mdash;mad, mad! I beg the readers of the Atlantic to listen to my
+humble confession of madness, as it culminated in this box.</p>
+
+<p>It is this. The most valuable property a man can possibly have is books;
+if he has a hundred or a thousand dollars to spare, he had better at
+once put<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> it into books than into any "paying investments," or any
+horses, clothes, pictures, or opera-tickets. A life passed among books,
+thinking, talking, living only for books, is the most amusing and
+improving life; and to make this possible, the acquisition of a library
+should be the first object of any one who makes any claim to the
+possession of luxuries. (My madness only allows me to make one
+exception,&mdash;I do acknowledge the solemn duty of laying in a stock of old
+Madeira.) But so far I have many fellow-maniacs. The special reason why
+I ought always to stop the Lowell cars at Somerville is, that I consider
+the reading of books only half the battle. I must have them in choice
+bindings, in rare imprints, in original editions, and in the most select
+forms. I must have several copies of a book I have read forty times, as
+long as there is anything about each copy that makes it peculiar, <i>sui
+generis</i>. I must own the first edition of Paradise Lost, because it is
+the first, and in ten books; the second, because it is the first in
+twelve; then Newton's, then Todd's, then Mitford's, and so on, till my
+catalogue of Miltons gets to equal Jeames de la Pluche's portraits of
+the "Dook." "And when," as Henry indignantly says, "he could read Milton
+all he wanted to, more than I should ever want to, notes and all, in
+Little and Brown's edition that father gave him, he must go spending
+money on a parcel of old truck printed a thousand years ago." Mad, quite
+mad.</p>
+
+<p>Now, to finish the melancholy picture, I am classic mad. I prefer the
+ancient authors, decidedly, to the moderns. I love them as I never can
+the moderns; they are my most intimate friends, my heart's own darlings.
+And how I love to lavish money on them, to see them adorned in every
+way! How I love to heap them up, Aldines, and Elzevirs, and
+Baskervilles, and Biponts, in all their grace and majesty. This was what
+filled that London box. This was all I had to show for twenty-five or
+thirty guineas of good money; a parcel of trumpery old Greek and Latin
+books I had by dozens already! Mad, mad.</p>
+
+<p>Will you come in and see them, ladies and gentlemen? Here they are, all
+ranged out on my table, large and small, clean and dirty. What have we
+first?</p>
+
+<p>A goodly fat quarto in white vellum, "Plinii Panegyricus, cum notis
+Schwarzii, Norimberg&aelig;, 1733." A fine, clean, fresh copy,&mdash;one of those
+brave old Teutonic classics of the last century, less exquisitely
+printed than the Elzevirs, less learnedly critical than the later
+Germans, but perfectly trustworthy and satisfactory, and attracting
+every one's eye on a library shelf, by the rich sturdiness of their
+creamy binding, that smacks of the true Dutch and German burgher wealth.
+The model of them all is Oudendorp's C&aelig;sar. But there is nothing very
+great about Pliny's Panegyric, and a man must be a very queer
+bibliomaniac who would buy up all the vellum classics of the last
+century he saw. Look inside the cover; read under the book-plate the
+engraved name, "Edward Gibbon, Esq." What will you, my sanest friend,
+not give for a book that belonged to the author of the "Decline and
+Fall"?</p>
+
+<p>The next is also a large quarto, but of a very different character. It
+is the Baskerville impression of the elegiac poets,&mdash;Catullus, Tibullus,
+and Propertius: Birmingham, 1772. No books are more delightful to sight
+and touch than the Baskerville classics. This Catullus of mine is
+printed on the softest and glossiest post paper, with a mighty margin of
+two inches and a half at the side, and rich broad letters,&mdash;the standard
+<i>n</i> is a tenth of an inch wide,&mdash;of a glorious blackness in spite of
+their ninety-two years of age. The classics of all languages have never
+been more fitly printed than by Baskerville; and the present book may
+serve as an admirable lesson to those who think a large-paper book means
+an ordinary octavo page printed in the middle of a quarto leaf,&mdash;for
+instance; Irving's Washington. My Catullus is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> bound in glossy calf,
+with a richly gilt back, and bears within the inscription, "From H. S.
+C. | to her valued friend | Doctor Southey | Feb<sup>y</sup> y<sup>e</sup> 24th, 1813,"
+in a true English lady's hand. This cannot be the poet Southey, who was
+not made LL. D. till 1821; but it may be his brother, Henry Herbert
+Southey, M. D.</p>
+
+<p>Next comes a very neat and compact little Seneca, in four 18mo volumes,
+bound in rich old Russia, and bearing the esteemed imprint, "Amstelodami
+apud Ludovicum et Danielem Elzevirios, M.D.CLVIII." As the Baskerville
+classics are the noblest for the library table, so the Elzevirs are the
+neatest and prettiest for the pocket or the lecture-room. And to their
+great beauty of mechanical execution is generally added a scrupulous
+textual accuracy, which the great Birmingham printer did not boast. This
+edition of Seneca, for instance, is that of Gronovius. His dedicatory
+epistle, and the title-pages of Vols. II., III. and IV., are all dated
+1658, but the general title-page in Vol. I. is 1659, as if, like White's
+Shakespeare, the first volume was the last published. Contrasting a
+<i>bijou</i> edition with a magnificent one, it may be noted that in the
+Elzevir the four words and two stops, "Moriar: die ergo verum," occupy
+just an inch, exactly the space of the one word "compositis" in the
+Baskerville; but the printing of each is in its way exquisite.</p>
+
+<p>Just about a century after the Elzevirs, and contemporary with
+Baskerville, an English publisher of the name of Sandby, who appears to
+have been, as we should say, the University printer and bookseller at
+Cambridge, projected a series of classics, which are highly prized on
+large paper and not despised on small. I possess two of the latter, a
+Terence and a Juvenal; the second, curiously enough, lettered
+"Juvenal<i>u</i>s," a regular binder's blunder. They are called pocket
+editions, but are much larger than the Elzevirs, and, though very
+pretty, just miss that peculiar beauty and finish which have made the
+former the delight of all scholars. There is a carelessness
+somewhere&mdash;it is hard to say where&mdash;about the printing, which prevents
+their being perfect; but a "Sandby" is a very nice thing.</p>
+
+<p>My next "wanity" is a Virgil,&mdash;Justice's Virgil; a most elaborate and
+elegant edition, in five octavo volumes, published in the middle of the
+last century. It is noted, first, for the great richness and beauty of
+its engravings from ancient gems, coins, and drawings, which form an
+unrivalled body of illustration to the text. But, secondly, it will be
+seen, on inspection, that the whole book is one vast engraving, every
+line, word, and letter being cut on a metallic plate. Consequently, only
+every other page is printed on. The same idea was still more perfectly
+carried out by Pine, a few years later, who executed all Horace in this
+way, but only lived to complete one volume of Virgil, choicer even than
+Justice's. It is well bound, in perfect order, and ranks with the
+choicest of ornamental classics.</p>
+
+<p>Side by side with this Virgil is another, the rare Elzevir Virgil, and a
+gem, if ever there was one. It is the corrected text of Heinsius, and
+thus has a fair claim to rank as the earliest of the modern critical
+editions of Maro. The elegance of this little book in size and shape,
+the clearness and beauty of the type, and the truly classical taste and
+finish of the whole design, can never be surpassed in Virgilian
+bibliography, unless by Didot's matchless little copies. Elzevir Virgils
+are common enough; but mine is, as I have said, the rare Elzevir, known
+by the pages introductory to the Eclogues and &AElig;neid being printed in
+rubric, while the ordinary Elzevirs have them in black. It dates
+1637,&mdash;the year when John Harvard left his money to the College at
+Newtowne, and the first printing-press in the United States was set up
+hard by.</p>
+
+<p>The books, then, that I have described so far all date within the two
+hundred and thirty years of our collegiate history. But I have behind
+three of an earlier&mdash;a much earlier date; books which John Cotton and
+Charles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> Chauncy might have gazed upon as old in Emmanuel College
+Library.</p>
+
+<p>First, I show you a pair of Aldines, and, what is better, a pair
+<i>editionum principum</i>,&mdash;the first Sophocles and the first Thucydides.
+Both have the proper attestation at the end that they come from the Aldi
+in Venice in the year 1502,&mdash;the Thucydides in May, and the Sophocles in
+August; hence the former has not the Aldine anchor at the extreme end.
+Both are in exquisitely clean condition; but the Sophocles, though
+taller than other known copies of the same edition, has suffered from
+the knife of a modern binder, who otherwise has done his work with the
+greatest elegance and judgment. The Thucydides has a grand page, over
+twelve inches by eight; the Sophocles is about seven by four. The type
+of both is small, and, though distinct, especially the Thucydides, not
+at all what we should call elegant. In fact, elegant Greek type is a
+very late invention. There is, I believe, no claim to textual criticism
+in these early Aldines; the publishers printed from such manuscripts as
+they could get. The Thucydides has a long dedicatory address by Aldus to
+a Roman patrician; the Sophocles has no such introduction. But it is, at
+any rate, most curious to consider that these two writers, who stand at
+the very head of Greek, or at least Attic, prose and verse, both for
+matter and style, should not have found a printer till the fifteenth
+century was long past, and then in a style which, for the Sophocles, can
+only be called neat. The Thucydides is handsome, but far inferior to the
+glory of the <i>princeps</i> Homer. And to own them&mdash;for a maniac&mdash;O, it is
+glorious!</p>
+
+<p>Last comes my special treasure,&mdash;my fifteener,&mdash;my book as old as
+America,&mdash;my darling copy of my darling author. Here, at the culmination
+of my madness, my friends, especially my brother Henry, are all ready to
+say at once what author I mean. For it has been my special mania for
+twenty years&mdash;thereby causing the deepest distress to nearly all my
+friends, even those who have been thought fellow-lunatics, except
+one,<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a> who is for me about the only sane man alive&mdash;to prefer <span class="smcap">Virgil</span> to
+all authors, living or dead, and to seek to accumulate as many different
+editions and copies of him as possible. I have in these pages chronicled
+two. My library holds twelve more, besides two translations, and I
+consider myself very short; for to my mind no breadth of paper, no
+weight of binding, no brilliancy of print, no delicacy of engraving, no
+elaboration of learning, can ever do honor enough to the last and best
+of the ancients, who was all but the first of the Christians,&mdash;who would
+have been, if his frame had not broken down under a genius too mighty
+and a soul too sweet for earth. (Mad, you see, beyond all question.
+Virgil is allowed to be a servile copyist, far inferior to Lucretius.
+Compare Lucr. V. 750 with Georg. II. 478, and Heyne's note.) This Virgil
+of mine bears the imprint of Antony Koburger, Nuremberg, 1492. It is in
+the original binding of very solid boards overlaid with stamped vellum,
+and is still clasped with the original skin and metal. It is a small
+folio, on very coarse paper, and the only one of my rare classics not in
+the cleanest condition. Its stains appear to be caused by its use in a
+school; for it is covered with notes, in German current hand, very
+antiquated, and very elementary in their scholarship. It has all the
+poetry ascribed to Virgil, and the Commentaries of Servius and Landini,
+which are so voluminous that the page looks like a ha'p'orth of sack to
+an intolerable deal of very dry bread. It is very rare, being unknown to
+the great Dibdin, and was snapped up by me for three guineas out of a
+London bookseller's catalogue. A Virgil printed by Koburger in the year
+America was discovered, original binding and clasps, not in Dibdin, for
+three guineas! Hurrah! It excites my madness so that I must rush
+straight to Piper's and buy right and left. Kind friends, come and take
+me away ere I am reduced to beggary.</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> F. W. H. M., you know I mean you.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_GREAT_DOCTOR" id="THE_GREAT_DOCTOR"></a>THE GREAT DOCTOR.</h2>
+
+<h3>A STORY IN TWO PARTS.</h3>
+
+
+<h4>II.</h4>
+
+<p>Five or six years of the life of our hero we must now pass over in
+silence, saying of them, simply, that Fancy had not cheated much in her
+promises concerning them. The first rude cabin had given place to a
+whitewashed cottage; the chimney-corner was bright and warm; the
+easy-chair was in it, and the Widow Walker often sat there with her
+grandson on her knee, getting much comfort from the reflection that he
+looked just as her own Johnny did when he was a baby!</p>
+
+<p>The garden smiled at the doorside, and the village had sprung up just as
+Fancy promised; and Hobert and Jenny walked to church of a Sunday, and
+after service shook hands with their neighbors,&mdash;for everybody delighted
+to take their strong, willing hands, and look into their honest,
+cheerful faces,&mdash;they were amongst the first settlers of the place, and
+held an honored position in society. Jenny was grown a little more
+stout, and her cheek a little more ruddy, than it used to be; but the
+new country seemed not so well suited to Hobert, and the well-wishing
+neighbor often said when he met him, "You mustn't be too ambitious, and
+overdo! Your shoulders ain't so straight as they was when you come here!
+Be careful in time; nothing like that, Walker, nothing like that." And
+Hobert laughed at these suggestions, saying he was as strong as the rest
+of them; and that, though his cheek was pale, and his chest hollow, he
+was a better man than he seemed.</p>
+
+<p>The summer had been one of the wildest luxuriance ever known in the
+valley of the Wabash; for it was in that beautiful valley that our
+friend Hobert had settled. The woods cast their leaves early, and the
+drifts lay rotting knee-deep in places. Then came the long, hot, soaking
+rains, with hotter sunshine between. Chills and fever prevailed, and
+half the people of the neighborhood were shivering and burning at once.
+It was a healthy region, everybody said, but the weather had been
+unusually trying; as soon as the frost came, the ague would vanish; the
+water was the best in the world, to be sure, and the air the purest.</p>
+
+<p>Hobert was ploughing a piece of low ground for wheat, cutting a black
+snake in two now and then, and his furrow behind him fast filling with
+water that looked almost as black as the soil. Often he stopped to
+frighten from the quivering flank of the brown mare before him the
+voracious horse-flies, colored like the scum of the stagnant pools, and
+clinging and sucking like leeches. She was his favorite, the pride of
+his farm,&mdash;for had she not, years before, brought Jenny on her faithful
+shoulder to the new, happy home? Many a fond caress her neck had had
+from his arm; and the fine bridle with the silver bit, hanging on the
+wall at home, would not have been afforded for any other creature in the
+world. Hobert often said he would never sell her as long as he lived;
+and in the seasons of hard work he favored her more than he did himself.
+She had been named Fleetfoot, in honor of her successful achievement
+when her master had intrusted to her carrying the treasure of his life;
+but that name proving too formal, she was usually called Fleety. She
+would put down her forehead to the white hands of little Jenny, four
+years old and upward now, and tread so slow and so carefully when she
+had her on her back! Even the white dress of Johnny Hobert had swept
+down her silken side more than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> once, while his dimpled hands clutched
+her mane, and his rosy feet paddled against her. He was going to be her
+master after a while, and take care of her in her old age, when the time
+of her rest was come; he knew her name as well as he knew his own, and
+went wild with delight when he saw her taking clover from the tiny hand
+of his sister or drinking water from the bucket at the well.</p>
+
+<p>"She grows handsomer every year," Hobert often said; "and with a little
+training I would not be afraid to match her against the speediest racer
+they can bring." And this remark was always intended as in some sort a
+compliment to Jenny, and was always so received by her.</p>
+
+<p>On this special day he had stopped oftener in the furrow than common;
+and as often as he stopped Fleety twisted round her neck, bent her soft
+eyes upon him, and twitched her little ears as though she would say, "Is
+not all right, my master?" And then he would walk round to her head, and
+pass his hand along her throat and through her foretop, calling her by
+her pet name, and pulling for her handfuls of fresh grass, and while she
+ate it resting himself against her, and feeling in her nearness almost a
+sense of human protection. His feet seemed to drag under him, and there
+was a dull aching in all his limbs; the world appeared to be receding
+from him, and at times he could hardly tell whether he stood upon solid
+ground. Then he accused himself of being lazy and good for nothing, and
+with fictitious energy took up the reins and started the plough.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at the sun again and again. He was not used to leaving off
+work while the sun shone, and the clear waters of the Wabash held as yet
+no faintest evening flush. There were yet two good hours of working time
+before him, when the quick shooting of a pain, like the running of a
+knife through his heart, caused him to stagger in the furrow. Fleety
+stopped of her own accord, and looked pityingly back. He sat down beside
+the plough to gather up his courage a little. A strange sensation that
+he could not explain had taken possession of him, a feeling as if the
+hope of his life was cut off. The pain was gone, but the feeling of
+helpless surrender remained. He opened his shirt and passed his hand
+along his breast. He could feel nothing,&mdash;could see nothing; but he had,
+for all that, a clearly defined consciousness as of some deadly thing
+hold of him that he would fain be rid of.</p>
+
+<p>He had chanced to stop his plough under an elm-tree, and, looking up, he
+perceived that from the fork upward one half of it was dead; mistletoe
+had sucked the life out of it, and lower and lower to the main body,
+deeper and deeper to the vital heart of it, the sap was being drawn
+away. An irresistible impulse impelled him to take the jack-knife from
+his pocket, and as far as he could reach cut away this alien and deadly
+growth. The sympathy into which he was come with the dying tree was
+positively painful to him, and yet he was withheld from moving on by a
+sort of fascination,&mdash;<i>he</i> was that tree, and the mistletoe was rooted
+in his bosom!</p>
+
+<p>The last yellow leaves fluttered down and lodged on his head and
+shoulders and in his bosom,&mdash;he did not lift his hand to brush them
+away; the blue lizard slid across his bare ankle and silently vanished
+out of sight, but he did not move a muscle. The brown mare bent her side
+round like a bow, and stretched her slender neck out more and more, and
+at last her nose touched his cheek, and then he roused himself and shook
+the dead leaves from his head and shoulders, and stood up. "Come,
+Fleety," he said, "we won't leave the plough in the middle of the
+furrow." She did not move. "Come, come!" he repeated, "it seems like a
+bad sign to stop here";&mdash;and then he put his hand suddenly to his heart,
+and an involuntary shudder passed over him. Fleety had not unbent her
+side, and her dumb, beseeching eyes were still upon him. He looked at
+the sun, low, but still shining out bright,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> and almost as hot as ever;
+he looked at his shadow stretching so far over the rough, weedy ground,
+and it appeared to him strange and fantastic. Then he loosed the traces,
+and, winding up the long rein, hung it over the harness; the plough
+dropped aslant, and Fleety turned herself about and walked slowly
+homeward,&mdash;her master following, his head down and his hands locked
+together behind him.</p>
+
+<p>The chimney was sending up its hospitable smoke, and Jenny was at the
+well with the teakettle in her hand when he came into the dooryard.</p>
+
+<p>"What in the world is going to happen?" she exclaimed, cheerfully. "I
+never knew you to leave work before while the sun shone. I am glad you
+have, for once. But what is the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>He had come nearer now, and she saw that something of light and hope had
+gone out of his face. And then Hobert made twenty excuses,&mdash;there wasn't
+anything the matter, he said, but the plough was dull, and the ground
+wet and heavy, and full of green roots; besides, the flies were bad, and
+the mare tired.</p>
+
+<p>"But you look so worn out, I am afraid you are sick, yourself!"
+interposed the good wife; and she went close to him, and pushed the
+hair, growing thinner now, away from his forehead, and looked anxiously
+in his face,&mdash;so anxiously, so tenderly, that he felt constrained to
+relieve her fears, even at some expense of the truth.</p>
+
+<p>"Not to look well in your eyes is bad enough," he answered, with forced
+cheerfulness, "but I feel all right; never better, never better, Jenny!"
+And stooping to his little daughter, who was holding his knees, he
+caught her up, and tossed her high in the air, but put her down at once,
+seeming almost to let her fall out of his hands, and, catching for
+breath, leaned against the well-curb.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Hobert? what is it?" and Jenny had her arm about him, and
+was drawing him toward the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing, nothing,&mdash;a touch of rheumatism, I guess,&mdash;no, no! I must take
+care of the mare first." And as she drank the water from the full bucket
+he held poised on the curb for her, he thought of the elm-tree in the
+field he had left, of the mistletoe sucking the life out of it, and of
+the unfinished furrow. "Never mind, Fleety," he said, as he led her away
+to the stable, "we'll be up betimes to-morrow, and make amends, won't
+we?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe, mother, I'll put on the new teacups!" Jenny said, as she set
+a chair before the cupboard, and climbed on it so as to reach the upper
+shelf. She had already spread the best table-cloth.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what for?" asked the provident mother, looking up from the sock
+she was knitting.</p>
+
+<p>"O, I don't know; I want to make things look nice, that's all."</p>
+
+<p>But she did know, though the feeling was only half defined. It seemed to
+her as if Hobert were some visitor coming,&mdash;not her husband. A shadowy
+feeling of insecurity had touched her; the commonness of custom was
+gone, and she looked from the window often, as the preparation for
+supper went on, with all the sweetness of solicitude with which she used
+to watch for his coming from under the grape-vines. Little Jenny was
+ready with the towel when he came with his face dripping, and the
+easy-chair was set by the door that looked out on the garden. "I don't
+want it," the good grandmother said, as he hesitated; "I have been
+sitting in it all day, and am tired of it!"</p>
+
+<p>And as he sat there with his boy on his knee, and his little girl, who
+had climbed up behind him, combing his hair with her slender white
+fingers,&mdash;his own fields before him, and his busy wife making music
+about the house with her cheerful, hopeful talk,&mdash;he looked like a man
+to be envied; and so just then he was.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning he did not fulfil his promise to himself by rising
+early; he had been restless and feverish all night, and now was chilly.
+If he lay till breakfast was ready, he would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> feel better, Jenny said;
+she could milk, to be sure, and do all the rest of the work, and so he
+was persuaded. But when the breakfast was ready the chilliness had
+become a downright chill, so that the blankets that were over him shook
+like leaves in a strong wind.</p>
+
+<p>Jenny had a little money of her own hidden away in the bottom of the new
+cream-pitcher. She had saved it, unknown to Hobert, from the sale of
+eggs and other trifles, and had meant to surprise him by appearing in a
+new dress some morning when the church-bell rang; but now she turned the
+silver into her hand and counted it, thinking what nice warm flannel it
+would buy to make shirts for Hobert. Of course he had them, and Jenny
+had not made any sacrifice that she knew of,&mdash;indeed, that is a word of
+which love knows not the meaning.</p>
+
+<p>"We will have him up in a day or two," the women said, one to the other,
+as they busied themselves about the house, or sat at the bedside, doing
+those things that only the blessed hands of women can do, making those
+plans that only the loving hearts of women can make. But the day or two
+went by, and they didn't have Hobert up. Then they said to one another,
+"We must set to work in earnest; we have really done nothing for him as
+yet." And they plied their skill of nursing with new hope and new
+energy. Every morning he told them he was better, but in the afternoon
+it happened that he didn't feel quite like stirring about; he was still
+better, but he had a little headache, and was afraid of bringing on a
+chill.</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure! you need rest and quiet; you have been working too hard,
+and it's only a wonder you didn't give out sooner!" So the two women
+said to him; and then they told him he looked better than he did
+yesterday, and, with much tender little caressing of neck and arms and
+hands, assured him that his flesh felt as healthy and nice as could be.
+Nevertheless, his eyes settled deeper and deeper, and gathered more and
+more of a leaden color about them; his skin grew yellow, and fell into
+wrinkles that were almost rigid, and that beseeching, yearning
+expression, made up of confidence in you, and terror of some nameless
+thing,&mdash;that look, as of a soul calling and crying to you, which follows
+you when you go farther than common from a sick-pillow,&mdash;all that
+terrible appealing was in his face; and often Jenny paused with her eyes
+away from him, when she saw that look,&mdash;paused, and steadied up her
+heart, before she could turn back and meet him with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>And friendly neighbors came in of an evening, and told of the sick wife
+or boy at home; of the mildewed crop, and the lamed horse; of the
+brackish well, and of the clock bought from the pedler that wouldn't go,
+and wouldn't strike when it did go;&mdash;dwelling, in short, on all the
+darker incidents and accidents of life, and thus establishing a nearness
+and equality of relation to the sick man, that somehow soothed and
+cheered him. At these times he would be propped up in bed, and listen
+with sad satisfaction, sometimes himself entering with a sort of
+melancholy animation into the subject.</p>
+
+<p>He would not as yet accept any offers of assistance. The wood-pile was
+getting low, certainly, and the plough still lying slantwise in the
+furrow; the corn-crop was to be gathered, and the potatoes to be got out
+of the ground,&mdash;but there was time enough yet! He didn't mean to indulge
+his laziness much longer,&mdash;not he!</p>
+
+<p>And then the neighbor who had offered to serve him would laugh, and
+answer that he had not been altogether disinterested: he had only
+proposed to <i>lend</i> a helping hand, expecting to need the like himself
+some day. "Trouble comes to us all, Mr. Walker, and we don't know whose
+turn it will be next. I want to take out a little insurance,&mdash;that's
+all!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, another day, if I don't get better!"</p>
+
+<p>And the long hot rains were over at last; the clouds drew themselves
+off,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> and the sharp frosts, of a morning, were glistening far and near;
+the pumpkin-vines lay black along the ground, and the ungathered ears of
+corn hung black on the stalk.</p>
+
+<p>Hobert was no better. But still the two women told each other they
+didn't think he was any worse. His disease was only an ague, common to
+the time of year and to the new country. It had come on so late it was
+not likely now that he would get the better of it before spring; making
+some little sacrifices for the present, they must all be patient and
+wait; and the nursing went on, till every device of nursing was
+exhausted, and one remedy after another was tried, and one after another
+utterly failed, and the fond hearts almost gave out. But there was the
+winter coming on, cold and long, and there was little Hobert, only
+beginning to stand alone, and prattling Jenny, with the toes coming
+through her shoes, and her shoulder showing flat and thin above her
+summer dress. Ah! there could be no giving out; the mother's petticoat
+must be turned into aprons for the pinched shoulders, and the knit-wool
+stockings must make amends for the worn-out shoes. So they worked, and
+work was their greatest blessing. A good many things were done without
+consulting Hobert at all, and he was led to believe that all went easily
+and comfortably; the neighbors, from time to time, lent the helping
+hand, without so much as asking leave; and by these means there were a
+few potatoes in the cellar, a little corn in the barn, and a load of
+wood under the snow at the door.</p>
+
+<p>The table was not spread in the sickroom any more, as it had been for a
+while. They had thought it would amuse Hobert to see the little
+household ceremonies going on; but now they said it was better to avoid
+all unnecessary stir. Perhaps they thought it better that he should not
+see their scantier fare. Still they came into his presence very
+cheerfully, never hinting of hardship, never breathing the apprehension
+that began to trouble their hearts.</p>
+
+<p>It was during these long winter evenings, when the neighbors sat by the
+fire and did what they could to cheer the sick man and the sad women,
+that the wonderful merits of the great Doctor Killmany began to be
+frequently discussed. Marvellous stories were told of his almost
+superhuman skill. He had brought back from the very gate of death scores
+of men and women who had been given up to die by their physicians,&mdash;so
+it was said; and special instances of cures were related that were
+certainly calculated to inspire hope and confidence. None of these good
+people could of their own knowledge attest these wonderful cures; but
+there were many circumstances that added weight to the force of the
+general rumor.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Killmany lived a great way off, and he charged a great price. He
+would not look at a man for less than a hundred dollars, so report said,
+and that was much in his favor. He had a very short way with
+patients,&mdash;asked no questions, and never listened to explanations,&mdash;but
+could tie down a man and take off his leg or arm, as the case might be,
+in an incredibly short space of time, paying as little heed to the cries
+and groans as to the buzzing of the flies. If anything further had been
+needed to establish his fame, it would have been found in the fact that
+he was very rich, wearing diamonds in his shirt-bosom, driving fine
+horses, and being, in fact, surrounded with all the luxuries that money
+can procure. Of course, he was a great doctor. How could it be
+otherwise? And it was enough to know that a Mr. A had seen a Mr. B who
+knew a Mr. C whose wife's mother was cured by him!</p>
+
+<p>At first these things were talked of in hearing of the sick man; then
+there began to be whispers about the fire as to the possibility of
+persuading him to sell all that he had and go to the great Doctor; for
+it was now pretty generally felt that the ague was only the
+accompaniment of a more terrible disease.</p>
+
+<p>Then at last it was suggested, as a wild pleasantry, by some daring
+visitor,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> "Suppose, Hobert, we should send you off one of these days,
+and have you back after a few weeks, sound and vigorous as a young colt!
+What should you say to that, my boy?"</p>
+
+<p>To the surprise of everybody, Hobert replied that he only wished it were
+possible.</p>
+
+<p>"Possible! Why, of course it's possible! Where there's a will, you
+know!" And then it began to be talked of less as an insane dream.</p>
+
+<p>One morning, as Jenny came into the sick man's room, she found him
+sitting up in bed with his shirt open and his hand on his breast.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Hobert?" she said; for there was a look in his eyes that
+made her tremble.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, Jenny; but whatever it is, it will be my death," he
+answered, and, falling upon her shoulder,&mdash;for she had come close to him
+and had her arm about his neck,&mdash;he sobbed like a child.</p>
+
+<p>The little hand was slipped under his, but Jenny said she could feel
+nothing; and I think she will be forgiven for that falsehood. He was
+sick, she said, worn out, and it was no wonder that strange fancies
+should take possession of him. She had neglected him too much; but now,
+though everything should go to pieces, he should have her first care,
+and her last care, and all her care; he should not be left alone any
+more to conjure up horrors; and when he said he was weak and foolish and
+ashamed of his tears, she pacified him with petting and with praises. He
+was everything that was right, everything that was strong and manly. A
+little more patience, and then it would be spring, and the sunshine
+would make him well. She put the hair away from his forehead, and told
+him how fair in the face he was grown; and then she shoved his sleeve to
+his elbow, and told him that his arms were almost as plump as they ever
+were; and so he was comforted, cheered even, and they talked over the
+plans and prospects of years to come. At last he fell asleep with a
+bright smile of hope in his face, and Jenny stooped softly and kissed
+him, and, stealing away on tiptoe, hid herself from her good old mother
+and from the eyes of her children, and wept long and bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>And the spring came, and Hobert crept out into the sunshine; but his
+cheek was pale, and his chest hollow, and there was more than the old
+listlessness upon him. As a tree that is dying will sometimes put forth
+sickly leaves and blossoms, and still be dying all the while, so it was
+with him. His hand was often on his breast, and his look often said,
+"This will be the death of me." The bees hummed in the flowers about his
+feet, the birds built their nests in the boughs above his head, and his
+children played about his knees; but his thoughts were otherwhere,&mdash;away
+beyond the dark river, away in that beautiful country where the
+inhabitants never say, "I am sick."</p>
+
+<p>It was about midsummer that one Mrs. Brown, well known to Mrs. Walker's
+family, and to all the people of the neighborhood, as having suffered
+for many years with some strange malady which none of the doctors
+understood, sold the remnant of her property, having previously wasted
+nearly all she had upon physicians, and betook herself to the great Dr.
+Killmany. What her condition had actually been is not material to my
+story, nor is it necessary to say anything about the treatment she
+received at the hands of the great doctor. It is enough to say that it
+cost her her last dollar,&mdash;that she worked her slow way home as best she
+could, arriving there at last with shoes nearly off her feet and gown
+torn and faded, but with health considerably improved. That she had sold
+her last cow, and her feather-bed, and her teakettle, and her
+sheep-shears, and her grandfather's musket, all added wonderfully to the
+great doctor's reputation.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't go to him if you don't go full-handed," said one to another;
+and he that heard it, and he that said it, laughed as though it were a
+good joke.</p>
+
+<p>Some said he could see right through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> a man: there was no need of words
+with him! And others, that he could take the brains out of the skull, or
+the bones out of the ankles, and leave the patient all the better for
+it. In short, there was nothing too extravagant to be said of
+him; and as for Mrs. Brown, the person who had seen her became
+semi-distinguished. She was invited all over the neighborhood, and her
+conversation was the most delightful of entertainments. Amongst the
+rest, she visited Mr. Walker; and through her instrumentality, his
+strong desire to see the great Dr. Killmany was shaped into purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Two of the cows were sold, most of the farming implements, and such
+articles of household furniture as could be spared; and with all this
+the money realized was but a hundred and fifty dollars. Then Jenny
+proposed to sell her side-saddle; and when that was gone, she said
+Fleety might as well go with it. "If you only come home well, Hobert,"
+she said, "we will soon be able to buy her back again; and if you
+don't&mdash;but you will!"</p>
+
+<p>So Fleetfoot went with the rest; and when for the last time she was led
+up before the door, and ate grass from the lap of little Jenny, and put
+her neck down to the caressing hands of young Hobert, it was a sore
+trial to them all. She seemed half conscious herself, indeed, and
+exhibited none of her accustomed playfulness with the children, but
+stood in a drooping attitude, with her eye intent upon her master; and
+when they would have taken her away, she hung back, and, stretching her
+neck till it reached his knees, licked his hands with a tenderness that
+was pitiful to see.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't, Hobert, don't take on about it," Jenny said, putting back the
+heart that was in her mouth; "we will have her back again, you
+know!"&mdash;and she gave Fleetfoot a little box on the ear that was half
+approval and half reproach, and so led Hobert back into the house.</p>
+
+<p>And that day was the saddest they had yet seen. And that night, when the
+sick man was asleep, the two women talked together and cried together,
+and in the end got such comfort as women get out of great sacrifices and
+bitter tears.</p>
+
+<p>They counted their little hoard. They had gathered three hundred dollars
+now, and there required to be yet as much more; and then they made plans
+as to what yet remained to be done. "We must mortgage the land," Jenny
+said, "that is all,&mdash;don't mind, mother. I don't mind anything, so that
+we only have Hobert well again." And then they talked of what they would
+do another year when they should be all together once more, and all
+well. "Think what Dr. Killmany has done for Mrs. Brown!" they said.</p>
+
+<p>And now came busy days; and in the earnestness of the preparation the
+sorrow of the coming parting was in some sort dissipated. Hobert's
+wearing-apparel was all brought out, and turned and overturned, and the
+most and the best made of everything. The wedding coat and the wedding
+shirt were almost as good as ever, Jenny said; and when the one had been
+brushed and pressed, and the other done up, she held them up before them
+all, and commented upon them with pride and admiration. The fashions had
+changed a little, to be sure, but what of that? The new fashions were
+not so nice as the old ones, to her thinking. Hobert would look smart in
+the old garments, at any rate, and perhaps nobody would notice. She was
+only desirous that he should make a good impression on the Doctor. And
+all that could be done to that end was done, many friends contributing,
+by way of little presents, to the comfort and respectability of the
+invalid. "Here is a leather pouch," said one, "that I bought of a pedler
+the other day. I don't want it; but as you are going to travel, may be
+you can make use of it, Walker; take it, any how."</p>
+
+<p>"I have got a new pair of saddle-bags," said the circuit-rider, "but I
+believe I like the old ones best. So, Brother Walker, you will oblige me
+by taking these off my hands. I find extra<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> things more trouble to take
+care of than they are worth."</p>
+
+<p>It was not proposed that Hobert should travel with a trunk, so the
+saddle-bags were just what was required.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is a pair of shoes," said another. "Try them on, Walker, and see
+if you can wear them: they are too small for my clumsy feet!" They had
+been made by the village shoemaker to Mr. Walker's measure. Of course
+they fitted him, and of course he had them.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bet you a new hat," said another, "that I come to see you ag'in,
+day after to-morrer, fur off as I live."</p>
+
+<p>The day after the morrow he did not come: he was "onaccountably
+hendered," he said; but when he did come he brought the new hat. He
+thought he would be as good as his word in one thing if not in another,
+and redeem his bet at any rate.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bring my team: I want to go to town anyhow; and we'll all see you
+off together!" This was the offer of the farmer whose land adjoined Mr.
+Walker's; and the day of departure was fixed, and the morning of the day
+saw everything in readiness.</p>
+
+<p>"Hobert looks a'most like a storekeeper or a schoolmaster, don't he,
+mother?" Jenny said, looking upon him proudly, when he was arrayed in
+the new hat and the wedding coat.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you are as spry as a boy!" exclaimed the farmer who was to drive
+them to town, seeing that Hobert managed to climb into the wagon without
+assistance. "I don't believe there is any need of Dr. Killmany, after
+all!" And the neighbors, as one after another they leaned over the
+sideboard of the wagon, and shook hands with Mr. Walker, made some
+cheerful and light-hearted remark, calculated to convey the impression
+that the leave-taking was a mere matter of form, and only for a day.</p>
+
+<p>As Jenny looked back at the homestead, and thought of the possibilities,
+the tears would come; but the owner of the team, determined to carry it
+bravely through, immediately gathered up the slack reins, and, with a
+lively crack of his whip, started the horses upon a brisk trot.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't spare the money," Jenny entreated, as she put the pocket-book in
+Hobert's hand; but she thought in her heart that Dr. Killmany would be
+touched when he saw her husband, and knew how far he had travelled to
+see him, and what sacrifices he had made to do so. "He must be good, if
+he is so great as they say," she argued; "and perhaps Hobert may even
+bring home enough to buy back Fleety." This was a wild dream. And the
+last parting words were said, the last promises exacted and given; the
+silent tears and the lingering looks all were past, and the farmer's
+wagon, with an empty chair by the side of Jenny's, rattled home again.</p>
+
+<p>It was perhaps a month after this that a pale, sickly-looking man, with
+a pair of saddle-bags over his arm, went ashore from the steamboat Arrow
+of Light, just landed at New Orleans, and made his slow way along the
+wharf, crowded with barrels, boxes, and cotton-bales, and thence to the
+open streets. The sun was oppressively hot, and the new fur hat became
+almost intolerable, so that the sick man stopped more than once in the
+shade of some friendly tree, and, placing the saddle-bags on the ground,
+wiped the sweat from his forehead, and looked wistfully at the strange
+faces that passed him by.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you tell me, my friend," he said at last, addressing a slave-woman
+who was passing by with a great bundle on her head,&mdash;"Can you tell me
+where to find Doctor Killmany, who lives somewhere here?"</p>
+
+<p>The woman put her bundle on the ground, and, resting her hands on her
+hips, looked pitifully upon the stranger. "No, masser, cante say, not
+for sure," she answered. "I knows dar's sich a doctor somewhars 'bout,
+but just whars I cante say, an' he's a poor doctor fur the likes o'
+you,&mdash;don't have noffen to do with him, nohow."</p>
+
+<p>"A poor doctor!" exclaimed the stranger. "Why, I understood he was the
+greatest doctor in the world; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> I've come all the way from the Wabash
+country to see him."</p>
+
+<p>"Warbash! whar's dat? Norf, reckon; well you jes be gwine back Norf de
+fus boat, an dat's de bery bes' advice dis yere nigger can guv."</p>
+
+<p>"But what do you know about Dr. Killmany."</p>
+
+<p>"I knows dis yere, masser: he mos'ly sends dem ar' as ar' doctored by
+him to dar homes in a box!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Walker shuddered. "I don't want your advice," he said directly; "I
+only want to know where Dr. Killmany lives."</p>
+
+<p>"Cante say, masser, not percisely, as to dat ar'; kind o' seems to me
+he's done gone from hur, clar an' all; but jes over thar's a mighty good
+doctor; you can see his name afore the door if you'll step this yere way
+a bit. He doctors all de pour, an' dem dat ar' halt, and dem dat ar'
+struck with paralasy, jes for de love ob de ark and de covenant; an'
+he's jes de purtiest man to look at dat you ever sot eyes onto. Go in
+dar whar ye sees de white bline at de winder an' ax for Dr. Shepard, an'
+when you's once seen him, I reckon you won't want to find de udder man;
+but if you does, why he can pint de way. An' de Lord bless you and hab
+mercy on your soul."</p>
+
+<p>The sick man felt a good deal discouraged by what the old slave had
+said, and her last words impressed him with feelings of especial
+discomfort. He knew not which way to turn; and, in fact, found himself
+growing dizzy and blind, and was only able, with great effort, to stand
+at all. He must ask his way somewhere, however, and it might as well be
+there as another place.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Shepard, who happened to be in his office, answered the inquiry
+promptly. Dr. Killmany was in quite another part of the city. "You don't
+look able to walk there, my good friend," he said; "but if you will sit
+here and wait for an hour, I shall be driving that way, and will take
+you with pleasure."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Walker gratefully accepted the proffered chair, as indeed he was
+almost obliged to do; for within a few minutes the partial blindness had
+become total darkness, and the whole world seemed, as it were, slipping
+away from him.</p>
+
+<p>When he came to himself he was lying on a sofa in an inner room, and Dr.
+Shepard, who had just administered some cordial, was bending over him in
+the most kindly and sympathetic manner. It seemed not so much what he
+said, not so much what he did, but as though he carried about him an
+atmosphere of sweetness and healing that comforted and assured without
+words and without medicine. He made no pretence and no noise, but his
+smile was sunshine to the heart, and the touch of his hand imparted
+strength and courage to the despairing soul. It was as if good spirits
+went with him, and his very silence was pleasant company. Mr. Walker was
+in no haste to be gone. All his anxious cares seemed to fall away, and a
+peaceful sense of comfort and security came over him; his eyes followed
+Dr. Shepard as he moved about, and when a door interposed between them
+he felt lost and homesick. "If this were the man I had come to see, I
+should be happy." That was his thought all the while. Perhaps&mdash;who shall
+say not?&mdash;it was the blessings of the poor, to whom he most generously
+ministered, which gave to his manner that graciousness and charm which
+no words can convey, and to his touch that magnetism which is at once
+life-giving and love-inspiring.</p>
+
+<p>How it was Mr. Walker could not tell, and indeed wiser men than he could
+not have told, but he presently found himself opening his heart to this
+new doctor, as he had never opened it to anybody in all his life,&mdash;how
+he had married Jenny, how they had gone to the new country, the birth of
+the boy and the girl, the slow coming on of disease, the selling of
+Fleety, and the mortgaging of the farm. Doctor Shepard knew it all, and,
+more than this, he knew how much money had been accumulated,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> and how
+much of it was still left. He had examined the tumor in the breast, and
+knew that it could end in but one way. He had told Mr. Walker that he
+could be made more comfortable, and might live for years, perhaps, but
+that he must not hope to be cured, and that to get home to his family
+with all possible speed was the best advice he could give him. His words
+carried with them the weight of conviction, and the sick man was almost
+persuaded; but the thought of what would be said at home if he should
+come back without having seen the great Dr. Killmany urged him to try
+one last experiment.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you suppose he will charge me to look at this?" he inquired of
+Dr. Shepard, laying his hand on his breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Half you have, my friend."</p>
+
+<p>"And if he cuts it out?"</p>
+
+<p>"The other half."</p>
+
+<p>"O, dear me!"&mdash;and the sick man fell back upon the sofa, and for a good
+while thought to himself. Then came one of those wild suggestions of a
+vain hope. "Perhaps this man is the impostor, and not the other!" it
+said. "And what do I owe you for all you have done for me to-day?" he
+inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, nothing, my good friend. I have done nothing for you; and my
+advice has certainly been disinterested. I don't want pay for that."</p>
+
+<p>"And suppose you should operate?"</p>
+
+<p>And then the doctor told him that he could not do that on any
+terms,&mdash;that no surgeon under the sun could perform a successful
+operation,&mdash;that all his hope was in quiet and care. "I will keep you
+here a few days," he said, "and build you up all I can, and when the
+Arrow of Light goes back again, I will see you aboard, and bespeak the
+kind attentions of the captain for you on the journey." That was not
+much like an impostor, and in his heart the sick man knew it was the
+right course to take,&mdash;the only course; and then he thought of Mrs.
+Brown and her wonderful cure, and of the great hopes they were
+entertaining at home, and he became silent, and again thought to
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Three days he remained with Dr. Shepard, undecided, and resting and
+improving a little all the while. On the morning of the fourth day he
+said, placing his hand on his breast, "If I were only rid of this, I
+believe I should get quite well again." He could not give up the great
+Dr. Killmany. "I do not intend to put myself in his hands,&mdash;indeed, I am
+almost resolved that I will not do so," he said to Dr. Shepard; "but I
+will just call at his office, so that I can tell my folks I have seen
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"I must not say more to discourage you," replied Dr. Shepard; "perhaps I
+have already said too much,&mdash;certainly I have said much more than it is
+my habit to say, more than in any ordinary circumstances I would permit
+myself to say; but in your case I have felt constrained to acquit myself
+to my conscience";&mdash;and he turned away with a shadow of the tenderest
+and saddest gloom upon his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you, sir, going to Dr. Killmany?" asked an old man, who had been
+sitting by, eying Mr. Walker with deep concern; and on receiving an
+affirmative nod, he went on with zeal, if not with discretion: "Then,
+sir, you might as well knock your own brains out! I regard him, sir, as
+worse than a highway robber,&mdash;a good deal worse! The robber will
+sometimes spare your life, if he can as well as not, but Dr. Killmany
+has no more regard for human life than you have for that of a fly. He
+has a skilful hand to be sure, but his heart is as hard as flint. In
+short, sir, he is utterly without conscience, without humanity, without
+principle. Gain is his first object, his last object, his sole object;
+and if he ever did any good, it was simply incidental. Don't put
+yourself in his hands, whatever you do,&mdash;certainly not without first
+making your will!" And the old man, with a flushed and angry
+countenance, went away.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the sick man, relapsing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> into silent thought, drowsed into
+sleep, and a strange dream came to him. He seemed at home, sitting under
+the tree with the mistletoe in its boughs; he was tired and hungry, and
+there came to him a raven with food in its mouth, and the shadow of its
+wings was pleasant. He thought, at first, the food was for him; but the
+bird, perching on his shoulder, devoured the food, and afterward pecked
+at his breast until it opened a way to his heart, and with that in its
+claws flew away; and when it was gone, he knew it was not a bird, but
+that it was Dr. Killmany who had thus taken out his heart. "I will go
+home," he thought, "and tell Jenny"; and when he arose and put his hand
+on the neck of Fleety, who had been standing in the furrow close by, she
+became a shadow, and instantly vanished out of sight. He then strove to
+walk, and, lo! the strength was gone out of his limbs, and, as he sank
+down, the roots of the mistletoe struck in his bosom, ran through and
+through him, and fastened themselves in the earth beneath, and he became
+as one dead, only with the consciousness of being dead.</p>
+
+<p>When he awoke, he related the dream, having given it, as it appeared, a
+melancholy interpretation, for he expressed himself determined to return
+home immediately. "I will take passage on the Arrow," he said to Dr.
+Shepard; and then he counted up the number of days that must go by
+before he could have his own green fields beneath his eyes, and his
+little ones climbing about his knees.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I had never left my home," he said; "I wish I had never heard of
+Dr. Killmany!" and then he returned to his dream and repeated portions
+of it; and then he said, seeming to be thinking aloud, "My good old
+mother! my dear, poor Jenny!"</p>
+
+<p>"The sick man's brain is liable to strange fancies," says Dr. Shepard;
+"you must not think too seriously of it, but your resolve is very wise."
+He then said he would see the captain of the Arrow, as he had promised,
+and went away with a smile on his face, and a great weight lifted off
+his heart.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes after this, Hobert Walker was again in the street, the
+heavy fur hat on his head, and the well-filled saddle-bags across his
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps sickness is in some sort insanity. At any rate, he no sooner
+found himself alone than the desire to see the great Dr. Killmany came
+upon him with all the force of insanity; his intention probably being to
+go and return within an hour, and keep his little secret to himself.
+Perhaps, too, he wished to have it to say at home that he had seen the
+great man for himself, and decided against him of his own knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Killmany was found without much difficulty; but his rooms were
+crowded with patients, and there was no possibility of access to him for
+hours.</p>
+
+<p>"It cannot be that so many are deceived," thought Hobert. "I will wait
+with the rest." Then came the encouraging hope, "What if I should go
+home cured, after all!" He felt almost as if Dr. Shepard had defrauded
+him out of two or three days, and talked eagerly with one and another,
+as patient after patient came forth from consultation with Dr. Killmany,
+all aglow with hope and animation. It was near sunset when his turn
+came. He had waited five hours, but it was come at last; and with his
+heart in his mouth, and his knees shaking under him, he stood face to
+face with the arbitrator of his destiny. There was no smile on the face
+of the man, no sweetness in his voice as he said, looking at Hobert from
+under scowling brows, "What brings <i>you</i>, sir? Tell it, and be brief:
+time with me is money."</p>
+
+<p>Then Hobert, catching at a chair to sustain himself, for he was not
+asked to sit, explained his condition as well as fright and awkwardness
+would permit him to do; going back to the commencement of his disease,
+and entering unnecessarily into many particulars, as well as making
+superfluous mention of wife and mother. "It isn't with your wife and
+mother that I have to deal," interposed Dr. Killmany;&mdash;"dear to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> you, I
+dare say, but nothing to me, sir,&mdash;nothing at all. I have no time to
+devote to your relatives. Open your shirt, sir! there, that'll do! A
+mere trifle, sir, but it is well you have come in time."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to say you can cure me?" inquired Hobert, all his heart
+a-flutter with the excitement of hope.</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly so. I can remove that difficulty of yours in five minutes, and
+have you on your feet again,&mdash;operation neglected, death certain within
+a year, perhaps sooner. Done with you sir. You now have your choice,
+make way!"</p>
+
+<p>Hobert went staggering out of the room, feeling as if the raven of his
+dream already had its beak in his heart, when a pert official reached
+out his hand with the demand, "Consultation fee, if you please, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"How much?" asked Hobert, leaning against the wall, and searching for
+his pocket-book.</p>
+
+<p>"Fifty dollars, sir,"&mdash;and the official spoke as though that were a
+trifle scarcely worth mentioning. The hands of the sick man trembled,
+and his eyes grew blind as he sought to count up the sum; and as his
+entire treasure was formed out of the smallest notes, the process was a
+slow one, and before it was accomplished it seemed to him that not only
+Fleety was turning to a shadow, but the whole world as well.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow, he hardly knew how, he found himself in the fresh air, and the
+official still at his elbow. "You are not going to leave us this way?"
+he said. "You will only have thrown your money away." And he pocketed
+the sum Hobert had just put in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Better that than more," Hobert answered, and was turning sadly away.</p>
+
+<p>"Allow me to detain you, sir, one moment, only just one moment!" And the
+official, or rather decoy, whispered in his ear tales of such wonderful
+cures as almost dissuaded him from his purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"But I am resolved to go home on the Arrow," he said, making a last
+stand, "and I must have something to leave my poor Jenny."</p>
+
+<p>And then the official told him that he could go home aboard the Arrow,
+if he chose, and go a well man, or the same as a well man; and what
+could he bring to his wife so acceptable as himself, safe and sound! And
+then he told other tales of sick men who had been carried to Dr.
+Killmany on their beds, and within a few hours walked away on their
+feet, blessing his name, and publishing his fame far and wide.</p>
+
+<p>Hobert began to waver, nor is it strange; for what will not a man give
+for his life? The world had not loosened its hold upon him much as yet;
+the grass under his feet and the sunshine over his head were pleasant
+things to him, and his love for his good little wife was still invested
+with all the old romance; and to die and go he knew not where, there was
+a terror about that which his faith was not strong enough to dissipate.
+The decoy watched and waited. He contrasted the husband returning home
+with haggard cheek and listless step and the shadow of dark doom all
+about him, having a few hundred dollars in his pocket, with a husband
+empty-handed, but with bright cheeks, and cheerful spirits, and with
+strong legs under him! Then Hobert repeated the story he had told to Dr.
+Shepard,&mdash;all about the little treasure with which he had set out, how
+hardly it had been gathered together, what had been already fruitlessly
+expended, and just how much remained,&mdash;he told it all as he had told it
+in the first instance, but with what different effect!</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Killmany never touched any case for a sum like that! Indeed, his
+services were in such requisition, it was almost impossible to obtain
+them on any terms; but he, the decoy, for reasons which he did not
+state, would exert to the utmost his own personal influence in Hobert's
+favor. "I cannot promise you a favorable answer," he said; "there is
+just a possibility, and that is all. A man like Dr. Killmany, sir, can't
+be haggling about dollars and cents!" And then he intimated that such
+things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> might be well enough for Dr. Shepard and his sort of practice.</p>
+
+<p>There was some further talk, and the time ran by, and it was night.
+Against his will almost, Hobert had been persuaded. He was to sleep in
+the Doctor's office that night, and his case was to be the first
+attended to in the morning. "You can rest very well on the floor, I
+suppose," the decoy had said, "taking your saddle-bags for a pillow. The
+whole thing will be over in half an hour, and I myself will see you
+aboard the Arrow before ten o'clock, and so you need take no more
+thought for yourself."</p>
+
+<p>That night, when at last Hobert made a pillow of his saddle-bags and
+coiled himself together, he felt as if a circle of fire were narrowing
+around him, and yet utter inability to escape.</p>
+
+<p>"You need take no more thought for yourself." These words kept ringing
+in his ears like a knell, and the mistletoe striking through his bosom,
+and the beak of the raven in his heart,&mdash;these were the sensations with
+which, long after midnight, he drowsed into sleep.</p>
+
+<p>When he awoke, there was a rough hand on his shoulder and a harsh voice
+in his ear. The room was light with the light of morning, but dark with
+the shadow of coming doom. There came upon him a strange and great
+calmness when he found himself in the operating-room. There were all the
+frightful preparations,&mdash;the water, the sponges, the cloths and
+bandages, the Doctor with his case of instruments before him, and
+looking more like a murderer than a surgeon. Almost his heart misgave
+him as he looked around, and remembered Jenny and the little ones at
+home; but the carriage that was to take him aboard the Arrow already
+waited at the door, and the sight of it reassured him.</p>
+
+<p>"You will hardly know where you are till you find yourself safe in your
+berth," said Dr. Killmany; "and to avoid any delay after the operation,
+from which you will necessarily be somewhat weak, you had perhaps better
+pay me now." And these were the most civil words he had yet spoken.</p>
+
+<p>So Hobert paid into his hand the last dollar he had.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, sir," he said; and Hobert laid himself down on the table. A
+minute, and of what befell him after that he was quite unconscious. It
+was as the doctor had told him; he knew not where he was until he found
+himself in his berth aboard the Arrow. "Where am I?" was his first
+inquiry, feeling a sense of strangeness,&mdash;feeling, indeed, as though he
+were a stranger to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"You are going home, my poor friend,&mdash;going home a little sooner than
+you expected,&mdash;that is all."</p>
+
+<p>Then the sick man opened his eyes; for he had recognized the tender
+voice, and saw Dr. Shepard bending over him, and he knew where he was,
+and what had happened; for he was shivering from head to foot. The
+sleeve of his right arm was red and wet, and there was a dull, slow
+aching in his bosom. "Ay, Doctor," he answered, pressing faintly the
+hand that held his, "I am going home,&mdash;home to a better country. 'T is
+all like a shadow about me now, and I am cold,&mdash;so cold!" He never came
+out of that chill, and these were the last words he ever spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"That man has been just the same as murdered, I take it!" exclaimed the
+captain of the Arrow, meeting Dr. Shepard as he turned away from the
+bedside.</p>
+
+<p>"I must not say that," replied the Doctor; "but if I had performed the
+operation, under the circumstances, I should think myself his murderer."</p>
+
+<p>"And if you had taken his money, you would perhaps think yourself a
+thief, too! At any rate, I should think you one," was the answer of the
+captain. And he then related to Dr. Shepard how the man, in an almost
+dying condition, had been brought aboard the Arrow by one of Dr.
+Killmany's menials, hustled into bed, and so left to his fate; and he
+concluded by saying, "And what are we to do now, Doctor?"</p>
+
+<p>What the Doctor's reply was need not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> be reported at length. Suffice it
+to say, that the departure of the Arrow was deferred for an hour, and
+when she sailed the state-room in which Hobert had breathed his last was
+occupied by a lively little lady and two gayly-dressed children, and on
+the wall from which the fur hat and the saddle-bags had been removed
+fluttered a variety of rainbow-hued scarfs and ribbons, and in the
+window where the shadow had been a golden-winged bird was singing in the
+sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>Some two or three weeks went by, and the farmer who had driven to town
+when Hobert was about to set out on his long journey, starting so
+smartly, and making so light of the farewells, drove thither again, and
+this time his wagon-bed was empty, except for the deep cushion of straw.
+He drove slowly and with downcast looks; and as he returned, a dozen men
+met him at the entrance of the village, and at sober pace followed to
+the meeting-house, the door of which stood wide.</p>
+
+<p>A little low talk as they all gathered round, and then four of them
+lifted from the wagon the long box it contained, and bore it on their
+shoulders reverently and tenderly within the open gate, through the wide
+door, along the solemn aisle and close beneath the pulpit, where they
+placed it very softly, and then stood back with uncovered heads, while a
+troop of little girls, who waited, with aprons full of flowers, drew
+near and emptied them on the ground, so that nothing was to be seen but
+a great heap of flowers; and beneath them was the body of <span class="smcap">Hobert Walker</span>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="MY_FARM_A_FABLE" id="MY_FARM_A_FABLE"></a>MY FARM: A FABLE.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Within a green and pleasant land<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I own a favorite plantation,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose woods and meads, if rudely planned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Are still, at least, my own creation.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Some genial sun or kindly shower<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Has here and there wooed forth a flower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And touched the fields with expectation.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I know what feeds the soil I till,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What harvest-growth it best produces.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My forests shape themselves at will,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My grapes mature their proper juices.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">I know the brambles and the weeds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">But know the fruits and wholesome seeds,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of those the hurt, of these the uses.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And working early, working late,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Directing crude and random Nature,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'T is joy to see my small estate<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Grow fairer in the slightest feature.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">If but a single wild-rose blow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Or fruit-tree bend with April snow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That day am I the happiest creature!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But round the borders of the land<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Dwell many neighbors, fond of roving;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With curious eye and prying hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">About my fields I see them moving.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Some tread my choicest herbage down,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">And some of weeds would weave a crown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And bid me wear it, unreproving.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"What trees!" says one; "whoever saw<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A grove, like this, of <i>my</i> possessing?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This vale offends my upland's law;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">This sheltered garden needs suppressing.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">My rocks this grass would never yield,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">And how absurd the level field!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What here will grow is past my guessing."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Behold the slope!" another cries:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"No sign of bog or meadow near it!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A varied surface I despise:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">There's not a stagnant pool to cheer it!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">"Why plough at all?" remarked a third,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">"Heaven help the man!" a fourth I heard,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"His farm's a jungle: let him clear it!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No friendly counsel I disdain:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My fields are free to every comer;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet that, which one to praise is fain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But makes another's visage glummer.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">I bow them out, and welcome in,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">But while I seek some truth to win<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Goes by, unused, the golden summer!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah! vain the hope to find in each<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The wisdom each denies the other;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These mazes of conflicting speech<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All theories of culture smother.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">I'll raise and reap, with honest hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The native harvest of my land;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Do thou the same, my wiser brother!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="PASSAGES_FROM_HAWTHORNES_NOTE-BOOKS" id="PASSAGES_FROM_HAWTHORNES_NOTE-BOOKS"></a>PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>VIII.</h3>
+
+<p>Concord, <i>Saturday, August 13, 1842.</i>&mdash;My life, at this time, is more
+like that of a boy, externally, than it has been since I was really a
+boy. It is usually supposed that the cares of life come with matrimony;
+but I seem to have cast off all care, and live on with as much easy
+trust in Providence as Adam could possibly have felt before he had
+learned that there was a world beyond Paradise. My chief anxiety
+consists in watching the prosperity of my vegetables, in observing how
+they are affected by the rain or sunshine, in lamenting the blight of
+one squash and rejoicing at the luxurious growth of another. It is as if
+the original relation between man and Nature were restored in my case,
+and that I were to look exclusively to her for the support of my Eve and
+myself,&mdash;to trust to her for food and clothing, and all things needful,
+with the full assurance that she would not fail me. The fight with the
+world,&mdash;the struggle of a man among men,&mdash;the agony of the universal
+effort to wrench the means of living from a host of greedy
+competitors,&mdash;all this seems like a dream to me. My business is merely
+to live and to enjoy; and whatever is essential to life and enjoyment
+will come as naturally as the dew from heaven. This is, practically at
+least, my faith. And so I awake in the morning with a boyish
+thoughtlessness as to how the outgoings of the day are to be provided
+for, and its incomings rendered certain. After breakfast, I go forth
+into my garden, and gather whatever the bountiful Mother has made fit
+for our present sustenance; and of late days she generally gives me two
+squashes and a cucumber, and promises me green corn and shell-beans very
+soon. Then I pass down through our orchard to the river-side, and ramble
+along its margin in search of flowers. Usually I discern a fragrant
+white lily, here and there along the shore, growing, with sweet
+prudishness, beyond the grasp of mortal arm. But it does not escape me
+so. I know what is its fitting destiny better than the silly flower
+knows for itself; so I wade in, heedless of wet trousers, and seize the
+shy lily by its slender stem. Thus I make prize of five or six, which
+are as many as usually blossom within my reach in a single
+morning;&mdash;some of them partially worm-eaten or blighted, like virgins
+with an eating sorrow at the heart; others as fair and perfect as
+Nature's own idea was, when she first imagined this lovely flower. A
+perfect pond-lily is the most satisfactory of flowers. Besides these, I
+gather whatever else of beautiful chances to be growing in the moist
+soil by the river-side,&mdash;an amphibious tribe, yet with more richness and
+grace than the wild-flowers of the deep and dry woodlands and
+hedge-rows,&mdash;sometimes the white arrow-head, always the blue spires and
+broad green leaves of the pickerel-flower, which contrast and harmonize
+so well with the white lilies. For the last two or three days, I have
+found scattered stalks of the cardinal-flower, the gorgeous scarlet of
+which it is a joy even to remember. The world is made brighter and
+sunnier by flowers of such a hue. Even perfume, which otherwise is the
+soul and spirit of a flower, may be spared when it arrays itself in this
+scarlet glory. It is a flower of thought and feeling, too; it seems to
+have its roots deep down in the hearts of those who gaze at it. Other
+bright flowers sometimes impress me as wanting sentiment; but it is not
+so with this.</p>
+
+<p>Well, having made up my bunch of flowers, I return home with them....
+Then I ascend to my study, and generally read, or perchance scribble<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> in
+this journal, and otherwise suffer Time to loiter onward at his own
+pleasure, till the dinner-hour. In pleasant days, the chief event of the
+afternoon, and the happiest one of the day, is our walk.... So comes the
+night; and I look back upon a day spent in what the world would call
+idleness, and for which I myself can suggest no more appropriate
+epithet, but which, nevertheless, I cannot feel to have been spent
+amiss. True, it might be a sin and shame, in such a world as ours, to
+spend a lifetime in this manner; but for a few summer weeks it is good
+to live as if this world were heaven. And so it is, and so it shall be,
+although, in a little while, a flitting shadow of earthly care and toil
+will mingle itself with our realities.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Monday, August 15th.</i>&mdash;George Hillard and his wife arrived from Boston
+in the dusk of Saturday evening, to spend Sunday with us. It was a
+pleasant sensation, when the coach rumbled up our avenue, and wheeled
+round at the door; for I felt that I was regarded as a man with a
+household,&mdash;a man having a tangible existence and locality in the
+world,&mdash;when friends came to avail themselves of our hospitality. It was
+a sort of acknowledgment and reception of us into the corps of married
+people,&mdash;a sanction by no means essential to our peace and well-being,
+but yet agreeable enough to receive. So we welcomed them cordially at
+the door, and ushered them into our parlor, and soon into the
+supper-room.... The night flitted over us all, and passed away, and up
+rose a gray and sullen morning,... and we had a splendid breakfast of
+flapjacks, or slapjacks, and whortleberries, which I gathered on a
+neighboring hill, and perch, bream, and pout, which I hooked out of the
+river the evening before. About nine o'clock, Hillard and I set out for
+a walk to Walden Pond, calling by the way at Mr. Emerson's, to obtain
+his guidance or directions, and he accompanied us in his own illustrious
+person. We turned aside a little from our way, to visit Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, a
+yeoman, of whose homely and self-acquired wisdom Mr. Emerson has a very
+high opinion. We found him walking in his fields, a short and stalwart
+and sturdy personage of middle age, with a face of shrewd and kind
+expression, and manners of natural courtesy. He had a very free flow of
+talk, and not much diffidence about his own opinions; for, with a little
+induction from Mr. Emerson, he began to discourse about the state of the
+nation, agriculture, and business in general, uttering thoughts that had
+come to him at the plough, and which had a sort of flavor of the fresh
+earth about them. I was not impressed with any remarkable originality in
+his views; but they were sensible and characteristic, and had grown in
+the soil where we found them;... and he is certainly a man of
+intellectual and moral substance, a sturdy fact, a reality, something to
+be felt and touched, whose ideas seem to be dug out of his mind as he
+digs potatoes, beets, carrots, and turnips out of the ground.</p>
+
+<p>After leaving Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, we proceeded through wood paths to Walden Pond,
+picking blackberries of enormous size along the way. The pond itself was
+beautiful and refreshing to my soul, after such long and exclusive
+familiarity with our tawny and sluggish river. It lies embosomed among
+wooded hills,&mdash;it is not very extensive, but large enough for waves to
+dance upon its surface, and to look like a piece of blue firmament,
+earth-encircled. The shore has a narrow, pebbly strand, which it was
+worth a day's journey to look at, for the sake of the contrast between
+it and the weedy, oozy margin of the river. Farther within its depths,
+you perceive a bottom of pure white sand, sparkling through the
+transparent water, which, methought, was the very purest liquid in the
+world. After Mr. Emerson left us, Hillard and I bathed in the pond, and
+it does really seem as if my spirit, as well as corporeal person, were
+refreshed by that bath. A good deal of mud and river slime had
+accumulated on my soul;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> but these bright waters washed it all away.</p>
+
+<p>We returned home in due season for dinner.... To my misfortune, however,
+a box of Mediterranean wine proved to have undergone the acetous
+fermentation; so that the splendor of the festival suffered some
+diminution. Nevertheless, we ate our dinner with a good appetite, and
+afterwards went universally to take our several siestas. Meantime there
+came a shower, which so besprinkled the grass and shrubbery as to make
+it rather wet for our after-tea ramble. The chief result of the walk was
+the bringing home of an immense burden of the trailing clematis-vine,
+now just in blossom, and with which all our flower-stands and vases are
+this morning decorated. On our return we found Mr. and Mrs. S&mdash;&mdash;, and
+E. H&mdash;&mdash;, who shortly took their leave, and we sat up late, telling
+ghost-stories. This morning, at seven, our friends left us. We were both
+pleased with the visit, and so I think were our guests.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Monday, August 22nd.</i>&mdash;I took a walk through the woods yesterday
+afternoon, to Mr. Emerson's, with a book which Margaret Fuller had left,
+after a call on Saturday eve. I missed the nearest way, and wandered
+into a very secluded portion of the forest; for forest it might justly
+be called, so dense and sombre was the shade of oaks and pines. Once I
+wandered into a tract so overgrown with bushes and underbrush that I
+could scarcely force a passage through. Nothing is more annoying than a
+walk of this kind, where one is tormented by an innumerable host of
+petty impediments. It incenses and depresses me at the same time. Always
+when I flounder into the midst of bushes, which cross and intertwine
+themselves about my legs, and brush my face, and seize hold of my
+clothes, with their multitudinous grip,&mdash;always, in such a difficulty, I
+feel as if it were almost as well to lie down and die in rage and
+despair as to go one step farther. It is laughable, after I have got out
+of the moil, to think how miserably it affected me for the moment; but I
+had better learn patience betimes, for there are many such bushy tracts
+in this vicinity, on the margins of meadows, and my walks will often
+lead me into them. Escaping from the bushes, I soon came to an open
+space among the woods,&mdash;a very lovely spot, with the tall old trees
+standing around as quietly as if no one had intruded there throughout
+the whole summer. A company of crows were holding their Sabbath on their
+summits. Apparently they felt themselves injured or insulted by my
+presence; for, with one consent, they began to Caw! caw! caw! and,
+launching themselves sullenly on the air, took flight to some securer
+solitude. Mine, probably, was the first human shape that they had seen
+all day long,&mdash;at least, if they had been stationary in that spot; but
+perhaps they had winged their way over miles and miles of country, had
+breakfasted on the summit of Greylock, and dined at the base of
+Wachusett, and were merely come to sup and sleep among the quiet woods
+of Concord. But it was my impression at the time, that they had sat
+still and silent on the tops of the trees all through the Sabbath day,
+and I felt like one who should unawares disturb an assembly of
+worshippers. A crow, however, has no real pretensions to religion, in
+spite of his gravity of mien and black attire. Crows are certainly
+thieves, and probably infidels. Nevertheless, their voices yesterday
+were in admirable accordance with the influences of the quiet, sunny,
+warm, yet autumnal afternoon. They were so far above my head that their
+loud clamor added to the quiet of the scene, instead of disturbing it.
+There was no other sound, except the song of the cricket, which is but
+an audible stillness; for, though it be very loud and heard afar, yet
+the mind does not take note of it as a sound, so entirely does it mingle
+and lose its individuality among the other characteristics of coming
+autumn. Alas for the summer! The grass is still verdant on the hills and
+in the valleys;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> the foliage of the trees is as dense as ever, and as
+green; the flowers are abundant along the margin of the river, and in
+the hedge-rows, and deep among the woods; the days, too, are as fervid
+as they were a month ago; and yet in every breath of wind and in every
+beam of sunshine there is an autumnal influence. I know not how to
+describe it. Methinks there is a sort of coolness amid all the heat, and
+a mildness in the brightest of the sunshine. A breeze cannot stir,
+without thrilling me with the breath of autumn, and I behold its pensive
+glory in the far, golden gleams among the long shadows of the trees. The
+flowers, even the brightest of them,&mdash;the golden-rod and the gorgeous
+cardinals,&mdash;the most glorious flowers of the year,&mdash;have this gentle
+sadness amid their pomp. Pensive autumn is expressed in the glow of
+every one of them. I have felt this influence earlier in some years than
+in others. Sometimes autumn may be perceived even in the early days of
+July. There is no other feeling like that caused by this faint,
+doubtful, yet real perception, or rather prophecy, of the year's decay,
+so deliciously sweet and sad at the same time.</p>
+
+<p>After leaving the book at Mr. Emerson's I returned through the woods,
+and, entering Sleepy Hollow, I perceived a lady reclining near the path
+which bends along its verge. It was Margaret herself. She had been there
+the whole afternoon, meditating or reading; for she had a book in her
+hand, with some strange title, which I did not understand, and have
+forgotten. She said that nobody had broken her solitude, and was just
+giving utterance to a theory that no inhabitant of Concord ever visited
+Sleepy Hollow, when we saw a group of people entering the sacred
+precincts. Most of them followed a path which led them away from us; but
+an old man passed near us, and smiled to see Margaret reclining on the
+ground, and me sitting by her side. He made some remark about the beauty
+of the afternoon, and withdrew himself into the shadow of the wood. Then
+we talked about autumn, and about the pleasures of being lost in the
+woods, and about the crows, whose voices Margaret had heard; and about
+the experiences of early childhood, whose influence remains upon the
+character after the recollection of them has passed away; and about the
+sight of mountains from a distance, and the view from their summits; and
+about other matters of high and low philosophy. In the midst of our
+talk, we heard footsteps above us, on the high bank; and while the
+person was still hidden among the trees, he called to Margaret, of whom
+he had gotten a glimpse. Then he emerged from the green shade, and,
+behold! it was Mr. Emerson. He appeared to have had a pleasant time; for
+he said that there were Muses in the woods to-day, and whispers to be
+heard in the breezes. It being now nearly six o'clock, we
+separated,&mdash;Margaret and Mr. Emerson towards his home, and I towards
+mine....</p>
+
+<p>Last evening there was the most beautiful moonlight that ever hallowed
+this earthly world; and when I went to bathe in the river, which was as
+calm as death, it seemed like plunging down into the sky. But I had
+rather be on earth than even in the seventh heaven, just now.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Wednesday, August 24th.</i>&mdash;I left home at five o'clock this morning to
+catch some fish for breakfast. I shook our summer apple-tree, and ate
+the golden apple which fell from it. Methinks these early apples, which
+come as a golden promise before the treasures of autumnal fruit, are
+almost more delicious than anything that comes afterwards. We have but
+one such tree in our orchard; but it supplies us with a daily abundance,
+and probably will do so for at least a week to come. Meantime other
+trees begin to cast their ripening windfalls upon the grass; and when I
+taste them, and perceive their mellowed flavor and blackening seeds, I
+feel somewhat overwhelmed with the impending bounties of Providence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> I
+suppose Adam, in Paradise, did not like to see his fruits decaying on
+the ground, after he had watched them through the sunny days of the
+world's first summer. However, insects, at the worst, will hold a
+festival upon them, so that they will not be thrown away, in the great
+scheme of Nature. Moreover, I have one advantage over the primeval Adam,
+inasmuch as there is a chance of disposing of my superfluous fruits
+among people who inhabit no Paradise of their own.</p>
+
+<p>Passing a little way down along the river-side, I threw in my line, and
+soon drew out one of the smallest possible of fishes. It seemed to be a
+pretty good morning for the angler,&mdash;an autumnal coolness in the air, a
+clear sky, but with a fog across the lowlands and on the surface of the
+river, which a gentle breeze sometimes condensed into wreaths. At first
+I could barely discern the opposite shore of the river; but, as the sun
+arose, the vapors gradually dispersed, till only a warm, smoky tint was
+left along the water's surface. The farm-houses across the river made
+their appearance out of the dusky cloud; the voices of boys were heard,
+shouting to the cattle as they drove them to the pastures; a man whetted
+his scythe, and set to work in a neighboring meadow. Meantime, I
+continued to stand on the oozy margin of the stream, beguiling the
+little fish; and though the scaly inhabitants of our river partake
+somewhat of the character of their native element, and are but sluggish
+biters, still I contrived to pull out not far from two dozen. They were
+all bream, a broad, flat, almost circular fish, shaped a good deal like
+a flounder, but swimming on their edges, instead of on their sides. As
+far as mere pleasure is concerned, it is hardly worth while to fish in
+our river, it is so much like angling in a mud-puddle; and one does not
+attach the idea of freshness and purity to the fishes, as we do to those
+which inhabit swift, transparent streams, or haunt the shores of the
+great briny deep. Standing on the weedy margin, and throwing the line
+over the elder-bushes that dip into the water, it seems as if we could
+catch nothing but frogs and mud-turtles, or reptiles akin to them. And
+even when a fish of reputable aspect is drawn out, one feels a shyness
+about touching him. As to our river, its character was admirably
+expressed last night by some one who said "it was too lazy to keep
+itself clean." I might write pages and pages, and only obscure the
+impression which this brief sentence conveys. Nevertheless, we made bold
+to eat some of my fish for breakfast, and found them very savory; and
+the rest shall meet with due entertainment at dinner, together with some
+shell-beans, green corn, and cucumbers from our garden; so this day's
+food comes directly and entirely from beneficent Nature, without the
+intervention of any third person between her and us.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Saturday, August 27th.</i>&mdash;A peach-tree, which grows beside our house and
+brushes against the window, is so burdened with fruit that I have had to
+prop it up. I never saw more splendid peaches in appearance,&mdash;great,
+round, crimson-cheeked beauties, clustering all over the tree. A
+pear-tree, likewise, is maturing a generous burden of small, sweet
+fruit, which will require to be eaten at about the same time as the
+peaches. There is something pleasantly annoying in this superfluous
+abundance; it is like standing under a tree of ripe apples, and giving
+it a shake, with the intention of bringing down a single one, when,
+behold, a dozen come thumping about our ears. But the idea of the
+infinite generosity and exhaustless bounty of our Mother Nature is well
+worth attaining; and I never had it so vividly as now, when I find
+myself, with the few mouths which I am to feed, the sole inheritor of
+the old clergyman's wealth of fruits. His children, his friends in the
+village, and the clerical guests who came to preach in his pulpit, were
+all wont to eat and be filled from these trees. Now, all these hearty
+old people have passed away, and in their stead is a solitary pair,
+whose appetites<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> are more than satisfied with the windfalls which the
+trees throw down at their feet. Howbeit, we shall have now and then a
+guest to keep our peaches and pears from decaying.</p>
+
+<p>G&mdash;&mdash; B&mdash;&mdash;, my old fellow-laborer at the community at Brook Farm,
+called on me last evening, and dined here to-day. He has been
+cultivating vegetables at Plymouth this summer, and selling them in the
+market. What a singular mode of life for a man of education and
+refinement,&mdash;to spend his days in hard and earnest bodily toil, and then
+to convey the products of his labor, in a wheelbarrow, to the public
+market, and there retail them out,&mdash;a peck of peas or beans, a bunch of
+turnips, a squash, a dozen ears of green corn! Few men, without some
+eccentricity of character, would have the moral strength to do this; and
+it is very striking to find such strength combined with the utmost
+gentleness, and an uncommon regularity of nature. Occasionally he
+returns for a day or two to resume his place among scholars and idle
+people, as, for instance, the present week, when he has thrown aside his
+spade and hoe to attend the Commencement at Cambridge. He is a rare
+man,&mdash;a perfect original, yet without any one salient point; a character
+to be felt and understood, but almost impossible to describe: for,
+should you seize upon any characteristic, it would inevitably be altered
+and distorted in the process of writing it down.</p>
+
+<p>Our few remaining days of summer have been latterly grievously darkened
+with clouds. To-day there has been an hour or two of hot sunshine; but
+the sun rose amid cloud and mist, and before he could dry up the
+moisture of last night's shower upon the trees and grass, the clouds
+have gathered between him and us again. This afternoon the thunder
+rumbles in the distance, and I believe a few drops of rain have fallen;
+but the weight of the shower has burst elsewhere, leaving us nothing but
+its sullen gloom. There is a muggy warmth in the atmosphere, which takes
+all the spring and vivacity out of the mind and body.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Sunday, August 28th.</i>&mdash;Still another rainy day,&mdash;the heaviest rain, I
+believe, that has fallen since we came to Concord (not two months ago).
+There never was a more sombre aspect of all external nature. I gaze from
+the open window of my study, somewhat disconsolately, and observe the
+great willow-tree which shades the house, and which has caught and
+retained a whole cataract of rain among its leaves and boughs; and all
+the fruit-trees, too, are dripping continually, even in the brief
+intervals when the clouds give us a respite. If shaken to bring down the
+fruit, they will discharge a shower upon the head of him who stands
+beneath. The rain is warm, coming from some southern region; but the
+willow attests that it is an autumnal spell of weather, by scattering
+down no infrequent multitude of yellow leaves, which rest upon the
+sloping roof of the house, and strew the gravel-path and the grass. The
+other trees do not yet shed their leaves, though in some of them a
+lighter tint of verdure, tending towards yellow, is perceptible. All day
+long we hear the water drip, drip, dripping, splash, splash, splashing,
+from the eaves, and babbling and foaming into the tubs which have been
+set out to receive it. The old unpainted shingles and boards of the
+mansion and out-houses are black with the moisture which they have
+imbibed. Looking at the river, we perceive that its usually smooth and
+mirrored surface is blurred by the infinity of rain-drops; the whole
+landscape&mdash;grass, trees, and houses&mdash;has a completely water-soaked
+aspect, as if the earth were wet through. The wooded hill, about a mile
+distant, whither we went to gather whortleberries, has a mist upon its
+summit, as if the demon of the rain were enthroned there; and if we look
+to the sky, it seems as if all the water that had been poured down upon
+us were as nothing to what is to come. Once in a while, indeed, there is
+a gleam of sky along the horizon, or a half-cheerful, half-sullen
+lighting up of the atmosphere; the rain-drops cease to patter down,
+except when the trees shake off a gentle shower;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> but soon we hear the
+broad, quiet, slow, and sure recommencement of the rain. The river, if I
+mistake not, has risen considerably during the day, and its current will
+acquire some degree of energy.</p>
+
+<p>In this sombre weather, when some mortals almost forget that there ever
+was any golden sunshine, or ever will be any hereafter, others seem
+absolutely to radiate it from their own hearts and minds. The gloom
+cannot pervade them; they conquer it, and drive it quite out of their
+sphere, and create a moral rainbow of hope upon the blackest cloud. As
+for myself, I am little other than a cloud at such seasons, but such
+persons contrive to make me a sunny one, shining all through me. And
+thus, even without the support of a stated occupation, I survive these
+sullen days and am happy.</p>
+
+<p>This morning we read the Sermon on the Mount. In the course of the
+forenoon, the rain abated for a season, and I went out and gathered some
+corn and summer-squashes, and picked up the windfalls of apples and
+pears and peaches. Wet, wet, wet,&mdash;everything was wet; the blades of the
+corn-stalks moistened me; the wet grass soaked my boots quite through;
+the trees threw their reserved showers upon my head; and soon the
+remorseless rain began anew, and drove me into the house. When shall we
+be able to walk again to the far hills, and plunge into the deep woods,
+and gather more cardinals along the river's margin? The track along
+which we trod is probably under water now. How inhospitable Nature is
+during a rain! In the fervid heat of sunny days, she still retains some
+degree of mercy for us; she has shady spots, whither the sun cannot
+come; but she provides no shelter against her storms. It makes one
+shiver to think how dripping with wet are those deep, umbrageous nooks,
+those overshadowed banks, where we find such enjoyment during sultry
+afternoons. And what becomes of the birds in such a soaking rain as
+this? Is hope and an instinctive faith so mixed up with their nature,
+that they can be cheered by the thought that the sunshine will return?
+or do they think, as I almost do, that there is to be no sunshine any
+more? Very disconsolate must they be among the dripping leaves; and when
+a single summer makes so important a portion of their lives, it seems
+hard that so much of it should be dissolved in rain. I, likewise, am
+greedy of the summer-days for my own sake: the life of man does not
+contain so many of them that one can be spared without regret.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Tuesday, August 30th.</i>&mdash;I was promised, in the midst of Sunday's rain,
+that Monday should be fair, and, behold! the sun came back to us, and
+brought one of the most perfect days ever made since Adam was driven out
+of Paradise. By the by, was there ever any rain in Paradise? If so, how
+comfortless must Eve's bower have been! It makes me shiver to think of
+it. Well, it seemed as if the world was newly created yesterday morning,
+and I beheld its birth; for I had risen before the sun was over the
+hill, and had gone forth to fish. How instantaneously did all dreariness
+and heaviness of the earth's spirit flit away before one smile of the
+beneficent sun! This proves that all gloom is but a dream and a shadow,
+and that cheerfulness is the real truth. It requires many clouds, long
+brooding over us, to make us sad, but one gleam of sunshine always
+suffices to cheer up the landscape. The banks of the river actually
+laughed when the sunshine fell upon them; and the river itself was alive
+and cheerful, and, by way of fun and amusement, it had swept away many
+wreaths of meadow-hay, and old, rotten branches of trees, and all such
+trumpery. These matters came floating downwards, whirling round and
+round in the eddies, or hastening onward in the main current; and many
+of them, before this time, have probably been carried into the
+Merrimack, and will be borne onward to the sea. The spots where I stood
+to fish, on my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> preceding excursion, were now under water; and the tops
+of many of the bushes, along the river's margin, barely emerged from the
+stream. Large spaces of meadow are overflowed.</p>
+
+<p>There was a northwest wind throughout the day; and as many clouds, the
+remnants of departed gloom, were scattered about the sky, the breeze was
+continually blowing them across the sun. For the most part, they were
+gone again in a moment; but sometimes the shadow remained long enough to
+make me dread a return of sulky weather. Then would come the burst of
+sunshine, making me feel as if a rainy day were henceforth an
+impossibility....</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon Mr. Emerson called, bringing Mr. &mdash;&mdash;. He is a good
+sort of humdrum parson enough, and well fitted to increase the stock of
+manuscript sermons, of which there must be a fearful quantity already in
+the world. Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, however, is probably one of the best and most
+useful of his class, because no suspicion of the necessity of his
+profession, constituted as it now is, to mankind, and of his own
+usefulness and success in it, has hitherto disturbed him; and therefore
+he labors with faith and confidence, as ministers did a hundred years
+ago.</p>
+
+<p>After the visitors were gone, I sat at the gallery window, looking down
+the avenue, and soon there appeared an elderly woman,&mdash;a homely, decent
+old matron, dressed in a dark gown, and with what seemed a manuscript
+book under her arm. The wind sported with her gown, and blew her veil
+across her face, and seemed to make game of her, though on a nearer view
+she looked like a sad old creature, with a pale, thin countenance, and
+somewhat of a wild and wandering expression. She had a singular gait,
+reeling, as it were, and yet not quite reeling, from one side of the
+path to the other; going onward as if it were not much matter whether
+she went straight or crooked. Such were my observations as she
+approached through the scattered sunshine and shade of our long avenue,
+until, reaching the door, she gave a knock, and inquired for the lady of
+the house. Her manuscript contained a certificate, stating that the old
+woman was a widow from a foreign land, who had recently lost her son,
+and was now utterly destitute of friends and kindred, and without means
+of support. Appended to the certificate there was a list of names of
+people who had bestowed charity on her, with the amounts of their
+several donations,&mdash;none, as I recollect, higher than twenty-five cents.
+Here is a strange life, and a character fit for romance and poetry. All
+the early part of her life, I suppose, and much of her widowhood were
+spent in the quiet of a home, with kinsfolk around her, and children,
+and the life-long gossiping acquaintances that some women always create
+about them. But in her decline she has wandered away from all these, and
+from her native country itself, and is a vagrant, yet with something of
+the homeliness and decency of aspect belonging to one who has been a
+wife and mother, and has had a roof of her own above her head,&mdash;and,
+with all this, a wildness proper to her present life. I have a liking
+for vagrants of all sorts, and never, that I know of, refused my mite to
+a wandering beggar, when I had anything in my own pocket. There is so
+much wretchedness in the world, that we may safely take the word of any
+mortal professing to need our assistance; and even should we be
+deceived, still the good to ourselves resulting from a kind act is worth
+more than the trifle by which we purchase it. It is desirable, I think,
+that such persons should be permitted to roam through our land of
+plenty, scattering the seeds of tenderness and charity, as birds of
+passage bear the seeds of precious plants from land to land, without
+even dreaming of the office which they perform.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</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>VIII.</h3>
+
+<h4>HOW SHALL WE ENTERTAIN OUR COMPANY?</h4>
+
+<p>"The fact is," said Marianne, "we must have a party. Bob don't like to
+hear of it, but it must come. We are in debt to everybody: we have been
+invited everywhere, and never had anything like a party since we were
+married, and it won't do."</p>
+
+<p>"For my part, I hate parties," said Bob. "They put your house all out of
+order, give all the women a sick-headache, and all the men an
+indigestion; you never see anybody to any purpose; the girls look
+bewitched, and the women answer you at cross-purposes, and call you by
+the name of your next-door neighbor, in their agitation of mind. We stay
+out beyond our usual bedtime, come home and find some baby crying, or
+child who has been sitting up till nobody knows when; and the next
+morning, when I must be at my office by eight, and wife must attend to
+her children, we are sleepy and headachy. I protest against making
+overtures to entrap some hundred of my respectable married friends into
+this snare which has so often entangled me. If I had my way, I would
+never go to another party; and as to giving one&mdash;I suppose, since my
+empress has declared her intentions, that I shall be brought into doing
+it; but it shall be under protest."</p>
+
+<p>"But, you see, we must keep up society," said Marianne.</p>
+
+<p>"But I insist on it," said Bob, "it isn't keeping up society. What
+earthly thing do you learn about people by meeting them in a general
+crush, where all are coming, going, laughing, talking, and looking at
+each other? No person of common sense ever puts forth any idea he cares
+twopence about, under such circumstances; all that is exchanged is a
+certain set of common-places and platitudes which people keep for
+parties, just as they do their kid gloves and finery. Now there are our
+neighbors, the Browns. When they drop in of an evening, she knitting,
+and he with the last article in the paper, she really comes out with a
+great deal of fresh, lively, earnest, original talk. We have a good
+time, and I like her so much that it quite verges on loving; but see her
+in a party, when she manifests herself over five or six flounces of pink
+silk and a perfect egg-froth of tulle, her head adorned with a thicket
+of craped hair and roses, and it is plain at first view that <i>talking</i>
+with her is quite out of the question. What has been done to her head on
+the outside has evidently had some effect within, for she is no longer
+the Mrs. Brown you knew in her every-day dress, but Mrs. Brown in a
+party state of mind, and too distracted to think of anything in
+particular. She has a few words that she answers to everything you say,
+as, for example, 'O, very!' 'Certainly!' 'How extraordinary!' 'So happy
+to,' &amp;c. The fact is, that she has come into a state in which any real
+communication with her mind and character must be suspended till the
+party is over and she is rested. Now I like society, which is the reason
+why I hate parties."</p>
+
+<p>"But you see," said Marianne, "what are we to do? Everybody can't drop
+in to spend an evening with you. If it were not for these parties, there
+are quantities of your acquaintances whom you would never meet."</p>
+
+<p>"And of what use is it to meet them? Do you really know them any better
+for meeting them, got up in unusual dresses, and sitting down together
+when the only thing exchanged is the remark that it is hot or cold, or
+it rains, or it is dry, or any other patent surface-fact that answers
+the purpose of making believe you are talking when neither of you is
+saying a word?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, for my part," said Marianne, "I confess I <i>like</i> parties:
+they amuse me. I come home feeling kinder and better to people, just for
+the little I see of them when they are all dressed up and in good humor
+with themselves. To be sure we don't say anything very profound,&mdash;I
+don't think the most of us have anything very profound to say; but I ask
+Mrs. Brown where she buys her lace, and she tells me how she washes it,
+and somebody else tells me about her baby, and promises me a new
+sack-pattern. Then I like to see the pretty, nice young girls flirting
+with the nice young men; and I like to be dressed up a little myself,
+even if my finery is all old and many times made over. It does me good
+to be rubbed up and brightened."</p>
+
+<p>"Like old silver," said Bob.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, like old silver, precisely; and even if I do come home tired, it
+does my mind good to have that change of scene and faces. You men do not
+know what it is to be tied to house and nursery all day, and what a
+perfect weariness and lassitude it often brings on us women. For my
+part, I think parties are a beneficial institution of society, and that
+it is worth a good deal of fatigue and trouble to get one up."</p>
+
+<p>"Then there's the expense," said Bob. "What earthly need is there of a
+grand regale of oysters, chicken-salad, ice-creams, coffee, and
+champagne, between eleven and twelve o'clock at night, when no one of us
+would ever think of wanting or taking any such articles upon our
+stomachs in our own homes? If we were all of us in the habit of having a
+regular repast at that hour, it might be well enough to enjoy one with
+our neighbor; but the party fare is generally just so much in addition
+to the honest three meals which we have eaten during the day. Now, to
+spend from fifty to one, two, or three hundred dollars in giving all our
+friends an indigestion from a midnight meal, seems to me a very poor
+investment. Yet if we once begin to give the party, we must have
+everything that is given at the other parties, or wherefore do we live?
+And caterers and waiters rack their brains to devise new forms of
+expense and extravagance; and when the bill comes in, one is sure to
+feel that one is paying a great deal of money for a great deal of
+nonsense. It is, in fact, worse than nonsense, because our dear friends
+are in half the cases, not only no better, but a great deal worse, for
+what they have eaten."</p>
+
+<p>"But there is this advantage to society," said Rudolph,&mdash;"it helps us
+young physicians. What would the physicians do if parties were
+abolished? Take all the colds that are caught by our fair friends with
+low necks and short sleeves, all the troubles from dancing in tight
+dresses and inhaling bad air, and all the headaches and indigestions
+from the <i>m&eacute;lange</i> of lobster-salad, two or three kinds of ice-cream,
+cake, and coffee on delicate stomachs, and our profession gets a degree
+of encouragement that is worthy to be thought of."</p>
+
+<p>"But the question arises," said my wife, "whether there are not ways of
+promoting social feeling less expensive, more simple and natural and
+rational. I am inclined to think that there are."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Theophilus Thoro; "for large parties are not, as a general
+thing, given with any wish or intention of really improving our
+acquaintance with our neighbors. In many cases they are openly and
+avowedly a general tribute paid at intervals to society, for and in
+consideration of which you are to sit with closed blinds and doors and
+be let alone for the rest of the year. Mrs. Bogus, for instance, lives
+to keep her house in order, her closets locked, her silver counted and
+in the safe, and her china-closet in undisturbed order. Her 'best
+things' are put away with such admirable precision, in so many wrappings
+and foldings, and secured with so many a twist and twine, that to get
+them out is one of the seven labors of Hercules, not to be lightly or
+unadvisedly taken in hand, but reverently, discreetly, and once for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+all, in an annual or biennial party. Then says Mrs. Bogus, 'For Heaven's
+sake, let's have every creature we can think of, and have 'em all over
+with at once. For pity's sake, let's have no driblets left that we shall
+have to be inviting to dinner or to tea. No matter whether they can come
+or not,&mdash;only send them the invitation, and our part is done; and, thank
+Heaven! we shall be free for a year.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said my wife; "a great stand-up party bears just the same
+relation towards the offer of real hospitality and good-will as Miss
+Sally Brass's offer of meat to the little hungry Marchioness, when, with
+a bit uplifted on the end of a fork, she addressed her, 'Will you have
+this piece of meat? No? Well, then, remember and don't say you haven't
+had meat <i>offered</i> to you!' You are invited to a general jam, at the
+risk of your life and health; and if you refuse, don't say you haven't
+had hospitality offered to you. All our debts are wiped out and our
+slate clean; now we will have our own closed doors, no company and no
+trouble, and our best china shall repose undisturbed on its shelves.
+Mrs. Bogus says she never could exist in the way that Mrs. Easygo does,
+with a constant drip of company,&mdash;two or three to breakfast one day,
+half a dozen to dinner the next, and little evening gatherings once or
+twice a week. It must keep her house in confusion all the time; yet, for
+real social feeling, real exchange of thought and opinion, there is more
+of it in one half-hour at Mrs. Easygo's than in a dozen of Mrs. Bogus's
+great parties.</p>
+
+<p>"The fact is, that Mrs. Easygo really does like the society of human
+beings. She is genuinely and heartily social; and, in consequence,
+though she has very limited means, and no money to spend in giving great
+entertainments, her domestic establishment is a sort of social exchange,
+where more friendships are formed, more real acquaintance made, and more
+agreeable hours spent, than in any other place that can be named. She
+never has large parties,&mdash;great general pay-days of social debts,&mdash;but
+small, well-chosen circles of people, selected so thoughtfully, with a
+view to the pleasure which congenial persons give each other, as to make
+the invitation an act of real personal kindness. She always manages to
+have something for the entertainment of her friends, so that they are
+not reduced to the simple alternatives of gaping at each other's dresses
+and eating lobster-salad and ice-cream. There is either some choice
+music, or a reading of fine poetry, or a well-acted charade, or a
+portfolio of photographs and pictures, to enliven the hour and start
+conversation; and as the people are skilfully chosen with reference to
+each other, as there is no hurry or heat or confusion, conversation, in
+its best sense, can bubble up, fresh, genuine, clear, and sparkling as a
+woodland spring, and one goes away really rested and refreshed. The
+slight entertainment provided is just enough to enable you to eat salt
+together in Arab fashion,&mdash;not enough to form the leading feature of the
+evening. A cup of tea and a basket of cake, or a salver of ices,
+silently passed at quiet intervals, do not interrupt conversation or
+overload the stomach."</p>
+
+<p>"The fact is," said I, "that the art of society among us Anglo-Saxons is
+yet in its ruder stages. We are not, as a race, social and confiding,
+like the French and Italians and Germans. We have a word for home, and
+our home is often a moated grange, an island, a castle with its
+drawbridge up, cutting us off from all but our own home-circle. In
+France and Germany and Italy there are the boulevards and public
+gardens, where people do their family living in common. Mr. A is
+breakfasting under one tree, with wife and children around, and Mr. B is
+breakfasting under another tree, hard by; and messages, nods, and smiles
+pass backward and forward. Families see each other daily in these public
+resorts, and exchange mutual offices of good-will. Perhaps from these
+customs of society come that na&iuml;ve simplicity and <i>abandon</i> which one
+remarks<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> in the Continental, in opposition to the Anglo-Saxon, habits of
+conversation. A Frenchman or an Italian will talk to you of his feelings
+and plans and prospects with an unreserve that is perfectly
+unaccountable to you, who have always felt that such things must be kept
+for the very innermost circle of home privacy. But the Frenchman or
+Italian has from a child been brought up to pass his family life in
+places of public resort, in constant contact and intercommunion with
+other families; and the social and conversational instinct has thus been
+daily strengthened. Hence the reunions of these people have been
+characterized by a sprightliness and vigor and spirit that the
+Anglo-Saxon has in vain attempted to seize and reproduce. English and
+American <i>conversazioni</i> have very generally proved a failure, from the
+rooted, frozen habit of reticence and reserve which grows with our
+growth and strengthens with our strength. The fact is, that the
+Anglo-Saxon race as a race does not enjoy talking, and, except in rare
+instances, does not talk well. A daily convocation of people, without
+refreshments or any extraneous object but the simple pleasure of seeing
+and talking with each other, is a thing that can scarcely be understood
+in English or American society. Social entertainment presupposes in the
+Anglo-Saxon mind <i>something to eat</i>, and not only something, but a great
+deal. Enormous dinners or great suppers constitute the entertainment.
+Nobody seems to have formed the idea that the talking&mdash;the simple
+exchange of the social feelings&mdash;<i>is</i>, of itself, the entertainment, and
+that <i>being together</i> is the pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame Recamier for years had a circle of friends who met every
+afternoon in her <i>salon</i>, from four to six o'clock, for the simple and
+sole pleasure of talking with each other. The very first wits and men of
+letters and statesmen and <i>savans</i> were enrolled in it, and each brought
+to the entertainment some choice <i>morceau</i> which he had laid aside from
+his own particular field to add to the feast. The daily intimacy gave
+each one such perfect insight into all the others' habits of thought,
+tastes, and preferences, that the conversation was like the celebrated
+music of the <i>Conservatoire</i> in Paris, a concert of perfectly chorded
+instruments taught by long habit of harmonious intercourse to keep exact
+time and tune together.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Real</i> conversation presupposes intimate acquaintance. People must see
+each other often enough to wear off the rough bark and outside rind of
+common-places and conventionalities in which their real ideas are
+enwrapped, and give forth without reserve their innermost and best
+feelings. Now what is called a large party is the first and rudest form
+of social intercourse. The most we can say of it is, that it is better
+than nothing. Men and women are crowded together like cattle in a pen.
+They look at each other, they jostle each other, exchange a few common
+bleatings, and eat together; and so the performance terminates. One may
+be crushed evening after evening against men or women, and learn very
+little about them. You may decide that a lady is good-tempered, when any
+amount of trampling on the skirt of her new silk dress brings no cloud
+to her brow. But <i>is</i> it good temper, or only wanton carelessness, which
+cares nothing for waste? You can see that a man is not a gentleman who
+squares his back to ladies at the supper-table, and devours boned turkey
+and <i>pat&eacute; de fois gras</i>, while they vainly reach over and around him for
+something, and that another is a gentleman so far as to prefer the care
+of his weaker neighbors to the immediate indulgence of his own
+appetites; but further than this you learn little. Sometimes, it is
+true, in some secluded corner, two people of fine nervous system,
+undisturbed by the general confusion, may have a sociable half-hour, and
+really part feeling that they like each other better, and know more of
+each other than before. Yet these general gatherings have, after all,
+their value. They are not so good as something better would be,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> but
+they cannot be wholly dispensed with. It is far better that Mrs. Bogus
+should give an annual party, when she takes down all her bedsteads and
+throws open her whole house, than that she should never see her friends
+and neighbors inside her doors at all. She may feel that she has neither
+the taste nor the talent for constant small reunions. Such things, she
+may feel, require a social tact which she has not. She would be utterly
+at a loss how to conduct them. Each one would cost her as much anxiety
+and thought as her annual gathering, and prove a failure after all;
+whereas the annual demonstration can be put wholly into the hands of the
+caterer, who comes in force, with flowers, silver, china, servants, and,
+taking the house into his own hands, gives her entertainment for her,
+leaving to her no responsibility but the payment of the bills; and if
+Mr. Bogus does not quarrel with them, we know no reason why any one else
+should; and I think Mrs. Bogus merits well of the republic, for doing
+what she can do towards the hospitalities of the season. I'm sure I
+never cursed her in my heart, even when her strong coffee has held mine
+eyes open till morning, and her superlative lobster-salads have given me
+the very darkest views of human life that ever dyspepsia and east wind
+could engender. Mrs. Bogus is the Eve who offers the apple; but, after
+all, I am the foolish Adam who take and eat what I know is going to hurt
+me, and I am too gallant to visit my sins on the head of my too obliging
+tempter. In country places in particular, where little is going on and
+life is apt to stagnate, a good, large, generous party, which brings the
+whole neighborhood into one house to have a jolly time, to eat, drink,
+and be merry, is really quite a work of love and mercy. People see one
+another in their best clothes, and that is something; the elders
+exchange all manner of simple pleasantries and civilities, and talk over
+their domestic affairs, while the young people flirt, in that wholesome
+manner which is one of the safest of youthful follies. A country party,
+in fact, may be set down as a work of benevolence, and the money
+expended thereon fairly charged to the account of the great cause of
+peace and good-will on earth."</p>
+
+<p>"But don't you think," said my wife, "that, if the charge of providing
+the entertainment were less laborious, these gatherings could be more
+frequent? You see, if a woman feels that she must have five kinds of
+cake, and six kinds of preserves, and even ice-cream and jellies in a
+region where no confectioner comes in to abbreviate her labors, she will
+sit with closed doors, and do nothing towards the general exchange of
+life, because she cannot do as much as Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Parsons. If
+the idea of meeting together had some other focal point than eating, I
+think there would be more social feeling. It might be a musical reunion,
+where the various young people of a circle agreed to furnish each a song
+or an instrumental performance. It might be an impromptu charade party,
+bringing out something of that taste in arrangement of costume, and
+capacity for dramatic effect, of which there is more latent in society
+than we think. It might be the reading of articles in prose and poetry
+furnished to a common paper or portfolio, which would awaken an
+abundance of interest and speculation on the authorship, or it might be
+dramatic readings and recitations. Any or all of these pastimes might
+make an evening so entertaining that a simple cup of tea and a plate of
+cake or biscuit would be all the refreshment needed."</p>
+
+<p>"We may with advantage steal a leaf now and then from some foreign
+book," said I. "In France and Italy, families have their peculiar days
+set apart for the reception of friends at their own houses. The whole
+house is put upon a footing of hospitality and invitation, and the whole
+mind is given to receiving the various friends. In the evening the
+<i>salon</i> is filled. The guests, coming from week to week, for years,
+become in time friends; the resort has the charm of a home circle; there
+are certain faces that you are always sure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> to meet there. A lady once
+said to me of a certain gentleman and lady whom she missed from her
+circle, 'They have been at our house every Wednesday evening for twenty
+years.' It seems to me that this frequency of meeting is the great
+secret of agreeable society. One sees, in our American life, abundance
+of people who are everything that is charming and cultivated, but one
+never sees enough of them. One meets them at some quiet reunion, passes
+a delightful hour, thinks how charming they are, and wishes one could
+see more of them. But the pleasant meeting is like the encounter of two
+ships in mid-ocean: away we sail, each on his respective course, to see
+each other no more till the pleasant remembrance has died away. Yet were
+there some quiet, home-like resort where we might turn in to renew from
+time to time the pleasant intercourse, to continue the last
+conversation, and to compare anew our readings and our experiences, the
+pleasant hour of liking would ripen into a warm friendship.</p>
+
+<p>"But in order that this may be made possible and practicable, the utmost
+simplicity of entertainment must prevail. In a French <i>salon</i>, all is,
+to the last degree, informal. The <i>bouilloire</i>, the French teakettle, is
+often tended by one of the gentlemen, who aids his fair neighbors in the
+mysteries of tea-making. One nymph is always to be found at the table
+dispensing tea and talk; and a basket of simple biscuit and cakes,
+offered by another, is all the further repast. The teacups and
+cake-basket are a real addition to the scene, because they cause a
+little lively social bustle, a little chatter and motion,&mdash;always of
+advantage in breaking up stiffness, and giving occasion for those
+graceful, airy nothings that answer so good a purpose in facilitating
+acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing can be more charming than the description which Edmond About
+gives, in his novel of 'Tolla,' of the reception evenings of an old
+noble Roman family,&mdash;the spirit of repose and quietude through all the
+apartments,&mdash;the ease of coming and going,&mdash;the perfect homelike spirit
+in which the guests settle themselves to any employment of the hour that
+best suits them,&mdash;some to lively chat, some to dreamy, silent lounging,
+some to a game, others, in a distant apartment, to music, and others
+still to a promenade along the terraces.</p>
+
+<p>"One is often in a state of mind and nerves which indisposes for the
+effort of active conversation; one wishes to rest, to observe, to be
+amused without an effort; and a mansion which opens wide its hospitable
+arms, and offers itself to you as a sort of home, where you may rest,
+and do just as the humor suits you, is a perfect godsend at such times.
+You are at home there, your ways are understood, you can do as you
+please,&mdash;come early or late, be brilliant or dull,&mdash;you are always
+welcome. If you can do nothing for the social whole to-night, it matters
+not. There are many more nights to come in the future, and you are
+entertained on trust, without a challenge.</p>
+
+<p>"I have one friend,&mdash;a man of genius, subject to the ebbs and flows of
+animal spirits which attend that organization. Of general society he has
+a nervous horror. A regular dinner or evening party is to him a terror,
+an impossibility; but there is a quiet parlor where stands a much-worn
+old sofa, and it is his delight to enter without knocking, and be found
+lying with half-shut eyes on this friendly couch, while the family life
+goes on around him without a question. Nobody is to mind him, to tease
+him with inquiries or salutations. If he will, he breaks into the stream
+of conversation, and sometimes, rousing up from one of these dreamy
+trances, finds himself, ere he or they know how, in the mood for free
+and friendly talk. People often wonder, 'How do you catch So-and-so? He
+is so shy! I have invited and invited, and he never comes.' We never
+invite, and he comes. We take no note of his coming or his going; we do
+not startle his entrance with acclamation, nor clog his departure with
+expostulation; it is fully understood that with us he shall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> do just as
+he chooses; and so he chooses to do much that we like.</p>
+
+<p>"The sum of this whole doctrine of society is, that we are to try the
+value of all modes and forms of social entertainment by their effect in
+producing real acquaintance and real friendship and good-will. The first
+and rudest form of seeking this is by a great promiscuous party, which
+simply effects this,&mdash;that people at least see each other on the
+outside, and eat together. Next come all those various forms of reunion
+in which the entertainment consists of something higher than staring and
+eating,&mdash;some exercise of the faculties of the guests in music, acting,
+recitation, reading, etc.; and these are a great advance, because they
+show people what is in them, and thus lay a foundation for a more
+intelligent appreciation and acquaintance. These are the best substitute
+for the expense, show, and trouble of large parties. They are in their
+nature more refining and intellectual. It is astonishing, when people
+really put together, in some one club or association, all the different
+talents for pleasing possessed by different persons, how clever a circle
+may be gathered&mdash;in the least promising neighborhood. A club of ladies
+in one of our cities has had quite a brilliant success. It is held every
+fortnight at the house of the members, according to alphabetical
+sequence. The lady who receives has charge of arranging what the
+entertainment shall be,&mdash;whether charade, tableau, reading, recitation,
+or music; and the interest is much increased by the individual taste
+shown in the choice of the diversion and the variety which thence
+follows.</p>
+
+<p>"In the summer time, in the country, open-air reunions are charming
+forms of social entertainment. Croquet parties, which bring young people
+together by daylight for a healthy exercise, and end with a moderate
+share of the evening, are a very desirable amusement. What are called
+'lawn teas' are finding great favor in England and some parts of our
+country. They are simply an early tea enjoyed in a sort of picnic style
+in the grounds about the house. Such an entertainment enables one to
+receive a great many at a time, without crowding, and, being in its very
+idea rustic and informal, can be arranged with very little expense or
+trouble. With the addition of lanterns in the trees and a little music,
+this entertainment may be carried on far into the evening with a very
+pretty effect.</p>
+
+<p>"As to dancing, I have this much to say of it. Either our houses must be
+all built over and made larger, or female crinolines must be made
+smaller, or dancing must continue as it now is, the most absurd and
+ungraceful of all attempts at amusement. The effort to execute round
+dances in the limits of modern houses, in the prevailing style of dress,
+can only lead to developments more startling than agreeable. Dancing in
+the open air, on the shaven green of lawns, is a pretty and graceful
+exercise, and there only can full sweep be allowed for the present
+feminine toilet.</p>
+
+<p>"The English breakfast is an institution growing in favor here, and
+rightfully, too; for a party of fresh, good-natured, well-dressed
+people, assembled at breakfast on a summer morning, is as nearly perfect
+a form of reunion as can be devised. All are in full strength from their
+night's rest; the hour is fresh and lovely, and they are in condition to
+give each other the very cream of their thoughts, the first keen sparkle
+of the uncorked nervous system. The only drawback is, that, in our busy
+American life, the most desirable gentlemen often cannot spare their
+morning hours. Breakfast parties presuppose a condition of leisure; but
+when they can be compassed, they are perhaps the most perfectly
+enjoyable of entertainments."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Marianne, "I begin to waver about my party. I don't know,
+after all, but the desire of paying off social debts prompted the idea;
+perhaps we might try some of the agreeable things suggested. But, dear
+me! there's the baby. We'll finish the talk some other time."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="GRIFFITH_GAUNT_OR_JEALOUSY" id="GRIFFITH_GAUNT_OR_JEALOUSY"></a>GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.</h2>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER XXXII.</h4>
+
+<p>He went straight to the stable, and saddled Black Dick.</p>
+
+<p>But, in the very act, his nature revolted. What, turn his back on her
+the moment he had got hold of her money, to take to the other. He could
+not do it.</p>
+
+<p>He went back to her room, and came so suddenly that he caught her
+crying. He asked her what was the matter.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," said she, with a sigh: "only a woman's foolish misgivings. I
+was afraid perhaps you would not come back. Forgive me."</p>
+
+<p>"No fear of that," said he. "However, I have taken a resolve not to go
+to-day. If I go to-morrow, I shall be just in time; and Dick wants a
+good day's rest."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt said nothing; but her expressive face was triumphant.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith and she took a walk together; and he, who used to be the more
+genial of the two, was dull, and she full of animation.</p>
+
+<p>This whole day she laid herself out to bewitch her husband, and put him
+in high spirits.</p>
+
+<p>It was up-hill work; but when such a woman sets herself in earnest to
+delight a man, she reads our sex a lesson in the art, that shows us we
+are all babies at it.</p>
+
+<p>However, it was at supper she finally conquered.</p>
+
+<p>Here the lights, her beauty set off with art, her deepening eyes, her
+satin skin, her happy excitement, her wit and tenderness, and joyous
+sprightliness, enveloped Griffith in an atmosphere of delight, and drove
+everything out of his head but herself; and with this, if the truth must
+be told, the sparkling wines co-operated.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith plied the bottle a little too freely. But Mrs. Gaunt, on this
+one occasion, had not the heart to check him. The more he toasted her,
+the more uxorious he became, and she could not deny herself even this
+joy; but, besides, she had less of the prudent wife in her just then
+than of the weak, indulgent mother. Anything rather than check his love:
+she was greedy of it.</p>
+
+<p>At last, however, she said to him, "Sweetheart, I shall go to bed; for,
+I see, if I stay longer, I shall lead thee into a debauch. Be good now;
+drink no more when I am gone. Else I'll say thou lovest thy bottle more
+than thy wife."</p>
+
+<p>He promised faithfully. But, when she was gone, modified his pledge by
+drinking just one bumper to her health, which bumper let in another;
+and, when at last he retired to rest, he was in that state of mental
+confusion wherein the limbs appear to have a memory independent of the
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>In this condition do some men's hands wind up their watches, the mind
+taking no appreciable part in the ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>By some such act of what physicians call "organic memory," Griffith's
+feet carried him to the chamber he had slept in a thousand times, and
+not into the one Mrs. Rider had taken him to the night before.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning he came down rather late for him, and found himself
+treated with a great access of respect by the servants.</p>
+
+<p>His position was no longer doubtful; he was the master of the house.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt followed in due course, and sat at breakfast with him,
+looking young and blooming as Hebe, and her eye never off him long.</p>
+
+<p>She had lived temperately, and had not yet passed the age when happiness
+can restore a woman's beauty and brightness in a single day.</p>
+
+<p>As for him, he was like a man in a heavenly dream: he floated in the
+past and the present: the recent and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> future seemed obscure and
+distant, and comparatively in a mist.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>But that same afternoon, after a most affectionate farewell, and many
+promises to return as soon as ever he had discharged his obligations,
+Griffith Gaunt started for the "Packhorse," to carry to Mercy Leicester,
+alias Vint, the money Catharine Gaunt had saved by self-denial and
+economy.</p>
+
+<p>And he went south a worse man than he came.</p>
+
+<p>When he left Mercy Leicester, he was a bigamist in law, but not at
+heart. Kate was dead to him: he had given her up forever, and was
+constant and true to his new wife.</p>
+
+<p>But now he was false to Mercy, yet not true to Kate; and, curiously
+enough, it was a day or two passed with his lawful wife that had
+demoralized him. His unlawful wife had hitherto done nothing but improve
+his character.</p>
+
+<p>A great fault once committed is often the first link in a chain of acts
+that look like crimes, but are, strictly speaking, consequences.</p>
+
+<p>This man, blinded at first by his own foible, and after that the sport
+of circumstances, was single-hearted by nature; and his conscience was
+not hardened. He desired earnestly to free himself and both his wives
+from the cruel situation; but to do this, one of them, he saw, must be
+abandoned entirely; and his heart bled for her.</p>
+
+<p>A villain or a fool would have relished the situation; many men would
+have dallied with it; but, to do this erring man justice, he writhed and
+sorrowed under it, and sincerely desired to end it.</p>
+
+<p>And this was why he prized Kate's money so. It enabled him to render a
+great service to her he had injured worse than he had the other, to her
+he saw he must abandon.</p>
+
+<p>But this was feeble comfort, after all. He rode along a miserable man;
+none the less wretched and remorseful, that, ere he got into Lancashire,
+he saw his way clear. This was his resolve: to pay old Vint's debts with
+Kate's money; take the "Packhorse," get it made over to Mercy, give her
+the odd two hundred pounds and his jewels, and fly. He would never see
+her again; but would return home, and get the rest of the two thousand
+pounds from Kate, and send it Mercy by a friend, who should tell her he
+was dead, and had left word with his relations to send her all his
+substance.</p>
+
+<p>At last the "Packhorse" came in sight. He drew rein, and had half a mind
+to turn back; but, instead of that, he crawled on, and very sick and
+cold he felt.</p>
+
+<p>Many a man has marched to the scaffold with a less quaking heart than he
+to the "Packhorse."</p>
+
+<p>His dejection contrasted strangely with the warm reception he met from
+everybody there. And the house was full of women; and they seemed,
+somehow, all cock-a-hoop, and filled with admiration of <i>him</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is she?" said he, faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"Hark to the poor soul!" said a gossip. "Dame Vint, where's thy
+daughter? gone out a-walking be-like?"</p>
+
+<p>At this, the other women present chuckled and clucked.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bring you to her," said Mrs. Vint; "but prithee be quiet and
+reasonable; for to be sure she is none too strong."</p>
+
+<p>There was some little preparation, and then Griffith was ushered into
+Mercy's room, and found her in bed, looking a little pale, but sweeter
+and comelier than ever. She had the bedclothes up to her chin.</p>
+
+<p>"You look wan, my poor lass," said he; "what ails ye?"</p>
+
+<p>"Naught ails me now thou art come," said she, lovingly.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith put the bag on the table. "There," said he, "there's five
+hundred pounds in gold. I come not to thee empty-handed."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor I to thee," said Mercy, with a heavenly smile. "See!"</p>
+
+<p>And she drew down the bedclothes a little, and showed the face of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+babe scarcely three days old,&mdash;a little boy.</p>
+
+<p>She turned in the bed, and tried to hold him up to his father, and said,
+"Here's <i>my</i> treasure for thee!" And the effort, the flush on her cheek,
+and the deep light in her dove-like eyes, told plainly that the poor
+soul thought she had contributed to their domestic wealth something far
+richer than Griffith had with his bag of gold.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The father uttered an ejaculation, and came to her side, and, for a
+moment, Nature overpowered everything else. He kissed the child; he
+kissed Mercy again and again.</p>
+
+<p>"Now God be praised for both," said he, passionately; "but most for
+thee, the best wife, the truest friend&mdash;" Here, thinking of her virtues,
+and the blow he had come to strike her, he broke down, and was almost
+choked with emotion; whereupon Mrs. Vint exerted female authority, and
+bundled him out of the room. "Is that the way to carry on at such an a
+time?" said she. "'T was enow to upset her altogether. O, but you men
+have little sense in women's matters. I looked to you to give her
+courage, not to set her off into hysterics after a manner. Nay, keep up
+her heart, or keep your distance, say I, that am her mother."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith took this hint, and ever after took pity on Mercy's weak
+condition; and, suspending the fatal blow, did all he could to restore
+her to health and spirits.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, to do that, he must deceive her; and so his life became a
+lie.</p>
+
+<p>For, hitherto, she had never looked forward much; but now her eyes were
+always diving into futurity; and she lay smiling and discussing the
+prospects of her boy; and Griffith had to sit by her side, and see her
+gnaw the boy's hand, and kiss his feet, and anticipate his brilliant
+career. He had to look and listen with an aching heart, and assent with
+feigned warmth, and an inward chill of horror and remorse.</p>
+
+<p>One Drummond, a travelling artist, called; and Mercy, who had often
+refused to sit to him, consented now; "for," she said, "when he grows
+up, he shall know how his parents looked in their youth, the very year
+their darling was born." So Griffith had to sit with her, and excellent
+likenesses the man produced; but a horrible one of the child. And
+Griffith thought, "Poor soul! a little while and this picture will be
+all that shall be left to thee of me."</p>
+
+<p>For all this time he was actually transacting the preliminaries of
+separation. He got a man of law to make all sure. The farm, the stock,
+the furniture and good-will of the "Packhorse," all these he got
+assigned to Mercy Leicester for her own use, in consideration of three
+hundred and fifty pounds, whereof three hundred were devoted to clearing
+the concern of its debts, the odd fifty was to sweeten the pill to Harry
+Vint.</p>
+
+<p>When the deed came to be executed, Mercy was surprised, and uttered a
+gentle remonstrance. "What have I to do with it?" said she. "'T is thy
+money, not mine."</p>
+
+<p>"No matter," said Griffith; "I choose to have it so."</p>
+
+<p>"Your will is my law," said Mercy.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides," said Griffith, "the old folk will not feel so sore, nor be
+afraid of being turned out, if it is in thy name."</p>
+
+<p>"And that is true," said Mercy. "Now who had thought of that, but my
+good man?" And she threw her arms lovingly round his neck, and gazed on
+him adoringly.</p>
+
+<p>But his lion-like eyes avoided her dove-like eyes; and an involuntary
+shudder ran through him.</p>
+
+<p>The habit of deceiving Mercy led to a consequence he had not
+anticipated. It tightened the chain that held him. She opened his eyes
+more and more to her deep affection, and he began to fear she would die
+if he abandoned her.</p>
+
+<p>And then her present situation was so touching. She had borne him a
+lovely boy; that must be abandoned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> too, if he left her; and somehow the
+birth of this child had embellished the mother; a delicious pink had
+taken the place of her rustic bloom; and her beauty was more refined and
+delicate. So pure, so loving, so fair, so maternal, to wound her heart
+now, it seemed like stabbing an angel.</p>
+
+<p>One day succeeded to another, and still Griffith had not the heart to
+carry out his resolve. He temporized; he wrote to Kate that he was
+detained by the business; and he stayed on and on, strengthening his
+gratitude and his affection, and weakening his love for the absent, and
+his resolution; till, at last, he became so distracted and divided in
+heart, and so demoralized, that he began to give up the idea of
+abandoning Mercy, and babbled to himself about fate and destiny, and
+decided that the most merciful course would be to deceive both women.
+Mercy was patient. Mercy was unsuspicious. She would content herself
+with occasional visits, if he could only feign some plausible tale to
+account for long absences.</p>
+
+<p>Before he got into this mess, he was a singularly truthful person; but
+now a lie was nothing to him. But, for that matter, many a man has been
+first made a liar by his connection with two women; and by degrees has
+carried his mendacity into other things.</p>
+
+<p>However, though now blessed with mendacity, he was cursed with a lack of
+invention; and sorely puzzled how to live at Hernshaw, yet visit the
+"Packhorse."</p>
+
+<p>The best thing he could hit upon was to pretend to turn bagman; and so
+Mercy would believe he was travelling all over England, when all the
+time he was quietly living at Hernshaw.</p>
+
+<p>And perhaps these long separations might prepare her heart for a final
+parting, and so let in his original plan a few years hence.</p>
+
+<p>He prepared this man&oelig;uvre with some art: he told her, one day, he had
+been to Lancaster, and there fallen in with a friend, who had as good as
+promised him the place of a commercial traveller for a mercantile house
+there.</p>
+
+<p>"A traveller!" said Mercy. "Heaven forbid! If you knew how I wearied for
+you when you went to Cumberland!"</p>
+
+<p>"To Cumberland! How know you I went thither?"</p>
+
+<p>"O, I but guessed that; but now I know it, by your face. But go where
+thou wilt, the house is dull directly. Thou art our sunshine. Isn't he,
+my poppet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well; if it kept me too long from thee, I could give it up. But,
+child, we must think of young master. You could manage the inn, and your
+mother the farm, without me; and I should be earning money on my side. I
+want to make a gentleman of him."</p>
+
+<p>"Anything for <i>him</i>," said Mercy: "anything in the world." But the tears
+stood in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>In furtherance of this deceit, Griffith did one day actually ride to
+Lancaster, and slept there. He wrote to Kate from that town, to say he
+was detained by a slight illness, but hoped to be home in a week: and
+the next day brought Mercy home some ribbons, and told her he had seen
+the merchant, and his brother, and they had made him a very fair offer.
+"But I've a week to think of it," said he; "so there's no hurry."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy fixed her eyes on him in a very peculiar way, and made no reply.
+You must know that something very curious had happened whilst Griffith
+was gone to Lancaster.</p>
+
+<p>A travelling pedler, passing by, was struck with the name on the
+signboard. "Hallo!" said he, "why here's a namesake of mine; I'll have a
+glass of his ale any way."</p>
+
+<p>So he came into the public room, and called for a glass; taking care to
+open his pack, and display his inviting wares. Harry Vint served him.
+"Here's your health," said the pedler. "You must drink with me, you
+must."</p>
+
+<p>"And welcome," said the old man.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said the pedler, "I do travel five counties; but for all that,
+you are the first namesake I have found. I am Thomas Leicester, too, as
+sure as you are a living sinner."</p>
+
+<p>The old man laughed, and said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> "Then no namesake of mine are you; for
+they call me Harry Vint. Thomas Leicester, he that keeps this inn now,
+is my son-in-law: he is gone to Lancaster this morning."</p>
+
+<p>The pedler said that was a pity, he should have liked to see his
+namesake, and drink a glass with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Come again to-morrow," said Harry Vint, ironically. "Dame," he cried,
+"come hither. Here's another Thomas Leicester for ye, wants to see our
+one."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Vint turned her head, and inspected the pedler from afar, as if he
+was some natural curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"Where do you come from, young man?" said she.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I came from Kendal last; but I am Cumberland born."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that is where t'other comes from," suggested Paul Carrick, who was
+once more a frequenter of the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Like enow," said Mrs. Vint.</p>
+
+<p>With that she dropped the matter as one of no consequence, and retired.
+But she went straight to Mercy, in the parlor, and told her there was a
+man in the kitchen that called himself Thomas Leicester.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, mother?" said Mercy, with high indifference, for she was trying
+new socks on King Baby.</p>
+
+<p>"He comes from Cumberland."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, to be sure, names do run in counties."</p>
+
+<p>"That is true; but, seems to me, he favors your man: much of a height,
+and&mdash;There, do just step into the kitchen a moment."</p>
+
+<p>"La, mother," said Mercy, "I don't desire to see any more Thomas
+Leicesters than my own: 'tis the man, not the name. Isn't it, my lamb?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Vint went back to the kitchen discomfited; but, with quiet
+pertinacity, she brought Thomas Leicester into the parlor, pack and all.</p>
+
+<p>"There, Mercy," said she, "lay out a penny with thy husband's namesake."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy did not reply, for at that moment Thomas Leicester caught sight of
+Griffith's portrait, and gave a sudden start, and a most extraordinary
+look besides.</p>
+
+<p>Both the women's eyes happened to be upon him, and they saw at once that
+he knew the original.</p>
+
+<p>"You know my husband?" said Mercy Vint, after a while.</p>
+
+<p>"Not I," said Leicester, looking askant at the picture.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't tell no lies," said Mrs. Vint. "You do know him well." And she
+pointed her assertion by looking at the portrait.</p>
+
+<p>"O, I know him whose picture hangs there, of course," said Leicester.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and that <i>is</i> her husband."</p>
+
+<p>"O, that is her husband, is it?" And he was unaffectedly puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy turned pale. "Yes, he is my husband," said she, "and this is our
+child. Can you tell me anything about him? for he came a stranger to
+these parts. Belike you are a kinsman of his?"</p>
+
+<p>"So they say."</p>
+
+<p>This reply puzzled both women.</p>
+
+<p>"Any way," said the pedler, "you see we are marked alike." And he showed
+a long black mole on his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy was now as curious as she had been indifferent. "Tell me all about
+him," said she: "how comes it that he is a gentleman and thou a pedler?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, because my mother was a gypsy, and his a gentlewoman."</p>
+
+<p>"What brought him to these parts?"</p>
+
+<p>"Trouble, they say."</p>
+
+<p>"What trouble?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, I know not." This after a slight but visible hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>"But you have heard say."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I am always on the foot, and don't bide long enough in one place
+to learn all the gossip. But I do remember hearing he was gone to sea:
+and that was a lie, for he had settled here, and married you. I'fackins,
+he might have done worse. He has got a bonny buxom wife, and a rare fine
+boy, to be sure."</p>
+
+<p>And now the pedler was on his guard, and determined he would not be the
+one to break up the household he saw before him, and afflict the
+dove-eyed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> wife and mother. He was a good-natured fellow, and averse to
+make mischief with his own hands. Besides, he took for granted Griffith
+loved his new wife better than the old one; and, above all, the
+punishment of bigamy was severe, and was it for him to get the Squire
+indicted, and branded in the hand for a felon?</p>
+
+<p>So the women could get nothing more out of him; he lied, evaded,
+shuffled, and feigned utter ignorance; pleading, adroitly enough, his
+vagrant life.</p>
+
+<p>All this, however, aroused vague suspicions in Mrs. Vint's mind, and she
+went and whispered them to her favorite, Paul Carrick. "And, Paul," said
+she, "call for what you like, and score it to me; only treat this pedler
+till he leaks out summut: to be sure he'll tell a man more than he will
+us."</p>
+
+<p>Paul entered with zeal into this commission: treated the pedler to a
+chop, and plied him well with the best ale.</p>
+
+<p>All this failed to loose the pedler's tongue at the time, but it muddled
+his judgment: on resuming his journey, he gave his entertainer a wink.
+Carrick rose and followed him out.</p>
+
+<p>"You seem a decent lad," said the pedler, "and a good-hearted one. Wilt
+do me a favor?"</p>
+
+<p>Carrick said he would, if it lay in his power.</p>
+
+<p>"O, it is easy enow," said the pedler. "'T is just to give young Thomas
+Leicester, into his own hand, this here trifle as soon as ever he comes
+home." And he handed Carrick a hard substance wrapped up in paper.
+Carrick promised.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay, lad," said the pedler, "but see you play fair, and give it him
+unbeknown. Now don't you be so simple as show it to any of the
+womenfolk. D' ye understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"All right," said Carrick, knowingly. And so the boon companions for a
+day shook hands and parted.</p>
+
+<p>And Carrick took the little parcel straight to Mrs. Vint, and told her
+every word the pedler had said.</p>
+
+<p>And Mrs. Vint took the little parcel straight to Mercy, and told her
+what Carrick said the pedler had said.</p>
+
+<p>And the pedler went off flushed with beer and self-complacency; for he
+thought he had drawn the line precisely; had faithfully discharged his
+promise to his lady and benefactress, but not so as to make mischief in
+another household.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the power of Ale&mdash;in the last century.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy undid the paper and found the bullet, on which was engraved</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I LOVE KATE."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>As she read these words a knife seemed to enter her heart, the pang was
+so keen.</p>
+
+<p>But she soon took herself to task. "Thou naughty woman," said she.
+"What! jealous of the dead?"</p>
+
+<p>She wrapped the bullet up; put it carefully away; had a good cry; and
+was herself again.</p>
+
+<p>But all this set her watching Griffith, and reading his face. She had
+subtle, vague misgivings, and forbade her mother to mention the pedler's
+visit to Griffith yet awhile. Womanlike she preferred to worm out the
+truth.</p>
+
+<p>On the evening of his return from Lancaster, as he was smoking his pipe,
+she quietly tested him. She fixed her eyes on him, and said, "One was
+here to-day that knows thee, and brought thee this." She then handed him
+the bullet, and watched his face.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith undid the paper carelessly enough; but, at sight of the bullet,
+uttered a loud cry, and his eyes seemed ready to start out of his head.</p>
+
+<p>He turned as pale as ashes, and stammered piteously, "What? what? what
+d'ye mean? In Heaven's name, what is this? How? Who?"</p>
+
+<p>Mercy was surprised, but also much concerned at his distress; and tried
+to soothe him. She also asked him piteously, whether she had done wrong
+to give it him. "God knows," said she, "'t is no business of mine to go
+and remind thee of her thou hast loved better<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> mayhap than thou lovest
+me. But to keep it from thee, and she in her grave,&mdash;O, I had not the
+heart."</p>
+
+<p>But Griffith's agitation increased instead of diminishing; and, even
+while she was trying to soothe him, he rushed wildly out of the room,
+and into the open air.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy went, in perplexity and distress, and told her mother.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Vint, not being blinded by affection, thought the whole thing had a
+very ugly look, and said as much. She gave it as her opinion that this
+Kate was alive, and had sent the token herself, to make mischief between
+man and wife.</p>
+
+<p>"That shall she never," said Mercy, stoutly; but now her suspicions were
+thoroughly excited, and her happiness disturbed.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, Griffith found her in tears. He asked her what was the
+matter. She would not tell him.</p>
+
+<p>"You have your secrets," said she; "and so now I have mine."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Griffith became very uneasy.</p>
+
+<p>For now Mercy was often in tears, and Mrs. Vint looked daggers at him.</p>
+
+<p>All this was mysterious and unintelligible, and, to a guilty man, very
+alarming.</p>
+
+<p>At last he implored Mercy to speak out. He wanted to know the worst.</p>
+
+<p>Then Mercy did speak out. "You have deceived me," said she. "Kate is
+alive. This very morning, between sleeping and waking, you whispered her
+name; ay, false man, whispered it like a lover. You told me she was
+dead. But she is alive, and has sent you a reminder, and the bare sight
+of it hath turned your heart her way again. What shall I do? Why did you
+marry me, if you could not forget her? I did not want you to desert any
+woman for me. The desire of my heart was always for your happiness. But
+O Thomas, deceit and falsehood will not bring you happiness, no more
+than they will me. What shall I do? what shall I do?"</p>
+
+<p>Her tears flowed freely, and Griffith sat down, and groaned with horror
+and remorse, beside her.</p>
+
+<p>He had not the courage to tell her the horrible truth,&mdash;that Kate was
+his wife, and she was not.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not thou afflict thyself," he muttered. "Of course, with you putting
+that bullet in my hand so sudden, it set my fancy a wandering back to
+other days."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said Mercy, "if it be no worse than that, there's little harm. But
+why did thy namesake start so at sight of thy picture?"</p>
+
+<p>"My namesake!" cried Griffith, all aghast.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, he that brought thee that love-token,&mdash;Thomas Leicester. Nay, for
+very shame, feign not ignorance of him. Why, he hath thy very mole on
+his temple, and knew thy picture in a moment. He is thy half-brother; is
+he not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am a ruined man," cried Griffith, and sank into a chair without power
+of motion.</p>
+
+<p>"God help me, what is all this?" cried Mercy. "O Thomas, Thomas, I could
+forgive thee aught but deceit: for both our sakes speak out, and tell me
+the worst. No harm shall come near thee while I live."</p>
+
+<p>"How can I tell thee? I am an unfortunate man. The world will call me a
+villain; yet I am not a villain at heart. But who will believe me? I
+have broken the law. Thee I could trust, but not thy folk; they never
+loved me. Mercy, for pity's sake, when was that Thomas Leicester here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Four days ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Which way went he?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hear he told Paul he was going to Cumberland."</p>
+
+<p>"If he gets there before me, I shall rot in gaol."</p>
+
+<p>"Now God forbid! O Thomas, then mount and ride after him."</p>
+
+<p>"I will, and this very moment."</p>
+
+<p>He saddled Black Dick, and loaded his pistols for the journey; but, ere
+he went, a pale face looked out into the yard, and a finger beckoned. It
+was Mercy. She bade him follow her. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> took him to her room, where
+their child was sleeping; and then she closed and even locked the door.</p>
+
+<p>"No soul can hear us," said she; "now look me in the face, and tell me
+God's truth. Who and what are you?"</p>
+
+<p>Griffith shuddered at this exordium; he made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy went to a box and took out an old shirt of his,&mdash;the one he wore
+when he first came to the "Packhorse." She brought it to him and showed
+him "G. G." embroidered on it with a woman's hair. (Ryder's.)</p>
+
+<p>"Here are your initials," said she; "now leave useless falsehoods; be a
+man, and tell me your real name."</p>
+
+<p>"My name is Griffith Gaunt."</p>
+
+<p>Mercy, sick at heart, turned her head away; but she had the resolution
+to urge him on. "Go on," said she, in an agonized whisper: "if you
+believe in God and a judgment to come, deceive me no more. The truth, I
+say! the truth!"</p>
+
+<p>"So be it," said Griffith, desperately: "when I have told thee what a
+villain I am, I can die at thy feet, and then thou wilt forgive me.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is Kate?" was all she replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Kate is my wife."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"I thought her false; who could think any other? appearances were so
+strong against her: others thought so beside me. I raised my hand to
+kill her; but she never winced. I trampled on him I believed her
+paramour: I fled, and soon I lay a-dying in this house for her sake. I
+told thee she was dead. Alas! I thought her dead to me. I went back to
+our house (it is her house) sore against the grain, to get money for
+thee and thine. Then she cleared herself, bright as the sun, and pure as
+snow. She was all in black for me; she had put by money, against I
+should come to my senses and need it. I told her I owed a debt in
+Lancashire, a debt of gratitude as well as money: and so I did. How have
+I repaid it? The poor soul forced five hundred pounds on me. I had much
+ado to keep her from bringing it hither with her own hands. O, villain!
+villain! Then I thought to leave thee, and send thee word I was dead,
+and heap money on thee. Money! But how could I? thou wast my
+benefactress, my more than wife. All the riches of the world can make no
+return to thee. What, what shall I do? Shall I fly with thee and thy
+child across the seas? Shall I go back to her? No; the best thing I can
+do is to take this good pistol, and let the life out of my dishonorable
+carcass, and free two honest women from me by one resolute act."</p>
+
+<p>In his despair he cocked the pistol; and, at a word from Mercy, this
+tale had ended.</p>
+
+<p>But the poor woman, pale and trembling, tottered across the room, and
+took it out of his hand. "I would not harm thy body, nor thy soul," she
+gasped. "Let me draw my breath and think."</p>
+
+<p>She rocked herself to and fro in silence.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith stood trembling like a criminal before his judge.</p>
+
+<p>It was long ere she could speak, for anguish. Yet when she did speak, it
+was with a sort of deadly calm.</p>
+
+<p>"Go tell the truth to <i>her</i>, as you have done to me; and, if she can
+forgive you, all the better for you. I can never forgive you, nor yet
+can harm you. My child! my child! Thy father is our ruin. O, begone,
+man, or the sight of you will kill us both."</p>
+
+<p>Then he fell at her knees; kissed, and wept over her cold hand; and, in
+his pity and despair, offered to cross the seas with her and her child,
+and so repair the wrong he had done her.</p>
+
+<p>"Tempt me not," she sobbed. "Go, leave me! None here shall ever know thy
+crime, but she whose heart thou hast broken, and ruined her good name."</p>
+
+<p>He took her in his arms, in spite of her resistance, and kissed her
+passionately; but, for the first time, she shuddered at his embrace; and
+that gave him the power to leave her.</p>
+
+<p>He rushed from her, all but distracted,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> and rode away to Cumberland;
+but not to tell the truth to Kate, if he could possibly help it.</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER XXXIII.</h4>
+
+<p>At this particular time, no man's presence was more desired in that
+county than Griffith Gaunt's.</p>
+
+<p>And this I need not now be telling the reader, if I had related this
+story on the plan of a miscellaneous chronicle. But the affairs of the
+heart are so absorbing, that, even in a narrative, they thrust aside
+important circumstances of a less moving kind.</p>
+
+<p>I must therefore go back a step, before I advance further. You must know
+that forty years before our Griffith Gaunt saw the light, another
+Griffith Gaunt was born in Cumberland: a younger son, and the family
+estate entailed; but a shrewd lad, who chose rather to hunt fortune
+elsewhere than to live in miserable dependence on his elder brother. His
+godfather, a city merchant, encouraged him, and he left Cumberland. He
+went into commerce, and in twenty years became a wealthy man,&mdash;so
+wealthy that he lived to look down on his brother's estate, which he had
+once thought opulence. His life was all prosperity, with a single
+exception; but that a bitter one. He laid out some of his funds in a
+fashionable and beautiful wife. He loved her before marriage; and, as
+she was always cold to him, he loved her more and more.</p>
+
+<p>In the second year of their marriage she ran away from him; and no
+beggar in the streets of London was so miserable as the wealthy
+merchant.</p>
+
+<p>It blighted the man, and left him a sore heart all his days. He never
+married again; and railed on all womankind for this one. He led a
+solitary life in London till he was sixty-nine; and then, all of a
+sudden, Nature, or accident, or both, changed his whole habits. Word
+came to him that the family estate, already deeply mortgaged, was for
+sale, and a farmer who had rented a principal farm on it, and held a
+heavy mortgage, had made the highest offer.</p>
+
+<p>Old Griffith sent down Mr. Atkins, his solicitor, post haste, and
+snapped the estate out of that purchaser's hands.</p>
+
+<p>When the lands and house had been duly conveyed to him, he came down,
+and his heart seemed to bud again, in the scenes of his childhood.</p>
+
+<p>Finding the house small, and built in a valley instead of on rising
+ground, he got an army of bricklayers, and began to build a mansion with
+a rapidity unheard of in those parts; and he looked about for some one
+to inherit it.</p>
+
+<p>The name of Gaunt had dwindled down to three, since he left Cumberland;
+but a rich man never lacks relations. Featherstonhaughs, and Underhills,
+and even Smiths, poured in, with parish registers in their laps, and
+proved themselves Gauntesses, and flattered and carneyed the new head of
+the family.</p>
+
+<p>Then the perverse old gentleman felt inclined to look elsewhere. He knew
+he had a namesake at the other side of the county, but this namesake did
+not come near him.</p>
+
+<p>This independent Gaunt excited his curiosity and interest. He made
+inquiries, and heard that young Griffith had just quarrelled with his
+wife, and gone away in despair.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith senior took for granted that the fault lay with Mrs. Gaunt, and
+wasted some good sympathy on Griffith junior.</p>
+
+<p>On further inquiry he learned that the truant was dependent on his wife.
+Then, argued the moneyed man, he would not run away from her but that
+his wound was deep.</p>
+
+<p>The consequence of all this was, that he made a will very favorable to
+his absent and injured (?) namesake. He left numerous bequests; but made
+Griffith his residuary legatee; and, having settled this matter, urged
+on, and superintended his workmen.</p>
+
+<p>Alas! just as the roof was going on, a narrower house claimed him, and
+he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> made good the saying of the wise bard,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">"Tu secanda marmora<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Locas sub ipsum funus et sepulchri<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Immemor struis domos."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The heir of his own choosing could not be found to attend his funeral;
+and Mr. Atkins, his solicitor, a very worthy man, was really hurt at
+this. With the quiet bitterness of a displeased attorney, he merely sent
+Mrs. Gaunt word her husband inherited something under the will, and she
+would do well to produce him, or else furnish him (Atkins) with proof of
+his decease.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt was offended by this cavalier note, and replied very like a
+woman, and very unlike Business.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know where he is," said she, "nor whether he is alive or dead.
+Nor do I feel disposed to raise the hue and cry after him. But favor me
+with your address, and I shall let you know should I hear anything about
+him."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Atkins was half annoyed, half amused, at this piece of indifference.
+It never occurred to him that it might be all put on.</p>
+
+<p>He wrote back to say that the estate was large, and, owing to the terms
+of the will, could not be administered without Mr. Griffith Gaunt; and,
+in the interest of the said Griffith Gaunt, and also of the other
+legatees, he really must advertise for him.</p>
+
+<p>La Gaunt replied, that he was very welcome to advertise for whomsoever
+he pleased.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Atkins was a very worthy man; but human. To tell the truth, he was
+himself one of the other legatees. He inherited (and, to be just, had
+well deserved) four thousand guineas, under the will, and could not
+legally touch it without Griffith Gaunt. This little circumstance
+spurred his professional zeal.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Atkins advertised for Griffith Gaunt, in the London and Cumberland
+papers, and in the usual enticing form. He was to apply to Mr. Atkins,
+Solicitor, of Gray's Inn, and he would hear of something greatly to his
+advantage.</p>
+
+<p>These advertisements had not been out a fortnight, when Griffith Gaunt
+came home, as I have related.</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Atkins had punished Mrs. Gaunt for her <i>insouciance</i>, by not
+informing her of the extent of her good fortune; so she merely told
+Griffith, casually, that old Griffith Gaunt had left him some money, and
+the solicitor, Mr. Atkins, could not get on without him. Even this
+information she did not vouchsafe until she had given him her &pound;500, for
+she grudged Atkins the pleasure of supplying her husband with money.</p>
+
+<p>However, as soon as Griffith left her, she wrote to Mr. Atkins to say
+that her husband had come home in perfect health, thank God; had only
+stayed two days, but was to return in a week.</p>
+
+<p>When ten days had elapsed, Atkins wrote to inquire.</p>
+
+<p>She replied he had not yet returned; and this went on till Mr. Atkins
+showed considerable impatience.</p>
+
+<p>As for Mrs. Gaunt, she made light of the matter to Mr. Atkins; but, in
+truth, this new mystery irritated her and pained her deeply.</p>
+
+<p>In one respect she was more unhappy than she had been before he came
+back at all. Then she was alone; her door was closed to commentators.
+But now, on the strength of so happy a reconciliation, she had
+re-entered the world, and received visits from Sir George Neville, and
+others; and, above all, had announced that Griffith would be back for
+good in a few days. So now his continued absence exposed her to sly
+questions from her own sex, to the interchange of glances between female
+visitors, as well as to the internal torture of doubt and suspense.</p>
+
+<p>But what distracted her most was the view Mrs. Ryder took of the matter.</p>
+
+<p>That experienced lady had begun to suspect some other woman was at the
+bottom of Griffith's conduct; and her own love for Griffith was now
+soured. Repeated disappointments and affronts, <i>spret&aelig;que injuria
+form&aelig;</i>, had not quite extinguished it, but had mixed so much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> spite with
+it that she was equally ready to kiss or to stab him.</p>
+
+<p>So she took every opportunity to instil into her mistress, whose
+confidence she had won at last, that Griffith was false to her.</p>
+
+<p>"That is the way with these men that are so ready to suspect others.
+Take my word for it, Dame, he has carried your money to his leman. 'Tis
+still the honest woman that must bleed for some nasty trollop or other."</p>
+
+<p>She enforced this theory by examples drawn from her own observations in
+families, and gave the very names; and drove Mrs. Gaunt almost mad with
+fear, anger, jealousy, and cruel suspense. She could not sleep, she
+could not eat; she was in a constant fever.</p>
+
+<p>Yet before the world she battled it out bravely, and indeed none but
+Ryder knew the anguish of her spirit, and her passionate wrath.</p>
+
+<p>At last there came a most eventful day.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt had summoned all her pride and fortitude, and invited certain
+ladies and gentlemen to dine and sup.</p>
+
+<p>She was one of the true Spartan breed, and played the hostess as well as
+if her heart had been at ease. It was an age in which the host struggled
+fiercely to entertain the guests; and Mrs. Gaunt was taxing all her
+powers of pleasing in the dining-room, when an unexpected guest strolled
+into the kitchen: the pedler, Thomas Leicester.</p>
+
+<p>Jane welcomed him cordially, and he was soon seated at a table eating
+his share of the feast.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Mrs. Ryder came down, dressed in her best, and looking
+handsomer than ever.</p>
+
+<p>At sight of her, Tom Leicester's affection revived; and he soon took
+occasion to whisper an inquiry whether she was still single.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," said she, "and like to be."</p>
+
+<p>"Waiting for the master still? Mayhap I could cure you of that
+complaint. But least said is soonest mended."</p>
+
+<p>This mysterious hint showed Ryder he had a secret burning his bosom. The
+sly hussy said nothing just then, but plied him with ale and flattery;
+and, when he whispered a request for a private meeting out of doors, she
+cast her eyes down, and assented.</p>
+
+<p>And in that meeting she carried herself so adroitly, that he renewed his
+offer of marriage, and told her not to waste her fancy on a man who
+cared neither for her nor any other she in Cumberland.</p>
+
+<p>"Prove that to me," said Ryder, cunningly, "and may be I'll take you at
+your word."</p>
+
+<p>The bribe was not to be resisted. Tom revealed to her, under a solemn
+promise of secrecy, that the Squire had got a wife and child in
+Lancashire; and had a farm and an inn, which latter he kept under the
+name of&mdash;Thomas Leicester.</p>
+
+<p>In short, he told her, in his way, all the particulars I have told in
+mine.</p>
+
+<p>Which told it the best will never be known in this world.</p>
+
+<p>She led him on with a voice of very velvet. He did not see how her cheek
+paled and her eyes flashed jealous fury.</p>
+
+<p>When she had sucked him dry, she suddenly turned on him, with a cold
+voice, and said, "I can't stay any longer with you just now. She will
+want me."</p>
+
+<p>"You will meet me here again, lass?" said Tom, ruefully.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, for a minute, after supper."</p>
+
+<p>She then left him, and went to Mrs. Gaunt's room, and sat crouching
+before the fire, all hate and bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>What? he had left the wife he loved, and yet had not turned to her!</p>
+
+<p>She sat there, waiting for Mrs. Gaunt, and nursing her vindictive fury,
+two mortal hours.</p>
+
+<p>At last, just before supper, Mrs. Gaunt came up to her room, to cool her
+fevered hands and brow, and found this creature crouched by her fire,
+all in a heap, with pale cheek, and black eyes that glittered like
+basilisk's.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter, child?" said Mrs. Gaunt. "Good heavens! what hath
+happened?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Dame!" said Ryder, sternly, "I have got news of him."</p>
+
+<p>"News of <i>him</i>?" faltered Mrs. Gaunt. "Bad news?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know whether to tell you or not," said Ryder, sulkily, but with
+a touch of human feeling.</p>
+
+<p>"What cannot I bear? What have I not borne? Tell me the truth."</p>
+
+<p>The words were stout, but she trembled all over in uttering them.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it is as I said, only worse. Dame, he has got a wife and child in
+another county; and no doubt been deceiving her, as he has <i>us</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"A wife!" gasped Mrs. Gaunt, and one white hand clutched her bosom, and
+the other the mantel-piece.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, Thomas Leicester, that is in the kitchen now, saw her, and saw his
+picture hanging aside hers on the wall. And he goes by the name of
+Thomas Leicester. That was what made Tom go into the inn, seeing his own
+name on the signboard. Nay, Dame, never give way like that. Lean on
+me,&mdash;so. He is a villain,&mdash;a false, jealous, double-faced villain."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt's head fell back on Ryder's shoulder, and she said no word;
+but only moaned and moaned, and her white teeth clicked convulsively
+together.</p>
+
+<p>Ryder wept over her sad state: the tears were half impulse, half
+crocodile.</p>
+
+<p>She applied hartshorn to the sufferer's nostrils, and tried to rouse her
+mind by exciting her anger. But all was in vain. There hung the betrayed
+wife, pale, crushed, and quivering under the cruel blow.</p>
+
+<p>Ryder asked her if she should go down and excuse her to her guests.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded a feeble assent.</p>
+
+<p>Ryder then laid her down on the bed with her head low, and was just
+about to leave her on that errand, when hurried steps were heard outside
+the door; and one of the female servants knocked; and, not waiting to be
+invited, put her head in, and cried, "O, Dame, the Master is come home.
+He is in the kitchen."</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER XXXIV.</h4>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ryder made an agitated motion with her hand, and gave the girl such
+a look withal, that she retired precipitately.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Gaunt had caught the words, and they literally transformed her.
+She sprang off the bed, and stood erect, and looked a Saxon Pythoness:
+golden hair streaming down her back, and gray eyes gleaming with fury.</p>
+
+<p>She caught up a little ivory-handled knife, and held it above her head.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll drive this into his heart before them all," she cried, "and tell
+them the reason <i>afterwards</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Ryder looked at her for a moment in utter terror. She saw a woman with
+grander passions than herself; a woman that looked quite capable of
+executing her sanguinary threat. Ryder made no more ado, but slipped out
+directly to prevent a meeting that might be attended with terrible
+consequences.</p>
+
+<p>She found her master in the kitchen, splashed with mud, drinking a horn
+of ale after his ride, and looking rather troubled and anxious; and, by
+the keen eye of her sex, she saw that the female servants were also in
+considerable anxiety. The fact is, they had just extemporized a lie.</p>
+
+<p>Tom Leicester, being near the kitchen window, had seen Griffith ride
+into the court-yard.</p>
+
+<p>At sight of that well-known figure, he drew back, and his heart quaked
+at his own imprudence, in confiding Griffith's secret to Caroline Ryder.</p>
+
+<p>"Lasses," said he, hastily, "do me a kindness for old acquaintance.
+Here's the Squire. For Heaven's sake, don't let him know I am in the
+house, or there will be bloodshed between us. He is a hasty man, and I'm
+another. I'll tell ye more by and by."</p>
+
+<p>The next moment Griffith's tread was heard approaching the very door,
+and Leicester darted into the housekeeper's room, and hid in a cupboard
+there.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Griffith opened the kitchen door, and stood upon the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>The women courtesied to him, and were loud in welcome.</p>
+
+<p>He returned their civilities briefly; and then his first word was, "Hath
+Thomas Leicester been here?"</p>
+
+<p>You know how servants stick together against their master! The girls
+looked him in the face, like candid doves, and told him Leicester had
+not been that way for six months or more.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I have tracked him to within two miles," said Griffith,
+doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Then he is sure to come here," said Jane, adroitly. "He wouldn't ever
+think to go by us."</p>
+
+<p>"The moment he enters the house, you let me know. He is a
+mischief-making loon."</p>
+
+<p>He then asked for a horn of ale; and, as he finished it, Ryder came in,
+and he turned to her, and asked her after her mistress.</p>
+
+<p>"She was well, just now," said Ryder; "but she has been took with a
+spasm; and it would be well, sir, if you could dress, and entertain the
+company in her place awhile. For I must tell you, your being so long
+away hath set their tongues going, and almost broken my lady's heart."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith sighed, and said he could not help it, and now he was here, he
+would do all in his power to please her. "I'll go to her at once," said
+he.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir!" said Ryder, firmly. "Come with me. I want to speak to you."</p>
+
+<p>She took him to his bachelor's room, and stayed a few minutes to talk to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Master," said she, solemnly, "things are very serious here. Why did you
+stay so long away? Our dame says some woman is at the bottom of it, and
+she'll put a knife into you if you come a-nigh her."</p>
+
+<p>This threat did not appall Griffith, as Ryder expected. Indeed, he
+seemed rather flattered.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Kate!" said he; "she is just the woman to do it. But I am afraid
+she does not love me enough for that. But indeed how should she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir," replied Ryder, "oblige me by keeping clear of her for a
+little while. I have got orders to make your bed here. Now, dress, like
+a good soul, and then go down and show respect to the company that is in
+your house; for they know you are here."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that is the least I can do," said Griffith. "Put you out what I am
+to wear, and then run and say I'll be with them anon."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith walked into the dining-room, and, somewhat to his surprise,
+after what Ryder had said, found Mrs. Gaunt seated at the head of her
+own table, and presiding like a radiant queen over a brilliant assembly.</p>
+
+<p>He walked in, and made a low bow to his guests first: then he approached
+to greet his wife more freely; but she drew back decidedly, and made him
+a courtesy, the dignity and distance of which struck the whole company.</p>
+
+<p>Sir George Neville, who was at the bottom of the table, proposed, with
+his usual courtesy, to resign his place to Griffith. But Mrs. Gaunt
+forbade the arrangement.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Sir George," said she; "this is but an occasional visitor; you are
+my constant friend."</p>
+
+<p>If this had been said pleasantly, well and good; but the guests looked
+in vain into their hostess's face for the smile that ought to have
+accompanied so strange a speech and disarmed it.</p>
+
+<p>"Rarities are the more welcome," said a lady, coming to the rescue; and
+edged aside to make room for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Madam," said Griffith, "I am in your debt for that explanation; but I
+hope you will be no rarity here, for all that."</p>
+
+<p>Supper proceeded; but the mirth languished. Somehow or other, the chill
+fact that there was a grave quarrel between two at the table, and those
+two man and wife, insinuated itself into the spirits of the guests.
+There began to be lulls,&mdash;fatal lulls. And in one of these, some unlucky
+voice was heard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> to murmur, "Such a meeting of man and wife I never
+saw."</p>
+
+<p>The hearers felt miserable at this personality, that fell upon the ear
+of silence like a thunderbolt.</p>
+
+<p>Griffith was ill-advised enough to notice the remark, though clearly not
+intended for his ears. For one thing, his jealousy had actually revived
+at the cool preference Kate had shown his old rival, Neville.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said he, bitterly, "a man is not always his wife's favorite."</p>
+
+<p>"He does not always deserve to be," said Mrs. Gaunt, sternly.</p>
+
+<p>When matters had gone that length, one idea seemed to occur pretty
+simultaneously to all the well-bred guests; and that idea was, <i>Sauve
+qui peut</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt took leave of them, one by one, and husband and wife were
+left alone.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt by this time was alarmed at the violence of her own passions,
+and wished to avoid Griffith for that night at all events. So she cast
+one terribly stern look upon him, and was about to retire in grim
+silence. But he, indignant at the public affront she had put on him, and
+not aware of the true cause, unfortunately detained her. He said,
+sulkily, "What sort of a reception was that you gave me?"</p>
+
+<p>This was too much. She turned on him furiously. "Too good for thee, thou
+heartless creature! Thomas Leicester is here, and I know thee for a
+villain."</p>
+
+<p>"You know nothing," cried Griffith. "Would you believe that
+mischief-making knave? What has he told you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Go back to <i>her</i>!" cried Mrs. Gaunt furiously. "Me you can deceive and
+pillage no more. So, this was your jealousy! False and forsworn
+yourself, you dared to suspect and insult me. Ah! and you think I am the
+woman to endure this? I'll have your life for it! I'll have your life."</p>
+
+<p>Griffith endeavored to soften her,&mdash;protested that, notwithstanding
+appearances, he had never loved but her.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll soon be rid of you, and your love," said the raging woman. "The
+constables shall come for you to-morrow. You have seen how I can love,
+you shall know how I can hate."</p>
+
+<p>She then, in her fury, poured out a torrent of reproaches and threats
+that made his blood run cold. He could not answer her: he <i>had</i>
+suspected her wrongfully, and been false to her himself. He <i>had</i> abused
+her generosity, and taken her money for Mercy Vint.</p>
+
+<p>After one or two vain efforts to check the torrent, he sank into a
+chair, and hid his face in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>But this did not disarm her, at the time. Her raging voice and raging
+words were heard by the very servants, long after he had ceased to
+defend himself.</p>
+
+<p>At last she came out, pale with fury, and, finding Ryder near the door,
+shrieked out, "Take that reptile to his den, if he is mean enough to lie
+in this house,"&mdash;then, lowering her voice, "and bring Thomas Leicester
+to me."</p>
+
+<p>Ryder went to Leicester, and told him. But he objected to come. "You
+have betrayed me," said he. "Curse my weak heart and my loose tongue. I
+have done the poor Squire an ill turn. I can never look him in the face
+again. But 'tis all thy fault, double-face. I hate the sight of thee."</p>
+
+<p>At this Ryder shed some crocodile tears; and very soon, by her
+blandishments, obtained forgiveness.</p>
+
+<p>And Leicester, since the mischief was done, was persuaded to see the
+dame, who was his recent benefactor, you know. He bargained, however,
+that the Squire should be got to bed first; for he had a great dread of
+meeting him. "He'll break every bone in my skin," said Tom; "or else I
+shall do <i>him</i> a mischief in my defence."</p>
+
+<p>Ryder herself saw the wisdom of this. She bade him stay quiet, and she
+went to look after Griffith.</p>
+
+<p>She found him in the drawing-room, with his head on the table, in deep
+dejection.</p>
+
+<p>She assumed authority, and said he must go to bed.</p>
+
+<p>He rose humbly, and followed her like a submissive dog.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She took him to his room. There was no fire.</p>
+
+<p>"That is where you are to sleep," said she, spitefully.</p>
+
+<p>"It is better than I deserve," said he, humbly.</p>
+
+<p>The absurd rule about not hitting a man when he is down has never
+obtained a place in the great female soul; so Ryder lashed him without
+mercy.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir," said she, "methinks you have gained little by breaking
+faith with me. Y' had better have set up your inn with me, than gone and
+sinned against the law."</p>
+
+<p>"Much better: would to Heaven I had!"</p>
+
+<p>"What d' ye mean to do now? You know the saying. Between two stools&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Child," said Griffith, faintly, "methinks I shall trouble neither long.
+I am not so ill a man as I seem; but who will believe that? I shall not
+live long. And I shall leave an ill name behind me. <i>She</i> told me so
+just now. And oh! her eye was so cruel; I saw my death in it."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come," said Ryder, relenting a little; "you mustn't believe every
+word an angry woman says. There, take my advice; go to bed; and in the
+morning don't speak to her. Keep out of her way a day or two."</p>
+
+<p>And with this piece of friendly advice she left him; and waited about
+till she thought he was in bed and asleep.</p>
+
+<p>Then she brought Thomas Leicester up to her mistress.</p>
+
+<p>But Griffith was not in bed; and he heard Leicester's heavy tread cross
+the landing. He waited and waited behind his door for more than half an
+hour, and then he heard the same heavy tread go away again.</p>
+
+<p>By this time nearly all the inmates of the house were asleep.</p>
+
+<p>About twenty-five minutes after Leicester left Mrs. Gaunt, Caroline
+Ryder stole quietly up stairs from the kitchen, and sat down to think it
+all over.</p>
+
+<p>She then proceeded to undress; but had only taken off her gown, when she
+started and listened; for a cry of distress reached her from outside the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>She darted to the window and threw it open.</p>
+
+<p>Then she heard a cry more distinct, "Help! help!"</p>
+
+<p>It was a clear starlight night, but no moon.</p>
+
+<p>The mere shone before her, and the cries were on the bank.</p>
+
+<p>Now came something more alarming still. A flash,&mdash;a pistol shot,&mdash;and an
+agonized voice cried loudly, "Murder! Help! Murder!"</p>
+
+<p>That voice she knew directly. It was Griffith Gaunt's.</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER XXXV.</h4>
+
+<p>Ryder ran screaming, and alarmed the other servants.</p>
+
+<p>All the windows that looked on the mere were flung open.</p>
+
+<p>But no more sounds were heard. A terrible silence brooded now over those
+clear waters.</p>
+
+<p>The female servants huddled together, and quaked; for who could doubt
+that a bloody deed had been done?</p>
+
+<p>It was some time before they mustered the presence of mind to go and
+tell Mrs. Gaunt. At last they opened her door. She was not in her room.</p>
+
+<p>Ryder ran to Griffith's. It was locked. She called to him. He made no
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>They burst the door open. He was not there; and the window was open.</p>
+
+<p>While their tongues were all going, in consternation, Mrs. Gaunt was
+suddenly among them, very pale.</p>
+
+<p>They turned, and looked at her aghast.</p>
+
+<p>"What means all this?" said she. "Did not I hear cries outside?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," said Ryder. "Murder! and a pistol fired. O, my poor master!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt was white as death; but self-possessed. "Light torches this
+moment, and search the place," said she.</p>
+
+<p>There was only one man in the house; and he declined to go out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> alone.
+So Ryder and Mrs. Gaunt went with him, all three bearing lighted links.</p>
+
+<p>They searched the place where Ryder had heard the cries. They went up
+and down the whole bank of the mere, and cast their torches' red light
+over the placid waters themselves. But there was nothing to be seen,
+alive or dead,&mdash;no trace either of calamity or crime.</p>
+
+<p>They roused the neighbors, and came back to the house with their clothes
+all draggled and dirty.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt took Ryder apart, and asked her if she could guess at what
+time of the night Griffith had made his escape. "He is a villain," said
+she, "yet I would not have him come to harm, God knows. There are
+thieves abroad. But I hope he ran away as soon as your back was turned,
+and so fell not in with them."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" said Ryder. Then, looking Mrs. Gaunt in the face, she said,
+quietly, "Where were you when you heard the cries?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was on the other side of the house."</p>
+
+<p>"What, out o' doors, at that time of night!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay; I was in the grove,&mdash;praying."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you hear any voice you knew?"</p>
+
+<p>"No: all was too indistinct. I heard a pistol, but no words. Did you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I heard no more than you, madam," said Ryder, trembling.</p>
+
+<p>No one went to bed any more that night in Hernshaw Castle.</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER XXXVI.</h4>
+
+<p>This mysterious circumstance made a great talk in the village and in the
+kitchen of Hernshaw Castle; but not in the drawing-room; for Mrs. Gaunt
+instantly closed her door to visitors, and let it be known that it was
+her intention to retire to a convent; and, in the mean time, she desired
+not to be disturbed.</p>
+
+<p>Ryder made one or two attempts to draw her out upon the subject, but was
+sternly checked.</p>
+
+<p>Pale, gloomy, and silent, the mistress of Hernshaw Castle moved about
+the place, like the ghost of her former self. She never mentioned
+Griffith; forbade his name to be uttered in her hearing; and, strange to
+say, gave Ryder strict orders not to tell any one what she had heard
+from Thomas Leicester.</p>
+
+<p>"This last insult is known but to you and me. If it ever gets abroad,
+you leave my service that very hour."</p>
+
+<p>This injunction set Ryder thinking. However, she obeyed it to the
+letter. Her place was getting better and better; and she was a woman
+accustomed to keep secrets.</p>
+
+<p>A pressing letter came from Mr. Atkins.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt replied that her husband had come to Hernshaw, but had left
+again; and the period of his ultimate return was now more uncertain than
+ever.</p>
+
+<p>On this Mr. Atkins came down to Hernshaw Castle. But Mrs. Gaunt would
+not see him. He retired very angry, and renewed his advertisements, but
+in a more explicit form. He now published that Griffith Gaunt, of
+Hernshaw and Bolton, was executor and residuary legatee to the late
+Griffith Gaunt of Coggleswade; and requested him to apply directly to
+James Atkins, Solicitor, of Gray's Inn, London.</p>
+
+<p>In due course this advertisement was read by the servants at Hernshaw,
+and shown by Ryder to Mrs. Gaunt.</p>
+
+<p>She made no comment whatever; and contrived to render her pale face
+impenetrable.</p>
+
+<p>Ryder became as silent and thoughtful as herself, and often sat bending
+her black judicial brows.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>By and by dark mysterious words began to be thrown out in Hernshaw
+village.</p>
+
+<p>"He will never come back at all."</p>
+
+<p>"He will never come into that fortune."</p>
+
+<p>"'T is no use advertising for a man that is past reading."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>These, and the like equivocal sayings, were followed by a vague buzz,
+which was traceable to no individual author, but seemed to rise on all
+sides, like a dark mist, and envelop that unhappy house.</p>
+
+<p>And that dark mist of Rumor soon condensed itself into a palpable and
+terrible whisper,&mdash;"Griffith Gaunt hath met with foul play."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>No one of the servants told Mrs. Gaunt this horrid rumor.</p>
+
+<p>But the women used to look at her, and after her, with strange eyes.</p>
+
+<p>She noticed this, and felt, somehow, that her people were falling away
+from her. It added one drop to her bitter cup. She began to droop into a
+sort of calm, despondent lethargy.</p>
+
+<p>Then came fresh trouble to rouse her.</p>
+
+<p>Two of the county magistrates called on her in their official capacity,
+and, with perfect politeness, but a very grave air, requested her to
+inform them of all the circumstances attending her husband's
+disappearance.</p>
+
+<p>She replied, coldly and curtly, that she knew very little about it. Her
+husband had left in the middle of the night.</p>
+
+<p>"He came to stay?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe so."</p>
+
+<p>"Came on horseback?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he go away on horseback?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; for the horse is now in my stable."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it true there was a quarrel between you and him that evening?"</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," said Mrs. Gaunt, drawing herself back, haughtily, "did you
+come here to gratify your curiosity?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, madam," said the elder of the two; "but to discharge a very serious
+and painful duty, in which I earnestly request you, and even advise you,
+to aid us. Was there a quarrel?"</p>
+
+<p>"There was&mdash;a mortal quarrel."</p>
+
+<p>The gentlemen exchanged glances, and the elder made a note.</p>
+
+<p>"May we ask the subject of that quarrel?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt declined, positively, to enter into a matter so delicate.</p>
+
+<p>A note was taken of this refusal.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you aware, madam, that your husband's voice was heard calling for
+help, and that a pistol-shot was fired?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt trembled visibly.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard the pistol-shot," said she; "but not the voice distinctly. O, I
+hope it was not his voice Ryder heard!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ryder, who is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ryder is my lady's maid: her bedroom is on that side the house."</p>
+
+<p>"Can we see Mrs. Ryder?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," said Mrs. Gaunt, and rose and rang the bell.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ryder answered the bell, in person, very promptly; for she was
+listening at the door.</p>
+
+<p>Being questioned, she told the magistrates what she had heard down by
+"the mere"; and said she was sure it was her master's voice that cried
+"Help!" and "Murder!" And with this she began to cry.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt trembled and turned pale.</p>
+
+<p>The magistrates confined their questions to Ryder.</p>
+
+<p>They elicited, however, very little more from her. She saw the drift of
+their questions, and had an impulse to defend her mistress there
+present. Behind her back it would have been otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>That resolution once taken, two children might as well have tried to
+extract evidence from her as two justices of the peace.</p>
+
+<p>And then Mrs. Gaunt's pale face and noble features touched them. The
+case was mysterious, but no more; and they departed little the wiser,
+and with some apologies for the trouble they had given her.</p>
+
+<p>The next week down came Mr. Atkins, out of all patience, and determined
+to find Griffith Gaunt, or else obtain some proof of his decease.</p>
+
+<p>He obtained two interviews with Ryder, and bribed her to tell him all
+she knew. He prosecuted other inquiries with more method than had
+hitherto been used, and elicited an important fact, namely, that
+Griffith Gaunt had been seen walking in a certain direction at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> one
+o'clock in the morning, followed at a short distance by a tall man with
+a knapsack, or the like, on his back.</p>
+
+<p>The person who gave this tardy information was the wife of a certain
+farmer's man, who wired hares upon the sly. The man himself, being
+assured that, in a case so serious as this, no particular inquiries
+should be made how he came to be out so late, confirmed what his wife
+had let out, and added, that both men had taken the way that would lead
+them to the bridge, meaning the bridge over the mere. More than that he
+could not say, for he had met them, and was full half a mile from the
+mere before those men could have reached it.</p>
+
+<p>Following up this clew, Mr. Atkins learned so many ugly things, that he
+went to the Bench on justicing day, and demanded a full and searching
+inquiry on the premises.</p>
+
+<p>Sir George Neville, after in vain opposing this, rode off straight from
+the Bench to Hernshaw, and in feeling terms conveyed the bad news to
+Mrs. Gaunt; and then, with the utmost delicacy, let her know that some
+suspicion rested upon herself, which she would do well to meet with the
+bold front of innocence.</p>
+
+<p>"What suspicion, pray?" said Mrs. Gaunt, haughtily.</p>
+
+<p>Sir George shrugged his shoulders, and replied, "That you have done
+Gaunt the honor to put him out of the way."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt took this very differently from what Sir George expected.</p>
+
+<p>"What!" she cried, "are they so sure he is dead,&mdash;murdered?"</p>
+
+<p>And with this she went into a passion of grief and remorse.</p>
+
+<p>Even Sir George was puzzled, as well as affected, by her convulsive
+agitation.</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER XXXVII.</h4>
+
+<p>Though it was known the proposed inquiry might result in the committal
+of Mrs. Gaunt on a charge of murder, yet the respect in which she had
+hitherto been held, and the influence of Sir George Neville, who, having
+been her lover, stoutly maintained her innocence, prevailed so far that
+even this inquiry was private, and at her own house. Only she was
+present in the character of a suspected person, and the witnesses were
+examined before her.</p>
+
+<p>First, the poacher gave his evidence.</p>
+
+<p>Then Jane, the cook, proved that a pedler called Thomas Leicester had
+been in the kitchen, and secreted about the premises till a late hour;
+and this Thomas Leicester corresponded exactly to the description given
+by the poacher.</p>
+
+<p>This threw suspicion on Thomas Leicester, but did not connect Mrs. Gaunt
+with the deed in any way.</p>
+
+<p>But Ryder's evidence filled this gap. She revealed three serious
+facts:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>First, that, by her mistress's orders, she had introduced this very
+Leicester into her mistress's room about midnight, where he had remained
+nearly half an hour, and had then left the house.</p>
+
+<p>Secondly, that Mrs. Gaunt herself had been out of doors after midnight.</p>
+
+<p>And, thirdly, that she had listened at the door, and heard her threaten
+Griffith Gaunt's life.</p>
+
+<p>This is a mere <i>pr&eacute;cis</i> of the evidence, and altogether it looked so
+suspicious, that the magistrates, after telling Mrs. Gaunt she could ask
+the witnesses any question she chose, a suggestion she treated with
+marked contempt, put their heads together a moment and whispered. Then
+the eldest of them, Mr. Underhill, who lived at a considerable distance,
+told her gravely he must commit her to take her trial at the next
+assizes.</p>
+
+<p>"Do what you conceive to be your duty, gentlemen," said Mrs. Gaunt, with
+marvellous dignity. "If I do not assert my innocence, it is because I
+disdain the accusation too much."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall take no part in the committal of this innocent lady," said Sir
+George Neville, and was about to leave the room.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Gaunt begged him to stay. "To be guilty is one thing," said
+she, "to be accused is another. I shall go<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> to prison as easy as to my
+dinner; and to the gallows as to my bed."</p>
+
+<p>The presiding magistrate was staggered a moment by these words; and it
+was not without considerable hesitation he took the warrant and prepared
+to fill it up.</p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. Houseman, who had watched the proceedings very keenly, put in
+his word. "I am here for the accused person, sir, and, with your good
+leave, object to her committal&mdash;on grounds of law."</p>
+
+<p>"What may they be, Mr. Houseman?" said the magistrate, civilly; and laid
+his pen down to hear them.</p>
+
+<p>"Briefly, sir, these. Where a murder is proven, you can commit a subject
+of this realm upon suspicion. But you cannot suspect the murder as well
+as the culprit, and so commit. The murder must be proved to the senses.
+Now in this case, the death of Mr. Gaunt by violence is not proved.
+Indeed, his very death rests but upon suspicion. I admit that the law of
+England in this respect has once or twice been tampered with, and
+persons have even been executed where no <i>corpus delicti</i> was found; but
+what was the consequence? In each case the murdered man turned out to be
+alive, and justice was the only murderer. After Harrison's case, and
+----'s, no Cumberland jury will ever commit for murder, unless the
+<i>corpus delicti</i> has been found, and with signs of violence upon it.
+Come, come, Mr. Atkins, you are too good a lawyer, and too humane a man,
+to send my client to prison on the suspicion of a suspicion, which you
+know the very breath of the judge will blow away, even if the grand jury
+let it go into court. I offer bail, ten thousand pounds in two sureties;
+Sir George Neville here present, and myself."</p>
+
+<p>The magistrate looked to Mr. Atkins.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not employed by the crown," said that gentleman, "but acting on
+mere civil grounds, and have no right nor wish to be severe. Bail by all
+means: but is the lady so sure of her innocence as to lend me her
+assistance to find the <i>corpus delicti</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>The question was so shrewdly put, that any hesitation would have ruined
+Mrs. Gaunt.</p>
+
+<p>Houseman, therefore, replied eagerly and promptly, "I answer for her,
+she will."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt bowed her head in assent.</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said Atkins, "I ask leave to drag, and, if need be, to drain
+that piece of water there, called 'the mere.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Drag it or drain it, which you will," said Houseman.</p>
+
+<p>Said Atkins, very impressively, "And, mark my words, at the bottom of
+that very sheet of water there, I shall find the remains of the late
+Griffith Gaunt."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>At these solemn words, coming as they did, not from a loose
+unprofessional speaker, but from a lawyer, a man who measured all his
+words, a very keen observer might have seen a sort of tremor run all
+through Mr. Houseman's frame. The more admirable, I think, was the
+perfect coolness and seeming indifference with which he replied, "Find
+him, and I'll admit suicide; find him, with signs of violence, and I'll
+admit homicide&mdash;by some person or persons unknown."</p>
+
+<p>All further remarks were interrupted by bustle and confusion.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt had fainted dead away.</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHAPTER XXXVIII.</h4>
+
+<p>Of course pity was the first feeling; but, by the time Mrs. Gaunt
+revived, her fainting, so soon after Mr. Atkins's proposal, had produced
+a sinister effect on the minds of all present; and every face showed it,
+except the wary Houseman's.</p>
+
+<p>On her retiring, it broke out first in murmurs, then in plain words.</p>
+
+<p>As for Mr. Atkins, he now showed the moderation of an able man who feels
+he has a strong cause.</p>
+
+<p>He merely said, "I think there should be constables about, in case of an
+escape being attempted; but I agree with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> Mr. Houseman that your
+worships will be quite justified in taking bail, provided the <i>corpus
+delicti</i> should not be found. Gentlemen, you were most of you neighbors
+and friends of the deceased, and are, I am sure, lovers of justice; I do
+entreat you to aid me in searching that piece of water, by the side of
+which the deceased gentleman was heard to cry for help; and, much I
+fear, he cried in vain."</p>
+
+<p>The persons thus appealed to entered into the matter with all the ardor
+of just men, whose curiosity as well as justice is inflamed.</p>
+
+<p>A set of old, rusty drags was found on the premises; and men went
+punting up and down the mere, and dragged it.</p>
+
+<p>Rude hooks were made by the village blacksmith, and fitted to
+cart-ropes; another boat was brought to Hernshaw in a wagon; and all
+that afternoon the bottom of the mere was raked, and some curious things
+fished up. But no dead man.</p>
+
+<p>The next day a score of amateur dragsmen were out; some throwing their
+drags from the bridge; some circulating in boats, and even in large
+tubs.</p>
+
+<p>And, meantime, Mr. Atkins and his crew went steadily up and down,
+dragging every foot of those placid waters.</p>
+
+<p>They worked till dinner-time, and brought up a good copper pot with two
+handles, a horse's head, and several decayed trunks of trees, which had
+become saturated, and sunk to the bottom.</p>
+
+<p>At about three in the afternoon, two boys, who, for want of a boat, were
+dragging from the bridge, found something heavy but elastic at the end
+of their drag: they pulled up eagerly, and a thing like a huge turnip,
+half gnawed, came up, with a great bob, and blasted their sight.</p>
+
+<p>They let go, drags and all, and stood shrieking, and shrieking.</p>
+
+<p>Those who were nearest them called out, and asked what was the matter;
+but the boys did not reply, and their faces showed so white, that a
+woman, who saw them, hailed Mr. Atkins, and said she was sure those boys
+had seen something out of the common.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Atkins came up, and found the boys blubbering. He encouraged them,
+and they told him a fearful thing had come up; it was like a man's head
+and shoulders all scooped out and gnawed by the fishes, and had torn the
+drags out of their hands.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Atkins made them tell him the exact place; and he was soon upon it
+with his boat.</p>
+
+<p>The water here was very deep; and though the boys kept pointing to the
+very spot, the drags found nothing for some time.</p>
+
+<p>But at last they showed, by their resistance, that they had clawed hold
+of something.</p>
+
+<p>"Draw slowly," said Mr. Atkins: "and, <i>if it is</i>, be men, and hold
+fast."</p>
+
+<p>The men drew slowly, slowly, and presently there rose to the surface a
+Thing to strike terror and loathing into the stoutest heart.</p>
+
+<p>The mutilated remains of a human face and body.</p>
+
+<p>The greedy pike had cleared, not the features only, but the entire flesh
+off the face; but had left the hair, and the tight skin of the forehead,
+though their teeth had raked this last. The remnants they had left made
+what they had mutilated doubly horrible; since now it was not a skull,
+not a skeleton; but a face and a man gnawed down to the bones and hair
+and feet. These last were in stout shoes, that resisted even those
+voracious teeth; and a leathern stock had offered some little protection
+to the throat.</p>
+
+<p>The men groaned, and hid their faces with one hand, and pulled softly to
+the shore with the other; and then, with half-averted faces, they drew
+the ghastly remains and fluttering rags gently and reverently to land.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Atkins yielded to nature, and was violently sick at the sight he had
+searched for so eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he recovered his powers, he bade the constables guard the
+body (it was a body, in law), and see that no one laid so much as a
+finger on it until<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> some magistrate had taken a deposition. He also sent
+a messenger to Mr. Houseman, telling him the <i>corpus delicti</i> was found.
+He did this, partly to show that gentleman he was right in his judgment,
+and partly out of common humanity; since, after this discovery, Mr.
+Houseman's client was sure to be tried for her life.</p>
+
+<p>A magistrate soon came, and viewed the remains, and took careful notes
+of the state in which they were found.</p>
+
+<p>Houseman came, and was much affected both by the sight of his dead
+friend, so mutilated, and by the probable consequences to Mrs. Gaunt.
+However, as lawyers fight very hard, he recovered himself enough to
+remark that there were no marks of violence before death, and insisted
+on this being inserted in the magistrate's notes.</p>
+
+<p>An inquest was ordered next day, and, meantime, Mrs. Gaunt was told she
+could not quit the upper apartments of her own house. Two constables
+were placed on the ground-floor night and day.</p>
+
+<p>Next day the remains were removed to the little inn where Griffith had
+spent so many jovial hours; laid on a table, and covered with a white
+sheet.</p>
+
+<p>The coroner's jury sat in the same room, and the evidence I have already
+noticed was gone into, and the finding of the body deposed to. The jury,
+without hesitation, returned a verdict of wilful murder.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gaunt was then brought in. She came, white as a ghost, leaning upon
+Houseman's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Upon her entering, a juryman, by a humane impulse, drew the sheet over
+the remains again.</p>
+
+<p>The coroner, according to the custom of the day, put a question to Mrs.
+Gaunt, with the view of eliciting her guilt. If I remember right, he
+asked her how she came to be out of doors so late on the night of the
+murder. Mrs. Gaunt, however, was in no condition to answer queries. I
+doubt if she even heard this one. Her lovely eyes, dilated with horror,
+were fixed on that terrible sheet, with a stony glance. "Show me," she
+gasped, "and let me die too."</p>
+
+<p>The jurymen looked, with doubtful faces, at the coroner. He bowed a
+grave assent.</p>
+
+<p>The nearest juryman withdrew the sheet. The belief was not yet extinct
+that the dead body shows some signs of its murderer's approach. So every
+eye glanced on her and on It by turns; as she, with dilated,
+horror-stricken eyes, looked on that awful Thing.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LONDON_FORTY_YEARS_AGO" id="LONDON_FORTY_YEARS_AGO"></a>LONDON FORTY YEARS AGO.</h2>
+
+<h3>FROM THE MEMORANDA OF A TRAVELLER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The Court of Chancery.&mdash;Feeling a desire to see for myself the highest
+embodiment of English law where it lurked&mdash;a huge and bloated
+personification of all that was monstrous and discouraging to
+suitors&mdash;in the secret place of thunder, just behind the altar of
+sacrifice, forever spinning the web that for hundreds of years hath
+enmeshed and overspread the mightiest empire upon earth with
+entanglement, perplexity, and procrastination, till estates have
+disappeared and families have died out, sometimes, while waiting for a
+decision,&mdash;I dropped into the Court of Chancery.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing I saw was the Lord Chancellor himself,&mdash;Lord Eldon,&mdash;the
+mildest, wisest, slowest, and most benignant of men,&mdash;milder than
+Byron's Ali Pacha, wiser than Lord Bacon himself; and, if not altogether
+worthy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> of being called "the greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind," like
+his prototype, yet great enough as a lawyer to set people wondering what
+he would say next. He was quite capable of arguing a question on both
+sides, and then of deciding against himself; and so patient, withal,
+that he had just then finished a sitting of three whole days to Sir
+Thomas Lawrence, for a portrait of his hand,&mdash;a beautiful hand, it must
+be acknowledged, though undecided and womanish, as if he had never quite
+made up his mind whether to keep it open or shut.</p>
+
+<p>And the next thing I took notice of, after a hurried glance at the
+carved ceiling and painted windows, and over the array of bewigged and
+powdered solicitors and masters,&mdash;a magnificent bed of cauliflowers, in
+appearance, with some of the finest heads I ever saw in my life&mdash;out of
+a cabbage-garden,&mdash;was a large, dark, heavy picture of Paul before
+Felix, by Hogarth, representing these great personages at the moment
+when Felix, that earliest of Lord Chancellors, having heard Paul
+through, says: "Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient
+season, I will call for thee." Lord Eldon was larger than I supposed
+from the portrait above mentioned. And this is the more extraordinary,
+because the heads of Lawrence, like those of ancient statuary, are
+always smaller than life, to give them an aristocratic, high-bred air,
+and the bodies are larger. The expression of countenance, too, was
+benignity itself,&mdash;just such as Titian would have been delighted
+with,&mdash;calm, clear, passionless, without a prevailing characteristic of
+any strength. "Felix trembled," they say. Whatever Felix may have done,
+I do not believe that Lord Eldon would have trembled till he had put on
+his night-cap and weighed the whole question by himself at his chambers.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Kean.</i>&mdash;Wishing to see how this grotesque but wonderful actor&mdash;a
+mountebank sometimes and sometimes a living truth&mdash;would play at home
+after driving us all mad in America, I went to see him in Sir Giles
+Overreach. He played with more spirit, more of settled purpose, than
+with us, being more in earnest, I think, and better supported. There is
+one absurdity in the play, which was made particularly offensive by
+Oxberry's exaggeration. The dinner is kept waiting, and the whole
+business of the play suspended, for the Justice to make speeches. But
+the last scene was capital,&mdash;prodigious,&mdash;full of that dark, dismal,
+despairing energy you would look for in a dethroned spirit, baffled,
+like Mephistopheles, at the very moment his arm is outstretched, and his
+long, lean fingers are clutching at the shoulder of his victim. Being
+about to cross blades with his adversary, in a paroxysm of rage he
+plucks at the hilt of his sword, and stops suddenly, as if struck with
+paralysis, pale, and gasping for breath, and says,&mdash;in that far-off,
+moaning voice we all remember in his famous farewell to the "big wars
+that make ambition virtue,"&mdash;"The widow sits upon my arm, and the
+wronged orphan's tear glues it to the scabbard,&mdash;it will <i>not</i> be
+drawn," etc., etc.,&mdash;or something of the sort. It was not so much a
+thrilling as a curdling you felt.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Young, in Sir Pertinax.</i>&mdash;Very good, though full of stage trick, or
+what they call, when they get bothered, or would like to bother you,
+stage <i>business</i>;&mdash;as where he throws his pocket-handkerchief before him
+on leaving the stage, somewhat after the style of Macready in Hamlet,
+which Forrest called <i>le pas &agrave; mouchoir</i>, and took the liberty of
+hissing. Good Scotch, generally, with a few wretched blunders, though
+his "booin', and booin', and booin'," and his vehement snuff-taking, and
+the declaration that "he could never stand oopright in the presence of a
+great mon in a' his life," were evidently copied from, or suggested by,
+George Frederick Cooke, who borrowed both from Macklin, if we may trust
+surviving contemporaries.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Robert Owen.</i>&mdash;Breakfasted with Robert<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> Owen, after having attended a
+conference of the brotherhood, where they talked a world of nonsense,
+and argued for a whole hour, without coming to a conclusion, about
+whether we are governed by circumstances or circumstances are governed
+by us. You would swear Owen was a Yankee, born and bred. He has the
+shrewd, inquisitive look, the spare frame, the sharp features, of a
+Connecticut farmer, and constantly reminds me of Henry Clay when he
+moves about. He is evidently sincere; but such a visionary! and so
+thoroughly satisfied that the world is coming to an end just as he would
+have it, that he allows no misgivings to trouble him, and never loses
+his temper, nor "bates one jot of heart or hope," happen what may. The
+last time we met&mdash;only three days ago&mdash;his great project was coming up
+before Parliament, and he told me, in confidence, that he was sure of a
+favorable result,&mdash;that he had counted noses, and had the most
+comfortable assurances from all the great leaders of the day,&mdash;and in
+short, between ourselves, that grass would be growing on the London
+Exchange within two years. The petition came up on the day appointed,
+and was allowed to drop out of the tail end of the cart, almost without
+a remark. But so far was he from being disheartened, that he lost no
+time in preparing for a trip across the Atlantic, which he had long had
+in contemplation, but was hindered from taking by the hopes he had been
+persuaded to entertain from his friends in Parliament, and by the
+business at Lanark,&mdash;a manufacturing place which he had built up of
+himself in Scotland, with eminent success, and most undoubted practical
+wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>Wishing to leave a record with me for future ages, he wrote as follows
+in my album, with a cheerfulness, an imperturbability, a serene
+self-confidence, past all my conceptions of a visionary or enthusiast.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I leave this country with a deep impression that my visit to
+America will be productive of permanent benefit to the Indian
+tribes, to the negro race, and to the whole population of the
+Western Continent, North and South, and to Europe.</p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"<span class="smcap">Robert Owen</span>.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">"<span class="smcap">London</span>, 4th September, 1824."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>What a magnificent scheme! How comprehensive and how vast! But nothing
+came of it, beyond the translation of his son, Robert Dale Owen, to this
+country,&mdash;a very clever, well-educated, and earnest, though rather
+awkward and sluggish young man, who has achieved a large reputation
+here, and will be yet more distinguished if he lives, being well
+grounded and rooted in the foundation principles of government, and both
+conscientious and fearless.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Old Bailey.</i>&mdash;This and other like places, of which we have all read so
+much that we feel acquainted with them, not as pictures or descriptions,
+at second hand, but as decided and positive realities, I lost no time in
+seeing.</p>
+
+<p>I found the court-room small, much smaller than the average with us,
+badly arranged, and worse lighted. A prisoner was up for burglary. He
+was a sullen, turbulent-looking fellow; and his counsel, an Old Bailey
+lawyer, was inquiring, with a pertinacity that astonished while it
+amused me, about the dirt in a comb. His object was to ascertain
+"whether it had been used or <i>not</i>"; and, as there were two sides to it,
+which side had become dirty from being carried in the pocket, and which
+from legitimate use. Before the prisoner was a toilet-glass, in which he
+could not help seeing his own pale, haggard, frightened face whenever he
+looked up,&mdash;a refinement of barbarism I was not prepared for in a
+British court of justice. I occupied a seat in the gallery, surrounded
+by professional pickpockets, burglars, and highwaymen, I dare say; for
+they talked freely of the poor fellow's chances, and like experts.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Joanna Baillie.</i>&mdash;"Here," said Lady Bentham, wife of General Sir
+Samuel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> Bentham, the originator of that Panopticon, which was the germ
+of all our prison discipline as well as of all penitentiary
+improvements, the world over,&mdash;"Here is an autograph you will think
+worth having, I am sure, after what I have heard you say of the writer,
+and of her tragedies, and I want you to see her";&mdash;handing me, as she
+spoke, the following brief note, written upon a bit of coarse paper
+about six inches by four.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"If you are perfectly disengaged this evening, Agnes and I will
+have the pleasure of taking tea with you, if you give us leave.</p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"<span class="smcap">J. Baillie</span>."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Now, if there was a woman in the world I wanted to see, or one that I
+most heartily reverenced, it was Joanna Baillie. Her "De Montfort" I had
+always looked upon as one of the greatest tragedies ever written,&mdash;equal
+to anything of Shakespeare's for strength of delineation, simplicity,
+and effect, however inferior it might be in the superfluities of genius,
+in the overcharging of character and passion, of which we find so much
+in Shakespeare; and, on the whole, not unlike that wonderful Danish
+drama, "Dyveke," or a part of "Wallenstein."</p>
+
+<p>My great desire was now to be satisfied. We met, and I passed one of the
+pleasantest evenings of my life with <i>Mrs.</i> Baillie, as they called her,
+Lady Bentham, her most intimate if not her oldest friend, and "sister
+Agnes."</p>
+
+<p>I found Mrs. Baillie wholly unlike the misrepresentations I had seen of
+her. She was rather small,&mdash;though far from being diminutive, like her
+sister Agnes,&mdash;with a charming countenance, full of placid serenity,
+almost Quakerish, beautiful eyes, and gray hair, nearly white indeed,
+combed smoothly away from her forehead. We talked freely together,
+avoiding the shop, and the impression she left on my mind was that of a
+modest, unpretending gentlewoman, full of quiet strength and shrewd
+pleasantry, with a Scottish flavor, but altogether above being brilliant
+or showy, even in conversation with a stranger and an author. She
+questioned me closely about my country and about the people, and
+appeared to take much interest in our doings and prospects. Her sister
+Agnes never opened her mouth, to the best of my recollection and belief,
+though she listened with her eyes and ears to the conversation, and
+appeared to enjoy it exceedingly; and as for Lady Bentham, though a
+clever woman of large experience and great resources, such was her
+self-denial and her generous admiration of the "queenly stranger," as I
+had called her friend in sport,&mdash;remembering how it was applied to the
+magnificent Siddons, when she represented Jane de Montfort,&mdash;that she
+did nothing more and said nothing more than what was calculated to bring
+out her friend to advantage. There was nothing said, however, from which
+a person unacquainted with the writings of Joanna Baillie would have
+inferred her true character,&mdash;no flashing lights, no surprises, no
+thunder-bursts. The conversation was, at the best, but sociable and
+free, as if we were all of the same neighborhood or household; but
+knowing her by her great work on the Passions, I was profoundly
+impressed, nevertheless, and left her well satisfied with her
+revelations of character.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Catalani.</i>&mdash;What a magnificent creature! How majestic and easy and
+graceful! And then what a voice! One would swear she had a nest of
+nightingales and a trumpet obligato in her throat. No wonder she sets
+the great glass chandeliers of the Argyle rooms ringing and rattling
+when she charges in a bravura.</p>
+
+<p>That she is, in some passages, a little&mdash;not vulgar&mdash;but almost vulgar,
+with a dash of the contadina, is undeniable; and she certainly has not a
+delicate ear, and often sings false; yet, when that tempestuous warbling
+in her throat breaks forth, and the flush of her heart's blood hurries
+over her face and empurples her neck, why then "bow the high banners,
+roll the answering drums," and shut up, if you wouldn't be torn to
+pieces by a London mob.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Say what you will, you must acknowledge&mdash;you <i>must</i>&mdash;that you never
+heard such a voice before, if there ever was one like it on earth,&mdash;so
+full and so impassioned, so rich and sympathetic. More educated, more
+brilliant organs there may be, like those of Pasta or Velluti, poor
+fellow!&mdash;more satisfying to the ear,&mdash;but none, I believe, so satisfying
+to the heart; none that so surely lifts you off your feet, and blinds
+and deafens you to all defects, and sets you wandering far away through
+the empyrean of musical sounds, till you are lost in a labyrinth of
+triumphant harmonies. The sad, mournful intonations of Velluti may bring
+tears into your eyes, but you are never transported beyond yourself by
+his piteous wailing.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, if you will believe me, this woman has just been called out of
+bed to a London audience, who, instead of paying a guinea or half a
+guinea to hear her in opera, are paying only 2<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> a head to hear
+her let off "God s<i>h</i>ave the King!" like a roll of musical thunder. She
+appears "in <i>dish-abille</i>" as they call it here, and in <i>tears</i>. And why
+is she summoned? Because the <i>sufferin'</i> people, having understood that
+she shares the house, insist on having their half-crowns and sixpences
+returned. It has been quite impossible to hear a word, ever since they
+were informed that she had been taken suddenly ill, and was not allowed
+to appear by her medical attendants. But what of that? Dead or alive, a
+British audience must have her out. And so a great banner was lifted on
+which was inscribed "Catalani sent for!" and then, after a while, as the
+uproar continued, and the outcries grew more violent, and the white
+handkerchiefs more and more stormy and threatening, another inscription
+appeared, "Catalani coming!" And lo! she comes! and comes weeping. But
+the people refuse to be comforted. And why? Because of their
+disappointment? Because of their passion for music? No indeed; but
+because they are told that she is to go snacks with the manager; and,
+her parsimony being proverbial, they are determined to rebuke it in a
+liberal spirit. Pshaw!</p>
+
+<p>These people pretend to love music, and to love it with such a devouring
+passion that nothing less than the very best will satisfy them, cost
+what it may. Yet the opera-house, with the patronage of the royal
+family, the nobility, and the gentry, and open only twice a week, is
+never full even at the representation of the finest works of genius; and
+when such an artist as Catalani is engaged at one of the theatres, and
+the people are admitted for theatre prices, the first thing they do,
+after crowding the house to suffocation, is to call for "God save the
+King," or, if Braham is out, for "Kelvin Grove." Enthusiasts
+indeed,&mdash;carried away, and justly, by "Black-eyed Susan," or "Cherry
+Ripe," which they do understand, feel, and enjoy,&mdash;they are all ready to
+swear, and expect you to believe, that their passion is for opera
+music,&mdash;Italian or German, the Barber of Seville, or <i>Der Freisch&uuml;tz</i>.
+And therefore I say again, Pshaw!</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>John Dunn Hunter.</i>&mdash;This luckiest and boldest of humbugs, whose book,
+by the merest accident, has obtained for him the favor of the Duke of
+Sussex, and, through the Duke, access to the highest nobility, has just
+been presented at Court, and is not a little mortified that his Majesty,
+on receiving a copy of the book, Hunter's "Captivity among the Indians,"
+did not inquire after his health or make him a speech. He does not so
+much mind paying five guineas for the loan of a court suit, consisting
+of a single-breasted claret coat with steel buttons, a powdered tie,
+small-clothes, white-silk stockings, and a dress sword,&mdash;with
+instructions on which side it is to be worn, and how it is to be managed
+in backing out so as not to get between his legs and trip him up,&mdash;nor
+the having to pay for being mentioned in the Court Journal by a fellow
+who is called the King's Reporter; but then he will have the worth of
+his money, and so takes it out in grumbling and sulking. Not long ago<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>
+he sent a note through the penny-post, sealed with a wafer, directed to
+the Marchioness of Conyngham, the king's mistress, in reply to an
+invitation from her ladyship, which he accepted, to meet the king! At
+least, such was the interpretation he put upon it. And now, after all
+this, to be fobbed off with a bow by "Gentleman George," the "fat
+friend" of poor Brummell, was indeed a little too bad.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing he can say or do, however, will undeceive these people. Though
+he cannot shout decently, cannot bear fatigue or pain, is so far from
+being swift of foot that he is not even a good walker, talks little or
+no Indian, and is continually outraging all the customs of society after
+getting well acquainted with them, and doing all this by calculation, as
+in the case of the note referred to above, they persist in believing his
+story. I shall have to expose him.&mdash;P. S. I have exposed him.</p>
+
+<p>While speaking just now of his acquaintance with the Duke of Sussex, who
+was very kind to him, and a believer to the last, I said that it was
+obtained for him by accident. It was in this way. At the house where he
+lodged a Mr. Norgate of Norfolk&mdash;not far from Holkham, the seat of Mr.
+Coke afterward Earl of Leicester&mdash;was also a lodger. Mr. Norgate invited
+Hunter down to his father's, and they went over to Holkham together. And
+there they met the Duke of Sussex, a great friend of Mr. Coke, both
+being Liberals and Oppositionists. His Royal Highness took a great fancy
+to Hunter, got him to sit to Chester Harding for his picture, gave him a
+gold watch and lots of agricultural tools to subdue the Indians with,
+and stuck to him through thick and thin, till I found it necessary to
+tear off the fellow's mask.</p>
+
+<p>On separating from me, before I had got possession of the facts which
+soon after appeared in the "London Magazine," he wrote in my album the
+following sententious and pithy apothegm, which, of course, only went to
+show the marvellous power of adaptation to circumstances which would
+naturally characterize the man, if his story were true. It was in this
+way his dupes reasoned. If he sealed a letter with a wafer, and sent it
+through the penny-post to a woman of rank, that proved his neglected
+education or a natural disregard of polite usage, and of course that he
+had been carried off in childhood by the Indians, and knew not where to
+look for father or mother, sister or brother,&mdash;while, on the contrary,
+if he used wax, and set the seal upon it which had been given to him by
+the Duke of Sussex, that showed, of course, the sagacity and readiness
+of adaptation which ought to characterize the hero of Hunter's
+narrative. In short, he was another Princess Caraboo, or young
+Chatterton, or Cagliostro, or Count Eliorich, all of whom were made
+great impostors by the help of others, the over-credulous and the
+over-confident in themselves.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"He who would do great actions," writes our enormous bug-a-boo,
+"must learn to <i>empoly</i> his powers to the least possible loss.
+The possession of brilliant and extraordinary talents" (this
+was probably meant for me, as he had been trying to prevail
+upon my "brilliant and extraordinary talents" to return to
+America with him, and go among the savages about the
+neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains, and there establish a
+confederacy of our own) "is not always the most valuable to its
+possessor. Moderate talents, properly directed, will enable one
+to do a great deal; and the most distinguished gifts of nature
+may be thrown away by an unskilful application of them.</p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"<span class="smcap">J. D. Hunter</span>.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">"<span class="smcap">London</span>, 15th May, 1824."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Kean at a Public Dinner.</i>&mdash;A terrible outcry just now, in consequence
+of certain exposures and a published correspondence. At a public dinner,
+he says he is going to America. The Duke of York, who presides, cries
+out, "No, no!" Shouts follow and the rattling of glasses, and men leap
+on the chairs and almost on the tables, repeating the Duke's "No, no!"
+till at last<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> Kean promises to make an apology from the stage,&mdash;a
+perilous experiment, he will find, after which he cannot stay here. The
+object of Price, who has engaged him, is to kill off Cooper. The best
+actors now get fifty guineas a week, or twenty-five pounds a night for
+so many nights, play or pay, with a benefit.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Architecture.</i>&mdash;I have seen no greater barbarisms anywhere than I find
+here. The screen of Carleton House,&mdash;a long row of double columns, with
+a heavy entablature supporting the arms of Great Britain,&mdash;"that and
+nothing more"; the doings of Inigo Jones in his water-gates and arches,
+with two or three orders intermixed; and the late achievements of Mr.
+Nash along Regent Street,&mdash;with the church spire, which has the
+attractiveness and symmetry of an exaggerated marlin-spike, for a
+vanishing point,&mdash;are of themselves enough to show that the people here
+have no taste, and no feeling for this department of the Fine Arts,
+however much they may brag and bluster.</p>
+
+<p>But I have just returned from a visit to one of Sir Christopher Wren's
+masterpieces, which has greatly disturbed my equanimity, and obliges me
+to modify my opinion. It is a church back of the Mansion House; and is
+the original of Godefroy's Unitarian church at Baltimore, beyond all
+question: the dome rests on arches, and springs into the air, as if
+buoyed up and aspiring of itself. Bad for the music, however. Here I
+find West's picture of the Martyrdom of St. Stephen, with a figure which
+he has repeated in "Christ Healing the Sick," and a woman,&mdash;or young
+man, you do not feel certain which,&mdash;weeping upon the hand of the
+martyr, precisely as in a painting in Baltimore Cathedral by Renou, who
+must have borrowed or stolen it from West, if West did not borrow or
+steal it from him.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Drawings.</i>&mdash;I have just returned from visiting a collection of drawings
+by the old masters,&mdash;Raphael, Michael Angelo, Rembrandt, Titian, &amp;c.,
+&amp;c. Wonderful, to be sure! There is a pen-and-ink drawing by Munro, of
+uncommon merit; another from a capital old engraving by Tiffen, hardly
+to be distinguished from an elaborate line engraving, full of good faces
+and straight lines, with nothing picturesque. A moonlight and cottage by
+Gainsborough, very fine. Jackson's and Robinson's miniatures, and
+sketches in water-colors,&mdash;charming. Leslie's designs, with Stothard's
+on the same subject, are delightfully contrasted: Leslie's, neatly
+finished and full of individuality; Stothard's, a beautiful, free
+generalization, without finish. (But the engraver understands him, and
+finishes for him, adding the hands and feet in his own way.) It is a
+representation of Jeanie Deans's interview with the Queen. Leslie's
+figure is standing; Stothard's, kneeling: yet both are expressive and
+helpful to our conceptions. Here, too, I saw Rembrandt's celebrated
+"Battle of Death," with a skeleton blowing a horn, and helmeted and
+plumed, and having a thigh-bone for a battle-axe,&mdash;shadows on the
+shoulders of horsemen, and skeleton feet;&mdash;on the whole, a monstrous
+nightmare, such as you might expect from Fuseli after a supper on raw
+beef, but never from such a painter as Rembrandt.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Phrenology.</i>&mdash;There must be something in this new science,&mdash;for they
+persist in calling it a science,&mdash;though I cannot say how much. Just
+returned from a visit to De Ville, in the Strand, in company with
+Chester Harding, Robert M. Sully, the painter, and Humphries, the
+engraver,&mdash;each differing from the others in character and purpose; yet,
+after manipulating our crania, this man says of each what all the rest
+acknowledge to be true, and what, said of any but the particular person
+described, would be preposterous. Why are the busts of Socrates and
+Solon what they should be, according to this theory of Gall and
+Spurzheim? Were they modelled from life, or from characters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> resembling
+them? Compared the head of a Greek boy with that of a young Hottentot.
+One was largely developed in the intellectual region, the other in the
+animal region, and the latter cries whenever his home or his mother is
+mentioned. Both are at school here. Thurtell's head is a great
+confirmation, which anybody can judge of. I must find time for a
+thorough investigation.</p>
+
+<p>P. S.&mdash;I have kept my promise, and am thoroughly satisfied. Phrenology
+deserves to be called a science, and one of the greatest and best of
+sciences, notwithstanding all the quackery and self-delusion that I find
+among the professors. I have now studied it and experimented upon it for
+more than thirty years, and have no longer any misgivings upon the
+subject, so far as the great leading principles are involved.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Manners.</i>&mdash;If we do not record our first impressions they soon
+disappear; and the greatest novelties are overlooked or forgotten.
+Already I begin to see women with heavily-laden wheel-barrows, without
+surprise. I have now learned, I hope, that a postman's rap is <i>one</i>,
+<i>two</i>, and no more; a servant's, <i>one</i>; while a footman gives from four
+to twenty, as hard as he can bang, so as to startle the whole
+neighborhood and make everybody run to the windows. Eating fish with a
+knife said to be fatal. Great personages give you a finger to shake. I
+did not know this when I took the forefinger of a cast-off mistress, the
+original of Washington Irving's Lady Sillicraft, a painted and withered
+old vixen, who meant to signify her liking for me, as I had reason to
+believe. Moles are reckoned such a positive beauty here that my
+attention has been called to them, as to fine eyes or a queenly bearing.
+A <i>fine</i> woman here means a large woman, tall, dignified, and showy,
+like a fine horse or a fine bullock.</p>
+
+<p>Never shall I forget the looks and tones of a bashful friend, in
+describing his embarrassment. He was at Holkham, the seat of Mr. Coke,
+our Revolutionary champion, who, being in Parliament at the time, moved,
+session after session, the acknowledgment of our independence,&mdash;am I
+right here?&mdash;and actually gave the health of George Washington at a
+large dinner-party while the Revolutionary fires were raging. There was
+a large company at dinner, but for his life my friend did not know what
+to do with the ladies nor with his hands. Goes through room after room
+to get his dinner; is called upon to serve a dish he has never seen
+before, and knows not how to manage. Asked to take wine, and wants to
+ask somebody else, but cannot recall the name of a single person within
+reach, and whispers to the servant for relief, while his eye travels up
+and down both sides of the long table; is reminded of the guest who said
+to himself, loud enough to be overheard by the waiter behind his chair,
+"I wish I had some bread," to which the waiter replied without moving,
+"I wish you had." Durst not offer his arm to a lady, lest he should
+violate some of the multitudinous every-day usages of society, and so,
+instead of enjoying his dinner, just nibbled and choked and watched how
+others ate of the dishes he had never seen before. Yet this man was no
+fool, he was not even a blockhead; but he was frightened out of all
+propriety nevertheless. Poor fellow! Soon after this he went to Paris,
+and, having picked up a few French sentences, undertook to pass off one
+upon a servant who took his cloak as he entered the hotel of a French
+celebrity in a violent rainstorm. He flung the phrase off with an air,
+saying, "Mauvais temps," whereupon the word was passed up from mouth to
+mouth, and, to his unutterable horror, he was introduced to the company
+as M. Mauvais Temps.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Painting.</i>&mdash;I have just been to see Mulready's famous "Lion and Lamb."
+He is a Royal Academician; and, spite of the cleverness we see in every
+touch, we are reminded of Pison's reply to the Academician, who asked
+what he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> was,&mdash;"I? O, I am nobody; not even an Academician." The picture
+is about eighteen by twenty-two inches, and belongs to his Majesty,
+George the Fourth. It represents two boys, a little child, a woman, and
+a dog. One boy has broken the strap of his trousers, and, bracing
+himself up for a clinch, is evidently encroaching on the other with his
+foot. He stands with his legs on the straddle, both fists made up for
+mischief, and head turned away in profile, with hat and books flung down
+upon the turf; while the other&mdash;the lamb&mdash;keeps his satchel in his hand,
+with one arm raised to parry the blow he is expecting. He has a meek,
+boyish face, and we have it in full. The back of the child is towards
+you, the mother terribly frightened; parts very fine, but as a whole the
+picture is not worthy of its reputation, to say nothing of the
+extravagant price paid for it,&mdash;some hundreds of guineas, they say.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Greenwich Fair.</i>&mdash;Having read so much in story-books and novels, from
+my earliest childhood,&mdash;at one time in the gilt-covered publication of
+E. Newbury, St. Paul's Church Yard, and after that in larger books,&mdash;of
+the rioting at Greenwich Fair (another Donnybrook in its way), I
+determined to see for myself, and went down for the purpose, April 19th,
+1824. Universal decorum characterized the whole proceedings till the day
+was over, after which there was a large amount of dancing and frolicking
+and sight-seeing and beer-drinking, but no drunkenness and no
+quarrelling. The people were saucy, but good-natured, like the Italian
+rabble, with their plaster confectionery, at a carnival. Women and girls
+would run down the long green slope together, which it is said the
+cockneys believe to be the highest land in the world, after Richmond
+Hill; and many of them stumble and slip and roll to the bottom,
+screaming and laughing as they go. This I understand to be a favorite
+pastime with people who are big enough to know better; for a part of the
+fun, and that which all seem to enjoy most, is in tripping one another
+up. Plenty of giants and dwarfs to be seen for a penny, with white
+Circassians, silver-haired, and actors of all sorts and sizes. "Walk in,
+ladies and gentlemen! walk in! Here's the rope-dancing and juggling,
+with lots of gilt gingerbread,&mdash;and all for sixpence! Here is the great
+Numidian lion!"&mdash;leading forth a creature not larger than a
+moderate-sized English mastiff,&mdash;"with a throat like a turnpike gate,
+and teeth like mile-stones, and every hair on his mane as big as a
+broomstick!" It was worth sixpence to see the fellow's face when he said
+this; but most of the people round me seemed to believe what they heard
+rather than what they saw. Actors and actresses turn out and dance and
+strut before the curtain.</p>
+
+<p>Went into the Hospital, of which we have all heard so much, and into the
+Chapel. Here is the best picture West ever painted, I think. It is the
+shipwreck of St. Paul, with the viper and the fire: rocks rather crowded
+and confused; on the right are two figures, frequently, I had almost
+said always, to be found in his pictures, and always together. Old man
+on the right, capital!&mdash;Roof of the Hospital highly ornamented, though
+chaste, with painted pilasters, fluted; ceiling done by Sir James
+Thornhill, and is really a grand affair, not only for coloring and
+drawing, but for composition and general treatment. Architecture of the
+building, once a palace, worthy of the highest commendation, though it
+needs a back part to correspond with the two wings. Cupolas made to
+correspond, but seem rather out of place,&mdash;not wanted.</p>
+
+<p>Had quite an adventure before I got away. I saw a young girl running
+down hill by herself. She fell, and stained her white frock all over one
+hip of a grass-green. She seemed to be much hurt and near fainting. I
+found her young, pretty, and modest, as you may readily infer from what
+follows,&mdash;usually if you hear of a woman being run over in the street,
+you may be sure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> she is neither young nor pretty,&mdash;and so seeing her
+greatly distressed about the figure she cut, and companionless, I took
+pity on her, and going with her found, after some search, an old woman
+in a garret with a husband, child, and grandchild, all huddled and
+starving in one room together. The husband was a waterman. He had
+"stove" his boat some years before, and was never able to get another;
+had two sons at sea; paid two shillings a week for the room, which they
+said was one shilling too dear, being only large enough to allow of two
+or three chairs, a table, and a turn-up bed. Poor Sarah took off her
+frock and washed it before me, without a sign of distress or
+embarrassment; and then we went off together and had a bit of a
+dance,&mdash;a rough-and-tumble fore-and-after,&mdash;at the nearest booth. With
+her bonnet off, and neat cap, her beautiful complexion and dark hair and
+eyes, how happened it that she was really modest and well-behaved? And
+how came she there? After some resolute questioning, I determined to see
+her home, at least so far as to set her down in safety in the
+neighborhood where she lived. The coach was crowded with strangers. It
+was late, and they were silent, and I thought sulky. Just as we were
+passing a lamp, after we had entered a wide thoroughfare, I saw a man's
+face under a woman's bonnet. Though not absolutely frightened, I was
+rather startled, and more and more unwilling to leave the poor girl to
+the mercy of strangers; for I saw, or thought I saw, signs of
+intelligence between two of the party; and in short, I never left her
+till the danger was over.</p>
+
+<p>There were mountebanks and fortune-tellers and gypsies at every turn.
+The prettiest I met with told my fortune. "You are liked better by the
+women," said she, "than by the men." Very true. "You are loved by a
+widow named Mary." My landlady was a widow, and her name was Mary.
+"Which do you like best, Mary or Bessie?" In addition to Mary, there was
+another pleasant friend, supposed to be a natural daughter of George
+IV., named Bessie. But how the plague did the little gypsy know this? I
+found out, I believe, long after the whole affair was forgotten. There
+was present, without my knowledge, a man who was always full of such
+tricks, who knew me well, and who threw the gypsy in my way and put her
+up to all she knew. This was Humphries the engraver.</p>
+
+<p>There was a great ball too,&mdash;a magnificent ball,&mdash;one shilling entrance.
+More than fifty couples stood up for a contra-dance, and tore down the
+middle and up outside, and cast off, as if they were all just out of a
+lunatic hospital. And yet, as I have said before, I believe, there was
+no drunkenness and no quarrelling.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Shooting the Bridge.</i>&mdash;Wanting to go to the Tower, I took a boat above
+London Bridge at the wrong time of the tide, in spite of all
+remonstrances, and came near being swamped. Not being a good swimmer,
+and aware that people were often drowned there, I cannot understand what
+possessed me; but as the watermen were not afraid, and asked no
+questions, why should I be troubled? For aught they knew, I might be
+made of cork, or have a swimming-jacket underneath my coat, or a pocket
+life-preserver ready to be blown up at a moment's notice; and they were
+sure of the fee. At the mouth of the St. John's River, New Brunswick,
+they have a fall both ways, at a certain time of tide, through which and
+up and down which boats and rafts plunge headlong so as to take away
+your breath, while you are watching them from the bridge; but really,
+this little pitch of not more than three or four feet under London
+Bridge I should think more dangerous, and the people seem to think so
+too, for they are always on the watch after the tide turns, and swarm
+along the parapets, and rush from one side to the other, as the wherry
+shoots through the main arch, with a feeling akin to that of the man who
+followed Van Amburgh month after month to see him "chawed up" by the
+lion or tiger.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Major Cartwright.</i>&mdash;Another fast friend of our country and the
+institutions of our country, and always ready to take up the
+quarter-staff in our defence. A great reformer, and honest as the day is
+long. Wrote much in favor of American independence in 1774, and, with
+Sir Francis Burdett and others, who chose to meddle with the British
+Constitution wherever they found a fragment large enough to talk about,
+has been visited by the government, and tried and imprisoned. His book
+on the British Constitution is, though somewhat visionary, both original
+and ingenious. He is six feet high, with a very broad chest; wears a fur
+cap and blue cotton-velvet dressing-gown in the sultriest weather; is a
+great admirer of Jeremy Bentham, Mrs. Wheeler, and Fanny Wright, by the
+way.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Woolwich.</i>&mdash;After spending a day here under special advantages, I have
+succeeded in seeing whatever was worth seeing for my purpose, and in
+getting a fine sketch of a Woolwich Pensioner by Sully,&mdash;Robert M.
+Sully, nephew of Thomas Sully, and a capital draughtsman,&mdash;to serve as a
+companion piece for the Greenwich Pensioner by the same artist. The man
+had served against us in the Revolutionary War, and participated in the
+"affair" of Bunker Hill. The shovel hats, the long chins and retreating
+mouths of these aged men at Greenwich, are wonderfully hit off by
+Cruikshank, with a mere flourish of the pen. I have a scene in a
+watch-house, with half a score of heads, thoroughly Irish, drunk or
+sleepy, and as many more of these shovel hats, which the clever artist
+amused himself with scratching off,&mdash;as we sat talking together at a
+table,&mdash;on a little bit of waste paper, which fluttered away in the
+draft from a window, and fell upon the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Saw a prodigious quantity of guns to be "let loose" in the dock-yard, to
+which I was admitted as a great privilege. When Alexander of Russia and
+the king of Prussia were admitted after the war, they were greatly
+disappointed and mortified, I was told, at seeing such a vast
+accumulation of warlike material. They supposed England to be exhausted.</p>
+
+<p>The English artillery is far superior in details to the French, though
+not half so abundant. Where the French bring eighty pieces at once into
+the field, the English never have more than twenty pieces. The English
+lost only two guns in the whole Peninsular war; the French lost nearly
+eleven hundred, Waterloo included.</p>
+
+<p>At Woolwich there are two or three hundred acres full of machinery, with
+saw-mills, planing-mills, &amp;c. Saw, among other inventions and
+improvements, anchor shanks made largest about one third of the distance
+from the crown, where they always bend or break; an original
+screw-cutter of uncommon merit; and a perpetual capstan for drawing in
+wood for the mill.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Illuminations.</i>&mdash;His Majesty's birthday. By one odd arrangement of
+colored lamps, which was intended for George IV., it reads thus,
+<i>Giver</i>, being G. IV. R. The populace break windows which are not
+lighted up. The king's tradesmen are most astonishing in their
+manifestations of loyalty; and, among others, I see an establishment
+with this inscription: "Bug Destroyer to his Majesty."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Chimney-Sweeps.</i>&mdash;May 1. The little monsters appear in cocked hats and
+gilt paper, with their faces painted, and with dancing and music, and a
+very pretty girl pirouetting in a hogshead of cut paper, with large boys
+about her, like trees dancing. Of course, we are constantly reminded of
+Edward Wortley Montagu, and of his delightful experience with the
+chimney-sweeps.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>John Randolph.</i>&mdash;This madman is full of his vagaries here; says the
+most offensive things, but in such a high-bred, supercilious, if not
+gentlemanly way, that people cannot make up their minds about him, nor
+whether to cut him dead or acknowledge him for a genius<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> and a humorist.
+Sir Robert Inglis says, publicly, that Mr. Randolph "on these boards"
+claimed for Virginia the first attempt at abolition. "And I am disposed
+to believe the gentleman correct," adds Sir Robert, "because of his
+opportunities for knowledge." Whatever related to the United States was
+received better than anything else in the proceedings of to-day at the
+Freemasons' Tavern. Very comfortable and gratifying.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Marquis of Stafford's Gallery.</i>&mdash;Here I find about three hundred fine
+pictures, most of them by the old masters, and a large part worthy of
+enthusiastic admiration. Thirty-eight in the National Gallery cost sixty
+thousand pounds. What, then, are these worth as a collection?</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Cary, the Translator of Dante.</i>&mdash;Met him at Mr. Griffith's,&mdash;Sylvanus
+Urban's,&mdash;another great friend of our country, who insisted on my
+occupying the seat which Dr. Franklin used to sit in, and after him Lord
+Byron. Mr. Cary has a good, sensible face, is about five feet seven in
+height, and forty-six years old, very moderate of speech, and talks with
+a low voice. Among the guests were Captain Brace, who was with Lord
+Exmouth when he put through the Dey of Algiers after the fashion of our
+Preble. He seemed about sixty, with gray hair, and a youthful
+countenance.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Horticultural Exhibition.</i>&mdash;Great show and surprising. No sales made.
+Pears better than ours; peaches nearly as good, and sell from a shilling
+to one and sixpence apiece. They resemble not our New Jersey or Maryland
+peaches, but such as grow about Boston. Grapes fine, nectarines capital;
+gooseberries, plums, mulberries, currants, all better than ours; apples
+wretched, "not fit to give the pigs," liked all the better for being
+hard, or ligneous.</p>
+
+<p>I have just understood here, on the best authority, that Mr. Coke, of
+Norfolk, did move for an abandonment of the war, session after session,
+and finally gave the casting vote as mover. He did also give
+Washington's health at his own table once, with a large company of
+leading men about him, in the hottest part of the struggle. He looks
+like one of Trumbull's generals or statesmen, of the old Revolutionary
+type, and not unlike Washington himself, or General Knox.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Duke of Sussex.</i>&mdash;Prodigious; even Chester Harding, who is a large man,
+over six feet, appears under-sized alongside of his Royal Highness. Went
+to a meeting for the encouragement of the arts. The Duke presided, and,
+being popular and willing so to continue, he made a speech. "Ladies and
+gentlemen," said he, "it affords me gratification to see, to recognize,
+so many persons assembled for the encouragement of what I may say is one
+of the best institutions of the country. Good deal of business coming
+up. I shall therefore reserve myself for the conclusion, and now call
+upon the Secretary to read the proceedings." Effect of the show seems to
+be very good. Some persons, girls and women, received three prizes.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Theatre.</i>&mdash;Munden's farewell. Dosey and Sir Robert Bramble; among the
+finest pieces of acting I ever saw,&mdash;rich, warm, and full of
+unadulterated strength. Terrible crush at the entrance, the corners
+being neither stuffed nor rounded. Great screaming and screeching. "Take
+care o' that corner!" "Mind there!" "Oh! oh! you'll kill me!" "There
+now, lady's killed!" And it was indeed about as much as a woman's life
+was worth to venture into such a brutal mob. No consideration for women,
+as usual. They are pushed, crowded, overthrown sometimes, and sometimes
+trampled on without remorse or shame, as at the Duke of York's funeral.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>Washington Irving.</i>&mdash;Met him for the second time, and had more reason
+than ever for believing that, with all his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> daintiness and
+fastidiousness, he is altogether a man, hearty and generous, and his
+books, with all their shifting shadows, but a transcript of himself and
+of his unacknowledged visions and meditations. His pleasantry, too, is
+delightful; and, as you cannot question his truthfulness, he gains upon
+you continually, even while you pity his girlish sensitiveness. I do not
+see any picture of him that satisfies me, or does him justice. Newton
+cannot paint a portrait, nor indeed can Leslie; and the result is, that
+what we have foisted off upon us for portraits are only
+misunderstandings.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_YEAR_IN_MONTANA" id="A_YEAR_IN_MONTANA"></a>A YEAR IN MONTANA.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Where the Wind River Chain of the Rocky Mountains stretches far away to
+the east, and the Bitter Root Range far away to the northwest, like
+giant arms holding in their embrace the fertile valleys whence the
+myriad springs which form the two great rivers of the continent take
+their rise,&mdash;on the northern border of the United States, and accessible
+only through leagues of desert,&mdash;lie the gold fields of Montana. Four
+years ago all this region was <i>terra incognita</i>. In 1805, Lewis and
+Clarke passed through it; but beyond a liberal gift of geographical
+inaccuracies, they have left only a few venerable half-breeds as relics
+of their journey. Among the Indians, what they did and said has passed
+into tradition; and the tribes of which they speak, the Ke-heet-sas,
+Minnetarees, Hohilpoes, and Tus-he-pahs, are as extinct as the dodo.
+Later explorers have added little to the scanty stock of information,
+save interesting descriptions of rich valleys and rough mountain scenery
+and severe hardships in the winters. For the most part, it was a country
+unexplored and unknown, and held by the various Indian tribes in the
+Northwest as a common hunting-ground.</p>
+
+<p>One bright morning in August, 1864, after a brief rest at Salt Lake, we
+left Brigham's seraglios for this new El Dorado. We had taken the long
+trip of twelve hundred miles on the overland stage, which Mr. Bowles
+describes in his admirable book "Across the Continent." But his was the
+gala-day excursion of Speaker Colfax and his party, so full of studied
+and constant attention as to lead Governor Bross to tell the good people
+of Salt Lake, a little extravagantly, that the height of human happiness
+was to live in one of Holladay's stages. This life loses its rose-color
+when nine inside passengers, to fortune and to fame unknown, are viewed
+as so much freight, and transported accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>It is four hundred miles due north from Salt Lake City to Montana. The
+low canvas-covered Concord hack, in which we travel, is constructed with
+an eye rather to safety than comfort, and, like a city omnibus, is never
+full. Still, our passengers look upon even their discomforts as a joke.
+They are most of them old miners, hard-featured but genial and kindly,
+and easily distinguished from men reared in the easy life of cities. Mr.
+Bowles describes them as characterized by a broader grasp and more
+intense vitality. I could not but notice, particularly, their freedom
+from all the quarrels and disagreements sometimes known among travellers
+in the States. The heavy revolver at every man's belt, and the miner's
+proverbial love of fair play, keep in every one's mind a clear
+perception of the bounds of <i>meum</i> and <i>tuum</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I must hurry over our four days'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> journey and its many objects of
+interest. All the first day we ride through brisk Mormon villages,
+prosperous in their waving cornfields and their heavy trade with the
+mines. At a distance is the Great Salt Lake,&mdash;properly an inland sea,
+like the Caspian and Sea of Aral,&mdash;having a large tributary, the Bear
+River, and no outlet. Crossing Bear River, and the low mountains beyond,
+we follow down the Portneuf Ca&ntilde;on to Snake River, or Lewis's Fork of the
+Columbia, along which and its affluents lies the rest of our journey.</p>
+
+<p>Hurrying past the solitary station-houses, and over here and there a
+little creek, our fourth night brings us to a low hill, which we need to
+be told is a pass of the Rocky Mountains. We cross this during the
+night, and morning dawns upon us in a level prairie among the network of
+brooks which form the extreme sources of the Missouri. Here, more than
+sixty years ago, Lewis and Clarke followed the river up to the "tiny
+bright beck," so narrow that "one of the party in a fit of enthusiasm,
+with a foot on each side, thanked God that he had lived to bestride the
+Missouri." It is called Horse Prairie, from the circumstance that they
+here bartered for horses with the Shoshonee Indians. They had often seen
+the men, mounted on fleet steeds, watching them like timid antelopes at
+a distance, but never allowing this distance to lessen. No signs or
+proffered presents could induce a near approach. One lucky day, however,
+Captain Lewis surprised a chattering bevy of their squaws and made
+prisoner a belle of the tribe. Finding all effort to escape hopeless,
+the woman held down her head as if ready for death. There was among them
+the same effeminate fear of capture and the same heroic fortitude when
+death seemed inevitable, that Clive and Hastings found in the Bengalee.
+But the Captain gallantly painted her tawny cheeks with vermilion, and
+dismissed her loaded with presents. It is hardly necessary to add, that
+captures of Shoshonee Sabines were not long matters of difficult
+accomplishment. Very soon all the chiefs followed, with a rather
+exuberant cordiality towards the party, and with forced smiles the
+explorers "received the caresses and no small share of the grease and
+paint of their new friends."</p>
+
+<p>Lewis and Clarke called Horse Prairie by the prettier name of Shoshonee
+Cove. But the names they gave have passed into as deep oblivion as the
+forgotten great man, Rush, whose pills they publish to the world as a
+sovereign specific in bilious fevers. Of all the names on their map only
+those of the three forks of the Missouri, from President Jefferson and
+his Secretaries Madison and Gallatin, remain. The unpoetical miner has
+invented a ruder nomenclature; and on the rivers which they called
+Wisdom, Philosophy, and Philanthropy, he bestows the barbarous names of
+Big Hole, Willow Creek, and Stinking Water.</p>
+
+<p>A few hours' ride brings us to Grasshopper Creek, another affluent of
+the Missouri, and, like them all, a crooked little stream of clear cold
+water, fringed with alders and willows, and with a firm pebbly bed,
+along which the water tinkles a merry tune. What a pity that these pure
+mountain children should develop to such a maturity as the muddy
+Missouri! Parallel with this little stream, where it winds into a narrow
+chasm between abrupt mountain walls, winds a crooked street, with a
+straggling row of log-cabins on either side, and looking from the
+mountain-tops very much like the vertebr&aelig; of a huge serpent. This is
+Bannack, so called from the Indian tribe whose homes were in the
+vicinity. These were the bravest, the proudest, and the noblest looking
+Indians of the mountains till the white man came. Yet seldom has there
+been a stronger illustration of the inexorable law, that when a superior
+and inferior race come in contact the lower is annihilated. Every step
+of the white man's progress has been a step of the red man's decay. And
+now this tribe, once so warlike, is a nation of spiritless beggars,
+crouching near the white settlements for protection from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> their old
+foes, over whom in times past they were easy victors.</p>
+
+<p>At Bannack, in the summer of 1862, a party of Colorado miners, lost on
+their way to Gold Creek in the Deer Lodge Valley, discovered the first
+rich placer diggings of Montana. A mining town grew up straightway; and
+ere winter a nondescript crowd of two thousand people&mdash;miners from the
+exhausted gulches of Colorado, desperadoes banished from Idaho, bankrupt
+speculators from Nevada, guerilla refugees from Missouri, with a very
+little leaven of good and true men&mdash;were gathered in. Few of them speak
+with pleasant memories of that winter. The mines were not extensive, and
+they were difficult to work. Scanty supplies were brought in from Denver
+and Salt Lake, and held at fabulous prices. An organized band of
+ruffians, styled Road Agents, ruled the town. Street murders were daily
+committed with impunity, and travellers upon the road were everywhere
+plundered. Care was not even taken to conceal the bodies of the victims,
+which were left as food for the wolves by the roadside.</p>
+
+<p>Next year, the discovery of richer mines at Virginia left Bannack a
+deserted village of hardly two hundred people. It is a dull town for the
+visitor; but the inhabitants have all Micawber's enthusiastic trust in
+the future, and live in expectation of the wealth which is to turn up in
+the development of the quartz lodes. We visited the most famous of these
+lodes,&mdash;the Dacotah,&mdash;almost every specimen from which is brilliant with
+little shining stars of gold. And deep down in the shaft of this lode
+has been found a spacious cave full of stones of a metallic lustre,
+sending out all the tints of the rainbow, and many-colored translucent
+crystallizations, varying from the large stalactites to the fragile
+glass-work that crumbles at the touch.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving Bannack, the road ascends a very lofty range of mountains, and
+passes by much wild and picturesque scenery. Mountaineers call these
+ranges, where they separate two streams, by the name of "divides." They
+have a scanty but nutritious herbage, and are for many months in the
+year covered with snow. On many of them a stunted growth of hybrid pines
+and cedars flourishes in great abundance. These, with the quaking ash
+and cottonwood along the streams, are the only woods of Montana. None of
+the harder woods, such as oak or maple, are found. It is inconceivably
+grand from the top of this range to look out upon the endless succession
+of vast peaks rolling away on every side, like waves in the purple
+distance. High above them all towers Bald Mountain,&mdash;the old Indian
+landmark of this section,&mdash;like Saul among his brethren. I have crossed
+this range in the gray of a February morning, with the thermometer at
+thirty-five below zero, and I never felt such a sense of loneliness as
+in gazing out from our sleigh&mdash;little atom of life as it seemed&mdash;upon
+this boundless ocean of snow, whose winters had been unbroken solitude
+through all the centuries.</p>
+
+<p>Over this divide we pass among a low range of hills seamed with veins of
+silver, having already a more than local reputation. The hills embosom a
+clear little creek called after the yellow rattlesnake, which is almost
+as plentiful a luxury in these wilds as the grasshopper. It is, however,
+less venomous than its Eastern brethren, for not even the oldest
+inhabitant can instance a death from its bite. Nervous people avoid it
+studiously, but it has many friends among the other animals. The
+prairie-dog, the owl, and the rattlesnake live a happy family in one
+burrow, and the serpent has another fast friend in the turtle-dove.
+These doves are called the rattlesnake's brothers-in-law, and there runs
+a pretty legend, that when an Indian kills one of them, or mocks their
+plaintive cry, they tell the rattlesnake, who lies in wait and avenges
+the wrong by a deadly sting. And when one of the snakes is killed, the
+turtle-doves watch long over his dead body and chant mournful dirges at
+his funeral.</p>
+
+<p>The road to Virginia passes through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> the basin in which lie the
+tributaries of Jefferson Fork. It is a barren waste. Being in the rich
+mineral section of the country, its agricultural resources are
+proportionally deficient. Providence does not sprinkle the gold among
+the grain lands, but, by the wise law of compensation, apportions it to
+remote and volcanic regions which boast of little else. Along the
+water-courses is a narrow belt of cottonwood, and then rise the low
+table-lands, too high for irrigation, and with a parched, alkaline soil
+which produces only the wild sage and cactus. Miners curse this
+sprawling cactus most heartily, and their horses avoid its poisonous
+porcupine thorns with great care. All through these brown wastes one
+sees no shelter for the herds, no harvests of grain or hay, and wonders
+not a little how animal life&mdash;as well the flocks of antelope, elk, and
+deer in the mountains, as the cattle and horses of the rancheros&mdash;is
+preserved through the deep snows of the Northern winter. But even when
+the mountains are impassable, there is seldom snow in the valleys; and
+along the sides of the hills grow stunted tufts of bunch-grass, full of
+sweetness and nutriment. Horses always hunt for it in preference to the
+greener growth at the water's edge. And it is not an annual, but a
+perennial, preserving its juices during the winters, and drawing up sap
+and greenness into the old blades in the first suns of spring. This
+bunch-grass grows in great abundance, and it is only in winters of
+extreme severity that animals suffer from a lack of nourishing food.</p>
+
+<p>Specks of gold may be found in a pan of dirt from any of these streams,
+followed back to the mountain chasm of its source. Upon one of them, in
+June, 1863, a party of gold-hunters stopped to camp on their return to
+Bannack, after an unsuccessful trip to the Yellowstone. While dinner was
+being cooked, one of them washed out a pan of dirt and obtained more
+than a dollar. Further washings showed even greater richness; and,
+hurrying to Bannack, they returned at once with supplies and friends,
+and formed a mining district. In the absence of law, the miners frame
+their own law; and so long as its provisions are equal and impartial, it
+is everywhere recognized. The general principle of such laws is to grant
+a number of linear feet up and down the gulch or ravine to the first
+squatter, upon compliance with certain conditions necessary for mutual
+benefit. In deliberations upon these laws, technicalities and ornament
+are of little weight, and only the plainest common-sense prevails.
+Prominent among their conditions was a provision&mdash;for the exorcism of
+drones&mdash;that every claim must be worked a fixed number of days in each
+week, or else, in the miners' expressive vocabulary, it should be
+considered "jumpable." Compliance with law was never more rigidly
+exacted by Lord Eldon than by the miners' judges and courts, and in the
+first days of this legislation a hundred revolvers, voiceless before any
+principle of justice, yet too ready before any technicality, fixed the
+construction of every provision beyond all cavil.</p>
+
+<p>This was the beginning of Virginia Gulch, from which twenty-five
+millions of dollars in gold have been taken, and which has to-day a
+population of ten thousand souls. The placer proved to be singularly
+regular, almost every claim for fifteen miles being found profitable.
+From the mouth of the ca&ntilde;on to its very end, among snows almost
+perpetual, are the one-storied log-cabins, gathered now and then into
+clusters, which are called cities, and named by the miner from his old
+homes in Colorado and Nevada. In travelling up the crazy road, with
+frowning mountains at our left, and yawning pit-holes at our right, we
+pass seven of these cities,&mdash;Junction, Nevada, Central, Virginia,
+Highland, Pine Grove, and Summit.</p>
+
+<p>Virginia, the chief of the hamlets, has since developed into an
+organized city, and the capital of the Territory. Its site was certainly
+not chosen for its natural beauty. Along the main gulch are the
+mines,&mdash;huge piles of earth turned up in unsightly heaps. At one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> side
+of the mines, and up a ravine which crosses the gulch at right angles,
+lies the city. In shape it was originally like the letter T, but its
+later growth has forced new streets and houses far up the hillsides. Not
+so much regard was paid, in laying the foundations of the new city, to
+its future greatness, as Penn gave when he planned Philadelphia. The
+miner only wanted a temporary shelter, and every new-comer placed a
+log-cabin of his own style of architecture next the one last built.
+Where convenience required a street, lo! a street appeared. There were
+no gardens, for beyond the narrow centre of the ravine only sage-brush
+and cactus would grow. But the mines thrived, and also grew and thrived
+the little city and its vices.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually a better class of buildings appeared. What were called hotels
+began to flourish; but it was long before the monotony of bacon, bread,
+and dried apples was varied by a potato. And for sleeping
+accommodations, a limited space was allotted upon the floor, the guest
+furnishing his own blankets. A theatre soon sprang up. And either
+because of the refined taste of some of the auditors, or the advanced
+talent of the performers, the playing was not the broad farce which
+might have been entertaining, but was confined to Shakespeare and heavy
+tragedy, which was simply disgusting. This style of acting culminated in
+the <i>d&eacute;but</i> of a local celebrity, possessed of a sonorous voice and
+seized with a sudden longing for Thespian laurels. He chose the part of
+Othello, and all Virginia assembled to applaud. The part was not well
+committed, and sentences were commenced with Shakespearian loftiness and
+ended with the actor's own emendations, which were certainly
+questionable improvements. Anything but a tragic effect was produced by
+seeing the swarthy Moor turn to the prompter at frequent intervals, and
+inquire, "What?" in a hoarse whisper. A running colloquy took place
+between Othello and his audience, in which he made good his assertion
+that he was rude in speech. Since then, Shakespeare has not been
+attempted on the Virginia boards. "Othello's occupation's gone"; and all
+tragic efforts are confined to the legitimate Rocky Mountain drama.
+"Nick of the Woods" has frequently been produced with great applause,
+though the illusion is somewhat marred by the audible creaking of the
+wheels of the boat in which the Jibbenainosay sails triumphantly over
+the cataract.</p>
+
+<p>Sunday is distinguished from other days in being the great day of
+business. The mines are not worked and it is the miners' holiday. All is
+bustle and confusion. A dozen rival auctioneers vend their wares, and
+gallop fast horses up and down the street. The drinking and gambling
+saloons and dance-houses are in full blast, all with bands of music to
+allure the passing miner, who comes into town on Sunday to spend his
+earnings. The discoverer of Virginia is the miner <i>par excellence</i>,&mdash;a
+good-natured Hercules clad in buckskin, or a lion in repose. All the
+week he toils hard in some hole in the earth for this Sunday folly. The
+programme for the day is prepared on a scale of grandeur in direct ratio
+to the length of his purse. The necessity of spending the entire week's
+earnings is obvious, and to assist him in doing so seems to be the only
+visible means of support of half the people of the town. The dance-house
+and the gambling-saloon, flaunting their gaudy attractions, own him for
+the hour their king. His Midas touch is all-powerful. I must confess,
+with all my admiration for his character, that his tastes are low. I
+know that the civilization of the East would bore him immeasurably, and
+that he considers Colt, with his revolvers, a broader philanthropist
+than Raikes with his Sunday schools. But he is frank and open, generous
+and confiding, honorable and honest, scorning anything mean and
+cowardly. Mention to him, in his prodigal waste of money, that a poor
+woman or child is in want of the necessaries of life, and the
+purse-strings open with a tear. Tell him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> that corruption and wrong have
+worked an injury to a comrade or a stranger, and his pistol flashes only
+too quickly, to right it. Circumstances have made him coarse and brutal,
+but below all this surface beats a heart full of true instincts and
+honest impulses. I am certain the recording angel will blot out many of
+his sins, as he did those of Uncle Toby. His means exhausted, he
+abdicates his ephemeral kingdom, and, uncomplaining, takes his pick and
+shovel, his frying-pan, bacon, and flour, and starts over the mountains
+for new diggings. Yet he gains no wisdom by experience. The same
+bacchanalian orgies follow the next full purse.</p>
+
+<p>The Road Agents came to the new city from Bannack increased in strength
+and boldness. Long impunity had made them scarcely anxious to conceal
+their connection with the band. Life and property were nowhere secure.
+Spies in Virginia announced to confederates on the road every ounce of
+treasure that left the city, and sometimes reports came back of
+robberies of the coaches, sometimes of murder of the travellers, and
+still more frequently the poor victim was never heard of after his
+departure. There were no laws or courts, except the miners' courts, and
+these were powerless. Self-protection demanded vigorous measures, and a
+few good men of Bannack and Virginia met together and formed a Vigilance
+Committee, similar in all respects to that which has had such a
+beneficent influence in the growth of California. It was, of course,
+secret, and composed of a mere handful. It must be secret, for the Road
+Agents had so overawed the people that few dared acknowledge themselves
+as champions of law and order. They had threatened, and they had the
+power to crush such an organization at its inception, by taking the
+lives of its members. But moving stealthily and unknown, the little
+organization grew. Whenever a good man and true was found, he became a
+link of the chain. At last it tried its power over a notorious desperado
+named Ives, by calling a public trial of the miners. It was a citizens'
+trial, but the Vigilantes were the leading spirits. Ives confronted his
+accusers boldly, relying on the promised aid of his confederates. They
+lay in wait to offer it, but the criminal was too infamous for just men
+to hesitate which side to take, and the cowards, as always in such
+cases, though probably a numerical majority, dared not meet the issue.
+Ives was hanged without any attempt at rescue.</p>
+
+<p>The proceedings thus vigorously commenced were as vigorously continued.
+The Road Agents still trusted their power, and the contest was not
+settled. The Vigilantes settled it soon and forever. One morning their
+pickets barred every point of egress from Virginia. A secret trial had
+been held and six well-known robbers sentenced to death. Five of them
+were one by one found in the city. The quickness of their captors had
+foiled their attempts at escape or resistance, and their impotent rage
+at seeing every point guarded sternly by armed Vigilantes knew no
+bounds. They were all executed together at noon. It was a sickening
+scene,&mdash;five men, with the most revolting crimes to answer for, summoned
+with hardly an hour's preparation into eternity. Yet they are frequently
+spoken of with respect because they "died game." All of them, drinking
+heavily to keep up their courage, died with the most impious gibes and
+curses on their lips. Boone Helm, a hoary reprobate, actually said, as
+the block was being removed from him, "Good by, boys! I will meet you in
+hell in five minutes." Harsh measures were these, but their effect was
+magical. One of the leaders had been hanged at Bannack, and the others
+as fast as found were promptly executed,&mdash;perhaps thirty in all. A few
+fled, and are heard of now and then among the robbers of Portneuf Ca&ntilde;on;
+but under the sway of the Vigilantes life and property in Virginia
+became safer than to-day in Boston. For minor offences they banished the
+guilty, and for grave offences they took life. As their history is now
+recounted by the people,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> there is no man who does not praise their work
+and agree that their acts were just and for the public good. The first
+courts were held in December, 1864, and the Vigilantes were the earliest
+to support their authority. They are still in existence, but as a
+support and ally of the courts, and only appearing when the public
+safety demands the most rigorous dealing.</p>
+
+<p>Virginia can never be a pretty city, but in many respects it is a model
+one. The earlier log-houses are now giving way to substantial stores of
+granite; and the number of gambling and tippling shops is steadily
+decreasing, the buildings being taken up by the wholesale traders. An
+organized city government preserves strict police regulations. Two
+thriving churches have grown up, and very recently the principal
+merchants have agreed to close their houses on the Sabbath. The old
+residents are bringing in their wives and children, and society
+constantly gains in tone. Erelong, it will compare favorably with the
+steadiest town in the land of steady habits.</p>
+
+<p>Eight miles above Virginia is Summit. Its name sufficiently designates
+its location, which is at the head of the gulch and among the highest
+mountains. The sun is not seen there till a late hour in the winter, and
+the few who make it their home burrow closely as rabbits from the bitter
+cold and deep snows. The placer diggings are at their greatest depth
+here, but exceedingly rich. Here also are the richest gold lodes of the
+Territory. All the quartz seems impregnated with gold, sometimes in
+little pockets of nuggets, sometimes spattered by the intense heat of
+old into all forms of wires and spangles.</p>
+
+<p>Quartz mining is yet in its rudest form. The gold is buried in solid
+rock, and requires heavy crushing-mills and cumbrous machinery, which
+must be built and transported at immense expense by capitalists. It is a
+question with such capitalists how certain is the promise of returns.
+The uncertainty of mining, as shown by the results of ventures in
+Colorado, has naturally deterred them. Under the old process of crushing
+the quartz to powder by stamps, and then separating the gold by
+amalgamation with quicksilver, but twenty-five per cent of the gold is
+saved. After the amalgamation a practical chemist could take the
+"tailings" of the Dacotah ore, and produce almost the full assay of the
+original rock. Very much depends in the mountain territories upon the
+success of experiments, now in operation, with the various new
+desulphurizing processes. This success established, the wealth of the
+territories is incalculable.</p>
+
+<p>All the mining of Montana is now confined to the placer or gulch
+diggings. There are many of these, but probably none to compare in all
+respects with those at Virginia. At Bannack is found purer gold, at
+Biven's are larger nuggets, and many diggings at McClellan's yield
+larger amounts per day. But these are lotteries,&mdash;some claims paying
+largely to-day and nothing to-morrow, or one yielding enormously, while
+the next, after all the labor and expense of opening, gives nothing.
+They are called "spotted," while nearly every claim at Virginia has
+yielded with great regularity. How the gold came into these gulches is
+of little consequence to the miner. It suffices him to know that it is
+there, and his practical experience enables him to point out its
+location with great accuracy, though without any scientific knowledge of
+its origin. Most probably, far away in the Preadamite periods, when
+these mountains were much loftier than to-day, they were cloven and
+pierced by volcanic fires, and then into their innumerable vents and
+fissures infiltrated the molten quartz and the base and precious metals.
+Afterwards followed the period of the glaciers, and all the working of
+the seasons and chemical decompositions. Traces of the glaciers and the
+rotten burnt quartz of the volcanic periods exist everywhere. Thus
+washing and crumbling away in the waters and suns of untold springs and
+summers, the gold has come down the mountain gorges into the valleys
+below. The manner of gathering it is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> rude and incomplete enough. In all
+the gulches, at depths varying from six to fifty feet, is a <i>bed-rock</i>
+of the same general conformation as the surface. Usually this is
+granite; but sometimes before reaching the primitive rock two or three
+strata of pipe-clay&mdash;the later beds of the stream, upon which frequently
+lies a deposit of gold&mdash;are passed. Upon the bed-rock is a deposit, from
+three to four feet in depth, of gravel and boulders, in which the gold
+is hidden. This is called by the miners "pay-dirt," and to remove it to
+the surface and wash it is the end of mining. It is an expensive and
+laborious process indeed. The water has first to be controlled; and in
+mines of not too great depth this is done by a drain ditch along the
+bed-rock, commenced many claims below. In this all the claim-holders are
+interested, and all contribute their quota of the labor and expense of
+digging it. The district laws permit every person to run such a drain
+through all the claims below his own, and force every man to contribute
+alike towards its construction, on pain of not being allowed to use the
+water, even though it flows through his own land. The water controlled,
+the rest is mere physical labor, which only bones and sinews of iron can
+endure. In the shallow diggings the superincumbent earth above the
+pay-dirt is removed, and the process is called "stripping." In deep
+diggings a shaft is sunk to the bed-rock, and tunnels are run in every
+direction,&mdash;and this is called "drifting." The roof is supported by
+strong piles, but these supports too frequently give way, and hurry the
+poor miners to untimely deaths. The pay-dirt, in whichever way obtained,
+is then shovelled into the sluice-boxes,&mdash;a series of long troughs, set
+at the proper angle to prevent the gold from washing past, or the dirt
+from settling to the bottom. Managed with the skill which experience has
+taught, the constant stream of water carries over the sand, while the
+gold, being seven times heavier, sinks to the bottom, and is caught by
+cross-bars called "<i>riffles</i>," placed there for the purpose. In the
+lower boxes is frequently placed quicksilver, with which the lighter
+particles amalgamate. During the washings the larger stones and boulders
+are removed by a fork. These boxes, after a successful day's work, are a
+pleasant sight to see, all brilliant with gold and black sand and
+magnetic iron. All is gold that glitters. The heavy sand and iron are
+separated by a more careful washing by hand and by the magnet. Of
+course, all this system is very rude and imperfect,&mdash;so much so, that it
+has been found profitable in California to wash over the same earth nine
+times.</p>
+
+<p>The gold-dust thus obtained is the only circulating medium in the
+Territory, and is the standard of trade. Treasury notes and coin are
+articles of merchandise. Everybody who has gold has also his little
+buckskin pouch to hold it. Every store has its scales, and in these is
+weighed out the fixed amount for all purchases according to Troy weight.
+An ounce is valued at eighteen dollars, a pennyweight at ninety cents,
+and so on. It is amusing to notice how the friction of the scales is
+made by some men&mdash;particularly the Jews, whose name is legion&mdash;to work
+them no loss. In <i>weighing in</i>, the scale-beam bows most deferentially
+to the gold side; but in <i>weighing out</i>, it makes profound obeisance to
+the weights. The same cupidity has given rise to two new terms in the
+miners' glossary,&mdash;<i>trade dust</i> and <i>bankable dust</i>. Bankable dust means
+simply gold, pure and undefiled. Trade dust is gold with a plentiful
+sprinkling of black sand, and is of three grades, described very clearly
+by the terms <i>good</i>, <i>fair</i>, and <i>dirty</i>. The trader, in receiving our
+money, complains if it does not approximate what is bankable, but in
+paying us his money pours out a combination in which black sand is a
+predominating ingredient. Many merchants even keep a saucer of black
+sand in readiness to dilute their bankable gold to the utmost thinness
+it will bear.</p>
+
+<p>As might be expected, the courts were hardly opened before grave
+questions arose as to the construction of contracts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> based on this
+anomalous currency. Notes were usually made to pay a given number of
+"dollars, in good, bankable dust." But the laws recognized no such
+commodity as a dollar in dust. The decision of the court protecting a
+trickster in paying treasury-notes worth but fifty cents for the gold
+loaned by a friend, savored to the plain miner of rank injustice. To
+avoid even this opportunity for a legal tender, sometimes notes promised
+to pay a certain number of ounces and pennyweights, with interest at a
+fixed rate. The question was immediately sprung as to whether such an
+agreement was to be construed as a promissory note, or was to be sued
+for as a contract to do a specified act, by setting out a breach and
+claiming damages for the non-performance. The miners listened to the
+long discussions on these points impatiently, and compared the courts
+unfavorably with the miners' courts, which unloosed all such Gordian
+knots with Alexander's directness.</p>
+
+<p>In the month of September, 1864, reports came to Virginia of mines on
+the Yellowstone. The reports were founded on some strange tales of old
+trappers, and were clothed with a vagueness and mystery as uncertain as
+dreams. Yet on such unsubstantial bases every miner built a pet theory,
+and a large "stampede" took place in consequence. I started with a party
+for the new mines, early in October. A day's ride brought us to the
+Madison Fork, a broad, shallow stream, difficult of fording on account
+of its large boulders, and flowing through a narrow strip of arable
+land. Very different is the Gallatin, beyond. It is cut up into narrow
+streams of a very rapid current, and waters a valley of surprising
+fertility. The Snakes called it Swift River. This valley is forty miles
+long and from ten to fifteen wide, and rising at its sides into low
+plateaus plenteously covered with rich bunch-grass. It is already
+pre-empted by farmers, and by easy irrigation are produced all the
+hardier vegetables and cereals, in quantity, size, and closeness of
+fibre not equalled on the Iowa prairies. The valley gradually widens as
+you descend the stream, until, at the junction of the Three Forks, it
+stretches into a broad prairie, sufficient alone to supply all the mines
+with grain and vegetables. A few enterprising speculators once laid out
+a town here, with all the pomp and circumstance of Martin Chuzzlewit's
+Eden. Pictures of it were made, with steamers lying at the wharves and a
+university in the suburbs. Liberal donations of lots were made to the
+first woman married, to the first newspaper, to the first church, to the
+first child born. But there were no mines near, and the city never had
+an inhabitant. The half-dozen buildings put up by the proprietors are
+left for the nightly carnivals of bats and owls.</p>
+
+<p>On our road we passed a half-dozen huts, dignified with the name of
+Bozeman City. Here lives a Cincinnatus in retirement, one of the great
+pioneers of mountain civilization, named Bozeman. To him belongs the
+credit of having laid out the Bozeman Cut-off, on the road from Fort
+Laramie to Virginia, and he is looked up to among emigrants much as
+Chief-Justice Marshall is among lawyers. I saw the great man, with one
+foot moccasoned and the other as Nature made it, giving Bunsby opinions
+to a crowd of miners as to the location of the mythical mines.</p>
+
+<p>Parting from him, we crossed a high range of mountains, and from their
+tops looked down upon the spiral line of the Yellowstone, marked by the
+rich tints of its willows and cottonwoods, red, yellow, and green, in
+the crisp frosts of October. The air on these mountain-tops is much
+rarefied, and so very clear and pure that objects at a great distance
+seem within the reach of an easy walk. The Yellowstone flows in the
+eastern portion of Montana through an uninhabitable desert called the
+Mauvaises Terres, or Bad Lands, which, mingling their soil with its
+waters, give it the yellow color from which it is named. These lands are
+vast wastes, covered with what appears to be pine ashes. No signs of
+vegetation are found, but they are abundant in strange petrifactions.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> I
+have seen from them petrified reptiles and portions of the human body,
+having a pearly lustre and inlaid with veins, and looking like the
+finest work in <i>papier-mach&eacute;</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The valley of the Upper Yellowstone has a thin, rocky soil, almost
+worthless for farming land. But what a paradise it would be for Izaak
+Walton and Daniel Boone! Quaint old Izaak would have realized a dream of
+Utopia in watching in the crystal stream its millions of speckled trout.
+It almost seems as if the New England trout had learned their proverbial
+wariness from long experience. There is none of it in these Yellowstone
+fish. They leap at the bare hook with the most guileless innocence.
+Trout are rarely found in the waters of the Missouri, but they fill all
+the brooks west of the mountains. They bite ravenously; one veracious
+traveller going so far as to assert that they followed him from the
+water far into the woods, and bit at the spurs on his boots. But
+mountaineers, even of the most scrupulous veracity, are occasionally
+given to hyperbole. Daniel Boone, too, would have found his paradise of
+a solitude undisturbed by white men, and full of wild game. Every night
+our camp was entertained with the hungry cry of wolves, the melancholy
+hooting of owls, and the growls of bears crackling the underbrush. The
+grizzly bear is not found in Montana; only the small black and cinnamon
+bears are seen. When wounded, these exhibit the most extreme ferocity;
+but persons who choose to avoid them will find them always willing to
+preserve the most distant relations. The most interesting of all the
+wild animals is the antelope. Every hour we passed flocks of these
+little fellows. They are timid as school-girls, but as inquisitive as
+village gossips; and while frightened and trembling at our presence,
+they could not resist keeping long in our view, and stopping every few
+moments to watch us, with most childish curiosity. Though fleet as the
+wind, I have seen many of the meek-eyed little fellows watch too long,
+and pay for their curiosity with their lives.</p>
+
+<p>The most eastern settlement of Montana is at the mouth of a ca&ntilde;on near
+the Yellowstone, one hundred and thirty miles from Virginia. A party of
+Iowa emigrants found fair prospects here, and made it their home,
+calling their mines Emigrant Gulch, and their half-dozen log-huts
+Yellowstone City. Their gulch is rich in gold, but the huge boulders,
+many tons in weight, make it impossible to obtain the treasure by the
+present rude methods. The few profitable claims are high up in the
+mountains, and are free from ice only in the hottest days of summer.
+Even the donkeys, so much in use in transporting supplies to the
+mountain miners, cannot travel here, and every pound of flour is carried
+on men's backs over giddy paths almost impassable for the chamois. Still
+the emigrants went to work with a will, and full of confidence. They
+built themselves log-cabins, not so convenient as those at
+Virginia,&mdash;for they had not the miner's knack of reaping large results
+from such limited resources,&mdash;but still substantial and comfortable.
+They enacted written laws, as ample as the Code Napoleon. Almost every
+day during our visit they met to revise this code and enact new
+provisions. Its most prominent feature was the ample protection it
+afforded to women in the distribution of lots in their prospective city,
+and the terrible punishment with which it visited any man who dared
+offer one of them an insult. They certainly founded their republic on
+principles of adamant, but in spite of high hopes and wise laws the
+boulders refused to move. Even Iowa enterprise at last gave way under
+constant disaster, and the people of the little city are one by one
+forsaking it for the older mines.</p>
+
+<p>The swift Yellowstone and the Colorado rise in lakes in the enchanted
+Wind River Mountains. Mr. Stuart mentions the weird tales, told by
+trappers and hunters, of places&mdash;avoided, if possible, by man and
+beast&mdash;in these mountains where trees and game and even Indians are
+petrified, and yet look natural as in life. These trappers are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+accustomed to exaggerate. I remember hearing a very serious account from
+one of them of a vast mountain of quartz so transparent that he could
+see mules feeding on the other side. There is also a story of a trapper
+who was lost in the fastnesses of the mountains years ago, and wandered
+for many days among streams whose bottoms were pebbled with gold. It is
+the miner's romance to repeat these fables of the Wind River Mountains,
+and to look forward to the day when the Indians shall be forced to yield
+them to his enterprise.</p>
+
+<p>We arrived at Virginia at the end of October, and the commencement of
+the long mountain winter. The snows were soon blown in deep drifts over
+the hills, and the roads became almost impassable. A few hardy
+prospecters braved them in the search for quartz lodes, but many
+perished, and others were brought back to the city with frozen limbs.
+The mines lay idle, and the business of the city, dependent upon them
+for support, was completely stagnant. It was humanity living a squirrel
+life among its little garners of roots and nuts. But as usual, the
+reason of humanity fell far behind the instinct of the squirrel. Before
+spring came, the supply of flour at Virginia failed, and the most
+hideous of all calamities was threatened,&mdash;a famine. The range on the
+Salt Lake road lay utterly impassable under more than fifteen feet of
+snow. No mails had arrived for three months. The fear of famine soon
+became a panic, and flour speedily rose from twenty dollars per sack of
+one hundred pounds to one hundred and ten dollars in gold. A mob was
+organized by the drones, who would rather steal than work; and the
+miners were wrought upon by statements that a few speculators held an
+abundance of flour, and were extorting money from the necessities of the
+people. The Robespierres of the new reform drew the miners into passing
+a resolution to place all the flour in Virginia in the hands of a
+committee, with authority to distribute it among the most needy, at a
+fair and reasonable compensation, payable to the owner. A riot followed,
+and the flour-merchants quietly awaited the mob behind barricades of
+their own flour. The County Sheriff stood at the front of these with
+cocked revolver, and threatened to kill the first who advanced. The
+thieves knew that he did not threaten idly, and, though a hundred were
+ready to follow, not one was bold enough to lead. The riot failed for
+want of a courageous leader, and towards night slowly dwindled away.
+Another mob followed in a few days; but the merchants had sold their
+flour at sacrifices, and the booty was only a few sacks. The want of
+this staff of life caused great suffering. All other vegetable food was
+rapidly consumed, and for six weeks the poorer classes were forced to
+live on beef alone. The effect was in all cases an inability to labor,
+and in some cases serious sickness.</p>
+
+<p>While thus cut off from all communication with the outer world, and
+buried in the dull town, there was little for us to do save to study
+each other's characters and talk the miners' language. In all new and
+thinly settled countries, many ideas are expressed by figures drawn from
+the pursuits of the people. Among the Indians, more than half of every
+sentence is expressed by signs. And miners illustrate their conversation
+by the various terms used in mining. I have always noticed how clearly
+these terms conveyed the idea sought. Awkwardness in comprehending this
+dialect easily reveals that the hearer bears the disgrace of being a
+"pilgrim," or a "tender-foot," as they style the new emigrant. To master
+it is an object of prime necessity to him who would win the miner's
+respect. Thus the term "adobe," the sun-dried brick, as applied to a
+man, signifies vealiness and verdancy. A "corral" is an enclosure into
+which the herds are gathered; hence a person who has everything arranged
+to his satisfaction announces that he has everything "corralled." A man
+fortunate in any business has "struck the pay-dirt"; unfortunate, has
+"reached the bed-rock." Everything viewed in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> the aggregate, as a train,
+a family, or a town, is an "outfit." I was much at a loss, on my first
+arrival, to comprehend the exact purport of a miner's criticism upon a
+windy lawyer of Virginia,&mdash;"When you come to pan him out, you don't find
+color." But this vocabulary is not extensive, and the pilgrim soon
+learns to perceive and use its beauties.</p>
+
+<p>Helena, the second point of importance in the Territory, is one hundred
+and twenty-five miles north from Virginia. We travel to it over a fine,
+hard road, through the low valleys of the Missouri. The beauty and
+richness of these valleys increase as we leave Virginia, and everywhere
+the green spots are becoming the homes of thrifty farmers. On the divide
+near Boulder Creek are wonderful proofs of the gradual levelling of the
+mountains, in the huge blocks of rock piled up in the most grotesque
+shapes. Many of these are colossal pillars, surmounted by boulders
+weighing many tons. The softer rock and gravel have washed down the
+ravines, leaving these as monuments of the primal ages. The ravines
+penetrate the mountain on every side, and little by little wear the
+monster away. The beavers choose the prettiest nooks in them for their
+villages, and the miner, finding the water cut off, often learns that in
+a single night these busy architects have built a tight and closely
+interwoven dam up the stream, which it takes him many hours to demolish.
+Is it strange that, in speaking of the beaver dam, he should sometimes
+transpose the words?</p>
+
+<p>We ride down the pleasantest of the ravines, till it develops into the
+Prickly Pear River, and past embryo cities,&mdash;at present noticeable for
+nothing except their rivalry of each other,&mdash;and hurry on to Last Chance
+Gulch and the city of Helena. A few emigrants from Minnesota had been
+here for many months. They made no excitement, no parade, but steadily
+worked on amid their majestic mountain scenery, and asked no heralding
+of their wealth. On either side of their cabins grew tall pines straight
+as arrows, and in front spread a vast fertile valley watered by clear
+rivulets, marked here and there with the low cottages of the rancheros,
+and dotted everywhere with innumerable herds of cattle. Beyond the
+Missouri rose abruptly chains of snow-capped mountains, glistening in
+the sunlight and veined with gold and silver. Reports of these men came
+at times to Virginia,&mdash;reports always of a quiet and unostentatious
+prosperity. In the winter of 1864 their secret became known, and half
+the nomadic population of Virginia hurried to the new mines, and puzzled
+the slow-moving Minnesotians by their bustle and activity. Claims
+advanced rapidly in price, and the discoverers reaped fortunes. A city
+rose like an exhalation. Yet I never saw better order than in the
+earliest days of Helena, though I am afraid that Hangman's Tree could
+tell some stories of too much haste and injustice in taking the lives of
+criminals.</p>
+
+<p>The hundred ravines near Helena showed gold, and every one of them was
+soon claimed from mouth to source. Every night I heard the clattering
+hoofs of the stampeders for some new gulch, starting in the utmost
+secrecy to gain the first right for themselves and friends. A trifling
+hint induces these stampedes. A wink from one old miner to another, and
+hundreds mounted their horses to seek some inaccessible mountain
+fissure. The more remote the diggings, so much the greater the
+excitement. Half the people of Helena lately hurried, in the depth of
+winter, to diggings on Sun River, (where many and many a brave fellow
+perished in the snows,) to learn that far richer mines had lain
+unclaimed for months within a stone's throw of their homes. The
+excitement over quartz lodes rapidly followed; and every spot on the
+mountains which showed any slight indications of auriferous quartz was
+claimed by the prospecters. Hardly a third of these can ever prove rich,
+but here and there is one of great value.</p>
+
+<p>Helena, supported by the trade of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> the surrounding mines, already rivals
+Virginia. Perhaps in years to come it may have a larger population and a
+more reckless enterprise. One hundred and fifty miles north from Helena
+is Fort Benton, an old fortified post of the American Fur Company, and
+the head of navigation on the Missouri. Steamers have arrived here in
+the spring, but the uncertainty of the water will fix the terminus of
+travel at some point farther down. A town charter for such a terminus
+was granted to a party of Virginia speculators at the mouth of Maria's
+River. They called it Ophir, which a friend of mine says is a very
+appropriate name and of poetic origin, being derived from Cowper's line,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"O for a lodge in some vast wilderness!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>On the first visit of the proprietors to their new site, every one of
+them was murdered and scalped by the Indians.</p>
+
+<p>These regions are held by the Blackfeet, who, with their offshoots, the
+Bloods, Gros Ventres, and Piegans, are the most formidable Indians of
+Montana. They are polygamists, being in that respect exceptional among
+the Indians. But Catlin rather unsentimentally apologizes for this, on
+the ground that the chiefs are required to give expensive
+entertainments, in getting up which the labor of a hundred wives is no
+trifling assistance. Attempts have long been made to civilize and
+Christianize these savages by the Catholic missions under Father de
+Smet, and the government has furthered these attempts by establishing a
+fine farm on Sun River. The chiefs would sometimes be induced to
+stolidly witness the grain-planting; but Captain Mullan quietly
+describes all this waste of philanthropy in the words: "I can only
+regret that the results as yet obtained would not seem commensurate with
+the endeavors so manfully put forth."</p>
+
+<p>The noble Indians of history and poetry do not exist among the Indians
+of to-day. You seek in vain for Logan or Pocahontas, for Uncas or
+Minnehaha. The real Indians are cruel and treacherous, lazy and filthy,
+crafty and ungrateful. Many of them live upon ants and grasshoppers, and
+at the best only know enough to preserve in the rudest manner a few of
+the commonest roots and berries.</p>
+
+<p>These tribes have no history and no growth. They live a mere animal
+life. Even their few traditions are rude and disgusting enough. I am
+indebted to Mr. Stuart for a fair example of the Bannack superstitions,
+from which not even Longfellow could glean any poetry or beauty. Among
+the caves in the rocks dwells a race of fairy imps, who, with arrow and
+quiver, kill game upon the mountains, and sing boisterous songs on the
+cliffs in summer evenings. Whenever an Indian mother leaves her infant,
+one of these pleasant cannibals devours it straightway, and takes its
+place, crying piteously. When the poor woman returns and seeks to pacify
+her child, the little usurper falls ravenously upon her. Fire-arms,
+knives, and stones are all powerless; and when the screams of the woman
+bring the men to her help, the destroyer runs away and leaves her in a
+dying condition. She always dies before morning. When little children
+play at a distance from camp, these fairies seek to sport among them.
+Lucky is it for those timid few who, frightened at the long tail,
+scamper away from the intruder; for, when allowed to mingle in the
+sport, he suddenly seizes the fairest child, and hurries away to make a
+dainty meal off him with his little wives in elfin-land. To the Indian
+men the fairies profess a real friendship; and when they meet one near
+their dwellings they invite him in and feast him, and press him to stay
+all night. He invariably declines the polite invitation with his thanks,
+and his regrets that he has killed an elk and must take it home before
+the wolves can eat it.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the main chain of the Rocky Mountains are the Deer Lodge and
+Bitter Root Valleys, celebrated for their great grazing capabilities. I
+rode through these valleys in June, passing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> up the Pipestone Creek,
+whose waters flow into the Missouri, and down the Silver Bow, whose
+waters flow into the Columbia. At the highest point we could almost see
+the springs of either river, flowing on one hand to the Atlantic, on the
+other to the Pacific. How widely are these children of the same mother
+separated! Summer sprinkles all the ravines with innumerable
+wild-flowers, which make a rich carpet even up close to the white line
+of the snow. I found among them wild varieties of the harebell,
+larkspur, and sunflower, and many pansies. Upon the Silver Bow Creek is
+a city of the same name, built in the winter, when it was hoped that
+spring would prove the richness of its mines. From a distance it looked
+like a large town; but upon riding in, we found only here and there a
+straggling inhabitant. Other mines proved richer, and any purchaser can
+buy its best house for less than the cost of drawing the logs to build
+it. At Deer Lodge in this valley,&mdash;almost equal in extent and fertility
+to that of the Gallatin,&mdash;old Johnny Grant lived for many years a life
+of patriarchal serenity among his wives and concubines, his flocks and
+herds. By constant presents of beads and whiskey, and many a warm meal
+when on the war-path, he had raised himself high in the esteem of the
+savages, and had a favorite squaw from almost every tribe among his
+wives. When the Flatheads passed by, no woman appeared at his hearth but
+a Flathead; when the Blackfeet came, the sole wife of his bosom was a
+Blackfoot. Thus for many years, almost the only white man in these
+solitudes, he lived at peace with the natives, a sharer in all their
+spoils and arbiter in all their quarrels. And when the patriarch was
+gathered to his fathers, he left cattle on a thousand hills to his son.
+Young Johnny is a mere repetition of his father. He cannot read or
+write, and in conversation his nominatives are not always true to his
+verbs; but he has all the slyness and craftiness of the Indian. I heard
+that he was immensely disgusted at the white immigration. He
+acknowledges that his beeves are of greater value, and he has no small
+admiration for dollars and cents; but he fears that his moral and
+intellectual standing will suffer.</p>
+
+<p>Passing down the Deer Lodge River,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"In the continuous woods<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Save his own dashings,"&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>we come to a pass through the mountains, called Hell-Gate by the
+Flatheads, because through it rode the scalping parties of the Eastern
+tribes. Beyond is the sunny valley of the Bitter Root. It has long been
+settled by hardy trappers and hunters, and by comfortable farmers with
+well-stored barns and granaries and fenced fields. There is a charm
+about this isolated life, and a freshness and exhilaration about these
+Daniel Boones, that one meets nowhere else. Many of them are old army
+officers, men of education, who left the exploring parties to which they
+were attached to make their homes among the wild allurements of this
+fascinating valley. It is pleasant to hear their stories of life among
+the Indians, and their accounts of the strange features of the
+mountains, their animal life, their flora and minerals. Most of them
+have squaw wives, and are rearing large families of ugly pappooses, and
+many have amassed wealth by their long trade with the fur companies. The
+great Hudson's Bay Company has for many years had a station in this
+valley, and drawn from it large quantities of costly furs and skins.
+Here and farther west is spoken the famous Chinnook jargon, invented by
+the Company to facilitate its trade with the Indians. It borrows words
+from the English, from the French, from all the Indian tongues, and
+works them all into an incongruous combination. It has an entire lack of
+system or rule, but is quickly learned, and is designed to express only
+the simplest ideas. The powerful influence of the Company introduced it
+everywhere, and it was found of indispensable utility. Ardent
+Oregonians<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> are said to woo their coy maidens in its unpronounceable
+gutturals. The white man is called "Boston" in this tongue, because the
+first whites whom the Oregon Indians met came in a Boston ship.</p>
+
+<p>The best Indians of the mountains dwell in this valley,&mdash;the Flatheads
+and Pend' d'Oreilles. Many of them are devoted Catholics, but liable at
+times to lapse into intoxication. The Jesuits have a thriving mission
+among them, with a neat church, whose clear ringing bell sounds
+strangely enough in the mountain recesses. The strict asceticism of the
+fathers, their careful nursing of the sick and wounded, and their
+cordial co-operation in all objects of philanthropy, have enabled them
+to wield an immense influence among the Indians. The white miners also,
+who have often lain sick or frost-bitten in their hospitals, except
+these zealous priests in their too common sneers at religion. Captain
+Mullan quite reflects the universal sentiment when he says: "The only
+good that I have ever seen effected among these people [the Indians] has
+been due to the exertions of these Catholic missionaries."</p>
+
+<p>I have hurried over the points of interest in the early days of Montana.
+But any picture of its shifting life can only be a view of one of the
+combinations of the kaleidoscope. The discovery of new mines, and the
+abandonment of old ones, the fresh advent of gold-seekers and the exodus
+of the winners of fortunes, the increase of facilities for travel and of
+all the comforts of life, are daily and perceptibly working out new
+combinations. But while welcoming all changes tending towards refinement
+and a higher civilization, the careful observer of the life of these
+remote people can point to some qualities among them which he would have
+unchangeable as their grand old mountains,&mdash;their frankness and honesty
+of purpose, their love of justice, and their sturdy democracy.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="REVIEWS_AND_LITERARY_NOTICES" id="REVIEWS_AND_LITERARY_NOTICES"></a>REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.</h2>
+
+
+<p><br /><br /><i>The Poems of</i> <span class="smcap">Thomas Bailey Aldrich</span>. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.</p>
+
+<p>The things which please in these poems are so obvious, that we feel it
+all but idle to point them out; for who loves not graceful form, bright
+color, and delicate perfume? Of our younger singers, Mr. Aldrich is one
+of the best known and the best liked, for he has been wise as well as
+poetical in his generation. The simple theme, the easy measure, have
+been his choice; while he is a very Porphyro in the profusion with which
+he heaps his board with delicates:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"Candied apple, quince and plum and gourd;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With jellies soother than the creamy curd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lucent syrops tinct with cinnamon;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Manna and dates, in argosy transferred<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From Fez; and spic&egrave;d dainties, every one,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And the feast is well lighted, and the guest has not to third his way
+through knotty sentences, past perilous punctuation-points, to reach the
+table, nor to grope in the dark for the dainties when he has found it.
+We imagine that it is this charm of perfect clearness and accessibility
+which attracts popular liking to Mr. Aldrich's poetry; afterwards, its
+other qualities easily hold the favor won. He is endowed with a singular
+richness of fancy, and he has well chosen most of his themes from among
+those which allow the exercise of his best gifts. He has seldom,
+therefore, attempted to poetize any feature or incident of our national
+life; for this might have demanded a realistic treatment foreign to his
+genius. But it is poetry, the result, which we want, and we do not care
+from what material it is produced. The honey is the same, whether the
+bee stores it from the meadow-clover and the wild-flower of our own
+fields, or, loitering over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> city wharves, gathers it from ships laden
+with tropic oranges and orient dates.</p>
+
+<p>If Mr. Aldrich needed any defence for the poems in which he gives rein
+to his love for the East and the South, he would have it in the fact
+that they are very beautiful, and distinctively his own, while they
+breathe full east in their sumptousness of diction, and are genuinely
+southern in their summer-warmth of feeling. We doubt if any poet of
+Persia could have told more exquisitely than he what takes place</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"WHEN THE SULTAN GOES TO ISPAHAN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"<i>When the Sultan Shah-Zaman</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Goes to the city Ispahan</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even before he gets so far<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the place where the clustered palm-trees are,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At the last of the thirty palace-gates,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pet of the harem, Rose-in-Bloom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Orders a feast in his favorite room,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Glittering squares of colored ice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweetened with syrop, tinctured with spice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Creams, and cordials, and sugared dates,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Syrian apples, Othmanee quinces,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Limes, and citrons, and apricots,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wines that are known to Eastern princes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Nubian slaves, with smoking pots<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of spic&egrave;d meats and costliest fish,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all that the curious palate could wish,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pass in and out of the cedarn doors:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Scattered over mosaic floors<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are anemones, myrtles, and violets,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a musical fountain throws its jets<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of a hundred colors into the air.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The dusk Sultana loosens her hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And stains with the henna-plant the tips<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of her pearly nails, and bites her lips<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till they bloom again,&mdash;but, alas! <i>that</i> rose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not for the Sultan buds and blows;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Not for the Sultan Shah-Zaman,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>When he goes to the city Ispahan.</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"Then, at a wave of her sunny hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">the dancing girls of Samarcand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Float in like mists from Fairy-land!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And to the low voluptuous swoons<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of music rise and fall the moons<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of their full, brown bosoms. Orient blood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Runs in their veins, shines in their eyes:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And there, in this Eastern Paradise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Filled with the fumes of sandal-wood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Khoten musk, and aloes and myrrh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sits Rose-in-Bloom on a silk divan,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sipping the wines of Astrakhan;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And her Arab lover sits with her.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>That's when the Sultan Shah-Zaman</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Goes to the city Ispahan.</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"Now, when I see an extra light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flaming, flickering on the night<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From my neighbor's casement opposite,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I know as well as I know to pray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I know as well as a tongue can say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>That the innocent Sultan Shah-Zaman</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Has gone to the city Ispahan.</i>"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>As subtilely beautiful as this, and even richer in color and flavor than
+this, is the complete little poem which Mr. Aldrich calls a fragment:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"DRESSING THE BRIDE.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"So, after bath, the slave-girls brought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The broidered raiment for her wear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The misty izar from Mosul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pearls and opals for her hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The slippers for her supple feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Two radiant crescent moons they were,)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lavender, and spikenard sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And attars, nedd, and richest musk.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When they had finished dressing her,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(The eye of morn, the heart's desire!)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like one pale star against the dusk,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A single diamond on her brow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Trembled with its imprisoned fire!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Too long for quotation here, but by no means too long to be read many
+times over, is "Pampinea," an idyl in which the poet's fancy plays
+lightly and gracefully with the romance of life in Boccaccio's
+Florentine garden, and returns again to the beauty which inspired his
+dream of Italy, as he lay musing beside our northern sea. The thread of
+thought running through the poem is slight as the plot of
+dreams,&mdash;breaks, perhaps, if you take it up too abruptly; but how
+beautiful are the hues and the artificing of the jewels strung upon it!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And knowing how in other times<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her lips were ripe with Tuscan rhymes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of love and wine and dance, I spread<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My mantle by almond-tree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'And here, beneath the rose,' I said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'I'll hear thy Tuscan melody.'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I heard a tale that was not told<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In those ten dreamy days of old,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When Heaven, for some divine offence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Smote Florence with the pestilence;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in that garden's odorous shade,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The dames of the Decameron,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With each a loyal lover, strayed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To laugh and sing, at sorest need,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To lie in the lilies in the sun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With glint of plume and silver brede!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And while she whispered in my ear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pleasant Arno murmured near,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The dewy, slim chameleons run<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through twenty colors in the sun;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The breezes broke the fountain's glass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And woke &aelig;olian melodies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And shook from out the scented trees<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lemon-blossoms on the grass.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The tale? I have forgot the tale,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A Lady all for love forlorn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A rose-bud, and a nightingale<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That bruised his bosom on the thorn:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A pot of rubies buried deep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A glen, a corpse, a child asleep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A Monk, that was no monk at all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the moonlight by a castle wall."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>As to "Babie Bell," that ballad has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> passed too deeply into the popular
+heart to be affected for good or ill by criticism,&mdash;and we have only to
+express our love of it. Simple, pathetic, and real, it early made the
+poet a reputation and friends in every home visited by the newspapers,
+in which it has been printed over and over again. It is but one of
+various poems by Mr. Aldrich which enjoy a sort of perennial fame, and
+for which we have come to look in the papers, as we do for certain
+flowers in the fields, at their proper season. In the middle of June,
+when the beauty of earth and sky drives one to despair, we know that it
+is time to find the delicately sensuous and pensive little poem
+"Nameless Pain" in all our exchanges; and later, when the summer is
+subject to sudden thunderstorms, we look out for "Before the Rain," and
+"After the Rain." It is very high praise of these charming lyrics, that
+they have thus associated themselves with a common feeling for certain
+aspects of nature, and we confess that we recur to them with greater
+pleasure than we find in some of our poet's more ambitious efforts.
+Indeed, we think Mr. Aldrich's fame destined to gain very little from
+his recent poems, "Judith," "Garnaut Hall," and "Pythagoras"; for when
+it comes to be decided what is his and what is his period's, these poems
+cannot be justly awarded to him. To borrow a figure from the polygamic
+usages of our Mormon brethren, they are sealed to Mr. Aldrich for time
+and to Mr. Tennyson for eternity. They contain many fine and original
+passages: the "Judith" contains some very grand ones, but they must bear
+the penalty of the error common to all our younger poets,&mdash;the error of
+an imitation more or less unconscious. It is to the example of the
+dangerous poet named that Mr. Aldrich evidently owes, among other minor
+blemishes, a mouse which does some mischief in his verses. It is a
+wainscot mouse, and a blood-relation, we believe, to the very mouse that
+shrieked behind the mouldering wainscot in the lonely moated grange.
+This mouse of Mr. Aldrich's appears twice in a brief lyric called
+"December"; in "Garnaut Hall," she makes</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"A lodging for her glossy young<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In dead Sir Egbert's empty coat of mail,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and immediately afterwards drags the poet over the precipice of
+anti-climax:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"'T was a haunted spot.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A legend killed it for a kindly home,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A grim estate, which every heir in turn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Left to the orgies of the wind and rain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The newt, the toad, the spider, and the mouse."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A little of Costar's well-known exterminator would rid Mr. Aldrich of
+this rascal rodent. Perhaps, when the mouse is disposed of, the poet
+will use some other word than <i>torso</i> to describe a headless, but not
+limbless body, and will relieve Agnes Vail of either her shield or her
+buckler, since she can hardly need both.</p>
+
+<p>We have always thought Mr. Aldrich's "Palabras Cari&ntilde;osas" among the most
+delicious and winning that he has spoken, and nearly all of his earlier
+poems please us; but on the whole it seems to us that his finest is his
+latest poem, "Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book"; for it is original in
+conception and expression, and noble and elevated in feeling, with all
+our poet's wonted artistic grace and felicity of diction. We think it
+also a visible growth from what was strong and individual in his style,
+before he allowed himself to be so deeply influenced by study of one
+whose flower indeed becomes a weed in the garden of another.</p>
+
+
+<p><br /><br /><i>The United States during the War.</i> By <span class="smcap">August Laugel</span>. New York:
+Bailli&egrave;re Brothers. Paris: Germer Bailli&egrave;re.</p>
+
+<p><i>The Civil War in America.</i> An Address read at the last Meeting of the
+Manchester Union and Emancipation Society. By <span class="smcap">Goldwin Smith</span>. London:
+Simpkin, Marshall, &amp; Co. Manchester: A. Ireland &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p>As a people, we are so used to policeman-like severity or snobbish
+ridicule from European criticism, that we hardly know what to make of
+the attentions of a Frenchman who is not an Inspector Javert, or of an
+Englishman who is not a Commercial Traveller. M. Laugel eulogizes us
+without the least patronage in his manner; Mr. Goldwin Smith praises us
+with those reserves which enhance the value of applause. We are
+ourselves accustomed to deal generously and approvingly with the facts
+of our civilization, but our pride in them falls short of M. Laugel's;
+and our most sanguine faith in the national future is not more cordial
+than Mr. Goldwin Smith's.</p>
+
+<p>The diverse methods in which these writers discuss the same aspects and
+events of our history are characteristic and interesting, and the
+difference in spirit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> is even greater than that of form,&mdash;greater than
+the difference between a book, which, made from articles in the <i>Revue
+de Deux Mondes</i>, recounts the political, military, and financial
+occurrences of the last four years, sketches popular scenes and
+characters, and deals with the wonders of our statistics, and a slender
+pamphlet address, in which the author concerns himself rather with the
+results than the events of our recent war. This is always Mr. Smith's
+manner of dealing with the past; but in considering a period known in
+all its particulars to his audience, he has been able to philosophize
+history more purely and thoroughly than usual. He arrives directly and
+clearly at the moral of the Ilias Americana, and sees that Christianity
+is the life of our political system, and that this principle, without
+which democracy is a passing dream, and equality an idle fallacy,
+triumphed forever in the downfall of slavery. He has been the first of
+our commentators to discern that the heroism displayed in the war could
+only come from that principle which made our social life decent and
+orderly, built the school-house and the church, and filled city and
+country with prosperous and religious homes. He has seen this principle
+at work under changing names and passing creeds, and has recognized that
+here, for the first time in the history of the world, a whole nation
+strives to govern itself according to the Example and the Word that
+govern good men everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>In the Introduction to his book, M. Laugel declares as the reasons for
+his admiration of the United States, that they "have shown that men can
+found a government on reason, where equality does not stifle liberty,
+and democracy does not yield to despotism; they have shown that a people
+can be religious when the State neither pays the Church nor regulates
+belief; they have given to woman the place that is her due in a
+Christian and civilized society." It is this Introduction, indeed, that
+will most interest the American reader, for here also the author
+presents the result of his study of our national character in a sketch
+that the nation may well glass itself in when low-spirited. The truth
+is, that we looked our very best to the friendly eyes of M. Laugel, and
+we cannot but be gratified with the portrait he has made of us. An
+American would hardly have ventured to draw so flattering a picture, but
+he cannot help exulting that an alien should see us poetic in our
+realism, curious of truth and wisdom as well as of the stranger's
+personal history, cordial in our friendships, and not ignoble even in
+our pursuit of wealth, but having the Republic's greatness at heart as
+well as our own gain.</p>
+
+<p>In the chapters which succeed this Introduction, M. Laugel discusses, in
+a spirit of generous admiration, the facts of our civilization as they
+present themselves in nearly all the States of the North and West; and
+while he does not pretend to see polished society everywhere, but very
+often an elemental ferment, he finds also that the material of national
+goodness and greatness is sound and of unquestionable strength. He falls
+into marvellously few errors, and even his figures have not that bad
+habit of lying to which the figures of travellers so often fall victims.</p>
+
+<p>The books of M. Laugel and Mr. Goldwin Smith come to us, as we hinted,
+after infinite stupid and dishonest censure from their countrymen; but
+the intelligent friendship of such writers is not the less welcome to us
+because we have ceased to care for the misrepresentations of the French
+and English tourists.</p>
+
+
+<p><br /><br /><i>Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac.</i> By <span class="smcap">William Howell Reed</span>.
+Boston; William V. Spencer.</p>
+
+<p>The advice of friends, so often mistaken, and so productive of mischief
+in goading reluctant authorship to the publication of unwise, immature,
+or feeble literature, prevailed upon Mr. Reed to give the world the
+present book; and we have a real pleasure in saying that for once this
+affectionate counsel has done the world a favor and a service. We have
+read the volume through with great interest, and with a lively
+impression of the author's good sense and modesty. In great part it is a
+personal narrative; but Mr. Reed, in recounting the story of the
+unwearied vigilance and tenderness and dauntless courage with which the
+corps of the Sanitary Commission discharged their high duties, contrives
+to present his individual acts as representative of those of the whole
+body, and to withdraw himself from the reader's notice. With the same
+spirit, in describing scenes of misery and suffering, he has more
+directly celebrated the patience and heroism of the soldiers who bore
+the pain than the indefatigable goodness that ministered to them,
+though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> he does full justice to this also. The book is a record of every
+variety of wretchedness; yet one comes from its perusal strengthened and
+elevated rather than depressed, and with new feelings of honor for the
+humanity that could do and endure so much. Mr. Reed does not fail to
+draw from the scenes and experiences of hospital life their religious
+lesson, and throughout his work are scattered pictures of anguish
+heroically borne, and of Christian resignation to death, which are all
+the more touching because the example of courage through simple and
+perfect faith is enforced without cant or sentimentality.</p>
+
+<p>The history of the great Christian aspect of our war cannot be too
+minutely written nor too often read. There is some danger, now the
+occasion of mercy is past, that we may forget how wonderfully complete
+the organization of the Sanitary Commission was, and how unfailingly it
+gave to the wounded and disabled of our hosts all the succor that human
+foresight could afford,&mdash;how, beginning with the establishment of depots
+convenient for the requisitions of the surgeons, it came to send out its
+own corps of nurses and watchers, until its lines of mercy were
+stretched everywhere almost in sight of the lines of battle, and its
+healing began almost at the hour the hurt was given. Mr. Reed devotes a
+chapter to this history, in which he briefly and clearly describes the
+practical operation of the system of national charity, accrediting to
+Mr. Frank B. Fay the organization of the auxiliary corps, and speaking
+with just praise of its members who perished in the service, or clung to
+it, till, overtaken by contagion or malaria, they returned home to die.
+The subject is dealt with very frankly; and Mr. Reed, while striving to
+keep in view the consoling and self-recompensing character of their
+work, does not conceal that, though they were rewarded by patience and
+thankfulness in far the greater number of cases, their charities were
+sometimes met by disheartening selfishness and ingratitude. But they
+bore up under all, and gave the world such an illustration of practical
+Christianity as it had never seen before.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Reed's little book is so earnestly and unambitiously written, that
+its graphic power may escape notice. Yet it is full of picturesque
+touches; and in the line of rapidly succeeding anecdote there is nothing
+of repetition.</p>
+
+
+<p><br /><br /><i>A History of the Gypsies: with Specimens of the Gypsy Language.</i> By
+<span class="smcap">Walter Simpson</span>. Edited, with Preface, Introduction, and Notes, and a
+Disquisition on the Past, Present, and Future of Gypsydom, by <span class="smcap">James
+Simpson</span>. New York: M. Doolady.</p>
+
+<p>The history of the Gypsies, according to the editor of the present work,
+is best presented in a series of desultory anecdotes which relate
+chiefly to the Egyptian usages of murder, pocket-picking, and
+horse-stealing, and the behavior of the rogues when they come to be
+hanged for their crimes. Incidentally, a good deal of interesting
+character is developed, and both author and editor show a very intimate
+acquaintance with the life and customs and speech of an inexplicable
+people. But here the value of their book ends; and we imagine that the
+earlier Simpson, who contributed the greater part of it in articles to
+Blackwood's Magazine, scarcely supposed himself to be writing anything
+more than sketches of the Scotch Gypsies whom he found in the different
+shires, and of the Continental and English Gypsies of whom he had read.
+The later Simpson thought it, as we have seen, a history of the Gypsies,
+and he has furnished it with an Introduction and a Disquisition of
+amusingly pompous and inconsequent nature. His subject has been too much
+for him, and his mental vision, disordered by too ardent contemplation
+of Gypsies, reproduces them wherever he turns his thought. If he values
+any one of his illusions above the rest,&mdash;for they all seem equally
+pleasant to him,&mdash;it is his persuasion that John Bunyan was a Gypsy. "He
+was a tinker," says our editor. "And who were the tinkers?" "Why,
+Gypsies, without a doubt," answers the reader, and makes no struggle to
+escape the conclusion thus skilfully sprung upon him. Will it be
+credited that the inventor of this theory was denied admittance to the
+columns of the religious newspapers in this country, on the flimsy
+pretext that the editors could not afford the space for a disquisition
+on John Bunyan's Gypsy origin?</p>
+
+<p>The comparison of the Gypsy language in this book with a dialect of the
+Hindostanee is interesting and useful, and the accounts of Gypsy habits
+and usages are novel and curious; and otherwise the work is a mass of
+rather entertaining rubbish.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p><br /><br /><i>Eros. A Series of connected Poems.</i> By <span class="smcap">Lorenzo Somerville</span>, London:
+Tr&uuml;bner &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p><i>Patriotic Poems.</i> By <span class="smcap">Francis de Haes Janvier</span>. Philadelphia: J. B.
+Lippincott &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p><i>The Contest: a Poem.</i> By <span class="smcap">G. P. Carr</span>. Chicago: P. L. Hanscom.</p>
+
+<p><i>Poems.</i> By <span class="smcap">Annie E. Clark</span>. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p>All these little books are very prettily printed and very pleasingly
+bound. Each has its little index and its little dedication, and each its
+hundred pages of rhymes, and so each flutters forth into the world.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Dove vai, povera foglia frale?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>To oblivion, by the briefest route, we think; and we find a pensive
+satisfaction in speculating upon the incidents of the journey. Shall any
+one challenge the wanderers in their flight, and seek to stay them?
+Shall they all reach an utter forgetfulness, and be resolved again into
+elemental milk and water, or shall one of them lodge in a dusty library,
+here and there, and, having ceased to be literature, lead the idle life
+of a curiosity? We imagine another as finding a moment's pause upon the
+centre-table of a country parlor. Perhaps a third, hastily bought at a
+railway station as the train started, and abandoned by the purchaser,
+may at this hour have entered upon a series of railway journeys in
+company with the brakeman's lamps and oil-bottles, with a fair prospect
+of surviving many generations of short-lived railway travellers. We
+figure to ourselves the heart-breaking desolation of a village-tavern,
+where, on the bureau under the mirror, to which the public comb and
+brush are chained, a fourth might linger for a while.</p>
+
+<p>But in all the world shall anybody read one of these books? We fancy not
+even a critic; for the race so vigilantly malign in other days has lost
+its bitterness, or has been broken of its courage by the myriad numbers
+of the versifiers once so exultingly destroyed. Indeed, that cruel
+slaughter was but a combat with Nature,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"So careful of the type she seems,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So careless of the single life";<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and from the exanimate dust of one crushed poetaster she bade a thousand
+rhymesters rise. Yet one cannot help thinking with a shudder of the
+hideous spectacle of "Eros" in the jaws of Blackwood or the mortal
+Quarterly, thirty years ago; or of how ruthlessly our own Raven would
+have plucked the poor trembling life from the "Patriotic Poems," or "The
+Contest," or the "Poems."</p>
+
+<p>The world grows wiser and better-natured every day, and the tender
+statistician has long since stayed the hand of the critic. "Why strike,"
+says the gentle sage, "when figures will do your work so much more
+effectually, and leave you the repose of a compassionate soul? Do you
+not know that but one book in a thousand survives the year of its
+publication?" etc., etc., etc. "And then as to the infinite reproduction
+of the species," adds Science, "<i>is</i> Nature,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'So careful of the single type?' But no,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From scarped cliff and quarried stone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She cries, 'A thousand types are gone.'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Patience! the glyptodon and the dodo have been dead for ages. Perhaps in
+a million years the poetaster also shall pass.</p>
+
+
+<p><br /><br /><i>Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border.</i> By <span class="smcap">Colonel R. B. Marcy</span>, U. S.
+A. With Numerous Illustrations. New York: Harper and Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>There is not much variety in frontier life, it must be confessed, though
+there is abundant adventure. A family likeness runs through nearly all
+histories of bear-fights, and one Indian-fight might readily be mistaken
+for another. So also bear-fighters and Indian-fighters are akin in
+character, and the pioneers who appear in literature leave a sense of
+sameness upon the reader's mind. Nevertheless, one continues to read of
+them with considerable patience, and likes the stories because he liked
+their ancestral legends when a boy.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Marcy's book offers something more than the usual attractions of
+the class to which it belongs; for it contains the history of his own
+famous passage of the Rocky Mountains in mid-winter, and notices of many
+frontiersmen of original and striking character (like the immortal
+Captain Scott), as well as much shrewd observation of Indian nature and
+other wild-beast nature. All topics are treated with perfect
+common-sense; if our soldierly author sometimes philosophizes rather
+narrowly, he never sentimentalizes, though he is not without poetry; and
+he is thoroughly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> imbued with the importance of his theme. One,
+therefore, suffers a great deal from him, in the way of unnecessary
+detail, without a murmur, and now and then willingly accepts an old
+story from him, charmed by the simplicity and good faith with which he
+attempts to pass it off as new.</p>
+
+<p>The style of the book is clear and direct, except in those parts where
+light and humorous narration is required. There it is bad, and seems to
+have been formed upon the style of the sporting newspapers and the local
+reporters, with now and then a hint from the witty passages of the
+circus, as in this colloquy:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Mought you be the boss hossifer of that thar army?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I am the commanding officer of that detachment, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Wall, Mr. Hossifer, be them sure 'nuff sogers, or is they only
+make-believe chaps, like I see down to Orleans?'</p>
+
+<p>"'They have passed through the Mexican war, and I trust have proved
+themselves not only worthy of the appellation of real, genuine soldiers,
+but of veterans, sir.'"</p>
+
+<p>And so forth. We like Colonel Mercy when he talks of himself better than
+when he talks for himself. In the latter case he is often what we see
+him above, and in the former he is always modest, discreet, and
+entertaining.</p>
+
+
+<p><br /><br /><i>Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing.</i> From the German of <span class="smcap">Joseph von
+Eichendorff</span>, by <span class="smcap">Charles Godfrey Leland</span>. With Vignettes by E. B. Bensell.
+New York: Leypoldt and Holt.</p>
+
+<p>When, as Heine says, Napoleon, who was Classic like C&aelig;sar and Alexander,
+fell to the ground, and Herren August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel,
+who were Romantic like Puss in Boots, arose as victors, Baron von
+Eichendorff was one of those who shared the triumph. He wrote plays and
+poems and novels to the tunes set by the masters of his school, but for
+himself practically he was a wise man,&mdash;held comfortable offices all his
+life long, and, in spite of vast literary yearning, sentiment, and
+misanthropy, was a Philister of the Philisters. The tale which Mr.
+Leland translates so gracefully is an extravaganza, in marked contrast
+to all the other romances of Eichendorff, in so far as it is purposely
+farcical, and they are serious; but we imagine it does not differ from
+them greatly in its leading qualities of fanciful incoherency and
+unbridled feebleness. An idle boy, who is driven from home by his
+father, the miller, and is found with his violin on the road to nowhere
+by two great ladies and carried to their castle near Vienna,&mdash;who falls
+in love with one of these lovely countesses, and runs away for love of
+her to Italy, and, after passing through many confused adventures there,
+with no relation to anything that went before or comes after, returns to
+the castle, and finds that his lovely countess is not a countess, but a
+poor orphan adopted by the great folk,&mdash;and so happily marries
+her,&mdash;this is the Good-for-Nothing and his story. A young student of the
+German language, struggling through the dusty paths of the dictionary to
+a comprehension of the tale, would perhaps think it a wonderful romance,
+when once he had achieved its meaning; but being translated into our
+pitiless English, its poverty of wit and feeling and imagination is
+apparent; and one is soon weary of its mere fantasticality.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No.
+106, August, 1866, by Various
+
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+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106,
+August, 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 18, No. 106, August, 1866
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: October 16, 2007 [EBook #23040]
+
+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. XVIII.--AUGUST, 1866.--NO. CVI.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+HOW MY NEW ACQUAINTANCES SPIN.
+
+
+The strictly professional man may have overcome his natural aversion to
+some of the most interesting objects of his study, such as snakes, and
+toads, and spiders, and vermin of all kinds; but people in general have
+always required that any attempt to force such abominations upon their
+notice should be preceded by a more or less elaborate and humble
+acknowledgment of their hideous aspect, their ferocious disposition,
+their dark and bloody deeds, and the utter impossibility of their
+conducing in any way to human comfort and convenience.
+
+But, while admitting the truth of much that has been thus urged against
+spiders as a class, I must decline, or at least defer, conforming to
+custom in speaking of the particular variety which we are about to
+consider, and I believe that it will need only a glance at the insect
+and its silk, and a brief notice of its habits, to justify my
+indisposition to follow the usual routine.
+
+Without apology, then, I shall endeavor to show that in the structure,
+the habits, the mode of growth, and, above all, in the productions of
+this spider are to be found subjects worthy the attention of every class
+of minds; for to the naturalist is exhibited a species which, though not
+absolutely new to science, was never seen nor heard of by Professor
+Agassiz till the spring of 1865, and which is so narrowly circumscribed
+in its geographical distribution that, so far as I can ascertain, it was
+never observed by Hentz,--a Southern entomologist, who devoted himself
+particularly to spiders,--and is met with only upon a few low, marshy
+islands on the coast of South Carolina, and perhaps of other Southern
+States. Its habits, too, are so interesting, and so different in many
+respects from those recorded of other species, that the observer of
+living creatures has here an abundant opportunity, not only for
+increasing his own knowledge, but for enlarging the domain of science.
+And this more especially in America; for while, in England, Blackwall
+and others have been laboring for more than thirty years, spiders seem
+to have received little attention on this side of the Atlantic.
+
+We have now, moreover, in our observation of these insects, an
+incentive of sovereign effect, namely, the hope of increasing our
+national wealth; for to the practical man, to the manufacturer and the
+mechanic, is offered a new silken material which far surpasses in beauty
+and elegance that of the silk-worm, and which, however small in quantity
+at present, demands some attention in view of the alarming decrease in
+the silk crops of Europe. This material is obtained in a manner entirely
+new,--not, as with the worm, by unwinding the cocoons, nor yet, as might
+be suggested for the spider, by unravelling the web, but by _drawing_ or
+_winding_ or _reeling directly from the body of the living insect_, even
+as you would milk a cow, or, more aptly, as wire is pulled through a
+wire-drawing machine.
+
+To the admirer of the beautiful and perfect in nature is presented a
+fibre of absolute smoothness, roundness, and finish, the colors of which
+resemble, and in the sunlight even excel in brilliancy those of the two
+precious metals, silver and gold; while the moralist who loves to
+illustrate the workings of God's providence in bringing forth good out
+of evil, by comparing the disgusting silk-worm with its beautiful and
+useful product, may now enforce the lesson by the still more striking
+contrast between this silk and the loathed and hated spider.
+
+The statesman who, after a four years' war, sees few indications of a
+better spirit on the part of the South, and is almost ready to exclaim,
+"Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" may now perhaps discern a
+spot, small indeed, but brilliant, on the very edge of the dark Carolina
+cloud; and it may not be too much to hope that, in course of time, the
+cords of our spider's golden and silver silk may prove potent bonds of
+union with the first of the rebellious States.
+
+As to the mathematician who believes in the inborn tendency of mankind
+to variation and imperfection, and holds up to us, as shining examples
+of mathematical accuracy, the work of certain insects, and who--since
+Professor Wyman has shown that the hexagonal form of the bee's cell is
+not of original design, but rather the necessary result of difficulties
+met and overcome in the most economical manner, though by no means
+always with perfect exactness and uniformity--has fallen back upon the
+ancient and still prevalent belief in the precise construction of the
+spider's web, (which, as will be seen, really displays it no more than
+does the bee's cell,)--to this disappointed man of geometry and figures
+is now offered the alternative of either finding a new and truer
+illustration, or of abandoning his position entirely.
+
+Let us, then, wait till we have seen this spider and heard his story.
+_His_ story! That reminds me of another class which may possibly be
+represented among my readers, and whose members, in the contemplation of
+the domestic economy of these insects, will, I fear, discover many and
+weighty arguments in favor of the various opinions entertained by the
+advocates of Woman's Rights; for here is a community in which the
+females not only far exceed the males in number, but present so great a
+contrast to them in size and importance, that, but for absolute proof,
+they never would be regarded as belonging to the same species.
+
+Here, then, is a life-size picture of our spider and of--I was about to
+say, _his_ partner; but in truth it is _she_ who is _the_ spider, and
+_he_ is only _her_ partner. Such is the real physical, and, so to speak,
+mental superiority of the female, that, even if we insist upon the legal
+equality at least of the masculine element, we can do so only in name,
+and will find it hard to avoid speaking of him as the male of the
+_Nephila plumipes_, thus tacitly admitting her as the truer
+representative of the species. Their relative size and appearance are
+shown by the figures; but it may be added that she is very handsome; the
+fore part of her body, which, being composed of the head and chest
+soldered together, is termed _cephalothorax_, is glossy-black and
+covered, except in spots, with white hairs; she has also upon six of
+her legs one or two brushes of black hairs;--while he is an
+insignificant-looking insect of a dull-brown color and half-starved
+look, with only a few scattered bristles upon his slender limbs. He does
+nothing for himself, leaving her to make the web and provide the food,
+and even to carry him on her back when removal is necessary; but she
+makes up for the imposition by keeping him on short allowance and at a
+respectful distance, excepting when the impregnation of her eggs is
+necessary; and even then she is mistress of the situation, and, _etiam
+in amoribus saeva_, may afterward eat him up. But of this contrast
+between the two sexes, of their functions and their relations to each
+other, more hereafter. It is sufficient to observe that, when this
+spider is mentioned, and the sex is not specified, the _female_ is
+always referred to.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 1. Male and Female _Nephila plumipes_.]
+
+When, where, and how was this spider discovered? and why is it that we
+have never heard of it before? To answer these questions, we must go
+back three years, to the 19th of August, 1863, and to the camp of the
+Fifty-fifth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, on a desolate island a
+little south from the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, and in sight
+of the fortress which Gillmore had just begun to strengthen by the
+addition of tons of Union shot and shell, till, from tolerably strong
+masonry, its walls became solid earthworks which nothing could pierce or
+greatly injure. There, at the north end of Folly Island,--scarce wider
+than our camp at that point, and narrower than the magnificent beach
+which, at low tide, afforded ample space for the battalion drill,--I
+found in a tree a very large and handsome spider, whose web was at least
+three feet in diameter.
+
+Glad enough to meet with anything new, and bearing in mind the interest
+with which, when a boy, I had watched and recorded the operations of our
+common house and hunting spiders, I entangled him--I didn't then know it
+was _her_, so let it pass--in the web, and carried it to my tent. The
+insect was very quiet, and did not attempt to escape; but presently,
+after crawling slowly along my sleeve, she let herself down to the
+floor, taking first the precaution, after the prudent fashion of most
+spiders, to attach to the point she left a silken line, which, as she
+descended, came from her body. Rather than seize the insect itself, I
+caught the thread and pulled. The spider was not moved, but the line
+readily drew out, and, being wound upon my hands, seemed so strong that
+I attached the end to a little quill, and, having placed the spider upon
+the side of the tent, lay down on my couch and turned the quill between
+my fingers at such a rate that in one minute six feet of silk were wound
+upon it. At the end of an hour and a half I estimated, with due
+allowance for stop-pages, that I had four hundred and fifty feet, or
+_one hundred and fifty yards_, of the most brilliant and beautiful
+golden silk I had ever seen.
+
+During all this operation the spider had remained perfectly quiet, but
+finally put an end to my proceedings by grasping the line with the tip
+of one of her hind legs so that it snapped. I was tired, however, and
+contented myself with the quantity already obtained, which now formed a
+raised band of gold upon the quill. This specimen is now in my
+possession, but has been removed from the quill to ascertain its weight,
+which is one third of a grain.
+
+It is worthy of notice, perhaps, that in all this was involved no new
+_fact_, but only a happy deduction from one known ages ago; namely, that
+a spider, when dropping, leaves her line attached, and so allows it to
+be drawn from her body. Nothing was more natural than to simply reverse
+the position of the fixed point, and, instead of letting the spider go
+away from the end of her line, to take the end of her line away from
+her. So natural, indeed, did it seem, that my gratification at having
+been (as was then supposed) the first to do it was, on reflection, mixed
+with surprise that no one had ever thought of it before, and I am very
+glad to find that at least _four_ individuals have, within the last
+century, pulled silk out of a spider, though of these only one, whose
+researches I hope to make known, regarded the matter as anything more
+than a curious experiment.
+
+I had never before seen such a spider, nor even paid attention to any
+geometrical species; though one large black and yellow variety is, or
+used to be, common enough in our fields at the North. Neither had I ever
+heard of such a method of obtaining silk. But though my first specimen
+was not preserved, and a second was never seen on Folly Island, yet I
+was so impressed with its size and brilliant colors, and especially with
+the curious brushes of black hairs on its legs, that when, during the
+following summer, another officer described to me a great spider which
+was very common on Long Island, where he was stationed, I knew it was
+the same, and told him what I had done the year before, adding that I
+was sure something would come of it in time.
+
+With leisure and many spiders at his command, this officer improved upon
+my suggestion, by substituting for my quill turned in the fingers a
+wooden cylinder worked by a crank, and by securing, at a proper
+distance, (between pins, I think,) one or more spiders, whose threads
+were guided between pins upon the cylinder. He thus produced more of the
+silk, winding it upon rings of hard rubber so as to make very pretty
+ornaments. With this simple machine I wound the silk in two grooves cut
+on a ring of hard rubber and parallel except at one point, where they
+crossed so as to form a kind of signet. Another officer now suggested
+and put in operation still another improvement, in the shape of the
+"gear-drill-stock" of our armorer's chest. This, being a machine for
+drilling iron, was rough in its construction and uneven in its action,
+but, having cog-wheels, a rapid and nearly steady motion could be given
+to its shaft. To this shaft he attached a little cross of rubber, and
+covered it with silk, which was of a silver-white color instead of
+golden-yellow, as in other cases. The difference in color was then
+supposed to depend upon individual peculiarities, but the true
+explanation will be given farther on. With this gear-drill-stock, upon a
+larger ring, one inch in diameter and three eighths of an inch in width,
+in a groove upon its periphery one fourth of an inch in width, and
+across the sides of the ring in two directions, I wound _three thousand
+four hundred and eighty-four yards_, or _nearly two miles, of silk_. The
+length was estimated by accurately determining the different dimensions
+of the ring where wound upon, and multiplying by this the number of
+revolutions of the cylinder per minute (170), and this product again by
+the number of minutes of actual winding (285), deducting from the gross
+time of winding (about nine hours) each moment of stoppage for any
+cause.
+
+This was late in the fall of 1864, and, our specimens being sent home,
+further experiments, and even thoughts upon the subject, were prevented
+by the expedition against the Charleston and Savannah Railroad, and the
+many changes of station that followed the disastrous battle of Honey
+Hill. But, when I was at the North in February, 1865, a friend expressed
+to me his confident belief that this new silken product could be made of
+practical utility, and advised me to make inquiries on the subject. So,
+before presenting it to the scientific societies, I tested the strength
+of the silk by attaching to a fixed point one end of a thread _one
+four-thousandth_ of an inch in diameter, and tying the other end upon
+the arm of an accurate balance: weights were then dropped in to the
+amount of _fifty-four grains_ before the line was broken. By a
+calculation from this, a solid bar of spider's silk, one inch in
+diameter, would sustain a weight of more than _seventy tons_; while a
+similar bar of steel will sustain only fifty-six, and one of iron
+twenty-eight tons. The specimens were then exhibited to Professors
+Wyman, Agassiz, and Cooke, of Harvard University, to all of whom the
+species of spider was unknown, though Professor Wyman has since found a
+single specimen among some insects collected at the South; while to them
+as well as to the silk-manufacturers the idea of reeling silk directly
+from a living insect was entirely new. The latter, of course, wished to
+see a quantity of it before pronouncing upon its usefulness. So most of
+my furlough was spent in making arrangements for securing a number of
+the spiders, and reeling their silk during the coming summer. These
+comprised six light wooden boxes with sliding fronts, each eighteen
+inches wide and high and one foot deep, and containing six tin trays one
+above another, each of which, again, held twenty-four square paper boxes
+two and a half inches in diameter, and with lids closed by an elastic.
+Into these the spiders were to be put for transportation. Then I had
+made a costly machine for reeling the silk, which, however, proved of no
+practical value.
+
+In March, with these and other real or fancied adjuvants, (some of which
+proved even less useful and trustworthy than the machine,) but, above
+all, with a determination to put this matter to the test of actual
+experiment, I rejoined the regiment at Charleston, which had just fallen
+into our hands. It was not until April, however, that we were so
+situated that I could make any attempt to get spiders. Of course it was
+not expected that the full-grown ones should be found at that season,
+but the eggs or young should be abundant where the spiders had been in
+the summer.
+
+Before recounting my adventures in pursuit of my spinster friends, it
+may be well to say a few words of the locality which they inhabited.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 2. Map of Charleston and Vicinity.]
+
+Charleston stands upon the extremity of a narrow peninsula, between the
+Cooper and the Ashley Rivers. Charleston Harbor, supplied by these and
+some smaller streams, lies between Mt. Pleasant and Sullivan's Island on
+the northeast, and James and Morris Islands on the southwest. One cannot
+but be struck with the resemblance, so great as to be almost
+symmetrical, between the two sides of the harbor. Mt. Pleasant and James
+Island are quite high land,--high at least for the coast of South
+Carolina,--and are separated from the mainland, the one by the Wando
+River, the other by Wappoo Creek; while Sullivan's Island, where stand
+Fort Moultrie and other Rebel batteries, corresponds almost precisely to
+Morris Island, both being low and sandy, and being, as it were, bent
+inland from the sea, with sharp points looking toward the city, their
+convex shores forming a rounded entrance to the harbor. Extending
+southward from Morris Island, and separated from it by Lighthouse Inlet,
+is Folly Island; and in exact correspondence to the latter, north of
+Sullivan's Island, and separated from it by Breach Inlet, is a similar
+sand-ridge called Long Island. But now occurs a difference; for while
+between Long and Sullivan's Islands and Christ's Church Parish is an
+immense salt marsh intersected by creeks, but presenting an unbroken
+surface, in the midst of the corresponding marsh between Morris and
+Folly Islands and James Island is a group of low wooded islands, the
+largest of which lies opposite the upper or north end of Folly Island.
+To this no name is given on the maps, nor is it even distinguished from
+the marsh. It is, however, completely surrounded by water; and, though
+this is in the form of creeks neither wide nor deep, yet the peculiar
+softness of the mud, and the absence of any landing-place except upon
+the side toward Folly Island, render it almost inaccessible.
+
+To this narrow strip of land, not three miles in length, was given the
+name of Long Island,--perhaps by our own troops, who knew nothing of an
+island of the same name _north_ of the harbor; and in case it is found
+that no other name belongs to it, we may properly avoid a confusion, and
+christen it _Spider_ Island, in honor of the remarkable insects for
+whose especial benefit it seems to have been made, and which, with the
+exception of the mosquitoes, are its sole inhabitants.
+
+As was said, the first spider was found on Folly Island on the 19th of
+August, 1863: it was also the last there seen. During the summer of
+1864, many were found on Long Island (so called); and when, in the
+spring of 1865, our regiment was encamped on James Island near Wappoo
+Creek, it was toward Long Island that all my attention, so far as
+concerned spiders, was directed.
+
+But first, as a bit of collateral history, and to show how easily and
+how far one may go astray when one of the links in the chain of argument
+is only an _inference_, let me relate that, while riding over James
+Island, I observed upon trees and bushes numbers of small brown bags,
+from half an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, pear-shaped, and
+suspended by strong silken cords. The bags themselves were made of a
+finer silk so closely woven as to resemble brown paper, and, when
+opened, were found to contain a mass of loose silk filled with young
+spiders to the number of five hundred or more. In certain localities,
+especially in a swampy field just outside the first line of Rebel works,
+they were quite abundant. I had soon collected about four hundred of
+them, which, by a moderate estimate, contained _two hundred thousand
+little spiders_,--quite enough, I thought, with which to commence
+operations. But one hot day in June I placed them all on a tray in the
+sun. I was called away, and on my return found my one fifth of a million
+young spiders dead,--baked to death.
+
+Prior to this catastrophe, however, I had become convinced that these
+were not the spiders I sought. Indeed, my only reasons for thinking they
+might be were, first, the abundance of these cocoons in a locality so
+near Long Island; and, second, my own great desire that they should
+prove the spiders I wanted. The young spiders, it is true, did not at
+all resemble their supposed progenitors, as to either shape, or color,
+or markings; yet all of these evidently changed during growth, and would
+not of themselves disprove the relationship.
+
+One day in April, however, a cocoon was found in a tree on James Island,
+of a very different appearance from the others. It was of loose
+texture, and, instead of being pear-shaped, was hemispherical in form,
+and attached by its flat surface to the lower side of a leaf. This also
+contained young spiders, a little larger and a little brighter in color
+than the others, but really bearing no resemblance to the full-grown
+spiders of Long Island. This single cocoon formed the entering wedge of
+doubt, and soon it was clear that the only means of proof lay on Long
+Island itself.
+
+But how was this to be reached? Easily enough while we were upon Folly
+Island and could row through the creeks to a wharf on the east side of
+Long Island. But now the case was altered; for between James and Long
+Islands was the immense marsh already mentioned, intersected by creeks,
+and composed of mud practically without bottom, and ranging from
+eighteen to twenty-three feet in depth by actual measurement. Around or
+over or through this marsh it was necessary to go, in order to reach
+Long Island, the home of the spiders.
+
+I could easily occupy the rest of my allotted space in recounting my
+various attempts to reach this El Dorado, which my fancy, excited by
+every delay, stocked with innumerable cocoons of the kind already found
+so abundantly on James Island. These I expected would furnish thousands
+of spiders, the care of which, with the reeling of their silk, would
+give employment to all the freed people in South Carolina,--for even
+then the poor creatures were finding their way to the coast. And
+perhaps, I thought, some day, the Sea-Island silk may be as famous as
+the choice Sea-Island cotton. This hope I still cherish, together with
+the belief that, under certain conditions, the spiders may also be
+reared at the North.
+
+After riding miles and miles in all directions in search of the readiest
+point of attack; after having once engaged a row-boat to go around
+through Stono River and meet me at the nearest point of land,--on which
+occasion I dismounted to give my horse a better chance of getting over a
+bad place in the road, and the ungrateful beast left me in the lurch and
+went home much faster than he came, while I, being now half-way, walked
+on through the marsh, and had the pleasure of sitting on a log in a
+pouring rain for an hour, with Long Island just on the other side of a
+creek over which no boat came to carry me,--after this and other
+disappointments, I at last made sure by going in the boat myself, and so
+finally reached the island. But now, to my discomfiture, after a most
+careful search, I saw only two or three cocoons of the kind I looked
+for, while the others, of loose texture, were quite abundant, and
+doubtless would have been found in still greater numbers but for their
+always being under leaves, and often at a considerable height. It was
+probable now that these latter cocoons contained _the_ spiders, and that
+the former were a different species.
+
+The regiment now removed to the interior of the State, and while there
+occurred the _coup de soleil_ above mentioned. We remained at Orangeburg
+until the middle of August, and then, being stationed at Mt. Pleasant, I
+again made raids for spiders. Upon James Island, in the localities where
+during the spring the cocoons were abundant, I found many large
+geometrical spiders, all of one kind, but not of the kind I sought. They
+were bad-tempered, and their legs were so short and strong that it was
+not easy to handle them, while their silk was of a light, and not
+brilliant, yellow.
+
+My first attempt upon Long Island was made by leaving Charleston in a
+boat, which, after touching at Sumter, landed me at Fort Johnson. Here I
+was joined by a sergeant and corporal of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts,
+and we walked across to a little settlement of freed people not far from
+Secessionville, where a boat and crew were engaged. It would be tedious
+to relate how, after sticking on invisible oyster-beds and mud-flats,
+and losing our way among the creeks, at two o'clock we found ourselves
+about one hundred yards from the north end of the island; and how,
+since it was too late to try to reach the wharf on the east side, even
+had we been sure of the way, the two Fifty-fourth boys and myself got
+out of the boat and essayed to cross upon the marsh. Such a marsh! We
+have marshes at the North, but they are as dry land in comparison. I had
+seen them at the South, had stepped upon and into them, but never one
+like this. It was clear mud, as soft as mud could be and not run like
+the water that covered it at high tide. Even the tall rushes wore an
+unsteady look; and the few oysters upon its surface evidently required
+all their balancing powers to lie upon their flat sides and avoid
+sinking edgewise into the oozy depths. In we sank, over ankles, at the
+first step, and deeper and deeper till we took a second; for our only
+safety lay in pushing down the rushes with the inside of one foot and
+treading upon them, till the other could be withdrawn from its yielding
+bed, and a spot selected for the next step forward. I say _selected_,
+for even this mud was more firm than a hole in it filled with water and
+treacherously concealed by a few rushes. A misstep into one of these
+pitfalls brought me to my knees, and well-nigh compelled me to call for
+help; but a sudden and determined spring, and a friendly bunch of rushes
+beyond, spared me that mortification. When two thirds of the way across,
+and while thinking we should soon reach dry land, we came upon the edge
+of a creek, not wide, it is true, but with soft, slimy, sloping sides,
+(for _banks_ they could not properly be called,) and no one knew how
+many feet of mud beneath its sluggish stream. Under ordinary
+circumstances I might have sounded a retreat; but, remembering that
+there was twice as much mud behind as before us, and feeling ourselves
+sinking slowly but surely in our tracks, we slid down the sides into the
+water. This received our bodies to the waist, the mud our legs to the
+knees; but we struggled through, and, after another terrible thirty
+yards of mud, reached Long Island. Leaving my faithful companions to
+rest, I struck off down the east side of the island, and soon found
+spiders in plenty. Stopping at the wharf, and returning upon the west
+side, I counted one hundred spiders in less than an hour. This was only
+a voyage of discovery, but I could not resist the temptation to capture
+one big fellow and put it in my hat, which, with the edges brought
+together, I was forced to carry in my teeth, for one hand was required
+to break down the webs stretched across my path, and the other to do
+battle in vain with the thousands of mosquitoes, of huge size and bloody
+intent, besetting me on every side. What with the extreme heat and my
+previous fatigue, and the dread lest my captive should escape and
+revenge herself upon my face while I was avoiding the nets of her
+friends, and the relentless attacks of their smaller but more venomous
+associates, it was the most uncomfortable walk imaginable. To complete
+my misery, the path led me out upon the marsh where I could see nothing
+of the boat or my companions, and whence, to reach them, I had to walk
+across the head of the island. Excepting the dreaded recrossing of the
+mud, I hardly remember how we made our way back; but by one means and
+another I finally reached Charleston at nine o'clock, about as
+disreputable-looking a medical man as ever was seen.
+
+However, all this was soon forgotten, and, being now assured of the
+presence of the spiders in their former haunts, on the 30th of August,
+1865, I organized a new expedition, which was to proceed entirely by
+water, and which consisted of a sail-boat and crew of picked volunteers.
+Leaving Mt. Pleasant in the morning, we crossed the harbor, and were
+soon lost in the meanderings of the creeks behind Morris Island. _Lost_
+is appropriate, for, once in these creeks, you know nothing, you see and
+hear nothing, and, if you change your course, must do so by mere guess.
+But the most annoying thing is, after an apparent advance of a quarter
+of a mile, to find yourself not twenty yards from your starting-point,
+so tortuous are the windings of the creeks.
+
+By dint of hard rowing (in the wrong direction, as we soon found), then
+by walking across Morris Island to Light-House Inlet, and still harder
+rowing from there to the wharf of Long Island, we succeeded in securing
+sixty spiders; but now arose a furious storm of wind and rain, which not
+only compelled our retreat, but drenched us to the skin, blew us back
+faster than we could row, and threatened to overturn our boat if we
+hoisted the sail; so slow was our progress, that it was eleven o'clock
+at night before we reached Mt. Pleasant. Thus ended my last and only
+successful raid upon Long Island.
+
+It may seem that I have dwelt longer than was necessary upon the
+circumstances attending the discovery of this spider and its silk. If
+so, it is not merely because at that time both were new to myself and
+all to whom I showed them, and everything concerning them was likely to
+be impressed upon my mind, but also because I then hoped that the idea
+of obtaining silk directly from a living insect might be found of
+practical importance, as I still hope it may. The incidents illustrate,
+too, the nature of the obstacles daily encountered and overcome by our
+troops; for no one who has never seen or stepped into a Sea-Island marsh
+can realize how difficult it was for our forces to obtain a foothold in
+the vicinity of Charleston. This was appreciated by the old freedman
+whom we left in the boat while crossing the mud. "No wonder," he said,
+"the Yankees whipped the Rebels, if they will do such things for to
+catch _spiders_."
+
+The sixty spiders so obtained were kept for several weeks in the little
+boxes in which they had been deposited when caught. Every day each box
+was opened, the occupant examined, and its condition, if altered, noted
+on the cover. They generally spun a few irregular lines on which to
+hang, and so remained quiet except when the boxes were opened: then, of
+course, they tried to escape. Half a dozen of the larger ones were
+placed on the window-seats and in corners of the room, where they
+speedily constructed webs. By preference these were stretched across the
+windows, illustrating one of the three principal instincts of this
+spider, which are, first, to _seek the light_; second, to _ascend_; and
+third, to take a position with the _head downward_.
+
+It was now a question how they were to be fed; not so much while there,
+where flies were abundant, but after their arrival at the North. So,
+remembering that the young ones had seemed to relish blood, I took the
+tender liver of a chicken, cut it into little pieces, and dipped them in
+water, not, I am sorry to say, with any view to supply them with that
+fluid for the want of which they afterward perished, but in order that
+the bits of liver should be more easily pulled from the pins by the
+spiders. To my delight they greedily accepted the new food, and now I
+felt assured of keeping them during the winter.
+
+Deferring, however, a more particular account of what was observed at
+Mt. Pleasant, until their habits and mode of life are taken up in order,
+it should be understood that, during our short stay, my attention was
+chiefly directed to getting from the spiders as much silk as possible;
+for it was evident that practical men would not credit the usefulness of
+spiders' silk until an appreciable quantity could be shown to them. The
+first trial of the machine with a live spider proved it an utter
+failure; for though quite ingenious and complicated, it had been devised
+with reference only to _dead_ spiders. In regard to the arrangement
+(wherein lay its chief, if not sole, peculiarity) by which a thin slip
+of brass was sprung against a rubber band by the latter's elasticity,
+with a view to secure the spider's legs between them, it was found that,
+as the spider was alive, and, literally, kicking, and two of its legs
+were smaller than the rest, these were at once extricated, and the
+others soon followed; while, if the spring was made forcible enough to
+hold the smaller legs, the larger were in danger of being crushed, and
+the spider, fearing this, often disjointed them, according to the
+convenient, though loose habit of most Arachnida, crabs, and other
+articulates. It was also proposed to secure several spiders in the above
+manner upon the periphery of a wheel, the revolution of which would give
+a twist to their conjoined threads, carried through a common eyelet upon
+the spindle; but this can be accomplished without the inconvenience of
+whirling the spiders out of sight, by modifications of the apparatus
+which has always been used for twisting ordinary silk. It will probably
+be inferred from the above, that, in securing the spider, two points are
+to be considered; first, to prevent its escape, and second, so to
+confine the legs that it cannot reach with their tips either the _silk_
+or the _spinners_. Now the machine accomplished this by putting all the
+legs together in a vice, as it were, entailing upon the captive much
+discomfort and perhaps the loss of some of its legs, which, though eight
+in number, are each appropriated to a special use by their possessor.
+
+So, abandoning the machine, I fell back upon a simple reel, and a
+modification of my little contrivance of the previous year; which was,
+to grasp the spider by all the legs, holding them behind her back, and
+to let her body down into a deep notch or slot cut in a thin card, the
+edges of which reached the constriction between the two regions of the
+body, the _cephalothorax_ and _abdomen_; so that, when a second piece of
+card was let down upon it, the _cephalothorax_, with the _legs_ of the
+spider, was upon one side of a partition, while on the other was the
+_abdomen_, bearing upon its posterior extremity the spinning organs. The
+head and horns of a cow to be milked are secured in a similar manner. By
+placing in a row, or one behind another, several spiders thus secured, a
+compound thread was simultaneously obtained from them, and wound upon a
+spindle of hard rubber.
+
+By this means were produced several very handsome bands of bright yellow
+silk; but the time was so short, and the means of constructing and
+improving my apparatus so deficient, that I could procure no more than
+these few specimens, which were very beautiful, and shone in the sun
+like polished and almost translucent gold; but which, being wound upon a
+cylinder only an inch in diameter, and from several spiders at different
+times, could not be unwound, and so made of any further use.
+
+I tried now to ascertain how much silk could be obtained from a single
+spider at once. It will be remembered that the first specimen, wound on
+Folly Island, was one hundred and fifty yards in length, and weighed one
+third of a grain. I now exhausted the supply of a spider for three days,
+using the same spindle, one inch in diameter, and turning this at the
+rate of one hundred and sixty times per minute. On the first day I
+reeled for twenty minutes, which gave two hundred and sixty-six and two
+thirds yards; on the third day, the second being Sunday, for twenty-five
+minutes, giving three hundred and thirty-three and one third yards; and
+on the fourth day, for eighteen minutes, giving two hundred and
+thirty-three and one third yards,--amounting in all to eight hundred and
+thirty-three and one third yards in three or four days. This was all
+that could be got, and the spider herself seemed unable to evolve any
+more; but on killing her and opening her abdomen, plenty of the gum was
+found in the little silk bags into which it is secreted. As this has
+always been the case, I have concluded that the evolution of the silk is
+almost entirely a mechanical process, which is but little controlled by
+the spinners themselves, and that the gum requires some degree of
+preparation after it is secreted before it is fit for use as silk; for
+it must be remembered that with the spider, as with the silk-worm, the
+silk is formed and contained in little bags or glands in the abdomen,
+not as _threads_, but as a very viscid gum. This passes in little tubes
+or ducts to the spinners, through minute openings, in which it is drawn
+out into filaments, uniting and drying instantly in the air, and so
+forming the single fibre from each spinner.
+
+The silk obtained the first day was of a deep yellow; to my great
+astonishment, the second reeling from the same spider gave silk of a
+brilliant silver-white color; while on the third occasion, as if by
+magic, the color had changed again, and I got only _yellow_ silk. The
+hypothesis of individual peculiarity, adopted the previous year to
+explain why some spiders gave yellow, and others white silk, was now
+untenable; and, remembering that, beside these two positive colors there
+was also (and indeed more commonly) a _light yellow_, as if a
+combination of the other two, I saw that the real solution of the
+mystery must lie in the spinners themselves. Examining carefully the
+thread as it came from the body, it was seen to be composed of two
+distinct portions, differing materially in their size, their color,
+their elasticity, and their relative position; for one of them was
+_white_ and _inelastic_, crinkling and flying up when relaxed, and
+seemed to proceed from the _posterior_ of the two principal pairs of
+spinners, while the other was _larger_, _yellow_, so _elastic_ that when
+relaxed it kept its direction, and seemed to come from the _anterior_
+pair of spinners, and so, in the inverted position of the spider, was
+_above_ the other. By putting a spider under the influence of
+chloroform, and then carrying the first thread under a pin stuck in a
+cork to one part of a spindle, and the second or yellow line over
+another pin to a different part of the spindle, I reeled off from the
+same spider, at the same time, two distinct bands of silk, of which one
+was a deep golden-yellow, the other a bright silver-white; while, if
+both threads ran together, there was formed a band of _light yellow_
+from the union of the two. Thinking such a difference must subserve some
+use in the economy of the insect, I made a more careful examination of
+its webs. At first sight these resembled those of most geometrical
+spiders, in being broad, rounded, nearly vertical nets; but they were
+unusually large, and in their native woods often stretched between trees
+and across the paths, so as to be two, three, and even more, feet in
+diameter, and in my room at Mt. Pleasant hung like curtains before the
+windows. They were of a bright yellow color and very viscid; but now I
+noticed that neither the color nor the viscidity pertained to the entire
+net, for although the concentric circles constituting the principal part
+of the web were _yellow_, and very _elastic_, and studded with little
+beads of _gum_, (Fig 3,) yet the diverging lines or _radii_ of the
+wheel-shaped structure, with all the guys and stays by which it was
+suspended and braced, were _dry_ and _inelastic_, and of a _white_ or
+lighter yellow color.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 3. Silk threads, viscid and dry.]
+
+Now, however, a new mystery presented itself. We will admit that the
+spider had the power, not only to vary the _size_ of her lines according
+to the number of spinners, or of the minute holes in each spinner, which
+were applied to the surface whence the line was to proceed, but also to
+make use of either golden or silver silk at will. But how was it that
+this yellow silk--which was quite dry and firm, though elastic, as
+reeled from the spider, or as spun by her in the formation of her
+cocoons--was nevertheless, when used for the concentric circles of the
+web, so viscid as to follow the point of a pin, stretching in so doing
+many times its length? A satisfactory explanation of this has never yet
+been offered, nor can be until the minute anatomy of the spinning organs
+is better understood, and the evolution of the silk more carefully
+observed at every stage, and under all conditions. I will merely state
+very briefly the few facts already established, with some of the
+possible explanations.
+
+The spinning _mammulae_ are placed in pairs at the lower part of the
+abdomen, near its hinder end, and number four, six, or eight in
+different species. They are little conical or cylindrical papillae,
+closely resembling the pro-legs of caterpillars, and are composed of two
+or three joints, the terminal one of which is pierced with a greater or
+less number of minute holes, the sides of these, in some, if not all,
+cases, being prolonged into tubes. Through these holes or tubes issue
+the fine filaments, which, uniting as they dry in the air, constitute
+the line from each spinner.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 4. Spinners.]
+
+Now the _Nephila plumipes_ possesses at least three pairs of spinners.
+Of these, two are much larger than the third, which indeed does not
+appear till they are separated. From the _posterior_ of the two largest
+pairs _seems_ to proceed the _white_, and from the _anterior_ the
+_yellow_ silk, while from the small intermediate pair seem to proceed
+very fine filaments of a pale-blue color, the use of which is to envelop
+the prey after it has been seized and killed, being drawn out by the
+bristles near the tips of the spider's hinder legs. Beside these six
+papillae there is, just in front of the anterior pair, a single small
+papilla on the middle line, the nature and use of which I have not
+ascertained, though I feel quite sure that no silk comes from it. The
+large median papilla, just _behind_ the posterior pair, surrounds the
+termination of the intestines, and through it the excrement is voided,
+the insect for this purpose turning back the abdomen as she hangs head
+downward, so that neither the web nor the spinners shall be
+contaminated. Now it has recently been ascertained that the minute
+globules with which the circles are studded, and the number of which on
+a web of average size is estimated at _one hundred thousand_, do not
+exist in that form when the viscid lines are first spun by the spider,
+but as a uniform coating of gum upon a thread; this gum, of itself and
+according to physical laws, soon exhibits little undulations, and then
+separates into the globules which have long been observed and supposed
+to be formed by the spider. The fact of spiders selecting the night for
+the construction of their webs, the difficulty of making any close
+observations upon them while so engaged without disturbing them, and the
+near approximation of the two larger pairs of spinners while the viscid
+line is slowly drawn out by the hind leg, have hitherto prevented my
+determining its exact source and manner of formation. If it comes from
+the anterior pair only, then one and the same organ has the power of
+evolving a central axis and covering it with viscid gum; and it seems
+less improbable that the axis is white and formed by the posterior pair,
+the yellow gum being spread upon it by the anterior pair, which also
+would then have the power to evolve this same gum at other times as an
+equally dry, though more elastic thread. But in either case we have only
+_three_ pairs of spinners and _four_ kinds of silk, the _pale-blue
+fasciculi_ the _dry white_, the _dry yellow_, and the _viscid_ and very
+_elastic_ silk which is employed only in the circles of the web, and
+which often does not become yellow till after exposure to the light.
+Apparently the surest method of investigation will be carefully to
+destroy one pair of spinners at a time without injuring the others, and
+then note the effect upon the spinning.
+
+Let us go back now to the sixty spiders left at Mt. Pleasant. A few of
+these died on the way North, but the majority reached Boston in safety
+about the 20th of September, 1865; for some time I had observed that
+they all were becoming more or less emaciated, and relished their food
+less than at first. Occasionally one died from no apparent cause. The
+mortality increasing toward the end of the month, and all of them losing
+both flesh and vigor, I was persuaded to try them with water,--a thing I
+had thus far declined to do, never having heard of a spider's drinking
+water, and knowing that our common house species can hardly get it at
+all. The result was most gratifying: a drop of water upon the tip of a
+camel's-hair pencil, not only was not avoided, but greedily seized and
+slowly swallowed, being held between the jaws and the palpi. All of the
+spiders took it, and some even five or six drops in succession. You will
+exclaim, "Poor things! what tortures they must have suffered!" I admit
+that it could not have been pleasant for them to go so long without that
+which they crave every day, but I cannot believe that creatures whose
+legs drop off on very slight provocation, and which never show any sign
+whatever of real pain, suffered very acute pangs even when subjected to
+what occasions such distress to ourselves.
+
+The few survivors straightway improved in health and spirits; but being
+now convinced that a moist atmosphere was almost as needful as water to
+drink, I turned them loose in the north wing of the hot-house in Dr.
+Gray's Botanical Garden at Cambridge. They all mysteriously disappeared,
+excepting one, which made a nice web at one end just under the
+ridge-pole, and for several weeks lived and grew fat upon the flies; but
+a thorough fumigation of the house with tobacco so shocked her not yet
+civilized organization that she died.
+
+Her untimely death, however, afforded opportunity for a closer
+examination of the web itself. The first one she had made was not
+_vertical_; and, following the prevalent ideas as to the precise
+construction of the spider's web, I had felt somewhat ashamed of my pet,
+but supposed the next she made would be an improvement. But no, the
+rebellious insect constantly made them all (for, it should have been
+said before, this spider seldom uses the same web more than forty-eight
+hours) after the same manner, and finally I laid it to a depraved
+idiocrasy, incident to captivity and poor health. But now another and
+most unexpected feature developed itself; for, on attempting to remove
+the last web by placing against it a large wire ring, and cutting the
+guy-lines, I found that this most degenerate spider had not only failed
+to make her house _perpendicular_, but had so far departed from the
+traditions of our ancestors as to have the centre thereof decidedly
+eccentric, and four times as near the upper as the lower border of the
+web, so that its upper portion was only a confused array of irregular
+lines, which it was impossible to secure to the frame. For any accurate
+observation my web was of no value. But perhaps this was best; for had I
+then learned what I have since, that our spider utterly ignores every
+precedent, not only in the _position_ and _shape_ of her web, but also
+in its _minute arrangement_, I might have been so affected by her
+evident bad character and radical proclivities, as to have feared paying
+her any further attentions,--much more, presenting her to the world.
+
+But in order to understand how these further discoveries were made, we
+must again go back to the original sixty spiders in my room at Mt.
+Pleasant, South Carolina.
+
+At the time of their capture, I had observed upon a few of the webs
+little brown spiders, which I then imagined might be the half-grown
+young. Six of these were found among the sixty larger spiders, and a
+moment's examination of their palpi or feelers (Fig. 5) showed that they
+were males, though even then I could not believe they had reached their
+maturity; for their bodies were only about one fourth of an inch in
+length, and weighed only one thirty-second part of a grain, while the
+females were from an inch to an inch and a quarter in length, and
+weighed from three to four grains. It was as absurd as if a man
+weighing one hundred and fifty pounds were joined to a bigger half of
+_eighteen thousand pounds' weight_, and I was not fully convinced that
+these small spiders were really the males of the _Nephila plumipes_ till
+I had witnessed the impregnation of the eggs of the females by them.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 5. Palpi, or Feelers.]
+
+One morning, in the cell of a large female, I found a cocoon of
+beautiful yellow silk containing a rounded mass of eggs. Soon the same
+occurred with other females, and there were fifteen cocoons, which would
+give about _seven thousand spiders_. Early in October, just one month
+after they were laid, the eggs of the first cocoon were broken and
+disclosed little spiders with rounded yellow bodies and short legs,
+looking about as little like their parents as could be imagined. The
+eggs in the other cocoons followed in their order, and now each
+contained four or five hundred little spiders closely packed.
+
+For some time they seemed to eat nothing at all; but within a few days
+all had shed their skins, and now the abdomen was smaller, while the
+_cephalothorax_ and legs were larger and darker; but they showed no
+desire to leave their cocoons. Still they grew perceptibly; and
+coincident with this was a less pleasing fact: their numbers were
+decreasing in the same proportion, and occasionally one was seen eating
+another. It was some time before I could reconcile the good temper and
+quiet behavior of the parents with this instinctive and habitual
+fratricide on the part of their children. But look at it in this way:
+here were several hundred active little creatures in a space just large
+enough to contain them; presently they were hungry, and as no two could
+be of exactly the same size, the smaller and weaker naturally fell a
+prey to their larger brethren, or rather sisters, for either very few
+males are hatched, or else they are particularly good eating, and a very
+small proportion survive the perils of infancy. It is evidently an
+established and well-understood thing among them: all seem to be aware
+of their destiny, to _eat_ or _be eaten_. What else can they do? Human
+beings would do the same under the same circumstances; and I have never
+seen the least sign of personal spite or malignity in the spider. There
+is no pursuit, for there is no escape; and we can only conclude that, as
+the new-born fish's first nourishment is the contents of the yolk-sac,
+partly outside, though still a portion of its body, so the first food of
+the young spiders is, if not themselves, the next best thing,--each
+other. Thus it is provided that the smaller and less vigorous shall
+furnish food for the larger until the latter are strong enough to
+venture forth in search of other means of support.
+
+In consequence of this mutual destruction, aided materially by the
+depredations of birds and of other insects, and by exposure to the
+weather, only about one per cent of those hatched reach maturity. If
+properly protected, however, a far larger proportion may be saved; and
+as their multiplication is so rapid, no fear need be entertained of a
+limit to the supply.
+
+By keeping these little spiders in glass jars, inverted, and with a wet
+sponge at the bottom, they were easily watched and cared for. At first
+only about one twentieth of an inch long and nearly as wide, they
+increased in length as they grew, but for many weeks lived in common on
+an irregular web, feeding together on the crushed flies or bugs thrown
+to them. But when one fourth of an inch in length, they showed a
+disposition to separate, and to spin each for herself a regular web,
+out of which all intruders were kept. And now it was found that all
+these webs were _inclined_ at nearly the same angle, and were _never
+exactly vertical_; that, like the spider in the first web she made in
+the Botanical Garden, the insect took a position much nearer the upper
+than the lower border; and also that, instead of a web of _perfect
+circles_ laid upon _regular radii_, as used to be described and is still
+figured in our books, or even one of a _spiral line_, as is now more
+correctly described of ordinary geometrical spiders (Fig. 6), these
+never made a circle, nor even a spiral, but a _series of concentric
+loops_ or arcs of circles, the lines turning back upon themselves before
+reaching a point over the spider, and leaving the larger portion of the
+web below her; and more than this, that the lines, though quite regular,
+were by no means perfectly so, as may be seen in Fig. 7, copied from a
+photograph.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 6. Web of common Garden Spider.]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 7. Web of _Nephila plumipes_.]
+
+As usual, the _radii_, or _spokes_, of the wheel-shaped structure are
+first made; then the spider begins a little way from the centre, and,
+passing from one radius to another, spins a series of loops at
+considerable distances from each other till she reaches the
+circumference. These first loops, like the radii, are of _white, dry_,
+and _inelastic_ silk, and may be recognized by the little notches at
+their junction with the radii. The notches are made by the spider's
+drawing her body a little inward toward the centre of the web at the
+time of attaching them to the radii, and so they always point in the
+direction in which the spider is moving at that time, and in opposite
+directions on any two successive lines (Fig. 8). Having reached what is
+to be the border of her web, and thus constructed a firm framework or
+scaffolding, she begins to retrace her steps, moving more slowly and
+spinning now in the _intervals_ of the dry loops two or three similar
+loops, but much nearer together and made of the _elastic_ and _viscid_
+silk, till she has again reached her starting-point near the middle of
+the web, where, on its under side, she takes a position, head downward,
+hanging by her claws, and thus keeping her body from direct contact with
+the web.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 8. Section of Web.]
+
+Here she will remain quiet for hours as if asleep; but no sooner does a
+fly or other insect strike the web, than she darts in the direction
+whence the vibrations proceed, and usually seizes her prey; but,
+strangely enough, if the insect have ceased its struggles before she
+reaches it, she stops, and if she cannot renew them by shaking the web
+with her claws, will slowly and disconsolately return to the centre of
+the web, there to await fresh vibrations. These and many other facts,
+even more conclusive, have satisfied me that, although this spider has
+eight eyes (Fig. 9), it is as blind as a man with his eyelids shut, and
+can only distinguish light from darkness, nothing more. This seems to be
+the case with other geometrical species, but not at all with the field
+and hunting spiders, some of which will boldly turn upon you and look
+right in your eyes; they alone, of all insects, seeming to recognize the
+_face_ of man as different from his body.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 9. Face and Jaws, magnified (eyes dimly seen).]
+
+The hearing and touch of this spider are very acute. The latter is
+exercised by the palpi and the tips of the legs, especially the first
+pair, but no ear has yet been discovered; neither is anything known of
+the organs of taste and smell, or even whether the insect possesses
+these senses at all.
+
+I ought before this to have anticipated and answered a question which
+nine out of ten, perhaps, of my readers have already asked themselves,
+"Do not spiders bite? and is not their bite poisonous, nay, at times,
+deadly even to man?" The answer is, in brief, Yes, spiders do bite,
+probably all of them, if provoked and so confined that they cannot
+escape; though only a few tropical species can be said to seek of their
+own accord an opportunity for attacking man, or any creature larger than
+the insects that form their natural prey. Even the _Nephila plumipes_,
+which, it has been intimated, is "Christian in its disposition, and
+well-behaved beyond most of its kind," will readily bite, if it is held
+in the fingers and anything is put to its jaws. But that is nothing. So
+would you, most gentle reader, if a great giant pinched you between his
+thumb and finger, and held your hands and feet and head; and if, too,
+like our spider, you could not see enough to distinguish friends from
+foes. Spiders, then, will bite. But to the second part of the inquiry
+our answer must be less positive. They have a very bad name; but much of
+this is due to their grim and forbidding aspect, and their bloody trade
+of trapping and eating poor little insects. It is to be remembered that
+there are very few, if any, medical reports of injuries from the bites
+of spiders, and that the accounts of such cases occurring in the
+newspapers consist in great measure of inference, and either make no
+mention of the offender at all, or merely speak of a little black or
+gray spider being found in the vicinity. A number of experiments have
+been made in England to ascertain the effect of the bite of the larger
+geometrical spiders upon the experimenter himself, upon other spiders,
+and upon common insects; and the conclusion was, that it produces no
+greater effect than the prick of a pin, or any other injury of equal
+extent and severity; while the speedy death of its victim is ascribed to
+the spider's sucking its juices, rather than to any poison instilled
+into the wound. But these experiments, though somewhat reassuring, are
+not conclusive; for they were tried only on one person, and people vary
+much in their susceptibility to poison of all kinds; moreover, the
+spiders employed were of the _geometrical_ kinds, which have never been
+so much feared as the larger _field_ and _hunting_ spiders. Indeed, it
+may be found that among spiders there is as great a difference in
+respect to venom as among serpents, and that those which depend upon
+their jaws for taking and holding their prey, such as the field and
+hunting spiders, are poisonous, while the web-builders which ensnare
+their victims are not so. In regard to our spiders, I have caused a
+large one to bite, so as to draw blood, a kitten three days old, and the
+kitten has not appeared to suffer in the least on that account.
+
+They are very quiet insects, and never appear disturbed at what goes on
+about them; neither do they run away and hide in holes and corners, like
+our common spiders; but if their webs are injured, or they are startled
+by a noise, they will shake themselves from side to side in their webs,
+so as to be wholly invisible. Their natural food is insects of all
+kinds; but they soon learn to eat soft flesh, such as the liver of
+chickens, for which, as well as for water, they will sometimes stretch
+themselves and turn in their webs so as to take it from the point of a
+pin or camel's-hair pencil. Besides water to drink, they require an
+atmosphere saturated with moisture, like that of their native island,
+the relative humidity being about _seventy_ on the Hygrodeik scale. If
+stroked upon the back, they often raise their bodies as a cat does, and
+sometimes put back a leg to push away your finger. They may be allowed
+to run over one's person with perfect safety, but, if suddenly seized,
+will hold on with tooth as well as nail.
+
+They are quite economical, and every few days, when the web has become
+too dry and dusty for use, will gather it up in a mass, which they stuff
+into their jaws and masticate for hours, swallowing the gum, but
+throwing out the rest, with the little particles of dust, in the form of
+a hard black pellet,--an instance rare, if not indeed unique, of an
+animal eating a substance already excreted from its body.
+
+Here I must close, though much against my will. It would please me to
+describe, as it has almost fascinated me to observe, the doings of my
+spiders, as they grew older and made their webs in the Wardian cases to
+which they were removed when too many and too large for the jars; how
+the young are gregarious, and move from place to place in a close
+column, protected on all sides by skirmishers, which continually report
+to the main body; how some of these young, whose parents were caught on
+Long Island, South Carolina, a year ago, and which were hatched from the
+egg in October last, have grown up during a Northern winter, have
+themselves become parents and laid eggs; how they periodically cast off
+their skins, even to that of the eyes, the jaws, and the breathing
+tubes, and how, from too great impatience, sad accidents sometimes
+befall them on these occasions; how, also, I have reeled silk from
+several of these spiders, and made a thread which has been woven in a
+power-loom as a woof or filling upon a warp of common black silk, so as
+to make a bit of ribbon two inches wide, thereby proving that it is real
+silk and can be treated as such.
+
+Much, too, could be said of the only other attempts to utilize spiders'
+silk, a knowledge of which would have materially aided me. In France,
+one hundred and fifty years ago, M. Bon made gloves and stockings of
+silk got by carding spiders' cocoons, and seventy years later, as I have
+but recently ascertained, Termeyer, a Spaniard, not only used the
+cocoons, but also, by an observation similar to my own, was led to reel
+the silk from the living insect. He, however, had poorer spiders or too
+little perseverance, or friends and a government influenced by a most
+short-sighted economy and prudence, else the highly interesting and
+instructive account of his experiments would have been familiar to some
+one in this country, and would not have waited these many years to be
+found by accident last spring in an obscure corner of the Astor Library.
+
+I will add, finally, that I believe some other geometrical spiders,
+especially of the genus _Nephila_, may be found as docile, and as
+productive of beautiful silk, as the species I have described. At any
+rate, you cannot find a more interesting inmate of your Wardian case
+than some large geometrical spider.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT DID SHE SEE WITH?
+
+
+I could not have been more than seven or eight years old, when it
+happened; but it might have been yesterday. Among all other childish
+memories, it stands alone. To this very day it brings with it the old,
+utter sinking of the heart, and the old, dull sense of mystery.
+
+To read the story, you should have known my mother. To understand it,
+you should understand her. But that is quite impossible now, for there
+is a quiet spot over the hill, and past the church, and beside the
+little brook where the crimsoned mosses grow thick and wet and cool,
+from which I cannot call her. It is all I have left of her now. But
+after all, it is not of her that you will chiefly care to hear. The
+object of my story is simply to acquaint you with a few facts, which,
+though interwoven with the events of her life, are quite independent of
+it as objects of interest. It is, I know, only my own heart that makes
+these pages a memorial,--but, you see, I cannot help it.
+
+Yet, I confess, no glamour of any earthly love has ever utterly dazzled
+me,--not even hers. Of imperfections, of mistakes, of sins, I knew she
+was guilty. I know it now,--even with the sanctity of those crimsoned
+mosses, and the hush of the rest beneath, so close to my heart, I cannot
+forget them. Yet somehow--I do not know how--the imperfections, the
+mistakes, the very sins, bring her nearer to me as the years slip by,
+and make her dearer.
+
+The key to her life is the key to my story. That given, as I can give
+it, I will try to compress. It lies in the fact that my mother was what
+we call an aristocrat, I do not like the term, as the term is used. I am
+sure she does not now; but I have no other word. She was a royal-looking
+woman, and she had the blood of princes in her veins. Generations
+back--how we children used to reckon the thing over!--she was cradled in
+a throne. A miserable race, to be sure, they were,--the Stuarts; and the
+most devout genealogist might deem it dubious honor to own them for
+great-grandfathers by innumerable degrees removed. So she used to tell
+us, over and over, as a damper on our childish vanity, looking such a
+very queen as she spoke, in every play of feature, and every motion of
+her hand, that it was the old story of preachers who did not practise.
+The very baby was proud of her. The beauty of a face, and the elegant
+repose of a manner, are by no means influences more unfelt at three
+years than at thirty.
+
+As insanity will hide itself away, and lie sleeping, and die out,--while
+old men are gathered to their fathers scathless, and young men follow in
+their footsteps safe and free,--and start into life, and claim its own
+when children's children have forgotten it; as a single trait of a
+single scholar in a race of clods will bury itself in day-laborers and
+criminals, unto the third and fourth generation, and spring then, like a
+creation from a chaos, into statesmen and poets and sculptors;--so, I
+have sometimes fancied, the better and truer nature of voluptuaries and
+tyrants was sifted down through the years, and purified in our little
+New England home, and the essential autocracy of monarchical blood
+refined and ennobled in my mother into royalty.
+
+A broad and liberal culture had moulded her; she knew its worth, in
+every fibre of her heart; scholarly parents had blessed her with their
+legacies of scholarly mind and name. With the soul of an artist, she
+quivered under every grace and every defect; and the blessing of a
+beauty as rare as rich had been given to her. With every instinct of her
+nature recoiling from the very shadow of crimes the world winks at, as
+from a loathsome reptile, the family record had been stainless for a
+generation. God had indeed blessed her; but the very blessing was a
+temptation.
+
+I knew, before she left me, what she might have been, but for the
+merciful and tender watch of Him who was despised and rejected of men. I
+know, for she told me, one still night when we were alone together, how
+she sometimes shuddered at herself, and what those daily and hourly
+struggles between her nature and her Christianity _meant_.
+
+I think we were as near to one another as mother and daughter can be;
+but yet as utterly different. Since I have been talking in such lordly
+style of those miserable Jameses and Charleses, I will take the
+opportunity to confess that I have inherited my father's thorough-going
+democracy,--double measure, pressed down and running over. She not only
+pardoned it, but I think she loved it in me, for his sake.
+
+It was about a year and a half, I think, after he died, that she sent
+for Aunt Alice to come to Creston. "Your aunt loves me," she said, when
+she told us in her quiet way, "and I am so lonely now."
+
+They had been the only children, and they loved each other,--how much, I
+afterwards knew. And how much they love each other _now_, I like to
+think,--quite freely and fully, and without shadow or doubt between
+them, I dare to hope.
+
+A picture of Aunt Alice always hung in mother's room. It was taken down
+years ago. I never asked her where she put it. I remember it, though,
+quite well; for mother's sake I am glad I do. For it was a pleasant face
+to look upon, and a young, pure, happy face,--beautiful too, though with
+none of the regal beauty crowned by my mother's massive hair, and
+pencilled brows. It was a timid, girlish face, with reverent eyes, and
+ripe, tremulous lips,--weak lips, as I remember them. From babyhood, I
+felt a want in the face. I had, of course, no capacity to define it; it
+was represented to me only by the fact that it differed from my
+mother's.
+
+She was teaching school out West when mother sent for her. I saw the
+letter. It was just like my mother:--"Alice, I need you. You and I ought
+to have but one home now. Will you come?"
+
+I saw, too, a bit of a postscript to the answer,--"I'm not fit that you
+should love me so, Marie."
+
+And how mother laughed at it!
+
+When it was all settled, and the waiting weeks became at last a single
+day, I hardly knew my mother. She was in her early married years; she
+was a girl; she was a child; she was every young thing, and merry thing,
+that she could have ever been. So full of fitful moods, and little
+fantastic jokes! such a flush on her cheeks too, as she ran to the
+window every five minutes, like a child! I remember how we went all over
+the house together, she and I, to see that everything looked neat, and
+bright, and welcome. And how we lingered in the guest-room, to put the
+little finishing touches to its stillness, and coolness, and coseyness.
+The best spread on the bed, and the white folds smoothed as only
+mother's fingers could smooth them; the curtain freshly washed, and
+looped with its crimson cord; the blinds drawn, cool and green; the late
+afternoon sunlight slanting through, in flecks upon the floor. Flowers,
+too, upon the table. I remember they were all white,--lilies of the
+valley, I think; and the vase of Parian marble, itself a solitary lily,
+unfolding stainless leaves. Over the mantle she had hung the finest
+picture in the house,--an "Ecce Homo," and an exquisite engraving. It
+used to hang in grandmother's room in the old house. We children
+wondered a little that she took it up stairs.
+
+"I want your aunt to feel at home, and see home things," she said. "I
+wish I could think of something more to make it pleasant in here."
+
+Just as we left the room she turned and looked into it. "Pleasant, isn't
+it? I am so glad, Sarah," her eyes dimming a little. "She's a very dear
+sister to me."
+
+She stepped in again to raise a stem of the lilies that had fallen from
+the vase, and lay like wax upon the table, then she shut the door and
+came away.
+
+That door was shut just so for years; the lonely bars of sunlight
+flecked the solitude of the room, and the lilies faded on the table. We
+children passed it with hushed footfall, and shrank from it at twilight,
+as from a room that held the dead. But into it we never went.
+
+Mother was tired out that afternoon; for she had been on her feet all
+day, busied in her loving cares to make our simple home as pleasant and
+as welcome as home could be. But yet she stopped to dress us in our
+Sunday clothes,--and no sinecure was it to dress three persistently
+undressable children; Winthrop was a host in himself. "Auntie must see
+us look our prettiest," she said.
+
+She was a picture herself when she came down. She had taken off her
+widow's cap and coiled her heavy hair low in her neck, and she always
+looked like a queen in that lustreless black silk. I do not know why
+these little things should have made such an impression on me then. They
+are priceless to me now. I remember how she looked, framed there in the
+doorway, while we were watching for the coach,--the late light ebbing in
+golden tides over the grass at her feet, and touching her face now and
+then through the branches of trees, her head bent a little, with eager,
+parted lips, and the girlish color on her cheeks, her hand shading her
+eyes as they strained for a sight of the lumbering coach. She must have
+been a magnificent woman when she was young,--not unlike, I have heard
+it said, to that far-off ancestress whose name she bore, and whose
+sorrowful story has made her sorrowful beauty immortal. Somewhere abroad
+there is a reclining statue of Queen Mary, to which, when my mother
+stood beside it, her resemblance was so strong that the by-standers
+clustered about her, whispering curiously. "Ah, mon Dieu!" said a little
+Frenchman, aloud, "c'est une resurrection."
+
+We must have tried her that afternoon, Clara and Winthrop and I; for the
+spirit of her own excitement had made us completely wild. Winthrop's
+scream of delight when, stationed on the gate-post, he caught the first
+sight of the old yellow coach, might have been heard a quarter of a
+mile.
+
+"Coming?" said mother, nervously, and stepped out to the gate, full in
+the sunlight that crowned her like royal gold.
+
+The coach lumbered on, and rattled up, and passed.
+
+"Why, she hasn't come!" All the eager color died out of her face. "I am
+so disappointed!" speaking like a troubled child, and turning slowly
+into the house.
+
+Then, after a while, she drew me aside from the others,--I was the
+oldest, and she was used to make a sort of confidence between us,
+instinctively, as it seemed, and often quite forgetting how very few my
+years were. "Sarah, I don't understand. You think she might have lost
+the train? But Alice is so punctual, Alice never lost a train. And she
+said she would come." And then, a while after, "I _don't_ understand."
+
+It was not like my mother to worry. The next day the coach lumbered up
+and rattled past, and did not stop,--and the next, and the next.
+
+"We shall have a letter," mother said, her eyes saddening every
+afternoon. But we had no letter. And another day went by, and another.
+
+"She is sick," we said; and mother wrote to her, and watched for the
+lumbering coach, and grew silent day by day. But to the letter there was
+no answer.
+
+Ten days passed. Mother came to me one afternoon to ask for her pen,
+which I had borrowed. Something in her face troubled me vaguely.
+
+"What are you going to do, mother?"
+
+"Write to your aunt's boarding-place. I can't bear this any longer,"
+sharply. She had already grown unlike herself.
+
+She wrote, and asked for an answer by return of mail.
+
+It was on a Wednesday, I remember, that we looked for it. I remember
+everything that happened that day. I came home early from school. Mother
+was sewing at the parlor window, her eyes wandering from her work, up
+the road. It was an ugly day. It had rained drearily from eight o'clock
+till two, and closed in suffocating mist, creeping and dense and chill.
+It gave me a childish fancy of long-closed tombs and lowland graveyards,
+as I walked home in it.
+
+I tried to keep the younger children quiet when we went in, mother was
+so nervous. As the early, uncanny twilight fell, we grouped around her
+timidly. A dull sense of awe and mystery clung to the night, and clung
+to her watching face, and clung even then to that closed room up stairs
+where the lilies were fading.
+
+Mother sat leaning her head upon her hand, the outline of her face dim
+in the dusk against the falling curtain. She was sitting so when we
+heard the first rumble of the distant coach-wheels. At the sound, she
+folded her hands in her lap and stirred a little, rose slowly from her
+chair, and sat down again.
+
+"Sarah."
+
+I crept up to her. At the near sight of her face, I was so frightened I
+could have cried.
+
+"Sarah, you may go out and get the letter. I--I can't."
+
+I went slowly out at the door and down the walk. At the gate I looked
+back. The outline of her face was there against the window-pane, white
+in the gathering gloom.
+
+It seems to me that my older and less sensitive years have never known
+such a night. The world was stifling in a deluge of gray, cold mists,
+unstirred by a breath of air. A robin with feathers all ruffled, and
+head hidden, sat on the gate-post, and chirped a little mournful chirp,
+like a creature dying in a vacuum. The very daisy that nodded and
+drooped in the grass at my feet seemed to be gasping for breath. The
+neighbor's house, not forty paces across the street, was invisible. I
+remember the sensation it gave me, as I struggled to find its outlines,
+of a world washed out, like the figures I washed out on my slate. As I
+trudged, half frightened, into the road, and the fog closed about me, it
+seemed to my childish superstition like a horde of long-imprisoned
+ghosts let loose and angry. The distant sound of the coach, which I
+could not see, added to the fancy.
+
+The coach turned the corner presently. On a clear day I could see the
+brass buttons on the driver's coat at that distance. There was nothing
+visible now of the whole dark structure but the two lamps in front, like
+the eyes of some evil thing, glaring and defiant, borne with swift
+motion down upon me by a power utterly unseen,--it had a curious effect.
+Even at this time, I confess I do not like to see a lighted carriage
+driven through a fog.
+
+I summoned all my little courage, and piped out the driver's name,
+standing there in the road.
+
+He reined up his horses with a shout,--he had nearly driven over me.
+After some searching, he discovered the small object cowering down in
+the mist, handed me a letter, with a muttered oath at being intercepted
+on such a night, and lumbered on and out of sight in three rods.
+
+I went slowly into the house. Mother had lighted a lamp, and stood at
+the parlor door. She did not come into the hall to meet me.
+
+She took the letter and went to the light, holding it with the seal
+unbroken. She might have stood so two minutes.
+
+"Why don't you read, mamma?" spoke up Winthrop. I hushed him.
+
+She opened it then, read it, laid it down upon the table, and went out
+of the room without a word. I had not seen her face. We heard her go up
+stairs and shut the door.
+
+She had left the letter open there before us. After a little awed
+silence, Clara broke out into sobs. I went up and read the few and
+simple lines.
+
+_Aunt Alice had left for Creston on the appointed day._
+
+Mother spent that night in the closed room where the lilies had drooped
+and died. Clara and I heard her pacing the floor till we cried ourselves
+to sleep. When we woke in the morning, she was pacing it still.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, weeks wore into months, and the months became many years. More
+than that we never knew. Some inquiry revealed the fact, after a while,
+that a slight accident had occurred upon the Erie Railroad to the train
+which she should have taken. There was some disabling, but no deaths,
+the conductor had supposed. The car had fallen into the water. She might
+not have been missed when the half-drowned passengers were all drawn
+out.
+
+So mother added a little crape to her widow's weeds, the key of the
+closed room lay henceforth in her drawer, and all things went on as
+before. To her children my mother was never gloomy,--it was not her way.
+No shadow of household affliction was placed like a skeleton confronting
+our uncomprehending joy. Of what those weeks and months and years were
+to her,--a widow, and quite uncomforted in their dark places by any
+human love,--she gave no sign. We thought her a shade paler, perhaps. We
+found her often alone with her little Bible. Sometimes, on the Sabbath,
+we missed her, and knew that she had gone into that closed room. But she
+was just as tender with us in our little faults and sorrows, as merry
+with us in our plays, as eager in our gayest plans, as she had always
+been. As she had always been,--our mother.
+
+And so the years slipped by, to her and to us. Winthrop went into
+business in Boston; he never took to his books, and mother was too wise
+to _push_ him through college; but I think she was disappointed. He was
+her only boy, and she would have chosen for him the profession of his
+father and grandfather. Clara and I graduated in our white dresses and
+blue ribbons, like other girls, and came home to mother, crochet-work,
+and Tennyson. And then something happened, as the veriest little
+things--which, unnoticed and uncomprehended, hold the destinies of lives
+in their control--will happen.
+
+I mean that our old and long-tried cook, Bathsheba, who had been an
+heirloom in the family, suddenly fell in love with the older sexton, who
+had rung the passing-bell for every soul who died in the village for
+forty years, and took it into her head to marry him, and desert our
+kitchen for his little brown house under the hill.
+
+So it came about that we hunted the township for a handmaiden; and it
+also came about that our inquiring steps led us to the poor-house. A
+stout, not over-brilliant-looking girl, about twelve years of age, was
+to be had for her board and clothes, and such schooling as we could give
+her,--in country fashion, to be "bound out" till she should be eighteen.
+The economy of the arrangement decided in her favor; for, in spite of
+our grand descent and grander notions, we were poor enough, after father
+died, and the education of three children had made no small gap in our
+little principal, and she came.
+
+Her name was a singular one,--Selphar. It always savored too nearly of
+brimstone to please me. I used to call her Sel, "for short." She was a
+good, sensible, uninteresting-looking girl, with broad face, large
+features, and limp, tow-colored curls. I doubt if I ever see curls like
+them now without a little shudder. They used to hang straight down about
+her eyes, and were never otherwise than perfectly smooth. She proved to
+be of good temper, which is worth quite as much as brains in a servant,
+as honest as the daylight, dull enough at her books, but a good,
+plodding worker, if you marked out every step of the way for her
+beforehand. I do not think she would ever have discovered the laws of
+gravitation; but she might have jumped off a precipice to prove them,
+if she had been bidden.
+
+Until she was seventeen, she was precisely like any other rather stupid
+girl; never given to novel-reading or fancies; never frightened by the
+dark or ghost-stories; proving herself warmly attached to us, after a
+while, and rousing in us, in return, the kindly interest naturally
+felt for a faithful servant; but she was not in any respect
+_un_common,--quite far from it,--except in the circumstance that she
+never told a falsehood.
+
+At seventeen she had a violent attack of diphtheria, and her life hung
+by a thread. Mother's aristocracy had nothing of that false pride which
+is afraid of contamination from kindly association with its inferiors.
+She was too thoroughly a lady. She was as tender and unwearying in her
+care of Selphar as the girl's own mother might have been. She was
+somehow touched by the child's orphaned life,--suffering always, in all
+places, appealed to her so strongly,--every sorrow found so warm a place
+in her heart.
+
+From that time, I believe Sel was immovable in her faith in my mother's
+divinity. Under such nursing as she had, she slowly recovered, but her
+old, stolid strength never came back to her. Severe headaches became of
+frequent occurrence. Her stout, muscular arms grew weak. As weeks went
+on, it became evident in many ways that, though the diphtheria itself
+was quite out of her system, it had left her thoroughly diseased.
+Strange fits of silence came over her: her volubility had been the
+greatest objection we had to her hitherto. Her face began to wear a
+troubled look. She was often found in places where she had stolen away
+to be alone.
+
+One morning she slept late in her little garret-chamber, and we did not
+call her. The girl had gone up stairs the night before crying with the
+pain in her temples, and mother, who was always thoughtful of her
+servants, said it was a pity to wake her, and, as there were only three
+of us, we might get our own breakfast for once. While we were at work
+together in the kitchen, Clara heard her kitten mewing out in the snow,
+and went to the door to let her in. The creature, possessed by some
+sudden frolic, darted away behind the well-curb. Clara was always a bit
+of a romp, and, with never a thought of her daintily-slippered feet, she
+flung her trailing dress over one arm and was off over the three-inch
+snow. The cat led her a brisk chase, and she came in flushed, and
+panting, and pretty, her little feet drenched, and the tip of a Maltese
+tail just visible above a great bundle she had made of her apron.
+
+"Why!" said mother, "you have lost your ear-ring."
+
+Clara dropped the kitten with unceremonious haste on the floor, felt of
+her little pink ear, shook her apron, and the corners of her mouth went
+down into her dimpled chin.
+
+"They're the ones Winthrop sent, of all things in the world!"
+
+"You'd better put on your rubbers, and have a hunt out-doors," said
+mother.
+
+We hunted out-doors,--on the steps, on the well-boards, in the
+wood-shed, in the snow; Clara looked down the well till her nose and
+fingers were blue, but the ear-ring was not to be found. We hunted
+in-doors, under the stove, and the chairs, and the table, in every
+possible and impossible nook, cranny, and crevice, but gave up the
+search in despair. It was a pretty trinket,--a leaf of delicately
+wrought gold, with a pearl dew-drop on it,--very becoming to Clara, and
+the first present Winthrop had sent her from his earnings. If she had
+been a little younger she would have cried. She came very near it as it
+was, I suspect, for when she went after the plates she stayed in the
+cupboard long enough to set two tables.
+
+When we were half through breakfast, Selphar came down, blushing, and
+frightened half out of her wits, her apologies tumbling over each other
+with such skill as to render each one unintelligible,--and evidently
+undecided in, her own mind whether she was to be hung or burnt at the
+stake.
+
+"It's no matter at all," said mother, kindly; "I knew you felt sick last
+night. I should have called you if I had needed you."
+
+Having set the girl at her ease, as only she could do, she went on with
+her breakfast, and we forgot all about her. She stayed, however, in the
+room to wait on the table. It was afterwards remembered that she had not
+been out of our sight since she came down the garret-stairs. Also, that
+her room looked out upon the opposite side of the house from that on
+which the well-curb stood.
+
+"Why, look at Sel!" said Clara, suddenly, "she has her eyes shut."
+
+The girl was just passing the toast. Mother spoke to her. "Selphar, what
+is the matter?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Why don't you open your eyes?"
+
+"I can't."
+
+"Hand the salt to Miss Sarah."
+
+She took it up and brought it around the table to me, with perfect
+precision.
+
+"Sel, how you act!" said Clara, petulantly. "Of course you saw."
+
+"Yes'm, I saw," said the girl in a puzzled way, "but my eyes are shut,
+Miss Clara."
+
+"Tight?"
+
+"Tight."
+
+Whatever this freak meant, we thought best to take no notice of it. My
+mother told her, somewhat gravely, that she might sit down until she was
+wanted, and we returned to our conversation about the ear-ring.
+
+"Why!" said Sel, with a little jump, "I see your ear-ring, Miss
+Clara,--the one with a white drop on the leaf. It's out by the well."
+
+The girl was sitting with her back to the window, her eyes, to all
+appearance, tightly closed.
+
+"It's on the right-hand side, under the snow, between the well and the
+wood-pile. Why, don't you see?"
+
+Clara began to look frightened, mother displeased.
+
+"Selphar," she said, "this is nonsense. It is impossible for you to see
+through the walls of two rooms and a wood-shed."
+
+"May I go and get it?" said the girl, quietly.
+
+"Sel," said Clara, "on your word and honor, are your eyes shut
+_perfectly_ tight?"
+
+"If they ain't, Miss Clara, then they never was."
+
+Sel never told a lie. We looked at each other, and let her go. I
+followed her out, and kept my eyes on her closed lids. She did not once
+raise them; nor did they tremble, as lids will tremble, if only
+partially closed.
+
+She walked without the slightest hesitation directly to the well-curb,
+to the spot which she had mentioned, stooped down, and brushed away the
+three-inch fall of snow. The ear-ring lay there, where it had sunk in
+falling. She picked it up, carried it in, and gave it to Clara.
+
+That Clara had the thing on when she started after her kitten, there
+could be no doubt. She and I both remembered it. That Sel, asleep on the
+opposite side of the house, could not have seen it drop, was also
+settled. That she, with her eyes closed and her back to the window, had
+seen through three walls, and through three inches of snow, at a
+distance of fifty feet, was an inference.
+
+"I don't believe it!" said my mother, "it's some nonsensical mistake."
+Clara looked a little pale, and I laughed.
+
+We watched her carefully through the day. Her eyes remained tightly
+closed. She understood all that was said to her, answered correctly, but
+did not seem inclined to talk. She went about her work as usual, and
+performed it without a mistake. It could not be seen that she groped at
+all with her hands to feel her way, as is the case with the blind. On
+the contrary, she touched everything with her usual decision. It was
+impossible to believe, without seeing them, that her eyes were closed.
+
+We tied a handkerchief tightly over them; see through it or below it she
+could not, if she had tried. We then sent her into the parlor, with
+orders to bring from the book-case two Bibles which had been given as
+prizes to Clara and me at school, when we were children. The books were
+of precisely the same size, color, and texture. Our names in gilt
+letters were printed upon the binding. We followed her in, and watched
+her narrowly. She went directly to the book-case, laid her hands upon
+the books at once, and brought them to my mother. Mother changed them
+from, hand to hand several times, and turned them with the gilt
+lettering downwards upon her lap.
+
+"Now, Selphar, which is Miss Sarah's?"
+
+The girl quietly took mine up. The experiment was repeated and varied
+again and again. In every case the result was the same. She made no
+mistake. It was no guess-work. All this was done with the bandage
+tightly drawn about her eyes. _She did not see those letters with them._
+
+That evening we were sitting quietly in the dining-room. Selphar sat a
+little apart with her sewing, her eyes still closed. We kept her with
+us, and kept her in sight. The parlor, which was a long room, was
+between us and the front of the house. The distance was so great that we
+had often thought, if prowlers were to come around at night, how
+impossible it would be to hear them. The curtains and shutters were
+closely drawn. Sel was sitting by the fire. Suddenly she turned pale,
+dropped her sewing, and sprang from her chair.
+
+"Robbers, robbers!" she cried. "Don't you see? they're getting in the
+east parlor window! There's three of 'em, and a lantern. They've just
+opened the window,--hurry, hurry!"
+
+"I believe the girl is insane," said mother, decidedly. Nevertheless,
+she put out the light, opened the parlor door noiselessly, and went in.
+
+The east window was open. There was a quick vision of three men and a
+dark lantern. Then Clara screamed, and it disappeared. We went to the
+window, and saw the men running down the street. The snow the next
+morning was found trodden down under the window, and their footprints
+were traced out to the road.
+
+When we went back to the other room, Selphar was standing in the middle
+of it, a puzzled, frightened look on her face, her eyes wide open.
+
+"Selphar," said my mother, a little suspiciously, "how did you know the
+robbers were there?"
+
+"Robbers!" said the girl, aghast.
+
+She knew nothing of the robbers. She knew nothing of the ear-ring. She
+remembered nothing that had happened since she went up the garret-stairs
+to bed, the night before. And, as I said, the girl was as honest as the
+sunlight. When we told her what had happened, she burst into terrified
+tears.
+
+For some time after this there was no return of the "tantrums," as
+Selphar had called the condition, whatever it was. I began to get up
+vague theories of a trance state. But mother said, "Nonsense!" and Clara
+was too much frightened to reason at all about the matter.
+
+One Sunday morning Sel complained of a headache. There was an evening
+service that night, and we all went to church. Mother let Sel take the
+empty seat in the carryall beside her.
+
+It was very dark when we started to come home. But Creston was a safe
+old Orthodox town, the roads were filled with returning church-goers
+like ourselves, and mother drove like a man. A darker night I think I
+have never seen. Literally, we could not see a hand before our eyes. We
+met a carriage on a narrow road, and the horses' heads touched, before
+either driver had seen the other.
+
+Selphar had been quite silent during the drive. I leaned forward, looked
+closely into her face, and could dimly see through the darkness that her
+eyes were closed.
+
+"Why!" she said at last, "see those gloves!"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Down in the ditch; we passed them before I spoke. I see them on a
+blackberry-bush; they've got little brass buttons on the wrist."
+
+Three rods past now, and we could not see our horse's head.
+
+"Selphar," said my mother, quickly, "what _is_ the matter with you?"
+
+"If you please, ma'am, I don't know," replied the girl, hanging her
+head. "May I get out and bring 'em to you?"
+
+Prince was reined up, and Sel got out. She went so far back, that,
+though we strained our eyes to do it, we could not see her. In about two
+minutes she came up, a pair of gentleman's gloves in her hand. They were
+rolled together, were of cloth so black that on a bright night it would
+never have been seen, and had small brass buttons at the wrist.
+
+Mother took them without a word.
+
+The story leaked out somehow, and spread all over town. It raised a
+great hue and cry. Four or five antediluvian ladies declared at once
+that we were nothing more nor less than a family of "them spirituous
+mediums," and seriously proposed to expel mother from the
+prayer-meeting. Masculine Creston did worse. It smiled a pitying smile,
+and pronounced the whole thing the fancy of "scared women-folks." I
+could endure with calmness any slander upon earth but that. I sent by
+the next mail for Winthrop, and stated the case to him in a condition of
+suppressed fury. He very politely bit back an incredulous smile, and
+said he should be _very_ happy to see her perform. The answer was
+somewhat dubious. I accepted it in silent suspicion.
+
+He came on Saturday noon. That afternoon we attended _en masse_ one of
+those refined inquisitions commonly known as picnics, and Winthrop lost
+his pocket-knife. Selphar, of course, kept house at home.
+
+When we returned, Winthrop made some careless reference to his loss in
+her presence, and thought no more of it. About half an hour after, we
+observed that she was washing the dishes with her eyes shut. The
+condition had not been upon her five minutes before she dropped the
+spoon suddenly into the water, and asked permission to go out to walk.
+She "saw Mr. Winthrop's knife somewhere under a stone, and wanted to get
+it." It was fully two miles to the picnic grounds, and nearly dark.
+Winthrop followed the girl, unknown to her, and kept her in sight. She
+went rapidly, and without the slightest hesitation or search, to an
+out-of-the-way gully down by the pond, where Winthrop afterwards
+remembered having gone to cut some willow-twigs for the girls, parted a
+thick cluster of bushes, lifted a large, loose stone under which the
+knife had rolled, and picked it up. She returned it to Winthrop,
+quietly, and hurried away about her work to avoid being thanked.
+
+I observed that, after this incident, masculine Creston became more
+respectful.
+
+Of several peculiarities in this development of the girl I made at the
+time careful memoranda, and the exactness of these can be relied upon.
+
+1. She herself, so far from attempting to bring on these trance states,
+or taking any pride therein, was intensely troubled and mortified by
+them,--would run out of the room, if she felt them coming on in the
+presence of visitors.
+
+2. They were apt to be preceded by severe headaches, but came often
+without any warning.
+
+3. She never, in any instance, recalled anything that happened during
+the trance, after it was passed.
+
+4. She was powerfully and unpleasantly affected by electricity from a
+battery, or acting in milder forms. She was also unable at any time to
+put her hands and arms into hot water; the effect was to paralyze them
+at once.
+
+5. Space proved to be no impediment to her vision. She has been known to
+follow the acts, words, and expressions of countenance of members of the
+family hundreds of miles away, with accuracy; as was afterwards proved
+by comparing notes as to time.
+
+6. The girl's eyes, after her trances became habitual, assumed, and
+always retained, the most singular expression I ever saw on any face.
+They were oblong and narrow, and set back in her head like the eyes of a
+snake. They were not--smile if you will, O practical and incredulous
+reader!--but they were not _human_ eyes. The eyes of Elsie Venner are
+the only eyes I can think of as at all like them. The most horrible
+circumstance about them--a circumstance that always made me shudder,
+familiar as I was with it--was, that, though turned fully on you, _they
+never looked at you_. Something behind them or out of them did the
+seeing, not they.
+
+7. She not only saw substance, but soul. She has repeatedly told me my
+thoughts when they were upon subjects to which she could not by any
+possibility have had the slightest clew.
+
+8. We were never able to detect a shadow of deceit about her.
+
+9. The clairvoyance never failed in any instance to be correct, so far
+as we were able to trace it.
+
+As will be readily imagined, the girl became a useful member of the
+family. The lost valuables restored and the warnings against mischances
+given by her quite balanced her incapacity for peculiar kinds of work.
+This incapacity, however, rather increased than diminished, and,
+together with her fickle health, which also grew more unsettled, caused
+us a great deal of care. The Creston physician--who was a keen man in
+his way, for a country doctor--pronounced the case altogether undreamt
+of before in Horatio's philosophy, and kept constant notes of it. Some
+of these have, I believe, found their way into the medical journals.
+
+After a while there came, like a thief in the night, that which I
+suppose was poor Selphar's one unconscious, golden mission in this
+world. It came on a quiet summer night, that ended a long trance of a
+week's continuance. Mother had gone out into the kitchen to give an
+order for breakfast. I heard a few eager words in Selphar's voice, and
+then the door shut quickly, and it was an hour before it was opened.
+
+Then my mother came to me without a particle of color in lips or cheek,
+and drew me away alone, and told the secret to me.
+
+Selphar had seen Aunt Alice.
+
+We sat down and looked at one another. There was a singular pinched look
+about my mother's mouth.
+
+"Sarah."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She says"--and then she told me what she said. She had seen Alice
+Stuart in a Western town, seven hundred miles away. Among the living,
+she desired to be counted of the dead. And that was all.
+
+My mother paced the room three times back and forth, her hands locked.
+
+"Sarah." There was a chill in her voice--it had been such a gentle
+voice!--that froze me. "Sarah, the girl is an impostor."
+
+"Mother!"
+
+She paced the room, once more, three times, back and forth. "At any
+rate, she is a poor, self-deluded creature. How _can_ she see, seven
+hundred miles away, a dead woman who has been an angel all these years?
+Think! an _angel_, Sarah! So much better than I, and I--I loved--"
+
+Before or since, I never heard my mother speak like that. She broke off
+sharply, and froze back into her chilling voice.
+
+"We will say nothing about this, if you please. I do not believe a word
+of it."
+
+We said nothing about it, but Selphar did. The delusion, if delusion it
+were, clung to her, haunted her, pursued her, week after week. To rid
+her of it, or to silence her, was impossible. She added no new facts to
+her first statement, but insisted that the long-lost dead was yet alive,
+with a quiet pertinacity that it was simply impossible to ridicule,
+frighten, threaten, or cross-question out of her, Clara was so
+thoroughly alarmed that she would not have slept alone for any
+mortal--perhaps not for any immortal--considerations. Winthrop and I
+talked the matter over often and gravely when we were alone and in quiet
+places. Mother's lips were sealed. From the day when Sel made the first
+disclosure, she was never heard once to refer to the matter. A
+perceptible haughtiness crept into her manner towards the girl. She even
+talked of dismissing her; but repented it, and melted into momentary
+gentleness. I could have cried over her that night. I was beginning to
+understand what a pitiful struggle her life had become, and how utterly
+alone she must be in it. She _would_ not believe--she knew not what. She
+could not doubt the girl. And with the conflict even her children could
+not intermeddle.
+
+To understand the crisis into which she was brought, the reader must
+bear in mind our long habit of belief, not only in Selphar's personal
+honesty, but in the infallibility of her mysterious power. Indeed, it
+had almost ceased to be mysterious to us, from daily familiarity. We had
+come to regard it as the curious working of physical disease, had taken
+its results as a matter of course, and had ceased, in common with
+converted Creston, to doubt the girl's capacity for seeing anything that
+she chose to, at any place.
+
+Thus a year wore on. My mother grew sleepless and pallid. She laughed
+often, in a nervous, shallow way, as unlike her as a butterfly is unlike
+a sunset; and her face settled into an habitual sharpness and hardness
+unutterably painful to me.
+
+Once only I ventured to break into the silence of the haunting thought
+that she knew, and we knew, was never escaped by either. "Mother, it
+would do no harm for Winthrop to go out West, and--"
+
+She interrupted me sternly: "Sarah, I had not thought you capable of
+such childish superstition. I wish that girl and her nonsense had never
+come into this house!"--turning sharply away, and out of the room.
+
+Just what that year was to my mother, I suppose only God and she have
+ever known, or will know.
+
+But it ended. It ended at last, as I had prayed every night and morning
+of it that it should end. Mother came into my room one night, locked the
+door behind her, and, walking over to the window, stood with her face
+turned from me.
+
+"Sarah."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Sarah."
+
+But that was all for a little while. Then,--"Sick and in suffering,
+Sarah,--the girl--she may be right, God Almighty knows! _Sick and in
+suffering_, you see. I am going. I think, I--"
+
+The voice broke and melted utterly. I stole away and left her alone.
+
+Creston put on its spectacles and looked wise on learning, the next day,
+that Mrs. Dugald had taken the earliest morning train for the West, on
+sudden and important business. It was precisely what Creston expected,
+and just like the Dugalds for all the world,--gone to hunt up material
+for that genealogical book, or map, or tree, or something, that they
+thought nobody knew they were going to publish. O yes, Creston
+understood it perfectly.
+
+Space forbids me to relate in detail the clews which Selphar had given
+as to the whereabouts of the wanderer. Her trances, just at this time,
+were somewhat scarce and fragmentary, and the information she had
+professed to give had come in snatches and very imperfectly,--the trance
+being apt to end suddenly at the moment when some important question was
+pending, and then, of course, all memory of what she had said, or was
+about to say, was gone. The names and appearance of persons and places
+necessary to the search had, however, been given with sufficient
+distinctness to serve as a guide in my mother's rather chimerical
+undertaking. I suppose ninety-nine persons out of a hundred would have
+thought her a candidate for the State Lunatic Asylum. Exactly what she
+herself expected, hoped, or feared, I think it doubtful if she knew. I
+confess to a condition of simple bewilderment, when she was fairly
+gone, and Clara and I were left alone with Selphar's ghostly eyes
+forever on us. One night I had to lock the poor thing into her
+garret-room before I could sleep.
+
+Just three weeks from the day mother started for the West, the coach
+rattled up to the door, and two women, arm in arm, came slowly up the
+walk. The one, erect, royal, with her great steadfast eyes alight; the
+other, bent and worn, gray-haired and sallow and dumb, crawling feebly
+through the golden afternoon sunshine, as the ghost of a glorious life
+might crawl back to its grave.
+
+Mother threw open the door, and stood there like a queen. "Children,
+your aunt has come home. She is too tired to talk just now. By and by
+she will be glad to see you."
+
+We took her gently up stairs, into the room where the lilies were
+mouldering to dust, and laid her down upon the bed. She closed her eyes
+wearily, turned her face over to the wall, and said no word.
+
+What was the story of those tired eyes I never asked, and I never knew.
+Once, as I passed the room, a quick picture showed through the open
+door. The two women lying with their arms about each other's neck, as
+they used to do when they were children together; and above them, still
+and watchful, the wounded Face that had waited there so many years for
+this.
+
+One was speaking with weak sobs, and very low. It was Aunt Alice. I
+caught but two words,--"My husband."
+
+But what that husband was remains unknown till the day when the grave
+shall give up its dead, and the secrets of hearts oppressed and sinned
+against and sorrowful shall be revealed.
+
+She lingered weakly there, within the restful room, for seven days, and
+then one morning we found her with her eyes upon the thorn-crowned face,
+her own quite still and smiling.
+
+A little funeral train wound away one night behind the church, and left
+her down among those red-cup mosses that opened in so few months again
+to cradle the sister who had loved her. Two words only, by mother's
+orders, marked the simple headstone,--
+
+     "ALICE BROWNING."
+
+I have given you facts. Explain them as you will. I do not attempt it,
+for the simple reason that I cannot.
+
+A word must be said as to the fate of poor Sel, which was mournful
+enough. Her trances grew gradually more frequent and erratic, till she
+became so thoroughly diseased in mind and body as to be entirely
+unfitted for household work, and, in short, nothing but an encumbrance.
+We kept her, however, for the sake of charity, and should have done so,
+till her poor, tormented life wore itself out; but after the advent of a
+new servant, and my mother's death, she conceived the idea that she was
+a burden, cried over it a few weeks, and at last one bitter winter's
+night she disappeared. We did not give up all search for her for years,
+but nothing was ever heard from her. He, I hope, who permitted life to
+be such a terrible mystery to her, has cared for her somehow, and
+kindly, and well.
+
+
+
+
+THE MINER.
+
+
+    Down 'mid the tangled roots of things
+    That coil about the central fire,
+    I seek for that which giveth wings,
+    To stoop, not soar, to my desire.
+
+    Sometimes I hear, as 't were a sigh,
+    The sea's deep yearning far above.
+    "Thou hast the secret not," I cry,
+    "In deeper deeps is hid my Love."
+
+    They think I burrow from the sun,
+    In darkness, all alone and weak;
+    Such loss were gain if He were won.
+    For 't is the sun's own Sun I seek.
+
+    The earth, they murmur, is the tomb
+    That vainly sought his life to prison;
+    Why grovel longer in its gloom?
+    He is not here; He hath arisen.
+
+    More life for me where He hath lain
+    Hidden, while ye believed him dead,
+    Than in cathedrals cold and vain,
+    Built on loose sands of "It is said."
+
+    My search is for the living gold,
+    Him I desire who dwells recluse,
+    And not his image, worn and old,
+    Day-servant of our sordid use.
+
+    If Him I find not, yet I find
+    The ancient joy of cell and church,
+    The glimpse, the surety undefined,
+    The unquenched ardor of the search.
+
+    Happier to chase a flying goal,
+    Than to sit counting laurelled gains,
+    To guess the Soul within the soul,
+    Than to be lord of what remains.
+
+
+
+
+PHYSICAL HISTORY OF THE VALLEY OF THE AMAZONS.
+
+
+II.
+
+Major Coutinho and myself passed three days in the investigation of the
+Serra of Errere. We found it to consist wholly of the sandstone deposits
+described in my previous article, and to have exactly the same
+geological constitution. In short, the Serra of Monte Alegre, and of
+course all those connected with it on the northern side of the river,
+lie in the prolongation of the lower beds forming the banks of the
+river, their greater height being due simply to the fact that they have
+not been worn to the same low level. The opposite range of Santarem,
+which has the same general outline and character, shares, no doubt, the
+same geological structure. In one word, all these hills were formerly
+part of a continuous formation, and owe their present outline and their
+isolated position to a colossal denudation. The surface of the once
+unbroken strata, which in their original condition must have formed an
+immense plain covered by water, has been cut into ravines or carried
+away over large tracts, to a greater or less depth, leaving only such
+portions standing as from their hardness could resist the floods which
+swept over it. The longitudinal trend of these hills is to be ascribed
+to the direction of the current which caused the denudation, while their
+level summits are due to the regularity of the stratification. They are
+not all table-topped, however; among them are many of smaller size, in
+which the sides have been gradually worn down, producing a gently
+rounded surface. Of course, under the heavy tropical rains this
+denudation is still going on, though in a greatly modified form.
+
+I cannot leave this Serra without alluding to the great beauty and
+extraordinary extent of the view to be obtained from it. Indeed, it was
+here that for the first time the geography of the country presented
+itself to my mind as a living reality, in all its completeness.
+Insignificant as is its actual height, the Serra of Errere commands a
+wider prospect than is to be had from many a more imposing mountain; for
+the surrounding plain, covered with forests, and ploughed by countless
+rivers, stretches away for hundreds of leagues in every direction,
+without any object to obstruct the view. Standing on the brow of the
+Serra, with the numerous lakes intersecting the low lands at its base,
+you look across the Valley of the Amazons, as far as the eye can reach,
+and through its midst you follow for miles on either side the broad
+flood of the great river, carrying its yellow waters to the sea. As I
+stood there, panoramas from the Swiss mountains came up to my memory,
+and I fancied myself standing on the Alps, looking across the plain of
+Switzerland, instead of the bed of the Amazons, the distant line of the
+Santarem hills on the southern bank of the river, and lower than the
+northern chain, representing the Jura range. As if to complete the
+comparison, I found Alpine lichens growing among cactus and palms, and a
+crust of Arctic cryptogamous growth covered rocks, between which sprang
+tropical flowers. On the northern flank of this Serra I found the only
+genuine erratic boulders I have seen in the whole length of the
+Amazonian Valley, from Para to the frontier of Peru, though there are
+many detached masses of rock, as, for instance, at Pedreira, near the
+junction of the Rio Negro and Rio Branco, which might be mistaken for
+them, but are due to the decomposition of the rocks in place. The
+boulders of Errere are entirely distinct from the rock of the Serra, and
+consist of masses of compact hornblende.
+
+It would seem that these two ranges skirting a part of the northern and
+southern banks of the Lower Amazons are not the only remnants of this
+arenaceous formation in its primitive altitude. On the banks of the
+Japura, in the Serra of Cupati, Major Coutinho has found the same beds
+rising to the same height. It thus appears, by positive evidence, that
+over an extent of a thousand miles these deposits had a very
+considerable thickness in the present direction of the valley. How far
+they extended in width has not been ascertained by direct observation,
+for we have not seen how they sink away to the northward, and towards
+the south the denudation has been so complete that, except in the very
+low range of hills in the neighborhood of Santarem, they do not rise
+above the plain. But the fact that this formation once had a thickness
+of more than eight hundred feet within the limits where we have had an
+opportunity of observing it, leaves no doubt that it must have extended
+to the edge of the basin, filling it to the same height throughout its
+whole extent. The thickness of the deposits gives a measure for the
+colossal scale of the denudations by which this immense accumulation was
+reduced to its present level. Here then is a system of high hills,
+having the prominence of mountains in the landscape, produced by causes
+to whose agency inequalities on the earth's surface of this magnitude
+have never yet been ascribed. We may fairly call them denudation
+mountains.
+
+At this stage of the inquiry we have to account for two remarkable
+phenomena. First, the filling of the Amazonian bottom with coarse
+arenaceous materials and finely laminated clays, immediately followed by
+sandstones rising to a height of more than eight hundred feet above the
+sea; the basin meanwhile having no rocky barrier towards the ocean on
+its eastern side. Second, the wearing away and reduction of these
+formations to their present level, by a denudation, more extensive than
+any thus far recorded in the annals of geology, which has given rise to
+all the most prominent hills and mountain chains along the northern bank
+of the river. Before seeking an explanation of these facts, let us look
+at the third and uppermost deposit.
+
+This deposit, essentially the same as the Rio drift, has been minutely
+described in my former article; but in the north, it presents itself
+under a somewhat different aspect. As in Rio, it is a clayey deposit,
+containing more or less sand, and reddish in color, though varying from
+deep ochre to a brownish tint. It is not so absolutely destitute of
+stratification here as in its more southern range, though the traces of
+stratification are rare, and, when they do occur, are faint and
+indistinct. The materials are also more completely comminuted, and, as I
+have said above, contain hardly any large masses, though quartz pebbles
+are sometimes scattered throughout the deposit, and occasionally a thin
+seam of pebbles, exactly as in the Rio drift, is seen resting between it
+and the underlying sandstone. In some places this bed of pebbles even
+intersects the mass of the clay, giving it in such instances an
+unquestionably stratified character. There can be no question that this
+more recent formation rests unconformably upon the sandstone beds
+beneath it; for it fills all the inequalities of their denudated
+surfaces, whether they be more or less limited furrows, or wide,
+undulating depressions. It may be seen everywhere along the banks of the
+river, above the stratified sandstone, sometimes with the river mud
+accumulated against it; at the season of the _enchente_, or high water,
+it is the only formation left exposed above the water level. Its
+thickness is not great; it varies from twenty or thirty to fifty feet,
+and may occasionally rise nearly to a hundred feet in height, though
+this is rarely the case. It is evident that this formation also was once
+continuous, stretching over the whole basin at one level. Though it is
+now worn down in many places, and has wholly disappeared in others, its
+connection may be readily traced; since it is everywhere visible, not
+only on opposite banks of the Amazons, but also on those of all its
+tributaries, as far as their shores have been examined. I have said that
+it rests always above the sandstone beds. This is true, with one
+exception. Wherever the sandstone deposits retain their original
+thickness, as in the hills of Monte Alegre and Almeyrim, the red clay is
+not found on their summits, but occurs only in their ravines and
+hollows, or resting against their sides. This shows that it is not only
+posterior to the sandstone, but was accumulated in a shallower basin,
+and consequently never reached so high a level. The boulders of Errere
+do not rest on the stratified sandstone of the Serra, but are sunk in
+the unstratified mass of the clay. This should be remembered, as it will
+presently be seen that their position associates them with a later
+period than that of the mountain itself. The unconformability of the
+ochraceous clay and the underlying sandstones might lead to the idea
+that the two formations belong to distinct geological periods, and are
+not due to the same agency, acting at successive times. One feature,
+however, shows their close connection. The ochraceous clay exhibits a
+remarkable identity of configuration with the underlying sandstones. An
+extensive survey of the two, in their mutual relations, shows clearly
+that they were both deposited by the same water-system within the same
+basin, but at different levels. Here and there the clay formation has so
+pale and grayish a tint, that it may be confounded with the mud deposits
+of the river. These latter, however, never rise so high as the
+ochraceous clay, but are everywhere confined within the limits of high
+and low water. The islands also in the main course of the Amazons
+consist invariably of river-mud, while those arising from the
+intersection and cutting off of portions of the land by diverging
+branches of the main stream always consist of the well-known sandstones,
+capped by the ochre-colored clay.
+
+It may truly be said that there does not exist on the surface of the
+earth a formation known to geologists resembling that of the Amazons.
+Its extent is stupendous; it stretches from the Atlantic shore, through
+the whole width of Brazil, into Peru, to the very foot of the Andes.
+Humboldt speaks of it "in the vast plains of the Amazons, in the eastern
+boundary of Jaen de Bracamoros," and says, "This prodigious extension of
+red sandstone in the low grounds stretching along the east of the Andes
+is one of the most striking phenomena I observed during my examination
+of rocks in the equinoctial regions."[A] When the great natural
+philosopher wrote these lines, he had no idea how much these deposits
+extended beyond the field of his observations. Indeed, they are not
+limited to the main bed of the Amazons; they have been followed along
+the banks of its tributaries to the south and north as far as these have
+been ascended. They occur on the margins of the Huallaga and the
+Ucayall, on those of the Ica, the Jutahy, the Jurua, the Japura, and the
+Purus. On the banks of the Japura, where Major Coutinho has traced them,
+they are found as far as the Cataract of Cupati. I have followed them
+along the Rio Negro to its junction with the Rio Branco; and Humboldt
+not only describes them from a higher point on this same river, but also
+from the valley of the Orinoco. Finally, they may be tracked along the
+banks of the Madeira, the Tapajos, the Xingu, and the Tocantins, as well
+as on the shores of the Guatuma, the Trombetas, and other northern
+affluents of the Amazons. The observations of Martius, those of Gardner,
+and the recent survey above alluded to, made by my assistant, Mr. St.
+John, of the valley of the Rio Guruguea and that of the Rio Paranahyba,
+show that the great basin of Piauhy is also identical in its geological
+structure with the lateral valleys of the Amazons. The same is true of
+the large island of Marajo, lying at the mouth of the Amazons. And yet I
+believe that even this does not cover the whole ground, and that some
+future writer may say of my estimate, as I have said of Humboldt's, that
+it falls short of the truth; for, if my generalizations are correct, the
+same formation will be found extending over the whole basin of the
+Paraguay and the Rio de la Plata, and along their tributaries, to the
+very heart of the Andes.
+
+Such are the facts. The question now arises, How were these vast
+deposits formed? The easiest answer, and the one which most readily
+suggests itself, is that of a submersion of the continent at successive
+periods to allow the accumulation of these materials, and its subsequent
+elevation. I reject this explanation for the simple reason that the
+deposits show no sign whatever of a marine origin. No seashells nor
+remains of any marine animal have as yet been found throughout their
+whole extent, over a region several thousand miles in length and from
+five to seven hundred miles in width. It is contrary to all our
+knowledge of geological deposits to suppose that an ocean basin of this
+size, which must have been submerged during an immensely long period in
+order to accumulate formations of such a thickness, should not contain
+numerous remains of the animals formerly inhabiting it.[B] The only
+fossil remains of any kind truly belonging to it, which I have found in
+the formation, are the leaves mentioned above, taken from the lower
+clays on the banks of the Solimoens at Tomantins; and these show a
+vegetation similar in general character to that which prevails there
+to-day. Evidently, then, this basin was a fresh-water basin; these
+deposits are fresh-water deposits. But as the Valley of the Amazons
+exists to-day, it is widely open to the ocean on the east, with a gentle
+slope from the Andes to the Atlantic, determining a powerful seaward
+current. When these vast accumulations took place, the basin must have
+been closed; otherwise the loose materials would constantly have been
+carried down to the ocean.
+
+It is my belief that all these deposits belong to the ice period in its
+earlier or later phases, and to this cosmic winter, which, judging from
+all the phenomena connected with it, may have lasted for thousands of
+centuries, we must look for the key to the geological history of the
+Amazonian Valley. I am aware that this suggestion will appear
+extravagant. But is it, after all, so improbable that, when Central
+Europe was covered with ice thousands of feet thick; when the glaciers
+of Great Britain ploughed into the sea, and when those of the Swiss
+mountains had ten times their present altitude; when every lake in
+Northern Italy was filled with ice, and these frozen masses extended
+even into Northern Africa; when a sheet of ice, reaching nearly to the
+summit of Mount Washington in the White Mountains (that is, having a
+thickness of nearly six thousand feet), moved over the continent of
+North America,--is it so improbable that, in this epoch of universal
+cold, the Valley of the Amazons also had its glacier poured down into it
+from the accumulations of snow in the Cordilleras, and swollen
+laterally by the tributary glaciers descending from the table-lands of
+Guiana and Brazil? The movement of this immense glacier would be
+eastward, and determined as well by the vast reservoirs of snow in the
+Andes as by the direction of the valley itself. It must have ploughed
+the valley bottom over and over again, grinding all the materials
+beneath it into a fine powder or reducing them to small pebbles, and it
+must have accumulated at its lower end a moraine of proportions as
+gigantic as its own; thus building a colossal sea-wall across the mouth
+of the valley. I shall be asked at once whether I have found here also
+the glacial inscriptions,--the furrows, striae, and polished surfaces so
+characteristic of the ground over which glaciers have travelled. I
+answer, not a trace of them; for the simple reason that there is not a
+natural rock surface to be found throughout the whole Amazonian Valley.
+The rocks themselves are of so friable a nature, and the decomposition
+caused by the warm torrential rains and by exposure to the burning sun
+of the tropics so great and unceasing, that it is hopeless to look for
+marks which in colder climates and on harder substances are preserved
+through ages unchanged. With the exception of the rounded surfaces so
+well known in Switzerland as the _roches moutonnees_ heretofore alluded
+to, which may be seen in many localities, and the boulders of Errere,
+the direct traces of glaciers as seen in other countries are wanting
+here. I am, indeed, quite willing to admit that, from the nature of the
+circumstances, I have not here the positive evidence which has guided me
+in my previous glacial investigations. My conviction in this instance is
+founded, first, on the materials in the Amazonian Valley, which
+correspond exactly in their character to materials accumulated in
+glacier bottoms; secondly, on the resemblance of the upper or third
+Amazonian formation to the Rio drift,[C] of the glacial origin of which
+there cannot, in my opinion, be any doubt; thirdly, on the fact that
+this fresh-water basin must have been closed against the sea by some
+powerful barrier, the removal of which would naturally give an outlet to
+the waters, and cause the extraordinary denudations, the evidences of
+which meet us everywhere throughout the valley.
+
+On a smaller scale, phenomena of this kind have long been familiar to
+us. In the present lakes of Northern Italy, in those of Switzerland,
+Norway, and Sweden, as well as in those of New England, especially in
+the State of Maine, the waters are held back in their basins by
+moraines. In the ice period these depressions were filled with glaciers,
+which, in the course of time, accumulated at their lower end a wall of
+loose materials. These walls still remain, and serve as dams to prevent
+the escape of the waters. But for their moraines, all these lakes would
+be open valleys. In the Roads of Glen Roy, in Scotland, we have an
+instance of a fresh-water lake, which has now wholly disappeared, formed
+in the same manner, and reduced successively to lower and lower levels
+by the breaking down or wearing away of the moraines which originally
+prevented its waters from flowing out. Assuming then, that, under the
+low temperature of the ice period, the climatic conditions necessary for
+the formation of land-ice existed in the Valley of the Amazons, and that
+it was actually filled with an immense glacier, it follows that, when
+these fields of ice yielded to a gradual change of climate, and slowly
+melted away, the whole basin, then closed against the sea by a huge
+wall of _debris_, was transformed into a vast fresh-water lake. The
+first effect of the thawing process must have been to separate the
+glacier from its foundation, raising it from immediate contact with the
+valley bottom, and thus giving room for the accumulation of a certain
+amount of water beneath it; while the valley as a whole would still be
+occupied by the glacier. In this shallow sheet of water under the ice,
+and protected by it from any violent disturbance, those finer triturated
+materials always found at a glacier bottom, and ground sometimes to
+powder by its action, would be deposited, and gradually transformed from
+an unstratified paste containing the finest sand and mud, together with
+coarse pebbles and gravel, into a regularly stratified formation. In
+this formation the coarse materials would of course fall to the bottom,
+while the most minute would settle above them. It is at this time and
+under such circumstances that I believe the first formation of the
+Amazonian Valley, with the coarse, pebbly sand beneath, and the finely
+laminated clays above, to have been accumulated.
+
+I shall perhaps be reminded here of my fossil leaves, and asked how any
+vegetation would be possible under such circumstances. But it must be
+remembered, that, in considering all these periods, we must allow for
+immense lapses of time and for very gradual changes; that the close of
+this first period would be very different from its beginning; and that a
+rich vegetation springs on the very borders of the snow and ice fields
+in Switzerland. The fact that these were accumulated in a glacial basin
+would, indeed, at once account for the traces of vegetable life, and for
+the absence, or at least the great scarcity, of animal remains in these
+deposits. For while fruits may ripen and flowers bloom on the very edge
+of the glaciers, it is also well known that the fresh-water lakes formed
+by the melting of the ice are singularly deficient in life. There are
+indeed hardly any animals to be found in glacial lakes.
+
+The second formation belongs to a later period, when, the whole body of
+ice being more or less disintegrated, the basin contained a larger
+quantity of water. Beside that arising from the melting of the ice, this
+immense valley bottom must have received, then as now, all which was
+condensed from the atmosphere above, and poured into it in the form of
+rain or dew. Thus an amount of water equal to that now flowing in from
+all the tributaries of the main stream must have been rushing towards
+the axis of the valley, seeking its natural level, but spreading over a
+more extensive surface than now, until, finally gathered up as separate
+rivers, it flowed in distinct beds. In its general movement toward the
+central and lower part of the valley, the broad stream would carry along
+all the materials small enough to be so transported, as well as those so
+minute as to remain suspended in the waters. It would gradually deposit
+them in the valley bottom in horizontal beds, more or less regular, or
+here and there, wherever eddies gave rise to more rapid and irregular
+currents, characterized by torrential stratification. Thus has been
+consolidated in the course of ages that continuous sand formation
+spreading over the whole Amazonian basin, and attaining a thickness of
+eight hundred feet.
+
+While these accumulations were taking place within this basin, it must
+not be forgotten that the sea was beating against its outer
+walls,--against that gigantic moraine which I suppose to have closed it
+at its eastern end. It would seem that, either from this cause, or
+perhaps in consequence of some turbulent action from within, a break was
+made in this defence, and the waters rushed violently out. It is very
+possible that the waters, gradually swollen at the close of this period
+by the further melting of the ice, by the additions poured in from
+lateral tributaries, by the rains, and also by the filling of the basin
+with loose materials, would overflow, and thus contribute to destroy
+the moraine. However this may be, it follows from my premises that, in
+the end, these waters obtained a sudden release, and poured seaward with
+a violence which cut and denuded the deposits already formed, wearing
+them down to a much lower level, and leaving only a few remnants
+standing out in their original thickness, where the strata were solid
+enough to resist the action of the currents. Such are the hills of Monte
+Alegre, of Obydos, Almeyrim, and Cupati, as well as the lower ridges of
+Santarem. This escape of the waters did not, however, entirely empty the
+whole basin; for the period of denudation was again followed by one of
+quiet accumulation, during which was deposited the ochraceous sandy clay
+resting upon the denudated surfaces of the underlying sandstone. To this
+period I refer the boulders of Errere, sunk as they are in the clay of
+this final deposit. I suppose them to have been brought to their present
+position by floating ice at the close of the glacial period, when
+nothing remained of the ice-fields except such isolated
+masses,--ice-rafts as it were; or perhaps by icebergs dropped into the
+basin from glaciers still remaining in the Andes and on the edges of the
+plateaus of Guiana and Brazil. From the general absence of
+stratification in this clay formation, it would seem that the
+comparatively shallow sheet of water in which it was deposited was very
+tranquil. Indeed, after the waters had sunk much below the level which
+they held during the deposition of the sandstone, and the currents which
+gave rise to the denudation of the latter had ceased, the whole sheet of
+water would naturally become much more placid. But the time came when
+the water broke through its boundaries again, perhaps owing to the
+further encroachment of the sea and consequent destruction of the
+moraine. In this second drainage, however, the waters, carrying away a
+considerable part of the new deposit, furrowing it to its very
+foundation, and even cutting through it into the underlying sandstone,
+were, in the end, reduced to something like their present level, and
+confined within their present beds. This is shown by the fact that in
+this ochre-colored clay, and penetrating to a greater or less depth the
+sandstone below, are dug, not only the great longitudinal channel of the
+Amazons itself, but also the lateral furrows through which its
+tributaries reach the main stream, and the network of anastomosing
+branches flowing between them; the whole forming the most extraordinary
+river system in the world.
+
+My assumption that the sea has produced very extensive changes in the
+coast of Brazil--changes more than sufficient to account for the
+disappearance of the glacial wall which I suppose to have closed the
+Amazonian Valley in the ice period--is by no means hypothetical. This
+action is still going on to a remarkable degree, and is even now rapidly
+modifying the outline of the shore. When I first arrived at Para, I was
+struck with the fact that the Amazons, the largest river in the world,
+has no delta. All the other rivers which we call great, though some of
+them are insignificant as compared with the Amazons,--the Mississippi,
+the Nile, the Ganges, and the Danube,--deposit extensive deltas, and the
+smaller rivers also, with few exceptions, are constantly building up the
+land at their mouths by the materials they bring along with them. Even
+the little river Kander, emptying into the Lake of Thun, is not without
+its delta. Since my return from the Upper Amazons to Para, I have made
+an examination of some of the harbor islands, and also of parts of the
+coast, and have satisfied myself that, with the exception of a few
+small, low islands, never rising above the sea-level, and composed of
+alluvial deposit, they are portions of the mainland detached from it,
+partly by the action of the river itself, and partly by the encroachment
+of the ocean. In fact the sea is eating away the land much faster than
+the river can build it up. The great island of Marajo was originally a
+continuation of the Valley of the Amazons, and is identical with it in
+every detail of its geological structure. My investigation of the island
+itself, in connection with the coast and the river, leads me to suppose
+that, having been at one time an integral part of the deposits described
+above, at a later period it became an island in the bed of the Amazons,
+which, dividing in two arms, encircled it completely, and then, joining
+again to form a single stream, flowed onward to the sea-shore, which in
+those days lay much farther to the eastward than it now does. I suppose
+the position of the island of Marajo at that time to have corresponded
+very nearly to the present position of the island of Tupinambaranas,
+just at the junction of the Madeira with the Amazons. It is a question
+among geographers whether the Tocantins is a branch of the Amazons, or
+should be considered as forming an independent river system. It will be
+seen that, if my view is correct, it must formerly have borne the same
+relation to the Amazons that the Madeira River now does, joining it just
+where Marajo divided the main stream, as the Madeira now joins it at the
+head of the island of Tupinambaranas. If in countless centuries to come
+the ocean should continue to eat its way into the Valley of the Amazons,
+once more transforming the lower part of the basin into a gulf, as it
+was during the cretaceous period, the time might arrive when
+geographers, finding the Madeira emptying almost immediately into the
+sea, would ask themselves whether it had ever been indeed a branch of
+the Amazons, just as they now question whether the Tocantins is a
+tributary of the main stream or an independent river. But to return to
+Marajo, and to the facts actually in our possession.
+
+The island is intersected, in its south-eastern end, by a considerable
+river called the Igarape Grande. The cut made through the land by this
+stream seems intended to serve as a geological section, so perfectly
+does it display the three characteristic Amazonian formations above
+described. At its mouth, near the town of Soure, and at Salvaterra, on
+the opposite bank, may be seen, lowest, the well-stratified sandstone,
+with the finely laminated clays resting upon it, overtopped by a crust;
+then the cross-stratified, highly ferruginous sandstone, with quartz
+pebbles here and there; and, above all, the well-known ochraceous,
+unstratified sandy clay, spreading over the undulating surface of the
+denudated sandstone, following all its inequalities, and filling all its
+depressions and furrows. But while the Igarape Grande has dug its
+channel down to the sea, cutting these formations, as I ascertained, to
+a depth of twenty-five fathoms, it has thus opened the way for the
+encroachments of the tides, and the ocean is now, in its turn, gaining
+upon the land. Were there no other evidence of the action of the tides
+in this locality, the steep cut of the Igarape Grande, contrasting with
+the gentle slope of the banks near its mouth, wherever they have been,
+modified by the invasion of the sea, would enable us to distinguish the
+work of the river from that of the ocean, and to prove that the
+denudation now going on is due in part to both. But besides this, I was
+so fortunate as to discover here unmistakable and perfectly convincing
+evidence of the onward movement of the sea. At the mouth of the Igarape
+Grande, both at Soure and at Salvaterra, on the southern side of the
+Igarape, is a submerged forest. Evidently this forest grew in one of
+those marshy lands constantly inundated, for between the stumps is
+accumulated the loose, felt-like peat characteristic of such grounds,
+and containing about as much mud as vegetable matter. Such a marshy
+forest, with the stumps of the trees still standing erect in the peat,
+has been laid bare on both sides of the Igarape Grande by the
+encroachments of the ocean. That this is the work of the sea is
+undeniable, for all the little depressions and indentations of the peat
+are filled with sea-sand, and a ridge of tidal sand divides it from the
+forest still standing behind. Nor is this all. At Vigia, immediately
+opposite to Soure, on the continental side of the Para River, just where
+it meets the sea, we have the counterpart of this submerged forest.
+Another peat-bog, with the stumps of innumerable trees standing in it,
+and encroached upon in the same way by tidal sand, is exposed here also.
+No doubt these forests were once all continuous, and stretched across
+the whole basin of what is now called the Para River.
+
+Since I have been pursuing this inquiry, I have gathered much
+information to the same effect from persons living on the coast. It is
+well remembered that, twenty years ago, there existed an island, more
+than a mile in width, to the northeast of the entrance of the Bay of
+Vigia, which has now entirely disappeared. Farther eastward, the Bay of
+Braganza has doubled its width in the last twenty years, and on the
+shore, within the bay, the sea has gained upon the land for a distance
+of two hundred yards during a period of only ten years. The latter fact
+is ascertained by the position of some houses, which were two hundred
+yards farther from the sea ten years ago than they now are. From these
+and the like reports, from my own observations on this part of the
+Brazilian coast, from some investigations made by Major Coutinho at the
+mouth of the Amazons, on its northern continental shore, near Macapa,
+and from the reports of Mr. St. John respecting the formations in the
+valley of the Paranahyba, it is my belief that the changes I have been
+describing are but a small part of the destruction wrought by the sea on
+the northeastern shore of this continent. I think it will be found, when
+the coast has been fully surveyed, that a strip of land not less than a
+hundred leagues in width, stretching from Cape St. Roque to the northern
+extremity of South America, has been eaten away by the ocean. If this be
+so, the Paranahyba and the rivers to the northwest of it, in the
+province of Maranham, were formerly tributaries of the Amazons; and all
+that we know thus far of their geological character goes to prove that
+this was actually the case. Such an extensive oceanic denudation must
+have carried away not only the gigantic glacial moraine here assumed to
+have closed the mouth of the Amazonian basin, but the very ground on
+which it stood.
+
+During the last four or five years I have been engaged in a series of
+investigations, in the United States, upon the subject of the
+denudations connected with the close of the glacial period there, and
+the encroachments of the ocean upon the drift deposits along the
+Atlantic coast. Had these investigations been published in detail, with
+the necessary maps, it would have been far easier for me to explain the
+facts I have lately observed in the Amazonian Valley, to connect them
+with facts of a like character on the continent of North America, and to
+show how remarkably they correspond with facts accomplished during the
+same period in other parts of the world. While the glacial epoch itself
+has been very extensively studied in the last half-century, little
+attention has been paid to the results connected with the breaking up of
+the geological winter and the final disappearance of the ice. I believe
+that the true explanation of the presence of a large part of the
+superficial deposits lately ascribed to the agency of the sea, during
+temporary subsidences of the land, will be found in the melting of the
+ice-fields. To this cause I would refer all those deposits which I have
+designated in former publications as remodelled drift. When the sheet of
+ice, extending from the Arctic regions over a great part of North
+America and coming down to the sea, slowly melted away, the waters were
+not distributed over the face of the country as they now are. They
+rested upon the bottom deposits of the ice-fields, upon the glacial
+paste, consisting of clay, sand, pebbles, boulders, etc., underlying the
+ice. This bottom deposit did not, of course, present an even surface,
+but must have had extensive undulations and depressions. After the
+waters had been drained off from the more elevated ridges, these
+depressions would still remain full. In the lakes and pools thus formed,
+stratified deposits would be accumulated, consisting of the most
+minutely comminuted clay, deposited in thin laminated layers, or
+sometimes in considerable masses, without any sign of stratification;
+such differences in the formation being determined by the state of the
+water, whether perfectly stagnant or more or less agitated. Of such pool
+deposits overlying the drift there are many instances in the Northern
+United States. By the overflowing of some of these lakes, and by the
+emptying of the higher ones into those on a lower level, channels would
+gradually be formed between the depressions. So began to be marked out
+our independent river-systems,--the waters always seeking their natural
+level, gradually widening and deepening the channels in which they
+flowed, as they worked their way down to the sea. When they reached the
+shore, there followed that antagonism between the rush of the rivers and
+the action of the tides,--between continental outflows and oceanic
+encroachments,--which still goes on, and has led to the formation of our
+eastern rivers, with their wide, open estuaries, such as the James, the
+Potomac, and the Delaware. All these estuaries are embanked by drift, as
+are also, in their lower course, the rivers connected with them. Where
+the country was low and flat, and the drift extended far into the ocean,
+the encroachment of the sea gave rise, not only to our large estuaries,
+but also to the sounds and deep bays forming the most prominent
+indentations of the continental coast, such as the Bay of Fundy,
+Massachusetts Bay, Long Island Sound, and others. The unmistakable
+traces of glacial action upon all the islands along the coast of New
+England, sometimes lying at a very considerable distance from the
+mainland, give an approximate, though a minimum, measure of the former
+extent of the glacial drift seaward, and the subsequent advance of the
+ocean upon the land. Like those of the harbor of Para, all these islands
+have the same geological structure as the continent, and were evidently
+continuous with it at some former period. All the rocky islands along
+the coast of Maine and Massachusetts exhibit the glacial traces wherever
+their surfaces are exposed by the washing away of the drift; and where
+the drift remains, its character shows that it was once continuous from
+one island to another, and from all the islands to the mainland.
+
+It is difficult to determine with precision the ancient limit of the
+glacial drift, but I think it can be shown that it connected the shoals
+of Newfoundland with the continent; that Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard,
+and Long Island made part of the mainland; that, in like manner, Nova
+Scotia, including Sable Island, was united to the southern shore of New
+Brunswick and Maine, and that the same sheet of drift extended thence to
+Cape Cod, and stretched southward as far as Cape Hatteras;--in short,
+that the line of shallow soundings along the whole coast of the United
+States marks the former extent of glacial drift. The ocean has gradually
+eaten its way into this deposit, and given its present outlines to the
+continent. These denudations of the sea no doubt began as soon as the
+breaking up of the ice exposed the drift to its invasion; in other
+words, at a time when colossal glaciers still poured forth their load of
+ice into the Atlantic, and fleets of icebergs, far larger and more
+numerous than those now floated off from the Arctic seas, were launched
+from the northeastern shore of the United States. Many such masses must
+have stranded along the shore, and have left various signs of their
+presence. In fact, the glacial phenomena of the United States and
+elsewhere are due to two distinct periods: the first of these was the
+glacial epoch proper, when the ice was a solid sheet; while to the
+second belongs the breaking up of this epoch, with the gradual
+disintegration and dispersion of the ice. We talk of the theory of
+glaciers and the theory of icebergs in reference to these phenomena, as
+if they were exclusively due to one or the other, and whoever accepted
+the former must reject the latter, and _vice versa_. When geologists
+have combined these now discordant elements, and consider these two
+periods as consecutive,--part of the phenomena being due to the
+glaciers, part to the icebergs and to freshets consequent on their
+breaking up,--they will find they have covered the whole ground, and
+that the two theories are perfectly consistent with each other. I think
+the present disputes upon this subject will end somewhat like those
+which divided the Neptunic and Plutonic schools of geologists in the
+early part of this century; the former of whom would have it that all
+the rocks were due to the action of water, the latter that they were
+wholly due to the action of fire. The problem was solved, and harmony
+restored, when it was found that both elements had been equally at work
+in forming the solid crust of the globe. To the stranded icebergs
+alluded to above, I have no doubt, is to be referred the origin of the
+many lakes without outlet existing all over the sandy tract along our
+coast of which Cape Cod forms a part. Not only the formation of these
+lakes, but also that of our salt marshes and cranberry-fields, I believe
+to be connected with the waning of the ice period.
+
+I hope at some future time to publish in detail, with the appropriate
+maps and illustrations, my observations on our coast changes, and upon
+other phenomena connected with the close of the glacial epoch in the
+United States. It is reversing the natural order of things to give
+results without the investigations which have led to them; and I should
+not have introduced the subject here except to show that the fresh-water
+denudations and the oceanic encroachments which have formed the
+Amazonian Valley, with its river system, are not isolated facts, but
+that the process has been the same in both continents. The extraordinary
+continuity and uniformity of the Amazonian deposits are due to the
+immense size of the basin enclosed, and the identity of the materials
+contained in it.
+
+A glance at any geological map of the world will show the reader that
+the Valley of the Amazons, so far as any attempt is made to explain its
+structure, is represented as containing isolated tracts of Devonian,
+Triassic, Jurassic, cretaceous, tertiary, and alluvial deposits. As is
+shown by the above sketch, this is wholly inaccurate; and whatever may
+be thought of my interpretation of the actual phenomena, I trust that,
+in presenting for the first time the formations of the Amazonian basin
+in their natural connection and sequence, as consisting of three uniform
+sets of comparatively recent deposits, extending throughout the whole
+valley, the investigations here recorded have contributed something to
+the results of modern geology.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] Bohn's edition of Humboldt's Personal Narrative, p. 134. Humboldt
+alludes to these formations repeatedly; it is true that he refers them
+to the ancient conglomerates of the Devonian age, but his description
+agrees so perfectly with what I have observed along the banks of the
+Amazons, that there can be no doubt he speaks of the same thing. He
+wrote at a time when many of the results of modern geology were unknown,
+and his explanation of the phenomena was then perfectly natural. The
+passage from which the few lines in the text are taken shows that these
+deposits extend even to the Llanos.
+
+[B] I am aware that Bates mentions having heard, that at Obydos
+calcareous layers, thickly studded with marine shells, had been found
+interstratified with the clay, but he did not himself examine the
+strata. The Obydos shells are not marine, but are fresh-water Unios,
+greatly resembling Aviculas, Solens, and Arcas. Such would-be marine
+fossils have been brought to me from the shore opposite to Obydos, near
+Santarem, and I have readily recognised them for what they truly are,
+fresh-water shells of the family of Naiades. I have myself collected
+specimens of these shells in the clay beds along the banks of the
+Solimoens, near Teffe, and might have mistaken them for fossils of that
+formation had I not known how Naiades burrow in the mud. Their
+resemblance to the marine genera mentioned above is very remarkable, and
+the mistake as to their true zoological character is as natural as that
+by which earlier ichthyologists, and even travellers of very recent
+date, have confounded some fresh-water fishes from the Upper Amazons of
+the genus Pterophyllum (Heckel) with the marine genus Platax.
+
+[C] As I have stated in the beginning, I am satisfied that the
+unstratified clay deposit of Rio and its vicinity is genuine glacial
+drift, resulting from the grinding of the loose materials interposed
+between the glacier and the solid rock in place, and retaining to this
+day the position in which it was left by the ice. Like all such
+accumulations, it is totally free from stratification. If this be so, it
+is evident, on comparing the two formations, that the ochraceous sandy
+clay of the Valley of the Amazons has been deposited under different
+circumstances; that, while it owes its resemblance to the Rio drift to
+the fact that its materials were originally ground by glaciers in the
+upper part of the valley, these materials have subsequently been spread
+throughout the whole basin and actually deposited under the agency of
+water.
+
+
+
+
+A MANIAC'S CONFESSION.
+
+
+I am a maniac. I have for some years been the victim of a peculiar
+insanity, which has greatly distressed several of my friends and
+relatives. They generally soften it in their talk by the name
+_mono_mania; but they do not hesitate to aver, when speaking their
+minds, that it has in truth infected my whole soul, and made me
+incapable of doing or thinking anything useful or rational. This sad
+delusion, which they endeavor to remove by serious advice, by playful
+banter, or by seeming to take an interest in my folly for a moment, is
+encountered with great acrimony by less gentle friends. They who are not
+bound to me by blood or intimacy--and some who are--deride, insult, and
+revile me in every way for my subjection to a mental aberration which is
+rapidly consuming a pretty property, more than average talents, and
+unrivalled opportunities.
+
+Of course, like all madmen, I think just the reverse. When the fit is on
+me, I assert that this fever--this madness--far from being the bane of
+my life, is a blessing to it; that I am habitually devoting money, time,
+and wits to an object at once beautiful and elevating; that I have found
+consolation in its visions for many sufferings, which all the amusements
+offered me by my revilers are utterly inadequate to touch. I declare
+that I have found a better investment for my money than all the West
+Virginia coal companies that ever sunk oil-wells, and am making more
+useful acquaintances than if I danced every German during the season. I
+have not been shut up yet, for my friends know that, if they attempt any
+such thing, the Finance Committee on the Harvard Memorial and Alumni
+Hall are in possession of a bond conveying all my money to them; so I am
+still at large, scolded by my brother Henry, laughed at by my sister
+Bathsheba, the aversion of Beacon Street, and the scorn of Winthrop
+Square.
+
+The other day, I took a little journey to Europe, with the view of
+feeding my madness on that whereby it grows. My friends did not choose
+to stop me, for they thought the charms of foreign travel might win me
+from my waywardness. To be sure, when they found, on my return, that I
+had never left England, they were convinced, if never before, that I was
+hopelessly insane; for what American, they very sanely said, "would stay
+in that dull, dingy island, among those stupid, cowardly bullies, when
+he might live in that lovely Paris, the most interesting and amusing
+city in the world, unless he were incomprehensibly mad." And, in truth,
+I begin to think I must be mad, when I find myself, like the man shut up
+with eleven obstinate jurymen, alone in thinking England a gay,
+beautiful, happy country, teeming with every gratification of art or
+nature, and inhabited by a manly, generous, and intelligent race; and
+that life in Paris, as Americans live it, is a senseless rush after
+excitement, where comfort is abandoned for unreal luxury, and society
+for vicious boon-companionship. Still I am very willing to admit that my
+special mania can be very capitally gratified in Paris, and I am
+meditating a little trip there for the purpose.
+
+On my return from England, I was observed to be in great distress about
+a certain box that I missed at Liverpool, looked for at Halifax, and all
+but lost at East Boston; and when it was found and opened, it only
+contained two suits of clothes, when, as Henry said, "I might have
+brought forty, the only thing they did have decent in England," and all
+the rest--mad, mad! I beg the readers of the Atlantic to listen to my
+humble confession of madness, as it culminated in this box.
+
+It is this. The most valuable property a man can possibly have is books;
+if he has a hundred or a thousand dollars to spare, he had better at
+once put it into books than into any "paying investments," or any
+horses, clothes, pictures, or opera-tickets. A life passed among books,
+thinking, talking, living only for books, is the most amusing and
+improving life; and to make this possible, the acquisition of a library
+should be the first object of any one who makes any claim to the
+possession of luxuries. (My madness only allows me to make one
+exception,--I do acknowledge the solemn duty of laying in a stock of old
+Madeira.) But so far I have many fellow-maniacs. The special reason why
+I ought always to stop the Lowell cars at Somerville is, that I consider
+the reading of books only half the battle. I must have them in choice
+bindings, in rare imprints, in original editions, and in the most select
+forms. I must have several copies of a book I have read forty times, as
+long as there is anything about each copy that makes it peculiar, _sui
+generis_. I must own the first edition of Paradise Lost, because it is
+the first, and in ten books; the second, because it is the first in
+twelve; then Newton's, then Todd's, then Mitford's, and so on, till my
+catalogue of Miltons gets to equal Jeames de la Pluche's portraits of
+the "Dook." "And when," as Henry indignantly says, "he could read Milton
+all he wanted to, more than I should ever want to, notes and all, in
+Little and Brown's edition that father gave him, he must go spending
+money on a parcel of old truck printed a thousand years ago." Mad, quite
+mad.
+
+Now, to finish the melancholy picture, I am classic mad. I prefer the
+ancient authors, decidedly, to the moderns. I love them as I never can
+the moderns; they are my most intimate friends, my heart's own darlings.
+And how I love to lavish money on them, to see them adorned in every
+way! How I love to heap them up, Aldines, and Elzevirs, and
+Baskervilles, and Biponts, in all their grace and majesty. This was what
+filled that London box. This was all I had to show for twenty-five or
+thirty guineas of good money; a parcel of trumpery old Greek and Latin
+books I had by dozens already! Mad, mad.
+
+Will you come in and see them, ladies and gentlemen? Here they are, all
+ranged out on my table, large and small, clean and dirty. What have we
+first?
+
+A goodly fat quarto in white vellum, "Plinii Panegyricus, cum notis
+Schwarzii, Norimbergae, 1733." A fine, clean, fresh copy,--one of those
+brave old Teutonic classics of the last century, less exquisitely
+printed than the Elzevirs, less learnedly critical than the later
+Germans, but perfectly trustworthy and satisfactory, and attracting
+every one's eye on a library shelf, by the rich sturdiness of their
+creamy binding, that smacks of the true Dutch and German burgher wealth.
+The model of them all is Oudendorp's Caesar. But there is nothing very
+great about Pliny's Panegyric, and a man must be a very queer
+bibliomaniac who would buy up all the vellum classics of the last
+century he saw. Look inside the cover; read under the book-plate the
+engraved name, "Edward Gibbon, Esq." What will you, my sanest friend,
+not give for a book that belonged to the author of the "Decline and
+Fall"?
+
+The next is also a large quarto, but of a very different character. It
+is the Baskerville impression of the elegiac poets,--Catullus, Tibullus,
+and Propertius: Birmingham, 1772. No books are more delightful to sight
+and touch than the Baskerville classics. This Catullus of mine is
+printed on the softest and glossiest post paper, with a mighty margin of
+two inches and a half at the side, and rich broad letters,--the standard
+_n_ is a tenth of an inch wide,--of a glorious blackness in spite of
+their ninety-two years of age. The classics of all languages have never
+been more fitly printed than by Baskerville; and the present book may
+serve as an admirable lesson to those who think a large-paper book means
+an ordinary octavo page printed in the middle of a quarto leaf,--for
+instance; Irving's Washington. My Catullus is bound in glossy calf,
+with a richly gilt back, and bears within the inscription, "From H. S.
+C. | to her valued friend | Doctor Southey | Feb'y y'e 24th, 1813,"
+in a true English lady's hand. This cannot be the poet Southey, who was
+not made LL. D. till 1821; but it may be his brother, Henry Herbert
+Southey, M. D.
+
+Next comes a very neat and compact little Seneca, in four 18mo volumes,
+bound in rich old Russia, and bearing the esteemed imprint, "Amstelodami
+apud Ludovicum et Danielem Elzevirios, M.D.CLVIII." As the Baskerville
+classics are the noblest for the library table, so the Elzevirs are the
+neatest and prettiest for the pocket or the lecture-room. And to their
+great beauty of mechanical execution is generally added a scrupulous
+textual accuracy, which the great Birmingham printer did not boast. This
+edition of Seneca, for instance, is that of Gronovius. His dedicatory
+epistle, and the title-pages of Vols. II., III. and IV., are all dated
+1658, but the general title-page in Vol. I. is 1659, as if, like White's
+Shakespeare, the first volume was the last published. Contrasting a
+_bijou_ edition with a magnificent one, it may be noted that in the
+Elzevir the four words and two stops, "Moriar: die ergo verum," occupy
+just an inch, exactly the space of the one word "compositis" in the
+Baskerville; but the printing of each is in its way exquisite.
+
+Just about a century after the Elzevirs, and contemporary with
+Baskerville, an English publisher of the name of Sandby, who appears to
+have been, as we should say, the University printer and bookseller at
+Cambridge, projected a series of classics, which are highly prized on
+large paper and not despised on small. I possess two of the latter, a
+Terence and a Juvenal; the second, curiously enough, lettered
+"Juvenal_u_s," a regular binder's blunder. They are called pocket
+editions, but are much larger than the Elzevirs, and, though very
+pretty, just miss that peculiar beauty and finish which have made the
+former the delight of all scholars. There is a carelessness
+somewhere--it is hard to say where--about the printing, which prevents
+their being perfect; but a "Sandby" is a very nice thing.
+
+My next "wanity" is a Virgil,--Justice's Virgil; a most elaborate and
+elegant edition, in five octavo volumes, published in the middle of the
+last century. It is noted, first, for the great richness and beauty of
+its engravings from ancient gems, coins, and drawings, which form an
+unrivalled body of illustration to the text. But, secondly, it will be
+seen, on inspection, that the whole book is one vast engraving, every
+line, word, and letter being cut on a metallic plate. Consequently, only
+every other page is printed on. The same idea was still more perfectly
+carried out by Pine, a few years later, who executed all Horace in this
+way, but only lived to complete one volume of Virgil, choicer even than
+Justice's. It is well bound, in perfect order, and ranks with the
+choicest of ornamental classics.
+
+Side by side with this Virgil is another, the rare Elzevir Virgil, and a
+gem, if ever there was one. It is the corrected text of Heinsius, and
+thus has a fair claim to rank as the earliest of the modern critical
+editions of Maro. The elegance of this little book in size and shape,
+the clearness and beauty of the type, and the truly classical taste and
+finish of the whole design, can never be surpassed in Virgilian
+bibliography, unless by Didot's matchless little copies. Elzevir Virgils
+are common enough; but mine is, as I have said, the rare Elzevir, known
+by the pages introductory to the Eclogues and AEneid being printed in
+rubric, while the ordinary Elzevirs have them in black. It dates
+1637,--the year when John Harvard left his money to the College at
+Newtowne, and the first printing-press in the United States was set up
+hard by.
+
+The books, then, that I have described so far all date within the two
+hundred and thirty years of our collegiate history. But I have behind
+three of an earlier--a much earlier date; books which John Cotton and
+Charles Chauncy might have gazed upon as old in Emmanuel College
+Library.
+
+First, I show you a pair of Aldines, and, what is better, a pair
+_editionum principum_,--the first Sophocles and the first Thucydides.
+Both have the proper attestation at the end that they come from the Aldi
+in Venice in the year 1502,--the Thucydides in May, and the Sophocles in
+August; hence the former has not the Aldine anchor at the extreme end.
+Both are in exquisitely clean condition; but the Sophocles, though
+taller than other known copies of the same edition, has suffered from
+the knife of a modern binder, who otherwise has done his work with the
+greatest elegance and judgment. The Thucydides has a grand page, over
+twelve inches by eight; the Sophocles is about seven by four. The type
+of both is small, and, though distinct, especially the Thucydides, not
+at all what we should call elegant. In fact, elegant Greek type is a
+very late invention. There is, I believe, no claim to textual criticism
+in these early Aldines; the publishers printed from such manuscripts as
+they could get. The Thucydides has a long dedicatory address by Aldus to
+a Roman patrician; the Sophocles has no such introduction. But it is, at
+any rate, most curious to consider that these two writers, who stand at
+the very head of Greek, or at least Attic, prose and verse, both for
+matter and style, should not have found a printer till the fifteenth
+century was long past, and then in a style which, for the Sophocles, can
+only be called neat. The Thucydides is handsome, but far inferior to the
+glory of the _princeps_ Homer. And to own them--for a maniac--O, it is
+glorious!
+
+Last comes my special treasure,--my fifteener,--my book as old as
+America,--my darling copy of my darling author. Here, at the culmination
+of my madness, my friends, especially my brother Henry, are all ready to
+say at once what author I mean. For it has been my special mania for
+twenty years--thereby causing the deepest distress to nearly all my
+friends, even those who have been thought fellow-lunatics, except
+one,[D] who is for me about the only sane man alive--to prefer VIRGIL to
+all authors, living or dead, and to seek to accumulate as many different
+editions and copies of him as possible. I have in these pages chronicled
+two. My library holds twelve more, besides two translations, and I
+consider myself very short; for to my mind no breadth of paper, no
+weight of binding, no brilliancy of print, no delicacy of engraving, no
+elaboration of learning, can ever do honor enough to the last and best
+of the ancients, who was all but the first of the Christians,--who would
+have been, if his frame had not broken down under a genius too mighty
+and a soul too sweet for earth. (Mad, you see, beyond all question.
+Virgil is allowed to be a servile copyist, far inferior to Lucretius.
+Compare Lucr. V. 750 with Georg. II. 478, and Heyne's note.) This Virgil
+of mine bears the imprint of Antony Koburger, Nuremberg, 1492. It is in
+the original binding of very solid boards overlaid with stamped vellum,
+and is still clasped with the original skin and metal. It is a small
+folio, on very coarse paper, and the only one of my rare classics not in
+the cleanest condition. Its stains appear to be caused by its use in a
+school; for it is covered with notes, in German current hand, very
+antiquated, and very elementary in their scholarship. It has all the
+poetry ascribed to Virgil, and the Commentaries of Servius and Landini,
+which are so voluminous that the page looks like a ha'p'orth of sack to
+an intolerable deal of very dry bread. It is very rare, being unknown to
+the great Dibdin, and was snapped up by me for three guineas out of a
+London bookseller's catalogue. A Virgil printed by Koburger in the year
+America was discovered, original binding and clasps, not in Dibdin, for
+three guineas! Hurrah! It excites my madness so that I must rush
+straight to Piper's and buy right and left. Kind friends, come and take
+me away ere I am reduced to beggary.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[D] F. W. H. M., you know I mean you.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT DOCTOR.
+
+A STORY IN TWO PARTS.
+
+
+II.
+
+Five or six years of the life of our hero we must now pass over in
+silence, saying of them, simply, that Fancy had not cheated much in her
+promises concerning them. The first rude cabin had given place to a
+whitewashed cottage; the chimney-corner was bright and warm; the
+easy-chair was in it, and the Widow Walker often sat there with her
+grandson on her knee, getting much comfort from the reflection that he
+looked just as her own Johnny did when he was a baby!
+
+The garden smiled at the doorside, and the village had sprung up just as
+Fancy promised; and Hobert and Jenny walked to church of a Sunday, and
+after service shook hands with their neighbors,--for everybody delighted
+to take their strong, willing hands, and look into their honest,
+cheerful faces,--they were amongst the first settlers of the place, and
+held an honored position in society. Jenny was grown a little more
+stout, and her cheek a little more ruddy, than it used to be; but the
+new country seemed not so well suited to Hobert, and the well-wishing
+neighbor often said when he met him, "You mustn't be too ambitious, and
+overdo! Your shoulders ain't so straight as they was when you come here!
+Be careful in time; nothing like that, Walker, nothing like that." And
+Hobert laughed at these suggestions, saying he was as strong as the rest
+of them; and that, though his cheek was pale, and his chest hollow, he
+was a better man than he seemed.
+
+The summer had been one of the wildest luxuriance ever known in the
+valley of the Wabash; for it was in that beautiful valley that our
+friend Hobert had settled. The woods cast their leaves early, and the
+drifts lay rotting knee-deep in places. Then came the long, hot, soaking
+rains, with hotter sunshine between. Chills and fever prevailed, and
+half the people of the neighborhood were shivering and burning at once.
+It was a healthy region, everybody said, but the weather had been
+unusually trying; as soon as the frost came, the ague would vanish; the
+water was the best in the world, to be sure, and the air the purest.
+
+Hobert was ploughing a piece of low ground for wheat, cutting a black
+snake in two now and then, and his furrow behind him fast filling with
+water that looked almost as black as the soil. Often he stopped to
+frighten from the quivering flank of the brown mare before him the
+voracious horse-flies, colored like the scum of the stagnant pools, and
+clinging and sucking like leeches. She was his favorite, the pride of
+his farm,--for had she not, years before, brought Jenny on her faithful
+shoulder to the new, happy home? Many a fond caress her neck had had
+from his arm; and the fine bridle with the silver bit, hanging on the
+wall at home, would not have been afforded for any other creature in the
+world. Hobert often said he would never sell her as long as he lived;
+and in the seasons of hard work he favored her more than he did himself.
+She had been named Fleetfoot, in honor of her successful achievement
+when her master had intrusted to her carrying the treasure of his life;
+but that name proving too formal, she was usually called Fleety. She
+would put down her forehead to the white hands of little Jenny, four
+years old and upward now, and tread so slow and so carefully when she
+had her on her back! Even the white dress of Johnny Hobert had swept
+down her silken side more than once, while his dimpled hands clutched
+her mane, and his rosy feet paddled against her. He was going to be her
+master after a while, and take care of her in her old age, when the time
+of her rest was come; he knew her name as well as he knew his own, and
+went wild with delight when he saw her taking clover from the tiny hand
+of his sister or drinking water from the bucket at the well.
+
+"She grows handsomer every year," Hobert often said; "and with a little
+training I would not be afraid to match her against the speediest racer
+they can bring." And this remark was always intended as in some sort a
+compliment to Jenny, and was always so received by her.
+
+On this special day he had stopped oftener in the furrow than common;
+and as often as he stopped Fleety twisted round her neck, bent her soft
+eyes upon him, and twitched her little ears as though she would say, "Is
+not all right, my master?" And then he would walk round to her head, and
+pass his hand along her throat and through her foretop, calling her by
+her pet name, and pulling for her handfuls of fresh grass, and while she
+ate it resting himself against her, and feeling in her nearness almost a
+sense of human protection. His feet seemed to drag under him, and there
+was a dull aching in all his limbs; the world appeared to be receding
+from him, and at times he could hardly tell whether he stood upon solid
+ground. Then he accused himself of being lazy and good for nothing, and
+with fictitious energy took up the reins and started the plough.
+
+He looked at the sun again and again. He was not used to leaving off
+work while the sun shone, and the clear waters of the Wabash held as yet
+no faintest evening flush. There were yet two good hours of working time
+before him, when the quick shooting of a pain, like the running of a
+knife through his heart, caused him to stagger in the furrow. Fleety
+stopped of her own accord, and looked pityingly back. He sat down beside
+the plough to gather up his courage a little. A strange sensation that
+he could not explain had taken possession of him, a feeling as if the
+hope of his life was cut off. The pain was gone, but the feeling of
+helpless surrender remained. He opened his shirt and passed his hand
+along his breast. He could feel nothing,--could see nothing; but he had,
+for all that, a clearly defined consciousness as of some deadly thing
+hold of him that he would fain be rid of.
+
+He had chanced to stop his plough under an elm-tree, and, looking up, he
+perceived that from the fork upward one half of it was dead; mistletoe
+had sucked the life out of it, and lower and lower to the main body,
+deeper and deeper to the vital heart of it, the sap was being drawn
+away. An irresistible impulse impelled him to take the jack-knife from
+his pocket, and as far as he could reach cut away this alien and deadly
+growth. The sympathy into which he was come with the dying tree was
+positively painful to him, and yet he was withheld from moving on by a
+sort of fascination,--_he_ was that tree, and the mistletoe was rooted
+in his bosom!
+
+The last yellow leaves fluttered down and lodged on his head and
+shoulders and in his bosom,--he did not lift his hand to brush them
+away; the blue lizard slid across his bare ankle and silently vanished
+out of sight, but he did not move a muscle. The brown mare bent her side
+round like a bow, and stretched her slender neck out more and more, and
+at last her nose touched his cheek, and then he roused himself and shook
+the dead leaves from his head and shoulders, and stood up. "Come,
+Fleety," he said, "we won't leave the plough in the middle of the
+furrow." She did not move. "Come, come!" he repeated, "it seems like a
+bad sign to stop here";--and then he put his hand suddenly to his heart,
+and an involuntary shudder passed over him. Fleety had not unbent her
+side, and her dumb, beseeching eyes were still upon him. He looked at
+the sun, low, but still shining out bright, and almost as hot as ever;
+he looked at his shadow stretching so far over the rough, weedy ground,
+and it appeared to him strange and fantastic. Then he loosed the traces,
+and, winding up the long rein, hung it over the harness; the plough
+dropped aslant, and Fleety turned herself about and walked slowly
+homeward,--her master following, his head down and his hands locked
+together behind him.
+
+The chimney was sending up its hospitable smoke, and Jenny was at the
+well with the teakettle in her hand when he came into the dooryard.
+
+"What in the world is going to happen?" she exclaimed, cheerfully. "I
+never knew you to leave work before while the sun shone. I am glad you
+have, for once. But what is the matter?"
+
+He had come nearer now, and she saw that something of light and hope had
+gone out of his face. And then Hobert made twenty excuses,--there wasn't
+anything the matter, he said, but the plough was dull, and the ground
+wet and heavy, and full of green roots; besides, the flies were bad, and
+the mare tired.
+
+"But you look so worn out, I am afraid you are sick, yourself!"
+interposed the good wife; and she went close to him, and pushed the
+hair, growing thinner now, away from his forehead, and looked anxiously
+in his face,--so anxiously, so tenderly, that he felt constrained to
+relieve her fears, even at some expense of the truth.
+
+"Not to look well in your eyes is bad enough," he answered, with forced
+cheerfulness, "but I feel all right; never better, never better, Jenny!"
+And stooping to his little daughter, who was holding his knees, he
+caught her up, and tossed her high in the air, but put her down at once,
+seeming almost to let her fall out of his hands, and, catching for
+breath, leaned against the well-curb.
+
+"What is it, Hobert? what is it?" and Jenny had her arm about him, and
+was drawing him toward the house.
+
+"Nothing, nothing,--a touch of rheumatism, I guess,--no, no! I must take
+care of the mare first." And as she drank the water from the full bucket
+he held poised on the curb for her, he thought of the elm-tree in the
+field he had left, of the mistletoe sucking the life out of it, and of
+the unfinished furrow. "Never mind, Fleety," he said, as he led her away
+to the stable, "we'll be up betimes to-morrow, and make amends, won't
+we?"
+
+"I believe, mother, I'll put on the new teacups!" Jenny said, as she set
+a chair before the cupboard, and climbed on it so as to reach the upper
+shelf. She had already spread the best table-cloth.
+
+"Why, what for?" asked the provident mother, looking up from the sock
+she was knitting.
+
+"O, I don't know; I want to make things look nice, that's all."
+
+But she did know, though the feeling was only half defined. It seemed to
+her as if Hobert were some visitor coming,--not her husband. A shadowy
+feeling of insecurity had touched her; the commonness of custom was
+gone, and she looked from the window often, as the preparation for
+supper went on, with all the sweetness of solicitude with which she used
+to watch for his coming from under the grape-vines. Little Jenny was
+ready with the towel when he came with his face dripping, and the
+easy-chair was set by the door that looked out on the garden. "I don't
+want it," the good grandmother said, as he hesitated; "I have been
+sitting in it all day, and am tired of it!"
+
+And as he sat there with his boy on his knee, and his little girl, who
+had climbed up behind him, combing his hair with her slender white
+fingers,--his own fields before him, and his busy wife making music
+about the house with her cheerful, hopeful talk,--he looked like a man
+to be envied; and so just then he was.
+
+The next morning he did not fulfil his promise to himself by rising
+early; he had been restless and feverish all night, and now was chilly.
+If he lay till breakfast was ready, he would feel better, Jenny said;
+she could milk, to be sure, and do all the rest of the work, and so he
+was persuaded. But when the breakfast was ready the chilliness had
+become a downright chill, so that the blankets that were over him shook
+like leaves in a strong wind.
+
+Jenny had a little money of her own hidden away in the bottom of the new
+cream-pitcher. She had saved it, unknown to Hobert, from the sale of
+eggs and other trifles, and had meant to surprise him by appearing in a
+new dress some morning when the church-bell rang; but now she turned the
+silver into her hand and counted it, thinking what nice warm flannel it
+would buy to make shirts for Hobert. Of course he had them, and Jenny
+had not made any sacrifice that she knew of,--indeed, that is a word of
+which love knows not the meaning.
+
+"We will have him up in a day or two," the women said, one to the other,
+as they busied themselves about the house, or sat at the bedside, doing
+those things that only the blessed hands of women can do, making those
+plans that only the loving hearts of women can make. But the day or two
+went by, and they didn't have Hobert up. Then they said to one another,
+"We must set to work in earnest; we have really done nothing for him as
+yet." And they plied their skill of nursing with new hope and new
+energy. Every morning he told them he was better, but in the afternoon
+it happened that he didn't feel quite like stirring about; he was still
+better, but he had a little headache, and was afraid of bringing on a
+chill.
+
+"To be sure! you need rest and quiet; you have been working too hard,
+and it's only a wonder you didn't give out sooner!" So the two women
+said to him; and then they told him he looked better than he did
+yesterday, and, with much tender little caressing of neck and arms and
+hands, assured him that his flesh felt as healthy and nice as could be.
+Nevertheless, his eyes settled deeper and deeper, and gathered more and
+more of a leaden color about them; his skin grew yellow, and fell into
+wrinkles that were almost rigid, and that beseeching, yearning
+expression, made up of confidence in you, and terror of some nameless
+thing,--that look, as of a soul calling and crying to you, which follows
+you when you go farther than common from a sick-pillow,--all that
+terrible appealing was in his face; and often Jenny paused with her eyes
+away from him, when she saw that look,--paused, and steadied up her
+heart, before she could turn back and meet him with a smile.
+
+And friendly neighbors came in of an evening, and told of the sick wife
+or boy at home; of the mildewed crop, and the lamed horse; of the
+brackish well, and of the clock bought from the pedler that wouldn't go,
+and wouldn't strike when it did go;--dwelling, in short, on all the
+darker incidents and accidents of life, and thus establishing a nearness
+and equality of relation to the sick man, that somehow soothed and
+cheered him. At these times he would be propped up in bed, and listen
+with sad satisfaction, sometimes himself entering with a sort of
+melancholy animation into the subject.
+
+He would not as yet accept any offers of assistance. The wood-pile was
+getting low, certainly, and the plough still lying slantwise in the
+furrow; the corn-crop was to be gathered, and the potatoes to be got out
+of the ground,--but there was time enough yet! He didn't mean to indulge
+his laziness much longer,--not he!
+
+And then the neighbor who had offered to serve him would laugh, and
+answer that he had not been altogether disinterested: he had only
+proposed to _lend_ a helping hand, expecting to need the like himself
+some day. "Trouble comes to us all, Mr. Walker, and we don't know whose
+turn it will be next. I want to take out a little insurance,--that's
+all!"
+
+"Well, another day, if I don't get better!"
+
+And the long hot rains were over at last; the clouds drew themselves
+off, and the sharp frosts, of a morning, were glistening far and near;
+the pumpkin-vines lay black along the ground, and the ungathered ears of
+corn hung black on the stalk.
+
+Hobert was no better. But still the two women told each other they
+didn't think he was any worse. His disease was only an ague, common to
+the time of year and to the new country. It had come on so late it was
+not likely now that he would get the better of it before spring; making
+some little sacrifices for the present, they must all be patient and
+wait; and the nursing went on, till every device of nursing was
+exhausted, and one remedy after another was tried, and one after another
+utterly failed, and the fond hearts almost gave out. But there was the
+winter coming on, cold and long, and there was little Hobert, only
+beginning to stand alone, and prattling Jenny, with the toes coming
+through her shoes, and her shoulder showing flat and thin above her
+summer dress. Ah! there could be no giving out; the mother's petticoat
+must be turned into aprons for the pinched shoulders, and the knit-wool
+stockings must make amends for the worn-out shoes. So they worked, and
+work was their greatest blessing. A good many things were done without
+consulting Hobert at all, and he was led to believe that all went easily
+and comfortably; the neighbors, from time to time, lent the helping
+hand, without so much as asking leave; and by these means there were a
+few potatoes in the cellar, a little corn in the barn, and a load of
+wood under the snow at the door.
+
+The table was not spread in the sickroom any more, as it had been for a
+while. They had thought it would amuse Hobert to see the little
+household ceremonies going on; but now they said it was better to avoid
+all unnecessary stir. Perhaps they thought it better that he should not
+see their scantier fare. Still they came into his presence very
+cheerfully, never hinting of hardship, never breathing the apprehension
+that began to trouble their hearts.
+
+It was during these long winter evenings, when the neighbors sat by the
+fire and did what they could to cheer the sick man and the sad women,
+that the wonderful merits of the great Doctor Killmany began to be
+frequently discussed. Marvellous stories were told of his almost
+superhuman skill. He had brought back from the very gate of death scores
+of men and women who had been given up to die by their physicians,--so
+it was said; and special instances of cures were related that were
+certainly calculated to inspire hope and confidence. None of these good
+people could of their own knowledge attest these wonderful cures; but
+there were many circumstances that added weight to the force of the
+general rumor.
+
+Dr. Killmany lived a great way off, and he charged a great price. He
+would not look at a man for less than a hundred dollars, so report said,
+and that was much in his favor. He had a very short way with
+patients,--asked no questions, and never listened to explanations,--but
+could tie down a man and take off his leg or arm, as the case might be,
+in an incredibly short space of time, paying as little heed to the cries
+and groans as to the buzzing of the flies. If anything further had been
+needed to establish his fame, it would have been found in the fact that
+he was very rich, wearing diamonds in his shirt-bosom, driving fine
+horses, and being, in fact, surrounded with all the luxuries that money
+can procure. Of course, he was a great doctor. How could it be
+otherwise? And it was enough to know that a Mr. A had seen a Mr. B who
+knew a Mr. C whose wife's mother was cured by him!
+
+At first these things were talked of in hearing of the sick man; then
+there began to be whispers about the fire as to the possibility of
+persuading him to sell all that he had and go to the great Doctor; for
+it was now pretty generally felt that the ague was only the
+accompaniment of a more terrible disease.
+
+Then at last it was suggested, as a wild pleasantry, by some daring
+visitor, "Suppose, Hobert, we should send you off one of these days,
+and have you back after a few weeks, sound and vigorous as a young colt!
+What should you say to that, my boy?"
+
+To the surprise of everybody, Hobert replied that he only wished it were
+possible.
+
+"Possible! Why, of course it's possible! Where there's a will, you
+know!" And then it began to be talked of less as an insane dream.
+
+One morning, as Jenny came into the sick man's room, she found him
+sitting up in bed with his shirt open and his hand on his breast.
+
+"What is it, Hobert?" she said; for there was a look in his eyes that
+made her tremble.
+
+"I don't know, Jenny; but whatever it is, it will be my death," he
+answered, and, falling upon her shoulder,--for she had come close to him
+and had her arm about his neck,--he sobbed like a child.
+
+The little hand was slipped under his, but Jenny said she could feel
+nothing; and I think she will be forgiven for that falsehood. He was
+sick, she said, worn out, and it was no wonder that strange fancies
+should take possession of him. She had neglected him too much; but now,
+though everything should go to pieces, he should have her first care,
+and her last care, and all her care; he should not be left alone any
+more to conjure up horrors; and when he said he was weak and foolish and
+ashamed of his tears, she pacified him with petting and with praises. He
+was everything that was right, everything that was strong and manly. A
+little more patience, and then it would be spring, and the sunshine
+would make him well. She put the hair away from his forehead, and told
+him how fair in the face he was grown; and then she shoved his sleeve to
+his elbow, and told him that his arms were almost as plump as they ever
+were; and so he was comforted, cheered even, and they talked over the
+plans and prospects of years to come. At last he fell asleep with a
+bright smile of hope in his face, and Jenny stooped softly and kissed
+him, and, stealing away on tiptoe, hid herself from her good old mother
+and from the eyes of her children, and wept long and bitterly.
+
+And the spring came, and Hobert crept out into the sunshine; but his
+cheek was pale, and his chest hollow, and there was more than the old
+listlessness upon him. As a tree that is dying will sometimes put forth
+sickly leaves and blossoms, and still be dying all the while, so it was
+with him. His hand was often on his breast, and his look often said,
+"This will be the death of me." The bees hummed in the flowers about his
+feet, the birds built their nests in the boughs above his head, and his
+children played about his knees; but his thoughts were otherwhere,--away
+beyond the dark river, away in that beautiful country where the
+inhabitants never say, "I am sick."
+
+It was about midsummer that one Mrs. Brown, well known to Mrs. Walker's
+family, and to all the people of the neighborhood, as having suffered
+for many years with some strange malady which none of the doctors
+understood, sold the remnant of her property, having previously wasted
+nearly all she had upon physicians, and betook herself to the great Dr.
+Killmany. What her condition had actually been is not material to my
+story, nor is it necessary to say anything about the treatment she
+received at the hands of the great doctor. It is enough to say that it
+cost her her last dollar,--that she worked her slow way home as best she
+could, arriving there at last with shoes nearly off her feet and gown
+torn and faded, but with health considerably improved. That she had sold
+her last cow, and her feather-bed, and her teakettle, and her
+sheep-shears, and her grandfather's musket, all added wonderfully to the
+great doctor's reputation.
+
+"You can't go to him if you don't go full-handed," said one to another;
+and he that heard it, and he that said it, laughed as though it were a
+good joke.
+
+Some said he could see right through a man: there was no need of words
+with him! And others, that he could take the brains out of the skull, or
+the bones out of the ankles, and leave the patient all the better for
+it. In short, there was nothing too extravagant to be said of
+him; and as for Mrs. Brown, the person who had seen her became
+semi-distinguished. She was invited all over the neighborhood, and her
+conversation was the most delightful of entertainments. Amongst the
+rest, she visited Mr. Walker; and through her instrumentality, his
+strong desire to see the great Dr. Killmany was shaped into purpose.
+
+Two of the cows were sold, most of the farming implements, and such
+articles of household furniture as could be spared; and with all this
+the money realized was but a hundred and fifty dollars. Then Jenny
+proposed to sell her side-saddle; and when that was gone, she said
+Fleety might as well go with it. "If you only come home well, Hobert,"
+she said, "we will soon be able to buy her back again; and if you
+don't--but you will!"
+
+So Fleetfoot went with the rest; and when for the last time she was led
+up before the door, and ate grass from the lap of little Jenny, and put
+her neck down to the caressing hands of young Hobert, it was a sore
+trial to them all. She seemed half conscious herself, indeed, and
+exhibited none of her accustomed playfulness with the children, but
+stood in a drooping attitude, with her eye intent upon her master; and
+when they would have taken her away, she hung back, and, stretching her
+neck till it reached his knees, licked his hands with a tenderness that
+was pitiful to see.
+
+"Don't, Hobert, don't take on about it," Jenny said, putting back the
+heart that was in her mouth; "we will have her back again, you
+know!"--and she gave Fleetfoot a little box on the ear that was half
+approval and half reproach, and so led Hobert back into the house.
+
+And that day was the saddest they had yet seen. And that night, when the
+sick man was asleep, the two women talked together and cried together,
+and in the end got such comfort as women get out of great sacrifices and
+bitter tears.
+
+They counted their little hoard. They had gathered three hundred dollars
+now, and there required to be yet as much more; and then they made plans
+as to what yet remained to be done. "We must mortgage the land," Jenny
+said, "that is all,--don't mind, mother. I don't mind anything, so that
+we only have Hobert well again." And then they talked of what they would
+do another year when they should be all together once more, and all
+well. "Think what Dr. Killmany has done for Mrs. Brown!" they said.
+
+And now came busy days; and in the earnestness of the preparation the
+sorrow of the coming parting was in some sort dissipated. Hobert's
+wearing-apparel was all brought out, and turned and overturned, and the
+most and the best made of everything. The wedding coat and the wedding
+shirt were almost as good as ever, Jenny said; and when the one had been
+brushed and pressed, and the other done up, she held them up before them
+all, and commented upon them with pride and admiration. The fashions had
+changed a little, to be sure, but what of that? The new fashions were
+not so nice as the old ones, to her thinking. Hobert would look smart in
+the old garments, at any rate, and perhaps nobody would notice. She was
+only desirous that he should make a good impression on the Doctor. And
+all that could be done to that end was done, many friends contributing,
+by way of little presents, to the comfort and respectability of the
+invalid. "Here is a leather pouch," said one, "that I bought of a pedler
+the other day. I don't want it; but as you are going to travel, may be
+you can make use of it, Walker; take it, any how."
+
+"I have got a new pair of saddle-bags," said the circuit-rider, "but I
+believe I like the old ones best. So, Brother Walker, you will oblige me
+by taking these off my hands. I find extra things more trouble to take
+care of than they are worth."
+
+It was not proposed that Hobert should travel with a trunk, so the
+saddle-bags were just what was required.
+
+"Here is a pair of shoes," said another. "Try them on, Walker, and see
+if you can wear them: they are too small for my clumsy feet!" They had
+been made by the village shoemaker to Mr. Walker's measure. Of course
+they fitted him, and of course he had them.
+
+"I'll bet you a new hat," said another, "that I come to see you ag'in,
+day after to-morrer, fur off as I live."
+
+The day after the morrow he did not come: he was "onaccountably
+hendered," he said; but when he did come he brought the new hat. He
+thought he would be as good as his word in one thing if not in another,
+and redeem his bet at any rate.
+
+"I'll bring my team: I want to go to town anyhow; and we'll all see you
+off together!" This was the offer of the farmer whose land adjoined Mr.
+Walker's; and the day of departure was fixed, and the morning of the day
+saw everything in readiness.
+
+"Hobert looks a'most like a storekeeper or a schoolmaster, don't he,
+mother?" Jenny said, looking upon him proudly, when he was arrayed in
+the new hat and the wedding coat.
+
+"Why, you are as spry as a boy!" exclaimed the farmer who was to drive
+them to town, seeing that Hobert managed to climb into the wagon without
+assistance. "I don't believe there is any need of Dr. Killmany, after
+all!" And the neighbors, as one after another they leaned over the
+sideboard of the wagon, and shook hands with Mr. Walker, made some
+cheerful and light-hearted remark, calculated to convey the impression
+that the leave-taking was a mere matter of form, and only for a day.
+
+As Jenny looked back at the homestead, and thought of the possibilities,
+the tears would come; but the owner of the team, determined to carry it
+bravely through, immediately gathered up the slack reins, and, with a
+lively crack of his whip, started the horses upon a brisk trot.
+
+"Don't spare the money," Jenny entreated, as she put the pocket-book in
+Hobert's hand; but she thought in her heart that Dr. Killmany would be
+touched when he saw her husband, and knew how far he had travelled to
+see him, and what sacrifices he had made to do so. "He must be good, if
+he is so great as they say," she argued; "and perhaps Hobert may even
+bring home enough to buy back Fleety." This was a wild dream. And the
+last parting words were said, the last promises exacted and given; the
+silent tears and the lingering looks all were past, and the farmer's
+wagon, with an empty chair by the side of Jenny's, rattled home again.
+
+It was perhaps a month after this that a pale, sickly-looking man, with
+a pair of saddle-bags over his arm, went ashore from the steamboat Arrow
+of Light, just landed at New Orleans, and made his slow way along the
+wharf, crowded with barrels, boxes, and cotton-bales, and thence to the
+open streets. The sun was oppressively hot, and the new fur hat became
+almost intolerable, so that the sick man stopped more than once in the
+shade of some friendly tree, and, placing the saddle-bags on the ground,
+wiped the sweat from his forehead, and looked wistfully at the strange
+faces that passed him by.
+
+"Can you tell me, my friend," he said at last, addressing a slave-woman
+who was passing by with a great bundle on her head,--"Can you tell me
+where to find Doctor Killmany, who lives somewhere here?"
+
+The woman put her bundle on the ground, and, resting her hands on her
+hips, looked pitifully upon the stranger. "No, masser, cante say, not
+for sure," she answered. "I knows dar's sich a doctor somewhars 'bout,
+but just whars I cante say, an' he's a poor doctor fur the likes o'
+you,--don't have noffen to do with him, nohow."
+
+"A poor doctor!" exclaimed the stranger. "Why, I understood he was the
+greatest doctor in the world; and I've come all the way from the Wabash
+country to see him."
+
+"Warbash! whar's dat? Norf, reckon; well you jes be gwine back Norf de
+fus boat, an dat's de bery bes' advice dis yere nigger can guv."
+
+"But what do you know about Dr. Killmany."
+
+"I knows dis yere, masser: he mos'ly sends dem ar' as ar' doctored by
+him to dar homes in a box!"
+
+Mr. Walker shuddered. "I don't want your advice," he said directly; "I
+only want to know where Dr. Killmany lives."
+
+"Cante say, masser, not percisely, as to dat ar'; kind o' seems to me
+he's done gone from hur, clar an' all; but jes over thar's a mighty good
+doctor; you can see his name afore the door if you'll step this yere way
+a bit. He doctors all de pour, an' dem dat ar' halt, and dem dat ar'
+struck with paralasy, jes for de love ob de ark and de covenant; an'
+he's jes de purtiest man to look at dat you ever sot eyes onto. Go in
+dar whar ye sees de white bline at de winder an' ax for Dr. Shepard, an'
+when you's once seen him, I reckon you won't want to find de udder man;
+but if you does, why he can pint de way. An' de Lord bless you and hab
+mercy on your soul."
+
+The sick man felt a good deal discouraged by what the old slave had
+said, and her last words impressed him with feelings of especial
+discomfort. He knew not which way to turn; and, in fact, found himself
+growing dizzy and blind, and was only able, with great effort, to stand
+at all. He must ask his way somewhere, however, and it might as well be
+there as another place.
+
+Dr. Shepard, who happened to be in his office, answered the inquiry
+promptly. Dr. Killmany was in quite another part of the city. "You don't
+look able to walk there, my good friend," he said; "but if you will sit
+here and wait for an hour, I shall be driving that way, and will take
+you with pleasure."
+
+Mr. Walker gratefully accepted the proffered chair, as indeed he was
+almost obliged to do; for within a few minutes the partial blindness had
+become total darkness, and the whole world seemed, as it were, slipping
+away from him.
+
+When he came to himself he was lying on a sofa in an inner room, and Dr.
+Shepard, who had just administered some cordial, was bending over him in
+the most kindly and sympathetic manner. It seemed not so much what he
+said, not so much what he did, but as though he carried about him an
+atmosphere of sweetness and healing that comforted and assured without
+words and without medicine. He made no pretence and no noise, but his
+smile was sunshine to the heart, and the touch of his hand imparted
+strength and courage to the despairing soul. It was as if good spirits
+went with him, and his very silence was pleasant company. Mr. Walker was
+in no haste to be gone. All his anxious cares seemed to fall away, and a
+peaceful sense of comfort and security came over him; his eyes followed
+Dr. Shepard as he moved about, and when a door interposed between them
+he felt lost and homesick. "If this were the man I had come to see, I
+should be happy." That was his thought all the while. Perhaps--who shall
+say not?--it was the blessings of the poor, to whom he most generously
+ministered, which gave to his manner that graciousness and charm which
+no words can convey, and to his touch that magnetism which is at once
+life-giving and love-inspiring.
+
+How it was Mr. Walker could not tell, and indeed wiser men than he could
+not have told, but he presently found himself opening his heart to this
+new doctor, as he had never opened it to anybody in all his life,--how
+he had married Jenny, how they had gone to the new country, the birth of
+the boy and the girl, the slow coming on of disease, the selling of
+Fleety, and the mortgaging of the farm. Doctor Shepard knew it all, and,
+more than this, he knew how much money had been accumulated, and how
+much of it was still left. He had examined the tumor in the breast, and
+knew that it could end in but one way. He had told Mr. Walker that he
+could be made more comfortable, and might live for years, perhaps, but
+that he must not hope to be cured, and that to get home to his family
+with all possible speed was the best advice he could give him. His words
+carried with them the weight of conviction, and the sick man was almost
+persuaded; but the thought of what would be said at home if he should
+come back without having seen the great Dr. Killmany urged him to try
+one last experiment.
+
+"What do you suppose he will charge me to look at this?" he inquired of
+Dr. Shepard, laying his hand on his breast.
+
+"Half you have, my friend."
+
+"And if he cuts it out?"
+
+"The other half."
+
+"O, dear me!"--and the sick man fell back upon the sofa, and for a good
+while thought to himself. Then came one of those wild suggestions of a
+vain hope. "Perhaps this man is the impostor, and not the other!" it
+said. "And what do I owe you for all you have done for me to-day?" he
+inquired.
+
+"Why, nothing, my good friend. I have done nothing for you; and my
+advice has certainly been disinterested. I don't want pay for that."
+
+"And suppose you should operate?"
+
+And then the doctor told him that he could not do that on any
+terms,--that no surgeon under the sun could perform a successful
+operation,--that all his hope was in quiet and care. "I will keep you
+here a few days," he said, "and build you up all I can, and when the
+Arrow of Light goes back again, I will see you aboard, and bespeak the
+kind attentions of the captain for you on the journey." That was not
+much like an impostor, and in his heart the sick man knew it was the
+right course to take,--the only course; and then he thought of Mrs.
+Brown and her wonderful cure, and of the great hopes they were
+entertaining at home, and he became silent, and again thought to
+himself.
+
+Three days he remained with Dr. Shepard, undecided, and resting and
+improving a little all the while. On the morning of the fourth day he
+said, placing his hand on his breast, "If I were only rid of this, I
+believe I should get quite well again." He could not give up the great
+Dr. Killmany. "I do not intend to put myself in his hands,--indeed, I am
+almost resolved that I will not do so," he said to Dr. Shepard; "but I
+will just call at his office, so that I can tell my folks I have seen
+him."
+
+"I must not say more to discourage you," replied Dr. Shepard; "perhaps I
+have already said too much,--certainly I have said much more than it is
+my habit to say, more than in any ordinary circumstances I would permit
+myself to say; but in your case I have felt constrained to acquit myself
+to my conscience";--and he turned away with a shadow of the tenderest
+and saddest gloom upon his face.
+
+"Are you, sir, going to Dr. Killmany?" asked an old man, who had been
+sitting by, eying Mr. Walker with deep concern; and on receiving an
+affirmative nod, he went on with zeal, if not with discretion: "Then,
+sir, you might as well knock your own brains out! I regard him, sir, as
+worse than a highway robber,--a good deal worse! The robber will
+sometimes spare your life, if he can as well as not, but Dr. Killmany
+has no more regard for human life than you have for that of a fly. He
+has a skilful hand to be sure, but his heart is as hard as flint. In
+short, sir, he is utterly without conscience, without humanity, without
+principle. Gain is his first object, his last object, his sole object;
+and if he ever did any good, it was simply incidental. Don't put
+yourself in his hands, whatever you do,--certainly not without first
+making your will!" And the old man, with a flushed and angry
+countenance, went away.
+
+Presently the sick man, relapsing into silent thought, drowsed into
+sleep, and a strange dream came to him. He seemed at home, sitting under
+the tree with the mistletoe in its boughs; he was tired and hungry, and
+there came to him a raven with food in its mouth, and the shadow of its
+wings was pleasant. He thought, at first, the food was for him; but the
+bird, perching on his shoulder, devoured the food, and afterward pecked
+at his breast until it opened a way to his heart, and with that in its
+claws flew away; and when it was gone, he knew it was not a bird, but
+that it was Dr. Killmany who had thus taken out his heart. "I will go
+home," he thought, "and tell Jenny"; and when he arose and put his hand
+on the neck of Fleety, who had been standing in the furrow close by, she
+became a shadow, and instantly vanished out of sight. He then strove to
+walk, and, lo! the strength was gone out of his limbs, and, as he sank
+down, the roots of the mistletoe struck in his bosom, ran through and
+through him, and fastened themselves in the earth beneath, and he became
+as one dead, only with the consciousness of being dead.
+
+When he awoke, he related the dream, having given it, as it appeared, a
+melancholy interpretation, for he expressed himself determined to return
+home immediately. "I will take passage on the Arrow," he said to Dr.
+Shepard; and then he counted up the number of days that must go by
+before he could have his own green fields beneath his eyes, and his
+little ones climbing about his knees.
+
+"I wish I had never left my home," he said; "I wish I had never heard of
+Dr. Killmany!" and then he returned to his dream and repeated portions
+of it; and then he said, seeming to be thinking aloud, "My good old
+mother! my dear, poor Jenny!"
+
+"The sick man's brain is liable to strange fancies," says Dr. Shepard;
+"you must not think too seriously of it, but your resolve is very wise."
+He then said he would see the captain of the Arrow, as he had promised,
+and went away with a smile on his face, and a great weight lifted off
+his heart.
+
+A few minutes after this, Hobert Walker was again in the street, the
+heavy fur hat on his head, and the well-filled saddle-bags across his
+arm.
+
+Perhaps sickness is in some sort insanity. At any rate, he no sooner
+found himself alone than the desire to see the great Dr. Killmany came
+upon him with all the force of insanity; his intention probably being to
+go and return within an hour, and keep his little secret to himself.
+Perhaps, too, he wished to have it to say at home that he had seen the
+great man for himself, and decided against him of his own knowledge.
+
+Dr. Killmany was found without much difficulty; but his rooms were
+crowded with patients, and there was no possibility of access to him for
+hours.
+
+"It cannot be that so many are deceived," thought Hobert. "I will wait
+with the rest." Then came the encouraging hope, "What if I should go
+home cured, after all!" He felt almost as if Dr. Shepard had defrauded
+him out of two or three days, and talked eagerly with one and another,
+as patient after patient came forth from consultation with Dr. Killmany,
+all aglow with hope and animation. It was near sunset when his turn
+came. He had waited five hours, but it was come at last; and with his
+heart in his mouth, and his knees shaking under him, he stood face to
+face with the arbitrator of his destiny. There was no smile on the face
+of the man, no sweetness in his voice as he said, looking at Hobert from
+under scowling brows, "What brings _you_, sir? Tell it, and be brief:
+time with me is money."
+
+Then Hobert, catching at a chair to sustain himself, for he was not
+asked to sit, explained his condition as well as fright and awkwardness
+would permit him to do; going back to the commencement of his disease,
+and entering unnecessarily into many particulars, as well as making
+superfluous mention of wife and mother. "It isn't with your wife and
+mother that I have to deal," interposed Dr. Killmany;--"dear to you, I
+dare say, but nothing to me, sir,--nothing at all. I have no time to
+devote to your relatives. Open your shirt, sir! there, that'll do! A
+mere trifle, sir, but it is well you have come in time."
+
+"Do you mean to say you can cure me?" inquired Hobert, all his heart
+a-flutter with the excitement of hope.
+
+"Exactly so. I can remove that difficulty of yours in five minutes, and
+have you on your feet again,--operation neglected, death certain within
+a year, perhaps sooner. Done with you sir. You now have your choice,
+make way!"
+
+Hobert went staggering out of the room, feeling as if the raven of his
+dream already had its beak in his heart, when a pert official reached
+out his hand with the demand, "Consultation fee, if you please, sir."
+
+"How much?" asked Hobert, leaning against the wall, and searching for
+his pocket-book.
+
+"Fifty dollars, sir,"--and the official spoke as though that were a
+trifle scarcely worth mentioning. The hands of the sick man trembled,
+and his eyes grew blind as he sought to count up the sum; and as his
+entire treasure was formed out of the smallest notes, the process was a
+slow one, and before it was accomplished it seemed to him that not only
+Fleety was turning to a shadow, but the whole world as well.
+
+Somehow, he hardly knew how, he found himself in the fresh air, and the
+official still at his elbow. "You are not going to leave us this way?"
+he said. "You will only have thrown your money away." And he pocketed
+the sum Hobert had just put in his hand.
+
+"Better that than more," Hobert answered, and was turning sadly away.
+
+"Allow me to detain you, sir, one moment, only just one moment!" And the
+official, or rather decoy, whispered in his ear tales of such wonderful
+cures as almost dissuaded him from his purpose.
+
+"But I am resolved to go home on the Arrow," he said, making a last
+stand, "and I must have something to leave my poor Jenny."
+
+And then the official told him that he could go home aboard the Arrow,
+if he chose, and go a well man, or the same as a well man; and what
+could he bring to his wife so acceptable as himself, safe and sound! And
+then he told other tales of sick men who had been carried to Dr.
+Killmany on their beds, and within a few hours walked away on their
+feet, blessing his name, and publishing his fame far and wide.
+
+Hobert began to waver, nor is it strange; for what will not a man give
+for his life? The world had not loosened its hold upon him much as yet;
+the grass under his feet and the sunshine over his head were pleasant
+things to him, and his love for his good little wife was still invested
+with all the old romance; and to die and go he knew not where, there was
+a terror about that which his faith was not strong enough to dissipate.
+The decoy watched and waited. He contrasted the husband returning home
+with haggard cheek and listless step and the shadow of dark doom all
+about him, having a few hundred dollars in his pocket, with a husband
+empty-handed, but with bright cheeks, and cheerful spirits, and with
+strong legs under him! Then Hobert repeated the story he had told to Dr.
+Shepard,--all about the little treasure with which he had set out, how
+hardly it had been gathered together, what had been already fruitlessly
+expended, and just how much remained,--he told it all as he had told it
+in the first instance, but with what different effect!
+
+Dr. Killmany never touched any case for a sum like that! Indeed, his
+services were in such requisition, it was almost impossible to obtain
+them on any terms; but he, the decoy, for reasons which he did not
+state, would exert to the utmost his own personal influence in Hobert's
+favor. "I cannot promise you a favorable answer," he said; "there is
+just a possibility, and that is all. A man like Dr. Killmany, sir, can't
+be haggling about dollars and cents!" And then he intimated that such
+things might be well enough for Dr. Shepard and his sort of practice.
+
+There was some further talk, and the time ran by, and it was night.
+Against his will almost, Hobert had been persuaded. He was to sleep in
+the Doctor's office that night, and his case was to be the first
+attended to in the morning. "You can rest very well on the floor, I
+suppose," the decoy had said, "taking your saddle-bags for a pillow. The
+whole thing will be over in half an hour, and I myself will see you
+aboard the Arrow before ten o'clock, and so you need take no more
+thought for yourself."
+
+That night, when at last Hobert made a pillow of his saddle-bags and
+coiled himself together, he felt as if a circle of fire were narrowing
+around him, and yet utter inability to escape.
+
+"You need take no more thought for yourself." These words kept ringing
+in his ears like a knell, and the mistletoe striking through his bosom,
+and the beak of the raven in his heart,--these were the sensations with
+which, long after midnight, he drowsed into sleep.
+
+When he awoke, there was a rough hand on his shoulder and a harsh voice
+in his ear. The room was light with the light of morning, but dark with
+the shadow of coming doom. There came upon him a strange and great
+calmness when he found himself in the operating-room. There were all the
+frightful preparations,--the water, the sponges, the cloths and
+bandages, the Doctor with his case of instruments before him, and
+looking more like a murderer than a surgeon. Almost his heart misgave
+him as he looked around, and remembered Jenny and the little ones at
+home; but the carriage that was to take him aboard the Arrow already
+waited at the door, and the sight of it reassured him.
+
+"You will hardly know where you are till you find yourself safe in your
+berth," said Dr. Killmany; "and to avoid any delay after the operation,
+from which you will necessarily be somewhat weak, you had perhaps better
+pay me now." And these were the most civil words he had yet spoken.
+
+So Hobert paid into his hand the last dollar he had.
+
+"Now, sir," he said; and Hobert laid himself down on the table. A
+minute, and of what befell him after that he was quite unconscious. It
+was as the doctor had told him; he knew not where he was until he found
+himself in his berth aboard the Arrow. "Where am I?" was his first
+inquiry, feeling a sense of strangeness,--feeling, indeed, as though he
+were a stranger to himself.
+
+"You are going home, my poor friend,--going home a little sooner than
+you expected,--that is all."
+
+Then the sick man opened his eyes; for he had recognized the tender
+voice, and saw Dr. Shepard bending over him, and he knew where he was,
+and what had happened; for he was shivering from head to foot. The
+sleeve of his right arm was red and wet, and there was a dull, slow
+aching in his bosom. "Ay, Doctor," he answered, pressing faintly the
+hand that held his, "I am going home,--home to a better country. 'T is
+all like a shadow about me now, and I am cold,--so cold!" He never came
+out of that chill, and these were the last words he ever spoke.
+
+"That man has been just the same as murdered, I take it!" exclaimed the
+captain of the Arrow, meeting Dr. Shepard as he turned away from the
+bedside.
+
+"I must not say that," replied the Doctor; "but if I had performed the
+operation, under the circumstances, I should think myself his murderer."
+
+"And if you had taken his money, you would perhaps think yourself a
+thief, too! At any rate, I should think you one," was the answer of the
+captain. And he then related to Dr. Shepard how the man, in an almost
+dying condition, had been brought aboard the Arrow by one of Dr.
+Killmany's menials, hustled into bed, and so left to his fate; and he
+concluded by saying, "And what are we to do now, Doctor?"
+
+What the Doctor's reply was need not be reported at length. Suffice it
+to say, that the departure of the Arrow was deferred for an hour, and
+when she sailed the state-room in which Hobert had breathed his last was
+occupied by a lively little lady and two gayly-dressed children, and on
+the wall from which the fur hat and the saddle-bags had been removed
+fluttered a variety of rainbow-hued scarfs and ribbons, and in the
+window where the shadow had been a golden-winged bird was singing in the
+sunshine.
+
+Some two or three weeks went by, and the farmer who had driven to town
+when Hobert was about to set out on his long journey, starting so
+smartly, and making so light of the farewells, drove thither again, and
+this time his wagon-bed was empty, except for the deep cushion of straw.
+He drove slowly and with downcast looks; and as he returned, a dozen men
+met him at the entrance of the village, and at sober pace followed to
+the meeting-house, the door of which stood wide.
+
+A little low talk as they all gathered round, and then four of them
+lifted from the wagon the long box it contained, and bore it on their
+shoulders reverently and tenderly within the open gate, through the wide
+door, along the solemn aisle and close beneath the pulpit, where they
+placed it very softly, and then stood back with uncovered heads, while a
+troop of little girls, who waited, with aprons full of flowers, drew
+near and emptied them on the ground, so that nothing was to be seen but
+a great heap of flowers; and beneath them was the body of HOBERT WALKER.
+
+
+
+
+MY FARM: A FABLE.
+
+
+    Within a green and pleasant land
+      I own a favorite plantation,
+    Whose woods and meads, if rudely planned,
+      Are still, at least, my own creation.
+          Some genial sun or kindly shower
+          Has here and there wooed forth a flower,
+      And touched the fields with expectation.
+
+    I know what feeds the soil I till,
+      What harvest-growth it best produces.
+    My forests shape themselves at will,
+      My grapes mature their proper juices.
+          I know the brambles and the weeds,
+          But know the fruits and wholesome seeds,--
+      Of those the hurt, of these the uses.
+
+    And working early, working late,
+      Directing crude and random Nature,
+    'T is joy to see my small estate
+      Grow fairer in the slightest feature.
+          If but a single wild-rose blow,
+          Or fruit-tree bend with April snow,
+      That day am I the happiest creature!
+
+    But round the borders of the land
+      Dwell many neighbors, fond of roving;
+    With curious eye and prying hand
+      About my fields I see them moving.
+          Some tread my choicest herbage down,
+          And some of weeds would weave a crown,
+      And bid me wear it, unreproving.
+
+    "What trees!" says one; "whoever saw
+      A grove, like this, of _my_ possessing?
+    This vale offends my upland's law;
+      This sheltered garden needs suppressing.
+          My rocks this grass would never yield,
+          And how absurd the level field!
+      What here will grow is past my guessing."
+
+    "Behold the slope!" another cries:
+      "No sign of bog or meadow near it!
+    A varied surface I despise:
+      There's not a stagnant pool to cheer it!"
+          "Why plough at all?" remarked a third,
+          "Heaven help the man!" a fourth I heard,--
+      "His farm's a jungle: let him clear it!"
+
+    No friendly counsel I disdain:
+      My fields are free to every comer;
+    Yet that, which one to praise is fain,
+      But makes another's visage glummer.
+          I bow them out, and welcome in,
+          But while I seek some truth to win
+      Goes by, unused, the golden summer!
+
+    Ah! vain the hope to find in each
+      The wisdom each denies the other;
+    These mazes of conflicting speech
+      All theories of culture smother.
+          I'll raise and reap, with honest hand,
+          The native harvest of my land;
+      Do thou the same, my wiser brother!
+
+
+
+
+PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+Concord, _Saturday, August 13, 1842._--My life, at this time, is more
+like that of a boy, externally, than it has been since I was really a
+boy. It is usually supposed that the cares of life come with matrimony;
+but I seem to have cast off all care, and live on with as much easy
+trust in Providence as Adam could possibly have felt before he had
+learned that there was a world beyond Paradise. My chief anxiety
+consists in watching the prosperity of my vegetables, in observing how
+they are affected by the rain or sunshine, in lamenting the blight of
+one squash and rejoicing at the luxurious growth of another. It is as if
+the original relation between man and Nature were restored in my case,
+and that I were to look exclusively to her for the support of my Eve and
+myself,--to trust to her for food and clothing, and all things needful,
+with the full assurance that she would not fail me. The fight with the
+world,--the struggle of a man among men,--the agony of the universal
+effort to wrench the means of living from a host of greedy
+competitors,--all this seems like a dream to me. My business is merely
+to live and to enjoy; and whatever is essential to life and enjoyment
+will come as naturally as the dew from heaven. This is, practically at
+least, my faith. And so I awake in the morning with a boyish
+thoughtlessness as to how the outgoings of the day are to be provided
+for, and its incomings rendered certain. After breakfast, I go forth
+into my garden, and gather whatever the bountiful Mother has made fit
+for our present sustenance; and of late days she generally gives me two
+squashes and a cucumber, and promises me green corn and shell-beans very
+soon. Then I pass down through our orchard to the river-side, and ramble
+along its margin in search of flowers. Usually I discern a fragrant
+white lily, here and there along the shore, growing, with sweet
+prudishness, beyond the grasp of mortal arm. But it does not escape me
+so. I know what is its fitting destiny better than the silly flower
+knows for itself; so I wade in, heedless of wet trousers, and seize the
+shy lily by its slender stem. Thus I make prize of five or six, which
+are as many as usually blossom within my reach in a single
+morning;--some of them partially worm-eaten or blighted, like virgins
+with an eating sorrow at the heart; others as fair and perfect as
+Nature's own idea was, when she first imagined this lovely flower. A
+perfect pond-lily is the most satisfactory of flowers. Besides these, I
+gather whatever else of beautiful chances to be growing in the moist
+soil by the river-side,--an amphibious tribe, yet with more richness and
+grace than the wild-flowers of the deep and dry woodlands and
+hedge-rows,--sometimes the white arrow-head, always the blue spires and
+broad green leaves of the pickerel-flower, which contrast and harmonize
+so well with the white lilies. For the last two or three days, I have
+found scattered stalks of the cardinal-flower, the gorgeous scarlet of
+which it is a joy even to remember. The world is made brighter and
+sunnier by flowers of such a hue. Even perfume, which otherwise is the
+soul and spirit of a flower, may be spared when it arrays itself in this
+scarlet glory. It is a flower of thought and feeling, too; it seems to
+have its roots deep down in the hearts of those who gaze at it. Other
+bright flowers sometimes impress me as wanting sentiment; but it is not
+so with this.
+
+Well, having made up my bunch of flowers, I return home with them....
+Then I ascend to my study, and generally read, or perchance scribble in
+this journal, and otherwise suffer Time to loiter onward at his own
+pleasure, till the dinner-hour. In pleasant days, the chief event of the
+afternoon, and the happiest one of the day, is our walk.... So comes the
+night; and I look back upon a day spent in what the world would call
+idleness, and for which I myself can suggest no more appropriate
+epithet, but which, nevertheless, I cannot feel to have been spent
+amiss. True, it might be a sin and shame, in such a world as ours, to
+spend a lifetime in this manner; but for a few summer weeks it is good
+to live as if this world were heaven. And so it is, and so it shall be,
+although, in a little while, a flitting shadow of earthly care and toil
+will mingle itself with our realities.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Monday, August 15th._--George Hillard and his wife arrived from Boston
+in the dusk of Saturday evening, to spend Sunday with us. It was a
+pleasant sensation, when the coach rumbled up our avenue, and wheeled
+round at the door; for I felt that I was regarded as a man with a
+household,--a man having a tangible existence and locality in the
+world,--when friends came to avail themselves of our hospitality. It was
+a sort of acknowledgment and reception of us into the corps of married
+people,--a sanction by no means essential to our peace and well-being,
+but yet agreeable enough to receive. So we welcomed them cordially at
+the door, and ushered them into our parlor, and soon into the
+supper-room.... The night flitted over us all, and passed away, and up
+rose a gray and sullen morning,... and we had a splendid breakfast of
+flapjacks, or slapjacks, and whortleberries, which I gathered on a
+neighboring hill, and perch, bream, and pout, which I hooked out of the
+river the evening before. About nine o'clock, Hillard and I set out for
+a walk to Walden Pond, calling by the way at Mr. Emerson's, to obtain
+his guidance or directions, and he accompanied us in his own illustrious
+person. We turned aside a little from our way, to visit Mr. ----, a
+yeoman, of whose homely and self-acquired wisdom Mr. Emerson has a very
+high opinion. We found him walking in his fields, a short and stalwart
+and sturdy personage of middle age, with a face of shrewd and kind
+expression, and manners of natural courtesy. He had a very free flow of
+talk, and not much diffidence about his own opinions; for, with a little
+induction from Mr. Emerson, he began to discourse about the state of the
+nation, agriculture, and business in general, uttering thoughts that had
+come to him at the plough, and which had a sort of flavor of the fresh
+earth about them. I was not impressed with any remarkable originality in
+his views; but they were sensible and characteristic, and had grown in
+the soil where we found them;... and he is certainly a man of
+intellectual and moral substance, a sturdy fact, a reality, something to
+be felt and touched, whose ideas seem to be dug out of his mind as he
+digs potatoes, beets, carrots, and turnips out of the ground.
+
+After leaving Mr. ----, we proceeded through wood paths to Walden Pond,
+picking blackberries of enormous size along the way. The pond itself was
+beautiful and refreshing to my soul, after such long and exclusive
+familiarity with our tawny and sluggish river. It lies embosomed among
+wooded hills,--it is not very extensive, but large enough for waves to
+dance upon its surface, and to look like a piece of blue firmament,
+earth-encircled. The shore has a narrow, pebbly strand, which it was
+worth a day's journey to look at, for the sake of the contrast between
+it and the weedy, oozy margin of the river. Farther within its depths,
+you perceive a bottom of pure white sand, sparkling through the
+transparent water, which, methought, was the very purest liquid in the
+world. After Mr. Emerson left us, Hillard and I bathed in the pond, and
+it does really seem as if my spirit, as well as corporeal person, were
+refreshed by that bath. A good deal of mud and river slime had
+accumulated on my soul; but these bright waters washed it all away.
+
+We returned home in due season for dinner.... To my misfortune, however,
+a box of Mediterranean wine proved to have undergone the acetous
+fermentation; so that the splendor of the festival suffered some
+diminution. Nevertheless, we ate our dinner with a good appetite, and
+afterwards went universally to take our several siestas. Meantime there
+came a shower, which so besprinkled the grass and shrubbery as to make
+it rather wet for our after-tea ramble. The chief result of the walk was
+the bringing home of an immense burden of the trailing clematis-vine,
+now just in blossom, and with which all our flower-stands and vases are
+this morning decorated. On our return we found Mr. and Mrs. S----, and
+E. H----, who shortly took their leave, and we sat up late, telling
+ghost-stories. This morning, at seven, our friends left us. We were both
+pleased with the visit, and so I think were our guests.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Monday, August 22nd._--I took a walk through the woods yesterday
+afternoon, to Mr. Emerson's, with a book which Margaret Fuller had left,
+after a call on Saturday eve. I missed the nearest way, and wandered
+into a very secluded portion of the forest; for forest it might justly
+be called, so dense and sombre was the shade of oaks and pines. Once I
+wandered into a tract so overgrown with bushes and underbrush that I
+could scarcely force a passage through. Nothing is more annoying than a
+walk of this kind, where one is tormented by an innumerable host of
+petty impediments. It incenses and depresses me at the same time. Always
+when I flounder into the midst of bushes, which cross and intertwine
+themselves about my legs, and brush my face, and seize hold of my
+clothes, with their multitudinous grip,--always, in such a difficulty, I
+feel as if it were almost as well to lie down and die in rage and
+despair as to go one step farther. It is laughable, after I have got out
+of the moil, to think how miserably it affected me for the moment; but I
+had better learn patience betimes, for there are many such bushy tracts
+in this vicinity, on the margins of meadows, and my walks will often
+lead me into them. Escaping from the bushes, I soon came to an open
+space among the woods,--a very lovely spot, with the tall old trees
+standing around as quietly as if no one had intruded there throughout
+the whole summer. A company of crows were holding their Sabbath on their
+summits. Apparently they felt themselves injured or insulted by my
+presence; for, with one consent, they began to Caw! caw! caw! and,
+launching themselves sullenly on the air, took flight to some securer
+solitude. Mine, probably, was the first human shape that they had seen
+all day long,--at least, if they had been stationary in that spot; but
+perhaps they had winged their way over miles and miles of country, had
+breakfasted on the summit of Greylock, and dined at the base of
+Wachusett, and were merely come to sup and sleep among the quiet woods
+of Concord. But it was my impression at the time, that they had sat
+still and silent on the tops of the trees all through the Sabbath day,
+and I felt like one who should unawares disturb an assembly of
+worshippers. A crow, however, has no real pretensions to religion, in
+spite of his gravity of mien and black attire. Crows are certainly
+thieves, and probably infidels. Nevertheless, their voices yesterday
+were in admirable accordance with the influences of the quiet, sunny,
+warm, yet autumnal afternoon. They were so far above my head that their
+loud clamor added to the quiet of the scene, instead of disturbing it.
+There was no other sound, except the song of the cricket, which is but
+an audible stillness; for, though it be very loud and heard afar, yet
+the mind does not take note of it as a sound, so entirely does it mingle
+and lose its individuality among the other characteristics of coming
+autumn. Alas for the summer! The grass is still verdant on the hills and
+in the valleys; the foliage of the trees is as dense as ever, and as
+green; the flowers are abundant along the margin of the river, and in
+the hedge-rows, and deep among the woods; the days, too, are as fervid
+as they were a month ago; and yet in every breath of wind and in every
+beam of sunshine there is an autumnal influence. I know not how to
+describe it. Methinks there is a sort of coolness amid all the heat, and
+a mildness in the brightest of the sunshine. A breeze cannot stir,
+without thrilling me with the breath of autumn, and I behold its pensive
+glory in the far, golden gleams among the long shadows of the trees. The
+flowers, even the brightest of them,--the golden-rod and the gorgeous
+cardinals,--the most glorious flowers of the year,--have this gentle
+sadness amid their pomp. Pensive autumn is expressed in the glow of
+every one of them. I have felt this influence earlier in some years than
+in others. Sometimes autumn may be perceived even in the early days of
+July. There is no other feeling like that caused by this faint,
+doubtful, yet real perception, or rather prophecy, of the year's decay,
+so deliciously sweet and sad at the same time.
+
+After leaving the book at Mr. Emerson's I returned through the woods,
+and, entering Sleepy Hollow, I perceived a lady reclining near the path
+which bends along its verge. It was Margaret herself. She had been there
+the whole afternoon, meditating or reading; for she had a book in her
+hand, with some strange title, which I did not understand, and have
+forgotten. She said that nobody had broken her solitude, and was just
+giving utterance to a theory that no inhabitant of Concord ever visited
+Sleepy Hollow, when we saw a group of people entering the sacred
+precincts. Most of them followed a path which led them away from us; but
+an old man passed near us, and smiled to see Margaret reclining on the
+ground, and me sitting by her side. He made some remark about the beauty
+of the afternoon, and withdrew himself into the shadow of the wood. Then
+we talked about autumn, and about the pleasures of being lost in the
+woods, and about the crows, whose voices Margaret had heard; and about
+the experiences of early childhood, whose influence remains upon the
+character after the recollection of them has passed away; and about the
+sight of mountains from a distance, and the view from their summits; and
+about other matters of high and low philosophy. In the midst of our
+talk, we heard footsteps above us, on the high bank; and while the
+person was still hidden among the trees, he called to Margaret, of whom
+he had gotten a glimpse. Then he emerged from the green shade, and,
+behold! it was Mr. Emerson. He appeared to have had a pleasant time; for
+he said that there were Muses in the woods to-day, and whispers to be
+heard in the breezes. It being now nearly six o'clock, we
+separated,--Margaret and Mr. Emerson towards his home, and I towards
+mine....
+
+Last evening there was the most beautiful moonlight that ever hallowed
+this earthly world; and when I went to bathe in the river, which was as
+calm as death, it seemed like plunging down into the sky. But I had
+rather be on earth than even in the seventh heaven, just now.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Wednesday, August 24th._--I left home at five o'clock this morning to
+catch some fish for breakfast. I shook our summer apple-tree, and ate
+the golden apple which fell from it. Methinks these early apples, which
+come as a golden promise before the treasures of autumnal fruit, are
+almost more delicious than anything that comes afterwards. We have but
+one such tree in our orchard; but it supplies us with a daily abundance,
+and probably will do so for at least a week to come. Meantime other
+trees begin to cast their ripening windfalls upon the grass; and when I
+taste them, and perceive their mellowed flavor and blackening seeds, I
+feel somewhat overwhelmed with the impending bounties of Providence. I
+suppose Adam, in Paradise, did not like to see his fruits decaying on
+the ground, after he had watched them through the sunny days of the
+world's first summer. However, insects, at the worst, will hold a
+festival upon them, so that they will not be thrown away, in the great
+scheme of Nature. Moreover, I have one advantage over the primeval Adam,
+inasmuch as there is a chance of disposing of my superfluous fruits
+among people who inhabit no Paradise of their own.
+
+Passing a little way down along the river-side, I threw in my line, and
+soon drew out one of the smallest possible of fishes. It seemed to be a
+pretty good morning for the angler,--an autumnal coolness in the air, a
+clear sky, but with a fog across the lowlands and on the surface of the
+river, which a gentle breeze sometimes condensed into wreaths. At first
+I could barely discern the opposite shore of the river; but, as the sun
+arose, the vapors gradually dispersed, till only a warm, smoky tint was
+left along the water's surface. The farm-houses across the river made
+their appearance out of the dusky cloud; the voices of boys were heard,
+shouting to the cattle as they drove them to the pastures; a man whetted
+his scythe, and set to work in a neighboring meadow. Meantime, I
+continued to stand on the oozy margin of the stream, beguiling the
+little fish; and though the scaly inhabitants of our river partake
+somewhat of the character of their native element, and are but sluggish
+biters, still I contrived to pull out not far from two dozen. They were
+all bream, a broad, flat, almost circular fish, shaped a good deal like
+a flounder, but swimming on their edges, instead of on their sides. As
+far as mere pleasure is concerned, it is hardly worth while to fish in
+our river, it is so much like angling in a mud-puddle; and one does not
+attach the idea of freshness and purity to the fishes, as we do to those
+which inhabit swift, transparent streams, or haunt the shores of the
+great briny deep. Standing on the weedy margin, and throwing the line
+over the elder-bushes that dip into the water, it seems as if we could
+catch nothing but frogs and mud-turtles, or reptiles akin to them. And
+even when a fish of reputable aspect is drawn out, one feels a shyness
+about touching him. As to our river, its character was admirably
+expressed last night by some one who said "it was too lazy to keep
+itself clean." I might write pages and pages, and only obscure the
+impression which this brief sentence conveys. Nevertheless, we made bold
+to eat some of my fish for breakfast, and found them very savory; and
+the rest shall meet with due entertainment at dinner, together with some
+shell-beans, green corn, and cucumbers from our garden; so this day's
+food comes directly and entirely from beneficent Nature, without the
+intervention of any third person between her and us.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Saturday, August 27th._--A peach-tree, which grows beside our house and
+brushes against the window, is so burdened with fruit that I have had to
+prop it up. I never saw more splendid peaches in appearance,--great,
+round, crimson-cheeked beauties, clustering all over the tree. A
+pear-tree, likewise, is maturing a generous burden of small, sweet
+fruit, which will require to be eaten at about the same time as the
+peaches. There is something pleasantly annoying in this superfluous
+abundance; it is like standing under a tree of ripe apples, and giving
+it a shake, with the intention of bringing down a single one, when,
+behold, a dozen come thumping about our ears. But the idea of the
+infinite generosity and exhaustless bounty of our Mother Nature is well
+worth attaining; and I never had it so vividly as now, when I find
+myself, with the few mouths which I am to feed, the sole inheritor of
+the old clergyman's wealth of fruits. His children, his friends in the
+village, and the clerical guests who came to preach in his pulpit, were
+all wont to eat and be filled from these trees. Now, all these hearty
+old people have passed away, and in their stead is a solitary pair,
+whose appetites are more than satisfied with the windfalls which the
+trees throw down at their feet. Howbeit, we shall have now and then a
+guest to keep our peaches and pears from decaying.
+
+G---- B----, my old fellow-laborer at the community at Brook Farm,
+called on me last evening, and dined here to-day. He has been
+cultivating vegetables at Plymouth this summer, and selling them in the
+market. What a singular mode of life for a man of education and
+refinement,--to spend his days in hard and earnest bodily toil, and then
+to convey the products of his labor, in a wheelbarrow, to the public
+market, and there retail them out,--a peck of peas or beans, a bunch of
+turnips, a squash, a dozen ears of green corn! Few men, without some
+eccentricity of character, would have the moral strength to do this; and
+it is very striking to find such strength combined with the utmost
+gentleness, and an uncommon regularity of nature. Occasionally he
+returns for a day or two to resume his place among scholars and idle
+people, as, for instance, the present week, when he has thrown aside his
+spade and hoe to attend the Commencement at Cambridge. He is a rare
+man,--a perfect original, yet without any one salient point; a character
+to be felt and understood, but almost impossible to describe: for,
+should you seize upon any characteristic, it would inevitably be altered
+and distorted in the process of writing it down.
+
+Our few remaining days of summer have been latterly grievously darkened
+with clouds. To-day there has been an hour or two of hot sunshine; but
+the sun rose amid cloud and mist, and before he could dry up the
+moisture of last night's shower upon the trees and grass, the clouds
+have gathered between him and us again. This afternoon the thunder
+rumbles in the distance, and I believe a few drops of rain have fallen;
+but the weight of the shower has burst elsewhere, leaving us nothing but
+its sullen gloom. There is a muggy warmth in the atmosphere, which takes
+all the spring and vivacity out of the mind and body.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Sunday, August 28th._--Still another rainy day,--the heaviest rain, I
+believe, that has fallen since we came to Concord (not two months ago).
+There never was a more sombre aspect of all external nature. I gaze from
+the open window of my study, somewhat disconsolately, and observe the
+great willow-tree which shades the house, and which has caught and
+retained a whole cataract of rain among its leaves and boughs; and all
+the fruit-trees, too, are dripping continually, even in the brief
+intervals when the clouds give us a respite. If shaken to bring down the
+fruit, they will discharge a shower upon the head of him who stands
+beneath. The rain is warm, coming from some southern region; but the
+willow attests that it is an autumnal spell of weather, by scattering
+down no infrequent multitude of yellow leaves, which rest upon the
+sloping roof of the house, and strew the gravel-path and the grass. The
+other trees do not yet shed their leaves, though in some of them a
+lighter tint of verdure, tending towards yellow, is perceptible. All day
+long we hear the water drip, drip, dripping, splash, splash, splashing,
+from the eaves, and babbling and foaming into the tubs which have been
+set out to receive it. The old unpainted shingles and boards of the
+mansion and out-houses are black with the moisture which they have
+imbibed. Looking at the river, we perceive that its usually smooth and
+mirrored surface is blurred by the infinity of rain-drops; the whole
+landscape--grass, trees, and houses--has a completely water-soaked
+aspect, as if the earth were wet through. The wooded hill, about a mile
+distant, whither we went to gather whortleberries, has a mist upon its
+summit, as if the demon of the rain were enthroned there; and if we look
+to the sky, it seems as if all the water that had been poured down upon
+us were as nothing to what is to come. Once in a while, indeed, there is
+a gleam of sky along the horizon, or a half-cheerful, half-sullen
+lighting up of the atmosphere; the rain-drops cease to patter down,
+except when the trees shake off a gentle shower; but soon we hear the
+broad, quiet, slow, and sure recommencement of the rain. The river, if I
+mistake not, has risen considerably during the day, and its current will
+acquire some degree of energy.
+
+In this sombre weather, when some mortals almost forget that there ever
+was any golden sunshine, or ever will be any hereafter, others seem
+absolutely to radiate it from their own hearts and minds. The gloom
+cannot pervade them; they conquer it, and drive it quite out of their
+sphere, and create a moral rainbow of hope upon the blackest cloud. As
+for myself, I am little other than a cloud at such seasons, but such
+persons contrive to make me a sunny one, shining all through me. And
+thus, even without the support of a stated occupation, I survive these
+sullen days and am happy.
+
+This morning we read the Sermon on the Mount. In the course of the
+forenoon, the rain abated for a season, and I went out and gathered some
+corn and summer-squashes, and picked up the windfalls of apples and
+pears and peaches. Wet, wet, wet,--everything was wet; the blades of the
+corn-stalks moistened me; the wet grass soaked my boots quite through;
+the trees threw their reserved showers upon my head; and soon the
+remorseless rain began anew, and drove me into the house. When shall we
+be able to walk again to the far hills, and plunge into the deep woods,
+and gather more cardinals along the river's margin? The track along
+which we trod is probably under water now. How inhospitable Nature is
+during a rain! In the fervid heat of sunny days, she still retains some
+degree of mercy for us; she has shady spots, whither the sun cannot
+come; but she provides no shelter against her storms. It makes one
+shiver to think how dripping with wet are those deep, umbrageous nooks,
+those overshadowed banks, where we find such enjoyment during sultry
+afternoons. And what becomes of the birds in such a soaking rain as
+this? Is hope and an instinctive faith so mixed up with their nature,
+that they can be cheered by the thought that the sunshine will return?
+or do they think, as I almost do, that there is to be no sunshine any
+more? Very disconsolate must they be among the dripping leaves; and when
+a single summer makes so important a portion of their lives, it seems
+hard that so much of it should be dissolved in rain. I, likewise, am
+greedy of the summer-days for my own sake: the life of man does not
+contain so many of them that one can be spared without regret.
+
+
+_Tuesday, August 30th._--I was promised, in the midst of Sunday's rain,
+that Monday should be fair, and, behold! the sun came back to us, and
+brought one of the most perfect days ever made since Adam was driven out
+of Paradise. By the by, was there ever any rain in Paradise? If so, how
+comfortless must Eve's bower have been! It makes me shiver to think of
+it. Well, it seemed as if the world was newly created yesterday morning,
+and I beheld its birth; for I had risen before the sun was over the
+hill, and had gone forth to fish. How instantaneously did all dreariness
+and heaviness of the earth's spirit flit away before one smile of the
+beneficent sun! This proves that all gloom is but a dream and a shadow,
+and that cheerfulness is the real truth. It requires many clouds, long
+brooding over us, to make us sad, but one gleam of sunshine always
+suffices to cheer up the landscape. The banks of the river actually
+laughed when the sunshine fell upon them; and the river itself was alive
+and cheerful, and, by way of fun and amusement, it had swept away many
+wreaths of meadow-hay, and old, rotten branches of trees, and all such
+trumpery. These matters came floating downwards, whirling round and
+round in the eddies, or hastening onward in the main current; and many
+of them, before this time, have probably been carried into the
+Merrimack, and will be borne onward to the sea. The spots where I stood
+to fish, on my preceding excursion, were now under water; and the tops
+of many of the bushes, along the river's margin, barely emerged from the
+stream. Large spaces of meadow are overflowed.
+
+There was a northwest wind throughout the day; and as many clouds, the
+remnants of departed gloom, were scattered about the sky, the breeze was
+continually blowing them across the sun. For the most part, they were
+gone again in a moment; but sometimes the shadow remained long enough to
+make me dread a return of sulky weather. Then would come the burst of
+sunshine, making me feel as if a rainy day were henceforth an
+impossibility....
+
+In the afternoon Mr. Emerson called, bringing Mr. ----. He is a good
+sort of humdrum parson enough, and well fitted to increase the stock of
+manuscript sermons, of which there must be a fearful quantity already in
+the world. Mr. ----, however, is probably one of the best and most
+useful of his class, because no suspicion of the necessity of his
+profession, constituted as it now is, to mankind, and of his own
+usefulness and success in it, has hitherto disturbed him; and therefore
+he labors with faith and confidence, as ministers did a hundred years
+ago.
+
+After the visitors were gone, I sat at the gallery window, looking down
+the avenue, and soon there appeared an elderly woman,--a homely, decent
+old matron, dressed in a dark gown, and with what seemed a manuscript
+book under her arm. The wind sported with her gown, and blew her veil
+across her face, and seemed to make game of her, though on a nearer view
+she looked like a sad old creature, with a pale, thin countenance, and
+somewhat of a wild and wandering expression. She had a singular gait,
+reeling, as it were, and yet not quite reeling, from one side of the
+path to the other; going onward as if it were not much matter whether
+she went straight or crooked. Such were my observations as she
+approached through the scattered sunshine and shade of our long avenue,
+until, reaching the door, she gave a knock, and inquired for the lady of
+the house. Her manuscript contained a certificate, stating that the old
+woman was a widow from a foreign land, who had recently lost her son,
+and was now utterly destitute of friends and kindred, and without means
+of support. Appended to the certificate there was a list of names of
+people who had bestowed charity on her, with the amounts of their
+several donations,--none, as I recollect, higher than twenty-five cents.
+Here is a strange life, and a character fit for romance and poetry. All
+the early part of her life, I suppose, and much of her widowhood were
+spent in the quiet of a home, with kinsfolk around her, and children,
+and the life-long gossiping acquaintances that some women always create
+about them. But in her decline she has wandered away from all these, and
+from her native country itself, and is a vagrant, yet with something of
+the homeliness and decency of aspect belonging to one who has been a
+wife and mother, and has had a roof of her own above her head,--and,
+with all this, a wildness proper to her present life. I have a liking
+for vagrants of all sorts, and never, that I know of, refused my mite to
+a wandering beggar, when I had anything in my own pocket. There is so
+much wretchedness in the world, that we may safely take the word of any
+mortal professing to need our assistance; and even should we be
+deceived, still the good to ourselves resulting from a kind act is worth
+more than the trifle by which we purchase it. It is desirable, I think,
+that such persons should be permitted to roam through our land of
+plenty, scattering the seeds of tenderness and charity, as birds of
+passage bear the seeds of precious plants from land to land, without
+even dreaming of the office which they perform.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+HOW SHALL WE ENTERTAIN OUR COMPANY?
+
+"The fact is," said Marianne, "we must have a party. Bob don't like to
+hear of it, but it must come. We are in debt to everybody: we have been
+invited everywhere, and never had anything like a party since we were
+married, and it won't do."
+
+"For my part, I hate parties," said Bob. "They put your house all out of
+order, give all the women a sick-headache, and all the men an
+indigestion; you never see anybody to any purpose; the girls look
+bewitched, and the women answer you at cross-purposes, and call you by
+the name of your next-door neighbor, in their agitation of mind. We stay
+out beyond our usual bedtime, come home and find some baby crying, or
+child who has been sitting up till nobody knows when; and the next
+morning, when I must be at my office by eight, and wife must attend to
+her children, we are sleepy and headachy. I protest against making
+overtures to entrap some hundred of my respectable married friends into
+this snare which has so often entangled me. If I had my way, I would
+never go to another party; and as to giving one--I suppose, since my
+empress has declared her intentions, that I shall be brought into doing
+it; but it shall be under protest."
+
+"But, you see, we must keep up society," said Marianne.
+
+"But I insist on it," said Bob, "it isn't keeping up society. What
+earthly thing do you learn about people by meeting them in a general
+crush, where all are coming, going, laughing, talking, and looking at
+each other? No person of common sense ever puts forth any idea he cares
+twopence about, under such circumstances; all that is exchanged is a
+certain set of common-places and platitudes which people keep for
+parties, just as they do their kid gloves and finery. Now there are our
+neighbors, the Browns. When they drop in of an evening, she knitting,
+and he with the last article in the paper, she really comes out with a
+great deal of fresh, lively, earnest, original talk. We have a good
+time, and I like her so much that it quite verges on loving; but see her
+in a party, when she manifests herself over five or six flounces of pink
+silk and a perfect egg-froth of tulle, her head adorned with a thicket
+of craped hair and roses, and it is plain at first view that _talking_
+with her is quite out of the question. What has been done to her head on
+the outside has evidently had some effect within, for she is no longer
+the Mrs. Brown you knew in her every-day dress, but Mrs. Brown in a
+party state of mind, and too distracted to think of anything in
+particular. She has a few words that she answers to everything you say,
+as, for example, 'O, very!' 'Certainly!' 'How extraordinary!' 'So happy
+to,' &c. The fact is, that she has come into a state in which any real
+communication with her mind and character must be suspended till the
+party is over and she is rested. Now I like society, which is the reason
+why I hate parties."
+
+"But you see," said Marianne, "what are we to do? Everybody can't drop
+in to spend an evening with you. If it were not for these parties, there
+are quantities of your acquaintances whom you would never meet."
+
+"And of what use is it to meet them? Do you really know them any better
+for meeting them, got up in unusual dresses, and sitting down together
+when the only thing exchanged is the remark that it is hot or cold, or
+it rains, or it is dry, or any other patent surface-fact that answers
+the purpose of making believe you are talking when neither of you is
+saying a word?"
+
+"Well, now, for my part," said Marianne, "I confess I _like_ parties:
+they amuse me. I come home feeling kinder and better to people, just for
+the little I see of them when they are all dressed up and in good humor
+with themselves. To be sure we don't say anything very profound,--I
+don't think the most of us have anything very profound to say; but I ask
+Mrs. Brown where she buys her lace, and she tells me how she washes it,
+and somebody else tells me about her baby, and promises me a new
+sack-pattern. Then I like to see the pretty, nice young girls flirting
+with the nice young men; and I like to be dressed up a little myself,
+even if my finery is all old and many times made over. It does me good
+to be rubbed up and brightened."
+
+"Like old silver," said Bob.
+
+"Yes, like old silver, precisely; and even if I do come home tired, it
+does my mind good to have that change of scene and faces. You men do not
+know what it is to be tied to house and nursery all day, and what a
+perfect weariness and lassitude it often brings on us women. For my
+part, I think parties are a beneficial institution of society, and that
+it is worth a good deal of fatigue and trouble to get one up."
+
+"Then there's the expense," said Bob. "What earthly need is there of a
+grand regale of oysters, chicken-salad, ice-creams, coffee, and
+champagne, between eleven and twelve o'clock at night, when no one of us
+would ever think of wanting or taking any such articles upon our
+stomachs in our own homes? If we were all of us in the habit of having a
+regular repast at that hour, it might be well enough to enjoy one with
+our neighbor; but the party fare is generally just so much in addition
+to the honest three meals which we have eaten during the day. Now, to
+spend from fifty to one, two, or three hundred dollars in giving all our
+friends an indigestion from a midnight meal, seems to me a very poor
+investment. Yet if we once begin to give the party, we must have
+everything that is given at the other parties, or wherefore do we live?
+And caterers and waiters rack their brains to devise new forms of
+expense and extravagance; and when the bill comes in, one is sure to
+feel that one is paying a great deal of money for a great deal of
+nonsense. It is, in fact, worse than nonsense, because our dear friends
+are in half the cases, not only no better, but a great deal worse, for
+what they have eaten."
+
+"But there is this advantage to society," said Rudolph,--"it helps us
+young physicians. What would the physicians do if parties were
+abolished? Take all the colds that are caught by our fair friends with
+low necks and short sleeves, all the troubles from dancing in tight
+dresses and inhaling bad air, and all the headaches and indigestions
+from the _melange_ of lobster-salad, two or three kinds of ice-cream,
+cake, and coffee on delicate stomachs, and our profession gets a degree
+of encouragement that is worthy to be thought of."
+
+"But the question arises," said my wife, "whether there are not ways of
+promoting social feeling less expensive, more simple and natural and
+rational. I am inclined to think that there are."
+
+"Yes," said Theophilus Thoro; "for large parties are not, as a general
+thing, given with any wish or intention of really improving our
+acquaintance with our neighbors. In many cases they are openly and
+avowedly a general tribute paid at intervals to society, for and in
+consideration of which you are to sit with closed blinds and doors and
+be let alone for the rest of the year. Mrs. Bogus, for instance, lives
+to keep her house in order, her closets locked, her silver counted and
+in the safe, and her china-closet in undisturbed order. Her 'best
+things' are put away with such admirable precision, in so many wrappings
+and foldings, and secured with so many a twist and twine, that to get
+them out is one of the seven labors of Hercules, not to be lightly or
+unadvisedly taken in hand, but reverently, discreetly, and once for
+all, in an annual or biennial party. Then says Mrs. Bogus, 'For Heaven's
+sake, let's have every creature we can think of, and have 'em all over
+with at once. For pity's sake, let's have no driblets left that we shall
+have to be inviting to dinner or to tea. No matter whether they can come
+or not,--only send them the invitation, and our part is done; and, thank
+Heaven! we shall be free for a year.'"
+
+"Yes," said my wife; "a great stand-up party bears just the same
+relation towards the offer of real hospitality and good-will as Miss
+Sally Brass's offer of meat to the little hungry Marchioness, when, with
+a bit uplifted on the end of a fork, she addressed her, 'Will you have
+this piece of meat? No? Well, then, remember and don't say you haven't
+had meat _offered_ to you!' You are invited to a general jam, at the
+risk of your life and health; and if you refuse, don't say you haven't
+had hospitality offered to you. All our debts are wiped out and our
+slate clean; now we will have our own closed doors, no company and no
+trouble, and our best china shall repose undisturbed on its shelves.
+Mrs. Bogus says she never could exist in the way that Mrs. Easygo does,
+with a constant drip of company,--two or three to breakfast one day,
+half a dozen to dinner the next, and little evening gatherings once or
+twice a week. It must keep her house in confusion all the time; yet, for
+real social feeling, real exchange of thought and opinion, there is more
+of it in one half-hour at Mrs. Easygo's than in a dozen of Mrs. Bogus's
+great parties.
+
+"The fact is, that Mrs. Easygo really does like the society of human
+beings. She is genuinely and heartily social; and, in consequence,
+though she has very limited means, and no money to spend in giving great
+entertainments, her domestic establishment is a sort of social exchange,
+where more friendships are formed, more real acquaintance made, and more
+agreeable hours spent, than in any other place that can be named. She
+never has large parties,--great general pay-days of social debts,--but
+small, well-chosen circles of people, selected so thoughtfully, with a
+view to the pleasure which congenial persons give each other, as to make
+the invitation an act of real personal kindness. She always manages to
+have something for the entertainment of her friends, so that they are
+not reduced to the simple alternatives of gaping at each other's dresses
+and eating lobster-salad and ice-cream. There is either some choice
+music, or a reading of fine poetry, or a well-acted charade, or a
+portfolio of photographs and pictures, to enliven the hour and start
+conversation; and as the people are skilfully chosen with reference to
+each other, as there is no hurry or heat or confusion, conversation, in
+its best sense, can bubble up, fresh, genuine, clear, and sparkling as a
+woodland spring, and one goes away really rested and refreshed. The
+slight entertainment provided is just enough to enable you to eat salt
+together in Arab fashion,--not enough to form the leading feature of the
+evening. A cup of tea and a basket of cake, or a salver of ices,
+silently passed at quiet intervals, do not interrupt conversation or
+overload the stomach."
+
+"The fact is," said I, "that the art of society among us Anglo-Saxons is
+yet in its ruder stages. We are not, as a race, social and confiding,
+like the French and Italians and Germans. We have a word for home, and
+our home is often a moated grange, an island, a castle with its
+drawbridge up, cutting us off from all but our own home-circle. In
+France and Germany and Italy there are the boulevards and public
+gardens, where people do their family living in common. Mr. A is
+breakfasting under one tree, with wife and children around, and Mr. B is
+breakfasting under another tree, hard by; and messages, nods, and smiles
+pass backward and forward. Families see each other daily in these public
+resorts, and exchange mutual offices of good-will. Perhaps from these
+customs of society come that naive simplicity and _abandon_ which one
+remarks in the Continental, in opposition to the Anglo-Saxon, habits of
+conversation. A Frenchman or an Italian will talk to you of his feelings
+and plans and prospects with an unreserve that is perfectly
+unaccountable to you, who have always felt that such things must be kept
+for the very innermost circle of home privacy. But the Frenchman or
+Italian has from a child been brought up to pass his family life in
+places of public resort, in constant contact and intercommunion with
+other families; and the social and conversational instinct has thus been
+daily strengthened. Hence the reunions of these people have been
+characterized by a sprightliness and vigor and spirit that the
+Anglo-Saxon has in vain attempted to seize and reproduce. English and
+American _conversazioni_ have very generally proved a failure, from the
+rooted, frozen habit of reticence and reserve which grows with our
+growth and strengthens with our strength. The fact is, that the
+Anglo-Saxon race as a race does not enjoy talking, and, except in rare
+instances, does not talk well. A daily convocation of people, without
+refreshments or any extraneous object but the simple pleasure of seeing
+and talking with each other, is a thing that can scarcely be understood
+in English or American society. Social entertainment presupposes in the
+Anglo-Saxon mind _something to eat_, and not only something, but a great
+deal. Enormous dinners or great suppers constitute the entertainment.
+Nobody seems to have formed the idea that the talking--the simple
+exchange of the social feelings--_is_, of itself, the entertainment, and
+that _being together_ is the pleasure.
+
+"Madame Recamier for years had a circle of friends who met every
+afternoon in her _salon_, from four to six o'clock, for the simple and
+sole pleasure of talking with each other. The very first wits and men of
+letters and statesmen and _savans_ were enrolled in it, and each brought
+to the entertainment some choice _morceau_ which he had laid aside from
+his own particular field to add to the feast. The daily intimacy gave
+each one such perfect insight into all the others' habits of thought,
+tastes, and preferences, that the conversation was like the celebrated
+music of the _Conservatoire_ in Paris, a concert of perfectly chorded
+instruments taught by long habit of harmonious intercourse to keep exact
+time and tune together.
+
+"_Real_ conversation presupposes intimate acquaintance. People must see
+each other often enough to wear off the rough bark and outside rind of
+common-places and conventionalities in which their real ideas are
+enwrapped, and give forth without reserve their innermost and best
+feelings. Now what is called a large party is the first and rudest form
+of social intercourse. The most we can say of it is, that it is better
+than nothing. Men and women are crowded together like cattle in a pen.
+They look at each other, they jostle each other, exchange a few common
+bleatings, and eat together; and so the performance terminates. One may
+be crushed evening after evening against men or women, and learn very
+little about them. You may decide that a lady is good-tempered, when any
+amount of trampling on the skirt of her new silk dress brings no cloud
+to her brow. But _is_ it good temper, or only wanton carelessness, which
+cares nothing for waste? You can see that a man is not a gentleman who
+squares his back to ladies at the supper-table, and devours boned turkey
+and _pate de fois gras_, while they vainly reach over and around him for
+something, and that another is a gentleman so far as to prefer the care
+of his weaker neighbors to the immediate indulgence of his own
+appetites; but further than this you learn little. Sometimes, it is
+true, in some secluded corner, two people of fine nervous system,
+undisturbed by the general confusion, may have a sociable half-hour, and
+really part feeling that they like each other better, and know more of
+each other than before. Yet these general gatherings have, after all,
+their value. They are not so good as something better would be, but
+they cannot be wholly dispensed with. It is far better that Mrs. Bogus
+should give an annual party, when she takes down all her bedsteads and
+throws open her whole house, than that she should never see her friends
+and neighbors inside her doors at all. She may feel that she has neither
+the taste nor the talent for constant small reunions. Such things, she
+may feel, require a social tact which she has not. She would be utterly
+at a loss how to conduct them. Each one would cost her as much anxiety
+and thought as her annual gathering, and prove a failure after all;
+whereas the annual demonstration can be put wholly into the hands of the
+caterer, who comes in force, with flowers, silver, china, servants, and,
+taking the house into his own hands, gives her entertainment for her,
+leaving to her no responsibility but the payment of the bills; and if
+Mr. Bogus does not quarrel with them, we know no reason why any one else
+should; and I think Mrs. Bogus merits well of the republic, for doing
+what she can do towards the hospitalities of the season. I'm sure I
+never cursed her in my heart, even when her strong coffee has held mine
+eyes open till morning, and her superlative lobster-salads have given me
+the very darkest views of human life that ever dyspepsia and east wind
+could engender. Mrs. Bogus is the Eve who offers the apple; but, after
+all, I am the foolish Adam who take and eat what I know is going to hurt
+me, and I am too gallant to visit my sins on the head of my too obliging
+tempter. In country places in particular, where little is going on and
+life is apt to stagnate, a good, large, generous party, which brings the
+whole neighborhood into one house to have a jolly time, to eat, drink,
+and be merry, is really quite a work of love and mercy. People see one
+another in their best clothes, and that is something; the elders
+exchange all manner of simple pleasantries and civilities, and talk over
+their domestic affairs, while the young people flirt, in that wholesome
+manner which is one of the safest of youthful follies. A country party,
+in fact, may be set down as a work of benevolence, and the money
+expended thereon fairly charged to the account of the great cause of
+peace and good-will on earth."
+
+"But don't you think," said my wife, "that, if the charge of providing
+the entertainment were less laborious, these gatherings could be more
+frequent? You see, if a woman feels that she must have five kinds of
+cake, and six kinds of preserves, and even ice-cream and jellies in a
+region where no confectioner comes in to abbreviate her labors, she will
+sit with closed doors, and do nothing towards the general exchange of
+life, because she cannot do as much as Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Parsons. If
+the idea of meeting together had some other focal point than eating, I
+think there would be more social feeling. It might be a musical reunion,
+where the various young people of a circle agreed to furnish each a song
+or an instrumental performance. It might be an impromptu charade party,
+bringing out something of that taste in arrangement of costume, and
+capacity for dramatic effect, of which there is more latent in society
+than we think. It might be the reading of articles in prose and poetry
+furnished to a common paper or portfolio, which would awaken an
+abundance of interest and speculation on the authorship, or it might be
+dramatic readings and recitations. Any or all of these pastimes might
+make an evening so entertaining that a simple cup of tea and a plate of
+cake or biscuit would be all the refreshment needed."
+
+"We may with advantage steal a leaf now and then from some foreign
+book," said I. "In France and Italy, families have their peculiar days
+set apart for the reception of friends at their own houses. The whole
+house is put upon a footing of hospitality and invitation, and the whole
+mind is given to receiving the various friends. In the evening the
+_salon_ is filled. The guests, coming from week to week, for years,
+become in time friends; the resort has the charm of a home circle; there
+are certain faces that you are always sure to meet there. A lady once
+said to me of a certain gentleman and lady whom she missed from her
+circle, 'They have been at our house every Wednesday evening for twenty
+years.' It seems to me that this frequency of meeting is the great
+secret of agreeable society. One sees, in our American life, abundance
+of people who are everything that is charming and cultivated, but one
+never sees enough of them. One meets them at some quiet reunion, passes
+a delightful hour, thinks how charming they are, and wishes one could
+see more of them. But the pleasant meeting is like the encounter of two
+ships in mid-ocean: away we sail, each on his respective course, to see
+each other no more till the pleasant remembrance has died away. Yet were
+there some quiet, home-like resort where we might turn in to renew from
+time to time the pleasant intercourse, to continue the last
+conversation, and to compare anew our readings and our experiences, the
+pleasant hour of liking would ripen into a warm friendship.
+
+"But in order that this may be made possible and practicable, the utmost
+simplicity of entertainment must prevail. In a French _salon_, all is,
+to the last degree, informal. The _bouilloire_, the French teakettle, is
+often tended by one of the gentlemen, who aids his fair neighbors in the
+mysteries of tea-making. One nymph is always to be found at the table
+dispensing tea and talk; and a basket of simple biscuit and cakes,
+offered by another, is all the further repast. The teacups and
+cake-basket are a real addition to the scene, because they cause a
+little lively social bustle, a little chatter and motion,--always of
+advantage in breaking up stiffness, and giving occasion for those
+graceful, airy nothings that answer so good a purpose in facilitating
+acquaintance.
+
+"Nothing can be more charming than the description which Edmond About
+gives, in his novel of 'Tolla,' of the reception evenings of an old
+noble Roman family,--the spirit of repose and quietude through all the
+apartments,--the ease of coming and going,--the perfect homelike spirit
+in which the guests settle themselves to any employment of the hour that
+best suits them,--some to lively chat, some to dreamy, silent lounging,
+some to a game, others, in a distant apartment, to music, and others
+still to a promenade along the terraces.
+
+"One is often in a state of mind and nerves which indisposes for the
+effort of active conversation; one wishes to rest, to observe, to be
+amused without an effort; and a mansion which opens wide its hospitable
+arms, and offers itself to you as a sort of home, where you may rest,
+and do just as the humor suits you, is a perfect godsend at such times.
+You are at home there, your ways are understood, you can do as you
+please,--come early or late, be brilliant or dull,--you are always
+welcome. If you can do nothing for the social whole to-night, it matters
+not. There are many more nights to come in the future, and you are
+entertained on trust, without a challenge.
+
+"I have one friend,--a man of genius, subject to the ebbs and flows of
+animal spirits which attend that organization. Of general society he has
+a nervous horror. A regular dinner or evening party is to him a terror,
+an impossibility; but there is a quiet parlor where stands a much-worn
+old sofa, and it is his delight to enter without knocking, and be found
+lying with half-shut eyes on this friendly couch, while the family life
+goes on around him without a question. Nobody is to mind him, to tease
+him with inquiries or salutations. If he will, he breaks into the stream
+of conversation, and sometimes, rousing up from one of these dreamy
+trances, finds himself, ere he or they know how, in the mood for free
+and friendly talk. People often wonder, 'How do you catch So-and-so? He
+is so shy! I have invited and invited, and he never comes.' We never
+invite, and he comes. We take no note of his coming or his going; we do
+not startle his entrance with acclamation, nor clog his departure with
+expostulation; it is fully understood that with us he shall do just as
+he chooses; and so he chooses to do much that we like.
+
+"The sum of this whole doctrine of society is, that we are to try the
+value of all modes and forms of social entertainment by their effect in
+producing real acquaintance and real friendship and good-will. The first
+and rudest form of seeking this is by a great promiscuous party, which
+simply effects this,--that people at least see each other on the
+outside, and eat together. Next come all those various forms of reunion
+in which the entertainment consists of something higher than staring and
+eating,--some exercise of the faculties of the guests in music, acting,
+recitation, reading, etc.; and these are a great advance, because they
+show people what is in them, and thus lay a foundation for a more
+intelligent appreciation and acquaintance. These are the best substitute
+for the expense, show, and trouble of large parties. They are in their
+nature more refining and intellectual. It is astonishing, when people
+really put together, in some one club or association, all the different
+talents for pleasing possessed by different persons, how clever a circle
+may be gathered--in the least promising neighborhood. A club of ladies
+in one of our cities has had quite a brilliant success. It is held every
+fortnight at the house of the members, according to alphabetical
+sequence. The lady who receives has charge of arranging what the
+entertainment shall be,--whether charade, tableau, reading, recitation,
+or music; and the interest is much increased by the individual taste
+shown in the choice of the diversion and the variety which thence
+follows.
+
+"In the summer time, in the country, open-air reunions are charming
+forms of social entertainment. Croquet parties, which bring young people
+together by daylight for a healthy exercise, and end with a moderate
+share of the evening, are a very desirable amusement. What are called
+'lawn teas' are finding great favor in England and some parts of our
+country. They are simply an early tea enjoyed in a sort of picnic style
+in the grounds about the house. Such an entertainment enables one to
+receive a great many at a time, without crowding, and, being in its very
+idea rustic and informal, can be arranged with very little expense or
+trouble. With the addition of lanterns in the trees and a little music,
+this entertainment may be carried on far into the evening with a very
+pretty effect.
+
+"As to dancing, I have this much to say of it. Either our houses must be
+all built over and made larger, or female crinolines must be made
+smaller, or dancing must continue as it now is, the most absurd and
+ungraceful of all attempts at amusement. The effort to execute round
+dances in the limits of modern houses, in the prevailing style of dress,
+can only lead to developments more startling than agreeable. Dancing in
+the open air, on the shaven green of lawns, is a pretty and graceful
+exercise, and there only can full sweep be allowed for the present
+feminine toilet.
+
+"The English breakfast is an institution growing in favor here, and
+rightfully, too; for a party of fresh, good-natured, well-dressed
+people, assembled at breakfast on a summer morning, is as nearly perfect
+a form of reunion as can be devised. All are in full strength from their
+night's rest; the hour is fresh and lovely, and they are in condition to
+give each other the very cream of their thoughts, the first keen sparkle
+of the uncorked nervous system. The only drawback is, that, in our busy
+American life, the most desirable gentlemen often cannot spare their
+morning hours. Breakfast parties presuppose a condition of leisure; but
+when they can be compassed, they are perhaps the most perfectly
+enjoyable of entertainments."
+
+"Well," said Marianne, "I begin to waver about my party. I don't know,
+after all, but the desire of paying off social debts prompted the idea;
+perhaps we might try some of the agreeable things suggested. But, dear
+me! there's the baby. We'll finish the talk some other time."
+
+
+
+
+GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+He went straight to the stable, and saddled Black Dick.
+
+But, in the very act, his nature revolted. What, turn his back on her
+the moment he had got hold of her money, to take to the other. He could
+not do it.
+
+He went back to her room, and came so suddenly that he caught her
+crying. He asked her what was the matter.
+
+"Nothing," said she, with a sigh: "only a woman's foolish misgivings. I
+was afraid perhaps you would not come back. Forgive me."
+
+"No fear of that," said he. "However, I have taken a resolve not to go
+to-day. If I go to-morrow, I shall be just in time; and Dick wants a
+good day's rest."
+
+Mrs. Gaunt said nothing; but her expressive face was triumphant.
+
+Griffith and she took a walk together; and he, who used to be the more
+genial of the two, was dull, and she full of animation.
+
+This whole day she laid herself out to bewitch her husband, and put him
+in high spirits.
+
+It was up-hill work; but when such a woman sets herself in earnest to
+delight a man, she reads our sex a lesson in the art, that shows us we
+are all babies at it.
+
+However, it was at supper she finally conquered.
+
+Here the lights, her beauty set off with art, her deepening eyes, her
+satin skin, her happy excitement, her wit and tenderness, and joyous
+sprightliness, enveloped Griffith in an atmosphere of delight, and drove
+everything out of his head but herself; and with this, if the truth must
+be told, the sparkling wines co-operated.
+
+Griffith plied the bottle a little too freely. But Mrs. Gaunt, on this
+one occasion, had not the heart to check him. The more he toasted her,
+the more uxorious he became, and she could not deny herself even this
+joy; but, besides, she had less of the prudent wife in her just then
+than of the weak, indulgent mother. Anything rather than check his love:
+she was greedy of it.
+
+At last, however, she said to him, "Sweetheart, I shall go to bed; for,
+I see, if I stay longer, I shall lead thee into a debauch. Be good now;
+drink no more when I am gone. Else I'll say thou lovest thy bottle more
+than thy wife."
+
+He promised faithfully. But, when she was gone, modified his pledge by
+drinking just one bumper to her health, which bumper let in another;
+and, when at last he retired to rest, he was in that state of mental
+confusion wherein the limbs appear to have a memory independent of the
+mind.
+
+In this condition do some men's hands wind up their watches, the mind
+taking no appreciable part in the ceremony.
+
+By some such act of what physicians call "organic memory," Griffith's
+feet carried him to the chamber he had slept in a thousand times, and
+not into the one Mrs. Rider had taken him to the night before.
+
+The next morning he came down rather late for him, and found himself
+treated with a great access of respect by the servants.
+
+His position was no longer doubtful; he was the master of the house.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt followed in due course, and sat at breakfast with him,
+looking young and blooming as Hebe, and her eye never off him long.
+
+She had lived temperately, and had not yet passed the age when happiness
+can restore a woman's beauty and brightness in a single day.
+
+As for him, he was like a man in a heavenly dream: he floated in the
+past and the present: the recent and the future seemed obscure and
+distant, and comparatively in a mist.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But that same afternoon, after a most affectionate farewell, and many
+promises to return as soon as ever he had discharged his obligations,
+Griffith Gaunt started for the "Packhorse," to carry to Mercy Leicester,
+alias Vint, the money Catharine Gaunt had saved by self-denial and
+economy.
+
+And he went south a worse man than he came.
+
+When he left Mercy Leicester, he was a bigamist in law, but not at
+heart. Kate was dead to him: he had given her up forever, and was
+constant and true to his new wife.
+
+But now he was false to Mercy, yet not true to Kate; and, curiously
+enough, it was a day or two passed with his lawful wife that had
+demoralized him. His unlawful wife had hitherto done nothing but improve
+his character.
+
+A great fault once committed is often the first link in a chain of acts
+that look like crimes, but are, strictly speaking, consequences.
+
+This man, blinded at first by his own foible, and after that the sport
+of circumstances, was single-hearted by nature; and his conscience was
+not hardened. He desired earnestly to free himself and both his wives
+from the cruel situation; but to do this, one of them, he saw, must be
+abandoned entirely; and his heart bled for her.
+
+A villain or a fool would have relished the situation; many men would
+have dallied with it; but, to do this erring man justice, he writhed and
+sorrowed under it, and sincerely desired to end it.
+
+And this was why he prized Kate's money so. It enabled him to render a
+great service to her he had injured worse than he had the other, to her
+he saw he must abandon.
+
+But this was feeble comfort, after all. He rode along a miserable man;
+none the less wretched and remorseful, that, ere he got into Lancashire,
+he saw his way clear. This was his resolve: to pay old Vint's debts with
+Kate's money; take the "Packhorse," get it made over to Mercy, give her
+the odd two hundred pounds and his jewels, and fly. He would never see
+her again; but would return home, and get the rest of the two thousand
+pounds from Kate, and send it Mercy by a friend, who should tell her he
+was dead, and had left word with his relations to send her all his
+substance.
+
+At last the "Packhorse" came in sight. He drew rein, and had half a mind
+to turn back; but, instead of that, he crawled on, and very sick and
+cold he felt.
+
+Many a man has marched to the scaffold with a less quaking heart than he
+to the "Packhorse."
+
+His dejection contrasted strangely with the warm reception he met from
+everybody there. And the house was full of women; and they seemed,
+somehow, all cock-a-hoop, and filled with admiration of _him_.
+
+"Where is she?" said he, faintly.
+
+"Hark to the poor soul!" said a gossip. "Dame Vint, where's thy
+daughter? gone out a-walking be-like?"
+
+At this, the other women present chuckled and clucked.
+
+"I'll bring you to her," said Mrs. Vint; "but prithee be quiet and
+reasonable; for to be sure she is none too strong."
+
+There was some little preparation, and then Griffith was ushered into
+Mercy's room, and found her in bed, looking a little pale, but sweeter
+and comelier than ever. She had the bedclothes up to her chin.
+
+"You look wan, my poor lass," said he; "what ails ye?"
+
+"Naught ails me now thou art come," said she, lovingly.
+
+Griffith put the bag on the table. "There," said he, "there's five
+hundred pounds in gold. I come not to thee empty-handed."
+
+"Nor I to thee," said Mercy, with a heavenly smile. "See!"
+
+And she drew down the bedclothes a little, and showed the face of a
+babe scarcely three days old,--a little boy.
+
+She turned in the bed, and tried to hold him up to his father, and said,
+"Here's _my_ treasure for thee!" And the effort, the flush on her cheek,
+and the deep light in her dove-like eyes, told plainly that the poor
+soul thought she had contributed to their domestic wealth something far
+richer than Griffith had with his bag of gold.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The father uttered an ejaculation, and came to her side, and, for a
+moment, Nature overpowered everything else. He kissed the child; he
+kissed Mercy again and again.
+
+"Now God be praised for both," said he, passionately; "but most for
+thee, the best wife, the truest friend--" Here, thinking of her virtues,
+and the blow he had come to strike her, he broke down, and was almost
+choked with emotion; whereupon Mrs. Vint exerted female authority, and
+bundled him out of the room. "Is that the way to carry on at such an a
+time?" said she. "'T was enow to upset her altogether. O, but you men
+have little sense in women's matters. I looked to you to give her
+courage, not to set her off into hysterics after a manner. Nay, keep up
+her heart, or keep your distance, say I, that am her mother."
+
+Griffith took this hint, and ever after took pity on Mercy's weak
+condition; and, suspending the fatal blow, did all he could to restore
+her to health and spirits.
+
+Of course, to do that, he must deceive her; and so his life became a
+lie.
+
+For, hitherto, she had never looked forward much; but now her eyes were
+always diving into futurity; and she lay smiling and discussing the
+prospects of her boy; and Griffith had to sit by her side, and see her
+gnaw the boy's hand, and kiss his feet, and anticipate his brilliant
+career. He had to look and listen with an aching heart, and assent with
+feigned warmth, and an inward chill of horror and remorse.
+
+One Drummond, a travelling artist, called; and Mercy, who had often
+refused to sit to him, consented now; "for," she said, "when he grows
+up, he shall know how his parents looked in their youth, the very year
+their darling was born." So Griffith had to sit with her, and excellent
+likenesses the man produced; but a horrible one of the child. And
+Griffith thought, "Poor soul! a little while and this picture will be
+all that shall be left to thee of me."
+
+For all this time he was actually transacting the preliminaries of
+separation. He got a man of law to make all sure. The farm, the stock,
+the furniture and good-will of the "Packhorse," all these he got
+assigned to Mercy Leicester for her own use, in consideration of three
+hundred and fifty pounds, whereof three hundred were devoted to clearing
+the concern of its debts, the odd fifty was to sweeten the pill to Harry
+Vint.
+
+When the deed came to be executed, Mercy was surprised, and uttered a
+gentle remonstrance. "What have I to do with it?" said she. "'T is thy
+money, not mine."
+
+"No matter," said Griffith; "I choose to have it so."
+
+"Your will is my law," said Mercy.
+
+"Besides," said Griffith, "the old folk will not feel so sore, nor be
+afraid of being turned out, if it is in thy name."
+
+"And that is true," said Mercy. "Now who had thought of that, but my
+good man?" And she threw her arms lovingly round his neck, and gazed on
+him adoringly.
+
+But his lion-like eyes avoided her dove-like eyes; and an involuntary
+shudder ran through him.
+
+The habit of deceiving Mercy led to a consequence he had not
+anticipated. It tightened the chain that held him. She opened his eyes
+more and more to her deep affection, and he began to fear she would die
+if he abandoned her.
+
+And then her present situation was so touching. She had borne him a
+lovely boy; that must be abandoned too, if he left her; and somehow the
+birth of this child had embellished the mother; a delicious pink had
+taken the place of her rustic bloom; and her beauty was more refined and
+delicate. So pure, so loving, so fair, so maternal, to wound her heart
+now, it seemed like stabbing an angel.
+
+One day succeeded to another, and still Griffith had not the heart to
+carry out his resolve. He temporized; he wrote to Kate that he was
+detained by the business; and he stayed on and on, strengthening his
+gratitude and his affection, and weakening his love for the absent, and
+his resolution; till, at last, he became so distracted and divided in
+heart, and so demoralized, that he began to give up the idea of
+abandoning Mercy, and babbled to himself about fate and destiny, and
+decided that the most merciful course would be to deceive both women.
+Mercy was patient. Mercy was unsuspicious. She would content herself
+with occasional visits, if he could only feign some plausible tale to
+account for long absences.
+
+Before he got into this mess, he was a singularly truthful person; but
+now a lie was nothing to him. But, for that matter, many a man has been
+first made a liar by his connection with two women; and by degrees has
+carried his mendacity into other things.
+
+However, though now blessed with mendacity, he was cursed with a lack of
+invention; and sorely puzzled how to live at Hernshaw, yet visit the
+"Packhorse."
+
+The best thing he could hit upon was to pretend to turn bagman; and so
+Mercy would believe he was travelling all over England, when all the
+time he was quietly living at Hernshaw.
+
+And perhaps these long separations might prepare her heart for a final
+parting, and so let in his original plan a few years hence.
+
+He prepared this manoeuvre with some art: he told her, one day, he had
+been to Lancaster, and there fallen in with a friend, who had as good as
+promised him the place of a commercial traveller for a mercantile house
+there.
+
+"A traveller!" said Mercy. "Heaven forbid! If you knew how I wearied for
+you when you went to Cumberland!"
+
+"To Cumberland! How know you I went thither?"
+
+"O, I but guessed that; but now I know it, by your face. But go where
+thou wilt, the house is dull directly. Thou art our sunshine. Isn't he,
+my poppet?"
+
+"Well, well; if it kept me too long from thee, I could give it up. But,
+child, we must think of young master. You could manage the inn, and your
+mother the farm, without me; and I should be earning money on my side. I
+want to make a gentleman of him."
+
+"Anything for _him_," said Mercy: "anything in the world." But the tears
+stood in her eyes.
+
+In furtherance of this deceit, Griffith did one day actually ride to
+Lancaster, and slept there. He wrote to Kate from that town, to say he
+was detained by a slight illness, but hoped to be home in a week: and
+the next day brought Mercy home some ribbons, and told her he had seen
+the merchant, and his brother, and they had made him a very fair offer.
+"But I've a week to think of it," said he; "so there's no hurry."
+
+Mercy fixed her eyes on him in a very peculiar way, and made no reply.
+You must know that something very curious had happened whilst Griffith
+was gone to Lancaster.
+
+A travelling pedler, passing by, was struck with the name on the
+signboard. "Hallo!" said he, "why here's a namesake of mine; I'll have a
+glass of his ale any way."
+
+So he came into the public room, and called for a glass; taking care to
+open his pack, and display his inviting wares. Harry Vint served him.
+"Here's your health," said the pedler. "You must drink with me, you
+must."
+
+"And welcome," said the old man.
+
+"Well," said the pedler, "I do travel five counties; but for all that,
+you are the first namesake I have found. I am Thomas Leicester, too, as
+sure as you are a living sinner."
+
+The old man laughed, and said, "Then no namesake of mine are you; for
+they call me Harry Vint. Thomas Leicester, he that keeps this inn now,
+is my son-in-law: he is gone to Lancaster this morning."
+
+The pedler said that was a pity, he should have liked to see his
+namesake, and drink a glass with him.
+
+"Come again to-morrow," said Harry Vint, ironically. "Dame," he cried,
+"come hither. Here's another Thomas Leicester for ye, wants to see our
+one."
+
+Mrs. Vint turned her head, and inspected the pedler from afar, as if he
+was some natural curiosity.
+
+"Where do you come from, young man?" said she.
+
+"Well, I came from Kendal last; but I am Cumberland born."
+
+"Why, that is where t'other comes from," suggested Paul Carrick, who was
+once more a frequenter of the house.
+
+"Like enow," said Mrs. Vint.
+
+With that she dropped the matter as one of no consequence, and retired.
+But she went straight to Mercy, in the parlor, and told her there was a
+man in the kitchen that called himself Thomas Leicester.
+
+"Well, mother?" said Mercy, with high indifference, for she was trying
+new socks on King Baby.
+
+"He comes from Cumberland."
+
+"Well, to be sure, names do run in counties."
+
+"That is true; but, seems to me, he favors your man: much of a height,
+and--There, do just step into the kitchen a moment."
+
+"La, mother," said Mercy, "I don't desire to see any more Thomas
+Leicesters than my own: 'tis the man, not the name. Isn't it, my lamb?"
+
+Mrs. Vint went back to the kitchen discomfited; but, with quiet
+pertinacity, she brought Thomas Leicester into the parlor, pack and all.
+
+"There, Mercy," said she, "lay out a penny with thy husband's namesake."
+
+Mercy did not reply, for at that moment Thomas Leicester caught sight of
+Griffith's portrait, and gave a sudden start, and a most extraordinary
+look besides.
+
+Both the women's eyes happened to be upon him, and they saw at once that
+he knew the original.
+
+"You know my husband?" said Mercy Vint, after a while.
+
+"Not I," said Leicester, looking askant at the picture.
+
+"Don't tell no lies," said Mrs. Vint. "You do know him well." And she
+pointed her assertion by looking at the portrait.
+
+"O, I know him whose picture hangs there, of course," said Leicester.
+
+"Well, and that _is_ her husband."
+
+"O, that is her husband, is it?" And he was unaffectedly puzzled.
+
+Mercy turned pale. "Yes, he is my husband," said she, "and this is our
+child. Can you tell me anything about him? for he came a stranger to
+these parts. Belike you are a kinsman of his?"
+
+"So they say."
+
+This reply puzzled both women.
+
+"Any way," said the pedler, "you see we are marked alike." And he showed
+a long black mole on his forehead.
+
+Mercy was now as curious as she had been indifferent. "Tell me all about
+him," said she: "how comes it that he is a gentleman and thou a pedler?"
+
+"Well, because my mother was a gypsy, and his a gentlewoman."
+
+"What brought him to these parts?"
+
+"Trouble, they say."
+
+"What trouble?"
+
+"Nay, I know not." This after a slight but visible hesitation.
+
+"But you have heard say."
+
+"Well, I am always on the foot, and don't bide long enough in one place
+to learn all the gossip. But I do remember hearing he was gone to sea:
+and that was a lie, for he had settled here, and married you. I'fackins,
+he might have done worse. He has got a bonny buxom wife, and a rare fine
+boy, to be sure."
+
+And now the pedler was on his guard, and determined he would not be the
+one to break up the household he saw before him, and afflict the
+dove-eyed wife and mother. He was a good-natured fellow, and averse to
+make mischief with his own hands. Besides, he took for granted Griffith
+loved his new wife better than the old one; and, above all, the
+punishment of bigamy was severe, and was it for him to get the Squire
+indicted, and branded in the hand for a felon?
+
+So the women could get nothing more out of him; he lied, evaded,
+shuffled, and feigned utter ignorance; pleading, adroitly enough, his
+vagrant life.
+
+All this, however, aroused vague suspicions in Mrs. Vint's mind, and she
+went and whispered them to her favorite, Paul Carrick. "And, Paul," said
+she, "call for what you like, and score it to me; only treat this pedler
+till he leaks out summut: to be sure he'll tell a man more than he will
+us."
+
+Paul entered with zeal into this commission: treated the pedler to a
+chop, and plied him well with the best ale.
+
+All this failed to loose the pedler's tongue at the time, but it muddled
+his judgment: on resuming his journey, he gave his entertainer a wink.
+Carrick rose and followed him out.
+
+"You seem a decent lad," said the pedler, "and a good-hearted one. Wilt
+do me a favor?"
+
+Carrick said he would, if it lay in his power.
+
+"O, it is easy enow," said the pedler. "'T is just to give young Thomas
+Leicester, into his own hand, this here trifle as soon as ever he comes
+home." And he handed Carrick a hard substance wrapped up in paper.
+Carrick promised.
+
+"Ay, ay, lad," said the pedler, "but see you play fair, and give it him
+unbeknown. Now don't you be so simple as show it to any of the
+womenfolk. D' ye understand?"
+
+"All right," said Carrick, knowingly. And so the boon companions for a
+day shook hands and parted.
+
+And Carrick took the little parcel straight to Mrs. Vint, and told her
+every word the pedler had said.
+
+And Mrs. Vint took the little parcel straight to Mercy, and told her
+what Carrick said the pedler had said.
+
+And the pedler went off flushed with beer and self-complacency; for he
+thought he had drawn the line precisely; had faithfully discharged his
+promise to his lady and benefactress, but not so as to make mischief in
+another household.
+
+Such was the power of Ale--in the last century.
+
+Mercy undid the paper and found the bullet, on which was engraved
+
+    "I LOVE KATE."
+
+As she read these words a knife seemed to enter her heart, the pang was
+so keen.
+
+But she soon took herself to task. "Thou naughty woman," said she.
+"What! jealous of the dead?"
+
+She wrapped the bullet up; put it carefully away; had a good cry; and
+was herself again.
+
+But all this set her watching Griffith, and reading his face. She had
+subtle, vague misgivings, and forbade her mother to mention the pedler's
+visit to Griffith yet awhile. Womanlike she preferred to worm out the
+truth.
+
+On the evening of his return from Lancaster, as he was smoking his pipe,
+she quietly tested him. She fixed her eyes on him, and said, "One was
+here to-day that knows thee, and brought thee this." She then handed him
+the bullet, and watched his face.
+
+Griffith undid the paper carelessly enough; but, at sight of the bullet,
+uttered a loud cry, and his eyes seemed ready to start out of his head.
+
+He turned as pale as ashes, and stammered piteously, "What? what? what
+d'ye mean? In Heaven's name, what is this? How? Who?"
+
+Mercy was surprised, but also much concerned at his distress; and tried
+to soothe him. She also asked him piteously, whether she had done wrong
+to give it him. "God knows," said she, "'t is no business of mine to go
+and remind thee of her thou hast loved better mayhap than thou lovest
+me. But to keep it from thee, and she in her grave,--O, I had not the
+heart."
+
+But Griffith's agitation increased instead of diminishing; and, even
+while she was trying to soothe him, he rushed wildly out of the room,
+and into the open air.
+
+Mercy went, in perplexity and distress, and told her mother.
+
+Mrs. Vint, not being blinded by affection, thought the whole thing had a
+very ugly look, and said as much. She gave it as her opinion that this
+Kate was alive, and had sent the token herself, to make mischief between
+man and wife.
+
+"That shall she never," said Mercy, stoutly; but now her suspicions were
+thoroughly excited, and her happiness disturbed.
+
+The next day, Griffith found her in tears. He asked her what was the
+matter. She would not tell him.
+
+"You have your secrets," said she; "and so now I have mine."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Griffith became very uneasy.
+
+For now Mercy was often in tears, and Mrs. Vint looked daggers at him.
+
+All this was mysterious and unintelligible, and, to a guilty man, very
+alarming.
+
+At last he implored Mercy to speak out. He wanted to know the worst.
+
+Then Mercy did speak out. "You have deceived me," said she. "Kate is
+alive. This very morning, between sleeping and waking, you whispered her
+name; ay, false man, whispered it like a lover. You told me she was
+dead. But she is alive, and has sent you a reminder, and the bare sight
+of it hath turned your heart her way again. What shall I do? Why did you
+marry me, if you could not forget her? I did not want you to desert any
+woman for me. The desire of my heart was always for your happiness. But
+O Thomas, deceit and falsehood will not bring you happiness, no more
+than they will me. What shall I do? what shall I do?"
+
+Her tears flowed freely, and Griffith sat down, and groaned with horror
+and remorse, beside her.
+
+He had not the courage to tell her the horrible truth,--that Kate was
+his wife, and she was not.
+
+"Do not thou afflict thyself," he muttered. "Of course, with you putting
+that bullet in my hand so sudden, it set my fancy a wandering back to
+other days."
+
+"Ah!" said Mercy, "if it be no worse than that, there's little harm. But
+why did thy namesake start so at sight of thy picture?"
+
+"My namesake!" cried Griffith, all aghast.
+
+"Ay, he that brought thee that love-token,--Thomas Leicester. Nay, for
+very shame, feign not ignorance of him. Why, he hath thy very mole on
+his temple, and knew thy picture in a moment. He is thy half-brother; is
+he not?"
+
+"I am a ruined man," cried Griffith, and sank into a chair without power
+of motion.
+
+"God help me, what is all this?" cried Mercy. "O Thomas, Thomas, I could
+forgive thee aught but deceit: for both our sakes speak out, and tell me
+the worst. No harm shall come near thee while I live."
+
+"How can I tell thee? I am an unfortunate man. The world will call me a
+villain; yet I am not a villain at heart. But who will believe me? I
+have broken the law. Thee I could trust, but not thy folk; they never
+loved me. Mercy, for pity's sake, when was that Thomas Leicester here?"
+
+"Four days ago."
+
+"Which way went he?"
+
+"I hear he told Paul he was going to Cumberland."
+
+"If he gets there before me, I shall rot in gaol."
+
+"Now God forbid! O Thomas, then mount and ride after him."
+
+"I will, and this very moment."
+
+He saddled Black Dick, and loaded his pistols for the journey; but, ere
+he went, a pale face looked out into the yard, and a finger beckoned. It
+was Mercy. She bade him follow her. She took him to her room, where
+their child was sleeping; and then she closed and even locked the door.
+
+"No soul can hear us," said she; "now look me in the face, and tell me
+God's truth. Who and what are you?"
+
+Griffith shuddered at this exordium; he made no reply.
+
+Mercy went to a box and took out an old shirt of his,--the one he wore
+when he first came to the "Packhorse." She brought it to him and showed
+him "G. G." embroidered on it with a woman's hair. (Ryder's.)
+
+"Here are your initials," said she; "now leave useless falsehoods; be a
+man, and tell me your real name."
+
+"My name is Griffith Gaunt."
+
+Mercy, sick at heart, turned her head away; but she had the resolution
+to urge him on. "Go on," said she, in an agonized whisper: "if you
+believe in God and a judgment to come, deceive me no more. The truth, I
+say! the truth!"
+
+"So be it," said Griffith, desperately: "when I have told thee what a
+villain I am, I can die at thy feet, and then thou wilt forgive me.
+
+"Who is Kate?" was all she replied.
+
+"Kate is my wife."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I thought her false; who could think any other? appearances were so
+strong against her: others thought so beside me. I raised my hand to
+kill her; but she never winced. I trampled on him I believed her
+paramour: I fled, and soon I lay a-dying in this house for her sake. I
+told thee she was dead. Alas! I thought her dead to me. I went back to
+our house (it is her house) sore against the grain, to get money for
+thee and thine. Then she cleared herself, bright as the sun, and pure as
+snow. She was all in black for me; she had put by money, against I
+should come to my senses and need it. I told her I owed a debt in
+Lancashire, a debt of gratitude as well as money: and so I did. How have
+I repaid it? The poor soul forced five hundred pounds on me. I had much
+ado to keep her from bringing it hither with her own hands. O, villain!
+villain! Then I thought to leave thee, and send thee word I was dead,
+and heap money on thee. Money! But how could I? thou wast my
+benefactress, my more than wife. All the riches of the world can make no
+return to thee. What, what shall I do? Shall I fly with thee and thy
+child across the seas? Shall I go back to her? No; the best thing I can
+do is to take this good pistol, and let the life out of my dishonorable
+carcass, and free two honest women from me by one resolute act."
+
+In his despair he cocked the pistol; and, at a word from Mercy, this
+tale had ended.
+
+But the poor woman, pale and trembling, tottered across the room, and
+took it out of his hand. "I would not harm thy body, nor thy soul," she
+gasped. "Let me draw my breath and think."
+
+She rocked herself to and fro in silence.
+
+Griffith stood trembling like a criminal before his judge.
+
+It was long ere she could speak, for anguish. Yet when she did speak, it
+was with a sort of deadly calm.
+
+"Go tell the truth to _her_, as you have done to me; and, if she can
+forgive you, all the better for you. I can never forgive you, nor yet
+can harm you. My child! my child! Thy father is our ruin. O, begone,
+man, or the sight of you will kill us both."
+
+Then he fell at her knees; kissed, and wept over her cold hand; and, in
+his pity and despair, offered to cross the seas with her and her child,
+and so repair the wrong he had done her.
+
+"Tempt me not," she sobbed. "Go, leave me! None here shall ever know thy
+crime, but she whose heart thou hast broken, and ruined her good name."
+
+He took her in his arms, in spite of her resistance, and kissed her
+passionately; but, for the first time, she shuddered at his embrace; and
+that gave him the power to leave her.
+
+He rushed from her, all but distracted, and rode away to Cumberland;
+but not to tell the truth to Kate, if he could possibly help it.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+At this particular time, no man's presence was more desired in that
+county than Griffith Gaunt's.
+
+And this I need not now be telling the reader, if I had related this
+story on the plan of a miscellaneous chronicle. But the affairs of the
+heart are so absorbing, that, even in a narrative, they thrust aside
+important circumstances of a less moving kind.
+
+I must therefore go back a step, before I advance further. You must know
+that forty years before our Griffith Gaunt saw the light, another
+Griffith Gaunt was born in Cumberland: a younger son, and the family
+estate entailed; but a shrewd lad, who chose rather to hunt fortune
+elsewhere than to live in miserable dependence on his elder brother. His
+godfather, a city merchant, encouraged him, and he left Cumberland. He
+went into commerce, and in twenty years became a wealthy man,--so
+wealthy that he lived to look down on his brother's estate, which he had
+once thought opulence. His life was all prosperity, with a single
+exception; but that a bitter one. He laid out some of his funds in a
+fashionable and beautiful wife. He loved her before marriage; and, as
+she was always cold to him, he loved her more and more.
+
+In the second year of their marriage she ran away from him; and no
+beggar in the streets of London was so miserable as the wealthy
+merchant.
+
+It blighted the man, and left him a sore heart all his days. He never
+married again; and railed on all womankind for this one. He led a
+solitary life in London till he was sixty-nine; and then, all of a
+sudden, Nature, or accident, or both, changed his whole habits. Word
+came to him that the family estate, already deeply mortgaged, was for
+sale, and a farmer who had rented a principal farm on it, and held a
+heavy mortgage, had made the highest offer.
+
+Old Griffith sent down Mr. Atkins, his solicitor, post haste, and
+snapped the estate out of that purchaser's hands.
+
+When the lands and house had been duly conveyed to him, he came down,
+and his heart seemed to bud again, in the scenes of his childhood.
+
+Finding the house small, and built in a valley instead of on rising
+ground, he got an army of bricklayers, and began to build a mansion with
+a rapidity unheard of in those parts; and he looked about for some one
+to inherit it.
+
+The name of Gaunt had dwindled down to three, since he left Cumberland;
+but a rich man never lacks relations. Featherstonhaughs, and Underhills,
+and even Smiths, poured in, with parish registers in their laps, and
+proved themselves Gauntesses, and flattered and carneyed the new head of
+the family.
+
+Then the perverse old gentleman felt inclined to look elsewhere. He knew
+he had a namesake at the other side of the county, but this namesake did
+not come near him.
+
+This independent Gaunt excited his curiosity and interest. He made
+inquiries, and heard that young Griffith had just quarrelled with his
+wife, and gone away in despair.
+
+Griffith senior took for granted that the fault lay with Mrs. Gaunt, and
+wasted some good sympathy on Griffith junior.
+
+On further inquiry he learned that the truant was dependent on his wife.
+Then, argued the moneyed man, he would not run away from her but that
+his wound was deep.
+
+The consequence of all this was, that he made a will very favorable to
+his absent and injured (?) namesake. He left numerous bequests; but made
+Griffith his residuary legatee; and, having settled this matter, urged
+on, and superintended his workmen.
+
+Alas! just as the roof was going on, a narrower house claimed him, and
+he made good the saying of the wise bard,--
+
+              "Tu secanda marmora
+    Locas sub ipsum funus et sepulchri
+    Immemor struis domos."
+
+The heir of his own choosing could not be found to attend his funeral;
+and Mr. Atkins, his solicitor, a very worthy man, was really hurt at
+this. With the quiet bitterness of a displeased attorney, he merely sent
+Mrs. Gaunt word her husband inherited something under the will, and she
+would do well to produce him, or else furnish him (Atkins) with proof of
+his decease.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt was offended by this cavalier note, and replied very like a
+woman, and very unlike Business.
+
+"I do not know where he is," said she, "nor whether he is alive or dead.
+Nor do I feel disposed to raise the hue and cry after him. But favor me
+with your address, and I shall let you know should I hear anything about
+him."
+
+Mr. Atkins was half annoyed, half amused, at this piece of indifference.
+It never occurred to him that it might be all put on.
+
+He wrote back to say that the estate was large, and, owing to the terms
+of the will, could not be administered without Mr. Griffith Gaunt; and,
+in the interest of the said Griffith Gaunt, and also of the other
+legatees, he really must advertise for him.
+
+La Gaunt replied, that he was very welcome to advertise for whomsoever
+he pleased.
+
+Mr. Atkins was a very worthy man; but human. To tell the truth, he was
+himself one of the other legatees. He inherited (and, to be just, had
+well deserved) four thousand guineas, under the will, and could not
+legally touch it without Griffith Gaunt. This little circumstance
+spurred his professional zeal.
+
+Mr. Atkins advertised for Griffith Gaunt, in the London and Cumberland
+papers, and in the usual enticing form. He was to apply to Mr. Atkins,
+Solicitor, of Gray's Inn, and he would hear of something greatly to his
+advantage.
+
+These advertisements had not been out a fortnight, when Griffith Gaunt
+came home, as I have related.
+
+But Mr. Atkins had punished Mrs. Gaunt for her _insouciance_, by not
+informing her of the extent of her good fortune; so she merely told
+Griffith, casually, that old Griffith Gaunt had left him some money, and
+the solicitor, Mr. Atkins, could not get on without him. Even this
+information she did not vouchsafe until she had given him her L500, for
+she grudged Atkins the pleasure of supplying her husband with money.
+
+However, as soon as Griffith left her, she wrote to Mr. Atkins to say
+that her husband had come home in perfect health, thank God; had only
+stayed two days, but was to return in a week.
+
+When ten days had elapsed, Atkins wrote to inquire.
+
+She replied he had not yet returned; and this went on till Mr. Atkins
+showed considerable impatience.
+
+As for Mrs. Gaunt, she made light of the matter to Mr. Atkins; but, in
+truth, this new mystery irritated her and pained her deeply.
+
+In one respect she was more unhappy than she had been before he came
+back at all. Then she was alone; her door was closed to commentators.
+But now, on the strength of so happy a reconciliation, she had
+re-entered the world, and received visits from Sir George Neville, and
+others; and, above all, had announced that Griffith would be back for
+good in a few days. So now his continued absence exposed her to sly
+questions from her own sex, to the interchange of glances between female
+visitors, as well as to the internal torture of doubt and suspense.
+
+But what distracted her most was the view Mrs. Ryder took of the matter.
+
+That experienced lady had begun to suspect some other woman was at the
+bottom of Griffith's conduct; and her own love for Griffith was now
+soured. Repeated disappointments and affronts, _spretaeque injuria
+formae_, had not quite extinguished it, but had mixed so much spite with
+it that she was equally ready to kiss or to stab him.
+
+So she took every opportunity to instil into her mistress, whose
+confidence she had won at last, that Griffith was false to her.
+
+"That is the way with these men that are so ready to suspect others.
+Take my word for it, Dame, he has carried your money to his leman. 'Tis
+still the honest woman that must bleed for some nasty trollop or other."
+
+She enforced this theory by examples drawn from her own observations in
+families, and gave the very names; and drove Mrs. Gaunt almost mad with
+fear, anger, jealousy, and cruel suspense. She could not sleep, she
+could not eat; she was in a constant fever.
+
+Yet before the world she battled it out bravely, and indeed none but
+Ryder knew the anguish of her spirit, and her passionate wrath.
+
+At last there came a most eventful day.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt had summoned all her pride and fortitude, and invited certain
+ladies and gentlemen to dine and sup.
+
+She was one of the true Spartan breed, and played the hostess as well as
+if her heart had been at ease. It was an age in which the host struggled
+fiercely to entertain the guests; and Mrs. Gaunt was taxing all her
+powers of pleasing in the dining-room, when an unexpected guest strolled
+into the kitchen: the pedler, Thomas Leicester.
+
+Jane welcomed him cordially, and he was soon seated at a table eating
+his share of the feast.
+
+Presently Mrs. Ryder came down, dressed in her best, and looking
+handsomer than ever.
+
+At sight of her, Tom Leicester's affection revived; and he soon took
+occasion to whisper an inquiry whether she was still single.
+
+"Ay," said she, "and like to be."
+
+"Waiting for the master still? Mayhap I could cure you of that
+complaint. But least said is soonest mended."
+
+This mysterious hint showed Ryder he had a secret burning his bosom. The
+sly hussy said nothing just then, but plied him with ale and flattery;
+and, when he whispered a request for a private meeting out of doors, she
+cast her eyes down, and assented.
+
+And in that meeting she carried herself so adroitly, that he renewed his
+offer of marriage, and told her not to waste her fancy on a man who
+cared neither for her nor any other she in Cumberland.
+
+"Prove that to me," said Ryder, cunningly, "and may be I'll take you at
+your word."
+
+The bribe was not to be resisted. Tom revealed to her, under a solemn
+promise of secrecy, that the Squire had got a wife and child in
+Lancashire; and had a farm and an inn, which latter he kept under the
+name of--Thomas Leicester.
+
+In short, he told her, in his way, all the particulars I have told in
+mine.
+
+Which told it the best will never be known in this world.
+
+She led him on with a voice of very velvet. He did not see how her cheek
+paled and her eyes flashed jealous fury.
+
+When she had sucked him dry, she suddenly turned on him, with a cold
+voice, and said, "I can't stay any longer with you just now. She will
+want me."
+
+"You will meet me here again, lass?" said Tom, ruefully.
+
+"Yes, for a minute, after supper."
+
+She then left him, and went to Mrs. Gaunt's room, and sat crouching
+before the fire, all hate and bitterness.
+
+What? he had left the wife he loved, and yet had not turned to her!
+
+She sat there, waiting for Mrs. Gaunt, and nursing her vindictive fury,
+two mortal hours.
+
+At last, just before supper, Mrs. Gaunt came up to her room, to cool her
+fevered hands and brow, and found this creature crouched by her fire,
+all in a heap, with pale cheek, and black eyes that glittered like
+basilisk's.
+
+"What is the matter, child?" said Mrs. Gaunt. "Good heavens! what hath
+happened?"
+
+"Dame!" said Ryder, sternly, "I have got news of him."
+
+"News of _him_?" faltered Mrs. Gaunt. "Bad news?"
+
+"I don't know whether to tell you or not," said Ryder, sulkily, but with
+a touch of human feeling.
+
+"What cannot I bear? What have I not borne? Tell me the truth."
+
+The words were stout, but she trembled all over in uttering them.
+
+"Well, it is as I said, only worse. Dame, he has got a wife and child in
+another county; and no doubt been deceiving her, as he has _us_."
+
+"A wife!" gasped Mrs. Gaunt, and one white hand clutched her bosom, and
+the other the mantel-piece.
+
+"Ay, Thomas Leicester, that is in the kitchen now, saw her, and saw his
+picture hanging aside hers on the wall. And he goes by the name of
+Thomas Leicester. That was what made Tom go into the inn, seeing his own
+name on the signboard. Nay, Dame, never give way like that. Lean on
+me,--so. He is a villain,--a false, jealous, double-faced villain."
+
+Mrs. Gaunt's head fell back on Ryder's shoulder, and she said no word;
+but only moaned and moaned, and her white teeth clicked convulsively
+together.
+
+Ryder wept over her sad state: the tears were half impulse, half
+crocodile.
+
+She applied hartshorn to the sufferer's nostrils, and tried to rouse her
+mind by exciting her anger. But all was in vain. There hung the betrayed
+wife, pale, crushed, and quivering under the cruel blow.
+
+Ryder asked her if she should go down and excuse her to her guests.
+
+She nodded a feeble assent.
+
+Ryder then laid her down on the bed with her head low, and was just
+about to leave her on that errand, when hurried steps were heard outside
+the door; and one of the female servants knocked; and, not waiting to be
+invited, put her head in, and cried, "O, Dame, the Master is come home.
+He is in the kitchen."
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+Mrs. Ryder made an agitated motion with her hand, and gave the girl such
+a look withal, that she retired precipitately.
+
+But Mrs. Gaunt had caught the words, and they literally transformed her.
+She sprang off the bed, and stood erect, and looked a Saxon Pythoness:
+golden hair streaming down her back, and gray eyes gleaming with fury.
+
+She caught up a little ivory-handled knife, and held it above her head.
+
+"I'll drive this into his heart before them all," she cried, "and tell
+them the reason _afterwards_."
+
+Ryder looked at her for a moment in utter terror. She saw a woman with
+grander passions than herself; a woman that looked quite capable of
+executing her sanguinary threat. Ryder made no more ado, but slipped out
+directly to prevent a meeting that might be attended with terrible
+consequences.
+
+She found her master in the kitchen, splashed with mud, drinking a horn
+of ale after his ride, and looking rather troubled and anxious; and, by
+the keen eye of her sex, she saw that the female servants were also in
+considerable anxiety. The fact is, they had just extemporized a lie.
+
+Tom Leicester, being near the kitchen window, had seen Griffith ride
+into the court-yard.
+
+At sight of that well-known figure, he drew back, and his heart quaked
+at his own imprudence, in confiding Griffith's secret to Caroline Ryder.
+
+"Lasses," said he, hastily, "do me a kindness for old acquaintance.
+Here's the Squire. For Heaven's sake, don't let him know I am in the
+house, or there will be bloodshed between us. He is a hasty man, and I'm
+another. I'll tell ye more by and by."
+
+The next moment Griffith's tread was heard approaching the very door,
+and Leicester darted into the housekeeper's room, and hid in a cupboard
+there.
+
+Griffith opened the kitchen door, and stood upon the threshold.
+
+The women courtesied to him, and were loud in welcome.
+
+He returned their civilities briefly; and then his first word was, "Hath
+Thomas Leicester been here?"
+
+You know how servants stick together against their master! The girls
+looked him in the face, like candid doves, and told him Leicester had
+not been that way for six months or more.
+
+"Why, I have tracked him to within two miles," said Griffith,
+doubtfully.
+
+"Then he is sure to come here," said Jane, adroitly. "He wouldn't ever
+think to go by us."
+
+"The moment he enters the house, you let me know. He is a
+mischief-making loon."
+
+He then asked for a horn of ale; and, as he finished it, Ryder came in,
+and he turned to her, and asked her after her mistress.
+
+"She was well, just now," said Ryder; "but she has been took with a
+spasm; and it would be well, sir, if you could dress, and entertain the
+company in her place awhile. For I must tell you, your being so long
+away hath set their tongues going, and almost broken my lady's heart."
+
+Griffith sighed, and said he could not help it, and now he was here, he
+would do all in his power to please her. "I'll go to her at once," said
+he.
+
+"No, sir!" said Ryder, firmly. "Come with me. I want to speak to you."
+
+She took him to his bachelor's room, and stayed a few minutes to talk to
+him.
+
+"Master," said she, solemnly, "things are very serious here. Why did you
+stay so long away? Our dame says some woman is at the bottom of it, and
+she'll put a knife into you if you come a-nigh her."
+
+This threat did not appall Griffith, as Ryder expected. Indeed, he
+seemed rather flattered.
+
+"Poor Kate!" said he; "she is just the woman to do it. But I am afraid
+she does not love me enough for that. But indeed how should she?"
+
+"Well, sir," replied Ryder, "oblige me by keeping clear of her for a
+little while. I have got orders to make your bed here. Now, dress, like
+a good soul, and then go down and show respect to the company that is in
+your house; for they know you are here."
+
+"Why, that is the least I can do," said Griffith. "Put you out what I am
+to wear, and then run and say I'll be with them anon."
+
+Griffith walked into the dining-room, and, somewhat to his surprise,
+after what Ryder had said, found Mrs. Gaunt seated at the head of her
+own table, and presiding like a radiant queen over a brilliant assembly.
+
+He walked in, and made a low bow to his guests first: then he approached
+to greet his wife more freely; but she drew back decidedly, and made him
+a courtesy, the dignity and distance of which struck the whole company.
+
+Sir George Neville, who was at the bottom of the table, proposed, with
+his usual courtesy, to resign his place to Griffith. But Mrs. Gaunt
+forbade the arrangement.
+
+"No, Sir George," said she; "this is but an occasional visitor; you are
+my constant friend."
+
+If this had been said pleasantly, well and good; but the guests looked
+in vain into their hostess's face for the smile that ought to have
+accompanied so strange a speech and disarmed it.
+
+"Rarities are the more welcome," said a lady, coming to the rescue; and
+edged aside to make room for him.
+
+"Madam," said Griffith, "I am in your debt for that explanation; but I
+hope you will be no rarity here, for all that."
+
+Supper proceeded; but the mirth languished. Somehow or other, the chill
+fact that there was a grave quarrel between two at the table, and those
+two man and wife, insinuated itself into the spirits of the guests.
+There began to be lulls,--fatal lulls. And in one of these, some unlucky
+voice was heard to murmur, "Such a meeting of man and wife I never
+saw."
+
+The hearers felt miserable at this personality, that fell upon the ear
+of silence like a thunderbolt.
+
+Griffith was ill-advised enough to notice the remark, though clearly not
+intended for his ears. For one thing, his jealousy had actually revived
+at the cool preference Kate had shown his old rival, Neville.
+
+"Oh!" said he, bitterly, "a man is not always his wife's favorite."
+
+"He does not always deserve to be," said Mrs. Gaunt, sternly.
+
+When matters had gone that length, one idea seemed to occur pretty
+simultaneously to all the well-bred guests; and that idea was, _Sauve
+qui peut_.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt took leave of them, one by one, and husband and wife were
+left alone.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt by this time was alarmed at the violence of her own passions,
+and wished to avoid Griffith for that night at all events. So she cast
+one terribly stern look upon him, and was about to retire in grim
+silence. But he, indignant at the public affront she had put on him, and
+not aware of the true cause, unfortunately detained her. He said,
+sulkily, "What sort of a reception was that you gave me?"
+
+This was too much. She turned on him furiously. "Too good for thee, thou
+heartless creature! Thomas Leicester is here, and I know thee for a
+villain."
+
+"You know nothing," cried Griffith. "Would you believe that
+mischief-making knave? What has he told you?"
+
+"Go back to _her_!" cried Mrs. Gaunt furiously. "Me you can deceive and
+pillage no more. So, this was your jealousy! False and forsworn
+yourself, you dared to suspect and insult me. Ah! and you think I am the
+woman to endure this? I'll have your life for it! I'll have your life."
+
+Griffith endeavored to soften her,--protested that, notwithstanding
+appearances, he had never loved but her.
+
+"I'll soon be rid of you, and your love," said the raging woman. "The
+constables shall come for you to-morrow. You have seen how I can love,
+you shall know how I can hate."
+
+She then, in her fury, poured out a torrent of reproaches and threats
+that made his blood run cold. He could not answer her: he _had_
+suspected her wrongfully, and been false to her himself. He _had_ abused
+her generosity, and taken her money for Mercy Vint.
+
+After one or two vain efforts to check the torrent, he sank into a
+chair, and hid his face in his hands.
+
+But this did not disarm her, at the time. Her raging voice and raging
+words were heard by the very servants, long after he had ceased to
+defend himself.
+
+At last she came out, pale with fury, and, finding Ryder near the door,
+shrieked out, "Take that reptile to his den, if he is mean enough to lie
+in this house,"--then, lowering her voice, "and bring Thomas Leicester
+to me."
+
+Ryder went to Leicester, and told him. But he objected to come. "You
+have betrayed me," said he. "Curse my weak heart and my loose tongue. I
+have done the poor Squire an ill turn. I can never look him in the face
+again. But 'tis all thy fault, double-face. I hate the sight of thee."
+
+At this Ryder shed some crocodile tears; and very soon, by her
+blandishments, obtained forgiveness.
+
+And Leicester, since the mischief was done, was persuaded to see the
+dame, who was his recent benefactor, you know. He bargained, however,
+that the Squire should be got to bed first; for he had a great dread of
+meeting him. "He'll break every bone in my skin," said Tom; "or else I
+shall do _him_ a mischief in my defence."
+
+Ryder herself saw the wisdom of this. She bade him stay quiet, and she
+went to look after Griffith.
+
+She found him in the drawing-room, with his head on the table, in deep
+dejection.
+
+She assumed authority, and said he must go to bed.
+
+He rose humbly, and followed her like a submissive dog.
+
+She took him to his room. There was no fire.
+
+"That is where you are to sleep," said she, spitefully.
+
+"It is better than I deserve," said he, humbly.
+
+The absurd rule about not hitting a man when he is down has never
+obtained a place in the great female soul; so Ryder lashed him without
+mercy.
+
+"Well, sir," said she, "methinks you have gained little by breaking
+faith with me. Y' had better have set up your inn with me, than gone and
+sinned against the law."
+
+"Much better: would to Heaven I had!"
+
+"What d' ye mean to do now? You know the saying. Between two stools--"
+
+"Child," said Griffith, faintly, "methinks I shall trouble neither long.
+I am not so ill a man as I seem; but who will believe that? I shall not
+live long. And I shall leave an ill name behind me. _She_ told me so
+just now. And oh! her eye was so cruel; I saw my death in it."
+
+"Come, come," said Ryder, relenting a little; "you mustn't believe every
+word an angry woman says. There, take my advice; go to bed; and in the
+morning don't speak to her. Keep out of her way a day or two."
+
+And with this piece of friendly advice she left him; and waited about
+till she thought he was in bed and asleep.
+
+Then she brought Thomas Leicester up to her mistress.
+
+But Griffith was not in bed; and he heard Leicester's heavy tread cross
+the landing. He waited and waited behind his door for more than half an
+hour, and then he heard the same heavy tread go away again.
+
+By this time nearly all the inmates of the house were asleep.
+
+About twenty-five minutes after Leicester left Mrs. Gaunt, Caroline
+Ryder stole quietly up stairs from the kitchen, and sat down to think it
+all over.
+
+She then proceeded to undress; but had only taken off her gown, when she
+started and listened; for a cry of distress reached her from outside the
+house.
+
+She darted to the window and threw it open.
+
+Then she heard a cry more distinct, "Help! help!"
+
+It was a clear starlight night, but no moon.
+
+The mere shone before her, and the cries were on the bank.
+
+Now came something more alarming still. A flash,--a pistol shot,--and an
+agonized voice cried loudly, "Murder! Help! Murder!"
+
+That voice she knew directly. It was Griffith Gaunt's.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+Ryder ran screaming, and alarmed the other servants.
+
+All the windows that looked on the mere were flung open.
+
+But no more sounds were heard. A terrible silence brooded now over those
+clear waters.
+
+The female servants huddled together, and quaked; for who could doubt
+that a bloody deed had been done?
+
+It was some time before they mustered the presence of mind to go and
+tell Mrs. Gaunt. At last they opened her door. She was not in her room.
+
+Ryder ran to Griffith's. It was locked. She called to him. He made no
+reply.
+
+They burst the door open. He was not there; and the window was open.
+
+While their tongues were all going, in consternation, Mrs. Gaunt was
+suddenly among them, very pale.
+
+They turned, and looked at her aghast.
+
+"What means all this?" said she. "Did not I hear cries outside?"
+
+"Ay," said Ryder. "Murder! and a pistol fired. O, my poor master!"
+
+Mrs. Gaunt was white as death; but self-possessed. "Light torches this
+moment, and search the place," said she.
+
+There was only one man in the house; and he declined to go out alone.
+So Ryder and Mrs. Gaunt went with him, all three bearing lighted links.
+
+They searched the place where Ryder had heard the cries. They went up
+and down the whole bank of the mere, and cast their torches' red light
+over the placid waters themselves. But there was nothing to be seen,
+alive or dead,--no trace either of calamity or crime.
+
+They roused the neighbors, and came back to the house with their clothes
+all draggled and dirty.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt took Ryder apart, and asked her if she could guess at what
+time of the night Griffith had made his escape. "He is a villain," said
+she, "yet I would not have him come to harm, God knows. There are
+thieves abroad. But I hope he ran away as soon as your back was turned,
+and so fell not in with them."
+
+"Humph!" said Ryder. Then, looking Mrs. Gaunt in the face, she said,
+quietly, "Where were you when you heard the cries?"
+
+"I was on the other side of the house."
+
+"What, out o' doors, at that time of night!"
+
+"Ay; I was in the grove,--praying."
+
+"Did you hear any voice you knew?"
+
+"No: all was too indistinct. I heard a pistol, but no words. Did you?"
+
+"I heard no more than you, madam," said Ryder, trembling.
+
+No one went to bed any more that night in Hernshaw Castle.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+This mysterious circumstance made a great talk in the village and in the
+kitchen of Hernshaw Castle; but not in the drawing-room; for Mrs. Gaunt
+instantly closed her door to visitors, and let it be known that it was
+her intention to retire to a convent; and, in the mean time, she desired
+not to be disturbed.
+
+Ryder made one or two attempts to draw her out upon the subject, but was
+sternly checked.
+
+Pale, gloomy, and silent, the mistress of Hernshaw Castle moved about
+the place, like the ghost of her former self. She never mentioned
+Griffith; forbade his name to be uttered in her hearing; and, strange to
+say, gave Ryder strict orders not to tell any one what she had heard
+from Thomas Leicester.
+
+"This last insult is known but to you and me. If it ever gets abroad,
+you leave my service that very hour."
+
+This injunction set Ryder thinking. However, she obeyed it to the
+letter. Her place was getting better and better; and she was a woman
+accustomed to keep secrets.
+
+A pressing letter came from Mr. Atkins.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt replied that her husband had come to Hernshaw, but had left
+again; and the period of his ultimate return was now more uncertain than
+ever.
+
+On this Mr. Atkins came down to Hernshaw Castle. But Mrs. Gaunt would
+not see him. He retired very angry, and renewed his advertisements, but
+in a more explicit form. He now published that Griffith Gaunt, of
+Hernshaw and Bolton, was executor and residuary legatee to the late
+Griffith Gaunt of Coggleswade; and requested him to apply directly to
+James Atkins, Solicitor, of Gray's Inn, London.
+
+In due course this advertisement was read by the servants at Hernshaw,
+and shown by Ryder to Mrs. Gaunt.
+
+She made no comment whatever; and contrived to render her pale face
+impenetrable.
+
+Ryder became as silent and thoughtful as herself, and often sat bending
+her black judicial brows.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By and by dark mysterious words began to be thrown out in Hernshaw
+village.
+
+"He will never come back at all."
+
+"He will never come into that fortune."
+
+"'T is no use advertising for a man that is past reading."
+
+These, and the like equivocal sayings, were followed by a vague buzz,
+which was traceable to no individual author, but seemed to rise on all
+sides, like a dark mist, and envelop that unhappy house.
+
+And that dark mist of Rumor soon condensed itself into a palpable and
+terrible whisper,--"Griffith Gaunt hath met with foul play."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No one of the servants told Mrs. Gaunt this horrid rumor.
+
+But the women used to look at her, and after her, with strange eyes.
+
+She noticed this, and felt, somehow, that her people were falling away
+from her. It added one drop to her bitter cup. She began to droop into a
+sort of calm, despondent lethargy.
+
+Then came fresh trouble to rouse her.
+
+Two of the county magistrates called on her in their official capacity,
+and, with perfect politeness, but a very grave air, requested her to
+inform them of all the circumstances attending her husband's
+disappearance.
+
+She replied, coldly and curtly, that she knew very little about it. Her
+husband had left in the middle of the night.
+
+"He came to stay?"
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"Came on horseback?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did he go away on horseback?"
+
+"No; for the horse is now in my stable."
+
+"Is it true there was a quarrel between you and him that evening?"
+
+"Gentlemen," said Mrs. Gaunt, drawing herself back, haughtily, "did you
+come here to gratify your curiosity?"
+
+"No, madam," said the elder of the two; "but to discharge a very serious
+and painful duty, in which I earnestly request you, and even advise you,
+to aid us. Was there a quarrel?"
+
+"There was--a mortal quarrel."
+
+The gentlemen exchanged glances, and the elder made a note.
+
+"May we ask the subject of that quarrel?"
+
+Mrs. Gaunt declined, positively, to enter into a matter so delicate.
+
+A note was taken of this refusal.
+
+"Are you aware, madam, that your husband's voice was heard calling for
+help, and that a pistol-shot was fired?"
+
+Mrs. Gaunt trembled visibly.
+
+"I heard the pistol-shot," said she; "but not the voice distinctly. O, I
+hope it was not his voice Ryder heard!"
+
+"Ryder, who is he?"
+
+"Ryder is my lady's maid: her bedroom is on that side the house."
+
+"Can we see Mrs. Ryder?"
+
+"Certainly," said Mrs. Gaunt, and rose and rang the bell.
+
+Mrs. Ryder answered the bell, in person, very promptly; for she was
+listening at the door.
+
+Being questioned, she told the magistrates what she had heard down by
+"the mere"; and said she was sure it was her master's voice that cried
+"Help!" and "Murder!" And with this she began to cry.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt trembled and turned pale.
+
+The magistrates confined their questions to Ryder.
+
+They elicited, however, very little more from her. She saw the drift of
+their questions, and had an impulse to defend her mistress there
+present. Behind her back it would have been otherwise.
+
+That resolution once taken, two children might as well have tried to
+extract evidence from her as two justices of the peace.
+
+And then Mrs. Gaunt's pale face and noble features touched them. The
+case was mysterious, but no more; and they departed little the wiser,
+and with some apologies for the trouble they had given her.
+
+The next week down came Mr. Atkins, out of all patience, and determined
+to find Griffith Gaunt, or else obtain some proof of his decease.
+
+He obtained two interviews with Ryder, and bribed her to tell him all
+she knew. He prosecuted other inquiries with more method than had
+hitherto been used, and elicited an important fact, namely, that
+Griffith Gaunt had been seen walking in a certain direction at one
+o'clock in the morning, followed at a short distance by a tall man with
+a knapsack, or the like, on his back.
+
+The person who gave this tardy information was the wife of a certain
+farmer's man, who wired hares upon the sly. The man himself, being
+assured that, in a case so serious as this, no particular inquiries
+should be made how he came to be out so late, confirmed what his wife
+had let out, and added, that both men had taken the way that would lead
+them to the bridge, meaning the bridge over the mere. More than that he
+could not say, for he had met them, and was full half a mile from the
+mere before those men could have reached it.
+
+Following up this clew, Mr. Atkins learned so many ugly things, that he
+went to the Bench on justicing day, and demanded a full and searching
+inquiry on the premises.
+
+Sir George Neville, after in vain opposing this, rode off straight from
+the Bench to Hernshaw, and in feeling terms conveyed the bad news to
+Mrs. Gaunt; and then, with the utmost delicacy, let her know that some
+suspicion rested upon herself, which she would do well to meet with the
+bold front of innocence.
+
+"What suspicion, pray?" said Mrs. Gaunt, haughtily.
+
+Sir George shrugged his shoulders, and replied, "That you have done
+Gaunt the honor to put him out of the way."
+
+Mrs. Gaunt took this very differently from what Sir George expected.
+
+"What!" she cried, "are they so sure he is dead,--murdered?"
+
+And with this she went into a passion of grief and remorse.
+
+Even Sir George was puzzled, as well as affected, by her convulsive
+agitation.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+Though it was known the proposed inquiry might result in the committal
+of Mrs. Gaunt on a charge of murder, yet the respect in which she had
+hitherto been held, and the influence of Sir George Neville, who, having
+been her lover, stoutly maintained her innocence, prevailed so far that
+even this inquiry was private, and at her own house. Only she was
+present in the character of a suspected person, and the witnesses were
+examined before her.
+
+First, the poacher gave his evidence.
+
+Then Jane, the cook, proved that a pedler called Thomas Leicester had
+been in the kitchen, and secreted about the premises till a late hour;
+and this Thomas Leicester corresponded exactly to the description given
+by the poacher.
+
+This threw suspicion on Thomas Leicester, but did not connect Mrs. Gaunt
+with the deed in any way.
+
+But Ryder's evidence filled this gap. She revealed three serious
+facts:--
+
+First, that, by her mistress's orders, she had introduced this very
+Leicester into her mistress's room about midnight, where he had remained
+nearly half an hour, and had then left the house.
+
+Secondly, that Mrs. Gaunt herself had been out of doors after midnight.
+
+And, thirdly, that she had listened at the door, and heard her threaten
+Griffith Gaunt's life.
+
+This is a mere _precis_ of the evidence, and altogether it looked so
+suspicious, that the magistrates, after telling Mrs. Gaunt she could ask
+the witnesses any question she chose, a suggestion she treated with
+marked contempt, put their heads together a moment and whispered. Then
+the eldest of them, Mr. Underhill, who lived at a considerable distance,
+told her gravely he must commit her to take her trial at the next
+assizes.
+
+"Do what you conceive to be your duty, gentlemen," said Mrs. Gaunt, with
+marvellous dignity. "If I do not assert my innocence, it is because I
+disdain the accusation too much."
+
+"I shall take no part in the committal of this innocent lady," said Sir
+George Neville, and was about to leave the room.
+
+But Mrs. Gaunt begged him to stay. "To be guilty is one thing," said
+she, "to be accused is another. I shall go to prison as easy as to my
+dinner; and to the gallows as to my bed."
+
+The presiding magistrate was staggered a moment by these words; and it
+was not without considerable hesitation he took the warrant and prepared
+to fill it up.
+
+Then Mr. Houseman, who had watched the proceedings very keenly, put in
+his word. "I am here for the accused person, sir, and, with your good
+leave, object to her committal--on grounds of law."
+
+"What may they be, Mr. Houseman?" said the magistrate, civilly; and laid
+his pen down to hear them.
+
+"Briefly, sir, these. Where a murder is proven, you can commit a subject
+of this realm upon suspicion. But you cannot suspect the murder as well
+as the culprit, and so commit. The murder must be proved to the senses.
+Now in this case, the death of Mr. Gaunt by violence is not proved.
+Indeed, his very death rests but upon suspicion. I admit that the law of
+England in this respect has once or twice been tampered with, and
+persons have even been executed where no _corpus delicti_ was found; but
+what was the consequence? In each case the murdered man turned out to be
+alive, and justice was the only murderer. After Harrison's case, and
+----'s, no Cumberland jury will ever commit for murder, unless the
+_corpus delicti_ has been found, and with signs of violence upon it.
+Come, come, Mr. Atkins, you are too good a lawyer, and too humane a man,
+to send my client to prison on the suspicion of a suspicion, which you
+know the very breath of the judge will blow away, even if the grand jury
+let it go into court. I offer bail, ten thousand pounds in two sureties;
+Sir George Neville here present, and myself."
+
+The magistrate looked to Mr. Atkins.
+
+"I am not employed by the crown," said that gentleman, "but acting on
+mere civil grounds, and have no right nor wish to be severe. Bail by all
+means: but is the lady so sure of her innocence as to lend me her
+assistance to find the _corpus delicti_?"
+
+The question was so shrewdly put, that any hesitation would have ruined
+Mrs. Gaunt.
+
+Houseman, therefore, replied eagerly and promptly, "I answer for her,
+she will."
+
+Mrs. Gaunt bowed her head in assent.
+
+"Then," said Atkins, "I ask leave to drag, and, if need be, to drain
+that piece of water there, called 'the mere.'"
+
+"Drag it or drain it, which you will," said Houseman.
+
+Said Atkins, very impressively, "And, mark my words, at the bottom of
+that very sheet of water there, I shall find the remains of the late
+Griffith Gaunt."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At these solemn words, coming as they did, not from a loose
+unprofessional speaker, but from a lawyer, a man who measured all his
+words, a very keen observer might have seen a sort of tremor run all
+through Mr. Houseman's frame. The more admirable, I think, was the
+perfect coolness and seeming indifference with which he replied, "Find
+him, and I'll admit suicide; find him, with signs of violence, and I'll
+admit homicide--by some person or persons unknown."
+
+All further remarks were interrupted by bustle and confusion.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt had fainted dead away.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+Of course pity was the first feeling; but, by the time Mrs. Gaunt
+revived, her fainting, so soon after Mr. Atkins's proposal, had produced
+a sinister effect on the minds of all present; and every face showed it,
+except the wary Houseman's.
+
+On her retiring, it broke out first in murmurs, then in plain words.
+
+As for Mr. Atkins, he now showed the moderation of an able man who feels
+he has a strong cause.
+
+He merely said, "I think there should be constables about, in case of an
+escape being attempted; but I agree with Mr. Houseman that your
+worships will be quite justified in taking bail, provided the _corpus
+delicti_ should not be found. Gentlemen, you were most of you neighbors
+and friends of the deceased, and are, I am sure, lovers of justice; I do
+entreat you to aid me in searching that piece of water, by the side of
+which the deceased gentleman was heard to cry for help; and, much I
+fear, he cried in vain."
+
+The persons thus appealed to entered into the matter with all the ardor
+of just men, whose curiosity as well as justice is inflamed.
+
+A set of old, rusty drags was found on the premises; and men went
+punting up and down the mere, and dragged it.
+
+Rude hooks were made by the village blacksmith, and fitted to
+cart-ropes; another boat was brought to Hernshaw in a wagon; and all
+that afternoon the bottom of the mere was raked, and some curious things
+fished up. But no dead man.
+
+The next day a score of amateur dragsmen were out; some throwing their
+drags from the bridge; some circulating in boats, and even in large
+tubs.
+
+And, meantime, Mr. Atkins and his crew went steadily up and down,
+dragging every foot of those placid waters.
+
+They worked till dinner-time, and brought up a good copper pot with two
+handles, a horse's head, and several decayed trunks of trees, which had
+become saturated, and sunk to the bottom.
+
+At about three in the afternoon, two boys, who, for want of a boat, were
+dragging from the bridge, found something heavy but elastic at the end
+of their drag: they pulled up eagerly, and a thing like a huge turnip,
+half gnawed, came up, with a great bob, and blasted their sight.
+
+They let go, drags and all, and stood shrieking, and shrieking.
+
+Those who were nearest them called out, and asked what was the matter;
+but the boys did not reply, and their faces showed so white, that a
+woman, who saw them, hailed Mr. Atkins, and said she was sure those boys
+had seen something out of the common.
+
+Mr. Atkins came up, and found the boys blubbering. He encouraged them,
+and they told him a fearful thing had come up; it was like a man's head
+and shoulders all scooped out and gnawed by the fishes, and had torn the
+drags out of their hands.
+
+Mr. Atkins made them tell him the exact place; and he was soon upon it
+with his boat.
+
+The water here was very deep; and though the boys kept pointing to the
+very spot, the drags found nothing for some time.
+
+But at last they showed, by their resistance, that they had clawed hold
+of something.
+
+"Draw slowly," said Mr. Atkins: "and, _if it is_, be men, and hold
+fast."
+
+The men drew slowly, slowly, and presently there rose to the surface a
+Thing to strike terror and loathing into the stoutest heart.
+
+The mutilated remains of a human face and body.
+
+The greedy pike had cleared, not the features only, but the entire flesh
+off the face; but had left the hair, and the tight skin of the forehead,
+though their teeth had raked this last. The remnants they had left made
+what they had mutilated doubly horrible; since now it was not a skull,
+not a skeleton; but a face and a man gnawed down to the bones and hair
+and feet. These last were in stout shoes, that resisted even those
+voracious teeth; and a leathern stock had offered some little protection
+to the throat.
+
+The men groaned, and hid their faces with one hand, and pulled softly to
+the shore with the other; and then, with half-averted faces, they drew
+the ghastly remains and fluttering rags gently and reverently to land.
+
+Mr. Atkins yielded to nature, and was violently sick at the sight he had
+searched for so eagerly.
+
+As soon as he recovered his powers, he bade the constables guard the
+body (it was a body, in law), and see that no one laid so much as a
+finger on it until some magistrate had taken a deposition. He also sent
+a messenger to Mr. Houseman, telling him the _corpus delicti_ was found.
+He did this, partly to show that gentleman he was right in his judgment,
+and partly out of common humanity; since, after this discovery, Mr.
+Houseman's client was sure to be tried for her life.
+
+A magistrate soon came, and viewed the remains, and took careful notes
+of the state in which they were found.
+
+Houseman came, and was much affected both by the sight of his dead
+friend, so mutilated, and by the probable consequences to Mrs. Gaunt.
+However, as lawyers fight very hard, he recovered himself enough to
+remark that there were no marks of violence before death, and insisted
+on this being inserted in the magistrate's notes.
+
+An inquest was ordered next day, and, meantime, Mrs. Gaunt was told she
+could not quit the upper apartments of her own house. Two constables
+were placed on the ground-floor night and day.
+
+Next day the remains were removed to the little inn where Griffith had
+spent so many jovial hours; laid on a table, and covered with a white
+sheet.
+
+The coroner's jury sat in the same room, and the evidence I have already
+noticed was gone into, and the finding of the body deposed to. The jury,
+without hesitation, returned a verdict of wilful murder.
+
+Mrs. Gaunt was then brought in. She came, white as a ghost, leaning upon
+Houseman's shoulder.
+
+Upon her entering, a juryman, by a humane impulse, drew the sheet over
+the remains again.
+
+The coroner, according to the custom of the day, put a question to Mrs.
+Gaunt, with the view of eliciting her guilt. If I remember right, he
+asked her how she came to be out of doors so late on the night of the
+murder. Mrs. Gaunt, however, was in no condition to answer queries. I
+doubt if she even heard this one. Her lovely eyes, dilated with horror,
+were fixed on that terrible sheet, with a stony glance. "Show me," she
+gasped, "and let me die too."
+
+The jurymen looked, with doubtful faces, at the coroner. He bowed a
+grave assent.
+
+The nearest juryman withdrew the sheet. The belief was not yet extinct
+that the dead body shows some signs of its murderer's approach. So every
+eye glanced on her and on It by turns; as she, with dilated,
+horror-stricken eyes, looked on that awful Thing.
+
+
+
+
+LONDON FORTY YEARS AGO.
+
+FROM THE MEMORANDA OF A TRAVELLER.
+
+
+The Court of Chancery.--Feeling a desire to see for myself the highest
+embodiment of English law where it lurked--a huge and bloated
+personification of all that was monstrous and discouraging to
+suitors--in the secret place of thunder, just behind the altar of
+sacrifice, forever spinning the web that for hundreds of years hath
+enmeshed and overspread the mightiest empire upon earth with
+entanglement, perplexity, and procrastination, till estates have
+disappeared and families have died out, sometimes, while waiting for a
+decision,--I dropped into the Court of Chancery.
+
+The first thing I saw was the Lord Chancellor himself,--Lord Eldon,--the
+mildest, wisest, slowest, and most benignant of men,--milder than
+Byron's Ali Pacha, wiser than Lord Bacon himself; and, if not altogether
+worthy of being called "the greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind," like
+his prototype, yet great enough as a lawyer to set people wondering what
+he would say next. He was quite capable of arguing a question on both
+sides, and then of deciding against himself; and so patient, withal,
+that he had just then finished a sitting of three whole days to Sir
+Thomas Lawrence, for a portrait of his hand,--a beautiful hand, it must
+be acknowledged, though undecided and womanish, as if he had never quite
+made up his mind whether to keep it open or shut.
+
+And the next thing I took notice of, after a hurried glance at the
+carved ceiling and painted windows, and over the array of bewigged and
+powdered solicitors and masters,--a magnificent bed of cauliflowers, in
+appearance, with some of the finest heads I ever saw in my life--out of
+a cabbage-garden,--was a large, dark, heavy picture of Paul before
+Felix, by Hogarth, representing these great personages at the moment
+when Felix, that earliest of Lord Chancellors, having heard Paul
+through, says: "Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient
+season, I will call for thee." Lord Eldon was larger than I supposed
+from the portrait above mentioned. And this is the more extraordinary,
+because the heads of Lawrence, like those of ancient statuary, are
+always smaller than life, to give them an aristocratic, high-bred air,
+and the bodies are larger. The expression of countenance, too, was
+benignity itself,--just such as Titian would have been delighted
+with,--calm, clear, passionless, without a prevailing characteristic of
+any strength. "Felix trembled," they say. Whatever Felix may have done,
+I do not believe that Lord Eldon would have trembled till he had put on
+his night-cap and weighed the whole question by himself at his chambers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Kean._--Wishing to see how this grotesque but wonderful actor--a
+mountebank sometimes and sometimes a living truth--would play at home
+after driving us all mad in America, I went to see him in Sir Giles
+Overreach. He played with more spirit, more of settled purpose, than
+with us, being more in earnest, I think, and better supported. There is
+one absurdity in the play, which was made particularly offensive by
+Oxberry's exaggeration. The dinner is kept waiting, and the whole
+business of the play suspended, for the Justice to make speeches. But
+the last scene was capital,--prodigious,--full of that dark, dismal,
+despairing energy you would look for in a dethroned spirit, baffled,
+like Mephistopheles, at the very moment his arm is outstretched, and his
+long, lean fingers are clutching at the shoulder of his victim. Being
+about to cross blades with his adversary, in a paroxysm of rage he
+plucks at the hilt of his sword, and stops suddenly, as if struck with
+paralysis, pale, and gasping for breath, and says,--in that far-off,
+moaning voice we all remember in his famous farewell to the "big wars
+that make ambition virtue,"--"The widow sits upon my arm, and the
+wronged orphan's tear glues it to the scabbard,--it will _not_ be
+drawn," etc., etc.,--or something of the sort. It was not so much a
+thrilling as a curdling you felt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Young, in Sir Pertinax._--Very good, though full of stage trick, or
+what they call, when they get bothered, or would like to bother you,
+stage _business_;--as where he throws his pocket-handkerchief before him
+on leaving the stage, somewhat after the style of Macready in Hamlet,
+which Forrest called _le pas a mouchoir_, and took the liberty of
+hissing. Good Scotch, generally, with a few wretched blunders, though
+his "booin', and booin', and booin'," and his vehement snuff-taking, and
+the declaration that "he could never stand oopright in the presence of a
+great mon in a' his life," were evidently copied from, or suggested by,
+George Frederick Cooke, who borrowed both from Macklin, if we may trust
+surviving contemporaries.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Robert Owen._--Breakfasted with Robert Owen, after having attended a
+conference of the brotherhood, where they talked a world of nonsense,
+and argued for a whole hour, without coming to a conclusion, about
+whether we are governed by circumstances or circumstances are governed
+by us. You would swear Owen was a Yankee, born and bred. He has the
+shrewd, inquisitive look, the spare frame, the sharp features, of a
+Connecticut farmer, and constantly reminds me of Henry Clay when he
+moves about. He is evidently sincere; but such a visionary! and so
+thoroughly satisfied that the world is coming to an end just as he would
+have it, that he allows no misgivings to trouble him, and never loses
+his temper, nor "bates one jot of heart or hope," happen what may. The
+last time we met--only three days ago--his great project was coming up
+before Parliament, and he told me, in confidence, that he was sure of a
+favorable result,--that he had counted noses, and had the most
+comfortable assurances from all the great leaders of the day,--and in
+short, between ourselves, that grass would be growing on the London
+Exchange within two years. The petition came up on the day appointed,
+and was allowed to drop out of the tail end of the cart, almost without
+a remark. But so far was he from being disheartened, that he lost no
+time in preparing for a trip across the Atlantic, which he had long had
+in contemplation, but was hindered from taking by the hopes he had been
+persuaded to entertain from his friends in Parliament, and by the
+business at Lanark,--a manufacturing place which he had built up of
+himself in Scotland, with eminent success, and most undoubted practical
+wisdom.
+
+Wishing to leave a record with me for future ages, he wrote as follows
+in my album, with a cheerfulness, an imperturbability, a serene
+self-confidence, past all my conceptions of a visionary or enthusiast.
+
+     "I leave this country with a deep impression that my visit to
+     America will be productive of permanent benefit to the Indian
+     tribes, to the negro race, and to the whole population of the
+     Western Continent, North and South, and to Europe.
+
+     "ROBERT OWEN.
+
+     "LONDON, 4th September, 1824."
+
+What a magnificent scheme! How comprehensive and how vast! But nothing
+came of it, beyond the translation of his son, Robert Dale Owen, to this
+country,--a very clever, well-educated, and earnest, though rather
+awkward and sluggish young man, who has achieved a large reputation
+here, and will be yet more distinguished if he lives, being well
+grounded and rooted in the foundation principles of government, and both
+conscientious and fearless.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Old Bailey._--This and other like places, of which we have all read so
+much that we feel acquainted with them, not as pictures or descriptions,
+at second hand, but as decided and positive realities, I lost no time in
+seeing.
+
+I found the court-room small, much smaller than the average with us,
+badly arranged, and worse lighted. A prisoner was up for burglary. He
+was a sullen, turbulent-looking fellow; and his counsel, an Old Bailey
+lawyer, was inquiring, with a pertinacity that astonished while it
+amused me, about the dirt in a comb. His object was to ascertain
+"whether it had been used or _not_"; and, as there were two sides to it,
+which side had become dirty from being carried in the pocket, and which
+from legitimate use. Before the prisoner was a toilet-glass, in which he
+could not help seeing his own pale, haggard, frightened face whenever he
+looked up,--a refinement of barbarism I was not prepared for in a
+British court of justice. I occupied a seat in the gallery, surrounded
+by professional pickpockets, burglars, and highwaymen, I dare say; for
+they talked freely of the poor fellow's chances, and like experts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Joanna Baillie._--"Here," said Lady Bentham, wife of General Sir
+Samuel Bentham, the originator of that Panopticon, which was the germ
+of all our prison discipline as well as of all penitentiary
+improvements, the world over,--"Here is an autograph you will think
+worth having, I am sure, after what I have heard you say of the writer,
+and of her tragedies, and I want you to see her";--handing me, as she
+spoke, the following brief note, written upon a bit of coarse paper
+about six inches by four.
+
+     "If you are perfectly disengaged this evening, Agnes and I will
+     have the pleasure of taking tea with you, if you give us leave.
+
+     "J. BAILLIE."
+
+
+Now, if there was a woman in the world I wanted to see, or one that I
+most heartily reverenced, it was Joanna Baillie. Her "De Montfort" I had
+always looked upon as one of the greatest tragedies ever written,--equal
+to anything of Shakespeare's for strength of delineation, simplicity,
+and effect, however inferior it might be in the superfluities of genius,
+in the overcharging of character and passion, of which we find so much
+in Shakespeare; and, on the whole, not unlike that wonderful Danish
+drama, "Dyveke," or a part of "Wallenstein."
+
+My great desire was now to be satisfied. We met, and I passed one of the
+pleasantest evenings of my life with _Mrs._ Baillie, as they called her,
+Lady Bentham, her most intimate if not her oldest friend, and "sister
+Agnes."
+
+I found Mrs. Baillie wholly unlike the misrepresentations I had seen of
+her. She was rather small,--though far from being diminutive, like her
+sister Agnes,--with a charming countenance, full of placid serenity,
+almost Quakerish, beautiful eyes, and gray hair, nearly white indeed,
+combed smoothly away from her forehead. We talked freely together,
+avoiding the shop, and the impression she left on my mind was that of a
+modest, unpretending gentlewoman, full of quiet strength and shrewd
+pleasantry, with a Scottish flavor, but altogether above being brilliant
+or showy, even in conversation with a stranger and an author. She
+questioned me closely about my country and about the people, and
+appeared to take much interest in our doings and prospects. Her sister
+Agnes never opened her mouth, to the best of my recollection and belief,
+though she listened with her eyes and ears to the conversation, and
+appeared to enjoy it exceedingly; and as for Lady Bentham, though a
+clever woman of large experience and great resources, such was her
+self-denial and her generous admiration of the "queenly stranger," as I
+had called her friend in sport,--remembering how it was applied to the
+magnificent Siddons, when she represented Jane de Montfort,--that she
+did nothing more and said nothing more than what was calculated to bring
+out her friend to advantage. There was nothing said, however, from which
+a person unacquainted with the writings of Joanna Baillie would have
+inferred her true character,--no flashing lights, no surprises, no
+thunder-bursts. The conversation was, at the best, but sociable and
+free, as if we were all of the same neighborhood or household; but
+knowing her by her great work on the Passions, I was profoundly
+impressed, nevertheless, and left her well satisfied with her
+revelations of character.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Catalani._--What a magnificent creature! How majestic and easy and
+graceful! And then what a voice! One would swear she had a nest of
+nightingales and a trumpet obligato in her throat. No wonder she sets
+the great glass chandeliers of the Argyle rooms ringing and rattling
+when she charges in a bravura.
+
+That she is, in some passages, a little--not vulgar--but almost vulgar,
+with a dash of the contadina, is undeniable; and she certainly has not a
+delicate ear, and often sings false; yet, when that tempestuous warbling
+in her throat breaks forth, and the flush of her heart's blood hurries
+over her face and empurples her neck, why then "bow the high banners,
+roll the answering drums," and shut up, if you wouldn't be torn to
+pieces by a London mob.
+
+Say what you will, you must acknowledge--you _must_--that you never
+heard such a voice before, if there ever was one like it on earth,--so
+full and so impassioned, so rich and sympathetic. More educated, more
+brilliant organs there may be, like those of Pasta or Velluti, poor
+fellow!--more satisfying to the ear,--but none, I believe, so satisfying
+to the heart; none that so surely lifts you off your feet, and blinds
+and deafens you to all defects, and sets you wandering far away through
+the empyrean of musical sounds, till you are lost in a labyrinth of
+triumphant harmonies. The sad, mournful intonations of Velluti may bring
+tears into your eyes, but you are never transported beyond yourself by
+his piteous wailing.
+
+And yet, if you will believe me, this woman has just been called out of
+bed to a London audience, who, instead of paying a guinea or half a
+guinea to hear her in opera, are paying only 2_s._ 6_d._ a head to hear
+her let off "God s_h_ave the King!" like a roll of musical thunder. She
+appears "in _dish-abille_" as they call it here, and in _tears_. And why
+is she summoned? Because the _sufferin'_ people, having understood that
+she shares the house, insist on having their half-crowns and sixpences
+returned. It has been quite impossible to hear a word, ever since they
+were informed that she had been taken suddenly ill, and was not allowed
+to appear by her medical attendants. But what of that? Dead or alive, a
+British audience must have her out. And so a great banner was lifted on
+which was inscribed "Catalani sent for!" and then, after a while, as the
+uproar continued, and the outcries grew more violent, and the white
+handkerchiefs more and more stormy and threatening, another inscription
+appeared, "Catalani coming!" And lo! she comes! and comes weeping. But
+the people refuse to be comforted. And why? Because of their
+disappointment? Because of their passion for music? No indeed; but
+because they are told that she is to go snacks with the manager; and,
+her parsimony being proverbial, they are determined to rebuke it in a
+liberal spirit. Pshaw!
+
+These people pretend to love music, and to love it with such a devouring
+passion that nothing less than the very best will satisfy them, cost
+what it may. Yet the opera-house, with the patronage of the royal
+family, the nobility, and the gentry, and open only twice a week, is
+never full even at the representation of the finest works of genius; and
+when such an artist as Catalani is engaged at one of the theatres, and
+the people are admitted for theatre prices, the first thing they do,
+after crowding the house to suffocation, is to call for "God save the
+King," or, if Braham is out, for "Kelvin Grove." Enthusiasts
+indeed,--carried away, and justly, by "Black-eyed Susan," or "Cherry
+Ripe," which they do understand, feel, and enjoy,--they are all ready to
+swear, and expect you to believe, that their passion is for opera
+music,--Italian or German, the Barber of Seville, or _Der Freischuetz_.
+And therefore I say again, Pshaw!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_John Dunn Hunter._--This luckiest and boldest of humbugs, whose book,
+by the merest accident, has obtained for him the favor of the Duke of
+Sussex, and, through the Duke, access to the highest nobility, has just
+been presented at Court, and is not a little mortified that his Majesty,
+on receiving a copy of the book, Hunter's "Captivity among the Indians,"
+did not inquire after his health or make him a speech. He does not so
+much mind paying five guineas for the loan of a court suit, consisting
+of a single-breasted claret coat with steel buttons, a powdered tie,
+small-clothes, white-silk stockings, and a dress sword,--with
+instructions on which side it is to be worn, and how it is to be managed
+in backing out so as not to get between his legs and trip him up,--nor
+the having to pay for being mentioned in the Court Journal by a fellow
+who is called the King's Reporter; but then he will have the worth of
+his money, and so takes it out in grumbling and sulking. Not long ago
+he sent a note through the penny-post, sealed with a wafer, directed to
+the Marchioness of Conyngham, the king's mistress, in reply to an
+invitation from her ladyship, which he accepted, to meet the king! At
+least, such was the interpretation he put upon it. And now, after all
+this, to be fobbed off with a bow by "Gentleman George," the "fat
+friend" of poor Brummell, was indeed a little too bad.
+
+Nothing he can say or do, however, will undeceive these people. Though
+he cannot shout decently, cannot bear fatigue or pain, is so far from
+being swift of foot that he is not even a good walker, talks little or
+no Indian, and is continually outraging all the customs of society after
+getting well acquainted with them, and doing all this by calculation, as
+in the case of the note referred to above, they persist in believing his
+story. I shall have to expose him.--P. S. I have exposed him.
+
+While speaking just now of his acquaintance with the Duke of Sussex, who
+was very kind to him, and a believer to the last, I said that it was
+obtained for him by accident. It was in this way. At the house where he
+lodged a Mr. Norgate of Norfolk--not far from Holkham, the seat of Mr.
+Coke afterward Earl of Leicester--was also a lodger. Mr. Norgate invited
+Hunter down to his father's, and they went over to Holkham together. And
+there they met the Duke of Sussex, a great friend of Mr. Coke, both
+being Liberals and Oppositionists. His Royal Highness took a great fancy
+to Hunter, got him to sit to Chester Harding for his picture, gave him a
+gold watch and lots of agricultural tools to subdue the Indians with,
+and stuck to him through thick and thin, till I found it necessary to
+tear off the fellow's mask.
+
+On separating from me, before I had got possession of the facts which
+soon after appeared in the "London Magazine," he wrote in my album the
+following sententious and pithy apothegm, which, of course, only went to
+show the marvellous power of adaptation to circumstances which would
+naturally characterize the man, if his story were true. It was in this
+way his dupes reasoned. If he sealed a letter with a wafer, and sent it
+through the penny-post to a woman of rank, that proved his neglected
+education or a natural disregard of polite usage, and of course that he
+had been carried off in childhood by the Indians, and knew not where to
+look for father or mother, sister or brother,--while, on the contrary,
+if he used wax, and set the seal upon it which had been given to him by
+the Duke of Sussex, that showed, of course, the sagacity and readiness
+of adaptation which ought to characterize the hero of Hunter's
+narrative. In short, he was another Princess Caraboo, or young
+Chatterton, or Cagliostro, or Count Eliorich, all of whom were made
+great impostors by the help of others, the over-credulous and the
+over-confident in themselves.
+
+     "He who would do great actions," writes our enormous bug-a-boo,
+     "must learn to _empoly_ his powers to the least possible loss.
+     The possession of brilliant and extraordinary talents" (this
+     was probably meant for me, as he had been trying to prevail
+     upon my "brilliant and extraordinary talents" to return to
+     America with him, and go among the savages about the
+     neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains, and there establish a
+     confederacy of our own) "is not always the most valuable to its
+     possessor. Moderate talents, properly directed, will enable one
+     to do a great deal; and the most distinguished gifts of nature
+     may be thrown away by an unskilful application of them.
+
+     "J. D. HUNTER.
+
+     "LONDON, 15th May, 1824."
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Kean at a Public Dinner._--A terrible outcry just now, in consequence
+of certain exposures and a published correspondence. At a public dinner,
+he says he is going to America. The Duke of York, who presides, cries
+out, "No, no!" Shouts follow and the rattling of glasses, and men leap
+on the chairs and almost on the tables, repeating the Duke's "No, no!"
+till at last Kean promises to make an apology from the stage,--a
+perilous experiment, he will find, after which he cannot stay here. The
+object of Price, who has engaged him, is to kill off Cooper. The best
+actors now get fifty guineas a week, or twenty-five pounds a night for
+so many nights, play or pay, with a benefit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Architecture._--I have seen no greater barbarisms anywhere than I find
+here. The screen of Carleton House,--a long row of double columns, with
+a heavy entablature supporting the arms of Great Britain,--"that and
+nothing more"; the doings of Inigo Jones in his water-gates and arches,
+with two or three orders intermixed; and the late achievements of Mr.
+Nash along Regent Street,--with the church spire, which has the
+attractiveness and symmetry of an exaggerated marlin-spike, for a
+vanishing point,--are of themselves enough to show that the people here
+have no taste, and no feeling for this department of the Fine Arts,
+however much they may brag and bluster.
+
+But I have just returned from a visit to one of Sir Christopher Wren's
+masterpieces, which has greatly disturbed my equanimity, and obliges me
+to modify my opinion. It is a church back of the Mansion House; and is
+the original of Godefroy's Unitarian church at Baltimore, beyond all
+question: the dome rests on arches, and springs into the air, as if
+buoyed up and aspiring of itself. Bad for the music, however. Here I
+find West's picture of the Martyrdom of St. Stephen, with a figure which
+he has repeated in "Christ Healing the Sick," and a woman,--or young
+man, you do not feel certain which,--weeping upon the hand of the
+martyr, precisely as in a painting in Baltimore Cathedral by Renou, who
+must have borrowed or stolen it from West, if West did not borrow or
+steal it from him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Drawings._--I have just returned from visiting a collection of drawings
+by the old masters,--Raphael, Michael Angelo, Rembrandt, Titian, &c.,
+&c. Wonderful, to be sure! There is a pen-and-ink drawing by Munro, of
+uncommon merit; another from a capital old engraving by Tiffen, hardly
+to be distinguished from an elaborate line engraving, full of good faces
+and straight lines, with nothing picturesque. A moonlight and cottage by
+Gainsborough, very fine. Jackson's and Robinson's miniatures, and
+sketches in water-colors,--charming. Leslie's designs, with Stothard's
+on the same subject, are delightfully contrasted: Leslie's, neatly
+finished and full of individuality; Stothard's, a beautiful, free
+generalization, without finish. (But the engraver understands him, and
+finishes for him, adding the hands and feet in his own way.) It is a
+representation of Jeanie Deans's interview with the Queen. Leslie's
+figure is standing; Stothard's, kneeling: yet both are expressive and
+helpful to our conceptions. Here, too, I saw Rembrandt's celebrated
+"Battle of Death," with a skeleton blowing a horn, and helmeted and
+plumed, and having a thigh-bone for a battle-axe,--shadows on the
+shoulders of horsemen, and skeleton feet;--on the whole, a monstrous
+nightmare, such as you might expect from Fuseli after a supper on raw
+beef, but never from such a painter as Rembrandt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Phrenology._--There must be something in this new science,--for they
+persist in calling it a science,--though I cannot say how much. Just
+returned from a visit to De Ville, in the Strand, in company with
+Chester Harding, Robert M. Sully, the painter, and Humphries, the
+engraver,--each differing from the others in character and purpose; yet,
+after manipulating our crania, this man says of each what all the rest
+acknowledge to be true, and what, said of any but the particular person
+described, would be preposterous. Why are the busts of Socrates and
+Solon what they should be, according to this theory of Gall and
+Spurzheim? Were they modelled from life, or from characters resembling
+them? Compared the head of a Greek boy with that of a young Hottentot.
+One was largely developed in the intellectual region, the other in the
+animal region, and the latter cries whenever his home or his mother is
+mentioned. Both are at school here. Thurtell's head is a great
+confirmation, which anybody can judge of. I must find time for a
+thorough investigation.
+
+P. S.--I have kept my promise, and am thoroughly satisfied. Phrenology
+deserves to be called a science, and one of the greatest and best of
+sciences, notwithstanding all the quackery and self-delusion that I find
+among the professors. I have now studied it and experimented upon it for
+more than thirty years, and have no longer any misgivings upon the
+subject, so far as the great leading principles are involved.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Manners._--If we do not record our first impressions they soon
+disappear; and the greatest novelties are overlooked or forgotten.
+Already I begin to see women with heavily-laden wheel-barrows, without
+surprise. I have now learned, I hope, that a postman's rap is _one_,
+_two_, and no more; a servant's, _one_; while a footman gives from four
+to twenty, as hard as he can bang, so as to startle the whole
+neighborhood and make everybody run to the windows. Eating fish with a
+knife said to be fatal. Great personages give you a finger to shake. I
+did not know this when I took the forefinger of a cast-off mistress, the
+original of Washington Irving's Lady Sillicraft, a painted and withered
+old vixen, who meant to signify her liking for me, as I had reason to
+believe. Moles are reckoned such a positive beauty here that my
+attention has been called to them, as to fine eyes or a queenly bearing.
+A _fine_ woman here means a large woman, tall, dignified, and showy,
+like a fine horse or a fine bullock.
+
+Never shall I forget the looks and tones of a bashful friend, in
+describing his embarrassment. He was at Holkham, the seat of Mr. Coke,
+our Revolutionary champion, who, being in Parliament at the time, moved,
+session after session, the acknowledgment of our independence,--am I
+right here?--and actually gave the health of George Washington at a
+large dinner-party while the Revolutionary fires were raging. There was
+a large company at dinner, but for his life my friend did not know what
+to do with the ladies nor with his hands. Goes through room after room
+to get his dinner; is called upon to serve a dish he has never seen
+before, and knows not how to manage. Asked to take wine, and wants to
+ask somebody else, but cannot recall the name of a single person within
+reach, and whispers to the servant for relief, while his eye travels up
+and down both sides of the long table; is reminded of the guest who said
+to himself, loud enough to be overheard by the waiter behind his chair,
+"I wish I had some bread," to which the waiter replied without moving,
+"I wish you had." Durst not offer his arm to a lady, lest he should
+violate some of the multitudinous every-day usages of society, and so,
+instead of enjoying his dinner, just nibbled and choked and watched how
+others ate of the dishes he had never seen before. Yet this man was no
+fool, he was not even a blockhead; but he was frightened out of all
+propriety nevertheless. Poor fellow! Soon after this he went to Paris,
+and, having picked up a few French sentences, undertook to pass off one
+upon a servant who took his cloak as he entered the hotel of a French
+celebrity in a violent rainstorm. He flung the phrase off with an air,
+saying, "Mauvais temps," whereupon the word was passed up from mouth to
+mouth, and, to his unutterable horror, he was introduced to the company
+as M. Mauvais Temps.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Painting._--I have just been to see Mulready's famous "Lion and Lamb."
+He is a Royal Academician; and, spite of the cleverness we see in every
+touch, we are reminded of Pison's reply to the Academician, who asked
+what he was,--"I? O, I am nobody; not even an Academician." The picture
+is about eighteen by twenty-two inches, and belongs to his Majesty,
+George the Fourth. It represents two boys, a little child, a woman, and
+a dog. One boy has broken the strap of his trousers, and, bracing
+himself up for a clinch, is evidently encroaching on the other with his
+foot. He stands with his legs on the straddle, both fists made up for
+mischief, and head turned away in profile, with hat and books flung down
+upon the turf; while the other--the lamb--keeps his satchel in his hand,
+with one arm raised to parry the blow he is expecting. He has a meek,
+boyish face, and we have it in full. The back of the child is towards
+you, the mother terribly frightened; parts very fine, but as a whole the
+picture is not worthy of its reputation, to say nothing of the
+extravagant price paid for it,--some hundreds of guineas, they say.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Greenwich Fair._--Having read so much in story-books and novels, from
+my earliest childhood,--at one time in the gilt-covered publication of
+E. Newbury, St. Paul's Church Yard, and after that in larger books,--of
+the rioting at Greenwich Fair (another Donnybrook in its way), I
+determined to see for myself, and went down for the purpose, April 19th,
+1824. Universal decorum characterized the whole proceedings till the day
+was over, after which there was a large amount of dancing and frolicking
+and sight-seeing and beer-drinking, but no drunkenness and no
+quarrelling. The people were saucy, but good-natured, like the Italian
+rabble, with their plaster confectionery, at a carnival. Women and girls
+would run down the long green slope together, which it is said the
+cockneys believe to be the highest land in the world, after Richmond
+Hill; and many of them stumble and slip and roll to the bottom,
+screaming and laughing as they go. This I understand to be a favorite
+pastime with people who are big enough to know better; for a part of the
+fun, and that which all seem to enjoy most, is in tripping one another
+up. Plenty of giants and dwarfs to be seen for a penny, with white
+Circassians, silver-haired, and actors of all sorts and sizes. "Walk in,
+ladies and gentlemen! walk in! Here's the rope-dancing and juggling,
+with lots of gilt gingerbread,--and all for sixpence! Here is the great
+Numidian lion!"--leading forth a creature not larger than a
+moderate-sized English mastiff,--"with a throat like a turnpike gate,
+and teeth like mile-stones, and every hair on his mane as big as a
+broomstick!" It was worth sixpence to see the fellow's face when he said
+this; but most of the people round me seemed to believe what they heard
+rather than what they saw. Actors and actresses turn out and dance and
+strut before the curtain.
+
+Went into the Hospital, of which we have all heard so much, and into the
+Chapel. Here is the best picture West ever painted, I think. It is the
+shipwreck of St. Paul, with the viper and the fire: rocks rather crowded
+and confused; on the right are two figures, frequently, I had almost
+said always, to be found in his pictures, and always together. Old man
+on the right, capital!--Roof of the Hospital highly ornamented, though
+chaste, with painted pilasters, fluted; ceiling done by Sir James
+Thornhill, and is really a grand affair, not only for coloring and
+drawing, but for composition and general treatment. Architecture of the
+building, once a palace, worthy of the highest commendation, though it
+needs a back part to correspond with the two wings. Cupolas made to
+correspond, but seem rather out of place,--not wanted.
+
+Had quite an adventure before I got away. I saw a young girl running
+down hill by herself. She fell, and stained her white frock all over one
+hip of a grass-green. She seemed to be much hurt and near fainting. I
+found her young, pretty, and modest, as you may readily infer from what
+follows,--usually if you hear of a woman being run over in the street,
+you may be sure she is neither young nor pretty,--and so seeing her
+greatly distressed about the figure she cut, and companionless, I took
+pity on her, and going with her found, after some search, an old woman
+in a garret with a husband, child, and grandchild, all huddled and
+starving in one room together. The husband was a waterman. He had
+"stove" his boat some years before, and was never able to get another;
+had two sons at sea; paid two shillings a week for the room, which they
+said was one shilling too dear, being only large enough to allow of two
+or three chairs, a table, and a turn-up bed. Poor Sarah took off her
+frock and washed it before me, without a sign of distress or
+embarrassment; and then we went off together and had a bit of a
+dance,--a rough-and-tumble fore-and-after,--at the nearest booth. With
+her bonnet off, and neat cap, her beautiful complexion and dark hair and
+eyes, how happened it that she was really modest and well-behaved? And
+how came she there? After some resolute questioning, I determined to see
+her home, at least so far as to set her down in safety in the
+neighborhood where she lived. The coach was crowded with strangers. It
+was late, and they were silent, and I thought sulky. Just as we were
+passing a lamp, after we had entered a wide thoroughfare, I saw a man's
+face under a woman's bonnet. Though not absolutely frightened, I was
+rather startled, and more and more unwilling to leave the poor girl to
+the mercy of strangers; for I saw, or thought I saw, signs of
+intelligence between two of the party; and in short, I never left her
+till the danger was over.
+
+There were mountebanks and fortune-tellers and gypsies at every turn.
+The prettiest I met with told my fortune. "You are liked better by the
+women," said she, "than by the men." Very true. "You are loved by a
+widow named Mary." My landlady was a widow, and her name was Mary.
+"Which do you like best, Mary or Bessie?" In addition to Mary, there was
+another pleasant friend, supposed to be a natural daughter of George
+IV., named Bessie. But how the plague did the little gypsy know this? I
+found out, I believe, long after the whole affair was forgotten. There
+was present, without my knowledge, a man who was always full of such
+tricks, who knew me well, and who threw the gypsy in my way and put her
+up to all she knew. This was Humphries the engraver.
+
+There was a great ball too,--a magnificent ball,--one shilling entrance.
+More than fifty couples stood up for a contra-dance, and tore down the
+middle and up outside, and cast off, as if they were all just out of a
+lunatic hospital. And yet, as I have said before, I believe, there was
+no drunkenness and no quarrelling.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Shooting the Bridge._--Wanting to go to the Tower, I took a boat above
+London Bridge at the wrong time of the tide, in spite of all
+remonstrances, and came near being swamped. Not being a good swimmer,
+and aware that people were often drowned there, I cannot understand what
+possessed me; but as the watermen were not afraid, and asked no
+questions, why should I be troubled? For aught they knew, I might be
+made of cork, or have a swimming-jacket underneath my coat, or a pocket
+life-preserver ready to be blown up at a moment's notice; and they were
+sure of the fee. At the mouth of the St. John's River, New Brunswick,
+they have a fall both ways, at a certain time of tide, through which and
+up and down which boats and rafts plunge headlong so as to take away
+your breath, while you are watching them from the bridge; but really,
+this little pitch of not more than three or four feet under London
+Bridge I should think more dangerous, and the people seem to think so
+too, for they are always on the watch after the tide turns, and swarm
+along the parapets, and rush from one side to the other, as the wherry
+shoots through the main arch, with a feeling akin to that of the man who
+followed Van Amburgh month after month to see him "chawed up" by the
+lion or tiger.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Major Cartwright._--Another fast friend of our country and the
+institutions of our country, and always ready to take up the
+quarter-staff in our defence. A great reformer, and honest as the day is
+long. Wrote much in favor of American independence in 1774, and, with
+Sir Francis Burdett and others, who chose to meddle with the British
+Constitution wherever they found a fragment large enough to talk about,
+has been visited by the government, and tried and imprisoned. His book
+on the British Constitution is, though somewhat visionary, both original
+and ingenious. He is six feet high, with a very broad chest; wears a fur
+cap and blue cotton-velvet dressing-gown in the sultriest weather; is a
+great admirer of Jeremy Bentham, Mrs. Wheeler, and Fanny Wright, by the
+way.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Woolwich._--After spending a day here under special advantages, I have
+succeeded in seeing whatever was worth seeing for my purpose, and in
+getting a fine sketch of a Woolwich Pensioner by Sully,--Robert M.
+Sully, nephew of Thomas Sully, and a capital draughtsman,--to serve as a
+companion piece for the Greenwich Pensioner by the same artist. The man
+had served against us in the Revolutionary War, and participated in the
+"affair" of Bunker Hill. The shovel hats, the long chins and retreating
+mouths of these aged men at Greenwich, are wonderfully hit off by
+Cruikshank, with a mere flourish of the pen. I have a scene in a
+watch-house, with half a score of heads, thoroughly Irish, drunk or
+sleepy, and as many more of these shovel hats, which the clever artist
+amused himself with scratching off,--as we sat talking together at a
+table,--on a little bit of waste paper, which fluttered away in the
+draft from a window, and fell upon the floor.
+
+Saw a prodigious quantity of guns to be "let loose" in the dock-yard, to
+which I was admitted as a great privilege. When Alexander of Russia and
+the king of Prussia were admitted after the war, they were greatly
+disappointed and mortified, I was told, at seeing such a vast
+accumulation of warlike material. They supposed England to be exhausted.
+
+The English artillery is far superior in details to the French, though
+not half so abundant. Where the French bring eighty pieces at once into
+the field, the English never have more than twenty pieces. The English
+lost only two guns in the whole Peninsular war; the French lost nearly
+eleven hundred, Waterloo included.
+
+At Woolwich there are two or three hundred acres full of machinery, with
+saw-mills, planing-mills, &c. Saw, among other inventions and
+improvements, anchor shanks made largest about one third of the distance
+from the crown, where they always bend or break; an original
+screw-cutter of uncommon merit; and a perpetual capstan for drawing in
+wood for the mill.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Illuminations._--His Majesty's birthday. By one odd arrangement of
+colored lamps, which was intended for George IV., it reads thus,
+_Giver_, being G. IV. R. The populace break windows which are not
+lighted up. The king's tradesmen are most astonishing in their
+manifestations of loyalty; and, among others, I see an establishment
+with this inscription: "Bug Destroyer to his Majesty."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Chimney-Sweeps._--May 1. The little monsters appear in cocked hats and
+gilt paper, with their faces painted, and with dancing and music, and a
+very pretty girl pirouetting in a hogshead of cut paper, with large boys
+about her, like trees dancing. Of course, we are constantly reminded of
+Edward Wortley Montagu, and of his delightful experience with the
+chimney-sweeps.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_John Randolph._--This madman is full of his vagaries here; says the
+most offensive things, but in such a high-bred, supercilious, if not
+gentlemanly way, that people cannot make up their minds about him, nor
+whether to cut him dead or acknowledge him for a genius and a humorist.
+Sir Robert Inglis says, publicly, that Mr. Randolph "on these boards"
+claimed for Virginia the first attempt at abolition. "And I am disposed
+to believe the gentleman correct," adds Sir Robert, "because of his
+opportunities for knowledge." Whatever related to the United States was
+received better than anything else in the proceedings of to-day at the
+Freemasons' Tavern. Very comfortable and gratifying.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Marquis of Stafford's Gallery._--Here I find about three hundred fine
+pictures, most of them by the old masters, and a large part worthy of
+enthusiastic admiration. Thirty-eight in the National Gallery cost sixty
+thousand pounds. What, then, are these worth as a collection?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Cary, the Translator of Dante._--Met him at Mr. Griffith's,--Sylvanus
+Urban's,--another great friend of our country, who insisted on my
+occupying the seat which Dr. Franklin used to sit in, and after him Lord
+Byron. Mr. Cary has a good, sensible face, is about five feet seven in
+height, and forty-six years old, very moderate of speech, and talks with
+a low voice. Among the guests were Captain Brace, who was with Lord
+Exmouth when he put through the Dey of Algiers after the fashion of our
+Preble. He seemed about sixty, with gray hair, and a youthful
+countenance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Horticultural Exhibition._--Great show and surprising. No sales made.
+Pears better than ours; peaches nearly as good, and sell from a shilling
+to one and sixpence apiece. They resemble not our New Jersey or Maryland
+peaches, but such as grow about Boston. Grapes fine, nectarines capital;
+gooseberries, plums, mulberries, currants, all better than ours; apples
+wretched, "not fit to give the pigs," liked all the better for being
+hard, or ligneous.
+
+I have just understood here, on the best authority, that Mr. Coke, of
+Norfolk, did move for an abandonment of the war, session after session,
+and finally gave the casting vote as mover. He did also give
+Washington's health at his own table once, with a large company of
+leading men about him, in the hottest part of the struggle. He looks
+like one of Trumbull's generals or statesmen, of the old Revolutionary
+type, and not unlike Washington himself, or General Knox.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Duke of Sussex._--Prodigious; even Chester Harding, who is a large man,
+over six feet, appears under-sized alongside of his Royal Highness. Went
+to a meeting for the encouragement of the arts. The Duke presided, and,
+being popular and willing so to continue, he made a speech. "Ladies and
+gentlemen," said he, "it affords me gratification to see, to recognize,
+so many persons assembled for the encouragement of what I may say is one
+of the best institutions of the country. Good deal of business coming
+up. I shall therefore reserve myself for the conclusion, and now call
+upon the Secretary to read the proceedings." Effect of the show seems to
+be very good. Some persons, girls and women, received three prizes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Theatre._--Munden's farewell. Dosey and Sir Robert Bramble; among the
+finest pieces of acting I ever saw,--rich, warm, and full of
+unadulterated strength. Terrible crush at the entrance, the corners
+being neither stuffed nor rounded. Great screaming and screeching. "Take
+care o' that corner!" "Mind there!" "Oh! oh! you'll kill me!" "There
+now, lady's killed!" And it was indeed about as much as a woman's life
+was worth to venture into such a brutal mob. No consideration for women,
+as usual. They are pushed, crowded, overthrown sometimes, and sometimes
+trampled on without remorse or shame, as at the Duke of York's funeral.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Washington Irving._--Met him for the second time, and had more reason
+than ever for believing that, with all his daintiness and
+fastidiousness, he is altogether a man, hearty and generous, and his
+books, with all their shifting shadows, but a transcript of himself and
+of his unacknowledged visions and meditations. His pleasantry, too, is
+delightful; and, as you cannot question his truthfulness, he gains upon
+you continually, even while you pity his girlish sensitiveness. I do not
+see any picture of him that satisfies me, or does him justice. Newton
+cannot paint a portrait, nor indeed can Leslie; and the result is, that
+what we have foisted off upon us for portraits are only
+misunderstandings.
+
+
+
+
+A YEAR IN MONTANA.
+
+
+Where the Wind River Chain of the Rocky Mountains stretches far away to
+the east, and the Bitter Root Range far away to the northwest, like
+giant arms holding in their embrace the fertile valleys whence the
+myriad springs which form the two great rivers of the continent take
+their rise,--on the northern border of the United States, and accessible
+only through leagues of desert,--lie the gold fields of Montana. Four
+years ago all this region was _terra incognita_. In 1805, Lewis and
+Clarke passed through it; but beyond a liberal gift of geographical
+inaccuracies, they have left only a few venerable half-breeds as relics
+of their journey. Among the Indians, what they did and said has passed
+into tradition; and the tribes of which they speak, the Ke-heet-sas,
+Minnetarees, Hohilpoes, and Tus-he-pahs, are as extinct as the dodo.
+Later explorers have added little to the scanty stock of information,
+save interesting descriptions of rich valleys and rough mountain scenery
+and severe hardships in the winters. For the most part, it was a country
+unexplored and unknown, and held by the various Indian tribes in the
+Northwest as a common hunting-ground.
+
+One bright morning in August, 1864, after a brief rest at Salt Lake, we
+left Brigham's seraglios for this new El Dorado. We had taken the long
+trip of twelve hundred miles on the overland stage, which Mr. Bowles
+describes in his admirable book "Across the Continent." But his was the
+gala-day excursion of Speaker Colfax and his party, so full of studied
+and constant attention as to lead Governor Bross to tell the good people
+of Salt Lake, a little extravagantly, that the height of human happiness
+was to live in one of Holladay's stages. This life loses its rose-color
+when nine inside passengers, to fortune and to fame unknown, are viewed
+as so much freight, and transported accordingly.
+
+It is four hundred miles due north from Salt Lake City to Montana. The
+low canvas-covered Concord hack, in which we travel, is constructed with
+an eye rather to safety than comfort, and, like a city omnibus, is never
+full. Still, our passengers look upon even their discomforts as a joke.
+They are most of them old miners, hard-featured but genial and kindly,
+and easily distinguished from men reared in the easy life of cities. Mr.
+Bowles describes them as characterized by a broader grasp and more
+intense vitality. I could not but notice, particularly, their freedom
+from all the quarrels and disagreements sometimes known among travellers
+in the States. The heavy revolver at every man's belt, and the miner's
+proverbial love of fair play, keep in every one's mind a clear
+perception of the bounds of _meum_ and _tuum_.
+
+I must hurry over our four days' journey and its many objects of
+interest. All the first day we ride through brisk Mormon villages,
+prosperous in their waving cornfields and their heavy trade with the
+mines. At a distance is the Great Salt Lake,--properly an inland sea,
+like the Caspian and Sea of Aral,--having a large tributary, the Bear
+River, and no outlet. Crossing Bear River, and the low mountains beyond,
+we follow down the Portneuf Canon to Snake River, or Lewis's Fork of the
+Columbia, along which and its affluents lies the rest of our journey.
+
+Hurrying past the solitary station-houses, and over here and there a
+little creek, our fourth night brings us to a low hill, which we need to
+be told is a pass of the Rocky Mountains. We cross this during the
+night, and morning dawns upon us in a level prairie among the network of
+brooks which form the extreme sources of the Missouri. Here, more than
+sixty years ago, Lewis and Clarke followed the river up to the "tiny
+bright beck," so narrow that "one of the party in a fit of enthusiasm,
+with a foot on each side, thanked God that he had lived to bestride the
+Missouri." It is called Horse Prairie, from the circumstance that they
+here bartered for horses with the Shoshonee Indians. They had often seen
+the men, mounted on fleet steeds, watching them like timid antelopes at
+a distance, but never allowing this distance to lessen. No signs or
+proffered presents could induce a near approach. One lucky day, however,
+Captain Lewis surprised a chattering bevy of their squaws and made
+prisoner a belle of the tribe. Finding all effort to escape hopeless,
+the woman held down her head as if ready for death. There was among them
+the same effeminate fear of capture and the same heroic fortitude when
+death seemed inevitable, that Clive and Hastings found in the Bengalee.
+But the Captain gallantly painted her tawny cheeks with vermilion, and
+dismissed her loaded with presents. It is hardly necessary to add, that
+captures of Shoshonee Sabines were not long matters of difficult
+accomplishment. Very soon all the chiefs followed, with a rather
+exuberant cordiality towards the party, and with forced smiles the
+explorers "received the caresses and no small share of the grease and
+paint of their new friends."
+
+Lewis and Clarke called Horse Prairie by the prettier name of Shoshonee
+Cove. But the names they gave have passed into as deep oblivion as the
+forgotten great man, Rush, whose pills they publish to the world as a
+sovereign specific in bilious fevers. Of all the names on their map only
+those of the three forks of the Missouri, from President Jefferson and
+his Secretaries Madison and Gallatin, remain. The unpoetical miner has
+invented a ruder nomenclature; and on the rivers which they called
+Wisdom, Philosophy, and Philanthropy, he bestows the barbarous names of
+Big Hole, Willow Creek, and Stinking Water.
+
+A few hours' ride brings us to Grasshopper Creek, another affluent of
+the Missouri, and, like them all, a crooked little stream of clear cold
+water, fringed with alders and willows, and with a firm pebbly bed,
+along which the water tinkles a merry tune. What a pity that these pure
+mountain children should develop to such a maturity as the muddy
+Missouri! Parallel with this little stream, where it winds into a narrow
+chasm between abrupt mountain walls, winds a crooked street, with a
+straggling row of log-cabins on either side, and looking from the
+mountain-tops very much like the vertebrae of a huge serpent. This is
+Bannack, so called from the Indian tribe whose homes were in the
+vicinity. These were the bravest, the proudest, and the noblest looking
+Indians of the mountains till the white man came. Yet seldom has there
+been a stronger illustration of the inexorable law, that when a superior
+and inferior race come in contact the lower is annihilated. Every step
+of the white man's progress has been a step of the red man's decay. And
+now this tribe, once so warlike, is a nation of spiritless beggars,
+crouching near the white settlements for protection from their old
+foes, over whom in times past they were easy victors.
+
+At Bannack, in the summer of 1862, a party of Colorado miners, lost on
+their way to Gold Creek in the Deer Lodge Valley, discovered the first
+rich placer diggings of Montana. A mining town grew up straightway; and
+ere winter a nondescript crowd of two thousand people--miners from the
+exhausted gulches of Colorado, desperadoes banished from Idaho, bankrupt
+speculators from Nevada, guerilla refugees from Missouri, with a very
+little leaven of good and true men--were gathered in. Few of them speak
+with pleasant memories of that winter. The mines were not extensive, and
+they were difficult to work. Scanty supplies were brought in from Denver
+and Salt Lake, and held at fabulous prices. An organized band of
+ruffians, styled Road Agents, ruled the town. Street murders were daily
+committed with impunity, and travellers upon the road were everywhere
+plundered. Care was not even taken to conceal the bodies of the victims,
+which were left as food for the wolves by the roadside.
+
+Next year, the discovery of richer mines at Virginia left Bannack a
+deserted village of hardly two hundred people. It is a dull town for the
+visitor; but the inhabitants have all Micawber's enthusiastic trust in
+the future, and live in expectation of the wealth which is to turn up in
+the development of the quartz lodes. We visited the most famous of these
+lodes,--the Dacotah,--almost every specimen from which is brilliant with
+little shining stars of gold. And deep down in the shaft of this lode
+has been found a spacious cave full of stones of a metallic lustre,
+sending out all the tints of the rainbow, and many-colored translucent
+crystallizations, varying from the large stalactites to the fragile
+glass-work that crumbles at the touch.
+
+Leaving Bannack, the road ascends a very lofty range of mountains, and
+passes by much wild and picturesque scenery. Mountaineers call these
+ranges, where they separate two streams, by the name of "divides." They
+have a scanty but nutritious herbage, and are for many months in the
+year covered with snow. On many of them a stunted growth of hybrid pines
+and cedars flourishes in great abundance. These, with the quaking ash
+and cottonwood along the streams, are the only woods of Montana. None of
+the harder woods, such as oak or maple, are found. It is inconceivably
+grand from the top of this range to look out upon the endless succession
+of vast peaks rolling away on every side, like waves in the purple
+distance. High above them all towers Bald Mountain,--the old Indian
+landmark of this section,--like Saul among his brethren. I have crossed
+this range in the gray of a February morning, with the thermometer at
+thirty-five below zero, and I never felt such a sense of loneliness as
+in gazing out from our sleigh--little atom of life as it seemed--upon
+this boundless ocean of snow, whose winters had been unbroken solitude
+through all the centuries.
+
+Over this divide we pass among a low range of hills seamed with veins of
+silver, having already a more than local reputation. The hills embosom a
+clear little creek called after the yellow rattlesnake, which is almost
+as plentiful a luxury in these wilds as the grasshopper. It is, however,
+less venomous than its Eastern brethren, for not even the oldest
+inhabitant can instance a death from its bite. Nervous people avoid it
+studiously, but it has many friends among the other animals. The
+prairie-dog, the owl, and the rattlesnake live a happy family in one
+burrow, and the serpent has another fast friend in the turtle-dove.
+These doves are called the rattlesnake's brothers-in-law, and there runs
+a pretty legend, that when an Indian kills one of them, or mocks their
+plaintive cry, they tell the rattlesnake, who lies in wait and avenges
+the wrong by a deadly sting. And when one of the snakes is killed, the
+turtle-doves watch long over his dead body and chant mournful dirges at
+his funeral.
+
+The road to Virginia passes through the basin in which lie the
+tributaries of Jefferson Fork. It is a barren waste. Being in the rich
+mineral section of the country, its agricultural resources are
+proportionally deficient. Providence does not sprinkle the gold among
+the grain lands, but, by the wise law of compensation, apportions it to
+remote and volcanic regions which boast of little else. Along the
+water-courses is a narrow belt of cottonwood, and then rise the low
+table-lands, too high for irrigation, and with a parched, alkaline soil
+which produces only the wild sage and cactus. Miners curse this
+sprawling cactus most heartily, and their horses avoid its poisonous
+porcupine thorns with great care. All through these brown wastes one
+sees no shelter for the herds, no harvests of grain or hay, and wonders
+not a little how animal life--as well the flocks of antelope, elk, and
+deer in the mountains, as the cattle and horses of the rancheros--is
+preserved through the deep snows of the Northern winter. But even when
+the mountains are impassable, there is seldom snow in the valleys; and
+along the sides of the hills grow stunted tufts of bunch-grass, full of
+sweetness and nutriment. Horses always hunt for it in preference to the
+greener growth at the water's edge. And it is not an annual, but a
+perennial, preserving its juices during the winters, and drawing up sap
+and greenness into the old blades in the first suns of spring. This
+bunch-grass grows in great abundance, and it is only in winters of
+extreme severity that animals suffer from a lack of nourishing food.
+
+Specks of gold may be found in a pan of dirt from any of these streams,
+followed back to the mountain chasm of its source. Upon one of them, in
+June, 1863, a party of gold-hunters stopped to camp on their return to
+Bannack, after an unsuccessful trip to the Yellowstone. While dinner was
+being cooked, one of them washed out a pan of dirt and obtained more
+than a dollar. Further washings showed even greater richness; and,
+hurrying to Bannack, they returned at once with supplies and friends,
+and formed a mining district. In the absence of law, the miners frame
+their own law; and so long as its provisions are equal and impartial, it
+is everywhere recognized. The general principle of such laws is to grant
+a number of linear feet up and down the gulch or ravine to the first
+squatter, upon compliance with certain conditions necessary for mutual
+benefit. In deliberations upon these laws, technicalities and ornament
+are of little weight, and only the plainest common-sense prevails.
+Prominent among their conditions was a provision--for the exorcism of
+drones--that every claim must be worked a fixed number of days in each
+week, or else, in the miners' expressive vocabulary, it should be
+considered "jumpable." Compliance with law was never more rigidly
+exacted by Lord Eldon than by the miners' judges and courts, and in the
+first days of this legislation a hundred revolvers, voiceless before any
+principle of justice, yet too ready before any technicality, fixed the
+construction of every provision beyond all cavil.
+
+This was the beginning of Virginia Gulch, from which twenty-five
+millions of dollars in gold have been taken, and which has to-day a
+population of ten thousand souls. The placer proved to be singularly
+regular, almost every claim for fifteen miles being found profitable.
+From the mouth of the canon to its very end, among snows almost
+perpetual, are the one-storied log-cabins, gathered now and then into
+clusters, which are called cities, and named by the miner from his old
+homes in Colorado and Nevada. In travelling up the crazy road, with
+frowning mountains at our left, and yawning pit-holes at our right, we
+pass seven of these cities,--Junction, Nevada, Central, Virginia,
+Highland, Pine Grove, and Summit.
+
+Virginia, the chief of the hamlets, has since developed into an
+organized city, and the capital of the Territory. Its site was certainly
+not chosen for its natural beauty. Along the main gulch are the
+mines,--huge piles of earth turned up in unsightly heaps. At one side
+of the mines, and up a ravine which crosses the gulch at right angles,
+lies the city. In shape it was originally like the letter T, but its
+later growth has forced new streets and houses far up the hillsides. Not
+so much regard was paid, in laying the foundations of the new city, to
+its future greatness, as Penn gave when he planned Philadelphia. The
+miner only wanted a temporary shelter, and every new-comer placed a
+log-cabin of his own style of architecture next the one last built.
+Where convenience required a street, lo! a street appeared. There were
+no gardens, for beyond the narrow centre of the ravine only sage-brush
+and cactus would grow. But the mines thrived, and also grew and thrived
+the little city and its vices.
+
+Gradually a better class of buildings appeared. What were called hotels
+began to flourish; but it was long before the monotony of bacon, bread,
+and dried apples was varied by a potato. And for sleeping
+accommodations, a limited space was allotted upon the floor, the guest
+furnishing his own blankets. A theatre soon sprang up. And either
+because of the refined taste of some of the auditors, or the advanced
+talent of the performers, the playing was not the broad farce which
+might have been entertaining, but was confined to Shakespeare and heavy
+tragedy, which was simply disgusting. This style of acting culminated in
+the _debut_ of a local celebrity, possessed of a sonorous voice and
+seized with a sudden longing for Thespian laurels. He chose the part of
+Othello, and all Virginia assembled to applaud. The part was not well
+committed, and sentences were commenced with Shakespearian loftiness and
+ended with the actor's own emendations, which were certainly
+questionable improvements. Anything but a tragic effect was produced by
+seeing the swarthy Moor turn to the prompter at frequent intervals, and
+inquire, "What?" in a hoarse whisper. A running colloquy took place
+between Othello and his audience, in which he made good his assertion
+that he was rude in speech. Since then, Shakespeare has not been
+attempted on the Virginia boards. "Othello's occupation's gone"; and all
+tragic efforts are confined to the legitimate Rocky Mountain drama.
+"Nick of the Woods" has frequently been produced with great applause,
+though the illusion is somewhat marred by the audible creaking of the
+wheels of the boat in which the Jibbenainosay sails triumphantly over
+the cataract.
+
+Sunday is distinguished from other days in being the great day of
+business. The mines are not worked and it is the miners' holiday. All is
+bustle and confusion. A dozen rival auctioneers vend their wares, and
+gallop fast horses up and down the street. The drinking and gambling
+saloons and dance-houses are in full blast, all with bands of music to
+allure the passing miner, who comes into town on Sunday to spend his
+earnings. The discoverer of Virginia is the miner _par excellence_,--a
+good-natured Hercules clad in buckskin, or a lion in repose. All the
+week he toils hard in some hole in the earth for this Sunday folly. The
+programme for the day is prepared on a scale of grandeur in direct ratio
+to the length of his purse. The necessity of spending the entire week's
+earnings is obvious, and to assist him in doing so seems to be the only
+visible means of support of half the people of the town. The dance-house
+and the gambling-saloon, flaunting their gaudy attractions, own him for
+the hour their king. His Midas touch is all-powerful. I must confess,
+with all my admiration for his character, that his tastes are low. I
+know that the civilization of the East would bore him immeasurably, and
+that he considers Colt, with his revolvers, a broader philanthropist
+than Raikes with his Sunday schools. But he is frank and open, generous
+and confiding, honorable and honest, scorning anything mean and
+cowardly. Mention to him, in his prodigal waste of money, that a poor
+woman or child is in want of the necessaries of life, and the
+purse-strings open with a tear. Tell him that corruption and wrong have
+worked an injury to a comrade or a stranger, and his pistol flashes only
+too quickly, to right it. Circumstances have made him coarse and brutal,
+but below all this surface beats a heart full of true instincts and
+honest impulses. I am certain the recording angel will blot out many of
+his sins, as he did those of Uncle Toby. His means exhausted, he
+abdicates his ephemeral kingdom, and, uncomplaining, takes his pick and
+shovel, his frying-pan, bacon, and flour, and starts over the mountains
+for new diggings. Yet he gains no wisdom by experience. The same
+bacchanalian orgies follow the next full purse.
+
+The Road Agents came to the new city from Bannack increased in strength
+and boldness. Long impunity had made them scarcely anxious to conceal
+their connection with the band. Life and property were nowhere secure.
+Spies in Virginia announced to confederates on the road every ounce of
+treasure that left the city, and sometimes reports came back of
+robberies of the coaches, sometimes of murder of the travellers, and
+still more frequently the poor victim was never heard of after his
+departure. There were no laws or courts, except the miners' courts, and
+these were powerless. Self-protection demanded vigorous measures, and a
+few good men of Bannack and Virginia met together and formed a Vigilance
+Committee, similar in all respects to that which has had such a
+beneficent influence in the growth of California. It was, of course,
+secret, and composed of a mere handful. It must be secret, for the Road
+Agents had so overawed the people that few dared acknowledge themselves
+as champions of law and order. They had threatened, and they had the
+power to crush such an organization at its inception, by taking the
+lives of its members. But moving stealthily and unknown, the little
+organization grew. Whenever a good man and true was found, he became a
+link of the chain. At last it tried its power over a notorious desperado
+named Ives, by calling a public trial of the miners. It was a citizens'
+trial, but the Vigilantes were the leading spirits. Ives confronted his
+accusers boldly, relying on the promised aid of his confederates. They
+lay in wait to offer it, but the criminal was too infamous for just men
+to hesitate which side to take, and the cowards, as always in such
+cases, though probably a numerical majority, dared not meet the issue.
+Ives was hanged without any attempt at rescue.
+
+The proceedings thus vigorously commenced were as vigorously continued.
+The Road Agents still trusted their power, and the contest was not
+settled. The Vigilantes settled it soon and forever. One morning their
+pickets barred every point of egress from Virginia. A secret trial had
+been held and six well-known robbers sentenced to death. Five of them
+were one by one found in the city. The quickness of their captors had
+foiled their attempts at escape or resistance, and their impotent rage
+at seeing every point guarded sternly by armed Vigilantes knew no
+bounds. They were all executed together at noon. It was a sickening
+scene,--five men, with the most revolting crimes to answer for, summoned
+with hardly an hour's preparation into eternity. Yet they are frequently
+spoken of with respect because they "died game." All of them, drinking
+heavily to keep up their courage, died with the most impious gibes and
+curses on their lips. Boone Helm, a hoary reprobate, actually said, as
+the block was being removed from him, "Good by, boys! I will meet you in
+hell in five minutes." Harsh measures were these, but their effect was
+magical. One of the leaders had been hanged at Bannack, and the others
+as fast as found were promptly executed,--perhaps thirty in all. A few
+fled, and are heard of now and then among the robbers of Portneuf Canon;
+but under the sway of the Vigilantes life and property in Virginia
+became safer than to-day in Boston. For minor offences they banished the
+guilty, and for grave offences they took life. As their history is now
+recounted by the people, there is no man who does not praise their work
+and agree that their acts were just and for the public good. The first
+courts were held in December, 1864, and the Vigilantes were the earliest
+to support their authority. They are still in existence, but as a
+support and ally of the courts, and only appearing when the public
+safety demands the most rigorous dealing.
+
+Virginia can never be a pretty city, but in many respects it is a model
+one. The earlier log-houses are now giving way to substantial stores of
+granite; and the number of gambling and tippling shops is steadily
+decreasing, the buildings being taken up by the wholesale traders. An
+organized city government preserves strict police regulations. Two
+thriving churches have grown up, and very recently the principal
+merchants have agreed to close their houses on the Sabbath. The old
+residents are bringing in their wives and children, and society
+constantly gains in tone. Erelong, it will compare favorably with the
+steadiest town in the land of steady habits.
+
+Eight miles above Virginia is Summit. Its name sufficiently designates
+its location, which is at the head of the gulch and among the highest
+mountains. The sun is not seen there till a late hour in the winter, and
+the few who make it their home burrow closely as rabbits from the bitter
+cold and deep snows. The placer diggings are at their greatest depth
+here, but exceedingly rich. Here also are the richest gold lodes of the
+Territory. All the quartz seems impregnated with gold, sometimes in
+little pockets of nuggets, sometimes spattered by the intense heat of
+old into all forms of wires and spangles.
+
+Quartz mining is yet in its rudest form. The gold is buried in solid
+rock, and requires heavy crushing-mills and cumbrous machinery, which
+must be built and transported at immense expense by capitalists. It is a
+question with such capitalists how certain is the promise of returns.
+The uncertainty of mining, as shown by the results of ventures in
+Colorado, has naturally deterred them. Under the old process of crushing
+the quartz to powder by stamps, and then separating the gold by
+amalgamation with quicksilver, but twenty-five per cent of the gold is
+saved. After the amalgamation a practical chemist could take the
+"tailings" of the Dacotah ore, and produce almost the full assay of the
+original rock. Very much depends in the mountain territories upon the
+success of experiments, now in operation, with the various new
+desulphurizing processes. This success established, the wealth of the
+territories is incalculable.
+
+All the mining of Montana is now confined to the placer or gulch
+diggings. There are many of these, but probably none to compare in all
+respects with those at Virginia. At Bannack is found purer gold, at
+Biven's are larger nuggets, and many diggings at McClellan's yield
+larger amounts per day. But these are lotteries,--some claims paying
+largely to-day and nothing to-morrow, or one yielding enormously, while
+the next, after all the labor and expense of opening, gives nothing.
+They are called "spotted," while nearly every claim at Virginia has
+yielded with great regularity. How the gold came into these gulches is
+of little consequence to the miner. It suffices him to know that it is
+there, and his practical experience enables him to point out its
+location with great accuracy, though without any scientific knowledge of
+its origin. Most probably, far away in the Preadamite periods, when
+these mountains were much loftier than to-day, they were cloven and
+pierced by volcanic fires, and then into their innumerable vents and
+fissures infiltrated the molten quartz and the base and precious metals.
+Afterwards followed the period of the glaciers, and all the working of
+the seasons and chemical decompositions. Traces of the glaciers and the
+rotten burnt quartz of the volcanic periods exist everywhere. Thus
+washing and crumbling away in the waters and suns of untold springs and
+summers, the gold has come down the mountain gorges into the valleys
+below. The manner of gathering it is rude and incomplete enough. In all
+the gulches, at depths varying from six to fifty feet, is a _bed-rock_
+of the same general conformation as the surface. Usually this is
+granite; but sometimes before reaching the primitive rock two or three
+strata of pipe-clay--the later beds of the stream, upon which frequently
+lies a deposit of gold--are passed. Upon the bed-rock is a deposit, from
+three to four feet in depth, of gravel and boulders, in which the gold
+is hidden. This is called by the miners "pay-dirt," and to remove it to
+the surface and wash it is the end of mining. It is an expensive and
+laborious process indeed. The water has first to be controlled; and in
+mines of not too great depth this is done by a drain ditch along the
+bed-rock, commenced many claims below. In this all the claim-holders are
+interested, and all contribute their quota of the labor and expense of
+digging it. The district laws permit every person to run such a drain
+through all the claims below his own, and force every man to contribute
+alike towards its construction, on pain of not being allowed to use the
+water, even though it flows through his own land. The water controlled,
+the rest is mere physical labor, which only bones and sinews of iron can
+endure. In the shallow diggings the superincumbent earth above the
+pay-dirt is removed, and the process is called "stripping." In deep
+diggings a shaft is sunk to the bed-rock, and tunnels are run in every
+direction,--and this is called "drifting." The roof is supported by
+strong piles, but these supports too frequently give way, and hurry the
+poor miners to untimely deaths. The pay-dirt, in whichever way obtained,
+is then shovelled into the sluice-boxes,--a series of long troughs, set
+at the proper angle to prevent the gold from washing past, or the dirt
+from settling to the bottom. Managed with the skill which experience has
+taught, the constant stream of water carries over the sand, while the
+gold, being seven times heavier, sinks to the bottom, and is caught by
+cross-bars called "_riffles_," placed there for the purpose. In the
+lower boxes is frequently placed quicksilver, with which the lighter
+particles amalgamate. During the washings the larger stones and boulders
+are removed by a fork. These boxes, after a successful day's work, are a
+pleasant sight to see, all brilliant with gold and black sand and
+magnetic iron. All is gold that glitters. The heavy sand and iron are
+separated by a more careful washing by hand and by the magnet. Of
+course, all this system is very rude and imperfect,--so much so, that it
+has been found profitable in California to wash over the same earth nine
+times.
+
+The gold-dust thus obtained is the only circulating medium in the
+Territory, and is the standard of trade. Treasury notes and coin are
+articles of merchandise. Everybody who has gold has also his little
+buckskin pouch to hold it. Every store has its scales, and in these is
+weighed out the fixed amount for all purchases according to Troy weight.
+An ounce is valued at eighteen dollars, a pennyweight at ninety cents,
+and so on. It is amusing to notice how the friction of the scales is
+made by some men--particularly the Jews, whose name is legion--to work
+them no loss. In _weighing in_, the scale-beam bows most deferentially
+to the gold side; but in _weighing out_, it makes profound obeisance to
+the weights. The same cupidity has given rise to two new terms in the
+miners' glossary,--_trade dust_ and _bankable dust_. Bankable dust means
+simply gold, pure and undefiled. Trade dust is gold with a plentiful
+sprinkling of black sand, and is of three grades, described very clearly
+by the terms _good_, _fair_, and _dirty_. The trader, in receiving our
+money, complains if it does not approximate what is bankable, but in
+paying us his money pours out a combination in which black sand is a
+predominating ingredient. Many merchants even keep a saucer of black
+sand in readiness to dilute their bankable gold to the utmost thinness
+it will bear.
+
+As might be expected, the courts were hardly opened before grave
+questions arose as to the construction of contracts based on this
+anomalous currency. Notes were usually made to pay a given number of
+"dollars, in good, bankable dust." But the laws recognized no such
+commodity as a dollar in dust. The decision of the court protecting a
+trickster in paying treasury-notes worth but fifty cents for the gold
+loaned by a friend, savored to the plain miner of rank injustice. To
+avoid even this opportunity for a legal tender, sometimes notes promised
+to pay a certain number of ounces and pennyweights, with interest at a
+fixed rate. The question was immediately sprung as to whether such an
+agreement was to be construed as a promissory note, or was to be sued
+for as a contract to do a specified act, by setting out a breach and
+claiming damages for the non-performance. The miners listened to the
+long discussions on these points impatiently, and compared the courts
+unfavorably with the miners' courts, which unloosed all such Gordian
+knots with Alexander's directness.
+
+In the month of September, 1864, reports came to Virginia of mines on
+the Yellowstone. The reports were founded on some strange tales of old
+trappers, and were clothed with a vagueness and mystery as uncertain as
+dreams. Yet on such unsubstantial bases every miner built a pet theory,
+and a large "stampede" took place in consequence. I started with a party
+for the new mines, early in October. A day's ride brought us to the
+Madison Fork, a broad, shallow stream, difficult of fording on account
+of its large boulders, and flowing through a narrow strip of arable
+land. Very different is the Gallatin, beyond. It is cut up into narrow
+streams of a very rapid current, and waters a valley of surprising
+fertility. The Snakes called it Swift River. This valley is forty miles
+long and from ten to fifteen wide, and rising at its sides into low
+plateaus plenteously covered with rich bunch-grass. It is already
+pre-empted by farmers, and by easy irrigation are produced all the
+hardier vegetables and cereals, in quantity, size, and closeness of
+fibre not equalled on the Iowa prairies. The valley gradually widens as
+you descend the stream, until, at the junction of the Three Forks, it
+stretches into a broad prairie, sufficient alone to supply all the mines
+with grain and vegetables. A few enterprising speculators once laid out
+a town here, with all the pomp and circumstance of Martin Chuzzlewit's
+Eden. Pictures of it were made, with steamers lying at the wharves and a
+university in the suburbs. Liberal donations of lots were made to the
+first woman married, to the first newspaper, to the first church, to the
+first child born. But there were no mines near, and the city never had
+an inhabitant. The half-dozen buildings put up by the proprietors are
+left for the nightly carnivals of bats and owls.
+
+On our road we passed a half-dozen huts, dignified with the name of
+Bozeman City. Here lives a Cincinnatus in retirement, one of the great
+pioneers of mountain civilization, named Bozeman. To him belongs the
+credit of having laid out the Bozeman Cut-off, on the road from Fort
+Laramie to Virginia, and he is looked up to among emigrants much as
+Chief-Justice Marshall is among lawyers. I saw the great man, with one
+foot moccasoned and the other as Nature made it, giving Bunsby opinions
+to a crowd of miners as to the location of the mythical mines.
+
+Parting from him, we crossed a high range of mountains, and from their
+tops looked down upon the spiral line of the Yellowstone, marked by the
+rich tints of its willows and cottonwoods, red, yellow, and green, in
+the crisp frosts of October. The air on these mountain-tops is much
+rarefied, and so very clear and pure that objects at a great distance
+seem within the reach of an easy walk. The Yellowstone flows in the
+eastern portion of Montana through an uninhabitable desert called the
+Mauvaises Terres, or Bad Lands, which, mingling their soil with its
+waters, give it the yellow color from which it is named. These lands are
+vast wastes, covered with what appears to be pine ashes. No signs of
+vegetation are found, but they are abundant in strange petrifactions. I
+have seen from them petrified reptiles and portions of the human body,
+having a pearly lustre and inlaid with veins, and looking like the
+finest work in _papier-mache_.
+
+The valley of the Upper Yellowstone has a thin, rocky soil, almost
+worthless for farming land. But what a paradise it would be for Izaak
+Walton and Daniel Boone! Quaint old Izaak would have realized a dream of
+Utopia in watching in the crystal stream its millions of speckled trout.
+It almost seems as if the New England trout had learned their proverbial
+wariness from long experience. There is none of it in these Yellowstone
+fish. They leap at the bare hook with the most guileless innocence.
+Trout are rarely found in the waters of the Missouri, but they fill all
+the brooks west of the mountains. They bite ravenously; one veracious
+traveller going so far as to assert that they followed him from the
+water far into the woods, and bit at the spurs on his boots. But
+mountaineers, even of the most scrupulous veracity, are occasionally
+given to hyperbole. Daniel Boone, too, would have found his paradise of
+a solitude undisturbed by white men, and full of wild game. Every night
+our camp was entertained with the hungry cry of wolves, the melancholy
+hooting of owls, and the growls of bears crackling the underbrush. The
+grizzly bear is not found in Montana; only the small black and cinnamon
+bears are seen. When wounded, these exhibit the most extreme ferocity;
+but persons who choose to avoid them will find them always willing to
+preserve the most distant relations. The most interesting of all the
+wild animals is the antelope. Every hour we passed flocks of these
+little fellows. They are timid as school-girls, but as inquisitive as
+village gossips; and while frightened and trembling at our presence,
+they could not resist keeping long in our view, and stopping every few
+moments to watch us, with most childish curiosity. Though fleet as the
+wind, I have seen many of the meek-eyed little fellows watch too long,
+and pay for their curiosity with their lives.
+
+The most eastern settlement of Montana is at the mouth of a canon near
+the Yellowstone, one hundred and thirty miles from Virginia. A party of
+Iowa emigrants found fair prospects here, and made it their home,
+calling their mines Emigrant Gulch, and their half-dozen log-huts
+Yellowstone City. Their gulch is rich in gold, but the huge boulders,
+many tons in weight, make it impossible to obtain the treasure by the
+present rude methods. The few profitable claims are high up in the
+mountains, and are free from ice only in the hottest days of summer.
+Even the donkeys, so much in use in transporting supplies to the
+mountain miners, cannot travel here, and every pound of flour is carried
+on men's backs over giddy paths almost impassable for the chamois. Still
+the emigrants went to work with a will, and full of confidence. They
+built themselves log-cabins, not so convenient as those at
+Virginia,--for they had not the miner's knack of reaping large results
+from such limited resources,--but still substantial and comfortable.
+They enacted written laws, as ample as the Code Napoleon. Almost every
+day during our visit they met to revise this code and enact new
+provisions. Its most prominent feature was the ample protection it
+afforded to women in the distribution of lots in their prospective city,
+and the terrible punishment with which it visited any man who dared
+offer one of them an insult. They certainly founded their republic on
+principles of adamant, but in spite of high hopes and wise laws the
+boulders refused to move. Even Iowa enterprise at last gave way under
+constant disaster, and the people of the little city are one by one
+forsaking it for the older mines.
+
+The swift Yellowstone and the Colorado rise in lakes in the enchanted
+Wind River Mountains. Mr. Stuart mentions the weird tales, told by
+trappers and hunters, of places--avoided, if possible, by man and
+beast--in these mountains where trees and game and even Indians are
+petrified, and yet look natural as in life. These trappers are
+accustomed to exaggerate. I remember hearing a very serious account from
+one of them of a vast mountain of quartz so transparent that he could
+see mules feeding on the other side. There is also a story of a trapper
+who was lost in the fastnesses of the mountains years ago, and wandered
+for many days among streams whose bottoms were pebbled with gold. It is
+the miner's romance to repeat these fables of the Wind River Mountains,
+and to look forward to the day when the Indians shall be forced to yield
+them to his enterprise.
+
+We arrived at Virginia at the end of October, and the commencement of
+the long mountain winter. The snows were soon blown in deep drifts over
+the hills, and the roads became almost impassable. A few hardy
+prospecters braved them in the search for quartz lodes, but many
+perished, and others were brought back to the city with frozen limbs.
+The mines lay idle, and the business of the city, dependent upon them
+for support, was completely stagnant. It was humanity living a squirrel
+life among its little garners of roots and nuts. But as usual, the
+reason of humanity fell far behind the instinct of the squirrel. Before
+spring came, the supply of flour at Virginia failed, and the most
+hideous of all calamities was threatened,--a famine. The range on the
+Salt Lake road lay utterly impassable under more than fifteen feet of
+snow. No mails had arrived for three months. The fear of famine soon
+became a panic, and flour speedily rose from twenty dollars per sack of
+one hundred pounds to one hundred and ten dollars in gold. A mob was
+organized by the drones, who would rather steal than work; and the
+miners were wrought upon by statements that a few speculators held an
+abundance of flour, and were extorting money from the necessities of the
+people. The Robespierres of the new reform drew the miners into passing
+a resolution to place all the flour in Virginia in the hands of a
+committee, with authority to distribute it among the most needy, at a
+fair and reasonable compensation, payable to the owner. A riot followed,
+and the flour-merchants quietly awaited the mob behind barricades of
+their own flour. The County Sheriff stood at the front of these with
+cocked revolver, and threatened to kill the first who advanced. The
+thieves knew that he did not threaten idly, and, though a hundred were
+ready to follow, not one was bold enough to lead. The riot failed for
+want of a courageous leader, and towards night slowly dwindled away.
+Another mob followed in a few days; but the merchants had sold their
+flour at sacrifices, and the booty was only a few sacks. The want of
+this staff of life caused great suffering. All other vegetable food was
+rapidly consumed, and for six weeks the poorer classes were forced to
+live on beef alone. The effect was in all cases an inability to labor,
+and in some cases serious sickness.
+
+While thus cut off from all communication with the outer world, and
+buried in the dull town, there was little for us to do save to study
+each other's characters and talk the miners' language. In all new and
+thinly settled countries, many ideas are expressed by figures drawn from
+the pursuits of the people. Among the Indians, more than half of every
+sentence is expressed by signs. And miners illustrate their conversation
+by the various terms used in mining. I have always noticed how clearly
+these terms conveyed the idea sought. Awkwardness in comprehending this
+dialect easily reveals that the hearer bears the disgrace of being a
+"pilgrim," or a "tender-foot," as they style the new emigrant. To master
+it is an object of prime necessity to him who would win the miner's
+respect. Thus the term "adobe," the sun-dried brick, as applied to a
+man, signifies vealiness and verdancy. A "corral" is an enclosure into
+which the herds are gathered; hence a person who has everything arranged
+to his satisfaction announces that he has everything "corralled." A man
+fortunate in any business has "struck the pay-dirt"; unfortunate, has
+"reached the bed-rock." Everything viewed in the aggregate, as a train,
+a family, or a town, is an "outfit." I was much at a loss, on my first
+arrival, to comprehend the exact purport of a miner's criticism upon a
+windy lawyer of Virginia,--"When you come to pan him out, you don't find
+color." But this vocabulary is not extensive, and the pilgrim soon
+learns to perceive and use its beauties.
+
+Helena, the second point of importance in the Territory, is one hundred
+and twenty-five miles north from Virginia. We travel to it over a fine,
+hard road, through the low valleys of the Missouri. The beauty and
+richness of these valleys increase as we leave Virginia, and everywhere
+the green spots are becoming the homes of thrifty farmers. On the divide
+near Boulder Creek are wonderful proofs of the gradual levelling of the
+mountains, in the huge blocks of rock piled up in the most grotesque
+shapes. Many of these are colossal pillars, surmounted by boulders
+weighing many tons. The softer rock and gravel have washed down the
+ravines, leaving these as monuments of the primal ages. The ravines
+penetrate the mountain on every side, and little by little wear the
+monster away. The beavers choose the prettiest nooks in them for their
+villages, and the miner, finding the water cut off, often learns that in
+a single night these busy architects have built a tight and closely
+interwoven dam up the stream, which it takes him many hours to demolish.
+Is it strange that, in speaking of the beaver dam, he should sometimes
+transpose the words?
+
+We ride down the pleasantest of the ravines, till it develops into the
+Prickly Pear River, and past embryo cities,--at present noticeable for
+nothing except their rivalry of each other,--and hurry on to Last Chance
+Gulch and the city of Helena. A few emigrants from Minnesota had been
+here for many months. They made no excitement, no parade, but steadily
+worked on amid their majestic mountain scenery, and asked no heralding
+of their wealth. On either side of their cabins grew tall pines straight
+as arrows, and in front spread a vast fertile valley watered by clear
+rivulets, marked here and there with the low cottages of the rancheros,
+and dotted everywhere with innumerable herds of cattle. Beyond the
+Missouri rose abruptly chains of snow-capped mountains, glistening in
+the sunlight and veined with gold and silver. Reports of these men came
+at times to Virginia,--reports always of a quiet and unostentatious
+prosperity. In the winter of 1864 their secret became known, and half
+the nomadic population of Virginia hurried to the new mines, and puzzled
+the slow-moving Minnesotians by their bustle and activity. Claims
+advanced rapidly in price, and the discoverers reaped fortunes. A city
+rose like an exhalation. Yet I never saw better order than in the
+earliest days of Helena, though I am afraid that Hangman's Tree could
+tell some stories of too much haste and injustice in taking the lives of
+criminals.
+
+The hundred ravines near Helena showed gold, and every one of them was
+soon claimed from mouth to source. Every night I heard the clattering
+hoofs of the stampeders for some new gulch, starting in the utmost
+secrecy to gain the first right for themselves and friends. A trifling
+hint induces these stampedes. A wink from one old miner to another, and
+hundreds mounted their horses to seek some inaccessible mountain
+fissure. The more remote the diggings, so much the greater the
+excitement. Half the people of Helena lately hurried, in the depth of
+winter, to diggings on Sun River, (where many and many a brave fellow
+perished in the snows,) to learn that far richer mines had lain
+unclaimed for months within a stone's throw of their homes. The
+excitement over quartz lodes rapidly followed; and every spot on the
+mountains which showed any slight indications of auriferous quartz was
+claimed by the prospecters. Hardly a third of these can ever prove rich,
+but here and there is one of great value.
+
+Helena, supported by the trade of the surrounding mines, already rivals
+Virginia. Perhaps in years to come it may have a larger population and a
+more reckless enterprise. One hundred and fifty miles north from Helena
+is Fort Benton, an old fortified post of the American Fur Company, and
+the head of navigation on the Missouri. Steamers have arrived here in
+the spring, but the uncertainty of the water will fix the terminus of
+travel at some point farther down. A town charter for such a terminus
+was granted to a party of Virginia speculators at the mouth of Maria's
+River. They called it Ophir, which a friend of mine says is a very
+appropriate name and of poetic origin, being derived from Cowper's line,
+
+    "O for a lodge in some vast wilderness!"
+
+On the first visit of the proprietors to their new site, every one of
+them was murdered and scalped by the Indians.
+
+These regions are held by the Blackfeet, who, with their offshoots, the
+Bloods, Gros Ventres, and Piegans, are the most formidable Indians of
+Montana. They are polygamists, being in that respect exceptional among
+the Indians. But Catlin rather unsentimentally apologizes for this, on
+the ground that the chiefs are required to give expensive
+entertainments, in getting up which the labor of a hundred wives is no
+trifling assistance. Attempts have long been made to civilize and
+Christianize these savages by the Catholic missions under Father de
+Smet, and the government has furthered these attempts by establishing a
+fine farm on Sun River. The chiefs would sometimes be induced to
+stolidly witness the grain-planting; but Captain Mullan quietly
+describes all this waste of philanthropy in the words: "I can only
+regret that the results as yet obtained would not seem commensurate with
+the endeavors so manfully put forth."
+
+The noble Indians of history and poetry do not exist among the Indians
+of to-day. You seek in vain for Logan or Pocahontas, for Uncas or
+Minnehaha. The real Indians are cruel and treacherous, lazy and filthy,
+crafty and ungrateful. Many of them live upon ants and grasshoppers, and
+at the best only know enough to preserve in the rudest manner a few of
+the commonest roots and berries.
+
+These tribes have no history and no growth. They live a mere animal
+life. Even their few traditions are rude and disgusting enough. I am
+indebted to Mr. Stuart for a fair example of the Bannack superstitions,
+from which not even Longfellow could glean any poetry or beauty. Among
+the caves in the rocks dwells a race of fairy imps, who, with arrow and
+quiver, kill game upon the mountains, and sing boisterous songs on the
+cliffs in summer evenings. Whenever an Indian mother leaves her infant,
+one of these pleasant cannibals devours it straightway, and takes its
+place, crying piteously. When the poor woman returns and seeks to pacify
+her child, the little usurper falls ravenously upon her. Fire-arms,
+knives, and stones are all powerless; and when the screams of the woman
+bring the men to her help, the destroyer runs away and leaves her in a
+dying condition. She always dies before morning. When little children
+play at a distance from camp, these fairies seek to sport among them.
+Lucky is it for those timid few who, frightened at the long tail,
+scamper away from the intruder; for, when allowed to mingle in the
+sport, he suddenly seizes the fairest child, and hurries away to make a
+dainty meal off him with his little wives in elfin-land. To the Indian
+men the fairies profess a real friendship; and when they meet one near
+their dwellings they invite him in and feast him, and press him to stay
+all night. He invariably declines the polite invitation with his thanks,
+and his regrets that he has killed an elk and must take it home before
+the wolves can eat it.
+
+Beyond the main chain of the Rocky Mountains are the Deer Lodge and
+Bitter Root Valleys, celebrated for their great grazing capabilities. I
+rode through these valleys in June, passing up the Pipestone Creek,
+whose waters flow into the Missouri, and down the Silver Bow, whose
+waters flow into the Columbia. At the highest point we could almost see
+the springs of either river, flowing on one hand to the Atlantic, on the
+other to the Pacific. How widely are these children of the same mother
+separated! Summer sprinkles all the ravines with innumerable
+wild-flowers, which make a rich carpet even up close to the white line
+of the snow. I found among them wild varieties of the harebell,
+larkspur, and sunflower, and many pansies. Upon the Silver Bow Creek is
+a city of the same name, built in the winter, when it was hoped that
+spring would prove the richness of its mines. From a distance it looked
+like a large town; but upon riding in, we found only here and there a
+straggling inhabitant. Other mines proved richer, and any purchaser can
+buy its best house for less than the cost of drawing the logs to build
+it. At Deer Lodge in this valley,--almost equal in extent and fertility
+to that of the Gallatin,--old Johnny Grant lived for many years a life
+of patriarchal serenity among his wives and concubines, his flocks and
+herds. By constant presents of beads and whiskey, and many a warm meal
+when on the war-path, he had raised himself high in the esteem of the
+savages, and had a favorite squaw from almost every tribe among his
+wives. When the Flatheads passed by, no woman appeared at his hearth but
+a Flathead; when the Blackfeet came, the sole wife of his bosom was a
+Blackfoot. Thus for many years, almost the only white man in these
+solitudes, he lived at peace with the natives, a sharer in all their
+spoils and arbiter in all their quarrels. And when the patriarch was
+gathered to his fathers, he left cattle on a thousand hills to his son.
+Young Johnny is a mere repetition of his father. He cannot read or
+write, and in conversation his nominatives are not always true to his
+verbs; but he has all the slyness and craftiness of the Indian. I heard
+that he was immensely disgusted at the white immigration. He
+acknowledges that his beeves are of greater value, and he has no small
+admiration for dollars and cents; but he fears that his moral and
+intellectual standing will suffer.
+
+Passing down the Deer Lodge River,--
+
+            "In the continuous woods
+    Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
+    Save his own dashings,"--
+
+we come to a pass through the mountains, called Hell-Gate by the
+Flatheads, because through it rode the scalping parties of the Eastern
+tribes. Beyond is the sunny valley of the Bitter Root. It has long been
+settled by hardy trappers and hunters, and by comfortable farmers with
+well-stored barns and granaries and fenced fields. There is a charm
+about this isolated life, and a freshness and exhilaration about these
+Daniel Boones, that one meets nowhere else. Many of them are old army
+officers, men of education, who left the exploring parties to which they
+were attached to make their homes among the wild allurements of this
+fascinating valley. It is pleasant to hear their stories of life among
+the Indians, and their accounts of the strange features of the
+mountains, their animal life, their flora and minerals. Most of them
+have squaw wives, and are rearing large families of ugly pappooses, and
+many have amassed wealth by their long trade with the fur companies. The
+great Hudson's Bay Company has for many years had a station in this
+valley, and drawn from it large quantities of costly furs and skins.
+Here and farther west is spoken the famous Chinnook jargon, invented by
+the Company to facilitate its trade with the Indians. It borrows words
+from the English, from the French, from all the Indian tongues, and
+works them all into an incongruous combination. It has an entire lack of
+system or rule, but is quickly learned, and is designed to express only
+the simplest ideas. The powerful influence of the Company introduced it
+everywhere, and it was found of indispensable utility. Ardent
+Oregonians are said to woo their coy maidens in its unpronounceable
+gutturals. The white man is called "Boston" in this tongue, because the
+first whites whom the Oregon Indians met came in a Boston ship.
+
+The best Indians of the mountains dwell in this valley,--the Flatheads
+and Pend' d'Oreilles. Many of them are devoted Catholics, but liable at
+times to lapse into intoxication. The Jesuits have a thriving mission
+among them, with a neat church, whose clear ringing bell sounds
+strangely enough in the mountain recesses. The strict asceticism of the
+fathers, their careful nursing of the sick and wounded, and their
+cordial co-operation in all objects of philanthropy, have enabled them
+to wield an immense influence among the Indians. The white miners also,
+who have often lain sick or frost-bitten in their hospitals, except
+these zealous priests in their too common sneers at religion. Captain
+Mullan quite reflects the universal sentiment when he says: "The only
+good that I have ever seen effected among these people [the Indians] has
+been due to the exertions of these Catholic missionaries."
+
+I have hurried over the points of interest in the early days of Montana.
+But any picture of its shifting life can only be a view of one of the
+combinations of the kaleidoscope. The discovery of new mines, and the
+abandonment of old ones, the fresh advent of gold-seekers and the exodus
+of the winners of fortunes, the increase of facilities for travel and of
+all the comforts of life, are daily and perceptibly working out new
+combinations. But while welcoming all changes tending towards refinement
+and a higher civilization, the careful observer of the life of these
+remote people can point to some qualities among them which he would have
+unchangeable as their grand old mountains,--their frankness and honesty
+of purpose, their love of justice, and their sturdy democracy.
+
+
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+
+_The Poems of_ THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.
+
+The things which please in these poems are so obvious, that we feel it
+all but idle to point them out; for who loves not graceful form, bright
+color, and delicate perfume? Of our younger singers, Mr. Aldrich is one
+of the best known and the best liked, for he has been wise as well as
+poetical in his generation. The simple theme, the easy measure, have
+been his choice; while he is a very Porphyro in the profusion with which
+he heaps his board with delicates:--
+
+      "Candied apple, quince and plum and gourd;
+    With jellies soother than the creamy curd,
+    And lucent syrops tinct with cinnamon;
+    Manna and dates, in argosy transferred
+    From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one,
+    From silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon."
+
+And the feast is well lighted, and the guest has not to third his way
+through knotty sentences, past perilous punctuation-points, to reach the
+table, nor to grope in the dark for the dainties when he has found it.
+We imagine that it is this charm of perfect clearness and accessibility
+which attracts popular liking to Mr. Aldrich's poetry; afterwards, its
+other qualities easily hold the favor won. He is endowed with a singular
+richness of fancy, and he has well chosen most of his themes from among
+those which allow the exercise of his best gifts. He has seldom,
+therefore, attempted to poetize any feature or incident of our national
+life; for this might have demanded a realistic treatment foreign to his
+genius. But it is poetry, the result, which we want, and we do not care
+from what material it is produced. The honey is the same, whether the
+bee stores it from the meadow-clover and the wild-flower of our own
+fields, or, loitering over city wharves, gathers it from ships laden
+with tropic oranges and orient dates.
+
+If Mr. Aldrich needed any defence for the poems in which he gives rein
+to his love for the East and the South, he would have it in the fact
+that they are very beautiful, and distinctively his own, while they
+breathe full east in their sumptousness of diction, and are genuinely
+southern in their summer-warmth of feeling. We doubt if any poet of
+Persia could have told more exquisitely than he what takes place
+
+    "WHEN THE SULTAN GOES TO ISPAHAN.
+
+    "_When the Sultan Shah-Zaman_
+    _Goes to the city Ispahan_,
+    Even before he gets so far
+    As the place where the clustered palm-trees are,
+    At the last of the thirty palace-gates,
+    The pet of the harem, Rose-in-Bloom,
+    Orders a feast in his favorite room,--
+    Glittering squares of colored ice,
+    Sweetened with syrop, tinctured with spice,
+    Creams, and cordials, and sugared dates,
+    Syrian apples, Othmanee quinces,
+    Limes, and citrons, and apricots,
+    And wines that are known to Eastern princes;
+    And Nubian slaves, with smoking pots
+    Of spiced meats and costliest fish,
+    And all that the curious palate could wish,
+    Pass in and out of the cedarn doors:
+    Scattered over mosaic floors
+    Are anemones, myrtles, and violets,
+    And a musical fountain throws its jets
+    Of a hundred colors into the air.
+    The dusk Sultana loosens her hair,
+    And stains with the henna-plant the tips
+    Of her pearly nails, and bites her lips
+    Till they bloom again,--but, alas! _that_ rose
+    Not for the Sultan buds and blows;
+    _Not for the Sultan Shah-Zaman,
+    When he goes to the city Ispahan._
+
+      "Then, at a wave of her sunny hand,
+    the dancing girls of Samarcand
+    Float in like mists from Fairy-land!
+    And to the low voluptuous swoons
+    Of music rise and fall the moons
+    Of their full, brown bosoms. Orient blood
+    Runs in their veins, shines in their eyes:
+    And there, in this Eastern Paradise,
+    Filled with the fumes of sandal-wood,
+    And Khoten musk, and aloes and myrrh,
+    Sits Rose-in-Bloom on a silk divan,
+    Sipping the wines of Astrakhan;
+    And her Arab lover sits with her.
+    _That's when the Sultan Shah-Zaman
+    Goes to the city Ispahan._
+
+      "Now, when I see an extra light,
+    Flaming, flickering on the night
+    From my neighbor's casement opposite,
+    I know as well as I know to pray,
+    I know as well as a tongue can say,
+    _That the innocent Sultan Shah-Zaman
+    Has gone to the city Ispahan._"
+
+As subtilely beautiful as this, and even richer in color and flavor than
+this, is the complete little poem which Mr. Aldrich calls a fragment:--
+
+    "DRESSING THE BRIDE.
+
+    "So, after bath, the slave-girls brought
+    The broidered raiment for her wear,
+    The misty izar from Mosul,
+    The pearls and opals for her hair,
+    The slippers for her supple feet,
+    (Two radiant crescent moons they were,)
+    And lavender, and spikenard sweet,
+    And attars, nedd, and richest musk.
+    When they had finished dressing her,
+    (The eye of morn, the heart's desire!)
+    Like one pale star against the dusk,
+    A single diamond on her brow
+    Trembled with its imprisoned fire!"
+
+Too long for quotation here, but by no means too long to be read many
+times over, is "Pampinea," an idyl in which the poet's fancy plays
+lightly and gracefully with the romance of life in Boccaccio's
+Florentine garden, and returns again to the beauty which inspired his
+dream of Italy, as he lay musing beside our northern sea. The thread of
+thought running through the poem is slight as the plot of
+dreams,--breaks, perhaps, if you take it up too abruptly; but how
+beautiful are the hues and the artificing of the jewels strung upon it!
+
+    "And knowing how in other times
+    Her lips were ripe with Tuscan rhymes
+    Of love and wine and dance, I spread
+    My mantle by almond-tree,
+    'And here, beneath the rose,' I said,
+    'I'll hear thy Tuscan melody.'
+    I heard a tale that was not told
+    In those ten dreamy days of old,
+    When Heaven, for some divine offence,
+    Smote Florence with the pestilence;
+    And in that garden's odorous shade,
+    The dames of the Decameron,
+    With each a loyal lover, strayed,
+    To laugh and sing, at sorest need,
+    To lie in the lilies in the sun
+    With glint of plume and silver brede!
+    And while she whispered in my ear,
+    The pleasant Arno murmured near,
+    The dewy, slim chameleons run
+    Through twenty colors in the sun;
+    The breezes broke the fountain's glass,
+    And woke aeolian melodies,
+    And shook from out the scented trees
+    The lemon-blossoms on the grass.
+    The tale? I have forgot the tale,--
+    A Lady all for love forlorn,
+    A rose-bud, and a nightingale
+    That bruised his bosom on the thorn:
+    A pot of rubies buried deep,
+    A glen, a corpse, a child asleep,
+    A Monk, that was no monk at all,
+    In the moonlight by a castle wall."
+
+As to "Babie Bell," that ballad has passed too deeply into the popular
+heart to be affected for good or ill by criticism,--and we have only to
+express our love of it. Simple, pathetic, and real, it early made the
+poet a reputation and friends in every home visited by the newspapers,
+in which it has been printed over and over again. It is but one of
+various poems by Mr. Aldrich which enjoy a sort of perennial fame, and
+for which we have come to look in the papers, as we do for certain
+flowers in the fields, at their proper season. In the middle of June,
+when the beauty of earth and sky drives one to despair, we know that it
+is time to find the delicately sensuous and pensive little poem
+"Nameless Pain" in all our exchanges; and later, when the summer is
+subject to sudden thunderstorms, we look out for "Before the Rain," and
+"After the Rain." It is very high praise of these charming lyrics, that
+they have thus associated themselves with a common feeling for certain
+aspects of nature, and we confess that we recur to them with greater
+pleasure than we find in some of our poet's more ambitious efforts.
+Indeed, we think Mr. Aldrich's fame destined to gain very little from
+his recent poems, "Judith," "Garnaut Hall," and "Pythagoras"; for when
+it comes to be decided what is his and what is his period's, these poems
+cannot be justly awarded to him. To borrow a figure from the polygamic
+usages of our Mormon brethren, they are sealed to Mr. Aldrich for time
+and to Mr. Tennyson for eternity. They contain many fine and original
+passages: the "Judith" contains some very grand ones, but they must bear
+the penalty of the error common to all our younger poets,--the error of
+an imitation more or less unconscious. It is to the example of the
+dangerous poet named that Mr. Aldrich evidently owes, among other minor
+blemishes, a mouse which does some mischief in his verses. It is a
+wainscot mouse, and a blood-relation, we believe, to the very mouse that
+shrieked behind the mouldering wainscot in the lonely moated grange.
+This mouse of Mr. Aldrich's appears twice in a brief lyric called
+"December"; in "Garnaut Hall," she makes
+
+          "A lodging for her glossy young
+    In dead Sir Egbert's empty coat of mail,"
+
+and immediately afterwards drags the poet over the precipice of
+anti-climax:--
+
+            "'T was a haunted spot.
+    A legend killed it for a kindly home,--
+    A grim estate, which every heir in turn
+    Left to the orgies of the wind and rain,
+    The newt, the toad, the spider, and the mouse."
+
+A little of Costar's well-known exterminator would rid Mr. Aldrich of
+this rascal rodent. Perhaps, when the mouse is disposed of, the poet
+will use some other word than _torso_ to describe a headless, but not
+limbless body, and will relieve Agnes Vail of either her shield or her
+buckler, since she can hardly need both.
+
+We have always thought Mr. Aldrich's "Palabras Carinosas" among the most
+delicious and winning that he has spoken, and nearly all of his earlier
+poems please us; but on the whole it seems to us that his finest is his
+latest poem, "Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book"; for it is original in
+conception and expression, and noble and elevated in feeling, with all
+our poet's wonted artistic grace and felicity of diction. We think it
+also a visible growth from what was strong and individual in his style,
+before he allowed himself to be so deeply influenced by study of one
+whose flower indeed becomes a weed in the garden of another.
+
+
+_The United States during the War._ By AUGUST LAUGEL. New York:
+Bailliere Brothers. Paris: Germer Bailliere.
+
+_The Civil War in America._ An Address read at the last Meeting of the
+Manchester Union and Emancipation Society. By GOLDWIN SMITH. London:
+Simpkin, Marshall, & Co. Manchester: A. Ireland & Co.
+
+As a people, we are so used to policeman-like severity or snobbish
+ridicule from European criticism, that we hardly know what to make of
+the attentions of a Frenchman who is not an Inspector Javert, or of an
+Englishman who is not a Commercial Traveller. M. Laugel eulogizes us
+without the least patronage in his manner; Mr. Goldwin Smith praises us
+with those reserves which enhance the value of applause. We are
+ourselves accustomed to deal generously and approvingly with the facts
+of our civilization, but our pride in them falls short of M. Laugel's;
+and our most sanguine faith in the national future is not more cordial
+than Mr. Goldwin Smith's.
+
+The diverse methods in which these writers discuss the same aspects and
+events of our history are characteristic and interesting, and the
+difference in spirit is even greater than that of form,--greater than
+the difference between a book, which, made from articles in the _Revue
+de Deux Mondes_, recounts the political, military, and financial
+occurrences of the last four years, sketches popular scenes and
+characters, and deals with the wonders of our statistics, and a slender
+pamphlet address, in which the author concerns himself rather with the
+results than the events of our recent war. This is always Mr. Smith's
+manner of dealing with the past; but in considering a period known in
+all its particulars to his audience, he has been able to philosophize
+history more purely and thoroughly than usual. He arrives directly and
+clearly at the moral of the Ilias Americana, and sees that Christianity
+is the life of our political system, and that this principle, without
+which democracy is a passing dream, and equality an idle fallacy,
+triumphed forever in the downfall of slavery. He has been the first of
+our commentators to discern that the heroism displayed in the war could
+only come from that principle which made our social life decent and
+orderly, built the school-house and the church, and filled city and
+country with prosperous and religious homes. He has seen this principle
+at work under changing names and passing creeds, and has recognized that
+here, for the first time in the history of the world, a whole nation
+strives to govern itself according to the Example and the Word that
+govern good men everywhere.
+
+In the Introduction to his book, M. Laugel declares as the reasons for
+his admiration of the United States, that they "have shown that men can
+found a government on reason, where equality does not stifle liberty,
+and democracy does not yield to despotism; they have shown that a people
+can be religious when the State neither pays the Church nor regulates
+belief; they have given to woman the place that is her due in a
+Christian and civilized society." It is this Introduction, indeed, that
+will most interest the American reader, for here also the author
+presents the result of his study of our national character in a sketch
+that the nation may well glass itself in when low-spirited. The truth
+is, that we looked our very best to the friendly eyes of M. Laugel, and
+we cannot but be gratified with the portrait he has made of us. An
+American would hardly have ventured to draw so flattering a picture, but
+he cannot help exulting that an alien should see us poetic in our
+realism, curious of truth and wisdom as well as of the stranger's
+personal history, cordial in our friendships, and not ignoble even in
+our pursuit of wealth, but having the Republic's greatness at heart as
+well as our own gain.
+
+In the chapters which succeed this Introduction, M. Laugel discusses, in
+a spirit of generous admiration, the facts of our civilization as they
+present themselves in nearly all the States of the North and West; and
+while he does not pretend to see polished society everywhere, but very
+often an elemental ferment, he finds also that the material of national
+goodness and greatness is sound and of unquestionable strength. He falls
+into marvellously few errors, and even his figures have not that bad
+habit of lying to which the figures of travellers so often fall victims.
+
+The books of M. Laugel and Mr. Goldwin Smith come to us, as we hinted,
+after infinite stupid and dishonest censure from their countrymen; but
+the intelligent friendship of such writers is not the less welcome to us
+because we have ceased to care for the misrepresentations of the French
+and English tourists.
+
+
+_Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac._ By WILLIAM HOWELL REED.
+Boston; William V. Spencer.
+
+The advice of friends, so often mistaken, and so productive of mischief
+in goading reluctant authorship to the publication of unwise, immature,
+or feeble literature, prevailed upon Mr. Reed to give the world the
+present book; and we have a real pleasure in saying that for once this
+affectionate counsel has done the world a favor and a service. We have
+read the volume through with great interest, and with a lively
+impression of the author's good sense and modesty. In great part it is a
+personal narrative; but Mr. Reed, in recounting the story of the
+unwearied vigilance and tenderness and dauntless courage with which the
+corps of the Sanitary Commission discharged their high duties, contrives
+to present his individual acts as representative of those of the whole
+body, and to withdraw himself from the reader's notice. With the same
+spirit, in describing scenes of misery and suffering, he has more
+directly celebrated the patience and heroism of the soldiers who bore
+the pain than the indefatigable goodness that ministered to them,
+though he does full justice to this also. The book is a record of every
+variety of wretchedness; yet one comes from its perusal strengthened and
+elevated rather than depressed, and with new feelings of honor for the
+humanity that could do and endure so much. Mr. Reed does not fail to
+draw from the scenes and experiences of hospital life their religious
+lesson, and throughout his work are scattered pictures of anguish
+heroically borne, and of Christian resignation to death, which are all
+the more touching because the example of courage through simple and
+perfect faith is enforced without cant or sentimentality.
+
+The history of the great Christian aspect of our war cannot be too
+minutely written nor too often read. There is some danger, now the
+occasion of mercy is past, that we may forget how wonderfully complete
+the organization of the Sanitary Commission was, and how unfailingly it
+gave to the wounded and disabled of our hosts all the succor that human
+foresight could afford,--how, beginning with the establishment of depots
+convenient for the requisitions of the surgeons, it came to send out its
+own corps of nurses and watchers, until its lines of mercy were
+stretched everywhere almost in sight of the lines of battle, and its
+healing began almost at the hour the hurt was given. Mr. Reed devotes a
+chapter to this history, in which he briefly and clearly describes the
+practical operation of the system of national charity, accrediting to
+Mr. Frank B. Fay the organization of the auxiliary corps, and speaking
+with just praise of its members who perished in the service, or clung to
+it, till, overtaken by contagion or malaria, they returned home to die.
+The subject is dealt with very frankly; and Mr. Reed, while striving to
+keep in view the consoling and self-recompensing character of their
+work, does not conceal that, though they were rewarded by patience and
+thankfulness in far the greater number of cases, their charities were
+sometimes met by disheartening selfishness and ingratitude. But they
+bore up under all, and gave the world such an illustration of practical
+Christianity as it had never seen before.
+
+Mr. Reed's little book is so earnestly and unambitiously written, that
+its graphic power may escape notice. Yet it is full of picturesque
+touches; and in the line of rapidly succeeding anecdote there is nothing
+of repetition.
+
+
+_A History of the Gypsies: with Specimens of the Gypsy Language._ By
+WALTER SIMPSON. Edited, with Preface, Introduction, and Notes, and a
+Disquisition on the Past, Present, and Future of Gypsydom, by JAMES
+SIMPSON. New York: M. Doolady.
+
+The history of the Gypsies, according to the editor of the present work,
+is best presented in a series of desultory anecdotes which relate
+chiefly to the Egyptian usages of murder, pocket-picking, and
+horse-stealing, and the behavior of the rogues when they come to be
+hanged for their crimes. Incidentally, a good deal of interesting
+character is developed, and both author and editor show a very intimate
+acquaintance with the life and customs and speech of an inexplicable
+people. But here the value of their book ends; and we imagine that the
+earlier Simpson, who contributed the greater part of it in articles to
+Blackwood's Magazine, scarcely supposed himself to be writing anything
+more than sketches of the Scotch Gypsies whom he found in the different
+shires, and of the Continental and English Gypsies of whom he had read.
+The later Simpson thought it, as we have seen, a history of the Gypsies,
+and he has furnished it with an Introduction and a Disquisition of
+amusingly pompous and inconsequent nature. His subject has been too much
+for him, and his mental vision, disordered by too ardent contemplation
+of Gypsies, reproduces them wherever he turns his thought. If he values
+any one of his illusions above the rest,--for they all seem equally
+pleasant to him,--it is his persuasion that John Bunyan was a Gypsy. "He
+was a tinker," says our editor. "And who were the tinkers?" "Why,
+Gypsies, without a doubt," answers the reader, and makes no struggle to
+escape the conclusion thus skilfully sprung upon him. Will it be
+credited that the inventor of this theory was denied admittance to the
+columns of the religious newspapers in this country, on the flimsy
+pretext that the editors could not afford the space for a disquisition
+on John Bunyan's Gypsy origin?
+
+The comparison of the Gypsy language in this book with a dialect of the
+Hindostanee is interesting and useful, and the accounts of Gypsy habits
+and usages are novel and curious; and otherwise the work is a mass of
+rather entertaining rubbish.
+
+
+_Eros. A Series of connected Poems._ By LORENZO SOMERVILLE, London:
+Truebner & Co.
+
+_Patriotic Poems._ By FRANCIS DE HAES JANVIER. Philadelphia: J. B.
+Lippincott & Co.
+
+_The Contest: a Poem._ By G. P. CARR. Chicago: P. L. Hanscom.
+
+_Poems._ By ANNIE E. CLARK. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.
+
+All these little books are very prettily printed and very pleasingly
+bound. Each has its little index and its little dedication, and each its
+hundred pages of rhymes, and so each flutters forth into the world.
+
+    "Dove vai, povera foglia frale?"
+
+To oblivion, by the briefest route, we think; and we find a pensive
+satisfaction in speculating upon the incidents of the journey. Shall any
+one challenge the wanderers in their flight, and seek to stay them?
+Shall they all reach an utter forgetfulness, and be resolved again into
+elemental milk and water, or shall one of them lodge in a dusty library,
+here and there, and, having ceased to be literature, lead the idle life
+of a curiosity? We imagine another as finding a moment's pause upon the
+centre-table of a country parlor. Perhaps a third, hastily bought at a
+railway station as the train started, and abandoned by the purchaser,
+may at this hour have entered upon a series of railway journeys in
+company with the brakeman's lamps and oil-bottles, with a fair prospect
+of surviving many generations of short-lived railway travellers. We
+figure to ourselves the heart-breaking desolation of a village-tavern,
+where, on the bureau under the mirror, to which the public comb and
+brush are chained, a fourth might linger for a while.
+
+But in all the world shall anybody read one of these books? We fancy not
+even a critic; for the race so vigilantly malign in other days has lost
+its bitterness, or has been broken of its courage by the myriad numbers
+of the versifiers once so exultingly destroyed. Indeed, that cruel
+slaughter was but a combat with Nature,--
+
+    "So careful of the type she seems,
+    So careless of the single life";
+
+and from the exanimate dust of one crushed poetaster she bade a thousand
+rhymesters rise. Yet one cannot help thinking with a shudder of the
+hideous spectacle of "Eros" in the jaws of Blackwood or the mortal
+Quarterly, thirty years ago; or of how ruthlessly our own Raven would
+have plucked the poor trembling life from the "Patriotic Poems," or "The
+Contest," or the "Poems."
+
+The world grows wiser and better-natured every day, and the tender
+statistician has long since stayed the hand of the critic. "Why strike,"
+says the gentle sage, "when figures will do your work so much more
+effectually, and leave you the repose of a compassionate soul? Do you
+not know that but one book in a thousand survives the year of its
+publication?" etc., etc., etc. "And then as to the infinite reproduction
+of the species," adds Science, "_is_ Nature,
+
+    "'So careful of the single type?' But no,
+    From scarped cliff and quarried stone
+    She cries, 'A thousand types are gone.'"
+
+Patience! the glyptodon and the dodo have been dead for ages. Perhaps in
+a million years the poetaster also shall pass.
+
+
+_Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border._ By COLONEL R. B. MARCY, U. S.
+A. With Numerous Illustrations. New York: Harper and Brothers.
+
+There is not much variety in frontier life, it must be confessed, though
+there is abundant adventure. A family likeness runs through nearly all
+histories of bear-fights, and one Indian-fight might readily be mistaken
+for another. So also bear-fighters and Indian-fighters are akin in
+character, and the pioneers who appear in literature leave a sense of
+sameness upon the reader's mind. Nevertheless, one continues to read of
+them with considerable patience, and likes the stories because he liked
+their ancestral legends when a boy.
+
+Colonel Marcy's book offers something more than the usual attractions of
+the class to which it belongs; for it contains the history of his own
+famous passage of the Rocky Mountains in mid-winter, and notices of many
+frontiersmen of original and striking character (like the immortal
+Captain Scott), as well as much shrewd observation of Indian nature and
+other wild-beast nature. All topics are treated with perfect
+common-sense; if our soldierly author sometimes philosophizes rather
+narrowly, he never sentimentalizes, though he is not without poetry; and
+he is thoroughly imbued with the importance of his theme. One,
+therefore, suffers a great deal from him, in the way of unnecessary
+detail, without a murmur, and now and then willingly accepts an old
+story from him, charmed by the simplicity and good faith with which he
+attempts to pass it off as new.
+
+The style of the book is clear and direct, except in those parts where
+light and humorous narration is required. There it is bad, and seems to
+have been formed upon the style of the sporting newspapers and the local
+reporters, with now and then a hint from the witty passages of the
+circus, as in this colloquy:--
+
+"'Mought you be the boss hossifer of that thar army?'
+
+"'I am the commanding officer of that detachment, sir.'
+
+"'Wall, Mr. Hossifer, be them sure 'nuff sogers, or is they only
+make-believe chaps, like I see down to Orleans?'
+
+"'They have passed through the Mexican war, and I trust have proved
+themselves not only worthy of the appellation of real, genuine soldiers,
+but of veterans, sir.'"
+
+And so forth. We like Colonel Mercy when he talks of himself better than
+when he talks for himself. In the latter case he is often what we see
+him above, and in the former he is always modest, discreet, and
+entertaining.
+
+
+_Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing._ From the German of JOSEPH VON
+EICHENDORFF, by CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. With Vignettes by E. B. Bensell.
+New York: Leypoldt and Holt.
+
+When, as Heine says, Napoleon, who was Classic like Caesar and Alexander,
+fell to the ground, and Herren August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel,
+who were Romantic like Puss in Boots, arose as victors, Baron von
+Eichendorff was one of those who shared the triumph. He wrote plays and
+poems and novels to the tunes set by the masters of his school, but for
+himself practically he was a wise man,--held comfortable offices all his
+life long, and, in spite of vast literary yearning, sentiment, and
+misanthropy, was a Philister of the Philisters. The tale which Mr.
+Leland translates so gracefully is an extravaganza, in marked contrast
+to all the other romances of Eichendorff, in so far as it is purposely
+farcical, and they are serious; but we imagine it does not differ from
+them greatly in its leading qualities of fanciful incoherency and
+unbridled feebleness. An idle boy, who is driven from home by his
+father, the miller, and is found with his violin on the road to nowhere
+by two great ladies and carried to their castle near Vienna,--who falls
+in love with one of these lovely countesses, and runs away for love of
+her to Italy, and, after passing through many confused adventures there,
+with no relation to anything that went before or comes after, returns to
+the castle, and finds that his lovely countess is not a countess, but a
+poor orphan adopted by the great folk,--and so happily marries
+her,--this is the Good-for-Nothing and his story. A young student of the
+German language, struggling through the dusty paths of the dictionary to
+a comprehension of the tale, would perhaps think it a wonderful romance,
+when once he had achieved its meaning; but being translated into our
+pitiless English, its poverty of wit and feeling and imagination is
+apparent; and one is soon weary of its mere fantasticality.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No.
+106, August, 1866, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***
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