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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 09, July, 1858

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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 09, July, 1858

Author: Various


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 02, NO. 09, JULY, 1858 ***

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. II.--JULY, 1858.--NO. IX.






THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
[Concluded.]

--fessoque Sacrandum
Supponato capiti lapidem, Curistoque quiescam.
PAULINUS OF NOLL

Et factus est in pace locus ejus et halitatio in Sion.
Ps. LXXV. 2

V.

Rome is preëminently the city of monuments and inscriptions, and the
lapidary style is the one most familiar to her. The Republic, the Empire,
the Papacy, the Heathens, and the Christians have written their record
upon marble. But gravestones are proverbially dull reading, and
inscriptions are often as cold as the stone upon which they are engraved.

The long gallery of the Vatican, through which one passes to enter the
famous library, and which leads to the collection of statues, is lined on
one side with heathen inscriptions, of miscellaneous character, on the
other with Christian inscriptions, derived chiefly from the catacombs, but
arranged with little order. The comparison thus exhibited to the eye is an
impressive one. The contrast of one class with the other is visible even
in external characteristics. The old Roman lines are cut with precision
and evenness; the letters are well formed, the words are rightly spelt,
the construction of the sentences is grammatical. But the Christian
inscriptions bear for the most part the marks of ignorance, poverty, and
want of skill. Their lines are uneven, the letters of various sizes, the
words ill-spelt, the syntax often incorrect. Not seldom a mixture of Greek
and Latin in the same sentence betrays the corrupt speech of the lower
classes, and the Latin itself is that of the common people. But defects of
style and faults of engraving are insufficient to hide the feeling that
underlies them.

Besides this great collection of the Vatican, there is another collection
now being formed in the _loggia_ of the Lateran Palace, in immediate
connection with the Christian Museum. Arranged as the inscriptions will
here be in historic sequence and with careful classification, it will be
chiefly to this collection that the student of Christian antiquity will
hereafter resort. It in in the charge of the Cavaliere de Rossi, who is
engaged in editing the Christian inscriptions of the first six centuries,
and whose extraordinary learning and marvellous sagacity in deciphering
and determining the slightest remains of ancient stone-cutting give him
unexampled fitness for the work. Of these inscriptions, about eleven
thousand are now known, and of late some forty or fifty have been added
each year to the number previously recorded. But a very small proportion
of the eleven thousand remain _in situ_ in the catacombs, and besides the
great collections of the Vatican and the Lateran, there are many smaller
ones in Rome and in other Italian cities, and many inscriptions originally
found in the subterranean cemeteries are now scattered in the porticos or
on the pavements of churches in Rome, Ravenna, Milan, and elsewhere. From
the first period of the desecration of the catacombs, the engraved tablets
that had closed the graves were almost as much an object of the greed of
pious or superstitious marauders as the more immediate relics of the
saints. Hence came their dispersion through Italy, and hence, too, it has
happened that many very important and interesting inscriptions belonging
to Rome are now found scattered through the Continent.

It has been, indeed, sometimes the custom of the Roman Church to enhance
the value of a gift of relics by adding to it the gift of the inscription
on the grave from which they were taken. A curious instance of this kind,
connected with the making of a very popular saint, occurred not many years
since. In the year 1802 a grave was found in the Cemetery of St.
Priscilla, by which were the remains of a glass vase that had held blood,
the indication of the burial-place of a martyr. The grave was closed by
three tiles, on which were the following words painted in red letters:
LVMENA PAXTE CVMFL. There were also rudely painted on the tiles two
anchors, three darts, a torch, and a palm-branch. The bones found within
the grave, together with the tiles bearing the inscription, were placed in
the Treasury of Relics at the Lateran.

On the return of Pius VII., one of the deputation of Neapolitan clergy
sent to congratulate him sought and received from the Pope these relics
and the tiles as a gift for his church. The inscription had been read by
placing the first tile after the two others, thus,--PAX TECUM FILUMENA,
_Peace be with thee, Filumena_; and Filumena was adopted as a new saint in
the long list of those to whom the Roman Church has given this title. It
was supposed, that, in the haste of closing the grave, the tiles had been
thus misplaced.

Very soon after the gift, a priest, who desired not to be named _on
account of his great humility_, had a vision at noonday, in which the
beautiful virgin with the beautiful name appeared to him and revealed to
him that she had suffered death rather than yield her chastity to the will
of the Emperor, who desired to make her his wife. Thereupon a young
artist, whose name is also suppressed, likewise had a vision of St.
Filomena, who told him that the emperor was Diocletian; but as history
stands somewhat opposed to this statement, it has been suggested that the
artist mistook the name, and that the Saint said Maximian. However this
may be, the day of her martyrdom was fixed on the 10th of August, 303. Her
relics were carried to Naples with great reverence; they were inclosed,
after the Neapolitan fashion, in a wooden doll of the size of life,
dressed in a white satin skirt and a red tunic, with a garland of flowers
on its head, and a lily and a dart in its hand. This doll, with the red-
lettered tiles, was soon transferred to its place in the church of
Mugnano, a small town not far from Naples. Many miracles were wrought on
the way, and many have since been wrought in the church itself. The fame
of the virgin spread through Italy, and chapels were dedicated to her
honor in many distant churches; from Italy it reached Germany and France,
and it has even crossed the Atlantic to America. Thus a new saint, a new
story, and a new exhibition of credulity had their rise not long ago from
a grave and three words in the catacombs.

One of the first differences which are obvious, in comparing the Christian
with the heathen mortuary inscriptions, is the introduction in the former
of some new words, expressive of the new ideas that prevailed among them.
Thus, in place of the old formula which had been in most common use upon
gravestones, D.M., or, in Greek, [Greek: TH.K.], standing for _Dis
Manibus_, or [Greek: _Theois karachthoniois_], a dedication of the stone
to the gods of death, we find constantly the words _In pace_. The exact
meaning of these words varies on different inscriptions, but their general
significance is simple and clear. When standing alone, they seem to mean
that the dead rests in the peace of God; sometimes they are preceded by
_Requiescat_, "May he rest in peace"; sometimes there is the affirmation,
_Dormit in pace_, "He sleeps in peace"; sometimes a person is said
_recessisse in pace_, "to have departed in peace." Still other forms are
found, as, for instance, _Vivas in pace_, "Live in peace," or _Suscipiatur
in pace_, "May he be received into peace,"--all being only variations of
the expression of the Psalmist's trust, "I will lay me down in peace and
sleep, for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety." It is a curious
fact, however, that on some of the Christian tablets the same letters
which were used by the heathens have been found. One inscription exists
beginning with the words _Dis Manibus_, and ending with the words _in
pace_. But there is no need of finding a difficulty in this fact, or of
seeking far for an explanation of it. As we have before remarked, in
speaking of works of Art, the presence of some heathen imagery and ideas
in the multitude of the paintings and inscriptions in the catacombs is not
so strange as the comparatively entire absence of them. Many professing
Christians must have had during the early ages but an imperfect conception
of the truth, and can have separated themselves only partially from their
previous opinions, and from the conceptions that prevailed around them in
the world. To some the letters of the heathen gravestones, and the words
which they stood for, probably appeared little more than a form expressive
of the fact of death, and, with the imperfect understanding natural to
uneducated minds, they used them with little thought of their absolute
significance.[1]

[Footnote 1: It is probable that most of the gravestones upon which this
heathen formula is found are not of an earlier date than the middle of the
fourth century. At this time Christianity became the formal religion of
many who were still heathen in character and thought, and cared little
about the expression of a faith which they had adopted more from the
influence of external motives than from principle or conviction.]

Another difference in words which is very noticeable, running through the
inscriptions, is that of _depositus_, used by the Christians to signify
the _laying away_ in the grave, in place of the heathen words _situs,
positus, sepultus, conditus_. The very name of _coemeterium_, adopted by
the Christians for their burial-places, a name unknown to the ancient
Romans, bore a reference to the great doctrine of the Resurrection. Their
burial-ground was a _cemetery_, that is, a _sleeping-place_; they regarded
the dead as put there to await the awakening; the body was _depositus_,
that is, _intrusted to_ the grave, while the heathen was _situs_ or
_sepultus, interred_ or _buried_,--the words implying a final and
definitive position. And as the Christian _dormit_ or _quiescit, sleeps_
or _rests_ in death, so the heathen is described as _abreptus_, or
_defunctus, snatched away_ or _departed_ from life.

Again, the contrast between the inscriptions is marked, and in a sadder
way, by the difference of the expressions of mourning and grief. No one
who has read many of the ancient gravestones but remembers the bitter
words that are often found on them,--words of indignation against the
gods, of weariness of life, of despair and unconsoled melancholy. Here is
one out of many:--

  PROCOPE MANVS LEBO CONTRA
  DEVM QVI ME INNOCENTEM SVS
  TVLIT QVAE VIXI ANNOS XX.
  POS. PROCLVS.

  I, Procope, who lived twenty years, lift up
  my hands against God, who took me away innocent.
  Proclus set up this.

But among the Christian inscriptions of the first centuries there is not
one of this sort. Most of them contain no reference to grief; they are the
very short and simple words of love, remembrance, and faith,--as in the
following from the Lateran:--

  ADEODATE DIGNAE ET MERITAE VIRGINI
  ETQVIESCE HIC IN PACE IVBENTE XPO EJUS

  To Adeodata, a worthy and deserving Virgin,
  and rests here in peace, her Christ commanding.

On a few the word _dolens_ is found, simply telling of grief. On one to
the memory of a sweetest daughter the word _irreparable_ is used, _Filiae
dulcissimae inreparabili_. Another is, "To Dalmatius, sweetest son, whom
his _unhappy_ father was not permitted to enjoy for even seven years."
Another inscription, in which something of the feeling that was unchecked
among the heathens finds expression in Christian words, is this: "Sweet
soul. To the incomparable child, who lived seventeen years, and
_undeserving_ [of death] gave up life in the peace of the Lord." Neither
the name of the child nor of the parents is on the stone, and the word
_immeritus_, which is used here, and which is common in heathen use, is
found, we believe, on only one other Christian grave. One inscription,
which has been interpreted as being an expression of unresigned sorrow, is
open to a very different signification. It is this:--

  INNOCENTISSISSIMÆ ETATIS
  DVLCISSIMO FILIO
  JOVIANO QVI VIXIT ANN· VII
  ET MENSES VI NON MERENTES
  THEOCTISTVS ET THALLVSA PARENTES

  To their sweetest boy Jovian, of the most
  innocent age, who lived seven years and six
  months, his undeserving [or unlamenting] parents
  Theoctistus and Thallusa.

Here, without forcing the meaning, _non merentes_ might be supposed to
refer to the parents' not esteeming themselves worthy  to be left in
possession of such a treasure; but the probability is that _merentes_ is
only a misspelling of _maerentes_ for otherwise _immerentes_ would have
been the natural word.

But it is thus that the Christian inscriptions must be sifted, to find
expressions at variance with their usual tenor, their general composure
and trust. The simplicity and brevity of the greater number of them are,
indeed, striking evidence of the condition of feeling among those who set
them upon the graves. Their recollections of the dead feared no fading,
and Christ, whose coming was so near at hand, would know and reunite his
own. Continually we read only a name with _in pace_, without date, age, or
title, but often with some symbol of love or faith hastily carved or
painted on the stone or tiles. Such inscriptions as the following are
common:--

  FELICISSIMVS DVLCIS,--GAVDENTIA IN PACE,
  --SEVERA IN DEO VIVAS,--

or, with a little more fulness of expression,--

  DVLCISSIMO FILIO ENDELECIO
  BENEMERENTI QVI VIXIT
  ANNOS II MENSE VNV
  DIES XX IN PACE

  To the sweetest son Endelechius, the well-
  deserving, who lived two years, one month,
  twenty days. In peace.

The word _benemerenti_ is of constant recurrence. It is used both of the
young and the old; and it seems to have been employed, with comprehensive
meaning, as an expression of affectionate and grateful remembrance.

Here is another short and beautiful epitaph. The two words with which it
begins are often found.

  ANIMA DVLCIS AVFENIA VIRGO
  BENEDICTA QVE VIXIT ANN: XXX
  DORMIT IN PACE

  Sweet Soul. The Blessed Virgin Aufenia,
  who lived thirty years. She sleeps in peace.

But the force and tenderness of such epitaphs as these is hardly to be
recognized in single examples. There is a cumulative pathos in them, as
one reads, one after another, such as these that follow:--

  ANGELICE BENE IN PACE

  To Angelica well in peace.

  CVRRENTIO SERVO DEI DEP. D. XVI. KAL
  NOVEM.

  To Currentius, the servant of God, laid in
  the grave on the sixteenth of the Kalends of
  November.

  MAXIMINVS QVI VIXIT ANNOS XXIII
  AMICVS OMNIVM

  Maximin, who lived twenty-three years, the
  friend of all.

  SEPTIMVS MARCIANE
  IN PACE QUE BICSIT MECV
  ANNOS XVII. DORMIT IN PACE

  Septimus to Marciana in peace. Who lived
  with me seventeen years. She sleeps in peace.

  GAVDENTIA
  PAVSAT DVLCIS
  SPIRITVS ANNORVM II
  MENSORVM TRES.

  Gaudentia rests. Sweet spirit of two years
  and three months.

Here is a gravestone with the single word VIATOR; here one that tells only
that Mary placed it for her daughter; here one that tells of the light of
the house,--[Greek: To phos thaes Oikias].

Nor is it only in these domestic and intimate inscriptions that the
habitual temper and feeling of the Christians is shown, but even still
more in those that were placed over the graves of such members of the
household of faith as had made public profession of their belief, and
shared in the sufferings of their Lord. There is no parade of words on the
gravestones of the martyrs. Their death needed no other record than the
little jar of blood placed in the mortar, and the fewest words were enough
where this was present. Here is an inscription in the rudest letters from
a martyr's grave:--

  SABATIVS BENEMERENTI QVI VIXIT ANNOS XL

  To the well-deserving Sabatias, who lived
  forty years.

And here another:--

  PROSPERO INNOCENTI ANIMAE IN PACE.

  To Prosperus, innocent soul, in peace.

And here a third, to a child who had died as one of the Innocents:--

  MIRAE INNOCENTIAE ANIMA DULCIS AEMILEANVS
  QVI VIXIT ANNO VNO, MENS. VIII D. XXVIII
  DORMIT IN PACE

  Aemilian, sweet soul of marvellous innocence,
  who lived one year, eight months, twenty-eight
  days. He sleeps in peace.

At this grave was found the vase of blood, and on the gravestone was the
figure of a dove.

Another inscription, which preserves the name of one of those who suffered
in the most severe persecution to which the ancient Church was exposed,
and which, if genuine, is, so far as known, the only monument of the kind,
is marked by the same simplicity of style:--

  LANNVS XPI MA
  RTIR HC*[Hic?] REQVIESC
  IT SVR [E-P-S] DIOCLITI ANO PASSVS

  Lannus Martyr of Christ here rests. He
  suffered under Diocletian.

The three letters EPS have been interpreted as standing for the words _et
posteris suis_, and as meaning that the grave was also for his successors.
Not yet, then, had future saints begun to sanctify their graves, and to
claim the exclusive possession of them.

But there is another point of contrast between the inscriptions of the un-
Christianized and the Christian Romans, which illustrates forcibly the
difference in the regard which they paid to the dead. To the one the dead
were still of this world, and the greatness of life, the distinctions of
class, the titles of honor still clung to them; to the other the past life
was as nothing to that which had now begun. The heathen epitaphs are
loaded with titles of honor, and with the names of the offices which the
dead had borne, and, like the modern Christian (?) epitaphs whose style
has been borrowed from them, the vanity of this world holds its place
above the grave. But among the early Christian inscriptions of Rome
nothing of this kind is known. Scarcely a title of rank or a name of
office is to be found among them. A military title, or the name of priest
or deacon, or of some other officer in the Church, now and then is met
with; but even these, for the most part, would seem to belong to the
fourth century, and never contain any expression of boastfulness or
flattery.

  FL. OLIVS PATERNVS
  CENTVRIO CHOR. X VRB.
  QVI VIXIT AH XXVII
  IN PACE

  Flavius Olius Paternus, Centurion of the
  Tenth Urban Cohort, who lived twenty-seven
  years. In peace.

It is true, no doubt, that among the first Christians there were very few
of the rich and great. The words of St. Paul to the Corinthians were as
true of the Romans as of those to whom they were specially addressed: "For
ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh,
not many mighty, not many noble are called." Still there is evidence
enough that even in the first two centuries some of the mighty and some of
the noble at Rome were among those called, but that evidence is not to be
gathered from the gravestones of the catacombs. We have seen, in a former
article, that even the grave of one of the early bishops,--the highest
officer of the Church,--and one who had borne witness to the truth in his
death, was marked by the words,

  CORNELIVS MARTYR
  EP.

  The Martyr Cornelius, Bishop.

Compare this with the epitaphs of the later popes, as they are found on
their monuments in St. Peter's,--"flattering, false insculptions on a
tomb, and in men's hearts reproach,"--epitaphs overweighted with
superlatives, ridiculous, were it not for their impiety, and full of the
lies and vanities of man in the very house of God.

With this absence of boastfulness and of titles of rank on the early
Christian graves two other characteristics of the inscriptions are closely
connected, which bear even yet more intimate and expressive relation to
the change wrought by Christianity in the very centre of the heathen
world.

"One cannot study a dozen monuments of pagan Rome," says Mr. Northcote, in
his little volume on the catacombs, "without reading something of _servus_
or _libertus, libertis libertabusque posterisque eorum_; and I believe the
proportion in which they are found is about three out of every four. Yet,
in a number of Christian inscriptions exceeding eleven thousand, and all
belonging to the first six centuries of our era, scarcely six have been
found containing any allusion whatever--and even two or three of these are
doubtful--to this fundamental division of ancient Roman society.

"No one, we think, will be rash enough to maintain, either that this
omission is the result of mere accident, or that no individual slave or
freedman was ever buried in the catacombs. Rather, these two cognate
facts, the absence from ancient Christian epitaphs of all titles of rank
and honor on the one hand, or of disgrace and servitude on the other, can
only be adequately explained by an appeal to the religion of those who
made them. The children of the primitive Church did not record upon their
monuments titles of earthly dignity, because they knew that with the God
whom they served 'there was no respect of persons'; neither did they care
to mention the fact of their bondage, or of their deliverance from
bondage, to some earthly master, because they thought only of that higher
and more perfect liberty wherewith Christ had set them free; remembering
that 'he that was called, being a bondman, was yet the freeman of the
Lord, and likewise he that was called, being free, was still the bondman
of Christ.'

"And this conclusion is still further confirmed by another remarkable fact
which should be mentioned, namely, that there are not wanting in the
catacombs numerous examples of another class of persons, sometimes ranked
among slaves, but the mention of whose servitude, such as it was, served
rather to record an act of Christian charity than any social degradation;
I allude to the alumni, or foundlings, as they may be called. The laws of
pagan Rome assigned these victims of their parents' crimes or poverty to
be the absolute property of any one who would take charge of them. As
nothing, however, but compassion could move a man to do this, children
thus acquired were not called _servi_, as though they were slaves who had
been bought with money, nor _vernae_, as though they had been the children
of slaves born in the house, but _alumni_, a name simply implying that
they had been brought up (_ab alendo_) by their owners. Now it is a very
singular fact, that there are actually more instances of _alumni_ among
the sepulchral inscriptions of Christians than among the infinitely more
numerous inscriptions of pagans, showing clearly that this was an act of
charity to which the early Christians were much addicted; and the
_alumni_, when their foster-parents died, very properly and naturally
recorded upon their tombs this act of charity, to which they were
themselves so deeply indebted."

So far Mr. Northcote. It is still further to be noted, as an expression of
the Christian temper, as displayed in this kind of charity, that it never
appears in the inscriptions as furnishing a claim for praise, or as being
regarded as a peculiar merit. There is no departure from the usual
simplicity of the gravestones in those of this class.

 [Greek:
  PETROS
  THREPTOS
  RAUKUTA
  TOS EN THEO]

  Peter, sweetest foster-child, in God.

And a dove is engraved at either side of
this short epitaph.

  VITALIANO ALVMNO KARO
  EVTROPIVS FECIT.

  Eutropius made this for the dear foster-child
  Vitalian.

  ANTONIVS DISCOLIVS FILIVS ET BIBIVS
  FELLICISSIMVS ALVMNVS VALERIE CRESTENI
  MATRI BIDVE ANORVM XVIII INTET SANCTOS

  Antonius Discolius her son, and Bibius Felicissimus
  her foster-child, to Valeria Crestina
  their mother, a widow for eighteen years.
  [Her grave is] among the holy.[2]

[Footnote 2: This inscription is not of earlier date than the fourth
century, as is shown by the words, _Inter sancios_,--referring, as we
heretofore stated, to the grave being made near that of some person
esteemed a saint.]

These inscriptions lead us by a natural transition to such as contain some
reference to the habits of life or to the domestic occupations and
feelings of the early Christians. Unfortunately for the gratification of
the desire to learn of these things, this class of inscriptions is far
from numerous,--and the common conciseness is rarely, in the first
centuries, amplified by details. But here is one that tells a little story
in itself:--

               DOMNINAE
INNOCENTISSINAE ET DVLCISSIMAE COIVGI
  QVAE VIXIT ANN XVI M. IIII ET FVIT
 IMARITATA ANN. DVOBVS M. IIII D. VIIII
  CVM QVA SON LICVIT FVISSE PROPTER
       CAVSAS PEREGRINATIONIS
           NISI MENEIE VI
QVO TEMPORE VT EGO SENSI ET EXHBVI
            AMOREM MEVM
   NVLLI SV ALII SIC DILEXERVNT
       DEPOSIT XV KAL. IVN.

  To Domnina, my most innocent and sweetest
  wife; who lived sixteen years and four
  months, and was married two years, four
  months, and nine days; with whom, on account
  of my journeys, I was permitted to be
  only six months; in which time, as I felt, so
  I showed my love. No others have so loved
  one another. Placed in the grave the 15th
  of the Kalends of June.

Who was this husband whose far-off journeys had so separated him from his
lately married wife? Who were they who so loved as no others had loved?
The tombstone gives only the name of Domnina. But in naming her, and in
the expression of her husband's love, it gives evidence, which is
confirmed by many other tokens in the catacombs, of the change introduced
by Christianity in the position of women, and in the regard paid to them.
Marriage was invested with a sanctity which redeemed it from sensuality,
and Christianity became the means of uniting man and woman in the bonds of
an immortal love.

Here is an inscription which, spite of the rudeness of its style,
preserves the pleasant memory of a Roman child:--

  ISPIRITO SANTO BONO
  FLORENTIO QVI VIXIT ANIS XIII
  QVAM SI FILIVM SVVM ET COTDEVS
  MATER FILIO BENEMERETI FECERVNT.

  To the good and holy spirit Florentius, who
  lived thirteen years, Coritus, his master, who
  loved him more than if he were his own son,
  and Cotdeus, his mother, have made this for
  her well-deserving son.[3]

[Footnote 3: Compare an inscription from a heathen tomb:--

  C. JVLIVS MAXIMVS
  ANN. II. M. V.

  ATROX O FORTVNA TRVCI QVAE FVNERR GAVDES
  QVID MIHI TAM SVBITO MAXIMVS ERIPITVR
  QVI MODO JVCVNDVS GREMIO SVPERESSE SOLEBAT
  HIC LAPIS TN TVMVLO NVNC JACET ECCE MATER

  C. Julius Maximus,
  Two years, five months old.

  Harsh Fortune, that in cruel death finds't joy,
  Why is my Maximus thus sudden reft,
  So late the pleasant burden of my breast?
  Now in the grave this stone lies: lo, his mother!]

And Coritus, his master, and Cotdeus, his mother, might have rejoiced in
knowing that their poor, rough tablet would keep the memory of her boy
alive for so many centuries; and that long after they had gone to the
grave, the good spirit of Florentius should still, through these few
words, remain to work good upon the earth.--Note in this inscription (as
in many others) the Italianizing of the old Latin,--the _ispirito_, and
the _santo_; note also the mother's strange name, reminding one of Puritan
appellations,--Cotdeus being the abbreviation of _Quod vult Deus_, "What
God wills."[4]

[Footnote 4: Other names of this kind were _Deogratias_, _Habetdeum_, and
_Adeodatus_.]

Here is an inscription set up by a husband to his wife, Dignitas, who was
a woman of great goodness and entire purity of life:--

  QUE SINE LESIONE ANIMI MEI VIXI MECVM
  ANNOS XV FILIOS AVTEM PROCREAVIT VII
  EX QVIBVS SECV ABET AD DOMINVM IIII

  Who, without ever wounding my soul, lived
  with me for fifteen years, and bore seven
  children, four of whom she has with her in
  the Lord.

We have already referred to the inscriptions which bear the name of some
officer of the early Church; but there is still another class, which
exhibits in clear letters others of the designations and customs familiar
to the first Christians. Thus, those who had not yet been baptized and
received into the fold, but were being instructed in Christian doctrine
for that end, were called _catechumens_; those who were recently baptized
were called _neophytes_; and baptism itself appears sometimes to have
been designated by the word _illuminatio_. Of the use of these names the
inscriptions give not infrequent examples. It was the custom also among
the Christians to afford support to the poor and to the widows of their
body. Thus we read such inscriptions as the following:--

  RIGINE VENEMEREMTI FILIA SVA FECIT
  VENERIGINE MATRI VIDVAE QVE SE
  DIT VIDVA ANNOS LX ET ECLESA
  VIXIT ANNOS LXXX MESIS V
  DIES XXVI

  Her daughter Reneregina made this for her
  well-deserving mother Regina, a widow, who
  sat a widow sixty years, and never burdened
  the church, the wife of one husband, who lived
  eighty years, five months, twenty-six days.

The words of this inscription recall to mind those of St. Paul, in his
First Epistle to Timothy, (v. 3-16,) and especially the verse, "If any man
or woman that believeth have widows, let them relieve them, and let not
the church be charged."

Some of the inscriptions preserve a record of the occupation or trade of
the dead, sometimes in words, more often by the representation of the
implements of labor. Here, for instance, is one which seems like the
advertisement of a surviving partner:--

  DE BIANOBA
  POLLECLA QVE ORDEV BENDET DE
  BIANOBA

  From New Street. Pollecla, who sold barley
  on New Street.

Others often bear a figure which refers to the name of the deceased, an
_armoirie parlante_ as it were, which might be read by those too ignorant
to read the letters on the stone. Thus, a lion is scratched on the grave
of a man named Leo; a little pig on the grave of the little child
Porcella, who had lived not quite four years; on the tomb of Dracontius is
a dragon; and by the side of the following charming inscription is found
the figure of a ship:--

  NABIRA IN PACE ANIMA DULCIS
  QVI BIXIT ANOS XVI M V
  ANIMA MELEIEA
  TITVLV FACTV
  APARENTES SIGNVM NABE

  Navira in peace. Sweet soul, who lived sixteen
  years, five months. Soul honey-sweet.
  This inscription made by her parents. The
  sign a ship.

The figures that are most frequent upon the sepulchral slabs are, however,
not such as bear relation to a name or profession, but the commonly
adopted symbols of the faith, similar in design and character to those
exhibited in the paintings of the catacombs. The Good Shepherd is thus
often rudely represented; the figure of Jonah is naturally, from its
reference to the Resurrection, also frequently found; and the figure of a
man or woman with arms outstretched, in the attitude of prayer, occurs on
many of the sepulchral slabs. The anchor, the palm, the crown, and the
dove, as being simpler in character and more easily represented, are still
more frequently found. The varying use of symbols at different periods has
been one of the means which have assisted in determining approximate dates
for the inscriptions upon which they are met with. It is a matter of
importance, in many instances, to fix a date to an inscription. Historical
and theological controversies hang on such trifles. Most of the early
gravestones bear no date; and it was not till the fourth century, that,
with many other changes, the custom of carving a date upon them became
general. The century to which an inscription belongs may generally be
determined with some confidence, either by the style of expression and the
nature of the language, or by the engraved character, or some other
external indications. Among these latter are the symbols. It has, for
instance, been recently satisfactorily proved by the Cavaliere de Rossi
that the use of the emblem of the fish in the catacombs extended only to
the fourth century, so that the monuments upon which it is found may, with
scarcely an exception, be referred to the preceding period. As this emblem
went out of use, owing perhaps to the fact that the Christians were no
longer forced to seek concealment for their name and profession, the
famous monogram of Christ, [Symbol] the hieroglyphic, not only of his
name, but of his cross, succeeded to it, and came, indeed, into far more
general use than that which the fish had ever attained. The monogram is
hardly to be found before the time of Constantine, and, as it is very
frequently met with in the inscriptions from the catacombs, it affords an
easy means, in the absence of a more specific date, for determining a
period earlier than which any special inscription bearing it cannot have
originated. Its use spread rapidly during the fourth century. It "became,"
says Gibbon, with one of his amusing sneers, "extremely fashionable in the
Christian world." The story of the vision of Constantine was connected
with it, and the Labarum displayed its form in the front of the imperial
army. It was thus not merely the emblem of Christ, but that also of the
conversion of the Emperor and of the fatal victory of the Church.

It is a remarkable fact, and one which none of the recent Romanist
authorities attempt to controvert, that the undoubted earlier inscriptions
afford no evidence of any of the peculiar doctrines of the Roman Church.
There is no reference to the doctrine of the Trinity to be found among
them; nothing is to be derived from them in support of the worship of the
Virgin; her name even is not met with on any monument of the first three
centuries; and none of the inscriptions of this period give any sign of
the prevalence of the worship of saints. There is no support of the claim
of the Roman Church to supremacy, and no reference to the claim of the
Popes to be the Vicars of Christ. As the third century advances to its
close, we find the simple and crude beginning of that change in Christian
faith which developed afterward into the broad idea of the intercessory
power of the saints. Among the earlier inscriptions prayers to God or to
Christ are sometimes met with, generally in short exclamatory expressions
concerning the dead. Thus we find at first such words as these:--

  AMERIMNVS
  RVFINAE COIV
  GI CARISSIME
  BENEMEREN
  TI SPIRITVM
  TVVM DEVS
  REFRIGERET

  Amerimnus to his dearest wife Rufina well-
  deserving. May God refresh thy spirit!

And, in still further development,--

  [Greek: AUR. AIANOS PAPHLAGON THEOU
  DOULOS PISTOS
  EKOIMNON EN EIPNIN MINSON
  AUTOU
  O THEOS EIS TOUS AIONAS]

  Aurelius Aelianus, a Paphlagonian, faithful
  servant of God. He sleeps in peace. Remember
  him, O God, forever!

Again, two sons ask for their mother,--

  DOMINE NE QVANDO
  ADVMBRETVR SPIRITVS
  VENERES

  O Lord, let not the spirit of Venus be shadowed
  at any time!

From such petitions as these we come by a natural transition to such as
are addressed to the dead themselves, as being members of the same
communion with the living, and uniting in prayers with those they had left
on earth and for their sake.

  VIBAS IN PACE ET PETE PRO NOBIS

  Mayst thou live in peace and ask for us!

Or, as in another instance,--

  PETE PRO PARENTES TVOS
  MATRONATA MATRONA
  QVE VIXIT AN. I. DI. LII.

  Pray for thy parents, Matronata Matrona!
  Who lived one year, fifty-two days.

And as we have seen how in the fourth century the desire arose of being
buried near the graves of those reputed holy, so by a similar process we
find this simple and affectionate petition to the dead passing into a
prayer for the dead to those under whose protection it was hoped that they
might be. In the multitude of epitaphs, however, these form but a small
number. Here is one that begins with a heathen formula:--

  SOMNO HETERNALI
  AVRELIVS GEMELLVS QVI BIXIT AN--
  ET MESES VIII DIES XVIII MATER FILIO
  CARISSIMO BENAEMERENTI FECIT IN PA--
  [C]ONMANDO BASSILA INNOCENTIA GEMELLI

  In Eternal Sleep. Aurelius Gemellus, who
  lived --- years, and eight months, eighteen
  days. His mother made this for her dearest
  well-deserving son in peace. I commend to
  Basilla the innocence of Gemellus.

Basilla was one of the famous martyrs of the time of Valerian and
Gallienus.

Here again is another inscription of a curious character, as interposing a
saint between the dead and his Saviour. The monogram marks its date.

  RVTA OMNIBVS SVBDITA ET ATFABI
  LIS BIBET IN NOMINE PETRI
  IN PACE

  Ruta, subject and affable to all, shall live in
  the name of Peter, in the peace of Christ.

But it would seem from other inscriptions as if the new practice of
calling upon the saints were not adopted without protest. Thus we read, in
contrast to the last epitaph, this simple one:--

  ZOSIME VIVAS IN NOMINE XTI

  O Zosimus, mayst thou live in the name of Christ!

And again, in the strongest and most direct words:--

  SOLVS DEVS ANIMAM TVAM
  DEFENDAD ALEXANDRE

  May God alone protect thy spirit, Alexander!

One more inscription and we have done; it well closes the long list:--

  QVI LEGERIT VIVAT IN CHRISTO

  Whoever shall read this, may he live in Christ!

As the fourth century advanced, the character of the inscriptions
underwent great change. They become less simple; they exhibit less faith,
and more worldliness; superlatives abound in them; and the want of feeling
displays itself in the abundance of words.

We end here our examinations of the testimony of the catacombs regarding
the doctrine, the faith, and the lives of the Christians of Rome in the
first three centuries. The evidence is harmonious and complete. It leaves
no room for skepticism or doubt. There are no contradictions in it. From
every point of view, theologic, historic, artistic, the results coincide
and afford mutual support. The construction of the catacombs, the works of
painting found within them, the inscriptions on the graves, all unite in
bearing witness to the simplicity of the faith, the purity of the
doctrine, the strength of the feeling, the change in the lives of the vast
mass of the members of the early church of Christ. A light had come into
the world, and the dark passages of the underground cemeteries were
illuminated by it, and manifest its brightness. Wherever it reached, the
world was humanized and purified. To the merely outward eye it might at
first have seemed faint and dim, but "the kingdom of God cometh not with
observation."




THREE OF US.


Such a spring day as it was!--the sky all one mild blue, hazy on the
hills, warm with sunshine overhead; a soft south-wind, expressive, and
full of new impulses, blowing up from the sea, and spreading the news of
life all over our brown pastures and leaf-strewn woods. The crocuses in
Friend Allis's garden-bed shot up cups of gold and sapphire from the dark
mould; slight long buds nestled under the yellow-green leafage of the
violet-patch; white and sturdy points bristled on the corner that in May
was thick with lilies-of-the-valley, crisp, cool, and fragrant; and in a
knotty old apricot-tree two bluebirds and a robin did heralds' duty,
singing of summer's procession to come; and we made ready to receive it
both in our hearts and garments.

Josephine Boyle, Letty Allis, and I, Sarah Anderson, three cousins as we
were, sat at the long window of Friend Allis's parlor, pretending to sew,
really talking. Mr. Stepel, a German artist, had just left us; and a
little trait of Miss Josephine's, that had occurred during his call,
brought out this observation from Cousin Letty:--

"Jo, how could thee let down thy hair so before that man?"

Jo laughed. "Thee is a little innocent, Letty, with your pretty dialect!
Why did I let my hair down? For Mr. Stepel to see it, of course."

"That is very evident," interposed I; "but Letty is not so innocent or so
wise as to have done wondering at your caprices, Jo; expound, if you
please, for her edification."

"I do not pretend to be wise or simple, Sarah; but I didn't think Cousin
Josephine had so much vanity."

"You certainly shall have a preacher-bonnet, Letty. How do you know it was
vanity, my dear? I saw you show Mr. Stepel your embroidery with the
serenest satisfaction; now you made your crewel cherries, and I didn't
make my hair; which was vain?"

Letty was astounded. "Thee has a gift of speech, certainly, Jo."

"I have a gift of honesty, you mean. My hair is very handsome, and I knew
Mr. Stepel would admire it with real pleasure, for it is a rare color. I
took down those curls with quite as simple an intention as you brought him
that little picture of Cole's to see."

Josephine was right,--partly, at least. Her hair was perfect; its tint the
exact hue of a new chestnut-skin, with golden lights, and shadows of deep
brown; not a tinge of red libelled it as auburn; and the light broke on
its glittering waves as it does on the sea, tipping the undulations with
sunshine, and scattering rays of gold through the long, loose curls, and
across the curve of the massive coil, that seemed almost too heavy for her
proud and delicate head to bear. Mr. Stepel was excusably enthusiastic
about its beauty, and Jo as cool as if it had been a wig. Sometimes I
thought this peculiar hair was an expression of her own peculiar
character.

Letty said truly that Jo had a gift of speech; and she, having said her
say about the hair, dismissed the matter, with no uneasy recurring to it,
and took up a book from the table, declaring she was tired of her seam;--
she always was tired of sewing! Presently she laughed.

"What is it, Jo?" said I.

"Why, it is 'Jane Eyre,' with Letty Allis's name on the blank leaf. That
is what I call an anachronism, spiritually. What do you think about the
book, Letty?" said she, turning her lithe figure round in the great chair
toward the little Quakeress, whose pretty red head and apple-blossom of a
face bloomed out of her gray attire and prim collar with a certain
fascinating contrast.

"I think it has a very good moral tendency, Cousin Jo."

The clear, hazel eyes flashed a most amused comment at me.

"Well, what do you call the moral, Letty?"

"Why,--I should think,--I do not quite know that the moral is stated,
Josephine,--but I think thee will allow it was a great triumph of
principle for Jane Eyre to leave Mr. Rochester when she discovered that he
was married."

Jo flung herself back impatiently in the chair, and began an harangue.

"That is a true world's judgment! And you, you innocent little Quaker
girl! think it is the height of virtue not to elope with a married man,
who has entirely and deliberately deceived you, and adds to the wrong of
deceit the insult of proposing an elopement! Triumph of principle! I
should call it the result of common decency, rather,--a thing that the
instinct of any woman would compel her to do. My only wonder is how Jane
Eyre could continue to love him."

"My dear young friend," said I, rather grimly, "when a woman loves a man,
it is apt, I regret to say, to become a fact, not a theory; and facts are
stubborn things, you know. It is not easy to set aside a real affection."

"I know that, ma'am," retorted Jo, in a slightly sarcastic tone; "it is a
painful truth; still, I do think a deliberate deceit practised on me by
any man would decapitate any love I had for him, quite inevitably."

"So it might, in your case," replied I; "for you never will love a man,
only your idea of one. You will go on enjoying your mighty theories and
dreams till suddenly the juice of that 'little western flower' drips on
your eyelids, and then I shall have the pleasure of seeing you caress 'the
fair large ears' of some donkey, and hang rapturously upon its bray, till
you perhaps discover that he has pretended, on your account solely, to
like roses, when he has a natural proclivity to thistles; and then,
pitiable child! you will discover what you have been caressing, and--I
spare you conclusions; only, for my part, I pity the animal! Now Jane Eyre
was a highly practical person; she knew the man she loved was only a man,
and rather a bad specimen at that; she was properly indignant at this
further development of his nature, but reflecting in cool blood,
afterward, that it was only his nature, and finding it proper and legal to
marry him, she did so, to the great satisfaction of herself and the
public. _You_ would have made a new ideal of St. John Rivers, who was
infinitely the best material of the two, and possibly gone on to your
dying day in the belief that his cold and hard soul was only the adamant
of the seraph, encouraged in that belief by his real and high principle,--
a thing that went for sounding brass with that worldly-wise little
philosopher, Jane, because it did not act more practically on his inborn
traits."

"Bah!" said Josephine, "when did you turn gypsy, Sally? You ought to sell
_dukkeripen_, and make your fortune. Why don't you unfold Letty's fate?"

"No," said I, laughing. "Don't you know that the afflatus always exhausts
the priestess? You may tell Letty's fortune, or mine, if you will; but my
power is gone."

"I can tell yours easily, O Sibyl!" replied she. "You will never marry,
neither for real nor ideal. You should have fallen in love in the orthodox
way, when you were seventeen. You are adaptive enough to have moulded
yourself into any nature that you loved, and constant enough to have clung
to it through good and evil. You would have been a model wife, and a
blessed mother. But now--you are too old, my dear; you have seen too
much; you have not hardened yourself, but you have learned to see too
keenly into other people. You don't respect men, 'except exceptions'; and
you have seen so much matrimony that is harsh and unlovable, that you
dread it; and yet--Don't look at me that way, Sarah! I shall cry!--My
dear! my darling! I did not mean to hurt you.--I am a perfect fool!--Do
please look at me with your old sweet eyes again!--How could I!"----

"Look at Letty," said I, succeeding at last in a laugh. And really Letty
was comical to look at; she was regarding Josephine and me with her eyes
wide open like two blue larkspur flowers, her little red lips apart, and
her whole pretty surface face quite full of astonishment.

"Wasn't that a nice little tableau, Letty?" said Josephine, with
preternatural coolness. "You looked so sleepy, I thought I'd wake you up
with a bit of a scene from 'Lara Aboukir, the Pirate Chief'; you know we
have a great deal of private theatricals at Baltimore; you should see me
in that play as Flashmoria, the Bandit's Bride."

Letty rubbed her left eye a little, as if to see whether she was sleepy or
not, and looked grave; for me, the laugh came easily enough now. Jo saw
she had not quite succeeded, so she turned the current another way.

"Shall I tell your fortune now, Letty? Are you quite waked up?" said she.

"No, thee needn't, Cousin Jo; thee don't tell very good ones, I think."

"No, Letty, she shall not vex your head with nonsense. I think your fate
is patent; you will grow on a little longer like a pink china-aster, safe
in the garden, and in due time marry some good Friend,--Thomas Dugdale,
very possibly,--and live a tranquil life here in Slepington till you
arrive at a preacher-bonnet, and speak in meeting, as dear Aunt Allis did
before you."

Letty turned pale with rage. I did not think her blonde temperament held
such passion.

"I won't! I won't! I never will!" she cried out. "I hate Thomas Dugdale,
Sarah! Thee ought to know better about me! thee knows I cannot endure him,
the old thing!"

This climax was too much for Jo. With raised brows and a round mouth, she
had been on the point of whistling ever since Letty began; it was an old,
naughty trick of hers; but now she laughed outright.

"No sort of inspiration left, Sally! I must patch up Letty's fate myself.
Flatter not yourself that she is going to be a good girl and marry in
meeting; not she! If there's a wild, scatter-brained, handsome,
dissipated, godless youth in all Slepington, it is on him that testy
little heart will fix,--and think him not only a hero, but a prodigy of
genius. Friend Allis will break her heart over Letty; but I'd bet you a
pack of gloves, that in three years you'll see that juvenile Quakeress in
a scarlet satin hat and feather, with a blue shawl, and green dress, on
the arm of a fast young man with black hair, and a cigar in his mouth."

"Why! where _did_ thee ever see him, Josey?" exclaimed Letty, now rosy
with quick blushes.

The question was irresistible. Jo and I burst into a peal of laughter that
woke Friend Allis from her nap, and, bringing her into the parlor, forced
us to recover our gravity; and presently Jo and I took leave.

Letty was an orphan, and lived with her cousin, Friend Allis. I, too, was
alone; but I kept a tiny house in Slepington, part of which I rented, and
Jo was visiting me.

As we walked home, along the quiet street overhung with willows and
sycamores, I said to her, "Jo, how came you to know Letty's secret?"

"My dear, I did not know it any more than you; but I drew the inference of
her tastes from her character. She is excitable,--even passionate; but her
formal training has allowed no scope for either trait, and suppression has
but concentrated them. She really pines for some excitement;--what, then,
could be more natural than that her fancy should light upon some person
utterly diverse from what she is used to see? That is simple enough. I hit
upon the black hair on the same principle, 'like in difference.' The cigar
seemed wonderful to the half-frightened, all-amazed child; but who ever
sees a fast young man without a cigar?"

"I am afraid it is Henry Malden," said I, meditatively; "he is all you
describe, but he is also radically bad; besides, having been in the
Mexican war, he will have the prestige of a hero to Letty. How can the
poor girl be undeceived before it is quite too late?"

"What do you want to undeceive her for, Sally? Do you suppose that will
prevent her marrying Mr. Malden?"

"I should think so, most certainly!"

"Not in the least. If you want Letty to marry him, just judiciously oppose
it. Go to her, and say you come as a friend to tell her Mr. Malden's
faults, and the result will be, she will hate you, and be deeper in love
with him than ever."

"You don't give her credit for common sense, Jo."

"Just as much as any girl of her age has in love. Did you ever know a
woman who gave up a man she loved because she was warned against him?--or
even if she knew his character well, herself? I don't know but there are
women who could do it, from sheer religious principle. I believe you
might, Sarah. It would be a hard struggle, and wear you to a shadow in
mind and body; but you have a conscience, and, for a woman with a heart as
soft as pudding, the most thoroughly rigid streak of duty in you; none of
which Letty has to depend on. No; if you want to save her, take her away
from Slepington; take her to Saratoga, to Newport, to Washington; turn her
small head with gayety: she is pretty enough to have a dozen lovers at any
watering-place; it is only propinquity that favors Mr. Malden here."

"I can't do that, Josephine. I have not the means, and Miss Allis would
not have the will, even if she believed in your prescription."

"Then Letty must stay here and bide her time. You believe in a special
Providence, Sarah, don't you?"

"Yes, of course I do."

"Then cannot you leave her to that care? Circumstances do not work for
you. Perhaps it is best that she should marry him, suffer, live, love, and
be refined by fire."

My heart sunk at the prospect of these possibilities. Josephine put her
arm round me. "Sally," said she, in her softest tone, "I grieved you,
dear, this afternoon. I did not mean to. I grieved myself most. Please
forgive me!"

"I haven't anything to forgive, Jo," said I. "What you said to me was
true, painfully true,--and, being so, for a moment pained me. I should
have been much happier to be married, I know; but now I daren't think of
it. I have lost a great deal. I have

 "--'lost _my_ place,
  _My_ sweet, safe corner by the household fire,
  Behind the heads of children';

"and yet I do not know that I have not gained a little. It is something,
Jo, to know that I am not in the power of a bad, or even an ill-tempered
man. I can sit by my fire and know that no one will come home to fret at
me,--that I shall encounter no cold looks, no sneers, no bursts of anger,
no snarl of stinginess, no contempt of my opinion and advice. I know that
now men treat me with respect and attention, such as their wives rarely,
if ever, receive from them. Sensitive and fastidious as I am, I do not
know whether my gain is not, to me, greater than my loss. I know it ought
not to be so,--that it argues a vicious, an unchristian, almost an
uncivilized state of society; but that does not affect the facts."

"You frighten me, Sarah. I cannot believe this is always true of men and
their wives."

"Neither is it. Some men are good and kind and gentle, gentle-men, even in
their families; and every woman believes the man she is to marry is that
exception. Jo,--bend your ear down closer,--I thought once I knew such a
man,--and,--dear,--I loved him."

"My darling!--but, Sarah, why"--

"Because, as you said, Josey, I was too old; I had seen too much; I would
not give way to an impulse. I bent my soul to know him; I rang the metal
on more than one stone, and every time it rang false. I knew, if I married
him, I should live and die a wretched woman. Was it not better to live
alone?"

"But, Sarah,--if he loved you?"

"He did not,--not enough to hurt himself; he could not love anything so
much better than his ease as to suffer, Josey: he was safe. He thought, or
said, he loved me; but he was mistaken."

"Safe, indeed! He ought to have been shot!"

"Hush, dear!"

There was a long pause. It was as when you lift a wreck from the tranquil
sea and let it fall again to the depths, useless to wave or shore; the
black and ghastly hulk is covered; it is seen no more; but the water
palpitates with circling rings, trembles above the grave, dashes quick and
apprehensive billows upon the sand, and is long in regaining its quiet
surface.

"I wonder if there ever was a perfect man," said Jo, at length, drawing a
deep sigh.

"You an American girl, Jo, and don't think at once of Washington?"

"My dear, I am bored to death with Washington _à l'Américain_. A man!--
how dare you call him a man?--don't you know he is a myth, an abstraction,
a plaster-of-Paris cast? Did you ever hear any human trait of his noticed?
Weren't you brought up to regard him as a species of special seraph, a
sublime and stainless figure, inseparable from a grand manner and a
scroll? Did you ever dare suppose he ate, or drank, or kissed his wife?
You started then at the idea: I saw you!"

"You are absurd, Jo. It is true that he is exactly, among us, what
demigods were to the Greeks,--only less human than they. But when I once
get my neck out of the school-yoke, I do not start at such suggestions as
yours; I believe he did comport himself as a man of like passions with
others, and was as far from being a hero to his _valet-de-chambre_ as
anybody."

By this time we were at home, and Jo flung her parasol on the bench in the
porch, and sat down beside it with a gesture of weariness and disgust
mingled.

"Why will you, of all people, Sarah, quote that tinkling, superficial
trash of a proverb, so palpably French, when the true reason why a man is
not a hero to his lackey is only because he is seen with a lackey's eyes,
--the sight of a low, convention-ridden, narrow, uneducated mind, unable
to take a broad enough view to see that a man is a hero because he is a
man, because he overleaps the level of his life, and is greater than his
race, being one of them? If he were of the heroic race, what virtue in
being heroic? it is the assertion of his trivial life that makes his
speciality evident,--the shadow that throws out the bas-relief. We chatter
endlessly about the immense good of Washington's example: I believe its
good would be more than doubled, could we be made, nationally, to see him
as a human being, living on 'human nature's daily food,' having mortal and
natural wants, tastes, and infirmities, but building with and over all, by
the help of God and a good will, the noble and lofty edifice of a patriot
manhood, a pure life of duty and devotion, sublime for its very strength
and simpleness, heroic because manly and human."

The day had waned, and the sunset lit Josephine's excited eyes with fire:
she was not beautiful, but now, if ever, beauty visited her with a
transient caress. She looked up and met my eyes fixed on her.

"What is it, Sally?--what do I look like?"

"Very pretty, just now, Jo; your eyes are bright and your cheek flushed:
the sunshine suits you. I admire you tonight."

"I am glad," said she, naively. "I often wish to be pretty."

"A waste wish, Jo!--and yet I have entertained it myself."

"It's not so much matter for you, Sarah; for people love you. And besides,
you have a certain kind of beauty: your eyes are beautiful,--rather too
sad, perhaps, but fine in shape and tint; and you have a good head, and a
delicately outlined face. Moreover, you are picturesque: people look at
you, and then look again,--and, any way, love you, don't they?"

"People are very good to me, Jo."

"Oh, yes! we all know that people as a mass are kindly, considerate, and
unselfish; that they are given to loving and admiring disagreeable and
ugly people; in short, that the millennium has come. Sally, my dear, you
are a small hypocrite,--or else--But I think we won't establish a mutual-
admiration society to-night, as there are only two of us; besides, I am
hungry: let us have tea."

The next day, Josephine left me. As we walked together toward the landing
of the steamer, Letty Allis emerged from a green lane to say good-bye, and
down its vista I discerned the handsome, lazy person of Henry Malden, but
I did not inform Letty of my discovery.

A year passed away,--to me with the old monotonous routine; full of work,
not wanting in solace; barren, indeed, of household enjoyments and
vicissitudes; solitary, sometimes desolate, yet peaceful even in monotony.
But this new spring had not come with such serene neglect to the other two
of us three. Against advice, remonstrance, and entreaty from her good
friends, Letty Allis had married Henry Malden, and, in attire more
tasteful, but quite as far from Quakerism as Josephine had predicted,
beamed upon the inhabitants of Slepington from the bow-window, or open
door, of a cottage very _ornée_ indeed; while the odor of a tolerable
cigar served as Mr. Malden's exponent, wherever he abode. And to Josephine
had come a loss no annual resurrection should repair: her mother was dead;
she, too, was orphaned,--for she had never known her father; her only
sister was married far away; and I kept an old promise in going to her for
a year's stay at least.

Aunt Boyle's property had consisted chiefly in large cotton mills owned by
herself and her twin brother,--who, dying before her, left her all his own
share in them. These mills were on a noisy little river in the western
part of Massachusetts,--in a valley, narrow, but picturesque, and so far
above the level of the sea that the air was keen and pure as among
mountains. Mrs. Boyle had removed here from Baltimore, a few years before
her own death, that she might be with her brother through his long and
fatal illness; and, finding her health improved by change of air, had
occupied his house ever since, until one of those typhoid fevers that
infest such river-gorges at certain seasons of the year entered the
village about the mills, when, in visiting the sick, she took the epidemic
herself and died. Josephine still retained the house endeared to her by
sad and glad recollections; and it was there I found her, when, after
renting the whole of my little tenement at Slepington, I betook myself to
Valley Mills at her request.

The cottage where she lived was capacious enough for her wants, and though
plain, even to an air of superciliousness, without, was most luxurious
within,--made to use and live in; for Mr. Brown, her uncle, was an
Englishman, and had never arrived at that height of Transatlantic _ton_
which consists in shrouding and darkening all the pleasant rooms in the
house, and skulking through life in the basement and attic. Sunshine,
cushions, and flowers were Mr. Brown's personal tastes; and plenty of
these characterized the cottage. A green terrace between hill and river
spread out before the door for lawn and garden, and a tiny conservatory
abutted upon the brink of the terrace slope, from a bay-window in the
library, that opened sidewise into this winter-garden.

I found Jo more changed than I had expected: this last year of country
life had given strength and elasticity to the tall and slender figure; a
steady rose of health burned on either cheek; and sorrow had subdued and
calmed her quick spirits.

I was at home directly, and a sweeter summer never glowed and blushed over
earth than that which installed me in the Nook Cottage. Out of doors the
whole country was beautiful, and attainable; within, I had continual
resources in my usual work and in Jo's society: for she was one of those
persons who never are uninteresting, never fatiguing; a certain salient
charm pervaded her conversation, and a simplicity quite original startled
you continually in her manner and ways. I liked to watch her about the
house; dainty and fastidious in the extreme about some things, utterly
careless about others, you never knew where or when either trait would
show itself next. She was scrupulous as to the serving of meals, for
instance,--almost to a fault; no carelessness, no slight neglect, was
admitted here, and always on the spotless damask laid with quaint china
stood a tapered vase of white Venice glass, with one, or two, or three
blossoms, sometimes a cluster of leaves, the spray of a wild vine, or the
tasselled branch of a larch-tree jewelled with rose-red cones, arranged
therein with an artist's taste and skill: but perhaps, while she sharply
rebuked the maid for a dim spot on her chocolate-pitcher or a grain of
sugar spilt on the salver, her white India shawl lay trailed over the
divan half upon the floor, and her gloves fluttered on the doorstep till
the wind carried them off to find her parasol hanging in the honeysuckle
boughs.

But, happily, it is not one's duty to make other people uncomfortable by
perpetually tinkering at that trait in them which most offends our own
nature; and I thought it more for my good and hers to learn patience
myself than undertake to beat her into order; the result of which was
peace and good-will that vindicated my wisdom to myself; and I found her,
faults and all, sufficiently fascinating and lovable.

A year passed away serenely; and when spring came again, Josephine refused
to let me leave her. Our life was quiet enough, but, with such beautiful
Nature, and plenty to do, we were not lonely,--less so because Jo's hands
were as open as her heart, and to her all the sick and poor looked, not
only for help, but for the rarer consolations of living sympathy and
counsel. Her shrewd common sense, her practical capacity, her kindly,
cheerful face, her power of appreciating a position of want and perplexity
and seeing the best way out of it, and, above all, her deep and fervent
religious feeling, made her an invaluable friend to just that class who
most needed her.

In the course of this spring we gained an addition to our society, in the
person of Mr. Waring, the son of the gentleman who had bought the mills at
Mrs. Boyle's death, but who had hitherto conducted them by an overseer. He
had recently bought a little island in the middle of the river, just below
the dam, and proposed erecting a new mill upon it; but as the Tunxis (the
Indian name of our river) was liable to rapid and destructive freshets,
the mill required a deep and secure foundation and a lower story of stone.

This implied some skilful engineering, and Mr. Arthur Waring, having
studied this subject fully abroad, came on from Boston, and took up his
abode in Valley Mills village. Of course, we being his only hope of
society in the place, he made our acquaintance early. I rather liked him;
his manner was good, his perceptions acute, his tastes refined, and he had
a certain strength of will that gave force to a character otherwise
common-place. Josephine liked him at once; she laid his shyness and
_brusquerie_, which were only the expression of a dominant self-
consciousness, to genuine modesty. He was depressed and moody, because he
was bored for want of acquaintance, and missed the adulation and caresses
that he received at home as an only child; but Jo's swift imagination
painted this as the trait of a reflective and melancholy nature disgusted
with the world, and pitied him accordingly; a mild way of misanthropic
speech, that is apt to infest young men, added to this delusion; and, with
all the energy of her sweet, earnest disposition, Josephine undertook his
education,--undertook to teach him faith and hope and charity, to set
right his wayward soul, to renovate his bitter opinions, to make him a
better and a happier man.

It is a well-known fact in the philosophy of the human mind, that it is
apt to gain more by imparting than by receiving; and since philosophy,
where it becomes fact, does not mercifully adjust its results to
circumstance, but rushes on in implacable grooves, and clears its own
track of whatever lies thereon by the summary process of crushing it to
dust, it did not pause now for the pure intentions and tender heart which,
in teaching another love to men, taught herself love to a man, and learnt
far better than her pupil.

Mr. Waring was but a man; he did not love Josephine,--he admired her; he
loved nothing but himself, his quiet, his pleasure; and while she
ministered to either, he regarded her with a species of affection that put
on the mask of a diviner passion and used its language. A thousand little
things showed the man fully to me, a cool spectator; but she who needed
most the discerning eye regarded this gay bubble as if it had been a
jewel.

Perhaps I blame him too severely, for it was against the very heart of my
heart that he sinned; possibly I do not allow for the temptation it was to
a young man, quite alone in a country village, without resources, and
accustomed to the flattery and caresses of a devoted mother, to find
himself agreeable in the eyes of a noble and lovable woman. Possibly, in
his place, a better man might have sought her society, drawn her out of
her reserve for his own delectation, confided in her, worked upon her
pity, claimed her care, played on her simplicity and ignorance of the
world, crept into her heart and won its strength of emotion and its
generous affection,--in short, made love to her, without saying so,
honestly and openly. Yet there are some men who would not have done it;
and even yet, while I try to regard Arthur Waring with Christian charity,
I feel that I cannot trust him, that I do not respect him,--that, if I
dared despise anything God has made, my first contempt would light on him.

In the autumn, while all this was going on, I received a painful and
wretched letter from Letty Malden, begging me to come to her. I could not
resist such an appeal; and one of Josephine's little nieces having come to
spend the winter with her, I hurried to Slepington,--not, I am sure, in
the least regretted by Mr. Waring, who had begun to look at me with uneasy
and sometimes defiant eyes.

I found a miserable household here. Mr. Malden had in no way reformed.
When did marriage ever reform a bad man? On the contrary, he was more
dissipated than ever; and whenever he came home, the welcome that waited
for him was one little calculated to make home pleasant; for Letty's quick
temper blazed up in reproach and reviling that drew out worse
recrimination; and even the little, wailing, feeble baby, that filled
Letty's arms and consoled her in his absence, was only further cause of
strife between her and her husband. Often, as I came down the street and
saw the pretty outside of the cottage, waving with creepers, and hedged
about with thorns, whose gay berries decked it as if for a festival, I
thought of what a good old preacher among the Friends once said to me:
"Sarah, thee will live to find shows are often seems; thee sees many a
quiet house, with gay windows, that is hell inside."

I soon found that I must stay all winter at Slepington. I had a hard task
before me,--to try and teach Letty that she had no right to neglect her
own duties because her husband ignored his. But six months of continual
dropping seemed to wear a tiny channel of perception; and my presence, as
well as the efforts we made together to preserve order, if not serenity,
in the house, restored a certain dim hope to Letty's mind, and I began to
see that the "purification by fire" was doing its work, in slow pain, but
to a sure end.

Selfish as it was, I cannot say that I felt sorry to return to Jo, who
wrote for me in April, urging me to come as soon as I could, for Mr.
Waring had fallen from the mill-wall and broken his leg, and the workmen,
in their confusion, had carried him to her house, and she wanted me to
help her. I learned, on reaching Valley Mills, that the new building on
the island had not been completed far enough to resist a heavy freshet,
that had swept away part of the first story, where the mortar was not yet
hardened; and it was in traversing these wet stones to ascertain the
extent of the damage that Mr. Waring had slipped, and, unable to recover
his footing, fallen on a heap of stones and received his injury.

My first question to Josephine was, "Where is Mr. Waring's mother?"

"He would not send for her, Sally," said she, "because she is not well,
and he feared to startle her."

"H'm!" said I, very curtly.

Josephine looked at me with innocent, grave eyes,--dear, simple child!--
and yet, for anybody but herself she would have been sufficiently
discerning. This love seemed to have remodelled her nature, to have taken
from her all the serpent's wisdom, to have destroyed her common sense, and
distorted her view of everything in which Arthur Waring was concerned. She
had certainly got on very fast in my absence. I had returned too late.

I had little to do with the care of the invalid; that devolved on Jo; my
offers of service were kindly received, but always declined. Nobody could
read to him so well as Miss Boyle. Nobody else understood his moods, his
humors, his whims; she knew his tastes with ominous exactness. It was she
who arranged his meals on the salver with such care and grace, nay, even
cooked them at times; for Jo believed, like a rational woman, that
intellect and cultivation increase one's capacity for every office,--that
a woman of intelligence should be able to excel an ignorant servant in
every household duty, by just so much as she excels her in mind. In fact,
this was a pleasant life to two persons, but harassing enough for me. Had
I been confident of Arthur Waring's integrity, I should have regarded him
with friendly and cordial interest; but I had every reason to distrust
him. I perceived he had so far insinuated himself into Jo's confidence,
that his whole artillery of expressive looks, broken sentences, even
caresses, were received by her with entire good faith; but when I asked
her seriously if I was to regard Mr. Waring as her lover, she burst into
indignant denial, colored scarlet, and was half inclined to be angry with
me,--though a certain tremulous key, into which her usually sweet and
steady voice broke while she declared he had never spoken to her of love,
it was only friendship, witnessed against her that she was apprehensive,
sad, perhaps visited with a tinge of that causeless shame which even in a
pure and good woman conventionality constrains, when she has loved a man
before he says in plain English, "I love you," though every act and look
and tone of his may have carried that significance unmistakably for years.
Thank God, there is a day of sure judgment coming, when conventions and
shields of usage will save no man from the due vengeance of truth upon
falsehood, justice upon smooth and plausible duplicity!

In due time Mr. Waring recovered. If there was any change in his manner to
Jo, it was too slight to be seen, though it was felt, and was, after all,
the carelessness of a person certain of his foothold in her good graces,
rather than the evident withdrawal of attention,--which I could have
pardoned even then, had it been the result of honest regret for past
carelessness, and stern resolution to repair that past. Whatever it was,
Jo perceived that her ideal man was become a real man; but, with a
tenacity of nature, for which in my fate-telling I had not given her
credit, she was as constant to the substance as she had been to the dream;
and while she lost both health and spirits in the contemplation of Arthur
Waring's fitful and heedless manner toward her, and was evidently pained
by the discovery of his selfish and politic traits,--to call them by no
harsher name,--it was inexpressibly touching to hear the excuses she made
for him, to see the all-shielding love with which she veiled his faults,
and kept him as a mother would keep her graceless, yet dearest child from
animadversion and reproach.

In the mean time I heard often from Letty,--no good news of her husband,
but that her child grew more and more a comfort, that her friends were
very kind, and always in a tiny postscript some such phrase as this: "I
try to be patient, Sarah," or "I don't scold Harry so much as I did,
dear." I hoped for Letty, for she persevered.

That summer we saw less than ever of Mr. Waring; he was very busy at the
mill in order that it might be far enough advanced to resist the
inevitable spring freshets; and besides, we were absent from the Valley
some weeks, endeavoring to recruit Jo's failing health at the sea-side.
But this was a vain endeavor; that which sapped the springs of her life
was past outward cure. She inherited her father's delicate and unreliable
constitution, and a nervous organization, whose worst disease is ever the
preying of doubt, anxiety, or regret. As winter drew on, she grew no
better; a dim, dreamy abstraction brooded over her. She said to me often,
with a vague alarm, "Sally, how far off you seem! Do come nearer!" She
ceased to talk when we were alone, her step grew languid, her eye deeper,
--and its bright expression, when you roused her, was longer in shooting
back into the clouded sphere than ever before. She sat for hours by the
window, her lovely head resting on its casement, looking out, always out
and away, beyond the hills, into the deep spaces of blue air, past cloud
and vapor, to the stars. Sudden noises startled her to an extreme degree;
a quick step flushed her cheek with fire and fluttered her breath. How I
longed for spring! I hoped all from the delicate ministrations of Nature;
though the physician we called gave me no hope of her final recovery. Mr.
Waring himself seemed struck with her aspect, and many little signs of
friendly interest came from him. As often as he could, he returned to his
old haunts; and while the pleasure of his presence and the excitement of
his undisguised anxiety wrought on her, Jo became almost her old self for
the moment, gay, cheerful, blooming,--alas! with the bloom of feverishness
and vain hope.

So spring drew near. The mill was nearly finished. One day in March a warm
south-wind "quieted the earth" after a long rain, the river began to stir,
its mail of ice to crack and heave under the sun's rays. I persuaded Jo to
take a little drive, and once in the carriage the air reanimated her; she
rested against me and talked more than I had known her for weeks.

"What a lovely day!" said she; "how balmy the air is! there is such an
expression of rest without despair, such calm expectation! I always think
of heaven such days, Sally!--they are like the long sob with which a child
finishes weeping. Only to think of never more knowing tears!--that is life
indeed!"

A keen pang pierced me at the vibration of her voice as she spoke. I
thought to soothe her a little, and said, "Heaven can be no more than
love, Jo, and we have a great deal of that on earth."

"Do we?" answered she, in a tone of grief just tipped with irony,--and
then went on: "I believe you love me, Sally. I would trust you with--my
heart, if need were. I think you love me better than any one on earth
does."

"I love you enough, dear," said I; more words would have choked me in the
utterance.

Soon we turned homeward.

"Tell John to drive down by the river," said Josephine,--"I want to see
the new mill."

"But you cannot see it from the road, Jo; the hemlocks stand between."

"Never mind, Sally; I shall just walk through them; don't deny me! I want
to see it all again; and perhaps the arbutus is in bloom."

"Not yet, Jo."

"I can get some buds, then; I want to have some just once."

We left the carriage, and on my arm Jo strolled through the little thicket
of hemlock-trees, green and fragrant. She seemed unusually strong. I began
to hope. After much searching, we found the budded flowers; she loved most
of all wild blossoms; no scent breathed from the closed petals; they were
not yet kissed by the odor-giving south-wind into life and expression; but
Jo looked at them with sad, far-reaching eyes. I think she silently said
good-bye to them.

Presently we came out on the steep bank of the river, directly opposite
the mill. A heavy timber was thrown across from the shore to the island,
on which the workmen from the west side had passed and repassed; it was
firm enough for its purpose, but now, wet with the morning's rain, and
high above the grinding ice, it seemed a hazardous bridge. As we stood
looking over at the new mill, listening to the slight stir within it,
apparently the setting to rights by some lingering workman of such odds
and ends as remain after finishing the great whole of such a building,
suddenly the cool wind, which had shifted to the north, brought on its
waft a most portentous roar. We stood still to listen. Nearer and nearer
it swelled, crashing and hissing as it approached. Josephine grasped my
arm with convulsive energy, and at that instant we perceived Mr. Waring's
plaid cap pass an open casement. She turned upon me like a wild creature
driven to bay. I looked up-stream;--the ice had gathered in one high
barrier mixed with flood-wood and timber, and, bearing above all the
uprooted trunk of a huge sycamore, was coming down upon the dam like a
battering-ram. Jo gasped. "The river is broken up and Arthur is on the
island," said she, in a fearfully suppressed tone, and, swifter than I
could think or guess her meaning, she had reached the timber, she was on
it,--and with light, untrembling steps half across, when both she and I
simultaneously caught sight of Mr. Waring running for dear life to the
other and stronger bridge. Jo turned to come back; but the excitement was
past that had sustained her; she trembled, she tottered. I ran to meet and
aid her. Just then the roots of the great sycamore thundered against the
dam; the already heavily pressed structure gave way; with the freed roar
of a hurricane, the barrier, the dam, the foot-bridge swept down toward
us. She had all but reached the end of the timber,--I stood there to grasp
her hand,--when the old tree, whirled down by the torrent, struck the
other end of the beam and threw Josephine forward to the bank, dashing her
throbbing, panting breast, with all the force of her fall, against the
hard ground. I lifted her in my arms. She was white with pain. Presently
she opened her eyes and looked up, a flush of rapture glowed all over her
face, and then the awful mist of death, gray and rigid, veiled it. Her
head dropped on my shoulder; a sharp cry and a rush of scarlet blood
passed her lips together; the head lay more heavily,--she was dead. But
Arthur Waring never knew how or for what she died!

Five years have passed since that day. Still I live at Nook Cottage; but
not alone. Of us three, Josephine is in heaven. Letty is still troubled
upon earth; her husband tests her patience and her temper every hour, but
both temper and patience are in good training; and if ever Henry Malden is
reclaimed, as I begin to see reasons to hope he will be, he will owe it to
the continual example and gentle goodness of his wife, who has grown from
a petulant, thoughtless girl into a lovely, unselfish, religious woman, a
devoted mother and wife, "refined by fire." For me, the last,--whenever
now I say, as I used to say, "Three of us," I mean a new three,--Paul,
baby, and me; for Jo was not a prophet. Four years ago, while my heart-
ache for her was fresh and torturing, a new pastor came to the little
village church of Valley Mills. Mr. Lyman was very good; I have seen other
men with as fine natural traits, but I have never seen a man or woman so
entirely good. He came to me to console me; for he, too, had just lost a
sister, and in listening to his story I for a moment forgot my own, as he
meant I should. But I did not love him,--no, not till I discovered, months
afterward, that he suffered incessantly from ill-health, and was all alone
in the world. I was too much a woman to resist such a plea. I pitied him;
I tried to take care of him; and when he asked me if I liked the office of
sick-nurse, I told him I liked it well enough to wish it were for life;
and now, when he wants to light my eyes out of that dreamy expression that
tells him I am re-living the past, and thinking of the dead, he tells me,
for the sake of the flash that follows, that I offered myself to him!
Perhaps I did. But he is well now; the air of the Tunxis hills, and the
rest of a quiet life, partly, I hope, good care also, have restored to him
his lost health. And I am what Jo said I should have been,--a blessed
mother, as well as a happy wife. The baby that lies across my lap has
traits that endear her to me doubly,--traits of each of us three cousins:
Josephine's hair on her little nestling head, Letty's apple-blossom
complexion, and my eyes, except that they are serene when they are not
smiling. I ask only of the love that has given me all this unexpected joy,
that my little Jo may have one better trait,--her father's heart; a
stronger, tenderer, and purer heart than belonged to any one among "Three
of us!"




WHAT A WRETCHED WOMAN SAID TO ME.


All the broad East was laced with tender rings
  Of widening light; the Daybreak shone afar;
Deep in the hollow, 'twixt her fiery wings,
  Fluttered the morning star.

A cloud, that through the time of darkness went
  With wanton winds, now, heavy-hearted, came
And fell upon the sunshine, penitent,
  And burning up with shame.

The grass was wet with dew; the sheep-fields lay
  Lapping together far as eye could see;
And the great harvest hung the golden way
  Of Nature's charity.

My house was full of comfort; I was propped
  With life's delights, all sweet as they could be,
When at my door a wretched woman stopped,
  And, weeping, said to me,--

"Its rose-root in youth's seasonable hours
  Love in thy bosom set, so blest wert thou;
Hence all the pretty little red-mouthed flowers
  That climb and kiss thee now!

"_I_ loved, but _I_ must stifle Nature's cries
  With old dry blood, else perish, I was told;
Hence the young light shrunk up within my eyes,
  And left them blank and bold.

"I take my deeds, all, bad as they have been,--
  The way was dark, the awful pitfall bare;--
In my weak hands, up through the fires of sin,
  I hold them for my prayer."

"The thick, tough husk of evil grows about
  Each soul that lives," I mused, "but doth it kill?
When the tree rots, the imprisoned wedge falls out,
  Rusted, but iron still.

"Shall He who to the daisy has access,
  Reaching it down its little lamp of dew
To light it up through earth, do any less,
  Last and best work, for you?"




SONGS OF THE SEA.


Not Dibdin's; not Barry Cornwall's; not Tom Campbell's; not any of the
"Pirate's Serenades" and "I'm afloats!" which appear in the music-shop-
windows, illustrated by lithographic vignettes of impossible ships in
impracticable positions. These are sung by landsmen yachting in still
waters and in sight of green fields, by romantic young ladies in
comfortable and unmoving drawing-rooms to the tinkling of Chickering's
pianos. What are the songs the sailor sings to the accompaniment of the
thrilling shrouds, the booming double-bass of the hollow topsails, and the
multitudinous chorus of Ocean? What does the coaster, in his brief walk
"three steps and overboard," hum to himself, as he tramps up and down his
little deck through the swathing mists of a Bank fog? What sings the cook
at the galley-fire in doleful unison with the bubble of his coppers?
Surely not songs that exult in the life of the sea. Certainly not, my
amateur friend, anything that breathes of mastery over the elements. The
sea is a real thing to him. He never is familiar with it, or thinks of it
or speaks of it as his slave. It is "a steed that knows his rider," and,
like many another steed which the men of the forecastle have mounted,
knows that it can throw its rider at pleasure, and the riders know it too.
Now and then a sailor will utter some fierce imprecation upon wind or sea,
but it is in the impotence of despair, and not in the conscious, boastful
mastery which the land-songs attribute to him. What, then, does the sailor
sing?--and does he sing at all?

Certainly the sailor sings. Did you ever walk through Ann Street, Boston,
or haunt the purlieus of the Fulton Market? and when there did you never
espy a huckster's board covered with little slips of printed paper of the
size and shape of the bills-of-fare at the Commonwealth Hotel? They are
printed on much coarser paper, and are by no means as typographically
exact as the aforesaid _carte_, or as this page of the "Atlantic Monthly,"
but they are what the sailor sings. I know they are there, for I once
spent a long summer's day in the former place, searching those files for a
copy of the delightful ballad sung (or attempted to be sung) by Dick
Fletcher in Scott's "Pirate,"--the ballad beginning

  "It was a ship, and a ship of fame,
  Launched off the stocks, bound for the main."

I did not find my ballad, and to this day remain in ignorance of what fate
befell the "hundred and fifty brisk young men" therein commemorated. But I
found what the sailor does sing. It was a miscellaneous collection of
sentimental songs, the worn-out rags of the stage and the parlor, or
ditties of highwaymen, or ballad narratives of young women who ran away
from a rich "parient" with "silvier and gold" to follow the sea. The truth
of the story was generally established by the expedient of putting the
damsel's name in the last verse,--delicately suppressing all but the
initial and final letters. The only sea-songs that I remember were other
ballads descriptive of piracies, of murders by cruel captains, and of
mutinies, with a sprinkling of sea-fights dating from the last war with
England.

The point of remark is, that all of these depend for their interest upon a
human association. Not one of them professes any concern with the sea or
ships for their own sake. The sea is a sad, solemn reality, the theatre
upon which the seaman acts his life's tragedy. It has no more of
enchantment to him than the "magic fairy palace" of the ballet has to a
scene-shifter.

But other songs the sailor sings. The Mediterranean sailor is popularly
supposed to chant snatches of opera over his fishing-nets; but, after all,
his is only a larger sort of lake, with water of a questionable saltness.
It can furnish dangerous enough storms upon occasion, and, far worse than
storms, the terrible white-squall which lies ambushed under sunny skies,
and leaps unawares upon the doomed vessel. But the Mediterranean is not
the deep sea, nor has it produced the best and boldest navigators.
Therefore, although we still seek the sources of our maritime law amid the
rock-poised huts (once palaces) of Amalfi, we must go elsewhere for our
true sea-songs.

The sailor does not lack for singing. He sings at certain parts of his
work;--indeed, he must sing, if he would work. On vessels of war, the drum
and fife or boatswain's whistle furnish the necessary movement-regulator.
There, where the strength of one or two hundred men can be applied to one
and the same effort, the labor is not intermittent, but continuous. The
men form on either side of the rope to be hauled, and walk away with it
like firemen marching with their engine. When the headmost pair bring up
at the stern or bow, they part, and the two streams flow back to the
starting-point, outside the following files. Thus in this perpetual
"follow-my-leader" way the work is done, with more precision and
steadiness than in the merchant-service. Merchant-men are invariably
manned with the least possible number, and often go to sea shorthanded,
even according to the parsimonious calculations of their owners. The only
way the heavier work can be done at all is by each man doing his utmost at
the same moment. This is regulated by the song. And here is the true
singing of the deep sea. It is not recreation; it is an essential part of
the work. It mastheads the topsail-yards, on making sail; it starts the
anchor from the domestic or foreign mud; it "rides down the main tack with
a will"; it breaks out and takes on board cargo; it keeps the pumps (the
ship's,--not the sailor's) going. A good voice and a new and stirring
chorus are worth an extra man. And there is plenty of need of both.

I remember well one black night in the mid-Atlantic, when we were beating
up against a stiff breeze, coming on deck near midnight, just as the ship
was put about. When a ship is tacking, the tacks and sheets (ropes which
confine the clews or lower corners of the sails) are let run, in order
that the yards may be swung round to meet the altered position of the
ship. They must then be hauled taut again, and belayed, or secured, in
order to keep the sails in their place and to prevent them from shaking.
When the ship's head comes up in the wind, the sail is for a moment or two
edgewise to it, and then is the nice moment, as soon as the head-sails
fairly fill, when the main-yard and the yards above it can be swung
readily, and the tacks and sheets hauled in. If the crew are too few in
number, or too slow at their work, and the sails get fairly filled on the
new tack, it is a fatiguing piece of work enough to "board" the tacks and
sheets, as it is called. You are pulling at one end of the rope, but the
gale is tugging at the other. The advantages of lungs are all against you,
and perhaps the only thing to be done is to put the helm down a little,
and set the sails shaking again before they can be trimmed properly.--It
was just at such a time that I came on deck, as above mentioned. Being
near eight bells, the watch on deck had been not over spry; and the
consequence was that our big main-course was slatting and flying out
overhead with a might that shook the ship from stem to stern. The flaps of
the mad canvas were like successive thumps of a giant's fist upon a mighty
drum. The sheets were jerking at the belaying-pins, the blocks rattling in
sharp snappings like castanets. You could hear the hiss and seething of
the sea alongside, and see it flash by in sudden white patches of
phosphorescent foam, while all overhead was black with the flying scud.
The English second-mate was stamping with vexation, and, with all his
ills misplaced, storming at the men:--"'An'somely the weather main-
brace,--'an'somely, I tell you!--'Alf a dozen of you clap on to the main
sheet here,--down with 'im!--D'y'see 'ere's hall like a midshipman's
bag,--heverythink huppermost and nothing 'andy.--'Aul 'im in, Hi say!"
--But the sail wouldn't come, though. All the most forcible expressions of
the Commination-Service were liberally bestowed on the watch. "Give us
the song, men!" sang out the mate, at last,--"pull with a will!
--together, men!--haltogether now!"--And then a cracked, melancholy voice
struck up this chant:

  "Oh, the bowline, bully bully bowline,
  Oh, the bowline, bowline, HAUL!"

At the last word every man threw his whole strength into the pull,--all
singing it in chorus, with a quick, explosive sound. And so, jump by jump,
the sheet was at last hauled taut.--I dare say this will seem very much
spun out to a seafarer, but landsmen like to hear of the sea and its ways;
and as more landsmen than seamen, probably, read the "Atlantic Monthly," I
have told them of one genuine sea-song, and its time and place.

Then there are pumping-songs. "The dismal sound of the pumps is heard,"
says Mr. Webster's Plymouth-Rock Oration; but being a part of the daily
morning duty of a well-disciplined merchant-vessel,--just a few minutes'
spell to keep the vessel free and cargo unharmed by bilge-water,--it is
not a dismal sound at all, but rather a lively one. It was a favorite
amusement with us passengers on board the ---- to go forward about
pumping-time to the break of the deck and listen. Any quick tune to which
you might work a fire-engine will serve for the music, and the words were
varied with every fancy. "Pay me the money down," was one favorite chorus,
and the verse ran thus:--

  _Solo._ Your money, young man, is no object to me.

  _Chorus._ Pay me the money down!

  _Solo._ Half a crown's no great amount.

  _Chorus._ Pay me the money down!

  _Solo and Chorus. (Bis)_ Money down, money down, pay me the money down!

Not much sense in all this, but it served to man and move the brakes
merrily. Then there were other choruses, which were heard from time to
time,--"And the young gals goes a-weepin',"--"O long storm, storm along
stormy"; but the favorite tune was "Money down," at least with our crew.
They were not an avaricious set, either; for their parting ceremony, on
embarking, was to pitch the last half-dollars of their advance on to the
wharf, to be scrambled for by the land-sharks. But "Money down" was the
standing chorus. I once heard, though not on board that ship, the lively
chorus of "Off she goes, and off she must go,"--

  "Highland day and off she goes,
  Off she goes with a flying fore-topsail,
  Highland day and off she goes."

It is one of the most spirited things imaginable, when well sung, and,
when applied to the topsail-halyards, brings the yards up in grand style.

These are some of the working-songs of the sea. They are not chosen for
their sense, but for their sound. They must contain good mouth-filling
words, with the vowels in the right place, and the rhythmic ictus at
proper distances for chest and hand to keep true time. And this is why the
seaman beats the wind in a trial of strength. The wind may whistle, but it
cannot sing. The sailor does not whistle, on shipboard at least, but does
sing.

Besides the working-day songs, there are others for the forecastle and
dog-watches, which have been already described. But they are seldom of the
parlor pattern. I remember one lovely moonlight evening, off the Irish
coast, when our ship was slipping along before a light westerly air,--just
enough of it for everything to draw, and the ship as steady as Ailsa Crag,
so that everybody got on deck, even the chronically sea-sick passengers of
the steerage. There was a boy on board, a steerage passenger, who had been
back and forth several times on this Liverpool line of packets. He was set
to singing, and his sweet, clear voice rang out with song after song,--
almost all of them sad ones. At last one of the crew called on him for a
song which he made some demur at singing. I remember the refrain well (for
he _did_ sing it at last); it ran thus:--

  "My crew are tried, my bark's my pride,
I'm the Pirate of the Isles."

It was no rose-water piracy that the boy sang of; it was the genuine
pirate of the Isle of Pines,--the gentleman who before the days of
California and steamers was the terror of the Spanish Main. He was
depicted as falling in deadly combat with a naval cruiser, after many
desperate deeds. What was most striking to us of the cabin was, that the
sympathy of the song, and evidently of the hearers, was all on the side of
the defier of law and order. There was no nonsense in it about "islands on
the face of the deep where the winds never blow and the skies never weep,"
which to the parlor pirate are the indications of a capital station for
wood and water, and for spending his honeymoon. It was downright cutting
of throats and scuttling of ships that our youngster sang of, and the grim
faces looked and listened approvingly, as you might fancy Ulysses's
veterans hearkening to a tale of Troy.

There is another class of songs, half of the sea, half of the shore, which
the fishermen and coasters croon in their lonely watches. Such is the
rhyme of "Uncle Peleg," or "Pillick," as it is pronounced,--probably an
historical ballad concerning some departed worthy of the Folger family of
Nantucket. It begins--

  "Old Uncle Pillick he built him a boat
    On the ba-a-ck side of Nantucket P'int;
  He rolled up his trowsers and set her afloat
  From the ba-a-ck side of Nantucket P'int."

Like "Christabel," this remains a fragment. Not so the legend of "Captain
Cottington," (or Coddington,) which perhaps is still traditionally known
to the young gentlemen at Harvard. It is marked by a bold and ingenious
metrical novelty.

  "Captain Cottington he went to sea,
  Captain Cottington he went to sea,
  Captain Cottington he went to sea-e-e,
  Captain Cottington he went to sea."

The third verse of the next stanza announces that he didn't go to sea in a
schoo-oo-ooner,--of the next that he went to sea in a bri-i-ig,--and so
on. We learn that he got wrecked on the "Ba-ha-ha-hamys," that he swam
ashore with the papers in his hat, and, I believe, entered his protest at
the nearest "Counsel's" (_Anglicé_. Consul's) dwelling.

For the amateur of genuine ballad verse, here is a field quite as fertile
as that which was reaped by Scott and Ritson amid the border peels and
farmhouses of Liddesdale. It is not unlikely that some treasures may thus
be brought to light. The genuine expression of popular feeling is always
forcible, not seldom poetic. And at any rate, these wild bits of verse are
redolent of the freshness of the sea-breeze, the damps of the clinging
fog, the strange odors of the caboose-cookery, of the curing of cod, and
of many another "ancient and fish-like smell." Who will tell us of these
songs, not indeed of the deep sea, but of soundings? What were the stanzas
which Luckie Mucklebackit sang along the Portanferry Sands? What is the
dredging-song which the oyster "come of a gentle kind" is said to love?

These random thoughts may serve to indicate to the true seeker new and
unworked mines of rhythmic ore. We are crying continually, that we have no
national literature, that we are a nation of imitators and plagiarists.
Why will not some one take the trouble to learn what we have? This does
not mean that amateurs should endeavor to write such ballad fragments and
popular songs,--because that cannot be done; such things grow,--they are
not made. If the sea wants songs, it will have them. It is only suggested
here that we look about us and ascertain of what lyric blessings we may
now be the unconscious possessors. Can it be that oars have risen and
fallen, sails flapped, waves broken in thunder upon our shores in vain?
that no whistle of the winds, or moan of the storm-foreboding seas has
waked a responsive chord in the heart of pilot or fisherman? If we are so
poor, let us know our poverty.

And now to bring these desultory remarks to a practical conclusion. I have
written these seemingly trifling fragments with a serious purpose. It is
to show that the seaman has little or no art or part in the poetry of the
seas. I have put down facts, have given what experience I have had of some
of the idiosyncrasies of the forecastle. The poetry of the sea has been
written on shore and by landsmen. Falconer's "Shipwreck" is a clever
nautical tract, written in verse,--or if it be anything more, it is but
the solitary exception which proves and enforces the rule. Midshipmen have
written ambitious verses about the sea; but by the time the young
gentlemen were promoted to the ward-room they have dropped the habit or
found other themes for their stanzas. In truth, the stern manliness of his
calling forbids the seaman to write poetry. He acts it. His is a
profession which leaves no room for any assumed feeling or for any
reflective tendencies. His instincts are developed, rather than his
reason. He has no time to speculate. He must be prepared to lay his hand
on the right rope, let the night be the darkest that ever came down upon
the waves. He obeys orders, heedless of consequences; he issues commands
amid the uproar and tumult of pressing emergencies. There is no chance for
quackery in his work. The wind and the wave are infallible tests of all
his knots and splices. He cannot cheat them. The gale and the lee-shore
are not pictures, but fierce realities, with which he has to grapple for
life or death. The soldier and the fireman may pass for heroes upon an
assumed stock of courage; but the seaman must be a brave man in his
calling, or Nature steps in and brands him coward. Therefore he cares
little about the romance of his duties. If you would win his interest and
regard, it must be on the side of his personal and human sensibilities.
Cut off during his whole active life from any but the most partial
sympathy with his kind, he yearns for the life of the shore, its social
pleasures and its friendly greetings. Captains, whose vessels have been
made hells-afloat by their tyranny, have found abundant testimony in the
courts of law to their gentle and humane deportment on land. Therefore,
when you would address seamen effectively, either in acts or words, let it
be by no shallow mimicry of what you fancy to be their life afloat. It
will be at best but "shop" to them, and we all know how distasteful that
is in the mouth of a stranger to our pursuits. They laugh at your clumsy
imitations, or are puzzled by your strange misconceptions. It is painful
to see the forlorn attempts which are made to raise the condition of this
noble race of men, to read the sad nonsense that is perpetrated for their
benefit. If you wish really to benefit them, it must be by raising their
characters as men; and to do this, you must address them as such,
irrespectively of the technicalities of their calling.




THE KINLOCH ESTATE, AND HOW IT WAS SETTLED.


CHAPTER I.

"Mildred, my daughter, I am faint. Run and get me a glass of cordial from
the buffet."

The girl looked at her father as he sat in his bamboo chair on the piazza,
his pipe just let fall on the floor, and his face covered with a deadly
pallor. She ran for the cordial, and poured it out with a trembling hand.

"Shan't I go for the doctor, father?" she asked.

"No, my dear, the spasm will pass off presently." But his face grew more
ashy pale, and his jaw drooped.

"Dear father," said the frightened girl, "what shall I do for you? Oh,
dear, if mother were only at home, or Hugh, to run for the doctor!"

"Mildred, my daughter," he gasped with difficulty, "the blacksmith,--send
for Ralph Hardwick,--quick! In the ebony cabinet, middle drawer, you will
find----Oh! oh!--God bless you, my daughter!--God bless"----

The angels, only, heard the conclusion of the sentence; for the speaker,
Walter Kinloch, was dead, summoned to the invisible world without a
warning and with hardly a struggle.

But Mildred thought he had fainted, and, raising the window, called loudly
for Lucy Ransom, the only female domestic then in the house.

Lucy, frightened out of her wits at the sudden call, came rushing to the
piazza, flat-iron in hand, and stood riveted to the spot where she first
saw the features on which the awful shadow of death had settled.

"Rub his hands, Lucy!" said Mildred. "Run for some water! Get me the
smelling-salts!"

Lucy attempted to obey all three orders at once, and therefore did
nothing.

Mildred held the unresisting hand. "It is warm," she said. "But the
pulse,--I can't find it."

"Deary, no," said Lucy, "you won't find it."

"Why, you don't mean"----

"Yes, Mildred, he's dead!" And she let fall her flat-iron, and covered her
face with her apron.

But Mildred kept chafing her father's temples and hands,--calling
piteously, in hopes to get an answer from the motionless lips. Then she
sank down at his feet, and clasped his knees in an agony of grief.

A carriage stopped at the door, and a hasty step came up the walk.

"Lucy Ransom," said Mrs. Kinloch, (for it was she, just returned from her
drive,) "Lucy Ransom, what are you blubbering about? Here on the piazza,
and with your flat-iron! What is the matter?"

"Matter enough!" said Lucy. "See!--see Mr."----But the sobs were too
frequent. She became choked, and fell into an hysterical paroxysm.

By this time Mrs. Kinloch had stepped upon the piazza, and saw the
drooping head, the dangling arms, and the changed face of her husband.
"Dead! dead!" she exclaimed. "My God! what has happened? Mildred, who was
with him? Was the doctor sent for? or Squire Clamp? or Mr. Rook? What did
he say to you, dear?" And she tried to lift up the sobbing child, who
still clung to the stiffening knees where she had so often climbed for a
kiss.

"Oh, mother! _is_ he dead?--no life left?"

"Calm yourself, my dear child," said Mrs. Kinloch. "Tell me, did he say
anything?"

Mildred replied, "He was faint, and before I could give him the cordial he
asked for he was almost gone. 'The blacksmith,' he said, 'send for Ralph
Hardwick'; then he said something of the ebony cabinet, but could not
speak the words which were on his lips." She could say no more, but gave
way to uncontrollable tears and sobs.

By this time, Mrs. Kinloch's son, Hugh Branning, who had been to the
stable with the horse and carriage, came whistling through the yard, and
cutting off weeds or twigs along the path with sharp cuts of his whip.

"Which way is the wind now?" said he, as he approached; "the governor
asleep, Mildred crying, and you scolding, mother?" In a moment, however,
the sight of the ghastly face transfixed the thoughtless youth, as it had
done his mother; and, dropping his whip, he stood silent, awe-struck, in
the presence of the dead.

"Hugh," said Mrs. Kinloch, speaking in a very quiet tone, "go and tell
Squire Clamp to come over here."

In a few minutes the dead body was carried into the house by George, the
Asiatic servant, aided by a villager who happened to pass by. Squire
Clamp, the lawyer of the town, came and had a conference with Mrs. Kinloch
respecting the funeral. Neighbors came to offer sympathy, and aid, if need
should be. Then the house was put in order, and crape hung on the door-
handle. The family were alone with their dead.

On the village green the boys were playing a grand game of "round ball,"
for it was a half-holiday. The clear, silvery tones of the bell were
heard, and we stopped to listen. Was it a fire? No, the ringing was not
vehement enough. A meeting of the church? In a moment we should know. As
the bell ceased, we looked up to the white taper spire to catch the next
sound. One stroke. It was a death, then,--and of a man. We listened for
the age tolled from the belfry. Fifty-five. Who had departed? The sexton
crossed the green on his way to the shop to make the coffin, and informed
us. Our bats and balls had lost their interest for us; we did not even ask
our tally-man, who cut notches for us on a stick, how the game stood. For
Squire Walter Kinloch was the most considerable man in our village of
Innisfield. Without being highly educated, he was a man of reading and
intelligence. In early life he had amassed a fortune in the China trade,
and with it he had brought back a deeply bronzed complexion, a scar from
the creese of a Malay pirate, and the easy manners which travel always
gives to observant and sensible men. But his rather stately carriage
produced no envy or ill-will among his humbler neighbors, for his
superiority was never questioned. Men bowed to him with honest good-will,
and boys, who had been flogged at school for confounding Congo and
Coromandel, and putting Borneo in the Bight of Benin, made an awkward
obeisance and stared wonderingly, as they met the man who had actually
sailed round the world, and had, in his own person, illustrated the
experiment of walking with his head downwards among the antipodes. His
house had no rival in the country round, and his garden was considered a
miracle of art, having, in popular belief, all the fruits, flowers, and
shrubs that had been known from the days of Solomon to those of Linnaeus.
Prodigious stories were told of his hoard of gold, and some of the less
enlightened thought that even the outlandish ornaments of the balustrade
over the portico were carven silver. Curious vases adorned the hall and
side-board; and numberless quaint trinkets, whose use the villagers could
not even imagine, gave to the richly-furnished rooms an air of Oriental
magnificence. Tropical birds sang or chattered in cages, and a learned but
lawless parrot talked, swore, or made mischief, as he chose. The tawny
servant George, brought by Mr. Kinloch from one of the islands of the
Pacific, completed his claims upon the admiration of the untravelled.

He was just ready to enjoy the evening of life, when the night of death
closed upon him with tropic suddenness. He left one child only, his
daughter Mildred, then just turned of eighteen; and as Mrs. Kinloch had
only one son to claim her affection, the motherless girl would seem to be
well provided for. Mildred was sweet-tempered, and her step-mother had
hitherto been discreet and kind.

The funeral was over, and the townspeople recovered from the shock which
the sudden death had caused. Administration was granted to the widow
conjointly with Squire Clamp, the lawyer, and the latter was appointed
guardian for Mildred during her minority.

Squire Clamp was an ill-favored man, heavy-browed and bald, and with a
look which, in a person of less consequence, would have been called "hang-
dog,"--owing partly, no doubt, to the tribulation he had suffered from his
vixen spouse, whose tongue was now happily silenced. He was the town's
only lawyer, (a fortunate circumstance,) so that he could frequently
manage to receive fees for advice from both parties in a controversy. He
made all the wills, deeds, and contracts, and settled all the estates he
could get hold of. But no such prize as the Kinloch property had ever
before come into his hands.

If Squire Clamp's reputation for shrewdness had belonged to an irreligious
man, it would have been of questionable character; but as he was a zealous
member of the church, he was protected from assaults upon his integrity.
If there were suspicions, they were kept close, not bruited abroad.

He was now an almost daily visitor at the widow Kinloch's. What was the
intricate business that required the constant attention of a legal
adviser? The settlement of the estate, so far as the world knew, was an
easy matter. The property consisted of the dwelling-house, a small tract
of land near the village, a manufactory at the dam, by the side of Ralph
Hardwick's blacksmith's shop, and money, plate, furniture, and stocks.
There were no debts. There was but one child, and, after the assignment of
the widow's dower, the estate was Mildred's. Nothing, therefore, could be
simpler for the administrators. The girl trusted to the good faith of her
stepmother and the justice of the lawyer, who now stood to her in the
place of a father. She was an orphan, and her innocence and childlike
dependence would doubtless be a sufficient spur to the consciences of her
protectors. So the girl thought, if she thought at all,--and so all
charitable people were bound to think.

How wearily the days passed during the month after the funeral! The shadow
of death seemed to darken everything. Doors creaked dismally when they
were opened. The room where the body had been laid seemed to have grown a
century older than the other parts of the once bright and cheerful house,
--its atmosphere was so stagnant and full of mould. The family spoke only
in suppressed tones; their countenances were as sad as their garments. All
this was terrible to the impressible, imaginative, and naturally buoyant
temper of Mildred. It was like dwelling in a tomb, and her heart cried out
for very loneliness. She must do something to take her mind out of the
sunless vault,--she must resume her relations with the dwellers in the
upper air. All at once she thought of her father's last words,--of Ralph
Hardwick, and the ebony cabinet. It was in the next room. She opened the
door, half expecting to see some bodiless presence in the silent space.
She could hear her own heart beat between the tickings of the great Dutch
clock, as she stepped across the floor. How still was everything! The air
tingled in her ears as though now disturbed for the first time.

She opened the cabinet, which was not locked, and pulled out the middle
drawer. She found nothing but a dried rose-bud and a lock of sunny hair
wrapped in a piece of yellowed paper. Was it her mother's hair? As
Mildred remembered her mother, the color of her hair was dark, not golden.
Still it might have been cut in youth, before its hue had deepened. And
what a world of mystery, of feeling, of associations there was in that
scentless and withered rose-bud! What fair hand had first plucked it? What
pledge did it carry? Was the subtile aroma of love ever blended with its
fragrance? Had her father borne it with him in his wanderings? The secret
was in his coffin. The struggling lips could not utter it before they were
stiffened into marble. Yet she could not believe that these relics were
the sole things to which he had referred. There must have been something
that more nearly concerned her,--something in which the blacksmith or his
nephew was interested.


CHAPTER II.

In order to show the position of Mrs. Kinloch and her son in our story, it
will be necessary to make the reader acquainted with some previous
occurrences.

Six years before this date, Mrs. Kinloch was the Widow Branning. Her
husband's small estate had melted like a snow-bank in the liquidation of
his debts. She had only one child, Hugh, to support; but in a country town
there is generally little that a woman can do to earn a livelihood; and
she might often have suffered from want, if the neighbors had not relieved
her. If she left her house for any errand, (locks were but seldom used in
Innisfield,) she would often on her return find a leg of mutton, a basket
of apples or potatoes, or a sack of flour, conveyed there by some unknown
hands. In winter nights she would hear the voices of Ralph Hardwick, the
village blacksmith, and his boys, as they drew sled-loads of wood, ready
cut and split, to keep up her kitchen fire. Other friends ploughed and
planted her garden, and performed numberless kind offices. But, though
aided in this way by charity, Mrs. Branning never lost her self-respect
nor her standing in the neighborhood.

Everybody knew that she was poor, and she knew that everybody knew it; yet
so long as she was not in absolute want, and the poor-house, that bugbear
of honest poverty, was yet far distant, she managed to keep a cheerful
heart, and visited her neighbors on terms of entire equality.

At this period Walter Kinloch's wife died, leaving an only child. During
her sickness, Mrs. Branning had been sent for to act as nurse and
temporary house-keeper, and, at the urgent request of the widower,
remained for a time after the funeral. Weeks passed, and her house was
still tenantless. Mildred had become so much attached to the motherly
widow and her son, that she would not allow the servants to do anything
for her. So, without any definite agreement, their relations continued.
By-and-by the village gossips began to query and surmise. At the sewing-
society the matter was fully discussed.

Mrs. Greenfield, the doctor's wife, admitted that it would be an excellent
match, "jest a child apiece, both on 'em well brought up, used to good
company, and all that; but, land's sakes! he, with his mint o' money,
a'n't a-goin' to marry a poor widder that ha'n't got nothin' but her
husband's pictur' and her boy,--not he!"

Others insinuated that Mrs. Branning knew what she was about when she went
to Squire Kinloch's, and his wife was 'most gone with consumption.
"'Twasn't a mite strange that little Mildred took to her so kindly; plenty
of women could find ways to please a child, if so be they could have such
a chance to please themselves."

The general opinion seemed to be that Mrs. Branning would marry the
Squire, if she could get him; but that as to his intentions, the matter
was quite doubtful. Nevertheless, after being talked about for a year, the
parties were duly published, married, and settled down into the quiet
routine of country life.

Doubtless the accident of daily contact was the secret of the match. Had
Mrs. Branning been living in her own poorly-furnished house, Mr. Kinloch
would hardly have thought of going to seek her. But as mistress of his
establishment she had an opportunity to display her house-wifely
qualities, as well as to practise those nameless arts by which almost any
clever woman knows how to render herself agreeable.

The first favorable impression deepened, until the widower came to believe
that the whole parish did not contain so proper a person to be the
successor of Mrs. Kinloch, as his housekeeper. Their union, though
childless, was as happy as common; there was nothing of the romance of a
first attachment,--little of the tenderness that springs from fresh
sensibilities, for she at least was of a matter-of-fact turn. But there
was a constant and hearty good feeling, resulting from mutual kindness and
deference.

If the step-mother made any difference in her treatment of the two
children, it was in favor of the gentle Mildred. And though the Squire
naturally felt more affection for his motherless daughter, yet he was
proud of his step-son, gave him the advantages of the best schools, and
afterwards sent him for a year to college. But the lad's spirits were too
buoyant for the sober notions of the Faculty. He was king in the
gymnasium, and was minutely learned in the natural history and botany of
the neighborhood; at least, he knew all the haunts of birds, rabbits, and
squirrels, as well as the choicest orchards of fruit.

After repeated admonitions without effect, a letter was addressed to his
stepfather by vote at a Faculty-meeting. A damsel at service in the
President's house overheard the discussion, and found means to warn the
young delinquent of his danger; for she, as well as most people who came
within the sphere of his attraction, felt kindly toward him.

The stage-coach that conveyed the next morning's mail to Innisfield
carried Hugh Branning as a passenger. Alighting at the post-office, he
took out the letter superscribed in the well-known hand of the President,
pocketed it, and returned by the next stage to college. This prank only
moved the Squire to mirth, when he heard of it. He knew that Hugh was a
lad of spirit,--that in scholarship he was by no means a dunce; and as
long as there was no positive tendency to vice, he thought but lightly of
his boyish peccadilloes. But it was impossible for such irregularities to
continue, and after a while Mr. Kinloch yielded to his step-son's request
and took him home.

Next year it was thought best that the young man should go to sea, and a
midshipman's commission was procured for him. Now, for the second time,
after an absence of three years, Hugh was at home in all the dignity of
navy blue, anchor buttons, glazed cap, and sword.


CHAPTER III.

"I have brought you the statement of the property, Mrs. Kinloch," said Mr.
Clamp. "It is merely a legal form, embracing the items which you gave to
me; it must be returned at the next Probate term."

Mrs. Kinloch took the paper and glanced over it.

"This statement must be sworn to, Mrs. Kinloch."

"By you?"

"We are joined in the administration, and both must swear to it."

There was a pause. Mrs. Kinloch, resting her hands on her knee, tossed the
hem of her dress with her foot, as though meditating.

"I shall of course readily make oath to the schedule," he continued,--"at
least, after you have done so; for I have no personal knowledge of the
effects of the deceased."

His manner was decorous, but he regarded her keenly. She changed the
subject.

"People seem to think I have a mint in the house; and _such_ bills as come
in! Sawin, the cabinet-maker, has sent his to-day, as soon as my husband
is fairly under ground: forty dollars for a cherry coffin, which he made
in one day. Cleaver, the butcher, too, has sent a bill running back for
five years or more. Now I _know_ that Mr. Kinloch never had an ounce of
meat from him that he didn't pay for. If they all go on in this way, I
sha'n't have a cent left. Everybody tries to cheat the widow"----

"And orphan," interposed Mr. Clamp.

She looked at him quietly; but he was imperturbable.

"We must begin to collect what is due," she continued.

"Did you refer to the notes from Ploughman?" asked Mr. Clamp. "He is
perfectly good; and he will pay the interest till we want to use the
money."

"I wasn't thinking of Ploughman," she replied, "but of Mark Davenport,
Uncle Ralph Hardwick's nephew. They say he is a teacher in one of the
fashionable schools in New York,--and he must be able to pay, if he's ever
going to."

"Well, when he comes on here, I will present the notes."

"But I don't intend to wait till he comes; can't you send the demands to a
lawyer where he is?"

"Certainly, if you wish it; but that course will necessarily be attended
with some expense."

"I choose to have it done," said Mrs. Kinloch, decisively. "Mildred, who
has always been foolishly partial to the young upstart, insists that her
father intended to give up the notes to Mark, and she thinks that was what
he wanted to send for Uncle Ralph about, just before he died. I don't
believe it, and I don't intend to fling away _my_ money upon such folks."

"You are quite right, ma'am," said the lawyer. "The inconsiderate
generosity of school-children would be a poor basis for the transactions
of business."

"And besides," continued Mrs. Kinloch, "I want the young man to remember
the blacksmith's shop that he came from, and get over his ridiculous
notion of looking up to our family."

"Oh ho!" said Mr. Clamp, "that is it? Well, you are a sagacious woman,"--
looking at her with unfeigned admiration.

"I _can_ see through a millstone, when there is a hole in it," said Mrs.
Kinloch. "And I mean to stop this nonsense."

"To be sure,--it would be a very unequal match in every way. Besides, I'm
told that he isn't well-grounded in doctrine. He even goes to Brooklyn to
hear Torchlight preach." And Mr. Clamp rolled up his eyes, interlocking
his fingers, as he was wont when at church-meeting he rose to exhort.

"I don't pretend to be a judge of doctrine, further than the catechism
goes," said the widow; "but Mr. Rook says that Torchlight is a dangerous
man, and will lead the churches off into infidelity."

"Yes, Mrs. Kinloch, the free-thinking of this age is the fruitful parent
of all evil,--of Mormonism, Unitarianism, Spiritualism, and of all those
forms of error which seek to overthrow"----

There was a crash in the china-closet. Mrs. Kinloch went to the door, and
leading out Lucy Ransom, the maid, by the ear, exclaimed, "You hussy, what
were you there for? I'll teach you to be listening about in closets,"
(giving the ear a fresh tweak,) "you eavesdropper!"

"Quit!" cried Lucy. "I didn't mean to listen. I was there rubbin' the
silver 'fore you come. Then I didn't wanter come out, for I was afeard."

"What made the smash, then?" demanded Mrs. Kinloch.

"I was settin' things on the top shelf, and the chair tipped over."

"Don't make it worse by fibbing! If that was so, how came the chair to tip
the way it did? You were trying to peep over the door. Go to the kitchen!"

Lucy went out with fallen plumes. Mr. Clamp took his hat to go also.

"Don't go till I get you the notes," said Mrs. Kinloch.

As she brought them, he said, "I will send these by the next mail, with
instructions to collect."

While his hand was on the latch, she spoke again:--

"Mr. Clamp, did you ever look over the deed of the land we own about the
dam where the mill stands?"

"No, ma'am, I have never seen it."

"I wish you would have the land surveyed according to this title," she
said. "Quite privately, you know. Just have the line run, and let me know
about it. Perhaps it will be as well to send over to Riverbank and get
Gunter to do it; he will keep quiet about it."

Mr. Clamp stood still a moment. Here was a woman whom he was expecting to
lead like a child, but who on the other hand had fairly bridled and
saddled _him_, so that he was driven he knew not whither.

"Why do you propose this, may I ask, Mrs. Kinloch?"

"Oh, I have heard," she replied, carelessly, "that there was some error in
the surveys. Mr. Kinloch often talked of having it corrected, but, like
most men, put it off. Now, as we may sell the property, we shall want to
know what we have got."

"Certainly, Mrs. Kinloch, I will follow your prudent suggestions,"--adding
to himself, as he walked away, "I shall have to be tolerably shrewd to get
ahead of that woman. I wonder what she is driving at."


CHAPTER IV.

Ralph Hardwick was the village blacksmith. His shop stood on the bank of
the river, not far from the dam. The great wheel below the flume rolled
all day, throwing over its burden of diamond drops, and tilting the
ponderous hammer with a monotonous clatter. What a palace of wonders to
the boys was that grim and sooty shop!--the roar of the fires, as they
were fed by the laboring bellows; the sound of water, rushing, gurgling,
or musically dropping, heard in the pauses; the fiery shower of sparkles
that flew when the trip-hammer fell; and the soft and glowing mass held by
the smith's tongs with firm grasp, and turning to some form of use under
his practised eye! How proud were the young amateur blacksmiths when the
kind-hearted owner of the shop gave them liberty to heat and pound a bit
of nail-rod, to mend a skate or a sled-runner, or sharpen a pronged fish-
spear! Still happier were they, when, at night, with his sons and nephew,
they were allowed to huddle on the forge, sitting on the bottoms of old
buckets or boxes, and watching the fire, from the paly blue border of
flame in the edge of the damp charcoal, to the reddening, glowing column
that shot with an arrowy stream of sparks up the wide-throated chimney.
How the dark rafters and nail-pierced roof grew ruddy as the white-hot
ploughshare or iron bar was drawn from the fire!--what alternations of
light and shadow! No painter ever drew figure in such relief as the
blacksmith presented in that wonderful light, with his glistening face,
his tense muscles, and his upraised arm.

Alas! the hammer is still; the wheel dashes no more the glittering spray;
the fire has died out in the forge; the blacksmith's long day's work is
done!

He settled in Innisfield when it was but a district attached to a
neighboring town. There were but three or four houses in the now somewhat
populous village. He came on foot, driving his cow; his wife following in
the wagon, with their little stock of household goods,--not forgetting his
hammer, more potent than Prospero's wand. The minister, the doctor, and
Squire Kinloch, who constituted the aristocracy, yielded precedence in
date to Ralph Hardwick, Knight of the Ancient Order of the Anvil.

So he toiled, faithful to his calling. By day the din of his hammer rarely
ceased, and by night the flame and sparks from his chimney were a Pharos
to all travellers approaching the town. Children were born to him, for
which he blessed God, and worked the harder. He attained a moderate
prosperity, secure from want, but still dependent upon labor for bread. At
length his wife died; he wept like a true and faithful husband as he was,
and thenceforth was both mother and father to his babes.

During all his life he kept Sunday with religious scrupulousness, and with
his family went to the house of worship in all weathers. From the very
first he had been leader of the choir, and had given the pitch with a fork
hammered and tuned by his own hands. With a clear and sympathetic voice,
he had such an instinctive taste and power of expression, that his song of
penitence or praise was far more devotional than the labored efforts of
many more highly cultivated singers. Music and poetry flowed smoothly and
naturally from his lips, but in uttering the common prose of daily life
his organs were rebellious. The truth must be spoken,--he stammered badly,
incurably. Whether it was owing to the attempt to overcome his impediment
by making his speech musical, or to the cadences of his hammer beating
time while his brain was shaping its airy fancies, his thoughts ran
naturally in verse.

Do not smile at the thought of Vulcan's callused fingers touching the
chords of the lyre to delicate music. The sun shone as lovingly upon the
swart face of the blacksmith in his shop-door, as upon the scholar at his
library-window. "Poetry was an angel in his breast," making his heart glad
with her heavenly presence; he did not "make her his drudge, his maid-of-
all-work," as professional verse-makers do.

Mr. Hardwick's younger sister was married to a hard-working, stern,
puritanical man named Davenport, (not her first love,) who removed to a
Western State when it was almost a wilderness, cleared for himself a farm,
and built a log-house. The toil and privations of frontier life soon
wrought their natural effects upon Mrs. Davenport's delicate constitution.
She fell into a rapid decline and died. Her husband was seized with a
fever the summer after, and died also, leaving two children, Mark and
Anna. The blacksmith had six motherless children of his own; but he set
out for the West, and brought the orphans home with him. He thenceforth
treated them like his own offspring, manifesting a woman's tenderness as
well as a father's care for them.

Mark was a comely lad, with the yellow curling hair, the clear blue eyes,
and the marked symmetry of features that belonged to his uncle. He had an
inborn love of reading and study; he was first in his class at every
winter's school, and had devoured all the books within his reach. Then he
borrowed an old copy of Adam's Latin Grammar from Dr. Greenfield, and
committed the rules to memory without a teacher. That was his introduction
to the classics.

But Mr. Hardwick believed in the duty and excellence of work, and Mark, as
well as his cousins, was trained to make himself useful. So the Grammar
was studied and Virgil read at chance intervals, when a storm interrupted
out-door work, or while waiting at the upper mill for a grist, or of
nights at the shop by the light of the forge fire. The paradigms were
committed to memory with an anvil accompaniment; and long after, he never
could scan a line of Homer, especially the oft-repeated

[Greek: Tou d'au | Taelema | chos pep | numenos | antion | aeuda],

without hearing the ringing blows of his uncle's hammer keeping tune to
the verse.

At sixteen years of age he was ready to enter college, though he had
received little aid in his studies, except when some schoolmaster who was
versed in the humanities chanced to be hired for the winter. But his uncle
was not able to support him at any respectable university, and the lad's
prospects for such an education as he desired seemed to be none of the
best.

At this point an incident occurred which changed the course of our hero's
life, and as it will serve to explain how he came to give his notes to Mr.
Kinloch, on which the administrators are about to bring suit, it should
properly be related here.

Mark Davenport was at work on a farm a short distance from the village. He
hoped to enter college the following autumn, and he knew no means to
obtain money for a portion of his outfit except by the labor of his hands.
He could get twenty dollars a month for the summer season. Sixty, or
possibly seventy dollars!--what ideas of opulence were suggested by the
sound of those words!

It was a damp, drizzly day; there was not a settled rain, yet it was too
wet to work in the corn. Mark was therefore busy in picking loose stones
from the surface of a field cultivated the year before, and now "seeded
down" for grass. A portion of the field bordered on a pond, and the alders
upon its margin formed a dense green palisade, over which might be seen
the gray surface of the water freckled by the tiny drops of rain. Low
clouds trailed their gauzy robes over the top of Mount Quobbin, and flecks
of mist swept across the blue sides of the loftier Mount Elizabeth.

"What a perfect day for fishing!" thought Mark. "If I had my tackle here,
and a frog's leg or a shiner, I would soon have a pickerel out from
under those lilypads."

But he kept at work, and, having his basket full of stones, carried them
to the pond and plumped them in. A growl of anger came up from behind the
bushes.

"What the Devil do you mean, you lubber, throwing stones over here to
scare away the fish?"

The bushes parted at the same time, showing Hugh Branning sitting in the
end of his boat, and apparently just ready to fling out his line.

"If I had known you were there fishing," said Mark, "I shouldn't have
thrown the stones into the water. But," he continued, while every fibre
tingled with indignation, "I will have you to know that I am not to be
talked to in that way by you or anybody else."

"I would like to know how you are going to help yourself," said Hugh,
stepping ashore and advancing.

"You will find out, Mr. Insolence, if you don't leave this field. You
a'n't on the quarter-deck yet, bullying a tar with his hat off."

"Bless me! how the young Vulcan talks!"

"I have talked all I am going to. Now get into your boat and be off!"

"I don't propose to be in a hurry," said Hugh, with provoking coolness,
standing with his arms a-kimbo.

The remembrance of Hugh's usual patronizing airs, together with his
insulting language, was too much for Mark's impetuous temper. He was in a
delirium of rage, and he rushed upon his antagonist. Hugh stood warily
upon the defensive, and parried Mark's blows with admirable skill; he had
not the muscle nor the endurance of the young blacksmith, but he had
considerable skill in boxing, and was perfectly cool; and though Mark
finally succeeded in grappling and hurling to the ground his lithe and
resolute foe, it was not until he had been pretty severely pommelled
himself, especially in his face. Mark set his knee on the breast of his
adversary and waited to hear "Enough." Hugh ground his teeth, but there
was no escape; no feint nor sudden movement could reverse their positions;
and, out of breath, he gave up in sullen despair.

"Let me up," he said, at length. Mark arose, and being by this time
thoroughly sobered, he walked off without a word and picked up his basket.

Hugh, on the other hand, was more and more angry every minute. The
indignity he had suffered was not to be tamely submitted to. He got into
the boat and took his oar; he looked back and saw Mark commencing work
again; the temptation was too strong. He picked up one of the largest of
the stones that Mark had emptied into the shallow margin of the pond; he
threw it with all his force, and hurriedly pushed off from shore without
stopping to ascertain the extent of the mischief he had done. He knew that
the stone did not miss, for he saw Mark fall heavily to the ground, and
that was enough. The injury was serious. Mark was carried to the farm-
house and was confined to his bed for six weeks with a brain fever, being
delirious for the greater part of the time. Hugh Branning found the town
quite uncomfortable; the eyes of all the people he met seemed to scorch
him. He was bold and self-reliant; but no man can stand up singly against
the indignation of a whole community. He went on a visit to Boston, and
not long after, to the exceeding grief of his mother, entered the navy.

When Mark was recovering, Mr. Rook,
the clergyman, called and offered to aid him in his college course, if he
would agree to study for the ministry. But the young man declined the
proposal, because he thought himself unfitted for the sacred calling.

"No," he added, with a smile, "I'm not made for an evangelist; not much
like the beloved disciple at all events, but rather like peppery Peter,--
ready, if provoked, to whisk off an ignoble ear."

Mr. Rook returned home sorrowful; and at the next meeting of the sewing-
circle the unfortunate Mark received a full share of attention; for the
offer of aid came partly from this society. When this matter had been the
talk of the village for a day or two, Squire Kinloch made some errand to
the house where Mark was. What passed between them the young man did not
choose to relate, but he showed his Uncle Hardwick the Squire's check for
two hundred and fifty dollars, and told him he should receive a similar
sum each year until he finished his collegiate course.

The promise was kept; the yearly supply was furnished; and Mark graduated
with honor, having given notes amounting to a thousand dollars. With
cheerful alacrity he commenced teaching in a popular seminary, intending
to pay his debts before studying a profession.


CHAPTER V.

It was Saturday night, and Mr. Hardwick was closing his shop. A customer
was just leaving, his horse's feet newly rasped and white, and a sack of
harrow-teeth thrown across his back. The boys, James and Milton, had been
putting a load of charcoal under cover, for the wind was southerly and
there were signs of rain. Of course they had become black enough with
coal-dust,--not a streak of light was visible, except around their eyes.
They were capering about and contemplating each other's face with
uproarious delight, while the blacksmith, though internally chuckling at
their antics, preserved a decent gravity, and prepared to go to his house.
He drew a bucket of water, and bared his muscular arms, then, after
washing them, soused his curly hair and begrimed face, and came out
wonderfully brightened by the operation. The boys continued their sports,
racing, wrestling, and putting on grotesque grimaces.

Charlotte, the youngest child, now came to the shop to say that supper was
ready.

"C-come, boys, you've ha-had play enough," said Mr. Hardwick. "J-James,
put Ch-Charlotte down. M-M-Milton, it's close on to S-Sabba'day. Now w-
wash yourselves."

Just as the merriment was highest, Charlotte standing on James's
shoulders, and Milton chasing them, while the blacksmith was looking on,--
his honest face glistening with soap and good-humor,--Mildred Kinloch
passed by on her way home from a walk by the river. She looked towards the
shop-door and bowed to Mr. Hardwick.

"G-good evenin', M-Miss Mildred," said he; "I'm g-glad to see you lookin'
so ch-cheerful."

The tone was hearty, and with a dash of chivalrous sentiment rarely heard
in a smithy. His look of half-parental, half-admiring fondness was
touching to see.

"Oh, Uncle Ralph," she replied, "I am never melancholy when I see you. You
have all the cheerfulness of this spring day in your face."

"Y-yes, I hev to stay here in the old shop; b-but I hear the b-birds in
the mornin', and all day I f-feel as ef I was out under the b-blue sky,
an' rejoicin' with all livin' creaturs in the sun and the s-sweet air of
heaven."

"I envy you your happy frame; everything has some form or hue of beauty
for you. I must have you read to me again. I never take up Milton without
thinking of you."

"I c-couldn't wish to be remembered in any p-pleasanter way."

"Well, good evening. I must hurry home, for it grows damp here by the
 mill-race. Tell Lizzy and Anna to come and see me. We are quite lonesome
now."

"P-p'raps Mark'll come with 'em."

"Mark? Is he here? When did he come?"

"H-he'll be here t-to-night."

"You surprise me!"

"'Tis rather s-sudden. He wrote y-yes-terday 't he'd g-got to come on
urgent b-business."

"Urgent business?" she repeated, thoughtfully. "I wonder if Squire
Clamp"----

The blacksmith nodded, with a gesture towards his children, as though he
would not have them hear.

"Yes," he added, in a low tone, "I g-guess that is it."

"I must go home," said Mildred, hurriedly.

"Well, G-God bless you, my daughter! D-don't forgit your old sooty friend.
And ef ever y-you want the help of a s-stout hand, or of an old gray head,
don't fail to come to the ber-blacksmith's shop."

"Thank you, Uncle Ralph! thank you with all my heart! Good-night!"

She walked lightly up the hill towards the principal street. But she had
not gone half a dozen yards before a hand grasped her arm. She turned with
a start.

"Mark Davenport!" she exclaimed, "Is it you? How you frightened me!"

"Yes, Mildred, it is Mark, your old friend" (with a meaning emphasis). "I
couldn't resist the temptation of giving you a little surprise."

"But when did you come to town?"

"I have just reached here from the station at Riverbank. I went to the
house first, and was just going to see Uncle at the shop, when I caught
sight of you."

Mark drew her arm within his own, and noticed, not without pleasure, how
she yet trembled with agitation.

"I am very glad to see you," said Mildred; "but isn't your coming sudden?"

"Yes, I had some news from home yesterday which determined me to come, and
I started this morning."

"Quick and impetuous as ever!"

"Yes, I don't deliberate long."

There was a pause.

"I wish you had only been here to see father before he died."

"I wish I might have seen him."

"I am sure _he_ would never have desired to put you to any trouble."

"I suppose he would not have _troubled_ me, though I never expected to do
less than repay him the money he was so good as to lend me; but I don't
think he would have been so abrupt and peremptory as Squire Clamp."

"Why, what has he done?"

"This is what he has done. A lawyer's clerk, as I supposed him to be,
called upon me yesterday morning with a statement of the debt and
interest, and made a formal demand of payment. I had only about half the
amount in bank, and therefore could not meet it. Then the clerk appeared
in his true character as a sheriff's officer, drew out his papers, and
served a writ upon me, besides a trustee process on the principal of the
school, so as to attach whatever might be due to me."

"Oh, Mark, were you treated so?"

"Just so,--entrapped like a wild animal. To be sure, it was a legal
process, but one designed only for extreme cases, and which no gentleman
ever puts in force against another."

"I don't know what this can mean. Squire Clamp is cruel enough, I know;
but mother, surely, would never approve such conduct."

"After all, the mortification is the principal thing; for, with what I
have, and what Uncle can raise for me, I can pay the debt. I have said too
much already, Mildred. I don't want to put any of my burdens on your
little shoulders. In fact, I am quite ashamed of having spoken on the
subject at all; but I have so little concealment, that it popped out
before I thought twice."

They were approaching the house, both silent, neither seeming to be bold
enough to touch the tenderer chords that thrilled in unison.

"Mildred," said Mark, "I don't know how much is meant by this suit. I
don't know that I shall be able to see you again, unless it be casually,
in the street, as to-night, (blessed accident!)--but remember, that,
whatever may happen, I am always the same that I have been to you."

Here his voice failed him. With such a crowd of memories,--of hopes and
desires yet unsatisfied,--with the crushing burden of debt and poverty,--
he could not command himself to say what his heart, nevertheless, ached in
retaining. Here he was, with the opportunity for which during all his
boyhood he had scarcely dared to hope, and yet he was dumb. They were at
the gate, under the dense shade of the maples.

"Good-night, dear Mildred!" said Mark.

He took her hand, which was fluttering as by electrical influence, and
raised it tenderly to his lips.

"Good-night," he said again.

She did not speak, but grasped his hand with fervor. He walked away slowly
towards his uncle's house, but often stopped and looked back at the
slender figure whose outlines he could barely see in the gateway under the
trees. Then, as he lost sight of her, he remembered with shame the selfish
prominence he had given to his own troubles. He was ashamed, too, of the
cowardice which had kept him from uttering the words which had trembled on
his lips. But in a moment the thought of the future checked that regret.
Gloomy as his own lot might be, he could bear it; but he had no right to
involve another's happiness. Thus he alternated between pride and
abasement, hope and dejection, as many a lover has done before and since.


CHAPTER VI.

Sunday was a great day in Innisfield; for there, as in all Puritan
communities, religion was the central and engrossing idea. As the bell
rang for service, every ear in town heard it, and all who were not sick or
kept at home by the care of young children turned their steps towards the
house of God. The idea that there could be any choice between going to
hear preaching and remaining at home was so preposterous, that it never
entered into the minds of any but the openly wicked. Whatever might be
their inclinations, few had the hardihood to absent themselves from
meeting, still less to ride out for pleasure, or to stroll through the
woods or upon the bank of the river. A steady succession of vehicles--
"thorough-braced" wagons, a few more stylish carriages with elliptic
springs, and here and there an ancient chaise--tended from all quarters to
the meeting-house. The horses, from the veteran of twenty years' service
down to the untrimmed and half-trained colt, knew what the proprieties of
the day required. They trotted soberly, with faces as sedate as their
drivers', and never stopped to look in the fence-corners as they passed
along, to see what they could find to be frightened at. Nor would they
often disturb worship by neighing, unless they became impatient at the
length of the sermon.

Mr. Hardwick and his family, as we have before mentioned, went regularly
to meeting; Lizzy and Mark sat with him in the singers' seats, the others
in a pew below. The only guardian of the house on Sundays was a large
ungainly cur, named Caesar. The habits of this dog deserve a brief
mention. On all ordinary occasions he followed his master or others of the
family, seeming to take a human delight in their company. Whenever it was
desirable to have him remain at home, nothing short of tying him would
answer the purpose. After a time he came to know the signs of preparation,
and would skulk. Upon setting out, Mr. Hardwick would tell one of the boys
to catch Caesar so that he should not follow, but he was not to be found;
and in the course of ten minutes he would be trotting after his master as
composedly as if nothing had ever happened to interrupt their friendly
relations. It was impossible to resist such persevering affection, and at
length Mr. Hardwick gave up the contest, and allowed Caesar to travel when
and where he chose. But on Sunday he sat on the front-door step, erect
upon his haunches, with one ear dropping forward, and the other upright
like the point of a starched shirt-collar; and though on week-days he was
fond of paying the usual courtesies to his canine acquaintances, and (if
the truth must be told) of barking at strange horses occasionally, yet
nothing could induce him either to follow any of the family, or accost a
dog, or chase after foreign vehicles, on the day of rest. Once only he
forgot what was due to his character, and gave a few yelps in holy time.
But James, with a glance at his father, who was stoutly orthodox, averred
that Caesar's conduct was justifiable, inasmuch as the man he barked at
was one of a band of new-light fanatics who worshipped in the school-
house, and the horse, moreover, was not shod at a respectable place, but
at a tinker's shop in the verge of the township. A dog with such powers of
discrimination certainly merits a place in this true history.

The services of Sunday were finished. Those who, with dill and caraway,
had vainly struggled against drowsiness, had waked up with a jerk at the
benediction, and moved with their neighbors along the aisles, a slow and
sluggish stream. The nearest friends passed out side by side with meekly
composed faces, and without greeting each other until they reached the
vestibule. So slow and solemn was the progress out of church, that merry
James Hardwick averred that he saw Deacon Stone, a short fat man, actually
dozing, his eyes softly shutting and opening like a hen's, as he was borne
along by the crowd. The Deacon had been known to sleep while he stood up
in his pew during prayer, but perhaps James's story was rather apocryphal.

Mark Davenport, of course, had been the object of considerable attention
during the day, and at the meeting-house-door numbers of his old
acquaintances gathered round him. No one was more cordial in manner than
Squire Clamp. His face was wrinkled into what were meant for smiles, and
his voice was even smoother and more insinuating than usual. It was only
by a strong effort that Mark gulped down his rising indignation, and
replied civilly.

Sunday in Innisfield ended at sunset, though labor was not resumed until
the next day; but neighbors called upon each other in the twilight, and
talked over the sermons of the day, and the affairs of the church and
parish. That evening, while Mr. Hardwick's family were sitting around the
table reading, a long growl was heard from Caesar at the door, followed by
an emphatic "Get out!" The growls grew fiercer, and James went to the door
to see what was the matter. Squire Clamp was the luckless man. The dog had
seized his coat-tail, and had pulled it forward, so that he stood face to
face with the Squire, who was vainly trying to free himself by poking at
his adversary with a great baggy umbrella. James sent away the dog with a
reprimand, but laughed as he followed the angry man into the house. He
always cited this afterwards as a new proof of the sagacity of the grim
and uncompromising Caesar.

"S-sorry you've had such a t-time with the dog," said Mr. Hardwick; "he
don't g-ginerally bark at pup-people."

"Oh, no matter," said the Squire, contemplating the measure of damage in
the skirt of his coat. "A good, sound sermon Mr. Rook gave us to-day. The
doctrines of the decrees and sovereignty, and the eternal destruction of
the impenitent, were strongly set forth."

"Y-yes, I sp-spose so. I d-don't profit so m-much by that inst-struction,
however. I th-think more of the e-every-day religion he u-usually
preaches."--Mr. Hardwick trotted one foot with a leg crossed and with an
air which showed to his children and to Mark plainly enough how impatient
he was of the Squire's beginning so far away from what he came to say.

"Why, you don't doubt these fundamental points?" asked Mr. Clamp.

"No, I don't d-doubt, n-nor I don't th-think much about 'em; they're t-too
deep for me, and I ler-let 'em alone. We shall all un-know about these
things in God's goo-good time. I th-think more about keepin' peace among
n-neighbors, bein' kuh-kindly to the poor, h-helpin' on the cause of
eddication, and d-doin' ginerally as I would be done by."--Mr. Hardwick's
emphasis could not be mistaken, and Squire Clamp was a little uneasy.

"Oh, yes, Mr. Hardwick," he replied, "all the town knows of your practical
religion." Then turning to Mark, he said, blandly, "So you came home
yesterday. How long do you propose to stay?"

The young man never had the best control of his temper, and it was now
rapidly coming up to the boiling-point. "Mr. Clamp," said he, "if you had
asked a pickerel the same question, he would probably tell you that you
knew best how and when he came on shore, and that for himself he expected
to get back into water as soon as he got the hook out of his jaws."

"I am sorry to see this warmth," said Mr. Clamp; "I trust you have not
been put to any trouble."

"Really," said Mark, bitterly, "you have done your best to ruin me in the
place where I earn my living, but 'trust I have not been put to any
trouble'! Your sympathy is as deep as your sincerity."

"Mark," said Mr. Hardwick, "you're sa-sayin' more than is necess-ssary."

"Indeed, he is quite unjust," rejoined the lawyer. "I saw an alteration in
his manner to-day, and for that reason I came here. I prefer to keep the
friendship of all men, especially of those of my townsmen and brethren in
the church whose piety and talents I so highly respect."

"S-sartinly, th-that's right. I don't like to look around, wh-when I take
the ker-cup at the Sacrament, and see any man that I've wronged; an' I
don't f-feel comf'table nuther to see anybody der-drinkin' from the same
cup that I think has tried to w-wrong me or mine."

"You can save yourself that anxiety about Mr. Clamp, Uncle," said Mark.
"He is not so much concerned about our Christian fellowship as he is about
his fees. He couldn't live here, if he didn't manage to keep on both sides
of every little quarrel in town. Having done me what mischief he could, he
wants now to salve the wound over."

"My young friend, what is the reason of this heat?" asked Mr. Clamp,
mildly.

"I don't care to talk further," Mark retorted. "I might as well explain
the pathology of flesh bruises to a donkey who had maliciously kicked me."

Mr. Clamp wiped his bald head, on which the perspiration was beginning to
gather. His stock of pious commonplaces was exhausted, and he saw no
prospect of calming Mark's rage, or of making any deep impression on the
blacksmith. He therefore rose to depart. "Good evening," said he. "I pray
you may become more reasonable, and less disposed to judge harshly of your
friend and brother."

Mark turned his back on him. Mr. Hardwick civilly bade him good-night.
Lizzy and Anna, who had retreated during the war of words, came back, and
the circle round the table was renewed.

"Yer-you'll see one thing," said Mr. Hardwick. "He'll b-bring you, and
p'r'aps me, too, afore the church for this talk."

"The sooner, the better," said Mark.

"I d'no," said Mr. Hardwick. "Ef we must live in f-fellowship, a der-
diffi-culty in church isn't per-pleasant. But 'tis uncomf'table for
straight wood to be ker-corded up with such ker-crooked sticks as him."

[To be continued.]




A PERILOUS BIVOUAC.


It is a pleasant June morning out on the Beauport slopes; the breeze comes
laden with perfume from shady Mount Lilac; and it is good to bask here in
the meadows and look out upon the grand panorama of Quebec, with its
beautiful bay sweeping in bold segments of shoreline to the mouth of the
River St Charles. The king-bird, too lazy to give chase to his proper
quarry, the wavering butterfly, sways to and fro upon a tall weed; and
there, at the bend of the brook, sits an old kingfisher on a dead branch,
gorged with his morning meal, and regardless of his reflected image in the
still pool beneath. The _goguelu_[1] rises suddenly up from his tuft of
grass, and, having sung a few staves of his gurgling song, drops down
again like a cricket-ball and is no more seen. Smooth-plumaged wax-wings
are pruning their feathers in the tamarac-trees; and high up over the
waters of the bay sails a long-winged fish-hawk, taking an extended and
generally liberal view of sundry important matters connected with the
fishery question.

[Footnote 1: This name is given by the French Canadians to the bobolink or
rice bunting. It is an old, I believe an obsolete, French word, and means
"braggart."]

Many a year has gone by since I last looked upon this picture, and then it
was a winter scene; for it was near the end of March, which is winter
enough in this region, and the blue water of the bay there was flagged
over with a rough white pavement of crisp snow. I think I see it now,
faintly ruled with two lines of _sapins_, or young fir saplings,--one
marking out the winter road to the Island of Orleans, and the other that
from Quebec to Montmorency; and this memory recalls to me how it fell upon
a certain day, the incidents of which are expanding upon my mind like
those dissolving views that come up out of the dark, I set up a camp-fire
just where that wood-barge nods drowsily at anchor, about a mile this side
of the town. It was a sort of bivouac a man is not likely to forget in a
hurry; not that it makes much of a story, after all,--but a trifling
scratch will sometimes leave its mark on a man for life. I was quartered
in Quebec then; didn't go much into society, though, because I devoted
much of my young energies to shooting and fishing, which were worth any
expenditure of energy in those days. And so I restricted my evening rounds
of duty to one or two houses which were conducted on the always-at-home
principle, walking in and hanging up my wide-awake when it suited me, and
staying away when it didn't,--which was about the oftener.

In the winter of eighteen hundred and no matter what, I got three months'
leave of absence, with the intention of devoting a great portion of it to
a long-planned expedition, an invasion of the wild mountain-region lying
north of Quebec, towards the head-waters of the Saguenay,--a district
seldom disturbed by the presence of civilized man, but abandoned to the
semi-barbarous hunter and trapper, and frequented much by that prince of
roving bucks, the shy but stately caribou. I need not go into the details
of my two-months' hunt. It was like any other expedition of the sort,
about which so much information has already been given to the world in the
pleasant narratives of the wandering family of MacNimrod. I succeeded in
procuring many hairy and horned trophies of trap and rifle, as well as in
converting myself from some semblance of respectability into the veriest
looking cannibal that ever breakfasted on an underdone enemy. The return
from the chase furnished the little adventure I have alluded to,--a very
small adventure, but deeply impressed upon a memory now a good deal cut up
with tracks and traces of strange beasts of accidents, quaint "vestiges of
creation," ineffaceably stamped upon what poor Andrew Romer used to call
the "old red sandstone," in playful allusion to what his friends well knew
was a heart of hearts.

The snow lay heavy in the woods, wet and heavy with the breath of coming
spring, as I tramped out of them one March morning, and found myself on
the queen's highway, within short rifle-shot of the rushing Montmorency,
whose roar had reached us through the forest an hour or two before. In the
early days of our hunt I had been so lucky as to run down and kill a large
moose, whose antlered head was a valuable trophy; and so I confided it to
the especial charge of my faithful follower, Zachary Hiver, a _brulé_ or
half-breed of the Chippewa nation, who had hunted buffaloes with me on the
plains of the Saskatchewan and gaffed my salmon in the swift waters of the
Mingan and Escoumains. I had promised him powder and lead enough to
maintain his rifle for the probable remainder of his earthly hunting-
career, if he succeeded in safely conveying to Quebec the hide and horns
of the mammoth stag of the forest. These he had concealed, accordingly, in
a safe hiding-place, or _cache_, to be touched at on our return; and now
as he emerged from the dark pine copse, with his ropy locks tasselling his
flat skull, and a tattered blanket-coat fluttering in ribbons from his
brown and brawny chest, his interest in the venture appeared in the
careful manner in which he drew after him a long, slender _tobaugan_,
heavily packed with the hard-won proceeds of trap and gun. Foremost among
these were displayed the broad antlers of the moose of my affections,
whose skin served as a tarpaulin for the remainder of the baggage, round
which it was snugly tucked in with thongs of kindred material.

We halted on a broad ledge of rock by the western verge of the bay of the
Falls, glad of an opportunity of enjoying my independence to the last,
unfettered by the conventionalities for which I was beginning to be imbued
with a savage contempt. Here we set up a primitive kitchen-range, and,
having feasted upon cutlets of the caribou, scientifically treated by a
skewer process with which Zach was familiar, we lounged like "lazy
shepherds" in the sun, and the eye of the Indian flashed as I produced
from the folds of my sash a leather-covered flask which did not look as if
it was meant to contain water. During the weeks of the chase I had been
very careful to conceal this treasure from Zach, knowing how helpless an
Indian becomes under the influence of the "fire-water"; and as I had had a
pull at it myself only two or three times, under circumstances of unusual
adversity and hardship, there still remained in it a very respectable
allowance for two, from which I subtracted a liberal measure, handing over
the balance to Zach, who gulped down the _skiltiwauboh_ with a fiendish
grin and a subsequent inhuman grunt. As I lit my pipe after this
satisfactory arrangement, the roar of the mighty Montmorency, whirling
down its turbulent perpendicular flood behind a half-drawn curtain of
green and azure ice, sounded like exquisite music to my ears, and I looked
towards Quebec and blinked at its fire-flashing tin spires and house-tops
burning through the coppery morning fog, until my mind's eye became
telescopic, and my thoughts, unsentimental though I be, reverted to
civilized society and its _agréments_, and particularly to a certain
steep-roofed cottage situated on a suburban road, in the boudoirs of which
I liked to imagine one pined for my return. If memory has its pleasures,
has it not also its glimpses of regret?--and who can say that the former
compensate for the latter? Even now I see her as she used to step out on
the veranda,--the lithe Indian girl, rivalling the choicest "desert-
flower" of Arabia in the rich darkness of her eyes and hair, and in the
warm mantling of her golden-ripe complexion,--unutterably graceful in the
thorough-bred ease of her elastic movements,--Zosime MacGillivray, perfect
type and model of the style and beauty of the _brulée_. She was the only
child of a retired trader of the old North-West Fur Company and his Indian
wife; had been partly educated in England; possessed rather more than the
then average Colonial allowance of accomplishments; and was, altogether,
so much in harmony with my roving forest-inclinations, that I sometimes
thought, half seriously, how pleasant and respectable it would be to have
one such at the head of one's camp-equipage, and how much nicer a
companion she would be on a hunt than that disreputable old scoundrel,
Zach Hiver.

"Pack the _tobaugan_, Zach! The sun will come out strong by and by, and
the longer we tarry here, the heavier the snow will be for our stretch to
the Citadel. Up, there! _lève-toi, cochon!_" shouted I, in the elegant
terms of address which experience had taught me were the only ones that
had any effect upon the stolid sensibilities of the half-breed,--at the
same time administering to him a kick that produced a _thud_ and a grunt,
as if actually bestowed on the unclean quadruped to which I had just
likened him. The ragamuffin was very slow this time in getting the traps
together on the _tobaugan_, and, if I had not attended to the matter
myself, the moose trophy, at least, would in all probability have been
left to perish, and would never have pointed a moral and adorned a tale,
as it now does, in its exalted position among the reminiscences of things
past. At length we got under way, and, as a walk over the open plain
offered a pleasing variety to a man who had been feeling his way so long
through the dim old woods, I determined to descend from the ridge of
Beauport, and proceed over the snow-covered surface of the bay, in a
bird's-eye line, to our point of destination. Winding down the almost
perpendicular declivity, sometimes sliding down on our snow-shoes, with
the _tobaugan_ running before us, "on its own hook," at a fearful pace,
and sometimes obliged to descend, hand under hand, by the tangled roots
and shrubs, we soon found ourselves on the great white winter-prairie of
the grand St. Lawrence, upon which I strode forward with renewed energy,
steering my course, like the primitive steeple-chasers of my boyhood's
home, upon the highest church-tower looming up from the heterogeneous
huddle of motley houses that just showed their gable-tops over the low
ring of mist which mingled with the smoke of the Lower Town.

After a progress of about five miles, I found I had very materially
widened the distance between myself and Zach, who, encumbered by the
baggage, and by the spring snow which each moment accumulated in wet heavy
cakes upon his snow-shoes, was now a good mile in my rear. This I was
surprised at, as he generally outwalked me, even when carrying on his back
a heavy load, with perhaps a canoe on his head, cocked-hat fashion, as he
was often obliged to do in our fishing-excursions to the northern lakes.
It now occurred to me, however, that I had incautiously left the brandy-
flask in his charge, and when he came up with me I gathered from his fishy
eye, and the thick dribblings of his macaronic gibberish,--which was
compounded of sundry Indian dialects and French-Canadian _patois_,
coarsely ground up with bits of broken English,--that the modern Circe,
who changes men into beasts, had wrought her spells upon him; a
circumstance at which I was terribly annoyed, as foreboding an ignominious
entry into the city by back-lane and sally-port, instead of my long-
anticipated triumphal progress up St. Louis Street, bearded in splendor,
bristling with knife and rifle, and followed by my wild Indian _coureur-
des-bois_, drawing my antlered trophies after him upon the _tobaugan_ as
upon a festival car.

"Kaween nishishin! kaw-ween!" howled the big monster, in his mixed-pickle
macaronio,--"je me sens saisi du mal-aux-raquettes, je ne pouvons plus.
Why you go so dam fast, when hot sun he make snow for tire, eh? Sacr-r-ré
raquettes! il me semble qu'ils se grossissent de plus en plus à chaque
démarche. Stop for smoke, eh?--v'là! good place for camp away there,
kitchee hogeemaus endaut, big chief's house may-be!" grinned he, as he
indicated with Indian instinct and a wavering finger a structure of some
kind that peered through the fog at a short distance on our left.

We were now within about a mile of Quebec. The Indian's intoxication had
increased to a ludicrous extent, so that to have ventured into the town
with him must have resulted in a reckless exposure of myself to the just
obloquy and derision of the public; while, on the other hand, if I left
him alone upon the wide world of ice, and dragged the _tobaugan_ to town
myself, the unfortunate _brulé_ must inevitably have stepped into some
treacherous snow-drift or air-hole, and thus miserably perished. So I made
up my mind for a camp on the ice; and, diverging from our course in the
direction pointed out by the Indian, we soon arrived at the object
indicated by him, which proved to be a stout framework about twelve feet
square, constructed of good heavy timber solidly covered with deal
boarding, and conveying indubitable evidence, to my thinking, of the
remains of one of the _cabanes_ or shanties commonly erected on the ice by
those engaged in the "tommy-cod" fishery,--portable structures, so fitted
together as to admit of being put up and removed piecemeal, to suit the
convenience of their proprietors. I blessed mentally the careless
individual who had thus unconsciously provided for our especial shelter;
and as the wind had now suddenly arisen sharp from the west, driving the
fog before it with clouds of fine drifting snow, I was glad to get under
the lee of the providential wall, in the hospitable shelter of which,
before two minutes had elapsed, "Stephano, my drunken butler," was snoring
away like a phalanx of bullfrogs, with his head bolstered up somehow
between the great moose-horns, and his brawny limbs rolled carelessly in
the warm but somewhat unsavory skin of the dead monarch of the forest. I
gloried in his calm repose; for the day was yet young, and I flattered
myself that a three-hours' snooze would restore his muddled intellects to
their normal mediocrity of useful instinct, and that I might still achieve
my triumphal entry into the city,--a procession I had been so much in the
habit of picturing to myself over the nocturnal camp-fire, that it had
become a sort of nightmare with me. Indeed, I had idealized it roughly in
my pocket-book, intending to transfer the sketches, for elaboration on
canvas, to Tankerville, the regimental Landseer, whose menagerie of living
models, consisting of two bears, one calf-moose, one _loup-cervier_, three
bloated raccoons, and a bald eagle, formed at once the terror and delight
of the rising generation of the barracks.

Having got up a small fire with the assistance of the chips and scraps of
wood that were plentifully scattered around, I placed my snow-shoes one on
top of the other, and sat down on them,--a sort of preparatory step in my
transition to civilization, for they had somewhat the effect of a cane-
bottomed chair minus the legs and without a back. Then I filled my short
black pipe from the seal-skin tobacco-pouch, the contents of which had so
often assuaged my troubled spirit when I brooded over griefs which _then_
were immature, if not imaginary. It was a very pleasant smoke, I
recollect,--so pleasant, that I rather congratulated myself upon my
position; the only drawback to it being that I was shut out from a view of
the town, as the wind and drift rendered it indispensable for comfort in
smoking that I should keep strictly to leeward of my bulwark. Tobacco is
notoriously a promoter of reflection; there must be something essentially
retrospective in the nature of the weed. I retired upon the days of my
boyhood, my legs and feet becoming clairvoyant of the corduroys and
highlows of that happy period of my existence, as the revolving curls of
pale smoke exhibited to me, with marvellous fidelity, many quaint
successive _tableaux_ of the old familiar scenes of home,--sentimental,
some of them,--comic, others,--like the domestic incidents revealed with
exaggerations on the hazy field of a magic-lantern. I thought of my poor
mother, and of the excellent parting advice she gave me,--but more
particularly of the night-caps with strings, which she extracted such a
solemn promise from me to wear carefully every night in all climates, and
which, on the second evening of my sojourn in barracks, were so
unceremoniously reduced to ashes in a noisy _auto-da-fé_. These
retrospective pictures were succeeded by others of more modern date,
coming round in a progressive series, until I had painted myself up to
within a few weeks of my present position, the foreground of my existence.
Then I remembered promises made by me of contributions to a certain
album,--further contributions,--for I had already furnished several pages
of it with food for mind and eye in the form of melancholy verses and
"funny" sketches, with brief dramatic dialogues beneath the latter, to
elucidate the "story." I particularly recollected having volunteered a
translation or imitation of a pretty song in Ruy Blas; and as the fit was
upon me, I produced my pocketbook, to commit to paper a version of it
which I had mentally devised. The leaves of my book were all filled,
however; some with memoranda,--a sort of savage diary it was,--some with
sketches of scenes in the wilderness: there was not a corner vacant.
Turning towards the planking of my bulwark, I perceived that it was
smoothly planed and clean, and to work on it I went, pencil in hand. First
I wrote "Zosime MacGillivray," in several different styles of chirography,
flourished and plain, and even in old text. Then I sketched out a rough
design for an ornamental heading, with a wreath of flowers encircling the
words "To Zozzy," and beneath this work of Art I inscribed the effort of
my muse, which ran thus:--

  Fields and forests rejoice
    In their silver-toned throng;
  _I_ hear but the voice
    Of the bird in thy song!

  In April's glad shower
    Flash petals and leaves,
  Less bright than the flower
    Round thy heart that weaves!

  Stars waken, stars slumber,
    Stars wink in the sky,
  Bright numberless number;
    But none like thine eye!

  For bird-song and flower
    And star from above
  Combine in thy bower;
    Their union is love!

My mind being considerably relieved by this gush of sentiment, I felt
myself entitled to unbend a little, and, turning my attention to artistic
pursuits, principally of a humorous character, I developed successively
many long-pent-up imaginings in the way of severe studies of sundry
garrison notables. There was "Bendigo" Phillips, with boxing-gloves
fearfully brandished, appearing in the attitude in which he polished off
young Thurlow of the R.A., under the pretence of giving him a lesson in
the noble art of self-defence, but in reality to revenge himself upon him
for an ill-timed interference in a certain _affaire du coeur_. The agony
of young Thurlow, pretending to look pleased, was depicted by a very
successful stroke of Art. To the extreme right you might have beheld
Vegetable Warren, the staff-surgeon, slightly exaggerated in the semblance
of a South-Down wether nibbling at a gigantic Swedish turnip. Written
lampoons of the fiercest character accompanied the illustrations. But my
boldest effort was an atrocious and libellous cartoon of the commandant of
the garrison, popularly known as "Old Wabbles,"--I believe from the
preternatural manner in which his wide Esquimaux boots vacillated about
his long, lean shanks. This _chef d'oeuvre_ was executed upon a rather
large scale, and I imparted considerable force and breadth to the design
by "coaling in" the shadows with a charred stick. Then calling color to my
aid, as far as my limited means admitted, I scraped from the edges of the
moose-hide a portion of the red-streaked fat, and, having impasted
therewith the bacchanalian nose of my subject, I stepped back a few paces
to contemplate the effect. So ludicrous was the resemblance, that I
laughed outright in the pride of my success,--a transient hilarity, nipped
suddenly in the bud by the loud boom of a cannon, accompanied rather than
followed by a rushing sound a few feet above my head, and a thundering
bump and splutter upon the ice some thirty or forty yards beyond me, as
the heavy shot skipped and ricochetted away with receding bounds to its
vanishing-point somewhere in the neighborhood of the Island of Orleans.
Two strides to the front, and a glance at the broad, black ring emblazoned
on the hitherto disregarded face of my bulwark, and the truth flashed upon
my staggering senses.

I was encamped in the lee of the bran-new artillery target, and they were
just commencing practice, on this fine bright afternoon, by pitching
thirty-two-pound shot into and about it, at intervals--as I pretty well
knew--of distressingly uncertain duration. With frantic strength I grasped
the Indian by the neck, and, plunging madly through the snow, dragged him
after me a few paces in the direction of our former track; but, hampered
as he was by the moose-trappings, the weight was too much for me, and I
dropped him, instinctively continuing to run with breathless speed, until,
having gained a considerable distance away from any probable line of fire,
I flung myself down upon the snow, and was somewhat startled at finding
Zach very close upon my tracks, tearing along on all fours with a vague
sense of danger of some kind, and looking, in his strange envelope, like
an infuriated bull-moose in the act of charging a hunter. A shot struck
the corner of the target just as we got away from it, slightly splintering
it, so as to give the bewildered Indian a pleasant practical lesson in the
science of gunnery and fortification.

Two minutes elapsed,--three minutes,--five minutes,--not another shot; but
it might commence again at any moment, and I stood at a respectful
distance from the danger, uncertain what course to pursue for the recovery
of my traps, all of which, rifle, snow-shoes, and _tobaugan_ loaded with
spoils, lay in pledge with the two-faced friend whose treacherous shelter
had no longer any charm for me, when I beheld several sleighs approaching
us from the town at a fearful pace, in the foremost of which, when within
range of rifle, I recognized Old Wabbles, the commandant.

"Who the Devil are you?" shouted he, as he drove right at us. "Two
Indians, ha!--somebody said it was _one_ Indian with a moose after him, a
man and a moose. Where's Thurlow?--_he_ had the telescope, and asserted
there was a man running round the target and a moose after him. I don't
see the moose." Zach had dropped the hide and horns from his "recreant
limbs," and was seated solemnly upon the snow, in all the majesty of his
native dirt.

"By Jove, it's Kennedy!" cried Tankerville, whose artistical eye detected
me through my hirsute and fluttering disguise. "What a picturesque
object!--I congratulate you, old fellow!--easiest and pleasantest way in
the world of making a living!--lose no time about it, but send in your
papers at once!--continue assiduously to neglect your person, and you're
worth a guinea an hour for the rest of your prime, as a living model on
the full pay of the Academies!"

I was soon bewildered by a torrent of inquiries from all sides: as to how
I came behind the target,--what success I had had in the woods,--how many
miles I had come to-day,--whether I had got the martin-skin I had promised
to this one, and the silver fox I undertook to trap for that,--when,
suddenly, a diversion was created by a roar from Phillips, who had
proceeded to inspect my spoils behind the target, and now stood looking at
my portrait-gallery of living celebrities, his great chest heaving with
laughter; and before I could satisfy my inquiring friends, the whole crowd
had rushed pell-mell to the exhibition.

"Caught, by all that's lovely!" shouted Phillips, repeating my verses at
the top of his voice,--

  "The bird-song and flower
    And star from above
  Combine in thy bower;
    Their union is love!"

"Ritoorala loorala loorala loo, ritoorala loorala loorala loo!" chorused
everybody, as he sang the last verse to the vulgar melody of 'Tatter Jack
Welch,' knocking the poetry out of my constitution at once and forever,
like the ashes out of a pipe. "Hooray for Miss Mac! Who should have
thought it, Darby?"--That was _my_ pet name in the regiment.

"How like!--how very like!--That's Warren there, nibbling the turnip. And
there's Thurlow,--ha! ha! ha! how good! And that--that--that's me, by
Jingo!--he he! he! he!--not so good that, somehow,--neck too long by half
a foot. But the Colonel!--only look at his boots!--He must'n't see this,
though, by Jove!--Choke the Colonel off, boys!--take him round to the
front!--do something!" whispered good-natured Symonds, anxious to keep me
clear of the scrape.

But it was too late. The last objects that met my view were the ghastly
legs of the Commandant, as he strode through the circle in front of my
Art-exhibition. I saw no more. A soldier is but a mortal man. Rushing to
the nearest cariole,--it was the Commandant's,--I leaped into it, and,
lashing the horse furiously towards the town, never pulled rein until I
got up to my long-deserted quarters in the Citadel. There I barricaded
myself into my own room, directing my servant to proceed to the target
for my scattered property. I had still a month's leave of absence before
me, availing myself of which, I started next morning for New York,
subsequently obtained an extension of leave, sailed for England, and
there negotiating an exchange from a regiment whose facings no longer
suited my taste for colors, I soon found myself gazetted into a less
objectionable one lying at Corfu.

I have never seen Tankerville's famous picture of my triumphal entry into
Quebec.




I.--NOVEMBER.


The dead leaves their rich mosaics,
  Of olive and gold and brown,
Had laid on the rain-wet pavements,
  Through all the embowered town.

They were washed by the Autumn tempest,
  They were trod by hurrying feet,
And the maids came out with their besoms
  And swept them into the street,

To be crushed and lost forever
  'Neath the wheels, in the black mire lost,--
The Summer's precious darlings,
  She nurtured at such cost!

O words that have fallen from me!
  O golden thoughts and true!
Must I see in the leaves a symbol
  Of the fate which awaiteth you?


II.--APRIL.

Again has come the Spring-time,
  With the crocus's golden bloom,
With the smell of the fresh-turned earth-mould,
  And the violet's perfume.

O gardener! tell me the secret
  Of thy flowers so rare and sweet!--
--"I have only enriched my garden
  With the black mire from the street."




THE GAUCHO.


What _is_ a Gaucho?

That is precisely what I am going to tell you.

Take my hand, if you please. Shod with the shoes of swiftness, we have
annihilated space and time. We are standing in the centre of a boundless
plain. Look north and south and east and west: for five hundred miles
beyond the limit of your vision, the scarcely undulating level stretches
on either hand. Miles, leagues, away from us, the green of the torrid
grass is melting into a misty dun; still further miles, and the misty dun
has faded to a shadowy blue; more miles, it rounds at last away into the
sky. A hundred miles behind us lies the nearest village; two hundred in
another direction will bring you to the nearest town. The swiftest horse
may gallop for a day and night unswervingly, and still not reach a
dwelling-place of man. We are placed in the midst of a vast, unpeopled
circle, whose radii measure a thousand miles.

But see! a cloud arises in the South. Swiftly it rolls towards us; behind
it there is tumult and alarm. The ground trembles at its approach; the air
is shaken by the bellowing that it covers. Quick! let us stand aside! for,
as the haze is lifted, we can see the hurrying forms of a thousand cattle,
speeding with lowered horns and fiery eyes across the plain. Fortunately,
they do not observe our presence; were it otherwise, we should be trampled
or gored to death in the twinkling of an eye. Onward they rush; at last
the hindmost animals have passed; and see, behind them all there scours a
man!

He glances at us, as he rushes by, and determines to give us a specimen of
his only art. Shaking his long, wild locks, as he rises in the stirrup and
presses his horse to its maddest gallop, he snatches from his saddle-bow
the loop of a coil of rope, whirls it in his right hand for an instant,
then hurls it, singing through the air, a distance of fifty paces. A jerk
and a strain,--a bellow and a convulsive leap,--his lasso is fast around
the horns of a bull in the galloping herd. The horseman flashes a
murderous knife from his belt, winds himself up to the plunging beast,
severs at one swoop the tendon of its hind leg, and buries the point of
his weapon in the victim's spinal marrow. It falls dead. The man, my
friend, is a Gaucho; and we are standing on the Pampas of the Argentine
Republic.

Let us examine this dexterous wielder of the knife and cord. _He, Juan de
Dios!_ Come hither, O Centaur of the boundless cattle-plains! We will not
ask you to dismount,--for that you never do, we know, except to eat and
sleep, or when your horse falls dead, or tumbles into a _bizcachero_; but
we want to have a look at your savage self, and the appurtenances
thereunto belonging.

And first, you say, the meaning of his name. The title, Gaucho, is applied
to the descendants of the early Spanish colonists, whose homes are on the
Pampa, instead of in the town,--to the rich _estanciero_, or owner of
square leagues of cattle, in common with the savage herdsman whom he
employs,--to Generals and Dictators, as well as to the most ragged Pampa-
Cossack in their pay. Our language is incapable of expressing the idea
conveyed by this term; and the Western qualification "backwoodsman" is
perhaps the nearest approach to a synonyme that we can attain.

The head of our swarthy friend is covered with a species of Neapolitan
cap, (let me confess, in a parenthesis, that my ideas of such head-
coverings are derived from the costume of graceful Signor Brignoli in
"Masaniello,") which was once, in all probability, of scarlet hue, but now
almost rivals in color the jet-black locks which it confines. His face--
well, we will pass that over, and, on our return to civilized life, will
refer the curious inquirer for a fac-simile to the first best painting of
Salvator, there to select at pleasure the most ferocious bandit
countenance that he can find. And now the remainder of his person. He
wears an open jacket of dirt-crusted serge, covered in front with a
gorgeous eruption of plated buttons, and a waistcoat of the same material,
adorned with equal profuseness, and showing at the neck a substratum of
dubious crimson, supposed to be a flannel shirt. So far, you may say,
there is nothing suspicious or very outlandish about his rig; but
_turpiter desinit formosus superne_,--there is something highly remarkable
_á continuacion_. Do you see that blanket which is drawn tightly up, fore
and aft, toward his waist, and, there confined by means of a belt which
his _querida_ has richly ornamented for him, falls over in uneven folds
like an abbreviated kilt? That is the famous _chiripá_, or Gaucho
petticoat, which, like the _bracae_ of the Northern barbarians some
nineteen hundred years ago, distinguishes him from the inhabitants of
civilized communities. Below the _chiripá_, his limbs are cased in
_calzoncillos_, stout cotton drawers or pantalets, which terminate in a
fringe (you should see the elaborate worsted-work that adorns the hem of
his gala-pair) an inch or two above the ankle. His feet are thrust into a
pair of _botas de potro_, or colt's-foot boots, manufactured from the hide
of a colt's fore-leg, which he strips off whole, chafes in his hand until
it becomes pliable and soft, sews up at the lower extremity,--and puts on,
the best riding-boot that the habitable world can show. Add a monstrous
spur to each heel of this _chaussure_, and you will have fully equipped
the worthy Juan de Dios for active service.--But stay! his accoutrements!
We must not forget that Birmingham-made butcher-knife, which, for a dozen
years, has never been for a moment beyond his reach; nor the coiling
lasso, and the _bolas_, or balls of iron, fastened at each end of a thong
of hide, which he can hurl a distance of sixty feet, and inextricably
entangle around the legs of beast or man; nor the _recado_, or saddle, his
only seat by day, and his pillow when he throws himself upon the ground to
sleep under the canopy of heaven. Neither must we omit the _mate_ gourd
which dangles at his waist, in readiness to receive its infusion of
_yerba_, or Paraguay tea, which he sucks through that tin tube, called
_bombilla_, and looking for all the world like the broken spout of an oil-
can with a couple of pieces of nutmeg-grater soldered on, as strainers, at
the lower end; nor the string of sapless _charque_ beef, nor the pouchful
of villanous tobacco, nor the paper for manufacturing it into
_cigarritos_, nor the cow's-horn filled with tinder, and the flint and
steel attached. Thus mounted, clothed, and equipped, he is ready for a
gallop of a thousand leagues.

He is a strange individual, this Gaucho Juan. Born in a hut built of mud
and maize-stalks somewhere on the superficies of these limitless plains,
he differs little, in the first two years of his existence, from peasant
babies all the world over; but so soon as he can walk, he becomes an
equestrian. By the time he is four years old there is scarcely a colt in
all the Argentine that he will not fearlessly mount; at six, he whirls a
miniature lasso around the horns of every goat or ram he meets. In those
important years when our American youth are shyly beginning to claim the
title of young men, and are spending anxious hours before the mirror in
contemplation of the slowly-coming down upon their lip, young Juan (who
never saw a dozen printed books, and perhaps has only _heard_ of looking-
glasses) is galloping, like a portion of the beast he rides, over a
thousand miles of prairie, lassoing cattle, ostriches, and guanacos,
fighting single-handed with the jaguar, or lying stiff and stark behind
the heels of some plunging colt that he has too carelessly bestrid.

At twenty-one he is in his glory. Then we must look for him in the
_pulperías_, the bar-rooms of the Pampas, whither he repairs on Sundays
and _fiestas_, to get drunk on _aguardiente_ or on Paraguay rum. There you
may see him seated, listening open-mouthed to the _cantor_, or Gaucho
troubadour, as he sings the marvellous deeds of some desert hero,
persecuted, unfortunately, by the myrmidons of justice for the numerous
_misfortunes_ (_Anglicé_, murders) upon his head,--or narrates in
impassioned strain, to the accompaniment of his guitar, the circumstances
of one in which he has borne a part himself,--or chants the frightful end
of the Gaucho Attila, Quiroga, and the punishment that overtook his
murderer, the daring Santos Perez. When the song is over, the cards are
dealt. Seated upon a dried bull's-hide, each man with his unsheathed knife
placed ostentatiously at his side, the jolly Gauchos commence their game.
Suddenly Manuel exclaims, that Pedro or Estanislao or Antonio is playing
false. Down fly the cards; up flash the blades; a ring is formed. Manuel,
to tell the truth, has accused his friend Pedro only for the sake of a
little sport; he has never _marked_ a man yet, and thinks it high time
that that honor were attained. So the sparks fly from the flashing blades,
and Pedro's nose has got another gash in it, and Manuel is bleeding in a
dozen places, but he will not give in just yet. Unfortunate Gaucho! Pedro
the next moment slips in a sticky pool of his own blood, and Manuel's
knife is buried in his heart! "He is killed! Manuel has had a misfortune!"
exclaim the ring; "fly, Manuel, fly!" In another minute, and just as the
_vigilantes_ are throwing themselves upon their horses to pursue him, he
has galloped out of sight.

Twenty miles from the _pulpería_ he draws rein, dismounts, wipes his
bloody knife on the grass, and slices off a collop of _charque_, which he
munches composedly for his supper. Very likely this _misfortune_ will make
him a _Gaucho malo_. The _Gaucho malo_ is an outlaw, at home only in the
desert, intangible as the wind, sanguinary, remorseless, swift. His
brethren of the _estancia_ pronounce his name occasionally, but in lowered
tones, and with a mixture of terror and respect; he is looked up to by
them as a sort of higher being. His home is a movable point upon an area
of twenty thousand square miles; his horse, the finest steed that he can
find upon the Pampas between Buenos Ayres and the Andes, between the Gran
Chaco and Cape Horn; his food, the first beef that he captures with his
lasso; his dainties, the tongues of cows which he kills, and abandons,
when he has stripped them of his favorite titbit, to the birds of prey.
Sometimes he dashes into a village, drinks a gourdful of _aguardiente_
with the admiring guests at the _pulpería_, and spurs away again into
obscurity, until at length the increasing number of his _desgracias_
tempts the mounted emissaries of justice to pursue him, in the hope of
extra reward. If suddenly beset by seven or eight of these desert police,
the _Gaucho malo_ slashes right and left with his redoubted knife,--kills
one, maims another, wounds them all. Perhaps he reaches his horse and is
off and away amid a shower of harmless balls;--or he is taken; in which
case, all that remains, the day after, of the _Gaucho malo_, is a lump of
soulless clay.

Then there is the guide, or _vaqueano_. This man, as one who knows him
well informs us, is a grave and reserved Gaucho, who knows by heart the
peculiarities of twenty thousand leagues of mountain, wood, and plain! He
is the only _map_ that an Argentinian general takes with him in a
campaign; and the _vaqueano_ is never absent from his side. No plan is
formed without his concurrence. The army's fate, the success of a battle,
the conquest of a province, is entirely dependent upon his integrity and
skill; and, strange to say, there is scarcely an instance on record of
treachery on the part of a _vaqueano_. He meets a pathway which crosses
the road upon which he is travelling, and he can tell you the exact
distance of the remote watering-place to which it leads; if he meet with a
thousand similar pathways in a journey of five hundred miles, it will
still be the same. He can point out the fords of a hundred rivers; he can
guide you in safety through a hundred trackless woods. Stand with him at
midnight on the Pampa,--let the track be lost,--no moon or stars; the
_vaqueano_ quietly dismounts, examines the foliage of the trees, if any
are near, and if there are none, plucks from the ground a handful of
roots, chews them, smells and tastes the soil, and tells
you that so many hours' travel due north or south will bring you to your
destination. Do not doubt him; he is infallible.

A mere _vaqueano_ was General Rivera of Uruguay,--but he knew every tree,
every hillock, every dell, in a region extending over more than 70,000
square miles! Without his aid, Brazil would have been powerless in the
Banda Oriental; without his aid, the Argentinians would never have
triumphed over Brazil. As a smuggler in 1804, as a custom-house officer a
few years later, as a patriot, a freebooter, a Brazilian general, an
Argentinian commander, as President of Uruguay against Lavalleja, as an
outlaw against General Oribe, and finally against Rosas, allied with
Oribe, as champion of the Banda Oriental del Uruguay, Rivera had certainly
ample opportunities for perfecting himself in that study of which he was
the ardent devotee.

Cooper has told us how and by what signs, in years that have forever
faded, the Huron tracked his flying foe through the forests of the North;
we read of Cuban bloodhounds, and of their frightful baying on the scent
of the wretched maroon; we know how the Bedouin follows his tribe over
pathless sands;--and yet all these are bunglers, in comparison with the
_Gaucho rastreador_!

In the interior of the Argentine every Gaucho is a trailer or
_rastreador_. On those vast feeding-grounds of a million cattle, whose
tracks intersect each other in every direction, the herdsman can
distinguish with unerring accuracy the footprints of his own peculiar
charge. When an animal is missing from the herd, he throws himself upon
his horse, gallops to the spot where he remembers having seen it last,
gazes for a moment upon the trampled soil, and then shoots off for miles
across the waste. Every now and then he halts, surveys the trail, and
again speeds onward in pursuit. At last he reaches the limits of another
_estancia_, and the pasturage of a stranger herd. His eagle eye singles
out at a glance the estray; rising in his stirrup, he whirls the lasso for
a moment above his head, launches it through the air, and coolly drags the
recalcitrant beast away on the homeward trail. He is nothing but a common,
comparatively unskilled, _rastreador_.

The official trailer is of another stamp. Like his kinsman, the
_vaqueano_, he is a personage well convinced of his own importance; grave,
reserved, taciturn, whose word is law. Such a one was the famous Calébar,
the dreaded thief-taker of the Pampas, the Vidocq of Buenos Ayres. This
man during more than forty years exercised his profession in the Republic,
and a few years since was living, at an advanced age, not far from Buenos
Ayres. There appeared to be concentrated in him the acuteness and keen
perceptions of all the brethren of his craft; it was impossible to deceive
him; no one whose trail he had once beheld could hope to escape discovery.
An adventurous vagabond once entered his house, during his temporary
absence on a journey to Buenos Ayres, and purloined his best saddle. When
the robbery was discovered, his wife covered the robber's trail with a
kneading-trough. Two months later Calébar returned, and was shown the
almost obliterated footprint. Months rolled by; the saddle was apparently
forgotten; but a year and a half later, as the _rastreador_ was again at
Buenos Ayres, a footprint in the street attracted his notice. He followed
the trail; passed from street to street and from _plaza_ to _plaza_, and
finally entering a house in the suburbs, laid his hand upon the begrimed
and worn-out saddle which had once been his own _montura de fiesta_!

In 1830, a prisoner, awaiting the death-penalty, effected his escape from
jail. Calébar, with a detachment of soldiers, was put upon the scent.
Expecting this, and knowing that the gallows lay behind him, the fugitive
had adopted every expedient for baffling his pursuers: he had walked long
distances upon tiptoe; had scrambled along walls; had walked backwards,
crawled, doubled, leaped; but all in vain! Calébar's blood was up; his
reputation was at stake; to fail now would be an indelible disgrace. If
now and then he found himself at fault, he as often recovered the trail,
until the bank of a water-course was reached, to which the flying criminal
had taken. The trail was lost; the soldiers would have turned back; but
Calébar had no such thought. He patiently followed the course of the
_acequia_ for a few rods, and suddenly halting, said to his companions,
"Here is the spot at which he left the canal; there is no trail,--not a
footprint,--but do you see those drops of water upon the grass?" With this
slight clue they were led towards a vineyard. Calébar examined it at every
side, and bade the soldiers enter, saying, "He is there!" The men obeyed
him, but shortly reported that no living being was within the walls. "He
is there!" quietly reiterated Calébar; and, in fact, a second more
thorough examination resulted in the capture of the trembling fugitive,
who was executed on the following day.--There can be no doubt regarding
the literal exactness of this anecdote.

At another time, we are told, a party of political prisoners, incarc

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