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The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, June, 1862

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Title: The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, June, 1862

Author: Various


        
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Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY, VOL. 1, NO. 6, JUNE, 1862 ***




Produced by Cornell University, Joshua Hutchinson, Norma
Elliott and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net








_THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:_

DEVOTED TO

LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.

VOL. I.--JUNE, 1862.--No. VI.


       *       *       *       *       *


_THE CONSTITUTION AND SLAVERY._

There are two sections of the United States, the Free States and the
Slave States, who hold views widely different upon the subject of
Slavery and the true interpretation of the Constitution in relation to
it. The Southern view, for the most part, is:

1. The Constitution recognizes slaves as strictly property, to her
bought and sold as merchandise.

2. The Constitution recognizes all the territories as open to slavery as
much as to freedom, except in those cases where it has been expressly
interdicted by the Federal Government; and it secures the legal right to
carry slaves into the territories, and any act of Congress, restricting
this right to hold slaves in the territories, is unconstitutional and
void.

3. Slavery is a natural institution, and not to be considered as local
and municipal.

4. The Constitution is simply a compact or league between sovereign
States, and when either party breaks, in the estimation of the other,
this contract, it is no longer binding upon the whole, and the party
that thinks itself wronged has a right, acting according to its own
judgment, to leave the Union.

5. This contract between sovereign States has been broken to such an
extent, by long and repeated aggressions upon the South by the North,
that the slave States who have seceded from the Union, or who may
secede, are not only right in thus doing, but are justified in taking up
arms, to prevent the collection of revenue by the Federal Government.

These ideas are universally repudiated in the free States. It is not my
purpose to discuss the social or moral relations of slavery, but simply
to consider under what circumstances the Constitution originated, and
what was the clear intent of those who adopted it as the organic or
fundamental law of the country. The last assumption taken by the
seceding States grows out of the first four, and therefore it becomes a
question of vital interest, what did the framers of the Constitution
mean? We must remember that while names remain the same, the things
which they represent in time go through a radical change. Slavery is not
the same that it was when the Constitution was formed, nor are the
original slave States the same. If freedom at the North has made great
strides, so also has slavery South. Our country now witnesses a mighty
difference in free and slave institutions from what originally was seen.
The stand-point of slavery and freedom has altogether changed, not from
local legislation, but from natural causes, inherent in these two
diverse states of society. New interests, new relations, new views of
commerce, agriculture, and manufactures now characterize our country. It
will not do then to infer, from the existing state of things, what was
originally the respective condition of the slaveholding and the free
States, or what was in fact the import of that agreement, called the
Constitution, which brought about the Federal Union. The framers of the
Constitution did not reason so much as to what they should do for
posterity as for the generation then living. As fallible men, much as
they would wish to legislate wisely for the future, yet their very
imperfection of knowledge precluded them from knowing fully what fifty
or a hundred years hence would be the development of slavery or freedom.
Their actions must have reference to present wants, and consult
especially existing conditions of society. While they intended that the
Constitution should be the supreme law of the land, yet they wisely put
into the hands of the people the power of amending it at any such time
as circumstances might make it necessary. The question then at issue
between the North and the South is not what the Constitution should
read, not what it ought to be, to come up to the supposed interests of
the country; but what it does read. How is the Constitution truly to be
interpreted? All parties should acquiesce in seeking only to find out
the literal import of the Constitution as originally framed, or
subsequently amended, and abide by it, irrespective altogether of
present interests or relations. The reason is, in no other way can the
common welfare of the country be promoted. If the necessities of the
people demand a change in the Constitution, they can, in a legal way,
exercise the right, always remembering that no republic, no free
institutions, no democratic state of society can exist that denies the
great principle of the rule of the majority. It becomes us, then, in
order that we may come to a right decision respecting the duties that
grow out of our Federal Union, to consider what language the
Constitution makes use of, in relation to slavery, and how was this
instrument interpreted by the framers. The great question is, was
slavery regarded as a political and moral evil, to be restricted and
circumscribed within the States existing under the Constitution, or was
it looked upon as a blessing, a social relation of society, proper to be
diffused over the territories? It can be clearly shown that there was no
such state of feeling, respecting slavery, as to lead the originators of
our Constitution to look upon it as a thing in itself of natural right,
useful in its operation, and worthy of enlargement and perpetuation.
Rather, the universal sentiment respecting slavery, North and South,
was, that as a great moral, social, and political evil, it should be
condemned, and the widely prevalent impression was, that through the
peaceful operation of causes that evinced the immeasurable superiority
of free institutions, slavery would itself die out, and the whole
country be consecrated to free labor. Never did it enter the minds of
the framers of the Constitution, that slavery was a thing in itself
right and desirable, or that it should be encouraged in the territories.
It was looked upon as exclusively local in its character, the creature
of State law, a relation of society that was to be regulated like any
other municipal institution. It is not to be presumed that the authors
of our government would, in the Declaration of Independence, assert the
natural rights of all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness, and then contradict this cardinal principle of the revolution
in the Constitution. They found slavery existing in the Southern States;
they simply left it as it was before the Revolution, with the idea that
in time the local action of the State legislature would do away with the
system. But so far as the extension of slavery was concerned, the
predominant feeling, North and South, was hostile to it. The security
of the country demanded the union of the States under one common
Constitution. The dangers of foreign war, the exhausted finances of the
different States, the evils of a great public debt, contracted during
the Revolution, made it advisable, as soon as the consent of the States
could be got, to have a Constitution that should command security at
home and credit and respect abroad. It was regarded as indispensable for
union, that slavery should be left as it was found in the States. The
thirteen States that first formed our Union under the Constitution, with
the great evils that grew out of war and debt, agreed, for their own
mutual protection, that slavery should be permitted to exist in those
States where it was sanctioned by the local government, as an evil to be
tolerated, not as a thing good in itself, to be fostered, perpetuated,
and enlarged. Seeing that union could not be had without slavery, it was
recognized as an institution not to be interfered with by the free
States; but not acknowledged, in the sense that it was right, a blessing
that, like free labor, should be the normal condition of the whole
people. There was no such indifference to slavery as a civil
institution, as has been asserted. The reason is two-fold: first, the
States could not be indifferent to slavery, if they wished; and
secondly, they could not repudiate, in the Constitution, the Declaration
of Independence. Thus the word 'slave' is not found in the Constitution.
In the rendition of slaves, they simply spoke of persons held to
service, and as union was impossible, if the free States were open to
their escape, without the right being recognized of being returned, this
provision was accordingly made; and yet by the provision that no person
should be deprived of liberty or life, without due process of law, and
that the free citizens of one State, irrespective of color, should have
the same rights, while resident in any other State, as the citizens of
that State, the framers of our Constitution declared, in language most
explicit, the natural rights of all men. The question is not as to the
consistency of their profession and practice, or how they could fight
for their own independence, and yet deny freedom, for the sake of the
Union, to the slaves; but the question is simply whether, in preparing
the Constitution, they intended to engraft upon it the idea of the
natural right of slavery, and recognize it as a blessing, to be
perpetuated and enlarged. The question is simply, whether the
Constitution was designed to be pro-slavery, or whether, like the
instrument of the Declaration of Independence, it was intended to be the
great charter of civil and religious freedom, although compelled, for
the sake of union, not to interfere with slavery where it already
existed? Great stress is put upon that clause enjoining the rendition of
slaves escaping from their masters; but union was impossible without
this provision. The necessity of union was thought indispensable for
protection, revenue, and securing the dearly-bought blessings of
independence. The question with them was not, ought slavery to be
recognized as a natural right, and slaves a species of property like
other merchandise? but simply, shall we tolerate this evil, for the sake
of Union? Thus, as the indispensable condition of union, the provision
was made for the rendition of persons held to labor in the slave States.
Why is the language of the Constitution so guarded as not to have even
the word 'slave' in it, and yet of such a character as not to interfere
with local State legislation upon slavery? Simply to steer between the
Charybdis of no union and the Scylla of the repudiation of the
Declaration of Independence, teaching that all men are born free and
equal, and that all have natural rights, such as life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. And yet, in the slave States, the interpretation
of the Constitution is such, that the free States are accused of
violating it, unless they acknowledge that it recognizes slavery as a
natural right, and an institution to be perpetuated and enlarged, and
put upon the same level with the blessing of freedom, in the
territories. Slavery virtually must be nationalized, and the
Constitution be interpreted so as to carry it all over the territories
now existing, or to be acquired, or the free States have broken the
Constitution, and the slave States may leave the Union whenever it suits
their pleasure. It is easy to see how time has brought about such a
revolution of feeling and idea respecting slavery. It can be shown that
circumstances have changed altogether the relations of slavery, and
while names have remained the same, the things which they represent have
assumed a radical difference. It can be shown that the introduction of
the cotton-gin, and the increased profits of slave labor, have given an
impetus to the domestic institution that brings with it an entire
revolution of opinion. When slavery was unprofitable to the
slaveholders; when, in the early days of the republic, the number of
slaves was comparatively small; when, all over the country, the veterans
of the Revolution existed to testify to the hardships they endured for
national independence, and eulogize even the help of the negro in
securing it, then slavery was regarded a curse, an evil to be curtailed
and in time obliterated; then the local character of slavery, as the
creature of municipal law, not to be recognized where such law does not
exist, was the opinion universally of the people. But now, with the
growing profits of slavery, with the increase of the power of this
institution, other and far different language is held. Disguise it as we
may, there do exist great motives that have silently yet powerfully
operated within the last thirty or forty years, to change the popular
current of feeling and opinion. Not only have the slave States held the
balance of political power, but the spread of slavery has been gigantic.
The fairest regions of the South have been opened up to the domestic
institution, and Texas annexed, with Louisiana, Arkansas and Florida,
making an immense area of country, to be the nursery of slavery. The
political ascendency of the slave States has ever given to the South a
great advantage, in the extension of their favored institution, and the
result has proved that what our ancestors looked upon as an evil that
time would soon do away with, has grown into a monster system that
threatens to make subservient to it the free institutions of the North.

Slavery has now come to be a mighty energy of disquietude all over the
country, assuming colossal proportions of mischief, and mocking all the
ordinary restraints of law. The question of the present day to be
decided is not whether freedom and slavery shall exist side by side, nor
whether slavery shall be tolerated as a necessary evil; but in reality,
whether freedom shall be crushed under the iron hoof of slavery, and
this institution shall obtain the complete control of the country. It
has been said that the Constitution takes the position of complete
indifference to slavery; but the history of the slave States does not
lead us to infer that they were ever willing that slavery should be
tested by its own merits, or stand without the most persistent efforts
to secure for it the patronage of the Federal Government. Study the
progress of slavery, the last forty years, and none can fail to see that
it has ever aimed to secure first the supreme political control, and
then to advance its own selfish interests, at the expense of free
institutions. The great danger has always been, that while numerically
vastly inferior to the North, slavery has always been an unit, with a
single eye to its own aggrandizement; consequently, the history of the
country will show that so far from the general policy of the government
being adverse to slavery, that policy has been almost exclusively upon
the side of slaveholders. The domestic institution has been ever the pet
interest of the land.

In all that pertains to political power, the slaveholding interests have
been in the ascendant. Even when Lincoln was elected, it was found that
the Senate and House of Representatives, as well as the Judiciary, were
numerically upon the side of slavery, so that he could not, even had it
been his wish, carry out any measure inimical to the South. True, the
South had not the same power as under Buchanan; they could not hope ever
again to wield the resources of government to secure the ascendency of
slavery in Kansas; but for all that, Lincoln was powerless to encroach
upon their supposed rights, even if thus disposed. Is it not, then,
evident, that so far from the slaveholding States holding to the
opinions of the framers of the Constitution, there has been within the
last forty years a mighty change going on in the South, giving to
slavery an essentially aggressive policy, and an extension never dreamed
of by the authors of the Constitution? The ground of the Constitution
respecting slavery, was simply non-interference in the States where it
already existed. It left slavery to be curtailed, or done away with by
the local legislature, but it used language the most guarded, to
preclude the idea that slavery rested upon natural right, and that
slaves, like other property, could be carried into the territories. It
has been said, that the position of the Constitution is that of absolute
indifference, both to freedom and slavery; that it advocated neither,
but was bound to protect both. But how could the Constitution be
indifferent to the very end for which it was made? Was not its great
design to secure the liberty of the country, and promote its highest
welfare? The Constitution simply tolerated the existence of slavery, and
no more. As union was impossible without the provision for the rendition
of persons held to labor, escaping from one state into another, it
simply accommodated itself to an evil that was thought would be
restricted, and in due process of time done away with in the slave
States. To strain this provision to mean that it advocated the natural
right of slavery, and recognized the slave as property, to be sold and
bought like other merchandise, is simply to say that the framers of the
Constitution were the greatest hypocrites in the world, originating the
Declaration of Independence upon the basis of the natural right of all
men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and yet with full
knowledge and purpose giving the lie to this instrument in the
Constitution. Madison thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the
idea of property in man. The word 'service' was substituted for
'servitude,' simply because this last encouraged the idea of property.

The constitutional provision for the rendition of slaves was simply a
compromise between union and slavery. Of the two evils of _no union_, or
_no slavery_, it was thought the former was the worse, and consequently
the free States fell in with the measure. But could the patriots of the
Revolution have foreseen the gigantic growth of slavery, and the use
that would have been made of the provision recognizing it, no
consideration would have induced them to adopt a course that has been
prolific of so much misrepresentation and mischief to the country. They
left the suppression of slavery to the States where it existed, but
there was no intention to ingraft the idea of property in man in the
Constitution, or to favor its extension beyond the original slave States
in any way. John Jay, the first Chief-Justice, was preëminently
qualified to judge respecting this. We have his testimony most
explicitly denying the natural right of property in slaves, and
declaring that the Constitution did not recognize the equity of its
extension in the new States or Territories. Who was there more
conversant with the genius of our country than Washington; and yet how
full is his testimony to the evil of slavery; its want of natural right
to support it, and the necessity of its speedy suppression and
abolition? Is it possible that he, himself a slaveholder and an
emancipationist, could utter such sentiments and enforce them by his
example, if he regarded the Constitution as establishing the light of
property in man, and the benefit of the indefinite expansion of slavery
over the country? No, indeed! If we may consider the Constitution in
relation to slaves an inconsistent instrument, we can not prove it an
hypocritical and dishonest one. The hard necessities of the times wrung
out of reluctant patriots the admission of the rendition of slaves, but
they would not by any reasonable construction of language, assert the
natural right of property in slaves, and the propriety or benefit of its
toleration in new States and Territories. It was bad enough to tolerate
this evil in the old slave States, but it would be infamous to hand down
to posterity a Constitution denying the self-evident truths of the
Declaration of Independence. Toleration is not synonymous with approval,
or existence with right. There is a most subtle error in the assumption
of the indifference of the Constitution to freedom and slavery--that it
advocated neither, but protected both. Certainly the framers of the
Constitution were not automatons, or this instrument the accident of the
throw of the dice-box. The great purpose of this instrument was to raise
the revenue, and defend the country. Its end was to protect the
liberties and command the respect of civilized nations. The old
Confederation was to give way to the Federal Constitution. The
independence of the United States had been achieved at a heavy cost. To
say nothing of frontiers exposed, country ravaged, towns burnt, commerce
nearly ruined, the derangement of finances--the pecuniary loss alone
amounted to one hundred and seventy million dollars, two thirds of which
had been expended by Congress, the balance by individual States. The
design of the Constitution was to preserve the fruits of the Revolution,
to respect State sovereignty, and yet secure a powerful and efficient
Union; to have a central government, and yet not infringe upon the local
rights of the States. It will, therefore, be seen that while the subject
of slavery was earnestly discussed, and presented at the outset a great
obstacle to the union of the States, yet it was thought, upon the whole,
best to leave to the slave States the business of doing away with this
great evil in such a manner as in their judgment might best conduce to
their own security and the preservation of the Union.

But no truth of history is more evident than that the authors of the
Constitution regarded slavery as impossible to be sustained upon the
ground of the natural rights of mankind, and deserving of no
encouragement in the Territories, or States hereafter to come into the
Union. It was thought that the best interests of the slave States would
lead them to abolish slavery, and that before many years, the Republic
would cease to bear the disgrace of chattel bondage. It is certainly
proper that the acts and language of the authors of the Constitution,
and those who chiefly were instrumental in achieving our independence,
should be made to interpret that instrument which was the creation of
their own toils and love of country. Because the circumstances of the
present day have brought about a mighty change in the feelings and
opinions of the slave States, it does not follow that the Constitution
in its original intention and spirit should be accommodated to this new
aspect of things. It is easy to get up a theory of the natural right of
slavery, and then say that the Constitution meant that the slave States
should carry slave property just where the free States carry their
property; but when this ground is taken, the Constitution is made, to
all intents, a pro-slavery instrument. It ceases to be the charter of a
nation's freedom, and resolves itself into the most effective agent of
the propagandism of slavery. The transition is easy from such a theory
to the fulfillment of the boast of Senator Toombs, 'that the roll of
slaves might yet be called at the foot of Bunker Hill Monument.' But no
straining of the language of the Constitution can make it mean the
recognition of the natural right of slavery, The guarded manner in which
the provision was made for the rendition of slaves, and all the
circumstances connected with the adoption of the Constitution, show
conclusively that slavery was considered only a local and municipal
institution, a serious evil, to be suppressed and curtailed by the slave
States, and never by the General Government a blessing to be fostered
and extended where it did not exist at the time the Union of the
thirteen States was perfected.

Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederate States, in a
speech at Atlanta, Georgia, said:

     'Jefferson, Madison, Washington, and many others, were tender of
     the word slave, in the organic law, and all looked forward to the
     time when the institution of slavery should be removed from our
     midst as a trouble and a stumbling-block. The delusion could not be
     traced in any of the component parts of the Southern Constitution.
     In that instrument we solemnly discarded the pestilent heresy of
     fancy politicians, that all men of all races were equal, and we
     have made African inequality, and subordination, the chief
     corner-stone of the Southern Republic.'

Here we have the great idea of an essential difference in relation to
the Constitution and slavery existing at the present day South, from
that which did exist at the time of its ratification universally by the
people of the thirteen States. The Vice-President of the Southern
Confederacy frankly admits that slavery is its chief corner-stone; that
our ancestors were deluded upon the subject of slavery; that the ideas
contained in the Declaration of Independence respecting the equality of
all men, and their natural right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness, are only the pestilent heresy of fancy politicians;
consequently that in the Southern Constitution all such trash was
solemnly discarded. Can clearer proof be wanted to show that the
stand-point of slavery and freedom has altogether changed since the days
of Washington? Is it not true that our country at the present day
presents the singular spectacle of two great divisions, one holding to
the Constitution as interpreted by our ancestors North and South, the
other openly repudiating such interpretation? Is it strange, with such a
radical difference existing as to the import of the Constitution upon
the subject of slavery, that we should have such frequent and ever
persistent charges of Northern aggression? If the history of slavery be
kept in mind, it will be seen that it has steadily had its eye upon one
end, and that is national aggrandizement. Thus about two hundred
thousand slaveholders wield all the political power of the South, and
compel all non-slaveholders to acquiesce in their supremacy. But
whatever the South may choose to do, the North is under obligation to
give to slavery nothing more than what is guaranteed in the
Constitution. If more than this is asked for, the North is bound by a
just regard for its own interests and the prosperity of the country to
refuse compliance. It has been seen that even admitting that a State has
a just cause of complaint, or supposing as a matter of fact that the
Constitution is violated, she can not set herself up to be exclusively
the judge in this matter, and leave the Union at her convenience.

The history of our country reveals two memorable cases where the
question was decided that not the State, but the Federal Government was
to be its own judge of what was constitutional, and act accordingly.
First, the case of New-York; secondly, the course taken by Massachusetts
in relation to the Embargo law of 1807, which was believed to be
unconstitutional generally in New-England. In the case of New-York,
there was, as has been said, the surrender of any right to secede from
the Union at her pleasure; while in the Embargo law of 1807, which was
brought up to the Supreme Court for decision, there was the acquiescence
of New-England upon the simple point, who should be the final arbiter in
the dispute. Massachusetts and all New-England assented to a decision of
the Judiciary, not upon the ground that it was right, but that the
Supreme Court had alone the authority to say what was right.

In this case there was a perfect refutation of the whole theory of
secession; that theory falls back upon the idea that the State
government is to be its own judge of what constitutes a violation of the
Constitution, and act accordingly; but the Embargo law of 1807, when
carried up to the Supreme bench, and the way New-England assented to a
decision that was not believed to be in accordance with the
Constitution, is a signal rebuke of the assumption of State sovereignty
when arrayed against the General Government. The all-important question
was not, Was the decision of the Judiciary right, but simply, Who had
the authority to say what was right? Who should submit to that
authority? No person can fail to see in these two cases, under
circumstances so widely different, and with an end proposed in each
directly the reverse of the other, that the point so important to
establish was clearly made out, that the National Government reserves to
itself alone the right to decide as to what should be the course taken
in questions of dispute that arise between the States and the Federal
authority.

It is mournful to see the finest country on the earth--a land peculiarly
blessed with every element of material wealth, a land that has grown
like a giant, and commanded the respect of the world--now in her central
government made an object of contempt, and crippled in her strength by
those very States who should, upon the principle of gratitude for favors
granted, have been the last to leave the Union. While the Government at
Washington has shown the utmost forbearance, they have manifested the
greatest insolence, as well as disregard of the most sacred rights of
the Union. An Absalom the most willful and impetuous of his father's
family, and yet the most caressed and indulged, requites every debt of
parental kindness by seeking through treachery and the prostitution of
all his privileges to raise an insurrection in the household of David,
and turn away through craft the hearts of the people from their rightful
lord. So like Absalom, South-Carolina first unfurls the banner of
treason and war among the sister States, desperately resolved to secure
her selfish aggrandizement even at the price of the ruin of the country,
but like Absalom, also, she is destined to experience a reverse as
ignominious and as fatal.



_A STORY OF MEXICAN LIFE_

VIII.

'My neighbor gazed at the stranger with bewilderment, and remained
speechless. There was, nevertheless, nothing in his outward mien to give
rise to so much emotion. He was a robust and rather handsome fellow, of
about twenty-five, bold, swaggering, and free and easy in his
deportment--a perfect specimen of the race of half-breeds so common in
Mexico. His skin was swarthy, his features regular, and his beard
luxuriant and soft as silk. His eyes were large and black as sloes, his
teeth small, regular, and white as ivory, and his whole countenance,
when in repose, wore an expression which won confidence rather than
excited distrust. But when conversing, there was an indefinable
craftiness in his smile, and a peculiar cunning in the twinkle of his
eye, that often strikes the traveler in Mexico, as pervading all that
class who are accustomed to making excursions into the interior. His
costume, covered with dust, and torn in many places, led me to infer
that he had only just returned from some long journey.

'After waiting, with great politeness, for some few seconds, to allow
Arthur time to address him, and finding he waited in vain, the Mexican
opened the conversation:

''I fear your excellency will scold me for delaying so long on the road;
but how could I help it? I am more to be pitied than blamed--I lost
three horses--at monte--and if it had not been by good luck that the ace
turned up when I staked my saddle and bridle, I should not be here even
now; but the ace won; I bought a fresh horse--and here I am.'

''What success?' inquired Arthur, with a look of intense anxiety; 'did
you bring any?'

''Certainly,' replied Pepito, handing him very unconcernedly a small
package; 'I brought more than you told me, and, in fact, I might have
brought a mule-load if you had wanted so many.'

''Adéle!' cried Mr. Livermore, overcome with delight, as he rushed into
my room, 'Adéle, HE HAS FOUND IT!'

Pepito followed Arthur with his sharp eye, and on beholding Adéle, asked
me, in a low tone:

''Who is that lady, Caballero?'

''I can not say; I myself never saw her until to-day,' said I; and
noticing his gaze riveted on her in apparent admiration, I added:

''Do you think her pretty?'

''Pretty! Holy Virgin! she is lovely enough to make a man risk his
salvation to win her.'

'Feeling that my presence might be one of those superfluities with which
they would gratefully dispense, I was on the point of leaving, when
there was a knock at the door. Again Adéle sought refuge in my room, and
again Arthur advanced to the door:

''Open, it is I,' said a voice from the outside; 'I have come to inquire
after my friend Pepito.'

''Señor,' exclaimed Pepito, 'that must be my compadre, Pedro.'

'On the door being opened, they flew to one another's arms, and gave a
true Mexican embrace.

'The entrance of Pedro, which evidently annoyed Mr. Livermore, awakened
in my mind strange suspicions. I resolved at the earliest opportunity I
had of a private interview with him, to allude to what I had overheard
on the Alameda. In the mean time I would keep an eye on these two
cronies.

''Stand back, Pedro, and let me have a good look at you.'

''_There!_ well, how do you think I look?'

''My dear fellow, you are growing decidedly coarse and fat.'

''Bah! but how do you like my new rig?'

''I can not admire the cut; but, of course, you bought them
ready-made--one could see that with half an eye.'

''Well, Pepito, now that you are once more back in the city, I lack
nothing to make me perfectly happy. You will spend the rest of the day
with me?'

''Of course, my dear fellow.'

''Well, it is about dinner-time; let us be off.'

''Wait till I have first bid adieu to his excellency,' replied Pepito,
turning toward Mr. Livermore. Then advancing a few steps, he whispered a
few words to him, at the same time bowing very low. Arthur unlocked the
drawer of his table and took out a roll of dollars, which he handed to
the Mexican.

''Must you absolutely leave me so soon?' said he.

''Well, Caballero, after so long a journey, a man requires relaxation,
and enjoys a social glass; so, with your permission, I will see you
again to-morrow.'

'This answer was any thing but pleasing to Mr. Livermore, who turned to
me, and addressing me in English, said:

''My dear sir, once more I must trespass on your good-nature. It is
essential to the success of my plans, that these two men should not be
left together. Will you, _can_ you, tack yourself on to them, and keep
close to Pepito until they separate?'

''Your request is as strange as it is difficult of execution; but I will
do my best.'

''Gentlemen,' said I, to the two Mexicans, as we all three were going
down the stairs, 'you were speaking of dining--now I want to visit a
real Mexican _fonda_; I am tired of these French cafés; will you favor
me by taking me to a first-rate house, for I am not acquainted with this
city.'

''If you will accompany us to the Fonda Genovesa, Caballero,' said
Pedro, 'I will warrant you will have no cause to repent it.'

''I am infinitely indebted to you, and shall gladly accept your
guidance.'

'The Fonda Genovesa was certainly one of the vilest establishments I
ever visited, and the dinner was, of course, detestably bad. However, I
treated my two worthies to a couple of bottles of wine, which being to
them a rare luxury, they declared they had fared sumptuously.

''But, look here, Pepito,' said Pedro, 'you have not yet alluded to your
journey. Where have you been all this time?'

''Where have I been? Oh! well, that is a secret.'

''A secret! what, from me, from your compadre Pedro?'

''Even so, my dear Pedro, even so; I have sworn not to mention the
object of my journey nor my destination.'

''Oh! I dare say; but look here, what did you swear by--the holy Virgin
of Guadalupe? No? Well, was it the cross?'

''No, neither by the one nor the other.'

''What is there binding, then? nothing else ought to keep you silent
when _I_ am in question?'

''I pledged my sacred honor.'

''Your sacred honor! Give me your hand, you always were a wag, but you
humbugged me this time, I confess; well, that _is_ a good one--the best
joke I have heard for an age--excellent! well, go on, I am all
attention, all ears.'

''Well, you won't hear much, for I am a man of honor, and bound not to
speak; besides, I received a hundred dollars to keep mum.'

'Pedro for a moment appeared to be in a brown study; at last, gazing
hard at his friend, he said:

''Would two hundred tempt you to speak?'

''If such a proposition were to come from a stranger, I might,
perchance, accept it; but seeing it comes from you--never.'

''Why?'

''Because, when you offer me two hundred dollars for any thing, it must
be worth far more than you offer.'

''Well, now, admit, just as a supposition, that I am interested in this
matter, what harm will it do you, if we both turn an honest penny?'

''That is just the point; but I don't want you to turn ten pennies to my
one.'

''Your scruples, my dear Pepito, display a cautious temperament, and
evince deep acquaintance with human nature; you see through my little
veil of mystery, and I own your sagacity; now I will be honest with
you--with a man like you, lying is mere folly. It is true, I am to have
four hundred dollars if I can find out where you have been. I swear to
you by the holy Virgin of Guadalupe, I am making a clean breast of it.
Now, will you take that amount? Say the word, and I will go and fetch it
right away.'

'This proposition seemed to embarrass the scrupulous Pepito extremely,
and he remained some time lost in thought.

''But, if you only receive four hundred, and give me four hundred, what
the deuce will you make out of such an operation?'

''Trust entirely to your generosity.'

''What! leave me to do what I like! I take you up--by Jupiter! Pedro,
that is a noble trait in your character--I take you up.'

''Then it is a bargain. Will you wait here for me, or would you prefer
to meet me at our usual Monte in the Calle de los Meradores?'

''I prefer the Monte.'

''You will swear on the cross, to relate fully and truly every
particular relating to your journey?'

''Of course--every thing.'

''I will be there in a couple of hours.'

'After his friend's departure, Pepito sat silent; his brow was knit, and
yet a mocking sneer played around his lips; he seemed to be pursuing two
trains of thought at once; suspicion and merriment were clearly working
in his mind.

''This is a droll affair, Caballero; I can't clearly see the bottom of
it'

''There is nothing very unusual in it that I see,' I replied, 'for every
day men sacrifice honor for gold.'

''True, nothing more common, and yet this proposition beats all I ever
met with.'

''In what respect?'

''Why, the interest that these folks who employ Pedro, take in this
journey that I undertook for your friend, Señor Pride.'

''But, if this journey has some valuable secret object in view?'

''Valuable secret!' repeated Pepito, bursting into a fit of laughter;
'Yes, a valuable secret indeed! Oh! the joke of offering four hundred
dollars for what, 'twixt you and me, is not worth a cent. But who can it
be that is behind Pedro, in this matter? He must be some rival doctor,
or else a naturalist, on the same scent.'

''Is Señor Pride,' I inquired, 'a doctor--are you sure of that?'

''Yes--he must be--but I don't know,' exclaimed Pepito; 'I am at my
wits' end. If he is not, I have been working in the dark, and he has
deceived me with a false pretext; I am at a loss--dead beat. But one
thing is plain--I can make four hundred dollars, if I like.'

''And will you betray your employer?' said I indignantly.

''Time enough--never decide rashly, Caballero; I shall
deliberate--nothing like sleeping on important affairs; to-morrow--who
knows what to-morrow may bring forth?'

'So saying, Pepito arose, took his traveling sword under his arm, placed
his hat jauntily on his head, cast an admiring eye at the looking-glass,
and then brushed off some of the dust that still clung to his left
sleeve.

''The smile of Heaven abide with you, Señor,' said he, with a most
graceful bow. 'As for your friend's secret, do not be uneasy about it; I
am not going to meet Pedro to-night. I shall take advantage of his
absence to make a call on my lady-love. Pedro is a good fellow, but
shockingly self-conceited; he fancies himself far smarter than
I--perhaps he is--but somehow I fancy, this time he must be early if he
catches me asleep.'

'On his departure, I paid the bill, which both my friends had
overlooked, then walked out and seated myself on the Alameda, which at
that hour was thronged with promenaders. Isolated, buried in thought, in
the midst of that teeming throng, the various episodes in the drama of
which my mysterious neighbor was the principal character, passed before
my mind. I again and again reviewed the strange events which, by some
freak of fortune, I had been a witness to. What was the basis on which
my friend, with two sets of names, founded his dream of inexhaustible
wealth, this mission he had intrusted to Pepito? What the mission which
the agent laughed at, and which to gain a clue to, others were tempting
him with glittering bribes? And again, why the deceit practiced on
Pepito, by assuming the guise of a doctor? Each of these facts was a
text on which I piled a mountain of speculation.

'Vexed and annoyed at finding myself becoming entangled in this web of
mystery, as well as piqued at my failure to unravel it, I determined to
avoid all further connection with any of the actors; and full of this
resolve, I wended my way homeward, to have a final and decisive
interview with Mr. Livermore.

'The worthy Donna Teresa Lopez confronted me as I entered the inner
door:

''Plenty of news, is there not?' she asked; 'I heard a good deal of
squabbling, last night; that man in the cloak was noisy.'

''Yes; they had an interesting discussion.'

''You can not make me believe that was all. _Discussion_, indeed! When
there is a pretty woman in the case, and two men talk as loudly as they
did, it generally ends in a serious kind of discussion. 'When love stirs
the fire, anger makes the blood boil.' Tell me, now, will they fight
here, in the Señor Pride's room?'

'This question, which Donna Teresa put in the most matter-of-fact sort
of way, staggered me considerably, and confirmed me in the resolution to
avoid the whole business.

''I sincerely trust, Señora, that such an event is not probable. On what
do you base your supposition?'

''There is nothing so very astounding in rivals fighting; but it is all
the same to me. I only asked that I might take precautions.'

''Precautions! what, inform the police?'

''No, no! I thought it might be as well to take down the new
curtains--the blood might spoil them.'

'Need I say I terminated my interview with my hostess, more impressed
with admiration of her business qualities than of her sympathetic
virtues? But let me do the poor woman justice; life is held so cheap,
and the knife acts so large a part in Mexico, that violence and sudden
death produce a mere transient effect.


IX.

'Instead of going to my own apartments, I went direct to Mr.
Livermore's, intending thus to show him that I wished no longer to be
looked upon as the man in the next room.

''We were dying with anxiety to see you,' he said, as I entered; 'walk
into the other room, you will find Adéle there.'

''Well, Mr. Rideau,' said she, with intense anxiety visible on her
countenance, 'what passed between those two men?'

''Little of importance. Pedro offered Pepito four hundred dollars if he
would divulge the particulars of his journey; to which offer Pepito has
acceded. That is about all.'

'I was far from anticipating the effect my answer would produce on my
hearers. They were overwhelmed--thunderstruck. Adéle was the first to
recover.

''Fool! fool that I was,' she exclaimed, 'why did I select in such an
enterprise a man worn down by sickness and disease?'

'The look she cast on Arthur, rapid as it was, was so full of menace
and reproach, that it startled me.

''Well, Arthur,' she said, laying her hand on his arm; 'do you feel ill
again?'

'Roused by the sound of her voice, Arthur placed his hand on his heart,
and mutely plead excuse for the silence which his sufferings imposed on
him.

'As for me, I spoke no word, but mentally consigned my mysterious
neighbors to a distant port, whence consignments never return.

''My dear sir,' I replied at length, 'Pepito's treachery, which appears
so deeply to affect you, is not yet carried into execution, it is only
contemplated. I will give you word for word what transpired.'

'When I had concluded my narrative, to which they listened with
breathless attention, Adéle exclaimed:

''Our hopes are not yet crushed, the case is not utterly desperate; but
alas! it is evident our secret is suspected, if not known. Arthur,' she
continued, 'now is the time to display all our energy. We have some
enemy to dread, as I have long suspected. If we do not at once steal a
march on him, then farewell forever to all our dreams of happiness, of
wealth, or even of subsistence.'

''Sir,' said she, again addressing me; 'your honor alone has kept you in
ignorance of our secret. You could easily have tempted and corrupted
Pepito. We prefer you should learn it from us rather than from an
accidental source. We merely request your word of honor that you will
not use it to your own advantage, without our joint consent, nor in any
way thwart our plans.'

''I am deeply sensible, madame, of the confidence you repose in me; but
I must beg you will allow me to remain in ignorance.'

''You refuse, then, to give us the promise?' exclaimed Adéle, 'I see it
all! you will thwart us; you would preserve your liberty of action
without forfeiting your word.'

'If you had known me longer, such a suspicion would not have crossed
your mind. However, as I have no other means of proving it unjust, I
will give the pledge you desire, I am now ready to hear whatever you
have to communicate.'

'Mr. Livermore resumed the conversation:

''The secret which Adéle imparted to me will, I dare say, appear at
first very extravagant, but before you laugh at it, give me time to
explain. It is the existence of a marvelous opal mine in the interior;
the precise location of which is known to no one save Adéle and myself.'

'In spite of the greatest effort, I could not suppress a smile of
incredulity, at this announcement. Mexico is so full of strange stories
of fabulous mines, that this wondrous tale of opals looked to me like
some new confidence game, and I felt sure my neighbors were duped or
else trying to dupe me.

''Oh! I see you think we are deceived?'

''I admit,' I replied, 'it strikes me as possible that you have been the
victims of some crafty scheme. Did you hear of this mine before or since
your arrival in Mexico?'

''Before we left New-Orleans.'

''And yet it is not known to the natives?'

''It was from a Mexican we had our information.'

''Why did not this Mexican himself take advantage of it?'

''He could not, for he was banished. He is now dead. But what do you
think of these specimens?'

'He took from a drawer ten or twelve opals of rare size and brilliancy.
I examined them with care; they were, beyond all doubt, of very
considerable value. My incredulity gradually gave way to amazement.

''Are you certain these opals really came from the mine of which you
speak?'

''Nothing can be more certain; you saw Pepito hand me a package; you
heard his remark that he could have brought a mule-load; these are a
few of what he did bring.'

''This mine then really exists?' I said, my incredulity giving way to
the most ardent curiosity.

''Really exists! yes, my friend; if you listen, I will dispel all doubt
of that.'


X.

''On arriving in this country, my first step was to procure a guide and
the necessary equipage for reaching the opal mine. Although I felt sure
of its existence, I could not dispel the fear that the story of its
marvelous richness would prove false. Without loss of time, I started;
for to me it was a question of life and death. I had, however, barely
accomplished a third of the journey, when I was prostrated by fever. The
fatigue of traveling in the interior of this magnificent but wretched
country, combined with excitement and anxiety, preyed upon my mind, and
brought on an illness, from which at one time I gave up all hope of
recovering. I was compelled to return to Vera Cruz. The doctors were all
of the opinion that several months of perfect repose would be necessary
before I could undertake another such journey. Several months--oh! how
those words fell on my ears; they sounded like the knell of all my
hopes. A thousand expedients floated through my brain, and in adopting
the course I eventually did, time alone will prove whether I followed
the promptings of a good or evil genius. One evening, I explained to my
attendant that I was a medical man, deeply interested in botanical and
mineralogical discoveries; that my object in undertaking my recent
journey was to collect certain rare herbs and a singular description of
shell. I laid peculiar stress on the herbs, and added in relation to the
shells, that I merely wanted a few specimens, as they were rare in my
country. My attendant at once proffered his services, to go in search of
them. I appeared at first to attach but little importance to his offer;
but as he renewed it whenever the subject was alluded to, I at last
employed him. The mine is situated on the margin of a little brook. One
day's work of an active man will turn the stream into a fresh channel,
and a few inches beneath its bed will be found, mixed with the damp sand
and loam, the shells, which, when polished, form the opal. I gave my
servant the needful information as to localities and landmarks, and
promised him a gratuity of a hundred dollars over and above his wages,
in case he succeeded. Having given him instructions, I retained his
services until I reached this city, where I determined to await his
return, it being more healthy than Vera Cruz. Having selected my
lodgings and given him the pass-word by which alone a stranger could
obtain admittance to me, with an anxious heart I dispatched him on the
mission.

''For three months I had no tidings of him; night and day, I was the
prey of doubt and fear. No words can portray the agony of suspense that
I endured; the hours seemed days, the days months, and the bitterness of
years was crowded into that short interval. At last, thanks be to
heaven, my messenger returned.'

''Do you mean Pepito?' I exclaimed.

''The very man,' replied Arthur; 'his journey was successful. You have
seen the specimens he brought. I was intoxicated with delight; but Adéle
did not share my joy. Nature has given woman a faculty of intuition
denied to man. Alas! Adéle's presentiment has been verified; your
account of the interview between Pepito and his friend proves her fears
were well-grounded.'

''In what way?'

''In _this_ way; it shows we have an enemy who has an inkling of our
secret, and is striving to snatch the prize from us. What course to take
I am at a loss to know. Adéle advises to make sure of Pepito, at any
price.'

''And that strikes me as being your surest if not your only course.'

''Yes, the surest; but how to make _sure_ of him?'

''By outbidding your competitors, and proving to him that in adhering to
you he is best serving his own interests.'

''But he is base enough to take bribes from both sides, and betray
each.'

''Oh! that I were a man!' exclaimed Adéle, 'this fellow is the only one
who knows our secret. One man ought not to stand in fear of another.
Only _one_ man crosses your path, Arthur.'

''Unless I murder him, how can he be silenced?'

''_Murder_ him! It is not murder to kill a robber. Were _I_ a man, I
would not hesitate how to act.'

''The anxiety of Pedro,' I said, 'indicates you have an enemy. Have you
any idea who he is?'

''I believe,' said Adéle, 'that I know him.'

''Are you sure there is only one?'

''Why do you ask?' said the woman, fixing her eye upon me as though she
would, in spite of every obstacle, read my inmost thoughts.

''Because I fancy there are _two_, for instance, Brown and Hunt.'

'At the mention of these names Adéle started to her feet, exclaiming:

''On all sides there is treachery. I _demand_, sir, an explanation. What
leads you to associate the name of that firm with this matter? Either
you are our friend or you are not. Speak plainly!'

''Madame, by the merest chance, I overheard Pedro mention those names,
and since you have given me your confidence, I will give you some
information which may put you on your guard, and help to guide your
future plans.'

'I then briefly related the conversations I had overheard between
General Valiente and Pedro, both on the Alameda and in the gaming-house
in the Calle del Arco.

''Now, madame,' I continued, 'let me inquire whether the Mexican from
whom you derived your information, had any connection with this firm?'

''Yes, sir, he knew them,' she replied; then, after a slight pause, she
added: 'We have already told you so much that it would be folly to
conceal the way in which we became acquainted with the existence of this
mine. Soon after my marriage, I met a veteran officer of the Mexican
army, General Ramiro, then living in exile, at New-Orleans. For me he
conceived a paternal affection, and many a time remonstrated with Mr.
Percival, and entreated him to devote himself to his family, and abandon
the course of life which was leading him to ruin. He often spoke of his
desire to return to Mexico, and lived constantly in the hope of the
decree being revoked, which had driven him into exile. One day he
disclosed the chief cause of his desire to return, by revealing the
secret we have imparted to you.'

''Pardon me, madame,' I said, 'but tell me how General Ramiro gained his
information? Exploring for opal mines is hardly part of the duties of a
General, even in Mexico.'

''I was about to explain that,' replied the lady. 'An Indian, convicted
of murdering a monk, some three years previously, was condemned to
death. On being taken, according to Mexican usage, on the eve of
execution, to the confessional, he refused the slightest attention to
the exhortations of the priests, affirming that he had written a letter
to the Governor, which would secure his pardon.

''True enough, a party of dragoons arrived during the night, and took
him away. The letter was addressed to General Ramiro, then acting as
Governor, and contained promises of a revelation of the highest
importance.

''When conducted to the General, the Indian proved, by a host of
details, the existence of an opal mine, which he had accidentally
discovered, and in return for the revelation, demanded a free pardon.'

''I understand, perfectly, madame,' I added, seeing Adéle hesitate.

''I feel,' she said, 'a certain reluctance at this portion of my
narrative, for it forces me to lay bare an act which General Ramiro ever
after regretted, and which--' ''Madame, I will spare you the recital;
the fact is, the General gained the Indian's secret, and
then--unfortunately for the Indian--forgot to fulfill his promise.'

''Alas! sir, you have rightly judged. Two hours after the interview, the
Indian suffered the garrote, and General Ramiro became the sole
possessor of this important secret. I will not attempt to justify my
venerable friend. He sincerely lamented his sin, and retribution
followed him with long, sad years of exile and poverty. We often sat
together for hours, he talking of his wonderful mine, and longing for
his recall to his native land. His enemies, however, held a firm hold of
government, and growing weary of delay, he made overtures to this firm
of Brown and Hunt, through their correspondents in New-Orleans. Being
sadly in want of funds, he was even mad enough to give a hint of some
kind, relative to an opal mine, which was to be worked by them on joint
account.

''Before any definite arrangement was perfected, an event occurred which
is indelibly impressed on my memory. The General, after spending a
portion of the afternoon with us, had returned to his home; and about
eleven at night, a messenger begged my immediate attendance on him. He
had been taken suddenly ill; and my husband, who was cognizant of the
paternal affection the General felt for me, urged me to hasten to his
bedside.

''I found him at the point of death; but my presence seemed to call him
back to life. 'My child,' said he, placing in my hands a very voluminous
letter, 'this is all I have to give you. Farewell, dear child, I am
going. Farewell, forever.' In a few moments he was no more. I returned
home a prey to the most intense grief, and for several days did not
think of opening the letter I had received from my dying benefactor. It
contained the most precise details of the situation of the opal mine,
and advice as to the best means of reaching it.

''So you see, Mr. Rideau,' she added, after a slight pause, 'the secret
is known only to three persons--Arthur, Pepito, and myself. What, under
the circumstances, would you do?'

''I see but one course, madame--prompt action; by this means only can
you hope to succeed. You should start without a day's delay.'

''And Pepito?'

''Take him with you.'

''Your advice would be excellent were it practicable; but the state of
Mr. Livermore's health will not permit him to travel.'

''Oh! never fear, Adéle; your presence and your care will keep me up. I
shall gain strength by change of air and scene.'

'Adéle was, probably, about to protest against such a proof of his
attachment, when she was interrupted by a knock at the door.

''It is Pepito,' said I. My conjecture proved correct. Opening the door,
the Mexican appeared, dressed in a new suit, and evidently not a little
proud of his external improvements. He bowed politely to Mr. Livermore
and myself, and then bending before Adéle, took her hand and raised it
with true Mexican grace, to his lips.

''You arrive, Pepito,' said Adéle, 'at the very moment we are talking
about you.'

'Pepito again bowed to the lady.

''Señora,' said he, 'to please you I would die; to obey you I would kill
myself.'

'The exaggerated tone of Mexican politeness which prompted this reply
did not surprise Adéle, but it brought a smile to her lips.

''I trust my wishes will not lead to such disastrous results,' she
replied. 'The fact is, Señor Pride thinks shortly of undertaking another
journey; and as his health is delicate, we are anxious you should bear
us company. I need not add, the zeal you have already shown, will not
fail to secure our interest in your future welfare.'

''Indeed! does his excellency intend starting very soon? May I be
allowed to ask where is he going?'

''To the same place,' said Arthur.

''Oh! oh! I see; the herbs and shells I brought were not enough to
answer his excellency's purpose; you want more of the shells--eh,
Señor?'

'Yes, a few more,' said Arthur, with a deep sigh, for he felt acutely
the ironical tone which the Mexican assumed.

''Well, what would you say, Señor Pride, if, instead of the few I handed
you, I had brought a sack full--you would not feel angry, would you?'

''Scoundrel! you have not dared to thus deceive me?' exclaimed Mr.
Livermore, starting to his feet and advancing toward Pepito, with an air
of menace.

''Unfortunately, I did not; but you have proved to me what a fool I was,
not to suspect their value. You evidently attach immense importance to
them.'

''Control your temper, Arthur,' said Adéle, in English, 'or you will
ruin every thing.'

''After all,' resumed Pepito, 'it is only a chance deferred, not a
chance lost. With a good horse, I can soon make up for lost time.'

'His tone of defiance annihilated the self-possession even of Adéle;
while as for Arthur, he looked the very picture of despair. I,
therefore, resolved to smooth matters over, and if possible, to bring
Pepito to terms. At first he listened to me very unwillingly, and
answered sulkily and laconically; but wearied at last by my pertinacity,
he suggested that it was scarcely fair play for me to assume to sit as
judge in a cause wherein I was an interested party.'

''You are strangely mistaken, Pepito,' I said, in reply; 'I can swear to
you on my honor, and by the holy Virgin of Guadalupe, that I am not in
any way a party to this transaction; and that its success or its failure
will not affect me to the extent of a real.

''Oh! I beg your pardon, Caballero,' muttered Pepito, on whom my
adjuration by the holy Virgin of Guadalupe, had produced an unexpected
effect. 'In that case I will trust to your advice; I rely on your honor.
Now tell me--I know very well these shells are valuable--how much would
a mule-load be worth--two thousand dollars?'

''Yes, and perhaps more.'

''You speak frankly, like a man!' he exclaimed with delight; 'you don't
seek to take advantage of my ignorance; you are a true gentleman. Tell
me where I could sell these things.'

''You could find no one to buy them in this country; they must be sent
either to Europe or New-York.'

''The devil! that upsets my plans. I know no one in Europe, no one in
New-York; besides, I can neither read nor write; I should be cheated on
all hands. Is there no way to settle this business between ourselves?
Listen, now: I will agree not only to accompany Señor Pride as his
guide, but to do all the work when we arrive at our destination, on
condition that he pays me two thousand dollars for every trip we make.
What do you say to my proposition?'

''That it is Señor Pride who must answer you, not I.'


XI.

'Obeying the injunction laid upon him by Adéle, Mr. Livermore affected
to demur at the high price placed by Pepito on his cooperation, but
finally appeared to yield to our joint solicitation.

''Well, then, the bargain is closed,' said Pepito, smiling. 'Now I can
understand why Pedro was so anxious to have me betray my trust. Oh! how
delighted I am to think he will find I have left him in the lurch.'

''Señor Pepito,' said Adéle, with a most winning smile, 'do you happen
to know a family residing some short distance from this city, who, in
consideration of a liberal compensation, would not object to take a lady
to board with them?'

''I do, Señora, at Toluca.'

''How far is it from here?'

''Twelve or fourteen leagues.'

'' Are you intimate enough with the family to take me there to-morrow,
without previously informing them of my intention?'

''Certainly; the lady I allude to is my sister.'

''Then to-morrow morning early, at seven, say. But Señor Pepito, I had
forgotten to warn you that in escorting me you will run a great danger.'

''Oh! I am not afraid of the robbers on the road; they know me well, and
never molest me.'

''It is not of robbers that I stand in dread.'

''Of what, then?'

''Of a man--an enemy who hates me with a deadly hatred, and who, I fear,
seeks my life.'

''A man--_one_ man--and he seeks your life; well, well, I should like
to meet him face to face,' exclaimed Pepito.

''Then, Señor, you promise to protect me at any risk?'

''Protect you! _yes_,' replied he with vehemence, 'I pledge you my
honor, my body, and my soul. I will face the bravest of the brave, to
defend you from injury.'

''From my heart of hearts I thank you, Pepito,' said Mr. Livermore, 'you
shall find me not ungrateful, and in return for the zeal and devotion
you have shown, two hundred dollars shall be yours, on your return with
tidings of madame's safe arrival.'

''I will at once proceed to secure the necessary equipage, Señor.
Señora, rely on my punctuality; at seven, I shall attend you.'

''Are you related to Señor Pride?' asked Pepito, as we descended the
stairs.

''In no way; I have known him only a few days.'

''Well, Caballero, I own I am enchanted with his wife; I never met a
woman of such matchless beauty, such fascinating manners; why, Señor, if
she said to me, 'Pepito, kill your brother,' and I had a brother, which,
luckily, I have not, I think I should kill him.'

'These words were uttered with so much vehemence, that I deemed it
advisable to turn the conversation.

''It seems strange to me,' said I, 'that you should be so intimate with
Pedro, and yet be ever on the very verge of quarreling with him.'

''Well, it is perhaps astonishing to those who do not know us; but
somehow Pedro is my best, in fact, my only friend. We were brought up in
the same village, and are just like brothers. He is a good sort of
fellow, but is abominably vain and self-conceited; then he is deucedly
overbearing. He has no delicacy for his friend's feelings, and, in fact,
has a thousand failings that no one else but I could tolerate. True, we
have now and then a pretty rough time of it. The two gashes on his left
cheek are mementoes of my regard, and I confess I have two ugly marks,
one on my shoulder, the other on my right breast, which I owe to him.
But what galls me most, he is always talking of his six dead ones, while
I can claim only five; but then my five are all men, while two of his
six are women.'

''Horrible!' I exclaimed.

''Yes, it is not a fair count; but then it shows his insatiable vanity.
Vanity is one of the capital sins; it is hard to tell into what meanness
it may not lead a man.' With this sententious denunciation, the Mexican,
who had clearly misinterpreted my indignant ejaculation, raised his hat,
with an air of extreme politeness, and departed.

'When I again entered Mr. Livermore's apartment, the conversation
naturally turned on Pepito.

''Well, what think you of my cavalier?' said Adéle.

''As you are aware, my acquaintance with him is of but recent date; but
one thing speaks greatly in his favor: he has been for several months
attached to Mr. Livermore's person, both as guide and as attendant while
sick, and he has not attempted, as far as I have heard, either to
assassinate or poison him. This I take to be a striking proof of
meritorious moderation.'

''I fear, Adéle, we are acting imprudently,' said Arthur, 'in intrusting
you to the tender mercies of such an unprincipled scoundrel, a man you
have seen but twice.

''Good heavens! dearest Arthur, would it be less imprudent for that man
Percival to find me here? I shudder to think of ever again meeting him;
and moreover, by flattering this Pepito and pretending to place entire
confidence in him, I shall win him to a devoted submission to my every
wish.'

'After a somewhat protracted but by no means important conversation, I
retired, promising to see them in the morning, previous to Adéle's
departure.


XII.

'Shortly before the appointed hour, Pepito arrived, and announced that
all his preparations had been made. His fair charge quickly made her
appearance, dressed in complete Mexican costume. It suited her
remarkably well, and I was not surprised to observe the intense
admiration with which Pepito gazed upon her, for her beauty was truly
fascinating. Notwithstanding my suspicions of the absence of that inner
spiritual beauty which should adorn all female loveliness, I myself
could scarce resist the spell she exercised on my feelings, even in
spite of my judgment.

'Turning to Pepito, with a smile, she inquired gayly, 'Well, Señor, how
do you like my change of costume?'

'The Mexican replied merely by putting his hand on his heart, and bowing
almost reverentially.

'Having given Mr. Livermore an affectionate embrace, she exclaimed, in a
firm, determined voice: 'Let us be off: time is precious.'

'It had been arranged that I should accompany them until they were out
of the city. I therefore left Mr. Livermore alone, and followed the two
travelers. On reaching the street, Adéle took the Mexican's arm; but as
they turned the corner of one of the streets running into the Cathedral
Square, I noticed that she raised her hood and lowered the veil attached
to it. Surprised at this apparently uncalled-for act of caution, I
inquired the reason.

''Do you not see Mr. Percival?' she exclaimed, in Spanish.

''Who is he? Is that the man you said you dreaded? that
melancholy-looking man, who is walking so moodily ahead of us?'
exclaimed Pepito. 'I must have a good look at him.'

''Be cautious, I beseech you; if he sees me, all is lost.'

''Fear nothing, I will be discreet; I only want to get one good look at
him.' So saying, Pepito increased his speed, and was soon walking beside
the unconscious Percival.

'In a few minutes, Pepito turned suddenly down a narrow street, into
which we followed, and there we found a carriage awaiting us.

''Señora, I shall know your enemy among a thousand,' was Pepito's
remark, on again offering Adéle his arm, to assist her in entering the
vehicle.

'We were soon safely out of the city, and taking advantage of the first
returning carriage we met, I returned with it, Adéle thanked me with
much apparent gratitude for my past services, and begged me to devote as
much of my leisure as possible to cheering and advising her dear Arthur.

'On my return, I found him pacing his chamber with intense anxiety, and
evidently prostrated by the excitement he had undergone.

''Well, what news?' said he, almost gasping for breath.

''Adéle is beyond the reach of danger.'

''You met no one?'

''No one.'

''Heaven be praised; and yet I feel a presentiment I shall never see her
again--never.'

''Pshaw! love is always timorous; it delights in raising phantoms.'

''This is no phantom; death is a reality, and, mark my words, on earth
we shall meet no more.'

'Overcome by the violence of his emotions, he buried his face in his
hands, and gave way to an outburst of Intense grief. Yielding, finally,
to my reiterated entreaties, he threw himself upon his bed, and, as I
had some private business to settle, I left him to the care of our
officious hostess, who was only too happy to find one on whom she could
display her self-acquired knowledge of the healing art.

'The next day, Arthur, though still feeble, was able to walk about his
apartments. Toward dusk, a letter arrived from Adéle. She announced her
safe arrival at Toluca, spoke in terms of praise of Pepito's devotion
and attention, and expressed herself agreeably surprised at the
hospitality she had received from his sister. The receipt of this letter
produced a marked improvement in my patient's health. In a postscript,
reference was made to an accident which had happened to poor Pepito, who
was prevented from being the bearer of this letter, by having sprained
his ankle. This would retard his return to the city for a day or two;
nevertheless, she begged her 'dear Arthur' not to be uneasy, as even
this delay, annoying as it was, might prove of advantage, as it would
give him time to recover from the effects of the excitement of the past
few days.

'After Adéle's departure, I again fastened up the door of communication,
and although I saw him at least once every day, to some extent I carried
out my determination of ceasing to be on such intimate terms with Mr.
Livermore. I fell back into my former course of life, and yet I felt a
certain envy of the colossal fortune upon which he had, as it were,
stumbled. Though I sincerely wished my poor sick neighbor might succeed
in his enterprise, I gradually grew restless and morose. The opal-mine
became a painful and distasteful topic of conversation, and as Arthur
invariably adverted to it in some way or other, I by degrees made my
visits of shorter and shorter duration.

'In vain I strove to divert my mind from this one absorbing idea. I
visited the theatres, attended cock-pits and bull-fights, in the hope
that the excitement would afford me relief from the fascinating spell:
but it was useless, I was a haunted man.

'One night, returning from the opera, at about ten o'clock, I was
stopped by a large crowd at the corner of the Calle Plateros. From an
officer near me, I ascertained that a foreigner, believed to be a
heretic, had been stabbed, and was either dead or dying.

'The next morning, in the _Diario de Gobierno_, which Donna Teresa
brought up with my chocolate, I learned that 'at about ten on the
previous night, an American, named Percival, recently arrived from
New-Orleans, was murdered in the Calle Plateros.' His watch and purse
were missing; it was therefore inferred that robbery and not revenge had
prompted the foul deed.

'I instantly summoned Donna Teresa, and requested her to take the paper,
which I marked, to Mr. Livermore; and as soon as my breakfast was over,
I hastened to make my usual call. I found him looking very sombre.

''God is my witness!' he exclaimed, the instant I entered the room,
'that I did not seek this poor unfortunate man's death; but it relieves
Adéle from all fear. Have you heard any details of the event?'

''I have not; but assassination is not so rare here that you need be
under any fear about it. No suspicion can possibly attach to you.'

''I have no fear, for I know my own innocence; but it is inexplicable to
me. Poor Percival! he could have had no enemy in the city.'

''Doubtless he was murdered for his money and his watch; but have you
heard from Toluca?'

''Yes, and Adéle informs me that I may expect Pepito in the course of
the day. So I shall not delay my departure beyond to-morrow, perhaps
to-night. But there is some one at the door; doubtless it is Pepito.'

'Mr. Livermore opened the door; but instead of Pepito it was his friend,
Pedro, who entered.

''My presence surprises you, Caballero,' said Pedro, drawing a long
sigh; 'but alas! I have bad news.'

'What! bad news? speak, speak, quick!' exclaimed Arthur, turning
deadly pale.

'Pedro, before deigning to answer, drew forth a very soiled rag, which
served him as a handkerchief, and proceeded to rub his eyes with no
little vigor, a pantomime which was intended no doubt to convey the idea
of tears having dimmed his eyes.

''Alas! Excellency,' said he at length, in a lugubrious tone; 'poor
Pepito is in sad trouble.'

''Have you been fighting again? Have you killed him?' I exclaimed.

''Killed him? _I_ kill him!' he repeated indignantly; 'how can you
imagine such an outrage, Caballero? Kill my best friend! No, Señor; but
poor Pepito has been pressed into a military company. To-morrow, they
will uniform him and march him off to some frontier regiment.'

''Is there no way of buying him off?' inquired Arthur.

''Nothing more easy, Caballero. You have simply to write to the General
who commands the department, and state that Pepito is attached to your
person, as a personal attendant, and that will suffice to set him at
liberty. They never press people in service.'

'Mr. Livermore lost no time in following Pedro's advice. As soon as the
letter was handed to him, the latter waved it in triumph over his head,
and rushed forth to effect the deliverance of his dear compadre, Pepito.

'The impressment of Pepito surprised me, for I had not heard of their
taking any body who had reached the dignity of a pair of inexpressibles,
and the luxury of a pair of shoes. The Indians in the neighborhood of
the capital, besotted by drink and misery, almost naked, and living or
rather burrowing in caves, were usually the only victims of the
recruiting sergeant. However, as the letter given by Arthur to Pedro
could be of no use to the latter, I saw no reasonable ground to doubt
the story.

'As it seemed probable that Mr. Livermore would shortly leave the city,
I accepted his invitation, and promised to return and dine with him at
five o'clock, adding that I hoped then to meet Pepito, and receive from
him a full account of his adventures since we had parted.


XIII.

'About three o'clock, I returned home. I had ensconced myself, book in
hand, in my rocking-chair, when groans which seemed to proceed from Mr.
Livermore's room, attracted my attention. I listened at the door, and my
fears were realized. The groans were assuredly uttered by my neighbor. I
rushed into his room, and as I crossed toward his bed, a fearful
spectacle met my gaze.

'Lying across the bed, his face livid, every muscle in motion, a prey to
the most violent convulsions, I saw my unfortunate fellow-countryman. No
sooner, however, did the noise of my entrance fall upon his ear, than he
summoned strength enough to rise, and seizing a pistol that was beside
him, pointed it at me.

''Ah! it is you?' said he, lowering his weapon, and falling back, 'you
have arrived just in time to see me die.'

''Take courage, my friend; for heaven's sake, be of good cheer. It is
only one of your usual attacks, and will pass off; there is no danger.'

''No danger!' repeated the unfortunate sufferer, biting the sheet and
striving to stifle the cry which agony drew from him; 'no danger? why, I
am poisoned!'

''Poisoned! you must be mad,' I exclaimed: but without loss of time, I
summoned Donna Lopez, and sent instantly for a doctor, who fortunately
lived within a few doors of our house.

'Once more alone with Arthur, I inquired, during a momentary cessation
of his sufferings:

''What reason have you for thinking you are poisoned?'

''I am _sure_ of it,' he replied. 'About an hour since, I received a
visit from the Mexican General who is superintendent of the recruiting
service. He desired me to give him certain explanations relative to
Pepito, which, of course, I did. It was very warm, and he asked for a
glass of iced water. I offered him some claret to mix with it, and, at
his request, joined him in the drink. But a few moments elapsed after I
had taken my draught, when I felt a weakness steal over me; my eyelids
grew heavy, my knees gave way, and an intolerable heat burned my veins.
I was compelled to sit down upon my bed. At that moment, the General
changed his tone, and imperiously demanded the key of my desk. 'I do not
want your money,' he said, 'but I must have the papers relative to the
opal-mine.' I can not express the effect these words produced upon me.
'To deal frankly with you,' continued the General, 'you are poisoned,
and the Indian poison that is now coursing through your veins has no
antidote. Ten minutes, and your strength will begin to fail; two hours,
and your earthly career will end. If you do not at once give me your
keys, I shall force the lock.' These words, which he doubtless thought
would crush me, filled me with boundless rage, and for a few moments
revived my sinking energies. I started to my feet, and seized my
revolver.'

'''The devil! it seems the dose was not strong enough,' exclaimed my
assassin, taking flight; 'but I will return, be sure of that.''

'The doctor soon arrived. At the first glance at the patient, he knit
his brow, and his countenance became overcast.

''How long have you been ill?' he inquired.

''I was poisoned, about an hour since.'

''Ah! you know you have been poisoned?'

''Yes, doctor, and also the man who poisoned me. Tell me, I beseech you,
how long I have to live? Speak! you need have no fear; I am prepared for
the worst.'

'The doctor hesitated, and then said: 'I fear, my dear sir, another hour
is all you can hope for.'

''I thank you, doctor, for your frankness. No antidote, then, can save
me?'

''None. The poison you have taken, which the Indians call '_Leche de
palo_,' is deadly. Your present sufferings will soon cease, and
gradually you will sink, peacefully and painlessly, into the sleep of
death.'

''Send instantly, then, for a magistrate. I at least will be revenged on
my murderer,' said Arthur, 'let me at once make my statement.'

''You will only be wasting your dying moments,' interposed the doctor;
'day after day, I am called upon to witness the ravages of this
insidious poison, but never yet has the scaffold punished the assassin.
My dear friend, think not of your murderer; eternity is opening to
receive you; in its solemn presence, mere human vengeance shrinks into
utter nothingness.'

''Doctor, you speak wisely as well as kindly. Poor Adéle,' murmured
Arthur, and his eyes closed, though his lips still moved.

'After the doctor's departure, I sent to the American Legation, urgently
requesting some official to return with my messenger. I took a chair
beside the bed, while Donna Teresa knelt in the adjoining room, and
prayed and sobbed with much fervor. In a short while, Arthur rallied
from the stupor into which he had fallen. His features became calm, his
breathing regular though feeble, and the tranquil, almost happy,
expression of his eye made me for a time half doubt the fearful
prediction of the physician.

''Do you feel better?' I inquired.

''Much much; I am in no pain.'

''Let us hope, then, for the best. I will send for another doctor.'

''No, that would be useless. My lower extremities are swelling, and I
can feel the hand of death clutching at my vitals. The doctor was
right; death is not racking me with torture, it is gently embracing me.
But I want your assistance; sit down.'

'I resumed my seat, and Arthur continued, in a feeble tone, but
perfectly calm:

''How mean a thing is life! Good God! so mean, that at this moment I can
not explain to my own soul why man should cling to it. What do we meet
during our short career? Deceit, hypocrisy, and treachery. Ah! death
reveals the hollowness of life.'

''My dear friend, you are exhausting yourself. Did you not say you wanted
my assistance? Rely on my zeal, my fidelity, and my discretion.'

''Rely on you! How can I tell? You are only a man; perhaps avaricious and
treacherous as your fellow-mortals. No matter; though you should
forswear yourself; I, at least, will do what is right. Feel beneath my
pillow, there is a key; take it, open my desk. In the small drawer on
the left is a package of letters. Have you them? Good. Next to that
there is a sealed letter. Now, read aloud the direction on each.'

''Papers to be burnt after my death,' said I, obeying his injunction.

''Well, what do you intend doing with them?'

''Can you for one moment doubt?' I replied.

'What if I should tell you they contain the entire secret of my
opal-mine!'

'I made no reply; but struck a match against the wall, and setting them
on fire, resumed my seat.

''I could hardly have believed it; but you still have Pepito; from him
you hope to learn the secret,' said the dying man.

''Shall I bind myself by an oath not to seek him?'

''No; I leave you at liberty. Act as you think best. I burned those
papers because they were bought with blood, for no other reason.'

''Bought with blood?' I exclaimed.

''Yes; ten months ago, General Ramiro died at New-Orleans, by
poison--poison administered by Adéle. Do you wonder life has lost all
charm for me? Oh! life is the bitterness, not death.'

'His voice momently grew fainter. I leaned closer, to catch his fading
tones, till he ceased to speak. I gazed intently at his glassy eyes; the
lids closed for a moment, then partially opened, the jaw fell, and he
was no more.'

'I know not how long I had stood beside his lifeless body, pondering
over the uncertainty of life, and the mystery of death, and the
conflicting presentiments he had uttered: that he should live to achieve
success, yet die without again seeing her who had lured him to his
wretched end, when the door of the chamber suddenly opened, and five or
six dragoons entered, accompanied by an officer in undress uniform.

''What! you here, General?' I exclaimed.

''Why not?' was the cool reply, 'I am in search of a deserter named
Pepito, who, I was informed, was concealed here. I see he is not here;
but doubtless by searching among the papers contained in this desk, I
shall find some clue to him.'

''Your search, General, will be fruitless. The unfortunate young man
whose corpse lies here, instructed me, before he expired, to burn all
the papers in his possession, and I have obeyed his injunctions.'

''Curses on his infernal obstinacy!' exclaimed General Valiente, 'but
look you, Señor, I tell you I will search this desk.'

''By what right?'

''By the right of might.'

'Taking my stand in front of the desk, I was protesting against the
lawless act of violence, when the Secretary of the American Legation
fortunately arrived. Finding his plans defeated, Valiente, with
commendable prudence, decided on beating a retreat, and with his
followers, took rather an abrupt departure.

'The ordinary formalities of attaching the seals of the Legation having
been performed, and having secured a faithful person to take charge of
the remains of the unfortunate Livermore, I sallied forth to make
arrangements to leave, as soon as possible, for Toluca.

The first person I met was Pedro. It is impossible to express the horror
I felt of this villain. My hand was on my weapon before he had reached
my side.

''Have you heard the news, Caballero?' said he, in a low, mysterious
tone.

''No.'

''I was not fortunate enough to release Pepito; when I arrived with his
master's letter, he had already escaped from the barracks.'

''Tell me frankly, Pedro, did not General Valiente send you, this
morning, for that letter?'

''Why? What makes you ask?' inquired Pedro, quite disconcerted by the
abruptness of my question.

''Because Señor Pride is dead, and General Valiente has twice been to
his rooms.'

''Dead! Señor Pride dead!' echoed Pedro, in unfeigned astonishment.
'Caballero, I must be off.' And he instantly turned away, and was soon
lost to my sight.

'Before another hour had passed I was on horseback and on the way to
Toluca. The road was infested by gangs of robbers, but my pockets were
empty, and my brain was full, so I gave those gentry not even a passing
thought. The evening was fast closing in, and as the shadows gathered
round me, the tragic event which I had just witnessed gradually receded
from my mind. As I journeyed on, it grew more and more distant, until at
last it faded into a dim memory of the past; and through the long miles
of my lonely ride there went before me the glorious vision of an
opal-mine of untold wealth--an opal-mine without an owner--a countless
fortune, untold riches, waiting to fall into my hands.


XIV.

'It was past midnight when I reached Toluca. As it was too late to call
on Adéle, I alighted at a tavern, where I passed the night, pacing my
chamber, and not closing my eyes. Soon after daybreak I sought the house
of Pepito's sister; and notwithstanding the earliness of the hour, found
Mrs. Percival standing at one of the windows.

''You here, Mr. Rideau!' she exclaimed, with surprise, on seeing me.
'How did you find my retreat?'

''I was told of it by Mr. Livermore.'

''Ah! 'tis he who sent you.'

''Alas! not so, madame.'

''Alas!--you say, alas! What do you mean? Have you ill news?'

''I have, indeed, madame.'

''Arthur is dead!' she cried. 'I know he is dead! But, tell me, I
entreat you, tell me all. How--when did this happen?'

'I gave her a detailed account of Arthur's death, to which she listened
with rapt attention.

''This opal-mine, like the Golden Fleece, brings misfortune to all who
seek it,' she said, when I had finished, 'Poor Arthur! I loved him
fondly, devotedly; and his image will live forever in my heart. But at
such a crisis it is worse than folly--it is madness to waste time by
giving way to grief. Reason teaches us to bow before the inevitable. It
is idle to repine at the decrees of Fate. I am alone, now--alone,
without a friend or a protector. No matter; I have a stout heart, and
the mercy of Providence is above all. But to business: After the death
of Mr. Livermore, what became of the papers?'

''I burned them before his death, in obedience to his injunctions.'

''You burned them! I will not believe it!' she exclaimed, in a loud
voice, and with a penetrating glance.

'I felt the blood rush to my face; she noticed my anger, and at once
added, in milder tone:

''Pardon me! pardon me! I knew not what I said; I am well-nigh crazy; I
do believe you, I do indeed; forgive me, and think of the despair to
which the loss of those papers reduces me. I have no copy, and with them
my secret perishes. I am ruined--ruined irretrievably. The mine is
known now only to Pepito!'

''Then, madame, on him you must hereafter rely.'

''Explain to me, pray, how could Arthur, on his dying-bed, have been
guilty of so cruel, so mean an act? How could he despoil the woman who
had trusted him, and leave her not only forlorn, but destitute?'

'This question embarrassed me, and I was conning an answer, when Adéle
resumed:

''Let no false delicacy restrain you; speak out, Mr. Rideau; adversity
has taught me endurance, if not courage.'

''Since, madame, you absolutely extort it from me, I must admit that a
few moments before he expired, Mr. Livermore--'

''Speak out, plainly; I beg of you, conceal nothing.'

''Well, madame, the words he used were: 'I destroy these papers because
they were bought with blood. Ten months ago General Ramiro died, at
New-Orleans, by poison--poison administered by Adéle!''

''Poor Arthur! what agony he must have suffered--he must have been
delirious. O Arthur! why was I not beside you? Poor Arthur!' As she
uttered these words, she raised her streaming eyes to heaven; her lips
moved as if in prayer, and a deadly pallor overspread her countenance.

'In a short time her fortitude returned, and turning toward me, she
said, in a voice which betrayed no emotion:

''Let us turn from the past and look at the present. Difficulties
surround and threaten to overwhelm me. Before I can determine how they
are to be met, I have a proposition to make to you, Mr. Rideau, to which
I must have an immediate answer. Will you become my partner in this
business?'

''Have you enough confidence in me?'

''I have; and for this reason: you have not sought to meddle in this
matter, but from the outset have striven to shun it; you have not
obtruded yourself, but been drawn into it in spite of your wishes. Do
you accept my proposition? Yes, or no?'

''I accept,' I replied, moderating my joyful feelings as well as I
possibly could.

''Such being your decision, what course do you advise?'

''Immediate action, for minutes are precious.'

''I foresee we shall agree perfectly. To-day my host purposes starting
for the capital; I shall accompany him. If you return without delay, the
remainder of the day will suffice to prepare for the journey, and
to-morrow we will start for the opal-mine.'

''But where shall I meet you, madame?'

''At the Hotel de las Diligencias.'

''And where shall I find Pepito?'

''At a tavern near the Barrier del Nino Perdido. But you will not, if
you please, inform him of my address. For--well, it is an unpleasant
matter to mention--but this Pepito seems to be--'

''Desperately in love with you.'

''I hardly meant that--but his attentions are too oppressive to be quite
agreeable.'

''I fully understand you, madame. May I inquire if you have had any
tidings of Mr. Percival?'

''Do not, I beg, Mr. Rideau, allude to that painful topic--all feelings
of resentment are hushed in the grave.'

''What! have you heard of his assassination?'

'' Yes; the news reached me yesterday; I read it in the newspaper.'

'I shortly afterward took my leave--the last words of my new copartner
being:

''At five, then, at the Hotel de las Diligencias. Be sure you are
punctual.'

'Arrived in Mexico, my first thought was to seek for Pepito. Following
the directions given me by Mrs. Percival, I soon found him; and
repeating to him a portion of the interview I had with the lady, I
finished by proposing to take the place of Mr. Livermore in the bargain
that had been made between them.

''I ask nothing better,' was the reply. 'Here are my terms--two thousand
dollars the very day we return to Mexico, and I to hold the shells till
you hand over the money. That is fair, is it not?'

''Quite. When shall I see you again?'

''At eight to-night, on the Cathedral steps.'

'Hastening home, I devoted the rest of the day to preparing for my
journey, and a little before five started for the Hotel de las
Diligencias. Mrs. Percival had not yet arrived. Twice again I called,
but still in vain. The evening gradually wore away, and at eight I paced
the Cathedral Square, and for an hour loitered around the steps; but
Pepito, also, failed to keep the rendezvous.

'As the next day was Sunday, I felt assured the most likely place to
find Pepito, would be the bull-ring. On reaching it, I found a crowd
assembled near one of the entrances, and pushing my way through, I
beheld Pepito lying on the ground weltering in his blood. I rushed to
him, and kneeling down, raised him in my arms.

''Ah! it is you, Señor,' said he, in a feeble tone. 'This is Pedro's
work, but it was his last; for I have killed the traitor.'

''Pepito, tell me, for Heaven's sake, where did you find the shells?'I
inquired; for avarice and cupidity reigned, I am ashamed to own,
paramount within my breast.

''Those shells? In the plains of Chiapa--three days' journey from the
sea--near the little river--in a brook--Ah! glory to God! here comes a
priest!'

'At this moment a fat Franciscan friar pressed through the crowd.

''Absolution, padre! absolution!' cried Pepito, to whom the sight of the
friar brought back new life.

''Patience, my son, patience! I am very late--very late--and I must not
be detained. Wait a little--and after the sports of the day are over, I
will return.'

''But, padre, I shall be dead!'

''Well, then, be quick!'

''I have only two sins on my conscience: I have not attended mass for
three weeks.'

''That is sad! very sad! Well, what next?'

''Three days ago I stabbed an Inglez--a heretic.'

''Well, my dear son, your sins are venial sins; I absolve you.'

''Pepito, how did that dagger come into your hands?' I exclaimed, for I
was astonished to see in his belt the dagger I had lost on the night
when Adéle took refuge in my room.

''From my dear--Adéle.'

''And the _Inglez_--the heretic you stabbed--who was he?'

''Her husband--she wished it--promised to be mine--and I obeyed. But,
stand back--I want air--air.'

'I turned away my head, sickened at the fearful revelation. When I again
looked, my eyes fell on a corpse. I snatched the dagger, which was still
wet with Pedro's blood, from his belt, and hurried almost frantic to the
Hotel de las Diligencias. Mrs. Percival had been waiting for me about
two hours.

'The violent emotions which raged within me must have been portrayed on
my countenance, for on my entering the apartment, she started back in
dismay.

''Mrs. Percival,' said I, striving to master the repulsive feeling which
the mere sight of her excited, 'Pepito has, within the past hour, been
murdered.'

''Murdered!' she repeated. 'And the secret--'

''Is dead--for _you_--forever! Madame, that infernal mine has for years
been driving you to the blackest crime! It is time that the bait fell
from the devil's hook.'

''What do you mean by this altered tone?'

''I mean, madame, that, thanks to Heaven, your crimes have been revealed
to me. Shall I enumerate the list of your victims--General Ramiro,
Arthur Livermore, Edward Percival, your husband, and last of all,
Pepito? Your path, since you have sought this mine, is marked at every
step by treachery and crime. The boldest heart must shudder to look at
the ghastly procession led on by the General you poisoned.'

'''Tis false! God help me, 'tis false!'

''False--_is_ it false--that three days since your husband was murdered
at your instigation, by Pepito? Stay--hear me! Look at this dagger! did
you not steal it from my room and give it to Pepito to perpetrate the
crime? Madame, pause, ere you dare to swear it is false.'

'She trembled, and falling on her knees, exclaimed:

''My God! my God! forgive me!'

''It is not, madame, for erring man to limit the infinite mercy of
Heaven; but for such crimes as yours there must be a fearful
retribution. Farewell; may you go and sin no more.'

'I left the room, but in a few moments heard a piercing shriek; and
rushing back, found the wretched woman extended on the floor in the
agonies of death. She had picked up the dagger which I had thrown away,
and stabbed herself to the heart.

       *       *       *       *       *

'And the opal-mine?'

'I meant, at first, to leave the Nibelungen Hoard alone; but time tames
all things except the love of gold. I went there; it was rich, but not
inexhaustible. You have all had proof that I am neither poor nor
parsimonious; but neither am I extravagant. I have all that I want--a
cottage at Newport, a neat house in the Rue de la Paix, stocks, and real
estate. The opal-mine started me; I have kept myself going very well
ever since.

'Gentlemen, my tale is ended. I am sorry it has proved so long, and am
grateful to you all for the attentive hearing you have given me. I have
been constantly looking round expecting to detect some one of you
falling into a gentle slumber; I therefore feel really flattered at
finding you all still awake.'

'But what became of the child that Percival was seeking?' shouted one.

'Did you ever find out any thing about Adéle's previous history?' asked
another.

'And look here, Rideau, what did you--?'

'Gentlemen, take pity on me; while I have been spinning this long yarn,
you have been smoking and imbibing; I am very willing to join you in
both; but to-night I am tired out. The next time we meet, I shall be
delighted to tell you what particulars I learned on my return to New
Orleans, relative to Adéle and her poor orphan child; but no more
to-night.'




_THE RED, WHITE, AND BLUE._

  Red was the lightning's flashing,
    And down through the driving rain,
  We saw the red eyes dashing
    Of the merciless midnight train;
  Soon many crowded together,
    Under the lamp's red glow,
  But I saw one figure only--
    Ah! why did I tremble so?
  The eyes that gazed in the darkness
    After the midnight train,
  Are red with watching and weeping,
    For it brings none back again.
  Clouds hang in the west like banners,
    Red banners of war unfurled,
  And the prairie sod is crimson
    With the best blood of the world.

  White faces are pressed to the window,
    Watching the sun go down,
  Looking out to the coming darkness,
    That covers the noisy town.
  White are the hands, too, and quiet,
    Over the pulseless breast;
  No more will the vision of parting
    Disturb the white sleeper's rest.
  Over sleeper, and grave, and tombstone,
    Like a pitying mantle spread,
  The snow comes down in the night-time,
    With a shy and noiseless tread.

  Blue smoke rolls away on the north-wind,
    Blue skies grow dusk in the din,
  Blue waters look dark with the shadow
    That gathers the world within.
  Rigid and blue are the fingers
    That clutch at the fading sky;
  Blue lips in their agony mutter:
    'O God! let this cup pass by.'
  Blue eyes grow weary with watching;
    Strong hands with waiting to do;
  While brave hearts echo the watchword:
    'Hurrah! for the Red, White, and Blue.'




_MACCARONI AND CANVAS._

IV.

THE FAIR AT GROTTO FERRATA.

No matter how well and hearty you may be, if you are in Rome, in summer,
when the _scirócco_ blows, you will feel as if convalescent from some
debilitating fever; in winter, however, this gentle-breathing south-east
wind will act more mildly; it will woo you to the country, induce you to
sit down in a shady place, smoke, and 'muse.' That incarnate essence of
enterprise, business, industry, economy, sharpness, shrewdness, and
keenness--that Prometheus whose liver was torn by the vulture of cent
per cent--eternally tossing, restless DOOLITTLE, was one day seen
asleep, during bank hours, on a seat in the Villa Madama. The _scirócco_
blew that day: Doolittle fell.

At breakfast, one morning in the latter part of the month of March,
Caper proposed to Roejean and another artist named Bagswell, to attend
the fair held that day at Grotto Ferrata.

'What will you find there?' asked Roejean.

'Find?--I remember, in the _Bohemian Girl_, a song that will answer
you,' replied Caper; 'the words were composed by the theatrical poet
Bunn':

  'Rank, in its halls, may not find
  The calm of a happy mind;
      So repair
      To the Fair,
  And they may be met with there.'

'Unsatisfactory, both the grammar and the sentiment,' said Bagswell; 'it
won't work; it's all wrong. In the first place, rank, in its hauls,
_may_ find the calm of a happy mind: for instance, the captain of a
herring-smack may find the calm of a very happy mind in his hauls of No.
1 Digbys; more joy even than the fair could afford him. Let us go!'

Bagswell was a 'funny' Englishman.

They went--taking the railroad. Dashing out of the station, the
locomotive carried them, in half an hour, to the station at Frascati,
whirling them across the Campagna, past long lines of ruined or
half-ruined and repaired aqueducts; past Roman tombs; past _Roma
Vecchia_, the name given to the ruins of an immense villa; landing them
at the first slope of the mountains, covered at their base with
vineyards, olive and fruit-trees, and corn-fields, while high over them
gleamed glistening white snow-peaks.

The walk from Frascati to the Grotto, about three miles, was beautiful,
winding over hills through a fine wood of huge old elms and plane-trees.
In the warm sun-light, the butterflies were flitting, while the
road-side was purple with violets, and white and blue with little
flowers. From time to time, our three artists had glimpses of the
Campagna, rolling away like the ocean, to dash on Rome, crowned by St.
Peter's; the dome of which church towers above the surrounding country,
so that it can be seen, far and wide, for thirty miles or more. The road
was alive with walkers and riders; here a dashing, open carriage, filled
with rosy English; there a _contadino_, donkey-back, dressed in
holiday-suit, with short-clothes of blue woolen, a scarlet waistcoat,
his coarse blue-cloth jacket worn on one shoulder, and in his brown,
conical-shaped hat, a large carnation-pink. Then came more of the
country-people, almost always called _villani_, (hence our word,
villains!) These poor villains had sacks on their backs, or were
carrying in their hands--if women, on their heads--loads of bacon, sides
of bacon, flitches of bacon, hams, loaves of bread, cheese, and very
loud-smelling _mortadella_; which they had bought and were bringing away
from the fair.

'There was one task,' said Roejean, 'that Hercules declined, and that
was eating that vile _mortadella_. He was a strong man; but that was
stronger. Wait a moment, till I fill a pipe with caporal, and have a
smoke; for if I meet another man with that delicacy, I shall have to
give up the Grotto--unless I have a pipe under my nose, as
counter-irritant.'

The three artists tramped along gayly, until they approached the town,
when they assumed the proud, disdainful mood, assuring spectators that
they who wear it are of gentle blood, and are tired of life and weary of
traveling around with pockets filled with gold. They only looked coldly
at the pens filled with cattle for sale; long-horned, mouse-colored oxen
were there; groups of patient donkeys, or the rough-maned,
shaggy-fetlocked, bright-eyed small horses of the Campagna; countless
pigs, many goats; while above all, the loud-singing jackasses were
performing at the top of their lungs. Here were knots of country-people,
buying provisions or clothing; there were groups of carriages from Rome,
which had rolled out the wealthy _forestieri_ or strangers, drawn up by
the way-side, in the midst of all sorts and kinds of hucksters. The road
leading to the church, shaded by trees, was crowded with country-people,
in picturesque costumes, busily engaged in buying and selling hams,
bacon, bacon and hams, and a few more hams. Here and there, a
cheese-stand languished, for pork flourished. Now a copper-smith exposed
his wares, chief among which were the graceful-shaped _conche_ or
water-vessels, the same you see so carefully poised on the heads of so
many black-eyed Italian girls, going to or coming from so many
picturesque fountains, in--paintings, and all wearing such brilliant
costumes, as you find at--Gigi's costume-class. Then came an ironmonger,
whose wares were all made by hand, even the smallest nails; for
machinery, as yet, is in its first infancy around Rome. At this stand,
Roejean stopped to purchase a pallet-knife; not one of the regular,
artist-made tools, but a thin, pliable piece of steel, without handle,
which experience taught him was well adapted to his work. As usual, the
iron-man asked twice as much as he intended to take, and after a sharp
bargain, Roejean conquered. Then they came to a stand where there were
piles of coarse crockery, and some of a better kind, of classical shape.

Caper particularly admired a beautiful white jug, intended for a
water-pitcher, and holding about two gallons. After asking its price, he
offered a quarter of the money for it; to Bagswell's horror, the
crockery-man took it, and Caper, passing his arm through the handle, was
proceeding up the road, when Bagswell energetically asked him what he
was going to do with it.

'Enter Rome with it, like Titus with the _spolia opima_,' replied Caper.

'Oh! I say, now,' said the former, who was an Englishman and an
historical painter; 'you aren't going to trot all over the fair with
that old crockery on your arm. Why, God bless me, they'll swear we are
drunk. There comes the Duchess of Brodneck; what the deuce will she
say?'

'Say?' said Caper, 'why, I'll go and ask her; this is not court-day.'

Without another word, with water-pitcher on arm, he walked toward the
Duchess. Saluting her with marked politeness, he said:

'A countryman of yours, madame, has objected to my carrying this _objet
de fantaisie_, assuring me that it would occasion remarks from the
Duchess of Brodneck. May I have the good fortune to know what she says
of it?'

'She says,' replied the lady, smiling and speaking slowly and quietly;
'that a young man who has independence enough to carry it, has
confidence enough to--fill it.' She bowed, and passed on, Caper politely
raising his hat, in acknowledgment of the well-rounded sentence. When he
returned to Bagswell, he found the historical painter with eyes the size
of grape-shot, at the sublime impudence of the man. He told him what
she had said.

'Upon my honor, you Americans have a face of brass; to address a duchess
you don't know, and ask her a question like that!'

'That's nothing,' said Caper, 'a little experience has taught me that
the higher you fly, in England, the nearer you approach true politeness
and courtesy. Believe me, I should never have asked that question of any
Englishwoman whose social position did not assure me she was
cosmopolitan.'

'Come,' said Bagswell, 'come, after such an adventure, if there is one
drop of any thing fit to drink in this town, we'll all go and get
lushy.'

They went. They found a door over which hung a green branch. Good wine
needs no bush, therefore Italian wine-shops hang it out; for the wine
there is not over good. But as luck was with our three artists, in the
shop over the door of which hung the green bough, they found that the
_padrone_ was an old acquaintance of Roejean; he had married and moved
to Grotto Ferrata. He had a barrel of Frascati wine, which was bright,
sparkling, sweet, and not watered. This the _padrone_ tapped in honor of
his guests, and at their urgent request, sat down and helped empty a
couple of bottles. Moreover, he told them that as the town was
overcrowded, they would find it difficult to get a good dinner, unless
they would come and dine with him, at his private table, and be his
guests; which invitation Roejean accepted, to the tavern-keeper's great
joy, promising to be back at the appointed time.

Our trio then sauntered forth to see the fair. Wandering among the
crowded booths, they came suddenly on a collection of _Zingare_, looking
like their Spanish cousins, the _Gitañas_. Wild black eyes, coarse black
locks of hair, brown as Indians, small hands, small feet--the Gipsies,
children of the storm--my Rommani pals, what are you doing here? Only
one woman among them was noticeable. Her face was startlingly handsome,
with an aquiline nose, thin nostrils, beautifully-arched eyebrows, and
eyes like an eagle. She was tall, straight, with exquisitely-rounded
figure, and the full drapery of white around her bosom fell from the
shoulders in large hanging sleeves; over her head was thrown a crimson
and green shawl, folded like the _pane_ of the _ciociare_, and setting
off her raven-black hair and rich red and swarthy complexion.

Roejean stood entranced, and Caper, noticing his rapt air, forbore
breaking silence; while the gipsy, who knew that she was the admiration
of the _forestieri_, stood immovable as a statue, looking steadily at
them, without changing a feature.

'_Piu bellisima che la madonna!_' said Roejean, loud enough for her to
hear. Then turning to Caper, 'Let's _andiammo_,' (travel,) said he,
'that woman's face will haunt me for a month. I've seen it before; yes,
seen her shut up in the Vatican, immortal on an old Etruscan vase.
Egypt, Etruria, the Saracen hordes who once overrun all this Southern
Italy, I find, every hour, among live people, some trace of you all; but
of the old Roman, nothing!'

'You find the old Roman cropping out in these church processions,
festivals, shrines, and superstitions, don't you?' asked Caper.

'No! something of those who made the seal, nothing of the impression on
the wax remains for me. Before Rome was, the great East was, and shall
be. The Germans are right to call the East the Morning-Land; thence came
light.... The longer you live along the wave-washed shore of the
Mediterranean, the more you will see what a deep hold the East once had
on the people of the coast. The Romans, after all, were only opulent
tradesmen, who could buy luxuries without having the education to
appreciate them. So utterly did they ignore the Etruscans, who made them
what they were, that you seek in vain to find in Roman history any thing
but the barest outline of the origin of a people so graceful and
refined that the Roman citizen was a boot-black in comparison to one of
them. The Saracens flashed light and life, in later days, once more into
the Roman leaven. What a dirty, filthy page the whole Gothic middle-age
is at best! It lies like a huge body struck with apoplexy, and only
restored to its sensual life by the sharp lancet, bringing blood, of
these same infidels, these stinging Saracens. Go into the mountains back
of us, hunt up the costumes that still remain, and see where they all
come from--the East. Look at the crescent earrings and graceful twisted
gold-work, from--the East. All the commonest household ware, the
agricultural implements, the manner of cooking their food, and all that
is picturesque in life and religion--all from the East.'

'Strikes me,' quoth Caper, 'that this question of food touches my
weakest point; therefore, let us go and dine, and continue the lecture
at a more un-hungry period. But where is Bagswell?'

'He is seeking adventures, of course.'

'Oh! yes, I sec him down there among the billy-goats; let's go and pick
him up, and then for mine host of the Green Bough.'

Having found Bagswell, our trio at once marched to the Green Bough,
which they saw was filled to overflowing with country-people, eating and
drinking, sitting on rough benches, and stowing away food and wine as if
in expectation of being very soon shipwrecked on a desert island, where
there would be nothing but hard-shell clams and lemons to eat. The
landlord at once took the trio up-stairs, where, at a large table, were
half-a-dozen of his friends, all of the cleanly order of country-people,
stout, and having a well-to-do look that deprecated any thing like
famine. A young lady of twenty and two hundred, as Caper summed up her
age and weight, was evidently the cynosure of all eyes; two other
good-natured women, of a few more years and a very little less weight,
and three men, made up the table. Any amount of compliments, as usual,
passed between the first six and the last three comers, prefacing every
thing with desires that they would act without ceremony; but Caper and
Roejean were on a high horse, and they fairly pumped the spring of
Italian compliments so dry, that Bagswell could only make a squeaking
noise when he tried the handle. This verbifuge of our three artists put
their host into an ecstasy of delight, and he circulated all round,
rubbing his hands and telling his six friends that his three friends
were _milordi_, in very audible whispers, _milordi_ of the most genial,
courtly, polite, complimentary, cosmopolitan, and exquisite description.

After all this, down sat our trio, and for the sake of future ages which
will live on steam-bread, electrical beef, and magnetic fish, let us
give them the bill of fare set before them:

ALL THE WINE THEY COULD DRINK.

Maccaroni (_fettucia_) a la Milanese--dish two feet in diameter, one
foot and a half high.

Mutton-chops, with tomato-sauce, (_pomo d'oro._)

Stewed celery, with Parmesan cheese.

Stewed chickens.

Mutton-chops, bird-fashion, (_Uccélli di Castrato._ They are made of
pieces of mutton rolled into a shape like a bird, and cooked, several at
a time, on a wooden spit. They are the _kibaubs_ of the East.)

Baked pie of cocks' combs and giblets.

Roasted pig, a twelve-pounder.

Roast squashes, stuffed with minced veal.

Apples, oranges, figs, and _finocchio_.

_Crostata di visciola_, or wild-cherry pie, served on an iron plate the
size of a Roman warrior's shield; the dish evidently having been one
formerly.

MORE WINE!

The stout young lady rejoicing in the name of Angelucia, or large angel,
was fascinated by Roejean's conversational powers and Caper's
attentions; the rest of the company, perfectly at ease on finding out
that the _milordi_ were not French--Roejean turning American to better
please them--and that they were moreover full of fun, talked and laughed
as if they were brother Italians. A jollier dinner Caper acknowledged he
had never known. One of the Italians was farmer-general for one of the
Roman princes; he was a man of broad views, and having traveled to Paris
and London, came home with ultra-liberal sentiments, and to Bagswell's
astonishment, spoke his mind so clearly on the Roman rulers, that our
Englishman's eyes were slightly opened at the by no means complimentary
expressions used toward the wire-workers of the Papal government. One
Italy, and Rome its capital, was the only platform our princely farmer
would take, and he was willing to stake his fortune, a cool one hundred
thousand scudi, on regenerated Italy.

Conversation then fell on the fair; and one of the Italians told several
stories which were broad enough to have shoved the generality of English
and American ladies out of the window of the room. But Angelucia and the
two wives of the stout gentlemen never winked; they had probably been to
confession that morning, had cleared out their old sins, and were now
ready to take in a new cargo. In a little while Roejean sent the waiter
out to a café, and he soon returned with coffee for the party, upon
which Caper, who had the day before bought some Havana cigars of the man
in the Twelve Apostles, in the piazza Dódici Apostoli, where there is a
government cigar-store for the sale of them, passed them around, and
they were thoroughly appreciated by the diners. The farmer-general gave
our three artists a hearty invitation to visit him, promising them all
the horses they could ride, all the wine they could drink, and all the
maccaroni they could eat. The last clause was inserted for Roejean's
benefit, who had played a noble game with the grand dish they had had
for dinner, and at which Angelucia had made great fun, assuring Roejean
he was Italian to the heart, _e piu basso_.

Then came good-by, and our artists were off--slowly, meditatively, and
extremely happy, but, so far, quite steady. They walked to the
castellated monastery of San Basilio, where in the chapel of Saint Nilus
they saw the celebrated frescoes of Domenichino, and gazed at them
tranquilly and not quite so appreciatingly as they would have done
before dinner. Then they came out from the gloom and the air heavy with
incense of the chapel to the bright light and lively scenes of the fair,
with renewed pleasure. They noticed that every one wore in the hat or in
the lappel of the coat, if men--in their hair or in their bosom, if
women, artificial roses; and presently coming to a stand where such
flowers were for sale, our trio bought half-a-dozen each, and then
turned to where the crowd was thickest and the noise greatest. Three or
four donkeys loaded with tin-ware were standing near the crowd, when one
of them, ambitious of distinction, began clambering over the tops of the
others in an insane attempt to get at some greens, temptingly displayed
before him. Rattle, bang! right and left went the tins, and in rushed
men and women with cudgels; but donkey was not to be stopped, and for
four or five minutes the whole fair seemed gathered around the scene,
cheering and laughing, with a spirit that set Caper wild with
excitement, and induced him to work his way through the crowd and
present one old woman who had finally conquered the donkey, with two
large roses, an action which was enthusiastically applauded by the
entire assembly.

'Bravo! bravo! well done, O Englishman!' went up the shout.

A little farther on they came to a large traveling van, one end of which
was arranged as a platform in the open air. Here a female dentist, in a
sea-green dress, with her sleeves rolled up and a gold bracelet on her
right arm, held in both hands a tooth-extractor, bound round with a
white handkerchief--to keep her steady, as Caper explained, while she
pulled a tooth from the head of a young man who was down in front of
her on his knees. Her assistant, a good-looking young man, in very white
teeth and livery, sold some patent toothache drops: _Solo cinque
baiocchi il fiasco, S'gnore_.

Caper having seen the tooth extracted, cried, '_Bravissima!_' as if he
had been at the opera, and threw some roses at the _prima donna
dentista_, who acknowledged the applause with a bow, and requested the
Signore to step up and let her draw him out. This he declined, pleading
the fact that he had sound teeth. The _dentista_ congratulated him, in
spite of his teeth.

'But come!' said Bagswell; 'look at that group of men and women in
Albano costume; there is a chance to make a deuced good sketch.'

Two men and three women were seated in a circle; they were laughing and
talking, and cutting and eating large slices of raw ham and bread, while
they passed from one to another a three-gallon keg of wine, and drank
out of the bung. As one of the hearty, laughing, jolly, brown-eyed girls
lifted up the keg, Caper pulled out sketch-book and pencil to catch an
outline sketch--of her head thrown back, her fine full throat and breast
heaving as the red wine ran out of the barrel, and the half-closed,
dreamy eyes, and pleasure in the face as the wine slowly trickled down
her throat. One of the men noted the artist making a _ritratto_, and
laughing heartily, cried out: 'Oh! but you'll have to pay us well for
taking our portraits!' And the girl, slowly finishing her long
draught, looked merrily round, shook her finger at the artist, laughed,
and--the sketch was finished. Then Caper taking Roejean's roses, went
laughingly up to the girl with brown eyes and fine throat, in Albano
costume, and begged that she would take the poor flowers, and putting
them next her heart, keep them where it is forever warm--'as the young
man on your left knows very well!' he concluded. This speech was
received amid loud applause and cheers, and thanks for the roses and an
invitation to take a pull at the barrel. Caper waved them _Adio_, and as
our trio turned Rome-ward from the fair, the last things he saw as he
turned his head to take a farewell look, were the roses that the Italian
girl had placed next her heart.


THE TOMBOLA.

The exceedingly interesting amusement known as the Tombola is nothing
more than the game of Loto, or _Lótto_, 'Brobdignagified,' and played in
the open air of the Papal States, in Rome on Sundays, and in the
Campagna on certain saints' days, come they when they may.

The English have made holiday from holy day, and call the Lord's day
Sunday; while the Italians call Sunday Lord's day, or _Domenica_. Their
way of keeping it holy, however, with tombolas, horse-races, and
fire-works, strikes a heretic, to say the least, oddly.

The Roman tombola should be seen in the Piazza Navona democratically; in
the Villa Borghese, if not aristocratically at least middle
classically, or bourgeois-istically.

In the month of November, when the English drown themselves, and the
Italians sit in the sun and smile, our friend Caper, one Sunday morning,
putting his watch and purse where pick-pockets could not reach them,
walked with two or three friends down to the Piazza Navona, stopping, as
he went along, at the entrance of a small street leading into it, to
purchase a tombola-ticket. The ticket-seller, seated behind a small
table, a blank-book, and piles of blank tickets, charged eleven
_baiocchi_ (cents) for a ticket, including one _baioccho_ for
registering it. We give below a copy of Caper's ticket:

     No. 17 D'ORDINE, LETTERA C.

     CARTELLA DA RITENERSI DAL GIUOCATORE.

     8      12      32      87      60
    20       4      76      30      11
    45       3      90      55      63


The numbers on this ticket the registrar filled up, after which it was
his duty to copy them in his book, and thus verify the ticket should it
draw a prize.

The total amount to be played for that day, the tombola being for the
benefit of the Cholera Orphans, was one thousand scudi, and was divided
as follows:


    Terno,.................... $50
    Quaterno,................. 100
    Cinquina,................. 200
    Tombola,.................. 650
                            -------
                             $1000

How many tickets were issued, Caper was never able to find out; but he
was told that for a one thousand dollar tombola the number was limited
to ninety thousand.

The tickets, as will be seen above, are divided into three lines, with
five divisions in each line, and you can fill up the fifteen divisions
with any numbers running from one to ninety, that you may see fit.
Ninety tickets, with numbers from one to ninety, are put in a revolving
glass barrel, and after being well shaken up, some one draws out one
number at random, (the slips of paper being rolled up in such manner
that the numbers on them can not be seen.) It is passed to the judges,
and is then read aloud, and exposed to view, in conspicuous figures, on
a stand or stands; and so on until the tombola is won or the numbers all
drawn.

Whoever has three consecutive figures on a line, beginning from left
hand to right, wins the _Terno_; if four consecutive figures, the
_Quaterno_; if five figures, or a full line, the _Cinquina_; and whoever
has all fifteen figures, wins the Tombola. It often happens that several
persons win the _Terno_, etc., at the same time, in which case the
amount of the _Terno_, etc., is equally divided among them. These public
tombolas are like too many thimble-rig tables, ostensibly started for
charitable objects, and it is popularly whispered that the Roman
nobility and heads of the Church purchase vast numbers of these tickets,
and never fill them up; but then again, they are not large enough for
shaving, and are too small for curl-papers; besides, six hundred and
fifty _scudi_! Whew!

The Piazza Navona, bearing on its face, on week-days, the most terrible
eruptions of piles of old iron, rags, paintings, books, boots,
vegetables, crockery, jackdaws, contadini, and occasional dead cats,
wore on the Sunday of the tombola--it was Advent Sunday--a clean,
bright, and even joyful look. From many windows hung gay cloths and
banners; the three fountains were making Roman pearls and diamonds of
the first water; the entire length (seven hundred and fifty feet) and
breadth of the square was filled with the Roman people; three bands of
military music played uncensurable airs, since the public censor
permitted them; and several companies of soldiers, with loaded guns,
stood all ready to slaughter the _plebe_. It was a sublime spectacle.

But the curtain rose; that is to say, the tombola commenced. At a raised
platform, a small boy, dressed in black, popularly supposed to be a
cholera orphan, rolled back his shirt-cuffs--he had a shirt--plunged his
hand into the glass barrel, and produced a slip of paper; an assistant
carried it to the judges--one resembled Mr. Pecksniff--and then the
crier announced the number, and, presto! on a large blackboard the
number appeared, so that every one could see it.

Caper found the number on his ticket, and was marking it off, when a
countryman at his side asked him if he would see if the number was on
his ticket, as he could not read figures. Caper accordingly looked it
over, and finding that it was there, marked it off for him.

'_Padrone mio_, thank you,' said the man, evidently determined, since he
had found out a scholar, to keep close by him.

'Seventeen!' called out the tombola-crier.

'C----o!' said the contadino, with joy in his face; 'seventeen is always
my lucky number. My wife was seventeen years old when I married her. My
donkey was killed by the railroad cars the other day, and he gave just
seventeen groans before he died. I shall have luck to-day.'

We refrain from writing the exclamation the contadino prefaced his
remarks with, for fear the reader might have a good Italian
dictionary--an article, by the way, the writer has never yet seen.
Suffice it to say, that the exclamations made use of by the Romans, men
and women, not only of the lower but even the middling class, are of a
nature exceedingly natural, and plainly point to Bacchic and Phallic
sources. The _bestémmia_ of the Romans is viler than the blasphemy of
English or Americans.

It happened that the countryman had a seventeen on his ticket, and Caper
marked it off, at the same time asking him how much he would take for
his pantaloons. These pantaloons were made of a goat's skin; the long
white wool, inches in length, left on and hanging down below the knees
of the man, gave him a Pan-like look, and with the word tombola,
suggested the lines of that good old song--save the maledictory part of
it:

  'Tombolin had no breeches to wear,
  So he bought him a goat's skin, to make him a pair.'

These breeches were not for sale; they were evidently the joy and the
pride of the countryman, who had no heart for trade, having by this time
two numbers in one line marked off, only wanting an adjoining one to win
the _terno_.

'If you were to win the _terno_, what would you do with it?' Caper asked
him.

'_Accidente!_ I'd buy a barrel of wine, and a hog, and a--'

'Thirty-two!' shouted the crier.

'It's on your paper,' said Caper to him, marking it off; 'and you've won
the _terno_!'

The eyes of the man gleamed wildly; he crossed himself, grasped the
paper, and the next thing Caper saw was the crowd dividing right and
left, as the excited owner of the goat-skin breeches made his way to the
platform. When he had climbed up, and stepping forward, stood ready to
receive the _terno_, the crowd jeered and cheered the _villano_, making
fine fun of his goat-skin, and not a little jealous that a _contadino_
should take the money out of the city.

'It's always so,' said a fat man next to Caper, 'these _villani_ take
the bread out of our mouths; but _ecco_! there is another one who has
the _terno_; blessed be the Madonna, there is a third! Oh! _diavolo_,
the _villano_ will only have one third of the _terno_; and may he die of
apoplexy!'

A vender of refreshments passing along, the fat man stopped him, and
purchased a _baioccho's_ worth of--what?

Pumpkin-seeds! These are extensively eaten in Rome, as well as the seeds
of pine-cones, acorns, and round yellow chick-peas; these supply the
place occupied by ground-nuts in our more favored land.

There is this excitement about the tombolas in the Piazza Navona, that
occasionally a panic seizes the crowd, and in the rush of people to
escape from the square, some have their pockets picked, and some are
trampled down, never to rise again. Fortunately for Caper, no stampede
took place on Advent Sunday, so that he lived to attend another grand
tombola in the Villa Borghese.

This was held in the spring-time, and the promise of the ascension of a
balloon added to the attractions of the lottery. To enter the Villa, you
had to purchase a tombola-ticket, whereas, in the Piazza Navona, this
was unnecessary. At one end of the amphitheatre of the villa, under the
shade of the ilex-trees, a platform was erected, where the numbers were
called out and the awards given.

Caper, Roejean, and another French artist, not of the French Academy,
named Achille Légume, assisted at this entertainment. Légume was a very
pleasant companion, lively, good-natured, with a decided penchant for
the pretty side of humanity, and continually haunted with the idea that
a princess was to carry him off from his mistress in spectacles, Madame
Art, and convey him to the land of Cocaigne, where they never make, only
buy, paintings--of which articles, in parenthesis, Monsieur Achille had
a number for sale.

'Roejean,' said Légume, 'do you notice that distinguished lady on the
platform; isn't she the Princess Faniente? She certainly looked at _me_
very peculiarly a few minutes since.'

'It is the Princess,' answered Roejean, 'and I also noticed, a few
minutes since, when I was on the other side of the circus, that she
looked at ME with an air.'

'Don't quarrel,' spoke Caper,'she probably regards you both equally, for
--she squints.'

This answer capsized Achille, who having a small red rose-bud in his
button-hole, hoped that at a distance he might pass for a chevalier of
the Legion of Honor, and had conquered something, say something noble.

A wandering cigar-seller, with _zigarri scelti_, next demanded their
attention, and Roejean commenced an inspection of the selected cigars,
which are made by government, and sold at the fixed price of one and a
half _baiocchi_ each; even at this low price, the stock of the
tobacco-factory paid thirteen per cent under Antonelli's direction.

'Antonelli makes a pretty fair cigar,' said, 'but I wish he would wrap
the ends a little tighter. I'm sorry to hear he is going out of the
business.'

'Why, he would stay in,' answered Caper, 'but what with baking all the
bread for Rome, and attending to all the fire-wood sold, and trying to
make Ostia a seaport, and having to fight Monsieur About, and looking
after his lotteries and big pawnbroker's shop, and balancing himself on
the end of a very sharp French bayonet, his time is so occupied, he can
not roll these cigars so well as they ought to be rolled.... But they
have called out number forty-nine; you've got it, Légume, I remember you
wrote it down. Yes, there it is.'

'Forty-nine!'

'I wonder they dare call out '49 in this villa; or have the people
forgotten the revolution already, forgotten that this spot was made
ready for a battleground for liberty. The public censor knows his
business; give the Romans bread, and the circus or tombola, they will be
content--forever?'

'_Au diable_ with politics,' interrupted Achille; 'what a very pretty
girl that is alongside you, Caper. Look at her; how nicely that costume
fits her, the red boddice especially. Where, except in Italy, do you
ever see such fine black eyes, and such a splendid head of coal-black
hair? This way of having Italian nurses dressed in the Albano costume is
very fine. That little boy with her is English, certainly.'

'Och! master Jamey, come in out of that grane grass; d'yiz want ter
dirty the clane pinafore I've put on yiz this blissed afthernoon?' spoke
the nurse.

'In the name of all that's awful, what kind of Italian is she speaking?'
asked Légume of Caper.

'Irish-English,' he answered; 'she is not the first woman out of Old
Ireland masquerading as an Albanian nurse. She probably belongs to some
English family who have pretensions.'

'Ah bah!' said Légume, 'it's monstrous, perfectly atrocious, ugh! Let us
make a little tour of a walk. The tombola is finished. An Irish dressed
up as an Italian--execrable!'




_EN AVANT!_

  O GOD! let us not live these days in vain,
    This variegated life of doubt and hope;
  And though, as day leads night, so joy leads pain,
    Let it be symbol of a broader scope.

  God! make us serve the monitor within;
    Cast off the trammels that bow manhood down,
  Of form or custom, appetite or sin,
    The care for folly's smile or envy's frown.

  Oh! that true nobleness that rises up,
    And teaches man his kindredship to Thee;
  Which wakes the slaveling from the poison cup
    Of passion, bidding him be grandly free:

  May it be ours, in these the evil days,
    That fall upon our nation like a pall;
  May we have power each one himself to raise,
    And place God's signet on the brow of all!

  Not race nor color is the badge of slaves;
    'Tis manhood, after all, that makes men free;
  Weakness is slavery; 'tis but mind that saves
    God's glorious image as he willed it be.

  Out of the shadows thick, will coming day
    Send Peace and Plenty smiling o'er our land;
  And the events that fill us with dismay,
    Are but the implements in God's right hand.

  Where patriot blood is poured as cheap as rain,
    A newer freedom, phoenix-like, will spring;
  Our Father never asks for us in vain:
    From noble seed comes noble harvesting.

  Then let, to-day, true nobleness be ours;
    That we be worthy of the day of bliss,
  When truth's, and love's, and freedom's allied powers
    Shall bind all nations with fraternal kiss.

  Would we might see, as did the saint of old,
    The heavens opening, and the starry throng
  Listening to have our tale of peace be told,
    That they may hymn man's resurrection song!




_DESPERATION AND COLONIZATION._

As the war rolls on, and as the prospects of Federal victory increase,
the greater becomes the anxiety to know what must be done to secure our
conquests. How shall we reestablish the Union in its early strength? How
shall we definitely crush the possibility of renewed rebellion? The
tremendous taxation which hangs over us gives fearful meaning to these
questions. And they must be answered promptly and practically.

The impossibility of Southern independence was from the first a foregone
conclusion to all who impartially studied the geography of this country
and the social progress of its inhabitants. The West, with its growing
millions vigorously working out the problem of free labor, and of
Republicanism, will _inevitably_ control the Mississippi river and
master the destinies of all soil above the so-called isothermal line,
and probably of much below it. The cotton States, making comparatively
almost no increase in population, receiving no foreign immigration, and
desiring none, have precipitated, by war, their destined inferiority to
the North. It has been from the beginning, only a question of time, when
they should become the weaker, and goaded by this consciousness, they
have set their all upon a throw, by appeal to wager of battle, and are
losing. It is not a question of abolitionism, for it would have been
brought on without abolition. It is not a question of Southern wrongs,
for the South never had a _right_ disturbed; and in addition to
controlling our Government for years, and directly injuring our
manufactures, it long swallowed a disproportionably great share of
government appointments, offices, and emoluments. It is simply the last
illustration in history of a smaller and rebellious portion of a
community forced by the onward march of civilization into subordination
to the greater. The men of the South were first to preach Manifest
Destiny and the subjugation of Cuba and Mexico--forgetting that as
regarded civilization, they themselves, on an average, only filled an
intermediate station between the Spanish Creole and the truly _white_
man of the North. Before manifest destiny can overtake the Mexican, it
must first overtake the Southerner.

Despite all its external show of elan, courtesy, and chivalry, 'the
South,' as it exists, is and ever must be, in the very great aggregate,
inferior to the North in the elements of progress, and in nearly all
that constitutes true superiority. They boast incessantly of their
superior education and culture; but what literature or art has this
education produced amid their thousands of ladies and gentlemen of taste
and of leisure? The Northern editor of any literary magazine who has had
any experience in by-gone days with the manuscripts of the chivalry,
will shrug his shoulders with a smile as he recalls the reams of
reechoes of Northern writers, and not unfrequently of mere 'sensation'
third-rate writers at that, which he was wont to receive from Dixie. And
amid all his vaunts and taunts, the consciousness of this intellectual
inferiority never left the Southerner. It stimulated his hatred--it
rankled in his heart. He might boast or lie--and his chief statistician,
De Bow, was so notoriously convicted of falsifying facts and figures
that the assertion, as applied to him, is merely historical--but it was
of no avail. The Northern school and the Northern college continued to
be the great fountain of North-American intellect, and the Southerner
found himself year by year falling behind-hand intellectually and
socially as well as numerically. As a last resort, despairing of victory
in the _real_, he plunged after the wild chivalric dream of
independence; of Mexican and Cuban conquest; of an endless realm and a
reopened slave-trade--or at least of holding the cotton mart of the
world. It is all in vain. We of the same continent recognize no right in
a very few millions to seize on the land which belongs as much to our
descendants and to the labor of all Europe and of the world as it does
to them. They have _no right_ to exclude white labor by slaves. A
Doughface press may cry, Compromise; and try to restore the _status quo
ante bellum_, but all in vain. The best that can be hoped for, is some
ingenious temporary arrangement to break the fall of their old
slaveholding friends. It is not as _we_ will, or as _we_ or _you_ would
_like_, that what the Southerners themselves term a conflict of races,
can be settled. People who burn their own cities and fire their own
crops are going to the dire and bitter end; and the Might which under
God's providence is generally found in the long run of history to be the
Right--will triumph at last.

As has been intimated in the foregoing passages, the antipathy of the
South to the North is deeply seated, springing from such rancor as can
only be bred between a claim to social superiority mingled with a bitter
consciousness of inferiority in nearly all which the spirit of the age
declares constitutes true greatness. It is almost needless to say, that
with such motives goading them on, with an ignorant, unthinking mass for
soldiers, and with unprincipled politicians who have to a want of
principle added the newly acquired lust for blood, any prospect of
conciliation becomes extremely remote. We may hope for it--we may and
should proceed cautiously, so that no possible opportunity of restoring
peace may be lost; but it is of the utmost importance that we be blind
to no facts; and every fact developed as the war advances seems to
indicate that we have to deal with a most intractable, crafty, and
ferocious enemy, whom to trust is to be deceived.

There can be no doubt that the ultimatum of the South is secession or
death. We of the North can not contemplate such a picture with calmness,
and therefore evade it as amiably as we can. We say, it stands to reason
that very few men will burn their own homes and crops, yet every mail
tells us of tremendous suicidal sacrifices of this description. The ruin
and misery which the South is preparing for itself in every way is
incalculable and incredible, and yet there is no diminution of
desperation. The prosperity which made a mock of honest poverty is now,
as by the retributive judgment of God, sinking itself into penury, and
the planter who spoke of the Northern serf as a creature just one remove
above the brute, is himself learning by bitter experience to be a
mud-sill. Verily the cause of the poor and lowly is being avenged. Yet
with all this there is no hint or hope of compromise; repeated defeats
are, so far, of little avail. The Northern Doughfaces tell us over and
over again, that if we will 'only leave the slave question untouched,'
all will yet be right. 'Only spare them the negro, and they, seeing that
we do not intend to interfere with their rights, will eventually settle
down into the Union.' But what is there to guarantee this assertion?
What _proof_ have we that the South can be in this manner conciliated?
None--positively none.

There is nothing which the Southern press, and, so far as we can learn,
the Southern people, have so consistently and thoroughly disavowed since
the war began, as the assertion that a restoration of the Union may be
effected on the basis of undisturbed slavery. They have ridiculed the
Democrats of the North with as great contempt and as bitter sarcasm as
were ever awarded of old to Abolitionists, for continually urging this
worn-out folly; for now that the mask is finally thrown off, they make
no secret of their scorn for their old tools and dupes. Slavery is no
longer the primary object; they are quite willing to give up slavery if
the growing prosperity of the South should require it; their emissaries
abroad in every _salon_ have been vowing that manumission of their
slaves would soon follow recognition; and it was their rage at failure
after such wretched abasement and unprincipled inconsistency which, very
naturally, provoked the present ire of the South against England and
France. They, the proud, chivalrous Southrons, who had daringly rushed
to battle as slave lords, after eating abundant dirt as prospective
Abolitionists, after promising any thing and every thing for a
recognition, received the cold shoulder. No wonder that ill-will to
England is openly avowed by the Richmond press as one of the reasons for
burning the cotton as the Northern armies advance.

The only basis of peace with the North, as the South declares, is
Disunion; and they do most certainly mean it. No giving up the slave
question, no enforcing of fugitive slave laws; no, not the hanging of
Messrs. Garrison and Phillips, or any other punishment of all
Emancipationists--as clamored for by thousands of trembling
cowards--would be of any avail. It is disunion or nothing--and disunion
they can not have. There shall be no disunion, no settlement of any
thing on _any_ basis but the Union. Richmond papers, after the battle of
Pittsburgh Landing, proposed peace and separation. They do not know us.
The North was never so determined to push on as now; never so eager for
battle or for sacrifices. If the South is in earnest, so are we; if they
have deaths to avenge, so have we; if they cry for war to the knife, so
surely as God lives they can have it in full measure. For thirty years
the blazing straw of Southern insult has been heaped on the Northern
steel; and now that the latter is red-hot, it shall scorch and sear ere
it cools, and they who heated it shall feel it.

We may as well make up our minds to it first as last, that we must at
every effort and at _any_ cost, conquer this rebellion. There is no
alternative. This done, the great question which remains to settle, is,
how shall we manage the conquered provinces? There are fearful obstacles
in the way; great difficulties, such as no one has as yet calmly
realized; difficulties at home and abroad. We have a fierce and
discontented population to keep under; increased expenses in every
department of government; but it is needless to sum them up. The first
and most apparent difficulty is that involved in the form of government
to be adopted. As the rebellious States have, by the mere act of
secession, forfeited all State rights, and thereby reduced themselves to
territories, this question would seem to settle itself without
difficulty, were it not that a vast body of the ever-mischief-making,
ever-meddling, and never-contented politicians (who continue to believe
that the millennium would at once arrive were Emancipation only
extinguished) cry out against this measure as an infringement of those
Southern rights which are so dear to them. They argue and hope in vain.
Never more will the South come back to be served and toadied to by them
as of old; never more will they receive contemptuous patronage and
dishonorable honors. It is all passed. Those who look deepest into this
battle, and into the future, see a resistance, grim and terrible, to the
death; and one which will call for the strictest and sternest watch and
ward. It will only be by putting fresh life and fresh blood into
Secessia, that union can be practically realized. Out of the old
Southern stock but little can be made. A great portion must be kept
under by the strong hand; a part may be induced to consult its own
interests, and reform. But the great future of the South, and the great
hope of a revived and improved Union will be found in colonizing certain
portions of the conquered territory with free white labor.

A more important topic, and one so deeply concerning the most vital
prosperity of the United States, was never before submitted to the
consideration of her citizens. If entertained by Government and the
people on a great, enterprising, and vigorous scale, as such schemes
were planned and executed by the giant minds of antiquity, it may be
made productive of such vast benefits, that in a few years at most, the
millions of Americans may look back to this war as one of the greatest
blessings that ever befell humanity, and Jefferson Davis and his
coadjutors be regarded as the blind implements by which God advanced
human progress, as it had never before advanced at one stride. But to
effect this, it should be planned and executed as a great, harmonious,
and centrally powerful scheme, not be tinkered over and frittered away
by all the petty doughfaces in every village. In great emergencies,
great acts are required.

It is evident that the only certain road to Union-izing the South is, to
plant in it colonies of Northern men. Thousands, hundreds of thousands
now in the army, would gladly remain in the land of tobacco or of
cotton, if Government would only provide them with the land whereon to
live. Were they thus settled, and were every slave in the South
emancipated by the chances of war, there would be no danger to apprehend
as to the future of the latter. Give a Yankee a fat farm in Dixie, and
we may rely upon it that although a Southern nabob may not know how to
get work out of a 'free nigger', the Northerner will contrive to
persuade Cuffy to become industrious. We have somewhere heard of a
Vermonter, who taught ground-hogs or 'wood-chucks' to plant corn for
him; the story has its application. Were Cuffy ten times as lazy as he
is, the free farmer would contrive to get him to work. And in view of
this, I am not sorry that the Legislatures of the border wheat States
are passing laws to prevent slaves from entering their territories. The
mission of the black is to labor as a free man in the South, under the
farmer, until capable of being a farmer on his own account.

The manner and method of colonizing free labor in the South deserves
very serious consideration, and is, it may be presumed, receiving it at
the hands of Government, in anticipation of further developments in this
direction. We trust, however, that the Administration will _lead_, as
rapidly as possible, in this matter, and that the President will soon
make it the subject of a Message as significant and as noble as that
wherein this country first stood committed by its chief officer to
Emancipation, the noblest document which ever passed from president or
potentate to the people; a paper which, in the eyes of future ages, will
cast Magna Charta itself into the shade, and rank with the glorious
manumission of the Emperor of Russia.

The primary question would be, whether it were more expedient to scatter
free labor all over the South, or simply form large colonies at such
points as might serve to effectually break up and surround the
confederacy. Without venturing to decide on the final merit of either
plan, we would suggest that the latter would be, for a beginning,
probably most feasible. Should Virginia, certain points on the Atlantic
coast, embracing the larger cities and vicinity of forts, and Texas, be
largely or strongly occupied by free men, we should at once throw a
chain around the vanquished foe, whose links would grow stronger every
year. With slavery abolished--and it is at present abolishing itself
with such rapidity that it is almost time lost to discuss the
subject--immigration from Europe would stream in at an unprecedented
rate, and in a few years, all the old Southern system become entirely a
tradition of the past, like that of the feudal chivalry which the
present chivalry so fondly ape.

The enormous internal resources of Eastern Virginia, her proximity to
free soil, the arrogance and insubordination of her inhabitants, render
her peculiarly fitted for colonization. Not less attractive is Texas--a
State which, be it remembered, is capable of raising six times as much
cotton as is now raised in the whole South, and which, if only settled
and railroaded-ed, would, in a few years, become the wealthiest
agricultural State in America. But let our army once settle in the
South, there will be little danger of its not retaining its possessions.
He who can win can wear.

The country has thus far treated very gingerly the question of
confiscation, which is, however, destined to thrust itself very
prominently forward among the great issues of the day, and which is
closely allied to colonization. That the South, after forcing upon us
such a war as this, with its enormous losses and expenses, should be
subjected to no penalty, is preposterous. Confiscation there must
be--not urged inhumanly on a wholesale scale, but in such a manner as to
properly punish those who were forward in aiding rebellion. When this
war broke out, the South was unanimous in crying for plunder, in
speaking of wasting our commerce and our cities on a grand scale. But it
is needless to point out that punishment of the most guilty alone would
of itself half cover the expenses of the war.

It may be observed that already, since the decree of emancipation in the
District of Columbia, a fresh spirit of enterprise has manifested itself
there. Within a few days after the signature of the President to that
act, Northern men began to prepare for renewed industry and action in
the old slave field. The tide of free labor which will rush into
Virginia, after the chances of war or other action shall have
emancipated that State, will be incalculable. Its worn-out plantations
will become thriving farms, its mines and inexhaustible water-powers
will call into play the incessant demand and supply of vigorous industry
and active capital. We may hasten the movement or we may not, by direct
legislation. For the present, it seems advisable to await the rapidly
developing chances of war and their results; but the great rush of free
labor will come, and that rapidly, and Virginia, disenthralled, become,
in all probability, once more the first among the States.

We have spoken of the desperation of the rebels, and of the idleness of
expecting from them any peaceable compromise. Those who, in the South,
will take the oath of allegiance, and who have probably acted only under
compulsion, should be spared. But there is a vast number who are as yet
under the dominion of a madness, for which nothing but the most vigorous
measures can be of any avail. It is evident that at present, every where
except in Halleck's department, government is too indulgent. Traitors
flaunt and boast openly in the border States, and publicly scheme with
their doughface allies, to defeat the Union cause in every possible way,
too often with signal success. The more mercy they receive, the more
insolent do they become, and yet every effort has been made, and is
making, 'to conciliate.' Let Government be vigorous, and rely only on
its strong hand, so far as the management of avowed traitors is
concerned; such men hold to no faith, and keep no oaths. With such, a
threat of confiscation will be found of more avail than all the lenity
in the world.

We may quote, in this connection, from a letter to the Salem _Register_,
from Captain Driver, who hoisted 'Old Glory' at Nashville, when our
troops took possession of that city. After speaking of the immense
amount of property being destroyed through the State, he asks:

     'Is there one man North, who now expects to make peace, based on
     compromise with such men as lead here? Is there one who expects a
     lasting peace in this land, until the armed heel of freedom's
     soldiers marks every inch of slave soil? If there is, he knows
     little of the South or Southern men and women. One defeat of the
     Federal forces, and madness would be rampant here. In the hour of
     victory, they would destroy every Union family in the South. We
     live on a volcanic mass, which at any moment may upheave and blow
     us to glory without the benefit of the clergy, the most of whom are
     in the army of Dixie.

     'Our enemy is as bitter as death, as implacable as the savage of
     the forest; he will do any thing to gain his end. Twice has the
     'Black Flag' been flaunted in our faces, and cheered by a portion
     of our citizens. Our women are more bitter than the men, and our
     children are taught to hate the North, in church, in school, and at
     the fireside. Our city still presents a sullen, silent front; it
     will take as long time to root treason out of Nashville us it did
     the household sins of Egypt out of Israel.

     'Had I my way, I would confiscate the property of all traitors,
     work the slaves three or four years under overseers, on the land of
     their masters, sell the crops thus raised, and pay the war debt;
     this would save the people from taxation. The fifth year's crop
     give to the slaves, and send them to Texas or elsewhere; give them
     a governance, buy up the slaves of the loyal men, and let them be
     sent to their brethren. The land confiscated, I would divide among
     the soldiers of the North and the widows and orphans of those
     deluded poor men of the South who fell victims to false notions of
     'Southern Rights;' compel the Northern man to settle on his grant,
     or to send a settler of true, industrious habits, and give him no
     power to alienate his title for ten or more years. This will insure
     an industrious, worthy, patriotic people for the South. One man
     will make one bale of cotton, others ten; your spindles and looms
     will be kept running by free men, and slavery will cease forever,
     as it should do. Slavery is a curse, a crime, a mildew, and must
     end, or war will blast our fair heritage for all time to come.'

Such are the views of one who seems to know what a real
Southern-sympathizing secessionist is made of. Let it not be forgotten
that there are thousands of native Tennesseeans, as of other borderers
of intelligence, character, and influence, who have offered to raise
regiments to fight for the Union; and this fact is urged by the
doughface democrats as a reason for increased leniency to traitors. We
confess we do not see what connection exists between the two. If these
loyal borderers are sincere in their professions, they have certainly no
sympathy for the wretches around them, who visit with death or pillage
every friend of the Union. But it is idle to argue with traitors. Either
we are at war, or we are not; and if the history of the past eighteen
months has not taught the country the folly of procrastinating, nothing
will do it. 'When you feel the knife in your heart, _then_ wish that you
had fought!'




_THE EDUCATION TO BE._

II.

A right intellectual education presupposes three essential features: the
selection of the most suitable subjects for study; the proper
presentation of these, in the order of their dependence, and in view of
the gradual growth of the pupil's powers of comprehension; and, not less
important than either of these, the finding out and following of the
best method and order of presenting the truths belonging to each subject
to be studied. These are the problems with which, as something apart
from Metaphysics or Logic, the possible but yet unachieved pedagogical
science has to deal. To the first of these questions, What shall we
teach? or, as he phrases it, 'What knowledge is of most worth?' Mr.
Spencer (presuming the child already supplied with his bare implements,
reading, spelling, and penmanship) is led, after a long discussion, to
conclude that 'the uniform reply is, Science.' The 'counts' on which he
bases this verdict, are, the purposes of self-preservation; the gaining
of a livelihood; the due discharge of parental functions; qualification
for political responsibilities; the production and enjoyment of art; and
discipline, whether intellectual, moral, or religious. Taken at his own
showing, Mr. Spencer seems to contemplate, as his model of an educated
man, a prodigiously capable and efficient mute. But can he deny that the
ability _to express_ what one may know, and in speech, as well as in
production, is at once the final proof, and in a very real sense the
indispensable consummation of such knowing? _Language_ is the
counterpart and complement of _Science_. The two are but two sides, and
either separately an incomplete one, of one thing; that one thing we may
name _definite and practical knowledge_; and it is the only sort of
knowledge that has real value. Language is yet larger than all the
sciences proper which it embodies, namely, those clustering about
Philology, Grammar, and Rhetoric. Of these, all deal with words, or
those larger words--sentences; but under these forms they deal, in
reality, with the objective world as perceived or apprehended by us, and
as named and uttered in accordance with subjective aptitudes and laws.
In language, then, there stands revealed, in the degree in which we can
ascend to it, all that is yet known of the external world, and all that
has yet evolved itself of the human mind. Can we decry the study of that
which, whether as articulate breath, or through a symbolism of visible
forms, mirrors to us at once all of nature and all of humanity? But if
we yield this claim in behalf of language, noting meanwhile that the
mathematics are already well represented in our courses of instruction,
then much of Mr. Spencer's eloquent appeal is simply wasted by
misdirection. All that he had really to claim is, that a
disproportionate time is now surrendered to the studies of the symbols,
as such, and too often to characteristics of them not yet brought in any
way into scientific coördination, nor of a kind having practical or
peculiarly disciplinary value. If Mr. Spencer had insisted on a more
just division of the school studies between the mathematical, physical,
biological, and linguistic sciences, he would have struck a chord
yielding no uncertain sound, and one finding response in a multitude of
advanced and liberal minds. If he had gone yet deeper, and disclosed to
his readers the fact that the fundamental need is, not that we study
what in the more restricted sense is known as _Science_, but that we
begin to study all proper and profitable subjects, as we now do hardly
any of them, _in the true scientific spirit and method_, he would not
merely seem to have said, but would have succeeded in saying, something
of the deepest and most pressing import to all educators.

The volume of republished papers from Mr. Barnard's able _Journal of
Education_--the first of a series of five under the general title of
'Papers for the Teacher'--will afford to those desirous of investigating
the second of the problems above proposed, some useful material and
hints. Especially will this be true, we think, of the first series of
articles, by Mr. William Russell, on the 'Cultivation of the Perceptive,
Expressive, and Reflective Faculties;' and of the second, by Rev. Dr.
Hill, now President of Antioch College, upon the 'True Order of
Studies.' In the outset of his first essay, (which appeared in March,
1859,) Dr. Hill takes it '_for granted_ [postulating, we think, a pretty
large ground, and one that analysis and proof would better have
befitted] that there is a rational order of development in the course of
the sciences, and that it ought to be followed in common education.' The
order he finds is that of five great studies, Mathesis, [mathematics;]
Physics, or Natural History; History; Psychology; and Theology. 'We also
take it for granted,' he continues, 'that there is a natural order of
development in the human powers, and that studies should be so arranged
as to develop the powers in this order.' Here two very difficult
problems are undertaken--the hierarchy of the sciences, and the analysis
of the intellect--and though we seem to find in the elucidation of the
subject traces of that 'harmony of results of the two lines of inquiry,'
on which the author relies as one source of confirmation of the results
themselves, yet we can not admit that the solutions given us remove all,
nor even all the main difficulties of the case. While we regard the
mathematics, physics, psychology, and theology as quite well
individualized and distinct lines of scientific research, we can not
help feeling that the day has hardly come for embracing _physiology_
under either physics or psychology; the forming of the bile and the
growing and waste of brain are yet, to our apprehension, too far removed
from the gravitation of planets or the oxidation of phosphorus, on the
one hand, as they are from the scintillations of wit or the severe march
of reason on the other, for ready affiliation with either. We question
decidedly whether Theology proper can, at the most, be more than a very
restricted subject; and quite as decidedly whether the heterogeneous
matters grouped under History, namely, Agriculture, Trade, Manufactures,
the Fine Arts, Language, Education, Politics, and Political Economy, are
or can be shown to be linked by any principle of essential unity. Most
of these have their historical side; but their unhistorical and
scientific side most interests the great body of learners. And this
latter aspect of some of them, Education and Politics especially,
belongs after, not before Psychology. Then, the great fact of
expression--Language--has not adequate justice done it by the position
it is here placed in. Want of space is the least among our reasons for
forbearing to attempt here a classification of the sciences--a work
which Ramus, D'Alembert, Stewart, Bentham, and Ampère successively
essayed and left unfinished. But the principle that the faculties in
their order are called out by the branches named in their order, is
quite given up as the writer proceeds, and distinctly so in his Tabular
View of the studies adapted to successive ages. In actual life, usually
the first set teaching the infant receives is in language; and even
though it previously is and should be getting its ideas of forms,
colors, and other qualities, in the concrete, yet it remains far from
true that we should 'pay our earliest attention to the development of
the child's power to grasp the truths of space and time.' Dr. Hill has,
however, taken in these papers a step in a needful direction; and
perhaps the best we could at first expect, are hints and an
approximation toward a much desired result.

We may fairly assume that Mr. Willson's answer to the question, What to
teach? is in some good degree embodied in his elaborate series of
'School and Family Readers,' of which the first six of the eight
contemplated volumes have already appeared. These Readers aim to replace
in a good degree the more purely literary materials of most of their
predecessors, with a somewhat systematic and complete view of the more
generally useful branches of human knowledge. They begin, where the
child is sure to be interested, with studies of animals, illustrated
with good and often spirited drawings, and proceed through Physiology,
Botany, Architecture, Physical Geography, Chemistry, etc., up at last,
as is promised, to Mental and Moral Philosophy, Natural Theology,
Rhetoric, Criticism, Logic, the Fine Arts, including that one of those
arts, as we presume we may class it, with which pupils of the rural
schools will have best cause to become acquainted, namely, Gardening!
Readers on this plan have long been known in the schools of Prussia and
Holland, and are even lately well received in England, in the form of
Mr. Constable's popular series; though apparently, when finished, the
American series will be more full and complete in topics and treatment
of them than any preceding one. Of course, restricted space, and the
range of maturity of talents addressed, compel the presentation in
simplified form of scarcely more than 'a little learning' under the
several heads; and the compiler sensibly tells us his aim is not to give
a full exposition of any theme, but rather, 'to present a _pleasing
introduction_ to science.' We may grant, in the outset, that most pupils
will really comprehend, in and through the reading of it, but a modicum
of all the high and large fields of knowledge here intimated to them;
but who that can now look on his school-days as in the past, does not
remember how many grandiose sentences he was then called on to utter in
cadence duly swelling or pathetic, but of the meaning of which he had
not the most distant approach to a true comprehension? It was _ours_
once to be of a class whose enunciative powers were disciplined by
repeated goings 'through' of the 'Old English Reader,' and well do we
remember how the accidental omission of the full pause after 'shows' in
the quotation ending the piece entitled 'Excellency of the Holy
Scriptures,' caused a certain teacher to understand(!) and direct us to
read the whole sentence thus: 'Compared, indeed, with this, all other
moral and theological wisdom

     'Loses, discountenanced, and like folly shows' BEATTIE.'

Now, it is true, the whole sentence, in its best state, would have shown
to our green understandings like enough to 'folly,' if we had once made
the effort to find meaning of any sort in it; nor can it be considered
the most profitable use of school time, thus to 'like folly show' to
unknit juvenile brains the abstract and high thought of mature and great
minds, who uttered them with no foolishness or frivolity in their
intentions! We see reasons to expect substantial advantages from Mr.
Willson's books; and we believe teachers will appreciate and use them.
We could wish they had not gone so far to mechanicalize the pupil's
enunciation; by too freely introducing throughout the points of
inflection; but it is safe to predict that most pupils will take up with
interest the simplified readings in science; that they will comprehend
and remember a useful portion of what they read; that the lessons will
afford both them and the teachers points of suggestion from which the
mind can profitably be led out to other knowledge and its connections;
and that they who go through the series can at least leave school with
some more distinct ideas as to what the fields of human knowledge are,
and what they embrace, than was ever possible under the _régime_ of
merely fine writing, of pathetic, poetic, and generally miscellaneous
selections.

The educational interest that grew up in our country between the years
1810 and 1828, about the year 1835 gave place to a stagnation that has
marked nearly the whole of the period intervening between the last-named
and the present date. In the year 1858, the _New-York Teacher_ was made
the first medium of some thoughts in substance agreeing with those set
forth in the earlier part of this paper, claiming the indispensableness
to true education of a more true and liberal _work_ on the part of the
learner's intellectual faculties, and of a more true and logical
_consecution_ than has yet been attained, and one corresponding to the
natural order of the intellectual operations, in the books and lessons
through which the usual school studies are to be mastered. 'Make'--said
the first of the articles setting forth this thought--'the [form of the]
facts and principles of any branch of study as simple as you choose, and
unless the order of their presentation be natural--be that order, from
observation to laws and causes, in which the mind naturally moves,
whenever it moves surely and successfully--the child, except in the rare
case of prodigies that find a pleasure in unraveling complexity, will
still turn from the book with loathing. He will do so because he must.
It is not in his nature to violate his nature for the sake of acquiring
knowledge, however great the incentives or threatenings attending the
process.' 'The child's mind ... with reference to all unacquired
knowledge ... stands in precisely the attitude of the experimenters and
discoverers of riper years. It is to come to results not only previously
unknown, but not even conceived of. Because their nature and faculties
are identical, the law of their intellectual action must be the same.'
'Study is research.' In subsequent articles, it was claimed that the law
here indicated is for intellectual education, the one true and
comprehensive law; and it was expressed more fully in the words: 'All
true study is investigation; all true learning is discovery.'

We say, now, that when the first of these articles appeared, the leading
thought it contained, namely, that our pupils can and should learn by a
process of _re-discovery_, in the subjects they pursue, had not in
distinct nor in substantial statement in any way appeared in the
educational treatises or journals; and further, that it was not, so far
as their uttered or published expressions show, previously occupying the
attention of teachers or of educational writers, nor was it the subject
or substance of remarks, speeches, or debates, in the meetings of
Teachers' Associations. We say further, and because history and justice
require it, that in our country, especially in the educational movements
in the State of New-York, and in the several national associations of
educators, a marked change and revolution in the course of much of the
thought and discussion touching matters of education has, since the year
1858, become apparent, and that to the most casual participant or
observer, and in the precise direction in which the thought above
referred to points. The essential issue itself--the practicability and
desirableness of casting our studies into the form of courses of
re-discovery is somewhat distantly and delicately approached,
incorporated into speeches by an allusion or in the way of _apercû_, or
thrown out as a suggestion of a partial or auxiliary method with the
younger learners, all which is of a fashion highly patronizing to the
thought, spite of the scruples about confessing who was the suggester of
it. But other questions, which spring up in the train of this, which by
themselves had received attention long since, but had been mainly
dropped and unheard of among us during the past twenty-five years, have
come again into full and unconcealed prominence. Such are the questions
about the natural order of appearance of the faculties in childhood, as
to what are the elementary faculties of the mind, as to the adaptation
of the kinds and order of studies to these, etc. And thus, all at once,
is disclosed that Education itself, which many had thought quite a
'finished' thing, well and happily disposed of, or at least so far
perfected as to leave no work further save upon the veriest outskirts of
details, is in truth a giant superstructure with foundations in sand, or
so almost visibly lacking underneath it, that it threatens to fall. For,
in the name of the simplest of all common sense, how are we to educate
to the best, _not yet knowing_--and that is now acknowledged--_what are
the_ FACULTIES _of the very minds we are dealing with, nor what are the_
PROCESSES _by which those minds begin and keep up their advance in
knowledge?_ So, also, those who in the most charitable mood could see in
education only something too hum-drum and narrow for their better
fancies, find it now rising and expanding into a new and large field for
intellectual effort, full of interesting problems, and fraught with
realizations as yet undreamed of.

It may be said, that the young mind had always learned what it did
learn, by discoveries; we answer, our methods and our books have not in
any sufficient degree recognized the fact, provided for it, nor taken
advantage of it. It may be said, that writers had previously
acknowledged that the mind learns well--some of them even, that it
learns best--when it discovers: we answer, that nevertheless, no one had
recorded it as a well-grounded, universal conclusion and positive law,
that the mind only can learn, in all strictly scientific matters, as it
discovers, and that hence, the canons of the method of discovery become
rules for directing, in studies of this character, the education of the
young. Aristotle and Bacon have recognized and enforced upon the adult
mind its two master methods of advance by reasoning. But our children
have their knowing also to attain to, their discoveries to make, their
logic of proof, on occasions, to employ. Shall we lavish all the
treasures of method on those who have passed the formative stage of
mind, and acquired the bent of its activities? Rather, we think, the
true intellectual method--combining both Baconian _induction_ and
Aristotelian _deduction_--yet waits to realize some of the best of the
application and work for which its joint originators and their
co-workers have been preparing it; and that perhaps one of the highest
consummations of this one method of thought may yet appear in the
carrying forward, with more of certainty, pleasure, and success in their
attaining of knowledge, the lisping philosophers of our school-rooms and
our firesides.

From one source, disconnected latterly from those to which I have thus
far called attention, there has arisen a decidedly progressive movement
in the direction of right teaching, and one that, at least in
geographical studies, promises soon to result in a consummation of great
importance. Though Pestalozzianism, as further developed by the Prussian
educators and schools, has never yet realized the completely inductive
and consecutive character here contended for, it has been tending in a
degree toward such a result; and this is perhaps seen in the most marked
way in the method of teaching geography developed by Humboldt and
Ritter, and represented in this country by their distinguished pupil,
Professor Guyot. This method subordinates political to physical
geography, proceeding from facts to laws, and by setting out with the
grand natural features of the globe, leads the learner to comprehend not
only the existence, boundaries, capitals, and strength of nations, but
the reasons why these have come to be what they are. As tending in the
same true direction, we should not fail to mention also the
faithfully-executed series of raised or embossed maps of the late Mr.
Schroeter, presenting not only the profile but the comparative
elevations of the land-surfaces or continents and islands, and, in
detail, of the several political divisions of the globe, thus at once
making the ocular study of geography _real_, and not as formerly,
leaving the right conception of the land-surfaces to the pupil's unaided
imagination.

Among the decisive and important steps marking the revival of
educational interest among us, is that looking to the introduction into
our primary schools of the simple lessons for what is called the
'education of the senses,' and what is in fact the solicitation of the
perceptive faculties, and the storing of them, with their proper ideas,
through the avenues of sense. When employed about observing or finding
and naming the parts or qualities and uses of objects, as _glass,
leather, milk, wood, a tree, the human body_, etc., this sort of
teaching takes the name of 'Object Lessons;' when it rises to
philosophizing in the more obvious and easy stages about natural
phenomena, as _rain, snow,_ etc., or about parts of the system of
nature, as _oceans, mountains, stars,_ etc., it is sometimes termed
'Lessons in Common Things.' In the year 1860, Mr. E.A. Sheldon, the
enterprising superintendent of the schools of that city, first
introduced with some degree of completeness and system, this sort of
teaching into the primary schools of Oswego. In March, 1861, under the
leadership also, as we infer, of their superintendent, Mr. William H.
Wells, the Educational Board of the city of Chicago adopted a still more
minutely systematized and more extensive course of instruction of this
sort, arranged in ten successive grades, and intended to advance from
the simple study of objects, forms, colors, etc., gradually to the
prosecution of the regular and higher studies. The greater naturalness,
life-likeness, and interest of this kind of mental occupation for young
learners, over the old plan of restricting them mainly to the bare
alphabet, with barren spelling, reading, definitions, and so on, is at
once obvious in principle and confirmed by the facts; and for the
younger classes--a stage of the utmost delicacy and importance to the
future habits of the learner--the fruits must appear in increased
readiness of thought and fullness of ideas, and in a preparation for
more true and enlarged subsequent comprehension of the proper branches
of study; provided, we must add, that these also, when reached, be
taught by a method best suited to their subject-matter and to the higher
range of mental activity required to deal with it. Whether, now, the
object-lesson system and plan is the one competent to carry on the
learner through those later studies, is another and larger question, and
one to which we shall presently recur.

Under the recall of the minds of educators among us to fundamental
principles of methods and tendencies in teaching, which we have pointed
out, it was but natural to expect attempts to be made toward remedying
the defects and supplying the needs that could not fail to be detected
in our teaching processes. Naturally, too, such attempts would result in
the bringing forward, sooner or later, of novelties in the topics and
form of the school-books. What the pen--which, in the outset, proposed
the necessity of molding the school-work into a course of re-discoveries
of the scientific truths--should reasonably be expected to do toward
supplying the want it had indicated; or what it may, in the interim,
have actually accomplished toward furnishing the working implements
requisite to realizing in practice the possible results foreshadowed by
the best educational theories, it may be neither in place nor needful
that we should here intimate. Sometimes, indeed, there is in our social
movements evidence of a singular sort of intellectual _catalysis;_ and a
mute fact, so it _be_ a fact, and even under enforced continuance of
muteness, through influence of temporary and extraneous circumstances,
may yet, like the innocent _platinum_ in a mixture of certain gases, or
the equally innocent _yeast-plant_ vegetating in the 'lump' of dough,
take effect in a variety of ways, as if by mere presence.

We shall remember how even Virgil had to write:

     'Hos ego versiculos scripsi: tulit alter honores!'

And the veriest bumpkin knows the force of the adage about one's shaking
the tree, for another to gather up the fruit. But Virgil was patient,
and did well at the last; though the chronicles do not tell us how many
pears ever came to the teeth of him that did the tree-shaking. At all
events, it is satisfying to know that time spins a long yarn, and comes
to the end of it leisurely and at his own wise motion!

The English object-lesson system being now fairly and successfully
domesticated among us, and to such an extent as to call for the
invitation and temporary residence among us, in the city of Oswego, of a
distinguished lady-teacher from the English Training Schools, it is
again but natural that the system should call forth books adapted to its
purposes; and it was scarcely possible, under the circumstances we have
now shown to exist, that such books should come forth without presenting
a more conscious aim toward embodying something of the principle and
order of _discovery_ than has marked even their English prototypes.
These anticipations we find exactly realized in the first book of the
new pattern that has yet made its appearance--the 'Primary
Object-Lessons' of Mr. Calkins. Of this book, issued June, 1861, the
author thus states the motive: 'With an earnest desire to contribute
something toward a general radical change in the system of primary
education in this country--a change from the plan of exercising the
memory chiefly to that of developing the observing powers--a change from
an artificial to a natural plan, one in accordance with the philosophy
of mind and its laws of development, the author commenced the following
pages.'

Acknowledging his indebtedness to the manuals of Wilderspin, Stow,
Currie, the Home and Colonial School Society, and other sources, the
author tells us that the plan of developing the lessons 'corresponds
more nearly to that given in Miss Mayo's works than to either of the
other systems;' and we understand him to claim (and the feature is a
valuable one) that in this book, which is not a text-book, but one of
suggestive or pattern lessons for teachers, he directs the teacher to
proceed less by telling the child what is before it and to be seen, and
more by requiring the child to find for itself what is present. Again,
an important circumstance, the purpose of the book does not terminate in
describing right processes of teaching, but on the contrary, _'in
telling what ought to be done, it proceeds to show how to do it by
illustrative examples,' (sic.)_ Now, spite of some liberties with the
President's English, which may properly be screened by the author's
proviso that he does not seek 'to produce a faultless composition,' so
much as to afford simple and clear examples for the teacher's use, we
are compelled to inquire, especially as this is matter addressed to
mature and not to immature minds, which it is the author really meant us
to understand; that is, whether, in fact, the book 'proceeds to show
_how to do it by_ illustrative examples;' or whether, in reality, it
does not aim _to show by illustrative examples how to do it_--that,
namely, which ought to be done. If we still find Mr. Calkins's
philosophy somewhat more faultless than his practice, perhaps that is
but one of the necessary incidents of all human effort; and we can say
with sincerity that, in some of its features, we believe this a book
better adapted to its intended uses--the age it is designed to meet
being that of the lowest classes in the primary schools, or say from
four to seven or eight years--than any of its predecessors. It will not,
we hope, therefore, be understood as in a captious spirit, that we take
exception to certain details.

The author is clearly right in his principle that 'The chief object of
primary education is the development of the faculties;' though doubtless
it would have been better to say, _to begin_ the development of the
faculties; but then, he recognizes, as the faculties specially active in
children, those of 'sensation, perception, observation, and simple
memory,' adding, for mature years, those of 'abstraction, the higher
powers of reason, imagination, philosophical memory, generalization,'
etc. But that any one of all these is in the true psychological sense, a
_faculty_--save, it may be, in the single instance of imagination--we
shall decidedly question; and Mr. Calkins will see by the intent of his
very lessons, that he does not contemplate any such thing as 'sensation'
or 'observation,' as being a faculty: but, on the other hand, that he is
so regarding certain individual powers of mind, by which we know in
nature Color and Form and Number and Change and so on.

We must question whether 'in the natural order of the development of the
human faculties, the mind of the child takes cognizance first of the
_forms_ of objects.' Form is a result of particular _extensions:_
evidently, extension must be known before form can be. But again,
visibly, form is revealed through kinds and degrees of light and shade;
in one word, through _color_. Evidently, then, color also must be
appreciated before visible form can be. But this 'natural order of the
development of the human faculties,' is a seductive thing. In phrase, it
is mellifluous; in idea, impressively philosophical. It would be well if
this book, while cautiously applying developing processes to the little
learner, were to _dogmatise_ less to the teacher. But when the
development-idea is carried into the titles of the sections, it becomes,
we think, yet more questionable. Thus, a section is headed, 'To develop
the idea of straight lines.' First, would not the idea of _a straight
line_ come nearer to the thing actually had in view? Again, 'To develop
the idea of right, acute, and obtuse angles.' 'The idea,' taking in all
these things, must be most mixed and multifarious; it could not be
_clear_, though that is a quality mainly to be sought. Is not the
intention rather, to develop _ideas_ of _the right, the acute,_ and _the
obtuse angle?_ Instances of this sort, which we can not understand
otherwise than as showing a loose way of thinking, are numerous. But
then, again, it is assumed that the lessons _develop_ all the ideas
successively discoursed about. Far otherwise, in fact. In many
instances, of course, a sharper, better idea of the object or quality
discussed will be elicited in the course of the lesson. This is, at
best, only a sort of quasi-development, individualizing an idea by
turning it on all sides, comparing with others, and sweeping away the
rubbish that partly obscured it. In others of the topics, the learner
has the ideas before we begin our developing operations. But the great
misfortune of the usage of the term here is, that _develop_ properly
implies to _unroll, uncover, or disclose_ something that is infolded,
complicate, or hidden away; but mark, something that is always THERE
before the developing begins, and that by it is only brought into light,
freedom, or activity! Thus, we may develop faculties, for they were
there before we began; but we simply can not develop _objective ideas_,
such as this book deals with, but must impart them, or rather, give the
mind the opportunity to get them. First, then, this term thus employed
is needlessly pretentious; secondly, it is totally misapplied. Would it
not help both teacher and pupil, then, if we were to leave this stilted
form of expression, and set forth the actual thing the lessons
undertake, by using such caption as for for example, _To give the idea,
of a triangle,_ or to insure, or _to furnish the idea of a curve?_ We
think the misnomer yet greater and worse, when we come to such captions
as 'To develop the idea of God, as a kind Father;' especially when the
amount of the development is this: 'Now, children, listen very
attentively to what I say, and I will _tell you_ about a Friend that
_you all have_, one who is kind to all of you, one who _loves you
better_ than your father or your mother does,' and so on. All this, and
what precedes and follows, is 'telling,' as the author acknowledges; of
course, then, it is not developing. How is the child here made to _find_
and _know_ that it has such a Friend?--that this Friend _is_ kind to
all?--that this Friend loves it better than do parents, or, in fact, at
all? This is the way the nursery develops this and kindred ideas, and if
the child be yet too young for its own comprehension of the most obvious
truths of Natural Theology, then better defer the subject, or at least
cease to call the nursery method by too swelling a name!

As to arrangement of topics, though the geographical lessons properly
come late, as they stand, the idea of _place_, as well as those of
_weight and size_, all belong earlier than the positions they are found
in; and _number_, later. Such mental anachronisms as talking of _solids_
before the attempt has been made to impart or insure the idea of a
solid, should, where practicable, be avoided; and more notably, such as
bringing a subsequent and complex idea, like that of 'square measure,'
before scarcely any one of the elementary ideas it involves, such as
_measure, standard_, or even _length or size_, is presented. As to the
substance of the teaching, we will indicate a few points that raise a
question on perusal of them. What will the little learner gain, if the
teacher follows the book in this instance? 'Where is the skin of the
apple? _On_ its surface.'' This is in the lesson for 'developing the
idea' of surface. When, by and by, the young mathematician gets the true
idea of a surface, as extension in two dimensions only, hence, without
thickness, then will follow this surprising result, that the whole
thickness of the apple-skin is _on_--outside--the apple's surface, and
hence, is nowhere: a singular converse of the teaching of those smart
gentlemen who waste reams of good paper in establishing, to their own
satisfaction, that even the mathematical surface itself has thickness!
In the lesson on 'perpendicular and horizontal,' the definition of
perpendicular is correct; but all the developing, before and after,
unfortunately confounds the _perpendicular_ with the _vertical_--a bad
way toward future accuracy of thought, or toward making scientific
ideas, as they should be, definite as well as practically useful. If we
judge by the brevity and incompleteness of the lesson on 'Developing
ideas of Drawing'(!), ideas of that particular 'stripe' must be scarce.
The Object Lessons at the close of the book we find generally very good
models of such exercises, clear and to the purpose. Once in a while
there is a _lapsus_, as in this: The criterion of a _liquid_ is
presented as being in the circumstances that it does not '_hold
together_' when poured from a vessel, but 'forms drops.' Now, since it
forms drops, it _has cohesion_, and the criterion is wrongly taken; In
fact, the same thing appears in that the liquid, even in pouring out,
does hold together in a stream, and a stream that experiments with
liquid jets show it really requires considerable force to break up.

Finally, Mr. Calkins's book, in the bands of discerning and skillful
teachers, can be made the instrument of a great deal of right and
valuable discipline for primary classes; but without some guarding and
help from the teacher's own thought, it will not always do the best
work, nor in the best way. It is an approach to a good book for early
mental development; but it is not the consummation to be desired. Many
of its suggestions and patterns of lessons are excellent; but there is
too large a lack of true consecution of topics, of accuracy of
expression, and of really natural method of handling the subjects. We
say this with no unkindly feeling toward the attempt or the author, but
because, though no matter by how fortuitous circumstances, it comes to
us as in this country the _first effort_ toward a certain new style of
books and subjects, and certain more rational teaching; and we hold it,
as being the privilege of teachers whose time may be too much consumed
in applying, to criticise minutely, as no less our right and duty, and
that of every independent man, to recognize and point out wherein this
new venture meets, or fails to meet, the new and positive demand of the
pupils and the teachers in our time. If, in a degree, the working out
shows defects such as we have named, is it not yet a question, whether
we have in the book an illustration 'how this system of training may be
applied to the entire course of common school education'?--to say
nothing now of the question whether, even in its best form, it is a
system that ought to be so applied.

After the author of a book for young learners is sure of the
comprehensibility of his subjects, and the accuracy of his ideas and
expressions of them, the highest need--and one the lack of which is
fatal to true educative value--is that of a natural and true synthesis
and consecution of the successive steps of fact and principle that are
to be presented. We would not be understood that every successive lesson
and every act of voluntary thinking must thus be consecutive: to say
this, would be to confine the mind to one study, and to make us dread
even relaxation, lest it break the precious and fragile chain of
thought. Our growth in knowledge is not after that narrow pattern. We
take food at one time, work at another, and sleep at a third: and so,
the mind too has its variations of employment, and best grows by a like
periodicity in them. This is our point--that it is a peculiarity and law
of mind, growing out of the very nature of mind and of its knowings,
that no truth or knowledge which is in its nature a _consequent_ on some
other truths or knowledge, can by any possibility be in reality attained
by any mind until after that mind has first secured and rightly
appreciated those _antecedent_ truths or knowings. No later or more
complex knowledge is ever comprehensible or acquirable, until after the
elements of knowledge constituting or involved in it have first been
definitely secured. To suppose otherwise, is precisely like supposing a
vigorously nourishing foliage and head of a tree with neither roots nor
stem under it; it is to suppose a majestic river, that had neither
sufficient springs nor tributaries. Now, for the pupil, the text-book
maker, the educator, no truth is more positive or profoundly important
than this. He who fails of it, by just so much as he does so, fails to
educate. Let the pupil, as he must, alternately study and not study--go
even on the same day from one study to a second, though seldom to more
than a third or fourth. By all this he need lose nothing; and he will
tax and rest certain faculties in turn. But then, insist that each
subject shall recur frequently enough to perpetuate a healthy activity
and growth of the faculties it exercises, usually, daily for five days
in a week, or every other day at farthest; that each shall recur at a
stated period, so that a habit of mind running its daily, steady and
productive round with the sun may be formed; and that in and along the
material of every subject pursued, whether it be arithmetic, or grammar,
or chemistry, or an ancient or modern language, the mind shall so be
enabled to advance consecutively, clearly and firmly from step to
step--from observation to law, from law to application, from analysis to
broader generalization, and its application, and so on--that every new
step shall just have been prepared for by the conceptions, the mental
susceptibility and fibre, gotten during the preceding ones, and that
thus, every new step shall be one forward upon new and yet sure ground,
a source of intellectual delight, and a further intellectual gain and
triumph. Need we say, this is the _ideal_? Practice must fall somewhat
short of it; but Practice must first aim at it; and as yet she has
scarcely conceived about the thing, or begun to attempt it. In truth,
Practice is very busy, dashing on without a due amount of consideration,
striving to project in young minds noble rivers of knowledge without
their fountains; and building up therein grand trees of science, of
which either the roots are wanting, or all parts come together too much
in confusion.

First, then, we are not to make the presentation of any topic or lesson,
even to the youngest learner, needlessly inconsecutive; but with the
more advanced learners--with those in the academic and collegiate
courses--we should insist on the display, and in so doing best insure
the increase of the true _robur_ of the intellect, by positive
requirement that all the topics shall be developed logically; that
sufficient facts shall come before all conclusions; and rigid, sharp,
and satisfactory analysis before every generalization or other
synthesis. So, the more advanced mind would learn induction, and logic,
and method, by use of them upon all topics; it would know by experience
their possibilities, requirements, and special advantages; and it would
be able to recognize their principles, when formally studied, as but the
reflex and expression of its own acquired habitudes. Such a mind, we may
safely say, would be _educated_. But secondly, the foregoing
considerations show that we are not unnecessarily to jumble together the
topics and lessons; to vacillate from one line of study to another; to
wander, truant-like, among all sorts of good things--exploiting, now, a
_color_; then _milk_; then in due time _gratitude_ and _the pyramids_;
then _leather_, (for, though 'there's nothing like leather,' it may be
wisest to keep it in its place;) then _sponge_, and _duty to parents,
lying_, the _points of compass_, etc.! And here, for all ages above nine
or ten years, is a real drawback, or at the least, a positive danger, of
the Object-Lesson and Common-Things teaching. Just here is shadowed
forth a real peril that threatens the brains of the men and women of
the--we may say, 'rising' generation, through this fresh accession of
the object-lesson interest in our country. _Objects_, now, are
unquestionably good things; and yet, even objects can be 'run into the
ground.'

We had put the essential thought here insisted on into words, before
object-lessons had acquired the impetus of the last and current year.

     'The 'object lessons' of Pestalozzi and his numerous followers, had,
     in a good degree, one needed element--they required WORK of the
     pupil's own mind, not mere recipiency. But they have [almost]
     wholly lacked another element, just as important--that of
     CONSECUTION in the steps and results dealt with. In most of the
     schools in our country--in a degree, in all of them--these two
     fundamental elements of all right education, namely, true work of
     the learner's mind, and a natural and true consecution in not only
     the processes of each day or lesson, but of one day on another, and
     of each term on the preceding, are things quite overlooked, and
     undreamed of, or,

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