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The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864

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Title: The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3,  September 1864

Author: Various


        
Release date: October 8, 2007 [eBook #22926]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY, VOL. 6, NO 3,  SEPTEMBER 1864 ***




Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Janet Blenkinship and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made
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The

Continental Monthly:

Devoted To

Literature and National Policy


VOL. VI.--September, 1864--No. III.




OUR DOMESTIC AFFAIRS.


Not of those affairs which are domestic in a broad, national sense; not
of any of our home institutions, 'peculiar' or otherwise; not of
politics in any shape, nor of railroads and canals, nor of interstate
relations, reconstructions, amnesty; not even of the omnivorous
question, The War, do I propose to treat under the head of 'Our Domestic
Affairs;' but of a subject which, though scarcely ever discussed except
flippantly, and with unworthy levity, in that broad arena of public
journalism in which almost every other conceivable topic is discussed,
is yet second to none, if not absolutely first of all in its bearings
upon our domestic happiness. I refer to the question of domestic service
in our households.

The only plausible explanation of the singular fact that this important
subject is not more frequently discussed in public is, undoubtedly, to
be found in its very magnitude. Men and women whose 'mission' it is to
enlighten and instruct the people, abound in every walk of morals.
Religion, science, ethics, and every department of social economy but
this, have their 'reformers.' Before the great problem, How shall the
evils which attend our domestic service be removed? the stoutest-hearted
reformer stands appalled. These evils are so multiform and
all-pervading, they strike their roots so strongly, and ramify so
extensively, that they defy the attempt to eradicate them; and they are
thus left to flourish and increase. We have plenty of groans over these
evils, but scarcely ever a thoughtful consideration of their cause, or
an attempt worth noting to remove or mitigate them.

This is surely cowardly and wrong. This great question, which is really
so engrossing that it is more talked of in the family circle than any
other--this profound and intricate problem, upon the solution of which
the comfort, happiness, and thrift of every household in the land depend
more than upon almost any other--surely demands the most careful study,
and the deepest solicitude of the reformer and philanthropist. The
subject just now is receiving considerable attention in England, and the
journals and periodicals of that country have recently teemed with
articles setting forth the miseries with which English households are
afflicted, owing to the want of good servants. But, unfortunately, from
none of these has the writer been able to extract much assistance in
preparing an answer to the only practical question: How are the evils
of domestic service to be remedied? I quote, however, an extract from a
recent article in _The Victoria Magazine_, in order to show how far the
complaints made in England of the shortcomings of servants run parallel
with those of our own housekeepers. It is to be noted that the writer
confessedly holds a brief for the servants. If the facts are fairly
stated, the relation between a servant in an English family and her
employer differs widely from the like relation with us;

     'The prizes in domestic service are few, the blanks many. Ladies
     think only of the prizes. Needlewomen and factory girls, when they
     turn their attention to domestic service, see the hardworked,
     underfed scrub lacking the one condition which goes far to
     alleviate the hardest lot, that of personal liberty. People who
     have never known what it is to be subject to the caprices of a
     petty tyrant, scarcely appreciate this alleviation at its true
     value. They expatiate upon the light labors, the abundance, the
     freedom from anxiety which characterize the lot of servants in good
     places, with an unction worthy of Southern slaveholders. What more
     any woman can want they cannot understand. They think it nothing
     that a servant has not, from week to week, and month to month, a
     moment that she can call her own, a single hour of the day or
     night, of which she can say, 'This is mine, and no one has a right
     to prescribe what I shall do with it'--that, in most cases, she has
     no recognized right to invite any one to come and see her, and
     therefore can have no full and satisfying sense of home--that many
     mistresses go so far as to claim the regulation of her dress--that
     even in mature age and by the kindest employers she is treated more
     as a child to be taken care of than as a responsible, grown-up
     woman, able to think and judge for herself. These are substantial
     drawbacks to the lot of the pampered menial.... These complaints of
     the readiness of servants to leave their places are based on the
     assumption that they are under obligations to their employers. In
     many cases, no doubt, they are, though probably least so where
     gratitude is most expected. But, at any rate, employers are also
     under obligations to them. When one thinks of all servants do for
     us, and how little, comparatively, we do for them, it appears that
     the demand for gratitude might come more appropriately from the
     other side. It is an old saying that we value in others the virtues
     which are convenient to ourselves, and this is curiously
     illustrated in the popular ideal of a good servant. In the master's
     estimate besides the indispensable physical qualification of
     vigorous health--diligence, punctuality, cleverness, readiness to
     oblige, and rigid honesty, of a certain sort, are essentials.'

We would look long through our laundries and kitchens for the
'hardworked, underfed scrub' of the above extract; and the 'servant who
has not from week to week, and month to month, a moment that she can
call her own, a single hour of the day or night, of which she can say,
This is mine,' etc., does not belong to so numerous a class that her
sorrows in this respect invoke commiseration in the public journals. But
great as is the difference still between English and American servants,
as indicated by the above extract, the former are in a steadily
'progressive' state, and every year brings them nearer in their
condition to the happy--and, fortunately for the rest of mankind, as yet
anomalous--state of American domesticdom. An article in the London
_Saturday Review_ thus comments upon this progress:

     'It seems to be too generally forgotten that servants are a part of
     the social system, and that, as the social system changes, the
     servants change with it. In the days of our great-grandmothers, the
     traditions of the patriarchal principle and the subtile influences
     of feudalism had not died out. 'Servitude' had scarcely lost its
     etymological significance, and there was something at least of the
     best elements of slavery in the mutual relation of master and
     servant. There was an identification of interests; wages were
     small; hiring for a year under penal obligations was the rule of
     domestic service; and facilities for changing situations were rare
     and legally abridged. It was as in married life; as the parties to
     the contract were bound to make the best of each other, they did
     make the best of each other. Servants served well, because it was
     their interest to do so; masters ruled well and considerately, for
     the same practical reason. Add to this that the class of hirers was
     relatively small, while the class of hired and the opportunities of
     choice were relatively large. These conditions are now reversed. As
     education has advanced, the social condition of the class from
     which servants are taken has been elevated, and it is thought to be
     something of a degradation to serve at all. 'I am a servant, not a
     slave,' is the form in which Mary Jane asserts her independence;
     and she is only in a state of transition to the language of her
     American cousin, who observes, 'I am a help, not a servant.' It is
     quite true that there are no good servants nowadays, at least none
     of the old type; and the day is not perhaps so very distant when
     there will be no servants at all.'

The servant classes of France, Germany, and the other Continental
countries, seem to be, to a great extent, free from the faults that
beset those of England and America. A recent number of _Bell's Weekly
Messenger_ thus discusses this difference:

     'The truth is that among the Celtic and Sclavonian families service
     is felt to be honorable; those engaged in it take it up as a
     respectable and desirable condition. They are as willing to
     acknowledge it as the physician, the lawyer, or the clergyman is to
     admit and be proud of their own. A French female servant, at least
     away from Paris, wears a dress which marks at once what she is. She
     is not ashamed of her condition, and nowhere is there such real
     attachment between servants and their employers as in France. In
     England, on the other hand, it is difficult to persuade a young
     girl to accept domestic service; she requires what she imagines to
     be something higher, or--to use her own word--more 'genteel.' If
     she be a dressmaker, or a shop girl, or a barmaid, she assumes the
     title of 'young lady,' and advertises--to the disgust of all
     sensible people--as such. This monstrous notion, which strikes at
     the root of all social comfort, and a great deal of social
     respectability, is on the increase among us. It is not quite so
     rampant as it is in America, but it is tending in the same
     direction. In fact, our household prospects are not promising.
     Since we feel that home cookery is far from rivalling that of the
     clubs, restaurants are being established in the city equal to those
     of Paris, and the cartoon of _Punch_ is daily fulfilled with a
     terrible accuracy. 'What has your mistress for dinner to-day?' says
     the master of the house, on the doorstep, his face toward the city.
     'Cold mutton, sir.' 'Cold mutton! Ah! very nice; _very_ nice. By
     the by, Mary, you may just mention to your mistress that I _may_
     perhaps be detained rather later than usual to-day, and she is not
     to wait dinner for me.' With these things before our eyes, we
     cannot but feel grateful to any one who will _bona fide_ undertake
     to teach a little plain cookery. The want of this is the cause of
     more waste than any other deficiency. The laboring man marries; but
     he marries a woman who can add nothing to the comfort of his home;
     she supplies him with more mouths to feed, and she spoils that
     which is to be put into them; she becomes slatternly, feels her own
     incapacity, and, finding that she can do but little of her duty,
     soon leaves off trying to do it at all. As her family increases the
     discomforts of her home increase, and the end is
     frequently--drunkenness, violence, and appeals to the police
     magistrate.'

The writer of the present article pretends to no peculiar fitness for
the investigation of this important subject, and to no more varied and
profound experience than that which has fallen to the lot of tens of
thousands of others; but much observation leads to the conviction that
the experience of any single family extending through a series of years
of housekeeping, may be taken as a type of that of all families who have
to employ servants; and if what shall be advanced in these pages shall
have the effect of stimulating others more competent to thought upon the
subject, with a view to practical suggestions for the amelioration of
the universal difficulty, much will have been gained.

The chief evils we have to consider on the part of servants are,
briefly, ignorance, wastefulness, untidiness, pertness, or downright
impudence, and what is called 'independence,' a term which all
housekeepers thoroughly understand. I leave out of the category the
vices of intemperance and dishonesty, which, although lamentably
prevalent among the class to which we are accustomed to look for our
main supply of domestics, yet do not belong, as do the other faults I
have named, to the entire class, and I gladly set them down as moral
obliquities, as likely to be exceptional in the class under
consideration as in any other. With regard to the other specified
failings, every housekeeper will allow that it is so much the rule for a
servant to be afflicted with the whole catalogue, that the mistress who
discovers her hired girl to be possessed of a single good quality, the
reverse of any I have named, as for example, economy, neatness, or a
conscientious devotion to the interests of her employers, although she
may utterly lack any other, fears to dismiss her, for fear that the next
may prove an average 'help,' and have not a solitary good point. A girl
who combines all the above-named good qualities is a rare treasure
indeed, and the possessor of the prize is an object of envy, wide and
hopeless.

In commenting upon the causes which produce bad servants, I shall
confine myself more especially to those which develop in them the faults
of wastefulness, impudence, and 'independence,' both because every
housekeeper will allow that they are the most common as well as trying
of all, and because it is only for them, I confess freely, I have any
hope of suggesting a remedy. Ignorance of their duties is chronic in all
Irish and German girls when they first go out to service, and their
acquirement of the requisite knowledge depends very much upon the amount
of such knowledge possessed by the housekeeper who has the privilege of
initiating them. Untidiness is almost equally universal among the same
classes, and, being a natural propensity, is extremely difficult of
eradication. It may be stated, however, that given an average
'greenhorn,' Irish or German, the notable and tidy housewife will make
of her a very fair servant, as well instructed as her native
intelligence will allow, and, unless a downright incorrigible, whose
natural slatternliness is beyond the reach of improvement, a certainly
tolerably neat, and possibly a very tidy servant. And just here I will
remark that it is an unquestionable fact that the good housekeeper has a
much more encouraging prospect of making a useful servant out of one of
these same 'greenhorns' than of a girl who has been longer in the
country, and who has nevertheless yet to be 'licked into shape.' Of
course this remark covers the whole ground, and it is obvious that to
_start_ a girl right in habits of economy, respectfulness, etc., is
quite as important as to start her right in any other good habit. It is
not necessary to say further that starting right is not of itself
enough: there must ever accompany the progress of the servant in
improvement, the watchful eye and guiding hand of the skilled mistress
and head of the family. I cannot, within the scope of this article,
enter into the consideration of the important correlative branch of my
subject, which includes the fitness of housekeepers to make good
servants out of the rough, to keep good what they so find, or to improve
such as they receive, be they good or bad. It is obvious that this
fitness presupposes a practical knowledge of the science of
housekeeping--(how worthy it is to be called a 'science'!)--and a
willingness to accept and carry out the responsibilities which devolve
upon the mistress of a family. I admit that very many of those who keep
servants are utterly unfit in many important senses for the
responsibilities of family economists. Yet I still believe it possible
for even the most inexperienced housekeepers to adopt and pursue, in
their management of servants, one or two cardinal principles which will
save them a vast deal of vexation. Of these, more hereafter.

The very prevalent pertness and 'independence' of servants are due,
primarily, unquestionably to the great demand for them, and the ease
with which situations are procured. This is not, in my judgment, because
the supply is inadequate; I do not believe it is. It is because the
frequent changings of servants by our families places it in the power of
every one of the former to procure a situation without the slightest
trouble. A girl about to leave a place has but to inquire for two or
three doors around, to find some family about to change 'help.' This
'independence' is also undoubtedly fostered by a false and exaggerated
idea which these girls imbibe from their brothers, 'cousins,' etc.--the
voting 'sovereigns' of the land--of the dignity of their new republican
relation. Most of the 'greenhorns' _begin_ humbly enough, but, after a
few months' tutelage of fellow servants, and especially if they pass
through the experiences of the 'intelligence offices' (of which more
anon), they are thoroughly spoiled, and become too impudent and
'independent' for endurance. The male adopted citizen, fawned upon by
demagogues for his vote, is 'as good as anybody;' and why not Bridget
and Katrina?

Now I do not broach the abstract question of equality: I am willing to
admit that in the eye of our Maker we are, and before the law ought to
be, all equal--that is to say, _ought all to have an equal chance_; but
to abolish the idea of subordination in the employed to the employer,
and to abrogate the relation of dependence of the servant upon her or
his master or mistress, would simply be to reverse the teachings of
inspiration and nature. As well say that the child shall be independent
of the parent as that the servant shall not be subject in all reasonable
things to the master.

It is worthy of remark that this spirit of insubordination spoken of is
far more rife among girls of Irish birth who go out to service than
among the Germans, Scotch, or English. Neither is there among these
latter so much clannishness, or disposition to establish the feeling
under consideration as a _class_ prejudice and principle of conduct, as
there is among the former. The absence of such a homogeneity of feeling
among German, English, and Scotch domestics makes them much more
favorable subjects for the operation of the rules I propose to suggest
for their improvement.

The clannishness just alluded to is a very important influence among
those which tend to produce insubordination and other serious faults
among servants. Every housekeeper must have observed that a marvellous
facility of intercommunication exists among the servant classes, and
more particularly among the Irish. There seems to be some mysterious
method at work, whereby the troubles and bickerings of each mistress
with her 'help' are made known through the whole realm of servantdom. It
is no uncommon thing for a mistress to have minutely detailed to her by
her hired girl the particulars of some difficulty with a previous
servant, with whom she has no reason to believe the narrator has had any
intercourse. So frequently does this happen that many housekeepers
religiously believe that the Irish servants are banded together in some
sort of a 'society,' in the secret conclaves of which the experiences of
each kitchen are confided to the common ear. This belief is not confined
to American housekeepers, but obtains very extensively in England also.
The arrest and punishment of a woman in London for giving a good
'character' to a dishonest servant, who subsequently robbed her
employer, naturally caused some excitement in housekeeping circles in
that city, and numerous communications to _The Times_ evinced the
feeling upon the subject. In one of these 'A Housekeeper' boldly asserts
that there are combinations among the servants, and that housekeepers
who refuse to give a certificate of good character are 'spotted,' and
find in consequence the greatest difficulty in obtaining any servants
thereafter. Indeed, she asserts that in some instances, so rigorously
does the system work, offending families have been compelled to
relinquish housekeeping, and go into lodgings or abroad, until their
offence was forgotten! The fundamental principle which our housekeepers
believe to pervade these societies is that employers are fair game; that
the servant has to expect nothing but to be oppressed, persecuted,
overworked, ground down, and taken advantage of at every opportunity,
and that it is her duty, therefore, to hold the employer at bitter
enmity, and to make the best fight she can.

Now such a belief can scarcely be termed absurd, and yet it is
unquestionably groundless. The mysterious 'understanding' of servants,
and their wide knowledge of each other's experiences, may be explained
upon a perfectly simple and rational theory, and I think we may venture
to reject the 'society' hypothesis altogether.

Servant life is as much a world in itself as political, religious, or
art life. Indeed, its inhabitants are even _more_ isolated and
self-existent than those of any other sphere, for while the politician,
theologian, and artist are generally, to some extent, under the
influence of interests and passions other than those which belong
exclusively to their special walk, the dwellers in kitchens have but the
one all-embracing sphere, and its incidents, which seem to us so
trivial, are to them as important as the great events which we think are
worthy of being embalmed in epics or made imperishable in history. To
them the reproof of the mistress or the loss of wages for the careless
pulverization of a soup tureen is lawful theme for the agitation of all
servantdom. Martin Luther had his tussles with pope and devil, Handel
and Gluck had their wars with the hostile cabals, Henry Clay had his
John Randolph and Andrew Jackson--and Bridget and Catharine have their
disturbing and absorbing questions of 'wages,' and 'privileges,' and
other matters; and a wrangle that the mistress forgets in a day, the
maid carefully cherishes in her memory, and makes it the theme of widest
discussion. Without resorting, then, to the improbable notion of the
existence of a secret society among the servants, through which the
knowledge of our difficulties with them is disseminated, I think the
theory above outlined sufficiently explains what seems so mysterious.
There can, however, be no question that the feeling among servants
generally is unfortunately something like that alluded to above as the
imaginary inspiration of a hypothetical society, namely, that employers
are oppressive, exacting, and utterly selfish; and there is certainly a
tacit understanding that, as between servant and mistress, it is
'diamond cut diamond;' and the habit domestics have of making common
cause with a sister in trouble, no doubt practically works as much evil
as if such a society as has been mentioned really existed. The girl,
confronting her adversary, in military phrase, feels a hundred comrades
'touching her elbow,' and her lip is wonderfully stiffened thereby. Now
it is needless for me to say that the idea that these poor girls have,
that their employers are their natural enemies, is wrong and absurd, and
every housekeeper should endeavor to make this clear to her servants. If
this false idea could be eradicated, and the true theory established
that the interests of the employer and employe are identical, much will
have been accomplished toward making better servants.

Among the influences which are at work to spoil servants, none are more
baleful than the system, as at present conducted, of 'intelligence
offices.' These agencies _might_ be and _ought_ to be among the most
useful of our social institutions: they _are_, as a class, utterly
worthless, and many of them are positively dens of thieves. Almost
without exception they are conducted upon the vicious principle I have
just above discussed, and in them the servant is confirmed in her belief
that the employing class is a class of cruel oppressors. The interest of
the _employer_ seems to be held by the managers of most of these
institutions as absolutely of no account. The following conversation,
which actually took place in one of these offices, between its
proprietor and an applicant for a domestic, will illustrate, better than
a lengthy disquisition could do, the system upon which too many of these
employment agencies are conducted:

LADY. I want a girl for general housework.

PROPRIETOR. Well, I can suit you, if you _can_ be suited. Here's a girl,
now, just out of a place, and I can recommend her (beckoning to one of
the fifty girls who are seated in full hearing of all that passes).

LADY (after a few questions addressed to the girl, who, of course, can
cook, and bake, and wash and iron, and is extravagantly fond of
'childer,' etc., etc.). Well, there is one thing I am very particular
about. I want a girl who is _honest_. The last girl I had from you I had
to discharge for making too free with my stores for the benefit of her
own family relations.

PROPRIETOR (with an insolent sneer). Honest! humph! that depends upon
what you _call_ honest. _Some_ people call a girl a thief if she takes a
bit of cake from the pantry without saying, 'By your leave.' (Chorus of
giggles and approbatory nods from the sympathizing audience of fifty.)

The crude notions of the respective rights of _meum_ and _tuum_
furnished the 'help' graduated by such an institution, may be imagined.

Some pains are occasionally taken to provide a regular customer, whose
patronage it is desirable to retain, with a good servant, but generally
all is fish that comes to their net. The business is now in such ill
odor that intelligence-office servants are proverbial for worthlessness
and all the worst qualities of the class. I have known a thief, a
drunkard, and a vixen to be sent from one of these offices in
succession, the victimized housekeeper finally begging that no more be
sent, preferring to let the retaining fee go, than to be pestered any
further. It is well known that the more decent and self-respecting of
the class of domestics rarely, now, enter their names upon the books of
intelligence offices. Indeed, such seldom have occasion to seek places;
if they do, they usually prefer to advertise.

In this employment-agency business a radical reform is needed. A
respectable and conscientious man at the head of such an institution,
managing it upon the principle that it is just as much his interest to
furnish the employer with a good servant as to provide the servant with
a good place, would be truly a public benefactor. In this, as in all
other kinds of business, honesty would be found the best _policy_. It is
a base imposition to recommend as good a servant who is known to be bad,
and it is just as dishonest to recommend as good one whose character is
totally unknown. It should be the business of every purveyor of
household 'help' to ascertain, by rigid investigation, the characters
and qualifications of those who apply for places; and they should
steadily refuse to have anything to do with any they cannot honestly
recommend. This, we repeat, they would speedily find their best policy.
In this way, and this only, can they win back the confidence and
patronage of the public; and they would soon find that the worthless
characters who now constitute their main stock in trade, would be
superseded by a much better class. There would be another important
benefit to the servants themselves in such a course. In an office thus
conducted, the known necessity of being able to show a clean record in
order to procure a place, would reform many a bad servant, who now,
knowing that her twenty-five cents will procure her a place (and no
questions asked by the agent, so that he need tell no lies), has no
incentive to improvement or good conduct. There would soon be a rivalry
among servants as to who should stand highest upon the roll of merit.

The fault which has been before alluded to under the name of
'independence,' deserves more special mention than I have yet given it.
It is probably the most exasperating, as it is the most general of all
the failings of servants. It makes the timid and sensitive housekeeper a
slave in her own house. No matter how grave may be the offences of her
hired girl, she must bear them in the meekest silence. Even the most
friendly advice, conveyed in the blandest possible tone, is often
declined with freezing dignity or repelled with tart resentment. The
cook who makes a cinder of your joint, or sends you up disgusting slops
for coffee, or the laundress between whose clean and soiled linen you
are puzzled to choose, has almost invariably the reply, uttered with a
majestic sternness that never fails to crush any but a veteran and
plucky housekeeper: 'This is the first time any mistress ever found
fault with _my_ cooking (or washing), and I have always lived with the
_best families_, too.' The cutting emphasis with which this point of the
'best families' is pushed home, is familiar to nearly every housekeeper.
It was scarcely a departure from sober truth in the lady who, on being
asked if she kept a hired girl, replied that she had an Irish lady
boarding with her, who occasionally condescended, when she had nothing
of more consequence to do, to help a little in the work of the family.
An amusing trifle is going the rounds of the papers, which well hits
off, and without much exaggeraration, the self-assumed prerogatives of
the servant girl of our great cities:

     "Now, Miss Bradford, I always likes to have a good, old-fashioned
     talk with the lady I lives with, before I begins. I'm awful
     tempered, but I'm dreadful forgivin'. Have you Hecker's flour,
     Beebe's range, hot and cold water, stationary tubs, oilcloth on the
     floor, dumb waiter?' Then follows her planned programme for the
     week: 'Monday I washes. I'se to be let alone that day. Tuesday I
     irons. Nobody's to come near me that day. Wednesday I bakes. I'se
     to be let alone that day. Thursday I picks up the house. Nobody's
     to come near me that day. Friday I goes to the city. Nobody's to
     come near me that day. Saturday I bakes, and Saturday afternoon my
     beau comes to see me. Nobody's to come near me that day. Sunday I
     has to myself."

I have now pointed out some of the principal faults of servants, and
indicated what I believe to be some of the causes of those faults.
Alluding, in passing, to some influences which it seems to me might be
made available in correcting some of these faults, I have yet to mention
what I conceive to be the most important reason of all for the general
worthlessness of the class under consideration. And in noticing this I
shall necessarily couple with that notice some suggestions which I
firmly believe, if put into practice, will be exceedingly beneficial in
producing the reform we all so ardently wish for. And I feel the less
hesitation in saying this, because they are based upon no theory of my
own devising, but upon principles which are everywhere recognized and
acted upon, except, singularly enough, in the conduct of our domestic
affairs. To be brief, then, I attribute the greatest of the evils of our
system of domestic service _to a want of business management in our
domestic affairs_.

A wife, in the truest sense, is her husband's most important business
partner--his partner in a more complete and comprehensive sense than any
other he can have. It is not, as many seem to imagine, the business of
the wife to spend the money the husband earns. She is as much bound to
forward the mutual prosperity as he is. The household is her department
of the great business of life, as her husband's is the store, the
manufactory, or the office. Her department does not embrace the conduct
of great enterprises, bargains, speculations, etc.; she has only to
remember and act upon the brief, simple maxim: 'A penny saved is a penny
earned.' In this way she can greatly advance the common weal. If she
fails to act constantly upon this principle, she is an unfaithful and
untrustworthy partner, and is as much, to blame as if her husband were
to neglect his stock, his shipping, his contract, or his clients. Why
should the husband be expected to manage _his_ part of the business upon
sound and correct business principles--system, responsibility,
economy--while his helpmeet is letting hers go at loose ends, with a
shiftlessness which if he should emulate would ruin him in a year?

Now what is the principle upon which every good business man manages his
affairs? Why, simply that of _sovereignty_. In his domain his will is
law, and no employe dare question it. He has to deal with the male
counterparts of Bridget and Catharine, as porters, laborers, sometimes
as cooks and waiters; but he has no trouble. The 'independent' man soon
goes out of the door. If he be a manufacturer, he does not allow his
employes to help themselves to his stores and material. He keeps, if he
is a sensible man, his stock under lock and key, and exacts a rigid
accountability in their use. What is to prevent the introduction of just
such a system of accountability in the family economy? 'Why,' say many
housekeepers, 'we would not _dare_ to lock up our butter, and eggs, and
flour, and sugar; we could not keep a girl a day if we doled out our
stores and held our servants responsible for their economical use.' But,
dear, doubting mesdames, your business partner does this every day, and
we should like to see the clerk or apprentice who would even 'look
black' at him for doing it. Perhaps your business partner has to employ
girls; if so, he has many Irish among them; don't _they_ stand his
manner of doing business, without grumbling? If they don't, they find
another shop, that's all. Suppose this case: A manufacturer of jewelry
reasons as you do. He says: 'I cannot keep my hands satisfied unless I
give them free access to my stock of gold, silver, and diamonds. I must
throw open my tool drawers, so that they can help themselves; and I must
not ask how much material this or that manufactured article has taken to
make.' That man would have to shut up shop in a year, even if he were
not robbed of a dollar. Now, I ask, is it fair to expect the husband to
be orderly, systematic, and business-like, and to superintend his
business himself, while the wife surrenders her legitimate affairs to
the hands of ignorant and irresponsible subordinates?

But the female partner of the shrewd man of business, or the plodding,
hardworking mechanic, may be inclined to say, 'I hate business,' and to
think it hard that she should be called upon to regulate her household
affairs upon any such severe and rigid rules. But, my dear madam, apart
from the clear fact that it is your duty to manage your household wisely
and prudently, which we have seen cannot be done without business
system, of which you must be the head, I assure you that such a system
is neither intricate nor vexatious. It does not necessarily entail upon
you the least participation in the actual _labor_ of the family. It does
not absolutely require your personal presence at the scene of those
labors, although the woman who considers it beneath her dignity to go
into her kitchen, has no more business to undertake to keep house than
the master mechanic, who is too proud to enter his workshop, has to try
to carry on a shop. The absolutely _essential_ thing is that yours
should be the directing and controlling mind, and that to you _every one
in your employ should be held rigorously responsible_. Now don't tell me
that such a system cannot be introduced with the present race of
servants; that you would be left half the time without anybody to do
your work; that until mistresses can combine to lay down rules for the
better regulation of domestic service, you must submit to the present
evils. You are not justified in assuming any of these things to be so,
until you have honestly and thoroughly tried the experiment in your
single household. To make such a system work, it is of course necessary
that your servants should be made to understand perfectly certain facts,
which you should take pains distinctly to announce to every new domestic
you engage. They are so plainly just and reasonable that the most
captious servant cannot take exception to them as a matter of principle.
It must depend upon your persevering spirit and firm hand that they do
not fail in practice. First, you should tell your servant that,
employing them at a stipulated rate of wages, to do certain, work,
_their time belongs to you_. Tell them that you insist upon their being
absolutely under your direction and control, that you expect to grant
them all reasonable privileges, but that they must be regarded _as
privileges_, and not as _rights_. Tell them distinctly that, if you
prefer to keep your stores under lock and key, it is not because you
suspect their integrity, but because you consider it as your business as
a housekeeper to know what is the cost of your living. Tell them that
you are in the habit of keeping an accurate account of your expenses,
and that, in consequence, it is necessary that you should know of every
cent that is expended. If these facts are clearly made known and
consistently acted upon, much of the trouble of managing servants is
done away with.

Although the plan of keeping a book of family accounts only belongs
incidentally to the main subject under discussion, it is so important
that I cannot refrain from a more special mention of it than is given
above. It is the simplest thing in the world, not taking more than ten
minutes on an average every day. For reference, in case of a disputed
bill, it is invaluable, while its influence in keeping down expenses is
wonderfully wholesome.

If the affairs of a family are to be conducted on business principles,
the family account book cannot be neglected. It would be just as safe
and sensible for the merchant to neglect _his_ cash book, as for his
domestic partner, who undertakes to do her business properly, to fail to
keep _her_ cash book.

One of the regulations which is proposed posed above as part of the
system of family management is, in my judgment, as important in its
bearing upon the honesty of the servant as it is upon the question of
economy. I refer to the keeping the family stores under the immediate
care of the housekeeper. It is nothing to the discredit of servants that
this is said. More people are honest _through circumstances_ than is
generally supposed. Many a servant is tempted into habits of pilfering
by the free and unquestioned access she has to the family stores. I have
before used the case of a man carrying on a business and having employes
under him, to illustrate my subject. Suppose a merchant or a bank should
allow all their clerks free access to the safe or till, they knowing no
cash account was kept. If some of these boys or young men were tempted
to steal, would not the blame lie chiefly at the door of those who,
having it in their power, yet did not remove the temptation?

Having now given a few rules for the improvement of servants, which are
easily tried, and which I know from observation of their practical
working are _worth_ a trial by every housekeeper, I wish to add a few
words concerning the material of which, our present supply of servants
consists, and to offer some observations upon the question of a
prospective supply of possibly a better material.

It is probably no exaggeration to say that four fifths of our female
servants are Irish. I have already given several reasons why this class
are more intractable and difficult to manage than any other. To apply
the rules I have given to this class will be more difficult than to the
domestics of any other nation. But, as I have said, I have seen them
enforced with success even in cases where an Irish domestic was the
subject. And here let me repeat that almost everything depends upon the
_starting right_. No Irish girl ever yet went to a new place perfectly
sure of her ground, although they generally can measure the quality of
their mistress during the negotiations which precede the engagement. In
starting with a new servant, it is emphatically the first encounter that
must decide who is to be the ruler. Dignity, coolness, and decision,
upon the first attempt to 'put on airs,' will generally bring you off
permanent conqueror.

By some housekeepers German domestics are preferred. They are naturally
less impulsive and more amenable to control than the Irish. Their class
prejudices are not so violent; there is less unity of purpose among
them, and they are, in consequence, more favorable subjects for the
application of the rules given than are generally the Irish. It is,
however, difficult to assimilate the German girls to American customs.
They are not apt to learn, and great patience is required in teaching
them. The virtues of order and cleanliness seem to be not only rare in
them, but exceedingly difficult to graft upon them. Their cooking,
especially, is generally execrable. But once properly trained, they make
the best of servants. They are generally contented, almost always
cheerful and good tempered, and have little of that irritating pertness
and 'independence' so characteristic of the Irish domestic.

That branch of the present subject which relates to the going out to
service of American women has been publicly discussed somewhat more
extensively than any of the others, particularly of late, it having
entered largely into the question of woman's labor, which has been
attracting considerable attention. It is truly a deplorable thing that
household service is so generally regarded as a menial employment, not
fit for an American woman to engage in. Our countrywomen will do almost
anything rather than go out to service. They will work ten or twelve
hours a day in close, unwholesome shops, surrounded by all the unsexing
and contaminating influences attending the customary free and easy
commingling of male and female employes in such places. They will accept
avocations from which the native delicacy and neatness of an American
girl must revolt. They will put up with wages which will barely keep
body and soul together, wear the meanest clothes, submit to the vilest
tyranny and extortion, rather than enter a position where they will have
but the natural, wholesome labor of woman to perform, that of domestic
life; accompanied by all the pure influences and comforts of a home. I
would be rejoiced if anything I could say would be useful in removing
this absurd and injurious prejudice among American women toward domestic
service. There is surely nothing menial in the work they would have to
do. It is woman's work all over the world, far more so than a hundred
other occupations they now eagerly seek. Their repugnance to the
position itself is the sticking point. This repugnance is based upon a
chimera. They are, in any position in which they labor for wages,
'servants' in as complete a sense as if they labored for wages in
household employments. Far be it from me to say a word to lower that
just and honorable pride which is the birthright of the American girl.
But in declining domestic service for that of the shops, the American
girl declines an honest, reputable, healthful, and every way elevating
employment, for, in many cases, a dwarfing, degrading, wretched slavery;
she turns from her natural and proper sphere to enter a walk of harsh
and degrading experiences, in which it is not possible she can pass her
life. A word on this latter point: Almost every young woman expects some
day to marry. Now, I ask, what sort of a fitting can a girl receive in a
shop for the serious business of homekeeping? The significance of this
word 'homekeeping' is not apparent at a glance. It means far more than
mere 'housekeeping' although the latter is one of its most essential
elements. A girl of sixteen is forced to earn her own living. She
chooses to go into a shop. Grant that she escapes contamination from the
influences heretofore alluded to; that her health bears up under
confinement, bad air, scanty food, and insufficient clothing--all of
which are experiences too familiar with women who labor at mechanical
employments;--when she reaches a marriageable age, and takes the
important step which is to 'settle her for life,' what is her condition?
The chances are that she has become the wife of some hardworking
mechanic, or man of scanty means, who cannot afford to keep a fine lady
in his domestic establishment. But she knows no more of the mysteries of
housekeeping than she does of the Latin kalends. She must keep a
servant, who will waste the common substance, and keep her husband's
nose perpetually at the grindstone, to the great wear of mutual comfort
and temper. And once more: There is far more of forecast in young men
seeking wives than they commonly get credit for. The neat, smart girl,
who works in the shop, _may_ get a good husband--the young woman who is
a notable, tidy, thrifty housewife, is _sure_ to be sought after.

I would add a remark upon another point. American girls are frequently
heard to say they would not object to going out to service could they be
'treated as one of the family.' No American girl who respects herself
need fear that in an American family she will fail to command respect.
It should be remembered that the rigid line which is drawn in most
families between mistress and servant, is not simply because such
relations exist, but because there is generally absolutely nothing in
common between them save sex alone; no community of nationality,
religious belief, intelligence--nothing which can excite mutual
sympathy, or move to homogeneity. The American girl who lives out at
service need not fear that she will occupy a position in all respects
corresponding to that occupied by the great mass of servants.

It is highly probable that we shall be able hereafter to procure many
valuable servants from the South. When freedom shall have taken the
place of slavery, and labor becomes honorable in that section, many
Southern women will do--as many Northern women always have done--their
own work. In this way many servants will be set free. Then, when it
becomes necessary to pay wages to servants, there will be a swarming out
from the kitchens of the South of Dinah and Phillis _et als._, and many
of these superfluous servants will find their way North. Already out of
the bloody wreck of society at the South, through the flaming borders of
bayonets and cannon, have drifted into happy Northern homes thousands of
valuable servants, and they will be followed by thousands more, 'when
this cruel war is over.' We cannot judge of the qualities of colored
servants from the wretched specimens we have heretofore had among us.
The trained house-servants of the South are the best in the world. They
are docile, cleanly, quick-witted, and respectful to humbleness.

There have been many projects devised looking to the education of girls
for housekeeping. There was a very excellent institution in existence
ten years ago in one of the Eastern States, which combined with the
customary course of intellectual instruction a systematic training in
the mysteries of housekeeping. The writer has heard nothing of this
school for some years, and presumes it has failed for want of support.
We train our daughters only to shine in the drawing room, and the real
graces of life are neglected. Music, French, and Italian are very
excellent things, but they should stand second, not first, in the
acquirements which we should desire for those who are to be future
wives, mothers, and mistresses of families.[1] But this is a little
apart from the present subject. The idea of a school for training girls
for housekeeping, however, suggests a thought on the expediency of an
institution for the education of servants. Such a project has frequently
been urged as a most desirable one to be put into operation, though I am
not aware that it has ever been tried.[2] Of course it cannot be
expected that girls wishing to become servants could enter such an
institution if it cost anything for instruction. But there can be no
question that, purely as a matter of speculation, such a school would be
a success. If, in one of our large cities, an institution should be
opened by some one having the requisite knowledge, embodying the
principle of our present intelligence offices, taking young girls and
training them gratuitously, some for cooks, waiters, nursery maids,
laundresses, and a larger number for what is termed 'general housework,'
it being understood that in selecting the material the proprietor had an
eye to honesty and intelligence, it would be an immense success. The
servants graduating from such an institution would be eagerly sought
for, and would command the highest wages. The fee for furnishing a
servant could be placed at a much higher rate than is now paid at
intelligence offices, and would be paid readily, for the employer would
be reasonably confident of securing a good domestic. Such institutions
would go very far toward remedying the evils under which we now groan,
and I trust it will not be many years before schools for servants will
be among the recognized institutions of our country.



FOOTNOTES:

[1] The pity of it is that the majority of our young ladies, on leaving
school, know as little of music, French, and Italian as they can
possibly do of housekeeping.--ED. CON.

[2] The House of the Sisters of Mercy in New York is a worthy
commencement in the above-mentioned direction, and has, as far as we
know, hitherto proved successful.--ED. CON.




AENONE:

A TALE OF SLAVE LIFE IN ROME.


CHAPTER XII.

A week passed away. It was toward the end of a bright and cloudless day,
and Rome was gradually arousing itself from its wonted siesta. The heat
had at no time been oppressive, for during the whole morning a cool
breeze had been gambolling across the Campagna from the sea; so that
even during the small hours of the day, the streets had not been kept
free from moving masses of life. Now that the atmosphere became still
further tempered, fresh throngs poured forth from all the smaller
passages and alleys, until the greater arteries of the city swarmed with
eager, animated crowds.

More now than at any other time during the few weeks that had just
elapsed; for upon the morrow was to commence the dedication of the great
amphitheatre of Titus, and thousands of strangers had already poured
into Rome to witness the games, combats, and pageantry. From the
surrounding towns and villages--from the cities of the south--from the
confines of the Alps--even from the farthermost provinces, countless
throngs had assembled to greet an occasion second only to the grand
triumphal entry with the spoils of Jerusalem.

From her window overlooking the streets, AEnone surveyed the panorama of
life spread out before her. Upon the battlements and towers of the
Caesars' house, in full sight over against the Palatine Hill, floated the
imperial banners, gently waving their folds in anticipation of the
splendors of the ensuing days; and round about stood crowds of
strangers, wondering at the magnificence of the palace architecture, and
the vast compass of its walls, and straining their eager gaze in the
hope of being able to catch a chance glimpse of the emperor himself.
Farther down was the now completed Colosseum, around which other
thousands stood watching the pigmies who, in dark clusters upon the top
and along the edge, laboriously erected the poles upon which, in case of
need, to stretch the protecting velarium. This was the last outward
preparation of all; and when that was done, everything would be ready.
As one of these poles was being elevated, he who had hold of the lower
end of it lost his balance, and fell to the ground. He was lifted up
outside, dead--a shapeless, gory mass. The crowd shuddered to see that
helpless body falling from such a height; but, at the next moment, all
sympathy passed away. The man wore a slave's dress, and was recognized
as belonging to the praetorian lieutenant Patrocles. Upon the morrow, if
he had lived, he was to have appeared in the arena as a retiarius--he
would then most likely have been conquered and slain--it was merely a
day sooner--a victim outside the walls instead of within--he had
clambered up to overlook the ground upon which he was to have fought,
and need not thus recklessly have volunteered to aid the regular
laborers--it was his fate--_Deus vult_--what more could be said?

AEnone had not witnessed the fall, for she had not been looking at palace
or amphitheatre, both, of which were too familiar with her to attract
her attention. The one had been for years the centrepiece of her
view--and the other had grown up arch by arch and tier by tier so
steadily before her eyes that it seemed as though she could almost count
its stones. Her gaze was now fixed upon the open space beneath her
window, where the Sacred and Triumphal Walls joined--a space always at
that hour gay with a phantasmagoria of shifting life, and at this time
more than ever provocative of curiosity and attention. Its bordering
palaces, already being hung with lively tapestries for the morrow--its
sparkling fountains--its corners decked with arches--its pavement
thronged with carriages and horsemen--the crowds of slaves, beginning in
advance to take their holiday, and affording pleasing contrasts as they
wound their way in slender currents through the openings in the throng
of their betters--the soldiery passing here and there in large or small
detachments--where else in the world could such a varied scene of life
and animation be presented?

First before her eyes passed a number of the praetorian guard, with
martial music, cutting the crowd asunder like a wedge in their steady
march toward the imperial palace. Then came the chariot of the African
proconsul, with liveried footmen in front, and Nubian slaves, in short
tunics and silver anklets, running beside the wheels. After that a
covered van, toilsomely dragged along by tired horses and guarded by
armed slaves in livery. The imperial cipher was emblazoned upon the
dusty canvas screen thrown over the top, and from within, at intervals,
came half-smothered growls and roars. It was some wild beast arriving at
this late hour from Nubia--a contribution from some provincial
governor--a booty which had cost pounds of gold, and perhaps the lives
of many slaves, and which was now destined to perform, in the sanded
arena, the combats of the jungle. The crowd, which had let the African
proconsul pass by with but a careless glance of uninterested
scrutiny--for dignitaries were too common to excite much
curiosity--pressed tumultuously and with frantic eagerness around the
heavy cage, exulting in each half-stifled roar from within as though it
were a strain of sweet music--and thus followed the van until it arrived
at the amphitheatre and passed out of sight through one of the deep, low
arches leading to the tiers of grated stone cages, already well filled
with the choicest forest spoils of every tributary country.

Then came a black-bearded horseman. The trappings of his steed were
marked with the insignia of distinction; and footmen, with staves, ran
before him to clear the way. He sat with proud and haughty mien--as one
who felt his power and immunity, and yet with the expression of one
aware that all his rank and state could not protect him from secret
scorn and hate. Not many looked at him; for, in that thronging display
of wealth and power, a single gayly caparisoned horse and two liveried
footmen counted for almost nothing. One or two, however, of those few
who study men for their deeds alone, turned and gazed scrutinizingly
after him, for he had already taken rank as one of the historians of the
age. And as he passed farther along, a group of slaves, whose marked
features denoted Jewish descent, suffered expressions of aversion to
break from them; some turning their backs--some gazing up with faces
inflamed with the fiercest intensity of hate--while one, less cautious,
clenched his fist and hurled after the rider a handful of dust and
volleys of heavy Hebrew curses. And so the apostate Josephus passed on,
and was gradually lost to view.

After him, slowly wending his way on foot through the crowds,
occasionally moving aside to allow others, more urgent, the privilege of
passing him, and constantly careful not to excite the impatient wrath of
those nearest to him by a too lively pressure, yet all the time making
sure progress along his chosen path, came a single figure--a
white-bearded man, in plain, coarse tunic and well-worn sandals. Few
regarded him or even seemed to know that he was there, except when in
their hurry they found it expedient to jostle him one side. But in his
face gleamed an intelligence far beyond what could be expected from one
in his humble attire; and as AEnone watched him, a suspicion crossed her
that the poor, beggarly dress and the quiet, yielding mien were assumed
to baffle observation. Soon another person in similar dress but of fewer
years met him. The two joined hands and looked earnestly into each
other's eyes, and the older one appeared to mutter a word or two. What
was that word, at which the younger bent his head with reverent gesture?
Was it a command or a blessing? Whatever it was, in a second it was all
said. The hands then unclasped--the bended head raised with a startled
glance around, as though with a fear that even such a mere instant of
humble bearing might have betrayed something which should be kept
secret; and then the two men parted, and were swallowed up in different
sides of the concourse.

'I know that person,' said Cleotos, He had been gazing, for the past
minute, out at the same window with AEnone; and while attracted by the
humble figure of that old man, he had noticed that she had been equally
observant.

'You know him, Cleotos?'

'They call him Clemens, noble lady. He is a leader of the Christian
sect, and a person of influence among them. It was at Corinth that I
first saw him, and it was he who let me copy the good words which are
written upon my little leaf of parchment. That was two years ago, but I
still recognize him. What does he here? Why should he thus peril his
life In public?'

'Give me that little scroll, Cleotos,' said AEnone. 'Let me have it for
my own.'

Cleotos gazed at her for a moment in dismay. Was she about to use her
authority, and take away from him by force those few lines, which,
though he understood them so little, had often served to cheer his heart
with their promises of future rest and joy? If so, he must submit; but
of what avail, then, was all her previous kindness?

'I ask it not as mistress, but as friend,' she said, reading his
thoughts. 'I ask it because, when you are away, I shall need some memory
of what have been happy days, and because I may then often wish to apply
those same words of comfort to my own soul. You can make another copy of
the same, and, in your own land, I doubt not, can find, with proper
search, many more words of equal value.'

'In my own land?' Cleotos repeated, ed, as in a dream. But, though her
meaning did not as yet flash upon him, he knew that she spoke in
kindness, and that she would not ask anything which he would not care to
grant; and he drew the little stained parchment from beneath his tunic,
and handed it to her.

'Close, now, the window, Cleotos, and shut out from sight that giddy
whirl, for I have something to say to you.'

He closed the window with its silken blind; and then, in obedience to
her motion, glided away from before it She seated herself upon her
lounge, and he upon his accustomed stool in front of her.

'Think not, Cleotos,' she said, after a moment's silence, 'that I first
brought you hither to become a mere slave. It was rather done in order
that, when the proper time came, I might set you free. Had
she--Leta--but shown herself worthy of you, the day might have come when
I could have managed to free her also, and send you both home again
together. But that cannot be. You must go alone, Cleotos, but not, I
hope, despairingly. Once again in your own loved Samos, I know that,
sooner or later, there will be found some other one to make you forget
what you have suffered here.'

He could no longer doubt her meaning--she was about to give him to
liberty again. At the thought the blood rushed to his heart, and he
gasped for breath. For the moment, as he gazed into her face and saw
with what sisterly sympathy and compassion she looked upon him, the
impulse came into his mind to refuse the proffered freedom, and ask only
to remain and serve her for life. But then came such floods of memories
of his native place, which he had never expected to see again--and its
hills and streams and well-remembered haunts seemed to approach with one
bound so near to him--and the faces of the loved ones at home began once
again to look so tenderly into his own--and the thought of throwing off
even the light, silken chains which he had been wearing, and of standing
up in the sight of heaven a free man again, was so grateful to his
soul--what could he do but remain silent and overpowered with
conflicting emotions, and wait to hear more?

'Think not to refuse your liberty,' she said, as she read his doubts and
perplexities, 'It must not be. No man has the right to suffer
degradation when he can avoid it. And though I might continue kind to
you, who can answer for it that I should live to be kind to the end? No,
no; from this instant be a free man again. And, for the few moments that
remain to us, strive to think of me only as your equal and your friend.'

Still silent. What, indeed, could he say? She knew that he was grateful
to her, and that was enough. But why should he, of all slaves in Rome,
find such kindly treatment? What had he ever done to deserve it? And--as
often before--that puzzled look of wondering inquiry came over his face
while he gazed into her own. She noticed it, but now made no attempt to
disguise herself by any forced and unnatural assumption of haughty
pride. Were he at last to learn the truth, there could surely no harm
come of it.

'You must depart to-night,' she said, 'and before it becomes known that
I am sending you away; lest, knowing it, others might claim authority to
delay or prevent you. Take this little purse. It contains a few gold
pieces, which you may need. And here is a written pass which will lead
you to Ostia. There you will go to the tavern of the Three Cranes, and
inquire for one Pollio, who has a vessel ready to sail for Samos. In
that vessel your passage is paid. Show him this ring. It will be a token
for him to know you by. And keep the ring ever afterward, as a sign that
you have a friend left here, who will often think of you with pleasure
and interest.'

'My mistress,' he said, taking the ring and placing it upon his finger,
'what have I done that you should be thus kind to me?'

'Nay; no longer mistress, but friend,' she said, with a melancholy
smile. 'As such alone let us converse during the hour that remains, for
you must soon leave me. It may be that when you arrive at Ostia, the
vessel will not be ready to set sail, nor yet for a day or two, for its
owner spoke to my messenger concerning possible delays. If so, there
will be time for you to look around you, and think of the days when you
wandered along the shore, hand in hand with your chosen one. You will,
perhaps, go over those wanderings again--along the sands leading past
Druse's olive grove to the altar of Vesta, or to the--'

'How know you about Druse's grove?' he cried with a start; and again
that look of keen inquiry came into his face. It was but a single step
now--he stood upon the very border of the truth. Should she repress him?
It were hardly worth the while. So she let him gaze, and, if anything,
softened her features yet more into the old familiar expression.

'Past Druse's Grove, Cleotos--or to the smooth rock which the waves
washed at Cato's Point. Do you remember, Cleotos, how often we there
sat, you holding me with your arm while I slid down the sloping side,
the better to dip my naked feet into the water?'

With a wild sob he seized her hand, and threw himself at her feet. Near
to the truth as he had been standing, it seemed at the last to burst
upon him with as much force as though even a suspicion of it had been a
thing before impossible. And yet, at the same time, it appeared to him
as though he must have known it all the while; for how could he
comprehend his blindness?

'AEnone,' he cried, 'send me not away! Let me stay here to serve you
forever!'

'Oh, speak not thus!' she said, touching his lips lightly with her
finger. 'Had you not been about to go from here, you should never have
recognized me. Forget, now, all that has ever passed between us; or
rather, strive to remember it only as a pleasant dream which left us in
its proper time. If the Fates separated us, it was only because they
were wiser than ourselves. Those bright anticipations of our youthful
love could never have been fully realized; and, if persisted in, might
have led only to sorrow and despair. Let me not blush now at having
revealed myself to you. Think, for the few minutes that remain to us, of
friendship and of duty alone.'

Raising him up, she placed him beside her, and there they talked about
the past and its pleasant recollections. How the cross miller, who had
never been known to do a kindness to any one else, had sometimes let
them ride upon his horse--how they had once rowed together about the
bay, and he had taken her aboard his ship--how she had stolen away from
home each pleasant evening to meet him, and with what feeble
excuses--and the like. As the shades of afternoon deepened and shut out
from sight the gilded cornices and costly frescoes, and all else that
could remind them of present wealth, and as, each instant, their
thoughts buried themselves still further in the memories of the past, it
seemed to them, at last, as though they were again wandering hand in
hand upon the beach, or sitting upon the wave-washed rock at Cato's
Point.

With something wanting, however. No force of illusion could bring back
to either of them, in all its former completeness, that sense of mutual
interest which had once absorbed them. Whatever dreams of the past
might, for the moment, blind their perceptions, there was still the
ever-present consciousness of now standing in another and far different
relation to each other. Though AEnone musingly gazed upon his face and
listened to his voice, until the realities of the present seemed to
shrink away, and the fancies of other years stole softly back, and, with
involuntary action, her hand gently toyed with his curls and parted them
one side, as she had once been accustomed to do, it was with no love for
him that she did it now. He was only her friend--her brother. He had
been kind to her, and perhaps, if necessary, she might even now consent
to die for him; but, with all that, he was no longer the idol of her
heart. Another had taken that place, and, however unworthy to hold it,
could not now be dispossessed. And though Cleotos, likewise, as he
looked at her and felt the gentle pressure of her hand upon his
forehead, seemed as though transported into the past, until he saw no
longer the matron in the full bloom of womanhood, but only the young
girl sparkling with the fresh hue and sunshine of early youth, yet to
him still clung the perception that there was a barrier between them.
What though the form of the treacherous Leta may then have faded from
his memory as completely as though he had never seen her? What though.
AEnone's pleasant and sympathetic tones may have again melted into his
heart as warmly as when first whispered at Ostia? The smile upon her
face--the winning intonation of her voice--all might seem the same; but
he knew that he must bide within his own heart all that he had thus felt
anew, and be content with the offered friendship alone, for that not
merely her duty but her altered inclination had separated her from him
forever.

At last the brief hour came to an end, and AEnone arose. The sun had set,
and the darkness of night had already begun to shroud the city. Here and
there, from some of the more wealthy neighborhoods, faint glimmers of
lamp light shone out and marked the scenes of solitary study or of
festive gathering, but as yet these indications were few. Already the
chariots and horsemen who had thronged the Appian Way had dispersed--a
single rider here and there occupying the place where so lately gay
bands had cantered, disputing each available empty space of pavement.
The walks were yet crowded with loiterers, but of a different class.
Patricians and fair ladies had departed, and left the course to the
lower orders of citizens and to slaves, who now emerged from the arches
and alleys, and, anticipative of the morrow's holiday, swarmed in dusky
crowds hither and thither in search of rude pastime.

'You must go now,' said AEnone, dropping the curtain which she had lifted
for a moment in order to peer into the street. 'Stay not for anything
that belongs to you, for I would not that you should be hindered or
delayed. You have been here as mine own property; and yet, how do I know
that some pretence of others' right might not be urged for your
detention, if it were known that you were departing? Go, therefore, at
once, Cleotos, and may the gods be with you!'

She held out her hand to him. He took it in his own, and, for the
moment, gazed inquiringly into her face. Was this to be their only
parting? Nay, need there be a parting at all? A flush came into his
countenance as he felt one wild thought and desire burning into his
soul. What if he were to yield to the impulse which beset him, and
should throw himself at her feet, and ask her to forget the years which
had separated them, and the trials which had beset them, and to give up
all else, and depart with him? Alas! only one result could follow such
an appeal as that! In the vain attempt to gain her love, he would lose
her friendship also. She would part from him as an enemy who had taken
advantage of her sisterly affection to inflict an insult upon her. He
knew that this would surely be the consequence; but yet, for the moment,
he could scarce resist the maddening impulse to thus forfeit all while
striving to attain impossibilities.

'Shall we never meet again?' he said, at length, after the hard struggle
to command himself.

'It may be, in after years; who can tell?' she answered. 'And yet, let
us rather look the truth in the face, and not delude ourselves with
false hopes. The world is very wide, and the way from here to your home
is far, and the fatalities of life are many. Dear Cleotos, let us rather
make up our minds that this parting is for ever; unless it may be that
the gods will let us look upon each other's faces again in some future
state. But there may be times when you can write to me, or send some
message of good tidings; and then--'

'Talk not to me of the gods!' he interrupted, in a storm of passionate
exclamation. 'What have they ever done for us, that we should worship or
pray to them? Why look to them for blessings in a future state, when
they have done us such evil in the present life? Here we were poor and
lowly together; and have they not dragged us apart? And will they, then,
in another life, be the more disposed to let us see each other's
faces--you one of the nobles of the earth, and I one of its meanest
plebeians? Is it written in the temples or by the priests and oracles,
that when the Caesars are throned in Olympus, their lowly subjects shall
be permitted to approach, them any nearer than when here? How, then,
could we meet each other better hereafter than now? Away with all talk
about the gods! I believe not in them! If we part now for this world, it
is for eternity as well!'

'Oh, say not that!' she exclaimed. 'And still pray to the gods as of
old, for they may yet bring good out of all that now seems to us so
obscure. Remember that to the best of us, this world offers little but
what is mingled with unhappiness. Take not, therefore, away from
yourself and me a belief in something better to come.'

'Take, then, with you, a belief in the God about whom I learned in
Greece, for He it is who tells of comfort hereafter for the poor and
oppressed, and He is the only one who does so,' Cleotos doggedly
answered.

'It may be--it may be,' she said. 'Who can tell which is right? We have
so often talked about it, and have not yet found out. They may both be
the true gods--they may neither of them be. Ah, Cleotos, my brother, let
us not doubt. It is pleasanter and safer, too, that we should believe,
even if we extend our faith to a belief in both. Choose, then, your own,
as I will mine. I must not abandon the gods in whose worship I have been
brought up; but when I pray to them, I will first pray for you. And
you--if you adopt the God of the Christians, who speaks so much better
comfort to your soul--will always pray to Him for me. And thereby, if
either of us is wrong, the sin may perhaps be pardoned, on account of
the other, who was right. And now, once more--and it may be for
ever--dear Cleotos, farewell!'

'Farewell, AEnone, my sister!' he said. And he raised her hand and
pressed it to his lips, and was about turning sorrowfully away, when the
door flew open, and Sergius Vanno burst into the room.




APHORISMS.--No. XII.


  See 'neath the swelling storm,
  The willow's slender form
  With grace doth ever yield;
  While oaks, the monarchs of the field,
  In pride resist the blast,
  And prostrate lie, ere it is past:
  But now the storm is o'er,
  The willow bows no more;
  While oaks from overthrow
  No rising ever know.

  So with the meek, in strife
  Against the storms of life;
  Though often roughly cast,
  They stand erect at last:
  But those who will not bend
  To what their God doth send,
  Are whelmed in lasting woe,
  And rising up will never know.




A GLANCE AT PRUSSIAN POLITICS.

PART I.

     [The author of the ensuing article, the topic of which is just now
     one of special interest, is MR. CHARLES M. MEAD, a gentleman who
     has spent the last year in Germany. Having resided in the family of
     Professor Jacobi, who fills the chair of history in the University
     of Halle, he has had excellent opportunities for making himself
     acquainted with his subject. Having a natural taste for political
     studies, he has investigated it in its many bearings with calm
     impartiality, and written upon it _con amore_. The conclusion will
     be given in our next issue.--EDITOR CONTINENTAL.]


The struggle now going on in Prussia, whatever may be the issue, must be
regarded as one of immense political importance. To Americans certainly,
no less than to any other people, is the character and progress of this
struggle a matter of profound interest. Though it cannot be said that
the contest is that of revolutionists or even of republicans against a
legitimately ruling monarch, yet the real principles involved in the
contest are in substance those of absolutism and of democracy.

Deep and irreconcilable as is now the opposition between the two
contending elements, all Prussians are proud of Prussia's history. In
order to a correct understanding of the present circumstances of the
country, a brief survey of its previous history is necessary.

In respect to the national domain, perhaps no other instance can be
found so striking as that here presented, of a steady growth of an
insignificant territory, from the first surrounded by powerful nations,
to a size which entitles it to rank among the first Powers of the earth.
Passing over the first few hundred years of her history, during which
period much confusion prevailed as to boundaries as well as everything
else, we find that as late as 1417 the country embraced a territory of
only about seven thousand eight hundred square miles, or of about the
size of Massachusetts; whereas its present extent is about one hundred
and twelve thousand square miles, _i. e._, about as large as New
England, New York, and New Jersey.

In respect to population, the increase is proportionally great. In 1417
it was only one hundred and eighty-eight thousand five hundred; now it
is over eighteen millions. As to general culture, the progress of the
nation and its present relative position in the scale of civilization
leave little for national pride to wish.

The history of the nation commences with the conquest of Brandenburg by
the Saxon emperor Henry I., in 927. He founded the so-called _North
Mark_, and set over it a margrave. The government was administered by
margraves until 1411, when, after a century of anarchy, during which the
Mark was struggled for by many aspiring dukes, it was delivered over by
the emperor Sigismund, an almost worthless possession, to Frederick of
Hohenzollern, burggrave of Nuremberg, with the title of elector.

The house of Hohenzollern is still the reigning dynasty. In 1701,
Frederick III., who became elector in 1688, secured from the emperor
Leopold I. the title of King Frederick I. Not king of Brandenburg, since
Brandenburg belonged to the Austrian empire, but king in Prussia, the
name of a Polish duchy acquired by John Sigismund as a feudal possession
in 1621, but in 1656 made an independent possession by Frederick
William. Not king _of_ Prussia, but _in_ Prussia, because not all the
territory to which that name belonged was included in the
afore-mentioned duchy. The rest was not annexed till 1772, so that
Frederick the Great was the first king _of_ Prussia. And not till 1815
was the name Prussia strictly a designation of the whole land now so
called.

We cannot stop even to glance at the political condition of the nation
during the period of the electorate, interesting as it might be, and
important as revealing the sources of subsequent political developments.
Yet in passing, this at least must be borne in mind, that there was all
the while a struggle going on between the nobility and the monarchy, the
latter gradually gaining in strength.

Frederick I., whose vanity led him to make it his main object to secure
the _name_ of king, did less than his immediate predecessor, the 'great
elector,' toward deepening the foundations of the monarchy. The most
noticeable feature of his reign was the increase of the standing army
from twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand. He secured the _title_ of
royalty. It remained for his son and successor to secure its power and
authority.[3]

Frederick William I. was the first absolute monarch of Prussia. He was a
man of rough manners and coarse tastes. Caring little for the pomp of
royalty, he jealously sought to maintain his hold on the essence of it.
No sooner had he dried the tears shed over his deceased father, than he
dismissed the larger part of the court attendants, cut off unnecessary
expenses, inaugurated a simple style of living in the court, and began
to direct his attention to the improvement of the military and financial
condition of the country. More than any predecessor, he identified the
office of king with that of commander-in-chief of the army. His
domineering disposition carried him so far that he personally scolded
and threatened with blows whoever seemed to him lazy and shiftless,
however little the matter personally concerned him. So violent was his
temper that, because his son, afterward Frederick the Great, displayed
more taste for literature, and less for religion and warfare, than he
had wished, he became disgusted with him, threateningly raised his cane
whenever he saw him; and, when the prince, exasperated by constant
abuse, formed a plan of escape to Sinsheim, the king, having discovered
it before its execution, was so infuriated that, except for the
intervention of bystanders, he would have run him through with his
sword. As it was, at one time he beat him furiously with his cane.
Frederick's confidant was executed before his eyes, and he himself
condemned to a long banishment from the court; and not till he had shown
signs of repentance, was he readmitted to it and to his father's favor.
Frederick William is famous for the 'tobacco club' which he established,
at whose sessions over the pipe and the beer he and his friends indulged
in the most unrestrained mirth and freedom; also for his monomania
concerning 'tall fellows'--a passion for securing as many regiments as
possible of extraordinarily tall soldiers, for which he spared no pains,
and often paid little regard to the personal wishes of the tall fellows
themselves. To increase their number, he scoured all Europe, other
monarchs being not unwilling to secure his good will by providing him
with the coveted men, for whom his almost insane passion made him
willing to give any price. But the real significance of his reign in
relation to Prussia's subsequent history, is the impulse which he gave
to her military tastes, and his success in establishing firmly the
absolute authority of the monarch. The power of feudal lords had already
been shattered; it required only a strong army and a strong will to
destroy it altogether. These the king possessed. He reigned at a time
when the obstacles to the exercise of unlimited power by the king were
not what they now are, viz.: a desire on the part of the people in
general for a constitutional government. The most certain way to secure
the esteem of the people was to centralize the power in himself, and
then exercise that power in the promotion of the people's material
welfare. This the king did. He laid the foundations of the still
existing system of general school education. He invited colonists from
abroad to settle in the more uncultivated parts of his domains. He
reformed the judiciary. He diminished the taxes, and yet by his economy
increased the real revenue of the state from two and a half to seven and
a half millions. Himself disinclined to become entangled in foreign
wars, he raised the troops and the money without which his son could not
have won the military glory which has given him the title of _the
Great_.

Frederick William I. established the absolute monarchy by internal
political changes and institutions. Frederick the Great secured for it a
solid foundation in the hearts of the people. The one was thoroughly
autocratic in disposition, and not seldom displayed this disposition too
offensively; the other knew how to use his hereditary power without
seeming to care about it. In fact, under the influence of Voltaire and
the French liberalism, he himself learned to cherish very liberal
opinions respecting popular rights. But practically he was absolute, and
preferred to be so. By his brilliant military successes in the two
Silesian wars and in the Seven Years' War he roused the national
enthusiasm for the royal house to the highest pitch. He secured for
Prussia the rank of a great Power in Europe. He enlarged her boundaries,
and, notwithstanding his expensive wars, promoted the general prosperity
of the land. Genial and kind-hearted, he won the affections of the
people, so that loyalty was easy and pleasant--none the less so, the
more completely the object of the loyalty was the king's person.

The reign of Frederick William II. was not characterized by any special
development in the political condition of the country. Lacking in energy
and decision, given to self-indulgence, controlled by courtiers and
favorite women, although by the partition of Poland he increased the
national domains, and by educational measures helped to promote German
literature instead of the French preferred by his father, he was yet too
inferior to the great Frederick to be able to uphold the glory of the
royal house. By his disgraceful withdrawal from the First Coalition and
the Treaty of Basle, by which he yielded to France all of Prussia lying
beyond the Rhine, he prepared the way for her subsequent humiliation by
Bonaparte.

The long reign of Frederick William III. is the richest period of
Prussia's history. Here begins that development whose progress is now
one of the most noteworthy of our time. The king, cautious,
conscientious, patriotic, but timid, declined to join the Second
Coalition (1799), hoping thereby to secure Prussia against the ravages
of war. Prominent Prussians, moreover, were positively friendly to
Napoleon; so that, even after the latter had violated his obligations by
marching through Prussian territory, the king hesitated a year to
declare war. This was done August 9, 1806; but two months later his army
was routed at Jena; Napoleon entered Berlin; the Prussians were finally
defeated at Friedland by the French, and at Tilsit, July 9, 1807, the
Prussian king was forced to give up the half of his domains, and to
furnish the conqueror a tribute of one hundred and forty millions of
francs. For six years Prussia lay prostrate at the feet of France. In
1812 he was compelled to furnish twenty thousand men to join Napoleon's
army in his invasion of Russia. Not till after the disastrous issue of
this invasion did king or people dare to lift an arm in defence of the
national independence. But these years compose just the period which
Prussians love to call that of Prussia's regeneration. The insolence of
the conqueror united the national heart. Full of the most flaming
patriotism, and not doubting that deliverance would finally come,
statesmen and warriors, Stein, Scharnhorst, Bluecher, Schill, and others,
labored unweariedly to keep up the spirits of the people, and prepare
them for the coming War of Liberation. Now for the first time the cities
were invested with the right to regulate their own internal affairs. Now
for the first time the peasants were delivered from the serfdom under
which they had hitherto suffered. In short, the whole policy of the
Government was determined by the resolution to inspire the people with a
healthful, unconstrained, enthusiastic devotion to the national weal,
and, as a means to this end, with zeal for the king. These efforts were
fully successful. When the providential time arrived, and the king
issued, February 3, 1813, a call for volunteers, and, March 17, his
famous _Aufruf an mein Volk_, all Prussia sprang to arms. In alliance
with Russia, finally also assisted by Austria and Sweden, her troops
were engaged in nine bloody battles with the French between April 5 and
October 18, the enthusiasm of the people and the dogged intrepidity of
Bluecher being at length rewarded by the decisive victory at Leipsic. The
immediate result of this victory for Prussia was the recovery of the
territory between the Elbe and the Rhine ceded to France by the
preceding king. At the congress of Vienna there were assigned to her in
addition all that she had possessed before the Treaty of Tilsit, half of
Saxony, and an increase of the former possessions on the Rhine. Some
further acquisitions and cessions were made at the second Treaty of
Paris, November 2, 1815, since which time the boundaries of Prussia have
been little changed.

This brief sketch of the so-called War of Liberation could not have been
avoided in an attempt to describe the present political condition of
Prussia. The enthusiasm with which the semi-centennial anniversary of
the battle of Leipsic was celebrated on the 18th of last October by men
of all parties and sentiments was a lively evidence of the profound
influence of that war on the national character. The chief significance
of the war for Prussia was its influence in uniting the people in the
pursuit of a common patriotic end. It was a struggle for national
existence; and all minor considerations were for the time forgotten. It
tended to break down the barriers which before had so effectually
separated the higher from the lower classes. The Government had need of
the hearty aid of all Prussians; and, in order to secure this, it was
necessary to abandon the invidious distinctions which, in spite of all
previous reformatory measures, made a large portion of the people
practically slaves. The sentiment was encouraged, that whoever was ready
to lay down his life for his country deserved full protection from his
country. The promise was made that this should henceforth be the spirit
and practice of the Government.

We are here to mark a twofold influence on the political sentiments of
the Prussian people springing from the war against French invasion. On
the one hand, from here dates the first positive preparations for, and
expectations of, a national representative assembly--a change from an
absolute to a limited monarchy; on the other, the perfect identification
of the interests of the king with those of the people, combined with a
real love for the royal family, made the people satisfied, after the
restoration of peace, to continue under the sway of a king in whom,
though his power was unlimited, they had perfect confidence that he
would use his power with conscientious regard to their good. To this day
the recollection of those years of pious loyalty, when every citizen
cherished a feeling of filial love and trust toward Frederick William
III., is the chief element of strength in the conservative party.
Prussia, they say, is what her kings have made her; the house of
Hohenzollern has raised her from an insignificant beginning to the rank
of a great Power; under this rule the people have prospered; no tyranny
has disgraced it; there is no need of a change; there is no danger that
a continuance of the former order of things can ever inure to our hurt;
gratitude to our sovereigns requires us not to attack their hereditary
prerogatives. There is danger of foreigners, especially republicans, not
fully appreciating the force of these considerations. To us, the fact
that one king, or even a series of kings, have ruled well, is no proof
that they have a divine right to rule; still less, that, when their
policy comes into conflict with the decided wishes of the people, they
have a right by unconstitutional measures to resist the popular will.
But it must be remembered that Prussia, even in the midst of the present
conflict, is thoroughly monarchical. No party pretends to wish any
change of the present form of government. Patriotism has so long been
associated with simple devotion to the royal house, and the royal house
has so uniformly proved itself not unworthy of this devotion, that it is
no easy matter, especially for those who by nature are conservative, to
be satisfied with a change which reduces the monarchical office to a
merely empty hereditary honor. In addition to this, it would be unfair
not to recognize the fact that the most cultivated and religious part of
the Prussian people belongs to the Conservative party. This, as a
general statement, is, as all acknowledge, true. That the exceptions,
however, are very numerous, is no less true. It is also, doubtless, not
unjust to assume that the dependence of churches and universities on the
state leads to much hypocritical piety and selfish loyalty. Yet the
general fact that the most estimable citizens are royalists, is not so
to be accounted for. The War of Liberation was a war not only against
French aggression, but against a power whose origin was to be traced to
a contempt not only of time-honored political customs, but also of
Christianity itself. Revolutions and republicanism became associated
with infidelity. It was natural, therefore, that Christians should
acquire the notion that every approximation toward democracy would
involve danger to the church; especially as the church and state were
united, and the king not only professed personal belief in Christianity,
but endeavored to promote its interests by his administrative measures.
It was to them a touching recollection that their king and the Austrian
and Russian emperors kneeled together on the battle field of Leipsic to
offer to the Lord of hosts their thanks for the victory that he had
vouchsafed to them. And when two years later the same monarchs united
themselves in the Holy Alliance, it is not strange, whatever may now be
thought of their motives, that Christians should have rejoiced at the
sight of princes publicly acknowledging their obligation to rule in the
interests of Christianity, and binding themselves to promote the
religious good of their subjects. As republicanism in France had
appeared in a positively unchristian form, here monarchism appeared in a
positively Christian form. Nothing was therefore more natural than that
their devotion to the king--already, for other reasons, hearty and
enthusiastic--should be increased as they thought they saw in him the
surest defender of the church. Instead, therefore, of encouraging or
wishing a separation of church and state--a consummation which it was in
the power of leading theologians, to procure--they preferred a still
closer union. Nor is it to be wondered at that, ever since, men of the
most earnest piety have made a defence of the royal prerogatives a part
of their religion, and that some have gone even so far as to deny that
in Prussia a Christian can be anything but a Conservative. It cannot but
serve to soften many prejudices against this party to know that men like
the venerable Professor Tholuck, of Halle, are decided supporters of the
Government, and regard the triumph of the Liberal party as almost
equivalent to the downfall of the church. And it may serve in part to
excuse the persistence of the Government in its course to know that it
is advised so to persist by men who should be supposed to have the
highest good of the country at heart.

But, on the other hand, as we have remarked, the seeds of the present
Liberal party were sown during this same period of national disaster,
and that, too, by the royal hand. The regeneration of Prussia is
attributed by all to the indefatigable efforts of the minister, Baron
von Stein, and, after he was deposed by command of Napoleon, of his
successor, Count Hardenberg. Their work, however, consisted not only in
abolishing villanage, the usufruct of royal lands, serfdom, the
exemption of the nobility from taxation, and the oppressive monopoly of
the guilds; in giving to all classes the right of holding landed
possessions and high offices; in the reconstruction of the courts; in
the enfranchisement of the cities; in the promotion of general
education; in relieving military service of many abuses and
severities;--this was not all: the king was moved to issue, October 27,
1810, an edict, in which he distinctly promised to give the people a
constitution and a national parliamentary representation. A year later
this promise was renewed. 'Our intention,' says the king, 'still is, as
we promised in the edict of October 27, 1810, to give the nation a
judiciously constituted representation.' That this promise was not
immediately fulfilled is, considering the condition of the country, not
specially surprising. Whatever may then have been the king's personal
inclinations, there is perhaps no reason to doubt that he intended to
introduce the constitution as soon as the return of peace should give
him the requisite means of devoting to the subject his undivided
attention. That the promise was originally drawn from him by the urgent
influence of his counsellors, especially Von Stein and Hardenberg, there
is every reason to believe. That he should have been inclined,
unsolicited, to limit his own power, is more than can ordinarily be
expected of monarchs. The bad love power because it gratifies their
selfish lusts; the good, who really wish the weal of their subjects, can
easily persuade themselves that the more freely they can use their
power, the better it will be for all concerned. But, for whatever
reasons, the pledge was given; yet, though Frederick William reigned
thirty years after giving it, he never fulfilled the pledge. It may be
that, had he done so, the party divisions which now agitate the land
would not have been avoided. Conservatives might have complained that he
had yielded too much to the unreasonable demands of an unenlightened
populace; Liberals might have complained that he had not yielded enough;
at all events, the opposing principles, of the divine right of kings,
and of popular self-government, whatever form they might have taken,
would have divided public sentiment. This may have been; but even more
certain is it that the failure on the part of the monarch to carry out a
promise solemnly and repeatedly made, a promise which he never would
have made unless believing that it would gratify his people, could not
but lead ultimately to a deep disaffection on the part of the people.
His course resembled too much the equivocating prophecies of the witches
in Macbeth; he kept the word of promise to the ear, and broke it to the
hope. It is then not strange that many should have found their faith in
royalty weakened, and come to the conclusion that whatever was to be
gained in the point of popular government must be secured by insisting
on it as a right which the Government _nolens volens_ should be required
to concede.

Such, in general terms, is the animus of the two political parties of
Prussia. Turning to a more particular consideration of the historical
progress of events, we find that the first movement toward a freer
development of popular character was made by Frederick the Great.
Throughout his life he was inclined, theoretically, to favor a
republican form of government; and, although he was no friend of sudden
changes, and did not think that the time had come for a radical change
in Prussia, he yet recognized the truth that a king's duty is to act as
the servant of the state; and, in spite of the sternness with which, in
many relations, he exercised his power, he introduced some changes which
may be regarded as the earnests of a permanent establishment of a
constitutional government. These changes consisted specially in the
increase of freedom which he allowed respecting the press, religion, and
the administration of justice. But, as we have seen, nothing like a real
limitation of the royal power was undertaken until the War of Liberation
seemed to make it a national necessity. The changes which Frederick
William's ministers made in the social and political condition of the
people were in themselves of vast and permanent importance. They were
made under the stimulus of a more or less clear recognition of the truth
of natural, inalienable rights. Fighting against a people whose
frightful aggressions were the product of this principle abnormally
developed, they yet had to borrow their own weapons from the same
armory. Or, if the republican principle was not at all approved, the
course of the Government showed that it was so far believed in by the
people that certain concessions to it were necessary as a matter of
policy. But these changes were yet by no means equivalent to the
introduction of republican elements in the Government. An approach was
made toward the granting of equality of rights; but this was only
_granted_; the Government was still absolute; strictly speaking, it had
the right, so far as formal obligations were concerned, to remove the
very privileges which it had given. But the _promise_ of something more
was given also. Besides the already-mentioned renewal of that promise,
the king, June 3, 1814, in an order issued while he was in Paris,
intimated his intention to come to a final conclusion respecting the
particular form of the constitution after his return to Berlin. In May,
1815, he issued another edict, the substance of which was that provision
should be made for a parliamentary representation of the people; that,
to this end, the so-called estates of the provinces should be
reorganized, and from them representatives should be chosen, who should
have the right to deliberate respecting all subjects of legislation
which concern the persons and property of citizens; and that a
commission should be at once appointed, to meet in Berlin on the first
of September, whose business should be to frame a constitution. But this
commission was not then appointed, and of course did not meet on the
first of September. Two years later the commissioners were named; but
their work has never been heard of.

Here is to be discerned a manifest wavering in the mind of the king
respecting the fulfilment of his intentions. The German States, taught
by the bitter experience of the late war the disadvantages of their
dismembered condition, and bound together more closely than ever before
by the recollection of their common sufferings and common triumphs, saw
the necessity of a real union, to take the place of the merely nominal
one which had thus far existed in the shadowy hegemony of the house of
Hapsburg. The German Confederation, essentially as it still exists, was
organized at Vienna by the rulers of the several German States and
representatives from the free cities, June 8, 1815. Although there was
in this assembly no direct representation of the people, it is clear
that its deliberations were in great part determined by the unmistakable
utterances of the popular mind. For one of the first measures adopted
was to provide that in all the States of the Confederacy constitutional
governments should be guaranteed. Frederick William himself was one of
the most urgent supporters of this provision. It is therefore not
calculated to elevate our estimation of the openness, honesty, and
simplicity for which this king is praised, and to which his general
course seems to entitle him, that as late as March, 1818, in reply to a
petition from the city of Coblenz, that he would grant the promised
constitution, he remarked that 'neither the order of May 22, 1815, nor
article xiii. of the acts of the Confederacy had fixed the _time_ of the
grant, and that the determination of this time must be left to the free
choice of the sovereign, in whom unconditional confidence ought to be
placed.' We are to account for this hesitation, however, not by
supposing that he originally intended to delay the measure in question
so long as he actually did delay it, but by the fears with which he was
inspired by the popular demonstrations in the times following the close
of the war. The fact was palpable, not only that the idea of popular
rights, notwithstanding the miserable failure of the French Revolution,
had become everywhere current, but that, together with this feeling, a
desire for German unity was weakening the hold of the several princes on
their particular peoples. At this time sprang up the so-called _Deutsche
Burschenschaft_, organizations of young men, whose object was to promote
the cause of German union. The tri-centennial anniversary of the
Reformation, in 1817, was made the occasion of inflaming the public mind
with this idea. The sentiment found ready access to the German heart. It
was shared and advocated by many of the best and ablest men. As
subsidiary to the same movement, was at the same time introduced the
practice of systematic and social gymnastic exercises, an institution
which still exists, and constitutes one of the most prominent features
of the German movement. Immense concourses of gymnasts from all parts of
Germany meet yearly to practise in friendly rivalry, and inspire one
another with zeal for the good of the common fatherland. But the
_Burschenschaft_ in its pristine glory could not so long continue. The
separate German Governments were naturally jealous of the influence of
these organizations, and, though not able to accuse them of directly
aiming at treason and revolution, were ready to seize the first pretext
for striking at their power. A pretext was soon found. A certain Von
Kotzebue, a novelist of some notoriety, suspected of being a Russian
spy, wrote a book in which he attacked the _Burschenschaft_ with great
severity. A theological student at Jena, Karl Sand, whose enthusiasm in
the cause of the _Burschenschaft_ had reached the pitch of a half-insane
fanaticism, took it upon him to avenge the wounded honor of the German
name. He visited Kotzebue at the dwelling of the latter, delivered him a
letter, and, while he was reading it, stabbed him with a dagger. Sand
was of course executed, and, though it was proved that the crime was
wholly his own, though the German Confederation, through a commission
appointed specially for the purpose of searching all the papers of the
participants in the _Burschenschaft_ movement, found no evidence of
anything like treasonable purposes, yet it was resolved that these
'demagogical intrigues' must cease. The _Burschenschaft_ was pronounced
a treasonable association; its members were punished by imprisonment or
exile. The poet and professor Arndt and the professor Jahn, prominent
leaders in the movement, were not only deposed from their
professorships, but also imprisoned. The celebrated De Wette was removed
from the chair of theology in the University of Berlin, simply because,
on the ground that an erring conscience ought to be obeyed, he had
excused the deed of Sand. In short, the princes intended effectually to
crush the efforts which, though indirectly, were tending to undermine
their thrones. Seemingly they succeeded. But they had only 'scotched the
snake, not killed it.' It is easy to see that these developments must
have shaken Frederick William's purpose. Of all things, the most
unpleasant to a monarch is to be driven by his subjects. In the present
case he saw not only a loosening of the loyalty which he felt to be due
to him, but also a positive transfer of loyalty, if we may so speak,
from the Prussian throne to the German people in general. If he should
now grant a popular constitution, he would seem not only to be yielding
to a pressure, but would be surrendering what he regarded as a sacred
right, into the hands of ungrateful recipients. He therefore set himself
against the popular current, gave up his former plan, and contented
himself with restoring, in some degree, the form of government as it had
existed before the establishment of the absolute monarchy. He gave, in
1823, to the estates of the provinces, a class of men consisting partly
of nobles and owners of knights' manors, partly of representatives of
the cities and of the peasants, the right of _advising_ the crown in
matters specially concerning the several provinces. Nothing further was
done in the matter of modifying the constitution during the reign of
Frederick William III., although he declared his _intention_ of
organizing a national diet.

Comparative quiet ensued till 1830, when the French revolution, followed
by the insurrection of the Austrian Netherlands against Holland, and of
Poland against Russia, again stirred the public mind. But, although the
Polish revolution, on account of its local proximity and ancient
political relations, threatened to involve Prussia in war, she yet
escaped the danger, and passed through the excitement with little
internal commotion. But the existence of disaffection was made manifest
by sundry disturbances in the chief cities, which, however, were easily
quelled. Suffering under no palpable oppression, accustomed once more to
peace, seeing no prospect of gaining any radical change in the form of
government except through violent and bloody measures, which, as
experience had proved, would, after all, be likely to be unsuccessful,
the masses of the people had little heart for a constant agitation in
behalf of an indefinite and uncertain good. Those who did continue the
agitation exhibited less of zeal for German unity and more for that sort
of liberalism which had been current in France, than had marked the
efforts of the _Burschenschaft_. Many of the leaders were obliged to
escape the country, in order to avoid arrest.

In 1840, Frederick William IV. ascended the throne. According to the old
custom, he summoned to Koenigsberg the estates of the provinces of
Prussia and Posen to attend the coronation and take their oaths of
fealty. On this occasion he inquired of this body whether they would
elect twelve members of the East Prussian knighthood, to represent the
old order of lords, and what privileges they wished to have secured.
They replied that they saw no need of reviving that order; and as to
privileges, instead of mentioning any in particular which they desired
to see protected, they wished them all protected and confirmed. They
then reminded the king of the promise of his father to give the nation
a constitution and a diet. The king replied that their reasons for
declining the first proposal were satisfactory, but the establishment of
a general representation of the people he must decline to grant, 'on
account of the true interests of the people intrusted to his care.' The
dissatisfaction produced by this reply was somewhat tempered by the
splendor of the coronation ceremonies, and by the hitherto unknown
condescension of the king in addressing the assembled throng as he took
upon him the vow to be a just judge, a faithful, provident, merciful
prince, a Christian king, as his ever-memorable father had been.
Personally he was a man of more than ordinary talents and of estimable
character. High expectations could be, and were, entertained of the
success of his reign. One of his first acts was to release from prison
those who were there languishing for having been connected with the
_Burschenschaft_. He manifested in his general policy a mildness and
benevolence which, had he lived when nothing had ever been heard of a
constitution, would have doubtless secured for him the uninterrupted
lore and devotion of his subjects. As it was, it is probable that his
reign would have been disturbed by no serious outbreak, had the occasion
for disturbance not come from without.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Frederick I. ruled till 1713; the succession since then has been as
follows: Frederick William I., 1713-'40; Frederick II. (the Great),
1740-'86: Frederick William II., 1786-'97; Frederick William III.,
1797-1840; Frederick William IV., 1840-'61; William I., 1861.




ASLEEP.

  What, darling, asleep in this sylvan retreat!
  Thy loose tresses sprinkled with rose petals sweet;
  Blown in from the sunlight, some float to thy breast;
  Less fragrant are they than their beautiful nest.

  There flutt'ring a moment they rise and they sink,
  As quivers a humbird his honey to drink,
  Or fond doves a-wooing that shiver their wings,
  Or throat of a song bird that throbs while he sings.

  These petals at last swoon far down in thy snow,
  Whose warm drifts of wonder they only can know;
  And hidden they lie there all rocked by thy breath,
  And pressed in soft odors to ravishing death.

  Thine eyes their dear curtains now shut from the light,
  Sweet veined and blue tinted they round to my sight,
  Fair shells of deep oceans! And sometimes a shell,
  When close to your ear, its home secrets will tell:

  But in music so mystic, you cannot guess
  The strange tales of Ocean it tries to confess.
  So lady, thine eyelids, as skies shut the sea,
  Or shells _try_ to whisper, are whisp'ring to me.

  As glad streams of day 'neath the dawn's glowing tide,
  So white keys of laughter thy curving lips hide,
  Warm gates of the morning, when morning is new,
  And red for the sunshine of smiles to break through!

  Thy round arms rest o'er thee so fair and so lone,
  Like that white path of stars across the night's zone:
  That pathway, when twilight late vanishing dies,
  Embraces the earth, though it quits not the skies.

  Thus stars kiss the hills, and the trees, and the plain,
  Yet never can they kiss the stars back again;
  Though yearning they thirst for those arms of the sky,
  They never will taste the white home where they lie.

  So rivers and oceans with influence sweet,
  Their mighty hearts swelling loved Luna to greet,
  Strain sobbing their bosoms to hold her dear face,
  And thrilled to their depths with her luminous grace,

  In tossing waves rapturous rise to her smile.
  In vain! Their coy queen half receding the while,
  In slow fainting cadence they sink to the shore,
  And hoarse tones of love-hunger moan evermore.

  Ah, lady, bright sleeper, my soul, like the sea,
  Illumed with thy beauty, is trembling to thee:
  I kneel in the silence, and drink in the air
  That, fragrant and holy, has toyed with thy hair;

  And hushed in thy presence with worshipping fear--
  The breeze even stills when it reaches thine ear--
  My lips dare not whisper in softest refrain
  The trance of my heart in its passionate pain.

  Oh, open thine eyes! let their smile make me brave--
  The Queen e'en of Ocean will _look_ at her slave!--
  Let me drown in their light--deliciously drown,
  And lay thy white hand on my head for a crown,

  And chrism. And thus regally shrived, might I dare
  Exhale the warm infinite incense of prayer
  From my deep soul to thine. Nor then couldst thou know
  The wealth of the censer. Thou wak'st!--must I go?




A CASTLE IN THE AIR.

  'I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house,
    Wherein at ease for aye to dwell;
  I said, 'O soul, make merry and carouse,
    Dear soul, for all is well.'

                                TENNYSON.


Times are changed. Most people (_i.e._, Bostonians) now build their
castles on the 'new land.'[4] But I belong to the old school, and I
still build mine in the air.

The situation has its advantages. As Miss Gail Hamilton observed, when I
had the pleasure of exhibiting it to her, it is airy. I need scarcely
add that it is the favorite haunt of those kindred spirits Ari-osto and
Ary Scheffer. It is too high ever to be reached by any unsavory odors
from the Back Bay. Cool in summer it is also, notwithstanding,
remarkably warm in winter. My castle is quite too retired for any
critics to intrude upon it. They cannot get at the plan of it even,
unless in the event of its being shown them by my friend, the editor of
a popular magazine, which is a betrayal too improbable to enter into my
calculations.

There is no stucco or sham about my castle. Like a fair and frank
republican, I built it all of pure freestone, from the doorsteps up to
the observatory. This observatory--I will speak of it while I think of
it--holds a telescope exactly like the one at Cambridge, except that the
tube has a blue-glass spectacle to screw on, through which it does not
put out one's eye to look at the moon.

My workmen never make mistakes nor keep me waiting. The painters paint,
the upholsterers upholster, and the carpenters _carpent_ precisely when
and as I wish. I do not have to heat myself by running over the town for
straw matting, nor to catch cold in crypts full of carpets. Everything
that I order comes to my door as soon as I order.

Every time that I go down Washington street, I choose something in the
shop windows for my castle--an engraving at Williams & Everett's, a
mosaic or classic onyx at Jordan's, or a camel's hair--for a dressing
gown, of course at Hovey's. It really costs surprisingly little, and is
an agreeable exercise of taste and judgment. It is likewise an exercise
of benevolence. I select as many things for my guests as I do for
myself. My castle is never too full. Little by little my tastes change;
and little by little, I let most of my old treasures go to make room for
new ones.

But certain principles always prevail in my selections. For instance, as
my particular friend, the Reverend George Herbert, remarked, as he
looked about him on one of his visits to my castle: 'Sober handsomeness
doth bear the bell.' I cannot admit anything gaudy, needlessly exotic,
or impertinently obtruding the idea of dollars. Now a travelled lady,
who had heard of my castle, once offered me for it a buhl cabinet, of
angry and alarming redness and a huge idol of a gilded trough, standing
on bandy legs, and gorged with artificial flowers. And I thanked her for
her kind intentions, ordered a handcart, sent the lumber to auction, and
applied the proceeds to the benefit of the insane.

Tapestry, however, clever bronzes, sheathed daggers from Hassam's with
beetles crawling on the hilts, and illuminated, brazen-clasped old
tomes abound at my castle. They come to me one by one, each bringing
with it its separate pleasure. I have no fancy for buying up, at one
fell swoop, the whole establishment of some bankrupt banker or
_confiscated_ Russian nobleman. Instead of slipping at once, like a
dishonest hermit-crab, into the whole investment of somebody else, I
rather choose to come by my own, as I suppose other more happily
constituted shell-fish do, by gradual and individual accretion or
secretion.

My winter parlor looks down Beacon street. It is lofty, like all the
rest of my apartments, but otherwise small and snug. The floor is of a
dark wood, polished to the utmost. The great wood-fire loves to wink at
its own glowing face mirrored in this floor; and, when alone, I often
skate upon it. But as I do not wish to see my less sure-footed friends
disposed about it in writhing attitudes expressive of agony and broken
bones, I usually keep it covered, up to a yard's breadth from the
dark-carved wainscot, with a velvety carpet, which was woven for me at
Wilton, and represents the casting scene in the 'Song of the Bell.' The
window curtains are of velvet, of just the shade of purple that nestles
in the centre of the most splendid kind of fuchsia, and have an Etruscan
border and heavy fringes of gold bullion. The walls are covered with a
crimson velvet paper, of the hue of the outer petals of that same
fuchsia, with little golden suns shining over it everywhere. One end of
the room is further lighted up by a portrait of the terrestrial fury
Etna, in a full suit of grape vines and an explosion of fiery wrath.
Opposite is a spirited scene, by an artist who shall be nameless,
suggested by a passage in an interesting sermon by Jonathan Edwards. The
contemplation of the latter picture, especially, makes a chance
sensation of chilliness a luxury rather than the contrary.

My tawny Scotch terrier, Wye-I, always takes up his position on the
purple plush cushion at one side of the fireplace, and the Maltese cat,
Cattiva, on the crimson one opposite, by instinct, because most becoming
severally to their complexions. The cat never catches mice. There are no
mice in my castle for her to catch. The dog is much attached to her. He
is considered remarkably intelligent. In gratitude for my forbearing to
cut off his tail, he uses it as a brush, watches the coals, and, when
they snap out, sweeps them up with it. He sometimes, with a natural
sensibility which does him no discredit, accompanies the performance
with the appropriate music which has earned him his name.

My summer parlor is much larger. It is paved with little hexagonal
tiles, green, purple, and white alternately, like a bed of cool violets,
with a border of marine shells in mosaic. The walls are cloaked as
greatly as the _Cloaca Maxima_, with verdant leaves, light and dark,
through which, here and there, peeps a rock. There is no arsenic among
them. The windows look seaward to see the ships come and go. Venetian
blinds, of the kind that turn up and down, admit only green light at
noon, softer or brighter according to my mood. Lace curtains sweep the
floor with a slumberous sound when the sea breeze breathes in. Some of
my visitors might say that this room was too empty. I should promptly
disagree with them. To a person of correct taste, not to speak of a
philanthropic bias, it must be painful to see, in warm weather, anything
which calls up a vision of warm handmaidens, laborious with their brooms
and dusters. Therefore I must persist in admitting here little furniture
besides the oriental bamboo couches and porcelain barrels that flank the
room, with little daisy-and-moss-like _chenille_ rugs beside them. One
Canton tepoy holds my _aquarium_, and another, beside the most
frequented of the lounges, the last number of the most weighty of North
American periodicals. If ever I take a nap, it is here.

In the centre of the room, a white-marble Egeria, carved by Thorwaldsen,
throws up between her hands a shaft of cold crystal water, pure as
truth, which spreads into a silvery veil all around her, and plashes
down in a snowy basin: no place could be more inviting for a bath. But
in the winter Egeria shows her power of adaptation by furnishing instead
a Geyser of hot water. Then I turn my scientific friends in here, when
they call upon me, to make them feel at home.

In the position of Jack Horner, sits Miss Hosmer's Puck. Opposite is a
mate production, which she never put on exhibition. It is Ariel, perched
hiding in a honeysuckle, and leaning slyly out to play on an AEolian harp
in a cottage latticed window.

Over the somewhat frequented couch of which I have spoken, there is a
picture by Paul Delaroche of

                     'Sabrina fair
  Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
    In twisted braids of lilies knitting
  The loose folds of her amber-dropping hair.'

On the other side hangs another painting which I prefer, partly perhaps
because even in my castle I was for a time at a loss how to procure it.
The subject was recommended to me by Hans Christian Andersen. It is the
story of a beautiful princess. Are not Danish princesses always
beautiful?

Her numerous brothers were so unfortunate as to be laid, by a witch,
under a spell of a most inconvenient sort. Every morning they were
turned into wild swans. Every day they were obliged to fly over many a
league of gray ocean to the mainland and back to their home, an island
in the midst of the sea. At every sunset they resumed their natural
shape, and were princes all night. One day they met their sister on the
shore. They undertook to carry her back with them. Her Weight made them
slower than usual. A storm came up in the after noon. There was a sad
probability of the swans being turned into princes again before they
could possibly 'see her home.'

In my picture, half of the swans are a plumy raft for her, and row her
through the air with their sweeping wings. Another relay, more tired,
perhaps, make a canopy over her, and fan her as they fly. Their
outstretched gaze sees only the island. But the princess, as she lies
facing backward, sees the danger. In despairing, motionless silence, she
looks at the sinking sun, with no color in her cheeks but that which he
casts upon her. The red, warning sun looks awfully back, face to face
with her, in the narrowing strip of blue sky between two horizontal bars
of thundering clouds, which the lightning is beginning to chain
together, that the night may come before its time, and the enchanted
princes and their sister may drown in darkness.

Church did the water very well, and Paul Weber the island. Rosa Bonheur
was so kind as to paint the swans--I need not say how. But the rest of
the picture was such a perplexity to me that I could think of nothing
better than to send for Mr. Laroy Sunderland to call one day when I was
out, and knock up Raphael to draw the princess, and Salvator Rosa, the
clouds, and Titian to see to the sky and light. When I came in again,
the completed whole met me as a pleasant surprise.

Not far off are Landseer's 'Challenge,' and a few other Arctic pieces of
his, which I look at in July to keep myself cool. But the chief of my
pictures are in the picture gallery, at the top of my castle, lighted
from above. _Connoisseurs_ assure me, with rare candor, that the
'Transfiguration,' 'Last Judgment,' 'Assumption of the Virgin,' and so
forth, there, are duplicates rather than copies of the originals.

In my library there is scarcely a single picture to be found, nor a
statue, nor a bust even, except of the duskiest, self-hiding bronze
overhead--only some dim, dark engraving, or brown, antiquated autograph,
fading in a little black frame, or a signet ring hanging against the
book written by the crumbled hand that once wore it--only relics having
the power to excite thought without distracting attention--- unobtrusive
memorials of the dead with whom I am soon to live. Rich, black, old
bookcases, carved all over in high relief, hold their immortal works or
the records of their undying deeds. Even the writings of the living are
sparingly admitted here. I stand on my guard constantly, lest I be
enslaved by their influence. It is less by obsequiousness to the Present
than by listening to the admonitions of the Past, that we may hope to
gain a hearing from the Future.

Saints and seraphs, such as they appeared to _Fra Angelico_, look in
upon me through the stained-glass windows, that I may always read and
study as if under their holy eyes. Ivy runs thickly over their deep
arched recesses, and over the stags' heads which surmount them. In
winter, little but painted beams and glow come through them. In summer,
the oriel opens of an evening to show me the phantom ships that haunt
the misty, dreamy harbor; and the lattices that look westerly over the
lake-like mouth of the Charles, are seldom shut against the sun or moon.

The floor is smoothly paved with broad, square slabs of freestone, on
which is here or there engraved one or another illustrious name, like a
'footprint on the sands of time,' with a date of birth and death. Tables
that match the bookcases support portfolios containing allegorical
designs by Relszch, Blake, and Albrecht Durer. On a writing desk, that
was once Vittoria Colonna's, a little Parian angel holds my ink for me,
kneeling as if to ask a blessing upon it, and to entreat me to blot no
pages with it in the souls whereon I write,

        [Greek: 'Mede mousa moi
  Genoit aoidos etis umnesei kaka']

Before the reading chairs, plenty of tiger and leopard skins lie in wait
to cherish the cool feet of students, but there is nothing to trip up my
own, along the long diameter of the long oval room, if sometimes the
fancy seizes me to walk up and down there for hours alone, listening to
the 'voices' that are not 'from without.'

At the end opposite to the oriel, I have just had placed an organ, the
twin of the new one at the Music Hall, except that the faces on the
pipes are beautiful, and do not look as if it hurt them to pipe. The
world may be too small; but the organ cannot possibly be too large.
Malibran, Jenny Lind, or Mrs. Mott usually sings to it of an evening,
accompanied by Franz, Schubert, or Mendelssohn; or Beethoven drops in to
play one of his symphonies. Sunday nights, Handel performs upon it
regularly for a choir composed of Vaughan, Herbert, the minister who
chants 'Calm on the listening ear of night,' Madame Guyon, and Sarah
Adams. Between their hymns, Robertson preaches a sermon and reads from
the liturgy of King's Chapel. This service is designed as a special
easement to the consciences and stomachs alike of those oppressed
Christians, whom modern customs and physical laws impel, of an
afternoon, to be dining and digesting precisely at the hours during
which their pastors are unaccountably and unjustifiably in the habit of
preaching.

The books upon the shelves, last not least, are less numerous than
choice. Among them still are to be found the most masterly writings of
the most masterly minds in the three learned professions, and the
noblest treatises on the nobler of the arts and sciences. There are many
'chronicles of eld,' which, if not true, as the Frenchman said, at any
rate '_meritent bien de l'etre_.' There are such few fictions as bear
the stamp of much individual thought, character, and observation.
Especially there is a great deal of biography; for biography is the
great, all-embracing epic of humanity.

Two suits of armor stand on guard, one on each side, by each
well-assorted bookcase. I always think it prudent to warn my incautious
visitors that these are _automata_, wound up and set to deal a box with
their gauntleted hands on each ear of each disorderly wight who puts a
book where it does not belong.

Below my library, and beyond my courtyard, is a boat in which I row
myself out in warm weather to visit my friends along the coast. When I
ply the oar, the crab-fishery is unproductive, droughts prevail, and I
am not often upset or drowned.

In my stable are sometimes to be found, eating unmingled oats, two tame
ponies, Mattapony and Poniatowski. They take my invalid acquaintance out
on airings in the daytime, and my lingering guests home at a reasonable
hour in the evening. The coachman thinks it is good for the horses to be
out in bad weather. He loves to wash the coach. For my own use, I keep a
large dapple-gray, an ex-charger of the purest blood. He has the
smoothest canter and the finest mouth that I ever felt; but, with decent
regard to appearances, and my private preferences, expressed or
understood, he never fails to prance in a manner to strike awe and
terror into all beholders, for full five minutes every time I mount him.

In the common world, I myself am, I trust, often amiable--always in some
respects exemplary. In my castle, I am always all that I ought to
be--all that I wish to be. I am as stately as Juno, as beautiful as
Adonis, as elegant as Chesterfield, as edifying as Mrs. Chapone, as
eloquent as Burke, as noble as Miss Nightingale, as perennial as the
Countess of Desmond, and as robust as Dr. Windship. I also understand
everything but entomology and numismatology; and if I do not understand
them, the only reason is that, as the dear little boys say, 'I _doe_
want to.'

The blossom-end of the day I keep to myself in my castle. I spend all
the mornings alone in the library writing--_calamo currente_, like one
of the heroines of the author of 'Ohone'--the most admirable romances
and poems of the age. People very seldom call to see me. When they do,
they go away again directly on hearing that I am engaged, without as
much as sending in a message. My porter has Fortunatus's purse, and is
giving discreet largesses, in collusion with the agent of the Provident
Association, to the less opulent of the beggars who apply for my
pecuniary aid, while I am providing above for the wants of those who
crave my higher wealth. So that really the only drawback to the pleasure
enjoyed by me at such times, is the idea of the frightful quarrels which
must arise, as soon as I put anything to the press, between the
booksellers, who stand ready to contend with one another for the honor
of publishing it. The very first novel I ever completed led to a duel
between the Montague and Capulet of the trade, in which each party must
have lost his life but for the strenuous interposition of Noah
Worcester. The fear of a repetition of that scene is all which withholds
me from more frequently answering the importunate calls of the public to
appear before them. Matters were simultaneously almost as bad between
Birket Foster and Darley. But I made a compromise there, by promising
that, the next time I got out an edition, I would get out another, and
that of the two each artist should illustrate one. Each eagerly agreed
to this arrangement, naturally feeling sure that such a comparison would
forever establish his own superiority.

Did I say there was but one drawback to my pleasure? There is one more.
It is the idea of the monotonous uniformity with which the Reviews will
eulogize me. They cannot say a word of commendation beyond what is
strictly true, I am fully aware; and I am not obliged to read any more
of it than I please. Still it may appear extravagant to the very few yet
unacquainted with the merits of my works.

Of an evening I am usually at home to visitors; and three times every
winter I give the young people a ball. It breaks up at twelve. I provide
none but the lightest wines. Nor do I encourage the 'round dances.' I
really cannot. Those who do not think it right to join in them would
either do so against their consciences, or feel left out and forlorn;
pretty girls would get overheated, tumbled, and torn, and carry about
the marks of black arms on their delicate waists; and youths,
unsurpassed in the natural nobleness of their port and presence, would
make ridiculous faces in their well-founded anxiety lest they should
lose the time or meet with collisions. But I give them, to make such
amends as I can, plenty of room, pure air, neither hot nor cold, and
flowers in abundance. Soyer furnishes their supper; Strauss and Labitzky
play for them; and they are in a measure consoled for their privations
by seeing and hearing how uncommonly handsome they look to the end of
the evening. The only qualifications I require for admission to the
entertainment are, that the candidates shall be generally acquainted
with one another, respectable in character, tasteful in dress, happy and
kind in their looks, and well-mannered enough to show that they have
assembled to give and receive as much innocent pleasure as they can.

Good talkers and good listeners only are invited to my dinner parties. I
give one every Wednesday. It is a pleasant thing to look forward to
through the first half of the week, and to look back upon through the
last.

My cook likes it. She is the complement to the unhappy gentleman who had
'the temperament of genius without genius.' She has the genius without
the temperament.

Part of my waiters are the attendant hands formerly engaged in the
service of the White Cat. They are always gloved, and never spill nor
break anything. Others, who are dumb, carry everything needed safely to
and fro between table and kitchen.

The walls of my dining room are hung with portraits of all of my
presentable ancestors, from the time of Apelles down to that of Copley.
There are not too many of them to leave room for some Dutch paintings of
fruit, game, and green-grocers' shops, for whets to the hunger.

My responsibility, with regard to the banquet, begins and ends with
seeing, as I never fail to do, that each of the banqueters has a
generally agreeable and peculiarly congenial companion. As for myself, I
maintain that a host has his privileges; and I always place the Reverend
Sydney Smith very near my right hand. On my left, I enjoy a variety. The
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table is sometimes so kind as to grace that
corner of my dinner table. So is a gentleman who was once two years
before the mast as an uncommon sailor; and so is Sir Lainful, and a
child from a neighboring college town, whose society is better than that
of most men.

Nothing is more promotive of digestion than laughter. I regret that my
experience does not enable me to speak quite so favorably of choking. By
means of the latter, my bright career was, on the very first of this
series of festivities, nearly brought to a premature close. But as upon
that occasion it was impossible for me to stop laughing, so likewise was
it impossible for me to stop living. Some sort of action of the lungs
was kept up, and complete asphyxia prevented; and, having smiled myself
nearly to death, I smiled myself back to life again. Ever since, my
_convives_, apprised of this mortal frailty of mine, time their remarks
more prudently, and allow me to take alternately a joke and a morsel.

Sir Walter Scott always sits at the farther end of the table. He is the
best talker that I ever heard, but not so good for dinner as he is for
luncheon, because what he says is too interesting, and takes away one's
appetite; nor for supper either, because he makes one dream. I always
contrive that the more plethoric of my guests shall take their seats
near him.

_I_ could never be tired of Macaulay; but he contradicts people, and
once made two ladies cry. They were introduced to me by an author to
whom I owe much enjoyment, Miss Wetherell, of the State of New York. One
was the bride of the Reverend John Humphreys, and the other Mrs. Guy
Carleton. To be sure, I did not see why they should cry--unless from
habit; but still, he ought not to have made them.

After dinner, those who show no signs of having talked themselves out,
are rewarded and encouraged by being privately invited to prolong their
stay, and meet a few other guests in the library.

Shakspeare always appears there among the first, collected and calm, but
whether happy or not, his manner does not show. With regard both to his
past and present life, his reserve is impenetrable. Like a mocking bird,
he utters himself in so many different strains, that I can seldom make
out which is most his own, except when he will sing one of his little
lyrics; when, I must say, I never heard so sweet and rich a voice but
that of Milton on such occasions, or those of Shelley's skylark and
cloud. But yet, whether this voice of his own says that the heart out of
which it comes is most glad or sad, I never can distinguish.

Dante comes with him, as tall, and, I think, as strong a man; but 'Pace'
is still upon his lips and not upon his brow. He complains that heaven
is a melancholy place to him. He has become better acquainted with
Beatrice, and finds her not more beautiful than the rest of the angels,
and otherwise rather a commonplace spirit.

To Goethe I usually have myself excused. To borrow a little slang from
the critics, he 'draws' uncommonly well, especially when he draws
portraits. But I do not care to have my eye trained much by an artist
who has such an infirmity of color that he does not know black from
white.

Schiller meets with many a welcome, and rarely a heartier one than when
he brings his Wilhelm Tell or Jungfrau. I should be glad to ask some of
those who are more intimate with him than I am, whether he is not a good
deal like three wise men, whose plays Socrates and I used to go to see
performed at Athens, two or three thousand years ago, when I was there.
Further, I should be glad to ask whether it would not be better if, in
one respect, he were more like them still. As he at least has seemed to
me to do, they threw the strength of their invention into two or three
impersonations; but as he sometimes does, they always--to steal a term
from the nearest grocery--lumped all the merely necessary and accessary
people, and called them simply 'Chorus.' Thus the wise men's ingenuities
and our memories were spared the trouble of assigning and remembering a
host of insignificant names; and there was no looking back to the
_dramatis personae_, or _dramatos prosopa_, as we called them then, to
find out _who was who_.

A Government officer sometimes reports himself at my gates from Rydal,
with a washing tub of ink on castors, which he pushes about with him
wherever he goes, and in which, as in a Claude-Lorraine mirror, he
contemplates everything that he can both on earth and above. He is
constantly employed in fishing in it with a quill for ideas; and as
often as he catches one, even if it is half drowned, my door-keeper
opens to him.

Lady Geraldine was one of my most constant guests of an evening. But
after her courtship and marriage, she was too apt to bring in her
husband. I received him cordially enough two or three times,
particularly when he came with 'the good news from Ghent.' But on other
occasions his conversation was so far from agreeable, so unintelligible,
or, 'not to put too fine a point upon it,' unedifying, that at last my
porter was obliged to hand him out for immediate chastisement.[5] He
never came again. I do not quite see why not; for, if others are willing
to take pains for his good, he certainly should be no less so.

Mrs. Stowe does honor to one of the most honorable places in the
assembly--her head crowned with an everlasting glory by the spirit of
Uncle Tom.

Poor Charlotte Bronte is always present. She looks happy at last, with a
happiness that is not of this world; and if her laurels are but earthly
laurels, I often fancy that in the hand which smoothed her sisters'
deathbeds, I can discern a heavenly palm. There are not many secular
writers whom I would not turn away, if need were, to make room for her.
If I do not always admire her characters, I do her mind. I do not
altogether like her stories; but I want words to express my appreciation
of the way in which she tells them.

I may state in this place, as well as in any, that--an enlightened
conservative in all things--I always hold myself in readiness to
receive, with marked distinction, intellectual women, who 'keep to their
sphere,' such as Miss Mitchell, whose sphere is the celestial globe,
Miss Austin, whose sphere is the _beau monde_, and Miss Blackwell, whose
sphere is the pill.

Cromwell, or Frederick the Great either, would have secured a standing
invitation for Carlyle, I dare say; but it is impossible for me to
overlook his present state of politics. I have little doubt that it fell
upon him as a Nemesis, in the first place for writing bad English, and
secondly for daring to 'damn with faint praise' the loyal, generous,
joyous, chivalrous, religious soldier, Frederick, Baron de la
Motte-Fouque, and prince of romance. When the latter presents himself
for admission my castle needs short siege. The drawbridge falls before
the summons; and when I see him cross my threshold with his lovely and
noble children, Ondine and Sintram, I should be almost too happy, if I
were not afraid of his being affronted by the mischievous humor of
Cervantes.

For Cervantes will make his way in now and then. It is impossible
utterly to banish so much originality, elegance, and grace as his, even
if the fun which accompanies them is sometimes too broad; and, when he
comes to see me, he is always on his very best behavior. Sir Thomas
Browne came once; but I thought he talked too much about himself; and
scarcely anybody seemed to know him.

Hazlitt brought me a letter of introduction from the Emperor Napoleon. I
was not inclined to think much of either of them; but I knew Hazlitt was
a friend of Lamb's; and I have a regard for Lamb, on account of his
regard for his sister. So my porter asked Mr. Hazlitt to walk in; and so
Mr. Hazlitt did. Presently I heard him say, in an aside to Mrs. Jameson,
that women were usually very stupid; if not by nature, by education and
principle. The next time he called I happened to be rather particularly
engaged in writing a review of him. Nobody ever heard him say anything
afterward.

Of course, I single out merely a few even of the 'representative men and
women' among my guests, and conveniences and luxuries in my
establishment. If I told over the tithe of them, I should become
diffuse; but if there is any one thing for which, more than for any
other thing, my writings are remarkable, that one thing[6] is a
thrice-condensed conciseness--in my castle in the air.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Land recently reclaimed from the Back Bay, near the foot of Beacon
street, in which the richer citizens of Boston are continually building
and furnishing the most showy houses.

[5] I was made a convert to that excellent officer, Corporal Punishment,
by the 'happy effects,' as medical writers say of blisters, thereby
brought about in the case of a divine of tender years, who had got at
his Bible through the medium of German (not Luther's).

Taking for his text the first verse of Genesis, he paraphrased it: 'In
the beginning, all things projected themselves from within outward, and
evolved a Final Cause out of the depths of their individual
consciousness.' As soon as he had got through his discourse and
gratefully asked a blessing on all that we had 'learned and taught,' the
sexton, who apparently entertained unusually high and comprehensive view
of the duties of his calling, attended the preacher to the vestry.
Thence presently issued cries indicative not only of remorse, but of
some kind of physical distress. The two are often connected as
intimately as mysteriously in the discipline of the visible world,
although we are often assured by those who must know, that they have
nothing whatever to do with each other In the invisible. On the
reappearance of the offender, as he meekly wiped his eyes and passed
down the aisle, he was heard, in a broken voice, inquiring of the
deacons where a Hebrew dictionary could be bought; and I have since been
credibly informed that before he arrived at maturity he had learned a
good deal.

Now anybody can read German; in fact, a great many persons seem wholly
unable to stop. But if we do not keep a theological boy to read our
Greek and Hebrew for us, then what do we keep one for? Or, to make the
question intelligible to those among us who speak the Sweden-borgian
tongue, what 'uses does he perform?'




THE DEVIL'S CANON IN CALIFORNIA.


This wonderful ravine is more generally known under the name of the
_Geysers of California_, an ambitious misnomer, which associates it with
the grand Geysers of Iceland, and has given rise to erroneous ideas in
regard to the nature and action of the springs it contains.

The prevalent idea of a geyser is a hot fountain, sometimes quiescent,
but at others rising in turbulent eruption. The mere existence of a hot
spring does not imply a 'geyser,' for, if such were the case, their
number would be very great, hot springs in many parts of the world being
frequent if not general accompaniments of volcanic action.
Unquestionably, the Geysers of Iceland, the 'Strokr,' and the spring of
the Devil's Canon, the 'Witches' Caldron', are the results of volcanic
action; but that action differs essentially in its operation. The
'Strokr' and the 'Great Geyser' are intermittent, and are accounted for
by the siphon theory: the 'Witches' Caldron' is always full and boiling,
and no difference is seen in it from one year's end to another.

It is not, moreover, a fountain, but a basin in the hillside, in which a
black and muddy spring is always bubbling without overflowing.

The great eruptions of the Icelandic Geysers are, it has been observed,
accounted for by the siphon theory; in other words, this theory supposes
the existence of a chamber in the heated earth, not quite full of water,
and communicating with the upper air by means of a pipe, whose lower
orifice is _at the side_ of the cavern and _below_ the surface of the
water. The water, being kept boiling by the intense heat, generates
steam, which soon accumulates such force as to discharge the contents of
the pond into the air through the narrow vent, or, at least enough to
allow of the escape of the superfluous steam. In the Great Geyser of
Iceland this eruption occurs with tremendous power, lasting only a few
moments, when, all the volume of water falling back into the pool, it
sinks much below its ordinary level, and remains quiescent for several
days, until a fresh creation of steam repeats the phenomenon.

'The Witches' Caldron,' which is the 'Great Geyser' of California, on
the contrary, never rises into the air; the subterranean pond of which
it is the safety valve, may be considered to rise in it, as in a pipe,
to the surface. It is not necessary to suppose a siphon; a straight
pipe, communicating with the air, will account for all that is peculiar
to this hot spring.

Before attempting to describe the wonders of the 'Devil's Canon,' it may
be well to give some account of the Geysers of Iceland, to render this
essential difference in character the more striking, especially as
numerous theories, professing to account for the Californian phenomena,
have been propounded by the people of that State, none of which are
thoroughly satisfactory to any one who has examined them attentively.

The following is taken from 'Letters from High Latitudes,' which
appeared in 1861, and is only one of many accounts by Iceland
travellers. Those interested in these matters will derive much
information from the sketches of Mr. J. Ross Browne, which have had many
readers through _Harper's Magazine_. We quote:

     'I do not know that I can give you a better notion of the
     appearance of the place than by saying that it looked as if for
     about a quarter of a mile the ground had been honey-combed by
     disease into numerous sores and orifices; not a blade of grass grew
     on its hot, inflamed surface, which consisted of
     unwholesome-looking, red, livid clay, or crumbled shreds and shards
     of slough-like incrustations. Naturally enough, our first impulse
     on dismounting was to scamper off to the Great Geyser. As it lay at
     the farthest end of the congeries of hot springs, in order to reach
     it we had to run the gauntlet of all the pools of boiling water and
     scalding quagmires of soft clay that intervened, and consequently
     arrived on the spot with our ankles nicely poulticed. But the
     occasion justified our eagerness.

     'A smooth, silicious basin, seventy-two feet in diameter and four
     feet deep, wide at the bottom, as in washing basins on board a
     steamer, stood before us, brimful of water just upon the simmer;
     while up into the air above our heads rose a great column of vapor,
     looking as if it was going to turn into the Fisherman's Genie. The
     ground above the brim was composed of layers of incrusted silica
     like the outside of an oyster shell, sloping gently down on all
     sides from the edge of the basin.

     'As the baggage train with our tents and beds had not yet arrived,
     we fully appreciated our luck in being treated to so dry a night;
     and having eaten everything we could lay hands on, we sat quietly
     down to chess, and _coffee brewed in geyser water_; when suddenly
     it seemed as if beneath our very feet a quantity of subterranean
     cannon were going off: the whole earth shook, and Sigurdr, starting
     to his feet, upset the chess board (I was just beginning to get the
     best of the game), and started off at full speed toward the great
     basin. By the time we reached its brim, however, the noise had
     ceased, and all we could see was a slight movement in the centre,
     as if an angel had passed by and troubled the water. Irritated by
     this false alarm, we determined to revenge ourselves by going and
     tormenting the Strokr.

     'The Strokr--or the _Churn_--you must know, is an unfortunate
     geyser, with so little command over his temper and his stomach that
     you can get a _rise_ out of him whenever you like. All that is
     necessary is to collect a quantity of sods, and throw them down his
     funnel. As he has no basin to protect him from these liberties, you
     can approach to the very edge of the pipe, about five feet in
     diameter, and look down at the boiling water, which is perpetually
     seething at the bottom. In a few minutes the dose of turf you have
     administered begins to disagree with him; he works himself up into
     an awful passion--tormented by the qualms of incipient sickness; he
     groans and hisses, and boils up and spits at you with malicious
     vehemence, until at last, with a roar of mingled pain and rage, he
     throws up into the air a column of water forty feet high, which
     carries with it all the sods that have been chucked in, and
     scatters them scalded and half digested at your feet. So irritated
     has the poor thing's stomach become by the discipline it has
     undergone, that long after all foreign matter has been thrown off,
     it goes on retching and spluttering, until, at last, nature is
     exhausted, when, sobbing and sighing to itself, it sinks back into
     the bottom of its den. Put into the highest spirits by the success
     of this performance, we turned to examine the remaining springs. I
     do not know, however, that any of the rest are worthy of any
     particular mention. They all resemble in character the two I have
     described, the only difference being that they are infinitely
     smaller, and of much less power and importance.

     'As our principal object in coming so far was to see an eruption of
     the Great Geyser, it was of course necessary to wait his pleasure;
     in fact, our movements entirely depended upon his. For the next two
     or three days, therefore, like pilgrims round some ancient shrine,
     we patiently kept watch, but he scarcely deigned to vouchsafe us
     the slightest manifestation of his latent energies. Two or three
     times the cannonading we heard immediately after our arrival
     recommenced--and once an eruption to the height of about ten feet
     occurred; but so brief was its duration, that by the time we were
     on the spot, although the tent was not eighty yards distant, all
     was over; as after every effort of the fountain, the water in the
     basin mysteriously ebbed back into the funnel. This performance,
     though unsatisfactory in itself, gave us an opportunity of
     approaching the mouth of the pipe, and looking down its scalded
     gullet. In an hour afterward the basin was brimful as ever.

     'On the morning of the fourth day a cry from the guides made us
     start to our feet, and with one common impulse rush toward the
     basin. The usual subterranean thunders had already commenced. A
     violent agitation was disturbing the centre of the pool. Suddenly a
     dome of water lifted itself up to the height of eight or ten
     feet--then burst and fell; immediately after which a shining liquid
     column, or rather sheaf of columns, wreathed in robes of vapor,
     sprang into the air, and in a succession of jerking leaps, each
     higher than the last, flung their silver crests against the sky.
     For a few minutes the fountain held its own, then all at once
     appeared to lose its ascending energy. The unstable waters
     faltered--drooped--fell, 'like a broken purpose,' back upon
     themselves, and were immediately sucked down into the recesses of
     their pipe.

     'The spectacle was certainly magnificent; but no description can
     give an idea of its most striking features. The enormous wealth of
     water, its vitality, its hidden power, the illimitable breadth of
     sunlit vapor, rolling out in exhaustless profusion--all combined to
     make one feel the stupendous energy of nature's slightest movement.

     'And yet I do not believe that the exhibition was so fine as some
     that have been seen: from the first burst upward to the moment the
     last jet retreated into the pipe, was no more than a space of seven
     or eight minutes, and at no moment did the crown of the column
     reach higher than sixty or seventy feet above the surface of the
     basin. Now early travellers talk of three hundred feet, which must,
     of course, be fabulous; but many trustworthy persons have judged
     the eruptions at two hundred feet, while well-authenticated
     accounts--when the elevation of the jet has been actually
     measured--make it to have attained a height of upward of one
     hundred feet.'

Such are the peculiar characteristics of the Geysers of Iceland,
differing in almost every essential point from the hot springs, so
called, in California. We propose to show that the phenomena of the
Devil's Canon appear in other parts of the world in connection with some
known volcano, which has at some period in history been in active
operation, and that there is strong reason to believe that they can be
explained by the sinking of cold water into the earth, in a country rich
in salts and minerals, and encountering a volcanic focus, from which the
water is discharged hot and strongly impregnated with the salts through
which it has passed. It was Humboldt's opinion that hot springs
generally originated thus, for he says in 'Kosmos':

     'A very striking proof of the origin of hot springs by the sinking
     of cold meteoric water into the earth, and by its contact with a
     volcanic focus, is afforded by the volcano of Jorullo. When, in
     September, 1759, Jorullo was suddenly elevated into a mountain
     eleven hundred and eighty-three feet above the surrounding plain,
     two small rivers, the Rio de Cuitimba and the Rio de San Pedro,
     disappeared, and some time afterward burst forth again during
     violent shocks of an earthquake, as hot springs, whose temperature
     I found, in 1803, to be 186.4 deg. Fahr.'

The most marked characteristics of the springs of the Devil's Canon are,
the small space in which they are all contained; the profusion and
variety of mineral salts, and the proximity of different minerals,
almost flowing into each other, but never mingling; the number and
different forces of the steam jets on every side; and the remarkable
appearance of the soil.

The approach to the Devil's Canon is through a section of country
bearing evident traces of volcanic action, and rich in mineral springs,
of which the most important are those of the Napa Valley. First among
these, at the greatest distance from the volcano (if we may be allowed
to call it so), is the soda spring of Napa, a cold spring, greatly
resembling in flavor the water of the Congress Spring at Saratoga.
Passing up the Napa Valley, we find a tepid sulphur spring near St.
Hellon's, known as the 'White Sulphur Spring,' being strongly
impregnated with that mineral, and tasting much like the famous 'White
Sulphur' of Virginia. Its waters, however, are slightly warm, and,
although stronger than those of the 'Warm Springs' of the Blue Ridge, a
basin as clear and buoyant as that could easily be made.

This spring is owned by Mr. Alstrom, of the Lick House, at San
Francisco, and, being in a charming valley, is fast becoming the most
popular watering place on the Pacific coast. About twelve miles beyond
the Sulphur Springs are the 'Hot Springs,' which resemble the
description just given of the Icelandic Geysers--the little
geysera--there being the same quaking bog around them, which emits steam
to the tread, and the surface being scabby, like an old salt meadow
under a midsummer sun. These waters are scalding hot, but are pure,
excepting a trace of iron. If they have been analyzed, the writer has
not seen the results.

The Devil's Canon lies about fifteen miles beyond the Hot Springs, and
in the heart of a wild, mountainous country, difficult of access, and
barren of vegetation, except of the most hardy character, such as the
manzanita and Californian oak. Molten mercury, pure and rich, is found
in the crevices of the rocks. Quartz and basalt are freely met with, and
on Geyser Peak disintegrating lava.

Here the road attains an elevation of three thousand feet, and on either
hand are broad and fertile valleys, with rivers winding through them,
the Russian River valley and the Napa being the most beautiful beneath,
while before us are gorges and barren hills, that rise above each other
in picturesque confusion.

The first view of the Devil's Canon is obtained from one of these
desolate hills. At our very feet, fully two thousand feet below,
seemingly a sheer descent, rises a little column of smoke or vapor, and
the opposing hills, which rise abruptly to the height of a thousand
feet, seem cleft by a narrow chasm, the sides of which and the
neighboring hillside seem to have been burnt over by fire, and baked of
many colors, like the neighborhood of an old brick kiln. Any one who has
seen the island of St. Helena will at once recognize it as the same
phenomenon which is famous in the 'Hangings,' the blasted precipice by
the side of Longwood Farm, overhanging the valley which Napoleon chose
for his last resting place. This striking similarity is all the more
worthy of note from its occurring there in a purely volcanic island,
every inch of which is decomposed or crumbling lava or lava rock. At the
'Hangings' the soil has the appearance of having been slowly roasted,
long after the central fires which produced the island had lost their
energy.

Descending the mountain we find ourselves on the brink of a precipice,
overhanging a turbulent stream about two hundred feet below, and facing
the ravine or canon, which contains these wonders, and which is smoking
incessantly throughout its entire length.

Just at this commanding point a hotel has been erected, from the portico
of which in the early morning we can watch the grand columns of vapor
opposite, before they are shorn of a portion of their splendor by the
rising sun.

It is possible to walk the entire length of the ravine, surrounded by
jets of steam, and little bubbling springs of mineral water; some
hissing, some sputtering, others roaring, and others shrieking; the
ground being soft and hot, your stick sinking into the clayey ooze, and
a puff of spiteful steam following it as withdrawn; your shoes white or
yellow, as you tread the chalk or the sulphur banks, and your feet
burning with the hot breath of the sulphur blasts below.

If you are not stifled by the sulphur fumes above, be thankful; and when
at last you reach the 'Mountain of Fire' at the head of the ravine, and
look back upon the perils of your upward journey, you think of poor
Christian in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Bunyan in his dreams
never imagined a more horrible place.

It is a vale of wonders--Nature's laboratory, where chemistry is to be
studied. The name and number of the springs is 'legion,' Hot Sulphur,
Warm Sulphur, Blue Sulphur, White Sulphur, Alum, Salt, and nobody knows
all the mineral compounds. You may stand with one foot in a cold bath
and another in a hot one--if you can. With one hand you may dip up alum
water, as bitter and pure as chemistry can compound it, and with the
other sulphur water, that shall sicken your very soul. If you have
rheumatism, bathe in the splendid sulphur baths or the Indian Spring; if
your eyes are weak, use the eye-water, which beats any ever charmed by
magical incantations.

In the midst of this ravine, into which so many springs are emptying
themselves, is a little stream, which, starting from the head of the
canon quite cool and pure, receives all their mingled waters, and
gradually increases in heat and abominable taste, until at last it
defies description.

Its stones and the rocks that line its banks, owing probably to the
protection of the cooler water, are tolerably firm in texture, all other
parts of the ravine being burned to a powder which crumbles in the hand,
or, when mixed with water, forms an ooze or clay. Many of these stones
by the sides of this little stream are banded with colors like the
Pictured Rocks of Lake Superior (to compare great things with small),
and probably from the same cause. These beautiful cliffs, the
Schwee-archibi-kung of the Indians, are colored by percolations of
surface-water, by which the coloring matter of various minerals and
acids is brought to the face of the precipice, and it is reasonable to
suppose that the drainage of the mountains behind the Devil's Canon,
sinking to similar beds of minerals, is thrown out by the volcano below
in the shape of steam or mineral springs. It is impossible to drill a
hole two feet deep in the side of the ravine without provoking a little
jet of steam. Now, Daubeny, who is the highest authority on volcanoes,
states that the greater part of their ascending vapor is mere steam, and
that in 'Pantellaria (a volcanic island near Sicily) steam issues from
many parts of this insular mountain, and hot springs gush forth from it
which form together a lake six thousand feet in circumference.'

Similar jets of steam and hot water are observed at St. Lucia, near the
crater Oalibou, where also there is a continual formation of sulphur
from the condensation of the vapors, a phenomenon which is lavishly
displayed in the Devil's Canon, and in fact around most known volcanoes.
The writer observed it fully two miles from the active volcano of
Kilawea, forming a fine sulphur bed, and a body of steam so dense that
rheumatic natives of Hawaii were in the habit of using it as a vapor
bath.

The jets of steam in the canon are of the most curious variety. One,
honored by the name of the 'Devil's Steamboat,' is quite a formidable
affair, high up on the hillside, and puffing uninterruptedly, and so
powerfully that the steam is invisible for at least five feet from the
vent. The ground about it is too soft to permit approach, and the heat
too great to tempt it. On a frosty morning, just before sunrise, it is a
fine sight. This, however, is only one of hundreds. It would be imagined
that if they all came from the same source, they would puff in some sort
of unison--that the beatings of the mighty heart below would be felt
simultaneously in every pulse; but the fact is quite the reverse. No
tune or concord is preserved by any two in the canon; one moves with the
quiet regularity of respiration, while the next is puffing with the
nervous anxiety of a little high-pressure tug boat. It affords endless
amusement to listen to their endless variety of complaint; some are
restless, some spiteful, and some angry, while others sound as merrily
as a teakettle, or beat a jolly 'rub-a-dub,' 'rataplan,' that makes a
man's soul merry to hear. In fact, there is a little retreat just out of
the canon, styled the Devil's Kitchen, where the pot and the saucepan,
the gridiron and the teakettle are visible to men gifted with
imaginations strong enough to grasp the unseen.

The great feature of the canon, which has given it the unmerited name of
'Geyser,' is the Witches' Caldron, a small cavity in the hillside,
seemingly running back into the hill at an angle of forty-five degrees,
filled with villanous black mud in unceasing commotion.

How different from the pellucid basin of the Great Geyser! Lord Dufferin
tells us that he '_brewed his coffee_ in the Geyser water.'

The mud boils like the angry lava-waves of a volcano; it is always of a
very high temperature, and occasionally runs over the rim of the basin,
but never rises violently into the air. It looks like black sulphur
(bitumen), and has a brimstone smell. Certainly it is a diabolical pit,
and worth coming far to see, but it shows none of the phenomena which
tempt travellers to Iceland.

It more closely resembles the salses or mud volcanoes of Central and
South America, and is a phenomenon very common on the sides of
volcanoes. As far back as the time of Pliny it was observed that 'in
Sicily eruptions of wet mud precede the glowing (lava) stream.'

Humboldt recognizes in the 'salses, or small mud volcanoes, a transition
from the changing phenomena presented by the eruptions of vapor and
thermal springs, to the more powerful and awful activity of the streams
of lava that flow from volcanic mountains.'

Although the recent discovery of the Devil's Canon in California makes
it impossible to say at what time, if ever, this smothered volcano may
have been more active, we have accounts of analogous phenomena in
Central America and San Salvador, in the Ausoles of Ahuachapan, near the
volcano of Izalco, which were described in 1576 by Licenciado Palacio,
and also in what was called the 'Infernillo,' on the side of the volcano
of San Vicente, which was mentioned by the Spanish _Conquistadores_. We
also know something of the subsequent history of these volcanoes; for M.
Arago has remarked that

     'The volcano of Izalco is extremely active. Among its eruptions may
     be cited those of 1798, 1805, 1807, and 1825. On the occasion of
     the last eruption the course of the river Tequisquillo was altered
     to the extent of several kilometres.'

Also:

     'The volcano of San Vicente, called also Sacatecoluca, was
     distinguished in 1643 by a very violent eruption which covered all
     the surrounding country with ashes and sulphur. In January, 1835, a
     new eruption of this volcano destroyed many towns and villages.'

Now let us see what old Palacio says of the springs on the side of this
fearful volcano of Izalco:

     'The springs, which the Indians call 'Hell,' are all within the
     space of a gunshot across, and each makes a different noise. One
     imitates the sound of a fuller's mill; another that of a forge, and
     a third a man snoring. The water in some is turbid; in some clear;
     in others red, yellow, and various colors. They all leave deposits
     of corresponding colors. Collectively the springs form the Rio
     Caliente, running underground for a quarter of a league, and so hot
     on reaching the surface as to take the skin off a man's feet.
     Double the range of a musket shot from these springs are others,
     which flow from a rock fifteen feet long by nine feet broad, split
     in the centre, sending out with water columns of smoke and steam,
     with a fearful sound, distinguishable for half a league.'

A later visitor has given an account of the same springs, which may be
thus condensed:

     'Not far from Apaneca and in the vicinity of the town of
     Ahuachapan, are some remarkable thermal springs, called _Ausoles_.
     They emit a dense white steam from a semi-fluid mass of mud and
     water in a state of ebullition, which continually throws off large
     and heavy bubbles. [The mud bubbles of the Witches' Caldron are
     quite as extraordinary.] They occupy a considerable space, the
     largest not less than one hundred yards in circumference. In this
     one the water is exceedingly turbid, of a light brown color, and
     boils furiously. The waters in the other caldrons vary in color,
     and form deposits of the finest clay of every shade. Steam ascends
     in a dense white cloud, shutting out the sun; the ground is all
     hot, soon becoming insupportable. In places a little jet of steam
     and smoke rises fiercely from a hole in the hills, while in others
     boiling water rushes out as if forced from a steam engine. The
     water possesses varying mineral qualities.

     'All these springs are on the side of the volcano Apaneca, one of a
     cluster of which Izalco is the most active, and Santa Anna the
     mother volcano.'

These accounts would be equally correct if applied to the Devil's Canon;
but the following appears to surpass it in the power of the volcano
below. It is condensed from a description by the same traveller, whose
name cannot be ascertained:

     'On the north side of the volcano of San Vicente (a water volcano
     occupying the geographical centre of San Salvador, seven thousand
     feet above the sea), at the head of a considerable ravine, and near
     the base of the mountain, is a place called 'El Infernillo.'

     'For the space of several hundred yards, rills of hot water spring
     from the ground, which looks red and burned, and there are numerous
     orifices sending out spires of steam with a fierce vigor like the
     escape of a steam engine. The principal discharge is from an
     orifice thirty feet broad, opening beneath a ledge of igneous
     rocks, nearly on a level with the bottom of the ravine. Smoke,
     steam, and hot water are sent out with incredible velocity for a
     distance of forty yards, as if from a force pump, with a roar as of
     a furnace in full blast. The noise is intermittent (although never
     ceasing entirely) and as regular as respiration. All around are
     salts, crystallized sulphur, and deposits of clay of every shade.
     There is no vegetation in the vicinity, and the stream for a mile
     is too hot for the hand to bear.'

Such a striking similarity in phenomena at so great a distance apart, in
connection with active or dormant volcanoes, would seem to be enough to
prove the connection in any candid mind, and utterly refute the idle
theory that all this heat may be produced by the chemical action of
water on beds of sulphates or phosphates just below the surface. The
temperature of the water should be sufficient to show that it comes from
great depths. The writer was unable, from want of a thermometer, to
verify the temperatures of the various springs in the Devil's Canon, but
was told that they average 201 deg., and as most of them were boiling, it
appeared not to be far from the truth. Since Arago discovered, in 1821,
that the deepest artesian wells were the hottest, it has been observed
that the hottest springs are the purest; and from their geological
surroundings, many are proved to come from great depths. The Aguas
Calientes de las Trincheras, near Puerto Cabello, issue from _granite_,
at a temperature of 206 deg.; the Aguas de Comaugillas, near Guanaxuato,
from _basalt_, at 205 deg.. To more fully establish the volcanic origin of
the phenomena of California and Central America, if such a thing were
necessary, it can, however, be shown that similar phenomena are found
around the crater of a volcano in _actual eruption_.

A graphic account of 'White Island,' in the South Pacific, from the pen
of Captain Cracroft, R. N., who visited it with the Governor of New
Zealand, in H. M. S. Niger, speaks of boiling springs, 'geysers,' and
steam-escapes, in connection with a very remarkable active volcano.

As very few are acquainted with this singular island, his description of
his visit is given in full:

                                          'Sunday, _January_ 15, 1862.

     'This morning we were well inside the Bay of Plenty, and as the
     wind declined to a calm, I got steam up, and stood for White
     Island, on which there is a volcano in active operation. The white
     cloud of smoke that always hovers over it was in sight before eight
     o'clock, in shape like a huge palm tree, and at eleven o'clock, H.
     E., the governor, gladly accompanied me ashore, with all the
     officers of the ship that could be spared from duty.

     'As we approached the island, its aspect was of the most singular
     and forbidding description. Except on its northern face, to which
     the sulphurous vapor does not appear to reach, it is utterly
     destitute of vegetation: here and there are a few patches of
     underwood; but in every other direction the island is bald, bleak,
     and furrowed into countless deep-worn ravines. The centre of the
     island has been hollowed out by the crater of the volcano into a
     capacious basin, almost circular, and, excepting to the south,
     where there is a huge cleft or rent, its sides or edges rise almost
     perpendicular full eight hundred feet from the base. After some
     trouble, carefully backing in with the swell, a landing was
     effected on the south side, when a most extraordinary sight was
     displayed to our view. Before us, in the hollow of the basin, was a
     lake of yellow liquid, smoking hot, about a hundred yards in
     diameter, as near as could be guessed. Around this, but chiefly
     toward the north side, were numerous jets of steam spouting out of
     the ground. A strong sulphurous smell pervaded the atmosphere, and
     warned us what was to be expected from a nearer proximity to the
     crater in active operation at the farther end of the lake, to
     which, nothing daunted by its appearance, our party was determined
     to penetrate. Our advance was made cautiously; the surface of the
     ground was in some places soft and yielding, and we knew not to
     what brimstone depths an unwary step might sink us. There were
     little ravines to be crossed, which had to be first carefully
     sounded. As we proceeded on the soft, crustaceous surface,
     diminutive spouts of vapor would spit forth, as if to resent our
     intrusion. In skirting the edge of the lake, its temperature and
     taste were both tested; the former varied with the distance from
     the seething bubbling going on at the extremity; in some places the
     hand could be kept in, but 130 deg. was the highest registered, without
     risk to the thermometer, by Mr. Lawrenson, assistant surgeon: the
     taste may be imagined, but not described!

     'Continuing our advance, the roaring and hissing became louder and
     louder, as though a hundred locomotives were all blowing off
     together, while the steam from the crater and numerous geysers
     surrounding it was emitted in huge volumes, ascending full two
     thousand feet in the air. Most fortunately it was a perfect calm,
     or the fumes of the sulphur would alone have sufficed to stop our
     progress; but there was also every reason to believe, judging from
     the description I have by me of a former visit, that the volcano
     was to-day in a more quiescent state than usual. Everywhere sulphur
     was strewed around, and we had only to enlarge any of the vapor
     holes to obtain it in its pure crystallized state. We were now
     within a few yards of the crater--huge bubbles of boiling mud were
     rising several feet from the surface of the lake--the heat and
     sulphurous vapor were almost insupportable; it was evident that no
     animal life could long exist here. But before leaving this caldron,
     one of the mids, more venturous than the rest, climbed up a small,
     semi-detached hill, and his example being followed, we beheld a
     scene that beggars all description. In full activity a roaring
     fountain shot up into the scorching atmosphere: we deemed this to
     be molten sulphur, but no flame was visible in the daylight; stones
     were thrown in, but they were projected into the air as high as the
     ship's mast-heads. It was a sight never to be forgotten; and we
     retraced our steps to the boats with the satisfaction of having
     been permitted to make a closer examination of this grand natural
     curiosity than any previous visitor. We saw no indication of either
     animal or insect life, and it is not likely that any can exist on
     this island. On the beach, which was composed of large bowlders,
     lay the bones of an enormous whale, and a couple of whale birds
     hovered round the boats as they pulled back to the ship.'

Here we have an account agreeing in every respect, as far as it goes,
with the appearance of the desolate valley known as 'Geyser Canon,' the
same 'burnt-out' look of the land, the same jets of steam, large and
small, and boiling caldrons of mud.

'The surface of the soil was soft and yielding,' according to the
gallant captain, and the punching of a stick called out spiteful little
jets of steam. It is to be regretted, however, that the observant
officer does not acquaint us with the taste of the waters. Probably one
swallow was enough for him, if it was sulphur water; and he does not
even tell us that, so that it is impossible to say whether the numerous
kinds of salts noticed in California are to be traced here. His
testimony is explicit that these 'geysers' occur on the sides of a great
volcano.[7]

Thus, in conclusion, it will be seen how a comparison of all the
phenomena occurring in the 'Devil's Canon'--where, without any other
positive proof, we suspect the existence of a deep-seated volcano--with
similar thermal springs and jets of steam on the sides of known
volcanoes, in many and distant parts of the world, either now or at some
recorded time in active operation, drives us irresistibly to the
inference that the so-called 'Geysers' are of similar origin, and only
another manifestation of the dormant energies of the interior of our
globe; now bursting out in lava flames, as on Hecla or Vesuvius, and now
mildly presenting us with a tepid bath.

As to the name of geyser being applied to the Californian phenomena, we
protest against it. A true geyser is a natural hydraulic machine of
magnificent power; it is a spring, to be sure, but a mineral spring is
not necessarily a geyser, and there is as much difference between the
'Geysers of California' and the Strokr or the 'Great Geyser,' as there
is between a squib and a musket-shot. Call the springs AUSOLES, if you
please, like their counterparts of Ahuachapan, or 'give the devil his
due,' and call the place as it was called by its discoverer.

THE DEVIL'S CANON is not a bad name for such a diabolical, sulphurous,
hot, and altogether infernal den.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Said the pleader to the judge, 'If there is any one thing which,
more than any other thing, proves the thing, this thing is that thing!'
'Which thing?' said the judge to the pleader.

[7] White Island is in the Bay of Plenty, not far from Auckland, the
government seat of New Zealand, on the more northerly of the two islands
forming the group. According to Mr. George French Angas, whose Travels
in New Zealand are quoted In Dicken's _Household Words_ for October 19,
1850, the neighboring mainland (if the word may be applied to the
principal inland) abounds in hot springs of volcanic origin.

Mr. Angas says:

'I visited the boiling springs which issue from the side of a steep
mountain, called Te Rapa. There were nearly one hundred of them; they
burst out, bubbling from little orifices in the ground, which are not
more than a few inches in diameter, the steam rushes out in clouds with
considerable force: the hillside is covered with them, and a river of
hot water runs down into the lake. The soil around is a red-and-white
clay, strongly impregnated with sulphur and hydrogen gas; pyrites also
occur. Several women were busy cooking baskets of potatoes over some of
the smaller orifices: leaves and ferns were laid over the holes, upon
which the food was placed. They were capitally done.

'About two miles from this place, on the edge of a great swampy flat, I
met with a number of boiling ponds; some of them of very large
dimensions. We forded a river flowing swiftly toward the lake, which is
fed by the snows melting in the valleys of the Tongariro. In many
places, in the bed of this river, the water boils up from the
subterranean springs below, suddenly changing the temperature of the
stream, to the imminent risk of the individual who may be crossing.
Along whole tracts of land I heard the water boiling violently beneath
the crust over which I was treading. It is very dangerous travelling,
for, if the crust should break, scalding to death must ensue. I am told
that the Rotuma natives, who build their houses over the hot springs in
that district, for the sake of constant warmth at night, frequently meet
with accidents of this kind: it has happened that when a party has been
dancing on the floor, the crust has given way, and the convivial
assembly has been suddenly swallowed up in the boiling caldron beneath!
Some of the ponds are ninety feet in circumference, filled with a
transparent pale-blue boiling water, sending up columns of steam.
Channels of boiling water run along the ground in every direction, and
the surface of this calcareous flat around the margin of the boiling
ponds covered with beautiful incrustations of lime and alum, in some
parts forming flat saucer-like figures. Husk of maize, moss, and
branches of vegetable substances were incrusted in the same manner. I
also observed small deep holes, or wells, here and there among the grass
and rushes, from two inches to as many feet in diameter, filled with
boiling mud, that rises in large bubbles as thick as hasty pudding;
these mud pits sent up a strong sulphureous smell. Although the ponds
boiled violently, I noticed small flies walking swiftly, or rather
running on their surface.

The steam that rises from these boiling springs is visible for many
miles, appearing like the jets of a number of steam engines.'--Vol. ii.,
pp. 113, 114, 115.




FLY LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A SOLDIER.

PART I.--SCALES.


We were in the _three_-months.

There! I feel as proud of that as one of the Old Guard would have been
in saying: 'I was of the Army of Italy.'

There is but one _three_-months (pronounced with the accent strongly
resting on the numeral adverb, after the Hibernian). All others are
spurious imitations. I refer to the early days of the war: the dark days
that followed the first fall of Sumter, when our Southern friends had
just finished the last volume of the lexicon of slavery, that for so
long a time had defined away our manhood, our national honor, and our
birthright of freedom, with such terrible words as 'coercion,'
'secession,' 'fratricidal war,' 'sovereign States,' and what not; before
we had begun to look without fear even at the title page of the new
Gospel of Liberty: the days when we were mudsills and greasy mechanics,
whose pockets were to be touched: the days, in short, when we were still
inclined to crawl upon our bellies, from the preference arising out of
long and strong habit. Then, you remember, the rebellion was to be
crushed in sixty days. So the President issued his proclamation, of date
the 15th of April, A. D. 1861 (and of the independence of the United
States the _first_), calling out SEVENTY-FIVE THOUSAND men for ninety
days to do it.

On the same day we were mustered into the service as a part of this
gigantic force of seventy-five thousand, at the bare suggestion of whose
numbers the refractory South was confidently expected to abandon its
rash enterprise, and kindly resume its sway over us. Before the awful
ceremony known as 'mustering in,' we were sixty odd excited young
gentlemen, hailing from and residing in all parts of the country. After
it we were Company N, commanded by Captain John H. Pipes, of the First
Regiment of District of Columbia Volunteers, commanded by Colonel
Charles Diamond, as the muster rolls called us, or the 'American
Sharpshooters,' as we called ourselves.

Major McDuff mustered us in. He did it after this fashion: First he
walked out into the yard of the War Department, where the company stood
at 'parade rest,' or the nearest militia approach thereto, waiting to be
absorbed. Then he had us marched across the yard and halted; then up it;
then down it; then back to the first position; then forward in a line a
few paces; then, by the right flank, into the back yard, where he left,
us, at a 'rest,' for two hours and fifty-three minutes, while he retired
into the War Department building, probably to ascertain if the thing was
regular. Then, at the fifty-fourth minute, or thereabout, after the
second hour, he caused us to be marched into our original position.
After gazing at us uneasily for a few minutes, he proceeded to inspect
our arms with the utmost care: the importance of which manoeuvre will
more fully appear from the fact that they intended to take us, and did
take many of us, _sans_ lock, stock, or barrel. Then he told us that we
were--called into the--service--of the--United States--for--three
months--to serve in the District--not to go beyond the District--under
any circumstances. Then he called the roll, so accurately (never having
seen it before) that nearly all of us recognized our names, and in
hardly more than two and three quarters the time it would have taken the
orderly sergeant to do it. Then we were told to hold up our right hands,
and a stout party, well known to all early volunteers, stepped forward
from wherever he had been before, and, introducing himself by
exclaiming, in solemn and cavernous tones, 'THE FOLLOWING IS THE OATH!'
swore us in. Then, after another short adjournment of half an hour, we
were marched to our barracks.

That was a queer organization, the 1st D.C. Vols., composed as it was of
a cloud of independent companies--thirty-five, or thereabout, in all, I
think--all made up of men from everywhere, largely in the tadpole stage
of Unionism, and all sworn in for service in the District, not to go
beyond the District. Early in May they were organized into eight
battalions of four or five companies each, commanded by
lieutenant-colonels, majors, or the senior captains. Nearly every
company occupied its own separate 'armory' or barracks, and all the
officers and men lived at home when not actually on guard or other duty!

It was an awful feeling that sandwiched the gaps of new-born exultation
at finding ourselves real soldiers--that feeling of a merged identity;
the individual Smith sold for glory at $11 per mensem, and lost, lost in
an aggregate: become only a cog in a little machine connected with a
larger machine that forms part of the great machine called an army. One
thing saved us the full horror of this discovery: we were not bothered
with corps, divisions, brigades, or even greatly with regiments, in
those days, and if individually we were ciphers or merely recurring
decimals, collectively 'our company' was of the first importance; and
this reflection stiffened the breasts of our gray frock coats, and
caused our scales (we wore scales!) to shine again.

_First night_. Everybody wants to be on guard! Think of that, old
soldiers, and grin. The captain details twice as many as are necessary,
to prevent clamor. Some of the more enthusiastic of the disappointed
ones offer to stay at the armory all night, to be on hand in case of
anything happening. We can never be certain about the enemy's crossing
the Long Bridge, you know. The company, guard and all, is drilled
vigorously, in squads, for two hours. Then the unhappy fellows who are
to go home loiter themselves, with many wistful glances, out of the
building. Then the guard plays euchre, reads, reads aloud, sings,
fences, and drills. A few sleepy heads lie down in corners about one
A.M., and are not going to sleep, but nevertheless shortly complain of
being kept awake by the noise. 'Never mind,' growls the melancholy man
of the company; 'won't hear any of this to-morrow night. D----d glad to
go to sleep then.' The melancholy man, now as hereafter, is voted a
bore, but, as I presently discover, turns out to be pretty nearly right,
and achieves the sad triumph of being able to say, 'Told you so;
wouldn't believe me; now see.'--Daylight. No one has been asleep, yet,
strange to say, everyone has waked up and found everyone else snoring.
No one waits for _reveille_, this first morning. You stretch yourself,
and endeavor to rise. Which is you, and which the board floor? You
rather think this must be you that has just got up, because it aches so
down the grain, and its knots or eyes--yes, they are eyes--are so full
of sand. This must be how Rip Van Winkle felt after his nap in the
Catskills, you think. You wonder how those fellows Boyce and Tripp can
skylark so on an empty stomach. Three hours to breakfast. You police the
quarters with vigor. 'Heavens, what a dust! Open the windows, somebody;
and look here, Sergeant! the floor hasn't been sprinkled.' The sharp,
quick tones of the sergeant of the guard (more like the sound of a
tenpenny nail scratching mahogany than aught else in nature) soon set
matters right. You think you have surely swallowed your peck of dirt
that morning, and feel even more gastric than you usually do on an empty
stomach. You can go home to breakfast now: but you hear Johnny Todd's
cheery voice sing out; 'Fall in, cocktail squad!' and march off with a
score of your comrades to the nearest restaurant, which, finding just
open, the squad incontinently takes possession of. You take a cocktail,
a whiskey cocktail, with the edge of the green glass previously lemoned
and dipped in powdered sugar. 'Ah,' says Todd to everybody, and
everybody, to everybody else, including Todd, 'that goes to the right
place' (slapping it affectionately). Oh, reader, if wearer of p[)a]hnts,
did you ever meet with a decoction, infusion, or other mixture
whatsoever, vinous, alcoholic, or maltic, with or without sugar, that
did _not_ go to the right place? And if there was a fault, wasn't it in
the addition of a trifle too much lemon peel? The crowd takes another of
the same sort. You take another. Then you wish you hadn't.

You go to the office that day, for, in common with two-thirds of the
company, you are a clerk in one of the Departments as well as a soldier;
and you can think and talk of nothing but the war. The oldsters quiz
your enthusiasm unmercifully, and cause your complexion to assume a red
and gobbling appearance, and your conversation to limp into
half-incoherent feebleness. Nevertheless everyone is very kind to you,
for you are a great pet with the old fogies--their prize 'Jack;' and
even old Mr. Gruff rasps down his tones, so that those harsh accents
seem to pat you on the back. Your handwriting, usually so firm and easy,
quavers a little, and exhibits more of the influence of the biceps
muscle than of your accustomed light play of the wrist and fingers. But,
you think, it's the rifle that does it, and are rather proud of this.

_Second night._ You rush down after an early dinner, in rash anxiety to
be drilled. Arriving very red and hot at the armory, you find bales of
straw and boxes on the sidewalk in front, and hear dreadful rumors that
our armory is to be taken away; that we are to have regular barracks,
and live there all the time; that we are to draw rations, and cook them.
Dismay is on every face. The melancholy man alone seems not to be
jostled from his habitual sad composure: he explains to the inquiring,
doubting crowd that the ration consists of 'one and a quarter pounds of
fresh beef or three quarters of a pound of salt beef, pork, or bacon,
fourteen ounces of flour or twelve ounces of hard bread, with eight
pounds of coffee, ten of sugar, ten of rice or eight quarts of beans,
four quarts of vinegar, four pounds of soap, one and a quarter pounds
candles, and two quarts of salt, to the hundred rations. But you won't
get fresh meat often, nor yet flour, and I reckon you'll have to take
beans instead of rice pretty much all the time, now't South Car'lina's
out.' _We_ eat salt pork! or beans either, except very occasionally.
There began to be serious symptoms of mutiny. Fippany and one or two
others declaimed so violently against the outrage, that the more
enthusiastic of us felt bound to use our influence to prevent the spread
of a disaffection that seemed to us highly calculated to embarrass the
action of the Government in this crisis. The end of it was that we
marched up to our new quarters, and, in the excitement of moving in and
receiving our clothing and camp and garrison equipage, had forgotten our
troubles, when (just as the melancholy man discovered that the overcoats
were seven short of the right number, that the mess pans all leaked, and
that the quarters were full of fleas) our orders to move were
countermanded, and we marched back again in joy. There were fewer
volunteers for guard duty that night, and the natural rest of the
sergeant of the guard was undisturbed save by the occasional nightmare
of having overslept the hour for relieving the meek sentinels (not yet
instructed in the art of awakening drowsy non-commissioned officers by
stentorian alarms, and indeed not yet knowing accurately the measure of
their 'two hours on'), or by some louder howl than usual from poor Todd
second, who, having continued his course of eye-opening to the hours
when sober citizens and prudent soldiers incline to close theirs, spent
the major portion of the night in dramatic recitations of the beauties
of Shakspeare, utterly neglecting and refusing to 'dry up,' although
frequently admonished thereto by the growls and eke by the curses of his
comrades.

The next afternoon and evening, including in the latter elastic term
many hours more properly claimed by the night, were spent in confused
and bungling attempts to issue the clothing and camp and garrison
equipage considerately provided for us by the Government. First
everybody opened all the boxes at once, and grabbed for everything. Then
everybody put his things back and petitioned for somebody else's. 'My
overcoat is too big.' 'Mine is too short.' 'Golly! what sleeves!' 'What
are these bags for?' 'Those things knapsacks! how you goin' to fassen
'em? no straps!' 'My canteen has no cork.' ... '_Silence_!' roars the
captain, and '=Silence!=' rasps the orderly sergeant, three times as
loudly and six as disagreeably. And then everybody being ordered to
replace everything, that a proper system of distribution may be adopted,
half of us hide our plunder away, and the other half dump their prizes
promiscuously and in sullenness. 'Here, here!' barks Sergeant Files;
'this kind of thing's played out. There were sixty-five canteens;
where's the other sixty?' Presently the confusion unravels a little,
but, after a breathing spell, begins again worse than ever, when our
melancholy friend, Smallweed, having signed the clothing receipt
doubtfully, presently announces, with the air of an injured martyr, that
he supposes it's all right, but he can't find all the things he signed
for. Then everybody frantically examines into this new difficulty, and
discovers that they signed for everything, and got nothing. Poor Captain
Pipes scratches his head perplexedly, and smokes in anxious puffs.
Sergeant Files hustles everybody about, exposes several shamefaced
impostors, who have more than everything, and by the timely announcement
that Smallweed's deficiency consists of two overcoat straps, which are
no longer used in the service, restores comparative quiet. Smallweed,
however, retires up and shakes his head dubiously, remarking in an
undertone, to a weak-eyed young man, who stands in mortal awe of him,
that it may be all right, but he don't see it.

Drills, drills, drills! For the next week we have nothing but
drills--except guard duty. Squad drills, company drills, drills in the
facings, drills under arms, drills in the morning, noonday drills,
drills at night. Besides these, the office all day, and guard duty every
third night. Talk about the patriotic days of '76! you think--was there
ever anything like this? In less than a week everybody is played out;
everybody, that is, except a lymphatic, dull-visaged backwoodsman, named
Tetter, who drags through everything so slowly and heavily, that he
can't get tired, and an old Polish cavalryman, named Hrsthzschnoffski,
or something of the kind, but naturally called Snuffsky, who knows
neither enthusiasm nor fatigue, who never volunteers for a duty nor ever
begs off from it. Growls arise. Men pale about the cheeks, beady in the
forehead, and dark under the eyes, begin to collect in knotlets, and
talk over the situation. 'We enlisted to fight,' the bolder spirits
hint; 'we came to fight, not to drill and guard armories. Why don't they
take us out and let us whip the enemy, and go back to our business?' But
presently comes

_The 19th of April._ No drill to-night. What is that? A fight in
Baltimore? Nonsense! True though, for all that, as history will vouch.
Six regiments of Massachusetts troops have been attacked in Baltimore by
the 'Plugs,' and cut to pieces. Where was the 'Seventh!' we wonder,
educated in the creed of its invincibility and omnipresence. The Seventh
was there too, and has been massacred. Colonel Lefferts is killed. There
is a stir around the armory door, the knot of idlers gives way
respectfully, and admits a little man, the pride of the regiment, always
cool, collected, handsome, and soldierly--Colonel Diamond. He says half
a dozen words in a whisper to the captain, writes three lines with a
pencil on the fly leaf of an old letter, gives a compr

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