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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866

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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866

Author: Various


        
Release date: October 16, 2007 [eBook #23040]

Language: English

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

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

_A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics._


VOL. XVIII.--AUGUST, 1866.--NO. CVI.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by TICKNOR AND
FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.

Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved
to the end of the article.




HOW MY NEW ACQUAINTANCES SPIN.


The strictly professional man may have overcome his natural aversion to
some of the most interesting objects of his study, such as snakes, and
toads, and spiders, and vermin of all kinds; but people in general have
always required that any attempt to force such abominations upon their
notice should be preceded by a more or less elaborate and humble
acknowledgment of their hideous aspect, their ferocious disposition,
their dark and bloody deeds, and the utter impossibility of their
conducing in any way to human comfort and convenience.

But, while admitting the truth of much that has been thus urged against
spiders as a class, I must decline, or at least defer, conforming to
custom in speaking of the particular variety which we are about to
consider, and I believe that it will need only a glance at the insect
and its silk, and a brief notice of its habits, to justify my
indisposition to follow the usual routine.

Without apology, then, I shall endeavor to show that in the structure,
the habits, the mode of growth, and, above all, in the productions of
this spider are to be found subjects worthy the attention of every class
of minds; for to the naturalist is exhibited a species which, though not
absolutely new to science, was never seen nor heard of by Professor
Agassiz till the spring of 1865, and which is so narrowly circumscribed
in its geographical distribution that, so far as I can ascertain, it was
never observed by Hentz,--a Southern entomologist, who devoted himself
particularly to spiders,--and is met with only upon a few low, marshy
islands on the coast of South Carolina, and perhaps of other Southern
States. Its habits, too, are so interesting, and so different in many
respects from those recorded of other species, that the observer of
living creatures has here an abundant opportunity, not only for
increasing his own knowledge, but for enlarging the domain of science.
And this more especially in America; for while, in England, Blackwall
and others have been laboring for more than thirty years, spiders seem
to have received little attention on this side of the Atlantic.

We have now, moreover, in our observation of these insects, an
incentive of sovereign effect, namely, the hope of increasing our
national wealth; for to the practical man, to the manufacturer and the
mechanic, is offered a new silken material which far surpasses in beauty
and elegance that of the silk-worm, and which, however small in quantity
at present, demands some attention in view of the alarming decrease in
the silk crops of Europe. This material is obtained in a manner entirely
new,--not, as with the worm, by unwinding the cocoons, nor yet, as might
be suggested for the spider, by unravelling the web, but by _drawing_ or
_winding_ or _reeling directly from the body of the living insect_, even
as you would milk a cow, or, more aptly, as wire is pulled through a
wire-drawing machine.

To the admirer of the beautiful and perfect in nature is presented a
fibre of absolute smoothness, roundness, and finish, the colors of which
resemble, and in the sunlight even excel in brilliancy those of the two
precious metals, silver and gold; while the moralist who loves to
illustrate the workings of God's providence in bringing forth good out
of evil, by comparing the disgusting silk-worm with its beautiful and
useful product, may now enforce the lesson by the still more striking
contrast between this silk and the loathed and hated spider.

The statesman who, after a four years' war, sees few indications of a
better spirit on the part of the South, and is almost ready to exclaim,
"Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" may now perhaps discern a
spot, small indeed, but brilliant, on the very edge of the dark Carolina
cloud; and it may not be too much to hope that, in course of time, the
cords of our spider's golden and silver silk may prove potent bonds of
union with the first of the rebellious States.

As to the mathematician who believes in the inborn tendency of mankind
to variation and imperfection, and holds up to us, as shining examples
of mathematical accuracy, the work of certain insects, and who--since
Professor Wyman has shown that the hexagonal form of the bee's cell is
not of original design, but rather the necessary result of difficulties
met and overcome in the most economical manner, though by no means
always with perfect exactness and uniformity--has fallen back upon the
ancient and still prevalent belief in the precise construction of the
spider's web, (which, as will be seen, really displays it no more than
does the bee's cell,)--to this disappointed man of geometry and figures
is now offered the alternative of either finding a new and truer
illustration, or of abandoning his position entirely.

Let us, then, wait till we have seen this spider and heard his story.
_His_ story! That reminds me of another class which may possibly be
represented among my readers, and whose members, in the contemplation of
the domestic economy of these insects, will, I fear, discover many and
weighty arguments in favor of the various opinions entertained by the
advocates of Woman's Rights; for here is a community in which the
females not only far exceed the males in number, but present so great a
contrast to them in size and importance, that, but for absolute proof,
they never would be regarded as belonging to the same species.

Here, then, is a life-size picture of our spider and of--I was about to
say, _his_ partner; but in truth it is _she_ who is _the_ spider, and
_he_ is only _her_ partner. Such is the real physical, and, so to speak,
mental superiority of the female, that, even if we insist upon the legal
equality at least of the masculine element, we can do so only in name,
and will find it hard to avoid speaking of him as the male of the
_Nephila plumipes_, thus tacitly admitting her as the truer
representative of the species. Their relative size and appearance are
shown by the figures; but it may be added that she is very handsome; the
fore part of her body, which, being composed of the head and chest
soldered together, is termed _cephalothorax_, is glossy-black and
covered, except in spots, with white hairs; she has also upon six of
her legs one or two brushes of black hairs;--while he is an
insignificant-looking insect of a dull-brown color and half-starved
look, with only a few scattered bristles upon his slender limbs. He does
nothing for himself, leaving her to make the web and provide the food,
and even to carry him on her back when removal is necessary; but she
makes up for the imposition by keeping him on short allowance and at a
respectful distance, excepting when the impregnation of her eggs is
necessary; and even then she is mistress of the situation, and, _etiam
in amoribus saeva_, may afterward eat him up. But of this contrast
between the two sexes, of their functions and their relations to each
other, more hereafter. It is sufficient to observe that, when this
spider is mentioned, and the sex is not specified, the _female_ is
always referred to.

[Illustration: Fig. 1. Male and Female _Nephila plumipes_.]

When, where, and how was this spider discovered? and why is it that we
have never heard of it before? To answer these questions, we must go
back three years, to the 19th of August, 1863, and to the camp of the
Fifty-fifth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, on a desolate island a
little south from the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, and in sight
of the fortress which Gillmore had just begun to strengthen by the
addition of tons of Union shot and shell, till, from tolerably strong
masonry, its walls became solid earthworks which nothing could pierce or
greatly injure. There, at the north end of Folly Island,--scarce wider
than our camp at that point, and narrower than the magnificent beach
which, at low tide, afforded ample space for the battalion drill,--I
found in a tree a very large and handsome spider, whose web was at least
three feet in diameter.

Glad enough to meet with anything new, and bearing in mind the interest
with which, when a boy, I had watched and recorded the operations of our
common house and hunting spiders, I entangled him--I didn't then know it
was _her_, so let it pass--in the web, and carried it to my tent. The
insect was very quiet, and did not attempt to escape; but presently,
after crawling slowly along my sleeve, she let herself down to the
floor, taking first the precaution, after the prudent fashion of most
spiders, to attach to the point she left a silken line, which, as she
descended, came from her body. Rather than seize the insect itself, I
caught the thread and pulled. The spider was not moved, but the line
readily drew out, and, being wound upon my hands, seemed so strong that
I attached the end to a little quill, and, having placed the spider upon
the side of the tent, lay down on my couch and turned the quill between
my fingers at such a rate that in one minute six feet of silk were wound
upon it. At the end of an hour and a half I estimated, with due
allowance for stop-pages, that I had four hundred and fifty feet, or
_one hundred and fifty yards_, of the most brilliant and beautiful
golden silk I had ever seen.

During all this operation the spider had remained perfectly quiet, but
finally put an end to my proceedings by grasping the line with the tip
of one of her hind legs so that it snapped. I was tired, however, and
contented myself with the quantity already obtained, which now formed a
raised band of gold upon the quill. This specimen is now in my
possession, but has been removed from the quill to ascertain its weight,
which is one third of a grain.

It is worthy of notice, perhaps, that in all this was involved no new
_fact_, but only a happy deduction from one known ages ago; namely, that
a spider, when dropping, leaves her line attached, and so allows it to
be drawn from her body. Nothing was more natural than to simply reverse
the position of the fixed point, and, instead of letting the spider go
away from the end of her line, to take the end of her line away from
her. So natural, indeed, did it seem, that my gratification at having
been (as was then supposed) the first to do it was, on reflection, mixed
with surprise that no one had ever thought of it before, and I am very
glad to find that at least _four_ individuals have, within the last
century, pulled silk out of a spider, though of these only one, whose
researches I hope to make known, regarded the matter as anything more
than a curious experiment.

I had never before seen such a spider, nor even paid attention to any
geometrical species; though one large black and yellow variety is, or
used to be, common enough in our fields at the North. Neither had I ever
heard of such a method of obtaining silk. But though my first specimen
was not preserved, and a second was never seen on Folly Island, yet I
was so impressed with its size and brilliant colors, and especially with
the curious brushes of black hairs on its legs, that when, during the
following summer, another officer described to me a great spider which
was very common on Long Island, where he was stationed, I knew it was
the same, and told him what I had done the year before, adding that I
was sure something would come of it in time.

With leisure and many spiders at his command, this officer improved upon
my suggestion, by substituting for my quill turned in the fingers a
wooden cylinder worked by a crank, and by securing, at a proper
distance, (between pins, I think,) one or more spiders, whose threads
were guided between pins upon the cylinder. He thus produced more of the
silk, winding it upon rings of hard rubber so as to make very pretty
ornaments. With this simple machine I wound the silk in two grooves cut
on a ring of hard rubber and parallel except at one point, where they
crossed so as to form a kind of signet. Another officer now suggested
and put in operation still another improvement, in the shape of the
"gear-drill-stock" of our armorer's chest. This, being a machine for
drilling iron, was rough in its construction and uneven in its action,
but, having cog-wheels, a rapid and nearly steady motion could be given
to its shaft. To this shaft he attached a little cross of rubber, and
covered it with silk, which was of a silver-white color instead of
golden-yellow, as in other cases. The difference in color was then
supposed to depend upon individual peculiarities, but the true
explanation will be given farther on. With this gear-drill-stock, upon a
larger ring, one inch in diameter and three eighths of an inch in width,
in a groove upon its periphery one fourth of an inch in width, and
across the sides of the ring in two directions, I wound _three thousand
four hundred and eighty-four yards_, or _nearly two miles, of silk_. The
length was estimated by accurately determining the different dimensions
of the ring where wound upon, and multiplying by this the number of
revolutions of the cylinder per minute (170), and this product again by
the number of minutes of actual winding (285), deducting from the gross
time of winding (about nine hours) each moment of stoppage for any
cause.

This was late in the fall of 1864, and, our specimens being sent home,
further experiments, and even thoughts upon the subject, were prevented
by the expedition against the Charleston and Savannah Railroad, and the
many changes of station that followed the disastrous battle of Honey
Hill. But, when I was at the North in February, 1865, a friend expressed
to me his confident belief that this new silken product could be made of
practical utility, and advised me to make inquiries on the subject. So,
before presenting it to the scientific societies, I tested the strength
of the silk by attaching to a fixed point one end of a thread _one
four-thousandth_ of an inch in diameter, and tying the other end upon
the arm of an accurate balance: weights were then dropped in to the
amount of _fifty-four grains_ before the line was broken. By a
calculation from this, a solid bar of spider's silk, one inch in
diameter, would sustain a weight of more than _seventy tons_; while a
similar bar of steel will sustain only fifty-six, and one of iron
twenty-eight tons. The specimens were then exhibited to Professors
Wyman, Agassiz, and Cooke, of Harvard University, to all of whom the
species of spider was unknown, though Professor Wyman has since found a
single specimen among some insects collected at the South; while to them
as well as to the silk-manufacturers the idea of reeling silk directly
from a living insect was entirely new. The latter, of course, wished to
see a quantity of it before pronouncing upon its usefulness. So most of
my furlough was spent in making arrangements for securing a number of
the spiders, and reeling their silk during the coming summer. These
comprised six light wooden boxes with sliding fronts, each eighteen
inches wide and high and one foot deep, and containing six tin trays one
above another, each of which, again, held twenty-four square paper boxes
two and a half inches in diameter, and with lids closed by an elastic.
Into these the spiders were to be put for transportation. Then I had
made a costly machine for reeling the silk, which, however, proved of no
practical value.

In March, with these and other real or fancied adjuvants, (some of which
proved even less useful and trustworthy than the machine,) but, above
all, with a determination to put this matter to the test of actual
experiment, I rejoined the regiment at Charleston, which had just fallen
into our hands. It was not until April, however, that we were so
situated that I could make any attempt to get spiders. Of course it was
not expected that the full-grown ones should be found at that season,
but the eggs or young should be abundant where the spiders had been in
the summer.

Before recounting my adventures in pursuit of my spinster friends, it
may be well to say a few words of the locality which they inhabited.

[Illustration: Fig. 2. Map of Charleston and Vicinity.]

Charleston stands upon the extremity of a narrow peninsula, between the
Cooper and the Ashley Rivers. Charleston Harbor, supplied by these and
some smaller streams, lies between Mt. Pleasant and Sullivan's Island on
the northeast, and James and Morris Islands on the southwest. One cannot
but be struck with the resemblance, so great as to be almost
symmetrical, between the two sides of the harbor. Mt. Pleasant and James
Island are quite high land,--high at least for the coast of South
Carolina,--and are separated from the mainland, the one by the Wando
River, the other by Wappoo Creek; while Sullivan's Island, where stand
Fort Moultrie and other Rebel batteries, corresponds almost precisely to
Morris Island, both being low and sandy, and being, as it were, bent
inland from the sea, with sharp points looking toward the city, their
convex shores forming a rounded entrance to the harbor. Extending
southward from Morris Island, and separated from it by Lighthouse Inlet,
is Folly Island; and in exact correspondence to the latter, north of
Sullivan's Island, and separated from it by Breach Inlet, is a similar
sand-ridge called Long Island. But now occurs a difference; for while
between Long and Sullivan's Islands and Christ's Church Parish is an
immense salt marsh intersected by creeks, but presenting an unbroken
surface, in the midst of the corresponding marsh between Morris and
Folly Islands and James Island is a group of low wooded islands, the
largest of which lies opposite the upper or north end of Folly Island.
To this no name is given on the maps, nor is it even distinguished from
the marsh. It is, however, completely surrounded by water; and, though
this is in the form of creeks neither wide nor deep, yet the peculiar
softness of the mud, and the absence of any landing-place except upon
the side toward Folly Island, render it almost inaccessible.

To this narrow strip of land, not three miles in length, was given the
name of Long Island,--perhaps by our own troops, who knew nothing of an
island of the same name _north_ of the harbor; and in case it is found
that no other name belongs to it, we may properly avoid a confusion, and
christen it _Spider_ Island, in honor of the remarkable insects for
whose especial benefit it seems to have been made, and which, with the
exception of the mosquitoes, are its sole inhabitants.

As was said, the first spider was found on Folly Island on the 19th of
August, 1863: it was also the last there seen. During the summer of
1864, many were found on Long Island (so called); and when, in the
spring of 1865, our regiment was encamped on James Island near Wappoo
Creek, it was toward Long Island that all my attention, so far as
concerned spiders, was directed.

But first, as a bit of collateral history, and to show how easily and
how far one may go astray when one of the links in the chain of argument
is only an _inference_, let me relate that, while riding over James
Island, I observed upon trees and bushes numbers of small brown bags,
from half an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, pear-shaped, and
suspended by strong silken cords. The bags themselves were made of a
finer silk so closely woven as to resemble brown paper, and, when
opened, were found to contain a mass of loose silk filled with young
spiders to the number of five hundred or more. In certain localities,
especially in a swampy field just outside the first line of Rebel works,
they were quite abundant. I had soon collected about four hundred of
them, which, by a moderate estimate, contained _two hundred thousand
little spiders_,--quite enough, I thought, with which to commence
operations. But one hot day in June I placed them all on a tray in the
sun. I was called away, and on my return found my one fifth of a million
young spiders dead,--baked to death.

Prior to this catastrophe, however, I had become convinced that these
were not the spiders I sought. Indeed, my only reasons for thinking they
might be were, first, the abundance of these cocoons in a locality so
near Long Island; and, second, my own great desire that they should
prove the spiders I wanted. The young spiders, it is true, did not at
all resemble their supposed progenitors, as to either shape, or color,
or markings; yet all of these evidently changed during growth, and would
not of themselves disprove the relationship.

One day in April, however, a cocoon was found in a tree on James Island,
of a very different appearance from the others. It was of loose
texture, and, instead of being pear-shaped, was hemispherical in form,
and attached by its flat surface to the lower side of a leaf. This also
contained young spiders, a little larger and a little brighter in color
than the others, but really bearing no resemblance to the full-grown
spiders of Long Island. This single cocoon formed the entering wedge of
doubt, and soon it was clear that the only means of proof lay on Long
Island itself.

But how was this to be reached? Easily enough while we were upon Folly
Island and could row through the creeks to a wharf on the east side of
Long Island. But now the case was altered; for between James and Long
Islands was the immense marsh already mentioned, intersected by creeks,
and composed of mud practically without bottom, and ranging from
eighteen to twenty-three feet in depth by actual measurement. Around or
over or through this marsh it was necessary to go, in order to reach
Long Island, the home of the spiders.

I could easily occupy the rest of my allotted space in recounting my
various attempts to reach this El Dorado, which my fancy, excited by
every delay, stocked with innumerable cocoons of the kind already found
so abundantly on James Island. These I expected would furnish thousands
of spiders, the care of which, with the reeling of their silk, would
give employment to all the freed people in South Carolina,--for even
then the poor creatures were finding their way to the coast. And
perhaps, I thought, some day, the Sea-Island silk may be as famous as
the choice Sea-Island cotton. This hope I still cherish, together with
the belief that, under certain conditions, the spiders may also be
reared at the North.

After riding miles and miles in all directions in search of the readiest
point of attack; after having once engaged a row-boat to go around
through Stono River and meet me at the nearest point of land,--on which
occasion I dismounted to give my horse a better chance of getting over a
bad place in the road, and the ungrateful beast left me in the lurch and
went home much faster than he came, while I, being now half-way, walked
on through the marsh, and had the pleasure of sitting on a log in a
pouring rain for an hour, with Long Island just on the other side of a
creek over which no boat came to carry me,--after this and other
disappointments, I at last made sure by going in the boat myself, and so
finally reached the island. But now, to my discomfiture, after a most
careful search, I saw only two or three cocoons of the kind I looked
for, while the others, of loose texture, were quite abundant, and
doubtless would have been found in still greater numbers but for their
always being under leaves, and often at a considerable height. It was
probable now that these latter cocoons contained _the_ spiders, and that
the former were a different species.

The regiment now removed to the interior of the State, and while there
occurred the _coup de soleil_ above mentioned. We remained at Orangeburg
until the middle of August, and then, being stationed at Mt. Pleasant, I
again made raids for spiders. Upon James Island, in the localities where
during the spring the cocoons were abundant, I found many large
geometrical spiders, all of one kind, but not of the kind I sought. They
were bad-tempered, and their legs were so short and strong that it was
not easy to handle them, while their silk was of a light, and not
brilliant, yellow.

My first attempt upon Long Island was made by leaving Charleston in a
boat, which, after touching at Sumter, landed me at Fort Johnson. Here I
was joined by a sergeant and corporal of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts,
and we walked across to a little settlement of freed people not far from
Secessionville, where a boat and crew were engaged. It would be tedious
to relate how, after sticking on invisible oyster-beds and mud-flats,
and losing our way among the creeks, at two o'clock we found ourselves
about one hundred yards from the north end of the island; and how,
since it was too late to try to reach the wharf on the east side, even
had we been sure of the way, the two Fifty-fourth boys and myself got
out of the boat and essayed to cross upon the marsh. Such a marsh! We
have marshes at the North, but they are as dry land in comparison. I had
seen them at the South, had stepped upon and into them, but never one
like this. It was clear mud, as soft as mud could be and not run like
the water that covered it at high tide. Even the tall rushes wore an
unsteady look; and the few oysters upon its surface evidently required
all their balancing powers to lie upon their flat sides and avoid
sinking edgewise into the oozy depths. In we sank, over ankles, at the
first step, and deeper and deeper till we took a second; for our only
safety lay in pushing down the rushes with the inside of one foot and
treading upon them, till the other could be withdrawn from its yielding
bed, and a spot selected for the next step forward. I say _selected_,
for even this mud was more firm than a hole in it filled with water and
treacherously concealed by a few rushes. A misstep into one of these
pitfalls brought me to my knees, and well-nigh compelled me to call for
help; but a sudden and determined spring, and a friendly bunch of rushes
beyond, spared me that mortification. When two thirds of the way across,
and while thinking we should soon reach dry land, we came upon the edge
of a creek, not wide, it is true, but with soft, slimy, sloping sides,
(for _banks_ they could not properly be called,) and no one knew how
many feet of mud beneath its sluggish stream. Under ordinary
circumstances I might have sounded a retreat; but, remembering that
there was twice as much mud behind as before us, and feeling ourselves
sinking slowly but surely in our tracks, we slid down the sides into the
water. This received our bodies to the waist, the mud our legs to the
knees; but we struggled through, and, after another terrible thirty
yards of mud, reached Long Island. Leaving my faithful companions to
rest, I struck off down the east side of the island, and soon found
spiders in plenty. Stopping at the wharf, and returning upon the west
side, I counted one hundred spiders in less than an hour. This was only
a voyage of discovery, but I could not resist the temptation to capture
one big fellow and put it in my hat, which, with the edges brought
together, I was forced to carry in my teeth, for one hand was required
to break down the webs stretched across my path, and the other to do
battle in vain with the thousands of mosquitoes, of huge size and bloody
intent, besetting me on every side. What with the extreme heat and my
previous fatigue, and the dread lest my captive should escape and
revenge herself upon my face while I was avoiding the nets of her
friends, and the relentless attacks of their smaller but more venomous
associates, it was the most uncomfortable walk imaginable. To complete
my misery, the path led me out upon the marsh where I could see nothing
of the boat or my companions, and whence, to reach them, I had to walk
across the head of the island. Excepting the dreaded recrossing of the
mud, I hardly remember how we made our way back; but by one means and
another I finally reached Charleston at nine o'clock, about as
disreputable-looking a medical man as ever was seen.

However, all this was soon forgotten, and, being now assured of the
presence of the spiders in their former haunts, on the 30th of August,
1865, I organized a new expedition, which was to proceed entirely by
water, and which consisted of a sail-boat and crew of picked volunteers.
Leaving Mt. Pleasant in the morning, we crossed the harbor, and were
soon lost in the meanderings of the creeks behind Morris Island. _Lost_
is appropriate, for, once in these creeks, you know nothing, you see and
hear nothing, and, if you change your course, must do so by mere guess.
But the most annoying thing is, after an apparent advance of a quarter
of a mile, to find yourself not twenty yards from your starting-point,
so tortuous are the windings of the creeks.

By dint of hard rowing (in the wrong direction, as we soon found), then
by walking across Morris Island to Light-House Inlet, and still harder
rowing from there to the wharf of Long Island, we succeeded in securing
sixty spiders; but now arose a furious storm of wind and rain, which not
only compelled our retreat, but drenched us to the skin, blew us back
faster than we could row, and threatened to overturn our boat if we
hoisted the sail; so slow was our progress, that it was eleven o'clock
at night before we reached Mt. Pleasant. Thus ended my last and only
successful raid upon Long Island.

It may seem that I have dwelt longer than was necessary upon the
circumstances attending the discovery of this spider and its silk. If
so, it is not merely because at that time both were new to myself and
all to whom I showed them, and everything concerning them was likely to
be impressed upon my mind, but also because I then hoped that the idea
of obtaining silk directly from a living insect might be found of
practical importance, as I still hope it may. The incidents illustrate,
too, the nature of the obstacles daily encountered and overcome by our
troops; for no one who has never seen or stepped into a Sea-Island marsh
can realize how difficult it was for our forces to obtain a foothold in
the vicinity of Charleston. This was appreciated by the old freedman
whom we left in the boat while crossing the mud. "No wonder," he said,
"the Yankees whipped the Rebels, if they will do such things for to
catch _spiders_."

The sixty spiders so obtained were kept for several weeks in the little
boxes in which they had been deposited when caught. Every day each box
was opened, the occupant examined, and its condition, if altered, noted
on the cover. They generally spun a few irregular lines on which to
hang, and so remained quiet except when the boxes were opened: then, of
course, they tried to escape. Half a dozen of the larger ones were
placed on the window-seats and in corners of the room, where they
speedily constructed webs. By preference these were stretched across the
windows, illustrating one of the three principal instincts of this
spider, which are, first, to _seek the light_; second, to _ascend_; and
third, to take a position with the _head downward_.

It was now a question how they were to be fed; not so much while there,
where flies were abundant, but after their arrival at the North. So,
remembering that the young ones had seemed to relish blood, I took the
tender liver of a chicken, cut it into little pieces, and dipped them in
water, not, I am sorry to say, with any view to supply them with that
fluid for the want of which they afterward perished, but in order that
the bits of liver should be more easily pulled from the pins by the
spiders. To my delight they greedily accepted the new food, and now I
felt assured of keeping them during the winter.

Deferring, however, a more particular account of what was observed at
Mt. Pleasant, until their habits and mode of life are taken up in order,
it should be understood that, during our short stay, my attention was
chiefly directed to getting from the spiders as much silk as possible;
for it was evident that practical men would not credit the usefulness of
spiders' silk until an appreciable quantity could be shown to them. The
first trial of the machine with a live spider proved it an utter
failure; for though quite ingenious and complicated, it had been devised
with reference only to _dead_ spiders. In regard to the arrangement
(wherein lay its chief, if not sole, peculiarity) by which a thin slip
of brass was sprung against a rubber band by the latter's elasticity,
with a view to secure the spider's legs between them, it was found that,
as the spider was alive, and, literally, kicking, and two of its legs
were smaller than the rest, these were at once extricated, and the
others soon followed; while, if the spring was made forcible enough to
hold the smaller legs, the larger were in danger of being crushed, and
the spider, fearing this, often disjointed them, according to the
convenient, though loose habit of most Arachnida, crabs, and other
articulates. It was also proposed to secure several spiders in the above
manner upon the periphery of a wheel, the revolution of which would give
a twist to their conjoined threads, carried through a common eyelet upon
the spindle; but this can be accomplished without the inconvenience of
whirling the spiders out of sight, by modifications of the apparatus
which has always been used for twisting ordinary silk. It will probably
be inferred from the above, that, in securing the spider, two points are
to be considered; first, to prevent its escape, and second, so to
confine the legs that it cannot reach with their tips either the _silk_
or the _spinners_. Now the machine accomplished this by putting all the
legs together in a vice, as it were, entailing upon the captive much
discomfort and perhaps the loss of some of its legs, which, though eight
in number, are each appropriated to a special use by their possessor.

So, abandoning the machine, I fell back upon a simple reel, and a
modification of my little contrivance of the previous year; which was,
to grasp the spider by all the legs, holding them behind her back, and
to let her body down into a deep notch or slot cut in a thin card, the
edges of which reached the constriction between the two regions of the
body, the _cephalothorax_ and _abdomen_; so that, when a second piece of
card was let down upon it, the _cephalothorax_, with the _legs_ of the
spider, was upon one side of a partition, while on the other was the
_abdomen_, bearing upon its posterior extremity the spinning organs. The
head and horns of a cow to be milked are secured in a similar manner. By
placing in a row, or one behind another, several spiders thus secured, a
compound thread was simultaneously obtained from them, and wound upon a
spindle of hard rubber.

By this means were produced several very handsome bands of bright yellow
silk; but the time was so short, and the means of constructing and
improving my apparatus so deficient, that I could procure no more than
these few specimens, which were very beautiful, and shone in the sun
like polished and almost translucent gold; but which, being wound upon a
cylinder only an inch in diameter, and from several spiders at different
times, could not be unwound, and so made of any further use.

I tried now to ascertain how much silk could be obtained from a single
spider at once. It will be remembered that the first specimen, wound on
Folly Island, was one hundred and fifty yards in length, and weighed one
third of a grain. I now exhausted the supply of a spider for three days,
using the same spindle, one inch in diameter, and turning this at the
rate of one hundred and sixty times per minute. On the first day I
reeled for twenty minutes, which gave two hundred and sixty-six and two
thirds yards; on the third day, the second being Sunday, for twenty-five
minutes, giving three hundred and thirty-three and one third yards; and
on the fourth day, for eighteen minutes, giving two hundred and
thirty-three and one third yards,--amounting in all to eight hundred and
thirty-three and one third yards in three or four days. This was all
that could be got, and the spider herself seemed unable to evolve any
more; but on killing her and opening her abdomen, plenty of the gum was
found in the little silk bags into which it is secreted. As this has
always been the case, I have concluded that the evolution of the silk is
almost entirely a mechanical process, which is but little controlled by
the spinners themselves, and that the gum requires some degree of
preparation after it is secreted before it is fit for use as silk; for
it must be remembered that with the spider, as with the silk-worm, the
silk is formed and contained in little bags or glands in the abdomen,
not as _threads_, but as a very viscid gum. This passes in little tubes
or ducts to the spinners, through minute openings, in which it is drawn
out into filaments, uniting and drying instantly in the air, and so
forming the single fibre from each spinner.

The silk obtained the first day was of a deep yellow; to my great
astonishment, the second reeling from the same spider gave silk of a
brilliant silver-white color; while on the third occasion, as if by
magic, the color had changed again, and I got only _yellow_ silk. The
hypothesis of individual peculiarity, adopted the previous year to
explain why some spiders gave yellow, and others white silk, was now
untenable; and, remembering that, beside these two positive colors there
was also (and indeed more commonly) a _light yellow_, as if a
combination of the other two, I saw that the real solution of the
mystery must lie in the spinners themselves. Examining carefully the
thread as it came from the body, it was seen to be composed of two
distinct portions, differing materially in their size, their color,
their elasticity, and their relative position; for one of them was
_white_ and _inelastic_, crinkling and flying up when relaxed, and
seemed to proceed from the _posterior_ of the two principal pairs of
spinners, while the other was _larger_, _yellow_, so _elastic_ that when
relaxed it kept its direction, and seemed to come from the _anterior_
pair of spinners, and so, in the inverted position of the spider, was
_above_ the other. By putting a spider under the influence of
chloroform, and then carrying the first thread under a pin stuck in a
cork to one part of a spindle, and the second or yellow line over
another pin to a different part of the spindle, I reeled off from the
same spider, at the same time, two distinct bands of silk, of which one
was a deep golden-yellow, the other a bright silver-white; while, if
both threads ran together, there was formed a band of _light yellow_
from the union of the two. Thinking such a difference must subserve some
use in the economy of the insect, I made a more careful examination of
its webs. At first sight these resembled those of most geometrical
spiders, in being broad, rounded, nearly vertical nets; but they were
unusually large, and in their native woods often stretched between trees
and across the paths, so as to be two, three, and even more, feet in
diameter, and in my room at Mt. Pleasant hung like curtains before the
windows. They were of a bright yellow color and very viscid; but now I
noticed that neither the color nor the viscidity pertained to the entire
net, for although the concentric circles constituting the principal part
of the web were _yellow_, and very _elastic_, and studded with little
beads of _gum_, (Fig 3,) yet the diverging lines or _radii_ of the
wheel-shaped structure, with all the guys and stays by which it was
suspended and braced, were _dry_ and _inelastic_, and of a _white_ or
lighter yellow color.

[Illustration: Fig. 3. Silk threads, viscid and dry.]

Now, however, a new mystery presented itself. We will admit that the
spider had the power, not only to vary the _size_ of her lines according
to the number of spinners, or of the minute holes in each spinner, which
were applied to the surface whence the line was to proceed, but also to
make use of either golden or silver silk at will. But how was it that
this yellow silk--which was quite dry and firm, though elastic, as
reeled from the spider, or as spun by her in the formation of her
cocoons--was nevertheless, when used for the concentric circles of the
web, so viscid as to follow the point of a pin, stretching in so doing
many times its length? A satisfactory explanation of this has never yet
been offered, nor can be until the minute anatomy of the spinning organs
is better understood, and the evolution of the silk more carefully
observed at every stage, and under all conditions. I will merely state
very briefly the few facts already established, with some of the
possible explanations.

The spinning _mammulae_ are placed in pairs at the lower part of the
abdomen, near its hinder end, and number four, six, or eight in
different species. They are little conical or cylindrical papillae,
closely resembling the pro-legs of caterpillars, and are composed of two
or three joints, the terminal one of which is pierced with a greater or
less number of minute holes, the sides of these, in some, if not all,
cases, being prolonged into tubes. Through these holes or tubes issue
the fine filaments, which, uniting as they dry in the air, constitute
the line from each spinner.

[Illustration: Fig. 4. Spinners.]

Now the _Nephila plumipes_ possesses at least three pairs of spinners.
Of these, two are much larger than the third, which indeed does not
appear till they are separated. From the _posterior_ of the two largest
pairs _seems_ to proceed the _white_, and from the _anterior_ the
_yellow_ silk, while from the small intermediate pair seem to proceed
very fine filaments of a pale-blue color, the use of which is to envelop
the prey after it has been seized and killed, being drawn out by the
bristles near the tips of the spider's hinder legs. Beside these six
papillae there is, just in front of the anterior pair, a single small
papilla on the middle line, the nature and use of which I have not
ascertained, though I feel quite sure that no silk comes from it. The
large median papilla, just _behind_ the posterior pair, surrounds the
termination of the intestines, and through it the excrement is voided,
the insect for this purpose turning back the abdomen as she hangs head
downward, so that neither the web nor the spinners shall be
contaminated. Now it has recently been ascertained that the minute
globules with which the circles are studded, and the number of which on
a web of average size is estimated at _one hundred thousand_, do not
exist in that form when the viscid lines are first spun by the spider,
but as a uniform coating of gum upon a thread; this gum, of itself and
according to physical laws, soon exhibits little undulations, and then
separates into the globules which have long been observed and supposed
to be formed by the spider. The fact of spiders selecting the night for
the construction of their webs, the difficulty of making any close
observations upon them while so engaged without disturbing them, and the
near approximation of the two larger pairs of spinners while the viscid
line is slowly drawn out by the hind leg, have hitherto prevented my
determining its exact source and manner of formation. If it comes from
the anterior pair only, then one and the same organ has the power of
evolving a central axis and covering it with viscid gum; and it seems
less improbable that the axis is white and formed by the posterior pair,
the yellow gum being spread upon it by the anterior pair, which also
would then have the power to evolve this same gum at other times as an
equally dry, though more elastic thread. But in either case we have only
_three_ pairs of spinners and _four_ kinds of silk, the _pale-blue
fasciculi_ the _dry white_, the _dry yellow_, and the _viscid_ and very
_elastic_ silk which is employed only in the circles of the web, and
which often does not become yellow till after exposure to the light.
Apparently the surest method of investigation will be carefully to
destroy one pair of spinners at a time without injuring the others, and
then note the effect upon the spinning.

Let us go back now to the sixty spiders left at Mt. Pleasant. A few of
these died on the way North, but the majority reached Boston in safety
about the 20th of September, 1865; for some time I had observed that
they all were becoming more or less emaciated, and relished their food
less than at first. Occasionally one died from no apparent cause. The
mortality increasing toward the end of the month, and all of them losing
both flesh and vigor, I was persuaded to try them with water,--a thing I
had thus far declined to do, never having heard of a spider's drinking
water, and knowing that our common house species can hardly get it at
all. The result was most gratifying: a drop of water upon the tip of a
camel's-hair pencil, not only was not avoided, but greedily seized and
slowly swallowed, being held between the jaws and the palpi. All of the
spiders took it, and some even five or six drops in succession. You will
exclaim, "Poor things! what tortures they must have suffered!" I admit
that it could not have been pleasant for them to go so long without that
which they crave every day, but I cannot believe that creatures whose
legs drop off on very slight provocation, and which never show any sign
whatever of real pain, suffered very acute pangs even when subjected to
what occasions such distress to ourselves.

The few survivors straightway improved in health and spirits; but being
now convinced that a moist atmosphere was almost as needful as water to
drink, I turned them loose in the north wing of the hot-house in Dr.
Gray's Botanical Garden at Cambridge. They all mysteriously disappeared,
excepting one, which made a nice web at one end just under the
ridge-pole, and for several weeks lived and grew fat upon the flies; but
a thorough fumigation of the house with tobacco so shocked her not yet
civilized organization that she died.

Her untimely death, however, afforded opportunity for a closer
examination of the web itself. The first one she had made was not
_vertical_; and, following the prevalent ideas as to the precise
construction of the spider's web, I had felt somewhat ashamed of my pet,
but supposed the next she made would be an improvement. But no, the
rebellious insect constantly made them all (for, it should have been
said before, this spider seldom uses the same web more than forty-eight
hours) after the same manner, and finally I laid it to a depraved
idiocrasy, incident to captivity and poor health. But now another and
most unexpected feature developed itself; for, on attempting to remove
the last web by placing against it a large wire ring, and cutting the
guy-lines, I found that this most degenerate spider had not only failed
to make her house _perpendicular_, but had so far departed from the
traditions of our ancestors as to have the centre thereof decidedly
eccentric, and four times as near the upper as the lower border of the
web, so that its upper portion was only a confused array of irregular
lines, which it was impossible to secure to the frame. For any accurate
observation my web was of no value. But perhaps this was best; for had I
then learned what I have since, that our spider utterly ignores every
precedent, not only in the _position_ and _shape_ of her web, but also
in its _minute arrangement_, I might have been so affected by her
evident bad character and radical proclivities, as to have feared paying
her any further attentions,--much more, presenting her to the world.

But in order to understand how these further discoveries were made, we
must again go back to the original sixty spiders in my room at Mt.
Pleasant, South Carolina.

At the time of their capture, I had observed upon a few of the webs
little brown spiders, which I then imagined might be the half-grown
young. Six of these were found among the sixty larger spiders, and a
moment's examination of their palpi or feelers (Fig. 5) showed that they
were males, though even then I could not believe they had reached their
maturity; for their bodies were only about one fourth of an inch in
length, and weighed only one thirty-second part of a grain, while the
females were from an inch to an inch and a quarter in length, and
weighed from three to four grains. It was as absurd as if a man
weighing one hundred and fifty pounds were joined to a bigger half of
_eighteen thousand pounds' weight_, and I was not fully convinced that
these small spiders were really the males of the _Nephila plumipes_ till
I had witnessed the impregnation of the eggs of the females by them.

[Illustration: Fig. 5. Palpi, or Feelers.]

One morning, in the cell of a large female, I found a cocoon of
beautiful yellow silk containing a rounded mass of eggs. Soon the same
occurred with other females, and there were fifteen cocoons, which would
give about _seven thousand spiders_. Early in October, just one month
after they were laid, the eggs of the first cocoon were broken and
disclosed little spiders with rounded yellow bodies and short legs,
looking about as little like their parents as could be imagined. The
eggs in the other cocoons followed in their order, and now each
contained four or five hundred little spiders closely packed.

For some time they seemed to eat nothing at all; but within a few days
all had shed their skins, and now the abdomen was smaller, while the
_cephalothorax_ and legs were larger and darker; but they showed no
desire to leave their cocoons. Still they grew perceptibly; and
coincident with this was a less pleasing fact: their numbers were
decreasing in the same proportion, and occasionally one was seen eating
another. It was some time before I could reconcile the good temper and
quiet behavior of the parents with this instinctive and habitual
fratricide on the part of their children. But look at it in this way:
here were several hundred active little creatures in a space just large
enough to contain them; presently they were hungry, and as no two could
be of exactly the same size, the smaller and weaker naturally fell a
prey to their larger brethren, or rather sisters, for either very few
males are hatched, or else they are particularly good eating, and a very
small proportion survive the perils of infancy. It is evidently an
established and well-understood thing among them: all seem to be aware
of their destiny, to _eat_ or _be eaten_. What else can they do? Human
beings would do the same under the same circumstances; and I have never
seen the least sign of personal spite or malignity in the spider. There
is no pursuit, for there is no escape; and we can only conclude that, as
the new-born fish's first nourishment is the contents of the yolk-sac,
partly outside, though still a portion of its body, so the first food of
the young spiders is, if not themselves, the next best thing,--each
other. Thus it is provided that the smaller and less vigorous shall
furnish food for the larger until the latter are strong enough to
venture forth in search of other means of support.

In consequence of this mutual destruction, aided materially by the
depredations of birds and of other insects, and by exposure to the
weather, only about one per cent of those hatched reach maturity. If
properly protected, however, a far larger proportion may be saved; and
as their multiplication is so rapid, no fear need be entertained of a
limit to the supply.

By keeping these little spiders in glass jars, inverted, and with a wet
sponge at the bottom, they were easily watched and cared for. At first
only about one twentieth of an inch long and nearly as wide, they
increased in length as they grew, but for many weeks lived in common on
an irregular web, feeding together on the crushed flies or bugs thrown
to them. But when one fourth of an inch in length, they showed a
disposition to separate, and to spin each for herself a regular web,
out of which all intruders were kept. And now it was found that all
these webs were _inclined_ at nearly the same angle, and were _never
exactly vertical_; that, like the spider in the first web she made in
the Botanical Garden, the insect took a position much nearer the upper
than the lower border; and also that, instead of a web of _perfect
circles_ laid upon _regular radii_, as used to be described and is still
figured in our books, or even one of a _spiral line_, as is now more
correctly described of ordinary geometrical spiders (Fig. 6), these
never made a circle, nor even a spiral, but a _series of concentric
loops_ or arcs of circles, the lines turning back upon themselves before
reaching a point over the spider, and leaving the larger portion of the
web below her; and more than this, that the lines, though quite regular,
were by no means perfectly so, as may be seen in Fig. 7, copied from a
photograph.

[Illustration: Fig. 6. Web of common Garden Spider.]

[Illustration: Fig. 7. Web of _Nephila plumipes_.]

As usual, the _radii_, or _spokes_, of the wheel-shaped structure are
first made; then the spider begins a little way from the centre, and,
passing from one radius to another, spins a series of loops at
considerable distances from each other till she reaches the
circumference. These first loops, like the radii, are of _white, dry_,
and _inelastic_ silk, and may be recognized by the little notches at
their junction with the radii. The notches are made by the spider's
drawing her body a little inward toward the centre of the web at the
time of attaching them to the radii, and so they always point in the
direction in which the spider is moving at that time, and in opposite
directions on any two successive lines (Fig. 8). Having reached what is
to be the border of her web, and thus constructed a firm framework or
scaffolding, she begins to retrace her steps, moving more slowly and
spinning now in the _intervals_ of the dry loops two or three similar
loops, but much nearer together and made of the _elastic_ and _viscid_
silk, till she has again reached her starting-point near the middle of
the web, where, on its under side, she takes a position, head downward,
hanging by her claws, and thus keeping her body from direct contact with
the web.

[Illustration: Fig. 8. Section of Web.]

Here she will remain quiet for hours as if asleep; but no sooner does a
fly or other insect strike the web, than she darts in the direction
whence the vibrations proceed, and usually seizes her prey; but,
strangely enough, if the insect have ceased its struggles before she
reaches it, she stops, and if she cannot renew them by shaking the web
with her claws, will slowly and disconsolately return to the centre of
the web, there to await fresh vibrations. These and many other facts,
even more conclusive, have satisfied me that, although this spider has
eight eyes (Fig. 9), it is as blind as a man with his eyelids shut, and
can only distinguish light from darkness, nothing more. This seems to be
the case with other geometrical species, but not at all with the field
and hunting spiders, some of which will boldly turn upon you and look
right in your eyes; they alone, of all insects, seeming to recognize the
_face_ of man as different from his body.

[Illustration: Fig. 9. Face and Jaws, magnified (eyes dimly seen).]

The hearing and touch of this spider are very acute. The latter is
exercised by the palpi and the tips of the legs, especially the first
pair, but no ear has yet been discovered; neither is anything known of
the organs of taste and smell, or even whether the insect possesses
these senses at all.

I ought before this to have anticipated and answered a question which
nine out of ten, perhaps, of my readers have already asked themselves,
"Do not spiders bite? and is not their bite poisonous, nay, at times,
deadly even to man?" The answer is, in brief, Yes, spiders do bite,
probably all of them, if provoked and so confined that they cannot
escape; though only a few tropical species can be said to seek of their
own accord an opportunity for attacking man, or any creature larger than
the insects that form their natural prey. Even the _Nephila plumipes_,
which, it has been intimated, is "Christian in its disposition, and
well-behaved beyond most of its kind," will readily bite, if it is held
in the fingers and anything is put to its jaws. But that is nothing. So
would you, most gentle reader, if a great giant pinched you between his
thumb and finger, and held your hands and feet and head; and if, too,
like our spider, you could not see enough to distinguish friends from
foes. Spiders, then, will bite. But to the second part of the inquiry
our answer must be less positive. They have a very bad name; but much of
this is due to their grim and forbidding aspect, and their bloody trade
of trapping and eating poor little insects. It is to be remembered that
there are very few, if any, medical reports of injuries from the bites
of spiders, and that the accounts of such cases occurring in the
newspapers consist in great measure of inference, and either make no
mention of the offender at all, or merely speak of a little black or
gray spider being found in the vicinity. A number of experiments have
been made in England to ascertain the effect of the bite of the larger
geometrical spiders upon the experimenter himself, upon other spiders,
and upon common insects; and the conclusion was, that it produces no
greater effect than the prick of a pin, or any other injury of equal
extent and severity; while the speedy death of its victim is ascribed to
the spider's sucking its juices, rather than to any poison instilled
into the wound. But these experiments, though somewhat reassuring, are
not conclusive; for they were tried only on one person, and people vary
much in their susceptibility to poison of all kinds; moreover, the
spiders employed were of the _geometrical_ kinds, which have never been
so much feared as the larger _field_ and _hunting_ spiders. Indeed, it
may be found that among spiders there is as great a difference in
respect to venom as among serpents, and that those which depend upon
their jaws for taking and holding their prey, such as the field and
hunting spiders, are poisonous, while the web-builders which ensnare
their victims are not so. In regard to our spiders, I have caused a
large one to bite, so as to draw blood, a kitten three days old, and the
kitten has not appeared to suffer in the least on that account.

They are very quiet insects, and never appear disturbed at what goes on
about them; neither do they run away and hide in holes and corners, like
our common spiders; but if their webs are injured, or they are startled
by a noise, they will shake themselves from side to side in their webs,
so as to be wholly invisible. Their natural food is insects of all
kinds; but they soon learn to eat soft flesh, such as the liver of
chickens, for which, as well as for water, they will sometimes stretch
themselves and turn in their webs so as to take it from the point of a
pin or camel's-hair pencil. Besides water to drink, they require an
atmosphere saturated with moisture, like that of their native island,
the relative humidity being about _seventy_ on the Hygrodeik scale. If
stroked upon the back, they often raise their bodies as a cat does, and
sometimes put back a leg to push away your finger. They may be allowed
to run over one's person with perfect safety, but, if suddenly seized,
will hold on with tooth as well as nail.

They are quite economical, and every few days, when the web has become
too dry and dusty for use, will gather it up in a mass, which they stuff
into their jaws and masticate for hours, swallowing the gum, but
throwing out the rest, with the little particles of dust, in the form of
a hard black pellet,--an instance rare, if not indeed unique, of an
animal eating a substance already excreted from its body.

Here I must close, though much against my will. It would please me to
describe, as it has almost fascinated me to observe, the doings of my
spiders, as they grew older and made their webs in the Wardian cases to
which they were removed when too many and too large for the jars; how
the young are gregarious, and move from place to place in a close
column, protected on all sides by skirmishers, which continually report
to the main body; how some of these young, whose parents were caught on
Long Island, South Carolina, a year ago, and which were hatched from the
egg in October last, have grown up during a Northern winter, have
themselves become parents and laid eggs; how they periodically cast off
their skins, even to that of the eyes, the jaws, and the breathing
tubes, and how, from too great impatience, sad accidents sometimes
befall them on these occasions; how, also, I have reeled silk from
several of these spiders, and made a thread which has been woven in a
power-loom as a woof or filling upon a warp of common black silk, so as
to make a bit of ribbon two inches wide, thereby proving that it is real
silk and can be treated as such.

Much, too, could be said of the only other attempts to utilize spiders'
silk, a knowledge of which would have materially aided me. In France,
one hundred and fifty years ago, M. Bon made gloves and stockings of
silk got by carding spiders' cocoons, and seventy years later, as I have
but recently ascertained, Termeyer, a Spaniard, not only used the
cocoons, but also, by an observation similar to my own, was led to reel
the silk from the living insect. He, however, had poorer spiders or too
little perseverance, or friends and a government influenced by a most
short-sighted economy and prudence, else the highly interesting and
instructive account of his experiments would have been familiar to some
one in this country, and would not have waited these many years to be
found by accident last spring in an obscure corner of the Astor Library.

I will add, finally, that I believe some other geometrical spiders,
especially of the genus _Nephila_, may be found as docile, and as
productive of beautiful silk, as the species I have described. At any
rate, you cannot find a more interesting inmate of your Wardian case
than some large geometrical spider.




WHAT DID SHE SEE WITH?


I could not have been more than seven or eight years old, when it
happened; but it might have been yesterday. Among all other childish
memories, it stands alone. To this very day it brings with it the old,
utter sinking of the heart, and the old, dull sense of mystery.

To read the story, you should have known my mother. To understand it,
you should understand her. But that is quite impossible now, for there
is a quiet spot over the hill, and past the church, and beside the
little brook where the crimsoned mosses grow thick and wet and cool,
from which I cannot call her. It is all I have left of her now. But
after all, it is not of her that you will chiefly care to hear. The
object of my story is simply to acquaint you with a few facts, which,
though interwoven with the events of her life, are quite independent of
it as objects of interest. It is, I know, only my own heart that makes
these pages a memorial,--but, you see, I cannot help it.

Yet, I confess, no glamour of any earthly love has ever utterly dazzled
me,--not even hers. Of imperfections, of mistakes, of sins, I knew she
was guilty. I know it now,--even with the sanctity of those crimsoned
mosses, and the hush of the rest beneath, so close to my heart, I cannot
forget them. Yet somehow--I do not know how--the imperfections, the
mistakes, the very sins, bring her nearer to me as the years slip by,
and make her dearer.

The key to her life is the key to my story. That given, as I can give
it, I will try to compress. It lies in the fact that my mother was what
we call an aristocrat, I do not like the term, as the term is used. I am
sure she does not now; but I have no other word. She was a royal-looking
woman, and she had the blood of princes in her veins. Generations
back--how we children used to reckon the thing over!--she was cradled in
a throne. A miserable race, to be sure, they were,--the Stuarts; and the
most devout genealogist might deem it dubious honor to own them for
great-grandfathers by innumerable degrees removed. So she used to tell
us, over and over, as a damper on our childish vanity, looking such a
very queen as she spoke, in every play of feature, and every motion of
her hand, that it was the old story of preachers who did not practise.
The very baby was proud of her. The beauty of a face, and the elegant
repose of a manner, are by no means influences more unfelt at three
years than at thirty.

As insanity will hide itself away, and lie sleeping, and die out,--while
old men are gathered to their fathers scathless, and young men follow in
their footsteps safe and free,--and start into life, and claim its own
when children's children have forgotten it; as a single trait of a
single scholar in a race of clods will bury itself in day-laborers and
criminals, unto the third and fourth generation, and spring then, like a
creation from a chaos, into statesmen and poets and sculptors;--so, I
have sometimes fancied, the better and truer nature of voluptuaries and
tyrants was sifted down through the years, and purified in our little
New England home, and the essential autocracy of monarchical blood
refined and ennobled in my mother into royalty.

A broad and liberal culture had moulded her; she knew its worth, in
every fibre of her heart; scholarly parents had blessed her with their
legacies of scholarly mind and name. With the soul of an artist, she
quivered under every grace and every defect; and the blessing of a
beauty as rare as rich had been given to her. With every instinct of her
nature recoiling from the very shadow of crimes the world winks at, as
from a loathsome reptile, the family record had been stainless for a
generation. God had indeed blessed her; but the very blessing was a
temptation.

I knew, before she left me, what she might have been, but for the
merciful and tender watch of Him who was despised and rejected of men. I
know, for she told me, one still night when we were alone together, how
she sometimes shuddered at herself, and what those daily and hourly
struggles between her nature and her Christianity _meant_.

I think we were as near to one another as mother and daughter can be;
but yet as utterly different. Since I have been talking in such lordly
style of those miserable Jameses and Charleses, I will take the
opportunity to confess that I have inherited my father's thorough-going
democracy,--double measure, pressed down and running over. She not only
pardoned it, but I think she loved it in me, for his sake.

It was about a year and a half, I think, after he died, that she sent
for Aunt Alice to come to Creston. "Your aunt loves me," she said, when
she told us in her quiet way, "and I am so lonely now."

They had been the only children, and they loved each other,--how much, I
afterwards knew. And how much they love each other _now_, I like to
think,--quite freely and fully, and without shadow or doubt between
them, I dare to hope.

A picture of Aunt Alice always hung in mother's room. It was taken down
years ago. I never asked her where she put it. I remember it, though,
quite well; for mother's sake I am glad I do. For it was a pleasant face
to look upon, and a young, pure, happy face,--beautiful too, though with
none of the regal beauty crowned by my mother's massive hair, and
pencilled brows. It was a timid, girlish face, with reverent eyes, and
ripe, tremulous lips,--weak lips, as I remember them. From babyhood, I
felt a want in the face. I had, of course, no capacity to define it; it
was represented to me only by the fact that it differed from my
mother's.

She was teaching school out West when mother sent for her. I saw the
letter. It was just like my mother:--"Alice, I need you. You and I ought
to have but one home now. Will you come?"

I saw, too, a bit of a postscript to the answer,--"I'm not fit that you
should love me so, Marie."

And how mother laughed at it!

When it was all settled, and the waiting weeks became at last a single
day, I hardly knew my mother. She was in her early married years; she
was a girl; she was a child; she was every young thing, and merry thing,
that she could have ever been. So full of fitful moods, and little
fantastic jokes! such a flush on her cheeks too, as she ran to the
window every five minutes, like a child! I remember how we went all over
the house together, she and I, to see that everything looked neat, and
bright, and welcome. And how we lingered in the guest-room, to put the
little finishing touches to its stillness, and coolness, and coseyness.
The best spread on the bed, and the white folds smoothed as only
mother's fingers could smooth them; the curtain freshly washed, and
looped with its crimson cord; the blinds drawn, cool and green; the late
afternoon sunlight slanting through, in flecks upon the floor. Flowers,
too, upon the table. I remember they were all white,--lilies of the
valley, I think; and the vase of Parian marble, itself a solitary lily,
unfolding stainless leaves. Over the mantle she had hung the finest
picture in the house,--an "Ecce Homo," and an exquisite engraving. It
used to hang in grandmother's room in the old house. We children
wondered a little that she took it up stairs.

"I want your aunt to feel at home, and see home things," she said. "I
wish I could think of something more to make it pleasant in here."

Just as we left the room she turned and looked into it. "Pleasant, isn't
it? I am so glad, Sarah," her eyes dimming a little. "She's a very dear
sister to me."

She stepped in again to raise a stem of the lilies that had fallen from
the vase, and lay like wax upon the table, then she shut the door and
came away.

That door was shut just so for years; the lonely bars of sunlight
flecked the solitude of the room, and the lilies faded on the table. We
children passed it with hushed footfall, and shrank from it at twilight,
as from a room that held the dead. But into it we never went.

Mother was tired out that afternoon; for she had been on her feet all
day, busied in her loving cares to make our simple home as pleasant and
as welcome as home could be. But yet she stopped to dress us in our
Sunday clothes,--and no sinecure was it to dress three persistently
undressable children; Winthrop was a host in himself. "Auntie must see
us look our prettiest," she said.

She was a picture herself when she came down. She had taken off her
widow's cap and coiled her heavy hair low in her neck, and she always
looked like a queen in that lustreless black silk. I do not know why
these little things should have made such an impression on me then. They
are priceless to me now. I remember how she looked, framed there in the
doorway, while we were watching for the coach,--the late light ebbing in
golden tides over the grass at her feet, and touching her face now and
then through the branches of trees, her head bent a little, with eager,
parted lips, and the girlish color on her cheeks, her hand shading her
eyes as they strained for a sight of the lumbering coach. She must have
been a magnificent woman when she was young,--not unlike, I have heard
it said, to that far-off ancestress whose name she bore, and whose
sorrowful story has made her sorrowful beauty immortal. Somewhere abroad
there is a reclining statue of Queen Mary, to which, when my mother
stood beside it, her resemblance was so strong that the by-standers
clustered about her, whispering curiously. "Ah, mon Dieu!" said a little
Frenchman, aloud, "c'est une resurrection."

We must have tried her that afternoon, Clara and Winthrop and I; for the
spirit of her own excitement had made us completely wild. Winthrop's
scream of delight when, stationed on the gate-post, he caught the first
sight of the old yellow coach, might have been heard a quarter of a
mile.

"Coming?" said mother, nervously, and stepped out to the gate, full in
the sunlight that crowned her like royal gold.

The coach lumbered on, and rattled up, and passed.

"Why, she hasn't come!" All the eager color died out of her face. "I am
so disappointed!" speaking like a troubled child, and turning slowly
into the house.

Then, after a while, she drew me aside from the others,--I was the
oldest, and she was used to make a sort of confidence between us,
instinctively, as it seemed, and often quite forgetting how very few my
years were. "Sarah, I don't understand. You think she might have lost
the train? But Alice is so punctual, Alice never lost a train. And she
said she would come." And then, a while after, "I _don't_ understand."

It was not like my mother to worry. The next day the coach lumbered up
and rattled past, and did not stop,--and the next, and the next.

"We shall have a letter," mother said, her eyes saddening every
afternoon. But we had no letter. And another day went by, and another.

"She is sick," we said; and mother wrote to her, and watched for the
lumbering coach, and grew silent day by day. But to the letter there was
no answer.

Ten days passed. Mother came to me one afternoon to ask for her pen,
which I had borrowed. Something in her face troubled me vaguely.

"What are you going to do, mother?"

"Write to your aunt's boarding-place. I can't bear this any longer,"
sharply. She had already grown unlike herself.

She wrote, and asked for an answer by return of mail.

It was on a Wednesday, I remember, that we looked for it. I remember
everything that happened that day. I came home early from school. Mother
was sewing at the parlor window, her eyes wandering from her work, up
the road. It was an ugly day. It had rained drearily from eight o'clock
till two, and closed in suffocating mist, creeping and dense and chill.
It gave me a childish fancy of long-closed tombs and lowland graveyards,
as I walked home in it.

I tried to keep the younger children quiet when we went in, mother was
so nervous. As the early, uncanny twilight fell, we grouped around her
timidly. A dull sense of awe and mystery clung to the night, and clung
to her watching face, and clung even then to that closed room up stairs
where the lilies were fading.

Mother sat leaning her head upon her hand, the outline of her face dim
in the dusk against the falling curtain. She was sitting so when we
heard the first rumble of the distant coach-wheels. At the sound, she
folded her hands in her lap and stirred a little, rose slowly from her
chair, and sat down again.

"Sarah."

I crept up to her. At the near sight of her face, I was so frightened I
could have cried.

"Sarah, you may go out and get the letter. I--I can't."

I went slowly out at the door and down the walk. At the gate I looked
back. The outline of her face was there against the window-pane, white
in the gathering gloom.

It seems to me that my older and less sensitive years have never known
such a night. The world was stifling in a deluge of gray, cold mists,
unstirred by a breath of air. A robin with feathers all ruffled, and
head hidden, sat on the gate-post, and chirped a little mournful chirp,
like a creature dying in a vacuum. The very daisy that nodded and
drooped in the grass at my feet seemed to be gasping for breath. The
neighbor's house, not forty paces across the street, was invisible. I
remember the sensation it gave me, as I struggled to find its outlines,
of a world washed out, like the figures I washed out on my slate. As I
trudged, half frightened, into the road, and the fog closed about me, it
seemed to my childish superstition like a horde of long-imprisoned
ghosts let loose and angry. The distant sound of the coach, which I
could not see, added to the fancy.

The coach turned the corner presently. On a clear day I could see the
brass buttons on the driver's coat at that distance. There was nothing
visible now of the whole dark structure but the two lamps in front, like
the eyes of some evil thing, glaring and defiant, borne with swift
motion down upon me by a power utterly unseen,--it had a curious effect.
Even at this time, I confess I do not like to see a lighted carriage
driven through a fog.

I summoned all my little courage, and piped out the driver's name,
standing there in the road.

He reined up his horses with a shout,--he had nearly driven over me.
After some searching, he discovered the small object cowering down in
the mist, handed me a letter, with a muttered oath at being intercepted
on such a night, and lumbered on and out of sight in three rods.

I went slowly into the house. Mother had lighted a lamp, and stood at
the parlor door. She did not come into the hall to meet me.

She took the letter and went to the light, holding it with the seal
unbroken. She might have stood so two minutes.

"Why don't you read, mamma?" spoke up Winthrop. I hushed him.

She opened it then, read it, laid it down upon the table, and went out
of the room without a word. I had not seen her face. We heard her go up
stairs and shut the door.

She had left the letter open there before us. After a little awed
silence, Clara broke out into sobs. I went up and read the few and
simple lines.

_Aunt Alice had left for Creston on the appointed day._

Mother spent that night in the closed room where the lilies had drooped
and died. Clara and I heard her pacing the floor till we cried ourselves
to sleep. When we woke in the morning, she was pacing it still.

       *       *       *       *       *

Well, weeks wore into months, and the months became many years. More
than that we never knew. Some inquiry revealed the fact, after a while,
that a slight accident had occurred upon the Erie Railroad to the train
which she should have taken. There was some disabling, but no deaths,
the conductor had supposed. The car had fallen into the water. She might
not have been missed when the half-drowned passengers were all drawn
out.

So mother added a little crape to her widow's weeds, the key of the
closed room lay henceforth in her drawer, and all things went on as
before. To her children my mother was never gloomy,--it was not her way.
No shadow of household affliction was placed like a skeleton confronting
our uncomprehending joy. Of what those weeks and months and years were
to her,--a widow, and quite uncomforted in their dark places by any
human love,--she gave no sign. We thought her a shade paler, perhaps. We
found her often alone with her little Bible. Sometimes, on the Sabbath,
we missed her, and knew that she had gone into that closed room. But she
was just as tender with us in our little faults and sorrows, as merry
with us in our plays, as eager in our gayest plans, as she had always
been. As she had always been,--our mother.

And so the years slipped by, to her and to us. Winthrop went into
business in Boston; he never took to his books, and mother was too wise
to _push_ him through college; but I think she was disappointed. He was
her only boy, and she would have chosen for him the profession of his
father and grandfather. Clara and I graduated in our white dresses and
blue ribbons, like other girls, and came home to mother, crochet-work,
and Tennyson. And then something happened, as the veriest little
things--which, unnoticed and uncomprehended, hold the destinies of lives
in their control--will happen.

I mean that our old and long-tried cook, Bathsheba, who had been an
heirloom in the family, suddenly fell in love with the older sexton, who
had rung the passing-bell for every soul who died in the village for
forty years, and took it into her head to marry him, and desert our
kitchen for his little brown house under the hill.

So it came about that we hunted the township for a handmaiden; and it
also came about that our inquiring steps led us to the poor-house. A
stout, not over-brilliant-looking girl, about twelve years of age, was
to be had for her board and clothes, and such schooling as we could give
her,--in country fashion, to be "bound out" till she should be eighteen.
The economy of the arrangement decided in her favor; for, in spite of
our grand descent and grander notions, we were poor enough, after father
died, and the education of three children had made no small gap in our
little principal, and she came.

Her name was a singular one,--Selphar. It always savored too nearly of
brimstone to please me. I used to call her Sel, "for short." She was a
good, sensible, uninteresting-looking girl, with broad face, large
features, and limp, tow-colored curls. I doubt if I ever see curls like
them now without a little shudder. They used to hang straight down about
her eyes, and were never otherwise than perfectly smooth. She proved to
be of good temper, which is worth quite as much as brains in a servant,
as honest as the daylight, dull enough at her books, but a good,
plodding worker, if you marked out every step of the way for her
beforehand. I do not think she would ever have discovered the laws of
gravitation; but she might have jumped off a precipice to prove them,
if she had been bidden.

Until she was seventeen, she was precisely like any other rather stupid
girl; never given to novel-reading or fancies; never frightened by the
dark or ghost-stories; proving herself warmly attached to us, after a
while, and rousing in us, in return, the kindly interest naturally
felt for a faithful servant; but she was not in any respect
_un_common,--quite far from it,--except in the circumstance that she
never told a falsehood.

At seventeen she had a violent attack of diphtheria, and her life hung
by a thread. Mother's aristocracy had nothing of that false pride which
is afraid of contamination from kindly association with its inferiors.
She was too thoroughly a lady. She was as tender and unwearying in her
care of Selphar as the girl's own mother might have been. She was
somehow touched by the child's orphaned life,--suffering always, in all
places, appealed to her so strongly,--every sorrow found so warm a place
in her heart.

From that time, I believe Sel was immovable in her faith in my mother's
divinity. Under such nursing as she had, she slowly recovered, but her
old, stolid strength never came back to her. Severe headaches became of
frequent occurrence. Her stout, muscular arms grew weak. As weeks went
on, it became evident in many ways that, though the diphtheria itself
was quite out of her system, it had left her thoroughly diseased.
Strange fits of silence came over her: her volubility had been the
greatest objection we had to her hitherto. Her face began to wear a
troubled look. She was often found in places where she had stolen away
to be alone.

One morning she slept late in her little garret-chamber, and we did not
call her. The girl had gone up stairs the night before crying with the
pain in her temples, and mother, who was always thoughtful of her
servants, said it was a pity to wake her, and, as there were only three
of us, we might get our own breakfast for once. While we were at work
together in the kitchen, Clara heard her kitten mewing out in the snow,
and went to the door to let her in. The creature, possessed by some
sudden frolic, darted away behind the well-curb. Clara was always a bit
of a romp, and, with never a thought of her daintily-slippered feet, she
flung her trailing dress over one arm and was off over the three-inch
snow. The cat led her a brisk chase, and she came in flushed, and
panting, and pretty, her little feet drenched, and the tip of a Maltese
tail just visible above a great bundle she had made of her apron.

"Why!" said mother, "you have lost your ear-ring."

Clara dropped the kitten with unceremonious haste on the floor, felt of
her little pink ear, shook her apron, and the corners of her mouth went
down into her dimpled chin.

"They're the ones Winthrop sent, of all things in the world!"

"You'd better put on your rubbers, and have a hunt out-doors," said
mother.

We hunted out-doors,--on the steps, on the well-boards, in the
wood-shed, in the snow; Clara looked down the well till her nose and
fingers were blue, but the ear-ring was not to be found. We hunted
in-doors, under the stove, and the chairs, and the table, in every
possible and impossible nook, cranny, and crevice, but gave up the
search in despair. It was a pretty trinket,--a leaf of delicately
wrought gold, with a pearl dew-drop on it,--very becoming to Clara, and
the first present Winthrop had sent her from his earnings. If she had
been a little younger she would have cried. She came very near it as it
was, I suspect, for when she went after the plates she stayed in the
cupboard long enough to set two tables.

When we were half through breakfast, Selphar came down, blushing, and
frightened half out of her wits, her apologies tumbling over each other
with such skill as to render each one unintelligible,--and evidently
undecided in, her own mind whether she was to be hung or burnt at the
stake.

"It's no matter at all," said mother, kindly; "I knew you felt sick last
night. I should have called you if I had needed you."

Having set the girl at her ease, as only she could do, she went on with
her breakfast, and we forgot all about her. She stayed, however, in the
room to wait on the table. It was afterwards remembered that she had not
been out of our sight since she came down the garret-stairs. Also, that
her room looked out upon the opposite side of the house from that on
which the well-curb stood.

"Why, look at Sel!" said Clara, suddenly, "she has her eyes shut."

The girl was just passing the toast. Mother spoke to her. "Selphar, what
is the matter?"

"I don't know."

"Why don't you open your eyes?"

"I can't."

"Hand the salt to Miss Sarah."

She took it up and brought it around the table to me, with perfect
precision.

"Sel, how you act!" said Clara, petulantly. "Of course you saw."

"Yes'm, I saw," said the girl in a puzzled way, "but my eyes are shut,
Miss Clara."

"Tight?"

"Tight."

Whatever this freak meant, we thought best to take no notice of it. My
mother told her, somewhat gravely, that she might sit down until she was
wanted, and we returned to our conversation about the ear-ring.

"Why!" said Sel, with a little jump, "I see your ear-ring, Miss
Clara,--the one with a white drop on the leaf. It's out by the well."

The girl was sitting with her back to the window, her eyes, to all
appearance, tightly closed.

"It's on the right-hand side, under the snow, between the well and the
wood-pile. Why, don't you see?"

Clara began to look frightened, mother displeased.

"Selphar," she said, "this is nonsense. It is impossible for you to see
through the walls of two rooms and a wood-shed."

"May I go and get it?" said the girl, quietly.

"Sel," said Clara, "on your word and honor, are your eyes shut
_perfectly_ tight?"

"If they ain't, Miss Clara, then they never was."

Sel never told a lie. We looked at each other, and let her go. I
followed her out, and kept my eyes on her closed lids. She did not once
raise them; nor did they tremble, as lids will tremble, if only
partially closed.

She walked without the slightest hesitation directly to the well-curb,
to the spot which she had mentioned, stooped down, and brushed away the
three-inch fall of snow. The ear-ring lay there, where it had sunk in
falling. She picked it up, carried it in, and gave it to Clara.

That Clara had the thing on when she started after her kitten, there
could be no doubt. She and I both remembered it. That Sel, asleep on the
opposite side of the house, could not have seen it drop, was also
settled. That she, with her eyes closed and her back to the window, had
seen through three walls, and through three inches of snow, at a
distance of fifty feet, was an inference.

"I don't believe it!" said my mother, "it's some nonsensical mistake."
Clara looked a little pale, and I laughed.

We watched her carefully through the day. Her eyes remained tightly
closed. She understood all that was said to her, answered correctly, but
did not seem inclined to talk. She went about her work as usual, and
performed it without a mistake. It could not be seen that she groped at
all with her hands to feel her way, as is the case with the blind. On
the contrary, she touched everything with her usual decision. It was
impossible to believe, without seeing them, that her eyes were closed.

We tied a handkerchief tightly over them; see through it or below it she
could not, if she had tried. We then sent her into the parlor, with
orders to bring from the book-case two Bibles which had been given as
prizes to Clara and me at school, when we were children. The books were
of precisely the same size, color, and texture. Our names in gilt
letters were printed upon the binding. We followed her in, and watched
her narrowly. She went directly to the book-case, laid her hands upon
the books at once, and brought them to my mother. Mother changed them
from, hand to hand several times, and turned them with the gilt
lettering downwards upon her lap.

"Now, Selphar, which is Miss Sarah's?"

The girl quietly took mine up. The experiment was repeated and varied
again and again. In every case the result was the same. She made no
mistake. It was no guess-work. All this was done with the bandage
tightly drawn about her eyes. _She did not see those letters with them._

That evening we were sitting quietly in the dining-room. Selphar sat a
little apart with her sewing, her eyes still closed. We kept her with
us, and kept her in sight. The parlor, which was a long room, was
between us and the front of the house. The distance was so great that we
had often thought, if prowlers were to come around at night, how
impossible it would be to hear them. The curtains and shutters were
closely drawn. Sel was sitting by the fire. Suddenly she turned pale,
dropped her sewing, and sprang from her chair.

"Robbers, robbers!" she cried. "Don't you see? they're getting in the
east parlor window! There's three of 'em, and a lantern. They've just
opened the window,--hurry, hurry!"

"I believe the girl is insane," said mother, decidedly. Nevertheless,
she put out the light, opened the parlor door noiselessly, and went in.

The east window was open. There was a quick vision of three men and a
dark lantern. Then Clara screamed, and it disappeared. We went to the
window, and saw the men running down the street. The snow the next
morning was found trodden down under the window, and their footprints
were traced out to the road.

When we went back to the other room, Selphar was standing in the middle
of it, a puzzled, frightened look on her face, her eyes wide open.

"Selphar," said my mother, a little suspiciously, "how did you know the
robbers were there?"

"Robbers!" said the girl, aghast.

She knew nothing of the robbers. She knew nothing of the ear-ring. She
remembered nothing that had happened since she went up the garret-stairs
to bed, the night before. And, as I said, the girl was as honest as the
sunlight. When we told her what had happened, she burst into terrified
tears.

For some time after this there was no return of the "tantrums," as
Selphar had called the condition, whatever it was. I began to get up
vague theories of a trance state. But mother said, "Nonsense!" and Clara
was too much frightened to reason at all about the matter.

One Sunday morning Sel complained of a headache. There was an evening
service that night, and we all went to church. Mother let Sel take the
empty seat in the carryall beside her.

It was very dark when we started to come home. But Creston was a safe
old Orthodox town, the roads were filled with returning church-goers
like ourselves, and mother drove like a man. A darker night I think I
have never seen. Literally, we could not see a hand before our eyes. We
met a carriage on a narrow road, and the horses' heads touched, before
either driver had seen the other.

Selphar had been quite silent during the drive. I leaned forward, looked
closely into her face, and could dimly see through the darkness that her
eyes were closed.

"Why!" she said at last, "see those gloves!"

"Where?"

"Down in the ditch; we passed them before I spoke. I see them on a
blackberry-bush; they've got little brass buttons on the wrist."

Three rods past now, and we could not see our horse's head.

"Selphar," said my mother, quickly, "what _is_ the matter with you?"

"If you please, ma'am, I don't know," replied the girl, hanging her
head. "May I get out and bring 'em to you?"

Prince was reined up, and Sel got out. She went so far back, that,
though we strained our eyes to do it, we could not see her. In about two
minutes she came up, a pair of gentleman's gloves in her hand. They were
rolled together, were of cloth so black that on a bright night it would
never have been seen, and had small brass buttons at the wrist.

Mother took them without a word.

The story leaked out somehow, and spread all over town. It raised a
great hue and cry. Four or five antediluvian ladies declared at once
that we were nothing more nor less than a family of "them spirituous
mediums," and seriously proposed to expel mother from the
prayer-meeting. Masculine Creston did worse. It smiled a pitying smile,
and pronounced the whole thing the fancy of "scared women-folks." I
could endure with calmness any slander upon earth but that. I sent by
the next mail for Winthrop, and stated the case to him in a condition of
suppressed fury. He very politely bit back an incredulous smile, and
said he should be _very_ happy to see her perform. The answer was
somewhat dubious. I accepted it in silent suspicion.

He came on Saturday noon. That afternoon we attended _en masse_ one of
those refined inquisitions commonly known as picnics, and Winthrop lost
his pocket-knife. Selphar, of course, kept house at home.

When we returned, Winthrop made some careless reference to his loss in
her presence, and thought no more of it. About half an hour after, we
observed that she was washing the dishes with her eyes shut. The
condition had not been upon her five minutes before she dropped the
spoon suddenly into the water, and asked permission to go out to walk.
She "saw Mr. Winthrop's knife somewhere under a stone, and wanted to get
it." It was fully two miles to the picnic grounds, and nearly dark.
Winthrop followed the girl, unknown to her, and kept her in sight. She
went rapidly, and without the slightest hesitation or search, to an
out-of-the-way gully down by the pond, where Winthrop afterwards
remembered having gone to cut some willow-twigs for the girls, parted a
thick cluster of bushes, lifted a large, loose stone under which the
knife had rolled, and picked it up. She returned it to Winthrop,
quietly, and hurried away about her work to avoid being thanked.

I observed that, after this incident, masculine Creston became more
respectful.

Of several peculiarities in this development of the girl I made at the
time careful memoranda, and the exactness of these can be relied upon.

1. She herself, so far from attempting to bring on these trance states,
or taking any pride therein, was intensely troubled and mortified by
them,--would run out of the room, if she felt them coming on in the
presence of visitors.

2. They were apt to be preceded by severe headaches, but came often
without any warning.

3. She never, in any instance, recalled anything that happened during
the trance, after it was passed.

4. She was powerfully and unpleasantly affected by electricity from a
battery, or acting in milder forms. She was also unable at any time to
put her hands and arms into hot water; the effect was to paralyze them
at once.

5. Space proved to be no impediment to her vision. She has been known to
follow the acts, words, and expressions of countenance of members of the
family hundreds of miles away, with accuracy; as was afterwards proved
by comparing notes as to time.

6. The girl's eyes, after her trances became habitual, assumed, and
always retained, the most singular expression I ever saw on any face.
They were oblong and narrow, and set back in her head like the eyes of a
snake. They were not--smile if you will, O practical and incredulous
reader!--but they were not _human_ eyes. The eyes of Elsie Venner are
the only eyes I can think of as at all like them. The most horrible
circumstance about them--a circumstance that always made me shudder,
familiar as I was with it--was, that, though turned fully on you, _they
never looked at you_. Something behind them or out of them did the
seeing, not they.

7. She not only saw substance, but soul. She has repeatedly told me my
thoughts when they were upon subjects to which she could not by any
possibility have had the slightest clew.

8. We were never able to detect a shadow of deceit about her.

9. The clairvoyance never failed in any instance to be correct, so far
as we were able to trace it.

As will be readily imagined, the girl became a useful member of the
family. The lost valuables restored and the warnings against mischances
given by her quite balanced her incapacity for peculiar kinds of work.
This incapacity, however, rather increased than diminished, and,
together with her fickle health, which also grew more unsettled, caused
us a great deal of care. The Creston physician--who was a keen man in
his way, for a country doctor--pronounced the case altogether undreamt
of before in Horatio's philosophy, and kept constant notes of it. Some
of these have, I believe, found their way into the medical journals.

After a while there came, like a thief in the night, that which I
suppose was poor Selphar's one unconscious, golden mission in this
world. It came on a quiet summer night, that ended a long trance of a
week's continuance. Mother had gone out into the kitchen to give an
order for breakfast. I heard a few eager words in Selphar's voice, and
then the door shut quickly, and it was an hour before it was opened.

Then my mother came to me without a particle of color in lips or cheek,
and drew me away alone, and told the secret to me.

Selphar had seen Aunt Alice.

We sat down and looked at one another. There was a singular pinched look
about my mother's mouth.

"Sarah."

"Yes."

"She says"--and then she told me what she said. She had seen Alice
Stuart in a Western town, seven hundred miles away. Among the living,
she desired to be counted of the dead. And that was all.

My mother paced the room three times back and forth, her hands locked.

"Sarah." There was a chill in her voice--it had been such a gentle
voice!--that froze me. "Sarah, the girl is an impostor."

"Mother!"

She paced the room, once more, three times, back and forth. "At any
rate, she is a poor, self-deluded creature. How _can_ she see, seven
hundred miles away, a dead woman who has been an angel all these years?
Think! an _angel_, Sarah! So much better than I, and I--I loved--"

Before or since, I never heard my mother speak like that. She broke off
sharply, and froze back into her chilling voice.

"We will say nothing about this, if you please. I do not believe a word
of it."

We said nothing about it, but Selphar did. The delusion, if delusion it
were, clung to her, haunted her, pursued her, week after week. To rid
her of it, or to silence her, was impossible. She added no new facts to
her first statement, but insisted that the long-lost dead was yet alive,
with a quiet pertinacity that it was simply impossible to ridicule,
frighten, threaten, or cross-question out of her, Clara was so
thoroughly alarmed that she would not have slept alone for any
mortal--perhaps not for any immortal--considerations. Winthrop and I
talked the matter over often and gravely when we were alone and in quiet
places. Mother's lips were sealed. From the day when Sel made the first
disclosure, she was never heard once to refer to the matter. A
perceptible haughtiness crept into her manner towards the girl. She even
talked of dismissing her; but repented it, and melted into momentary
gentleness. I could have cried over her that night. I was beginning to
understand what a pitiful struggle her life had become, and how utterly
alone she must be in it. She _would_ not believe--she knew not what. She
could not doubt the girl. And with the conflict even her children could
not intermeddle.

To understand the crisis into which she was brought, the reader must
bear in mind our long habit of belief, not only in Selphar's personal
honesty, but in the infallibility of her mysterious power. Indeed, it
had almost ceased to be mysterious to us, from daily familiarity. We had
come to regard it as the curious working of physical disease, had taken
its results as a matter of course, and had ceased, in common with
converted Creston, to doubt the girl's capacity for seeing anything that
she chose to, at any place.

Thus a year wore on. My mother grew sleepless and pallid. She laughed
often, in a nervous, shallow way, as unlike her as a butterfly is unlike
a sunset; and her face settled into an habitual sharpness and hardness
unutterably painful to me.

Once only I ventured to break into the silence of the haunting thought
that she knew, and we knew, was never escaped by either. "Mother, it
would do no harm for Winthrop to go out West, and--"

She interrupted me sternly: "Sarah, I had not thought you capable of
such childish superstition. I wish that girl and her nonsense had never
come into this house!"--turning sharply away, and out of the room.

Just what that year was to my mother, I suppose only God and she have
ever known, or will know.

But it ended. It ended at last, as I had prayed every night and morning
of it that it should end. Mother came into my room one night, locked the
door behind her, and, walking over to the window, stood with her face
turned from me.

"Sarah."

"Yes."

"Sarah."

But that was all for a little while. Then,--"Sick and in suffering,
Sarah,--the girl--she may be right, God Almighty knows! _Sick and in
suffering_, you see. I am going. I think, I--"

The voice broke and melted utterly. I stole away and left her alone.

Creston put on its spectacles and looked wise on learning, the next day,
that Mrs. Dugald had taken the earliest morning train for the West, on
sudden and important business. It was precisely what Creston expected,
and just like the Dugalds for all the world,--gone to hunt up material
for that genealogical book, or map, or tree, or something, that they
thought nobody knew they were going to publish. O yes, Creston
understood it perfectly.

Space forbids me to relate in detail the clews which Selphar had given
as to the whereabouts of the wanderer. Her trances, just at this time,
were somewhat scarce and fragmentary, and the information she had
professed to give had come in snatches and very imperfectly,--the trance
being apt to end suddenly at the moment when some important question was
pending, and then, of course, all memory of what she had said, or was
about to say, was gone. The names and appearance of persons and places
necessary to the search had, however, been given with sufficient
distinctness to serve as a guide in my mother's rather chimerical
undertaking. I suppose ninety-nine persons out of a hundred would have
thought her a candidate for the State Lunatic Asylum. Exactly what she
herself expected, hoped, or feared, I think it doubtful if she knew. I
confess to a condition of simple bewilderment, when she was fairly
gone, and Clara and I were left alone with Selphar's ghostly eyes
forever on us. One night I had to lock the poor thing into her
garret-room before I could sleep.

Just three weeks from the day mother started for the West, the coach
rattled up to the door, and two women, arm in arm, came slowly up the
walk. The one, erect, royal, with her great steadfast eyes alight; the
other, bent and worn, gray-haired and sallow and dumb, crawling feebly
through the golden afternoon sunshine, as the ghost of a glorious life
might crawl back to its grave.

Mother threw open the door, and stood there like a queen. "Children,
your aunt has come home. She is too tired to talk just now. By and by
she will be glad to see you."

We took her gently up stairs, into the room where the lilies were
mouldering to dust, and laid her down upon the bed. She closed her eyes
wearily, turned her face over to the wall, and said no word.

What was the story of those tired eyes I never asked, and I never knew.
Once, as I passed the room, a quick picture showed through the open
door. The two women lying with their arms about each other's neck, as
they used to do when they were children together; and above them, still
and watchful, the wounded Face that had waited there so many years for
this.

One was speaking with weak sobs, and very low. It was Aunt Alice. I
caught but two words,--"My husband."

But what that husband was remains unknown till the day when the grave
shall give up its dead, and the secrets of hearts oppressed and sinned
against and sorrowful shall be revealed.

She lingered weakly there, within the restful room, for seven days, and
then one morning we found her with her eyes upon the thorn-crowned face,
her own quite still and smiling.

A little funeral train wound away one night behind the church, and left
her down among those red-cup mosses that opened in so few months again
to cradle the sister who had loved her. Two words only, by mother's
orders, marked the simple headstone,--

     "ALICE BROWNING."

I have given you facts. Explain them as you will. I do not attempt it,
for the simple reason that I cannot.

A word must be said as to the fate of poor Sel, which was mournful
enough. Her trances grew gradually more frequent and erratic, till she
became so thoroughly diseased in mind and body as to be entirely
unfitted for household work, and, in short, nothing but an encumbrance.
We kept her, however, for the sake of charity, and should have done so,
till her poor, tormented life wore itself out; but after the advent of a
new servant, and my mother's death, she conceived the idea that she was
a burden, cried over it a few weeks, and at last one bitter winter's
night she disappeared. We did not give up all search for her for years,
but nothing was ever heard from her. He, I hope, who permitted life to
be such a terrible mystery to her, has cared for her somehow, and
kindly, and well.




THE MINER.


    Down 'mid the tangled roots of things
    That coil about the central fire,
    I seek for that which giveth wings,
    To stoop, not soar, to my desire.

    Sometimes I hear, as 't were a sigh,
    The sea's deep yearning far above.
    "Thou hast the secret not," I cry,
    "In deeper deeps is hid my Love."

    They think I burrow from the sun,
    In darkness, all alone and weak;
    Such loss were gain if He were won.
    For 't is the sun's own Sun I seek.

    The earth, they murmur, is the tomb
    That vainly sought his life to prison;
    Why grovel longer in its gloom?
    He is not here; He hath arisen.

    More life for me where He hath lain
    Hidden, while ye believed him dead,
    Than in cathedrals cold and vain,
    Built on loose sands of "It is said."

    My search is for the living gold,
    Him I desire who dwells recluse,
    And not his image, worn and old,
    Day-servant of our sordid use.

    If Him I find not, yet I find
    The ancient joy of cell and church,
    The glimpse, the surety undefined,
    The unquenched ardor of the search.

    Happier to chase a flying goal,
    Than to sit counting laurelled gains,
    To guess the Soul within the soul,
    Than to be lord of what remains.




PHYSICAL HISTORY OF THE VALLEY OF THE AMAZONS.


II.

Major Coutinho and myself passed three days in the investigation of the
Serra of Errere. We found it to consist wholly of the sandstone deposits
described in my previous article, and to have exactly the same
geological constitution. In short, the Serra of Monte Alegre, and of
course all those connected with it on the northern side of the river,
lie in the prolongation of the lower beds forming the banks of the
river, their greater height being due simply to the fact that they have
not been worn to the same low level. The opposite range of Santarem,
which has the same general outline and character, shares, no doubt, the
same geological structure. In one word, all these hills were formerly
part of a continuous formation, and owe their present outline and their
isolated position to a colossal denudation. The surface of the once
unbroken strata, which in their original condition must have formed an
immense plain covered by water, has been cut into ravines or carried
away over large tracts, to a greater or less depth, leaving only such
portions standing as from their hardness could resist the floods which
swept over it. The longitudinal trend of these hills is to be ascribed
to the direction of the current which caused the denudation, while their
level summits are due to the regularity of the stratification. They are
not all table-topped, however; among them are many of smaller size, in
which the sides have been gradually worn down, producing a gently
rounded surface. Of course, under the heavy tropical rains this
denudation is still going on, though in a greatly modified form.

I cannot leave this Serra without alluding to the great beauty and
extraordinary extent of the view to be obtained from it. Indeed, it was
here that for the first time the geography of the country presented
itself to my mind as a living reality, in all its completeness.
Insignificant as is its actual height, the Serra of Errere commands a
wider prospect than is to be had from many a more imposing mountain; for
the surrounding plain, covered with forests, and ploughed by countless
rivers, stretches away for hundreds of leagues in every direction,
without any object to obstruct the view. Standing on the brow of the
Serra, with the numerous lakes intersecting the low lands at its base,
you look across the Valley of the Amazons, as far as the eye can reach,
and through its midst you follow for miles on either side the broad
flood of the great river, carrying its yellow waters to the sea. As I
stood there, panoramas from the Swiss mountains came up to my memory,
and I fancied myself standing on the Alps, looking across the plain of
Switzerland, instead of the bed of the Amazons, the distant line of the
Santarem hills on the southern bank of the river, and lower than the
northern chain, representing the Jura range. As if to complete the
comparison, I found Alpine lichens growing among cactus and palms, and a
crust of Arctic cryptogamous growth covered rocks, between which sprang
tropical flowers. On the northern flank of this Serra I found the only
genuine erratic boulders I have seen in the whole length of the
Amazonian Valley, from Para to the frontier of Peru, though there are
many detached masses of rock, as, for instance, at Pedreira, near the
junction of the Rio Negro and Rio Branco, which might be mistaken for
them, but are due to the decomposition of the rocks in place. The
boulders of Errere are entirely distinct from the rock of the Serra, and
consist of masses of compact hornblende.

It would seem that these two ranges skirting a part of the northern and
southern banks of the Lower Amazons are not the only remnants of this
arenaceous formation in its primitive altitude. On the banks of the
Japura, in the Serra of Cupati, Major Coutinho has found the same beds
rising to the same height. It thus appears, by positive evidence, that
over an extent of a thousand miles these deposits had a very
considerable thickness in the present direction of the valley. How far
they extended in width has not been ascertained by direct observation,
for we have not seen how they sink away to the northward, and towards
the south the denudation has been so complete that, except in the very
low range of hills in the neighborhood of Santarem, they do not rise
above the plain. But the fact that this formation once had a thickness
of more than eight hundred feet within the limits where we have had an
opportunity of observing it, leaves no doubt that it must have extended
to the edge of the basin, filling it to the same height throughout its
whole extent. The thickness of the deposits gives a measure for the
colossal scale of the denudations by which this immense accumulation was
reduced to its present level. Here then is a system of high hills,
having the prominence of mountains in the landscape, produced by causes
to whose agency inequalities on the earth's surface of this magnitude
have never yet been ascribed. We may fairly call them denudation
mountains.

At this stage of the inquiry we have to account for two remarkable
phenomena. First, the filling of the Amazonian bottom with coarse
arenaceous materials and finely laminated clays, immediately followed by
sandstones rising to a height of more than eight hundred feet above the
sea; the basin meanwhile having no rocky barrier towards the ocean on
its eastern side. Second, the wearing away and reduction of these
formations to their present level, by a denudation, more extensive than
any thus far recorded in the annals of geology, which has given rise to
all the most prominent hills and mountain chains along the northern bank
of the river. Before seeking an explanation of these facts, let us look
at the third and uppermost deposit.

This deposit, essentially the same as the Rio drift, has been minutely
described in my former article; but in the north, it presents itself
under a somewhat different aspect. As in Rio, it is a clayey deposit,
containing more or less sand, and reddish in color, though varying from
deep ochre to a brownish tint. It is not so absolutely destitute of
stratification here as in its more southern range, though the traces of
stratification are rare, and, when they do occur, are faint and
indistinct. The materials are also more completely comminuted, and, as I
have said above, contain hardly any large masses, though quartz pebbles
are sometimes scattered throughout the deposit, and occasionally a thin
seam of pebbles, exactly as in the Rio drift, is seen resting between it
and the underlying sandstone. In some places this bed of pebbles even
intersects the mass of the clay, giving it in such instances an
unquestionably stratified character. There can be no question that this
more recent formation rests unconformably upon the sandstone beds
beneath it; for it fills all the inequalities of their denudated
surfaces, whether they be more or less limited furrows, or wide,
undulating depressions. It may be seen everywhere along the banks of the
river, above the stratified sandstone, sometimes with the river mud
accumulated against it; at the season of the _enchente_, or high water,
it is the only formation left exposed above the water level. Its
thickness is not great; it varies from twenty or thirty to fifty feet,
and may occasionally rise nearly to a hundred feet in height, though
this is rarely the case. It is evident that this formation also was once
continuous, stretching over the whole basin at one level. Though it is
now worn down in many places, and has wholly disappeared in others, its
connection may be readily traced; since it is everywhere visible, not
only on opposite banks of the Amazons, but also on those of all its
tributaries, as far as their shores have been examined. I have said that
it rests always above the sandstone beds. This is true, with one
exception. Wherever the sandstone deposits retain their original
thickness, as in the hills of Monte Alegre and Almeyrim, the red clay is
not found on their summits, but occurs only in their ravines and
hollows, or resting against their sides. This shows that it is not only
posterior to the sandstone, but was accumulated in a shallower basin,
and consequently never reached so high a level. The boulders of Errere
do not rest on the stratified sandstone of the Serra, but are sunk in
the unstratified mass of the clay. This should be remembered, as it will
presently be seen that their position associates them with a later
period than that of the mountain itself. The unconformability of the
ochraceous clay and the underlying sandstones might lead to the idea
that the two formations belong to distinct geological periods, and are
not due to the same agency, acting at successive times. One feature,
however, shows their close connection. The ochraceous clay exhibits a
remarkable identity of configuration with the underlying sandstones. An
extensive survey of the two, in their mutual relations, shows clearly
that they were both deposited by the same water-system within the same
basin, but at different levels. Here and there the clay formation has so
pale and grayish a tint, that it may be confounded with the mud deposits
of the river. These latter, however, never rise so high as the
ochraceous clay, but are everywhere confined within the limits of high
and low water. The islands also in the main course of the Amazons
consist invariably of river-mud, while those arising from the
intersection and cutting off of portions of the land by diverging
branches of the main stream always consist of the well-known sandstones,
capped by the ochre-colored clay.

It may truly be said that there does not exist on the surface of the
earth a formation known to geologists resembling that of the Amazons.
Its extent is stupendous; it stretches from the Atlantic shore, through
the whole width of Brazil, into Peru, to the very foot of the Andes.
Humboldt speaks of it "in the vast plains of the Amazons, in the eastern
boundary of Jaen de Bracamoros," and says, "This prodigious extension of
red sandstone in the low grounds stretching along the east of the Andes
is one of the most striking phenomena I observed during my examination
of rocks in the equinoctial regions."[A] When the great natural
philosopher wrote these lines, he had no idea how much these deposits
extended beyond the field of his observations. Indeed, they are not
limited to the main bed of the Amazons; they have been followed along
the banks of its tributaries to the south and north as far as these have
been ascended. They occur on the margins of the Huallaga and the
Ucayall, on those of the Ica, the Jutahy, the Jurua, the Japura, and the
Purus. On the banks of the Japura, where Major Coutinho has traced them,
they are found as far as the Cataract of Cupati. I have followed them
along the Rio Negro to its junction with the Rio Branco; and Humboldt
not only describes them from a higher point on this same river, but also
from the valley of the Orinoco. Finally, they may be tracked along the
banks of the Madeira, the Tapajos, the Xingu, and the Tocantins, as well
as on the shores of the Guatuma, the Trombetas, and other northern
affluents of the Amazons. The observations of Martius, those of Gardner,
and the recent survey above alluded to, made by my assistant, Mr. St.
John, of the valley of the Rio Guruguea and that of the Rio Paranahyba,
show that the great basin of Piauhy is also identical in its geological
structure with the lateral valleys of the Amazons. The same is true of
the large island of Marajo, lying at the mouth of the Amazons. And yet I
believe that even this does not cover the whole ground, and that some
future writer may say of my estimate, as I have said of Humboldt's, that
it falls short of the truth; for, if my generalizations are correct, the
same formation will be found extending over the whole basin of the
Paraguay and the Rio de la Plata, and along their tributaries, to the
very heart of the Andes.

Such are the facts. The question now arises, How were these vast
deposits formed? The easiest answer, and the one which most readily
suggests itself, is that of a submersion of the continent at successive
periods to allow the accumulation of these materials, and its subsequent
elevation. I reject this explanation for the simple reason that the
deposits show no sign whatever of a marine origin. No seashells nor
remains of any marine animal have as yet been found throughout their
whole extent, over a region several thousand miles in length and from
five to seven hundred miles in width. It is contrary to all our
knowledge of geological deposits to suppose that an ocean basin of this
size, which must have been submerged during an immensely long period in
order to accumulate formations of such a thickness, should not contain
numerous remains of the animals formerly inhabiting it.[B] The only
fossil remains of any kind truly belonging to it, which I have found in
the formation, are the leaves mentioned above, taken from the lower
clays on the banks of the Solimoens at Tomantins; and these show a
vegetation similar in general character to that which prevails there
to-day. Evidently, then, this basin was a fresh-water basin; these
deposits are fresh-water deposits. But as the Valley of the Amazons
exists to-day, it is widely open to the ocean on the east, with a gentle
slope from the Andes to the Atlantic, determining a powerful seaward
current. When these vast accumulations took place, the basin must have
been closed; otherwise the loose materials would constantly have been
carried down to the ocean.

It is my belief that all these deposits belong to the ice period in its
earlier or later phases, and to this cosmic winter, which, judging from
all the phenomena connected with it, may have lasted for thousands of
centuries, we must look for the key to the geological history of the
Amazonian Valley. I am aware that this suggestion will appear
extravagant. But is it, after all, so improbable that, when Central
Europe was covered with ice thousands of feet thick; when the glaciers
of Great Britain ploughed into the sea, and when those of the Swiss
mountains had ten times their present altitude; when every lake in
Northern Italy was filled with ice, and these frozen masses extended
even into Northern Africa; when a sheet of ice, reaching nearly to the
summit of Mount Washington in the White Mountains (that is, having a
thickness of nearly six thousand feet), moved over the continent of
North America,--is it so improbable that, in this epoch of universal
cold, the Valley of the Amazons also had its glacier poured down into it
from the accumulations of snow in the Cordilleras, and swollen
laterally by the tributary glaciers descending from the table-lands of
Guiana and Brazil? The movement of this immense glacier would be
eastward, and determined as well by the vast reservoirs of snow in the
Andes as by the direction of the valley itself. It must have ploughed
the valley bottom over and over again, grinding all the materials
beneath it into a fine powder or reducing them to small pebbles, and it
must have accumulated at its lower end a moraine of proportions as
gigantic as its own; thus building a colossal sea-wall across the mouth
of the valley. I shall be asked at once whether I have found here also
the glacial inscriptions,--the furrows, striae, and polished surfaces so
characteristic of the ground over which glaciers have travelled. I
answer, not a trace of them; for the simple reason that there is not a
natural rock surface to be found throughout the whole Amazonian Valley.
The rocks themselves are of so friable a nature, and the decomposition
caused by the warm torrential rains and by exposure to the burning sun
of the tropics so great and unceasing, that it is hopeless to look for
marks which in colder climates and on harder substances are preserved
through ages unchanged. With the exception of the rounded surfaces so
well known in Switzerland as the _roches moutonnees_ heretofore alluded
to, which may be seen in many localities, and the boulders of Errere,
the direct traces of glaciers as seen in other countries are wanting
here. I am, indeed, quite willing to admit that, from the nature of the
circumstances, I have not here the positive evidence which has guided me
in my previous glacial investigations. My conviction in this instance is
founded, first, on the materials in the Amazonian Valley, which
correspond exactly in their character to materials accumulated in
glacier bottoms; secondly, on the resemblance of the upper or third
Amazonian formation to the Rio drift,[C] of the glacial origin of which
there cannot, in my opinion, be any doubt; thirdly, on the fact that
this fresh-water basin must have been closed against the sea by some
powerful barrier, the removal of which would naturally give an outlet to
the waters, and cause the extraordinary denudations, the evidences of
which meet us everywhere throughout the valley.

On a smaller scale, phenomena of this kind have long been familiar to
us. In the present lakes of Northern Italy, in those of Switzerland,
Norway, and Sweden, as well as in those of New England, especially in
the State of Maine, the waters are held back in their basins by
moraines. In the ice period these depressions were filled with glaciers,
which, in the course of time, accumulated at their lower end a wall of
loose materials. These walls still remain, and serve as dams to prevent
the escape of the waters. But for their moraines, all these lakes would
be open valleys. In the Roads of Glen Roy, in Scotland, we have an
instance of a fresh-water lake, which has now wholly disappeared, formed
in the same manner, and reduced successively to lower and lower levels
by the breaking down or wearing away of the moraines which originally
prevented its waters from flowing out. Assuming then, that, under the
low temperature of the ice period, the climatic conditions necessary for
the formation of land-ice existed in the Valley of the Amazons, and that
it was actually filled with an immense glacier, it follows that, when
these fields of ice yielded to a gradual change of climate, and slowly
melted away, the whole basin, then closed against the sea by a huge
wall of _debris_, was transformed into a vast fresh-water lake. The
first effect of the thawing process must have been to separate the
glacier from its foundation, raising it from immediate contact with the
valley bottom, and thus giving room for the accumulation of a certain
amount of water beneath it; while the valley as a whole would still be
occupied by the glacier. In this shallow sheet of water under the ice,
and protected by it from any violent disturbance, those finer triturated
materials always found at a glacier bottom, and ground sometimes to
powder by its action, would be deposited, and gradually transformed from
an unstratified paste containing the finest sand and mud, together with
coarse pebbles and gravel, into a regularly stratified formation. In
this formation the coarse materials would of course fall to the bottom,
while the most minute would settle above them. It is at this time and
under such circumstances that I believe the first formation of the
Amazonian Valley, with the coarse, pebbly sand beneath, and the finely
laminated clays above, to have been accumulated.

I shall perhaps be reminded here of my fossil leaves, and asked how any
vegetation would be possible under such circumstances. But it must be
remembered, that, in considering all these periods, we must allow for
immense lapses of time and for very gradual changes; that the close of
this first period would be very different from its beginning; and that a
rich vegetation springs on the very borders of the snow and ice fields
in Switzerland. The fact that these were accumulated in a glacial basin
would, indeed, at once account for the traces of vegetable life, and for
the absence, or at least the great scarcity, of animal remains in these
deposits. For while fruits may ripen and flowers bloom on the very edge
of the glaciers, it is also well known that the fresh-water lakes formed
by the melting of the ice are singularly deficient in life. There are
indeed hardly any animals to be found in glacial lakes.

The second formation belongs to a later period, when, the whole body of
ice being more or less disintegrated, the basin contained a larger
quantity of water. Beside that arising from the melting of the ice, this
immense valley bottom must have received, then as now, all which was
condensed from the atmosphere above, and poured into it in the form of
rain or dew. Thus an amount of water equal to that now flowing in from
all the tributaries of the main stream must have been rushing towards
the axis of the valley, seeking its natural level, but spreading over a
more extensive surface than now, until, finally gathered up as separate
rivers, it flowed in distinct beds. In its general movement toward the
central and lower part of the valley, the broad stream would carry along
all the materials small enough to be so transported, as well as those so
minute as to remain suspended in the waters. It would gradually deposit
them in the valley bottom in horizontal beds, more or less regular, or
here and there, wherever eddies gave rise to more rapid and irregular
currents, characterized by torrential stratification. Thus has been
consolidated in the course of ages that continuous sand formation
spreading over the whole Amazonian basin, and attaining a thickness of
eight hundred feet.

While these accumulations were taking place within this basin, it must
not be forgotten that the sea was beating against its outer
walls,--against that gigantic moraine which I suppose to have closed it
at its eastern end. It would seem that, either from this cause, or
perhaps in consequence of some turbulent action from within, a break was
made in this defence, and the waters rushed violently out. It is very
possible that the waters, gradually swollen at the close of this period
by the further melting of the ice, by the additions poured in from
lateral tributaries, by the rains, and also by the filling of the basin
with loose materials, would overflow, and thus contribute to destroy
the moraine. However this may be, it follows from my premises that, in
the end, these waters obtained a sudden release, and poured seaward with
a violence which cut and denuded the deposits already formed, wearing
them down to a much lower level, and leaving only a few remnants
standing out in their original thickness, where the strata were solid
enough to resist the action of the currents. Such are the hills of Monte
Alegre, of Obydos, Almeyrim, and Cupati, as well as the lower ridges of
Santarem. This escape of the waters did not, however, entirely empty the
whole basin; for the period of denudation was again followed by one of
quiet accumulation, during which was deposited the ochraceous sandy clay
resting upon the denudated surfaces of the underlying sandstone. To this
period I refer the boulders of Errere, sunk as they are in the clay of
this final deposit. I suppose them to have been brought to their present
position by floating ice at the close of the glacial period, when
nothing remained of the ice-fields except such isolated
masses,--ice-rafts as it were; or perhaps by icebergs dropped into the
basin from glaciers still remaining in the Andes and on the edges of the
plateaus of Guiana and Brazil. From the general absence of
stratification in this clay formation, it would seem that the
comparatively shallow sheet of water in which it was deposited was very
tranquil. Indeed, after the waters had sunk much below the level which
they held during the deposition of the sandstone, and the currents which
gave rise to the denudation of the latter had ceased, the whole sheet of
water would naturally become much more placid. But the time came when
the water broke through its boundaries again, perhaps owing to the
further encroachment of the sea and consequent destruction of the
moraine. In this second drainage, however, the waters, carrying away a
considerable part of the new deposit, furrowing it to its very
foundation, and even cutting through it into the underlying sandstone,
were, in the end, reduced to something like their present level, and
confined within their present beds. This is shown by the fact that in
this ochre-colored clay, and penetrating to a greater or less depth the
sandstone below, are dug, not only the great longitudinal channel of the
Amazons itself, but also the lateral furrows through which its
tributaries reach the main stream, and the network of anastomosing
branches flowing between them; the whole forming the most extraordinary
river system in the world.

My assumption that the sea has produced very extensive changes in the
coast of Brazil--changes more than sufficient to account for the
disappearance of the glacial wall which I suppose to have closed the
Amazonian Valley in the ice period--is by no means hypothetical. This
action is still going on to a remarkable degree, and is even now rapidly
modifying the outline of the shore. When I first arrived at Para, I was
struck with the fact that the Amazons, the largest river in the world,
has no delta. All the other rivers which we call great, though some of
them are insignificant as compared with the Amazons,--the Mississippi,
the Nile, the Ganges, and the Danube,--deposit extensive deltas, and the
smaller rivers also, with few exceptions, are constantly building up the
land at their mouths by the materials they bring along with them. Even
the little river Kander, emptying into the Lake of Thun, is not without
its delta. Since my return from the Upper Amazons to Para, I have made
an examination of some of the harbor islands, and also of parts of the
coast, and have satisfied myself that, with the exception of a few
small, low islands, never rising above the sea-level, and composed of
alluvial deposit, they are portions of the mainland detached from it,
partly by the action of the river itself, and partly by the encroachment
of the ocean. In fact the sea is eating away the land much faster than
the river can build it up. The great island of Marajo was originally a
continuation of the Valley of the Amazons, and is identical with it in
every detail of its geological structure. My investigation of the island
itself, in connection with the coast and the river, leads me to suppose
that, having been at one time an integral part of the deposits described
above, at a later period it became an island in the bed of the Amazons,
which, dividing in two arms, encircled it completely, and then, joining
again to form a single stream, flowed onward to the sea-shore, which in
those days lay much farther to the eastward than it now does. I suppose
the position of the island of Marajo at that time to have corresponded
very nearly to the present position of the island of Tupinambaranas,
just at the junction of the Madeira with the Amazons. It is a question
among geographers whether the Tocantins is a branch of the Amazons, or
should be considered as forming an independent river system. It will be
seen that, if my view is correct, it must formerly have borne the same
relation to the Amazons that the Madeira River now does, joining it just
where Marajo divided the main stream, as the Madeira now joins it at the
head of the island of Tupinambaranas. If in countless centuries to come
the ocean should continue to eat its way into the Valley of the Amazons,
once more transforming the lower part of the basin into a gulf, as it
was during the cretaceous period, the time might arrive when
geographers, finding the Madeira emptying almost immediately into the
sea, would ask themselves whether it had ever been indeed a branch of
the Amazons, just as they now question whether the Tocantins is a
tributary of the main stream or an independent river. But to return to
Marajo, and to the facts actually in our possession.

The island is intersected, in its south-eastern end, by a considerable
river called the Igarape Grande. The cut made through the land by this
stream seems intended to serve as a geological section, so perfectly
does it display the three characteristic Amazonian formations above
described. At its mouth, near the town of Soure, and at Salvaterra, on
the opposite bank, may be seen, lowest, the well-stratified sandstone,
with the finely laminated clays resting upon it, overtopped by a crust;
then the cross-stratified, highly ferruginous sandstone, with quartz
pebbles here and there; and, above all, the well-known ochraceous,
unstratified sandy clay, spreading over the undulating surface of the
denudated sandstone, following all its inequalities, and filling all its
depressions and furrows. But while the Igarape Grande has dug its
channel down to the sea, cutting these formations, as I ascertained, to
a depth of twenty-five fathoms, it has thus opened the way for the
encroachments of the tides, and the ocean is now, in its turn, gaining
upon the land. Were there no other evidence of the action of the tides
in this locality, the steep cut of the Igarape Grande, contrasting with
the gentle slope of the banks near its mouth, wherever they have been,
modified by the invasion of the sea, would enable us to distinguish the
work of the river from that of the ocean, and to prove that the
denudation now going on is due in part to both. But besides this, I was
so fortunate as to discover here unmistakable and perfectly convincing
evidence of the onward movement of the sea. At the mouth of the Igarape
Grande, both at Soure and at Salvaterra, on the southern side of the
Igarape, is a submerged forest. Evidently this forest grew in one of
those marshy lands constantly inundated, for between the stumps is
accumulated the loose, felt-like peat characteristic of such grounds,
and containing about as much mud as vegetable matter. Such a marshy
forest, with the stumps of the trees still standing erect in the peat,
has been laid bare on both sides of the Igarape Grande by the
encroachments of the ocean. That this is the work of the sea is
undeniable, for all the little depressions and indentations of the peat
are filled with sea-sand, and a ridge of tidal sand divides it from the
forest still standing behind. Nor is this all. At Vigia, immediately
opposite to Soure, on the continental side of the Para River, just where
it meets the sea, we have the counterpart of this submerged forest.
Another peat-bog, with the stumps of innumerable trees standing in it,
and encroached upon in the same way by tidal sand, is exposed here also.
No doubt these forests were once all continuous, and stretched across
the whole basin of what is now called the Para River.

Since I have been pursuing this inquiry, I have gathered much
information to the same effect from persons living on the coast. It is
well remembered that, twenty years ago, there existed an island, more
than a mile in width, to the northeast of the entrance of the Bay of
Vigia, which has now entirely disappeared. Farther eastward, the Bay of
Braganza has doubled its width in the last twenty years, and on the
shore, within the bay, the sea has gained upon the land for a distance
of two hundred yards during a period of only ten years. The latter fact
is ascertained by the position of some houses, which were two hundred
yards farther from the sea ten years ago than they now are. From these
and the like reports, from my own observations on this part of the
Brazilian coast, from some investigations made by Major Coutinho at the
mouth of the Amazons, on its northern continental shore, near Macapa,
and from the reports of Mr. St. John respecting the formations in the
valley of the Paranahyba, it is my belief that the changes I have been
describing are but a small part of the destruction wrought by the sea on
the northeastern shore of this continent. I think it will be found, when
the coast has been fully surveyed, that a strip of land not less than a
hundred leagues in width, stretching from Cape St. Roque to the northern
extremity of South America, has been eaten away by the ocean. If this be
so, the Paranahyba and the rivers to the northwest of it, in the
province of Maranham, were formerly tributaries of the Amazons; and all
that we know thus far of their geological character goes to prove that
this was actually the case. Such an extensive oceanic denudation must
have carried away not only the gigantic glacial moraine here assumed to
have closed the mouth of the Amazonian basin, but the very ground on
which it stood.

During the last four or five years I have been engaged in a series of
investigations, in the United States, upon the subject of the
denudations connected with the close of the glacial period there, and
the encroachments of the ocean upon the drift deposits along the
Atlantic coast. Had these investigations been published in detail, with
the necessary maps, it would have been far easier for me to explain the
facts I have lately observed in the Amazonian Valley, to connect them
with facts of a like character on the continent of North America, and to
show how remarkably they correspond with facts accomplished during the
same period in other parts of the world. While the glacial epoch itself
has been very extensively studied in the last half-century, little
attention has been paid to the results connected with the breaking up of
the geological winter and the final disappearance of the ice. I believe
that the true explanation of the presence of a large part of the
superficial deposits lately ascribed to the agency of the sea, during
temporary subsidences of the land, will be found in the melting of the
ice-fields. To this cause I would refer all those deposits which I have
designated in former publications as remodelled drift. When the sheet of
ice, extending from the Arctic regions over a great part of North
America and coming down to the sea, slowly melted away, the waters were
not distributed over the face of the country as they now are. They
rested upon the bottom deposits of the ice-fields, upon the glacial
paste, consisting of clay, sand, pebbles, boulders, etc., underlying the
ice. This bottom deposit did not, of course, present an even surface,
but must have had extensive undulations and depressions. After the
waters had been drained off from the more elevated ridges, these
depressions would still remain full. In the lakes and pools thus formed,
stratified deposits would be accumulated, consisting of the most
minutely comminuted clay, deposited in thin laminated layers, or
sometimes in considerable masses, without any sign of stratification;
such differences in the formation being determined by the state of the
water, whether perfectly stagnant or more or less agitated. Of such pool
deposits overlying the drift there are many instances in the Northern
United States. By the overflowing of some of these lakes, and by the
emptying of the higher ones into those on a lower level, channels would
gradually be formed between the depressions. So began to be marked out
our independent river-systems,--the waters always seeking their natural
level, gradually widening and deepening the channels in which they
flowed, as they worked their way down to the sea. When they reached the
shore, there followed that antagonism between the rush of the rivers and
the action of the tides,--between continental outflows and oceanic
encroachments,--which still goes on, and has led to the formation of our
eastern rivers, with their wide, open estuaries, such as the James, the
Potomac, and the Delaware. All these estuaries are embanked by drift, as
are also, in their lower course, the rivers connected with them. Where
the country was low and flat, and the drift extended far into the ocean,
the encroachment of the sea gave rise, not only to our large estuaries,
but also to the sounds and deep bays forming the most prominent
indentations of the continental coast, such as the Bay of Fundy,
Massachusetts Bay, Long Island Sound, and others. The unmistakable
traces of glacial action upon all the islands along the coast of New
England, sometimes lying at a very considerable distance from the
mainland, give an approximate, though a minimum, measure of the former
extent of the glacial drift seaward, and the subsequent advance of the
ocean upon the land. Like those of the harbor of Para, all these islands
have the same geological structure as the continent, and were evidently
continuous with it at some former period. All the rocky islands along
the coast of Maine and Massachusetts exhibit the glacial traces wherever
their surfaces are exposed by the washing away of the drift; and where
the drift remains, its character shows that it was once continuous from
one island to another, and from all the islands to the mainland.

It is difficult to determine with precision the ancient limit of the
glacial drift, but I think it can be shown that it connected the shoals
of Newfoundland with the continent; that Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard,
and Long Island made part of the mainland; that, in like manner, Nova
Scotia, including Sable Island, was united to the southern shore of New
Brunswick and Maine, and that the same sheet of drift extended thence to
Cape Cod, and stretched southward as far as Cape Hatteras;--in short,
that the line of shallow soundings along the whole coast of the United
States marks the former extent of glacial drift. The ocean has gradually
eaten its way into this deposit, and given its present outlines to the
continent. These denudations of the sea no doubt began as soon as the
breaking up of the ice exposed the drift to its invasion; in other
words, at a time when colossal glaciers still poured forth their load of
ice into the Atlantic, and fleets of icebergs, far larger and more
numerous than those now floated off from the Arctic seas, were launched
from the northeastern shore of the United States. Many such masses must
have stranded along the shore, and have left various signs of their
presence. In fact, the glacial phenomena of the United States and
elsewhere are due to two distinct periods: the first of these was the
glacial epoch proper, when the ice was a solid sheet; while to the
second belongs the breaking up of this epoch, with the gradual
disintegration and dispersion of the ice. We talk of the theory of
glaciers and the theory of icebergs in reference to these phenomena, as
if they were exclusively due to one or the other, and whoever accepted
the former must reject the latter, and _vice versa_. When geologists
have combined these now discordant elements, and consider these two
periods as consecutive,--part of the phenomena being due to the
glaciers, part to the icebergs and to freshets consequent on their
breaking up,--they will find they have covered the whole ground, and
that the two theories are perfectly consistent with each other. I think
the present disputes upon this subject will end somewhat like those
which divided the Neptunic and Plutonic schools of geologists in the
early part of this century; the former of whom would have it that all
the rocks were due to the action of water, the latter that they were
wholly due to the action of fire. The problem was solved, and harmony
restored, when it was found that both elements had been equally at work
in forming the solid crust of the globe. To the stranded icebergs
alluded to above, I have no doubt, is to be referred the origin of the
many lakes without outlet existing all over the sandy tract along our
coast of which Cape Cod forms a part. Not only the formation of these
lakes, but also that of our salt marshes and cranberry-fields, I believe
to be connected with the waning of the ice period.

I hope at some future time to publish in detail, with the appropriate
maps and illustrations, my observations on our coast changes, and upon
other phenomena connected with the close of the glacial epoch in the
United States. It is reversing the natural order of things to give
results without the investigations which have led to them; and I should
not have introduced the subject here except to show that the fresh-water
denudations and the oceanic encroachments which have formed the
Amazonian Valley, with its river system, are not isolated facts, but
that the process has been the same in both continents. The extraordinary
continuity and uniformity of the Amazonian deposits are due to the
immense size of the basin enclosed, and the identity of the materials
contained in it.

A glance at any geological map of the world will show the reader that
the Valley of the Amazons, so far as any attempt is made to explain its
structure, is represented as containing isolated tracts of Devonian,
Triassic, Jurassic, cretaceous, tertiary, and alluvial deposits. As is
shown by the above sketch, this is wholly inaccurate; and whatever may
be thought of my interpretation of the actual phenomena, I trust that,
in presenting for the first time the formations of the Amazonian basin
in their natural connection and sequence, as consisting of three uniform
sets of comparatively recent deposits, extending throughout the whole
valley, the investigations here recorded have contributed something to
the results of modern geology.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Bohn's edition of Humboldt's Personal Narrative, p. 134. Humboldt
alludes to these formations repeatedly; it is true that he refers them
to the ancient conglomerates of the Devonian age, but his description
agrees so perfectly with what I have observed along the banks of the
Amazons, that there can be no doubt he speaks of the same thing. He
wrote at a time when many of the results of modern geology were unknown,
and his explanation of the phenomena was then perfectly natural. The
passage from which the few lines in the text are taken shows that these
deposits extend even to the Llanos.

[B] I am aware that Bates mentions having heard, that at Obydos
calcareous layers, thickly studded with marine shells, had been found
interstratified with the clay, but he did not himself examine the
strata. The Obydos shells are not marine, but are fresh-water Unios,
greatly resembling Aviculas, Solens, and Arcas. Such would-be marine
fossils have been brought to me from the shore opposite to Obydos, near
Santarem, and I have readily recognised them for what they truly are,
fresh-water shells of the family of Naiades. I have myself collected
specimens of these shells in the clay beds along the banks of the
Solimoens, near Teffe, and might have mistaken them for fossils of that
formation had I not known how Naiades burrow in the mud. Their
resemblance to the marine genera mentioned above is very remarkable, and
the mistake as to their true zoological character is as natural as that
by which earlier ichthyologists, and even travellers of very recent
date, have confounded some fresh-water fishes from the Upper Amazons of
the genus Pterophyllum (Heckel) with the marine genus Platax.

[C] As I have stated in the beginning, I am satisfied that the
unstratified clay deposit of Rio and its vicinity is genuine glacial
drift, resulting from the grinding of the loose materials interposed
between the glacier and the solid rock in place, and retaining to this
day the position in which it was left by the ice. Like all such
accumulations, it is totally free from stratification. If this be so, it
is evident, on comparing the two formations, that the ochraceous sandy
clay of the Valley of the Amazons has been deposited under different
circumstances; that, while it owes its resemblance to the Rio drift to
the fact that its materials were originally ground by glaciers in the
upper part of the valley, these materials have subsequently been spread
throughout the whole basin and actually deposited under the agency of
water.




A MANIAC'S CONFESSION.


I am a maniac. I have for some years been the victim of a peculiar
insanity, which has greatly distressed several of my friends and
relatives. They generally soften it in their talk by the name
_mono_mania; but they do not hesitate to aver, when speaking their
minds, that it has in truth infected my whole soul, and made me
incapable of doing or thinking anything useful or rational. This sad
delusion, which they endeavor to remove by serious advice, by playful
banter, or by seeming to take an interest in my folly for a moment, is
encountered with great acrimony by less gentle friends. They who are not
bound to me by blood or intimacy--and some who are--deride, insult, and
revile me in every way for my subjection to a mental aberration which is
rapidly consuming a pretty property, more than average talents, and
unrivalled opportunities.

Of course, like all madmen, I think just the reverse. When the fit is on
me, I assert that this fever--this madness--far from being the bane of
my life, is a blessing to it; that I am habitually devoting money, time,
and wits to an object at once beautiful and elevating; that I have found
consolation in its visions for many sufferings, which all the amusements
offered me by my revilers are utterly inadequate to touch. I declare
that I have found a better investment for my money than all the West
Virginia coal companies that ever sunk oil-wells, and am making more
useful acquaintances than if I danced every German during the season. I
have not been shut up yet, for my friends know that, if they attempt any
such thing, the Finance Committee on the Harvard Memorial and Alumni
Hall are in possession of a bond conveying all my money to them; so I am
still at large, scolded by my brother Henry, laughed at by my sister
Bathsheba, the aversion of Beacon Street, and the scorn of Winthrop
Square.

The other day, I took a little journey to Europe, with the view of
feeding my madness on that whereby it grows. My friends did not choose
to stop me, for they thought the charms of foreign travel might win me
from my waywardness. To be sure, when they found, on my return, that I
had never left England, they were convinced, if never before, that I was
hopelessly insane; for what American, they very sanely said, "would stay
in that dull, dingy island, among those stupid, cowardly bullies, when
he might live in that lovely Paris, the most interesting and amusing
city in the world, unless he were incomprehensibly mad." And, in truth,
I begin to think I must be mad, when I find myself, like the man shut up
with eleven obstinate jurymen, alone in thinking England a gay,
beautiful, happy country, teeming with every gratification of art or
nature, and inhabited by a manly, generous, and intelligent race; and
that life in Paris, as Americans live it, is a senseless rush after
excitement, where comfort is abandoned for unreal luxury, and society
for vicious boon-companionship. Still I am very willing to admit that my
special mania can be very capitally gratified in Paris, and I am
meditating a little trip there for the purpose.

On my return from England, I was observed to be in great distress about
a certain box that I missed at Liverpool, looked for at Halifax, and all
but lost at East Boston; and when it was found and opened, it only
contained two suits of clothes, when, as Henry said, "I might have
brought forty, the only thing they did have decent in England," and all
the rest--mad, mad! I beg the readers of the Atlantic to listen to my
humble confession of madness, as it culminated in this box.

It is this. The most valuable property a man can possibly have is books;
if he has a hundred or a thousand dollars to spare, he had better at
once put it into books than into any "paying investments," or any
horses, clothes, pictures, or opera-tickets. A life passed among books,
thinking, talking, living only for books, is the most amusing and
improving life; and to make this possible, the acquisition of a library
should be the first object of any one who makes any claim to the
possession of luxuries. (My madness only allows me to make one
exception,--I do acknowledge the solemn duty of laying in a stock of old
Madeira.) But so far I have many fellow-maniacs. The special reason why
I ought always to stop the Lowell cars at Somerville is, that I consider
the reading of books only half the battle. I must have them in choice
bindings, in rare imprints, in original editions, and in the most select
forms. I must have several copies of a book I have read forty times, as
long as there is anything about each copy that makes it peculiar, _sui
generis_. I must own the first edition of Paradise Lost, because it is
the first, and in ten books; the second, because it is the first in
twelve; then Newton's, then Todd's, then Mitford's, and so on, till my
catalogue of Miltons gets to equal Jeames de la Pluche's portraits of
the "Dook." "And when," as Henry indignantly says, "he could read Milton
all he wanted to, more than I should ever want to, notes and all, in
Little and Brown's edition that father gave him, he must go spending
money on a parcel of old truck printed a thousand years ago." Mad, quite
mad.

Now, to finish the melancholy picture, I am classic mad. I prefer the
ancient authors, decidedly, to the moderns. I love them as I never can
the moderns; they are my most intimate friends, my heart's own darlings.
And how I love to lavish money on them, to see them adorned in every
way! How I love to heap them up, Aldines, and Elzevirs, and
Baskervilles, and Biponts, in all their grace and majesty. This was what
filled that London box. This was all I had to show for twenty-five or
thirty guineas of good money; a parcel of trumpery old Greek and Latin
books I had by dozens already! Mad, mad.

Will you come in and see them, ladies and gentlemen? Here they are, all
ranged out on my table, large and small, clean and dirty. What have we
first?

A goodly fat quarto in white vellum, "Plinii Panegyricus, cum notis
Schwarzii, Norimbergae, 1733." A fine, clean, fresh copy,--one of those
brave old Teutonic classics of the last century, less exquisitely
printed than the Elzevirs, less learnedly critical than the later
Germans, but perfectly trustworthy and satisfactory, and attracting
every one's eye on a library shelf, by the rich sturdiness of their
creamy binding, that smacks of the true Dutch and German burgher wealth.
The model of them all is Oudendorp's Caesar. But there is nothing very
great about Pliny's Panegyric, and a man must be a very queer
bibliomaniac who would buy up all the vellum classics of the last
century he saw. Look inside the cover; read under the book-plate the
engraved name, "Edward Gibbon, Esq." What will you, my sanest friend,
not give for a book that belonged to the author of the "Decline and
Fall"?

The next is also a large quarto, but of a very different character. It
is the Baskerville impression of the elegiac poets,--Catullus, Tibullus,
and Propertius: Birmingham, 1772. No books are more delightful to sight
and touch than the Baskerville classics. This Catullus of mine is
printed on the softest and glossiest post paper, with a mighty margin of
two inches and a half at the side, and rich broad letters,--the standard
_n_ is a tenth of an inch wide,--of a glorious blackness in spite of
their ninety-two years of age. The classics of all languages have never
been more fitly printed than by Baskerville; and the present book may
serve as an admirable lesson to those who think a large-paper book means
an ordinary octavo page printed in the middle of a quarto leaf,--for
instance; Irving's Washington. My Catullus is bound in glossy calf,
with a richly gilt back, and bears within the inscription, "From H. S.
C. | to her valued friend | Doctor Southey | Feb'y y'e 24th, 1813,"
in a true English lady's hand. This cannot be the poet Southey, who was
not made LL. D. till 1821; but it may be his brother, Henry Herbert
Southey, M. D.

Next comes a very neat and compact little Seneca, in four 18mo volumes,
bound in rich old Russia, and bearing the esteemed imprint, "Amstelodami
apud Ludovicum et Danielem Elzevirios, M.D.CLVIII." As the Baskerville
classics are the noblest for the library table, so the Elzevirs are the
neatest and prettiest for the pocket or the lecture-room. And to their
great beauty of mechanical execution is generally added a scrupulous
textual accuracy, which the great Birmingham printer did not boast. This
edition of Seneca, for instance, is that of Gronovius. His dedicatory
epistle, and the title-pages of Vols. II., III. and IV., are all dated
1658, but the general title-page in Vol. I. is 1659, as if, like White's
Shakespeare, the first volume was the last published. Contrasting a
_bijou_ edition with a magnificent one, it may be noted that in the
Elzevir the four words and two stops, "Moriar: die ergo verum," occupy
just an inch, exactly the space of the one word "compositis" in the
Baskerville; but the printing of each is in its way exquisite.

Just about a century after the Elzevirs, and contemporary with
Baskerville, an English publisher of the name of Sandby, who appears to
have been, as we should say, the University printer and bookseller at
Cambridge, projected a series of classics, which are highly prized on
large paper and not despised on small. I possess two of the latter, a
Terence and a Juvenal; the second, curiously enough, lettered
"Juvenal_u_s," a regular binder's blunder. They are called pocket
editions, but are much larger than the Elzevirs, and, though very
pretty, just miss that peculiar beauty and finish which have made the
former the delight of all scholars. There is a carelessness
somewhere--it is hard to say where--about the printing, which prevents
their being perfect; but a "Sandby" is a very nice thing.

My next "wanity" is a Virgil,--Justice's Virgil; a most elaborate and
elegant edition, in five octavo volumes, published in the middle of the
last century. It is noted, first, for the great richness and beauty of
its engravings from ancient gems, coins, and drawings, which form an
unrivalled body of illustration to the text. But, secondly, it will be
seen, on inspection, that the whole book is one vast engraving, every
line, word, and letter being cut on a metallic plate. Consequently, only
every other page is printed on. The same idea was still more perfectly
carried out by Pine, a few years later, who executed all Horace in this
way, but only lived to complete one volume of Virgil, choicer even than
Justice's. It is well bound, in perfect order, and ranks with the
choicest of ornamental classics.

Side by side with this Virgil is another, the rare Elzevir Virgil, and a
gem, if ever there was one. It is the corrected text of Heinsius, and
thus has a fair claim to rank as the earliest of the modern critical
editions of Maro. The elegance of this little book in size and shape,
the clearness and beauty of the type, and the truly classical taste and
finish of the whole design, can never be surpassed in Virgilian
bibliography, unless by Didot's matchless little copies. Elzevir Virgils
are common enough; but mine is, as I have said, the rare Elzevir, known
by the pages introductory to the Eclogues and AEneid being printed in
rubric, while the ordinary Elzevirs have them in black. It dates
1637,--the year when John Harvard left his money to the College at
Newtowne, and the first printing-press in the United States was set up
hard by.

The books, then, that I have described so far all date within the two
hundred and thirty years of our collegiate history. But I have behind
three of an earlier--a much earlier date; books which John Cotton and
Charles Chauncy might have gazed upon as old in Emmanuel College
Library.

First, I show you a pair of Aldines, and, what is better, a pair
_editionum principum_,--the first Sophocles and the first Thucydides.
Both have the proper attestation at the end that they come from the Aldi
in Venice in the year 1502,--the Thucydides in May, and the Sophocles in
August; hence the former has not the Aldine anchor at the extreme end.
Both are in exquisitely clean condition; but the Sophocles, though
taller than other known copies of the same edition, has suffered from
the knife of a modern binder, who otherwise has done his work with the
greatest elegance and judgment. The Thucydides has a grand page, over
twelve inches by eight; the Sophocles is about seven by four. The type
of both is small, and, though distinct, especially the Thucydides, not
at all what we should call elegant. In fact, elegant Greek type is a
very late invention. There is, I believe, no claim to textual criticism
in these early Aldines; the publishers printed from such manuscripts as
they could get. The Thucydides has a long dedicatory address by Aldus to
a Roman patrician; the Sophocles has no such introduction. But it is, at
any rate, most curious to consider that these two writers, who stand at
the very head of Greek, or at least Attic, prose and verse, both for
matter and style, should not have found a printer till the fifteenth
century was long past, and then in a style which, for the Sophocles, can
only be called neat. The Thucydides is handsome, but far inferior to the
glory of the _princeps_ Homer. And to own them--for a maniac--O, it is
glorious!

Last comes my special treasure,--my fifteener,--my book as old as
America,--my darling copy of my darling author. Here, at the culmination
of my madness, my friends, especially my brother Henry, are all ready to
say at once what author I mean. For it has been my special mania for
twenty years--thereby causing the deepest distress to nearly all my
friends, even those who have been thought fellow-lunatics, except
one,[D] who is for me about the only sane man alive--to prefer VIRGIL to
all authors, living or dead, and to seek to accumulate as many different
editions and copies of him as possible. I have in these pages chronicled
two. My library holds twelve more, besides two translations, and I
consider myself very short; for to my mind no breadth of paper, no
weight of binding, no brilliancy of print, no delicacy of engraving, no
elaboration of learning, can ever do honor enough to the last and best
of the ancients, who was all but the first of the Christians,--who would
have been, if his frame had not broken down under a genius too mighty
and a soul too sweet for earth. (Mad, you see, beyond all question.
Virgil is allowed to be a servile copyist, far inferior to Lucretius.
Compare Lucr. V. 750 with Georg. II. 478, and Heyne's note.) This Virgil
of mine bears the imprint of Antony Koburger, Nuremberg, 1492. It is in
the original binding of very solid boards overlaid with stamped vellum,
and is still clasped with the original skin and metal. It is a small
folio, on very coarse paper, and the only one of my rare classics not in
the cleanest condition. Its stains appear to be caused by its use in a
school; for it is covered with notes, in German current hand, very
antiquated, and very elementary in their scholarship. It has all the
poetry ascribed to Virgil, and the Commentaries of Servius and Landini,
which are so voluminous that the page looks like a ha'p'orth of sack to
an intolerable deal of very dry bread. It is very rare, being unknown to
the great Dibdin, and was snapped up by me for three guineas out of a
London bookseller's catalogue. A Virgil printed by Koburger in the year
America was discovered, original binding and clasps, not in Dibdin, for
three guineas! Hurrah! It excites my madness so that I must rush
straight to Piper's and buy right and left. Kind friends, come and take
me away ere I am reduced to beggary.

FOOTNOTES:

[D] F. W. H. M., you know I mean you.




THE GREAT DOCTOR.

A STORY IN TWO PARTS.


II.

Five or six years of the life of our hero we must now pass over in
silence, saying of them, simply, that Fancy had not cheated much in her
promises concerning them. The first rude cabin had given place to a
whitewashed cottage; the chimney-corner was bright and warm; the
easy-chair was in it, and the Widow Walker often sat there with her
grandson on her knee, getting much comfort from the reflection that he
looked just as her own Johnny did when he was a baby!

The garden smiled at the doorside, and the village had sprung up just as
Fancy promised; and Hobert and Jenny walked to church of a Sunday, and
after service shook hands with their neighbors,--for everybody delighted
to take their strong, willing hands, and look into their honest,
cheerful faces,--they were amongst the first settlers of the place, and
held an honored position in society. Jenny was grown a little more
stout, and her cheek a little more ruddy, than it used to be; but the
new country seemed not so well suited to Hobert, and the well-wishing
neighbor often said when he met him, "You mustn't be too ambitious, and
overdo! Your shoulders ain't so straight as they was when you come here!
Be careful in time; nothing like that, Walker, nothing like that." And
Hobert laughed at these suggestions, saying he was as strong as the rest
of them; and that, though his cheek was pale, and his chest hollow, he
was a better man than he seemed.

The summer had been one of the wildest luxuriance ever known in the
valley of the Wabash; for it was in that beautiful valley that our
friend Hobert had settled. The woods cast their leaves early, and the
drifts lay rotting knee-deep in places. Then came the long, hot, soaking
rains, with hotter sunshine between. Chills and fever prevailed, and
half the people of the neighborhood were shivering and burning at once.
It was a healthy region, everybody said, but the weather had been
unusually trying; as soon as the frost came, the ague would vanish; the
water was the best in the world, to be sure, and the air the purest.

Hobert was ploughing a piece of low ground for wheat, cutting a black
snake in two now and then, and his furrow behind him fast filling with
water that looked almost as black as the soil. Often he stopped to
frighten from the quivering flank of the brown mare before him the
voracious horse-flies, colored like the scum of the stagnant pools, and
clinging and sucking like leeches. She was his favorite, the pride of
his farm,--for had she not, years before, brought Jenny on her faithful
shoulder to the new, happy home? Many a fond caress her neck had had
from his arm; and the fine bridle with the silver bit, hanging on the
wall at home, would not have been afforded for any other creature in the
world. Hobert often said he would never sell her as long as he lived;
and in the seasons of hard work he favored her more than he did himself.
She had been named Fleetfoot, in honor of her successful achievement
when her master had intrusted to her carrying the treasure of his life;
but that name proving too formal, she was usually called Fleety. She
would put down her forehead to the white hands of little Jenny, four
years old and upward now, and tread so slow and so carefully when she
had her on her back! Even the white dress of Johnny Hobert had swept
down her silken side more than once, while his dimpled hands clutched
her mane, and his rosy feet paddled against her. He was going to be her
master after a while, and take care of her in her old age, when the time
of her rest was come; he knew her name as well as he knew his own, and
went wild with delight when he saw her taking clover from the tiny hand
of his sister or drinking water from the bucket at the well.

"She grows handsomer every year," Hobert often said; "and with a little
training I would not be afraid to match her against the speediest racer
they can bring." And this remark was always intended as in some sort a
compliment to Jenny, and was always so received by her.

On this special day he had stopped oftener in the furrow than common;
and as often as he stopped Fleety twisted round her neck, bent her soft
eyes upon him, and twitched her little ears as though she would say, "Is
not all right, my master?" And then he would walk round to her head, and
pass his hand along her throat and through her foretop, calling her by
her pet name, and pulling for her handfuls of fresh grass, and while she
ate it resting himself against her, and feeling in her nearness almost a
sense of human protection. His feet seemed to drag under him, and there
was a dull aching in all his limbs; the world appeared to be receding
from him, and at times he could hardly tell whether he stood upon solid
ground. Then he accused himself of being lazy and good for nothing, and
with fictitious energy took up the reins and started the plough.

He looked at the sun again and again. He was not used to leaving off
work while the sun shone, and the clear waters of the Wabash held as yet
no faintest evening flush. There were yet two good hours of working time
before him, when the quick shooting of a pain, like the running of a
knife through his heart, caused him to stagger in the furrow. Fleety
stopped of her own accord, and looked pityingly back. He sat down beside
the plough to gather up his courage a little. A strange sensation that
he could not explain had taken possession of him, a feeling as if the
hope of his life was cut off. The pain was gone, but the feeling of
helpless surrender remained. He opened his shirt and passed his hand
along his breast. He could feel nothing,--could see nothing; but he had,
for all that, a clearly defined consciousness as of some deadly thing
hold of him that he would fain be rid of.

He had chanced to stop his plough under an elm-tree, and, looking up, he
perceived that from the fork upward one half of it was dead; mistletoe
had sucked the life out of it, and lower and lower to the main body,
deeper and deeper to the vital heart of it, the sap was being drawn
away. An irresistible impulse impelled him to take the jack-knife from
his pocket, and as far as he could reach cut away this alien and deadly
growth. The sympathy into which he was come with the dying tree was
positively painful to him, and yet he was withheld from moving on by a
sort of fascination,--_he_ was that tree, and the mistletoe was rooted
in his bosom!

The last yellow leaves fluttered down and lodged on his head and
shoulders and in his bosom,--he did not lift his hand to brush them
away; the blue lizard slid across his bare ankle and silently vanished
out of sight, but he did not move a muscle. The brown mare bent her side
round like a bow, and stretched her slender neck out more and more, and
at last her nose touched his cheek, and then he roused himself and shook
the dead leaves from his head and shoulders, and stood up. "Come,
Fleety," he said, "we won't leave the plough in the middle of the
furrow." She did not move. "Come, come!" he repeated, "it seems like a
bad sign to stop here";--and then he put his hand suddenly to his heart,
and an involuntary shudder passed over him. Fleety had not unbent her
side, and her dumb, beseeching eyes were still upon him. He looked at
the sun, low, but still shining out bright, and almost as hot as ever;
he looked at his shadow stretching so far over the rough, weedy ground,
and it appeared to him strange and fantastic. Then he loosed the traces,
and, winding up the long rein, hung it over the harness; the plough
dropped aslant, and Fleety turned herself about and walked slowly
homeward,--her master following, his head down and his hands locked
together behind him.

The chimney was sending up its hospitable smoke, and Jenny was at the
well with the teakettle in her hand when he came into the dooryard.

"What in the world is going to happen?" she exclaimed, cheerfully. "I
never knew you to leave work before while the sun shone. I am glad you
have, for once. But what is the matter?"

He had come nearer now, and she saw that something of light and hope had
gone out of his face. And then Hobert made twenty excuses,--there wasn't
anything the matter, he said, but the plough was dull, and the ground
wet and heavy, and full of green roots; besides, the flies were bad, and
the mare tired.

"But you look so worn out, I am afraid you are sick, yourself!"
interposed the good wife; and she went close to him, and pushed the
hair, growing thinner now, away from his forehead, and looked anxiously
in his face,--so anxiously, so tenderly, that he felt constrained to
relieve her fears, even at some expense of the truth.

"Not to look well in your eyes is bad enough," he answered, with forced
cheerfulness, "but I feel all right; never better, never better, Jenny!"
And stooping to his little daughter, who was holding his knees, he
caught her up, and tossed her high in the air, but put her down at once,
seeming almost to let her fall out of his hands, and, catching for
breath, leaned against the well-curb.

"What is it, Hobert? what is it?" and Jenny had her arm about him, and
was drawing him toward the house.

"Nothing, nothing,--a touch of rheumatism, I guess,--no, no! I must take
care of the mare first." And as she drank the water from the full bucket
he held poised on the curb for her, he thought of the elm-tree in the
field he had left, of the mistletoe sucking the life out of it, and of
the unfinished furrow. "Never mind, Fleety," he said, as he led her away
to the stable, "we'll be up betimes to-morrow, and make amends, won't
we?"

"I believe, mother, I'll put on the new teacups!" Jenny said, as she set
a chair before the cupboard, and climbed on it so as to reach the upper
shelf. She had already spread the best table-cloth.

"Why, what for?" asked the provident mother, looking up from the sock
she was knitting.

"O, I don't know; I want to make things look nice, that's all."

But she did know, though the feeling was only half defined. It seemed to
her as if Hobert were some visitor coming,--not her husband. A shadowy
feeling of insecurity had touched her; the commonness of custom was
gone, and she looked from the window often, as the preparation for
supper went on, with all the sweetness of solicitude with which she used
to watch for his coming from under the grape-vines. Little Jenny was
ready with the towel when he came with his face dripping, and the
easy-chair was set by the door that looked out on the garden. "I don't
want it," the good grandmother said, as he hesitated; "I have been
sitting in it all day, and am tired of it!"

And as he sat there with his boy on his knee, and his little girl, who
had climbed up behind him, combing his hair with her slender white
fingers,--his own fields before him, and his busy wife making music
about the house with her cheerful, hopeful talk,--he looked like a man
to be envied; and so just then he was.

The next morning he did not fulfil his promise to himself by rising
early; he had been restless and feverish all night, and now was chilly.
If he lay till breakfast was ready, he would feel better, Jenny said;
she could milk, to be sure, and do all the rest of the work, and so he
was persuaded. But when the breakfast was ready the chilliness had
become a downright chill, so that the blankets that were over him shook
like leaves in a strong wind.

Jenny had a little money of her own hidden away in the bottom of the new
cream-pitcher. She had saved it, unknown to Hobert, from the sale of
eggs and other trifles, and had meant to surprise him by appearing in a
new dress some morning when the church-bell rang; but now she turned the
silver into her hand and counted it, thinking what nice warm flannel it
would buy to make shirts for Hobert. Of course he had them, and Jenny
had not made any sacrifice that she knew of,--indeed, that is a word of
which love knows not the meaning.

"We will have him up in a day or two," the women said, one to the other,
as they busied themselves about the house, or sat at the bedside, doing
those things that only the blessed hands of women can do, making those
plans that only the loving hearts of women can make. But the day or two
went by, and they didn't have Hobert up. Then they said to one another,
"We must set to work in earnest; we have really done nothing for him as
yet." And they plied their skill of nursing with new hope and new
energy. Every morning he told them he was better, but in the afternoon
it happened that he didn't feel quite like stirring about; he was still
better, but he had a little headache, and was afraid of bringing on a
chill.

"To be sure! you need rest and quiet; you have been working too hard,
and it's only a wonder you didn't give out sooner!" So the two women
said to him; and then they told him he looked better than he did
yesterday, and, with much tender little caressing of neck and arms and
hands, assured him that his flesh felt as healthy and nice as could be.
Nevertheless, his eyes settled deeper and deeper, and gathered more and
more of a leaden color about them; his skin grew yellow, and fell into
wrinkles that were almost rigid, and that beseeching, yearning
expression, made up of confidence in you, and terror of some nameless
thing,--that look, as of a soul calling and crying to you, which follows
you when you go farther than common from a sick-pillow,--all that
terrible appealing was in his face; and often Jenny paused with her eyes
away from him, when she saw that look,--paused, and steadied up her
heart, before she could turn back and meet him with a smile.

And friendly neighbors came in of an evening, and told of the sick wife
or boy at home; of the mildewed crop, and the lamed horse; of the
brackish well, and of the clock bought from the pedler that wouldn't go,
and wouldn't strike when it did go;--dwelling, in short, on all the
darker incidents and accidents of life, and thus establishing a nearness
and equality of relation to the sick man, that somehow soothed and
cheered him. At these times he would be propped up in bed, and listen
with sad satisfaction, sometimes himself entering with a sort of
melancholy animation into the subject.

He would not as yet accept any offers of assistance. The wood-pile was
getting low, certainly, and the plough still lying slantwise in the
furrow; the corn-crop was to be gathered, and the potatoes to be got out
of the ground,--but there was time enough yet! He didn't mean to indulge
his laziness much longer,--not he!

And then the neighbor who had offered to serve him would laugh, and
answer that he had not been altogether disinterested: he had only
proposed to _lend_ a helping hand, expecting to need the like himself
some day. "Trouble comes to us all, Mr. Walker, and we don't know whose
turn it will be next. I want to take out a little insurance,--that's
all!"

"Well, another day, if I don't get better!"

And the long hot rains were over at last; the clouds drew themselves
off, and the sharp frosts, of a morning, were glistening far and near;
the pumpkin-vines lay black along the ground, and the ungathered ears of
corn hung black on the stalk.

Hobert was no better. But still the two women told each other they
didn't think he was any worse. His disease was only an ague, common to
the time of year and to the new country. It had come on so late it was
not likely now that he would get the better of it before spring; making
some little sacrifices for the present, they must all be patient and
wait; and the nursing went on, till every device of nursing was
exhausted, and one remedy after another was tried, and one after another
utterly failed, and the fond hearts almost gave out. But there was the
winter coming on, cold and long, and there was little Hobert, only
beginning to stand alone, and prattling Jenny, with the toes coming
through her shoes, and her shoulder showing flat and thin above her
summer dress. Ah! there could be no giving out; the mother's petticoat
must be turned into aprons for the pinched shoulders, and the knit-wool
stockings must make amends for the worn-out shoes. So they worked, and
work was their greatest blessing. A good many things were done without
consulting Hobert at all, and he was led to believe that all went easily
and comfortably; the neighbors, from time to time, lent the helping
hand, without so much as asking leave; and by these means there were a
few potatoes in the cellar, a little corn in the barn, and a load of
wood under the snow at the door.

The table was not spread in the sickroom any more, as it had been for a
while. They had thought it would amuse Hobert to see the little
household ceremonies going on; but now they said it was better to avoid
all unnecessary stir. Perhaps they thought it better that he should not
see their scantier fare. Still they came into his presence very
cheerfully, never hinting of hardship, never breathing the apprehension
that began to trouble their hearts.

It was during these long winter evenings, when the neighbors sat by the
fire and did what they could to cheer the sick man and the sad women,
that the wonderful merits of the great Doctor Killmany began to be
frequently discussed. Marvellous stories were told of his almost
superhuman skill. He had brought back from the very gate of death scores
of men and women who had been given up to die by their physicians,--so
it was said; and special instances of cures were related that were
certainly calculated to inspire hope and confidence. None of these good
people could of their own knowledge attest these wonderful cures; but
there were many circumstances that added weight to the force of the
general rumor.

Dr. Killmany lived a great way off, and he charged a great price. He
would not look at a man for less than a hundred dollars, so report said,
and that was much in his favor. He had a very short way with
patients,--asked no questions, and never listened to explanations,--but
could tie down a man and take off his leg or arm, as the case might be,
in an incredibly short space of time, paying as little heed to the cries
and groans as to the buzzing of the flies. If anything further had been
needed to establish his fame, it would have been found in the fact that
he was very rich, wearing diamonds in his shirt-bosom, driving fine
horses, and being, in fact, surrounded with all the luxuries that money
can procure. Of course, he was a great doctor. How could it be
otherwise? And it was enough to know that a Mr. A had seen a Mr. B who
knew a Mr. C whose wife's mother was cured by him!

At first these things were talked of in hearing of the sick man; then
there began to be whispers about the fire as to the possibility of
persuading him to sell all that he had and go to the great Doctor; for
it was now pretty generally felt that the ague was only the
accompaniment of a more terrible disease.

Then at last it was suggested, as a wild pleasantry, by some daring
visitor, "Suppose, Hobert, we should send you off one of these days,
and have you back after a few weeks, sound and vigorous as a young colt!
What should you say to that, my boy?"

To the surprise of everybody, Hobert replied that he only wished it were
possible.

"Possible! Why, of course it's possible! Where there's a will, you
know!" And then it began to be talked of less as an insane dream.

One morning, as Jenny came into the sick man's room, she found him
sitting up in bed with his shirt open and his hand on his breast.

"What is it, Hobert?" she said; for there was a look in his eyes that
made her tremble.

"I don't know, Jenny; but whatever it is, it will be my death," he
answered, and, falling upon her shoulder,--for she had come close to him
and had her arm about his neck,--he sobbed like a child.

The little hand was slipped under his, but Jenny said she could feel
nothing; and I think she will be forgiven for that falsehood. He was
sick, she said, worn out, and it was no wonder that strange fancies
should take possession of him. She had neglected him too much; but now,
though everything should go to pieces, he should have her first care,
and her last care, and all her care; he should not be left alone any
more to conjure up horrors; and when he said he was weak and foolish and
ashamed of his tears, she pacified him with petting and with praises. He
was everything that was right, everything that was strong and manly. A
little more patience, and then it would be spring, and the sunshine
would make him well. She put the hair away from his forehead, and told
him how fair in the face he was grown; and then she shoved his sleeve to
his elbow, and told him that his arms were almost as plump as they ever
were; and so he was comforted, cheered even, and they talked over the
plans and prospects of years to come. At last he fell asleep with a
bright smile of hope in his face, and Jenny stooped softly and kissed
him, and, stealing away on tiptoe, hid herself from her good old mother
and from the eyes of her children, and wept long and bitterly.

And the spring came, and Hobert crept out into the sunshine; but his
cheek was pale, and his chest hollow, and there was more than the old
listlessness upon him. As a tree that is dying will sometimes put forth
sickly leaves and blossoms, and still be dying all the while, so it was
with him. His hand was often on his breast, and his look often said,
"This will be the death of me." The bees hummed in the flowers about his
feet, the birds built their nests in the boughs above his head, and his
children played about his knees; but his thoughts were otherwhere,--away
beyond the dark river, away in that beautiful country where the
inhabitants never say, "I am sick."

It was about midsummer that one Mrs. Brown, well known to Mrs. Walker's
family, and to all the people of the neighborhood, as having suffered
for many years with some strange malady which none of the doctors
understood, sold the remnant of her property, having previously wasted
nearly all she had upon physicians, and betook herself to the great Dr.
Killmany. What her condition had actually been is not material to my
story, nor is it necessary to say anything about the treatment she
received at the hands of the great doctor. It is enough to say that it
cost her her last dollar,--that she worked her slow way home as best she
could, arriving there at last with shoes nearly off her feet and gown
torn and faded, but with health considerably improved. That she had sold
her last cow, and her feather-bed, and her teakettle, and her
sheep-shears, and her grandfather's musket, all added wonderfully to the
great doctor's reputation.

"You can't go to him if you don't go full-handed," said one to another;
and he that heard it, and he that said it, laughed as though it were a
good joke.

Some said he could see right through a man: there was no need of words
with him! And others, that he could take the brains out of the skull, or
the bones out of the ankles, and leave the patient all the better for
it. In short, there was nothing too extravagant to be said of
him; and as for Mrs. Brown, the person who had seen her became
semi-distinguished. She was invited all over the neighborhood, and her
conversation was the most delightful of entertainments. Amongst the
rest, she visited Mr. Walker; and through her instrumentality, his
strong desire to see the great Dr. Killmany was shaped into purpose.

Two of the cows were sold, most of the farming implements, and such
articles of household furniture as could be spared; and with all this
the money realized was but a hundred and fifty dollars. Then Jenny
proposed to sell her side-saddle; and when that was gone, she said
Fleety might as well go with it. "If you only come home well, Hobert,"
she said, "we will soon be able to buy her back again; and if you
don't--but you will!"

So Fleetfoot went with the rest; and when for the last time she was led
up before the door, and ate grass from the lap of little Jenny, and put
her neck down to the caressing hands of young Hobert, it was a sore
trial to them all. She seemed half conscious herself, indeed, and
exhibited none of her accustomed playfulness with the children, but
stood in a drooping attitude, with her eye intent upon her master; and
when they would have taken her away, she hung back, and, stretching her
neck till it reached his knees, licked his hands with a tenderness that
was pitiful to see.

"Don't, Hobert, don't take on about it," Jenny said, putting back the
heart that was in her mouth; "we will have her back again, you
know!"--and she gave Fleetfoot a little box on the ear that was half
approval and half reproach, and so led Hobert back into the house.

And that day was the saddest they had yet seen. And that night, when the
sick man was asleep, the two women talked together and cried together,
and in the end got such comfort as women get out of great sacrifices and
bitter tears.

They counted their little hoard. They had gathered three hundred dollars
now, and there required to be yet as much more; and then they made plans
as to what yet remained to be done. "We must mortgage the land," Jenny
said, "that is all,--don't mind, mother. I don't mind anything, so that
we only have Hobert well again." And then they talked of what they would
do another year when they should be all together once more, and all
well. "Think what Dr. Killmany has done for Mrs. Brown!" they said.

And now came busy days; and in the earnestness of the preparation the
sorrow of the coming parting was in some sort dissipated. Hobert's
wearing-apparel was all brought out, and turned and overturned, and the
most and the best made of everything. The wedding coat and the wedding
shirt were almost as good as ever, Jenny said; and when the one had been
brushed and pressed, and the other done up, she held them up before them
all, and commented upon them with pride and admiration. The fashions had
changed a little, to be sure, but what of that? The new fashions were
not so nice as the old ones, to her thinking. Hobert would look smart in
the old garments, at any rate, and perhaps nobody would notice. She was
only desirous that he should make a good impression on the Doctor. And
all that could be done to that end was done, many friends contributing,
by way of little presents, to the comfort and respectability of the
invalid. "Here is a leather pouch," said one, "that I bought of a pedler
the other day. I don't want it; but as you are going to travel, may be
you can make use of it, Walker; take it, any how."

"I have got a new pair of saddle-bags," said the circuit-rider, "but I
believe I like the old ones best. So, Brother Walker, you will oblige me
by taking these off my hands. I find extra things more trouble to take
care of than they are worth."

It was not proposed that Hobert should travel with a trunk, so the
saddle-bags were just what was required.

"Here is a pair of shoes," said another. "Try them on, Walker, and see
if you can wear them: they are too small for my clumsy feet!" They had
been made by the village shoemaker to Mr. Walker's measure. Of course
they fitted him, and of course he had them.

"I'll bet you a new hat," said another, "that I come to see you ag'in,
day after to-morrer, fur off as I live."

The day after the morrow he did not come: he was "onaccountably
hendered," he said; but when he did come he brought the new hat. He
thought he would be as good as his word in one thing if not in another,
and redeem his bet at any rate.

"I'll bring my team: I want to go to town anyhow; and we'll all see you
off together!" This was the offer of the farmer whose land adjoined Mr.
Walker's; and the day of departure was fixed, and the morning of the day
saw everything in readiness.

"Hobert looks a'most like a storekeeper or a schoolmaster, don't he,
mother?" Jenny said, looking upon him proudly, when he was arrayed in
the new hat and the wedding coat.

"Why, you are as spry as a boy!" exclaimed the farmer who was to drive
them to town, seeing that Hobert managed to climb into the wagon without
assistance. "I don't believe there is any need of Dr. Killmany, after
all!" And the neighbors, as one after another they leaned over the
sideboard of the wagon, and shook hands with Mr. Walker, made some
cheerful and light-hearted remark, calculated to convey the impression
that the leave-taking was a mere matter of form, and only for a day.

As Jenny looked back at the homestead, and thought of the possibilities,
the tears would come; but the owner of the team, determined to carry it
bravely through, immediately gathered up the slack reins, and, with a
lively crack of his whip, started the horses upon a brisk trot.

"Don't spare the money," Jenny entreated, as she put the pocket-book in
Hobert's hand; but she thought in her heart that Dr. Killmany would be
touched when he saw her husband, and knew how far he had travelled to
see him, and what sacrifices he had made to do so. "He must be good, if
he is so great as they say," she argued; "and perhaps Hobert may even
bring home enough to buy back Fleety." This was a wild dream. And the
last parting words were said, the last promises exacted and given; the
silent tears and the lingering looks all were past, and the farmer's
wagon, with an empty chair by the side of Jenny's, rattled home again.

It was perhaps a month after this that a pale, sickly-looking man, with
a pair of saddle-bags over his arm, went ashore from the steamboat Arrow
of Light, just landed at New Orleans, and made his slow way along the
wharf, crowded with barrels, boxes, and cotton-bales, and thence to the
open streets. The sun was oppressively hot, and the new fur hat became
almost intolerable, so that the sick man stopped more than once in the
shade of some friendly tree, and, placing the saddle-bags on the ground,
wiped the sweat from his forehead, and looked wistfully at the strange
faces that passed him by.

"Can you tell me, my friend," he said at last, addressing a slave-woman
who was passing by with a great bundle on her head,--"Can you tell me
where to find Doctor Killmany, who lives somewhere here?"

The woman put her bundle on the ground, and, resting her hands on her
hips, looked pitifully upon the stranger. "No, masser, cante say, not
for sure," she answered. "I knows dar's sich a doctor somewhars 'bout,
but just whars I cante say, an' he's a poor doctor fur the likes o'
you,--don't have noffen to do with him, nohow."

"A poor doctor!" exclaimed the stranger. "Why, I understood he was the
greatest doctor in the world; and I've come all the way from the Wabash
country to see him."

"Warbash! whar's dat? Norf, reckon; well you jes be gwine back Norf de
fus boat, an dat's de bery bes' advice dis yere nigger can guv."

"But what do you know about Dr. Killmany."

"I knows dis yere, masser: he mos'l

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